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resilientreview · 3 years

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What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

📷By Stephen Sawchuk — May 18, 2021 10 min read Education Week is the #1 source of high-quality news and insights on K-12 education. Sign up for our EdWeek Update newsletter to get stories like this delivered to your inbox daily.

Is “critical race theory” a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement.The topic has exploded in the public arena this spring—especially in K-12, where numerous state legislatures are debating bills seeking to ban its use in the classroom.In truth, the divides are not nearly as neat as they may seem. The events of the last decade have increased public awareness about things like housing segregation, the impacts of criminal justice policy in the 1990s, and the legacy of enslavement on Black Americans. But there is much less consensus on what the government’s role should be in righting these past wrongs. Add children and schooling into the mix and the debate becomes especially volatile. SEE ALSO 📷 EQUITY & DIVERSITYWhat Black Men Need From Schools to Stay in the Teaching Profession School boards, superintendents, even principals and teachers are already facing questions about critical race theory, and there are significant disagreements even among experts about its precise definition as well as how its tenets should inform K-12 policy and practice. This explainer is meant only as a starting point to help educators grasp core aspects of the current debate.Just what is critical race theory anyway? Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas. SEE ALSO 📷 EQUITY & DIVERSITY SPOTLIGHTSpotlight on Critical Race Theory (PDF Download) June 11, 2021 Today, those same patterns of discrimination live on through facially race-blind policies, like single-family zoning that prevents the building of affordable housing in advantaged, majority-white neighborhoods and, thus, stymies racial desegregation efforts.CRT also has ties to other intellectual currents, including the work of sociologists and literary theorists who studied links between political power, social organization, and language. And its ideas have since informed other fields, like the humanities, the social sciences, and teacher education.This academic understanding of critical race theory differs from representation in recent popular books and, especially, from its portrayal by critics—often, though not exclusively, conservative Republicans. Critics charge that the theory leads to negative dynamics, such as a focus on group identity over universal, shared traits; divides people into “oppressed” and “oppressor” groups; and urges intolerance.Thus, there is a good deal of confusion over what CRT means, as well as its relationship to other terms, like “anti-racism” and “social justice,” with which it is often conflated.To an extent, the term “critical race theory” is now cited as the basis of all diversity and inclusion efforts regardless of how much it’s actually informed those programs.One conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation, recently attributed a whole host of issues to CRT, including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, California’s recent ethnic studies model curriculum, the free-speech debate on college campuses, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline—such as the Promise program in Broward County, Fla., that some parents blame for the Parkland school shootings. “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects

the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based,” the organization claimed. (A good parallel here is how popular ideas of the common core learning standards grew to encompass far more than what those standards said on paper.)

Does critical race theory say all white people are racist? Isn’t that racist, too? The theory says that racism is part of everyday life, so people—white or nonwhite—who don’t intend to be racist can nevertheless make choices that fuel racism.Some critics claim that the theory advocates discriminating against white people in order to achieve equity. They mainly aim those accusations at theorists who advocate for policies that explicitly take race into account. (The writer Ibram X. Kendi, whose recent popular book How to Be An Antiracist suggests that discrimination that creates equity can be considered anti-racist, is often cited in this context.)Fundamentally, though, the disagreement springs from different conceptions of racism. CRT puts an emphasis on outcomes, not merely on individuals’ own beliefs, and it calls on these outcomes to be examined and rectified. Among lawyers, teachers, policymakers, and the general public, there are many disagreements about how precisely to do those things, and to what extent race should be explicitly appealed to or referred to in the process.Here’s a helpful illustration to keep in mind in understanding this complex idea. In a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court school-assignment case on whether race could be a factor in maintaining diversity in K-12 schools, Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion famously concluded: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” But during oral arguments, then-justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said: “It’s very hard for me to see how you can have a racial objective but a nonracial means to get there.”All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.What does any of this have to do with K-12 education? Scholars who study critical race theory in education look at how policies and practices in K-12 education contribute to persistent racial inequalities in education, and advocate for ways to change them. Among the topics they’ve studied: racially segregated schools, the underfunding of majority-Black and Latino school districts, disproportionate disciplining of Black students, barriers to gifted programs and selective-admission high schools, and curricula that reinforce racist ideas.Critical race theory is not a synonym for culturally relevant teaching, which emerged in the 1990s. This teaching approach seeks to affirm students’ ethnic and racial backgrounds and is intellectually rigorous. But it’s related in that one of its aims is to help students identify and critique the causes of social inequality in their own lives. Many educators support, to one degree or another, culturally relevant teaching and other strategies to make schools feel safe and supportive for Black students and other underserved populations. (Students of color make up the majority of school-aged children.) But they don’t necessarily identify these activities as CRT-related.As one teacher-educator put it: “The way we usually see any of this in a classroom is: ‘Have I thought about how my Black kids feel? And made a space for them, so that they can be successful?’ That is the level I think it stays at, for most teachers.” Like others interviewed for this explainer, the teacher-educator did not want to be named out of fear of online harassment.An emerging subtext among some critics is that curricular excellence can’t coexist alongside culturally responsive teaching or anti-racist work. Their argument goes that efforts to change grading practices or make the curriculum less Eurocentric will ultimately harm Black students, or hold them to a less high standard.As with CRT in general, its popular representation in schools has been far less nuanced. A recent poll by the advocacy group Parents Defending Education claimed some schools were teaching that “white people are inherently

privileged, while Black and other people of color are inherently oppressed and victimized”; that “achieving racial justice and equality between racial groups requires discriminating against people based on their whiteness”; and that “the United States was founded on racism.”Thus much of the current debate appears to spring not from the academic texts, but from fear among critics that students—especially white students—will be exposed to supposedly damaging or self-demoralizing ideas.While some district officials have issued mission statements, resolutions, or spoken about changes in their policies using some of the discourse of CRT, it’s not clear to what degree educators are explicitly teaching the concepts, or even using curriculum materials or other methods that implicitly draw on them. For one thing, scholars say, much scholarship on CRT is written in academic language or published in journals not easily accessible to K-12 teachers.What is going on with these proposals to ban critical race theory in schools? As of mid-May, legislation purporting to outlaw CRT in schools has passed in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee and have been proposed in various other statehouses. SEE ALSO 📷 STATES INTERACTIVEMap: Where Critical Race Theory Is Under Attack June 11, 2021 • 2 min read The bills are so vaguely written that it’s unclear what they will affirmatively cover.Could a teacher who wants to talk about a factual instance of state-sponsored racism—like the establishment of Jim Crow, the series of laws that prevented Black Americans from voting or holding office and separated them from white people in public spaces—be considered in violation of these laws?It’s also unclear whether these new bills are constitutional, or whether they impermissibly restrict free speech.It would be extremely difficult, in any case, to police what goes on inside hundreds of thousands of classrooms. But social studies educators fear that such laws could have a chilling effect on teachers who might self-censor their own lessons out of concern for parent or administrator complaints.As English teacher Mike Stein told Chalkbeat Tennessee about the new law: “History teachers can not adequately teach about the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. English teachers will have to avoid teaching almost any text by an African American author because many of them mention racism to various extents.” The laws could also become a tool to attack other pieces of the curriculum, including ethnic studies and “action civics”—an approach to civics education that asks students to research local civic problems and propose solutions.How is this related to other debates over what’s taught in the classroom amid K-12 culture wars? The charge that schools are indoctrinating students in a harmful theory or political mindset is a longstanding one, historians note. CRT appears to be the latest salvo in this ongoing debate.In the early and mid-20th century, the concern was about socialism or Marxism. The conservative American Legion, beginning in the 1930s, sought to rid schools of progressive-minded textbooks that encouraged students to consider economic inequality; two decades later the John Birch Society raised similar criticisms about school materials. As with CRT criticisms, the fear was that students would be somehow harmed by exposure to these ideas.As the school-aged population became more diverse, these debates have been inflected through the lens of race and ethnic representation, including disagreements over multiculturalism and ethnic studies, the ongoing “canon wars” over which texts should make up the English curriculum, and the so-called “ebonics” debates over the status of Black vernacular English in schools.In history, the debates have focused on the balance among patriotism and American exceptionalism, on one hand, and the country’s history of exclusion and violence towards Indigenous people and the enslavement of African Americans on the other—between its ideals and its practices. Those tensions led to the implosion of a 1994

attempt to set national history standards.A current example that has fueled much of the recent round of CRT criticism is the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which sought to put the history and effects of enslavement—as well as Black Americans’ contributions to democratic reforms—at the center of American history. The culture wars are always, at some level, battled out within schools, historians say.“It’s because they’re nervous about broad social things, but they’re talking in the language of school and school curriculum,” said one historian of education. “That’s the vocabulary, but the actual grammar is anxiety about shifting social power relations.” The literature on critical race theory is vast. Here are some starting points to learn more about it, culturally relevant teaching, and the conservative backlash to CRT.Brittany Aronson & Judson Laughter. “The Theory and Practice of Culturally Relevant Education: A Synthesis of Research Across Content Areas.” Review of Educational Research March 2016, Vol. 86 No. 1. (2016); Kimberlé Crenshaw, ed. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. The New Press. (1996); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy,” American Educational Research Journal Vol. 32 No. 3. (1995); Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education?” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education Vol 11. No. 1. (1998); Jonathan Butcher and Mike Gonzalez. “Critical Race Theory, the New Intolerance, and Its Grip on America.” Heritage Foundation. (2020); Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed. New York, NY: New York University Press. (2017); Shelly Brown-Jeffy & Jewell E. Cooper, “Toward a Conceptual Framework of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: An Overview of the Conceptual and Theoretical Literature.” Teacher Education Quarterly, Winter 2011.A version of this article appeared in the June 02, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

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carolinemillerbooks · 3 years

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New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/social-concerns/light-reading-on-court-stripping/

Light Reading On Court Stripping

Donald Trump’s Reign of Error has left some positive residue. It got people to vote in large numbers, and it also got them to consider the meaning of “checks and balances” with reference to the U. S. Constitution. Congress, particularly the Senate, hasn’t provided much of a civics lesson on that point, but what about the Supreme Court? Did it insulate the country from presidential overreach? According to some pundits, its performance has been a mixed bag. The authority of the Supreme Court is enshrined in Article 111, Section 2 of the Constitution. It gives that body the power to determine what are issues of law are and rule accordingly. (“Maybury vs. Madison”) Historically, neither the White House nor Congress have been comfortable with its jurisdiction and have tried to provide oversight through judicial appointments. Amy Coney Barrett’s is a recent example. Ultra-conservative, she replaces an ultra-liberal judge, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Congressional Democrats are rattled by the conservative shift the new appointee brings to the Court. They talk of remedies like increasing the number of justices or initiating term limits for judges. Congress has the authority to regulate the Courts under the “exception” clause of section ii, an effort to ensure an elected body has final jurisdiction over an appointed one. In 1982, after Roe v. Wade, a young lawyer, looking for a third way to reign-in the courts, made an unorthodox proposal. (“Pack the Supreme Court, or Stripe Its Powers?” by David Yaffe-Bellany, Bloomberg Businessweek, October 12, 2020, pgs. 36-37.) Under the exception clause, he argued Congress could regulate what cases came before the high court and which did not. In today’s world, for example, if Congress wanted to pass a sweeping “Green New Deal,” but feared a conservative Supreme Court would overturn it, legislators could add language to the bill that exempted it from the high court’s oversight. That would strip the judiciary of its jurisdiction. A snag exists, however. Article 111 gives the Supreme Court the power to determine what is “law” and “equity” which means, according to Maybury vs. Madison, the Court has the right to decide what is law and could exercise that right. The inevitable battle between the branches of government would weaken our democracy, so no one as yet has had the stomach to play that gambit. But times change. A discussion about the Constitution is apt to make a person’s eyelids grow heavy, instilling the need for a nap. But not to worry. Even a Constitutional crisis has its ironies and bits of humor. Take that young lawyer who was so incensed by Roe v. Wade that he proposed to strip the high court of its power, for example. His name is John Roberts. Yes, that one! The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. “O, what a tangled web we weave…” (Walter Scott.)

#Amy Coney Barrett #checks and balances between government branches #court stripping #David Yaffe-Bellany #John Roberts #Maybury vs. Madison #Roe vs. Wade #Ruth Bader Ginsberg #U. S. Supreme Court #U.S. Constituion

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gyrlversion · 5 years

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Trump Is Repeating Obamas Mistakes On Trade

For well over a year now, experts have been predicting disaster from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. It would wreck Christmas shopping, ruin the board game industry and drive up the price of fancy sweaters. According to the august analysts at the New York Federal Reserve, Trump’s tariffs cost an average of $414 per household last year and will cost another $831 over the coming year. The top Senate Democrat on trade, Ron Wyden of Oregon, recently warned that the tariffs could increase consumer prices by up to 25 percent by the time back to school shopping is through.

This, we are told, is just Econ 101. Tariffs raise prices on consumers and by doing so, limit economic growth. Trump’s tariffs, therefore, are a celebration of ignorance, a grotesquerie cribbed from medieval alchemists. Last year, The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell even argued that Trump’s trade program was quite literally a relic of the 1680s.

Recent history has a way of painting the distant past in its own colors. It’s true that since the 1990s, both Democratic and Republican administrations have generally pursued tariff reductions, imposing import tariffs only as a last resort. And yet tariffs have always been a pretty routine element of U.S. economic policy. The second piece of legislation President George Washington signed into law was a 5 percent tariff applied to most imports. The latest official Harmonized Tariff Schedule published by the U.S. International Trade Commission includes 22 sections and 99 chapters ― plus appendices for chemicals, dyes and pharmaceutical products ― coming to 3,888 pages of information. Very little of it is Trump’s handiwork.

Apocalypse Trade may yet come, but so far, its would-be Cassandras have been Chickens Little. Consumer spending rose last holiday season. Total U.S. manufacturing employment is up very modestly since Trump began his tariff campaign, while overall unemployment has continued its downward drift to levels unseen since the 1960s.

If you didn’t notice losing $400 last year, you aren’t alone. The New York Fed’s analysis is a mess of theory and assumption that conflicts with basic inflation data. Consumer prices have essentially been flat since the tariffs were imposed.

None of this means Trump’s trade war is a success. In fact, it’s much worse than the Econ 101 scolds let on. Behind all of his bluster and bravado, Trump is essentially pursuing the same international economic agenda as his recent predecessors ― an agenda that can only be described as an abject, bipartisan failure. And the stakes in this drama are much higher than a few dollars a month at Target or Amazon.

Behind all of his bluster and bravado, Trump is essentially pursuing the same international economic agenda as his recent predecessors.

Trade between the United States and China is, like all international commerce, a political arrangement. There is no “natural” or “free” way for two nations with different laws and political systems to conduct their affairs together, and the relationship between the United States and China was strained long before Trump’s inauguration.

It is not a secret that American corporations have outsourced much of their manufacturing activity to China over the past two decades. Economists dispute exactly how much of the domestic job loss is attributable to trade, but leading scholars believe the U.S. lost roughly 1 million manufacturing jobs to China during the first decade of the 21st century, and there is reason to suspect the outflow continues today in some sectors.

China does not have some innate aptitude for manufacturing. The climate in Shenzen is not better suited for cranking out electronics than that of San Francisco or Des Moines. The reason so much of the world’s manufacturing moved to China in the early years of this century is that the Chinese and American governments implemented policies designed to make it happen.

The signature elements of this program are low wages for workers in China, loose regulations for companies operating in China, and systematic under-valuation of China’s currency, the yuan. Low wages and hands-off regulatory policies cut corporate costs, enabling made-in-China products to secure higher profits. These efforts are strongly reinforced by the Chinese government’s policy of maintaining a “weak” yuan. By keeping the international value of China’s currency low, Chinese goods can sell for less in American markets, undercutting made-in-America producers.

Workers in China earn an average wage of about $3.40 an hour, according to the research firm Euromonitor, which compares to an average wage in the U.S. of about $27.83. This differential is enabled by lower costs of living in China, but also through simple worker repression. It’s illegal, for instance, to form a labor union in China independent of the ruling Communist Party. On the currency front, China hasn’t directly intervened in currency markets to devalue for several years now, but by holding on to about $4 trillion in dollar-denominated assets as reserves, China elevates the value of the dollar against the yuan.

So the U.S. simultaneously exported manufacturing jobs and much of its dirtier, carbon-intensive production to China in exchange for cheaper consumer goods and higher corporate profits. This is, in a nutshell, the central idea behind what was once optimistically labeled “free trade” or “globalization,” but which increasingly goes by the more ominous term “neoliberalism.”

Bill Clinton implemented this framework over the course of his presidency, relying on the ideas of George H.W. Bush and a few thinkers celebrated by the American conservative movement. He added moral heft to the arrangement by dressing it up in the language of human rights and international goodwill.

“Bringing China into the [World Trade Organization] doesn’t guarantee that it will choose political reform,” Clinton said in 2000. “But accelerating the process of economic change will force China to confront that choice sooner, and it will make the imperative for the right choice stronger.” Free trade with China, he argued, “is likely to have a profound impact on human rights and political liberty.”

By 2009, most world leaders recognized things were not going according to Clinton’s script. The “political reform” Clinton had hoped for had not materialized in China, while the United States had invaded Iraq on false pretenses and implemented a ghastly torture program. Whatever the virtues of cheap labor in China, it did not seem to have much to do with global harmony.

An economically stronger China, meanwhile, began asserting itself more forcefully on the international stage ― sometimes confronting American allies in ways that demanded U.S. attention. Things got particularly heated in 2010 and 2011 when China claimed rights to shipping, mining and drilling rights in the South China Sea ― a dispute that involved Japan, India and several other nations.

The reason so much of the world’s manufacturing moved to China in the early years of this century is that the Chinese and U.S. governments implemented policies to accomplish exactly this outcome.

This wasn’t just a problem for American allies. The United States itself was becoming increasingly dependent on China for an array of products that were no longer produced domestically ― from consumer electronics to specialty high-tech metal alloys. This, in turn, had given China new economic leverage over U.S. diplomatic decisions.

So in the fall of 2011, President Barack Obama announced plans to station 2,500 marines in Australia, saying his administration had made “a deliberate and strategic decision,” that “as a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.”

The troops were mostly for show. The real action involved in what became known as “the pivot to Asia” was a massive trade deal with essentially every Pacific nation the Obama administration could convince to sign on ― other than China. By strengthening U.S. economic ties with everyone else in the region, the Obama administration hoped to obtain greater leverage over China to deter geopolitical choices the United States frowned upon.

This was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the core function of which ― despite much window-dressing to the contrary ― was not to reduce carbon emissions or advance human rights, but to diversify the abusive regimes on which the United States relied for cheap consumer goods (particularly the governments of Vietnam and Malaysia). The Obama administration eventually became so desperate to pass the deal that it upgraded Malaysia’s official human rights rating shortly after the discovery of mass human trafficking graves on the Malaysian side of the border with Thailand. As many environmental advocacy groups noted during TPP negotiations, the trade pact was inconsistent with the goals Obama pursued under the Paris climate accord.

TPP, famously, did not pass. Which brings us to Trump. Look under the hood of his economic demands against China, and they are very similar to those the Obama administration once made ― mostly calls to respect the intellectual property claims of U.S. corporations that move their operations to China and end China-backed hacking of U.S. companies. Trump is applying tariffs against hundreds of billions of dollars worth of made-in-China products in an effort to coerce China into making it easier and more profitable for American firms to move their operations to China.

In a sense, Trump is getting results. China hasn’t budged on IP, but many firms that sell to American consumers have in fact rearranged their supply chains to avoid Trump’s tariffs. The results roughly align with the aims once pursued by the Obama administration. As the U.S. trade deficit with China has declined in recent months, the trade deficit with Vietnam has increased, as noted by Brad Setser at the Council on Foreign Relations. This is one reason prices for American households haven’t really increased. Trump’s tariffs aren’t bringing manufacturing back to America; they’re shifting it from China to other low-wage countries.

And like Obama, Trump has done nothing substantive to address the national security implications of China’s effective monopoly over various critical resources. The U.S., for instance, remains entirely dependent on China for rare earth minerals ― a key ingredient in everything from light bulbs to smartphones to military weapons.

Trump, in short, is using the unilateral blunt force of a tariff program to implement many of the international goals that Obama tried and failed to secure through coordinated, multilateral negotiation. The different tactics of the two administrations have obscured their essentially common agenda.

The repugnance of this agenda in the face of domestic inequality, international political repression and accelerating global climate change renders the tariff question almost a distraction. Movements in retail prices are simply not very important when considered against the linked crises facing great power diplomacy in the 21st century.

Such complications, alas, are beyond the scope of Econ 101.

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96thdayofrage · 5 years

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Comcast has been active in lobbying against state net neutrality laws and municipal broadband, which is restricted by laws passed in many US states. The Friends Fiduciary proposal pressures Comcast to disclose more of its state-level lobbying activity.

Comcast's board unanimously recommended that shareholders vote against the Friends Fiduciary resolution, saying that Comcast "already disclose[s] most of our government lobbying interactions" as required by law. "[O]ur Board believes that the requirements in this proposal are burdensome and an unproductive use of our resources and are not in the best interests of our shareholders," Comcast said in a rebuttal included in its proxy statement.

Friends Fiduciary acknowledged that its proposal is unlikely to pass. It needs a majority, but "CEO Brian Roberts holds 33.3 percent of the voting shares," a Friends Fiduciary spokesperson told Ars. Friends Fiduciary has filed similar proposals the past few years and received 19.1 percent of the vote in 2018, up from 16.6 percent in 2017, the group said.

Excluding Roberts' shares, the proposal received 32 percent of the vote in 2018, the group also said. "We see even proposals that don't pass as an important barometer of shareholder perspective, and over 30 percent of outside shareholders requesting more transparency from Comcast on their lobbying as a strong statement to the company," Friends Fiduciary told Ars.

Net neutrality and municipal broadband

The Friends Fiduciary proposal argued that more lobbying disclosures are necessary in part because "Comcast's lobbying spending is perceived to go counter to its public statements, a sentiment which has only grown given recent debates over net neutrality." As evidence, the group pointed to a November 2017 Slate article titled "Comcast wants you to think it supports net neutrality while it pushes for net neutrality to be destroyed."

Separately, Comcast should say how much it gives to Broadband for America, a "group which has been subpoenaed by the New York attorney general in the course of an investigation into the potential fraudulence of some of the 22 million comments submitted to the Federal Communication Commission" during the net neutrality repeal proceeding, Friends Fiduciary said. Comcast is a member of the group.

Friends Fiduciary also argued that Comcast's secrecy around lobbying could contribute to the rise of municipal broadband networks that compete against Comcast broadband. The shareholder proposal said:

Comcast's lack of lobbying transparency perpetuates its negative public image and could fuel regulatory backlash or contribute to the rise of municipal broadband, potentially threatening company profitability. In a highly regulated industry providing essential services such as telecommunications, we maintain that careful consideration of reputational risk becomes even more crucial. Municipal broadband has drawn bipartisan support, especially in conservative areas. More than 750 communities in the US have decided to operate their own networks. As one article puts it, "Our desire for better broadband, and our collective disdain for Comcast, tends to be one of the few things capable of bridging the partisan divide." Comcast's consistent low rankings in the areas of trust and citizenship speak to the potential for its lack of transparency to impact its future prospects.

State disclosures lag behind federal ones

While Comcast faces strict rules for disclosing federal lobbying activity, its lobbying disclosures are not sufficient at the state level, Friends Fiduciary said.

"Comcast expends significant company resources on lobbying at both the state and federal level in comparison with other companies," the Friends Fiduciary proposal also said. "Although required at the federal level, state and other disclosures are often cursory or non-existent—meaning that investors have no way of knowing how much the company is spending beyond the federal level."

FURTHER READING

Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off

Additionally, the group argues that Comcast's "board oversight structures are insufficient given the volume of Comcast's lobbying spending."

By contrast, AT&T "does comprehensively disclose its lobbying expenditures," the proposal said.

Comcast spent $30.3 million on lobbying at the federal level in 2017 and 2018, "the highest sum in the telecommunications sector and 4th highest sum of all reporting US companies," the proposal said. Comcast's spending on lobbying at the state level is also likely significant, given that "Comcast hired 241 lobbyists in 35 states in 2017," Friends Fiduciary said. But the full extent of Comcast's state lobbying is unknown, as "[l]obbying disclosure requirements are currently close to nonexistent in 22 states," the group said.

The shareholder proposal applauded Comcast's decision to leave the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), but said Comcast should also "disclos[e] the names of and amounts paid to trade associations and other tax-exempt organizations which lobby on the company's behalf."

Comcast: Expanding disclosures is too hard

As evidence that it sufficiently discloses political activity, Comcast pointed to a webpage with information on its political contributions—though the page only lists political contributions from 2014 to 2017.

"Because the information that this proposal seeks to be disclosed is generally publicly available in appropriate detail, implementing this proposal would require us to incur unnecessary expense, would divert management attention away from our primary business activities and would raise potential competitive concerns," Comcast said.

Comcast noted that it files quarterly reports with Congress about its federal lobbying activities and that it follows state disclosure laws.

Friends Fiduciary countered that public availability of Comcast's federal lobbying spending isn't enough and that "our proposal asks for more information about state level, trade association, and grassroots spending, all of which are not covered under federal disclosures."

Comcast's response also defends its lobbying activities. "For a company in highly regulated industries such as ours, providing information to legislators and regulators and their respective staffs and making sure they fully understand the implications of their policy decisions is a necessary cost of doing business and an extension of our right to petition our government," Comcast said. "Requiring a company to go through the unnecessary burden of gathering and disclosing such costs—particularly when much of this information is already publicly available either through our own filings or those of any trade associations of which we are members—would be a waste of resources."

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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President Donald Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which puts Roe v. Wade in serious peril. Proponents of criminalizing abortion are, and should be, pleased with this development.

But some people claiming to be pro-abortion rights have argued that they’re okay with Roe being overruled too — on the grounds that the decision was poorly reasoned and that it choked off democratic debate prematurely.

“Let Roe go,” urged Megan McArdle of the Washington Post last week, even as she explained she believed as a general matter that women ought to be free to choose abortion. This might seem like idiosyncratic contrarianism. But for many years pro-choice/anti-Roe punditry has been a genre unto itself, with columnist after columnist asserting that overruling Roe wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Benjamin Wittes, for example, predicted in the Atlantic, in 2005, that “in the absence of Roe abortion rights would probably be protected by the laws of most states relatively quickly.” “Access to abortion wouldn’t necessarily become less widely available than it is now,” agreed Jeffrey Rosen, in the same magazine the next year.

But sometimes an argument is counterintuitive because it’s wrong, and that’s the case here. Still, it’s an argument worthy of attention. McArdle’s column serves as a useful target for analysis because it brings together into one place a lot of common fallacies about Roe, fallacies that will definitely be used in the coming months by opponents of legal abortion in order to minimize the effects of overruling a decision that roughly 70 percent of the public believes should be upheld. Let’s look at some of these myths in detail.

Roe is “a poorly reasoned mess,” asserts McArdle, adding that “it’s all ‘emanations and penumbras’ and similarly float-y language.” This line of argument been echoed by other nominally pro-choice and anti-Roe pundits. “Roe has had a deep legitimacy problem, stemming from its weakness as a legal opinion,” according to Wittes.

Opponents of Roe writing for general audiences routinely invoke the “penumbras” phrase, from Justice William O. Douglas’s opinion striking down a ban on the use or distribution of contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut, as if doing so self-evidently renders the opinion absurd. Douglas had used that phrase to defend the idea that the Constitution includes an implicit right to privacy, in at least some matters of marriage and family, and the Roe majority cited it to extend that idea to the realm of abortion.

But Justice Douglas’s observation that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance” describes a perfectly banal concept: the enumeration of rights, individually or collectively, implies the existence of other rights. As Douglas himself pointed out, in Griswold, the Supreme Court has enforced a “right of association” although that phrase is not found in the Constitution, because guarantees of free speech and to petition the government would mean little without the right to form political associations.

Earlier this term, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which prevented most states from making their own rules regarding sports gambling, based on the doctrine of “anticommandeering.” Specifically, that meant the the US could not conscript state officials to enforce its own regulatory schemes. Now, the concept of “anticommandeering” is not found explicitly in the Constitution, but according to the Rehnquist Court it is implicit in the general federalist structure of the Constitution. In short, mocking the phrase “emanations and penumbras” isn’t much of an argument.

But it’s even more problematic when applied to Roe because the holding in that case does not rely on Douglas’s argument that the right to privacy is implicit in the “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights” (i.e., the penumbras). The right to privacy, according to Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion for the Court in Roe, should be located in “the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action.” This doctrine, generally called “substantive due process,” is that some rights are so fundamental that abrogating them is by definition a violation of the “due process of law.”

New Dealers like Douglas distrusted the doctrine because it had been used by pre-New Deal Courts to strike down economic regulations, seemingly because that’s what the justices preferred politically, but the moderate Republicans who controlled the Court in 1973 were more comfortable with the concept.

Rooting the right to privacy in the 14th Amendment is particularly significant because while Justice Douglas is one of the most liberal justices in the history of the Court — an easy target for Roe’s critics — Blackmun was largely drawing on a theory (privacy is rooted in substantive due process) laid out in a concurrence by Justice John Marshall Harlan, in Griswold. Harlan was the Warren Court’s house conservative; that he and Douglas agreed that a right to privacy exists, if for different reasons, suggests that belief in such a right need not be narrowly partisan. (And it’s worth remembering that Blackmun, the author of the Roe opinion, was a Nixon appointee, and he was joined by two of the three other Nixon appointees.

While the opinions in Griswold may seem a little thin, that’s partly because both Douglas and Harlan had stated their views in much more detail four years earlier in their dissents in Poe v. Ullman. In that case, a majority of the court refused to hear a challenge to the Connecticut law it later struck down in Griswold, and Douglas and Harlan explained both why the Court should have taken the case — which prevented any birth control clinics from operating in the state — and ruled the law unconstitutional. Both dissents in Poe are worth reading, and provide further evidence that the right to privacy has deep roots in the American constitutional tradition. And if Griswold is right, Roe is at least plausible.

As Justice John Paul Stevens put it in a 1986 case, “There may, of course, be a significant difference in the strength of the countervailing state interest, but I fail to see how a decision on childbearing becomes less important the day after conception than the day before.”

To be clear, as with virtually all constitutional questions of any interest, reasonable people can disagree with the outcome of Roe. One can argue that in fact there are no privacy protections implicit in the Constitution, and that a statute making the use of contraceptives illegal and empowering police to search bedrooms for evidence of them raises no constitutional problems. Or one can argue that privacy doctrine is sound but not applicable to Roe because fetal life presents a unique problem.

But Roe hardly invented the idea that the constitution created a zone of privacy for families into which the state may not intrude; in that sense, at least, it is well-grounded in established doctrine.

Roe “has made it all but impossible to regulate abortion, except in the narrowest circumstances,” according to the anti-abortion National Review editor Rich Lowry. This echoes a theme of the pro-choice anti-Roe pundits: Wittes claimed that Court had “removed the abortion question from the legislative realm.”

But this is simply false. It’s true that Roe itself forbade most regulation of abortion prior to fetal viability, which it defined as occurring after the second “trimester.” But as modified by the Supreme Court in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey — which discarded the trimester framework — states can regulate pre-viability abortions as long as they do not constitute an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to choose.

And the Supreme Court has applied that test very loosely. Even as states have passed more and more restrictions on abortion — including “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws that have forced perfectly safe abortion clinics to close – the Court struck down only one regulation under Casey between 1992 and 2016, and that decision was quickly overruled when George W. Bush’s nominees joined the Court. (The Court upheld a federal ban on so-called “partial-birth abortion” after striking down a nearly identical state statute less than a decade earlier.)

The Court finally struck down a particularly extreme Texas statute in 2016, one that required abortion clinics to have facilities similar to those in clinics that performed a much wider range of procedure, and also required doctors to have admitting privileges in a nearby hospital — requirements that would have required a majority of the state’s clinics to close. This decision has become effectively a dead letter with Kennedy’s retirement. But in any case, states have many regulatory tools at their disposal to discourage women from getting abortions. These regulations have been distressingly effective at making abortion inaccessible for many women, particularly those in rural areas.

According to McArdle, the US has “one of the world’s most permissive abortion laws.” This point, related to the previous one, uses the somewhat more stringent term limits in most European countries as a “gotcha” against liberals. “France, like many European countries, takes a stricter line on abortion than does the United States,” writes Kevin Williamson, of National Review (and, ever-so-briefly, the Atlantic).

Ross Douthat has similarly argued that the French system, which permits abortion for any reason within 12 weeks of conception, afterwards requiring certification by two doctors that abortion would be threatening to a woman’s life or health, represents a plausible “middle ground” in the American abortion debate.

The comparison is misleading at best because it abstracts a single regulatory aspect from a complex healthcare system and applies it to radically different political and geographic context. Making abortion law comparable in the US and France would require not merely changing the term limit but repealing the Hyde Amendment — which bans Medicaid funds from being used for abortions. (In France, in contrast, the state pays 80 to 100 percent of the cost of an abortion.) It would also mean subsidizing a bunch of rural public health clinics that offer women a full array of reproductive services, including abortion, and a repeal of most of the state laws that restrict the termination of a pregnancy.

Needless to say, this isn’t the deal American anti-abortion activists are offering. In fact, many American women would have much greater access to abortion if they lived under the French framework.

The two points above have emanations that form a penumbra that casts a shadow over the scope of the abortion debate in the United States. The arguments made by McArdle, Williamson, Lowry, and Douthat all imply that the primary subject of debate ought to be the point of the pregnancy at which abortion is banned outright.

The arguments that second trimester abortions should be banned, but pre-viability abortions shouldn’t, are not, in my view, persuasive. But more to the point, focusing on bans based on the age of the fetus obscures the obvious fact that the vast majority of abortion regulations — mandatory waiting periods, parental involvement and informed consent requirements, TRAP laws — apply at every stage of the pregnancy. (More than 90 percent of abortions occur in the first trimester, yet the restrictions apply to them as well.)

Opponents of Roe prefer to focus on second- and third-trimester abortions, the latter of which are vanishingly rare. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 1.3 percent of abortions occur after the 21st week.

If the goal of the anti-abortion movement is to stop second-term-or-later abortions, why do anti-abortion groups and their legislative allies also favor establishing a bewildering obstacle course of arbitrary regulations that affect abortions from the moment of conception onward.

The focus on term limits is a diversionary tactic intended to conceal a pincer movement carefully designed to strangle a woman’s right to choose. On the one hand, the number of weeks a woman has to obtain an abortion gets smaller and smaller; on the other hand, the hurdles for women seeking an abortion in a timely matter grow higher and higher.

This is particularly important because permitting onerous regulations targeted at abortion clinics is one way the Supreme Court can empower states to make abortion inaccessible without immediately and explicitly overruling Roe.

Another staple of the pro-choice anti-Roe argument is that, because abortion rights are generally popular, the protection of the Supreme Court isn’t really necessary. Wittes asserted that “the Supreme Court has prevented abortion-rights supporters from winning a debate in which public opinion favors them.” Rosen recently and tellingly argued that the transformations if Roe is overruled or gutted “may be less dramatic, in practice, than liberals fear” because “the main effect would be restricting the access of poor women who have little access today.”

It is very odd indeed to argue that overruling Roe is no big deal because its greatest effects would be on the most vulnerable populations. (It’s true that, because of Casey, the access of many poor women to abortion has been greatly reduced, but from a pro-abortion rights perspective the obvious answer is to move towards the more robust protections of the original Roe rather than making abortion even less accessible.)

But the inequitable impact of overruling Roe is important politically as well. The women who pay the biggest price for abortion criminalization and most regulations are the least politically powerful.

Even when abortion is made banned by a state, affluent women generally have access to safe abortions, either through the “gray market” of doctors who quietly perform them or by their ability to travel to other jurisdictions. As a result, many affluent pro-choice Republican voters can keep voting Republican knowing that more restrictive abortion laws will not affect them or people similarly situated. After all, before Roe the vast majority of states kept abortion bans on the books even as national majorities become supportive of abortion rights.

Elections are not referenda; supporting a particular unpopular position doesn’t necessarily spell electoral doom for a party. And that’s doubly true when the population affected most by a law has little political power. This is exactly a case where judicial protection of a threatened right is both appropriate and in many cases necessary.

President Trump said in an interview after Kennedy’s resignation that abortion “could very well end up with the states at some point.” Many pundits – including McArdle – have accepted the framing.

But the assumption that overruling Roe would send the issue back to the states is clearly false. As previously discussed, Congress has passed, and the Supreme Court upheld, a nationwide ban of what anti-abortion groups have labeled “partial-birth abortions.” To find the last time the House of Representatives passed an abortion regulation, you would have to go all the way back to —this January, when it passed a bill that would require doctors to provide medical care for a fetus born alive during an abortion procedure.

And last year, the House passed a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks in every state in the union. So far, these bills have died in the Senate. But as the Republican Party becomes more and more hostile to abortion rights, abortion would remain a national issue. And should the filibuster be eliminated or substantially watered down, a Republican government with slightly larger Senate majorities than it has now would be able to pass national abortion regulations.

If you support the criminalization of abortion, or believe that safe abortions should be available to affluent women but not to poor and/or rural women, you should be happy about the near-certainty that Roe will be overruled or eviscerated. But whatever the nation’s contrarian pundits might tell you, if you support the reproductive rights of women, you should be appalled.

Scott Lemieux is a lecturer in political science at the University of Washington, specializing in constitutional law, the Supreme Court, and American political institutions and development. He is, with David Watkins, the co-author of Judicial Review and Contemporary Democratic Theory: Power, Domination and the Courts. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns & Money

The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at [email protected]

Original Source -> 6 myths about Roe v. Wade, debunked

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The Democrats' Response

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The Democrats' Response

This article appears in the Summer 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.

On a summer day in 1981, a disconsolate House Speaker Tip O’Neill sat “slumped in a chair far to the rear of the House floor” (as Thomas Edsall recalled the scene in his 1984 book The New Politics of Inequality) and watched his colleagues vote to end the New Deal order. The vote was on a Republican substitute to a tax bill sent to the floor by the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee; the substitute cut taxes by $749 billion, bringing down the rate on the highest incomes from 70 percent to 50 percent, lowering the capital gains tax, and reducing the inheritance tax—the first tax reduction since the 1920s, Edsall wrote, “skewed in favor of the rich.”

To O’Neill, the unkindest cut was not that the Republican measure passed, but that it passed with the support of 48 of his fellow House Democrats. Most of them represented majority-white districts in the South—districts that today are represented by Republicans—but some Northern-state Democrats voted for the substitute as well. And when the bill went over to the Senate, which unlike the House was under Republican control, 37 Democrats voted for it on final passage, while just ten voted no.

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

In the decades since Ronald Reagan’s election and the first tax cut skewed in favor of the wealthy since the 1920s, Democratic support for tax cuts for the rich has evaporated.

Plainly, Ronald Reagan’s victory on an anti-tax platform and the GOP capture of the Senate in the 1980 election had shaken many of O’Neill’s fellow Democrats. So had California voters’ passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which heralded an era of tax and spending rollbacks. That era was still going strong in 2001, when another newly elected Republican president, George W. Bush, signed into law a bill that further reduced the taxes on high-income Americans—this time, with the votes of 12 Democratic senators. The Revolt of the Haves (the all-too-prophetic title of my colleague Robert Kuttner’s 1979 book on Proposition 13) had not yet run its course.

For Republicans, apparently, it will never run its course. The tax cut that all but 12 Republicans voted for and Donald Trump signed earlier in this session remains the one significant piece of legislation that an otherwise fractious GOP could agree upon—and, in grand Republican tradition, it will deliver 83 percent of its benefits to the wealthiest 1 percent by 2027. But this time around, no Democrat in either house supported the legislation. Even though many Democrats had at times supported lowering corporate tax rates, the GOP bill was so overwhelmingly tilted toward the rich that no Democrat crossed party lines on the vote.

The Democrats’ solidarity was doubtless strengthened by their battles against Trump, and “their success in defeating the Republicans’ attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” says Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), “really stiffened their spines.” More than that, their unanimity was a reflection of the political transformations their party and nation had undergone since 1981, with the Democrats no longer representing any part of the white South, and with the share of party members identifying themselves as liberals growing from 28 percent in 2000 to 46 percent today. It was also a reflection of the economic transformation the nation had undergone since that 1981 tax cut, with the era of broadly shared prosperity now a dim memory, with the decades-long stagnation of wages, and with levels of economic inequality not seen since just before the 1929 crash.

Their opposition to the tax cut notwithstanding, it has taken the Democrats a while to figure out which arguments against the cuts work best on the 2018 campaign trail. And while they now appear to have reached a consensus on that, they have been slow to specify what changes they’d make to the law should they return to power. Their reticence is partly due to their calculation that such proposals might cost them votes come November. But it’s also due to their disagreement on what changes they should make. Though revisiting the cuts to corporations may look to be politically unassailable to voters, there are still many centrist Democrats who fear for their campaign funding should the party offend their corporate donors.

DESPITE ALL THE COVERAGE the 2017 Republican Tax Act received in the media, despite all the hype about corporations passing along their new savings to their workers, when Democrats talked to their constituents in town meetings and neighborhood coffee shops in the weeks and months following the bill’s enactment, they made an important discovery: Most people didn’t think the cut mattered very much to their own pocketbooks. Indeed, it was far from the top of list of issues that concerned them.

“If I didn’t raise the tax cut at my town halls, I don’t think it would even come up,” says Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. “People bring up gun safety, the need for living-wage jobs, the cost of housing and education. And they bring up corruption—the stranglehold that money has on our politics.”

And the tax cut, says Merkley, is a perfect illustration of that corruption. “I describe the bill as a reflection of the fundamental corruption of Congress,” he says. “I say it borrowed $1.5 trillion from your kids to give 80 percent of that to the richest Americans. I get hardly any pushback when I say that—even in the most conservative counties.”

Precisely because the cut confirms most Americans’ beliefs that big money controls politics and that corporations don’t pass along their profits to their workers, Democrats have seized upon a number of the bill’s enrich-the-rich particulars, and on the way it illustrates how wealth does not trickle down. The record level of share buybacks and mergers on which corporations have spent their new largesse has now become a standard Democratic talking point. In mid-May, for instance, Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi responded to a study that showed S&P 500 companies are on track to spend $1 trillion on buybacks and dividends this year by issuing a broadside against both the law and American corporate behavior. Contrary to Republican claims, she pointed out, the tax savings were going to “wealthy investors instead of raising wages or creating jobs.” (It’s not clear that the structural deficiencies of American capitalism would have become quite such a Democratic mantra absent the Tax Act.)

Another widely held American belief underpins the Democrats’ other line of attack against the cuts: That having just added mightily to the nation’s fiscal deficit, the Republicans will use that deficit as a pretext for going after Medicare and Medicaid. That charge, every poll shows, sticks—not least because the Republicans did try to go after Medicaid in their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. In the face of polling showing nearly 80 percent of the public didn’t want Medicaid slashed, Republican Speaker Paul Ryan went after it repeatedly, obsessively, as Ahab did the whale. It requires no imaginative leap to envision Republicans seeking to fill the budget hole they created by reducing Americans’ access to medical care. It requires nothing more than a short-term memory.

It took some time for the Democrats to realize that these three lines of attack—that the tax savings are going to the rich, that the corporations’ bounty is going only to shareholders, that Republicans will use the deficits they created to cut health care, retirement income, and education—were the ones that resonated most widely and deeply with the public. “Initially, Republicans got away with the argument that the cuts would bring jobs back,” says one senior Democratic Hill staffer. “The early reports after the bill passed focused on bonuses: Home Depot gives its workers $1,000 bonuses. Then we saw what corporations were actually doing with their savings: Home Depot admits it’s only for employees who’ve worked there for 20 years. That’s why Democrats have to keep talking about the buybacks, have to keep the drumbeat going.”

“It also took a while for the media to pick up on the threat the cut posed to Medicare and Medicaid,” he continues. “Our attacks on the cuts weren’t fully resonating until we zeroed in on the implications for Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. Then the media got it. And the public got it.”

The public certainly did. In a Gallup poll from April, 39 percent of Americans approved of the Republican tax cuts, while 52 percent disapproved of them. “I doubt there’s ever been a tax break bill in the whole course of American history that’s been this unpopular,” says Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett, the ranking Democrat on the Tax Policy Subcommittee of Ways and Means.

“IT’S EASIER TO BE UNIFIED when you’re on defense, opposing something,” says ATF’s Frank Clemente. “It’s hard when you’re proposing something, on offense.”

Precisely because the Democrats’ attacks on the Republican tax cut appear to be working, the course of least resistance, thus far, has been to stay on the attack rather than propose concrete alternatives. Yet arguing, as the Democrats do, that the cuts endanger education, affordable health care, and retirement security automatically begs the question of what Democrats would do about the cuts if they’re returned to power. Roll them all back? Perhaps only the corporate cuts? Or maybe just some particularly indefensible provisions?

Among some more centrist Democratic politicos and consultants, any talk of countering what all agree is a disastrous Republican tax cut is nonetheless seen as a risky venture. When Pelosi remarked in a meeting of reporters that, of course, the Democrats would seek to roll back some of the cuts, some Democratic staffers hastily put out the word that the party’s real commitment was simply to extend tax cuts to the middle class.

But the cognitive dissonance involved in attacking the cuts as dangerous yet failing to promise to do anything about them is ultimately too great for any but the most petrified of pols. (Who most certainly exist. Asked whether the cuts should be rolled back, one of the few House Democrats who represents a district that Trump carried came up with this masterpiece of nothing: “I think we ought to do what makes sense, and what passed does not make sense.”)

Not every Democrat is so exquisitely noncommittal. Asked the same question on rollbacks, Tim Ryan, the Democrat who represents Youngstown and Akron in the House, and who at times has been touted as a more culturally centrist (or at least, less demonized) alternative to Pelosi to lead the House Dems, replied, “For the top—yeah, absolutely. We need to ask the wealthiest people to pay more to help us rebuild the country and put these communities back into the global economy.” In other words, to get some much-needed funding to places like Youngstown and Akron.

“It’s important to tie the opposition to cuts to what we’d do with the money,” says one House Ways and Means Committee staffer. In late May, Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and a number of their House and Senate colleagues did just that. In response to the support for greater education outlays that the public demonstrated in backing the teachers’ strikes, they called for spending $100 billion on raises for teachers and improvements to school infrastructure. “Democrats propose paying for this critical investment,” the accompanying press release stated, “by repurposing the money used to provide tax cuts to the top one percent. Instead of allowing millionaires, billionaires, and massive corporations [to] keep their tax breaks and special-interest loopholes, Democrats would invest that money in teachers and students.” Nothing too specific there on which breaks and loopholes would be closed, but Doggett has noted that rolling back one late insertion in the GOP’s bill, which reduced the tax rate on the highest-income Americans from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, would yield the same amount of funds that Trump’s budget cut from education.

Doggett also authored the first bill that would roll back a portion of the tax cuts—a portion he views as especially indefensible. Though the Republicans touted their bill as enabling corporations to bring jobs they’d offshored back to America, in fact the new tax law sets the rate for profits corporations earn abroad at about half that of the rate for the profits they earn in the United States. Doggett’s bill—the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act—would equalize those rates, as well as compel companies based in the United States that divert their profits to tax-shelter nations such as the Cayman Islands to pay the U.S. tax rate on those profits.

“We hadn’t introduced any bills that make corrections here or there to the Republican tax bill, but this issue is so significant in terms of impact, we thought we needed to get it out there,” Doggett says. “This bill is something our candidates can talk about not just to progressives but to a broader public, including across the Midwest.”

Senate Democrats/Creative Commons

“If I didn’t raise the tax cut at my town halls, I don’t think it would even come up,” says Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley.

I ask Doggett whether that means his bill will get the unified support of the Democratic caucus. “No,” he replies. “There’ll be some opposition in the caucus; we have our corporate wing, as we saw in the vote on weakening Dodd-Frank. With campaign dollars flowing from the corporate sector, there’s more reticence about raising corporate taxes than there is about raising taxes on individuals. There’ll be more members willing to take on individuals who make more than a million a year than to take on corporations.”

“The multinationals have been so successful at moving their profits across borders they’ve come to think of it as an entitlement,” Doggett adds. “They have a lot of influence in both caucuses.”

Indeed, as ATF’s Clemente points out, when Republicans first outlined their tax cuts last year, congressional Democrats were united in opposing the cuts for the wealthy, but a number were reluctant to oppose the drop in corporate tax rates. “There are 7,000 corporate lobbyists who work on taxes.” Clemente says. “They hold the Democrats back.” In the end, responding in large part to the increasingly militant liberalism of the Democratic base, every member opposed the GOP bill, but that doesn’t mean every member would support revisiting corporate tax rates should the Democrats regain congressional majorities—even if, as with Doggett’s bill, public sentiment would almost surely favor such action.

IN LATE MAY, Colorado Representative Jared Polis introduced the second bill to roll back the GOP tax cuts—in this case, all of them. Polis’s Students Over Special Interests Act would restore the tax rates the Republicans cut and redirect the funds to pay off student debt and make colleges more affordable. This idea cuts through the mind-numbing detail of the Tax Act, and proposes, by contrast, a big idea that Americans can immediately grasp—billionaires versus students and graduates hobbled with debt.

Unlike Doggett’s bill, Polis’s hasn’t really been written with an eye to its eventual passage should the Democrats retake Congress. Indeed, even if the Democrats retake Congress, Polis won’t be there, since instead of seeking re-election, he’s running for governor of Colorado. His bill is plainly intended to boost his prospects in his politically purple home state.

And in that, Polis is on to something. For at the state level—in red states as well as purple and blue—many Democrats are running for office this year not just by demanding a greater commitment to funding schools and other necessary services, but to paying for them with higher taxes.

What changed the political calculus for those Democrats were the teachers’ strikes in a string of red states, which not only compelled Republicans to violate their Norquist oaths never to raise taxes, but convinced Democrats that raising taxes was no longer a sure ticket to political oblivion.

The change was particularly notable in West Virginia, home to the strike whose success ignited similar actions in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Arizona. Democrats had controlled the statehouse there as recently as 2014, but while in power had no interest in raising taxes to help the state’s beleaguered schools. Indeed, earlier in the decade, when Democrat Joe Manchin was governor, they’d cut business taxes, creating a deficit of roughly $350 million.

When the teachers shuttered all the state’s schools, however, with demands for funding not only to make their imperiled health insurance system sound again but also to upgrade the condition of public education—demands that won wide support from the schoolchildren’s parents—they derailed a Republican bill that would have cut taxes on the state’s energy companies. They also called for a severance tax on natural gas to fund their demands.

“We had thousands of members outside the capitol chanting, ‘Tax the Gas!’” says Ryan Frankenberry, a key strike organizer. “In West Virginia—where coal and oil and gas have dominated the state since its creation. This was a game-changer.”

The proposal didn’t come to a vote, as the state’s Republican governor simply declared that he’d change his budget estimates, thereby creating (on paper, anyway) the funds to cover the health insurance fund deficit. But most Democratic legislators supported the teachers’ proposal.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked that, of course, the Democrats would seek to roll back some of the cuts, some Democratic staffers hastily put out the word that the party’s real commitment was simply to extend tax cuts to the middle class.

Mick Bates, a member of the state assembly who heads the state Democrats’ House Campaign Committee, says: “We will campaign this fall on raising revenues. A little more than half of the state’s $4 billion budget goes to K–12 schools; we view that as an investment we need to increase.” Two revenue sources Bates believes the Democrats will likely back are the gas severance tax and a tax on marijuana. (To general amazement, Bates steered a medical marijuana legalization bill into law last year.) He’s upbeat about the Democrats’ prospects in the November elections, not only because of the high level of parental support for the teachers’ demands and more school spending. He also cites the defeat in this year’s Republican primary of one longtime legislator who opposed tax hikes to increase school funding by a more moderate Republican who supported them—much as the parents of Kansas schoolchildren ousted anti-tax lawmakers in that state’s 2016 Republican primaries to win better funding for their children’s schools.

In contesting for state offices by advocating raising taxes to boost such services as education, the West Virginia Democrats are anything but alone. In Georgia, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams is calling for rolling back a state tax cut that Republicans enacted earlier this year.

The changing political climate around taxes and education in red and purple states “is part of a larger trend of Democrats coming around to the idea that raising taxes on the wealthy is actually not only a good idea but a popular one,” says one senior Senate staff member. But the forces that have compelled even red-state Republicans to recalibrate their thinking on taxes, Doggett cautions, haven’t trickled up to his Republican colleagues in the Capitol. “The only thing the Republican caucus can agree on here is more tax cuts,” he says. “The Norquist ideal still holds.”

Indeed, Doggett is concerned that the Republicans may try to pass yet another tax cut shortly before the November election—responding to the Democratic criticism that their tax bill reduced corporate taxes permanently but individual taxes only for ten years by making the cut to individual taxes permanent, too. In a speech in late May, Trump promised to do just that.

Doggett fears that if the Republicans do attempt to make that change, “the response of my Democratic colleagues would be mixed. We’d need to emphasize that this would dig us into an even deeper hole, jeopardizing Social Security, Medicare, and education even more. We’d need to say, rather than extend this flawed bill, extending tax cuts to the richest Americans, let’s wait until January. If Democrats take the House, we could draft a bill with progressive provisions, but not extend benefits that go to the very top.”

“Still,” Doggett adds, “if this comes on the eve of the election, it could be a significant challenge for the Democrats.”

The Democrats face a different kind of challenge going into the 2020 election, Clemente points out. With the party abuzz with talk of Medicare for All, affordable college, and bringing the nation’s infrastructure up to (or even close to) 21st-century standards, the Democrats need to develop plausible plans for how to pay for such necessities. “The party base is into these programs; it’s not into taxes,” Clemente says. But progressive taxes will be the sine qua non behind these programs if these programs are to emerge and thrive. He’s encouraged that polls show millennials—the generation most scarred by the Great Recession, employment insecurity, and low wages—are especially supportive of a more progressive tax code. Millennials, he points out, will be the nation’s largest voting bloc ten years hence.

Does that augur an end to the era of Proposition 13, which was enacted 40 years ago this June? Perhaps. A new poll by the Los Angeles Times shows that 54 percent of state voters would support a proposed initiative for the 2020 ballot that would roll back Proposition 13’s tax cuts on businesses.

Would that mean the revolt of the haves will have finally run its course? Not likely. But it could be a sign—as the forces for a more equitable economy come into their own—that it will be a lot more contested.

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#Democrats

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thetawlfoundat · 6 years

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NEW BLOG

` THE DICHOTOMY OF THE LACK OF LEADERSHIP IN THE BLACK & MINORITY COMMUNITIES (THE BARBARITY AND ILLEGALITY OF MASS INCARCERATION)

Dear Black leaders,

Sometimes we get an epiphany. Sometimes we realize things once we are suffering the effects of the things we missed. I am writing today b/c I am haggled by such a phenomenon. The lack of black leadership and the dwindling of the daring of today's leadership has caused disparities in the social and judicial order. This disparity is so great a chasm that minorities have become accepting of their positions as long as they appear better than another minorities.

PART I.

(Mind-Set)

There are two equal but distinct mindsets in the black community. One is the mind-set of 'SOMETHING-IS-BETTE-THAN-NOTHING'. Then there is the mindset that its 'ALL-OR-NOTHING'. These are very interesting and distinct mindsets. Let me delve into them and present them as I understand them.

A. Something-Is-Better-Than-Nothing (SOBTN)

This is the mindset of the self proclaimed proponents of "CHANGE". A mantra who's evolution was seen during the Obama Administration's campaign. They believe that getting something that is "good" at a time that is bad is a First Step to progress and the beginning of change; in a given situation. They will accept what is given in order to help as many people as possible. They often argue if we don't take this "thing" then we won't have any-"thing" and that is better than no-"thing". It is a logical position.

Sally Yates, White House Counsel to President Obama, believed in this mantra so much that when overseeing the handling of sentence commutations she very carefully chose candidates that presented the least risk for President Obama's legacy/image. She did not base her decision to grant presidential clemency on the merit of each persons character or unjust sentence. Infact she disregarded whether a person's sentence was unjust under the color of law and premised her decision to commute, based on the ideology that granting some of those wronged by disparate and illegal sentences, was better than granting none of those wronged by disparate and unconstitutional sentences. The fact that the 1,000's of prisoners she left behind to suffer unconstitutional and racially disparate sentences- did not factor enough into her decision to grant. What factored most was Sally Yates preservation of a Legacy of One man. Not the millions of blacks that made it possible for this one man to have a legacy but just him & his legacy.

The evolution of this mindset is so often refined to the point of mastery. One has to be ever mindful that sometimes to embrace this mindset means to embrace an unexpected outcome. I see it often on Sports shows who discuss whether NFL players should stand or kneel. The consensus is that they should find another way to demonstrate their dislike for the senseless murders of citizens, perpetrated by police officers, that for the most part go unpunished. This rhetoric has been heard by NFL officials who recently made it part of Policy for NFL players to stand or stay out of site if you want to protest. So I guess they got their point across.

Moreover, the proponents of SOBTN believe that the All or Nothing approach is "unrealistic". It is divisive and it is ultimately bad strategy and ineffective. Further they also believe that one should not have to jeopardize their livelihood or station to effect change.

B. The All-Or-Nothing (AON)

This mindset is the mindset of the self proclaimed freedom fighter. One who believes that Justice can only be had by the adherence to Justice. However, the last sighting of the evolution of this mindset died around the time of the assignation of MLK Jr.. MLK Jr. was a conservative who had the AON mindset. The only "progress" in these proponents minds is the eradication of certain CAUSES and not the enactment of the First Step to the eradication of some Cause.

In today's society this AON mindset gets bad billing. The effects of standing for the position of AON can best be seen in the handling of Colin Kaepernick. The lost of prestige and employment. The labeling of a societal outsider. Most who do not subscribe to the AON mindset cannot take financial set backs or OSTRACIZING. Either for personal or professional reasons.

The AON mindset believes that something IS better than nothing but at the same time it also believes that "all money is not good money". That taking anything over having nothing can be a trick and even worse be contrary to the Universal law of compensation. However, It would be irrational to stand pat in misery and exclusion if we don't get everything we want all at once. However, the AON mindset does not ask for everything at once. What it ask for is the eradication of wrongs in a step by step solution of one wrong at a time. The Obama Administration had this AON mindset when it came to many of their policies. Health Care was one. They got it passed. Likewise, some of the administration's foreign policies were quasi-all-or-nothing decisions. However, they did not have this mindset when it came to criminal justice issues, on that point they were open for compromise; which is the enemy of the AON mindset. MLK Jr. stated that we have an obligation to obey Just laws and an equal obligation to disobey unjust laws. He was citing St. Aquinas who was citing Jesus Christ. Maybe that seems AON to people aswell.

C. Dilemma of Mass Incarceration (My Expertise)

So the dilemma for us all is where do we stand? Do we accept things like PRISON REFORM b/c it is the only thing we can get past in this political climate? Just because This bill does some good? Or do we say NO to Prison Reform and accept nothing but the same thing ...which is nothing. MLK Jr. was labeled unrealistic by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They urged him to WAIT. Called his actions "unwise and untimely". That good things come to those who waited. MLK Jr. felt it was not in the best interest for mankind to wait. He believed his agenda was anchored in the very premise of Godliness & humanity, goodwill and the American Dream. So he Marched and died for what he believed in.

We could end Mass Incarceration. I have a 10 point plan that would do just that. 10 points w/o even needing congress to sign off on a single bill. I have shared this idea with Organizations who claim that they fight for things like this. They all state what I have to offer has merit BUT that they are limited financially and they basically have better, more "politically" feasible things to consider. It does not matter that we are a self-proclaimed "Nation Of Laws". It does not matter that these laws are racially disparate and disproportionately enforced severely on minorities. It does not matter, that due to these facts, that this would mean that this Nation is admittedly only just and fair to some. If we are therefore, not equally treated as our laws and the enforcement of our laws have shown then how can we expect to receive a fair share of the American Dream? Mass Incarceration is the consequent of a Nation who arbitrarily enforces the laws based on cultural and racial components.

It would then seem to reason that Mass Incarceration is the effect of this Nations bias and prejudice. A civil Issue which robs the everyday pursuit of happiness, liberty, property and some times life from those who are the victims of Mass Incarceration. Mass Incarceration does not only effect the prisoner, it effects the "growth" of the family unit as a whole. It was Aristotle who stated to effect a Nation you merely need to remove a component of the household. Why? Because the family makes up the community, the community the county, the county the state and the state the nation. So to effect a Nation of people you need merely remove a component of the household. You can do that through legislation. Call it a War on Drugs. To effect the family unit. Or you can call it a "Health Crisis" and effect another family unit another way.

Lastly, Mass Incarceration is NOT about the crimes committed. It has a dual pronged approach aswell. This dual composition consist of the charging decision (how many crimes & which crimes to charge) and then the severity in sentencing. This is correctable but no organization seems to focus their efforts on this. You have to ask yourself at one point...why? Then the next logical question is do these people believe that the American Dream should be equally available to all?

PART II.

D. MLK Jr. (His Dream)

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". "Constructive non-violent tension...is necessary for growth". "Wait has almost always meant never". These are Dr. King Jr's words. How relevant do they sound in this date in time?

(i) On the point of injustice I recently had discussion w/a friend of mine Georgetown Professor Shon. R. Hopwood. We disagree on a Bill in Congress. The Bill is the First Step Act. It is labeled a Bill that is suppose to issue in Prison Reform. He endorses this bill but he states he does it reluctantly. I feel the Bill does absolutely nothing for US in prison. ( I am doing a Life Sentence For a non-violent drug conspiracy). Infact I find the Bill to be a mockery of justice and laughable. One of the things the Bill will address is the shackling of women prisoners, to the bed, while they give birth. A barbaric practice which is in and of itself worth having the bill passed but not to endorse it. Practices like this defy the consciousness of human civility. Supporting this Bill is supporting the need to legislate kindness & compassion. Think about it. A bill that keeps Americans from shackling other Americans to beds while giving birth to an American. I can't endorse that mindset.

Professor Hopwood calls me "unrealistic" that my idea not to endorse Prison Reform is "dumb". That my all-or-nothing approach is an ignorant position. He believes this Bill is better than getting nothing this congressional term. To his point I asked Professor Hopwood to make the argument that MLK Jr. would have accepted a Bill that allowed Negros to eat at white diners -at night- as a First Step to desegregation. Further, I asked Professor Hopwood that if MLK Jr. accepted such a Bill would he then effectively lose leverage to get a greater bill passed? I have yet to hear from professor Hopwood on this specific question.

What drives me in my quest for fairness in the judicial and legislative systems is the words of MLK Jr. My so called AON approach is premised in the idea that accepting anything less than justice is to accept injustice.

(ii) Next is the level of tension necessary to get law makers to make sensible reforms and laws. As I write there have been 5 mass shootings in America in less than two years. In recent days 22 children and 5 adults were killed in two public school shootings. The NRA although connected to financial contributions from foreign entities like Russia have led the charge in blocking any federal bill to be passed concerning -what I call smart on Gun Control Legislation. Kids have marched, more have died and nothing has changed. Moreover, tensions between blacks and law enforcement are as tense as they get yet no major legislation has been passed save for one that exempts police from civil suit if they kill some unarmed suspect.

"Tension" the cornerstone of MLK Jr. Cause To CREATE CHANGE is being taken out of protest. The NFL recently stated that players can protest but back in the locker room where no one can see them. The president champions a more hard line approach that if NFL players protest they should not be in this country. Popular sports pundits on ESPN & FS1 Sports have stated that NFL players should not jeopardize their employment and find better ways to demonstrate dislike for judicial injustice and "THE WAR ON BLACKS" that has been perpetually getting stronger in law enforcement circles. Even so called black leaders condemn too much tension or any tension that may jeopardize their status or be "too politically risky". We need look no further than Obama's Clemency Initiative that was not even his idea but Republican President Bush's idea. It was too risky to grant commutation for the 1,000's of minorities who suffered severe constitutionally infirmed sentences. (iii) To the last point of Waiting. The Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) came out in 1985. It was passed along with the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines which were promulgated in 1987 and predicated on a case called McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 US 79, 91-92 (1986) (Later struck down by the Supreme Court in Alleyne). This case allowed for a legislature to remove from the jury offense conduct and have a judge at sentencing find this offense conduct by a preponderance of the evidence. So what does that mean? Once you were convicted. You could and would be sentence based on conduct that a jury did not find you guilty of. This opened the door for Courts to sentence defendants to severe and harsh sentences without affording them the proper Due Process that the Constitution provides. Again this case has been recently struck down but courts are still sentencing prisoners based on offense conduct. In operation and in application defendants such as myself have been sentenced based on acquitted conduct or uncharged conduct. Using offense conduct as sentencing factors was forbidden by the Supreme Court, in a case called O'Brien. However, judges still use it. So when I am found not guilty for crime or even if I am not charged for a crime a judge can still sentence me as if I were convicted of this crime. For Example: Lets say the jury acquitted me of a violent crime, it would not matter. A judge could still sentence me based on that crime. OR lets say I was never charged with a specific offense. It doesn't matter, I still could be sentenced based on this specific offense. Further, is does not factor that my presumption of innocence had never been removed by a finding of guilt by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The Judge could and would determine that it was 'more likely than not' that I committed this offense. Eventhough I was suppose to be presumed innocent of this actual crime. See United States v. Jones, 31 F3d. 1304, 1316 (4th cir. 1994) and United States v. Grubbs, 585 F3d. 793, 799-803 (4th cir. 2009). Another great LEGAL, SOCIAL AND CIVIL injustice is the crack ratio. A Schedule II drug which has a more severe penalty than a Schedule III drug (OPIODS). Moreover, it was determined by the Supreme Court that "crack" has no scientific distinction from powder cocaine it is the same as cocaine. See a case called Kimbrough. So all the lies about crack babies, and crack kills were all propaganda. Opiods kill at a rate of 65k a year and Opiods create Opiod babies but crack is still punished more severely than Opiods. The truth is If you "shoot" powder cocaine you get the same high as crack. So why is my punishment 100x more severe than powder cocaine? Could it be that 90% of crack dealers are black and 85% of the users are white? It is called the 100:1 ratio now (down to 18:1) but not applicable to me b/c AG Jeff Sessions says he honors the policy tradition of Finality in verdict. It gets better. Lets say they designate you a career offender based on your prior conviction then later determine that your prior could not qualify you as a career offender. Well eventhough you are doing time for something you don't qualify for there is nothing you can do legally about it. Sad but this is our legal system. See Grubbs, Supra. These are some of the best kept secrets of federal sentencing. If this were corrected sentences like mine and others would decrease exponentially. For example instead of receiving life I would receive a sentence of 15 years. Yes you are reading this correctly. This is THE DRIVING FORCE in mass incarceration. So Black leaders I ask what do you plan to do about this? Congress wants us to WAIT! Wait for a right afforded to us by the Constitutions Due Process Clause. Well wait has meant never- as MLK Jr. has said- b/c we have been waiting for over 30 years for justice and it is never the right time. E. (Black Leadership) It is not a question of existing leadership. The black community has existing leadership. However, this leadership is lacking at best. Since MLK Jr. assignation plans such as Mass incarceration have been successfully implemented. Black leadership has spent its time convincing black people to wait for some democratic revolution or if not for that for something else. Obama's farewell speech placed the black communities fate in the hands of the NEXT GENERATION. More evidence that he was even aware there was a lack for leadership in the black community. More to that point, I can be critical of the Obama Administration b/c, as far as addressing CAUSES that negatively effect the black community, it left me alot to critique. For over 400+ years blacks have given their servitude, money, their lives, and their every thought to one day seating a Black president that would go to some extent of instituting a "culture" (not political policies) that would better the black community. I agree with our black leaders Obama could not do it all. That we as a black nation would have to do some things on our own. But what was lacking in the Obama Administration was the creation of the opportunity to free ourselves from economical and judicial oppression which are the effects of the social discord and disparities in America. I give President Obama an A++ when it comes to being the President he was a fine example and did the virtually impossible but when it comes to issues that effected the black community I give him a C-. As he was Average. Like the average politician. Greatness never performs average. Unfortunately his model has become the model for black leadership in America. Which I also give a C-. Because it is just average. I will end this with my solution. Without it I feel I would just be venting. My solution does not involve congress. It does involve the Judicial System. Our Black Congress people have whole heartedly sold our votes to the democratic party. This party in turn has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO INSTITUTE STRUCTURAL CHANGES TO BETTER THE BLACK COMMUNITY. What the democratic party has done well is at the right moments trumpet their passing of bills and policies which target the "EFFECTS" (Not the Cause) of the problems that beset the black community. The greatest enablers have become our own people. Remember good intentions can still pave roadways to hell. As a result as Charles Barkley stated and so many other blacks I have spoken with lately, the democrats are at a point where they cannot take our votes for granted. I like this idea for two reasons. The First is simple it is written in Donald Trumps 'Art of the Deal' that If you can't walk away from a deal -and this is what these Bills are based on...deals- then you probably won't get a good deal. Second and most important there is NO COMPROMISE TO JUSTICE. Either something is just or it is not. There are some things you cannot walk away from. Things such as Heritage and Spiritualism. But legislative acts & "public policy" that do not insure fairness, equality and justice are things people who believe in these tenets are obligated to walk away from. I cannot not support any bill or policy that acts as a prophylactic OR a band aid. Since I take this position that anything short of Justice is non-negotiable I am labeled an AON. Is there anyone who believes that if MLK Jr. were still alive that Mass Incarceration would have happened or if it happened would have sustained itself for this long. I am more than prepared for that debate. My belief is based on the premise that since we are a Nation of Laws then the law must be corrected so this Nation can be corrected. So if for example the law is disparative and unfair then logically so is the Nation. This is my line of logic. I have a 10 point plan I would love to share with any black leader who is serious about ending Mass Incarceration. I am incarcerated and, via my 17 year incarceration and 15 years studying law, understand exactly what it will take to make a marked difference in the black community. REMEMBER the perpetual nature of the Willy Lynch philosophy: 1) Kill the Strong Male (indefinite incarceration) 2) make the black woman the negotiator, provider and protector of the black household 3) break the rest of the black men in front of the black family and 4) reverse the roles of the male and female children. The male child should be a tool to be utilized -whether mind or body and the female child is to pick up where her mom left off. Look at our community. Tell me this is not apparent. Dear black leaders this is a letter written out of a great love for the black community. MLK Jr. stated "there can be no great disappointment without first having great love". You have been given notice that your leadership is lacking and since no one is "pulling you up" I am pulling you up. I was "pulled up"... out of my community and stay "pulled up" for 17+ years. Not due to my crimes but to racial disparity in sentencing. There are Tens of Thousands like me. Hundreds of Thousands if you count both state and federal. How do you on one hand state you represent a community and then on the other hand do nothing to alleviate the central cause of this communities despair. Men are missing in large number from the black community b/c of Mass Incarceration. Strong men. mostly the "Wild uncontrollable N*^^#%" the slave owners were warned about. I was told by a popular civil rights leader that the difference in my generation and his generation (50's,60's,70's) is that they were willing to die for what they believe in and we are willing to kill for what we believe in. This dynamic has to change. MLK Jr. died for what he believed in. Which was his dream. Something we have all seemed to have forgotten and by forgetting to respect his dream have disrepected it and ourselves. WAKE UP!Always My Best, Eric Van Buren #11044-068 FCI Schuylkill P.O. BOX 759 Minersville, PA 17954 Post-Conviction consultant/strategist Author of: The Art of Winning Litigation Contributing writer to: Prison-Insider(Paris) @THETAWLFOUNDAT THE TAWL FOUNDATION/fb

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years

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Argument analysis: Justices are divided on whether to overrule precedents on sales-tax collection by remote sellers

Anyone who thought that just because one member of the Supreme Court had invited a test case about whether to overrule Quill Corp. v. North Dakota meant that every justice was prepared to do so quickly got a reality check this morning.

In South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc., the court is considering whether to overrule Quill, a 1992 decision that the Constitution’s commerce clause prohibits the states from requiring out-of-state retailers that do not have a physical presence in the state to collect tax on sales to state residents.

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley explained why he believed the court should reconsider the older ruling.

South Dakota Attorney General Marty J. Jackley (Art Lien)

“There are two very significant consequences brought about by Quill,” said Jackley, a Republican who happens to be running for governor this year. “First, our states are losing massive sales tax revenues that we need for education, health care, and infrastructure. Second, our small businesses on Main Street are being harmed because of the unlevel playing field created by Quill, where out-of-state remote sellers are given a price advantage.”

He quickly ran into a non-stop series of questions from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was not slowed by a fall at her home on Monday morning that, according to the court’s public information office, resulted in a broken left shoulder.

“I’m concerned about the many unanswered questions that overturning precedents will create a massive amount of lawsuits about,” she told Jackley.

One concern was about retroactive liability for sellers if the court changes the physical-presence requirement. South Dakota has specifically ruled out retroactivity in the 2016 law it passed that seeks to subject out-of-state sellers to sales tax liability based on an economic presence rather than a physical nexus. But other states could seek such retroactive liability, Sotomayor says.

She had more. “How much contact is enough to justify placing this obligation on an out-of-town seller?” Sotomayor said. And while South Dakota and its allies have pointed to sophisticated software programs that help sellers determine their sales tax obligations from the estimated 12,000 taxing jurisdictions in the United States, Sotomayor asked, “What happens when the tax program breaks down, as it already has for the states who are using it, and merchants can’t keep track of who they’ve sold to?”

The high stakes of the case seemed evident throughout the argument, though the justices took note of the fact that there was wide disagreement about the relevant numbers.

South Dakota contends that it is missing out on about $50 million in sales tax revenue under the Quill rule, a significant sum for a state with no income tax. The state also cites in its brief an estimate from researchers that all the states and local jurisdictions with sales taxes are missing out on $34 billion in revenues because of Quill this year.

The three web retailers who are respondents in this case — Wayfair Inc., Overstock.com Inc., and Newegg Inc. — cite a 2017 Government Accountability Office study that is more conservative, offering an estimate of lost revenue between $8 billion and $13 billion for this year.

“You have wildly different estimates of costs, revenues, and what states are losing or not,” Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out to Jackley. He also asked about retroactivity and the standard for determining sales-tax liability.

“When it comes to retroactivity, the states don’t want to address this retroactively, which is why South Dakota, illustrative of that, has indicated we’re prospective only,” Jackley said. “In the briefing, 38 other states have indicated their laws would prevent retroactivity.”

Chief Justice John Roberts asked Jackley whether the nation was perhaps past the stage when many large Internet retailers were not collecting sales taxes, in part to enjoy a price advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

“The suggestion in some of the briefs is that this is a problem that has peaked in the sense that the bigger e-commerce companies find themselves with physical presence in all 50 states,” Roberts said. “So they’re already covered. And the work-arounds that some of the states have employed are also bringing more [sellers] in. And if it is, in fact, a problem that is diminishing rather than expanding, why doesn’t that suggest that there [is] greater significance to the arguments that we should leave Quill in place?”

Jackley replied that e-commerce continues to expand, and the states are expected to miss out on some $100 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.

Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart took to the lectern on South Dakota’s side, and he pointed out that whether the court overrules Quill or its 1967 predecessor, National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Illinois Department of Revenue, leaves them in place, or does something in between, “Congress can act.”

Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart (Art Lien)

“Congress can impose whatever solution it believes is appropriate,” said Stewart.

In the courtroom on Tuesday were several members of that body, including Sen. Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee; Sen. Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming.; and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota. Those three, along with Sen. Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, filed an amicus brief on South Dakota’s side that argues that Quill should be overruled but that “Congress is fully prepared to act when needed.”

The chief justice pressed Stewart on whether there is a constitutional minimum by which a small Internet retailer facing the burdens of complying with state sales-tax obligations might have a claim for relief.

Stewart said there is no such minimum under the court’s dormant commerce clause jurisprudence. A retailer shipping even just one good into a state could be subject to the regulatory burdens of that state’s tax requirements. But in an answer to a question from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stewart said that Congress could address that issue.

When George Isaacson, the Lewiston, Maine, lawyer representing the retailers, began his argument time, he quickly ran into a concern from Ginsburg.

“How about going back to the very basic issue?” she said. “The assertion is that asking an out-of-state seller to collect tax on goods shipped in-state discriminates against interstate commerce. But, as I see it, why isn’t it, far from discriminating, equalizing sellers. That is, anyone who wants to sell in-state, whether an in-state shop, an out-of-state shop, everybody is treated to the same tax collection obligation. All who exploit an in-state market are subject to the in-state tax. Why isn’t that equalizing rather than discriminating?”

George S. Isaacson for respondents (Art Lien)

Isaacson replied, “Well, the dormant Commerce Clause takes as its principal objective the maintenance of a single national marketplace that is free and accessible to all participants.” He pointed out that at the time of the Bellas Hess decision in 1967, there were some 2,300 taxing jurisdictions, a figure that had jumped to 6,000 at the time of the Quill ruling in 1992, and to today’s estimate of 12,000. “So the concern that the Bellas Hess and Quill courts had was the notion that a free and open market would be encumbered by that degree of complexity,” Isaacson said. “And that complexity has only worsened over time.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who as a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit wrote a concurrence that questioned the vitality of Bellas Hess and Quill, pressed Isaacson on why, when brick-and-mortar stores must comply with sales tax obligations, the court should favor “ a particular business model that relies not on brick and mortar but on mail order?”

“I understand in Bellas Hess the court was concerned about a nascent, small mail order industry,” Gorsuch said. “Those concerns seem a little antiquated today.”

Isaacson replied that “Borders count. States exercise their sovereignty based upon borders, territorial limits. It’s a key part of horizontal federalism in this country. So, if there’s going to be some standard that determines when is a company subject to the tax jurisdiction of a state, using the territorial limits of that state make sense.”

Isaacson said that Congress would be the best branch to address the issues of sales-tax collection for out-of-state sellers, such as by requiring one tax rate per state for all remote sales. “It can require a clearinghouse that can be used for the processing of payments,” he said. “It can require standard uniform definitions of products so that food and sportswear and clothing doesn’t mean one thing in one jurisdiction and another elsewhere.”

When Sotomayor asked Isaacson whether there was anything the court could do to signal to Congress “to act more affirmatively in this area,” Isaacson said, “I would welcome a decision from this court that would indicate that Congress should move forward with consideration and action upon legislation.”

This prompted an observation from the chief justice that lawmakers perhaps have already decided “that this is something they’re going to leave the way it has been for, whatever it is, 25 years.” “I think it would be very strange for us to tell Congress it ought to do something in any particular area,” Roberts said. “Just a thought.”

Kennedy, who had invited the challenge to Quill with his concurrence in 2015’s Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl, asked only a couple of questions, in which he appeared to be restating the arguments of Isaacson or others. He referred to a proposition, whether it was that of the parties or his own, that “this court has made a statement of constitutional law that … has now, especially in light of the cyber age, proven incorrect.”

There were multiple references to the retail denizens of the cyber age. Roberts and other justices cited Amazon several times, even though the web retailing giant is not involved in the case as a party or amicus. Justice Elena Kagan cited Amazon as well as sites such as eBay and Etsy.com that might seek to take over tax-collection duties for their smaller, affiliated sellers.

Justice Stephen Breyer set himself apart by asking what it would cost “for a mandolin seller who sells mandolins on the Internet to sell them in 50 states? How much does it cost him to enter that market?”

And Breyer wondered how much it had cost “Sears, Roebuck” to enter the national market. Perhaps sidestepping the recent struggles of the storied catalog and department store retailer, he added, “You know, that’s an ancient name, but they did all right.”

A decision in the case is expected by late June.

[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in this case. The author of this post is not affiliated with the firm.]

The post Argument analysis: Justices are divided on whether to overrule precedents on sales-tax collection by remote sellers appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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thetawlfoundat · 6 years

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NEW BLOG

` THE DICHOTOMY OF THE LACK OF LEADERSHIP IN THE BLACK & MINORITY COMMUNITIES (THE BARBARITY AND ILLEGALITY OF MASS INCARCERATION)

Dear Black leaders,

PART I.

(Mind-Set)

A. Something-Is-Better-Than-Nothing (SOBTN)

B. The All-Or-Nothing (AON)

C. Dilemma of Mass Incarceration (My Expertise)

PART II.

D. MLK Jr. (His Dream)

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