WolfeNotes.com

[Update: 6/24/22 – Yes he is – read the opinion:

Today the majority refuses to face the facts. “The most striking feature of the [majority] is the absence of any serious discussion” of how its ruling will affect women. Ante, at 37. By characterizing Casey’s reliance arguments as “generalized assertions about the national psyche,” ante, at 64, it reveals how little it knows or cares about women’s lives or about the suffering its decision will cause. (dissent @p.50)

The majority’s refusal even to consider the life-altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment of its decision. (@p.55

[Updates below]

I thought I’d comment on one revealing passage from the draft US Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Alito that would strike down Roe and eliminate the Constitutional right to an abortion.

The summary by Politico of 10 key passages in the decision fails to mention it and I haven’t seen it discussed in other media coverage (NY Times does not mention it either), but it struck me as an important and revealing passage, if not technically of legal significance (but the core legal principle it applies, stare decisis, or respecting precedent, certainly is).

This comes at the very end of the opinion, in the section regarding the legal notion of “reliance”, or how women and society have evolved over the last 50 years and responded to the right to abortion, which Alito summarizes as:

the effect of the abortion right on society and in particular the lives of women

After some 60 pages of what amounts to a Medieval Christian male rant on abortion – and virtual silence on the rights and feelings of the pregnant woman – Alito describes his views on women, their role in society, and the implications of the right to abortion.

It is incredibly revealing and deeply troubling:

Get that?

An “empirical question”.

This Court has neither the authority or the expertise to adjudicate those disputes

Imagine that.

In the preface to that excerpt, Alito dismisses the prior Casey decision’s “reliance” analysis, a social and “intimate relations” concept of legal “reliance”, in favor of a far more narrow “property and contract rights” doctrine:

“Intimate relations” can’t be considered – they’re not matters of “property and contract rights”.

[Update 6/24/22 – read the dissent, which makes the same point:

No consideration given to all this “feminine” stuff, which is dismissed as merely “generalized assertions about the national psyche”.

How twisted is that?

Finally, again not quoted in the corporate media, Alito goes out of his way to give us all the middle finger:

“We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work.”

So, does Alito’s arrogance and ignorance remind one of – the stench – of the Court’s most historical outrage? How about this (from the infamous Dred Scott decision):

[African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.

Alito believes that Women have No reproductive rights the white man need respect!

End Note: With respect to loss of legitimacy and credibility, I gave up on the Court after Bush v. Gore (2000).

[Update 5/5/22 – Linda Greenhouse at the NY Times makes the same point I do, so I’ll take that as a vote of confidence, see: “Justice Alito’s Invisible Women”

Granted that the young Samuel Alito, as a recent Princeton graduate, joined an organization of conservatives who sought to limit the inclusion of women at his alma mater. Granted that he has made clear his desire to overturn Roe since even before his days on the court. It is still astonishing that in 2022 he would use his power to erase the right to abortion without in any way meaningfully acknowledging the impact both on women and on the constitutional understanding of sex equality as it has evolved in the past half-century.  ~~~ end update

[Update: 5/8/22 – here is a wonderful far more nuanced and historical analysis – examines the role of slavery and racism, but also echoes and expands my points about contract and property and the absence of women and society:

Men in the courts and Congress of the nineteenth century understood contracts. They understood a little bit about labor. Women they understood wholly by their sex and wombs, and those—at a time when all women were under a form of vassalage—they regarded as the property of husbands once owners exited the stage. […]

It is astounding, reading the Roe decision today, how absent the woman is. In the majority’s tortuous historical review, her lived experience emerges in faintest outline, and then only in others’ professed interests in her health and life. ~~~ end update]

No mention of air pollutants, Corporate polluters, or DEP unregulated chemicals

State Department Of Health And DEP Ignore CDC Cancer Cluster Guidelines

Murphy Administration Abdicates To Local Government

NJ Spotlight again reported today on the alleged cancer cluster among Colonia High School (Woodbridge NJ) attendees, see:

• Suspected Colonia ‘cancer cluster’ echoes Toms River in 1990s

And once again, despite the coverage correcting some of the previous flaws I’ve complained about, Spotlight whitewashes critical issues.

These are not random omissions in the coverage. They all go in the same direction.

There is a pattern and they all serve to downplay broader public health risks, to avoid holding DEP and corporate polluters accountable, and to obfuscate scientific and regulatory policy problems.

NJ Spotlight reporting also fails to include links to the critical scientific and regulatory documents so readers can understand the facts.

Here’s a short list I’ve flagged previously:

1. NJ Department of Health Maintains a Cancer Registry

Spotlight has failed to report that NJ Department of Health maintains a Cancer Registry. Many cancers are associated with environmental exposures to chemicals.

NJ people would be appalled at NJ’s high incidence of cancer.

2. The federal CDC Guidelines for responding to an alleged cancer cluster are not being followed by NJ State government agencies.

Specifically, CDC Guidelines stress open and early communications with the community and media; transparency; and scientific rigor.

CDC does NOT recommend that federal and State health and environmental agencies delegate these investigations to local governments, as the Murphy Administration has done. Local governments lack the expertise, authority, and resources to respond.

Yet, instead of holding the Murphy administration to these guidelines and reporting State failures as facts, Spotlight reports these failures as shortcomings alleged by local residents.

3. The Colonia High School is surrounded, 24/7, by ambient air pollution, including by known carcinogens that exceed DEP’s cancer risk benchmarks.

DEP has published maps of known exceedences of cancer risk benchmarks by regulated “hazardous air pollutants”.

People of NJ would be shocked and appalled at these known cancer risks.

The location of the Colonia High School also suggests risks from nearby air pollution sources.

NJ Spotlight fails to mention any of these relevant facts.

4. The Toms River cancer cluster was associated with an unregulated chemical.

Toms River is being held out as a learning experience. According to a NJ Department of Health Report, the childhood cancers there were associated with unregulated chemicals.

There are hundreds of unregulated chemicals that are allowed to be emitted by corporate polluters to our air, land and water (including to sewage treatment plants that lack technology to treat or remove them). Many of these sewage treatment plants discharge to rivers above drinking water intakes. Similarly, NJ drinking water plants lack treatment to remove these chemicals, despite the fact that treatment technology is available and cost effective. DEP refuses to regulate these chemicals or mandate treatment to remove them.

Again, the people of NJ would be appalled to learn these facts.

(Historical Note: In fact, ironically, DEP’s acknowledgment and research on health risks of unregulated chemicals was prompted by the Toms River episode (read the DEP white paper):

In the Toms River case, the DEP laboratory documented the unregulated chemical that was associated with the Toms River cancer cluster, known as a “trimer” – trichloroethylene, styrene-acrylonitrile (san).

Amazingly, Gov. Whitman was seeking to zero the budget, shut down this DEP laboratory and lay off the scientists when it was conducting this research. I worked with chemists in that lab to blow the whistle on this egregiously bad budget proposal. In response, 7 NJ Senate Republicans opposed the Gov. and the legislature restored $17 million of Whitman’s proposed DEP cuts. (see this post for the May 16, 1996 letter from Senate Republicans).

5 years later, during Whitman’s US Senate confirmation hearing for George Bush’s  EPA Administrator, in response to my testimony, Whitman cynically claimed she was merely “consolidating” the DEP lab with the DHSS lab. See Senate transcript).

Yet, 30 years later, hundreds of these chemicals with known or suspected adverse public health effects remain unregulated by DEP.

This is a major issue that is being obfuscated and whitewashed by the Spotlight coverage.

5. The Toms River cancer cluster was associated with air pollution from corporate polluter Ciba-Geigy.

The Spotlight coverage fails to even mention that surrounding corporate polluters – Big Pharma and the NJ petro-chemical industries – emit tons of chemicals, some of which are known carcinogens.

According to NJ Department of Health Study, the, Toms River cancer cluster was associated with:

“air pollutant emissions from the Ciba-Geigy chemical manufacturing plant”

Amazingly, Spotlight says nothing about air pollution or corporate polluters.

6. Toms River is not NJ’s only documented cancer cluster. NJ DHSS documented cancers from the Dupont Pompton Lakes toxic site.

NJ Dept. of Health & Senior Services found statistically significant elevated rates of bladder cancers in women and lymphoma in men (in Pompton Lakes Dupont site).

Here is DHSS study: (of course, the link is dead)

ANALYSIS OF CANCER INCIDENCE IN THE POMPTON LAKES NEIGHBORHOOD IMPACTED BY THE DUPONT GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION

http://state.nj.us/health/eoh/cehsweb/index.html…

I wrote about it all in this 12/16/09 post, w/great photos:

Dupont & DEP Hammered by Angry Residents for Failure to Cleanup Toxic Nightmare Linked to Cancer Cluster

http://wolfenotes.com/2009/12/dupont-dep-hammered-by-500-angry-residents-for-failure-to-cleanup-toxic-nightmare-linked-to-cancer-cluster/

Of course, Dupont was never held accountable by the regulatory agencies (EPA or NJ DEP) or the NJ Courts or the NJ media.

Of course, NJ DHSS has killed the link to their own report – Down Orwell’s Memory Hole (again).

Of course, NJ Spotlight never heard of any of that.

They’d rather imply that radioactive rocks are the source of the problem.

Like radon, Rocks don’t have corporate lawyers and lobbyists – or legislators or regulators and contributing funders and Foundations in their pocket.

War, Covid, And Collapse Of Biden Presidency Have Displaced Economic Justice

We repost last year’s May Day post – no pretty landscape pictures and we just don’t have anything to say today, but share a sad song: Sunday morning coming down (1970):

May Day – Time To Demand FDR’s Second Bill Of Rights

With all the legacy media chatter about Biden’s First 100 Days and the repeated invoking of the history of the New Deal – and we realize that Biden is no FDR and that FDR certainly was no Socialist, but instead saved capitalism from the revolutionary forces unleashed by the Great Depression – we thought we might rehash the elements of FDR’s “Second (Economic) Bill of Rights”.

The political economy  and program of FDR’s New Deal and FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights have been lost completely in the current discourse, even by so called progressives like AOC and the activist proponents of the Green New Deal, like the Sunrise Movement.

That quasi-radical political economy of FDR’s New Deal was reflected in Bernie Sanders’ version of the Green New Deal – but that program and strategy have been co-opted by corporate Democrats and the progressive left, who have basically sold out to Joe Biden’s mild corporatist reforms.

Sanders’ GND was grounded in the need to challenge corporate and billionaire class power via democratic movement politics:

We cannot accomplish any of these goals without taking on the fossil fuel billionaires whose greed lies at the very heart of the climate crisis. These executives have spent hundreds of millions of dollars protecting their profits at the expense of our future, and they will do whatever it takes to squeeze every last penny out of the Earth. Bernie promises to go further than any other presidential candidate in history to end the fossil fuel industry’s greed, including by making the industry pay for its pollution and prosecuting it for the damage it has caused.

And most importantly, we must build an unprecedented grassroots movement that is powerful enough to take them on, and win. Young people, advocates, tribes, cities and states all over this country have already begun this important work, and we will continue to follow their lead.

I haven’t heard any of that from the Biden administration or its sycophants among the beltway green groups and “progressive left” (that includes AOC, The Squad, and the Justice Democrats, who all have folded completely and are all in with “bi-partisan Joe”).

So, it would behoove the media and so called progressives to reflect on not only Bernie Sanders’ vision of the GND, but on FDR’s Second Bill Of Rights, set forth in his State of the Union address to Congress on January 11, 1944 (emphases mine):

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

• The right of every family to a decent home;

• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

• The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

Note that FDR recognized the relationship between economic insecurity and the rise of Fascism.

Note that FDR proposed universal rights – not identity politics based patronage.

Note that FDR recognized the relationship between economic security at home and “peace in the world” – and did so decades before Dr. King connected those dots in his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech in 1967. King said:

A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. …

We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. …

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. …

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. …

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Let us recall this rich legacy and reject the corporate Democrats and their minor reforms that are designed to co-opt real change.

We must move “beyond Biden” and identity politics – and look to FDR’s history in combining social and economic justice and activist government, in light of the climate emergency.

(photo above – Colorado River, Utah)