American society is being restructured by six corrupt christofascists. Think about that for a minute. There are 337 million Americans and their lives are being changed by six people who are political agents, not law-based justice agents. And no one is doing anything about it.
The Supreme Court Credit: Michael A. McCoy / Getty
The Supreme Court upended how the federal government works on Friday. In a landmark decision in its war on federal regulatory power, the justices formally overturned a key doctrine that determined when and how courts should interpret ambiguous federal laws.
Forty years ago, in Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court ruled that when a federal agency enforces an ambiguous law, courts must defer to the agency’s interpretation of that law so long as it is “reasonable.” Congress and the executive branch have operated against this backdrop for decades when drafting laws and writing regulations.
No longer. “Chevron is overruled,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the [Administrative Procedures Act] requires.”
The court’s three liberals denounced the ruling in vivid terms as a threat to […]
The corruption and politicization of the christofascist cabal on the Supreme Court has reached a point where even the honorable justices that make up the consistent minority have had enough and are speaking out. If criminal Trump is elected I think the American judiciary will be finished as a fair, non-political, system of justice.
Associate Justice Elena Kagan at the supreme court in Washington DC on 23 April 2021. Credit: Erin Schaff / Getty
Elena Kagan issued a devastating dissent to the decision of her hard-right fellow Supreme Court justices to overturn the Chevron doctrine that has been a cornerstone of federal regulation for 40 years, accusing the majority of turning itself into “the country’s administrative czar”.
Kagan was joined by her two fellow liberal-leaning justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in delivering a withering criticism of the actions of the ultra-right supermajority that was created by Donald Trump. Such caustic missives have become commonplace from the three outnumbered liberals, with each carefully crafted dissent sounding more incensed and despairing than the last.
In a speech at Harvard last month, Sotomayor revealed that after some of the supreme court’s recent decisions she has gone back to her office, closed the door and cried.
“There have been those days, and there are likely to be more,” she said.
Kagan’s dissent in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo on Friday was the literary equivalent of crying over 33 pages. But she was also searingly angry.
More bad news as a result of the Dobbs decision. Take a look at this week’s SR podcast where I go into this in detail. As I said in the previous comment, six people are changing our world, as everyone looks on.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision, as dozens of abortion clinics shut down in states with total or near-total abortion bans, reproductive justice advocates warned that the closures wouldn’t just affect patients seeking to terminate their pregnancies. Family planning clinics have historically provided more than abortion services, often offering basic gynecological health care for women. Indeed, more than 1 in 10 women get their birth control from these clinics, including those that also provide abortions. For low-income patients and people of color, the numbers are closer to one 1 in 5. Without access to affordable and reliable contraception, many more women were bound to become pregnant, whether they liked it or not. And without abortion as an option, many of them would be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.
Now, in the first research to look at national trends in the use of birth control pills and emergency contraceptives in the post-Roe v. Wade era, a University of Southern California study has found evidence that those warnings were warranted. The analysis of what is known as “prescription-fill” data from retail pharmacies across the […]
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Josh Bivens , Chief Economist - Economic Policy Institute
Stephan:
Okay, here are the facts. If you want a strong more vital economy you vote Democratic. There is no question about this. Sadly, I don’t think a large percentage of American voters comprehend this, and instead, they vote based on politically weaponized misinformation. If you know someone like that send the research article along to them, perhaps it will make a difference.
Summary: The economy performs much better during Democratic presidential administrations than during Republican ones.
Key findings
Since 1949, there has been a Democratic advantage in the average performance of key macroeconomic indicators measuring economic health, including:
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth
Job growth
Unemployment rate
Growth in inflation-adjusted wages
Growth of market-based incomes per capita
Inflation
Interest rates
This Democratic advantage is across the board in all variables we measure but strongest in private-sector outcomes—notably, business investment, job growth, and the growth of market-based incomes.
Household income growth (adjusted for inflation) was faster on average and far more equal during Democratic administrations, and the Democratic advantage shows up for every group.
Why this matters
We suspect that the simple facts on economic performance during Democratic and Republican administrations aren’t well known. Providing accurate economic information at a time of rampant misinformation supports an informed citizenry.
Full Report
The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance…The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly ubiquitous: it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large. (Blinder and Watson 2016)
