Keeping the faith 2021

Happy New Year! Pandemic is over now. Congratulations to all who participated. 

(CNN)President-elect Joe Biden received his first dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on live television Monday afternoon and reassured Americans of the vaccine's safety.

The shot, which Biden received in his left arm, was administered at ChristianaCare's Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, by Tabe Mase, who is a nurse practitioner and the head of employee health services at the hospital, according to the Biden transition team. 

 

"We owe these folks an awful lot," Biden said, thanking those involved in the vaccine's development and distribution and front-line health care workers. 

 

Biden said the Trump administration deserved "some credit" for Operation Warp Speed, the federal government's vaccine program, and their role in making coronavirus vaccinations possible.

Certainly we do love to get up every day and remember to give Trump "some credit" for everything that's gone on this year.  But let's try to remember that.. popular and electoral vote counts notwithstanding... he isn't the only winner. 

The real winners are the bosses. The bosses have won the pandemic.  They actually have been the winners since the very beginning but if you read this website you would have seen us bleating about it many times over already.  We could already see how they were going to win early as March. Before the CARES act even passed it was clear that first shot at a federal response was going to be the one opportunity for a just outcome . And it was just as clear we were well on the way to missing it.  I didn't explicitly use the phrase "bosses are winning the pandemic" until about a month later but anyone could tell what was happening. By May we had the whole picture and it has not changed since. 

Eventually they're just going to make everyone go back to work. The Brennans will send a six foot rabbit to force us there at the point of a sword. Those of us there are even jobs for, that is. Those of us that can be used under whatever temporary and tenuous conditions that are set down. It will happen before anyone is safe from the virus. If there is no further action from congress and the status quo order is already maintained, everything will still be as broken as it is now and we will all be several orders of magnitude poorer for it.  Poorer workers are cheaper workers. When unemployment is high they are more disposable. The conditions that force them to work despite the danger make them easily exploitable. The bosses have won the pandemic.

I don't bring that up to get in a cheap I-told-you-so. If you read this website you also know nothing I can tell you matters.  I just want to point out how obvious all of this has always been even to an idiot blogger who only knows what he reads in John Geroges's newspapers. 

From the moment the pandemic hit, the most likely thing to happen, as has been the case with every of our century's many disasters, was yet another concentration of wealth and power at the very top and a further immiseration and impoverishment of the vast majority.  Jesus I said that too way back in March.  Look, if you are wondering why there has been less and less posting on the yellow blog as this year has gone along it's because fewer and fewer new things have happened as it's gone along.

 Anyway here we are a few days before the end of the year and how is all that going? 

Meanwhile, America’s wealthiest have seen their fortunes soar. The 100 richest people in the U.S. added about $600 billion to their wealth in 2020, enough to send a $2,800 check to every adult in the country. One, Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk, ended 2020 six times richer than at the beginning of the year.

Individual billionaires getting more billions? Check.  The engines that siphon the billions upward continue to crush and devour everything in their path?  Check on that too. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—but next to nothing for workers. In a report published last month, we found that many of America’s top retail and grocery companies have raked in billions during the pandemic but shared little of that windfall with their frontline workers, who risk their lives each day for wages that are often so low they can’t support a family. This is especially true of Amazon and Walmart, the country’s two largest companies. Together, they have earned an extra $10.7 billion over last year’s profits during (and largely because of) the pandemic—a stunning 56% increase. Despite this surge, we ranked Amazon and Walmart among the least generous of the 13 large retail and grocery companies studied in our report. The two companies could have quadrupled the extra COVID-19 compensation they gave to their workers through their last quarter and still earned more profit than last year.”

Sounds about like mission accomplished, right?  Well, they're almost there.  As I type this right now, I'm watching Mitch McConnell fend off a last minute attempt by Bernie Sanders to tack a one-time $2,000 payment to individuals onto the jumble of giveaways to Wall Street firms and defense contractors that just passed as the (likely final) COVID relief bill.

They wouldn't even be there had our ingeniously unstable President not thrown one last incoherent fit during which he happened to mention that $2,000 is a larger amount than $600. Before Trump opened his mouth, the deal was already closed. Our leading opinion makers were well on their way to lionizing the moonshine sipping centrists who brought it to us and explaining that it was "good enough" the way it was. Who would have thought we might actually miss having Trump around to light random things on fire like this?  Going back to brunch is going to suck. 

Or maybe it doesn't matter. McConnell seems to have the situation well in hand. 

McConnell introduced the parallel pandemic relief bill on Tuesday, S.5085, which would include the $600 to $2,000 increase in checks to individual Americans, but tacks on a repeal of section 230 of the Communications Act of 1996 and funding for a commission to investigate voter fraud. Both of these additions to McConnell's surprise bill are demands which have been made by Trump for months. The Section 230 repeal would pull back protections for internet companies and allow such media companies as Twitter and Facebook to be sued if users feel wronged by messages on the platform.

Aside from maybe Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell is the most consequential American political figure of the 21st Century.  Over the course of the previous two Presidential administrations, McConnell has completely turned over the federal judiciary. He delivered trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the corporate ruling class.  Now he is leveraging the pandemic to crush workers' rights and bankrupt every state and municipal government which will result in radical austerity nationwide. When future historians write about the dawning of the American neo-feudal age, McConnell will be remembered as a prime architect.

Not to give him too much credit.  I mean being an insider hatchet man for the establishment is always an easier job than trying to protect the disenfranchised.  That's kind of the definition of how power works. McConnell isn't engaging in any dark wizardry. He's just making obvious moves that no one can muster the effort to counter.  It's very easy to muck up something everyone wants by tying it to something else everyone know cannot pass.  State and local governments need relief but McConnell killed that by tying it to liability shields for bosses who callously expose workers to danger during the pandemic. And now he has blocked these one time survival checks by tying them to internet censorship and Trump election conspiracy crap. Being a jerk really isn't that hard as long as you are sufficiently insulated from any consequences.  

So McConnell isn't the definitive US politician of the moment just because he happens to be the guy in position to pull the lever on the machine that feeds the abattoir. It's more the fact that he, or any person who would get to work those controls embodies the universal ethic of the governing class. It's a power that only does one thing. And so anyone who seeks to wield that power necessarily wants to do that thing. Which is another way of saying they're all like this. None of them is here to help.  In fact as I'm continuing to type now, I see the Democrats in the Senate have, in fact, caved on their gambit for the $2000. It looks like they decided it was more important to continue funding the current push for war with Iran.  Here's Joe Biden barely acknowledging the issue while literally turning his back and walking away.  You're not going to get a clearer image of where the Democrats are than that.

Of course, a one time check for $2,000 or even the $2,800 we could have by splitting up the billionaires' profits from this year is still an insult. A just pandemic response policy would pay people to stay home, protect them from their exploitative bosses and rapacious landlords, guarantee treatments and vaccinations are free, and "re-start the economy" through continued fiscal stimulus on the back end.  But we'll never do any of that. All we care about, even at this very late stage of the game, is keeping the military and police state funded while also giving away billions of dollars to rich people. 

WASHINGTON — Tucked away in the 5,593-page spending bill that Congress rushed through on Monday night is a provision that some tax experts call a $200 billion giveaway to the rich.

It involves the tens of thousands of businesses that received loans from the federal government this spring with the promise that the loans would be forgiven, tax free, if they agreed to keep employees on the payroll through the coronavirus pandemic.

But for some businesses and their high-paid accountants, that was not enough. They went to Congress with another request: Not only should the forgiven loans not be taxed as income, but the expenditures used with those loans should be tax deductible.

The truly remarkable thing now is how little it matters that the supply side philosophy guiding such policy has been repeatedly discredited over the course of our 50 year experiment with it. Tax privileges for the one percent do not magically raise revenues. They do not end racial inequality. They do not "create jobs" or raise the general standard of living.  No matter. Our leaders will press on with it as an article of faith. It's the central creed of both parties from Congress all the way down to your local City Council. Giving money to rich people is the reason our electeds are called to service.  The hours are running short on the year now. But real quick, here are a few of our favorite local examples of neoliberal gospel preached in 2020. 

Just last week, Governor John Bel proudly announced a plan to give away $3 million in state funds to a company owned by the world's richest man who proposes to "create jobs" paying $32,000 on average.

Besides the access to Interstate 49 and 10, Amazon is eligible for a performance-based grant from Louisiana Economic Development of $3 million. The grant is payable over two years and can offset facility infrastructure costs. The state will also give Amazon access to LED FastStart, the state's workforce training program, which has given 463,000 training hours to more than 29,000 employees since 2008.

In October, with Orleans Parish homeowners still reeling from last year's property tax assessment, and renters facing a wave of evictions as CARES act protections and unemployment benefits ran out, Erroll Williams announced a $42 million tax cut for corporate owners of downtown commercial properties. 

According to data compiled by the Downtown Development District, almost a third of the total cut in commercial sector valuations — or about $90 million — is accounted for by 10 downtown properties, including the cluster of properties at the river end of Canal Street owned by Harrah's New Orleans Casino, a division of Caesars Entertainment of Las Vegas. Harrah's valuations were more than halved to about $15.3 million, which will reduce its property tax bill by an estimated $2.4 million, according to the assessor's office.

Similarly, the Marriott Hotel on Canal, the Sheraton, the Intercontinental, the Crowne Plaza, the Roosevelt and the Ritz-Carlton will see their property taxes halved.

All are owned by national hotel management groups, suggesting that any tax savings will head to corporate coffers outside of the city.

This gift to out of state mega-landlords will be paid for by about a $12 million dollar drop in revenues meant for public schools and services while homeowners and renters will have to pay $30 million more collectively. 

But let's not get too caught up in the distinction between businesses and neighborhoods. Because another thing we learned this year is that the city's official position is that neighborhood ARE businesses. 

“I really want to be thoughtful on the term business, because we were worried that there may be criticism that we only are thinking of businesses. I say business as a very global perspective where neighborhoods are businesses in my mind. People that have never been through this process and want to expand their gate, those individuals, those customers are businesses. So it’s not just ‘hey let’s help big business.’ “

That is New Orleans CAO Gilbert Montano employing a special kind of capitalism-inflected gobbledygook to talk about his plan to reorganize city planning, permitting and land use departments under something called the Office of Business and External Services. The scheme, which Montano describes as a "paradigm shift," would essentially change the mission of these agencies from protecting  public safety and quality of life from the hazards of profit-driven development to assisting the profit-seekers in getting around those protections.  

As if to drive the point home, the person they hired to implement this new vision made his own fortune monetizing the gentrification of New Orleans neighborhoods. 

Bowen’s new position caught the attention of some affordable housing advocates on Monday due to his former job as general manager of Sonder — a San Francisco-based company that has grown to be one of the largest operators of short-term rentals in New Orleans. In the resume he submitted for the job, Bowen claimed that during his tenure at Sonder he “Blitz Scaled the New Orleans market for Sonder from launch to 1,000 apartments (2,500 rooms) in under 36 months.” 

A report from March 2018 by Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, an affordable housing group that opposed the expansion of the legal short-term rental market in the city, found that Sonder had more listings on Airbnb than any other short-term rental operator in the city with 124.

Neighborhoods are businesses.  They are fodder for "blitz-scaled" profits regardless of whether anybody can actually live there.  It probably helps if they don't, in fact. That way they won't need things like public libraries which, incidentally, the city proposed to de-fund in order to pay for Bowen's new neighborhood monetization department. That proposal was killed by voters. But it's only a temporary set-back. It's clear where the city's priorities lie. Eventually they'll get the budget to follow. 

To expect anything different would be to expect a sudden conversion of the entire political class away from its religious belief in trickle-down economics.  But why would that happen when our priests continue to reaffirm their orthodoxy over and over?  As our final example, we have here one of Mayor Cantrell's very first actions in response to the emergency way back in March. She decided to give businesses a tax break. 

Despite worries about the city’s bottom line, Cantrell announced on Tuesday that the city would waive all penalties for late sales tax payments from businesses for the next 60 days. That measure is intended to make sure businesses have the money on hand to keep paying their employees while state and city closures are in place during the height of the outbreak.

What could possibly go wrong? Well they did ask her that. 

Given the strains to the city budget, Cantrell urged those businesses who are remaining open and can pay their sales taxes to do so, to lighten the burden on city government. Asked about concerns that businesses would simply pocket the money, not turning it over to their workers or to the government, Cantrell said she choose to look at the situation from an optimistic perspective.

“I’m not being negative at all and thinking that our businesses or employers will not do the right thing,” Cantrell said. “This is all with the expectation that they’ll do the right thing.”

Don't be "negative." Just hold fast to the belief that doing nice things for those at the top of the ladder will result in nice things for those at the bottom. For ever and ever amen. Anyway, the true believers only need to hold out a bit longer. The sooner we can declare the pandemic over, the sooner we can dismiss any heresy that suggests that poor people have anyone besides themselves to blame. 

The savior is coming in the form of a vaccine... eventually... maybe.

It’s happening all over again. For months, Americans who despaired about the country’s coronavirus-suppression efforts looked desperately to the arrival of a vaccine for a kind of pandemic deliverance. Now that it has arrived, miraculously fast, we are failing utterly to administer it with anything like the urgency the pace of dying requires — and, perhaps most maddeningly, failing in precisely the same way as we did earlier in the year. That is, out of apparent, near-total indifference.

Well, they'll figure it out.  After all, as Joe Biden might say, we gotta give Trump some credit. Just have a little faith.

Running out the clock

The first thing to understand about this "bi-partisan" stimulus proposal is that it is, in fact, a total cave on the part of the Democratic leadership.   

The top Democratic congressional leaders on Tuesday embraced a $908 billion coronavirus relief framework -- a massive concession meant to prod President Trump and Senate Republicans into accepting a compromise as covid cases spike and the economic recovery shows signs of faltering ahead of the holiday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that “we believe the bipartisan framework introduced by Senators yesterday should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations.”

The "framework" would amount to about a third of what the Democrats had been asking for which also was not going to be enough. And, of course, as a "starting point" it is only going to be watered down further from here. McConnell has already rejected this first offer, in fact. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pushed for a smaller deal and it appears unlikely he is poised to support the bipartisan agreement.

He circulated a proposal on Tuesday that offered minimal aid to the jobless, in a sharp break with the bipartisan group that could represent an obstacle to a final deal.McConnell has also delivered an ultimatum, requiring any legislation to immunize businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits. 

Nothing is written into a bill yet so the details of the "framework" are still fluid, as they say.  But according to this article we know it aims at a $300 per week boost to unemployment benefits matching the now expired emergency stop gap written by Trump after the original $600 provided by the CARES act ran out.  Today we learned another 712,000 new jobless claims were filed this week.  A lot of headlines highlight that the number is "fewer than expected" or down from last week, but as Atrios points out, "Every week since this began has been higher than the peak week of the Great Recession," so what are we really looking at here?  An historically large number of people need help and will continue to need it. $300 is not really help. 

The starting point framework includes $160 billion for state and local governments.  The notion of any state and local aid at all has previously been a non-starter for Republicans so expect that figure to come down.  Our friend, Senator John Kennedy was seen "trashing it" on TV today, in fact.  In any case, the starting figure is not enough.  According to, still incomplete estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities  state budgets are expected to take a hit of at least $194 billion.  This Brookings study figures that state and local revenues will take a hit of well over half a trillion dollars in the next few years.  Obviously we aren't going to get where we need to go from this "starting point." 

Certainly this $160 billion (but likely much less) sop isn't worth trading this for. 

The measure, spearheaded by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, would restore lapsed federal jobless benefits, providing $300 a week for 18 weeks; would include $288 billion for struggling small businesses, restaurants and theaters and $160 billion for fiscally strapped cities and states; and would create a temporary liability shield for businesses operating amid the pandemic.

"Temporary" or not, there can be no compromise where the US government allows your boss to simply order you to your death with no repercussions. 

Anyway, the punchline to all of this is now that the vaccines are almost ready, the political pressure to do more emergency stimulus will quickly reduce to zero. So Joe Biden can say all he wants about how whatever comes out of the lame duck session is a "first step," come the new Congress, the focus will be on the quickest way to just vaccinate everyone and tell them to get a job. Nevermind that the jobs are half gone and what's left out there is gig-a-fied beyond all recognition. That's the "new normal" all of this has been leading toward all along.  McConnell has run the clock out all year and the bosses have won the pandemic. They're even going to be shielded from future liability. The rest of us will just have to get used to it. 

Update: Well at least somebody gets it. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday announced his opposition to the bipartisan coronavirus relief package gaining momentum in the U.S. Senate, as jockeying intensified among lawmakers eager to cut a deal to provide relief amid renewed signs of economic weakness.

Sanders said he would vote against the $908 billion relief framework that has attracted a flurry of interest from Democrats and Republicans since it was introduced earlier this week. Sanders said he would consider backing it only if it is “significantly” revised. That package, broadly embraced this week by both senior congressional Democrats and more than a half-dozen Republican senators, leaves out some priorities among liberals such as another round of $1,200 stimulus payments.

Tourism is the virus

Nature tried to heal for a little while.  Enjoy it while you can.

The Marais is one of the oldest, most historic neighborhoods of Paris and is known for its quaint village-like charm. But it had become a retail Disneyland where visitors came to spend money, but not necessarily for the history.

I knew the Marais belonged to locals again on the first night of France’s national lockdown, when I opened my window to clap for caregivers. The light had faded and I said to myself, “Paris is no longer the City of Light.”

Sadly, there were few people at their windows, because so many apartments in the neighborhood have been converted to Airbnbs for tourists. But instead of the noise of crowds and suitcases on the pavement, the streets were deserted, and there was an air of enchantment. You could hear the birds singing and the wind blowing the leaves on the trees.

New Orleans can feel like that too; empty and enchanted. The other night I could swear I saw a ghost staring out from the window of this empty Airbnb.



Unfortunately neither we in New Orleans, nor anyone quoted in that NYT story have had a true opportunity to go out and enjoy a locals-for-locals experience of our hometowns. We're only getting glimpses of such places while we commute to "essential" jobs or venture out for "essential" errands or for essential having a few beers on the sidewalk.  A lot like that ghost in the window, New Orleans for New Orleanians is only a momentary mirage. Once we "re-open" the city, it will dissolve before we can touch it.

The short term rentals aren't going to revert to local housing. Yes, there are a lot of desperate sounding Craigslist ads for "furnished rentals" right now.  Some of those could end up staying on the local market. But not as many as you might expect.  Landlords and renters are in a brief period of uneasy detente right now. (In some cases, more uneasy than in others.) But that all goes out the window once the evictions moratorium comes to an end.

Richardson says the city doesn't want people evicted during a health crisis, but it is a short term solution. She says until the economy starts back up, residents won't have a steady income which means both the housing and rental markets won’t be fed potentially for months.

“Eventually rent is going to be owed, eventually mortgages are going to have to be paid, one of the difficult things going forward is the possible, if not probable balloon of payments that people are going to have in the future… it would be a good idea for renters at this point in time to talk to your landlord to see if you can work out even if it’s just a short term deal,” said Richardson.

The sort of small independent landlords with whom you might "work something out" will be under heavy pressure to evict once the CARES Act mortgage forbearance period ends.  Assuming no extension or a more generous round of federal aid, many will be forced to sell out. Probably on the cheap and probably to larger nationally or internationally based mega-landorlds

The proptech industry ballooned following the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, when racist lending practices and government response dispossessed hundreds of thousands of mainly black and Latinx property owners. This era saw over 240,000 black residents lose their homes, erasing most of the gains made since the 1968 passing of the civil rights era Fair Housing Act. Wall Street investment firms such as Blackstone, Invitation Homes, Colony, Waypoint, and Starwood—which have all now consolidated into one mega-firm—swept in to purchase foreclosed homes at auction, ushering in the age of the corporate landlord. Today the conglomerate of Blackstone comprises the largest landowning firm globally and is the biggest landlord in the United States. Hundreds of large investment companies followed Blackstone’s lead, forming massive landlord monopolies in various cities and regions across the United States. These mega-landlords generally acquire new properties through limited partnership (LPs) and limited liability company (LLCs) shell companies, a practice that makes it difficult for tenants to know who their landlords really are, and thus serves to stymie tenant organizing and collective action.

A ginormous private equity firm has no interests in working something out with distressed tenants. Your mayor and councilpersons can talk all they want about finding "balance" between those interests but the future of all housing in your city is going to be about maximum extraction of profit from property by giant ownership entities acting at a far remove from the fate of the people who actually live there.

This begins with vulture firms scooping up distressed properties on the cheap and evicting anyone who can't make rent. A company like Blackstone, whose investments are all but guaranteed by the Federal Reserve, can sit on a lot of unused buildings for a while if it wants. There's no need to shift to a more equitable usage of our housing stock that might drive the investment value down. Better to just subsidize the harsh practices that were already in place. When the pandemic passes, we'll be right back to hollowing out the city of its residents, its schools or its non-tourism related small businesses and replacing anything that resembles a real life community with more of the half-empty resort town we've been building since Katrina. This crisis will only have accelerated that process.

In the meantime, we're already eager to please the architects of that "New" New Orleans in a desperate effort to reopen our tourism economy.  For those willing to don a dining mask and head out for a surreal 25% capacity experience at their favorite restaurant, maybe something like the momentarily tourist-free local-for-locals city really is available.  Or maybe it's another uncomfortable product of the forced march of workers back into the maw of capitalism currently underway.

Mitch McConnell promised House Republicans on Wednesday that the beefed up unemployment benefits enacted earlier this spring "will not be in the next bill."

The Senate majority leader told the House GOP minority in an afternoon phone call that he is comfortable waiting to see how the nearly $3 trillion in coronavirus spending previously approved plays out before moving forward on the next relief legislation. And he told them the ultimate end-product won't look anything like House Democrats' $3 trillion package passed last week, according to a person briefed on the call.

There are over 38 million unemployed nationwide as of this week.  And even though the still raging pandemic guarantees there won't be enough jobs to send them all back to, we're still going to make sure they have to suffer. Why? Well the short answer is, we're trying to make sure we come out of the crisis with a loose labor market full of frightened and docile workers.  McConnell admits as much. So did Louisiana State Rep. Gerald “Beau” Beaullieu this week in Baton Rouge. Republicans are doing everything they can to keep bosses from having to pay a decent living wage.

Beaullieu said hefty unemployment payments could discourage someone from wanting to return to work, and he said the high rate of unemployment was draining Louisiana’s unemployment fund.

“We want to protect that trust fund. We also want to make sure that employees are not disincentivized from going back to work,” Beaullieu said. He said his bill would help “those small businesses get their employees to work."

It's a sad state of affairs that they can be this openly hostile and get away with it. If for no other reason than because they are in danger of rendering all this street theater irrelevant.  

A handful of mostly out-of-state protesters held a small rally outside a Lorimer Street barbershop in Williamsburg on Tuesday, calling on the city and state to end the coronavirus shutdown — so that they can go to yoga and get their nails done!

“My fingernails are breaking, I’ve got hangnails, I’ve been getting my nails done for 14 years … I’m very much into yoga, I can’t go to my Bikram yoga studios, I can’t go get my eyelashes done, I can’t go and socialize with the people that are my friends,” said Mississippian Hillary Angel Barq. “It’s led me to depression, it’s made me not feel sexual — I mean it’s awful.”

The gathering of roughly half a dozen people — outnumbered even by the amount of media covering the event — was organized by the pro-Trump group Liberate America together with the owners of Beard Barberia Cut and Shave at the corner of Grand Street.

The brief time of New York for New Yorkers is ending. Tourism season is back on, heralded by a loudly un-horny Hillary Barq.  This can only bode ill for New Orleans.  There can be little doubt now that the "reopening" of our own tourist business will mean catering to similar organized day trips of death cult protesters coming into town to complain about having to wear masks and whatnot. And with that, will come more intense pressure on business owners and therefore the politicians they influence to take such complaints seriously... regardless of the absurdity of their source.

New York City is one of the global epicenters of the pandemic with more than 20,000 deaths due to the virus, and almost 200,000 people infected, according to the city’s health department data on May 18 — but, when asked whether it was worth risking hundreds of further deaths by allowing businesses to reopen, the protest organizer said it was and questioned the staggering death tolls.

“Absolutely, absolutely. But there’s a difference, it’s what they didn’t tell you is what is the mortality rate that’s already been in place,” said Liberate America’s founder Frank Scurlock, who is from New Orleans.

Nature had a scarce two months to heal. Earlier this week we read that those two months were rather impressive. In April, the emissions typically caused by air and ground travel were down about 40 percent.  Rest assured, though, with Scurlock's group on the loose, the bad air will be back to intolerable levels in no time.

"Lockdown"

Things are about to get a little bit weird.



At 5pm today, the governor's state wide "stay at home" order goes into effect. This is intended to get a handle on the virus's terrifying rate of spread in Louisiana which is projected to overwhelm health care capacity within the next week or so. While it's imperative that people do their best to stay put, it's worth noting that, once again, the actual rules the governor has put in place are not a significant change from the mayor's order on Friday. What this means, in practice, is that even as the public is advised to stay at home, many people, servers and kitchen staff at restaurants offering "take out" for example, are still at the mercy of their employers. Come to work under dubious circumstances or face the prospect of losing your job. Until (unless) Congress takes significant action to mitigate these fears, that is not going to change.

The problem is the Congress, especially the Republicans there, have no interest in relieving the pressure on people, even in the midst of a crisis. This thing where people have no choice but to put themselves and others in danger for the sake of a boss's or a landlord's profits, is a core feature of capitalism.  The Republican Senators playing a sinister game of chicken this morning over a federal relief package know this. In fact they are counting on it.

Hours after Senate Democrats blocked movement on a massive stimulus package Sunday evening, injecting fresh uncertainty over whether and when lawmakers will reach a bipartisan deal to deliver relief amid the devastating coronavirus pandemic, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ramped up the pressure on Democrats.

Taking to the Senate floor late Sunday night, he announced another procedural vote on the package timed for 9:45 a.m. Monday — minutes after the stock market opens — but it was blocked by Democrats who don't want to be forced to take the vote.

 

"I think there's a good chance we'll have an agreement. But we don't need artificial deadlines. We will get this done. We will come in at noon and hopefully we will have an agreement by then," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who made the objection, said on the Senate floor.

 

McConnell blasted Schumer's move as reckless and warned the markets will now be open for three hours before they can get some certainty a stimulus bill will pass the Senate.

 

A vote in the Senate is now expected at 1 p.m.

McConnell's bill issues billions of dollars in bailout money to major corporations while restricting and stigmatizing the badly needed relief to Americans currently agonizing over the Hobson's choice of reporting to work in a dangerous pandemic or suffering job losses and evictions. Today his strategy is to use the crashing stock market as a "ticking time bomb" to force the Democrats into going along with his bailout plan. They should not fall for it.  There are tools the federal government has at its disposal  that allow it to send direct relief to people immediately. Rep. Waters outlined several of them last week.  Rep. Tlaib has submitted a bill that takes advantage of the Fed's power to send cash payments to people. But there are other actions the Congress can take to protect people which they should be moving on.  Above all the Senate must stop McConnell's cruel bill.  Signs are the Democrats (even the bad ones) are rallying to do that this morning.  Let's see how well they hold together.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans we will have to just sit tight and hope, and above all, stay home if possible. Trust me, if you go out, there's not much of anything to do. A short bike ride yesterday afternoon (while practicing strict "social distancing") confirms this. Aside from grocery stores and the occasional "take out" window, there isn't anything to see or do.

The front door is boarded up at Ms. Mae's.  There is speculation this is because nobody even knows if it locks. 



Other famously 24 hour operations like Igor's here are also shuttered.



The French Quarter is a virtual ghost town of boarded up windows and empty streets all under an eerie silence.









The people you are most likely to encounter are police and the city's numerous unhoused population who also are in dire need of protection.  The mayor says here that she has a plan for that.  Hopefully it is a good one.  No one should ever be left to live out on the streets in this absurdly wealthy country.  This shouldn't even be a problem but well, like a lot of things.....

Anyway, for those of you who can stay at home, stay at home. Leave the streets to the "crazy rats" for now.

Needless to say, this is not how you "go big"

Every single thing is on fire.  We have to choose, right now, whether we are going to fight the fire on behalf of every single person or if we are going to allow predators move about and swallow up the vulnerable during the chaos.  Mitch McConnell is a predator.

The 247-page McConnell CARES Act puts the leader’s imprint on opening talks with Democrats in Congress as lawmakers prepare to work through the weekend to fast-track perhaps the most urgent legislative undertaking since the 2008 financial crisis.

The negotiations are certain to encounter difficulties ahead, despite the pressure on Washington to act. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Larry Kudlow will meet behind closed doors with Senate leaders. Democrats say the Republican plan does not go far enough and some Senate Republicans object to certain provisions.

“We are beginning to review Senator McConnell’s proposal and on first reading, it is not at all pro-worker and instead puts corporations way ahead of workers,” said a joint statement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

"McConnell CARES" They keep trying to tell us irony is dead but it's still very much our leading cultural product.  Just look at this shit.

Under the plan, the government would provide households an early tax rebate worth up to $1,200 for an individual or $2,400 for a married couple, with an extra $500 for each of their children. (So far, so good). The payments will be based on a household’s 2018 tax return, or if it didn’t submit one, their 2019 filing.

But the checks will shrink for both low and high earners. Americans with little to no tax liability (aka, poor folks) will only receive a minimum payment of $600, unless they earned less than $2,500, in which case they get zilch. Low-wage workers who don’t have a federal tax return for 2018 or 2019—adults generally aren’t required to file one they if earn less than the standard deduction—also won’t qualify for the early rebate. (They could still get it next year if they file taxes for 2020, but by that time it will be a bit late.) Meanwhile, the payments phase down for workers who make more than $75,000 and drop to zero for those making $99,000 and above (double those numbers for joint filers).

This is absolutely brutal. Friday, the state of Louisiana announced it received 47,000 new unemployment claims this week. A one time $1200 check helps absolutely none of these people. The nascent depression is said to be a "service-led" event. It is hitting waiters, cooks, bartenders hotel workers, performers, and so-called "gig economy" and informal cash economy workers first. The great majority of these workers are not eligible for severance or sick leave so they do not benefit from the emergency leave measures prioritized in congress earlier in the week.  Likely most of these people will fall within the "little to no tax liability" category which means they get even less direct aid than the targeted "middle class" recipients. In the midst of a crisis that is falling hardest on the poorest Americans, this is a bill that further punishes the poor.

Who will protect them?  We'd love to sit here and tell you the Democrats can do this. We know they've been advised by Rep. Maxine Waters as to how they should proceed.   The Waters memo (it's a policy memo and not yet incorporated into a bill) proposes substantial direct aid to individuals ($2,000 per month) with bailouts for state and local governments, Americans with student debt and the homeless.  McConnell wants to give poor and working class Americans almost nothing while handing multi-billion dollar bailouts to airlines and oil companies.

But so far the Democrats haven't moved on Waters' proposals. Instead they've been doing everything they can to help pull the process in McConnell's direction. In fact, the first voice raised in favor of limiting and "means testing" cash payments to workers wasn't McConnell's. It was Nancy Pelosi's.

In technical economic jargon, Pelosi wants to "means test" cash aid in response to coronavirus: Don't give the checks to everyone, but target them to the poorest people, by at least scaling up the checks for people further down the income ladder, or most likely phasing them out completely for Americans above a certain income threshold. Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, fleshed this point out further in a tweet: "The Speaker believes we should look at refundable tax credits, expanded [unemployment insurance] and direct payments — but MUST be targeted."

Means testing may seem reasonable. But it's actually not a great idea even in the best of times. And in a crisis situation like the social and economic lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus, direct and universal cash aid is one of the best single policy responses available. The fact that Pelosi had the chance to lead this charge a week ago and demurred, insisting on means testing as a condition, is blinkered and insane, on both the politics and the policy merits.

There are obvious positions the Democrats can take to claim the moral high ground. The Waters memo outlines some of it.  I think also everyone should listen to this interview with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and economist Stephanie Kelton this week about the scope of what's happening and what the scale of the response should be. Here is AOC answering a question about whether the Democratic response has been sufficient.

MH: No, I was gonna say, Congresswoman, do you sign on to all of that? And also a follow up. Katie Porter, your fellow freshman Democrat from California came out in the Atlantic yesterday and said she disagrees with Speaker Pelosi is focused on “refundable tax credits” over direct cash payments. She says that’s too slow. Do you agree with Katie Porter? Is the Pelosi/Schumer way just too slow given how fast the economy is going downwards right now?

AOC: Yes, I completely agree. I sit with Katie Porter on the Financial Services Committee and she’s absolutely right. And I agree with Professor Kelton. I think one thing that’s important to underscore when Professor Kelton is talking about well, we want to look, last time we only have one bite at this apple, there won’t be appetite. We have to examine why there wasn’t political appetite to do more in 2008. And the reason for that was because there was a package that was entirely designed to favor corporations, to bail out Wall Street that was more concerned with stock prices than wages and the health of Wall Street than the actual healthcare system. And that’s why there wasn’t political appetite to do more because we passed out billions of dollars and then the CEOs came in flying in on their private jets, asking for more. And so that was the core of why Americans rejected doing more after the first package.

Now is a very different time. If we focus our package on immediate bailouts for everyday people, making sure that we’re issuing things like mortgage and rent and student loan debt moratoriums, making sure that we’re getting cash into people’s hands, ensuring the fact that if they have to go to the hospital, coronavirus related or not because as we know this can trigger a series of other health issues, that you will be financially okay. And that is the number one thing that we need to do right now. We need to be introducing stabilizers to working families. And Katie Porter is absolutely right on the point of tax credits. You know, I think sometimes with all due respect to my colleagues, we get into this, you know, there’s a lot of like this 90s wonkery going on where if we do a backdoor tax credit, oh, that’s a clever way of helping people. But it doesn’t address the core issue, which is that people are experiencing a shock right now. We need to get checks into people’s hands. If you’re concerned about it being means-based, tax it on the other end. Get everyone a check right now. And then if you want to make sure that the millionaire’s don’t get 1,000 bucks, do an extra, you know, tax them on the other end of that and make sure that they can’t wriggle out of that.

People are in trouble. Just give people money.  "How do we pay for it?" STFU! Here is Rep. Rashida Tlaib's plan to mint trillion dollar coins to pay for it.  We can shoot the money cannon at people to help them out right now. This is what needs to happen.

To see why, one need look no further than New Orleans' City Hall where Friday afternoon Mayor Cantrell appeared once again to lecture New Orleanians on their failure to adequately observe social distancing directives.  Unfortunately, the mayor's message, no matter how loud she makes it, continues to be mixed.

In a fiery press conference Friday, Mayor LaToya Cantrell issued her strongest demands to date that residents stay home and shut down non-essential businesses to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus in the city, where cases have grown to more than 300 since March 9.

Cantrell doubled-down on restrictions the city put in place earlier this week with a "stay at home mandate." But despite her forceful rhetoric, the mandate does not include any significant new restrictions on businesses or residents and aligns with what other communities are doing around the country.

Coronavirus is dangerous. Every day we learn more about how dangerous it can be, even to those who may not have considered themselves part of the "at risk" population.  But, really, there is only one population of humanity. If any part of it is "at risk" then we all are. That's the whole point behind the "flatten the curve" idea in the first place.  Everyone has to have everyone else's back. Which is why, in order to ensure that workers stay home to protect the vulnerable, we have to assure them they will be taken care of too.

But Cantrell, and the tourism business owners who advise her, know only how to use a crisis to intimidate their employees into submission.  As long as people are afraid they have no choice but to go to work they are going to leave the house and go to work. If you give people no support, if you give them no money, if you give them no reason to expect that they will have a job when the crisis ends unless they keep putting themselves at risk, if, in fact, you subsidize their bosses for staying open right now, then you have no right to get on TV and scream at people for not "staying home" like they're supposed to.  

The only way to protect workers from this kind of avarice is to give them money and security. Except no one in the Democratic leadership is working to make it happen.  Instead their reflex is to retreat into "90s wonkery" as AOC puts it. Some of this is because they, too, are corrupt defenders of criminal capitalism.  But, from a pure public messaging standpoint, the problem is the Democrats have no idea what is happening anymore. They are fighting shadows of what the Republican political message used to be.

This is what people are talking about when they say Trump has "outflanked" the Democrats to their left. The actual Republican legislation may be as cruel and as slanted toward the wealthy as ever. But on TV, in the place where the political perception happens, the public face of their party isn't denigrating "welfare queens" anymore. He's promising to "GO BIG" with checks for everybody. Democratic leaders should counter by embracing the suggestion of members of their own party that we GO EVEN MORE BIGLY with checks for everyone every month until the crisis has ended and we've built a better more stable social safety net altogether. Instead they are proposing means tests and worrying about the deficit. All of which is why despite Trump's utter denial and bungling of the crisis that has endangered countless lives, polls are now showing that Americans approve of the way he's handling it. By failing to "go big" for real, Democrats are losing to the worst con-man in history at the worst possible moment and they have only themselves to blame.

How did he do?

Yesterday morning the President met with major financial executives to talk about ways he could help stem what is definitely not a panic in the global economy triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said Wednesday that the current turmoil caused by the coronavirus isn’t stemming from the financial system.

“This is not a financial crisis,” Corbat said during a White House meeting. “The banks and the financial system are in strong shape and we are here to help.”

Leaders of the biggest U.S. banks were summoned to Washington by President Donald Trump to discuss ways to support small businesses and markets. Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Charles Scharf of Wells Fargo, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs and Stephen Schwarzman of alternative investments giant Blackstone were among the CEOs present at the meeting.

Nothing to worry about. We're from Wall Street. We're here to help. Well, okay, here is the helpful thing they told the President. They told him he was doing a great job and that they also believed the media was overstating the severity of the problem. But it would be helpful if he could do something to "change the psychology of the public."

At meeting with finance executives at the White House today, according to person familiar w it, the execs played to the president's ego - told him the fundamentals of the economy are strong and that he made it that way - but that the psychology of the public needs to change.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 11, 2020

Soooo last night the President went on TV where he called for 1) An arbitrary and confusing ban on travel into the country from Europe. 2) Tax breaks for "certain individuals and businesses negatively impacted."  He didn't say what that means specifically but we did read Tuesday that Republicans were considering tax relief for hotels and oil companies. 3) A reckless "payroll tax holiday" that would endanger the stability and future of Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, basically the very social safety net programs we need to be beefing up at a moment like this.

One thing we should do right away is implore liberals to hold off on their go-to declaration that "This is not normal!"  In fact, Trump's proposals are very much in line with the Republican response to every disaster.  They immediately look for ways to turn it to the advantage of the wealthy. The PATRIOT Act with its sweeping expansion of state surveillance and police powers went into effect a month after 9/11. The neocon imperialists who populated the Bush Administration then pressed us into a world-destroying war in Iraq.  The Katrina flood, itself a result of federal neglect, unleashed a torrent of corruption and failure at all levels of government enriching landlords, developers, and other schemers of great wealth while displacing thousands of New Orleanians. The 2008 financial crisis saw an immediate unprecedented bailout of the major banks while leaving most Americans to struggle with greater and greater states of precarity, underemployment, and debt. 

After the President's speech people began making lists of better ideas than his, some of which... sick leave and food aid, in particular..  made their way into an emergency relief bill, that will now have to be watered down because Mitch McConnell rejected it out of hand.  Meanwhile nobody objected to an immediate injection of $1.5 trillion into the bond markets in order so save all those bankers Trump met with yesterday.  This isn't to say some monetary stimulus is an entirely bad idea at this point. It is one of those things where a trillion dollars can suddenly materialize without anyone asking, "How are you gonna pay for that?"

But maybe it wouldn't have been  necessary if Trump had only managed to help out that that "psychology of the public" thing he was supposed to be working on.  How did that go? Not so great.

The stock market has suffered a relentless, breathtaking drop — moving deeper into bear territory. Stocks fell so fast Thursday morning that it triggered a 15-minute halt in trading for the second time this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,352 points, or nearly 10% — the biggest one-day drop since 1987. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were each down more than 9%.

Those indexes are now down at least 27% from record highs set just last month. The Dow is now down nearly 8,400 points from its peak on Feb. 12.

Thursday's stock market drop followed a nearly 6% plunge in the Dow on Wednesday, when the blue chip index entered a bear market, defined as falling 20% from its peak. The S&P 500 is now also in a bear market, ending an 11-year winning streak

Anyway here we are muddling through another shock where the only possible policy response is we give the ruling class whatever it wants in an instant and the rest of us have to scrap and fight to justify our very existence.  It's the same story with any 21st Century crisis. Why should this be any different?   

Un-Borkable Wendy

Last week, New Orleans's world famous very woke racism expert Mitch Landrieu lent his approval to President Trump's nomination of Wendy Vitter to a federal judgeship. 

Landrieu's support came in the form of a letter sent March 1 to Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee. The Democratic mayor wrote that he has "had the great pleasure to know and work with Wendy for many years" and added he "can personally attest to her strong moral character."

We have to wonder there if, by "strong moral character," Mitch was referring to Vitter's disturbingly extreme positions on abortion expressed at several public events. Here she is leading a panel where a pro-life activist claimed that abortion causes breast cancer and that birth control pills can cause you to be murdered. Here she is telling the Clarion Herald that Planned Parenthood "kills over 150,000 females a year."  Vitter came under criticism during her confirmation hearing for leaving this as well as speeches she gave at a Tea Party rally and at an anti-Planned Parenthood protest off of her disclosure form.

She also caused a stir for refusing to answer this question.

At her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Wendy Vitter was plainly asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal: “Do you believe that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided?” Her initial response raised an immediate red flag: “I don’t mean to be coy,” she began, before continuing: “I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions—which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with. Again, my personal, political, or religious views I would set aside. That is Supreme Court precedent. It is binding. If I were honored to be confirmed I would be bound by it and of course I would uphold it.” Asked again by a befuddled Blumenthal whether she supported the ruling, Vitter replied: “Again, I would respectfully not comment on what could be my bosses ruling—the Supreme Court—I would be bound by it, and if I start commenting on ‘I agree with this case’ or ‘don’t agree with this case’ I think we get into a slippery slope.”

What's going on here?  Could it be the former attorney for the Archdiocese of New Orleans has a certain affinity for the more or less de-facto segregated school system it operates?  Maybe.  But, according to the American Bar Association, that's really none of our business.

The American Bar Association's Model Code of Judicial Conduct advises that a candidate for judge "shall not, with respect to cases, controversies or issues that are likely to come before the court, make pledges, promises or commitments that are inconsistent with the impartial performance of the adjudicative duties of the office" and "should emphasize in any public statement the candidate's duty to uphold the law regardless of his or her personal views."

Vitter is following a script adhered to by (most especially by conservative) judicial nominees ever since the stuffing of President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork in 1987 over published opinions of his that leaned heavily toward the radical right. The key to getting confirmed now is to say nothing. In other words, the key to getting confirmed is to undermine the entire purpose of the confirmation process.

The notion that these judges are there "to uphold the law regardless of personal views" is an unexamined absurdity that devalues our commitment to democracy. The law is political. This is the sole source of its legitimacy.  Our laws are written and executed by elected representatives. They should be interpreted and arbitrated by individuals with accountability to the people as well. This is why Louisiana is among the states that elect most of their judges.  The federal appointment process is less pure. But the advise and consent role of the Senate is supposed to provide at least some assurance that the judiciary is subject to the will of the citizenry and not the other way around.  Nominees who refuse to talk about issues on which they are likely to rule are displaying contempt for the Senate's oversight role.

Sidestepping the question by pretending the courts exist in cloistered isolation from politics is plainly bullshit. Every judicial appointment is a political matter.  Mitch McConnell understands this. He's made it his highest priority to embed as many right wing judges as he can manage to stuff in there before he or Trump or both are removed from power.

But here you have an opportunity, particularly if you get highly intelligent, relatively young people into lifetime positions, you can have a long-term impact on the country. So that’s what we’re in the process of doing, and if you believe as most of us do, that we’d like to see America right of center, this is the most consequential year since I’ve been year, and I’ve been here a long time. Supreme Court, deregulation, 12 circuit court judges, comprehensive tax reform. So if you’re a right-of-center person, 2017 was an incredibly successful year, and in my view the linchpin of it, the thing that will last the longest, is the courts.

Wendy Vitter's nomination is part of McConnell's explicitly stated strategy to orient the federal judiciary along right wing ideological lines for a generation. Her disingenuous "Bork-proof" strategy of speaking no evil should be apparent enough to everyone.  It doesn't seem to bother Mitch Landrieu, though. No wonder he's become such a hot property among Democrats lately. They do enjoy getting whipped by McConnell. Might as well keep that going.

Trump is "normal"

That is to say, the Trump phenomenon our friends in the professional political establishment prefer to view as some sort of aberration is actually nothing of the sort. Instead it's just the latest waypoint in a long running American trudge to the far right that shows no signs of slowing.

Several leaders of key activist groups held a news conference Wednesday to denounce Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his leadership team, accusing them of ignoring grass-roots conservatives and hitting them for the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare.

“This pattern of failure from McConnell’s gang of five leadership team while loathing and attacking their own base, the most loyal bloc of voters that has elected them and all of their caucus members, can no longer be tolerated,” said Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, which has supported conservative challengers take on GOP incumbents.

There is always room on the right to outflank even the most reactionary Republicans. The signatories to this attack on McConnell know. They've only been at this forever. 

First there’s Richard Viguerie, basically the inventor of right wing direct mail fundraising. In many ways Viguerie invented clickbait and fake news decades before the Internet. He’s 84.

Then there’s Brent Bozell. Bozell has lived his entire life in the sinecure right wing activism world, which some very unnice people are ungenerous enough to call the world of ‘wingnut welfare’. He founded the Media Research Center in 1987 – full-time yakking about ‘liberal media bias’. His father was L. Brent Bozell, Jr., partner with Bill Buckley is launching much of what we know as movement conservatism today. Among many other things he ghosted Barry Goldwater’s ‘Conscience of a Conservative’, a bible of young conservatives in the early 60s which helped launch his 1964 presidential run.

To the extent that Trump is something ‘new’ in the GOP firmament, these folks are as old as it gets. The other three all predate Trump and in key cases predate the Tea Party. Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots is the ‘newest’ person on the list.

It's a little weird that Marshall goes on almost to discount the significance of this even as he recognizes it. 

There’s no new anything. Trump is the candidate of the most unreconstructed elements of movement conservatism. In many ways, the folks modern conservatives don’t want to associate with publicly anymore.

Not sure what he means by "modern conservatives."  If he thinks they're anything apart from the movement that spent the last several decades getting us to Trump, he's wrong about that. Also I would argue there's nothing to stop them continuing on in this direction indefinitely.

Asymmetric Cliff-fare

John Bel is changing tactics. 

Gov. John Bel Edwards told House Speaker Taylor Barras Thursday (July 20) that the governor won't call a special lawmaking session to address a looming billion-dollar hole in Louisiana's finances unless he is confident that a plan to replace expiring taxes would pass the House.

"I am hesitant to convene another special session without meaningful input from, and a concerted effort by, House leadership to identify a viable path forward. Specifically, I need a good faith commitment to remove the partisan barriers and solve this problem," wrote Edwards, a Democrat, in a letter to Barras, a Republican from New Iberia.

"Accordingly, at this point, I do not intend to call the legislature back for a special session prior to next year's regular session," the governor wrote to Barras.

Rather than threaten House Republicans with more special sessions, he's now threatening no special session ahead of next year's "fiscal cliff" manufactured emergency unless he gets...  *sigh*... "a good faith commitment to remove the partisan barriers."  Yeah, that's not happening for a whole host of reasons.

But most importantly right now if you're going to play chicken with the radical right over a "fiscal cliff" you're going to lose every time.  They don't actually care about solving the problem as you perceive it. To them, the problem is rich people pay too much in taxes. The only way to "remove the partisan barrier" is to just give them that. Otherwise, it's off the cliff everybody goes.

This is why Grace, I think, makes an error when she compares this cliff with the "replace later" strategy Senate Republicans are considering with health care right now. As far as McConnell is concerned, "replace later" can mean "replace never" so long as the big tax cut passes.  That's all they're really after anyway. So it doesn't do any good to seek "bi-partisan solutions" in hopes of avoiding a cliff.  Not when your opponent is indifferent to the cliff either way.

Extreme vetting

Senate Democrats aren't as completely helpless as, I suspect, many of them would like to be.  There are things they can do to obstruct the fascists. 

But it’s also fair to say that, by nominating a poorly qualified and ethically challenged Cabinet, Trump forfeited his right to a speedy confirmation process, and Democrats should therefore slow it down to facilitate the adequate vetting that Trump and Senate Republicans are determined to avoid by rushing the process before all the questionnaires and filings are submitted. Four days of scrutiny on the Senate floor per nominee, even after the committee hearings, is a reasonable standard for fulfilling the Senate’s constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.

Democrats can also withhold their consent from every piece of objectionable legislation McConnell tries to advance. With 48 senators in their caucus, they have the votes to block most bills. But even when Democrats don’t have the votes, they can force McConnell to spend time jumping through procedural hoops. This is the insight McConnell deployed against Reid to manufacture the appearance of gridlock, forcing him to use the cloture process more than 600 times.

But this would mean backing off of the sanctimonious adherence to norms and decorum that often substitutes for ideology with these plutocrats. If only we had a politics that connected people's concerns directly to their elected representatives without 50 levels of donor-fed technocratic institutional bullcrap. Instead we have.. whatever Chuck Schumer is

Down payment

Looks like we're only going to be able to squeeze $500 million out of congress for flood relief before they rush off to recess again.

The short-term funding bill, formally known as a continuing resolution, has been identified as the fastest way to get flood money for the state before Congress recesses this month. Lawmakers won't return to D.C. until December, after this fall's elections. Gov. John Bel Edwards had requested a $2.8 billion package.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, said that the $500 million in the proposal is seen as a "down payment" on future flood relief that can be awarded in the December "lame duck" session.

"It's a great start," he said Thursday. "This obviously gets things going."

The flood relief package, which Senators will have for four days before votes are cast and then it heads to the House, would largely go toward meeting housing needs in the flood-ravaged areas. As it's currently written, the money would also go toward recovery for North Louisiana, which experienced mass floods in the spring.

They sound pretty proud of themselves as well as optimistic about getting the rest of the money after the fall break. Could they have done now, though? Probably. 

WASHINGTON The Senate may break two weeks ahead of schedule, with lawmakers on Monday suggesting that an early recess is underway.

Friday could be the last day the Senate is in session until after the election, meaning senators have just one week to make progress on Zika, an environmental bill, and relief for Flint, Michigan, and flood-damaged Louisiana – not to mention pass a continuing resolution, known as the CR, that would keep the government funded before the fiscal year ends on September 30.

“Republicans took the longest summer recess in 60 years and are rushing for the exits again after three short weeks back at work,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in a statement. “This Republican Senate has worked fewer days than any Senate in modern history.”

Oh well. Have a nice vacation, guys. See you after the re-greatening of America. 

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article102774302.html#storylink=cpy

Not quite, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney"

But close enough!

A Kentucky man photobombed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as they voted.

#458388082 / gettyimages.com

How it's done

This here is how you do it.

Got 15 minutes handy? OH YES YOU DO. Because here is United States Senate candidate for Kentucky Alison Lundergan Grimes, at some sort of Real Murican smalltown Heartland hoedown Lottery, yelling at Mitch McConnell that he is a useless old fucktard, TO HIS FACE.

Please enjoy

See how easy that was?

Mitch McConnell calls his own bluff.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) floated a novel way out of default on Tuesday, suggesting that Congress give up its power to raise the debt ceiling, and instead effectively transfer that authority -- and the political pain that comes with it -- to the White House for the remainder of Obama's first term.

Does this mean Obama will be sad that he doesn't get to raise the retirement age?

And even when you've changed it or condensed it...

So even after "co-Presidents" Nelson and Collins finish shittying up the stimulus bill, Mitch McConnell announces.. to no one's surprise... that he's still against it. McConnell's remarks are once again available for your review below.



Yes, it's the same speech he's been making. And it's the same speech the Republicans will continue to make as long as they know the Democrats will be stupid enough to allow them to get away with it.

And that's just what they're doing. This morning, President Obama and Senator Reid each made statements that included the phrase, "we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good" As noble as that sounds, the implication is that the problem lies with DEMOCRATIC uncompromising advocates of "the perfect". The clear fact is, however, that it's Groucho and the "I'm Against It" caucus who have repeatedly refused to budge... who have in fact managed to redefine the word "bi-partisan" to describe their obstinate behavior.

But again, the fault here lies squarely on the President's shoulders. The Republicans and the media are all too happy to play pretend for as long as they are allowed to do so.