Voting Rights – Page 6 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – April 24, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Mountain Park in Globe, AZ – April 2023 photo by Karen Coffelt

(Earth Day was yesterday. Wrongo was at the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 in NYC. Then-mayor John Lindsay closed Fifth Avenue from 59^th Street to 14^th Street. Nearly one million people marched downtown. It was an upbeat and friendly crowd. In July of 1970, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order.)

Today let’s return to talking politics. Axios had an interesting chart from Gallup on the distribution of voters by party preference:

We spend our days listening to politicians who’s Parties, individually, now represent a minority of Americans. This trend means there are serious challenges ahead for our two traditional Parties. It also adds some context to our evenly split politics.

Here’s an analysis of the vote share of independents by Party in recent elections: (the numbers do not total to 100% because voters who chose “another” or didn’t vote aren’t shown)

Interestingly, the Democrats have lost 10 points of independent support from 2020 to 2022, but the GOP only gained 1%. At the time, the Associated Press reported:

“Republican House candidates nationwide won the support of 38% of independent voters in last month’s [2022] midterm elections, VoteCast showed. That’s far short of the 51% that Democrats scored with the same group in 2018…picking up 41 seats. The GOP’s lackluster showing among independents helps explain why Republicans flipped just nine seats…”

Going back to the trends in the first chart, Axios reports that Gallup analyst Jeff Jones says a big reason for this change is driven by the younger generation:

“It was never unusual for younger adults to have higher percentages of independents than older adults….What is unusual is that as Gen X and millennials get older, they are staying independent rather than picking a party, as older generations tended to do.”

So who are these independents? Krystal Ball explains in a YouTube video that most of these “independents” are younger voters, millennials and Gen-Z. They’ve also stayed more disillusioned than their elders.

This means that the nation is evenly split between those who think that one of our two political parties is telling the absolute truth, while the 49% majority basically don’t trust either to have their back.

The question with independents is whether they are truly a part of some mythical center or if they are a segment (half) of the population that isn’t politicized, meaning they don’t believe they have a personal stake in elections.

Or are independents simply that half of the US electorate that just doesn’t bother to vote?

The American political system is dysfunctional. That’s making people opt for being independent rather than Democrat or Republican. They see the choice between the Parties as choosing between the red shit sandwich and the blue shit sandwich.

Time to wake up America! Democracy is our country’s feedback mechanism, but just 46.8% of us voted in the 2022 mid-terms. So it’s clear our current brand of democracy isn’t working. More of us need to vote, and that means we have to help our Parties change. We don’t need a third Party; we need our two Parties to reflect what grassroots America needs. More about this tomorrow.

To help you wake up, and in honor of Earth Day, watch and listen to Neil Young perform “After the Gold Rush”, live at the Shoreline Amphitheater in 1993. He’s playing a pump organ, which generates sound as air flows past the vibrating reeds. Also, he’s wearing Uggs:

Sample lyric:

Look at Mother Nature on the run In the twentieth century
Look at Mother Nature on the run In the twentieth century.

She’s still trying to outrun us 50 years later.

Can America Come Back From Our Divide?

The Daily Escape:

Easter Sunday, Great Smokey Mountains NP – April 2023 photo by Melissa Russell

We’re back from our roughly 2,200 mile journey to Gettysburg PA, St. Augustine FL, and Charleston SC. The focus of our trip was visiting with family, and it didn’t disappoint. We saw about 40 family members in the three locations. Most are healthy and thriving, and there was lots of laughter.

But we also saw slices of different cultures than what we’re used to here in Connecticut. Wrongo wonders if the US has ever been as divided as it is now?

Yes we’ve been divided in the past, most notably before and during the Civil War. American schools still teach the Civil War to our kids, although like everything else, views on what it was fought about differ largely by geography and political leaning.

Between 1861-1865, we killed our fellow Americans at a prodigious rate, with about 620,000 dying. In fact, Americans killed more other Americans in that war than all of our adversaries did in eight of our wars combined: the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Gulf Wars. The Civil War stands alone when it comes to America being divided deeply enough that we killed each other in astonishing numbers.

The Civil War was about one issue: Slavery.

In today’s America, we’re fighting about everything: Gun control, abortion, climate change, fossil fuels, drilling, the environment, immigration, refugees, diversity, voting rights, elections, women’s rights, policing, who gets tax cuts, health care, LGBTQ+ rights, health care for transgender kids, bathrooms, books, what’s taught in classrooms, COVID-19, vaccines, poverty, welfare, unions, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, student debt, Trump, the Jan. 6 insurrection, and education.

These modern divisions exist without exception in every state. They are fought over with words, and occasionally, with weapons. They are fought about in our courts. Some on the political Right call for secession. In 2021, the University of Virginia Center for Politics released the results of a poll that found the majority of the individuals who voted to reelect Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections hoped that their state could secede from the Union.

“Hoping” isn’t doing something to make secession happen, although it’s a first step.

What’s worrisome is that like before the Civil War, there doesn’t seem to be a pathway forward to a common cause. Wrongo has written about “The Cause, The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783” by Joseph Ellis. It says that the founders had to create a blurry vision of the revolution because colonists were suspicious of the motives of other colonies. So the founders described their fight for independence as “The Cause”, an ambiguous term that covered diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints.

It succeeded in unifying us against the British.

Maybe America’s now reached a point where it’s possible that nothing will ever unite us again. Instead, we yell at each other across a chasm of ideological and political partisanship.

Our global reputation has sunk: We’re seen as an undereducated, and unhealthy nation. Many of us want our political opponents dead, while admiring the world’s autocrats. We’re tolerant of the gun slaughter of our children, and callous about the plight of our neighbors, especially if they are poor, sick, or different.

The annual World Happiness Report, based on data from Gallup’s World Poll of 24 developed nations, shows that Americans, when asked to evaluate their current life as a whole, are less content than the citizens of 14 other wealthy countries.

It’s worth noting that most of the countries whose citizens are happier than ours have governments that provide their residents with a sense of safety and security, a foundation on which their people can build a fulfilling life and an optimistic future. They can get treated for medical problems. They can afford life-saving medicine. They don’t fall into medical bankruptcy.

Their life expectancies are longer than ours and rising; America’s is falling.

They value higher education enough to provide it for free. They value families enough that their maternal care, both before and after birth, is outstanding. The US should be ashamed of our maternal mortality rate, which is higher than almost any other country, developed or not, in the world.

We desperately need to find a new “Cause” to bind us together.

Benjamin Franklin famously remarked at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that we had formed a republic if we could keep it.

We must get prepared both mentally and in our guts, to fight to keep this country together – AND to keep it a representative democracy.

The alternative looks horrendous.

Monday Wake Up Call, North Carolina Edition – March 6, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Early blooming Bradford Pear trees, near Cana, VA – March 2023 photo by Lee Ogle

North Carolina is in today’s news for two reasons: First, North Carolina Republicans, who control the state legislature, announced a deal to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. North Carolina would be the 40th state to expand Medicaid after a decade of Republican resistance.

From the WaPo:

“The deal marks a stark turnaround for Republican leaders that played out over years in North Carolina and in states across the country, as more and more governors and legislatures expanded Medicaid to low-income residents.”

NC’s governor, Democrat Roy Moore will sign the bill if it gets to his desk. Passage would extend Medicaid coverage to 600,000 of the state’s poor citizens. Dozens of rural hospitals in NC closed during Covid, so maybe it dawned on NC’s Republican Party that dead constituents have a difficult time voting for them.

As with other states, this will allow North Carolina, at no cost to the state government, to give health insurance to the state’s working poor. The federal government will pay for 90% of the cost, and the rest will be covered by a new tax on hospitals and insurance companies.

Wrongo wrote about how the Medicaid expansion was a great source of revenue to state governments here. The NC House Speaker, Republican Tim Moore said that since the federal government will pay North Carolina a $1.8 billion bonus if expansion passes, the GOP was motivated to sign on.

The extra money is part of the 2021 stimulus package signed into law by Biden, that offered signing bonuses to states that expanded Medicaid. In NC’s case, $1.8 billion. Biden reacted:

“This is what I’m talking about….That’ll be 40 states who’ve expanded. 10 more to go.”

It’s doubtful that any other states will sign on this year.

Shouldn’t Red states be taking care of their residents? Instead of wasting time with anti-trans bills and anti-woke bullshit? But that’s too much to expect.

A second North Carolina story involves a case in front of the US Supreme Court, Moore vs. Harper. Last fall the Supremes heard this case about the “Independent State Legislature Theory“. The case started out as a challenge to a Republican-gerrymandered voting map that the NC Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutionally partisan.

NC’s GOP then appealed to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the Constitution’s election clause gives state legislatures freedom to do whatever they decide about their own elections, and that no court can intervene in that. A decision was expected in June, 2023.

But the Supremes may not get a chance to weigh in, since the case is back before the NC high court. Why you ask? Well the NC Supreme Court is elected. And in November, the Republicans won a majority of the seats on the court.

Unsurprisingly, the court decided to review two cases that were decided against Republicans. What’s remarkable is the extent to which NC Republicans are willing to go in order to take control over the outcome of elections away from voters. And they’re not even trying to be covert about it.

On February 3, the NC Supreme Court granted a petition to rehear the case. That means the state supreme court may reconsider a case that is already in front of the US Supreme Court.

On March 2, the US Supreme Court asked for a supplemental briefing. They’re asking the NC Republicans, (the plaintiffs that originally challenged the maps), and the Biden administration to submit supplemental briefings about what effects the state court’s reconsideration might have on the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision.

So the legal jousting about voting rights in North Carolina continues. Maybe the state’s decision to embrace Medicare expansion after a decade means that we simply have to wait for the GOP to come around to an idea that most Americans favor. In the case of voting rights, Wrongo suggests continuing the fight, not waiting.

Time to wake up America! The Biden administration won’t be sending free money to the states to get them to embrace universal voting rights. That may have worked with Medicare, but not with voting rights.

To help you wake up, watch, and listen to Roy Rogers play “Walkin Blues” from his video “Slide Guitar For Rock & Blues” on a 12 string resonator guitar. Rogers makes it his own, and the playing and vocals are terrific:

This is dedicated to our friend Rene S, who also plays a mean guitar. “Walkin Blues” is a blues standard that’s been recorded countless times, often with different lyrics. Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and the Grateful Dead all have their own versions.

Monday Wake Up Call – February 20, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Oatman, AZ on Route 66 – February 2023 photo by Laurel Anne Lindsay

Some of you may have heard about a study called “The Hidden Tribes of America” by the group More in Common. It’s trying to understand the forces driving political polarization in America today. They classify the American electorate into seven distinct groups, they call “Tribes”.

But their key conclusion is that most people don’t belong on the far left or far right: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…the largest group that we uncovered in our research has so far been largely overlooked. It is a group of Americans we call the Exhausted Majority…representing a two-thirds majority of Americans, who aren’t part of the Wings….most members of the Exhausted Majority aren’t [simply] political centrists or moderates. On specific issues, their views range across the spectrum.”

“But while they hold a variety of views, the members of the Exhausted Majority are also united in important ways: They are fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society….. [they] are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely….. they aren’t ideologues who dismiss as evil or ignorant the people who don’t share their exact political views. They want to talk and to find a path forward.

This chart from the study graphically illustrates the seven tribal groups of the American populace. As you can see, there is a left-wing group that is about 8% of the US population. And there are two right-wing groups that equal about 25% of Americans. That leaves four groups in what the authors call the “Exhausted Majority”. They are 67% of the American populace.

Here are some demographic characteristics of the seven groups:

Progressive Activists: younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.
Traditional Liberals: older, retired, open to compromise, rational, cautious.
Passive Liberals: unhappy, insecure, distrustful, disillusioned.
Politically Disengaged: young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic,
Moderates: engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.
Traditional Conservatives: religious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic.
Devoted Conservatives: white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising,

Wrongo identifies as one of the Traditional Liberals, their description rings true.

The authors say that in their research, this tribal membership predicted differences in Americans’ views on various political issues better than demographic, ideological, and partisan groupings. You can read or download the whole study here.

An “Exhausted Majority” may be a positive political development. Wrongo spends nearly every day thinking that there are just two opposing camps. And that they each view each other with fear and loathing, refusing to listen to anything that doesn’t fit their existing narrative. As we’re entering the next presidential campaign, it’s good to know that Wrongo’s view of our polarization might be well, wrong.

Is the “Exhausted Majority” merely a new response to our dysfunctional politics? Wrongo isn’t alone in thinking that what’s wrong with our country will take decades to overcome. Faced with that, people start to look for quick fixes, or a way to stop listening to the wrangling. And you don’t have to be unaligned with either Party to share this sense of exasperation.

The people described in the “Exhausted Majority” are similar. It’s also true that for most people, politics isn’t the be-all-end-all of their lives. They’d prefer that the business of government didn’t require their involvement. They’re trying to get their kids educated, and to keep them safe. They prefer to see political compromise happen without needing to be involved.

But if you can walk away from politics when it frustrates you, then you’re in the lucky minority:

There are large numbers of parents who have discovered that their child is addicted to opioids.
There are many people who had lost their health insurance when they were laid off.
Many sent their daughter to college in the South only to learn that she no longer has any reproductive rights.
Many are worried that books are being taken from public school libraries.
Some fear that they may lose the right to vote.

These people can’t simply throw up their hands and walk away. Only political action will help them. We all know that the political radicals are irredeemable. We also know they make the most noise, but they’re a minority.

The fed-up people on both sides and in the middle have to find a way to take the country back from the radicals, instead of allowing ourselves to be herded into existing opposing camps.

Time to wake up America! We can’t simply drop out. There’s too much at stake. Democrats need to find candidates and a message that can motivate an additional 5%-15% of the “Exhausted Majority” to vote with them. To help you wake up, watch, and listen to the RedMolly band play a very nice cover of Richard Thompson’s “Vincent Black Lightning 1952”. It’s a surprise how beautifully it adapts to a bluegrass idiom, and the dobro work makes it:

“Vincent Black Lightning” is one of the most perfect songs ever written. We saw Thompson perform it live at Tanglewood last summer.

Biden’s Speech Showed His 2024 Strategy

The Daily Escape:

Sea smoke at Portland Head Light – February 2023 photo by Rick Berk Photography

(The Wrongologist is taking a few days off. The next column will appear on Tuesday, 2/14. Enjoy your nachos and jalapeno dip on Sunday.)

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the State of the Union (SOTU) extravaganza. You have already read many insightful observations, so Wrongo’s facing the daunting task to come up with something original for you. Let’s start with some data. CNN’s flash poll of SOTU viewers found that 72% had a positive reaction to Biden’s speech, while:

“71% said Biden’s policies will move the country in right direction — up 19 percentage points from before his speech.”

That’s a win. Politico reported that:

“…the White House is ecstatic that the GOP’s ‘boos, taunts, groans, and sarcastic chortles’ helped Biden paint them as ‘unreasonable and chaotic.’”

It was the most confrontational SOTU address ever, but Biden seemed up to handling the catcalls. Like CNN, most pundits gave Biden good marks for the speech. It ran from “best Biden speech ever!” to “Biden Kills It” to Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo tweeting:

Everyone’s talking about how House Republicans underestimated old man Biden. His speech was an early look at his 2024 general election strategy. Biden is a career politician. Maybe he learned somewhere along his way to the Oval Office that you are only as unpopular as your enemies are popular. In that case, he’s a winner.

Based on Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ GOP rebuttal, Trumpists and their ilk plan to treat 2024 as another braying appeal to their grievance-filled base. They’re adding a rich creamy layer of culture war to help spin up their base, along with their evergreen awfulizing about the national deficit. From JV Last:

“Where Biden spent the majority of his speech talking about steel workers, bridge projects, insulin prices, and junk fees, Sanders insisted that Biden has surrendered to “a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.” And that “his administration has been completely hijacked by the radical left.”

OTOH, Biden’s 2024 strategy won’t be a re-run. It’s different and new. As Eugene Robinson says in the WaPo:

“The call to action during President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday — “Let’s finish the job” — would never be mistaken for soaring poetry.”

That also resonated with Jon Last, who agrees that “Finish the Job” will be the campaign’s guiding theme. Here are the implied pillars of Biden 2024:

The economy has to keep growing and it must help everyone.
The deficit must be cut to the extent possible over the next six years.
Biden’s great accomplishments were achieved with bipartisan help of centrist Republicans.
The government needs to keep funneling money to small towns and rural areas, something that he started with the infrastructure bill.
The risky ideas of the MAGA Republicans who plan to torpedo Social Security and Medicare will be front and center in the campaign.

Instead of the Republicans’ embrace of the culture wars, here’s what Biden had to say: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“My economic plan is about investing in places and people that have been forgotten. Amid the economic upheaval of the past four decades too many people have been left behind or treated like they’re invisible.

Maybe that’s you watching at home.

You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away. I get it.

That’s why we’re building an economy where no one is left behind. Jobs are coming back; pride is coming back because of the choices we made in the last two years.

This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives.”

A “Blue-Collar Blueprint” is a smart way to brand your 2024 agenda, instead of some focus-group tested acronym or clever name. Sometimes it just makes sense to say what you mean. As Ron Brownstein wrote in The Atlantic: (brackets by Wrongo)

“He [Biden] repeatedly noted how many of the jobs created by his economic agenda are not expected to require a four-year college degree.”

Jon Last contrasts Biden’s strategy with the GOP strategy, which he thinks is doomed to failure:

“Republicans believe they can increase the number of votes from one group of Americans (their base) by….attacking another group (the coastal elites). Further, Republicans believe that the number of votes they will win through this use of negative polarization will be greater than the number of votes they might otherwise gain by trying to empathize with and persuade the out-group.”

That’s a re-run of Trump 2020.

Biden isn’t going to play defense in 2024. The GOP’s core strategy is always to sway working-class voters and use that political base to implement policies that enrich corporations and the wealthy at the expense of their base.

If Biden can find a way to drive a wedge into that Republican coalition, and peel off 3%-5% of their working-class supporters, it would translate into a big victory in 2024.

Monday Wake Up Call – February 6, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sea smoke, South Portland, ME looking towards Portland Head light – February 2023 photo by Benjamin Williamson Photography

On Saturday, Wrongo and Ms. Right went to a dinner party with friends and two generations of family. The after dinner talk turned to how quite a few of the kids and grandkids weren’t planning on having children.

We tossed around ideas about why they were unlikely to procreate, and somethings stood out. First, they see climate change as an existential threat that society is unwilling to solve, even though the technology already exists. Why bring a kid into that?

Second, society seems broken. Our group meant that we face simultaneous crises, layered on top of each other. This situation involving simultaneous global challenges, for which we have few solutions, is called Polycrisis.

And a crisis in one global system can spill over into other global systems. They interact with each another so that each new crisis worsens the overall harm. The Polycrisis environment weakens every individual’s sense of security and their place in the world.

One impact that seems related to the simultaneous climate, health, economic and geopolitical challenges are the effects on children. The needs for special education and special services for the very young has never been greater in America. It’s forcing big changes in public school budgets across the country.

No one is really sure why this is happening.

Wrongo isn’t proposing a solution, just suggesting we need to think more about how the problems of declining birth rates, coupled with the growing issues our young children are facing, might be interrelated.

Noah Smith an economist, has an interesting newsletter about how we define community:

“In the past, our communities were primarily horizontal — they were simply the people we lived close to….Increasingly, though, new technology has enabled us to construct communities that I’ve decided to call vertical — groups of people united by identities, interests, and values rather than by physical proximity.”

Smith says that in the past few decades, Americans became disengaged from their local communities, hunkering down in their houses, and failing to interact with the people around them. That led to a well-documented decline in Americans’ participation in civic organizations, local clubs, etc. Our neighbors can also be stifling and/or repressive because they impose uncomfortable community norms on us.

We’ve always had Smith’s vertical communities: “the Jewish community”, “the LGBT community”, and many others. But in the past, an identity grouping wasn’t a true community. We all have identities that connect us with faraway people — other Irishmen, other Taylor Swift fans.

Prior to the internet, we couldn’t have much contact with them. These loose vertical communities weren’t efficient ways to exchange ideas. Before email, text and streaming video, getting the word out was very slow, and our horizontal communities would decide whether what we wanted to share was worthwhile.

Now, we’re no longer isolated. The internet brought us a world of human interaction: social media feeds, chat apps, and so on. Suddenly we’re surrounded by people through their words, their pictures, and their videos.

Now we organize much of our human interaction around virtual vertical communities. Former occasional connections became Facebook groups, subreddits and personal networks on Twitter. And like our small towns back in the day, vertical communities use social ostracism to punish those who deviate from consensus norms.

But vertical communities can’t provide things like public education, national defense, courts of law, property rights, product standards, and infrastructure that we all depend on.

These require a government to administer them. And governments are organized horizontally; mostly defined by lines on maps. But what if we socialize, cooperate, and fall in love with the people from our vertical community? What if we grow apart from the people next door and the relationship is irreparable?

We see this every day in America when citizens go to a PTA meeting and discover a bunch of strangers saying things that they despise.

Wrongo isn’t saying that vertical communities are another enemy. But they can and do exacerbate the polycrisis by making truth harder to see. And by making effective action more difficult.

If you doubt this, remember how powerful the anti-vaxx vertical was at the height of the Covid pandemic. Today’s vertical communities are strong enough to keep our government from getting much of anything done. How can we work together with neighbors when we share few common bonds?

America today is a predatory society. We predate on politics, ideas, values, and culture. Biden’s trying to change this, but can he succeed? How many of us are trying to help? Changing a society that’s this broken, one that’s moving deeper into vertical communities will be a very heavy lift.

Time to wake up America! What can we do to maintain what Lincoln in his first inaugural address said:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

To help you wake up, listen and watch the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 2022 cover of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” with Larkin Poe (Rebecca Lovell and Megan Lovell) on vocals and a fabulous slide guitar solo:

Sample of Lyrics:

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame
All day long I hear him shout so loud
Just crying out that he was framed

Monday Wake Up Call, MLK Jr Day – January 16, 2023

The Daily Escape:

It’s MLK day, so let’s talk about a topic that was near to his heart: economic inequality. Since 1980, economic inequality has been increasing between the top 1% and the bottom 90% of Americans. It’s become so great that today, America now faces the same level of economic inequality that existed before the Great Depression.

Here’s a chart from Elise Gould and Jori Sandra of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) showing the percentage change in annual wages by income group for the last 40 years:

From the EPI article: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The level of earnings inequality that existed in 1979 could have simply continued…to today. Instead, we have seen a growing concentration of earnings at the…very top of the earnings distribution, while the bottom 90% has experienced meager gains. Wages for the top 1% grew more than seven times fast as wages for the bottom 90% between 1979 and 2021. The top 1% now amasses a record share of total earnings, while the bottom 90% share of earnings has hit a historic low.”

Slow growth in real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages for the vast majority of workers has been a defining feature of the US labor market for most of the last 40 years. Only for about 10 years after 1979 did workers see consistent positive wage growth: in the tight labor market of the late 1990s and in the five years prior to the pre-pandemic labor market peak in 2019.

While some low-wage workers have experienced high wage gains after America reopened from Covid, the truth is that most haven’t even kept pace with where they were in 1979.

Today is Martin Luther King Day in America. We mostly celebrate Dr. King’s birth rather than acknowledging what he was arguing for when he was killed. His focus at the end was on both economic justice, and voting rights. Perhaps more than any other leader in American history, King could see the different strands of political and social injustice. He was able to tie them together to form a coherent narrative, one that was capable of leveraging dissent for concrete policy change.

Those were the enduring lessons of Dr. King’s life.

There’s less than three months between the observance of King’s birthday and his death. The way each is recognized by politicians reveals the contradictions in his legacy. Most politicians extol the virtues of racial equality, while most ignore King’s criticisms of economic injustice.

From his April 30th speech in Atlanta: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

“A true revolution of values will…look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just’…this business of…injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane….cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

As the EPI report above shows, over the last four decades, policies promoted by the GOP have reduced the opportunities for most workers to achieve wage growth at rate similar to the top 10%.

Time to wake up America! Develop your narrative, one that fights against economic injustice and for voting rights. Add any other issues that are pertinent to you. Take your narrative to your neighbors. Then work to get out the vote.

To help you wake up, watch “People Get Ready”, a Curtis Mayfield tune that foretold the turning tide in the battle for racial equality. It topped the R&B charts after its 1965 release by The Impressions. It’s been covered by scores of artists, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and by Rod Stewart and the late Jeff Beck, who died last week. Early in their careers, in 1969, Beck and Stewart performed together in the Jeff Beck Group. Here’s Beck’s official music video for “People Get Ready” featuring Rod Stewart:

Jeff Beck was one of one as a guitarist. There was no one better. He had the mindset of a jazz musician playing blues rock. His guitar sound wasn’t anything like traditional jazz guitar. He didn’t cut his teeth playing the old jazz standards, but he could improvise something fresh every time. OTOH, Wrongo didn’t love Beck the recording artist.

Rod Stewart has a secret hobby; he builds model trains. He would take his trains on tour with him, requesting an extra room so he could work on them while staying in hotels. Stewart recently unveiled his 1,500 square-foot replica of post-war Chicago and New York railway systems that took him 23 years to build.

Reform the Supreme Court, Part II

The Daily Escape:

Winter at Bryce Canyon NP, UT – January 2023 photo by Michael Andrew Just

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has a legitimacy crisis. Put simply, many people no longer think the Supreme Court can be trusted to uphold Constitutional rights or follow judicial norms. This is the result of the Conservative supermajority, driven by its partisan agenda that is increasingly hostile to precedent and separation of powers.

The Conservative supermajority threatens that it will not observe Constitutional guardrails. As an example, our democracy depends on citizens having a meaningful right to vote. Right now, that’s in jeopardy because the Court has upheld voter suppression laws and has provided for partisan gerrymandering to continue.

Also, the Conservative supermajority has taken away a woman’s control over her body. It has also taken direct aim at the tradition of separation of church and state.

SCOTUS ignores its own internal check of stare decisis by writing sweeping decisions seemingly intended to foreshadow future decisions that could further endanger American liberty as we know it.

So, it’s time to reform the Court by building better checks and balances. The power to make these changes sits primarily with Congress. So if reform is to happen, reformers are going to have to control both Houses of Congress.

Let’s talk about some of the options for reform.

I. Expanding the Court

This means increasing the number of justices. The number of justices isn’t set by the Constitution, so Congress can change it at any time, and has done so seven times. The first Supreme Court had only six justices.

Given that Congress can and has altered the size of the Court, it could do that again. One idea is to add two justices in every presidential term. Alicia Bannon of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote an analysis looking at this idea. Basically, it would mean every president gets to appoint two justices, regardless of how many justices wind up serving on the court.

One potential issue is that SCOTUS could regularly have an even number of justices, which isn’t unprecedented, but it makes the possibility of split decisions more likely. There’s also the possibility that it could make presidential elections even more of a proxy vote for Supreme Court justices.

The challenges are that this change would require 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. And since Republicans control the House, it’s unlikely to happen soon.

II. Ending life tenure

The big upside to this proposal is that it is much less dependent on justices either retiring or dying. It could also help slow the increasing push to nominate younger justices who could serve on the court for longer.

Prior to 1970, Supreme Court Justices served an average term of 14.9 years. Post 1970, they’ve served an average term of 26.1 years. But the five most recently appointed Supreme Court Justices to leave the court served an average of 27.5 years.

Today, most countries in the world have limited judicial tenure, either through mandatory retirement ages or fixed terms. In the US, only one state supreme court (RI) allows for life tenure.

Properly implemented, term limits could give each president the opportunity to appoint the same number of Supreme Court justices each term. Thus, reducing partisan gamesmanship around individual confirmations while making the Court more representative.

One suggestion from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences calls for an 18-year term with regular appointments made every two years to replace outgoing justices. This would not only limit life tenure, but it would also guarantee every president a stable number of two appointments, assuring a reliable translation of voters’ political will into the federal judiciary.

III. Limiting the Court’s jurisdiction

Congress can limit the kinds of cases that can be appealed to the Supreme Court. Along with the ability to define the jurisdictions of lower courts, this “jurisdiction stripping” can be used to curtail the power of the Court overall. This also might force certain aspects of the law back to the political branches of government.

This happened recently under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which tried to strip Guantanamo Bay detainees of the ability to appeal cases in federal courts. This could only become law if passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the president.

IV. Create a binding code of ethics

The Supreme Court is the least accountable part of our government; it does not even have a binding code of ethics. We should institute a binding code of ethics, including rules to prevent conflicts of interest. We should adopt transparency measures, including live-streaming of oral arguments and decisions.

Of the above, term limits should be enacted, and a code of ethics should be established. Those are realistic goals. When the Constitution was adopted, the average life expectancy was 36 years, not today’s 80 years.

We need to forge a new consensus about SCOTUS. That requires us to do the political work of negotiating and renegotiating what the Court should look like, and how it should operate.

Reform The Supreme Court

The Daily Escape:

Gold Creek Valley, WA – December 2022 photo by Erwin Buske Photography

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not be trusted by anybody.” – Thomas Paine

Welcome to 2023! It seems like a good time to think again about what’s worth fighting for. Paine valued freedom and despised oppression. In 2023, we could substitute the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) for Paine’s original targets, which were Britain and King George III.

From Ed Walker: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In case after case, SCOTUS has ignored the trial record, made up its own facts, reached out to take cases before a record can be made, ignored precedent, including precedent about rejecting precedent, invented new Constitutional “doctrines”, taking faked-up cases for the sole purpose of striking down actions…and delaying justice through the shadow docket.”

The Shadow Docket is designed to allow the Court to engage in administrative management of its calendar so that the Justices have sufficient time to rule on emergency applications.

On Dec. 27, we saw an example of the Court’s reactionary majority using the Shadow Docket to extend indefinitely a Trump immigration policy known as Title 42. Trump implemented Title 42 to exclude asylum seekers from the US because they might be carriers of coronavirus.

From Vox’s Ian Millhiser:

“That decision…is typical behavior from the Supreme Court — or, at least, is reflective of this Court’s behavior since a Democrat moved into the White House….It’s the latest example of the Court dragging its feet after a GOP-appointed lower court judge overrides the Biden administration’s policy judgments, often letting that one judge decide the nation’s policy for…an entire year.

And that delay may be the best-case scenario for the Biden administration — and for the general principle that unelected judges aren’t supposed to decide the nation’s border policy. “

Millhiser points out that SCOTUS’ response is very different from when Trump was in office. Back then, the Court frequently raced to reinstate Trump’s policies within days.

The Court’s Conservative Six no longer seem to care about the law or precedent. It’s become a policy-making body in service of Conservative’s religious and social agendas. We should expect It to continue down this path until we reform the Court.

Reform is necessary to protect the legislative prerogatives of Congress, and the prerogatives of the Executive. Oh, and to protect the individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

The NYT’s Adam Liptak says that SCOTUS has been rapidly accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government. He quotes Mark A. Lemley, a Stanford law professor’s article in The Harvard Law Review:

“The Court has taken significant, simultaneous steps to restrict the power of Congress, the administrative state, the states, and the lower federal courts. And it has done so using a variety of (often contradictory) interpretative methodologies. The common denominator across multiple opinions in the last two years is that they concentrate power in one place: the Supreme Court.”

Non-elected activist judges indeed.

We have historically entrusted courts with the task of determining which rights belong to the people, and the extent to which governments at all levels can exercise their Constitutional powers in controlling the people. We know that courts have always lagged behind the consensus of the American People on issues of rights. But before now, change has come, albeit slowly.

That ended with SCOTUS’ decision in Dobbs, where the Conservative Six ruled that women have no right to control their own bodies.

Earlier, they imposed their religious view that coaches are free to dragoon their players into worshiping the God of the coach’s choice, and that religious leaders are free to spread a pandemic, despite public health officials’ warnings.

Neither Congress nor the President have resisted SCOTUS’s power grab. They haven’t even taken the mild step of imposing ethical requirements on the Court. The other two branches have simply watched the Conservative Six operate in their self-declared role of Philosopher Kings. We now have a Supreme Court tinkering with the Separation of Powers, based solely on political and ideological preference.

As if to justify their power without restraint or oversight, Chief Justice John Roberts recently cited the myth of “three separate and co-equal branches of government.” But that isn’t what the Founders and Framers had in mind, and it isn’t what the Constitution says.

In fact, the judiciary was third in line of power and importance in the minds of the Framers of the Constitution. Article III clearly puts the Supreme Court under the control of Congress. Section 2 is unambiguous:

“[T]he supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

The founders felt the judiciary was not co-equal. In Federalist 51, James Madison proclaims:

“[I]n republican government the legislative authority, necessarily, predominates.”

In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton writes:

“[T]he judiciary is beyond compare the weakest of the three departments of power.”

It’s important to remember that the power to overturn laws passed by Congress and signed by the President was not granted by the Constitution: it was taken by the Court onto itself in 1803 in the case Marbury v Madison.

Soon SCOTUS will rule in Moore v Harper. Moore hinges on a legal proposition known as the “independent state legislature theory.” The theory says that, when it comes to making state laws that apply to federal elections — from drawing congressional district lines, to determining the who-what-when-where of casting a ballot — only the state legislature itself has the power to set the rules.

Moore is an opportunity for the court to reject radicalism, but SCOTUS may upend our democracy with their decision.

SCOTUS has legalized bribery of politicians (Citizens United) and ignored potentially seditious behavior by its own members and their families. Not to mention exceeding its Constitutional authority by inserting itself into political issues, now with startling regularity.

It’s time to reign in the Supremes before they reign over us.

Reasons For Optimism In 2023

The Daily Escape:

Spirit Lake, viewed from Mt. Spokane, ID – December 2022 photo by James Richman Photography

Wrongo has served you many big plates of gloom in 2022, and he has plenty more cooking on the stove. But, maybe there’s a reason to be a little optimistic about 2023?

Let’s take a few minutes to offer reasons why 2022 wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and why the coming year has a shot at being even better.

First, the Russians failed to win their war in Europe. And you ought to think that the Ukraine war is really a war against Europe, not just a land grab in Ukraine. Second, in the US, most of the authoritarian and anti-democratic candidates promoted by the Republican Party failed to gain a bigger toehold.

Both of these could easily have gone another way, as was nearly universally predicted by our so-called know-betters. But through the efforts of many government leaders and America’s regular citizens, they didn’t. But don’t underestimate just how close to real disaster we came in 2022.

In 2022, the West, at great cost, chose to help Ukraine defend itself. And in America, enough voters came out to help protect our democracy. Turnout in the midterms was reasonably high, especially among young voters. And despite the voter suppression laws passed in Georgia and Texas, voters got to the polls. Most losers acknowledged they had lost, just like in a functional democracy.

In fact, with last week’s passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act, the American system is enabled to create resilience, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now. Congress, with some semblance of bipartisanship, also passed a budget at the last minute.

Meanwhile despite our worst fears, the DOJ gained convictions against many Jan. 6 coup plotters and seditionists. A group of Oath Keepers is facing prison time. And the ringleaders of the plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor also got long prison sentences. Add to all of this Trump’s legal difficulties, which bring a high probability of him facing a criminal conviction, and there’s some reason for optimism in 2023.

And there is certainly more to come from DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith, Wrongo’s pick for 2023 person of the year.

Even with some optimism there are a few things that could go horribly wrong in 2023.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is nowhere near over. The war is currently at a military stalemate, but the Ukrainian people are suffering terribly. Despite recent losses on the battlefield, Russia has a formidable army, and they might outlast the West’s commitment to Ukraine. That will bring a temporary peace to Europe, but it would be a huge strategic mistake to stand aside and let the Russians win.
The political crisis in the US isn’t over. We know that the Republican Party’s elected members of Congress still represent the main source of threats to the Constitution. With control of the House, they will pursue an anti-democratic agenda. Wrongo worries that when the Debt Limit needs to be increased this spring, the Republican-controlled House will refuse to be a part of that effort.

Anyone who predicted last year that 2022 would have been this successful would have been called a Pollyanna. The twin challenges for 2023, including the preservation of US democracy and the restoration of global peace, aren’t new. We’ve been facing them for several years if not decades. And we’re still here working on them.

Here are a few Wrong wishes for the new year:

An end to the war in Ukraine with a Ukrainian victory.
Continued good health for President Biden.
No deep 2023 recession. Let’s hope the economy defies history and remains strong.
A resolution to America’s immigration crisis. Let’s hope Congress can find a bipartisan solution that respects the dignity of migrants and establishes an efficient, workable immigration process.
Further relief from Covid. Fewer people are dying, but the virus can mutate very quickly, and that threatens all of us still.
Is a more centrist Supreme Court too much to ask for?

Finally can we have a rational House of Representatives? We need political stability. Wrongo knows that delivering on this wish is an extremely heavy lift.

As we enter the new year, as Kasey Kasim used to say:

“keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars”.

Will things turn suddenly worse in 2023? Will inflation continue to hurt Americans? Will the stock market collapse in the face of recession? Will political turmoil continue? Perhaps. But if 2022 is a gauge, it’s far more likely that we will muddle through, with our politics marking time while both Parties position for 2024. And our economy will continue to grow, albeit very slowly.

Let’s try to keep things in context, and not be distracted by the many things that could go wrong. Let’s also recognize those things that go right. Happy New Year!

Now listen to Diana Krall in 2005 asking, “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”:

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Voting Rights

Biden’s Speech Showed His 2024 Strategy

Reform the Supreme Court, Part II