Happy 28th?

Happy 28th?

[I posted this on another platform (Substack) on January 21 and I was supposed to post it here but, well, I forgot. I think it is still worth a look, even if the issue, at least as far as media is concerned, vanished as fast as it arose.]

There has been justified and exuberant celebration over the statement (of course deleted post-inauguration) from Joe Biden that as far as he's concerned, the Equal Rights Amendment is part of the Constitution, with one example exulting "Woohoo! They can fight it but it’s done! Great news for human rights!" (Sorry for no credit; I misplaced the link.)

Yeah, well, hang on. It’s not quite over. In fact, delete “quite.”

For one thing, Biden said much the same thing three years ago (again deleted) and you see how far that has gotten us. This one is stronger because that time he called on Congress to ratify the ERA and this time he says, screw it, it’s already ratified. Well, good, but still, that doesn’t wrap things up.

On a practical, legal level this will simply be ignored until someone claims some law or rule is unconstitutional because it violates the ERA. That is, nothing will happen until someone forces the issue. And when that happens, I guarantee it will be accompanied by multiple arguments and suits trying to undo this historic achievement.

There will be suits about states having rescinded approval, which I think (hope?) will more likely than not fail because of (among other things) the can of worms it would open about the potential for states to pull an Emily Latella and rescind approval of amendments already enacted. (Can states secede by saying “We changed our mind, we don’t approve the Constitution?” Was the Confederacy thus properly constituted?) If I understand correctly (correct me if I’m wrong), but I think the technical term here is “no take-backs.”

Some efforts will claim that the amendment is not in force because US Archivist Colleen Shogan hasn’t published it. Those should fail - “should” because these days with this SCOTUS nothing is certain - on the grounds that an archivist is by definition a record-keeper, not a decision-maker and her role is ministerial. That is, she has no more authority to block the amendment than then-VP Mike NotWorthAFarthing had to refuse to certify the electoral count in January 2021.

And there will be suits about having exceeded the imposed and quite arbitrary time limit, which could rise to a “Well…” In a 1921 case (Dillon v. Gloss), SCOTUS found that Article V of the Constitution “implies” that proposed amendments “must be ratified, if at all, within some reasonable time after their proposal.” However, a later case (Coleman v. Miller, 1939) suggests that while Congress can set a “reasonable” deadline, what constitutes “reasonable” may be open to challenge. Further, later commentators have argued that this dicta is incorrect because the Constitution gives no such role to Congress (see Note 7 here). Which together would seem to make it difficult for our originalist and “plain text” intoners to argue straight-faced that such a time limit was “what the Founders intended” - not that they’ve never before ignored their own principles when it suited them. (This again relates to the federal archivist, of which more presently.)

Finally and perhaps most importantly, don’t be surprised if, regardless of the merits of the case at hand, some district court judge somewhere issues an injunction barring the amendment from taking effect anywhere in the country while any suits on any of those or other related issues proceed. Because I again guarantee you there are some who will do it on command.

In the meantime, however, we should all do as some are already doing and just declare “It’s over! We won!” over and over and over again. Make it an assumption under which the law should operate; treat it as a done deal, not a request or “someone do something.” I mean, at the very least it provides a basis for filing for injunctions against enforcement of anti-LGBTQ+ laws until any legal issues get resolved - which easily could take years.

However, what hasn’t taken years or even days is for the media to react to Biden’s statement with tut-tuts and tsk-tsks in dismissive tones ringing with “look at the old guy trying to look important” vibes.

For example, Politico called it “little more than an expression of [Biden’s] opinion” and a “long-shot gambit” while Faux News declared it’s “unlikely that Biden’s support will have any impact.” Slate dismissed it in a headline saying it “does nothing.” Meanwhile, AP called it "symbolic,” adding that "presidents have no role in the constitutional process" while emphasizing it "stirred aggravation among some allies" who had wanted it done sooner.

Others were no better and the all-but universal reaction came down to “But - but - the archivist!” They took it as unquestionable fact that the archivist refusing, on her own authority, to print it up and publish it is an absolute Constitutional bar to the amendment’s being part of the document. Which strikes me as much the same as saying that the Congressional Record could block any law by refusing to include it in its publication or the GPO could block any regulation by refusing to print it for distribution. She says she is relying on legal opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel that the time limit is enforceable, but the point is, that’s not her decision to make.

(Sidebar: It seems odd to me that with everyone agreeing that the president has no role to play in the amendment process, an opinion of the OLC - which is, again, an advisory opinion, not a determinative ruling - should be thought binding on the archivist, when they are all part of the Executive Branch.)

When the OFR [Office of the Federal Register] verifies that it has received the required number of authenticated ratification documents

from state legislatures, her job is to issue a formal declaration

to certify that the amendment is valid and has become part of the Constitution. This certification is published in the Federal Register and U.S. Statutes at Large and serves as official notice to the Congress and to the Nation that the amendment process has been completed.

It should, must, be left to others to make the claim that the ratifications were somehow improper or without force. She is, bluntly, a clerk - not a legislature, not even a legislator, and not a judge.

And neither is the press. I used to read The Daily Howler, by this guy named Bob Somerby. I stopped because I came to see him as a obnoxious twerp forever looking to prove himself the purest, most superior “liberal” ever to work a keyboard - but I still credit him with developing one of the best tools for media analysis I’ve come across: the concept of “the script,” the idea that the media will rapidly coalesce on a way of viewing a certain issue, after which all future coverage has to be in line with that interpretation in order to be taken as “serious.”

The frame, the script, here has become “the archivist says,” and therefore the question is resolved and isn’t Biden just so cute trying to burnish his legacy with his useless opinion. That is, members of the media here are eager to just dismiss the whole thing as a one-day story not worth pursuing - as opposed to, for example, the pulsatingly exciting and important issues of “Is Tweetie-pie going to invade Greenland” (he won't) and “Will Pete Hegseth get confirmed” (he will).

Admittedly, not all the coverage ignored the open questions here and acknowledged that ultimately there are issues to be resolved by Congress or the courts (or both). But still, it seems overwhelmingly on the sake of “BFD, who cares about that old stuff when the machinations, manipulations, and madcap malevolence of The Great Orange One are just so exciting and so much fun to cover! (The absence of the word "important" is deliberate.)

There will be legal and legislative battles ahead and I have to admit that overall, the outlook isn’t good. Yes, the challenges should fail by logic and justice but a victory by the fascistic racist xenomisiacs* on a single point on any one of them could spell doom for the whole idea. I’d say our best move is to, as I said, use Biden’s statement to treat adoption of the ERA as the 28th amendment as a done deal and use it aggressively as an organizing focus.

Specifically, since everyone appears to agree that Congress could at any point say “forget the deadline, there isn’t one anymore,” thus removing Shogun’s excuse for inaction, Dems in both Houses of Congress should introduce measures to do just that. Put the xenomisiacs and other opponents of human rights in the position of having to vote against a move to approve the amendment. I would fully expect that there is no way in hell the GOPpers would allow it to come to a vote, but that very refusal should then be a point of attack.

The one thing we must not do on this or indeed anything else for the foreseeable future, is engage in preemptive capitulation, surrendering even before the battle is joined (such as can be seen here). King Lear had it right: That way madness (and despair) lies.

*The suffix “phobia” refers to fear; “misia” refers to hatred. These creatures are not afraid of foreigners, trans folks, of “the other,” they hate them. I’ve come to regularly use it whenever it applies. I got it from someone in a post about transmisiacs, but I can’t remember who, which is unfortunate because I’d really like to give them credit.

Why would I do it?

Robert Reich had a poll up about the just-passed bill about the Child Tax Credit. He noted that half of the funding would go toward expanding the tax credit and half would got to tax cuts for the rich and Big Business, resulting in an average increase of 0.3% in after-tax income for beneficiaries and 0.5% for the rich. The question was if you would vote for the bill.

The choices were Yes, it helps the poor; No, it increases income inequality; and Other (in comments). I voted Other and this was my comment:

I would vote for it, but with great and vocal reluctance, using it as an occasion to point out as loudly as I could (not just on the floor but through social media and press statements) the disgusting, stomach-wrenching greed and moral bankruptcy of the rich, those "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinners" whose only concern is "Gimmie more! Gimmie more!" and often have quite literally more money than they can use and so buy things from apartment-building-sized yachts to private islands to joyrides into the upper atmosphere just to have things to spend it on.

That, and just as loudly pointing out that the very fact that an average income increase of $60 a year potentially could make a difference in the lives of number of people is undeniable proof of just how screwed up, sick, and wretched our economy has become.

We regard the "gilded age" as a time of ostentatious wealth and extreme poverty. We are facing such a time again, one where being a multimillionaire is to be small fry, billionaires seem ordinary, and centibillionaires (with the arrival of the first trillionaire in sight) are presented by the media as affable folk heroes. Meanwhile, nearly 40 million among us remain in poverty with the "official" rate varying between 11 and 15 percent for the last nearly 60 years, some among us so poor that, again, $60 a freaking year makes an actual difference, and some legislators propose to deal with this by revoking child labor laws.

All in line with George Wills' statement "'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."

We need to take that sense we have of the "gilded age" as being tacky, distasteful, and apply it to the present and add the moral outrage that radicals and reformers expressed at the time. We need to make possession of that level of wealth something shameful. We need, that is, to stop simply referring to economic inequality and instead make it both a moral campaign and the central economic issue of our age.

So why I would vote for this bill? Because for all the moral and ethical faults it represents, it does provide some benefits to the poorer among us. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, it would benefit some 16 million children in the first year and could raise over 500,000 children above the poverty line when fully in effect. (Bear in mind the $60 after-tax figure is an average for everyone eligible to apply for the benefit, including those above the poverty line, with shrinking benefits as income rises.)

So I would vote yes for the sake of the small benefit it does give those in need while expressing my thorough disgust at the shameless, immoral, inhumane, avarice of those who put me in the soul-killing position of having to do it.

When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time

 When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them The First Time

The title of this post is a quote from Maya Angelou that seems especially appropriate these days, and I'm reminded of a letter-to-the-editor I wrote some time ago in response to a syndicated column by George Will, at the time regarded as pretty much the definition of a right-wing intellectual.

"Some time ago," indeed: The date of the letter is January 3, 1995. This is the unedited text:

To George Will (Boston Globe, January 2) goes the honor of being called an honest man. Cutting through the nonsense of Newt and company, he opens the heart of his cohorts' agenda: "'Back to 1900,'" he says, "is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."

"Back to 1900." Back to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of child labor and twelve-hour work days. Back to a time before consumer or environmental protection laws, before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death. A time before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance.

"Back to 1900." Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition. Back before civil or voting rights laws, when wives were chattel, blacks were either "good n*****s" who got called "boy" or "uppity "n*****s" who risked being lynched, when racism (against Irish, Italians, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians, as far as "polite society" was concerned, didn't exist.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss. "Back to 1900" is indeed "a serviceable summation" of the right-wing's goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to selfishly benefit their morally stunted lives.

And if anyone thinks I'm too harsh, remember that Will's "summation" was offered as a moderate alternative to Christopher DeMuth of the American Enterprise Institute, who proposed we "go back to the Articles of Confederation and start over." One wonders what, given the chance, they'd do with the Bill of Rights.

They told us. Believe them.

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5

036 The Erickson Report for April 22 to May 5

This episode:

- Some thoughts prompted by the Derek Chauvin conviction
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/20/watch-live-jury-delivers-verdict-in-derek-chauvin-murder-trial.html
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/4/15/22383392/adam-toledo-shooting-video-released-chicago-police-bodycam
https://theconversation.com/being-skeptical-of-sources-is-a-journalists-job-but-it-doesnt-always-happen-when-those-sources-are-the-police-159173
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/officer-who-fatally-shot-daunte-wright-police-chief-have-resigned-n1263949
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minnesota-police-chief-says-he-believes-officer-meant-grab-taser-n1263817
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-veteran-officer-could-have-mistaken-glock-taser-fatal-shooting-n1263976
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-similar-to-duante-wright-shooting-other-cops-have-claimed-gun-taser-mixup-20210412-7b34zo47kzhtpj4n3rxjl37mze-story.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/us/brooklyn-center-police-shooting-minnesota.html

- Afghanistan
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/04/us-nato-troops-withdraw-afghanistan-911-us-official-says/173326/
https://apnews.com/article/world-news-afghanistan-troop-withdrawals-islamabad-015703a459088547531a755819897040

- Noted in Passing
https://www.aol.com/news/ohio-republicans-aim-rename-state-174607622-163054145.html
-
https://www.aol.com/finance/romney-introduces-legislation-tackle-social-163327974.html
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
-
https://theintercept.com/2021/04/19/israel-aid-elizabeth-warren-j-street/
-
https://ncse.ngo/creationism-bill-advanced-arkansas
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html
-
https://www.aol.com/finance/poll-15-americans-worse-off-120630775-134039730.html - And Another Thing
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/12/100-years-on-eclipse-1919-picture-that-changed-universe-arthur-eddington-einstein-theory-gravity
https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/black-hole/

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page Two: Police training document calls Antifa, BLM "terrorists" and civil right protesters "useful idiots"

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page Two: Police training document calls Antifa, BLM "terrorists" and civil right protesters "useful idiots"

There's an outfit in Indiana called the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, or ILEETA.

Among the guidance documents they have circulated to police departments is something called "Understanding Antifa and Urban Guerrilla Warfare," and it is chock-a-block with falsehoods and conspiracy theories about Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

It claims they have no intentions to negotiate but instead are "revolutionary movements whose aims are to overthrow the US government" while labeling those who participated in the nationwide protests for civil rights over the summer as "useful idiots" who were working for "hard-core, terrorist trained troops."

It even claims that BLM is "supposedly funded by China and that money is then donated to the Democratic Party."

In the face of complains, Harvey Hedden, ILEETA's executive director, defended the document, dismissing the concerns as "differences of opinion" only to later say it was the opinion of a single member even though the document says some of those making the observations there are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have witnessed these types of terrorist groups organizing" - and so, seemingly, are to be regarded as experts, not just people with opinions.

Despite his offhanded dismissal of objections, Hedden also says that the "just one person's opinion" document has been removed and replaced. I fear to think with what.

025 The Erickson Report for November 11-24

 

The Erickson Report for November 11-24
This time:
Heroes and Villains
Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages
Five Things Noted in Passing
Some post-election commentary
A very brief RIP for Alex Trebek

Sources to follow shortly

Some Good News amid all this

Some Good News amid all this

I wrote a number of time in the past about the struggle over the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, as Native American groups staged large-scale civil disobedience and protest in the attempt to block the pipeline from putting water supplies at risk.

Now comes some long overdue Good News on that front.

On March 25, the Washington, DC, federal district court ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers violated federal law when it affirmed federal permits for the pipeline originally issued in 2016.

The ruling, which came in response to a suit filed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, found that in approving the project the Corps had violated the National Environmental Protection Act by, among other things, failing to take into account the criticisms by the Tribe's experts and paying insufficient attention to the safety record of the parent company, one which the court said "does not inspire confidence."

The original parent company, Energy Transfer Partners, has merged with Sunoco over the course of the legal battle over the pipeline.

The pipeline, designed to carry oil 1200 miles (1930 km) from North Dakota to Illinois, crosses the Missouri River near Standing Rock Sioux lands, threatening their water supply. After a lot of dithering, in December 2016 outgoing President The Amazing Mr. O denied the required permits - only to have Tweetie-pie reverse the decision his first week on the throne. The pipeline was completed in June 2017.

However, a suit challenging parts of the approved permits continued. Now, the court has ordered the Corps to undertake a full review and prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement, which the Corps has thus far avoided doing. Such a review could take years, during which the pipeline may - this has not yet been decided - have to be shut down.

Hopefully, in light of the finding that the project went ahead in violation of federal law, the court will do the obvious and shut it down until the review can be completed (since the result could be to find that the pipeline never should have been built, at least in its present configuration or on its present route). But we can't count on it: In 2017 the same court allowed construction of the pipeline to continue and in October 2017 said the pipeline could continue to function while the suit continued.

Still, the order for a full Environmental Impact Statement is different from a remand order to address details, so maybe the court will feel differently this time. In any event, the new decision is still Good News.

Outrage: forced birthers charge pregnant woman with getting shot

I had a fall during the taping of Episode 4 of The Erickson Report, delaying production for a week. So I thought I would post a couple of things intended for that show but which will not be used now.

==

Outrage: forced birthers charge pregnant woman with getting shot

Another example of just how far the forced-birthers are prepared to go to enforce their dystopian view of women's independence.

Back on December 4 a 27-year-old Alabama woman named Marshae Jones got into a fight with a women named Ebony Jemison. In the course of the fight, Jemison shot Jones in the abdomen, leading Jones, who was five months pregnant at the time, to have a miscarriage.

Jemison was charged with manslaughter but a grand jury failed to indict and the charges were dropped.

Frustrated, prosecutors went after Jones, arguing she began the fight and therefore was responsible for her own shooting.

Why? Because they were unwilling to lose this opportunity to have a five-month old fetus declared a victim of manslaughter and thus a person. So on June 26 she was indicted for manslaughter and ordered jailed on $50,000 bond.

Charges were dropped on July 3 after an outcry and after it developed that Alabama's Criminal Code states that the prosecution of "any woman with respect to her unborn child" should not be permitted under criminal homicide charges like manslaughter. Police and prosecutors were so desperate for another woman to prosecute that they didn't even read the law.

After her arrest, police at least twice referred to her "unborn baby" (and to her as "the mother of the child") despite the medical fact that at roughly 21 or 22 weeks, the fetus is only barely and hypothetically viable.

But of course viability isn't the issue; "fetal personhood," treating even a fertilized egg as if it were a born child, giving a zygote more protection than the fully-grown woman, that is the point.

Marshae Jones

In fact, Alabama leads the country in criminal cases involving women accused of endangering their fetuses. Over 600 women have been charged since 2005 with alleged crimes related to their pregnancies.

The vast majority of them were prosecuted for exposing their embryo or fetus to controlled substances under the state’s “chemical endangerment of a child” statute. That law was passed in 2006 and mandates 10 years in prison for drug use during pregnancy even if the fetus, once born, shows no ill effects. Penalties run up to 99 years if the fetus dies.

But those aren't the only cases: Pregnant women have been charged for getting in a car accident, failing to leave a physically abusive partner, or attempting suicide.

Alabama’s Yellowhammer Fund, which advocates for abortion rights in the state, said that Jones’ treatment was part of “a new beginning” in Alabama’s zeal to undermine women’s reproductive rights. "Today, Marshae Jones is charged with manslaughter for being pregnant and getting shot," the group stated. “Tomorrow, it will be another black woman, maybe for having a drink while pregnant. And after that, another, for not obtaining adequate prenatal care.” And as always, "it will be poor, marginalized and black people who will feel this pain the most.”

Two footnotes: Ten states now have laws requiring physicians to tell patients that medically-induced abortions can be "reversed." What they really mean is that the procedure can be stopped after the first of two steps of the first part can be undone. Maybe. It's unproved, experimental, and based on anecdotal evidence. But anything to stop an abortion, even if it requires physicians to actively lie to patients.

Early in June, 42 elected prosecutors representing jurisdictions in 24 states, including Georgia, Alabama, Texas, and Ohio, issued a statement vowing not to enforce extreme anti-abortion restrictions passed in their states.

Outrage of the Year 2017

Now for our third yearly award. This is for the Outrage of the Year for 2017.

The Outrage category is different from the Clown Award in that it's meant to involve something that was spread over the year, something on-going, where the Clown Award could be for a one-off. Which also means it's more about an issue than a person or persons.

By way of illustration, the 2015 Outrage of the Year was the Trayvon Martin case; for 2016 it was the Democratic Party presidential campaign (both primary and general).

There were a few themes that ran through my posts during the year that I considered for the dishonor of Outrage of the Year. (The links are examples.)

One was what I called the "unleashing of militarism as national policy," including essentially making the War Department the director of policy in Afghanistan and the US enabling of war crimes in Yemen, combined with news about our wars becoming pack-of-the-paper stories and the virtual disappearance of those wars and of military spending in general from the concerns of the Left.

Another was how a number of states and the federal government responded to protests by variously pushing legislation specifically intended to make it harder to protest and trying to prevent media from covering such protests.

There was the disparaging of the "other" marked by continuing opposition to the rights of LGBTQ people and even the human dignity of immigrants.

All of these are outrageous and outrages. But ultimately, I chose a topic that I brushed against, discussed briefly, a number of times but only addressed directly and at length late in the year.

So the Outrage of the Year 2017 is the scourge of sexism and the sexual discrimination and violence to which it gives birth.

And oh, the examples were everywhere. I already mentioned "Time" magazine's jackassery on the topic. There was plenty more where that came from, such as the guy who to the delight of his friends, got filmed humping the "Fearless Girl" statue on Wall Street - because crude, boorish, simulated sexual violence is always good for a laugh.

Worse was Captain Peter Rose of the New York City police, who was not concerned about a sharp increase in reported rapes in his precinct in 2016 because many of the attackers were acquainted with the victims, and "only two were true stranger rapes." Because, y'know, a woman who knows her rapist isn't really raped.

And in a dark part of the universe there exists an entire online community of men dedicated to "stealthing," the practice of sneaking off a condom during sex without your partner knowing because it's the "right" of a man to "spread his seed" regardless of the desires of, or potential consequences to, your partner.

Meanwhile, good old economic sex discrimination rolled on.

According to the US Census Bureau, women make up more than 47% of the workforce. They make up at least a third of physicians, a third of surgeons, a third of lawyers, and a third of judges. Women also represent 55% of all college students.

But at the same time, American women still earn less than men do, a difference that persists across all levels of education to the point where a woman with an advanced degree can expect to be paid less than a man with a bachelor's.

The point here is that while it was sexual harassment and violence that got most of the attention this past year, they are not, at the end of it all, the real problem. Sexism is.

Sexism, the underlying assumptions about women that society has long held and still does hold, assumptions that breed a sense of privilege and power, even if unconsciously, in men, is the problem, is the root of the poisonous plant of sexual harassment and assault, is the foundation of workplace discrimination, is the cause.

Sexism is why women remain underrepresented at every level in corporate America, why women don't advance in business despite earning more college degrees than men for thirty years and counting, why women still get paid only 83% of what men do.

And sexism and the corrupting influence of power it feeds is why women have been forced to pretend to ignore the smirks and sneers, to abide the grabs and gropes, to fear the silent street and the empty elevator.

In realities ranging from stifled dreams and blunted careers to harassment and brutal assault we have the chills, the throbbing aches, the raging fevers; in sexism we have the disease, one we all - men even more than women - have a moral duty to eradicate.

Sexism: Outrage of the Year 2017.

38.5 - Outrage of the Week: sexism, the cause of sexual harassment and assault

Outrage of the Week: sexism, the cause of sexual harassment and assault

I have talked on occasion on this show about the scourge of racism, one of our two great national evil -isms. I have also talked some about our least recognized -ism, that of classism, our contempt for the poor no matter their race.

But I have not talked enough about our other big national evil -ism: sexism. But this week it is the Outrage of the Week.

There has been a lot of talk and news recently about sexual assault and sexual harassment as the hashtag #metoo continues to trend. It seems not a day goes by now without some man whose name you know being accused of sexual harassment or assault as the fact that some women have come forth has emboldened others to tell their stories which has in turn emboldened still more.

It's like a floodgate has been opened, releasing a torrent of pent-up frustrations, hurts, injuries, and bad memories.

It's important this is happening because - the temptation is to say it "reminds" men, but that allows for too much prior awareness; let's say rather it hopefully "informs" and "educates" some men and for some who were to some degree aware, "emphasizes" to them just how commonplace these sorts of experiences are for women, just how almost, if not in fact, routine they are. Not so much the outright physical violence, but the degradations, the humiliations, the commonplace put-downs and sneers they experience.

A good place to see this was a recent article in which four women, all US senators, recalled their own experiences with sexual harassment and the comments section on the article, as is all too common, is where the truth of things was visible, as the comments were chock-a-block with things like:

- Are we sure these are women? (with the response of) They are women, that no one wants to go near.
- They got hit with the Ugly stick a couple of times.
- I think they are faking and just hostile because they are NOT a man.
- They could only PRAY for someone, probably legally blind, to hit on them.
- The Guys Involved must have really been hard up for some action!!
- I would think that these homely women would be flattered.
- There [sic] just upset cause they were told to do the dishes.

Numerous cases, that is, of denials of their words and sneering references to their appearance, which served as proxies for denial of either the truth or the significance of the accounts.

The fact is, sexual harassment can be anything from a passing crude comment to a laser-focused, deliberate, on-going attack; sexual assault can be anything from an unwanted grope to brutal and brutalizing rape. The effects on victims can be anything from mere irritation to physical and emotional catastrophe.

It is vital, it is important, it is necessary that we as society, particularly we as men, face, acknowledge, and deal with this - but at the same time there is a point in all of this that I don't want to get lost.

A recent article claimed that a common thread among the abusers in the news lately was economic inequality, that the abusers were in a position to damage their targets' jobs or careers if the victims resisted or complained. Which I would say is close but not quite right - the difference between abuser and abused is not money but power, social power, social dominance. In these cases it was the money issues involved that created that power, but it was the power dynamic itself that lay at the root.
Men do not abuse their girlfriends, their fiancees, their wives because of the economic inequality between them; the subway groper has no control over his victim's job; the date rapist is not thinking about her career prospects.

Because sexual harassment and assault, for all their venomous nature, are not ultimately the issue. They are an outgrowth of the issue.

The issue is sexism, the root of the poisonous plant of sexual harassment and assault. The issue is the underlying assumptions about women that society has long held and still does hold and yes, including among too many women, who are no less likely to be shaped by the culture around them than men are, assumptions either that women are inferior to men or that women should be, deserve to be, "protected" by men - both of which relegate women to lesser status and, as we are also finding about race, assumptions which few people will admit to embracing but which they still express in attitudes and behavior even if they are not consciously aware of it

Beyond the recent news about sexual harassment and assault, there was something else that prompted addressing this now. It was an article I recently came across at the website of the Harvard Business Review. I want to tell you about it.

The article noted that despite improvements, women remain underrepresented among CEOs, receive lower salaries, and are less likely to receive that critical first promotion to manager than men are and looked to examine the claim that this was because - it wasn't put this way, but it's what it came down to - women are not as ambitious as men. [The three links are from the article.]

So they asked: Do women and men act all that differently at work?

Working with what was described as "a large multinational firm," researchers

collected email communication and meeting schedule data for hundreds of employees in one office, across all levels of seniority, over the course of four months. We then gave 100 of these individuals sociometric badges, which allowed us to track in-person behavior.

I'm going to skip over relating what data they gathered and how they went about maintaining employees' anonymity and so on to get to the conclusion. They found

almost no perceptible differences in the behavior of men and women. Women had the same number of contacts as men, they spent as much time with senior leadership, and they allocated their time similarly to men in the same role. [M]en and women had indistinguishable work patterns in the amount of time they spent online, in concentrated work, and in face-to-face conversation. And in performance evaluations men and women received statistically identical scores. This held true for women at each level of seniority. [Emphasis added.]

They also found men and women had roughly equal levels of access to senior management and that women were just as central as men in the workplace's social network.

Yet men were advancing in the hierarchy and women weren't, and at each higher level of management there were fewer women.

Our analysis suggests that the difference in promotion rates between men and women was due not to their behavior but to how they were treated. Gender inequality is due to bias, not differences in behavior.

In other words, the cause is sexism. The existence of sexism in the workplace is well-established, so it's not so much that this is new information, as it is meticulously researched information, with the very meticulous nature of the work adding to the outrage of the message it carries.

Sexism, the assumptions that constitute sexism and the sense of privilege and power those assumptions breed, even if unconsciously, in men, is the problem.

It's sexism. Sexism is the reason why women remain underrepresented at every level in corporate America, the reason why women don't advance in business despite earning more college degrees than men for thirty years and counting. Sexism is the reason why despite improvement women still get paid only 83% of what men do.

And sexism and the corrupting influence of power it feeds is why women have been forced to pretend to ignore the smirks and sneers, to abide the grabs and gropes, to fear the silent street and the empty elevator.

It is good, it is needed, it is brave of this growing number of women to speak out about the harassment and even assault they have experienced, to let other women know that they are not alone and no, their own experience was not an outlier; it is necessary for men to hear this message, to absorb it, and frankly it's even necessary for some women who will continue to deny it.

In realities ranging from stifled dreams and blunted careers to harassment and brutal assault we have the chills, the throbbing aches, the raging fevers; in sexism we have the disease.

I have, yes, several times denounced racism on this show. It's about time I denounced our other great social wrong, the outrage, the monumental outrage, of sexism.

37.1 - Good News: courts blocks military ban on transgenders

Good News: courts blocks military ban on transgenders

On October 30, federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the central provisions of TheRump's order banning transgender people serving in the military - and she did it in no uncertain terms.

President Tweetie-pie's memo was issued August 25. It indefinitely extended a prohibition against transgender individuals joining the military and required the military to authorize, no later than March 23, 2018, the discharge of transgender people currently in the military.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly blocked those provisions, holding that the plaintiffs are "likely to succeed" on their due process claims, having "established that they will be injured by these directives, due both to the inherent inequality they impose, and the risk of discharge and denial of accession that they engender."

She also blasted the fact that Tweetie-pie made the initial announcement in a tweet, "without any of the formality or deliberative processes that generally accompany the development and announcement of major policy changes."

Administration lawyers had wanted the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it was premature and that "federal courts owe the utmost deference to the political branches in the field of national defense and military affairs," but Kollar-Kotelly said those argument "wither away under scrutiny."

The memorandum unequivocally directs the military to prohibit indefinitely the accession of transgender individuals and to authorize their discharge. This decision has already been made. These directives must be executed by a date certain, and there is no reason to believe that they will not be executed.

As if that wasn't enough, she also said that

all of the reasons proffered by the president for excluding transgender individuals from the military were not merely unsupported, but were actually contradicted by the studies, conclusions and judgment of the military itself.

Bam.

Two last quick things: One, the reason the injunction is temporary is that it's not a final ruling; rather, it's that Tweetie-pie's order can't be enforced while the case against it moves through the courts.

And Judge Kollar-Kotelly did refuse to enjoin another part of Tweetie-pie's order, banning the use of funds for gender reassignment surgery. She ruled that plaintiffs had not established they would be harmed by the ban. The plaintiffs, for their part, regarded that as a very small loss, particularly because the ruling says the military's policy will "revert to the status quo" as it was before Tweetie-pie's order, a status quo which would include covering surgery.

All in all, even though it's about the military, it's still about rights, so this is genuine Good News.

36.2 - Good News: memorial fund for Philando Castile wipes out school lunch debt

Good News: memorial fund for Philando Castile wipes out school lunch debt

More Good News, this one being under the subheading of Feel-Good News.

Philando Castile was the unarmed man shot and killed by a cop in July 2016 after being pulled over supposedly for a broken tail light. He worked as a nutrition services supervisor at the J.J. Hill Montessori school in St. Paul, Minnesota and was known sometimes to help pay for student lunches with his own money.

So some folks started a fund to provide money to make sure students could pay for lunch. Their goal was to raise $5000, but by October 13 they had raised $72,000 - enough to entirely wipe out student lunch costs for the whole student body for the whole year.

Meanwhile, Unity Autoworks, located in a suburb of the Twin Cities, has announced that they "will be replacing tail light and license plate bulbs indefinitely for free" because "a defective bulb should never be a reason to be murdered."

Okay, it's not really a case of making lemonade out of lemons, but at least it's in the vicinity.

35.4 - Not Good News: Dakota Access pipeline to continue operations during review

Not Good News: Dakota Access pipeline to continue operations during review

Unfortunately, this week we also have some Not Good New.

You remember, I surely hope, the activism and protest around the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,200-mile oil pipeline to be part of the system to get tar sands oil from Canada across the Midwest and ultimately to the Gulf Coast.

Still, a bit of history to get you up to date. The planned route of the pipeline, being built by a corporation called Energy Transfer Partners, crossed the Missouri River just upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, threatening lands sacred to the tribe as well as its source of drinking water.

The outpouring of support that lead to the mass protests at the site were undoubtedly part of what moved the Obama administration to deny the final permits to cross the river and to promise a full environmental review that considered the Tribe's treaty rights as well as alternative routes.

And of course almost immediately on taking office, TheRump reversed all that and gave the permits.

The Tribe filed a lawsuit to challenge this decision, but construction went ahead and was completed while the case was proceeding.

In June, just weeks after pipeline operations had begun, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers had not complied with environmental review laws before issuing permits for the pipeline to cross the Missouri River. The court ordered the Corps to do a new analysis of critical issues it hadn't properly addressed.

Here's where the Not Good News comes in: The court also ordered a separate briefing to assess whether the pipeline should be shut down while this so-called "remand" process is going on.

On October 11, the DC District Court ruled that the pipeline can keep operating. It rejected the claim that shutting it down would cause substantial economic harm to the company, noting that Energy Transfer Partners got itself into that situation by starting operations while the case was being litigated, but also ruled that because it is "possible" that when the remand is complete the Corps can justify its decision not to conduct a full review, the gunk can keep moving.

The Tribe had also asked for additional measures to reduce the risk of oil spills; that is still before the court.

For now, the Tribe intends to focus on the remand process and has a team of experts assisting it in providing input. The Corps of Engineers has stated that remand process should be complete by April 2018 and the court admonished the Corps not to treat this process as a "bureaucratic formality" but to give "serious consideration" to the errors identified by the court.

So the fight goes on, but right now the news is not good.

35.1 - Good News: majority of GOPpers say society should accept homosexuality

Good News: majority of GOPpers say society should accept homosexuality

Starting off with some Good News, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center included a notable result: For the first time, a majority - 54% - of Republicans and Republican leaners say homosexuality should be accepted by society.

By contrast, only 35 percent of that same group felt that way in 2007.

Democrats and Democratic leaners, not too surprisingly, were more emphatic: 83 percent said homosexuality should be accepted by society.

On a related noted, because it also comes under the heading of LGBTQ rights, Stiles Zuschlag is a 17-year-old Maine boy who had been attending Tri-City Christian Academy in Somersworth, New Hampshire.

Stiles Zuschlag

That all changed when he came out as transgender in 2015. The school knew of his gender change, but he wanted to be clear that he should be addressed as Stiles and no longer as Alija.

So he spoke to a counselor at the school in August, who gave him an ultimatum: He had to confess his sins, renounce that he was a male, stop taking testosterone treatments, and go to Christian counseling - or find a new school.

So this year he found a new school, a public one: Noble High School, in North Berwick, Maine.

When an email began circulating asking for nominees for the position of this year's homecoming king, as a joke he asked for his name to be put in. You know what's coming: Not only was he nominated, on October 6, he won.

It's a small thing, even a very small thing; nonetheless, it's another little sign of progress, of acceptance of people for who they are. And just like GOPpers gradually coming around, that is Good News.

34.7 - Outrage of the Week: payments to "safety net" hospitals cut, Children's Health Insurance Program expired, due to Congressional inaction

Outrage of the Week: payments to "safety net" hospitals cut, Children's Health Insurance Program expired, due to Congressional inaction

Now for our other regular feature, this is the Outrage of the Week.

Over the summer and into early fall, the Senate found time to spend weeks in yet another attempt to undo whatever good the Affordable Care Act has done and then after that failed they found weeks more to try again with an even worse bill - the Graham-Cassidy catastrophe - and when that failed they still found time to talk about trying again later.

That, the Senate had time for.

The House found time to pass a bill on October 3 banning abortions after 20 weeks and imposing a five year prison sentence on women who attempt to get abortions after that time and the doctors who would do them.

The bill is based on the lie that 20-week old fetus can feel pain, a lie that keeps circulating even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considers the case to be closed as to whether a fetus can feel pain at that stage in development: Simply put, a fetus at 20 weeks just does not have enough of a brain to perceive pain and won't until about 27 weeks.

More: The bill was passed despite fact that its chances of passing the Senate, where it would have to overcome the 60-vote barrier, are at most negligible.

Even so, that the House had time for.

You know what they didn't have time for?

The Disproportionate Share Hospitals payments, for one thing. They are a part of Medicaid and Medicare which since the 1980s have offset a portion of the uncompensated care hospitals provide to patients every year.
But because of a quirk in the way Obamacare was implemented, those payments were facing $43 billion in cuts over the next few years, cuts set to kick in on October 1.

And safety net hospitals - which care for low-income patients as part of their mission - will, naturally, be hit the hardest: They provide on average eight times more uncompensated care than other hospitals - because again, part of their mission is to care for those who are the least likely to be able to pay.

Congress was supposed to pass an extension of those payments to head off the cuts, which, again, will hit the neediest the hardest. But they were too busy with bullshit to find the time to deal with it. That, they didn't have time for.

CHIP is the Children's Health Insurance Program. It provides matching funds to states for health insurance for families with children, geared to cover uninsured children in families with incomes too low to afford insurance but too high to receive Medicaid.
About 9 million children have health insurance thanks to the program, which is a big part of the reason that the US has - or at least had - almost eliminated the specter of children without health insurance.
It expired on September 30. Because Congress was too busy with bullshit to renew it. That, they didn't have time for.

Now I have to add that because the program piggybacks on Medicaid, this doesn't mean states will run out of money for the program immediately. But 10 states are projected to run out of matching funds by the end of the year and 22 more and Washington, DC will hit that wall by March if Congress does not act very soon.
We'll have to see if they can find the time. In the meantime, this is and will remain an outrage.

34.6 - Clown Award: Sen. Ron Johnson

Clown Award: Sen. Ron Johnson

And that in fact leads us right into one of our regular features, the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

It leads us in because our first nominee this week is Pat Robertson, who attributed the Las Vegas mass shooting to "disrespect for authority" including, particularly, disrespect for President TheRump.

Quoting Robertson,

we have disrespect for authority - there is profound disrespect of our president, all across this nation. They say terrible things about him - it's in the news, it's in other places.

He also blamed, among other things, "disrespect for our national anthem," which apparently means that Stephen Paddock saw NFL players kneeling for the anthem and went "That's it! Their disrespect justifies me killing a whole bunch of people."

I thought all this was pretty clownish but thent I thought "Does anyone still take Pat Robertson seriously?"

Realizing the answer is "no," I decided to move on to our second nominee, Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, a favorite of the far-right anti-choice crowd who brags about how anti-abortion he is.

Turns out that back in January this "family values" bloviator was having an extra-marital affair with a woman who was concerned she may have gotten pregnant as a result. He told her to get an abortion.

A real clown! But wait, it's really just plain old run-of-the-mill right-wing hypocrisy. And it turns out that he has gone with the "spend time with my family" route and won't run for re-election in 2018. (Update: He resigned.)

So we turn to this week's winner of the Big Red Nose, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Sen. Ron Johnson: Clown

On September 28, when asked by a high school student whether he considered health care a right or a privilege, Johnson not only went with privilege, he also said that food and shelter and clothing should also be considered "privileges," reserved to those who can afford them.

"What we have as rights," he said, "are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Past that point, everything else is a limited resource that we have to use our opportunities given to us so that we can afford those things." He also referred to Rand Paul's statement from a few years ago describing a universal health care system as the imposition of slavery.

So in other words, there's only so much health care - or food or clothing or shelter - to go around, so it's up to you to be able to pay whatever the market demands and if you can't, well, you just didn't "use your opportunities."

Missing from Johnson's blathering was an explanation how you can have a "right to life" if you don't have food, shelter, clothing, or health care.

What was not missing is the fact that Ron Johnson is a smug, self-satisfied, prig - and a clown.

Footnote: Of the 25 wealthiest nations in the world, the United States is the only one not to recognize health care as a right by providing some measure of universal health care to its residents.

And it's worth noting that Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the US has endorsed and had a major hand in creating, says:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.

It's doubtful Sen. Clown Johnson knows - or cares.

33.2 - Good News: Teamsters Local is a "sanctuary" union; California is a "sanctuary" state

Good News: Teamsters Local is a "sanctuary" union; California is a "sanctuary" state

We've also got some Good News on matters related to immigration.

For one thing, on September 13, Teamsters Joint Council 16, an umbrella group of 27 union locals representing 120,000 workers around the New York City area and in Puerto Rico, passed a resolution declaring itself a "sanctuary union." It will not assist federal immigration agents in deporting its members and will proactively provide trainings, legal assistance, and organize support for immigrant Teamsters.

This followed the deportation of Eber Garcia Vasquez, who had been working as a Teamster for 26 years and was deported despite having no criminal record, reporting in once a year regarding his request for asylum, and doing everything else he was supposed to do.

So much for the "bad hombres" bull, as even some ICE agents are admitting, saying the practice is to arrest and deport people because they can, not because those people are a danger, and doing it even as Jeff "Not a racist, not me, nope" Sessions foams at the mouth about how sanctuary policies put us all in danger from "predators" because "a sanctuary city is a trafficker, smuggler, or gang member's best friend" while he repeatedly lies about a non-existent rise in violent crime, which in fact is at the lowest level in several decades.

But if Jeffykins is that upset about sanctuary cities, he must be absolute apoplectic about California, which on September 16 made itself a sanctuary state. Although the bill as passed is not as strong as the version first proposed, it still is the most wide-ranging such law in the US.

And if that didn't make him pop a few blood vessels, maybe this did: On September 15, a federal judge in Chicago issued a nationwide injunction against TheRump's effort to smack down sanctuary cities by withholding federal funds for public safety programs.

District Judge Harry Leinenweber found that penalizing cities for protecting undocumented immigrants was both unlawful and unconstitutional and that Sessions doesn't have the authority to impose such conditions on the program.

The judge made the injunction national because, he wrote in his ruling, there is "no reason to think that the legal issues present in this case are restricted to Chicago or that the statutory authority given to the attorney general would differ in another jurisdiction."

The decision follows one in California in April, also about the attempt to end aid to sanctuary cities, and a related one in Texas in July; that one addressed a Texas state law allowing police to inquire about a person's immigration status even during routine interactions. In both those cases, as the newest one in Chicago, justice for immigrants prevailed.

Which only makes sense, not only legally and morally, but logically: Police around the country often support sanctuary cities because that allows immigrants to report crimes without fearing retaliation or deportation, which contrary to the bigoted xenophobic ranting of such as Jeff Sessions, actually makes those cities safer.

32.7 - Outrage(s) of the Week

Outrage(s) of the Week

Finally for this week is our other regular feature, the Outrage of the Week.

I had two possibilities this week, one of which is overall potentially much more significant that the other but that other one is just so cheap, so low, that I found it hard to choose.

So I'll lay them both out. You can decide.

The cheap, low one is from last month.

In November 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services adopted a rule that prohibited nursing homes that accept Medicare or Medicaid funds from including forced arbitration language in their resident contracts.

Forced arbitration - I have talked about this before - is where in order to use a product or service you have to forswear your rights to go to court even as a member of a class action suit and agree to let any dispute be settled by a supposedly neutral arbiter chosen by the corporation whose income depends on being contracted by corporations to handle such arbitrations - which is a good part of the reason why corporations win 93% of the time.

More specifically, it means, in this instance, that in order to get admitted to the nursing home, prospective residents and their families would have to sign away their rights to take the corporation to court and agree that any dispute, even up to allegations of abuse, neglect, or sexual assault, would be settled by such a "neutral" arbiter. Don't agree? You don't get in. Take it or leave it; if you don't, there are others who will so we don't give a damn.

So as of last November, the rule became that nursing homes couldn't do that. Now, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services want to undo that rule and again leave the elderly and their caretakers, at a time when they are under great emotional stress, to the tender mercies of the nursing home industry, which of course has been lobbying and suing over the rule ever since it went into effect.

There is just no other word for this but "low." It is so unfeelingly despicable, so morally outrageous, so ... low, that I don't know what else to say about it.

So let's move on the other other case.

First, you may know this but just to be sure: An amicus brief - properly, amicus curiae, literally "friend of the court" - is a legal brief filed by someone who wants to address some aspect of a case but who is not a party to it. Usually they are filed as support for one side or the other.

The ACLU reports that the TheRump administration has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing - follow me here - that businesses have a constitutional right to discriminate against LGBTQ people, that a business could properly and rightly put out a sign saying "We Don't Sell To Gays" even if a state or Congress says such discrimination is illegal.

The case revolves around a baker who ran afoul of Colorado's anti-discrimination laws when he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple and who now wants SCOTUS to free him from any consequences of that. And now the White House has weighed in on his side because they insist it is his constitutional right to be a bigot, not just personally, but in his business dealings.

What makes this especially outrageous - and dangerous - is that the baker and the White House are not even "just" making the hackneyed claim that it's a freedom of religion issue: The baker insists - with White House backing - that creating a wedding cake is an act of creative expression to the point where it makes him a participant in the event, in the celebration, and anyone attending would assume that the cake meant he approved of the union.*

Therefore, the argument goes, denying him the "freedom" to be a bigot, denying him the "freedom" to refuse to serve a same-sex couple, becomes "compelled speech," he is "compelled" to say he supports same-sex marriage, and compelled speech violates the First Amendment.

In other words, they are claiming that not only his freedom of religion is at stake, but his freedom of speech as well.

But where does this logic end? If it's a violation of First Amendment rights to say that you cannot discriminate against others, that you can't be a bigot in your dealings with the public, where does it end? How can it be unconstitutional to say you can't discriminate against LGBTQ people but constitutional to say you can't do it in the case of blacks? or women? or Jews? or Muslims? or anyone else you happen to dislike or disapprove of?

The White House brief tries to thread that needle, claiming that this exemption for bigotry would not apply to discrimination based on race by arguing, in effect, that discrimination based on race is really, really bad - but discrimination based on being LGBTQ? Eh, not so much.

Which just proves that they are as bigoted and un-American as the baker - and every bit as much an outrage.

*Because after all, whenever you see a wedding cake, don't you immediately think about the baker's opinion of the marriage? Yeah, me neither.

32.5 - Good News: Medicare for All bill introduced

Good News: Medicare for All bill introduced

The other Good News is that Bernie Sanders and 15 other Senators have - I'm very tempted to say finally - rolled out a Medicare For All bill.

The reason this is Good News - despite the bill's at best faint chances of passing - is that it shows that the idea of single-payer health insurance is becoming, has become, mainstream. It has had significant support among the public for some time - most polls put the percentage supporting it somewhere in the high 50s to the mid 60s - but getting it addressed seriously in the mass media has been problematic and the institutional Democratic Party has been downright dismissive: Remember when Hillary Clinton said it was "never" going to happen?

Now it's become a serious enough issue that that we are seeing party stalwarts snipe that the proposal isn't "serious" because it doesn't present a finely detailed plan with exact financing of how to structure the program or how exactly to institute it or to nitpick at the very idea of single-payer, or, on the other hand and most significantly, issuing blah-blah statements about how they really do support single-payer "in concept" but it's just "the wrong time" - without ever indicating what the "right" time would be except for an unspecified future someday because first "we have to elect more Democrats" - all of which means they are feeling the heat.

Now personally, I don't think Medicare For All goes nearly far enough, not only because there is much Medicare doesn't cover - although admittedly Sanders' proposal is considerably more extensive in what it covers - but also because for all its merits, single-payer is still health insurance, not health care, and I want to get away from that model. What I want is a National Health Service, based on neighborhood health centers and building up through community and regional hospitals to a few national hospitals dealing with the rarest and most complicated treatments.

There's obviously much more to the idea than that and maybe I'll get into some more details at some time, but the point here is that Medicare for All is not a final answer - but it damn well is a big improvement and damn well is a step in the right direction. So even though we know it won't pass, the very fact that there is such noise about it damn well is Good News.

30.11 - Outrage of the Week: "Back to 1900"

Outrage of the Week: "Back to 1900"

This is our other regular feature and it is the Outrage of the Week.

Back in 1995, George Will, who isn't an intellectual but plays one on TV on behalf of the mouth-breathers of the right wing, wrote in his syndicated column that, quoting,

"'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal."

It appears that the the White House of Donald TheRump is taking that almost literally with its increasingly-obvious intent to roll back the social progress of decades. on a variety of fronts, trying to recreate a time that exists only in their fantasies.

There was, for one obvious example, the occasion the morning of July 26 when His High Orangeness tweeted that

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.

Okay, to start off with, the part about consultation is a blatant lie. Top military brass were blindsided by the announcement. They had no idea this was coming.

In fact, they are sufficiently against it or at least resistant to it that Gen. Joseph Dunford, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a note Thursday to all service chiefs, commanders, and enlisted military leaders saying that US policy on transgender individuals in the military "has not - and will not - change" until Secretary of War Mattis receives TheRump's policy direction and Mattis determines how to implement it.

And "disruption that transgender in the military would entail?" Is he really that disconnected from the real world, is he really that much wrapped up in his own fantasies that he doesn't even know that there are already transgender members of the military?

The number is unknown but a RAND study suggested there could be over 6000 and a study at UCLA estimated there are nearly 9000 on active duty with 6000 more in the guard and reserve.

The issue supposedly arose in the House a few weeks ago. An amendment was introduced to a defense authorization bill would ban funding for gender reassignment surgeries and treatments for transgender active-duty personnel. The GOPper leadership was shocked when a group of 24 mostly moderate Republicans teamed up with 190 Democrats to kill the effort.

So they turned to Trump for help getting this bill through. He didn't hesitate, in fact, he went further than they were looking for.

But claim the issue was about "cost" is belied first by the reality that the cost involved is estimated to be about $1.2 million per year, an amount the government could save if His High Orangeness skipped just one golf weekend.

And belied, more importantly, by comments on issue. GOPper Trent Franks, for one, said

It's not so much the transgender surgery issue as much as we continue to let the defense bill be the mule for all of these social experiments that the left wants to try to [foist] on government

and

It seems to me that if someone wants to come to the military, potentially risk their life to save the country, that they should probably decide whether they're a man or woman before they do that.

It's not about money or "social experiments." It's about fear and hatred of transgender folks.

But of course it's not only transgender folks on who the clock is to be turned back. The same day as the infamous tweet, the Department of Injustice submitted a brief in a federal lawsuit claiming that a major piece of civil rights legislation banning discrimination in employment based on sex doesn't protect homosexuals from workplace discrimination.

The law is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and besides sex, it bans discrimination based on race, color, national origin, or religion. The case is that of Zarda v. Altitude Express. The case started in 2010 when Donald Zarda sued his former employer, claiming he had been fired for being gay.

When the case got to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, the court invited outside parties to weigh in. Note well because it's important, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the largely autonomous federal agency that is charged with enforcing anti-discrimination laws, had already filed a brief in support of Zarda and has held that position for several years, arguing that anti-gay discrimination is based on sex stereotyping, and therefore is discrimination on the basis of sex.

The DOJ of Jeff "I'm not a bigot, really I'm not" sessions didn't care. Despite not being a party to the case, despite the fact that the EEOC had already spoken, and despite the fact that the department doesn't normally weigh in on a case between private parties as this one is, they came storming in to say never mind what the EEOC says, they don't represent the government (even though that's their job). No, listen to us! And we say that Title VII only applies to cases where men and women are treated differently - which is the narrowest possible reading of the law - so it does not cover sexual orientation so Donald Zarda and every other gay or lesbian worker in the whole country is just screwed.

Because like George Will said, 1900.

The DOJ argued that the issue that Title VII does not cover sexual orientation has been "settled for decades" and there is an "overwhelming judicial consensus" apparently based on two cases from the 2000s and some others that were from before Lawrence v. Texas (which struck down state laws against sodomy in 2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (which legalized same-sex marriage in 2015). In other words, cases from the good old days. It also ignored the fact that in April, the 7th Circuit ruled in favor of a lesbian who made the same claim of protection under Title VII.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a staff attorney at Lambda Legal, said "There is no role for the DOJ to play" in the Zarda case and the Injustice Department was "going out of its way to harm LGBT people."

But LGBTQ people, of course are not the only ones standing between the hate-mongers and their dream of a purified white nation. There are also all those icky brown people, all those "illegal" human beings, those people whose existence is against the law.

I noted just two or three weeks ago that ICE agents, according to a directive from the head of its enforcement unit, are told to take action against any undocumented immigrant they encounter while on duty. Not that they "may" take action, which still allows for at least some degree of discretion, but that they "will" do so.

ICE is taking that to heart to the point where, as Splinter News put it, "ICE is just arresting everyone," a practice that prompted one ICE agent turned whistleblower to say "The plan is to take them back into custody, and then figure it out. We’re doing it because we can."

Here's an example: ICE recently announced that its officers arrested 650 people, including 38 minors, in a four-day operation in late July. But it turned out that over 450 of the people arrested - over 70% - weren't even the ones ICE was looking for in the first place. They just happened to be in the vicinity when the ICE-y cops showed up.

The goal here is simple: Label all undocumented immigrants as "animals," as "violent," as "criminals" (even though they commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens), claim they all "go on welfare" (for which they are not eligible and never have been), and otherwise dehumanize them in any way you can and then you don't have to care who you deport as long as you can eject "foreigners," eject "them," eject "the other," eject the "not us," eject the "not white."

But then it develops that "the other" has an even wider application.

Right now, the US grants about 1 million green cards per year; a green card marks a grant of permanent legal residence in the United States. The number of green cards issued in a year is the measure of legal immigration. Over the past half century US immigration laws have permitted a growing number of immigrants to come to the country to work or join relatives already living here legally.

One August 2, TheRump endorsed a new Senate bill intended to cut that legal immigration in half.

Not only that, the bill also proposes to completely end a visa diversity lottery that has awarded 50,000 green cards a year - out of 14 million applications - which go mostly to areas in the world that traditionally do not have as many immigrants to the United States, such as, I would say significantly, Africa. And the bill caps refugee admissions at the heartless level of 50,000 per year.

Under the bill, a new immigration system would award points to green card applicants based on such factors as English ability, education levels, and job skills. Note that while a rudimentary command of English is needed to become a citizen, it has never been a requirement for a green card and this "new system" would favor English speakers over others, trying to create a de facto version of what the US has never had: an official language.

It also favors more educated applicants and those with specialized skills, leading to the ultimate point as noted by Kevin Appleby, the senior director of international migration policy for the Center for Migration Studies. He called the bill "part of a broader strategy by this administration to rid the country of low-skilled immigrants they don't favor in favor of immigrants in their image."

And what is that image? Here's a way you can tell:

- The anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform said "it looks like the perfect bill."
- White nationalist William Johnson called it "a viable first step."
- Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute, said the bill "sounds awesome."

Know them by the company they keep.

Because when Sen. Tom Cotton, one of the bill's sponsors, said that while immigrant rights groups might view the current system as a "symbol of America's virtue and generosity," he sees it "as a symbol we're not committed to working-class Americans," I for one am damn sure that the "working-class American" he was envisioning was not named Jesus or Laticia.

Transgender people, gays and lesbians, undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants, all on the political chopping block for being "other," for being "not us," for being insufficiently - using the word here in a social rather than a literal sense - for being insufficiently white.

If rights must be denied, if families must be ripped apart, if dreams must be crushed, then in the minds of those harshly, cruelly, pursuing a nostalgia for a whiteness that never truly was and a national sense of commonality that existed only because of the oppression of other voices, so be it and you, back into the closet; you, back where you came from or at least back into the shadows; and you, you keep out.

It is a denial of who we are, a denial of who we have become, a denial of what we can be, a denial of what could in the best possible sense of the term be considered American. It is small, it is bigoted, it is a project of timorous, fearful people trembling in the face of the future, it is a project not bounded, not defined, by these examples but is illustrated by them and were it not driven by powerful people who fear the loss of their privilege, it would be an occasion for sorrow and pity.

But as it is driven by powerful people with positions and privileges to protect, it is a source not of pity but of outrage.