Sooooo… Apparently this happened and I am here for it:
The term “congressional hearing” is rarely associated with words like “fun” and “exciting,” which is all the more reason why Rep. Katie Porter’s (D-CA) rise to social media fame is so unheard of.
Finding a way to cut through sleepy government meetings, Porter has created a series of enthralling whiteboard visuals, which she uses to illustrate key points in her mission to call out government corruption during hearings.
Her latest gag, called “JeoperDoD,” a mashup name including TV gameshow “Jeopardy!” and the acronym for the U.S. Department of Defense, invited those participating in the Thursday’s defense hearing to earn hypothetical points for correctly answering questions about alleged overspending in the U.S. defense budget.
“A member of Senate leadership who recently said funding the Pentagon at $886 billion would mean defense is ‘radically underfunded,’” Porter prompted in one 200-point question in the category of “enablers.” The correct answer was Mitch McConnell.
I don’t know what to say about a defense establishment that gets a trillion dollars a year and struggles to make enough 155 rounds to support a regional conflict in Europe.
SiubhanDuinne
I love her SO HARD. Still supporting Adam Schiff in the Senate run for DiFi’s seat, but not without a lot of angst. Because I am really a huge fan of Katie Porter. But I do think she’s exactly where she’s most effective right now, and I think Schiff would be formidable in the Senate.
misterpuff
I’ll take “Flying Gravy Boat” for 300 please.
Cheryl from Maryland
@SiubhanDuinne: Agree. I was so happy when Jamie Raskin decided not to run for the MD Senate Seat because I felt he would be most effective where he is (disclosure – he is my congressperson).
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Agree, it’s not the time for Raskin in the Senate right now. I think it may be in the next few years, but not yet. And he’s been through more than any human soul should be asked to bear, so he needs to chill and get centred and not invite unneeded additional stress into his life.
I’m content enough with my Representative (Lucy McBath), and of course am very happy with my Senators, Ossoff and Warnock, but I must confess I am greenly envious of your having Jamie Raskin representing you in the USHoR.
OzarkHillbilly
GAWD, I so love Katie porter.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yup yup yup.
Roger Moore
I know exactly what to say: it’s been captured by the MIC. The primary function of the defense procurement system is to provide corporate welfare to defense contractors; any ability to provide functioning military hardware is strictly secondary.
You can see this both in what we buy and how it’s made. In many cases, we buy stuff the generals and admirals have specifically asked not to receive just because it’s made by contractors who our legislators want to reward. The manufacturing process is designed to buy votes by ensuring some part of hardware is made in as many Congressional districts as possible, even though this is almost guaranteed to compromise the cost and quality of the final product.
twbrandt
Is it just me, or did an AL post disappear?
Raoul Paste
@twbrandt: I think we just witnessed the avoidance of a post stomp
Parfigliano
The last thing the Pentagon budget is for is the defense of the USA.
Gin & Tonic
Thinking of what russia is doing as a “regional conflict” is a category error.
JPL
ot From Lafft at Mastodon Trump did tell them to take the hoods off.
omg.
Via Rep. Don Beyer:
This just happened on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. A House Republican just referred to Black Americans serving in our military as “colored people.” In 2023.
Acyn:
Crane: My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or black people or anybody can serve.
Beatty: I would like those words stricken from the record #racism. 1/…
2/ Ohhh but there’s more.
America 2023, folks.
Via Aaron Fritschner:
This was not just a slip- Crane also said this:
“The military was never intended to be inclusive, its strength is not its diversity”
“You can keep playing around these games with diversity, equity, and inclusion … [if] we keep lowering our standards it’s not gonna be good”
Daoud bin Daoud
@Parfigliano: the Pentagon budget defends the plutocracy. That’s all.
gene108
Katie Porter annoys me. Her white board annoys me.
It’s like the flip side of Republicans spewing out “yes or no gotcha questions” to people testifying before Congress.
I know I’m in the minority here.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Agree.
On the DoD budget. We spend a lot to create new ways of doing things with the military, even when I was in half a century ago. (Just passed the 50th anniversary of my discharge! This month.) And it’s good that we keep our military up with the times, however there is always a need for the old fashioned way of doing things. I mean we really don’t need that flap on the back of the dark navy dress uniform that was there so that the pony tails that sailors wore didn’t mess up the uniform, seeing as how we haven’t allowed long hair for the past what, at least 100 yrs.
But what we do spend money on is what can only be called advanced weapons and ways of propelling ships or airplanes or on and on. Is it an improvement? I’d bet yes, but it is expensive and can we do better? Seemingly a portion of the population wants to travel back in time to have a society that sucked donkey balls back when we actually used donkeys. So many of us realize that the conservative party wants to go back to a world and time not where they made any sense whatsoever, but a time that had them with a damn strong lock on power, but time and history do not have reverse. We have a strong country but allowing people to make billions and pay so little tax that it should make whatever they did to make those billions illegal. Now we will never have a country where some don’t make a lot more than others but it should at least move the country and society forward, instead of just increasing their bank accounts, especially while some/many still suffer.
LifeInTheBonusRound
Katie Porter is not my favorite person, but this is brilliant!
Dorothy A. Winsor
From Scott MacFarlane. Jack Smith files an argument against Trump’s request for an indefinitely delayed trial.
Freemark
@SiubhanDuinne: F— you people! I have Scott Perry. I hate you all!
/snark
Bex
@SiubhanDuinne: I always liked her, but I didn’t love her until she was seen reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck while the McCarthy for speaker shitshow was going on.
SpaceUnit
I’m in agreement with Porter regarding military spending, but I doubt the ability of such a stunt to get any legs or do anything about it. Yet another issue where we need a Dem supermajority.
JPL
@SpaceUnit: It was a better aproach that Rep. Crane of Arizona blaming diversity and colored folks
Joy Reid is now covering Eli Crane’s comments.
SpaceUnit
@JPL:
I missed that.
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108: I agree with you. Not a huge fan.
ETA: This also is reminiscent of Gaylord Nelson’s Golden Fleece Awards.
edit: corrected to William Proxmire.
JPL
@SpaceUnit: my comment at 12
It was stricken from the record, but it should not have been.
CaseyL
Someone – possibly on Mastodon – dismissed Porter as “performative,” and I wanted to argue the point, but then I wondered if they might be right. Porter gets a lot of media attention, and a lot of love from folks like us, but have her whiteboard presentations ever actually accomplished anything?
And by that, I mean: has she used them to mobilize broader public opinion in support of policies that would weaken the oligarchic death grip on the country?
Has she used them to move other Members of the House to support stronger, broader measures than they might otherwise have done?
Has she followed up on the hearings where she publicly shames these people, in aid of additional hearings, or legislation, or sustained public campaigns?
I haven’t seen any signs that that has happened.
Martin
I do love the creativity and pettiness of my representative.
Getting these guys to grudgingly go along is pretty funny.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree with you, not a huge fan. She’s one of those cases where YMMV definitely applies.
SpaceUnit
@JPL:
Gotcha. Sorry, I posted my comment before I read through.
And that is truly unfuckingbelievable.
Geminid
@LifeInTheBonusRound: Porter needs to differentiate herself from Adam Schiff, her chief rival for California’s Senate seat. This is one good way. It could help her in the first round, where she also needs to beat Barbara Lee, a long term defense spending critic.
The second round in November, 2024 could be a different story. Hard core Trump supporters might leave the Senate line blank, since Porter is very liberal while Schiff is reviled by Trump. But California has a large military-industrial base, and some hawkish Republicans and Independents might see Porter as a threat, and vote for Schiff..
California’s “jungle” primary has introduced a new electoral dynamic, and I think we are still finding out what it means in practice. This Senate contest will be an interesting social science experiment in that regard.
Another Scott
$BIGNUMBER is meaningless without context.
Similarly, one could say, the USA spends $1.4T a year on federal health insurance programs but there are still people dying of easily preventable illnesses.
The critics are right, the US does not spend what it needs to to support all of the DoD missions that it has taken on. One can either spend more, or cut missions and upkeep and readiness and R&D, or muddle through like we always do until there is a crisis. It’s the same in healthcare, and education, and basic research, and care for the environment, and just about anything you can think of.
The OECD national average tax revenue is about 32% of GDP. The US is about 26.6%. Denmark is the highest at 46.9%.
The USA is vastly undertaxed, because the top 5% or so aren’t paying anywhere nearly enough.
“Show me your budget and I’ll tell you your values.” – Speaker Pelosi
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Proxmire not Nelson. My bad.
JPL
@SpaceUnit: Katie Porter’s game is what MSM is covering, so once again Kevin is breathing a sigh of relief
One thing that a guest of Reid said, was they should not have stricken it from the record.
CaseyL
Oh, and if anyone is curious about some of the stuff DoD spends its money on that doesn’t get a lot of press, I hugely and highly recommend the book Grunt by Mary Roach.
She does a deep dive into all the R&D and implementation it takes for the US to field its armed forces. Weapons systems aren’t what the book is about: it’s about how to keep people alive, healthy, fed, clothed, and equipped in a war zone in any environment; how to design the things they ride in, fly in, and patrol beneath the sea in to be safer; and medical care when things go very wrong. It’s fascinating, and told with great humor as well as insight.
She wrote the book while the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were in full swing, so she had a lot of material to work with.
Mike in NC
We know roughly what the Pentagon’s annual budget is, but we’ll probably never know how much Fat Bastard spent in four years to ‘upgrade’ his shabby properties at taxpayer expense.
Ruckus
When you are describing people of grade school (or less) mentality you should use grade school style to convey that. Katie Porter does exactly that. IOW there is no mistaking what she is saying. And it needs saying because we cannot move forward as a country if we don’t. We will never get everyone on board that the country and every damn one of it’s citizens needs many things to be better. We shouldn’t have such a misshapen economy that people that do nothing positive make billions and many still barely survive in poverty. And if you don’t think that is happening, ride along with me on the Los Angeles Metro train system. The vast majority is using the system to move from one place to another far cheaper and easier and often faster than driving, but not everyone. There are still those that use the train as a reasonable place to sleep that is far more comfortable than the sidewalk or street. In a society that has a magazine that runs a story once a year, the 400 richest Americans and everyone on that list is now a billionaire.
Steve in the ATL
Another thread about Omnes? Ugh.
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: Another part of the budget is spent on being prepared for things that might happen. If they don’t actually happen it can look like waste, but if it did and the DoD wasn’t prepared people would scream. This is not to say there isn’t a ton of waste too. It’s just a bit more complex than people often think.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: If that were true, I would have staff comment here. My comments would probably be much more coherent.
zhena gogolia
@twbrandt: Yeah, I had a comment there.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: She says that? I didn’t watch the video.
zhena gogolia
@gene108: I’m with you!
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: William Proxmire.
ETA: I see you corrected it.
Geminid
@SpaceUnit: You would also need to get a sizeable majority of Congressional Democrats to sign on to substantial defense cuts. That substantial majority is not there now, and I think it might not be for the rest of the decade.
One reason is that the defense spending is spread across so many districts and states, and another reason is that a lot of Democratic voters see a need for a strong and qualitatively superior military.
I have not seen polling of Democrats on this issue, but I suspect Democrats were generally more willing to cut the Pentagon budget ten years ago, in the wake of the Iraq War, than they are now in the midst of the war on Ukraine. It may take a few years for that pendulum to swing back.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: Cole calls it that.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: Ohhh, missed that the first time. Wow.
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
They’re absolutely performative. The whole thing is to show off for the cameras, not to get useful information from the witnesses. Porter is far from alone in doing this; it’s a big problem with the way Congress operates.
The point of a Congressional hearing is supposed to be bringing people in to inform the members of Congress about something they need to know in order to legislate better. Maybe that’s a technical matter where they need to hear from subject matter experts, or maybe it’s an event where they need to hear from people who know what happened and why. But the point is supposed to be getting the witnesses to provide useful information.
The witnesses are not supposed to be there to provide a convenient foil for members of Congress who want to preen for the camera. It’s true that some witnesses will want to spar with the Congress people questioning them, or they’ll stick to evasion and non-answers, and it makes sense to challenge witnesses who do that. But bringing visual aids shows Porter was never intending to ask these people useful questions. She wants them only as a backdrop for her star turn.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I corrected myself after the edit period was over.
Martin
@CaseyL: She has moved my district bluer. But she’s hugely popular with young people and I think there’s a lot of evidence her grilling of Jamie Dimon over basic living wages has carried over into actual policy. This is the same kind of argument that Biden is making and there are a lot of younger voters that see these kinds of confirmations by older individuals in Congress that they aren’t crazy for demanding these things. That’s why Bernie was popular with them and the same-age Biden was not at the time. And from this you got *some* movement on unions taking place. You got some movement on wages taking place – minimum wage in her district is $15.50 and the McDonald’s across the street from me is now $21/hr with a $500 signing bonus. That’s still not a living wage here, but it’s actually a lot higher than that JP Morgan teller was making that she used. Is McDonalds doing that because of Katies lashing? Of course not, but workers telling employers to fuck off with their shit pay is and there’s evidence that this kind of support by elected officials does help that effort.
Of course it’s also performative. Only AOC has a higher name recognition from that class of new congresspeople, but this kind of ‘looking out for the voter’ virality is pretty goddamn good for Democrats. Imagine if we had 212 people out there getting 19 year olds to want to watch their hearings on TikTok. My daughter doesn’t tune into Chris Hayes, but she sees this shit on TikTok and she wants to help Katies campaign. This stuff is her primary draw to politics, and we need all the young voter turnout we can get. If Democrats aren’t showing up on TikTok, she doesn’t know who the fuck they are. She knows AOC, she knows Kamala, and about a dozen others, and they’re the ones she asks about postcard campaigns for and so on. She’s right in that ‘ok boomer’ demographic.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: nuance? We don’t do that here—save it for Kos and LGM!
zhena gogolia
@Roger Moore: Here’s where I think Kamala Harris did it right. It was always based on the factual information she wanted to get out there, and she did it in real time through questioning.
Martin
@Geminid: Katie is not going to be our next Senator. I’m hoping that is realized soon enough to keep her as my Rep.
zhena gogolia
Anyway, here’s what I said on AL’s thread — while reading Kundera obits, I stumbled across the fact that McClatchy fired three Pulitzer-winning political cartoonists, including Ohman:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2023/07/12/mcclatchy-cartoonists-layoffs/
Mai Naem mobileI
I agree some of Katie Porter’s stuff is performative but with the media the way it is currently, it’s almost part of the job now. Anyhow, I am still on Twitter and I was disappointed and surprised to see a Katie Porter fundraising ad on Twitter in the past few days. It’s possible it was a PAC or whatever. I wasn’t going to click on it to find out.
BellyCat
@Martin: Truth. We get the youngin’s, we win. We overlook them, we lose
ETA: Imagine coming of age (voting wise) during the Orange Stain’s realm, then experiencing the USSC rejection of stare decisis to overturn Roe, etc, while watching DeSatan being lauded by the press. The disillusionment among the young’s has got to be exponential to anyone who came up during Nixon. “Why vote? It’s ALL fucked…” has got to be a common refrain among today’s youth.
Geminid
@Martin: How is it looking for your district’s Democrats who want to succeed Porter? I saw that former Rep. Rouda dropped out of the race with a health problem, while up in Sacramento State Senator Min drove through a red light and into the shit. A failure to call Uber might end up costing Min a House seat.
Any other potentially strong Democratic candidates? It sounds like the Republican Porter beat by ~3% last year will be back.
Edit: now I see there’s hope Porter will end up filing for her House seat.
Martin
The US doesn’t rely on 155 rounds to support our wars, so we never set up to have enough production capacity to ramp up for that role. We fight wars from the air first, and from the sea second. Our capacity is to make Mk82s, not 155s. In a head-to-head with Russia, their 155s would be gone in 72 hours. We’re not going to take 4 days to roll up to 155 range when an F-35 or A-10 does that in 15 minutes. And in terms of tipping up production, the US is pretty shitty at that overall. Can you get enough profit off of 18 months of increased 155 production to pay for a new factory? Probably not. And the 155s production is useless after that 18 months.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I believe that Katie is more than just performative. We have a legislative system that has specific rules about how things are done and those rules often cloud the work that is or isn’t being done for many people. Her performative style informs people that would not sit through the process or even possibly understand the process. It also has the added value of being performative so that it gets shown in a manner that explains things simply, in a way that more people can understand. Is it grandstanding? I can easily see how it could be considered that. But I don’t think she does it to be grandstanding, I believe she does it to inform in a manner that is hard to miss the point. It’s grade school performance for audiences that often wouldn’t pay any more attention than your average grade school student. Folks like you, me or most here are not the audience.
twbrandt
@zhena gogolia: As Dan Gillmor points out on mastodon, the real culprit in these firings is Chatham Asset Management, the private equity firm that owns McClatchy.
Geminid
@Martin: I read that even though a munitions factory in Scranton Pa. was working 3 shifts making 155mm shells, production was still limited by the need for more of the complex machines required for production. These take months and months to build once they are ordered.
Martin
@Geminid: Yeah, Min was a strong candidate. He was Katie’s coworker – I know him a bit as well. That incident is obviously disqualifying and, well, I hope he’s okay – that seems very unlike him.
We have a few to pull from but a lot of our stronger Dems are pretty new so jumping from a first term mayor or board of supervisors to House is tough. But Katie came right from being a professor, so there’s some beating of the bushes there. Unfortunately we’ve lost Michele Goodwin and L Song Richardson to other states, and I’d have loved to see either of them run.
The kingmakers in this district are the legal community, and that’s not my area so I don’t have a very good sense of who is being considered.
Martin
But I’m not convinced that Feinstein is going to make it to 2024. If there’s an appointment, it’s 100% going to be Barbara Lee as of right now. In the general it’s going to be Schiff and Lee. I don’t see how Katie gets in there – we have too strong of a field.
Martin
@Ruckus: Having known her before she was in office, it’s pretty consistent with her teaching style as well. This really just is who she is, for good or ill.
cain
@CaseyL:
I saw what you did there.
Chief Oshkosh
@Omnes Omnibus: How do we know you’re not OO’s BJ staffer?
Omnes Omnibus
@Chief Oshkosh: Look at the general coherence of my comments.
ETA: A staffer with that title might not be posting here. Just saying.
Kay
I think Porter is great but should stay in the House because she’s valuable there.
I also like her for this, from 2019:
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I just added the edit.
I just can’t bear to read 37 more comments correcting it, but I can remove it if you like.
WaterGirl
@Martin: She has a role to play where she is, but the Senate is a whole different ballgame.
Kay
@Martin:
That’s the value.
Kay
She’s very valuable for Democrats. Her seat is a toss up and she wins. She also raises a ton of money. In 2022 she raised 23 million and her opponent raised 2 million. Small D donors are watching those videos.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Thank you.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s all that matters. Not every Dem rep needs to appeal to every Dem voter.
Kay
@Baud:
She’s …good at politics :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Yes, the fact that I don’t particularly care for her does not mean she isn’t providing value. I just think AOC is a better show pony and Underwood a better workhorse from that intake. But I don’t live in any of their districts and I am perfectly happy with Pocan.
Manyakitty
@SiubhanDuinne: I love her, too, and wish she decided to run for reelection. We need her in the House.
Geminid
@Kay: I think the redrawn district Porter ran in last year was rated D+3, and she won by about 3%. But other California Democrats under performed their districts’ “PVI” last year, so Porter did well to win
I’m hoping that Will Rollins makes another run at Republican Ken Calvert in his Palm Springs-based district. Rollins came close last year, and a Presidential-year electorate might put him over the top. I think Rollins is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, and he’s fairly young
Edit: Will Rollins is 38 years old.
Manyakitty
@Martin: it’s not too late? I thought she had to make a choice and that was it.
Kay
@Geminid:
Oh come on. Give her credit! I know this site thinks “playing politics” is unseemly but she’s a talented politician. They’re, ya know, good talkers.
This is Schiff, btw:
General election for U.S. House California District 30Incumbent Adam Schiff defeated Maebe A. Girl in the general election for U.S. House California District 30 on November 8, 2022.
71% to 28%. Very tough race for Mr. Schiff. It required literally just being a Democrat :)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I got a handful of fundraising texts from the Porter campaign. I replied several times that I would consider a donation when she explained her endorsement of Nina “Bowl of Shit” Turner. The texts stopped coming, so I guess someone is reading those replies.
piratedan
to be fair, I thought her grilling of Dimon and the Wells Fargo bankers moved the needle. Especially for those out west who have been bent over by their bankers who always scream for latitude from the government while providing damn little to their customers and workers. That’s kitchen table stuff and its effective imho.
Geminid
@Kay: I did give Porter credit for winning her district in a year when Democratic turnout in California was not that great. And Porter was one of the 40 Democrats who flipped red seats in 2018, and each one deserves a lot credit for that.
I rate Porter on a par with other Class of 2018 members like Chrissy Houlihan (PA), Jason Crow and Joe Neguse of Colorado, and Sharice Davids of Kansas, not above them. This is no slam on Porter because that’s a capable, hardworking group.
It’s true that Porter has built a national brand in a way those four have not. They don’t try to though, and I think that in the long run they will add at least as much value to the party as Porter will, maybe more.
piratedan
@Geminid: I would agree with your rating of her. We need all different kinds of folks illustrating that it is a BIG tent and we are all pulling in the same direction. Katie fills a very needed niche imho, Mom with kids, using simple means to make her point to make it all relatable. It strikes me that the media doesn’t take the time to focus on other Dems, but they will promote Ms. Porter’s schtick because it’s visual and it reaches a LOT of people. We have to remember that we’re looking for a majority and sadly that means that we have to reach people who are not as politically savvy as we like to think of ourselves, so having a Porter on the team means a lot as far as outreach. just my opinion.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Seconded. I am not a fan either.
catbirdman
@piratedan: I agree — she’s not the messenger for me, but she’s one that Dems desperately need. We have waaaay too many technocrats in an era of rampant populism. I’ll take Schiff for Senate, but if it’s Porter I’m not going to whine.