So a Democratic Senator is indicted on serious charges, and no Democrats attacking the Justice Department, no Democrats attacking the prosecutors, no Democrats calling for an investigation of the prosecution, and no Democrats calling to defund the Justice Department. Weird, huh?
This week's featured post is "About the Polls".
This week everybody was talking about the looming government shutdown
Typically, a government shutdown happens because the House, Senate, and Presidency aren't all controlled by the same party, and one party wants something the other doesn't want to give. Attempts to work out a compromise fail, so the new fiscal year starts and big chunks of the government close for lack of money.
So in 1995, Speaker Newt Gingrich wanted major cuts in spending that President Clinton wouldn't agree to. In 2013, Republicans wanted to defund ObamaCare. Those shutdowns resulted from a dysfunctional inability to negotiate a compromise, but they at least represented a coherent clash of policy goals.
The 2018 shutdown was a bit strange, because during the post-midterm-election session, Republicans still controlled all three power centers, pending a Democratic takeover of the House when the new Congress would be seated in January. In December, Republicans had worked out a deal to fund the government that didn't include more money for Trump's Wall. But when he saw how badly that deal played with his base, Trump reneged.
The government was shut down for 35 days, during which time the Democrats took control of the House, ending the possibility of passing a wall-funding bill. So Trump relented, reopened the government, and then declared a national emergency that allowed him to divert money appropriated for other purposes into wall-building.
This year is stranger yet, because the Republican majority in the House can't even agree on a set of demands, much less negotiate a compromise with the Democratic Senate and White House.
Here's how everyone expected the process to work: Speaker McCarthy would placate the far-right "Freedom" Caucus by passing what is know as a "messaging bill" -- a bill that everyone knows has no chance to become law, but which includes provisions that express what the MAGA base really wants. Of course the messaging bill would be rejected by the Senate, and then the real negotiating could begin.
The problem is that the House GOP can't even get its messaging bill together, so negotiations with the Senate and the White House can't start. The WaPo examines the possibilities, none of which resolve the situation in time to avoid a shutdown.
and corruption
There's a Democratic corruption story this week: New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez got indicted for accepting bribes. New Jersey Democrats reacted the way a sane party would to such serious allegations.
Calls for his resignation mounted from ethics groups, Republicans and even longtime Democratic allies who stood by him last time, including the governor, state party chairman and the leaders of the legislature. And party strategists and elected officials were already openly speculating that one or more of a group of ambitious, young Democrats representing the state in Congress could mount a primary campaign against him.
Three-term Congressman Andy Kim has already announced his candidacy, posting:
Not something I expected to do, but NJ deserves better.
Joe Walsh comments on all the things that didn't happen.
So a Democratic Senator is indicted on serious charges, and no Democrats attacking the Justice Department, no Democrats attacking the prosecutors, no Democrats calling for an investigation of the prosecution, and no Democrats calling to defund the Justice Department. Weird, huh?
Also: No calls for violence in the streets or civil war.
The one bad sign from Democrats is that the Democratic Senate caucus seems to be standing by Menendez. He had to resign as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, but Majority Leader Schumer is not asking for his resignation from the Senate.
And if there's corruption in the air, there must be a Clarence Thomas story. Pro Publica has been ahead of everybody else on Thomas scoops, and they published a new one Friday: In 2018, Thomas rode on somebody's private jet -- he never reported the trip, so we don't know whose -- to attend the winter donor summit of Stand Together, the Koch-led network of high-roller conservative money men.
During the summit, the justice went to a private dinner for the network’s donors. Thomas has attended Koch donor events at least twice over the years, according to interviews with three former network employees and one major donor. The justice was brought in to speak, staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.
That puts Thomas in the extraordinary position of having served as a fundraising draw for a network that has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.
Political fund-raising violates the code of ethics that applies to lower-court judges. But the Supreme Court has no formal code and is expected to police itself.
In 2021, Thomas sided with the Kochs in a 6-3 ruling allowing dark money groups to keep their donors secret. The court will soon hear a Koch-backed case that could sharply curtail the ability of government agencies to issue regulations. Pro Publica claims Thomas has flipped his position to support the Koch view.
Rep. Ted Lieu sums up:
Clarence Thomas secretly accepted millions in lavish gifts from billionaires. He secretly shows up at a fundraiser for billionaires to help raise money for a super PAC. And he votes on cases to help billionaires. This isn’t the appearance of corruption, this is corruption.
and Rupert Murdoch
While Fox News has been focusing attention on Joe Biden's age issues, Rupert Murdoch has continued to run both Fox and News Corp at the age of 92. This week he announced he will turn the empire over to his son Lachlan, sparking a series of retrospectives about his career.
but we should be paying attention to a court case that hasn't gotten much coverage yet
I'm becoming dangerously complacent about Supreme-Court-considers-triggering-Armageddon stories. Remember Moore v Harper and the "independent state legislature" theory? The upshot of ISL is that once you get control of a state legislature, you can gerrymander to make your control permanent, and then leverage that power to determine all the other elections in your state. "Independent" means "unchecked by the courts", which means that if your power grab violates the state constitution, no one can call you on it.
Anyway, that was decided in June, and the Court did not in fact opt to make it easier to end democracy. It was a 6-3 decision, which means that we're still safe from permanent minority rule, at least until John Roberts and either Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett change their minds. So rest easy, everybody.
Now we've got another end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it case coming up: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v Community Financial Services Association, which will be argued next week and probably decided sometime in 2024.
The origin of this dispute is fairly trivial in the grand scheme of things: CFPB issued regulations cracking down on the payday-lending industry, which could use some cracking down on, because it exploits people who live paycheck-to-paycheck. CFSA represents payday lenders who would rather operate without government interference. So it sued. In the course of that lawsuit, it made an atomic-bomb-scale argument: The whole CFPB is unconstitutional.
Now, you wouldn't expect mortgage bankers, home builders, and realtors to be fans of federal regulation, but those associations filed a brief warning that striking down all of CFPB's rules simultaneously could cause the real estate market to seize up, disrupting some large portion of the entire economy, and possibly setting off a Depression.
But it's actually worse than that, because of course there's no line in the Constitution saying "Congress shall establish no consumer financial protection bureau". So CFSA had to make a broader argument: The way CFPB is funded is unconstitutional. Congress doesn't appropriate a specific amount of money for CFPB each year. Instead, it gets whatever funding it needs up to some cap, and the funding is perpetual until Congress says otherwise.
Here's the problem, as described by Vox' Ian Milhiser: If funding something without approving a specific sum each year is unconstitutional, there goes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Under this interpretation of the Constitution, moreover, many key federal programs simply could not exist. Medicare, for example, is a health insurance program that pays for beneficiaries’ health costs as those costs arise. It is impossible for Congress to determine, in advance, the specific dollar amount that Medicare will spend in any given year. To do so, Congress would need to precisely predict which health services would be provided to every senior in the United States, and how much each one of those services would cost.
Imagine it: I recently had a fairly expensive medical test. (It came out well. Thank you for wondering.) We're near the end of the fiscal year, so under a specific-sum appropriation system, Medicare might say, "I'm sorry, but we can't pay for your test because medical expenses nationally ran a little high this year and we've already spent all the money Congress appropriated." Every year, millions of Americans like me would game the system to get our medical care done in October rather than September. Some number of people would take their chances without care, and some of them would die.
Oh, and all those programs would be vulnerable to government shutdowns -- not that we ever have to worry about that.
The hyper-conservative Fifth Circuit appeals court agreed with CFSA.
Consumer Financial reveals just how deeply delusional thinking has penetrated into the post-Trump federal judiciary. The plaintiffs’ arguments in Consumer Financial have no basis in law, in constitutional text, in precedent, or in rational thought. And they risk the sort of economic catastrophe that the United States hasn’t experienced for nearly a century.
And yet a federal appeals court bought these arguments. So now it’s up to the Supreme Court to save the United States from calamity.
It's a safe bet that Justices Thomas and Alito will vote to blow up the system. (Alito, IMO, is the most predictable judge on the Court. You don't need to know anything about the facts of the case or the relevant law, just who stands to benefit. He will consistently vote for Republicans over Democrats, corporations over working people, and Catholics over secularists. The CFPB protects working people from corporations, so he'll be against it.) So we'll need to count on two of Roberts, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett to save us.
and you also might be interested in ...
A deal has been announced, so the writer's strike may end soon.
Worth reading: the Atlantic article subtitled "How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump."
The NYT has a disturbing article about China claiming sovereignty over the South China Sea, and how little can be done about it short of war.
Another week of Fox News, summarized by Kat Abu.
This week's scandal: John Fetterman wears hoodies and shorts. It's technically a violation of the Senate dress code, but when he's dressed like that he votes from the doorway.
In the Handmaid's-Tale dystopia known as Nebraska:
A Nebraska woman who acquired abortion pills that her teenage daughter used to end her pregnancy last year was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison.
Last week, I wondered how conservative media would erupt if AOC were caught doing something like Lauren Boebert's lewd behavior while watching a musical. Turns out AOC was wondering the same thing.
Jimmy Carter has been in hospice for seven months, but he still enjoys peanut butter ice cream and plans to celebrate his 99th birthday this coming Sunday. Saturday he was spotted at the Plains Peanut Festival.
And while we're talking about family values (i.e., Boebert), Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are facing death together after 77 years of marriage.
In the silly-but-amusing category, conservative podcaster Clay Travis tweeted about Kansas City Chief tight end Travis Kelce:
Travis Kelce is doing Bud Light and covid shot commercials. He needs to fire all his marketing agents. Or he needs to just go ahead and cut his dick off, become a chick, and endorse Joe Biden.
And Ron Filipkowski replied:
He scored a touchdown today in a 41-10 win and left the game with Taylor Swift. Seems to be doing ok.
Elon Musk said he wants users to pay a monthly fee to use Twitter.
I've used X/Twitter for years now. I use it to cast a wider net for points of view than I'll find in my usual news sources. I don't often post content other than links to this blog.
Since Musk took over, I've thought about leaving X. And I've checked out Mastodon as an alternative. But inertia is powerful, so I've stayed.
If they start charging a fee, though, I'll have to take positive action to stay on X. I'll have to give them a credit card number or something. Just by doing nothing, I could quit.
I would do nothing, and see how long it took them to turn off my account. I suspect the vast majority of users would do the same. Charging a fee will probably complete Musk's destruction of the platform, setting fire to the remainder of his $44 billion investment.
and let's close with something uplifting
The FamilyThis web page has an article about times kids surprised their parents and older siblings with their kindness and compassion. Like this one:
had lunch with my son at school for his birthday. he can pick 2 kids to sit with him and one I had never met. i asked afterward who he was and he said "oh, i don't really know him but no one had picked him for birthday lunch before"
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