New House Republican majority prepare for debt limit fight that could cause chaos and recession

The US economy already is on a knife edge, with fears of a looming recession amid a historic effort to tame decades-high inflation.

Now, members of the new House Republican majority have amped up the uncertainty by saying they won’t let the federal government keep borrowing money this year without an agreement to significantly cut spending. A standoff over increasing the $31.4 trillion debt limit when it’s reached later this year could roil financial markets, trigger higher borrowing costs, and push the economy into a recession it might otherwise have avoided, experts said.

The economic fallout would be even worse if, unlike in previous showdowns, Congress doesn’t ultimately raise the limit in time to avoid a first-ever US government default on its bills. The difficulty that the narrow House Republican majority had in electing Kevin McCarthy as speaker last week has amplified the concerns.

“I think the the economy’s going to struggle this year, but we have a fighting chance to avoid a downturn, assuming we don’t make a big mistake, like breaching the debt limit or even threatening to breach the debt limit,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, an economics research and consulting firm. “The dysfunction in Washington is a very, very serious threat to the economy and our ability to avoid a recession in 2023.”

One of the concessions McCarthy made to win the speaker’s gavel was to use the need to raise the debt limit to force Democrats to agree to federal spending cuts. House Republicans have loudly complained about the rising national debt under President Biden, although they were largely silent as it shot up during the Trump administration.

The table is already being set for a high-stakes clash.

“I’ve never voted for a debt ceiling increase, and I won’t unless it’s paired with meaningful reform,” Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, said last week. Former president Donald Trump egged on Republicans this week, writing on Truth Social that they should be “playing tough in the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations.”

 

That’s got Democrats worried. While there is bipartisan agreement that the rising debt needs to be addressed, the White House has said Biden won’t negotiate over raising the debt limit, which is required to pay for spending already authorized by Congress.

“There will be no hostage-taking,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week. “The full faith and credit of our country is too important to allow any of that, because to default would be to force extraordinary costs on the American economy and American families.”

Biden knows the damage a debt limit standoff can cause. He was vice president in 2011 when House Republicans under speaker John Boehner, fresh off winning control of the chamber after four years in the minority, balked at increasing the limit until the last minute during the Obama administration.

“It was terrifying, and the terror came from not being sure that Speaker Boehner had the ability to control his caucus,” said Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was a top White House economic official at the time. “The debt limit is just an existential threat to the US economy.”

Boehner had about a 50-seat majority in the House. McCarthy has only a four-seat majority, giving him much less flexibility to make a debt limit deal with Biden and the Democrats.

Fr. Boston Globe 1/11: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/11/nation/debt-limit-fight-could-cause-financial-chaos-push-economy-into-recession-experts-warn/?et_rid=1312764944&s_campaign=todayinpolitics:newsletter

Linesperson?

 Are you friggin' kidding me?

So, I was watching a junior hockey game the other night and they were presenting an award to the Linesmen - of which there were two, BOTH MEN, but announce them as Linespersons. 

LINESPERSONS!! When the only two linespersons on the ice were MEN.

Now there is another junior hockey tournament going on between young ladies, and the commentators are always referring to them as "young ladies" and "girls" and on occasion "women". WHY NOT PERSONS?

This is SO politically incorrect to call them by female names when they SHOULD BE called Persons, amirite??

Bad enough postmen are now postal workers and firemen are now fire fighters.

Instead of this… Consider this…

1 Anchorman Anchor

2 Assemblyman Assemblyperson

3 Businessman Businessperson

4 Cameraman Camera Operator

5 Chairman Chair, Chairperson

6 Clergyman Minister, Pastor

7 Congressman Member of Congress

8 Construction Man Construction Worker

9 Councilman Council Member

10 Craftsman Artisan

11 Crewman Crew Member

12 Doorman Door Keeper, Door Attendant

13 Fireman Firefighter

14 Foreman Supervisor, Supervisor, Boss

15 Garbage Man Trash Collector

16 Handyman Maintenance Person, Fixer

17 Longshoreman Stevedore

18 Mailman Postal Worker, Letter/Mail Carrier

19 Maintenance Man Janitor, Caretaker

20 Patrolman Police Officer

21 Pizza Man Pizza Person

22 Policeman Police Officer

23 Salesman Salesperson

24 Stuntman Stuntperson

25 Weatherman Meteorolgist

https://blog.ongig.com/diversity-and-inclusion/gender-neutral-job-titles/

I have a question: WHEN are they going to stop neutering us men?

An analysis of the state of the House GOP

The open question here is to what extent is the anti-democratic radicalism of House Republicans shared by those in the Senate. I suspect it is shared to a large extent. After all, Senate Republicans are the ones who put Christofascism in charge of the Supreme Court. An analysis published by Salon comments:

The battle over the Speakership dreams of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was a cataclysmic event, in terms of the media's increasingly ineffective efforts to convey to news consumers what is actually going on. Most press coverage portrayed the struggle as one between a more moderate faction supporting McCarthy and a far-right splinter group who opposed him. In reality, however, the fight was merely showboating from a small group of trolls who wanted attention, with no real substance to any of the disagreements. Indeed, pro- and anti-McCarthy groups are in fierce agreement on nearly all major policy issues, including the question of whether democracy is a good thing worth protecting. (Both sides believe it is not!)

For proof there's no real daylight between the two factions, look no further than the fact that the biggest Republican troll in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, was on Kev's side from the get-go. Greene has become one of the most famous — and powerful — Republicans in Capitol Hill by sheer dint of her gleefully unapologetic fascism. She's one of the biggest apologists for Donald Trump's Big Lie and the violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow democracy on January 6, 2021. She's a grade-A conspiracy theorist who rode into Washington spouting QAnon nonsense. Once in office, she went straight for the third rail in American politics, showy antisemitism, downplaying the Holocaust and raving about how Jews were setting wildfires with space lasers. She hits all the major stations of the conspiracy theory cross, from dismissing mass shootings as "false flags" to vaccine denialism to, naturally, 9/11 trutherism. She, of course, has also gotten that sweet, sweet attention by calling for the execution of her political opponents. 

But she's all for McCarthy, because he is fine with all this, despite his media image of moderation. Greene, who is a much savvier operator than the liberals constantly dunking on her would like to admit, clearly realizes that being on the always-Kevin side of this fight opened up a golden opportunity: She can now rebrand herself as a mainstream Republican. With her shiny new committee assignments — complete with access to some of the most highly classified information in government — and her role as McCarthy's golden girl, Greene is set to remake herself into a respected figure on Capitol Hill. She'll be just as much a conspiracy theory kook as she ever was, but her new status as an elder statesman in the GOP will put an ennobling gloss on her lies, helping push them through the ever-credulous Beltway press. 

That Greene is consciously rebranding herself became undeniable on Sunday, when she distanced herself from QAnon during a Fox News interview.

"Well, like a lot of people today, I had easily gotten sucked into some things I'd seen on the internet," she said when host Howard Kurtz asked her about QAnon. "But that was dealt with quickly early on. I never campaigned on those things. That was not something I believed in."

I strongly agree with these two points:

• There is not much difference between the holdout extremists and the other Republicans in the House. The GOP has undeniably radicalized into a corrupted, mendacious anti-democracy political force.

• The mainstream media is doing a poor job of explaining what is going on. One can reasonably speculate that the main reasons are some combination of (i) pro-corporate bias due to corporate ownership, (ii) incompetence and too many errors of omission and commission, (iii) much more pressure to sensationalize and trivialize news to make money than to inform the public, and/or (iv) loss of public trust after decades of unfounded attacks, lies and slanders.

Also, Greene is a shameless liar. She knew all along that QAnon was lies, slanders and crackpottery. She was never sucked in, despite her claim to the contrary. She just needed the publicity. The mainstream media gave it to her.

News bits: Tales from Twittwerlandia, etc.

MTG gets booted off Twitter for copyright infringement: A Twitter person got a hold of a letter sent by Dr. Dre’s attorney to the lovely MTG. She used one of Dre’s songs in her online propaganda poison and the good Dr. was not pleased that his music was being used without his permission to support fascism. Yikes! Kerfuffle alert!

The letter contains a couple of interesting comments, quoted below.

“One might expect that, as a member of congress, you would have a passing familiarity with the laws of our country.” Ooh, that was snarky. Naughty lawyer. One seasoned observer commented: “Legal snark is my favorite snark!” Bwaaahahahaha!!!

“It's possible, though, that laws governing intellectual property are a little too arcane and insufficiently populist for you to really have spent much time on.” Ouch, gut punch!

“You are wrongfully exploiting this work through various social media outlets to promote your divisive and hateful political agenda.”  That’s called copyright infringement and, as an added bonus, her political agenda is divisive and hateful.

“We’re writing because we think that an actual lawmaker should be making laws, not breaking laws, especially those embodied in the constitution by the founding fathers.” Another gut punch, but a good point. Protection for copyrighted material is actually in the original constitution. Art. 1, Sec. 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries (that means copyrights and patents are protected)

The Marjorie is not pleased

Dammit, she liked that Dre song!

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From the Filling the Congressional Swamp With Fascists Files: Here we go, gird up you loins boys and girls. Included in its first official action, the House gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The Repubs said they were gonna do that and by golly they did! Newsweek optimistically (😵) comments: 

Three of four Democratic-appointed OCE board members will also be removed due to term limits under the changes, leaving Republican-appointed members in nearly full control of the office before Democrats are able to add new members, which may take months.

There was excitement in the Repub House caucus with the elimination of all concerns for ethics and the rule of law as applied to Repubs in the House. George Santos, the spreader of whopper lies is now off the hook for lying his way into congress. He excitedly exclaimed: Fantastic! MAGA!!

OK, he only said Fantastic! I added MAGA!! to tastefully and artistically emphasize Santos’ understandable excitement at his get out of the slammer free card.

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Corruption in the swamp at the Supreme Court: Business Insider writes about the transition of the super obscure Supreme Court Historical Society (SCHS) to a now much less obscure pay-to-play way for donors to get direct access to Supreme Court justices. This is corporate and fascist partisan moral rot to its very core. Funding for the obscure SCHS quietly accelerated after 2000 when it decided to get aggressive about looking for ‘donors’, a/k/a paying players. BI writes:

In 2000, the SCHS decided it would select new trustees for its board of directors largely based on their ability to provide “financial support” for the organization. [than means setting up a pay-to-play cash harvesting operation]

Before Silverman raised the alarm, the society hadn't attracted much attention — or money — from people outside the legal profession, Insider's review of the nonprofit's trustees throughout the 1990s found. Most of its donors were legal-history buffs and aging philanthropists.

But it wasn't long before new faces started showing up at society events and board meetings.

In 2003, the Ohio real-estate developer Don Wright joined the board of trustees. In 2007, so did Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza. By 2010, they were joined by the GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, the son of the real-estate magnate Trammell Crow.

These new members were part of a wave of right-wing ideologues, corporate representatives, and wealthy conservative power brokers who flocked to the Supreme Court Historical Society over the past two decades, Insider's analysis found, using the little-known group to gain unprecedented access to one of the most elusive and secretive judicial bodies on the planet. The donors leveraged relatively small sums of cash into privileged face time with the very Supreme Court justices who were in some instances deciding cases to which their companies or affiliated advocacy organizations were parties.

An analysis of the society's donors published by The New York Times in late December identified at least $6.4 million in donations since 2003 coming from groups or individuals that argued cases before the court. (The Times had previously reported that one donor, the anti-abortion activist Rob Schenck, claimed to have used the society to infiltrate Justice Samuel Alito's inner circle and gain access to information about a pending decision.)

Insider's investigation into nearly three decades' worth of Supreme Court Historical Society records found that the extensive network of donors and trustees with vested interests before the court was rife with right-wing religious activists and corporations. In exchange for as little as a few thousand dollars in contributions to the nonprofit, these people received easy access to events where Supreme Court justices would be.

The Supreme Court has recently been criticized as biased and conflicted due to the donors who get access to the judges through SCHS social events. Chief Justice Roberts vehemently denies that any conflicts of interest exist. Right. And pigs with wings can fly too.

Chief Justice Roberts is either a corrupt liar or corrupt and stupid. Since he is very, very smart, we can eliminate corrupt stupid as a possibility. What does that leave? Hm. Corrupt liar? Yup, that’s what it leaves.

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Did Joe Biden screw the pooch?: The NYT writes:

President Biden’s lawyers discovered “a small number” of classified documents in his former office at a Washington think tank last fall, the White House said on Monday, prompting the Justice Department to scrutinize the situation to determine how to proceed.

The inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter, is a type aimed at helping Attorney General Merrick B. Garland decide whether to appoint a special counsel, like the one investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive documents and failure to return all of them.  

The documents found in Mr. Biden’s former office, which date to his time as vice president, were found by his personal lawyers on Nov. 2, when they were packing files at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, according to the White House. Officials did not describe precisely how many documents were involved, what kind of information they included or their level of classification.

One can just hear the howls of self-righteous faux moral outrage from the Republicans in the House. There will be an investigation or two. There probably will be an impeachment or two of Joe for one or more alleged treasons, crimes and/or horrors. One can only hope that Joe didn’t break any laws.