Does this mean that we the People of the USA cannot overcome lobbying of the Corporate world, and no longer make changes to our Constitution to allow such regulation of business?
Just think about it from an energy use standpoint. The average citizen has very little energy they dedicate to community and social system support. This includes education, voting, lobbying etc…
This is a basic requirement for an electorate to self govern, everyone has to give input and that input should align with their well considered interests. The amount of work that takes is relatively immense for the amount of impact that people feel they have as a result.
On the other hand you have in effect every for profit entity putting as much possible energy into rent seek and increase margins for the majority owners by offloading any possible externalities of inequitable ownership or resource hoarding.
Corporate lobbies have perfectly captured the political process to the extent that nobody even questions it anymore. Including legislators.
Unfortunately its hard enough that almost half of the nation doesn’t do it for even the biggest election and only a minority of voters actually vote in local elections
You don't need to change the constitution, all you'd have to do is pass the rules you want through Congress instead of having them created by an unelected administrative agency.
If Roe was an actual law, it wouldn't have been overturned. The current Supreme Court is simply remedying years of lazy legislating from executive agencies and the bench, instead of making laws the way we're supposed to. Everyone should support this.
Where is this state where you have the right to self defense? From what I can gather, the police can generally execute and otherwise harm commonfolk with impunity nation wide. Some states let you buy more equipment to go out in a blaze of glory with, but that's a pretty poor consolation prize.
Has this happened with the converse as well? Police assault a residence, resident defends themselves, police escalate and "win", and the police are charged and convicted of second degree murder? A right to self defense implies that both outcomes should happen.
Do these verdicts also happen for the least sympathetic cases, like an actual criminal defending themselves against an unknowable no-knock "warrant" ? Because if you're the basic upstanding sympathetic right-looking type, it's actually most places you will not be charged for defending yourself in your home against non-police.
And has this all happened regularly enough to form a predictable pattern such that the police have actually curtailed such attacks? Affecting repeated interactions such that one doesn't need to continually dwell on the basic dynamic is the hallmark of an intact right.
Because I haven't heard of any states that are shining examples of police accountability, especially states that people tend to market as promoting the right to self defense. But I'd love to be wrong!
Try killing a cop who is threatening you at a traffic stop, and see how that works out for you.
You'll quickly discover that your state also has some hard limits on that right, they are just drawn at different points than the states that you mistakenly think don't have a right to 'self-defense'. You can defend yourself anywhere, you just can't always kill people in 'self-defense' when you have other options available to you.
(Related question: Does your state have a right to body autonomy, or is it in blatant violation of the fourth amendment?)
That's not really a good framing. If we allow that the police have a legitimate function to exercise justifiable violence on behalf of the state, then the right to self defense must obviously be limited against duly authorized and duly noticed state violence. And unfortunately in your example "threatening" isn't really litigable, making the details collapse into just a duly-authorized traffic stop.
There's probably an argument to be made from a natural rights framing that the right to self defense is still applicable to unjustifiable but duly authorized state violence, like say the war on drug users. Though I don't know how this could be applied practically. Perhaps limiting the number of cops that can carry out any arrest, such that there's an actual balance of power?
Cops do have authority to use violence, but they must not have a monopoly. If a cop encroaches on another person in an unjustified manner, they should face exactly the same consequences, up to and including death.
I've certainly said nothing supporting police having a monopoly on violence in general. However, it seems unavoidable that cops have a temporary situation-scoped monopoly on violence while carrying out duly authorized functions. What other possible alternative is there that wouldn't also lead to every traffic stop being a shoot out?
That sounds like a euphemism for the persecution of basic medical care based on backwards religious superstition that anything growing where a baby would is assumed to be a human baby. IMO the Democratic Party has totally screwed up with this extremist "pro choice" framing, when the reality is mainly one of non-viable fetuses and only one medically-prudent choice.
> IMO the Democratic Party has totally screwed up with this extremist "pro choice" framing
100% correct.
> backwards religious superstition that anything growing where a baby would is assumed to be a human baby
This is absolute bullshit. I'm an Orthodox Christian, extremely conservative, particularly on abortion, and a priest's wife I know had an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy, because it was non-viable and would have killed her. It's simply a matter of believing that the unborn are human and then acting rationally based on this belief. I wish more people could get this—rather reasonable—viewpoint through their thick skulls.
If this is the basis, why are the laws aimed at criminalizing abortion essentially blanket bans with narrow exceptions rather than based around medical judgement that's equitable between both parties? For example Texas's only viability test is the presence of a periodic electric signal, rather than any consideration of whether the fetus even has the right number of chromosomes.
Additionally, even a fetus that seemingly will be eventually viable isn't actually viable for the first few months. From a libertarian perspective, while arguments exist that the mother has consented to this responsibility for some cases, in other cases she has not (eg rape).
(Also FWIW your example of an ectopic pregnancy example doesn't actually meet the criteria of "growing where a baby would")
> why are the laws aimed at criminalizing abortion essentially blanket bans with narrow exceptions rather than based around medical judgement that's equitable between both parties
Because then would-be abortants would simply find a doctor who would sign the correct paperwork. Duh.
> whether the fetus even has the right number of chromosomes.
So you support eugenics?
> From a libertarian perspective, while arguments exist that the mother has consented to this responsibility for some cases, in other cases she has not (eg rape).
Abortion, if the fetus is human, violates the non-aggression principle. From a humanist perspective, it wasn't the kid's fault.
> Because then would-be abortants would simply find a doctor who would sign the correct paperwork
That hypothetical doctor would be breaking the law by falsifying paperwork, and could be prosecuted for that. It seems you're arguing that it's necessary for the law to overbearingly criminalize related just behavior (and in this case medically prudent behavior), because of the possibility that law breaking could be fraudulently hidden. I don't buy that sort of argument.
> So you support eugenics?
Do you have a larger point here, or is equating the acknowledgement of chromosomal abnormalities that are ultimately incompatible with life as "eugenics" just meant to be a rhetorical cheap shot?
> Abortion, if the fetus is human, violates the non-aggression principle
By the usual framing of the non-aggression principle, I don't see how. Would you say a landlord evicting a tenant violates the non-aggression principle?
HIPAA already includes exceptions for law enforcement, and the new law itself could certainly mandate some new monitoring and compliance checks. This argument just feels like doubling down on the previous unsupported rationale.
> Depends if you're talking about Down's and related disorders or not.
Since you're defending blanket bans, then it's sufficient to make my point on the most extreme least compatible with life conditions. Like say from a quick look, trisomy 8. "Warkany syndrome (trisomy 8) is a common cause of miscarriage and, for newborns who survive, death usually occurs within the first months". Or trisomy 16. "Full trisomy 16 is incompatible with life. While most fetuses are spontaneously aborted by the 12th week of pregnancy, a few have survived into the second trimester". But in general I don't think knowingly bringing a child with Down's syndrome into the world is kind, compassionate, or worthwhile either.
> Of course not, eviction is a possible outcome of the contract between the two parties.
That only works for tenants over 18 who've signed the lease contract, and not for say their minor children or subletees. But sure, getting the contract out of the picture entirely - would you say that a landlord evicting a squatter violates the non-aggression principle?
Can I move over to your state, and just take a blood transfusion, or an organ from you? I will die without a kidney, and surely you can spare one... My body autonomy is more important than yours, after all, I should be able to make such an imposition on you. My life for a minor inconvenience for you.
I'm asking you to apply to the born the same rights you are willing to apply to a zygote (be it viable or unviable, differentiated or undifferentiated). I need a kidney. You have two. I should be able to violate your body autonomy to protect mine.
If a zygote can make this imposition on a woman, why should you have any right to refuse me on this?
This is a bad-faith argument. Say someone superglues an infant to you in public. Do you have the right to stab the infant? There's a proper equivalent.
The student debt case: perfectly clear law passed by Congress and overturned by SCOTUS in very tenuous grounds with a plaintiff that never even had proper standing.
There is a law. It authorized the education dept to “waive or modify” loan provisions. But somehow the court ruled that that means only minor changes are permitted. Obviously this isn’t what Congress intended - waiving entire provisions could of course result in major changes.
The entire “major questions” doctrine is a farce. It’s not in a law. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s an invention of the court.
And again: the case never should have been heard. The litigant had no standing.
The motivation here is SCOTUS striking down a policy they don’t like.
Conservatives don't really like the federal Department of Education, but there is no question that Congress passed a law creating it. Why do you think they would strike down this but not that?
> There is a law. It authorized the education dept to “waive or modify” loan provisions. But somehow the court ruled that that means only minor changes are permitted. Obviously this isn’t what Congress intended - waiving entire provisions could of course result in major changes.
Under that reading they could waive the entire law and forgive everybody's loans, making any other provisions moot. If that's what Congress wanted then why would they pass a law allowing them to "waive or modify" loan provisions, implying that they contemplated the continued existence of loans, rather than just passing a loan forgiveness bill to begin with?
> The entire “major questions” doctrine is a farce. It’s not in a law. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s an invention of the court.
The Court interprets the law. The "major questions" doctrine announces how they intend to interpret the laws Congress passes. It was already a thing when the bill in question was passed. Congress therefore knew that if they intended the law to grant the power to do something like that, they would have to spell it out explicitly, and then they didn't, implying that wasn't what they intended.
Also, just think about it. If that bill had the words "including the power to forgive all student loans" appended to the bottom, do you think it would have passed? If not, it's because those words would have changed the expected consequence of the law, right?
That's absolute nonsense. Biden abused a law that did not say what he said it said. If you can't get Congress to pass a law, you don't get to do the thing.
At the risk of a cliché, Biden's student debt forgiveness strategy was dangerous to democracy.
Sorry but this is just plain wrong. Congress authorized the secretary of education to waive or modify any loan provision.
If you are concerned about the rule of law you should be upset that the Supreme Court even heard a case so obviously lacking standing. Nobody was harmed by this policy so conservative groups had to invent a fictional harm just to get the case heard.
Partisan politics, mostly. It was a Biden campaign promise.
The party allegedly harmed, MOHELA, didn’t think they were harmed and didn’t want to participate in the case. The court let the state of Missouri stand in for them even though it’s even harder to see how they have standing.
You tell me: who is harmed by students owing less is student loans?
Whoever didn't get the money they were lent and never repaid (presumably taxpayers), and anyone holding or contracting in US dollars since forgiving the loans is equivalent to printing the money and causes inflation.
> If Roe was an actual law, it wouldn't have been overturned.
Nonsense and worse words. They aren't originalists, they don't care about the executive/legislative distinction. It's embarrassing farce to pretend that there is constitutional principle behind achieving their desired political goals. Roe would've been gutted were it law and the general incoherence of Alito and Thomas would have led the way.
Have you actually read Roe itself? It struggles to find any real basis for what it was doing in the constitution and the same logic should have rendered unconstitutional e.g. the Controlled Substances Act as well as any equivalent law at the state level, because the government is interfering with what people put into their own bodies in private. People liked it because they liked the outcome, not because it was ever coherent.
The real problem is that a lot of people want there to be a right to abortion in the constitution but they don't have enough votes to actually put it there, and they also don't want to read the constitution's general constraints on government power to be restrictive enough to limit this using coherent logic because that would also limit the government from doing many other things they want it to do.
Roe is simply a bad court decision. Congress has the right to codify Roe into law. The Supreme Court does not have the power to create law out of whole cloth. Overturning Roe was the Supreme Court taking presumptive power away from itself.
Also, the current court absolutely has an originalist majority, even if you happen to disagree with the originals. The Constitution is a very restrictive document for the Federal Government.
If it were congress's job to pass these rules and regulations instead of pawning off their authority to someone else, I would assume that congresspeople would have to generally take the job a lot more seriously.
That’s an interesting perspective. What’s problematic is the level of corporate lobbying which can interfere with peoples’ (not shareholders, but those who work there) interest. They cannot afford lobbyists. Not without a union.
> They cannot afford lobbyists. Not without a union.
All of the union's money comes from the workers. If they wanted to they could form a PAC regardless of whether they form a union. Which might even do them more good because then the PAC would be directly representing the workers instead of having an indirect layer of union leadership with potentially different incentives.
How do they communicate to form a PAC? Would a less educated blue collar worker ever fund a PAC? How do you convince them it’s for their own benefit? Will you do it again for a different agenda? There may be some merit in exploring a new approach that uses modern technology to organize workers.
Until we figure something out, the current structure is better than zero protections for workers.
