The Wrongologist

Fourth
of July Quotes:

Where
liberty dwells, there is my country.
— Benjamin Franklin

All we have of
freedom, all we use or know –
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
–Rudyard Kipling

What
is the essence of America?  Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate
balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from”.

–Marilyn
vos Savant

Independence Day Party Animals:

You need the NSA when terrorists are everywhere:

Egyptian Army Launches New Government:

The Wrongologist
mentioned anti-Sharia laws in North Carolina here.
Last week, North Carolina’s GOP-controlled senate introduced an anti-Sharia law
bill. Their concern was that Sharia could trump our laws and maybe threaten our
constitution. Sharia, they feared, could blur the lines between church and
state…Women would be subjugated. And then, the state senate amended the bill
to restrict access to legal and
constitutionally-protected abortion. Why do that? Because of their
religious convictions:

Multiple Choice Test:

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
Wrongologist is not an Egyptian expert. He is of two minds about the current
situation where the Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) has been ousted from power in Egypt
in a military coup. There is an astonishing amount of support for the ouster
around the region and around the world as well.  

Mr.
Obama also has had difficulty hitting the ball down the middle of the fairway. He
expressed concern over the military’s action, urged all sides to exercise
restraint and reiterated that the United States takes no side except to support
democracy and the rule of law. All while the Egyptian Army Chief Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi spent
time speaking with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, probably to be sure
the US was OK with the coup.

We have been
beating our chests and beating the world to death with the concept of “democracy”.
Maybe it is time to admit it’s not for everybody.

Juan
Cole reported that General Al-Sisi said that the officer corps had been in dialogue with the various political
parties since the crisis in November, 2012, when President Morsi
abruptly declared himself above the law. He then pushed through a theocratic
constitution (turnout for the referendum on it was only 30%), then tried to
pack their Senate with MB members and sympathizers.

Cole
reports that Al-Sisi indicated that all
the political actors on the Egyptian stage showed a willingness to compromise
to end the crisis except Morsi, who refused to show any flexibility. A
last attempt at national reconciliation, brokered by the officers, began June
20, but President Morsi’s speech last week offered nothing that would satisfy the people
or the military.

Al-Sisi
said that the constitution rushed into law by Morsi last December would be
suspended, and a balanced constituent assembly would be formed to revise it.

He said
that there will be new presidential and parliamentary elections in the coming
months. Freedom of the press will be guaranteed, he said, and a mechanism
established to allow the youth to be partners in making policy decisions.

The
provisional government has asked the MB to continue to participate in
government. From the MB’s perspective, this must be seen as cynical: You can
participate in our democracy, but only on our terms.

The Egyptian
military isn’t showing much respect for pluralism.

They
closed pro-MB television channels and arrested the reporters, though they only
detained them a few hours before releasing them. This move appears to have been
tactical, ensuring that the Brotherhood media could not help get out a call for
resistance to the coup. Then the officers issued arrest warrants for 300 major
figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, and proceeded to detain Morsi and his inner circle.
The mass arrests are troubling, since they have the effect of criminalizing the
Muslim Brotherhood.

From Moon of Alabama:

The question seems to
be about “how Islamist” and about “how inclusive” versus
“exclusive” the Egyptian government and constitution should be.  

The coup was
supported by Al-Azhar, Islam’s highest institute of learning, and by the Salafi
parties which came in second in the last Egyptian election. With broad
religious support, it is very likely that a majority of Egyptians will consent
to what is happening.

So, we will watch the Egyptian people
try to decide between an Islamist government and more pluralist principles.

It is an excellent time to reflect upon
America if it were a nation run by the Ralph Reed’s and Pat Robertson’s of our
land.

We would be assured that Jesus loves us.
The Bible would determine what women should do, should not do, and better damn
well not do.

The last serious attempt by Western
Christians to hold control of large populations ended with an Inquisition.
It was a brutal lesson in governance by religion. Today, Europe still ranks
lowest in the world in share of population with religious belief.

Finally,
it is ironic that many liberal Westerners approve this
military coup which by definition overturns a democracy. It is as if democracy
for Arab states is only OK if it produces the result we want.

Maybe,
since Islamists can’t get Sharia
Law passed in Egypt, we can stop worrying about Sharia law taking over in the
US: Laws prohibiting enacting future laws based on Sharia, or legal interpretations based on Sharia law in our courts, have already passed in North
Carolina, Oklahoma,
and Kansas,
among other states.

On July 4, 1776, or
within a few days thereafter, 56 people signed the Declaration of Independence.

(View the seminal documents of our republic here).

The signers were openly resisting the
legal authority of the King of England. The British considered them outlaws who
were breaking the laws of England. They risked capture, prison and even death
for their belief in independence from England.

The new country was far from perfect: The
vote was restricted to landowners. Most women could not vote, slavery was
already well entrenched in the land, colonists had been forcing Native Americans from their
lands for almost 150 years. So at that point, liberty, equality and unalienable
rights were for a select few.

Is it inalienable or unalienable?

The Grammarist
says English has changed
since the founders of the United States used “unalienable” in the signed final
draft of their 1776 Declaration of Independence (some earlier drafts and later
copies have inalienable). Inalienable
means exactly the same thing (both mean incapable
of being transferred to another or others). Inalienable is now the preferred form.

The legal separation
of the 13 Colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second
Continental Congress
voted to approve a resolution
of independence
that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring the United States
independent from Great Britain.

After voting for
independence, the Continental Congress created a Committee of Five  to write a Declaration of Independence, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress
debated and revised the wording of the Declaration, finally approving it on
July 4. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

Adams’s prediction
was off by two days. From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July
4, the date of the Declaration of Independence, rather than on July 2, the date
the resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress.

Historians dispute
whether Congress actually signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th
, even though Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin all later
wrote that they had signed it on that day. Most historians have concluded that
the Declaration was not signed by all until nearly a month after its adoption,
on August 2, 1776, not on July 4th.

In a remarkable
coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the
Declaration of Independence who later served as presidents of the US, died on
the same day: July 4, 1826. James Monroe, a founder of our country, but not a
signatory of the Declaration, became
the third president in a row to die on July 4th in 1831.

Here are a few
important July 4th milestones:

• 1776
  – The Colonies declare their independence

• 1803
  – The Louisiana Purchase is announced

• 1826
  – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the United States, dies the
  same day as John Adams, 2nd president of the United States. It was
  the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of
  Independence

• 1831
  – James Monroe, 5th president
  dies

• 1863
  – Vicksburg surrenders to US Grant after 47 days of siege

• 1863
  – Lee withdraws from the battlefield after
  losing at the Battle
  of Gettysburg,
  signaling an end to the Southern invasion of the North

• 1872-
  Calvin Coolidge, 30th president was born

• 1966
  – President LB Johnson signs the
  Freedom of Information Act into law

So,
who are the true patriots of today?

• The
  flag-draped politicians who wrote the Patriot Act?

• Those
  same politicians who send other people’s children off to be killed or disabled
  in wars of choice?

• The
  flag-wavers who earn outsized profits through partnership with the government?

• The
  crowds who chant “USA, USA, USA” when they learned about the death of Osama bin
  Laden?

• The
  religious hypocrites who speak of patriotism while they work to limit the
  rights of others?

True patriots today are
those very few people who continue
to fight to preserve our constitutional rights. They are the people who work to
add jobs in our jobs-short economy. They are the military personnel who return
time and again to the front lines, enduring the unendurable. They are the families
of those in the military. They are people who serve on school boards, zoning boards
and town councils, who get a very limited return for their efforts, compared to
politicians on the national level who are working hard to become millionaires,
assuming they were not millionaires when they were elected.

They are average
Americans who are watching the decline of our civic institutions and
infrastructure in disbelief, wondering where to turn if we are to reverse all
of these bad trends.

Is anyone “High as a
kite on the 4th of July” anymore?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Now that
the Senate’s passed an immigration bill, everyone wants to know what the House
is going to do, and there are a few theories about what happens next. Speaker
John Boehner, at a briefing last Thursday, said the House
would not take up the Senate bill and would pass its own bill, but only if a
majority of Republicans backed it. Although he didn’t say it, that is known as
the “Hastert Rule”. From the Wrongologist  in March:

Although Republicans
hold 234 seats in congress and just 218 votes are required to pass legislation,
the question is, are there are more than 17 Republicans who will refuse to
support any Immigration Bill? The answer is certainly yes.

The question is: Can Mr. Boehner lead his caucus?

There are doubters. Roll
Call reports that the Club for Growth and Heritage Action for America are
out to depose Mr. Boehner:

Mr.
Boehner has had continuing problems leading his caucus. Recently, the
Senate-passed Farm Bill failed
to pass the House. The vote wasn’t even particularly close: 234-195 against passage, as 62 Republicans voted against the bill.

Remember
Boehner’s Plan B? It was Mr. Boehner’s fiscal cliff tax proposal that in
December 2012 would have extended the Bush tax cuts on income for those who
earn $1 million or less. Even on the day of the expected vote, he said it would
pass, but it failed to win even enough support in the Republican Conference and
the vote was canceled. 

Of the 234 House Republicans,
48 are members
of the Tea Party Caucus and 4 representatives are former members of the
Tea Party caucus. 201 members are Democrats. So, a majority of the House – 253 of 435
members – are either Tea Party Republicans or Democrats, leaving only 180 members who are more or less mainstream Republicans to form
the basis of a functioning center-right coalition.

At some
point, the House will probably pass something related to immigration reform. It
might not resemble the Senate version. It might be 100% about border security,
but some bill will serve as a vehicle to go to a Conference Committee with the
Senate.

Then the
House will vote on assigning members to serve on the Conference Committee. That
requires a majority vote. The Senate has a similar process, although approval
of their conferees is not in doubt. Speaker Boehner will not have an easy time
convincing the majority of his caucus to assign conferees because he cannot
assure them that the Conference Committee will produce a bill that they can
support.

Instead, he
has assured them that he won’t allow a vote on the Conference Report if the
majority doesn’t support it.

In order
for a bill to become a law, both Houses have to pass an identical version of
the bill. That is what the Conference
Report is. Apparently, many House Republicans suspect that the
Conference Report will be a bill that they can’t support.

It’s hard
to see how the Conference Committee can create a report than the Democrats can
support and that the president is willing to sign, but is also acceptable to
the majority of the House. The way it looks right now is that the
Committee will produce a report that the House will reject.

So Mr.
Boehner is caught in a vise: Many traditional Republican supporters favor the
Senate bill. They include: Grover Nordquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the US
Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Majority, the National Association of
Manufacturers and the Financial Services Forum.  

He faces
attacks from his right by the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth, and a
revolt from the Tea Party caucus, while most of his traditional sources of
support want him to bring forward something close to the Senate’s bill.

Can Mr.
Boehner find a way to lead on Immigration? If he can, perhaps it will be by
making a deal with most of the 201 House Democrats and 40 or so Republicans.

That would
likely be the end of his ride as Speaker, so don’t bet on Boehner’s leadership
stepping in front of his partisanship in 2013.

The worst
possible outcome for the GOP would be for something like the Senate bill to
become law over the explicit objections of the House leadership. It would give
Democrats a huge policy victory and leave Republicans without the political
dividends they’d pocket if they were equal partners in the reform effort.

It would really
exacerbate their problems with Hispanic voters. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said:

But the
longer the House takes on immigration, the more the 2016 presidential election
will emerge as a factor in the Republicans’ thinking about how to pass a bill.

The trick
Republicans are trying to play is to win additional seats in the Senate by claiming
they supported the immigration bill, while retaining their majority in the
House by claiming they did not vote to pass the Senate version of the bill.

Hard to
see how this is a winning strategy for their party. Certainly it is not a
winning strategy for the country.

Harry Truman never minced words:

Wrong Quote of the Week:

John McCain brags about
the Senate immigration bill, that it creates the “most militarized border since
the fall of the Berlin Wall.”  Kinda makes you proud, don’t
it?

Chief Justice Roberts: The 1965 Voting Rights Act is “antiquated”

Liberty, meet Justice:

‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy:

Remain silent at the Ballot Box:

NSA = Not Sayin’ Anything:

Meet your new buddy:

What’s
Wrong Today:

“If we desire respect
for the law, we must first make the law respectable” – Justice Louis D. Brandeis

When
Edward Snowden leaked classified information about US intelligence programs
this month, he became either a criminal, a conscientious citizen, or maybe both,
depending on your viewpoint and to some degree, your politics.

He is also
the gift that keeps on giving: The NYT
today reports on a new disclosure by Snowden:

The
Times says that the report is the latest document given to the Guardian by Snowden. It
may clear up a long-running mystery over which program White House officials
wanted Mr. Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials to sign off on when
they went to his Washington hospital room.

Snowden’s saga is
very useful for one reason: It’s forced us to think about how (or if) we strike
a balance between privacy and security. It’s a conversation long overdue; as
our lives become ever more digital and electronic, there’s an inevitable and
corresponding loss of privacy. We’ve mutely acquiesced to turning ever greater
quantities of our personal information over to entities who do with it…well,
who knows what?

That the National
Security Agency (NSA) is sitting on a treasure trove of cell phone metadata is
hardly surprising. The question is what they’ll use it for, and if this
represents the beginning of a descent down a slippery slope: today, cell phone
metadata; tomorrow, listening to our phone calls?

From Bloomberg:

Snowden’s
location and motives are interesting to speculate about, but they shouldn’t
distract attention from what really matters in all this:

• Twelve
  years after the Sept. 11 attacks (and two years after the killing of Osama bin
  Laden) the security apparatus created in response is growing, not shrinking.

• The
  US government is monitoring its citizens’ communications on a scale that was previously unknown and is
  without precedent.

• The
  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) has declined just 11 of the government’s
  more than 33,900 surveillance requests.

• The
  legal interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is used by that
  court to rule on government requests for information, is classified. So the laws that enable this
  surveillance are themselves, in effect, secret.

• The
  group meant to guarantee appropriate privacy safeguards, the Privacy and Civil
  Liberties Oversight Board, was authorized by Congress in 2007, but didn’t get a
  full-time chairman until last month, and has met with President Barack Obama
  exactly once.

Bloomberg
continues:

We can understand
that we can’t have people disclosing secrets left and right, but what happens
when/if our government oversteps? It’s easy to demonize a whistleblower, but
how else would we know if our government is engaged in activities that run
counter to preserving and protecting democracy?

The
reaction of our mainstream media to the NSA leaks, by disparaging leaker Edward
Snowden, has exposed cable news and other mainstream media outlets as government
mouthpieces that have allowed very few points of view to be aired.

Consider
Andrew Ross Sorkin, a writer the Wrongologist follows: After Snowden made it
out of Hong Kong to Russia, Sorkin expressed his frustration:

“We’ve
screwed this up, to even let him get to Russia.”  By “we,” he meant the US
government. Last time we checked, Sorkin worked for the New York Times, not the government.  

Sorkin declared on CNBC that maybe Glen Greenwald should be arrested:

If these
were independent journalists, they would be dissecting the impacts of NSA
surveillance on privacy rights, trying to separate fact from fiction. But, the US
news media are obsessed with questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice? Is Putin the winner vs. Obama?

Many pundits, after a
few days of vague discussion, think they have heard enough to strike the
balance between liberty and security. Many seem confident that the government
is doing nothing more than relieving Verizon, AT&T and Facebook of their data storage problems.  So what if government agents can, on
occasion, sift through years of phone and Internet records if they need to find
a contact with a suspicious foreigner?

Americans want to accept
assurances that specific conversations are only rarely exhumed and only when
allowed by the FISA court. Such sifting and warrants — in unexplained
combination with more conventional intelligence efforts — are now said by
President Obama and his team, to have prevented several dozen potential
terrorist attacks, with elliptical references to threats against New York
City’s subways and Stock Exchange.

From Max Frankel in
the NYT: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Until Snowden, the
very existence of the enterprise was “top secret” and publicly denied, even in
Congressional hearings. Even now, the project remains secret in every important
respect.

Frankel, who was at
the Times for the Pentagon Papers: (emphasis
by the Wrongologist):

How do you balance
security and privacy? When does the collection of data violate the 4th
Amendment? If we don’t have this
conversation now, we’ll soon live in a country we no longer recognize.
If we continue to mutely acquiesce to the idea that government knows best and
should be allowed to do what it thinks needs to be done to keep us safe, we’ll
become proof of Benjamin Franklin’s belief that those who would sacrifice
liberty for security deserve neither.

Franklin was ahead of
his time, because modern-day America is proving his thesis to be spot-on.

Can we trust our
government? Should we trust our government? The answer to those questions have
never been more important.

Errol
Flynn (playing Robin Hood) in The Adventures of Robin Hood when asked if he
blamed Prince John for England’s problems, said:

It’s
sad that Americans have to depend on outlaws like Snowden and other
whistleblowers for the truth.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

As the
Wrongologist pointed out yesterday, Justice
Ginsburg’s dissent in Shelby County vs.
Holder
outlines the Congress’s findings from the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting
Rights Act:

Congress
discovered roughly 1,800 instances between 1982 and 2006 in which areas covered
by Section 4 of the Act were prevented from enacting voting laws that were
discriminatory in nature. That averages out to 67 attempts to discriminate per
year, every year, for 24 straight years.

There are
three sections of the Voting Rights Act that are directly relevant to the
Supreme Court’s ruling:

Section 2
of the Act allows anyone from any jurisdiction to challenge a governmental
entity that attempts to discriminate in the electoral process. This is almost
always done after the fact: Someone was denied the right to vote, or a class of
people had their vote suppressed, or districts were drawn that were
discriminatory in nature and the Feds look into it.

Section 4
defines those areas of the country that have a history and record of racial
discrimination and that must get advanced clearance (the preclearance requirement) under Section 5 in order to
make any changes in their election laws.

The
Supreme Court invalidated the formula that Congress used to craft Section 4,
which means that no jurisdictions are currently subject to Section 5.

If the law
had been the way it is now between 1982 and 2006, all 1,800 violations referenced
above would have had to have been addressed under Section 2, and addressing them would have occurred after
the elections.

So, will we be looking
at intended consequences or unintended consequences? How rapidly will southern
Republicans move to take advantage of SCOTUS’ decision striking down Section 4
of the Voting Rights Act to restrict who can vote?  You’d think after years of claiming that
Section 4 and Section 5 were unnecessary, southern Republicans would pause a decent interval before proving
the point of voting rights advocates that prior review of voting
changes in the Deep South remain a necessity.

However, Talking
Points Memo reports the following:

Within
hours of Tuesday’s decision, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott declared on Twitter:
“Eric Holder can no longer deny VoterID in Texas.” The Texas Department of
Public Safety announced later in the day that on Thursday it would begin
distributing photo IDs under a 2011 law that Holder’s lawyers had blocked under
Section 5.

In
Mississippi, the Secretary of State said her office would begin enforcing a
pending voter ID law for primaries in June 2014.

North
Carolina Republicans said they plan swift action on a pending voter ID bill.

So the remaining
question is just how blatant the disenfranchisement of blacks, Hispanics, and
college students will become.

Perhaps creating
even the most restrictive voter ID laws will not be enough. The next logical
step (along with discriminatory redistricting) will be to make voting so
physically taxing that minority voters are unable to cast votes, more like what
we saw in 2012.

The Election
of 2010 enabled Republican-controlled statehouses to begin a coordinated
strategy to suppress the votes of blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young –
seen as predominantly Democratic voters – by requiring photo IDs, tightening
eligibility and reducing voting hours.

That plan,
however, ran afoul of the Voting Rights Act, especially in Old Confederacy
states like Texas which were covered by the preclearance requirement of the
law. Using the Act, the Justice Department was able to beat back most of the
attempts to infringe on suffrage – and minorities provided key votes to reelect
President Obama in 2012.

Kerry Kennedy, (RFK’s daughter)
in the NYT
today:

She
went on to say that the Voting Rights Act remains:

The Right’s
current message remains wrapped up in the word “liberty”. But that message includes the “liberty” of white Americans to reign over — and rein in —
non-white Americans.

That
sentiment was at the heart of the Jim Crow laws: Denying citizenship rights to
blacks despite the 14th and 15th amendments; it can be
seen today in the Right’s longstanding refusal to grant congressional voting
rights to District of Columbia residents, most of whom are black and who face
“taxation without representation”; it is reflected in the Right’s obsession
with the conspiracy theory about Obama being born in Kenya; and it fires up
Republican opposition to immigration reform since it would permit some 11
million undocumented immigrants — mostly Hispanic — to eventually gain
citizenship and the right to vote.

Conservatives
and bigots created the original Jim Crow laws, and we’ve already heard cheers from
some Republicans eager to return to a time when the feds didn’t interfere with the
sovereign ability of white southerners to decide who was worthy to vote.

It’s like watching a tape of that
1965 march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma played in reverse. To that end,
expect to see Republican-controlled state legislatures renew their efforts
to create voter eligibility roadblocks in the form of “Jim Crow 2.0”
laws.

It
is going to be a heavy lift, but things can change, if and ONLY if, Democrats
get off their butts and work very hard in 2014 to win 25+ congressional
districts not currently held by Democratic incumbents.

They
need to work like there is no tomorrow, because otherwise, there may not be one.

What’s
Wrong Today:

Today,
the Wrongologist departs from his policy of not writing on a hot, trending
issue that everyone else is writing millions of words about,  to comment on the Voting Rights Act (VRA). 

Americans need to
remember The Edmund Pettus bridge, a symbol of the fight for change in Alabama and the rest of America. It was there that
voting rights marchers were violently confronted by police on March 7, 1965. The next day, Martin Luther King, Jr.
led 3,200 people out of Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge
to Montgomery. Less than five
months later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 

Things went terribly wrong yesterday when SCOTUS
struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by cleverly striking down Section FOUR instead, saying that
the formula that Congress uses to determine which states are under Section 5
pre-clearance is no longer Constitutional. 

 

The vote was 5-4. No one should ever again say that politics
is a fool’s errand, or that it doesn’t matter whether a Democrat or a
Republican takes office. There is a
direct line from 2000, when Nader’s 3% of the vote was enough to throw Florida
into chaos and hand the Presidency to George W. Bush. Consider the following:

• There is a direct line from November
  of 2000 to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. To pretend
  otherwise is to ignore history.

• And there is a direct line from 2010,
  when the 2008 voters stayed home and handed the House and state governments
  across the nation to a radical Republican fringe.

• There is also a direct line from
  November 2010 to yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling.

Will you be energized and organized to take on the challenge in
2014? Will you donate to get out the vote efforts? Will you volunteer
to drive voters to the polls? Will you make calls? Or will you sit at your computer
gnashing your teeth and complaining because the mean nasty Republicans remain mean
and nasty?


Our democracy is only as good as we
make it. Without significant participation, the loudest voices win. We have to
be the loudest voices, voices that make the earth shake.

Anything less, and we deserve what we
get.

Here’s
what the court did yesterday: They invented a standard to
strike down the preclearance map. A law that has been authorized five times
before, with reams of Congressional findings of fact, is invalid because the
Court suddenly prefers its own facts to those provided by Congress. What’s comical
is that the Roberts opinion spends precious little time on the Constitutional issues
and a whole lot of time developing a made-up standard that never existed before,
in order to strike it down.

The
Constitutional issue is simple. Nobody had a problem with the VRA before, and
it’s abundantly clear that the 15th Amendment permits such legislation. When
the Supreme Court looks to strike down a law, it must do so only if
there is no way to uphold it. Clearly that is not the case. What changed is
that the conservative majority seized the opportunity to defang it for no other
reason than the fact that they could.

This is the Roberts
majority creating a judicial line item
veto. They
struck down the coverage formula that had been used by the federal government
to determine which states and counties are subject to continued oversight.
Roberts said that the 1972 formula was outdated and unworkable. The court said
it is now up to congressional lawmakers to revise the law and create a new
formula that will pass constitutional scrutiny. From Chief Justice Roberts:

Chief Justice
Roberts’ opinion is here.  By removing the specific protections of
Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, the only protection against massive
predations against minority voters by “states’ rights enthusiasts”
will be a Department of Justice willing to prosecute and defend the general
protections of Section 5. In that context, the political leanings of the
Executive Branch become that much more important. 

You can expect that Republicans
will get right on that new formula thing.  Count out the South from here
on out, folks.  It will be open season on massive gerrymandering because
now, no states, districts, or localities are subject to Section 5 rules. 

From Ginsburg’s dissent:

Assuming Justice
Ginsburg’s research is correct, the jurisdictions covered under Section 5 of
the Voting Rights Act were prevented
from enacting approximately 1600 discriminatory voting laws in the 24 years
between 1982 and the 2006 reauthorization of the Act.

That is 67
discriminatory laws proposed per year, for almost a quarter century.

By Robert’s rule, all
of those laws would have gone into effect and most likely had an impact on
elections before they could be challenged in court, which isn’t good enough.

The only thing that’s history now?  Potentially, the rights of millions of
Americans to vote.

We should mourn for a
few days. Then, we need to fight as if our lives depended on it, because they will.

What’s
Wrong Today:

We read
about outrage after outrage against the US worker, the middle class and the working poor. Recently,
Robert Reich tweeted:

There is
so much economic injustice these days; it’s hard to keep up. Yet sometimes
the news is so outrageous, you’ll swear out loud and scare the dog.

Consider the
story of the McDonald’s workers being forced to accept payment for their work by
debit cards instead of checks. A Shavertown PA McDonald’s franchise required employees to accept
payment on a JP Morgan Chase payroll card. But the card imposes fees on
virtually every transaction. Among the costs: $1.50 for an ATM withdrawal, $5
for over-the-counter cash withdrawals and $1 to check the balance, 75¢ per
online bill payment and $10 per month if the card is left inactive for more
than three months.

As a
result of all of these fees, this McDonald’s franchise pays its employees less than the minimum wage/hour.

A
McDonald’s ex-employee just sued over it: The case is Natalie
Gunshannon v. Albert/Carol Mueller T-A McDonald’s et al., case number
7010-2013 in the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County.

Gunshannon
worked less than a month at the Shavertown, PA McDonald’s location when she
learned that the franchise required employees to accept payment on the Chase payroll card. According to the lawsuit, employees had no option to
receive a traditional paycheck or get paid by direct deposit. The lawsuit
contends that the practice violates the Pennsylvania Wage Payment and
Collection Act.

According
to Lenore Uddyback-Fortson, a PA Department of Labor spokeswoman, the
department is aware of the McDonald’s case, but could not confirm or deny if
there is an active state investigation. She did say:

Using
prepaid cards isn’t new, but is a growing trend. It is estimated that $60 billion in wages
will be paid out via payroll cards by 2014. That’s quite a siphoning of
other people’s dough back to the banks via fees charged to use these cards.

Think
Progress reported that the rise of prepaid debit cards has been a boon for
banks in state-level unemployment insurance programs as well, as the National
Consumer Law Center (NCLC) reported
in January. While the NCLC found some improvements since the early days of
prepaid benefits cards, the numbers remain ugly. Even in California, the
group’s highest-rated state, banks charge users $1.8 million in fees each year.
The cards “effectively shifted the cost of distributing payments from governments
to individuals,” as the AP put it, as the country’s biggest banks “seized
on government payments as a business opportunity.“

And
remember this: The financial reform legislation in
2010 exempted prepaid cards from regulation. Thus it is no surprise they have
proliferated and are used by governments at all levels. While proposals have
been considered, it seems not much has changed either, as outlined in the
Federal Reserve prepaid regulations information.

It’s so
ridiculous that the FTC’s warning video on fees basically implies to just find
a way to pay lower fees. There is no mention of how checks and cash are not
normally fee-based since one can easily find a no fee bank account.

Isn’t this
the epitome of abuse and ripoff?

These cards are used primarily by the young and the poor. Think Finance , an alternative financial products company, released a survey of more than 1,000 people ages 18 to 34 that found while 92% currently use a bank, nearly half, or 45%, say they have also used outside services including prepaid cards, check cashing, pawn shops and payday loans. To make sure you don’t get taken advantage of, you may want to get some more information about payday loans before you sign a contract.

For millennials, many of whom find themselves cash-strapped, in debt from student loans and underemployed, they seem willing to be stuck with extra charges when it comes to quick access to cash and credit. They will still be eligable for getting a credit card with no credit but that doesn’t mean they will have total financial freedom.

Ken Rees, president
and CEO of Think Finance:

And he points out
that more than 80% of survey respondents said emergency credit options are at
least somewhat important to them.

It
is unclear if Ms. Gunshannon’s lawsuit is going anywhere, but it shows again
how the system is rigged against the working poor. The banks get prepaid cards
exempted from government oversight and we see the logical outcome: Fees pile on
top of fees, and pretty soon a minimum wage job is no longer minimum wage.

So,
paper (greenbacks or checks) or plastic?

Add
this to Congress’ to-do list: Get. Debit. Cards. Under control.

Otherwise,
let’s pay Congress via a JP Morgan Chase debit card.

Boomers: Nobody is currently writing
a book called “The Greatest Generation” about you. Any idea why?

Their only political transparency is that they will do
anything for cash:

But
the GOP has principles:

They can manage your info, but not their people:

Is Obama just Cheney with a Nobel Peace Prize?

Another Slippery Slope traps
America:

Good Guy Roulette: