The World and Everything in It - January 3, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The U.S. Supreme Court considers what the phrase “violent crime” means in a case of attempted robbery.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today the Monday Moneybeat, we welcome back economist David Bahnsen and we’ll talk about what he considered some of the top stories of the year in markets and the economy.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, opening up the world of books to the blind.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, January 3rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Kids return to school amid record COVID-19 surge » Kids and teachers are returning to classrooms this week amid a record surge of new COVID-19 cases.

Some schools are once again requiring masks and some others are ramping up testing.

But a court over the weekend ruled that President Biden cannot force teachers in the Head Start early education program to get vaccinated and kids in the program to be masked.

PAXTON: We’ve been fighting this ever since Biden issued these mandates.

That’s Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

PAXTON: The idea here is the federal government can’t make up laws without Congress passing them, that the Biden administration has to follow the law. They have to follow the Constitution. They’re implementers of the law. They can’t just make it up.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty agreed. He wrote that the Biden administration unlawfully bypassed Congress. The administration ordered workers in the Head Start programs to be vaccinated by Jan. 31st. And it mandated that students 2 years or older be masked when indoors or when in close contact outdoors.

It was not immediately clear the federal government would appeal the ruling.

Twenty-four states sued over the mandates.

Mass flight cancellations continue » The nightmare continued on Sunday for travelers stuck inside crowded airports.

Airlines again canceled well over 2,000 U.S. flights.

That as airline workers continue to call in sick with COVID-19. But the weather didn’t help either.

A weekend winter storm in the Midwest made Chicago the worst place in the country for travelers. Airlines cancelled about a quarter of all flights at O’Hare Airport yesterday.

Three people missing after wildfire in suburban Denver » Three people were still missing and feared dead on Sunday after a massive fire that burned neighborhoods to the ground in suburban Denver. The blaze broke out on Thursday and destroyed nearly a thousand buildings.

David Marks lives in Superior, Colorado. He said his home was spared, but his neighbors weren’t as fortunate.

MARKS: For 35 years, I walked out my front door and I saw beautiful homes. Now, when I walk out—my home’s standing—I walk out my front door and this is what I see.

What he saw was the blackened and smoldering remains of his neighborhood.

Louisville city councilman Caleb Dickinson said Sunday…

DICKENSON: There are entire neighborhoods gone. It’s unbelievable. It’s really just down to rubble in so many places.

Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said authorities were pursuing a number of tips and had executed a search warrant at “one particular location.” He declined to give details.

PELLE: We are looking into the cause and origin of the fire. And if it turns out to be arson or reckless behavior with fire, we’ll take appropriate actions.

Pelle said the area was under a “red flag” warning on Thursday and burning of any kind was not allowed. 

Fire ravages South Africa's historic Parliament complex » Meantime, in South Africa, a major fire ripped through the county’s historic Parliament complex on Sunday.

As firefighters struggled to tame the blaze, a dark plume of smoke rose high into the air above Cape Town.

The flames gutted offices and caused ceilings to collapse in parts of the 138-year-old complex.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said authorities are investigating the fire.

RAMAPHOSA: I believe somebody is being held right now and they are being questioned, but we need to go a lot deeper, a lot deeper into how this type of event can take place and what measures we will need to take going forward.

The Parliament complex has hosted some of the country's most pivotal moments. Officials said the fire started in the Old Assembly building. It was built in 1884.

Twitter bans Rep. Greene » Twitter on Sunday permanently banned the personal account of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher reports.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The company cited multiple violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy.

Congresswoman Greene said in a statement that her account was suspended after she tweeted statistics from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. That’s a government database that includes unverified raw data. The Georgia Republican blasted Twitter's move as un-American.

Greene has made numerous highly controversial claims about vaccines, and Twitter has suspended her account multiple times. The permanent ban does not affect her official congressional Twitter account.

Twitter has taken heavy criticism for its censorship. But the company defends its content policies, saying it has removed thousands of tweets and challenged millions of accounts.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: defining violent crime.

Plus, the man who helped the blind read.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday, January 3rd, 2022! A brand new year and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today for The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

We first want to note the death of a lawyer whose work 50 years ago is front and center at the Supreme Court this term.

Lawyer Sarah Weddington argued on behalf of Norma McCorvey. That’s the “Jane Roe” who sought an abortion in the landmark case Roe v Wade.

EICHER: Weddington died in her sleep the day after Christmas at age 76.

She was only 26 years old in 1971 when she became the youngest person to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here’s a clip from the December 1971 oral argument. Justice Byron White had asked Weddington about whether abortion should have gestational time limits. He also asked about the constitutional basis to permit abortion.

Here’s how she answered.

WEDDINGTON: The Constitution, as I see it, gives protections to people after birth. It's also interesting that our statutes, the penalty for the offense of abortion depends on whether or not the consent of the woman was obtained prior to the procedure. It's double if you don't get her consent. Obviously, in our State, the offense is not murder. It is an abortion, which carries a significantly lesser offense even though the state in its brief points out the development of the fetus in an eight-week period, the same State does not require any death certificate, or any formalities of birth. The product of such a conception would be handled merely as a pathological specimen.

REICHARD: Weddington’s argument persuaded 7 justices to make abortion legal in all 50 states.

In 2003, Weddington told Texas Monthly she was sure that upon her death, her obituary’s lead paragraph would refer to the landmark case she argued. She’d thought that over time, abortion rights would be accepted by society.

But as she said, “I was wrong.”

EICHER: Clearly. The Roe decision divided national politics deeply. It galvanized the pro-life movement. A half century later and after more than 60 million unborn people lost to abortion, the Supreme Court this term takes on a direct challenge to Roe. The justices will decide whether Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation can stand. That’s long before the viability standard set by Roe, around 24-25 weeks gestation.

REICHARD: Now to today’s oral arguments.

First, the meaning of the phrase “violent crime.” Turns out, that phrase can mean different things depending on which statute we’re talking about. And when the difference means additional prison time, criminal defendants will challenge which meaning is applied to their crimes.

EICHER: Justin Taylor is one of those people. Back in 2003, Taylor and an accomplice hatched a plan to steal money. They decided to target a man who bought illegal drugs from them in Richmond, Virginia.

Instead, the accomplice pulled a gun on the buyer and demanded even more than the two had planned. Things unraveled quickly. The target refused and resisted the demand, so the accomplice shot and killed him—and then fled without the money.

REICHARD: It wasn’t long before police caught them.

As part of a deal, prosecutors didn’t charge Taylor as an accomplice to murder. He did receive convictions for conspiracy to commit a certain kind of robbery and for using a firearm to carry out a crime of violence.

The dispute here is over a statute called the Hobbs Act. It says robbery is taking someone’s property through “actual or threatened force.”

The government says even an attempt to rob fits into that language.

But Taylor’s lawyer argues that a mere attempt to rob cannot be a crime of violence. Lawyer Michael Dreeben says the government’s argument cannot stand:

DREEBEN: It argues that attempted threats are attempted uses of force, positing a meaning of "use of force" that contradicts this Court's cases. It argues that the robber on the way to the target has already threatened force, adopting a definition of "threatened" that is foreign to criminal law, appears in no case, and has never been used before.

The justices threw out hypotheticals trying to figure out what is a threat versus an attempted threat.

Listen to this exchange between Chief Justice John Roberts and Taylor’s lawyer Dreeben.

ROBERTS: This discussion actually reminded me of a scene in a Woody Allen movie -- I -- I don't remember which one it was, but you might -- where the robber walks into the bank, hands a note to the teller, and the teller reads it and says: Give me the money, I have a gub. And -- and the robber says: No, it's gun, I have a gun. And she says: No, that's definitely a "B," and -- and -- and then goes and asks the teller next to her, is this a "B" or a -- and so that's a "B". And I think the guy just leaves. I mean, which -- how do you analyze that?

DREEBEN: So that -- that would actually be a substantive violation of the Hobbs Act if Take the Money and Run --

ROBERTS: Is that what it was?

DREEBEN: -- could -- could -- yes, it would, because that would have been a threatened use of force. Now it probably would be an attempt if he walked out without the money, and that -- but that would be -- you know, if he made the threat and got money, it would be a crime. If he makes the threat and he doesn't get money because they can't read the note, it could be prosecuted as an attempt. But not all Hobbs Act attempts involve the actual communication of the threat.

I think most of the justices leaned in Taylor’s favor. Justice Clarence Thomas reviewed the facts—illegal drug dealing, attempted robbery, the fact the customer died of his gunshot wounds. He seemed to doubt the government’s arguments in this exchange with the government’s lawyer, Rebecca Taibelson.

THOMAS: Well, it just seems that if you look at the actual facts and you consider your argument, there's a bit of a look -- "through the looking glass" feel to this case. 

TAIBELSON: I couldn’t agree more, Justice Thomas. It’s almost like angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Justice Elena Kagan was equally skeptical:

KAGAN: I mean, suppose -- suppose that, you know, the guy goes in, and maybe he has a fake gun, maybe he just has a note saying "I have a gun, give me your money or I shoot," but he doesn't have a real gun, and some confederate of his calls the police department and says he's going to go rob a bank. And so the police department gets on its, you know, horse and -- and -- and apprehends him actually before he even goes into the bank. Are you saying that there's no crime here? 

TAIBELSON: Your Honor, I think there -- there may be a crime there, depending

KAGAN: Of course, there's a crime here.

TAIBELSON: -- on the details. I -- I think your -- your question

KAGAN: There's an attempted crime, right? It's an attempted threat?

Justice Samuel Alito tried to get at the problem this way:

ALITO: Is it a violation of the Hobbs Act if a person attempts to threaten but does not actually threaten? Is that an attempted violation of the Hobbs Act?

TAIBELSON: I don’t think there is such a thing as a non-threatening attempt to threaten under the Hobbs Act, if that makes sense.

I don’t think the government is going to win this one.

This final case today is about immigration law. Specifically, what sorts of decisions from immigration judges can regular courts review?

This case revolves around a man from India who has lived and worked in the United States for 30 years under a work visa. When he arrived in 1992, he didn’t go through the formal process called inspection, meaning, he didn’t apply for admission to see if he could lawfully enter the country.

In 2008, he applied for a driver’s license in Georgia and checked the box that said, “US citizen.” Now, he isn’t an American citizen, but the man says he wasn’t trying to dupe anyone. It was just a mistake.

That came back to haunt him. In 2012, the government tried to deport him because he hadn’t completed inspection and because of that false statement on the driver’s license application.

So now the question is whether federal courts can review an immigration judge’s decision that he isn’t eligible for relief from deportation.

The federal government actually agreed with the man that courts should be able to review the immigration court’s decision in this situation. So the Supreme Court appointed another lawyer just to argue that such review is not permissible.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted this oddity:

KAVANAUGH: We don’t usually have the government coming in in an immigration case through four administrations and saying, ‘we want courts to review issues…’

I do think the man will get to stay in the United States, given his record and the tenor of the questions from the justices.

But, as we all know, the immigration laws need to be fixed by Congress, and the sooner the better.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for our first conversation of the new year on business, markets, and the economy. Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen joins us. David, good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, good morning and happy new year to you, Nick.

EICHER: Before we jump into 2022, we ought to acknowledge the year gone by, and I was struck by a good list put together by The Wall Street Journal editorial board, “the Conformity Crackup of 2021” was the title of a piece talking about what the board called “the political-media consensus [proven] wrong.”

One item on that “proven wrong” list was the notion that—quoting here:

“The supply side of the economy doesn’t matter.”

I bring that up to say, that’s got to be a major storyline from the past year—and I want to give you credit for calling our attention time and again to the supply side of the economy when the rest of the economic world is obsessed with the demand side—and now anybody who’s looking for a car or an appliance or needing some work done and can’t get it, well, now the only thing people are talking about is the importance of supply.

That’s got to cheer you a little bit, that people seem to have awakened to it.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, it definitely cheers me if I agreed that there are people who have awakened to it. I wish that there were more. I don't think policymakers fully have. And I don't think that there's enough economic literacy throughout the population to fully grasp it. But I agree with the Journal that there's more people talking that way now.

But I certainly don't think that the current administration is focused on it. There is certainly a benefit that came though out of ’21, which was the fact that we didn't make worse, this aspect through significant tax increases, we basically got out of ’21, with a new infrastructure bill that doesn't raise taxes, and without any other big social spending bill. And both of those things we were told six months ago, nine months ago, and 12 months ago, we're going to be massive tax increases.

So there's a lesson to be learned here. And this is me expressing a sort of conservative appreciation for our founding fathers. But it is not as easy to pass draconian legislation in this country as people think it is, and the separation of powers and the sausage making that goes into legislation, this is all a sort of a Madisonian wisdom that kept really draconian tax increases from happening that would have further damaged the American economy.

EICHER: We don’t talk much about the stock market, except every so often, and now with the exchanges opening back up from the holidays and starting a fresh new year, let’s take stock of stocks. What do you think was the big story of 2021 for the markets?

BAHNSEN: Well, I'm not sure that there is only one big story, but I'll try to sum it up in the interest of time as best I can. You have an S & P 500, up 27%, the year after it was up quite a lot, even in the COVID moment, and you had a Dow up 18%. And yet, you did have certain kind of shiny objects that investors have been really speculative and euphoric about, get hammered a lot of those really hot, cool tech stocks got destroyed down 50, 60, 70 percent. And so for the most part, you saw risk assets do very well, you had a strong economic recovery, great year of profit growth for the market. And so all of those things are somewhat unsurprising. However, it does seem that there was a little bit of discernment from investors that they churned from some of the real euphoric crazes that were just out of control, I still think that there is going to be a day of reckoning for some of the crypto euphoria. And for even some of the really big tech companies, I expect 2022 will not necessarily be as kind there.

But then overall, you look to the risk asset environment, knowing that we got a lot of profit growth and ’21 that we thought we'd get in ’22. It kind of happened earlier than expected. I don't see how that level of profit growth is sustainable into the new year. So I suspect you either have best case more moderate expectations for returns this year. And worst case, something even worse than that. But no, it was a very healthy year for risk takers. And that is in the face of a lot of political dysfunction. And I think that's an important lesson, particularly for some of our listeners, we have got to do a bett er job at remembering the news headlines and the political behavior of leadership is not that correlated to the investment markets, and it really never has been.

EICHER: I would like you to comment on a story we talked a lot about in 2021 and that’s the problem of the labor market—record numbers of jobs going unfilled, people leaving work altogether. 

BAHNSEN: Well, I definitely agree that it was a huge story, both economically and culturally. I wish I could say that it will stay in 21. And it won't be a big story in 22. But I think there's a lot still up in the air about this. The major problem that was affecting labor markets after the silly Biden COVID bill that extended federal unemployment subsidies, and therefore incentivized workers to not go back to the workforce throughout the summer. That was largely remedied by the fact that the federal unemployment subsidy finally ended and we did see a significant reduction of initial jobless claims. month or so after that happened.

The labor participation force issue that you bring up is the real secular problem, meaning it's structural now, how are there a million people? Are there 5 million people what is the number of people that have left the workforce that don't intend to go back. And why are those numbers so heavily concentrated in the age 55. And over. And in the young adult category, let's call it age 20 to 25. Well, the reasons I believe, are that there have been good returns in investment markets and some people that are older that maybe we're on the brink of retiring, but not quite ready now feel a little more ready. And also, there's a lot of people, and this is the majority case, in my opinion, that are simply not being rational, not being thoughtful, they probably do not have the economic means to be leaving the workforce. There are child tax credits that were stimulus checks that are other transfer payments that make it feel like they can, but existentially, spiritually, socially, culturally, these people need to be at work. And to the extent there are some that have reasons to leave the workforce, I can't speak to every exception.

But as a general cultural and macro theme, I have no doubt that our society is worse off with less people working. And therefore this becomes a much bigger problem going forward, it does push wage prices higher, which cuts into profits, it does speak to labor shortage, which delays the ability of curing supply chain disruptions and getting goods and services delivered to the economy. There are all those economic implications that we don't want to ignore, and probably should be at the center of what I'm addressing, but I can't help myself. The other piece to it is that spiritual component, that existential reality of humanity, humanity needs to be busy and needs to be active and needs to be purposeful. And this is the part to me that I think we're gonna see millions of people miss out on and it has no way of ending well, so 2022 That'll be a big source of both prayer and consideration.

EICHER: All right! David Bahnsen, financial analyst and adviser. He writes at dividendcafe.com. Sign up there for his daily email newsletter. David, thank you, welcome back, looking forward to a new year.

BAHNSEN: Thank you so much. Happy New Year.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, January 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up on The World and Everything In It: The WORLD History Book. Today, the 12 days of Christmas end and a new liturgical season begins; a double-agent works to bring down a Nazi spy ring; and the man who pioneered a new way for the visually impaired to communicate. Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Louis Braille famously invented a reading and writing system for the visually impaired. The French Catholic died 170 years ago. His faith became sight on January 6, 1852.

He accidentally blinded himself at age 3, playing with an awl in his father’s workshop. His parents went to great lengths to raise him like his three sighted siblings, expressing confidence in his abilities. Braille’s bright mind impressed his teachers and the clergy, and he earned a scholarship to the first school for the visually impaired: The National Institute for Blind Youth, in Paris. Its sighted founder had developed his own method for teaching his students to read. Simon Whistler of “Today I Found Out” shares more.

WHISTLER: … which consisted of tracing a finger along raised letters. However this system of reading was painfully slow, and it was difficult to discern by touch the relatively complex letters of the alphabet.

Plus, that early method involved an artisanal process of embossing heavy papers with Latin letters, so the children couldn’t hope to write using the system.

The young Braille began considering ways he might capitalize on that system’s strength: using the sense of touch for sightless reading. He learned of a shorthand system that used raised dots and adapted it, creating an efficient way to help the blind read and write. His system was mostly complete by the time Braille was just 15. Its effectiveness came from its simplicity. Visually impaired education advocate Molly Burke explains.

BURKE: Everything in Braille is made up of six dots. That’s it. Every number, ever letter, every symbol, everything in math, everything in music, is made of six dots. That’s it, that’s all.

He stayed with the institute the rest of his life, first as an aide, then as a professor. He was a gifted musician, playing the organ at his church. He suffered from respiratory disease for years, succumbing to his illness at age 43.

Almost two centuries after its creation, Braille’s system remains virtually unchanged, and it’s known worldwide simply as braille.

Turning to the largest espionage case in U.S. history—the Duquesne Spy Ring. On January 2, 1942—80 years ago—a federal court sentenced 33 members of a German spy ring to over 300 years in prison.

Those spies—led by spymaster Fritz Duquesne—embedded themselves in jobs and positions that would give them information and leverage that could harm the Allied effort: An airline employee, an engineer, even a restaurant owner who would eavesdrop on his influential customers.

And the scheme may have been catastrophic if not for the involvement of a man named William Sebold—alias Harry Sawyer. An FBI internal film from the time:

ANNOUNCER: These pictures were taken at a busy New York street corner. The man walking up and down the street is Harry Sawyer, a naturalized German-American citizen.

Sebold/Sawyer visited his mother in Germany in 1939. On that trip, Nazi officials coerced him into becoming a spy for their cause. But, Sebold managed to tip off the FBI…

ANNOUNCER: Before leaving Germany, he sent word to us. A spy trap was set. Sawyer was working for the FBI.

He became a double agent, working closely with the network of Nazi spies, thwarting their efforts without them catching on. The bureau launched a massive effort, taking into custody the entire ring in a short period of time. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called that concerted swoop the greatest spy roundup in U.S. history. Here’s Hoover, congratulating the agents who busted the network.

HOOVER: We of the FBI feel we’re a part of a team to make America a great and decent place in which to live. We’re on that team, all of us, together.

And for our last entry, the end of the 12 days of Christmas. Call it Three Kings Day or Little Christmas, but most who follow the Christian liturgical calendar know January 6th as Epiphany.

JESKE: People have maybe heard that word, but I’m not sure most people know what that means.

That’s Pastor Mark Jeske of St. Marcus Lutheran Church of Milwaukee.

JESKE: It comes from the Greek word “phaino” which means “to shine,” it’s light shining, and when you put “epi” in front of it, that’s a Greek preposition, it means to shine through…And what it does, it celebrates that phase of Jesus life in which his glory shone through his earthly disguise.

Christians symbolically link Epiphany to the Magi presenting gifts to the young Jesus. And, in some traditions, to his baptism by John the Baptist, with both events pointing to glimpses of when Christ's divine nature shone through His humanity.

SONG: “We Three Kings,” London Symphony Orchestra

In the Christian calendar, January 6 marks the transition from Christmastide to Epiphanytide. An epiphany, of course, means seeing something for what it is—“I had an epiphany!” Many denominations recognize Epiphanytide—Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and Church of Christ, to name a few—as a season of seeing Jesus as divine Lord.

Epiphany traditions include using chalk to mark meaningful letters and symbols on the front door; special singing performances; blessings of the home; and eating king cake.

But for those without those backgrounds, January 6 still holds some significance on the calendar. Many recognize it as the last day it’s socially acceptable to have your Christmas decorations up.

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: car repairs. We’ll tell you why they’re taking so long and are costing so much.

And, Classic Book of the Month for January.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

I hope you’ll have a great rest of the day. We’ll talk to you tomorrow!

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