'This is absurd': A legal expert unpacks the hidden agenda behind the Supreme Court's 'pernicious' decision ​

John Stoehr
January 14, 2022

Chief Justice John Roberts (screengrab)

Normal people don’t pay much attention to the United States Supreme Court. I don’t know why. Here’s nine people who tell us what the law is. They tell us what the law is even if their reasoning for it is trash.

Such is the case with the court’s latest ruling. The six Republican justices could have said to themselves, “Gee, the pandemic is bad. It’s killing a lot of people. Maybe we shouldn’t second guess the people who know what they’re talking about when it comes to public health.”

Nah.

The court instead decided to second guess the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The White House had tried to implement the president’s vaccine-or-test mandate via OSHA’s statutory authority to regulate workplace safety. The mandate would have affected employers with over 100 workers, or about 100 million people.

The Republicans justices make-believed they were public health experts. The covid, though it continues to rage through the workplace, isn’t an occupational hazard, they said. Why? It exists, like other hazards in life, outside the workplace. Therefore, OSHA doesn’t have the statutory authority the Biden administration says it has.

This is stupid, according to Josh Chafetz, professor of law at Georgetown and author of Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers. (“Stupid” wasn’t his word, though.) Air exists outside the workplace. So does water. Yet OSHA regulates them. This is what happens when justices make-believe.

It gets worse.

The justices said they were restoring power to Congress, but Josh said nuh-uh. That’s bad faith. What they are really trying to do is dismantle the administrative state. To do that, Republican justices invented out of thin air something called the “major questions doctrine.”

It’s complicated. Josh explained in our chat. The long and short of it, though, is that the court’s Republicans figured out a way to tear down what they don’t like while never appearing to have torn down anything.

The result is a court that’s okie-dokie with mass death while being hostile toward a government trying to prevent more mass death.

The ruling was about the authority of OSHA. Why did the conservatives say it does not have authority over workplace safety?

Their opinion basically hinged on two reasons – one absurd and one pernicious. The absurd one is best summed up in this sentence from the opinion: "Although COVID–19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most. COVID–19 can and does spread at home, in schools, during sporting events, and everywhere else that people gather."

In other words, the majority said that OSHA is designed to regulate things that are unique to workplaces, and since Covid exists everywhere in society, it isn't unique to workplaces.

This is absurd for a couple of reasons.

First, it's not anywhere in the statutory language. The statute gives OSHA the authority to set "occupational safety and health standards." It doesn't say that the dangers against which OSHA can protect have to exist only in occupational environments – it simply says that OSHA can regulate them when they exist in such environments.

And that brings us to the second reason, that it's absurd: Lots of stuff OSHA regulates exists outside of workplaces. OSHA can regulate for workplace fire safety, even though fires burn down houses and churches and other places, too. OSHA can regulate for workplace air quality, even though air pollution exists on the streets, too.

The second, pernicious basis of the opinion is what is called the "major questions doctrine" in administrative law.


Under most circumstances, when an agency regulates pursuant to statutory authorization, the courts will defer to that agency's understanding of the law, so long as that understanding is reasonable. (This is called "Chevron deference," named for a 1984 case.)

The "major questions doctrine" is a carveout to this regime that basically says, "We won't defer to agencies when the agency has taken it upon itself to decide a 'major question.'"


This is pernicious because what counts as a "major question" is entirely in the eye of the observer, and is a post-hoc determination made by the court.

Which means that, although the Court claims the “major questions doctrine" is Congress-empowering, it just empowers the justices who decide in the moment whether they think a particular question is "major" or not. So, here, they decide that the vaccinate-or-test mandate is "major" and therefore that OSHA gets no deference.

So they say they are respecting Congress but not really?

Exactly. They say this is all about returning power to Congress. (In effect, they're saying, “Surely if Congress meant to allow the agency to address such a major question, it would have said so explicitly in statutory text.”)

But Congress had no way of knowing when it wrote the statute (a) precisely what issues would arise or (b) whether the justices would decide those issues were "major" (and therefore outside the normal deference regime) or not.

So this isn't actually about respecting Congress's wishes – after all, Congress chose to write broad language against the backdrop of a generally applicable deference regime.


Instead, it's about the Republican justices inventing a new doctrine that allows them to impose deregulatory outcomes whenever they want to under the flag of empowering Congress.

Clarence Thomas seemed to underscore this point. He said Congress did not “expressly authorize" vaccine requirements. The thinking here seems to be that if Congress does not write laws in granular detail, no agency has any authority. Am I onto something?

That's Thomas writing in dissent in the other case, the one about healthcare workers specifically. He says that the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services don’t specifically have that authority. That ties into a deep anti-administrativism that runs throughout Thomas's jurisprudence, and increasingly in that of many of his colleagues as well.

This would also require Congress to be as nimble, informed and experienced about, say, public health policy as the public servants whose job is public health policy. That seems absurd.

Indeed! Again, what looks like deference to Congress is in fact cover for a deregulatory regime, because these judges know full well that this is not how legislatures are set up to work in the modern world.

Deregulation with the outcome being increased profits is one thing. Deregulation with the outcome being mass death is another. Before this pandemic is over, 1 million Americans will be dead.

Yep. And the Republican justices just made the policy choice to allow many more to die.

This goes back to the subjectivity of what counts as a "major question."

To my mind, getting vaccinated is a minor inconvenience at most. Getting tested is also a minor inconvenience. Getting to choose whether to be vaccinated or tested weekly is even more minor.

But the majority describes them as "major," so suddenly they're overturning OSHA's decision and creating a situation that will kill more people.

Can we say in fairness that some of the justices are giving credence to anti-vax views?

Yes, I think that's fair. They're all vaccinated and boosted, of course, as are so many elites of all types who are playing footsie with anti-vaxxers.

But they're definitely giving support to the anti-vax movement with both the decision and also with some of the language.

I'll also note that they describe it as a vaccine mandate, rather than a vaccine-or-test mandate, which is telling.

So this doesn't end with covid vaccines.

Definitely not.

The broadening of the major questions doctrine means a lot of environmental regulations are probably in trouble, as are just about any other regulations that the Republicans on the Court don't like.

That's what's so pernicious -- they can describe just about anything as "major" and then use that as a reason to deny deference, which in practice means gutting the regulation.

What is the ideal deregulatory scheme for these people? A federal government with no authority to provide for the general welfare?

Well, Thomas, at one extreme, has repeatedly expressed nostalgia for the "Lochner era," the period between the mid-1890s and 1937 when the Court frequently struck down both state and federal health, safety, and welfare laws.

I think some of his Republican colleagues don't want to go that far, but they do want to radically pare back the administrative state, which would have a significant deregulatory effect.

But what’s the threshold between too little and too much?

I'm not sure they have that fine-grained a view, and of course their ability to calibrate is limited by some of the constraints of the judicial role.

But the majority today definitely thinks that there is too much federal regulation generally, and it is using a lot of different sorts of mechanisms to pare it back across the board.

This is bad for democracy.

I agree. And, again, what makes it even more frustrating is that they claim to be doing it in the service of empowering representative institutions.

Josh, our hour is up. Many thanks for your time, consideration and caring.

My pleasure! It was fun!

Jan. 6 was literally a white supremacist assault on democracy. Has anyone in the media come out and said that?

Chauncey Devega, Salon
January 18, 2022

Screenshot from Raw video (Arun Gupta) https://www.facebook.com/arun.gupta.75054689/videos/246940530907779/

Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that white racist attitudes, whether presented as "old-fashioned" racism or in less direct fashion as racial resentment and racial hostility, are strongly associated with support for Donald Trump and his Republican fascist movement. It is certainly true that feelings of economic insecurity, inequality and social alienation among the white working class are central to understanding the rise of American neofascism. But throughout American history, those forces have primarily manifested through white racism in its various forms

As social theorist Stuart Hall described this dynamic: "Race is the modality in which class is lived."

W.E.B. Du Bois explained it this way in a memorable passage from "Black Reconstruction":

Slavery bred in the poor white a dislike of Negro toil of all sorts. He never regarded himself as a laborer, or as part of any labor movement. If he had any ambition at all it was to become a planter and to own "niggers." To these Negroes he transferred all the dislike and hatred which he had for the whole slave system. The result was that the system was held stable and intact by the poor white.

President Lyndon Johnson offered a famous observation in a similar vein: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

RAWSTORY+
'He is the Yoda of intel': How conspiracy theorists were instrumentalized to mobilize followers to violence on Jan. 6

In this sense, the Age of Trump is the latest iteration of a much older politics of white rage and white supremacy whose origins extend well back before the Founding.

Last January Trump's agents and allies attempted to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Their plot consisted of a multifaceted nationwide plan to disqualify Joe Biden's votes -- and some participants literally suggested deploying the military after declaring a national state of emergency to cement Trump's control over the country.

The evidence shows that the Capitol attack of Jan. 6 was an integral component of Trump's coup attempt, intended to delay the certification of the Electoral College votes and prevent the final and formal election of Biden as president. In none of these events was race in any way a peripheral or irrelevant issue.

It is simply factual to describe Jan. 6 as a white supremacist attack on multiracial democracy. But if one were to rely on the consensus of the America's mainstream news media on the one-year anniversary, one might come away with the belief that racism and white supremacy played little or no role in the events of that day.

Very few of the personal essays and reflections from journalists and others who were at the Capitol or nearby on Jan. 6 explicitly mentioned that Trump's attack force was almost entirely all white. Instead, those accounts depicted a race-less and colorless horde of angry political hooligans attempting to overthrow American democracy.

Other writing about the events of Jan. 6 focused more impersonally on the role of authoritarianism and "populism." But again, the specific racial marker was missing: It was not described as "white" populism or "white" authoritarianism or, better yet, "white fascism," "white terrorism" or "white violence."


Likewise, Trump's attack force and coup plotters were involved in an "insurrection" — but not a "white" insurrection. They were "enraged" about the 2020 election and its results but not driven by "white rage."

By not centering the role of race in the events of Jan. 6, other realities are obscured as well. Trump's attempted coup and the ongoing attacks on American democracy are a function of toxic white masculinity, militant "Christianity," collective narcissism and other pathologies, including a profound societal impulse towards violence, self-destruction and death.

Many journalists may object to this criticism by responding that race and racism are not their "beat," and they lack expertise in that area. My response would be that they are neglecting one of the most important aspects of American society, and therefore failing to understand crucial context for the current political crisis.

To those who say they don't want to "make a mistake" when writing about race and racism, I would respond: Learn and study. Talk to experts, ask questions and educate yourself. Treat those topics as you would any other matter of critical societal importance.

If the answer is, "I chose to not write that story," I would say you made a choice to ignore a central element of the Age of Trump, and America's actual or potential descent into fascism and racial authoritarianism. If the answer is more that the role of race on Jan. 6 "did not occur to me." The luxury not to "see" or understand racism and white supremacy is itself an example of white privilege and how it works on day-to-day manner. I do not question your good intentions — but those have little, if anything, to do with racist or white supremacist outcomes.

If the answer is to respond that it's "obvious" that the Trump attack force was white and it serves no purpose to mention said fact, I would explain how that is still a form of racial erasure which is doing the work of white supremacy. Assuming that these things are "obvious" helps to make invisible the myriad ways that whiteness and white power structure American society.

The power of racial colorblindness as a tool of white supremacy is easily understood: If the Jan. 6 attackers had been black or brown or Muslim, there would have been no such racial erasure. They would have been described in racial terms by the media, and in public discourse more generally, likely almost every single time the event was mentioned.

My concerns about racial erasure and the events of Jan. 6 are directed primarily toward the mainstream news media and its "reasonable" liberal or moderate voices. Right-wing media is a propaganda machine that serves the interests of white supremacy, and has no legitimacy or credibility in this discussion. But if mainstream "centrist" and liberal voices in the media are to play any kind of effective role as defenders of democracy in this moment of crisis, they must remove the blinders of whiteness.

At its core, American neofascism is a white supremacist project. To blind yourself to that fact is to limit your ability to understand it — and to grasp the magnitude of the existential danger now facing American society. That is the road to defeat, and the literal end of America's experiment in multiracial democracy. Mainstream media can do better — and it absolutely must.

Djokovic failed as a leader on world stage

He lied and put others at risk, and he has no one but himself to blame.

By the Editorial Board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
JANUARY 18, 2022 — 

Top-ranked tennis star Novak Djokovic finally got his comeuppance for reckless behavior unbecoming of a global sports ambassador. Australia's government deported him, and his exclusion from the Australian Open stalls Djokovic's quest for a record 21 major championship titles.

Even if he does ultimately outshine rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal on the court, he has ensured he'll forever walk in their shadows as players who recognize their roles as leaders on the world stage and who inspire fans young and old by behaving honorably and responsibly.

Djokovic has no competitors for top ranking in defiant ignorance and selfishness. In June 2020, while the rest of the world remained locked down following a crushing wave of coronavirus deaths, Djokovic organized several exhibition matches that resulted in multiple players, including Djokovic and his pregnant wife, becoming infected with the virus.

Players made no effort to socially distance themselves. They partied mask-free after hours as if pandemic precautions didn't apply to them. Djokovic apologized, but clearly he had learned nothing from the danger to which he exposed his friends, wife and unborn child.

Early last month, Australian Open officials made clear that vaccinations were required for entry into a country that had sacrificed heavily to keep the pandemic at bay, enduring months of lockdowns and achieving a nearly 80% full vaccination rate. Djokovic made no apparent attempt to protect himself from exposure ahead of the open.

On Dec. 14, he attended a professional basketball game and was photographed hugging players who later tested positive. Two days later, Djokovic tested positive. He continued to travel abroad and pose for photos with children and adults. He lied on his Australia visa form about where he had been.

Djokovic now faces a potential three-year ban from Australia and could be blocked from the French Open in May. He has no one to blame but himself. Djokovic might argue that he is meticulous about everything that could affect his physical performance, and that he doesn't want to risk vaccine side effects. But the facts of his case simply don't bear that argument out. He appears simply not to want to abide by the rules his fellow players follow.

Sadly, he's not alone. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, top contender for the NFL's most valuable player award, lied about his vaccination status and subsequently tested positive. He missed a single game and was fined.

Three Tampa Bay Buccaneers players forged their vaccination documents, receiving three-game suspensions without pay. They were heedless of the danger to which they exposed their own coach, Bruce Arians, after his multiple bouts with cancer, one of which led to the removal of a kidney.

It's time for the sports world — officials, fans and companies that pay top-dollar for product endorsements — to stop giving stars a pass for behaving as if the rules don't apply to them.

Hey, women in STEM, let’s form an alliance
by Elizabeth Wolfe

January 18, 2022

Design by Meghana Tummala. 

Misogyny in academia is a special breed, even in “progressive” universities. What makes misogyny in academia unique is the unnecessary competition between different fields, particularly STEM and liberal arts: which is more necessary, which is more lucrative, which is more ethical and all sorts of other superlatives. As a woman with a liberal arts major, I not only often feel this competition, but also experience and witness internalized misogyny between women in STEM and women in liberal arts. The debate between STEM vs. liberal arts inaccurately reflects the true value of academics, and worsens misogyny by keeping us occupied with in-fighting instead of fighting patriarchal structures.

The debate is not only irrelevant, but fundamentally flawed. Although containing different courses, degrees and careers, the two are functionally connected; one cannot exist without the other. How else would we have well-written lab reports reflecting scientific research, technologically-advanced museums demonstrating history, digital art and online books? While independently important, the interdisciplinary nature of STEM and liberal arts keeps the world advancing, tangibly and intangibly, factually and emotionally.

We aren’t only competing over our academic beliefs, but the existence of misogyny itself towards the other party. Misogyny in academia is not one-size-fits-all, but is uniquely based on our specific interests. When women have already been exposed to internalized misogyny our entire lives (who’s prettier, smarter, wealthier, etc.), academics add yet another layer. We’re not only driven further apart, but it becomes more difficult to communicate and respect one another in our experiences.

For STEM majors working in a “man’s world,” women are often discriminated against and not given the same voice or opportunities. Despite increasing numbers of women as researchers, authors and reviewers, they are still underrepresented in research projects, publications and grant rewards. Marginalized women, such as women of color and transgender women, have even more difficulties with gaining recognition. The mere presence of women in STEM fields has caused backlash with scientists trying to justify the gap with different theories, including that women are biologically less fit for STEM or biologically less interested than men — both of which have been proven false.

On the other hand, misconceptions about the importance of liberal arts programs and their economic value have led some universities to cut funding for the programs altogether. I believe a key part of this trend is that liberal arts is often seen as “women’s work.” Throughout history, when once male-dominated fields, such as teaching and social work, became women-dominated, those fields are then seen as less important. As a result, liberal arts coursework is seen as less difficult and necessary in the grand scheme. Women are encouraged to change career paths or even drop out. Just recently, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R–N.C., encouraged students to drop out of college unless they “become a doctor or lawyer or engineer.”

In STEM or liberal arts, when the work and achievements of women are undervalued on a personal and industry level, there is no point debating which form of misogyny is worse. When we fail to recognize different experiences with misogyny and its harm, we allow it to continue. Though passive, we all take responsibility when other women suffer.

Seeing women in STEM make new strides and push for equality, I have admittedly felt embarrassed over my major and even resentful. I fear that I’m not doing enough for feminism by working in a women-dominated field. For this, I’ve also felt ignored in my experiences with misogyny, because it’s not seen as being “as bad” as what other women in college face. Conversely, I’ve been praised for choosing a creative field and not one that’s “boring” or “typical” as some have inaccurately described STEM.

This is why I’m extending not an olive branch but rather a metaphorical treaty. We cannot accept praise for our achievements at the expense of other women and their goals. My work in liberal arts is both influential and lucrative, and STEM is becoming more common because of our developing world. When so many differences and ignorances distract us from fighting for equality, we shouldn’t let this false narrative deter us even further from our goals. Is “girls support girls” an oversimplified motto? Yes, but I don’t think “STEM girls support liberal arts girls and vice versa” has to be so complicated. Changing our mentality on academic purpose is one step towards eliminating academic misogyny.


Elizabeth Wolfe is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at eliwolfe@umich.edu.

SO CALLED RED TAPE

Downgrading licensing will weaken consumer protections

BY DAVID COX, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/18/22 

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© Getty Images

With the recent enactment of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, engineers and surveyors will be called upon to work with similar professionals to improve the physical infrastructure in our country. They will work to improve the safety of the roads we drive, the bridges we cross, the water we drink, and countless other areas that impact our daily lives. The public can have confidence in the safety and integrity of the work engineers and surveyors will provide thanks to our current licensing system, which was first established in the U.S. more than 100 years ago. However, it is imperative that state lawmakers recognize the importance and value that the existing licensure requirements and processes provide in protecting the public.

With so many large and extraordinary projects on the horizon that will impact the health, safety, and welfare of the public, state lawmakers must resist calls to weaken or eliminate the consumer protections afforded by rigorous professional licensing standards.

In many states, lawmakers are proposing to downgrade licensing for professions with high public impact such as architects, CPAs, engineers, landscape architects and surveyors with the hope of boosting the economy. Lost in many of those proposals are the unintended consequences on the same consumers the anti-licensing movement purports to help.

In most cases, consumers can choose a service provider based on recommendations and decide whether to continue using them based on their level of satisfaction. However, in the case of some highly-technical professions, such as engineering and surveying, consumers do not get to choose who builds the bridges and roads they drive on every day. They must rely on lawmakers to ensure their safety through licensing standards that require engineers and surveyors to demonstrate a minimum level of competence through education, examinations, and experience.

The steady weakening — or in the most extreme cases, the proposed wholesale elimination — of licensure standards for engineers, surveyors, and other highly technical professions will put the public at an increased level of risk.

Biden endures up-and-down first year on labor issues

Since the first engineering and surveying licensure laws were established, lawmakers in every state have taken seriously their responsibility to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public in situations where the public is unable to do so for themselves. This commitment to public protection must continue.

Public protection will be impacted if the long-standing requirements for engineering and surveying licensure are swept-up and swept-out as part of broad-brush efforts to remove barriers to entry for some occupations.

Too often, licensing critics conflate occupations with professions to make their case. There is a critical difference between occupations and highly complex, technical professions that are responsible for the integrity of our physical and financial infrastructure.

Any attempt to change state licensing requirements should reflect this important distinction. Engineering and surveying rightly require necessary standards for education and experience and the ability to demonstrate a minimum level of competence through examinations. If any of what we call the “3 Es” — education, examinations, and experience — are downgraded in one or two states, the ripple effect throughout the country would have a devastating impact on consumer protection due to existing interstate cooperative licensing processes that allow engineers and surveyors to become quickly and easily licensed in additional states.

Consumers intuitively know that downgrading licensure requirements is an unreasonable and unacceptable risk. This instinct was reflected in a poll commissioned last year by the Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing (ARPL) which found that 71 percent of voters believe professional licensing should be required unless it can be proven that eliminating licensing will not have a negative impact on public health and safety. The same poll also found that 67 percent of voters believe that consumers are best protected by a system that regulates education, examination, and experience standards — all of which are overseen by a state licensing board.

As Benjamin Franklin once observed, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” When it comes to building our critical physical and financial infrastructure, responsible professional licensing overseen by state licensing boards is the best method of prevention.

State lawmakers, licensing boards, engineers, surveyors, and others practicing within other highly technical professions must never lose sight of their shared obligation to protect the public. And the best way to honor that commitment is to provide effective licensing models that are designed for public protection. Downgrading the long-standing licensure requirements for highly technical professions will ultimately cheapen our investment in infrastructure and our investment in the health, safety, and welfare of the public.

David Cox is the CEO of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES).

GUN NUTS USA

TSA detects record number of firearms at nation's airports


Photo by: Gene J. Puskar/AP
Travelers wait in line at the TSA security checkpoint at Pittsburgh International Airport in Imperial, Pa. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

By: Scripps National
Posted  Jan 18, 2022

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced Tuesday that agents discovered 5,972 firearms at airports across the country in 2021. That's an increase of more than 2,500 from 2020.

The TSA says 86% of the guns found in 2021 were loaded.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport had 507 firearm discoveries, the most of any airport in the country. The TSA says that's the most firearm discoveries at one location since the agency's inception.

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport had 317 discoveries and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport had 245 to round out the top three airports with the most firearm discoveries in 2021.

The TSA reminds travelers that bringing a gun to a checkpoint could lead to criminal charges.

"Even if a traveler has a concealed weapon permit, firearms are not permitted to be carried onto an airplane," the TSA said. "However, travelers with proper firearm permits can travel legally with their firearms in their checked bags if they follow a few simple guidelines."

Don’t Blame Benefits for Inflation — Blame the Global Economy

Ending child care subsidies won’t restock store shelves. A fairer, more sustainable global economy might.

January 18, 2022 by Other Words Leave a Comment


By Sonali Kolhatkar

Headlines are screaming that inflation is here to stay.

U.S. consumer prices have risen by an average of 6.2 percent in the past year, the sharpest increase since 1991. Although Americans are supposedly — in the words of the New York Times — “flush with cash and jobs,” they are also deeply unhappy with the state of the economy.

It’s no wonder Republicans are thrilled and are drawing a line between inflation, public anxiety about the economy, and Joe Biden’s presidency.

What is surprising is that President Biden himself is helping them by citing his administration’s achievement of putting more money into people’s pockets as part of the explanation for the current spike in inflation.

In a November 10 speech, Biden said, “You all got checks for $1,400. You got checks for a whole range of things.” He went on to explain, “Well, with more people with money buying product and less product to buy, what happens? Prices go up.”

The New York Post, a conservative paper, jumped on the speech, claiming that the president “concedes his COVID stimulus checks fueled [the] spike in inflation.”

But the paper downplayed Biden’s assertion that “the supply chain is the reason.”

In fact, the president led his audience through a fairly clear explanation of how globalization works. By artificially driving down the cost of goods for decades, this far-flung system is especially vulnerable to disruptions like the pandemic.

As Biden explained, “Products like smartphones often bring together parts from France, Italy; chips from the Netherlands; touchscreens from New York State; camera components from Japan — a supply chain that crosses dozens of countries.”

“That’s just the nature of a modern economy,” he concluded. But should it be?

The massive web of consumer manufacturing isn’t a fact of nature. It’s a systematically deregulated system designed by multinational corporations to minimize the cost of materials and labor — and maximize their profits. This was precisely what the anti-globalization movements of the 1990s were protesting.

When Biden said in his speech that you “have to use wood from Brazil” and “graphite from India before it comes together at a factory in the United States to get a pencil,” he didn’t reveal that pencil manufacturers might be relying on illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon. Nor did he mention that transporting goods from far reaches of the globe generates massive carbon pollution.

Now this system is hurting consumers too. In fact, they’ve been feeling the pinch for years.

Go back to polls conducted even before the pandemic — including a Gallup poll from 2018 and the General Social Survey from 2019 — and one can find widespread malaise about the state of the economy.

In other words, Americans have spent decades being disappointed with the sustained suppression of wages and increasingly insecure jobs. This is a direct consequence of the offshoring and deregulation accelerated by corporate globalization.

But instead of drawing the connection, conservative Republicans are blaming pandemic assistance and other government help, as though ending child care subsidies could restock store shelves. Conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is making similar assertions to justify stymying Biden’s proposals to expand government assistance.

A better takeaway from our current economic situation is that there is nothing natural about being at the mercy and whims of an economy designed by corporate profiteers for corporate profiteers.

We need to make the global economy fairer and more sustainable — not pull up the few remaining supports for American families.

Previously Published on otherwords with Creative Commons Licenses

8,500 KROGER WORKERS STRIKE FOR THEIR LIVES

King Soopers workers say they're paid enough to survive, but not enough to live.

January 18 2022

About 8,500 grocery workers at Kroger-owned King Soopers are on strike, demanding an end to Kroger’s greed. The Colorado workers at nearly 80 grocery stores have been on strike since January 12, fighting for livable wages and healthcare.

The grocery chain’s parent company Kroger has recently come under fire for the treatment of its workforce.

A recent survey of 10,000 Kroger employees revealed 3 out of 4 workers face food insecurity, with 14 percent experiencing homelessness in the last year. Yet for years, Kroger executives have known that most of their workers live in poverty, according to a leaked memo sent to More Perfect Union.

Workers rejected the company’s most recent contract offer on January 13, which had a base pay only pennies above Denver’s minimum wage.

“It’s very disappointing to know that the CEO made over $20 million and we have workers here that are struggling everyday just to put food on the table and feed their families,” Carol McMillan, a King Sooper worker said.

In March 2021, a mass shooting occurred inside a King Sooper store in Boulder, CO, killing ten people including workers and customers. Traumatized employees who witnessed the events received little support from the company.

After just a few weeks, workers were required to use sick days for any additional time off to recover from the events.

“We would like King Soopers to remember who we are and what we do for them. And we’d like them to respect us, protect us and pay us,” McMillan said.

Abortion rights groups tie their fight to voting rights

NARAL said Tuesday that it will back only candidates who work to pass voting rights, and Emily’s List says it won’t support Sen. Kyrsten Sinema if she doesn’t get behind changing Senate rules.


(PHOTO BY ALLISON BAILEY/NURPHOTO)

By Barbara Rodriguez, Amanda Becker
Published January 18, 2022

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with a response from Sen. Sinema.

The abortion rights group NARAL said Tuesday it will no longer back candidates who don’t support Democratic efforts to pass federal voting rights legislation, just hours after the similarly aligned Emily’s List said it will pull its endorsement of U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema if she does not reverse her opposition to changing Senate filibuster rules that have stymied those efforts.

The moves — which came as President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders are at a critical juncture on voting rights, with Senate votes slated for this week that are expected to fail — show that abortion rights groups increasingly see the two movements as interwined.

NARAL President Mini Timmaraju said in a statement that the group will not endorse or support any senator “who refuses to find a path forward on this critical legislation.”

“Without ensuring that voters have the freedom to participate in safe and accessible elections, a minority with a regressive agenda and a hostility to reproductive freedom will continue to block the will of the majority of Americans,” she said.

Abortion rights groups’ focus on flailing Democratic efforts to get voting rights legislation through the U.S. Congress put Sinema in the crosshairs. Emily’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion access, said it would no longer endorse the Arizona lawmaker, who is up for reelection in 2024, if she did not back changes her party is seeking to the Senate filibuster.

“Electing Democratic pro-choice women is not possible without free and fair elections. Protecting the right to choose is not possible without access to the ballot box,” Emily’s List President Laphonza Butler said in a statement Tuesday.

Sinema is an original co-sponsor of a voting rights bill, but has nevertheless said she opposes her party leaders’ push to change filibuster rules so that election legislation could pass the chamber by a simple-majority vote instead of clearing the typical 60-vote threshold.

As Biden came to the Senate last week to talk to Democrats about voting rights, Sinema reiterated her opposition to filibuster changes in a speech on the Senate floor, saying the “harried discussions about Senate rules are but a poor substitute for what I believe could have, and should have, been a thoughtful public debate at any time over the past year” about how to pass a voting rights bill.

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The next day, more than 70 Arizona women asked Emily’s List — a top donor to Sinema’s Senate and House campaigns — to make a “public demand to Senator Sinema to support ending the filibuster.”

The call was heeded on Tuesday when Butler said that the country is at an “inflection point in the fight for voting rights and reproductive freedom” and that the group’s “mission can only be realized when everyone has the freedom to have their voice heard safely and freely at the ballot box.”

“So, what we want to make it clear: if Sen. Sinema can not support a path forward for the passage of this legislation, we believe she undermines the foundations of our democracy, her own path to victory and also the mission of EMILY’s List, and we will be unable to endorse her moving forward,” Butler said in a statement.

Sinema said in a statement to The 19th that the Senate filibuster “has been used repeatedly to protect against wild swings in federal policy, including in the area of protecting women’s health care.”

“People of good faith can have honest disagreements about policy and strategy. Such honest disagreements are normal, and I respect those who have reached different conclusions on how to achieve our shared goals of addressing voter suppression and election subversion,” she added.

ALASKA

Tribal sovereignty ballot initiative smashes threshold

'The amount of support we’ve gotten throughout this process has been amazing'


Zachariah Hughes
Anchorage Daily News

A campaign to formalize the government-to-government relationship between federally recognized tribes in Alaska and the state is moving forward. On Wednesday, organizers submitted 56,200 signatures in support of the measure to the Division of Elections, far more than the 36,140 required to put it before voters on November’s statewide ballot.

“The amount of support we’ve gotten throughout this process has been amazing,” said Barbara ‘Wáahlaal Gidáak Blake, one of the co-sponsors of the Alaskans for Better Government campaign.

According to organizers, signatures came from all 40 legislative districts around the state.

“This puts us in a state of trusting that Alaskans are going to step up for Indigenous people,” Blake said.

The measure would formalize in state statute the peer relationship between tribes and other government entities, an arrangement already acknowledged by Alaska’s courts and the federal government. The legal foundations of tribal sovereignty in U.S. date back almost two centuries. But according to Blake, the state of Alaska sues its federally recognized tribes over jurisdictional disputes more often than any other state in the nation, typically losing in the courts after costly litigation drains resources from both sides.

By formalizing the state’s recognition of tribal sovereignty, supporters say doors will open for more efficient, effective implementation of measures that benefit tribal members at the local level without substantially altering state laws.

“What this does is codify what’s already recognized by the federal government,” said state Rep. Tiffany Zulkosky.

The Bethel-based Democrat represents the House district covering the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, and she sponsored a bill with nearly identical language to the ballot initiative. The Alaskans for Better Government campaign is the second in what is essentially a two-pronged approach toward the same goal, and organizers are largely agnostic about which route ultimately succeeds, though the voter initiative currently looks more feasible. Last May, Zulkosky’s bill received overwhelming support in the House with a vote of 35 to 4. But it is unlikely to advance in the upper chamber during the upcoming session.

“The path towards yes looks a lot different in the Senate than it does in the House,” Zulkosky said.

She and other supporters say that if the measure is approved, it will give tribal entities and the state overall more tools for dealing with complex major issues like child welfare, public safety and transportation. They point to the Alaska Tribal Health Compact as a prime example. The 1994 agreement directs federal dollars into Alaska that are overseen, administered and implemented by tribal entities as large as the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, and as tiny as the clinics operating in almost every rural community in the state.


Alaska Native Medical Center, Sept. 2, 2021 (Photo by Joaqlin Estus, Indian Country Today).

Zulkosky, who outside of her legislative duties is employed by the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp., said it was those government-to-government relations in the health care sector that allowed tribal entities to administer COVID-19 vaccine doses to rural residents more quickly than they were delivered to almost any other group of Americans.

Comparable arrangements could be possible in the years ahead, Zulkosky said, with tribes working to leverage federal money for government functions currently overseen by the state.

“How do we stretch every dollar at a time when Alaska’s Legislature is trying to resolve fiscal issues?” Zulkosky asked.


Stay updated on ICT’s ANCSA project using #ANCSA50 and at https://indiancountrytoday.com/tag/ancsa-50.

The initiative has backing from some of the largest and most powerful Alaska Native groups and corporations, including the Alaska Federation of Natives, Sealaska and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, among others.

Blake said that the group has not seen any organized opposition to the ballot initiative yet.

During a brief debate on Zulkosky’s House bill, only two lawmakers spoke out against it, though few of the objections were substantive.

“I am generally a fan of local control, local government. However, it’s not clear to me at this time how much authority is being granted, (and) what the long-term significance could be,” said Wasilla Republican Rep. Christopher Kurka during debate. He’s now running for governor.

Organizers say that even if the measure is approved it will not have major day-to-day impacts for most Alaskans, nor, Zulkosky said, will it “significantly change the dynamic of the legal relationship that tribes have with their members.”

As state officials certify signatures for the measure, the campaign says it will begin focusing on adding members to its steering committee, building coalitions and raising funds.

Campaign manager Alex Murphy helped submit boxes of tribal recognition initiative petition signature booklets to the State Division of Elections in Anchorage, Alaska on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. (Photo by Bill Roth, Anchorage Daily News)