Weekend Open Thread

4 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

1. "Map out your future-but do it in pencil crayon."

   Pencils are too dangerous.

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   1. Powerful Pear … some of us have gone electronic, leaving the static view of pencil or crayon mapping illustrations behind.  You may benefit from using 21st-century technology, too.

      Seriously … happy new year to you.  Looking forward to hearing your takes on the Colorado Republican delegation, especially with its dean, Rep. Lauren Boubert. 

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3. "Big Pile O' Money (BPM)." Josh Marshall at TPM.

   Really great article on defending against Trump and MAGA lawfare. Worth reading the whole thing.

   It’s not just Trump and official MAGA we have to worry about. We’re really facing an era of broader civic disinhibition, in which public and private actors will be declaring war on civil society, government employees and more in ways that simply haven’t happened in the past. There’s no one group that can combat that. And these nascent efforts are going to be a critical part of the equation — for the civil servant who gets harassed, for the nonprofit which needs legal assistance fending off financially ruinous subpoenas. And by this I don’t mean just to say … well, the small stuff. What I mean is that there’s going to be a lot of stuff, across society, across multiple layers of government. There’s a lot to go around. And not every individual or entity wants to become a poster child for MAGA abuses of power. Often they just need someone to pick up the legal work that would have bankrupted the organization or made an individual lose their home.

   As I learned more, I decided that there’s actually a lot of complementarity between the nascent efforts I’m describing and and my imagined Big Pile of Money (BPM) group. So let me describe what that BPM group is and why it’s still necessary. There are three roles I think of — penumbras of fear, penumbras of safety and the grand political wrestling match.

   One of the best ways I can think of to describe what I’m looking for is by an illusory hypothetical. Let’s imagine there was another billionaire out there — a non-decadent, non-degenerate version of Musk — who said: I believe in America. Every person Trump targets, I’m going to send them a contact number at mega law firm X, which I’ve retained, and it’s an open tab for as long as they need. And if you’re out there wondering if you’re willing to take the risks of doing the right thing over the next four years, I’ll be sending you a contact number too. And I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to use the channels of these abusive lawsuits and criminal investigations to load these folks down with every discovery motion you could have imagined. I’m going to use my cash and the courts not just to protect people but to embarrass and humiliate the abusers, make them wish they’d never started.

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