Biden’s SOTU Message to Congress: Tax the Rich, Bitches!?
Advice from around the media for the President
State of the Union speeches are mostly about using what Teddy Roosevelt called “the bully pulpit” to summarize past accomplishments and call for policy changes going forward.
Thursday (6pm, PST) evening’s speech before Congress may give President Biden the biggest audience he’ll see all year. The measured size of the public viewing audience won’t come anywhere near setting any records, in large part because dead tree and linear media are a declining factor these days.
I predict that fewer people will continue to watch the entirety of the speech because all the “good” parts will be posted on social media.
Another factor about audience size is what I’ll call the Nixon effect, where a substantial part of the audience tunes in anticipation of watching a president do something unprecedented, like declare martial law. As the transcripts from Watergate show, openly retaliating against political foes certainly was considered.
This certainly was true during the Trump years, when his unpredictable and mean-spirited notions were largely stymied by incompetent advisors who were hired, based on a perceived notion that they would somehow become effective if placed in a supportive environment.
But the biggest shocker in a State of the Union address came from President Lyndon B Johnson, when he closed the address with an announcement that he would not run for re-election.
President Biden is a traditionalist when it comes to decorum so, while there may not be much in terms of incendiary rhetoric, there will be a vision for continuing change presented. Politely. With as much vigor as can be summoned up aimed at disproving the media threads expressing “concern” about his age.
What we do know will be included are tax reforms aimed at making the wealthy pay their fair share of the costs of the nation’s infrastructure that makes their profits possible.
Via the Washington Post:
Mr. Biden will propose raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent, up from the 21 percent rate that Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017. He will also call for increasing a new minimum tax on large corporations, which Mr. Biden signed into law in 2022, to 21 percent from 15 percent.
Mr. Biden will also propose ending the ability of corporations to deduct compensation costs for any employee who is paid more than $1 million per year.
Republicans will squeal like stuck pigs at these proposals, and try to paint them in the most draconian manner possible. Playing along with their presumed presidential nominee, they’ll go into “America sucks” mode, warning that the president’s proposals will make the nation suck even more.
Punchbowl News caught up with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients on Wednesday, publishing The view from the West Wing. Asked about former President Trump:
This week, the Biden campaign is targeting Trump as “wounded, dangerous and unpopular.” We asked Zients how much Trump would factor into tonight’s address. Zients was careful in his response, saying he was speaking from the White House and couldn’t engage in campaign activities. Zients still took an indirect shot at Trump, however.
“There is a contrast versus some Republicans in how the president wants to lead the country and will continue to lead the country and that will be evident,” Zients said. “But tomorrow is about governing and the state of our union and the vision for the future.”
Lots of people and interest groups had ideas about what they’d like to see in the SOTU, and I’ve captured a few glimpses for your edification.
First up, the Biden campaign reached out to well-known actors who’ve portrayed the chief executive on screen asking their advice on what should be included in the speech.
Hopefully this link will work
https://twitter.com/i/status/1765750702972809621
At Mother Jones, David Corn thought Biden Should Go Dark Brandon at Tonight’s State of the Union
Imagine the drama. Biden staring down GOP legislators and declaring something like: “Many of you, but not all of you, supported Donald Trump’s promotion of a baseless charge that led to violence in this very room and threatened our republic and the peaceful transfer of power. Afterward the Senate Republican leader plainly said, ‘There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.’ He also rightly criticized former President Trump for sitting idly by, watching the riot on television, and taking no action to stop the violence being waged by his supporters. The Republican leader in the House said the same, telling us that President Trump ‘bears responsibility’ for the ‘attack on Congress by mob rioters.'”
Then, after a pause: “And now you guys want to put this man back in office? A guy who caused a riot right here? Are you kidding me?”
Of course that’s one man’s fantasy. Odds are the President won’t mention the former President by name. Remember: decorum
At Jezebel, Susan Rinkunas wrote What Biden Should Say About Abortion Rights Tonight, But Probably Won’t
There’s a way for Biden to talk about this larger picture, and to do it without injecting his personal stigma. After he talks about Cox’s story and the threat to IVF, he could say something like this, which I even tried to make sound like him:
“It wasn’t enough for Republicans to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the right to abortion. They won’t stop until the procedure is banned in every state in the country. If Republicans take control of Congress, they will try to pass a nationwide ban. But the fact is, far-right extremists are pushing a Republican president to enforce a national ban without Congress—they want to use a law from the 19th century called the Comstock Act. It was written before women could vote, for God’s sake. They want to take away your freedoms, but the Vice President and I want to protect them. The choice couldn’t be more clear.”
Douglas Riven, writing at Medium, The Immigration State of the Union Address I Hope to Hear from President Biden
So, yes, I inherited a border mess and a broken immigration system. It reflects the reality that global migration is a complicated issue and reminds us why we need a full immigration overhaul from Congress to address 21st century migration.
But if my Republican friends refuse to work together on that bigger legislative modernization, let’s still fund more border infrastructure and personnel at ports of entry; provide resources for faster asylum processing to reduce the case backlog; and give aid so states and cities can better integrate newcomers. Heck, there are high-tech fentanyl scanners that are sitting unused in warehouses because Congress hasn’t appropriated the money to install them. The people who shout loudest about the border but who block reforms ought to put money where their mouths are.
And also remember that while most of the immigration focus has been how to keep immigrants from coming to the U.S., the Federal Reserve and leading economists are touting how immigrants are leading the charge to expand our economy and fight inflation. That includes an unexpected windfall of $7 trillion in added economic activity over ten years and $1 trillion in reduced deficits because of increases in the number of people working in our economy, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. America shouldn’t have to choose between maintaining a secure and orderly border and living up to our country’s proud history as a nation that is strengthened by immigrants.
Mehdi Hasan, the exiled MSNBC commentator, now at Zeteo News, had seven tips for the President (which I’m not going to list here; give his new digs some love, ok?) in 'Brag, Joke, Pick A Fight': What Joe Biden Should Do in His State of the Union
Biden is known for his empathetic side; for being willing to mourn and grieve with heartbroken families. There is, however, one group of people for whom he has never seemed to have much empathy: the Palestinians. As a former administration official told Mother Jones: “The President does not seem to acknowledge the humanity of all parties affected by this conflict.”
In recent weeks, Biden has made some rhetorical attempts to show that he cares about the lives of Gazans under occupation (despite his ongoing arms sales to their occupier). “We value and pray for… all those who are living in dire circumstances,” he declared at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 1. “Innocent men, women, and children held hostage or under bombardment or displaced, not knowing where their next meal will come from or if it will come at all.”
We need to hear much more of this from a president who is facing an organized revolt from sections of his party base in Michigan, Minnesota, and beyond.
Slate’s Mary Harris interviewed Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal and wrote What Progressives Need to Hear From Biden Tonight
Look, we have to change not just the rulers—the people who are in office—but we also have to change the rules. We have rules that we’re stuck with, and the filibuster is one of them. Joe Biden has said that he would be supportive of reforming the filibuster so that we can codify abortion rights, so that we can codify voting rights. I think we need to get rid of it completely. But we need at least 50 votes in the Senate. And right now, we theoretically have 48. Let’s try to get a majority of 51 or 52 in the Senate, and then let’s change the rules.
The reality is the filibuster is a Jim Crow legacy rule that stops us from doing so many things that not just young voters but voters across this country want. We have to show young people the path, because they’re so tired of hearing us say that we’re going to do all these things but not talking to them about how we’re going to do them. If we explain to people that we need at least a 51-, 52-vote majority in the Senate, and that we are going to demand of our senators that they get rid of the filibuster so that we can do all these things, that is a pathway. But we’ve got to lay it out for people. We can’t just say, “Trust us, we’re going to get it done,” because they’ve trusted us and we haven’t explained to them that the rules don’t allow it.
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Wednesday News to Peruse
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Unionize College Sports And Watch the World Bow Down by Hamilton Nolan in How Things Work
“Campus politics” is a phrase and a concept that has always made me roll my eyes. In general, colleges and universities serve as sweet, deadly traps for politically-minded activists. Each year many thousands of young people are politically radicalized on college campuses, but the campuses themselves can also function as isolating sponges that can soak up all of that activism without allowing it to trickle out into the real world, where it would actually matter. The extent to which college students and professors— one of the most leftist demographics in America— focus their political action on colleges themselves is also the extent to which they have been unwittingly marginalized by the forces they oppose.
As I said: in general. An exception to this rule, I think, is labor organizing. In the national political arena, colleges are stereotyped as youthful and elitist backwaters that are easy to ignore—but in the labor arena, colleges are the backbone of an industry, Higher Ed, that is culturally and economically influential and profitable and wracked by the same sorts of inequalities that plague many other industries. Unions in higher ed are just as important as unions anywhere else. If you want to have a political protest you should leave campus. But if you want to form a union, organizing your cohort of grad workers or adjunct professors or dining hall workers is a very worthy use of your time.
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Voters in car-centric L.A. approve Measure HLA to make room on streets for bikes, buses Via the Los Angeles Times (It wasn’t even close)
“This says people in Los Angeles want change, they want safer streets, and they want the city to follow through on their promises,” said Michael Schneider, who has led the HLA campaign and is executive director of the advocacy group Streets for All, which conceived the measure.
Measure HLA requires Los Angeles to re-engineer some of the region’s most storied boulevards, reducing traffic lanes, building more space for bicyclists and buses, and providing better protections for pedestrians. It calls for 238 miles of protected bike lanes, hundreds more unprotected lanes and 300 miles of improvements for buses, including designated lanes and signal prioritization for public transit.
The transportation measure essentially compels the city to follow its nearly decade-old Mobility Plan 2035, which was meant to revamp how the city moved by designating specific roads for biking, transit and more foot traffic, but has been largely ignored.
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Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S. Via the New York Times
Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle.
In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture.
While Russia has long sought ways to influence public discourse in the United States, the fake news organizations — at least five, so far — represent a technological leap in its efforts to find new platforms to dupe unsuspecting American readers. The sites, the researchers and officials said, could well be the foundations of an online network primed to surface disinformation ahead of the American presidential election in November.
