Tag Archives: rights

Systemic Racism

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As my wife and better half says, “The tote board tells the tale.”

The title of the Senate Amendment might be hard to read (even after a Right Click|Open in New Tab maneuver), so:

To prohibit Federal funding for any institution of higher education that discriminates against Asian Americans in recruitment, applicant review, or admissions.
Amendment Rejected (49-48, 60 votes required)

All 49 Yeas were, without exception, Republican. All 48 Nays, rejecting this anti-discrimination amendment and by extension overtly supporting discrimination by race, were, without exception, Progressive-Democrat.

The amendment was to S937, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. Even though this cloture vote was last April, it’s remains as a shocking example of the systemic racism that is in a significant part of our nation—the systemic racism that pervades the Progressive-Democratic Party.

The Progressive-Democrats’ unanimous decision to kill an actual anti-hate amendment to a Hate Crimes bill is…ironic.

Union Political Spending, Union Political Power

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A couple of numbers illustrate the matter.

Organized labor spent more than $1.8 billion on political activity and lobbying in the US during the 2020 election cycle, according to a new study published by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR). The majority of the money spent by labor, $1.4 billion, came straight from union dues taken from workers who can legally be fired if they refuse to fund union activities[.]

Those two numbers also emphasize the need for even more right-to-work laws, laws that not only allow workers to work for an employer without joining a union whose members also work for that employer, but also allow those non-union workers to decline to pay any form of dues or tribute to that union.

Reverse Roe v Wade?

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That’s part of the goal of an amicus brief being prepared for the Supreme Court for when it takes up the appeal of the Mississippi case Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (the case itself concerns whether Mississippi should be able to prohibit abortions after 15 weeks).

A coalition of approximately 22 pro-life groups and several legislators collected signatures from more than 300 lawmakers in 35 states in support of the brief, ranging from Michigan State Representative Steve Carra (R-Three Rivers) to Arkansas State Senator Scott Flippo (R-Bull Shoals).
“We’re hoping to accomplish protecting life within our respective states as best as possible,” [University of Michigan Law School] graduate Jacob Weaver [the lead on the brief] told The Center Square. “Roe v Wade was abundantly unconstitutional. It’s now clear that it’s life in the womb, not potential life.”

Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Action Fund President, demurs.

Mississippi has said the quiet part out loud. The purpose of its blatantly unconstitutional abortion ban is to have the Supreme Court overrule 50 years of precedent and allow states to ban abortions. This is not what the American people—80% of whom support safe, legal abortion—want, and it would deny essential health care primarily to people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and people with low incomes.

Her first is both correct and a cynically done exaggeration. Mississippi has, indeed, said a quiet part out loud: that States, not the Federal government—including the Judiciary—should be regulating abortion access and abortions. There is no particular move to ban all abortions, though, except in the minds of a very few, and in the fetid imaginations of hysterical pro-abortionists.

Next, the fact that Roe has lasted 50 years only illustrates the duration of the error; that duration in no way legitimizes the error. Indeed, Roe itself reversed 150 years of precedent in which the Federal government, correctly, played no role in the matter.

Then there’s the business of polling. Johnson has chosen not to cite the poll she claims has produced that result. I’ll leave aside the exposure over the last 5 years of the utter reliability of polls generally. But aside from her claim, she’s assuming “80%” are evenly distributed across all States—or assuming the legitimacy of a Federal, one-size-fits-all status of abortion preference, so that “80%” of California or Illinois should be able to dictate to Mississippi or Texas the outcome, even if “80%” of Mississippians or Texans adamantly disagree.

No, with States in control of their own domestic matters, as our Constitution holds, the citizens of each State would be, as they should, the arbiters of their State’s abortion laws. Each State then will take care of its own minority populations—which would tend to better protect the lives of minority babies otherwise vulnerable to being killed in their mothers’ wombs.

Finally come Johnson’s two dog whistles: that abortion is health care and that LGBTQ+ might be denied access to abortions. Regarding the first whistle, there’s nothing particularly healthful for the babies in their being killed in the womb. Regarding the second shrill whistle, only biology, not “identification,” can make it possible for a member of the LGBTQ+ community even to get pregnant, much less decide subsequently to want to abort her baby.

The rest of the goal of the Michigan amicus is to restore, under the 9th Amendment of our Constitution, that right of individual States to regulate access to abortion and to abortion itself.

“The power to regulate abortion falls squarely into States’ police powers,” as it did for 150 years pre-Roe.
“We argue this depoliticizes the court and that it returns states to their rightful place in the constitutional scheme,” Weaver told The Center Square in a phone interview.

At worst, the Supreme Court should recognize current, realized medical capability. Roe is essentially a technology-based ruling, setting its abortion threshold to the point at which the baby is viable outside the womb—roughly the start of the third trimester at the time of the Roe ruling. Today’s capability brings that viability far earlier in the pregnancy.

“Hold the Floor”

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President Joe Biden (D) is pretending he doesn’t want to get rid of the filibuster.

There’s no reason to protect it, other than you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done. Nothing at all will get done. There’s a lot at stake. The most important one is the right to vote, that’s the single most important one.

So far, so good.

But. Because there’s always a but.

Biden referenced former Senator Strom Thurmond (D at the time) of South Carolina, who once conducted a 24-hour filibuster in a failed bid to halt passage of civil rights legislation in 1957.

And then he gave his game away with this:

The president reiterated his stance that lawmakers should be required to “hold the floor,” or deliver continued remarks in the Senate chamber, in order to maintain a filibuster.

What happened after Thurmond’s “hold the floor” filibuster? A straight party-line, strictly partisan vote on that bill. Just as would have been done were the filibuster abolished outright, only with a few hours’ delay.

The point of a cloture vote of 60 or more Senators agreeing to bring a bill to the floor for debate—even strictly partisan debate—is to force a measure of bipartisanship to legislation, even if it’s only a matter of some Senators from the minority party agreeing enough with the bill to debate it.

Requiring “holding the floor,” requiring Senators to speak to exhaustion, as the means of filibustering is no filibuster at all. It only delays the strictly partisan, party line, vote for some hours.

An honest Senate, a truly deliberative body, will keep the cloture vote filibuster.

Utterly Illegal

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And the Progressive-Democrats don’t care. They have the power, so they don’t need any stinking authority, and they’re going ahead: with censorship of what average Americans are allowed to say, even allowed to know.

The White House announced their efforts with Facebook to take aggressive action on problematic social media posts. The administration said they would work to flag and censor anything they deemed to be disinformation about COVID-19.

Biden’s Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy:

We expect more from our technology companies. We’re asking them to operate with greater transparency and accountability. We are asking them to monitor misinformation more closely.

Biden himself, through his Press Secretary, Jen Psaki:

“There are also proposed changes we have made to social media platforms, including Facebook….

And

We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation[.]

And overt spying on private citizens’ personal communications to facilitate the censorship, per the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Democratic National Committee:

…plans to work with SMS carriers to monitor text messages and dispel misinformation about vaccines.
“If you send a text message to a friend or to a family member or to whoever and it includes whatever they deem as misinformation that somehow you’re going to get a message on your phone from the government,” David Rubin of the Rubin Report.

And the threat, from none other than President Joe Biden (D):

Mr Biden was asked what his message was to social media platforms when it came to Covid-19 disinformation.
“They’re killing people,” he said. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that—and they’re killing people.”

Never mind that the censorship is a blatant violation of our 1st Amendment and of long-standing and myriad case law:

As recently as 2019, the Supreme Court reasoned “‘a private entity can qualify as a state actor,’ subject to First Amendment protections….” Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck (2019) …;
“When the private entity performs a traditional, exclusive public function,” Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co. (1974);
“When the government compels the private entity to take a particular action,” Blum v. Yaretsky, (1982);
“When the government acts jointly with the private entity.” Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co. (1982).

The government doesn’t get to avoid censorship by farming out its censoring to third parties.

And there’s this: it’s well established in Civil Rights law and Supreme Court rulings that private enterprises that are public accommodations (of which diners are a canonical example) may not discriminate, under the 14th Amendment, on the basis of race. It’s an easy extension of that “may not discriminate” to include 1st Amendment speech, and it’s quite clear that Facebook et al., have become, if they weren’t created as, public accommodations.

Us average Americans need to keep this blatant disregard for our Constitution firmly in mind in November 2022.

 

H/t Grim’s Hall