Department of Homeland Security v. New York: A Win for Commonsense

In what may come to be the most important decision out of Washington this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the DHS may enforce the ‘Public Charge’ rule to go into effect. That’s all well and good, but the important part is that Justice Gorsuch really blasted the practice of nationwide injunctions in his concurring opinion. Tyler O’Neil has more at PJ Media.

“Today the Court (rightly) grants a stay, allowing the government to pursue (for now) its policy everywhere save Illinois. But, in light of all that’s come before, it would be delusional to think that one stay today suffices to remedy the problem. The real problem here is the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of ‘nationwide,’ ‘universal,’ or ‘cosmic’ scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case,” Gorsuch wrote. […]

“Equitable remedies, like remedies in general, are meant to redress the injuries sustained by a particular plaintiff in a particular lawsuit. When a district court orders the government not to enforce a rule against the plaintiffs in the case before it, the court redresses the injury that gives rise to its jurisdiction in the first place. But when a court goes further than that, ordering the government to take (or not take) some action with respect to those who are strangers to the suit, it is hard to see how the court could still be acting in the judicial role of resolving cases and controversies. Injunctions like these thus raise serious questions about the scope of courts’ equitable powers under Article III,” he explained.

“It has become increasingly apparent that this Court must, at some point, confront these important objections to this increasingly widespread practice. As the brief and furious history of the regulation before us illustrates, the routine issuance of universal injunctions is patently unworkable, sowing chaos for litigants, the government, courts, and all those affected by these conflicting decisions,” he wrote.

These nationwide injunctions create confusion and “tend to force judges into making rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions.”

“The rise of nationwide injunctions may just be a sign of our impatient times. But good judicial decisions are usually tempered by older virtues,” the Supreme Court justice insisted.

“There are currently more than 1,000 active and senior district court judges, sitting across 94 judicial districts, and subject to review in 12 regional courts of appeal. Because plaintiffs generally are not bound by adverse decisions in cases to which they were not a party, there is a nearly boundless opportunity to shop for a friendly forum to secure a win nationwide,” Gorsuch explained.

Worse, it is possible that plaintiffs can win “conflicting nationwide injunctions.”

“If a single successful challenge is enough to stay the challenged rule across the country, the government’s hope of implementing any new policy could face the long odds of a straight sweep, parlaying a 94- to-0 win in the district courts into a 12-to-0 victory in the courts of appeal. A single loss and the policy goes on ice— possibly for good, or just as possibly for some indeterminate period of time until another court jumps in to grant a stay,” he noted. “And all that can repeat, ad infinitum, until either one side gives up or this Court grants certiorari.”

And that is the crux of the problem. The executive can not exercise its governance because some US district court judge in some sh*thole district who is beholden to the other party issues a stay to whatever policy it is (and this could easily go either way) and then enjoins it on the entire country.

It’s a method to destroy the rule of law and transfer sovereignty to unelected judges. It is, I think, not only a tyrannical practice but prima facie a case of the judicial wildly overstepping its bounds. One way or another, it must be curtailed, and soon.

Justice Gorsuch is proving to be a stalwart conservative/originalist member of the court, I think.

Brexit Week

So, what is the status of Brexit which will happen on 31 January? To be honest, I think it’s pretty foggy, but it is happening at last. It’s an interim arrangement, but Boris insists it will be finalized by the end of the year. Good, in my opinion, although it should have happened about 3 years ago. Best I’ve seen on it is from Alex Christoforou on The Duran, here’s some of it.

[…]The main significance is this: getting liberal/globalist elites to respect democratic outcomes even if they don’t like them. This is an important precedent.

That is indeed a critically important result.

Despite “Remoaner” hysteria, leaving the EU is not the end of the world either. I’m sure Britain will be able to get on fine outside the EU and indeed both the British and the Continentals have strong incentives to get along. Perhaps Britain will reinvent itself as a global tax haven. After all, Europe’s share of global GDP has been rapidly declining over the past decades.

In fact, it is pretty much the only market in the world that is.

Britain’s departure is a major economic blow to the EU. Brexit will leave a €7.5-billion hole in the EU budget, Britain being the biggest contributors besides the Germans. Britain was one of the EU’s few dynamic major economies (along with Germany and, to a more limited extent, France) and the only one with a semi-serious tech sector. The bloc will be reduced to 450 million inhabitants and will become a distant third in terms of GDP behind China and the United States of America.

Britain is the 5th largest economy in the world, the EU will notice its absence.

Brexit happening seems a good time to recall a farsighted Frenchman who predicted that none of this would work: Charles de Gaulle. President de Gaulle twice vetoed Britain’s candidacy to join the then-European Economic Community (EEC), causing an uproar in Atlanticist circles.

De Gaulle had long thought that the so-called “Europeanists” were not sincere and/or coherent in their claim to be building a strong and independent federal Europe. He said in a May 1962 press conference:

France’s proposals [on Europe] have raised two objections, which incidentally are perfectly contradictory even though they are presented by the same people. . . . These critics tell us: “You want to create a Europe of nations, while we want to create supranational Europe.” As if a simple phrase were sufficient to confound these powerfully established entities that are the nations and the States. And then, these same critics simultaneously tell us: “England has submitted its candidacy to join the [European] Common Market. So long as they are not in, we won’t be able to do anything political.”

And yet, everyone knows that England, as a great State and a nation true to itself, will never consent to being dissolved in some utopian construct.

Prescient words!

Indeed they are, and yes, England has been the driver of Brexit.

Of course, Yes, Minister covered this.

Anyway, Britain’s departure from the European Union opens the way for the Continentals to try, a bit more earnestly, to create a truly sovereign and independent “European Europe.” This is not an absurd ambition. London was in some ways Europe’s only top-tier “global city.” Paris, Berlin, and Brussels really are secondary nodes. There’s a charmingly provincial quality to European politics which must be preserved. While in the Anglosphere Jews and Asians have massively displaced White Gentiles among their cultural and economic elites, the same is not really true in Continental Europe, certainly outside of France. Time will tell.

I think he’s using the British usage of Asians here, from South Asia, not eastern Asia as we usually do in the US. But I think he has a point, and the video at the link makes it stronger.

President Trump Marches for Life

I wrote a fairly long article this morning for On the Pilgrim Road which will come up at 10 this morning central time, I hope you’ll pop over and read it.

I built it around the speech that President Trump gave at the March for Life last Friday, which moved me. I do want to share that speech here, as well.

It’s so nice to have a president who understands the value of every life, isn’t it?

Sunday Funnies, a Busy Week

A busy, and yet a pretty satisfying week.

And the high point of the week – The March for Life

Phrasing? One hopes so.

And of course… Audre will note that she is a brunette.

 

 

Welfare Dependant Big Business?

I’m perhaps a bit warped but I found this from Niel Munro at Breitbart actually funny.

The likely rejection of poor and unhealthy migrants required by the Public Charge rule will hurt business revenues, says the January 16 plea to federal judges by numerous companies, investor groups such as Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, and advocacy coalitions, such as the blue-chip Compete America coalition:

Because [green-card applicants] will receive fewer public benefits under the Rule, they will cut back their consumption of goods and services, depressing demand throughout the economy …

The New American Economy Research Fund calculates that, on top of the $48 billion in income that is earned by individuals who will be affected by the Rule—and that will likely be removed from the U.S. economy—the Rule will cause an indirect economic loss of more than $33.9 billion … Indeed, the Fiscal Policy Institute has estimated that the decrease in SNAP and Medicaid enrollment under the Rule could, by itself, lead to economic ripple effects of anywhere between $14.5 and $33.8 billion, with between approximately 100,000 and 230,000 jobs lost … Health centers alone would be forced to drop as many as 6,100 full-time medical staff.

[…] The regulation would also deny green cards to many unskilled migrants who would compete for the jobs sought by unskilled Americans, such as blue-collar employees who were not able to graduate from college.

See what I mean? What Trump is trying to do is to reduce our intake of people who are a drain on our society, not to mention our welfare system both federal and state. That’s a worthy goal. We spend far too much still (although it has improved in the last three years) on welfare, with people born here, sometimes there is little choice, but there is no reason at all why we should be importing more.

And here is the real kicker, not only are the gimmegrants collecting our welfare. Which is, of course, tax money paid by you and me, not them, but they are costing native born Americans jobs. Sure at the lower end of the spectrum, but there is a dignity in work that can never be replicated by welfare. Why do you think snap recipients all but hide their cards, and I think it is one of the reasons that it has changed from a paper program to a card in the first place. That’s good actually, there’s little point in publically shaming people.

But multi-generational welfare is still a very bad thing for the people of this country. When I’ve occasionally been unemployed, and even now when I’m retired, it makes me feel less useful, as if I’m not really part of the community. It’s not a pleasant feeling. I find it is a human reaction, not just an American one or a conservative one. In a very real sense, we are what we do. And f what we do is watch TV, we are a passive spectator of life itself. It’s not good for us.

So this plan of Trump’s is a very good idea, I think. More power to his elbow, as my English friends say.

A New Versailles

From Sgt Mom at Chicago Boyz.

My daughter actually suggested this line of thought; that the current ruling class (or those who think themselves to be so) in the United States are perilously akin to the French nobility – those who were termed the ancient regime, of pre-revolutionary France. The ruling class were gathered together deliberately at Versailles, where all was all as far as the nobles and ruling class were concerned for at least a hundred years.

There, amid the squalid splendors of Versailles, they were gathered together, under the eye of the King, to frivol their lives away, distracted by spectacles and the vicious grasp for and fall from power within a very small realm. Only instead of a vast palace, outbuildings, gardens and minor palaces, our ruling class disports in a slightly larger venue, that of Washington, DC and the surrounding suburbs.

But the airs and graces, the privilege and entitlements, the mind-set of a ruling and a ruled class is plain to see. There is ‘us, the noble and entitled to rule’ and ‘all those grubby, smelly, Walmart-shopping peasants’ out there, beyond the Beltway and the boardrooms, beneath the notice or consideration of the grandees … except when our presence is required, say when there is an election, a war, there are taxes to be paid, or whenever one of the highest ruling nobles need a suitable (and racially/sexually diverse) background crowd for a photo op.

Keep reading (and do not skip the comments, which are excellent).

This is pretty much what we see, isn’t it? As Tucker Carlson says A Ship of Fools, cavorting on deck while ignoring the approaching rocks on the lee shore. It’s the classic vision of an out of touch bubble. Is there a person west of the Hudson and east of Sacramento that really thinks it a good idea to impeach this president? I certainly doubt it, although there may be a few who think they will personally benefit. And you know, they might in the short term. But thy won’t when the whole thing blows up.

Which it will, as anyone who actually paid attention to the whirlwind that Governor Blackface unleashed in Richmond last week. Kipling come to life.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

When you get that sort of response from Americans, especially Americans with jobs and families, obviously enough to even scare the brownshirts of Antifa away, one would be wise to rethink one’s program. But the Dims charge on, full speed ahead. The rocks are there, and the shoal waters no longer completely cover them. There is a reckoning approaching, it is too soon whether it will be at the ballot box, and perhaps the courts, or whether it will be the fourth of the cousin’s wars. If it is, I think it may be the worst of all that bloody sequence.

Sgt Mom ends admirably…

And that was when things got … interesting. For a certain value of interesting.

 

It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.