Tag: Chuck Schumer

Progressive Collapse

The chaos that is the defining feature of the Biden presidency is not the result of one man’s incompetence. Nor,  by itself, is it the consequence of his intellectual shallowness, advanced age, cognitive dissonance or general mediocrity, though all of these factors have played a role. 

The chaos is the result of Biden’s choice to align himself with the progressive wing of his party. And since the party has pretty much been captured in toto by said progressives, group think reigns supreme. Consider the reaction to Senator Joe Manchin’s refusal (thus far) to buckle under and support the “Build Back Better” bill. 

The headline in the Washington Post sums up the story: “Democratic bitterness, rage follow Manchin’s ‘no’ on Biden bill.” According to the Post, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused Manchin of a ”betrayal of working families across the country… and an egregious breach of the trust of the president.”

After accusing Manchin of being a liar, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki went on to say “Senator Manchin will have to explain to those families paying $1,000 a month for insulin why they need to keep paying that, instead of $35 for that vital medicine. He will have to explain to the nearly two million women who would get the affordable day care they need to return to work why he opposes a plan to get them the help they need. Maybe Senator Manchin can explain to the millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax Credit, why he wants to end a program that is helping achieve this milestone—we cannot.”

For his part, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, looking over his shoulder at a potential primary challenge in 2022 by Squad leader AOC, announced that the Build Back Better Bill would be subject to a vote on the Senate floor. Schumer is taking this extraordinary step even though the bill has no chance of passing and will damage the prospects of Senators in swing states in the upcoming mid-terms. Then again, Senator Bernie Sanders (I. Rolling Stone) demanded the vote. 

Senator Sanders reportedly said “…that Manchin should have to vote publicly and that he would “have a lot of explaining to do to the people of West Virginia” about his opposition. So it appears that Senators Sanders and Schumer along with AOC actually believe that Manchin, a fellow Democrat (which by the way Sanders, the self declared democratic socialist is not) will be punished by West Virginia’s voters. This, even though Donald Trump carried the state by 40 points in 2020, and recent polling indicates that upwards of 70% of West Virginians oppose the bill. 

Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in by saying “Well, we never give up,” Pelosi said. “This will happen, it must happen, and we will do it as soon as we can. There are conversations that are ongoing, but we cannot walk away from this commitment. The Build Back Better [Act] is about transforming our society.”

It has apparently not occurred to Pelosi et.al. that the American public is not at all interested in “transforming our society”. What the American public wants is stable prices, good schools, safe streets and reasonably competent public administration. The Democrats, have delivered none of these. 

In fact, progressive policy, with a large assist from Republican Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, has set off an explosion of inflation that shows no signs of abating. Parents across the country are protesting the take-over of the public schools by woke activists while school test scores (where they still have tests) continue to deteriorate rapidly. And the murder rate in big cities has skyrocketed 30% year-over-year, a record. And we haven’t even broached foreign policy. 

The reason for the chaos is the underlying (and preposterous) progressive conceit that not only can the administrative state micro-manage a dynamic free-market economy and local institutions; it can also do so competently and efficiently.  Which is to imply that bureaucrats know better than you how you should live your life. And they have the regulations to do the trick. 

Except that all they have created is economic and social destruction. The one major policy success of the last few years is the astonishingly rapid discovery and deployment of vaccines to fight the COVID pandemic. And that success was brought to you compliments of those creatures of the free-market, the drug companies. 

JFB

Same Circus, Different Clowns

As roughly everybody knows, on January 6, 2021, then-President Donald J Trump stirred up a crowd by claiming that the most recent presidential election was stolen from him, implying that  Joe Biden’s ascension to the office was illegitimate.  Immediately thereafter a crowd of Trump supporters, some of whom were armed, attacked the Capitol and attempted to stop Congress from carrying out its lawful duty in counting the electoral votes of the several states. Counting those electoral votes was the last formal step in certifying the election, paving the way for Mr. Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021.  

In the aftermath, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell pinned responsibility for the attack on Trump. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Senate minority leader Charles Schumer demanded that Trump ether step down or be forced from office immediately. As in right away, without delay. (See the You Tube video below dated January 12, 2021.)

In the event, Pelosi and Schumer demanded, naturally enough, that someone else take action. When that didn’t work, the House impeached Trump for the second time. The vote came on January 13, 2021, a day after Schumer’s speech. But then a funny thing happened. Speaker Pelosi didn’t get around to sending the article of impeachment to the Senate for 12 days, by which time Biden had been sworn in and Trump had become a private citizen. 

Not only that, the article of impeachment was for incitement. Trump could easily have been impeached for dereliction. He, as Commander-in-Chief, refused to respond to an attack on the seat of government. Moreover he rebuked his own Vice President for refusing to tamper with the states’ electoral votes. Not only are those surely impeachable offenses; the evidence is unassailable.  

As it now stands, after insisting on the immediacy of the situation, Speaker Pelosi took her time sending over a deeply flawed article of impeachment. The trial is not scheduled to begin until February 8, 2021. Moreover, the article she sent over contains two important constitutional issues. The first has to do with the definition of incitement—at what point does a political speech become incitement to violence? The second has to do with impeaching a former president. 

The balance of the evidence suggests that a former president may be impeached, paving the way for a majority vote that would prohibit him from holding office again. But there is sufficient ambiguity to make the case less than clear cut.  

The issue of incitement is more problematic. Did Trump incite his followers to violence? It is my opinion that he did. But having said that, we need to acknowledge several factors. First, restricting the political speech of a sitting politician sets a dangerous precedent when free speech is already under attack. Second, the incitement charge was totally unnecessary to achieve the desired goal, namely securing a conviction in the Senate. Third, because of (presumably) sloppy drafting and the constitutional issues involved, Republicans can dodge the underlying issue. In effect they are being given a low cost opportunity to vote for acquittal. 

An acquittal would allow Trump to argue that once again, he has been exonerated. That is surely not an outcome to be welcomed. But it sure looks like the path of least resistance, due in part to the handiwork of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer. As always they have quashed the national interest in favor of their own narrow political interests.  

JFB

Democrats are Behaving Disgracefully

For the second time in 2 days the Democratic caucus in the Senate voted unanimously (except for Doug Jones, D. AL) to refuse to allow a vote by the full Senate on a $2 trillion bill designed to cushion the impact of the Corona virus. This while the financial markets are cratering, state and local governments are scrambling for resources, hospitals are stressed, small businesses are running out of cash and job layoffs are proceeding at what will likely be a record pace. 

It would be one thing if Democratic demands were designed to improve the proposed legislation. But many of the demands have nothing to do with the crisis at hand. For example, Speaker Nancy Pelosi who is working hand-in-glove with Chuck Schumer has proposed including same-day voter registrations as part of a package. Democrats are also demanding additional collective bargaining power for unions, increased fuel emissions standards for airlines, and expansion of wind and solar tax credits. 

This is the same Democratic caucus that correctly pointed out that the U.S. Government was asleep at the switch when the signs of danger began to emerge back in January. Then again, Congress was briefed on the situation in closed door meetings with agency representatives. And what did Congress do about it? It had already impeached Trump on December 18, 2019 but then Speaker Pelosi held up sending the impeachment articles to the Senate until January 5. The trial began January 12, 2020 and the preordained acquittal came on February 5, 2020. And all the while COVID-19 was infecting more and more people. Nice work, guys.

It is also worth noting that on January 31, 2020 in a response to the Corona virus, Trump issued the following order” “Foreign nationals other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have traveled in China in the last 14 days will be denied entry into United States.” Progressives who are now (correctly) complaining that the Trump didn’t act quickly enough, were also busy condemning Trump’s January 31 order as “racist” even though China was the origin of the disease. Because woke progressives are blind to anything but a burning desire to bring down Trump at all costs. And they will stop at nothing in the attempt to do so.

So while the house is burning down, the crowd that argued in favor of eliminating the filibuster decided to…filibuster emergency remedial legislation. The price of this blackmail is  the passage of a progressive wish list that has absolutely nothing to do with the crisis at hand. 

Enter Mr. Biden, the alleged moderate. For his part he is egging Congressional Democrats on, joining in the call to favor the common man over corporations and all the usual nonsense. One is left to wonder how Mr. Biden thinks people will be able to get back to work if their business go bankrupt while Chuck Schumer is busy working on solar panel subsidies. 

While all this is going on lefty Democratic media cheerleaders have actually begun to argue that Donald Trump should be denied access to media coverage until the press has had time to vet his remarks. Note that these media truth tellers had no problem with those pillars of rectitude Bill and Hillary Clinton. In any event the Trump blackout arguments are now coming from such luminaries as Washington Post media analyst Margaret Sullivan and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. The reason is obvious: Trump’s poll numbers have begun to rise, and that must be stopped at all costs. 

Given the dire situation, the behavior of the Democrats and their media cheerleaders goes well beyond politics as usual. It is indecent and even more dishonest than usual. It shows what they are really made of. And it isn’t pretty. 

JFB

Now What?

Campaign Finance

Recent events have proved to be clarifying if unedifying. Michael Bloomberg did us the enormous favor of spending over $500 million in an effort to win the Democratic Presidential nomination. For his efforts he won a total of 13 delegates; 4 in American Samoa plus another 9 scattered around the country. That’s about $38 million per delegate. Two days later former Mayor Bloomberg dropped out of the race and pledged to work for the election of Joe Biden. 

Bloomberg Drops Out

All of this would seem to provide rather conclusive evidence discrediting the idea that money is determinative in elections. Despite the evidence though, we can expect Progressives to continue their attempt eviscerate First Amendment speech rights under the guise of campaign finance reform and fighting “hate speech” because the goal is control, not clean elections or civility. 

And, by the way, if the best Michael Bloomberg could do was grab 13 delegates with $500 million, why would anybody continue to believe that Russian propaganda on Facebook was sufficient to tip the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump. 

About Those Norms

The Trump Administration—actually POTUS himself—has been criticized, frequently and correctly, for violating long held political norms. Trump, for example, launched a typically idiotic Tweet calling for Justices Sotomeyer and Ginsburg to recuse themselves from cases involving him and his administration.  And candidate Trump famously attacked a federal judge complaining that the judge, who was born in Indiana, was Mexican and therefore could not be counted on to give Trump a fair hearing. 

Well, Chuck Schumer has done Trump one better. On March 4, speaking at a demonstration at the Supreme Court, Schumer said the following referring to an abortion case before the Court.

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price…You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Abortion Rights Protest at the Supreme Court

Which is to say that Chuck Schumer (Harvard Law, 1974) issued a direct threat by name to sitting justices on the Court, contingent on their votes. Surprisingly enough, Schumer’s fellow progressives who were once so concerned about democratic norms, have fallen strangely silent. 

Feel the Phony Bern

Bernie Sanders (I. Rolling Stone) has spent the better part of the last 40 years or so attacking “the establishment” and singing the praises of folks like Fidel Castro. In 2012 he threatened to “primary” (now a verb) then President Obama who wasn’t quite left wing enough for comrade Sanders taste. But on Super Tuesday he got trounced by former Vice President Biden, who among other things grabbed a commanding share of the African American vote. 

And all of a sudden Bernie-the-Authentic has decided that he has been a fan of Obama after all. So his campaign has released an ad showing what pals he and Obama were and are. Needless to say, former Obama officials have denounced the ad as deceptive, misleading etc etc. Which, of course, it is. Just like the rest of his campaign. 

The ad is below. Have a look and think about what it says about the raw political ambition of the selfless Socialist from Vermont. 

New Sanders Ad

JFB