Tag: Legislation

A Free State First

Maryland has become the first state in the nation to enact a tax on online advertisements.

They had to override a veto though, because Governor Larry “Rat-F%$#” Hogan vetoed the bill, because he promised no new taxes ever.

Revenue is to be dedicated to education:

Maryland today became the first state in the nation to impose a tax on digital advertising revenue, overriding an earlier veto from the governor and incurring the wrath of piles of Big Tech businesses that are all but guaranteed to sue.

The bill (PDF) levies a state tax of up to 10 percent on the annual gross revenues of all digital advertising aimed at users inside Maryland state. Proceeds from the new tax are explicitly earmarked to go into an education fund dedicated to improving Maryland public schools.

“Right now, they don’t contribute,” the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Bill Ferguson (D) said of the bill. “These platforms that have grown fast, and so enormously, should also have to contribute to the civic infrastructure that helped them become so successful.”

Both chambers in the state’s General Assembly, its Senate and its House of Delegates, approved the bill by wide majorities last year. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed the bill in May, but it had sufficiently high support in both chambers of the legislature to pass a veto override, and both houses approved the veto override this week.

It will work on a sliding scale, with larger companies, like Google and Facebook, paying up to 10% of gross revenue from the portion of their ads from Maryland, which constitutes about 1.8% of the US population.

………

A coalition of small and medium businesses and trade groups launched a coalition last year to lobby against the tax. The group, which bills itself as Marylanders for Tax Fairness, argues that the tax will “place an unnecessary and undue burden on the state’s entrepreneurs and job creators.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda,

The internet economy wants not to pay taxes.

F%$# that.

………

Among the coalition members are not only several Maryland-based businesses and organizations, including several local Chambers of Commerce, but also most of the large tech-related trade groups. All of the usual suspects who represent advertising, Internet, tech, telecom, or media firms are on the list, including the Internet Association, the IAB, the NCTA, and TechNet. Those four groups represent every online firm from Amazon to Zillow and just about any brand you can name in between.

The stakes for all the firms involved may go well beyond Maryland. Other states, including high-population New York, are considering similar advertising revenue bills of their own.

I’m not sure what the right rate is, though I do support an aggressively progressive tax.

Abolish the CBO

In the 2019 they used 11 studies, and found the median “directly affected employment” elasticities (closely related to the own-wage elasticity of employment) of around -0.25. Then they multiplied by 1.5 to capture “long run” effects, getting -0.38. pic.twitter.com/thBqW6t0Cj

— Arindrajit Dube (@arindube) February 8, 2021

The Twitter thread gets wonkier.  Short version:  The CBO juiced their report

The Republican hack running the CBO just released a report saying that raising the minimum wage would create unemployment.

That’s news to me, since the overwhelming majority of studies show no such effect.

The CBO report also disappointed people whose studies were actually used in that report.It also people who study this for a living, who note that the CBO report is complete sh%$: (I miss profanity SO much)

………

Michael Reich, a prominent minimum-wage expert at the University of California at Berkeley whose work is cited by the CBO, disputed the report’s more pessimistic estimates.

“Studies have found that wage floors have minimal to low effect on level of jobs or for inflation,” he said on a call with reporters. “Minimum-wage increases are generally paid for by small price increases, mostly in restaurants, but restaurants have increased sales….When low-wage workers get a wage increase they put it to good use — to improve living standards of themselves and their families.”

Reich did his own estimate of the minimum-wage proposal earlier this month, which found that instead of creating a budget deficit, it would increase federal tax revenue by $65 billion a year. This was due largely to increases in payroll taxes from higher wages and a reduction in government spending on safety net programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which are heavily used by people earning below minimum wage and living in poverty.

The problem is not that the CBO is full of crap now, it is that it is ALWAYS full of sh%$, and this is by design.

The CBO and the power that it is given by the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) through PAYGO rules is not, and has not, fulfilled its stated purpose, to give Congress accurate and timely budget projections and information.

Rather it is a place where bills that might inconvenience fat-cat donors go to die.

So Says the ASSLaw Fellow

Jan Rybnicek, an antitrust attorney and a Senior Fellow at the Global Antitrust Institute of the Antonin Scalia School of Law (ASSLaw) has taken issue with both the Biden administration and in Congress to restrict mergers in the name of increasing competition in the marketplace.

She states that slowing the paces of M&A activity will reduce employment in the United States, despite the fact that mergers result in massive job cuts more often than not.

In fact the only areas of the economy that might see reductions in employment are beyond brokers and lawyers, so how could anyone claim with a straight face that this would cause job losses.

It’s almost as if the person writing this is an M&A lawyer, and ……… Checks Notes ……… never mind.

About F%$#ing Time

Finally, legislation proposed to reverse the absurd requirement that the US Post Office prefund its pension and benefits for 50 years has a chance to pass the Congress:

This is literally the only reason that the USPS is in dire financial straits, and this been the case for almost 15 years:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a bill to ease a major financial burden on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) by eliminating a requirement that it fund retirement benefits decades ahead of time.

The USPS Fairness Act would do away with a 2006 law that mandated the USPS to form a $72 billion fund to pay for retirement health benefits for over 50 years, a requirement that is not imposed on any other federal agency.

The legislation was introduced in the House by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Colin Allred (D-Texas) and in the Senate by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

“The unreasonable prefunding mandate has threatened the survival of the USPS and placed at risk vital services for the millions who rely on it. The prefunding mandate policy is based on the absurd notion of paying for the retirement funds of people who do not yet, and may not ever, work for the Postal Service,” DeFazio said in a statement.

The introduction of the legislation comes as President Biden faces pressure from the biggest Postal Service union to install new USPS leadership. The department was thrust into the national spotlight late in the Trump administration for changes to mail delivery that critics said would impact the collection of mail-in ballots in a way that would benefit then-President Trump.

A similar bill to the USPS Fairness Act was passed in the House last year but languished in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Here’s hoping that this actually happens.

The original bill was an attempt to privatize the post office as a way of breaking its union, and Donald Trump used the chaos in an attempt to subvert the 2020 election.

This needs to be repealed today.

In the Words of Marcel Marceau

No!

Republicans had a proposition for Joe Biden, a Covid relief package that was clearly inadequate, and Biden gave them a (polite) brush-off.

While Biden might have an honest commitment to bipartisanship, unlike his former boss, he does not see it as an end in itself, nor does he see it as a demonstration of just how awesome he is:

Ten Senate Republicans attempted to sell President Joe Biden Monday night on a coronavirus relief compromise, even as Biden’s own party made plans to leave the GOP in the dust.

In the two-hour meeting, the GOP senators presented their $618 billion counterproposal to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the president described his own $1.9 trillion plan to the senators. They agreed to keep talking, although senators conceded their discussions were just beginning.

………

Biden has spoken frequently of his ability to work with Senate Republicans after his long Senate service, and simply meeting with the group demonstrates his ability to hear his opposition out. But the reality is this: Republicans oppose Biden’s spending plans and are proposing something far smaller.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who helped organize the meeting, praised Biden for hosting GOP senators: “We’re very appreciative that as his first official meeting in the Oval Office that the president chose to spend so much time with us.” But she also acknowledged there wasn’t an explicit breakthrough between sides that are so far apart.

………

Shortly before the meeting, Democratic leaders announced they would begin a process that would allow passage of Biden’s coronavirus stimulus plan without GOP votes, a sign that Democrats have little confidence that a suitable deal can be struck with Republicans. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a centrist, said succinctly of the GOP’s plan: “The package has to be bigger than that.”

“This needs to be big enough to get the job done. If we’re having to come back time and time again, I just don’t think that’s good for the economy or for certainty,” Tester said at the Capitol.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced they would continue setting up budget reconciliation this week, which would evade the Senate’s 60-vote requirement. They will pass a budget this week instructing committees to write a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, which includes items like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and giving $400 in additional weekly unemployment assistance through September.

“While there were areas of agreement, the President also reiterated his view that Congress must respond boldly and urgently, and noted many areas which the Republican senators’ proposal does not address. He reiterated that while he is hopeful that the Rescue Plan can pass with bipartisan support, a reconciliation package is a path to achieve that end,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said after the meeting.

It’s refreshing that we have a President who does not believe his own PR spin.

We have not had that in at least 20 years.

Read His Lips

$2000.00 stimulus checks are popular. Their popularity was such, even in Georgia, that it led to the Democrats taking control of the Senate.  (It was a big part of the campaigning for the runoff)

Now, the very serious people are trying to scale back and means test the stimulus to irrelevancy.

It is patently clear that this is bad policy and even worse politics.  It is George H.W. Bush’s no new taxes pledge all over again:

On January 4, Joe Biden made an unequivocal pledge, telling voters that by electing Democrats to Georgia’s senate seats, “you can make an immediate difference in your own lives, the lives of people all across this country because their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000 stimulus check, that money that will go out the door immediately to people who are in real trouble.”

Now they are counting the $600, so $1400 is the new 2000, saying that it will take months to pass the bill, making overtures to Republicans, etc.

A little more than a decade later, the public option fight should be a harrowing cautionary tale for Biden on both the policy and the politics. He had a front-row seat in watching a bad-faith Republican opposition kill a much-needed initiative, and then use Democrats’ failure to deliver to win at the polls. He of all people should know that this story never ends well.

………

The $2,000 checks initiative does not have to go down the same way the public option went down. The president and congressional Democrats do not have to do what weak-kneed, wimpy Democrats of the past have so often done. They do not have to negotiate against themselves, word-parse their way out of campaign pledges and delude themselves into thinking that Republicans are good-faith legislative partners.

They could instead try to use their election mandate — and the weakened state of the GOP — to demand full survival checks, rather than pretending that bad-faith Republican senators have any standing to make policy arguments.

The “Very Serious People” are going to “reasonable” themselves into losses in 2022 that make the 2010 blood letting look like a walk in the park.

Seeing as How I Mentioned the PRO Act………

Here is a brief rundown of The PRO Act, which passed the House the last session, and died in the Senate.

The cynic in me believes that if it were not headed to certain death at the hands of Mitch McConnell, it would not have passed the house, because it is an amazingly good bill.

The high points:

  • Expands the definition of employer, to make it more difficult for employers to classify their employees as “Independent Contractors.”
  • Narrows the definition of supervisor who cannot unionize.
  • Increases data reporting requirements for the NLRB.
  • Makes it illegal to threaten to shut down if unionized or to lock out workers.
  • Repeals ban on secondary strikes, secondary boycotts, and jurisdictional strikes.
  • Makes mandatory anti-union meetings illegal.
  • Requires employers to maintain existing working conditions in the event of an impasse. 
  • Sets a strict timeline for employers to negotiate with a union.
  • Allows union members to refuse to handle cargo from other business which are on strike.
  • Makes it illegal to have mandatory arbitration or forbid employees from entering class-action suits.
  • Requires employers to supply names of potential union membership voters.
  • Reduce the restrictions on what constitutes a bargaining unit.
  • Allows the union to specify the type (in person, by mail, etc) and location of a union recognition ballot.
  • Speeds up unionization elections.
  • Increases damages for unfair labor practices.
  • Expands coverage of illegal immigrant workers.
  • Makes NLRB orders self enforcing.  (Don’t have to have a court ruling in addition to the NLRB decision)
  • Creates personal liability for managers and officers who engage in unfair labor practices.
  • Repeals right-to-work laws.

Given that there is actually a chance of this passing with a Democratic Senate this time around, I’m dubious that we will anything as expansive in scope hitting the floor of the house.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is fine with pro-labor legislation as performative legislation, but as actual law, the Blue Dogs and the New Dems have no interest in offending their corporate masters.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

In response to the Supreme Court ruling Carpenter v. United States in 2018, whcih stated that law enforcement had to get a warrant to track people via their cell phones, elements of the US State Security Apparatus are purchasing exactly the same data from commercial suppliers without a warrant.

We need to make it illegal for US law enforcement to get private data from commercial suppliers that would otherwise require a warrant, if just because it would knock the pins out from underneath literal vampire* capitalist Peter Thiel’s business plan for Palantir.

Purchasing commercial information should not be allowed to be an excuse for using commercial vendor as a cut-out to the 4th amendment:

A military arm of the intelligence community buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant, according to an unclassified memo obtained by The New York Times.

Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have searched for the movements of Americans within a commercial database in five investigations over the past two and a half years, agency officials disclosed in a memo they wrote for Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

The disclosure sheds light on an emerging loophole in privacy law during the digital age: In a landmark 2018 ruling known as the Carpenter decision, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution requires the government to obtain a warrant to compel phone companies to turn over location data about their customers. But the government can instead buy similar data from a broker — and does not believe it needs a warrant to do so.

“D.I.A. does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially available data for intelligence purposes,” the agency memo said.

Mr. Wyden has made clear that he intends to propose legislation to add safeguards for Americans’ privacy in connection with commercially available location data. In a Senate speech this week, he denounced circumstances “in which the government, instead of getting an order, just goes out and purchases the private records of Americans from these sleazy and unregulated commercial data brokers who are simply above the law.”

………

It has been known that the government sometimes uses such data for law enforcement purposes on domestic soil.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year about law enforcement agencies using such data. In particular, it found, two agencies in the Department of Homeland Security — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection — have used the data in patrolling the border and investigating immigrants who were later arrested.

………

The military has also been known to sometimes use location data for intelligence purposes.

In November, Vice’s Motherboard tech blog reported that Muslim Pro, a Muslim prayer and Quran app, had sent its users’ location data to a broker called X-Mode that in turn sold it to defense contractors and the U.S. military. Muslim Pro then said it would stop sharing data with X-Mode, and Apple and Google said they would ban apps that use the company’s tracking software from phones running their mobile operating systems.

………

Mr. Wyden’s coming legislation on the topic appears likely to be swept into a larger surveillance debate that flared in Congress last year before it temporarily ran aground after erratic statements by President Donald J. Trump, as he stoked his grievances over the Russia investigation, threatening to veto the bill and not making clear what would satisfy him.

The the 4th amendment should never be for sale.

*I do mean this characterization of Thiel literally.  He is literally a vampire who wants to use the blood of the young to extend his lifespan.

Meanwhile, in DC

Republicans in Congress are using the right-wing insurrection on January 6 as an excuse for bills targeted primarily at peaceful protesters like Black Lives Matter.

Republicans never miss an opportunity to use a crisis to rat-fuck the country, do they?

In September, Florida governor and Trump ally Ron DeSantis proposed a bill dubbed the Combating Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act to create new criminal penalties for offenses commonly committed during protests. He said it was needed to stop the “professional agitators bent on sowing disorder and causing mayhem in our cities” following months of largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.

Hours after a far-right mob stormed the Capitol at the behest of the president, Florida Republicans introduced a version of the bill. That night, DeSantis said the violence in Washington shows that lawmakers “have no time to waste to uphold public safety” and must “swiftly pass this bill.”

DeSantis isn’t alone. Within the past year, lawmakers in 24 states have introduced at least 45 bills to create new penalties or increase criminal penalties for offenses related to protesting, discourage cuts to police funding, and provide protections to people who drive their cars into protesters or shoot protesters in an alleged act of self defense. Six of those bills—one in Utah, one in Mississippi, one in West Virginia, one in Tennessee and two in South Dakota—have been signed into law.

But the bills aren’t aimed at reining in the kind of violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, and federal prosecutors already have a litany of charges at their disposal to hold the perpetrators accountable. The bills seek to criminalize conduct typically associated with Black Lives Matter protests, like blocking streets or highways and camping out at state capitols. Provisions of DeSantis’s bill seek to discourage local governments from cutting police budgets, but what happened on Jan. 6 can’t be pinned on a lack of police funding or intelligence—the FBI knew extremists were planning to commit violence in Washington days before, and Capitol Police rejected offers for additional manpower from the National Guard. While some police officers were brutally attacked or took action to protect the lives of others, others shook hands with a member of the mob. One police officer even took a selfie with the insurrectionists.

This is why I oppose changes to the current laws in response to the January 6 insurrection.

The people who will be enforcing these laws, cops, prosecutors, etc.  are objectively pro-fascist and institutionally, if not necessarily personally, racist.

All that more laws get you is more opportunities for abuse.

Illinois Takes Steps to Fix Policing in the State

It’s not as extensive as it could be, there were some last minute bad cop favoring amendments, but the Illinois police reform bill has made it to the Governor’s desk, who has announced his support for the bill.

The way that we know that this is a good bill is that the police unions are completely losing their shit over this, as well they should.

The high points of the bill are:

  • Expanding a database of police misconduct and requiring that those records be kept.
  • The elimination of cash bail.
  • Reduces the scope unions to negotiate disciplinary and certification issues.
  • Resisting arrest citations must include the predicate charge for the original arrest.
  • Expanded reporting on killings and applications of force.
  • Whistleblower protections.
  • Bans the use of military equipment.
  • Requires that redistricting on the state level be based on permanent locations, and not where someone is incarcerated.
  • Applies tighter standards to the use of force.
  • Narrows the felony murder statute.
  • Expands the list of crimes that would result in an officer being decertified.
  • Adds a duty to intervene for officers who witness police misconduct.

Unfortunagely, two of the best portions got dropped at the last minute:

  • Eliminating qualified immunity for police officers, which means that bad cops with bad records (see the NYPD’s David “Bullethead” Grieco) are going to have to spend lots of money for liability insurance.
  • Completely eliminating the right to collective bargaining for the police on discipline matters. 

All in all, a very good bill, but I still want qualified immunity gone.

Here is Hoping that the Lawsuit Succeeds

The SEIU is suing to overturn Proposition 22, which was intended by Uber and the rest of the “Gig Economy” companies to keep their employees as peons.

Shame on them for pushing that plebiscite, and shame on the voters in California for voting yes: 

A group of rideshare drivers in California and the Service Employees International Union filed a lawsuit today alleging Proposition 22 violates California’s constitution. The goal of the suit is to overturn Prop 22, which classifies gig workers as independent contractors in California.

The suit, filed in California’s Supreme Court, argues Prop 22 makes it harder for the state’s legislature to create and enforce a workers’ compensation system for gig workers. It also argues Prop 22 violates the rule that limits ballot measures to a single issue, as well as unconstitutionally defines what would count as an amendment to the measure. As it stands today, Prop 22 requires a seven-eights legislative supermajority in order to amend the measure.

………

This suit is the latest in a long battle between gig workers and tech companies. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft have their eyes on pursuing Prop 22-like legislation elsewhere. Given Uber and Lyft’s anti-gig-workers-as-employees stance, it came as no surprise when Uber and Lyft separately said they would pursue similar legislation in other parts of the country and the world.

The Gypsy cab companies and the rest of them figured that if they spent enough money, they could get the voters to approve their abomination, and that once it passed, they could continue to mistreat their employees.

If this gets overturned, it will be much harder to get a second bite at the apple, because they, and other companies, have taken the law as an opportunity to be evil, and people will not forget this.

What Took You So Long?

Months after being invaded by gun toting fascist and white supremacist terrorists, the Michigan legislature has finally decided that maybe allowing any Tom, Dick, and Harry to open carry in the state house is a bad idea:

Michigan banned the open carry of guns inside its Capitol building on Monday, following mob violence last week at the US Capitol and last year’s storming of the Michigan statehouse.

The Michigan ban came as reports detailed FBI warnings about possible violence at state capitols and in Washington in the run-up to the 20 January inauguration of Joe Biden.

………

Security officials are preparing for a large crowd in Washington for the inauguration, and state officials are preparing for protests.

On Monday, ABC News reported a similar FBI bulletin warning of armed protests “at all 50 state capitols” and in Washington, but neither the date of that bulletin nor the evidentiary basis for its advice was given.

………

Security around the Capitol has been stepped up.

Armed men stormed the Michigan capitol in April, protesting social restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19. It later emerged that a group had plotted to kidnap and perhaps kill the governor, the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer.

April ……… May ……… June ……… 9 Months?

It too them 9 Fucking Months to realize that it’s a bad thing for the legislature to be threatened by mooks carrying assault rifles?

Seriously? 

I get that Republicans controlled both state houses, but I would figure that they would have a have enough of a self preservation instinct to act sooner.

The Squad Notches a Win

One of the 1st votes I ever cast broke w/ my party over House rules that strangled transformative legislation for working people + climate. It was honestly terrifying.

Now, CPC has pushed these critical rule changes in House negotiations. Grateful for @RepMcGovern’s leadership🙏🏽 https://t.co/4N0NfF5Arz

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 2, 2021

One of the great failures of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is their insistence on austerity politics.

Nothing exemplifies this more, and hamstrings the progressives in the Congress more, than the PAYGO rules, which the Democrats have assiduously followed over the past 3 decades, even while Republicans ignore it.

Basically, it says that any legislation has to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and if it costs money, then there have to be offsetting spending cuts or tax hikes in that bill.

It means that unelected staff in the CBO can hold up a bill, and kill it with the numbers that they generate.

It also means that conservative Democrats, Nancy Pelosi (Seriously, look at her record, and who she gives committee chairmanships to) who are more interested in careerism and getting large campaign checks in, have an excuse not to do anything to help the average American.

It suits them just fine, but it also gave us Donald John Trump.

Well now, clearly as a result of pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Caucus, I honestly think that this was a price of their vote for Pelosi as speaker earlier today, House rules have been change to both soften Pay Go and the motion to recommit. (The motion to recommit was frequently used by Republicans, and almost never by Democrats, to force meaningless votes that could be used as election fodder)

The House rules package for the 117th Congress, released Friday, would weaken a procedural tool of the minority, provide key exemptions to a budget rule requiring the cost of legislation to be offset and strengthen congressional oversight provisions.

………

The rules package is expected to get a vote on Monday, the second day of the new Congress.

One of the main requests from Democrats across the caucus was that leadership either eliminate or defang the motion to recommit, or MTR, which is a vote afforded to the minority on most bills.

The MTR has been used in the past as a procedural vote to kill legislation by sending it back to committee, but in recent years it has become a substantive vote that would actually amend the bill if adopted. In either scenario, it is mostly used as a political messaging vote in which the minority tries to trap the majority into going on the record on controversial policies.

The new rules would prevent MTRs from being used to alter bills on the floor. Instead, the minority would only be able to use the motion to send a bill back to committee.

The change makes it easier for Democrats — concerned about opposing whatever policy Republicans use the MTR to highlight — to vote against the motion as purely a procedural maneuver.

………

Progressives were also pushing for the rules package to eliminate a longstanding pay-as-you-go, or PAYGO, provision that requires legislation that would increase the deficit to be offset.

While the rules package does not get rid of PAYGO, it would provide the Budget Committee chairperson the authority to declare legislation providing economic and heath responses to the pandemic, as well as measures designed to combat climate change, as having no cost — effectively a PAYGO exemption.

One of the main reasons progressives wanted to repeal PAYGO was to make it easier to pass measures to respond to the climate crisis, so the rule change may be enough to satisfy them.

Basically, if you can credibly argue that a bill pertains to the pandemic, or climate change, it can proceed without all the rigamarole that has been required up to now.

It’s a good start, and I would note that the only reason the Pelosi is still speaker is because she has meticulously prevented any alternatives to her rule to come forward.

This should be the next item on the Progressive Caucus, because even if the Democrats to not retain control of the house in 2022, pretty likely giving the Joe “Nothing will Fundamentally Change” Biden will be in the White House, Pelosi is an impediment to the success of the Democratic Party and the well-being of the nation.

F%$# the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)

This really is remarkable.

The overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats voted with Mitch McConnell to proceed on the veto override on the Defense Authorization Bill, kneecapping Bernie Sanders’ filibuster to get a vote on $2000.00 pandemic stimulus payments.

In case you are wondering, if you look at the vote totals, more Democrats voted for the motion to proceed than Republicans did, 41-39.

You can always argue that it the perfect is the enemy of good enough, but , as TAP Executive Editor David Dayen tweeted, this was a losing tactic both politically and policy wise, “Somewhere in between “Dems are turncoats for not filibustering the NDAA” and “it’s Repubs whatcha gonna do” is the idea that it would’ve been good politics to at least deny enough votes to force Perdue and Loeffler to leave the campaign trail in Georgia.”

For a more extensive take down, I would take you to David Sirota and Andrew Perez’s analysis of what they call, “Senate Democrats’ Motion To Concede On $2,000 Checks.”

Instead, as Republicans saber rattled about the need to pass the defense bill, 41 Democrats obediently voted with McConnell, allowing him to move the defense bill forward without a vote on the checks. That included “yes” votes from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and vice-president elect Kamala Harris, the lead sponsor on a bill to give Americans monthly $2,000 checks during the pandemic. One day before her vote to help McConnell, Harris had called on the Republican leader to hold a vote on her legislation.

They capitulated Even Though It Was to Their Political Advantage Not to Capitulate.

They are playing to lose, because they just don’t care.

It’s careerism run amuck.

Think about that the next time the DNC, DCCC, or the DSCC calls for donations.

Would That He Were President Elect

While Joe Biden signed off regarding making the direct payments so miserly in the stimulus bill, Bernie Sanders is promising a filibuster of the veto override of the Defense Authorization Bill, which would delay the vote for at least 3 days, unless the house bill to raise payments to $2000.00 gets an up or down vote in the Senate.

I get that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) came together with a zeal and a competence that is never seen opposing wars, or ill-guided tax cuts, or genocide, and anointed Biden, but Bernie is still being Bernie:

For most of the last few decades, budget standoffs in Washington tended to follow the same script: Republicans threatened to block some domestic spending bill or fully shut down the government unless Democrats agreed to let the GOP own the libs with something bad like a JPMorgan giveaway, a tax break for the rich or a draconian cut to a social program.

When Democrats controlled Congress, they never mustered the courage to respond with their own version of the same shrewd tactics. Even toward the end of the Bush era when the Iraq War was deeply unpopular, they never made a serious attempt to hold up a bloated GOP-written Pentagon bill in order to try to get their way on a progressive initiative.

But at the end of one of the worst years in recent history, it seems things are changing.

In a long overdue script-flipping move, Sen. Bernie Sanders is now moving to halt a major defense bill until and unless Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell allows a full vote on legislation to give millions of starving Americans $2,000 in emergency aid. That legislation passed the House yesterday over opposition from a majority of House Republicans, who tried their best to deny their own constituents much-needed aid.

Now the bill is in McConnell’s hands, and Sanders is pulling a McConnell on McConnell. He is imperiling the GOP boss’s top priority — the defense bill that authorizes pay increases for soldiers, military training, new weapons systems, while also complicating attempts to draw down troops deployed in Afghanistan. That McConnell-backed legislation could be stalled unless he agrees to Sanders’ demands and stops obstructing a progressive priority.

Sanders could keep the Senate in session until New Years Day, limiting the ability of corrupt Georgia Senators Purdue and Loeffler to campaign in the runup to the runoff.

 I am heartened by this, but I expect the Democrats to figure out a way to capitulate, because that is what Democrats do, particularly in the Senate, and particularly under the leader ship of Chuck Schumer.

And the Payments Stay at $600

And now, Trump has signed the stimulus package, so there will be no additional stimulus money going out to ordinary people.

I’m not going to try and guess whether this is just that Trump wanted the attention, or wanted to torture Mitch McConnell (So say we all), or some sort of political jujitsu against Democrats, but with a government shutdown off of the table, it’s pretty clear that there will be no increase in stimulus payments:

President Trump unexpectedly capitulated Sunday night and signed the stimulus bill into law, releasing $900 billion in emergency relief funds into the economy and averting a Tuesday government shutdown.

White House officials didn’t explain why the president decided to suddenly back down and sign into law a bill he had held up for nearly a week and had referred to as a “disgrace” just days earlier.

Trump signed the bill while vacationing in Florida and on a weekend when he had allowed unemployment benefits for 14 million Americans to expire.

He had demanded changes to the stimulus and spending package for a week, suggesting he would refuse to sign it until these demands were met. This continued defiance caused lawmakers from both parties to panic over the weekend, worried about the implications of a government shutdown during a pandemic. It was unclear what prompted him to change his mind late Sunday, but he was under tremendous pressure from Republicans to acquiesce.

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In the same statement, he said “much more money is coming, and I will never give up my fight for the American people!”

After Trump signed the bill into law, Democrats attacked him and said his decision to drag the process out for days was harmful to many Americans.

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The government would have shut down on Tuesday if Trump hadn’t acted. In addition to containing money to fund government operations, the spending package also includes emergency relief money that finances a new round of stimulus checks, unemployment aid, and small-business assistance, among other things.

I am not sure how the politics of this plays out, but I’m pretty sure that Pelosi and Schumer have lost here, because losing is what they do.

Speaking of the Silly Season

Trump has vetoed the Defense Authorization bill, because he wants to keep Confederate names on military bases and because Twitter has been mean to him.

No, this is not The Onion.

Trump is demanding a repeal of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and he is objecting to changing the names of military bases named after traitors:

President Trump made good Wednesday on his repeated threats to veto a $741 billion defense spending bill, setting up what is expected to be the first successful veto override of his presidency during his last weeks in office.

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The House and Senate each passed the defense bill earlier this month with strong veto-proof majorities, rejecting Trump’s insistence that it be changed to meet his oftentimes shifting demands. Both chambers are expected to sustain the two-thirds majorities needed to override the president’s veto, despite pledges from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other stalwart Trump allies not to cross the president’s wishes.

In his veto message, Trump complained that the legislation includes “provisions that fail to respect our veterans’ and military’s history” — a seeming reference to instructions that the Defense Department change the names of installations commemorating Confederate leaders. He also scorned the bill as a “ ‘gift’ to China and Russia,” slammed the bill for restricting his ability to draw down the presence of U.S. troops in certain foreign outposts, and excoriated lawmakers for failing to include an unrelated repeal of a law granting liability protections to technology companies that Trump has accused, without significant evidence, of anti-conservative bias.

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Trump and his advisers have repeatedly objected to various provisions in the behemoth defense legislation, including its mandate to the Pentagon to rename the 10 military installations bearing titles that honor the Confederacy and the bill’s limitations on reducing troop levels in Germany, South Korea and Afghanistan.

Trump’s insistence that the defense bill become a vehicle for a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects companies from bearing legal responsibility for content third parties post on their websites, became a breaking point between the president and congressional Republicans during the final days of negotiations over the legislation. Trump views its repeal as a way to punish social media companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter.

It’s stupid and petty, but Trump does Stupid and Petty better than anyone.