In a July 29 Washington Post op-ed,  president Joe Biden lays out a three-part proposal for reforming the Supreme Court.  With Biden in full-blown “lame duck” status  (he’s no longer seeking re-election), it’s better read as a “think piece” than as a real policy proposal with any chance of adoption. But it’s still food for thought, so let’s think.

Biden’s proposal comes in three parts:

First, a constitutional amendment to “make it clear” (as if it wasn’t already) that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.

No such amendment should be necessary, nor is any amendment likely to garner 2/3 support in both houses of Congress and ratification by 3/4 of state legislatures at this time, nor would it likely matter anyway even if ratified. After all, the Supreme Court’s majority simply ignored the text, meaning, and history of the US Constitution to get the magical immunity outcome it wanted for former president Donald Trump. Why would we expect the court to respect a new amendment when it won’t respect the existing law?

Second, term limits of 18 years for Supreme Court justices. Biden doesn’t mention that those term limits would likewise require a constitutional amendment, or that they wouldn’t solve the court’s “politicization” problem (his proposal would still retain presidential appointment and Senate confirmation of justices).

Third, a “binding code of ethics” for the court.  But again, absent a constitutional amendment creating some other process, the court (or Congress, via impeachment) would themselves remain the ultimate arbiters of whether that code was violated.  Neither the court nor Congress has taken action on (for example) justice Clarence Thomas’s flagrant acceptance of bribes under the current system. How would a new “code” fix that?

The three proposals all fail right at the starting point. They’re not going to enjoy adoption before Biden’s retirement next January, if ever.

So why not aim for the stars instead and propose REAL reforms that would be just as difficult to pass but that might solve the biggest problems — the partisan/political nature of how the court is chosen and the lifetime tenure that gifts the justices with impunity for poor or corrupt decision-making?

My proposal:

First, one-year terms for a Supreme Court composed of an odd number of randomly selected US citizens (the process is called “sortition”) who, after their names are drawn, demonstrate a standardized test IQ of greater than 100. No conscription — any citizen can refuse to serve. No presidential appointments allowed and no Senate confirmation needed.

Second, sequestration from the beginning to the end of each term. The justices live in a barracks facility. No phones. No email. Recreational television, but no news programs. A well-stocked law library, with classic novels for recreational reading, but no current events punditry allowed.

One year in total isolation with no sensory input other than the Constitution, the law, and the filings to affect rulings. Then a new court takes over.

About as likely to pass as Biden’s proposals, but at least worth the effort.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Bad News for Universal Basic Income.” The “bad news,” per  Reason‘s Eric Boehm. is that a non-profit’s three-year, 1,000-person, $1,000-per-month trial of the idea “resulted in decreased productivity and earnings, and more leisure time.”

Is that really bad news? Well, it depends on who you are and what you want.

UBI advocates  like Andrew Yang  predict the idea would, in part, “enable all Americans to pay their bills, educate themselves, start businesses … relocate for work.”

Bad news indeed … on those metrics, anyway.

But Yang also predicts a UBI would let recipients “be more creative, stay healthy … spend time with their children, take care of loved ones …”

Call it a tie at most.

The education/productivity/work side of Yang’s equation seems like so much window dressing to soothe real economic concerns.

The real marketing sizzle lies in a utopian vision aimed at people who would — quite understandably — rather spend eight hours a day in front of the television set than on the service side of a fast food drive-thru window, and be willing to take a bit of a pay cut (probably offset by reduced costs of transportation, etc.) for it.

I’m opposed to “guaranteed income” schemes for a number of reasons, but those reasons don’t really include the economic side.

I suspect we may be on our way toward the possibility of something like Aaron Bastani’s “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” — an economy in which AI-powered robots become quite capable of handling most, if not all, aspects of economic production, leaving us (at least in theory) with no more strenuous work to do than picking drone-delivered pizza up from the porch and remembering to put the boxes out for robot sanitation workers to whisk away.

In that scenario, a Universal Basic Income would simply serve as a rationing mechanism. Scarcity would still exist. Letting everyone order a new Ferrari each week (after crashing the old one for fun) could bring the system down pretty quickly. You’d have to decide between three pizzas or one ribeye dinner, etc., so as not to strain our robot servants’ productive capacity.

I’m not an economist, and I apologize for playing one on the Internet, but I hope you see my point: Inspiring economic activity may not be a necessary feature of a UBI.

The trial results are GREAT news for Fully Automated Luxury Communism types … and for authoritarians who prefer fewer limits to their power over other people.

A UBI wouldn’t really be “universal.” Some groups (prison inmates, for example) would find themselves excluded from the start, with political dissidents, sooner or later, following them into the “no money for you” abyss. The latter would be too busy working (if there were any jobs to be had) or starving to inconvenience our “benevolent” rulers. That threat would leave them with an entirely free hand (holding a robot-manufactured whip).

Would I love to receive a “subsistence wage,” gratis, no questions asked? Who wouldn’t? But the devils in the details sound more like hell than like utopia.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“You should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag,” former (and possibly future) president Donald Trump told the hosts of Fox & Friends on July 25.

In a rare moment of at least partial agreement with Trump, likely Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris says “I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way.”

Both were referring to pro-Palestinian protesters who stole flags from in front of Washington, DC’s Union Station before burning them.

I condemn that too, by the way — not because flags were burned, but because those flags apparently didn’t belong to the people who burned them.

The standard defense of flag-burning, affirmed by the US Supreme Court, treats flag-burning as  “speech” that enjoys the protection the First Amendment.

Well, OK, I get that. Whether it’s technically “speech” or not it’s at least expressive conduct, and I’m all for freedom of non-violent expressive conduct.

But to me, what it’s really about is property rights.

If you own a piece of cloth — even a piece of cloth with a particular pattern on it that makes it into what my friend and fellow political writer Kent McManigal calls a “Holy Pole Quilt,” possessing quasi-religious-relic qualities to certain cultists — it’s yours.

Not Donald Trump’s.

Not Kamala Harris’s.

Yours.

You don’t get to ride in their limousines; they don’t get to tell you what to do with your flag.

The exceptions to that rule are simple, and should be obvious:

You don’t get to strangle someone with your flag.

If you want to burn it, you have to do so in a way that doesn’t endanger the lives or property of others.

Apart from exceptions of that type, what you do with it is your business and no one else’s.

If you want to “desecrate” it in some way — burn it, draw a thin blue line across it, cut it up to make yourself a g-string — have at.

Personally, I use two flags (one “American” and one representing my favorite college football team) as window curtains. Want them? Molon labe!

If you steal someone else’s flag, that’s a crime and you’re a thief … just as it would be a crime and you would be a thief if you stole a candy bar, a coffee cup, or a Corolla. The penalty (return or restitution, and perhaps punitive damages) should be the same for all four crimes.

I’d rather burn every flag in the country than watch Trump and Harris wrap themselves in those flags to score cheap political points with low-IQ, short attention span voters.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY