The Legacy of Notorious RBG – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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On Friday, September 18, 2020, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the pillar of the current Supreme Court. She served as the Senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Affectionately known as Notorious R.B.G., to emulate late rapper and icon Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie Smalls), because of her strong passion to keep pushing regardless of life’s circumstances or obstacles that she may have faced… whether it was discrimination, health issues, or other challenges she faced.

She is known as the most powerful liberal Justice on the Supreme Court. Ginsburg became a US Court Appeals judge in Washington DC Circuit Court in 1980 when she was nominated by President Jimmy Carter. She was then nominated by President Bill Clinton as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1993. She was confirmed by Congress 96-3. An impressive confirmation you almost never will see in Congress today. She served as the second woman to be on the Supreme Court.  The first woman of the Supreme Court was Sandra Day O’Connor who served from 1980 to 2006 when she retired. Justice Ginsburg has served the people for many years. 

It was at Columbia Law School where she became the first woman to tenured. There she also co-authored the first law school casebook dealing with sexual discrimination. She co-founded the Women’s Right Law Reporter in 1970, the first law journal in the United States that focused exclusively on women’s rights. In 1972, she co-founded the Women’s Right Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); she also became the General Counsel for this project. She has fought time and time again for women’s rights, including women’s right to choose what to do with their own bodies, rights to not be improperly searched as a woman, rights to fight for equal pay for equal work, rights for the LGBTQ community, women’s voter right, as well as many other civil rights issues.  

Her legacy must live on and we should always remember and celebrate what she fought for and whom she fought for. But we are living in a time where those who are supposed to protect the law are covering up and ignoring the law. A time, where people who claim they believe in the rule of law only believe in the rule of law against minorities. A time, where women’s Right to choose to have an abortion could possibly be abolished. The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) could no longer be the law of the land causing millions of people to lose their health care in the midst of a horrific pandemic. Her legacy is of utmost importance, considering Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has done nothing but stack the federal courts with far-right judges who will do everything they can to uphold discriminatory policies and inequalities.

Ginsburg’s last wish she dictated to her granddaughter was that Congress would not replace her seat until the country gets a new President. Within just a few hours of her death, Mitch McConnell said he would put her replacement up for a vote on the Congress floor. This is a time where the person who can be selected on the Supreme Court could change the lives of America for decades. We say this often, election after election; if there ever was a time we need to vote that time is now. That time to vote is seriously now. Justice Ginsburg passed on the same day the nation begin voting for this election year. It is important that we the people vote not just for the President and Vice President but straight down the line, US Congress, State Congress, State, Local, Judges, Sheriffs, Prosecutors, and School Board Members. We need to exercise our right to vote and maintain the legacies of the late Georgia Representative John Lewis and late Senior Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We need to be Notorius Citizens exercising our right to vote.

Similar Read: Legal Attack on Women’s Right to Choose (How Did We Get Here?)

Bold Ideas and Lessons Learned

by with One Comment FeaturedGen ZPolitics

While we all look ahead to 2020—which can be fun, that I will not deny—it might be best to start by looking back.  On Tuesday, Trump gave his second State of the Union Address, followed by the Democratic rebuttal given by Stacey Abrams.  Reading through Twitter after the address, I was expecting to find my favorite political voices pushing back on Trump’s falsehoods and rhetoric, and I did, but right before sighing and calling it a night, I found something even more profound.  It was a tweet, retweeted by an account I follow, written by Joe Kennedy. He was offering support and advice for Stacey Abrams before her rebuttal speech. It took me a minute to even understand the tweet’s context: Kennedy gave the Democrat’s State of the Union rebuttal a year earlier, at the end of Trump’s first year in office.  Aside from jokes about Kennedy’s over-application of chapstick (which he poked at in the tweet), the speech ultimately fell flat. That’s not to say it wasn’t well done, but it is to say that it appeared to be Kennedy’s opportunity to be thought of as the future of the Democratic Party, and a year later, he is not. In a very short time, the Democratic Party has experienced some pretty significant changes.  

To explain this, let us go back further, to 2015, when Hillary announced she was running for President.  Her campaign, personality notwithstanding, was essentially a promise for 4 more years of Obama: hold the line on some of the important victories Democrats had won, like Obamacare, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and legalizing gay marriage, and build on some of the things he began to do, like strengthening discrimination laws and making minor cutbacks in incarceration laws.  Then Bernie came along, then Cynthia Nixon, then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and today, our Democratic Party has taken an entirely different form. It is being moved by a diverse array of faces, it is confronting and pushing back on its opponents, and it is insisting on bold changes. Part of this, it must be said, is due to a wholly unpopular president and stagnation in progress on health care, tax reform, and mass incarceration, which are key issues for the American public.  But it is also an important lesson in American political science. A lesson borne of our obsession with the moderate, our two-party system, and a relatively obscure idea called the Overton Window (to be explained later).

Let us start with the moderate, who is the fixation of nearly every politician who hopes to take office.  When we envision our two-party system, we imagine our microeconomics lesson on two competing hot-dog stands: if there are two hot-dog stands on a street, logic would say the best placement would be such that the two stands broke the street up into 3 equal parts.  To increase Stand A’s business in this situation, one would suggest moving closer to the middle of the street—customers who were once in the middle now find themselves closer to Stand A, while those on the edge of the street are unaffected. For an example of this kind of thinking in politics, simply look for anyone begging the Democratic Party to abandon things like Medicare for All or free college tuition in order to “appeal to the moderate.”

The problem with this opinion is that it fundamentally misunderstands how American politics work.  If we go back to the hot-dog stands, what happens in the long run if the best idea to increase business is to stay close to the center?  The answer is that we are eventually left with two stands directly next to each other—a smart reaction in the short term turns into a long-term equilibrium where very few people are happy with the inefficient placement of the stands.  Next, who’s to say that the location of the people has to be fixed? The first question ties in deeply to Clinton’s 2016 campaign; an obsession with being near the center leaves voters near the edges unhappy, and they end up staying home or voting for Jill Stein.  The answer to the second explains the importance of figures like Bernie Sanders and AOC; bold ideas, attractive messaging, and genuine desire for change has the Democratic Party promised for success in 2020 and beyond.

The best articulation of this is the Overton Window, a theory whose named was coined in the late 20th century by Joesph P. Overton, which explains just how vital the “New Left” wing of the Democratic Party is.  The theory goes that the mainstream discourse exists in a certain window, with its center being the “moderate” take, and its edges the farthest one can go without appearing extreme (and being dismissed).  Just 3 years ago, college tuition and Medicare for All fell outside this window and would have been disqualifying in a presidential candidate. The interesting thing about the Overton Window is that it is not a fixed box in space, immovable and restrictive; it is a fluid area that can be expanded, contracted, and pulled in either direction.

Bernie Sanders, through his grassroots campaign and social-media-friendly advertising, moved the Overton Window, putting M4A and other “socialist” policies on America’s radar.  In New York, AOC proved that such ideas were not simply possibilities, they were winning policy goals, as she upset a 10-year incumbent en route to becoming the youngest female ever elected to Congress.  As she leads the progressive charge, Republicans are taking notice, as many on the campaign trail made sure to tell voters they would protect their public health care. The point is not to say that the next president will pass Medicare for All or that a stronger Republican Party will not find answers to a growing swell of progressive support, but the lesson is this: too long have Democrats wholly misunderstood the game they are playing, as bold ideas populate the left, they do not weaken Democrats, they pull voters with them, making a stronger party for years to come.  

McCain Votes “NO” and Saves Obamacare

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Shortly after midnight, in a historic vote, Senator John McCain voted “No” to Mitch McConnel’s Healthcare Freedom Act, also known as the “skinny repeal.” As the last Senator to cast his vote, he had the power to either pass or kill the bill. He chose the latter and joined Senator’s Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkoski of Alaska. The irony… McCain was one of President Obama’s loudest critics regarding the Affordable Care Act, and last night he was the final vote, which essentially saved President Obama’s bill.

McCain was recently diagnosed with brain cancer; however, he flew back to Washington earlier this week to vote “Yes” on the motion to move forward with health-care legislation. He then took to the Senate floor to ridicule his party for trying to pass a bad bill.

“Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet… To hell with them! They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood. Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order.” 

This is truly a historic moment in America’s efforts to get healthcare right. After 7 years of campaigning to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans have failed to deliver and pass a better bill. What’s next for the Republican Party?

Even Jamie Dimon Sounds Like Middle America

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Jamie Dimon: “It’s almost an embarrassment being an American citizen!”

What a difference six months has made – Last January, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon couldn’t stop talking about the “moment of opportunity” at the start of the Trump Presidency. At the time, he believed what many Republicans believed: that with the election behind us, the President would appoint a cabinet that could assemble policy plans even if he didn’t oversee them directly, that Congress would support those plans, draft legislation and reform that was in parity with White House policy and the President would sign it. Ah- what dreams may come…

In my day job, I must have listened to 200 or more bank earnings calls, and JPMorgan’s is one of the most important. They are generally stale and rehearsed- almost like a State of the Union address. So it’s hard to imagine this was an off-the-cuff exclamation by a long-standing, experienced leader.  But it was in some ways comforting to see an uber-conservative, powerful, connected person like Jamie Dimon feel as helpless as the rest of us as we near the second fight over an Obamacare repeal that increasingly seems to be going sideways, with bank reform, tax reform and a real budget plan still over the horizon.

Wall Street has much to fear from this stagnation. Much of the “Trump Rally” of early 2017 was due to expectations of a “lightning fast” administration that expected to already have unilaterally repealed Obamacare, put out a new budget with sweeping tax cuts, a $1 trillion (with a ‘T’) infrastructure plan, higher interest rates, a boost in GDP growth, and a massive re-vamp of Dodd-Frank alongside sweeping policy changes for bank capital plans. As the train backs up from a 2017 agenda to 2018 at best, a whole year of growth that may already be “baked in” to 2017 earnings (especially in financials) looks more and more like over-optimism… and the pain of that shortfall will be shouldered heavily by Dimon.

It feels like something’s gotta give, and my guess – maybe even my hope – is that it’s the Senate filibuster. Maybe the 60 vote cloture rule really is a relic of a lost era – when the point really was just to make sure all sides had a chance to speak (not to hold hostage the democratic process), and filibusters were rare – rather than the universal means to halt any legislation at all. Senators – this is why we can’t have nice things.

It’s time to pick an agenda and go. Repeal or move on. Obamacare is important, but tax and budget planning are the backbone of GDP projections, corporate growth and earnings, and a myriad of corporate planning objectives for the next 5 years. The Senate has set its time table based on their internal politics, and the country has spoken – that just can’t be the timeline. Godspeed, Senator McCain, I wish you a speedy recovery. But it isn’t just about one vote. It’s time to get this past us and move on to the next phase of economic growth- or by October, the “Trump Rally” may yet be another bear market.

 

Mainstream Media or “Fake News”?

by with One Comment CultureMediaPolitics

A few weeks ago, Stephen Colbert was up in arms over the President’s dismissal of CBS anchor John Dickerson – whom the President referred to as “Fake News” and then dismissed entirely when Dickerson questioned the president’s source for claims that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

To a lot of people on the coasts, this seems laughable and shocking that a president could be so dismissive of mainstream media while making completely unfounded claims of his own.  Nonetheless, it resonates with millions of people throughout most of the Midwest (an area bereft of major broadcast journalists).

Donald Trump definitely has made heavy use of “alternative facts”, but the backlash the mainstream media has used to counter (perhaps in defense of their own credibility) has only served to give weight to his assertions.  A look at the CNN homepage for the past two months yields a full transcript of SNL’s best digs on the White House- despite no affiliation between CNN and SNL parent NBC.  I counted three articles a few weekends ago that discussed anecdotal information that various Republican congressmen didn’t know before sending the partial repeal of Obamacare to the Senate this week, and yet there wasn’t an article outlining the bill’s full content in even terms.  The closest two articles to an overview of the bill on CNN as I wrote this were “Pre Existing Conditions: Pregnancy, Sleep Apnea Could Make You Pay More” and “Here’s a (Partial) List of All the Pre-Existing Conditions the GOP Bill May Not Cover”.  There’s no real up front mention of savings, what’s protected, or that this is a starter version of the bill sent to the Senate.  There isn’t much of an overview at all.  I wonder how any independent person could come to any sort of conclusion at all about the healthcare bill from reading CNN, or even understand fully what it is (rather than a few anecdotal things that it isn’t).

One of the largest reasons the President’s “Fake News” message resonated so well as President Elect was the very surprise that he had won the election at all.  For many in the Midwest, talking to their neighbors and friends, it seemed clear Donald Trump was doing well in their own polls of peers.  Many in the Midwest looked around and could see clearly that he was winning in their district weeks ahead of the election despite poll numbers on major news networks showing different outcomes- particularly in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin.  The fact that the polls misrepresented the actual vote gave many people grounds to distrust many of the major news networks as making any effort to present balanced facts – or even facts at all.

That may well have been bad polling.  In any regard, it’s given the President an opportunity to confuse the American people as to where to look for the truth, and it does appear that many of the networks – perhaps through attacking the President in response to criticism aimed at the networks – have played fully into his hands.  

165 days are over, but there are 1,295 more to go.  The public probably would appreciate journalism that starts with facts and overviews.  When everyone is yelling and pointing fingers, everyone is just noise, and if that’s how the next few years go- it’ll be the media and not the White House who will lose this war of words.