John Steele Gordon

Business and economic historian

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

@stritenata @GettyImagesNews @JenniferJJacobs The president and the VP have their own details, whose instructions are, protect YOUR guy. Vance was just nearer.

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

@KareemRifai When I took international politics in college (many years ago), I remember the professor saying, "In the last analysis, 'international law' is what great states do."

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

Three Cheers for Billionaires 📰 @NewYorkSun

https://t.co/DkRVGYIFan

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

Will Zohran Mamdani Try To Reach Gracie Mansion by Scapegoating Billionaires Who Made New York City Great? 📰 @NewYorkSun

https://t.co/3xB9S6yHf9

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

Recession? What recession? https://t.co/PwuNvTZkC9

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

How Trump Could Impound Budget Line-Items To Gain Leverage Against Congress in Effort To Curtail Spending 📰 @NewYorkSun

https://t.co/IlLE6GFBtB

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

Chance & history https://t.co/8UtNVaedZm

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

Earlier today, a reporter standing outside the Senate chamber told me that, after four months of secrecy, The Firm™️ plans to release the text of the $106 billion supplemental aid / border-security package—possibly as soon as tomorrow.

Wasting no time, she then asked, “if you get the bill by tomorrow, will you be ready to vote on it by Tuesday?”

The words “hell no” escaped my mouth before I could stop them. Those are strong words where I come from. (Sorry, Mom).

The reporter immediately understood that my frustration was not directed at her.

Rather, it was directed at the Law Firm of Schumer & McConnell (“The Firm™️”), which is perpetually trying to normalize a corrupt approach to legislating—in which The Firm™️

(1) spends months drafting legislation in complete secrecy,

(2) aggressively markets that legislation based not on its details and practical implications (good and bad), but only on its broadest, least-controversial objectives,

(3) lets members see bill text for the first time only a few days (sometimes a few hours) before an arbitrary deadline imposed by The Firm™️ itself, always with a contrived sense of urgency, and then

(4) forces a vote on the legislation on or before that deadline, denying senators any real opportunity to read, digest, and debate the measure on its merits, much less introduce, consider, and vote on amendments to fix any perceived problems with the bill or otherwise improve it.

Whenever The Firm™️ engages in this practice, it largely excludes nearly every senator from the constitutionally prescribed process in which all senators are supposed to participate.

By so doing, The Firm™️ effectively disenfranchises hundreds of millions of Americans—at least for purposes relevant to the legislation at hand—and that’s tragic.

It’s also unAmerican, uncivil, uncollegial, and really uncool.

So why does The Firm™️ do it?

Every time The Firm™️ utilizes this approach and the bill passes—and it nearly always does—The Firm™️ becomes more powerful.

The high success rate is largely attributable to the fact that The Firm™️ has become very adept at (a) enlisting the help of the (freakishly cooperative) news media, (b) exerting peer pressure in a way that makes what you experienced in middle school look mild by comparison, and (c) rewarding those who consistently vote with The Firm™️ with various privileges that The Firm™️ is uniquely capable of offering (committee assignments, help with campaign fundraising, and a whole host of other widely coveted things that The Firm™️ is free to distribute in any manner it pleases).

It’s through this process that The Firm™️ passes most major spending legislation.

It’s through this process that The Firm™️ likely intends to pass the still-secret, $106 billion supplemental aid / border-security package, which The Firm™️ has spent four months negotiating, with the luxury of obsessing over every sentence, word, period, and comma.

I still don’t know exactly what’s in this bill, although I have serious concerns with it based on the few details The Firm™️ has been willing to share.

But under no circumstances should this bill — which would fund military operations in three distant parts of the world and make massive, permanent changes to immigration law — be passed next week.

Nor should it be passed until we have had adequate time to read the bill, discuss it with constituents, debate it, offer amendments, and vote on those amendments.

There’s no universe in which those things will happen by next week.

Depending on how long it is and the complexity of its provisions, the minimum period of time we should devote to this bill after it’s released should be measured in weeks or months, not days or hours.

Please share this if you agree.

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

Lloyd Austin’s secret surgery was unusual, but not unprecedented https://t.co/VnWxIJeej7

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

The rise and fall of US Steel https://t.co/lwCPk0ZB56

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

A potted history of impeachments https://t.co/iiP7gdkbDp

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

@RNCResearch My favorite high school math word problem: If the husband is 73 and the wife is 24, how much money does the husband have?

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

If the biologics are "non-human" the obvious next question is, "did they contain DNA?"

[Citizen Free Press @CitizenFreePres]

Nancy Mace from today's UFO hearing.

Non-human biological pilots were recovered.

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

"Yesterday's newspaper are used to wrap fish," to which every newspaper man through the ages has said, "Thank God!"

[Roger Kimball @rogerkimball]

He got a job at CNN

[RNC Research @RNCResearch]

“There were certain investigative steps we weren't allowed to take that could have led us to President Biden.”

— IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

Democrats throwing black voters under bus for new progressive agenda https://t.co/kqjNJHucxr via @nypost

Memo to the RNC: Read it!

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

Passing on by John Steele Gordon https://t.co/ykZk87wCff via @newcriterion

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

The last banking crisis and its architects, Dodd and Frank https://t.co/h9ZmMgUBIU

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

SVB was more interested in virtue-signaling than sound banking https://t.co/wIi71gGsCI

[John Steele Gordon @SteeleGordon]

200,000,000 cars in the US. That many EV's would need 100,000,000 tons of lithium for the batteries. Current annual world production: 82,000 tons. Total world reserves (economically recoverable with current technology): 21,000,000 tons. Total world resources: 86,000,000 tons.