The Biden Administration (No Lago)

[Kaelik]

Biden is now talking about ending US support from Yemen. Arms sales, seeking diplomatic talks, military operations, etc were mentioned. He also assures that we will continue to defending the Saudis still. A very out of left field thing given that I don't think making this move was even necessary for him. A definite good thing even if defensive support of the Saudis might still give an 'out' to doing unsavory things in Yemen.

The specific way this has been divided is that "defensive" actions where we kill people to "stop a new ISIS from arising" are still allowed. But we won't do "offensive" actions like.... helping Saudi Arabia bomb things just because they are bored? It's not actually clear what actions couldn't be justified as defensive, but presumably some of them won't be even if they could be.

However, it's also not "very out of left field." Remember that back when Donald Trump was president Bernie Sanders arranged the passage of a bill in a republican senate to stop the continued support of the KSA war on Yemen.

Trump vetoed it. But you can see why Biden choosing to change the rules now is actually not out of field. Cynically, it means instead of a law stopping us being passed, that the President can always do it again later if he wants. More generously, the consensus has reached the point we don't actually want to continue stopping the worst ongoing war crimes in the world, and Biden has always been a very consensus actor and so he is moving around that consensus.

[Kaelik]

The Senate passed 97-3 a bill to keep the embassy in Jerusalem.

Because democrats and republicans agree that international law is for suckers and Palestinians aren't really human beings.

God I never get tired of watching a bunch of fucking assholes clapping for Trump violating international law on repeat.

[Thaluikhain]

97-3?

I mean, yeah, expected them to keep it there, but still.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

I can now give you an official list:

Manchin
Sinema
Hassan
Tester
Shaheen
King*
Hickenlooper
Warner
Kelly

That's the cosponsor's on the amendment that would reduce income caps.

So a lot of overlap with the gang of 16 members, but some additions and removals both.

I appreciate the information. Looking forward to the Democrats telling people who lost their job while living anywhere near a major metropolitan area that the 50k they made in 2019 means they aren't going to get evicted in 2021 (not that 1400 would be more than a month of rent anyways).

[Kaelik]

I appreciate the information. Looking forward to the Democrats telling people who lost their job while living anywhere near a major metropolitan area that the 50k they made in 2019 means they aren't going to get evicted in 2021 (not that 1400 would be more than a month of rent anyways).

The amendment passed, but it didn't specifically lower the amounts it just said that the final reconciliation bill will deny benefits to "high income" individuals, which will be decided in conference and/or when those 8 decide to vote it down.

I assume one of them will be on the conference committee to represent their interest.

[Kaelik]

The United States aids and performs coups in democratically elected states and then supports their pet dictators, and nothing about Joe Biden being elected has changed that.

The United States aided and supported a coup in Haiti in 2004 and has propped up and directed the phony governments ever since. They choose who will be the new President and tell the government which candidates are no permitted to run in elections. Most recently in 2016 the US helped the government fake ballots to replace their then puppet who was term limited with a new US toady. The obvious fakeness of the pretend election was so bad that the election took more than a year to resolve and during that time the current President Moise, declared himself "provisional" president for a year, then declared himself president for a five year term after that year because he totally won that election that he spent a year overseeing the counting of.

This is particularly relevant because the constitution requires that someone can only be President for 1 year. Currently, he is declaring that his provisional presidency doesn't count, so he doesn't have to step down when he's been President for five years, the deadline for which is today.

Now, he's just put aside all pretense of not being a dictator, not that Haiti has in any way been a democracy since the US supported coup. Moise had absolved parliament and ruled as dictator since January 2020. But now as people call for him to step down after 5 years as President he presents a transparently false bullshit narrative about how he was provisional President so it doesn't count, he gets to rule until 2022. Oh, and also he just arrested 20 people including a Supreme Court Justice because of their plan to "assassinate" him, that he assures everyone was totally real.

Meanwhile, what does the US have to say? "Ned Price, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said Friday that the U.S. has urged Haiti to organize free and fair elections so that Parliament can resume operations, adding that a new elected president should succeed Moïse when his terms ends in February 2022."

Oh... guess he just gets to be President for 6 years and also he should definitely take some time out of his day to undesolve Parliament and have some fake elections for that too.

Reminder as a coup happens in Myanmar that one reason coups happen and everyone knows they can get away with it is because everyone everywhere else in the world knows that the US doesn't give a single fuck about democracy and will support your coup if you can arrange the right meeting.

[Koumei]

I believe the term used by media is now "cabinet reshuffle", not "coup".

[Kaelik]

While the senate democrats are negotiating against Biden to lower the relief checks, house Democrats have cut a month off of bidens proposed duration for unemployment.

The most classic democrat thing to do.

First the president negotiates himself down from his initial promise. Then the senate democrats start negotiating down to prove they are the real pragmatic centrists who will do something extremely unpragmatic to prove it. Not wanting to be left out, the House democrats also negotiate down to prove they are the pragmatic centrists.

Meanwhile the economic advisers are saying "1.9 trillion isnt enough at all. Not even close. But also you shouldnt propose more because my judgment as an economic advisor is that politics prevents more."

Pragmatically there is no reason to have unemployment end ever! Just write that it is permanent until another law is passed and you can fix it if you think you are post pandemic!

Meanwhile Joe Biden is privately agreeing that there is no way the minimum wage can be passed through reconciliation since it doesnt effect the national debt and the CBO is getting the heritage foundation economists to write that the minimum wage will cause mass unemployment and this drive up the debt.

Bernie Sanders calling the bluff saying "well if it drives up the debt, then it substantially effects it and we can get it through the byrd rule." While Biden slouches off to let it die.

[MGuy]

Has there been any attempt by Dems to explain why they are negotiating themselves down on anything since they had already decided to march this thing on through without Republicans? I saw Biden talking about how Minimum wage increase won't survive and I'm still wondering who he thinks is holding it up. I thought that they were showing some willingness to softly threaten the few dems not on board but now I'm seeing a bunch of reports that seem to collectively be telling people to lower their expectations on a thing they can get through unopposed

[Kaelik]

Fucking over poor people is how you show you are "serious" in the democratic party and if you arent willing to fuck over poor people for no reason in your own bills then you are a pie in the sky idealist who cant be trusted with power.

[Kaelik]

Joe Biden keeping so fucking many Barr handpicked attorneys right now.

Right now one of them is defending Betsy Devos, but tons of them all over, including the acting head in District of Columbia that Garland wants to keep in charge of the capital riot investigation.

Because democrats are the dumbest mother fuckers alive and will think continuity is more important than ideology in an ideological crime.

[MGuy]

Not that I'm opposed to this but if citizens are allowed to sue members acting at the head of a federal agency like Devos would that open up the ability for any entity to sue heads of federal departments for perceived grievances regardless of whether or not it would be warranted? While I think that many consequences both financial and otherwise should be levied at pretty much everyone operating under Trump in the case of Devos I wonder if letting her off the hook might be one of those necessary evil moments where ya she deserves much worse than this but in doing so it might open the door to less savory people/corporations to abuse his kind of dynamic in a way that hampers any administration's ability to govern.

[Kaelik]

Not that I'm opposed to this but if citizens are allowed to sue members acting at the head of a federal agency like Devos would that open up the ability for any entity to sue heads of federal departments for perceived grievances regardless of whether or not it would be warranted? While I think that many consequences both financial and otherwise should be levied at pretty much everyone operating under Trump in the case of Devos I wonder if letting her off the hook might be one of those necessary evil moments where ya she deserves much worse than this but in doing so it might open the door to less savory people/corporations to abuse his kind of dynamic in a way that hampers any administration's ability to govern.

Cabinet heads are sued all the time by people as a way of objecting to policies of that department. It's the conventional way of handling those cases, see, EG: Shelby County v Holder (Obama's AG). You can always sue a federal department for "perceived grievances" and that is handled by a suit against the head of the agency. There have been over 400 suits against Devos during her time as Education Secretary.

What the Biden admin is doing is helping Betsy Devos justify her actions under the Trump admin so that the students defrauded by her policies cannot obtain relief from the federal government. This is important because the AG's office actually has the total discretion to just not defend a policy in a case and agree with the plaintiffs. Obviously it wasn't going to do that while Trump was president, but Biden should be firing every attorney who wants to keep defending Betsy Devos's policies now and ordering that to change, not allowing the AG's office to keep defending them.

(Biden should really by firing every AG that Barr promoted or hired in the first place, which this attorney specifically is, but even if you weren't going to blanket fire them, which you should, you should still fire them if they are actively continuing to defend Trump admin policies that you claim as President to not support.)

[Kaelik]

Even public prisons are a source for private profits, as prisoners are charged for all kinds of basic services, often having them call on prison phones being charged for it to beg their families to add money so the can keep calling their family. (and have soap, medicine, food, )

While the Biden admin has made some gestures towards pretending to care about this, it's undermined by the fact that they are finally targeting the last non profit service provided to prisoners, mail.

The Biden admin is preparing to discontinue all physical mail to prisoners so that they can instead be charged rental fees for tablets, fees to scan documents in so they can be read on tablets, and as a side effect, they can read all the prisoners mail more easily.

It is the essence of cop to take every possible source of power and use it to exploit the poor as much as possible, and this is pure fucking cop.

[MGuy]

Well damn. I didn't know suing members of the cabinet was so commonplace.
It's a good time for them to pull the Devos stunt though. With most of the media focusing on the absolute shit show this trial is turning out to be. Targeting physical mail in prison is such a weird thing to do though. They could change to the tablets and leave the mail open as just an option and probably still get most prisoners to use the tablets without much prompting.

[Kaelik]

Well damn. I didn't know suing members of the cabinet was so commonplace.
It's a good time for them to pull the Devos stunt though. With most of the media focusing on the absolute shit show this trial is turning out to be. Targeting physical mail in prison is such a weird thing to do though. They could change to the tablets and leave the mail open as just an option and probably still get most prisoners to use the tablets without much prompting.

Not if the paper is free and the tablets cost money.

Which they do.

It's another say to profit off of prisoners.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Sometimes I wonder what the effects of ending prison labor and exploitation would look like on an economic level. If we don't have slaves, then we have prisoners. If we don't have prisoners, then we have child laborers. If we don't have child laborers, then we get poor people to do it for pennies.
Makes you wonder if there's any way to divorce American prosperity from the constant grinding machine that consumes blood, flesh, and time.

[Longes]

The Biden admin is preparing to discontinue all physical mail to prisoners

I want to know more, is there a source on this?

[Kaelik]

CBP still building the border wall even after Biden has ordered construction stopped. Because all police states know they are above the law and elected officials lack the fortitude to do what is necessary to control them. And our federal cops are just like other cops in this way.

[Kaelik]

Random reminder that the IMF is tool of US imperialism and that the coup regime in Bolivia took out huge loans on the condition that the IMF gets to force them to follow shitty free market rules to cripple their economy.

The MAS government has returned all that money, but this was only possible because the pre-coup MAS government was so good (and had control for so long) that the country could do this. Many countries are trapped giving up the ability to have any good economic policy because the the US enforces exploitative client statuses on them through the IMF.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Nobody expects the Democrats to ever do anything good in foreign policy though, do they? The Democrats virtually always promise to do the same amount of evil that Republicans do abroad, just a bit quieter.

I am glad we have a Democrat in office with control of the House and Senate so we can get to business and tackle the problems of the day. Like promising not to do anything about the cops, or promising not to do anything about student loan debt, or promising not to raise the minimum wage in a timeframe that actually matters.

[Kaelik]

Nobody expects the Democrats to ever do anything good in foreign policy though, do they? The Democrats virtually always promise to do the same amount of evil that Republicans do abroad, just a bit quieter.

I am glad we have a Democrat in office with control of the House and Senate so we can get to business and tackle the problems of the day. Like promising not to do anything about the cops, or promising not to do anything about student loan debt, or promising not to raise the minimum wage in a timeframe that actually matters.

Normally I think that's the promise, but this time because Trump was so weird Biden's express promises were "unlike that LOSER trump I will SUCCEED in my coups." Which was..... a direction you could go apparently.

[MGuy]

I honestly thought they'd have more trouble validating shortchanging themselves on their own policies. That without any actual way to blame Republicans for why they are not going to do what they said they were going to do there would have to be an excuse put forth. Every time I see an article about how minimum wage, student loans, and even the 1400 (+600=2k!) checks are either not going to get done, not going to get done in the way they claimed, or is on the chopping block to get cut I don't see any real explanation for why Dems are essentially arguing with themselves to threaten any of these policies.

[Kaelik]

Every day the White House announces that Iran is not complying with their end of the deal we broke so therefore we don't have to stop breaking the deal.

Please for the love of god Biden do literally the least you could do in FP.

[Kaelik]

Biden's Raytheon board member that he appointed to Secretary of Raytheon Enrichment has not yet divested of $1.7 Million in Raytheon stock.

Too busy approving Raytheon contracts to sell weapons overseas, which is obviously the most consequential part of being Secretary of Defense.

EDIT: Also Biden is privately promising governors that the $15 minimum wage by 2025 will be removed from the bill. Remember when Biden lost Florida where 67% of them voted for a $15 minimum wage.

Also Biden just issued new guidelines to ICE that deportations are good and have fun.

So...... I guess in the end it turned out all of trump's policies were good and we are keeping them except 9/10s of the muslim ban. (Biden keeping 1/10th of the muslim ban.

Who knew trump was so right so often?