SCOTUS scuttles executive branch's reliance on experts

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court transformed the nation’s power from the people to a king and his court.

Literally.

Understandably, much attention has been paid to the Supreme Court’s decision granting immunity to U.S. Presidents for what judges consider “official acts,” but a few days before that shocker, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court ruled that routine findings by federal experts must henceforth be determined by judges, too.

That threatens to upend the “Chevron doctrine” that since 1984 has deferred to people with expertise to interpret appropriate actions when Congress wasn’t specific in laws. Now, some appointed federal judge could preside over suitable consequences for, say, pharmaceutical corporations breaking medical standards, investors gaming the system to manipulate stocks, or employers defying labor laws or safety regulations.

The Court’s 6-3 ruling threatens to unleash chaos throughout government, and to create uncertainty about limits on agencies’ power to punish lawbreakers, from tax cheats and polluters jeopardizing air and water to financial scofflaws held accountable by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent said the results will be “earthshattering” and “a massive sea change.

“The constitutionality of hundreds of statutes may now be in peril, and dozens of agencies could be stripped of their power to enforce laws enacted by Congress,” she added.

Justice Elena Kagan in her own dissent wrote, “A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris. The majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue – no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden – involving the meaning of regulatory law.

“Will courts be able to decide these issues as to things they know nothing about?” she asked.

Such revelations about how much the Court has swung against regular people may escape them, according to labor journalist Steven Greenhouse, a fellow at the Century Foundation.

“Most Americans probably don’t know just how anti-worker and anti-union it really is,” he wrote in The Guardian. “The justices have often shown a stunning callousness toward workers, and that means a callousness toward average Americans.”

The conservative majority held that the Constitution’s 7th Amendment guarantee to a trial by jury applies when the government seeks civil penalties for violations, but author and Rutgers professor Anthony Grasso writes that the ruling will have four profound effects: limiting government’s ability to govern, undermining Americans’ self-governance, benefiting big corporations that can afford endless litigation at the expense of the public good, and endangering policies Big Business opposes.

“For 40 years, the federal government’s more than 400 agencies, sub-agencies, independent commissions, and executive branch departments have been able to rely on scientific and professional expertise to fill in the gaps of ambiguous legislation without worrying about judicial interference,” he said.

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, said upsetting the status quo “dramatically reshape[s] the balance of power between the three branches of government, knocking the checks and balances envisioned by the Founding Fathers off kilter.

“What happens if a company that builds airplanes objects to an agency decision that requires them to use, say, six bolts to attach an engine to a plane?” she continued. “They can go to court and make their case to a federal judge. Then, that judge – a lawyer, not an engineer – gets to decide how it will work.”

In the original Chevron decision during the Reagan administration (advocated by his EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch, mother of current conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch!) the majority opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens (appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford) gave three reasons for establishing the doctrine. One, by not specifically addressing an issue, Congress implicitly vests an agency with a limited delegation to act (reasonably). Two, agencies (not courts) have greater institutional competence and expertise in an esoteric subject matter. Three, the executive branch of government, not the judicial branch, should make policy choices.

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association teachers union, said the Court’s “MAGA supermajority granted themselves blanket authority to rewrite the rules in favor of the billionaires and major corporations — while leaving the American people to pay the price.”

Writing specifically about the impact on enforcing labor laws, Jeevna Sheth, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress think tank, said, "Future NLRB decisions would likely be subject to heightened scrutiny ... making it more difficult for (the Board) to effectively protect American workers’ rights.”

Indeed, from now on – barring any reversal of the ruling or change in the Supreme Court – courts from coast to coast can strike down rules Congress approved based on judges’ personal policy preferences or prejudices.

Chief Justice John Roberts was joined by Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas – who on July 2 separately said that he thinks the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is unconstitutional.

Dozens of Western professors lose their jobs

Western Illinois University’s administration on July 1 announced plans to lay off dozens of faculty, citing financial needs.

“In an ongoing commitment to achieving fiscal stability at Western Illinois University, 36 contracts for Unit B faculty have not been renewed,” WIU said in a prepared statement.

“Unit B” faculty are professors who work year-to-year without the job security for tenure-track teachers.

Carin Stutz, chair of WIU’s Board of Trustees, said the state-supported university has exhausted its cash reserves. At the board’s quarterly meeting in June, she said the administration must deal with the financial situation. However, neither the board nor administration has detailed how not renewing employment for 36 teachers translates to budget savings.

The job cuts could affect WIU’s campuses in Macomb and in the Quad Cities.

Merrill Cole, president of Western’s chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois 4100, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers representing WIU faculty, told the Labor Paper the union stands by those affected by the mass layoff.

"UPI will not stop fighting for our hard-working colleagues who have lost their jobs,” said Cole, a Professor of English at Western. “We are doing all we can to support and protect our students, our staff, and our faculty. We are working to build a better WIU. Please join us."

Last fall, WIU reported having 1,313 workers, including 519 faculty.

News analysis: Trump is mentally unfit for the Presidency

The risk of a “Mad King” isn’t uncommon in culture, from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1926 novel of that name to George R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones” character. But with the U.S. Supreme Court essentially making Donald Trump a monarch, and a mountain of evidence that he’s unwell, Americans have to confront a new, troubling reality: Trump is mentally unsound, according to thousands of experts who recognize the indications.

As the late AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in the spring of 2016, “When you look at Donald Trump, you have to say three things: one, he’s unfit to be president; two, he’d make it harder for working people to make ends meet; and three, he would tear our country apart.”

Some eight years later, that seems prophetic, but Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee for President and is about tied with incumbent Joe Biden in most polls.

Last month, of course, Biden looked bad for some of CNN’s presidential debate, “but lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering,” editorialized the Philadelphia Inquirer. “His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office. In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.”

A bully who’s attacked the military, belittled the FBI, CIA. Justice Department and judges, picked fights with allies and schmoozed with dictators, Trump blasts the United States as a “Third World country.” He’s a convicted felon, took classified documents and lied about them, tried to overturn the 2020 election, was found liable for sexual abuse, and still faces other criminal indictments. Maybe most importantly – and apart from candidates’ ages (Biden is 81 and Trump is 78) – voters must consider the candidates’ minds and behaviors.

Still, most attention in recent weeks has been on Biden’s condition, not Trump – nor both of them.

“As of 8 a.m. July 5, the New York Times had published 192 pieces on Biden’s debate performance: 142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces,” reported historian and author Heather Cox Richardson. “Trump was covered in 92 stories, about half of which were about the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. Although Trump has frequently slurred his words or trailed off while speaking and repeatedly fell asleep at his own criminal trial, none of the pieces mentioned Trump’s mental fitness.”

As media piled on Biden, Trump over that time displayed rratic comments and “his own disqualifying temperament and mental state,” reported Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone. “Among other alarming behavior, Trump has amplified the QAnon violent conspiracy theory; called for political foes to be tried for treason; lobbed an obscenity at the sitting vice president; and suggested that he is God’s ‘chosen’ candidate.”

Many Americans seem to suspect something. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, 57% of voters said he lacked the proper temperament to be president, while the same number agreed that he is a “risky choice” for a second term.

Democrats may replace Biden as a candidate, but there’s ample evidence of his character and competence to lead. He’s done it, working to pass bipartisan legislation in a polarized Capitol to benefit the nation, and he’s gathered capable people in his administration who haven’t needed to be fired, much less indicted or imprisoned.

Further, in his hour-long State of the Union address a few months ago, the President was articulate and quick (even responding quickly to a few hecklers).

In the most recent edition of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” 37 psychiatrists and mental health experts say Trump has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and psychologists and commentators from all ideological camps have agreed (despite a longstanding suggestion to not diagnose public figures without having personally examined them.

“Among those making this assertion are more than 70,000 mental health professionals who signed a petition warning of Trump's potential danger,” Psychology Today reported.

Apart from NPD, Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University, has said Trump shows signs of dementia, “faltering in a very dangerous way.

“I think of this cognitive decline as being another layer of danger on top of an already erratic, mentally challenged person who shouldn't be anywhere near the White House,” he said.

As to offering informed opinions about people without direct examination, it’s not unusual. At least “since Sigmund Freud analyzed the life and art of Leonardo da Vinci, in 1910, scholars have applied psychological lenses to the lives of famous people,” wrote Northwestern University psychology professor Dan McAdams.

Some in the media have been reluctant. In fact, GOP President Ronald Reagan in 1994 said he had Alzheimer’s Disease, and its onset probably started in his second term, 1985-88, but few journalists covered concerns within the White House.

Further – whether it’s mental health professionals or journalists willing to write about the situation away from “pack journalism,” there’s an obligation to share informed observations.

As Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic said on June 27, “We should tell the unadorned truth about Trump, and treat him like any other candidate for high office who is emotionally and mentally unstable.”

Some Republicans have been willing ti state the obvious, including Trump’s own aides and employees, such as Bill Barr, John Bolton and Cassidy Hutchison. They’ve described Trump as a brat at best and a threat at worst. His one-time Chief of Staff, John Kelly, called Trump “an idiot” and said he thought the president was “unhinged,” His Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, commented: “I think he’s unfit for office.”

Lifelong Republican Peter Welmer, who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and the George W. Bush White House, wrote that Trump “is temperamentally unfit to be president. I think he’s erratic, I think he’s unprincipled, I think he’s unstable, and I think that he has a personality disorder; I think he’s obsessive. And at the end of the day, having served in the White House for seven years in three administrations and worked for three presidents, one closely, and read a lot of history, I think the main requirement for president of the United States … is temperament, and disposition … whether you have wisdom and judgment and prudence.”

Psychologist John Gartner, in his essay “Donald Trump is: A) Bad B) Mad C) All of the Above” said, “This is absolutely the worst case of malignant narcissism I’ve ever seen. Donald Trump is so visibly psychologically impaired that it is obvious even to a layman that 'something is wrong with him'. "

 

Notable quotes –

 

After Trump posted his idea of a military tribunal trying ex-Congresswoman Liz Cheney for treason, the Wyoming Republican said, “Donald -- This is the type of thing that demonstrates yet again that you are not a stable adult, and are not fit for office.”

 

“Across his lifetime, Donald Trump has exhibited a trait profile that you would not expect of a U.S. president: sky-high extroversion combined with off-the-chart low agreeableness.” – Northwestern University psychology professor Dan McAdams.

 

“Across a range of behavioral and cognitive traits – temper tantrums, a short attention span, impulse control, oppositional behavior and knowledge deficits – Trump has much more in common with small children than with the 43 men who preceded him.” – political scientist Daniel Drezner, author of the book “The Toddler in Chief.”

 

“You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don’t need to be a mental-health professional to see that something’s very seriously off with Trump – particularly after years of watching his erratic and abnormal behavior in the White House. The president isn’t simply volatile and erratic, however—he’s also incapable of consistently telling the truth.” – George Conway, a conservative lawyer who’s part of The Lincoln Project, a coalition of former Republicans who’ve opposed Trump for years.

 

“Nikki Haley called on Trump (and Biden) to take a mental-acuity test. On social media and in the press, countless detractors have speculated that Trump is losing touch with reality, or sliding into dementia, or growing intoxicated by his own conspiracy theories. The sense of progression is what unites all these claims –the idea that Trump is not just bad, but getting worse.” – McKay Coppins, a staff writer at The Atlantic

 

 

 

Here are links to some of the stories about this topic published in The Atlantic magazine:

“A psychologist analyzes Trump’s personality” (2016):

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/

“Is something neurologically wrong with Donald Trump?” (2018):

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/trump-cog-decline/548759/

“Trump is not well” (2019): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/donald-trump-not-well/597640/

“Unfit for Office” (2019): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/george-conway-trump-unfit-office/599128/

“The Unadorned Truth About Donald Trump” (2024): https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/06/the-unadorned-truth-about-donald-trump/678816/

 

Peoria public-TV station probe(s) could be wrapping up

WTVP-TV 47 seems to be moving from crisis management to correction and prevention.

The ongoing audit by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) may conclude this month, said President and CEO Jenn Gordon, after her first board meeting May 21 and the station’s annual meeting June 11.

 

“We are optimistic that we will get through the CPB audit and move forward in good standing with the CPB, with funding reinstated,” Gordon said. “We anticipate a preliminary report submitted at the end of July.”

 

Some discussion last month noted that the station apparently doesn’t have some records that CPB requested.

 

In other business, WTVP’s insurance claim was resolved.

 

“We received from the Cincinnati Insurance Company the sum of $250,000 (the maximum for our policy) for an Employee Theft Claim submitted,” Gordon continued. “The board sees this as external validation that mishandling of funds occurred under prior leadership.”

 

The crisis went public about nine months ago after WTVP CEO Lesley Matuszak resigned and committed suicide the next day. The public-TV station’s board said there had been “questionable, unauthorized or improper” spending, cut some 30% of its budget, suspended publication of its costly magazine, laid off workers, admitted a shortfall of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, over time, replaced board members.

Meanwhile, responding to a Community Word Freedom of Information request, the Peoria Police Department said its investigation of whether there had been financial wrongdoing is still pending.

Board Chairman John Wieland said when time permits, the Peoria Police detective leading the department’s inquiry will interview two or three more people before wrapping up.

 

Still ahead is another audit, from the Federal Communications Commission.

 

“FCC has contacted us on an audit,” Wieland said., “but it was completely random and has nothing to do with the [rest]. This is a periodic audit that all stations have. They granted us an extension since we are focused on the [CPB audit].”

 

Meanwhile, business at the annual meeting included changing one board member, retaining a second who’ll continue as treasurer, and losing a key employee to retirement:

* The board named retired Peoria Fire Chief Jim Bachman to fill the vacancy created by Kim Armstrong, whose term expired;

 * Board member and long-time treasurer Helen Barrick – who’s worked with Wieland for years and whose late husband was part of Wieland’s company, MH Equipment – will continue as treasurer at least through her current board term, which had been due to expire in 2026; and

* Chief Engineer Jim Jordan is retiring.

 

“Jordan has been the chief engineer at WTVP about 30 years,” commented Becky Doubleday of the independent Friends of 47 group. “Alex Ferrell is in training to take his position – BIG shoes to fill. This work isn’t just a checklist that’s turned over to a new person. There’s a lot of troubleshooting in the job, much in the same way that it’s hard to replace expertise in old IT systems. And it’s not just WTVP that’s affected. WCBU is on the same tower.”

 

Also last month, the board unanimously amended its bylaws.

 

“Changes include 1) reducing the number of consecutive terms that a board member may serve on the board of directors, 2) limiting the number of terms an officer may serve on the Executive Board, and 3) adopting a whistleblower policy to promote accountability, transparency and oversight,” Gordon said.

 

Further, the board created advisory committees to augment the standing committees of Executive, Governance, and Audit/Investment, “which range from Buildings and Grounds, to Community Engagement/Events,” Gordon continued. “The advisory committees will provide the board meaningful opportunities to engage with the mission of WTVP and enhance its impact in our community.”

 

With budget cuts and anticipated funding, WTVP finished the Fiscal Year ending June 30 “in the black,” said Wieland, adding that the following year’s balance budgeted was approved last month.

 

Finally, the May 21 board meeting conceded that some long-time employees had left WTVP in “less than ideal” circumstances and recognized Bill Baker, Luann Claudin and H. Wayne Wilson with a reception.

Campus protests less rites of passage than rites of passions

Time can offer perspective and appreciation to events undertaken in youth, when courage and cowardice collide.

This spring’s widespread campus protests, focused on Gaza, have rekindled meaningful memories. There were workshops I used to do for junior high schoolers on the First Amendment when I was a university journalism professor. “GRASP it,” I’d say, using a mnemonic device indicating the five rights: Grievance, Religion, Assembly, Speech and the Press.

Gaza protests exercise First Amendment rights.

There’s also the recollection of personal involvement in similar demonstrations 50+ years ago, when protests erupted around war, student power, racism and disappointing politicians. I’m certainly nothing special; such actions, then as now, were less rites of passage than rites of passion with millions of us engaged. I hope today’s protests are similarly felt, with neither pride nor panic.

Echoing in young people’s stereos, radios and mind was music like Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 “For What It’s Worth,” with its line “There’s something happening here…”

I was a college freshman when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and, two months later, Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down, followed two months afterward by the Chicago police riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention, where peace candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy lost the nomination to LBJ VP Hubert Humphrey.

Shock and outrage swept society, including campuses, where students resented what seemed like arbitrary authority that mirrored heavy-handed government, and by February 1969, increasingly angry students defied a disputed student government election at Western Illinois University (WIU), and 2,000 of us took over the union building here.

Nine months later, hundreds marched throughout Macomb, part of the national Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam; weeks later, dozens of buses from Illinois traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in the November Moratorium, where some 500,000 Americans gathered around the Washington Monument to oppose that war.

In contrast to such turbulence, days later the Pentagon held a draft lottery that randomly pulled birthdays to see which young men would go to war. In my dorm, men gathered to watch their destinies picked on live TV. My number was 204, and the highest number sent to Vietnam was 195. A friend on our floor was numbered 137 and he enlisted soon after. He’d die in Vietnam the next fall.

Of course, Vietnam already was on the minds of people whose student deferments had exempted them from the military draft. A schoolmate’s brother had returned from Southeast Asia gravely wounded. An older neighbor who’d played Wiffle ball with us just a few years earlier was killed in combat that summer.

Activism bubbled for months and boiled over after National Guard troops shot anti-war protestors at Kent State, killing four and wounding eight. Two weeks later police opened fire at student protestors at Jackson State, killing two and injuring 12. Almost spontaneously, students invaded WIU’s ROTC building and occupied it for days, when students went on strike.

Seeing recent “tent cities” disrupting and criticizing colleges and political leaders from President Biden to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu also is reminiscent of disillusionment felt in the ’60s and ’70s. There really was political corruption then, too.

President Nixon was forced to resign after conservative Republicans joined with liberal Democrats to hold him accountable for much of the Watergate scandal. One of Nixon’s aides, John Ehrlichman, was one of those convicted, and he served 18 months in prison.

In the ’90s, Erlichman in an interview with Harper’s magazine journalist Dan Baum conceded how one of many Nixon administration initiatives targeted people like me and my friends.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies,” Erlichman said, “– the anti-war Left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

“We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news,” he added in Baum’s 2016 cover story on the War on Drugs. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Besides the reassurance many of us felt that our uncertainty or naivete were less folly and vanity than clumsy but correct, there have been moments of profound reconciliation, between those who opposed the Vietnam War no matter what, and those who backed it. Veterans were divided, too, and one vet I argued with often was a colorful guy who resembled the grizzled cowboy actor Leo Gordon. We developed a mutual respect, agreeing to disagree, and both became newspapermen, then good friends. Likewise, hometown Vietnam vets returned, harboring little ill will toward anti-war classmates.

WIU’s ROTC program eventually was moved from the building students temporarily seized, and about 20 years after that occupation I taught there.

I hope this year’s student activists make a difference, endure difficulties, and find common ground with their current antagonists.

As the Chambers Brothers sang in 1967 “Time Has Come Today.”

Is an Article V constitutional convention a ‘con-con'?

The upcoming Democratic and Republican get-togethers in Chicago and Milwaukee aren’t the only possible conventions that are being planned.

An unprecedented action to amend the U.S. Constitution bypassing the long-established process to add or subtract provisions in one of the nation’s founding documents is underway. It’s supposedly seeking to enact term limits on Congress or other relatively reasonable suggestions, but it’s open to upending the whole document.

Article V of the Constitution says, “The Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which … shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof.”

In other words, 34 states could ask Congress to call a convention, and if amendments were eventually approved by that convention, ratifying each would require 38 states to agree. 

Where did this unusual thought come from?

“The Article V Convention is a secretive plot funded by millions in Right-wing dark money,” said the nonpartisan Common Cause organization, “a pet project of a corporate-funded, Right-wing group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), funded by Right-wing think tanks and big corporations serving the interests of its wealthy donors. Billionaire Charles Koch is a major benefactor.”

The group Convention of the States (COS) says it seeks to “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials.”

That may sound rational, if controversial, but a Right-wing agenda could target the National Labor Relations Act or the Bill of Rights, eliminate federal agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency, or effectively kill U.S. Supreme Court rulings such as Brown v. Board of Education (prohibiting segregated schools).

Reasonable? Just consider the rogue’s gallery of extremists who’ve endorsed the Convention of States: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, ex-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Fox broadcaster Sean Hannity, Sen. Rand Paul, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, conservative talk-radio host Mark Levin, televangelist James Dobson, and Sarah Palin.

These are MAGA followers, not members of the pre-Trump Republican Party. Even revered GOP moderates and conservatives would be stunned. For instance, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101^st Airborne Division to enforce integration and protect the Little Rock Nine trying to attend Central High School; Sen. Barry Goldwater was a member of the NAACP and the Urban League and, as a colonel in the Arizona National Guard, desegregated his unit years before federal desegregation of the armed forces; President Ronald Reagan opposed bussing as a financial burden on schools, but he didn’t support segregation. (In fact, in the 1930s, when Reagan was a sports announcer, he opposed segregation in baseball, and when a local hotel refused to rent rooms to African Americans, the future president invited them into his family home.)

“Why would one do this?” asks Anders Walker, a professor at Saint Louis University, where he teaches constitutional law at SLU Law School. “Sam Moyne at Yale argues that a Constitutional convention could help us rid the document of its anti-democratic elements. The infamous ‘checks’ on democracy that Madison devised, for example, the Electoral College and the Senate.

“Moyne envisions a more European-style parliamentary system that would effectively replace the president with a prime minister and do away with the Senate and the Electoral College,” he tells The Labor Paper.

“I think he would also like to curtail the power of the Judiciary,” he adds.

Such a Convention of the States would have each state get one vote. So Wyoming, population 570,000, would get a voice equal to California, population 39 million. (Actually, Fresno, Calif., has about the same number of people as Wyoming: 540,000).

State legislatures and/or governors would pick delegates, except Rhode Island, where people would be able to vote on the issue, according to a Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) survey of state laws. Probably affected by gerrymandered districts, the GOP controls 31 states, Democrats 15, and 4 are split, CND reported.

Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican and a leader of the COS organization, said, “We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority, even though ... we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”

The notion literally has never been done, so it’s unclear how it could proceed, who’d enforce the call, etc.

“It’s a horrifically anti-majoritarian vehicle for amending the constitution, and hugely imbalanced against one-person, one-vote,” Chicago labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan tells the Labor Paper.

The author of the award-winning 1991 book “Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back,” reissued in 2004, Geoghegan adds. “No other democracy would permit such an undemocratic way of amending the constitution.”

Some Article V advocates favor adding a presidential line-item veto, or eliminating any campaign-finance regulations, but delegates arguably could propose any change. Once the delegates convene. an Article V Convention of States could tweak some things or try to reshape the whole document.

It’s beyond theoretical. Dozens of states have already passed resolutions (although some have rescinded previous approvals, such as Illinois, in 2022). Currently, according to Jay Young, Executive Director for Common Cause Illinois, the Convention of States effort has 19 states signed up; the Balanced Budget Amendment ("BBA") campaign has 28 states; and the term limits campaign has 8 states.

In January, DeSantis urged Florida get on board, commenting, “Washington is never going to reform itself. It’s going to be up to us to take power away from D.C.”

There are varied dangers, says Walker, also author of “The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America.”

“The risks involved in such an endeavor would, to my mind, be significant,” he says. “We currently boast the world's oldest living Constitution that has promoted a dynamic, competitive, creative system of free enterprise.  Said system has made America into an economic and cultural leader globally, meanwhile avoiding a descent in authoritarianism.  Importing European-style systems to America will probably fail for cultural reasons.”

And even more drastic, “states’ rights” result could also occur.

“Another idea might be to return to the Articles of Confederation, an arrangement that granted states much more power than they currently wield,” Walker says. “That, ironically, would diminish the power of the federal government and turn us into another version of Europe, a discordant set of sovereign states who cannot agree on a common market and are currently in the middle of a destructive 20^th century-style land war.”

Amendments aren’t necessarily bad, of course. But looking at the 27 constitutional amendments passed since 1788, they’ve often been difficult to ratify. For example, the Equal Rights Amendment, which prohibits discrimination based on gender, was first proposed in the 1920s. The U.S. House OK’d it in 1971, the Senate in 1972, and Congress set a March 22, 1979, deadline for ratification. Thirty-five states did so before conservatives mounted an opposition campaign. Five states then tried to revoke their approval (a disputed action), and the three final approvals came in 2017 (Nevada), 2018 (Illinois) and Virginia (2020). Nevertheless, the ERA is tied up in litigation, and women still aren’t legally affected by the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

“The 14^th Amendment passed only because the South was not voting in any true sense – same with the 13^th.  Otherwise, slavery would still be in the Constitution,” Geoghegan says.

That’s not lost on COS’s Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, who at an ALEC summit in San Diego in 2021 responded to concerns that progressives would be excluded in the new Constitutional Convention by saying that Tories had no role in the crafting of the Constitution and that Confederates had no choice in the adoption of post-Civil War amendments.

Viki Harrison, Director of Common Cause’s Constitutional Convention and Protect Dissent Programs, warned, “This isn’t some far-fetched conspiracy theory. “Experts are calling this the biggest present threat to our democracy.

“Just six states stand between us and a dangerous attempt to radically reshape our Constitution.”

Will GFL build Peoria's needed landfill?

The man who owns the company that the City of Peoria and Peoria County have said has dragged its feet on building Landfill #3 isn’t playing the Blame Game, reportedly telling officials that they’ll fulfill the deal.

Patrick Govigi, 45 years old this month, didn’t play games at the Civic Center Arena either, despite being a goaltender for New Orleans when that team and the Rivermen were in the same league. Soon after that near-miss, he left hockey, saying he felt others were in control of his future.

His future was – is – in trash.

Growing up in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario, with a backyard rink his dad built, and Chicago Blackhawks legends Phil and Tony Esposito his cousins, Dovigi playing hockey was natural, he said.

“In Sault Sinte Marie, playing hockey is like drinking water,” he told Canadian Business in 2022.

Eventually, Dovigi would play hockey for 15 years, including 156 games in the minor leagues between 1995- 1999.

After hockey and jobs in finance (See Timeline below), Dovigi founded GFL (Green For Life) Environmental in 2007. Based in metro Toronto GFL now serves millions of households through hundreds of municipal contracts in Canada and the United States, plus thousands of industrial and commercial customers.

From its modest beginning, Dovigi saw opportunities.

“What I noticed about the industry was that most people working in it didn’t question how they could improve it, because they had grown up in it,” he told the Toronto Star last year, “— meanwhile, they were upholding processes from the ’90s.”

He started bundling different environmental services under one company. Now, GFL is a one-stop shop with more than 20,000 employees, offering various services such as collection, hauling, sorting, transfer and disposal of non-hazardous solid waste; identification, collection, transporting, processing, recycling and disposal of some hazardous and non-hazardous liquid wastes; and infrastructure services, including site excavation, demolition, shoring and foundations, soil retention and remediation, it’s said.

Besides the umbrella approach handling most steps in managing waste, GFL’s business model has revolved around aggressive growth. For example, the corporation in 2020 spent $835 million to buy 86 waste-collection assets in 10 U.S. states – landfills, garbage collection operations, and transfer stations. The next year its 31 takeovers included PDC in Peoria, where its fleet of 5-ton, lime-green trucks seem to be everywhere. Less visible is the commitment GFL acquired in in the purchase – to build Landfill #3.

GFL didn’t respond to a call requesting comments.

Most mergers and acquisitions are funded by loans, and GFL owes a lot of money. Some value GFL at about $19 billion, although its net income hasn’t grown along with its revenues. That surprises some people.

“We completely normalized this concept of no profit,” said Wall Street Journal reporter Elliot Brown, co-author of The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion.

“Investors are so taken with the prospect of technological evolution that private backers are stretching the limits of reasonable investments and valuations,” Brown told the Globe and Mail in 2021, “– a mindset that’s also bleeding into public markets,”

Persevering – prospering – with sizable debt might compare to hockey. Compiling debt by buying companies but showing little profit while continuing to grow is like a goalie making dramatic stops at the net for a losing team that still draws crowds.

But the model has worked for him personally. Dovigi’s a financial success, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. One of Canada’s highest-paid CEOs, his compensation last year reportedly totaled $49.7 million in U.S. dollars, up some $10 million from 2020.

Dovigi’s also a philanthropist and an employer praised for paying a living wage, according to the Niagara Poverty Reduction Network in Ontario. He helped create a sports medicine clinic and has served on foundation boards working on environmental research and a hospital, and has helped Habitat for Humanity and the National Ballet of Canada. He bought naming rights to a sports/entertainment venue in Toronto, and has had homes there, Aspen, Miami, and even a small island in Ontario. He’s owned jets and yachts.

In fact, last November and December, during debates about the local control and costs of private vs. public residential trash collection, the head of Winnipeg’s Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local addressed city committees and blasted granting hefty contracts to private companies when public services could do the work.

"I think that Winnipeggers would prefer to see their money stay there within the economy, not buying a $350 million yacht," said Gord Delbridge, holding aloft a photo of Dovigi’s yacht, which is longer than a football field, has a crew of 26 to help up to 14 guests experience its garden, pool, small cinema, etc.

Delbridge added, “The ability to be able to evolve and adapt [quickly is] tough for us to do when we are 100% controlled by … the private collection business that is often profit-driven,” according to CBC News.

However, Dovigi doesn’t seem any more fazed by controversies than a confident goalie guarding against a power-play attack.

Dovigi’s faced criticism from shareholder opposition to his compensation; Moody’s Investors Service downgrading GFL and rating its debt as junk; Canada’s Competition Bureau objecting to GFL’s proposed consolidation of waste-management services in Western Canada; and a New York hedge fund’s 2020 report that criticized GFL’s “extremely aggressive and opaque business model,” remarking that its stock was “worthless.”

Dovigi dismissed the report as flawed and self-serving.

“It’s just crazy stuff you read online,” he told the Toronto Star last year. “Canada can be a weird place — we don’t celebrate success as much as we should; we try to knock the guy on top. But in my time as a goalie, I developed the habit of not reading the paper during the highs, or the lows … play the game and block the noise.”

Another Wall Street firm, Simply Wall St, notes that GFL’s annual revenues increased yearly since 2020 and predicts this could be the year GFL turns a profit. But the investor analysts temper that enthusiasm. Commenting about GFL’s “debt-to-equity ratio of 118%,” Simply Wall St added, “Generally, the rule of thumb is debt shouldn’t exceed 40% of you equity, and the company has considerably exceeded this. Interest payments are not well covered by earnings.

“A higher debt obligation increases the risk around investing in the loss-making company.”

Meanwhile, the risk of Peoria’s needed landfill expansion not being ready is real, according to local officials.

A new permit application was filed with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, which has 90 days to act, but if Landfill #3 started this fall, it wouldn’t open before the spring of 2026, long past when existing landfills reach capacity. And despite GFL assurances, the original construction bid hasn’t been updated.

“A promise isn’t progress,” one local official commented. “They say they’ll build it, but they don’t want to.”

In fact, in a GFL report at June 19's meeting of the Peoria Landfill Commission, the corporation proposed delaying construction of Landfill #3 for another 15 years.

 

Timeline for GFL & its CEO

1979

Patrick Dovigi was born that July 2 and grew up in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario, where his Italian-immigrant parents were teachers. He became active in hockey, and by the age of 14 moved to Waterloo and lived with a host family while playing for the Elmira Sugar Kings of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League.

1996-98

After two seasons for the minor-league Eric Otters, Dovigi was drafted by the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers as a goaltender in the 41^st round, and he was on the 1997-98 roster of the New Orleans Brass in the East Coast Hockey League.

2000

Following two more seasons in the Ontario Hockey League, he quit hockey and enrolled at Ryerson University in a business program.

2001-04

Dovigi’s jobs included a construction-equipment and auto leasing company, then he was hired by Brovi Investments, working in corporate finance. There, he helped a venture with KISS’s Gene Simmons called NGTV, but it went out of business. Dovigi also became familiar with the waste management business, called to deal with a sour investment – a mismanaged firm that required years of cleaning up.

2007

Dovigi left Brovi, and launched Green For Life Environmental with seed money of about $250,000 and fewer than a dozen employees. Specializing in buying smaller waste-management companies, GFL’s business and revenues – and debt – grew, becoming one of North America’s biggest waste-management companies.

2018-20

Dovigi started, then postponed, Initial Public Offerings to take GFL public, completing the change in 2020.

2021

In one year, GFL acquired 31 waste-management companies, including PDC in Peoria, where one of its responsibilities is the planned Landfill #3.

Since

Peoria’s landfill complex outside Edwards is owned by the City of Peoria and Peoria County. Its Landfill #1 section was full by 1998, and Landfill #2 (operated by Waste Management, Inc.) is expected to reach capacity this year. Landfill #3 was anticipated to be in operation by this year, but it’s not even started after years of delays.

In April, Peoria County served GFL a breach-of-contract notice, but weeks later at a meeting of local officials and GFL representatives, including Dovigi, GFL reportedly said it honors its contracts.