A Real Headline From Today’s Washington Post: “World Watches In Disbelief And Horror As US Nears Possible Default”. Apocalyptic, much? Here’s a sentence I can get behind:
And foreign economists and policymakers are bewildered over why the United States has imposed a specific limit on its debt and then turned it into a political football.
Mint the coin. Use the 14th Amendment. Tell the Rethugs to fuck off. And be done with it. Let them go to court to try to sink the country. They are not on firm legislative and/or legal grounds. Two noted scholars explain. I’ll cut to the chase:
There is, thus, simply no role, since 1974, for the old Liberty Bond Act of 1917 — the source of the ersatz debt ceiling that Republicans now routinely wield like a weapon — to play any longer. It is a children’s toy, not a real gun, and it’s high time the Senate and all reasonable Republicans in the House called the bluff.
Lest there be any doubt on this score, we suggest that conservatives note how the current incarnation of the no longer meaningful (since 1974) Liberty Bond Act of 1917 is a would-be freestanding ceiling whose disregard leaves in place all sections of Title 31 that authorize needed borrowing — per the U.S. Code Subchapter I, sections 3102 through 3106. Conservative critics are accordingly dead wrong again, be it deliberately or inadvertently, in suggesting that we and others are proposing the president borrow without congressional authority.
Perhaps rightwingers really have overlooked all of this. But it strikes us as equally likely that, obsessed as they seem to be with “the Stuart monarchs,” seemingly aspiring dictators and other “strong men,” they’re simply hoping that the public will think this is all about “Dark Brandon” and ”White House tyranny” rather than Capitol Hill schizophrenia, as it is.
And this they hope — notwithstanding, that it would be by ignoring our congressionally legislated debts, not by honoring them — that President Biden would be usurping Congress’s power of the purse.
Let’s cure this schizophrenia now. President Biden, Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and all reasonable Republicans should kindly call the MAGA conservatives’ bluff. Simply ignore the 1917 vintage debt ceiling, which is now null and void, and abide by the 1974 budget law. You will be vindicating our Constitution and preserving our constitutional republic in so doing.
Read. Do as they say.
DeSantis Sinks Yu-u-u-ge Disney Project. $1 billion worth. Plus 2000 jobs paying in excess of $100K per.
Last month, when Disney sued the governor and his allies for what it called “a targeted campaign of government retaliation,” the company made clear that $17 billion in planned investment in Walt Disney World was on the line.
“Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes, or not?” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said on an earnings-related conference call with analysts last week.
On Thursday, Mr. Iger and Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s theme park and consumer products chairman, showed that they were not bluffing, pulling the plug on an office complex that was scheduled for construction in Orlando at a cost of roughly $1 billion. It would have brought more than 2,000 Disney jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average salary, according to an estimate from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
DeSantis is a George Wallace nostalgia candidate who doesn’t use the n-word in public.
The Cult Of Indispensability. “When does the beneficent version of gerontocracy give way to the destructive version of it?”:
Octogenarian politicians sometimes behave like grandparents refusing to hand over the keys to the car. They stop in traffic for no apparent reason and never accelerate above 20, but they’re under the delusion that they’re still good drivers.
I understand that acknowledging this may make some uncomfortable. All of us, if we are lucky, face the indignities of aging. In other circumstances, the fact that Feinstein can’t cast votes in the Senate might not be terribly meaningful for the country. But the Senate is evenly divided—and when she is out of pocket, the Democrats can’t prevail on a party-line vote. Because she sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee—and Republicans refuse to let her trade the assignment with a colleague physically fit for the job—Democrats are unable to send any of their nominees to the bench to the floor of the Senate.
This isn’t a trivial part of Feinstein’s job. Without a majority in the House, it is more or less the entirety of it. A more liberal bench is the only lasting achievement available to her party, and she’s preventing its realization. This is a fleeting opportunity, moreover: Even if Biden wins reelection, the political map nearly guarantees a Republican majority in two years’ time. These next few months are the narrow window for Democrats to aggressively erode the GOP’s capture of the judiciary.
Feinstein’s condition spurs a question that looms over American politics for obvious reasons, given the age—for the moment, at least—of the top candidates in the next presidential election: When does the beneficent version of gerontocracy give way to the destructive version of it? Admirable reasons for handing power to senior citizens almost inevitably become the justification for their never relinquishing it. The cult of experience becomes the cult of indispensability.
I return to the sage words of an ex-girlfriend, who once said “Nobody’s irreplaceable”. About a week before she replaced me.
Skyscrapers Sinking NYC. Because, you know, they weigh a lot:
New York City is sinking in part due to the extraordinary weight of its vertiginous buildings, worsening the flooding threat posed to the metropolis from the rising seas, new research has found.
The Big Apple may be the city that never sleeps but it is a city that certainly sinks, subsiding by approximately 1-2mm each year on average, with some areas of New York City plunging at double this rate, according to researchers
This sinking is exacerbating the impact of sea level rise which is accelerating at around twice the global average as the world’s glaciers melt away and seawater expands due to global heating. The water that flanks New York City has risen by about 9in, or 22cm, since 1950 and major flooding events from storms could be up to four times more frequent than now by the end of the century due to the combination of sea level rise and hurricanes strengthened by climate change.
Progress On Lead Levels In Delaware Schools Drinking Water? I report clip-n-paste, you decide:
Over 100 schools across 17 Delaware districts plus the Charter School of Wilmington had at least one drinking water sample return elevated lead levels, the latest results on the state’s sampling dashboard show.
While few school districts have been left untouched by at least trace amounts of lead, state education officials say Delaware’s infusion of $3.8 million to install filters throughout district schools and charters is the ideal step forward in addressing lead levels in school drinking water.
What do you want to talk about?