Last Call For It's About Suppression, Con't

We don't often put New Hampshire in such terms, but it's a Republican-controlled swing state with a history of voter suppression tactics headed by a GOP Governor, Chris Sununu. The state has long been a battleground over the legality of Sununu's major voting suppression law, Senate Bill 3, which was signed into law back in 2017 as one of the NH GOP's first acts. After nearly four years however, the law has just be struck down entirely in a unanimous decision by the state's Supreme Court.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has struck down in its entirety the 2017 Republican-authored voter registration law known as Senate Bill 3, finding it imposes burdens on voters that are in violation of their rights under the state constitution.

The law created a new process for people to prove that they are residents of New Hampshire if they registered to vote within 30 days of an election or on Election Day without a photo ID.

The state's highest court agreed with a 2020 Superior Court ruling that the new requirements and forms involved in the process are confusing, could deter people from registering and voting and "imposes unreasonable burdens on the right to vote."

“We affirm the trial court’s ruling that SB3 violates Part I, Article 11 of the New Hampshire Constitution,” Associate Justice Patrick Donovan wrote in a unanimous, 4-0 opinion. The constitutional article cited guarantees each "inhabitant" of the state 18 years of age and older an "equal right to vote."

The court concluded that, given the burdens, Senate Bill 3 “must be stricken in its entirety”

Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, who was attorney general at the time the suit was brought, did not sit on the case. Two of the justices, Donovan and Barbara Hantz-Marconi, are appointees of Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed Republican-authored and Republican-backed bill into law in 2017.

Also concurring were Associate Justices Gary Hicks and James Bassett.

Sununu said in a statement shortly after the ruling was issued:

“It’s disappointing that these commonsense reforms were not supported by our Supreme Court, but we have to respect their decision and I encourage the Legislature to take the court’s opinion into account and continue working to make commonsense reforms to ensure the integrity of New Hampshire’s elections.”

One of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case, New Hampshire Democratic Party legal counsel William Christie, said: "Today is a great day for voting rights. A unanimous New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed that the Republican voter suppression law, SB 3, is unconstitutional.

"This is one of the strongest opinions in the country protecting the right to vote," Christie said. "We will continue to fight against any effort to suppress the right to vote in New Hampshire."

 

It doesn't get much more clear-cut than "This law imposes unconstitutional burdens on voters and therefore must be struck down in its entirety" in a unanimous decision, folks. 

It's what Republicans do. They can't win, so they make it harder for them to lose.

A Taxing Explanation, Con't

David Frum argues that the biggest sign that that case Manhattan DA Cy Vance has leveled against the Trump Organization on tax fraud charges is serious, serious trouble for Trump himself comes not from what Trump said, but what he did not say in his defense.

A grand-jury indictment of Donald Trump’s business and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, unsealed this afternoon in New York, alleges tax evasion arising from an attempt to pay Weisselberg and other Trump Organization executives extra money “off the books.” Prosecutors charge that Weisselberg and others received rent payments and other benefits without paying the appropriate taxes on them. Weisselberg and the Trump Organization have said they will plead not guilty.

So far, the danger is to Trump’s friends and his business, not the former president himself. But the danger could spiral, because Trump knew only so many tricks. If Trump’s company was bypassing relatively moderate amounts of tax on the income flows to Trump’s friends, what was it doing with the much larger income flows to Trump and his own family? Even without personal testimony, finances leave a trail. There is always a debit and a credit, and a check issued to the IRS or not.

An early indication that things may end badly for Trump is the statement released today from the Trump Organization. “Allen Weisselberg is a loving and devoted husband, father and grandfather who has worked for the Trump Organization for 48 years. He is now being used by the Manhattan District Attorney as a pawn in a scorched earth attempt to harm the former President. The District Attorney is bringing a case involving employee benefits that neither the IRS nor any other District Attorney would ever think of bringing. This is not justice; this is politics.”

Here is what is missing from that statement: “I’m 100 percent confident that every investigation will always end up in the same conclusion, which is that I follow all rules, procedures, and, most importantly, the law.” That’s the language used by former Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke when he was facing ethics charges in 2018. Likewise, when Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was accused of violating campaign-finance laws in 2016, he too was “very confident” that “there was no wrongdoing.” Plug the phrases very confident and no wrongdoing into a search engine and you will pull up statement after statement by politicians and business leaders under fire. For some, their matter worked out favorably; for others, not so much. Either way, everybody expects you to say that you’re confident you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s the thing an innocent person would want to say. So it’s kind of a tell when it goes unsaid.

An earlier statement from Trump himself likewise omitted an affirmative defense of his company and its employees, and instead attacked the professional prosecutors as “radical Left” (not to mention “rude, nasty, and totally biased”). The key line in Trump’s own statement is an anticipation of the possibility that one or another of his friends might flip: “They”—the prosecutors—continue to be “in search of a crime; and will do anything to frighten people into making up the stories or lies that they want.”

One of Trump’s skills as a politician is preparing the battlefield in advance. In the case of his first impeachment, he chose to argue outright innocence—“it was a perfect call”—and no matter how mountainous the evidence of wrongdoing, that was the line he maintained to the end.

This time, though, Trump is not claiming that “all taxes were paid” or that “it was a perfect tax return.” He’s readying his supporters for bad revelations about his company’s taxes and directing them to a fallback line that singling him out as a tax scofflaw is politically unfair.

That line of defense may well rally Trump’s supporters. It will not do him much good in court. It’s impossible for tax collectors to scrutinize every return. Selecting high-profile evaders and holding them to account is how tax laws are enforced. And if a former president numbers among those high-profile evaders, that makes the case for targeting him stronger, not weaker. It sends the message that the tax authorities most want to send: Everybody has to pay, especially powerful politicians. In 1974, former President Richard Nixon faced a review of his taxes that ultimately presented him with a bill equal to half his net worth at the time. Members of Congress have faced indictment for tax evasion, as have high-profile state and local officials.

Trump and his team already appear to expect that the law will be against him. They are counting on that fact not to matter very much—not enough to overcome the political hullabaloo they hope to raise in Trump’s defense.

 

In the grand tradition of a stopped grandfather clock being right twice a day, Frum here has this correct. Already in circles outside Trump's direct orbit, this case is being presented as political harassment for something "everybody" does but "nobody" is ever charged for. He's guilty of a non-crime.

If that's you're best defense, that you're not innocent at all, but what you did isn't criminal, when you're changed with, well, criminal fraudulence, you're going to lose and lose badly.

Everyone knows it.

Biden's Jobapalooza, Con't

Another grand slam month of jobs created under President Biden, but The Former Guy™ got us into such a depressionary hole with COVID and incompetence, that we still have months, if not years, to go.

The US economy added 850,000 jobs in June, when adjusted for seasonal changes. It was far more than economists had expected and a signal that American job growth is accelerating.

It was the biggest monthly jobs gain since August 2020, when the economy added 1.6 million jobs.

The hospitality and leisure sector grew the strongest, having the most ground to cover after the pandemic devastated the travel and service industries. That sector added 343,000 jobs. More than half of them were at restaurants and bars.

It was a "bright" jobs report, even though there is still plenty to worry about, wrote Kate Bahn, interim chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, in a tweet. It "just means it's good foundation to grow," she added.

America's once-strong labor market is still far from being back to normal, down 6.8 million jobs compared with February 2020. According to the report, 6.2 million people reported that they didn't work at all or worked less because their employer had been affected by the pandemic.

The unemployment rate stood at 5.9%, up from 5.8% in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. 

Even though the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.6%, the number of people quitting their jobs voluntarily to look for another position jumped by 164,000 in June. 

It's a tale of a job market in imbalance: Employers are struggling to attract and retain staff as the reopening spurred a hiring surge, because some workers are still not ready to return to work. Many fear infection, or worry about adequate care for their children or elderly relatives. The expanded jobless benefits that were created to soften the pandemic blow also allow people to take longer in choosing the right job for them, rather than to rush back into the labor market. 

All of this is creating an unprecedented mismatch between worker supply and demand. 

Although many economists rejected claims that pandemic-era jobless benefits are keeping people comfortably at home and away from work, various states have cut the special programs ahead of the September deadline. 

But that didn't move the needle much in June. Early data from states that ended those programs shows that didn't push workers to resume their job search, said Cailin Birch, global economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit, in emailed comments. 

"Most states will phase out these benefits in September, which could have a more noticeable impact," she added. "More than this, however, we expect an additional few months of economic growth, more progress on Covid vaccinations and the resumption of in-person education in September to be the main factors driving a stronger increase in labor-force participation in the fall."

 

So things are improving, but slowly at best. We'd need another 10-12 months like June to get back to  February of 2020. That's how many jobs were destroyed under Trump.