TX progressive bloggers talk #NewHorizons, #BlackLivesMatter, #LeonardPeltier, elections

The Texas Progressive Alliance asks What Happened to Sandra Bland, and what might happen to Blue Bell Ice Cream, as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at the lawsuit filed against the state for refusing to issue birth certificates to children of undocumented immigrant mothers.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos makes a compelling argument as to why the Democratic Party needs to sharpen its message in a way in which it resonates with and motivates the majority of D voters. Why we need a better Democratic story and how Sanders' candidacy underscores this point.

Socratic Gadfly says that if Obama is going to visit a federal prison and talk about commuting sentences, he ought to throw the long bomb by going to Florida and freeing Leonard Peltier.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know Greg Abbott screwed up child support payment upgrade.  Republicans don't really care about kids.  You can tell by action after action.

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson. The rotting fruit of one-party rule in Williamson County, County GOP Elected Officials Using Courts For Petty Political Battles.

The disruption at Netroots Nation's presidential town hall forum by activists associated with Black Lives Matter was a clash between the politics of the old-school Social Democrats and that of the New Democrats' identity politics.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs thinks there will a coming-together of the two movements or a cleaving of the Democratic Party as the dynamic unfolds.

Neil at All People Have Value discussed Obama's role in taking away our freedoms through the New Horizons mission to Pluto. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.


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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

The Texas Election Law Blog celebrates its second anniversary, and reviews the case that led to its beginning.

Ken Janda asks how can Texas continue to ask for billions of dollars in uncompensated care payments to hospitals for uninsured patients coming to emergency rooms, when more than one million of those people could be put into Medicaid Managed Care?

The TSTA Blog warns of "dangerous anti-educator" Scott Walker.

Texas Vox cheers the forthcoming end of coal.

Grits for Breakfast is pleased to see that funding has been allotted for research into the underlying scientific bases for the forensic tools and methods currently used in the criminal justice system.

David Ortez gives a graphical representation of the Houston Mayoral fundraising race.

Rachel Pearson explains why that video hit job on Planned Parenthood is "pure applesauce".

Texas Clean Air Matters documents the trend towards clean, affordable power.

#GayMarriage and the false hopes of John Roberts vs Anthony Kennedy

By now, everyone this side of Outer Mongolia with an Internet connection knows that the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that gay marriage is the law of the land.

And, Anthony Kennedy wrote a pretty broad opinion, per Scotusblog:

The opinion seems to go out of its way not to state a standard of scrutiny. Instead, it says, "It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality . . . Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry." That's page 22.

It elsewhere notes Kennedy's focus on "dignity" and "autonomy."

Unfortunately, after writing the 6-3 majority decision yesterday on Obamacare exchange subsidies (and seeing fellow justice Kennedy join him, reversing his original vote opposition to Obamacare), Chief Justice John Roberts acted a bit like Antonin Scalia today.

Roberts from bench: "Today 5 lawyers have ordered every state to change their definition of marriage. Just who do we think we are?"

Gee, just yesterday, Scalia was saying that, in essence, "6 lawyers have ordered every state to change their definition of the word 'state.' Just who do we think we are?" 

Per some blogging friends, his Obamacare rulings may simply be as a Big Biz Republican vs a Tea Party Republican.

On this case, each of the four dissenters — Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas — wrote his own dissent. They can't even agree what's wrong legally with gay marriage, just that they don't like it. And, I don't need to immediately read through each of the four dissents to note that four separate dissents is the main talking point.

Meanwhile, Texas' Lite Guv, Dan Patrick, has already contacted Texas "Attorney General" Ken Paxton to ask if county clerks can ask for personal religious exemptions in refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay or lesbian couples.

Back to SCOTUS and the main theme.

I should have known better on Roberts, though. Yesterday, as I blogged, while he kept the court on O-care, he refused to agree with Kennedy that "disparate impacts," even if not intentional, were grounds to sue on fair housing issues.

That said, a bit more parsing of the dissents, from the full opinion. Roberts was partially joined by Scalia and Thomas. If "this Court is not a legislature" is the best opening argument you can find for tap-dancing around the 14th Amendment, and ignoring the obvious parallels to Loving, you're weak tea indeed. And, to extend that parallel and refute your next sentence, no, on Loving, and in many other cases, the Court has indeed said just what the law should be.

Later, his dissent tries to explain away Loving parallels, noting that previous gay/lesbian petitioners raised that and were rejected. Yeah, well Loving cases themselves were once rejected, both interracial marriage, and just interracial marriage. That's why Think Progress claiming that Roberts' dissent is more bad news for conservatives is tendentious at best.

Beyond the above, per Roberts, I could almost extend his argument to say stare decisis on Plessy v Ferguson. Of course, Brown vs Board of Education trumped Plessy.

Next, he goes to a traditionalist-presentist stance, invoking the old "marriage for conception" argument. This has repeatedly been refuted.

Scalia and Thomas then added their concurring dissent with the this claim gay marriage is a "threat to American democracy." For Scalia, at least, I get the feeling that this was more important. And, by his logic, then, the Supreme Court IS supposed to be a legislature, bowing to the tyranny of actual, or perceived, or finger-in-the-wind tested majoritarianism.

The final laugh is the pair them, especially Scalia, calling out Kennedy for "hubris."

Thomas, to whom Scalia concurred, then tried to pull an economics rabbit out of his hat, claiming that marriage is a "government benefit" that's neither a right nor entitlement, ignoring the IRS, state tax codes, etc. Fine, then, your actual argument should have been to overrule any government benefit for ANY marriage.

He then, without irony as a minority, chides people for reading too much into the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment.

He ends with the old "religious liberty" argument, as big a red herring as any.

Alito then brings in the "states rights argument," which in turn ignores the "full faith and credit" clause" of the Constitution itself. Like the Chief tap-dancing around Loving, Alito does the same here.

Kennedy, on the other hand, IS evolving on some issues. Last week, in an under-the-radar issue, on a case about jury selection issues, he moved beyond that to raise major questions about solitary confinement in prisons. This is something that deserves more airplay:

In a powerful five-page concurrence in Davis v. Ayala, Kennedy criticized the widespread use of solitary confinement in American prisons, which he said affected at least 25,000 inmates in the United States. … 

 “Research still confirms what this Court suggested over a century ago: Years on end of near-total isolation exacts a terrible price,” he summarized. 

 Kennedy’s critique of solitary confinement in Davis came without warning or fanfare. Davis was not a case about solitary confinement at all; the Court had accepted it to address peremptory challenges during jury selection. … 

 Solitary confinement is a new battleground for the Court’s second-longest serving justice, but not a surprising one. Few justices on the Supreme Court have wielded the Eighth Amendment as expansively as Anthony Kennedy. … 

 Although Kennedy addressed solitary confinement specifically, he also invoked mass incarceration in general and the national debate surrounding it. “There are indications of a new and growing awareness in the broader public of the subject of corrections and of solitary confinement in particular,” he noted. Perhaps hoping to reach this broader public, Kennedy wrote without dense legal jargon. … 

 But Kennedy’s concurrence also seemed to be directed toward the American legal community, whose disengagement from prison issues he has previously lamented. “In law school, I never heard about corrections,” he told a congressional hearing on March 23, two weeks after the Davis oral arguments. “Lawyers are fascinated with the guilt/innocence adjudication process. Once [it] is over, we have no interest in corrections. Doctors and psychiatrists know more about the corrections system than we do.”

With people like Chelsea Manning put in solitary at the whim of our constitutional law scholar president, we need to talk about this more.

Now, tying this to another issue on radar screens: Abortion.

Kennedy, in my opinion, will never become more "liberal" on abortion issues. And, Hobby Lobby shows that he's still some kind of conservative Catholic on contraception.

However, I am halfway confident that he'll maintain "balance tests" so that he never supports going back before Roe.

And, him being the swing vote on a "Stay" saying Planned Parenthood et al can keep their clinics open pending SCOTUS hearing the case on Texas' abortion law may be a "tell" on what might be a bright line for him.

Gay marriage "versus" prison labor exploitation, or neolibs vs. liberals

Starbucks may like gay marriage, but it also, via a subsidiary, likes exploiting prison labor. Sure sign of the diff between a latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, Meyer-lemon squeezing neoliberal vs. real liberals is this. In this particular case, I don't think Starbucks is that bad toward its own direct employees, but that's not the full picture.

It's one of a number of U.S. companies that exploit prison labor operations. And, while we normally associate this with private prisons, government-owned prisons in some states also have prison labor operations. 

Maybe that's because the federal government has been in this business for 80 years. Their home page is sickening, looking more business-slick than many actual businesses. Wikipedia has its history. And good old ALEC pushed regulation allowing prison industries much more latitude in competing with free world workers.

I, too, support gay marriage. But, I don't use that as a cover for letting businesses continue to exploit prison labor in what violates at least the spirit of the 13th Amendment.

Prison 'reform' about budgets, not justice

Is it true that whites, or at least a majority of whites in positions of power, will support prison "reform" only as long as state budgets push for releasing nonviolent inmates?

Michelle Alexander, hinting that today's judicial system approaches a new Jim Crow, forcefully argues yes to that.

Telling me nothing new, but a stat to which many white Americans simply will not listen, she says:

African-Americans are far more likely to get prison sentences for drug offenses than white offenders, even though studies have consistently shown that they are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites.

Indeed.

The first time a state or federal government runs an undercover drug operation in a high-rise office tower is the day I start believing otherwise.

States want prison cellphone jam; wise idea?

Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is co-author of a bill to allow states to jam cellphones inside prisons; since they are actually two-way radios, cellphones are wholly under the regulation of the Federal Communications Commission and jamming them is illegal.

On the surface, it sounds like a bright idea.

But the wireless industry trade group CTIA-The Wireless Association, says that experiences in other countries show that private lines in the vicinity also get jammed. It wants states to use better detection technology and toughen criminal penalties.

Cell phones in prison a growing problem

Since I first blogged about this issue back in 2007, it seems like the problem is only becoming more serious.

As the new story notes, California state penal officials confiscated more than 2,800 cell phones last year, double that of 2007. Texas could confiscate nearly 1,500 this year.

Why? Federal law prohibits jamming cell phones, though Congress is considering new legislation on that, targeted at prisons. As for what you can do with one inside the stir?

You can call in drug deals, either from the outside or within prison. You can talk to sympathetic guards. You can use them as a form of prison currency for those two reasons. You can rent them out, for reasons one and two. Probably, you can get, like condos, time-share cell phones.

More seriously than that, you can orchestrate prison gang work, set up outside crimes and harassment, arrange getaway rides for escapes, call in bribes for those more friendly prison guards and more.

Here in Texas, Grits for Breakfast picked up on some issues back in 2007, following up on a National Public Radio story that highlights the problem nationally, including this Texas example:

Last month, a warden in Texas also got a call — from the mother of one of his inmates. She was calling to complain that her son was getting poor cell-phone reception inside the prison.

“She was paying for the service, and she felt that she should get good service out of the prison,” says John Moriarity, the inspector general of the Texas prison system. “That cell-phone company assured her it was within the coverage area, and she wanted to know why they were having some difficulty getting a good cell-phone signal out of the prison.”

(NPR also reports that a Maryland state senator got a cell-phone call from an inmate complaining about prison conditions!)

Henson noted, speaking of friendly prison guards, that a cell phone, being metal, can’t get past a detector, so a corrupt guard is allowing each one inside.

Give the Time story a further look; I've just summarized it.

Henson has more on the phone calling reform ideas here.

And, back in 2007, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was already worried about BlackBerries, not just cell phones.

Oh, if you want an unvarnished look inside TDCJ, try The Backgate, a blog by TDCJ staff. It’s so renegade it’s even pro-union!

You’re 1 in 100 …

If you’re an inmate in an American prison. In what is primarily a shameful legacy of the failed “War on Drugs,” 1 in 100 U.S. adults is now behind bars.

Plus, our incarceration rate is far worse than even authoritarian nations. The far more populous nation of China ranked second with 1.5 million behind bars. Since China has four times our population, but only two-thirds of our 2.3 million prisoners, that means our incarceration rate is six times that of China’s.

The War on Drugs is shameful not only in its own right, but also because it has given credence to the casual use of “War on —“ for all kinds of inanities, including the “War on Terror.”