29 October 20
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Robert Reich | Reversing the GOP Power Grab
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Reich writes: "Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation as the ninth justice on the U.S. Supreme Court is a travesty of democracy." The vote on Barrett’s confirmation occurred just eight days before Election Day. By contrast, the Senate didn’t even hold a hearing on Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who Obama nominated almost a year before the end of his term. Majority leader Mitch McConnell argued at the time that any vote should wait “until we have a new president.” Barrett was nominated by a president who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots, and who was impeached by the House of Representatives. With Barrett now on the court, five of the nine justices have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. The Republican senators who voted for her represent 15 million fewer Americans than their Democratic colleagues. Barrett now joins 5 other reactionary justices who together will be able to declare laws unconstitutional, for perhaps a generation. Barrett’s confirmation was the culmination of years in which a shrinking and increasingly conservative, rural, and white segment of the U.S. population has been imposing its will on the rest of America. They’ve been bankrolled by big business, seeking lower taxes and fewer regulations. In the event Joe Biden becomes president on January 20 and both houses of Congress come under control of the Democrats, they can reverse this trend. It may be the last chance – both for the Democrats and, more importantly, for American democracy. How? For starters, increase the size of the Supreme Court. The Constitution says nothing about the number of justices. The court changed size seven times in its first 80 years, from as few as five justices under John Adams to ten under Abraham Lincoln. Biden says if elected he’ll create a bipartisan commission to study a possible court overhaul “because it’s getting out of whack.” That’s fine, but he’ll need to move quickly. The window of opportunity could close by the 2022 midterm elections. Second, abolish the Senate filibuster. Under current rules, 60 votes are needed to enact legislation in that chamber. This means that if Democrats win a bare majority there, Republicans could block any new legislation Biden hopes to pass. The filibuster could be ended with a rule change requiring a mere 51 votes. There’s growing support among Democrats for doing this if they gain that many seats. During the campaign, Biden acknowledged that the filibuster has become a negative force in government. The filibuster is not in the Constitution, either. The most ambitious structural reform would be to rebalance the Senate itself, as well as the Electoral College. For decades, rural states have been emptying as the U.S. population has shifted to vast megalopolises. The result is a growing disparity in representation. For example, both California, with a population of 40 million, and Wyoming, whose population is 579,000, get two senators. If population trends continue, by 2040 some 40 percent of Americans will live in just five states, and half of America will be represented by 18 Senators, the other half by 82. This distortion also skews the Electoral College, because each state’s number of electors equals its total of senators and representatives. Hence, the recent presidents who have lost the popular vote. This growing imbalance can be remedied by creating more states representing a larger majority of Americans. At the least, statehood should be granted to Washington, D.C. The Constitution is also silent on the number of states. Those who recoil from structural reforms such as the three I’ve outlined warn that Republicans will retaliate when they return to power. That’s rubbish. Republicans have already altered the ground rules. In 2016, they failed to win a majority of votes cast for the House, Senate, or the presidency, yet secured control over all three. Amy Coney Barrett’s ascent is the latest illustration of how grotesque the Republican power grab has become, and how it continues to entrench itself ever more deeply. If not reversed soon, it will be impossible to remedy. What’s at stake is not partisan politics. It’s representative government. If Democrats get the opportunity, they must redress this growing imbalance – for the sake of democracy. READ MORE
Supreme Court building. (photo: Getty)
Supreme Court Allows Ballot Extensions in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, for Now
Nina Totenberg, NPR
Totenberg writes: "The U.S. Supreme Court has refused, for a second time, a Republican Party effort to block a three-day extension for counting absentee ballots in Pennsylvania. That means that at least until after the election, the court will not intervene in the way the state conducts its vote count."
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Miles Taylor, left, served as the chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security under Kirstjen Nielsen. (photo: Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
Miles Taylor, a Former Homeland Security Official, Reveals He Was 'Anonymous'
Michael D. Shear, The New York Times
Shear writes: "Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was the anonymous author of The New York Times Op-Ed article in 2018 whose description of President Trump as 'impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective' roiled Washington and set off a hunt for his identity, Mr. Taylor confirmed Wednesday."
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Healthcare workers wheel the body of deceased person from the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 2, 2020. (photo: Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters)
Trump's COVID Advisers: He's Now Pushing Herd Immunity
Erin Banco, The Daily Beast
Banco writes: "Despite publicly downplaying it, President Donald Trump and his team of White House advisers have embraced the controversial belief that herd immunity will help control the COVID-19 outbreak."
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A father and son walk together as they are cared for in an Annunciation House facility after they were reunited with each other on July 25, 2018 in El Paso, Texas. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty)
Ex-DHS Official Miles Taylor Regrets Family Separations. Now He's Trying to Stop Trump
María Peña, Noticias Telemundo
Peña writes: "Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff, said Republicans like him 'don't need to be afraid' of President Donald Trump and should vote against him in the general election."
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Treatment at a centre in Sana'a combating malnutrition. (photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Getty)
Yemen on Brink of Losing Entire Generation of Children to Hunger, UN Warns
Kaamil Ahmed, Guardian UK
Ahmed writes: "Almost 100,000 children under the age of five are at risk of dying in Yemen as the country slides back into a hunger crisis."
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A bay in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska. (photo: Eleanor Scriven/Getty)
Trump to Strip Protections From Tongass National Forest, One of the Biggest Intact Temperate Rain Forests
Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
Eilperin writes: "President Trump will open up more than half of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development, according to a notice posted Wednesday, stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world's largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades." As of Thursday, it will be legal for logging companies to build roads and cut and remove timber throughout more than 9.3 million acres of forest — featuring old-growth stands of red and yellow cedar, Sitka spruce and Western hemlock. The relatively pristine expanse is also home to plentiful salmon runs and imposing fjords. The decision, which will be published in the Federal Register, reverses protections President Bill Clinton put in place in 2001 and is one of the most sweeping public lands rollbacks Trump has enacted. The new rule states that it will make “an additional 188,000 forested acres available for timber harvest,” mainly “old growth timber.” For years, federal and academic scientists have identified Tongass as an ecological oasis that serves as a massive carbon sink while providing key habitat for wild Pacific salmon and trout, Sitka black-tailed deer and myriad other species. It boasts the highest density of brown bears in North America, and its trees — some of which are between 300 and 1,000 years old — absorb at least 8 percent of all the carbon stored in the entire Lower 48′s forests combined. “While tropical rainforests are the lungs of the planet, the Tongass is the lungs of North America,” Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist with the Earth Island Institute’s Wild Heritage project, said in an interview. “It’s America’s last climate sanctuary.” While Trump has repeatedly touted his commitment to planting trees through the One Trillion Tree initiative, invoking it as recently as last week, his administration has sought to expand logging in Alaska and in the Pacific Northwest throughout his presidency. Federal judges have blocked several of these plans as illegal: Last week, the administration abandoned its appeal of a ruling that struck down a 1.8 million-acre timber sale on the Tongass’s Prince of Wales Island. Alaska Republicans — including Gov. Mike Dunleavy and Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is locked in a tight reelection race — lobbied the president to exempt the state from the roadless rule on the grounds that it could help the economy in Alaska’s southeast. Fishing and tourism account for 26 percent of regional employment, according to the Southeast Conference, a regional business group, compared with timber’s 1 percent. When Sullivan briefed Trump on the Tongass earlier this year, according to an individual familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment frankly, the president asked him, “How the hell do you have an economy without roads?” Asked about the exchange, the White House declined to comment. Southeast Alaska’s economy has taken an enormous hit during the pandemic. Robert Venables, the executive director of the Southeast Conference, said in an interview that though 1.4 million cruise passengers typically visit the region each summer, that number dropped to just 48 people this summer. The area’s fisheries also have suffered because of climate change, and the global economic crisis hurt seafood prices. “The economy is collapsing,” he said, adding that the Trump administration’s action might allow loggers to extract timber from some relatively accessible old-growth stands. “There’s some common-sense, near-term relief.” But even Venables criticized the administration as going too far and predicted that the decision probably would be reversed next year if Democrats won the White House. “It seems like the ball’s being punted from one end to the other,” he said. “The real disappointment here is a compromise could not be found that could create a more lasting peace.” Logging in Alaska costs U.S. taxpayers millions each year, because of a long-standing federal mandate that companies profit from any timber sale. This means the Forest Service often covers harvesters’ costs, including road building. According to a Taxpayer for Common Sense analysis of the Forest Service’s accounts, the Tongass timber program has lost roughly $1.7 billion over the last 40 years. After Taxpayers for Common Sense commented during the federal environmental review that it would be more economically efficient to hold timber sales in parts of the forest that already have roads, the Forest Service acknowledged that that was true. The agency said its plan “reflects a different policy perspective on the roadless management issue rather than a change in the underlying facts and circumstances,” adding that the Trump administration believes “that overall reduction in federal regulations is good for the American public due to reduced burden to the taxpayer and reduced burden to business.” Ninety-six percent of the comments during the U.S. Forest Service’s environmental review opposed lifting the existing safeguards, while 1 percent supported it. In a sign of how unpopular the administration’s push to lift roadless restrictions has become, all five Alaska Native tribal nations withdrew as cooperating agencies in the process two weeks ago, after the Forest Service published its blueprint for opening up the entire Tongass to development. “We refuse to allow legitimacy upon a process that has disregarded our input at every turn,” the tribal leaders wrote. Some of these tribes had conducted clear cuts decades ago, when they gained legal control over their ancestral lands. Marina Anderson, the tribal administrator for the Organized Village of Kasaan on Prince of Wales Island, recalled in a phone interview that her late father was a logger and said that the entire village had suffered the consequences of felling so many trees. A landslide occurred Monday morning; while Anderson was speaking on the phone, a second landslide occurred. “These landslides happen on clear-cut lands. This morning I said, ‘It’s landslide day,’ ” she said, noting there had been heavy rain. “I’ve grown up seeing these mudslides my whole life. As a culture committed to balance, it’s my responsibility to bring back that balance from what [my father] had done.” The roughly 60 residents in the village, which does not have a grocery store, rely heavily on salmon, berries and other staples they can harvest from the forest. “Climate change is hitting us pretty hard,” Anderson said, adding that tribal officials oppose extensive logging because old-growth trees help lower stream temperatures and provide key wildlife habitat.
Referring to the new plan, she said, “It will only devastate even more what is already in progress.” Environmentalists, who have successfully blocked a slew of timber sales on the Tongass since the early 1970s, said they will challenge the repeal of protections in court. “Years ago a previous administration tried to eliminate the essential protection the roadless rule provides on the Tongass and the courts rejected the attempt,” said Eric Jorgenson, managing attorney for the Alaska office of Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. “Today’s effort is no better justified and we believe it will meet a similar fate.” Still some experts said they worried the decision could greenlight timber sales that would release more carbon into the atmosphere. DellaSala noted that last month he had to evacuate from his home near Talent, Ore., because of a massive blaze nearby, a clear sign of how catastrophic climate impacts are already affecting the United States. “It’s personal for me,” he said, adding that his home survived but that many others nearby did not. “We don’t have a lot of time to get this right, and we are heading in the wrong direction.” | 
