Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

Good take on the work black women have been doing for years to turn out voters in Georgia by Astead Herndon at NYT.

 

Nse Ufot, who leads the New Georgia Project, said the same national leaders now praising voter registration efforts in Georgia should reflect on how long it had taken them and groups like the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to invest in the Black women leading the push.

 

“National campaign committees and presidential campaigns, like the D.N.C. and the D.C.C.C., would have their favorite pastor or their favorite community activists just run programs,” she said. “No accountability. No data.”

 

Ms. Ufot added: “It was just their favorite pastor dude saying, ‘Turn your people out.’ When people like Helen Butler could actually run a proper program.”

 

“Foundations were not supporting social justice and community building work here,” she said. “No one was looking at what’s happening in our rural areas, and no one’s looking at the small ways that people were being cheated out of their own democracy by having these voter suppression laws. People weren’t even paying attention, because they thought that’s just the way it was here.”

 

For years, national Democratic campaigns have wrestled with whether Georgia and other Southern states were worthy investments, including during former President Barack Obama’s race in 2012 and Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. However, in the zero-sum environment of presidential politics, Democrats prioritized other states, including in the Upper Midwest and traditional battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida.

 

Asked about the criticism from Ms. Ufot and others, representatives for the D.N.C. and the D.C.C.C. declined to respond directly. A spokeswoman for the D.C.C.C. praised the organizing in Georgia and said that in recent years, the party had invested in local groups and campaign organizers with success.

 

“Georgia doesn’t turn blue without the determined organizing of activists and leaders in communities of color, particularly the Black community,” said Robyn Patterson, the national press secretary for the D.C.C.C. “House Democrats flipped two Trump-lean districts by investing early, hiring talented organizers with deep ties to their communities, and engaging the people of color who have spent years working to move Georgia forward.”

 

The arc of Georgia’s transformation has become a road map for other states that are experiencing rapid demographic change and a catalyst for a new strategy in liberal politics. Versions of the New Georgia Project have popped up in Virginia, Texas and North Carolina as organizers try to create new, consistent voting blocs.

Investing in well organized networks is more effective that investing in pastor dudes? Dems could be onto something.

[y66]

Two Retiring Senators, Lamar Alexander and Tom Udall, and Two Divergent Views on How to Save the Senate

 

Perhaps the best measure of how far the Senate has fallen is the dearth of amendments considered on the floor, which is devoted mainly to judicial confirmation votes. Senators used to fight it out over their bills. Now, with senators unwilling to take politically risky votes, even the few pieces of legislation that are produced are typically prepackaged in leadership suites and put on the floor with little opportunity for senators to propose or debate changes.

 

Ever the Tennessean, Mr. Alexander compared it to “joining the Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing.” But he said the problem was not with the rules; it is with senators who reflexively block their colleagues from bringing up amendments, effectively shutting down the Senate. What is needed, he said, was a change in behavior by senators, who must learn to show the “restraint” necessary to allow debate and the political courage to vote no when they oppose something — rather than stifle it outright.

 

But Mr. Udall was having none of the idea that a behavioral adjustment was all that was necessary.

 

“I don’t buy the statement that the rules are fine, that we just need to change the people or we need the people to change themselves or we just need to get better leaders when the institution hasn’t worked for decades,” Mr. Udall said. “This system is broken, and I don’t think there is any doubt of that.”

 

He has pushed a sweeping top-to-bottom overhaul of a political system he considers corrupted by huge, undisclosed donors and has persuaded all of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate to sign on to it — no easy task. Though it had no chance of advancing in a Republican-controlled Senate, the provisions on tightening campaign finance laws, ending gerrymandering, imposing lobbying restrictions and simplifying voter registration are the types of changes a Democratic-controlled Senate might pursue. Mr. Udall said he believed that bold changes were needed to shake Congress out of stasis and allow lawmakers to attack the challenges facing the country.

 

“We can right this ship and make it so Republicans and Democrats can work together and do the things we need done for the planet and country,” Mr. Udall said.

The title implied there were two views on how to save the Senate. I only saw one.

[Winstonm]

I'm tired of hearing the media report that "there is no evidence of election fraud". To the crazoid, that just means evidence is there but has yet to be found. Just say no, there wasn't any fraud. Period.

[kenberg]

I'm tired of hearing the media report that "there is no evidence of election fraud". To the crazoid, that just means evidence is there but has yet to be found. Just say no, there wasn't any fraud. Period.

 

I agree. They could also say that there is no evidence that I have held up a bank or shot someone. Technically that is true but phrasing it as "there is no evidence that..." is misleading despite being technically true.

 

I did see an article recently referring to "baseless claims" That's better. "Total crap" would be a good way of putting it.

 

[Zelandakh]

I'm tired of hearing the media report that "there is no evidence of election fraud". To the crazoid, that just means evidence is there but has yet to be found. Just say no, there wasn't any fraud. Period.

It is worse than that. Several of the CNN anchors prefer the phrasing that there is no proof, which tends to imply, falsely, that there is evidence. I have a much bigger problem with that than the "no evidence" phrasing. Increasingly the media are just ignoring it though as it is not really news any more; that seems to be as good an approach as any. The right-wing extremists will continue saying what they like - that is ok and their 1^st Amendment right. As long as the authorities are tracking the various groups and willing to charge anyone instigating violence.

[Winstonm]

It is worse than that. Several of the CNN anchors prefer the phrasing that there is no proof, which tends to imply, falsely, that there is evidence. I have a much bigger problem with that than the "no evidence" phrasing. Increasingly the media are just ignoring it though as it is not really news any more; that seems to be as good an approach as any. The right-wing extremists will continue saying what they like - that is ok and their 1^st Amendment right. As long as the authorities are tracking the various groups and willing to charge anyone instigating violence.

 

Basically, what it amounts to is that the media outlets are pussyfooting and trying not to offend anyone. What they should be concerned about is simply adhering to the unvarnished truth. If that loses some viewers, too bad.

[y66]

Arguing that “a license to practice law is not a license to lie,” nearly 1,500 lawyers issued a letter on Monday calling on bar associations across the country to investigate and, if needed, penalize the members of President Trump’s legal team, including the architect of his post-election strategy, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

 

“It is indefensible for lawyers to falsely proclaim widespread voting fraud, submit a pattern of frivolous court claims and actively seek to undermine citizens’ faith in our election’s integrity,” said the letter, which was signed by several former judges, former federal prosecutors and law professors. “We condemn this conduct without reservation.”

 

The letter comes as Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have lost or withdrawn from nearly 50 legal challenges to this year’s election, including five in five different states within about three hours on Friday evening alone. Even so, Mr. Trump’s lawyers and those representing his Republican allies have continued filing lawsuits, igniting criticism that they are acting frivolously, even irresponsibly.

 

In their letter on Monday, the signers noted that Mr. Giuliani — who recently tested positive for Covid-19, according to President Trump — has made baseless arguments in public about “massive fraud” in the election, but has tempered his claims under questioning in court, saying he was not alleging fraud.

 

“Mr. Giuliani’s aim is obvious,” the letter said. “To fuel Mr. Trump’s campaign to delegitimize the outcome of the election.”

 

Among the signers were Philip Lacovera, a former deputy solictor general who worked on the case that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon; Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University; and Thomas Vanaskie, a former judge with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.

 

The letter also took aim at another lawyer for Mr. Trump, Joseph DiGenova, who late last month publicly threatened Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who was fired by Mr. Trump after he declared that the 2020 elections were “the most secure in American history.”

 

During an interview on the conservative TV outlet Newsmax, Mr. DiGenova said that because of Mr. Krebs’s remarks he should be “taken out at dawn and shot.”

 

For the moment, only a handful of challenges to the election are still moving through the courts, including an emergency petition by Mike Kelly, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, requesting that the Supreme Court hear his appeal of a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the state’s election results.

 

There are also state cases still alive in Georgia and Arizona and a federal case filed by the Trump campaign in Wisconsin. Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Mr. Trump whom the campaign has disavowed, has filed four more federal cases of her own — in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. On Monday, a federal judge dismissed Ms. Powell’s Georgia case after a hearing in Atlanta, and another judge in Michigan denied her emergency request to overturn the state’s election.

 

All of the remaining efforts are running out of time to succeed. On Tuesday, the nation will reach the so-called safe harbor deadline, the date by which all state-level election challenges are supposed to be completed.

 

Then on Dec. 14, the Electoral College will cast its votes, making any attempt to overturn the results of the election nearly impossible.

[Winstonm]

The American Taliban and their Amen Coalition at work: The WaPo:

 

 

President Trump’s naked attempt to overturn a fair election — with key elements of Joe Biden’s victory vouchsafed by Republican state officials, Republican-appointed judges and even the Justice Department — has driven some Trump evangelicals to the edge of blasphemous lunacy.

 

“I’d be happy to die in this fight,” radio talk-show host Eric Metaxas assured Trump during a recent interview. “This is a fight for everything. God is with us. Jesus is with us in this fight for liberty.”

 

Elsewhere Metaxas predicted, “Trump will be inaugurated. For the high crimes of trying to throw a U.S. presidential election, many will go to jail. The swamp will be drained. And Lincoln’s prophetic words of ‘a new birth of freedom’ will be fulfilled. Pray.”

 

Just to be clear, Metaxas has publicly committed his life to Donald Trump, claimed that at least two members of the Trinity favor a coup against the constitutional order, endorsed the widespread jailing of Trump’s political enemies for imaginary crimes, claimed Abraham Lincoln’s blessing for the advance of authoritarianism and urged Christians to pray to God for the effective death of American democracy. This is seditious and sacrilegious in equal measure.

 

 

[y66]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trumps-farcical-inept-and-deadly-serious-coup-attempt/617309/

 

On the evening of September 11, 1980, my mom was approached by a neighbor who held rank in the Turkish military. He told her to stock up on bread and rice. “Oh, another coup,” she immediately groaned. The neighbor was aghast—he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what was coming. But my mom, of course, had immediately understood what his advice must have meant. Turkey is the land of coups; this was neither the first nor the last coup it would face.

 

Over three decades later, I walked up to a counter in Antalya Airport to tell a disbelieving airline employee that our flight would shortly be canceled because the tanks being reported in the streets of Istanbul meant that a coup attempt was under way.* It must be a military exercise, she shrugged. Some routine transport of troops, perhaps? If so, I asked her, where is the prime minister? Why isn’t he on TV to tell us that? Another woman approached the counter. “This must be your first,” she said to the young woman behind the counter, who was still shaking her head. “It’s my fourth.”

 

[Zeynep Tufekci: America’s next authoritarian will be much more competent]

 

I told the airline employee that we were not getting on that plane, destined for the Istanbul airport, which I knew would be a primary target. The other woman and I nodded at each other, becoming an immediate coup pod. I went out to secure transportation for us—this airport was not going to be safe either—while she and my 7-year-old son went to retrieve our luggage. “His first too,” I said to her.

 

In political science, the term coup refers to the illegitimate overthrow of a sitting government—usually through violence or the threat of violence. The technical term for attempting to stay in power illegitimately—such as after losing an election—is self-coup or autocoup, sometimes autogolpe.

 

Much debate has ensued about what exactly to call whatever Trump is attempting right now, and about how worried we should be. It’s true, the whole thing seems ludicrous—the incoherent lawsuits, the late-night champagne given to official election canvassers in Trump hotels, the tweets riddled with grammatical errors and weird capitalization. Trump has been broadly acknowledged as “norm shattering” and some have argued that this is just more of his usual bluster, while others have pointed out terminological issues with calling his endeavors a coup. Coup may not quite capture what we’re witnessing in the United States right now, but there’s also a danger here: Punditry can tend to focus too much on decorum and terminology, like the overachieving students so many of us once were, conflating the ridiculous with the unserious. The incoherence and incompetence of the attempt do not change its nature, however, nor do those traits allow us to dismiss it or ignore it until it finally fails on account of that incompetence.

 

Part of the problem is that we haven’t developed linguistic precision to put a name to it all—not just to what’s been happening since November, but to the processes within which it’s embedded. That’s dangerous, because language is a tool of survival. The Inuit have many words for snow—because their experience demands that kind of exactness. (The claim had been disputed, but the latest research affirms it.) “These people need to know whether ice is fit to walk on or whether you will sink through it. It’s a matter of life or death,” the linguist Willem DeReuse told New Scientist.

 

In Turkish, we do have many different words for different types of coups, because our experience similarly demands it. For example, coups that are attempted through threatening letters from the military are called memorandum coups. A 2007 attempt is commonly referred to as the “e-coup” because the threatening letter from the military was first posted on the internet. (The one before that, in 1997, is often referred to as a “postmodern” or “soft” coup.) We know the difference between military coups that start from the top and follow the military chain of command and those that do not. The term autogolpe comes from the Spanish partly because there have been so many such attempts in Latin America.

 

The U.S. president is trying to steal the election, and, crucially, his party either tacitly approves or is pretending not to see it. This is a particularly dangerous combination, and makes it much more than just typical Trumpian bluster or norm shattering.

 

Maybe in other languages, from places with more experience with this particular type of power grab, we’d be better able to discuss the subtleties of this effort, to distinguish the postelection intervention from the Election Day injustices, to separate the legal but frivolous from the outright lawless, and to understand why his party’s reaction—lack of reaction—is not just about wanting to conclude an embarrassing presidency with minimal fanfare. But in English, only one widely understood word captures what Donald Trump is trying to do, even though his acts do not meet its technical definition. Trump is attempting to stage some kind of coup, one that is embedded in a broader and ongoing power grab.

 

And if that’s hard to recognize, this might be your first.

What starts as farce may end as tragedy, a lesson that pundits should already have learned from their sneering dismissal of Trump when he first announced his presidential candidacy. Yes, the Trump campaign’s lawsuits are pinnacles of incompetence, too incoherent and embarrassing to go anywhere legally. The legislators who have been openly pressured by Trump don’t seem willing to abide the crassness of his attempt. States are certifying their election results one by one, and the General Services Administration―the agency that oversees presidential transitions—has started the process of handing the government over to President-elect Joe Biden. If things proceed in their ordinary course, the Electoral College will soon vote, and then Biden will take office.

 

But ignoring a near catastrophe that was averted by the buffoonish, half-hearted efforts of its would-be perpetrator invites a real catastrophe brought on by someone more competent and ambitious. President Trump had already established a playbook for contesting elections in 2016 by casting doubt on the election process before he won, and insisting that he only lost the popular vote due to fraud. Now he’s establishing a playbook for stealing elections by mobilizing executive, judicial, and legislative power to support the attempt. And worse, much worse, the playbook is being implicitly endorsed by the silence of some leading Republicans, and vocally endorsed by others, even as minority rule becomes increasingly entrenched in the American electoral system.

 

It’s not enough to count on our institutions to resist such onslaughts. Our institutions do not operate via magic. They do not gain their power from names, buildings, desks, or even rules. Institutions rely on people collectively agreeing to act in a certain way. Human laws do not simply exert their power like the inexorable pull of gravity. Once people decide that the rules are different, the rules are different. The rules for electoral legitimacy have been under sustained assault, and they’re changing right before our eyes.

 

We’re being tested, and we’re failing. The next attempt to steal an election may involve a closer election and smarter lawsuits. Imagine the same playbook executed with better decorum, a president exerting pressure that is less crass and issuing tweets that are more polite. If most Republican officials are failing to police this ham-handed attempt at a power grab, how many would resist a smoother, less grossly embarrassing effort?

 

Adding to the crisis is that many of the 74 million people who voted for Trump now believe that the election was outright stolen. They believe that they were robbed of the right to vote. How many of these supporters will be tempted to carry Trump’s claims about being cheated out of an election victory to their logical conclusion? Meanwhile, millions of people around the country are repeatedly experiencing that being a majority is not enough to win elections, or even if one does win, not always enough to be able to govern.

 

When Biden takes the presidential oath in January, many will write articles scolding those who expressed concern about a coup as worrywarts, or as people misusing terminology. But ignoring near misses is how people and societies get in real trouble the next time, and although the academic objections to the terminology aren’t incorrect, the problem is about much more than getting the exact term right.

 

Alarmism is problematic when it’s sensationalist. Alarmism is essential when conditions make it appropriate.

 

Kenneth Owen: Minority rule cannot last in America

 

The boy who cried wolf is a familiar parable. But what of the boy who saw an approaching wolf scared off by a thunderstorm and decided that he didn’t need to worry about wolves, instead of readying himself for its return? Fortune favors the prepared; catastrophe awaits those who confuse luck with strength.

 

In Turkey, the leader of the 1980 coup, the one that my mom had been warned about, was Kenan Evren. He was a military-academy classmate of many who had taken part in a particularly incompetent coup attempt in the early ’60s that failed spectacularly—its missteps included tanks being accidentally sent to a neighborhood in Ankara at the wrong time. But the coup Evren led many years later was anything but farcical: Hundreds of thousands were detained, and more than 100 were tortured to death. A new, restrictive constitution was enacted, under repressive conditions. The failure of multiple attempted coups in the ’60s was not a reason to dismiss the risk of a subsequent coup—but a warning that such an effort might well succeed in more competent hands. Indeed, there was a “memorandum coup” in 1971, which resulted in a change of government after the military issued threats, and the full military takeover in 1980.

 

So, yes, the word coup may not technically capture what we’re seeing, but as Pablo Picasso said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.” People are using the term because it captures the sense and the spirit of the moment—its zeitgeist, its underlying truth.

 

Our focus should not be a debate about the proper terminology. Instead, we should react to the frightening substance of what we’re facing, even if we also believe that the crassness and the incompetence of this attempt may well doom it this time. If the Republican Party, itself entrenching minority rule on many levels, won’t stand up to Trump’s attempt to steal an election through lying and intimidation with the fury the situation demands; if the Democratic Party’s leadership remains solely focused on preparing for the presidency of Joe Biden rather than talking openly about what’s happening; and if ordinary citizens feel bewildered and disempowered, we may settle the terminological debate in the worst possible way: by accruing enough experience with illegitimate power grabs to evolve a more fine-grained vocabulary.

 

Act like this is your first coup, if you want to be sure that it’s also your last.

[y66]

https://zeynep.substack.com/p/is-this-a-coup-introducing-the-counter?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3NTkzNjUyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoyMzQ0ODYwOCwiXyI6IlFBcEZlIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA3NDQwNzUxLCJleHAiOjE2MDc0NDQzNTEsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xMTg0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.KMqu3qu7KKDLOx8PopWg_WuxVUmLihMiur9uc72j4gc[/url]

 

Calling anything a “coup” in these circumstances—even if you search for just the right Inuit word to capture its nuance—seems a little extravagant.

 

This disconnect between what’s happening out in the country and the thunder and smoke on social media is part of a pattern we’ve been stuck in since 2016, when Trump became the presumptive nominee. Through the entire trajectory of Trump’s presidency—his assumption of power, his cabinet appointments, the Russia investigation, the Mueller report, impeachment, the census, the midterm elections, and now his peaceful departure from office—we have been warning each other that we might as well start ironing our brown shirts, because American democracy was just about done for.

 

But for a patient who has spent four years on life support, American democracy has been looking remarkably spry. All of the elections held during Trump’s tenure in office have been utterly ordinary. When Democrats won the House in 2018, the President’s party relinquished control without a fuss. Now we’ve had a similarly smooth election in 2020. In a month’s time we’ll see the 44th peaceful transfer of power to a democratically elected head of state.

 

And yet we kvetch. I don’t have any moral high ground to stand on here—I’ve been just as bad as the rest of you, prophesying doom for the last four years. But there comes a point after you’ve been pulling the fire alarm for a while when you have to pause and wonder where the flames are.

 

It’s important that we admit that norm-breaking behavior by Trump in 2020, even his flagrant attempt to overturn the election, is not the same thing as his norm breaking when he first got into office. We’ve had four years to get the measure of the man. We know how the movie goes. He’ll rage for a while and it will be over.

 

The Republicans accepted this fact of life earlier than we did, and concentrated on achieving whatever political goals they could pull out of the chaos of his administration. And so they got their tax cut, their Federal justices, and Supreme Court appointments. When it became clear Biden had won the election, they made the correct, if not very noble, political calculation that they should just wait and let Trump sulk for a while. Like a lot of political calculations the Republicans have made in the past four years, this one was both enraging and accurate.

 

Zeynep argues that to dismiss the post-election theatrics because they are farcical misses the point—that Trump’s flailing, comical attempt at stealing the election sets the stage for a more competent politician to run the same playbook in the future, attacking and undermining a legitimate election. She argues that if we don’t hold politicians to basic norms of conduct now, we’re not going to have those norms when we need them most.

 

But the lesson I take from the 2020 election is a much darker one —that we are worrying far too much about how Republicans might steal future elections, and not enough about how they can win those elections outright.

 

Consider that we came within a whisker of losing this election! Only the pandemic, which gave Trump a canvas broad enough to express the full scope of his incompetence, saved our hide. Not only did we fail to win a Senate majority (absent a double miracle in Georgia), but we came close to losing our majority in the House, which no one even expected could be in danger.

 

And the lower down the ballot you go, the more unpleasant the results. State house majorities that seemed ours for the taking in Iowa, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania instead got redder. We couldn’t even flip two seats in the Minnesota senate, where Democrats control both the state house and the governor’s mansion, and Walter Mondale roams the earth.

 

We didn’t lose these state races because of gerrymandering, or lack of money, or any kind of Republican tampering with the electoral process. Our failure was political, and all the more inexcusable because it took place in a year when the opposing party had failed at governing so badly that it had racked up a body count. And still we couldn’t make the case.

 

As Zeynep points out in her essay, these newly-elected Republican legislatures will now have the opportunity to redraw Congressional districts based on the 2020 census. Even with no change in the vote, this redistricting process would net the Republican party a House majority in 2022. And we know from history that the midterm vote is likely to favor them. So not only can Republicans expect to win a House majority in 2022, but they have a fair shot at winning it with a plurality of the national vote.

 

So my response to worries that a future, more competent Trump might try to steal an election is that we should be so lucky! The more likely, and frightening, outcome is that Republicans are about to win majorities, bigly, that will make this whole debate about entrenched minority rule academic. You don’t have to steal elections when you win.

Dems have a ton of work to do. They are doing some of this work in Virginia where we helped flip the House in 2018 and took back the Virginia General Assembly in 2019. Demographic changes are helping. As in other states, Trumpism is rampant in rural areas. So, still a ton of work to do here.

[Winstonm]

This is a worrisome development - made more so by the doubt of a credible SCOTUS.

 

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The state of Texas, aiming to help President Donald Trump upend the results of the U.S. election, said on Tuesday it has sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at the Supreme Court, calling changes those states made to election procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic unlawful.

 

The long-shot lawsuit, announced by the Republican attorney general of Texas Ken Paxton, was being filed directly with the Supreme Court rather than with a lower court, as is permitted for certain litigation between states. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority including three justices appointed by Trump.

 

 

 

[y66]

Senate stimulus negotiations at risk of collapsing over whether companies can be sued for outbreaks

 

McConnell called the liability shield a red line in negotiations in May, predicting a flood of lawsuits could amount to a “second pandemic,” and saying the measure was necessary to protect companies from costly litigation.

 

Democrats have characterized the liability shield as a non-starter, alleging that the Trump administration’s lax stance on worker protections has already tilted the scale toward companies on safety issues. Durbin, who had been involved in the bipartisan group’s work, pulled out of discussions last week and criticized the inclusion of a liability shield in the legislation.

 

Lawmakers have more information now than they did in the spring about the potential for coronavirus-related lawsuits. And data shows that the “flood” of litigation warned about by Republicans and business groups has not materialized thus far.

 

An online complaint tracker from the law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth shows that out of an overall pool of about 6,500 lawsuits filed across the country so far, only 116 have been filed by employees over issues like lack of personal protective equipment, exposure or infections at work, and death from the virus. Consumers have filed another 29 personal injury or wrongful death claims for coronavirus exposure.

 

“That’s like two to four lawsuits per state,” said Hugh Baran, an expert on legal recourse for employees at the worker-focused National Employment Law Project. “That’s a trickle. It’s not a flood. ... This whole immunity bill that’s been proposed by McConnell and Cornyn is really a solution in search of a problem.”

 

The legal database Lex Machina counts 234 personal injury and wrongful death cases filed against companies for coronavirus-related issues as of the end of November, predominantly negligence suits from clientele of cruise lines and assisted-living facilities. Another 527 lawsuits have been filed by employees over coronavirus issues, mostly workers claiming they were retaliated against or terminated for getting sick. Both of those figures represent just a fraction of the non-coronavirus-related court cases those practice areas this year: 16,461 personal injury and wrongful death suits and 17,822 employment cases.

 

“Cases caused by covid-19 have not hit the federal courts in particularly a large wave at this time,” said Rachel Bailey, a legal analyst at Lex Machina.

 

By contrast, the businesses themselves appear to be a much larger source of litigation than employees: Some 1,300 lawsuits have been filed by companies against insurers over business interruption claims due to the coronavirus, for example. Lawsuits that track with conservative-leaning complaints, like nearly 1,000 lawsuits counted by Ballotpedia against local and state coronavirus restrictions, have also made for a significantly larger bulk of the legal cases during the pandemic.

 

Legal advocates and worker representatives say that allowing workers to challenge employers through private lawsuits is a crucial check on corporate power at a time when the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has taken a largely pro-employer approach to safety issues.

The fact that Congress can't come to a reasonable compromise on the liability issue tells you why blanket preemption is such a bad idea.

 

Clearly, for Republicans, the prime directive is helping corporations and themselves rig the system at every opportunity.

[Winstonm]

At what point did the Republican party become an enemy to democracy? This is no longer politics as usual. This is put them in prison for sedition type activity.

[johnu]

At what point did the Republican party become an enemy to democracy? This is no longer politics as usual. This is put them in prison for sedition type activity.

 

Probably the Tea Bag Party movement was the tipping point, IMHO.

[Zelandakh]

This is a worrisome development - made more so by the doubt of a credible SCOTUS.

 

 

[/size]

The SCOTUS are not going to touch anything like this. Trump appointees may be there but they have a lifetime to push their agenda and are not going to want to delegitimise themselves over a pointless show.

 

@y66, coup is the right term I think, although I suspect it is in reality more about raking in cash than any actual belief in holding power. I have used the #StopTheCoup hashtag on twitter for a while now - fits much better than #StopTheSteal.

[Zelandakh]

Probably the Tea Bag Party movement was the tipping point, IMHO.

Ironically the person that might go down in history as the last Republican with a spine, John McCain, was probably the instigator of the change. One can only hope, not only for America but for the entire world, that they somehow find their way back to a more traditional conservatism in the coming years.

[akwoo]

One can only hope, not only for America but for the entire world, that they somehow find their way back to a more traditional conservatism in the coming years.

 

One of my pet theories - who knows if it really makes any sense, but I think it might:

 

Traditional conservatism rests on two principles:

 

1) A slow pace of change in society

2) Limited government intervention (or, rather, slow change in how government intervenes, because established modes of government intervention aren't seen as intervention).

 

When those two principles are incompatible because society is rapidly changing due to non-governmental forces (like new technology driving a revolution in the economy), then traditional conservatism becomes unviable.

[kenberg]

One of my pet theories - who knows if it really makes any sense, but I think it might:

 

Traditional conservatism rests on two principles:

 

1) A slow pace of change in society

2) Limited government intervention (or, rather, slow change in how government intervenes, because established modes of government intervention aren't seen as intervention).

 

When those two principles are incompatible because society is rapidly changing due to non-governmental forces (like new technology driving a revolution in the economy), then traditional conservatism becomes unviable.

 

As a two point summary, I would call this pretty accurate. The full story would be more complicated, I imagine you agree, but it's a good quick summary.

 

However, the problem we have right now is different. Trump likes to speak of Reagan. I very much doubt Reagan would be willing to sit at the same table with him. Trump has absolutely nothing in common with GWH Bush. Or with Mitt Romney. Certainly nothing in common with Barry Goldwater or Dwight Eisenhower, The problem is not conservatism, I often agree with conservatives on a variety of points, the problem is that we have a cult movement that is tolerated by Republicans who, through cowardice, laziness or self-interest, won't acknowledge what is happening.

 

 

 

[shyams]

The SCOTUS are not going to touch anything like this. Trump appointees may be there but they have a lifetime to push their agenda and are not going to want to delegitimise themselves over a pointless show.

This is a worrisome development - made more so by the doubt of a credible SCOTUS

I would have wholeheartedly agreed with Zel on this. In principle, it is too risky for SCOTUS to make stupid calls on a short-term matter when they are in it for the long run.

 

That is, until I read a note on the Scotusblog website (link here) re. this lawsuit which I found concerning.

Update (Tuesday, Dec. 8, 6:20 p.m.): On Tuesday evening, the court called for a response to Texas’ suit by Thursday, Dec. 10, at 3 p.m.

If the SC thought the entire lawsuit was frivolous and that Texas's attempt to intervene is an overreach of "Original Jurisdiction" (used by SC to adjudicate inter-State disputes), they would have thrown it out or sat on it till it was too late. They instead chose to ask for responses from the sued States.

[Winstonm]

This is what happens when the conch shell is controlled by children:

 

 

Lifelong Republican Ron Filipkowski, who resigned on Tuesday from his position as vice chairman of the 12th Circuit Judicial Nomination Committee (JNC) in Florida, appeared on Cuomo Prime Time Tuesday night and explained he decision.

 

A day earlier, agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) raided the home of Rebekah Jones, a data scientist who was fired from the Florida Department of Health in May following a dispute with superiors over properly reporting COVID-19 data.

 

Filipkowski agreed with the assertion Jones made on Monday night that the raid was an attempt by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to intimidate her and other scientists, and he claimed that the raid wasn’t warranted.

 

“I watched the video when she tweeted it out right after the incident happened, and I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Filipkowski said, later adding, “I saw what was happening and I couldn’t believe it. Then I read the search warrant, and I’m a criminal lawyer, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing in the search warrant about how broad it was, about what they were alleging as a supposed crime.”

 

 

 

 

Lord of the Lies?

[Winstonm]

I would have wholeheartedly agreed with Zel on this. In principle, it is too risky for SCOTUS to make stupid calls on a short-term matter when they are in it for the long run.

 

That is, until I read a note on the Scotusblog website (link here) re. this lawsuit which I found concerning.

 

If the SC thought the entire lawsuit was frivolous and that Texas's attempt to intervene is an overreach of "Original Jurisdiction" (used by SC to adjudicate inter-State disputes), they would have thrown it out or sat on it till it was too late. They instead chose to ask for responses from the sued States.

 

The latest news:

 

 

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed to intervene in a long-shot lawsuit by the state of Texas filed at the U.S. Supreme Court trying to throw out the voting results in four states he lost to President-elect Joe Biden as he seeks to undo the outcome of the election.

 

 

The Republican president, writing on Twitter, said: "We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!"

 

 

 

 

How the hell the WH can intervene in the SCOTUS is unexplained.

 

Steve Vladeck, law professor at the University of Texas, explains what this lawsuit means:

 

“The central argument here is that we should let the election be decided by unelected judges and partisan state legislators, rather than the 150 million Americans who cast legitimate ballots,” Vladeck told me. “That would be the end of democracy as we know it."

Fortunately, although original jurisdiction allows the SCOTUS to hear this without a lower court acting, the choice to hear the case still resides with the SCOTUS - we all hope they act sanely and refuse.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Winstonm

[akwoo]

If you are an originalist who believes that the US government should adhere closely to the vision of the Founding Fathers, then almost by definition you do not think the US should be a democracy. The Founding Fathers did not want democracy; they wanted a republic (which just means a government without a king) that, like the British government of the time, combined elements of personal authority, an oligarchy of the wealthiest, and broader participation by all landowners.

[Winstonm]

If you are an originalist who believes that the US government should adhere closely to the vision of the Founding Fathers, then almost by definition you do not think the US should be a democracy. The Founding Fathers did not want democracy; they wanted a republic (which just means a government without a king) that, like the British government of the time, combined elements of personal authority, an oligarchy of the wealthiest, and broader participation by all landowners.

 

A democratic republic, to be sure. Representative government.

[Winstonm]

The Republican party has gone full-blown autocratic anti-America:

 

Texas has been joined by 17 other red states in its longshot Supreme Court lawsuit to try and overturn Donald Trump's election defeat.

 

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton launched legal action against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which were all won by Joe Biden as he claimed the White House.

 

The 17 states, all of which supported the outgoing president, have now filed an amicus brief in support of the case to throw out Mr Biden's wins in those four states.

 

[johnu]

The Republican party has gone full-blown autocratic anti-America:

 

It is not surprising that the Texas AG would be the one to file this lawsuit. Only in the US would a criminal be attorney general of a major state. OK, maybe not so unusual because we have a criminal who is president

 

AP Sources: FBI is investigating Texas attorney general

 

The FBI is investigating allegations that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton broke the law in using his office to benefit a wealthy donor, according to two people with knowledge of the probe.

 

Federal agents are looking into claims by former members of Paxton’s staff that the high-profile Republican committed bribery, abuse of office and other crimes to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, the people told The Associated Press. They insisted on anonymity to discuss the investigation because it is ongoing.

 

Top aides accuse Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of bribery, abusing office

 

In a one-page letter to the state agency’s director of human resources, obtained Saturday by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, seven executives in the upper tiers of the office said that they are seeking the investigation into Paxton “in his official capacity as the current Attorney General of Texas.”

 

Paxton is undoubted angling for a presidential pardon, but federal pardons do not apply to state crimes. But Texas has a highly partisan right fringe Republican governor so a state pardon is also certainly possible.