Linky Friday: The Beginning of the Middle of the End of the Beginning
DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos [Public domain]
[LF1] There are not four, so the rest is a mathematical equation: Without witnesses, the impeachment trial is likely to wrap up late Friday or Saturday.
[LF2] Or, to put it a bit more poetically as Todd S. Purdum does in The Atlantic: “As the final sliver of daylight faded over the Capitol dome last night, it was clear that Democrats’ long, frustrated quest for a deus to save them from Donald Trump would produce no machina after all.”
[LF3] The term “Euroskepticsim” wasn’t coined until the 80’s, but the BBC tracks Brexit-type sentiments all the way back to 1961, on this last day of The United Kingdom being in the European Union.
[LF4] Speaking of the EU, the UK might just want on with it, but technicalities remain. If you want to win a trivia contest on little known power blocks within it…: “A comprehensive, 1,600-page treaty between the E.U. and Canada eliminated 98 percent of trade tariffs between both sides but took a full seven years to finish. The treaty, worth billions of dollars, was ultimately held up by the Parliament of Wallonia, a French-speaking Belgian region that has the power to stop Belgium ratifying E.U. treaties.”
[LF5] Texas is turning blue, Million Dollar Legislative Seat Edition:
Shot: Flipping the Texas House: Inside Democrats’ effort to turn a red state blue
[LF6] Texas isn’t turning blue, Million Dollar Legislative Seat Edition:
Chaser :Chaser: The Humbling of Democrats in Texas: Republicans in the state were caught napping in 2016 and 2018. They came back to life last night in a key special election.
[LF7] The most recent states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment — Virginia, Illinois and Nevada — filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C.
[LF8] NPR tried to be helpful for something we seem to go over every four years: How The Iowa Caucuses Work — And Why They’re Important
[LF9] Bully Pulpit: “Not only will it allow Trump to take his first victory lap after an expected Senate acquittal, it’s also an opportunity to speak to millions of voters who may not have followed wall-to-wall coverage of his impeachment trial. An estimated 9.3 million people watched live coverage of the Senate trial across six networks on Monday, according to Nielsen, compared to 46.8 million who tuned into the State of the Union last February. ”
[LF10] “San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced a policy on Wednesday that will end cash bail for those being released from custody.”
[LF11] Meanwhile, in New York: “If New York lawmakers undo some of the new law, they will join officials in other states who have tweaked bail reform in response to complaints that criminals are being coddled.”
[LF12] When love goes bad. SAD! “Trump wrote, “Really pathetic how @FoxNews is trying to be so politically correct by loading the airwaves with Democrats like Chris Van Hollen, the no name Senator from Maryland. He has been on forever playing up the Impeachment Hoax. Dems wouldn’t even give Fox their low ratings debates….” He added, “…So, what the hell has happened to @FoxNews. Only I know! Chris Wallace and others should be on Fake News CNN or MSDNC. How’s Shep Smith doing? Watch, this will be the beginning of the end for Fox, just like the other two which are dying in the ratings. Social Media is great!””
[LF13] The Middle getting squeezed in Boston. The Middle Class, that is: “Maybe the reason this is happening is because we haven’t been honest with ourselves about the city’s current situation: Boston isn’t becoming a place where rich people are thriving and middle-class people—particularly those with kids—are unable to build their lives. Rather, as anyone still desperately clinging on to city life can tell you, the middle-class dream in Boston is not only dead and buried, but its friends and family don’t even visit the grave anymore.”
[LF14] Someone did not heed the sound advice of Kenny Rogers: “The Incredible Rise Of PokerStars Cofounder Isai Scheinberg — And His Surrender To Federal Agents”
[LF15] Just to lighten things up a bit, with all the talk of real and metaphorical apocalypse in DC these days, The Washingtonian has a handy dandy guide for Beltway End Times
LF2 – That is some purple prose. Someone should nominate that for the Bulwer-Lyton award.Report
Okay. At this point, what I am looking for are prominent voices coming out and saying something to the effect of “Democrats handled this poorly” or “Democrats botched the Impeachment”.
It might be a hair early for “Impeachment was a mistake”, but I think I should start keeping an eye out for that in March or April.Report
Lol.Report
You should look for what you want to look for.
I will look for what I want to look for.Report
Impeachment cannot fail, it can only be failed.Report
Adjacent but not in the same wheelhouse, really. This is Cillizza saying that McConnell handled the Impeachment well.
Report
Near-impossible to get Republican senators to vote in lock-step just as they have since 2009. Uh-huh.Report
I’m not commenting on whether Cilliza is an astute observer. (He appears to be as dumb as a sack of hammers.)
But he’s a national observer and he’s talking about how good McConnell was at this.
I’m waiting for national observers of similar stature to start talking about how, maybe, just maybe, the House could have, in theory, handled this better. Maybe. Not a criticism of Pelosi, mind… but, maybe, there were ways to do this better than it was done.Report
Times of crisis always need a clarifying moment, and this was ours.
America now has the Republican Party saying openly that they are willing to grant the President unchecked power whenever it suits their naked interests.
So the task for the American citizens is to decide if they will meekly roll over or stand up.Report
Well, at the end of the day he does have a pen and a phone….haReport
Related:
“Document shows Bernie Sanders’s team preparing dozens of potential executive orders”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/elections-2020-us/document-shows-bernie-sanders-s-team-preparing-dozens-of-potential-executive-orders/ar-BBZtEU0
The American people largely accepted Obama’s claims of executive authority, after the John Yoo Unitary Executive Theory was left undisputed.Report
Chip, I’d wait until we’re sure that Trump is out of office before explaining that President Bernie can do what he wants when it comes to executive orders.Report
At this point, I have to wonder what we are paying congress to do? Are they there to craft legislation, or simply stroke their egos on TV and the internet while deciding if they are or are not going to oppose the presidents latest executive order or action?Report
Other than giving the military more money for toys and smacking around the occasional small country, there is no longer any room for compromise except on almost insignificant things. The Left is paying Congressional Dems to keep the Right from implementing any of its policies; the Right is paying Congressional Republicans to keep the Left from implementing any of their policies; increasingly, the country is run by the President by regulation and executive order (and arguably, by manipulating the courts and DoJ). Just watch: if we have President Biden/Sanders/Warren/Buttigieg next January, their time will be taken up reversing the rule-making of the Trump administration, not pushing for legislation.
Unsurprisingly, this is how most strong-president systems have died, and why no one tries them anymore.Report
It’s also why the United States never implemented a strong President system in any of the countries where we wrote the Constitution for or were asked for advise on.Report
LF10-LF11: I have to wonder what kind of guidance judges are getting for all this? I agree with the concept, but if enough such cases are slipping through the cracks, is it the law, or the judges just not understanding how to execute it (or not faithfully executing it for whatever reason)?
Personally, I figure it’s the law itself, given how consistently lawmakers fail to game out their creations. For instance, CA decision to not pursue petty theft resulting in an increase in petty theft. Heart is in the right place, but incentives matter.Report
Here’s a fun link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlimCLccxpQ
When it comes to ignorant politicians and guns, this guy is right up there with Carolyn McCarthy (of the “Shoulder thing that goes up” fame). If people want me to explain where he is wrong, let me know, but it’s going to be a long post, because he starts off wrong, and it never gets better.
I get that not every politician can always be well informed on every aspect of legislation, but things like guns or abortion are such hot topics where ignorance of basic concepts and facts hurt your credibility, I would hope that they would make the effort to talk to experts and get their data correct. The fact that so many are so consistently bad about this just reinforces my belief that legislators aren’t actually interested in crafting good laws, they just want free steak and lobster dinners, and all the other fringe benefits that come with the position.Report
Yeah but that’s technically mechanical level ignorance. The deeper issue ignorance is the premise of ‘preventative law’.
https://youtu.be/hcslEvb6Bzk?t=831Report
When I play “Laws Against Humanity” my first step is to ban all transportation pathways ‘because we have people dying’ in the pathways.
Level Up: Your banned from getting out of your bed in the morning because bad things might happen!!!Report
PMJB: The trombone is inspired!Report
I liked that one, and most of what PMJB doesReport
Cash bail links: I am largely supportive of ending cash bail. The research shows that the overwhelming majority of people show up for their court appointments and cash bail seriously harms the black community. People lose jobs even if they are innocent. It encourages pleas just to get it over. But these kind of policies are hard sells from a political prospective often but no one said reform was easy.
Boston and the middle-class: I think it is very clear that our current housing mess is a product of several decades of bad policies and maybe even centuries of social thought. LeeEsq has pointed out that the anglo-ideal for homes has always been the detached or semi-detached single family home. In continental Europe, they were more accepting of apartments even for the rich. The first apartment buildings in New York for wealthy people were considered shocking. Plus restrictive zoning. But apartments in cities need to be bigger for families. So you need to find ways to get developers to do three or four bedroom apartments with good soundproofing.
But the trend of cities being for the very wealthy, the poor, and/or the very young are not quite new. This basically described New York during the bad days of the 70s and 80s.Report
LF13 is a bit overwrought. The median household income in Boston is only moderately higher than the median household income for the entire state of Massachusetts . It’s also worth noting that Boston is a fairly small city, geographically, and moving to “the suburbs” doesn’t necessarily mean moving all that far.
The claim that it takes 30 years to save up for a down payment rests on a bunch of assumptions selected for maximum sensationalism. First, 5% is a pretty unambitious saving rate. Upping the savings rate to 10% cuts that in half. It also assumes a 20% down payment, which is no longer standard for first-time buyers. The 20% down payment is a relic of a time when mortgage rates were much higher, leading to lower sticker prices on homes. Nowadays you can put up a down payment of 10%, 5%, or even less, depending on your credit rating.
Comparing median income to median home price is also questionable. Home ownership tends to skew towards higher-income households, so a household with median income should be aiming to buy a house at, say, the 30th percentile, rather than at the median.
If we correct these assumptions, we get a dramatically lower estimate of the amount of time needed to save for a down payment on a house in Boston, perhaps only 3-7 years.
That said, housing costs are higher than is ideal, and it’s good to see an article correctly identify building as the solution to keeping housing costs reasonable. Due to the pigeonhole principle, it simply isn’t possible to have affordable housing for 300,000 households when you only have 250,000 houses. Even if some units are rent-controlled, the price has to rise on the market rate units to the point where 50,000 of those households are priced out. And if you have all units rent-controlled, then the only way to move in is to buy a house. True affordability can only come from building, not from “affordable housing” policies.Report