Negotiating

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Ex-SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. had some thoughts on negotiating in his take on the relationship between the Biden-Harris White House and Congress. In one thought in particular, though, Levitt is badly…off.

Governance takes two. If a director opposed the CEO without proposing something better, he’d be ignored. In Washington, Republicans don’t seem interested in negotiating. … Republicans, you can oppose, but if you have an opportunity to shape policy, take it.

Levitt badly misunderstands. Progressive-Democrat Ocasio-Cortez openly hoped for Progressive-Democrat control of Senate explicitly so Party would not need to negotiate with Republicans.

Republicans have often tried to negotiate, only to be told “we won, you lost.” The last time Progressive-Democrats controlled Senate, then-Majority Leader Reid routinely “filled the tree” precisely to prevent Republicans from offering amendments.

Progressive-Democrats have already passed one reconciliation bill so as to exclude Republican amendments, and they’re bent on same a second time. They’re also determined to blow up up the filibuster so they no longer have need even to pay lip service to negotiating.

Where is this “opportunity” of which Levitt wrote for Republicans to shape policy with Progressive-Democrats refusing to negotiate?

President Joe Biden (D) often says it’s his goal to fundamentally change America. How is it possible to negotiate with a Party that refuses to negotiate and that is openly bent on destroying the republican democracy that is the United States and to remake us into their image?

Visitor Logs

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President Joe Biden (D) refuses to release any visitor logs connected to visitors he has when he’s in Delaware—which is as much as a third of his time in office during his first year, just concluding. He’s defending that refusal, using the voice of his Press Secretary, Jen Psaki.

The president goes to Delaware because it’s his home. It’s also where his son and his former wife are buried, and it’s a place that is obviously close to his heart. A lot of presidents go visit their home when they are president.

A responsible press, denied access to visitor logs when the President is at his Delaware home, especially for as much of the year as Biden is, would send reporters and photographers to his home to track those visitors and to keep their own logs of visitations. And publish those logs and images.

However….

“It Depends on Uncle Sam”

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Without more help from Washington, electric-vehicle sales will struggle to live up to the stock-market hype.

That Wall Street Journal lede pretty much tells the tale.

And this:

If the new technology is to live up to high investor expectations, the global record suggests that the US will need to embrace subsidies.

It depends on Uncle Sam. As long as electric vehicles get subsidies of any sort—either on the manufacturing end or to buyers of them on the other end—these battery cars can never be mainstream. As long as they’re getting any sort of subsidy, battery cars are tautologically unready for market.

Inadequate

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Co-President Joe Biden-Kamala Harris are having trouble getting much of their political and (pseudo-)economic agenda passed. (Aside: failure isn’t a done deal; it would behoove the pundits on the right side of center to stop their crowing and predictions of landslide Republican elections in November.)

That’s not a failure of the agenda or of Biden-Harris or of Party managers in the House and Senate, though.

Not at all, insisted Paul Begala.

I think the problem for the Democrats right now is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers, okay?

And

In other words, those of us who want to say voting rights– we need to get to work. I do think Biden is putting everything behind this. But he needs– he needs better followers….

This is an example of the contempt Progressive-Democrats have had for us Americans all along. Here is Herb Croly, one of the founders of the modern Progressive movement that has evolved the Democratic Party into its current form as the Progressive-Democratic Party:

But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of a constructive national democracy. The national advance will always be impeded by these misleading and erroneous ideas, and, what is more, it always should be impeded by them, because at bottom ideas of this kind are merely an expression of the fact that the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Written Response

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated Russia’s demand for

a written response this week from the US and its allies to Moscow’s request for binding guarantees that NATO will not embrace Ukraine or any other ex-Soviet nations, or station its forces and weapons there.

I have a written response for him.

“Nuts.”