The Post & Email by Joseph DeMaio 12/31/2021
"A STEALTH DAGGER TO THE HEART OF FAIR ELECTIONS" Now that the Goofball’s multi-trillion-dollar “Bankrupt America by Sundown” bill has itself been “sun-setted,” thanks to the rational statesmanship of Sen. Joe Manchin (D. VA), the Democrat radicals in Congress must focus attention elsewhere.
That “elsewhere,” facilitated by a sycophantic mass media, appears to be S.2747, the so-called “Freedom to Vote Act.” The stated purpose of the bill is to “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box and reduce the influence of big money in politics, and for other purposes.” Two points to keep in mind: (1) the bill purports to foster the expansion of ballot box access for “Americans;” and (2) the bill seeks to legislate “for other purposes.”
As with most federal proposals, the bill is a hyper-byzantine labyrinth of interdependent definitions, prohibitions, authorizations, exceptions, provisos, exceptions to exceptions and – significantly for purposes of this offering – “notwithstandings.”
The term “notwithstanding” is for general purposes defined as meaning “despite,” “nevertheless” or “although” and usually connotes an exception from an otherwise applicable policy or protocol. In the case of S.2747, in the version appearing on the Congress.gov website, there are (at present) twenty-two (22) appearances of the term. However, on the .pdf version of the proposed legislation – which is accompanied by the statement that the “PDF provides a complete and accurate display of this text” – there are only sixteen (16) appearances in the relatively-short 594-page proposal.
That unexplained anomaly aside – yes, Virginia, a shocking revelation in a document prepared by the Congress and the Government Printing Office – the use of “notwithstanding” throughout the bill allows the proposed legislation to accomplish results “notwithstanding” other, previously-enacted laws forbidding such things. In effect, the “notwithstanding” gimmick allows the enactment of laws without the overt “red flag” needed to “repeal” previously-enacted laws which evince a contrary legislative intent. It is a shortcut mechanism to articulate that we are to “never mind” the other laws without going so far as to formally repeal them.
More:
https://www.thepostemail.com/2021/12/31/the-notwithstanding-gambit/
