Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

Of course, the Con Man in Chief's economic team disagrees 100%

 

Top Trump Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow Sees ‘No Recession In Sight’

 

Very reassuring that a giant in the field of economics ( :lol: at least in the Fox Propaganda world ) has such confidence that there will not be a recession.

 

In defense of Kudlow, what are the odds that he could be wrong about when the next recession is coming twice in a row? :rolleyes:

Predictions are hard as Aaron Blake explained at Wapo today:

 

Nobody knows whether we’re headed for a recession. Even those who are the most bearish on the economy aren’t saying it’s a 50-50 shot — just that it’s an increasing possibility.

 

But whatever fears exist, President Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, is here to calm them. “Well, I’ll tell you what: I sure don’t see a recession,” he told “Meet the Press’s” Chuck Todd on Sunday, before ticking off some of his preferred economic indicators. “So I think actually the second half, the economy’s going to be very good in 2019.”

 

Kudlow added for good measure when pressed: “No, I don’t see a recession.”

 

The problem is that the last time we had a recession, Kudlow was saying much the same thing. And that’s not even his most recent wayward prediction about the economy. Those predictions have persisted after he assumed the position of great power he now has.

 

As was widely noted Sunday after Kudlow’s interview, his consistent misses on the 2008 economic crash were some of the more remarkably bad predictions.

 

“Bush Boom Continues,” read a December 2007 headline on a Kudlow column in the National Review. Added the headline underneath: “You can call it Goldilocks 2.0. But you can’t call it a recession.”

 

In another version of the story, Kudlow elaborated:

 

There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that’s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still the greatest story never told.

When signs of trouble increased, Kudlow doubled down in a column in February 2008: “I’m going to bet that the economy will be rebounding sometime this summer, if not sooner,” he wrote. “We are in a slow patch. That’s all. It’s nothing to get up in arms about.”

 

Even as late as July 2008, Kudlow’s rose-tinted glasses remained firmly in place. He said he saw “an awful lot of very good new news, which appear to be pointing to a bottom in the housing problem; in fact, maybe the tiniest beginnings of a recovery.” Foreclosures kept surging, though, and stocks kept tumbling.

 

When Kudlow was appointed by Trump, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank and New York’s Jonathan Chait documented a number of other times Kudlow’s predictions were badly off-base. But what has gotten less attention is that this tendency has persisted into his time in the White House.

 

Back in June 2018, Kudlow saw a declining deficit. “The deficit, which was one of the other criticisms, is coming down — and it’s coming down rapidly,” Kudlow claimed. “Growth solves a lot of problems.”

 

The problem was that the deficit wasn’t coming down, much less rapidly. So Kudlow clarified to CNBC’s Eamon Javers that he was making a prediction. “I was referring to future deficits,” he said, adding, “I think it will come down in 2018, and the big reductions will come in future years.”

 

This, yet again, has not come to pass. The deficit rose a full 17 percent in fiscal year 2018, to $779 billion, as projections suggested it was headed toward $1 trillion. That path has continued this year, and, in fact, the rate of growth has increased. So not only did the deficit not “come down in 2018,” but it almost definitely won’t come down in 2019. Any reduction in the deficit appears years away, if it ever happens during Trump’s tenure.

 

Kudlow also predicted in January 2018 that the GDP would grow to between 3 percent and 4 percent based on the GOP tax cuts. Since then (and including preliminary estimates for the last quarter), it has grown by 2.5 percent.

 

In April 2018, he said the GDP could hit 5 percent for at least a short period of time. The highest quarterly GDP growth since then was 3.5 percent.

 

To some degree, this is now Kudlow’s job. He’s a cheerleader for Trump’s economic policies, in addition to being his strategist. But even spokespeople should have their rosy predictions parsed carefully and their credibility adjusted accordingly. And when Kudlow provides such reassuring predictions, it’s difficult to be too reassured — judging by both his record before his time in the White House and since.

[jjbrr]

Wow :rolleyes:

 

Trump Suggests Building More Mental Institutions To Curb Gun Violence

 

 

Editorial note: We can save time and money by turning the White House into a mental institution. We should have mental institutions located where there is the most serious mental illness.

 

I totally skimmed so I may have missed some context, but are you suggesting that his quote is not absolutely correct, assuming these institutions provide research? I understand anti-Trump circlejerks, but he doesn't deserve criticism for suggesting we need to expand mental health research.

[johnu]

I totally skimmed so I may have missed some context, but are you suggesting that his quote is not absolutely correct, assuming these institutions provide research? I understand anti-Trump circlejerks, but he doesn't deserve criticism for suggesting we need to expand mental health research.

Had you looked at the article closer, you would have read:

 

Research shows that most mass killers don’t have severe mental health problems. Experts have also long repeated that most people with mental health issues are not violent but are actually more likely to be victims of violence.

Why do we need "more" mental institutions when we already have plenty of mental institutions. In any case, even if the US had 2X, 5X or 10X the number of mental institutions, there is no plan to get potential mass murderers admitted and successfully treated.

 

IIRC (I think I heard it on TV), only ~3% of mass shooters meet the definition of seriously mentally ill.

 

The point is that blaming the mentally ill is a NRA talking point to deflect arguments about universal background checks, restrictions on assault weapons, restrictions on the size of gun clips, restrictions on the type of ammunition available, or any type of gun regulation. The NRA and their puppets are saying, "Why don't need no stinking gun control, let's blame the mentally ill and call it a day". And after initially saying he wanted to do something on gun control, this was the Manchurian President backtracking and distancing himself from any type of gun control by changing the subject.

 

Edit: When you say mental health research are you talking about field studies, drug trials, behavioral studies, etc,. or treatment? If so, that's the type of thing that would be done at a university, maybe a drug company trial, possibly some department in the NIH. The average mental institution doesn't have the money or the expertise to do large scale research.

[y66]

Guest post from Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg who is filling in for David Leonhardt at NYT this week:

 

One of the more telling mistakes that Donald Trump is making is he’s entering into a period of potential economic instability with a vacancy in a position that could help him. The last chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, told the president in late May that he was leaving; Trump announced it on June 2; Hassett’s last day was June 28. Since then, Tomas Philipson has been the acting chairman. So it’s been almost three months since Trump learned of Hassett’s departure, and he has yet to nominate a replacement.

 

(In typical Trump fashion, he claimed on June 2 that he would announce a new chairman “as soon as I get back to the U.S.” from the overseas trip he was on at the time. Normal presidents try to avoid making specious promises because they care about their reputation for honesty and for following through on their plans — but not Trump.)

 

The Council of Economic Advisers vacancy isn’t the most significant of the 145 openings in important positions without nominees; that would probably be secretary of homeland security (Kirstjen Nielsen resigned on April 7 and her last day was April 10, so that’s over four months without a nominee for that one). But it’s an interesting one because of what it says about Trump’s approach to the presidency. For that, it’s worth going into a bit of explanation.

 

When the government expanded in the 1930s and 1940s, Franklin Roosevelt and then Harry Truman discovered that they were at a disadvantage in managing the newly enlarged executive branch. More agencies, and more responsibilities for those agencies, meant it was harder for presidents to affect what was happening. In part that’s because executive branch departments and agencies are as much creatures of Congress as they are of the president; Congress gives them statutory authority and sets their budgets, and the Senate confirms the president’s nominees. In part it’s because large agencies wind up with large bureaucracies that resist any kind of outside control.

 

To fight this, Truman set up what became practically a new branch of the government — what the political scientist John Hart called the “presidential branch” — consisting of the White House staff and various agencies, including the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget, all within the Executive Office of the President. In part that was set up to help the president coordinate the government and to give overall assistance to the president. But it also offers the president independent sources of information.

 

As the presidency scholar Richard Neustadt observed, for effective presidenting, information is intensely important. If being president is about bargaining with others, then knowing more than they do about policy and politics is what can give the president a decisive advantage.

 

But it’s complicated. Presidents must deal with all types of information, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Executive branch agencies have practical experience with their jobs — but what they know may be biased in favor of the bureaucracy’s operating procedures. Partisans may have deep knowledge of how party coalition groups will react to a public policy and how it will affect them, but their advocacy may lead to one-sided analysis.

 

So presidents have also sought to get “neutral” information — expertise outside of the push and pull of either party politics or the politics of implementation. Thus the Council of Economic Advisers, a Truman-era (1946) innovation that puts typically academic economists inside the presidential branch. Neutral, scientific information also has its weaknesses. It may be ignorant of critically important political implications, and any academic discipline winds up with idiosyncratic preferences that may be difficult for outsiders to decipher.

 

Nevertheless, wise presidents recognize the limitations of different forms of information and use their position in the political system to outflank others by gathering more and more ways of seeing important policy questions — including scientific and academic forms of “neutral” information. Economists may be wrong about, say, the effects of tariffs, but only a very foolish president wouldn’t want to at least know what those economists know.

 

Trump has supposedly relied on “acting” people in different agencies because he thinks that gives him more influence over them. That’s wrong, because those “actings” may kowtow to the president, but without any clout within their agencies, it doesn’t actually do Trump any good. But the Council of Economic Advisers is different: The whole point of having one is to get “neutral” analysis, which the president can then take or leave as he or she sees fit. Using an acting chairman will no doubt make that person less secure in the job and less likely to be forthright, but there’s really no upside to that at all.

 

Of course, this is a president whose main source of information appears to be whoever Fox News happens to put on the air, who doesn’t seem to accept that there is such a thing as neutral information and who considers anything that resembles bad news to be a likely sign of a conspiracy against him. And yet he seems oddly unaware that advisers with strong policy preferences may flatter him to his face while putting their own advocacy ahead of his political needs.

 

This results in an economic team uniquely ill suited to combat bad economic times. Which is both a danger to his presidency — something he seems to understand — and to the nation.

Perhaps Trump thinks that anyone who would work for him is not to be trusted.

[barmar]

I totally skimmed so I may have missed some context, but are you suggesting that his quote is not absolutely correct, assuming these institutions provide research? I understand anti-Trump circlejerks, but he doesn't deserve criticism for suggesting we need to expand mental health research.

Mental institutions have practically never performed significant research, they're just a place to warehouse these people because we don't want to see them on the streets. Have you ever read or seen "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? It was based on a real place, and from all I've heard it was typical.

 

Increasing research on mental health is certainly needed. Putting mentally ill people in asylums is not necessary for that.

[y66]

From Jordan Fabian at Bloomberg:

 

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo called on China to respect Hong Kong demonstrators’ rights and to fulfill its pledge to uphold one country with two systems of government.

 

“President Trump captured this, I think, perfectly across the weekend when he said we support democracy, we support liberty,” Pompeo said in an interview Tuesday with “CBS This Morning.” “We very much want to make sure that those folks that have the desire in their hearts to protest -- to speak out on behalf of their own freedom, their own liberty, to do so.”

 

Pompeo said the protests, which have been ongoing for more than two months, should be conducted peacefully. “And the Chinese government should respect their right to speak out in a way that they’re speaking," he said.

 

The pro-democracy protesters came out in force on Sunday in a largely calm gathering that contrasted with violent clashes with police in previous weeks. Demonstrators oppose Beijing’s attempts to tighten control over the city.

 

Pompeo echoed President Donald Trump, connecting the demonstrations to the trade dispute between the U.S. and China.

 

"China needs to fulfill its promises,” he said. “One of the challenges in the trade deal is you have to make sure that China actually lives up to the commitments that it would make. In Hong Kong, this Chinese government made a promise that it has a central understanding that there’d be one country, two systems and they need to live up to that promise."

 

Pompeo also said the U.S. is concerned with North Korea’s recent missile tests and wishes they would be halted. He still said he hopes negotiations will resume with Pyongyang.

 

"We haven’t gotten back to the table as quickly as we would have hoped," he said.

This is an easy call for the U.S. State Department but it's not the type of call they have been making lately.

 

+1 (in context) to Pompeo.

[Winstonm]

From Jordan Fabian at Bloomberg:

 

 

This is an easy call for the U.S. State Department but it's not the type of call they have been making lately.

 

+1 (in context) to Pompeo.

 

The important take-a-way is that Pompeo spoke out; Trump was quiet.

[Winstonm]

Incarceration of the mentally ill was dramatically lowered by this ruling:

 

O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975), was a landmark decision in mental health law. The United States Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot constitutionally confine a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom by themselves or with the help of willing and responsible family members or friends. Since the trial court jury found, upon ample evidence, that petitioner did so confine respondent, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court's conclusion that petitioner had violated respondent's right to liberty.[1][2][3]

[johnu]

Another mass shooting averted

 

Trump-Loving Neo-Nazi Arrested For Allegedly Plotting To Kill Miami Hispanics

 

Disturbing excerpts of the messages show that Lin allegedly threatened to rape and murder the unnamed individual along with the person’s family before targeting “all Hispanics” and other ethnic groups. He heaped praise on the Trump administration for supporting what he called a “race war.”

 

“I Thank God everyday President Donald John Trump is President,” Lin allegedly wrote.

I thought this was thought provoking in the headline:

 

Trump-Loving Neo-Nazi

Seriously, is there any other kind?

[Winstonm]

Another mass shooting averted

 

Trump-Loving Neo-Nazi Arrested For Allegedly Plotting To Kill Miami Hispanics

 

 

I thought this was thought provoking in the headline:

 

 

Seriously, is there any other kind?

 

John, you are probably to young to remember but this "race war" claim reminds me of the Manson family in August of 1969.

[kenberg]

I totally skimmed so I may have missed some context, but are you suggesting that his quote is not absolutely correct, assuming these institutions provide research? I understand anti-Trump circlejerks, but he doesn't deserve criticism for suggesting we need to expand mental health research.

 

Everyone is in favor of research in mental health and mental illness. Even skimming, you can see that is not the discussion.

 

Let's take a paragraph from the article:

 

"We're looking at the whole gun situation. I do want people to remember the words 'mental illness.' These people are mentally ill. And nobody talks about that," Trump responded.

A guy who takes a weapon to a mall and shoots 20- or 30 people is mentally ill? Yeah, I guess we could say that. So we would do what? Require everyone to take a mental exam that would single out those who would do such a thing and then lock them up in an asylum? Before they have done anything? Really? Psychiatrists can be pretty unbearable but I doubt even they claim such predictive powers. Yes, on occasion, rarely but on occasion, we commit someone against his will because he is obviously completely nuts and out of control. But except in very special cases we lock people up based on what they have actually done, not based on what some psychiatrist thinks he will do.

So sure, support mental health research for all sorts of reasons, and perhaps some of the research will help in some way with violence in various forms. Don't expect miracles.But saying that the administration will address gun violence by building more mental hospitals is so cynical that I cannot imagine anyone taking it seriously. It's simply say something, say anything, just jabber, until the public moves on to some other news item.

[jjbrr]

John: "Research shows that most mass killers don’t have severe mental health problems. Experts have also long repeated that most people with mental health issues are not violent but are actually more likely to be victims of violence."

 

Research? What research? Fortunately your link has a link!

 

"It is true that severe mental illnesses are found more often among mass murderers. About one in five are likely psychotic or delusional, according to Dr. Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University who maintains a database of 350 mass killers going back more than a century. The figure for the general public is closer to 1 percent."

 

And those are only the cases that our current infantile science allows us to diagnose.

[johnu]

John: "Research shows that most mass killers don’t have severe mental health problems. Experts have also long repeated that most people with mental health issues are not violent but are actually more likely to be victims of violence."

 

Research? What research? Fortunately your link has a link!

 

"It is true that severe mental illnesses are found more often among mass murderers. About one in five are likely psychotic or delusional, according to Dr. Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University who maintains a database of 350 mass killers going back more than a century. The figure for the general public is closer to 1 percent."

 

And those are only the cases that our current infantile science allows us to diagnose.

For the record, the quote "Research shows that most mass killers don’t have severe mental health problems. Experts have also long repeated that most people with mental health issues are not violent but are actually more likely to be victims of violence." is not my conclusion, it was copied from the article.

 

Also, you have to parse statistics carefully to draw the correct conclusions. So a study shows that 1 in 5 mass killers are psychotic or delusional (according to who, and why are there only 350 mass killers in the database for a period over 100 years? What criteria is being used to select the 350?). Another result of the study must be that at least 4 out of 5 mass killers are not psychotic or delusional. So even if you locked up all the psychotic and delusional people in the US (and how are you going to identify them and who is going to pay for the costs involved?), you would miss at least 80% of the mass killers.

 

The next question is how many used an assault weapon (or any gun) to kill their victims? Does the 350 include killers who used poison, bombs, knives, vehicles, etc. to kill their victims? Since the database goes back more than a century and assault weapons being available to the general public is a relatively recent phenomenon, I'm going to predict that a very sizable percentage of the 350 killers did not use an assault weapon and some smaller percentage didn't use gun.

 

Finally, getting back to my original point that talk about mental illness was just a NRA talking point diversion to avoid taking action on gun control legislation,

 

Donald Trump Appears To Be Caving To NRA On Background Checks

 

But the president on Tuesday appeared to walk back that language during remarks to the press in the Oval Office, saying that the country had “very, very strong background checks” already.

The Atlantic reported that Trump, in a Tuesday phone conversation, told embattled NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre that universal background checks were off the table.

[Winstonm]

A classic sign of demagoguery is presenting as simple the solutions to complex problems. Gun violence is a complex problem, and mental health may play a role but mental illness is not the raison d'être for gun violence.

 

This article presents a reasonable presentation about that subject:

 

Mental illness may increase the likelihood of committing violence in some individuals, but only a small part of the violence in society can be ascribed to mental health patients. Overall, those psychiatric patients who are violent have rates of repeated aggression somewhere between the general population and a criminal cohort.

 

No one is talking about this, which is seemingly a contributing factor:

 

Among women and men under 45 years of age, those in the lowest socioeconomic class were three times more likely to be violent than those in the highest socioeconomic class. Rates of violence also increased with lower education level, less social stability, and in regions with high rates of unemployment.

my emphasis

[barmar]

Another thing to remember. Even if it were true that most mass murders are committed by menally ill people, that doesn't translate to most mentally ill people being dangerous.

 

Imaging a population of a million people, of which 1000 are mentally ill. Then suppose there are 5 mass murderers, of which 4 are mentally ill. That means that 80% of mass murderers are mentally ill, but only 0.4% of mentally ill people are mass murderers. Predicting the mass murderers from that mentally ill population is looking for needles in a haystack. The only thing you can say in support of focusing on mentally ill people is that searching for them among the entire population means the haystack is even bigger.

 

The same logic goes for practically any qualities that are often mentioned as being related to gun violence, like playing violent video games, believing or not believing in God, being a neo-nazi. Even if something makes you 5 times more likely to be violent than most people, that just means that instead of being something like 0.01% likely, you're 0.05% likely.

[Zelandakh]

The same logic goes for practically any qualities that are often mentioned as being related to gun violence, like playing violent video games

Anyone that believes that playing video games causes mass shootings is surely mentally ill. If you locked all of those people up and refused them a vote, it would be easy to get decent gun control laws through Congress. :D

[johnu]

Yet another WTF moment

 

Trump has asked aides about possibility of US acquiring Greenland: report

 

President Trump has privately asked aides about the possibility of purchasing Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

 

Two advisers told the Journal that Trump asked them and other advisers at dinners and in passing conversations whether such a move would be possible, listening intently when they talked about its resources and geopolitical importance.

 

He also reportedly asked his White House counsel to look into the idea.

There is no confirmation that the Trump Ice Corporation has plans to expand into Greenland :rolleyes:

 

There is seemingly no end to this story:

 

Trump Cites ‘Nasty’ Remark by Danish Leader After Canceling Trip

 

Wow, those bullies in Denmark have hurt the Manchurian President's feelings :rolleyes:

 

President Donald Trump said he canceled his trip to Denmark after a “nasty” comment by the country’s prime minister.

 

The president told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s remark that Trump’s interest in buying Greenland was absurd “was a very not nice way of saying something.”

 

“You don’t talk to the U.S. that way,” Trump said.

Well, you might imply that Frederiksen was calling the unstable non genius a whackjob, a psycho, out of his mind, a looney tune, missing a few screws, ... you could go on and on. But unlike the American press, Frederiksen only said the possibility that Greenland was for sale was absurd.

 

A leading member of the Danish government bloc on Wednesday called Trump’s behavior “hopeless,” while a former prime minister said the decision was “deeply insulting” to Danes. The queen weighed in, noting through a spokeswoman that the U.S. president’s decision to snub her invitation in a tweet came as a surprise.

The cancellation of the trip is a “diplomatic crisis,” said Kristian Jensen, a leading member of the opposition and a former finance minister. He hinted at the damage done to the post-World War II relationship with Denmark, which was among a handful of countries to follow the U.S. into the Iraq war.

Denmark needs to get in line behind a long list of US allies (many NATO partners) who have been insulted, denigrated, and threatened by the Individual-1 in Chief. The startling comparison is how the Manchurian President is so cozy with the leaders of North Korea and Russia who are actually enemies of the US.

[Winstonm]

The Atlantic calls out the sycophant-in-chief:

 

One uncomfortable truth is already inescapable. Free societies and autocracies are at odds with each other—over human rights, the rule of law, technology, freedom of the press, the free flow of information, and territorial expansion. At this particular moment, it is not sufficient to say that the free world is without a leader. He has actually defected to the other side.

[Winstonm]

Well, isn't this special:

 

An email sent from the Justice Department to all immigration court employees this week included a link to an article posted on a white nationalist website that “directly attacks sitting immigration judges with racial and ethnically tinged slurs,” according to a letter sent by an immigration judges union and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

 

According to the National Association of Immigration Judges, the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) sent court employees a link to a blog post from VDare, a white nationalist website, in its morning news briefing earlier this week that included anti-Semitic attacks on judges.

[y66]

From Mitch McConnell is calling on Democrats to keep the filibuster. He ignores just how much he’s done to blow up Senate rules. by Li Zhou at Vox:

 

Mitch McConnell had a warning for Democrats in a New York Times op-ed on Thursday: Eliminate the filibuster at your peril.

 

“Yes, the Senate’s design makes it difficult for one party to enact sweeping legislation on its own. Yes, the filibuster makes policy less likely to seesaw wildly with every election,” the Senate majority leader writes. “These are features, not bugs.”

 

McConnell’s post, of course, underlines an interesting paradox: Even as he calls for the preservation of a longstanding Senate rule, he glosses over the fact that he’s blown up many of the upper chamber’s norms himself.

 

His message comes as Democrats on the 2020 campaign trail ramp up their talk of getting rid of the filibuster for good, a structural reform that would reshape Senate dynamics and that many see as increasingly necessary in order to push ambitious, progressive legislation through Congress. It also follows an August New York Times op-ed from retired Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who argued that the filibuster was single-handedly responsible for obstructing vital policy on gun control and immigration.

 

The idea of eliminating the filibuster — congressional procedure that effectively sets a 60-vote threshold for any legislation to pass the Senate — has gotten mixed reviews from 2020 candidates. But it has picked up momentum as a campaign talking point, largely because many Democratic plans, including Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal, would have little chance of passage if it remained.

 

McConnell’s case for preserving it is yet another instance of the majority leader actively trolling Democrats: He’s arguing for the sanctity of Senate rules after he’s disregarded many of them himself. It’s also a sign, potentially, of McConnell seeing the need to go on the offensive as the Democratic push for retaking the upper chamber in 2020 heats up.

 

McConnell lays out a case for preserving the filibuster by arguing that the Senate, unlike the House, was designed to be the deliberative body of Congress, which has also been described as the “cooling saucer” for ideas. Effectively this means that the Senate is a place where legislation gets approved much, much slower, if at all.

 

Historically, this dynamic has translated to a wholesale stymying of legislation on civil rights, environmental protections, and immigration, all of which have died in the Senate because they weren’t able to garner enough Republican support. Because of how much this Senate procedure has thwarted civil rights legislation including bills that would make lynching a federal crime, lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren argue that it’s helped fuel racism, among other critiques.

 

McConnell warns that Democrats would regret their decision to do away with the filibuster in the same way that certain lawmakers have expressed concern about their decision to get rid of a filibuster on judicial nominees, a rule that previously set up a 60-vote threshold for their confirmation. Reid first championed this move in 2013, and since then, Republicans have regained power in the Senate and capitalized on this change in order to advance judges at a breakneck pace.

 

McConnell emphasizes that Democrats could certainly use changes to the filibuster to promote what he calls “socialist” policies, but emphasizes that Republicans would one day be able to use them as well:

 

Senate Democrats bought what Senator Reid was selling — but buyer’s remorse arrived with lightning speed. Just one year later, Republicans retook the majority. Two years after that, Americans elected President Trump. In 2017, we took the Reid precedent to its logical conclusion, covering all nominations up to and including the Supreme Court.

There’s a strong degree of irony to McConnell’s arguments: Even as he’s pushing for Democrats to keep the filibuster in the name of preserving Senate rules and tradition, he’s personally done significant damage to congressional norms.

 

As McConnell notes, Democrats were the first to change the filibuster rules on judicial nominees. What he doesn’t say, however, is that the reason Reid felt compelled to do so because McConnell had mounted an overwhelming obstruction of non-controversial judicial nominees. And that’s far from the only time McConnell has levied his power as majority leader to reject Senate norms.

 

When President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland was up for confirmation, McConnell didn’t even hold a hearing. Earlier this year, McConnell pushed through another rules change on judicial nominees, enabling lawmakers to confirm judges even faster. This congressional term, he has become known for blocking consideration of countless House bills, including on the topic of election security, declaring himself the “grim reaper” of Democratic legislation on Capitol Hill.

 

McConnell’s op-ed was published as the fields for battleground Senate seats are starting to take shape, with former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper most recently announcing that he’ll pursue the state’s seat. As Vox’s Tara Golshan and Ella Nilsen explained, Democrats still have a pretty tough challenge if they want to retake the upper chamber. But as more candidates declare in places like Maine and North Carolina, they’re beginning to build out their opposition.

 

If Democrats were able to flip the Senate, eliminating the filibuster could certainly be within their reach. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has not ruled out the possibility, and he’d likely be on the spot if Democrats were in a position of power.

 

At the moment, Democrats aren’t exactly united in how they’d take on this issue, either. While several leading 2020 candidates including Warren and Rep. Seth Moulton have come out forcefully in favor of killing the filibuster, others, including Sen. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, have been more circumspect. As Vox’s Matt Yglesias explains, the filibuster doesn’t just block major legislation — it’s also given lawmakers some political cover on difficult votes:

 

A senator can even take a position in favor of some sweeping piece of legislation and then quietly reassure interest group opponents that everyone knows this isn’t getting 60 votes and really just represents an opening bid. Senators in purple states, meanwhile, often enjoy the ability to avoid taking clear positions on issues. Since many areas of policy can, in practice, only be legislated on via bipartisan deals, it’s usually possible for a member to remain ambiguous whenever that seems most suitable.

Per Reid’s previous op-ed, however, Democrats’ need to advance the legislation they want may outweigh their reservations about changing the Senate rules for good. “If the Senate cannot address the most important issues of our time, then it is time for the chamber itself to change, as it has done in the past,” Reid wrote.

[Winstonm]

“If the Senate cannot address the most important issues of our time, then it is time for the chamber itself to change, as it has done in the past,” Reid wrote.

 

Wrong, Harry. The solution is to change the membership of the Senate - to ones who will work together for the betterment of all.

[y66]

From Craig Torres at Bloomberg:

 

Harvard University economist Lawrence Summers warned central bankers that they are staring at “black hole monetary economics” where small changes in interest rates and even more aggressive strategies do little to solve demand shortfalls.

 

“Interest rates stuck at zero with no real prospect of escape -- is now the confident market expectation in Europe and Japan, with essentially zero or negative yields over a generation,” Summers wrote on in a series of tweets as central bankers head toward the Kansas City Fed’s annual policy retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “The United States is only one recession away from joining them.”

 

Explaining his views over a series of 28 tweets, Summers said a forthcoming paper he has co-authored with Harvard researcher Anna Stansbury argues low interest rates do little to stimulate demand and may make the problem worse.

 

"Interest rate cuts, even if feasible, may be at best only weakly effective at stimulating aggregate demand and at worst counterproductive,” Summers wrote, explaining that they could produce financial bubbles, induce higher savings, and sustain zombie firms with low debt service payments that are like students “who do not have to take tests.”

 

Summers said it is “dangerous” for central bankers to suggest they have control over assuring sufficient demand. He said he hopes the issue will be discussed at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium, “but we are not holding our breath.”

Tweet #24:

 

The right issue for macroeconomists to be focused on is assuring adequate aggregate demand. We believe it is dangerous for central bankers to suggest that they have this challenge under control - or that with their current toolkit they will be able to get it under control.

[y66]

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

 

As a more-or-less supporter of the filibuster, I’m not thrilled with the former Nevada senator and majority leader Harry Reid’s call for Democrats to get rid of it. But I’m even less thrilled by Mitch McConnell’s mischaracterization of what happened when Barack Obama was president. If there’s one person responsible for the likely eventual final demise of the filibuster, it’s Mr. McConnell.

 

Why is the filibuster — a requirement for a supermajority of 60 votes to pass legislation or confirm presidential nominees in the Senate — justified? Because democracy isn’t simply about majority rule. In particular, when majorities are relatively indifferent about an issue and minorities are passionate about it, then there’s a good argument that the correct democratic result is for the minority position to triumph.

 

To be sure, as with federalism, in practice the use of the filibuster for a long time was closely intertwined with the fight to preserve white supremacy. The filibusters against civil rights were never democratically legitimate because they were based on elections, especially in the South, that were themselves fundamentally undemocratic. Still, the basic idea of giving intense minorities some institutional support makes some sense.

 

There’s also a case for the filibuster in that it empowers individual senators; without it, especially during this era of polarization, the result is apt to be top-down rule by the majority party. That’s what happened in the House after procedures and customs that empowered a wide array of members disappeared. Top-down rule robs Congress of one of its real strengths — the ability of individual members of both chambers, but especially senators, to be influential. So as long as the filibuster is used sparingly, it can be perfectly democratic.

 

But over time, both parties — but particularly Republicans at the start of Bill Clinton’s presidency and then again at the start of Barack Obama’s presidency — began using the filibuster against more and more things, eventually winding up in 2009 with a Senate in which in effect everything was filibustered — everyone understood that (with the exception of a few things that were exempt) there was no chance anything could pass with just a simple majority. It had not always been like that; as recently as 1991, the highly controversial Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas was confirmed by a 52-48 vote.

 

The more filibusters, the less stable the filibuster rule became. Democrats never did come close to changing the rule during Bill Clinton’s presidency, probably because the administration didn’t really get organized until after it had squandered its two years of unified Democratic government. Republicans, however, threatened to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations when Democrats used it against a handful of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees they considered out of the mainstream. They backed off only when seven Democrats and seven Republicans cut a deal that Republicans would not impose filibuster reform as long as, in effect, Democrats stopped using it. That probably wasn’t a stable compromise, but soon after Democrats took the Senate majority, so it no longer mattered.

 

Then during Barack Obama’s administration Republicans didn’t just target specific nominees — they used the filibuster against positions, not people, blockading vacancies on the District of Columbia Circuit Court and in several executive branch agencies. That, too, was unstable, and when Republicans refused to cut a deal, Democrats had little choice but to change the rules by majority vote in 2013.

 

Mr. McConnell says that Democrats lived to regret that change, but it’s a preposterous claim. Republicans broke all precedents and norms when they regained the majority in the 2014 elections by refusing to consider any Supreme Court nominee from Barack Obama and by largely shutting down confirmation of appellate court and many executive branch positions as well. They then removed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations as soon as Democrats tried to use it, and then eliminated the “blue slip” procedure that Democrats had retained when Obama was president, which allowed senators an effective veto over judicial nominations in their own state.

 

It’s impossible to prove what would have happened had Democrats not acted in 2013, but there’s just no reason to believe that Republicans, who at least since 2009 have had zero respect for confirmation norms, would have acted any differently. Which means that confirmations of Mr. Obama’s nominations would have ended in 2013, rather than in 2015, and Republicans would have filled all of those additional vacancies after 2016.

 

If Mr. McConnell really respected the filibuster, he would have used it a lot less when his party was in the minority — and when it was in the majority, he would have worked to restore the rule rather than eliminating even more protections for Senate minorities.

 

The bottom line is that the filibuster can be justified if it’s used when the minority is particularly intense, and when it wins only if the majority is relatively indifferent. It seems safe to say that Mr. McConnell and the Republicans retained the legislative filibuster in 2017-18 only because they had a paltry legislative agenda. Democrats will eliminate it if it’s all that stands between them and passing their agenda, and Republicans use it across-the-board to block everything without any interest in cutting deals.

 

And even though Democrats may be the ones who deliver the final blow, historians will correctly put the blame — or the credit — squarely on Mitch McConnell and his Republicans.

[Winstonm]

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

 

And once we get to majority rule we might as well toss out the constitution as its purpose is the protection of the rights of the minority.

[Winstonm]

In a series of angry Twitter posts, Mr. Trump said “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing our companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”

my emphasis

 

While I'm at it, I'll order another Big Mac, a diet coke, and supersize the fries this time.

 

Does this stupid clown actually believe he can order American business to follow his ridiculous rants!?!