Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

Wannabe kidnappers and throat slashers stand by.

This succinctly explains my problem with the libertarian viewpoint. From the article:

 

 

In July, Whipple proposed and shepherded a city ordinance that requires protective face coverings to be worn in most public settings in an attempt to prevent the spread of the coronavirus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

That ordinance is extremely unpopular with a segment of Wichita society who showed up in force Sept. 8. At that council meeting, 120 people

.

 

Many of the speakers said their resistance is rooted in their belief that the mask mandate violates their constitutional rights or religious beliefs.

 

my emphasis

 

These types of libertarians should watch more Star Trek:

"Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few." - Mr. Spock

"Or the one." - Captain Kirk

[y66]

Federal Appeals Courts Emerge as Crucial for Trump in Voting Cases by Jim Rutenberg and Rebecca R. Ruiz at NYT

 

This month, a federal judge struck down a decree from Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas limiting each county in the state to a single drop box to handle the surge in absentee ballots this election season, rejecting Mr. Abbott’s argument that the limit was necessary to combat fraud.

 

Days later, an appellate panel of three judges appointed by President Trump froze the lower court order, keeping Mr. Abbott’s new policy in place — meaning Harris County, with more than two million voters, and Wheeler County, with well under 4,000, would both be allowed only one drop box for voters who want to hand-deliver their absentee ballots and avoid reliance on the Postal Service.

 

The Texas case is one of at least eight major election disputes around the country in which Federal District Court judges sided with civil rights groups and Democrats in voting cases only to be stayed by the federal appeals courts, whose ranks Mr. Trump has done more to populate than any president in more than 40 years.

 

The rulings highlight how Mr. Trump’s drive to fill empty judgeships is yielding benefits to his re-election campaign even before any major dispute about the outcome may make it to the Supreme Court. He made clear the political advantages he derives from his power to appoint judges when he explained last month that he was moving fast to name a successor to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg so the Supreme Court would have a full contingent to handle any election challenges, which he has indicated he might bring in the event of a loss.

 

In appointing dozens of reliable conservatives to the appellate bench, Mr. Trump has made it more likely that appeals come before judges with legal philosophies sympathetic to Republicans on issues including voting rights. The trend has left Democrats and civil rights lawyers increasingly concerned that they face another major impediment to their efforts to assure that as many people as possible can vote in the middle of a pandemic — and in the face of a campaign by Republicans to limit voting.

 

“There has been a very significant number of federal voting rights victories across the country and those have in the last week or two — many if not most — been stayed by appellate courts,” said Wendy R. Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which has been involved in several voting rights lawsuits this year. “We’re seeing the brakes being put on the voting rights expansion at the appellate level in these jurisdictions, in many cases in ways that won’t be remediable before the election.”

 

In potentially pivotal states like Wisconsin and Ohio, the outcomes appear to be serving the president’s effort to limit voting while in some cases creating widespread confusion about the rules only three weeks before Election Day.

Reps were packing before packing was cool.

[y66]

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

 

Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

 

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

 

Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country’s future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.

 

The resilience of American democracy has been sorely tested by Mr. Trump’s first term. Four more years would be worse.

 

But even as Americans wait to vote in lines that stretch for blocks through their towns and cities, Mr. Trump is engaged in a full-throated assault on the integrity of that essential democratic process. Breaking with all of his modern predecessors, he has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, suggesting that his victory is the only legitimate outcome, and that if he does not win, he is ready to contest the judgment of the American people in the courts or even on the streets.

 

The enormity and variety of Mr.Trump’s misdeeds can feel overwhelming. Repetition has dulled the sense of outrage, and the accumulation of new outrages leaves little time to dwell on the particulars. This is the moment when Americans must recover that sense of outrage.

 

It is the purpose of this special section of the Sunday Review to remind readers why Mr. Trump is unfit to lead the nation. It includes a series of essays focused on the Trump administration’s rampant corruption, celebrations of violence, gross negligence with the public’s health and incompetent statecraft. A selection of iconic images highlights the president’s record on issues like climate, immigration, women’s rights and race.

 

The urgency of these essays speaks for itself. The repudiation of Mr. Trump is the first step in repairing the damage he has done. But even as we write these words, Mr. Trump is salting the field — and even if he loses, reconstruction will require many years and tears.

 

Mr. Trump stands without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history. In 2016, his bitter account of the nation’s ailments struck a chord with many voters. But the lesson of the last four years is that he cannot solve the nation’s pressing problems because he is the nation’s most pressing problem.

 

He is a racist demagogue presiding over an increasingly diverse country; an isolationist in an interconnected world; a showman forever boasting about things he has never done, and promising to do things he never will.

 

He has shown no aptitude for building, but he has managed to do a great deal of damage. He is just the man for knocking things down.

 

As the world runs out of time to confront climate change, Mr. Trump has denied the need for action, abandoned international cooperation and attacked efforts to limit emissions.

 

He has mounted a cruel crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration without proposing a sensible policy for determining who should be allowed to come to the United States.

 

Obsessed with reversing the achievements of his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, he has sought to persuade both Congress and the courts to get rid of the Affordable Care Act without proposing any substitute policy to provide Americans with access to affordable health care. During the first three years of his administration, the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 2.3 million — a number that has surely grown again as millions of Americans have lost their jobs this year.

 

He campaigned as a champion of ordinary workers, but he has governed on behalf of the wealthy. He promised an increase in the federal minimum wage and fresh investment in infrastructure; he delivered a round of tax cuts that mostly benefited rich people. He has indiscriminately erased regulations, and answered the prayers of corporations by suspending enforcement of rules he could not easily erase. Under his leadership, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stopped trying to protect consumers and the Environmental Protection Agency has stopped trying to protect the environment.

 

He has strained longstanding alliances while embracing dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whom Mr. Trump treats with a degree of warmth and deference that defies explanation. He walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a strategic agreement among China’s neighbors intended to pressure China to conform to international standards. In its place, Mr. Trump has conducted a tit-for-tat trade war, imposing billions of dollars in tariffs — taxes that are actually paid by Americans — without extracting significant concessions from China.

 

Mr. Trump’s inadequacies as a leader have been on particularly painful display during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of working to save lives, Mr. Trump has treated the pandemic as a public relations problem. He lied about the danger, challenged the expertise of public health officials and resisted the implementation of necessary precautions; he is still trying to force the resumption of economic activity without bringing the virus under control.

 

As the economy pancaked, he signed an initial round of aid for Americans who lost their jobs. Then the stock market rebounded and, even though millions remained out of work, Mr. Trump lost interest in their plight.

 

In September, he declared that the virus “affects virtually nobody” the day before the death toll from the disease in the United States topped 200,000.

 

Nine days later, Mr. Trump fell ill.

 

The foundations of American civil society were crumbling before Mr. Trump rode down the escalator of Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his presidential campaign. But he has intensified the worst tendencies in American politics: Under his leadership, the nation has grown more polarized, more paranoid and meaner.

 

He has pitted Americans against each other, mastering new broadcast media like Twitter and Facebook to rally his supporters around a virtual bonfire of grievances and to flood the public square with lies, disinformation and propaganda. He is relentless in his denigration of opponents and reluctant to condemn violence by those he regards as allies. At the first presidential debate in September, Mr. Trump was asked to condemn white supremacists. He responded by instructing one violent gang, the Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by.”

 

He has undermined faith in government as a vehicle for mediating differences and arriving at compromises. He demands absolute loyalty from government officials, without regard to the public interest. He is openly contemptuous of expertise.

 

And he has mounted an assault on the rule of law, wielding his authority as an instrument to secure his own power and to punish political opponents. In June, his administration tear-gassed and cleared peaceful protesters from a street in front of the White House so Mr. Trump could pose with a book he does not read in front of a church he does not attend.

 

The full scope of his misconduct may take decades to come to light. But what is already known is sufficiently shocking:

 

He has resisted lawful oversight by the other branches of the federal government. The administration routinely defies court orders, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly directed administration officials not to testify before Congress or to provide documents, notably including Mr. Trump’s tax returns.

 

With the help of Attorney General William Barr, he has shielded loyal aides from justice. In May, the Justice Department said it would drop the prosecution of Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn even though Mr. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. In July, Mr. Trump commuted the sentence of another former aide, Roger Stone, who was convicted of obstructing a federal investigation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, rightly condemned the commutation as an act of “unprecedented, historic corruption.”

 

Last year, Mr. Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation of his main political rival, Joe Biden, and then directed administration officials to obstruct a congressional inquiry of his actions. In December 2019, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Mr. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors. But Senate Republicans, excepting Mr. Romney, voted to acquit the president, ignoring Mr. Trump’s corruption to press ahead with the project of filling the benches of the federal judiciary with young, conservative lawyers as a firewall against majority rule.

 

Now, with other Republican leaders, Mr. Trump is mounting an aggressive campaign to reduce the number of Americans who vote and the number of ballots that are counted.

 

The president, who has long spread baseless charges of widespread voter fraud, has intensified his rhetorical attacks in recent months, especially on ballots submitted by mail. “The Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED,” he tweeted. The president himself has voted by mail, and there is no evidence to support his claims. But the disinformation campaign serves as a rationale for purging voter rolls, closing polling places, tossing absentee ballots and otherwise impeding Americans from exercising the right to vote.

 

It is an intolerable assault on the very foundations of the American experiment in government by the people.

 

Other modern presidents have behaved illegally or made catastrophic decisions. Richard Nixon used the power of the state against his political opponents. Ronald Reagan ignored the spread of AIDS. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying and obstruction of justice. George W. Bush took the nation to war under false pretenses.

 

Mr. Trump has outstripped decades of presidential wrongdoing in a single term.

 

Frederick Douglass lamented during another of the nation’s dark hours, the presidency of Andrew Johnson, “We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man, we shall be safe.” But that is not the nature of our democracy. The implicit optimism of American democracy is that the health of the Republic rests on the judgment of the electorate and the integrity of those voters choose.

 

Mr. Trump is a man of no integrity. He has repeatedly violated his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

 

Now, in this moment of peril, it falls to the American people — even those who would prefer a Republican president — to preserve, protect and defend the United States by voting.

[Winstonm]

What I look forward to most with a Trump loss is the quiet.

[y66]

“This might be the that last time that you’re on the air, it’s probably the last time we’ll invite you on, are there any apologies you want to issue to anyone?”

 

A dream final question for a disgraced politician or operative. I hope U.S. anchors see this.

This is kind of amazing.

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1317808494884552704

Wow. I wish they all could be New Zealand.

[Winstonm]

Wow. I wish they all could be New Zealand.

 

Trump would have walked out about 14 seconds in.

[Winstonm]

Sen Chris Murphy on the latest Russian effort to spread disinformation about Biden - aided by the New York Post:

 

 

https://twitter.com/...449896333611009

8:58 AM · Oct 17, 2020

 

Joe Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading what is very likely Russian propaganda.

 

1/ I've seen the intel. The mainstreaming of misinformation is Russia's 2020 goal. Here's what we know, and why we can't take it lying down.

 

2/ Russia knew it had to play a different game than 2016. So it built an operation to cull virulently pro-Trump Americans as pseudo-assets, so blind in their allegiance to Trump that they'll willingly launder Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.

 

Guiliani was a key target. […]

Whether he knows it or not, Giuliani is effectively a Russian asset now […]

 

6/ Further, media don't need a Pulitzer to see the whole story as super fishy. […]

 

7/ Why is it important for media to not simply pick this story up and amplify it? Why should we be offended that the VP is being asked about it?

 

Because this is Russia's bet – that America, and its media, is so hungry for salacious stories that no one will vet their lies.

 

8/ And American media do have major credibility, for good reason. They do amazing work, and get most stories 100% right.

 

Russia wants to use this credibility to their advantage. And that's why we all have to be vigilant. Democracy depends on it.

[y66]

With Covid-19 Under Control, China’s Economy Surges Ahead by Keith Bradsher at NYT

 

BEIJING — As most of the world still struggles with the coronavirus pandemic, China is showing once again that a fast economic rebound is possible when the virus is brought firmly under control.

 

The Chinese economy surged 4.9 percent in the July-to-September quarter compared with the same months last year, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday. The robust performance brings China almost back up to the roughly 6 percent pace of growth that it was reporting before the pandemic.

 

Many of the world’s major economies have climbed quickly out of the depths of a contraction last spring, when shutdowns caused output to fall steeply. But China is the first to report growth that significantly surpasses where it was at this time last year. The United States and other nations are expected to report a third-quarter surge too, but they are still behind or just catching up to pre-pandemic levels.

 

China’s lead could widen further in the months to come. It has almost no local transmission of the virus now, while the United States and Europe face another accelerating wave of cases.

 

The vigorous expansion of the Chinese economy means that it is set to dominate global growth — accounting for at least 30 percent of the world’s economic growth this year and in the years to come, Justin Lin Yifu, a cabinet adviser and honorary dean of the National School of Development at Peking University, said at a recent government news conference in Beijing.

 

Chinese companies are making up a greater share of the world’s exports, manufacturing consumer electronics, personal protection equipment and other goods in high demand during the pandemic. At the same time, China is now buying more iron ore from Brazil, more corn and pork from the United States and more palm oil from Malaysia. That has partly reversed a nosedive in commodity prices last spring and softened the impact of the pandemic on some industries.

 

Still, China’s recovery has done less to help the rest of the world than in the past because its imports have not increased nearly as much as its exports. This pattern has created jobs in China but placed a brake on growth elsewhere.

 

China’s economic recovery has also been dependent for months on huge investments in highways, high-speed train lines and other infrastructure. And in recent weeks, the country has seen the beginning of a recovery in domestic consumption.

China’s model for restoring growth may be effective, but may not be appealing to other countries.

 

Determined to keep local transmission of the virus at or near zero, China has resorted to comprehensive cellphone tracking of its population, weekslong lockdowns of neighborhoods and cities and costly mass testing in response to even the smallest outbreaks.

[y66]

For the new low files

 

As soon as President Trump was released from the hospital after being treated for the coronavirus, he and his allies began counting down the days until he could return to the campaign trail. By reviving his beloved rallies, they thought, he could both prove to voters that he was healthy enough to be re-elected and zero in on Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s vulnerabilities.

 

That is not what has happened.

 

In the week since he restarted in-person campaigning, Mr. Trump has continued to prove he is his own biggest impediment by drawing more attention to himself each day than to Mr. Biden.

 

The president is blurting out snippets of his inner monologue by musing about how embarrassing it would be to lose to Mr. Biden — and how he’d never return to whatever state he happens to be in if its voters don’t help re-elect him.

 

He’s highlighting his difficulties with key constituencies, like women and older voters, by wondering out loud why they’ve forsaken him, rather than offering a message to bring more of them back into his camp.

 

And perhaps most damaging, to him and other Republicans on the ballot, he is further alienating these voters and others by continuing to minimize the pandemic and attacking women in positions of power.

 

A new low point came on Saturday, when Mr. Trump held a rally in Muskegon, Mich., where he demanded that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reopen the state and then said “lock them all up” after his supporters chanted “lock her up!”

 

It was a stunningly reckless comment from a president whose own F.B.I. this month arrested 14 men who it said had been plotting to kidnap Ms. Whitmer, a Democrat, and were captured on video with an array of weapons allegedly planning the crime. Mr. Trump has assailed Ms. Whitmer for months, disregarding her solid approval ratings with independent voters and women, two groups he is purportedly trying to court.

 

Michigan Republicans, already struggling to avoid an electoral debacle in a state that has been returning to its Democratic roots in elections since Mr. Trump’s narrow victory in 2016, were again forced to answer for the president’s penchant for targeting high-profile women there.

[y66]

Election Tech That’s Super Simple

 

Friends, I love technology that is deceptively simple and actually helpful to human beings.

 

So I present to you: A new election information website for Centre County, Pa., that’s as easy to use as your favorite shopping site.

 

That’s it. It’s not flying cars, but it is extremely useful in a confusing election year.

 

This voter site and others like it were built in partnership with U.S. Digital Response, a group that started in the pandemic to match volunteers with technical expertise with local governments seeking help. It’s tech nerds putting their spare time to use.

 

The work of U.S. Digital Response shows that technology that does good doesn’t have to involve complicated inventions or turning over government functions to Silicon Valley giants. People with tech knowledge sometimes just need to listen to problems and assess how they can help without over complicating everything. (I mentioned U.S. Digital Response, organized in part by the technology executive Raylene Yung, in the spring.)

 

Michael Pipe, the chair of the board of commissioners for Centre County who oversees elections, said he heard from his peers in other counties about U.S. Digital Response and contacted the group in early September.

 

Within weeks, about five volunteers helped the county’s staff create the elections website from scratch, plus a database to organize the county’s poll workers and an online form for voters to schedule appointments at a satellite election site.

 

“It felt like it was too good to be true,” Pipe said when he heard about U.S. Digital Response.

 

In the past, the roughly 160,000 county residents looking online for information to register to vote, check a sample ballot or find their polling station had to hunt on the county’s main website to find the relevant information. Often, Pipe said, people couldn’t find answers to their questions and called or emailed local election officials. That was usually fine — until this year.

 

The pandemic, new state laws and extensive lawsuits over Pennsylvania’s election plans have made voting more confusing.

 

Centre County knew the status quo wasn’t good enough, and Pipe said officials hunted for commercial vendors to create a new website devoted to election information. He was quoted costs of up to $40,000, he said. The county paid nothing for the election services that U.S. Digital Response volunteers helped create.

 

Now, about 1,000 people a day visit Centre County’s election website, Pipe said. “It’s been about saving personnel time and a better customer service experience for our residents,” he said.

 

“You can’t do public policy if you can’t make the damn website work,” is how Robin Carnahan, a former Missouri secretary of state who is helping lead U.S. Digital Response’s election projects, put it to me.

 

Pipe said this is his 18th election as a county commissioner, and it’s a doozy. He said the new website, with clear information and election returns, is also a way for officials to build faith among voters in a year with lots of misinformation and mistrust about the election process.

 

Pipe is working long hours ahead of the election — the day I spoke with him, he said he returned home from work at 4 a.m. and was back at 9 a.m. — but he said he feels like it’s worth it. “I enjoy this stuff too much,” he said. “It’s like every day is Christmas.”

[kenberg]

"he said he returned home from work at 4 a.m. and was back at 9 a.m. "

Becky trusts me but if this were to happen often I think she would have some questions.

[kenberg]

I just read some of

https://www.washingt...3d61_story.html

 

I could not stand to read it all.

 

I have been, I believe, restrained in my comments about Trump's mental make-up. I am not trained in psychology. That being said, he sounds to me like a man who is well into a complete breakdown.

 

I have not wished for Trump to die, I have not wished him a mental breakdown, I have wished him to be gone. I think he will be gone, but I doubt it will go easily or smoothly.

 

A test for us all.

[Winstonm]

I just reas some of

https://www.washingt...3d61_story.html

 

I could not stand to read it all.

 

I have been, I believe, restrained in my comments about Trump's mental make-up. I am not trained in psychology. That being said, he sounds to me like a man who is well into a complete breakdown.

 

I have not wished for Trump to die, I have not wished him a mental breakdown, I have wished him to be gone. I think he will be gone, but I doubt it will go easily or smoothly.

 

A test for us all.

 

The biggest threat we face is not from Trump but from the U.S. media. The story that Trump is pushing - the one published by the New York Post - is most likely Russian disinformation pawned off on Rudy Guiliani and now the Trump/Bannon network of tangled webs is furiously trying to get it passed off as "news". The fact that it even warranted a mention in this WaPo article is troubling as Steve Bannon himself has admitted that this type of created pseudo-scandal is not effective if it simply circulates in the right-wing propaganda world - it has to penetrate into the mainstream press to have effect. Anyone remember the Hillary's e-mails scandal?

 

It is enough that the Trump campaign almost assuredly cooperated in 2016 with Russian sources on how to weaponize and time the release of the Russian Democrat hacks by way of Paul Manafort and Roger Stone. This time around Russia is trying to interfere by feeding a false story to Guiliani. Let's hope mainstream media completely ignores this non-story unless they are able to confirm it themselves. It is not news just because Trump wants it in the papers.

 

Personally, I think once Trump is defeated he will fizzle like a balloon that has escaped a fat man's pursed lips. He is nothing but a blowhard and has no genuine guts for combat.

[kenberg]

I am not always a big Rahm Emanuel fan but here is a recent perceptive and intelligent column that he wrote for WaPo.

 

Of course by :"perceptive and intelligent" I mean that he agrees with me. Well, for the most part.

He might still need to think some things through a littler better.

[Winstonm]

I am not always a big Rahm Emanuel fan but here is a recent perceptive and intelligent column that he wrote for WaPo.

 

Of course by :"perceptive and intelligent" I mean that he agrees with me. Well, for the most part.

He might still need to think some things through a littler better.

 

I happen to agree with you and Rahm, only from a slightly different perspective. My perspective is that the loss of the SCOTUS is a consequence of apathetic voters' failure to involve themselves. There are some things that can cause a backlash - a consequence - that creates a worse position. I see court-packing that way. It would simply give ammunition to the right's media circus. Better to create unassailable laws.

[y66]

With the election approaching, and former Vice President Joe Biden holding a large polling lead, it’s not surprising that we’re starting to see speculation about his cabinet and other administration positions. It’s also not surprising to see a backlash to those stories — I’ve seen some from Democrats upset that the media is jumping the gun when people should be focused on the election, and I’m sure we’ll see some from Republicans accusing Biden of measuring the drapes and taking voters for granted.

 

So the first thing to know about such stories is that it’s essential for all major-party nominees to begin working on the transition months before the election. Under the law, candidates (other than incumbents) establish a transition team separate from the campaign, and the current administration must cooperate with them as they prepare for personnel choices and policy planning. The good news? So far, at least, it appears that Donald Trump’s administration is handling this process well. As much as the campaign may want to pretend that nothing happens until Election Day, preparations are in fact underway and have been for some time.

 

Typically, the transition team doesn’t leak much unless it wants to. But that doesn’t slow down the speculation. People who want jobs let it be known that they’re interested, in the hopes that party actors will support them and let the transition staff know it. Other party actors may get involved in the personnel fight by targeting personal or ideological opponents. See, for example, Kara Voght’s story at Mother Jones about progressive pushback against two potential White House chief-of-staff candidates — and acceptance of the likely frontrunner for the position, Ron Klain. And then there’s a third type of story, in which pundits speculate about names, typically for cabinet positions.

 

Personnel decisions are important. Biden is likely to be a mainstream liberal president, planted squarely in the center of his (liberal) party. But presidents don’t get involved in every decision, and while they may set the policy agenda, there’s still plenty of leeway for others. My suggestion in following these stories is to focus in and down: “In” as in within the White House, and “down” as in those who will head subcabinet agencies and occupy the ranks right below cabinet officials. Jobs within the White House and the “presidential branch” are critical in normal administrations — the chief of staff, director of the Office of Management and Budget, national security adviser and the top players on the White House economic team are among the most important people in the incoming administration. But executive-branch departments and agencies are important as well, and too often the focus is just on the cabinet.

 

Party actors who understand how agencies work and care about particular policy areas have no doubt been busy lobbying for and against various candidates for these positions, often either within the transition team itself or through their contacts on the team. And remember: Parties are permeable, so individuals and groups who have been active within the party tend to have contacts within the transition group — or are part of it themselves. “Insiders” have clout in these situations, but insiders can be a huge category involving thousands of people. And it’s not just party actors; unaligned interest groups try to weigh in as well to protect their policy preferences.

 

Bottom line: These stories may be annoying or feel like a sideshow when the election is still underway, but the process is extremely important — and those with a stake in policy know it.

[Zelandakh]

Election Tech That’s Super Simple

Compare that with the Trump-supporting businesses that won contracts to provide postal ballots and waited until 3 weeks before the election to tell State authorities that they could not honour their commitments.

[Winstonm]

Here's a headspinner reported by The Daily Beast:

 

Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani argued on Tuesday that the American public deserved to see reports based off material from Hunter Biden's laptop "even if it isn't accurate."

 

I see. So Rudy thinks that for gaslighting purposes all lies and Russian propaganda should be treated as "news" in order to see if the public can figure out if it is gaslighting.

[Winstonm]

As predicted, Trump is trying to use this bullshite Russian propaganda as a weapon and urging his corrupt Attorney General to do his bidding. Since Barr has been involved in this for well over a year, he no doubt will do as ordered. The media has a problem: if the president yells and the AG starts a bogus investigation, the media will no doubt report on it - how they treat it is critical. If they continue with their bothsiderisms it will be horrible for our democracy. Treat it like what it is - utter rubbish and a corrupt DOJ.

 

 

 

President Trump on Tuesday called on Attorney General William Barr to "appoint somebody" to launch an investigation into his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter before Election Day, now just two weeks away.

 

"We've got to get the attorney general to act," Trump said in a telephone interview with "Fox & Friends" when asked whether a special prosecutor should be appointed to probe unverified allegations against the Bidens. "He's got to act. And he's got to act fast. He's got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption, and this has to be known about before the election."

 

 

As Steve Bannon himself has said, unless the mainstream media becomes involved like a megaphone, disinformation of this sort does not work.

 

 

[cherdano]

I am not always a big Rahm Emanuel fan but here is a recent perceptive and intelligent column that he wrote for WaPo.

 

Of course by :"perceptive and intelligent" I mean that he agrees with me. Well, for the most part.

He might still need to think some things through a littler better.

 

That view is a bet that SCOTUS will let such legislating happen without interference. I wouldn't be so sure. Five justices to the right of Roberts is a frightening view for progressive legislation and governing, and for small-d democracy. Four justices willing to overturn the PA supreme court on the mail-in ballots is a loud warning shot. And I am not sure most realise how impossible-to-govern the US would be without Chevron, which is a case conservatives have been aiming their fire at for quite a while.

[hrothgar]

Five justices to the right of Roberts is a frightening view for progressive legislation and governing, and for small-d democracy.

 

Not if there are seven justices to the left of him

[cherdano]

Here is Slate's piece on the PA mail-in ballot ruling: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/supreme-court-pennsylvania-election-late-ballots.html

If you look at it superficially, Slate's take is the radical extremist one, and Rahm Emanuel's the moderate sensible one. Well, sometimes the radical extremist take is the correct one.

[kenberg]

I acknowledge that there is a problem. I will take on a few of the issues.

 

Voting: I suppose there are five people in PA, perhaps even ten, who feel they need more information before they make up their minds whom to vote for. yes there probably are more than ten who have not made up their minds, I am not denying that, but I doubt those people have thought about the matter, looked into it, and still feel that they need more info. And it takes no more time to mail the ballot today than it takes to mail it on the 3rd. I think a reasonable rule would be: Vote in person on the 3rd if you like, or use a mail-in if you like, but if you are going to mail it in have it post marked by the Saturday before the 3rd so that we can reasonably expect it to be counted promptly. If it is postmarked by Saturday Oct 31 and does not arrive by the 3rd it still counts, but hopefully there would be few of those. I see this as a practical approach. I voted two or three weeks ago and I took it to a drop box. But mailing it in this week or next is fine. Dropping it off at the post office at 11 pm on the 3rd is not fine. The pandemic has caused us all problems, I think Maryland has responded well, and now I think people need to do their part in cooperating with the plan.

 

The ACA: I thought the decision that let the individual mandate and penalty for non-compliance stand because the penalty was a tax instead of a fine was a bit too close to the edge. I am no legal scholar, but it seemed edgy. The entire US medical structure is pretty effed up and needs some serious thought. I hope we do it.

 

Abortion: I have what I think of as a conservative view on this, which is that unless we must, we do not impose our views on others. Whether this view is properly described as conservative or liberal, I think it is a view that is widely shared. Very few women treat getting an abortion lightly. So we stay out of their choice on this. I was born to an unmarried 20 year old farm girl and quite possibly I would not exist if abortion had been legal in 1938,. But equally I would not exist if they had properly used contraceptives. Just stay out of others business on such matters. And if we have to bring religion into tihs then I just talked to God and He sys I am right. Most people do not really believe someone who says God spoke to them.. So the whole matter should be presented as a mind your own business issue.

 

We need to get rid of Trump. And we need a Democratic Senate, although I wish I did not have to say that. I am fine with compromise, I favor it, but as long as McConnell is there productive negotiation will not be possible. Politics can be ruthless, that has always been true, but Trump and McConnell? Trump is deranged and McConnell has no regard for anyone or anything beyond his own interests. So they have to go. Then I think we can get things done.

[y66]

It was a fleeting victory that portends a crushing blow to democracy the moment Barrett dons her robe.

I think he meant to say another crushing blow.

[y66]

WASHINGTON — After the twin traumas of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal came a period of change in the nation’s capital. The system set about reinventing itself to realign the balance of power, establish new guardrails for those in high office and try to enforce greater accountability.

 

Two weeks before an election that will determine whether President Trump wins another term or is repudiated by voters, some in both parties are already looking beyond him to map out a similar rewriting of the rules. After four years in which the old post-Watergate norms have been shattered, the would-be reformers anticipate a counterreaction to establish new ones.

 

“It’s pretty obvious that Trump has, through his actions and words, exposed a number of weaknesses in the normative and legal restraints on the presidency,” said Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor. “He has revealed that there are a lot of gaps in presidential accountability and that norms are not as solid as we thought. He has revealed that the presidency is due for an overhaul for accountability akin to the 1974 reforms.”

 

Mr. Goldsmith, an assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, has teamed up with Robert F. Bauer, a White House counsel under President Barack Obama, to produce what they hope could be a bipartisan blueprint for what such an overhaul would look like. Among their ideas are empowering future special counsels; restricting a president’s pardon power and private business interests; and protecting journalists from government intimidation.

 

They are not the only ones looking ahead. House Democrats led by Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chief House manager in this year’s Senate impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, have assembled a legislative package of similar ideas, including limits on a president’s authority to use declarations of national emergencies to take unilateral action; more protections for inspectors general and whistle-blowers; and an accelerated process to resolve disputes over congressional subpoenas.

 

The flurry of proposals reflects the pent-up frustration on the part of Mr. Trump’s critics in both parties over his success at flouting traditions that have bound other presidents in the nearly half-century since Watergate. Mr. Trump has overtly pressured the Justice Department to go easy on his allies and prosecute his enemies while purging the government of inspectors general who exposed improprieties within his administration. He has kept his business, hidden his tax returns and defied congressional inquiries.

 

“He definitely underscored that a president who’s committed to challenging these norms can do it,” Mr. Bauer said. “We shouldn’t assume it won’t happen again. We shouldn’t assume it’s a one-off.”

 

Mr. Bauer and Mr. Goldsmith developed more than 50 proposed legislative and executive changes in “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,” the first book published by Lawfare Press, an imprint of Lawfare, a nonpartisan website that focuses on issues of national security and executive power.

 

Their collaboration was meant to bring together veterans of Republican and Democratic administrations, although Mr. Goldsmith said he became an independent after his party nominated Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Bauer’s involvement may be telling because he is a senior adviser to the campaign of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, and would be in position to promote these ideas with a new administration should Mr. Trump lose.

 

Among their ideas:

• 
   
  
• Provide more authority and protection for future special counsels investigating presidents or other high-level officials and have them report their findings to Congress and the public rather than to the Justice Department.
   
  
• Prohibit presidents from pardoning themselves and amend the bribery statute to make it illegal to use the pardon power to bribe witnesses or obstruct justice.
   
  
• Bar presidents from managing or supervising private businesses or establishing blind trusts for their financial assets and require any business in which they have an interest to file public reports.
   
  
• Authorize inspectors general to investigate and report on reprisals or intimidation of journalists.
   
  
• Revise the authorization of force passed after Sept. 11, 2001, to prohibit humanitarian military intervention without additional votes by Congress and limit the use of nuclear weapons to self-defense in extreme circumstances.
   
  
• Ensure that the attorney general makes decisions on prosecutions involving the president or presidential campaigns, not the F.B.I. director, as happened during the Hillary Clinton email case.
  

Mr. Bauer and Mr. Goldsmith are an unlikely tandem. They got to know each other when Mr. Bauer invited Mr. Goldsmith to speak to his class at New York University School of Law and they debated the merits of the Obama and Bush administrations. They found that they shared a common concern for what they see as the consequences of the Trump presidency, prompting development of these proposals.

 

The historical precedent traces back to the 1970s when Congress responded to Vietnam, Watergate and C.I.A. revelations with a raft of legislation, including the War Powers Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Privacy Act, the Inspector General Act, the Civil Service Reform Act, the Presidential Records Act, the Ethics in Government Act that provided for independent counsels and updated versions of the Federal Election Campaign Act and Freedom of Information Act.

 

The intent was to curb abuses like those under President Richard M. Nixon and make government and political campaigns more accountable. Not all of them worked as hoped; the campaign finance system created at the time has been warped by court rulings, creative legal interpretations and the collapse of public financing, while the Independent Counsel Act lapsed after Iran-contra and Whitewater investigations soured Republicans and Democrats alike.

 

One area where Mr. Bauer and Mr. Goldsmith disagreed may presage a larger debate if Mr. Trump loses — whether he should be prosecuted. In that, too, there is a 1970s precedent in President Gerald R. Ford’s decision to pardon Mr. Nixon rather than have a former president stand trial, an act that may have cost Mr. Ford the 1976 election but has since won him praise as an act of courage in the national interest.

 

Mr. Goldsmith argued that investigations of any actions by Mr. Trump that occurred before he became president should be allowed to continue but warned against criminal prosecution of acts that he took while in office.

 

“I just think it’s going to make everything worse for everyone on balance,” he said. “It will continue to be a spectacle. It will consume the next administration. It will not be easy to pull off. It will look politicized.” And, he added, it would set “a terrible precedent for the country” by encouraging the expectation that a new administration would routinely investigate its predecessor.

 

Mr. Bauer acknowledged the point. “We wouldn’t want anyone to have the impression that this was victor’s justice or vigilante justice or anything like that,” he said. But he argued that any investigation of Mr. Trump should be allowed to work its way toward a conclusion and only then, after the facts have been established, should the next president consider a pardon or commutation.

 

Otherwise, Mr. Bauer said, presidents would be shielded from prosecution while in office by Justice Department policy and then shielded from prosecution after leaving office by the political desire to avoid a spectacle. “We have to signal that there is going to be some accountability for presidential misconduct,” he said.