The Biden-Harris Administration

[BlueRidge]

For me, I haven't gotten mad about some things because they aren't over yet. Voting Rights aren't dead. The infrastructure bill(s) aren't dead. Abortion hasn't been killed by the Supreme Court yet.

well one could be mad about what's happening, but ITA I'm not discouraged yet because these things aren't dead yet. We're still fighting.

 

[DORISPULASKI]

Just so you know, you agree with Einstein:

You never fail until you stop trying.

 

[MacMadame]

Yeah, pretty much. I have had to kind of scale back emotionally on some things that are happening locally. But I'm still in there plugging away.

 

[once_upon]

They send these emails because they work (or they think they work).

Just yesterday, I assume because it was the last day of the quarter, I got pleas from Jill, Doug, Hillary, Joe, Kamala, Stacy A, Eric H, Jon O, Precious M (Nebraska), Carol B (Nebraska) and a boatload of Vote.Org.

That's on top of similar emails from the same people over the last 7 days. And the 15 days before that.

I've hit unscribe numerous, numerous times. I'm really, really worn out. The abortion issue has enraged me - but like I said, I don't see a point in the women's March tomorrow and I'm on someone's donate to the porta potty emails.

 

[MacMadame]

I've hit unscribe numerous, numerous times.

Yeah, me too. But every time I sign a petition, I end up right back on them. I don't sign any petition from Daily Kos anymore because they not only put me back on their mailing list but they sell my name to other progressive lists.

I just created a gmail only for petitions. And a rule to put everything that comes to that email in the trash! We'll see how it goes next time I sign a petition.

 

[BlueRidge]

The Women's March tomorrow was called too quickly to generate large numbers but I think its a start.

As for fundraising emails, candidates and non-profit organizations have to fundraise and email fundraising is an effective way to do it. I hate it and unsubscribe all the time, but I understand why they have to do it and that inane messages unfortunately work.

ETA: A lot of online petitions exist ONLY to get your email for fundraising. I consider that dishonest but unfortunately non profit orgs are desperate.

 

[ballettmaus]

Overall my answer to that question would not capture my real level of discontent about the subject. And that's because I blame conservative Dems in Congress much more than I blame Biden, but I do blame Biden as well. Although I will without question vote for him again, I do have some areas where I'm not fully happy.

I think that's normal though and I don't think the politician where anyone would be fully happy in all areas exists.

We have some amazing progressives out there fighting for us in the House and Senate, and its very clear that leadership--Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi--are largely on the same page with the progressives. Listen to Pramila Jayapal this morning. As far as the current legislation goes, they are fighting the good fight and may just pull off something.

I read a comment on social media the other day claiming that progressives were derailing Biden's agenda or however it was phrased. It made me so mad because it's progressives who are fighting for it and there are only two Democrats who are derailing the agenda (as far as I know) and one is conservative and the other I'd call an opportunist because I have no idea what else she stands for. Progressives want to get this done and I think that we'd already have a watered-down deal or just the bipartisan infrastructure deal without them.

Wouldn't it be nice if the MSM focused on the good fight the progressives are fighting instead of the Manchin's and Sinema's obstruction?! (I'd also love to know if they'd dig in or came around if that happened).

For me, I haven't gotten mad about some things because they aren't over yet. Voting Rights aren't dead.

It is my understanding that the laws that have been enacted already can't be undone, so while Congress still can do something, it's also already too late for some states. That is what is frustrating me the most. Republicans are in agreement about seizing power, so they can move at lightning speed while Manchin and Sinema need their 15-minutes of fame with every damn bill, so Democrats can't match that speed and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it. (Other than vote in more Democrats, however, I'm afraid that Manchin's and Sinema's power trip may lead to the opposite if they continue to prevent Democrats from getting anything done).

 

[jenny12]

Agreed @ballettmaus. Progressives have already done plenty to compromise. They have already went from 10 trillion down to 3.5. At this point, they are really the ones holding the line for Biden’s agenda.

 

[clairecloutier]

Biden appeared on Capitol Hill today and told both groups--progressives and moderates--that they were going to have to compromise on the 2 bills, which Biden confirmed as linked. He also tried to ratchet down the tension and pressure:

Biden, however, urged patience and restraint in the days ahead.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days or in six weeks,” he said.

Hopefully both sides respond.

I am firmly convinced that Manchema thought they could get the infrastructure bill passed on its own and that they could just make the reconciliation bill go away. I very much believe they were hoping for it to just die. I'm proud of Pramila Jayapal and her caucus for sticking to their position firmly. There comes a time when you just have to stand for what you believe in.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/10/01/house-democrats-infrastructure-biden/

P.S. For those interested--video of West Virginia activists approaching Manchin on his houseboat (non-aggressively):

https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1443750386066731014

 

[ballettmaus]

I am firmly convinced that Manchema thought they could get the infrastructure bill passed on its own and that they could just make the reconciliation bill go away. I very much believe they were hoping for it to just die.

You'd think that they would have learned from what happened with the ACA. Apparently, they didn't but I'm glad that others have.

 

[BlueRidge]

Chuck Schumer's comments on Republican refusal to vote to raise the debt ceiling (from the Guardian):

He said the refusal of the Republicans to extend the country’s debt limit and to “pay for the spending and debts incurred as a result of the bipartisan covid relief legislation passed during the Trump administration” is “a stark reminder of how absurd and partisan Republicans have made the process for raising the debit limit.”

Basically, Mitch McConnel and Republicans in the Senate are willing to play at the brink of disaster for some imagined political advantage to themselves.

I'm just exhausted with this politics.

 

[DORISPULASKI]

So raise the debt ceiling to " To infinity and beyond," if it can't just be deleted.

 

[BlueRidge]

Glad to see this:

A senior State Department official is abruptly leaving his role in the Biden administration. And on his way out, he has sent a scathing internal memo criticizing the president’s use of a Trump-era policy to expel migrants from the southern border.
In a detailed legal memo dated October 2 and obtained by POLITICO, Harold Koh, a senior adviser and the sole political appointee on the State Department’s legal team, called the use of the public health authority known as Title 42 “illegal,” “inhumane” and “not worthy of this Administration that I so strongly support.”

“I believe this Administration’s current implementation of the Title 42 authority continues to violate our legal obligation not to expel or return (“refouler”) individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti,” the memo reads. He added that “lawful, more humane alternatives plainly exist.”

Top State adviser leaves post, rips Biden’s use of Trump-era Title 42 (Politico)

 

[Judy]

Chuck Schumer's comments on Republican refusal to vote to raise the debt ceiling (from the Guardian):



Basically, Mitch McConnel and Republicans in the Senate are willing to play at the brink of disaster for some imagined political advantage to themselves.

I'm just exhausted with this politics.

It's really healthy to do a time out from it.

 

[BlueRidge]

Couple of good commentaries today on Biden's agenda. They address the fact that the media often treats those politicians who don't want to spend money as serious and those who do as unrealistic and extreme.

How it is we have not learned from the past 40 years what happens when you do not invest in the country's future, I cannot understand. Further how it can be considered "patriotic" to advocate against investing in our future is even more impossible to understand.

Paul Krugman:

On children: Child poverty is a huge problem in America. And there’s overwhelming evidence that spending on programs that alleviate child poverty has huge payoffs: Children who receive aid from these programs grow up to be healthier adults, with higher earnings, than those who don’t. In fact, the evidence for high returns from spending more on children is much stronger than the evidence for high returns to spending on roads and bridges (although we should do that, too).

So every year that we don’t increase aid to children, for example by expanding the child tax credit, leads to decades of wasted human potential.

And I would add it adds to our future costs when people are left behind and can't live up to their potential.

David Atkins:

3) Cutting the reconciliation bill is not responsible policy.
Entire shelves’ worth of books have been written on this subject, so it hardly needs reiterating here that America’s investment in both its physical infrastructure and its people lags far behind much of the rest of the developed world—with concomitant gaps in incomes, equality, and mobility. Even the $3.5 trillion (spread out over 10 years!) in the reconciliation bill is a mere fraction of what would be required to bring the United States into the 21st century.

Because the reconciliation bill must be revenue neutral, it does not increase deficits (though America’s debt-to-GDP level remains in safe territory, and borrowing is incredibly cheap due to historically low interest rates, so deficit spending would not, in fact, be a problem). The spending is paid for by taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, whose effective rates in the United States due to loopholes and lax enforcement remain laughably low. The cost of natural disasters and climate mitigation in the future will far, far exceed the cost of working to address it today should we fail. The longer we take to address it, the more costly it will be in both lives and money.

 

[Dobre]

Biden administration reverses Trump rule barring federally funded family planning clinics from abortion referrals​

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/biden-administration-title-x-abortion/2021/10/04/33451c1a-223c-11ec-9309-b743b79abc59_story.html

 

[BlueRidge]

Biden has called McConnell's bluff on the debt ceiling. If the Democrats are forced to raise it without Republicans, they'll do it by removing the filibuster for this. But doing that threatens to unravel the filibuster so McConnell can decide if he wants to risk a breach of the filibuster by blocking a vote on the debt ceiling.

Good job Biden. Now of course Manchin and Sinema have to vote for lifting the filibuster on this for it to work. But if they don't they essentially push the nuclear button on the economy. I hope they are feeling comfortable right now.

 

[Vagabond]

Not so fast, @BlueRidge.

Debt Ceiling Fight Gives Democrats Ammunition Against Filibuster

Party leaders say the G.O.P.’s refusal to allow a vote to avert default is the most powerful argument yet for weakening the Senate’s signature procedural weapon.

www.nytimes.com

Yet it is not clear whether enough people are drawing that conclusion. The chief impediment to changing the filibuster has been the resistance of centrist Democratic Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and there is no indication that they have changed their stance in response to the current debt limit drama.

 

[BlueRidge]

Not so fast, @BlueRidge.

Debt Ceiling Fight Gives Democrats Ammunition Against Filibuster

Party leaders say the G.O.P.’s refusal to allow a vote to avert default is the most powerful argument yet for weakening the Senate’s signature procedural weapon.

www.nytimes.com

that's my point, its going to come down to whether Sinema and Manchin want to blow things up by refusing to raise the debt ceiling out of their undying love for the filibuster.

 

[BlueRidge]

Hmm Delaware Senator Chris Coons says "“there very well may be” 50 votes in the Senate to change the filibuster rules to bypass the Republicans and allow the Democrats move forward and raise the debt limit." (According to the Guardian)

He may just be putting this out there as part of the pressure campaign on McConnell, but hmm.

 

[caseyedwards]

Reading about the history of the modern debt ceiling it really seems it was congresspeople wanting to pretend they were tough on deficits and we’re budget hawks! There is no rational excuse for the government to limit its debt or borrowing. It the dumbest most pathetic most political thing ever passed by congress! It should have be totally repealed ASAP!! The fundamental flaw is that no one ever ever ever opposes spending that will lead to reaching the debt ceiling. It’s just never thought of at the voting for spending stage.

United States debt ceiling - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

If democrats are going to pass anything it must be abolition of the debt ceiling not raising the debt ceiling. If they don’t it’s because they want to pretend they are deficit hawks

 

[MacMadame]

The filibuster is stupid.

 

[BlueRidge]

The filibuster is stupid.

its especially stupid if it causes the US to default on its debt.

 

[Vagabond]

The filibuster is stupid.

Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 22

To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision) is in its tendency to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser number.... This is one of those refinements which in practice has an effect, the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must in some way or other go forward. If a pertinacious minority can controul the opinion of a majority respecting the best mode of conducting it; the majority in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will over-rule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence tedious delays—continual negotiation and intrigue—contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: For upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savour of weakness—sometimes border upon anarchy.​

​

Dude knew his stuff.

 

[KCC]

Talked to my sister today. She is mad because Biden is going to monitor all of her transactions from her her bank accounts (valued over $600). I fact checked her claims and while a tiny bit of the story was right, wow was she wrong on everything of substance. She is also the one who told me that solar panels were outlawed in Florida. You know, the sunshine state.

 

[Dobre]

Paying one's debts would be a nice conservative reason to get rid of the filibuster.

 

[BlueRidge]

McConnell blinked. The suggestion that Dems might breach the filibuster did it.

Schumer has accepted the deal for a short term debt extension. That means this is not over, but if Republicans are voting to the extension it blows up McConnell's bullshit plus Biden beat him in this round.

 

[Susan1]

McConnell blinked. The suggestion that Dems might breach the filibuster did it.

Schumer has accepted the deal for a short term debt extension. That means this is not over, but if Republicans are voting to the extension it blows up McConnell's bullshit plus Biden beat him in this round.

The banner on MSNBC said McConnell folded, and when Nicolle said that, I said "like a cheap lawn chair". I don't even remember who said that originally, but it's one of my favorite insults to republicans.

 

[Vagabond]

Biden to Restore Three National Monuments in Utah and New England

President Biden is restoring Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah and a marine monument off the New England coast, all severely reduced by former President Donald J. Trump.

www.nytimes.com

Mr. Biden will reinstate and slightly expand the original 1.3 million acre boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument, and restore the original 1.8 million acre boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante, two rugged and pristine expanses in Utah that are defined by red rock canyons, rich wildlife and archaeological treasures.

He will also restore protections covering the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine monument, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, an expanse of sea canyons and underwater mountains off the New England coast.

 

[caseyedwards]

McConnell strategy now officially baffling and incomprehensible! Very easy to see Cruz beating him for Republican leader if he keeps using his group of 10 die hard followers to pass things after folding and capitulating after failed posturing.

But unless I am mistaken the bill says the government will spend 480 billion in October November December? Is this true?

Side note! Lol because (non DC) republicans and democrats hate McConnell equally he has possibly the most unsuccessful unpopular Twitter account! He gets ratioed on every post. If any (non DC) republicans liked him surely he wouldn’t be ratioed