Biden Thread

[rory_20_uk]

The USA has a system where both major parties are sitting in a latrine squealing that the other lot are dirty.

With no mechanism to improve matters.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The USA has a system where both major parties are sitting in a latrine squealing that the other lot are dirty.

With no mechanism to improve matters.

lol

The Founders were relying on the common sense of most and the dedication to learning, logic, and reason of the more more moneyed.

[Montmorency]

The USA has a system where both major parties are sitting in a latrine squealing that the other lot are dirty.

With no mechanism to improve matters.

The Big S?

[rory_20_uk]

The Big S?

I think that Full-Fat Socialism is as sensible as "Defund the Police" - perhaps in a perfect society everyone would be equal and crime would be zero but that is something that has been achieved nowhere (apart from the smallest communities and even then only for short periods of time).

Social Democracy as seen in the Nordics IMO is a the target for now - how realistic rather depends on the country. There would continue to be winners and loosers, but society is a lot "fairer" and "kinder". How one encourages the winners in the current system to both give more and stop the propaganda that somehow the tax system is better as it is; if the general populace could grasp that socialism isn't communism that'd be great.

[Montmorency]

The USA has a system where both major parties are sitting in a latrine squealing that the other lot are dirty.

With no mechanism to improve matters.

I think that Full-Fat Socialism is as sensible as "Defund the Police" - perhaps in a perfect society everyone would be equal and crime would be zero but that is something that has been achieved nowhere (apart from the smallest communities and even then only for short periods of time).

Social Democracy as seen in the Nordics IMO is a the target for now - how realistic rather depends on the country. There would continue to be winners and loosers, but society is a lot "fairer" and "kinder". How one encourages the winners in the current system to both give more and stop the propaganda that somehow the tax system is better as it is; if the general populace could grasp that socialism isn't communism that'd be great.

It has to be noted that this exchange follows on relentless news of centrist liberals being corrupt or self-interested and trammeling the efforts of the center-left to craft responses to national priorities.

Just saying...

[Montmorency]

Reminder of how the effort to persuade Pence to disregard electoral procedure argued. Not that this would have worked, but it should be noted that John Eastman is one of the most elite conservative law professors in the country and was among those suing on Trump's behalf to overturn state election results last year. He was even a speaker at the January 6 DC rally.

1.VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro TemporeGrassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).

2.When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States.This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

3.At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” –the language of the 12th Amendment--is 454.This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe(here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

4.Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe’s prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where the “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote. . . .” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.

5.One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one—a constitutional no-no(as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone –Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. –should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.

6.The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission –either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position --that these are non-justiciable political questions –thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

His most 'benign' contribution to the 2020 election was an op-ed that Kamala Harris is not an American citizen, and that the 14th Amendment does not confer citizenship on persons born in American jurisdiction.

Last month he was, pursuant to the allegedly illegitimate and unprecedented federal pandemic measures (such as they even exist) that are constitutive of a "cold civil war," arguing for Republican states' "robust assertion" of state police power to preempt federal authority. Use cases being state border controls, eminent domain, "high-intensity demonstrations" in major cities, displacing the national currency with cryptocoin, and independent enforcement of "individual civil rights."

I hope Democratic politicians take notes, at least some of the time. "Those who have the power take and those hold who can."

[ReluctantSamurai]

I hope Democratic politicians take notes, at least some of the time. "Those who have the power take and those hold who can."

The upcoming votes on the two proposed infrastructure bills will determine who has power, and who doesn't. And I don't mean Republican vs Democrat....

[Montmorency]

Contemporary McCarthyism

The upcoming votes on the two proposed infrastructure bills will determine who has power, and who doesn't. And I don't mean Republican vs Democrat....

I don't like to take time reading much about bills that haven't become law, but to the extent one does it's truly shocking just how many elements - in genuine compromise legislation that costs a fraction of the pandemic stimulus bills enacted so far, 6% of federal spending over a decade - have been sacrificed for the sake of conservative lawmakers who quite likely won't even vote for the final product. Even though it will hurt their country and their party. And in the context of normal politics, this is the last chance Democrats would have at unified government for the next decade at least; at least offer us some brief consolation before, in the context of real politics, the Republicans overthrow the government and we have to hit the streets. I didn't expect any better with such a slim majority, but the proximate agents staking out the insufficiency sure are a disgrace.

When a couple brings a new life into Sweden, they are entitled to 71 weeks of leave, during which time they receive 78 percent of their normal earnings. In the United Kingdom, couples may take up to 41 weeks of combined paid parental leave. Just across our northern border, Canadians may take up to 50 weeks.

America is the only developed country whose citizens are entitled to none. And we aren’t just an outlier within the OECD. A 2014 United Nations report found that, among the 185 countries with relevant data, only three declined to guarantee some form of paid maternity leave to their citizens: Oman, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. Only the latter two nations are still holding out today.

For years, the Democratic Party’s signature paid-leave legislation was Senator Kirsten Gilibrand’s FAMILY Act. That bill would guarantee 12 weeks of publicly financed paid leave, at a minimum of two-thirds of one’s previous wages (up to a limit of $4,000 a month), to workers who are:

• caring for newborn children or seriously ill family members
• battling a serious illness
• coping with the adverse consequences of a loved one’s military deployment
• mourning a lost loved one
• or recovering from an incident of domestic violence or a sexual assault

The bill finances those benefits through a 0.4 percent payroll tax, split between firms and their employees. This is the same funding structure used by Social Security and all state-level paid-leave programs.

Gee, sounds inadequate!

But the Family Act is not the version of paid leave that’s most likely to make it into law. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a similar but distinct paid-leave proposal. The new legislation, authored by the committee’s chairman, Richard Neal, retains the bulk of the Family Act’s basic design: It guarantees paid leave for the same list of reasons, at roughly the same rate of reimbursement, for the same length of time.

But there are a few critical differences between the two plans. One is that Neal’s proposal lacks a minimum benefit. In order to ensure that part-time workers with low-earnings secure non-negligible leave payments, the FAMILY Act guaranteed all eligible workers at least $580 a month in cash aid, even if they would be entitled to less money under the bill’s wage-replacement formula. The two bills also have different financing mechanisms. Whereas the FAMILY Act is funded through a dedicated payroll tax, Neal’s legislation is paid for out of general tax revenue.

The most significant difference, though, concerns each bill’s mode of administration. The FAMILY Act has the same model as Social Security — a unified federal program. Neal’s bill has a much more complex operating structure. In brief, the proposal subsidizes employer-provided paid-leave insurance plans and state paid-leave programs while reserving direct federal benefits as a backup for Americans who lack access to a state or employer plan. In other words, the legislation is modeled less on Social Security than on the tangled web of public-private and federal-state partnerships that the U.S. health-care system comprises.

This policy design poses some serious administrative hazards. As Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy project argues:

By including private insurance in this way, the bill ensures that we will waste some of our paid leave money on private insurer overhead and profits. It also invites employers and insurers to profit off of benefit denials and cream-skimming of various sorts. An employer who has a workforce that takes a below-average amount of paid leave could conceivably get an insurance contract that charges less than the grant the Treasury pays them and then pocket the difference.

The employer and state plans will also massively complicate the system for individuals trying to take paid leave. Individuals seeking leave have to figure out firstly whether they are covered by an employer plan, secondly whether they are covered by a state plan, and then, if not, apply to the federal government for benefits and, in that process, prove they aren’t covered by an employer or state. What happens to someone who was covered by an employer plan at the beginning of the year but was later fired and is now seeking paid leave? According to the bill text, their name will show up in the Treasury database as being covered by their prior employer even though they no longer are.
Neal’s plan also suffers from shortcomings common to all of the Democrats’ recent paid-leave proposals. The 12-week duration of its individual benefits trails the OECD average of 18 weeks. Further, the duration rules are structured in a manner that disadvantages single parents relative to co-parenting couples. The latter can stagger their respective 12-week leaves, thereby avoiding child-care expenses for a full six months. Single parents are not, generally, more capable of incurring the costs of child care than two-earner couples are. Nor are the children of single parents generally in less need of parental nurturing during their infanthood. A more equitable policy design — common to paid-leave programs in many other countries — would provide all parental units with the same amount of paid time off and allow couples to divide the time between each other as they see fit, while enabling single parents to take the same amount of total leave as couples do.

Separately, the paid leave policy’s eligibility requirements likely render upwards of 30 percent of all new parents ineligible for cash support during their newborns’ first months. This is because parents must show labor-market earnings in the months before their desired leave. This excludes parents who have children while attending high-school or college, those suffering long-term unemployment, and the disabled, among others. If the point of paid leave is to allow parents to bond and nurture their newborn children, it is not obvious why unemployed parents should not be provided with at least a modest 12-week subsidy following their infants’ birth.

Neal’s paid leave proposal has made it out of committee. But now, like virtually every other item on the Democratic agenda — from green investment to universal prekindergarten to child allowances — the fate of a national paid-leave program rests on the success or failure of a single megabill.

Never let way less than the bare minimum be the enemy of Jack Shit.