Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

The hypocrisy of Republican calls for "reconcilation"

 After the insurrection, Republicans are criticizing Democrats for pursuing impeachment of President Trump, instead calling for "national unity."

They don't want unity, they want the continuation of lack of accountability.

If they want unity, rather than calling for b.s. commissions to study problems that they've created (a majority of Republicans don't believe the November election was fair, because Republican elected officials and other stakeholders, starting with Trump, said it wasn't, without any evidence to back up their allegations) they should propose serious initiatives to demonstrate their good faith.

The Post's Jennifer Rubin had some ideas ("Republicans want reconciliation. Here’s what they need to do first."), and in response I listed some more:

+ Many Republicans in addition to Kevin McCarthy should resign to demonstrate their good faith commitment to healing and unity and to acknowledge their culpability in Trump's insurrection.

+ Republicans should introduce a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate the Electoral College and make the popular vote the sole determination of election for president.  After all, winning the popular vote is the most direct and clearest definition of winning.

+ Introduce legislation to require independent reviews before Presidential pardons can be granted, especially in cases involving the president.

+ Introduce legislation making it clear that sitting Presidents can be indicted for criminal acts.

+ Fox television station licenses should be challenged because parent Fox demonstrates with their management of cable channels an unwillingness to broadcast truth.  (The example is how RKO lost television and radio licenses after illegal acts and failure to be honest with the FCC.  "RKO loses Boston station," New York Times, "RKO Faces Loss of 14 Radio and TV Station Licenses," AP)  Note that in the UK, Murdoch's improper acts at newspapers led to the company being deemed unfit in their application to take full control of British Sky Broadcasting ("," Rupert Murdoch not fit to run a major company, British panel says," Washington Post).

+ same for Sinclair in the way they manipulate news coverage in a systematic way across their network of stations that are primary providers of "local" television news for hundreds of stations across the country ("Sinclair Made Dozens of Local News Anchors Recite the Same Script," New York Times, "How America's Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers In Trump's War On The Media," Deadspin).

+ Give DC control of its National Guard.

+ Support Statehood for DC and Puerto Rico to help address the rural small state imbalance of the Senate.

+ Introduce legislation to add 100 seats to the US House of Representatives.

+ acknowledgement of antidemocratic repercussions of gerrymandering and support for independent nonpartisan district mapping in every state.

4 Comments:

At 8:46 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

Want unity? Impeaching Trump was the first step. - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-want-to-move-forward-impeaching-trump-was-the-first-step/2021/01/13/b5fbf5ee-55e0-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html?outputType=comment&no_nav=true

 
At 1:16 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/14/opinion/an-amherst-professor-predicted-exactly-how-trump-would-try-overturn-election-now-he-fears-2024

 
At 3:29 PM, Anonymous h st ll said...

Agree w/ almost of this but increasing the size of the House is a terrible idea. Our govt is horribly inefficient and we are taxed for too much for horrible governance.

 
At 3:46 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

the reason to increase the size of the House is how the redistricting process ends up shifting seats from the North and Upper Midwest to the South, as those states grow in population.

Adding more house seats would change this dynamic somewhat, away from a zero sum game.

But yes, it's not like the House is a paragon of organizational excellence, that the average member and staff is particularly available to their constituents, etc.

And they could build a new House Building on the site of those parking lots by Capitol South Metro...

 

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