National

With Stephen Breyer’s retirement, President Biden now has his first opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice. This has sparked a flurry of “news” about the perceived front-runners for the appointment, about how fast Biden should move (to avoid another Merrick Garland incident), about whether it’s appropriate to make (and fulfill) a campaign pledge to appoint a justice based on race and gender, among many other angles and considerations.

Here are some links (with PDFs available) provided by Peter S.

Racial Preference and Affirmative Action

NYT Opinion on Affirmative Action [PDF]

(And there have been a lot of other Affirmative Action op-eds in the last week, given the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the Students for Fair Admissions cases. Supply your favorite in the comments.)

What is “Black”?

A data point re: Barack Obama: His March 2008 speech at the Constitution Center (and a bonus musical celebration of his diversity)

One Candidate to Consider

Leondra Kruger

Maybe we’ll do “ethics” (government and business) again next week…

We’ll revisit the subject of “money in politics” to see if we can develop some new insights. (As you may recall, this is a subject we’ve discussed several times in the past.)

The original suggestion was to discuss a question something like:

Which is the greater threat to our country: “government” or “corporations?”

We can go in lots of directions:

• What do we mean by “our country?”
• Is the perceived “corporation” risk mostly about their concentration of power and Citizens United free speech rights or is there more to be concerned about?
• If we think narrowing Citizens United is appropriate, how would we do so? (Citizens also covered labor unions. What about Political Action Committees? “Super-PACs?” How about significant political expenditures by individuals such as Tom Steyer or Sheldon Adelson?
• Does “money in speech” reform have a chance of passing our federal and state legislatures? While many support reform in principle, enthusiasm seems to wane when the actual specifics are defined. Here’s an article on New York’s recent experience.

Tomorrow’s topic will be healthcare in America–again.

Many Beyond Labels attendees appear to support “Medicare for All” in Maine or across the U.S. Is this the answer to our healthcare issues? Does Medicare “work?” Is it financially sustainable as configured, or is it a transfer of wealth from future generations to current Medicare beneficiaries? We’ve discussed this topic many times in the past, bot as the formal topic and informally in conjunction with other topics.

REMINDER: We meet in the Bass Room tomorrow.