12/4/20: The latest jobs report is out. In November, the U.S. economy regained 245,000 jobs. October gains were revised lower, to 610,000. Unemployment ticked downward to 6.7 percent, which was a positive sign.
More ominously, the labor participation rate declined, from 61.7 percent to 61.5 percent, lower than the 62.8 percent the day Trump took office.
The latest drop in the participation rate meant that an additional 560,000 Americans had stopped looking for work.
Adding to the gloom, 12 million Americans are scheduled to see unemployment benefits run out at the end of the year.
More than one in three American families report they are having difficulty paying ordinary household expenses.
One of every eight households with children (13%) report “sometimes or often not having enough food to eat.”
The president
might not have noticed. If he did, we know he won’t care. But desperate
families and desperate individuals are resorting to putting rent or mortgage payments on credit. Then they hope some miracle
will occur and they can avoid paying the high interest they accrue.
*
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“It would violate that oath, the basic principles of republican government and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people’s vote based on unsupported theories of fraud.”
Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives,
Rusty Bowers
____________________
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Speaker Bowers. |
The president’s quixotic and crazy campaign to overturn the results of the November election continues – mostly because Trump is incapable of facing up to the truth.
He lost.
As Politico notes, Team Trump continues to spin its wheels, unable to get any traction in a bid to steal the electoral votes of states Joe Biden supposedly stole from Donald J. Trump. In desperation, this week, Pennsylvania Republican state legislators, including the Speaker of the House, called on their “Republican-heavy congressional delegation to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory when federal lawmakers certify the presidential election Jan. 6.”
In their letter to their brethren in Congress, they wrote, we “the undersigned members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly urge you to object, and vote to sustain such objection, to the Electoral College votes received from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”
Originally, they claimed to have 75 signatories, more than half the GOP lawmakers in the state.
Sadly,
the letter had to be withdrawn when several “signatories” made clear they
didn’t intend to sign on for the fight.
It can also be interesting to compare this approach – to claim that the election was rigged – with what the state’s Speaker of the House said in October 2019, when Pennsylvania altered its election laws.
As we noted, before the election (see: 10/28/20), when
Keystone State lawmakers passed a voting reform law thirteen months ago,
GOP leaders in both House and Senate were on board. “This bill was not written
to benefit one party or the other, or any one candidate or single election,”
said House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler. “It was developed over a multi-year
period with input of people from different backgrounds and regions of Pennsylvania.
It serves to preserve the integrity of every election [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] and
lift the voice of every voter in the commonwealth.”
*
IN THE FACE of sustained attacks by the president and his legal minions and enraged and ill-informed supporters, many Pennsylvania lawmakers lost their nerve. Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives did not balk. Speaker Rusty Bowers called claims made by Rudy Giuliani, and repeated regularly by President Trump, about fraud in the Arizona election “breathtaking.”
Not in an exciting way, rather a “I can’t believe the nerve” sort of way.
“I and my fellow legislators swore an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and the constitution and laws of the state of Arizona,” Bowers said. “It would violate that oath, the basic principles of republican government and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people’s vote based on unsupported theories of fraud.”
Rudy responded angrily via tweet, saying that, “Republican Legislature[s] let down America. I’m ashamed of them. They completely misled the President and me. All of us Republicans [who still believe in magic vote-switching machines should] let them know what we think of them.”
To the surprise of almost no one, sources inside the White
House told CNN that Loser Donald wasn’t budging from his
position, no matter how many courts or state lawmakers shot down his claims of massive
election fraud. “No one expects him to concede. No
one!” a Trump adviser admitted.
Meanwhile, Team Trump suffered five defeats in court in a matter of three hours on Friday. At 4:30 p.m. the Minnesota Supreme Court tossed a case, in which Team Trump lawyers asked that the state’s electoral vote not be certified. Half-an-hour later, the Michigan Court of Appeals tossed out a challenge to certification of the vote in Wayne County. Nevada was next. A judge shit-canned a claim by several Republican electors that there had been widespread fraud in the November vote – and Nevada’s electoral votes should be transferred to Donald J. Trump’s win column – which was really a loser’s column. Judge James T. Russell rejected their arguments, writing in response that he found “no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 general election in Nevada was affected by fraud.”
At 6 p.m., Team Trump got knocked to the canvas and took a ten-count after a Wisconsin judge blew up their case. Asked to overturn the state’s entire vote, and let a Republican-led legislature decide who got the state’s electoral votes, Judge Brian Hagedorn expressed shock. “Such a move would appear to be unprecedented in American history,” he wrote for the court.
“One might expect that this solemn request would be paired with evidence of serious errors tied to a substantial and demonstrated set of illegal votes. Instead,” he added, “the evidentiary support rests almost entirely on the unsworn expert report of a former campaign employee that offers statistical estimates based on call center samples and social media research.”
Judge Hagedorn went on to say, “Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”
Nevertheless, it was clearly a
path that Donald J. Trump and his sycophants were willing to tread. Hagedorn
and other judges simply said no.
Then came a fifth coffin nail. At 7 p.m. a judge in Phoenix denied a request by Arizona Republican Party chairwoman Kelli Ward to invalidate the results of that state’s election. And why did he turn her request down?
Simple, really.
In rejecting Ward’s request, Judge Randall H. Warner wrote definitively: “The court finds no misconduct, no fraud, and no effect on the outcome of the election.”
So, Team Trump went 0 for 5 in just one day.
POSTSCRIPT: Any fool can find Democrats criticizing Republicans, and Republicans attacking Democrats. See, for example: Sean Hannity (pick any telecast).
So it should wake up those who care about democracy and free elections to note the number of Republicans calling out Trump for his post-election lies. Trey Grayson, former GOP secretary of state of Kentucky, referred to the president’s repeated claims of election fraud as “unfounded,” and pleaded with members of his own party to defend the election process.
In
Arizona, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of
Supervisors said he
would not “violate the law or deviate from my own moral compass,” even though
that’s what the President of the United States and his fanboys, like Rudy G., would
like him to do. “No matter how you voted, this election was administered with
integrity, transparency, and most importantly in accordance with Arizona state
laws,” Chairman Clint Hickman says.
Brian Corley, GOP election supervisor of Pasco
County, Florida also decides to speak out. Trump won his county by 20 points. Corley
released a statement saying he felt compelled both in his professional capacity
and as an “American citizen” to respond to all the lies about the process.
“I cannot stand by as my work, and the work of all professional elections’ administrators, becomes the scapegoat of those seeking political gain,” he explains. “I believe that history will not be kind to those who are cognizant of the truth and yet choose silence for political expediency.”
“It just it boggles my mind that these appeals are still
being believed with no evidence,” Grayson added with finality.
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