Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label GOP vs Dems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GOP vs Dems. Show all posts

Friday, March 22, 2024

Another'n Bites It


218 Republicans minus Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher = 216
213 Democrats plus two Republicans willing to vote with them = 215-to-214 and Dems win


Rep. Mike Gallagher announces he’ll resign in April, further narrowing House GOP majority

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) announced Friday he will resign effective April 19, further narrowing Republicans’ already razor-thin House majority.

Gallagher, who had already announced he would not seek reelection this year, said he made the decision to resign after conversations with his family. He currently chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

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“I’ve worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline and look forward to seeing Speaker [Mike] Johnson appoint a new chair to carry out the important mission of” the committee, Gallagher said in a statement.

Republicans currently have a five-seat majority after Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) resigned Friday, leaving the House earlier than he initially anticipated because he found his majority to be unproductive.

Gallagher has represented Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District since 2017.

He announced in February he would not run for another term, saying in a statement that “electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old.”

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Raskin Brings It

Democrats take a lot of criticism for "not hitting back".

This is horseshit. Dems hit back, but they don't have the echo chamber necessary to make it widely known.

Republicans have a pretty vast network of Wingnut Media that will repeat whatever crap they care to utter.

Pass this around.


Friday, March 08, 2024

SOTU


Highlites



Some of the Press Poodles got it about right:



Then there's NYT:
And never mind that the lede paragraph
began with "Biden did great, and then
the GOP sent out this fuckin' loon."
(I may have paraphrased a little)

I encourage everyone to watch this, but you're going to need a stiff drink and a subdued gag reflex.

All it needs is the Sarah McGlachlan music in the background.


Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Decide


There's lots of smoke in your house, and some flames are becoming visible.

Two rather elderly firefighters show up.

Fireman Joe has a hose hooked up, ready to go, and dozens of people already working the problem.

Fireman Don has a bunch of guys with him too, and they're all carrying full cans of gasoline.

This is not a difficult choice.


Thursday, February 29, 2024

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

A Letter

... to the editors at WaPo, from Alan Guttman in Hampton VA:


Opinion
The border bill shows the House is political theater

Regarding the Feb. 5 front-page article “Senate reveals border package”:

While Republican senators continue to work with their Democratic counterparts and President Biden to hammer out legislation to address issues around immigration and border security, more and more House Republicans are jumping on board former president Donald Trump’s ark toward injustice.

The convening of the House Homeland Security Committee to take up articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, along with the announcement from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) that a proposed Senate bill on immigration and border security would be “dead on arrival” in the House, is not political theater; it is insidious reality. These actions signal that many House Republicans have now chosen to follow the dictates of a U.S. citizen charged with 91 felonies rather than work with Mr. Biden, the only person who can sign their bills into law.

The former president’s harmful actions and inaction on Jan. 6, 2021, continue to fester within the same legislative body that was attacked on that day three years ago. Rather than doing his job and addressing the crisis at our southern border, Mr. Johnson has made clear his plans to essentially hold the House and the American people hostage at least until after the November election.

Mike Johnson is the latest in a string of malignantly incompetent GOP Speakers. And I lump him in with John Boehner and Paul Ryan, who seemed at the time to be trying to bring some regular order to a House that was rapidly degenerating into the Big Fuckin Mess it is now, because I think they both knew where it was headed, but they didn't get up on their hind legs and call it out.

And I think they were unable or unwilling to publicly criticize the rabble (then the Tea Party and now MAGA) because the establishment plutocrats were telling them to let it go, thinking the rubes were doing the work, and the fat cats would reap the rewards.

Even though more people are starting to recognize the danger, we could see the end of American democracy unless these next few election cycles go to the Blue side in a big way.

There's likely a thought that Trump has given us a taste of how bad the bad cop can be, and now it's time to send in the good cop - Nikki Haley.

Project Plutocracy is still on. Don't get cocky and start thinking it's all good, and we can go back to ignoring everything but our hobbies, funny animal videos, and our crazy friends on Instagram.

Democracy is not something we have
if it's not something we do

Friday, February 02, 2024

The Needle Moves?

I'm really hoping the guys in these videos indicate a trend - that maybe some of the less rabid Republicans are beginning to see the glaring cynicism of the GOP - especially where Trump and his MAGA goons are concerned, and rebelling enough to get that party's shit together.

Like the first guy, I don't hold the Dems up as total paragons of civic virtue. They've got their share of manipulative assholes and smarmy characters too. And that's not to get all Both Sides-y or anything. I just always want to take some precaution against becoming too much of a fanboy.

Anyway, Tony Michaels is new to me, and he just popped up on my YouTube feed. I'll give him a try for a bit, but he's referred to as The Rush Limbaugh Of The Left, so I'm thinking I can prob'ly go without. We'll see.



Thursday, February 01, 2024

Vote Them Out



Opinion
The GOP’s blunders take their toll

House Republicans who have become indifferent to the adverse consequences of nihilism and performative politics might want to consider the toll their chaos-producing antics are taking. From vowing to pursue meritless impeachments to nixing a border security measure to please former president Donald Trump, they have given Democrats plenty of ammunition to blast them out of the majority in November.

Republicans, by the admission of conservative Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.), have not a single accomplishment on which to run this year. “For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something … and then do nothing about it,” he bellowed on the House floor in November. “One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!” He got no answer.

Most Republicans voted against the overwhelmingly popular infrastructure bill. Now they routinely claim credit for it. Only occasionally do they get called out for hypocrisy. (Get ready to hear plenty of it as the campaign heats up.) With help from some Republicans in the Senate and very few in the House, Democrats were able to pass the infrastructure bill in 2021. As with infrastructure, Republicans have largely escaped blame for causing economic havoc thanks to Democratic votes for keeping the government open and avoiding a default on the debt.

Now, however, with no one to cover their tracks, Republicans risk making themselves vulnerable to voters disgusted with partisan melodrama. On the impeachment front, Republicans embarrassingly have come up with nothing to justify the impeachments of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or President Biden. As for Mayorkas, Republicans’ favorite lawyer, Jonathan Turley, wrote in the Daily Beast that “being a bad person is not impeachable — or many cabinets would be largely empty,” nor is doing a bad job. He added that if poor performance were grounds for impeachment, Mayorkas “would be only the latest in a long line of cabinet officers frog-marched into Congress for constitutional termination.”

Norman Eisen, former impeachment counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, along with Democracy 21 founder Fred Wertheimer and researcher Sasha Matsuki, wrote for MSNBC: “Both the Biden and Mayorkas impeachments are clearly not backed up by evidence. … What really concerns us, though, is the way these impeachments will both weaponize a key constitutional remedy and undermine its sober original intent.” In turning impeachment into a “partisan joke” to satisfy four-times-indicted and twice-impeached Trump, they wind up revealing their own recklessness, irresponsibility and deep dishonesty. When Turley, a fierce defender of Trump during his impeachments, and Eisen, a counsel to House impeachment managers, agree these are baseless stunts, the jig might be up for Republicans.

Making matters worse, House and Senate Republicans’ objection to a massive funding bill to secure the border — to make Mayorkas’s job easier — only underscores their cynical disinterest in actually securing the border. Even for some Republicans, this is a bridge too far. “I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said last week. “It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) denounced Republicans’ obstructionism as well. “The border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem — because he wants to blame Biden for it — is really appalling,” Romney said. “The American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem! Don’t solve it! Let me take credit for solving it later.’”

Put differently, Republicans’ brazen objection to arguably the most serious border funding measure in decades makes both their Mayorkas impeachment and caterwauling about the border look absurdly cynical, even for them.

Unsurprisingly, the public is not buying any of it. Last year, a Wall Street Journal poll found that, concerning Biden, “while overwhelming shares of Republicans support impeachment and Democrats oppose it, independents on the whole side with the opponents, the poll found, with 51% against impeachment and 37% in favor.” As my Post colleague Aaron Blake found in a December review of polling that showed meager support for impeachment, “If the poll numbers don’t move significantly toward where they were for Trump’s impeachments (and are now for his indictments), a Biden impeachment vote could be tricky for a lot of Republicans — and for GOP leadership. And failing to even hold a vote would be a remarkable capitulation.”

Matters have not improved for Republicans. A USA Today-Suffolk University poll in January found, “Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden could be costing them with voters, particularly with America’s moderates. About twice as many of these middle-of-the-road voters — a crucial bloc for both parties in this year’s presidential election — said they oppose rather than support the House GOP’s recent impeachment inquiry.”

Republicans overwhelmingly were against Biden’s popular infrastructure bill and in favor of shutting down the government, defaulting on the debt and conducting bogus impeachment hearings that the voters do not want while opposing a tough border control bill. Democrats can hardly believe their good fortune heading into November. Chip Roy likely will not be the only one who cannot think of a single reason to keep them in power.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Today's Trae

Republicans have been shit-talkin' government for 50 years - at a minimum.

And apparently, it's finally come to where they can't afford to do anything that might make us think they've been lying to us the whole fuckin' time.


Saturday, January 20, 2024

Continuing GOP Fuckery

They never let up.


"Conservatives" have been gunning for Social Security for close to 90 years now. And it's the classic ploy - they refuse to do anything that might fix it, and in fact do things like drive up the debt and deficit so they can use "fiscal responsibility" as an excuse to kill off anything the government's involved with that doesn't put money in their pockets.

They won't say it, but we're right back to where they want to turn trillions of our retirement dollars over to their buddies on Wall Street so they can take some nice fat commission checks to the bank, and issue "Medicare vouchers" in order to make their other buddies in the Healthcare Insurance business wealthy beyond the dreams of Croesus.

Remember, Republicans want the government limited to just 3 basic tasks:
  1. Defend business interests overseas
  2. Keep the rabble in line here in USAmerica Inc
  3. Settle contract disputes
Everything else is to be "privatized". (ie: converted to a coin-operated system)


Senate Finance chief rips GOP's 'backroom scheme' to cut Social Security

The chair of the Senate Finance Committee said legislation advanced Thursday by the GOP-controlled House Budget Committee is a "backroom scheme" to cut Social Security and Medicare outside of the regular political process, a warning that came as Republicans signaled their intention to attach the bill to a must-pass government funding measure.

"Republicans in Congress know their plans to gut Americans' Social Security and Medicare benefits are deeply unpopular, so they are resorting to schemes that short-circuit the legislative process, rushing through cuts to Americans' earned benefits," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said of the Fiscal Commission Act, which passed out of the House Budget Committee in a largely party-line vote.

Wyden argued Thursday that "the term fiscal commission' is the ultimate Washington buzzword, and it translates to trading away Americans' earned benefits in a secretive, closed-door process."

"Instead of trying to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," Wyden added, "Republicans should work with Democrats to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share, which would go a long way towards securing Social Security and Medicare long into the future."

If passed, the Fiscal Commission Act would establish a bipartisan, bicameral, 16-member panel consisting of both lawmakers and individuals from the private sector, all chosen by congressional leaders.

The commission would be tasked with crafting and voting on policy recommendations for Social Security, Medicare, and other trust fund programs. If approved by the commission, the recommendations would receive expedited consideration in both the House and Senate, with no amendments to the final document allowed.

Social Security defenders have long warned that the GOP-led push for a fiscal commission is a ploy to slash the New Deal program, which helps keep tens of millions of seniors and children above the poverty line every year.

During Thursday's budget committee hearing, Republican members did nothing to assuage concerns about their intentions, voting down a proposed amendment from Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) that said the fiscal commission "shall propose recommendations to strengthen and secure Social Security" by "protecting Social Security benefits" and requiring the wealthy to contribute more to the program.

Republican committee members also rejected Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's (D-Texas) amendment stating that the fiscal commission "shall propose recommendations to strengthen and secure Medicare" by "protecting the traditional Medicare program" and extending its solvency by "requiring taxpayers with incomes above $400,000 to contribute more" and closing a loophole that allows rich business owners to avoid Medicare taxes.

"This bill should be opposed by any member of Congress who cares about Social Security, Medicare, and their constituents who depend on them."

At a press conference following Thursday's hearing, House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — a longtime supporter of deep Social Security and Medicare cuts — is "100% committed to this commission" and hopes to tie it to government funding legislation.

"Probably that's its best chance of success, but I also think it's most germane to attach it to our final funding bill."

The Fiscal Commission Act has some support in the Senate. In a joint statement on Thursday, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — both of whom declined to run for reelection this year — applauded the budget committee for "advancing this commonsense legislation."

"We also appreciate Speaker Johnson's continued support for this effort," added the senators, who are leading a companion bill in the upper chamber. "Taking immediate, corrective action to reverse this catastrophic financial demise of our own making will help ensure that our children and grandchildren are not burdened by our poor fiscal choices."

But the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) stressed Thursday that
"Social Security and Medicare Part A are fully self-funded and do not contribute to the debt."

"The biggest drivers of the debt are 'tax expenditures' — giveaways to the wealthy and large corporations like the Trump/GOP tax cuts of 2017 that Republicans insist be extended," the group noted. According to a recent analysis by the Center for American Progress, debt as a percentage of the U.S. economy would be on the decline if the Bush and Trump tax cuts were never passed.

Max Richtman, NCPSSM's president and CEO, said in a statement that the fiscal commission push is "designed to give individual members of Congress political cover for cutting Americans' earned benefits."

"Any changes to Social Security and Medicare should go through regular order and not be relegated to a commission unaccountable to the public and rushed through the Congress," he added. "This bill should be opposed by any member of Congress who cares about Social Security, Medicare, and their constituents who depend on them."

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Today's Moscowitz



Tuesday, January 09, 2024

Take It Away, Bob


Maddow Comes Around

And it's about fuckin' time. Driftglass and Blue Gal have been on this for years.

Trump did not remake the GOP in his own image. He's the perfect reflection of what that party has been morphing into for decades.

And finally, the Press Poodles (some anyway) are starting to catch up.


Saturday, December 16, 2023

Let's Do The Numbers


Budget Deficit (Surplus in parentheses)

Jimmy Carter
1977: $54B
1981: $79B
Change: +46.2963%


Ronald Reagan
1981: $79B
1989: $153B
Change: +93.6709%


George HW Bush
1989: $153B
1993: $255B
Change: +66.6667%


Bill Clinton
1993: $255B
2001: ($128B)
Change: -150.196%


George W Bush
2001: ($128B)
2009: $1.413T
Change: +1,203.91%


Barack Obama
2009: $1.413T
2017: $665B
Change: -52.937%


Donald Trump
2017: $665B
2021: $3.132T
Change: +370.977%


Joe Biden (to date)
2021: $3.132T
2023: $1.70T
Change: -45.7216%

Average Change

4 Democratic Presidents: - 50.639575%
4 Republican Presidents: +433.80615%

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

I'll Say It Again

Three things, actually:
  1. When Ken Buck sounds like the voice of reason, we've got serious problems
  2. The "silent moderates" of the GOP are silent because they think they'll get their plutocratic agenda through by hiding behind the freak show at the MAGA circus 
  3. Democrats are not to blame for the shitty behavior of the Republicans


Jordan loses again:

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Thursday, August 31, 2023

Another Mitch Glitch

Some of the wiring in Mitch McConnell's brain has gone a little kerflooey.

I imagine you've already seen the video and heard the reports, but this is the era of piling on, so here it is again. He goes off the air for a good 20 seconds, and then kinda reboots enough to continue.



That death grip on the podium seems a bit metaphorical - McConnell desperately holding on to something he thinks will shield him from the humiliation he continually brings on himself.

About a month ago:



I think the interesting angle here is not just that Mitch is having some really alarming episodes, but that the Democratic governor of Kentucky would appoint a replacement Senator if McConnell can't serve out his term, and the Republican legislature has put through a bill requiring the governor to appoint a replacement of the same party as the departing Senator - from a list of candidates proffered by the Kentucky GOP.

So what if Gov Beshear ignores that requirement, appoints a Democrat, and tests it out in the courts, arguing Separation Of Powers?

That's of particular interest for me because the Republicans have been chipping away at the Checks-n-Balances thing for decades, starting at least as far back as Reagan, with the cockamamie "theory of the unitary executive".

The general principle that the President controls the entire executive branch was originally rather innocuous, but extreme forms of the theory have developed. Former White House Counsel John Dean explains: "In its most extreme form, unitary executive theory can mean that neither Congress nor the federal courts can tell the President what to do or how to do it, particularly regarding national security matters."

According to law professors Lawrence Lessig and Cass Sunstein, "No one denies that in some sense the framers created a unitary executive; the question is in what sense. Let us distinguish between a strong and a weak version." In either its strong or weak form, the theory would limit the power of Congress to divest the President of control of the executive branch. The "strongly unitary" theory posits stricter limits on Congress than the "weakly unitary" theory. During his confirmation hearing to become an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court, Samuel Alito seemed to endorse a weaker version of the unitary executive theory.

Alito's seemingly obvious self-interest in preserving his own power not withstanding (the guy did lie his ass off during his confirmation, dontcha know), the GOP position is largely that the Legislative Branch can't really interfere with the Executive's power to run the government. Which is pretty interesting because the Kentucky legislature is trying to do exactly that.

And that contradiction is just too perfectly on-brand for these asshole Daddy State Republicans.

Monday, July 17, 2023

Hunter's Laptop


First - if Hunter Biden broke the law, then Hunter Biden should be held to account and taken down.

Oh, wait - Hunter Biden actually has been found to have broken the law, he's stood before the man, admitted to being a tax cheat, and he's paid us what he owed.

He's also pled guilty to a gun charge (he lied on his background check), which is something that's almost never prosecuted.

BTW #1, I have yet to hear any Republicans squawking about how poor Hunter's 2A rights have been trampled on by a tyrannical government.

OK, but still, he got off easy. What about all the horrible things he's accused of doing in the 2014 - 2016 timeframe? Rudy Giuliani's pal got Hunter's laptop for us and it's just loaded with proof.

BTW #2, some serious questions remain largely unanswered about "the laptop":
  • Does it actually exist?
  • How was it obtained?
  • What about the chain of custody?
I'm not saying there's absolutely nothing to it, and that Hunter Biden is innocent like a spring lamb. I'm betting there is, and he's not.

But I'll bet way more on the obviously dead solid certainty that Republicans have their new Benghazi, and it doesn't matter what the truth is - they're going to flack the fuck out of that one narrow aspect of it, trying to drive Joe's numbers down.

WaPo takes a look at it for us.


Here we go again: An explosive Hunter Biden laptop email needs context

Republican lawmakers expressed outrage last week after Fox News published a 2015 email chain from Hunter Biden’s laptop in which a Ukrainian energy company executive suggested that the “ultimate purpose” of Hunter’s hiring by the company was to shut down investigations of the company’s owner. The email exchange took place about one month before then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine with the express purpose of seeking the removal of the country’s top prosecutor.

Never mind that Tucker Carlson, then a Fox News host, devoted an entire show to this email in October 2020. “Did Joe Biden subvert American foreign policy to enrich his family?” Carlson asked.

The Hunter Biden saga apparently can be endlessly recycled for maximum impact.

“The calm, judicious, steady reveal of incredibly condemning evidence that clearly incriminates the Biden crime family will eventually alarm even the most ardent supporters” of Biden, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) told Fox last week.

However, working with our colleagues in Ukraine in 2019, we carefully documented the legal cases involving the energy company, Burisma, and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky. The information continues to be relevant to assess whether the 2015 email chain provides evidence that Hunter Biden was acting to influence U.S. policy through his father at the time.

Biden and the Ukrainian prosecutor

The email chain is part of 217 gigabytes of data on a hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden and obtained by The Washington Post from a Republican activist. A small portion of the data, including the chain, was verified by two security experts who examined it for The Post, so we are able to cite these emails and provide links.

On Nov. 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, who was a Burisma board member, and two of Hunter’s associates regarding the hiring of a U.S. public relations firm to bolster Burisma’s image.

“I would like us to formulate a list of deliverables, including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions, incl. meetings/communications resulting in high-ranking U.S. officials in Ukraine (U.S. Ambassador) and in U.S. publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their ‘positive opinion’ and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision-makers here in Ukraine: President of Ukraine, president Chief of staff, Prosecutor General, etc.,” Pozharskyi wrote, using a nickname for Zlochevsky. “The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former U.S. policymakers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.”

After responding with an email suggesting he wanted “one more conversation” with Blue Star, the PR firm, Hunter Biden told Pozharskyi that he was “comfortable” with Blue Star and “you should go ahead and sign.”

Nine days later, the U.S. Embassy announced that the vice president would be traveling to Ukraine in December to meet with the Ukrainian president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, and members of parliament. Separately during this period, Blue Star indicated it was beginning to engage with U.S. and Ukrainian officials to shape perceptions of the company.

Here’s where the story gets complicated. A key purpose of Joe Biden’s December 2015 trip was to press Poroshenko to remove the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. Biden’s pressure eventually led to Shokin’s firing. But whether he was a shakedown artist operating at the behest of his son depends on whether Shokin was viewed as an impediment to investigating Burisma.
Shokin has since claimed he was ousted because he was getting too tough on Burisma, but the available evidence shows the opposite is true.

- snip -

The Bottom Line

The available evidence shows that U.S. policy, executed but not developed by Joe Biden, operated independently of his son’s efforts to engage a PR firm to burnish Zlochevsky’s image. Biden’s efforts to oust the prosecutor only plausibly benefited Zlochevsky if Shokin had moved aggressively against Zlochevsky. But documents and interviews instead show Shokin had failed to act — which was a key reason the international community, led by the United States, sought his removal in the first place.

Sunday, June 25, 2023

To The Point


We're at a point now where the only sure way to win a Republican primary election is to stake out positions that will all but guarantee you'll lose in the general election.

I'd normally say it doesn't really hurt my feelings to watch Republicans shooting themselves in the foot, but it makes for a very unsustainable political system, so I have to keep trying to convince Republicans to knock that shit off.

Call me Sisyphus.


WASHINGTON, June 24 - Former President Donald Trump said the federal government has a role in regulating late term abortions, but declined to provide specifics on what that role was in a speech to a conservative audience on Saturday night.

Trump has been relatively quiet on the issue of abortion throughout his campaign for a second term, putting him at odds with other Republican presidential hopefuls including his current biggest threat to the party nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who enacted a six week ban on abortions in his state.

When the guy takes every opportunity to go out of his way to brag about how he overturned Roe v Wade, I don't quite get how he's been "relatively quiet" about it, Reuters.

"There of course remains a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life," Trump told attendees at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual conference in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night. "We will defeat the radical Democrat policy of extreme late term abortion."

Late term abortions, which take place after 21 weeks, are extremely rare, representing just 1% of all abortions, and are often due to fetal abnormalities or threats to the mother's life.

Trump touted his record of appointing three judges to the Supreme Court, which gave the court the conservative majority needed to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case which created federal protections for abortion.

The issue of abortion is likely to become a defining one of the 2024 election. Republican candidates are wooing far right Christian voters with commitments to ban the medical procedure - South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has said he would ban it at 15 weeks, and former Vice President Mike Pence has committed to signing a federal ban on it entirely.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted April 11-12 found that 56% of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a politician who supports legislation limiting access to abortion, while 28% would be more likely to.

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Shitty Is As Shitty Does


Republicans always seem to be competing with each other, trying to see who can be the shittiest shit-heel in that whole shitty gang of shit-eatin' shit-flingers.

And I don't think it's only about pandering to "the base".

It's like the Dark Money Leaders Of The Yacht Buyers Club demand this shitty behavior, so Republicans are running around looking for opportunities to demonstrate just how shitty they can be.

The more you can use government to shit on average people, the better your chances are for collecting nice fat "donations", which will give you more opportunities to impress the bosses by proposing even shittier policies, which will get you nicer and fatter "donations".

And make no mistake - while sometimes they're being shitty just for the sake of being shitty, usually (like in this case) it's aimed at privatization, the pathway to which (again, in this case) runs through "religious" companies.

(I say 'companies' because that's what a church is - it's a fucking company)

Anyway, they get to fuck over poor people, and fuck over everybody who knows church and state have to be kept separate, and they hand "the libs" a dilemma.
  • "How can you be against helping churches help homeless people?"
  • "If the program is working, why wouldn't you want the private sector to help out and make it even better?"
  • "Would you like to take responsibility for cutting the funding altogether? We can do that, y'know - and we'll spend whatever it takes to run a campaign that gets people to blame you guys for it."
And it all fits neatly into everybody's favorite GOP game
  1. Fuck something up
  2. Wait a while
  3. Point at it and say, "Oh look - it's fucked up - better put us in charge so we can fix it."
Tell me I'm wrong.


Federal Policy on Homelessness Becomes New Target of the Right

The approach known as Housing First has long enjoyed bipartisan support. But conservatives are pushing efforts to replace it with programs that put more emphasis on sobriety and employment.


The bipartisan approach that has dominated federal homelessness policy for more than two decades is under growing conservative attack.

The policy directs billions of dollars to programs that provide homeless people with permanent housing and offer — but do not require them to accept — services like treatment for mental illness or drug abuse. The approach, called Housing First, has been the subject of extensive study and expanded under presidents as different as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. President Biden’s homelessness plan makes Housing First its cornerstone and cites it a dozen times.

But Housing First has become a conservative epithet.

Republican lawmakers, backed by conservative think tanks and programs denied funding by Housing First rules, want to loosen the policy’s grip on federal dollars. While supporters say that housing people without preconditions saves lives by getting them off the streets, critics say it ignores clients’ underlying problems and want to shift funding to groups like rescue missions that demand sobriety or employment. Some even blame Housing First for the growth in homelessness.

“No more Housing First!” said Representative Andy Barr, Republican of Kentucky, after introducing a bill last month that would offer more money for programs with treatment mandates.

Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, used two recent hearings to argue that Housing First ignores the root causes of homelessness. The Cicero Institute, a Texas policy group, is promoting model state legislation that bars Housing First programs from receiving state funds. A documentary it produced with PragerU, a conservative advocacy group, cuts between critiques of Housing First and footage of people living in tents on the street and shots of drug use.

The escalating war over an obscure social service doctrine is partly an earnest policy dispute and partly an old-fashioned rivalry between groups seeking federal funds. But it is also a new ideological and political flashpoint, with former President Donald J. Trump and others on the right using it to to promote their argument that homelessness in liberal cities is an indictment of Democratic governance more broadly.

Joe Lonsdale, the tech mogul behind the Cicero Institute, has called Housing First part of a “Marxist” attempt to blame homelessness on capitalism, and Mr. Trump, in seeking a return to office, has pledged to place homeless people in “tent cities.”

“The attack on Housing First is the most worrisome thing I’ve seen in my 30 years in this field,” said Ann Oliva, chief executive of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an advocacy group with bipartisan roots. “When people have a safe and stable place to live, they can address other things in their lives. If critics succeed in defunding these successful programs, we’re going to see a lot more deaths on the street.”

Until Housing First emerged a generation ago, services for homeless people were built on a staircase model: Clients were meant to progress from shelters to transitional programs, where training or treatment would ready them for permanent apartments. In practice, services were weak and failure rates high, with large numbers of noncompliant people returning to the streets.

Though skeptics feared that troubled people would leave or get evicted, early results were impressive.

After five years, 88 percent of the clients in a New York City program called Pathways to Housing remained housed, compared to 47 percent in the usual system of care. Despite the lack of treatment mandates, Pathways clients were no more likely than those in the regular system to report mental illness or substance abuse. A large experiment covering five Canadian cities achieved similar results.

Citing such studies, supporters praise Housing First as unusually “evidence based.”

Contemporaneous research also offered hopes of cost savings. While most people entering shelters were quickly rehoused, work by Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania showed that a small minority became chronically homeless and consumed tens of thousands of dollars of services in jails and emergency rooms — roughly what it cost to house them. Supporters hoped Housing First would prove “not only more humane but for some people potentially cheaper,” Mr. Culhane said.

Housing First exploded from a model to a movement under a Republican administration. Philip F. Mangano, the Bush administration’s top homelessness official, proved relentless in promoting Housing First programs, and the approach, which initially targeted the chronically homeless, broadened to a wider range of people experiencing homelessness.

The Obama administration placed a preference for Housing First into the main federal grant programs, which now provide about $3 billion a year to local groups. From 2007 to 2016, chronic homelessness fell by more than a third.

For social workers used to seeing people languish on the streets, a breakthrough seemed at hand.

“I can still feel the emotion — ‘Wow, we can house everyone!’” said Adam Rocap, deputy director of Miriam’s Kitchen, a social services agency in Washington. Optimism about ending homelessness ran so high, he said, some of the agency’s staff members asked if they should seek other jobs.

Since 2007, the stock of permanent supportive housing has more than doubled to 387,000 beds, while the Department of Housing and Urban Development found 582,000 people were homeless on a single night last year, and researchers estimate the number experiencing homelessness in a year could be three times as high.

Some recent studies have noted limits on what the programs achieve. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2018 found “no substantial evidence” that supportive housing improved clients’ health. Likewise, the medical journal The Lancet found “no measurable effect” on the severity of psychiatric problems, addiction, or employment.

And despite hopes, the programs did not save money. Supportive housing is expensive to build (average costs in high-priced Los Angeles, which has an ambitious Housing First initiative, are nearly $600,000 per unit), and the share of unhoused people who consume costly services is low.

Still, proponents say Housing First has succeeded where it matters most — getting people off the streets.

“Getting people out of homelessness quickly is more important than anything, because life on the streets is so dangerous,” said Professor Culhane, of the University of Pennsylvania. “The evidence shows that Housing First is a very successful policy. Undoing it would be a disaster.”

The growth in homelessness and the visibility of encampments in some locations have intensified debate. Since 2015, the unsheltered population has grown by about 35 percent, with California the center of the crisis. Most analysts say soaring rents play a major role. But critics fault Housing First for financing costly permanent housing instead of shelters that could serve more people, and for preventing treatment mandates they say would promote recovery and employment.

“I thought it would help the few and leave thousands out on the streets, and my fears have been solidified,” said the Reverend Andy Bales, chief executive of the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles, which enforces sobriety rules and does not get federal funds.

Housing First defenders scoff at the charge that it promotes homelessness.

“Blaming Housing First for the rise in homelessness is like blaming aspirin for headaches,” said Jeff Olivet, head of the Biden administration’s Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Mr. Olivet noted that the Department of Veterans Affairs has used Housing First policies — with more generous funding — and cut veterans’ homelessness since 2010 by more than half.

“That’s a proof point for showing we can end homelessness and end it with a Housing First approach,” he said. “What we need to do is scale it up.”

Like its predecessors, the Trump administration initially embraced Housing First, with the housing secretary, Ben Carson, praising a “mountain of data showing that a Housing First approach works.”

That changed in 2019 as California’s homelessness crisis worsened and Mr. Trump began highlighting the issue to criticize the state’s “liberal establishment.”

The Council of Economic Advisers issued a report skeptical of Housing First, and the Trump administration fired its homelessness coordinator, a holdover from the Obama years. His replacement, Robert Marbut, backed strict work and sobriety rules and said he favored “Housing Fourth.”

In a recent interview, Mr. Marbut said he was brought in to “do everything we could to reverse Housing First.”

But when the Trump administration tried to delete the Housing First preference in federal grants, congressional Democrats blocked the effort. With the coronavirus pandemic consuming the rest of Mr. Trump’s term, policy remained unchanged.

Still a revolt had been seeded. Conservative literature on the topic emerged, with critiques from the Manhattan Institute, the Cicero Institute, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and a Heritage Foundation paper by Christopher F. Rufo, the activist who turned “critical race theory” into a war cry on the right.

Tonally, the criticisms occupy two registers. Mr. Trump has described people experiencing homelessness as “violent and dangerously deranged,” and a Cicero Institute podcast asked whether phrases like “vagrants, bums, tramps” are preferable to “homeless.” But Cicero’s film offers sympathetic portraits of recovering addicts, and a former shelter director cries onscreen as she calls Housing First “one of the most oppressive things we’ve done” to the needy.

Cicero’s work has drawn particular attention, given Mr. Lonsdale’s wealth as a co-founder of Palantir, the data-mining firm, and his support of conservative causes. The group’s model legislation restricts encampments to designated sites and blocks Housing First programs from state funds.

“As an all-encompassing model for addressing homelessness, Housing First has failed,” said Judge Glock, who until recently led the group’s work.

Texas and Georgia have adopted measures that enforce camping bans, and Missouri passed a broader Cicero-inspired bill last year, blocking Housing First programs from state funds. Its State Senate sponsor, Holly Thompson Rehder, a Republican, said concerns about the status quo had grown after an encampment fire under a Kansas City bridge killed one person and closed Interstate 70. Even in her rural district, campgrounds complained of losing business because customers feared encampments nearby.

Ms. Rehder, who experienced homelessness as a child, said Cicero recruited her in part because of that history. Having watched relatives struggle with mental illness and addiction, she considered treatment mandates “a no-brainer.” The institute organized a study tour in Texas for her, and Mr. Glock testified for the bill.

“They were incredibly helpful,” she said.

In Congress, Mr. Barr, the Kentucky Republican, got involved after shelters in his Lexington-area district complained they could not get federal funding because of sobriety rules. He said residents told him they would have relapsed in less strict environments.

But Mr. Olivet, the Biden administration official, said critics have forgotten how often services failed the homeless before Housing First came along.

“Housing First saves lives every day,” he said. “It’s a proven intervention. We need more of it.”