I know I should probably be trying to decode the 12D chess or whatever, but I'm distracted by all the mistaken assumptions, bad history, poor reasoning, & preening vanity here. washingtonpost.com/opinions/joe-m…
I'm trying to resist yelling about this piece for all eternity, but the key question Manchin doesn't address is, why, if small/rural states are already over-represented in the Senate, we *also* need a 60-vote supermajority requirement.
Or why the public would trust a Senate that passes legislation less than one that can't.
Or why rural areas in California, which are cumulatively larger than the whole state of WV, deserve normal Senate representation while the rural people of WV deserve extra.
Or what the common interests of low-population states could possibly fucking consist in. What is it, specifically, that Delaware & Wyoming share that warrants their citizens extra Senate representation?
Or what exactly it means that Republicans "have a responsibility to stop saying no & participate in finding real compromise with Dems." Responsibility to whom? Their voters don't want them to. Their donors don't want them to. It doesn't serve their political interests. So...?
Or why we should take the sweet nothings Republicans whisper in Manchin's ear in the cloakroom more seriously than we take their clear pattern of public behavior.
Or why losing the entirety of the remaining Democratic agenda is a worthwhile price to pay for Senate comity & tradition that Republicans will promptly light on fire the next time they take over.
Read @AJentleson's book. The filibuster is literally an accident; no one ever *intended* it. It's a weird quirk in the rules that nobody even thought to exploit for decades. And the vast preponderance of uses have been to defend racism & segregation. wwnorton.com/books/97816314…
Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans were on board with civil rights laws in the 1950s. There were numerous attempts to respond to public will by passing them -- blocked by the filibuster. By Manchin's logic, that's a good thing. Gotta protect rural states.
"Biden admin officials say [Trump's tax cut] increased incentives for companies to shift profits to lower-tax countries, while reducing corporate tax receipts in the US to match their lowest levels as a share of the economy since WWII." Are these not facts that can be verified?
Seems like the fact that it's true is more relevant than the fact that Bidenites say it. nytimes.com/2021/04/07/bus…
"Members of the Business Roundtable, which represents corporate chief executives in Washington, said this week that Mr. Biden’s plan for a global minimum tax 'threatens to subject the U.S. to a major competitive disadvantage.'" 🙄
Just going to enjoy a moment of uncomplicated pleasure in @ezraklein telling me that the Democratic Party has more or less conceded that I'm right about everything. nytimes.com/2021/04/08/opi…
Sure, others were right too. You can go to their feeds if you want to hear about that.
"They view the idea that a carbon tax is the essential answer to the problem of climate change as being so divorced from political reality as to be actively dangerous."
Must-read investigative journalism from @JaneMayerNYer (if that's not redundant) shows that the right is in a bit of a panic about HR1, the voting rights bill, because it's wildly popular with the public, even a majority of Rs. newyorker.com/news/news-desk…
Hey @JoeManchinWV? This is how they're talking about the voting rights bill in private:
"Instead, a senior Koch operative said that opponents would be better off ignoring the will of American voters and trying to kill the bill in Congress."
Do you want to be complicit in that?
Imagine sitting around having this discussion and never thinking, "gosh, I wonder if maybe we're horrible fucking people?"
And I chose to launch a new venture during exactly this period, so I'm haunted by the thought that I should be doing *more* than usual, showing enthusiasm, cranking stuff out, getting the thing going. Hustling! But it's like squeezing a rock for blood.
Today on Volts: I take a closer look at my favorite parts of Biden's infrastructure plan, from a new Grid Deployment Authority at DOE to a plan to retrofit a million affordable residences. (If you don't want to read, you can listen!) volts.wtf/p/the-coolest-…
Luv 2 send out an email with "$10 billion" instead of "$10 trillion" in the very first paragraph. Thank goodness things like that don't haunt me.
Hard to pick a favorite part of the jobs bill, but if forced, I might choose this: “a new Grid Deployment Authority at the Department of Energy ... to spur additional high priority, high-voltage transmission lines.” ⚡️⚡️⚡️🤟
All of this. As in the Hayes/McWhorter podcast, whenever anyone tries to question the *scale* & *significance* of this problem in the grand scheme of things, the CC crowd responds with outrageous individual examples. Which, yes, exist! But it isn't responsive to the question.
If we were going to approach "cancel culture" in a *remotely* scientific fashion, we'd have to define it, clarify what counts & doesn't. We'd have to specify what distinguishes leftie racial-justice CC from threats to speech from the right, or from the wealthy/powerful.
And we'd need to develop some empirically credible assessment of the *number* of these cases. How common are they, relative to other threats to speech/freedom?
The fact no CC warrior will answer these Qs (or even address them in good faith) inspires little confidence.