The Biden Administration (No Lago)

[Kaelik]

Truly amazing watching the Biden admin set world records in promise breaking.

The man can break the same promise 7 or eight times.

[Kaelik]

In addition to Biden's complete failure to keep any of his executive promises and the Biden DOJ and the Biden Treasury Secretary both fighting to hide Trump documents from transparency, the senate has been completely pathetic.

The Biden admin is now backing off and throwing away a bunch of promises they made to get republican votes on the infrastructure bill that they will eventually pass 50-50, not this fiscal year, because they just announced that they can't get a second reconciliation bill out Sept 30th, so any further reconciliation bills will have to be started all over and worked on and passed next fiscal year.

It's almost like deciding to self-hobble at every opportunity is bad or something!

[PseudoStupidity]

What's with all the news that keeps saying Biden is doing things progressives want? I feel like every time I open a NYT or WaPo newsletter they talk about how Biden is doing leftist things like ENDING CHILDHOOD POVERTY or GIVING EVERYONE access to HEALTHCARE or REIGNING IN THE POLICE? Then they point to things like the AFP or literally just a ban on chokeholds (which the cops will ignore). Is it just propaganda to make wealthy liberals feel better? Because damn it looks like that from here.

[Kaelik]

What's with all the news that keeps saying Biden is doing things progressives want? I feel like every time I open a NYT or WaPo newsletter they talk about how Biden is doing leftist things like ENDING CHILDHOOD POVERTY or GIVING EVERYONE access to HEALTHCARE or REIGNING IN THE POLICE? Then they point to things like the AFP or literally just a ban on chokeholds (which the cops will ignore). Is it just propaganda to make wealthy liberals feel better? Because damn it looks like that from here.

Yes, it is the consent manufacturing process saying all the same things about current President Biden that people on this forum were saying about candidate Biden, that he is good enough and does all the good things that could possibly be done and really you can't tell the difference between him and Sanders.

It exists solely to train people into thinking that horrific evil right wing democrats who do none of the things they promise and could do are good enough and should be supported, so that next time there's a primary, people like Username 17 will post about how Kamala Harris has a 100% rating from Human Rights Watch so really AOC couldn't possibly be better than her anyway.

[violence in the media]

Is it just propaganda to make wealthy liberals feel better?

Yes. Though Kaelik answered this better.

[MGuy]

Is it just propaganda to make wealthy liberals feel better?

Yes. Though Kaelik answered this better.

It definitely is propaganda but people truly believe this shit because it's more comfortable. Race car 17 was not paid for his campaign long shilling. It's real easy to sell painless illusion of change to people and than the reality that no significant change was ever made without lots of suffering.

[Kaelik]

This is climate change denial.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/clim ... lling.html

[Kaelik]

Like many influential party consultants and liberal pundits, the party leadership apparently read polls showing that kitchen-table issues and bipartisanship poll well, and decided to recruit candidates and run campaigns that reflected this meaningless insight.

Perhaps the hope was that reasonableness would win the election, then self-interest would force the party to engage in realpolitik over the filibuster and gerrymandering and voting rights and senate malapportionment and maybe even the courts.

I fear we are witnessing the folly of that notion in real time. That a party can’t select for accommodative politicians in campaigns then flip a switch and govern as hardball practitioners once in power. That what pencils out as politically optimal on a spreadsheet can’t overwhelm deep seated human tendencies like fight or flight. I hope I’m wrong about that, but I've met a lot of humans over the years and few of them were robot chameleons. It’s why Republicans are maximalists in just about every circumstance—even when dialing it down a bit would serve their interests best—and Democrats fret over the importance of consensus even when the people on the other end of the olive branch want them dead.

Maybe data says ambition and principle poll worse than pragmatism and conciliation, and so fielding a bunch of cautious, moderate candidates is always the optimal move. But it also says if they don’t pass aggressive democracy reforms, they and the country are screwed. In practice, these two imperatives appear to be in tension and you have to pick. I know which one I thought was more important; Dems went the other way.

It is almost like the people who advocate for more "electable" moderates are have no fucking clue what they are talking about and no one should ever listen to them because they keep making things worse by electing moderates and please for the love of god learn this lesson.

https://mailchi.mp/crooked.com/big-tent ... 4b66a7e85f

[Kaelik]

Joe Biden is trying to cut unemployment benefits illegally.

There are three facets of unemployment extension under the law right now, and one of the three the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which extended unemployment benefits to workers who are not typically eligible, such as gig workers, and effectively extended the duration of ordinary unemployment benefits by making individuals who run out of ordinary unemployment benefits eligible for PUA, is a mandatory program. It is enacted as a shall, and cannot be waived by state governments. The DOL even wrote a legal memo to that effect.

However, a bunch of states are trying to cut all their unemployment benefits, including the PUA, and instead of using lawsuits to stop them or contracting with other states to provide unemployment to residents of a state that cuts benefits (we did this in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina) Biden is just saying that governors have the right to cut mandatory unemployment benefits that his own Department of Labor has said they don't have the right to cut.

[Kaelik]

Just a fun update to remind everyone that the US supports the worst ongoing crimes in the world, Omar asked Blinken if the US won't support ICC investigations of Israeli genocide, where can Palestinians look for justice. Blinken said they should ask Israel to investigate. Fuck my entire life.

[Kaelik]

The Biden/Garland DOJ is absolutely horrible and worse than even the worst possible imagination.

The Garland DOJ is literally arguing that Jean Carrol is a liar and trying to substitute itself as the defendant in her suit to protect Trump from having to take a DNA test.

It's also still (with help from the Biden treasury secretary) protecting Trump's tax returns.

It SEEEEEMS like maybe they believe presidential immunity from all possible crimes is the most important thing. (It's also fighting to hide the memos from the Barr DOJ that would implicate Barr.)

[MGuy]

I wonder what's the worth of expending energy to defend Trump. He's out and enough people with money would enjoy seeing him face serious consequences for how rude he was to them in their sacred space. I get Barr. He's career insider. Powerful people with connections don't have consequences often in this country. But Trump? He's an outsider who's punishment wouldn't hurt anyone.

[Kaelik]

I wonder what's the worth of expending energy to defend Trump. He's out and enough people with money would enjoy seeing him face serious consequences for how rude he was to them in their sacred space. I get Barr. He's career insider. Powerful people with connections don't have consequences often in this country. But Trump? He's an outsider who's punishment wouldn't hurt anyone.

1) The principle of presidential impunity to crimes is essential. If you could be sued for doing crimes then ANY president could be sued for doing crimes!

2) The Department of Injustice had a position on a lawsuit and to CHANGE the position of the DOJ would be POLITICAL. So the Garland DOJ has to keep supporting every single position the Trump DOJ did for the next 4-8 years, because otherwise POLITICS is changing what a political institution does.

[Kaelik]

New Garland Position dropped: The current DOJ will not tell Congress if the DOJ a few years ago was hiding evidence of republican congressional crimes and investigating democrats for crimes for partisan political reasons.

For fucks sake, just keep Barr as DOJ, is there any difference?

[Josh_Kablack]

Can someone explain to me the legal contortions necessary for Biden to believe that $10k of Student Loan Forgiveness is possible via executive action, but $50k is not?

I will admit myl ignorance of the relevant statutes, but it would intuitively seem that forgiveness can either be accomplished via executive action or it cannot, and it requires an act of Congress. The setting of a credit limit on the amount that executive action could forgive seems really strange. Is there a real legal basis for this, or is it just an attempt by Biden to dodge doing anything on another campaign promise?

[Kaelik]

Can someone explain to me the legal contortions necessary for Biden to believe that $10k of Student Loan Forgiveness is possible via executive action, but $50k is not?

I will admit myl ignorance of the relevant statutes, but it would intuitively seem that forgiveness can either be accomplished via executive action or it cannot, and it requires an act of Congress. The setting of a credit limit on the amount that executive action could forgive seems really strange. Is there a real legal basis for this, or is it just an attempt by Biden to dodge doing anything on another campaign promise?

It's the dodge one. Although I think he actually never promised anything except 10k. So it's just "avoiding doing good things to help people because those people aren't rich."

The relevant statue(s) are that the 1965 Higher Education Act grants the president complete settlement authority, including the ability to cancel debt. Technically it's the secretary, but the president can fire the secretary on a whim and replace them with an "interim" appointment of several years, so they do what the president says in an EO.

Now, because "settlements" usually involve people defaulting and then sometimes a court case, and then parties agreeing to a set of terms that theoretically offers one party benefits because it absolves risk on the other party and whatever, some people try to argue that it's not really settlement to forgive loans. They will be surprised to find out that in fact, loans are forgiven be creditors all the time for literally zero dollars because creditors realize it will cost them more to collect than it is worth to collect. Since economic analysis shows that in fact forgiving student debt would cost the government LESS money from economic growth increasing taxes and not having to pay for servicing. That isn't needed, but it is true, and to the extent it is someone's job to evaluate that it's a political decision for the President.

The purpose of Biden's "investigation" into whether he can do this is the same as his "Supreme Court Reform Commission" when you don't want to do something, but you also don't want to admit you don't want to do it, you appoint a commission to study it (or as the AG to, or whatever) and then you hope that in many months when they come out with a report you either lost the ability to do it (YAY, not my fault, republicans won the midterms so I can't pass court reform) or you hope everyone forgets about it (it's been 6 months, surely no one is under crippling student debt anymore).

As for the "can I forgive only a small amount or lots" it's definitely all bullshit. There is no possible justification for forgiving some of the debt of someone who owes you but not a greater amount. The settlement authority that exists either allows you to forgive any amount you want (yes, that) or none at all (this is wrong and stupid).

Maybe an EXTREMELY arbitrary and stupid ruling is it lets you forgive 100% of a given student's debt, but not some lesser percent. This is, I want to stress, definitely wrong, but at least kind of an argument you could make based on a misunderstanding of what settlement is. But this won't be what Biden goes for because the only thing he wants is to get the lowest possible amount of forgiveness to make people shut up and stop asking for things.

[MGuy]

I assumed it was because of some obscure unelected authority that they have complete control over (like this whole parliamentarian thing) telling him he couldn't do it but I guess they haven't gotten around to even erecting an authority figure to tell them they can't do it yet.

[Kaelik]

"“The Biden administration is looking forward, not back,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks told ABC News."



Killllllllllllllllll meeeeeeeeee.

Remember when the obama admin used those exact words to describe how they would promote people who did war crimes and then everything in the world was worse forever after because of the tradition of elite impunity.

[Kaelik]

Biden admin still really bad in lots of ways, Garland so bad that even liberals are recognizing he's garbage and calling for him to be fired.

But today I'm here to tell you that the Biden admin agrees with 100% of the Trump admin's positions on Israel as they have no finally clarified. They believe all the settlements are actually Israel now and also that Israel should be allowed to steal the Golan Heights in violation of international law. Good times.

The Biden admin has also continued all of the Trump sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela designed to kill and immiserate the population until they theoretically rise up in violent revolution and overthrow their elected governments, but more realistically, don't gather together and undo a US coup like they did in 2002 in Venezuela.

[Kaelik]

Oh come the fuck on on!

https://reason.com/2021/06/24/biden-tel ... hire-cops/

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I wish I could say that I didn't expect things to get more totalitarian in this administration, but I would be lying.
Ironically, I'd probably be saying the same thing under a different administration. Funny how that works...

[MGuy]

No more totalitarian than usual honestly. He was saying 'we need to pay cops more' and shit on the campaign trail so this isn't really different from what he advertised. It is a fine time to remind people though that this is a man who put himself on the forefront of the crime bill that has done wonders to kill and incarcerate amazing numbers of poor and marginalized people in this country.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

No more totalitarian than usual honestly.

That's what I meant.

[Kaelik]

Supreme Court let's everyone know 6-3 today that it's good for states to make laws that target disenfranchisement at racial minorities because it helps republicans win.

Good thing we won't be passing any voting laws in congress because the leadership, president, and shitty right wing democrats are all in agreement that it's not important.

[Kaelik]

Biden apparently paying a very good team of lawyers to find out how he can murders as many black people as possible while keeping to his promise to not do any executions.

The Biden admin will continue to seek the death penalty, and Biden refuses to commute any sentences, but he won't do any EXECUTIONS so he's keeping his promise see!

Literally just queuing up a line of murders for President DeSantis to do on inauguration day.