A Word About NY Gov Hochul's Court Choice.

With the nomination of anti-labor, forced-birther Hector LaSalle, Hochul has betrayed her voters and all those who would be harmed by his rulings.

Hello, friends,

I was planning on talking about public banking today, but that got bumped when I read the astonishing news that my state’s governor, New York’s Kathy Hochul, has nominated the worst possible choice, Hector LaSalle, for our highest court. He is currently the Presiding Judge of the Supreme Courts Second Department.

New York has weird names for its courts. We begin with the lowest level, the District Courts. We move up to the Supreme Courts. Then, we have the Court Of Appeals, where final (or, pending the U.S. Supreme Court, near-final) judicial decisions are made. Remember when we talked (in our very first article!) about how the courts overturned a gerrymandered election map? That took place at the NY Court Of Appeals.

So, you might think that would mean that the supposedly-Democratic governor of the state would nominate a Liberal, if not Progressive candidate to the bench to balance out the conservative-dominated entity. Maybe that would be considered a savvy power move, or maybe it would simply be considered as representing the people of New York better, but you’d imagine she’d at least pick a moderate to balance things out.

But that’s not what happened.

A Bit About LaSalle.

Slate’s article, cited above, talks about one of his worst moves: When he went out of his way to protect “crisis pregnancy centers” against an Attorney General investigation. Crisis pregnancy centers are those groups that pose sorta-kinda like an abortion clinic, but instead of offering abortion services they try to talk people out of having the abortion they came for.

Right there, LaSalle should be disqualified from consideration by any pro-choice leader - and I guess that tells you what Hochul isn’t.

But it gets worse. LaSalle undermined protections for union leadership that allowed one of NY’s most notorious megacorporations, Cablevision, to sue union leadership for criticizing the company’s response to Hurricane Sandy. Yes, *that* Hurricane Sandy.

The third decision Slate cites is one that’s a little tricker and less clear-cut, and involves prohibiting a defendant from appealing a ruling based on what appears to be a coercively and/or deceptively obtained signing-off of those rights. His trial lawyer certainly didn’t explain what the signing meant, and that makes me wonder if the lawyer was compromised, but that’s another story.

The bottom line is that LaSalle is far too conservative for New Yorkers to stomach, and by all accounts numerous State Senators have announced they are against the pick. That’s heartening. New York’s branch of the AFL-CIO has adopted a similar approach.

So What Now?

The bottom line is that Hochul and other state Senators who support this, such as mine-when-the-redistricting-kicks-in, Kevin Thomas, need to know that they have lost our votes, at least until - and unless! - they change their minds and vote LaSalle down.

Maybe it’s just the usual, repeated traumas I suffer during the holidays talking, but there is no point in “getting out and voting against Fascism, even when we don’t like the Dem candidate” when the Democrats are lockstep with Republicans in voting for Fascist forced-birther lunatics. These moves absolutely destroy any hope that I have in making our system any better through electoral means. I mean, why don’t we just hand our state over to Republicans if we’re going to act like them?

Or, hell, why don’t we just hand over the entire country? Call up Donald Trump and say, “Ya know, your three appointments to the Supreme Court were soooo bad, but we want you back as President anyway!” Or, hell, why didn’t Hochul just let Lee Zeldin win in the 2022 election!? I don’t get it. Or, rather, it’s just fucking stupid.

I was recently told by a man who identified as a Democratic campaign worker that the “water is warm” to be a part of the party. Then, today, I saw this. What really is the point? Because this? THIS?!

This makes me not want to join these people in any swimming pools, let alone bath tubs.