Summary: Cathedral City’s adoption of an ordinance banning single-use plastic straws, while doubtless well intended, is nothing more than grandstanding. A statewide prohibition will go into effect at the new year, leaving Cathedral city’s ordinance little more than a piece of “feel-good” legislation. Councilmember Mark Carnevale and outgoing Mayor Stan Henry were right to vote against it.
A federal district judge in Washington City ordered the White House to reinstate CNN’s Jim Acosta’s “hard pass” after a hearing this morning at which the Justice Department lawyers made absolutely nonsensical arguments. Today’s order is a victory for the free press, but the war against the regime is by no means won.
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Cathedral City, November 16 –- at its Wednesday night Council meeting, the Cathedral City city Council adopted an ordinance banning the use of so-called single-use plastic straws in Cathedral City.
The ordinance, while well intended as a gesture of conscientious environmental stewardship, nonetheless comes across as unfortunate political grandstanding. The state has adopted similar legislation which goes into effect on January 1, 2019. Why Cathedral City should have felt it necessary to burden its municipal codebook with a duplicative and probably pre-empted ordinance is unfortunately no mystery.
Cities throughout California, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, West Hollywood, and Palm Springs, have a history of what may be called statement legislation. The legislation itself is usually intended to cover matters that are already covered, or will be covered, by a statewide Act of the Legislature. But, by jumping the gun, cities with histories of “statement legislation” can feel good about having made a statement or taken a stand about a particular issue before the Legislature did so.
Now, fortunately, the damage that local jurisdictions can do with “statement legislation” is pretty much limited to the geographic boundaries of the jurisdiction. Unfortunately, from a Democratic partisan perspective, the ammunition that such “statement legislation” gives to Republicans and cultural conservatives of every stripe cannot be measured.
While of course, there is no good reason to take issue with limiting the use of plastic straws. (Who can forget the heartbreaking YouTube video of rescuers trying to extract a plastic straw from a sea turtle’s nose, having to make an election between leaving the straw in and potentially killing the creature, or extracting it and causing the creature excruciating pain in the process?) There is ample reason indeed to limit the use of plastic straws, even ignoring the plight of the random sea turtle.
However, trying to steal a march on the Legislature through “statement legislation” does not strike one as a compelling justification for grandstanding. Sacramento has been known to take a fairly dim view of local legislation that it sees is trampling upon the prerogatives of the Legislature, whose powers, where not limited by the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States, are, after all, coextensive with the powers of the Imperial Parliament of the United Kingdom. That includes the authority to pass pre-emptive statewide legislation on any subject within the Legislature’s competence. And the Legislature has been known to be more than a little territorial on occasion.
Thus, while the Cathedral City ordinance in question was doubtless well intended, it was the kind of political grandstanding that in the end should be rejected as politically ill-advised because it not only pisses off the Legislature, but also because it provides ammunition to haters.
Cathedral City’s plastic straw ordinance will probably prove to have been an unforced error on the part of the city Council. Were I still on the Council, I would have voted “no.”
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The Trump administration took another black eye this morning when federal District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, ironically a Trump appointee, ordered the White House to reinstate CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s “hard pass,” thus reinstating Acosta’s ability to cover the White House for “the little network that could.”
Just about every American by now has learned the history of the Trump/Acosta confrontation last week that resulted in a petulant president ordering Acosta’s hard pass revoked. Just about every American also knows that the Trump administration attempted to justify its conduct with the usual outrageous lies, buttressed by a doctored video supplied by Alex Jones’s InfoWars website. Those lies, together with a doctored video, were quickly fact checked by numerous media outlets. Those same media outlets, including Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, rallied to CNN and Acosta’s defense.
And CNN and its colleagues in the media have prevailed. Gospodin Trump’s effort to impose a media regime on the White House that would reduce coverage of the President to that which is fawning and sycophantic, has — at least for the time being — failed, and American democracy lives to survive, and fight, another day.
But what was so problematic about the Trump/Acosta imbroglio was that the Justice Department, in oral arguments before the District Court, argued that the White House had essentially unfettered discretion to keep any journalist off the White House grounds for any reason whatsoever. Reporting on CNN.com, CNN’s Brian Stelter framed the larger issue in these ominous words:
While responding to a hypothetical from Kelly, [Justice Department lawyer James]Burnham said that it would be perfectly legal for the White House to revoke a journalist's press pass if it didn't agree with their reporting. "As a matter of law... yes," he said.Fortunately for the Republic, Judge Kelly did not see the matter the way Mr. Burnham would have liked him to see it.
A President does not have the right to contravene either the First Amendment, which guarantees free speech, or the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees due process as against the federal government, on his mere ipse dixit, simply because he dislikes or disagrees with the reporter or the media outlet in question.
Of course, Donald Trump, who has a rather imperial concept of presidential power, including the power of his mere ipse dixit, won’t like the results of this morning’s hearing one little bit. Like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who, according to bombshell New York Times reporting earlier this week, also has a rather thin skin, Donald Trump can be expected to let fly with one or more rage tweets. We should expect something along the lines of “Disgraceful decision by Democratic so-called judge! Outrageous! Will appeal! Terrible for the country! Sad!”
Already, a number of media outlets are describing a sense of siege within the White House. A Politico.com headline describes Trump world as “preparing for the worst.” CNN’s victory in court this morning can only have reinforced the ominous feelings within Trump world. Will that world come crashing down? Will Trump world go the way of Atlantis or Pompeii? All the auguries indicate that the Trump organized crime family is becoming uncomfortably aware that it is dancing on a volcano.
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