How can voters trust you to defend democracy?

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. I think new cases per day has his a plateau, even with the omicron variant 5. The peaks over the last few weeks have been 2043, 2265, 2140, and 1768. The deaths per day has stayed low, under 20 a day for the last five weeks. Back in 2018 Michigan citizens gathered enough signatures to put a couple proposals on the ballot. These were not amendments to the state constitution. They were proposals for laws put forth by citizens. The Michigan version of this process has a twist – the legislature can enact the proposal, and if so it won’t go on the ballot. And when the legislature does that the governor cannot veto it. So, yeah, the Republicans in control of the legislature have been manipulating this method. A group gathered signatures to put voter suppression measures on the ballot. This gets them around the Democratic governor, who had vetoed similar bills in the past. It wouldn’t actually get on the ballot, where it might fail. This particular proposal didn’t turn in signatures by the deadline because there was signature fraud. But they weren’t aiming for the ballot anyway and could turn signatures in later. A second method of manipulation was to adopt the measure once the signatures were turned in, which would keep it off the ballot, then “amend” (gut) the provision in the lame duck session after the election. In 2018 they did that to two proposals, one on minimum wage and the other on paid sick leave. Of course, proponents of these proposals were furious. And they took it to court. Nearly four years later the Michigan Court of Claims ruled this “adopt and amend” strategy is unconstitutional. The legislature cannot amend a citizen proposal. And since the legislature adopted them, they are now law. I’m not sure how paid sick leave works though it is now better than it was. For minimum wage it is $12 an hour now rather than rising to $12 an hour by 2030. It also increases the tipped minimum wage to be on par with the regular minimum by 2024. Before now the tipped minimum was $3.75 because the law assumed tips would make up the difference. I had heard about this story on Michigan Radio as a news item, so they didn’t have the full story online. Another favorite Michigan news outlet didn’t mention it. I did find a source with a link to share with you – the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. After stating the basics they added their editorial about how “crippling” this will be for businesses and their hope it will be appealed to the state supremes to be overturned. No sympathy from me. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the forced birther nightmare is now here. She presented several cases of horrors of people who cannot get abortions. We’re going to be hearing a lot more of these stories. There’s the story of a 10 year old rape survivor who had to go from Ohio to Indiana for care. A Texas hospital let a woman bleed until she almost died before treating her ectopic pregnancy. A Wisconsin woman nearly bled to death over 10 days before her incomplete miscarriage was treated. A common theme in these cases is the doctors are fearful of being sued under whatever their state law is. If an abortion is allowed to be done to save the life of the mother, how sick or how close to death does she have to be before treatment can be given and lawsuit avoided? These stories may have stayed hidden in the 1960s. They won’t be hidden now. And they shouldn’t. They will be evidence of Republican cruelty. Dorothy Roberts tweeted:

How close to death do patients experiencing pregnancy complications have to come before doctors in forced pregnancy states can treat them without risking criminal prosecution? What kind of barbaric question is that?

Jonathan Metzl, Director of Medicine Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, added, along with a link to an article in the New York Magazine:

Similarly, the notion of picking "a side between the baby or the mother" is a wholly false construct in many medical emergencies like ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Fetus is not viable, denying treatment is matricide.

Evelyn Lomax replied to Metzl with a meme:

Hint: If you oppose abortion rights, which Jesus never mentioned, because you are so deeply Christian; but support the death penalty, which Jesus directly opposed, the rest of us are no longer obliged to take your Christianity seriously. – John Fugelsang

Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post who discussed how to prevent Republicans from avoiding questions about what the nasty guy did. Another reporter had asked Arizona Governor Ducey whether the nasty guy’s conduct should disqualify him. Ducey gave a non-answer. Rubin gave several possible follow up questions that should be used to force elected officials and candidates to discuss democracy. Here are some of them:

How can voters trust you to defend democracy if you cannot rule out supporting the instigator of a coup attempt? Should pressuring the Justice Department to “just say” the election was fraudulent despite any evidence of fraud be permissible? Is it acceptable to urge an armed mob to march to the Capitol to stop the count of electoral votes?

Now that Sen. Manchin has scuttled Biden’s climate bills Meteor Blades of Kos reported on what Biden might do on his own. There are a few executive orders Biden might announce soon. He could also announce a climate emergency, though he likely won’t do that yet. Many are urging him to declare and emergency, saying if now isn’t the time, when is? The Brennan Center for Justice put together a list of over 130 statues that give Biden special powers once an emergency is declared. Blades mentioned a few, which I’ll summarize: * Oil leases have clauses to suspend them in an emergency. Invoking that seems logical if the emergency was caused by oil. * He can respond to industrial shortfalls, such as batteries for electrical vehicles and components for renewable energy. * The Secretary of Transportation could “coordinate transportation” as in restricting high emission vehicles. * Invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to handle an extraordinary threat that is mostly outside the US to impose sanctions against companies and countries trafficking in fossil fuels. Of course, it will be litigated. Describing the situation terms of national security might splinter the Supreme Six. Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois tweeted a thread:

One of the great tragedies of the Senate's climate failure this week is that fossil fuel workers are going to bear the brunt of their failure, in spite of their claims to be on their side. And there is no better place to see that tragedy than West Virginia.

Casten then provides numbers of what has happened in West Virginia since Manchin joined the Senate in 2010. There is a drop in employment in mining and logging. A drop in population. A drop in total jobs and workforce participation. An increase in suicides and drug overdoses. A drop in wealth.

So fewer jobs, less money, more suicide and more overdoses. This is the direct result of a policy environment that has doubled down on failing industries, elevated the interests of mine owners over labor and failed to provide a social safety net to those in need. To be clear, Manchin is not unique. His political views are, in fact shared by the majority of the US Senate. But if you want to know where that policy agenda leads, you need look no further than WV. The American people deserve so much better than what the US Senate is capable of providing them.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the trial of Twitter suing Elon Musk for backing out of his purchase deal now has a date. There was a preliminary hearing yesterday in which both sides laid out their basics. Sumner wrote Twitter’s basic is this: “Musk isn’t just welching on a deal, he’s trying to burn down his opponent in the process.” The trial is to be held in the Delaware Court of Chancery. Delaware is very pro business – a lot of corporate documents say they are registered in Delaware. So they have a court for business disputes. After laying out what Musk did Sumner wrote (bracketed words are his):

The reason that all this is intolerable to the Delaware court is simple enough to understand by substituting [Generic Rich Guy] and [Target Acquisition] into the above scenario. If what Musk did was okay, then anyone who has enough money to mount a supposed acquisition could make an offer to buy, gain access to company data, then use this data to bring the company down. Imagine this scenario in terms of a tech CEO buying out a rival, or someone like Rupert Murdoch going after a rival network. In either case, the [Generic Rich Guy] knocks the stuffing out of [Target Acquisition] with next to no investment. And now that the target company is worth a fraction of that original offer, the would-be buyer could either walk away and leave behind the wreckage, or pick up the remains for a song. It’s a form of corporate sabotage that not only invites those with deep pockets to rampage over any potential corporation, it’s economically terrifying in the sense that it makes corporations impossible to value. In almost any market, whether it’s the local yard sale or Wall Street, the value of something is what someone will pay for it. But if you can say you’ll buy something, purposefully damage it, then demand a discount … what’s the real value? That form of corporate sabotage is something the Delaware court is really, really not going to tolerate. Because it can’t.

And it can’t because it has been tried many times before. Sumner lists several outcomes of this case from Musk is allowed to walk away, to Musk is required to pay several billion (several times the $1 billion renege penalty in his contract) as a “go away” fee.