Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Can someone please explain to me why I feel chilly when it is 60 degrees in Tempe but I walk around my house shirtless with just boxers and wool socks with my thermostat set on 60 at home when it is 12 degrees out?
I don’t understand this at all. I need to buy some damned slippers.
It’s long past time for Trump’s head to explode – he is not supposed to be losing!!!
MuellerSheWrote
@MuellerSheWrote (1 hour ago)
Trump’s immunity claim in the E Jean Carroll case is DENIED a re-hearing en banc (by the entire appeals court panel). Earlier, a three-judge panel DENIED his motion to stay the trial pending the outcome of this appeal. As of now, trial begins January 16th. 1/Kyle Cheney
@kyledcheneyThe federal appeals court in NY has *denied* Donald Trump’s request for the full bench to hear his civil immunity appeal. This could be moving ot SCOTUS imminently.
Totally open thread.
I’m Not Tired of Winning – Is Trump Tired of Losing?Post + Comments (98)
I don’t know about y’all, but when someone starts yapping about “freedom” and “liberty,” I brace myself for an avalanche of stupid. It’s not that freedom and liberty aren’t perfectly wonderful concepts that I personally enjoy very much — it’s that hard-right jackholes have been humping those words for so long that the terms are redolent of conservaturd ball sweat. And that’s gross!
Well, it looks like reproductive healthcare supporters stole a page from the Frank Luntz playbook and have rebranded pro-choice advocacy as pro-freedom work. The forced-birth crowd isn’t taking it well, as noted on Bluesky with reference to a recent WSJ article:
The forced-birthers stole the federal right to reproductive freedom from half this nation’s citizens, so we’re taking back the word “freedom.” Get over it, talibangelicals. Or die mad. Either one works for me.
Open thread!
I’m just popping in as I’m waiting for the last analysis of my 2nd dissertation paper to finish running through a couple thousand bootstraps (for those who don’t know what that means, consider yourself lucky!) But there is an interesting paper in the Journal of Risk and Insurance by Handon and Minicozzi, both employees of the Congressional Budget Office. They use the full 2017-2019 risk adjustment data set to estimate the cross subsidies various demographic groups insured by the ACA give to each other — ie which groups spend on average less than their premiums and which groups, on average, spend more. Premiums in the same geography for the same plan vary by age. The authors compare individual market enrollees to small group market enrollees.
We should expect cross-subsidization. Insurance is a transfer of resources from the lucky to the unlucky. Some groups are likely to be systematically lucky or systemically a bit unlucky.
They find lots of interesting things:
Our results suggest that women aged 55–64 helped stabilize the nongroup market
through high enrollment and relatively low spending. Men enrolled in the marketplace also subsidized other nongroup enrollees but to a lesser extent than expected. In fact, men aged 25–50 enrolled in nongroup plans spent 18% more than their counterparts enrolled through a small employer.
Takeaway #1 Employment is one hell of a screen for non-chronic health conditions.
Takeaway #2 Older women are comparatively cheap — this could be the result of either better aggregate health then similar age men or less adverse selection.
Mega Takeaway MEDICARE BUY-IN PROPOSALS LIKELY RAISE ACA PREMIUMS
Medicare buy-ins would transfer a net lucky group from the ACA to Medicare. More premiums are pulled out of the ACA pool than claims. This means the surviving ACA pool would be heavy on claims and light on premiums which would drive premiums up.
Now the welfare effects are messy as the 55 to 64 year olds would have messy experiences with Medicare or Medicare Advantage stratified by geography and individual health status and income. Under 55’s who are willing to buy benchmark plans or plans priced below benchmark and who receive premium subsidies are likely to be better off as things are no more expensive and likely cheaper. Subsidized individuals who want to buy above benchmark plans (likely to be less healthy on average) are worse off, and almost all non-subsidized buyers would be worse off.
Before the ACA, research suggested that young adults (those aged 21–35) in the nongroup market would subsidize older adults (aged 60 and older) under a 3:1 age curve for premiums. By contrast, we found that in the post‐ACA nongroup market, the age‐rating curve would shift up by around 5% if enrollees aged 55 and up were excluded from the market, while in the small group it would shift down by around 0.5%.
Damn, it is almost like health policy is complicated and heavily fact dependent.
Jack Smith filed his brief on Saturday, Dec 30. Team Trump had until Tuesday, Jan 2 to file their response. The oral arguments are set for one week after that, Jan 9.
Save the date, with any luck, we might need cake after the oral arguments are over on Jan 9, or at least once they make their ruling
Dec 30
Either Jack Smith and his team are super good at writing these things in plain English so that those of us following along at home can understand it, or I am getting better at understanding what the hell they are saying.
So, the list court cases takes no less than 6.5 pages. Then we have two pages of “Other Authorities”. My favorite is Brett M. Kavanaugh, The President and the Independent Counsel, 86 Geo. L.J. 2133 (1998).
Some of my favorite excerpts follow.
Introduction
For the first time in our Nation’s history, a grand jury has charged a former President with committing crimes while in office to overturn an election that he lost. In response, the defendant claims that to protect the institution of the Presidency, he must be cloaked with absolute immunity from criminal prosecution unless the House impeached and the Senate convicted him for the same conduct. He is wrong. Separation-of- powers principles, constitutional text, history, and precedent all make clear that a former President may be prosecuted for criminal acts he committed while in office—including, most critically here, illegal acts to remain in power despite losing an election.
To the contrary: it is the defendant’s claim that he cannot be held to answer for the charges that he engaged in an unprecedented effort to retain power through criminal means, despite having lost the election, that threatens the democratic and constitutional foundation of our Republic.
Statement of the Case
The defendant lost the 2020 presidential election. Nonetheless, according to a later grand jury indictment, in the weeks following the election, he conspired to use knowingly false claims of election fraud with the goal of overturning the legitimate results of that election and disenfranchising millions of voters. The conspiracies culminated in an attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, when both Houses of Congress met to certify the Presidential election results, in accordance with procedures set out in the Constitution and federal law. A violent mob forced past police officers and into the Capitol building, causing Members of Congress and the Vice President to flee, delaying the certification, and leaving “multiple people dead, injur[ing] more than 140 people, and inflict[ing] millions of dollars in damage to the Capitol.” Trump v. Thompson, 20 F.4th 10, 15 (D.C. Cir. 2021).
They spend 3 pages listing all the illegal stuff Trump did, or attempted to do.
The Argument (The argument is 40+ pages.)
The defendant argues that Presidential immunity and principles of double jeopardy warrant dismissal of the indictment. Those arguments lack support in the separation of powers, constitutional text, history, or precedent. Both arguments also threaten to undermine democracy. The defendant’s immunity claim implies that a President may use any means necessary to remain in power and evade federal criminal liability for his conduct unless first impeached and convicted. And his invocation of double-jeopardy principles implies that a Senate acquittal of a former President because he is no longer in office forever insulates him from criminal accountability. Those claims draw no support from our constitutional heritage and, if accepted, would damage bedrock principles of equality before the law. The Court should affirm.
The Defendant Has No Immunity from Federal Criminal Prosecution.
Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, the Court should affirm the district court’s order denying the defendant’s motions to dismiss on Presidential- immunity and double-jeopardy grounds.
For the reasons given in the Government’s motion to expedite appellate review, including the imperative public importance of a prompt resolution of this case, the Government respectfully requests the Court to issue the mandate five days after the entry of judgment. Such an approach would appropriately require any party seeking further review to do so promptly.
Issuing the mandate 5 days after the entry of judgment appears to be a big Joe Biden deal, as Trump would have to either request an en banc hearing or go to the Supreme Court within that 5 days.
It seems to me that that’s probably the whole ballgame there, because otherwise Trump could twiddle his thumbs for 44 days and only then request the en banc hearing or go to the Supreme Court, which would at least come close to running out the clock.
It seems to me that the lay of the land has changed considerably. If you haven’t been keeping up (good luck with that, given how fast things are moving!), two landscape-changing Amicus curiae briefs have been submitted, and accepted. These are also known as “friends of the court” briefs.
First one: Judge Luttig and other respected conservatives from 5 republican administrations filed the first one. Guessing that everyone has heard about that one, so I won’t go into it.
Second one:
A nonprofit watchdog organizaion, American Oversight, filed an amicus brief arguing that the DC Court of Appeals does not have jurisdiction to take up Trump’s immunity appeal. Instead, the lawyers argue, the immunity question should be sent back to Judge Chutkan. The Special Counsel team and Trump’s team have been notified that they should be prepared to address the two amicus briefs in their oral arguments on Jan 9.
If you want to hear it from the horse’s mouth, Harry Litman explains the second amicus brief in 15 minutes in the YouTube video below.
How fast could we potentially see a ruling after the oral arguments on Jan 9? Apparently each side gets only 20 minutes and then a little bit of followup time. I assume the judges can extend that time if they wish. Seems like with these two friends of the court briefs, there will be too much to cover in 20 minutes.
Open thread.
Earlier this week, when I heard that a House GOP rep from Ohio was resigning effective this month, I thought good riddance and hoped his decision to thin the GOP’s already narrow majority was due to the stress of serving in the chaotic shit-show that is the least productive Congress in nearly a century. But it turns out Rep. Bill Johnson is resigning to jump on the GOP’s edu-grift bandwagon. The Daily Beast:
A controversial Republican congressman known for his 2020 election denial and anti-abortion stances is retiring this month to take a plum gig as the president of Youngstown State University in Ohio…
His appointment to the job—which carries a $410,000 salary, free housing and a complementary car—was decried by many YSU faculty, students, alumni, and donors, who objected to both his political views and his lack of experience in the education field.
He also received pushback during a November press conference announcing the career change, after doubling down on his plans to overhaul the institution to get rid of its alleged liberal biases.
“We want students to be educated, not indoctrinated,” he said at the time.
Johnson is lying, of course. As we know from other right-wing takeovers of K-12 public school districts and colleges, such as the DeSantis/Rufo-orchestrated ruination of New College of Florida, far-right enemies of public education are wildly enthusiastic about indoctrination as long as they get to do the indoctrinating.
Ultimately, their goal is to destroy public education and redirect the funds to private Christian schools and wingnut-owned charter and home school curricula grifts. But meanwhile, the unqualified political hacks they put in place to “transform” the institutions make out like goddamn bandits.
In the thread under John’s Tempe update post last night, I read some comments about right wingers collecting the Harvard and Penn presidents’ scalps. Someone noted that wingnuts really ramped up their campaign to destroy higher education when women began outnumbering men on campus.
That sounds about right. Educated women are less likely to settle for abusive, controlling men as mates, which is bad news for right-wing males. Also, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives enrage wingnuts for obvious reasons. It’s not enough that their bought-and-paid-for SCOTUS blew up affirmative action in higher ed — they want to delegitimize the very notion that systemic biases exist.
But I’ve got to think a main motivation for the attack on higher ed is the fact that college-educated voters are increasingly gravitating toward Democrats. If I recall correctly, in many recent elections, education levels have been more predictive of voter behavior than any other factor, including income.
Couldn’t Republicans try to figure out why they are losing college educated voters and adopt policies to lure them back? Haha, no! That would mean confronting the extremist morons who are no longer just the foot soldiers in the conservative movement but now comprise its officer corps and generalissimos too. It’s easier to just destroy public education instead.
Will voters put up with it? So far, they have in Florida, which failing presidential candidate Ron DeSantis says is “where woke goes to die.” But the lack of national enthusiasm for his candidacy, plus the electoral backlash against anti-woke agitators outside of far-right strongholds, provides hope that the rest of the country is where this dumb woke panic finally goes to die.
Open thread.
PS: I hope y’all’s new year is off to a better start than mine. I’m dealing with some life-disrupting (but not life threatening!) health issues that have and may continue to affect my output here. Fuck you already, 2024!
How the Biden campaign hopes to make 2024 less about Biden and more about a contrast with Trumphttps://t.co/2xvzFM9o6z
— Island News (@KITV4) January 2, 2024
Tomorrow Wednesday: @VP visits Las Vegas to meet hospitality workers at Culinary Workers Union Local 226 as they celebrate their successful new contracts, which led to historic pay increases and workplace safety improvements. pic.twitter.com/7gvGn387j0
— KAMALA NATION (@KamalaNation) January 3, 2024
Biden campaign amps up focus on reelection with speech on Jan. 6 anniversary, via @mviser https://t.co/YNi14hnM6C
— John Wagner (@WPJohnWagner) January 3, 2024
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: On the Campaign TrailPost + Comments (144)