Hanson on Carlson

The New Neo Posted on by

Interesting take:

Two other points. The first is that, for what it’s worth (considering the source), the NY Times says that the real reason Carlson was fired was a text he sent that in part consisted of this:

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.

Megyn Kelly has had a lot to say about Carlson’s firing. One of those things is that, technically speaking, he wasn’t actually fired:

Kelly explained that her information about his “parting of the ways” with Fox was that he wasn’t officially “fired” — that he was still under contract with Fox. She said the head of the network told him that Monday morning that his show wasn’t going to be aired anymore but they never told him why. They even kicked him out of his company email which was pretty slimy. Kelly said they needed to work out with him getting out of his contract. But that they thought it would be an “amicable parting.”…

The current problem for Carlson, Kelly explained, is that he’s still technically under contract so he can’t sign any other deals until he gets out of the contract.

Some are concerned that this may be an effort to silence him right before the election…But Kelly noted Carlson has a great attorney and they’re working out the contract issues now.

Here’s one of the offers Carlson is apparently entertaining:

The latest on the debt ceiling fight

The New Neo Posted on by

Biden may have to give in, if only a little bit:

After weeks of saying he would never meet with House Republicans to raise the debt limit, Joe Biden was forced to cave to the Republicans after his Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave Washington a drop dead date for raising the debt ceiling — June 1.

The date was at least a month earlier than most experts were predicting. And with Republicans already having a debt limit bill in hand, Biden reluctantly agreed to drop his demand for a “clean” debt limit bill with no negotiations.

Biden’s position was never viable. So the president must now talk about budget cuts with the GOP or find a way to avoid the blame if the whole kit and kaboodle goes south.

Democrats have one bullet they can use. Because they control the Senate, they can bring a “clean” debt limit bill to the floor and dare the GOP House to defeat it. But it’s not even clear that Democrats can pass a clean bill in the Senate, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer may not risk it.

The GOP is unusually united in backing Kevin McCarthy on this, which is a feat in itself.

RIP Gordon Lightfoot

The New Neo Posted on by

Singer-songwriter – this article says “troubadour” – Gordon Lightfoot has died at 84. RIP.

Lightfoot was not an extreme favorite of mine; for example, I never bought an album of his. Nevertheless, he wrote many classic folk-type songs that I liked very much indeed, and still like. The first one – and the one I associate with Lightfoot most strongly – was this, in which a love ’em and leave ’em type sings to his most recent forsaken lover. It’s not a “nice” song, but I still think it’s a great one, not so much for the fairly simple but catchy melody, but even more for the words. The first line and refrain – “That’s what you get for lovin’ me” – has a certain ironic, teasing bite to it, as does what I think is its most brilliant passage of all: “Now there you go you’re cryin’ again…/But then some day when your poor heart is on the mend/I just might pass this way again.”

The casual way he speakks about re-breaking her heart – what a touch!

It was one of the first songs I ever learned to play on the guitar, and I could even finger-pick it way back when. I wouldn’t have a clue how to do that now.

Here’s Lightfoot singing it:

And here’s another great one by him; one of so many more:

Another bank bites the dust: First Republic

The New Neo Posted on by

The call is for stricter regulations on banks. First Republic appears to have run into trouble because of the huge percentage of uninsured deposits it held, coupled with a run on the bank:

First Republic had been hit by a massive wave of withdrawals following the twin collapses of New York City’s Signature Bank and the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley Bank in March.

JPMorgan Chase has now gobbled up First Republic.

Billionaires for Biden

The New Neo Posted on by

For quite some time, the Democratic Party has been mostly the party of the rich and the poor rather than the middle. That’s an exaggeration perhaps, but it certainly seems to be a general trend. And this despite the fact that Democrats like to pretend they support the average working person and that it’s the GOP that’s the party of the very very rich. But those days are gone, although it helps the Democratic Party to pretend otherwise.

In a way, it makes sense that the very rich support Democrats and Biden, ever since the Democrats have become more and more allied with the welfare state. After all, the very very rich can afford it; it’s the squeezed middle who can’t. It also helps assuage any guilt the very very rich might have about the extent of their money – after all, they’re supporting the party that is so very generous to the very poor.

And after all, the right is inhabited by dangerous bigots and violent gun-toting morons as well as religious fanatics, or so the left likes to say. Sort of like “Deliverance” plus “Elmer Gantry” on steroids. And the right is headed by that vile, criminal, maniac Trump.

Or, as former vice chairman at Evercore and founder of Signum Global Advisors Charles Myers says:

Stakes are higher than ever. Trump 2.0 would be devastating for the country and arguably the world.

It’s a puzzlement to me how anyone could say that and believe it. Perhaps he does believe it; perhaps he doesn’t. Perhaps his company is expecting special perks from the Biden administration that it wouldn’t get from Trump.

The same article quotes hedge fund executive Donald Sussman as saying, “No one since FDR has accomplished as much for Americans. I am thrilled [Biden’s] unique leadership will continue.”

Well, there’s one thing with which I agree – Biden’s “leadership” is indeed “unique.” Whether it’s even “leadership” at all is another question, and probably not an important one to Donald Sussman.

Money matters in campaigns. Money can buy lawyers for your cause. It can buy advertisements and visibility. It can buy mailers. If people can figure out how to do it, it can even buy votes. It can certainly buy campaign workers and canvassers and the like. And the Democrats have the capacity to raise enormous sums of money.

Will the Supreme Court curb the power of federal regulatory agencies?

The New Neo Posted on by

They’ve taken the first step, anyway, by agreeing to hear the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which is a process that could end up overruling Chevron:

Nearly 40 years ago, in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that courts should defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute as long as that interpretation is reasonable. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider its ruling in Chevron.

The question comes to the court in a case brought by a group of commercial fishing companies. They challenged a rule issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service that requires the fishing industry to pay for the costs of observers who monitor compliance with fishery management plans.

Chevron has allowed federal agencies to effectively act as unacknowledged, unelected legislators whose decisions have had sweeping conequences. Curbing their power would be a watershed event.

Here’s the Chevron doctrine in a nutshell:

The scope of the Chevron deference doctrine is that when a legislative delegation to an administrative agency on a particular issue or question is not explicit but rather implicit, a court may not substitute its own interpretation of the statute for a reasonable interpretation made by the administrative agency. Rather, as Justice Stevens wrote in Chevron, when the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s action was based on a permissible construction of the statute.

Here’s an objection to Chevron, voiced by political scientist Charles Murray:

Chevron deference augments that characteristic of prerogative power by giving regulatory bureaucrats a pass available to no private citizen and to no other government officials — including the president and cabinet officers — who function outside the regulatory state. For everyone except officials of the regulatory state, judges do not defer to anything except the text of the law in question and the body of case law accompanying it.

This case promises to be interesting as well as potentially important.

Closing time

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I’m not planning to close down this blog.

But most of you know I’ve been dealing with Gerard’s death, plus managing open threads on his old blog so that the commenters can continue to go there and chat with each other and read his old posts. In addition, I’m trying to work on compiling two books: one of his essays and one of his poetry.

But I’m also dealing with shutting down his autopays, of which he had many that weren’t written down. So I monitor his email for notices about them. I’m also working to file a grievance with the hospital for things they did that seem egregiously wrong.

So there’s a lot to do, and I get tired of it – particularly since all these activities also serve to remind me of his death. To close down his accounts, to let his newer blog lapse, to work on a book that I know he had planned to design, all of it is a graphic reminder of what happened.

I didn’t need to get rid of Gerard’s worldly goods; his brother took care of that, fortunately. But I’m taking care of his wordly goods, as his digital executor. The task is likely to take a while.

North Carolina’s SCOTUS reverses previous rulings on redistricting and restores some voting safeguards

The New Neo Posted on by

This is potentially important:

In a trio of rulings Friday, the N.C. Supreme Court restored the state’s voter ID law, took state courts out of partisan gerrymandering disputes, and ended voting for felons who have not completed their sentences.

Each ruling split the court, 5-2. Republican justices supported the majority decisions. Democrats dissented.

The rulings will affect North Carolina’s upcoming elections, including the next set of congressional and legislative election maps.
In a trio of opinions totaling 436 pages, the N.C. Supreme Court has restored North Carolina’s voter ID law, ruled that state courts cannot consider partisan gerrymandering claims, and ended voting for felons who have not completed their sentences.

What happened to cause the reversal? An election. The previous court had a 4-3 Democrat majority. There was an election in November, and two of the Democrat justices were replaced by Republican ones, giving the court its present 5-2 Republican split.

It’s another reminder that justice is not blind, especially in cases such as these which directly concern politics and elections. Interestingly, the present court casts this as a retreat from politics by the court, because the previous decisions were judicial overreach in which the court negated actions by the legislature:

“There is no legal recourse available for vindication of political interests, but this Court is yet again confronted with ‘a partisan legislative disagreement that has spilled out . . . into the courts.’ This Court once again stands as a bulwark against that spillover, so that even in the most divisive cases, we reassure the public that our state’s courts follow the law, not the political winds of the day,” wrote Justice Phil Berger Jr. for the majority.

The voter ID law had been passed by the NC legislature and rejected by the previous NC Supreme Court. The legislature also is in charge of redistricting, but the previous court had thrown out the maps drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature. This new court adds that “state courts will no longer hear lawsuits challenging election maps because of claims of excessive partisanship.” The power rests in the legislative branch. The court stated:

The constitution does not require or permit a standard [for redistricting fairness] known only to four justices. Finally, creating partisan redistricting standards is rife with policy decisions. Policy decisions belong to the legislative branch, not the judiciary.

This would not be happening now but for the recent election in North Carolina that put Republicans in charge of the court. I’d like to know how it was that there was a Democrat majority in that court in that state to begin with, and then how the voters became convinced that the party balance of the court needed changing during the 2022 campaign. Was it about personalities, or general policy? Can the GOP in other states learn from the experience?

If you want to know how many states elect judges and how many don’t, it’s complicated because there are a great many different systems for it. Here’s a list and chart.

Bonchie points out that this ruling is likely to affect the next election:

What that means is that the map that was ultimately adopted for the 2022 election was drawn in such a way as to guarantee a near-neutral split between Republican and Democrat seats. That allowed Democrats to win several seats they would have otherwise lost…

The GOP has a very slim majority in the House of Representatives right now. All it would have taken were a few bad candidates or scandals to arise during the next election to hand the gavel over to Hakeem Jeffries. Having a high probability of an extra four seats in North Carolina is just the breathing room Republicans need to ensure they hold onto power, no matter what happens with the presidential election in 2024.