Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[PeterAlan]

I read an interesting piece yesterday that came to the conclusion that the "My Pillow" guy is actually a mark, the victim of a scam. Basically, what it said was that if you waive a bunch of detailed information that requires expert understanding to interpret and say - decide for yourself because here is the proof - then people who are looking for a reason not to accept reality will buy into your claims.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/10/con-is-winding-down/

[Winstonm]

https://www.washingt...s-winding-down/

 

A little icing on this cake.

[y66]

From the icing on the cake link: Judge Allows Dominion Suits Against Giuliani, Powell, Lindell to Proceed

[kenberg]

If it were not for the Water Coller I might have gone through my entire life never hearing of Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy!

 

I looked him up in the Wik and was distraught to learn that he was born, and usually lives, in Minnesota. Mankato is nice town I won't hold it against them.

 

An amusement (Feel free to skip this, it probably amuses only me).

The Better Business Bureau gave him an F, apparently because he advertised pillows as buy one get one free, but since this was a continuous offer it became the actual price and therefore should not have been advertised as a special.

I once worked in St.Paul at Al's Discount Furniture, everything one-third off. Mostly I delivered furniture but Al also gave me occasional odd jobs. One of the odd jobs: When new items came in, he would tell me what he wanted the selling price to be and I was to work out what price should be put on the tag so that 1/3 off would give the actual price. Improper I suppose but I needed the job and I figured that anyone could understand that when everything is one-third off this meant that the original price was a fiction.

Another of my other occasional jobs: Sometimes when new furniture came in it came in damaged. Sometimes the box it came in was also damaged, sometimes not. The shipper would replace the damaged stuff only if the box was damaged. My assignment was to make sure the box was damaged.

Oh, it's a vicious world out there.

[Winstonm]

If it were not for the Water Coller I might have gone through my entire life never hearing of Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy!

 

I looked him up in the Wik and was distraught to learn that he was born, and usually lives, in Minnesota. Mankato is nice town I won't hold it against them.

 

An amusement (Feel free to skip this, it probably amuses only me).

The Better Business Bureau gave him an F, apparently because he advertised pillows as buy one get one free, but since this was a continuous offer it became the actual price and therefore should not have been advertised as a special.

I once worked in St.Paul at Al's Discount Furniture, everything one-third off. Mostly I delivered furniture but Al also gave me occasional odd jobs. One of the odd jobs: When new items came in, he would tell me what he wanted the selling price to be and I was to work out what price should be put on the tag so that 1/3 off would give the actual price. Improper I suppose but I needed the job and I figured that anyone could understand that when everything is one-third off this meant that the original price was a fiction.

Another of my other occasional jobs: Sometimes when new furniture came in it came in damaged. Sometimes the box it came in was also damaged, sometimes not. The shipper would replace the damaged stuff only if the box was damaged. My assignment was to make sure the box was damaged.

Oh, it's a vicious world out there.

 

I had a similar experience years ago when I worked in the used car business and my trainer explained why he liked "push, pull, or drag your trade-in" sales because he would mark up the car an extra $2500 to offset that cost.

[Gilithin]

I had a similar experience years ago when I worked in the used car business and my trainer explained why he liked "push, pull, or drag your trade-in" sales because he would mark up the car an extra $2500 to offset that cost.

This is just standard practice in many sectors. For example, kitchen and double glazed window prices are designed to be marked down 30% as part of the sales pitch before giving the customer the final cost.

[kenberg]

This is just standard practice in many sectors. For example, kitchen and double glazed window prices are designed to be marked down 30% as part of the sales pitch before giving the customer the final cost.

 

This is one of the many facts of life that I wish were different. We recently had our roof redone. The price started at 40K and ended at 13.5K. It's not a large house. At one point I told the guy "I'm not used to this but I guess it is how things are done in the roofing business". They did a good job, which is what my main concern was.

My father made his living installing weatherstripping in houses. He would go out, look at what needed doing, and say what the price would be. They would then say yes or no. If yes, he did it. If no, then no. This was the 1940s and 50s. Times change. Often not for the better. My father was a very trusted contract worker. 40K to 13.5K for the roof. I considered trying someone else, but this guy was the second one and I did not think I could stand going through it a third time.

[Winstonm]

A little icing on this cake.

 

And guess who Lindell, AKA My Pillow guy, has as his "software expert"?

 

Guy Raz talks with journalist Aram Roston about his article in Playboy magazine about Dennis Montgomery, "The Man Who Conned the Pentagon."

my emphasis

[johnu]

No mystery why conservatives find education dangerous

 

That’s a lesson students will be denied if Republicans like Ron DeSantis get their way. Last week, Florida’s governor signed a bill requiring the state’s public colleges and universities to survey students and faculty on their ideological beliefs. The aim, he claims, is to prevent schools from “indoctrinating” students. DeSantis has hinted that those failing to show “intellectual diversity” will face budget cuts.

 

In other words, if there aren't enough misogynists, gay bashers, racists, and white supremacists then schools will have their budgets cut.

 

There is no mystery why conservatives find education dangerous. A 2015 Pew Research Center study quantified that the better educated one is, the more likely one is to hold liberal beliefs. But I’d argue, contrary to what conservatives seem to feel, that’s not because of bullying professors shouting left-wing dogma. Rather, it’s because once you learn how to think, you’re less susceptible to thin reasoning and easy answers. And increasingly, that’s all conservatism’s got.

 

I disagree a little. Thin reasoning and easy answers is all GOP conservatism has had for as long as I can remember.

[pilowsky]

How does this explain Jordan Peterson?

[kenberg]

No mystery why conservatives find education dangerous

 

 

 

In other words, if there aren't enough misogynists, gay bashers, racists, and white supremacists then schools will have their budgets cut.

 

 

 

I disagree a little. Thin reasoning and easy answers is all GOP conservatism has had for as long as I can remember.

 

A longer excerpt;

 

There is no mystery why conservatives find education dangerous. A 2015 Pew Research Center study quantified that the better educated one is, the more likely one is to hold liberal beliefs. But I'd argue, contrary to what conservatives seem to feel, that's not because of bullying professors shouting left-wing dogma. Rather, it's because once you learn how to think, you're less susceptible to thin reasoning and easy answers. And increasingly, that's all conservatism's got.

 

That may not have been true — or at least, may have been less true — decades ago. But back then, the right had some intellectual underpinning, had yet to devolve into the twitching id of perpetual resentment now on daily display. I mean, is anyone overawed by the profundity of Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene? How about Louie Gohmert? Or even Ron DeSantis?

 

An opinion one can't defend — using actual facts and recognizable reason — is an opinion not worth having. At some level, conservatives must know they fail that standard, so they work to undermine it instead, to make the world safe for ignorance.

 

 

 

 

Since I went to school decades ago, I want to follow up on"That may not have been true — or at least, may have been less true — decades ago. "

 

We had variety. Teachers expressed opinions. One teacher spoke of the need to combat the red menace. My high school Spanish teacher told me I should not study so hard, Yes, she really gave me this advice. when I was14. She explained that no girl wants to be Mrs. Einstein. My high school psychology teacher told us that no matter how modern a woman might think she is, a woman can not be happy in a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Actually, I think he said "truly happy". A college teacher explained that he does not believe in miracles because he had never seen one, but if he had to choose he prefers people who are absolutely positive that miracles do happen to those who are absolutely positive that miracles do not happen. I could go on. The point is that these were people expressing their own views, they were not expressing approved, or for that matter unapproved, dogma. Education is meant to encourage thinking, and a good way to do that is to have people express their thoughts. None of these thoughts came from a syllabus and they did not appear on exams. "Does any girl wish to be Mrs. Einsteon, answer yes or no". Freely expressed thoughts encourage thought by others.

 

Example: Native Americans suffered greatly as Europeans made North America their home. My thoughts about that, in high school, were that we had better have a strong military so that nobody can do that to us. My thinking has expanded beyond that by now, but I still think that conclusion has merit. The world can be an unfriendly place.

 

Education needs to encourage independent thinking. I know I have said all of this before, but there are a lot of people out there who want education to teach the "right way of thinking". "Right way" often means "their way".

A related thought, added in later. A major difference between education now, when I was young, is that now everyone wants to get into the act. The 1950s are often thought of as a time of great conformity, and in some ways that is correct. At my high school boys were not allowed to wear jeans, girls could not wear shorts and there was a stipulation about skirt length. But in other ways there was greater freedom than today. Teachers were expected to cover some specific topics, but as long as they did that, there was much less intrusion into details than there is today. My mother's view, and it was the view of many, was that she was not to tell the teachers how to teach, they were not to tell her how to be a parent.

 

 

 

[cherdano]

Hot take: University makes students more liberal, not because they are exposed to professors, but because they are exposed to other students.

[y66]

The wc has that effect on me.

[Winstonm]

This whole episode is getting beyond weird.

 

A Colorado election official who's a fervent supporter of Trump's Big Lie is now being accused of compromising her county’s voting machines and allowing information to be leaked to one of QAnon’s biggest promoters, who shared it to the world this week.

[y66]

For the art of the deal file:

 

WASHINGTON— Afghanistan's Taliban militia said Thursday that it had agreed to surrender its last remaining stronghold, the southern city of Kandahar, to a prominent anti-Taliban commander and would begin giving up its weapons on Friday.

 

But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld immediately objected to portions of the deal that reportedly would allow the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to remain in Kandahar to "live in dignity" in opposition custody, so long as he renounced terrorism.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/news/rumsfeld-rejects-planto-allow-mullah-omar-to-live-in-dignity-taliban.html

[PassedOut]

 

Since I went to school decades ago, I want to follow up on"That may not have been true — or at least, may have been less true — decades ago. "

 

We had variety. Teachers expressed opinions. One teacher spoke of the need to combat the red menace. My high school Spanish teacher told me I should not study so hard, Yes, she really gave me this advice. when I was14. She explained that no girl wants to be Mrs. Einstein. My high school psychology teacher told us that no matter how modern a woman might think she is, a woman can not be happy in a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Actually, I think he said "truly happy". A college teacher explained that he does not believe in miracles because he had never seen one, but if he had to choose he prefers people who are absolutely positive that miracles do happen to those who are absolutely positive that miracles do not happen. I could go on. The point is that these were people expressing their own views, they were not expressing approved, or for that matter unapproved, dogma. Education is meant to encourage thinking, and a good way to do that is to have people express their thoughts. None of these thoughts came from a syllabus and they did not appear on exams. "Does any girl wish to be Mrs. Einsteon, answer yes or no". Freely expressed thoughts encourage thought by others.

 

Example: Native Americans suffered greatly as Europeans made North America their home. My thoughts about that, in high school, were that we had better have a strong military so that nobody can do that to us. My thinking has expanded beyond that by now, but I still think that conclusion has merit. The world can be an unfriendly place.

 

Education needs to encourage independent thinking. I know I have said all of this before, but there are a lot of people out there who want education to teach the "right way of thinking". "Right way" often means "their way".

A related thought, added in later. A major difference between education now, when I was young, is that now everyone wants to get into the act. The 1950s are often thought of as a time of great conformity, and in some ways that is correct. At my high school boys were not allowed to wear jeans, girls could not wear shorts and there was a stipulation about skirt length. But in other ways there was greater freedom than today. Teachers were expected to cover some specific topics, but as long as they did that, there was much less intrusion into details than there is today. My mother's view, and it was the view of many, was that she was not to tell the teachers how to teach, they were not to tell her how to be a parent.

 

 

Your post brought back lots of memories: When I was in eighth grade, our school's principal took me aside and recommended that I spend more time outside with my rifle and less time inside reading. It's hard to imagine anything like that happening today.

 

I went to three different high schools, the first pretty good, the second excellent, and the third (where I spent my junior and senior years) not so good academically -- but great socially. Because of those last two years, when I took freshman calculus at Princeton I saw right away how far behind I was. It took a lot of effort (but well spent) to work myself into the top bracket. That was a formative experience for me in lots of ways.

 

At my third high school, I heard teachers express racist comments as fact and heard teachers spout absolute nonsense, and I got a reputation for abrasiveness for challenging teachers in class. Some of my classmates recommended that I cool it on the grounds that teachers were adults and therefore knew what they were talking about. Some of the nonsense I still remember:

 

Teacher: "The dark side of the moon gets no sunlight and so we know it must be covered with ice." (I asked the teacher to diagram an eclipse of the sun.)

 

Teacher: "Settlers used 'Conestago' wagons to transport loads from east to west." (Me: "Don't you mean Conestoga wagons?") Teacher: "No, you are wrong. I'll look it up for you." (Long pause.) Teacher: "The dictionary has it wrong too."

 

Teacher: "A pickaninny is cute -- until its nose spreads across it face." (I was suspended for three days for my reaction to that one.)

 

Some a little more funny now than then:

 

Test question in English class: "Everyone has heard of Wordsworth. (True/False)"

 

I chose false and the teacher marked my answer wrong. When I demanded a change. mentioning my infant brother as an example, the teacher directed me to chapter 6 in the text. Sure enough, the first sentence was, "Everyone has heard of Wordsworth."

 

It does seem to me that something is wrong when the quality of a person's education depends so much on luck.

[Gilithin]

Test question in English class: "Everyone has heard of Wordsworth. (True/False)"

 

I chose false and the teacher marked my answer wrong. When I demanded a change. mentioning my infant brother as an example, the teacher directed me to chapter 6 in the text. Sure enough, the first sentence was, "Everyone has heard of Wordsworth."

Presumably this teacher would also think that the correct answer to the test question "The Jews should be eliminated. (T/F)" is True. The fact that someone has written something down does not make it true. And basing questions of fact from an opinion source is poor. One of the best lessons I received at school was in History regarding the quality and reliability of sources, pointing out that some are more reliable than others. The point here was not to discard the unreliable sources but to give them only the appropriate weight for the question being asked. If a text book presents something as fact that you know 100% is untrue, it is, I think, right to treat it as an unreliable source.

[kenberg]

Your post brought back lots of memories: When I was in eighth grade, our school's principal took me aside and recommended that I spend more time outside with my rifle and less time inside reading. It's hard to imagine anything like that happening today.

 

I went to three different high schools, the first pretty good, the second excellent, and the third (where I spent my junior and senior years) not so good academically -- but great socially. Because of those last two years, when I took freshman calculus at Princeton I saw right away how far behind I was. It took a lot of effort (but well spent) to work myself into the top bracket. That was a formative experience for me in lots of ways.

 

At my third high school, I heard teachers express racist comments as fact and heard teachers spout absolute nonsense, and I got a reputation for abrasiveness for challenging teachers in class. Some of my classmates recommended that I cool it on the grounds that teachers were adults and therefore knew what they were talking about. Some of the nonsense I still remember:

 

Teacher: "The dark side of the moon gets no sunlight and so we know it must be covered with ice." (I asked the teacher to diagram an eclipse of the sun.)

 

Teacher: "Settlers used 'Conestago' wagons to transport loads from east to west." (Me: "Don't you mean Conestoga wagons?") Teacher: "No, you are wrong. I'll look it up for you." (Long pause.) Teacher: "The dictionary has it wrong too."

 

Teacher: "A pickaninny is cute -- until its nose spreads across it face." (I was suspended for three days for my reaction to that one.)

 

Some a little more funny now than then:

 

Test question in English class: "Everyone has heard of Wordsworth. (True/False)"

 

I chose false and the teacher marked my answer wrong. When I demanded a change. mentioning my infant brother as an example, the teacher directed me to chapter 6 in the text. Sure enough, the first sentence was, "Everyone has heard of Wordsworth."

 

It does seem to me that something is wrong when the quality of a person's education depends so much on luck.

 

I really like the Wordsworth story. This is exactly the approach taken by some teachers. Fortunately not by all. A variant, one I am sure I have mentioned: In elementary school a teacher explained that if you are to round 7.46 to the nearest integer you first round 7.46 to the nearest tenth to get 7.5 and then round 7.5 to 8 because 5s are rounded up. He found no merit in my argument that 7.46 was closer to 7 than to 8. You follow the rules, and with his understanding of the rules, it rounds to 8. But he was a substitute for a day and the regular teacher rounded 7.46 to 7. She was capable in many areas.

But we learn from these experiences.

 

Princeton! I am impressed. I had a high school friend who went to Stanford and another friend who went to MIT. But neither attended the high school that I went to. Ok, make that neither attended the school to which I went.

One of the greetings in my high school yearbook: "To Ken, the kid to who I owe my English credit to".

High school! My high school was a mix of good and bad. But so is life.

I do think there are far too many non-teachers who get very pushy about what happens in high school.

Teachers should know their subject matter. Not all do. After that is attended to, I favor not getting all that much in their way as to how they teach it.

 

I had my moments but I confess I never got a three day suspension. That would definitely outrank going to Princeton in terms of respect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[y66]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/opinion/climate-change-summit.html

 

In June 1988 a NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen, appeared on a very hot day in Washington and told a group of powerful senators that a grim future lay ahead. Carbon emissions, he said, had raised average global temperatures to the highest levels in recorded human history, bringing heat waves, droughts and other disruptions to people’s lives. “The greenhouse effect has been detected,” he said, “and it is changing our climate now.”

 

That same year a collection of scientists assembled by the United Nations — known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — delivered much the same message, warning pointedly of rising seas and threats to biodiversity. Four years later, world leaders meeting in Rio de Janeiro signed a landmark agreement to stabilize “greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

 

We knew, three decades ago, about global warming and its consequences. We suspected, even then, that the potentially catastrophic future forecast in the I.P.C.C.’s latest report, released on Monday — a report the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called a “code red for humanity” — could well come to pass.

 

What have we done with that knowledge? Very little, for lots of reasons. Timid leaders, feckless legislatures. Interminable arguments between rich and poor nations over who bears responsibility. Well-financed disinformation campaigns from big polluters like Exxon Mobil. On a purely human level, there’s the reluctance of people living worry-free in the here and now to make the investments and sacrifices necessary to protect future generations.

 

All in all, the past 30 years have been a colossal series of missed opportunities. Good ideas squandered. Time lost. The performance of the United States, historically the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (China is now the biggest annual emitter) and therefore presumed leader of any effort to confront the problem, has been particularly disheartening.

 

President George H.W. Bush, having boldly promised to counter the “greenhouse effect” with what he called “the White House effect,” had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the Rio conference, where he made sure that the treaty signed there had no real teeth. Similarly blinded by fossil fuel interests, and worried that the United States was being asked to carry a disproportionate share of the burden, Congress in 1997 refused to even consider, much less ratify, the agreement worked out by Vice President Al Gore in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce emissions from industrialized nations.

 

President George W. Bush — who, like his father, talked a good game in his campaign — was no better. Hypnotized by the fossil fuel enthusiasts around him, notably Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney, he repudiated Kyoto altogether, greatly embarrassing his E.P.A. administrator, Christie Whitman, who eventually quit. Even Barack Obama, who understood the issue and appreciated its gravity, but was fatally detached when it came to legislative infighting, fell short. He failed to persuade a Congress controlled by his own party to cap emissions of carbon dioxide.

 

Mr. Obama partly compensated for this with an admirable suite of regulatory initiatives aimed at reducing emissions from vehicles, oil and gas wells and power plants, which gave John Kerry, then the secretary of state, the credibility he needed to help forge a new global treaty in Paris in 2015. But these initiatives were always vulnerable to repeal, and were unsurprisingly and expeditiously repudiated by President Donald Trump, who seemed to have no idea what climate change was all about and had no interest in learning.

 

Such is the weight of history that President Biden bears as he faces an opportunity to assert American leadership in advance of a global summit on climate change in Glasgow in November. There, it is hoped that the 190 or so countries in attendance will greatly improve on the commitments they made in Paris to reduce emissions. The Washington Post has called this meeting a “moment of truth’’ for climate change. To anyone who has read the I.P.C.C. report, that is not journalistic hyperbole.

 

The report’s main points are these: First, nations have waited so long to curb emissions that a hotter future is essentially locked in, as are more droughts, more forest fires, more crippling heat waves, more sea level rise, more floods. The greenhouse gases that have already been pumped into the atmosphere are going to stay there a long time, inflicting misery for years to come.

 

This summer has already produced huge floods in Central Europe, Nigeria, Uganda and India, blazes in Greece and Siberia, wildfires erasing entire towns in California and Canada, murderous heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, the drying up of Colorado River reservoirs. “What more can numbers show us that we cannot already see?” asked one U.N. climate official. Fair question. But what the numbers show is that these meteorological calamities will become routine unless the world takes dramatic steps to get a grip on emissions.

 

In their analysis of the new report, the Times reporters Henry Fountain and Brad Plumer offer this illustration. Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century. If global warming rises to around 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next 20 years, heat waves that would have occurred once every 50 years can be expected to show up once every 10 years. At 4 degrees of warming, they’ll show up every year.

 

Point two: Humanity can still take a stand. It must. If countries make a coordinated effort to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by, say, midcentury, and undertake through reforestation and other means to remove carbon from the air, global warming might level off at around 1.5 degrees. This in turn means mustering the will to stave off a darker future than the one the world has already locked itself into. It also means, in policy terms, a rapid shift away from fossil fuels; big investments in wind, solar and nuclear power; a rebuilt electric grid; more efficient homes and buildings — in short, a wholly different energy delivery system.

 

Earlier this month, Mr. Biden announced a strategy to shift Americans from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles, thus resurrecting an Obama initiative Mr. Trump had canceled. This is an important step. But Mr. Biden is not going to get the energy transformation he wants via regulation any more than Mr. Obama could. For this, he will need Congress.

 

Can Congress deliver? No small question. The Senate, split evenly between the parties, took forever to approve an infrastructure bill, which has only modest climate-related measures in it and should not have been all that controversial. Ahead lies something a lot more difficult — winning approval of a giant $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill that can be approved with only 51 votes (all the Democrats and the vice president), thus avoiding a Republican filibuster and opening a legislative pathway for a range of big-ticket social programs and Mr. Biden’s climate policies.

 

Of these, two are of paramount importance and are essential to honoring Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to cut America’s emissions in half by 2030, eliminate fossil fuel emissions from power plants by 2035 and zero out all greenhouse gases by midcentury — pretty much what the I.P.C.C. wants. One is billions in incentives for electric vehicles and for clean energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear power. The other is a clean electricity standard that, as currently envisioned, would reward power producers that reduce emissions and penalize those that don’t. There are likely to be add-ons from individual senators, like Chris Van Hollen’s proposal, unveiled this month, to tax Exxon, Chevron and a handful of other major oil and gas companies to get them to pay for floods, fires and other disasters linked to the fossil fuels they have produced over the years.

 

How great would it be if the Senate and then the House approved such a package before the climate summit in Glasgow? One person who would shout to the rafters is John Kerry, once again the White House’s point man on international negotiations. He’ll be the face of America’s resolve in Scotland, and he’ll need tangible evidence to prove that Washington cares. Congress can give it to him.

[y66]

The next step in the two-bill infrastructure plan making its way through Congress is for the House of Representatives to join the Senate next week in passing a budget resolution, a step in the process of moving forward with the partisan bill that will contain Democratic priorities outside of so-called traditional infrastructure. Nine Democrats on the moderate side of the House caucus are objecting; they want the House to act first on the bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate passed on Aug. 10.

 

They don’t have the leverage to get their way.

 

The magic of the convoluted scheme Democrats have crafted is that each extreme within the caucus has the votes to sink the other extreme’s priority. So if these nine Democrats vote against the budget resolution and defeat it, the most liberal group will vote against the bipartisan bill and that one will go down. They all want something to pass, and that can only happen if both bills pass. Congress scholar Josh Huder nails it:

 

Democrats’ narrow majorities leave almost no room for error. Theoretically, this empowers almost every member as the pivotal actor capable of driving congressional decision making. In practice, however, it's the opposite. When everyone has power, no one does. Presuming various factions believe these deals are in their interest, the only feasible path forward is a detente between them. What does that mean? Pelosi has the leverage.

Plenty of liberals are furious with the more moderate group, and I can understand that. But what the moderates are doing isn’t that hard to understand. Indeed, I suspect that almost all House Democrats are frustrated with the procedures, which require the House to accept whatever the Senate produces. Sure, the bottom line will eventually work out well if they go along. Every House Democrat can live with anything that every Senate Democrat supports, from Vermont’s Bernie Sanders to West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. And the way this process is structured means it will only get to the House if all 50 Senate Democrats vote for it. But most members of the House are there to legislate, not to rubber stamp whatever the Senate does.

 

Besides, it’s not just a question of living with the Senate bills, and it’s the most moderate House Democrats who are getting the worst deal. Sure, Manchin is as moderate as they are — more so, in fact — but ideology isn’t everything, and it’s likely that his policy preferences diverge from theirs on many of the specifics, even more than, say, how Sanders’s desires diverge from those of the progressive representatives who call themselves “the squad.” (And it’s not just Manchin; Arizona’s Senator Krysten Sinema is even more idiosyncratic). On top of that, they’re being asked to vote for a $3.5 trillion dollar concept (as described in the budget resolution) that will almost certainly wind up as a smaller reconciliation bill, one closer to their preferences in size at least, once Senate negotiations are done. That, too, is happening because it was needed to get everything through the Senate. They’re simply being told to go along.

 

The good news for this relatively moderate group — I hesitate to call anyone in either party and either chamber “moderates” given that the large gap between the parties means that those closest to the center are still quite far from it — is that the eventual bills do poll very well, and if Democratic economists are correct, the program will boost the economy and generally do things that all House and Senate Democrats support. Procedurally this stinks for them; on policy substance, it will be a win if it passes.

 

So Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be able to keep everyone on board next week. What I’m curious about, and have seen little or no reporting on, is whether the Senate negotiations that are continuing this month have any House participation at all. Is the squad in touch with Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren? Is the moderate faction talking to Manchin and Sinema and asking them to negotiate on its behalf? Is Pelosi involved in the details, or is the House Democratic leadership ready to be satisfied with whatever the Senate produces?

 

In the old days, that kind of cross-chamber cooperation would have been unlikely. But it would have been unthinkable for the House to simply defer to the Senate on the drafting of two enormous bills. So it wouldn’t be shocking if various House groups were attempting to make their voices heard at this stage — although whether the Senate would listen is another matter altogether.

 

And if not? Well, there’s always the option to make a little noise about voting “no” and sinking the whole ship in the hopes that it can buy some sort of concessions. And while it would be a major self-injury to actually go through with it, I can’t really blame any group of House Democrats from trying a little bluff. Before they go back to being the Senate’s — and the House leadership’s — rubber stamp.

[pilowsky]

"I've never read critical race theory like some of my conservative friends..."

https://bit.ly/WalterMastersonCRT

[thepossum]

Its interesting the way people always think its conservatives who hate education. From my knowledge of the last 40 years of my life it appears to have been elements of the left intent on destroying it

[pilowsky]

I think the usage of 'conservative' vs 'left' is slightly different in the USA compared with Australia.

I agree with the comment that both are anti-science but in different ways.

 

The body politic, in the post-WWII pre-COVID19 era, settled into a miasma of euphoric indifference to the threats that we face.

Not fearful of war or pestilence because these problems were 'solved' by science, the modern politician sees no need to waste money on backroom boffins frittering away "our hard-earned tax dollars" on pointless self-serving and unimportant endeavours.

Forgetting that when a new problem needs solving it is Louis Pasteur's 'prepared mind' that finds a solution.

By restricting funding for curiosity-based research in particular and any research in general, we are left with rulers that know 'things' because, well, it's just common sense, isn't it?

What we are suffering from now is a prepared mind deficit.

Just keep your hands off my stash.

[Winstonm]

I think the usage of 'conservative' vs 'left' is slightly different in the USA compared with Australia.

I agree with the comment that both are anti-science but in different ways.

 

The body politic, in the post-WWII pre-COVID19 era, settled into a miasma of euphoric indifference to the threats that we face.

Not fearful of war or pestilence because these problems were 'solved' by science, the modern politician sees no need to waste money on backroom boffins frittering away "our hard-earned tax dollars" on pointless self-serving and unimportant endeavours.

Forgetting that when a new problem needs solving it is Louis Pasteur's 'prepared mind' that finds a solution.

By restricting funding for curiosity-based research in particular and any research in general, we are left with rulers that know 'things' because, well, it's just common sense, isn't it?

What we are suffering from now is a prepared mind deficit.

Just keep your hands off my stash.

 

I believe a lot of what you have seen can be traced back not to governmental decisions but cultural considerations to make capitalism a god. The market-based propaganda swayed both the masses and the government's policies. I know here in the U.S.A. the position promoted and popularized since the 1980s has been that the market is infallible as long as governments don't intervene.

 

Say that in a crowd and you will probably get an Amen!

[Winstonm]

Its interesting the way people always think its conservatives who hate education. From my knowledge of the last 40 years of my life it appears to have been elements of the left intent on destroying it

 

What do you mean by "left"? I ask that in all sincerity since here in the U.S.A. it has been the religious right that has most contravened devotion to education.