Friday, September 28, 2018

Editorial: Supreme Power Play

Senate Republican leaders continued to insist they would put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court despite mounting stories of his sexual misconduct in high school and college.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told a crowd of conservatives at the Values Voters Summit Sept. 22 in Washington that the Senate was going to “plow right through” on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, dismissing the possibility that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony about Kavanaugh’s alleged attempt to sexually assault her at a Bethesda, Md., house party in 1982 would derail the nomination.

When McConnell made his proclamation to the cheering crowd, Senate Republican staffers were aware that Deborah Ramirez was also alleging that Kavanaugh sexually abused her during a drunken dorm party at Yale University in the 1983-84 school year. Senate Republicans called to accelerate the timing of the committee vote. After The New Yorker on Sept. 24 reported her account that Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face at the party, McConnell characterized the allegations against the judge as a “smear campaign” and, with contempt for the rising outrage of women, promised Kavanaugh would get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor “in the near future.”

Michael Avenatti, the attorney best known for representing Stormy Daniels, also reported he was representing a third woman who had “credible information” about allegations of “gang rape” involving Kavanaugh, his friend Mark Judge and others at house parties in the Washington, D.C. area during the early 1980s.

McConnell has been draining good faith from the Senate since 2009, when, as Senate Republican leader, he led the opposition as Barack Obama became president with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. McConnell determined to use the filibuster, which required 60 votes to move legislation, to block Obama at every turn as he sought to stimulate the economy and pull it out of the recession that started in the last year of George W. Bush’s administration.

McConnell was adamant that Republicans thwart the Democrat’s plans. Vice President Joe Biden told Michael Grunwald, in The New New Deal, the 2012 book on the making of the economic stimulus, that during the transition seven different Republican senators told Biden that “McConnell had demanded unified resistance” to make sure Obama did not succeed. In October 2010 McConnell admitted to National Journal, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

In 2009, Democrats had a relatively small period of time with a supermajority of 60 votes, as Sen. Ted Kennedy had a seizure during Obama’s inaugural luncheon and he never returned to vote in the Senate. Kennedy died in August 2009 and his seat was temporarily filled by Democrat Paul Kirk on Sept. 24, 2009, which finally gave Democrats 60 votes in the Senate — for all of 14 weeks, through Feb. 4, 2010, when Republican Scott Brown won Kennedy’s seat in a special election.

Under McConnell, Republicans also filibustered Obama’s judicial nominees until then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, in 2013 was forced to eliminate the filibuster for presidential appointees and lower-court judges. The number of votes needed for presidential appointees was reduced from 60 to 51 votes, a simple majority, so bipartisanship no longer was needed on those nominations.

When Republicans gained the Senate majority in 2015, McConnell again slowed down consideration of Obama’s nominees for judicial positions. In the most notorious case, after Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death in Texas in February 2016, McConnell refused to allow a hearing on Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy, Merrick Garland, the moderate chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. McConnell even refused to allow Senate votes on 25 of Obama’s judicial nominees who had advanced from the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support, as the majority leader ran out the clock with the 2016 election approaching.

Senate Republicans kept 103 judicial vacancies unfilled, including the Supreme Court seat, and handed them over to Donald Trump when he was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. That was nearly double the 54 openings Obama inherited from George W. Bush. Trump let the far-right Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation draw up lists of reliably right-wing candidates and McConnell removed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees — which had been the last position requiring bipartisan approval — to speed Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and other judicial nominees through the Senate. As of Sept. 4, Trump had appointed 26 circuit court judges, with a median age of 49. Obama appointed 55 circuit judges in eight years, with a median age of 53.

So now, with the opportunity to fill a second seat on the Supreme Court, Trump picked Kavanaugh, a partisan who worked for Kenneth Starr on the inquisition of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the late 1990s.

Kavanaugh later worked in George W. Bush’s White House, helping to push partisan judges to confirmation using documents stolen from Democrats, and he later lied under oath about the use of those stolen materials during hearings in 2004 and 2006 when he was up for his seat on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Perhaps what appealed to Trump in his selection for the Supreme Court was Kavanaugh’s opinion that Republican presidents should not be investigated. That would put a vote on Trump’s side on the Supreme Court in what appears to be the inevitable showdown when Trump tries to shut down Robert Mueller’s investigation. The appearance that Kavanaugh also is a sexual predator just gives Trump something else in common with the purported jurist. But Kavanaugh also carries radical GOP views against healthcare protections, environmental protection, consumer protection, workers’ rights and women’s rights. He is presumed to be a fifth vote to overturn women’s right to abortion, but he also could be the fifth vote to overturn the Affordable Care Act, which would eliminate the mandate that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions and allow insurers to reinstate limits on “lifetime” coverage, which could make your lifetime a lot shorter if you can’t pay for the difference.

Don’t feel sorry for Kavanaugh having to account for his sexual predations. Remember his recommendation, in a memo to Ken Starr, how President Clinton should be questioned regarding his past sexual behavior: “I have tried hard to bend over backwards and to be fair to him and to think of all reasonable defenses to his pattern of behavior. In the end, I am convinced that there really are none. The idea of going easy on him at the questioning is thus abhorrent to me,” Kavanaugh wrote. “He should be forced to account for all of that and to defend his actions. It may not be our job to impose sanctions on him, but it is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear — piece by painful piece.”

As we go to press, Trump has reiterated his support for Kavanaugh, who is determined to go ahead with the process, no matter how many women come up with accusations against him. Of course, either the White House or Kavanaugh could decide tomorrow to withdraw and let Trump pick another right-wing judge with a cleaner record to make sure they get another “winger” confirmed to the high court before this Congress adjourns in December.

It’s still important to vote Democratic if you are in a state with a contested Senate election Nov. 6. If Democrats flip two seats held by Republicans — and at least four are in play, in Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas — and if Dems hold onto their incumbents, they will regain the Senate majority, they can shut down the flow of right-wing judges onto federal courts, possibly keep Anthony Kennedy’s old seat open, and block all sorts of damage Republicans hope to do to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to pay for the tax cuts they gave to billionaires. — JMC

Editor's Note: The headline on this was changed from "Supreme Embarrassment" in the printed edition after the Sept. 27 Judiciary Committee hearing in which the Republican majority refused to refer to the FBI Christine Blasey Ford's accusation that Kavanaugh tried to rape her, refused to allow witnesses to corroborate Dr. Blasey Ford's account and also refused to hear Deborah Ramirez's and Julie Swetnick's claims to be victims of sexual abuse by Kavanaugh, but instead proceeded to plow on through to approve Kavanaugh's nomination. But Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., forced Senate leaders to ask President Trump to order the FBI to conduct a review of the accusations against Kavanaugh lasting no more than one week, saying he would not vote to approve Kavanaugh without that review.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2018

Populist.com

Selections from the October 15, 2018 issue

COVER/Paul Mason
Ten years since the financial crisis we’re still getting screwed

EDITORIAL
Supreme power play

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Ohio officials show no grace

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Thought for food as farmers hit the wall

DISPATCHES
Data shows little evidence tax cuts trickled down to workers.
Trump is biggest middle-class tax raiser of all time.
GOP Senate candidate vows to protect pre-existing conditions while working to end ACA.
Pharma exec claims ‘moral requirement’ to raise drug price 400%.
In crosshairs of ‘right-to-work,’ Kentucky bourbon workers strike.
Trump cuts Head Start, cancer research to fund child detention.
Trump passes 5,000 lies.
US is second-biggest lower from climate change economically.
US ambassador Haley conradicts Giuliani, says US notseeking regime change in Iran after terror attack.
Electric car batteries' 'second life' could be clean energy game changer.
Despite progressive rebranding, Nike still donates more to GOP.
Keeping Kavanaugh off court more important to Maine and Alaska than re-electing Collins and Murkowski.
Trump judges make it easier for prosecutors to convict innocents ...

JIM GOODMAN and TIFFANY FINCK-HAYNES
Monsanto-Bayer merger hurts farmers and consumers

JILL RICHARDSON
Why women don’t report sexual assault

JOHN YOUNG
Mr. Vice President, you are one big phony

ROBERT BOROSAGE
A new roadmap for getting change done

HAL CROWTHER
Cue the visigoths

BOB BURNETT
Suspicions confirmed, Woodward on Trump

MARK ANDERSON
Two pot bills pave the way for better health research, decriminalization

ART CULLEN
The view from Iowa: Where immigrants are at the heart of America’s culture war

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
Stay nasty

PETER CERTO
Nobody in the White House is part of ‘The Resistance’

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Beware The Bill

SAM URETSKY
Table manners make the candidate

WENONAH HAUTER
New legislation would put the brakes on wave of ag mega-mergers

JASON SIBERT
Who runs the police?

WAYNE O’LEARY
The rhinestone cowboy

JOHN BUELL
Men’s bodies and the politics of abortion

SETH SANDRONSKY
Brain injuries, US military and NFL

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Of course, it’s racial

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Henry Ford would fire Ford CEO Jim Hackett

FR. DONNELL KIRCHNER
Rise above the clergy scandal

ROB PATTERSON
Birth and death of joke tellers

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Tell all, tell fast

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Michael Moore turns up the heat in Fahrenheit 11/9

Analyses of the Roman climate show government action to address climate change works

By Marc Jampole

The Spring 2018 issue of Jewish Currents had my latest “Left is right” article that uses the latest research to show that the left position on environmental issues is the correct one: that the government has a role in addressing climate change and that the best way to do so is with regulation and not market solutions.

There are no current plans to post the article on the Jewish Currents website, so I thought I would give you a taste of it in hopes that you will buy the issue to read the whole piece, and maybe even start a subscription. Jewish Currents is a leading left-wing journal of politics and the arts.

Here’s the excerpt:

There are two conceptual differences between the left and the right when it comes to the environment and environmental policy. The first difference is fundamental: The left believes it is appropriate for the government to coordinate or dictate action to respond to environmental degradation and climate change, whereas the right questions the effectiveness of any governmental solution that impedes the freedom of individuals or corporations. The second difference is tactical: Once a nation or a group of nations has decided that government intervention is necessary, leftists prefer simple regulation, whereas right-wingers insist on complicated, market-based solutions like carbon trading. Readers may immediately think that I’m leaving out the fundamental issue of whether global warming is actually occurring and, if so, whether humans have caused it. In fact, that question has been decided by science.

Recent research gives us a fresh perspective on the impact of climate change on past societies, and the ways that past governments reacted to sudden modifications of weather patterns. Historians are poring over statistics from carbon dating, tree rings, ice bores, human records of harvests, food prices and plagues, population estimates and fossils to understand how weather has affected humans in the past. Although the discipline of history has only recently begun investigating the impact of climate on past civilizations, a fair amount of research already suggests that government intervention works better than denying the realities of weather.

Before the industrial revolution and the development of vaccines and advanced agricultural techniques and sanitation systems, sudden environmental change typically led to famines and epidemics. A decade of droughts or cold summers could ruin enough harvests to create widespread hunger. As classicist Kyle Harper (University of Oklahoma) details in The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire, a change in temperature could also force a carrier of disease such as rodents or mosquitos to move to a new region and infect human populations already weakened by famine.

Harper finds that weather change is implicated in the entire history of the Empire. From circa 200 [BCE] to 150 [CE], the Roman world had such good weather that climatologists call the period the “Roman Climate Optimum—warm, wet, and stable across much of the territory the Romans conquered. In an agricultural economy, these conditions were a major boost. The population swelled yet there was still enough food to feed everyone. But from the middle of the 2nd century, the climate became less reliable. The all-important annual Nile flood became erratic. Droughts and severe cold spells became more common. The Climate Optimum became much less optimal.

According to The Fate of Rome, the unrest throughout the Empire in the second half of the 2nd century is tied to cooling weather at the end of the Climate Optimum and the epidemic, probably of smallpox, that it helped to cause. Two hundred years later, a large and significant drought in the Asian steppes turned the Huns into “armed climate refugees on horseback.” In the 530s and 540s, a series of violent volcanoes, highlighted by the “year without summer” in 536, ushered in the Late Antique Little Ice Age, which saw the greatest decline in the energy the Earth receives from the sun over the past 2,000 years. This Late Antique Ice Age likely led to the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in 541. Over the next century or so, the Eastern Roman Empire’s population fell by as much as 50 percent, as the plague recurred about every ten years.

How did the Roman Empire react to these weather crises? Harper documents that the Roman governments took aggressive action to ameliorate the damaging impact of climate change on the economy and society. Because the emperors and their advisors perceived the menace of climate change as epidemics, their actions primarily related to population management: From Augustus onward, the Roman state penalized childlessness and rewarded fecundity in its policies. About 30 years after the Antonine plague of 165 to 180 CE, Caracalla took the unprecedented step of granting citizenship to all non-slave residents of the Empire, leading to an infusion of talent, growth of the imperial bureaucracy, and the dissemination of Roman laws and customs throughout imperial territory. Diocletian and Constantine’s answer to the Cyprian Plague in the 250s—which devastated the population and led to severe food shortages—was more government control of the economy and the military, producing the economic good times of the 4th century

Justinian, however, ruling from 527 to 565, could not add new peoples into the imperial system in his response to the disasters of the Late Antique Little Ice Age because there was no additional population left to integrate. Instead, writes Harper, Justinian built cisterns, aqueducts, granaries, and transport depots, reclaimed floodplains, and moved riverbeds, trying to “control the flux of nature.” But in the end, the Eastern Empire could not do enough to overcome the depopulation caused by a severe cooling of the Earth that lasted about two hundred years.