Good evening, this is The Smoke Eater for Wednesday, December 23, 2020 and here's a parting shot for you.
Quick Hit
* The Omnibus * Agent Orange and the NDAA * Congressional Shenanigans * Genocide * Pr0n * Lord of War *
NOTE: Technically, it’s still 11pm in Chicago, so I’m leaving the date as it is. There won't be a Friday edition because I've carved out a couple of days for a bender, some research, and rebuilding my portfolio. The Smoker Eater is mobile friendly, totally free and supported by super awesome readers. If you want to be super awesome, tip me on Ko-Fi, find me on Venmo, or Paypal, or subscribe to my Patreon!
Crashing The Omnibus
Trump finally decided to get involved in omnibus and COVID relief negotiations by pretty much threatening to veto legislation he has has played almost no part of all year. In yet another rambling video, Trump complained about the foreign spending his own administration proposed in the COVID aid package that is actually part of the FY2021 $1.4 trillion government funding omnibus. Trump demanded $2,000 stimulus checks instead of the $600 checks his administration has been pitching to congressional negotiators for months.
Democrats have jumped at the chance to put more money into the pockets of Americans, with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib racing to co-author an amendment that would strike $600 checks and replace it with $2,000 checks, but it's unlikely to pass. The measure would require the unanimous consent of both the House and Senate, and most political fortune tellers expect Republicans to block it. Pelosi has said she'll put the measure on the House floor for a vote Thursday or Friday.
There's a growing chorous of conservative blowhards on AM radio who are suddenly concerned about government spending. Inside the White House the charge is being led by Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Since Trump isn't on speaking terms with any of the primary negotiators, it's likely things could get ... interesting if Congress can't get the bill onto the Resolute Desk by 11:59 on Wednesday night.
Speaking in terms of raw numbers, the omnibus passed both the House and Senate with enough votes to override any veto, but there's no telling on how quickly that could happen as Trump could simply not sign the bill, and kill it via a pocket veto. On Wednesday night Politico reported that minions in Trumpland don't think Trump's tantrums will be politically damaging to him, even if they screw pretty much everyone and everything else.
Fun Fact: If Trump doesn't sign the omninus before Dec. 28, when the current final stopgap measure expires, and Congress can't pass another stopgap or veto override, Trump shut the government down four times during his one-term presidency.
History Lesson
The framework for the latest round of COVID aid came from the "March to Common Ground," a $1.5 trillion dollar bill the House Problem Solvers Caucus unveiled on Sept. 15 to break the impasse between the $3.4 trillion dollar Heroes Act the House passed in May, and the so-called "skinny" or "targeted" bill $500 billion joke Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell farted out at the beginning of September amid public outcry.
As benefits from the original CARES Act were running out in July and August, McConnell was telling reporters that Republicans "think that we've already done enough," and saying the House $3.4 trillion bill was, "far beyond what is necessary to get us through this next period as we continue to wrestle with the coronavirus." McConnell's own bill failed in the Senate, with Democrats calling it, "pathetic," and "emaciated."
Here's McConnell's bill. Instead of the five month $600 boost to unemployment, it added $300 for about three months, and liability shields for businesses, hospitals and schools. The White House's resident T.V. economist Larry Kudlow would tell Bloomberg TV, "We can live with it -- we can absolutely live with it."
While Trump was planning super spreader events all over the Midwest, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was talking with the Problem Solvers Caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. House Democrats passed a $2.2 trillion bill on Sept. 29 after Mnuchin proposed a $1.62 trillion bill with $400 for unemployment, and another $1,200 stimulus (the gossip was that Trump wanted people to get more checks with his name on them before the election). McConnell didn't join those negotiations, instead he was privately telling the White House and Republicans not to support any additional COVID aid until after the election. When the White House and Democrats reached a $1.8 trillion deal just before the election, McConnell said he wouldn't bring it to the floor because, "My members think half a trillion dollars, highly targeted is the best way to go."
Pelosi spent the last few weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 election brushing off the pleas of centrists Democrats to give them something to take bake to their constituents. Pelosi's calculus wasn't much different than McConnell's in that she was gambling on another Blue Wave that simply didn't materialize on election day.
Negotiations stalled, and bipartisan group of centrist Senators announced a $908 billion compromise on Nov. 30 that Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and PEOTUS Joe Biden quickly got behind. McConnell refused to sign onto that too. Instead, he responded by proposing a skinnier version of the same turd he couldn't flush two months earlier.
It wasn't until this weekend when the New York Times reported that McConnell was afraid Republicans might lose the Senate runoffs in Georgia if some kind of additional stimulus measures weren't taken immediately -- an ironic twist as Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loefeller opposes bailouts for poor people (while simultaneously supporting farm subsidies for wealthy families like hers). When the $908 billion bill was split into a $160 billion for state and local government funding and McConnell's liability shield, and $748 billion for everything else, McConnell suddenly arrived at the negotiating table and refused to eat his crow.
The Bottom Line: Increasingly partisan political divisions and blustering soapbox speeches have created a legislative atmosphere that's forced Congress to resort to massive omnibus legislation in order to pass the rather mundane fiscal year spending bills for about a decade. Nothing can get done because everyone (Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, DSAs, Independents, neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, progressives, Blue Dogs, RINOs, Greens, the Whigs, the Bull Moose, etc.) wants to appear as though they gutted some pork while riding bravely atop their high horse.
Legislators spend the majority of time shitposting on Twitter and/or doing six-minute talking head stand-ups in the Capitol Rotunda to create the appearance of legislating. It allows them to receive accolades from their base which they can turn into donors. They can hide that money in Super PACs -- which are still shockingly legal -- and do literally whatever they want with that money. Everyone does it; the people who say they don't are bullshit artists.
Defense Bill
Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act because it would rename bases named after Confederate generals, and it didn't contain any legislation that would let him sue Twitter for calling a liar. In his veto notification, Trump wrote without a hint of irony, "I will not approve this bill, which would put the interests of the Washington, D.C., establishment over those of the American people." Congress is expected to begin the veto override process on on Monday. The veto sets the stage for Congressional Republicans to directly challenge Trump for the first time. In vetoing the bill, Trump denies benefits to Blue Water Navy vets who were exposed to Agent Orange, and a pay raise for troops.
BONUS: CQ/ROll Call's John Donnelly has an quick breakdown of some of the ways Congress was able to reallocate money using rescission to get more ships, missiles, and F-35s than anyone asked for in their initial budget proposals.
FUN FACT: Trump had more defense secretaries than any previous president.
Congress Critters
Colum Lynch has a retrospective about all the ways Trump tried to kill the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (AKA: JCPOA, AKA: the Iran nuclear deal) in 2020 as its "maximum pressure" campaign failed to keep Iran from furthering its nuclear capabilities. Now, Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are hoping to use the legislative process as an end-run around incoming PEOTUS Joe Biden's pledges to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords and JCPOA. From my best guestimate, the scheme seems to work like this: leak a letter asking Trump to send both agreements to the Senate to a bootlicking insider on the Hill. The insider pens an article that generates buzz on social media and, with a little luck, shitposting bots convince Trump to send both agreements to the Senate for ratification. It's unlikely 2/3 of the Senate would ratify either agreement, thus making their resurrection impossible.
The Senate is floating a tentative 2021 legislative calendar; the House released theirs a few weeks ago. Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski adds that things are still in flux because of COVID restrictions, and there's also growing concern Trump could start making legally questionable recess appointments during the transition from the 116th Congress to the 117th.
Lindsey McPherson has a profile on members of the Problem Solvers Caucus. They're aiming to become the linchpin of the 117th. They want to grow their ranks between 50 and 60 legislators who are eager to make a name for themselves as clichés who aren't afraid to reach across the aisle.
A couple of freshman gun fetishists want to bring firearms onto the Hill. Ultimately it's not really their decision, that falls to the Capitol Police Board (which is the sergeants-at-arms for the House and Senate, the Architect of the Capitol, and the chief of the Capitol Police). D.C. has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but because D.C. isn't a state and the Capitol building is federal land … well, things can get stupid rather quickly.
The Georgia run-offs aren't the only unsettled 2020 election after Iowa Democrat Rita Hart filed an appeal with the House Administration Committee contesting the results in Iowa's 2nd. Hart, who lost by six votes according to official records, says there were 22 "legally cast but unlawfully excluded" votes that could have put her over the top. At the moment it's not clear if Hart's opponent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, will be seated on Jan. 3 with the rest of the incoming House members. The Congressional Research Service notes that it's uncommon for these kinds of challenges to succeed, but it's not historically unprecedented. In a bit of a twist, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board bitches that the last time Democrats overturned a narrow vote ("The Bloody 8th") it contributed to the rise of Newt Gingrich.
Odds and Ends
Reuters has a deeply researched investigation into qualified immunity, a legal shield offered to police officers. Reuters found that since 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly sided with police on qualified immunity cases, even leaning on federal appeals courts to reexamine cases where an officer is found to have used excessive force. "The high court has also put its thumb on the scale by repeatedly tweaking the process," Reuters reports, "It has allowed police to request immunity before all evidence has been presented. And if police are denied immunity, they can appeal immediately – an option unavailable to most other litigants, who typically must wait until after a final judgment to appeal."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is considering charging China with genocide over its treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority, Foreign Policy reports, charging the U.S. ambassador-at-large for the Office of Global Criminal Justice, and top State Department officials to conduct a review. If Trumpland does find China is committing genocide it could trigger a whole host of international legal quandaries the incoming Biden administration would have to deal with. Biden's decades in politics have forged a realist approach in dealing with the worlds most populous nation, and in August he accused China of genocide. There's been bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress to call China's treatment of Uighurs and other ethnic peoples (which include mass surveillance, mass arrests imprisonment, forced labor, forced sterilization and abortions, torture) a genocide. In 2019, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists began publishing "The China Cables," leaked government documents that include a manual for security officials operating secret detention camps in China's Xinjiang province. Additionally, the spending omnibus and NDAA contain legislation that accuses China of genocide, and provides funding to remove equipment of Chinese telecoms from networks.
BONUS: PBS has a Frontline documentary on China's treatment of Uighur people. The majority of the documentary is filmed undercover and shows a repressive police state in Xinjiang. There's also blockbuster story on Chinese espionage operations that Zach Dorfman wrote earlier this week. The TLDR is that the Uncle Sam has been getting PWNED for about 20 years.
Last week the Financial Times published a story about Mind Geek, the secretive owners of the most trafficked websites in the world (it's porn). The taboo nature of porn has allowed the company to float under the regulatory radar to create an empire of content and advertising, and their deep pocketed investors are just fine with that.
One More Thing...
2005's Lord of War begins with a truly fascinating scene that shows the manufacturing, delivery, and use of a bullet from a first-person perspective. The film itself is about the rise of a fictional arms dealer, played by Nicolas Cage, whose character and exploits are based off real stories of smugglers and traffickers from the former Soviet Union. In 2006, Amnesty International praised the film for drawing attention to arms trafficking. [Youtube]
OK, here's a cute critter video: IT'S TOPI!
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