REASONS FOR OPTIMISM IN THE UNITED STATES IN JUNE OF 2022.
I have been searching for optimistic news to write about. I found some. Let me say, first, that I did not find optimistic news in Washington, D.C. As you will see, the efforts in the U.S. Senate surrounding murders with guns are not the kind of efforts that make most people optimistic. I found optimism in some news from the States.
Uber and Lyft want their drivers to be classified as independent contractors without benefits rather than employees with benefits. Uber and Lyft in particular in the so-called “gig economy” have set out to persuade voters to vote for this classification through elections. Uber and Lyft have made a conscious choice to spend their money on elections. They have decided that it is cheaper to pay for elections than to pay their workers.
I do not mean to say that their position is a moral failing. It is, however, their clear economic calculation.
In Massachusetts Uber and Lyft pushed for a question on the ballot that the voters would decide that Uber and Lyft workers are independent contractors without benefits rather than employees with benefits. They tried to do too much.
In their ballot measure, Uber and Lyft snuck in a provision that would have given them immunity from all liability, not just immunity from liability as employers with an obligation to pay benefits. Uber and Lyft spent millions to get voters in Massachusetts to vote for their plan this year. In addition to hiding their intent by burying their proposals in a single plan, their plan ran afoul of the Massachusetts State Constitution in the eyes of the highest Court in Massachusetts. The Uber-Lyft proposition proposed two “substantively distinct policy decisions, one of which is buried in obscure language,” the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote in striking the Uber-Lyft proposition from the ballot in Massachusetts.
In California, Uber and Lyft previously pushed and after Uber and Lyft again spent millions on the campaign, voters passed an initiative that became law, that their workers should be classified as independent contractors without benefits rather than employees with benefits. Parenthetically, in California a voter initiative is a ballot measure that becomes law when it is passed by the voters just as if the Legislature itself had passed the law.
In their initiative, Uber and Lyft snuck in a provision to ban collective bargaining by their drivers. Like the Massachusetts State Constitution (and many State Constitutions), the California State Constitution requires that ballot measures have one subject. A California State Judge held that Uber’s and Lyft’s initiative was unconstitutional under the California Constitution’s requirement, saying that “a prohibition on legislation authorizing collective bargaining by app-based drivers” has nothing to do with classifying those workers as independent contractors without benefits rather than employees with benefits.
The Uber-Lyft initiative would also have stripped worker’s compensation protections from their workers. In the California State Judge’s eyes, that by itself made the initiative law unenforceable under California State law.
There is positive news, hopeful news coming from the States. At least from some States, like Massachusetts and California. And from the State Courts there specifically.
Washington, D.C. is a different story.
In the District, there is an idea that the most important thing, to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, is to “get something done.” That idea plus the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate gives power to a minority. Actually, the combination gives power to a minority of a minority. Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and their gang of Republican Senators are not only in the minority in the Senate, but as a group they are elected by a minority of Americans.
When Chris Murphy and other Senators wanted to pursue the possibility of legislation that might at least reduce the number of murders such as the Uvalde Elementary School Massacre, they worked in the direction of the few ideas that the McConnell Gang liked.
Practicing the art of the possible at all costs, means throwing any ideas overboard that the other person doesn’t like. Even if the entire country, or most of the country, likes those things. Even then those ideas must be thrown overboard; compromise is everything in these things. Just take a look at the evidence of even a few of the things they discussed, and discarded.
Ban assault weapons? Gone.
Make gun makers liable for their product defects? (Gun manufacturers are perhaps the only manufacturers in the United States who are not at risk of paying damages for misuse of their products.) Gone.
Limit or ban ammo clips with insane numbers of bullets? Gone.
All of these measures, and more, are supported by the American people. None were acceptable to the minority of the minority, the McConnell Gang.
Instead, the Senate’s proposed solutions – maybe (they haven’t been adopted yet, and they may never yet be voted on) – are things that are not necessarily designed to stop murders with guns. Their announced suggested proposals include more money for suicide prevention and mental health programs, and money for States that may choose to enact “red flag” potential murderers using guns, but not apparently actual red flag laws. Why? The gun lobby has lots of money and much of it goes to the McConnell Gang and their few friends.
I do not mean to say that their position is a moral failing. It is, however, their clear economic calculation.
So, there you have it. There are grounds for optimism in the States. Do not look to Washington, D.C. for inspiration or even for hope. We have a Senate that offers neither inspiration nor hope. The Senate will stay that way just as long as the McConnell Gang or any other minority of a minority is calling the shots, or more accurately perhaps, is allowed to call the shots by silly rules and deluded people.
Please read the disclaimer. ©2022 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.
