A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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PAGE 671 of 725
Yep. Democrats hate black people.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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A Few Ways Out of the Debt Ceiling Mess
How will we deal with a G.O.P.-inflicted crisis?
Let’s say you took out a large mortgage to buy a house. Maybe you made the right decision, maybe you didn’t. Either way, you signed the contract. And your next monthly payment on that mortgage is due.
So how do you respond? Do you (a.) grumble but pay the bill, since that’s what you promised to do? Or do you (b.) refuse to pay, giving a speech about how debt is bad and your family must cut spending, even though defaulting on your mortgage will ruin your credit rating and could cause you to lose your house?
On Monday, Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House, decided to go for option (b.). Or maybe “decided” is the wrong word. McCarthy may be the weakest speaker in modern history, the notional leader of a caucus seemingly united by little but its loathing for President Biden, probably including a number of members who would rather see the U.S. economy burn than allow Biden to govern successfully. It’s not even clear that McCarthy could deliver on the dead-on-arrival, vague sketch of a deal he sort of offered in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange.
The issue at hand is whether to raise the federal debt ceiling. This ceiling is a peculiar — and destructive — quirk of the U.S. budget process. Here’s how it works: First, Congress passes legislation that determines federal spending and tax collection. This legislation may lead to a budget deficit. Whether that’s a good idea is beside the point: Congress made its choices, and the Treasury Department must do whatever is necessary to honor duly enacted legislation, which may require borrowing to cover the deficit.
But under current law Congress must also vote a second time to authorize federal borrowing by raising the limit on the allowed amount of debt. And we’re only a few months from the point where America won’t be able to keep paying its bills — that is, spend the money Congress has already told it to spend — unless Congress votes to raise that limit.
Yet now House Republicans aren’t willing to raise the limit unless they are given policy concessions they would never be able to enact via the normal legislative process. Basically, they’re saying, “Nice economy you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Indeed, failing to raise the debt limit would have disastrous consequences, laid out in a useful recent paper from Moody’s Analytics titled “Going Down the Debt Limit Rabbit Hole.” At minimum, it would disrupt the functioning of the federal government. At worst, it would precipitate a global financial crisis, possibly as bad or worse than the crisis of 2008 — because U.S. government debt, normally considered the ultimate safe asset, is the linchpin of financial markets around the world, and many markets might freeze if investors lose confidence that we’ll honor that debt.
What can be done to avoid this potential disaster? McCarthy’s suggestions about what a deal might involve are barely worth discussing. On one side, giving in to blackmail — for that’s what a deal would amount to — would set a terrible precedent. On the other, it’s not clear that McCarthy could make good on a deal even if the Biden administration were willing to go along.
Still, for what it’s worth, McCarthy seems fixated on the idea that many Americans are refusing to work because they’re living off government aid and that we should impose more stringent work requirements on programs like food stamps and Medicaid. In reality, the employed percentage of Americans in their prime working years is near a 20-year high. And furthermore, there is abundant evidence that work requirements don’t actually encourage work — all they do is throw up bureaucratic hurdles that end up denying aid to people who really need it.
But this is, as I said, beside the point. What will actually happen next?
One possibility is that faced with looming financial chaos, McCarthy will allow a floor vote on the debt ceiling, and that a few sane members of his party will cross the aisl
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Yet now House Republicans aren’t willing to raise the limit unless they are given policy concessions they would never be able to enact via the normal legislative process. Basically, they’re saying, “Nice economy you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Oh. You mean what politicians on both sides do every time a bill is passed. *yawn*
And how's this any different than Democrats spending the last two years getting around the filibuster via reconciliation.
You have a very selective and short term memory.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:6ix, you should put a sign somewhere in your house that reads "6ix has health problems because he lives like a fool who believes absolute freedom to eat and drink whatever pleases is absolutely a Constitutional right." There is another group, in Congress, that believes in absolute freedom to do whatever pleases them. It is no surprise that this belief has made America unhealthy. Only the Senate uses the filibuster, not even the House of Representatives. Why? Because the filibuster was invented by slavery-loving Senators to protect themselves from being punished for their atrocious mistreatment of blacks. It would be healthier for America if those Senators understood they need severe self-control rather than the absolute freedom they crave like 6ix craves foods and drinks he should not consume.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Yet now House Republicans aren’t willing to raise the limit unless they are given policy concessions they would never be able to enact via the normal legislative process. Basically, they’re saying, “Nice economy you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
Oh. You mean what politicians on both sides do every time a bill is passed. *yawn*
And how's this any different than Democrats spending the last two years getting around the filibuster via reconciliation.
You have a very selective and short term memory.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Sure thing.
Only if you put up the sign that says "Worlds Smallest Prick on the World's Biggest Dick" first.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:Congressional Republicans just can’t resist trying to cut Medicaid
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan
https://apnews.com/article/health-covid-304d921beee43d29f1862cd4d6ab52
97Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.
It passed a Democrat Senate and was signed into law by Joe Biden*.
Bernie Sanders is not happy.
There is a certain logic to Republicans’ commitment to pursuing Medicaid cuts: Social Security and Medicare are universal programs. Everyone pays in while they work, and then enjoys the benefits when they retire. Medicaid, on the other hand, is targeted to people who have low incomes. Republicans argue that this program, like food stamps and cash welfare, discourages people from seeking work, since they only qualify for benefits if their income is below a certain threshold.
“Assistance programs are supposed to be temporary, not permanent,” McCarthy said. “A hand up, not a handout. A bridge to independence, not a barrier.”
A little more than half of the Republican base continues to consider Medicaid more akin to welfare than health care.
There’s even a risk that the GOP’s attempts to overhaul the program could further reinforce its popularity. An analysis published last year in the American Political Science Review studied the effects of the party’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, of which Medicaid expansion is a core part. The threat to the law helped to solidify its standing with the public, partly because some Republican voters became more resistant to the possibility of losing their benefits. Two of the Republican senators who doomed the party’s plans cited the Medicaid cuts as a major factor in their vote.
https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/4/19/23688022/debt-ceiling-2023-kevin-
mccarthy-medicaid-work-requirement
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan
https://apnews.com/article/health-covid-304d921beee43d29f1862cd4d6ab52
97
Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.
It passed a Democrat Senate and was signed into law by Joe Biden*.
Bernie Sanders is not happy.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Supreme Court Chief Justice’s wife, Jane Roberts, made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms who practice before the Supreme Court, whistleblower documents show
Two years after John Roberts’ confirmation as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms.
Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country. “There are many paths to the good life,” she said. “There are so many things to do if you’re open to change and opportunity.”
And life was indeed good for the Robertses, at least for the years 2007 to 2014. During that eight-year stretch, according to internal records from her employer, Jane Roberts generated a whopping $10.3 million in commissions, paid out by corporations and law firms for placing high-dollar lawyers with them.
That eye-popping figure comes from records in a whistleblower complaint filed by a disgruntled former colleague of Roberts, who says that as the spouse of the most powerful judge in the United States, the income she earns from law firms who practice before the Court should be subject to public scrutiny.
(Other advisory opinions have held that when a judge's spouse is actively recruiting for a firm appearing before that judge, or when a spouse has personally done "high level" recruitment work that generated "substantial fees," recusal would be appropriate.)
"When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong," the whistleblower, Kendal B. Price, who worked alongside Jane Roberts at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Insider in an interview. "During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane's clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It's natural that they'd do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive."
Roberts' apparent $10.3 million in compensation puts her toward the top of the payscale for legal headhunters. Price's disclosures, which were filed under federal whistleblower-protection laws and are now in the hands of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, add to the mounting questions about how Supreme Court justices and their families financially benefit from their special status, an area that Senate Democrats are vowing to investigate after a series of disclosure lapses by the justices themselves.
"She restructured her career to benefit from his [John Roberts'] position," Price wrote in an affidavit accompanying his complaint. "I believe that at least some of her remarkable success as a recruiter has come because of her spouse's position."
Jane Roberts did not respond to emails with detailed questions. When reached by phone on Thursday morning, she declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for the Supreme Court. Totally unsurprising action by a crook.
In an emailed statement, John Cashman, the president of Major, Lindsey & Africa, said that Jane Roberts was "one of several very successful recruiters" at the firm. He attributed his recruiters' success to "the highest standards: Candidate confidentiality, client trust, and professionalism."
A spokesperson for the firm declined to comment further. A spokesperson for Macrae, the recruiting firm where Roberts now works, did not return an email requesting comment. Completely predictable action by crooks.
Mor
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The ‘I’ and the ‘We’
Posted on Monday, May 1, 2023 2:00AM by Martin Butler
Bemoaning the ills of individualism is nothing new. Jonathan Sacks’ bestseller, “Morality, Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times”(2020) provides us with one of the more comprehensive accounts of how we lost community and why we need it back. Justin Welby sums it up well in the foreword: “His message is simple enough: ours is an age in which there is too much ‘I’ and not enough ‘We’. Sacks himself puts the point succinctly when he says: “The revolutionary shift from “We” to “I” means that everything that once consecrated the moral bonds binding us to one another – faith, creed, culture, custom and convention – no longer does … leaving us vulnerable and alone.”
The book is divided into five parts, the first four giving a detailed account of how the shift from ‘We’ to ‘I’ took place and the fifth, entitled ’The Way Forward’, providing some suggestions as to how we might return to a more ‘We’-based society. The breadth and depth of knowledge Sacks displays is impressive, and he draws on a vast range of philosophers and numerous psychological and sociological studies to make his case, which is both detailed yet accessible to the general reader.
. . .
Because Sacks separates morality from political and economic policy, the last section of the book – The Way Forward – provides next to no actual suggestions for the way forward. No one denies that modern liberal democracies face enormous problems, but perhaps the next big ‘experiment’ should be to initiate economic and political policies that genuinely attempt to promote greater equality, more community, less poverty, less corporate greed and so one. Such policies are possible. It is at least worth a try.
More at https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/05/the-i-and-the-we.html
Download all of Jonathan Sacks’ books from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.click/search.php?req=Jonathan+Sacks
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Nobody's reading any of that shit.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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