ProfJerry's Weblog

I really like the way Jack Smith is framing the prosecution’s case. TPM’s David Kurtz spells it out:

In his brief 2-minute remarks at Main Justice Tuesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith placed the new indictment of former President Trump squarely in the context of the hundreds of other federal prosecutions related to the Jan. 6 attack.

Here’s the key line from Smith:

Since the attack on our Capitol, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day. This case is brought consistent with that commitment.

In tying this case directly to the Capitol attack and the other prosecutions – even though the charges against Trump don’t yet include seditious conspiracy or anything akin to incitement to riot – Smith has made this prosecution the ultimate prize as DOJ worked its way up the ladder from random rioters to Oath Keepers and Proud Boys to the White House itself.

For the federal judges in DC who have handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases each, the context is clear. Trump is the big fish. And his conduct will be judged with that broader context firmly in mind. So too will sentencing occur in the context of the hefty prison terms handed down for the worst of the rioters and the right-wing extremist groups who formed an initial vanguard for the attack.

Remember Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has the longest prison sentence to date: 18 years. No federal judge in DC could sentence Trump without having that context firmly in their minds.

Heather Cox Richardson points out:

When Ronald Reagan called for tax cuts in 1980, he argued that tax cuts would concentrate money in private hands, enabling investors flush with cash to build the economy. That growth would keep tax revenues stable even with the lower rates. That was the argument, but it never came to pass. In fact, a 2022 study by political economists David Hope and Julian Limberg shows that “tax cuts for the rich…do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment,” but they do “lead to higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term” https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-23-2023

So, tax cuts for the wealthy don’t work as they had been advertised and pitched.

Wow, who knew?

And yet, today’s GOP still refuses to ask the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes.

Lawrence Tribe, writing in the New York Times:

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.

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.

This seems like an astute way to avoid the crisis that the GOP seems willing to impose on the nation. Congress passed the laws that led to the debt, and the President has an obligation to execute the laws. Congress has no right to tell the President he cannot pay the bills they created.

Those who claim to be Christian and are supporting the surge of legislation aimed at punishing transchildren have apparently not paid much attention to what Jesus had to say about children.

As Candice Marie Benbow at Religious News Service affirms:

All of our children deserve better. Transgender youth deserve a world where they are safe, and cisgender youth deserve that same world. It can come into being when adults push past their own agendas and limited understandings to let it be so.

More than half of Americans (54%) oppose anti-trans legislation, specifically laws that criminalize gender-affirming care for minors. This is a good thing. Perhaps America isn’t that soulless, after all. Perhaps the majority of us do care about all children and desire to create a world where their thriving is essential. If only our legislation — and lawmakers — reflected this intention.

At the same time, Jesus told his disciples that they must become like children to enter into heaven, he also said it would be better for a millstone to be placed around a person’s neck and to drown than for that person to make life unnecessarily hard for children.

In her February 11 newsletter, Heather Cox Richardson reported:

Today, Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post reported that Trump’s campaign hired a consulting firm to try to prove that the election had been stolen. The Berkeley Research Group examined the election results in six swing states, but could not find anything that would have changed the outcome. “They looked at everything,” a source told Dawsey: “change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted…. Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.”

It won’t change the minds of the “election deniers” but for those of us who like to think we’re part of the “reality-based community” this serves as further confirmation that the former guy was just “blowing smoke” with his claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.

Robert Reich, writing in The Washington Post:

Corporations have been more willing to exercise monopoly power over the past year because inflation has given them cover to do so. While telling retailers and consumers they have no choice but to raise prices because their own costs are rising, they’ve been raising prices higher than their rising costs in order to expand their profit margins.

So the next time you hear or read someone saying that Biden has been the cause of inflation, remember the role of major corporations in raising the prices of nearly everything.

I recently read that in the early part of the 17th century, there were twice as many people living in North America as there were in Europe.

That led to a further reflection — namely, the people who buy into the great replacement theory may be exhibiting a classic example of projection because they remember (subconsciously or consciously) that their ancestors did, in fact, engage in a great replacement. This was the replacement of the indigenous peoples of North America by white Europeans.

Philip Bump, writing in The Washington Post¹ discusses a report written by a “group of Republican staffers and officials with robust partisan credentials” that concludes the claims of a stolen election are without any supporting evidence whatsoever.

However,

Those who believe Trump’s claims that the election was stolen are participants in a torrid love affair with the idea. There’s no dissuading, no telling them that their partner is toxic, dishonest and deceptive. Over time, one hopes, their feelings will simply fade and, while they’ll always harbor positive feelings toward the idea that election was stolen, they’ll move on. Perhaps even trust another election in the future.

Let’s hope those who bought the claims of a stolen election will indeed, eventually move on. But, in the meantime, their credulity and disconnect with reality continue to contribute to the grave problems facing our nation.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/14/we-have-reached-apex-election-fraud-debunking/ ↩

These suggested readings come from Sojourners. I hope you may find them useful in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

I wish that I had more eloquent words. I don’t have them right now,” admitted Rev. Katey Zeh as she talked with Sojourners’ Mitchell Atencio about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

I suspect many of us know the feeling. Even though we knew the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was likely to overturn the federal protections that allowed women and pregnant people to make their own reproductive health decisions for nearly 50 years, it’s still a shock.

In Sojourners’ coverage of abortion, we aim to get beyond the simple labels of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” and highlight voices that honor the fullness of life and human flourishing in all its messy complexity. One of the best ways we know how to do this is to listen closely to the stories and lived experiences of people who are directly affected by legal decisions, especially folks who are economically poor, politically marginalized, and socially vulnerable.

So if you find you don’t have your own words right now, we’ve rounded up some of the coverage on faith, abortion, and social justice — both past and present, from Sojourners and from around the web — that we think are worth revisiting. —Betsy Shirley

1. Roe Is Over: Faith Leaders On What That Means for Christians

“I fear many women, especially low-income and Black women, will suffer because of Roe being overturned,” said Alessandra Harris. _By Mitchell Atencio via sojo.net._

2. Damned If You Don’t

Rebecca Shrader thought she knew what was right when it came to abortion. Then she got pregnant. _By Emma Green via This American Life._

3. About That Bible Verse You See on Anti-Abortion Signs

For many Christians, Jeremiah 1:5 — “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” — is about when life begins. But the passage deserves more than a plain-text reading. _By Katherine Pater via sojo.net._

4. How Clergy Set the Standard for Abortion Care

Fifty years ago, a network of religious leaders helped thousands of women find safe, comfortable ways of having the procedure. _By Bridgette Dunlap via The Atlantic._

5. What It Took to Change My Mind on Abortion

For years I was able to avoid talking about abortion because the people I knew who had abortion stories were close, but not too close. _By Bryan Parys via sojo.net._

6. Conservative Court-Packing Isn’t About Abortion — It’s About Culture

If the Right really cares about abortion, they should reduce poverty. _By Lisa Sharon Harper via _Sojourners_._

7. As a Christian, I Want to Reduce Abortion, Not Overturn Roe

It shouldn’t be controversial to say “I don’t want to criminalize abortion” and “I want to ensure there are fewer unwanted pregnancies.” But it is. _By Adam Russell Taylor via sojo.net._

8. We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse.

We are entering an era not just of unsafe abortions but of the widespread criminalization of pregnancy. _By Jia Tolentino_ _via _The New Yorker.

9. Rev. Katey Zeh Is Done With Circular Abortion Debates

She hopes her new book, _A Complicated Choice_, helps Christians care more fully for people who’ve had abortions. _By Betsy Shirley via sojo.net._

10. 4 Ways the Church Can Get Ready for a Post-Roe World

While “surrounding mothers with love” is certainly essential to addressing crisis pregnancies, there are a number of national-level advocacy efforts the church can and must engage in that will impact the lives of women much more effectively. _By M.T. Dávila via National Catholic Reporter._

Benjamin Mazer, writing in The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/covid-anti-vaccine-smoking/622819/

And yet, here we are, swimming in an ocean of disinformation and misinformation.