Tit for Tat 🌻 🌻 🌻

Chaos Caucus:  The Republicans are officially in charge of the House and things are going about as expected. Only one Republican, Texas’s Tony Gonzales joined with all the Democrats in voting against the Republican’s governing “rules” package, an indication that the so-called Republican moderates either don’t exist or are too intimidated by fears of retaliation to vote their consciences, a fair concern given that a few including Texas’ Dan Crenshaw have already lost coveted committee chairmanships for talking out of school. Worth noting, the deals that Speaker Kevin cut on the side are top secret and no one who isn’t in the in crowd knows exactly what he promised.  To much fanfare the Republicans held a largely ceremonial vote to eliminate the $80 billion allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act to the IRS for the hiring of 87,000 new employees.  The Republican’s ran on a mantra that those 87,000 were all “agents” and that the sole purpose of their hiring was to intrusively investigate each, and every law-abiding taxpayer.  The funding isn’t a one-shot expenditure, rather it’s to be spent over ten years and more than pays for itself by increasing tax revenues.  Moreover, 50,000 of the hires are to replace retiring employees, the other 37,000 are for areas like customer service and IT, with the IT workers focused on keeping the IRS website functioning so that when taxpayers need assistance or access to information, they can get it without having to endure endless waits. Of course, some of the hires will conduct audits and presumably some of those audited will be rich Republican donors with complex filings which is probably why the Republican contingent made good their promise to “defund” the hiring with such urgency.  Anyway, the vote to eliminate the ”agents,” which according to the CBO would add $114 billion to the deficit, was pointless since neither the Democratic led Senate nor Biden will signoff.  

Weaponization: Of more significance, Republicans also announced plans to create a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to be chaired by Ohio’s Gym Jordan.  The subcommittee will be tasked with launching a “wide-ranging investigation into federal law enforcement and national security agencies” to get to the bottom of the “concerted effort by the government to silence and punish conservatives” including protesters at school board meetings and Trump, of course.  Basically, the subcommittee will be Benghazi on steroids, echoes of the House Un-American Activities of the 1950s, the pre-Civil Rights, Stepford Wife era that the religious right yearns to bring back.  Naturally, Gym is requesting and will likely get as least as much funding as was allocated to the January 6^th Committee. As of last night, Democratic leadership said that unlike their Republican brethren who made the mistake of not accepting positions on the January 6^th Committee, except of course for “RINOs” Cheney and KInzinger, they will accept positions on the any of the investigatory committees that the Republicans set up, probably not what Gym and his crowd wanted to hear.   Speaking of committees, McCarthy also plans to carry through with his threat to take Democrats Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell off theirs, retaliation for the Dems have punished Georgia’s Margie Q and Arizona’s Paul Gosar for their unapologetically ugly behavior.  Tit for tat beats adult governing every time.

Twinning? So it turns out that like Trump, President Biden also took some classified briefing documents at the end of his vice presidency.  In November his lawyers found a few while packing up his former office at the Penn Biden Center.  That’s where the similarity ends.  Biden’s cache included 12 documents only some of which were top secret.  Trump’s included 160 documents, sixty of which were top secret.  Biden’s lawyers immediately contacted the National Archives to turn them over, Trump refused to turn his over even after they were subpoenaed.  Merrick Garland who could do without this wrinkle,  has assigned one of the few remaining Trump era US Attorney’s to oversee the investigation into Biden’s documents but that won’t stop rightwing media and the Republican echo chamber from doing what they do.  No doubt Gym Jordan will add this to his long list of things to be investigated.  As to ethics and the like, McCarthy says that they’ll talk to George Santos in private about his lapses, a list that now includes having one of his staff members solicit campaign contributions while pretending to work for McCarthy.  By the way, did you know that Santos was one of the first people to contract COVID, that he was hospitalized and almost died because it was right after he had the brain tumor he didn’t have. Unlikely, but his COVID brush with death is now part of his legend and who are we to question it?   Also, who are we to question why Alan Weisselberg got off with a sentence of only 5 months, albeit to be served at Rikers, for the financial finagling he did while serving as the Trump Organization.  Trump is still in Florida, playing golf and posting hate messages on Truth Social but he may have some court time coming his way in Atlanta.  Fani Willis’ special grand jury has completed its report, it’s likely that she will now convene a regular grand jury to issue indictments, not that any of us should hold our breaths waiting because at least so far, that’s proven to be pointless.  Also, still in Florida for now is Jair Bolsonaro, the election denying former President of Brazil.  He apparently spent a few days in the hospital, something to do with the old injuries he suffered when someone stabbed him back in the day.  He’s out but his days in Florida could be numbered as he may have to go home to face the music in Brazil.