Category Archives: Supreme Court

What Roberts Knew About The Healthcare Ruling.

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The primary thing that defines a nation is its rule of law, and that was very much in question with the Supreme Court decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  After a long series of 5-4 decisions heavily weighted to the right, Roberts likely knew the very credibility of the Court was on the line when he ruled that the mandate was a tax, allowing the law to stand.

Even so, the decision merely gives the Court’s reputation a temporary reprieve.

With such overtly political “justices” as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Court is still perceived as unduly biased toward the way-out-on-the-right-wing fringe of politics.  That perception began with the Court’s 2000 decision on Bush v. Gore which gave the presidency to the candidate with the fewest votes.  It has continued with a series of partisan decisions which have allowed elections to be sold to the highest bidder.

The conservatives on this partisan Court have shown a tendancy to argue cases out of both sides of their mouths to help their political causes, and they’ve shown disdain for long-standing tradition.

To wit, Clarence Thomas, whose wife was being paid to fight against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, refused to recuse himself from the case.  And, in a show of contempt for openness, he failed to list his wife’s job and income on his financial disclosure.

Scalia, a close buddy of Richard “The Dick” Cheney, has made numerous political statements that are unseemly for a Supreme Court justice.  One of the most bizzare was his assertion following the decision overturning most of Arizona’s SB 1070, that the entire law should have been upheld, likening it to the time when Southern states could exclude free blacks from their borders.

Scalia’s tendancy to mix justice with politics led columnist E. J. Dionne to write an opinion in The Washington Post calling for Scalia’s resignation.  Stating that Scalia cannot be a blatantly political actor and a justice at the same time, Dionne wrote, “So often, Scalia has chosen to ignore the obligation of a Supreme Court justice to be, and appear to be, impartial. He’s turned “judicial restraint” into an oxymoronic phrase.”

He went on to write, “Scalia should free himself to pursue his true vocation. We can then use his resignation as an occasion for a searching debate over just how political this Supreme Court has become.”

Justice Roberts’ deciding vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act would seem to have delayed that debate.  But, with Scalia and Thomas on the Court, likely not for long.

The Panderer-In-Chief.

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Anyone else amused at Mitt Romney’s response to the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday?  We were treated to the Panderer-In-Chief attacking the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act as an unconstitutional over-reach.  He called it morally wrong and vowed to repeal and replace it his first day in office.

Can anyone believe anything this man says?

Does he actually think that we don’t know that the healthcare mandate was a conservative idea?  Does he think we don’t know that he proposed an almost identical healthcare plan for Massachusetts and signed it into law as governor?

Never mind his lack of compassion and understanding for ordinary citizens.  Never mind his actions as a vulture capitalist.  Never mind that he destroyed businessess and shipped jobs overseas.  Never mind that his proposals would throw our economy into a recession while bloating our deficits.

Anyone with so little respect for the intelligence of voters should never be elected to office.

The Age Of The Corporation.

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Following the Great Depression and World War II, most people in the US were independent.  Many owned a small family farm or a small business such as a Five and Dime, a soda fountain, clothing store or whatever.  If they managed to set aside any savings, the money likely went into a Certificate of Deposit or US Savings Bond with guaranteed interest.

Things pretty much continued that way until the 1970s and 1980s.  Then, large indoor shopping malls and big box stores began replacing small retailers.  Farms became larger and larger until only a few families and wealthy corporations could afford the land and equipment.  Much of the US population moved to large cities to work for large corporations. Whatever savings we managed to accumulate went into large, corporate-controlled mutual funds, corporate 401Ks or IRAs.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, yet another trend toward corporate control began as on-line shopping sites began to replace brick and mortor stores cutting salaries and moving many jobs off-shore.

The result of all of this is an almost total corporate dominance of our lives.

We not only rely on large corporations for our jobs.  We have grown to rely on them for food, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, communications, entertainment and our investments (if we’re lucky enough to still have some).  And now large corporations are beginning to seize control of many other aspects of our lives such as education, transportation, even the military.  And, in the most disturbing intrusion of all, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling for Citizens United, corporations are now exerting even more control over our election campaigns.

Our once proud democracy is slowly fading into history.  Welcome to the age of plutocracy.

The Teapublican Book of Lies.

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You know those things Teapublicans present as facts that just never quite make sense?  The ones that are repeated day after day on Fox News Channel and right wing radio?  The conservative ideas that have been tried and failed, but keep coming back?

I’ve taken 50 of those so-called “facts,” researched them, and presented my findings in a new book:  The Teapublican Book of Lies.  It’s a sort of handbook for debates with your conservative friends and family members.

Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but you can buy the book from Amazon.

For Sale: USA, Highest Bidder Takes All.

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This past week, it was announced that Teapublican Super Pacs will spend more than $3 billion on attack ads.  Likely, there will be nearly a billion more spent by the campaigns for Teapublican candidates.

Also in the news this week, was the John Edwards verdict and mistrial over the alleged misspending of money for a 2008 campaign at a time when contributions were limited to $2,500 from any single contributor.

The juxtaposition of the two stories should tell you everything you need to know about the impact of the Supreme Court’s misguided decisions equating money with free speech and corporations with individuals.

Thanks to the Court’s five conservative justices, this election may very well go to the highest bidders.  The Koch brothers, John Paulson, Bill Marriott, Richard Marriott, Julian Robertson, Ken Griffin, and Jim Davis each have donated $1,000,000 or more to Mitt Romney’s campaign.  In addition, the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson have donated untold millions to Super Pacs dedicated to attacking President Obama.

Of course, they don’t expect anything in return…nooooo!  Why would anyone think that?

If, like me, you believe individual voters should decide elections.  Not corporations and billionaires.  If you think that elections should be determined by the quality of ideas.  Not the quantity of contributions.  Then let’s overrule the Court.  Help restore our democracy by signing the petition at www.MoveToAmend.org.

How Teapublicans Win.

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What happens when you combine the least educated and least curious portion of our electorate with the most selfish and greedy?  What happens when those people are guided by the religious certainty that the Earth is 6,000 years old and that the destruction of our planet will only hasten their opportunity to ride in the golden chariot to heaven?  What happens when they’re led by people who are willing to tell any lie and embrace any falsehood to be elected?

The result is today’s Republican Party.

Of course, they’ll never admit it.  According to Teapublicans, they’re simply trying to rescue America from socialists, communists, fascists and other undesireables such as Democrats, women, school teachers, government workers, labor unions, immigrants, gays, lesbians, transgenders, people of color, and the poor.  I’m sure there are many other “enemies,” but I don’t know what’s inside the minds of Teapublicans.  And, given the ugliness of their rhetoric, I certainly don’t want to peek inside!

The reality is that Teapublican leaders want their followers to fear their neighbors, so they won’t notice the big money interests pulling the strings behind the curtain.  They’re quite literally rigging the system and walking off with the money.  They’ve pushed their tax burden onto the already overburdened middle class.  They collect billions in government contracts and subsidies. And by gaining control of the Supreme Court, they’ve usurped even more control of our political system.

Now they’re out to undermine Social Security and Medicare.  The end result will be to give large financial institutions and insurance companies (both controlled by Wall Street) access to still more of our money.

If more people recognized what’s going on, Teapublicans would never again win an election.  They can’t win based on an open discussion of ideas and truth.  They can only win through a combination of lies, intimidation, dirty tricks and fear.

This year, they are led by a candidate who quite blythely says today what is in direct contradiction with what he said yesterday.  And his followers eat it up.  They’ve manufactured the usual number of straw dogs to excite their base and intimidate opponents, such as ballot measures designed to appeal to their religious base in order to incite more campaigning from the pulpit.  They’ve created PACs and Super PACs with tens of millions in anonymous money to buy votes.  And they are well on their way to repressing minority votes through new voter ID laws.

We’ve seen it all before…in 2000, 2004 and 2010.  And with each passing election cycle, the conversation leans further to the right and ordinary citizens lose a little more control of our country.

The Politicization Of Everything.

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The publicity for the Trayvon Martin killing served to emphasize the depths of our culture.  When the Samford, Florida Police Department announced that the killer, George Zimmerman, would not be charged, Martin’s family was understandably outraged.  They asked MSNBC’s Rev. Al Sharpton to pick up the case and publicize it nationally.  Of course, that meant that Fox News Channel and right-wing radio had to take the side of George Zimmerman.

If a travesty such as the Martin case can be politicized, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that every other part of our culture is viewed through the same divisive lenses.  We have politicized science, education, health care, contraception, religion, race, women’s rights, the environment, the military, our judiciary, veteran’s affairs, Social Security, Medicare, guns, energy, agriculture, sports and, of course, journalism.

That hasn’t always been the case.  Prior to the early 80s, evolution was considered settled science.  Few questioned our education system.  Religion did not intrude in the classroom, except in parochial schools.  Outside of our military, no one carried guns except police and criminals.  And the media were bound by high standards of objectivity.

What changed?

Following the debacle of Watergate, the moribund Republican Party made an unholy alliance with evangelical leaders. Later, the Fairness Doctrine was repealed unleashing conspiracy talk radio.  Evangelists flooded radio and cable television with conservative politics and the message that Christianity was under attack.  Greedy right-wing mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck filled the airwaves with their theories of a New World Order.  Rupert Murdoch built a media empire on hate and Teapublican talking points.  And worst of all, the National Rifle Association and American Legislative Exchange Council began writing legislation and recruiting state legislators to serve their ideological agendas.

And our conservative-leaning populace sucked it all in.

So here we are…arguing about racism, judicial “activism,” contraception, the origin of “personhood,” immigration, Bible studies and prayer in the classroom, religious messages in government buildings, cutting taxes for the rich, guns on campus, etc., etc., etc.

And all the while we’re arguing, the real problems such as a crumbling infrastructure, economic inequality, the exodus of high-paying jobs, too-big-to-fail corporations, climate change, the extinction of wildlife, an increasingly inaccessible and unaffordable health care system, and massive national debt are only getting worse.

A Truly Momentous Court Decision.

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With the US Supreme Court poised to decide on the insurance mandate of “Obamacare,” there are a few things to keep in mind.

First, the idea of the mandate that Teapublicans now oppose was originated by…you guessed it…Teapublicans!

Second, the federal government already mandates that our citizens and businesses purchase insurance…even health insurance.  You are currently mandated to pay for Social Security insurance and Medicare, and employers are mandated to pay for unemployment insurance.

What’s different about the federal government mandating that we pay for health insurance?

If the Court rules that the insurance mandate is unconstitutional, will we then see lawsuits claiming that the other mandates are unconstitutional as well?  Will we no longer have Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance?  Teapublicans have already tried to dismantle these safety nets.

And what will happen to our health care system?  Since Congress has previously passed legislation mandating hospitals to provide emergency medical treatment to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay, those costs will continue to be passed along to the insured through higher fees.  Given the fact that more than 60 million Americans will be left uninsured, health care costs will continue to rise at a rate more than 10 times that of inflation.

Moreover, the rising cost of health care will continue to push multi-national corporations to send jobs overseas.  The number of uninsured will continue to increase, unemployment will remain high, and quality health care will eventually become affordable only to the wealthy.

It’s no exaggeration to state that this decision is the most important in the Court’s history.  The political implications will be even greater than the conservative majority voting to give the 2000 election to George W. Bush and voting to permit corporations to buy our elections.

Raising Cain.

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For those of you who don’t watch The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, you’re not only missing some of the best comedy on TV. You’re missing some of the most accurate news analysis anywhere.

Lately, Stephen Colbert and Stewart have been exposing the absurdity of the decisions by conservatives on the US Supreme Court ruling that money equals free speech and that corporations have the rights of people. To do so, Colbert created a Super PAC called Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. Then after he learned that he out-polled John Huntsman in his native state of South Carolina, Colbert created an “exploratory committee” to assess his chances of running for President. (No doubt that he would be better than any of the Teapublican candidates, but that’s beside the point.)

Colbert then turned his Super PAC over to his good friend and business associate, Jon Stewart. Now labeled The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC, Stewart claims it is keeping him busy sorting receipts for crown polish, first-class airfare and his new diamond tiara, the intent is to show that there are virtually no restrictions on how much money can be contributed on behalf of candidates and how little control the FEC exerts over that money.

Now Colbert and The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC are asking that South Carolina primary voters vote for Herman Cain. Why? Colbert is too late to get on the primary ballot, and the 9-9-9er has dropped out of the race. So any votes for Cain may be assumed to be votes for Colbert and against the Supreme Court decision.

So, if you’re eligible to vote in the South Carolina primary, please vote for Colbert…er…I mean Cain. After all, if we must have a clown in the presidential race, it may as well be a good one.

The Continuing Destruction Of Our Two-Party System.

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Destroy limits on corporate political donations – check. Marginalize President Obama – check. Block Democratic presidential appointments – check. Block all attempts to improve the economy – check. Destroy ACORN – check. De-fund Planned Parenthood – in progress. Destroy labor unions – in progress. Suppress minority voters in key swing states – in progress. Destroy confidence in mainstream media – check. De-fund Public Broadcasting – in progress. Destroy the Environmental Protection Agency – in progress. Destroy confidence in government – check.

I will probably be dismissed as a leftist conspiracy crackpot for writing this. But if you think these things are unrelated, you’re wrong. More than 40 years ago, right wing Republicans along with conservative Christians set out to change the political landscape. They pushed moderate politicians from their party, labeling them RINOS (Republicans In Name Only). They attacked the media for daring to publish any story counter to their beliefs then eliminated the Fairness Doctrine to allow right wing media to lie as much as they want.

They focused on judicial appointments to replace moderate “activist” judges with conservative “activist” judges. Evangelist “Christian” Pat Robertson prayed (or should it be spelled preyed) for the death of moderate Supreme Court justices so George W. Bush could appoint “true” conservatives. They even attacked science for daring to teach such “leftist” ideas as evolution and climate change.

As a result, politics in this country have undergone a dramatic shift to the extreme right. Many traditional Republicans have switched parties or left politics altogether. Many moderate Democrats are former Republicans. And traditional Democrats are relegated to the Progressive Caucus and dismissed as extreme lefties.

In many states, thanks to the 2010 census and lack of Democratic voter turnout in 2010, Teapublican legislatures are hard at work gerrymandering congressional and legislative districts to benefit their candidates. But the most disturbing development of the Conservative/Religious alliance is the current attempt to suppress minority votes.

In 38 states (particularly swing states), Teapublicans are busy pushing bills to eliminate “voter fraud” by demanding photo IDs for voters. Nevermind that confirmed instances of voter fraud are virtually non-existant. In some states, it’s estimated as many as 50 percent of minority and elderly voters do not have driver’s licenses. Many of those people will find it difficult to obtain photo IDs. So Teapublicans are hoping that they won’t make the effort. And who will it help to suppress minority votes? Certainly not President Obama.

Our two party system and, as a result, our middle class have never been more at risk. If you think that’s accidental or the product of circumstances, think again.