Where is Trump’s book deal? His paid speeches?

One of the features of American political life is that after leaving high office, politicians cash in by publishing books. Another lucrative activity is giving highly paid speeches to big corporations, Wall Street firms, and other wealthy organizations, with the Clintons and the Obamas being notable examples of how to become spectacularly rich doing so. These speech gigs are really a form of legalized bribery, for the sponsors of these events to gain access and curry favor wit, people who can do favors for them through their contacts in government or when they cycle back into government after the next election. Other people who served in administrations, such as current treasury secretary Janet Yellen and secretary of state Anthony Blinken, went the same route during the Trump era and can make even more money when their current time in office ends.
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The coronavirus relief bill on the way to becoming law

The $1.9 trillion stimulus package proposed by Joe Biden is on the way to becoming law. The US senate passed by a strict partisan 50-49 vote a version of it that was different from what the House of Representatives passed earlier in the week. One Republican senator was absent which meant that vice-president Kamala Harris did not have to cast a tie-breaking vote. Republicans delayed the process as much as they could by introducing amendment after amendment that was defeated, with one senator even invoking a rule that resulted in aides reading aloud the entire text of the 628 page bill, a futile process whose only effect was to waste 11 hours of time.
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TV review: Amend: The Fight for America (2020)

I just finished watching this excellent six-part documentary series that tells the story of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US constitution. It is arguably the most important amendment as it has enabled great strides towards equality in the US. It was enacted in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 that freed all the salves in the south.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

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The massive injustices that go unpunished

The litany of stories of police, prosecutors, and even judges sentencing people to long terms in prison despite being innocent continues to grow. ProPublica reposts one such person Fred Steese who has just been awarded $1.4 million from the state of Nevada for wrongfully convicting him of murder. After having a court rule that he was actually innocent, he was released in 2012 after serving 17 years, with the state just letting him go without even an apology.
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Drug raids should end

The list of tragic deaths of innocent people caused by police and SWAT teams blasting into people’s homes in the middle of the night with battering rams and with their guns firing continues to grow. Some jurisdictions have stopped the use of so-called ‘no-knock’ warrants that allows them to break down doors without warning.

But John Oliver on last week’s Last week Tonight says that there is little difference between a ‘no knock’ warrant and a warrant that requires knocking, since the police are only required to wait only 20 seconds after knocking before breaking down the door. Since they usually arrive in the middle of the night, the 20 second limit is meaningless. Hell, it often takes me longer than that to answer the door even when I am awake and dressed and it is in the middle of the day.
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ICC starts war crimes investigation in Israel’s occupied territories

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has opened a war crimes investigation into war crimes committed in the territories occupied by Israel. An examination of events in that apartheid state is long overdue.

Fatou Bensouda said the probe would cover events in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip since June 2014.

Last month, the Hague-based court ruled that it could exercise its criminal jurisdiction over the territories.

Israel rejected Ms Bensouda’s decision, while Palestinian officials praised it.

The US expressed disappointment and opposition to the move.
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How much of this outrage is performative?

We are now fed a regular diet of outrage about the most trivial of things. The latest are the ones about the Muppets, the Potato Head toy, and some Dr. Seuss books

These things are definitely ginned up in order to get viewers and clicks. I am pretty certain that the people on Fox News and similar sites (even the most dimwitted) know that these things are silly even as they feign outrage over these pseudo-controversies. But I wonder about their target audience of older, white, right-wing viewers. Do they view these things as serious issues and get angry or do they see them as merely entertaining? I am sure that some do get genuinely fired up but I cannot imagine that it can be a large number. Maybe there is an unspoken agreement in which the people in the media pretend to be outraged and their audience pretends to be angry. Or maybe I am just naive in thinking that adults can’t surely care that much about such things.

Stephen Colbert had a very thoughtful segment on the Dr. Seuss books faux-controversy and gives some children’s books recommendations of his own.

Neera Tanden is out

Joe Biden’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget has withdrawn her name in the face of stiff opposition. In all the coverage that I have been reading about her nomination in the mainstream media, attention has focused entirely on her supposedly ‘toxic’ tweets. For Republicans to be upset over mean tweets is of course rich, given that their hero Donald Trump was an utterly vicious tweeter.

But what is noticeable is that nowhere in the coverage did I see any mention of what should have been the real obstacle to her nomination, which is her awful record as head of the Center of American Progress and that silence says a lot about the corrupt bipartisan politics in the US.

Tanden will likely end up in some other Biden administration post because she is a strong Democratic partisan and prolific fundraiser even from unsavory sources and money talks.

The USPS Board gets new people who may fire the postmaster general

Louis DeJoy, the Postmaster General of the US Postal Service, was a businessperson and Republican fundraiser with no experience in the area of the agency he was picked to lead by Trump. He seems intent on ruining the postal service in the name of cost savings and efficiency. Like many Trump and Republican free market enthusiasts, they do not seem to realize that some vital government services are just that, services whose goal should be to serve the public well, not to generate profits.

What is even more puzzling is that in providing uniform pricing for mail, the USPS is using the heavier volume of mail sent to and from urban areas (which makes it cheaper to handle per item) to subsidize the mail sent to and from rural and remote areas. For some rural areas, the postal service is their lifeline to the rest of the country and the way they get essential items like medicines. Since urban areas tend be more Democratic and rural areas more Republican, cutting postal services or raising prices would hurt Republicans more. And yet, Republicans, so indoctrinated against the government, seem to be on board with both those measures that are promoted in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘cost cutting’.
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