Obstructing the Judiciary

Justice too long delayed is justice denied.

- Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail

The President of the United States is responsible for nominating judges to the Federal judiciary.  It is the Senate's responsibility to confirm or deny these nominations.  With just 7 months remaining before the 2014 midterm elections, there are 86 vacancies in the Federal courts - roughly 10% of the total Federal judgeships.  Nearly all vacancies have resulted from Republicans blocking Obama nominees in an attempt  to deny the Democratic President his choices and ensure continued Republican control of the judicial branch.  The obstructionism on presidential nominees to Federal judgeships is unprecedented in recent history.


Harry Reid was able to change the Senate rules to prevent filibustering of these nominees to the federal courts.  Should the Republicans gain control of the Senate in 2014, this will no longer matter.  You can rest assured that any Obama nominee sent to a Republican Senate will not be confirmed.  Just look at the decisions of the currently composed Supreme Court to see what the future holds.  Democracy-challenged supporters of the corporations and the wealthy, appointed by Republican Presidents, fill most of the seats on the Court and they've brought us such decisions as Citizens United and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act.  Who can ever forget the Republican majority Supreme Court stopping the vote recount in Florida and handing Bush the Presidency even though Gore had garnered more than a half-million more popular votes nationally?


The Court's favorable ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act was still detrimental to the "non-ruling" class.  By making the expansion of Medicaid optional, they effectively eliminated this option for low-wage-earners in most Republican-controlled states.  There has been some movement but as of now, there are still 25 states not moving forward with the ACA's provision for Medicaid expansion.  In the end, those finally denied affordable medical insurance will be in the millions.




The Roberts' corporate court sided with the Chamber of Commerce in 13 of 16 cases during the 2009-2010 term.  Then, in the 2010-2011 term, "the Roberts Court cut down an exemplary Arizona statute that leveled the financial playing field, rejected a [gender discrimination] suit by 1.6 million women against...Wal-Mart, shielded the makers of drugs from lawsuits by patients who had been harmed, smothered lawsuits against mutual fund cheaters and liars, and disallowed a suit by a death row inmate even though the prosecution failed to turn over exculpating evidence." [Reno News & Review, "Top 10 Worst Supreme Court Decisions", March 2012]



Currently there are 49 nominees pending for the 86 vacant judgeships.  Mr. President, please wake up and bring forward nominations for the remaining 37 vacancies before the mid-terms. Senator Reid, please put these nominations on a fast track.

2014 Senate seat contests -lighter color indicates retiring Senator

Why is this important?  Democrats currently hold a 55-45 edge in the Senate (assuming the two independents continue to vote with the Dems).  If just 6 seats change hands, the Republicans will control the Senate.  I don't want to sound too pessimistic about the Democrats' chances of holding onto the Senate but there are 21 Democratic seats at stake in 2014 compared to just 15 Republican seats.  Four of the 21 Democratic seats are held by retiring Senators - South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan and West Virginia.  Of the 17 remaining Democratic incumbents, 5 are from states that went for Romney in 2012.  So that leaves just 12 seats with a returning Democrat running for office in a "blue state".  By my count, that means 9 Democratic Senate seats are up for grabs.


This year's elections promise to the most expensive mid-terms ever.  The money unleashed by Citizens United is flowing freely into the electoral process.  Fact-free negative ads are bouncing around the airwaves.  Voter suppression measures will be taking full effect in November and "government of the people, by the people and for the people" may become a thing of the past.  With the addition of corporate judges to the Federal courts should the Republicans gain the Senate, the oligarchy will be entrenched for a long, long time.


Image
The 2014 Senate election map is from Wikipedia.
The Medicaid expansion map is from the Kaiser Family Foundation website.

Links
"If you prick a corporation, does it not bleed?..." cartoon [New Yorker, March 14, 2011]

Options for low-income people in states denying Medicaid expansion [AllVoices.com, March 22]

Best News of the Year

This is The Left Bank Café's 200th post. I thought it appropriate to celebrate the occasion with a listing of some of the best news of 2013 as well as a list of the top 5 viewed Left Bank Café posts.  There are still three weeks left in 2013 but I'm not sure much better will come along in the next couple of weeks.  In roughly chronological order, here are some of the best of this year's stories. 

In March, the College of Cardinals elected Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio Pope.  Choosing his papal name after Francis of Assisi, he gave an early indication of what would become the priorities for his papacy.  The poor of the world moved to front and center.  The Catholic Church has, for centuries, taught that all have an  obligation to the disadvantaged.  What was different about this Pope were the emphasis he placed on it and his symbolic actions of empathy.  Then in late November he issued his first apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospels).  Evangelii Gaudium covers much ground (full text and Porta Fidei website summary) but the items getting the most attention in the Western, and particularly the US, press are his comments on "trickle down" economics and income inequality.  Here are a couple of widely quoted passages that spell out in the clearest terms possible what the application of the Gospel means in a poorly regulated capitalistic system.  

“...some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting."

“While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules."

(Time named Pope Francis its "Person of the Year" today. [Reuters])

In May, Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty and thereby join the rest of the civilized world.  The death penalty is still imposed in 32 US states.  In 2012 the US was the sixth highest executioner of prisoners - only China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen killed more.  Quite a group to be in with...

State legislatures introduced and/or passed legislation to control gun violence and foster clean energy initiatives.  In the absence of any Congressional action, this comes as good news.  Needless to say, the state initiatives are already under attack from conservative lobbyists and special interest groups.  On gun violence, the New York Times noted on September 15: "Since the Newtown shooting, robust background check laws or packages of gun legislation were enacted in four states with Democrat-controlled governments — Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and New York — as well as in Colorado, the site of two mass shootings, in Aurora in 2012 and in Columbine in 1999.  Others states, including Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, enacted far more modest legislation to strengthen restrictions on the possession of guns by people with mental illnesses or those involved in domestic violence cases."  On clean energy, this year at least 44 pieces of legislation to strengthen "renewable portfolio standards" were proposed or enacted in 18 states.  [CleanEnergyStates.org]  A Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is "a regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal." [Wikipedia]  Special kudos to Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  These states did not also have counterbalancing legislation introduced that would weaken RPS's. 

In November, the G3+3 reached an interim agreement with Iran on limiting its uranium enrichment and allowing complete inspection of the country's nuclear facilities.  This is the year's most important diplomatic victory and the decade's most important action to stabilize the Middle East.  Reuters said the agreement signalled "the start of a game-changing rapprochement that would reduce the risk of a wider Middle East war." [Left Bank Café Post of Nov 25]  Le Monde Diplomatique compared it to "the historic meeting between US president Richard Nixon and China’s Mao Zedong in February 1972... [which] transformed the entire geopolitical scene." [Left Bank Café Post of Dec 7]

The US Senate revised its filibuster rule.  The change reduces the threshold from 60 votes to 51 votes for Senate approval of executive branch and non-Supreme Court judicial nominees.  The move was prompted by the unprecedented Republican use of the filibuster during Obama's two terms to block Obama nominations.  Passed on November 21, the rules change has just seen its first success - Patricia Millett's confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on December 10.  [Left Bank Café post of Aug 5 ranked the filibuster as the #5 threat to American democracy]

Finally, two items from the world of science and medicine make the best news list - the Argus II bionic eye and a gene therapy treatment for blood cancers.  Popular Science in its December issue named the Argus II bionic eye "The Innovation of the Year".  The first FDA-approved artificial retina uses a video camera and a microprocessor to send images to an electrode array implanted in the back of the eye.  "The optic nerve picks up these signals and sends them to the brain, where they are interpreted as rudimentary gray-scale images....trials are planned to test the treatment of macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in Americans over the age of 60."  On the gene therapy treatment, NBC News writes: "In one of the biggest advances against leukemia and other blood cancers in many years, doctors are reporting unprecedented success by using gene therapy to transform patients' blood cells into soldiers that seek and destroy cancer."  The treatment has been successfully applied to adults and children who were "gravely ill patients out of options."

Top 5 (or 6) Viewed Posts on the Left Bank Café

#1 Most Viewed:  Night Fishing at Antibes
#2: 2312 (a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson)
#3: Sunday Round-Up May 26, 2013
#4: When the Blue Shift Comes; End of Time Sci-Fi
#5 (tie): Existence (a novel)
#5 (tie): Masters of War

Correction upon a recount: The Leader and the Demagogue post had several more views than either Existence or Masters of War.


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Image and quote of Pope Francis is from the usmessageboard.com website

 







   

 

 

 

 

 

Democracy - The What's Left of It Edition (Part 2)

This is the second post on the state of our democracy.  In the July 31 post, I listed my personal choices of the #10 through #6 threats to American democracy.   To wit: (10) Wealth disparity, (9) Misinformed citizenry, (8) Government spying, (7) Special interest money, (6) Political attack ads.  Concluding the countdown, here are the top five attacks on democracy in this country.

#5 - The Filibuster

The 60 vote requirement to break a Senate filibuster is the equivalent of 9 stolen elections.  Instead of the majority needing 51 votes to pass legislation, they need 60.  The filibuster's original purpose - preventing the hasty but perhaps unwise action of the majority - has been distorted and abused in an unprecedented fashion in the past several years after the election of Barack Obama. When first conceived, the filibuster required Senators to actually speak about the legislation under consideration. The primary purpose of the now non-talking filibuster as wielded by Senate Republicans today has been to block Presidential nominations (both judicial and executive) and to block legislation supported by the majority of the American people (e.g., universal background checks for gun purchases). Since Republicans lost the Senate in 2006, there have been 425 cloture motions. Cloture motions only represent the attempts to break the filibuster. Sometimes the majority will not even get that far. The Senate can change its own rules. Eliminating the filibuster altogether would be the right (democratic) thing to do. Failing that, there should be limits placed on debate. Senators need to talk to the issue and after a given number of hours of debate be required to give an up or down vote.

#4 - Congressional district gerrymandering

 

One man/woman, one vote, right? Well, thanks to the magic of gerrymandering of Congressional districts by state legislatures, that isn't always the case. Boundaries are often redrawn to give an advantage to the party in power in the state. Republicans have been excellent at it, taking full advantage of the most recent census and their victories in the 2010 elections. As noted on the PolicyMic website: "The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) has an agenda. It has been costly but its goal is simple: Get more congressional seats without actually winning them. This wildly undemocratic goal has been successfully pursued in seven states: Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, and Ohio." In the current version of the 113th do-nothing Congress, Republicans hold a 34 vote majority. Yet nationwide, Republican House candidates received fewer votes than the Democrats in the 2012 elections. So how did they end up with ~54% of the House seats when they had less than 50% of the vote? I've created this chart from the PolicyMic post that goes some way towards explaining it.

State	Dem Popular vote	Rep Popular vote	House seats Dems	House seats Reps
North Carolina	51 pct	49 pct	4	9
Michigan	52 pct	47 pct	5	9
Wisconsin	51 pct	49 pct	3	5
Pennsylvania	50.65%	49.34%	5	13
Florida	48 pct	52 pct	10	17
Ohio	47 pct	53 pct	4	12
Virginia	49 pct	51 pct	3	8

For these seven gerrymandered states, Republicans were awarded 73 House seats; Democrats, 34 - a 39 vote margin when the popular vote was nearly evenly split.

The next step in the Republican plan is to try to pass "electoral college" legislation in states they control but which have typically voted for Democrats in national elections. This scheme would award electoral votes according to who wins the Congressional district rather than the popular vote across the state. Had this been the case in 2012 with the gerrymandered districts, we would be talking about President Romney's policies today even though Obama received more than 50% of the popular vote nationwide.

#3 - SCOTUS' Citizens United ruling on corporate "free speech"

SCOTUS' infamous Citizens United decision gave corporations the status of persons - at least as far as freedom of speech goes. The decision eliminated the ban on political spending by corporations and unions. As summarized on the Center for Public Integrity's webpage on the subject: "The Citizens United ruling, released in January 2010, tossed out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. It gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools, calling for the election or defeat of individual candidates." A companion ruling several weeks later in Federal court (SpeechNow.org) decided that limits on individual contributions to groups that make independent expenditures are unconstitutional. It further allows non-profits and so-called "social welfare organizations" ( aka 501(c)(4)), such as business leagues, to keep their donor lists secret. And what was the result? "The 2012 election was the most expensive and least transparent presidential campaign of the modern era." The flood of super-PAC and "social welfare group" money was astounding. And it was mainly spent in opposition to candidates. 266 Super-PAC's spent $546.5 million dollars during the 2012 Presidential election cycle. More than half of the Super-PAC money ($290 million) was spent trying to defeat just one candidate - Barack Obama. Then there is the "dark money" from social welfare organizations and non-profits. Dark money is so-named because unlike PAC's, these organizations do not have to reveal their donors. Overall, dark money spent on the 2012 elections totaled $300 million. The financing of election campaigns is totally out-of-control thanks to these Supreme Court and lower court rulings. Several states have begun working on a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn Citizens United. This appears to be the only way out of the morass - both on a national and state level. It's obvious that there will be no relief from the current Supreme Court, who saw fit in their wisdom to overturn a 100 year-old Montana law limiting individual campaign contributions in February 2012.

#2 - SCOTUS destroys the Voting Rights Act

This has been previously blogged (June25, 2013 SCOTUS: R.I.P. Voting Rights Act) so I'll just sum up a few salient points here. Justice Ginsburg's dissent said it well: "The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the VRA has proven effective," Ginsburg wrote. "The Court appears to believe that the VRA’s success in eliminating the specific devices extant in 1965 means that preclear­ance is no longer needed." The provision has proven "enormously successful" in increasing minority registration and access to the ballot and preventing a "return to old ways," Ginsburg said. Even in jurisdictions where discrimination may not be overt, "subtle methods" have emerged to diminish minority turnout, such as racial gerrymandering. With the House in Republican hands and Mitch "Mr. Filibuster" McConnell leading the Senate Republicans, Sections 4 and 5 will not be rewritten by Congress in the foreseeable future. The decision has unleashed what MoJo blogger Kevin Drum describesas a "GOP feeding frenzy". The North Carolina legislature recently passed the worst voter suppression law in the country. For a complete listing of the provisions of this incredible attack on the right to vote see Ari Berman's post on the Moyers & Company website.  Berman's post points out that "Six Southern states have passed or implemented new voting restrictions since the Supreme Court’s decision last month invalidating Section 4 of the VRA, which will go down in history as one of the worst rulings in the past century."  The right to vote is the most fundamental and distinguishing feature of a democracy. A constitutional Amendment guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote is needed if we are to ensure democracy's survival.

And the #1 threat to American democracy is....state voter suppression laws.

For the most part, Republican voter suppression laws did not succeed in the 2012 elections - certainly not in their main objective: to defeat Barack Obama.  Aimed at denying the vote to traditionally Democratic voters, these laws were a combination of overly restrictive voter ID laws, reductions in early voting days, limitations on voter registration drives, and elimination of or severe restrictions on provisional balloting - what happens when you show up at the wrong polling place. These throw backs to the now unconstitutional poll taxes of yesteryear were overcome by a combination of judicial action in state and Federal courts and executive action (enforcing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act) and a massive turnout effort on the part of Democrats. And a good thing they were. Based on the Brennan Center for Justice's October 2011 analysis, the laws in place by year end 2011 would have made it "significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012." States implementing these restrictive voter ID and registration laws "will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency." This figure of 171 electoral votes was revised upwards to 189 in a March 2012 update.  Democracy escaped Republican clutches this time but in 2014 and 2016, we may not be so fortunate. North Carolina recently enacted the most restrictive voting law in the country in the aftermath of SCOTUS' gutting of the Voting Rights Act.   (If you haven't gone to the Moyers & Company website, here's another chance - North Carolina really has passed a most incredible law.)  Five other Southern states have done likewise.  And if someone without Obama's drawing power and organizational savvy becomes the Democratic candidate, the laws will certainly have their desired effect. The best short-term hope to blunt this blatant attack on voting rights will be the Administration's challenging of the voter ID laws. They'll need to spend a lot more effort on this now that SCOTUS has effectively destroyed the Voting Rights Act .
 

Many of the problems affecting our democracy are rooted in our election laws and the way we finance public elections. Under the current system, money wins elections. Period. Public financing of all Federal elections has no chance of being enacted for now.  Nor is there any chance of bi-partisan reform of existing laws passing the obstructed 113th Congress. So, in the meantime, we need to take our gains, limited as they are by the Citizens United decision, and defend our rights, as difficult as it may be, wherever we can. In the end, it may be down to a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote - this most basic right of a citizen of a democracy.

Sunday Round-Up April 21. 2013

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the mainstream media. Today we look at the Senate vote on universal background checks for gun sales and, on a more pleasant note, Earth Day 2013.

US Gun Control

What can you say about a political system where the will of 80-90% of the country is thwarted by a minority filibuster vote ? In one of its more gutless acts, the US Senate was unable to muster the required 60 votes to pass universal background checks designed to keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally disturbed. The lies and robocalls of the NRA did their job. But why? The huge amount of money the NRA spent trying to defeat Obama in 2012 was ineffective. He won. They lost. What are the Senators afraid of ?

Mother Jones has a series of excellent short articles related to the debacle:

Here's their main article on the failure of the measure to pass the filibuster limit.

Cerberus Capital Management is trying to sell its ownership of  Freedom Group, the manufacturer of the gun used in the Newton CT tragedy.  Relating the difficulty of finding investors to buy them out MJ writes:  "In this case, it seems that Wall Street has a better sense of American public opinion than the Senate, which failed to pass a bipartisan background check bill on Wednesday."

They also look at the four Democrats who voted no on backegroundchecks - turns out they are all up for election in 2014 and all hail from states that went for Romney in 2012.  [Kudos on the other hand to John McCain and the other 5 Republicans who votesd for the background checks.]

 

MJ then takes on the gun lobby myth that guns stop crime. Charts are provided that show, among other myths, that "that less than 3 percent of gun-related homicides are committed in self-defense " and that the "typical gun is more likely to be stolen than to be used in an attempt to stop a crime".

 

They then give you some screen shots of the Mitch McConnell Facebook Page posted "after the defeat of the watered-down Manchin-Toomey background checks compromise".

Finally there's an update on other gun bills soon to be voted on (or not).

 

This TomDispatch article explores the actual causes of violent crime as opposed to the fear-mongering of the right. "To acknowledge what really threatens us is to upset two of the most guarded citadels in this country: the military and masculinity. They are perhaps the same force on different scales. Armed intervention is imperial machismo in the same way a raging husband or father is the military dictator of a household."

 

 

Earth Day 2013

 

News from Europe, Asia, and Africa on plans for Earth Day 2013...

The town of Cefalu on the north coast of Sicily is organizing three days of activities - among them "a Conference on sustainable issues, guided excursions on the rock of Cefalù, concerts, wine tasting of organic products, sports performances, environmental awareness-raising campaigns also at the various schools, and a photographic exhibition on planet Earth, designed as a multi-sensory experience (images, sounds, scents '), which will be held at the St. Catherine's Octagon."

[From the Earth Day Italia website as translated by Microsoft Bing.]

 

 

 

In Japan Kids Weekend at Earth Day Tokyo is again organizing a recreational tour for children from Fukushima (the site of the 2011 tsunami-caused nuclear accident).

And in South Africa, the day is being used to raise environmental awareness. The Greenworks South Africa website asks people to commit to "a billion acts of green" while nicely summarizing the world's and South Africa's environmental challenges: "Earth Day is a global movement to highlight and address environmental issues. These are just some of the major environmental issues our Planet faces: global warming and climate change... destructive energy sources... toxic waste... groundwater contamination, abuse of water resources, wetland destruction, and pollution of waterways and the oceans... litter... overfishing and unsustainable fishing...destruction of rainforests...and expanding deserts."