I have learned not to bet against the Democratic ability to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They’re the designated marksmen of political self-harm. Joe Biden has thus done a good job of neither taking the bait of Republican obstructionism nor letting it slow him down, but Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi can’t keep themselves from pageantry and grandstanding even when it buys them nothing and hurts their party and peers.
Stranger
That’s a big extrapolation, from “Politico” to “the media” based on one headline. Did the story back up the headline? (Sometimes the headline isn’t backed up by the story.)
Glad this is coming up:
On Tuesday, the White House is expected to announce a task force that will look at demands for restitution, expanded mental health services, the readmission of deported parents and possible permanent legal residency for families like Ms. Cordeiro’s who suffered lingering damage from a policy intended to make it too emotionally punishing for migrant families to attempt to cross into the United States.
More than 1,000 migrant children still in the United States likely remain separated from their parents, and another 500 or more were taken from their parents who have yet to be located, according to the latest estimates from lawyers working on the issue.
One of the continuing obstacles to reunification is that hundreds of parents have been deported to their home countries — places they had fled because of the danger there — and are fearful of having their children sent home to them. And some children are being deported even though their parents are still in the United States trying to obtain legal residence.
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I mean the guy has been President for ELEVEN DAYS! Why hasn’t he fixed everything yet??
When you’ve got the New York Times shouting about Biden owning a Rolex and a Peloton, I feel justified in saying “The media”.
You know I love you (or maybe you don’t) but this comment on NYTimes as media makes even less sense than your comment on Politico. I agree that The Media is a significant virtual entity. And both NYTimes and Politico are components of that entity. But your way of referring to it in these two instances is quite illogical, and I don’t know how to comment further so I’ll just move on.
After the GOP blocked Garland then turned around and forced the GOP tax cuts through reconciliation and forced Barrett down our throats I hope the democrats have learned their lesson, never trust Republicans. They just tried to violently overthrow the government and kill politicians, the time to be naive and submissive is over.
The true goal of the GOP with this tactic is to delay the passage of anything, and to water down anything that does pass. They did the same thing with the ACA, they kept watering it down and having parts of the bill amended or cut, then after months and months of doing that all the republicans voted against it anyway.
Its sad only one party wants to govern in good faith. But thats sadly America.
Sing it, Paul Krugman!
So 10 Republican senators are proposing an economic package that is supposed to be an alternative to President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. The proposal is only a third of the size of Biden’s plan and would in important ways cut the heart out of economic relief.
Republicans, however, want Biden to give in to their wishes in the name of bipartisanship. Should he?
No, no, 1.9 trillion times, no.
It’s not just that the G.O.P. proposal is grotesquely inadequate for a nation still ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. Beyond that, by their behavior — not just over the past few months but going back a dozen years — Republicans have forfeited any right to play the bipartisanship card, or even to be afforded any presumption of good faith.
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There’s such an incredible amount of trumpism to fix!
So Joe’s not just going to toss paper towels into the crowd?
6.2 billion buys a lot of paper towels!
If you have enough paper towels, flooding isn’t a problem. Especially if they’re Bounty towels, amirite? Just soak up all the water!
What are you doing up at this hour? For myself, i’m having a hard time getting to sleep.
It’s the Trumpist solution to rising sea levels. Fits right in with raking forests to prevent forest fires.
In my eldritch years, I’ve lost the self discipline to get to bed when it’s a reasonable bedtime, and have thus drifted towards keeping later and later hours. Getting engrossed in reading the Dope while wearing comfy fuzzy slippers in the cold dark night just makes it worse.
And you can put out forest fires by dumping all those soaked paper towels on top. Win-win!
In other news:
…President Biden signed an executive order requiring his appointees to take a stringent new ethics pledge.
“We’re going to be judged [by] whether or not we restored the integrity and competency of this government,” Biden said that first day, as he swore in appointees. “I need your help badly.”
Biden’s ethics executive order is a roadmap for appointees, meant to signal that those in his administration are committed to serving the American people — not their former or future employers, and not their own self interests. It’s tougher than the ethics order Trump signed and repealed, and it’s more stringent than the one that governed the Obama administration too.
“These are the toughest rules ever,” said Norm Eisen, who helped craft the Obama ethics rules and is now at the Brookings Institution. “Both coming into government and for when his appointees ultimately leave.”
Biden’s order bans accepting gifts from lobbyists, a standard item across administrations. It restores a reporting requirement Trump had done away with and expands the definition of lobbying, after Trump had narrowed it.
Notably, it includes what amounts to a preamble, taking direct aim at some of the most frequent criticisms of Trump’s administration. It asks appointees to pledge to a set of norms that in previous administrations went unstated:
I commit to decision-making on the merits and exclusively in the public interest, without regard to private gain or personal benefit. I commit to conduct that upholds the independence of law enforcement and precludes improper interference with investigative or prosecutorial decisions of the Department of Justice. I commit to ethical choices of post-Government employment that do not raise the appearance that I have used my Government service for private gain, including by using confidential information acquired and relationships established for the benefit of future clients.
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There’s more. Not paywalled.
I wonder what fault Biden’s critics are going to find with this… They’re very creative, so there will be something, for sure.
They’re not that creative. It’s going to be some rendition of Hunter Biden in Ukraine, John Kerry not in Viet Nam, Tara Reade, and probably some way to wedge in Hillary’s email server and Bengazi, too. These people are more of a one trick pony than The Knack playing “My Sharona” at every county fair they can book.
Stranger
They’ll probably take the position that anyone who has to emphasize ethics so strongly must be up to some baaaaad shit. Also, that emphasizing ethics is just being uppity, holier than thou, showing off, and tacitly accusing the Republicans of being UN-ethical. Hell, why make it tacit? I say take out billboards declaring it.
The downside, of course, of emphasizing that the Biden administration is ethical is that the Republicans and Fox News will jump on every perceived misbehavior.
I would like to think that the ethics rules should be codified rather than easily modified Executive Branch policy, but then, Congresscritters are terrified of doing anything that might force them to behave ethically.
"Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said Tuesday he is opposed to passing an economic relief bill without bipartisan agreement.
Asked by reporters if he would support a budget resolution to pass the legislation, Manchin said, “I will only support moving in a bipartisan way.” He added, “That means an open process. I’ve been very clear about that.”"
One wonders how much of the Biden agenda will Manchin support?
That’s a pretty shitty article. Manchin’s quotes don’t align at all with what the headline and first paragraph of the article say. He doesn’t say that he won’t support a stimulus without “bipartisan agreement.” He says he supports moving in a “bipartisan way” and that means an “open process.” Well, Biden is meeting with Republican Senators and has indicated he’s open to some of their idea, like lowering the income threshold for phasing out the checks. If Biden makes some changes based on Republican recommendations and the Rs still all vote against it, Manchin has all the cover he needs to say that there was an “open process.”
President Biden on Tuesday announced the start of efforts to identify and reunite hundreds of families who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration and remain apart years later.
President Biden signed an executive order creating a task force to reunite the families, a step toward fulfilling a campaign promise.
…The Trump administration separated at least 5,500 children from their parents along the border between July 2017 and June 2018 in an attempt to deter migration. The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the government over the policy, says it’s likely that at least 1,000 of those families remain separated — parents scattered mostly across Central America and children living with relatives in the United States.
…Because of poor government record keeping, it remains unclear how many parents were deported without their children and where they are currently living — a major challenge facing any reunion effort. Attorneys and advocates have been unable to find hundreds of separated families, in some cases sending search parties into remote parts of Central America in attempts to locate them.
Many of those parents, unsure if or when they would ever be together again, have spent the past several years trying to raise their children over video calls. Some returned to the U.S. border in hopes of finding their children but were once again apprehended by immigration agents and deported a second time.
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In a clusterfuck of an administration full of atrocities, this is one of the worst. It’s ongoing and the damage will never be undone.
I hope that the Biden administration siezes on the potential political benefits of doing the right thing here – IMO they should have daily briefings complete with some sort of countdown/clicker/etc. that lists how many children still remain to be reunited with their families.
Wow, who even knew this was happening?! A labor relations board that is anti-union and anti-employee. Biden just dumped them.