DL Open Thread: Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022

Good Enough For The Confederacy, Good Enough For Madison Cawthorn.  Several of North Carolina’s leading jurists are trying to remove Cawthorn from office because of his seditionist behavior. They just might have a case:

That is because North Carolina’s election statute offers challengers a remarkably low bar to question a candidate’s constitutional qualifications for office. Once someone establishes a “reasonable suspicion or belief” that a candidate is not qualified, the burden shifts to the officeseeker to prove otherwise.

If Mr. Cawthorn is labeled an “insurrectionist,” that could have broader ramifications. Other Republican House members, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, face similar accusations, but their state’s election laws present higher hurdles for challenges to their candidate qualifications. If one of their colleagues is disqualified for his role in encouraging the rioters, those hurdles might become easier to clear.

There is much that is known. Whether it makes Mr. Cawthorn an “insurrectionist” would have to be determined by North Carolina’s Board of Elections, or more likely, by the state’s courts, where the board might punt the matter.

His attorney, harkening back to the post-Civil War period, argues:

Mr. Bopp said all of that was beside the point. Section three of the 14th amendment concludes with a key phrase that refers to the insurrectionist disqualification, or disability: “Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.” Congress did just that, he said, with the Amnesty Act of 1872 that declared, that “all political disabilities imposed by the third section” of the 14th amendment were “hereby removed from all persons whomsoever.”

That was then. This is now:

Gerard N. Magliocca, an expert witness for the complainants and a law professor at Indiana University who has written on the constitutional section in question, said Mr. Bopp was wrong.

Congress did not discuss what would happen in the future when it debated granting amnesty to confederates in 1872, nor did it have the power to grant prospective pardons, he said. Mr. Berger, the sole office holder denied re-election after Reconstruction because of the amendment, tried to make the same argument, but Congress rejected it.

Besides, Mr. Magliocca said, the section at issue remains in the Constitution; Congress does not have the power to repeal it.

Weighty jurisprudence: A guaranteed conversation-starter.

Trump Proposes Pardons For Jan. 6 Insurrectionists.  Don’t think this is a political winner.  Hey, at least he proposed it at a massive Covid-spreading event.  Also proved he can still draw a crowd in Conroe, TX.

Robert Reich: ‘Share The Profits’.  Anybody remember profit-sharing?:

Profit-sharing was tried with great success in the early decades of the 20th century but is now all but forgotten. In 1916, Sears, Roebuck & Co, then one of America’s largest corporations with more than 30,000 employees, announced it would begin to share profits with its employees, giving workers shares of stock and thereby making them part-owners.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested profit-sharing as a means of reducing “frequent and often violent disputes” between employers and workers. Profit-sharing gave workers an incentive to be more productive, since the success of the company meant higher profits would be shared. It also reduced the need for layoffs during recessions because payroll costs dropped as profits did.

The downside was that when profits went down, workers’ paychecks would shrink. And if a company went bankrupt, workers would lose all their investments in it. The best profit-sharing plans took the form of cash bonuses that employees could invest however they wish, on top of predictable wages.

But profit-sharing with regular employees all but disappeared in large US corporations. Ever since the early 1980s when corporate “raiders” (now private-equity managers) began demanding high returns, corporations stopped granting employees shares of stock, presumably because they didn’t want to dilute share prices. Sears phased out its profit-sharing plan in the 1970s.

Yet, just as profit-sharing with regular employees disappeared, profit-sharing with top executives took off, as big Wall Street banks, hedge funds, private equity funds and high-tech companies began doling out huge wads of stock and stock options to their MVPs.

Profit-sharing is one answer. But how can it be encouraged? Reduce corporate taxes on companies that share profits with all their workers, and increase taxes on those that do not.

Sharing profits with all workers is a logical and necessary step to making the system work for the many, not the few.

Judge Rules Unvaxxed Can Pollute Jury Pool.  Gee, will he also rule that those who do not want to risk their health by consorting with these bozos can be dismissed from jury service for cause?

What do you want to talk about?