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TODAY'S HEADLINES:
The Georgia Runoff elections are in full swing, as Republican David Perdue ditched a debate with Jon Ossoff and Kelly Loeffler floundered at her meeting with Rafael Warnock. It looks like the Republicans are going all in on attacks with Warnock, even as their own party tries to provide some level of legitimacy to the general election results.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden will reportedly announce Former General and current Board Member at Raytheon Lloyd Austin as his pick for Secretary of Defense, while his advisors keep busy trying to shut out indigenous Congresswoman Deb Haaland from getting Secretary of the Interior.
And lastly, some good news from Los Angeles, where a new District Attorney has immediately committed to a sweeping set of reforms including a near-total abolishment of cash bail and new investigations into police use of force cases.
THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:
By now, you know the score: Joe Biden’s ability to get basically anything done could ride on the results of two runoff Senate elections in Georgia, which go down on January 5.
Reverend Raphael Warnock is running against uber-rich and uber-corrupt Senator Kelly Loeffler, while boring-boy Jon Ossoff is taking on also corrupt and certainly cowardly Senator David Perdue. The Democrats have to sweep both races if they want to even up the senate and give Kamala Harris the deciding vote on bills they want to get through.
So far, the Republican strategy seems to be a version of what they ran everywhere in 2020: attack Warnock primarily as a radical leftist and hope that Ossoff goes down with him. They’re taking this strategy to the extreme: because Ossoff is such a blank slate of a candidate, the GOP doesn’t see any positives in even acknowledging him. Purdue didn’t even show up to their debate on Sunday night, figuring people would instead tune in to Loeffler and Warnock instead.
Loeffler played her part, repeatedly referring to Warnock as a “radical liberal” and his past critiques of the police and military from his pulpit. Warnock, of course, has countered with the Democrats typical centrism. We’ll see how well that works, as disappointing as it is. For what it’s worth, the GOP has basically nothing else: Republican election officials have created a rift with the President and his party’s official line in recent days by certifying the general election results.
We’ll be keeping an eye on how this all plays out for the next month or so.
More Bad Biden Cabinet Picks
Ah, feels like just yesterday we had a story about Joe Biden’s disappointing cabinet picks. Let’s check... nope, sorry it’s been almost five days. Wow. Well here’s another one.
On Monday night, the New York Times reported that Biden is expected to nominate retired General Lloyd J. Austin III to be his secretary of defense. Austin would be the first black SecDef, but he certainly won’t be the first secretary who has ties to defense giant Raytheon! He’s a board member there. We really do hate to see it.
Austin is well respected in the military community, and will probably go through without much protest from everyone who doesn’t see a problem with the fact that everyone who controls our active military also has incredibly close entanglements with all the private companies who make their weapons. Just business as usual there!
Meanwhile, the race for Biden’s Secretary of the Interior position is looking extremely messy. Progressives have been openly pushing for Congresswoman Deb Haaland to get the nod, as she’s one of the country’s first high-profile indigenous politicians and supports a proactive climate agenda including the Green New Deal.
But according to the Huffington Post, some of Biden’s advisors are pushing for another native candidate, Michael Connor, despite dozens of tribal leaders telling Biden, publicly and privately, that they back Haaland. The line they’re pushing is that Haaland is unqualified, and that Connor is a better pick because he was a deputy secretary for the department under Obama.
But progressive activists suggest the insiders’ objections to Haaland may have more to do with her politics than with her preparedness for the job. As Huffington Post noted, Connor’s own tribe signed a letter urging Biden to back Haaland. We’ll see how that one shakes out in the coming days.
LA's New DA Begins Reform
On a brighter note, there seems to be a real push for criminal justice reform in Los Angeles County, thanks to the election of new District Attorney George Gascon.
According to the LA Times, Gascon has committed to a sweeping, extensive slate of reforms on his first day in office. The first major change was an almost-complete elimination of cash bail, one of the most predatory systems in the prison pipeline in most cities. There’s some details to work out there -- cash bail will still exist until the end of the year for violent felonies, but will get phased out in 2021.
The other huge changes are almost too many to list in the quickie, but we’ll try. Gascon is immediately banning prosecutors from trying children as adults, as well as ending the “sentencing enhancements” cities have used to assign more jail time for everything from gang affiliations to gun infractions and three-strikes laws. He’s also seeking to change some peoples’ sentences who were convicted under these systems to get them time off.
Crucially, Gascon is also opening new investigations and re-opening old investigations into LA cops’ use of force cases, and a new use-of-force review board for police shootings and other incidents.
One of the changes that might fly a bit under the radar: Gascon is also trying to institute a policy of diversion, where non-violent arrests don’t make it to actual charges, but instead try to get people help instead of locking them up, which would be a huge change for mentally ill and homeless people caught in a cycle of legal trouble. In a speech, Gascon said quote:
“I recognize for many this is a new path ... whether you are a protester, a police officer or a prosecutor, I ask you to walk with me. I ask you to join me on this journey. We can break the multigenerational cycles of violence, trauma and arrest and recidivism that has led America to incarcerate more people than any other nation.” endquote.
If more officials with different jurisdictions and powers get on board, he just might be right.
AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:
In an extremely distressing sign of where we’re headed, the investors on Wall Street are now trading futures for _water_, predicting that it will be a scarce commodity in the future like gold, oil, and other commodities. And of course, nothing has ever gone wrong with Wall Street speculating on things before.
A new report by Brown University’s Costs of War project shows that Donald Trump’s incredibly destructive bombing campaign in Afghanistan increased civilian casualties by a staggering 330 percent since 2016. In 2019 alone, airstrikes killed 700 civilians, the most in a single year since the war started in 2001.
One bit extremely sketchy Biden Cabinet news we skipped earlier: Maya Harris, Kamala Harris’s sister, is reportedly lobbying hard to get her husband, Tony West, the nod for Attorney General under Biden. West, you may know, is the top lawyer for Uber, one of the most openly evil companies in Silicon valley that just spent millions on pushing through an anti-labor proposition in the 2020 election.
Here’s a late-breaking story you’ll definitely want to watch today: on Monday, Florida state police raided the house of Rebekah Jones, a former Department of Health employee who was unceremoniously fired for trying to keep up accurate information of the state’s COVID cases. She continued her project independently, but was violently raided at gunpoint on Monday.
DEC 8, 2020 - AM QUICKIE
HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner
WRITER - Jack Crosbie
PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn