Federal Government - 2021

ra84970

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With it looking like a Democratic trifecta for 117th Congress and 46th Presidency, what Federal policy on urban development, transportation and mobility, and public works are you going to be watching?

On the legislative side of things,

I'm curious about how Congress will process these bills and what exactly gets crafted into those pieces of legislation:
  • Green New Deal or derivative
  • House's INVEST act or derivative
On the executive side, I'm curious about how the Biden administration undoes some of the HUD and DOT shenanigans. Picking good leaders, is going to be part of it -- Buttigeg is an intersting pick though I'm curious as to lower-level under-sec'ys and senior administrators of the DOT and the assorted administrations under the DOT. Also, curious to see how much executive action is going to be taken to undo some of the abnormal Trumpian stuff -- like the direction to pursue only classical architectural forms.
 
Given what's going down at the Capitol right now, I'll settle for avoiding breakout of Civil War by tomorrow A.M. and then see where the chips may fall.

Because even in 2020 that sentence I just typed wouldn't have been real.😶
 
Given what's going down at the Capitol right now, I'll settle for avoiding breakout of Civil War by tomorrow A.M. and then see where the chips may fall.

Because even in 2020 that sentence I just typed wouldn't have been real.😶

You know the insurrection coming to DC was on the back of my mind late last night. But, yeah, i'm disapointed, not shocked, but sad and disapointed.
 
Mostly amazed that law enforcement was utterly unprepared for this. It's shocking.
 
Scuffles down in DTLA thanks to Trump and QAnon Supporters. Scuffles breaking out in several US Cities. Fuck this administration and their cultists. The only positive outcome is that many who sympathized with these supporters are starting to turn against them.
 
Scuffles down in DTLA thanks to Trump and QAnon Supporters. Scuffles breaking out in several US Cities. Fuck this administration and their cultists. The only positive outcome is that many who sympathized with these supporters are starting to turn against them.

While I agree that the last bit is a good thing, it's a bit jarring how so many passive Trump supporters apparently didn't realize the kinds of people they were enabling? Like I think I saw an article where Romney is decrying the riots and basically throwing Trump under the bus, and my reaction was "are you kidding me!? You've been right by his side practically every step of the way over the last four years! Don't try to play innocent now!"
 
Mostly amazed that law enforcement was utterly unprepared for this. It's shocking.

Capitol Police are agents of U.S. Congress (the only federal law enforcement agency under legislative branch instead of executive control)...so that is explainable by the 100+ insurrectionist Congresscritters spread between both chambers being able to install sympathetic leadership in the CapPo who'd make sure the front-line officers assigned were inadequate and fold like a chair in exactly this situation. I mean...the crowd wasn't very large at all compared to the pathetic porousness of the security on-duty today. Everyone keeps citing the show of CapPo force during the BLM protests this summer, and keeps re-tweeting the pics of those officers posting smiling selfies with the insurrectionists inside. But that's sort of political theatre beside the point. Their S.O.P. is usually strong enough that there wouldn't even be a hint of barriers being toppled under the size of today's protest...let alone people actually making it into Members' offices to deface property. Look how many officers at the barrier weren't even wearing regulated headgear. 5 feet from a maskless crowd frontline either armed-to-the-teeth with open-carry weaponry or possessing all manner of nuisance projectiles...and there's officers not even wearing caps regulated by the uni, let alone not even the helmets mandated for the situation or the face shields that--if for no other reason than hygiene--serves as the best PPE compliance for crowd management of the COVID superspreader petri dish in front of them. Lapsing on shit like that will get you perma-banished to desk duty at Mayberry PD...but CapPo rolls out that weakest-possible sauce today of all times?!?

I don't think so. Chief, Asst. Chief, and whatever Deputies were assigned to running today's security farce are going to get grilled on their political obsequiousness...and who arm-twisted them with whispers and/or threats of funding changes to make the swisss-cheese defense come out just when the political statement would be biggest. (Though I'm sure not even the Congressional insurrectionists thought pressuring a little wet-noodle defense would backfire this thoroughly and badly, so don't mistake that arm-twisting for anyone's diabolical game of eleven-dimensional chess. In a choice of "Stupid" or "Evil", "Stupid" always wins...always.).


I also think D.C. Statehood is going to get an unintended boost from this as potentially expedited action in the fallout, because perennially having one hand tied behind City P.D.'s back while CapPo gets played for political football is already a long and festering fissure with District voters AND city pols. Capitol Police have lots of cross-jurisdictional power over local P.D. when it comes to stuff like traffic enforcement around gov't buildings, event coordination, and so on. And the City H-A-T-E-S having to silently bear the brunt of the inconvenience while having no say over their own streets whenever CapPo is superseding local control on a whim. So the fact that the City had to be the ones tasked with coming to rescue today for that inept display by calling in the Virginia National Guard to end the first sacking of the Capitol since the Brits in 1814 is going to trigger payback...swift and fierce. Under statehood, the newly-minted D.C. State Police would absorb >90% of CapPo's duties. They'd be relegated to just buildings-and-grounds security at the handful of buildings in the residual Fed District after everything else terraforms into the Staties' jurisdiction rather than this nullification of local-control law enforcement continuing to exist at flip of a switch for any barely-justified reason under the sun. They'd be reduced to glorified Mall Cops. So security theatre-of-absurd now gets crowned on top...with a bullet...of the other litany of other longstanding "Taxation Without Representation" gripes D.C. has long held against its captors. If there's going to be retribution against the Congressional insurrectionists for their role in fermenting this fiasco, D.C. statehold just gained a whole lot of steam as a wedge to ram through.

While I still think such legislation would have a hard time passing such a divided Senate...God help us, if there really is enough self-flagellation introspection resulting from today's Rubicon crossing 51 stars by year's end might no-foolin' be part of the reckoning. Unlikely, I know...but chances just got tantalizingly real. If CapPo simply have to be blown up and rebooted in-full in penance for its sins of politically aiding the coup today, D.C. statehood is one of the literally least-messy administrative means of accomplishing their symbolic neutering & dispersal.
 
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so that is explainable by the 100+ insurrectionist Congresscritters spread between both chambers being able to install sympathetic leadership in the CapPo who'd make sure the front-line officers assigned were inadequate and fold like a chair in exactly this situation.

Or they just saw that the protestors were mostly white and assumed that it would be non-violent?

Edit: Forget about not being prepared to defend the Capitol and control the rioters, it looks like the police may have even helped the rioters break in?
 
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So many US citizens have drawn the line from Charlottesville to the other insurrectionist, terrorist, and white supremacist movements to the QAnon/Maga camps heading to DC today - and clearly the it's dramatic that the Capitol Police had its guard so down. I fully expect the 117th Congress to do a complete dressing down of the CapPo.
 
From a purely urbanist POV (getting this thread back to its archBoston roots), my brother, who lives on Capitol Hill, sent me this Twitter thread which he thought was 100% on-the-nose in response to yesterday's events. I'd encourage people to read the whole thread.


For the last twenty years, DC has increasingly become a more and more locked down version of "fortress DC." Capitol Police and the other various powers-that-be in the District think nothing of constantly inconveniencing and harassing DC residents, workers, and visitors in the name of "security." Billions of dollars have spent on barriers and checkpoints and military equipment and street closures and et cetera, all in order to keep the Capitol "safe." This has all been begrudgingly tolerated by locals on the logic that it was a necessary evil in a possibly-dangerous world. People have put up with getting yelled at and searched and constantly told "you can't go here" on a daily basis all because they thought it was part of a larger plan to prevent bad things from maybe happening.

Then the one day when the Capitol Police was actually called on to do their one job, they failed miserably. They did nothing to stop an angry mob from storming the Senate floor during a joint session of Congress. All of that "security" was clearly shown to be a charade. All those years of inconvenience and harassment and all those billions of dollars spent were for nothing. The powers-that-be did less to stop a mob from storming the Senate chamber than they do to harass tourists and commuters on the Mall every day.

And unfortunately, if recent history is to be seen as a model, the response to this failure of existing security will in all likelihood be the establishment of even more security. The powers-the-be will dig in even deeper, doing even more to lock down hundreds of thousands of peaceful residents, workers, and visitors on a daily basis all because Capitol Police failed miserably to appropriately deal with an angry out-of-town mob. That's a shame. And given how yesterday's events clearly showed that existing security procedures don't accomplish what the public has been told to believe they would, why should DC residents, workers, and visitors continue to provide the buy-in and believe that additional security will accomplish its purported purpose?
 
Stephanie Pollack appointed to deputy administrator of FHWA, and acting administrator until one is confirmed by the Senate. At MassDOT, Jamey Tesler, who is currently the head of the RMV, will serve as acting transportation secretary.

New England pols are a hot commodity in this admin!

 
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Stephanie Pollack appointed to deputy administrator of FWHA, and acting administrator until one is confirmed by the Senate. At MassDOT, Jamey Tesler, who is currently the head of the registry, will serve as acting transportation secretary.

New England pols are a hot commodity in this admin!


Good riddance. I am not a fan of Pollack, at least not what she has (failed to) achieve at MassDOT.
 
Good riddance. I am not a fan of Pollack, at least not what she has (failed to) achieve at MassDOT.

Yeah. She's talented...she can probably do good with some rejuvenation. But...yuck...the past 2 years have been a painful display in hanging on too long, and shredding her past advocacy street cred. It's past time for some fresh faces at the top of MassDOT.
 
1.9T "Relief Bill" / 128M Households = $14,792 per household
Total direct payments per household = $3,400
$14,792 - $3,400 = $11,392 net wealth confiscated per household

This relief bill only relieves citizens of their wealth.
Not only that you have to pay Federal Taxes back on the stimulus.

Benjamin Franklin — 'When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.'
 
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The thing with federal debt... you don't have to pay it down. The simulative impact of the $3,400 is a far more important concern. In other words, don't worry RIF, they aren't going to send you a bill for $11,392.
 
1.9T "Relief Bill" / 128M Households = $14,792 per household
Total direct payments per household = $3,400
$14,792 - $3,400 = $11,392 net wealth confiscated per household

This relief bill only relieves citizens of their wealth.
Not only that you have to pay Federal Taxes back on the stimulus.

Benjamin Franklin — 'When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.'



359BF07A-C946-49C6-A795-BDD371928EBA.jpeg


@Johnnyrocket891 Peculiar that you’d like this as I’m calling you out for being both misinformed and a plagiarist.
 
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