It's Called a Shot Across the Bow

Joe Biden is preparing to propose major changes to how the Supreme Court operates.

Among other things, he will be proposing a legally binding ethics code and term limits as well as possibly proposing a constitutional amendment to overturn the Trump immunity decision.

Your mouth to God's ear:

President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.

He is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The announcement would mark a major shift for Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has long resisted calls to make substantive changes to the high court. The potential changes come in response to growing outrage among his supporters about recent ethics scandals surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas and decisions by the new court majority that have changed legal precedent on issues including abortion and federal regulatory powers.

Biden previewed the shift in a Zoom call Saturday with the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The start of such an effort needs to begin with a statement that the current justices are partisan and corrupt.

The current court deserves no deference, nor any respect.

Mikhail Gorbachev Dead at 91

He was arguably the most significant figure of the last quarter of the 20th century.

He was also naive in his dealing with the United States, where he assumed that engaging with the west would result a new cooperative world order.

What he got was NATO expansion, looting that put the elderly on the street, and forced the young to walk the street, and created the oligarchs.

On the plus side, he tried, and maybe someone will eventually succeed:

Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, was the most important world figure of the last quarter of the 20th century. Almost singlehandedly he brought an end to 40 years of east-west confrontation in Europe and liberated the world from the danger of nuclear conflagration. It was not the objective he set himself when he was elected general secretary of the Soviet Communist party in March 1985, nor did he predict or plan the way the cold war would end, the haemorrhaging of the Communist party, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany or the break-up of the Soviet Union itself.

What distinguished Gorbachev from previous Soviet leaders was that he started a process of reform and did not try to reverse it once it threatened to spin out of control. The great facilitator, he carried on, even to the point of resigning with dignity as his power faded away.

In the aftermath of his downfall, as his successor Boris Yeltsin stumbled into market economics, it became fashionable in the west to sneer at Gorbachev as “just another communist at heart”. He was called a failure because he had not been willing to liberalise state-controlled prices, privatise industry and open the Soviet economy to outside forces as fast as the emerging Russian elite or Yeltsin’s rightwing western advisers wanted. He was ridiculed for trying to “reform” communism when he should have recognised that it was dead.

The charges were unfair – as well as inaccurate – since they characterised Gorbachev as an ideologue when he was, in fact, one of the great pragmatists of modern Russian history. The only part that was true was that he tried to “reform” life for Russians. He sought to maintain some form of democratic socialism, with a continuing role for government intervention and a foundation of social justice. Compared with the crony capitalism and chaotic collapse of public services that marked the first years of post-communism in Russia, his goals seem admirable. There were a variety of avenues for developing democracy and introducing a market economy, and his view that the process should be done gradually was legitimate and honourable.

The world order following the dissolution of the USSR has not been a significant improvement.

The New York Times OP/ED Gets One Right

They issued an editorial lambasting the prevalence of junk patents in the United States.

This is not a particularly unusual opinion, but it is a surprise coming from that bastion of the establishment that is the New York Times editorial board:

The injector pen is not, by any stretch, a new invention. Drugmakers of every ilk have been using it for decades to deliver all sorts of crucial medications into the bloodstream. By adding this old technology to its insulin drug, Glargine, however, the pharmaceutical giant Sanofi was nonetheless able to secure additional patents for a lucrative product. The drug’s existing patents were expiring, and new ones enabled the company to maintain its monopoly — and the bounty that goes with it — much longer. But for the patients who depend on this life-sustaining drug? Too many are still struggling to afford it.

Sanofi is not alone, of course. Other drugmakers have patented scores of uninspiring tweaks to their existing products: making a tablet instead of a pill, changing the dose, adding a flavor. When it comes to protecting a drug monopoly, it seems no modification is too small.

………

And for all the hand-wringing over how to lower prescription drug costs in recent years, little has been said about the patent system or its many failings. Put simply: The United States Patent and Trademark Office is in dire need of reform.

The agency was created more than two centuries ago for the express purpose of protecting and promoting innovation. For most of the ensuing decades, it has stood as a beacon of American ingenuity. But critics say that by the time the office issued its 11 millionth patent last year, it had long since devolved into a backwater office that large corporations game, politicians ignore and average citizens are wholly excluded from. As a result, not only is legal trickery rewarded and the public’s interest overlooked, but also innovation — the very thing that patents were meant to foster — is undermined.

………

Given that import, it’s concerning that the agency spent the past year without a permanent director. With that post now filled — the Senate confirmed Kathi Vidal, a Silicon Valley patent attorney, this month — there’s a fresh opportunity to modernize and fortify the patent system. Ms. Vidal and Congress should seize that opportunity quickly. Here’s how they can start.

Enforce existing standards. The best way to ensure that patents spur innovation instead of thwarting it is to set a high standard for what deserves patent protection in the first place and then to honor it.

In the United States, that standard already exists: To secure a patent, an invention must be truly novel and nonobvious, it must be described in enough detail for a reasonably qualified person to build and use it, and it must actually work. The problem is these rules are poorly enforced.

The pharmaceutical industry is a good example. Nearly 80 percent of the drugs associated with new patents between 2005 and 2015 were not new. But the issue is not confined to drugmakers. The Theranos debacle, to take just one other example, was touched off by officials who granted scores of patents for a device that had never been built and that turned out not to work. The company was able to secure those patents without disclosing almost any technical information about its product.

I want to note something here:  Patents and trade secrets are mutually exclusive.  Patent law requires the public disclosure of the information necessary to duplicate an invention in order to secure an exclusive license for a limited amount of time.

IP law, is public interest law, as is explicitly stated in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, it exists, "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

It's time for patents to be limited to actual inventions, and not trivial changes that are neither novel nor significant.

Seems Awfully Familiar

It appears that some members of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are pushing for pushing to move money and authority from the Democratic Party to the state parties, on the theory that the consultant dominated national party cannot get ot of its own way.

If this sounds familiar, this is probably because it's very close to Howard Dean's tenure as head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) when he instituted the, "50 State Strategy."

The official justification used by Howard Dean was that the party should contest every election, as opposed to writing off whole districts or states, a subtext was that by taking resources from an incompetent and corrupt national office, and giving it to people who actually live where the elections are happening, and who aren't dependent on wasteful spending to fund their kids private school tuition, you get better results. (Of course, Obama's and his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dismantled this post haste following the 2008 elections)

When one considers the mendacity and incompetence of the Democratic Party inside the DC beltway, this looks to be an attractive option:

Dozens of voting members of the Democratic National Committee met Friday to organize a new voting bloc to push for changes to the internal governance of the national party and send more money to state party groups, according to multiple attendees.

The gathering at the Churchill Hotel in D.C., across the street from the party’s winter meeting, came after months of growing complaints among some rank-and-file voting members. They argue that the top-down structure of the DNC, which is directed by advisers to President Biden, risks undermining changes aimed at empowering the grass roots that went into effect after the 2016 presidential election.

Calling itself “DNC Members for Party Modernization,” the group is pushing for a greater share of the national party budget to be channeled directly to the states, more distributed regional representation in the party leadership teams, greater internal oversight of the party budget and other changes to the party’s governing rules, such as new restrictions on proxy voting.

“This is us saying, ‘We are the DNC and we want the DNC to be more responsive to the states,’” said Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb, one of the organizers. “We have now been through several cycles kicking ourselves and saying we should have organized. So we are organizing ourselves.”

The effort tracks fissures among Democrats that have been endemic for decades, dating most notably to former Vermont governor Howard Dean’s leadership of the party, when he focused after the 2004 election on investing in all state parties. The current DNC leadership has aimed much of its funding at a select number of swing states that are likely to decide Senate control in 2022 and the presidential election in 2024. Several state parties in other parts of the country believe more-local efforts have been left behind.

As I have noted before, (see here, here, here, here, and here) the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has a problem with corruption. 

I do not think that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) can be mended in the near term, so defunding it is the best course of action.

I would also note that the problems within the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are a manifest example of the Iron Law of Institutions, that, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution," though one could quote Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles as well, "We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen!"

Reformers Win Teamsters Elections

With James Hoffa retiring, there was a contested election for the first time in years, and the reform slate won.

One hopes this presages union that better serves its members, but as Nietzsche said, "If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you," so we will see if this results in a more responsive and more activist union:

A new administration will soon take the helm of the 1.3 million-member Teamsters union. The Teamsters United slate swept to victory in this week's vote count, beating out their rivals 2 to 1.

It’s the first time in almost a quarter-century that a coalition backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union has taken the driver’s seat in the international union.

The incoming president is Sean O’Brien, leader of New England Joint Council 10. He says his top priorities are to unite the rank and file to take on employers, organize Amazon and other competitors in the union’s core industries, and withdraw support from politicians who don’t deliver on union demands.

………

The challengers rode a wave of fury over concessions and weak contracts, especially at UPS, the union’s biggest bargaining unit, where TDU and other Teamsters United supporters had campaigned for a no vote on a contract that would create a lower-paid second tier of drivers. After a majority voted no, Hoffa forced the deal through anyway. TDU’s demand to repeal the “two-thirds rule” that let him do it became a campaign issue; reformers got it done at this year’s convention.

Meanwhile UPSers have lived out the consequences of the bad deal: two-tier wages and another five years of rampant forced overtime and harassment from supervisors. “It doesn’t matter where we went when we were campaigning—that’s what everybody was furious about,” said Eugene Braswell, a New York City Local 804 UPS driver and TDU steering committee member who has been to Baltimore, New Jersey, and Philadelphia campaigning for Teamsters United.

Here's hoping that the new leadership doesn't, "Go native."  If they do, this will be squandering a once in a generation opportunity.

More Often Than Not, Cops Lie

Thread. Speaking to reporters past few days. Baffled how head of NYPD could so brazenly lie. In this case about tie btwn "reform" & "crime" w/o data. Answer: bc he can & media still buys it. Even now, reporters asking *me* for data to disprove *him.* Fine:https://t.co/9xe9CUoS0Y

— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) October 19, 2021

A cop lying? Hoocoodanode?

The New York City Police Department has been railing against bail reform ever since it was proposed, and from top to bottom, they have been lying about the effects on crime.  (Spoiler: there has been no measurable effect)

It appears that when confronted by New York State Representatives who had done the homework, as opposed to credulous reporters interested in, "Beat Sweetening," NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea was forced to admit that his previous statements were a complete humbug:

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea did an about face Thursday on the causes of the city’s seemingly uncontrollable gun violence.

While being grilled by lawmakers in Albany, Shea also had a tough time answering pointed questions from Assembly members representing the five boroughs, CBS2’s Marcia Kramer reported.

It was probably a day Shea wished he’d stayed in bed, or at least not made the long trek to the state capital. Because in addition to switching his story on the cause of gun violence, he had a bout of, shall we say, selective amnesia about an embarrassing case where the NYPD pinned a crime on the wrong guy.

………

It started out OK, but tongues started wagging after Shea seemed to backtrack on his repeated insistence that state bail reform laws are a major reason why cops can’t stop gun violence.

………

Meanwhile, CBS2 obtained a report from the city’s Office of Criminal Justice that throws cold water on Shea’s bail reform argument. It shows that 9.7% of defendants were released without bail for gun crimes, before bail reform was passed. It fell to 3.5% after bail reform was enacted.

………

The Assemblywoman also grilled Shea about an incident two days ago where the commissioner blamed bail reform as the reason a man police said was responsible for a Brooklyn purse snatching attack on a 65-year-old was still on the street.

………

It was a “oops” moment. After Shea talked about it on the radio, red-faced cops had to retract the story because the man they identified as the culprit was actually behind bars when the attack occurred. Asked about it at the hearing, Shea all but took the Fifth.

………

Meanwhile, the Legal Aid Society called on lawmakers to ignore Shea’s calls for changes to the bail laws. It charged that Shea has relied on “falsehoods, fearmongering, dog whistling and other unscrupulous tactics” to undermine the reforms.

Asking police about criminal justice reform is like asking Jack Daniels about temperance.

Relying on police statements to inform your decision is, to quote Nietzsche, "Like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity." (He was not writing about talking with cops)

Pennsylvania Elections Today (Larry Krasner:1 — Philly PBA:0)

Reformer Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, just destroyed his Police Union supported opponent by an almost 2:1 margin in today's primary. 

This makes him almost certain to win the general election, as Republicans are severly out-numbered in Philadelphia, and their nominee is best known for having an ex-girl friend found dead in his bathtub: (Not kidding here)

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner easily defeated Democratic primary challenger Carlos Vega on Tuesday, taking a giant step toward winning a second term after campaigning on his record of criminal justice reform.

The Associated Press projected Krasner as the winner over Vega late Tuesday night. With 22% of the projected votes counted, Krasner held a wide advantage, 65% to 35%. In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, Krasner is now very likely to win November’s general election. He won the 2017 general election with 75% of the vote.

“Four years ago we promised reform and a focus on serious crime,” Krasner told supporters at a Center City hotel Tuesday night. “We kept those promises. And this time they put us back in office for what we have done. Not ideas, not promises, but realities.”

Krasner, 60, was a defense and civl rights lawyer for three decades, with a long record of suing the Philadelphia police before he was elected as a reformer in 2017. That victory helped propel him to the forefront of a new crop of progressive prosecutors across the country, a reform movement that was tested this election in Philadelphia by rising violent crime.

In his victory speech, Krasner said he had a mandate “from the people most affected by serious crime,” voters he suggested had rejected critics who blame the DA for shootings plaguing the city.“That mandate has rejected, definitively, a politics of fear that is built on falsehoods,” he said, calling for more funding for crime prevention. “We have to invest in all those things because we were robbed of them a long time ago. And what we are facing now is the consequences.

You have a mandate to push even harder, particularly against the Philadelphia police who still have a lot of Frank Rizzo in them.

Also, on the other side of the state, a DSA supported candidate scored an upset victory over the incumbent mayor.

Beating a two-term incumbent in a race centered on equity, state Rep. Ed Gainey won the Democratic primary on Tuesday, which should pave the way to becoming Pittsburgh's first ever Black mayor.

Mr. Gainey was beating incumbent Mayor Bill Peduto 45 to 41 percent as of 11:11 p.m., with retired police officer Tony Moreno garnering 13 percent of the vote and local ride-share driver Michael Thompson registering 1 percent.

“I just called [Ed Gainey] and congratulated him on earning the Democratic endorsement for Mayor of the city of Pittsburgh. Wishing him well. Thank you Pittsburgh for the honor of being your Mayor these past 8 years. I will remain forever grateful,” Mr. Peduto tweeted shortly before 10:30 p.m.

Mr. Gainey, a 51-year-old state lawmaker representing a district stretching from Highland Park to Wilkinsburg, frequently asked, "For whom is Pittsburgh most livable?" — a question that he backed with facts from the many task forces and reports Mr. Peduto commissioned to identify problems. His message seemed to match the moment, and he thanked God, his wife, his children, his mother, his step-father and all of his campaign staff after Mr. Peduto conceded on Tuesday.

………

Mr. Gainey is almost certain to win in November, with no Republican filed to run in the primary and the city’s dark blue demographics making it unlikely a challenger could oust him — though it’s possible a Republican will have emerged from the write-ins.

Not a bad result, particularly given that Peduto tried to accuse Gainey of "Socialism"  toward the end of the campaign.

Nice to see the term shifting from a detriment to something positive.

About F%$#ing Time

Chile has finally a ditched the neoliberal Milton Friedman abomination of a constitution that the murderous Agusto Pinochet foisted on them almost 40 years ago.

Over 70% of voters have approved a plebiscite to replace that constitution.

Milton Friedman, and his "Chicago Boys" made Chile, and the rest of the world a much worse place.

At some point, we should total up the deaths from their machinations.

I don't think that they would beat out Josef Stalin, but I'm pretty sure that they make Pol Pot look a piker.

A Medical Myth Busted

A study in the BMJ shows that capping interns hours at 80 per week does not adversely effect quality of care later in their careers.

Seeing as how working interns 100+ hours a week is killing patients today, and does not produce better outcomes tomorrow, it's a good thing that accreditation authority has banned this:

When new rules by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education capped medical residents’ training hours at 80 hours per week in 2003, critics worried that the change would leave physicians-in-training unprepared for the challenges of independent practice.

Now, new research published July 11 in the journal BMJ and led by scientists in the Department of Health Care Policy in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School (HMS) says that their warnings appear largely unjustified. The team’s analysis found no evidence that reduced training hours had any impact on the quality of care delivered by new physicians.

The push to scale back residents’ hours and change other aspects of training was sparked by a series of high-profile patient injuries and deaths believed to stem from clinical errors caused by fatigue.
………

The researchers found no significant differences in 30-day mortality, 30-day readmissions, or inpatient spending between physicians who completed their residencies before and after the hour reforms.

………

The study analyzed 485,685 hospitalizations of Medicare patients before and after the reform.

The training-hour reforms were not associated with statistically significant differences in patient outcomes after the physicians left training.

I always figured that the brutal hours of medical residency were primarily about ritual scarring as a coming of age ritual, and it appears that I was right.

F%$# Me. I Agree with Mitch McConnell

He is looking at further restricting the filibuster.

Notwithstanding the assertions by Senators that the US Senate is "The Word's Greatest Deliberative Body," the filibuster, and its routine use has made it nothing more than a petri dish for psychopaths:^*

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is opening the door to changing the filibuster in response to growing pressure from Republicans angered that Democrats have blocked legislation from reaching the White House.

McConnell has appointed a special task force to explore changes to the filibuster rule and other procedural hurdles — including whether to eliminate filibusters on motions to proceed to legislation. That’s a tactic the minority often uses to shut down a bill before amendments can be considered.

McConnell has tapped his close ally, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and Senate Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to form a task force with Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and two other freshmen to weigh various reforms. They hope to implement the changes at the start of next year.

“We’re going to take a serious look at whether Senate rules ought to be changed in order to make the Senate work more effectively,” Alexander said.

The filibuster is an accident of history, and it has done far more harm than good.

To the degree that the filibuster returns to the fetid swamps of history, it is a good thing, regardless of party.

^*Understand that this is not a formal diagnosis. I am an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!^†
†I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

Books to Read: Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force

I've got to read this book. Professor Robert Farley, an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky has written a book calling for the abolition of the US Air Force as an independent branch of the service:

The United States needs airpower, but does it need an air force? In Grounded, Robert M. Farley persuasively argues that America should end the independence of the United States Air Force (USAF) and divide its assets and missions between the United States Army and the United States Navy.

In the wake of World War I, advocates of the Air Force argued that an organizationally independent air force would render other military branches obsolete. These boosters promised clean, easy wars: airpower would destroy cities beyond the reach of the armies and would sink navies before they could reach the coast. However, as Farley demonstrates, independent air forces failed to deliver on these promises in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, and the War on Terror. They have also had perverse effects on foreign and security policy, as politicians have been tempted by the vision of devastating airpower to initiate otherwise ill-considered conflicts. The existence of the USAF also produces turf wars with the Navy and the Army, leading to redundant expenditures, nonsensical restrictions on equipment use, and bad tactical decisions.

I certainly agree with this idea.  The raison d'être for an independent air force is Douhet's theory about how strategic bombing could win wars.

History has shown this to be completely false.  Strategic bombing with the possible exception of the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, have never won wars, nor do they appear to have shortened wars.

H/t War is Boring.