Salem Political Snark

Debt limit deal seems like a good compromise to this progressive

Many of my fellow progressives won't like my opinion, but I'm happy with the debt limit deal reached today between President Biden and House Speaker McCarthy.

The deal is going to irritate those on both the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum, so passage of the legislation isn't assured. But the alternative -- defaulting on the nation's financial obligations -- was much worse. 

A New York Times story provides some basic facts about the deal.

President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Saturday reached an agreement in principle to lift the debt limit for two years while cutting and capping some government spending over the same period, a breakthrough after a marathon set of crisis talks that has brought the nation within days of its first default in history.

Congressional passage of the plan before June 5, when the Treasury is projected to exhaust its ability to pay its obligations, is not assured, particularly in the House, which plans to consider it on Wednesday. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the chamber, and right-wing lawmakers who had demanded significantly larger budget cuts in exchange for lifting the borrowing limit were already in revolt.

But the compromise, which would effectively freeze federal spending that had been on track to grow, had the blessing of both the Democratic president and the Republican speaker, raising hopes that it could break the fiscal stalemate that has gripped Washington and the nation for weeks, threatening an economic crisis.

Biden had correctly said that he wouldn't negotiate over raising the debt limit, since this only enables payment of money that already has been authorized by Congress and signed into law by the president. However, Biden also said that he'd negotiate the contours of federal spending for the next fiscal year and beyond.

That was simply political reality.

Spending bills originate in the House. The House is controlled by Republicans. So it made sense to talk about federal spending now with House Republicans. If Biden had refused to negotiate on spending, especially after the House had passed a debt limit bill that contained a GOP spending wish list, he would have looked foolish and irresponsible.

Progressives tend to ignore this fact. Compromises on federal spending were going to occur at some point given the GOP majority in the House. Those compromises were hammered out now, rather than later. 

All in all, I think Democratic priorities ended up doing fine in the deal. Not great, but fine. That's the nature of political deal-making: nobody gets all they want.

The debt limit is increased for two years, putting it off limits until after the 2024 election. A spending freeze also is for only two years. The House GOP wish list had large spending cuts extending over ten years, a big difference. 

The wish list called for doing away with climate action policies in the Inflation Reduction Act bill. Those won't happen, which is great. Only $10 billion of the $80 billion in increased funding for IRS enforcement of our tax laws is being shifted to other parts of the budget. Not good, but acceptable.

Yes, there are work requirements for federal aid in the deal. But they could have been worse. The New York Times story says:

According to a person familiar with the agreement, it also would impose new work requirements for some recipients of government aid, including food stamps and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. It would place new limits on how long certain recipients of food stamps — people under the age of 54, who do not have children — could benefit from the program. But it also would expand food stamp access for veterans and the homeless, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the package.

As I said in a blog post where I predicted a debt ceiling catastrophe, which is still possible but much less likely now, one of my fears was that House Republicans would tank the economy by not raising the debt limit, thereby seriously hurting Biden's reelection chance.

Biden seems to think that congressional Republicans want to ensure that our country doesn't enter a deep recession, or even a depression, due to full faith in the credit worthiness of the federal government taking a nose dive because of an inability to pay its bills.

Actually, Republicans want to take back the presidency in 2024, along with control of both the House and Senate. The best way to do that is for Biden and Democrats to be saddled with a massive economic downturn.

Which is what defaulting on our debt would do. 

The Freedom Caucus effectively controls the House of Representatives. Those far-right members got promises from Kevin McCarthy in return for giving him the backing to become Speaker of the House after 15 votes.

I don't see the Freedom Caucus being satisfied with any debt ceiling agreement that Biden is willing to sign and congressional Democrats are willing to support. Again, maybe I'm wrong.

Perhaps McCarthy has a political cattle prod that will jolt the Freedom Caucus into supporting a much pared down version of the extreme debt ceiling bill passed by the House with exactly zero votes to spare. This just seems very unlikely to me.

It still seems unlikely, given the nature of the deal worked out by McCarthy and Biden. Democratic votes will be needed to get the deal across the finish line in the House. Some ardent House progressives will refuse to provide those votes, but enough Democrats should join with enough Republicans to get the bill passed.

Then it goes to the Senate, where some GOP members will oppose it. However, while they will be able to slow down passage of the House debt limit bill, I don't see them being able to kill it. That would saddle Republicans with the responsibility for orchestrating the first default on our debt in the nation's history -- not something the GOP wants with an election coming in 2024.

So, yeah, congressional Democrats came out of the debt ceiling negotiation with about as good a deal as was possible for them.

Their crucial mistake was not raising the debt ceiling on their own when they had control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. House Republicans can't be blamed for using the debt ceiling as leverage given that this opportunity was available to them. The good news is that this leverage didn't pay off very well for them.

Democrats need to hang tough on Senate GOP walkout

Republicans are doing their best to make my blood boil. (So far, figuratively.)

Nationally, House Republicans seem determined to make their demands so extreme to raise the debt ceiling that the federal government will be unable to pay all of its bills soon, creating a financial catastrophe. 

Here in Oregon, the walkout of Senate Republicans entered its 15th day. And they just announced that they'll keep on not doing the job they were elected to do all the way to the last day of the current legislative session, June 25.

A story in the Oregon Capital Chronicle describes their unreasonable demand, and the totally appropriate response of the Democratic Senate President, Rob Wagner.

Oregon Senate Republicans on Tuesday declared they’re willing to return to the floor to pass bipartisan legislation and budget bills on June 25, the final day of the session.

Senators continued to participate in the GOP-led walkout on Tuesday, boycotting the floor session for the 15th day and preventing the Senate from reaching the two-thirds quorum needed to conduct business. 

...Republicans object to a few bills they want killed. These include House Bill 2002, a bill expanding abortion rights and access to transgender health care, and House Bill 2005, which deals with firearms and raises the minimum age for most gun purchases from 18 to 21 years old and allows local agencies to ban firearms in government-owned property.

Knopp’s statement came out as Wagner was on the Senate floor.

“We’re here to do the people’s work,” Wagner told reporters afterwards. “All the bills should be considered. This is our democracy. People need to show up to the floor, and if they object to legislation, then come tell the voters, tell your citizens, tell your constituents. Really, the place to have that debate is on the floor.”

Wagner said Democrats have no interest in changing House bills 2002 or 2005.

Democrats get to decide what bills are considered by the Senate. They should hang tough on not giving in to Republican hostage-taking, the hostage being a budget for state government and bills that are Democratic priorities.

Senate Republicans are acting like a toddler who refuses to eat their dinner, but demands dessert. (Ah, I remember those days well when my daughter was young.) 

No, Republicans, you don't get to pick and choose what bills you want to vote on. Oregonians have made Democratic legislators a majority in both the House and Senate. If the GOP wants to enjoy that power, win more elections. 

It's that simple. All the crying and wailing about Democrats running roughshod over the poor Republican minority runs counter to how democracy works: majority rule. 

But since Oregon Republicans aren't able to convince voters to put them in charge of this state, they're choosing to give democracy their middle finger by walking out of the Senate in a hissy-fit. Every parent learns that child temper tantrums can't be rewarded.

Same applies to adult temper tantrums in the Oregon legislature.

Oregon law allows state troopers to track down legislators who walk away from their constitutional duty.  So far, Governor Kotek hasn't done this. I think she should, if possible. All that is needed is to bring a few Senate Republicans back to have a quorum.

Another approach is to keep scheduling special sessions of the legislature if the GOP walkout extends past the statutory deadline of June 25 for the regular legislative session. Eventually enough Senate Republicans will return to vote on a must-pass bill, a budget to fund state government.

Here's another excerpt from the Oregon Capital Chronicle story.

If the walkout continues to June 25 and the session ends, Kotek could call lawmakers back in a special session to pass a budget. The current budget ends June 30, but state agencies can continue operating without any disruptions through Sept. 15 because of a continuing resolution that keeps the current levels of funding in place if a budget isn’t set yet.

So when September arrives, Kotek could schedule a special session. When a sufficient number of Republicans in both the House and Senate produce a quorum, state troopers should be ordered to lock the doors of the Capitol.

Bring in cots, blankets, and food. I'll be glad to contribute to a pizza fund. Force Republicans to remain in the Capitol, along with Democratic legislators, until all of the bills that are Democratic priorities have bene voted on.

Hardball? Absolutely. Legal? I'm not sure. But I sure like the idea. When Republicans are in power in red states, they ram through conservative bills with no concern for Democratic feelings. Turnabout is fair play here in Oregon.

Give Republicans exactly zero rewards for their walkout. Make the walkout as painful as possible for the GOP. This is what Republicans would do if they were in power in our state. It's what Democrats should do given that voters have put them in charge of Oregon.

My debt ceiling prediction: catastrophe. (I hope I'm wrong.)

As early as June 1, the federal government will run out of money to pay all of its bills unless the debt ceiling is raised and more money can be borrowed. The United States has never defaulted on its obligations, so many people believe we won't this time.

I disagree. I think there's a better chance of our country entering financial meltdown than of the debt ceiling being raised in enough time to avert a major catastrophe. 

Usually I want my political predictions to come true. In this case I want to be proven wrong. However, my reading of the political tea leaves is that the rise of far-right crazies in the Republican Party changes all of the calculations based on what has transpired in the past, debt ceiling wise.

President Biden still believes in bipartisanship. A majority of House Republicans don't. Thus a story in Politico is almost pathetic as it describes Biden's hope for a collaboration with the GOP that reflects times gone by, not today.

Biden and his team had been buoyed by their belief that a consensus building approach — though perpetually doubted — worked for them before, including with the passage of an infrastructure package and the far-reaching legislation that became the Inflation Reduction Act. But the debt ceiling standoff has so far proved stubbornly different, with Republicans showing a surprisingly united front and the president risking taking the brunt of the blame if the nation defaults for the first time in its history.

Biden seems to think that congressional Republicans want to ensure that our country doesn't enter a deep recession, or even a depression, due to full faith in the credit worthiness of the federal government taking a nose dive because of an inability to pay its bills.

Actually, Republicans want to take back the presidency in 2024, along with control of both the House and Senate. The best way to do that is for Biden and Democrats to be saddled with a massive economic downturn.

Which is what defaulting on our debt would do. 

The Freedom Caucus effectively controls the House of Representatives. Those far-right members got promises from Kevin McCarthy in return for giving him the backing to become Speaker of the House after 15 votes.

I don't see the Freedom Caucus being satisfied with any debt ceiling agreement that Biden is willing to sign and congressional Democrats are willing to support. Again, maybe I'm wrong.

Perhaps McCarthy has a political cattle prod that will jolt the Freedom Caucus into supporting a much pared down version of the extreme debt ceiling bill passed by the House with exactly zero votes to spare. This just seems very unlikely to me.

Most House Republicans back Trump. Trump loves chaos, the more the better.

If the federal government can be put in the position of having to decide whether purchasers of treasury bonds get paid interest on the debt they hold, or whether federal employees have to miss paychecks, this will bring smiles to the malevolent faces of Biden-hating Republicans.

In short, they don't care about the damage failure to raise the debt ceiling will do to the United States and the world. They care about winning in 2024 and restoring Trump to the presidency again.

Now, my dire prediction of what's going to happen soon, probably as early as June, rests on an assumption that Biden isn't going to invoke the 14th Amendment -- which he definitely should. Laurence Tribe, a noted constitutional scholar, has been arguing for this along with many others.

At this moment, at the White House as well as the Departments of Treasury and Justice, officials are debating a legal theory that previous presidents and any number of legal experts — including me — ruled out in 2011, when the Obama administration confronted a default.

The theory builds on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to argue that Congress, without realizing it, set itself on a path that would violate the Constitution when, in 1917, it capped the size of the federal debt.

...Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says the “validity” of the public debt “shall not be questioned” — ever.

...The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.

The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.

The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.

And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.

Biden hasn't ruled out using the 14th Amendment to avert a financial catastrophe. But he's expressed more concerns about doing this than I think are valid. Like, an obvious one: invoking the 14th Amendment would lead to a legal challenge.

Well, of course it would. So what?

If a reasonable agreement to raise the debt ceiling can't be worked out with Kevin McCarthy, then before the debt ceiling is breached Biden should announce that's he's ordering the Treasury Department to borrow enough money to pay the bills of the federal government in accord with the 14th Amendment.

That action will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Fine.

If a majority on the Supreme Court want to allow our nation to default on its debt, then the ensuing financial catastrophe is on them. Biden and the Democrats tried to work out a deal to raise the debt limit. Republican intransigence made that impossible. 

So the 14th Amendment was invoked. As Tribe says, this isn't ideal, but it's the better option.

The president should remind Congress and the nation, “I’m bound by my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution to prevent the country from defaulting on its debts for the first time in our entire history.” Above all, the president should say with clarity, “My duty faithfully to execute the laws extends to all the spending laws Congress has enacted, laws that bind whoever sits in this office — laws that Congress enacted without worrying about the statute capping the amount we can borrow.”

By taking that position, the president would not be usurping Congress’s lawmaking power or its power of the purse. Nor would he be usurping the Supreme Court’s power to “say what the law is,” as Chief Justice John Marshall once put it. Mr. Biden would simply be doing his duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” even if doing so leaves one law — the borrowing limit first enacted in 1917 — temporarily on the cutting room floor.

Ignoring one law in order to uphold every other has compelling historical precedent. It’s precisely what Abraham Lincoln did when he briefly overrode the habeas corpus law in 1861 to save the Union, later saying to Congress, “Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?”

For a president to pick the lesser of two evils when no other option exists is the essence of constitutional leadership, not the action of a tyrant. And there is no doubt that ignoring the debt ceiling until Congress either raises or abolishes it is a lesser evil than leaving those with lawful claims against the Treasury out in the cold.

Progressives should feel good about Salem-Keizer school board election

These days even local elections reverberate with echoes of national controversies. That certainly was the case with yesterday's special district election where three seats on the Salem-Keizer school board were up for grabs. 

Two slates of candidates faced off, one progressive and one conservative. The stakes were high, since in 2021 four progressive candidates beat their conservative opponents, putting control of the school board in their hands.

There are seven members of the school board, so 4-3 is a majority.

This year the three seats occupied by conservatives in 2021 were up for election, though only one was occupied by an incumbent, Satya Chandragiri, owing to some resignations. So while progressive control of the school board wasn't in doubt, the size of the progressive majority was.

As things stand the day after the May 16 election, there appears to be two winners and one too-close-to-call race.

Progressive Cynthia Richardson is leading conservative Casity Troutt by 1,051 votes. Conservative Krissy Hudson has a 4,205 vote lead over progressive Larry Scruggs. And conservative Satya Chandragiri is leading progressive Kelly Strawn by 446 votes. 

So unless Troutt has an extremely unlikely comeback, soon the progressive majority on the school board will increase from 4-3 to 5-2. Sure, liberals like me would prefer it be 6-1 or 7-0. But picking up a seat formerly held by a conservative should make progressives smile.

Especially since Casity Troutt hoped to win that seat. Troutt was a far-right candidate who would have brought her extreme agenda to the school board, creating havoc wherever she could. 

I urge you to read an excellent piece by Andrew Hickey on his Salem-Keizer Proletariat substack publication: "Progressives gain in Salem-Keizer School Board race." As I told Hickey in a comment on this post, whatever I was going to say about the election, you've said it better.

Hickey says this about Casity Troutt. 

Bigotry and hate lost big. Casity Troutt is a vocal anti-transgender activist and has tried to get books on diversity banned from public schools. Her candidacy was borne from those efforts. And her supporters worked hard to smear and degrade the only black woman in the entire race. Her campaign (and ideology) was a gross expression of fear and hate that was soundly rejected by our community. That’s a great signal.

Troutt also led an unsuccessful effort to recall three progressive school board members, so her loss is especially sweet for me.

I hated the attack ad against Richardson backers of Troutt spewed forth on social media. So the way I see it from my progressive point of view, keeping Troutt off the school board was better than losing the Hudson-Scruggs race, plus the Chandragiri-Strawn race -- should that remain in conservative hands after all the votes are counted.

Pleasingly, the overall positive showing of the progressive candidates in the Salem-Keizer school district  election reflected a broader trend. Here's some excerpts from an Oregonian story, "Oregon voters reject conservative school board candidates in Newberg, other districts."

Three incumbents on the Newberg school board lost their seats in Tuesday’s election, the end of an era in a district that’s attracted national attention since 2021, when a majority of board members banned staff from putting Black Lives Matter and pro-LGBTQ+ rights signs up in classrooms or hallways.

The five candidates who won seats on the board this week — three of them against incumbents and two of them for open seats — were all supported by a political action committee called Oregon CARES that says its mission is to elect “responsible and equitable” community leaders. That PAC’s largest single donor is the statewide teachers’ union, the Oregon Education Association.

...Overall, candidates who had strongly supported increased parental oversight over curriculum, particularly in social studies and health and sexuality, and who emphasized a “back-to-basics” approach on everything from academics to student discipline – lost their races in the Portland suburbs and exurbs Tuesday night, bucking a national trend that has seen candidates with conservative ideologies make meaningful inroads onto nonpartisan school boards.

Senate Democrats shouldn't negotiate over GOP walkout

Last Thursday Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner, a Democrat from Lake Oswego, agreed to a request from the minority leader to have the Senate not meet on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday after a nine-day GOP walkout.

An Oregon Capital Chronicle story says:

The three-day break gives Wagner and Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, a chance to work out differences before any senators rack up 10 unexcused absences. Legislators cannot qualify to run for reelection if they have 10 or more unexcused absences because of a voter-approved constitutional amendment that passed in 2022.

...“It is my hope that this will give us time to work out a legitimate agreement that will benefit all Oregonians,” Knopp said. “I have communicated that I will be available over the weekend to have these critical discussions.”

Knopp told the Capital Chronicle that Republicans want 20  bills set aside, including on abortion, guns and transgender health care.

So far, three senators have nine absences: Republican Sens. Daniel Bonham, The Dalles, Dennis Linthicum of Klamath Falls and Independent Brian Boquist of Dallas.

I think it's a mistake for Democrats to reward Senate Republicans with negotiations. Legislators are supposed to show up for work, not walkout. "Do your job" is the only thing the GOP senators should be hearing from Democrats in the Senate.

What's especially irritating about what Wagner did in cancelling the Friday-Sunday legislative sessions, after holding sessions the previous Friday and weekend, is that Oregonians overwhelmingly voted by a 68-32 margin for Measure 113 last November.

That measure says that if a state legislator has ten unexcused absences from floor sessions, they're disqualified from running for re-election at the end of their term.

Since over two-thirds of voters supported this, it's mystifying why Wagner felt he should negotiate with Republicans the day before three senators were going to hit the ten-day limit. It seems to me that Wagner should have let them be disqualified from running for office again.

That would have demonstrated how seriously Democrats take the walkout and also shown respect for the will of the voters who passed Measure 113. 

If Senate Republicans are able to get some bills killed that are Democrat priorities, this will embolden them to keep on staging walkouts. Since most GOP senators probably are in safe Republican districts, even if some senators are disqualified from running again, their GOP replacement can repeat the walkout in the next legislative session.

One small bit of leverage Senate Republicans had was a threat to take Measure 113 to court in hopes that it would be declared unconstitutional. If that happened, they could walkout in this session without suffering any consequences.

But Willamette Week has reported that a top Portland law firm has issued an opinion saying that Measure 113 appears to be constitutional. Here's an excerpt from the story, "As AWOL GOP Senators Consider Challenging New Attendance Law, Legal Memo Says They Have No Case."

As a walkout by Oregon Senate Republicans nears the end of its second week and butts up against the allowed maximum of 10 unexcused absences for some members, progressive groups have sought a legal opinion on whether a potential court challenge to that absence cap might succeed.

The short answer in the memo WW obtained: It’s unlikely.

“It is our conclusion that Measure 113 on its face does not violate the First Amendment rights of free speech and protest, nor the right to run for elective office,” wrote Misha Isaak and Whitney Brown, lawyers at the Stoel Rives firm, in a May 11 memo. “Accordingly, it is likely to survive constitutional challenge.” (Isaak was counsel to former Gov. Kate Brown before returning to private practice.)

So Senate Democrats better not cave to Republican demands to kill gun control, abortion, and transgender health care bills. If they want to walkout over these bills, let a bunch of GOP senators be disqualified from running again.

Sure, their replacements probably will be Republicans also, but at least the senators with ten unexcused absences will be punished for walking out. Of course, the real solution to walkouts is to change the legislative quorum rule from requiring 2/3 of legislators to be present to a simple majority. Oregon is only one of a handful of states that has a 2/3 quorum requirement. 

But this is in the state constitution, I'm pretty sure, so would require a vote of the people to change.

Trump on CNN was horrifying. Also, disqualifying.

I had no plan to watch the Trump town hall on CNN yesterday. But it was still going when I drove home from a Tai Chi class around 6 pm, so I listened to it on satellite radio for about half an hour.

It was ugly. Really ugly. Trump lied incessantly. He talked over the moderator, Kaitlan Collins. He called E. Jean Carroll, who had just won a civil lawsuit where Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, a "wack job" and said the trial was "a rigged deal."

The New Hampshire audience, mostly Republicans and a few independents, laughed at Trump's insults. Collins did her best to get Trump to answer her questions without lying, but she failed. Mostly the town hall seemed more like a Trump campaign rally than a forum for learning about his views.

I couldn't help but think, "This guy is utterly unqualified to run for president."

Of course, I already knew that, having suffered through four long years of Trump in the White House. But I'd expected that Trump would tone down his bullshit somewhat in the CNN town hall, since he must know that he can't win in 2024 without appealing to voters who aren't his MAGA devotees.

Not surprisingly, CNN has come in for lots of criticism for giving Trump over an hour of air time to blab about his usual grievances. A right-on story in The Bulwark by Charlie Sykes, "The Moment That You Knew," starts off this way. 

Critics had worried that giving the indicted, twice-impeached, coup-plotting, chronically lying sexual predator an unedited, live television forum might turn out badly.

The reality, however, was far ghastlier: a sh*tshow for the ages, and a moment that captured the thorough degradation of both our politics and the media. “It was a f**king nightmare,” remarked one savvy observer, “and it was programmed to BE a f**king nightmare.”

Trump was, of course, thrilled.

For her part, Kaitlan Collins was poised, prepared, and determined, but she never stood a chance. She raised all of the key questions and tried (not always successfully) to ask followups.

But Trump just rolled over her with a torrent of invective, jibes, and bullsh*t. The fact-checkers were reduced to asterisks. “He declared war on the truth,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said afterward. “And I’m not sure that he didn’t win.”

Where to start?

• • Trump called a black law enforcement officer a “thug.”

  • He repeated baseless conspiracy theories about 2020.

  • He lied about losing the 2020 election. (CNN’s Oliver Darcy tweeted: “I've lost count of how many times Trump has lied about the election. Collins keeps fact-checking him, but he keeps lying.”)

  • He lied about calling for “terminating” the Constitution so he could be returned to power.

  • He lied about his role on January 6th.

  • He suggested that he would pardon many of the January 6th insurrectionists.

  • He insisted again that Mike Pence should have overturned the election.

  • He endorsed letting the country default on its debt, even if it would bring on an economic cataclysm.

  • He claimed that residents of the Chinatown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., “did not speak English as part of an allegation that Biden stored boxes there after his vice presidency because he had nefarious ties to Beijing.”

  • He refused to back Ukraine against Russia.

  • He lashed out at Collins as “nasty woman” — and the audience CHEERED.

But this was hardly the worst of it. Actually, not even close.

The day after a federal jury found that the ex-president had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, Trump turned the episode into a joke, mocking and insulting his victim.

And the crowd laughed.

CNN's own employees are disparaging the town hall. However a Politico story, Enough With the Bellyaching Over CNN's Trump Town Hall, makes some good points about the value of what happened last night. I like Jack Shafer's writing style.

The captains who steer the SS CNN sent first mate Kaitlan Collins into the bilge Wednesday night to bail out the sinking ship with a thimble, while Donald Trump used the town hall format to blast a hole in CNN’s hull with a torpedo barrage of lies.

Collins, a resourceful journalist who thinks as fast on her feet as Muhammad Ali did on his, couldn’t keep up. That’s no reflection on her. Nobody practiced in the art of the interview has ever been able to stop this lying chatterbox in a live session. As scholar Michael Socolow points out, Chris Wallace, Lesley Stahl and Jonathan Swan successfully tamed him, but all of those Trump interviewers were taped and edited, which neutered his predictable and exuberant filibustering.

Plus, those interviews were conducted without an audience. Trump’s CNN town hall, on the other hand, was stocked from stem to stern with cheering acolytes who rewarded his every insult and evasion with laughter and applause. It’s hard to conduct an interview when rotten fruit and vegetables are being hurled onto the stage.

So was it a “mistake” on CNN’s part to give Trump such a forum? No. The town hall’s results could have been predicted — in fact, they were predicted by about a million commentators in the days leading up to the event. The chorus observed that Trump can lie faster than any real-time interviewer can fact-check him, so the immediate advantage of the arena will generally accrue to him.

CNN could have armed Collins with a centrifugal pump to siphon the Trump deluge, and she still would have been swamped. If it was all a ratings ploy, it wasn’t a very good one, as it attracted fewer viewers than six previous Trump town halls on Fox.

But in principle, a Trump interview was a good idea because it’s never a mistake for the press to confront newsmakers, even if the newsmaker lies about the integrity of the 2020 election, which Trump did.

Even if he mocks the justice system because it has held against him, which Trump did. Even if he uses the rhetorical devises of ad hominem, ad populum, ad baculum to savage his foes, as Trump did. Even if he insults the interviewer, which Trump did (“You’re a nasty person,” he said to Collins). Even if he refuses to answer simple questions about his stand on abortion, which Trump repeatedly did. And even if he offers his self-serving hallucinations about the events of January 6 as the truth, which Trump did.

...The lessons taught by Collins and CNN Wednesday night are not to fear Trump or to actively suppress his ideas but that the best format for tangling with him is a taped one, where he can’t chomp scenery and eat up the clock with non-answers, and one where the audience is at home in front of their televisions, not in an auditorium cheering him on.

We should all look forward to the next Trump TV interview, for all the good and bad it will surely deliver.

Justice! Trump guilty of sexual abuse and defamation

Our legal system served E. Jean Carroll well today. Today a jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of sexually abusing and defaming her. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages that Trump has to pay.

A New York Times story starts off this way.

A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. More than a dozen women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, but this is the only allegation to be affirmed by a jury.

In the civil case, the federal jury of six men and three women found that Ms. Carroll, 79, a former magazine writer, had sufficiently proved that Mr. Trump sexually abused her nearly 30 years ago in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. The jury did not, however, find he had raped her, as she had long claimed.

The jury, in returning the verdict shortly before 3 p.m., also found that Mr. Trump, who is running to regain the presidency, defamed Ms. Carroll in October when he posted a statement on his Truth Social platform calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.” His lawyer said he intended to appeal.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers called no witnesses, and he never appeared at the trial to hear Ms. Carroll, who had sued him last year, deliver visceral testimony about the attack she said had ended her romantic life forever.

Trump's attorney said he was pleased that the jury didn't find Trump raped Carroll. But Carroll admitted that she wasn't sure whether Trump fully penetrated her or just partially did so. This shows that the jury carefully considered the evidence in the trial, which renders Trump's crazy claim of "witch hunt" to be as absurd as his contention that he'd never met Carroll. 

Of course, there will be the usual assertions that Trump's bad character is "baked in" to how voters see him, so today's guilty verdict in Carroll's civil case against Trump won't hurt his candidacy to become president again.

A well-documented Just Security story argues otherwise. Here's an excerpt from Why the E. Jean Carroll Verdict Will Matter to Voters.

The unanimous jury verdict that has turned Donald Trump from an alleged sexual assaulter into a proven one may create political shockwaves if recent history is any guide. As numerous empirical studies have shown, the American public has come to view sexual assault as a form of abusing power that can disqualify a perpetrator from holding public office. Trump may suffer significant political damage from this new majoritarian understanding. 

In November 2017, 61% of voters – including 56% of men and a nontrivial margin of white men (50-43) and white women (55-37) – said then-President Trump should be impeached and removed from office if he were proven to have engaged in “sexual harassment,” according to a Quinnipiac poll. That overall support – the eye popping number of 61% – was higher than any poll tracking public support for impeachment and removal from office for the scandalous conduct in Trump’s first and second impeachments (see Five Thirty-Eight’s complete collection of surveys for the first and second impeachment). What’s more, Quinnipiac asked only about sexual harassment not sexual assault in the case of Trump. The latter, which is also the core crime in the E. Jean Carroll verdict, would have presumably produced even greater levels of support for removal from office. 

The Quinnipiac poll was not alone.

Here's some other tweets from my Twitter feed today. 

Of course, this is just the first trial that Trump is likely to face. A Politico story, Trump's defeat in Carroll case presages more legal peril, lays out those cases. I'm just sharing the title of each one. Read the story for details.

Indictment watch in Fulton County
KEY DATE: JULY 11

Pre-trial motions in the Manhattan hush-money case
KEY DATE: AUG. 8

Upcoming trial in New York civil case against the Trump Organization
KEY DATE: OCT. 2

The federal probe of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election

The federal probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents

Another lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll

Kind of amazing that Trump is the clear frontrunner to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 with all of these legal problems looming over him. Just goes to show that any claim the GOP has to be the law-and-order party is a bunch of B.S.

City of Salem pays $3.5 million for vacant property near riverfront. Why?

Since I don't watch City of Salem Urban Renewal meetings on You Tube (got to save my time for Succession), until today I wasn't aware that the Urban Renewal board, which is the City Council under another name, had approved paying $3.5 million for 1.14 acres of property near the riverfront.

The property is marked with a red star. The triangular Park Front building is above it. The South Park apartments are below it. Riverfront Park is to the left of it.

As I'll describe below, this seems like a questionable thing to do. In fact, it strikes me as irresponsible.

A Statesman Journal story clued me in: On the agenda: Salem to consider moving $1.81 million to buy downtown property.

City officials are set to consider reallocating $1.81 million to help buy a downtown property during the Salem City Council and Urban Renewal Agency meeting Monday.

...During its April 10 meeting, Urban Renewal Agency members, which includes the City Council, voted to authorize the city manager to execute a purchase and sale agreement with Salem LTC Properties, LLC, for the vacant land at Commercial and Front Street SE for $3.5 million.

The property being bought is owned by the Marquis Company, which operates rehabilitation facilities. In December 2021 Marquis filed an application with the city to build a four-story mixed use building with a 72 bed rehabilitation facility on the upper floors and about 3,940 square feet of ground floor commercial space.

But Marquis determined that the project was infeasible and put it back on the market, according to the Statesman Journal story.

They found a willing buyer: the taxpayers of Salem, who fund the Urban Renewal Agency through a property tax mechanism. An Urban Renewal FAQ describes how it works.

What is urban renewal? 
Urban renewal is a public financing tool. Using a mechanism called Tax Increment Financing (or TIF), urban renewal directs property taxes on growth in assessed value within an established urban renewal area toward projects that will improve conditions in that area. The driving idea behind urban renewal is that the extra investment, and the expectation of investment, in the urban renewal area generates growth that would not have occurred but for that investment. This extra growth is what funds urban renewal projects, and ultimately provides additional tax revenues to the city as a whole.

Note the mention of "growth that would not have occurred but for that investment." But in the past this isn't how the City of Salem uses urban renewal, as I argued in a 2016 post, "Urban renewal crony capitalism is alive and well in Salem (may it die soon)."

The object of my ire was a $749,000 Urban Renewal grant given to T.J. Sullivan, a former Salem city councilor, for his Park Front building. Sullivan said he didn't need the grant to construct a building. He needed the grant because he couldn't get a bank to give him a loan to construct the larger building that he wanted. I wrote:

T.J. Sullivan admitted that the only reason he needs the $749,000 is to be able to build two extra floors on his four-story building.  
In his testimony, Sullivan went into considerable detail about the problems he encountered in getting a construction loan from Pioneer Trust Bank.

Given that Sullivan and his partners would only have a million dollars in equity invested in this $8.9 million building, and that only two floors had committed tenants, he said that it wouldn't be possible to get loan approval for the four story building he wants without a $749,000 grant from City of Salem urban renewal funds.

Sullivan admitted that he could have built a two-story building on his own. But Pioneer Trust wasn't happy with the appraisal, debt to income level, or occupancy percentage of his four-story project. 

Well, for most businesspeople that's a problem they'd have to deal with on their own. Find more equity/investors. Work harder at recruiting tenants. Reduce the cost of construction. 

But in Salem, urban renewal money isn't being used for the main intended purpose -- spurring private development that wouldn't have occurred without the leverage of public funds. Rather, Sullivan got a gift from the City of Salem that helps him construct a building that he said definitely was going to be built eight months before he applied for the urban renewal grant.

Basically, this is a public bail-out of a poorly-planned private project. Which is a pretty damn good definition of crony capitalism. 

I also noted in the 2016 post that the Marquis property which the Urban Renewal Agency is buying already had received several $749,000 grants.

Calling the current condition of the old Boise Cascade property blighted is absurd.
Urban renewal money is supposed to be used on redevelopment projects in "blighted" areas. Years ago, when nothing was happening with the Boise Cascade site, that word would have fitted the property. 

But after Mountain West Investment got a generous 10-year tax break to build the South Park complex, I've heard those apartments are fully occupied and commanding pretty high prices. Further, Marquis Companies got a similar $749,000 urban renewal grant for a rehab center as part of the deal Mountain West made when it sold part of the Boise Cascade property to the City of Salem for an expansion of Riverfront Park. 

So that's two major de-blighting investments of public funds already made on the Boise Cascade property. Further, as I said in my testimony T.J. Sullivan's Park Front building is on a site bought from Marquis Companies. So the same piece of property now is going to get two $749,000 urban renewal grants.

This is ridiculous.

So is the Urban Renewal Agency buying the Marquis property for $3.5 million. The 1.14 acres obviously isn't blighted, since Marquis had bought it, and T.J. Sullivan had purchased the property his Park Front building sits on from Marquis. That's a lot of recent commercial activity on the site.

Yet after Marquis determined that a mixed use development isn't feasible for the 1.14 acres, Salem's Urban Renewal Agency decided to buy it from Marquis for.... (take a guess)... a mixed use development. 

This is called an "opportunity" purchase by the Urban Renewal Agency. Question is, what does the opportunity consist of? This evening I watched a video of the April 10, 2023 Urban Renewal Agency meeting where the $3.5 million purchase was approved by the city councilors.

The agenda item was on the consent calendar where routine business like minutes of the previous meeting is approved on a single vote. That's what happened on April 10. There was no discussion of spending the $3.5 million. There was no mention of what the City of Salem planned to do with the property after it was acquired.

Councilor Nordyke did ask Kristin Retherford, director of the Urban Development department, about what was happening with the downtown property formerly occupied by the Union Gospel Mission and several private businesses. It also was bought by the Urban Renewal Agency.

Retherford said that criteria for assessing development proposals are being developed, and a list of potential developers made. When asked what the property would be used for, Retherford was vague. Mixed use, with housing required to have 15% affordable housing units. She said that it will be up to the developers to decide what is feasible given current market conditions.

So it looks to me like Marquis is the one who got the main benefit from this opportunity purchase. They were able to sell their 1.14 acres that was unfeasible for them as a mixed-use development. Now the City of Salem, not Marquis, will have to find a buyer willing to purchase that property for a mixed-use development. 

Not only that, but tomorrow, Monday, May 8, the Urban Renewal Agency has an agenda item proposing that $1,812,090 from Future Projects, Pringle Creek Trail Improvements, and Project Coordination in the South Waterfront Urban Renewal Area be shifted to pay for the Marquis property.

Thus say goodbye to the future projects and improvements to the Pringle Creek Trail.

And say hello to the use of $3.5 million in public funds to pay for 1.14 acres that will then have to be sold to a developer, even though private development in that area already is obviously evident: the South Park apartments and the Park Front building currently exist, with both having gotten Urban Renewal money in the past, just as the 1.14 acres got a previous Urban Renewal grant.

The only reason I can think of why more Urban Renewal money should be poured into the same Marquis property is that now city officials can require that some housing be built there, instead of just office space or another commercial use.

Otherwise, this seems like a poor use of Urban Renewal funds, especially since interest rates are so high and the economy could be headed for a recession -- which might make that property worth quite a bit less than $3.5 million.

Debt ceiling fight is super scary. Because the GOP is crazy.

June 1 isn't far away. I wish it were a lot farther. Because that's the date when the United States could hit the debt ceiling.

The debt ceiling is a uniquely American bit of stupidity, along with the electoral college. Denmark is the only other country with a debt ceiling, but Denmark doesn't engage in political games over it as we do. A New York Times story explains this.

Almost no other country in the world has a debt ceiling. Elsewhere, politicians argue over how high taxes and spending should be when passing budget laws. Once those laws have passed, the government doesn’t need any additional authority to borrow money to pay for its programs.

Your household budget works the same way: You don’t first decide whether to buy a car and then separately decide whether you should repay the car loan. The decision is whether to buy the car in the first place. If you do, you repay the loan — or go bankrupt.

The U.S. government instead uses a two-step process. After passing tax and spending policies, Congress must pass another law that authorizes repayment of its obligations. This second law increases the limit on how much the government can borrow, which is known as the debt ceiling. (Here’s an explainer.) Denmark is the only other country with a similar system, and Danish politicians increase their debt ceiling well in advance, typically without rancor.

Republicans in Congress had no problem with raising the debt ceiling when Trump was president. But now that Biden is in the White House, they're making absurd demands of the Democrats in order to raise it.

House Republicans have voted to raise the debt ceiling for a year in exchange for massive cuts in federal spending, which include rolling back the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act needed to combat global warming. 

Not going to happen.

President Biden is wisely refusing to negotiate over the debt ceiling. As the New York Times story says, raising the debt ceiling doesn't authorize any additional spending. It simply guarantees that the United States will pay for programs already passed by Congress and signed into law.

Biden has said that he's willing to sit down with congressional Republicans and discuss spending in the next fiscal year budget, along with longer term efforts to reduce the rise in our national debt by increasing revenue, reducing spending, or both.

But Republicans are refusing to enter into budget negotiations.

They're demanding that Democrats give in to their hostage taking over the debt ceiling, the hostage being the credibility of the U.S. government to pay its bills and the financial catastrophe that will hit our country and the world if the debt ceiling isn't lifted. 

Catherine Rampell, a Washington Post opinion columnist, lays out the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling in a disturbing piece accurately titled What would U.S. default actually look like? 'Financial Armageddon.'

Here's some excerpts.

For months you’ve heard warnings about the Very Bad Things that could happen if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling. U.S. government default! Market crash! Global financial crisis!

That probably feels abstract, maybe even hyperbolic. Worldwide financial meltdown? Really?

I spent recent days talking to financial market experts and former government officials about the potential fallout. I wanted to better understand the channels through which panic and losses could spread and precipitate “financial Armageddon,” as one former Federal Reserve official dubbed it. (Other phrases that came up in interviews: “nightmare scenario,” “bankruptcies that rival those in the Great Depression,” and “we might have to go back to trading beads.”)

...One useful lens for thinking through possible consequences was suggested by Richard Berner, a senior Treasury official during the 2011 debt-limit crisis: The global financial system is like an upside-down pyramid, and the tip of that pyramid is the U.S. Treasury market. “Everything else rests upon it,” he told me.

With these disclaimers, here’s a summary of what market experts relayed. Our scenario assumes the U.S. government fails to pay for not only key services such as Social Security checks and military salaries but also principal or interest on at least some U.S. Treasury securities. (It’s unclear whether the government has technical capacity to effectively prioritize payments, anyway, or if ratings agencies would care.) On to the consequences, in seven terrifying steps: [I'm just sharing the terrifying headlines; read the opinion piece for a discussion of each.]

1) Treasurys get downgraded — as does virtually every other asset on earth.
2) Interest rates rise for U.S. consumers, businesses and the government.
3) The dollar might lose value in foreign-exchange markets.
4) Stock markets plummet.
5) Companies holding Treasurys suffer hits to both revenue and balance sheets.
6) There might be a scramble to close out trades that people would otherwise hold.
7) Some of the infrastructure underpinning large parts of the financial system (called “central counterparty clearinghouses”) could essentially get overwhelmed and go down.

In the past, there were enough reasonable Republicans in Congress to assuage my fear that the GOP will allow a national and global financial meltdown over the debt ceiling fight. But "reasonable" and "Republican" now are two words that don't go together very often.

And certainly not in the House of Representatives. House Speaker McCarthy sold out to the farthest right of his party in order to win the speakership. Those arch-conservative crazies aren't willing to raise the debt ceiling unless Biden gives in to their ridiculous demands, which Biden won't do.

At least, I hope he doesn't.

Giving in to hostage-taking just guarantees additional hostage-taking. Biden and congressional Democrats have to stay firm on their current simple stance: a clean debt limit hike with no conditions comes first; then negotiations can begin on the federal budget for the next fiscal year, and possibly future years.

Our country has never failed to pay its bills. We've never defaulted on our debt.

If the GOP pushes the United States over a financial cliff, that debacle will come back to bite Republicans in their political butt, big time. When Americans see their stock market investments drop 20-30%, or even more, they're going to want to punish the GOP for what congressional Republicans have done.

Oregon Senate Republicans walkout. Again. Pathetic.

Well, it didn't take long for Republicans in the Oregon Senate to give an extended middle finger to the 68% of Oregonians who approved Measure 113 last November, which says that any legislator with ten unexcused absences from a legislative session can't run for reelection. 

After walking out in 2019 and 2021, once again Senate Republicans are refusing to do their job, as reported by the Oregonian.

Oregon Republicans boycotted the state Capitol on Wednesday, testing for the first time a 2022 measure that punishes state lawmakers for walkouts. The boycott comes as Democrats advance an abortion and gender-affirming health care proposal and gun regulations scorned by conservatives.

Five senators — one Independent and four Republicans — were unexpectedly absent when the state Senate convened Wednesday morning. In addition, another seven senators were granted excused absences in advance. The absences denied the 20-member quorum necessary to conduct business, forcing Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, to bang a gavel ending the session.

I wish those Republicans (the independent is Brian Boquist, a former Republican who caucuses with the Senate GOP members) would be honest and simply say that they're against gun safety, abortion rights, and gender-affirming care.

Instead, they made up a bunch of crap to justify being paid while failing to perform their legislative duties. Here's the absurd reason they conjured up, according to the Salem Reporter.

The walkout – which Republican leaders called a work stoppage – comes amid frustrations between minority GOP senators and Democratic leaders over contentious issues like firearms regulations, transgender rights and abortion. GOP leaders say the move is not tied to any one bill and aims to combat an unconstitutional process of passing bills that fail to meet legal requirements for readable language that the public can understand. 

So we're supposed to believe that the top priority of Senate Republicans now is readable language. I'd say Good luck making this a centerpiece of your reelection campaign, but if the Republicans in the Oregon Senate (12 including Boquist) keep on with their walkout, many or most of them won't be able to be reelected because of Measure 113.

Not surprisingly, the GOP is thinking of challenging the constitutionality of Measure 113. You know, the measure that over two-thirds of Oregon voters said "yes" to. Try explaining that to the public, Senate Republicans. Here's another excerpt from the Salem Reporter story. Tim Knopp is the Senate Republican leader.

Knopp said Republicans and an independent senator are taking their protest day-by-day, and that it’s possible at least one will rack up 10 unexcused absences to have legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of the new voter-approved law.