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FOCUS: Johnny Reb, Charlie Hebdo, and the Way of Free Speech |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=5494"><span class="small">Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Sunday, 05 July 2015 11:51 |
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Weissman writes: "Why is free speech so difficult to understand? Why are so many people for it, but ...? The muddle sadly engulfs all sides of our ideologically riven Supreme Court."
Ray James, a member of the Texas chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, displays a license plate with the Confederate 'battle flag.' (photo: Johnny Hanson/Houston Chronicle)
Johnny Reb, Charlie Hebdo, and the Way of Free Speech
By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
05 July 15
 hy is free speech so difficult to understand? Why are so many people for it, but …?
The muddle sadly engulfs all sides of our ideologically riven Supreme Court. In Citizens United, the conservative majority ruled that money equals speech, an intellectually curdling and democratically disastrous doctrine advocated for years by no less than the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Even more eye-popping, last month in Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, Justice Clarence Thomas joined with his intellectual foes Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor to decree that the State of Texas did not infringe the First Amendment's protection of free speech in refusing to allow a confederate flag on a specialty license plate.
“A significant portion of the public,” the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles had argued, “associates the Confederate flag with organizations advocating expressions of hate directed toward people or groups that is demeaning to those people or groups.”
No one could make this up. Texas is hardly the most racially sensitive state in the union. Thomas, the uncommunicative enthusiast of Long Dong Silver, almost never shows much sympathy for the feelings of his fellow African-Americans, while the four liberal paragons are generally seen as defenders of free speech.
What odd-mates they are! Yet they came together to dumb down the First Amendment, arguing in Justice Breyer’s majority decision that the specialty license plates represented government speech, not private expression, and thus bypassed the restrictions governing free speech.
Strip away the legalistic smoke and mirrors, and what remains? At best, the same well-motivated, politically correct, and self-defeating notion that led many liberal intellectuals to turn against the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. In this inevitably short-sighted view, speech should not offend, especially embattled minorities, whether African-Americans, Muslims, Christians, or Jews.
Like other states, Texas makes money by offering higher-priced license plates that enable drivers to support various causes or express differing points of view. The messages tout everything from the soft drink “Dr. Pepper” to “Choose Life” and “Operation Enduring freedom.” Many advertise universities and their football teams, often from out of state. You can see the plates on the Texas DMV website.
All this appeared harmless enough until the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans asked for a plate that would include its logo, which features the battle flag of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The state initially approved the design, for which the group had to agree to pay an initial $8,000 to produce the first 1000 plates.
Opposition quickly mounted. As the ACLU argued in its ultimately unsuccessful friend of the court brief in February, Texas had wrongfully censored speech, but for reasons with which free speech advocates could sympathize. “The Confederate flag has a symbolic significance that many African-Americans and others consider offensive, and for good reason,” said the ACLU. “The Confederate flag was flown by those who defended slavery and sought to dissolve the Union.”
More recently, it served as the banner of those white supremacists who wanted to maintain state-sponsored segregation. But, to those who understand the way of free speech, these outrages can never justify censoring one viewpoint while permitting another. On this, if not on Citizens United, the ACLU nailed the argument perfectly.
“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment,” the group wrote in its brief, “it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
“Once the government opens a forum for private speech, as it has done here, it is undisputed that two rules always apply: 1) the State may not engage in viewpoint discrimination, and 2) the State may not establish vague and indefinite standards that permit state officials to regulate speech with unfettered discretion.”
Just how sweeping this has to be to hold the state in check and defend the rights of individual citizens came through clearly in the oral arguments of R. James George, counsel for the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a former law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Suppose, asked Justice Ginsburg, someone wanted a swastika on their license plate?
“I don’t believe the State can discriminate against the people who want to have that design,” George answered.
“Suppose somebody else says, I want to have ‘Jihad’ on my license plate. That’s okay, too?” asked Ginsburg.
“Yes,” George answered again.
“How about ‘make pot legal?’”
“Yes,” George repeated.
“And Bong hits for Jesus?” Ginsburg pressed on to laughter in the courtroom.
“Yes,” said the longtime defender of free speech.
All this might argue for getting rid of the specialty license plates, as some of the justices remarked. But, in the marketplace of ideas, no one has a right not to be offended, and as the furor over Charlie Hebdo demonstrates, this has to include Muslims, Jews, the Pope, and whomever else.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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FOCUS: The Blatant Ignorance of Republican Presidential Candidates |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Sunday, 05 July 2015 10:20 |
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Pierce writes: "Even former Karl Rove life-coach Ron Fournier has noticed the severe lack of Abraham Lincolns in the current GOP presidential candidates."
Ted Cruz. (photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)
The Blatant Ignorance of Republican Presidential Candidates
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
05 July 15
In which conservatives continue to defend Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, endlessly perplexing Jonathan Chait.
 he symptoms of the prion disease are beginning to become so obvious that even some of our more prominent pundits are beginning to notice them. For example, even former Karl Rove life-coach Ron Fournier has noticed the severe lack of Abraham Lincolns in the current GOP presidential candidates. And noted climate-denialist and baseball drone George Effing Will has staked out the bold position that many of these candidates have gone so far around the bend that they've crossed some kind of termination barrier.
It is, therefore, especially disheartening that Cruz, who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and who is better equipped by education and experience to think clearly about courts, proposes curing what he considers this court's political behavior by turning the court into a third political branch.
The problem, of course, is that, for all his expensive education and lengthy experience, Ted Cruz is a nut. And the larger problem is that the institutions of the conservative movement that has cosseted George Effing Will for his entire adult life, and from which he derives his endlessly mysterious influence as a "thinker," were the places where Republicans first ate the monkeybrains containing the prion disease in the first place.
And nobody knows what in the fk to do about Donald Trump. In turn, this has confused Jonathan Chait, who by and large is a sensible fellow. (H/T to Driftglass, who caught this one first today.)
What is significant and genuinely disturbing, not to mention poisonous to the Republican Party's electoral interests, is the fact that conservative thought leaders feel compelled to defend Trump's nativist ramblings. And not just bottom-feeding outlets like the Daily Caller and Breitbart, either. National Review editor Rich Lowry writes in Politico that Trump "has a point."
Yes, ol' Sparkle Pants did write that today in Tiger Beat On The Potomac.
It's just that a lack of education is an anchor around even the hardest-working person in modern America. This is illustrated in an exhaustive report based on government data, by Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a lower level of immigration. I rely on it for the figures that follow.
It's no surprise that the editor of a longtime white-supremacist journal would cite a report from the CIS, an aging storage unit of moldy quasi-intellectual nativism.
There's a reason for that. Although you'd never know it to read its materials, CIS was started in 1985 by a Michigan ophthalmologist named John Tanton — a man known for his racist statements about Latinos, his decades-long flirtation with white nationalists and Holocaust deniers, and his publication of ugly racist materials. CIS' creation was part of a carefully thought-out strategy aimed at creating a set of complementary institutions to cultivate the nativist cause — groups including the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and NumbersUSA. As is shown in Tanton's correspondence, lodged in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Tanton came up with the idea in the early 1980s for "a small think tank" that would "wage the war of ideas."
So, no, I do not choose to engage this "exhaustive study," because, if its author had concluded anything else, he would have lost his gig entirely. The prion disease is established now. There's nobody who is immune.
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Sabotage in Your IRA |
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Sunday, 05 July 2015 08:24 |
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Excerpt: "Middle-class families face many challenges trying to save for a secure retirement, but high fees and hidden payments shouldn't be among them."
Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker. (photo: Getty Images)
Sabotage in Your IRA
By Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, USA Today
05 July 15
New rule will protect retirement investors from predatory fees and broker self-interest.
 t's hard - really hard - to save for retirement. And the stats bear this out: Almost one-third of Americans on the edge of retirement have zero savings. Another third have saved less than one year's income.
That's why it's important to protect every dollar that someone puts away for their retirement. Many Americans rely on investment advisers for guidance on how to save towards retirement, and most advisers have savers' best interests at heart. But not all advisers put their customers first - and that's created a hole that's draining $17 billion in retirement savings every year, money that's going to some investment advisers who are more interested in collecting fees for themselves than helping families build real security.
Thankfully, the hole may soon be plugged. The president and the Department of Labor are meeting with stakeholders and the public to finalize new rules that would require the people who advise customers about IRAs and other retirement savings options to keep the best interests of the customer as their first priority. These proposed rules are still being perfected, but they are a strong step in the right direction.
Today, if employers offer retirement options at all, it's most likely through 401(k)s and IRAs, which put families in charge of ensuring their own returns through a series of often-complex accounts. Instead of a handful of experts managing a company's pension, this shift means that families must rely on retirement advice from financial advisers and brokers.
Most retirement advisers recommend investments that work best for the customer. They work together with their clients to help them reach their retirement savings goals. But some don't. These advisers and brokers recommend investments that boost their own profits through fees and bonuses, while the value of the customer's savings are eroded over time. Some recommend investments in return for being rewarded with free vacations, cars, jewelry, or on other perks that the adviser can earn from selling a more expensive product to the customer - one that is plainly not in that customer's best interests.
Because of outdated laws and loopholes big enough to drive a truck through, it is now perfectly legal for brokers and advisers to take payments and boost their own incomes by pushing lousy products. Most customers aren't on the lookout for unscrupulous retirement advisers.
The problem is significant. Several studies, including some from Harvard and MIT, have found that certain advisers consistently steer customers toward the highest fee products - despite the fact that high fee products don't perform any better, and often perform much worse, than low fee funds. Russel Kinnel, the Director of Fund Research at Morningstar, a leading investment research company, said this about high fees: "If there's anything in the whole world of mutual funds that you can take to the bank, it's that expense ratios help you make a better decision. In every single time period and data point tested, low-cost funds beat high-cost funds."
Even if the percentages seem small, over time costs compound to become big numbers. People working hard to put away money lose an estimated $17 billion a year to excess fees. Even a 0.75% increase in fees could cost a retiree over $100,000 in savings over a career. That's a lot of money to lose.
This loophole is also unfair to the thousands of honest advisers and brokers who put their clients first and work hard every day to help Americans build a secure retirement. Right now they have to compete against unethical advisers who rake in money just for themselves. That's not a level playing field - it's a broken system. It's time to fix it.
While several industry leaders have stepped out in support of a rule, many of those who benefit from maintaining the status quo are arguing that the industry can police itself, that the Securities and Exchange Commission should regulate retirement advisers instead of the Department of Labor, and that requiring advisers to disclose conflicts of interest should suffice. But none of these arguments pass the smell test: the retirement industry and the SEC could have fixed this problem years ago, but failed to do so - resulting in lost billions for today's retirees. The Department of Labor, which has clear authority to act, has stepped up. It's about time.
Middle-class families face many challenges trying to save for a secure retirement, but high fees and hidden payments shouldn't be among them. Hard-working Americans who manage to scrape together some savings for their retirement should be able to trust that their advisers are working for them - not against them.
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The Most Outrageous Decision of this Supreme Court Term |
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Sunday, 05 July 2015 08:21 |
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Stern writes: "The justices' refusal to examine Jordan's case clears the way for his execution. It may be remembered as their most gallingly unjust decision this term."
Supreme Court. (photo: Greg Nash/The Hill)
The Most Outrageous Decision of this Supreme Court Term
By Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
05 July 15
 ust before the Supreme Court closed out its term on Monday, it condemned a man to death. Richard Jordan, who has been on Mississippi’s death row for 38 years, had asked the justices to reconsider an appeals court’s ruling that blocked his access to the courts. Without explanation, they declined. The justices’ refusal to examine Jordan’s case clears the way for his execution. It may be remembered as their most gallingly unjust decision this term.
Jordan’s saga began in 1976, when Jackson County Assistant District Attorney Joe Sam Owen prosecuted him for the murder of Edwina Marter. Under Mississippi law at the time, a capital murder conviction resulted in an automatic sentence of death. But later that same year, the Supreme Court held that automatic death sentences were “cruel and unusual,” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
The trial court gave Jordan a new trial. Owen once again served as prosecutor. During his closing argument, Owen told the jury that “each of you have to determine what is an aggravating circumstance” necessary to sentence someone to death. That was absolutely false: Under Supreme Court precedent, jurors must be given “clear and objective standards” and “specific and detailed guidance” about aggravating circumstances when weighing the penalty of death. A broad instruction like Owen’s could lead juries to consider irrelevant factors, leading to the unconstitutional “arbitrary and capricious” infliction of death. An appeals court set aside Jordan’s sentence.
In 1983, Jordan was granted a new sentencing trial. By this point Owen had moved to private practice—but at the behest of Marter’s family, he represented Mississippi as a special prosecutor. Owen secured yet another death sentence. But to do so, he persuaded the court to bar Jordan from introducing mitigating evidence—namely, testimony from several family members and a prison guard. The Supreme Court later held that convicts must be allowed to introduce such testimony, and Jordan’s death sentence was vacated.
At that point Owen entered into a plea agreement with Jordan. Under the agreement, Jordan would be sentenced to life without parole in exchange for his promise not to challenge his new sentence. A trial court accepted the plea and sentenced Jordan accordingly.
But the plea agreement Owen prepared turned out to be defective. Mississippi law allowed life without parole only for habitual offenders—which Jordan was not. Jordan asked the trial court to fix his unlawful sentence by changing it to life with the possibility of parole. The Mississippi Supreme Court agreed that Jordan’s previous sentence was invalid and sent the case back to the trial court. In the meantime, Mississippi had amended its laws to permit life without parole for all capital murder convictions.
Jordan asked Owen—who reprised his role as special prosecutor—to simply reinstate their previous life-without-parole agreement, which would now be valid. Owen refused. Instead, he sought a new sentencing trial—and asked the jury to sentence Jordan to death. The jury complied. After an extensive reprieve, Jordan found himself once again awaiting execution.
Repeatedly ensnared by the vagaries of Mississippi state law, Jordan had one final hope: the United States Constitution. Jordan argued in federal court that his new sentence violated the Due Process Clause, which prohibits prosecutorial vindictiveness. Owen, Jordan pointed out, had previously agreed to let Jordan live. But he later reneged on that agreement because—by his own admission—he was irked that Jordan had violated their original agreement. Yet Jordan only violated this agreement because it was illegal, something Owen should have realized before he crafted it. Jordan claimed that Owen’s refusal to negotiate another non-capital plea amounted to unconstitutional retaliation.
The district court rejected Jordan’s argument—and it refused to give him a “certificate of appealability,” or COA, which would permit him to appeal the court’s decision. He asked the 5th Circuit to consider granting him the COA so he could appeal his case. It refused—and, in the process, utterly botched the relevant case law. The 5th Circuit held that Jordan had “fail[ed] to prove” that Owen had acted out of vindictiveness, and thus could not appeal his case. But the Supreme Court has explicitly held that a prisoner need not prove his claim on the merits to obtain a COA. Instead, he need only show “something more than the absence of frivolity.”
By any measure, Jordan demonstrated that he had a serious—if not watertight—due process claim. Under established precedent, the 5th Circuit should have recognized that fact and given him a COA. Instead, it went ahead and evaluated the merits of Jordan’s case and ruled against him—in direct contradiction of the Supreme Court’s instruction. Jordan asked the justices to fix the error. On Monday, they refused.
In a subtly searing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor—joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan—reprimanded her colleagues for refusing to address the 5th Circuit’s obvious mistake. She then noted six other cases in which the 5th Circuit refused to grant a COA by essentially ruling on the merits of the underlying claim. That’s unlawful, and the Supreme Court should have said so. Instead, the justices ignored the miscarriage of justice, allowing Jordan’s execution to move forward.
Mississippi’s attorney general will likely soon file a motion for an execution date. Soon after it is granted, Jordan will be put to death by lethal injection, ending his nearly four decades on death row. Owen may celebrate the long-awaited execution of the man he tried over and over again. But he should not pretend that his prosecution of Jordan came close to fulfilling the Constitution’s commands.
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ince the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized marriage equality in America, some conservative Christians have been downright apoplectic. In a ridiculously offensive analogy, right wing anti-equality zealot Bryan Fischer tweeted:
