Senate Bill 2829: Marco Rubio’s Out to Mind Your Business

Em Carpenter

Em was one of those argumentative children who was sarcastically encouraged to become a lawyer, so she did. She is a proud life-long West Virginian, and, paradoxically, a liberal. In addition to writing about society, politics and culture, she enjoys cooking, podcasts, reading, and pretending to be a runner. She will correct your grammar. You can find her on Twitter.

Related Post Roulette

33 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    Once again the Party of Small Government ™ seeks to use the power of government to intrude in private decisions and transactions so that private actors ONLY act in the way the Party wants them to. Constitution be damned.Report

  2. Dark Matter says:

    it would be nice if our Congress would put forth effort into getting important things done instead of grandstanding stunts like this.

    Not sure I agree with that.Report

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    A fun bit of irony would be if corporations pulled all their financial support from Rubio for being stupid.Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    Does this have a snowball’s chance?

    I don’t know if I should put this in the “REPEAL OBAMACARE!” pile or the “Fund The Iron Dome!” pile.Report

  5. It doesn’t even pretend to be principled. “You can sue if the promote liberal ideology but not conservative ideology” is textbook authoritarianism. What a joke.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Michael Siegel says:

      Exactly.
      As I mentioned on the other thread, theatrics isn’t meant to be taken literally, but seriously, and we should.

      Theater communicates ideas, but in a way that outflanks our rational and logical thinking.

      Like all those essays about how authoritarians promise not peace and prosperity but endless war and suffering. It can’t be analyzed or attacked using logic because it was never in that realm to begin with. The central themes of Republican messaging are all theatrics.

      Like the “Heroic Warrior” stuff of cops and soldiers isn’t meant to be rooted in a rational thought process of national defense or civil order, instead it is part of their narrative of an epic clash of cultures. That what all the cosplay is about, with all the camo and tacti-cool costumes and performative gun displays.

      Or the hysterical theatrics of victimization of mask mandates and vaccine conspiracies, or the sweaty panic over immigration and the Great Replacement.

      None of these are meant to appeal to anyone’s intellect or left brain thought processes. They all theatrics, but it would be a grave mistake to think that “theatrics” means trivial or unimportant.

      Theater is one of the most powerful tools of persuasion humans have.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        You’re correct about all of this but we’re pretty deep into BSDI.

        The left’s hysteria is on Inequality, Gun violence, Racism (no, we’re not just as racist now as we used to be), and a few others.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Michael Siegel says:

      If it’s not going to pass, never in a million years, *WHY NOT MAKE A PRINCIPLED VERSION*?!?!?Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

        If you’re trying to appeal to your tribe, then “principled version” is at odds with your goal.

        There’s also the possibility that he doesn’t want it passed so he might as well make it so the courts can’t help but toss it.Report

      • CJColucci in reply to Jaybird says:

        A. Rubio isn’t himself principled
        B. Rubio gains nothing politically from it being principled
        C. The rubes he’s playing to aren’t themselves principled and actively prefer it unprincipled
        D. Even a principled version is a bad ideaReport

      • Jesse in reply to Jaybird says:

        Because the amount of people who have a principled view of free speech can fit in a conference room at a Des Moines Holiday Inn.

        After all, Bari Weiss, current purveyor of the doom of free speech…tried to get a Palestinian professor fired.

        Also, like CJ said, even the principled version of this is dumb and a bad idea.Report

  6. LeeEsq says:

    As somebody who had facial hair since I was 19, I didn’t like the implication that a good man is by necessity a clean shaving man. This is something that exists a lot in media because I guess many women do not find facial hair attractive. I’m not really sure that the liberal version of being a good man works anybody than the conservative version. Both are heavily based around the idea that since I have an XY chromosome than my role in life is as some sort of sacrifice foot soldier for the cause. The cause will vary but I’m supposed to be the sacrifice will not.Report

  7. LeeEsq says:

    Many conservatives are incensed that light liberalism is just part and parcel of corporate culture these days. Even as recently as the Bush II administration or even early Obama, they could force corporations to back track for any sort of LGBT inclusivity. These days, Nabisco tells the Evangeliban to pound sand. Conservatives believe that corporations must be tools to preserve their version of the social order and see the light liberalism increasingly embraced by conviction and pragmatism as a great betrayal.Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to LeeEsq says:

      I get trained in micro-judgements or whatever every year. If you want to climb the management ladder it’s helpful to not be a white man (because we have enough of those).

      Corporations are under a lot of pressure by the Left to hire/promote people according to their percentage of the population.

      If you push back on that then you can expect bad things to happen to your rep or career.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

        CRT, but for white males.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          That’s a horrible way to frame LGBT issues.Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          I’d call it reverse discrimination and/or social engineering.

          I have zero sympathy for the conservatives disliking LGBT and I’m in favor of corporations ignoring the entire thing. However some of the Left’s notions of group evaluations/rights are counter to individual rights and are also taken up by corporations.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

            What’s the difference between discrimination and reverse discrimination?

            Should we analyze them using different tools and methodologies?

            In other words, should your claims of discrimination be studied through the same lens by which you interrogate black people’s claims?Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              The difference is whether or not it openly exists and/or maybe even exists.

              CRT is a narrative. Typically we start talking “structural racism”, which takes us to talking about things which have been illegal for the last 50 or so years. So events which happened 50+ years ago have way more impact than parents not be married today… despite marriage being seriously predictive on offspring success.

              Reverse Discrimination, i.e. actual discrimination, says (at best) that since we can’t find enough qualified people of a specific race/sex in the normal applicant pool we’ll try really really hard and “find” them anyway. That is probably impossible without lowering standards.

              At worst it says that no matter what a persons qualifications are, if their gender and race aren’t what we want then they don’t need to apply. That’s negative spin on “we’re going to fill our leadership with women and other minorities”.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Big picture imho the solution for discriminating against race/sex is NOT to insist on equal outcomes but rather equal opportunity.

                That’s the difference between individual rights and group rights.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Is there any evidence that any white people are being discriminated against?
                Like, actual cases, in a number that statistically doesn’t round to zero?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                You don’t need stats if you have official plainly stated policy.

                I mean seriously, try switching the words black with white or male with female and see if the policy wouldn’t attract official legal action.

                We intend to hire white men at levels far above what is what is seen in the application pool because we want to avoid white replacement.

                100 years ago society did whatever.

                Similarly I keep being surprised that courts can look at what high level schools do with Asian adminsion and not conclude that it’s discrimination based on race.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                So no actual examples of injustice to share.

                Instead it sounds like they are just seeking out minorities instead of passively waiting, which seems entirely reasonable.

                Trying to build a graduating class or workforce that matches the society which it serves seems like it has a greater moral claim to legitimacy than using the same methods to produce one that marginalizes and disempowers an entire group.

                So maybe we can say that discrimination is the latter, and reverse discrimination is the former, and they have different moral weight.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                So no actual examples of injustice to share.

                Asians at high level colleges seems pretty well documented and if I put down specific examples, you’d call them antidotal. Official policy openly carried out is the gold standard for this sort of thing.

                Trying to build a graduating class or workforce that matches the society which it serves seems like it has a greater moral claim to legitimacy than using the same methods to produce one that marginalizes and disempowers an entire group.

                To the extent we had ethical justification, that was when these efforts were directed at people who had personally experienced the same tools negatively. That’s not even close to what we’re doing now.

                Society decided these “methods” were evil (or Evil) for good reason.

                Society lacks the ability to micro-target. Drill down to a personal level and our “greater moral claim to legitimacy” is being used so Obama’s kids get a serious advantage while the child of poor Asians (who were also discriminated against many decades ago if that matters) are disadvantaged. Insisting on “group outcomes” is unethical because the only way to get them is via violating individual rights.

                Further “that matches society” is a fantasy. We’re multicultural. Differing cultural values exist. We should expect wildly different outcomes and lifestyle choices. If your culture believes in violence and doesn’t value education or marriage, that strongly lowers your prospects.

                If you view those outcomes as a problem, the solution is to encourage people to leave that culture and not to pretend it’s not the root problem. My brother did that for a while, mentoring and so on. One of the situations he ran into was what to do when the kid you’re mentoring tells you how he’s planning on killing his romantic rival.

                Further the concept that different genders will pick the same lifestyles at 50/50 is also a fantasy. Northern European mono-cultures lowered all barriers to lifestyle choice but found that increased the difference between male & female job choices.

                The expectation should be Asian students being prevented access to high level colleges is just the tip of the iceberg of unintended consequences. Academic Mismatch is a thing and distorts who ends up in which field (i.e. we’re harming the people we’re trying to help). https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/how-affirmative-action-colleges-hurts-minority-studentsReport

  8. Burt Likko says:

    1. Rubio’s bill is blatantly viewpoint-discriminatory. It therefore violates R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992) and its progeny, e.g., Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98 (2001). These may be useful precedents to cite before certain Justices on the Court today, as the cases cited involve 1) invalidating laws criminalizing cross-burning and 2) permitting kids to pray in public schools. (This, by the way, is the same doctrine that would have all of the anti-CRT legislation and rules out there laughed at as equally unconstitutional as an uncompensated gun grab, but for some reason isn’t.)

    2. After reading the bill I remain highly uncertain what kinds of things are and aren’t proper subjects of shareholder fiduciary duty claims. The bill is therefore likely void for vagueness, because a person of reasonable intelligence would have difficulty determining what conduct is or isn’t purportedly prohibited. E.g., Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358 (2010).

    3. The bill seems to suggest that a corporation that makes political donations or funnels political money towards any one political candidate, particularly those with “narrowly political or partisan agendas” or who promote ideologies that are “un-American” (whatever that means) is a waste of shareholder money and therefore presumptively a breach of officer/director fiduciary duty. Does that include making donations to federal legislators who support and enable would-be dictators who seek to circumvent the Constitution and subvert the effects of free and valid democratic elections? If so, Senator Rubio may find himself in a little bit of fundraising trouble.Report

  9. Among the rest of the nonsense, a shareholder can sue with a stake as low as $2000. That’s one share of Google.Report