It is sometimes said that politics involves the art of compromise. This does not mean that in politics one cannot have principles and stick to them but that at some point if there is a clash of principles, then there may be no means of resolution within the system other than having one or both sides back down, at least partially. This is because when it comes to the decisions of certain political institutions, there is no supra-arbiter to decide who wins and who loses. The contesting parties themselves have to work things out. This can be contrasted with (say) civil disputes between two parties where there is always recourse to an external entity like the courts that can step in and decide the issue.

This was perfectly illustrated in the vote for the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. The rules under which it operates created a box whose remarkable rigidity only became apparent when it went into operation this time. The rules said that the first order of operation had to be the election of the Speaker and that the Speaker had to be elected by a majority of the 435 members present and voting. Those members who were absent or voted ‘present’ or abstained were not counted. In a two-party system in which each side puts up one candidate and where the vote is along party lines, there is no problem in that the party that has the majority will always have its candidate win. And that is what usually happens.
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Today comes another report alleging how the drive at Amazon to deliver packages quickly overrides basic human decency.

On the morning of 27 December 2022 at the Amazon DEN4 warehouse in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 61-year-old Rick Jacobs died on the job after experiencing a cardiac event, right before a shift change. What happened next has angered his former colleagues.

Witnesses say a makeshift barrier around the deceased worker using large cardboard bins was used to block off the area on the outbound shipping dock where the incident occurred, and workers criticized the response and lack of transparency about the incident. Amazon denied boxes were used to cordon off the area, but said managers stood around to make sure no one came near for privacy and security.

As workers arrived for their day shift, they say they were not notified about what was going on and continued working as usual while a deceased colleague remained in the facility and emergency responders awaited the arrival of a coroner.

I find it hard to believe Amazon’s story that they used managers to cordon off the area to ensure privacy. Use real people that you have to pay instead of cheap cardboard boxes could achieve that same result? That is not the Amazon model, surely?

As I have said repeatedly, the drive for ever-increasing speed of delivery at the cheapest price, even when there is absolutely no need to get stuff quickly, creates an inhumane workspace.

In what seems like a Brazilian reprise of the January 6th, 2021 assault by Trump supporters on the US Capitol buildings, thousands of supporters of defeated president Jain Bolsonaro stormed the government institutions of Brazil yesterday, ransacking the buildings and committing many acts of vandalism.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has ordered the federal government to take control of policing in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, after hundreds of hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court.

The massed attack was a stunning security breach that was immediately compared to the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump in 2021.

“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television network as word of the upheaval spread. “The three buildings have been invaded by coup-mongering terrorists.”

Shocking video footage showed the pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalising the nearby supreme court, whose windows had been smashed.

Videos posted on social media showed fires burning inside the congress building. Furniture was broken and tossed around, objects were reportedly stolen in the presidential palace and the supreme court, and in some places sprinklers appeared to be dousing chambers.

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Late Friday night, on the 15th attempt, Kevin McCarthy finally got enough votes to be elected Speaker. He still did not get the 218 absolute majority that he needed in the reduced 434-member body (one Democratic member being deceased and not yet replaced) because 212 members voted fro Democrat Hakeem Jeffries again and there were six members in his 222-member caucus who refused to vote for him. But he did manage to get the six to merely vote present, which took them out of the calculus. This meant that he needed a majority of the remaining 428 members and he squeaked by with 216 or, as Trump would describe it, “by a landslide that some people are calling the biggest landslide ever”. Of course, the ever-toadying McCarthy thanked Trump for his support though it appeared that the renegades ignored Trump’s repeated pleas to switch their votes.
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In the US where guns are easily available, it is not unusual for young children to shoot someone. This usually happens because an adult has carelessly left a gun lying around where a child has got hold got it and accidentally fired it.

But in Newport News, there was an alarming report that a six-year old had deliberately shot a teacher in their elementary school.

The superintendent of the public school district in Newport News, Virginia, has called for increased gun control while condemning a shooting in which a first-grade student deliberately shot his teacher.

In a news conference, the superintendent George Parker said he was “disheartened” and “in shock” after the attack left a Richneck elementary school teacher with “life-threatening injuries”.
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The teacher identified as Zwerner was shot in a classroom and was said to have “some improvement” as of Friday afternoon, the Newport News police chief, Steve Drew, told reporters.

Police arrested the six-year-old boy accused of shooting his teacher.
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Under Virginia law, six-year-olds cannot be tried as adults, the Associated Press reported. They are also considered too young to be committed to the juvenile justice department’s custody if they are found guilty of any criminal charges against them.

Nevertheless, a juvenile judge is able to strip away custody from a parent of such a child and place that child under the care of the state social services department.

If the report checks out, this shows an alarming level of premeditation for a young child: to take a gun to school undetected and then fire it at the teacher.

I am one of those people who likes to go behind the scenes and see how things get done. If I join an organization, I tend to study the bylaws to make sure that things are done properly. This is especially true of politics. Most of the time when things are working smoothly, the process is largely opaque. It is only when things go seriously off the rails that the inner workings get exposed. And boy, these last two years have been a boon for process nerds.

We saw this with the the Electoral College fiasco that led up to the January 6th riot by Trump supporters. The whole process was laid bare revealing the potential for abuse. One good thing that came out of it is that as part of the omnibus spending bill that was passed last month, it was clarified that the vice president’s role in certifying the results was purely ceremonial, leaving no room for him to unilaterally reject the slate of voters sent by each state, as Trump and his cult members claimed.
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Kevin McCarthy has suffered six defeats in his attempt to get the 218 votes to become Speaker, failing each time by about 16 votes. The numbers have barely budged and it must be humiliating for him to have Democrat Hakeem Jeffries get more votes than him with a solidly united caucus.

After its fourth vote, the House has still not elected a speaker. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California won 201 votes. Here's the breakdown of each lawmaker's vote: https://t.co/wpkcBBHByH pic.twitter.com/69g57T4EJv

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 4, 2023

The sixth vote also gave him just 201 votes.

It seems clear that there is a hard core of Republicans who hate McCarthy with a passion and this is deeply puzzling to me because his whole career has been of schmoozing and cultivating relationships to get ahead. He really has no core principles or convictions, which are the things that usually arouses strong antagonisms. Jonathan Blitzer took a deep look at his political evolution starting from his early days as a aide in Bakersfield CA for his local congressman Bill Thomas and a California state assemblymen

In an [CA state] assembly dominated by Democrats, McCarthy faced a bind. Because conservatives outnumbered moderates in the minority, there wasn’t a strong appetite for compromise. Yet the Republicans lacked the power to pass legislation. Jim Brulte, who was the minority leader in the state senate at the time, told me, “When you’re the minority leader in the California State Assembly, you can only lead by sheer force of personality.” McCarthy distributed books (Newt Gingrich on politics), iPods, and watches; he planned Party retreats and organized weekly bipartisan basketball games at a Sacramento gym. He had presents ready for members’ birthdays and their children’s graduations. When Núñez, the Democrat, became the speaker of the assembly, he kept a binder with biographical information on his members. McCarthy paged through it once, while the two were chatting in the state capitol. “I have the same thing,” he told Núñez. “Except I have wedding anniversaries in mine. You don’t.”

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Republican leader of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy failed to get a majority of the members present and voting even after three attempts, so they adjourned until noon on Wednesday. In the interim, there is going to a lot of pleading, yelling, and arm twisting in an effort to get to the magic number of 218.

Frankly, I did not see this coming. I did think that the hardliners in the Republican caucus would defeat McCarthy on the first vote to show their displeasure but I expected the two sides to arrive at some face-saving compromise that would enable both sides to declare victory. But not only did that not happen, the vote against McCarthy increased by one on the third round.

There are 435 members in the body and the last election results split 222-213 in favor of Republicans. But one Democratic member from Virginia died soon after the election, which means that Democrats have only 212 votes and a special election to fill the seat will be held on February 21. It seems like a safe Democratic seat so the final result will be the same as before. But given the razor-thin margins and the rules for voting for the Speaker, this could be significant.
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