The 46 have urged Biden to order Colleen Shogan, the national archivist, whose remit includes publishing and certifying constitutional amendments, to declare the Equal Rights Amendment ratified. If the president issues such an order, she will disregard it. Otherwise, Shogan would violate her written assurances to the Senate that confirmed her appointment: She said only a court order would cause her to certify the ERA’s ratification.
The ERA issue merits a final revisit because progressives’ latest maneuver illustrates their merely intermittent and selective devotion to constitutional and democratic proprieties, and their belief in limitless presidential power.
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The ERA (“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged … on account of sex”) might have made sense when first proposed a century ago. Since then, however, statutes and constitutional case law have rendered it superfluous.
Today, its advocates’ aim is to get it into a sympathetic court that will construe its vague wording as a license to, among other things, reverse the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which reversed the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which overturned 50 states’ abortion laws. Today’s ERA resuscitation project aims to again nationalize abortion policy, which did so much to embitter national politics.
Last Tuesday, Archivist Shogan and Deputy Archivist William J. Bosanko said: “The ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable,” and the ERA “cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.” Case closed.
Three lessons from progressives’ ERA cynicism and sophistry: There are more forms of norm-shredding shabbiness than appear in Trump’s repertoire. Progressives’ reliance on presidential ukases to achieve their objectives indicates the collapse of their confidence in their persuasive powers. And cluttering the Constitution with the ERA would be as unseemly as the method of doing so.
Mark Perry, at his Facebook page, shares this note and graph:
Narrative Destabilizing Accounting Fact (see chart):
By definition, the BEA’s “Balance” of Payments for international trade and investment flows always BALANCES, so there really is never any “trade deficit” or “trade imbalance” when we account for all international cash inflows/outflows.
For example, the $736B YTD Current Account “Trade Deficit” is exactly offset (like in every period in the chart) by a $736B job-generating foreign investment surplus on the Capital Account.
The net inflow of $736B foreign capital inflow YTD has allowed our domestic investment to exceed national savings, fueling economic productivity/prosperity & job/economic growth.
Note also this important, but overlooked fact: Since 1983 the US has experienced (a) a net inflow of goods and services of almost $16T and (b) a net inflow of almost $16T in foreign investment (see chart).
Bottom Line: Why would we ever complain about a net inflow of $16T in goods/services and a net inflow of $16T in foreign investment? And yet we end up every year with a net inflow of goods/services AND foreign investment and COMPLAIN about getting ripped off by foreigners? Based on who gets the most “stuff” on net and who gets the most investment capital on net, the US is the clear winner when it comes to international trade.
The Teamsters on Thursday urged Amazon workers across the country to walk off the job to pressure the online retailer to recognize and collectively bargain with the union. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said customers frustrated by delivery delays should “blame Amazon’s insatiable greed” and that “this strike is on them.”
No, the Teamsters are striking on Amazon customers. While the Teamsters claim to represent nearly 10,000 of Amazon’s some 1.5 million workers, Amazon doesn’t recognize the union as their representative. Nor do many of the workers who haven’t voted for the union.
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The Teamsters’ Christmas “strike” comes after Donald Trump rewarded Mr. O’Brien for his presidential non-endorsement this year by nominating the pro-union Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his Labor Secretary. Don’t expect unions to reciprocate with labor peace. By empowering unions, the Biden Administration encouraged more strikes. Mr. Trump can expect the same.
There are only two ways to parcel out goods and services that have a higher demand than supply: pricing or rationing. Government healthcare monopolies are notorious for rationing care and for leaving customers with far fewer alternatives or avenues to challenge those decisions.
“There is, in the U.K., a government agency that decides which treatments are worth covering, and for whom. It is an agency that has even decided, from the government’s perspective, how much a life is worth in hard currency,” Jonah Goldberg explained. He asked if we’d hear the same type of reactions “(i)f some punk kid stalked and shot the director of the VA, Medicare and Medicaid, or the U.K.’s National Health System.” He doubts it, as do I.
Andrew Stuttaford applauds the results (so far) Javier Milei’s efforts in Argentina. A slice:
It is obviously far too soon to claim that Javier Milei’s reforms have definitively turned Argentina around. Decades of economic mismanagement are not undone that quickly. Nevertheless, the release of numbers showing quarter-on-quarter GDP growth of 3.9 percent (against forecasts of 3.4 percent) was very encouraging. Expectations seem to be that the economy will grow by 5 percent in 2025, after falling around 3 percent in 2024. Inflation continues to ease, with November’s monthly number falling to 2.4 percent, as against a monthly 25.5 percent in December 2023. That December number was increased by an (overdue) 50 percent devaluation of the peso within a couple of days of Milei taking office, but it was very clear that the previous government had left the country within a month or so of hyperinflation (normally defined as 50 percent a month). The peso printing presses were running at an incredible pace.
