Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Saturday, June 29, 2024

Biden Debacle Update

6/29/24

Some important information has emerged since the debate fiasco. The following are excerpts from 2 articles. One is from The Wall St. Journal, the other from The Intercept.  In the latter, Akela Lacy asks, "Can Anything Stop the Democratic National Convention from being a Biden Coronation?" She writes:

People have been talking behind closed doors about President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline for the past several years. After the Wall Street Journal published a story earlier this month raising concerns about Biden’s health, Democrats slammed the article, deflected the criticism, and characterized it as a hit piece. But after his performance in the first presidential debate on Thursday night, party operatives were no longer able to hide the problem. 

Now, as Democrats scramble to assess the damage, the question has turned to how – or if – the party will address Biden’s candidacy crisis at the Democratic National Convention in August.


“They’ve just been trying to skate to the general election with as minimal exposure as possible to the public. And now it’s blown up on them,” said Thomas Kennedy, a former delegate to the Democratic National Committee who resigned in January over Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. “The delegates knew, the electeds knew, the donors knew, obviously the staffers know,” he said. “Everybody knew.

Efforts to raise concerns within the DNC about Biden’s health have been definitively shut down for years, Kennedy said. One DNC member who suggested that another candidate should run in 2024 said he was attacked by other members and faced with a vote to remove him from the committee. “That’s the sort of pushback that any sort of — not just dissent, but any sort of mentioning of this topic — has been happening for two years,” Kennedy said. 

Biden’s campaign, for its part, made clear on Friday that he has no intention of backing down. Asked about his debate performance, campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt emphasized that Biden would not be stepping down and pointed to the campaign’s $14 million fundraising haul after the debate and a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday. “He just gave a very forceful speech at a rally in NC with a fired up crowd,” Hitt wrote to The Intercept. In comments made on Air Force One on Friday afternoon, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler doubled down: “Joe Biden is the nominee,” Tyler said

Current and former delegates told The Intercept there is little chance that the DNC would change course. The convention, the delegates said, would likely follow the same pro forma processes that have sidelined reform efforts and with them, the party’s progressive wing. The convention has already moved the vote for the presidential nomination online, weeks before the actual convention is held in person in Chicago.

There are mechanisms to allow for an open convention to nominate another candidate, but the party has avoided that option as a last resort and it would be too late at this point, said Nadia Ahmad, a DNC member in Florida. Biden would have to decide to step aside on his own accord. Or, delegates would have to organize themselves quickly to commit to another candidate. Given that the nomination vote will take place ahead of the convention, Ahmad said that any open nomination process would have to take place online too, which is unlikely.

“There’s definitely an appetite for what I would call the combustion factor,” Ahmad said. “People are willing to burn things down to maybe get them to work. That’s where you see the rise of a third party.” 

The convention has long stopped serving as a place for democratic decision-making, she added. “The Democratic Party is more invested in trying to maintain control than it is in trying to win an election in November.”

Another DNC member who requested anonymity to avoid reprisal said the debate only emphasized what progressives have been saying about the DNC in recent cycles. “Unless Biden withdraws, the convention is a stage managed coronation.” 

Kennedy noted that the days of action-packed political conventions are far behind us. “These are not the conventions of 1968 or 1972 that we read about,” he said. “They’re just highly choreographed top-down affairs where there’s not a lot of room for political maneuvering or opposing sides, or anything that strays away from the establishment. And the delegates are carefully chosen and funneled in a way that they’re part of the party machinery and hackery.” 

Days before the debate, the New York Times published a story about how the president was battling “misleading videos” showing his age-related deterioration. Very quickly into the debate on Thursday evening, Biden’s campaign was battling on another front: how to stop the bleeding as coverage swirled about how the performance would affect his chances at winning the November election. During a routine, post-debate call with surrogates last night, campaign staff acknowledged that the debate was rocky, according to a source who attended. By the next day, the party apparatus was back to normal messaging.

***

The WSJ article, "The World Saw Biden Deteriorating. Democrats Ignored the Warnings." , paints a picture of mounting apprehension about Biden's fitness for office both domestically and internationally-- esp. in recent months. It suggests that the Democratic Party's decision to overlook these concerns will have significant consequences not only for the upcoming election, but also global politics. 

Many European officials expressed worries about Biden's focus and stamina prior to the recent presidential debate. These concerns were echoed by some Democrats whose warnings went unheeded by top WH officials who instead have engaged in attempts to control all discourse around Biden's inability to function normally. Here are some excerpts-- with some examples highlighted-- from the long article which is behind a paywall.

European officials had already been expressing worries in private about Biden’s focus and stamina before Thursday’s debate, with some senior diplomats saying they had tracked a noticeable deterioration in the president’s faculties in meetings since last summer. There were real doubts about how Biden could successfully manage a second term, but one senior European diplomat said U.S. administration officials in private discussions denied there was any problem.

The White House disputed the characterization that Biden has stumbled on the world stage. “Foreign leaders see Joe Biden up close and personal,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson. “They know who they are dealing with, how effective he has been, and how important his leadership is on the world stage.”

Diplomats described Biden’s performance at the Group of Seven summit in Italy in mid-June as mixed, with Biden appearing physically frailer than in the past but alert in many of the most important discussions.

Biden missed the summit’s dinner party in a medieval castle, an off-camera and less- scripted part of the summit in which leaders often exchange views more candidly. He was the only G-7 leader not to attend the meal; the White House told reporters in advance he wouldn’t be there because it would be a “jam-packed two days” of meetings. Biden instead held an event with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and had a news conference.

The next day, Biden followed through on his plans to forgo a Swiss peace summit on Ukraine to attend a California fundraiser instead, frustrating Ukrainian officials who had organized the conference in Switzerland directly after the G-7 in the hope that Biden would come from Italy. 

Top White House officials disputed any portrait of a president slipping during his European trip, which included 12-hour days chock-full of meetings. “He didn’t miss a beat,” said Daleep Singh, the deputy national security adviser for international economics who participated in meetings with Biden. Singh said that there has been no change to the “forceful and substantive rigor” that Biden brings to meetings with foreign leaders....

“The reading in Europe is that this has been an unmitigated disaster,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome and a former adviser to the EU’s foreign-affairs chiefs, referring to Biden’s attempts to reassure voters worried about his age. European officials and prominent commentators, she added, “have been talking about it. It’s something that has been known, always, that his age is his main Achilles’ heel.”

In the hours after Thursday’s debate, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters that the Democrats have a problem.

“I was afraid of this. It was to be expected that in a direct confrontation, in a debate, it would not be easy for the president,” said Tusk, who has known Biden for years. Asked what he thought of proposals to replace Biden with another candidate, he said: “They definitely have a problem. The reactions have been unambiguous.”

Norbert Röttgen, a senior lawmaker in Germany’s center-right main opposition party and the former chair of its parliament’s foreign-affairs committee, said on X: “The Democrats must switch horses now.” Slovenian former Prime Minister Janez Janša said he bet months ago that Biden would no longer be on the ballot in November. 

When Biden was in France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day in June, he struggled. During a bilateral meeting in Paris with Zelensky, Biden spoke so softly that reporters brought in to document the meeting between the two men couldn’t initially hear the American president. Zelensky, a non-native English speaker, could be heard clearly.

During the brief exchange, Biden flubbed when explaining what the Ukrainians would do with a new tranche of $225 million in funds that the U.S. was sending. Biden told Zelensky that money was “to help you reconstruct the electric grid.” Officials traveling with the president explained that the money was actually a series of munitions including air defenses that could protect the electric grid, among other targets, and not for rebuilding the electric grid.

Back in Washington for a brief time between his trips to France and Italy, Biden appeared at a Juneteenth concert at the South Lawn. Video footage of the event showed him clapping noticeably out of time to the music. He needed assistance from the person seated next to him when it was time for him to get up. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked about his awkward behavior at the event, dismissed the question. “That is just not a health issue,” she said.

[After describing Jill Biden as a "strong supporter of her husband's decision to run" the article continues]Biden’s top aides insist publicly and around various Washington dining room tables that the president is mentally sharp. As recently as May, one aide in frequent contact with the president insisted that there has been absolutely no change in his performance. And, when confronted with evidence that Biden is deteriorating, the White House pushes back hard, including when The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Biden showed signs of slipping in negotiations with congressional leaders. In February, before the Hur report was released on the probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents, White House lawyers sought to strip references about Biden’s memory from the report. The White House team of communications officials labeled Hur’s comments on Biden’s memory as “gratuitous” as they expressed relief that he wasn’t recommending criminal charges against Biden.

The WSJ then turns to the complaints and concerns of Biden donors, many of whom saw him fumbling and flubbing his lines during fundraisers and meeetings. 

At a September 2023 fundraiser in New York, Biden retold the same anecdote twice—leaving at least one attendee shaken and worried about his age. In February, Biden used a teleprompter at a fundraiser in Los Angeles, and questions were screened in advance, according to a person familiar with the matter—frustrating some donors...

During a May fundraiser in Washington state, Biden appeared to lose his train of thought as he talked about Israel and at one point paused for five seconds before continuing, according to a pool report from a journalist who attended. Biden said: “The cease-fire would begin tomorrow. It all has to do…you know, we’ve not…anyway, I guess I shouldn’t get into all this about Israel but…”

Some major Democratic donors have sat this race out, believing that the ticket might change or that Biden is too old, according to two people familiar with Biden’s fundraising operation. So far the money has come in at such a fast clip that those naysayers have been ignored.

These articles, and other emerging information indicate a crisis not only within the Biden election campaign, the DNC, the down-ticket elections which will take a hit along with the reputation and credibility of the party, but also the confidence of political actors on the world stage. Though the WSJ focused on the EU and its member states, it is doubtful that other major states in the world are not similarly shaken by the state of affairs described above. With urgent policy decisions being made daily in multiple regions of the world with cascading effects of great magnitude, any already-existing doubts and fears within the international community will almost certainly be greatly accentuated by the fact that all of this has now exploded into public view and consciousness in US mainstream media. The curtain has been pulled back. Things have been said and seen that cannot be unsaid and unseen. How this will affect policies such as those concerning Israel, Ukraine and China-- just to take 3 obvious examples-- is not yet clear. But it is, I think, fair to say that not only American domestic politics, but International Relations will be dangerously offset by the live-streaming trainwreck that is the Biden Administration in this historic moment. We're all in uncharted waters now. 

***

Here is a transcript of what Biden said Thursday night when asked a simple question on on of his strong points relative to Trump-- i.e. abortion.

"President Biden?"

"It's a terrible thing, what you've done.

The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional scholars supported Roe when it was decided, supported Roe. And that was--that's-- this idea that they were all against it is just ridiculous. 

And this is the guy who says the states should be able to have it. We're (ph) in a state where in six weeks you don't even know if you're pregnant or not, but you cannot see the doctor and have your-- and have him decide on what your circumstances are, whether you need help.

The idea that states are going to do this is a little like saying  we're going to turn civil rights back to the states. Let each state have a different rule.

Look, there's so many young women who have been--including a young woman who was just murdered and he-- he went to the funeral. The idea that she was murdered by a-- by--by an immigrant coming in, and they talked about that. But here's the deal, there's a lot of young women who are being raped by their-- by their in-laws, by their-- by their spouses, brothers and sisters, by--just-- it's just--it's just ridiculous. And they can do nothing about it. 

And they tried to arrest them when they crossed state lines.

Bash: Thank You.

(Source: Politco's  Meredith McGraw post of final CNN transcript)

 

Friday, June 28, 2024

Supreme Court finds a route to leniency for some Jan. 6 traitors

The WaPo writes (not paywalled) about another ding on democracy (and the rule of law):
Justices strike obstruction charge for Jan. 6 rioter, likely impacting others

Hundreds have been charged with felony obstruction, among other counts, for their role in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol

Federal prosecutors improperly charged a Jan. 6 defendant with obstruction, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday, a decision that will likely upend many cases against rioters who disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election and which Donald Trump’s legal team may use to try to whittle down one of his criminal cases.

After the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, federal prosecutors charged more than 350 participants in the pro-Trump mob with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding. The charge carries a 20-year maximum penalty and is part of a law enacted after the exposure of massive fraud and shredding of documents during the collapse of the energy giant Enron.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said prosecutors’ broad reading of the statute gives them too much discretion to seek a 20-year maximum sentence "for acts Congress saw fit to punish only with far shorter terms of imprisonment.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was disappointed with the ruling but insisted it was not a body blow to the overall investigation and prosecution of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.  
“The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision,” he added, noting that not a single Jan. 6 defendant was charged solely with the crime at issue in the Fischer case. “For the cases affected by today’s decision, the Department will take appropriate steps to comply with the Court’s ruling.”
What overall impact this will have is not clear. The dissent by Amy Coney Barrett — joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — said the court’s reading of the obstruction statute is too limited and requires the majority to do “textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach” of the law. Narrowing the reach of the law for radical right authoritarians is to be expected for this radical Republican court. 

Thoughts about the MEDIA COVERAGE of the Biden-Trump Debate

 

For those who watched post-debate responses from top democrats and pundits in real time last night, there was a near-total consensus that Biden is incapable of pulling this off. I'm not talking about Republican responses now. Nor am I referring only to the chattering class. I'm not talking about Biden's fairweather friends here, but those who have been his biggest champions, and claim to "love" him. Starting at the very Biden-friendly NYT (which almost never has a mean word for Biden), we find 2 of Biden's friends and favorite columnists begging him to drop out now. Some of these pieces read like eulogies.

Nicholas Kristof writes:

President Biden is a good man who capped a long career in public service with a successful presidential term. But I hope he reviews his debate performance Thursday evening and withdraws from the race, throwing the choice of a Democratic nominee to the convention in August....

[Notably skipping over the usual next step which is discussing the VP at such a time he continues]There isn’t time to hold new primaries, but he could throw the choice of a successor to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Democratic Party has some prominent figures who I think would be in a good position to defeat Trump in November, among them Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce. And there are many others.

My phone has been blowing up with texts from people saying, as one put it: “Dear God. What are we going to do?” Another, also a fan of Biden, texted: “It’s imperative we change horses.” But Democrats have been reluctant to say this out loud and undermine Biden. So it will be up to Joe and Jill Biden to make this choice themselves.

This will be a wrenching choice. But, Mr. President, one way you can serve your country in 2024 is by announcing your retirement and calling on delegates to replace you, for that is the safest course for our nation. https://www.nytimes.com/202...


In a similar vein, Biden's close personal friend, Thomas Friedman wrote a column this AM entitled "Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race." The article opens like this:

I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep. I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime, precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.

The Biden family and political team must gather quickly and have the hardest of conversations with the president, a conversation of love and clarity and resolve. To give America the greatest shot possible of deterring the Trump threat in November, the president has to come forward and declare that he will not be running for re-election and is releasing all of his delegates for the Democratic National Convention.....

Biden has been a friend of mine since we traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan together after Sept. 11, 2001, when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so I say all of the above with great sadness
.

[In his conclusion, Friedman sounds more honest than those pretending Biden's family, staff and handlers were really "shocked" and "surprised" last night-- they've been denying leaked warnings from off record Democratic insiders for months. He concludes:]I had been ready to give Biden the benefit of the doubt up to now, because during the times I engaged with him one on one, I found him up to the job. He clearly is not any longer. His family and his staff had to have known that. They have been holed up at Camp David preparing for this momentous debate for days now. If that is the best performance they could summon from him, it’s time for him to keep the dignity he deserves and leave the stage at the end of this term. https://www.nytimes.com/202...

Morning Joe is--famously--Biden's favorite show. He watches it whenever possible. Joe Scarborough, a Biden confidante and friend, spoke poignantly and tactfully as possible on the matter. Among other things, he said that based on what he saw, Donald Trump will win "unless things change." After praising Biden's first term to the high heavens, he matter-of-factly posed the question, "If [Biden] was a CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America, keep him on as CEO?” Then asking if it was time for top Dems to tell him he needs to bow out, he said after praising Biden more, “These are hard questions, but the fact is, friends, failure is just not an option in 2024.”

Over at CNN, top establishment voices rose to urgent fever pitch as CNN Chief National Correspondent, John King kicked off the post-debate discussion sounding utterly shocked. Foregoing niceties he shot straight to his point:

Anderson, this was a game changing debate Right now as we speak there is a deep, wide and very aggressive panic in the Democratic party. It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now. It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers. They think the president's performance was dismal, will hurt other people in the party down the ticket, and they're having conversations what they should do about it.


Sitting at that CNN roundtable were heavyweights, and old Biden friends like former chief Obama advisor and strategist, David Axelrod, and former Biden communications director, Kate Beddingfield. Both agreed with King's assessment. "I can't disagree with anything I just heard," Axelrod said. Then former Obama advisor and Biden confidante, Van Jones spoke. He claimed to be in great "pain" after watching Biden's "performance" saying:

That was painful. I love Joe Biden. I worked for Joe Biden. He didn’t do well at all. He did not do well at all!

I love that guy. That’s a good man. He loves his country. He’s doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight to restore the confidence of the country and of the base. And he failed to do that.”

We’re still far from our convention and there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward. But that was not what we needed from Joe Biden and it’s personally painful for a lot of people. It’s not just panic, it’s the pain of what we saw tonight. (fr. CNN transcript of post-debate roundtable)

Erin Burnett, who recently interviewed the president with soft-ball questions (and he did not look very good there!) behaved frantically, raising her voice and demanding an answer to the question: "HOW could he be so obviously unprepared. They grilled him for days, he knew all the questions that were going to be asked [I wondered if she meant that literally or not] and THIS is the best he could do?!?"

Mike Wallace answered the question, "The question answers itself, he did the best he is capable of doing. He was incapable tonight, on the biggest of stages, that he sought. And with all of that preparation, he was incapable of doing better than he was, and you can’t come back from that,” Wallace answered Burnett.

When Rachel Maddow, at Biden-friendly MSNBC, asked Obama's former campaign manager, David Plouffe how he read the reportedly panicky signals from the "donor class," Plouffe didn't waste words stating that, "It's kind of a DEFCON 1 moment."

Then he made a strange transition saying, "At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what people like me say. It matters what the voters say now." While that interesting observation has some truth, all these top insiders (like Plouffe, Axelrod, Van Jones, Scarborough, Friedman, Kristof to say nothing of the pundits like John King, Erin Burnett, Nicole Wallace et al.) surely know that these cutting soundbites ("DEFCON 1 moment;" "painful panic;" "made me weep;" a" CEO would get fired if he acted like Biden did;" etc. etc. )-- that all these quotes from his most ardent supporters and friends HAVE A SIGNIFICANT INFLUENCE ON WHAT VOTERS THINK.

Biden's fans turn to media pundits like Joe Scarborough,Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow. I already quoted Scarborough. Here's a summary of the first 2 minutes of reaction over art NBC involving an opening exchange between Nicole Wallace and Rachel Maddow as quoted in a Variety article on the post-debate coverage:

In the first minute of post-debate coverage, Maddow cited Biden’s weak voice and “halting delivery” and said it must have “put a shock into the campaign.” In the second minute, Nicole Wallace reported that Democratic insiders were having “frank conversations.” Maddow asked her: What do you mean? The “conversations range from whether he should be in this race tomorrow morning, to what was wrong with him,” Wallace said.

Variety attributed these cutting remarks to admirable "honesty." But are these instant reactions to the debate across multiple platforms in real time consistent with the behavior of top Dems that WANT to convince voters that Biden is the man for the job?

Plouffe is right that if all the voters who tuned in and heard all the after-debate spin somehow act like Biden is just fine now, then yes, Biden might recover. But if he wants them to feel encouraged, would such an experienced campaign manager sit there on national TV and earnestly say to these potential voters that they've just witnessed a "DEFCON 1 Moment?"

Think about it. These are pros. They are friends, former advisors, strategists, confidantes and Biden proponents we're talking about. Surely they have to know that they have now provided a hefty supply of toxic soundbites to last the Trump campaign from now to the election. The clips of Trump lost in mid-sentence are already viral. But what a stockpile of quotes from top Democrats we will probably see coming from the other side.Does anyone else feel that maybe all these folks aren't quite as "surprised" and "shocked" as they act? Some of this feels stage-managed to me.

Friedman's column (see above) intimates something like this when he writes that family and insiders "had to know" this would happen. I don't know if Friedman was really out of the loop or not as he states when saying he was unprepared for what he saw; and that it made him weep. But as bad as Biden's "performance" was, the hours worth of high profile freakouts on display last night, and in the morning papers etc. will not simply fade into the thin air. These damning analyses, soundbites, pleas for Biden to step down will be dispensed liberally by Team Trump.

Something about all of this seems very odd. Was this trainwreck really so spontaneous and shocking to all the insiders as we're asked to believe? Maybe. I'm left with a lot of questions and nagging doubts, though. We may never know. What is certain is that as bad as the debate itself was, it very quickly became a "shocking trainwreck" according to the very people paid to sell Biden to the public. And while it seems Biden won't be talked out of the run, the damage that has been done will probably effect not only Biden's chances, but the credibility of the Democratic Party which refused all our pleas to run real primaries, and now openly talk about foisting potential "Biden replacements" on all of us. One must bear in mind that we're being told all of this is being done to "protect democracy." But appointing a replacement at the 11th hour without a primary does not sound very democratic. Nor do I think his performance, or his "inability to run effectively" was a top-secret. There were lots of inside Dems who spoke to various media outlets off the record months ago, including a devastating expose (NOT opinion piece) in the WSJ that I read. I also read a transcript of a recent Time interview, where accompanied by several aids, and with notes, Biden's words in text form sometimes defied grammar and logic.

I'm left with lots of nagging doubts and unanswered questions.

(Note: This was originally written as a comment on another page here. It has not been edited. Sorry for any typos or errors)

Supreme Court attacks the federal government: Chevron defense is overruled

In a gigantic blow to the federal government's ability to regulate anything, the USSC has completely overruled the Chevron defense. This opens the door to further erosion of democracy and the rule of law. The Chevron defense allowed federal agencies to write regulations based on sloppy, often incoherent laws that congress writes and passes. Those agencies are empowered to enforce the regulations they write. The idea is that since congress is incompetent and coward, federal agencies are empowered to try to translate congressional slop into coherent law. For decades, corporations and businesses have hated this system because it is so hard to corrupt. Congress is much easier to corrupt.

Live Updates: Supreme Court Overrules Chevron Doctrine, 
Imperiling an Array of Federal Rules

The foundational 1984 decision required courts to defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes, underpinning regulations on health care, safety and the environment

The Supreme Court swept aside a longstanding legal precedent on Friday, reducing the power of executive agencies and endangering countless regulations by transferring power from the executive branch to Congress and the courts. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that “agencies have no special competence” and that judges should determine the meaning of federal laws.

The precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, is one of the most cited in American law, underpinning 70 Supreme Court decisions and roughly 17,000 in the lower courts. Critics of regulatory authority immediately hailed the decision, suggesting it could open new avenues to challenge federal rules in areas ranging from abortion pills to the environment.
The importance of this case is hard to overstate. The damage it will cause is catastrophic. Note Roberts' assertion that “agencies have no special competence” and that judges should determine the meaning of federal laws. That is a full-blown lie. An outrageous lie. The whole point of federal agencies is to acquire special expertise that neither judges nor congress has. That is what professional bureaucrats are for. 

Note that this constitutes a gigantic power transfer from congress and federal agencies to the USSC. Federal judges are even less qualified than congress to have the expertise to regulate complex industries.

This is a freaking catastrophe. The plutocrats are celebrating by guzzling champagne and unleashing their attorneys to attack every federal regulation that the Chevron defense previously protected. The USS has betrayed us and the environment. The radical authoritarian Republicans on the bench sold us out to kleptocratic plutocracy.

We are now royally fucked and totally defenseless. 


Context

Radical right former US senator Ben Sasse (R-NE)
commenting on congressional slop and cowardice, 
and the bitterness of Supreme Court nominations


Sasse: “. . . . . the people don't have a way to fire the bureaucrats. What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws. What we mostly decide to do is to give permission to the secretary or the administrator of bureaucracy X, Y or Z to make law-like regulations. That’s mostly what we do here. We go home and we pretend we make laws. No we don’t. We write giant pieces of legislation, 1200 pages, 1500 pages long, that people haven’t read, filled with all these terms that are undefined, and say to secretary of such and such [federal agency] that he shall promulgate rules that do the rest of our dang jobs. That’s why there are so many fights about the executive branch and the judiciary, because this body rarely finishes its work. [joking] And, the House is even worse.”

Well now, the court has taken the job of rule writing away from from both congress and federal agencies and given it to itself. We are so very fucked.

More dismal context from the NYT article:

Overturning Chevron is just the latest in a series of ringing blows the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed conservative bloc has delivered to the ability of regulatory agencies to impose rules on powerful business interests, advancing a long-standing goal of the conservative legal movement and the donors who have funded its rise. Here are some previous steps:

Charlie Savage
24 minutes ago

Just yesterday, the majority struck down the ability of agencies to enforce their rules via in-house tribunals before technical-expert administrative judges. Instead, it ruled, agencies must sue accused malefactors in federal court before juries.

Charlie Savage
24 minutes ago

In recent years, the Republican majority has also made it easier to sue agencies and get their rules struck down, including by advancing the so-called major questions doctrine. Under that idea, courts should nullify economically significant regulations if judges decided Congress was not clear enough in authorizing them. Advancing and entrenching that idea, the court has struck down an E.P.A. rule aimed at limiting carbon pollution from power plants, and barred the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from telling large employers they must either have their workers vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus or have them undergo frequent testing.

The Supreme Court directly attacks honest governance and democracy

Various sources are reporting that about a USSC decision that, Snyder v. United States, as far as I can tell, has legalized bribery of government officials at least at the state level. In my opinion, this constitutes what amounts to a lethal blow to democracy and honest governance in the states. (I don't know if this applies to the federal government) It opens the door and paves the path for further progress of authoritarian kleptocracy to obliterate what is left of our democracy and honest governance. Vox reports:
On a 6-3 party-line vote, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that state officials may accept “gratuities” from people who wish to reward them for their official actions, despite a federal anti-corruption statute that appears to ban such rewards.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion in Snyder v. United States for the Court’s Republican-appointed majority. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent on behalf of the Court’s three Democratic appointees.

Snyder turns on a distinction between “bribes” and “gratuities.” As Kavanaugh writes, “bribes are payments made or agreed to before an official act in order to influence the official with respect to that future official act.” Gratuities, by contrast, “are typically payments made to an official after an official act as a token of appreciation.”  
It’s also notable that neither Justice Clarence Thomas nor Justice Samuel Alito, both of whom have accepted expensive gifts from politically active Republican billionaires, recused themselves from the case. Thomas and Alito both joined Kavanaugh’s opinion reading the anti-corruption statute narrowly.
It does not take a genius to see the massive hole in corruption laws that this decision has made. Bribery is now a gratuity, not bribery. In this decision, the USSC made bribery legal unless the briber or bribe taker explicitly writes down or is recorded saying “I’m taking/offering a bribe to do X in the future.” Otherwise it’s not corruption. This decision knowingly and purposefully enables vast corruption by ignoring how corruption works. In my opinion, this is the most insane shit possible. It basically makes corruption non-prosecutable.


The poison here
Clarence Thomas commented on at least one occasion, was that there is an constitutional absolute right of people and corporations to (i) spend unlimited amounts of money on politicians, judges or anything else, and (ii) that right includes the right do spend the cash in absolute secrecy. This decision in Snyder is the embodiment of Thomas' sentiment. Perplexity comments:
Clarence Thomas argued for a right to anonymous political spending in his concurring opinion in the 2010 Citizens United case. Specifically:
  • In his concurring opinion in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, Thomas pushed to invalidate all political spending disclosure laws, insisting that donors have a constitutional right to anonymously influence politics with unlimited amounts of cash.
  • Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion: "This court should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements". He argued that donors could face retaliation and "ruined careers" when they disclose their political spending.
  • Thomas contended that there exists an "established right to anonymous speech" and that transparency requirements enable private citizens and officials to implement strategies against "peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights".
I think that what Thomas articulated is where this is ultimately going to go.



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