Joe Manchin’s Fickleness Is a Needless Catastrophe (only 8.54 years left)

The Atlantic ^ | 7/15/22 | Robinson Meyer

[Libloather]

For its many flaws, the world of cryptocurrency has bequeathed to the English language a vivid new verb: rug-pulling. As its idiom-derived name suggests, rug-pulling is when a crypto developer hypes up a new coin or new project, gets ordinary people to invest in it, and then - all at once - shuts it down in such a way that they take all of their investors’ cash with them. It is a spectacular act of bad faith, a breach of trust so severe that it casts doubt on the entire cryptocurrency community, so-called.

Yesterday, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia rug-pulled Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, committing a betrayal that could shape the character of climate politics in this country for decades to come. Manchin reportedly told Schumer that he could not support any energy or climate investments in the comprehensive Democratic bill meant to enact President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda. He also said that he could not support any new tax provisions on corporations or the wealthy.

I have been somewhat sympathetic to Manchin’s concerns in the past, criticizing Schumer earlier this year for ignoring his worries about inflation and the deficit. Even though Manchin had every reason to obstruct climate action—he receives more donations from the oil-and-gas industry than any other politician, for instance, and he and his family have made millions of dollars selling coal to a single power plant in West Virginia - he was right that the process has generally been a mess, and that neither Biden nor congressional Democrats have taken inflation seriously enough since it began to boil over last year.

But this reversal has burned through any remaining goodwill for Manchin among the press corps and, I suspect, the rest of his caucus. That’s because adopting a climate-and-new-taxes framework...

[stevem]

We ARE doomed. Still, goodwill from the press corps likely isn’t the best goal for most people.

Also, there have to be a few in the caucus happy as clams for Manchins stand as needed while Manchin is the one absorbing the heat.

[HenrytheGr8]

“For its many flaws, the world of cryptocurrency has bequeathed to the English language a vivid new verb: rug-pulling.”

Today’s “journalists” apparently believe the world was created on the day they were born. “Rug pulling” is a phrase that predates cryptocurrency by many, many years.