In a six to three ruling, the conservative Supreme Court has decided to
strike down President Joe Biden's incredibly weak vaccine mandate,
which pertains to large businesses, businesses with 100 employees or more.
Now I say it's insanely weak because it had all sorts of loopholes,
all sorts of caveats.
People who don't wanna get vaccinated could take advantage of those loopholes
and not get vaccinated.
But nonetheless, the Supreme Court with every single conservative
Supreme Court justice decided to strike that part of the vaccine mandate down.
Now they did decide in the same ruling to uphold the similar mandates
that would apply to medical facilities that receive any public funding or
any money from Medicare or Medicaid.
So it seems like they're applying to different standards here.
They did not sign their decision on this, which I think tells you quite a bit.
And so let me give you their so-called rationale in this ruling.
Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational
dangers, and that's true, they have been given those powers, it has not
given the agency the power to regulate public health more broadly requiring
the vaccination of 84 million Americans selected simply because they work for
employers with more than 100 employees, certainly fails in the latter category.
Is that the problem that it wasn't applied to smaller companies?
Okay, well, if that's the case then Biden should just revise his vaccine mandates so
that it applies to smaller companies.
But of course that's not the real issue here.
This is a conservative Supreme Court and more importantly,
a pro corporate Supreme Court and there were several,
I mean dozens of right wing states that sued the Biden administration over this.
You also have some businesses and
corporations who didn't wanna have to deal with testing and vaccine mandates.
And when I talk about those loopholes was, what I'm specifically referring to is if
an employee at one of these companies decides, no, I don't really wanna get
vaccinated, all they have to do is submit to COVID tests once a week.
And there are other loopholes as well, including religious exemptions and
things like that.
So really, what I believe is happening here is that the Supreme Court is
handing down rulings that are favorable to what the corporations want because
this is a pro business, pro corporation Supreme Court, that's it.
I mean we're dealing with this pandemic that will not go away mostly because of
the fact that people are still unvaccinated, not just in this country,
but globally speaking, people are not getting boosted.
It's just a complete nutter mess.
And honestly, at this point, this is what we should expect any time.
There's any common sense executive action or legislative move in Congress,
it might just be completely destroyed in this conservative Supreme Court.
>> Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about how holy
captured the Supreme Court is by the corporate interests and
again like it's very bad with the Republicans,
it's very bad with the Democrats, but on the Supreme Court,
these guys are allegedly neutral arbiters of the law, allegedly.
These guys, especially the conservative judges,
they are 1000% pro corporate and basically every single decision that
they're going to to make they're gonna side with the corporations and
I'm not gonna lie, I'm not really all that bent out of shape about it.
It's not like this mandate had any real teeth to it anyway.
And I have a hard time believing that like people who were dedicated to not being
vaccinated weren't gonna figure out a way to get around this.
Or even employers would figure out a way to not sorta enforce these mandates so
I can't get too bent out of shape about sleepy Joe's [LAUGH] mandate
getting knocked down.
>> Well, in the same decision, they did essentially apply a double
standard when it comes to these healthcare facilities.
They argue, we agree with the government that the Health and
Human Services Secretary's rule falls within the authorities that Congress has
conferred upon them.
Is that, what?
Okay, so when it comes to health care facilities, that like this kind of mandate
makes all the sense in the world, by the way, I think it makes sense in all cases,
including by the way in small businesses as well.
But look, while we keep basically seeing common sense policies or
common sense executive orders get basically ruled
against in this pro corporate Supreme Court.
I don't want anyone to feel despair because we are seeing some
positive outcomes in regard to working conditions during
this pandemic when workers organize and are willing to strike.
Now this has been a huge issue among workers throughout this pandemic.
And one trend that I think is very noticeable is that when workers
are unionized, when they're organized, when they're willing to strike for
better working conditions, including more protections at the workplace so
they don't get sick from COVID.
More often than not, they do get what they want.
So a lot of people will sometimes message me and they'll be like,
we appreciate that you're being honest about what's going on in the country, but
what do we do then, right?
Like what do you advocate that we do?
We'll try to change your immediate environment.
I mean I think that's where we've seen some positive changes and
that gives me a little bit of hope.
But under the current system that we're living,
under governmental system with this highly conservative Supreme Court with,
by the way, the fact that Donald Trump was able to successfully appoint hundreds,
literally hundreds of conservative federal judges.
We're gonna keep running into issues like this again and
again unless the people are willing to organize and really do what it takes to
challenge the one thing that seems to matter in this country and that's capital.
>> Yeah, [LAUGH] like that's basically it.
You hit the nail on the head.
The only thing that's been able to be a ballast against the corporate interest
are unions, workers organizing and striking just labor militancy.
I think when people criticize folks for being apathetic and
not being involved in the political process, what's the proof that
collectively marshaling a political will towards, I don't know,
getting Joe Biden the electoral college votes in Georgia, right?
Like he went down there the other day and some black leaders were like, yo,
we put work in like there was boots on the ground here knocking on doors like
sweat equity put into getting Joe Biden elected president of this country and
there's nothing to show for it.
Like they did all of that,
all of that hand wringing about how Republicans are gonna come and
kill our babies while they sleep because they're so awful, they're devil!
My God, save us from the Republicans, please, Joe Biden!
And what do they get for it?
Nothing, people are tired of platitudes.
People are tired of photo ops, people are tired the kente cloths Nancy Pelosi.
People wanna see action and the only action that we've seen in the past few
months, the past year is labor action.
>> Yeah, you're absolutely right about that.
That's the only inspiring and positive thing we've really seen
in this country during the pandemic and certainly during the Biden administration.
You say that democratic voters are tired of the stunts,
the photo ops, the kente cloths, but what about Hamilton?
Do you think Hamilton's still has lasting power?
>> [LAUGH] God.
As somebody who's never seen Hamilton but
have been forced to listen to it on Spotify, the soundtrack,
I was hoping that we were done with that thing.
And here goes Nancy Pelosi rearing that ugly Hamilton's head
again with just the corniest most, like, that was absurd.
That's insane.
>> So we didn't actually talk about it on the show, Was, so for the audience members
who have no idea what we're talking about because we haven't covered it,
do you wanna give him a quick rundown of what happened with Hamilton [LAUGH]?
>> Yeah, basically to commemorate, I guess to like to commemorate the day,
the anniversary of January 6th, which we know, and
is the single worst thing that's ever happened in American history,
to commemorate the day, [LAUGH] they got Lin Manuel to write a song about unity and
togetherness and I don't know, crap.
And some Hamilton cast members actually sang.
And they played the video and Nancy Pelosi was so proud of herself to
present the people, to present the congress with this beautiful song,
she had commissioned by the great Lin Manuel Miranda, it was embarrassing.
And, again, like I wonder, I really do wonder and
I mentioned this on our twitch show and I wonder if the democrats would have found
a way to pass build back better in some major way, would they celebrate it?
Like when they get people to write a song to be like, yo, child tax, credit paid,
sick leave, basically green spending so that we can get ourselves out of
the climate rut, would they commission a song or get a painting done?
I don't think so, I don't think they would celebrate that, but for January 6th,
because it conveniently paints their enemies as cartoonish, evil, blah, blah,
blah, it's so convenient for them.
They wanna celebrate that.
And again, I don't wanna make light of January 6th.
I mean to pretend that it's the death of our democracy when,
build back better has a 70% approval rating amongst the American people.
And a few people in the corporate class can just basically say, go to hell, right?
To 70% of the American people, what's more undemocratic than that?
>> Well, by the way, so it turns out that the crew did talk about that story,
it was in the bonus episode on Friday's, I'm not on the bonus episode on Friday so
for those of you who wanna check out that conversation,
you can by becoming a member TYT.com/join, or if you're watching us on YouTube,
just click on that Join button on the screen.
But yeah, I think you make such a great point, Was.
And it goes back to what we saw during the Obama administration and
it worked during that time, just like this constant dependence on
celebrity culture to get their messaging out.
But at this stage in the game where Americans are really seeing what corporate
rule looks like and they're experiencing that in their households,
they're experiencing that in their pocketbooks, they're not interested
in the stunts, they're not interested in the celebrity culture,
they want actual legislative change.
And if you're not gonna give that to them, simply relying on the boogeyman
messaging regarding the Republican Party, simply isn't good enough.
And I don't mean to minimize in any way how destructive the Republican Party
really is.
Make no mistake.
I mean, while some might think, well, January 6th was bad, but
it wasn't the worst thing that's happened in this country.
It's not just about January 6th,
it's about everything that led up to that day and
everything that has happened legislatively on a state level, everything that's
happened in regard to redrawing districts in all of these red states, all of that.
Look, the Republican Party, for all of the embarrassing, humiliating,
stupid things they say publicly, on the ground, they're pretty well organized and
they it seems like they get things done and it's stuff that they get done to our
detriment, to the detriment of our Democratic process.
I am concerned about that.
What I'm more concerned about, though, is that we have no line of defense
in regard to the Democratic Party, like none, zero.