July 5, 6

 Good morning. Thankfully the actual 4th of July is over though I wonder how many people around here will continue their fireworks celebrations for another week.

I wondered when the (NOT)Supreme Court issued its decision on the affirmative action case and carved out certain exceptions which included "legacy" admissions how long it would be before those exceptions were challenged. I read that such a challenge has already been started and Joyce Vance has an interesting article on it here.

I was just thinking as I was reading a couple of stories about recent judicial rulings how "normal" and expected it is that the Judge is named along with the name of the President who nominated them to the bench. I can't remember that happening before The Former Guy railed against "Obama judges" when the decision was unfavorable to him. Now what ever the decision the judge and his/her ruling is applauded or castigated depending on who appointed them and our feelings about that President.

6************************************************************************

Following the ruling of that Louisiana judge that prohibits, very broadly, Federal communication, especially by the FBI and Health and Human Services, and the social media companies for the purposes of  

the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech"

I always thought the complaints on the right were self-serving crap--for the most part. I have read on a couple of the blog sites I follow about the social media companies shutting down advertising and/or access mostly on the accusation of "misinformation" over COVID. But, from the descriptions the Federal agencies were not the villain. Advertisers and other groups applied the pressure. Heather Cox Richardson has a post which covers a lot of the issues involved. Several aspects bother me. First, that a judge would accept an accusation without evidence reminds me too much of Supreme Court cases without a plaintiff with standing or a plaintiff who has suffered no harm but fears future harm. Note that the complaining parties aren't the media companies but Republican Attorneys General who went forum shopping. Second, the breadth of the order which seems to ignore the fact that there are some serious matters, often criminal matters, the agencies cited should discuss with thee companies. Third, when should misinformation, disinformation, or outright lies be targeted. I keep coming back to the fact that the Constitution promises a "free" press--not a fair press, not a truthful press, not an unbiased press. I find a lot of information on line. Some of it is obviously bogus. Some of it has a clear bias. Some of it is accurate. It is up to me to decide which bucket anything I find belongs in. Social media is like every other kind of media (newspapers, magazines, books, radio, movies, TV, and the internet) have been a mixed bag of false claims, propaganda, truth etc. Censorship is almost never a good thing.

I have written about the return of child labor before. Steve Fraser at Tomdispatch.com has covered the history pretty well. I had a couple of thoughts on the issue that he didn't include. The movement to eliminate or severely curtail child labor laws has risen as our society's faith in education has declined. Fraser mentioned the DeVos family spearheading the movement. If the name is ringing a faint bell in your mind, it should. During The Former Guy's administration Betsy DeVos was the Secretary of Education and pushed vigorously for charter schools (read "for profit") and for vouchers paying tax money directly to parents who wanted to send their kids to such schools but couldn't foot the bill. I vaguely remember a story about one she had a stake in which collapsed in a messy financial scandal. Fraser didn't mention that along with flat wages for working class and the lower levels of the middle class, unaffordable medical care, and falling life expectancy, the test scores for American children have fallen for several decades. The recent dismal test results have been blamed on the pandemic and school closures but that was merely the continuing of a long standing trend.