Enough With The Cutesy Titles, People Are Dead: US Politics January 2021 pt 2

directing the Department of the Interior to indefinitely pause new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters “to the extent possible.” The order does not specifically ban new coal leases and leaves fossil fuel leases on tribal lands up to their discretion.

oh well!

apply this link to ^ too

Moreover, Biden is directing a review of existing fossil fuel leases and development projects, and asked the Interior Department to find ways to boost renewable energy projects, especially offshore wind, on federally owned water and land.

good. how's the staffing and leadership at the Interior rn?

The American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade association, balked at the new restrictions. “Restricting natural gas and oil leasing and development on federal lands and waters could threaten U.S. energy security, economic growth and good-paying American jobs,” API tweeted.

or it could do the opposite. fair play to them.

A key part of the executive orders is creating new offices and committees focused on addressing specific climate problems and goals. Besides formally creating a new White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, led by Gina McCarthy, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Biden on Wednesday established a National Climate Task Force that directs members across agencies and departments “to enable a whole-of-government approach to combating the climate crisis,” according to a White House memo.

Biden is also creating a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative designed to create new jobs in conservation, an Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization to take on projects that cut the pollution from existing and abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure, as well as a White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council and White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to boost environmental justice monitoring and enforcement.

ok this makes for some headlines but is there --

Few details were provided on exactly who will be spearheading the many new efforts, how much funding they will receive, or timelines for delivering on these bold goals.

-- oh.

FWIW, it's pretty clear that they really DID have a Day 1 plan at this point:

When President Biden swore in a batch of recruits for his new administration in a teleconferenced ceremony late last week, it looked like the country’s biggest Zoom call. In fact, Mr. Biden was installing roughly 1,000 high-level officials in about a quarter of all of the available political appointee jobs in the federal government.

At the same time, a far less visible transition was taking place: the quiet dismissal of holdovers from the Trump administration, who have been asked to clean out their offices immediately, whatever the eventual legal consequences.

If there has been a single defining feature of the first week of the Biden administration, it has been the blistering pace at which the new president has put his mark on what President Donald J. Trump dismissed as the hostile “Deep State” and tried so hard to dismantle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/us/politics/biden-government.html

Just think - they’ve been at this for a week!

A week.

Where’s my $2k

Your $2,000 $1,400 tax adjustment is still in the works.

Raymond otm

You’ll get it in the form of coupons from Joe Manchin’s daughter’s company. You can have one third of an epi-pen!

We need to give Americans a choice: your gun or your truck. Pick one, you can't have both.

how's the staffing and leadership at the Interior rn?

Biden's nominee, Deb Haaland, will be the first Native American to lead a cabinet-level agency. This Fox News piece explains all the things Republicans and the fossil fuel industry (but I repeat myself) hate about her. There are a lot.

There is no more telling way to convey the corruption inherent in having a Trump branded property just blocks from a Trump White House than its desolation a week into the Biden era. https://t.co/72gOx7J014

— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) January 27, 2021

they're retiring but not fast enough. retire fossils!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/federal-judges-retire-joe-biden_n_600f3759c5b676ad837652a8?rz

As of Wednesday, Biden has 46 district court vacancies and three appeals court vacancies to fill ― numbers that will only continue to grow.

The president has some work to do if he wants to counter the effect that Trump had on the nation’s courts. Thanks in large part to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s laser focus on confirming judges, Trump put more than 230 people into lifetime judgeships. That’s far more than Obama (175), Bush (206) and Clinton (204) confirmed in their first terms.

ouch yeah I don't even wanna see a list of the oldest Federal judges appointed by Dems, GTFO all of you

really DID have a Day 1 plan

good stuff.

has Breyer handed over his resignation or does he need to be visited by 3 fucking ghosts

The Ghosts of Sic, Milo, and Sleeve.

I’ll tickle his feet until he retires.

lol, I'd prob yell and cuss a lot

I'd cave if I were him

the FUCK you thinking you goddamn corpse, get the hell outta here

He told Slate in December he had no plans to retire, but that he would eventually.

Even-headed thread re: cancelling private prison contracts:

So those are pluses. But, while this move is appreciated, it's hard to be too excited by it. First, President Obama did most of this in 2016. I remember that day, celebrating the move. It was a big thing, for 2016. But here we are, 5 years later, with largely the same move. 4/10

— Udi Ofer (@UdiACLU) January 27, 2021

bring your scythe and use it menacingly imo

That NYT article reminded me of this anecdote (as recounted in Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk):

On his visits to the White House soon after the election, Jared Kushner expressed surprise that so much of its staff seemed to be leaving. “It was like he thought it was a corporate acquisition or something,” says an Obama White House staffer. “He thought everyone just stayed.”

The thing is, if I brought a scythe, I'd try to scare him into retiring. He's stared down Nino and Alito, so who the fuck knows the limits of his selfishness.

omg that Kushner quote

It’s like he’d never read or thought much about how federal politics work.

(Which he probably hadn’t.)

I just finished reading 'Golden Gulag' and yeah, that private prisons EO is fine but doesn't actually accomplish much.

It’s like he’d never read or thought much about how federal politics work.

― Everything's Blue In This Whorl (Raymond Cummings), Wednesday, January 27, 2021 7:04 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

(Which he probably hadn’t.)

― Everything's Blue In This Whorl (Raymond Cummings)

Breyer?

Hahaha

Nah the Kush

btw I do think Breyer will retire this year, just not now. There's too much other shit going on.

Joe Biden had won it,
The Democrats had done it,
And Donald read the comics all the while.
Covid babies being born,
Mitch McConnell we would scorn,
So down on the beltway,
SCOTUS went on trial.

sometimes i wonder what a guy like Kushner would end up doing if he were not born into wealth & privilege and "raised" by unscrupulous jackals

middle school principle, relentlessly mocked by the teachers every bit as much as the kids?
TPS report guy at Initrode?

marjorie taylor greene makes complete sense when you realize she doesn’t even live in the rural district she represents. she lives in a wealthy north atlanta suburb and she used to come into the whole foods i worked at to yell at my friend for cutting her ham too thin

— Mohammad (@MargBarAmerica) January 27, 2021

One of Obama's first EOs was to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay... look how that worked out.

Why we still have a base on Cuba is beyond me... it's barely 90 miles from Florida, we're no longer at war with Spain.. let it go.

have you lived in Miami

No.. forgot about that

Xpost MTG is every moderator on local Re-Open Our Schools Facebook Groups

xpost I know a lot of Cubans actually work on the base, so they probably wouldn't mind if it stayed.

i knew MTG was a wealthy real estate lady. impressive how much better she connects with the crazy than Loeffler. i suppose it helps if you really Believe.

AOC's on Chris Hayes' show now unilaterally praising the Biden EOs on climate push.

Hmph, how dare she, time to cancel AOC

huh funny all the assholes that said AOC should know her place and stfu, she's had pretty non-negligible effect on the party platform as a whole (not just her, obv, the squad, Bernie, etc).

“I’m feeling extraordinarily encouraged,” says @AOC discussing Biden’s executive orders on climate. pic.twitter.com/e41hk8Qe15

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) January 28, 2021

huh funny all the assholes that said AOC should know her place and stfu, she's had pretty non-negligible effect on the party platform as a whole (not just her, obv, the squad, Bernie, etc).

I disagree with this. The party platform has absolutely shifted to the left, in no small part because of Democrats like Sanders, Warren, and the Squad.

I think you will find upon rereading that you do agree with that.

Lol you are correct, I blame the wine

SCOOP: Sen. Dianne Feinstein fails to disclose husband's stock purchase, says she's willing to pay a fine https://t.co/REpoFJomGk via @businessinsider

— Kimberly Leonard (@leonardkl) January 27, 2021

AOC's on Chris Hayes' show now unilaterally praising

omg she's broken from the party to praise Biden

xpost "leading by example"