Interesting . . .

I read in the "Failing New York Times" an interesting story today. You really should read it yourself. It was authored by a former White House stenographer, whose job it was to keep transcripts of conversations between the President and, well, anyone, to ensure that people accurately quoted what the President of the United States said. A few highlights:

On Friday, at a news conference with Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain a reporter asked President Trump about disparaging comments he had made about her to The Sun newspaper. He denied ever having said them and declared that recordings of the interview would vindicate him. “We record when we deal with reporters,” he said. “We solve a lot of problems with the good old recording instrument.”

Do we?

. . . . . . . 

As White House stenographers, we were among the handful of staff members who remained at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when the administration changed. This was my first transition, but my boss had said every new administration she’d worked in since the 1980s was grateful for our help.

. . . . . . .

We carried a microphone and two recorders at all times, and let them run until the last reporter had left the room, just in case a reporter yelled a question over his shoulder with one foot out the door. Should the press actually misquote the president, we were there, armed with an official transcript of what the president did or did not say.

But now, we were faced with a president who didn’t want to be recorded.  

. . . . . . . 

Mr. Trump likes to call anyone who disagrees with him “fake news.” But if he’s really the victim of so much inaccurate reporting, why is he so averse to having the facts recorded and transcribed?

President Trump did criticize Theresa May to The Sun. We know because it was recorded.

It’s clear that White House stenographers do not serve his administration, but rather his adversary: the truth. 

As a self-righteous jackass who has done more than perhaps one person to put this horse's ass in the White House said a few months ago, "Lordy, I hope there are tapes."  (And that very much includes the infamous "pee tape.")

I guess when you lie every time your lips move . . . . .

Those Pence Brothers . . . They're Just so Nice!

Ugh! I think I need to go punch myself in the face just for writing that headline! Hopefully anyone who has ever read this blog recognizes the sarcasm in the title.

Anyway, this recently came to my attention:

Vice President Mike Pence turns nostalgic when he talks about growing up in small-town Columbus, Indiana, where his father helped build a Midwestern empire of more than 200 gas stations that provided an upbringing on the “front row of the American dream.”

The collapse of Kiel Bros. Oil Co. in 2004 was widely publicized. Less known is that the state of Indiana — and, to a smaller extent, Kentucky and Illinois — are still on the hook for millions of dollars to clean up more than 85 contaminated sites across the three states, including underground tanks that leaked toxic chemicals into soil, streams and wells.

Indiana alone has spent at least $21 million on the cleanup thus far, or an average of about $500,000 per site, according to an analysis of records by The Associated Press. And the work is nowhere near complete.

Well, I mean, what's $21m when you're a "christian first, conservative second, and Republican third" here in Indiana? It's not like you're some selfish school kid who wants to, you know, eat lunch or something. Million-dollar pollution problem? Great! Poor kids want lunch? Feed 'em to Rokita!

Kiel Bros. has paid for only a fraction of the overall effort.

OK. So here we are, the Pence family business has imposed tens of millions of dollars on us, the taxpayers, and people are still willing to believe in his so-called "fiscal conservatism." I tell you what, next time I'm looking for someone to get my spending under control, I'm not just going to let him (or her) do my spending for me!

In a statement, Pence’s older brother Greg Pence — who was president of Kiel Bros. when it went bankrupt and is now running for Congress as a Republican — distanced himself from the cleanup costs.

“Greg Pence has had nothing to do with Kiel Bros since 2004. This is another attempt by the liberal media to rehash old, baseless attacks,” campaign spokeswoman Molly Gillaspie said. 

A few things: first off, I forgot that the Pence brothers were multiplying . . . God help us! 

Second, Ms. Gillaspie, perhaps you weren't aware that underground pollution plumes take decades to develop. In fact, I'll bet that someone on one of the Pence teams has already acknowledged this:

Pence spokeswoman Alyssa Farah called the findings “a years old issue” that the vice president has addressed before. She did not elaborate.

So, what is it? Did the pollution occur during the Pence family's "stewardship" of Kiel Bros. or did it occur after? Maybe before? All I've seen is blah blah blah liberal media blah blah blah old blah blah blah liberal media blah blah baseless.

The fact that the company stuck taxpayers with the lion’s share of the cleanup bill rankles some observers, especially in light of the family’s reputation as budget hawks critical of government spending.

You don't say. It's like I've seen this tragicomedy before.

 Greg Pence, who is seeking the vice president’s old congressional seat, has total assets worth $5.7 to $26 million.

Nearly a decade after going under, Kiel Bros. sites still ranked among the top 10 recipients of state money for such cleanups in Indiana in 2013, the last year for which the petroleum industry has reliable spending data for the company. That was out of more than 230 companies seeking cleanup money that year, including major gas station chains with a substantially larger presence in the state.
Founded as an oil distributor by businessman Carl Kiel in 1960, the company expanded into the gas station business. Pence’s father, Edward, joined in the early years and, by the mid-1970s, rose to corporate vice president.
Mike Pence says he worked for the business — which mostly operated under the name Tobacco Road — starting at age 14. But it was his brother who took over after Edward Pence’s 1988 death and eventually became president.

Just so we're clear: the Pence family made a ton of money running this company. This company cut costs by polluting our air and water. Now we get to pay to not be poisoned while the Pence family gets to go and bring their special sauce to the nation as a whole.

 When an underground tank leaks, companies are liable for the damage, but Indiana has been especially amenable to using public money to pay for heavily contaminated soil to be excavated and for high-powered pumps to suck toxic liquid and vapor from the soil.

The state’s payout limit was $2 million per site until Mike Pence signed a 2016 law as governor, increasing it to $2.5 million. In 2016, Indiana paid out nearly two-and-a-half times the national average per incident, according to records.

I for one can't imagine why the state can't afford to do such trivial things as reform its child welfare issues, after a mere 15 years of studying the issue.

Pence 2018: Starve the kids and poison the water!

"You didn't build that"

I recall the presidential election of 2012 and how infuriating it was to me to hear people argue, in what seemed self-evidently bad faith, that Barack Obama's statement, "you didn't build that," somehow robbed all individuals of their own accomplishments. Personally, I always viewed that statement as essentially stating that "while you did something impressive, your accomplishment rests on the prior achievements of others, public and private." It reminded me of my father's saying that each generation stands on the shoulders of the preceding generation.

Anyway, all of this is to hype a great article I read in Vox on Sunday. A few quotes, but I highly encourage anyone to click through and read the entirety:

I went to public schools through eighth grade. My parents were able to save for some of my college costs through a plan that provides tax relief for those savings. I stayed on my parent’s health insurance until I was 26 under the Affordable Care Act. I have received the earned income tax credit, targeted at those with low or moderate income. I took out federal student loans to go to law school. I am enrolled in an income-based repayment plan currently as I pay them back and have also signed up for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The way we discuss our successes as individual accomplishments and valorize some as “self-made” fails to acknowledge such systems of support.

This sounds very familiar . . . it could almost have been written by yours truly.

To be sure, I worked tremendously hard. . . . . But, I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard as a mom who works multiple jobs for a minimum wage. Hard work is not enough. There are structures that impact success.

I agree. I earn vastly more now than I did as a public high school teacher. That is not to suggest that I work vastly harder.

When it comes to wealth in this country, we no longer have a scarcity problem. We have a distribution problem. The world produces enough food to feed everyone, we have approximately five vacant homes for each homeless person in the US and the US spends twice as much on health care as other developed countries.

All of this is to argue that when we discuss redistribution in this country, we ignore how opportunity is distributed at our own peril. My own father was the president of a fortune 500 company as I made my way through adolescence. To argue that this did not provide me more opportunities than other, less fortunate, people my age is to bury one's head in the sand. 

Like most people, I make no apology for my success (limited though it may be). I worked very hard for it and continue to work hard for it. However, I would be maximally misguided and misleading to suggest that I don't owe anyone, both public and private, for the opportunities with which I have been blessed. 

On Healthcare - Part One Billion

I have had heartburn problems for quite some time. It used to only hit me infrequently and has gotten worse since I've aged. I recently saw a doctor for this (great guy, I might add) and he quickly diagnosed the issue and wrote me a prescription.

My wife went to Kroger to fill this prescription and found out it was not covered by our health insurance (for which I pay about as much per month as our family mortgage). Without health insurance coverage, this particular medication for heartburn/acid reflux, goes for $3,000 for a thirty (30) day supply.

The pharmacy aide pointed out that this same medication can be had over the counter for about $12.

Our system of healthcare is indefensible.

A Wonderful Man with a Wonderful Family

It seems that my lone reader has given me some pushback on my assessment of Judge Kavanaugh and what we can expect in the New Gilded Age Lochner Court that is certainly coming.

Rather than put words into the proverbial mouth of my wonderful reader, I would prefer to quote the comment in full:

Now boo hoo Tabletop Joe Trump’s puck seems to me like a wonderful man who has a wonderful family . Are you a religious man Tabletop Joe ? Everyone needs religion , whichever religion you choose ... that’s just my opinion and not growing up Catholic but having converted I can say this is a very admirable attribute , looks like he is very giving to the community of his time talent and treasure....

Where to begin with this?

Boo Hoo Tabletop Joe
For starters, let's make clear that the people who Judge Kavanaugh and modern Republicans want to hurt generally doesn't include me. I will benefit from their tax cuts (minimally) and, as a white male, their decreasingly covert racism isn't directed at me. Therefore, save your boo hoos for someone else.

Wonderful Man/Wonderful Family
As to the "wonderful man who has a wonderful family," that's fine and great. Some would say the same about me, even if they think my ideas are the worst thing in the world. Curtis Painter, I'm sure, also has a lovely family, but that doesn't mean that I want him to play QB for the Indianapolis Colts. I only care about a football player's football playing (to put a comically fine point on it). Similarly, I care about a judge's approach to the law, not his approach to his own family. However kind he is in person is irrelevant to me because it is such a longshot that I will ever get to meet him personally as to be effectively impossible. However, his jurisprudence will affect me (and you).

On judicial philosophy, I am given to understand that he doesn't believe in the exclusionary rule and wants to eliminate that. For the uninitiated, the exclusionary rule states that the government can't use evidence against you if they violated your rights and illegally obtained it. It's the thing that keeps the police from breaking into your house, for example.

Further, I have no illusion that a Justice Kavanaugh will be the 5th vote to overturn, either explicitly or sub silencio, Roe v. Wade. Now, I've had plenty of conversations with so-called conservatives who tell me that abortion doesn't bother them as long as it's not a 3rd trimester abortion. To them, I would say that you should actually, you know, read Roe v. Wade. However, to save you some time, I'll summarize: the state has no business getting between a woman and her doctor in the 1st trimester; the state has an interest in getting involved during the 2nd trimester to protect the mother's life; the state has an interest in getting involved during the 3rd trimester to protect the baby's life. There it is. Apparently Judge Kavanaugh believes that the government knows better than a woman and her doctor what is proper for her. These are not easy decisions, and it appears that this judge does not believe that determining what grows inside one's own body is a fundamental right. I disagree.

Judge Kavanaugh has also written about how he believes that a sitting president can't be indicted. I'm sure that had nothing to do with Donald Trump's selection of him, though. I'm likewise sure that it will never come up because the Mueller investigation is one with which Donald Trump has fully supported, as he is concerned that our nation's elections be free of foreign interference, right?

Religion
My commenter believes that "everyone needs religion." I disagree. If you are happily ensconced in your faith, I am happy for you. If you are happily ensconced in atheism, I am similarly happy for you. I do not believe that everyone needs religion. Regrettably, too many people use religion as a justification for their own desire to look down on others, to judge others, and to exclude others. It is those who use religion for such profane purposes that put so many people off from religion. It kind of reminds me of when I was young and couldn't stand Phish for no reason other than the band's fans were just intolerable.

Everyone does not need religion.

Time, Talent, and Treasure
I too give my time and talent for good causes. I do some pro bono legal work, and I play in two rock n' roll bands that donate a lot of money to charity and no money back to me. That doesn't make my ideas the right ones for public policy, and it doesn't do so for Judge Kavanaugh, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Elizabeth Warren, or anyone else.

Elected representatives are our employees. Just like I don't really care how giving my paralegal is in her own community if she can't do her job to my liking, I don't care how giving my representatives are in their community if they don't do their jobs to my liking. While I recognize that a judge doesn't represent me, he is supposed to represent the law.

My big takeaway about Judge Kavanaugh is that he will use the Court not to protect the weak from the whims of the powerful but rather to protect a privileged, wealthy minority from the whims of democracy.

Taking the Ball and Running

I love Indianapolis as a whole nearly as much as I love Speedway. It constantly perplexes me, however, that there isn't much that's particularly memorable about Indianapolis, food wise. For a long time, I have believed that perhaps that is because Indianapolis is a test market for regional or national restaurant corporations; they test new concepts here and have sufficient budget to both be able to fail without financial catastrophe while simultaneously setting an artificially high bar for survival for local concepts.

Recently, I read a great piece in the Urbanophile that made me question whether I had thought this entirely through. The piece discusses the diverging fortunes of Nashville Hot Chicken and Hoosier Breaded Pork Tenderloin.  I highly encourage anyone to click through and read the entire article. A few snippets should you forego the opportunity to click through:

First, about Nashville "Hot" Chicken:

In other words, it’s possible that this dish has been around a while in some form in the local black community, but what we know today as the Nashville hot chicken is from the 70s or 80s. A Midwestern reader with longstanding family ties to Nashville told me a while back that at least through the 1990s he never heard hot chicken mentioned there. I read that Nashville hot chicken is now supposedly popular around the south, but having spent extensive time in Alabama 10-15 years ago, I never once came across it there.

I have no reason to doubt this analysis, but then again I'm not from the South. I don't recall ever hearing about Nashville Hot Chicken until just a few years ago, though.

Now, as to the Hoosier Tenderloin:

the pork tenderloin is fairly ubiquitous in Central Indiana, where it is on practically every bar and grill menu. 

I can attest to that. I don't know how long the pork tenderloin has been ubiquitous in Indianapolis, but it's been at least the entire time I've lived here (since 2003).

The question, of course, is:

Why was Indianapolis unable to do with the tenderloin what Nashville did with hot chicken?

His answer, essentially, is that Indianapolis doesn't even try.

I again and again see that Southern cities start with little to nothing, and yet what they do have they treat as the greatest things of all time. As illustrated by Nashville hot chicken, they’ve also looked at their often neglected black community as a source of local cultural identity.

The Midwestern cities not only fail at this consistently, they typically don’t even try. There are tons of regional food products in the Midwest – Chicago style dogs, St. Louis pizza, etc. – but other than Chicago’s deep dish pizza, they have been dramatically underexploited in the marketplace even as these cities say that they are very keen to raise their brand profiles.

Interesting.

Being a litigator (and thus having nothing whatsoever to do with tourism, or the friendlier side of humanity generally) I don't really know what to say about this. Nonetheless, it is worth considering. It also gets me a-thinking about what it is, aside from racing, that Speedway hangs its hat on. I get that the 500 is, in the immortal words of Joe Biden, "a big f**kin' deal." Nonetheless, what is the "thing" about Speedway during the other 350 or so days per year? Food? Festivals? Sport? Music?

Shameful

When I last lived in Ft. Wayne (2013-2014), I heard constantly about how the "good conservative folks of Northeastern Indiana" would do this and that, would always act politely, gathered the facts before acting hysterically, etc. This was always pointed out in juxtaposition to Obama (a nation turns its lonely eyes to you Barack Obama). Among the things that the "good conservative folks of Northeastern Indiana" have been doing lately, apparently, is this:

Fort Wayne's Planned Parenthood Health Center is closing effective today after several years of increased harassment and intimidation.

“I'm pretty angry about this,” said Christie Gillespie, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. “This is not how decent and compassionate people behave. These are actions of harassment and intimidation that are done in the name of faith, religion and Jesus.

“It's an awful day for the Fort Wayne community. We will be back stronger.”

The Fort Wayne location at 3914 W. Jefferson Blvd. does not perform abortions and has four employees.

Gillespie said the community is losing a trusted health care provider that conducted tests for early diagnosis of cervical, testicular and breast cancer, provided birth control options and tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

Gillespie said the tactics used by Allen County Right to Life and other area groups go far beyond protesting outside the facility.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky provided copies of a mailer sent to Fort Wayne neighborhoods where a Planned Parenthood nurse practitioner worked.

It included her name and picture and said “There are killers among us.” It said the woman enabled “child killing by coordinating abortions off site.” It also gave her home address.

Absolutely disgusting and shameful. If, as they say, you are judged by the company you keep, then this list of people should be judged for keeping company with Allen County Right to Life and its shameful tactics.

NOTE: I haven't even addressed the fact that Fort Wayne Planned Parenthood (a) does not provide abortions but (b) provides no/low-cost STD screening. Perhaps someone can explain to me how these so-called "right to life" groups are targeting abortion and not conducting the so-called "war on women" with these kinds of tactics directed at clinics that don't provide abortions?

Labor Shortage BS

How many times have you heard some financial-news type (i.e. Jim Cramer) talk about how there's a "skills gap" or a "skilled labor shortage," and the government has to do SOMETHING BIG RIGHT NOW to fix that problem (never mind that the "something big right now" tends to involve training workers after the same Jim Cramer types bitch and moan over having to pay taxes for schools, but I digress).

Anyway,  with the seemingly never ending Obama Recovery driving unemployment down to 4%, you would think that sooner or later wages would start to rise. For the record, lets look at inflation adjusted wages over time:

Source

This is what Americans have been making, adjusted for inflation, for about 50 years. Note the low point in those wages? Yeah, that's about the time I turned 18. Wages then picked up pretty quickly until about 2000, at which point they essentially flattened out until the recession, picked back up, and have more or less stayed constant.

While that wage growth is pathetic, it certainly has redounded to the benefit of someone. I wonder who:

Source

A few things jump out at me from looking at these two graphs. First, they're not a perfect overlay. Second, the wealth share going to the top 1% appears to have at least doubled and nearly tripled since approximately 1970.

In light of this background, I give you a recent blurb from Slate, which I would highly recommend:

Corporate executives and Wall Street types come up with all sorts of reasons why it’s supposedly dangerous to let the unemployment rate drop too low. They talk about how the economy might “overheat,” leading to a dreaded bout of inflation. They may talk about “worker shortages” that make it hard to find the right talent.

But in the end, most of this is just verbiage meant to skirt the real concern: Companies are worried that if unemployment falls far enough, they’ll have to pay workers more, and that will cut into their profits. With the official jobless rate at 4 percent, that’s already beginning to happen at some companies, the Wall Street Journal reports today. Ten percent of companies in the S&P 500 have claimed that higher wages hurt their earnings in the first quarter, it notes. Goldman Sachs is predicting that “every percentage-point increase in labor-cost inflation will drag down earnings of companies in the S&P 500 by 0.8%.”

. . . . . . .

 This, of course, is considered a nightmare. “At the end of the day, I haven’t heard this many CEOs talk about shortages in skilled labor and wage increases to attract talent in a long time—in at least a decade,” one money manager told the paper.

Keep that quote in mind the next time you read an overwrought article about ill-defined “worker shortages.” C-suiters have created an entire coded language that lets them spin a strong labor market as a threat to the economy, when in reality it mostly just poses a marginal threat to their bottom line. A CEO can go on CNBC and say that his company is coping with a “labor shortage” without seeming like a self-interested capitalist, when in reality, he’s just trying to explain why a healthy economy is bad for his shareholders.

So, the next time you hear about worker shortages, ask whoever brings them up to point out where the wages are skyrocketing. After all, if the world desperately needed someone who was able to work on a Tuttle-Tut Machine and only one guy knew how, his wages would be astronomical. If, on the other hand, there were plenty of people who knew how to work on Tuttle-Tut Machines but they demanded a decent wage, perhaps the owners of the Tuttle-Tut Machine Shop would start making noise about how the public needs to shoulder the cost of training more Tuttle-Tut Mechanics, simply as a way to drive down the wages and increase the shop's bargaining power.

Food for thought. 

Explainer - Special Prosecutor

Perhaps I'm a bit premature, but I just saw on the Indiana Lawyer where Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry has requested that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate Attorney General Curtis Hill. When I saw the news, I was a bit perplexed. However, as I am a fan of Terry Curry (probably the only prosecutor on Earth who earns my fandom), I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; nonetheless, I looked into his reasoning for doing so:

Pursuant to Indiana Code section 33-23-13-3, the Attorney General’s Office is required to represent an elected prosecutor in certain civil matters. Hill is currently representing Curry in two civil matters pursuant to that statute, including a challenge to Indiana’s civil forfeiture law that is pending before the Indiana Supreme Court and the most recent Planned Parenthood federal lawsuit challenging an Indiana abortion law.

“We are a client of the Attorney General’s Office, and it would be entirely inappropriate for our office then to turn around and participate in a criminal investigation of the Attorney General,” Curry said. “When the information came to light last week, I had no doubt whatsoever that we could not be involved in any criminal investigation.”

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. As much as I'd love to see Terry Curry put the screws to Mr. Jackass Attorney General Hill, I am heartened to see that the Marion County prosecutor has a sense of what is and what is not appropriate; what does and does not have the appearance of impropriety.

Now if only we could have this kind of honesty, judgment, and discretion at all levels of government . . .

Right-to-Work and Freeriders

I went to the Union Jack Pub last night and had a pizza. It was delicious. I also had a few beers and some breadsticks. My family had a blast. Of course, at the end of the meal, I was presented a bill for something like $60, which seemed like a very fair price to me given the quality of our meal.

To my right-to-work friends, I ask you this: If I had the option of continuing to get the meal without paying for it, do you think I would have taken that option? If I chose to eat the meal and not pay for it, would that represent me exercising my freedoms? Or would that have represented me being a freeloader?

Thus concludes our lesson on right-to-work for the day. If I haven't made my point clearly, please ask clarifying questions in the comments.

A Righteous Screed

Here at Above the Law:

between you and me, I honestly couldn’t give a wet crap about which version of fascist the Russian president nominates tonight. I’ll report on who and cover the confirmation hearings and mock the Democrats’ ineffectual attempts to hold up the confirmation process. But care? No. You can’t make me. They all look the same to me.

. . . . . . . 

Trump is going to appoint a fascist. Trump will nominate a fascist. The Republican Senate will confirm a fascist. That fascist will be a vote against women’s rights, minority rights, and non-white voting rights for 30 years. It will be a vote for mass shootings and police brutality and bigotry for 30 years.

. . . . . . .  

Which particular person gets to stuff themselves in the robe is inconsequential to me when the robe-bearer is standing on my neck.

The Anschluss of the Supreme Court and Trump’s brand of white supremacy is upon us. I don’t give a damn which puppet functionary is installed to do Trump’s bidding. 

Seriously, go read the whole thing.

So many jackasses, so little time

Now that Mike Pence has re-joined the D.C. swamp (and Brandt Hershman has quit the legislature to go work as a lobbyist) it's time to re-think who the most contemptible person in Indiana politics is. Jim Lucas (he of "constitutional carry" fame) is always a tempting target . . . Lord knows we in Indianapolis need a guy from Seymour telling us how to control urban violence, but I digress.

As the one regular reader of this blog can probably tell you, the undisputed, heavyweight champion of Hoosier Jackassery has been none other than Attorney General Curtis Hill, that aging drug and culture warrior who makes affluent racist white people feel good because, by gum, there's a black guy that agrees with their insatiable desire to lock up minorities.

Now, for those who haven't read the now-infamous memo about his ass-grabbing ways, it's right here. The Indiana Lawyer describes the allegations as follows:

Reports that Hill groped and/or behaved inappropriately toward four women — including Democratic State Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon — came to light Tuesday when a confidential memo created at the request of state legislative leaders was leaked to the media. The memo, which was prepared by Indianapolis law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP, records Reardon’s account of a drunken Hill sliding his hands down her back and under her clothes before grabbing her bare buttocks at an end-of-session legislative party in March. Though the memo says Hill repeated this conduct a second time, Reardon penned a column on Friday saying she was able to recoil before Hill could grope her a second time.

Personally, with the exception of the allegation about him reaching into a woman's pants to grab her butt, I think the rest of the allegations are fairly minor, by comparison (particularly when "by comparison" means "by comparison to the President of the United States"). I tend to view Mr. Hill's drunken actions as in line with a privileged man who rarely imbibes.

Note to self, if you're going to drink, drink often and learn how to handle your booze.

I do note, with a hint of irony, Curtis Hill's reaction to this firestorm:

“I now stand falsely accused of some of the same crimes I spent 28 years prosecuting,” the statement said. “Yet without a thorough investigation — without the right to face my accusers and review the evidence against me — I am convicted by public officials demanding my resignation. I believed that the standard in this country is that you are innocent until proven guilty – not guilty until proven innocent.”

The rumor mill has told me that Curtis Hill represented the absolute worst, most vile features of prosecutors everywhere: depriving the accused of due process by threatening to "charge up" in order to get them to plead guilty. Apparently leaning on people accused of misconduct is A-OK so long as you're Mr. Tough Guy Prosecutor but "you are innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent" when the accusation is against you, right Mr. Hill?

As I've made clear, this jackass can't go soon enough, and it really has very little to do with his rare-drunken pervy/handsy ways. Just take your stuffed suit back to where you came from Mr. Hill; go back to putting people in jail for possessing marijuana, if your former constituents will have you. Just please, please, quit besmirching my profession. We can do that just fine ourselves without your noxious self doing so.

Thoughts on Right to Work Laws and Janus

The Supreme Court recently issued its opinion in Janus v. AFSCME et al. To those (like me) who support the union movement, this is an abomination. To those who don't, this is a victory for freedom.

The rationale of Janus, however, is quite interesting. It struck down fair-share fees (which are illegal in Indiana because of course they are) on the grounds that taking money from one individual forcefully to advocate positions with which that individual disagrees is necessarily a violation of the 1st Amendment. This is an interesting view of the 1st Amendment, particularly when combined with the Hobby Lobby case of a few years ago. Apparently, the Court is signaling that government policies can't compel individuals or organizations to expend money to advocate positions with which they disagree.

Can't this work the other way as well? Can't unions then file a declaratory judgment action seeking a declaration that being forced by statute to represent and advocate for those who don't contribute fair-share fees is in essence being compelled to advocate positions with which they disagree (i.e. non-members should get the same benefits as members)?

Given that the next step from the anti-labor movement appears to be a lawsuit seeking to recover all fair-share fees "illegally and unconstitutionally" collected, what if Unions file suit against all freeloaders on a quantum merit theory?

Take the two lawsuits together, and it certainly presents a thorny problem for the courts to deal with (that they brought on themselves).

Today's musing.

The Worm Always Turns

Anyone remember what Dante's three-headed beast was called? For some reason, this picture makes me think of that image but forget all of the details about it, as though I've somehow perfectly envisioned that beast.

I am not a Republican. I'm pretty sure I've made that clear. In my adult life, the Republican party has:

• Impeached a president for having an affair with interns (while it's own Speaker of the House was having an affair as his own wife lay dying of cancer);
• "Won" the presidency three times: once with the help of Vladimir Putin, James Comey, and the electoral college; once with the help of five Republican-appointed justices of the Supreme Court; and once "fair and square" with the help of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth;
• Pushed for deregulation of the financial industry (Bill Clinton is by no means innocent in that);
• turned a surplus in 2000 into a tax cut for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003, and a subsequent deficit by 2004;
• responded to a terrorist attack by a bunch of Saudis who had been receiving hospitality and protection in Afghanistan by invading Iraq;
• responded to a financial crisis (itself a result of the deregulation of the financial industry) and subsequent Republican bailout by (dishonestly) blaming Democrats and the Community Reinvestment Act;
• voted en masse against the Affordable Care Act, notwithstanding that it was proposed as a compromise between what Democrats had long wanted (single-payer) and Republicans had proposed a very similar plan in the early 1990s as an "alternative" to what the Clintons were going to propose (ultimately derided as "Hillarycare" . . . see a pattern here?; on another note, I believe the current Republican line on the 1993 Chafee bill is that it was a bad-faith distraction, but that tells you something too, doesn't it?);
• promised for 7+ years that they would "repeal and replace" Obamacare. As I write this, in July 2018, I have yet to see a replacement from Republicans that they can even pass, let alone one that does everything they promised it would do;
• refused to even allow a hearing for the legitimate (centrist, mid-60s) nominee to the Supreme Court (call it court packing or seat stealing, the end result is the same);
• trolled Democrats from 2008-2016 about how deficits were putting us all on the "Road to Serfdom," finding their voice on overspending, conveniently, after about an 8-year hiatus;
• Of course they proved their budget hawk bonafides when they turned a big deficit in 2017 into a HUGE future budget problem, by passing another enormous tax cut for the wealthy, to which they intend to respond by cutting social security and medicaid (I guess "deficits don't matter" when they're the result of regressive Republican tax cuts).

One can easily argue the merits of the above statements (which by no means represent an exhaustive list of the bad policy/bad faith coming from the Republican party since I turned 18 in 1995), but my characterization of these events clearly IDs me.

Some people think that liberals should respond in kind to Republicans. Perhaps I'm one of those people, I don't really know. However, to any Republicans out there who believe that "both sides do it" and "the liberals are even worse," I'd like to show you what "responding in kind" actually would look like (HINT: it doesn't involve electing centrists like Obama and Clinton):

But let's imagine .... Democrats win both houses of Congress this year. Trump struggles and is pinned down by the legal reckoning he's long deserved. Democrats sweep in 2020.

A proportional backlash would include not only a bipartisanship-be-damned crusade to enact an unapologetically progressive agenda. It would also include merciless gerrymandering in every state now controlled by Democrats. It would include anti-Republican vote suppression: the closing of polling places in white suburbs, along with efforts to identify GOP voters' habits and to create hurdles to voting based on those habits. 

Both sides don't do it. In the future they could. 

Voter re-registration requirements if you have voted from the same address more than twice? Single payer healthcare? Top marginal income tax rates at 90%? Inheritance taxes at similar confiscatory levels? Private education taxes? Income and property taxes for religious organizations? Performance and de-commissioning bonds for large commercial/industrial undertakings to ensure that money exists for the inevitable environmental clean up? Mandatory liability insurance on the sale of bullets?

Am I the only one who thinks that the current race to the bottom is a bad idea? That extreme ideas batted back and forth for little reason other than to troll the other side will invariably give us worse public policy? Am I also the only one who recognizes that unilateral concessions from Democrats for the last two decades hasn't made Republican behavior any better? Democrats haven't done any of the above things. 

Anyway, I need a drink. Enough ranting for one sitting.

Supreme Court - Musings and Expectations

Well, Anthony Kennedy is retiring, and Donald Trump will get his second Supreme Court pick. Woo friggin' hoo.

For starters, perhaps Republicans will now embrace "activist judges?" I'm inclined to think they did so long ago, perhaps in the matter of Bush v. Gore? I can't accurately express how disingenuous this line of argument has been my entire life: after all, Republicans have nominated the median Supreme Court justice ever since the Burger Court in the late 1960s. 

As a side note, I think that the Supreme Court will have a legitimacy problem on its hands if it continues to hand down 5-4 "conservative" decisions based on partisan preference, particularly when 4 of the 5 "conservative" justices will have been nominated by presidents who entered office after losing the popular vote. 

But I digress. The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin recently posted a fantastic article about what to expect in the coming years. He starts with recognizing that Justice Kennedy was by no means what Rush Limbaugh and company would characterize as some "activist liberal judge."

Kennedy is no liberal. He provided the fifth vote to deliver the Presidency to George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore; he was the author of the majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which hastened the deregulation of American politics; he upheld Trump’s travel ban this term; and his votes on the day-to-day grist of the Supreme Court’s docket—on labor law, the environment, and health care—hewed closely to those of his fellow Republican nominees. But, to the dismay of conservatives, he departed from their orthodoxy on some key issues in addition to gay rights, among them affirmative action, the death penalty, and, most notably, abortion rights. 

Toobin then notes one of Trump's shrewd political moves:

The whole purpose of Trump’s Supreme Court selection process has been to eliminate the possibility of nominating someone who might commit Kennedy’s perfidies of moderation. The activists from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation who supplied the President’s list of twenty-five prospective nominees are determined to tear down the monuments, on select issues, that Kennedy has built. Their labors have already produced one soaring success, in the confirmation, last year, of Neil Gorsuch. His extremism has exceeded that of his predecessor Antonin Scalia and equalled that of his colleague Clarence Thomas, the Justice with whom he has voted most often. 

Clearly, while Trump's personal life should shame anyone who self identifies as "christian," "family values oriented," "respectable," or "decent," many evangelicals have cast their lot with President Trump for just this moment.

I fear what "this moment" will bring, but here is a decent primer for step one:

Yet it’s far from certain that the public wants the kinds of rulings that a brazen conservative majority would produce. So the nominee and his or her supporters will avoid spelling out the implications of this judicial philosophy. As with Gorsuch, the nominee will be supported with meaningless buzz phrases: he or she will be opposed to “legislating from the bench” and in favor of “judicial restraint.” 

I think it is important, however, to cut through all of the niceties and the discussions about process, and get to the meat and potatoes of what is coming from our new Unbound Conservative Supreme Court. Here is the highlight reel, such as it is:

It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.

Probably not surprising, since every Republican politician in the country has expressed fealty to these notions, if not in these precise terms. However, this coming unbridled conservative majority has more nightmares in store, we can be sure:

 In many respects, the most important right-wing agenda item for the judiciary is the undermining of the regulatory state. In the rush of conservative rulings at the end of this term, one of the most important received relatively little notice. In Janus v. afscme, a 5–4 majority (including Kennedy) said that public employees who receive the benefits of union-negotiated contracts can excuse themselves from paying union dues. In doing so, the Justices overruled a Supreme Court precedent that, as it happens, was nearly as old as Roe v. Wade. (Chief Justice John Roberts, who has made much of his reverence for stare decisis, joined in the trashing of this precedent, and will likely join his colleagues in rejecting more of them.) 

To my Republican-voting, machine-operating, union buddy in Ft. Wayne (to take a single example of someone who I note to consistently vote Republican in direct contravention of his own self interest, apparently in some misguided sense of grievance directed toward pointy headed intellectuals and college leftists), perhaps you ought to familiarize yourself with the term Faustian Bargain. 

On a closing note:

Kennedy’s words at the conclusion of the Obergefell opinion deserve to be his judicial epitaph. “It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage,” he wrote. “Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” But the Constitution grants only those rights that the Supreme Court says it grants, and a new majority can and will bestow those rights, and take them away, in chilling new ways. 

For the record, pursuant to Marbury v. Madison, the Constitution says precisely what the Supreme Court says it says. The Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means; plain English is only so persuasive (i.e. the complete elimination in legal discourse of the phrase "well-regulated" from the 2nd Amendment). 

To my lone reader, I implore you to look deep into your soul and ask what rights you presently have that would be eliminated by powerful interests, given the chance. Property rights? Familial rights? Contractual rights? Religious rights? Remember, the Supreme Court does a lot more than navel gaze over abortion; it affects essentially everything. Next time you're forced to sign a mandatory arbitration clause, for example, be sure to thank your conservative majority on SCOTUS for its enforceability (and good luck finding a lawyer to take your case to arbitration on contingency over the mere $1,000/year you've lost for the last decade due to getting ripped off; I can tell you what it would cost to pay your lawyer hourly and it well exceeds your $10,000 damages).

In reference to the legitimacy problem the court will face, recall that Democrats can currently retake the House of Representatives by garnering 55% of the popular vote to get 51% of the seats. The converse of that means that Republicans retain control of the House by losing the popular vote with 46%. Now, imagine a landslide where Democrats take the House and the Senate, and start passing popular progressive legislation only to have it struck down by a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court, replete with "Justice" Merrick Garland Neil Gorsuch; a court that is 5-4, and 4 of the 5-vote majority was installed by presidents who entered office after having received fewer votes than their opponents. Legitimacy problems abound.

As a parting note, I simply suggest that we are in for more, not less, domestic disturbance in this country. I suppose that probably is par for the course, as Americans are a quarrellous bunch; the good old days weren't really that good.