"Lawmakers also lack the mastery of esoteric issues, say soil runoff, that civil servants can master. When the courts force Congress to expressly decide, usually either nothing happens — or lobbyists sit in the driver’s seat. Pushing decision-making to Congress from the civil service, or what Trump disdainfully called the 'deep state,' is a goal of the conservative legal project shared by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.... The reality is, even if they tried, the Democratic-controlled Congress probably couldn’t cobble together the votes to pass a mandate like OSHA’s. Ten Republicans in the Senate wouldn’t cross over to break a filibuster. Republicans are emboldened because they think opposition to vaccine mandates in the off-year Virginia elections helped win all three statewide races and flip the House of Delegates."
From
"How blocking Biden’s vaccine mandate would be a Supreme Court gift to Trump" by James Hohmann (WaPo).
The Biden administration is relying on general language in a statute passed over a half century ago as it tries to do something that we know Congress won't do on its own, even though Congress has been able to see the problem to be solved for at least half a year. The administration's mandate is such an aggressive imposition on people, and the position of Congress is, essentially, to spare us. It looks as though the Supreme Court is about to make Congress's answer — no mandate — the final answer.
Isn't that the most democratic — small "d" democratic — resolution of the lawmaking conundrum?
Posts
88 comments:
The vaccine mandate is about as popular as cholera.
That is why congress wont touch it.
Everyone knows the Biden Regime is illegitimate and everyone already hates Biden so they are just pitching him out there like a dead fish and trying to get whatever they can get.
Biden got about 60 million votes. Nobody voted for a guy who shits his pants in public.
They know they wont be able to mail in another election.
They are just trying to burn everything down now.
"Historically, and almost definitionally, a gridlocked Congress that cannot pass laws tends to be better for conservative reactionaries than progressive activists."
Forget the Constitution, forget democracy, forget the rule of law, the "problem" here is that following those things doesn't get us what we want, so we shoudl nuke them and go with authoritarian government by an unbound Executive
I do appreciate James Hohmann and WaPo's willingness to be honest about what they're doing
When somebody comes to me demanding that I do something "because emergency," two things happen:
(1) They better explain exactly how this is an emergency, how bad it is, how long it is likely to persist, and how much less bad it will be made by my contribution --time, money, freedom-- that he wants me to make.
(2) The demand on me has to be proportional to the badness: both in magnitude and in duration.
In effect he is asking me to partner with him and I won't be given enough information or enough time to chew on it; but it's got to be done. The BIGGER THE DEMAND, THE MORE SPECIFIC AND DEFINITE ITS END MUST BE.
What I have watched so far with the Supremes is OSHA waving a magic wand called "emergency" that entitles them to do anything, really just about anything at all, and do it for as long as they want, and without regard to the costs on others, and without any duty to account for their exercise and its consequences.
No thanks.
Is keeping the status quo really 'reactionary'? I can never keep up with these new definitions of words.
When the President tells OSHA “jump” and OSHA says “how high?”, how is that an instance of agency expertise that courts should defer to?
"Lawmakers also lack the mastery of esoteric issues, say soil runoff, that civil servants can master.
Ah, the worship of he "expert".
New flash: Civil Servants aren't special any more. Any member of Congress who cares can have aides who know at least as much about any given issue as does any given member of the civil service bureaucracy.
And there are thousands to millions of us out in the real world who know more. And who can inform our elected representatives
When the courts force Congress to expressly decide, usually either nothing happens — or lobbyists sit in the driver’s seat.
And when the Executive Branch gets to decide, people who are looking forward to future jobs with the lobbyists get to decide.
Except they get to decide without any democratic accountability, unlike with Congress
Pushing decision-making to Congress from the civil service, or what Trump disdainfully called the 'deep state,' is a goal of the conservative legal project shared by
Every single person who values the US Constitution, the rule of law, and / or democracy
The reality is, even if they tried, the Democratic-controlled Congress probably couldn’t cobble together the votes to pass a mandate like OSHA’s.
So, what your'e saying is that teh reason why the authoritarian Biden* Admin went for "emergency powers" rather than a law was because the law they wanted would not have passed Congress.
And, rather than saying "wow, we can't do this legally, I guess we should try something that we can do legally", you authoritarian and divisive enemies of democracy decided to try an illegitimate end run through OSHA.
While I appreciate the Democrats willingness to tell us just how illegitimate their actions are, I'm kind of disappointed that they have so little shame that they're willing to publicly brag about their contempt for the rule of law and democracy
It's SCIENCE, people!
Two senior officials have resigned from their positions within the US Food and Drug Administration over frustrations with the Biden administration’s plans to move forward with recommending COVID-19 booster shots without their prior approval, according to a report.
Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research & Review, and deputy director Phil Krause are set to leave the agency this fall, with sources telling Politico that the two officials were at odds with the FDA’s top vaccine official, Peter Marks, and were discontented over the roles of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in decisions that they believed should be handled by the FDA.. NY Post -9/1/21
The administration's mandate is such an aggressive imposition on people, and the position of Congress is, essentially, to spare us. It looks as though the Supreme Court is about to make Congress's answer — no mandate — the final answer.
Isn't that the most democratic — small "d" democratic — resolution of the lawmaking conundrum?
Yes, it is.
Which is why the Democrats are opposed to it. And why I always refer to them as the "Democrat" Party". Because there's nothing democratic about them
"Pushing decision-making to Congress from the civil service, or what Trump disdainfully called the 'deep state,' is a goal of the conservative legal project"
The phrasing is telling, isn't it?
Assumption 1: The civil service properly makes "decisions," but only reactionary conservatives want to "push" it to Congress. Assumption 2: the actual language of the actual Constitution is irrelevant to who decides what. Assumption 3: Anything that stands in the way of progressives getting what they want is bad, bad. Inference: when progs talk about saving "our democracy," they don't mean people electing representatives who then engage in "decision-making" on their behalf.
Republicans are emboldened because they think opposition to vaccine mandates in the off-year Virginia elections helped win all three statewide races and flip the House of Delegates."
It wasn't. What lost it for democrats was a terrible gaff by Terry McAuliffe saying the school boards knew better than parents about what is a good education for their kids.
Read Matt Taibbi's Substak: Loudoun County, Virginia: A Culture War in Four Acts.
Link to video
It’s political dog shit with nothing to do with the health of humanity.
Below the surface is the by-now well-known issue of vaxxing:
We were led to believe it would be like MMR or anti-polio. One, two, maybe three sticks and....never have to worry for life. See smallpox.
In fact, the definition of vaccine has had to be changed to accommodate the fact that, for the foreseeable future, we're going to be encouraged to get at least one shot a year, if not more, on the promise that, although we can still carry it around and succumb to somebody else's carrying it around, we probably won't be as sick as otherwise.
In the meantime, therapeutics--whatever their place in medicine at this point--were being slagged as if poison. What's up with that?
Mandating this dog's breakfast is not as popular as some may think.
I note Mayo fired seven hundred staff for not vaxxing. I presume Mayo doesn't have seven hundred useless paychecks to send out each pay period, so this would be a shortage in useful staff of SEVEN FREAKING HUNDRED HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS. Wouldn't you like to know what those folks are thinking, what they've seen, to be on the front line and refuse vaxxing knowing it will cost them their jobs.
Houston Methodist dumped 150 for that reason.
New York state was looking at losing so many over the issue that the gov was talking about mobilizing the National Guard. Forgetting until somebody with an IQ of room temp--the governor's brain trust--mentioned that these people weren't lying around on the stimmies, but had their day jobs. As medical professionals. From which they'd be removed to fill in empty slots, leaving empty slots....
I have no recollection of what the Army shoved into me fifty-plus years ago, but I've not had any disease of any kind, including flu, since. This is the general picture of vaccination and complaining that people today don't see the current issue as if it's the Old Way is...not productive.
I started the flu shots three years ago and got the shingle whenever the supply reached our area. Couple of years.
So two Pfizers and a booster in the last ten months and I'm about to be a Typhoid Mary if I don't get another of what may be an endless series of boosters.
I live in a state with a dem governor so we don't have to worry about the old folks with co-morbidities.
This is not vaccination as we were promised.
Democracy is sacred... except when it results in outcomes the managerial class doesn't like.
Reactionary? Isn’t pushing through a mandate to take a vaccine as an emergency a bit reactionary? You had a year, but you spent the first 3 months telling people not to trust a vaccine developed under a Trump Administration.
Since the State is mostly in the business of hurting us and stealing our stuff, a gridlocked State is certainly better for those of us who still value liberty.
Isn't that the most democratic
Well, yes. But democracy isn't progressive. Progressive is a privileged class leading the lessor cattle to greener pastures. Which, in practice, is the slaughter house.
I'm happy with gridlock too! Our wonderful Constitution obstructs “rent seeking” and other forms of influence by the privileged few. Can you imagine what the lunatic Leftists would do without bicameralism and interinstitutional competition? And what about Bush II's poorly conceived proposals like Medicare vouchers or privatized social security? Thanks but no thanks.
I take issue with "that civil SERVANTS can MASTER"
I dont make the rules, by I certainly can play by them. ;)
While I don’t like the loaded term “reactionary conservatives,” the article is semi-balanced for the Washington Post. I do think that grid lock
tends to restrain the left from doing any further damage. Often no legislation is better than destructive legislation. I suppose that leftists
thinks that grid lock is preferable to conservative control of congress as well.
Something about a dagger.
I actually clicked through and read the article because I was having a hard time seeing how this would be a victory for Trump. Turns out it's a victory for Trump because until he came along, no politicians were concerned about and trying to pare back the (apparently) purely beneficent administrative state. In truth, the federal bureaucracy has become the true rulers of this country and needs to be reined in, if not rooted out completely. It all started when the Supreme Court rued on Wickard v Filburn. They got that wrong and what has flowed from it might well destroy small 'd' democracy in this country.
These people don't believe in democracy. They believe in mowing down anybody who gets in their way.
Answer to Althouse's question- "Yes."
It wasn't. What lost it for democrats was a terrible gaff by Terry McAuliffe saying the school boards knew better than parents about what is a good education for their kids.
A smart candidate would drive home the point that both vaccine mandates and CRT in schools are symptoms of the same problem: bureaucracy which actively disdains the people most affected by its decisions.
Most people in congress are ignorant about almost all subjects except the law and getting elected to congress.
They have no practical knowledge of everyday things...
Let's see, rule by enlightened "experts", bypassing the elected representatives of the people, to create mandates with no political accountability. WaPo is right, democracy does die in the darkness.
I am totally against vaccine mandates, but believe that SCOTUS should leave a small crack in the door just in case there is a really nasty virus that kills a high percentage (50% or more) of the infected and is highly contagious, and there is a vaccine that stops it. Something like bubonic plague.
Thus, I believe that the Court should set out a series of high standards that must be met for there to be a mandate for ANYONE, including the military. Such standards would look at things such as the government letting in illegals without vaccines, parts of the government being exempt from vaccines (e.g. USPS), the low low low level of serious outcomes among younger people, the availability of effective therapies, etc. The guidelines that I imagine would forestall any administratively established mandates for the current COVID situation while leaving the door open just a crack for the potential that the Chinese get really good at viruses and send us one that threatens half of the U.S. population.
Richard Aubrey said “This is not the vaccination we were promised.” The evidence is slowly emerging that not only are there long term effects, but the more shots you get, the worse they are. Karl Denninger’s post today mentions just how bad.
Now some of the readers here- and the hostess- have dutifully lined up and been double jabbed, some with a 3rd booster shot. Don’t recall anyone mentioning the 4th. Now all the health authorities admit the vac is useless against contracting the omicron variant- but still insist it will keep you from dying from it, even as everyone who is paying attention realizes they’re not going to die from omicron in any event. And, all health authorities worldwide are admitting disease protection from the vaxxes is temporary at best. Hence the “need” for more and more jabs…
It’s not going to be if, it’s going to be when. When the evidence becomes overwhelming that it’s the vac itself killing people, your friends, your children, your parents, what are those of you who believed going to do about it? Or are you just going to shrug it off as a well intentioned mistake and hold no one accountable?
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker-Nad
Automiscorrect changed “vax” to “vac” and I didn’t notice…..
I recommend watching this.
two reasons - 1) it's fascinating. 2) the government (Biden admin doesn't want you to)
"Don't do it because it would be a victory for Trump." This is their best argument?
Either DJT is a viral infection in their brains (possible), or it's an angle calculated to sway the greatest number of minds who are actually infected (likely). Though it could be "and".
Historically, voters have seemed to prefer gridlocked Congresses - even splitting tickets - maybe to encourage compromise but possibly out of a desire that nothing drastic gets done at all.
The Biden administration is relying on general language in a statute passed over a half century ago as it tries to do something that we know Congress won't do on its own, even though Congress has been able to see the problem to be solved for at least half a year.
So, today's Congress, which 'has been able to see the problem" would NEVER do it...
FORTUNATELY, a Congress, FIFTY YEARS AGO, saw the problem, and passed a law addressing it
do i have that right? Just Checking
Which is why the Democrats are opposed to it. And why I always refer to them as the "Democrat" Party". Because there's nothing democratic about them
Same reason. My wife believes that when we use the noun-form, that we are really saying DemocRAT. That has nothing to do with it. The Democrat Party is the party of government control of everything. The very definition of fascism.
The Government can do Special Things, because IT'S an EMERGENY
Serious Question. How LONG Can an EMERGENCY Continue??
2 years (obviously)
10 years?
20 years?
50 years?
100 years?
1,000 years?
1,000,000 years?
an Eon?
Until the End of Time?
Can somebody let me know?
You could always stage a coup radical lefties. I remember when talk of a coup amongst lefties was aspirational.
I guess your bad hips and arthritis are damping that talk…
What about conservative activists and progressive reactionaries? How will they fare?
"Progressive is a privileged class leading the lessor cattle to greener pastures. Which, in practice, is the slaughter house."
Progressives are of two classes:
BOSTON BRAHMINS: New Englanders who go to Harvard on the money of their rapacious trader ancestors and live on the income of inherited fortunes. Often MD's and Attorneys. Their world is improving the poor from a distance.
MILWAUKEE COMMUNISTS (Minnesota also): German or Scandinavian 19th Century immigrant families who came to escape Europe and war, and want to build a socialist paradise, but none of them need socialism because they work too hard. So they need poor people to help to justify themselves.
These people have created much good for America and have seeded all the states with educational aspiration. They will be destroyed by their clients.
Right now the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the Presidency. If they truly believe this is an emergency they should enact legislation accordingly. They have not and are not going to so therefore they don't believe it themselves.
gilbar @ 6:02: "...How LONG can an EMERGENCY continue?"
How long is a string? Joking aside, "emergency" is just a shiny word that the power-mad shout at you as they take the keys and drive off with your government.
Analytically, "emergency" means something "emerging" (as if from the deep; unexpectedly, suddenly, shockingly). It necessarily means "things are different than they were, in important ways, ways you had not planned for."
What's interesting is that we can (roughly) agree on that initial shock wave, the start of the pulse of what's different. But can we agree on when it has ended?
I submit that if something occurs repeatedly, it ceases to be an emergency. Maybe after the first iteration; very likely after the second; absolutely after the third. By then, it is presumed that we had figured it out and didn't need to tear up all our old procedures and standards. We no longer needed to force people, on pain of losing their livelihood, to submit to being injected with a novel substance whose safety and efficacy are, excuse me, a gigantic crapshoot.
For the record, we are now at the fourth iteration of Wu Flu Emergency. Alpha, beta, delta and now omicron.
Emergency? No.
The author is confusing the administrative state with the deep state. The administrative state wants to pass laws that should be left to the legislature. The deep state is something I first heard of in the context of Turkey, where the deep state would work to remove leaders who were too Islamic. It was successful until Erdogan came along. In the US context it is those that worked to remove Trump.
You could always stage a coup radical lefties.
How soon they forget. They already did.
It's not about the vax, it's about the mandate.
And that goes for both sides.
"it's about the mandate."
It would be nice if the anti-mandaters didn't also try to shame others out of getting the vax. Granted mRNA is not a perfect inoculation but so far the vaxxed seem to be doing better than the unvaxxed right now.
Talk about your fog of war.
It would be nice if the anti-mandaters didn't also try to shame others out of getting the vax.
Give me an example so I know what you mean.
Suppose that, in an alt universe, there were two groups in a country where there was a pandemic known as P-D19. The first group had a set of co-morbidities such that almost all the deaths from P-D19 came from members of this group. And vaccines reduced the seriousness of P-D19 for this group so that many lived who would have died without the vaccine. Statistically it's plain that vaccines helped this group. Now suppose that, in this alt country, the second group was very much larger than the first group but did not have the kind of co-morbidities associated with death from P-D19. Very few members of this group died of P-D19, but, at first, this whole second group got vaccinated. The result, in this alt world, was that in the second group, the healthy group, the damaging side effects of the vaccine - and every vaccine has side effects - turned out to be more significant than the protective effects because P-D19 was having so small an effect in terms of death and serious hospitalization on this group. It was called the M-L0nE effect. And in this alt country, this second group was so large that, statistically, the M-L0Ne effect was found to be greater than the protective effect of the vaccine on both groups taken as a whole. And so the repeat shots of the vaccine were banned. And since repeat shots were needed to protect those with co-morbidities, many people, loaded with co-morbidities died unnecessarily, leading to social turmoil till a solution was found.
The solution found in alt world was "informed" vaccination or choice. Those who, statistically, would benefit from the vaccine were informed of the facts. And those who, statistically, were in more danger from the vaccine than the disease were also informed. And those in a "gray area" were informed. And people, rather than distant experts, made informed individual choices for themselves. Informed choice was the law in alt world, you see.
Well, alt history, it's all a dream, isn't it?
The Democrats used to chant "My Body, My Choice."
That was before Trump.
It's not about the vax, it's about the mandate.
Speaking as someone who suffered a life-threatening event a couple of months after I got the second Pfizer, I'm wondering if maybe it is about the vax.
Blogger Critter said...
I am totally against vaccine mandates, but believe that SCOTUS should leave a small crack in the door just in case there is a really nasty virus that kills a high percentage (50% or more) of the infected and is highly contagious, and there is a vaccine that stops it. Something like bubonic plague.
There was in 2003 called SARS. It was a corona virus with a 23% mortality. It quickly died out because infectious diseases with high mortality always die out quickly. Smallpox had a pretty high mortality and once people discovered a vaccine that prevented it, they were lining up to get it. No mandate was necessary.
Similar thing with Polio. No mandate needed. There actually was an early Polio vaccine that had complications, sort of like this one, but that was quickly dropped for 30 years. This time the complications are being kept secret.
Lem said...
"Republicans are emboldened because they think opposition to vaccine mandates in the off-year Virginia elections helped win all three statewide races and flip the House of Delegates."
It wasn't. What lost it for democrats was a terrible gaff by Terry McAuliffe saying the school boards knew better than parents about what is a good education for their kids.
That maybe lost the Gov race.
They also lost Lt Gov and AG, and the State House
And those were lost because teh entire Democrat Establishment, not just Terry, wanted to shove CRT and Trans rules and school closing and all sorts of other miseries on parents, and the parents aren't willing to take it any more
Blogger Sebastian said...
The phrasing is telling, isn't it?
That was well said, Sebastian
It's good The Wise Latina worked remotely.
It would be cruel to force SCOTUS minions to clean all the shit she was flinging.
What else they got?
"But Truuuuuuuumpppp!"
Critter said...
I am totally against vaccine mandates, but believe that SCOTUS should leave a small crack in the door just in case there is a really nasty virus that kills a high percentage (50% or more) of the infected and is highly contagious, and there is a vaccine that stops it. Something like bubonic plague.
The proper SCOTUS ruling in this case is that Covid started hitting the US back in Feb 2020. It's now Jan of 2022.
There is nothing in the world that requires the exercise of "emergency powers", which is what the Biden* Admin is claiming, 20+ months after the "emergency" started.
Therefore if the Biden* Admin wants a vaccine mandate, they can go to Congress and get a new law passed.
Arguments about that hypothetical law can be discussed after Congress passes it. Until then, no Federal mandates.
In your hypothetical, the amount of time it would take for the vaccine to be created, tested, and found to work would provide more than enough time for Congress to pass a law WRT any mandates.
So SCOTUS need leave no cracks
but believe that SCOTUS should leave a small crack in the door
Dumbest thing I've ever heard!! It's YOUR decision. You shouldn't be looking to a court ruling. It's self-defense.
.....and you leave that door open just a crack, and they will drive a truck through it!!
Just look at what that stupid cunt Sotomayor suggests! She wants to conflate OSHA with a federal police force.
“I’m not sure I understand the distinction why the states would have the power [to institute a mandate such as OSHA’s], but the federal government wouldn’t,” stated the associate justice.
When Ohio solicitor general Ben Flowers began to explain that the federal government lacks police powers, Sotomayor cut him off, exclaiming that that it has “power with respect to protecting the health and safety of workers. ”
“We have accept[ed] the constitutionality of OSHA,” continued Sotomayor, who eventually insisted that the federal government has “a police power to protect workers,” over Flowers’s objections.
walter said...
It's good The Wise Latina worked remotely.
I do find it hilarious that said Wise Latina, who is presumably double vaxxed and boostered, doesn't trust teh shots she's gotten enough to come in to work.
But she's still ready to force everyone else to get them
"wildswan said...
Suppose that, in an alt universe . . . "
Pretty much supports the tenets of the Great Barrington Declaration, doesn't it? Target meds and protections at those who need them, and let society live.
The Bishop of our Diocese is threatening to fire, defrock -even excommunicate- a priest for refusing to get “vaccinated”.
If the mandate is not allowed- does the Bishop still have the authority to do this?
I posted the YouTube of the priest’s explanation of the ordeal on the last cafe post.
"Conservative reactionaries." Sigh.
I am totally against vaccine mandates, but believe that SCOTUS should leave a small crack in the door just in case there is a really nasty virus that kills a high percentage (50% or more) of the infected and is highly contagious, and there is a vaccine that stops it. Something like bubonic plague.
That would be an emergency. Allowing the Executive to take action. Short term, until Congress acts.
If Congress cannot generate the requisite votes to keep the executive orders in place, that proves it is no longer an emergency.
SCOTUS really needs to shut this down now. There is no emergency. The President is way out of his lane.
"Conservative reactionaries."
It's going to replace ORANGE MAN BAD!!
The opponents of the Revolution are always called Reactionary, regardless of the actual meaning of the term. As everyone knows, the Republicans want to re-establish the Romanovs./sarc
Critter said...
I am totally against vaccine mandates, but believe that SCOTUS should leave a small crack in the door just in case there is a really nasty virus that kills a high percentage (50% or more) of the infected and is highly contagious, and there is a vaccine that stops it. Something like bubonic plague.
Sorry. This is really dumb.
If such a virus happens and there is a vaccine that is even remotely effective there will be absolutely no need to mandate the vaccine. People will beg to get it.
People can make rational decisions and be responsible for them.
Often the people are on average more intelligent than the government bureaucrats that want to make mandates.
The only reason to institute a mandate is if you want to force someone to do something you cannot convince them to accept with rational support and evidence.
There are a lot of doctors and scientist out there that think Fauci is not just malevolent and corrupt but also pretty bad at science. Allowing someone like him to force someone like me to make a decision is just fucking stupid.
The scientific evidence supports the people that disagree with Fauci.
There will never be a need for a vaccine mandate. The premise and logic is wrong.
Civil servants may well have more expertise than Congressmen in a particular area, but that doesn't mean they know more in other areas. Any major public policy issue will have many facets requiring many different areas of expertise. Weighing one "expert" and set of values against another is Congress's responsibility as the direct representative of the people. In the current case, how much public health benefit against how much economic, psychological, and educational damage? This is not a question for "experts" or civil servants, whose judgment is not necessarily any better than anyone else's and who are no less subject to personal bias, career considerations, etc.
"Conservative reactionaries."
Wasn't this a George Carlin routine?? Jumbo Shrimp anyone?
I remember sitting in a workplace meeting before activities started and heard people grousing about how Congress was not busy passing laws. I suggested that maybe they are trying to work on passing good laws that make sense and not ones that amount to busy work for everyone but Congress. Since my workplace was in Madison, it was not a popular opinion.
YouTube misled me. Jumbo Shrimp anyone?
....but I didn't have the heart to delete the incorrect link to a George Carlin routine.
"The reality is, even if they tried, the Democratic-controlled Congress probably couldn’t cobble together the votes to pass a mandate like OSHA’s." Has everyone forgotten those inherent features of popular government: persuasion and compromise? Ever since (I think) the Obama Administration, we seem to have gotten used to the idea that the two "sides" are immutable; Democrats don't try to persuade Republicans, Republicans don't try to persuade Democrats, and neither side spends much time trying to figure out how they could modify their proposal to attract support from the other. Both LBJ and RWR must be spinning in their graves. Do you hear the whirring?
If there really is a crisis, with many lives at stake, don't you think some smart political operatives (yes, I know; that's not an apt description of current leadership) could cobble together a compromise that would command enough votes to pass? To save millions of lives?
I'm just wondering how Robert's is going to fuck this up again and allow most of it to stand or some other bullshit. This needs to be killed with fire so these fuckheads stop this nonsense. Like the unconstitutional rent relief Biden knew was unconstitutional but went ahead did any way. They need their wings clipped and pronto but I doubt it happens. We are adrift at sea now.
Right on Achilles what you said ten thousand times
"relying on general language in a statute passed over a half century ago"
Does this mean we don't have to obey old laws.
"Your Honor, that law shouldn't apply- it was passed a long time ago."
"Nobody voted for a guy who shits his pants in public"
https://twitter.com/Fruebee/status/1202567222230691842/photo/1
"The evidence is slowly emerging that not only are there long term effects, but the more shots you get, the worse they are."
And this is the link this genius posts in support of the above:
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker-Nad
Michael K and Achilles, exactly right. Hell, I would line to take a shot against Ebola f'rinstance.
And if a mandate were imposed, no one would think to challenge it.
Critter,
You don't have to mandate something that is that unquestionably good for an individual, and even in such a case, you definitely wouldn't have trouble getting Congress to authorize it by statute. What it basically comes down to is this- the government is using coercion because it can't convince the unvaccinated that the shots are actually go for them, and most of the unvaccinated are basically right in believing this. It was questionable in March, but the data is now all but conclusive- the vaccines offer nothing of value to 3/4 of the population given you have to get a booster every 6 months or less, followed by new vaccines every year, and you can still get infected and pass on the virus just like a sick unvaccinated person.
There are only two outcomes here- we either give up trying to control this virus with vaccines and/or boosters, or everybody takes them forever on a 6 month basis. COVID isn't going to disappear- you can count on the virus producing new strains that will hit the South in the hottest parts of the Summer, and then the North as Summer end and Fall begins. You will literally have to put a gun to my head to get me on the vaccine treadmill at this point.
Gridlock is one of the things you have to accept in a democratic form of government. This is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing, but tolerance of it is a requirement. If you decide that gridlock is terrible that we have to provide emergency powers to get around it, you have rejected the democratic model. Yet these typically are the same people who are so afraid about the survival of our democracy. A lot of masks have come off. Trump has broken a lot of people. And the worst thing about it is a lot of these people either (a) do not realize their mask has come off and are wondering why we are making a big fuss about their overt authoritarian and totalitarian arguments, or (b) did not realize they had a mask in the first place, being not very thoughtful people, and think their extreme positions are perfectly reasonable.
It is about time Congress got back to law making and stripped the authority they have given the executive branch because Congress is either too lazy or too cowardly to make decisions. I am of the opinion that the average Congressman is not particular well versed in the variety of topics they are supposed to be addressing, but the various regulatory agencies of the executive have proven to be corrupt, biased, and, despite being the "experts," not particularly well versed in the very things they are supposed to be regulating. I'd rather the laws be passed by the idiots I can vote for than the idiots I can't.
To Achilles and Yancey,
I doubt you are more libertarian and Constitutionally conservative than me. But that's just to establish where I'm coming from. Given the distrust that the Biden regime has generated in its COVID policies, I was addressing a situation where time was against the best interests of Americans. I agree that a virus like COVID affords time for information to get out and people to make decisions for themselves. But my scenario was one where time was of the essence. It's a very limited circumstance, but I don't think it's wise to rule it out given what the Chinese have in the works. I agree that you are right to distrust government to make the decision. But in the fog of war, so to speak, the executive needs to act. Given a realistic choice between death (which is not the case with COVID) and the right to choose what goes into your body, there is a point at which debate needs to stop and steps need to be taken to prevent massive death. That is how things worked when I grew up. There were no mandates for the epidemics of 1959 and 1969 because they did not fit my criteria. I lived through them and frankly don't even remember them or doing anything because of them. That is how the Founding Fathers saw it. If SCOTUS enumerated a high bar for deferring to the executive, I think it would be good.
Think, for example, how you would feel with a president you trusted with this power. I suspect you are reacting to the current regime and its totally political approach to the pandemic. Do you think that the ban on incoming flights from China would work itself out through Congress? It would be too late. That is why the brilliant Founding Fathers gave the executive the powers to act on foreign affairs etc. They had no awareness of a lab-created pandemic from a blood enemy like China. I don't want the executive to be handcuffed if a true killer virus comes from China. That would be unwise. I know my approach comes with some risk, but we get the government we vote for (recognizing that was not the case in 2020).
I used to think that this debate was about logic and evidence too.
Civil servants may well have more expertise than Congressmen in a particular area, but that doesn't mean they know more in other areas.flatten the curve, WHAT IS THE GOAL?
What exactly was the goal of all the protocols supposed to accomplish. Because none of the protocols were ever going to work against an aerosolized virus.
Coming into the third year of "two weeks to flatten the curve" the "experts" recommend ramping up the same mandates that NEVER moved the needle on a goal, that was never quite identified.
That is why, even though politicians know next to nothing, it is better for 535 of them inject incentives into the decision making process.
535 of them, NOT ONE, directing a massive bureaucratic machine that moves under the direction of ONE politician.
I agree that you are right to distrust government to make the decision. But in the fog of war, so to speak, the executive needs to act.
You keep alluding to emergency powers. 3 years into this dog and pony show, is long past emergency powers. Congress has all sorts of time to act.
Your example of stopping flights is OK, but you fail to note, Congress could have easily overturned in a matter of days.
As an intellectual exercise--imagine, if you will, that President Donald J. Trump had issued an "emergency" executive order requiring everybody to get the brand-new vax back in October of 2020.
Or (for purposes of my example)--that the vax was "available" in June of 2020, and Trump had issued such an order. (Imagine also that Fauci supported it).
I don't think that this guy would be so comfortable with the idea that we should let the "deep state"* decide what's best for us all.
*Yes, this guy has it wrong. The "Deep State" is the national security apparatus. The swamp is the administrative state (and the political hacks who derive power and income from it).
Critter, there is no president I would trust with this power. None.
police powers = what does this mean?
where is it defined? explained?
does it mean power to arrest / detain / isolate from others?
with warrant / without?
does it include duty to protect? or only when conveneient / officer feels like it
If legislation is hard to enact in our particular divided democracy, then it's going to happen only when much more than a majority supports it. There is a real danger, then, that important needs will not get addressed.
That would imply, though, that when a statute is enacted, the court should be particularly respectful of it and should certainly not read it narrowly based on a presumption that the democratic outcome is inaction, because then what you are doing is doubling down on disempowerment.
In addition, for those who believe that textualism is the democratic way to read a statute (a view that many conservatives and readers of this blog should share and that Althouse often flirts with), it sounded to me that the government had a much stronger textual argument than did the business and state petitioners. Indeed, I didn't hear any of the conservative justices question that textual argument.
So I think the small "d" democracy argument doesn't go anywhere.
Narayanan said...
police powers = what does this mean?
where is it defined? explained?
The US Government has enumerated powers. That means if the power is not specifically mentioned in the US Constitution, the Feds can't do it
States have generalized police power. That means if the US Constitution doesn't explicitly say "States can't do this", then they can
Pushing decision-making to Congress from the civil service, or what Trump disdainfully called the 'deep state,' is a goal of the conservative legal project shared by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr
Someone pointed this out above, I can't remember how:
The whole point of the "Civil Service" was that the would not make policy decisions.
That's why they're protected from being fired, because their role is to "expertly" implement the policy that others ahve formed.
If you're going to dump that, as James Hohmann and WaPo are openly advocating for, then we need to get rid of the Civil Service, and go back to the "spoils system".
Because anyone making policy needs to be subject to the voters
So conservatives who want law and order and to defend marriage and smaller gov are "reactionaries"? I think not.
I see this discussion is still going- and that Mutaman doesn't like Karl Denninger. Doesn't address any of the study links from which Karl draws his conclusions though. I mean, why bother looking at those? Everyone knows Karl Denninger is a nutjob, right?
How about Walter Chestnut? Has a series of threads on threadreaded.
https://threadreaderapp.com/user/parsifaler
Or a site I was referred to today that has a collection of links to a lot of studies showing that- the vaccine is dangerous.
https://www.saveusnow.org.uk/covid-vaccine-scientific-proof-lethal/
Hey, maybe all these people are lying or really mistaken- and in shape soccer players dropping on fields around the world after vaxxing is just a statistical anomaly. And the CDC and the admitted liar Dr. Fauci are telling the truth- we all need to get this vaccine to protect us against a virus that doesn't kill healthy people. I was reading again today that the average death age of death from the dreaded covid alone is still above the average death age overall. And still concentrated among those with serious comorbidities- particularly obesity even in the really old elderly.
Get your weight under control, adopt healthy habits, and covid is far less dangerous than influenza, which seems to kill across age groups with far less regard as to comorbidities. Almost as if the dreaded covid was designed to rid the world of "useless eaters" to use the proper Commie term.
Many of here , including me, have mentioned the supplements you should be taking, the daily cleaning rituals you could perform, etc, to reduce your chances of getting the dreaded covid and surviving it if you do. And we've included links. And the single best survival predictor to this day is still Vitamin D blood level on the day you're infected.
No vax, multiple CDC defined close exposures, taking recommended supplements, daily nasal rinse, 66 years old which automatically placed me in a high risk category according to the CDC- and I haven't contracted the disease. Or colds or flu for years now.
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