Tag Archives: politics

Some Key Moments

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From the oral arguments regarding the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case currently before the Supreme Court. And my responses to them. Because you know I don’t lack for hubris.

Perhaps the most famous example of overturned precedent was the 1954 Brown v Board of Education ruling, which reversed Plessy v Ferguson….

Well, there was another, preceding case—the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dred Scott v Sandford, which needed a Civil War to overturn because the Justices on the Taney Court and later lacked the integrity, the morals, the courage to overturn the ruling on their own.

And from CJ Roberts,

If we look at it from today’s perspective, it’s going to be a long list of cases that we’re going to say were wrongly decided.

If those rulings were wrongly decided at the outset, of course they should be reversed. Wrong doesn’t become right through the hoariness of age.

If the conditions of those rulings no longer exist, of course they should be reversed. The convenience of the Court isn’t relevant to any of that.

Additionally, Stewart gave Roberts a way out by saying Roberts’ examples are settled.

And,

“What would you say to the argument that has been made many times by people who are pro-choice and pro-life, that the line really doesn’t make any sense—that it is, as Justice Blackman himself described it, arbitrary?” Alito asked Rikelman.
Alito noted that while a woman may still want to terminate a pregnancy after viability, a “fetus has an interest in having a life” both before and after.
Rikelman replied[,] “It is principled because in ordering the interests at stake, the court had to set a line between conception and birth.”

Rikelman evaded Alito’s question. The baby always has an interest—the primary interest in the ordering of interests—in its own life.

Finally,

…a Supreme Court that has undergone enormous changes and currently sits at a 6-3 conservative majority.

No, it doesn’t. At best it sits at a 5-3-1 majority.

A Union Strikes

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Buzzfeed News has been struck by the union that organized many of its workers.

“BuzzFeed won’t budge on critical issues like wages—all while preparing to go public and make executives even richer,” the union said… “There is no BuzzFeed News without us, and we’re walking out today to remind management of that fact,” the union said.

Another way of saying the same thing, without changing a minim of meaning is this:

“The union won’t budge on critical issues like wages—all while the company is preparing to go public and make the company and its employees even more prosperous. There is no BuzzFeed News without us, and we’re walking out today to remind management of that fact and to pay the vig. Be too bad if something was to happen to that nice company.”

Not Unless…

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…he can guarantee, also, a “No” on Lael Brainard. She, after all, was the only other serious potential nominee for Fed Chairman.

Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) wants a no vote on Jerome Powell’s nomination for a second term as Fed Chairman.

I disagree.

At least Powell is a devil we know and so whose behavior we have a chance to predict. Brainard, on the other hand, refuses to confirm whether she’s a capitalist or a socialist, forcing us to reject her on the risk that she’s a socialist. Alternatively, Brainard is unable to say whether she’s a capitalist or a socialist, forcing us to reject her on her incompetence.

Permanent Marks

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The WSJ editors cited Fed Chairman Jerome Powell as saying, on the matter of our current relatively high inflation rate,

…some people define transitory to mean “short-lived.” But at the Fed “we tend to use it to mean that it won’t leave a permanent mark in the form of higher inflation.”

This is misleading. It’s good that he’s not anticipating permanently higher inflation—if he’s right—but that’s unlikely in nearly any event—so far.

The permanent mark of importance here is the higher price levels that have already resulted from the present inflation level. Even when the inflation rate falls to a more normal level, those price levels will be unlikely to fall commensurately in nominal terms, and it’ll be a long while before productivity or wages or both rise enough to reduce those price levels, in real terms, to their prior level.

Politicizing Things

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Congressman and Vice Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Jake Auchincloss (D, CT) had an op-ed in Tuesday’s Fox News Online in which he complained about the lack of bipartisanship regarding and the politicization of the current inflation period—and blamed it all on Republicans.

Never mind the irony of decrying partisanship and politicization while blaming partisanly.

But the irony—no, the dishonesty—didn’t stop there. Here are just a couple of examples; he led off with them.

…game of chicken with the debt-ceiling….

Here is Auchincloss’ first move of partisanly politicizing the dire strait of our economy. There’s no game of chicken here; the Progressive-Democrats have the votes to raise the debt ceiling. All they need to do is to set their number for the raise, and then vote it into law. Auchincloss knows that full well.

Then there’s this:

First and foremost, that means working together to shift consumer spending towards services and away from goods.

Because the Progressive-Democrats, with their Big Government ideology, insist they know better than us ignorant average Americans what we want—what we should want—than we do. They’re looking to dictate to us what we will buy, with the money they choose to leave us after they’ve taken most of it via their taxes.

Auchincloss’ nonsense went on in that partisan, wholly political, vein.

This self-absorption, if not outright duplicity, is all too typical of the Progressive-Democratic Party.