A Senate Judiciary Committee Report on Court Packing

Posted on by
1

With the Progressive-Democratic Party having gained a strong majority in the Senate, it’s useful to recall many of that Party’s politicians’ promises to stack the Supreme Court by adding as many as six Justices to it. That recollection makes it imperative to further recollect an earlier move to stack the Court and a Senate Judicial Committee’s near-unanimous rejection of the move.

This bill  is an invasion of judicial power such as has never before been attempted in this country.
…
It is essential to the continuance of our constitutional democracy that the judiciary be completely independent of both the executive and legislative brunches of the Government, and we assert that independent courts are the last safeguard of the citizen, where his rights, reserved to him by the express and implied provisions of the Constitution, come in conflict with the power of governmental agencies. We assert that the language of John Marshall, then in his 76th year, in the Virginia Convention (1829-31), was and is prophetic:

[Spelling and punctuation in the original] Advert, sir, to the duties of a judge. He has to pass between the Government and the man whom the Government is prosecuting,; between the most powerful individual in the community and the poorest and most unpopular. It is of the last Importance that in the exercise of these duties he should observe the utmost fairness. Need I express the necessity of this? Does not every man feel that his own personal security and the security of his property depends on that fairness? The judicial department comes home in Its effect to every man’s fireside; it passes on his property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not, to the last degree, important. that he should be rendered perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or control him but God and his conscience?

…
It is a measure which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.

That’s from a report by the Senate Judiciary Committee, with its strong-majority membership of Democrats—its 7 June 1937 REORGANIZATION OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY report, an ADVERSE REPORT, regarding President Franklin Roosevelt’s (D) court packing bill.

Unfortunately, those were among the last of the Democratic Party politicians who aspired to a measure of integrity and of country before party. Today’s Progressive-Democrats, demonstrated by their drive to pack the Court with activist justices who will view our Constitution only as a collection of suggestions, are interested only in Party power and their personal power within it.

The Committee’s report can be read here.

 

h/t Senator Ted Cruz (R) via his Going Further: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas

Referenda Weren’t Part of the Blue Tsunami

Posted on by
Reply

In all of the voting that produced the collapse of the Republican Party in the last week, there were some bright spots where the people spoke directly for themselves rather than indirectly by electing politicians to speak for them. The people passed a number of conservative-oriented referenda.

  • Iowa…voters approved a constitutional amendment to require a two-thirds legislative majority for raising income taxes on residents or businesses.
  • Ohio…voted to shore up the state’s voter ID requirement by putting it in the constitution.
  • North Carolina…approved a constitutional amendment to cut the maximum income-tax rate to 3.5%, from 7%.
  • North Carolina also approved an amendment on voter ID.
  • Washington state approved a measure.
  • Colorado is on a path to Colorado’s barring biological males from competing in girls’ sports and a separate measure banning gender surgeries on minors also is ahead.
  • Arizona is on a similar path to protecting female athletes.
  • Kentucky voters amended their constitution to prevent lame-duck pardons.

However, even that silver lining is deeply buried in dark clouds; there’s still this:

  • Colorado voters repealed the state’s groundbreaking Taxpayer Bill of Rights and may saddle themselves with a progressive income tax.
  • Washington looks to have rubber-stamped a millionaire’s tax.
  • Arizona and California said no to voter ID.
  • Montanans and Michiganders voted for new restrictions on free speech under the guise of “campaign-finance reform.”

And Again, a Reason

Posted on by
Reply

This time, it’s the People’s Republic of China’s decision to block Softbank‘s acquisition of the robotics unit of ABB. As the news writers correctly noted,

By barring the SoftBank deal, Beijing is sending a message that it doesn’t want the expertise and technology ABB has developed in China to help its rivals—especially one based in US ally Japan, which has been in a diplomatic war of words with China over Taiwan.

The PRC has no trouble stealing non-PRC business’ intellectual property, but it objects to intellectual know-how developed by a non-PRC business while it was operating inside that nation being repatriated and used or licensed elsewhere. This is, at best, cynically disingenuous. This is the nation pushing anti-trust excuses for blocking deals moving hard to maintain its own monopoly, here over robotics.

Just as I suggested in a nearby post about another example of PRC disingenuous obstructionism, Softbank and ABB should do the deal, regardless of the PRC’s position, and simply stop doing business with any business domiciled in the PRC and stop doing any other business within the PRC. That would render the PRC’s intransigence wholly irrelevant, it would strongly benefit the two companies’ shareholders and customers, and their example would encourage others to take similar steps.

Still Another Reason

Posted on by
Reply

Still another reason to stop doing business with or inside the People’s Republic of China.

Beijing’s antitrust regulator has yet to sign off on a proposed $53 billion merger between miners Anglo American and Teck Resources that was first announced over a year ago.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, or SAMR, is the only regulator globally out of a total of nine that hasn’t approved the deal.

The PRC, through its SAMR, isn’t objecting to the deal on anti-trust grounds. That nation just wants special consideration for itself for the copper output that would result.

Anglo American and Teck Resources should go through with the merger absent PRC approval and simply stop doing any business with PRC businesses or within the PRC, which would render that nation’s lack of merger approval irrelevant.

Blaming Trump for the Erasure of the Republican Party?

Posted on by
Reply

In most of the post-election analyses going on, a major theme is that it’s all Trump’s fault. Typical of that is the house editorial in the WSJ.

True to form, President Trump [R] is already blaming everyone else, but he is the main architect of this rout. He’ll say the Senate didn’t break the filibuster or pass his Save America Act. But neither would have saved the GOP this year, even if there had been enough votes to do either. He’ll blame Karl Rove and Texas Senator John Cornyn [R] for the shocking defeats in the Lone Star State, but failed Senate candidate Ken Paxton was his man—and his choice helped bring down Governor Greg Abbott [R] too.

The editors aren’t far wrong as far as they went, but they cast their analysis too narrowly.

Trump’s late season campaign rallies that were all “Yay me,” instead of touting the particular candidate and pushing to get out the vote for him/her, also were counterproductive.

Major contributing factors, though, were the Republicans’ Chaos Caucus in the House that blocked too many of the party’s priorities and the Establishment Republicans in the Senate (not only Thune) who were too timid to force on-the-record votes or otherwise actually to fight for the party’s priorities.

And too many of the candidates themselves, who kept arguing how wonderful our economy is on the national level (and it is), but who didn’t talk directly to their constituents about how they would help, explicitly, those constituents, most of whom weren’t experiencing any of that national wonderfulness at their local grocery stores, local gas pumps, or their local utility bills.

Republicans, if they’re to have any chance of recovery, will need to stop playing at the obstreperous loyal opposition and act like they deserve to be in charge. That will require more than just greater internal unity than the Chaos Caucus has been interested in. It will require, also, vastly overhauling what they use for their communications game and talk often and freely to their constituents—not at them—about those constituents’ problems independently of national conditions, and each Republican needs to lose his fear of specifics and talk to his constituents about what policies he’ll fight for that particularly address those problems.

Republicans also need to learn from the Progressive-Democrats and load up their own saps and use them. Not to smear and lie; leave those to the Progressive-Democrats, instead to call out their specific opponents and identify, with facts and specific outcomes, the emptiness of those opponents’ words and promises and those opponents’ policy failures.