New Orleans hits close to home.
January 3, 2025
Some of the victims of the New Orleans terror attack have been identified. For a partial listing, see NYTimes, Who Were the People Killed in the New Orleans Attack on New Year’s? (Accessible to all.) Among those identified in the NYTimes article, most are young people in their twenties.
Every death is a tragedy, but I was saddened to hear that the victims included the nephew of a reader, who asked that I mention Martin “Tiger” Bech. Lannyl S. writes,
I am reaching out to you yet again in a time of immense grief. My nephew Martin “Tiger” Bech was one of the victims of the unspeakable tragedy that occurred on Bourbon Street in New Orleans in the early morning hours of Jan 1.
He was only 27 years old and had a bright future ahead of him. As a son of a large, devout Catholic family from Lafayette, Louisiana, he attended St. Thomas Moore High School in Lafayette, LA and was a star athlete there.
He went to Princeton University and played football for their team.
He had just begun a promising career in New York City — his dream.
I cannot make any sense of the despicable evil in our world. And now it has arrived in my own family. We are all bereft.
I hope you will mention Tiger’s name to your followers. His family is in dire need of prayers and healing thoughts from all of our extended communities, and since I consider this community my own, it would be of immense comfort to me to know that my community might hold Tiger and our family in their thoughts.
Multiply the grief experienced by Tiger Bech’s family by the fifteen killed and dozens more who suffered serious injuries. Add to the physical injuries the horror experienced by hundreds more who witnessed the killings and aftermath.
Although New Orleans and the US will recover and move forward, the families are forever changed by the tragedy. There is no context that can lessen the pain. Indeed, the only context that matters is that the US leads the industrialized world in homicides—with three times the murder rate of the European Union.
From New Orleans to Orlando to Sandy Hook to Las Vegas, families in the US are far more likely to lose a loved one to violence than families in industrialized nations around the world.
In the aftermath of the New Orleans terror attack, the victims and their families deserve our support, as reader Lannyl requests for her family. But as soon as possible, we must resume pushing for laws that will protect citizens, workers, students, teachers, ministers, health care workers, first responders, and everyone else in America who desires the ability to live their lives in relative safety and freedom from fear.
Remember the victims of the tragedy, not the terrorist who inflicted suffering on innocents.
Update on New Orleans and Las Vegas
When I sent the newsletter on Wednesday evening, authorities were investigating the possibility that the incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas were coordinated terror attacks. Officials were also investigating the possibility that the New Orleans attack was the result of a conspiracy involving several accomplices.
By mid-day Thursday, law enforcement officials announced that the New Orleans terror attack was the work of a terrorist acting alone. See Associated Press, The Latest: The FBI now says the New Orleans truck attacker acted alone in an 'act of terrorism'.
Law enforcement officials in Las Vegas announced that the driver of the Tesla that exploded at the Trump resort probably died from a self-inflicted gunshot before the Tesla exploded. See Associated Press, Man shot himself in head before Cybertruck exploded outside Trump's Las Vegas hotel, officials say.
The likely suicide victim in Las Vegas was a veteran. Per the AP,
[Matthew] Livelsberger served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces who work to counter terrorism abroad and train partners, the army said in a statement. He had served in the army since 2006, rising through the ranks with a long career of overseas assignments, deploying twice to Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, the army said.
The fact that both incidents appeared to involve lone actors provides some measure of relief to a nation on edge as it enters a period of high-profile events, i.e., the first day of the 119th Congress (Jan 3), the count of electoral ballots (Jan 6), President Jimmy Carter’s funeral (Jan 9), and the Inauguration (Jan 20).
The Las Vegas incident also focuses attention on the suicide rate among US military veterans. The suicide rate for US military veterans (as of 2022) was double that of the non-veteran population (34.7 vs. 17.1). See Veterans Affairs, National Veteran Suicide Prevention | 2024 Annual Report | Part 2 at Table 1.
To the surprise of no one, Trump's “government efficiency” commission is reportedly targeting veterans’ healthcare as one of the social benefit programs to be killed so that Trump can extend the 2017 tax cut for billionaires and corporations. See Military.com, Musk, Ramaswamy Proposal to Slash Spending Could Include VA Medical Services.
Per the Military.com article,
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal this week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency," confirmed that they plan to target "unauthorized" federal spending, a category that includes the VA's medical services.
Musk and Ramaswamy are playing word games when the claim that the $500 billion in government spending is “unauthorized.”
The budgeting process includes many steps, including a first step of passing a bill “authorizing” spending and a subsequent bill “appropriating” funds for programs that have been authorized. Because Congress is a complete ****show, it has failed to pass “authorizations” for decades for programs for which it nonetheless appropriates funding.
Congress clearly believes that if it “appropriates” money for programs, that appropriation includes an implicit authorization for the program. See The Fiscal Times, Chart of the Day: Unauthorized Spending.
Per the Fiscal Times,
[M]uch of that “unauthorized” spending is for basic programs such as veterans’ healthcare, the Federal Aviation Administration and assorted defense and security programs — programs that Congress very much intended to fund, but for whatever reason failed to take the additional steps to authorize formally.
The “authorization” for veterans’ healthcare expired in 1998—but has nonetheless been funded continuously through 2024. If Musk and Ramaswamy suddenly claim that the lack of authorization for veterans healthcare allows Trump to defund the program, then the same logic applies to major defense programs, all of NASA and the FAA, and dozens of other programs that maintain the health and safety of Americans across the nation.
The apparent veteran suicide in Las Vegas is a reminder that allowing two clueless billionaires to decide what benefits military veterans should receive is madness.
The New Orleans incident also provides warning signs for cuts targeting federal law enforcement. As reader Peter Z. noted in a Comment to yesterday’s newsletter, the New Orleans attack will likely spur an increase in national security spending—a reasonable prediction.
As a weary nation deals with domestic terror and a crisis in mental health for veterans who served their country honorably, the ridiculous rhetoric emanating from Trump's techbros is callous and insulting.
President Biden awards Medal of Freedom to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson
On Thursday, President Biden awarded the Medal of Freedom to twenty Americans, including the co-chairs of the January 6 Committee, Representatives Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson. See AP, Biden awards the 2nd highest civilian award to leaders of the Jan. 6 committee and 18 others.
The complete list of Medal of Freedom recipients recognized on January 2, 2025, is here: President Biden Announces Recipients of the Presidential Citizens Medal | The White House.
Chief Justice John Roberts fails us again
Chief Justice John Roberts issued his year-end report on the Supreme Court. See 2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary.
Roberts’ report is an out-of-touch exercise in finger-pointing and studied ignorance of the crisis engulfing the Court. Candidly, I felt like I had entered a time warp while reading Roberts’ year-end report. It is as if there are no ethics scandals, no decisions inventing immunities that are contrary to the plain words of the Constitution, no manipulation of the “shadow docket” in a partisan manner, and no crisis in forum shopping to funnel show-trial cases to extremist MAGA judges.
The Supreme Court is in crisis, and John Roberts pretends it is 1950 for the Court and America. The failure to address the crisis on the Supreme Court is inexcusable and offensive. We deserve better from a Chief Justice.
Roberts spends most of his time defending the judiciary’s independence. Fine. “So stipulated” that judicial independence is important, but “Counsel, could you please move on to something relevant?”
Judicial independence is under attack by billionaires and interest groups who fund lavish lifestyles for justices they believe will deliver the goods. Supreme Court appointees are selected from a result-orient, hand-curated list generated by a billionaire-funded lobbying organization masquerading as a legitimate bar association. But not a word on those crises from Roberts.
As you can tell, I am over the edge with disgust over Roberts’ report. For a more sober view—that raises many of the same criticisms in a more professional style—see Sherrilyn Ifill on Substack, On Chief Justice Roberts’ 2024 Year-End Report | Challenging Critics & Invoking Heroic Civil Rights-Era Judges To Insulate An Imperial Court
The first casualty of the Supreme Court’s termination of the Chevron deference doctrine
One of the major controversies of the Court’s 2024 term was the termination of the Chevron doctrine that afforded deference to federal experts charged with rulemaking pursuant to congressional regulation. The reactionary majority on the Supreme Court concluded that federal judges—with crushing caseloads—are better equipped to make discretionary policy judgments about rules authorized by Congress to regulate industries as varied and complex as nuclear energy, general aviation, drug testing, coal mine safety, and deep-water oil drilling. See Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo,
In short, the Roberts’ Court substituted itself for tens of thousands of subject-matter experts with hundreds of thousands of years of experience regulating complex industries.
The first significant casualty of the Court’s hubris in Loper Bright was the “net neutrality” doctrine. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit overruled the FCC’s interpretation of whether broadband internet service is “an information service” or a “telecommunications service for purposes of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.” See Chris Geidner on Substack, Sixth Circuit strikes down net-neutrality rule.
Geidner writes,
In the relatively brief, 26-page decision, [Judge] Griffin declared that three judges sitting on an appeals court representing four states in the middle of the country were better suited to decide what a law in place since the mid-1990s means than the experts or political appointees at the FCC.
[¶]
Instead of the executive branch issuing its interpretation, subject to electoral constraints and judicial review (and with the benefit of those subject experts on the agency’s staff), a man who has been a judge since the 1980s wrote the Sixth Circuit’s opinion deciding the matter on Thursday . . . .
Welcome to the brave new world of federal judges overruling experts charged with rulemaking by Congress.
Recommended reading
As we all search for new, reliable sources of news, reader Ravi Chandra posted a comment today that directed me to an “ezine” called East Wind ezine – Presenting Politics & Culture of Asian Pacific America. Although the ezine specifically addresses Asian Pacific culture, many of the articles address American political culture in general.
Ravi Chandra is the new editor-in-chief and one of the major contributors of East Wind. I read two of his articles and found them to be thoughtful, well-written, and generally aligned with the sentiments of the readers in this community. Check them out: Did the Ivy League Break America? Can the Joy League Save it?, and Post-2024 Election: Preventing Psychopathy and Cruelty From Going Viral.
Concluding Thoughts
There is much more going on, but that is all the news I have time and bandwidth for this evening.
I have been disappointed to see several politicians and commentators advise Democrats to “tone it down” and “to be less confrontational” in opposing Trump's policies. Some counsel against using the term “resistance” or “opposition.” (One example is Tom Suozzi’s recent op-ed in NYTimes in which he said describing efforts to oppose Trump as “resistance” is a “bad idea.”)
While we should absolutely seek bipartisan consensus in the interests of the American people, we must also recognize that “false equivalency and “both-siderism” can create an illusory middle ground that is tantamount to surrender and “obeying in advance.”
Where is the middle ground in appointing an Attorney General credibly accused of paying minors for sex? Where is the middle ground in appointing a Secretary of Defense who was removed from a security detail on January 6 because he was deemed “an insider threat.” Where is the middle ground in appointing an FBI Director who has vowed to shut down FBI headquarters on Day One and pursue an “enemies list” of people viewed to be disloyal to Trump? Where is the middle ground in eliminating veterans’ benefits to extend a tax cut for billionaires and corporations? Where is the middle ground in banning interstate sale of contraception? Where is the middle ground in paying bounties to report mothers driving daughters across state lines for reproductive healthcare after a rape?
Democrats have already proven that they are willing to act in a bipartisan manner. Democrats provided the majority of votes necessary to pass the continuing resolution proposed by Speaker Johnson to fund the government through March 2025. Democrats could have said, “You are the majority, you pass a bill.” Democrats did not take that selfish path because they put the interests of the American people first.
Democrats are not the “Party of No” if they fail to “meet Trump in the middle” as Tom Suozzi implies in his NYTimes op-ed. Refusing to meet an extremist “in the middle” is no vice—it is a virtue.
So, if others want to wag their finger and lecture me (and others) for proudly embracing the concept of “resistance” to a man who espouses the desire to be a dictator on “day one,” wag away. We will see you on the other side.
Talk to you tomorrow!
Daily Dose of Perspective
I captured the image below intending to focus on the Flame Nebula. To my surprise, I caught several other deep-sky objects of interest. The combination makes for an interesting and beautiful photo:
Here is a key to the photo (distance from Earth)
Center: Flame Nebula, 820 light-years.
Orange star on the left edge: V1197 variable star, 526 light years.
Blue nebula above the Flame Nebula: IC 432—1,700 light years.
Blue nebula below Flame Nebula: NGC 2023—1,500 light years.
Large star to the right of Flame Nebula: Zeta Ori, variable double star—740 light years.
Horsehead Nebula (bottom edge): 1,600 light years.
I agree 100 percent that Democrats must speak out against the dangers in Trump's agenda rather than try to "get along."
I heard a Republican dedicated to opposing Trump, speak forcefully just last week on MSNBC, about organizing good speakers to combat all the lies and misinformation spewed by the non-stop "fascist media war machine" (my words.) She said it was critically important.
Tonight Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on MSNBC said Democrats absolutely need to speak up in the same sort of organized fashion to combat the rapid fire propaganda machine firing on all cylinders from the right. He too sounded fed up with the Democrats lack of organized media campaign against Republican lies.
How hard is it to start with ONE simple point raised tonight in Professor Cox Richardson's newsletter:
Republicans big goal is to keep transfering money from the already suffering middle and lower classes to the millionaires and billionaires at the top of the financial heap, who are already so rich they couldn't spend their money in two lifetimes. In order to try and divert attention from their constant addiction to sucking up everyone else's money, they are continually starting loud, flashy divisive media wars about other issues like immigration or abortion.
Americans on the right and left need to stop falling for the shiny objects being tossed in their faces continually by the Republicans and start FOLLOWING THE MONEY.
Is anyone organizing this clearly necessary media campaign on behalf of the Democrats and majority of average American citizens? If not WHY NOT???
The inane and insane death of Tiger cannot be described in words. I hope our community grants comfort, sympathy, and condolence hugs to Lannyl.
Also in the mire of the past 24 I noted that Schumer has supported the WisDems' Ben Wilkler. I hope this helps pave the path to new clarity and bold leadership at the DNC.