The View from Right Field

Nothing Is Better Than Too Much; Nothing Is Better Than Too Little

That is the essence of the dispute in Congress on a coronavirus relief bill.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans say that the plan proposed by the Democrats is too big and they won’t approve it.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats say that the plan proposed by the Senate Republicans is too small and they won’t approve it.  In other words, both of them are saying that doing nothing is better than passing the bill the other side wants.  And so, nothing is done.

Which sounds familiar to those of us in Illinois who remember the Governor Bruce Rauner/Speaker Michael Madigan disputes in 2015-17.¹
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¹ See here and here.

The Washington 180 – Once Again

With Joe Biden being elected President and the Republicans very possibly keeping a majority in the Senate,¹ we may have another “Washington 180” coming up next year. 

After the Republicans took the House in 2010, Barack Obama couldn’t get Congress to pass his agenda.  When Congress wouldn’t pass the laws he wanted, President Obama turned to what he called his “pen and phone.”²  Sometimes, departments and agencies followed the Administrative Procedure Act and adopted formal regulations.  Other times, they just issued new interpretations of laws or prior regulations.  Or they sent so-called “Dear Colleagues” letters to state and local governments setting out new rules, with an implied threat to cut off federal funding if they didn’t follow the new rules or standards.

Supreme Court or Supreme Election Board?

Three weeks ago, I asked “Will Courts Be Changing Voting Rules Right Up to Election Day?”  Since then, some of the more extreme examples I mentioned in that post have been walked back.  On Monday night, the Supreme Court upheld, by a 5 to 3 vote, a decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that overturned a federal district court decision in Wisconsin to extend the period for getting absentee ballots back to the election board until six days after Election Day.  (Wisconsin law provided that absentee ballots had to be received by Election Day.)   

What I wanted to talk about here are a couple of things Justice Elena Kagan said in her dissent in that decision.  Justice Kagan said: “As the COVID pandemic rages, the Court has failed to adequately protect the Nation's voters." and "[T]he Court's decision will disenfranchise large numbers of responsible voters in the midst of hazardous pandemic condition.”

Hunter Biden and Ukraine: Old News – And Still Wrong

There is a big brouhaha about Twitter and Facebook not allowing the re-tweeting or posting (or whatever the proper verb is) of reports in the New York Post about what Hunter Biden allegedly did for the Ukrainian energy company he got a job with when his father was Vice President under Barack Obama.  Apparently, Twitter and Facebook did this because there wasn’t proper sourcing for the reports in the Post, it was based on hacked materials, etc.  (See here and here.)  If Twitter and Facebook really start enforcing a policy requiring stories to be properly sourced, there’s going to be a lot less traffic on those sites.

But back to the Bidens and Ukraine.  If Twitter and Facebook wanted to cut down on posts, etc., about Hunter Biden and Ukraine and his father, a better explanation than a lack of proper sourcing would have been “It’s old news.”  I wrote about this in May of 2014 when reports first came out about Hunter Biden taking the job.  Hunter Biden getting paid by a Ukrainian energy company when his father was Vice President didn’t become wrong because he made an introduction to his father or something else.  It was wrong from the beginning, and it was whether he made the introduction or not.

So, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, Vice President Biden.  Old news.  And still not enough of a reason to vote for Donald Trump.

Will Courts Be Changing Voting Rules Right Up to Election Day?

Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal had an editorial listing what I assume are just some of the lawsuits going on across the country to change voting rules for this November.  In some of these lawsuits, judges have extended the date by which ballots that are postmarked as of election day can arrive at the election authority and still be counted.  In others, courts have held that ballots received by some new court-set deadline are to be counted even if they don’t have a postmark.  The deadline for receiving ballots has been extended a few days in some states.  In Michigan, it has been extended until two weeks after the election. 

Which raises the question: Who is supposed to decide the rules for elections these days?  It used to be that legislatures would pass laws setting rules for voting; i.e., when ballots needed to be postmarked; when they had to be received; etc.  But things have changed.  Now it seems like courts are doing the deciding in a lot of states.  The question is: Why?

When It Comes to Staying Safe With Covid-19, I’m Going to Rely on Me, Not Government Rules

We all want to stay safe when it comes to Covid-19.  I know I do.  But I’ve also come to the conclusion that, if I’m going to do that, it’s up to me to figure out what I need to do to stay safe and not rely on government rules.  Government can do some things regarding Covid-19, but ultimately, if I want to stay safe, I’m better off relying on me than on the government.

To state the obvious, the federal government hasn’t done a good job with Covid-19.  However, I’m not sure how much better a different President would have done, especially early on.  Would the CDC or the FDA have done a better job under a different President?  States and governors would still have been on the front line.  Would a different President have meant fewer deaths in nursing homes?  I don’t know.  After all, it wasn’t President Trump sending Covid-infected patients back to nursing homes in New York.  A different President certainly could have provided better moral leadership.  He or she could have encouraged us to wear masks, etc.  That would have helped.  With a different president, we could have had fewer deaths.  But substantially fewer?  I don’t know.

Donald Trump Bans Evictions. Huh?

While I was getting ready for more important things last week (the Cubs-Cardinals series over the weekend at Wrigley Field¹), the Trump administration issued a nationwide ban on evictions, through the end of the year, of tenants who are unable to pay their rent because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  I’m not going to go into whether a ban on evictions is a good idea or not, assuming it is done by the proper level of government.  I want to talk about the legal basis the Trump Administration is using to justify its action.  Well, I will talk about it as long as I can keep from laughing about it.

In issuing the order, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Sad News at Wrigley Field

As Phil Rosenthal notes in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, there has always been gambling at Wrigley Field.  Gambling in the bleachers was one of the underlying themes in the classic play “Bleacher Bums.”  But the Cubs have decided to bring sports betting to Wrigley Field in a big and different way when the Friendly Confines opens again.

On Thursday, the team announced it has reached an agreement with DraftKings to set up gambling at Wrigley Field.  While the Cubs need approval by the City of Chicago and the Illinois Gaming Board,¹ it doesn’t appear anybody thinks that will be hard to get.  

Character Defines the Choice in November

The Wall Street Journal summed up the case for and against Donald Trump’s re-election in an editorial today.  Here are a few excerpts, with my comments added in italics:

“Four years [after President Trump’s election] our verdict is that he has been better on policy than we feared but worse on personal behavior than we hoped.  Whether Americans re-elect him depends on how they assess that political balance sheet. …

The President contracted out tax reform to Congress, especially Paul Ryan in the House and Pat Toomey in the Senate, and they delivered.  Mr. Trump also hired a cast of deregulators who liberated the economy from burdens on energy and more. …

A “Fair Tax” for a Poorly Run and Corrupt State

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has an idea to solve Illinois’s financial problems: a progressive income tax.¹  Illinois currently has a flat-rate income tax, but in November, voters will be able to vote on an amendment to the Illinois constitution allowing a graduated income tax.  In pushing for the change, Governor Pritzker assures us that only 3% of us would pay more under his plan. (I would say that, if you believe this, you probably also believe in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, but that would be unfair to the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.  They’re real compared to the chance that, within five to ten years, only 3% of us would be paying more under the Fair Tax.)

Illinois’s main problem is not its unpaid bills or huge unfunded pension liability.  It is, rather, that it is so poorly run and so corrupt.  So much of the money that Illinois government gets is wasted, and there is no reason to think this would change just because Illinois gets more money.  More money would just mean more money to waste.²