Catch Congressman James Comer (R-KY) speaking on any news program or in a Congressional hearing, and you’ll get the message he’s absolutely devoted to pursuing an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden to the limit.
Ask those around him, though, and they say he’s already at and beyond the limit on that goal — and is desperate for a way out.
Republicans have not yet been able to produce a single piece of evidence of any wrongdoing, much less criminal act, by President Biden. Instead, they’ve been relying on innuendo, misrepresentation, and debunked conspiracy theories.
In the process, Comer has embarrassed himself, and been dunked on by colleagues — such as when Representative Jared Moskowitz made a motion to impeach and dared Comer or any of his Republican buddies to second it, knowing they wouldn’t do it because there’s literally no evidence.
Just how worn down is Comer, at this point? CNN reported:
“Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out,” one of the GOP lawmakers who spoke to Comer told CNN.“He is fed up.”
Others have put it more mildly, saying Comer is looking for a way to “tactfully” wiggle out of the impeachment process, and save face for his future political ambitions, which include running for Governor.
Again, none of this matches what Comer has been saying publicly. A week ago, he was telling the public that the inquiry would be moving toward criminal referrals, according to The Hill.
In fact, you can see Comer in a hearing last week, when pressed by Rep. Jamie Raskin to explain what crime he’s alleging against the president, insisting, “You’re about to find out, very soon” — but he can’t name a single one.
Raskin: What is the crime that you want to impeach Joe Biden for? Tell America right now
He also said impeachment was still “on the table,” as he complained about both Bidens, Joe and his son Hunter, declining an invitation to “set the record straight” in a public hearing.
Meanwhile, Comer’s Democratic colleagues are holding his feet to the proverbial fire. It’s not just Rep. Moskowitz humiliating him on the House floor by proving that he knows he has nothing to move forward with, they’re calling him out publicly, too.
As seen below, the Oversight Committee Democrats are even tweeting out memes that mock him for not being able to name a crime.
The United States has had an industrial policy aimed at boosting its domestic shipbuilding industry since the passage of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly known as the Jones Act. Whatever the arguments for the passage of the bill a century ago, it has over time been a disaster for the US maritime industry, and continues to impose significant costs on other parts of the US economy. Colin Grabow goes through the arguments in “Protectionism on Steroids: The Scandal of the Jones Act” (Milken Institute Review, Second Quarter 2024, pp. 44-53).
The Jones Act “requires that vessels engaged in domestic transportation be registered and built in the United States as well as crewed and at least 75 percent owned by U.S. citizens.” However, the underlying rule goes back to an 1817 law “prohibiting foreign vessels from transporting goods within the U.S.”
The political problem back in 1920 was that as US shipbuilding and shipping costs were protected from foreign competition, they were no longer cost-competitive. in terms of production costs, and shipping by US-owned firms was not cost-competitive, either. Grabow gives an example of one 19th-century firm that shipped from New York to Belgium to California–because it was cheaper to pay for two “foreign” trips with non-US firms than to pay a US shipping firm to go direct from New York to California.
The gap in US ship-building costs has only widened. Current estimates are that “large cargo ships constructed in U.S. shipyards today cost at least 300 percent more than the competitive world price.” For operating costs, Grabow cites a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office which finds: “According to U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) officials, the additional cost of operating a U.S. flag vessel compared to a foreign-flag vessel has increased—from about $4.8 million annually in 2009 and 2010 to about $6.2 to $6.5 million currently—making it harder for such vessels to remain financially viable.”
The consequences of this US attempt at a pro-shipbuilding and pro-US-shipping industrial policy have been awful. Here are some of them.
1) The US shipbuilding industry, with no need to respond to international competition, has become irrelevant in global markets. Here’s a table on large ocean-going ships under construction from the Congressional Research Service (“U.S. Commercial Shipbuilding in a Global Context,” November 15, 2023).
The CRS reports:
During World Wars I and II, the United States built thousands of cargo ships. These were sold to merchant carriers after the wars, including foreign buyers, but were soon replaced by more efficient ships built in foreign yards. In the 1970s, U.S. shipyards were building about 5% of the world’s tonnage, equating to 15-25 new ships per year. In the 1980s, this fell to around five ships per year, which is the current rate of U.S. shipbuilding. … The Jones Act’s domestic construction requirement likely underpins the entirety of U.S. commercial ship construction. None of the U.S.-flag international trading fleet is domestically built, though shipbuilders could take advantage of both the loan guarantee and tax shelter programs discussed above. No overseas purchase of large U.S.-built ships has occurred in decades because U.S.-built ships can be four or more times the world price.
Indeed, the US military relies on Chinese-built ships to support its military vessels: “Three of the ten commercial oil tankers selected to ship fuel for DOD as part of the newly enacted Tanker Security Fleet are Chinese-built. As for dry cargo supplies for DOD, 7 of the 12 most recently built ships in the Maritime Security Fleet are Chinese-built.
2) The higher costs of Jones-Act-compliant US shipping naturally impose heavy costs on places like Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico. Weird consequences result, and Grabow provides a number of examples. Puerto Rico gets its liquified natural gas from Nigeria, because there are no Jones-Act-compliant US ships to transport natural gas within the United States. US lumber producers complain that they have a disadvantage vs. Canadian firms, because the US lumber producers must use higher-cost Jones Act ships to send their products to US destinations, while Canadian lumber producers can use cheaper international shipping companies.
3) One might think that a natural transportation advantage for the United States would be to take advantage of maritime shipping via oceans on both sides. But the high cost of Jones-Act-compliant US shipping means more trucks and freight trains, with costs including traffic congestion, highway repair, and greater pollution.
4) Various specialized uses of ships become more costly. For example, if you want offshore wind-power to be an important part of future US electricity generation, you should know that it is considerably more costly to build with Jones-Act-compliant ships. Even basic tasks like dredging US ports and rivers are slower and more costly because the Jones Act (along with some other legislation of that time) shuts off the supplier of higher-quality and lower-cost dredging ships made elsewhere.
Supporters of industrial policy have a tendency to brush aside examples like the Jones Act: “Sure, that’s a foolish way to implement industrial policy, but my plan is a smart way to do so.” “Yes, the Jones Act is a problem, but the way to fix it is with much bigger government subsidies to expand US shipbuilding.” But the Jones Act is a classic example of a special interest law that benefits a small and very vocal group, while imposing large but diffuse costs. The problems of the Jones Act have been well-known for decades, and nothing has changed. Every proposal for industrial policy faces similar political economy dynamics.
Thus, it seems to me that the challenge for supporters of industry policy is not just to pick some alluring industries and then to hand out government favors like Halloween candy, but to specify in advance how they intend to measure success or failure of these subsidies–perhaps with a series of goals that must be met over time or else the subsidies get turned off. In South Korea, for example, which is often cited as an example of successful industry policy, the government subsidies for certain industries were often made contingent on the industries expanding their export sales at prevailing prices in international markets. When industrial policy goes poorly, as in the Jones Act, the costs are broadly felt across an array of related industries.
Outside, it’s a delightfully crisp Spring morning. The sun is out, the flowering trees are in bloom, carpeting the ground with pink and white petals fallen in winds overnight. A breeze blows, making you glad you wore your down vest, even though the weather forecast says it’s going to warm up considerably later on.
Inside, the windowless room is airless, the chairs are uncomfortable, and the walls are painted in that industrial nowhere color between beige and ugh. The overhead lights are harsh. No one looks like they slept enough last night.
It’s impossible to get comfortable as you sit and wait and contemplate what’s coming. You’re sleepy. The air in the room, cleansed and cooled by unseen machines and seeping through unseen vents, is stultifying. There is dread; nothing that will happen to you this morning will be good. You can feel your eyelids drooping and your eyes closing, but you can’t stop them. Your breathing slows. Trapped within your unbearable surroundings, you fall asleep sitting upright in the chair on which you don’t want to be sitting, in the airless room you are compelled to inhabit.
A description of Donald Trump in a Manhattan courtroom this morning? No, yours truly in a cardiologist’s waiting room, marking time before a nuclear stress test. Everything about the experience, right down to the age we share, 77, was as intolerable as Trump’s daily court appearances are reported to be. You’re in a place you don’t want to be, undergoing a procedure you don’t want to experience, all the while feeling every bloody tick of the clock of the years your body has endured to get you here.
In my case, an intravenous needle and some EKG chest stickers and wires and a cardiac PET scanner are all the punishment I need to tolerate over a three-hour period, and then voila! Welcome back to the sunny day and the budding trees and the sounds of mowers and trimmers working a nearby expanse of grass signaling that the rest of the day awaits with all its ordinary glories and pressures and delights!
I confess that when my chin hit the neck of my shirt, jolting me back to wakefulness, it did make me think of Defendant Trump down there in that Manhattan courtroom at the exact moment I was in the office of a Newton, New Jersey, cardiologist. My years on this earth and the way I have lived them and a general sense that I should take care of my health with occasional cardiac check-ups sentenced me to my airless room, surrounded by attendants going about their professional duties. Donald Trump, on the other hand, landed in his uncomfortable chair surrounded by attendants of a much different sort, going about the business of prosecuting him for the way he has lived his life, a circumstance which may lead to a sentencing more grave, and many would say, far more deserved than my own.
Age does funny things to you. A recent survey I came across reported that attitudes of people about aging are changing. The study found that as people get older, the age which they define as being “old” gets pushed further and further into the future. “Seventy is the new sixty,” was one finding of the study. The study also reported that “negative beliefs about getting older are linked to higher stress levels.”
Donald Trump is being described by court reporters who have seats inside the courtroom as looking lonely and older than he appears on television, as he sits there in his uncomfortable chair at the defense table. I can testify that there is nothing you can do at 77 to feel like you’re 60, but not being on trial for committing several dozen felonies helps. Hours later this afternoon, while Donald Trump was still listening to David Pecker on the stand describing a criminal conspiracy in which the two of them participated, I was home in an actual bed under an actual comforter taking an actual nap, having left my chin on my chest in my uncomfortable chair behind me.
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Grace— disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency
I went to Merriam for that definition of grace. I noticed that there were a grand total of eight categories with sub-definitions below them. So, if something else were coming to your mind you are likely also right. The definition above just happens to fit what I’m thinking in the moment.
Further defining terms we find that clemency can be defined as “an act or instance of mercy, compassion, or forgiveness see also amnesty, commute, pardon, reprieve.” In these trying times, forgiveness can be difficult. I wrote a piece earlier about forgiveness and I invite everyone to take a look. It is essentially a state of being and a realization more than anything else.
I say all this because a friend reacted angrily and in a bizarre manner to a piece I wrote last week. The initial reaction is usually one of defense. The response claimed I had said and done things that I had never said or done. So, the first reaction is to go through the rolodex of memories to try to determine where that was coming from. You then move onto anger. When someone clearly says you have said things you’ve never said or done things you’ve never done it can be bewildering and infuriating at the same time.
I’ve quickly moved on. Some of my other friends have not. The difficulty is that these things are all public now. Everyone on my friends list can see and as you’d expect they run the gamut. So, some friends want to defend me. Some probably feel the frustration by proxy.
I am asking for one simple thing: grace. That grace can go any number of different directions. It can obviously go to me as I am not going to turn down anyone or anything’s grace. However, it should also go to my friend. He is a decent person that might be triggered by some powerful feelings, confusion, and a boat load of misinformation.
One of the things he accused me of is being compliant. I find that term to be pretty charged in the way he intended it, but it is an ironic term. We are all compliant to something or someone. Someone that professes to be Christian (as he and I both do) are compliant to the word of God or at least our own interpretation of the word of God. He meant to political authority figures or prominent experts in a field.
I plead guilty to that one. One of the best things we have done as a species is specialize. When it comes to a world wide pandemic I’m going to trust an immunologist who has studied viruses for more than 50 years over my own best judgments and instincts. I got a D in college Biology. I felt like I understood the material better than that, but not much better.
Regardless of party or ideology, we have an absolute epidemic of people deciding they know as much as experts because they saw a YouTube video their cousin sent them. We have parents or even private citizens deciding we are teaching things in school we have never taught based on absolutely zero evidence. Instead of asking us they “do their own research.”
Someone famous once decried people that know things that just aren’t so. False knowledge is worse than ignorance. It rots the brain and causes people to believe things that have no basis in reality. I can’t hate people like this. I want to offer them love and support and will do as much as I can. That might be my own failing, but that is what it is.
Texas CD-13’s Ronny Jackson has a problem with his past, (present, and future tenses). Time is a human construct, but it would seem to be somewhat of an elusive concept to the Texas congressman.
I shall explain.
On his congressional website, Jackson refers to himself as a “retired Rear Admiral.” As in
“As a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service I understand the commitment and sacrifices made by servicemen and servicewomen to serve our country.”
or
“In December 2019, after 25 years of distinguished service to his country, Dr. Jackson retired from the United States Navy as a Rear Admiral.”
Ronny Jackson is not a retired Rear Admiral.
Not anymore.
Before his congressional job, Dr. Jackson was TFG’s favorite doctor who once claimed that, except for his dietary choices, TFG “might live to be live to be 200 years old.”
200 years. That’s a lot of time for a human lifespan.
But not everyone was held in high esteem by Jackson. As explained in a DOD inspector general report released in March 2021, Jackson was abusive to doctors and nurses on his staff at the White House, and “established a workplace where fear and intimidation were kind of hallmarks with him…”.
As a result of the report, Ronny Jackson was demoted to Captain in July 2022, which was retroactively applied back to his 2019 retirement.
And while his past demotion is yet to be noted in the present on his congressional website, his retirement pension certainly does reflect his present rank.
Time problems tend to follow Ronny around.
In a March 13, 2024 local news article, Jackson’s efforts for his district were touted: “Due to Jackson’s efforts, over $200 million specifically designated for the district was included in” the Fiscal Year 2024 Government funding package.
Great, huh? What a wonderful provider for his district.
But only 9 days into the future, the same Ronny Jackson voted against the same funding package. His vote is listed there among the 134 Nay votes in the March 22, 2024 vote.
Albert Einstein once wrote:
“The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
I can only conclude that Einstein’s proposition might be playing itself out in Ronny Jackson’s own mind.
First, there was Moms For Liberty Beta, called the Florida Coalition of School Board Members. Then came the actual Moms For Liberty launch, a group of ladies who were upset about masking and school building closures. That gave way pretty quickly to M4L 2.0, the group that was all about banning naughty books and clamping down on LGBTA ideology (whatever that is).
M4L 2.0 cruised along pretty well for a while. But as more people came to understand what they were up to, their thin skins, their desire to tell other moms what children should be allowed to read. their intolerance-- well, opposition started to swell. And their last election round wasn't very impressive (we'll never know exactly how unimpressive because, perhaps already sensing that their brand was tarnished, they backed away from endorsing so many candidates). And their beloved Ron DeSantis had to slink home in humiliation and defeat. And they went on 60 Minutes and couldn't really explain the terrible alleged indoctrination they were crusading against.
Make way for version 3.0.
The moms have been rolling this out for a while, like the time M4L honcho Tina Descovich appeared at the DeSantis presser about how his book ban was being abused. She led with the statistic that the literacy rate in Florida is 40%, which is about 40% off (it's 80%). I think she means to say that the proficiency rate on the NAEP is 40%, and at this point anyone who says NAEP proficiency is "at grade level" is just not trying to get it right (NAEP proficiency is A or B level). But her point is that there is a public education crisis in America.
Then she wagged her fingers at the "media in the back of the room" and says "All you can do is be obsessed with book bans that are not happening." She hammered home that "we the parents" have had enough, and when is the media going to start covering the literacy crisis.
They're currently rolling out 3.0 in a series of town halls, like this one in North Carolina hosted by co-Mom Tiffany Justice as reported by Emily Walkenhorst.
Speakers focused on problems in public schools — chiefly, worsening student behavior and test scores that remain below pre-pandemic levels — and suggested more discipline and having schools cut ties with federal programs and outside nonprofits as solutions.
You can watch the whole thing here (all two hours and eleven minutes of it). Some of the standards are here. Open with a Jesus prayer. Stand up for parents' God-ordained right to control their children's everything. Indoctrination! But then we swing on to other topics.
Moms For Liberty 3.0 is deeply concerned about student achievement (have you seen those dreadful NAEP scores-- let us misrepresent the amount of proficiency) and school discipline (here's an anecdote about something awful that happened to a kid in school). Also, special needs students are not getting their proper services.
The complaints about indoctrination, gender ideology, CRT--all the classics--are still part of their shtick. And these days, the happy warriors who once handed DeSantis a shiny sword are now decrying the political persecution of Donald Trump. Witch hunt! Also, M4L 3.0 will no longer do political endorsements, but you know, that's just because they're designated candidates were harassed.
Does 3.0 represent a serious shift for the organization? Not really. The fundamental message of M4L has always been the same-- public schools are scary and terrible and good God-fearing people should either take them over or abandon them. Parental rights (but not student rights)! As Chris Rufo, hot young culture panic agitator, told a Hillsdale College audience, "To get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a place of universal school distrust."
M4L have aligned themselves with far right group like the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute. Their leaders are experienced and well-connected comms professionals. None of that has changed.
Like anyone else whose mission is to manage comms and break things, they are going to periodically adjust their approach and set aside old dull tools for new, more effective ones. Learning loss panic has been hot for a while, and school discipline problems are a legitimate issue. "Beware outside groups" is a new skin for their old government-imposed LGBTQ/SEL panic wine.
New tools. New approached. New talking points for the brand. We'll see if the new tools help them achieve their usual goals.
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