Republicans threaten Democrats

The Washington Post writes in an article entitled, In wake of Bannon indictment, Republicans warn of payback: 

Republicans are rallying around former White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon after his indictment on charges of contempt of Congress on Friday, warning that Democrats’ efforts to force Bannon to comply with what they say is an unfair subpoena paves the way for them to do the same if they take back the House in 2022.

Bannon, like former president Donald Trump, has refused to comply with an order from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection to turn over records and testify about his actions leading up to the attack, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol trying to stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral college win.

Bannon is expected to turn himself in to law enforcement Monday ahead of a court appearance that afternoon. Democrats and a handful of anti-Trump Republicans argue that the indictment was necessary to enforce subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 committee to Trump associates who are resisting cooperation and to witnesses summoned by other congressional panels.

Many GOP leaders, however, are seizing on Bannon’s indictment to contend that Democrats are “weaponizing” the Justice Department, warning Democrats that they will go after Biden’s aides for unspecified reasons if they take back the House majority in next year’s midterm elections, as most political analysts expect.  

“For years, Democrats baselessly accused President Trump of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ. In reality, it is the Left that has been weaponizing the DOJ the ENTIRE TIME — from the false Russia Hoax to the Soviet-style prosecution of political opponents,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking House Republican, tweeted Saturday.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suggested that Republicans would seek payback if the GOP regained control of the House, signaling that in challenging the doctrine of executive privilege, Democrats were making it easier for Republicans to force Biden’s top advisers to testify before a future GOP Congress.  

“Joe Biden has evicerated Executive Privilege,” Jordan wrote on Twitter. “There are a lot of Republicans eager to hear testimony from Ron Klain and Jake Sullivan when we take back the House.” Sullivan is Biden’s national security adviser, and Klain is the White House chief of staff.

Various thoughts come to mind here. In no particular order:

• Maybe Democrats are, to at least some extent, trying to give the DoJ back some of the teeth it used to have, which is a good thing in view of how neutered it was under anti-rule of law Republicans
• Threats to force advisers to testify before congress doesn't seem to amount to much since advisers should talk to Congress and not just operate in secrecy as was the case under our corrupt, mendacious, treasonous ex-president with his corrupt, mendacious, treasonous advisers
• If a politician has done nothing grossly inept or illegal, then they have nothing to fear in testifying before Congress
• Being able to force an adviser, and IMO a president, to honestly communicate with Congress is a force for less corruption and more transparency, both of which are in short supply
• Yes, forcing an adviser or president to testify before Congress can amount to unwarranted harassment, but if no laws were broken that would just be part of the job, and the unreasonably harassed individual should be able to publicly criticize their attackers
• If Republicans get power and start issuing good faith subpoenas to Democratic advisers, there is nothing wrong with it, but if they do it in bad faith, then they are open to criticism for abuse of power and should be harshly sanctioned 
• By making these threats, Republicans make clear that they see the rule of law as subordinate to partisan politics and are thus reasonably seen as generally anti-rule of law, which is anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian
• Based on their behavior over the last couple of decades, it is likely that Republicans will not operate in good faith with this or most anything else, but there is no clear law that prevents this kind of rotten behavior, so this will be the new norm for the foreseeable future 
• If voters tolerate corrupt, mendacious bad faith politics and politicians then that is what the situation has come to for better or worse
• The DoJ under Biden has done a terrible job and anything that reinvigorates DoJ vitality and the rule of law is democratic and good if it is in done in good faith, and authoritarian and bad if done in bad faith
• Courts have ruled that the ex-president cannot claim executive privilege for the kind of information the Democrats are trying to get about the 1/6 insurrection, but at least some House Republicans and the ex-president claim otherwise, which suggests Republican bad faith (later court rulings might change this) 
  
  

Questions: 

1. Are these Republican threats a sign of respect for the even-handed rule of law, or a sign that the rule of law is to be used as a partisan weapon for partisan advantage?

2. How can a person distinguish a good faith House subpoena from one issued in bad faith?

Democrats will probably lose the House in 2022

In normal times, the party in power tends tom bet booted out of the House and/or the Senate. These are not normal times. New gerrymandered voting districts appear to make it almost certain that the ARP (authoritarian Republican Party) will regain control of the House. That will be the end of significant legislation at least until the 2024 elections, maybe longer than that. The New York Times writes:

A year before the polls open in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are already poised to flip at least five seats in the closely divided House thanks to redrawn district maps that are more distorted, more disjointed and more gerrymandered than any since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

The rapidly forming congressional map, a quarter of which has taken shape as districts are redrawn this year, represents an even more extreme warping of American political architecture, with state legislators in many places moving aggressively to cement their partisan dominance.

The flood of gerrymandering, carried out by both parties but predominantly by Republicans, is likely to leave the country ever more divided by further eroding competitive elections and making representatives more beholden to their party’s base.

At the same time, Republicans’ upper hand in the redistricting process, combined with plunging approval ratings for President Biden and the Democratic Party, provides the party with what could be a nearly insurmountable advantage in the 2022 midterm elections and the next decade of House races.  

All told, Republicans have added a net of five seats that the party can expect to hold while Democrats are down one. Republicans need to flip just five Democratic-held seats next year to seize a House majority.

A recent NYT article analyzed and explained gerrymandering and the current process in detail.

Gerrymandering is used to rig both House and/or state legislature voting districts in most states. On top of gerrymandering that gives an ARP minority power to dictate control of the House, at least 17 states controlled by the ARP have passed laws intended to suppress Democratic votes and/or rig elections after votes are cast. Republican judges who support gerrymandering and voter suppression have been put on the bench. They are now in firm control of the Supreme Court.

 

Unless congress does something now to allow voters to pick their politicians in free and fair elections instead of the opposite, it looks like voters are going to get cracked, packed and fracked in future rigged elections. Federal courts will not save free and fair elections. Republican federal judges rationalize acceptance of rigged elections by calling it "just politics," which is not something that judges should interfere with. America could very well be on the verge of what turns out to be a long period of harsh, corrupt, authoritarian minority rule.

In hindsight, one can see the wisdom of decades of divisive, polarizing ARP propaganda and lies. By tearing American society apart and constantly vilifying Democrats as Godless radical socialist or communist tyrants, or something worse, most Republican voters are unlikely to ever vote for a Democrat. That seems to be the situation no matter how immoral, corrupt, inept or mendacious the ARP candidate is. The ARP is at least tribal, but arguably cult. For whatever reasons, there is asymmetry in how bad a successful politician can be between the two parties, with the strong advantage going to the ARP. In a cult, bad traits in your own leaders are denied or forgivable, but the same in the opposition is a horror that must be stopped at any cost by any means, including packing, cracking, fracking, deceiving, lying and cheating.

Questions: 

1. Are we witnessing just politics as usual, or is America more likely than not on the verge of a long period of rigid partisan rule or even a form of tyranny by an ARP minority?

2. Since congress is needed to suppress gerrymandering but that probably won't happen, should democratic states like California get rid of non-partisan districting and go back to the gerrymander to get rid of as many Republicans in the House as possible?

I love science!

There is a video going around of what all takes place when you get an mRNA COVID vaccine.  Pretty interesting.  

There are times when I’m actually proud of humanity.  Thank you science and technology! ❤️

Animation of the process 

Thanks for viewing and recommending. 😊

Apportioning responsibility for climate change

The Glasgow climate summit is over. In the last hour or two, the final agreement got diluted. India made demands that neutered a key provision(s). Funding a facility for pay poor countries got changed to talking about it. Poor countries are increasingly demanding payment for damage that rich countries have caused and are increasingly causing. A New York Times article published before the summit ended considered the issue of national responsibility.

The NYT writes: 

One of the biggest fights at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow is whether — and how — the world’s wealthiest nations, which are disproportionately responsible for global warming to date, should compensate poorer nations for the damages caused by rising temperatures.

Rich countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan and much of western Europe, account for just 12 percent of the global population today but are responsible for 50 percent of all the planet-warming greenhouse gases released from fossil fuels and industry over the past 170 years.

At the summit, Sonam P. Wangdi, who chairs a bloc of 47 nations known as the Least Developed Countries, pointed out that his home country of Bhutan bears little responsibility for global warming, since the nation currently absorbs more carbon dioxide from its vast forests than is emitted from its cars and homes. Nonetheless, Bhutan faces severe risks from rising temperatures, with melting glaciers in the Himalayas already creating flash floods and mudslides that have devastated villages.

“We have contributed the least to this problem yet we suffer disproportionately,” Mr. Wangdi said. “There must be increasing support for adapting to impacts.”

A decade ago, the world’s wealthiest economies pledged to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate finance for poorer countries by 2020. But they are still falling short by tens of billions of dollars annually, and very little aid so far has gone toward measures to help poorer countries cope with the hazards of a hotter planet, such as sea walls or early warning systems for floods and droughts.

“Lots of people are losing their lives, they are losing their future, and someone has to be responsible,” said A.K. Abdul Momen, the foreign minister of Bangladesh. He compared loss and damage to the way the United States government sued tobacco companies in the 1990s to recover billions of dollars in higher health care costs from the smoking epidemic.

At the same time, some of the world’s biggest developing economies are beginning to catch up on emissions. China, home to 18 percent of the world’s population, is responsible for nearly 14 percent of all the planet-warming greenhouse gases released from fossil fuels and industry since 1850. But today it is the world’s largest emitter by far, accounting for roughly 31 percent of humanity’s carbon dioxide from energy and industry this year.

At the climate summit, the United States and the European Union have argued that the world will never be able to minimize the damage from global warming unless swiftly industrializing nations like India do more to slash their emissions. But India, which recently announced a pledge to reach “net zero” emissions by 2070, says it needs much more financial help to shift from coal to cleaner energy, citing both its lower per capita emissions and smaller share of historical emissions.

An article from April of 2021 reported an economic analysis that estimated annual global economic loss would be as much as $23 trillion by 2050. The US and other wealthy Western nations could lose between 6 percent and 10 percent of their potential economic output. Most poor nations are projected to fare much worse. If the increase in global temperature is held to two degrees Celsius, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand would each see economic growth 20 percent below what they could otherwise expect by 2050.

Questions: 

1. Do wealthy polluting nations owe financial aid to poor low polluting countries, assuming that at least about 75% of the aid actually goes to mitigate climate impacts, less than ~25% being siphoned off by corrupt politicians and other kinds of crooks and kleptocrats? What about a roughly 50:50 split, e.g., ~47% for climate mitigation and ~53% for crooks, or vice versa? 

2. Some critics immediately criticized the final agreement as just another a greenwash, while at least some major world leaders hailed it as a significant step forward.  Based on past international failures to agree on significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but in view of increased public global concern for climate change, what is likely to be closer to truth about the impact of this agreement, (i) mostly reasons for reasonable pessimism, (ii) mostly reasons for reasonable optimism, or (iii) something closer to the middle? 

3. Will industries, companies and countries that profit heavily from selling oil and gas, e.g., Exxon-Mobile and Saudi Arabia, probably continue to publicly spout concern for climate change, while quietly and behind closed doors continue opposing, undermining and slowing the global response to climate change, just as they and their lobbyists and paid propagandists have been doing for decades?