Today In Biden Land

[Kirkland Laing]

I love graphs.

Amazing that as many as 11 percent of people polled said the government spends too much money on infrastructure.

I'd love to hear their "reasoning."

I was thinking when I read this there's no way even eighty nine percent of Americans (or any other country's population) know what infrastructure means so I looked up the actual poll and the question actually explains what infrastructure is. Amazing these days that ninety percent of Americans can agree on anything. I wonder what would happen to this number of conservative media went on an anti infrastructure jihad for a month or two.

Of course you know more than most Americans but most infrastructure bills go into union pockets.

Yes, union bosses have famously made huge generational wealth fortunes from American government infrastructure spending. It's the one thing people think of when the subject of infrastructure spending comes up.

Do they? I thought most go to private businesses who win contracts.

I was joking.

[Kirkland Laing]

The party of the workers:

One of the most distinctive and important features of the American political economy is the power differential between business and labor. Not only is the former vastly larger and wealthier, it also commands respect and attention from the political system that the latter could never dream of. A small window into the differential can be seen in comments made by Mitt Romney the other day at the hearings for Julie Su, the Biden administration’s nominee for Labor secretary.



Romney complained that Su has met frequently with unions, but only recently with business. This means, he complained, she is not “an unbiased, neutral arbiter”:

It is hard to believe that Julie Su—whose public calendar shows standing meetings with unions and only very recent engagements with businesses—would be an unbiased, neutral arbiter when negotiating agreements. Her lack of experience and competency makes her unfit to lead @USDOL. pic.twitter.com/98yZzR4nbN
— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) April 20, 2023

The “unbiased, neutral arbiter” standard is an interesting one. It is not a demand that is normally made of other Cabinet secretaries. The Commerce secretary is understood as a representative of business. The Treasury secretary is supposed to have at least the respect of Wall Street. They are not generally pressed to demonstrate a record of cooperation with labor. So should all Cabinet secretaries be neutral between business and labor, or just the Labor secretary?
And if this expectation of neutrality applies to just the Labor secretary, should it apply to all of them, or just Democratic ones? Because Republican Labor secretaries generally adopt uncompromising pro-management positions.




Donald Trump’s last Labor secretary, Eugene Scalia*, came from a corporate law firm, where he bitterly fought unions over workplace-safety protections. The AFL-CIO called him a “lifelong union-buster” who “has yet to find a worker protection he supports or a corporate loophole he opposes.” Romney votes for his nomination.
Trump’s first pick to run the department, fast-food executive and right-wing ideologue Andrew Puzder, was equally loathed by unions. (His nominations ultimately failed in the face of credible domestic-abuse allegations.) But even after other Republicans abandoned Puzder, Romney — at the time just a concerned private citizen — stuck his neck out to write a Facebook post endorsing the embattled nominee.
Romney’s concept of neutrality means, in practice, “What’s mine is mine, and what’s your is ours.”Labor is a special interest, and management is just “the economy.”



* Yes, his son.

[Kirkland Laing]

American debt changes by president:

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/sta...47983910240256

and

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/sta...50051924320256


After Clarence Thomas we now get:

https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/stat...29176616767496

good job Supreme Court justices don't have any ethics requirements at all or that would be two of them having to resign in two weeks. Any other federal level judge would be out.





And:

Justice Clarence Thomas said he was advised he didn’t have to disclose private jet flights and luxury vacations paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow because, although a close friend, Crow “did not have business before the court.”
But in at least one case, Crow did.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...&sref=yaJhKSOh



And John Roberts has just declined to testify to the Senate judiciary committee about all this.

[palmerq]

U.S. Economy Continues to Grow, but More Slowly https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/b...UkQ4kBLTYvO-LZ

Bidens recession still not going to plan, but this is maybe a good thing? Real GDP slightly up but nothing crazy after an assault by interest rates

[Kirkland Laing]

U.S. Economy Continues to Grow, but More Slowly https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/b...UkQ4kBLTYvO-LZ

Bidens recession still not going to plan, but this is maybe a good thing? Real GDP slightly up but nothing crazy after an assault by interest rates

It'll be amazing if the US economy avoids some level of recession. The interest rate rises that started last year won't have any effect on the real economy until this year so America could end up with a recession it didn't need to have seeing as inflation is abating by itself.

[Spicoli]

Not feeling the complete confidence for a repeat Biden-Harris ticket. Honestly between the tribes, both Biden and Trump this feels like a blurry dream you wake up in the middle of the night from. Shame on both factions for not cultivating and encouraging new blood knowing where we're heading. And it's not in the form of friggin AOC or a Tim Scott. They say Kennedy is polling in the 20 percent territory . All I see ahead are two very very fractured tickets and split vote. Anyone ever hear this Rep Katie Porter? Talk about sharp and pointed in a heated debate.

[TitoFan]

Not feeling the complete confidence for a repeat Biden-Harris ticket. Honestly between the tribes, both Biden and Trump this feels like a blurry dream you wake up in the middle of the night from. Shame on both factions for not cultivating and encouraging new blood knowing where we're heading. And it's not in the form of friggin AOC or a Tim Scott. They say Kennedy is polling in the 20 percent territory . All I see ahead are two very very fractured tickets and split vote. Anyone ever hear this Rep Katie Porter? Talk about sharp and pointed in a heated debate.

I hear ya. Been saying this for months now. I don't buy all the excuses for how there's absolutely nothing to choose from in 2024. There's been enough time. So here we are... with a POTUS who would be approaching 90 by the end of his next term, if elected. And a Pied Piper (and his Minions) who for all intents and purposes should be in prison. And if something happens to Biden between now and when he's given his gold watch and shown the door... you know who's next in line.

Meanwhile, you've got illustrious Congresspeople like AOC on one side of the aisle... and horseface... I mean... MTG... on the other. Get your popcorn and buy your tickets. The circus is only getting started.

[Kirkland Laing]

Not feeling the complete confidence for a repeat Biden-Harris ticket. Honestly between the tribes, both Biden and Trump this feels like a blurry dream you wake up in the middle of the night from. Shame on both factions for not cultivating and encouraging new blood knowing where we're heading. And it's not in the form of friggin AOC or a Tim Scott. They say Kennedy is polling in the 20 percent territory . All I see ahead are two very very fractured tickets and split vote. Anyone ever hear this Rep Katie Porter? Talk about sharp and pointed in a heated debate.

I hear ya. Been saying this for months now. I don't buy all the excuses for how there's absolutely nothing to choose from in 2024. There's been enough time. So here we are... with a POTUS who would be approaching 90 by the end of his next term, if elected. And a Pied Piper (and his Minions) who for all intents and purposes should be in prison. And if something happens to Biden between now and when he's given his gold watch and shown the door... you know who's next in line.

Meanwhile, you've got illustrious Congresspeople like AOC on one side of the aisle... and horseface... I mean... MTG... on the other. Get your popcorn and buy your tickets. The circus is only getting started.

The establishment people in parties would like a different leader but that's impossible for different reasons. In the case of the GOP the base, or at least a big enough chunk of them, are still in love with Trump. They're Trump voters first and GOP voters second. Trump is going to win the nomination probably while under multiple indictments and there's nothing anybody can do about it.


In the case of the Democrats Biden is the least worst option. And he's the incumbent. Very difficult to get rid of unless his health goes. The party are going to back him and that's that. If he did have to step down there'd be a primary and it would tear the party apart. Harris would claim it should be her but I'm not sure even all of the black caucus would vote for her as they're interested in winning and she's a loser. But she'd have enough black support to cause a split in the party.



A contested Democratic primary would be a gigantic clusterfuck and could cost the party any shot of winning the election. And there's just nobody on the bench in the party that's any good. Nobody with any kind of national profile who looks like a plausible candidate. Maybe Whitmer, the governor for Michigan I think would be a prospect in 2028. Can win in the midwest and is moderate (both go together). But loads of flaws, is a woman for starters. Amy Klobuchar was a similar type but sunk without trace in the 2020 primary. Voters weren't interested. The California governor is trying to set the stage for himself in the future but is a grandstanding tit. The Democratic version of Meatball Ron.



You can't manufacture candidates otherwise both parties would manufacture the perfect candidate for every election. You just have a bunch of flawed human beings who look in the mirror one day and see a future American president. Then these fuckers run in a quadrennial beauty contest. They have a bunch of image makers and advisors who try and sculpt them into the most electable version of themselves they can possibly be and a lot of them spend years and millions of dollars preparing to run but the majority just sink without trace. One thing about the endless bloody length of American election campaigns is they expose the people running in a lot of detail and the vast majority find they're not ready for primetime/garbage candidates stroke people/nobody likes them.


Which makes you wonder how Trump got elected. The reason is that the GOP voters are so radicalised by their bullshit media that they're basically domestic terrorists these days. And this isn't going away anytime soon, going to get worse in fact. The terrifying thing is they could actually elect Trump next year.



It's a fucking sorry choice America is facing. You have an outright crook on one side who will wreck the American democratic system and usher in an unknown length period of rampant criminality and corruption and significant economic damage if he's elected and he easily could be. On the other side you have an ancient old geezer who is past it and should not be running but there is unbelievably nobody better on the Democratic side. There wasn't four years ago and there isn't now.