The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[N.E. Brigand]

Here's an interesting short article at The New Republic about how the National Labor Relations Board's general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, is working to get "card check" reinstated. That's a method of union organizing that's largely been abandoned since 1969 in favor of shop elections (which are much easier for employers to influence) apparently due to an NLRB attorney misspeaking during oral arguments at the Supreme Court. He said that the NLRB had abandoned card check, but that wasn't actually true, and the Court didn't rule one way or the other on that issue. Two years later, the NLRB did officially decide to drop card check, but that means that they can decide otherwise now, and that's apparently what they're planning to do. There will definitely be challenges from the right. But Joe Biden has claimed repeatedly to value workers' right to organize, so his administration likely will do as much as they can to defend this new old position.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Biden administration was probably going to lift the mask mandate on flights soon anyway, so I think it's unlikely they'll appeal, but they really shouldn't let the precedent of Judge Mizelle's ruling stand unchallenged. Here's how ridiculous the ruling is: it says that masks used to prevent the spread of communicable diseases aren't covered by the law that gives the federal government the ability to regulate "sanitation" to protect public health.

(Decide for yourself if any of this background is relevant: Judge Mizelle was one of ten Trump-appointed federal judges who were deemed "not qualified" by the American Bar Association. She was all of 33 when she was appointed to this lifetime position, so she'll still be making MAGA-informed rulings after most of us are dead. She had no courtroom experience at all, as a judge or lawyer, at any level. No Democrats voted for her. She was confirmed *AFTER* Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and while he was actively working to overturn the results. Her husband had a position way above his experience in the Dept. of Justice during Trump's presidency -- and he now works at Jared Kushner's investment fund: the one that just received $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, over the objections of the Saudi fund's advisors. She clerked for Clarence Thomas. And one of her clerks, in fact the one who actually filed the decision, interned with a group now challenging other Covid-19 safety measures (though not before Judge Mizelle, as far as I know).)

Today the Centers for Disease Control asked the Department of Justice to appeal the ruling "to protect CDC's public health authority" without regard to whether or not the CDC finds that the previous (and now blocked) mask mandate should be extended.

I think that makes sense. Judge Mizelle's ruling, if taken as precedent, could lead to many deaths in a future pandemic, and the government needs to go on the record making it clear how dangerous her analysis is.

[N.E. Brigand]

One of these conservative men is not Black, and another of these conservative men is not alive (and Donald Trump played a part in his death).



And the man who is arguably the most prominent Black conservative is entirely absent from this list!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The Biden administration was probably going to lift the mask mandate on flights soon anyway, so I think it's unlikely they'll appeal, but they really shouldn't let the precedent of Judge Mizelle's ruling stand unchallenged. Here's how ridiculous the ruling is: it says that masks used to prevent the spread of communicable diseases aren't covered by the law that gives the federal government the ability to regulate "sanitation" to protect public health.

(Decide for yourself if any of this background is relevant: Judge Mizelle was one of ten Trump-appointed federal judges who were deemed "not qualified" by the American Bar Association. She was all of 33 when she was appointed to this lifetime position, so she'll still be making MAGA-informed rulings after most of us are dead. She had no courtroom experience at all, as a judge or lawyer, at any level. No Democrats voted for her. She was confirmed *AFTER* Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and while he was actively working to overturn the results. Her husband had a position way above his experience in the Dept. of Justice during Trump's presidency -- and he now works at Jared Kushner's investment fund: the one that just received $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, over the objections of the Saudi fund's advisors. She clerked for Clarence Thomas. And one of her clerks, in fact the one who actually filed the decision, interned with a group now challenging other Covid-19 safety measures (though not before Judge Mizelle, as far as I know).)

Today the Centers for Disease Control asked the Department of Justice to appeal the ruling "to protect CDC's public health authority" without regard to whether or not the CDC finds that the previous (and now blocked) mask mandate should be extended.

I think that makes sense. Judge Mizelle's ruling, if taken as precedent, could lead to many deaths in a future pandemic, and the government needs to go on the record making it clear how dangerous her analysis is.

The risk of appealing is that if they lose (which I think is likely, particularly if it eventually goes to the SCOTUS) it will establish a far more binding precedent. Still, I think they need to try.

[RoseMorninStar]

I think it was awful that the lifting of the mandate applied to flights that were already in progress. There may have been compromised people on the flights or children too young for the vaccine.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yes, this ruling is likely to lead to at least some people getting sick (or maybe even dying) who otherwise wouldn't have. On a more mundane level: supposing you are immuno-compromised and scheduled a trip so that you would return before the CDC was scheduled to lift the mask mandate. Now you either have to risk flying among the unmasked, or you have to, for instance, spend the additional cost to rent a car to return home.

Proposed: the U.S. legal system should be changed to allow people in such situations to sue judges who do this sort of thing to them.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I assume that you are saying that despite actually understanding what utter chaos and disaster that would cause.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yes. While I do sometimes chafe at both the idea of judicial supremacy and of the prohibition on non-retroactive judgements, I also, as I noted last night in the 2022 election thread, see how such precedents and norms help stave off an even more dangerous anarchy. We live in a fallen world, and often there are wrongs that cannot be righted. (Inigo Montoya: "Offer me everything I ask for.") But I do wish that at least people would say so forthrightly. Do I recall correctly that in one of the Muslim ban cases, Justice Roberts wouldn't just come out and admit that Korematsu was bad law and that the Court had made a dreadful error in that decision, even though he clearly knows that to be true? I was glad today to see Justice Gorsuch, of all people (although it's also in keeping with his decision about tribal law a year or two ago), in his concurrence agreeing that residents of Puerto Rico are not entitled to Supplemental Security Income, apply a little critical race theory when he said that the Insular cases were decided on racist grounds and should be overturned.

- - - - - - - - - -
On a completely unrelated note, I have to say, although it's much brighter scene, your trees remind me a little of Tolkien's Taur-nu-Fuin drawing.

[RoseMorninStar]

It will help that people who choose to wear masks can still do so (compromised/disease-wise). I continue to wear mine in public although few do so here. There is more awareness associated with masking than there was before the pandemic.

[N.E. Brigand]

Florida's Republican governor, Ron De Santis, has just signed into law a bill that dissolves the company town where Walt Disney World is located.

The law is nominally intended to punish Disney for lobbying against Florida's recently-passed so-called "don't say gay" bill.

Ironically, the "punishment" will actually reduce Disney's taxes by more than $100 million and will raise other Floridians' taxes by $1 billion.

The new law doesn't actually take effect until June 2023, so what's probably going to happen is that a new bill repealing this one will be quietly passed early next year.

[RoseMorninStar]

I'm thinking Disney lawyers will have a thing or two to say about this agreement which has
been in place for over 50 years. It also sends a message to businesses not to make agreements with the State of Florida.

[N.E. Brigand]

First-term U.S. Congressman and Republican from North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn:



First-term U.S. Congressman and Republican from North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn:



To be very clear: I think there's absolutely nothing wrong in those pictures (published in this story at Politico.)

But does Cawthorn agree with me?

Do his Republican colleagues, who have regularly complained about "drag queen story hour"?

(Cawthorn was also in the news recently for driving erratically with an expired license and for claiming that his fellow members of Congress participate in cocaine-fueled orgies.)

[N.E. Brigand]

A senior writer at the conservative National Review delivers exactly the message that Texas's governor, Dan Abbott, wants Americans to be repeating:

(image of tweet mocking the White House press secretary for saying that Texas's governor was causing supply chaing delays)

But the White House is correct!

Even Texas's Agricultural Commissioner, Sid Miller, who is endorsed by Donald Trump, says that Abbott's "enhanced safety inspections" on trucks entering Texas from Mexico are a "misguided policy" that "is stopping food from getting to grocery store shelves and, in many cases, causing food to rot in trucks—many of which are owned by Texas and other American companies. It is simply political theater."

Abbott has relented arguably by violating the U.S. Constitution. He signed an agreement with the governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo León: Texas will end its new safety inspections and Nuevo León will ste up security on its side of the border. But here's Section 10 of Article I of the Constiution:

Section 10: Powers Denied to the States ....

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

But I don't know what the enforcement mechanisms or penalties are for breaking this particular law.

A Washington Post writer notes that "Governor Greg Abbott's 'enhanced' truck inspections turned up zero drugs or migrants, but cost Texas consumers and businesses an estimated $4.2 billion. Delays resulted in $240 million in spoiled produce alone."

[N.E. Brigand]

Today, President Joe Biden pardoned three individuals of federal crimes and commuted the sentences of seventy-five others. All of the commutations and two of of the pardons were for non-violent drug crimes. The third pardon was of a former Secret Service agent (now 86) convicted in 1964 of trying to sell a classified file: it appears he was railroaded in retaliation for reporting on racist behavior in the agency (he was the first African American assigned to protective duty).

At this point, April 26 in the second year of a presidency (or by the 462nd day of a presidency for those presidents who didn't take office on a January 20th), here's how many pardons and commutations had been issued by Biden's predecessors (source):

>>President Donald Trump -- 3 pardons, 1 commutation
>>President Barack Obama -- 0 pardons, 0 commutations
>>President George W. Bush -- 0 pardons, 0 commutations
>>President Bill Clinton -- 0 pardons, 0 commutations
>>President George H.W. Bush -- 9 pardons, 1 commutation
>>President Ronald Reagan -- 52 pardons, 2 commutations
>>President Jimmy Carter -- 148 pardons, 4 commutations
>>President Gerald Ford -- 160 pardons, 8 commutations
>>President Richard Nixon -- 82 pardons, 14 commutations

That government website appears not to have statistics for presidents before Nixon, but the list above goes back 53 years.

Here's a curious thing that caught my eye as I scanned the names of people granted clemency:

--The first person pardoned by Gerald Ford in 1974 was Richard Nixon, who had resigned one month earlier due to his role covering up the Watergate break-in.

--The first person whose sentence was commuted by Jimmy Carter in 1977 was G. Gordon Liddy, who led the Watergate break-in.

--The first person pardoned by Ronald Reagan in 1981 was Deep Throat! That is to say, Reagan pardoned former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt and presumably had no awareness of Felt's secret identity as the informant who was so crucial to Washington Post reporting on Watergate. Felt had been convicted in 1980 of violating the civil rights of members of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s when he ordered agents to break into their homes to search for bombs.

But more to the point for this thread, I'd like to note and expand upon the argument being made here by writer Magdi Semrau.

Donald Trump's first six acts of clemency (including the four referenced above) all seemed to be at least somewhat politically or personally motivated:

(1) In August 2017, Trump pardoned the racist and corrupt Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, a hero of the right for his harsh anti-immigration stance who had been convicted for contempt of court just one month earlier.

(2) In December 2017, Trump commuted the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, the owner of a large meat-packing plant who had been convicted on fraud charges in 2009 and sentenced to serve 25 years in prison and make restitution of more than $25 million. Rubashkin was also set to have a second trial in 2009 on more than 70 charges of having hired illegal immigrants, but after Rubashkin's conviction for fraud, prosecutors asked for the case to be dismissed on the grounds that it would be a waste of time and money because a second conviction would not add to Rubashkin's sentence. (In the meantime, Rubashkin's company was also found in state court to have illegally hired underage workers.) However, there was some appearance of bias against Rubashkin by the judge, and some civil rights groups, while not disputing Rubashkin's guilt, took up his case on procedural grounds (the Eighth Circuit turned down his request for a new trial and the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal). A number of elected officials from both parties asked the Obama administration for clemency, and when Trump took office, his friend Alan Dershowtiz personally asked Trump to commute Rubashkin's sentence.

(3) In March 2018, Trump pardoned Kristian Saucier, a former Navy sailor convicted in 2016 of having taken photographs of classified portions of a nuclear submarine in 2009; he had been sentenced to one year in prison and had been released by the time of his pardon. Both at his sentencing hearing in 2016 and in an appearance on Fox News in 2018, Saucier complained that Hillary Clinton had not been jailed for what he claimed was her similar behavior in mishandling official emails as Secretary of State. Trump himself had also made this comparison during the 2016 presidential campaign.

(4) In April 2018, Trump pardoned Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted for crimes related to his having leaked the covert identify of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer, which he had done in 2003 (either at the orders of Cheney or of Cheney's boss, George W. Bush) in order to punish Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was undermining the Bush administration's phony narrative about Iraq acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

(5) In May 2018, in something of a stunt, Trump pardoned the famous and long-deceased early 20th century boxer, Jack Johnson (he died four days before Trump was born in 1946), who had been convicted in 1912 of the Mann Act, which criminalized "transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes," basically because Johnson was African American and the women with whom he consorted were White.

(6) Also in May 2018, Trump pardoned the conservative activist Dinesh D'Souza, who had violated campaign finance laws in 2012 with a straw donor scheme in which he reimbursed two people $5,000 each for contributions they made to the failed New York senate campaign of Wendy Long.

But as Semrau notes, after these perhaps somewhat unsavory moves, Trump's seventh act of clemency, in June 2018, although motivated in part by the urgings of professional celebrity Kim Kardashian and his son-in-law Jared Kushner (as well as some politicians in both parties), felt different: he commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who had been convicted of multiple drug trafficking charges.

Like most non-violent offenders, Johnson's commutation seems deserved, but no more so than were the pardons and commutations issued to the 78 people granted clemency by Biden today. Also, as far as we know, Biden hasn't pardoned anyone yet based on personal connections. And as shown above, Biden has pardoned more people at this point than any president since Jimmy Carter had done.

Yet if you look back at the headlines Trump received then and compare to the press Biden is getting today, there does seem to be a difference. While Trump received much praise in the media for pardoning Johnson, instead of Biden receiving 78 times as much good press for his actions today, many stories seem pretty guarded in tone, indicating, for example, that Biden is merely making tiny steps toward undoing policies that he enacted as a senator with the tough-on-crime bills that were passed in the early 1990s.

Mind you, those Clinton-era laws had a lot of bipartisan support at the time, including more than a little from Republicans! But as Semrau says, it's as if the mainstream media feels like this:

We expect worthy acts from Democrats. We must therefore add caveats about how a given worthy act was insufficient. (The caveats are, again, often justified.)

In contrast, we expect *bad* acts from Republicans. When they engage in a moment of non-evil, they are to be praised for days.

Anne Marie Johnson was later granted a full pardon by Trump, at about the same time that she spoke at the Republican National Convention where Trump was nominated for a second term in 2020. She praised his "compassion" and praised the Trump White House's work for "criminal justice reform."

But I'll bet many voices on the right will claim Biden is "soft on crime."

[RoseMorninStar]

But that is the .. erm.. 'brilliance' of Trump. He knows how to play the media and get attention and take personal credit and work it to his personal advantage. That is his motivation. It is always all about him and how it reflects on him personally. I doubt that is what is on Biden's mind.

[N.E. Brigand]

The world's second-wealthiest man got a lot of attention today after posting this image on the social media site he is in the process of buying:



In response, various commentators have noted other ways of looking at U.S. political positions:









That last one comes from a study called DW-Nominate, and I would note this essay by Matt Yglesias from early 2021 that shows how that analysis is arguably not as useful at describing politicians' positions as it was ten years ago. For example, DW-Nominate finds the four members of "The Squad" -- who are avowedly progressive -- to be among the most economically moderate members of the Democratic Congress, so something has clearly gone wrong with the methodology. Yglesias argues that in traditional terms, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party moved a little to the left over the past decade, as the whole country shifted left, but also the Republican Party went nuts in ways that are harder to quantify.

(To make sure this post stays on topic for this thread, Yglesias also writes in that essay about Joe Biden's decision in the 2020 Democratic primaries to change his long-held public position regarding the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding to abortion providers: "I think feminist groups are absolutely correct on this, and Medicaid and hypothetical future government health programs should fund abortion services. But whether Biden takes that position or not, it’s nowhere near happening legislatively. And it’s very unpopular [i.e., the U.S. public supports this funding ban]. Also, the Republican Party is radicalizing against democracy, so I think Democrats should try really hard to win elections and put themselves in a position to redress the gerrymandering, ballot access issues, and Senate malapportionment that have left us on the brink of catastrophe. That means adopting popular positions rather than unpopular ones and broadening the tent rather than narrowing it.")

In general, I wish that all such surveys listed a bunch of issues and identified just what the possible positions were over time.

For example, what were the left and right positions on gun control in the 1950s?

Or to talk specifically about today's claim: what were Musk's slightly liberal positions in 2008 that are now slightly conservative positions?

Edit #1: See also Philip Bump's analysis in the Washington Post.

Edit #2: And here James Surowiecki points out that Republican have clearly moved to the right on immigration (including legal immigration) and climate change.

[N.E. Brigand]

To be very clear: I think there's absolutely nothing wrong in those pictures (published in this story at Politico.) But does Cawthorn agree with me? Do his Republican colleagues, who have regularly complained about "drag queen story hour"?

(Cawthorn was also in the news recently for driving erratically with an expired license and for claiming that his fellow members of Congress participate in cocaine-fueled orgies.)

There have been so many negative stories about Madison Cawthorn in the past week -- some of them (including the one I linked to above) almost certainly leaked by his fellow Republicans -- that I suspect he was telling the truth about their cocaine-fueled orgies.

Edited to add: I missed the story almost two weeks ago about Cawthorn having closed all but one of his offices in his district.

[RoseMorninStar]

It seems like he is intentionally seeking the most outrageous publicity one can possibly attain.. and yet still win. It's bizarre.

[N.E. Brigand]

He's 26, and yesterday he complained that his critics are "just digging stuff up from my early 20s to smear me."

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. added 428,000 jobs in April, surpassing the median estimate for today's report by more than 10%.

However, revisions to the two previous months found that February was revised down by about 5% (March was basically unchanged), so the overall unemployment rate holds stead at 3.6%. Just for reference: it was higher than that in every month from January 1970 to February 2019. Anyone younger than 50 years old had never seen a jobs market this strong until very recently.

Edited to add: 428,000 new workers is more than was added in any month during Barack Obama's or Donald Trump's administrations prior to the pandemic. And given that the unemployment rate is so low, I'm not sure we can still credit this growth to the pandemic rebound. There are about 11 million open positions right now, so it seems there far more jobs available than there are people looking for work.