Voter suppression, arbitrary state rules make this the worst election ever

NOV. 1, 2020
3 AM



https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-11-01/voter-suppression-worst-election-ever






To the editor: In my 70 years of being alive, this election season has got to be the absolute worst ever. (“Memo to the Supreme Court: Let the people vote,” editorial, Oct. 30)

The reduction of polling places and ballot dropoff boxes in some areas; the slowdown of mail service; the withholding of federal funding to certain states for nakedly political reasons — all are making this election particularly difficult.

This is a federal election. States could follow the same rules. Why should a voter in Texas have to drive for miles and miles to drop off a ballot?

I have long thought that all campaigning should be limited only to three months prior to election day. If a candidate cannot explain their stance on the issues within that time, too bad. Doing this would greatly reduce the fighting and allow the citizens to exercise their franchise as guaranteed by federal law. Of course, it would reduce the income of the various fields of the media industry.


And God knows, it would reduce the time we’d have to listen to and read of the insults made by the candidates of their opponents, which are, just plainly, rude behaviors.

Randy Smith, Cathedral City




To the editor: I don’t understand the thinking of the U.S. Supreme Court justices and their suppression, or at the very least discouragement, of voting.





They must have, at some point in their vaunted Ivy League educations, heard about the rise of fascism in Europe. Why on Earth are they bending the rules to favor authoritarianism in this erstwhile beacon of democracy?

I am mystified.

Zena Thorpe, Chatsworth

..


To the editor: The wisest thing the Supreme Court could do regarding the election is to stay out of it and avoid getting drowned in the quagmire with the disreputable Rehnquist court, which decided Bush vs. Gore in 2000.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh didn’t do Chief Justice John Roberts any favors by citing the Rehnquist court in his recent opinion on voting in Pennsylvania, but he did lay his cards on the table so we can see what things might look like down the road.

Democrat Joe Biden may well win the election handily, making it unnecessary for the Supreme Court to intervene. If so, Kavanaugh’s way of thinking is going to force Biden and Congress to expand not just the Supreme Court but probably the entire federal judiciary.

Kavanaugh has made it very clear what a 6-3 conservative majority will mean for Biden, and Biden will certainly realize that it will mean a failed presidency. It could also mean trouble for Kamala Harris if she runs for president in 2024.


The Supreme Court must be expanded and the conservative majority must be sidelined.

Muriel Schuerman, Downey



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Trump's FCC Repeals NET NEUTRALITY Again

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTblsgtB2FY&ab_channel=TheJimmyDoreShow

Contested Election? Labor Unions Vow General Strike

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I75nGWB0zc&ab_channel=GrahamElwood

Debt Forgiveness For The Rich, Destitution For The Rest

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCSmMB-s1Cs&ab_channel=RedactedTonight

Labor’s Uphill Battle

Enthusiasm for strikes, walkouts, sick-outs, and pickets has surged. A new, progressive wing of the Democratic Party, represented by young women of color like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar—has won the enthusiasm of millions of young people.




November 3, 2020 Lauren Kaori Gurley NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS




https://portside.org/2020-11-03/labors-uphill-battle




On a blustery October afternoon, Joe Biden stopped in Erie, Pennsylvania, a lakeside city in a battleground county that swung to Trump in 2016, to speak to an attentive group of plumbers at a union hall. “If every investment banker in New York went on strike, nothing would change much in America,” Biden said, addressing members of United Association Local 27, who stood by their workbenches in blue shirts and face masks. “If every plumber decided to stop working, every electrician—the country comes to a halt. I mean, literally, not figuratively. Literally, it comes to a damn halt.”

A video of Biden’s comment went viral, circulated by members of the country’s resurgent labor movement, by and large a young, multiracial coalition of social media–savvy leftists—a demographic that perhaps only shares common class interests with white, middle-aged plumbers in Erie. Many of these young labor enthusiasts had been supporters of Bernie Sanders for whom Biden was not a second or even a third choice in the primaries, and who nevertheless responded to Biden’s comment with support—and calls for a general strike.

During the 2008 recession, popular support for labor unions, according to Gallup, hit an all-time low. (Historically, American opinion on unions has suffered during economic crises.) But in the last four years, enthusiasm for strikes, walkouts, sick-outs, and pickets has surged, often in unusual places. In 2018, West Virginia public school teachers, demanding higher wages and smaller classroom sizes, staged a wildcat strike that spread to a series of red states: Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, and North Carolina. Amazon warehouse workers, Google and Microsoft engineers, and journalists at digital media companies have ignited their own combative movements, gaining widespread support on social media. Earlier this year, when UC Santa Cruz graduate students staged a wildcat strike for a $1,412 increase to their monthly stipend, their strike fund received nearly $300,000 on GoFundMe and support from Bernie Sanders on Twitter. Protests, organized on Twitter and Facebook, spread to nearly every single University of California campus in the state.

The new gig economy, which emerged out of Silicon Valley in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, has been a major site of labor organizing in recent years. Start-up platforms like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Postmates, DoorDash, and Caviar—all founded in the span of four years, between 2009 and 2013— enticed millions of underemployed Americans into rideshare and food delivery jobs. These gig workers are not paid per hour, but per ride, delivery order, or task—in a poverty wage “piecework” labor model resembling the garment industry at the turn of the twentieth century, when Jewish and Italian seamstresses living in overcrowded New York City tenements were paid per piece of needlework, with no standardized minimum wage. Since 2018, thousands of gig workers have mobilized from coast to coast, staging massive multicity strikes and rallies at airports, corporate office towers, and the homes of billionaire investors. “All of the money I make goes to bills and car maintenance and gas,” an Uber driver in Orange County, California, who participated in a strike last year the day before Uber’s stock market debut, told me bitterly. “I did a ride yesterday where the rider paid $8.60, and my pay was $2.56. When you’re the driver and you see that, it makes your blood boil.”

Meanwhile, a new, progressive wing of the Democratic Party, represented by young women of color like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar—whose campaigns have spotlighted the labor issues affecting their working-class constituents—has won the enthusiasm of millions of young people on Twitter, Instagram, and most recently, the livestreaming service for gamers, Twitch. Support for unions among the American public, according to Gallup, is rising again to nearly the highest it has been since the 1960s.

"We Won’t Let Him": Unions Nationwide Are Planning a General Strike If Trump Tries to Steal the Election

President Trump has signaled he’s ready to declare victory before all the votes are counted. These unions are saying “hell no”—by planning massive workplace actions.




November 3, 2020 Jeff Schuhrke LABOR - IN THESE TIMES




https://portside.org/2020-11-03/we-wont-let-him-unions-nationwide-are-planning-general-strike-if-trump-tries-steal




Amid wide­spread con­cerns that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump will attempt to steal today’s elec­tion or refuse to leave office if he los­es, the lead­ers of mul­ti­ple Chica­go-area unions issued a joint state­ment on Mon­day com­mit­ting to take any non­vi­o­lent action nec­es­sary — up to and includ­ing a gen­er­al strike — to defend democracy.

“Every sin­gle vote has to be count­ed,” says Sta­cy Davis Gates, vice pres­i­dent of the Chica­go Teach­ers Union (CTU). ​“We are pre­pared to be in sol­i­dar­i­ty to ensure that our democ­ra­cy is pro­tect­ed in this moment.”

The CTU, Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal Work­ers (UE), SEIU Local 73, SEIU Health­care, Cook Coun­ty Col­lege Teach­ers Union, Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Gov­ern­ment Employ­ees Local 704 and Ware­house Work­ers Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee are call­ing on ​“all unions, com­mu­ni­ty, faith and civic orga­ni­za­tions, and pub­lic lead­ers to unite in vig­i­lance and readi­ness to defend our rights as the votes in the Novem­ber 3rd elec­tion are cast and counted.”

The Chica­go unions are part of Labor Action to Defend Democracy (LADD) — a recent­ly formed nation­al net­work of union mem­bers orga­niz­ing the labor movement’s response to the threat of a stolen election.

Alex Han, a Chica­go-based labor orga­niz­er help­ing coor­di­nate LADD, says the net­work seeks to tap into the unique pow­er of unions and work­ers to not only protest in the streets, but to cause seri­ous eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion, if necessary.

“One les­son we learned from the sum­mer is you can sus­tain street heat to some degree, but it’s going to dis­solve. We saw this dur­ing Occu­py, we’ve seen this many times,” Han tells In These Times. ​“There’s a per­spec­tive that would say the miss­ing ingre­di­ent is a direct link­age with work­place action, which is the kind of action that could be more sus­tain­ing and sharp­er, and not let street action devolve into a run­ning bat­tle with police.”

LADD has put togeth­er var­i­ous resources—includ­ing sam­ple res­o­lu­tions and a mod­el let­ter to politi­cians — that unions can use to ampli­fy calls to pro­tect the elec­toral process. In the past three weeks, over twen­ty cen­tral labor coun­cils, state labor fed­er­a­tions, nation­al and local unions have issued res­o­lu­tions express­ing firm oppo­si­tion to any efforts to sub­vert, dis­tort or dis­re­gard the final results of the pres­i­den­tial election.

The Rochester Labor Coun­cil is specif­i­cal­ly call­ing on the nation­al AFL-CIO to pre­pare for a gen­er­al strike, while the Ver­mont AFL-CIO plans to hold a gen­er­al strike vote on Novem­ber 21 should Trump lose and refuse to con­cede. The Seat­tle Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion will also con­vene an emer­gency meet­ing of its board of direc­tors with­in a week of the elec­tion to con­sid­er next steps for pos­si­ble action.

Mean­while, the Emer­gency Work­place Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee (EWOC)—a joint project of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca and UE formed ear­li­er this year in response to the pan­dem­ic — host­ed a livestream dis­cus­sion last week on how work­ers can take mass action to ensure a peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er. Fea­tur­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of Flight Atten­dants Pres­i­dent Sara Nel­son and EWOC orga­niz­ers Dawn Tefft and Zack Pat­tin, the livestream has near­ly 6,000 views.

“The labor move­ment knows how impor­tant it is to defend democ­ra­cy in this coun­try. We are demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions,” UE Pres­i­dent Carl Rosen explains. ​“We’re pre­pared to do what­ev­er it takes to make sure democ­ra­cy is sus­tained. We know what it’s tak­en in oth­er coun­tries that have faced tin­pot dic­ta­tors try­ing to stay in office after the peo­ple of their coun­try have vot­ed them out.”

As Rosen indi­cates, unions around the world are often the first line of defense against would-be dic­ta­tor­ships. For exam­ple, in the year since Bolivia’s demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent Evo Morales was oust­ed in a U.S.-backed mil­i­tary coup, the Cen­tral Obr­era Boli­viana — the nation’s largest labor fed­er­a­tion—led the fight to restore democ­ra­cy, cul­mi­nat­ing in the recent elec­toral vic­to­ry of Morales’s par­ty, the Movimien­to al Socialismo.

“The labor move­ment has a proud his­to­ry of stand­ing up for democ­ra­cy and fair elec­tions around the world,” says SEIU Local 73 Pres­i­dent Dian Palmer. ​“Cit­i­zens across the coun­try are vot­ing like nev­er before. We are uti­liz­ing the rights afford­ed to us to vote ear­ly, in per­son, and by mail. And those votes should be counted.”

“We believe in the pow­er of the peo­ple — the mul­ti-racial, work­ing-class major­i­ty,” the Chica­go unions’ state­ment reads. ​“Don­ald Trump wants to steal this elec­tion. We won’t let him.”

The Real Reason Democrats Didn’t Stop the Barrett Confirmation

She’s exactly the kind of judge corporate donors support.




November 3, 2020 Leonard C. Goodman CHICAGO READER




https://portside.org/2020-11-03/real-reason-democrats-didnt-stop-barrett-confirmation




On March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died one month earlier. But Senate Republicans blocked his nomination on the grounds that it was too close to the presidential election, which was then seven months away. Four and a half years later, President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. Although Barrett’s nomination was made just over one month from the presidential election (which Trump appears to be losing), she was confirmed.

The Democrats claimed to be united in their opposition to Barrett’s confirmation. Yet their resistance to having a justice rammed through at the 11th hour of a lame duck presidency feels like the resistance that the Washington Generals used to show against the Harlem Globetrotters. That is, pure theater in which the outcome is never in doubt.

What this tells us is that the corporate donors who control the Democratic Party are happy with a Justice Barrett. In her short time on the bench, she has ruled consistently in favor of corporations. Just weeks before her nomination to the high court, Judge Barrett delivered a key ruling blocking many gig workers from suing in court when tech companies cheat them out of overtime pay. This and other business-friendly rulings is why corporations have given millions to groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to campaign for Barrett’s appointment to the court. Barrett also belongs to the business-backed Federalist Society and will join five other Federalists on the Supreme Court.

The differences between Democrats and Republicans on issues like abortion and gay rights are important to be sure. But the areas of agreement between the two parties— both parties favor the interests of corporations over their workers and the environment— are also important. And these issues don’t get discussed because there is no disagreement. It is just accepted by both parties that a lawyer must be business-friendly to qualify for a federal judgeship.

In a true representative democracy, a lawyer should not have to demonstrate her fealty to corporate power to become a federal judge. The interests of corporate America are closely aligned with only a small fraction of Americans: the investor class. Most of our interests are more closely aligned with those of workers and consumers. There are scores of talented lawyers who go to top law schools but do not go to work at corporate firms. Many of these lawyers devote their careers to representing ordinary people, often taking on the most powerful interests in industry and in government. These pro-people lawyers should also have a place on the federal courts.

Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights activist who distinguished himself representing victims of racial injustice before being nominated by President John F. Kennedy for a federal judgeship, and later to the Supreme Court. Marshall would never get on the court today. Without a track record of pro-corporate advocacy, the donors would reject him.

Some lawyers distinguish themselves by taking on powerful corporations that harm ordinary people through negligence or deliberate malfeasance, such as the lawyers who took on a power company’s illegal dumping of toxic waste portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich. These lawyers often exhibit great skill, resourcefulness, and integrity in fighting powerful and ruthless corporations.

Probably the most successful lawyer ever in taking on the criminal acts of massive corporations is Steven Donziger. Donziger graduated from Harvard Law School, worked as a public defender in Washington D.C., and in 1993 agreed to represent a group of 30,000 Indigenous people and villagers in Ecuador who had been deliberately poisoned by Chevron, one of the world’s largest corporations with over $260 billion in assets.

Beginning in 1964, Chevron (then Texaco) began extracting oil in Ecuador. To save about $3 per barrel of oil produced, the company decided to ignore waste regulations and dump some 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and pits, polluting groundwater and farm land, and destroying a large section of the Ecuadorian Amazon in what came to be called the “Amazon Chernobyl” by locals and experts. Local drinking water became noxious, and citizens became ill. This has all been confirmed by courts in Ecuador after an eight-year trial, the submission of 105 technical evidentiary reports, and testimony from numerous witnesses.

“I did not set out to be an environmental lawyer,” Donziger recently told Greenpeace. “I simply agreed to seek a remedy for 30,000 victims for the destruction of their lands and water; to seek care for the health impacts including birth defects, leukemia, and other cancers; and to help them restore their Amazon ecosystem and basic dignity.”

Donziger made more than 250 trips to Ecuador over the next two decades as he led the legal fight against Chevron. Then in 2011, Donziger and his team secured a $9.5 billion judgment on behalf of the victims. The trial court decision was affirmed on the merits or for enforcement by multiple appellate courts in Ecuador and Canada, including the supreme courts of both countries.

Chevron refused to pay. During the trial, it threatened the affected communities with a “lifetime of litigation.” Afterwards, Chevron engaged a team of 2,000 corporate lawyers from at least 60 firms to retaliate against Donziger and the lead plaintiffs in the case, filing a barrage of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) and RICO suits, legal tools used—and abused—by large companies to punish people who take them to court.

Chevron’s vile and cynical legal strategy—designed to avoid paying compensation to the Indigenous people whose lives it deliberately destroyed to earn an extra $5 billion over 20 years—could not succeed without a federal judiciary populated by corporate-friendly judges willing to bend the law to protect corporate profits.

Chevron’s RICO suit against Donziger was filed in the Southern District of New York, a Wall Street-friendly court. The case was presided over by U.S. district Judge Lewis Kaplan who, before being appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, spent decades as a corporate lawyer representing tobacco companies and banks. The record of the RICO case shows that Chevron paid a disgraced former Ecuadoran judge named Alberto Guerra about $2 million to testify that the verdict in Ecuador was the product of a bribe. Chevron’s cash payments to Guerra should have disqualified him as a witness. Moreover, Guerra admitted to lying about the bribe in another international proceeding. Nevertheless, after denying Donziger his right to a jury trial, Judge Kaplan found that Guerra’s story was credible.

Judge Kaplan later charged Donziger with criminal contempt, but the New York prosecutor’s office refused to take the case. In a rare legal move, Kaplan then appointed a private corporate law firm (that also represents Chevron) to prosecute Donziger. Kaplan personally assigned Judge Loretta Preska, a member of the corporatist Federalist Society, to hear the case. Preska placed Donziger under house arrest and confiscated his passport.

I reached Donziger by phone at his apartment in Manhattan, where he lives with his wife and teenage son. He says that his contempt trial before Judge Preska is scheduled for November 4, the day after the election. He is again being denied a jury trial.

Some 29 Nobel laureates, including nine Peace Prize winners, have signed a letter declaring that Chevron’s legal assault on Donziger is “one of the most egregious cases of judicial harassment and defamation” ever seen. He has also been backed by 475 lawyers and bar associations who wrote an open letter outlining his wrongful detention and mistreatment by U.S. judicial authorities.

Donziger’s story is also a story about the sad condition of the U.S. court system which, like the other two branches of our government, primarily serves the interests of the wealthy. On this topic, I strongly recommend a new book by Ronald Goldfarb called The Price of Justice.

Although the Democrats will do nothing to stop Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, their leader, Joe Biden, has pledged that if elected, he would establish a bipartisan commission to study whether to expand the courts to achieve greater balance.

We recall from history class that President Franklin D. Roosevelt also threatened, in 1937, to add enough liberal justices to the court to protect his programs from the “obstructionist” conservatives. The key difference then was that FDR had an agenda of bold programs to pull the country out of the Great Depression, such as putting Americans to work building post offices, bridges, schools, highways, and parks; supporting farmers and labor unions, and ending alcohol prohibition.

The Democrats of today, however, are offering nothing but a promise to wear a face mask and to not send mean tweets at 3 AM, while Joe Biden assured his wealthy donors at a New York fundraiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he is elected president. Even a Supreme Court packed with Republicans is likely to go along with that agenda.

Click here for the defense fund established on Donzinger's behalf.