Texas Goes Off-Grid

By David Amaya

Amid President Biden’s plan to boost America's dependence on renewable energy, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a retaliatory executive order. It directs “every state agency to use all lawful powers and tools to challenge any federal action that threatens” natural gas in the state. Only three weeks after Abbott’s attempt to strengthen the natural gas industry’s defenses against federal oversight, the state’s entire energy grid nearly collapsed. Sources reveal that Texas was minutes and seconds away from a complete shutdown that would have lasted for months. 

Several state leaders gave excuses as to why the state’s vulnerable power system failed millions of Texans. Gov. Abbott blamed non-renewables for the outage though 26 of the total 30 gigawatts lost in the blackout were traced back to natural gas. Former Republican Gov. Rick Perry stated that Texans would rather lose power than be part of the national grid system, as the state recorded several fatalities from hypothermia, including the death of 11-year-old Cristian Pavon. Despite being warned of the grid’s vulnerability in 2011, Texas took no action to weatherize the equipment. Texan leadership, in private and public sectors, failed us. 

It is time Texas reframe climate change policy as infrastructure policy. Infrastructure policy includes more than merely weatherizing energy equipment; It calls for the mitigation of the severity a polar vortex has on roads and property by reducing carbon emissions. Texas has its energy grid system to show off its exceptionalism, but those days are now over. Think of millions of Texans observing how the free-market failed them. Depending on what Texas does next, the federal government may need to intrude and be part of the solution that regulates the industry. 

Texas may well have looked at California to develop a Plan B for its constituents in the event of a blackout. California forces its energy providers to have a reserve of electricity for this exact reason. Not only that, but California is also part of a broader national energy-grid that allows them to borrow energy from other states. Texas has no such security. It relies on free-market competition to resolve these changes in energy demand. Texas, like California, must force the energy sector to come up with safeguards; the state has enforcement power for a reason. 

Texans survived nature’s cold shoulder and the folly of Texas leadership. Despite the differences in each state’s party politics, California and Texas both have experience with large-scale energy blackouts, which feel like the beginning of a new era of energy security for the entire country. When reality transcends the need for performative politics (i.e., focusing on the national anthem in football games instead of urgent issues), nature’s forces remind us that party ID alone won’t help us adapt to changing climate. Informed and responsible leadership will. A reconciliation between energy practices that sets aside cynicism for uniting cooperation is desperately needed. As Texas has come to understand, electricity is as important to our society’s foundation as democracy.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on President Biden’s supply chain review — Click on Forum above.

Texas and California are Polar Opposites on Energy Regulation

By Todd Lassa

The Texas legislature has begun a comprehensive investigation on What Went Wrong, a week after a severe winter storm pushed its power grid within “minutes from failing” with three hearings by four state House and Senate committees. 

More than 13 million state residents suffered no heat and electricity in sub-freezing temperatures as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas issued rolling blackouts to prevent a total collapse that experts say could have left the state without power for months.

Critics of Texas’ independent streak blame a policy that prevents the state from “borrowing” energy from neighboring states, in order to avoid federal regulations. Equipment at natural gas, coal and nuclear facilities became frozen and broke down, Time magazine reports, adding that after the last Texas freeze that caused blackouts, in 2011, federal regulators recommended the state weatherize energy equipment, including pipes, valves and other things necessary to keep the grid operating. When power in the state was back up again, many consumers were hit with energy bills of $10,000 and more, the result of unregulated price spikes by ERCOT for energy providers.  

Perhaps trying to divert attention from the real problem that was affecting millions of Texans, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott blamed the state’s wind turbines that failed due to iced-up windmill parts and solar panels that collect no sunlight when it’s not sunny. (34 gigawatts were down in Texas on February 15, with wind representing just 4 gigawatts of that total.) Fox News’ prime time commentators directed blame to the “Green New Deal” proposal by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, to combat climate change, even though it remains only a proposal.

The energy crisis in Texas draws comparison with rolling blackouts in California last summer and fall, which were the result of extreme weather on the opposite end of the spectrum. California’s “first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years,” according to the Los Angeles Times, affected less than half a million homes and businesses on August 14, for between 15 minutes and 2-1/2 hours at a time, with 321,000 more customers experiencing eight-minute to 90-minute blackouts the next evening. 

Extreme heat and forest wildfires across the state caused the blackouts, and because neighboring states also suffered record high temperatures, California was not able to buy power from them.

California energy officials “didn’t line up the right sources and didn’t take climate change” causing the extreme temperatures “into account,” according to the LA Times.

As usual in politics, it comes down to following the money. Either state could proceed at considerable cost building out renewable energy sources with the hope the burgeoning industry will create new jobs, or continue to protect relatively cheap, relatively reliable fossil fuel sources and maintain that industry’s level of employment.  

It raises the issue of regulation vs. de-regulation – and even the question of what regulation is for a public utility.

Fortunately, we have a left-column pundit from Texas, and a right-column pundit from California, to sort this all out.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on President Biden’s supply chain review — Click on Forum above.

•Email comments to editors@thehustings.news

Texas Faces California’s ‘Green’ Energy Supply

By Bryan Williams

Welcome to the club, Texas! California has been mismanaging its electrical power grid for going on 20 years. How can the two largest states in the nation by population, both with vast natural resources and human ingenuity fail their residents like this? It is 2021. Citizens should not be without electricity in the United States because of  political and managerial problems.

That Texas is red and California is blue is also a conundrum. How can both political parties (California has been run by Democrats for nearly a generation -- Governator Schwarzenegger acted like a Republican for all of two years or so -- but that’s for another column -- and Texas, dominated by Republicans) get this so wrong?

I can’t speak to Texas’ woes, but I can to California’s. Democratic Gov. Gray Davis rushed in where only fools dare tread back in 2001, and actually put the state into the electricity buying business using taxpayer dollars, in order to stave off erroneous shortages of electricity due to market manipulation of California’s electricity supply. By the late 2010s and early 2020s, California’s electricity problem developed different causes with the same results: Millions left without power in the state that gave us the iPhone, PayPal, Tesla, and is home to Alphabet/Google, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Stanford University (that is to say -- places with LOTS of smart people.

Why? Because for years our politicians have replaced reliable electrical production with renewable resources like solar and wind to save us from the evils of CO2 pollution. When the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, California is a net exporter of electricity. But the sun sometimes is hidden behind clouds, and the wind doesn’t always blow. Meanwhile, the state’s nearly 40 million residents need more and more electricity to power those iPhones, Teslas, and all those Chromebooks (made by Google – one of which I am typing on now) that millions of kids need to be taught at home due to COVID school shutdowns. A brilliant, potential solution to California’s unstable energy supply is to use old electric car batteries to store excess electricity from solar and wind farms, but those “battery farms” are still years away. Really, how will that look to have stacks and stacks of greasy old car batteries next to those gleaming solar panels?

At the same time, baseline electricity production like (brace yourselves - I’m going to say something controversial) clean nuclear power is being shut down all over the state. Why? Because anything nuclear must be bad (right?), and because of short-sighted politicians in Washington, our nuclear power plants aren’t allowed to recycle their fuel like those in Europe, so we have to store spent nuclear fuel rods in pools of water in open air. Brilliant!

As for natural gas power plants, they emit too much CO2, and use fossil fuels to make electricity, though the California plants make more than enough energy from this to feed the entire state. What about hydro-electric power? Here’s another clean, renewable source of electricity, right? More and more of these century-old plants are being decommissioned because California’s left-leaning politicians are worried about their effect on fish. Meanwhile, California ratepayers (who pay the highest rates in the nation) get to sit in the dark and the heat, and now, the smoke. Now, California utilities are allowed to shut off power for wildfires sparked on land that state and federal political officials have for years failed to clear out. Meanwhile, those same politicians have failed to hold our electric utilities accountable for running the shoddy equipment that can spark fires, in the first place.

So to repeat, welcome, Texas! One question: When can we shut down the politicians and get back to the basics of providing electricity in the richest state in the richest nation in the world?

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•Read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on President Biden’s supply chain review — Click on Forum above.

One Step Forward, Two Back

By Stephen Macaulay

Although there are certainly metrics associated with bringing kids back to the classrooms across the country, a country where the COVID-19 numbers are beginning to decline — but decline from a high place to what still should be an inconceivable place, were it not that we’ve become inured to large numbers (it is still a really big number, folks) — it seems that the anecdotal is important in thinking about this issue.

Kids and teachers are human beings, which is something that can be readily overlooked when they are turned into metrics. And let’s not forget about the other people who make schools operate, whether it is the absolutely important janitorial staff or the bus drivers or the school administrators. There are plenty of people who are involved that transcends the teacher-pupil ratio.

So, the anecdote.

I have a niece who is a third-grade teacher in Southwest Michigan. Before the pandemic, her parents, who live in Southeast Michigan, would periodically travel west, not only to see their daughter, but to bring her essential school supplies that they bought because (1) they knew their daughter, who was also buying things like paper and pencils, wasn’t exactly making a whole lot and (2) the school district didn’t have the funds either. As you may have learned of late, Southwest Michigan is an area where there isn’t a whole lot of interest in things like tax increases, even if it is for school children.

Teachers, like my niece, want to teach. They didn’t go into that profession thinking that they’re going to get rich. And as my niece has discovered, part of her income is going to support her students.

My niece has been back in the classroom for several weeks now. Whereas in a pre-pandemic year she would go in on weekends to decorate the classroom with educational materials, now she goes in on weekends to assure that there is proper spacing and to do some additional Lysol wiping.

Clearly, priorities change.

Although the school district she teaches in is literally about 10 miles from the Pfizer plant where the vaccine is made, she has yet to get her first shot: it will happen next week. It will be a Moderna jab. Do you want to know what my niece says is one of her biggest challenges while teaching during a pandemic?

“The kids want to hug one another.”

Yes, we’re talking about people here.

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While the U.S. is deservedly renowned for many of its universities, when it comes to primary and secondary schools, things aren’t so swell.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) runs the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which “measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.” 

How well did U.S. middle schoolers do compared with those in other parts of the world in the most recent survey (2018)? Thirteenth place.

China, separated into four divisions for the survey ((1) Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang; (2) Singapore, (3) Macao and (4) Hong Kong) are in the first four positions.

To get a sense of performance, the students in the B-S-J-Z grouping scored 555 on reading, 591 in math and 590 in science.

In the U.S. those numbers are 504, 502 and 505.

Which ought to be an argument that we need to get students back into classrooms ASAP.

But here’s the thing. While it can most certainly be argued that local districts have local concerns and consequently don’t need some Big Government program to tell them what to do, the dirty little secret that doesn’t seem to want to be acknowledged is that: The pandemic is something that no one—local, state, regional, national—knew how to deal with. There is no handbook with protocol in it.*

Note how the CDC keeps changing its recommendations. It isn’t because it doesn’t know what it is doing. It is because things keep changing.

It is absurd to think that a school superintendent in any district in the country — to say nothing of the teachers, bus drivers, custodial staff, etc. — is a skilled epidemiologist who knows everything that one needs to know to keep people from being sick.

This takes the know-how of people who deal with these life-and-death situations on a daily basis.

Yes, there is huge frustration on behalf of parents who want their kids back in schools.

But to rush things, to think that bad things won’t happen simply because “damn it they won’t” will likely move things one step forward and then two in reverse.

And that surely won’t help the next ranking for the U.S. in the OECD global survey.

*Although it is worth noting an advisory group that was established by George H.W. Bush in 1990, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) wrote a document in August 2009, “Preparations for 2009-H1N1 Influenza,” to help mitigate the effects of the swine flu epidemics. And prior to Obama leaving office a 69-page report, “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents,” was developed by the National Security Council and presented to the executive branch — and was reportedly — and evidently — ignored by the Trump administration.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay on Trump vs. McConnell, and Bryan Williams on censured Republican moderates ; Click on FORUM.

The School Opening Conundrum

By Charles Dervarics

A few years back, I visited a high-poverty middle school during a lockdown, with students confined to classrooms and the doors closed. It also was a 90-degree day in an old building without air conditioning. Observing a math class, I couldn’t help but notice how the teacher had strategically placed 19 small and medium-size fans around the room, generating air flow to take advantage of the one open window. Clearly, she had faced similar challenges before, probably using her geometry skills for the best fan placement.

While this visit took place before COVID, I sometimes think about that school – still open during any normal academic year – when considering how fast schools should reopen in 2021. 

With medical facilities and some colleges open for months now, conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t take that long for most K-12 schools to offer more than remote learning. With PPE, partitions, masks, and a goal to vaccinate teachers, it makes sense to offer in-person learning especially for low-income youngsters with the least technology access and the most chance of falling behind. But just as achievement among schools can vary greatly, so do the facilities and crowding that teachers and students have to deal with on a daily basis.

National debate on this issue has erupted anew now that President Biden has pledged to reopen the majority of schools during his first 100 days in office. But that plan is putting the president in crosshairs with some teacher unions, who warn of the risks posed by overcrowding, substandard ventilation systems and lagging vaccination rates. 

Similar debates are playing out across the country, as typified by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long battle with the Chicago Teachers Union on school reopening. And in San Francisco, the city just sued its own school district, citing a lack of planning and vision to get back to in-person instruction.

Meanwhile, Republicans have remained largely unified in calling for schools to re-open. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, recently called remote learning a “pale shadow of proper schooling” and said the science shows that schools can offer in-person instruction. Earlier this month, the House GOP tried to require schools to provide a reopening plan before getting funds from last December’s COVID relief bill. Democrats rebuffed that idea.

This GOP message plays well with its base. In some communities, it’s not uncommon to see residents who have replaced their Trump 2020 signs with signs pushing for school re-openings. A Republican push on this issue also may help recapture the attention of suburban parents weary of the school-at-home trend.

According to Burbio, a research and data company, about 39% of schools are currently open for traditional, in-person learning. That leaves the administration until late April – the end of Biden’s first 100 days – to reach the 50% mark.

On Feb. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also offered a possible way forward. The agency outlined a series of steps to promote safe school openings, including use of masks by students, teachers and staff, social distancing, handwashing, strong cleaning and maintenance practices and speedy contact tracing in response to COVID cases. With the school year more than half over, those guidelines may arrive just in time.

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Low Risk to School-Age Youth vs. Being Deprived of Learning, Socialization

By Andrew Boyd

I met recently with a friend and colleague whose spouse and he made a decision some years back to pursue public schooling for their two young children, despite having the resources to have put them into private institutions. They are preparing now to graduate their son to the public middle school, which is not as well regarded as was the elementary program; however, they imagined that their son, and a couple dozen of his friends and their parents, could do some good in helping this school to advance and grow.  

Then, the pandemic. Then two weeks to slow the spread. Then national lockdowns. And as our great national nightmare dragged on, many of those same parents have decided that they will be enrolling their kids in private institutions going forward. Add this little story to a growing pile of evidence favoring the argument that the extended national lockdown, in particular as it relates to schools, has been a complete disaster of both economic and social policy. 

The costs of these policies are far-flung and harder to measure in the near-term relative to the daily updates on COVID infections and deaths, and as we all know, if it bleeds it leads, the ever-present failure of journalism to take its responsibility seriously. Add to that the disease of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has run wild through our political, social and media institutions, accompanied as it is by all loss of perspective, which only compounds the problem: That is, our inability, as a people to engage in reasoned, rational and thoughtful discussion of deadly serious issues. In such environs, all suffer, but none so much as the children, deprived of learning, socialization, protections from abuse and despair. One can hardly imagine the scale of this tragedy.

Now, as both COVID and TDS ebb, we see all kinds of interesting after-effects, including the breaking of bonds between staunch Democratic, even leftist, institutions such as the Chicago mayor's office and San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the teachers’ unions. Said unions will not escape unscathed, as the masses take note of their moral depravity, abject cowardice, and total lack of commitment to the children they purport to serve. So, too, with that megalomaniacal, Emmy-award nominated, dare I say Trump-esque simulacrum of a human being, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-NY, who may yet get his just desserts if Joey from Scranton lives up to his promise of a depoliticized DOJ (not holding my breath, exactly). 

Need I revisit the science as it stands today (understanding evolves, you see)? The almost statistically insignificant danger to our children from COVID, the presence of a 95%-effective vaccine, soon to be broadly administered to “essentials,” or the countervailing dangers presented by this sham that is virtual schooling? Surely, all reasonable and reasoning people are beginning to see the need for change and fast. That, at least, is my hope.

We all have a stake in this, unquestionably, so the fact that I have three school-age children grants me no special ownership of the issue or moral high ground. My children, as best I can tell, are extraordinarily well-adapted, loved and supported, and the damage to their lives is arguably minimized, but I can see in their eyes a pressing sense of loneliness and a creeping despair. It’s not just COVID we’re fighting here. It’s the tragedy of the human condition and the ever-so-thin layer of social organization, friendship, support and shared sense of purpose that keep us all from the edge of the abyss. We must work now to repair and uphold these structures, lest we lose a grip on the whole damned thing.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay on Trump vs. McConnell, and Bryan Williams on censured Republican moderates ; Click on FORUM.

The Me-lection of Donald Trump

By David Amaya

What followed after former President Donald Trump’s instruction to Proud Boys, a far-right group that endorses violence, to “stand back and standby,” telling his loyalists that the only way he’ll lose the 2020 election is if it is stolen from him, and finally, to “fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” before sending his rally off to the Capitol was his second impeachment. This impeachment would not be like any other in our history – the Representatives and Senators are not only the jurors and judges of the trial but also witnesses. In a careful balancing act between justice and incumbency, the Senate vote leaned towards incumbency. 

The argument made by Donald Trump’s defense attorneys and most of his Republican backers that a former president can’t be subjugated to an impeachment trial is devoid of merit. It was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, (who has since been demoted to Senate minority leader) who postponed the trial for a date after Trump’s departure from presidency. McConnell’s decision was a hollow strategy that acted as a loophole to our hallow system of checks and balances.

Other than the purported defense that a former president shouldn’t be tried by the Senate, there is no other redeemable quality to the defense made for Mr. Trump. He was indeed guilty both “practically” and “morally” for the invasion of the Capitol, McConnell said after the vote to acquit, but Trump was freed from culpability because he is no longer in office.

In a move similar to McConnell’s expedient “the-end-justifies-the-means” strategy, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy bit his tongue about the pugnacious president and expressed support for the man who is “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022. For the sake of our country, the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped.” Both Republican leaders are gambling away their integrity for a chance at their party’s re-election and a fundraising cashflow crowdsourced by the man who refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. 

Although the House impeachment managers were successful in illustrating the cold hard facts of Trump’s insurrectionist intention, they were unified with the Republicans in one way – they both perpetuated Trump’s everlasting war on what truth is and what facts are. Both sides succeeded in expressing how precarious our fragile republic is at the moment. Trump successfully persuaded legislators on both sides of the aisle to deny and strip the ideological opposition of their humanity, their entitlement to truth, and how to put party over country–the antithesis of the very premise that founded our country. 

Lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, prided himself in being part of the most bipartisan impeachment trial yet, but history may beg to differ. In 1974, President Richard Nixon was days away from being impeached before he resigned from the presidency for his crimes against the Democratic National Committee. Nixon’s Republican loyalists on Capitol Hill assured him he would not pass the impeachment vote–his party rejected him, so Nixon exiled himself voluntarily. Fast-forward to 2021 and the Republican party now defends a twice-impeached president who challenges the validity of our democracy’s electoral system; and for what, but to preserve and reinforce the Republican party’s incumbency.

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•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
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The Final Steps to Trump’s Acquittal

By Todd Lassa

Once the votes were counted Saturday afternoon and Donald Trump was acquitted in his second Senate impeachment trial, both sides declared a victory. Because 10 Republicans joined 48 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with the latter party, lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, could lay claim to the “most bipartisan” trial vote ever (click on Forum to read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on the impeachment trial, “The Long Con”). 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, had it both ways, too, having been among the 43 Republicans in the minority who nonetheless snagged an acquittal because the 57-43 vote was 10 “guilties” short of the two-thirds needed to convict. 

“They did this because they followed the wrong words of the most powerful man on earth,” McConnell said on the Senate floor after the vote, in what pundits were describing as the most critical excoriation of Trump made by either side. “There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”

McConnell, who when he still was Senate majority leader before President Biden’s inauguration, told his caucus they could vote their conscious in the impeachment trial, said he voted “not guilty” Saturday because the trial of a president after leaving office is unconstitutional. Last Tuesday, the Senate voted 56-44 that trying an ex-president is indeed constitutional, in a decision that required only a majority decision. A major point in the House impeachment managers’ argument was that if an ex-president could not be tried thusly, it would risk the nation with a “January surprise,” with carte-blanche to commit high crimes and misdemeanors as a lame-duck. 

But McConnell forced delaying the trial until after the inauguration, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, said Saturday afternoon. The House voted for impeachment on January 15, while Trump was still in office.

Prior to the final Senate vote, Raskin moved to call a witness to give a video deposition in the case. Trump attorney Michael van der Veen objected, and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, threatened to call many witnesses for the defense, including House Speaker Pelosi, and draw out the trial to disrupt Biden’s agenda for weeks or even months to come.

In the end, the two sides agreed that the statement of Raskin’s intended witness, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-WA, would be admitted as evidence and that defense would stipulate to its veracity. 

Herrera Beutler’s statement is that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, had called Trump during the siege urging him to call off the violent protesters. Trump had replied that the violent protesters were Antifa and Black Lives Matter, not pro-MAGA. 

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump replied, according to Herrera Beutler. CNN reported her description of the call Friday night, but according to various news reports, Herrera Beutler told about overhearing the conversation to a local Washington state newspaper and to constituents. 

In his closing arguments, van der Veen said the defense was not admitting to the statement’s truthfulness, though the House impeachment managers apparently were satisfied with the outcome.

The trial itself came down to House impeachment managers building a case that then-President Trump called for his supporters to rally on the Capitol January 6 to “Stop the Steal” of his November 3 “landslide victory,” a.k.a., “the Big Lie,” and did nothing to prevent members of Congress and vice president Mike Pence, from the danger of the mob. Trump’s defense attorneys argued that the impeachment was a continuation of Democratic and mainstream Republican “hatred” since before he took office January 20, 2017, and that the trial was unconstitutional.

But the nine House impeachment managers appear satisfied that the trial and its bipartisan verdict achieved their goal overall and are looking forward to investigations in New York for Trump’s business practices, and especially in Fulton County, Georgia, for his phone call with secretary of state Ben Raffensperger. In the meantime, however, Trump continues to maintain control of the GOP, especially on state and local levels. Rep. Herrera Beutler, for example, faces potential censure from Washington state’s GOP and a Trump PAC-funded primary challenger next year for her statement in the impeachment trial.

•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
•Address comments to editors@thehustings.news

Trump Needs to be Rebuked for January 6

By Bryan Williams

Impeachment Part II has come and gone, and its result has surprised no one. Did there need to be a trial? I still say “yes.” President Trump had to be properly rebuked for what he did, and didn’t do, on January 6. He is forever besmirched as the only U.S. president impeached twice, and the only president who incited a mob to storm our seat of government. I have written before about the possibility of Trump running again in 2024, and I still believe he doesn't have the attention span to run again in in three-and-a-half years. There was a lot of talk about Hillary Clinton running again in 2020 and she didn't. She is a damaged good and her chances of winning were slim. I think the same can be said of Trump.

How much further should the "punish Trump" train go? Investigations in New York, Georgia and possibly Washington, D.C., could lead to more indictments of Trump. Of these, I think the Georgia attorney general’s fraud investigation of Trump’s call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has the most legs, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking Trump is going to face a prison sentence for it. 

Several congressional Republicans have also let me down. I have enough experience with party politics to never expect legislators to impeach or convict a president from the same party. But this last impeachment was all kinds of weird. It is clear that Trump’s actions after last November’s election resulted in the Capitol insurrection and threats to the health of duly elected officials and the vice president. And let’s not forget the five people who died from it. 

Key to the Senate’s lack of a two-thirds vote to convict, and the reason Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, gives for voting to acquit is whether it was constitutional to try a president after he is out of office. I wish the U.S. Supreme Court had been compelled to weigh in on this; It is a burning, relevant constitutional question and Chief Justice John Roberts turned a deaf ear, declining even to preside as judge of the trial and turning that duty over to senior Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. When will our government start working for us?

I voted for Trump in 2020, and I still stand by that vote. I do not believe in Joe Biden, and so far, his governance is exactly as I expected. I liked a lot of Trump’s policies, but I did not like Trump's tweets and the uglier aspects of his personality. But I could never vote for him again. Those who stood up and voted their conscience on this impeachment (Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, etc.) deserve a second look (and boy, was I excited about Mitt Romney back in 2012 -- I was waving campaign signs for him every night). 

We need principled leadership now, more than ever. Cheney and Romney are the only two politicians I think currently fit that bill, and their chances of going anywhere right now are nil. I’m going for a walk.

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•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
•Address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Founding Fathers Rejected the Filibuster

By Chase Wheaton

The legislative filibuster in the Senate is probably one of the least understood aspects of our government, especially in a historical context, but is simultaneously the most significant obstacle to tangible governance and progress that currently exists in our legislative branch. And now that Senate Democrats are being forced to pass President Biden’s American Rescue Plan through budget reconciliation so that Republicans don’t use the filibuster to stonewall COVID relief for millions of Americans during a national crisis, it’s time we have a better understanding of the thing that’s been responsible for so much gridlock in Washington over the last 50 years.

In the original iteration of the Senate, there was no such thing as a legislative filibuster, and for good reason. On its surface, the legislative filibuster might sound like a tool to allow for sufficient debate before legislation is voted on, or even as a tool to prevent a majority party from simply ramming their agenda through Congress. Upon closer inspection, however, you’d see that the legislative filibuster creates a Congress that our founders explicitly wanted to avoid when they formed our government. The existence of this filibuster essentially means that, while passing most legislation only requires a simple majority of 51 votes, ending the debate on legislation to actually vote on it requires a super-majority of 60 votes. The way our Senate currently operates, you need more votes to end debate about a piece of legislation than you do to actually pass it. The result? A seemingly endless stalemate that hurts the working-class American voter more than anyone else. 

This form of legislation is precisely what James Madison, one of the principle authors of the Constitution, warned against in The Federalist Papers, when he said that if super-majority voting requirements became routine in our legislative body, “the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority.” Sadly, this is exactly how the filibuster has been used more and more frequently since its inception in the early 1800s. It has allowed legislators representing a minority percentage of the country to halt legislation from being passed by the majority party, and for no other reason than because they care more about power and their own party than they do about progress and our democratic institution. And while this procedural component of the Senate may feel like an unavoidable truth of legislating to some, the wonderful truth of the matter is that it doesn’t have to be.

One of the fundamental rules of both legislative bodies of Congress is that each gets to determine its own rules and operating procedures at the start of each term. This means that, if Senate Democrats so chose, they could end the legislative filibuster and open the doors to sweeping change and progress for our country, arguably at a time in our history where it’s needed now more than ever. Now is the time for bold and progressive legislation and governance, and to fulfill the campaign promises that Biden and the rest of the Democratic party made to the American people last year, and there’s no way to do that with the filibuster in place. Even if Republicans were to retake control of the Senate in two years and use the absence of the filibuster to their own legislative advantage, at least we’d know that Senate Democrats did absolutely everything in their power to help and serve the American people during this time of widespread tragedy and devastation, rather than simply roll over and accept an otherwise avoidable fate.

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Click on Forum for a new commentary by Stephen Macaulay

Kill the Legislative Filibuster?

By Todd Lassa

Before last November’s election, Joseph R. Biden punted on the question of whether he supports killing the Senate legislative filibuster. It’s a move Senate Democrats have been considering at least since it won a majority by the slimmest of margins, with Vice President Harris the tie-breaker for when legislation is split down party lines 

The issue is not the first priority with Senate Democrats, who are moving President Biden’s $1.9-trillion coronavirus relief package via the arcane reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority vote rather than the 60 votes – including 10 Republican senators – necessary when the potential of a filibuster is involved. 

The question is, how much legislation can Biden’s Democratic allies in the Senate pass in the next two years without eliminating the legislative filibuster, which means most bills will require those 10 Republican votes? After January 2023, Democrats either will lose their wafer-thin Senate majority, or will build on it, though it is unlikely either party will gain at least 10 senators in the November 8, 2022 mid-terms. 

Filibuster reformation seems to come up every four years with the presidential election, if not every two years. 

In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, rallied Democrats to end the filibuster for federal judicial nominees and executive office appointments. Spiking the filibuster, called “the nuclear option,” requires only a simple majority vote. 

Republicans warned that triggering the nuclear option on appointing federal judges would come back to bite Democrats whenever they inevitably lost the Senate majority. 

And they were right. In 2017, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, led a majority of his party to end the judicial filibuster for U.S. Supreme Court nominees, paving the way for President Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch as replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Adding hard-core partisanship to injury, Gorsuch’s Senate approval came the year after McConnell prevented a vote on Obama’s nominee late in his term to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland, who now is Biden’s nominee for attorney general.

In the end, Trump saw his three Supreme Court associate justice nominees get Senate approval in his four years in office, compared with Obama’s two associate justices in eight years. 

The question for Democratic senators now is, how much more of Biden’s agenda could the Senate pass in the next 23 months if just 51 votes were needed? And would it be worth weathering the inevitable Senate and White House flip somewhere off in the future?

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Click on Forum for a new commentary by Stephen Macaulay
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Not Carthage, But Important

By Stephen Macaulay

On January 26, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tweeted, "I made clear that if Democrats ever attack the key Senate rules, it would drain the consent and comity out of the institution. A scorched-earth Senate would hardly be able to function." 

He was talking about the filibuster. The Senate cloture rule calls for a supermajority, or 60 votes, to cut off debate. The Democrats, who hold a simple majority, would prefer that is all that is required to end debate; odds are, with Vice President Harris as president of the Senate, they would end all debate on subjects and get right to the voting, which they would again, as bill passage depends on a simple majority, come away as victors.

While “scorched-earth” may be a bit of an exaggeration — after all, we’re not talking the Third Punic War here and the salting of the ground upon which Carthage once stood — but a point of trying to uphold what the Senate should be about: being a deliberative body (it would be hard to put “greatest” in front of that term). To deliberate means to debate. To debate, when done properly, means to have an exchange of ideas, of opposing viewpoints.

In one regard it is somewhat ironic that I open with a tweet from McConnell in that it seems too many political issues are now being dealt with in 280 characters, rather than with an open, fulsome, spirited debate.

The Senate structure, as you know, is one where each state has equal representation. (The House, of course, has a structure predicated on population.) The point of the way the Senate is put together is to protect, in effect, the minority, meaning that California and New York can’t step on Wyoming and Vermont.

The Senate cloture rule does the same thing by requiring that there be two thirds, not one half, of the body in agreement that debate ends.

Of course, there’s the question of whether this is too high a bar, if getting cloture is some sort of impossibility. Perhaps that was once the case (or Senators just tended to be more loquacious back in the proverbial day) because from 1917 to 1968 cloture was invoked just eight times.

In 2019-2020 it was invoked 270 times (a record).

There is a feeling that we “must get things done.” A bunch of droning Senators doesn’t seem to be the way that can or will happen.

But McConnell does have a point, with the point being that before important things get done there needs to be sufficient support — by both sides — for its execution to have the positive effects anticipated by its existence.

To simply have a situation that says, in effect, “OK. We’ve had enough. Go back to your desk and put your head down,” isn’t going to be particularly beneficial.

This is not to argue that McConnell is an exemplary politician. He has proven himself over the years to be more of a tactician, a man who makes moves to benefit his, and his party’s, interests.

But there is something to be said for the ability of the minority to be heard in a fulsome manner.

And McConnell ought to know that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is far from being Cato.

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Click on Forum for new commentary by Stephen Macaulay

Our Left Columnists Want to See a Third Party

Spoiler Alert

By Stephen Macaulay

There is something that we seem to like about binaries. For example, Coke/Pepsi. McDonalds/Burger King. Republicans/Democrats. Take your pick.

But reality isn’t like that. Or at least reality is no longer like that.

Take Coke/Pepsi. While they are admittedly number-one and number-two in the carbonated beverage market, realize that Coca-Cola, which has plenty more than Classic Coke in its portfolio, has about 44% of that market and Pepsi (ditto, number of beverages-wise) is back at about 24%. Keurig Dr. Pepper is third, at 18%, so the delta between it and Pepsi is far closer than Pepsi and Coke, and arguably all three have viability in the carbonated beverage space.

Then there’s McDonald’s and Burger King. In 2019 McDonald’s had sales of some $40.4-billion. Burger King was back at $10.3-billion. And leaving out Starbucks, which is actually number two in the fast-food market, it turns out that Chick-fil-A outsold Burger King, with sales of $11-billion.

And there are plenty more examples. Remember when in mass market audio it was Sony vs. Panasonic? Not only did the Apple iPod put the Walkman out of existence, but now the iPod is nearly extinct.

Or “American” luxury cars were either Cadillac or Lincoln. In that case one could argue that Acura is actually a U.S. brand, as that is where its models are sold and most of them made. In 2020 Lincoln sold 105,410 vehicles, Cadillac 129,495 and Acura 136,983.

The whole notion that there could be a third political party seems to be one thought of only in the context of being a spoiler. Well, Acura is certainly spoiling the sales of Cadillac and Lincoln and seems like the cow on billboards that encourage people to “Eat Mor Chikin” has done its job.

It is fairly clear that there is no longer the “brand loyalty” that once seemed to exist. So the notion that there are just two parties that matter* is a vestige that could be going away—sooner, rather than later.

And arguably, should be.

*Yes, there are more, like Libertarian, Green and Natural Law, but they lack the visibility and voice of the Republicans and Democrats. For now.

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Republicans Should Tell Us Who They Really Are

By Jim McCraw

The United States of America has a history littered with the remains of short-term, single-issue and reform political parties.  It is part of who we are and what we do politically. War. Segregation. Income tax. Prohibition. Whigs. Bull Moose. Know-Nothings. Greens. Peace. Ross Perot.

Now we are faced with more new opportunities, and I think that is a very good thing.  If there are enough real honest-to-God Republicans out there who, after sober reflection, have decided that Donald John Trump was a very bad idea for America and for the future of their party, then it is perhaps time to unite or reunite behind the image and the philosophy of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States.  This would be the new party of the real Republicans.

I think it is high time that the real Republicans come out of the dark and murky shadows created by the self-aggrandizing, power-crazy Trumplicans like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Josh Hawley and the new kid on the block, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Even McConnell despises her.  

They should tell us who they are and what they believe as 21st Century Republicans, so the Democratic Party can fight them fair and square on real issues, not nonsense like stolen elections and Jewish space lasers.  It’s time the old people, the crazies, and the Nazis were shown the door in favor of younger, saner, true Republicans. Democrats will beat them either way, but new blood would be a lot more fun to beat than these old, tired, wacky powermongers.

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Third Party Blind?

By Todd Lassa

If there was any chance that the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill by a pro-Trump mob would clarify the future of the Republican Party, such hopes have been smashed against the temporary gates erected around the Capitol since the inauguration. 

After the attacks, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA,  at first said the soon-to-be-ex-president “bears responsibility for the attack on Congress by mob rioters.”

But in late January, McCarthy flew to the Office of the Former President at Florida’s Mar-a-Lago, where Trump promised to stump for GOP candidates in the 2022 midterms who have been loyal toward him and help mount primary campaigns against those who have not.

Some Republican leaders are threatening impeachment of Liz Cheney, R-WY, for her January 13 vote in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. And while Democrats on Wednesday threatened removal from her committee assignments of controversial freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-GA, after Republicans declined to do so themselves, Republicans have countered by threatening to strip Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN, of her committee assignments because of “past inflammatory statements,” Fox News reports. Greene, who has been associated with QAnon and with social media threats against “The Squad,” including Omar, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rashida Tlaib, D-MI as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told Fox News last August that she has “moved on” from QAnon, the cable news outlet reports.

And so it goes. 

Both sides of the GOP schism can count early victories in fundraising, Politico reports. Trump’s new leadership PAC, Save America, had raised $31.2 million by the end of 2020. Trump can’t use the cash to support any future campaign of his own, but he can use it to influence 2022 midterm campaigns, according to Politico. Meanwhile, the political news site says, Defending Democracy Together, which includes the groups, Republicans for the Rule of Law and Republican Voters Against Trump, has a $50-million ‘war chest’ for GOP incumbents to fight off primary challengers. 

As we approach the week of the former impeachment trial in the Senate, the Lincoln Project has introduced billboards calling on Sens. Ted Cruz, R-TX, and Josh Hawley, R-MO, for supporting Trump in his call for the Senate to reject the Electoral College vote favoring Biden. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told fellow Republicans he would not “whip” them to vote against convicting Trump of “incitement to insurrection,” he voted with the majority of his party against proceeding with the trial.

Just five Republicans voted with 50 Democrats in favor of proceeding with the trial, and a week later, 10 Republicans met with Biden at the White House to discuss a compromise on competing coronavirus relief bills. There is scant chance Democrats will convince 17 Republicans to reach the 2/3 majority needed for conviction, thus eliminating the prospects of following up with a separate, simple majority vote to bar Trump from running for any federal office again. 

Which brings us full-circle to the question of the future of the GOP. The Lincoln Project, founded in 2016 by a group of traditional Republican “Never-Trumpers” are complemented by such online publications as The Dispatch, and The Bulwark, the latter a website founded by former editors at intellectual conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr.’s National Review after it pivoted toward Trump early in his administration.

What happens to Defending Democracy Together, Republicans for the Rule of Law, Republican Voters Against Trump and the Lincoln Project if Trump maintains his stranglehold on the modern GOP? If “traditional” Republicans like McConnell find they can’t give up their fealty to Trump, where do such Republicans as Rep. Cheney go? 

The answer, and the underlying implication of the formation of these groups, is a third party, spearheaded by those groups. This would be a bloodbath for two right-leaning parties, of course, potentially handing the Democrats a good deal of power in the next four years. Ex-President Trump has intimated he’d take his followers and launch a Patriot party, if he had to, but lately, that doesn’t seem necessary. As of this writing, it’s the never-Trump organizations that will have to break off into a new party.

For this debate post, The Hustings asked right-columnists Andrew Boyd and Bryan Williams, pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay and left-columnist Jim McCraw to weigh in on whether, say, a “Lincoln Party” might be good for modern conservatism, and for the country.

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Our Right Columnists Do Not

Dedicated to the GOP, Not Any Single Candidate

By Bryan Williams

I voted for President Trump in 2020. I don't regret that vote - still. I have thought a lot about re-registering as "No Party Preference" here in California, rebuking the party I have called a home since I was 18. I stopped and thought further: There are Republicans I haven't voted for since 2012 for one reason or another. In their respective race, I just didn't vote. 

I cannot bring myself to vote for a Democratic candidate because of what they stand for. I have voted for Democrats in "non-partisan" races (local city council, etc.), but that's about it.
What about splitting the GOP into two, the MAGA-loving Trumpsters or a "Lincoln Party" comprised of Never-Trumpers? I have a problem with that too. 

See, I'm not a Never Trumper. I voted for him. I liked a lot of what he did. But his obvious character flaws and the events of January 6 changed my views of Trump. So again, I was let down by a person.  I wasn't let down by the Republican Party or it's ideals. I imagine you can ask many Catholics how they feel about their church leaders versus what their religion stands for. 

I haven't voted for several Republicans in my local elections since 2012 because I don't like them as individual persons. I still believe in Republicanism. And there are lots out there who do too -- Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney to name a few. 

So no, for now I won't be joining a "Lincoln Party," or a break-away party of any other name. I am not a MAGA-Trumpster. I am not a Never-Trumper. I am a Republican.

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Chosing Conservatism Over Party

By Andrew Boyd

Every day we make decisions whose first skew is pragmatic or principled. With respect to the grifters that make up the leadership of the Lincoln Project, pragmatism wins every time. On the other, more populist, less swampy and, I’d argue, principled side of the conservative movement are those such as me, who believe the Republican establishment has long since decoupled itself from anything resembling classic conservatism, perhaps not in word but most certainly in deed. 

These two factions define the ends of a spectrum that constitutes the fight for the soul of the Republican party. Having said that, I’m not one who subscribes to the notion that political parties, in the pragmatic sense, have any soul at all. That’s why I am more inclined to think of myself as a conservative than a Republican. One is a principle, the other – well, as they say, every great idea starts as a cause, becomes a business and ends up a racket. 

When precisely our national political system entered into the racket phase, I’m hard pressed to pinpoint, but we’re in it for sure. There is a deep and abiding cynicism in the body politic, arguably more so on the left than on the right, because as conservatives, we’re more predisposed toward suspicion of all power centers, regardless of ideology, understanding they all tilt toward tyranny. The left, in principal, seems to me to have nothing left to offer but cheap virtue signaling, manufactured outrage, and the diminishing returns of intersectional politics. And based on the news of late, it’s every bit as on-board with crony capitalism as is the right.

Into the fray rises the notion of a third party arising from one or the other side of the conservative spectrum. There are monied interests on both sides, and insofar as a Patriot party is concerned, I completely understand the inclination, as it resides within me. On principle, I’d love to stick it to the man, to say “see, you don’t own my vote, Mitch McConnell, you, swampy old toad!” But pragmatically, we’re a two-party affair. You dance with the one that brung you. There’s no pitching around it, so far as I can see. Any conservative, on either side of the divide, who throws his or her weight behind a third-party movement has essentially decided to take that principal and light it on fire just to watch the damned thing burn, and that’s just nihilism.

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