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What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

Started by Caliga, November 07, 2020, 12:07:22 PM

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alfred russel

Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:33:57 AMGood points, Sheilbh.

Looking at the top three points from Dorsey's post, they are: leadership, inflation, the economy. The inflation and the economy are if not the same thing, closely related. And if you can show convincing plan on strong leadership on the economy & inflation, then you're covering what 50% of voters are saying they care about. That's not nothing.

So what are the Democrats' options here?

It is probably too late because the election is 6 months away and it will be difficult to move anything forward with an election so close.

However, if you are the party in power it is worth remembering that, in the absence of major accomplishments, the general impression is that the national conversation is going to be what people think you were focused on. The democrats got through a major covid relief bill, but there wasn't much else. When the national conversation is on crap like transgender stuff that is what they will think is your focus which regardless of the merits isn't inflation/the economy etc.

Passing bills in the US is really hard. In the absence of being able to do so, they should have been identified the core issues to campaign on and forced vote after vote on them. Make it clear to everyone that democrats are for the working class and republicans are not.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There's a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle.

I'm embarrassed. I've been making the mistake of associating with you. It won't happen again. :)
-garbon, February 23, 2014

Jacob

Quote from: alfred russel on May 02, 2022, 01:00:07 PMIt is probably too late because the election is 6 months away and it will be difficult to move anything forward with an election so close.

However, if you are the party in power it is worth remembering that, in the absence of major accomplishments, the general impression is that the national conversation is going to be what people think you were focused on. The democrats got through a major covid relief bill, but there wasn't much else. When the national conversation is on crap like transgender stuff that is what they will think is your focus which regardless of the merits isn't inflation/the economy etc.

Passing bills in the US is really hard. In the absence of being able to do so, they should have been identified the core issues to campaign on and forced vote after vote on them. Make it clear to everyone that democrats are for the working class and republicans are not.

That seems very reasonable to me.

Sheilbh

Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:33:57 AMGood points, Sheilbh.

Looking at the top three points from Dorsey's post, they are: leadership, inflation, the economy. The inflation and the economy are if not the same thing, closely related. And if you can show convincing plan on strong leadership on the economy & inflation, then you're covering what 50% of voters are saying they care about. That's not nothing.

So what are the Democrats' options here?
On leadership I think this is where the gerontocracy issue with the Democrats comes in. Biden is old, he's never been a great speaker and he does seem to be visibly ageing with the office as you'd expect. There's nothing you can do about that. So my instinct would be you build up and emphasise the rest of the team and get them doing more, certainly more visibly.

Unfortunately Kamala Harris doesn't appear to have connected with people. And the Congressional leadership and much of the cabinet seem to have as many (and similar issues) as Biden. The Democrats seem pretty wedded to seniority, because I think the best approach on leadership would have been to surround Biden with clear potential successors - lean, hungry, young types. For want of a better analogy people like Paul Ryan.

But I think leadership is also linked to inflation and the economy which, as you say, are tied too. I don't think the Democrats have a message on this yet. They seem to have danced around multiple options which may be right because it's a difficult issue - and if they don't have a coherent idea on those issues, their leadership will be found wanting.

My instinct would be to go populist and push for and propose measures that would help people deal with the cost of living - and I'd fund it with a windfall tax on energy companies - even if it fails I'd make it go to a vote to make Republicans (especially the ones pushing "national conservatism"/"working class conservatism") vote against it. Ideally at the backend also fund measures on energy transition. I don't think any of that has a chance of passing - but there's somoething there that looks like a way of dealing with these issues. And I think they should be talking about it every single day - and hammering home the message they want to help people deal with this, they want a long-term strategy to fix these issues and they want to fund it with a tax on companies benefiting, inadvertently, from Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Let's bomb Russia!

Berkut

The problem is that Republicans will be fine voting against it, and they won't be seen as voting against American working class, but rather voting against the left wing Dems.

I mean, they don't take a hit for voting against *anything*, as long as it is seen as the Dems.

I don't disagree that the Dems have to push it anyway, but I despair at anything making a difference.
"If you think this has a happy ending, then you haven't been paying attention."

select * from users where clue > 0
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OttoVonBismarck

Quote from: alfred russel on May 02, 2022, 01:00:07 PM
Quote from: Jacob on May 02, 2022, 11:33:57 AMGood points, Sheilbh.

Looking at the top three points from Dorsey's post, they are: leadership, inflation, the economy. The inflation and the economy are if not the same thing, closely related. And if you can show convincing plan on strong leadership on the economy & inflation, then you're covering what 50% of voters are saying they care about. That's not nothing.

So what are the Democrats' options here?

It is probably too late because the election is 6 months away and it will be difficult to move anything forward with an election so close.

However, if you are the party in power it is worth remembering that, in the absence of major accomplishments, the general impression is that the national conversation is going to be what people think you were focused on. The democrats got through a major covid relief bill, but there wasn't much else. When the national conversation is on crap like transgender stuff that is what they will think is your focus which regardless of the merits isn't inflation/the economy etc.

Passing bills in the US is really hard. In the absence of being able to do so, they should have been identified the core issues to campaign on and forced vote after vote on them. Make it clear to everyone that democrats are for the working class and republicans are not.

I don't see anything objectionable here, mostly agree--other than I would clarify I don't think there is anything Democrats could have done between Biden's swearing in, and right now, that would make them likely to hold the House (the Senate is closer to up in the air, but same deal there.) The problem is, even if we buy into the economic argument that Biden's cash infusion pumped inflation up, which I do, the issue is I also think we were heading for higher inflation even without Biden's Recovery Act. Mainly because Trump had just gotten done pumping a huge amount of cash into the economy, and while 9% inflation is bad, I think say 6 or 7% inflation would still be quite politically damaging.

Additionally current oil prices, which Biden largely had nothing to do with, makes up a very big portion of inflation's "political cost", I think it may make up something like 40% of the total of current inflation, but in visibility it's probably even higher than that. And again, Biden just doesn't have any control over the oil price, not in the timespans we've been working under.

The various supply shocks, employment shocks, etc also are largely outside of Biden's power to fix.

This is all a lot of TLDR to say: things that Presidents frequently get blamed for, were going to happen during these two years no matter what, which means there are few magic tricks to avoid taking the hit. We all know the score--in so much as Presidents affect national economies it is usually with a significant lag time (and usually overstated), but our politics blames the current President in real time, at all times, for the state of the economy. An economy with troubles is bad news for a President.

We also know that in just about every first midterm of a new Presidency, the President's party has lost significant numbers of congressional seats. There is like 1 counter-example to that in the last what, 40 years?

We should be careful confusing the all but certain drubbing the party was always going to get in 2022 with the larger strategic/structural issues that might make the Dems less able to compete in '24, '26, etc.

DGuller

Ultimately, it seems like at the root of all evil is the lack of sophistication among the voters themselves.  How can you have good governance if the voting populace isn't willing to reward or punish behaviors, and the only reliable issue it does punish the president on, he usually has little to do with it.  If voters demand results and can't be bothered to know why none are forthcoming, then it was probably only a matter of time before a cynical enough political player decided to capitalize on it.

The Brain

There is indeed nothing inherent about the voters that makes them deserve, in a conventional moral sense, good government.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

alfred russel

OvB, I don't think inflation is Biden's fault and the general macroeconomic situation in the US is aligned with the developed world/not really conducive to successful midterms for democrats. That shouldn't excuse how bad things look for democrats right now. There was recently polling that Biden's approval rating was lower than any president in US history at this point in his term.

To put things in context, the republicans are putting up some of the worst candidates ever. Herschel Walker in particular is not just a bad senate candidate: he would be the worst senator in the history of senates, going all the way back to the founding of the roman republic. Several credible polls have him ahead of Warnock. It is a dangerous situation:

Normally when a president takes office there is a wave in the president's favor: that obviously didn't happen in 2020.
2016 was a wave year for republicans. this is the senate class up for reelection so gaining seats just augments that.
2018 was a wave for democrats. If republicans enter the election in 2024 with 53 or so senate seats, if the environment doesn't improve significantly they have a real shot at massive senate gains and a filibuster proof senate majority is on the table.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There's a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle.

I'm embarrassed. I've been making the mistake of associating with you. It won't happen again. :)
-garbon, February 23, 2014

Sheilbh

Although that's been the argument among sceptics of democracy since Plato. I don't think it's anymore true now - I think there is an issue with the American system in all of its anti-majoritarian "protections" that have become weapons in the hands of a party that can act like a coherent, parliamentary style political.

There's a provocative political science paper I remember reading that actually the issue with American elections is the lack of disengaged voters turning out. Turnout tends to be low compared to most Western democracies and it tends to be people who have partisan preferences - and because they're partisans are pretty engaged at consuming information that helps their "side". A more informed populace sounds good - but if it's anything like the current informed populace it will be highly polarised in the way it consumes information. People who watch or read more news are not less partisan or less wrong - if anything, they're the opposite.

What American elections lack is a ballast of reliably uninformed voters going off vibes only :lol:
Let's bomb Russia!

alfred russel

in 2024, these are some of the democratic seats up for election:

Montana
Virginia
West Virginia
Arizona
New Mexico
Nevada
Ohio
Wisconsin
Michigan
Pennsylvania

Of the 33 seats up, only 10 are republicans, and of those 10, the only competitive seats are Florida and Missouri.

It is really going to be important for the democrats to keep republicans from running up the score in 2022 in the senate.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There's a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle.

I'm embarrassed. I've been making the mistake of associating with you. It won't happen again. :)
-garbon, February 23, 2014

crazy canuck

Quote from: Sheilbh on May 02, 2022, 03:32:12 PMAlthough that's been the argument among sceptics of democracy since Plato. I don't think it's anymore true now - I think there is an issue with the American system in all of its anti-majoritarian "protections" that have become weapons in the hands of a party that can act like a coherent, parliamentary style political.

There's a provocative political science paper I remember reading that actually the issue with American elections is the lack of disengaged voters turning out. Turnout tends to be low compared to most Western democracies and it tends to be people who have partisan preferences - and because they're partisans are pretty engaged at consuming information that helps their "side". A more informed populace sounds good - but if it's anything like the current informed populace it will be highly polarised in the way it consumes information. People who watch or read more news are not less partisan or less wrong - if anything, they're the opposite.

What American elections lack is a ballast of reliably uninformed voters going off vibes only :lol:

Yeah, there is something to be said for the inherent structural weaknesses built into the American political system.  It requires people of good faith.  Not the mess on the right.  The only penalty for playing disruptive games is far too far off in the future if ever.  Try pulling most of those moves in a Parliamentary democracy and run the risk of triggering an immediate election in which your seat is up for grabs. 

OttoVonBismarck

Quote from: alfred russel on May 02, 2022, 03:28:32 PMOvB, I don't think inflation is Biden's fault and the general macroeconomic situation in the US is aligned with the developed world/not really conducive to successful midterms for democrats. That shouldn't excuse how bad things look for democrats right now. There was recently polling that Biden's approval rating was lower than any president in US history at this point in his term.

I mean I think at least some of the inflation is Biden's fault, certainly not most of it. I also should note Biden has made some genuine missteps--the messaging and handling of Afghanistan withdrawal was poor. On a meta level, I'm really glad we are out of that hell hole country and a pox on the Afghan people who were not worth one drop of American blood, but there's a reason none of the previous President withdrew. The % chance of a bad egg-on-face clusterfuck of a withdrawal was high, and that was proven out.

Biden also has essentially no "presence" as POTUS at all. Again, not going to change the results this year--Afghanistan made Biden look incompetent but few voters vote on foreign policy, and a more energetic and engaged Biden likely isn't swinging many votes in this atmosphere.

QuoteTo put things in context, the republicans are putting up some of the worst candidates ever. Herschel Walker in particular is not just a bad senate candidate: he would be the worst senator in the history of senates, going all the way back to the founding of the roman republic. Several credible polls have him ahead of Warnock. It is a dangerous situation:

For sure--I've been saying the general decline in Republican politician quality is a major issue, and it is essentially happening due to unprecedented levels of political cultism in the electorate. In the 1990s and even 2000s a really shitbag candidate would lose because lots of voters from their own party would vote against them. That barely happens now, even Roy Moore almost won and he was basically a proven pederast.

QuoteNormally when a president takes office there is a wave in the president's favor: that obviously didn't happen in 2020.
2016 was a wave year for republicans. this is the senate class up for reelection so gaining seats just augments that.
2018 was a wave for democrats. If republicans enter the election in 2024 with 53 or so senate seats, if the environment doesn't improve significantly they have a real shot at massive senate gains and a filibuster proof senate majority is on the table.

The wave in the President's favor isn't always certain, Reagan, H.W. Bush and W. Bush all entered office not controlling at least some portion of Congress [Reagan flipped the Senate Red but not the House, H.W. Bush actually had the Senate flip blue the same year he beat Dukakis, and W. Bush saw the Democrats gain 4 Senate Seats the year he beat Gore--making Gore briefly the tiebreaker in a 50-50 Senate until Bush was inaugurated, but six months later Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords left the GOP and started caucusing with the Democrats, giving them Senate control until the next election.] However some of this goes back to something I mentioned in one of the last mega discussions on this now-interminable topic--what we are often really talking about with Democratic fortunes is "avoid losing winnable races." The Democrats lost some winnable races in 2020, which set them up for a real bad 2021 and 2022. If they had won a couple of those winnable races we might have 53 Democrat Senators, which likely is enough to ram a ton of stuff through and nuke the filibuster. Maybe things like election reform, Electoral Count Act reform etc that maybe don't win tons of votes, but at least significantly temper the ability of a future GOP to just make election day a "non-binding poll" and the real decision gets left up to gerrymandered state legislatures. Also because of the nature of the Senate--some of those lost opportunities are locked in until 2026.

The Larch

In a change of discussion topic...

QuoteSupreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows
"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court.

The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," Alito writes.

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," he writes in the document, labeled as the "Opinion of the Court." "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives."

Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court's holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.

The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. It's unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft.

No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term.

The draft opinion offers an extraordinary window into the justices' deliberations in one of the most consequential cases before the court in the last five decades. Some court-watchers predicted that the conservative majority would slice away at abortion rights without flatly overturning a 49-year-old precedent. The draft shows that the court is looking to reject Roe's logic and legal protections.

A person familiar with the court's deliberations said that four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices after hearing oral arguments in December, and that line-up remains unchanged as of this week.

The three Democratic-appointed justices – Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – are working on one or more dissents, according to the person. How Chief Justice John Roberts will ultimately vote, and whether he will join an already written opinion or draft his own, is unclear.

The document, labeled as a first draft of the majority opinion, includes a notation that it was circulated among the justices on Feb. 10. If the Alito draft is adopted, it would rule in favor of Mississippi in the closely watched case over that state's attempt to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

A Supreme Court spokesperson declined to comment or make another representative of the court available to answer questions about the draft document.

POLITICO received a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court's proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document. The draft opinion runs 98 pages, including a 31-page appendix of historical state abortion laws. The document is replete with citations to previous court decisions, books and other authorities, and includes 118 footnotes. The appearances and timing of this draft are consistent with court practice.

The disclosure of Alito's draft majority opinion – a rare breach of Supreme Court secrecy and tradition around its deliberations – comes as all sides in the abortion debate are girding for the ruling. Speculation about the looming decision has been intense since the December oral arguments indicated a majority was inclined to support the Mississippi law.

Under longstanding court procedures, justices hold preliminary votes on cases shortly after argument and assign a member of the majority to write a draft of the court's opinion. The draft is often amended in consultation with other justices, and in some cases the justices change their votes altogether, creating the possibility that the current alignment on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization could change.

The chief justice typically assigns majority opinions when he is in the majority. When he is not, that decision is typically made by the most senior justice in the majority.

'Exceptionally weak'
A George W. Bush appointee who joined the court in 2006, Alito argues that the 1973 abortion rights ruling was an ill-conceived and deeply flawed decision that invented a right mentioned nowhere in the Constitution and unwisely sought to wrench the contentious issue away from the political branches of government.

Alito's draft ruling would overturn a decision by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that found the Mississippi law ran afoul of Supreme Court precedent by seeking to effectively ban abortions before viability.

Roe's "survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant to the plainly incorrect," Alito continues, adding that its reasoning was "exceptionally weak," and that the original decision has had "damaging consequences."

"The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation's history and traditions," Alito writes.

Alito approvingly quotes a broad range of critics of the Roe decision. He also points to liberal icons such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, who at certain points in their careers took issue with the reasoning in Roe or its impact on the political process.

Alito's skewering of Roe and the endorsement of at least four other justices for that unsparing critique is also a measure of the court's rightward turn in recent decades. Roe was decided 7-2 in 1973, with five Republican appointees joining two justices nominated by Democratic presidents.

The overturning of Roe would almost immediately lead to stricter limits on abortion access in large swaths of the South and Midwest, with about half of the states set to immediately impose broad abortion bans. Any state could still legally allow the procedure.

"The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion," the draft concludes. "Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives."

The draft contains the type of caustic rhetorical flourishes Alito is known for and that has caused Roberts, his fellow Bush appointee, some discomfort in the past.

At times, Alito's draft opinion takes an almost mocking tone as it skewers the majority opinion in Roe, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a Richard Nixon appointee who died in 1999.

"Roe expressed the 'feel[ing]' that the Fourteenth Amendment was the provision that did the work, but its message seemed to be that the abortion right could be found somewhere in the Constitution and that specifying its exact location was not of paramount importance," Alito writes.

Alito declares that one of the central tenets of Roe, the "viability" distinction between fetuses not capable of living outside the womb and those which can, "makes no sense."

In several passages, he describes doctors and nurses who terminate pregnancies as "abortionists."

When Roberts voted with liberal jurists in 2020 to block a Louisiana law imposing heavier regulations on abortion clinics, his solo concurrence used the more neutral term "abortion providers." In contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas used the word "abortionist" 25 times in a solo dissent in the same case.

Alito's use of the phrase "egregiously wrong" to describe Roe echoes language Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart used in December in defending his state's ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The phrase was also contained in an opinion Kavanaugh wrote as part of a 2020 ruling that jury convictions in criminal cases must be unanimous.

In that opinion, Kavanaugh labeled two well-known Supreme Court decisions "egregiously wrong when decided": the 1944 ruling upholding the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II, Korematsu v. United States, and the 1896 decision that blessed racial segregation under the rubric of "separate but equal," Plessy v. Ferguson.

The high court has never formally overturned Korematsu, but did repudiate the decision in a 2018 ruling by Roberts that upheld then-President Donald Trump's travel ban policy.

The legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy remained the law of the land for nearly six decades until the court overturned it with the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling in 1954.

Quoting Kavanaugh, Alito writes of Plessy: "It was 'egregiously wrong,' on the day it was decided."

Alito's draft opinion includes, in small type, a list of about two pages' worth of decisions in which the justices overruled prior precedents – in many instances reaching results praised by liberals.

The implication that allowing states to outlaw abortion is on par with ending legal racial segregation has been hotly disputed. But the comparison underscores the conservative justices' belief that Roe is so flawed that the justices should disregard their usual hesitations about overturning precedent and wholeheartedly renounce it.

Alito's draft opinion ventures even further into this racially sensitive territory by observing in a footnote that some early proponents of abortion rights also had unsavory views in favor of eugenics.

"Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population," Alito writes. "It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black."

Alito writes that by raising the point he isn't casting aspersions on anyone. "For our part, we do not question the motives of either those who have supported and those who have opposed laws restricting abortion," he writes.

Alito also addresses concern about the impact the decision could have on public discourse. "We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public's reaction to our work," Alito writes. "We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today's decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision."

In the main opinion in the 1992 Casey decision, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and Davis Souter warned that the court would pay a "terrible price" for overruling Roe, despite criticism of the decision from some in the public and the legal community.

"While it has engendered disapproval, it has not been unworkable," the three justices wrote then. "An entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe's concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions; no erosion of principle going to liberty or personal autonomy has left Roe's central holding a doctrinal remnant."

When Dobbs was argued in December, Roberts seemed out of sync with the other conservative justices, as he has been in a number of cases including one challenging the Affordable Care Act.

At the argument session last fall, Roberts seemed to be searching for a way to uphold Mississippi's 15-week ban without completely abandoning the Roe framework.

"Viability, it seems to me, doesn't have anything to do with choice. But, if it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks not enough time?" Roberts asked during the arguments. "The thing that is at issue before us today is 15 weeks."

Nods to conservative colleagues
While Alito's draft opinion doesn't cater much to Roberts' views, portions of it seem intended to address the specific interests of other justices. One passage argues that social attitudes toward out-of-wedlock pregnancies "have changed drastically" since the 1970s and that increased demand for adoption makes abortion less necessary.

Those points dovetail with issues that Barrett – a Trump appointee and the court's newest member – raised at the December arguments. She suggested laws allowing people to surrender newborn babies on a no-questions-asked basis mean carrying a pregnancy to term doesn't oblige one to engage in child rearing.

"Why don't the safe haven laws take care of that problem?" asked Barrett, who adopted two of her seven children.

Much of Alito's draft is devoted to arguing that widespread criminalization of abortion during the 19th and early 20th century belies the notion that a right to abortion is implied in the Constitution.

The conservative justice attached to his draft a 31-page appendix listing laws passed to criminalize abortion during that period. Alito claims "an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment...from the earliest days of the common law until 1973."

"Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right," Alito adds.

Alito's draft argues that rights protected by the Constitution but not explicitly mentioned in it – so-called unenumerated rights – must be strongly rooted in U.S. history and tradition. That form of analysis seems at odds with several of the court's recent decisions, including many of its rulings backing gay rights.

Liberal justices seem likely to take issue with Alito's assertion in the draft opinion that overturning Roe would not jeopardize other rights the courts have grounded in privacy, such as the right to contraception, to engage in private consensual sexual activity and to marry someone of the same sex.

"We emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right," Alito writes. "Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion."

Alito's draft opinion rejects the idea that abortion bans reflect the subjugation of women in American society. "Women are not without electoral or political power," he writes. "The percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so."

The Supreme Court remains one of Washington's most secretive institutions, priding itself on protecting the confidentiality of its internal deliberations.

"At the Supreme Court, those who know don't talk, and those who talk don't know," Ginsburg was fond of saying.

That tight-lipped reputation has eroded somewhat in recent decades due to a series of books by law clerks, law professors and investigative journalists. Some of these authors clearly had access to draft opinions such as the one obtained by POLITICO, but their books emerged well after the cases in question were resolved.

The justices held their final arguments of the current term on Wednesday. The court has set a series of sessions over the next two months to release rulings in its still-unresolved cases, including the Mississippi abortion case.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473

The Larch

#3073
Is this even legal? It seems completely fucked up, and if the justification the company gives is right it seems absolutely counter-intuitive.

QuoteStarbucks will raise wages again — but not for unionized workers

Starbucks interim CEO Howard Schultz has a message for workers interested in unionizing: If you do, you could miss out on higher wages.

The coffee chain said it would raise wages back in October. Starbucks will honor those commitments to employees even if they have voted to unionize, Schultz said during an analyst call Tuesday.

But future wage hikes are coming. And they won't necessarily apply to workers in unionized stores, he said.
"Today, we take further steps to modernize our pay and benefits vision for our partners with further investments in wage ... and in September, we will share additional initiatives we are planning for Starbucks partners," he said.

The company will invest $200 million in wages, equipment and training, among other benefits, on top of previously announced commitments, Schultz said. Overall, Starbucks is planning to spend about $1 billion this fiscal year on employees and improving customer experience in stores.

Workers at company-operated stores "will receive these wages and benefit enhancements," he said, as Starbucks (SBUX) can control their pay.

But "we do not have the same freedom to make these improvements at locations that have a union or where union organizing is underway," he said, adding that federal law "prohibits us from promising new wages and benefits at stores involved in union organizing."

The first company-operated Starbucks store voted to unionize in December. Since then, about 46 stores have voted to unionize, with five voting against. Overall, 237 company-owned stores have filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board so far.

That's just a small portion of the roughly 8,800 US company-owned locations. But Starbucks is eager to stem the flow.

Schultz, who last month stepped into the CEO role for the third time, acknowledged that workers are facing "tremendous strain" as demand grows. Sales at North American company-owned stores open at least 13 months jumped 12% in the three months ending on April 3. Revenues jumped 17% in the region in the quarter. The company's stock jumped about 5% after hours on the results.

To help, the company is offering more support in addition to that higher pay. Some examples: Starting next month, it will double the amount of training time for new baristas. In August, it will do the same for shift supervisors. It's also launching an employee app to keep workers connected.

grumbler

Quote from: The Larch on May 04, 2022, 06:45:55 PMIs this even legal? It seems completely fucked up, and if the justification the company gives is right it seems absolutely counter-intuitive.

He's just weakening his hand in future negotiations with the unions, since he is conceding that the owners have a lot of money to throw at their employees.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!