Mint the coin with Trump's face. No R can vote against it.

http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_18326.html#2165085

LW is brilliant.

I like it. Trump's face, and the dates of his presidency, so they can't vote against it but he'll still hate it.

Instead of "In God We Trust" it could say something like "Most Racism Today Is Against White People".

I can't find it in TFA, but I remember posting a variation on this idea way back during the Obama debt ceiling fooferaw.
My idea was that Obama should announce that he's going to mint a trillion dollar coin with Malcolm X's face on it. Instantly, any controversy over the trillion dollar coin concept would be eclipsed by the controversy over Malcolm X. As this controversy reaches a fever pitch, Obama would relent and announce that he was going to put Reagan's face on it instead, and the Republicans would celebrate.

5: Sub in Obama and Trump, unstoppable.

Dumb question but help me refresh my memory in lieu of actually reading any news articles. The four options to avoid hitting the limit and crashing the economy are basically as follows:

1. Congress passes something that the President signs. The usual way of doing it. The problem is the Republicans in the House suck.

2. Biden orders the Treasury to mint a trillion dollar coin and immediately deposits it in the Federal Reserve. The main problems with this are that (a) it might lead to inflation depending on details, and that (b) it's generally new and unprecedented which is scary for the conservative party, i.e. the Democrats.

3. Biden argues that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional due to the 14th Amendment and ignores it. The main problems with this are the same as 2b, and also the fact that it would be challenged in court and no one wants to guess what this Supreme Court would say.

That cover it?

The fourth option, of course, being doing nothing and crashing the economy.

Default is the default.

2(a) is wrong. It's no more inflationary than 1 - it's the spending that matters, not a hypothetical number on Treasury's balance sheet.

2(b) is overstated, I think - it's new to use this power this way but all the powers involved are direct and clear as is the net effect. In contrast, the 14th amendment approach is a lot more unprecedented and has the potential for a lot more weird effects.

so they can't vote against it

They've vote against it if you put "2021" on it.

2. Praise is thin on the ground in my real life these days, so thank you. Pretty sure I repeated something I read elsewhere and found genuinely funny rather than improvised.

There's fiddling around for bits of time apparently happening. SS payments will be the big issue, no idea about how those are scheduled.
https://kfgo.com/2023/05/23/us-treasury-asks-federal-agencies-for-payments-clarity-as-debt-ceiling-default-looms/

I'm thinking about non-hyperbolic parallels, temporary credit hiccups maybe from currency rather than legal snafus-- did anything happen with the UK in 1992? Belgium had no government for over a year in 2010, did that have any financial consequence? Most places have large entities whose identity is intermediate between state and business that are buffer zones in crises like these. I guess Fannie and Freddie here, maybe other weird reinsurance support mechanisms?

The Knesset hasn't passed a budget in 4 or 6 years or something, because Bibi. But they have a law which in this event automatically re-passes the budget most recently passed. (My details might be wobbly.)

This is like how if your password requirement gets too stupid, your password reset becomes the real log in.

Charles I managed about a decade without a Parliamentary budget by creative use of crown feudal revenues, privileges, properties, and such. Don't know if the Presidency has any equivalents. Apart from the $tr coin trick. I'd guess yes, but not $3trn/yr's worth.

Biden's ancestral fief is Scranton. Not much revenue.

On the subject of Trump, sources are saying Jack Smith is preparing to indict over the Mar-a-Lago documents!

did anything happen with the UK in 1992?

we had a general election, left the Exchange Rate Mechanism, Leeds United won their so far last championship, the Manchester United squad who would dominate the game in the 90s-00s won the FA Youth Cup, lots of royal shenanigans, a wave of car theft and low level rioting...?

There wasn't a budget/government debt crisis but the pound sterling did sell off a lot after the government gave up on the ERM, ironically ending the 1990-1992 recession at a stroke.

13: I think that was true a few years ago, but not the case anymore -- https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/world/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-budget.html?searchResultPosition=1

I thought the problem with the coin, or avenues involving the 14th, is that even if it seems to conform to the letter of the law, new shenanigans will make the markets nervous and might destabilize the heretofore rock-solid Treasury bond in somewhat the same way as an actual default?

The demonstrated policy preference of the second largest political party in the U.S. is to threaten default as a means of governing from a minority position. Shouldn't that destabilize the bond market on its own?

Destabilizing the bond market to some extent seems baked-in at this point.

The Post reports that Social Security payments, and specifically those to the most vulnerable seniors, are likely to be hit first. Obviously advocates and the administration have an interest in emphasizing sob stories like this as a negotiating tactic, but that doesn't mean they're not true.

The coin is ridiculous but fun. If someone can get standing to challenge it, our current Supreme Court will strike it down: the intent of the law on platinum coins is obviously for collectors (and a sop to the platinum mining companies); it was not enacted to evade the provisions on debt.

When kidnappers really have taken a hostage, and are unstable enough to likely shoot the hostage, you really do have to negotiate, if you care about the hostage, even though that's bad bad bad policy.

There are certainly people in the Republican caucus who'd love to crash the economy. As a precursor of the revolution they want.

I'm thinking that at the end of the day, Biden is probably going to have to give up something to save McCarthy, but it might not have to be much.

I feel like there's a real opportunity for some country to fill the void that the US seems determined on leaving, but everyone else seems to just self-sabotage even worse. Currency is a great example, if it weren't for Brexit the pound would have a real opportunity now, but the UK decided to fuck things up even worse than the US. For a non-currency example, any country that wanted to become the premier center for fundamental research and the top destination for foreign students right now could pretty easily do it if they tried. But basically only China is trying and they're an awful dictatorship that's unappealing to move to. All you'd have to do is pay American salaries, teach in English, treat universities even passingly well, and actually start new universities.

It's a strong solution for the Republicans if they stopped giving a shit about economic growth. They can shrink the government by fucking up the good faith and credit of the United States.

Justice Thomas will write a concurring opinion reaching back over the centuries and saying that the trillion dollar coin is only valid is it used a trillion dollars worth of platinum.

I still think my proposal from years past that members of congress and their staffs be paid in nickels whenever we've gone past the debt limit (as happened in January) is viable. It'd take a lot of wheelbarrows, but it could be done. Oh, and the nickels should be in bags, not paper rolls.

7: There are some workarounds that aren't minting the coin but allow the Treasury to avoid hitting the debt limit; the least silly is to issue bonds that have a discounted face value (i.e. instead of $100, they say $50 but carry a higher interest rate to make them equivalent to $100) or are interest-only (so they have a face value of $0, which is what the debt limit law covers).

They really do need some sort of workaround plan and I really hope they have one, because none of these compromise bills that keep getting floated is getting through the House.

if it weren't for Brexit the pound would have a real opportunity now

...Why? Under Blair or Cameron, what was better or more useful about the pound than the euro? This seems like the standard British self-talk that they're still a great power, but I didn't think you were British.

Matt Bruenig has a good rundown of the debt ceiling options here, plus a nice clear view of the logic of the situation:

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2023/05/23/the-debt-limit-situation/

Not sure the Supreme Court would really decline to rule in this case (they seem to have a taste for going down as legends) or that zero-principal bonds are better than minting the coin, but that Biden should shitcan the negotiations and just *act* is dead right.

what was better or more useful about the pound than the euro?

The lack of German hard-money fanatics refusing to devalue, a decade of Greek and Portuguese unemployment be damned? (I take your point, but also I don't think you can look at the post-GFC European Central Bank and think, aha, these are the people I want in charge of things.)

33 was me.

ECB sucks (-ed?), but I though upetgi was talking about businesses and individuals choosing to voluntarily use a currency when not in its territory.

I don't agree that the SC would go political question, and I also don't agree that the SC would accept the frame in the article. It's not going to be 'what is the President supposed to do?' it's going to be 'did the President have the authority to do this particular thing under review?'

There are centuries of precedent wrt coins, and while he can point to the platinum coin statute and say 'I've nominally been delegated the authority to do this ridiculous thing,' I think they're very likely to say 'no you haven't.' The zero value bond may be a better bet for evading Supreme Court review. We still end up with some turbulence in the period between when he does it and when they rule -- it could be quite a while. How bad would that be? Could be pretty bad, seems to me, completely ex recto.

The notion that this SC is ever going to endorse any kind of necessity argument for any unilateral executive action Biden takes is just, imo, wrong. What they'll think he's supposed to have done is make a deal with McCarthy.

The student loan decision, when it comes out, will show how keen the SC is to prevent Biden from using statutory authorities more broadly than originally intended.

Who's making the argument for a zero-value bond? Is that the same as JMM's thing of consols, that pay periodic amounts but have no face value and never mature?

From an intellectual POV, I didn't follow that argument of his. If all I were trying to do was faithfully interpret the law, I would say "just because a consol doesn't have a face value doesn't mean the government isn't taking on debt; they need to calculate the NPV of the obligation it creates and count it against the debt ceiling."

There also seem to exist zero-coupon bonds, but those have a face value and no payments, so they trade well below their face value; that seems counterproductive.

I just saw on the internet that someone got a notice from Chase that their checking account was $200 billion over drawn. Just do that to five people and it's a trillion.

It's generally overlooked, at least in most press descriptions of the situation, that Biden is breaking the law either way. Ignoring some payments duly mandated by Congress is just as illegal as ignoring the debt ceiling limit, and has a lot more people with standing to sue than some shenanigans involving metal content of a coin.

Biden has to cave or the GOP will crash the economy, and stupidity may crash it anyway if McCarthy is too afraid for his speakership to try to pass something that the farthest right objects to.

GOP politicians are either people who are literally too stupid to understand the consequences of a default and people who are rich enough to see the crash as an opportunity. The stupid ones get elected because they're useful for the rich ones, who need people to say the dumbest shit possible with their whole chests in order to convince the rubes.

The GOP thinks, probably correctly, that most Americans are too uninformed at best and too stupid at worst to understand that the US does not operate on household budget lines and again, probably correctly, that most Americans will blame Biden and re-elect Trump. The culture war stuff is getting overplayed and most people are realizing that they sort of like birth control, no-fault divorce and not having their kids' genitals inspected in gym class, so the strategic conservatives figure that the next step is to crash the economy.

The Democrats, stupid in their own way, don't understand that they don't have any leverage - just like they didn't understand that when we lost the Supreme Court we lost Roe, something that was so obvious in my immediate social circle that someone was literally predicting it in 2015.

When I was a kid, I read things like that Roald Dahl story The Swan (probably not the best story to give to a kid of my general type) and it scared the daylights out of me because I figured "yes, those are my peers, stupid, sadistic and mean - and they could easily hurt or kill me because they are too dumb to know better". Then I spent my teens and twenties teaching myself that this was an elitist way of thinking, regular people are great, etc etc, and over about the past ten years I've been wishing that I had the sense to stick to my initial impression and live my life accordingly, since I could be safely off the grid somewhere outside the US by now.

~~
Of course, we all hate America but love our hometowns, hate the bosses but love our manager, etc etc etc, so actually I can report that Minnesota has been doing good lately, what with the school lunches and affordable housing funding and so on. None of it is perfect, certainly, but lone among Democrats the governor seems to have the sense to make hay while the sun shines instead of dithering about bipartisanship until he loses his majority. I thought he was just a placeholder in the wake of local rich guy Mark Dayton, but he turns out to have some kind of agenda of his own. If the GOP gets the trifecta in the medium future, of course, it will be blood and fire for all of us, but hopefully they won't.

Anyway. When I was a young anarchist I was still basically a left liberal at heart, but it's all nihilistic despair.

an elitist way of thinking, regular people are great, etc etc

I did this through college, but my first post-college retail job smacked that wishful thinking but hard.

Ignoring some payments duly mandated by Congress is just as illegal as ignoring the debt ceiling limit

Pointing to another legal argument - Article II, Section 3, faithful execution of the laws. "Until Congress stops sending me mutually inconsistent directives I have no choice but to use my best judgment picking and choosing."

There are great ordinary people and shitty elitists, and great elitists and shitty ordinary people. As it turns out, class is just worthless as a heuristic for telling who to trust fuck, marry, or kill.

I will say, Frowner, that I wouldn't use "Democrats" as a word to describe people in denial about the consequences for the Supreme Court -- and everything that comes before it -- of not prevailing in the 2016 election. There may have been some whistling past the graveyard, but imo most of that was from people either left or right of the Democratic mainstream.

oops:

43 It's not about whether the President can put a sentence together. It's about whether 5 justices are going to buy it.

44: "I will defend Roe v. Wade and I will defend women's rights to make their own healthcare decisions. We have come too far to have that turn back now. And indeed, he said women should be punished. There should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions. And I could just not be more opposed to that kind of thinking..." - Hillary Clinton, 2016, second debate.

(The moderator also asked Trump point blank if he wanted the court to overturn Roe, and he said "I will be appointing pro-life judges" and that with those appointments "that is really what will happen. That will happen automatically in my opinion.")

46: I think it's quickly graduating from that to "how many different ways can it be shown to the general public that the Supreme Court has become tyrannical and illegitimate."

(I do think even today's Supreme Court would think twice about giving an order whose direct impact would be crashing the economy. When it's just Congress failing to act, responsibility can be disavowed; but when it's "The Supreme Court orders..." much less so.)

47 last: I think we differ on the ultimate usefulness of that showing.

Sure doctors are free to ignore Dobbs and the statutes passed in its wake. They'll end up ruined, in jail, or both.

Tell the bond market to bonds issued by the US after June 6, 2023 are void, and you get a huge reaction, even if elite opinion is that the SC's pronouncements on unprecedented measures Biden has taken are bullshit.

38: The debt ceiling law specifically refers to face value of issued bonds ("The face amount of obligations issued under this chapter and the face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are guaranteed by the United States Government..." If you issue a $50 bond that pays back $102 due to high interest rates, that's a $50 face amount; if you issue a coupon-only bond (I don't like calling them "consuls" because I associate that with British perpetual bonds) with no face value, that's presumably $0. As we've seen, the actual plain language of the law no longer is anything more than a vague suggestion to the Supreme Court, but that's the reasoning.

Couldn't they do something like block the administration from releasing additional premium bonds without annulling the existing ones? (One could even argue under the 14th that this is what they must do.)

50: Interesting, thanks.

If the real problem is social security payments, we can relax for a bit, because they are paid on the second, third, or fourth Wednesday of each month, depending on recipient's birthdate, so the next round isn't going out until June 14. And that's only for people born in the first 10 days of a month, and who cares about them?

The Fourteenth Amendment isn't the only argument for Biden to continue paying all bills and issuing as much in new debt as is needed. He can also argue that when faced with conflicting laws, he must act in the public interest, and in this case the public interest is to follow the leter of all of the appropriations statutes and debt servicing statutes, as well as the Anti-Impoundment Act, and reject the debt ceiling statute. The Supreme Court may find thast easier to swallow.

If Biden cared about America, he would somehow figure out how to make light beer masculine again.

If the real problem is social security payments, we can relax for a bit, because they are paid on the second, third, or fourth Wednesday of each month, depending on recipient's birthdate, so the next round isn't going out until June 14. And that's only for people born in the first 10 days of a month, and who cares about them?

Per the article in 24, the real problem is not regular SS payments but SSI, the next round of which is scheduled to go out on June 1 and 2.

OT: Oh, bother.

Public domain, baby!

Apparently SCOTUS just decided that the clear language of the Clean Water Act isn't to their liking so they changed it.

I finally found my comment from the 2011 debt ceiling fight. I was mostly wrong in thinking we actually were going to default back then, but I think the number of Republicans who would not be unhappy with a default has grown:

There seems to be a belief, maybe not widely held, that default will be like some kind of ritual purification, leading the US to shed all of its excess waste and then be reborn as a leaner, but still last best hope for etc. etc. blah blah

I think the consequences of a default are hard to predict in electoral terms and it's not clear to me it would favor Republicans, except to the extent it makes authoritarian control seem more appealing to some than democratic muddling through..

59: Thanks for finding that! Very odd to read that thread now.

I was still pretty serious.

61: Yes, I was surprised by how serious I was too.

Tell the bond market to bonds issued by the US after June 6, 2023 are void, and you get a huge reaction

This is what pisses me off though. We are being asked pitch our hard-won priorities in order to please the fucking bond market, which I guess has apparently failed to hedge against the obvious risk that debt limit-related political fuckery might imperil the repayment of US government debt. I was told that the miracle of modern market economics is that risks get reflected in prices, but if the entire market is systemically underestimating this risk such that there would be a huge negative systemic reaction if this thing were to happen which has already almost happened a dozen times, well, maybe our bond market isn't really doing its job. So maybe hold off on sacrificing the environment on its behalf?

A default on US debt caused by stupid Republican debt-ceiling politics would not be a black swan. It would be an extremely white swan. Markets ought to be able to manage white swans without the world falling to pieces.

At every other rodeo, everyone has blinked and done a deal before the arena exploded. That's the white swan.

"if the entire market is systemically underestimating this risk such that there would be a huge negative systemic reaction if this thing were to happen which has already almost happened a dozen times, well, maybe our bond market isn't really doing its job"

I feel that this comment is based on a misunderstanding of how prices work. Even if markets are completely efficient there is still going to be a drop in price when a product goes from "this tin of beans has a 1% chance of catching fire" to "this tin of beans has already caught fire". The latter tin of beans is worthless. What the price of the former tin includes is the risk that it will turn into the latter tin and become worthless, causing me, its owner, a loss. I hedge against that risk in advance by diversifying my investments and by demanding a slightly higher return, but there is logically no way to price a debt security such that when default occurs I do not take a loss on that security. If I'm clever I won't take an overall loss over the long term, but that's different.

Also, don't personalise the bond markets. You sound like that weirdo James Carville.

A drop in prices in the bond market is just fine with me. It will harm the wealthy, which is good. Fuck the wealthy.

But if it actually leads to massive systemic instability, that's really reflective of massive systemic instability we already have. If Wall Street stability is predicated on national political stability, its time for Wall Street to wake up and recognize that national political stability is a dumpster fire as long as Republicans are empowered. If Wall Street is continuing to price US government as essentially risk free, that is something they should stop doing and should have stopped doing a long time ago.

If companies in the market hasn't seen this problem coming for years and made appropriate plans and adjustments to manage a disruption gracefully, that's on them. But for the left to give up its hard won gains because those companies profit by continuing to be unrealistic about the long term risk outlook of government debt, no fucking way.

tldr: We've seen this problem coming for decades. If Wall Street isn't prepared, that's on Wall Street.

There are a few points to make here:

The first is that, well, yes, Republicans make lots of noise about the debt ceiling every few years, but as a matter of actual historical fact the USA has never defaulted on its sovereign debt. (Some people argue that redeeming silver and gold bonds with paper money counts as a default; I don't agree.) Based purely on the historical record, US sovereign debt is really safe, and banks may be acting quite rationally in valuing a record of 200 years of financial stability over the occasional posturing of various habitually untruthful blobs of seething resentment. Lots of other nations have defaulted. The US hasn't.

The second is that the stability of the US government really backstops a lot of other things. To take a very simple example, it's not much good your insuring your US Treasuries with a credit default swap issued by, say, Bank of America. If the US defaults, Bank of America will not be in good shape either.

The third is that based on 67 you seem a bit conflicted on whether you want a massive systemic financial crisis to happen or not and should probably address whether the joy of seeing the wealthy harmed would actually make up for the occasional inconvenience for the rest of us of a massive systemic financial crisis.

The fourth is that I am not really sure how you think Wall Street should prepare for such an event. How would you do it? There is a truly huge amount of US sovereign debt out there and it is held largely by financial institutions. How should they, collectively, prepare for a default?
One way would be to demand much higher coupons on US debt to compensate (correctly, you would argue) for its risk level, just as they do with, say, Ecuador or Tanzania.
First of all, this would not protect them from the full effect of a default.
Second, it would mean the US government paying far more money each year in coupon payments to various very large financial institutions, to finance its debt issuance. The effect of this change on the hard-won policy gains of US liberals I will leave to you to work out, but tl;dr, it wouldn't be good.

63: Even if financial markets are pricing in the risk correctly (as Matt Levine, who is both funny and invaluable on this stuff, has noted, during the last debt ceiling bullshit the price of T-bills rose, because with financial chaos looming everyone, quite possibly correctly, figured T-bills were still the safest place to put their money), there's a bunch of stuff that will happen that isn't under "the bond market"'s control. Biden would have to actually decide whether he's willing to do something modestly novel to ensure that Social Security checks go out. Interest rates would probably go up, possibly significantly, in the medium term, worldwide. Etc. The infuriating thing (on top of everyone in 2021 stating with certainty that this would happen as soon as the Republicans had a chance and being dimissed) is that, as with Roe and Dobbs, it feels like the administration never actually wargamed their response for when this completely predictable set of circumstances came to pass and now they're just flailing. Oh what if we hobble the IRS again will that satisfy the hostage-takers?

Biden would have to actually decide whether he's willing to do something modestly novel to ensure that Social Security checks go out.

Yeah, he would. Got forbid we ask centrist Democrats to do something creative.

As for the backstopping and all that - these are exactly the systems that are in desperate need of being unwound. We learned in 2016 that US voters could no longer be trusted to elect a responsible US government, and the wheels have been coming off ever since. That has not, so far, sparked any reckoning within the US financial system, but it really should because its a boil that will need to be lanced at some point, and sooner is better. The American political system is unstable and the world financial system needs to quit relying on the assumption that it isn't.

I'm still mad at Bank of America for cutting my credit limit in 2007. The fucks were actually less solvent than I was at the time and I never asked them to raise my credit limit.

as Matt Levine, who is both funny and invaluable on this stuff, has noted, during the last debt ceiling bullshit the price of T-bills rose, because with financial chaos looming everyone, quite possibly correctly, figured T-bills were still the safest place to put their money

I should have made this point. Bond prices do not reflect absolute risk - they reflect relative risk. Relative, that is, to the risk of all the other things you might otherwise do with the money. A huge across-the-board change in absolute risk shouldn't really affect bond prices.

A US government default is not really a financial event like a default by General Motors. It's an out-of-context problem like a nuclear war. It's going to hit everything badly, and while it's certain that at the end of the chaos the US government will still be there, it's not certain that other counterparties will be.

Let me use a toy example (not an analogy).
I am a money lender.
I'll lend heebie $100 and ask for 5% interest because I know that she's reliable, and there is therefore only a 4.8% chance that she'll lose the money down the back of the couch and therefore won't pay me back.
I'll lend Moby $100 and ask for 15% because I happen to know that he has a major addiction to betting on quail fights and is therefore higher risk - there's a 13% chance he won't pay me back.
Or I'll just keep the money under my mattress where it will earn 0%.
All three of those options have equal expected return, so I don't really mind which of them I do.

Now I hear that this year, a gang of ferocious Californian water usage experts are in town, hungry for blood and loaded for bear. I estimate that there's a 50% chance that they'll pick on each of us to rob of all we possess.
So now the chance of heebie repaying me has gone way down. Not only is there the chance that she'll lose the money down the back of the couch, but also the much bigger chance that she'll get robbed by the Californians. Ditto Moby. Even if I just hang on to my money there's a 50% chance that it (and my mattress) will be gone.
Now, question: lending to heebie is now far riskier this year than it was last year. Shouldn't I be charging her more interest to reflect this? Am I failing in my duty as a lender by not including this massive new repayment risk in my calculation of interest rate?

We learned in 2016 that US voters could no longer be trusted to elect a responsible US government, and the wheels have been coming off ever since

From a bond market point of view, though, that just isn't true. The US paid its coupons every month under Trump like a good little debtor, just as it did under Obama. Trump was silly and corrupt but he didn't actually affect the US' debt repayments. In my toy example above, heebie may well be a terrible person in all sorts of ways but I don't care as long as none of those ways make her less able and willing to repay her debts.

You can't tie a spike to a quail. That's why we use roosters.

I guess the safe financial move would be to buy a DCF tent.

The difference between 'modestly novel' and 'quite possibly illegal' is kind of thin here, is the point.

I have thought of a completely novel financial act.

73 would be a terrible analogy, but it's both funny and a thought provoking toy model. Thank you.

70 Who dismissed the certainty that House Republicans would do the ceiling hostage thing again? Manchin?

The difference between 'modestly novel' and 'quite possibly illegal' is kind of thin here, is the point.

If the Supreme Court says its illegal, let them enforce it. We are not at a position in time where "respecting the position of the Supreme Court" is a norm that should necessarily remain in play.

80: An unnamed administration spokesperson in November 2022, when they had the option to raise during the lame duck: "A White House spokesperson noted that congressional Republicans voted three times to lift the debt ceiling under former President Donald Trump. 'The debt ceiling should never be a matter of political brinksmanship,' the spokesperson said. 'Congress must once again responsibly address the debt ceiling before its expiration.'" I'm not sure whether blame for believing that the scorpion will not do what's in its nature rests on the Biden Administration, Manchin/Sinema, or the 5-10 dummies in the Democratic caucus in the Senate that Manchin and Sinema's idiocy gives cover to, or some combination of all of them.

And here's some earlier Post reporting, suggesting that a) Manchin and Sinema weren't on board and b) other unnamed members of the Democratic party thought they could get the Republicans to baldfacedly state that they wanted to cut Social Security (and further, scorpion-wise, that this would be communicated to the American people and not bothsidesed to an undifferentiated blur).

77: But half the point here is that in the event of exceeding the debt ceiling, the President has literally no actions he can take that aren't possibly illegal, so doing something not statutorily forbidden--minting the coin, issuing zero-coupon bonds, saying that the 14th amendment means he must ignore the debt ceiling, etc.--is the only way through. It's like there were laws passed both requiring him to serve tea and forbidding him to serve tea at White House dinners; the way through without breaking the law is to do something like close the commissary or redeclare dinner as officially "lunch".

(I guess the 14th amendment escape hatch is statutorily forbidden; that would involve Biden saying that he has to ignore the statute due to constitutional limitations.)

I don't disagree with the underlying point that Biden can't comply with all the mandates. The choices are (a) get the mandates changed or (b) break one and go to jail (metaphorically).

I don't think there are 5 or 10 Dem senators hiding behind Manchin/Sinema. If there are, then there are definitely not the votes to get rid of the ceiling, or, indeed, to ratify whatever lawbreaking Biden decides to engage in. Executive actions Biden takes aren't the finish line -- they're the starting gun to a process that will last well into 2024.

Even in the face of the strongly pro-Republican mainstream media, Biden is holding his own, I think, in public opinion with taking Congress to the brink. He's betting they'll blink -- by which I mean settle for something not earth-shattering -- and he's probably right.

The fundamental problem, of course, is that people keep voting for Republicans. It's dumb. it's unforgivable, and it's the main reason we can't have a lot of nice things. Ordinary people put notorious phony JD Vance into a position where he gets to make these calls. Because they wanted him in there to fuck shit up.

(Not to pick on your guy: Vance is fucking Churchill compared to our Matt Rosendale.)

I've come to agree with 81. This Supreme Court has lost its legitimacy.

88 If you were a fiduciary, you'd care whether or not the courts said that particular instruments you wanted to purchase, or had purchased, were legally invalid. If you're a lower court, you're going to have to follow them, whether you want to or not. If they end up upholding 'don't say gay' laws, you can think whatever you want, but teachers who violate the law are going to get fired.

I guess it's true that an order compelling the government to release people from concentration camps they've been placed in because of their ethnicity can be ignored, or an order directing the government not to evict indigenous people from their lands.

Wow, sounds like the Supreme Court is pretty important. They had better get their shit together.

Biden has to cave or the GOP will crash the economy

I don't know how this all sorts out -- all the alternatives are bad, including the ones that I favor. But I am generally inclined to think that Biden is the right guy for this moment.

I wonder what my opinion will be a week from now.

The latest leaked potential deal does seem surprisingly good. I'm still skeptical they can get it passed, though.

90 They are doing exactly what the people who put them there wanted them to do. The people who put them there were elected on the promise of selecting Supreme Court justices who would do this kind of stuff. It's a fucked up conundrum: Roe was popular but so too were politicians promising to take the steps to get rid of Roe. As a polity we had a choice to make, and we made it.

'Ignore the Supreme Court!' is very similar in my mind to 'that's it, I'm moving to Canada!' Momentarily personally satisfying rhetoric, but, at the societal level, in the end harmless at best and counterproductive at worst. The Supreme Court is going to be on the ballot again in 2024, in 2026 (because control of the Senate matters), in 2028, and for the rest of time. 'It's not legitimate, no one cares what they say' isn't going to be a useful pitch. We've already tried 'who cares about the Supreme Court anyway' in some past elections . . .

I guess it's true that an order compelling the government to release people from concentration camps they've been placed in because of their ethnicity can be ignored, or an order directing the government not to evict indigenous people from their lands.

You're gaming this out entirely as "what if scattered individuals with no support defy the Court and no one else." I agree that would be futile, similar to individuals boycotting products without organization and for untrumpeted reasons. But if it's a social movement encouraged by Democrats at all levels (similar to how Republicans in the Civil War led by Lincoln engaged in large-scale defiance of the Supreme Court), that's a different story.

It's another jumbo gravel smasher scenario.

94 We mostly deal with the courts as scattered individuals. EPA can send letters to the Sacketts demanding all the fines they want, but no court is going to enforce them. If EPA officials try to occupy the Sackett's property to prevent them from filling in their little wetland, they'll get arrested by the county sheriff. And probably also get contempt sanctions from the federal judge in Idaho. You're basically endorsing a Trail of Tears scenario for the Sacketts -- I don't know, maybe they're unpopular enough in the area to have to leave, but I kind of doubt it.

Doctors who perform non-emergency abortions in Idaho are going to get arrested, as individuals. Already, med students are deciding not to relocate to states like Idaho, and docs already there are considering leaving. Scattered individuals.

For nearly 50 years, the anti-abortion movement had huge numbers of people mobilized to march on Washington, in January no less, year in and year out. It didn't make even a tiny difference at the Supreme Court. What did make all the difference was that 80,000 or so people in a few states thought it would be fun or interesting to give the carnival barker a turn, despite (and/or because of) his clearly stated intention to change the Supreme Court.

Along with tens of millions of others, of course.

We mostly deal with the courts as scattered individuals.

Yes, you're looking at it from your professional perspective. Understandable, but limited.

97 Yes. absolutely. But what is it you expect people to actually do, beyond March for Life or whatever they called it? Biden should send in the 101st Airborne to prevent the Idaho legislature from banning abortion? Activists should harass the Sacketts, and everyone else who wants to fill a little wetland?

Some top-down examples could include performing abortions for all at VA hospitals, with enough security to prevent marshals from interfering.

Or if Biden declares "the illegitimate decision notwithstanding, the US will honor all debts and pay all legal obligations," that might not save those relying on the bonds if they need a judicial stamp of approval, but it might; hard to say, it's pretty unexplored territory and they haven't needed such approval in practice before. Could result in a scare => uneasy economic truce.

A state resisting abortion-related extradition (effectively nullifying Puerto Rico v. Branstad) is another area where the resister would have the upper hand, enforcement-power-wise. There was a lot of this under the Fugitive Slave Act, where the state's noncooperation made activists more confident in blocking direct judicial enforcement.

38, 50: Levine went over mucking around with face value a while ago.

78: Unfortunately, the margin of this eclectic web magazine is too small to contain it.

99 I think he probably needs congressional action for this. Is the Hyde Amendment still a thing? Are there statutory restrictions on who can get care at a VA hospital? Indeed, Congress could probably preempt abortion state laws for some set of patients, if not all.

Security could prevent state officials from interfering during the procedure, but not from arresting the doctors and nurses at their homes. Or revoking the doctor's license to practice. This stuff too can maybe be dealt with in federal legislation, but not by presidential fiat.

Unless you want a president with far more power than even the outsized (and I think unconstitutional) position we have now.

101 Yeah, if you can get the state to cooperate. The thing about the earlier era is there were cases that legitimized resistance, and those have been, as you note, overruled. Now your state officials who cooperate with resistance are going to be subject to contempt sanctions. Maybe Gov Newsome would stand up to that. He'd be an exception . . .

Apparently, you can open the door of the airplane while it's on flight. I'd always thought it was not possible.

What happened?

Someone opened the door on a plane while it was in flight.

I wasn't on the plane.

That was me again.

They should make a sign that says "do not open this door during flight," just so nobody makes an innocent mistake.

That's too short and clear for an airline. "Do not operate or engage the exgress while the aircraft is airborne or moving."

I keep suggesting they don't need so many words, but they keep rejecting "Don't fuck with the smoke detector in the shitter."

Supposedly there's a deal?

You can fuck with the smoke detector if you fix it after your cigarette is done.

Guess who's in the ICU with another stroke? It's me! (My stroke symptoms have mostly resolved- they're just making me stay because of the turbo charged blood thinner)

I'm manufacturing drama by picking fights with everyone about the hospital's illegal interpreter policy and also by spontaneously bleeding a lot out of old mostly healed scratches & scrapes

That's a lot of blood thinners. Please don't punch anyone about the interpreters. I hope you recover quickly.

116: you're up to three in one year?!

Thanks! Me too!

119 is a HIPAA violation.

The problem with saying the Supreme Court is on the ballot is that it's not very directly on the ballot. Someone has to die or resign, possibly not in that order, to change things, unless you consider other options like expanding the court, or investigating or impeaching the obviously corrupt, or term limits, or legislating with regard to jurisdiction. If you explicitly rule out thoseand other options, especially if you condescendinly pat people on the head and drone on about preserving the legitimacy of the institution*, or you throw up your hands and declare Congress won't act so why bother, and you act like the only choice is to wait for some future date, determined perhaps by actuarial tables, when an opportunity will arise to appoint someone new for life, and don't you hope that a Democrat will be in power? then you create an incentive for people to give up on working through institutions that already exist.

It would be great if the court was on the ballot more visibly because even though Democrats are doing better than expected in post-Dobbs elections, the opportunity is thereto be better and I'm worried that ineffectual inaction wil eventually wear down supporters. Are the votes there now? No! But elections are about getting more votes, not saying you deserve to stay in office to preserve the status quo.

*Not saying it's happening here but it's happening.

The perils of commenting in a thread you haven't reloaded in about a day.

Hope you get to go home soon with just the right blood thickness, Messily.

119- the first one was in November so it depends if you mean calendar year or fiscal year or school year or what. But I don't think it's ideal, regardless

"Guess who's in the ICU with another stroke? It's me!"

And they called Hitchcock the master of suspense.

Ta da!

Dude, I told you last time to stop doing that.

Hang in there, Messily.

Now I'm home! Nobody knows what's going on, still. It's an exciting mystery

OT: So, I was letting a beggar find $5 and another beggar started asking for money. The first beggar says to the other "Don't do me like that."

Moby, you big softy.
Power to you Messily!

She came into the bar but didn't stay or drink. She was just saying hello to someone.

I still haven't adjusted to the guy who keep sleeping in the doorway of the newsstand next to the bar.

I liked it better when my part of the dystopia had upholstery and just the one beggar.

Biden-Harris 2024: The dystopia needs new upholstery.

I'm not good at marketing.

You've got to haggle.

The dystopia needs Corinthian Leather.

So, odds that the "deal" (or some slight modification of it) gets more Dem votes than Republican? I'm thinking it will if it passes.

Is there really not going to be a motion to vacate? No one seems to be talking about it, so I guess not, but it seems surprising to me.

"Motion to vacate" sounds like how you had to ask to use the restroom in 1930s.

Hey, I have lots of things to say about rating scales and how you validate them.

I mean, not really lots to say, but I know something about it.

And the scales were a different type, so there's not really psychometric stuff.

I'm working on a new debt-ceiling thread proposal to heebie.

Yes please!