Category Archives: Law

War on women

Posted on by davald

That phrase is included in this morning’s Seattle Times‘ editorial. If you’ve been reading the recent exchanges following my post yesterday on this topic, you’ll appreciate that not everyone supports Sandra Fluke in her attempts to change Georgetown University’s policy on providing contraceptives to its students. My interlocutor accuses me of bias and a failure to question Ms. Fluke’s motives. I’ll offer one more comment before I move on to other topics.

I’m old enough to have witnessed and participated in several political issues, from civil rights and environmental protection to Washington’s propping up authoritarian Central American regimes and wars in Iraq. I’ve demonstrated in some, wrote letters on others. In years past I helped establish and operate a half-dozen or more groups devoted to one cause or another, including educational reform, land use matters, dental care for the poor, and opposition to nuclear weapons. Some time ago I was featured on the front page of the local paper, described as a “citizen activist.”

I mention all this to suggest that for many decades there have been serious people engaged in serious efforts to right terrible wrongs. Among these was, for lack of a better term, feminism, which I took to be a movement to win equal rights, if not also outcomes, for women. Those like the modern-day Rush Limbaugh earned the moniker “sexist, chauvinist pig.” This struggle was long in incubation, and while advocates did not attain all that they had wanted they managed to get significant legislation passed (e.g., the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act) and favorable court rulings (e.g., Roe v. Wade).

So, it strikes me as a big step backward to observe a resurgent denigration of women. While I would expect the reactionary Catholic Church to oppose birth control, despite the fact that almost all Catholic women practice it, I am appalled that there are still so many who would impute ulterior motives, in the case of my interlocutor, and utter contemptible expressions to publicly humiliate a young woman deeply committed to social justice, in the case of Rush Limbaugh—I’m sure just one among others.

Yet, I really shouldn’t be surprised. After six-plus decades on this planet I’ve concluded that America falls far short of being that “city on a hill,” a shining example to the rest of the world. We’ve got deep pockets of nativism, sexism, and racism—along with extreme poverty. That these revanchist attitudes seem to have found a secure place within the modern-day Republican Party should give us pause, in the least, if not great consternation.

For this party is determined to chip away at hard-won gains by people of color, women, labor, and environmental advocates. I certainly hope that there are sufficient numbers of the Rest of Us to resist the chiseling.

Lilly and Sandra

Posted on by davald

Readers of this blog know full well that I have nothing but contempt for the modern GOP, suffused with religious nuts and Tea Party revelers, both generously marinated in bushels of dollars from right-wing billionaires. I firmly believe that the world would be a much better place without Republicans.

But I dream. They are here and they insist on having their way, from your bedroom to the workplace and everywhere in between. Only those with ample means can escape the vicious clutches of narrow-minded ideologues.

Linda Greenhouse stirred up these sentiments most recently, writing in the New York Times about Lilly Ledbetter and Sandra Fluke. Both sought justice and both had been denied, the former by the U.S. Supreme Court, the latter by House Republicans. Ms. Fluke was then publicly debased by that good old boy of bluster and hate, Rush Limbaugh.

In Lilly Ledbetter’s case, it was a mix of old and new: the old concern about equal opportunity and fairness in the workplace given new urgency within the Democratic base by distress at the Supreme Court’s abrupt rightward shift following Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement and her replacement by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. It was Justice Alito who wrote the majority opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber.

Ms. Ledbetter alleged discrimination by her employer, Goodyear. She received lower wages than her male counterparts, in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had established that each instance of discrimination, in her case the regular receipt of her lower paycheck, could be the basis for a discrimination lawsuit. Demonstrating unvarnished sexism, the five conservative members of the Supreme Court said that Ms. Ledbetter’s first paycheck started the 180-day-clock, the period in which a lawsuit must be filed. Of course, that was too many long years in the past. Besides, Ms. Ledbetter was unaware at the time of the discrimination.

Congress ultimately addressed that interpretation, passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which Pres. Obama quickly signed, complete with a photo-op, linked to in Ms. Greenhouse’s essay. From 1964 to 2009 a little bit more justice achieved.

Judging no woman worthy the Republicans have now launched a broadside against Ms. Fluke, a student of Georgetown University, a Catholic institution. She thought that her school administration should provide contraceptives under so-called Obamacare. The House Republicans shut the doors, refusing to hear her testimony. So House Democrats convened an unofficial hearing for the purpose of listening to Ms. Fluke.

This was simply too much for gasbag Limbaugh. Such nastiness issued from his foul mouth that he was eventually forced to issue a very rare public apology, saying that it was nothing personal. Right.

Several sponsors have pulled their financial support for Limbaugh’s show. But I doubt that he has much to worry about. He has legion’s of ditto-head followers who cheer his every wicked utterance, no matter how scurrilous.

Take nothing for granted in America as long as there are Republicans amongst us.

The strange Everett school board

Posted on by davald

Lots of ink has been spilled over the fighting (literal) amongst school board members, with member Jessica Olson playing the instigator—or so it seems. Last night the board took a bizarre step toward further inanity: limiting the review of the district’s superintendent to a committee of three; the board has five members. We may presume that Ms. Olson will not be invited to participate. She said that the 3-1 vote cemented the board’s “laughingstock” reputation, according to the Everett Herald.

For whatever reasons, she has given black marks to Superintendent Gary Cohn. But her review has been in the form of a minority report, which evidently didn’t become part of the record.

Now I don’t know any of the school board members. Nor am I in a position to finger one or more as the cause of the bitter animus between them, although readers of the Herald would likely infer that Olson is chiefly responsible.

But she has a point.

Olson contended the parameters for Cohn’s review should take place in a public meeting.

Having been through such processes as a member of the Snohomish County PUD board, I am quite familiar with the state’s Open Public Meetings Act, which gives deference to the people’s right to know what their public bodies are up to. The act allows for executive-session exemptions (pdf)—evaluating the performance of a public employee being one.

However, and this is where I think Olson has it right, the evaluation criteria are a matter of public record. Only the discussion of whether or not the employee satisfied the criteria belongs in executive session.

I’ve been on contentious boards, for which I was largely responsible. It’s not much fun, certainly. I’m relieved that we PUD commissioners managed to work through our problems—with the help of a professional facilitator. We’re now actually governing. Fancy that.

The stacked deck

Posted on by davald

Robert Kuttner, writing in the American Prospect:

On any given day in Washington, D.C., the city’s hotels teem with civic activity. Trade associations, lobbies, corporations seeking government contracts, lawyers looking to influence agency rules—all form a beehive of action. At last count, there were 12,200 registered lobbyists in Washington, according to opensecrets.org, and that doesn’t include the many thousands of corporate attorneys who are technically not lobbyists. Of the top-spending trade associations or issue organizations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce leads the list with a budget of more than $46 million. Only one quasi-liberal group, the AARP, is even in the top 20. This is the vision of Alexis de Tocqueville made flesh, with one notable difference: Nearly everyone in this associational paradise speaks for the top 1 percent or 2 percent of the income distribution.

Citizens United makes matters worse, as tens of millions of dollars make their way into political campaigns, swamping the voices of the Rest of Us. We could organize, right?

Here’s a dose of irony. According to Kuttner, it is the well-to-do who belong to and actively participate in what de Tocqueville called “associations.” The Rest of Us have become fragmented and disenfranchised. There is no civic organization that works broadly on our behalf.

In their classic 1995 work, Voice and Equality, political scientists Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady demonstrated conclusively that political activity varied by class. Well-off people were more likely to be engaged with associations, more likely to get involved in campaigns and to contact their elected representatives, more likely to make political donations, more likely to vote. The study found that 86 percent of high-income people reported having voted but only 52 percent of low-income people did; 73 percent of high-income people were involved with a political organization, compared to 29 percent of low-income people.

In the 40s and 50s more than a third of all private sector workers were members of a union. Unions provided a much-needed organizing function and a counter-balance, however overmatched, to the forces of greed. Today, less than seven percent of the private work force belongs to a union.

The Catholic Church in America once played an important role in social justice and community organizing. (I know because I was thus involved.) Entire neighborhoods, or ethnic ghettoes if you wish, could rely on fellow parishioners and local churches’ resources to put people in office, facilitate the flow of public goods in their direction, and sustain viable communities. Now the church hierarchy is obsessed with sex, having long ago abandoned the Sermon on the Mount and its implications for the faithful.

The Democratic Party, which used to serve as an organizing vehicle, is in the same Wall Street bed as the Republicans. Since money wins elections, the natural proclivity is to curry favor with those who have it—the Rest of Us be damned.

Kuttner does not despair, however. He concludes:

We cannot restore the world of mutual self-help and local associational vigor that characterized 19th-century America at its best. But there are 21st-century versions, ranging from strong unions in parts of the service sector to Internet-based organizing drives and the use of the Web to revive local associational life.

Vive la Web. Perhaps.

The content of their character

Posted on by davald

Conservatives, as a rule, loathe affirmative action. Their opposition stems in part from their abhorrence of government itself and its intervention in any number of issues, from education to so-called entitlements, though they are hardly reticent about imposing their moral views on people’s bedroom behavior. The more sinister part of their opposition is surely racism; they prefer whiteness against color.

So, it appears that conservatives may get their wish as the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case of Abigail Fisher, who sued the University of Texas for racial discrimination. Since the court had previously allowed for the use of race in a college’s admission selections, the mere fact that the court has placed Ms. Fisher’s case on its docket can mean only one thing: the court will reverse itself. It’s highly unlikely the court would consider the matter only to affirm its previous decision, since refusing the case would have the same effect.

Texas has an unusual admission’s policy. Any high school student graduating in the top ten percent of his or her class can attend the state’s public colleges and universities. Ms. Fisher, who is white, did not. She was therefore placed in a pool in which race is a factor for admissions. But when she was passed over by the University of Texas, she sued, charging that she was denied entrance because of race.

The complexion of the current court is decidedly conservative. It will be even more so since Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself, likely because as Obama’s solicitor general she was involved in the appellate process, according to the New York Times. Moreover, the court’s frequent swing vote belongs to Justice Kennedy, who, as the Times points out, has never voted to uphold an affirmative action policy. The numbers, then, are five against race-based policies and three in favor.

The Times suggests that this case, Fisher v. University of Texas, may have limited effect, even if the court rules in her behalf, which it is expected to do. However, as we learned from the Citizens United case, this court has no compunction about expanding its reach beyond the rather narrow issue at hand. Indeed, its ruling in the latter upended a hundred years of precedent regarding congressional restrictions on campaign finance.

It was Martin Luther King’s dream that we would eventually become a society that judged people by the “content of their character” rather than on the “color of their skin.” Conservatives, including those on the Supreme Court, have turned round that message, using it to preserve preferential treatment of white citizens.

Affirmative action policies were designed to compensate for generations of racial oppression, whites over people of color. The policy makers assumed that exclusive reliance on merit (e.g., GPA, SAT scores) would effectively reduce opportunities for non-white races. Implicit in this assumption was that years of oppression had denied to people of color those conditions that nurtured or enhanced childhood learning, conditions enjoyed almost exclusively by whites.* By taking affirmative action to redress race-based inequities, policy makers and courts hoped to diversify post-academic achievement.

With the court’s expected decision on Fisher v. University of Texas, admission policies at most, if not all, levels will be devoid of racial considerations. Color will no longer matter, thus perverting Dr. King’s dream.

____________

*  It does not follow that no white children suffer from impoverished conditions that prevent above-average academic performance. Indeed, in absolute numbers, more Caucasians live in poverty than do African Americans or Latinos.

Some wise words from a Catholic philosopher

Posted on by davald

The mistake of the Obama administration — and of almost everyone debating its decision — was to accept the bishops’ claim that their position on birth control expresses an authoritative “teaching of the church.”  (Of course, the administration may be right in thinking that the bishops need placating because they can cause them considerable political trouble.)  The bishops’ claim to authority in this matter has been undermined because Catholics have decisively rejected it. The immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church.  Pope Paul VI meant his 1968 encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” to settle the issue in the manner of the famous tag, “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.”  In fact the issue has been settled by the voice of the Catholic people.

— Gary Gutting, writing for the New York Times

Knock yourself out

Posted on by davald

I didn’t know that there was an Occupy the SEC out there, but I’m glad there is. These folks have obviously gotten off their intellectual butts to read the find print then offer thoughtful comments. This one is on the Volcker rule.

If you’ve got a little time on your hands, read through this and let us know what you think. One excerpt:

The United States aspires to democracy, but no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

Amen, of course.

Bogus numbers

Posted on by davald

Bill Snyder, writing for Infoworld, sharply rebukes advocates of SOPA and PIPA for their contrived numbers regarding job loss and dollar hits to the economy. Microsoft is notoriously busy in Congress and elsewhere shouting about piracy. Snyder:

“The software industry is being robbed blind,” said Business Software Alliance CEO Robert Holleyman. “Nearly $59 billion worth of products were stolen last year (2010) — and the rates of theft are completely out of control in the world’s fastest-growing markets,” it reported in a study. The BSA, which is led by Microsoft, was a leading advocate for SOPA and PIPA. By way of comparison, Microsoft’s revenue for that year was $62 billion. (Microsoft, by the way, spent $7.34 million on lobbying efforts last year, according to United States Senate Office of Public Records.)

Readers may have noticed that I had displayed a banner in the upper right corner of my site for a few days in protest of these anti-piracy proposals (SOPA and PIPA). The Internet chatter and Wikipedia’s self-blocking of its site sent a message. Congress has put these two measures on the back burner.

But Microsoft and others have deep pockets. So I don’t think these initiatives are gone for good.

If they return, though, web-shit will hit the fan again, and again, and again.

Love the Internet.

This makes me feel better

Posted on by davald

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, said the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which regulates slaughterhouses, pre-empted the California law, which requires the immediate euthanasia of “downer” animals and bars their slaughter or sale.

The state law was enacted in response to undercover videos released in 2008 by the Humane Society of the United States. They showed, as Justice Kagan put it, “workers at a slaughterhouse in California dragging, kicking and electroshocking sick and disabled cows in an effort to move them.”

 

— New York Times

 

By the way, the federal law was passed in 1906.