Republicans are Fighting Against Democracy

This situation is the result of a president who tried to overturn the November 2020 election. Even before the election Donald Trump repeatedly said that the election process was fraudulent. He tried to take his claims to courts including the Supreme Court.

Just today the justices declined to take up an appeal from Mr. Trump that challenged absentee ballots cast in the presidential election in Wisconsin. The former president urged the Supreme Court to declare the election there unconstitutional and allow the state legislature to appoint its own slate of electors. Mr. Trump lost the state of Wisconsin to President Biden, and Mr. Biden was sworn into office January 20.

Sadly GOP controlled states are now passing new laws to limit future elections by limiting voting and making it harder for voters to return absentee ballots. Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, and North Dakota are the states passing regulations that require identification of voters, limiting voting to in person only voting. All these law are probably legal. Each stae has the power to set its own election rules. They are clearly designed to deny the right to vote to poor people who likely Democratic Party voters.

Georgia is just one of the 43 states collectively contemplating 253 bills this year with provisions restricting voting access, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.

As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported: the Supreme Court’s majority signaled it would be open to more such voting restrictions. In oral arguments, the conservative justices indicated they would uphold two Arizona laws that would have the effect of disproportionately disqualifying the votes of non-White citizens. One law throws out ballots cast in the wrong precinct, a problem that affects minority voters twice as much as White voters because polling places move more frequently in minority neighborhoods. The other law bans the practice of ballot collection — derided by Republicans as ballot “harvesting” — which is disproportionately used by minority voters, in particular Arizona’s Native Americans on reservations.”

Why are Republicans doing this? They believe that large turnouts result in Democratic Party candidates winning.

The United States is at War

The fear of domestic terrorists who want to bring down the United States government is real. The House of Representatives has canceled their Thursday March 4 session because there is credible evidence that there will be an attack on the Capitol building.

U.S. Capitol Police officials said Wednesday they have “obtained intelligence that shows a possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group on Thursday, March 4” — the date that far-right conspiracy theorists believe former President Donald Trump will return to power.

There are discredited internet conspiracy theories that allege the world is run by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles. Followers of the fringe movement believe that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from Trump, who has pushed baseless claims of voter fraud along with his allies.

QAnon followers also believed that Trump would not actually leave office on Inauguration Day but rather would declare martial law, announce mass arrests of Democrats and stop Joe Biden from becoming president. When that didn’t happen, the date was moved from Jan. 20 to March 4.

There are many among the conspiracy groups who believe Ulysses S. Grant was the last legal president of the United States because he was the last president inaugurated on March 4. That is the focus on March 4 as the day that Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term as the 19th president. I do not know how the conspiracy people explain the four years that Trump was president. There is no reasonable explanation. The conspiracy theorists have yet to square the facts that is probably because they don’t want to look at reality.

Those of you who think this is all nonsense should look at what happened on January 6 at the Capitol. This is the start of a war. January 6 was the first attack. There will be more attacks if the perpetrators are unsuccessful on March 4.

America’s Defense Posture is out of Touch with the 21st Century

The United States is unlikely to be invaded by the military of another nation.

In his final speech from the White House, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that an arms race would take resources from other areas — such as building schools and hospitals.

Despite that conclusion under President Donald Trump there was a build up of America’s military might. It’s true that under President Obama military spending did decline.

Microtrends itemized American military spending during the past four years

U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2019 was $731.75B, a 7.22% increase from 2018.
U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2018 was $682.49B, a 5.53% increase from 2017.
U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2017 was $646.75B, a 1.08% increase from 2016.
U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2016 was $639.86B, a 0.95% increase from 2015.

It’s nice to know we are well protected. But from who?

USA Today asks the question is this really necessary? America outspends every other nation in the world. Almost three times the money spent by the second largest military in 2019. The USA spent $731.8 Billion. China spent $261.1 Billion. The sum of military spending for the next ten largest military spenders is less than the US military budget.

In Germany, about 45,000 Americans go to work each day around the Kaiserslautern Military Community, a network of U.S. Army and Air Force bases that accommodates schools, housing complexes, dental clinics, hospitals, community centers, sports clubs, food courts, military police and retail stores. About 60,000 American military and civilian personnel are stationed in Japan; another 30,000 in South Korea. More than 6,000 U.S. military personnel are spread across Africa, according to the Department of Defense.

About 220,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel serve in more than 150 countries, the Defense Department says. But in today’s world it is not military invasion that is the issue. It’s the cyber invasion that is in process now.

David Sanger of the New York Times reported on December 13, 2020, “The Trump administration acknowledged on Sunday that hackers acting on behalf of a foreign government — almost certainly a Russian intelligence agency, according to federal and private experts — broke into a range of key government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and had free access to their email systems.”

Remember the cyber attack on Sony Pictures in 2014. The FBI blamed a North Korea scheme to retaliate for the comedy ‘The Interview.’

More recently Business Insider reported on February 25, 2021 SolarWinds, a major US information technology firm, was the subject of a cyberattack that spread to its clients and went undetected for months. US agencies — including parts of the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Treasury — were attacked. So were private companies, like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, and Deloitte, and other organizations like the California Department of State Hospitals, and Kent State University, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The military Industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about is still a reality. Jobs manufacturing military hardware are consequential in almost every state. Is President Joe Biden prepared to face the 21st century world? He must or the United States will be overwhelmed by its enemies.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas

The board that governs the flow of power for more than 26 million people in Texas has been blamed for the widespread outages, prompting the governor, lawmakers and federal officials to begin inquiries into the system’s failures, particularly in preparation for cold weather.

The five board members, who intend to resign at the conclusion of a meeting scheduled for Wednesday morning, were all from outside of Texas, a point of contention for critics who questioned the wisdom of outsiders playing such an influential role in the state’s infrastructure.

The board became the target of blame and scrutiny after the winter storm last week brought the state’s electric grid precariously close to a complete blackout that could have taken months to recover from. In a last-minute effort to avert that, the council, known as ERCOT, ordered rolling outages that plunged much of the state into darkness and caused electricity prices to skyrocket. Some customers had bills well over $10,000.

One of the striking things about the crisis was not just that Texas was hit worse than neighboring states, but that some parts of the state did much better than others. On Tuesday, at the height of the power disruptions, only .04% of households tracked in El Paso County were without power, while the comparable number was 29% in Dallas County, 44% in Travis County (Austin), 41% in Tarrant County (Fort Worth), and 18% in Harris County (Houston).

Texas is the only state that has its own grid, which it maintains in order to avoid federal regulation. The rest of the US is on either the Western power grid (like El Paso) or the Eastern Power grid, like the panhandle and a few counties on the state’s eastern border. (In Bowie County, home of Texarkana, 10% of households lost power.) So when Texas’ supply/demand situation went bad, the rest of the country couldn’t bail them out.

The result was a laissez-faire market design that rewards those who can sell power inexpensively and still recover their capital costs. That keeps prices low when demand is steady. When demand spikes, however, so do prices, which can climb as high as $9,000 per megawatt-hour to incentivize power plants of all kinds to fire up.

Texas lawmakers are trying to find someone to blame. Republicans are trying to blame Democrats but that will be hard to do in a state that is run by the GOP. More likely those five board members from outside Texas will be the fall guys for mismanagement.

Water Quality

The issue of dirty water is not new. Texas may be feeling the impact of the Big Freeze but other cities have faced similar issues. Flint Michigan comes to mind as a good example of mismanagement.

I live in Los Angeles. When the city was hit with an earthquake in 1994 we were told to boil our water during the following week. Instead we started buying bottled water. We bought the 2 ½ gallon Arrowhead containers at Costco. We have continued buying bottled water since that time. We consume 5 to 7 gallons a week. I keep six to eight containers in the garage and an additional five gallons in a storage shed.

The city Department of Water and Power (DWP) sends out an annual water quality report. Of course it reports that that the water is safe to drink. I just don’t trust the report. When we re-piped our house in the year 2000 the old pipes were filthy and clogged. Am I to believe that the city’s pipes are cleaner than the 60 year old pipe that lead to my house?

In July 2014 the massive Sunset Boulevard water main break brought geysers of water, a sinkhole, flooding on the UCLA campus — the risks that come with expansive water line systems installed decades ago. The main line trunk that burst and turned UCLA into a swimming pool was 93 years old.

The failure also led to a familiar “Band-Aid approach” that experts say is common when pipes in an aging system fail.

Water main breaks continue in the city every month. That those breaks are a continuing problem says that we have a serious problem that the city DWP has yet to confront. One of the latest was near my home on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. After posting this item another break on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks reported on February 24. These breaks tell me that the pipes are deteriorating everywhere. Anything breaking off inside those pipes that ends up at my house? Oh no they say. Everything is OK.

Contaminated pipes are everywhere. Lead pipes are everywhere. This map shows where it is most prevalent.

Once again money is the issue.

Bidenism was on Full Display from the Get-Go

Biden signs many executive orders during his first week in office

It’s been a whirlwind of action for President Joe Biden starting the very day he was inaugurated.

Just hours into the job, Joe Biden signed orders to rejoin the Paris climate accord, mandate masks in federal buildings and rescind the Keystone pipeline permit.

Then he in a round of executive orders, he extended moratoriums on evictions and student loan, rejoined the World Health Organization and expanded food assistance. Took action reopening enrollment on the federal Affordable Care Act exchanges as part of two health care executive actions that he signed Thursday, taking a step to help uninsured Americans that former President Donald Trump rejected.

He proposed a massive overhaul of immigration laws, including a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

All of his actions were all executive orders. Next come the hard part. Getting the congress to pass the legislation he wants. With Democratic Party control of both houses of congress, even though its very thin, we can expect the president to leave no stone unturned in obtaining the results he wants.

The Corruption of an Admired Councilman

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander was sentenced Monday to 14 months in prison for lying to federal authorities about his dealings with a businessman who provided him $15,000 in secret cash payments and a debauched night in Las Vegas. “There’s simply no adequate explanation as to how he totally lost his moral compass and committed this crime,” said U.S. District Judge John F. Walter. Englander, 50, is the first person to be sentenced in a sprawling federal investigation into corruption at Los Angeles City Hall. He pleaded guilty in July to scheming to falsify material facts, a felony. “I’ve hurt the very people I love the most,” Englander said at his sentencing.

Englander is not alone in the corruption at the city LA City council. Former Councilman Jose Huizar is awaiting trial on bribery, racketeering and other charges on allegations of shaking down developers seeking approval for major downtown building projects. A former deputy mayor to Mayor Eric Garcetti Raymond Chan, and Huizar’s special assistant, George Esparza have wither been found guilty or are pleading guilty.

The troubling part of this story is that the LA city council has the power to grant construction permits. The advice of neighborhood councils, made up of the citizens, is ignored. Those councils are advisory and have no power to do anything in their communities.

How can this situation be resolved? Power should be given to every neighborhood council to administer everything from street repairs to tree trimming to parking enforcement. The councils should not be advisory. That would require changes so the city charter. Since the council members see their positions as fiefdoms they will fight any change in their power.

Arcane – The Filibuster

The filibuster is Unfathomable, and Obscure. It is complicated and therefore understood or known by only a few people.

Filibuster is a tactic used in the United States Senate to prevent a measure from being brought to a vote by means of obstruction. The most common form occurs when one or more senators attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill by extending debate on the measure.

The Senate can overcome a filibuster if it invokes cloture — a vote by 60 members of the Senate to place a 30-hour time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter.

Cloture, adopted as Rule 22 in 1917, used to require a two-thirds majority vote. However, due to the difficulty of obtaining a two-thirds vote, the Senate changed the rule in 1975 and reduced the number of votes required to three-fifths (or 60).

In 2005 Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to use the nuclear option to end Democratic-led filibusters of judicial nominees submitted by President George W. Bush. And in July 2013, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened its use to stop Republicans from filibustering President Barack Obama’s executive-branch nominees.

Senators have never successfully made good on their threat to invoke the nuclear option and bring an end to the filibuster, but if they did, it could have huge consequences for the future of the Senate and the ability to keep the majority in check.

In November 2013, Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid used the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments. In April 2017, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell extended the nuclear option to Supreme Court nominations in order to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.^[2]^[3]^{McConnell loves the filibuster when it suits his purpose.}

Filibuster is called respect for the minority. And this is called democracy in America.

An Administration of Diversity

We are seeing the destruction of White Christian America as diversity of race, religions and sexual orientation that are being introduced by President Biden. The change won’t be easy for those White Christian’s. Their support of Donald Trump is an exemplar of what is likely to come in the coming years. Richard T. Hughes, a professor emeritus of religion at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles calls the coming change The Dying of Christian America in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

Here is a list of some Biden appointments of non-Christian members of his staff. Lots of of Blacks and Jews but many other races and religions.

Biden’s latest appointment of Dr. Rachel Levine as his assistant secretary of health sends a message and this is it. I don’t care anything about your zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. I care about your expertise.

Chief of Staff is Ron Klain, Jewish, attorney, political consultant, and former lobbyist.

Michael S. Regan Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Gina Raimondo. Secretary of commerce, 75th governor of Rhode Island, Of Italian descent

Lloyd J. Austin III, Black, retired four-star Army general

Miguel Cardona. Secretary of Education, was Connecticut commissioner of education.

Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Born in Sacramento, California, to Mexican parents, Becerra graduated from Stanford University and received his Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School. He previously was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Downtown Los Angeles in Congress from 1993 to 2017. Attorney General of California since 2017.

Alejandro Mayorkas, , Secretary of Homeland Security, American lawyer and government official. Born in Cuba, he grew up in Los Angeles. Served as U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California.

Marcia L. Fudge, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Black, a lawyer who served more than three decades, beginning with the Cuyahoga County Ohio Prosecutor’s Office.

Deb Haaland, secretary of Interior, a Native American active in tribal management.

Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General, Jewish, serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He has served on that court since 1997.

Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, Jewish, has been active in government served in the State Department and in senior positions on the National Security Council staff. He was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2001–2002)

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, Gay, former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and mayor of South Bend Indiana.

Janet Yellen, Secretary of Treasury, Jewish, former Chair of the Federal Reserve.

Cecilia Rouse, Economic advisers chair, Black, economist and dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Michael S. Regan, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Black, Was secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality. He is a former air quality specialist in the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Neera Tanden, Director of office of management and budget, parents were Indian migrants to the United States, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale Law School.

Isabel Guzman, Administrator Small Business Administration

Katherine Tai, Trade Representative and is currently an American attorney who serves as the chief trade counsel for the United States House Committee on Ways and Means.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, UN Ambassador, Black, served as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the United States Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs from 2013 to 2017.

Reema Dodin. Deputy Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Palestinian Muslim woman.