Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, March 31, 2025
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58 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
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BlueSky.
I wonder how this will go over. Mucking around with the Social Security sign in.
Just tried to sign in on the SS account. I know have to sign in with ID.Me rather my existing SS account name and password.
Next screen:
Great, a private organization controlling my access to SS.
BTW. ID.Me will bombard you with sales pitches.
@Scott: BTW. The facial recognition wouldn’t work for me. Couldn’t match the Driver’s License photo with the photo taken on the phone. This will go over well with a lot of old folks.
Per NBC News, Trump won’t rule out running for a third term. He says “there are methods” for so doing.
@Scott: Also, BTW. The best advice I’ve heard? If you have a problem with long holds on the phone for SS or other government services, go immediately call your Congress critters office and get their constituent services people on the phone. Direct pressure on Congress.
@CSK:
Crazy, no?
Heard someone speculate that he gets elected speaker of the House, subsequently hires a hit on the newly inaugurated president and VP, is sworn in as president, and becomes immune from criminal prosecution because he is the sitting president. Easy peasy.
And the crowd (Republican Party) cheers!
More demand for action from someone who doesn’t know what they are doing:
SecDef gives DOD leaders less than two weeks to lay out cuts, changes
This is typical nonsense from someone who has no experience running anything. Especially a large complex organization.
So glad I’m retired.
@Scott:
That looks similar to a change that was implemented at an IRS website roughly a year ago.
(The site I use to pay my quarterly estimated taxes, this one:
https://www.eftps.gov/eftps/login/logout )
No big deal, I just get a phone call with a six digit code number.
Not my experience. There were three login choices, maybe I lucked out when I picked one.
eftps stands, I think, for electronic funds transfer payment system.
Reposting from yesterday’s China thread:
@JohnSF:
Unless the GOP manages to rapidly discredit itself. Rare, but not impossible – the 1930’s after the 1920’s.
Stock markets in Asia and Europe are mostly all having a pretty bad day today, U.S. stock futures are currently off a bit too.
ETA: Digby thinks Trump is nuts.
https://digbysblog.net/2025/03/29/hes-losing-it-2/
@charontwo: Yes, there were three choices for login. 1) Original SSA only login, ID.ME login, and login.gov. For Gov services, I use SSA, VA, DFAS, Tricare/milconnect and probably some others I rarely use. I think maybe the aforementioned sales pitches from ID.ME results from using it to get military/veterans discounts.
Like everybody else, I spend a lot of time keeping track of names and passwords, even with the help of a password manager.
@CSK: Another example of Trump “flooding the zone with bullshit.” The 22nd amendment is clear:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. That’s as clear as it can be, contrary to whatever Trump is said to be considering. Of course the Constitution is merely a suggestion in MAGAstan, where a corrupt SCOTUS is expected to appease the king.
@Scott: The ID.me sign in is nothing new. They’ve been using it for years.
@Scott – login.gov works well. It is what Federal employees use for nonsensitive platforms like USA Staffing as an alternate to using your smart card. I haven’t had any issues using it.
@Charley in Cleveland:
SCOTUS will just use the same argument they used with the insurrection clause: individual states can’t unilaterally exclude someone from the ballot on the basis of the 22nd ammendment, and that it is up to congress to enforce the ammendment when the electoral votes are counted
I came by a few weeks ago to report on my latest small pro democracy efforts only to find the site in meltdown. Glad to see it functioning again!
Three weekend ago I was back to the Baltimore area anti-Tesla protest. It seemed about double the size and I like to think the article that ran in the Banner after I contacted them and sent in pictures they used had something to do with that. The last two weekends have been consumed by illness and a move, but I did see another Banner article https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/politics-power/national-politics/tesla-takedown-protesters-maryland-EIRM2YA54NATHLXPZWQOUE3MTM/ about the latest protest. This time they sent a reporter. It also appears that it was one of the biggest nationwide
@Charley in Cleveland:
The MAGAs seem to agree that Trump is just trolling the libturds.
@wr: @Gromitt Gunn: Well, I’m going to have to give them more patience. It is when I had to switch from laptop to phone in order to compare a picture ID (driver’s license) with a new selfie from my phone and they didn’t compare. Tried twice. I’m pretty patient with technology but only if I’m not in a hurry.
Not sure what happened with that first link there but don’t trust myself to try to fix it. Which brings me to a non-political comment. Ear Infections! Holy shit! I had no idea how high they could go on the pain scale. On a scale of 1 to Worst-Kidney-Stone-I-Ever-Had, it was a 9. I’m taking one off because I could still walk if I had to, but I spent most of the time rocking back and forth in a chair, first at home, then in urgent care, then in the ER. It finally ruptured, and between that and the super Tylenol it finally got to excruciating but bearable. A week later my head seems to have stopped leaking but for some reason that has corresponded with worse balance. Lost 8 pounds in five days but definitely don’t recommend the diet.
Oh, and we moved household this weekend and there things I had to do, some involving some very shaky time on ladders. So no time or ability for political action
@MarkedMan: best wishes to you (health wise) and keep up the political action. I miss your insight, but do what you are able. Good to “hear” from you.
@Bobert: Thanks! Definitely on the mend, but still feel like someone stuffed my head full of gym socks and then started banging on it with a wooden spoon, and now dizzy on top of that. But I’m going to opening day. As I said to my wife, if I was able to climb up and down on ladders and help with the movers, I’ll be damned if I can’t walk ten minutes to the stadium and then sit in a seat for three hours. Will wear earplugs though!
In case you need to explain to someone why due process is a cornerstone of American democracy and the rule of law, here’s a pithy explanation.
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-133-due-process-and-the-rule
It’s pretty tragic that you do need to explain this to a substantial number of people, but that’s just life in Our Awful Age.
@Charley in Cleveland:
Exactly! The system works to the degree the participants allow it to by following the rules and the gatekeepers can protect the gates. If Trump decides to run again, who is going to order him kept off ballot? SCOTUS doesn’t seem a likely candidate, and has no enforcement agency anyway. Same with Congress. And the Republican party itself.
@Scott: Must have been three or four years ago that the SS announced that the name/password access would be going away.
@Bobert:
Knowing Trump, that’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Testing to see if my avatar has changed.
No, it has not.
@Stormy Dragon:
That would be easier than kneading the law, shaping it into a misshapen pretzel, and issuing a decision that essentially says “the rapist can do whatever he wants.”
@becca:
Did you change it to a pic of Ms. Sadie, I hope?
@Scott: @Scott: Well, that was fun. Got Login.gov to work. The selfie software used was twitchy and hard to capture the picture (no, my hands aren’t shaky and I’m not caffeinated). The use of a personal key was new to me (I have to print it out or electronically save it somewhere (and remember where saved)).
BTW, if you don’t have a phone camera you are advised to go to your local post office to get authentication.
However, Login.gov is not currently working with SSA but it is working with the VA website. Go figure. I used the ID.ME to get me logged into the SSA site instead.
Yes, it does seem more secure but you are dealing with seniors now. Good luck with that. Can’t wait until my two APOE4 alleles kick in. I expect chaos and calls to your friendly neighborhood congressman.
It will be hard tomorrow to see headlines that are funny, ridiculous, mocking, hilarious, or terrifying, and not be confused whether they are real or an April Fools’ prank.
@Scott: Would you or charon2 know what identification process is used by either of these two (login.gov or ID.ME).
The reason I ask is because several years ago, when trying to setup my ssa.gov login, I had to go through a series of questions that were multiple choice, and if you gave an incorrect response you got locked out and had to go to the SS office for an appointment.
Sounds simple enough, however some of the questions were ambigious, for example: “What was the color of your first car” – to which I said to myself – before or after I painted it.
So, what do either of these new log-in require to establish identity?
@Bobert:
It’s been a long time since I have accessed SSA or anything other than the IRS EFTPS. I am not sure I interacted with either of the two you mentioned. I had already been using IRS EFTPS for years, all they were doing was adding two factor authentification. I don’t really remember, but I don’t think they asked for anything more than email address and *landline phone number (and the IRS PIN I had previously been given).
*(in my case).
@becca:
I do not see any avatar, just the letter “G”.
@Bobert: For login.gov go to https://www.login.gov/create-an-account/
You’ll need an email address, a password, one or more authentification methods such as
Face or touch unlock
Security key
Federal government employee or military identification (PIV/CAC)
Authentication application
Text/voice message
Backup codes
Count me as one of the people who, like Digby, are wondering about Trump’s mental acuity. It’s possible that his statements about being out of the loop are accurate.
Let’s recall that in the transcript we read, Stephen Miller confirmed the green light with “what I heard”. This is not what I understand it should look like. Meanwhile Susie Wiles is silent.
It could be that all the bluster and chaos from Trump is because he doesn’t know what’s happening, and he can’t track it.
I still remember the sense I got from that Madison Square Garden rally was that he was saying goodbye. Is he holding rallies now? Is he even spending much time in the WH?
@CSK: I was trying, well, mr becca was, but my setup is a Rube Goldberg configuration and proved frustrating. Will try later.
@Jay L Gischer:
He never did understand, but in his first term he still had a few professionals around him. Trump is an ignoramus. And lazy and stupid on top of that. And now there’s no one to push back against senile grandpa’s random malice.
For the moment the MAGAts are pretending everything is fine and Trump is playing n-dimensional chess. The next stage will be, ‘Whaddabout Biden? He’s way less senile than Biden was!’ The final stage will be the pity-blame: ‘No wonder he’s having some issues because liberals have been so mean to him.’
They will never see reality, they will never admit they were fools, they will never take responsibility for the damage they’ve done. They are, after all, twinned with apocalyptic Christian denominations which have been proclaiming the second coming for two thousand and twenty-five years without success. Doubt is heresy and betrayal, failures are tests of faith, a raging pandemic that could have been prevented is god’s way of saying we should have just killed all the trans people, a category 5 hurricane without FEMA is the fault of woke Hollywood, etc….
So, I read this article on my phone (so it’s paywalled here):
https://www.vox.com/politics/403364/tik-tok-young-voters-2024-election-democrats-david-shor
It’s another why Kamala lost articles gussied up with pretty much the usual crap. What stood out to me was this line
For a while today I couldn’t figure out why this was the most irritating part of the article. I realized that there is something that binds ‘principled’ conservatives and people who claim to be ‘moderates’: they have never actually had to live under actual conservative rule. For the last 40ish years as hard as the actual left has been pushing for better outcomes for people, the ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates’ have fought tooth and nail against things that would actually help people: socialized healthcare, tax reform that would slow down the concentration of wealth, more housing, student loan reform.
Idiots like David French clung to his beloved fence to opposing EVERYFUCKINGTHING. This made the system brittle and prone to actual Conservatives taking power. Actual Conservatives like Stephen Miller and Musk. Now we get to actually live with the policies and laws of actual Conservatives.
I’m hopeful that the one benefit of Trump is that he just absolutely destroys the moderates. You didn’t let us fix anything and the cost was we lost everything.
@Michael Reynolds: Religious beliefs have unquestionably been intertwined with some of the worst things humans have done. The Inquisition, slavery, etc.
AND, it is also intertwined with things like the abolitionist movement, and Johnson’s Great Society – Medicare and Medicaid. Somehow though, that religious aspect of the left has not prospered in the last 60 years. Blame is not my point. My point is that religious involvement in institutions that are more socially aware and progressive has come to the point of near invisibility.
I have long felt that people often put on their religion like a uniform that gave them status and approval. They want their own beliefs and convictions validated by society. They claim to know Gods Will better than others. Even at my most fervent, I thought this was nonsense. I thought it was a monstrous lack of humility and a contradiction of not just a few teachings. We see through a glass but darkly. That means everyone.
@Michael Reynolds:
They can never admit he is senile without people asking “How long have you known this?” and “Why did you not do something?” and “Why was this kept secret?”
The stinky stuff hits the rotating blades once it becomes so obvious, as he deteriorates, that many more people realize this.
@Beth:
I wonder, if moderates are to blame, why Trump et al did not run on opposition to Social Security, Medicare, the VA or even Obamacare? They aren’t attacking liberal/moderate programs or ideas, they’re attacking progressives. They’re bad people but they are quite good at finding weak points and exploiting them, and their targets are progressives.
There is a lot of blame to go around. Liberals were timid, smug and lazy. And progressives delivered a master class in how to lose support. It would be good to have a real conversation about this. But the progressive position seems to be, ‘We did nothing wrong! Nothing!’
At least moderates will consider the possibility that they made mistakes. Progressives? Nope, they are as incapable of error as Trump himself, gods walking amongst us mere mortals. That is a fragile position to try and hold.
@charontwo:
Two or three years ago I’d believe you, but now the opposite has been proven.
“Progress Pond”
Here is a gift link to NYT:
“NYT Gift“
“Progress Pond”
Here is a gift link to NYT:
“NYT Gift“
Yesterday’s cooking consisted of not shepherd’s pie, at least as I understand it. I began by caramelizing two very large red onions (half of which went to the weekly dinner), then browned some ground beef, added some tomato paste and mixed, deglazed with half a cup of beef bouillon which I let reduce, and at last I added some thawed peas. Next I made mashed potatoes from flakes, seasoned with nutmeg, ground mustard seed, and a little ground oregano. I placed the beef mix in a baking dish, covered that with the mashed potatoes, sprinkled some cheese on top, and baked in the oven for a while (tooo bad the broiler quit working…)
It was pretty good.
On other things, I’m reading an audiobook called The Little Book of Aliens, by Adam Frank. the author is an astronomer who works on detecting bio and techno signatures from exoplanets (no detections have been carried out yet; I gather the work now is mostly on refining techniques and instruments).
He came up with an unusual datum: there may not be enough carbon dioxide on Mars to terraform it.
Huh? Isn’t the whole atmosphere like 99% CO2 with some water vapor for variety? Well, yes. And it’s bigger than Earth’s atmosphere, too. But also thinner. The mass of the atmosphere is tiny. So a lot of carbon must still be locked in rocks.
There may not be enough water, either. A lot has been lost to the solar wind (because Mars also lacks a magnetic field).
So, it looks grim for the nazi in chief’s dreams of establishing humanity there.
but it looks great for the vast mass of people who’d like to see him take a one-way trip to Mars.
@charontwo:
From the NYT link:
@Michael Reynolds: It’s fascinating how much you’ve incorporated the right wing claims into your views on progressives.
It’s not quite “I hate Jews, but Hitler really is trouble for everyone. Why are those Jews so hateable? It’s all the Jews fault.” But it’s also not entirely dissimilar.
@Gustopher: Michael Reynolds didn’t incorporate any right-wing claims in his comment, unless you consider the possibility of a progressive mistake to be a right-wing claim. If I missed one please highlight it.
So, things just keep getting worse for the airlines.
Virgin Atlantic warned of slowdown in demand to the US, and IAG’s shares fell. IAG is the parent company that owns British Airways, Iberia, and some other European airlines.
Some airlines have not yet fully recovered from the trump pandemic slump. And we’re not even in the trumpcession yet. When that hits, it might be time to buy airline shares*, as they will surely be bailed out or get a “stimulus”, or something. Maybe. Who can tell what a senile old fool who may or may not be in charge will do ar be allowed or told to do?
I can see some European and Canadian travelers heading instead to Mexico, the Caribbean, Brazil, Colombia, even Cuba. But there’s not as much reciprocal traffic from these destinations as there is in America.
What I really wonder is how this will affect business travel.
*Do not take any comments I make as investment advice.
Charlie Sykes says what needs to be said about the Quislings in big law.
@Fortune: I think you need to look to the whole body of Mr. Reynold’s work, where he mostly espouses progressive values but hates each and every progressive.
The flaws of the liberals are unfortunate, but the flaws of the progressives are unforgivable.
It’s the respectability politics of the mid-to-late 1980s gay community, redux. Will And Grace did more to shape America’s views on equality for garden variety homosexuals than Act Up, but Act Up was needed to be the catalyst that set the stage for Will And Grace.
Act Up, the bunch of messy radicals who espoused such radical views as visibility and pride, to try to get physical numbers to put pressure on Fauci to move more aggressively on approving trials for AIDS treatments.
Act Up, who the garden variety homosexuals would point to and say “I’m gay, but I’m not one of them”. Act Up, who was visibly queer.
And, like the garden variety homosexuals of the mid-to-late 1980s, liberals are followers. More interested in protecting what they have (or slowing the assault on what they have) than really doing anything for anyone else, even when that is how you protect yourself — raise up that next group so when the shit hits the fan, there’s someone else to take the brunt of the splatter.
I believe it was George W. Bush who explained it best, when justifying his war of choice that killed at least 100,000 Iraqis — “we fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.”
Except, ideally without killing at least 100,000 Iraqis.
With apologies to all members of academia, past, present, and future.
S.B. 1 will set rules around classroom discussion, create post-tenure reviews, put diversity scholarships at risk, create a retrenchment provision that block unions from negotiating on tenure, shorten university board of trustees terms from nine years down to six years, and require students take an American history course, among other things.
Michael Reynolds has experienced clear personal harm from people espousing far-left views. In a way that few others of us have.
Which I think drives a lot of his anger. In his situation, I would probably be angry too.
AND, I don’t think there is an alternate reality where the right wing assault we are seeing couldn’t find an good target to motivate their destruction of moderate to center-left institutions and the rule of law. There’s always going to be a target.
Policing people you’ve never heard of before on their rhetoric does not have much value for me, nor does blaming them. I mean, it’s already a long shot to even have an effect, and even if it works, there will always be somebody else to frame as a “radical”. Always some quotes or clips to take out of context.
Lots of us are spoiling for a fight. I think Michael is, too. I don’t think we should spend that energy fighting each other.
OMG! US Domestic Terrorists strike overseas!1!!111
@Michael Reynolds:
Sorry, no.
They are attacking science, rule of law, equity, all social programs, an independent judiciary, democracy, government itself, international alliances, economic theory, … Those are not “progressive” concepts or policies. The assault on DEI is trivial, compared to the assault on the pillars of liberal democracy.
@Fortune:
Done.
@Kathy:
Are you sure we can’t blame the Red Brigade? /s/
@Kathy: It might be a false flag. Given that sales are way down, the Tesla corporation may be torching their own vehicles to collect the insurance.
I would normally not assume such a thing, but given that their dealerships in Canada claimed to have sold close to 9,000 vehicles in 72 hours to get an expiring tax credit. That has big “everyone cheats, if you don’t cheat, you’re a sucker” vibes, which likely reflect the company culture as a whole rather than a few bad Canadian apples.
@DrDaveT: Yes and no. The are using attacks on progressives and trans people as the targets to keep people mad/motivated while they are also attacking the institutions of our government.
I have no doubt that if trans people hadn’t made the gains they had in the past few years, and that progressives weren’t out being progressive, a lot of those attacks would be falling on people like me — medium left, garden-variety queer liberals.
And, I would like to thank the more progressive and more vulnerable populations for taking it on the chin before it gets to me. I’m sorry it’s you, but I’m glad it’s not me.
It’s part of why the moderately vulnerable groups should support the more marginalized groups. I mean, sure, it’s objectively the right thing to do, and there’s solidarity and intersectionality and all that proper altruistic stuff, but it also moves the immediate target off our backs. It’s self-preservation.
Meanwhile, if there’s anything I can do from way back here to help out the people taking the brunt of worst of it, let me know. I’m happy to help, and hopefully delay the fascists from getting around to targeting me.
And if nothing else, it gives me breathing room and a warning. If they start treating the trans community the way they are treating immigrants (so far, trans folks aren’t being abducted off the streets and shipped across the country or to a foreign concentration camp without any due process), then it’s absolutely time for me to pack up and head across a border with my cats.
(This is half tongue-in-cheek, but I also absolutely believe it, so is it really tongue-in-cheek at all?)
@Gustopher:
Oh, absolutely — no argument from me on that. I was responding to Reynolds’ claim that they are ONLY attacking progressive ideas/programs. “The government should have employees, who do things for the American people” is not a progressive idea.