February 24, 2023

Friday, February 24, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

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Today and through the weekend. Ukraine braces for Russian Attacks on the anniversary of Putin’s war.

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Joe is always busy.

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Jill is always busy.

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Elections matter. The Democratic Gubernatorial Team works to protect abortion rights.

Democratic governors form alliance on abortion rights.

Democratic governors in 20 states are launching a network intended to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision nixing a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy and instead shifting regulatory powers over the procedure to state governments.

Organizers, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, described the Reproductive Freedom Alliance as a way for governors and their staffs to share best practices and affirm abortion rights for the approximately 170 million Americans who live in the consortium’s footprint — and even ensuring services for the remainder of U.S. residents who live in states with more restrictive laws.

“We can all coalesce,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in an interview ahead of a Tuesday announcement. She added that the court’s Dobbs decision that ended a national right to abortion “horrified” and put pressure on governors to act. “This is leveraging our strengths ... to have more of a national voice.”

That includes, organizers said, sharing model statutory language and executive orders protecting abortion access, ways to protect abortion providers from prosecution, strategies to maximize federal financing for reproductive health care such as birth control, and support for manufacturers of abortion medication and contraceptives that face potential new restrictions from conservatives. (Associated Press)

The alliance so far includes:

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom

• Colorado Gov. Jared Polis

• Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont

• Delaware Gov. John Carney

• Hawaii Gov. Josh Green

• Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker

• Maine Gov. Janet Mills

• Maryland Gov. Wes Moore

• Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey

• Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

• New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy

• New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham

• New York Gov. Kathy Hochul

• North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper

• Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek

• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro

• Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee

• Washington Gov. Jay Inslee

• Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers

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Understanding issues and possibilities Biden faces about canceling student debt.

How the Government Cancelled Betty Ann’s Student Debts.

On August 2nd, Betty Ann, who is ninety-one years old, was having a slow morning. She woke up late, flicked on the news, and shuffled around the kitchen of her suburban Philadelphia apartment, fixing coffee. Suddenly, from the TV in the other room, she heard Whoopi Goldberg on “The View,” saying Betty Ann’s name, her age, and the dollar amount that she owed in student debt. Goldberg was reading from an article that I had written about the rise of aging student debtors, featuring Betty Ann. She immediately picked up the phone and called me, breathless with surprise and just a hint of pride. “Oh, no!” Betty Ann giggled. “Now everyone knows how old I am!” Mercifully, Whoopi was sympathetic to Betty Ann’s stats. “Listen,” Whoopi said, looking straight at the camera. “These are the debts you need to forgive.”

Betty Ann’s debts were, as Goldberg put it, “ridiculous.” In 1983, at age fifty-five, she borrowed twenty-nine thousand dollars to attend New York University’s law school, becoming one of its few Black female students at that time. Thirty-five years after graduating, she owed $329,309.69. Trying to understand Betty Ann’s debts required a near-forensic audit. They were old, for starters, and had been subject to multiple loan servicers, a shifting tide of legal regimes, and decades of the Department of Education’s patchy bookkeeping. At one point, I contacted the Department of Education’s ombudsperson. As she flipped through the loan history, she realized that Betty Ann had endured numerous administrative bungles. Based on available records, it appeared that Betty Ann’s loan servicer had never invited her to enroll in a payment plan that could have reduced her monthly bill and dismissed her balance after twenty or twenty-five years.

There might be a way to discharge these debts, the ombudsperson mused. Perhaps if Betty Ann filed for total and permanent disability, a status that requires a doctor’s confirmation of a person’s inability to work, the Department of Education could cancel her debt. When I called Betty Ann to suggest the possibility, she responded with a polite but flat “Oh, that’s nice.” When I called back a few days later, to arrange a meeting, she declined. “Look, Eleni, you seem like a nice girl,” she said. “But, if the Department of Education has caused this problem, why should I have to be part of the cleanup efforts?” For one thing, what in the world did her doctor have to do with a student loan that she took out in the nineteen-eighties? For another, it wouldn’t be exactly truthful to assert that Betty Ann could not work—after all, she had only retired a few months ago.

However, the ombudsperson believed that, even without Betty Ann getting a doctor’s note, there were still grounds for discharge. About a week later, Betty Ann received an e-mail saying that her entire student-loan balance had been cleared. Betty Ann called me, ecstatic, to share the news. Under a provision of the Higher Education Act of 1965, known as the “compromise and settlement” authority, the Department of Education had cancelled Betty Ann’s debts.

Under a provision of the Higher Education Act of 1965, known as the “compromise and settlement” authority, the Department of Education had cancelled Betty Ann's debts. The power to create a debt is integrally related to the power to destroy it. If you loan someone twenty bucks, you're not mandated to ask for it back

To read the whole article, click here. (New Yorker).

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Let’s keep the Senate in 2024.

“The race for the Senate in 2024 will come down to three incumbent Democrats, Politico explains. Two of them, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester, have now signaled plans to run for re-election. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has yet to announce his intentions.” (Wake up to Politics).

From Politico’s 2024’s sprawling Senate map comes down to these 3 Dems.

Sherrod Brown says he’s “fine” running for reelection with Joe Biden on the ballot in Ohio. Joe Manchin predicts Biden will “get beat so bad” in West Virginia that he’d have to run separately anyway.

And Jon Tester was distinguishing himself from the president even before the Montana Democrat announced Wednesday that he’s seeking a fourth term in his ruby-red state.

“This election is hopefully going to be about me. They’re going to try to make it about somebody else that’s not me,” Tester said in a recent interview as he pointed out his Senate workwear, capped by a clashing Montana tie pin. “It’s hard to make me into a banker or anybody. Even when I look like this — who the fuck puts that kind of a tie tack on their tie?”

While Brown and Tester are all in, Manchin hasn’t decided whether to run again, and Biden hasn’t made it official yet either.

Among the three red-state Democrats, Manchin is most akin to Collins in terms of keeping their distance from their parties’ presidential nominees. Manchin didn’t support Obama in 2012, nearly pulled his backing from Hillary Clinton in 2016, and though he supported Biden in 2020 he seems unlikely to be vocal either way in 2024.

“In West Virginia, you know, it doesn’t make a difference,” Manchin said. “Joe Biden’s going to get beat so bad no matter what in my state. It’s just me. I’m not going to be campaigning for or against anybody else.”

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This is important- an article uncovering and summarizing a book the Florida Governor and aspirant to the Presidency wrote in 2011.

The Forgotten Ron DeSantis Book.

DeSantis is not simply an extremist who suddenly arrived without roots,

His world view is based on an exculpatory view of the Founding Fathers.

Former President Donald Trump reveled in his own ignorance and preference not to read at all, much less read history. In his four years in office, most of his statements about the Constitution were bluster about how it allowed him to do anything he wanted.

By contrast, DeSantis has an intellectual pedigree and a book from 2011, his first, to prove it. Dreams From Our Founding Fathers is a revealing treatise, lively and polemical. While clearly a direct rebuke to Barack Obama’s 1995 coming-of-age memoir, Dreams From My Father, it is also filled with ample quotation from 18th-century writings, footnotes to a smattering of scholarly works, and highly selective use of then-current reportage, tacking back and forth over 26 thematic chapters from Madison and Alexander Hamilton to Obama and the Democrats, the apparent betrayers of the Founders’ dreams.

The book clarifies how DeSantis’s view of history has shaped his politics and explains his fierce reaction to any attempt to discuss the role of racism in America’s past.

So Ron DeSantis fancies himself an historian activist, rebuilding the 1776 America he dreams of. Keep in mind that his children are named Madison and Mason.
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And now on a related story, Nazis in Florida.

Touch to watch. 👇

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Will this be the issue that finally forces us to face #USAReality2023?

House Republicans introduce bill to declare AR-15-style assault rifle US 'national gun.’

Republican Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama and three of his fellow GOP House members on Tuesday introduced a bill "To declare an AR-15 style rifle chambered in a .223 Remington round or a 5.56x45mm NATO round to be the National Gun of the United States."

The AR-15-style rifle is a semi-automatic weapon that's been used in multiple mass shootings across the country in the past few years.

"Today I unveiled my bill to make the AR-15 the National Gun of America," Moore tweeted. "We must send a message that we will meet every attack on any of our constitutional rights."

Moore's co-sponsors are Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and George Santos of New York. Santos was among House members spotted wearing a pin in the shape of an AR-15 that Clyde had passed out to his Republican colleagues. Clyde said in a video shared on his Twitter account that he hands them out "to remind people of the Second Amendment of the Constitution and how important it is in preserving our liberties."

Advocates against gun violence, including Newtown Action Alliance and Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action, noted that Clyde has a stake worth between $5 million and $25 million in a gun store and, according to his 2021 financial disclosure, earns millions of dollars in income from the enterprise.

AR-15-style rifles were used in the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022; at a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, in July 2022; at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018; at a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018; at a country music festival in Las Vegas in October 2017; and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, among others. (American Independent).

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Mike Pence refuses to speak under oath?…. Not so fast, sir.

Special Counsel Seeks to Force Pence to Testify Before Jan. 6 Grand Jury.

The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to force former Vice President Mike Pence to testify fully in front of a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, seeking to cut short any attempt by Mr. Trump to use executive privilege to shield Mr. Pence from answering questions, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The request — amounting to a pre-emptive motion to compel Mr. Pence’s testimony — came before the former vice president had even appeared in front of the grand jury, and before any privilege claims had actually been raised in court.

The sealed motion, filed in recent days in Federal District Court in Washington, is the latest step in a long-running behind-the-scenes struggle, first by the Justice Department and now by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to cut through the various assertions of privilege that witnesses close to Mr. Trump have repeatedly raised in an effort to avoid answering questions. (New York Times).

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Nancy Pelosi at “Pictures from Home” on Broadway.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi Stops By PICTURES FROM HOME On Broadway.

PICTURES FROM HOME is running now at Broadway's Studio 54 and last night the cast and crew got a visit from Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi who stopped backstage for a meet and greet witn stars Nathan Lane, Zoe Wanamaker, Danny Burstein, director Bartlett Sher and more!

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America lives on Heinz.

Sir Kensington’s Announces It Will Discontinue Its Ketchup.

Heinz wins again. Sir Kensington’s, the upstart condiment purveyor beloved by shoppy shops and bodegas alike, has announced that it will cease production of its flagship product: ketchup.

Scott Norton and Mark Ramadan launched Sir Kensington’s 13 years ago, billing it as an artisanal product free of high-fructose corn syrup.

From the jump, it was a bet that consumers wanted something other than Heinz, a food that Malcolm Gladwell famously reported activated all of the major taste receptors in the human mouth: “The taste of Heinz’s ketchup began at the tip of the tongue, where our receptors for sweet and salty first appear, moved along the sides, where sour notes seem the strongest, then hit the back of the tongue, for umami and bitter, in one long crescendo.” Gladwell, relaying this information for The New Yorker in 2004, added, “How many things in the supermarket run the sensory spectrum like this?”

In a lengthy note posted to both Medium and LinkedIn, Norton takes a grave tone to announce the news: “There’s no easy way to say this,” the missive begins. “We’re saddened to think about how the ketchup will not endure.” He goes on to thank all of the customers who took part in the Ketchup Wars, people “who embraced this crazy idea for choice in condiments from day one.”

Sir Kensington himself, however — a mascot that somehow adopts the most ostentatious attributes of both Mr. Peanut and the Monopoly Man, while also adding an apparent knighthood into the mix — will live on in the form of the company’s other sauce and mayonnaise products. Kensington may be an honorary MBE, or possibly even an OBE, but when it comes to ketchup, Heinz remains the king. (Eater)

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