AUDIO:
POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTING IS OVER FOR GENERAL ELECTION; For live election results in Harris County; Wilmington Race Riot of 1898; Does Anyone Know How to Behave on the Subway Anymore?; Mike Johnson said he and his 17-year-old son use an app that alerts each other if they look at porn; No stock trading, a hefty home mortgage, and more than $120,000 from Liberty University: Here’s what we know about newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson’s personal finances; What’s Up With Mike Johnson’s Very Shady-Seeming Financial Disclosures?; The Supreme Court’s Big Gun Case Was Humiliating for the Justices;
Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host, assistant producer and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.
Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:
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- An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
- You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.
- VOTING IS OVER FOR GENERAL ELECTION:
- Mike: To those of you who voted, many thanks. To those of you who would have voted if you had gotten the mail-in ballots that you were supposed to get, it makes me very upset, but it just shows that the voter suppression that Republicans in Austin intended to inflict on Harris County did, in fact, work as intended.
- MIKE: To those of you who did not vote, and did not care enough to bother to vote … Please do vote next time. Your votes DO count, IF you bother to cast them!
- For more election information anywhere in Texas, go to VOTETEXAS.GOV
- You may be able track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
- For any place in Texas, you can go to GOV
- For live election results in Harris County, you can click here. It appears that there will be a lot of runoffs.
- MIKE: In local elections, with over 90% of Harris County precincts reporting in as of this writing, almost all the proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution passed in Harris County and Statewide, most by large margins. This, unfortunately, did not surprise me. The one the exception was Prop 13 — the one to raise the age of mandatory retirement for judges. Because while the right to farm on your 5000 square foot lot should be enshrined in the Texas Constitution, we apparently just don’t trust old people. (Although for the record, I also opposed this one for complicated reasons. See our Oct 25th)
- MIKE: The County bond issue for the Harris Hospital District passed by a large margin.
- MIKE: Both amendments to the Houston City charter passed by big margins.
- MIKE: As of this writing, I don’t know what the total voter turnout percentage was.
- MIKE: While Houston City Council District Races appear to be mostly decided, there will be some runoffs. There will also be runoffs among the At-Large positions. The Mayor’s race will be a runoff between John Whitmire and Sheila Jackson Lee. Houston Controller will have a runoff between Chris Hollins and Orlando Sanchez.
- ANDREW: It’s unfortunate that a lot of bad amendments passed, but at least all the good ones did too. As far as Texas constitutional amendment elections go, that’s not a bad result.
- MIKE: For those who may not know, this week is the 125th anniversary of the only successful coup d’état of an elected government in US history.
- Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 — ORG | Posted on January 11, 2008 by contributed by: Tekla Ali Johnson
- A politically motivated attack by whites against the city’s leading African American citizens, the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 documents the lengths to which white Democrats went to regain political domination of the South after Reconstruction. The violence began on Thursday, November 10 in the predominantly African American city of Wilmington, North Carolina, at that time the state’s largest metropolis. Statewide election returns had recently signaled a shift in power with Democrats taking over the North Carolina State Legislature. The city of Wilmington, however, remained in Republican hands, primarily because of its solid base of African American voters. On November 10, Alfred Moore Waddell, a former Confederate officer and a white supremacist, led a group of townsmen to force the ouster of Wilmington’s city officials.
- Waddell relied on an editorial printed in the African American-owned Wilmington Daily Record as the catalyst for the riot. [MIKE: Editorial is transcribed at this link] Alex Manly, the editor of the Daily Record, had published an editorial in early November arguing that “poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women.” Paraphrasing articles by Ida B. Wells on the subject of lynching, Manly opined that “our experiences among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than the white men with the colored women.” Manly’s public discussion of the taboo subject of interracial sex exposed the reality of sexual exploitation of black women by white men and challenged the myth of pure-white womanhood.
- Forty-eight hours after Manly’s editorial ran, Waddell led 500 white men to the headquarters of the Daily Record on 7th Street. The mob broke out windows and set the building on fire. Manly and other high profile African Americans fled the city; however, at least fourteen African Americans were slain that day. An eyewitness later wrote that African Americans fled to the swamps or hid in the African American cemetery at the edge of town. When their criminal behavior resulted in neither federal sanctions nor condemnation from the state, Waddell and his men formalized their control of Wilmington. The posse forced the Republican members of the city council and the mayor to resign and Waddell assumed the mayoral seat. Over the next two years North Carolina passed the “grandfather clause,” as one in a series of laws designed to limit the voting rights of African Americans.
- MIKE: I chose this particular piece to read because it’s short, but informative. It’s a brief, overall summation of what happened.
- MIKE: But over the last 125 years, the way this event is taught in North Carolina specifically and in the South generally has drastically changed. It is now seen as a Race-based White Supremacist putsch against a legally elected government that the White power establishment felt threatened by.
- MIKE: The coup d’état was successful. The white insurrectionists took and maintained power, and by all accounts I can find, the Federal government failed to act either because it legally couldn’t or chose not to.
- MIKE: There is one more question to be addressed: Why did the federal government do nothing? There is a contemporaneous questioning of that as well, as two newspaper articles show.
- On the question of Federal Intervention? — The Richmond Planet, article makes some very compelling arguments for federal intervention.
- Unlike the 1894 labor riots in Illinois, no federal troops were sent to bolster the government in Wilmington, North Carolina. Both the newspapers in question address this fact, but from greatly different perspectives.
- On November 12, 1898 the News and Observer published an article [titled] “No Federal Interference” in which it reported that although “the President expressed deep concern”, the developments up to this point did not warrant federal intervention. The state would be “kept under close surveillance” and no action would be taken unless rioting resumed. It was reported that the President would meet with the Attorney General when he returned to town. Although the language in the article is fairly neutral, the title makes it clear that any intervention on the part of the federal government would not only be unwelcome, but seen as a direct intrusion into North Carolina’s rights to handle purely internal matters.
- The News and Observer revisited the issue after President McKinley’s annual speech to Congress. It published an article called “Race Riots Ignored” on December 06, 1898. The article stated [that the] President did not mention the issue of race in either of the Carolina’s; this is seen as “significant” as the administration would not support any legislation. Federal intervention is once again seen as a violation of the State of North [Carolina’s] sovereignty. Reportedly, President McKinley felt that any interference by Congress would “be not only unjust to the white people of the South, but would be overstepping the bounds of tolerance.” The article fails to make any reference to the plight of the deposed government or the African Americans still living in Wilmington, North Carolina.
- The Richmond Planet addressed the question of federal intervention in Wilmington with a legalistic argument published on November 19, 1898. The Planet’s article quotes the constitution and federal statutes to rebuff Attorney General Griggs’ interpretation that the federal government has no right to interfere in Wilmington. Article XIV of the Constitution states that no person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, [thus] the Planet asks if the city of Wilmington has been deprived of these things during the riot on November 10, 1898. Article IV of the Constitution guarantees to every State a republican form of government. The Planet asked if Wilmington could be said to have this form of government. The riot ended with the resignation of the [elected] leaders of the city and a completely new government installed without any formal elections. Furthermore, the Planet claimed that Federal Statute Sec. 5299 makes it the duty of the President to intervene with “the employment of the militia, or the land and naval forces of the United States”[6] in situations where the State or local government has failed to protect right of the people as enumerated in the Constitution. The author encouraged his readers to make friends locally due to the “truckling policies at Washington.”
- MIKE: I had to do quite a bit of digging to find this particular legal citation because the article did it so imprecisely. As near as I can find (and I’ve linked to the sources), it is mentioned more or less in full in FEDERAL TROOPS IN DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES, By Major George S. Patton, Jr., Cavalry (November 1932): There, it says in part, “S.5299 provides, “Whenever insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations, or conspiracies in any State so obstructs or hinders the execution of the laws thereof, and of the United States, as to deprive any portion or class of the people of such State of rights, privileges, or immunities, or protection named in the Constitution . and the constituted authorities of such State are unable or unwilling, or refuse to protect the people in such rights . or whenever such insurrection, etc., opposes or obstructs the laws of the United States or the due execution thereof . it shall be lawful for the President, and it shall be his duty, to take such means . by the employment of the land and naval forces of the United States, as he deems necessary . for the suppression of such insurrections, etc.”
- MIKE: So yeah, the federal government decided to overlook this insurrection over which it had jurisdiction in what appears to be, as they say, “black letter law”.
- ANDREW: Obviously, the ethical and legal thing for the federal government to do would have been to intervene and restore the democratically elected government in Wilmington and protect the Black citizens there from any further terrorism. I’m sure at least part of the reason for the inaction was racism, indifference to racism, or both. For a complete picture, though, it’s worth considering what the risks of intervention might have been.
- ANDREW: First, a little more history. After the Civil War ended, the Reconstruction era began, where federal troops were present in much of the South to enforce the changes necessary in Southern society to bring the former Confederate states back into the Union. Many of these changes were major steps for enfranchisement of Black people, and the presence of the US Army was a significant factor in keeping Southern Black people enfranchised. But opposition from the Democratic party at the time and some capital-L Liberal (as opposed to capital-R Radical) Republicans created pressure to withdraw those troops from the South, and this pressure came to a head with the Election of 1876.
- ANDREW: This election saw fraudulent vote counts and violence against Black voters, resulting in 20 electoral votes left in question. Congress created a mostly-Republican Electoral Commission to investigate, which decided to award all 20 votes to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, who would win by one electoral vote. However, Democrats filibustered this result in Congress, creating a deadlock that was only resolved in the Compromise of 1877, where Hayes agreed to withdraw the Army from the Southern states. Great for Hayes, who became President, but not so much for Black Southerners, who now had far less protection for their political and civil rights.
- ANDREW: Now, there’s 21 years between the Compromise of 1877 and the Wilmington Coup of 1898. But I believe that the events of 1876 may have convinced the Republicans of the time that the Democrats could be a major obstacle for their policies and power, even after the defeat of the Confederacy. That feeling could have persevered through the next two decades. It may even have been compounded by the fact that by the time of the Wilmington Coup, the Democrat Grover Cleveland had won two separate terms as President in an era otherwise dominated by Republicans.
- ANDREW: I think the Republican Party of 1898 may have worried that intervention in the Wilmington Coup could have had a couple of possible consequences.
- ANDREW: First, by the time of the Compromise of 1877, Reconstruction policies were already losing support among some Republicans, and most Democrats. Twenty years later, it seems reasonable to conclude that sending federal troops into a Southern state might be a bit too reminiscent of Reconstruction, and thus not well-received by large swaths of the voting public—including some of their own party. Republicans had a clear majority in both houses of Congress in 1898, but it wasn’t a supermajority—and in fact, the Republican majority in the House would narrow in the next election. If Republican President McKinley had sent troops to Wilmington, it’s possible the 1899 Congress would have had a Republican Senate, but a Democratic House—the same situation that allowed the Democrats to cause the electoral crisis in 1876.
- ANDREW: Secondly, the Civil War had only ended about 30 years ago at the time of the Wilmington Coup. The coup itself serves as proof that white Southerners were still plenty willing to use violence for their racist political aims. President McKinley and/or other Republicans could have been concerned that responding with federal force could inflame white Southerners and possibly even Northern Democrats into further violence. It may simply have been unfocused rioting, or it could have meant other coup attempts elsewhere in the country… maybe even in the Capitol.
- ANDREW: Of course, neither of these concerns (if they even were concerns) would justify the complete failure of McKinley’s government to protect the Black citizens of Wilmington. There are times when one must do the right thing, even if it will mean unpleasant consequences down the line. The Wilmington Coup of 1898 was one such time, and it stands as both a reminder to do what is right… and a lesson that you can never really trust a capitalist government.
- MIKE: I agree with most of your comments. It’s also worth noting that by the middle of the Civil War, a lot of Northerners were already tired of the war and were really ready to make a peace deal with the Confederacy and just let them go on their own. So, sending federal troops down to Wilmington probably would have been really unpopular to many Northerners whose memories of the war were still vivid.
- REFERENCES: The 1898 Coup in Wilmington, NC — AMSOUTH.UNC.EDU (“Understanding/Tales of the American South” / University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill). To access the accompanying PPT, click here. To view the K-12 lesson plan in PDF, click here.
- Additional Resources (optional): A substantial list of recommended resources for further study from previous Carolina K-12 events is available here. ß This resource is highly recommended, with many sublinks to information.
- Carolina K-12’s virtual program recording, “Wilmington 1898: The Hidden History of an American Coup”
- Carolina K-12’s virtual program recording, “Democracy on the Line: Hope, Hostility & Lasting Legacies of 1898 Wilmington” (featuring LeRae Umfleet)
- Carolina K-12’s curriculum Exploring Life in 1898 Wilmington & the Wilmington Coup with CROW, a novel for young adults
- REFERENCES: Primary Source: The Wilmington Record Editorial —NCPEDIA.ORG (A North Carolina History Online Resource)
- REFERENCES: The Lost History of an American Coup D’État: Republicans and Democrats in North Carolina are locked in a battle over which party inherits the shame of Jim Crow. — THEATLANTIC.COM (August 2017)
- REFERENCES: The Wilmington Coup — NCPEDIA.ORG
- REFERENCES: What a White-Supremacist Coup Looks Like — NEWYORKER.COM, By Caleb Crain (April 20, 2020)
- REFERENCES: The Wilmington Coup D’état of 1898 — UNCW.EDU (William Madison Randall Library)
- REFERENCES: The Wilmington Coup D’état of 1898 — LIBGUIDES.UNCW.EDU (Has LOTS of additional resources)
- REFERENCES: Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 — ORG | Posted on January 11, 2008 by contributed by: Tekla Ali Johnson
- REFERENCES: 1898 Wilmington Coup —DNCR.NC.GOV (North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources)
- REFERENCES: Wilmington Massacre and Coup d’état of 1898 – Timeline of Events —NHCGOV.COM (Cape Fear Museum, New Hanover County, NC)
- REFERENCES: When white supremacists overthrew a government: The hidden history of a North Carolina coup. By Ranjani Chakraborty | VOX.COM | Jun 20, 2019, 1:30pm EDT
- REFERENCES: Wilmington insurrection of 1898 — From WIKIPEDIA, the free encyclopedia. (“The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, also known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898 or the Wilmington coup of 1898,[6] was a coup d’état and a massacre which was carried out by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, on Thursday, November 10, 1898” …)
- REFERENCES: A North Carolina city begins to reckon with the massacre in its white supremacist past — By Scott Neuman | NPR.ORG | November 10, 20215:00 AM ET
- REFERENCES: Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government — By Toby Luckhurst, BBC News | BBC.COM | Published 17 January 2021
- REFERENCES: The Wilmington Coup — NCPEDIA.ORG (ANCHOR: A North Carolina History Online Resource)
- REFERENCES: Civil War Era NC: Federal Intervention? —CWNC ( Civil War Era NC)
- REFERENCE: FEDERAL TROOPS IN DOMESTIC DISTURBANCES, By Major George S. Patton, Jr., Cavalry (November 1932): Says in part, “R.S.5299 provides, “Whenever insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations, or conspiracies in any State so obstructs or hinders the execution of the laws thereof, and of the United States, as to deprive any portion or class of the people of such State of rights, privileges, or immunities, or protection named in the Constitution . and the constituted authorities of such State are unable or unwilling, or refuse to protect the people in such rights . or whenever such insurrection, etc., opposes or obstructs the laws of the United States or the due execution thereof . it shall be lawful for the President, and it shall be his duty, to take such means . by the employment of the land and naval forces of the United States, as he deems necessary . for the suppression of such insurrections, etc.”
- REFERENCE: Historical and Revision Notes
- Revised section 333
- Source (U.S. Code) 50:203
- Source (Statutes at Large) R.S. 5299
- REFERENCES: GENERAL GOOGLE SEARCH TERM USED: “1898 Wilmington coup” (Many sources, including some YouTube/Video discussions)
- REFERENCES: GENERAL GOOGLE SEARCH TERM USED: “What caused the 1898 Wilmington coup”
- GOOD ADVICE FOR MASS TRANSIT USERS OF ALL TYPES EVERYWHERE: Does Anyone Know How to Behave on the Subway Anymore?; New Yorkers are reacquainting themselves with the subway code — no eye contact; no stinky food — as the city rebounds from the coronavirus pandemic.
- There are unwritten rules when riding the New York City subway. No eye contact. No blocking doors. No hogging seats. …
- New Yorkers must follow a long list of standards and practices in order to manage the crush of people they navigate each day, said Jay Van Bavel, a professor at N.Y.U. who specializes in social psychology.
- “It’s probably the place in New York where you’re pressed up against humanity more than any other place,” Mr. Van Bavel said. “It would be insane for me to press up against a stranger’s body for, like, 10 minutes in the street, right? Like, they would freak out. But how many times have you been in the subway and people are grinded up right against you?” …
- While everyone has individual pet peeves, many seem to agree on the top, unwritten offenses. Riders, for instance, should never spread their arms or legs, because that can crowd or trip up fellow passengers. …
- And then there’s the traffic jam getting on and off the train. “Let the people get off the train first so that it could make our commute easier,” said Maykon Reyes, 30, a security guard who lives and works in the Bronx. …
- MIKE: BTW, this same rule applies to elevators. But moving on …
- Another common source of frustration for New Yorkers are people who play loud music from their cellphones or Bluetooth speakers. The noise is not only irritating, but can also drown out subway announcements.
- MIKE: I might note that this also applies not only in public spaces, but especially in any enclosed spaces, like waiting rooms and restaurants. To continue …
- Those who ride while standing must be mindful not to hold onto a pole in a way that prevents others from grabbing it. Transit riders get particularly upset at fellow passengers who lean on shared poles.
- And no matter how packed a train is, no one should ever come close to a stranger in a way that makes them uncomfortable.
- Other leading blunders include putting backpacks or purses on empty seats, stuffing bicycles and scooters into crowded cars, and eating stinky food.
- Van Bavel said those core offenses are especially frustrating because they show a lack of respect for fellow riders.
- “It signals that you’re not a nice person,” Mr. Van Bavel said. “You’re not fair, and you welcome or create chaos.” …
- The [NY transit] authority has tried … marketing campaigns in the past. A previous version in 2014 called out riders for clipping their nails, wearing backpacks and manspreading — a widely loathed sitting style that involves opening one’s legs in a V-shape, crowding others in nearby seats. In 2017, the authority offered pregnant women blue-and-yellow buttons with a message asking fellow passengers to offer them a seat. …
- Perhaps unsurprisingly, some New Yorkers were quick to snub the idea [of a marketing campaign to teach subway etiquette].
- “I think it’s foolishness,” Mr. Reyes, the security guard, said. “People don’t respect the rules.”
- MIKE: Some of you might be asking why I’m discussing a story abut NY subway etiquette in Houston.
- MIKE: Well, for starters, we have light rail and buses, and all of these same rules should apply in those instances. These suggested rules should also apply to waiting rooms or waiting areas (e.g., if you want to listen to something on your phone, use headphones!), restaurants, elevators, or any confined or crowded space.
- MIKE: As noted in the story, just be considerate of the people around you. And hopefully, they will do likewise.
- ANDREW: I think most of the points made in this article are fair and uncontroversial, but not so on the sound front. I read an essay in The Nation a little while back called Why Do Rich People Love Quiet? It’s unfortunately logwalled (or whatever the term for “free but you have to give us your personal information by signing up for an account before reading” is), so I couldn’t jog my memory on it before the show, but it does touch on loudness in public spaces including New York public transit.
- ANDREW: If I recall correctly, the author makes the argument that consciously or not, expectations of quiet in public areas are an exertion of social control of rich white people over working class people and Black and Brown people.
- ANDREW: Now sure, there’s probably not too many rich people riding the subway or the bus, but when working-class people reinforce rich people’s social control over other working-class people, the rich are still benefiting by having working-class people adhere to that control in other situations. And there are certainly other, more tangible examples of rich people’s control over the working class. But it’s a point worth considering, especially if you’ve ever felt stifled by seemingly-pointless social rules.
- ANDREW: I think as long as nobody’s getting hearing damage or spreading hate, maybe it’s okay to let people listen to music, or talk, or laugh on public transit.
- MIKE: I must strongly disagree. Stinky food isn’t stinky to the person eating it. Smoking a cigarette or cigar smells fine to the smoker. Loud music isn’t objectionable to the person listening to it, but all of these things show a lack of respect and consideration for those around you.
- MIKE: If you’ve ever ridden mass transit with someone playing loud music, you can look around and see the dirty looks those people are getting.
- MIKE: When we are all considerate of the people around us, whether in public spaces or confined spaces, we all get along better.
- ANDREW: You’re entitled to your opinion, but I do have to point out: stinky food might cause someone nausea, and secondhand cigarette smoke does have harmful effects on other people. These things can do real harm to other people in a way that can’t be controlled. Sound in public can be controlled to be present without doing harm to others, and I think that’s a difference that matters.
- MIKE: Yes. They’re called headphones. So, three for three.
- [Speaker] Mike Johnson said he and his 17-year-old son use an app that alerts each other if they look at porn; Mia Jankowicz and Madison Hall | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Nov 6, 2023, 10:15 AM CST
- Recently-unearthed footage shows Mike Johnson, now the Speaker of the House, promoting an app that enables “accountability” between him and his son over any porn use.
- “Covenant Eyes is the software that we’ve been using a long time in our household,” he said. The footage appears to be from an event titled “War on Technology” at Benton, Louisiana’s Cypress Baptist Church, where Johnson was billed as a speaker in October 2022.
- The clip was found by X user @receiptmaven, who suggested that Johnson had since tried “scrub” it from his feeds.
- Insider couldn’t locate a source for the footage other than @receiptmaven’s post.
- Johnson described the app as an opt-in service that “scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, laptop, tablet, what have you. We do all of it. And then it sends a report to your accountability partner.”
- An accountability partner is a term, often used by evangelicals but also in many wellness circles, for someone who checks in and ensures you are sticking to your goals.
- In this case, it’s his 17-year-old son, Johnson said. “So he and I get a report of all the things that are on our phones or devices once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice.
- “I’m proud to tell you my son’s got a clean slate,” he said. He didn’t mention whether he had lapsed himself.
- The app scans keywords and images and flags anything of “concern”, he said …
- Johnson didn’t directly mention porn, but the app’s social feeds — as well as other marketing — make it abundantly clear that warding people off X-rated content is its sole purpose.
- In 2022, a Wired investigation of Covenant Eyes’ inner workings found significant privacy concerns, resulting in the app’s removal from the Google Play store. At the time of writing, the app is available on the store once more, suggesting it now meets Google policies. …
- ANDREW: I knew I’d heard of Covenant Eyes before. It was in an Ars Technica article from June this year.
- ANDREW: This is the program that courts are using to invade the privacy of people on probation and their families, chilling their free expression in private conversations (including with their lawyers!), sharing details of their lives and social circles with authorities, and preventing them from accessing legal information that criticizes government policy, among other things. And because the app’s developers can’t account for websites updating in the background, users of the software can get punished for supposedly visiting websites they never actually did. And by the way, these people still have to pay for the subscription. In other words, this is a bad app all around, even if it wasn’t being used to violate people’s Constitutional rights.
- ANDREW: Really, the problem doesn’t just lie with this one app. It’s with the whole concept of these so-called “accountability” apps. If people don’t want to look at porn, that’s their right. But it shouldn’t take installing invasive, easily inaccurate, and data-insecure spyware that costs $17 per month according to Covenant Eyes’ website in order to live your life the way you want, and if you think it does, you’re either really just trying to control someone else’s life or you need to talk to an addiction professional and get real
- ANDREW: The fact that the Speaker of the House thinks this program is anything other than a mistake – and uses it on his teenage son – is deeply concerning to me, and it should be to you too.
- MIKE: There’s something to be said for not judging others lest we be judged ourselves, but Mike Johnson is looking like an increasingly odd duck.
- MIKE: How creepy is it for a father and son to be flagged about the other’s porn viewing?
- MIKE: And what’s up with someone successful enough to be elected to Congress, yet having no registered checking or savings accounts? Does he cash his Congressional paycheck at the nearest check cashing service and pay a percentage? Does he pay his bills at Kroger and bring cash to the bank to pay his mortgage? How does someone at that level even function without a checking account?
- MIKE: This brought me to a whole new line of inquiry: Mike Johnson’s reported financials.
- No stock trading, a hefty home mortgage, and more than $120,000 from Liberty University: Here’s what we know about newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson’s personal finances; By Bryan Metzger | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Oct 26, 2023, 10:29 AM CDT
- The new speaker of the House is not as wealthy as most of his colleagues.
- That’s perhaps the biggest insight one can draw from the eight years of financial disclosures Mike Johnson has filed since 2016, when he first ran to represent Louisiana’s fourth congressional district.
- All members of Congress are required to file yearly financial disclosures in which they detail their assets, any debts they hold, any gifts they’ve received, and any income they’ve made in addition to their $174,000 salary.
- Here’s what we know based on the documents Johnson has filed.
- He doesn’t own or trade any stocks — From 2016 through 2022, Johnson did not disclose owning or trading any individual stocks or other securities, such as mutual funds. …
- As Insider’s Conflicted Congress investigation found in 2021, lawmakers often encounter a variety of conflicts of interest stemming from their stock holdings, given that they have access to nonpublic information and can influence national policy. …
- But Johnson also does not appear to have commented publicly on the ongoing effort to ban members of Congress from trading stocks, leaving the public unsure of where he stands on the issue.
- He has a home mortgage worth up to $500,000 — Since 2013, Johnson and his wife, Kelly, have had a home mortgage valued between $250,000 and $500,000 from Citizens National Bank. …
- In addition to the mortgage, Johnson has other debts, including a personal loan and a home-equity line of credit from Citizens Bank, both of which were valued at between $15,000 and $50,000. …
- He’s made $120,000 from Liberty University since 2018 — Johnson has spent the past five years teaching online courses at Liberty University, gradually making more money from the gig each year. …
- There’s little publicly available information about Johnson’s activities at the university, and Insider has reached out to the university for further details. But according to a biography on the website Answers in Genesis, the lawmaker has taught “Constitution and free enterprise” at the university’s Helms School of Government.
- He made roughly the same amount before Congress — but he’s set to get a $50,000 raise now that he’s speaker
- Before he came to Congress, Johnson was both a practicing lawyer and a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives — a part-time job in that state.
- As a House candidate in 2016, Johnson disclosed making a $128,316 salary from Kitchens Law Firm, in addition to his $25,000 salary as a state representative. Couple that with another $18,000 he made from his own practice, and he made just over $171,000 — not far off from his current $174,000 salary.
- But now that he’s the speaker, Johnson is set to get a $50,000 raise: while all rank-and-file House members and senators make $174,000, the speaker of the House makes $223,500.
- MIKE: I don’t know what more to say here except that all this is at least very odd, and more than a little suspicious. There must be a money trail somewhere, because Johnson acknowledges having both income and debts. What’s going on in between? It’s hard for me, at least, not to conclude that Johnson is making a serious effort to hide it.
- ANDREW: I have to be honest, I don’t immediately see anything ground-breakingly suspicious in this article. The income from Liberty University seems like a potential conflict of interest considering he was in office while taking the money, but that’s about it. Are you saying that you think Mike Johnson has income that he hasn’t reported?
- MIKE: No. I’m saying that the average person with these kinds of incomes and debts has to have someplace to collect it and then disburse it. And Congress doesn’t pay its employees in cash. There’s a money or cash trail someplace.
- ANDREW: I see. These articles don’t seem to mention it, but I did find a Vanity Fair article that does say he’s never reported having a checking or savings account. Though that same article does say the most likely explanation is that he’s living paycheck-to-paycheck and thus his accounts exist but haven’t passed the individual $1,000 or combined $5,000 threshold.
- ANDREW: That’s not necessarily a good sign, though. The Vanity Fair article also says that part of the reason Congressfolk are required to report these things is so we can tell if any of them are hurting for cash and thus might do things like take a bribe. So you’re certainly right in that this is something to watch Speaker Johnson over.
- REFERENCE: What’s Up With Mike Johnson’s Very Shady-Seeming Financial Disclosures? — The new House leader lists no bank accounts, including checking or savings, on financial disclosure forms going back to 2016. By Bess Levin | VANITYFAIR.COM | November 1, 2023
- THIS IS YOUR SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES AT WORK: The Supreme Court’s Big Gun Case Was Humiliating for the Justices; By Jay Willis | SLATE.COM | Nov 07, 2023 @ 5:21 PM
- For Zackey Rahimi, the solution for just about every problem in life seems to be to shoot a gun in its general direction. In December 2019, he fired a shot at a bystander who’d seen him shove his girlfriend in a parking lot, then threatened to shoot his girlfriend too if she told anyone about it. When an acquaintance posted something rude about him on social media, he fired an AR-15 into their house. When he got into a car accident, he shot at the other driver; when a truck flashed its lights at him on the highway, he followed the driver off the exit and, for some reason, shot at a different car that was behind the offending truck. After Rahimi’s friend’s credit card was declined at a Whataburger, Rahimi pulled out a gun and fired several shots into the air, a choice that I doubt made terrified employees any more inclined to fulfill his order.
- None of this was in dispute on Tuesday, when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over Rahimi’s bid to keep his beloved guns. But it was also not much of a topic of conversation, as Justice Clarence Thomas claimed there existed only a “very thin record” in the case. Despite the court’s inability (or unwillingness) to highlight the horrifying facts of his case, it does seem as if enough conservatives will join the court’s progressives to reject Rahimi’s plea.
- If it weren’t clear already, Zackey Rahimi has not demonstrated an ability to safely possess firearms. … [A]fter police investigating the subsequent shootings searched his room and found a pistol, a rifle, and ammunition for both, Rahimi was charged with violating a federal law that prohibits people subject to protective orders from possessing guns. In federal district court, Rahimi challenged the law as a violation of his Second Amendment rights, but the judge was unconvinced. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—the country’s most conservative federal appeals court—affirmed in June 2022 the state’s right to take away Zackey Rahimi’s firearms.
- A few weeks later, however, the Supreme Court blessed Rahimi with a chance to get his guns back. In an opinion penned by [Justice Clarence] Thomas, the court held, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, that restrictions on the right to bear arms are presumptively unconstitutional unless they are, in a judge’s learned opinion, consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The 5th Circuit withdrew its opinion in Rahimi’s case and issued another in which it changed its mind: Although the law embodies “salutary policy goals,” wrote Judge Cory T. Wilson, “our ancestors would never have accepted” it. Put differently, because the Framers did not disarm domestic abusers, who today shoot and kill an average of 70 women a month, modern lawmakers are powerless to do anything about it.
- Since Bruen, lower court judges applying its test have been, to use a legal term of art, all over the place, a fact repeatedly highlighted during oral arguments by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who sought some, any, guidance on how the court should understand its own ruling.
- A few judges have publicly aired their frustrations with the sudden analytical primacy of law-office history. “We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791,” wrote one in 2022. “Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.” …
- In taking up Rahimi’s case on Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in its first major Second Amendment case since Bruen. The legal question in United States v. Rahimi is whether the federal law under which Rahimi was convicted violates the Second Amendment. The practical question is whether the court meant what it said in Bruen so literally that any legislative attempt to address America’s ongoing gun violence crisis must bow to whatever Clarence Thomas imagines that James Madison would have thought about it nearly 250 years ago. …
- Rahimi argues that a purported lack of a “history and tradition” of outright bans on gun possession means that the law is unconstitutional, and that the government has no choice but to restore Rahimi’s right to wave a gun around when denied access to fast-food hamburgers of his choice.
- This argument is bold, in the same way that Captain Smith’s choice to navigate the Titanic into an iceberg field was bold. The modern concept of protective orders, after all, did not exist at the founding, which makes the absence of laws disarming people subject to protective orders not as dispositive as your average National Rifle Association lifetime member would think. Today’s firearms are also far deadlier than Colonial-era firearms: In about two-thirds of fatal mass shootings between 2014 and 2019, the perpetrator either killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of domestic violence, according to an amicus brief filed by a gun safety group. In the context of a real-life epidemic of deadly intimate partner violence, the fact that the Framers did not disarm abusers in 1791 does not mean they would not have done so if abusers in 1791 murdered as many people as they do in 2023.
- A few justices raised concerns about the problems inherent in empowering judges and lawmakers to determine who is “dangerous” or “irresponsible” enough to lose their Second Amendment rights. None, however, seemed to think that Zackey Rahimi would not qualify. After Chief Justice John Roberts asked if Rahimi’s counsel, J. Matthew Wright, would concede that his client is a “dangerous person,” Wright, ever the zealous advocate, asked for a definition of the term. Roberts’ incredulous reply—“Well, it means someone who’s shooting, you know, at people. That’s a good start”—drew nervous laughter from the gallery. …
- At various points, Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch all suggested that resolving problems with civil protective order processes is simply a task for another day. If there are “circumstances where someone could be shown to be sufficiently dangerous that the firearm can be taken from him,” Roberts asked, “why isn’t that the end of the case?”
- Justice Elena Kagan was even more withering in her criticism. “I feel like you’re running away from your argument, you know, because the implications of your argument are just so untenable that you have to say, ‘No, that’s not really my argument,’ ” she said, noting that Wright’s logic would jeopardize a “wide variety” of laws that disarm people who pose an “obvious” danger to others. “I guess I’m asking you to clarify your argument, because you seem to be running away from it because you can’t stand what the consequences of it are.”
- After oral argument, it seems likely that the court will back away from the most extreme iteration of Bruen. …
- To the extent that the justices felt annoyed or embarrassed by the proceedings on Tuesday, they have no one to blame but themselves. Everything Wright argued on Rahimi’s behalf flows directly from Bruen, a jurisprudential train wreck that Clarence Thomas slapped on Supreme Court letterhead while putting together his luxury vacation plans for the summer. This is the kind of thing that will occasionally happen as long as the court is controlled by a six-justice conservative supermajority: When there is nothing to check Thomas and Company’s enthusiasm for repackaging Federalist Society dogma as constitutional law, sometimes they will make a mess that they’ll have to go back and clean up.
- ANDREW: I firmly believe that in order to get and keep any kind of labor rights and civil rights, the working class and marginalized people have to be armed enough that they could fight off a government intent on destroying those rights, and as such I generally support expanding and preserving gun access for people who haven’t shown that they’ll do unjustified harm to other people. In this case, Mr. Rahimi has very clearly proven he has done such harm, and will again. If Bruen is able to be used to keep Mr. Rahimi and people like him armed, then even I would have to support overturning it.
- MIKE: Guns are relatively useless for self-defense or family defense. In fact, the vast majority of shooting around the home are among people who know each other. But that’s not at issue here, at least in my opinion.
- MIKE: This is a matter of a majority of judges — the Conservative ones — having conclusions they want to reach before they even hear the cases, and then trying to wrap some kind of logic in their written opinions to get there.
- MIKE: Essentially, it’s biased adjudication. And maybe worse, it’s sloppy adjudication. They leave loopholes and contortions of logic that create legal barn doors that they don’t bother considering in advance, and that even they can’t “pretzel-logic” their way out of.
- MIKE: The most basic thing in our legal system is an impartial jury. All jurors are asked to set their biases, prejudices, and preconceived notions aside and listen only to the evidence presented, and base their decisions only on the evidence presented.
- MIKE: If Supreme Court justices can’t do that, then they wouldn’t even qualify to sit on a basic trial jury.
- MIKE: But that’s where the Conservative justices have gotten us.
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