Tag Archives: regulation

Compelling Interest and Racism

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly decry President Joe Biden’s (D) race-based “equity” programs and diktats as taking our nation back to an ugly past.

By equity, Mr Biden means preferences for some racial groups over others to achieve equal outcomes.

And

Mr Biden sells his agenda as taking America into the future. But allocating government funds or privileges by race is a step back to an uglier past. … If applied on the scale Mr Biden hopes, America would become a nation of groups competing for racial spoils and defined outcomes rather than seeking equal opportunity for everyone.

The editors added this near the end of their piece, and here I demur from them.

Strict scrutiny requires that the government have a compelling interest for discriminating by race, and that it must use the least restrictive means to achieve that interest. If less restrictive ways can achieve the same purpose, the policy fails.

There shouldn’t be any strict scrutiny on such matters; the policies should fail on their face. There’s nothing in the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protections clause that permits Government-determined “compelling interest” to override our Constitution [emphasis added].

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

All of that plainly applies to our Federal government every bit as much as it does to each of the governments of the several States.

The Strict Scrutiny standard, as applied here, has been unconstitutional from the start and was an earlier Supreme Court attempt to duck its responsibility in applying our Constitution rather than seeking out excuses and methodologies for getting outside of it.

Government’s compelling interest is to defend and uphold our Constitution.

Full stop.

Rule By Law

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…and not rule of law, which our Constitution so strongly pushes. That’s what SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has decided to do.

The SEC announced this month that it will suspend enforcement of new rules issued under former Chairman Jay Clayton that subjected proxy advisory firms to the same anti-fraud rules as public companies and required them to disclose their business conflicts.

Just pick and choose the rules the Biden appointee deigns enforce. Don’t move first to change the rule, while enforcing it while it’s in force. Gensler Knows Better which rules are fit, and disdains the need for someone so awesome to submit his wishes to lesser masses who might impudently comment contrariwise to any change he deems necessary during such a rule change’s comment period.

Oh, wait:

Mr Gensler has directed SEC staff to consider revising the rules.

Give him a rule that better suits him. But he’ll still ignore the existing rule as beneath his dignity.

This is rule by law—which is another way of saying rule by men with the raw power to reign.

The Manchin Alternative

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Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) claims he never liked HR1, even though he voted for cloture on the Senate Progressive-Democrats’ effort bring that Federal election deform law to the Senate floor for party-line passage.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors rightly called out his sham of a compromise, to be substituted for that HR1…nonsense.

I’ve picked out just a couple of the items in Manchin’s offering to illustrate the sham. The first is a repeat example of Manchin’s personal fundamental dishonesty.

The [compromise’s] preamble insists that any voting bill “must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together.”

We’ve already seen how worthless Manchin’s word is. On that “coming together” bit, in particular, Manchin late last fall piously intoned, often, that he would support no bill that didn’t have input from “his friends across the aisle.” Then he voted, twice, for a unilaterally done reconciliation bill that spent nearly $2 trillion of our taxpayer money.

“ban partisan gerrymandering and use computer models.”

Here is an example of Party’s intrinsic dishonesty, and that of the DC politicians in general, for generations and across parties.

The only legitimate way to get rid of gerrymandering, and computers would be helpful here, but they’re far from critical, is to subdivide each State into rectangular districts of substantially equal numbers of citizens, and with no regard to geography other than State borders.

After all, in the eyes of our Constitution, there are no black voters or brown voters or Asian voters or white voters. There are no male voters or female voters. There are only American voters.

You Didn’t Build That

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The Progressive-Democrats are continuing their attack on American citizens being successful. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has populated her Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth.

The past several decades have shown with devastating clarity the marked imbalance between the financial fortunes of CEOs and workers….

Never mind that the last four years before the present Progressive-Democrat-run administration and Congress has seen a marked decrease in the disparity in the financial fortunes of CEOs and workers, as workers got bigger pay raises, in per centage terms, than have the CEOs, significantly closing the gap. Never mind, either, that that decrease in the financial fortunes gap also has been markedly potentiated by the historic lows in minority and women unemployment as those especially on the bottom rungs of our economic—financial fortune—ladder saw marked increases in their wages: they got actual jobs, they became workers.

Pelosi went on:

The devaluing of work has had a negative impact on consumer confidence, job creation and economic growth….

Never mind that the only ones devaluing work, and through that negatively impacting consumer confidence, are Progressive-Democrats with their government (not economic) policy of paying people not to work. Never mind, either, that Job creation has been so anemic under this Progressive-Democrat government that there are millions more jobs available than there are workers willing to take them—especially in the low-skill milieus—because Progressive-Democrats insist on paying those least fortunate to not work, to continue being the least fortunate.

Pelosi’s wonderful select committee? It’s chaired by Congressman Jim Himes (D, CT) and populated with Progressive-Democrats like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY), Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D, WA), Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D, OH), Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D, WI), Congressman Vicente González (D,TX), Congresswoman Angie Craig (D, MN), and Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D, CA).

It’s hard to find farther left members, even for the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Pelosi to Americans: you didn’t build that. You’re not going to, either, without Government.

An Example

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…of socialism’s control of private enterprise. California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has issued this diktat for how California-domiciled businesses must operate vis-à-vis the waning Wuhan Virus situation in that State.

Businesses were told by the state that they will have three options related to vaccines and mask mandates. Business owners can provide information to customers and not require anything at all. They can implement “vaccine verification” to determine which people must wear a mask, or they can require everyone to wear a mask.

Those three, and no other, options. Never mind that a business might wish, instead, to provide separate (not necessarily masked) seating for those not vaccinated. That’s not allowed.

No business decision to not ask at all a customer’s medical status regarding the virus. That’s not allowed.

No business decision to discriminate between not vaccinated by individual choice and not vaccinated by already having had the virus and recovered from it, and so not needing vaccination (another individual choice). That’s not allowed.

No business decision to do nothing at all, including not spending money on a State-mandated information campaign aimed at business’ customers. That’s not allowed.

No business decision to…. Don’t even think about it. That’s not allowed.

No, this is the socialist government dictating to private enterprise how it must operate. This is the socialist government dictating to private enterprise the government-allowed performance options.

Socialism: government control of the means of production. Government control of private enterprise.

Socialism: private enterprise isn’t private—it’s government enterprise.