I was just on CNN discussing the decision in Schuette v. BAMN, reversing the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and declaring that the citizens of Michigan have the constitutional authority to prohibit racial and other preferences in university admissions. We addressed this case this term in my Supreme Court class and the students voted not only in the same way as the majority today but predicted this result. What was surprising was the vote — 6-2. Only Justice Sotomayor and Ginsberg voted to upheld the Sixth Circuit.
This is clearly a breakthrough decision for those who have opposed racial and other preferences in admissions. In the past, these issues have inevitably ended up in the courts as the final arbiter of the constitutionality of affirmative action programs. Now, the Supreme Court is saying overwhelmingly that citizens can make these decisions for themselves. It creates a clear avenue by which affirmative action could be curtailed by direct action of the voters — bringing clarity that many have sought for decades of conflicted judicial rulings. Seven states have similar rules but this decision is likely to encourage others to follow suit.
Justice Kennedy wrote the main decision, which limited the political-process line of cases represented by Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. Kennedy stressed that “This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may resolve it.” In the view of the majority “[t]here is no authority in the Constitution of the United States or in this court’s precedents for the judiciary to set aside Michigan laws that commit this policy determination to the voters. . . Democracy does not presume that some subjects are either too divisive or too profound for public debate.”
Justice Scalia wanted to go even further and get rid of much of that jurisprudence. However, this decision is potentially sweeping enough for most of the justices. Chief Justice Roberts and Alito joined Kennedy though Roberts filed a concurring opinion. Thomas joined with Scalia in his concurrence in arguing to go all the way in gutting the political-process line of cases. Justice Breyer concurred in the judgment while Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissented. Justice Kagan probably would have joined in that dissent but recused herself. Even with Kagan however the vote would still have been lopsided at 6-3. Instead, it stands at 6-2. That is a sharp departure from the historically razor thin margins in cases like Grutter, Gratz, and others.
Sotomayor wrote a 58 page dissent (longer than all of the other opinions combined) and objected that the Court needed to limit voters because “without checks, democratically approved legislation can oppress minority groups.”
At 58 pages, Sotomayor’s dissent was longer than the combined length of the four opinions in support of the outcome.
In our vote, the Supreme Court seminar voted 11-4 in favor of reversing the Sixth Circuit and 11-4 in predicting that that “other Supreme Court” would also reverse. The United States Supreme Court (while producing multiple opinions) proved less ideologically divided in the outcome than the Sixth Circuit. On the lower court decision upholding the dismissal of the action, the eight judges in the majority were nominees by Democratic presidents while the seven judges in dissent were appointed by Republican presidents.
Here is the opinion.
No one owns land. You may have a better right to it than the next guy. Try not paying your taxes and see where that lands you.
Keebler – actually I own land. That is why the various government agencies keep trying to tax me for it.
Paul Schulte wrote:
ap – watched your video and the lady makes a claim but has neither proof nor evidence to back up her claim.
So Paul likes to say, whether it’s true or not.
ap – read the article, thanks. I spent my teaching life teaching the type of student that article is about. However, the problem is not about the racism but rather the quality of teachers the students are given in high school. If you read the article, the girl is getting a 16 on her ACT which measures everything she learned in high school. This is after she took a prep course. The school is not teaching what she needs or is not setting the bar high enough. If only two students passed the AP English exam the previous year, that is not near enough. At least half of them should have.
Either they are being failed in the elementary grades or in the high schools,but somewhere their basic education is lacking.
RTC
Karen: You’re absolutely correct that there are negative aspects to alternative energy production. The actually require fossil fuels to manufacture and ship with present technology in today’s economy, for instance.
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Absolutely wrong.
Don’t blame the victims (“you were dressed skimpy weren’t you?”).
If you think dirty oil or dirty coal is required to make clean oil, clean coal, or clean anything, you have come down with a doublespeak infection (“we have to destroy it in order to save it”).
Like those who make Twinkies, which has dirty in in from dirty oil fields in China because “I have to” (A Closer Look At MOMCOM’s DNA – 2).
Loose the indoctrination of a century (Viva Egypt – 2) started by the religious notion of Armageddon (“we have to prepare for Armageddon in order to stop it”).
Welfare Queens in Cowboy Hats
Apr 18, 2014
By James Greiff
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-18/welfare-queens-in-cowboy-hats
Excerpt:
The tale of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada cattle rancher, had all the elements of a certain type of political theater, making it inevitable that he would become a hero in the conservative blogosphere and a fixture on Fox News.
The story line, as told in those forums, went something like this: Heavy-handed federal bureaucrats, having seized Bundy’s cattle, were forced to back down after being confronted by cowboys on horseback toting nothing more than their side arms and an unshakable faith in the U.S. Constitution. (A little-told detail: A sniper or two were concurrently taking aim at the federal agents.)
Bundy was painted as a man being “squeezed” by the federal government, and deserving of our sympathy. Or, more profoundly, he was cast in the same mold as Mohandas Gandhi and George Washington, men who disobeyed unjust laws to bring about revolutionary change. The word “tyranny” was used so often it became background noise in the news coverage.
Let’s dispense with niceties: Bundy is a freeloading scofflaw, a welfare queen in a Stetson who claimed what wasn’t his. He took subsidies from U.S. taxpayers and refused to pay the $1.2 million he owed for using federal — make that our — land.
Bundy has neither history nor law on his side in his long-running dispute with the U.S. government. He asserts that his grazing rights were established in 1880 when his ancestors settled the land where his ranch sits. By some reasoning understood only by him and his range-war sympathizers, the federal government has no constitutional right to interfere with his grazing cattle.There is a gaping flaw with this argument. As several writers have noted, the Nevada constitution, adopted in 1864 as a condition of statehood, trumps Bundy’s right to graze on public land. It says:
“That the people inhabiting said territory do agree and declare, that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within said territory, and that the same shall be and remain at the sole and entire disposition of the United States.”
Bundy no doubt is pining for the days, which he never actually experienced, when cattlemen could let their herds roam at will on public lands. That changed in 1934 when federal control of grazing was formalized under a law designed to prevent overuse and degradation of the range. The legislation was backed by ranchers (it was drafted by a rancher turned congressman), in part because it made it that much harder for newcomers to get into the business.
The law, the Taylor Grazing Act, gave existing ranchers permits allowing them to run their herds on federal land. In turn, ranchers paid user fees, which were lower than what most private landowners would have charged. Because those fees capture only a bit of the costs of the grazing program, it amounts to a taxpayer subsidy to ranchers of as much as $1 billion a year. Subsequent court rulings clearly established that the law didn’t grant ownership rights to ranchers who used federal land.
Elaine – if you have been following along, Bundy and many of us in the West do not believe ‘you’ own ‘our’ land. That when the states became states all land reverted to the states. That is what the fight is about. Of course, the NYT likes the fact that over have the land in the Western states is owned by the feds, but none of the land in the Eastern states is. Odd that, isn’t it?
As you are probably aware, bad federal law is bad federal law.
Paul S
I’m done with you. You are neither serious or educable.
Let us know when the states win their suits.
I am as serious as a heart attack. However, no one is forcing you to play in the sandbox.
Latest remarks from Cliven Bundy – leading advocate of the Theory It’s His Land:
“Bundy made some racially charged comments about government assistance in his daily news conference Saturday, according to a New York Times story published Wednesday.
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” the rancher began as he described a “government house” in Las Vegas where he recalled that all the people who sat outside seemed to “have nothing to do.”
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he said, as quoted by the Times. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
That has nothing to do with his legal issue, but nice try. Focus.
Culture captivated by culture:
Awww, c’mon, mannnn. Not again! Karen: What can I say? I’ll try again tonight. Meantime, all the best.
Would you like to cite the law the US is working under?
“As the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a ban on affirmative action in Michigan and the country marks 60 years since the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education, we look at how segregation is still pervasive in U.S. public schools. An explosive new report in ProPublica finds school integration never fully occurred, and in recent decades may have even been reversed. Focusing on three generations of the same family in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the story concludes: “While segregation as it is practiced today may be different than it was 60 years ago, it is no less pernicious: in Tuscaloosa and elsewhere, it involves the removal and isolation of poor black and Latino students, in particular, from everyone else. In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.” We are joined by Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose article, “The Resegregation of America’s Schools,” is the latest in the ProPublica series “Segregation Now: Investigating America’s Racial Divide.””
http://youtu.be/6Xn-604iDIA
ap – watched your video and the lady makes a claim but has neither proof nor evidence to back up her claim.
Does your “theory” overrule the law?
Fight it in the courts. Bundy did twice. And lost twice. Your Sagebrush Rebellion would be sedition. Should any yahoos decide to take arms against the government, I hope they spend a long, long time in jail. And you would be stealing MY land, my kids land, and my grandchildrens land.
What kind of lazy welfare moochers are you?
You are clearly unaware that the Sagebrush Rebellion involves the affected states suing the federal government to get their land back.
Chuck,
I hope you are right about the rejection!
PS,
I looked through the spam filter and did not see your post in the first 15 pages. It looks like WordPress is hungry tonight.
rafflaw – thanks for looking.
RTC – I have given up trying to get stuff rescued today and just rewritten it. Just well-consider it in a slightly different way so it get past the spam filter.
Chuck: If it turns out to be true that Obama rejects the XL pipeline, I’ll always remember that I heard it from you first.
I feel ungrateful for asking if you or anybody could rescue a long and well-considered post to Karen from the filter.
This Word Press is doing me head in.
Karen: You’re absolutely correct that there are negative aspects to alternative energy production. The actually require fossil fuels to manufacture and ship with present technology in today’s economy, for instance.
And yes, they are responsible for many bird deaths, that’s true. But they are working on solutions to that problem, and they’ll come up with something the same way they came up with turtle exclusion devices (TEDS) to keep sea turtles out of fishing nets. Prohibiting wind turbines from known flyways would reduce bird kills significantly.
Our choices involve certain tradeoffs. Continued reliance on fossil fuels to power the majority of society and its economy is the most destructive choice, because it’s affecting our atmosphere. We screw that up and every organism pays the price.
I point to Germany, which has found a way to subsidize the installation of solar panels on 80-90% of its residential homes. Germany is a social democracy, yet has the strongest economy in the world.
BTW: if you’re looking for solar panels for your home, their is a program run by utilities that installs solar panels on your home at very low cost. They’re essentially leasing your roof from you. You receive sharply discounted power and any surplus goes back into the grid.
I don’t have the name of the company right now. My wife gave it to me a while ago and I was supposed to look into it, but I uhh…I umm. (Shuffles feet. Shifts eyes to the left, up to the ceiling, then back down to the floor. RTC’s wife is glaring at him from across the room. She can sense that he’s about to make a lame excuse for something.)
I’ll see if I can locate that information for you.
Let me address acouple of points you made above:
Cost: They’ve been trying to find a technologically feasible way to get the tar sands to market since the forties, at least. The normal economic equation of price and production equaling demand don’t exist in the petroleum market; it’s controlled by a cartel of oil producing nations and speculators. It doesn’t matter how much tar sands oil costs, the producers will simply demand to be compensated. I firmly believe that once it reaches the market, the cost of oil will increase.
The route: The Canadian companies will wait as long as it takes to get this pipeline, even if it means waiting for another election and spending a bargeful of money to influence it.
The editor of Nature magazine make the same argument that you do; the tar sands will be mined and refined, we might as well share in the benefits. But the risks far outweigh the rewards with this pipeline. Let Transcanada run it to the Pacific. Why should we turn our wild spaces into an industrial zone?
Property Rights: Turley posted a story about an elderly woman in Texas who was arrested for trying to prevent pipeline contractors from cutting down a stand of pine trees on her property. Sheriffs came and cuffed her in her own yard, not far from the trees. When she released, she came home to find the trees gone. There are many other similar occurrences.
RTC – Germany seems to be getting out of the PV business. The numbers you cite are for 2050, not tpday and today the manufacturers are leaving the field. On renting the solar panels, you rent them for 30 years, which means if you sell the house, you sell the house with them on it. The excess power may be bought, but that is up to the utility company. Some are now charging extra for people who have solar panels, still cheaper than what you would pay for their service.
Paul wrote
It is different because the feds have seized state lands which are being managed by the BLM
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The feds haven’t SEIZED anything. They own the land and have for a long, long long time. It’s the STATES that want to do the seizing.
Those lands, BTW, are OWNED by all of us. That includes ME and I don’t live anywhere near TX, AZ, or NV.
Now the Sagebrush Rebellion was 1960 or thereabouts. (Please don’t do the “nearly” crap again)
And the UV/Reno paper says that the states don’t like the feds owning that land, their feelings are hurt, and the feds don’t know how to run it anyway.
And just so we don’t have to wade through some nonsense about “being managed by the BLM” , yes, the federal lands are being managed by the BLM.
The theory is that once the states became states all lands inside their borders that were not military forts reverted to the states. This did not happen in the West, the majority of the land in every state in the West is owned by the federal government.
The idea of the Sagebrush Rebellion is that the states would get that land back, the downside is that some of the states have not been good stewards of the lands they supervise, so that was a problem holding some states from joining the rebellion. The states have been better stewards since the first attempted Rebellion, so this one might get more support.
Nite john boy, going to get shut eye. Got chores to git done afore sunrise.
BTW, do not understand ‘BB’ please explain.