The following is just part of an article about the dysfunctional Republican House by Li Zhou at Vox.com:
There’s nothing quite like starting the year with 14 consecutive rounds of failed speaker votes.
Just one week into 2023, House Republicans had already endured a humiliating leadership race full of infighting and chaos. And while that was a low point for them, things arguably went downhill from there.
Since then, the GOP followed up its first wave of speaker drama with another equally tumultuous contest, expulsion votes on one of its own members, failed attempts to get much of its policy agenda out the door, and floundering investigations of President Joe Biden.
Spending a year dealing with political and personnel problems left the party with little to show for itself policy-wise ahead of an election year in which Republicans hope to expand on their narrow House majority. And it has given Democrats plenty of ammunition to use in making the case the GOP shouldn’t be trusted to govern.
According to the New York Times, this is the most unproductive the House has been in years, even compared to other instances of divided government. In 2023, the House passed just 27 bills that became law, a far lower figure than the 72 it passed in 2013 when Congress was similarly split.
It was always going to be difficult for Republicans to leave a mark given Democratic control of the Senate and White House, but in the past, parties in the GOP’s position have stayed better united on their policy priorities and put pressure on the administration while sticking together on their demands. Although there’s still time to turn things around next year, at this point in the term, it seems as though this House will be remembered for being the one in which Republicans were seriously in disarray.
In the latest edition of The Wall Street Journal’s “Inside View,” columnist Andy Kessler ponders last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history. The autopsy might seem straightforward: The bank was unusually vulnerable to interest rate hikes because most of its holdings were in long-term debt and because its customer base was disproportionately startups and other industries that needed more cash as interest rates rose.
But Kessler suggests another possible cause. "In its proxy statement," he writes, "SVB notes that besides 91% of their board being independent and 45% women, they also have '1 Black,' '1 LGBTQ+' and '2 Veterans.' I’m not saying 12 white men would have avoided this mess, but the company may have been distracted by diversity demands."
Now, there’s nothing “woke” about woefully inadequate risk management. White men have excelled at that for millennia. But, regardless, as MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle put it, “This has absolutely NOTHING to do with a bank being ‘woke.’”
Missing the point in times of crisis is nothing new for the Journal’s opinion pages. This is the same publication whose editorial board, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, suggested President George W. Bush should use the tragedy to pass “pro-growth tax cuts.” But in this case, Kessler, far from having the “Inside View,” is merely repeating Republican talking points.
“We see now coming out they were one of the most woke banks,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. Referring to diversity, equity and inclusion policies, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Fox News: “I mean, this bank, they’re so concerned with DEI and politics and all kinds of stuff. I think that really diverted from them focusing on their core mission.”
“SVB is what happens when you push a leftist/woke ideology and have that take precedent over common sense business practices,” tweeted Donald Trump Jr. (The executive vice president of the Trump Organization did not elaborate nor say whether “common sense business practices” include those that led to his employer’s being convicted of tax fraud.)
This tactic long predates SVB's collapse: “Say ‘woke’ in case of emergency” has become a favorite Republican strategy. At first, denunciations of “wokeism” were mostly used in attempts to oppose gay rights and scrub school curricula of mentions of Black history. But more recently, Republicans have expanded their use of the term. After the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., wondered whether “Norfolk Southern’s DEI policies [were] directing resources away from the important things like greasing wheel bearings.” As Republicans scramble for politically palatable budget cuts, lawmakers such as House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York have tried to target the Defense Department’s “woke agenda.” When a former student shot up a Texas elementary school, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin blamed “wokeness.” And when Memphis, Tennessee, police fatally beat Tyre Nichols, Trump Jr. was one of the conservatives who blamed Memphis police for hiring “woke DEI candidates” as officers.
Why are conservatives using one word to explain everything from a train derailment to a bank failure to the police wrongly beating a motorist? Because it lets them duck the consequences of their ideas.
They could acknowledge that SVB might still be around today but for deregulation signed by former President Donald Trump that was supported almost unanimously by Republicans (and even some Democrats). But it’s easier to blame the “woke agenda.” They could admit that school shootings are more common because of lax gun laws. But it’s easier to blame the “woke agenda.” They could accept that American policing may be in desperate need of reform. But it’s easier to blame the “woke agenda.”
While debate continues over whether SVB has received (or should have received) a bailout, it’s useful to think of the word “woke” as its own bailout — for conservatives. Whether it’s explaining away an inconvenient news development or creating a stopgap reason to oppose a Democrat, criticizing what it calls wokeness is the one-size-fits-all solution for today’s right. An intellectually healthy party would engage with the news, react to the developments, reconsider its priorities when necessary and strengthen its policies as a result.
But it’s easier to rail against an imaginary “woke agenda.”
Nichols was stopped for a traffic violation (supposedly reckless driving). It should have just resulted in a traffic ticket.
But the officers that stopped him approached him in a very aggressive manner, demanding he get out of the car. When he asked politely why he was stopped. They physically removed him from the car and roughly shoved him to the ground. There was no reason for that, and I'm not surprised that Nichols was scared and ran away.
When he was apprehended, the officers decided to get revenge for his escape. They beat him with their fists, with a metal nightstick, and kicked him in the head. None of that was necessary either. There were enough officers to safely put the 140 pound man on the ground and handcuff him. There was no reason for anyone to be injured -- not the victim or the officers.
The five officers who beat Nichols have been charge with the crimes they committed, and that's a good thing. They were nothing more than criminals wearing badges.
But they were not the only officers who failed to do their duty that night.
A police officers job is not over once a person is apprehended. The job is not over until the person is safely in jail -- or in the hospital, if medical attention is necessary.
After Nichols was subdued and handcuffed, he was leaned against a car. He fell over several times. It should have been obvious to all of the dozen or so officers standing around that he was in medical distress. But they ignored it. Nichols laid on the ground for over 20 minutes before receiving any medical help.
That may or may not have contributed to Nichols' death. But one thing is sure -- every officer at the scene failed to do their duty! They all need to be punished.
Here is just part of what Maia Szalavitz says about this in an excellent article for The New York Times:
The failure of American drug law, particularly marijuana policy, has long been obvious.
Finally, this October, President Biden ordered the Department of Health and Human Services and the attorney general to review what’s known as the “scheduling” status of cannabis. This legal process could lead to federal regulation of sales for recreational use or a national law that requires a prescription for marijuana. Mr. Biden also recently signed a law to ease onerous restrictions on marijuana research, and legislation is pending to allow cannabis businesses, now forced to use cash, to get access to banks.
Reform is much needed, with more than two-thirds of Americans favoring legalizing and regulating recreational use. Nearly half of Americans can or will soon be able to legally buy marijuana to get high in their state, which conflicts with federal law.
The details of new regulation, however, matter enormously. The current law, the Controlled Substances Act, is antiquated: It makes no scientific sense and grew out of legislation that was often driven by racist and anti-immigrant propaganda. While policymakers consider how to regulate marijuana specifically, they also need to rethink how the U.S. government classifies and controls psychoactive substances in general — not just drugs like marijuana and opioids, but also alcohol and tobacco.
The Controlled Substances Act was initially intended to regulate pleasurable substances that are risky. It has five categories, or “schedules,” which are supposed to reflect varying hazard levels. But it is filled with contradictions.
Schedule I, the most restrictive, bans the sale and possession of certain drugs for recreational use and limits their medical use to research. Those drugs include marijuana, heroin and LSD and most other psychedelics — all of which have wildly different risks. Each also has significant medical benefits.
The remaining four schedules put varying restrictions on medications. But some medically permissible drugs are more dangerous and addictive than some illegal substances — and the recreationally legal drugs alcohol and tobacco can be more dangerous than some prohibited ones and are not scheduled at all.
Initially passed in 1970, when Richard Nixon was president and alcohol and tobacco weren’t seen as drugs at all, the Controlled Substances Act needs a complete overhaul. . . .
Heroin addiction is the deadliest conditionin psychiatry. But neither LSD nor marijuana use kills by overdose, and marijuana doesn’t seem to have significant impact on mortality rates (the effects of LSD on life expectancy haven’t been extensively studied). While both LSD and marijuana are associated with psychotic experiences, lasting psychosis is uncommon. And recent research suggests that cannabis and psychedelics could actually treat some mental illnesses, including addictions. . . .
There’s no science to this system. The Controlled Substances Act was an attempt to justify existing legislation. Many laws prohibiting specific drugs had passed by the 1960s, often propelled by bias and propaganda and without consideration of relative risk.
For example, racist ideas about Black men who used cocaine and Chinese men who used opium helped push the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act, which prohibited nonmedical use. The 1937 law that banned marijuana was fueled by racism against Mexicans and racist fears about Black jazzmen spreading both addiction and seductive music. . . .
But changing marijuana law isn’t enough. Psychedelics are already presenting similar regulatory issues, with some states already legalizing their use. And it’s unrealistic to think that all of the recreational drugs humans will ever use already exist.
Instead, we should consider creating a new, strict pathway for approval for safer substances that have both recreational and medical uses, like psychedelics — or, for example, some new drug with the benefits of alcohol, but less harm. Without such a path, cartels will continue to be the main innovators, introducing new and often-deadly products to millions without testing or quality control.
Better drug law also demands limits on the marketing and advertising of substances including alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and prescription drugs. As the opioid crisis demonstrated, permitting the marketing of addictive substances can be dangerous, whether aimed at doctors or consumers. Lax rules on commercialization are a disaster.
It’s unclear now how the Biden administration will act on marijuana. But in order to effectively regulate pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, we need new ideas.
The future of plant-based meat was supposed to be cooked to perfection. In recent years, corporate and venture capital funds poured into the space. Fast-food giants such as KFC and Burger King raced to roll out offerings. The meme stock crowd rallied around Beyond Meat. Sales were growing. It would appeal to vegans missing meat! Even better, it would find a following with meat-eaters looking to cut back!
It’s now clear that the hype got ahead of a sometimes less than tasty reality. Sales of plant-based meats in the United States are down by more than 10 percent from this time last year. The issue is basic: The problems fake meat were meant to solve — from the climate impact of industrial farming to the health impacts of meat — are all too real, but the solution it offers appeals to far fewer consumers than expected.
The truth, of course, is that we eat not simply for nutrition, but for enjoyment. Meat offers up a sinewy, gamy, savory experience that is, to date, impossible to reproduce.
When I asked around over a period of weeks, I discovered few fans of processed meat substitutes. “Too chewy,” one friend said. “Mushy,” said another. My older son made a face. The only person I could find who claimed it tasted like the real thing admitted, actually, she hadn’t tasted the real thing in more than 20 years. Some people with vegetarian-leaning diets told me they didn’t mind it and were happy to have it as an option on fast-food menus, and others told me that they enjoyed it as a substitute for breakfast meat like sausage and bacon. But few people seemed to find plant-based meat really delectable.
On the expert side, everyone from Wall Street short sellers to market researchers said that, at least for now, many fake meat sales appeared to be to people giving it a test drive. “I think a lot of the demand was people trying it once,” said noted short seller Jim Chanos, when I called him up to ask how once-promising Beyond Meat ended up as one of the most popular shorts out there. He pointed out the company is "unprofitable.” When I asked him what he himself thought of the offerings, he replied, “Put me in the category of people who tried it once.”
And when it came to health, yes, these “meats” cuts back significantly on saturated fat compared to the real thing — but they also contain more sodium. They’re a highly processed offering. “These are not your mother’s veggie burgers made with beans and other whole plant ingredients,” warns a report issued this year by the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. The industrial food complex is a huge player, with companies such as Tyson Foods and Cargill dominating the space.
Those facts mean that many people well-informed about health have remained skeptical about adding these artificial meats to their diets. “It has the same feel as much else in the industrial landscape, where we think we can outsmart nature,” says Kristin Lawless, the author of “Formerly Known As Food.”
The data shows the new offering doesn’t seem to result in major meat cutbacks — it’s more of a supermarket add-on. As a study published this year in the journal Nature dryly observed, “Interestingly, after a household’s first PBMA [plant-based meat alternatives] purchase, ground meat consumption did not fall.”
In a moment of rising food costs, such novelties become all too easy to dispense with. Of the people who told me they both enjoyed plant-based meat and dined on it regularly (often as a substitute for breakfast meats), several said they’d cut back when inflation kicked up. That points to a significant problem — artificial meat is often more expensivethan at least the budget version of the real thing.
In other words, people want to do right by the environment and their health — but not with a significant cost to their taste buds or wallet.
The United States is basically a two party system -- currently the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Other parties have been established (like the current Green and Libertarian Parties), but have not been able to effectively compete with the two major parties. The last new party that succeeded was the Republican Party, which replaced the Whig Party which was already dying.
Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman -- a former Democrat and former Republican -- think it's time for a new party, and they think they can succeed where countless others have failed. They call their new organization the Forward Party, and they hope to tap into the large group of moderates in this country.
I think their party will be a spectacular failure. Jamelle Bouie does also. Here is part of what he wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times:
Let’s not mince words. The new Forward Party announced by the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and former Representative David Jolly is doomed to failure. The odds that it will attract any more than a token amount of support from the public, not to mention political elites, are slim to none. It will wither on the vine as the latest in a long history of vanity political parties.
Why am I so confident that the Forward Party will amount to nothing? Because there is a recipe for third-party success in the United States, but neither Yang nor his allies have the right ingredients.
First, let’s talk about the program of the Forward Party. Writing for The Washington Post, Yang, Whitman and Jolly say that their party is a response to “divisiveness” and “extremism.”
“In a system torn apart by two increasingly divided extremes,” they write, “you must reintroduce choice and competition.”
The Forward Party, they say, will “reflect the moderate, common-sense majority.” If, they argue, most third parties in U.S. history failed to take off because they were “ideologically too narrow,” then theirs is primed to reach deep into the disgruntled masses, especially since, they say, “voters are calling for a new party now more than ever.”
It is not clear that we can make a conclusion about the public’s appetite for a specific third party on the basis of its general appetite for a third party. But that’s a minor issue. The bigger problem for Yang, Whitman and Jolly is their assessment of the history of American third parties. It’s wrong.
The most successful third parties in American history have been precisely those that galvanized a narrow slice of the public over a specific set of issues. They further polarized the electorate, changed the political landscape and forced the established parties to reckon with their influence.
Take the Free Soil Party.
During the presidential election of 1848, following the annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, a coalition of antislavery politicians from the Democratic, Liberty and Whig Parties formed the Free Soil Party to oppose the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. At their national convention in Buffalo, the Free Soilers summed up their platform with the slogan “Free soil, free speech, free labor, free men!”
The Free Soil Party, notes the historian Frederick J. Blue in “The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848-1854,” “endorsed the Wilmot Proviso by declaring that Congress had no power to extend slavery and must in fact prohibit its extension, thus returning to the principle of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.” It is the duty of the federal government, declared its platform, “to relieve itself from all responsibility for the existence of slavery wherever that government possesses constitutional power to legislate on that subject and is thus responsible for its existence.”
This was controversial, to put it mildly. The entire “second” party system (the first being the roughly 30-year competition between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans) had been built to sidestep the conflict over the expansion of slavery. The Free Soil Party — which in an ironic twist nominated Martin Van Buren, the architect of that system, for president in the 1848 election — fought to put that conflict at the center of American politics.
It succeeded. In many respects, the emergence of the Free Soil Party marks the beginning of mass antislavery politics in the United States. They elected several members to Congress, helped fracture the Whig Party along sectional lines and pushed antislavery “Free” Democrats to abandon their party. The Free Soilers never elected a president, but in just a few short years they transformed American party politics. And when the Whig Party finally collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, after General Winfield Scott’s defeat in the 1852 presidential election, the Free Soil Party would become, in 1854, the nucleus of the new Republican Party, which brought an even larger coalition of former Whigs and ex-Democrats together with Free Soil radicals under the umbrella of a sectional, antislavery party.
There are a few other examples of third-party success. The Populist Party failed to win high office after endorsing the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, for president in 1896, but went on to shape the next two decades of American political life. “In the wake of the defeat of the People’s party, a wave of reform soon swept the country,” the historian Charles Postel writes in “The Populist Vision”: “Populism provided an impetus for this modernizing process, with many of their demands co-opted and refashioned by progressive Democrats and Republicans.”. . .
This is all to say that there’s nothing about the Forward Party that, as announced, would have this kind of impact on American politics. It doesn’t speak to anything that matters other than a vague sense that the system should have more choices and that there’s a center out there that rejects the extremes. . . .
The biggest problem with the Forward Party, however, is that its leaders — like so many failed reformers — seem to think that you can take the conflict out of politics. “On every issue facing this nation,” they write, “we can find a reasonable approach most Americans agree on.”
No, we can’t. When an issue becomes live — when it becomes salient, as political scientists put it — people disagree. The question is how to handle and structure that disagreement within the political system. Will it fuel the process of government or will it paralyze it? Something tells me that neither Yang nor his allies have the answer.
The following is from the editorial board of The Washington Post:
“It just doesn’t get any better than this," President Donald Trump proclaimed in January 2020 as he signed a partial trade deal with China. Mr. Trump heralded the pact as “historic” and “momentous.” He touted his dealmaking abilities for getting China to commit to purchase an extra $200 billion of U.S. products in the next two years.
The results are in: China didn’t buy anything extra from the United States.
The purchases of U.S. exports that China did make in the past two years barely got back to the amount China was purchasing in 2017 — before Mr. Trump started his trade war, according to calculations by Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. exporters will never get back the sales they lost, and few have seen any meaningful growth in their sales to China under the “deal.” “The only undisputed ‘historical’ aspect of that agreement is its failure,” said Mr. Bown.
The main result of Mr. Trump’s bluster on trade was higher costs to the American public. Numerous studies have shown how tariffs were mostly passed along to American consumers, causing prices to rise on thousands of popular everyday items. It was a debacle that was easy to predict. Business leaders, economists and former trade officials from both parties warned the Trump White House repeatedly that the nation would have been better off without the trade war and the tenuous agreement that was ultimately reached with China (and not adhered to).
The smarter move would have been to keep the United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the big trade deal with other nations in the Pacific, including Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, Australia and Chile. The whole purpose of the TPP was to boost trade among other nations and lessen reliance on China, which was excluded from the deal. But Mr. Trump pulled out of the TPP in his first week in office, and other nations went ahead and completed the trade pact on their own. In an ironic twist, China is now petitioning to join.
It’s true that the pandemic didn’t help. The destruction of business travel, tourism and students studying abroad helped fuel a big decline in U.S. services exports to China. Some of the few U.S. industries to see exports to China rise significantly in the past two years were covid-19-related products, semiconductors, liquefied natural gas, corn, wheat, pork and sorghum. In the meantime, U.S. purchases on Chinese goods jumped last year as Americans spent heavily on home remodeling and home entertainment. Overall, 2021 was a record for the U.S. trade deficit, though that is largely a reflection of the strong economic rebound.
The United States has just learned costly lessons about the futility of trade wars and how China can’t be trusted to honor its deals. Now the Biden administration has to figure out how to hold Beijing to account for failing to fulfill its commitments. One conclusion ought to be clear: More tariffs are not the answer.
But it was a lie! His rich buddies may be in great shape now (after the massive tax cut they got), but most Americans are worse off than they've been in many years.
Instead of making the country great, Trump has come close to destroying it, and has seriously damaged its democratic institutions.
To be blunt: Trump is leaving the country in worse shape than any president in modern history!
Here is part of what Stephen Collins had to say at CNN.com:
President Donald Trump is leaving America in a vortex of violence, sickness and death and more internally estranged than it has been for 150 years.
The disorientating end to his shocking term has the nation reeling from a Washington insurrection. The FBI warned Monday of armed protests by pro-Trump thugs in 50 states, which raise the awful prospect of a domestic insurgency. Lawmakers have been briefed about a plot to surround the US Capitol by extremists inspired by Trump's false and dangerous claims the election was stolen. Health officials fear 5,000 Americans could soon be dying every day from the pandemic Trump ignored. Hospitals are swamped and medical workers are shattered amid a faltering rollout of the vaccine supposed to end the crisis.
It took 200 years for the country to rack up its first two presidential impeachments. Trump's malfeasance has led the country down that awful, divisive path twice in just more than a year. With House Democrats expected to formally impeach the President for inciting a mob assault on Congress on Wednesday, he will rely on the Republican enablers who refused to rein in his lawlessness to save him from conviction again.
Millions of Americans have bought into the delusional, poisoned fiction that an election Trump lost was stolen, and there are signs that some police and military forces have been radicalized by the grievance he stokes.
The city Trump has called home for four years is being turned into an armed camp incongruous with the mood of joy and renewal that pulsates through most inaugurations. In a symbol of a democracy under siege, the people's buildings -- the White House and the US Capitol -- are caged behind ugly iron and cement barriers.
This is the legacy President-elect Joe Biden will inherit in eight days when he swears to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution -- an oath that Trump trampled when inciting the Capitol attack last week from behind a bulletproof screen while buckling the cherished US chain of peaceful transfers of power. . . .
The virus is meanwhile running rampant. Eleven states and Washington, DC, just recorded their highest 7-day average of new cases of Covid-19 since the pandemic began. For the first time, the country is averaging over 3,000 deaths from the pandemic per day. Trump's outgoing head of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Robert Redfield warned in a recent interview with McClatchy newspapers that the pandemic would get worse for the rest of January and parts of February and that the country could see 5,000 deaths a day.
And hopes that the nation could soon turn a corner are being tempered by the glitches in the vaccine roll out. Just as with the early stages of the crisis, poor coordination between federal and local and state authorities and the overall lack of a broader distribution plan are hampering the effort.
Like everything else, it will be up to Biden to fix it.
Here's a short list of some of those problems:
He promised to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. While somewhere between 350 and 400 miles of wall have been built, only about 15 miles were built where no wall previously existed. The rest were just replacing wall that already existed.
He promised Mexico would pay for that wall. Mexico has not paid a penny toward building the wall. The small bit of wall built was financed by stealing money from the military's budget -- money needed to repair and build new facilities for soldiers and their families.
He promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He will not get another 4 years (having been defeated in the 2020 election), but in his four years in office he has increased the national debt by trillions of dollars.
He promised to cut taxes for most Americans. He actually did cut taxes, but almost all of the cuts went to corporations and rich Americans. And that tax cut bill had a provision that would start raising taxes on everyone making less than $100,000 a year in 2021, and continue raising those taxes until 2027 (when most workers will be paying more in taxes than they were before the tax cut bill was passed. But the rich and corporations will get to keep those cuts. I consider that another promise broken.
He promised to reduce the trade deficit with China. But his tariff on Chinese goods imported was nothing but a hidden tax on American consumers. China did NOT pay it. American farmers were devastated though as China looked elsewhere for the products they bought. And the tariffs were a failure. The trade deficit with China is larger than it was when Trump took office.
He promised to create a great economy. The economy was good for a while (a continuation of the good economy he inherited from President Obama). But then Trump mishandled the virus pandemic, and created the most serious recession in this country since the Great Depression.
He promised to reform immigration. That never happened. All he did was ban muslims and people of color from entering the country. That's not reform -- it's bigotry.
He promised to unify the country. But early in his term, he called white supremacists "good people". Then went on to refuse to condemn white supremacy or racism, while vilifying the Black Lives Matter movement. His actions have created the worst racial divisions in this country in years, and emboldened racists (who consider him, rightly, to be one of them).
He promised to have a plan to cover all American citizens with health insurance. That plan never happened. All he's done is try to outlaw the Affordable Care Act, which would leave millions more Americans without insurance.
He promised to make America great again. Unfortunately, he meant great for rich white men -- not all Americans.
Trump's term in office has been a disaster. He made beautiful promises, none of which he ever intended to keep. The promises were just more of his lies. The voters were right to kick him out of office.
