OK. let's get down to it! What to do about Joe Manchin?

 Yeah, everyone has an opinion. So why not me? 

Is Joe really a Trojan Horse?

https://stansburyforum.com/2021/09/19/joe-manchin-the-republicans-trojan-horse

Could Joe really switch parties?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/could-joe-manchin-really-switch-parties.html

West Virginians Ask Joe Manchin: Which Side Are You On?https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/west-virginians-ask-joe-manchin-which-side-are-you-on

So here what I have to say, and I know it won't be popular:

What the F is wrong with the Democrats? They know they are going to lose the House in 2022. Maybe the Senate. Yet, led by the other Joe, Joe Biden, they are still playing "nice" with Manchin?

There will be no BBB passed - because of Joe M.

The fillibuster won't be eliminated - because of Joe M.

Voting rights legislation won't pass - because of Joe M.

And yeah, Krysten Sinema is another headache, but Joe M. is the bigger one.

So what should the Dems do?

Michelle Obama and coalition vow to register more than a million new voters

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/09/michelle-obama-voting-midterms-526809

So, step 1, follow Michelle's lead, and STOP WHINING, and get voters registered, motivated, organized, and out to the polls. Might not help you say. Maybe not, but it won't hurt either!

2nd suggestion: primary Manchin. Even if you lose that seat. Having a Trojan Horse ain't helping.

If this were the Republicans, Manchin would be toast. While I hate copying their M.O. the fact remains, the Republicans know how to win, and the Dems don't. 

Primary the ass off of Manchin and take the loss for the sake of sending a clear message: get on board or get out!

3rd suggestion: What do Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, et al, have in common? Yup, OLD guard. I like the Progressive wing of the Democratic party. A bit hyperbolic - sure. A bit intense - sure. But the Dems need to go young, dynamic, intense and COMMITTED!! 

There, glad to get that off my shoulders. Now where is my 2nd cuppa java?

China’s dictatorship is using social media to sow domestic disinformation

Prices the Chinese government pays for faking accounts

China is paying Chinese companies to create fake Facebook and Twitter accounts. Among other bad things, the accounts are used to deny brutalization of Chinese minorities and other citizens and to falsely claim that China is a democracy. The propaganda, lies and slanders are just as bad as those flowing from America’s neo-fascist radical right. The New York Times writes:

Flood global social media with fake accounts used to advance an authoritarian agenda. Make them look real and grow their numbers of followers. Seek out online critics of the state — and find out who they are and where they live.

China’s government has unleashed a global online campaign to burnish its image and undercut accusations of human rights abuses. Much of the effort takes place in the shadows, behind the guise of bot networks that generate automatic posts and hard-to-trace online personas.

Now, a new set of documents reviewed by The New York Times reveals in stark detail how Chinese officials tap private businesses to generate content on demand, draw followers, track critics and provide other services for information campaigns. That operation increasingly plays out on international platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which the Chinese government blocks at home.

The documents, which were part of a request for bids from contractors, offer a rare glimpse into how China’s vast bureaucracy works to spread propaganda and to sculpt opinion on global social media. They were taken offline after The Times contacted the Chinese government about them. (that’s called building plausible deniability)

On May 21, a branch of the Shanghai police posted a notice online seeking bids from private contractors for what is known among Chinese officialdom as public opinion management. Officials have relied on tech contractors to help them keep up with domestic social media and actively shape public opinion via censorship and the dissemination of fake posts at home. Only recently have officials and the opinion management industry turned their attention beyond China.

Some of the services the government wants

in the fake account propaganda effort

The NYT goes on to note that Shanghai police want to be able to create hundreds of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other major social media platforms quickly when a need arises. Apparently, officials want to be ready to release new accounts quickly to influence sensitive online discussions. Over the past two years, officialdom networks have been associated with an online surge in pro-China traffic and content. Government posts from usually support official government accounts or they attack social media users who criticize government policy. 

This is part of a shift in Chinese government tactics from brute force to be more subtle and quietly subversive. Part of the effort to quash dissent and criticism is a tactic called “touching the ground.” It amounts to use of fake accounts to try to find online critics who have been able to get around official barriers to disapproved content. In 2018, the government started arresting critics and forcing them to delete their online accounts.

Recently, the oppression campaign started targeting Chinese citizens living outside of China. The documents the NYT reviewed indicate that Chinese police want to discover the identities of people behind targeted accounts. Their users’ domestic connections to are traced back to people in mainland China. The thugs then threaten family members in China or detain overseas account holders after they return. Captured critics are required to delete posts or entire accounts. 

Chinese contractors are asked to produce dozens of fake videos each month and post them worldwide as part of what China calls its “battle of public opinion.”

This is part of what digital dictatorship will include from here on out. One can only wonder how effective social media is at spotting fake accounts and taking them down. Probably not very. It costs money to do that. Social media companies are there to boost profit, not to defend democracy or truth.  

5,000 RMB = ~$784

69,800 RMB = ~$10,947

The reach and power of American political corruption

A PBS documentary, Unrepresented, takes a deep dive into the origins, nature, scope and depth of corruption in American politics. The broadcast speaks to experts from a range of backgrounds and experiences. The bottom line is that with our current two-party pay-to-play political system, average voters are simply not represented and sooner or later, corruption will drive us to economic (and probably social) ruin. 

This is the best and clearest articulation of American political corruption I have ever seen. It pounds home this one central point: 

Unless corruption favors what people want on a given issue, government will not be responsive to deal with any problem or issue they believe needs to be addressed as they want it to be addressed, e.g., climate change, neo-fascist attacks on democracy, gun regulation, wealth inequality, etc. The only way that government will respond as a majority wants is if corruption is dealt with and its power significantly neutered. Corruption has displaced the will of the people. Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party has nearly enough incentive to actually be serious about reducing corruption. Our system is now thoroughly corrupt. Corruption could be worse, but as it is now, it is pervasive and dominant. America is approaching the status of a full blown kleptocracy that runs on increasing federal debt.

Some of the key points are these:

• Corruption has been legalized; the presence and role of private sector money in politics that used to be illegal is now legal
• Our two-party political system now socializes risk and social and environmental damage but privatizes profit and sends most of it to elites at the top
• Many politicians in both parties (IMO, not Republicans any more) complain about the corrupting influence of money in politics and promise reform, but reform never comes instead, the situation worsens
• Three factors underpin and sustain the American system of political corruption, unrestrained and mostly unregulated private sector campaign financing, lobbyists and unlimited federal debt; those three factors are the source of the power of government corruption  
• Major corporate campaign donations tend to favor one of the two parties, but in general the split is not more than 60:40 for either of the two parties; politicians in both parties need to be bought to exert influence
• At the state level, both parties actively oppose measures to reduce corruption; Democrats in Blue states oppose it as quietly as they can, while Republicans in Red states are tend to be much more open about it, usually falsely labeling anti-corruption efforts as socialist, communist and/or tyranny
• The main reason there is bipartisan opposition to reducing corruption is that corruption helps both parties maintain their grip on (i) political power, (ii) the flow of cash into their coffers, and (iii) their ability to neuter threats from potential third party challenges; in other words, the incentives to maintain corruption are extremely high and not balanced by any significant incentives to be honest
• The incentives to be corrupt are so high that one manifestation of it is claims by politicians and parties of honesty to help them hide the fact of their corruption 
• The producers of Unrepresented argue that the system sidetracks honest politicians by putting them in positions of limited power in congress; in essence, the system itself is corrupt, not necessarily all individual politicians (but IMO, a lot (~65% ?) of individual politicians are corrupt themselves to some degree)  
• The politicians in power in congress in both parties are the ones who can raise the most money, not the ones who can govern best
• People in congress spend 30-70% of most every day they can making phone calls to potential donors or attending fund raising events
• About 100,000 wealthy Americans are the reliable donors that congressional politicians routinely turn to for cash and those donors have to be kept happy or their donations will stop; in large part, the federal government is responsive to the demands of that group of 100,000 rich people, less than 0.1% of potential voters (100,000/235 million eligible voters = 0.04%)
• Individuals and groups that do not make major contributions are mostly ignored, regardless of what they want, unless what they want is what the 0.04% also want 
• In return for political donations or ‘investments’ up to the several million dollars, an industry sector can often expect to reap billions in added revenues and tens or hundreds of millions in new profits 
• After the Citizens United the Supreme Court decision in 2010, special interest money in politics increased greatly, giving the big donors significantly more political access and power than they had before the decision; representation is not equal and citizens are therefore not equal in the eyes of government
• To be competitive for re-election, people in congress must be campaigning from the moment they win a campaign
• To be in a track to power in congress, e.g., on a powerful committee or in line to be a committee chairman, a politician must meet fund raising goals, which is necessary to even have a chance at significant power and influence; a leaked document from the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) shows a mandatory schedule of 4 hours per 10 hour work day raising money; a new person in congress is expected to raise about $18,000 per day
• People in congress are under so much pressure to raise money that they sometimes openly complain to their leadership that debating legislation is a waste of time because they need to get back to making phone calls to donors asking for as little as $1,000 from a donor who donated $18,000 last year
• Legalized bribery exists through lobbyists who can represent a donor and argue for what the donor wants; lobbyists are necessary because a donor cannot directly ask a politician for what they want because it would look like bribery; going through a lobbyist allows a donor to give a lot more money than current laws allow through direct donations

• Lobbying is mostly unregulated -- donations do not have to be reported; since 1938, only 8 lobbyists have been prosecuted for bribing a politician
• Large corporations now see Washington as a profit center
• Efforts to shrink government increasingly operate by outsourcing government work to the big donors, which helps hide the payback that donations buy; contractors become part of the political infrastructure → federal contractors make donations and get more contracting work in return
• Unlimited federal debt allows both Democrats and Republicans to get some of what they want because unlimited debt makes it easy to spend; in the past taxes were increased to pay for increased spending, but now spending is financed by new debt
• The pharmaceutical industry has corrupted government by buying politicians to get law passed that prohibits the federal government as the world's biggest drug buyer to negotiate prices; that leaves companies free to charge whatever they want, regardless of costs or profits; that alone is worth billions in profit, not just revenues
• Corruption includes the making of working on Capitol Hill as a politician or staffer unpleasant and jumping from government to lobbying very appealing; expertise in government has been hollowed out, and more drafting of laws is now in the hands of the private sector interests who are affected by the laws they write themselves → they write laws to favor themselves at the expense of the public interest → some huge corporations wind up paying little or no taxes
• Politicians, especially Republicans, know that the public would not tolerate the high cost of war, so they lie to the American people, hire more contractors and increase federal debt to help hide both the cost of that and their own corruption 
• Congress has not passed a full budget on time since 1997, which helps hide corrupt spending in huge, unread and undebated spending bills with no reforms or restraints that congressional leadership arranges to pass at the last moment in the dead of night to help their sleaze fly under the MSM’s and public’s radar
• Unrepresented cited poll data that 96% of Americans believe that special interest money has corrupted politics, but 91% believe it is impossible to change the situation
• Etc., etc., etc.

The sleaze and corruption is routine and endless. The level of corruption in the military budget is ghastly. Unwarranted opacity and complexity helps our corrupt system hide the corruption.

U.S. Constitution, Article V:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

The documentary ends with an argument that it is necessary for the states to force congress to deal with the issue of corruption through an Article 5 (A5) constitutional amendment in a proposed amendment called the American Anticorruption Act. The point is to make political corruption illegal again, e.g., by overturning the pro-corruption Citizens United Supreme Court decision, among other things. It turns out that, despite opposition, a years long effort has got 25 state legislatures so far to call for for an A5 convention to address corruption, which now requires two thirds of state legislatures (34 states) to call . 

My immediate reaction to this proposed A5 convention was vehement opposition grounded in fear. That was based on what happened at the original constitutional convention in 1787. The 1787 was called to amend the Articles of Confederation (AoC). The AoC was a failure that almost cost the US the Revolutionary War. The states understood that and agreed to amend the AoC. The people behind the convention never intended to revise the AoC. Their goal was to ignore it and write a new constitution, which they did. My fear was that a convention called by the states could do the same. Unrepresented went on to directly address and assuage my initial fear in great detail. 

The states cannot do what was done in 1787 because Article V requires three-fourths of states (38 states) to ratify a new amendment. That requirement was not present in 1787 because the current constitution did not exist then. All there was at that time was the ineffective AoC and it did not prevent what happened.[1] 

Six minute video on corruption

Princeton, Gilens and Page study data for average people:

low public support → ~30% chance of becoming law

50% public support → ~30% chance of becoming law

high public support → ~30% chance of becoming law

Rich people: government is more responsive

Conclusion:  Public support or opposition is not relevant, 

but money in politics is

One group that has been working nationwide to call a state-initiated constitutional convention is Wolf-PAC. I've started a monthly donation. Unrepresented convinced me that neither party can or wants to address corruption because the money constitutes a compelling incentive to maintain a corrupt government and political system. Maybe a move to force a state-initiated convention can at least make two things clear to the American people. First, the seriousness of corruption in government and the central role of special interest money. Second, the possibility that maybe, just maybe, our system can actually be changed to better serve the American people instead of special interests backed by plies of cash and slick lobbyists making about a million or two each year.  

The time factor: It will take years to get 34 states to call for a constitutional convention to try to address our corrupt political system, and more years before 38 ratify it. All along the way, both parties will try to derail the effort using propaganda, lies, smears, slanders and any other means they can think of to maintain our corrupt status quo. The one thing that provides a basis for at least some hope is there seems to be a significant majority (not necessarily 96%) of Americans, maybe about 75%, who believe that special interest money has too much influence and has corrupted our political system. 

May 2018 data

Given the slow pace of a constitutional convention and the urgency of other things, it might make sense to focus on three or four priorities at the same time. My assessment looks like this:

1. Highest priority because it is most immediate: The Republican Party’s neo-fascist attack on democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties 

2, 3, 4. About equal priority: Climate change, corruption, and wealth inequality  

Question: Is it possible to actually make corruption illegal, or is there just too damn much money involved to reduce corruption? In other words, is the idea of a meaningful anti-corruption law too far fetched to be anything other than a deranged pipe dream or some variant of a crackpot QAnon conspiracy theory?

Footnote: 

1. Unrepresented argues that the safeguard to a runaway constitutional convention is the three-fourths ratification requirement that A5 specifies. Various analyses have drawn that conclusion.

For example, a 1974 American Bar Association study concluded that a constitutional convention would not spin out of control like the 1787 convention did: “The major conclusion reached from the study is that a national constitutional convention can be channeled so as not to be the unleashing of a radical force in the system, but rather an orderly mechanism of effecting constitutional change when circumstances require its use.” 

But, the wild card here now is the current radical, neo-fascist US Supreme Court. There are complexities and unanswered questions about A5 conventions. For example, some states have rescinded their applications for an A5 convention, which may or may not be valid. A few rescissions of a recission have also occurred. The US Supreme Court could assert exclusive authority to decide what is valid and what isn’t. It would decide on the side of neo-fascism. A 2017 Congressional Research Service analysis discusses these issues, but the last firewall against an out of control A5 convention remains the requirement for three-fourths of states (currently 38) to ratify.

Warnings about civil war

The NYT writes in an opinion piece:

Barbara F. Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, has interviewed many people who’ve lived through civil wars, and she told me they all say they didn’t see it coming. “They’re all surprised,” she said. “Even when, to somebody who studies it, it’s obvious years beforehand.”

Two books out this month warn that this country is closer to civil war than most Americans understand. In “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” Walter writes, “I’ve seen how civil wars start, and I know the signs that people miss. And I can see those signs emerging here at a surprisingly fast rate.” The Canadian novelist and critic Stephen Marche is more stark in his book, “The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future.” “The United States is coming to an end,” Marche writes. “The question is how.”

In Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Thomas Homer-Dixon, a scholar who studies violent conflict, recently urged the Canadian government to prepare for an American implosion. “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence,” he wrote. “By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.” As John Harris writes in Politico, “Serious people now invoke ‘Civil War’ not as metaphor but as literal precedent.”

Of course, not all serious people. The Harvard political scientist Josh Kertzer wrote on Twitter that he knows many civil war scholars, and “very few of them think the United States is on the precipice of a civil war.” Yet even some who push back on civil war talk tend to acknowledge what a perilous place America is in. In The Atlantic, Fintan O’Toole, writing about Marche’s book, warns that prophecies of civil war can be self-fulfilling; during the long conflict in Ireland, he says, each side was driven by fear that the other was mobilizing. It’s one thing, he writes, “to acknowledge the real possibility that the U.S. could break apart and could do so violently. It is quite another to frame that possibility as an inevitability.”  

I agree with O’Toole that it’s absurd to treat civil war as a foregone conclusion, but that it now seems distinctly possible is still pretty bad.

As usual, there are different opinions on the situation we are in. Calling a new American civil war inevitable is not credible yet. But we are in a perilous place and our political and social situations appear to be worsening, not stabilizing or getting better. Yes, prophecies of civil war maybe can be self-fulfilling, if that is what happened to Northern Ireland. But warnings short of prophesy can also help waken people to the grave danger that democracy, the rule of law and civil society now face.

Question: Which is the greater danger, warning of the possibility of a civil war or denying it is significantly or distinctly possible? 

Iowa Republican Party kicks press out of state Senate

In another of many signs of neo-fascist Republican hostility toward the press and crackpottery, the Republican Iowa state senate voted to bar journalists from the chamber floor. That ended a 140-year tradition of allowing the press to be present for Senate work. Journalists will be allowed to sit in a public gallery above the floor. As usual, the excuses for this are nonsense. They rely on almost the same sophistication of ‘reasoning’ that accompanies Republican arguments that the 2020 election was stolen, i.e., crackpot. The Washington Post writes:

Republican leaders in the state Senate told journalists last week they will no longer be allowed to work on the chamber floor, a change that breaks with a more than 140-year tradition in the Iowa Capitol. 

The new rule denies reporters access to the press benches near senators’ desks, a proximity current and former statehouse reporters told The Washington Post is crucial for the most accurate and nuanced coverage. The position allows reporters to see and hear everything clearly on the Senate floor and to get real-time answers and clarifications during debates.

“When you take journalists and restrict their access and then you couple that with changes that have occurred in the past couple of years with procedures in Iowa, it makes it that much harder for the public to know what’s going on,” said Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a government transparency watchdog.

In an email to statehouse reporters obtained by The Washington Post, Senate Republican spokesperson Caleb Hunter said the new rule arose from the “evolving nature and definition of ‘media.' ” 

“As nontraditional media outlets proliferate, it creates an increasingly difficult scenario for the Senate, as a governmental entity, to define the criteria of a media outlet,” the email said. Hunter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.  

To critics of the new rule, including members of the Iowa Capitol Press Association and Democrats in the state Senate, the change is little more than a thinly veiled retaliation against news outlets for unflattering coverage of the Republican-controlled legislature. Longtime statehouse reporters also called the justification specious and said there are no instances of nontraditional media causing disruptions.

The Republican excuse seems to indicate that most likely either the Republicans are too inept to recognize legitimate media outlets, or they just do not want transparency as they advance their anti-democratic neo-fascist agenda in Iowa. They can handle disruptive presences by banning them.

Questions: Does the Republican excuse make any sense or carry weight? Why couldn’t any media outlet, traditional, untraditional or otherwise, that caused a disruption be banned (with or without a prior banning warning like Dissident Politics sometimes employs on disruptive miscreants, pissants, insulters and hooligans)? How stupid do Iowa state Senate Republicans think everyone is, or are they just virtue signaling to their significantly deceived, echo-chambered base and do not much care what anyone else thinks?

How congressional Republicans commemorated the 1/6 coup attempt

McConnell instructing his caucus before the impeachment votes

With one single exception, they didn’t commemorate it. All the others ignored it. A few publicly defended it with standard GOP crackpottery.

The NYT writes:

Republicans were nowhere to be found at the Capitol on Thursday as President Biden and Democratic members of Congress commemorated the deadliest attack on the building in centuries, reflecting the Republican Party’s reluctance to acknowledge the Jan. 6 riot or confront its own role in stoking it.

There are currently more than 250 Republican members of Congress — 212 in the House and 50 in the Senate. Not a single one of those senators appeared on the Senate floor ....

And when lawmakers gathered in the House chamber for a moment of silence to commemorate the riot, only two Republicans joined: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized and marginalized by her party for speaking out against Mr. Trump and his election lies, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The only Republican-led event on Thursday to commemorate Jan. 6 was hosted by two lawmakers on the fringes of the party, Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Seeking to deflect blame from Mr. Trump, they held a news conference to elevate unproven conspiracy theories about the origins of the assault on the Capitol.

McConnell commented that Democrats were playing politics and accused them of trying to “exploit this anniversary to advance partisan policy goals that long predated this event.” His comment referred to the possibility that Democrats might waive the filibuster to pass a voting rights law.

The less biased news sources generally assert that many congressional Republicans disliked the coup attempt and would have voted to impeach the ex-president if the Senate vote had been held in secret. Given where we are today, does it matter whether some or even most congressional Republicans are horrified at what the GOP has become and what the ex-president is, i.e., a fascist? They keep their silence and just let the poison flow.

Maybe they think that by staying silent, they can stay in power (get re-elected) and soften the harsh authoritarianism the GOP now openly pursues. The irrationality of that reasoning, assuming any congressional Republican actually thinks that way (which I doubt), is in the fact that so far they have exerted no perceptible softening or pro-democracy influence on GOP legislation, policy goals, rhetoric or tactics. In other words, that line of reasoning is garden variety, self-serving bullshit. They just want to stay in power, regardless of what they have irrationalized themselves into believing or how much damage they help inflict on democracy, the rule of law and civil society. Those Republicans, assuming there are any, are invertebrates.

Questions: Is it reasonable to believe that congressional Republicans who don't oppose the open authoritarianism of the GOP are moral cowards, or since they are merely human and inherently flawed, one cannot reasonably expect anything other than this? If this is the best that can be expected from humans, why aren't the Democrats also on board with GOP authoritarianism and silent support of the 1/6 coup attempt?

in·ver·te·brate

/inˈvərdəbrət,inˈvərdəbrāt/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. an animal lacking a backbone