July 2, 2021
Dear Interested Readers,
What’s Next? What Are The “Joes” Going to Do?
I am flabbergasted. It is my opinion that yesterday (Thursday) was a horrible day for our democracy, and ultimately for healthcare. The Supreme Court dealt the Voters Rights Act of 1965 what will probably be a fatal blow in a decision that upheld two oppressive laws from Arizona, and then for an encore made it easy for rich people to hide their political contributions by invalidating a California law. The reversal of over fifty years of electoral progress toward making it possible for every eligible voter to cast a ballot got its initial blow in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. I will get into that story in due time when I vent my feelings toward Chief Justice John Roberts. My main point is that these rulings by the court put everything, and especially the movement toward healthcare equity and the improvement of our healthcare disparities in jeopardy.
I have read several articles, editorials, and columns decrying the court’s decision. The editorial board of the New York Times wrote:
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history. By outlawing racial discrimination in voting and imposing federal oversight in states with histories of discriminating, it finally enforced the 15th Amendment and marked the first time the nation could call itself a truly representative democracy. Until the last decade, the law occupied a sacred spot in the American legal system. In 2006, Congress reauthorized the law nearly unanimously.
Since then, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been dismantling it, piece by piece.
The latest blow came Thursday, when all six conservative justices voted to uphold two Arizona voting laws despite lower federal courts finding clear evidence that the laws make voting harder for voters of color — whether Black, Latino or Native American. One law requires election officials to throw out ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct; the other bars most people and groups from collecting voters’ absentee ballots and dropping them off at polling places.
That is a good overview of what happened. Those are the facts. The editorial board goes on to talk about the misdirection of the motivation behind those facts.
Since the court is talking about “mere facts,” the conservative justices might have noted the mere fact that voting fraud, which lawmakers in a number of states claim they are trying to prevent with laws like the ones in Arizona, is essentially nonexistent. As one federal judge put it several years ago, such laws are akin to using “a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table.”
You have got to be pretty gullible to believe that the motivation behind Arizona’s new election laws or the raft of election laws being passed in Republican-controlled states across the country like Texas, Georgia, Florida, and even my state of New Hampshire have any other motivation other than to de facto disenfranchise millions of minority voters who most often vote for Democratic candidates like Joe Biden or Barack Obama.
The New York Times editorial board can tell time and smell a rat, but they used the words of Associate Justice Elena Kagan to give us the truth:
That [the destruction of the voting rights of minorities] doesn’t appear to bother the conservative justices, who have given a free pass to state legislatures to discriminate, even as they demand more and more from voters trying to show that they are hurt by that discrimination.
This subverts the whole purpose of the Voting Rights Act, which was enacted because of the persistence of discriminatory state voting laws and policies, a point Justice Kagan made throughout her dissent. “What is tragic here is that the Court has (yet again) rewritten — in order to weaken — a statute that stands as a monument to America’s greatness, and protects against its basest impulses,” she wrote.
Who do they think they are fooling? I almost had to vomit when Attorney General Mark Brnovich of Arizona was interviewed on NPR. Lisa Chang tried hard to corner him into saying what the real motivation behind the Arizona Laws was. He wrapped his biases and willingness to destroy democracy in the flag.
CHANG: We should note, though, we should note that voters who rely on ballot collectors in Arizona have tended to be poor or older or homebound or disabled. These are voters who tend more to be voters of color. Justice Alito wrote in his majority opinion that just because voting is, quote, “inconvenient to some,” it doesn’t mean access to voting is unequal. So how do you, as attorney general of the state of Arizona, how do you personally view the difference between what’s inconvenient and what is actually unequal when it comes to Arizona voters?
BRNOVICH: Well, it’s not just about Arizona. It’s about, what does the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act require? And as we maintain, in fact, literally the first sentence when I did the oral argument and I said to the court that public servants have no more sacred duty than protecting the people’s right to vote, but we have to maintain confidence in the results and in the process.
Really? What if you are an elderly Native American with multiple medical problems living on a reservation without a post office within thirty miles and you have no car or family to help you get to the polls? Justice Samuel Alito and Mr. Brnovich agree that it is not their problem. If you can’t get to the polls or the post office then they are not interested in counting your vote. In their twisted view of the world, their opinions are offered in defense of “democracy.”
One of the most important revelations from the Times editorial was its comments about Justice Roberts. The bolding is my addition.
In 2013, the court gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act, Section 5, which had required states and localities with a history of discriminatory voting practices — including Arizona — to obtain approval from the federal government before changing or adopting any voting law.
Section 5 was by far the most effective way to prevent voting discrimination, but according to Chief Justice John Roberts — who has been working to hobble the Voting Rights Act since he was a junior lawyer in the Reagan administration — the list of offenders was out of date. “Things have changed dramatically,” he wrote in his 2013 majority opinion, pointing to the increase in Black voter registration and turnout in the years since the Voting Rights Act was adopted. It didn’t seem to occur to him that this increase was precisely because of the law, and not in spite of it. As if to drive home the point, Republican-led states that had been under federal oversight began imposing strict new voting laws within hours of the ruling.
The editors over at the other big purveyor of “false news,” The Washington Post wasted little time in publishing their opinion of the court’s decision and of Justice Robert’s motivations and previous attacks on the Voters Rights Act.
At times, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has labored to maintain the Supreme Court’s legitimacy against the gale-force pressures of partisan acrimony and social division. When it comes to voting rights, he has pushed in the opposite direction, presiding over the court’s systematic dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, overriding Congress’s clear intentions and gravely injuring U.S. democracy.
The first major blow came in 2013, when the court eviscerated the act’s Section 5, which required states with a history of racial discrimination to preclear changes to voting rules with the Justice Department. The decision left in place a backstop, Section 2, which allows legal challenges to discriminatory election rules after they have been enacted. On Thursday, the Roberts court sharply limited that provision as well.
The court upheld two Arizona election rules the Democratic National Committee claimed discourage minority voting. The legitimacy of Arizona’s policies could be debated, and the court could have struck them down without indulging in dangerous overreach. But in its reasoning and guidance for future cases, the six justices in the majority, including the chief, flashed a green light to state lawmakers eager to erect new barriers to voting.
Just for balance, I should report that Ian Millhiser in an article written for Vox, postulated that it could have been worse:
…the opinion that followed Alito’s name is more measured than could have reasonably been expected from a Court where Republican appointees hold a 6-3 supermajority. It’s not, by any means, a good decision for democracy…But Alito’s opinion most likely preserves civil rights plaintiffs’ ability to challenge many of the most odious provisions of the voter suppression laws currently being pushed by Republican state lawmakers in other states.
For starters, the opinion is limited in scope…the opinion limits its analysis to “cases involving neutral time, place, and manner rules” governing elections…
Second, while Republican litigants proposed various interpretations of the Act that would have read a key prong of the Voting Rights Act so narrowly as to render it meaningless, Alito’s opinion explicitly refuses to embrace those interpretations. “We decline in these cases to announce a test to govern all VRA §2 claims involving rules, like those at issue here, that specify the time, place, or manner for casting ballots,” Alito writes.
…Alito lays out five factors that govern future “time, place and manner” lawsuits … novel restrictions on the right to vote are less likely to survive judicial scrutiny.
…Alito’s opinion does weaken the Voting Rights Act. It endorses phantom fears about “voter fraud,”… it permits lawmakers to enact voting restrictions intended to combat this largely imaginary problem.
…Brnovich is a blow to liberal democracy, it is not an apocalypse…The law survives, albeit in a significantly weakened state.
The LA Times has published an editorial today that reviews the entire recent session of the Supreme Court that culminated in yesterday’s disappointing outcomes about elections. They share the point of view that although the decision was regrettable, all is not lost. There is room for a little hope but the best possibility for the future would be for Congress to pass a new voting rights law.
Compared with other restrictions being pressed in Republican-controlled legislatures, Arizona’s rules may seem like minor burdens on the right to vote. But Alito’s opinion upholding them dramatically limited the protections of Section 2, offering what Justice Elena Kagan in her dissent rightly called “a cramped reading [of] broad language.”
Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at UC Irvine, said that although the ruling is “not a death blow for Section 2 claims,” it will make it “much, much harder for such challenges to succeed.”
Given the stakes for the country and the court, the justices should have strived to achieve in this case the common ground they staked out to their credit in so many others. Their failure to do so increases the obligation of Congress to step in and protect the right to vote.
President Biden is not so sure that there is anything redeemable in the court’s decision. He is incensed. The Hill quotes him:
“I am deeply disappointed in today’s decision by the United States Supreme Court that undercuts the Voting Rights Act, and upholds what Justice [Elena] Kagan called ‘a significant race-based disparity in voting opportunities,’ ” Biden said in a statement.
“After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this Nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them,” he added. “Yet this decision comes just over a week after Senate Republicans blocked even a debate — even consideration — of the For the People Act that would have protected the right to vote from action by Republican legislators in states across the country.”
Joe’s is right. Democracy is 0 for 2 over the last few weeks. It seems like ages ago since the ACA survived its latest court challenge and Juneteenth became a holiday. Joe knows that history and Mitch McConnell are against him. Midterm elections have been a disaster for most presidents in recent memory. Presidents are elected on promises. If promises don’t become laws soon then voters either turn way in apathy or flip to the other side. I agree with almost everything President Biden has said or done, but he is smoking something hallucinatory or is in a time warp back to the eighties if he thinks we can protect the rights of voters or pass meaningful social legislation as long as Mitch McConnell has a two letter strategy, “No.” Could it be that Biden never read “Peanuts?” Lucy always promises to hold the football so that Charlie can kick it, but she also always pulls it away when he decides to trust her just one more time. There is only one result. Lucy has a grin on her face and Charlie is lying on his back saying “good grief.”
What is sad is that President Joe doesn’t control the decision to end the filibuster to enable the passage of some new voting protections that would nullify the efforts of Republicans to shore up self-serving minority rule. In our very strange political world that option is managed by a former high school quarterback who went to the University of West Virginia on a football scholarship and is a lifelong friend of Alabama football coach, Nick Saban. The man who is running the option play for the future of democracy is Joe Manchin, a very conservative Democrat from a very Republican state which Donald Trump won twice by huge double-digit margins. Trump won West Virginia in 2020 by a whopping 38.9 points, down from 42.1 points in 2016. Manchin probably figures that if he votes for some change in the Senate rules that would modify the filibuster rule even a little bit his political career is over. So far Joe M. has jockeyed for some possible breakthrough that would create bipartisan election reform. Last week Mitch made sure that would not happen. The question is whether Joe M. and Joe B have seen the light and can put away the fantasy of bipartisanship. There are several ways the filibuster could be modified by a simple majority vote if only Joe M. would go along.
I think there is a clear majority of Americans who favor election reforms, immigration reform, gun control reform legislation, legislation to combat global warming, and all of the excellent proposals that the Biden administration has advanced in his American Jobs Act and American Families Act. Biden won by a large plurality because a majority favors the platform that he ran on. Progress against healthcare disparities, racial inequities, and yes the future of the planet would be made if these proposals could pass. None of the proposals, except for perhaps a traditional infrastructure bill, will pass without elimination of the filibuster. The filibuster allows a minority coalition of rural white Americans, the Christain Right, and those who would rather bend the rules to their own immediate financial advantage to rob the rest of us of the possibilities of equity, individual health, and the pursuit of happiness. These are the opportunities that we claim are the birthright of every American. The dream of the Triple Aim and the prospects for the future health of the nation are both significantly at risk if Republican strategies to make voting harder for minorities are allowed to continue.
My guess is that Joe B. and Joe M. will continue to struggle with what might be lost and what to do in the face of an increasing threat that we will be held in the self-serving grip of a minority that prefers the future on their terms even if their terms include a departure from what we have called a democracy. As they say down South where I come from, the time is fast approaching when Joe and Joe will need to “fish or cut bait.” I fear that without some decisive joint action from the Joes that results in some change in Senate rules that allows a majority passage of some kind of law that reverses what the Supreme Court has done we will lose much of what we consider to be our democracy, and that over the long haul the health of the nation with be figuratively and literally diminished.
Merganser Day Care
This week was about staying cool until a front came through late on Wednesday and dropped the temperature twenty degrees. We don’t have air conditioning. Why should we invest in air conditioning? Before this last heatwave, the second of this new summer, we rarely had heat that our ceiling fans could not make tolerable. There is usually a nice breeze coming off the lake which makes even the mid-eighties tolerable as long as the humidity is not too high. When all else fails, I go for a refreshing swim. The water temp in the lake is up to the low seventies, and it feels great when the air temp is over ninety degrees.
Before this week we had been very disappointed with a lack of loon viewing. We knew the loons had a chick, and we had seen the chick with our binoculars, but unlike most past years the loons seemed to be avoiding our end of the lake. Was it because of the eagle? We developed various theories, but the truth was we were taking their absence as a personal affront.
This week things changed. Mom, pop, and junior hung out for about twelve hours just off our shore for most of Monday. My wife took hundreds of pictures in an effort to get just the right pose with just the right light. Unfortunately, it never happened. She had backlighting and glare all day.
Suddenly, while my wife was struggling to get the best loon shot of her career there was noise along the shoreline, and what to my wondering eyes did appear but mother merganser with twenty chicks behind her in tow. Mom and the chicks were intermittently diving for food which made it was hard to get a picture when they were all above the water line and visible. If you carefully count the heads in today’s header you will see that I finally succeeded. All twenty chicks are present and mom gave me a nice profile. It’s not a world-class wildlife photograph, but it was an achievement for me. Did one mother merganser actually have twenty chicks? It seemed unlikely to me. That’s a lot of eggs to hatch. Last summer I had seen a mother merganser with twelve chicks and thought that was amazing.
Monday evening some friends invited us for a sunset cruise on Pleasant Lake. Pleasant Lake is on the other side of town at the foot of Mount Kearsage. We have friends who are part owners of a beautifully restored one hundred-ten-year-old electric boat that is on Pleasant Lake. This beautiful antique has been restored to perfect working order and is all mahogany. We have enjoyed many evenings of wine and nibbles in this grand old boat as we circle the shoreline and watch the evening approach. Whenever I am in this boat I feel like I am riding in a grand old piece of furniture like my grandmother’s dining room sideboard. Almost two years ago on a similar evening cruise at the time of a full moon, I had learned that the old standard that was Kate Smith’s signature song, “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain” was inspired by the same scene about a hundred years ago. I was so excited that I wrote about my discovery. Click on the link to see the moon over the mountain and learn the story. Whenever I tell this story I discover that most people don’t know the song or who Kate Smith was. That’s OK because there is a lot of today’s stars that I don’t know.
As we were enjoying our wine and the view, I told our hosts about my merganser sighting. Our hostess immediately gave me an explanation. Mother mergansers pool their chicks. When I got home I checked it out. It is true. The Cornell Lab website reports that the males leave early and females often combine their broods with up to forty or more chicks. Further research on Wikipedia suggested one female can have up to seventeen chicks and combined broods can reach seventy! The practice is not limited to mergansers and is called crèche. Apparently, penguins also do it. Who knew? Certainly not me. It’s amazing how much more there is to learn.
I guess that I have made my case that before the Supreme Court drove another nail in our democracies coffin it was a good week despite the heat. The forecast for the Fourth of July weekend is not exciting. It will be cooler, but there will also be clouds and showers. I am not worried. I am sure that even if the weather is not perfect there is every reason to believe that this Fourth like all Fourths will be eventful. We have a lot to celebrate and much to consider about the future of our democracy. The Fourth is always a great time to pause and ponder the responsibilities that are associated with the freedoms we enjoy and celebrate. There is no freedom more essential than the right to vote. Using the Fourth to re-commitment to the work necessary to make sure that everyone is treated equitably and that everyone has an equal opportunity to vote is a good way to ensure that our Fourths of the future will never lose their true meaning. I hope that whatever you plan to do will be a joy for you, your friends, and your family.
Be well, and enjoy a great fourth!
Gene
