American Taliban

September 2, 2021

      Tuesday marked the end of America’s twenty-year misadventure in Afghanistan.  After twenty years, trillions of dollars and thousands of Afghan and American lives lost, the only ones who have profited are military contractors and corrupt officials.  Many Americans are justifiably worried about what fate awaits Afghan women and girls, or of the translators and other Afghan citizens who helped us under the Taliban, but the very threat that the Taliban poses in Afghanistan, is posed to Americans by a radicalized right wing minority eager to usher in authoritarianism.

      Hyperbole?  Consider S.B. 8, the law that took effect in Texas yesterday.  It not only bans abortions beyond six weeks after conception,  but creates a cause of action against anyone who helps a woman secure an abortion after six weeks, from doctors to clinic staff to Uber drivers who provide transportation, (Source:  “Supreme Court, Breaking Silence, Won’t Block Texas Abortion Law,” by Adam Liptak, J. David Goodman and Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, 9/1/21).

    The new law is simultaneously cowardly and barbaric.  Cowardly, because it offloads enforcement of the law to an army of faceless anti-abortion crusaders who do not need to have “any connection to the abortion,” and need not even live in the state of Texas to bring a lawsuit which can garner them $10,000, plus their legal fees, if they win.  Yet the law does not entitle defendants to their legal fees if they prevail (ibid)!

    Barbaric, because the legislature knows that this law will outlaw most abortions, since 85% of abortions are performed after the six week point.  Barbaric, because the law contains no exception for rape or incest, compelling women who have already been hideously violated to choose between a life of misery or a back alley abortion.

     The Texas legislature designed S.B.8 to evade judicial review by delegating its enforcement. Last night a majority of the Supreme Court took this easy off ramp and declined to issue a stay, imperiling the Constitutional rights of thousands of women.  Even worse, the one paragraph decision was issued without the benefit of full briefing or arguments, as it arose from the Court’s ever expanding “shadow docket.”

     The majority’s decision was so stunningly irresponsible that each of the four dissenting justices issued an opinion, from Chief Justice John Roberts to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with the three liberal justices all joining one another’s opinions.  As Justice Breyer stated, the Court should have stayed enforcement of the Texas law because “a State cannot delegate veto power [over the right to obtain an abortion] which the state itself is absolutely and totally prohibited from exercising during the first trimester of pregnancy,” (Source:  “Whole Woman’s Health v. Austin Reeve Jackson, Judge, et al, 594 U.S.___, (2021), Breyer, J., dissenting).

     Although Justice Sotomayor’s scathing dissent notes that the majority “silently acquiesced in a state’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents, (ibid, Sotomayor, J. dissenting), the reality of what the Court did was far worse.  It ignored a bedrock legal principle that goes back to the seminal case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), that “where a legal right is ‘invaded’ law provides a legal remedy by suit or action at law, (ibid, Breyer, J. dissenting, quoting Marbury).

      It is no accident that the effective date of S.B. 8 comes one day after the Republican led Texas legislature succeeded in passing its most sweeping voter suppression bill yet.  The new bill prohibits drive-through voting, 24 hour voting and sending unsolicited absentee ballots.  Most ominously, it “empowers partisan poll watchers [and] creates new criminal and civil penalties for poll workers,”(Source:  “Texas G.O.P. Passes Election Bill, Raising Voting Barriers Even Higher,” by J. David Goodman, Nick Corasantini and Reid J. Epstein, The New York Times, 8/31/21).

      These laws are of a piece.  Both laws strip women and people of color of fundamental Constitutional rights and impose heavy penalties on any person who would dare to help them.  Both statutes codify vigilantism by empowering average citizens to enforce the deprivation of citizens’ 14th and 15th Amendment rights. These laws are breathtaking in their audacious contempt for the Constitution.

       Texas is a harbinger of things to come. Every other Republican-led state is taking notes. It is long past time for Congress to get serious about passing laws that protect voting rights and a woman’s right to choose.  Thinking that people of color and women can simply “out-organize” authoritarianism shows an enraging naivete and a maddening disdain for our very humanity.  We can give Congress no rest until they ditch the filibuster and work to preserve democracy.   We must be relentless.  Those who favor fascism clearly are.

The looming disaster

May 8, 2021

     Just over one week past the 100 day mark of Biden’s presidency, we are beset by a pervasive sense of unease.  Progress seems unmistakable. The country administered 200 million doses of the COVID vaccine just shy of Biden’s 100th day, (Source:  “Biden Says Goal of 200 Million COVID-19 Vaccinations in 100 Days Has Been Met,” by Brian Naylor, NPR.org, 4/21/21). The number of new infections is decreasing, as is the number of deaths, (Source: CDC.gov).  New York and New Jersey are re-opening on May 19th.  California, where new infections in L.A. and Sacramento have dropped precipitously, but remain stubbornly high in the Central Valley, is opening up on June 15th, (Source:  “California Reaches More Re-Opening Milestones,” by Jill Cowan, The New York Times, 5/5/21).

     Yet, the pace of new vaccinations is slowing as our expanding supply of doses meets the resistance of those duped by right wing propaganda.  About 40% of Republicans flatly say that they will never get vaccinated.  Given the continued emergence of more contagious variants, this makes our ability to reach herd immunity unlikely, endangering us all, (Source:  “Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe,” by Apoorva Mandivilli,The New York Times, 5/3/21).

     We are justifiably relieved to have a president who believes that government should serve the people.  That belief is reflected in policies that will not only rebuild our crumbling physical infrastructure, but build an infrastructure of care that supports our children and our elders, (Source: “Biden’s plan to make America less terrible for parents,” by Anna North, Vox.com, 5/5/21).  Yet, an entire political party stands staunchly opposed to any policies that help people.  Ghoulish minority leader Mitch McConnell announced that Biden’s Infrastructure package would not get a single Republican vote. This past week, McConnell went further, repeating his Obama era mantra and declaring that he was “100% focused on stopping” Biden’s agenda, (Source:  “McConnell says he’s ‘100% focused on stopping’ Biden’s administration,” by Allan Smith, NBCNews.com, 5/5/21).

      Manchin’s and Sinema’s refusal to support H.R.1, D.C. statehood, or even reform of the filibuster in the face of this belligerent intransigence, makes them complicit in the Republican Party’s attack on democracy and open embrace of white nationalism.

     This week we saw the reunion of four families who had been separated at the border as a result of Trump’s sadistic family separation policy.  The tear-soaked reunions were heartwarming, but four families is a drop in the bucket when as many as 1000 children remain separated from their parents, (Source:  “U.S. to begin reuniting migrant families separated under ‘cruel’ Trump policy,” by Kevin Sieff and Adam Taylor, The Washington Post,  5/3/21).

     We see this pattern replicated across every sector of American life.  On one side are a Democratic administration and members of Congress earnestly trying to improve American lives and repair the wreckage of the last four years.  On the other, a group of unhinged white nationalists, unmoored from facts or truth, gleefully torch the Constitution.  They are motivated, above all,  by a desire to persecute BIPOC and LGBTQ Americans, reduce women to “breeders” with no bodily autonomy and disenfranchise Democrats, regardless of their race or gender identity. In state after state, Republicans are passing laws that will return us to the Jim Crow era.  So far, the Justice Department has not intervened.

     It’s no wonder we feel a sense of looming disaster.  One party has declared war on America.  If we want to save our country, we will all have to enlist.

No sense of decency

April 22, 2018

     Amidst the escalating threat that the Southern District of New York’s investigation of Michael Cohen poses to Trump, the mounting evidence that Scott Pruitt is a avaricious grifter with a boundless capacity for corruption hums along like so much background noise.  Yesterday, The New York Times detailed Pruitt’s 15 year history of shady self-dealing in the service of his inflated ego, demonstrating that Pruitt’s practice of using public funds to finance his lavish lifestyle is a feature, not a bug (Source:  “Scott Pruitt Before the E.P.A.: Fancy Homes, A Shell Company and Friends With Money,” by Steve Eder and Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times, 4/21/18).  In a pre-Trump era, Pruitt’s history would have disqualified him for nomination to head the E.P.A., let alone confirmation, but in their Machiavellian pursuit of empowering the person best suited to dismantle the E.P.A. and give corporations unfettered license to pollute, most Republicans sit on their hands while Pruitt is the subject of ten federal investigations. Continue reading “No sense of decency”