Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive science, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
DP Etiquette
First rule: Don't be a jackass.
Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.
At this time of year, most people are making holiday plans. Donald Trump will mark the season a different way: by killing people. The Associated Pressreportedon Monday that Trump’s administration will ramp up federal executions ahead of departing the White House. The Justice Department plans to execute five people in federal prison sentenced to death before President-elect Joe Biden assumes office on January 20. If all five executions take place, the administration will have killed 13 people since July alone. That would “cement Trump’s legacy as the most prolific execution president in over 130 years,” the AP observed.
It’s difficult to imagine a more fitting epitaph for the Trump presidency. To Trump and his enablers, the lives of others were never worth much. When migrants died in ICE custody, the administration remained silent. The COVID-19 dead he barely acknowledges and, indeed, really can’t, as long as he wants to pretend that the pandemic isn’t so bad. But a handful of deaths could matter. When Trump needed proof of the innate criminality of immigrants, he turned to Angel Moms, the parents of children killed by undocumented immigrants.
Death has another use for Trump, and it’s to prove his mettle as a law-and-order president. But his administration’s approach to capital punishment may further undermine arguments in its favor. Trump’s intense commitment to the death penalty reveals the risks inherent in granting the state the power to kill. At both the state and federal levels, the application of capital punishment is “capricious,” as Intelligencer’s Zak Cheney-Rice wrote earlier this year. The fickle qualities of this form of justice were advertised as soon as the Trump administration resumed federal executions in July after a 17-year hiatus.
When the federal government put Daniel Lewis Lee to death in July for his role in the 1996 slaying of an Arkansas family, it did so over the objections of the victims’ relatives. In statements to the press, they observed a disparity between the sentences given to Lee and to his co-conspirator, who received life in prison despite planning and initiating the brutal crime. Despite the family’s sentiments, Attorney General Bill Barr justified the execution as an act of closure intended specifically for them. “Lee finally faced the justice he deserved,” Barr said at the time. “The American people have made the considered choice to permit capital punishment for the most egregious federal crimes, and justice was done today in implementing the sentence for Lee’s horrific offenses.”
But in Barr’s mouth, justice means little. Killing a man who is already caged, over the protestations of those he’s alleged to have harmed, remedies no wrong and makes nothing whole. No one is safer because Lee is dead, and no one will be safer on January 20, after the administration finishes killing five more people. There is no evidence that the death penalty effectively deters violent crime. What matters to Trump, and to Barr, is the way things look. The executions are a way to show strength: Conservatives enforce order; liberals are too weak to bother.
Biden opposes the death penalty and has said he’ll work to end it at the federal level upon taking office. Trump’s killing spree might help Biden make his case. All presidents have power over life and death; the ability to lead us into war or out of it, to shape domestic policy in ways that either reduce or exacerbate suffering. They don’t need the death penalty, too.
There’s been a lot of talk about the GOP potentially blocking Biden’s cabinet picks, something that hasn’t been done a lot in the history of our nation but fitting with the GOP’s complete abdication of reason and ability to govern. I thought it would be interesting to compare whom Biden has picked to the people Trump picked and compare. Today we will start with the first four nominations by Biden, and compare them to the original and replacements Trump made along the way (which are a lot, so hang on).
Secretary of State
Rex Tillerson was selected as Secretary of State in 2016. Tillerson was an oil company executive with no government experience and no diplomatic credentials. He had multiple business deals with Russian and opposed sanctions on them in response for their invasion of Crimeria, downing of civilian aircrafts and meddling in the 2016 US elections. The choice of Tillerson caused 60% of long time Foreign Service Officers to resign and recruitment fell by 50%.
Tillerson was replaced by Mike Pompeo in 2018 after Tillerson and Trump fell out. Tillerson would go on to be quoted calling Trump “a f*cking moron” and explain how ill-equipped Trump was for any sort of foreign policy actions.
Pompeo was a US army officer and US representative from Kansas until he was selected by Trump to run the CIA. He had two years as a member of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as background in intelligence work, and only served in the position of CIA director for less than a year before being tapped as Secretary of State. While in the House he was a member of the Tea Party (nationalist anti-tax far right conservatives) and a member of the Italian American Congressional Delegation, a group of people who push for Italian American interests and closer ties between the two nations.
Pompeo’s tenure was hallmarked by the destruction of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the dead end of Iran policy, the dismissal of a Saudi assassination of a US resident, and multiple instances of using federal funds and resources for personal fundraising and support dinners.
Joe Biden has selected Antony Blinken to serve as Secretary of State. Blinken served as Deputy National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2015 and Deputy Secretary of State from 2015 to 2017. Blinken also served in the State Department and in senior positions on the National Security Council staff during Bill Clinton’s tenure. He was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2001–2002) and Democratic Staff Director of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (2002–2008). From 2009 to 2013, Blinken served as Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy think tank.
Secretary of the Treasury
Steven Mnuchin is one of the few Trump Cabinet picks to not be removed and replaced in his tenure. Before becoming Treasury Secretary, Mnuchin was a hedge fund manager at Goldman Sachs, which he joined following his father, a General Manager there at the time. He left Goldman’s in 2002 and started a series of hedge fund companies. He was sued for “asset stripping” in his acquisition and sales of companies, as well as questionable foreclosures. He had zero government experience prior to serving as Trump’s National Finance Chairman.
His tenure was marked by the passing of the 2017 tax cut bill, which reduced corporate tax rates permanently and individual tax rates for three years, and his failure to live up to his promise of a 3% GDP growth rate, and multiple investigations into private use of government transport.
Joe Biden has selected Janet Yellen as his pick for Secretary of the Treasury. She is an economist who is currently a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor emeritus at Haas School of Business. Yellen served as the 15th chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018 and was also Vice Chair from 2010 to 2014. Yellen was also a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997 and again from 2010 to 2018 and served as the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 1999 and was President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010.
Janet Yellen awarded Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for Field of Study in Economics. She received an Honorary Doctorate from the London School of Economics in May 2015. In October 2010, she received the Adam Smith Award from the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). In 2012, she was elected Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Tom Price was selected in 2016. An orthopedic surgeon, Price practiced since 1980 and taught shortly in 2002. He was a member of the anti-vaccination and anti-Medicare group AAPS and was an active member of the Republican party during the 1990s. Since 1995 he was active in state legislation, serving on multiple committees. In 2005 Price moved to the US Legislature as a Representative, and joined in his third term the religious right wing and anti-tax caucus Republican Study Committee. Later he served on the Ways and Means Committee and the Budget Committee.
During his tenure he worked to repeal the ACA, privatize Medicare and cut all funding off for any organization who offers abortion services. He is also against removing co-pays for birth control. Price is known to be a climate change denialist, Patriot Act supporter, anti-UN, opponent of any gun control, and against birthright citizenship. He is also known for his anti-LGBT votes and has a 0% score from the Human Rights Campaign. He has a 100% score from the American Conservative Union.
As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Price worked to repeal the individual mandate, which he later admitted would drive up costs of the ACA and reduce participation, and repeal the ACA’s protection on pre-existing conditions. He was accused of using his position to inform his stock trades, including pulling out of a company his actions days later negatively influenced. Eventually, Price was fired (“resigned”) after it was found that he used private jets and military aircraft billed to the government for his private use.
Price was replaced by Alex Azar, a pharmaceutical industry executive who had served in Bush’s HHS department as legal counsel (4 years) and Deputy Secretary (2 years). He also worked as a lawyer for accused sexual predator Judge Alex Kozinski (replaced by Brett Kavanaugh), SC Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, and Associate Independent Counsel Ken Starr. He was known for tripling the price of insulin while at the head of Ely Lilly, and being anti-ACA and anti-abortion, but being pro-regulation for health services.
Azar’s tenure was primarily noted for his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Azar was one of few Trump administration officials to push for a more active policy regarding COVID-19, though in January 2020 he stated that everything was completely fine and under control (it should be noted he said this to Trump, who notoriously ignored the pandemic for months and refused to acknowledge any danger). Azar pushed to keep quarantine procedures over urgent response, but strangely picked a dog breeder to run the entire coordination for the government’s COVID-19 response. Testing was also a flashpoint, as the US was for a long time behind on testing, and even had a batch of self-made tests fail requiring a complete restart.
Joe Biden has selected Xavier Becerra for HHS Secretary. Becerra is a US Representative and lawyer, serving from 1993 to 2017. During his time there he was appointed to serve on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (often called Bowles-Simpson/Simpson-Bowles) on March 24, 2010, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (also known as the Super Committee) on August 11, 2011, and on December 23, 2011, he was appointed to serve on a bicameral conference committee to find bipartisan solutions on middle-class tax cuts, unemployment insurance, and the Medicare physician payment rate.
Becerra was known to oppose any bill with cuts for Social Security, SNAP or Medicare, going against both Republican and Democrat policy goals. He supported the DREAM act and DACA, and is considered 100% pro-choice by Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America. While a Representative he was on the Ways and Means Committee, Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, and was a former chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Becarra’s latest role is as California’s attorney general. Highlights here were his fight against anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress for fraud, threats to media who received police officer criminal history reports, opposition to Trump’s border wall, potentially biased ballot descriptions, and a failure to stop fraud in pandemic relief.
Secretary of Homeland Security
Trump’s first pick was career Marine officer John Kelly, who at the time was on the board of advisors for a policy and investment firm, DC Capital Partners. Aside from his extensive military service and command as a four star general, Kelly received a Master of Arts degree in National Security Affairs from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. In 1995, Kelly graduated from the National Defense University in Washington, DC with a Master of Science in Strategic Studies. Kelly was steadfast in the duty of the military to carry out the laws and orders from civilian government, charging them with making sure those decisions were well thought out and planned.
Kelly’s tenure as Homeland Security Secretary was short; he was tapped to replace Reince Priebus as White House Chief of Staff after about 6 months, a position he held until an acrimonious split from Trump, one of several that marked his administration. During his tenure, Kelly was known as an immigration hardliner, pushing for but failing to build the wall, setting the child detention and family separation policies into motion and greatly expanding the deportation lists beyond undocumented immigrants. He was also retroactively investigated for his undisclosed financial ties to contractors who benefitted greatly from the policies he enacted.
Kelly was replaced first by Elaine Duke, who served shortly as acting Secretary. She was a career Homeland Security professional who served under Bush Jr, Obama and Trump. Her short tenure was hallmarked by Hurricane Maria and the US response to the devastation of Puerto Rico. Duke arranged for aid to be swiftly brought to Puerto Rico, bypassing usual regulations. She also noted that Trump considered selling Puerto Rico when it was hit by the Hurricane.
Duke was replaced by Kirstjen Nielsen, who was chief of staff to John Kelly and deputy chief of staff to Trump at the time. She was educated as a lawyer and foreign service expert, with a specialization in Japan. She served in the George W Bush administration’s White House Security Council, after which she started a private consulting firm (consisting of herself only) and worked with FEMA.
Nielsen’s tenure was rife with controversy, starting immediately with her response to Trump’s “shithole countries” remarks about African nations compared to places like Norway. She supported Trump’s ban on transgender military members, denied the conclusion from intelligence agencies that Russia meddled with the 2016 election, and went against Trump’s desire to use advanced weapons on migrants at the border. But her biggest hallmark was the family separation policy that John Kelly had begun, which she allegedly opposed, and then lied about was occurring. She stated an executive order could not be used to end this, and then privately pushed for one and was present during Trump’s eventual signing of it (thought it did not stop the policy or reunite the children with their parents, to this day). Her actions led to a lot of internal turmoil within the administration, and externally she was cited for perjury in stating that the intention was not deterrence.
Nielsen was terminated in 2019, and her deputy Claire Grady was also forced to resign, being replaced instead by Trump pick Kevin McAleenan, bypassing both the confirmation process of Congress and the standard replacement procedure. He was the commissioner of the US Customs and Border Patrol, and previously served in other CBP positions since 2006. His tenure as CCBP was marked by his claims that conditions at detention facilities for children were fine, which was proven to not be the case, with no or inconsistent access to showers or hot meals. He served only a few months before resigning to rejoin the private sector, being replaced by another Trump pick, Chad Wolf.
Wolf was a lobbyist before being picked as chief of staff for the TSA and for Nielsen. He had previously worked for the TSA during Bush Jr’s tenure, then lobbied on behalf of clients getting contracts for it, before returning under Trump. In 2017, while working at TSA the company where Wolf’s wife worked was awarded 6 million in contracts, having never before received a TSA contract. Wolf’s tenure was marked with his federal policing actions in Portland, which were widely criticized as unlawful and were rejected and resisted by the state of Oregon, as well as his alleged order not to report threats from Russia. He also suspended DACA.
Both Wolf and McAleenan were found to be improperly appointed and much of their policy work was ruled unlawful.
Joe Biden has selected Alejandro Mayorkas as his pick for Secretary of Homeland Security. He is a long time government employee and Homeland Security Professional, having served as US attorney during the Clinton administration, director and deputy secretary of Homeland Security under Obama, and then worked at a DC law firm from 2017 onwards. His background includes a specialization in prosecuting white collar crime, mafia’s, and hate crimes. He implemented DACA. He also controversially oversaw the EB-5 investor program, which gave green cards to foreign investors who made large investments into US communities, and was accused of favoritism.
His previous tenure was marked by DHS response to the Ebola and Zika epidemics, cybersecurity efforts which led to a reduction of threats from China in 2015, and the normalization of relations with Cuba.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had just finished wrapping string lights around her home’s portico on Saturday evening and was about to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with her 4-year-old son when a crowd of protesters marched up carrying American flags and guns.
About two dozen protesters chanted “Stop the Steal” and accused Benson, a Democrat and Michigan’s chief election officer, of ignoring widespread voter fraud — an echo of President Trump’s continued unfounded claims as he seeks to overturn the results of the election that President-elect Joe Biden won.
“She’s decided to completely ignore all of the credible, credible, fraudulent evidence that has been continually pointed out,” demonstrator Genevieve Peters said of Benson, as she live-streamed the protest in Detroit on Facebook. “We’re out here in front of the secretary of state’s house and we want her to know we will continue to be here.”
Vitriolic rhetoric has led bipartisan leaders to warn that Trump’s baseless attacks on the election are endangering election officials’ lives. Multiple Michigan officials have reported being threatened and harassed over the election results, as have officials in Georgia, Arizona, Vermont, Kentucky, Minnesota and Colorado.
For more than 10 hours last Monday, President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, convened in a Phoenix hotel ballroom with more than a dozen current and future Arizona Republican lawmakers to hear testimony from people who supposedly witnessed election fraud.
Giuliani and other attendees were shown maskless and not social distancing, and the Arizona Republican Party tweeted an image of Giuliani and lawmakers flouting guidelines to restrict transmission of the novel coronavirus.
That defiance of public health advice came to a head on Sunday when Trump announced on Twitter that Giuliani had contracted the coronavirus. Hours later, legislative staff in Arizona’s Capitol abruptly announced a week-long closure of the state Senate and House starting on Monday.
The next day, Giuliani held a private meeting with Arizona’s GOP leadership, including state Senate Majority Leader Rick Gray, Senate President Karen Fann, House Speaker Rusty Bowers and House Majority Leader Warren Petersen, according to a tweet from state Sen. Vince Leach, who also attended the meeting. Leach posted an image of himself with his arm around Giuliani with neither wearing a mask. (😊 for the selfie!)
Last month, more than 300 people packed into a wedding near rural Ritzville, Wash., defying state restrictions. Authorities later traced more than a dozen coronavirus cases and two outbreaks to the ceremony — and warned that the fallout would likely get worse.
Now, health officials say the wedding also included some guests whose job is caring for among the most vulnerable to coronavirus: nursing-home residents. And at least six residents have now died of covid-19 at two nursing homes where staffers tested positive for the virus after attending the wedding, the local department announced in a Thursday news release.
The Grant County Health District said that it hasn’t yet definitively linked those deaths to the wedding, but the department now intends to do full contact tracing on the staffers who tested positive after attending the event, spokeswoman Theresa Adkinson told The Washington Post in an email statement late Sunday.
Health experts have long warned of the risk that “superspreader” events pose to the elderly and those with underlying conditions even if they don’t participate in the mass gatherings themselves. In August, a wedding in a small Maine town with about 65 guests sparked an outbreak resulting in nearly 200 infections. Six residents of an assisted-living facility who did not attend the party died of covid-19 complications after being infected in the outbreak, the state’s CDC director later announced.
The New York Times writes about two senators, democratic Tom Udall (NM) and republican Lamar Alexander (TN), who are retiring from the senate at the end of this year. They have opposite views about keeping or getting rid of the filibuster as a means to fix the broken US senate. The NYT writes on their different rationales:
“It would basically destroy the Senate,” Mr. Alexander, a three-term senator, said in an interview, crediting the procedural weapon with forcing compromise. “It would be a second House of Representatives. The freight train of the people would run through every two years depending on whatever the fever was.”
Mr. Alexander said he found it particularly odd that Democrats wanted to abolish a tactic that has served them so well as the minority party.
“They have used it to their enormous advantage over the last six years,” he said. “They have been protected.”
“Our founders would have been outraged at the idea that the Senate should be run as a supermajority institution,” said Mr. Udall, who is departing after two Senate terms. “Let’s focus on rules that allow the majority to move forward. At the end of the day, 51 votes. That is what works for the American people. And it has accountability built into it.”
He said he feared for the next four years as he sees Republicans digging in against the incoming administration as they did against President Barack Obama beginning in 2009.
“I am already worried about what I see, and us not coming together around this new president and his team and not giving him a chance to succeed,” said Mr. Udall, who has been mentioned as a contender to be interior secretary or to fill another post in the Biden administration, a prospect he said he would welcome.
So, what should be done? Should the filibuster stay, should it go or should something else be done? My guess is that nothing will be done about it because the GOP will retain a majority in the senate. If that happens, there will be at least another two more years, probably four, of broken congress, GOP obstructionism and legislative gridlock.
The GOP will be no more in any mood to compromise with any democratic president or congressperson in 2021 than it was under essentially all eight years of Obama's time in office and has been since the dems won the House in the 2018 elections.
Kumbaya, my Lord, kumbaya Oh, Lord, kumbaya
Good people on both sides calmly discussing the filibuster
In refusing to hear another of the baseless lawsuits, conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn of the Wisconsin Supreme Court commented: “It can be easy to blithely move on to the next case with a petition so obviously lacking, but this is sobering. The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen. Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. . . . This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”
In that lawsuit, the court refused to hear a lawsuit filed by a conservative group that sought to invalidate the election in Wisconsin.
Nevada
Judge James T. Russell of the Nevada District Court in Carson City wrote that the campaign “did not prove under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted, or legal votes were not counted at all, due to voter fraud, nor in an amount equal to or greater than” Biden’s margin of victory, about 33,600 votes. Russell dismissed witness declarations the campaign submitted, describing them as “self-serving statements of little or no evidentiary value” and said the campaign’s expert testimony “was of little to no value.”
By contrast, the T**** campaign lawyer Jesse R. Binnall said the Nevada election had been “stolen” and he claimed a “robust body of evidence” supported his conclusion. It is beyond me that lawyers making such obviously false statements to the court are not sanctioned for lying and wasting the court’s time. The Nevada Republican Party said it will appeal this baseless case to the state’s highest court.
Arizona
Judge Randall Warner of the Maricopa County Superior Court ruled Friday that he found “no misconduct, no fraud and no effect on the outcome of the election.” The lawsuit was filed by the Arizona Republican Party and its chairwoman, Kelli Ward. Ward is expected to appeal the ruling.
