Editorial Roundup: United States
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
June 15
The Washington Post on SCOTUS, Congress and Stock Regulation
It’s been nearly seven years since a gunman began shooting from his Las Vegas hotel window, causing fear and destruction among a crowd of country music concertgoers below. Within about 10 minutes, the gunman fired more than 1,000 shots, killing 58 people and wounding more than 500, mostly from gunfire. In a country where mass shootings have become unconscionably frequent, that October 1, 2017 massacre still ranks as the deadliest massacre in American history. And this was made possible because the perpetrator used a ‘bump stock’ to accelerate the rate of fire of his AR-15; the device effectively converted that legal semi-automatic weapon into the functional equivalent of an automatic weapon.
This rapid killing spree was so devastating and outrageous that political leaders across the ideological spectrum called for a ban on bump stocks. Polls in 2018 showed that a large majority of the public was in favor of such a measure. Even then president Donald Trump, a Republican committed to a maximalist view of gun rights, agreed. By the end of 2018, the Trump administration had done so issued a regulation reclassifying bump stocks as machine guns, which have been severely restricted since 1934.
Now it’s up to the Supreme Court undo that arrangement, in a 6-3 ruling. The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas and joined only by his fellow Republican justices, is a tour de force of legal hair-splitting, concluding that the bump stock does not, strictly speaking, allow multiple bullets to be fired from a single press the trigger. Therefore, Justice Thomas wrote, the device does not fall within the definition of a machine gun that Congress established when it imposed severe restrictions on civilian ownership of such weapons ninety years ago, and the executive branch lacks the power to regulate it to ban. All that remains of the former movement against bump stocks are statutes banning them in 15 states and DC
The Thomas opinion feels like the ultimate triumph of form over substance, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent co-signed by two fellow appointees of Democratic presidents. The court might as well have found that bump stocks meet the definition of a machine gun because it allows the shooter of a semiautomatic weapon to pull the trigger once and then, as she put it, “fire continuous shots.” to fire without any human input other than maintaining a weapon. forward pressure.” She added accurately: We fear, “Today’s decision to reject that common understanding will have deadly consequences.”
The only problem is that Judge Thomas was correct when he pointed out that the 2018 regulation issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not represent that agency’s consistent view. In effect, it represented a 180-degree reversal from ATF’s position on bump stocks before the Las Vegas massacre, which had been more or less the same as Judge Thomas expressed in his opinion. This history shows what can go wrong when such clearly legislative matters are left to the bureaucracy and the courts. It would be much better if Congress provided new guidance, instead of relying on regulators and judges to parse a 90-year-old text of law.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/15/supreme-court-bump-stock-ban-congress/
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June 16
The Wall Street Journal on putting pressure on contractor unions
The contractor that runs Medicare call centers as well as the federal ObamaCare marketplace is less than two years into a nine-year deal, so why is the Department of Health and Human Services accepting new proposals this week? The answer appears to be that the Biden administration wants to push more than 10,000 workers into a union.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said late last year that he planned to redo the contract, this time with a “labor harmony requirement.” Notices of intent to compete for the job are due June 21, and the department plans to announce the winner no later than January 16, 2025, four days before the next presidential inauguration. The current contractor, Maximus, receives good ratings, but Mr. Becerra mentioned the need to ensure “continuity of operations.” The insinuation is that a labor dispute could leave 1-800-MEDICARE with a busy signal.
This concern is unfounded, the company says. “Maximus has experienced only five short labor-related demonstrations since 2018, all of which were sparsely attended,” HHS said in a letter last month. “Barely 1 percent of Maximus employees participated in any given demonstration,” and “many of the participants were paid by the union.” Meanwhile, “our customer satisfaction score averaged 95.6 percent across these five demonstrations.”
Maximus won the current deal in September 2022, after nearly three years of HHS procurement work. The contract can be extended annually for nine years and is worth $6.6 billion. Last year, the company answered about 30 million Medicare and ObamaCare calls. The contract employees, up to 13,000, are located in right-to-work states: Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia.
The HHS request for proposal states that a “labor harmony agreement” would at least prohibit work stoppages. In return, however, unions could make concessions such as access to workers or the ability to join a union through “card check” rather than a secret ballot. Under HHS’s terms, negotiations would be necessary when a union “demonstrates an intent to represent service members performing work under this contract.” Then an executed labor harmony agreement must be submitted within 120 days.
Think of the leverage this provides to labor organizers. Any union that “demonstrates intent” to organize Medicare call centers, even if most employees disagree, can use the threat of breach of contract to demand negotiations. What if the union makes unreasonable demands?
Maximus has argued to HHS that this is a wrong turn. Adding unions could frustrate performance by making call centers less flexible and adaptive. The broad language in the HHS document leaves many questions unanswered, so it’s not clear how this should work in practice. Maximus’ letter from last month also states that the mandate for a labor harmony agreement is “contrary to the law.”
The point of contracting is to serve taxpayers, but HHS subordinates this purpose to a union agenda. “I’ve been in this industry for almost half a century now and I’ve never seen this kind of action with this kind of intent,” David Berteau, CEO of the trade group Professional Services Council, said recently. ‘It was done for no reason. There is no other reason for this than to incorporate a labor harmony agreement into the existing work.”
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June 13th
The Los Angeles Times on SCOTUS keeps medication abortion safe for now
The Supreme Court has done that right Thursday with unanimity pronunciation against a challenge to the safety of mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in medication abortions.
Of course, this was not the court that protected access to abortion, which it overturned by Roe vs. Wade two years ago and take away the constitutional right to abortion. It also made no statement on the safety of mifepristone, which has been available for more than two decades.
It was the court bringing a ridiculous case on the grounds that the plaintiffs, anti-abortion doctors, had no standing or personal interest in questioning the safety of the drug. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine et al. have sued the Food and Drug Administration, arguing that mifepristone should be revoked because it has not been adequately studied, even though it has been used safely for more than two decades.
Yet anyone who cares about the right to control their body and their destiny should feel relief and satisfaction. If the justices had ruled in favor of the anti-abortion groups, it would have limited access to the most common and very safe form of abortion across the country. Even residents of progressive states like California would have had less access to medication abortion. So this is a victory.
But any sense of relief should be tempered by this reality check: anti-abortion forces are relentlessly plotting to ban abortion altogether. Precisely because medication abortion is so commonly used, it has been and will continue to be a target for abortion opponents.
It’s infuriating that the case has gotten this far, working its way up the legal ladder, from the courtroom of Amarillo-based U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk to the 5th Circuit, which affirmed part of his decision, and ultimately to the 5th Circuit, which affirmed part of its decision. the Supreme Court. This case was so clearly flawed. It wrongly impugned the FDA, and prosecutors had no business bringing it.
In the opinionJudge Brett M. Kavanaugh shot down the group’s claim that it could sue the FDA because they could at some point suffer personal or economic harm from medication abortion. Kavanaugh wrote that the group had not identified any doctors who had been forced to perform an abortion against their conscience. They also have not proven that they would suffer economic harm because they might have to spend time with other patients to treat patients with complications from mifepristone.
All the plaintiffs have proven in this case is that they have moral and ideological objections to abortion. Kavanaugh made the following suggestion: “Citizens and physicians who object to what the law allows others to do can always bring their concerns to the executive and legislative branches.”
This note is a sober reminder that the fight for access to abortion is not over. There is no doubt that Thursday’s ruling was a victory for reproductive rights. But this is a long battle. Abortion drugs will end up in court again. Other plaintiffs will argue that they can join the fight to shorten abortion procedures.
The only way to stop this ongoing assault on our rights is through the ballot box. Every voter should remember that access to abortion must be protected in state constitutions and federal law so that the decision does not fall into the hands of nine judges who do not represent the government. 336 million Americans whose lives will be affected by their decisions. This November, and in every election afterward, voters must send a message to elected officials and political candidates that they must protect abortion rights if they want to win power.
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