Month: April 2021

A Problem of Bicameralism

When the United States fought its war for independence from Great Britain, the various colonies sent delegates to an assembly known to history as the Continental Congress. This loose organization was formalized by the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, which called its legislative body the “United States in Congress Assembled.”

Regardless of the name by which this congress was known or its exact power or structure, each of the colonies/states had one vote (regardless of the number of delegates it sent). When the government under the Articles of Confederation proved ineffective and the Constitutional Convention was debating the composition of the legislature to be proposed, larger states urged that voting power be proportional to population (the Virginia Plan), while smaller states sought to retain equal voting power (the New Jersey Plan). Ultimately the convention agreed to the Connecticut Compromise, which provided for two houses in the new Congress: the House of Representatives (states represented in proportion to population) and the Senate (each state choosing two senators).

This two-house structure for a legislature is called bicameralism, from the Latin word camera, meaning “chamber” or “room.” (In this context the words “house” and “chamber” are synonymous.) The Congress under the Constitution was of course not the first bicameral legislative body. Not only did the British Parliament (whose authority over America was denied by the Declaration of Independence) have two chambers, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, but two houses were the usual, if not the sole, manner of organization of colonial, and later state, legislatures. (Nebraska is the sole exception.)

As the Connecticut Compromise shows, bicameralism allows for different methods of selection or representation. (Until the Seventeenth Amendment, senators were chosen by state legislatures rather than popular vote.) Until the reapportionment cases of the 1960s, some states used factors other than population equality to apportion seats on one house of their state legislature. In New Jersey, for example, each county was formerly represented by one senator, until the rejection of the so-called “federal analogy” by Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S. Ct. 1362, 12 L. Ed. 2d 506 (1964), eventually resulted in the current structure, in place since the 1973 election: 40 legislative districts, with substantially equal population, each electing one senator and two members of the general assembly.

It is this method that is described by the title of this post. Each district is represented by legislators elected by the same voters (and, in three out of five elections, at the same time). The result (encouraged by the gerrymandering used after each census to create the districts) is that almost every (if not every) district is represented by three people from the same party. What, then, is the point of having two houses? In a future post I will suggest an alternate method of selecting senators that might answer this question.

Jay Bohn
April 29, 2021

Critique of the Historical Case for Senate Jurisdiction to Try Impeached Former Official

This post was originally written as a letter to the editor of the two newspapers mentioned, but was too long for those fora.

In their respective January 17, 2021, editions, the Star-Ledger and Express-Times published an article from Bloomberg News which they entitled “Can Trump be tried after he leaves? Yes, history indicates.” The articles assert that the Senate can conduct President Trump’s impeachment trial after he leaves office.

What may once have been considered primarily an academic question has now taken on greater importance. A full discussion of the question would take far more space the than any newspaper can allot to letters to the editor. (The 2001 law review article by Brian Kalt mentioned in the newspaper article is 68 pages long and contains 554 footnotes.) Therefore, other than noting that there are other arguments for and against the power to try an impeachment against a former official, this post will only argue that the three precedents cited in the newspaper articles are of extremely limited value in answering the question. I am addressing only the process question and not whether President Trump should have been convicted if the trial had occurred while he was in office.

The first precedent identified in the article was the impeachment and trial of Warren Hastings in the British Parliament. Hastings had served as colonial governor in British India and, after he had resigned and returned to Great Britain, was charged with various offenses regarding his time in office. Because–Professor Kalt asserts–the members of the constitutional convention were aware of the trial which was ongoing at the time (the trial started in 1787 and did not end with a “not guilty” verdicts until 1795), they must  have wanted someone in Hastings’ position (a former office holder) to be impeachable. Not only does this assertion require a bit of a leap to reach, but it does not give sufficient weight to the fact that there was no legal limit to the power of the House of Commons to impeach anyone (office holder or not) and that punishment by the House of Lords was accordingly not limited to removal from office or disqualification from holding office in the future. Impeachment under the United States Constitution is much more limited.

The second precedent is the impeachment and trial of Senator William Blount, who was expelled from the Senate two days after the House of Representatives voted to impeach him. (Each house of Congress has the power to expel a member by a two-thirds vote.) Following the expulsion a trial was commenced on the impeachment charges, which Blount defended on several legal bases going to the jurisdiction of the Senate to try him, including the a senator was not a “civil officer” subject to impeachment and that in any event he was, as a result of the expulsion, no longer a senator at the time of trial. The Senate, by a majority vote, ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to try him. The resolution is ambiguous as to the actual basis for the conclusion of no jurisdiction, so this is hardly a strong precedent favoring the trial of a former official.

The third precedent cited is indeed the strongest, but once again the Senate’s jurisdiction to try a former officer was subject to intense argument. William Knapp, President Grant’s Secretary of War, resigned in the morning before a committee of the House of Representatives voted to impeach him in the afternoon. Although a majority of the Senate voted in favor of a resolution asserting that it had jurisdiction because Knapp had been an officer at the time of the offenses alleged, Knapp was ultimately acquitted, with most of the senators voting in his favor doing so because they disagreed with the ability to impeach and try a former official.

Far more numerous are the occasions when impeachment proceedings had commenced but were terminated by the timely resignation of the officer (most famously that of President Nixon in 1974).

In neither of the two pre-Trump cases governed by the U.S. Constitution was the impeached former office-holder convicted, so there has been no occasion for a court to decide this question. (This assumes that judicial review could be had; in 1993 the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by an impeached and convicted judge to challenge his removal on certain procedural grounds as being beyond the power of the courts to review.) Thus, the historical record supporting the Senate’s ability to trial is not only sparse, but particularly weak.

President Trump’s impeachment trial was in essence a repeat of Belknap’s: a majority of the the Senate voted that it had jurisdiction, but fewer than two-thirds voted to convict.

Jay Bohn
April 26, 2021

Congress Should Fix Its Own Mess

This is about a Supreme Court case that never should have gotten there. I am not saying that it is not worth the Court’s attention, but that it involves a one-time issue of statutory interpretation affecting the distribution of about half a billion dollars of CARES Act funds. Congress’s meaning is less than clear and Congress should step in and make it so.

The case is Yellen v. Confederated Tribes of Chehalis Reservation and it was argued this past Monday (April 19, 2021). (The petition for certiorari was filed by the former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin but the current Secretary, Janet Yellin, was substituted as petitioner when she took office. I see no indication of any change in the Government’s position resulting from the change in administrations.)

The issue, as framed by the petition filed by the Government, is:

In the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security or CARES Act, Congress directed the Secretary of the Treasury to disburse $8 billion of relief funds “to Tribal governments.” The CARES Act defines a “Tribal government” as “the recognized governing body of an Indian Tribe,” and provides that “[t]he term ‘Indian Tribe’ has the meaning given that term in” the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDA). ISDA, in turn, defines “Indian tribe” to mean “any Indian tribe, band, nation, or other organized group or community, including any Alaska Native village or regional or village corporation as defined in or established pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act * * * , which is recognized as eligible for the special programs and services provided by the United States to Indians because of their status as Indians.” The question presented is as follows:

Whether Alaska Native regional and village corporations established pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act are “Indian Tribe[s]” for purposes of the CARES Act.

[statutory citations omitted]

The Government wants to include Alaska Native regional and village corporations as eligible recipients of a share of $8 billion under the CARES Act, but some seventeen recognized Indian tribes (whose own distributions would be accordingly reduced) obtained a decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to the effect that the Alaska Native regional and village corporations are not eligible.

As things stand, the Supreme Court has to decide the case based upon the language that Congress used and not which outcome is the better policy. It will essentially have to clean up the mess resulting from too hasty drafting of the statute.

There is, however, nothing except the likely desire not to offend the losing side that would prevent Congress from stepping in (although it should do so quickly) and passing curative legislative definitely providing that Alaska Native regional and village corporations are (or are not) eligible for a share in the relief funds. The Supreme Court could then vacate the decision below and remand for further proceedings in light of the new statute.

Jay Bohn
April 22, 2021

Post script

The Supreme Court decided this case today. By a vote of 6-3 the Court decided that Alaska Native regional and village corporations established pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act are “Indian Tribe[s]” for purposes of the CARES Act. I have no comment on the merits of the decision, I will just note that the justices were not aligned in their generally perceived camps.

J.B.B.
June 25, 2021

Politicians Should Provide Details Too

Last week I commented on the need for journalists to provide details, not just conclusions, in their stories. A recent news article reminded me that often politicians will make proposals touting the results they are seeking, but without any credible detail on how those results are realistically going to be achieved.

The case in point was NJ.com’s coverage of a proposal by Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr., to establish a pilot program whereby the U.S. Postal Service would get into the banking business by cashing checks and providing no-fee ATMs, low-cost checking accounts and low-interest loans. A few years ago I first saw the term “banksters,” but now Congressman Pascrell and his colleagues say that 63 million Americans are “underbanked.”

I tried to see if there was any more detail of the proposal readily available, so I went to the congressman’s official web page. I did find a few press releases on the topic, but alas, no details on how it would work. I am skeptical that an agency that is having a lot of trouble with its core mission of delivering the mail would be able to provide the free and low cost services being envisioned and at least not lose any more money.

This proposal is similar, at least as to the lack of details, as the creation of a state bank in New Jersey that was part of Philip Murphy’s first campaign for governor or the “public option” that was initially proposed but ultimately deleted from the Affordable Care Act. Another similarity is that each would have a non-taxed (indeed, likely tax-supported) government agency compete with tax-paying private businesses.

The lack of details could mean that the proposal is simply not well thought out (which is a reason to be wary), but the cynic in me sees it as an intentional means of putting forward a trojan horse policy proposal. It is, after all, much easier to argue that poorer Americans need these services than to prove that the postal service bank will deliver for them.

Jay Bohn
April 19, 2021

Counterpoints Miss the Point

As a reader of news, I have noted that a common form of journalism is the “point-counterpoint” story, where a newspaper publishes a story that starts with the views of one side of an issue and concludes with the opposing view. In at least two recent examples, Lehigh Valley Live (the on-line version of the Express-Times) and NJ.com (the on-line version of the Star-Ledger) have each published such a story where the comments published as the counterpoint do not fairly meet the point.

The first of these examples was published on March 29, 2021, and involves litigation over the the conduct of during the tenure of the late Edward Bullock, who resigned as sheriff of Warren County in 1991. [“Rare statement from Warren County about sex-abuse cases involving ex-sheriff stuns accusers” (note that this is a “subscriber exclusive” story; you cannot access it without some form of subscription).] Plaintiffs in several lawsuits filed starting in 2013 allege that Bullock sexually abused young men in his custody and that his conduct was widely known throughout the courthouse and that Warren County is liable for the conduct and the failure of others to stop it. (I take this characterization from this story and others; as they report, the record in some of the lawsuits themselves is sealed. I take no position on either the factual or the legal merits of the lawsuits.)

The Lehigh Valley Live article reports that Warren County issued a press release (County website / Facebook) criticizing the distribution of “flyers and pamphlets . . . by at least one victim ahead of a planned April 27 protest at the county courthouse . . . that will call on Warren County to end its fight against lawsuits over the county’s alleged role in the sheriff’s abuses.” The press release particularly objects to the attribution of any role in the conduct which is the subject of the lawsuits to the current county commissioners, none of whom were in office (and one of whom had not even been born) during the relevant time period. Point.

The counterpoint quotes from the attorney for three of the plaintiffs and one of the plaintiffs himself. The attorney said he was surprised at the County’s statement and will use it as a basis for a forthcoming motion to unseal the record in the cases. The one plaintiff “said the county’s public position is another example of officials’ ‘unconscionable treatment of child sex-trafficking victims.’” The flyers and pamphlets (and a Facebook page shown in the article which in turn links to a website) are apparently attempts to pressure the current County government to abandon defending against the lawsuits.

The “point” does not not contend that the plaintiffs in the lawsuits are lying (in fact it does not address the merits of the lawsuits at all). The counterpoint is all about the merits and apparently the position that any defense against the claims is illegitimate.

The second example was posted on NJ.com on April 12, 2021, and is actually a point – counterpoint – second counterpoint story: “Christie criticizes Biden’s spending proposal, calling it a ‘faux infrastructure package’ .” This story reports former NJ governor Chris Christie’s statement over the weekend criticizing President Biden for describing his proposal as an infrastructure proposal, a viewpoint expressed by other Republicans as noted in the article. Christie is quoted as identifying real infrastructure components as including “roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, broadband” but certainly not $400 billion in Medicaid funding, for which he says the President should make the case without untruthfully calling it “infrastructure.”

The source of the first counterpoint is not identified (presumably it reflects the opinion on the author of the article, which is not labeled as an opinion piece). The article mentions three actions taken by Christie which are presumably to be interpreted as inconsistent with his current point on what does or does not constitute “infrastructure”: first, it notes that in a speech during his 2016 presidential campaign Christie called for building “the necessary infrastructure” for the distribution of oil and gas supplies; second (and third) , it states that he signed legislation in 2015 entitled the Water Infrastructure Protection Act and in 2010 legislation under NJ’s Environmental Infrastructure Trust to help fund water and sewer infrastructure projects.

If the point is that Christie is being inconsistent in his definition of “infrastructure,” it is a bit too subtle for me. Pipelines (even controversial ones) for the transmission of oil, gas, water and sewer are certainly infrastructure; I simply do not believe that you can take the quoted reference to “roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, broadband” at the beginning of the article as meaning that these types of projects are the only ones that qualify as infrastructure.

The second (real) counterpoint includes the assertion by Jennifer Granholm, the Secretary of Energy, that the definition of infrastructure has changed over the years. In an unfortunate example for the counterpoint she cites broadband as an example of a new type of infrastructure. I say “unfortunate” because Christie’s statement noted earlier specifically listed broadband as a type of infrastructure. The article then quotes Granholm as saying “We don’t want to use past definitions of infrastructure, when we are moving into the future . . . .”

Juliet’s rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but calling Romeo’s Medicaid expansion infrastructure does not make it so.

In both of these point-counterpoint stories the counterpoint misses the point.

Jay Bohn
April 15, 2021

The News Media Should Give Us More Details — Not Just Conclusions

We’re busy. Even though the internet gives us the ability to obtain information more directly than ever before, it is often difficult to find and takes too much trouble (not to mention thought), so we just accept the summary given by others, both traditional media outlets and tweets and posts on the internet.

We expect the media to report facts, but lately I’ve been seeing more conclusions, or at least extremely general summaries. One example is the current coverage of the changes to certain of Georgia’s election laws. Because these changes roll back some measures that reduced inconveniences connected with voting (some of which measures were established only due to the COVID emergency), the changes are described as voter suppression

I imagine that much the same can be said about coverage of other election-related bills in state legislatures around the country.

Since I expect to use many of my posts to take the traditional media to task for weak or opinionated reporting, it is only fair that I also note good efforts from time to time. Recently ABC News had an online story Breaking down claims about Georgia’s election law: What’s true and what’s not? This article analyzed claims about various features of the law and advised where both parties were being less than accurate.

COVID-19 and Emergency Powers

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s governors have issued many and varied emergency declarations and used these declarations to justify the exercise of legislative powers that they would not normally possess. Unfortunately, attempts to rein in the use of emergency powers have been viewed through the prism of politics or the perceived merits of the action taken rather than process considerations or the constitutional separation of powers.

The expansion of executive powers in the face of an emergency is not a feature of the United States Constitution (and probably not most State constitutions either) but rather has a statutory basis. Therefore, what constitutes an “emergency” and what may be done when one exists will be defined by the statute.

These issues are evident in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin’s March 31, 2021, decision in Fabick v. Evers. In that case a private citizen, Jeré Fabick, challenged certain declarations of emergency issued by Governor Tony Evers as being contrary to the terms of the relevant statute. Media coverage of the case does not go much beyond the fact that the governor is a Democrat, the Legislature has Republican majorities in both houses, and the elected Supreme Court (which is perceived to have a four to three conservative majority) voted along ideological lines to overturn the emergency declarations that were challenged.

The substantive legal issues were based upon the following statute:

If the governor determines that a public health emergency exists, he or she may issue an executive order declaring a state of emergency related to public health for the state or any portion of the state and may designate the department of health services as the lead state agency to respond to that emergency. . . . A state of emergency shall not exceed 60 days, unless the state of emergency is extended by joint resolution of the legislature. . . . The executive order may be revoked at the discretion of either the governor by executive order or the legislature by joint resolution.

Wis. Stat. § 323.10

Another statute defines public health emergency as “the occurrence or imminent threat of an illness or health condition” meeting certain criteria. [Wis. Stat. § 323.02(16)]

Governor Evers has issued several emergency declarations arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, most of which expired after 60 days. Not only did the Legislature not act to extend any of the governor’s emergency declarations, but it used its statutory authority to terminate one of them. (In response to the termination–in fact on the very same day–the governor issued another such declaration.)

A majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court determined that § 323.10’s limit on the length of an emergency to 60 days and the grant of power to extend that period to the Legislature alone meant that the governor could not simply declare a new emergency on the same basis. (The three dissenting justices argued that the various emergency declarations that were struck down were each based upon a different “occurrence” and so were permissible.)

My point is not whether or not the decision is correct as a matter of Wisconsin law (the Wisconsin Supreme Court is the final judge of that) or whether particular responses to the pandemic (e.g., mask mandates, quarantines, business closures) should be undertaken, but the danger to democracy of allowing a single person the unchecked power to make that decision.

Why do we accept that the existence of an emergency justifies extraordinary executive power? It must be because the normal processes of government are unable to address the emergency condition, most likely because the need for a response is urgent and the Legislature cannot react in a timely manner. Superstorm Sandy was a perfect example. Emergency conditions existed during the storm and the immediate cleanup, but the normal machinery of government was able to resume its functions promptly.

The need for urgent action may well describe the situation with COVID-19 in March 2020 (when there was little to no public anticipation that the situation would last this long), but the pandemic has been with us for over a year now, although its severity has ebbed and flowed. Congress and state legislatures have not been prevented from meeting and continuing to pass laws. There is no reason that the continuation of the “emergency” should not have been placed on a statutory basis. That the situation is still dire does not mean it remains an emergency in the sense of requiring urgent action. The real issue is that the executive does not trust the legislature to do the right thing.

Where the State’s legislative and executive branches are controlled by different parties, it is certainly understandable if each branch were to believe that it has a better approach to the pandemic or for the legislature to seek to limit the power of the governor.

New Jersey does not even have that excuse. The governor is a Democrat and there are solid Democratic majorities in both the General Assembly and the Senate. The Legislature’s acquiescence to continued rule by decree is an abdication of its role.

It is certainly true, as judges would be the first to admit, that the courts are not staffed with public health experts who know better than anyone else. Where these issues become the subject of a judicial challenge, our courts must not hesitate to act for fear of criticism by those to whom constitutional rights and the separation of powers are a mere inconvenience.

Jay Bohn
April 8, 2021

Some Weaknesses in NJ.com’s Arguments Against the SALT Deduction Limit

One of the more controversial aspects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, 115–97, 131 Stat. 2054, was the limitation of the deduction for State and local taxes (sometimes called “SALT”) to $10,0000. Since the passage of the act, the Star-Ledger‘s website, NJ.com, has published quite a few “articles” criticizing that change and advocating for its repeal or evasion. Two such recent articles are Biden’s new infrastructure bill should also restore your property tax break, Pelosi says (posted April 1, 2021), and Murphy leads new effort by governors to restore your property tax break (first posted April 2, 2021).

It is not my purpose here to argue for or against the SALT deduction cap. What I want to do is discuss the argument set forth in many of the criticisms that the cap unfairly impacts New Jersey and other high-tax States which pay more in taxes than they get back in federal spending and was meant to punish New Jersey and those other States for being “blue,” more likely to support Democrats than Republicans. I will also comment on NJ.com’s failure to label these articles as opinion pieces.

From the beginning of the federal income tax and varying over time, a deduction has been allowed for taxes paid to State and local governments. Among the changes over time was the elimination of the deductibility of sales taxes in the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. (Subsequently the tax code was amended to allow a taxpayer to deduct either income taxes or sales taxes, but not both.) At least as applied recently, state and local taxes may only be deducted if the taxpayer itemizes deductions. A taxpayer who does not itemize can take the “standard” deduction, which is based on filing status.

Prior to the passage of the act, the deductibility of state and local taxes might well have encouraged states and localities to provide and finance services through general taxation because, it could be argued, the cost was partially subsidized by the federal government. For example, a municipality could provide (or contract for) garbage service for its homeowners because the local taxes were deductible where the cost of a private garbage hauler was not.

With the adoption of a SALT deduction cap of $10,000 (not much higher than the average property tax bill in New Jersey, to say nothing of State income tax), States and local governments where taxes exceeded the cap could expect to experience increased public pressure to reduce those taxes. Such governments opposed the cap when the bill was in Congress, challenged it in the courts, and have constantly sought its repeal. In February Forbes published an interesting piece discussing some of the repeal arguments.

Among the arguments published in NJ.com that the SALT deduction cap was unfair is the assertion that New Jersey pays more in federal taxes than it gets back. For example, in this article NJ.com cites a report from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, which concluded that in the federal fiscal year 2018 (“FFY 2018”) New Jersey received only 79 cents from every dollar, fiftieth of the fifty states.

This is the argument I want to address.

First, its rests on the attribution of taxes paid by New Jersey residents as coming from the State itself rather than in large part by its residents.

Second, it assumes that there is some requirement of equivalency between taxes paid and federal spending within the State. Indeed, one element of the rhetoric contained in quotes from some members of Congress in these articles is calling the States which receive more in federal spending “moochers.” (Name-calling, especially by members of Congress, does not elevate public discourse, and is little different that President Trump’s rightly criticized use of Twitter to insult those with whom he disagreed.) If States that receive more in federal spending than their residents pay in federal taxes are “moocher states,” then are not New Jersey’s local government entities in the same position “moocher counties” and “moocher municipalities”? Indeed, why not measure the balance at the individual taxpayer level?

Lets look at some of the elements of the federal spending that go into this calculation. The New York State Comptroller’s report which NJ.com cites indicates that 62% of federal spending allocated to states in FFY 2018 consisted of direct payments to or on behalf of individuals. The two largest components of this category are social security and medicare, which together comprise 71% of these direct payments. If you add the next two biggest components, veterans benefits programs and federal employee retirement, the result is more than 84% of these direct payments (some 52% of all federal spending allocated to the states) are entirely based upon where the recipient chooses to live.

These NJ.com “articles” are advocacy pieces. Just look at their titles, describing the uncapped deduction as “your property tax break.” (It is of course not a property tax break at all, but a federal income tax break.) NJ.com of course has every right to express such opinions, but in response to feedback on its decision to erect a paywall to certain content, NJ.com also promised that it would “better label opinion pieces.”

As a final note, I must also point out that this issue puts NJ.com and high-tax state governors, who usually assert that those who have higher incomes do not pay their “fair share” of taxes, in the unusual position of defending a tax deduction that provides a greater benefit to higher-income taxpayers, as there is some correlation between income and state and local taxes paid, if only because those without sufficient income simply cannot pay high property taxes. The existence or level of a SALT deduction cap is irrelevant to a taxpayer whose itemized deductions, including an uncapped SALT deduction, do not exceed the standard deduction (increased to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples by the same legislation).

Jay Bohn
April 5, 2021

Why Another Blog?

I already have a blog, to which I have posted very infrequently. So, why a new one?

Over the course of the last year, I have often found myself wanting to react to political decisions or to comments in the traditional media. I have considered writing letters to the editor of my local newspaper , but the size limitations do not allow for arguments to be adequately stated.

I sometimes thought it would be nice to have a regular column, and I realized that the blog is the closest I am going to get. Therefore, I decided to create this new blog, From the Peanut Gallery, for public affairs posts and use The Bohn Blog for lighter fare.

One of my goals here is to take the traditional media to task for reporting on issues based on politics or personalities rather than on their merits. All to often, for example, reports of judicial decisions are concerned with who appointed a judge or the judge’s political party and not with the actual arguments for and against the decision reached. Just yesterday a challenge to the state-certified results of one of last year’s Congressional elections was withdrawn. No news coverage that I could find about the contest actually explained the basis for the challenge; it only reported the “count every vote” or “sore loser” comments of the political parties or the charges or concerns about hypocrisy for trying to “overturn an election.” I hope to be able to comment in depth on this contest in the future.

I also hope to develop in myself and promote in others more critical reading skills by identifying and pointing out where conclusory adjectives and adverbs are used to substitute for rational argument.

It is also my intention to keep the discussion free from insult and invective. Just as it was unseemly for the President of the United States to use derisive nicknames for other public officials, it is inappropriate for members of Congress to describe other States as “moochers” in their arguments seeking to restore the unlimited federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes. The level of discourse in comments on online news sites (if any such sections still exist) is not raised by the anonymity afforded when the commenters hide behind screen names and simply hurl insults. I am signing my posts.

I will not pretend not to have a point of view, but I will try to support it with logic.

This will be a learning experience. Let’s see how it goes.

Jay Bohn
April 1, 2021