Which Side Are You On? Friedrichs Case Poised to Make Public Sector Unions Open Shop in All But Name

Adam Liptak in his story, "Supreme Court Seems Poised to Deal Unions a Major Setback," makes it sound as if open shop in everything but name is the likely outcome of the Supreme Court hearing the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case. At issue is whether union members who work in the public sector, a.k.a., government workers, have to pay "agency fees" or "representational fees" to their labor union or whether they can opt out entirely and choose instead to be what is called a "free rider," someone who enjoys all the benefits of union membership without paying any of its costs. (It has been a settled opinion for decades that public sector workers can opt out of paying that portion of their dues that goes directly to support political campaigns, but they cannot opt out of paying their union for representing them in collective bargaining, which is the lion's share of one's union dues.)

The best hope for a victory for the unions had rested with Justice Antonin Scalia, who has written and said things sympathetic to their position. But he was consistently hostile on Monday. 

”The problem is that everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within the political sphere, almost by definition,” he said.

The court’s four liberal members were on the defensive, asking whether there was good reason to overturn a 1977 decision by the court that allowed the fees.

“You start overruling things,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said. “What happens to the country thinking of us as a kind of stability in a world that is tough because it changes a lot?”

Justice Elena Kagan focused on the practical consequences of a decision in favor of the challengers. 

“This is a case in which there are tens of thousands of contracts with these provisions,” she said. “Those contracts affect millions of employees, maybe as high as 10 million employees.”

Michael A. Carvin, the lawyer for the teachers, emphasized what he said was the limited nature of the case. It was not, he said, an attack on the union’s exclusive representation of all workers. A decision in his clients’ favor, he added, would not affect private employers, who are not subject to the First Amendment. 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked whether workers “who paid these fees against their will” were entitled to refunds. 

Mr. Carvin answered that “all we’re asking is for prospective relief.”

The fact that so much attention was devoted to the aftermath of a decision favoring the challengers suggested that at least some members of the court viewed it as a foregone conclusion.

***

Limiting the power of public unions has long been a goal of conservative groups. Even before Monday’s argument, they had reason to be hopeful that their side would prevail in the case.

In 2014, the court stopped just short of overruling a foundational 1977 decision and declaring that government workers who choose not to join unions may not be forced to pay fees in lieu of dues.

In the 1977 decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court made a distinction between two kinds of compelled payments. Forcing nonmembers to pay for a union’s political activities violated the First Amendment, the court said. But it was constitutional, the court added, to require nonmembers to help pay for the union’s collective bargaining efforts to prevent freeloading and ensure “labor peace.”

Justice Kagan said the 2014 ruling, along with one from 2012, “admittedly expressed some frustration with Abood.” But that was not enough, she said, to justify overruling a 40-year-old precedent.

Mr. Carvin responded that the recent decisions had “undermined the doctrinal underpinnings of Abood.” He said the court had overruled important precedents in similar circumstances in 2010 in the Citizens United campaign finance decision.

And that is an appropriate analogy here -- Citizens United. Friedrichs will likely have an impact that is in the ballpark of the Supreme Court's post-2008-Obama-landslide decision to scrap existing campaign finance law. Fairly quickly, but certainly over time, the number of free riders will grow in public sector unions, diminishing their strength.

Conservatives like the Kochs -- who have provided some financial backing for the outfit, the Center for Individual Rights, that organized the Friedrichs lawsuit -- want to see public sector unions hamstrung because there is far greater union density in the public sector than in the private sector.

Public sector unions are the bedrock of unionism in the United States. Once they are bled out, the next step will to be go after after the large building trades internationals by repealing Davis-Bacon, the federal prevailing wage law. 

All this is happening against the backdrop of increasing income inequality and the post-Great Recession stagnation in wages. The last thing you want to do is weaken the unions. And that is exactly what the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has signaled it will do.

The upside to Friedrichs is that now more than ever it will force unions to engage in the kind of "Which Side are You On?" organizing that they have shied away from for generations. The problem, as can be seen by the number of large internationals, like SEIU, that have already endorsed Hillary, is that the leadership at the top remains conflicted, addicted as they are to big money and "the lesser of two evils," and that's why labor finds itself in its present diminished and endangered state. Hitching their wagon to Hillary, who appears to be headed for a defeat in Iowa, is just another tone deaf bad move.

Seattle District Elections: Money Tries to Beat Back Kshama Sawant's Progressive Movement

On the job I will have conversations with the few coworkers who are able to conceive of a big picture. Where are we headed? Who is going to win it all in 2016? Can we imagine a future that isn't bleak and apocalyptic?

My usual contribution to the dialogue is to locate the nexus of our collective ills in the concentration of wealth and power in a tiny elite who are driven by insatiable greed and who feel themselves somehow invulnerable to the onrushing societal and ecological collapse.

Yesterday I was telling a coworker that if you are a Saudi royal who owns opulent estates on more than one continent, the possibility of genocide in Yemen or igniting a war with Iran must not mean what it does to your average person. The super-rich I believe always expect to be able to parachute somewhere to safety.

Another one of my mantras is that we -- "we" meaning the 99% -- can't win the money game; the super-rich have far more of it. If we try to compete by pooling our dollars and cents -- and try we must -- we almost always end up being buried.

The story of our present history -- Citizens United v. FEC -- is a story of a 1% who, freaked out by the success of Obama 2008 in raising millions online in small donations, rushed to equate money with free speech, clearing the way for unlimited independent expenditure campaigns and creating a brave new world of electioneering in the United States.

In the City of Seattle a law was passed in 2013 to create a district system for the city council. Of the nine council seats, seven would represent individual districts and two would be at-large.

The idea is that it takes a lot less money for yard signs and mailings to campaign in a couple of neighborhoods than it does citywide. I don't think that can be denied.

But what we are seeing in the midst of primary voting (election day is August 4) for the first district elections is that money in the form of independent expenditures is saturating the process as never before.

I am at ground zero, District 3, where superstar socialist Kshama Sawant is running for reelection. The Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) has backed a shill, Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle President Pamela Banks, in an attempt to oust Sawant.

Banks' yard signs and hip, colorful, almost Avalon Ballroomesque posters are, if not everywhere, highly visible. It is a cynical effort made possible by developer deep-pockets that repackages the Urban League corporate toady as a multiracial, multicultural Hippie goddess. As Sawant wrote in a recent email, "So far over $70,000 from 160 top corporate executives, bankers, private equity managers, and developers have poured into our race."

Local captains of industry are banking that Banks can hoodwink enough voters, the ones who are obviously not paying attention, to fill in her bubble on the ballot.

The same thing is happening in other districts. In District 1 $74,000 has been dropped by a business PAC to make sure Lisa Herbold, a longtime legislative aide to Nick Licata, will not join Kshama on the council to push for rent control in the city.

What we are witnessing is the Democratic Party, which is terrified of a socialist rebirth at the local level thanks to the celebrity of Sawant, joined at the hip with the downtown power structure of the Seattle Times, developers and sundry capitalists drenching the primary election in gobs of cash in an effort to beat back a truly progressive uprising.

The issues are income inequality and exorbitant rents in a city that is rapidly, chiefly due to Amazon's ascent, becoming a San Francisco on the Sound. Kshama has proven herself time after time a fighter who will not go down, a rare almost unique politician who walks her radical talk and who cannot be bought. She is concatenating allies around her; and the fear of the power elite is that these allies will join her on city council. Hence, the gobs of cash.

We'll see what happens. I don't think Kshama can be beat. And as for the important District 1 race, the large independent expenditures will hopefully go the way of Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS effort in 2012: Lots of money which in the end bought next to nothing.

Menendez is Going to Jail, Unless Hillary Rides to the Rescue

Sometimes it is hard to find a silver lining in the morning's Gray Lady. Not today. Right out on the front page is Matt Apuzzo's wonderful "Senator Robert Menendez Indicted on Corruption Charges." One can almost hear the assholes collectively puckering in Washington D.C.:

The charges revolve around Mr. Menendez’s relationship with Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye surgeon and political benefactor. Dr. Melgen resisted entreaties by the Justice Department to testify against Mr. Menendez and was ultimately charged alongside him.

Prosecutors described Mr. Menendez’s offices on Capitol Hill as a hub of corrupt dealings, a place where the senator used his chief of staff to solicit gifts from Dr. Melgen, find out what he wanted in return and make sure it got done.

The indictment also reveals how the rise of super PACs, unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and subsequent legal changes, have opened a new channel for the wealthy to trade campaign cash for official favors.

Through his company, Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, Mr. Melgen directed $700,000 in corporate contributions to Majority PAC, a super PAC intended to help Democrats retain control of the Senate. Mr. Melgen instructed the group to use those contributions to aid Mr. Menendez’s 2012 re-election campaign.

Among the favors for Dr. Melgen, the department said, Mr. Menendez encouraged the Obama administration to change the Medicare reimbursement policy in a way that would make millions for the doctor. Prosecutors said he also tried to push a port security deal that Dr. Melgen was involved in, and helped the surgeon’s foreign girlfriends obtain travel visas to the United States.

A bribery charge is among the most serious accusations of corruption the federal government can make. Prosecutors often opt to file a lesser charge of accepting a gratuity, which is easier to prove. A bribe amounts to the purchase of an official act, while a gratuity is seen as a way to curry favor with powerful officials.

Mr. Menendez is the first senator to face federal bribery charges since another New Jersey Democrat, Harrison A. Williams Jr., was indicted in 1980 as part of the federal corruption investigation known as Abscam [played by Jeremy Renner in David O. Russell's American Hustle; maybe Menendez can look forward to his moment on the silver screen]. In 2002, an ethics scandal deterred Senator Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, from a re-election bid.

To prove their case, prosecutors must show that Mr. Menendez’s actions and Dr. Melgen’s gifts were explicitly traded. The two men argue that they were longtime friends and that they exchanged gifts as part of that friendship.

“Prosecutors at the Justice Department don’t know the difference between friendship and corruption,” Mr. Menendez said on Wednesday.

The senator’s involvement in Dr. Melgen’s dispute with Medicare is the most damning element of the department’s indictment. Prosecutors cite emails showing that Mr. Menendez’s office was deeply involved in the dispute.

The DOJ indictment raises the possibility of putting the whole sordid, venal system on display. It is a pay-to-play scheme, and Menendez is a skilled, extroverted practitioner. He basically advertised his senate office as a fee-for-service enterprise, soliciting foreigners to bring him their visa difficulties. I have assumed that Menendez has been under investigation for years, if not decades -- but possibly Menendez and Torricelli morphed together in my understanding.

Now that the other shoe has dropped one wonders how long Zionist groups will continue to run their full-page ads extolling the courage and friendship of Senator Menendez.

Unless Menendez pleads out, he is going to jail. His "friendship" defense is ridiculous. Government business is not supposed to be guided by personal like or dislike. Public opinion towards the U.S. political class is at a historic nadir; the same thing goes for the ostentatiously wealthy. If the Menendez case goes to trial, a lot of bombshells are in the offing. That is why puckering beltway assholes are well-nigh audible.

During the Obama years we have seen the creation of a new system of politics. Citizens United was a knee-jerk response to Obama's successful crowdfunding during the 2008 campaign. The rich realized that their overwhelming advantage in a democratic system -- their wealth -- could be neutralized by millions of small donations made via the Internet. The plutocrats dreamed nightmares of Che Guevara riding to power on the World Wide Web.

But after Citizens United no longer is a politician with national aspirations guided primarily by the math of voting blocs. Now the most important math is found in the bottom line of donations made by the super-rich, what is publicly referred to as the "billionaire primary." Candidates trundle off to Palm Springs or Las Vegas and prostrate themselves at the feet of a David Koch or a Sheldon Adelson.

A long, contentious federal bribery trial puts this new system in the spotlight. Everyone knows it is corrupt, spotlighting it will generate calls for reform. The plutocrats would prefer not to have to deal with deflecting such calls. So this morning I am sure the conversation Menendez is having is whether to dig in and wait for a new chief executive in 2017 to spike the DOJ case -- I'm sure either Hillary or whomever the GOP nominates would be amenable -- or, after reaping as many pledges of financial consideration as he can muster, falling on his sword and pleading to a lesser charge, serving out his penalty time in a comfortable federal prison looking out on green hills.

Sham Elections in the United States

As one ages, meaning, when one leaves youth behind and moves into midlife, attention to the basics becomes paramount. And what I mean by the basics are diet, exercise and rest. If you are attentive to these details of your life, you can successfully counteract some of the decreases in energy that result from the loss of youth.

Along with this wisdom regarding the basics, age also brings an appreciation of a central bias of U.S. reporting on foreign elections and election processes. The bias is that U.S. electoral democracy is cleaner, fairer, more open than other countries.

Putin's United Russia party swept Russia's elections on Sunday. David Herszenhorn reports in
"Russia: Putin’s Loyalists Dominate Vote" that "Candidates loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin won elections for governor in all 30 regions that held elections on Sunday, as balloting reflected the Kremlin’s total domination of political opponents and its iron grip on the country’s political system."

Neil MacFarquhar had a story yesterday that criticized these elections because of recent changes in ballot access requirements and the outsize influence of money in the process. This was said without sarcasm in the flagship newspaper of a nation that has the most complex, antiquated, money-dominated electoral system on the planet.

The same day as MacFarquhar penned his critique of Russian elections, Hillary Clinton made an appearance at the Harkin Steak Fry in Indianola, Iowa. There is now no doubt that the American electorate is going to be force fed a Hillary candidacy for president.

Presidential elections in the United States are based largely on the performance of candidates in two small, lily white non-urban states -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- that occur early in the primary season. Third parties don't figure in the process. Iowa and New Hampshire are classic Potemkin villages,

The system is rigged. Ballot access laws prevent any third-party candidate from reaching the people. 

I'll be dealing with this issue more in the future. I saw it up close as a member of the Green Party during the last decade, specifically as a Nader supporter. What the Democratic Party did to Nader in 2004 is very instructive. Democrats basically sued -- successfully -- the Nader campaign to keep it off the ballot in several key states. You won't find the Gray Lady inveighing about it in her editorial pages, but Nader 2004 proves beyond question that the United States does not have a fair election system.

And then there is role of money. After Citizens United there is no longer any question that elections are now a contest between who has the biggest pile of money. I don't think, post-Citizens United, that the sham can continue much longer. 

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission: Lifeline for the Duopoly

For an easy-to-digest synopsis of yesterday's 5-4 McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision check out today's lede unsigned editorial, "The Court Follows the Money," in the Gray Lady:

As a result of Wednesday’s ruling, an individual donor will now be able to contribute as much as $3.6 million per election cycle (the sum of maximum donations to all national and state party committees and a party’s presidential and Congressional candidates). This money can then be funneled to specific campaigns through the use of joint fund-raising committees, effectively nullifying the per-candidate limit. Chief Justice Roberts blithely rejected such a scenario as “speculation,” and he ignored political reality by confining the meaning of corruption to instances of “quid pro quo,” or the direct exchange of money for political favors. 

But the interest of Congress in preventing political corruption has long been “far broader” than merely forbidding bribery, as Justice Stephen Breyer argued in dissent. It includes an interest in controlling influence over and access to politicians.

Nicholas Confessore points out in a helpful think piece, "Power Surge for Donors as Terrain Is Reshaped on Campaign Money," that the McCutcheon ruling will counteract the trend toward super PACS by pushing money back into the parties:

Donors would still be barred from giving more than $5,200 to any one candidate over the course of the 2014 campaign. But the new ruling would allow each donor to contribute that amount to as many candidates as he or she wants, freeing those with the means to pour millions of dollars into candidates and parties. 

Current rules limit each donor to a total of $74,600 worth of contributions to party committees and political action committees, and $48,600 to all federal candidates, enough to permit a donor to make the maximum $5,200 in contributions to as many as nine candidates. But when the Supreme Court decision goes into effect, a single donor will be able to contribute the maximum amount to every candidate in the country, every political action committee, and every party committee, campaign experts say. 

The ruling opens the door for each party’s establishment to reclaim some power from the super PACs and other independent spending groups that are now playing an outsize role in campaigns. Experts said the decision would permit party leaders to form joint fund-raising committees and solicit multimillion dollar checks on behalf of candidates. The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, for example, could in theory approach a donor seeking to help Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, and solicit as much as $2.3 million — $5,200 for each Democratic candidate in every House race, plus a contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

A donor could also, in theory, give $5,000 per year to every political action committee currently registered with the Federal Election Committee. That would total more than $13 million, versus the $74,600 allowed under the existing aggregate cap. 

Party officials have been effectively prohibited from soliciting supersize checks since Congress moved in 2002 to ban unlimited contributions to party committees, also known as “soft money.” The prestige and financial muscle of party leaders was further eroded by the court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, which led to super PACs, which could raise and spend unlimited amounts of money so long as they did not coordinate with parties or candidates. Super PACs have spent more than $700 million since that decision. 

But the ruling offers a path for party officials to re-establish themselves as kingmakers. And because senior congressional leaders often have the closest ties to big donors, the decision could give them a tool with which to discipline rank-and-file members.

So McCutcheon accomplishes two things: 1) it basically scraps all the Watergate-era Buckley limits designed to combat corruption since now the parties can once again rake in seemingly unlimited soft money contributions and then funnel this money to individual candidates, bypassing the $5,200 limit; and 2) the political parties, the duopoly, increasingly showing signs of obsolescence with the rise of super PACS and groups like the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, can move back to center stage.

McCutcheon is thus both radical and conservative; it kills off for good the campaign finance reform of the Hippie era while insuring that the Republican and Democratic party system stays in place. In other words, it does not look like we're headed for duopoly disintegration in the near term replaced by a brave new world of 501(c)(4)'s and new political configurations. Huge infusions of cash will keep the cadavers animated for all election cycles on the horizon.

Couple McCutcheon and Citizens United with the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder backdoor scrapping of the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and you have the outlines of a system where the rich may exercise the franchise but the poor, the uneducated cannot.

A New Feudalism

Everywhere jihadis are on the warpath. Iraq is besieged by daily terror bombings. Pakistan and Afghanistan are battlegrounds. Secular politicians are assassinated in Tunisia. Egypt is experimenting with a return to Mubarakism. Syria is being cracked. The United States is fighting a secret war in Somalia. Where is all the funding coming from? One can't help but come to the conclusion that the U.S. is in bed with the imams bankrolled by the Gulf Arab states.

Secularism and social democracy -- transcendent in the 19th and 20th centuries -- are now deemed too expensive and dangerous by Western elites. A new feudalism is coming down the pike. And while religious fundamentalism is too much on the wane in the West to provide a sturdy cage for social control, racial identity and entitlement are ready at hand. The strategy for domination and a continuing rollback of rights will be race based. We're already seeing it with the Supreme Court's scrapping of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Obama might not be a progressive, but he was elected by a progressive majority with impressive margins -- twice. After the first election the Supreme Court served up its Citizens United decision. When that didn't work and Obama was reelected in spite of the unlimited amount of money spent on attack ads the Supreme Court decided to repeal the Voting Rights Act. The idea is to disenfranchise the progressive majority. And if that doesn't work, if citizens still find a way to vote, then I'm sure other repressive measures will be concocted. This is the direction we're headed in.

SEC Considering Disclosure Requirement

A good indication of just how moribund our democracy is will be whether the Securities and Exchange Commission issues a new rule requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose their political donations. The story, "S.E.C. Gets Plea: Force Companies to Disclose Donations," by Nicholas Confessore can be found today on the frontpage of the New York Times.

A petition to the S.E.C. asking it to issue the rule has already garnered close to half a million comments, far more than any petition or rule in the agency’s history, with the vast majority in favor of it. While relatively few petitions result in action by the S.E.C., the commission staff filed a notice late last year indicating that it was considering recommending a rule.

In response to the growing pressure, House Republicans introduced legislation last Thursday that would make it illegal for the commission to issue any political disclosure regulations applying to companies under its jurisdiction. Earlier this month, the leaders of three of Washington’s most powerful trade associations — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable — issued a rare joint letter to the chief executives of Fortune 200 companies, encouraging them to stand against proxy resolutions and other proposals from shareholder activists demanding more disclosure of political spending. 

Tax-exempt groups and trade associations spent hundreds of millions of dollars on political advertising during 2012 elections, but they are not required to disclose their donors. Evidence has mounted that a significant portion of the money came from companies seeking to intervene in campaigns without fear of offending their customers, their shareholders — or the lawmakers they target for defeat.

In 2010 the Citizens United ruling lifted independent expenditure restrictions in political campaigns, but it did require disclosure. In order to avoid disclosure a system of secret campaign spending has sprung up in the form of 501(c)(4) issue advocacy groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS that favor Republicans. That's why Republicans are trying to block the S.E.C. disclosure rule. Confessore summarizes the main argument against the new rule as follows:

Opponents argue that the agency does not have the authority or expertise to issue regulations about political spending, and that a disclosure rule would infringe on companies’ free speech rights — and damage shareholder value — by exposing them to criticism and attack from political opponents. 

“The Chamber believes that the funds expended by publicly traded companies for political and trade association engagement are immaterial to the company’s bottom line,” said Blair Holmes, a spokeswoman for the business group, who added that the advocates’ “apparent goal is to silence the business community by creating an atmosphere of intimidation under the cover of investor protection.”

For the Chamber to argue against disclosure because of a fear of intimidation is absurd. In disclosure law there is an exemption for minor parties, such as socialists or communists, who can prove that retaliation or harassment would result from revealing donor information. So it seems that the threshold should be the same for publicly traded corporations. If they can prove harassment or retaliation -- not the vague "intimidation" -- fine; give them an exemption. Otherwise, they should disclose their political donations.

Interestingly, Citizens United provided disclosure as a justification for lifting restrictions on independent expenditure campaigns. As Confessore points out:

In seeking greater disclosure to shareholders, many of the advocates are citing an unlikely source: the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. In clearing the way for unlimited corporate expenditures in campaigns, Justice Kennedy suggested that “shareholder objections raised through the procedures of corporate democracy” could provide accountability for the new political powers. 

“I think the S.E.C. staff is very sympathetic to the petition itself, and a lot of the comments have referenced Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Citizens United,” said Karl J. Sandstrom, counsel to the Center for Political Accountability, which advocates transparency in corporate political spending. “But they have so much on their plate, they have to decide what’s going to come first,” he added.

But don't count on the Securities and Exchange Commission doing the right thing. The system is captured.

A video of Confessore discussing his article can be found here.

Neo-Dixiecrat Push to Scrap Section 5

This is the key paragraph from Adam Liptak's story today about Wednesday's arguments on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the Supreme Court:

Should the court strike down the law’s central provision, it would be easier for lawmakers in the nine states [now covered by a federal preclearance requirement] to enact the kind of laws Republicans in several states have recently advocated, including tighter identification standards. It would also give those states more flexibility to move polling places and redraw legislative districts.

The conservative justices indicated by their questions that they were in favor of scrapping Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The problem that they're grappling with is how to turn a neo-Dixiecrat GOP into a majority party. Their first bold move was the fast-tracked Citizens United ruling equating money with speech. Conservatives were frightened by the amount of money Obama raised in small amounts online during the 2008 campaign. But the Super PACs, which resulted from Citizens United, spectacularly underperformed for the neo-Dixiecrat GOP in 2012. Large swaths of the citizenry are immune to attack ads. Certain kinds of people have to be kept from voting. There are various ways to do this -- identification requirements, moving polling locations and limiting their hours of operation -- which were tried by Republican-controlled states. But the Department of Justice intervened in those states covered by Section 5 and told them to stop. This from today's unsigned editorial in the New York Times, Congress’s Power to Protect the Vote:

Congress found that, in general, the problems of voting discrimination were much worse in the covered areas than elsewhere in the United States. A recent study by Morgan Kousser of the California Institute of Technology confirms that: “five-sixths or more of the cases of proven election discrimination from 1957 through 2013 have taken place in jurisdictions subject to Section 5 oversight.” The Justice Department used Section 5 last year to block and change discriminatory voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina, for example, and to block a discriminatory Florida law that limited early voting.

If the conservative majority votes in a bloc to strike down Section 5 it would do so on the basis that the formula used to determine covered jurisdictions is out of date. Congress would be tasked with updating the formula. This, as Liptak points out, will not happen; hence, a de facto ban:

Should the court strike down the coverage formula when it decides the case, Shelby County v. Holder, No. 12-96, Congress would be free to take a fresh look at what jurisdictions should be covered. But Congress seems unlikely to be able to agree on a new set of criteria, given the current partisan divide, meaning the part of the law requiring federal pre-approval of election changes would effectively disappear.

This is Republican road map for neo-Dixiecrat domination: massive amounts of corporate cash, a gerrymandered permanent majority in Congress and restrictive voting laws.

The Gerrymandered House of Representatives

There is an excellent unsigned editorial in today's New York Times on the effort underway in Michigan's Republican-controlled legislature to pass right to work.  Parts of the editorial could have come from Workers World, a socialist weekly I've read for many years: "Concern for the rights of individual workers, of course, is not the real reason business is pushing so hard for these laws. Gutting unions is the fastest way to achieve lower wages and higher profits."

According to Monica Davey's front page story the pivotal figure in this fight is Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder who originally opposed right-to-work legislation as divisive but then suddenly changed his mind and requested last week that the legislature give him something to sign in a matter of days.  UAW's Bob King is quoted as saying that Snyder succumbed to Rightist pressure groups.  One can almost smell the sulfur belching from a Georgia Pacific smokestack.

Equally dispiriting in today's paper is Jonathan Weisman's story about GOP anti-tax purity in the House, which is based on rigorous gerrymandering.  This is the second time in as many weeks that Weisman has addressed the issue of how it is that Republicans in the House can be so out of touch with the national sentiment on raising taxes on the rich.  Polls consistently show that a supermajority want the wealthy to pay more and Social Security left alone, the exact opposite of the House majority.  How can this be?  Of the two houses of the United States Congress isn't the House of Representatives supposed to be the people's house?

House Democratic candidates won about 50.5 percent of the national vote in November, but took just 46 percent of the seats. In the last 40 years, only one other time — 1996 — did the party that won the majority of the votes end up with a minority of the House, said Nicholas Goedert, a political science researcher at Washington University in St. Louis in Missouri. Democrats actually gained two seats in the Senate.

Political scientists point to two factors influencing this divergence: a redistricting process dominated by Republican legislatures, and even more so, the concentration of Democratic voters in urban enclaves.

Gerrymandering did matter. In nine states redistricted by Republicans, the Democratic vote share was well above the percentage of seats won, Mr. Goedert said. For instance, in North Carolina, Democratic House candidates won 51 percent of the vote but only 27 percent of the House seats. Where Democrats drew the lines, in Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts, Democratic House delegations fared better than their vote totals, but not as drastically. This points to an inherent advantage for Republicans. In closely contested years, like 2012, the concentration of Democratic voters in cities has put them at a loss — and given House Republicans little reason to fear national opinion.

In other words, the House has become another Senate — a block on the popular will.  With Citizens United the law of the land, a rural congressional district is chump change for a Super PAC.  I imagine the GOP can mantain its 30-seat House majority for quite a while.  Barring a radical shift our future seems certain to be some form of plutocratic dystopia.