Jerry Nadler Will Chair The House Judiciary Committee, For The Trump Impeachment Hearings

On Wednesday morning the House Democratic caucus voted to replace John Conyers as Ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee with Jerry Nadler (D-NY). The secret ballot was 118 votes for Nadler and 72 for Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). Nadler won not because of any of the usual Democratic Party identity politics bullshit but because he's the best qualified member of the Judiciary Committee and the most capable member to lead an impeachment investigation into Trump which is likely to begin early in 2019.

As soon as Conyers was forced into retirement, Zoe Lofgren swooped in to claim the ranking member position. The problem for most members is that Lofgren is corrupt and interested in leading the Judiciary Committee because her major Silicon Valley campaign donors don't want to see any anti-trust activities that could impede their drives towards monopolistic dominance. She plays ball with them and it would have been catastrophic to make her chair of the committee. Lofgren is right under Nadler in seniority. The best members of the committee, with very little seniority, are Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin. I'm sure the 3 of them will feature prominently in the impeachment hearings.

On Wednesday there was a demonstration of why Lofgren was so totally unfit for the job. Two reform-minded members of Judiciary-- Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and David Cicilline (D-RI)-- introduced, along with Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) crucial anti-trust legislation, the 21st Century Competition Commission Act (H.R. 4686), which would fund the creation of a new body charged with investigating the impact of corporate mergers and increasing market concentration. The representatives’ bill would model the new commission on the Temporary National Economic Committee that existed during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. The bill went right to the House Judiciary Committee where Lofgren could have easily put it on an endless backburner where she chair.

Ellison, the lead sponsor: "Monopolistic corporations have grown so big and powerful that they have hijacked our democratic process and our daily lives, leading us to a new Gilded Age. This sweeping bill aims to analyze all the ways monopolization has made our economy worse for working families, and help our government use existing antitrust laws to fix it." Jayapal agreed wholeheartedly: "Robust anti-trust laws help protect everyday people and ensure that hardworking Americans have good wages, and that businesses are incentivized to improve consumer services and provide competitive prices. I’m proud to cosponsor the 21st Century Competition Commission Act. If Republicans are serious about protecting Main Street, not Wall Street, they will join us in passing this bill to simply assess the scope of America's market concentration problem."

This is something likely to be voted on in 2019, certainly not before and will have to be signed into law after Trump has been consigned to the garbage pile of history. Although I did hear back from a very enthusiastic congressional candidate from Iowa, Austin Frerick, who told me that "My very first act of Congress will be to co-sponsor this legislation."