"... because they can’t afford travel to a blue state to get an abortion. They’re also hurt by the failure of red states to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act; by red state de facto segregation in public schools; and by red state measures to suppress votes. One answer is for Democratic administrations and congresses in Washington to prioritize the needs of the red state poor and make extra efforts to protect the civil and political rights of people of color in red states.... Blue states have a potential role here. They should spend additional resources on the needs of red state residents, such as Oregon is now doing for people from outside Oregon who seek abortions.... California already bars anyone on a state payroll (including yours truly, who teaches at UC Berkeley) from getting reimbursed for travel to states that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. Where will all this end? Not with two separate nations. What America is going through is analogous to Brexit – a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights).... The open question is like the one faced by every couple that separates: how will the two find ways to be civil toward each other?"
Writes Robert Reich, ending with a question that undercuts the click-bait headline, in "The second American civil war is already happening/America will still be America. But it is fast becoming two versions of itself. The open question is: how will the two be civil toward each other?" (The Guardian).
Does this deserve my tag "civility bullshit"? It's a close call. I'll add it because now I'm talking about it, but I don't think Reich deserves it, because he is calling for his own side to be civil. Those who click on that headline will probably mostly be people who are hot for battle and hating their adversary and — because it's Reich and The Guardian and because of the incipient overruling of Roe v. Wade — on the left.
I hear Reich saying settle down and think of specific, practical things that can be done through the ordinary processes of government, which include, in the United States, federalism. Let's take a moment to sneer at federalism — AKA "states rights" — and then let's calm down and diligently use it.
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78 comments:
How about we be civil by focusing a real problems that affect poor mothers, the ability to find baby formula?
The poor – both white and people of color – are already especially targeted by anti-abortion legislation because the democrats don't actually WANT those losers..
Let me confirm this argument,
Robert Reich takes the position that the constitutional establishment of states' rights.....i.e. the ability for smaller individual units to make decisions best for them while part of a broader whole....was always about segregation and harsh discrimination.
In which case....why give states the right to set their own rules? Why not codify segregation and discrimination at the national level?
Oh, wait, because states rights were never about segregation and harsh discrimination. Used to support those things, yes. But not what they were about or broadly use for across the centuries.
Truly authoritarians and central-government-minds don't even try to hide themselves.
I've never seen Reich acknowledge all the terrible things that has happened among centralized government controlled societies.
"mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights)."
That seems to me to be very much what our Constitution framers had in mind. George Washington had a Department of State, of War, of the Treasury, and an Attorney General.
Sounds very good, but you know bloody well the left are pathologically incapable of simply leaving other people alone -- which is the ultimate civility in free society.
Robert Reich sure does hate the concept of Federalism.
He sure does like the concept of all political power being concentrated into one central political entity.
I don't know about civility, but it's definitely bullshit. I stopped reading after the first two sentences.
such as Oregon is now doing for people from outside Oregon who seek abortions....
Oregon is worried, that states like Idaho will Grow, and takeover places like Oregon
Oregon (like California) has Only one thing going for it illegal immigration..
And THAT takes two generations. A child born in Idaho today will be on the 2030 census and be VOTING by 2040
Trust nothing Robert Reich says. He's the consummate spin doctor, framing his intent toward oppression with niceties. I expect him to claim that the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission," or whatever they choose to call it next week, will actually be about Reconciliation, or truth.
@Gilbar
"Oregon is worried, that states like Idaho will Grow"
Idaho is growing, bigly. So are the Dakotas, AZ, NV, etc. So much so they're having real housing issues. There's a huge migration being seen that hasn't happened in decades.
Ultimately, Reich's federalism would end up being like the eastern European commie states he secretly admires...people not being able to move around freely.
Watch. In 2030 I guarantee this bozo will write something about people shouldn't be able to move elsewhere without a permit or something. Reich has always tried to rationalize his loony positions first instead of examining them in the first place.
’…red state de facto segregation in public schools…’
Marxists lie with aplomb.
What a load of bullshit from a lifelong privileged twat.
The progressives of the democrat party have a lot of ying and yang going on when it comes to what they are impassioned about. Right now, they are marching and yelling "Abort the court" and yet, just a little bit earlier, they were all for packing the court. That would be like aborting the baby and making sure it is dead and doesn't exist any longer while simultaneously doing everything possible to give birth to 6 live babies. It's hard to keep up.
"Even before the 2020 election, when asked if violence would be justified if the other party won the election, 18.3% of Democrats and 13.8% of Republicans responded in the affirmative."
This seems contrary to what we've been told is the most extreme political group by [checks notes] the Democratic regime in power.
Totalitarian souls seek central control when it provides a way to gain more power, particularly over those who don't want to be governed under their rules. When facing a stalemate or trench warfare, totalitarians retreat toward a narrower scope of control (i.e., federalism). Party label irrelevant, "left" or "right" label irrelevant.
Totalitarian souls say: "It's better to rule in hell than serve in heaven." They'll eagerly destroy heaven if they can thereby rule hell. These are textbook psychopaths/sociopaths.
Over at Marginal Revolution, Reisch is hardly spoken of, nor are links to anything he writes seen often. Among both professional and amateur "orb ponderers" (economists), he's a bad joke, regardless of your political leanings. It's also why he hasn't been tapped for slot in an administration for anything other than outside, arms-length consulting in a long time.
He rates lower than Krugman, and that's saying something considering how far krugmans star has fallen. Not everyone who "ponders the orb" sees deeper than their own reflection.
I don't think Reich deserves it, because he is calling for his own side to be civil.
Reich’s inability - in the first sentence quoted- to truthfully describe his opponents’ motivations should disabuse us of the notion that he’s actually advocating civility.
If only all states could achieve the wealth and income inequality of California, if only all states could have the levels of poverty and homelessness of California, if only all states could construct segregated, underachieving systems of primary education like California has - once all have reached these goals, then they can work on becoming abortion havens like California.
The open question is: how will the two be civil toward each other?"
A good start would be stop imagining that getting less than a third of the voting age population in the United States to support a vegetable for President gives you the right to determine the policies of states your party can't muster a majority in.
The nazis destroyed the historical federal character of the German state because it stood in their way.
I just mention it because I find it funny that someone named 'Robert Reich' seems to be of the same opinion.
"red state measures to suppress votes"
Really? How so? By tightening one-person one-vote and voter ID laws? How does that suppress votes? Are blacks not allowed to have ID? Of course they are. Leftists are so insulting and well - liars.
reality? blue districts allow vote fraud.
Ugh. States don’t have rights. People have rights. States have powers.
How can no one running our government or media get this correct?
Secret writing: controversialists have to feed the ideological beast up front to establish their credentials, and then they may get down to writing a more balanced, more objective, less partisan, less tendentious article -- but usually don't.
Even tho evil Romney will soon ban tampons and contraception. Wear a condom.
Offer males who go in and out of prison - free vasectomies. Offer. that alone will lower the need for an abortion.
What Reich doesn't explain is why those supposedly dispossessed persons choose to stay in, and are moving to, red states.
a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights)...
Gosh, maybe, just spit balling here, maybe we need an agreement drawn up, that says the federal govt can only do certain things. A defined list of things, and if its not on the list, the people or the State legislatures can take care of the matters.
Robert third Reich.
Put this in context of Reich's statements over the past 20 or so years about conservatives. He is only saying this because he fears losing power.
What an horrible opening gambit: “States Rights” was always a cover for segregation and harsh discrimination.”
This is the Progressive bedrock view, that the Constitution itself was “always” rigged against minorities when it’s explicitly written to do the opposite, protect minority opinion from the tyranny of the majority. This foundational lie is the whole problem with progressivism which strives to strip us of our rights through mob rule and “direct democracy.” That’s why you never hear praise for Federalism but the ruling class loves to go on about “our democracy.” To Reich, Federalism is simply a “cover” for harming our fellow citizens. What a shitty thing to write, especially since the Progressive movement is presently made up of Commies and the national Party best known as the party of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, internment camps, “separate but equal,” blackface governors and yesterday’s Senate vote to force abortion on all fifty states up to the moment of birth. Every Senator except Manchin voted for this. It’s as anti-Federalist as any legislation can be.
Reich is a polemicist of ill repute and taking his poorly reasoned article at face value is dangerous. What a crock.
I mentioned in the overnight thread, my nephew is moving their family to Las Vegas. They both work for international corporations, and work 100% from home. They could live literally, anywhere they wanted. But they were moving out, of that all inclusive, blue state, Garden of Eden, Chicago. (side bar, abortion is the hot topic, This family, after two healthy thriving boys, felt the need for a third... so, adopted an at risk new born. There are a huge number of people trying to do exactly that)
Back to the thought. People have NEVER been so free to vote with their feet. Federalism is a huge feature, not a bug, and addresses, even the fever dream concerns, like those invented by Reich.
If the left comes to accept federalism, I don't really care how tortured their reasoning is or how reluctantly they do it. It's the only way for the country to have some level of peace.
Say, didn’t Reich play Kramer’s friend Mickey on Seinfeld?
Has Reich ever been right about anything? Remember his prediction about Trump’s economy?
Jersey Fled said...
I don't know about civility, but it's definitely bullshit. I stopped reading after the first two sentences.
Well I read the whole thing and I would agree with your sentiment. Reich declares a number of things about red states - with no proof - and then calls on blue states to support the people in red states who aren't lucky enough to live in blue states.
Condescending would be accurate as well.
Civil is as civil does.
"Where will all this end? Not with two separate nations. What America is going through is analogous to Brexit – a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights)."
Look at that, Reich discovered Federalism. Maybe we should give it a try.
Wow! overturning Roe v Wade is such powerful stuff that even Robert Reich who never saw a federal power grab he didn't love, is forced to pretend to support federalism. Next thing you know he will become an originalist. I wonder what would happen if we had a truly bold originalist supreme court. Forget Roe v Wade, they could overturn Wickard v Filburn and bring the commerce clause back to it's actual intent and meaning. That would cripple DC overreach and bring us immeasurably closer to the "lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights)" that the constitution actually envisioned"
An interesting article in the Chicago Booth Review discusses a study on discomfort as a motivator in acquiring knowledge. The experiments are focused on motivation, but there is one interesting sidelight that I am perhaps misinterpreting. It appears that Republicans are more interested in acquiring new knowledge than Democrats.
Here is the set-up:
"Participants who were instructed to seek discomfort and see it as a sign of effectively taking in new information were more open to reading the opposing political party’s views than those who were told to learn something new."
In the accompanying graph, it show that Republicans are more motivated than Democrats by both discomfort (3.7 to 2.72 on a scale 1-7) and by seeking to learn (2.3 to 2.0 on a scale 1-7).
One can only speculate as to why this would be true, but most of my Dem friends already think they know everything they need to know.
Here is the article: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/why-making-yourself-uncomfortable-can-be-motivating?sc_lang=en
Your ending reminds me of Charles Hamilton Houston's testimony to Truman's Civil Rights Commission, as quoted in Root and Branch (page 195):
"I am a states rights man as distinguished from a federal rights man, because I can conceive of the Federal Government being a juggernaut which can roll over minority rights, as well as protect them. and the present performance of the Federal Government in the witch hunt against Communism and its fight against labor, gives me no belief that the Federal Government either is the repository of all wisdom or should be entrusted with all the police power of the United States of America."
Only high income people and elites like Reich view babies as a curse. And they especially don't want "growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of." (Ruth Bader Ginsburg)
"One answer is for Democratic administrations and congresses in Washington to prioritize the needs of the red state poor" Heh. Hee-hee-hee. Stop sneering at them and hating on them first. This is so far from the ken of Democrats that I'm amazed that he bothered suggesting it.
And we're now Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), Yale undergrad, Harvard JD, arguing that inflation reinforces the need for abortion, because it's too expensive to feed all those "mouths." (full quote: "people need to be able to be in charge of how many mouths they're going to have to feed")
I'm interested in Reich's claim that poor women in red states are "burdened" by the lack of convenient access to abortion. I guess this may be true in a narrow sense if we assume that these women will choose to get an abortion regardless of whether it's cheap and convenient, with the result that not having an abortion facility nearby only serves to impose travel costs on folks who are already hurting for money.
But what if we don't make that assumption? What if we instead assume that at least some poor women who are pregnant, faced with the potentially daunting travel costs of getting an out-of-state abortion, chose instead some combination of practicing birth control, having less unprotected sex, make better choices of sexual partners, and taking the opportunity to actually start a family? Would the women who did those things be better or worse off in 5-10-20 years than those who didn't adopt those strategies and instead elected to have an abortion?
The conceit here is that only racist whites in red states could possibly oppose abortion.
"'States rights' was always a cover for segregation and harsh discrimination. The poor – both white and people of color – are already especially burdened by anti-abortion legislation..."
"... because they can’t afford travel to a blue state to get an abortion."
I've always felt that the left's abortion mania is not about women's rights, but rather is about the use of the issue as a political cudgel (I'm sure that's not true of all individuals; I speak, rather, about the establishment left). The evidence for my belief is that for all the money spent on rallying to "The Cause", surely there's enough money to provide all poor women who want an abortion a trip to a state where they can get one. But that's not where they spend their money.
Federalism is a good thing. If some states want to subsidize abortions by residents of anti-abortion states, that’s their right. If California wants to give tax subsidies to corporations to encourage them to move to California from an anti-abortion state, well, I think all such tax subsidies are stupid but that’s their right. Let each state adopt whatever pro or anti abortion policies it wants. The only limits I would draw are these: (1) States cannot punish conduct that takes place in another state. (2) States cannot restrict their residents from traveling to other states. (3) States cannot be compelled to violate their own public policies by extraditing those who commit pro or anti abortion acts in another state.
I've often wondered if there was an opening for an elected official who would promise that for each step up the political ladder, they would do LESS than they had done in their previous position.
A guy can dream.
"they can’t afford travel to a blue state to get an abortion"
Unlike the homeless who manage to find their way to LA and San Francisco?
Anyway, the poor can just go live in blue states. Nothing stops them. What's that you say--taxes and cost of living too high? crime too bad? schools lousy? But abortion!
What America is going through is analogous to Brexit...
No, it isn't, and Reich knows it. Brexit is about the loss of sovereignty and the unconstitutional powers the European super-statist myrmidons tried to exert over British voters. The only people fooled by the Brexit comparison are the ignorant and the oblivious.
Reich tries to hammer a square peg into a round hole because he is ashamed to draw to the most appropriate analogy, our own 1861-1865 Civil War. Some will claim that the issue in 1861 was states' rights, specifically the right to secede from the Union, but that was just the proximate cause. The real contention, then as now, was the unjust and immoral assertion of property rights over persons, Blacks in 1861, near-term and newborn human beings in 2022. Just as in 1861, those who asserted immoral property claims have discovered that they are members of a shrinking minority about to be overwhelmed, and just like the Southern slaveocracy, the abortion absolutists cannot tolerate any restrictions of their peculiar institution, because such toleration is a tacit admission of their moral degeneracy. Similarly, the political separation of the two camps is their obvious refuge.
Unfortunately for the abortion absolutists, their members are dispersed, they do not dominate an entire geographic region like the slaveocracy dominated the South, consequently, actual secession backed up by military power is not in the cards. The best they can hope for is the political domination of a few heavily populated states, but that is also a vain hope. The states most friendly to infanticide are also so poorly mismanaged that their economies and populations are eroding at a remarkable pace. The abortion empire shall inevitably crumble, like the Confederacy, with a howl, but without a March to the Sea.
Diversity [dogma], Inequity, and Exclusion (DIE).
The poor were less "burdened" by pregnancy, in part because they were less liberal, less progressive, than their elitist, urbane counterparts. It's the same lack of poverty among the poor that was then mocked and forced by elite minds (e.g. labor and environmental arbitrage, immigration reform, single/central/monopolistic solutions that force sustainable progressive prices). Reproductive rites for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes, were conceived as empathetic appeals to feminists and masculinists, and to keep [poor] women appointed, available, and taxable for #MeToo, special and peculiar minority progress, and State financial health.
The poor are burdened not by restricted access to abortion but by pregnancies that are a direct result of not taking contraceptive measures both readily available and affordable. They lose the right to the unfettered control of their bodies when their negligence or indifference results in the creation of another being who also has rights.
This may be just a tactical retreat. Soon Reich will be back to advocating ways to force his beliefs on whole country. The first part of the article indicates the atmosphere he's steeped in. He lives in a bubble of people who all think that way. Such strong influence is hard to shake off.
The Founders didn't have to deal with advocacy groups like those we have today. The demands people put on government and politics were minimal and few had the leisure and resources to create whole institutions devoted to influencing public opinion and the government. We got political parties early on but they were broad-based coalitions. A few people could push for special benefits from the government, but they didn't have a whole ideology and mass movement behind their demands. Most people just wanted to be left alone by government.
Now that we have networks of advocacy groups and ideologues, it's natural that they'll regard rejection of their demands anywhere in the country as an injustice and push to have their views imposed on the nation as a whole.
The Northeast is generally Blue states, yet the NE had had growing segregation in public schools since the Civil Rights Act, i.e., de facto segregation of public schools. Hmmm...
=========
"In fact, despite a recent rise in segregation in the South, it remains one of the least segregated regions in the U.S., leading the rest of the country in school desegregation for African American students.
"The opposite is true in the Northeast. Since the late 1960s, the Northeast has experienced a steady increase in the percentage of black students enrolled in schools with fewer than 10% white students. In 2016, more than half of black students were in such segregated schools."
The open question is like the one faced by every couple that separates: how will the two find ways to be civil toward each other?"
The answer, easily grasped by every couple who separates and remains civil, is to maintain civility BEFORE the separation.
It was a way for Democrats to legally discriminate against black people.
First by owning them and then by keeping them out of schools and restaurants.
If the left comes to accept federalism, I don't really care how tortured their reasoning is or how reluctantly they do it.
Well to quote Dr. Dre, "Don't believe the hype." And to follow up with my old buddy Pete Townsend, "It's an eminence front." He's fronting for Progressives who never ever accept the Constitution as written.
Nothing Reich says is worth serious consideration. I will venture that there is less actual segregation in public schools in Red States than in Blue. Take New York as a leading example where NYC schools may not de Jure be segregated, but de Facto certainly are.
Anyone who thnks that pro-abortion groups won’t fund-raise to transport indigent women to states where abortion is legal has not been paying attention.
Doesn't Reisch realize we PAY poor women to have more children? When it comes to welfare benefits the more the better, especially here in Californication. Little Robby is supremely ignorant of his own progressive policies absolutely dominating in the freaking state he lives in! What a maroon.
Vaclav: great pull quote from way back when the shoe was on the other foot and progressives felt like prey instead of the current crop that think they are apex predators entitled to rule.
"States rights' was always a cover for segregation and harsh discrimination."
"Abortion was always a cover for eugenics and reducing the black population."
Both or neither?
If a mile-wide meteor strikes the earth, the news punditry immediately reports that women and minorities are the hardest hit.
Reich is also about 10 years late on his announcement that the second US Civil War has begun.
Every other advanced democracy has settled the question of abortion democratically; we're just out of practice.
You need a "Robert Reich bullshit" tag because that's all he ever offers.
I'm old enough to remember when he said that inflation was a myth...
3 months ago...
"States rights' was always a cover for segregation and harsh treatment."
Always? Not true. Even the recent book by almost equally wacko liberal Noah Feldman disagrees. States' rights and secession were urged by Northeasterners in opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts and the War of 1812, and by the abolitionists' (e.g. William Lloyd Garrison) who wanted the North to secede from the Union.
You need a "Robert Reich bullshit" tag because that's all he has to offer.
I'm old enough to remember him saying that inflation is a myth...
Three months ago...
"Oregon is worried, that states like Idaho will Grow"
Idaho is growing, bigly. So are the Dakotas, AZ, NV, etc. So much so they're having real housing issues."
Tell me about it. Arizona has water issues, always has, always will. There's folks who can't build their dream home on the land they bought for it because a) can't drill a well that works and b) can't hook up to town water, even though it runs right there, because the town is already oversubscribed for water.
And they have plans for a one-million person town southeast of Mesa. There's no water, but they think they can get some. And they may. The governor has said Arizona will buy water from a Mexican desalination plant. Critics say, oh, but that's expensive. $130 per acre foot!
A family of three uses less than an acre foot a year (assuming a gravel xeriscaped yard). So that's $11 per month. More than it costs now, for sure, but that's nothing, really. Folks would not notice an extra $11 on the water bill.
If that town happens then Phoenix metro will be larger than Chicago, and maybe Los Angeles. And Phoenix is the reddest big city. It will also be about 80 miles end-to-end. Mesa, which has 550,000 people, has very, very few buildings over 3 stories.
Tom said...
Ugh. States don’t have rights. People have rights. States have powers.
How can no one running our government or media get this correct?
****************
"States' Rights" was a rallying cry of southern segregationists prior to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Our modern-day government/media Know-Nothings are just stuck on stupid.
Just where does Reich get data supporting his claim that poor people won't be able to travel from states forbidding all abortions---are any states claiming they plan to do that?---to those that will?
Do poor people not travel between states now, for many reasons? Don't they use cars, trains, Greyhounds and even planes, now?
"red state de facto segregation in public schools"
Robt Reich III has clearly and obviously never heard of Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, or a host of other role-model (per his argument) Blue State public school districts of considerable size and girth which measure among the most segregated educational experiences anywhere on earth.
He's as unlistenable as he is able to be seen from the other side of a cafe counter. What a pathetic, sniveling little man he is, and so cocksure about the obviously incorrect drivel he's spouting. Didn't he used to be known to be good at something? An expert, even? WTF happened to him?
As a resident of a state that the poor move to in droves I call bullshit. If they can afford to come to Florida, dropping everything in their lives back home to move here, they can afford baby murder tourism.
Almost every “Florida Man” story features a person who moved here from NY or Michigan to evade warrants or child support payments back home. The poor have zero problem moving around. It is the middle class who actually pay their bills and have property that has difficulty.
There is no "red state de facto segregation in public schools in the rural South. Here in Putnam County, we have exactly 3 high schools, one in Baxter, one in Cookeville and one in Monterey. The one in Baxter is a little whiter, the one in Monterey is a little browner, and the one in Cookeville is a little blacker. But only because of the demographics of the three areas. And none of the three is appreciably different from the others. I have to call bullshit. He has never been to a small town in the south.
Reich is one of those people on the Left who never seems to have said anything original or interesting.
Reich is right about the growing chasm between sides in America. It's there on abortion certainly, but I see it most clearly on rhetoric about race. On the one side are those who hold to the old liberal notion that character matters far more than color, and on the other side those who view everything through the lens of color and whose anti-white rhetoric is becoming progressively more and more hostile.
And yet, the blue states are the ones where inequality is greatest, aren't they?
The vast, vast majority of Americans gives not a shit for this dopey Second Civil War talk; it exists exclusively in the masturbatory fantasies of those on the right and left for whom politics is their religion.
by red state de facto segregation in public schools
The public schools have been run by the Left for decades, in all US States.
Yes, those schools are screwing kids over. But it's the Left's fault, not ours.
by red state measures to suppress votes
By red state measures to suppress illegal votes.
FIFY Robbie. And know, that only hurts criminal scum. It's evil of you to claim that the poor and minorities are all criminal scum
Where will all this end? Not with two separate nations. What America is going through is analogous to Brexit – a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights)
That would require the Left to value national defense, not inflate the money supply out of existence, and value our Civil Rights. Since they are on the wrong side of all of those, were going to settle for a civil war.
After all, we're the only ones who actually know how to shoot
Turley put up a similar post at, Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks
He noted the communal outcry reacting to the possible falling of Roe, and Casey. Identified the wails as a list of horrible, resulting.
Just fear mongering. The left is on the wrong side of the facts, so discussion and debate, has to be replaced with fear mongering.
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