The Electoral College Reform Act passes in the nick of time

Fr. WSJ 12/22/22

https://www.wsj.com/articles/presidential-vote-counting-to-get-revamp-after-trump-tried-to-reverse-2020-loss-11671687195 

For the first time in more than a century, Congress is poised to pass legislation that would revamp the process of certifying presidential electors, a direct response to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The Electoral Count Reform Act has been attached to a $1.65 trillion yearlong spending package currently moving through Congress that is expected to become law this week. The ECRA is the result of nearly a year of bipartisan Senate negotiations to update an 1887 law that came into focus during the certification of the presidential results on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Current law requires Congress to convene for a joint session on Jan. 6 after a presidential election to count and ratify the 538 electoral votes certified by the 50 states and District of Columbia. The vice president, serving as president of the Senate, has the duty to count the votes in a joint session of Congress. 

In 2021, Mr. Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject some electors unilaterally. Mr. Pence refused, saying such a move was beyond his power. After Mr. Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol in a speech on the Ellipse, a pro-Trump mob overran the Capitol, temporarily interrupting the proceedings. After Congress reconvened, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans voted against certifying the election results.

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The new legislation would make it clear that the vice president’s role is merely to count the votes publicly and that he or she has no power to alter the results. It also would significantly raise the threshold to sustain an objection to a state’s electors to one-fifth of both chambers, up from one House member and one senator now. 

The proposal would also provide for an expedited federal court challenge if a state attempts to delay or tamper with election results. The bill holds that the court decision is final and requires Congress to accept that decision.

The current Electoral Count Act “is a time bomb under democracy, and we learned on Jan. 6 that its ambiguities and confusing terms are very dangerous,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) credited the work of a group of 15 senators who span the ideological spectrum in negotiating the bill. “The events of Jan. 6 clearly brought home the flaws in the law,” she said.

The Biden administration called the changes “a vital piece of legislation.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) said he opposed changes to the current law. Mr. Hawley was the first senator to say he would object to the results of the 2020 presidential election, a move that forced lawmakers to debate and vote to affirm the states’ tallies on Jan. 6, 2021. As Mr. Hawley entered the Capitol ahead of the joint session that day, he was photographed fist-pumping to cheers from the pro-Trump crowd gathered outside.

“I think it’s fine, this is the democratic process,” Mr. Hawley said about the current rules. “I don’t think the objection caused the riot.” 

Other lawmakers have used the process outlined in the Electoral Count Act to object to election results in recent years. Some Democrats objected, unsuccessfully, to certification of both of former President George W. Bush‘s wins as well as Mr. Trump’s.

In both cases the Democratic nominee for president had already conceded and wasn’t supportive of the objections. Mr. Trump has continued to call for overturning the results and to claim falsely that he won the 2020 election.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack made four criminal referrals for Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on Monday after investigating the lead-up and attack itself. Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing related to the riot. The Justice Department is currently conducting a parallel investigation of the events.

“I don’t care whether they change The Electoral Count Act or not, probably better to leave it the way it is so that it can be adjusted in case of Fraud,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.Mr. Trump has said the planned changes show that the vice president did indeed have the power to block electors under current law. Backers say they are trying to eliminate any loopholes that could be exploited by future candidates, including Mr. Trump.

Among the Electoral Count Reform Act provisions included in this week’s spending package is a requirement that each state’s governor, unless specified in the state’s laws or constitution, submit the slate of electors. That would keep states from submitting false electors as some sought to do in 2020. 

It also would prevent state legislatures from overriding the popular vote in their states by declaring a “failed election,” except in narrowly defined “extraordinary and catastrophic” events.

Edward Foley, the director of Election Law at Ohio State University said the bill’s most significant provision is making sure the courts are the final backstop in case of false electors.

“We can look to courts as being the branch of government that is most immune from this kind of political denialism,” he said.

The version included in the spending bill is the Senate version, which had 38 co-sponsors, including both Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

In September, the House passed its own version of the legislation, 229-203. Nine Republicans joined Democrats in voting to pass the House bill. None of them are returning to Congress next year.

News bits: The futility of government vs. climate change under capitalism, etc.

Climate change futility 

Rolling Stone writes:

Thanks to Big Oil, Your Tax Dollars Are Spent Ruining the Climate

The same dynamic keeps playing out over and over: the rich pollute, the poor suffer, and the rich really don't care

About $11 million a minute. That’s the amount of direct and indirect subsidies the International Monetary Fund calculates the global fossil fuel industry receives to ensure that cooking the planet remains profitable for them. If you do the math, it comes to about $5.9 trillion a year.

As The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer has pointed out, only $826 billion of that comes from actual price cuts or tax breaks. The rest is calculated from damages caused from the environmental and health costs of carbon pollution. But that’s sorta the point. This is an antiquated industry that is knowingly and willfully poisoning the planet and killing millions of people every year. And governments of the world — which ultimately means you and me and everyone else who pays taxes — are essentially paying them to do it. 

The fossil fuel mafia has used money and political muscle to stall and derail action on the climate crisis, and they will do everything they can to draw out the inevitable transition to clean energy as long as possible. Given the stunning decline in the cost of solar and wind power in most of the world, they know their days are numbered. It’s not a question of if they go. It’s a question of how fast. But every day they wait, every delay tactic they come up with, imperils the rest of us [and makes the climate worse and oil companies more wealthy and powerful].

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Peach Freeze who brought this article to my attention. 

A snippet of poison from the 1/6 Committee

CNN writes: 

The January 6 committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump-backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled.

.... CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did ....

Trump’s Save America political action committee funded Passantino and his law firm Elections LLC, including paying for his representation of Hutchinson, other sources tell CNN. The committee report notes the lawyer did not tell his client who was paying for the legal services.

The sleaze and slime attached to Trump and most people he deals with just keeps oozing out. One can only wonder what kind of people, both elites and rank and file, Republicans who support all of this are. Good decent people, shockingly deceived, and/or cynical thugs?

A US corporation gets aggressive about attacking critics

An Intercept article writes about an attorney who tries to get accountability for corporations involved in wrongdoing, e.g., murder. American corporations are starting to fight back hard. The Intercept writes:

On March 12, 2001, paramilitary gunmen [in Colombia] dragged Orcasita and another union leader, Valmore Locarno, from a company bus as the men returned home from work. The gunmen shot Locarno on the spot and carried Orcasita off in the bed of their pickup truck. His body was found the next day. He’d been shot in the head, his teeth knocked out.

The miners’ union was convinced that Drummond was involved in the murders. They suspected that the company was secretly paying the paramilitary group that executed their leaders. Ultimately, a Drummond food service contractor who ran the mine’s cafeteria was convicted of plotting the murders and sentenced to 38 years in prison.

To make the case that the company was complicit in the killings, the union turned to Terry Collingsworth, a lifelong human rights attorney based in Washington, D.C.

Collingsworth’s decision to file suit in the United States made Orcasita’s widow hopeful that justice would prevail. For years, she had felt that justice would be impossible in Colombia due to Drummond’s political clout.

“What we were most excited about was bringing the lawsuit in Alabama,” she said. “There it would not be so easy for them to traffic their influence.”

Collingsworth lost an initial trial in 2007, when a jury found there wasn’t clear evidence tying the company to the crimes. Another of his lawsuits was dismissed for being too similar to the first. But Collingsworth continued to press his case, offering new witnesses with firsthand testimony implicating Drummond.

Then, in March 2015, the case took a surprising turn.

Drummond had returned fire in the legal fight with an unusual accusation. The company charged that Collingsworth — an advocate who recently brought a case before the U.S. Supreme Court — had led a “multifaceted criminal campaign” to extort Drummond into paying a costly settlement. This campaign, Drummond alleged, was in fact a racketeering conspiracy as defined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO.

If one trusts the American legal system and corporations, Drummond did nothing wrong. There wasn’t enough evidence to legally implicate the company in the murders. But if one does not trust, maybe an American corporation literally got away with murder. By filing a RICO suit against the attorney, the company signals it will engage in scorched-Earth legal tactics. Drummond wants to bankrupt Collingsworth to shut him up. This is perfectly legal. 

If American corporations operated with less opacity and in good faith to the public interest, there would be no reason to distrust the lawsuit’s outcome. But that is probably not how most American corporations generally operate. Secrecy, opacity, deceit (“public relations”) and non-disclosure agreements effectively hide everything a company wants to hide, innocent and guilty. American laws are heavily rigged to protect corporations and elites. As long as Drummond is not found responsible in court, it will publicly trumpet its innocence, regardless of what it did or did not do. 

And Collingsworth? He is going to face years of hell on Earth in the courts.

Republican Party election fraud zealots in Florida struggle 
to whack a few dozen voters while undermining trust in elections

NPR reports:

Back in August, Florida officials announced they were charging 20 people with alleged voter fraud. It was the first big set of cases investigated by the state's new election crimes unit, which was created at the urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The statewide prosecutor recently secured one conviction through a plea deal. But at least three other cases so far have been dismissed on procedural grounds. And attorneys representing those who were charged say Florida's cases face a tough road — even if they make it to trial.

Roger Weedon, who is representing two individuals charged for alleged voter fraud, says he thinks there is even a case to be made that the state entrapped these voters. He says the state could have created a system where local election officials and formerly incarcerated people could see if they're eligible to vote.

"The government shouldn't be able to prosecute cases in which they are almost co-conspirators by sending the registration cards and allowing them to vote," Weedon said.

Weedon says he's working to get the cases against his two clients dismissed. So far, three cases out of the initial collection of charges have been thrown out. The state has appealed at least two of those dismissals.

DeSantis: Working hard to suppress votes and undermine public trust 

in elections by entrapping people and punishing their honest mistakes

What a patriot!  /s

What a hypocrite and liar!  not/s

Fantasylandia: Just imagine if you will, a fairy tale. In this wistful tale in a magic land far away, Republican elites were as hell bent on prosecuting law violations of law such as obstruction of justice, insurrection, criminal conspiracy, blatant corruption, treason and the like by any and all politicians in office. End of fairy tale. Back to cold reality.

Obviously, Republicans are hell bent on such law enforcement when it comes to crimes and sleaze by Democrats. But when it comes to crimes and sleaze by Republicans and big corporate donors, Republican Party elites, no such zealotry will ever be turned against those miscreants. Being radical right Christofascist and profoundly mendacious, corrupt, hypocritical and morally rotted, prevents such zealotry by Republican elites in defense of democracy, inconvenient truth or the public interest. 

Hunter Biden should be ready for what’s to come. But Trump can probably rest easy that his cult will not turn on him. That’s the sad, anti-democratic reality of the hypocrite Christofascist Republican Party.

News bits: The flaccid rule of law, etc.

IRS shielded Trump from scrutiny

The NYT writes:

I.R.S. Didn’t Audit Trump for 2 Years in Office, 

House Committee Says

The House Ways and Means Committee voted to release six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns, and members revealed that the I.R.S. failed to follow its own policy because it did not audit Mr. Trump during his first two years in office. It may be days before the tax information is revealed.  

The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald J. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns.

Sigh. Once again, we have a two-tiered rule of law. Once is soft and friendly for the rich and powerful. For the rest of us, the other is usually not nearly as forgiving or friendly. Not only is the rule of law flaccid, our federal government has been poisoned by deeply corrupted Republicans. 

Strange faerie tales from Twitterlandia

The hellscape continues to unfold

Elon Musk must be having some kind of a psychotic break. He loses a Twitter poll to stay on as CEO, 57.5% voted against him, but then says the election was rigged against him. Now, he says he will step down as Twitter CEO. The NYT comments:

Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he would resign as Twitter’s chief executive when he found “someone foolish enough to take the job,” two days after he had asked his 122 million Twitter followers whether he should step down as the leader of the social media site and a majority of respondents answered yes.  

But hours after the poll closed on Monday morning, Mr. Musk stayed silent. When he finally spoke up late Monday, he did not directly address the survey result. Instead, he replied to Twitter users who cast doubt on the outcome and said Twitter would change its poll feature so that only people who paid for its subscription service would be allowed to vote.

So, Elon is looking for a fool to be CEO. This ought to be pretty interesting. No more stolen elections for Musk!! MAGA!!

From the Corporations are Good Citizens Files

The NYT writes:

Wells Fargo to Pay $3.7 Billion Over 

Consumer Banking Violations

The settlement, which includes the largest fine ever imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allows the bank to resolve claims that it had harmed millions of consumers since 2011.

The consumer protection bureau said Wells Fargo did not record customer payments on home and auto loans properly, wrongfully repossessed some borrowers’ cars and homes and charged overdraft fees even when customers had enough money to cover purchases they made with their bank cards. Wells Fargo stopped the conduct this year as part of a larger effort to clean up other unlawful practices stretching back to 2011, the filing said.

It only took Wells 11 years to deal with whatever it was doing. Well done Wells! See how responsive and efficient the patriotic private sector is compared to the evil, socialist government? 

Note that the CFPB is the federal agency that Republicans in congress hate and want to get rid of. After all, corporations would never do anything naughty, like simply taking away someone’s home or car for no reason. Right? No, wrong!

The rise of corporate power and wealth in the US

This raises some interesting points about how corporations in the US came to escape restrictions on them and empowered to inflict social and environmental damage with impunity. I do not recall this being taught in public schools, but it probably should be.

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Reclaim Democracy! writes:

When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country’s founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.

Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:

• Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
• Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
• Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
• Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
• Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
• Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.

For 100 years after the American Revolution, legislators maintained tight control of the corporate chartering process. Because of widespread public opposition, early legislators granted very few corporate charters, and only after debate. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.

States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved and its assets were divided among shareholders. Citizen authority clauses limited capitalization, debts, land holdings, and sometimes, even profits. They required a company’s accounting books to be turned over to a legislature upon request. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were outlawed. Shareholders had the right to remove directors at will.

But the men running corporations pressed on. Contests over charter were battles to control labor, resources, community rights, and political sovereignty. More and more frequently, corporations were abusing their charters to become conglomerates and trusts. They converted the nation’s resources and treasures into private fortunes, creating factory systems and company towns. Political power began flowing to absentee owners, rather than community-rooted enterprises.

The industrial age forced a nation of farmers to become wage earners, and they became fearful of unemployment–a new fear that corporations quickly learned to exploit. Company towns arose. and blacklists of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights became common. When workers began to organize, industrialists and bankers hired private armies to keep them in line — sometimes by killing key leaders. They bought newspapers to paint businessmen as heroes and shape public opinion. Corporations bought state legislators, then announced legislators were corrupt and said scrutinizing every corporate operation wasted public resources

Government spending during the Civil War brought these corporations fantastic wealth. Corporate executives paid “borers” to infest Congress and state capitals, bribing elected and appointed officials alike. They pried loose an avalanche of government financial largesse. During this time, legislators were persuaded to give corporations limited liability, decreased citizen authority over them, and extended durations of charters.

Attempts were made to keep strong charter laws in place, but with the courts applying legal doctrines that made protection of corporations and corporate property the center of constitutional law, citizen sovereignty was undermined. As corporations grew stronger, government and the courts became easier prey. They freely reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution and transformed common law doctrines.

One of the most severe blows to citizen authority arose out of the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of “corporate personhood,” thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as precedent to hold that a corporation was a “natural person.” (This story was detailed in “The Theft of Human Rights,” a chapter in Thom Hartmann’s Unequal Protection.)

From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional “personhood.” Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these “rights,” corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, judges, and the law.

A United States Congressional committee concluded in 1941, “The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power….”

Some observations & commentary

Notice how power and wealth are persistent. They never stop looking for ways to get more, even if it takes centuries. Power and wealth accumulated by corporations have corrupted government and gained great power over citizens. That power often or usually is not used for the benefit of citizens. Instead, it is used to gain more power and wealth for corporations.

I keep harping here on the importance of keeping eyes on the flow of power when radical right American politicians howl about the tyrannical socialist horrors of business regulations. When those politicians deregulate, power usually flows from government and/or citizens to special interests. Power in the form of consumer protections, civil liberties and freedom from corporate deceit does not tend to flow to citizens. It usually flows away from citizens and/or government. 

Right now, our radical right, brass knuckles capitalist Republican Supreme Court is in the process of arrogating power to itself so it can block government efforts to deal with climate change and give state legislatures the power to turn elections into a non-democratic farce. Power flows away from citizens and to political elites and allied corporations who buy those elites.

Republicans in congress want to completely get rid of federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau because it protects citizens, not corporations. Recent Supreme Court decisions shield corporate political activities behind an impenetrable wall of opacity. That allows for plausible deniability about corporations corrupting government (via campaign contributions, etc.), opposing efforts to deal with climate change, profiting from polluting, and spreading lies in vast propaganda campaigns to deceive the public and politicians. 

And there is this parody of an oil company ad pretending to care about climate change, in the initial ~1:40 of the video:

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Freeze Peach for bringing this article to my attention.