Bucket List Joe

President Biden Has 100 Days Left in Office. He Has Newly-Granted Supreme Powers WITH Immunity and No Political Consequences. What If He Were to Use Them?

Oct 12, 2024

Dear President Biden:

I have found myself thinking of you often over these past few days. About how we will remember your time in the White House, about what your legacy will be. Certainly, you will be remembered for your brave and selfless act of stepping aside, of elevating the person who could be and, if I have any say in this, will be our first woman President in this country’s nearly 250-year history.

Beyond that, what will the history books say about your time — about your journey from Scranton to the Senate, your tireless defense of the working class, your eight years as Vice President to our nation’s first Black president, the personal tragedies that you have selflessly channeled into compassion for others, or your record as the most progressive president we have had since FDR?

Some people are now calling you a “lame duck” president — but then it occurred to me today: You’re not done. You’ve still got 100 days left in office! And the Supreme Court has just granted you super powers — AND immunity! You don’t answer to anyone. For the first time in over 50 years, you don’t have to campaign for anything. You are the opposite of lame, Joe. And you are not a duck. You, sir, are the President of the United States of America, and for the next 100 days, you have tremendous power. The only people you have to answer to is us. The people who put you there. You have an extraordinary opportunity to make a whole bunch of things happen. Great things. Important things. With a simple stroke or two of your presidential pen, you can make life better for millions of people in ways you never would’ve dreamed possible. You will leave the White House a hero.

So I’ve put together a list — a Bucket List for Scranton Joe — of executive actions that you can legally take today or any day until January 20, 2025.

There is still so much left for you to do, so much left that you can do, and so much left that I know, deep down in your heart, you know that you must do, no matter how difficult it may be.

And the best part is, the items on this list already have the support of the majority of the American people. You’ll be doing the things they elected you to do. And what better note to leave on than that?

You want to help people, Joe. That’s your legacy. That’s the real Joe Biden.

And, did I mention — You have full immunity! No kidding! No joke! That’s not hyperbole! You can get away with anything! And what if anything means everything to the people?

Joe, this is it:

President Biden’s Bucket List for The Final 100 Days

1. Officially Declare the Equal Rights Amendment for Women (E.R.A.) as the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

On January 27, 2020, the state of Virginia became the 38th state (of the required 38 states needed) to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Two hundred and forty four years after the Declaration of Independence declared that all men were created equal (but only if they were, in fact, men who were white and owned land), women’s Constitutional equality was finally recognized!

Except it wasn’t.

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice refused to publish the fully ratified 28th Amendment to the Constitution, saying it “took too long” and now a few red states wanted to “de-ratify” it. But the Constitution grants no power to rescind a ratification (that’s why there’s a 21st Amendment [“Drink Up — It’s On The House!”] that repealed the 18th Amendment [“Alcohol is the Devil’s Demon Seed!”]). And the Constitution grants no power to set time limits on how long it takes to ratify an Amendment. It took 202 years to ratify the 27th Amendment. President Biden, for almost four years, you have had the power to order the United States Archivist to publish the now-ratified Equal Rights Amendment as the law of the land. Will women-haters try to sue to stop it? Well, of course they will! So what! Let ‘em. When does our side stop being so chicken-shit? 93% of the country believes women should have the same rights as men. You have the legal and Constitutional authority to permanently enshrine this Amendment where the American people overwhelmingly want it: IN OUR UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION!

DO IT TODAY! It will take less than two minutes! About the same time it took Lincoln to give the Gettysburg Address.

Be the hero to all women you say you are. I think even Anita Hill will light a candle in your honor. In fact, call her now and invite her over to the posting ceremony this afternoon.

2. Cancel All Student Debt Now.

You ran on the promise to cancel all student loan debts. Now is the time to do it! Break the law if you have to (remember — you have immunity!). You have made admirable efforts so far, but the Republican Supreme Court of Right Wing Catholics, along with the Republican Congress of Election Denying Traitors, keep trying to stop you. Now’s the time to go whole hog and just wipe away ALL student debt. And while you’re at it, take the advice of the American Federation of Teachers and fire MOHELA, the company currently under contract with the Department of Education that is one of the largest holders of student debt in the country. Better yet, don’t fire them, nationalize ‘em, and cancel all the debt they hold. You have immunity!

Everyone under the age of 40 who is saddled with this insane debt — debt that is unheard of and even outlawed in most other Democracies — these younger Americans will not only be sure to set new record numbers for Harris at the polls, they will fire up millions of bongs in your honor.

3. Cancel Medical Debt, too!

While you are at it, cancel medical debt, too! Americans owe $220 BILLION in medical debt to our corrupt, bloated, broken and exploitative health care system. Like student loan debt, these undue burdens that no other civilized country suffers from cripple our households and keep people living paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford rent, car payments and even groceries. You have some of the smartest minds in the legal world at your fingertips. What’s the wildest, most aggressive plan they’ve presented to you to cancel medical debt? Now’s your chance. Shortly before you ended your campaign, you pledged that ending medical debt would be a primary goal for your second term. Well, you have three months to go. Treat this time as your second term. You’ve got nothing to lose. And everything to gain from a grateful nation that will finally be able to realize that part of the American Dream called “the pursuit of happiness” because they will finally be out from under this crushing debt.

4. Close Guantanamo Bay.

Close the United States Military’s Guantanamo Bay Torture Base now. It represents a dark stain on America’s standing in the world. It is long, long past time for GITMO to go.

Shut it down.

5. Free Cuba, Free Our Souls.

Last November, an overwhelming 187 countries in the UN General Assembly came together — for the 31st time! — to demand the United States end our six decade-long trade embargo against Cuba. The only country that voted with us was… wait for it… Israel! Oh, and one nation abstained — Ukraine. No decent person can look at this and truly believe America is on the right side of this issue. It is time to normalize all relations with Cuba, end all sanctions against Cuba, end the embargo and fully recognize the Cuban people’s right to self-determination. And while you’re in Havana at the signing ceremony, announce that you’re also giving Guantanamo Bay back to the Cuban people since we don’t need it anymore (see above) because it’s quite obviously their land. The devout Catholic in you knows that what we’re doing to Cuba is wrong. Joe, free our souls of this sinful burden, do what is right.

6. Be Israel’s Best Friend, Stop the Slaughter.

How many violations of red lines will it take until you’ve had enough? How many times can Netanyahu flaunt your rules, ignore your advice, and spit in your face? He came to Our House, the People’s House, and spewed hate and violence from the spot where you normally stand. Mass carnage, mass murder, mass destruction all being committed in America’s name — with America’s bombs and America’s weapons and America’s money — all of which you sent him. Stop the slaughter now. Halt all weapons shipments. Halt all military aid. Demand the ceasefire. Put Bibi in the corner or in the timeout room and tell Israel to get its shit together, get to the negotiating table, and make a deal to end this madness, free the hostages in Gaza, free the political prisoners in Israel and stop this slaughter.

In May, your own State Department issued a report admitting that it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel has violated international humanitarian law — by using American weapons! In 1997, Senator Patrick Leahy conceived and introduced a law — now known as “the Leahy Law” — which prohibits the United States from funding and arming foreign military forces if the Secretary of State has “credible information” that this military unit is violating human rights. By continuing to arm the Israeli military after that report, the U.S. government is in violation of the Leahy Law. And do you know who is saying that we’re in violation of the Leahy Law? The guy who wrote the law! This past May, Patrick Leahy explained how our arming of Israel violates the very law he authored. We are funding a genocide, we are funding human rights abuses and war crimes, we are funding the breaking of international laws. And in the process, we are breaking our own laws! It is time for this to stop, and you have the power to stop it. It’s not anti-semitic. It’s not anti-Israel. It’s the opposite! It’s doing what any true best friend does: Tell you when you are effing up! And set you straight!

Oh — and it’s the law!

7. Back in the U.S.S.R., Keep Your Comrades Warm.

Similarly, the senseless destruction in Ukraine must end. Putin does not want to be Trump’s friend. In fact, Putin threw Trump under the bus yesterday by admitting that he did, in fact, secretly receive free COVID tests from Trump when they were most needed by the American people. Putin wants to be your friend, Joe. Cause who better to pull him out of this mess that he started with his illegal invasion of Ukraine than another president who finds himself in a mess involving the illegal bombing of a civilian population that the entire world is against?

President Biden, you pride yourself on your foreign policy knowledge and prowess. Use it. Get Putin to the negotiating table. You cannot end your presidency with America still funding these two bloody wars, one against the people of Gaza, the other with Ukraine trying to defend itself from Russian aggression. What greater way to close out your administration than to bring an end to these two wars! You’re the expert here, so do whatever it is you have to do because back here at home we have an education system we need to fund, teachers we need to pay, students who need a warm meal, a health care system that needs to be made universal — you get the idea. For my money, I think enough people have died. Let’s cut our losses and invest in the future. Russia, go home. Ukraine, you lost Crimea a decade ago. Mexico lost Texas in 1848. I wish they hadn’t. We’ve been stuck with it now, like, forever. They’re not getting it back. Shit happens. Let’s pick up the pieces and move on. No more killing. Thanks to you, Joe, Putin has lost many lives and much prestige. He won’t try this again anytime soon.

8. Empty Federal Death Row.

As a candidate, Mr. President, you campaigned on the promise to “pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.” You said that even the worst criminals on Death Row “should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole.” This was your stance. Now… it is your time. That law never passed, but you still have the power to do something else. There are currently 40 people on the Federal Death Row. They have committed heinous awful crimes. But still, Joe… who are we? The only other countries on Earth that routinely execute their own citizens are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and North Korea. Is that who we are? Really? Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, just 16 men have been executed. Three of them in George W. Bush’s first term and 13 of them during the Trump administration, all of them in the final 7 months of his disgraceful presidency. It was your campaign promise to end this barbarism. Commute their sentences to life without parole and let them live with what they’ve done. (Note: May I remind you that four out of the last five Popes opposed the death penalty. The second to last one called for its abolition, and the current one called it a Mortal Sin. That’s not a venial sin, Joe, it’s a MORTAL one. That’s bad!)

9. Free Leonard Peltier.

Mr. President, Leonard Peltier is two years younger than you. Mr. Peltier has now been in prison for over 46 years. To put that another way, three years after you entered the United States Senate, Mr. Peltier was locked up. I don’t think I need to tell you that this is a very long time. Think of all you have experienced in these past 46 years, Joe. What if instead of all that, you had just sat in prison the entire time? May I please refresh your memory on the facts of Mr. Peltier’s case?

Leonard Peltier, a Native American civil rights activist was pursued and surveilled by the FBI because of his political engagement. The evidence at his trial included conveniently altered details and a key witness who was coerced into testifying. Now, one of the lead prosecutors in Mr. Peltier’s case, United States Attorney James Reynolds, has written to you, asking for Mr. Peltier’s release. “With time, and the benefit of hindsight,” Mr. Reynolds wrote in 2021, “I have realized that the prosecution of and continued incarceration of Mr. Peltier was and is unjust.” Among those who have called for Mr. Peltier’s clemency include: Jesse Jackson, Bernie Sanders, Robert Redford, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Morello and Rage Against the Machine, the Dali Lama, the late Kris Kristofferson and Harry Belafonte. And Nelson Mandela. Joe, c’mon man — even Mother Teresa wanted him freed! President Biden, you know what you have to do. Now… you just have to do it. It will take less than a minute. Pick up the phone and buzz your indigenous cabinet member, Secretary of the Interior, Rep. Deb Haaland — who urged Biden to release Peltier in a tweet writing, “At 75 with chronic health issues, it is urgent that we #FreeLeonardPeltier.”

10. Pardon Edward Snowden.

Hey, Joe, do you remember back in the spring of 2014, you were Vice President and President of the Senate, and the late Dianne Feinstein, who had spent the previous nine months defending the NSA’s mass surveillance of American citizens, went public with claims that the CIA was spying on her committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and that it violated her 4th Amendment right to privacy? What did you think of that? Did you think that U.S. Senators should get different rights than the rest of the American public? That they should be safe from the government’s prying eyes — but that we, the people, should have no such rights?

Edward Snowden, as you very well know, exposed a massive scandal involving the highest levels of the United States government and its intelligence community. Hired as a contractor for the NSA, he saw what the vast majority of Americans never see — and when he learned that the government was spying on its own people, he did exactly the right thing. He told us. After Snowden’s whistleblowing, the NSA’s mass surveillance program was found to be ILLEGAL in court. Edward Snowden did this country a service. And for that — for embarrassing the United States Government, for exposing the illegal actions of the intelligence community — he’s a criminal? Let’s be real, Joe. Edward Snowden deserves a pardon. Like Chelsea Manning (whose sentence was commuted), Eugene Debs (whose sentence was commuted) and Daniel Ellsberg (whose case was dismissed), Edward Snowden made this country a safer, smarter and stronger place. He exposed corruption. He defended American freedom. That’s what America is all about. What would you have done, in his shoes? What would Beau have done? Just let the government keep on spying on Americans? No! Joe, you would’ve done the same thing because you love America. He doesn’t deserve prison, he deserves a medal. And you know it. Pardon Edward Snowden. Give him the medal.

11. Pardon Sister Carol Gilbert. And posthumously, Sister Jackie Hudson and Sister Ardeth Platte.

In October 2002, these three Dominican nuns dressed in white hazmat suits and broke into a nuclear missile site in Colorado. They used a hammer to bang on a nuclear missile silo loaded with a Minuteman III missile that was armed with a 20 kiloton nuclear bomb. They made the sign of the cross on the silo’s lid in their own blood and said a prayer: “Oh God, help us to be peacemakers in a hostile world.” Later, Sister Ardeth would recount, “Every movement of our body was a liturgy.” The three nuns were arrested. This was not their first run-in with the law. As members of the peaceful and anti-nuclear Plowshares movement, Sister Carol had previously been arrested at the Pentagon in the mid-1990s, and in 1998, they were arrested after attending an air show at Andrews Air Force Base and banging on a B-52 bomber with a hammer and pouring their blood on it. Two years later, they entered another Air Force base and put their blood on a fighter jet. I dedicated my 2001 book, Stupid White Men, to them, and Sister Ardeth would later become the inspiration for a character on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black. You see, the Sisters had spent so much time in prisons, that they took that as part of their calling, too. Sister Ardeth became a chaplain for all faiths behind bars, fighting the unfair sentencing of the mostly poor women of color alongside whom she served her time. Sister Jackie passed away from cancer after one of their early stints in jail, but Sister Carol and Sister Ardeth continued on. By 2017, they estimated that they had spent more than 15 years in total behind bars, and had been arrested around 40 times. Sister Ardeth died in 2020, with Sister Carol by her side. Sister Carol has continued their cause to this day. I don’t even know that she — or they — would want a Pardon. But you should give it to them anyway. And then, when Sister Carol immediately goes out with pardon in hand to continue her righteous lifelong protest against the bloodthirsty violence of our murderous and militarized government, you or President Harris can pardon her again. (Note: In the full interest of transparency, Sister Ardeth and Sister Carol were “my nuns” back in the 1970s and later worked on my paper The Flint Voice — when they weren’t being pursued by law enforcement.)

12. Ban All Spam Text Messaging (Including Political Fundraising Text Messages!).

Everyone hates these. The only people who like them are scammers and politicians. Weird combo, huh? Anyway, these messages are annoying, unhelpful and often harmful. These unregulated texts are used to scam our most vulnerable people out of their hard-earned money. They serve no good purpose. More importantly, if you were the President who successfully saved every American from being bombarded by this daily barrage of messages, we’d add your head to Mount Rushmore tomorrow (as long as you do 60% of the other things on this list as well.)

Finally:

13. Grant Clemency to Non-Violent Drug Offenders, Many of Whom Need Help and Recovery, Not Prison Time (People Just Like Your Son, Hunter).

Do I really need to say more, Joe? For the last 30 years, our nation has practiced a campaign of mass incarceration. You’re responsible for some of that, and I think it weighs on your conscience. Now, you’re seeing just a small glimpse of this up close and in your own house. What they did to your son is evil, Joe. It’s evil. And it’s no different than what’s happened to millions of sons and daughters all across this country. Those parents feel just like you, Joe. And you can help them.

The ACLU runs an ongoing nationwide effort — The Redemption Campaign — to free 50,000 people from federal and state prisons by pushing elected officials to use clemency powers in transformational new ways. You’ve granted many clemencies like this, Mr. President, but I’d like to challenge you to go further. Grant them all. Grant as many clemencies as you can. Order your team to work directly with the ACLU and then challenge every single governor in the U.S. to join you in this cause. The ACLU’s network of lawyers have focused on these 50,000 people in four large groups of unjustifiably imprisoned people:

People who, if they were convicted under current laws, would serve a lesser sentence than what they are now serving;
People convicted of possession offenses, regardless of underlying substance;
People incarcerated for technical probation or parole violations; and
Older incarcerated people.

Imagine how you would feel, Joe, if someone granted your kid clemency. Your good kid. Maybe he messed up. But he needs help, not prison. Imagine all of a sudden, someone told you that the President of the United States had reached out, and that your kid was free, free to get help, to get a fresh start, to be a good kid again. Imagine that.

C’mon Joe. I know it doesn’t look like it, but you’ve been around a while. You know what to do. We’re Americans. This is what we are built for.

You’ve got, starting today, 100 days left in the White House.

Make ‘em count. And for God’s sake, let me say it again: Don’t let the violence that you are funding and allowing against the people of Palestine become what your presidency will be remembered for. I know that is not the legacy you want.

So rewrite it. Today. It’s as easy as taking the cap off a pen.

Enjoy these 100 days! Rehoboth Beach awaits you!

YOU HAVE IMMUNITY!

Write to mike: mike@michaelmoore.com

Photo Credits: Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images, and The Dominican Sisters Archives Collection.

Michael Moore

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