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More than a decade ago, many Democrats still in office now went along with Gorsuch as he was unanimously confirmed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2006. Things are different today, ahead of his hearing for the highest court in the land.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expressed deep doubts during a press conference last Wednesday about the nominee and asserted Gorsuch "may act like a neutral, calm judge," but "his record and his career clearly show he harbors a right wing, pro-corporate, special interest agenda."
[...] Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy said he would demand "real answers" to questions he has about Gorsuch's judicial philosophy.
"I hope next week, when the president's Supreme Court nominee will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he provides transparent, truthful answers to Senators' questions," Leahy said in a statement. "I will insist on real answers from Judge Neil Gorsuch, because there are real concerns about his record and his judicial philosophy."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 22 2017, @02:38PM (7 children)
I agree, but the Dems don't seem to have enough seats to really hold things back. What I'd like to see is them wreck everything so badly that the federal government stops functioning altogether for Trump's entire term. Sometimes you have to break things before you can fix them. But I don't think that's going to happen here: our brilliant voters have handed complete control of the government over to the GOP, so the only way things will get held up is because of GOP infighting.
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday March 22 2017, @03:03PM (6 children)
One problem. Progressives worship government. Expecting them to wreck it is a hard to even hold in the mind as a concept. Even a government 'shutdown' is hard to imagine since the Democrats have to have someone in their ranks smart enough to realize what a weapon such a thing becomes in the hands of someone like Trump. He would be almost entirely unfettered in his ability to downsize government as an emergency measure. Then all he would need to is keep the wheels frozen long enough the people had time to notice their lives were better with the government 'shutdown' than with it running normally. Obama and Clinton used the shutdowns to inflict maximum immediate pain on the voters to put pressure on Congress to surrender, Trump could do exactly the opposite and that idea terrifies Progs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:21PM (5 children)
One problem. Progressives worship government. Expecting them to wreck it
I found a big problem with your analysis: we don't have any "progressives" in this government. We have Republicans (various stripes, Trumpists, Tea Partiers, traditional), and we have Democrats. There's only a small handful of Progressives, like Sanders and Wyden. Overall, Democrats are not remotely progressive, they're neo-liberal corporatists (Hillary is a prime example of this).
Obama and Clinton used the shutdowns to inflict maximum immediate pain on the voters to put pressure on Congress to surrender
What are you talking about? The Republican Congress shut down the government because they insisted on repealing Obamacare.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @04:48PM
What are you talking about? The Republican Congress shut down the government because they insisted on repealing Obamacare.
Alt-facts in action. It was actually the democrats who shutdown the government because democrats!
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:24PM (3 children)
Ah, you are going for the No True Scotsman, an ever popular fallacy in the Left's rhetoric. Funny, but the 72 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus seem to believe they are Progressives and they account for 16.6% of the Legislative Branch. And pretty much every Democrat votes as Progressive as they think they get away with and get reelected.
You are probably too young to know much about Newt and Bill Clinton's shutdown capers so lets limit things to Obama vs Baynor the Orange (good riddance to both of em). You are right the Repubs shut the government down in a futile attempt to get Obama to accept a repeal of his dream of Single Payer. But the reason isn't important. What is on point was both Obama and Clinton's method of winning the battle by inflicting maximum immediate pain on the voters. Sending guards to close down the normally unattended WWII memorial for example. They expected lots of useful footage from that stunt, suddenly the coverage disappeared though when the old codgers didn't play along and reminded everyone why we won WWII. But in general Obama was successful in inflicting an outsized damage compared to the actual loss of funding authority and Congress quickly capitulated. For example he even raised the possibility of Social Security checks not going out on schedule, even though that program isn't funded in the normal budget cycle that was under dispute; but his media operations (the #fakenews) breathlessly spread the fear and the switchboard melted. He refused to allow the bill authorizing the DoD (already agreed to by both sides) to go through without the others so he could even hold the military hostage.
Now imagine Trump being just as ruthless in a shutdown scenario, only pulling the levers the other direction and working to prolong it just as long as possible. Causing minimum pain, shuttering entire departments infested with Prog worker bees and if it could be prolonged enough they would have to seek private sector employment and that would be the end of it, just never get around to repopulating it when the shutdown is over. We already know (Obama demonstrated it) that a POTUS can ignore any law he wants, who needs a line item veto when you can just declare it 'policy' to not enforce parts of the Executive responsibility you don't like. You can't fire civil service employees but imagine EPA shuttered for a year, then just refuse to hire replacements and they shamble along as a zombie agency on the few diehard true believers who had the financial resources to hold out through a year (or more if possible) of zero pay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 22 2017, @05:51PM
-1, Insane
(Score: 3, Informative) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday March 22 2017, @06:12PM
Le sigh, Jmo back with pseudo-facts. First off, just because they label themselves progressive does not make them so. The vast majority of democrats are not even close to progressive any more, and you have it backward. They vote as closely to their corporate donor's wishes as they can get away with and still be reelected.
As for your long post about Obama being the bad guy, first that is distracting away from the fact that the GOP were the ones at fault. They were the ones who wouldn't compromise and tried to force the issues, blackmailing the entire country. I was curious about your claim regarding social security and Obama "inflicting maximum immediate pain on the voters". So I did a search and found a conservative news outlet to get whatever details you are basing your claims on.
The Full Faith and Credit Act. The House of Representatives passed H.R. 807, allowing the Treasury to pay all public debt obligations and Social Security benefit payments after the debt limit has been reached. If the President and his allies were truly worried about defaulting on the debt and about not being able to meet Social Security payments, they could quickly take up this bill and assure America’s creditors and Social Security recipients that they need not worry.
The Social Security trust fund. Treasury could redeem Social Security trust fund bonds early to pay benefits at the debt limit. Treasury used this option in 1985 to meet Social Security payments at the debt limit, and a law from 1996 authorizes the Treasury to redeem Social Security bonds early for the purpose of “payment of benefits or administrative expenses.” By making room under the debt limit from redeeming trust fund bonds early, Treasury is able to borrow additional funds from the public to make benefit payments.
Revenues. Treasury will collect more than enough revenue in fiscal year 2014 to meet all debt obligations and most non-debt obligations on an annualized basis. After prioritizing interest on the debt, the Treasury could fund $2.8 trillion in additional obligations with projected revenues. This would cover, for example, Social Security and disability payments ($848 billion), discretionary defense programs ($582 billion), Medicare ($505 billion), Medicaid ($298 billion), and $517 billion of all other obligations—in total, more than three-quarters of the non-interest budget.
#1: Pass some legislation cooked up just so they would be able to shut down the gov and claim it was Obama's fault for not paying social security. This wasn't already law, so using that as an excuse is disingenuous.
#2: Redeem trust fund bonds early? Doesn't sound like a great solution, and better to avoid it in the first place.
#3: They could have paid social security and defaulted on other areas of our debt? Also not ideal since there would be consequences for defaulting on other areas of debt.
Basically shitty "solutions" that were rejected, and Congress was then forced to play ball. As usual you alt-righters (or whatever you identify with nowadays) twist the world to fit your prejudices. Ignore the horrors your chosen party inflicts upon you and blame it all on the other party. Hey, Dems do that too, but that doesn't give YOU a pass. Bugger off with your politics, if you can't be bi-partisan when blaming politicians for their faults then you should keep your opinions to yourself, or at least wait till you're around your friends so you can all circle jerk together. There is plenty of shit to talk about Obama, try and keep to the facts and not some twisted version of half-truths to suit your own agenda.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 23 2017, @01:35AM
Ah, you are going for the No True Scotsman, an ever popular fallacy in the Left's rhetoric.
So if you don't believe in definitions? If I said that most Republican politicians were hardcore communists, would you agree with me? If not, could I reasonably accuse you of using the No True Scotsman fallacy?