US Politics: July 2020 - "Denigrating this Luxury Avenue"

Rick Scott was kind of inherently corrupt coming in, he didn't require the state to take him there.

something to be said about how we elected a guy whose company was fined for Medicare fraud, but hey, the other guy was A LIBRUL

As a neighbor, I don't get the sense that Wisconsin is so much corrupt as it is just ground zero for GOP efforts to flip what remains of the blue state Midwest.

what are the most corrupt state governments? NY/RI/OH/IL pop to mind, but maybe i just haven't heard enough about FL/WI/NC etc

*raises hand, waves from NJ*

Fascinating that Chris Christie somehow isn’t in prison over the bridge thing

here's a fun one:

As the number of coronavirus cases continues to surge, nearly three-quarters of Americans say the behavior of their fellow citizens is making the pandemic worse, according to new Axios-Ipsos polling.

The survey finds that 74 percent of Americans overall feel that way. Among Democrats, the number is even higher: 83 percent. Meanwhile, 65 percent of Republicans think other Americans are making things worse.

The same survey, which was released Tuesday, also finds that nearly a third of Americans (31 percent) think the actual death toll from the pandemic is less than what is being officially reported.

Republicans (59 percent) and people who get most of their political information from Fox News (61 percent) are the most likely to say that the real number of deaths is less than the official count, according to the polling. Meanwhile, most Democrats (61 percent) believe the real toll of the pandemic is greater than what has been officially reported.

as usual, the ~30% of the country that makes up the core of trump morons believes the exact opposite of the truth

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/axios_covid-19_w17-v2.jpg

all them dead bodies piled up in mounds

You'd think those Republicans would see all the bodies piled up, given the prominence of all those FEMA death camps.

Oh, wait, wrong president.

more than half the population is abnormal

FBI Special Agent in Charge Chris Hoffman

not the point I know but "Special Agent in Charge" is an actual position?? It sounds like something my kid would make up

Apropos of not much, and 10 days early, but I nominate "I'll be right someday" for August thread title.

what are the most corrupt state governments? NY/RI/OH/IL pop to mind, but maybe i just haven't heard enough about FL/WI/NC etc

I think WI and NC are outstandingly corrupt in the political dimension (undercutting separation of powers, lame-duck skulduggery, voter suppression, etc.) but WI pols at least are not known for the refrigerator-full-of-cash style of corruption.

the FBI Special Agent in Charge reports directly to the G.R.O.S.S. Dictator-for-Life, iirc

Special Agent In Charge sounds like a Kevin James movie

sounds better in the original German etc etc

State-level we're merely notable, tho not noteworthy. The city of Philadelphia, however, easily makes top 5 most corrupt cities.

the level of ongoing, insane corruption in city and state government is perhaps the most surprising thing about the US to me now that i've been here for a few years. real failed state stuff. on another level to anything i've seen in any other country, but it's considered completely normal here.

Frank Rizzo taught me everything I needed to know about Philadelphia's city government.

the partisan polarization is why. when state and local governments are always run by members of the same party, incumbency is an even bigger hurdle for primary challengers to overcome, and any sort of accountability that's supposed to happen at the ballot box erodes to almost nothing.

DC is seeing more of its old machine politicians thrown out because the demographics are changing, and the new-ish voters are much less trusting of the characters who've been in charge.

don't worry, the thriving local news industry will find the wrongdoers.

The Washington Post still loves the old incumbents lol

the western us has been ruled by real estate interests and has been since the louisiana purchase, "government" exists to facilitate that

I grew up during Wilson Goode's Philly, when the Dem mayor proved he could be both corrupt *and* bomb his own city.

You want to talk about failed state stuff?

Philly's sanitation workers have been getting infected with Covid at alarming rates, but aren't given PPE or hazard pay for working long shifts during this crisis, when more residential trash has been being produced due to more people staying at home.

As a result, many of these sanitation workers, if not ill, are calling off work, because they're working 7-14 days in a row for 12 hours on trucks that don't have AC.

The city won't give them hazard pay or PPE, but is considering hiring private services to deal with trash.

In the meantime, our garbage day is Friday. We were told to delay one day, so Saturday. It's now Tuesday, it's been 90+ Fahrenheit every day for the past week, and none of the garbage has been collected. None of it, and no answers as to when it will be collected so that people could plan for these circumstances. No communication. Nothing.

I was born in 84, so don't remember much of Rizzo or Goode except their horrific legacies.

on twitter recently i saw some veteran pol mention that at no level of government had he ever seen 'lobbying' more effective than that by real estate developers and car dealerships in albany, ny

oof re: trash. i bet joe bologna feels like he's back in the old country.

It smells like hotdog water and diapers everywhere.

he finally became president

THE NOTE: The president is displaying a new tone and a new level of engagement, after aides and allies have pleaded with him to recognize the gravity of the moment, @rickklein writes. https://t.co/8giw8IfiE3

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 21, 2020

It smells like hotdog water and diapers everywhere.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Tuesday, July 21, 2020

^^ best line from The Waste Land imo

Key graf:

Sixty-three percent of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement and a record 69% -- the most by far in 32 years of polling -- say Black people and other minorities are denied equal treatment in the criminal justice system, two of several signs of deep changes in public attitudes on racial discrimination. These views don't necessarily translate into majority preferences on policy -- 55% oppose reducing police funding in favor of more social services, for instance, with 40% in favor. Nonetheless, this ABC News/Washington Post poll finds substantial shifts in how Americans view underlying issues of racial justice.

stoked to hear about LAW AND ORDER/STATUES in this afternoon's global pandemic briefing.

BLM is insanely popular and 1% of people think crime is the most important issue in this election. a president who was more trusted might be able to bend reality and increase that 1%, but his other problem is that he is completely untrusted! no one believes anything he says!

There's also this, which is just fabulous news
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/20/trump-john-yoo-lawyer-torture-waterboarding?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR1Suv5X1cDAJcx4bc4kiPNMXZLp7T3iphNbp421Jt5kTTPRm7tYh6TRgyM

John Yoo told the Guardian he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders on whether to apply existing federal laws.

“If the court really believes what it just did, then it just handed President Trump a great deal of power, too,” Yoo, a professor at Berkeley Law, said.

“The supreme court has said President Obama could [choose not to] enforce immigration laws for about 2 million cases. And why can’t the Trump administration do something similar with immigration – create its own … program, but it could do it in areas beyond that, like healthcare, tax policy, criminal justice, inner city policy. I talked to them a fair amount about cities, because of the disorder.”

Snowflake liberal Berkeley professor John Yoo

I knew that fuckface's name sounded familiar. And of course found a way to blame Obama in there!

Yoo hate to see it.

It smells like hotdog water and diapers everywhere

"sixth borough of NYC"

It just came to my realization that Chad Wolf is both a Chad and a Wolf.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Lawandorder01.jpg

Well I had my money on law and order but sure

The president on Ghislaine Maxwell — "I just wish her well, frankly."

— Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) July 21, 2020

fbclid=IwAR1Suv5X1cDAJcx4bc4kiPNMXZLp7T3iphNbp421Jt5kTTPRm7tYh6TRgyM

Game recognize game https://t.co/U1pFnJjwOv

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) July 21, 2020

nyt loves the sober tone

And the Trump virus briefing wraps up after just about 35 minutes. POTUS seems to have absorbed -- for now -- that he needs a major reboot to save his campaign.

His tone was sober, he acknowledged the need for masks, that things will get worse before they get better.

— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) July 21, 2020

He kept saying "China Virus" tho.

China Virus is Trump's "sober" way of talking about the Kung Flu

lol "Trip" Gabriel deleted the Tweet.

the ratio was cancelling him

lol the NYT even changed the lede for its story.

the coronavirus spending plan seems to be in some disarray

A major intraparty rift widened between the White House and Senate Republicans on Tuesday as they stumbled to formulate a unified coronavirus budget plan, lacking agreement on policy goals, spending parameters, and even deadlines.

The Republican and White House position changed multiple times as the day went on, with some GOP lawmakers refusing to rally behind President Trump’s demand for a payroll tax cut while others worked to convince White House emissaries that more money was needed for testing and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Complicating matters, other Republican lawmakers appeared mortified about the growing size of the spending bill, leading to bickering over which policies to remove and warning that miscalculations could allow Democrats to seize control of the White House and Senate in November.

“What in the hell are we doing,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) asked his colleagues at the lunch with White House officials, according to several participants who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the exchange. Cruz was incensed at the push among his colleagues to boost spending levels.

The whole process now appears likely to spill into August, something the White House and congressional Democrats had hoped to avoid, because it would mean more than 20 million Americans would lose emergency unemployment benefits when they expire at the end of this month. They have not mapped out a plan for what would happen to these people as the pandemic’s turmoil continues to weigh on the U.S. economy.

Part of the problem stemmed from the White House’s failure to go into the talks with a preset strategy or a list of proposals that they knew GOP lawmakers would rally behind. This miscalculation created immediate problems. Numerous demands the White House had tried to formulate over the weekend were erased within hours.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Monday that the goal was to keep the spending bill around $1 trillion, but by Tuesday he had abandoned that. White House officials also indicated they would no longer push for cuts to testing and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And after a barrage of criticism of President Trump’s tax cut demand, White House officials stopped trying to press the matter.

White House, GOP in disarray over coronavirus spending plan as deadline nears on expiring emergency aid

I read that story twenty minutes ago and had to stop -- too fucking long, lots of detritus.