Interesting News Events
Justice Dept. Will Toughen Rules for Seizing Lawmakers’ Data, Garland Says (msn.com)
The Justice Department will tighten its rules for when law enforcement officials may seize information about members of Congress and their aides, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said on Monday amid a backlash to the disclosure of a 2018 subpoena that swept in data from the Apple accounts of Democratic lawmakers and staff.
What Ilhan Omar Actually Said – The Atlantic
Following Democratic outrage and Republican calls for a floor vote to strip Omar of her committee assignments, let me record the following for posterity: Omar demonstrably did not say what she’s been accused of having said; what she did say was true; and every politico using this opportunity to take a swing at her likely knows those two things—they just think you don’t.
How misinformation overturned California’s assault weapons ban (msn.com)
Judge Roger Benitez’s ruling last week that overturned California’s 1989 assault weapons ban, in which he argues defensive gun use with an assault weapon “surely happens a lot” and “seems to be more common” than mass shootings with such weapons – both of which are blatant falsehoods.
From January 2016 to May 2021, assault weapons were used 2.7 times more often to perpetrate mass shootings than they were used defensively against any type of attack.
Simone Biles’s Excellence Is an Act of Resistance – The Atlantic
What Biles has come to mean to Black culture, to women, and especially to Black women is bigger than her all-out assault on the record books. Her excellence is an act of resistance. She is openly mocking expectations about what she should or shouldn’t do. Through her performances, she is creating a previously inconceivable new standard for her sport.
June 14, 2021 – Letters from an American (substack.com)
Today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told radio personality Hugh Hewitt that it is “highly unlikely” that he would permit President Biden to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court if the Republicans win control of the Senate in 2022.
Hundreds protest Manchin’s opposition to voting law overhaul (msn.com)
The protest was spurred by Manchin’s decision opposing a landmark reform of U.S. election law, a proposal known as For the People Act. Manchin said last week passing reform on a party-line vote risked further stoking partisan divides.
The Supreme Court just handed down disastrous news for unions (msn.com)
But the right of unions to enter onto a California farm to organize workers is now in deep trouble. In an opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court held that California’s longstanding regulation violates the Constitution’s “Takings Clause,” which provides that no one shall have their property taken from them by the government “without just compensation.”
And, in order to reach this result, Roberts rewrites decades of law interpreting that clause.
Joe Manchin and the Democrats’ Doomed Voting Bill – The Atlantic
“Nobody knowing Manchin well was surprised by his decision,” The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos writes in one of the latest and deepest pieces on the senator. Nobody following national politics at all should be surprised by his decision, either. Manchin has said all along—though not always clearly—that he doesn’t want to eliminate the filibuster.
Judge halts loan forgiveness program aimed at Black farmers (msn.com)
A federal judge in Florida cited racial discrimination in a ruling that halted the loan forgiveness program aimed at Black farmers that was part of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 relief package that forgave debts related to agriculture.
Americans of Color suffer most in biggest U.S. drop in life expectancy since WWII, Modern Healthcare
While white Americans lost 1.36 years, Black Americans lost 3.25 years and Hispanic Americans lost 3.88 years. Given that life expectancy typically varies only by a month or two from year to year, losses of this magnitude are “pretty catastrophic,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and lead author of the study.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/business/economy/larry-summers-washington.html?smid=tw-share
That Supreme Court ruling on unions is just so blatantly contrived. More evidence of capture that Sen Whitehouse has been sounding the horn on.
I just don’t think people have gotten just how far gone from a democracy we are. The court re-balancing is just as important as the need to deal with the voter suppression and election rigging.
Just look at the “compromise” Biden just did. Privatization of our infrastructure is now acceptable? Why have I not heard from the Dems when the question is asked about how to pay for this: It will pay for its self.
I am so fearful we as a nation are really deep in the quicksand of an exclusive society and not an inclusive one.
Privatization of our infrastructure is now acceptable?
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Nothing wrong with privatization until taxpayers have to foot the bill, taxpayers and inflation payers. Whenever it is not paid with taxation it is paid with inflation, the kind of inflation that hurts the tight budgets of the poor, the unemployed and the downtrodden.
Past time this was said.
” I am not an economist. Unlike dismal scientists, I hold no special regard for Lawrence Summers. I’m not awed by his intellect nor impressed with his academic credentials. What wows so many economists does not impress me.
Why? His underperformance, lack of alpha, P&L.
My bottom line is that based on history – Summer’s leadership at Harvard, his public policy decisions at the White House, his judgments on lots of big things that matter – Summers’ decision making has been deeply flawed. Note I do refer to the intemperate tweet or other minutiae, but rather, very big things that matter. Like hurting Harvard’s endowment or adding to the factors that caused the great financial crisis (GFC). These are massive issues, where Summers was called upon to offer his judgment – and blew it…..
I don’t find it appropriate to go ad hominem when criticizing somebody’s economic views. However, any economist’s track record is fair game, and Summers record has simply been awful. And I don’t doubt that Summers is an extremely smart guy; I wish his intellectual computing power included an updated software – based on his past performance, the root judgment module he is using is clearly faulty.”
https://ritholtz.com/2021/0…
Nice collection Run. Like Einstein I look for a unified theory that would explain everything even if I do not have the cognitive power to do so. I keep falling back on powerful people trying to amass more power and the ultimate futility of it all—as Keynes said in the long run we are all dead and the power, money and even reputation means nothing thereafter. An additional note which I found interesting was MSNBC’s Chris Hayes’ take on critical race theory as reported by Raw Story. Essentially, by using it as a means to rile up the base, the GOP establishes its validity. The recent polling across the board indicating the best educated—note not the smartest or best, just best educated—pretty strongly approve of President Biden. Now the question is whether the educated or those who have a visceral backlash to education will carry the day. Seems pretty existential to me.
Terry
I guesss I have a visceral backlash to education. That’s because I have seen too many people whose education consists mostly of being able to quote some other person… without judgement or even human decency or even reasonable care that they have enough of the relevant facts or that they put them together “logically”… i don’t mean formal logic, but just the kind of natural logic that we all recognize is faulty when we have a chance to think carefully… something most of us fail to do most of the time.
I will grant you that the R’s seem to have summoned up a huge proportion of the population….educated as well as uneducated..whose ideas are lunatic, but I don’t think the problem is education or the lack of it, but more just that someone has taken the trouble to mis-educate them for their own political purposes.