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JANUARY 13, 2022
Meyerson on TAP
The Republicans' Death Panel Finally Emerges!
The Supreme Court's Republican Six rule that the government lacks the
power to fight a pandemic.
It's been just another typical day here in Washington. In a speech
that threatens to give sanctimonious bullshit a bad name, Kyrsten Sinema
affirmed that the filibuster's obstruction of majority rule is a more
fundamental foundation of our democracy than Americans' right to vote,
while, just across the street, the Supreme Court Six negated the federal
government's right to protect the citizenry against a deadly pandemic.
For a bunch of jurists who claim to adhere to textualism, the six Court
right-wingers gave no indication that they'd actually read the act
that established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA), which was signed into law by left-winger Richard Nixon. That law
gives OSHA the authority to protect workers "exposed to grave danger"
from "substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful
or from new hazards."
During oral arguments last week, some of the Six noted that since it was
possible to contract COVID off the job as well as on, the pandemic
wasn't really a workplace hazard. This argument seemed to miss the
apparently obscure fact that close to 100 million of their fellow
Americans have at some point over the past two years been working
remotely due to the fact that showing up at workplaces heightened the
possibility of coming down with the virus. Then again, nothing in the
constitutional requirements for serving on the Court requires justices
either to follow the news or exhibit common sense.
Have previous administrations required private big businesses to alter
their conduct during national emergencies? It would seem that they have.
During World War II, virtually every American manufacturer was compelled
to shift from making what they normally produced to the production of
tanks, ships, guns, helmets, and the like. Some were slow to make the
shift from profitable new cars to not-quite-so-profitable jeeps, but the
Pentagon made clear this was a requirement, not a request.
For the record, 405,399 Americans were killed in World War II, while
more than 800,000 Americans have now died from COVID.
In 2009 and '10, Sarah Palin and other Republicans warned that the
Affordable Care Act then pending in Congress would establish "death
panels" that would determine whether Americans would live or die. Those
warnings, to state it gently, turned out to be wrong, but as of today,
we do indeed have a death panel that has exercised the very powers those
Republicans feared. It has six members, all wearing robes.
Like I said, just another typical day in D.C. Me, I'm going back to
bed.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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Democratic Inaction Will Lead Us Back to Austerity
Fiscal policy has reverted negative right when omicron is surging, and
the Democrats are uncertain about where to turn for political success.
BY DAVID DAYEN
Remote Workers Punch Holes in City Revenues
Cities hard hit by the pandemic economic slowdown maneuver to keep local
income taxes flowing. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY
Fire Jeff Zients
Biden's COVID czar has gone from 'Mr. Fix-It' to grim reaper,
steering the administration's pandemic response to catastrophic lows.
BY DANIEL BOGUSLAW
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