Reflecting on the first five months of On The Ground Ypsi, and the future of this little city of ours

By Mark | December 7, 2017

[Ypsi community activist and Southside resident Bryan Foley, seen here in a photo by Doug Coombe taken at Parkridge Community Center, will be on a December 15 panel hosted by On The Ground Ypsilanti about “Ypsi’s rich past, and visions for a vibrant future.”]

Earlier this year, the folks at Issues Media Group, having identified our city as a “news desert,” set out to find a way to bring journalism back to Ypsilanti, and fill the void that had been left by the rapidly constricting Ann Arbor News. And, about six months ago, having secured financial contributions from a handful of local organizations, they hired Brianna Kelly, a freelancer for the Detroit News and Crain’s Detroit Business, who had just moved back to Michigan from Chicago, where she’d worked for the Associated Press, to tackle the project. Kelly, along with Concentrate editor Patric Dunn, then opened a small newsroom at Landline Creative Labs, and launched the online publication On The Ground Ypsi, which, over the past five months, has covered everything from the experiences of local immigrants and the urban gardens of Ypsi’s Kingdom Builders, to Ypsi’s homegrown comic con, Hero Nation and the controversy over International Village.

On December 15, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM, the On The Ground Ypsilanti team is going to be hosting an event at Ypsilanti’s Freighthouse, where, one imagines, they’ll be not only reflecting on what they’ve done thus far, but also engaging with members of the community on what they might do in the future, assuming they’re able to, once again, cobble together enough funding to keep the enterprise going. [The event is free and open to the public.]

At some point during the event, I’m going to be on a panel along with community activist Bryan Foley, Ypsi High art teacher Lynne Settles, and EMU’s Decky Alexander, where we’ll all be answering questions posed by former State Representative David Rutledge about both the current state of Ypsi, and where we see things heading… In preparation for the event, On The Ground’s Brianna Kelly reached out to each of us to ask what we thought the strengths of this community were, and what we think might be our greatest challenges and opportunities going forward. You can read all of our responses at the On The Ground Ypsi site, but here’s what I had to say… I think, had I had more time to consider the questions, I might have answered a bit differently, but this should at least give you a sense as to what to expect from me.

What have been some of Ypsi’s greatest strengths as a community?

“Ypsi has a few things going for it. It’s got a sense of place, which I think is more and more unique these days, given the great extent to which places, thanks to the growth of chain stores and restaurants, are beginning to feel the same. I think, when you’re in Ypsi, there’s still a sense that you’re somewhere special and different. It’s not like other small towns of its size where, in exchange for higher rents, they’ve sacrificed their identities. At least we haven’t really done so yet. And, more importantly, I’d say our people are clearly a strength. There’s a strong community here that’s willing to embrace good, new ideas. But, at the same time, there’s also a respect for our shared history, which is important. And I think people are generally kind. It’s a good place to do things. If you have a good idea, I’ve found Ypsi to be a pretty receptive place, and I think that’s a good thing.”

What are some of the biggest challenges you foresee Ypsi having to overcome in the future?

“I think how to grow responsibly, and with a sense of equity, is going to be probably the most difficult thing we face. I think growth is going to happen whether we like it or not. I think the housing market in Ann Arbor, as it continues to price people out, will continue to move people this way. I think we need to be aware of the things that I just mentioned – the sense of place and the community – and work to the best of our ability to protect them. We need to create opportunities for the people who live here. We need good jobs. And we need financial stability. But, at the same time, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice our identity or our people, and I think that’s going to be a difficult line to walk as we go forward. But, yeah, I think the battle to keep Ypsilanti open, diverse and interesting is going to dominate the next several years.”

What are your ultimate hopes for Ypsi’s future?

“I hope Ypsilanti continues to be the kind of place where I want to live and raise my family. I hope that it’s able to retain what I love about it, which is why we moved back here. At the same time, however, I think growth is inevitable, and I hope that we find a way to do it so that people aren’t left behind. I’d also like to see more community-wide conversations, in hopes that, collectively, we can come to some kind of consensus about what we want this community of ours to evolve into. And I hope we can evolve in a way that we all feel good about, without sacrificing too much of who we are in the process. I think it’s going to be difficult, though, and I don’t know how many communities have been able to navigate it well. I think clearly Ypsi’s going to grow. I know, from friends looking to buy houses here, that the market is changing rapidly. Prices keep going up and there aren’t really very many empty storefronts anymore. And it feels like we might be losing control over the direction in which things are headed. So my hope is that we can find a way to guide things in a direction that we can not only be happy about, but be proud of.”

[Be warned… If you follow the link above in search of the article about the event, there’s a chance that you will see a super goofy photo of me, which never should have seen the light of day. All I can say in my defense is that I was probably a little more casual about the photo shoot than I should have been, given that I’m friends with Doug Coombe, the photographer who took the photos. I can assure you, though, I will never curl up on a couch like a “sexy cat” again just because a photographer tells me to.]

OK, so here’s the reason I posted this… If you have the time and interest, I’d love to know your answers to these three questions in bold, as I think it would help me to know what others are thinking before I sit down to participate on this panel… Thanks… And do come out on the 15th. It would be good to see you in person.

Posted in Mark's Life, Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

I got to take the train from Ypsi to Detroit a few days ago, and, if we play our cards right, we might all be able to do it someday soon

By Mark | December 6, 2017

Last Friday, at about 1:30 PM, a train on Amtrak’s Wolverine line stopped on its way from Chicago to Detroit to pick up passengers in Ypsilanti. While it’s true that, back in late May of 2010, the President of Amtrak disembarked from a train in Depot Town and met with elected officials to discuss the future of regional rail, this, as I understand it, was the first time since 1984, when Ypsi lost its Amtrak stop, that a passenger train has actually stopped and picked up local folks in Depot Town… and, as I just happened to be one of the lucky ones who got to take the ride, I thought that I’d tell you about it.

Before we get into what it was like to ride from Ypsi to Detroit and back on the train, though, I think it would probably be good for me to preface this conversation by saying, “Don’t get your hopes up.” As longtime readers of this site know, we’ve been down this road before… Here, to give you some sense of what I’m talking about, is an excerpt from something I posted almost eight years ago, in January of 2010. The post was titled Update on the Ann Arbor – Detroit rail line.

…Remember the East – West commuter rail line that’s supposed to connect Ann Arbor and Detroit, with stops in Ypsi and Dearborn? Remember how the Governor said that it will happen before October 25, 2010, when her term comes to an end? Well, acording to a report issued today by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), they’re on schedule to see it happen…

Well, guess what? It didn’t happen by the end of Granholm’s tenure as governor. Efforts, however, did continue. And, in May of 2010, I posted here that we might see our first stop by 2012, which, as you know, also didn’t happen. Here’s a clip.

…(I)t looks as though even the scaled-back Ann Arbor-Detroit line isn’t likely to start rolling until 2012, at the earliest. Or, at least that’s Councilman Murdock’s assessment. And I know that I’ve said it before, but we really need to establish a grass roots lobbying effort to keep the pressure on our elected officials. There are tens of thousands of people that would benefit from a rail line connecting Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Dearborn, and Detroit, and we should start organizing. This is too good of an idea to let die…

And, to our credit, the idea didn’t just die. In spite of opposition at the state level, where elected Republicans did what they could to kill anything related to mass transit, especially if it had anything to do with the Obama administration, local folks kept pushing. And, slowly, over time, things got done, albeit not fast enough as some of us would have liked. Amtrak was able to buy back the tracks from the freight companies that owned them, opening the door to increased passenger rail options. Federal funding helped improve both tracks and crossings. And Dearborn, after having built a new station, got their stop. And, here at home, volunteers worked to get our Freighthouse reopened, as discussions began about where we’d build our platform… For those of you who would like to dive deeper into the history, here are links to just a few of the many conversation we had bak in 2010 and 2011, when talk of the possibility of a local train stop first started to heat up.

High-speed bus system to link Ann Arbor and Detroit, as precursor to passenger rail

One step closer to the Ann Arbor – Detroit rail line

Ann Arbor – Detroit passenger rail… Can Dingell deliver?

Should there be a Depot Town stop on the Amtrak line to Chicago?

And these conversations have continued over the past half dozen years… Not too long ago, on episode 46 of the Saturday Six Pack, for instance, we discussed the release of the regional transit master plan authored by the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan (RTA), which, among other things, called for a Detroit-Ann Arbor rail line with a stop in Ypsilanti, and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) between Ann Arbor and Ypsi.

This has, in short, been a long time coming. And we’ve still got quite a ways to go. According to the most optimistic projection I’ve heard, Ypsilanti, assuming we don’t hit any delays, won’t have an operational platform in Depot Town for about two years, as we still need to conduct an assessment of the platform site, finalize plans for construction, raise the necessary funds, and build the damn thing. The good news is, though, once the platform is built, the train will stop. At least that’s what Derrick James, Amtrak’s senior manager for government affairs, told me on the train, as we made our way toward Detroit. And that, I think, demonstrates that we’ve at least made some progress from the early 200s, when no one at Amtrak was talking about an Ypsi stop.

One more thing… When the train does finally stop in Ypsilanti, at least at first, it will just be the Wolverine line, meaning that it’ll be relatively useless for commuting into Detroit or Ann Arbor, going to see baseball games, etc. As of right now, according to a friend of mine who knows such things, the eastbound Wolverine line passes through Ypsilanti daily at approximately 1:15 PM, 6:30 PM, and 11:30 PM, on the way to Detroit. And, if you’re in Detroit, headed this way, trains depart at 6:30 AM, 11:20 AM, and 6:20 PM. [This past Friday, for instance, I caught the 1:15 train to Detroit, and got the 6:20 train back from Detroit.] So, you could go to Detroit for a while to check out a museum, have lunch, or maybe see an afternoon baseball game, but the schedule wouldn’t work for most jobs, and it wouldn’t allow for you to do anything in the evening, at least if you wanted to make it back to Ypsi afterward. That, however, is the ultimate goal… The ultimate goal is commuter rail, with multiple trains running back and forth over the course of each day, starting early in the morning, and running late into the night, connecting not only Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Ypsilanti and Detroit, but also Metro Airport, which would be incredibly cool.

Oh, and for commuter rail to work, not only would the trains have to run more often, but they’d also have to run on time, which, as of right now, isn’t always the case. For instance, the train taking us to Detroit this past Friday was about 20 minutes late, whereas the one bringing us back was about 30 minutes late. While this wasn’t a big deal for me, as I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be at a certain time, delays like this would doom a commuter service, or one that people were depending on to get them to the airport in time for a flight.

And, I should also add, in no scenarios that I’ve heard thus far would there be a “high-speed rail” stop in Ypsi, as we’re too close to the considerably larger stop in Ann Arbor. So you’re likely not going to be able to jump on a train in Depot Town and be in Chicago in two hours. You may, however, be able to get the commuter train to Ann Arbor at some point in the future, and then jump onto a high-speed train for Chicago.

So, now that I’ve tempered your optimism and enthusiasm a bit, let me tell you about last Friday’s trip to Detroit, which was absolutely incredible. Granted, the train was a bit late each way, as I mentioned above, but it was great to just sit and look out the window, not worrying at all about traffic, and then just stepping off the train on Woodward Avenue, in downtown Detroit. [I didn’t ride the QLINE, which runs up and down Woodward, but there’s a stop just across the street from the train station, on Baltimore Street.] While I didn’t time the trip out, my sense is that it was less than half an hour, from the time we walked on, to the time we got off, including the time we spent partied at the Dearborn station, as people got on and off. I did, however, time the trip back, and it took 37 minutes. [My sense, and I could be wrong, is that the train runs slower after dark due to visibility issues.] At any rate, it was faster than my car ride into Detroit the night before, and a lot less stressful. And, if we could make this a regular thing, I’d love it. I cannot express to you how right it felt to walk to Depot Town from my house, step onto a train, and be whisked downtown. It was really, truly incredible…

And, when we got back to Ypsi, and stepped off the train in front of Sidetrack – and I’m not exaggerating – there was electricity in the air. People were literally getting out of their cars, and coming out of restaurants, asking us what was going on. A young guy came up to me and asked me explain what was happening, and, after I told him, he said, “Who do I need to call to get this platform built?” People were seriously enthusiastic in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time.

Here, speaking of enthusiasm, is our State Rep Ronnie Peterson calling “all aboard” as the train rolled into Depot Town to pick us up.

If you can’t tell from the above video, almost everyone who took the trip was a politician. Joining State Rep Ronnie Peterson, were State Reps Yousef Rabhi, Adam Zemke, and Jewell Jones, who, I’m pretty sure, is the only one of the four to have been written up Teen Vogue. In addition to State Reps, we also had the Mayor of Dearborn, and a bunch of elected officials from the surrounding Townships, like Brenda Stumbo. And Ypsilanti was also well represented by City Council members Lois Richardson and Beth Bashert, Economic Development Director Beth Ernat, and Washtenaw County Commissioner Ricky Jefferson. [County Commissioner Andy LaBarre and Ypsi City Councilperson Pete Murdock were at the reception, before the train rolled into town, but weren’t able to take the trip with us.] And, in addition to all of the political folks, there were also local commuter rail advocates like my friends Bill Kinley and Linda French, as well as representatives from Eastern Michigan University, the AAATA, and Washtenaw Community College, and several business owners from the the Ypsi-Arbor Visitor and Convention Bureau board.

I don’t know who exactly was involved in putting the whole thing together, but my sense is that, in large part, we had Ronnie Peterson, Mary Kerr, the President of the Visitor and Convention Bureau, and Sean Duval, the President of Golden Limousine, to thank. [Kerr, among other things, organized a quick tour of Detroit for us, for which Duval provided the busses.] Peterson, however, was clearly the one running the show, publicly acknowledging everyone who had gathered for the event, and playfully reminding each one in turn that, when the time comes, they’d better be ready to invest in the Ypsilanti stop.

So, now what? Now that all of these elected officials and community leaders have spent an afternoon with representatives from Amtrak, traveling to Detroit and back, what’s the next step? How do we keep the momentum up, and ensure that we not only get a stop, but that we eventually get commuter rail in Ypsilanti? As much as I wanted this to happen before, I’m even more excited by the prospect now that I’ve experienced what it would be like firsthand. And I’m ready to fight to make it happen.

Posted in Ann Arbor, Rail, Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

Trump endorses accused pedophile Roy Moore, the Republicans fall in line, and we’re forced once again to acknowledge the darkness of the world we now inhabit

By Mark | December 5, 2017

When news first broke a few weeks ago that Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, had been not only accused of pedophilia, but also banned from a local shopping mall because of his aggressive pursuit of young girls, a good number of Republicans did the right thing. After saying that he believed the women who had come out with accusations against Moore, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “He’s obviously not fit to be in the United States Senate, and we’ve looked at all the options to try to prevent that from happening.” Over a few day’s time, Moore lost even his most diehard supporters, like John Cornyn‏ and Ted Cruz‏, both of whom withdrew their endorsements. The Republican National Committee then withdrew financial support, as McConnell urged Moore to “step aside”‏, and the head of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee went on the record saying that, if Moore were to win the race, he should be expelled from the Senate.”

Well, today, our President endorsed Roy More for Senate… Here’s how Moore announced it on Twitter.

That’s right. Donald trump has endorsed the man about whom his own daughter, Ivanka, said deserved “a special place in hell” for the way he systematically preyed on children.

What’s worse, though, is the fact that the Republicans seem to be falling in line behind Trump. The following comes from the Washington Post.

The Republican National Committee announced Monday night that it is reopening the spigot for Roy Moore in Alabama and will work to elect a candidate accused of sexual misconduct against teenage girls to the U.S. Senate.

The underlying facts have not changed in the three weeks since the RNC cut off Moore. In fact, new women have come forward, additional evidence has emerged and the candidate — who categorically denies any wrongdoing — has struggled to keep his story straight.

What changed is Trump’s mind. The president formally endorsed Moore yesterday after seeing polls that showed he can win. He came to identify with the former judge because of his own experience with the “Access Hollywood” tape last year.

“Go get ’em, Roy,” Moore said Trump told him in a call from Air Force One.

Naturally, the RNC gave the “exclusive” to Breitbart, which is led by Steve Bannon. The former White House chief strategist is campaigning for Moore again in Alabama tonight. America First Action, a pro-Trump group, announced that it will spend $1.1 million to help Moore ahead of next Tuesday’s special election. Trump himself is planning a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday night, which is just across the border and part of the Mobile media market…

If I had to guess, I’d say that Bannon, who is a long-time Moore supporter, convinced Trump that, with Mueller breathing down his neck, and the Republican tax bill still not signed‏, he couldn’t afford to lose another vote in the Senate, where a Moore loss would give the Democrats 49 seats. And, as you read in the above quote, it sounds like the Republicans are rallying around Trump, and coming to the support of Moore. McConnell, in keeping with this new direction, just said that we should allow the people of Alabama to decide for themselves who they send to the Senate. And Senator Orrin Hatch said that we should look beyond the allegations, as they’re from “decades ago‏.”

As for why the Republicans are following Trump down this dark path, one can only imagine it’s out of fear – fear that, if they turn on Trump, he will either come after them personally, or leave the Republican party to start a party of his own, which would ultimately lead to the destruction of the GOP… So, with that said, it would appear as though our Republican representatives, having stood quietly by as a Supreme Court seat was stolen, and an epic disinformation campaign was waged to pass tax cuts for the wealthy, have collectively come to the decision that they’re going to ride this out with Trump all the way to the bitter end.

I never thought it would come to this, but I actually like what former RNC Chair Michael Steele had to say about all of this earlier today on Twitter.

I think it probably goes without saying that we cannot allow Roy Moore to win in Alabama. As that’s the case, can I count on you to join me in sending a few dollars to Doug Jones, the Democrat running against Roy Moore in Alabama’s December 12 special election? Or, if you don’t have $5, could you at least call your Senators, wherever you might live, and encourage them to take a public stand against Moore? This, if I haven’t made it clear, is really, really important.

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Did Trump just admit to obstruction of justice on Twitter?

By Mark | December 3, 2017

The short answer is, “Yes, yes he did.”

Donald Trump just posted Twitter that he knew, when his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn left his administration last February, that the retired general had committed a felony by lying to federal investigators looking into the role Russia played in our 2016 election. In fact, according to Trump, that’s why Flynn was fired… Here’s Trump’s tweet, along with the response of Congressman Ted Lieu.

So, assuming Trump is now telling us the truth, this means that, when Flynn submitted his letter of resignation on February 13, Trump knew that he’d lied to federal investigators. Furthermore, it means that, when Trump took FBI Director James Comey aside the following day, on February 14, and asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn, he knew that Flynn had been lying about his communications with the Russians. So, when Trump, according to Comey, said to him on February 14 that Flynn “is a good guy,” and that he’d appreciate it if the FBI could just “let this go,” he knew that Flynn had been withholding information, and that the investigation into Russian collusion wasn’t, as he claimed at the time, “fake news” and “a lie”.

So, when Sally Yates, the acting attorney general at the beginning of the Trump administration, warned White House officials on January 26th that Flynn had lied to investigators two days earlier, we now know that this information was relayed to Trump, and that it’s because of these lies, according to Trump, that Flynn was asked to resign. What we don’t know, however, is why it took Trump more than two weeks to fire Flynn, after knowing that he’d committed a felony when he told the FBI that he hadn’t, during the transition, talked with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about rolling back sanctions that had been put in place against Russia during the Obama administration. [The FBI knew better, as they’d intercepted the call.] Furthermore, we don’t know why Trump would have pushed for the firing of both Comey and Yates, if he knew that the Russia investigation was legitimate… One can only assume that he wanted to kill the investigation as he knew that it would lead all the way to the Oval Office. And this, by the way, would appear to be supported by a report in today’s New York Times about comments made by Trump adviser K. T. McFarland during the transition, which would seem to indicate that Flynn wasn’t a rogue agent, but a loyal foot soldier working on behalf of senior administration officials, when he began conversations with Kislyak… Here’s a clip.

When President Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in February, White House officials portrayed him as a renegade who had acted independently in his discussions with a Russian official during the presidential transition and then lied to his colleagues about the interactions.

But emails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Mr. Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.

While Mr. Trump has disparaged as a Democratic “hoax” any claims that he or his aides had unusual interactions with Russian officials, the records suggest that the Trump transition team was intensely focused on improving relations with Moscow and was willing to intervene to pursue that goal despite a request from the Obama administration that it not sow confusion about official American policy before Mr. Trump took office.

On Dec. 29, a transition adviser to Mr. Trump, K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Mr. Trump’s victory. The sanctions could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails obtained by The Times…

One last thing…. Perhaps not surprisingly, the White House came out today and said that Trump didn’t write the tweet about how he’d known that Flynn had lied to investigators, but that it was written instead by his attorney, John Dowd, which would appear to be yet anther in a long series of baldfaced lies… One would hope that, at this very minute, Mueller and members of his team are confiscating Trump’s phone, and determining whether or not he was, in fact, the author of the tweet in question. And, if he is, one would hope that obstruction of justice charges follow soon after.

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Michael Flynn pleads guilty, sounding the alarm for Republicans to push through permanent tax cuts for the wealthy before their party dies

By Mark | December 2, 2017

Yesterday morning, it was announced that Michael “lock her up” Flynn, the conspiracy theorist turned foreign agent that Donald Trump tapped to be his National Security Adviser in spite of warnings from the Justice Department, had plead guilty to the charge of lying to federal investigators pursing the investigation into Russia’s involvement in our 2016 election. While it’s certainly significant on it’s own that the highest ranking person on Trump’s national security team has now plead guilty to a felony that could put him in prison for decades, what’s far more interesting, at least from my perspective, is the fact that the retired general wasn’t charged with more… because, as we all know, there was certainly more that he could have been charged with. Which leads me to believe that Flynn must have finally turned on Trump, Sessions, Pence, Trump Jr. and/or Kushner, giving Mueller definitive proof of criminal wrongdoing higher up in the administration… Here’s my initial reaction on Twitter.

And, here, from Harry Litman, a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, is the best takeaway of the day. “This is not a meet-in-the-middle deal,” he told the New York Times. “Both sides did not assess their risks and decide to hedge them with a compromise. Rather, as we’ve known for weeks, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, believed he had sufficient evidence to indict Mr. Flynn on a long list of criminal charges, including money laundering, tax offense and false statements. Mr. Mueller’s team, as is standard prosecutorial practice, presented Mr. Flynn with that list and helped him understand that his life as he knew it had ended.” So Flynn, lest you had any doubts, has been caught dead to rights, and he’s now agreed to give Mueller actionable evidence against others in the administration. There’s simply no other way to interpret this recent turn of events.

Had we been living in more normal times, the Republicans in Congress, having heard that Flynn had struck a plea deal, would have likely retreated to a bunker somewhere to discuss whether or not they’d stand by their president. Instead, though, the Republicans in the Senate apparently decided that their time would best be spent pushing through a tax reform package that would add $1 trillion to the national debt, raise taxes on the middle class, take health care from 13 million Americans, decimate higher education, and, through the elimination of the estate tax, pave the way for the development of a true American aristocracy… In other words, with their party in flames, instead of trying to put the fire out, and mitigate the damage, they made the conscious decision to invest every last ounce of strength they had left to pass extremely unpopular tax cuts on behalf of their donors… tax cuts which, by the way, the conservative financial magazine Forbes just called “the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.”

And every Republican in the Senate, even the ones like John McCain, who have made it a point in the past to say that they wouldn’t support legislation that violated the “regular order” of the Senate, voted for it, except for Bob Corker of Tennessee, who decided to jump ship at the very last minute, saying that he just couldn’t support a bill that would add $1 trillion to the national debt. [For what it’s worth, if Corker had any courage at all, he would have spoken up last week, when the bill was still in the Senate Budget Committee, and he could have actually stopped it. He, however, chose not to.] And this bill, for those of you who haven’t followed the news, did not follow regular order. Far from it… There were no public hearings. There were no debates. In fact, all 52 Republicans in the Senate voted against letting their fellow Senators read the new tax code before it came to a vote on the floor last night. Instead, they waited until just before the vote was to take place, and only then shared their 479-page tax bill, still covered in the handwritten edits of lobbyists. According to Senator Claire McCaskill, she and her fellow Democrats “politely asked to adjourn till Monday morning,” so that they could read and study the bill. They were, of course, denied. And, with that, according to McCaskill, the Republican majority moved on to, “blindly re-arrange the American economy in the middle of the night.”

Here’s an example, for those of you who have yet to see the bill, of those handwritten markups, many of which are completely illegible… But, of course, 51 Republican Senators voted to pass the legislation anyway, not even knowing what they were voting on.

For what it’s worth, when people rush legislation through like this, it’s not usually because they think it’s just so tremendously awesome that they can’t wait to see it in action. No, when legislation is shoved through like this, it’s generally because the party in power knows damn well that, if people were to see what was in it, they’d rally against it, like the American people did earlier this fall when Republicans tried unsuccessfully to kill the America Cares Act. And, in this case, the Republicans were also not only facing the prospect of a government shutdown on December 8, but the very real possibility of criminal charges being filed against their President, thanks to the flipping of Michael Flynn. And, with donors saying that, if this bill didn’t pass, the contributions would stop coming in, they apparently felt as though they had no choice. [Republican Senator Lindsay Graham had said publicly to members of his party, that, if this legislation didn’t pass, “financial contributions will stop.”] So, they did as they were told, and they crammed it through, like the good little corporate soldiers that they are.

Just to recap… The Republicans told us that this bill of theirs would not increase the debt. They told us it was designed to benefit the middle class. Trump said repeatedly that he would not personally benefit from the legislation. And, as we know now, all of that was a lie. But, it worked… The American people allowed it to happen.

I don’t want to hold out false hope, but it’s worth noting that, because of the way this was done, there’s still a chance of killing it, although it’s not very likely. Given that the bills which passed the House and Senate are considerably different, they now have to go through the reconciliation process, meaning that either the House will have to vote on the Senate bill, as it just passed, or a new compromise bill will have to be drafted, and then voted on by members of both chambers. And it’s conceivable, I suppose, that some people… especially Republican Senators like Susan Collins‏, who said today that she only agreed to vote “yes” once she was assured that there would be no reduction in Medicare triggered by the bill, which likely isn’t true… might change their votes.

So, I’ll leave you with this from Senator Kamala Harris: “Under the cover of darkness, Republicans passed their tax plan. But this fight isn’t over yet, as the Senate and the House tax bills will be reconciled in conference. Keep up the calls and tell Republicans you don’t want this #TaxScamBill: (202) 224-3121.”

Is it a long shot? Hell, yeah. But we can’t stop fighting, and reminding these Republicans that a vote for this bill is a vote for Trump, and a vote that will forever tie them to his disgraced, criminal administration. [You’ll find information on how to contact the offices of your elected officials here.]

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