Majority support for the impeachment trifecta

What I mean by that, is that clear majorities support impeachment #2, conviction, and barring Trump from running for federal office again. Regarding political polling, in the wake of the just-completed cycle I take less for granted than ever. But these numbers do seem about right.

Not that the will of the people generally matters, in the United States Senate. With few exceptions, it's just the entitled serving the ultra-entitled.

According to Monmouth, the level of support among Americans for disciplining Trump is slightly higher now than it was when the former president was impeached for the first time in January 2020. Last year, 49% backed removing Trump from office via an impeachment conviction, while 48% opposed such a move. Now, 57% want the Senate to take action to prevent Trump from holding federal office in the future, compared with 41% who are opposed.

When respondents were informed that a ban on future office-holding must be preceded by a conviction, the support for a Senate conviction on the impeachment charge increased from 52% to 55%. - Common Dreams

Pushing for way overdue election reforms

Maybe some of this could actually happen. This article is lengthy and rather comprehensive.

The task force made 28 recommendations in several areas, including: election administration, with regard to how states helped voters both to get a ballot during the pandemic and to ensure their votes were accurately counted; legal reforms, ranging from clarifying federal laws governing the Electoral College and presidential transitions to urging that states modify their post-Election Day procedures to allow more assurances that votes were being counted accurately; and social media platforms, which would do better to delete false posts, not merely add warning labels.

As extensive as this to-do list seems, it is not the full democracy reform agenda. In July 2020, a 25-member expert panel based at Harvard University and the Washington-based Brookings Institution issued a report calling for mandatory voting. As María Teresa Kumar, founding president of Voto Latino, who participated in that panel and the bipartisan task force, said, universal voting was one way to dilute the power of the most extreme political factions.

"Universal voting, in countries that practice it, actually tones down the extremism on both sides because it involves everybody," she said. "If there are methods to promote that type of practice in the country, we will see not only fair elections but more participation… with the hopes of toning down that extremism that we are witnessing today."

An even longer-standing reform effort led by voting rights advocates is calling for swift passage of H.R. 1. That 791-page House bill addresses election intricacies, campaign finance and ethics. It is comprised of reforms proposed mostly by Democrats from more than 50 bills that failed to pass during the past decade when Republicans controlled at least one chamber in Congress. A growing coalition of 170 center-left groups are pushing for H.R. 1, even though most of it was drafted before the pandemic dramatically altered how 2020's general election was conducted, including greatly expanding the use of mailed-out ballots and early in-person voting. One day before Biden's inauguration, a version of H.R. 1 was introduced in the Senate. - The National Memo

We'll see, about "suspended" corporate political donations

You know plenty are thinking this will all probably blow over by 2022, certainly by 2024, and it will be back to shoveling the cash to whoever will follow orders.

The companies withdrawals also mean less in an era when corporate political giving represents a shrinking share of overall political spending: the Center for Responsive Politics estimates that only about 5 percent of money donated in the 2020 election came from corporate PACs, an “all-time low.”

Kelleher says the corporations’ announcements seem more like “a PR stunt” than a consequential stand. The first quarter after a presidential election is typically when corporate political giving is already the lowest, he notes, so it’s unclear just how much money the targeted lawmakers will actually lose. Many of the companies have been unclear about how long their suspensions will last.

And since Kelleher says large companies typically plan their political giving a year or even two in advance, the cut-off lawmakers may not have actually been in the companies’ plans. “They know going into 2021 how much they have estimated they’re going to give, to who, and when. So let them disclose that information, and tell the public exactly which contributions they’re no longer going to make,” Kelleher says. “Until and unless they do that everybody should be deeply skeptical of the genuineness of what is so far a PR campaign.” - Mother Jones

Efforts to super-spin the Trump "legacy" are already here

A lot will depend on what the major corporate media outlets do. My own take is that they're not likely to risk their only partially rebuilt, at best, reputations with younger age groups, by reverting to what they did in 2015-16. But I don't claim to really know.

But while some Republicans might be eager to “walk away from Trump,” Heye added, “many will continue talking about the things in the administration they supported”—from tax cuts and deregulation to flooding the judiciary with conservatives.

Indeed, the narrative now forming in some GOP circles presents Trump as a secondary figure who presided over an array of important accomplishments thanks to the wisdom and guidance of the Republicans in his orbit. In these accounts, Trump’s race-baiting, corruption, and cruel immigration policies—not to mention his attempts to overturn an election—are treated as minor subplots, rather than defining features. - The Atlantic

Biden has a great chance, on public schools

Elements of the proposed rescue/stimulus package are a good start. But there needs to be a lot of effort and resources beyond that. And the opposition is given to a plethora of classless, underhanded, cowardly tactics.

After decades of federal legislation that emphasized mandating standardized testing and tying school and teacher evaluations to the scores; imposing financial austerity on public institutions; incentivizing various forms of privatization; and undermining teachers' professionalism and labor rights, there is a keen appetite for a new direction for school policy.

Due to the disruption forced by the pandemic, much is being written and said about the need to "restart and reinvent" education and a newfound appreciation for schools as essential infrastructure for families and children. With an incoming Biden administration, Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, and the influence of incoming first lady Jill Biden, a career educator, we may be on the cusp of a historic moment when the stars align to revitalize public schools in a way that hasn't happened in a generation.

Among the promising ideas that appear to have growing momentum behind them are proposals to fund schools more equitably, to expand community schools that take a more holistic approach to educating students, to create curriculum and pedagogy that are relevant to the science of how children learn and the engagement of their families, and to reverse the direction of accountability measures from top-down mandates to bottom-up community-based endeavors. - Jeff Bryant/AlterNet

Get going on expulsions

A straightforward metric, indeed.

We can go on, and we should. The metric that should be used for expulsion should be a simple one.

- If a member of Congress advocated for overturning a U.S. election based on fraudulent claims, that member should be expelled.

- If a member of Congress promoted known-false conspiracy theories designed to discredit the U.S. election that were used to justify the violent insurrection against Congress, that member must be removed.

That really is not a hard measure of who should be a lawmaker and who should not. It requires no ideological litmus test. There is no "conservative" or "liberal" label that needs to be applied. Fomenting insurrection by using your office to promote hoaxes discrediting U.S. democracy itself is not an edge case. It does not matter if these members chose to spread sedition-justifying hoaxes because they were incompetent paint-huffing dullards or with explicit intent to deceive; either is sufficient reason to expel them from government service. Any government service.

This will not be easy, because the Republican House and Senate are full of co-conspirators to this attempt to overturn democracy in favor of one-party rule. They have been willing saboteurs who have allied themselves with Trump's criminal acts, who have blocked probes into those acts, who have abided as Trump misled the American people using a torrent of lies and who took up those lies and fascist causes themselves. But it needs to be done. This nation cannot survive if governed by seditionists and traitors. Democracy is already dead if the public can, without consequence, be manipulated into believing whatever hoax their leaders find it most advantageous to push. - Daily Kos

What the Pres.-elect can quickly do for reproductive rights

Pretty straightforward, really.

Even with Democrats poised to control the Senate, our wait on some of these issues may continue for at least another election cycle. Which is why it’s worth focusing on at least one action Biden can take immediately that will help increase reproductive freedom: He can commit to combatting the rampant disinformation campaigns that have targeted reproductive and sexual health, rights, and justice issues with the same vigor he applies to attacking other destructive lies.

On December 10, House Democrats sent President-elect Biden a proposal for combatting digital disinformation. The signees specifically called out the flagrant spread of fictional claims regarding COVID-19—what has been dubbed an “infodemic”—for contributing to the erosion of our democracy, and expressed grave concern about how foreign adversaries might take advantage of a citizenry that’s proved to be highly vulnerable to online manipulation. - Rewire News Group

Standardized testing, this year, would be even more counterproductive than usual

It would be downright idiotic, really. What it would do is give ammo to public school bashers, who are already taking advantage of the effects of the pandemic with despicable, shameless fervor.

Bernie Burnham, the vice president of Education Minnesota, which is the state’s influential teachers union, said in a written statement that the “biggest concern right now for educators is students’ socioemotional and physical health.”

The union — which represents more than 70,000 teachers — is working on a set of recommendations for supporting students when they return to school buildings, Burnham said, including improving technology and internet access; providing mental health services; planning for potential future closures; and cancelling standardized tests in the spring.

“At best, the deeply flawed MCA (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment) tests give a snapshot of how groups of students are progressing compared to how groups of students were doing historically. Everyone knows this isn’t a normal year. The time and money wasted on testing could be better spent educating our students,” Burnham said in the statement. - Minnesota Reformer