2021
by Hank Silverberg
So, here we are in 2021! We get a fresh start? Not exactly. There wasn't much of a celebration on New Year's Eve. Somehow those TV live shots of an empty Times Square in NYC as they dropped the ball were a fitting end to 2020. But it was also a sad preview of the next 12 months.
Why am I so pessimistic? The stimulus checks are
Second stimulus check: IRS says the $600 payments are on their way (msn.com)
For me, the new start doesn't really begin until noon on January 20th, when Donald Trump no longer has his finger on the nuclear trigger and sanity is restored to the White House.
We may get more hope this Tuesday when voters in Georgia could finally send a message to the GOP that "the party of no" no longer controls the Senate. But that is just a start. (Until Mitch McConnell is ousted, Trumpism survives.)
Let's take a look at some of the things Joe Biden has to tackle in his first 100 days.
So Mr. Biden has to convince all those brainwashed people out there who still doubt Covid-19 is real that the precautions need to be continued and possibly even increased.
He needs to develop a plan to distribute the vaccines as fast as they come of the assembly lines
of big pharma. The vaccines mean nothing until they are in people's arms. It will require a strong "bully pulpit" from Biden and a massive public relations campaign to counter the false propaganda that still fills the airways on the right-wing cable networks and talk radio. The effort has to counter the distortions they promote on both the pandemic's death toll and the vaccines effectiveness.
Donald Trump, who will once again attempt his overturn of the election this week (see below), has spent four years dismantling the federal government.
He has removed many of those with institutional knowledge on everything from distributing disaster aide to farm subsidies. And the outgoing administration continues to block attempts by the Biden transition team to get the information they need to hit the ground running on Jan 20th on everything from Medicare changes to national security. I suspect, though I have no direct evidence, that a great deal of that type of information will actually be deleted or shredded in the early morning hours of Inauguration day to hinder the new President.
Biden may spend his first hundred days just restocking the government with competent people.
Part of that effort will include close coordination with all 50 states and D.C., along with the private health care industry which are actually handling the inoculations.
As he is dealing with the pandemic, Biden also has to confront Iran, China, Russia and North Korea on their continued cyber attacks on both the U.S. Government and private industry, something Trump consistently ignored, against the advice of his own national security team.
Should Georgia Democrats not succeed in turning the Senate, Biden will also have to deal with Mitch McConnell and his obstructionist party which, though a bit divided right now, could easily rally around their negativity. I suspect McConnell will renew his pledge, though not necessarily in public, that he made in 2010 with his target now Joe Biden instead of Barack Obama. Remember this?
Biden has about six months into his term to show some turnaround in the face of constant criticism from the GOP and the clueless pundits slowly eating away at his efforts. He will also have to deal with the left wing of his own party who will start showing impatience by then on some of their more radical ideas.
Treason, Sedition or Just Plain STUPIDITY:
I hope to be able to change this part of my blog by Wednesday, and it will just be a footnote to history. But there are about a dozen Republican senators and dozens of Republican House members who will attempt to negate your vote. They will propose that Congress throw out the election results based on fictional voter fraud by trying to get the Congress to formally reject the results. The procedure of accepting the Electoral College votes has been just a Constitutionally mandated formality since 1790.
There is one precedent for lawmakers objecting to the results (2005) but there has never actually been a congressional debate or vote to dispute Electoral College ballots. Remember, Electoral College votes simply reflect the will of the people in each of the 50 separate states and D.C.
It's a last ditch effort by Trump supporters to overturn the will of 81 million voters, and it makes many Republicans uncomfortable. Even Senator "No" McConnell doesn't want this debate.
There is sheer stupidity in this action. A large number of those supporting it were elected or re-elected in the same balloting that they are now claiming was fraudulent.
It would be almost comical if some of those same lawmakers like Louie Gohmert (R-TX), were now suggesting violence in the streets if it doesn't work. Rep. Gohmert Calls for Street Violence as Another Legal Loss Sends MAGA World Spiraling (yahoo.com)
Some people have suggested the Congressman's call is sedition or treason. I'm not sure it meets those definitions, but "inciting a riot" is a felony. And he should be censured by Congress for calling for violence and kicked out if people follow his call. It would not be the first time members of Congress were kicked out for criminal activity. Just so you know, behind his back, Gohmert has been called "the dumbest person in Congress", but after some of the other comments I have heard this week, he has lots of competition.
Here's a tweet as an example, with a response from Donald Lame Duck.
Does anyone really think someone could buy all those votes without producing ANY evidence that it happened?
Some Republicans continue to do everything they can to damage our Democracy.
This maneuver has no chance of going anywhere. It just eggs on all those people who have bought the big lie on voter fraud, and makes us look bad around the world. Biden is going to have to mend the country's image as a democracy as well.
Apologies to Teddy Roosevelt!
Bully! Bully! That term has been used about Donald Lame Duck for much of his presidency. But the bully sounded a bit deflated in his last-ditch effort to bully Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over the election results. It happened in a phone call this past Saturday (Jan 2nd). Trump can be heard on an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post, pleading with Raffensperger to "re-calculate" the votes from November's election and get him 11,780 more votes because he "won" the election. The Post published the audio a few hours after the President tweeted that the two men had spoken about FRAUD in the election. You can go to the link below to hear the recording yourself.
Washington Post: In call, Trump demands Georgia official 'find' votes to tilt election (msn.com)
Raffensperger issued a statement on Sunday which called the President's accusations of shredded ballots and tampered machines " not true".
All of this comes just two days before that key double Senate race in Georgia mentioned above, that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.
Raffensperger, a Republican, has been a Trump supporter. He had the Georgia Bureau of Investigation do a signature check on ballots in Cobb County a few weeks ago in response to allegations. That investigation found no evidence of fraud.
There are many people who have listened to the recording who are calling it intimidation, or election tampering and all other legal terms. I will leave that up to the lawyers. Reports out on Monday indicate Trump tried to call Raffensperger 18 times before he got through. But when I listened I heard something else.
I'm not a mental health professional, but if you listen to the audio you can hear the desperation in Trump's voice. It's almost like a child pleading with his parents not to make him go to his room for doing something bad. It's pitiful. But it's also dangerous. As I wrote earlier, this man still controls our nuclear arsenal. The new start we all hope for in 2021 can't come until noon on January 20th. That's when Mr. Trump no longer has the codes to the nuclear football or the title "Commander-in-Chief".
51st State?
Norton says she has 202 original co-sponsors for the bill, which is likely to pass the House as it did in the last Congress. But like many things, Mitch McConnell never let it come up for consideration in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Even if the Senate approved it though, D.C. could not become a state until the 23rd Amendment passed in 1961 is appealed. It gave D.C. residents the right to vote for president even though D.C. is not a state. A court challenge would also be likely.
Why all the fuss and strong opposition from the Republicans? D.C. has more residents than two states--Vermont and Wyoming--which each have one voting Congressman plus two United States Senators.
If it became a state, the City of Washington (or state of Columbia?) and its majority Black and Democratic population would get a voting Congressman and two U.S. Senators. It's not hard to figure out why Republicans object.
Right now, D.C. residents pay the highest per-capita federal income taxes in the U.S., and pay in total more federal tax dollars than residents in 22 states, despite no vote in Congress. It's taxation without representation.
(Your comments and suggestions are welcome)
Copies of my book "The Campaign" are below. Or you can by a copy by emailing me at:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084Q7K6M5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
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