I mean the white house hold a press conference everyday, and they have officials out, cabinet members touring talking to the press (I mean fuck sake Pete Buttigieg was even on fox for god sake). But because they got so used to palace intrigue bullshit they are unhappy.
Yeah, but what does the official line really mean? Because it can't be the case where they all came to an agreement on policy in a meeting and then say what that agreement entails.
Katherine Tai, a longtime congressional staff lawyer, won Senate confirmation on Wednesday as the first woman of color to serve as the top U.S. trade negotiator.
The Senate approved her nomination 98-0, marking a rare bipartisan agreement in a deeply-divided Washington.
Among her first tasks will be advising the president on what to do about existing tariffs on most imported Chinese products, presiding over enforcement of a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, and seeking a negotiated end to a long-running commercial dispute with the European Union.
"Katherine Tai, a longtime congressional staff lawyer, won Senate confirmation on Wednesday as the first woman of color to serve as the top U.S. trade negotiator.
Whenever I see this, while it's great this is the case finally, it's also an indictment on the system, that it's taken this long.
Though, to be honest, I was legit surprised when I looked it up, and saw it was a 98-0 confirmation. Honestly thought confirmations would cap out at ~80 votes.
Katherine is the lead advisor to the Chairman and Democratic Members of the Committee on Ways and Means on matters of international trade. She was named to this position in 2017 after serving three years on the Committee as Trade Counsel.
Katherine came to the Committee in 2014 from USTR’s Office of the General Counsel, first as Associate General Counsel from 2007 to 2011 and then as Chief Counsel for China Trade Enforcement with responsibility for the development and litigation of U.S. disputes against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Before joining USTR, Katherine worked in the international trade departments in several Washington, DC law firms. From 1996 to 1998, she lived and worked in Guangzhou, China teaching English at Zhongshan University as a Yale-China Fellow.
Oh, and she is from Taiwanese descent. It shouldn't matter, but it will. So, given that the US is not negotiating any trade deals at the moment thanks to COVID except taking the UK to the cleaners post-Brexit, and given that the national mood is "fuck Xi", that vote doesn't surprise me at all.
man, it's really nice to have a little more subtlety coming out of the white house. Not that this is especially subtle but coming off the last admin you just love to see it.
President Biden will announce a top official from a leading gun-control group as his nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — a key agency in combating gun violence that has gone without a permanent director for years.
Two people familiar with the matter said Biden plans to nominate David Chipman, a veteran ATF special agent who currently serves as senior policy adviser at Giffords, as his ATF director nominee. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose a personnel decision before it is made public.
Before his current role at Giffords, the advocacy group led by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), Chipman was a special agent at ATF for more than two decades with a focus on firearms programs, according to the biography on his website.
Wow so someone concerned about guns falling into the wrong hands in charge of an agency who's task that is, and he literally worked there previously? I dunno might be too competent.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Wow so someone concerned about guns falling into the wrong hands in charge of an agency who's task that is, and he literally worked there previously? I dunno might be too competent.
I can't see any Republican voting for him, and unless there's already a deal made, there's likely several Democrats that will have objection there.
We'll see, does Manchin really want to be seen as pro no gun enforcement with the recent mass shootings?
Oh, I'm not saying he's full raving gun nut. After all, he does have the failed Manchin-Toomey bill on his resume.
But I can absolutely see him saying "This guy is too extreme (cause of who he works for), give me someone a little less so, and I'll vote for them.".
Just like he did on the minimum wage, and he's looking to do on the corporate tax rate.
Attempting to be "reasonable" by rejecting initial offers.
Going out of the gate with someone from a gun control advocacy group? I don't like the odds.
That gun control advocacy group being the one run by a former Congresswoman who was shot in the head, and who is now currently a Senate spouse and likely knows Manchin personally.
We'll see, does Manchin really want to be seen as pro no gun enforcement with the recent mass shootings?
Oh, I'm not saying he's full raving gun nut. After all, he does have the failed Manchin-Toomey bill on his resume.
But I can absolutely see him saying "This guy is too extreme (cause of who he works for), give me someone a little less so, and I'll vote for them.".
Just like he did on the minimum wage, and he's looking to do on the corporate tax rate.
Attempting to be "reasonable" by rejecting initial offers.
Going out of the gate with someone from a gun control advocacy group? I don't like the odds.
That gun control advocacy group being the one run by a former Congresswoman who was shot in the head, and who is now currently a Senate spouse and likely knows Manchin personally.
Which feels entirely intentional on Biden's part to me.
It may be a novel approach but we could at least theoretically wait to see if Manchin is going to be a shit before we complain about him being a shit :P
It may be a novel approach but we could at least theoretically wait to see if Manchin is going to be a shit before we complain about him being a shit :P
Though the odds of him being a shit remain disturbingly high.
So I dunno if we have anyone from Tuscon who can comment, but Biden's planning on nominating their chief of police to head CBP. The good news is the CBP union (fascists) haaaaaaaaate him. Did things like refused to allow Tuscon police to help them with their bullshit.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
So I dunno if we have anyone from Tuscon who can comment, but Biden's planning on nominating their chief of police to head CBP. The good news is the CBP union (fascists) haaaaaaaaate him. Did things like refused to allow Tuscon police to help them with their bullshit.
So I dunno if we have anyone from Tuscon who can comment, but Biden's planning on nominating their chief of police to head CBP. The good news is the CBP union (fascists) haaaaaaaaate him. Did things like refused to allow Tuscon police to help them with their bullshit.
Can't ask for a better character reference than that.
White House compiles report that says of Biden's 1,500 admin appointees
—58% are women
—18% Black
—15% Hispanic
—15% Asian American or Pacific Islander
—3% Middle Eastern or North African
—2% American Indian or Alaska Native
—14% LGBTQ+
—4% are veterans
—3% have a disability.
I would be very curious to see a comparison of where Trump was at appointment-wise at the 100 day mark. Because this seems like a particularly impressive feat by the Biden admin to get this many people in place.
I would be very curious to see a comparison of where Trump was at appointment-wise at the 100 day mark. Because this seems like a particularly impressive feat by the Biden admin to get this many people in place.
I'm pretty sure a not insignificant part of it is that those posts were either empty now, or filled with incompetents, when they typically would have a holdover from the previous Administration who is qualified and doesn't have much discretion to impact policy and so there is less of a need to fill them quickly.
And, perennial complaint: the Plum Book needs to be cut in half at least. Because a lot of those postings should probably be career civil service.
I would be very curious to see a comparison of where Trump was at appointment-wise at the 100 day mark. Because this seems like a particularly impressive feat by the Biden admin to get this many people in place.
I'm pretty sure a not insignificant part of it is that those posts were either empty now, or filled with incompetents, when they typically would have a holdover from the previous Administration who is qualified and doesn't have much discretion to impact policy and so there is less of a need to fill them quickly.
And, perennial complaint: the Plum Book needs to be cut in half at least. Because a lot of those postings should probably be career civil service.
The amount of positions in the US government that are politically appointed is insane.
White House compiles report that says of Biden's 1,500 admin appointees
—58% are women
—18% Black
—15% Hispanic
—15% Asian American or Pacific Islander
—3% Middle Eastern or North African
—2% American Indian or Alaska Native
—14% LGBTQ+
—4% are veterans
—3% have a disability.
I would be very curious to see a comparison of where Trump was at appointment-wise at the 100 day mark. Because this seems like a particularly impressive feat by the Biden admin to get this many people in place.
Trump was probably on his second person in some positions.
White House compiles report that says of Biden's 1,500 admin appointees
—58% are women
—18% Black
—15% Hispanic
—15% Asian American or Pacific Islander
—3% Middle Eastern or North African
—2% American Indian or Alaska Native
—14% LGBTQ+
—4% are veterans
—3% have a disability.
Away from the relative spotlight of Cabinet confirmation positions, there's still lots of diversity from the Biden admin.
That’s fantastic diversity and also holy shit that’s a lot of appointments but also holy shot that was a lot of vacancies from the previous shitshow
It's why, as much as he wasn't my first (or fourth) preference for the job of President in a vacuum, I do think he was probably the best choice to be THIS President.
Beyond his electoral appeal to people who might not have given others a look, he and the people he surrounded himself with, knew what was needed to have a functioning government, and just how much in the shit the previous guy had left things, and how to accomplish that correction.
Other candidates might have been better at getting the things Democratic voters wanted doing, but noone on the debate stages was a suited to fixing the mistakes of the former guy, and getting the country back on the right footing, while not getting bogged down by the conservative shitfling machine.
I would be very curious to see a comparison of where Trump was at appointment-wise at the 100 day mark. Because this seems like a particularly impressive feat by the Biden admin to get this many people in place.
I seem to recall his leaving a huge number of positions vacant for several months out of a combination of "civil service bad" and just not bothering with putting in the basic work. The diplomatic corps was nonexistent for ages, for instance.
I would be very curious to see a comparison of where Trump was at appointment-wise at the 100 day mark. Because this seems like a particularly impressive feat by the Biden admin to get this many people in place.
I seem to recall his leaving a huge number of positions vacant for several months out of a combination of "civil service bad" and just not bothering with putting in the basic work. The diplomatic corps was nonexistent for ages, for instance.
There was also the alphabetization of the picks he did make.
I remember it being reported that when given a list, he'd just pick the first name so often, which were in alphabetic order, that they had to start randomizing the list so that it wasn't so damn obvious what he was doing.
Everyone focused on his corruption, and incompetence, but the laziness was right up there as one of his core "values".
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
It's amazing how bad Trump was at everything. He couldn't even manage to dole out patronage jobs properly.
I'd be perfectly happy with changing a lot of the appointed positions to regular civil service jobs, with all the protections that entails... once they've been filled with Biden nominees.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
It's amazing how bad Trump was at everything. He couldn't even manage to dole out patronage jobs properly.
I'd be perfectly happy with changing a lot of the appointed positions to regular civil service jobs, with all the protections that entails... once they've been filled with Biden nominees.
Looking back I think the fact that while Trump is a scam artist he's fundamentally a lazy scam artist saved us from things becoming so much worse. I can only imagine the bullshit that people wanted him to do that he couldn't be bothered with.
Richard Cordray, the ex-consumer protection chief who is a close ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren, will head the federal student aid office, a key post in the swirling debate over student debt.
NYTimes is occasionally a news organization.
Cordray is a good sign being put in that position.
There is an easy way to preven Rahm from amassing further power and influence and that is to tell him "nope, you fucked up and the covered up the murder of a teenager by police, you're done within this party at a federal level and a state level if we can manage it."
Like, handing him an ambassadorship isn't this sneaky brilliant way of removing him from the political realm so he can't cover up cops shooting black people.
The way to do that is to excise him from the party to the highest degree you can. It is totally within Biden's ability to do so, he is not being forced to give Rahm this job. He could withdraw his nomination today if he wanted.
What is says is that not only does the White House not care enough about the issue of police brutality in America, particularly against one of the groups that forms one of it's core constituencies, it cares so little that it is willing to take a person who exemplifies the issue (literally helping cover up a murder) and send them to represent their nation.
it's the lowest possible stakes
there's no rahm emanuel constiuency to lose if you tell him to pound sand
and yet
Sure there is. That's what people have been talking about this whole time. Just because that constituency is not voters doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I agree, the DNC cares more about maintaining its relationship with wealthy donors than it does for any semblance of justice for people murdered by the police.
Not just wealthy donors I think here, but also other members of the party. Rahm almost certainly has connections to politicians and party officials and such that are also paying off here.
Giving Rahm this job is like giving Buttigieg a cabinet appointment. The party assumes they can't fuck it up too bad and it lets them stay in the club until the next go around.
How is that cushy Department of Transportation job going?
Rahm is getting a job because the DNC feels it needs to do fealty to the Chicago machine.
It's bad, but in the context of Washington corruption it's completely unsurprising, and I can only be righteously angry about so much.
I'd be annoyed if it was a cabinet position. But it's clearly a "Please go away" position. It's a nice job so he can't be too angry and start doing tell-all interviews. But he's as far away from power as they can possibly get him. Literally the other side of the world. It's a subtle insult to him.
I used to think that, but he could have been at home pissed off and irrelevant anyway
That enough people felt he needed something for doing something in the past is kind of a great example of the leadership we’ve got at a time when we needed the absolute best of us
Oh well that’s all I got to say for now, I’ll try to go back to silently fuming at the party I support being captured by money so I don’t annoy anyone
Oh, we can use this thread to talk about Biden noms outside of the Cabinet as well? I had posted about a possible US Attorney nomination about a month ago in the Police Brutality thread but it kind of got missed in the discussion of other events then.
Alec Karakatsanis, the founder and executive director of Civil Rights Corps, a "non-profit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the United States’ legal system" (view their full mission statement here has put up a Twitter thread about a Biden nomination for US attorney.
Due to the length of the tweets I will be putting the majority of them inside spoiler tags.
THREAD: Biden is reportedly nominating a former judge, Keva Landrum, to be U.S. Atty in New Orleans. The history of this judge’s illegal behavior and violent crimes will shock you to the core.
A few years ago, we uncovered that Judge Landrum was running a modern day debtors' prison. The things I saw during this investigation have haunted me ever since. The story of corruption is hard to believe.
Judge Landrum and other judges were jailing very poor people in New Orleans if they couldn't pay debts. They created a "Collections Department" inside the court to illegally collect debt. When our clients couldn't pay, they were caged in unbearable conditions. It gets worse.
Judge Landrum and other judges took a cut of the profits to run their courts, creating an unconstitutional financial conflict of interest that destroyed whatever "neutrality" they were supposed to have as judges. It gets worse.
The judges even used some of these profits they extorted from the poorest people in New Orleans (disproportionately Black) on benefits for themselves and their spouses. Even the District Attorney wrote a letter asking the State Attorney General to prosecute the judges.
This scheme violated many laws, but among the most basic principles: the U.S. Constitution forbids a judge from putting a human being in a cage solely because the person cannot make a cash payment. And yet it happened every day for years. It's how Landrum and others did business.
What did this mean? Mothers and fathers separated from their families. People forced to sell blood plasma to pay their debts. Debtors brutalized in filthy jail cells without sunlight, fresh air, exercise, and medical care.
The violations of constitutional rights were so egregious that the federal court in New Orleans issued a judgment against Judge Landrum and other judges declaring that they were violating the basic 14th Amendment rights of some of the poorest people in New Orleans.
After she lost, Judge Landrum chose to appeal to try to preserve her financial conflict of interest. But a unanimous federal appeals court held that her financial conflict of interest violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the simple due process right to a neutral judge.
Although Landrum lost this civil case, both federal and state prosecutors ultimately decided that they would let the criminal offenses of the judges go. I’ve written a lot about how our legal system only chooses to prosecute *some* crimes by *some* people. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-punishment-bureaucracy
That's just one example. The Supreme Court reversed a conviction because Landrum helped DAs discriminate against Black jurors. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan took an unusual step of writing separately to call out Landrum’s behavior. https://theappeal.org/landrum-new-orleans-da/
And there’s much more: few people have amassed as long and as monstrous a record of fighting to keep innocent people in prison as Judge Landrum. This post by a longtime official with the Innocent Project describes many examples from Judge Landrum’s career. https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10102605673695831&id=1002458
In one of the most heartbreaking stories, Landrum fought to keep an innocent teenager, Kia Stewart, in prison in horrific conditions for 10 years before he was exonerated. She ignored evidence of innocence to keep Robert Jones away from his family for an additional 8 years.
And there’s more. Landrum was a key prosecutor in the DA Office at a time when we now know from internal docs, court rulings, and prison data that the office used fake subpoenas, illegally jailed crime victims to coerce testimony, routinely hid evidence of innocence.
Over a period of years as a DA and a judge, Landrum presided over the greatest expansion of caging Black people in modern history, as New Orleans became the world leader in human caging of Black people and poor people. She made a lot of money for the bail industry and others.
Stories like this are important. They show how powerful people reward people willing to do monstrous things for them. And if we don’t make noise, the cycle of corruption will continue. To my knowledge, Biden has never publicly been asked about this corrupt nomination.
It isn’t too late to do something. For some reason (perhaps you can guess by now), it appears that Landrum's background check hasn’t been completed. And key members of the Senate who confirm nominees can be educated about her horrific history of criminality and injustice.
To my knowledge, Landrum would be the first U.S. Atty ever to serve after a court judgment that they violated federal constitutional rights. And *this* is the person that elite politicians advising Biden want to appoint to "enforce the law." People must know about it. (end)
This is the first I've heard about this, despite Landrum's nomination being announced in late April - and back then it only made the local papers, where they just have a passing mention of "resigning from her previous post due to a series of controversies."
I just can't get over how they tried to put their future poster boy in a safe cabinet position for experience and resume building and it slams right into the biggest supply chain logistical gorgon not in like half a century.
I just can't get over how they tried to put their future poster boy in a safe cabinet position for experience and resume building and it slams right into the biggest supply chain logistical gorgon not in like half a century.
Well at least hes been on leave for some time so hopefully people who know what theyrr doing are running that Department?
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I just can't get over how they tried to put their future poster boy in a safe cabinet position for experience and resume building and it slams right into the biggest supply chain logistical gorgon not in like half a century.
Well at least hes been on leave for some time so hopefully people who know what theyrr doing are running that Department?
I just can't get over how they tried to put their future poster boy in a safe cabinet position for experience and resume building and it slams right into the biggest supply chain logistical gorgon not in like half a century.
Well at least hes been on leave for some time so hopefully people who know what theyrr doing are running that Department?
Are you throwing shade on paternity leave?
I believe they're throwing shade on the fact that the department is better with him on paternity leave than at work.
Posts
Yeah, but what does the official line really mean? Because it can't be the case where they all came to an agreement on policy in a meeting and then say what that agreement entails.
man, it's really nice to have a little more subtlety coming out of the white house. Not that this is especially subtle but coming off the last admin you just love to see it.
A good pick.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I can't see any Republican voting for him, and unless there's already a deal made, there's likely several Democrats that will have objection there.
Especially Manchin. Sure, this is ten years old, but still...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJORBRpOPM
Heck, this one is from three years ago.
I'll be shocked if he gets confirmed.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Oh, I'm not saying he's full raving gun nut. After all, he does have the failed Manchin-Toomey bill on his resume.
But I can absolutely see him saying "This guy is too extreme (cause of who he works for), give me someone a little less so, and I'll vote for them.".
Just like he did on the minimum wage, and he's looking to do on the corporate tax rate.
Attempting to be "reasonable" by rejecting initial offers.
Going out of the gate with someone from a gun control advocacy group? I don't like the odds.
That gun control advocacy group being the one run by a former Congresswoman who was shot in the head, and who is now currently a Senate spouse and likely knows Manchin personally.
Which feels entirely intentional on Biden's part to me.
Though the odds of him being a shit remain disturbingly high.
That's the kind of endorsement I like to hear.
Can't ask for a better character reference than that.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20693376-100-day-fact-sheet-final
Away from the relative spotlight of Cabinet confirmation positions, there's still lots of diversity from the Biden admin.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I'm pretty sure a not insignificant part of it is that those posts were either empty now, or filled with incompetents, when they typically would have a holdover from the previous Administration who is qualified and doesn't have much discretion to impact policy and so there is less of a need to fill them quickly.
And, perennial complaint: the Plum Book needs to be cut in half at least. Because a lot of those postings should probably be career civil service.
The amount of positions in the US government that are politically appointed is insane.
That’s fantastic diversity and also holy shit that’s a lot of appointments but also holy shot that was a lot of vacancies from the previous shitshow
Trump was probably on his second person in some positions.
It's why, as much as he wasn't my first (or fourth) preference for the job of President in a vacuum, I do think he was probably the best choice to be THIS President.
Beyond his electoral appeal to people who might not have given others a look, he and the people he surrounded himself with, knew what was needed to have a functioning government, and just how much in the shit the previous guy had left things, and how to accomplish that correction.
Other candidates might have been better at getting the things Democratic voters wanted doing, but noone on the debate stages was a suited to fixing the mistakes of the former guy, and getting the country back on the right footing, while not getting bogged down by the conservative shitfling machine.
I seem to recall his leaving a huge number of positions vacant for several months out of a combination of "civil service bad" and just not bothering with putting in the basic work. The diplomatic corps was nonexistent for ages, for instance.
There was also the alphabetization of the picks he did make.
I remember it being reported that when given a list, he'd just pick the first name so often, which were in alphabetic order, that they had to start randomizing the list so that it wasn't so damn obvious what he was doing.
Everyone focused on his corruption, and incompetence, but the laziness was right up there as one of his core "values".
I'd be perfectly happy with changing a lot of the appointed positions to regular civil service jobs, with all the protections that entails... once they've been filled with Biden nominees.
Looking back I think the fact that while Trump is a scam artist he's fundamentally a lazy scam artist saved us from things becoming so much worse. I can only imagine the bullshit that people wanted him to do that he couldn't be bothered with.
NYTimes is occasionally a news organization.
Cordray is a good sign being put in that position.
Not just wealthy donors I think here, but also other members of the party. Rahm almost certainly has connections to politicians and party officials and such that are also paying off here.
How is that cushy Department of Transportation job going?
*looks at 70+ ships off the coast of LA*
It's bad, but in the context of Washington corruption it's completely unsurprising, and I can only be righteously angry about so much.
I'd be annoyed if it was a cabinet position. But it's clearly a "Please go away" position. It's a nice job so he can't be too angry and start doing tell-all interviews. But he's as far away from power as they can possibly get him. Literally the other side of the world. It's a subtle insult to him.
That enough people felt he needed something for doing something in the past is kind of a great example of the leadership we’ve got at a time when we needed the absolute best of us
Oh well that’s all I got to say for now, I’ll try to go back to silently fuming at the party I support being captured by money so I don’t annoy anyone
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Well at least hes been on leave for some time so hopefully people who know what theyrr doing are running that Department?
Are you throwing shade on paternity leave?
I believe they're throwing shade on the fact that the department is better with him on paternity leave than at work.