Supreme Logic

I was reading about a supreme Court’s ruling in the recent case as to whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act also protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination.

You have probably heard that according to this SCOTUS, it does. However, as one article put it: “Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissenting opinion saying, ‘The common understanding of sex discrimination in 1964 was bias against women or men and did not encompass discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. If Congress wanted to protect gay and transgender workers, he wrote, it could pass a new law.’

The article went on to comment: “Let me break down Alito’s argument: Because homophobia was more acceptable in 1964 when the anti-discrimination act was written and the creators of that law had no intention of protecting LGBTQ people, that law should not protect LGBTQ people.”

I wonder if Justice Alito’s logic extends to the Second Amendment right to bear arms, in that the amendment was referring to smooth bore, single shot muskets and swords and “If Congress wanted to protect the right to own and bear modern firearms, it could pass a new law.” I wonder how the Justice’s NRA supporters would view throwing that idea open to Congress.

And wouldn’t it be simpler to restrict employers as to hiring and firing to “job related performance” and nothing else. This would allow firings for not having the money to pay the worker, or the job was no longer needed, or the employee stinks and refuses to bathe, or . . . etc., but shouldn’t the reasoning be related to the job and not the category one wishes to stuff the employee into?

Public Funding of Religious Schools?

One could ask why charter schools are resisting government oversight so very vigorously, but one would question that only if one didn’t realize who is behind the charter school movement as it is currently constituted. These movers and shakers are conservatives looking to make money, a great deal of it, in a deregulated business. After having hoovered up as much money as could be made in the private sector, they looked at the pile of money that was being spent on public educations and said “I want me some of that!”

But these blood sucking assholes are not just out for #1, they are also a stalking horse for the public funding of private religious schools.

“Tomorrow, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in a crucial case called Espinoza v. Montana. The goal of the Espinoza plaintiffs is to strike down state laws that prohibit public funding for religious schools. This is a case that could not only erase the line between church and state but could actually compel states to fund religious schools. It would require states to fund religious schools of every kind, and no one knows who will determine what is a legitimate religious school. It would divert funding from public schools to support students enrolled in religious schools, now and in the future.” (Source: Diane Ravitch’s Blog)

To my mind, there are a number of ways that this could occur and that would be if all religious schools were included in the deal (Ashrams, Yeshivas, Catholic schools, Sikh schools, Scientology schools, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ schools, Evangelical schools, etc.), that would eliminate showing some of the favoritism which is expected and government wouldn’t be sponsoring a religion, it would be sponsoring all of them. And, of course, the cost of accepting the funding would also include accepting government oversight and complying with the national hiring laws, anti-discrimination laws, etc. This is under the well-attested constitutional principle of “He who pays the piper names the tune.”

Oh, the religious schools are no longer interested? Ah!

SCOTUS

You’d think that the evangelical Christians behind this effort would be more aware of Church History. These folks seem to be quite anti-intellectual, and that includes with regard to their own documents. That notwithstanding, the Christian Church of the time, the “Orthodox Church” as it came to be named, even later to be called the Catholic Church, made a deal with the Devil by accepting status within the Roman Empire, first as a official state religion of Rome and then the official state religion of Rome. Think about this . . . Rome, represent Jesus’ executioners in this corner, and the relatively powerless nascent Christian Church in the other corner. A marriage made in . . . Hell.

The Christian Church officials of the time, like those behind this case, drooled over the prospects of exerting Roman state power in support of their religion. When they first acquired it, it was applied to the extermination of pagan cults (aided by Roman officials cashing in by claiming the confiscated lands and buildings of those cults). Once the pagan cults were vanquished, they took on the heretics. Of course, the definition of heretic was actually anyone who opposed the power of this or that ambitious prelate. (There was no central authority in the church at the time, there were just ambitious church politicians looking to claim it. Are you at all surprised that the church in Rome won that contest?) Those prelates used theological wars to provide the basis for greater power acquisitions.

Oh, and the cost of having state power at their beck and call? Well, it was steep. Most of the practices of the Christians of the third and fourth centuries no longer exist. They have been replaced by formalisms urged by Roman cult officials. (The separation of laity and priests, heck—priests and preachers, music in church, funny robes being worn by presiding officials, oh—presiding officials, funny hats being worn, you name it.) All adopted because of the Romans.

So, if the religious schools would sign on to play by the rules every other public school has to play by, then I might not oppose this move. Of course, the religious would be getting in bed with secular types who might just strangle them in their sleep. We can only hope.

 

A New Slant on the Second Amendment Debate

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
(Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution)

Quite a few people are unaware that until quite recently most people and most Supreme Court Justices viewed the Second Amendment as addressing other than an individual right. Since its ratification, Americans have been arguing over the amendment’s meaning and interpretation. One side interprets the amendment to mean it provides for collective rights (of militia members), while the opposing view is that it provides individual rights.

Until quite recently, this was considered mostly a collective right, not an individual one, with few Supreme Court cases addressing that matter (in effect, they were hiding from an definitive decision). That all changed with District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008. (Yes, 2008, eleven years ago, peeps! Pay attention!) The case centered on Dick Heller, a licensed special police office in Washington, D.C., who challenged the nation’s capital’s handgun ban. For the first time, the Supreme Court ruled that despite state laws, individuals who were not part of a state militia did have the right to bear arms. As part of its ruling, the court wrote, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” (Empahsis mine. SR).

So now the Second Amendment addresses the government’s ability (inability, actually) to control an individual right. And that will be the case until a reversal of this opinion is had, so basically forever.

But, consider this. If you strip out all of the militia verbiage (which creates the collective vs. individual brouhaha) and just look at the rest of it, it says:

“. . . the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Keep and bear. “Keep” refers to people who already have an “arm” and that they are to be allowed to keep (store, house, etc.) those arms and “bear” means to carry and, in this case, use the arms involved. But it says nothing about the government infringing upon the right to acquire firearms. (None other than Antonin Scalia stated in that 2008 decision the opinion that for him, “to bear” was simple enough, meaning “to carry.” And “arms” were just weapons. He conceded that there was an idiom, “to bear arms,” which meant to belong to an organized military force. But this was only a possible import of the phrase, not its core meaning. So, while establishing this new individual right, he also established with the terms “keep” and “bear” were in this amendment.)

So, while the government cannot infringe the right to keep and bear arms, it is free to legislate who can acquire arms and for what purposes. We can limit what arms can be acquired, how many, how much ammunition, etc. and the conditions that need to be met to be able to acquire them, which includes having a license, passing a training program, being sane, providing insurance against criminal use, etc.

Well, what do you think?

Some Have More Equal Rights Than Others

No, we are not talking Animal Farm here, we are talking about Republican court packing which has created a Supreme Court consisting of five Justices wedded to the Religious Right. If the Republicans win the next presidential election and retain control of the Senate, it is quite likely that Justice Ginsberg will retire from the Court and be replaced with a sixth Justice wedded to the Religious Right.

The consequences of this are huge. We are faced with avoiding taking cases on church-state separation to the Supreme Court out of fear as to how they might rule. (Look what they did with Citizens United.) And, once the federal courts indicate that they favor religious exceptionalism, look to the more conservative states to be making laws favoring religious groups by the score.

Right now, the recent history of the court has provided exclusions for religious groups from obeying the law. They say, everyone must obey the law . . . except . . . if you have a profound religious belief, you do not have to. Consider the Obamacare contraception coverage situation, as just one example. You must obey the law, they do not.

The whole idea of the separation of church and state was to keep religious squabbles outside of government . . . and . . . to not have government bodies deciding religious issues. It protects the government from religion and religion from government. Once that barrier is broached (and there are already holes in the dike) then where is the line to be drawn as to how much the government can favor the religious over the non-religious? There is no natural divide, so as the metaphor goes, the flood gates will be open. Once that happens, how long will it be before states pass laws favoring one religion over others? (You will only need a stopwatch to measure how long that will take.)

Any number of current justices believe that the religious can be favored over the non-religious under the Constitution. This leaves the non-religious in a second class status, with only the freedom of speech provision of the Constitution to protect us.

And so many of the religious wonder why atheists are so “hostile” to religion! Even when religious people, some–not all, are actively working to get the law to favor them over us. That’s one reason for the hostility. (D’ya think?)

Elections have consequences. If you want to continue the Repubs court packing practices, then indeed vote for Republicans for Senate and President. Ruth Ginsberg cannot live forever. If the Supreme Court gets packed with even more adherents for the Religious Right movement, then the GOP will have its fondest wish, for trickle down religiosity incorporated into our governments, to become the state of this country for decades to come.

SCOTUS … Wandering … Wandering

The US Supreme Court decided to stay out of a case from New Jersey about taxpayer funding of the historical preservation of churches. This leaves in place a decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court that held the denial of state funds to religious establishments did not violate the church’s free exercise rights.

Of course, the unwise and unwary justices couldn’t leave well enough alone:

“At some point, this court will need to decide whether governments that distribute historic preservation funds may deny funds to religious organizations simply because the organizations are religious. … [B]arring religious organizations because they are religious from a general historic preservation grants program is pure discrimination against religion.” Justice Brett Kavanaugh

He says “discrimination” as if it were wrong. In this case discrimination is right. The word “discrimination” has taken on as a primary meaning of discriminating for illegal reasons, such as racial or age discrimination in hiring. But the word just means being able to recognize a distinction; to differentiate. In the justice’s case, he is supposed to discriminate between actions the government is legally allowed to take and actions the government is not. If I may quote from the First Amendment to the Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;. . .”

Since the adoption of that amendment, the courts have ruled over and over that the government cannot use funds in support of any religion and that this rule applies to the states as well as the federal government. So, according to the Constitution, the SCOTUS is supposed to discriminate between funds spent legally and funds spent illegally, in this case “in support of any religion.”

So, in response to Justice Kavanaugh’s “is pure discrimination against religion.” Yes, thank you, for recognizing what the Constitution stipulates we must do. You have finally recognized your duty and my hope is that you continue to discriminate for the Constitution as you have sworn to do.

 

Defining Conservatives

A self-defined conservative laid out a number of points why he finds conservatism attractive. These are not all of his points, just some and I respond to these. Here is my truncation of his list, mostly without the supporting commentary:

1. Conservatives are in favor of less government.
2. Conservatives are in favor of following the law.
3. Conservatives seem to support lower taxes. Government can’t really do anything right, companies are much better at getting the right products to the right people at the right time. The higher taxes go, the less well they can do that and the more government will step in and screw things up even further.
4. Conservatives want people to reach their full potential. They want people to enjoy life and be the most that they can be – without interference from anyone else or from the government – especially from the government.
5. Conservatives are pro-immigration … but they want legal immigration, not illegal immigration.
6. Conservatives value life.
7. Conservatives believe in helping out people who have less than they do. Did you know that 80% of charity money comes from conservatives?
8. Conservatives believe in the Constitution and that the Constitution is the paramount law of the land. They believe the government should follow the Constitution and the law and not butt into people’s private affairs.
9. Conservatives will fight for your right to say whatever you please even if they disagree with it.
10. If you’re poor, a conservative will give you a chance at a job, they will try to help you get an education and a place to live, food and clothing if you need it. But they also expect you to take responsibility for your own life.
11. The way I see it, is that conservatives want things – like in politics – to work.
12. Conservatives favor capitalism over socialism because they know that capitalism works better.
13. Conservatives believe in a strong defense because every country that has dropped their defense has been attacked by some other country.

I don’t know how far I will go with these, but here are some of my responses.

Conservatives are in favor of less government. Well, yes and no. The federal government has expanded under all Democrats and Republican presidents in my lifetime, so no matter what is said, we have gotten more government and not less. The claim that conservatives are in favor of less government is ideological support for their attempts to cut parts of the government they do not like. They tend to follow actions in this vein, for example, with irrational demands to expand military spending (often as a way to support military-industrial corporations, which donate heavily to their political coffers e.g. ordering new tanks when many of the tanks we have are being scrapped because they are unneeded). They seem to be in favor of what they like and not in favor of what they do not. So, there is no position here, just ideological support for “smaller government” in the areas they do not like and larger government in the areas they do.

Conservatives value life. Uh, again, yes and no. Conservatives are frequently anti-abortion. Once you are born, however, you are on your own. And if you make a really big mistake, like breaking the law while black or brown, they are staunchly in favor of the death penalty. So, again, this is a statement meant to portray conservatives in a good light, but really, who doesn’t value life, especially their own? Everyone values life. But being “pro-life” is just ideological cover for what they want to do, like banning abortion, which is a huge government intrusion into people’s private lives. So, here again, their desire for smaller government doesn’t extend to government restrictions on abortion. They want more government regulations in this area, but less in business.

Conservatives believe in helping out people who have less than they do. They just do not want the government involved. They prefer a situation in which the poor know who is giving them a handout. They prefer “charity” as the mode in which we help out our fellow citizens who are struggling. Clearly studies show that “charity” is not up to the task, but still the government, which is really the collective “we” as in “we the people,” should not be involved, say critics. Examples of other countries which have effectively figured out how to provide their citizens with basic supports (healthcare, education, etc.) we cannot copy because well, it would make government effective and the last thing conservatives want is a perception of the government being effective. The government is the only power in play that can rein in uncontrolled capitalism and the richest conservatives do not want that. Government has to be perceived as being inefficient and incompetent … except in the areas they like, such as the military.

Conservatives want things – like in politics – to work. Uh, like everybody else? Actually, they seem to want politics to work the way they want it to and, if it does not, they set about changing how politics works. They recently have been gung ho for voter suppression when historically they have been in favor of the act of voting for everyone. It was just that they began to lose too many elections because the wrong kind of voters were voting.

Conservatives believe in the Constitution and that the Constitution is the paramount law of the land. Well, who doesn’t? It is interesting, however, that whenever the conservatives discover the Constitution doesn’t say what they want, they set about changing it. For example, the Second Amendment right to bear arms was viewed since its writing as a collective right for Americans to bear arms in support of militias. But that wasn’t good enough, so centuries old settled law was changed so that bearing a firearm became an individual right. (With regard to the NRA’s campaign to change the “normal” interpretation of the constitution, Chief Justice Warren Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”) More recently, the Supreme Court’s conservatives have given corporations free speech rights as well as the right to donate as much political money as they want, as if those “powers” of corporations were not just manifestations of their executive officers, giving them super powers as citizens.

Basically, I guess I am arguing that we need to stop using broad descriptive generalizations and, actually, I intend to stop talking about conservatives as people. A responder on Quora who was asked “can conservatives say anything nice about liberals?” responded that he had many nice things to say about people who claim to be liberals but what constitutes a liberal is way too broad for generalizations (epithets yes, generalizations no) so that there was nothing he could say which applied to all liberals. I think the same thing can be said to apply to conservatives.

So, I will try mightily to not talk about conservatives … but conservative ideas and ideology, well, I think there is an open season on those.

A Religious Freedom Smokescreen

The concept of religious freedom is being used as a smokescreen for something else. Just as the act after the events of 9/11 was called the Patriot Act when it had nothing to do with patriots, the religious freedom movement of today has actually nothing to do with religion per se nor freedom, other than freedom from anti-discrimination laws.

Most famously we had a county court clerk in Kentucky who refused to grant marriage licenses to gay couples. Her job was to make sure that all applicable state and county laws were abided by in the issuance in the license. Since the local polity had authorized licenses to be issued to gay couples, she had no recourse but to do her job and issue those licenses. There was no part of her job description that allowed her to insert her personal feelings into the process. There were no exceptions for issuing licenses to ugly people, or short people, or gay people. She just decided that there was to be one more step in the process of getting a marriage license, the approval of the county clerk, aka her.

The same can be said for the baker in Colorado who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, on artistic grounds as well as religious. What was being purchased was a wedding cake, something this baker did often. On top was to be a groom, something the baker did often, and a second groom. Whoa, Nelly, that’s offensive to his religion! Not the customer’s religion, but the baker’s religion! WTF? There is a religious test for doing business? “I will only serve Muslims” or “I will only serve Christians” is okay?

The baker was being asked to do something that was ordinary and not a stretch of his “artistic” skills. In fact, he could have taken a wedding cake that was not picked up and plucked the bride off of the top and added a second groom and ta da! Nothing extraordinary was being asked here. But his religious sensibilities were inserted into his business when they were not required. His claim was that by making the cake, he would be endorsing the wedding. WTF? Do the florists know this? The people who rent halls for receptions? The people who sell wedding gowns? (Buy a gown and we will personally endorse your marriage! Come with this cool certificate!)

The Trump administration is gearing up to use a “religious freedom” excuse to discriminate against anyone of whom they do not approve. The term religious freedom sounds like preserving the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is not being infringed upon anywhere I know of. What they are talking about is practicing their religion on people not of their religion, in other words, in my religion I can’t do this, so you can’t do this either. What we really need is a “Freedom from Religion” for the secular sphere.

People who do not want to sell cakes to gay couples should probably find another line of work. People who do not want to do their job as county clerk, should be fired, as Kim Davies should have been for refusing to do her job.

Even if you open a Christian bookstore, you cannot refuse service to atheists. I have been in a few of these stores and even made purchases and they had no idea who they were serving. (Bwah hah ha hah!) There needs to be a simple statement that if you open a business, that you cannot deny service to a law abiding customer. This is not currently the case, but it should be. Our federal administration is working in a direction opposite to this right now. If they get their SCOTUS nominee placed, expect a landslide of such religious freedom cases. Soon it will be acceptable for stores to not serve Muslins or Catholics or Scientologists and we will soon be immersed in religion wars that the Founding Fathers tried like crazy to avoid, to which end they created a secular state that protects religion but does not participate … until now in any case.

Things to Consider When Selecting Another Supreme Court Justice

This is not yet another post about who should be selected or how, but some background on how the SCOTUS fits into our system of government.

In a quite brilliant post [Time to Stop Playing “Simon Says” with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton by Paul Street (July 13, 2018)] at www.counterpunch.org the author points out quite clearly that the Constitutional Authors were more than fearful of popular democracy, that they felt the “natural” leaders were people like themselves, wealthy landowners who had the time and education and sensibilities (Sniff!) to lead well.

Here are a few telling quotes:

At the Constitutional Convention, Madison backed an upper U.S. legislative assembly (the Senate) of elite property holders meant to check a coming “increase of population” certain to “increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings” [emphasis added]. “These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former.”

In Federalist No. 35, the future first U.S. secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, argued that the common people found their proper political representatives among the small class of wealthy merchant capitalists. “The idea of an actual representation of all classes of people by persons of each class,” Hamilton wrote, “is altogether visionary.” The “weight and superior acquirements of the merchants render them more equal” than the “other classes,” Hamilton proclaimed.

Mr. Street goes on to say this:

Checkmating Popular Sovereignty
The New England clergyman Jeremy Belknap captured the fundamental idea behind the U.S. Founders’ curious notion of what they liked to call “popular government.” “Let it stand as a principle,” Belknap wrote to an associate in the late 1780s, “that government originates from the people, but let the people be taught…that they are unable to govern themselves.”

It wasn’t just about teaching “the people” that they were incapable of self-rule, however. The Constitution was designed to make sure the popularity majority couldn’t govern itself even if it thought it could. The rich white fathers crafted a form of “popular government” (their deceptive term) that was a monument to popular incapacitation.

The U.S. Constitution divided the federal government into three parts, with just one-half of one of those three parts (the House of Representatives) elected directly by “the people”—a category that excluded blacks, women, Native Americans and property-less white males (that is, most people in the early republic). It set up elaborate checks and balances to prevent the possibility of the laboring multitude influencing policy. It introduced a system of intermittent, curiously time-staggered elections (two years for the House, six years for the Senate, and four years for the presidency) precisely to discourage sweeping popular electoral rebellions It created a Supreme Court appointed for life (by the president with confirmation power restricted to the Senate) with veto power over legislation or executive actions that might too strongly bear the imprint of the “secretly sigh[ing]” multitude.

It sanctified the epic “un-freedom” and “anti-democracy” of black slavery, permitting slave states to count their disenfranchised chattel toward their congressional apportionment in the House of Representatives.

The Constitution’s curious Electoral College provision guaranteed that the popular majority would not directly select the U.S. president—even on the limited basis of one vote for each propertied white male. It is still in effect.

U.S. Americans did not directly vote for U.S. senators for the first 125 years of the federal government.  The Constitution said that senators were to be elected by state legislatures, something that was changed only by the Seventeen Amendment in 1913.

It is true that the Constitution’s Article V provided a mechanism technically permitting “We the People” to alter the nation’s charter. But the process for seriously amending the U.S. Constitution was and remains exceedingly difficult, short of revolution and/or civil war.

I know this is a lot to absorb, so I recommend you read the entire article. I will add a couple of comments.

Regarding the quotation from New England clergyman Jeremy Belknap “‘Let it stand as a principle,’ Belknap wrote to an associate in the late 1780s, ‘that government originates from the people, but let the people be taught…that they are unable to govern themselves (my emphasis).’” I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that a clergyman would oppose people thinking and acting for themselves! Realize that in the New Testament, the only descriptions of how Christians practiced their religion were very democratic. There were no clergy per se, unless you think wandering guides such as “Paul,” qualified. Congregations of Christians met in homes and “shared” with one another with no middlemen involved. But if there are no middlemen, there is no power structure and the early days of Christianity (first three-four centuries) was all about creating a power structure … by those wanting the power.

So, to hear that some clergy, although I suspect close to all clergy, believed that people could not rule themselves is hardly a revelation. In their religion, the people could not govern themselves, they needed “guidance,” otherwise they might believe the wrong things (“wrong” as determined by those in power).

Regarding “The Constitution was designed to make sure the popularity majority couldn’t govern itself even if it thought it could.” This is a stunning revelation to me. I knew quite a bit of this background and the attitudes of the “Founding Fathers,” but I had not had this point made so clearly and forcibly before.

Regarding “The Constitution’s curious Electoral College provision guaranteed that the popular majority would not directly select the U.S. President.” Isn’t it curious that the Electoral College was the instrument that got a populist President elected in 2016. The “best laid plans of mice and men,” indeed!

Oh, and on which side of this argument do you think Judge Kavanaugh is on?

 

 

SCOTUS: Fair and Balanced?

Since the Supreme Court is floating in the discussion air, I am reading more and more comments like this:

And just when we thought SCOTUS was done trying to unravel the moral fabric of America, Justice Kennedy gently whispered, “Hold my beer” and announced his upcoming retirement, thus simultaneously signaling the end of an era of a [kind of] fair and balanced Supreme Court. I won’t use his name.

Fair and balanced my ass.

Again, reasonable journalists are giving sops to the status quo to suck up to all segments of their potential audience and doing us all a disservice. Judge Kennedy is being called a “moderate,” because he voted with the liberal wing a couple of times. But he is solely responsible for the “Citizens United” ruling and voted with the conservative wing far more often (way more often) than he voted with the liberals. That makes him a milder conservative, but in no way was he a moderate.

And, “fair and balanced?”

The current court, minus Justice Kennedy, has 4.5 Catholics on it (Gorsuch was raised a Catholic but now is part of an Episcopal church. Episcopalians consider Catholics to be catholic in name only, they being considered back sliders.)

Three of Trump’s four finalists for Kennedy’s seat on the court were Catholic as is the one he finally “chose,” Brett Kavanaugh. The remaining three Justices are Jewish. So, if Kavanaugh gets confirmed that will make three Jews and six Catholics as the representation of the court. Fair? On occasion. Balanced? In no way.

Catholics represent 22% of the U.S. population and Jews represent 2%. What about the other 76% of Americans? The Protestants, the Atheists, the Agnostics, the Muslims? What about them? And please don’t try to tell me that their religious worldviews have no effect on their decisions. Give me a break. (Freaking Scalia believed in the literal existence of the Devil!)

I guess candidates from the “out groups,” don’t get chosen off of lists created by the like of The Federalist Society, the strongly Catholic organization that prepared the list from which Trump got to choose “his nominee.” (The Federalist Society is already responsible for placing three justices: Alito, Roberts, and Gorsuch on the high court.)

Fair and balanced my ass.

And, if you are wondering why so many Republicans are scoffing at the idea of the “Deep State,” you might want to consider that they are protecting their benefactors, like the Federalist Society, part of the Deep State.

The System Ain’t Broke; It’s Fixed!

I can’t claim originality for the title of this blog entry. It seems that political discourse is a creative driving force, at least for sloganeers. (My current other favorite is: “I’ll believe a corporation is a person when Texas executes one!”)

On the two year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision we are now seeing how it is playing out and even conservatives are questioning its wisdom. I feel that it is time to reconsider this decision.

Ignoring for the time being that SCOTUS picked this fight by asking those bringing the suit to ask them to address the bigger question of corporate free speech, it has been a long standing power of Congress to regulate elections, e.g.:

U.S. Constitution / Article 1, Section 4
1: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

Plus a long history of Supreme Court decisions have backed up Congress’s ability to do so, for example:

The U.S. Supreme Court decision Buckley v. Valeo (1976) held that limitations on donations to candidates were constitutional (because of the compelling state interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption), but limitations on the amount campaigns could spend (spending limits or caps) were an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech under the First Amendment.

So, we end with, two-years ago today, SCOTUS voiding nearly a century of settled law and declaring corporations “persons” for political reasons when they had been declared persons only for business reasons prior to that point. Of course, conservative icon Antonin Scalia voted in the majority on this opinion. Scalia describes himself as an originalist, which means he claims to interpret the Constitution as it would have been understood when it was adopted. When the Constitution was adopted, in 1789, modern corporations weren’t anywhere on the horizon. In fact, all of the Founding Fathers and every participant in the Revolutionary War was dead by the time the modern corporation was first conceived, albeit in a weak and feeble state at that time.

So, how does Scalia defend his decision? He does so by rejecting the argument made in a dissenting position that the Founding Fathers only thought of free speech in terms of citizens, not organizations. So, the “originalist” Justice basically stated, the Founding Fathers and citizen’s general understanding of the Constitution don’t count . . . because he says so.

This court has picked any number of fights that previous courts have generally shunned for the purpose, apparently, of empowering corporations as that is how they have ruled in every such case.

There is only one solution to this bias in the Court—amend the Constitution. Here is the rule that applies:

U.S. Constitution / Article 5 (in part)
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress.

Since there is a snowball’s chance in Hell that Congress will do such a thing, I suggest we try something novel. In at least two-thirds of the state legislatures, pass a Constitutional amendment bill (something like “Corporations are not people” but more careful considered to have the needed effect of curbing corporate political power). Then Congress would have a decision to make. Since it takes only two-thirds of the state legislatures to call for a Constitutional Convention, a zoo all would probably like to avoid, the only other option would be to pass the appropriate bills triggering the ratification process, ratification being almost a foregone conclusion.

Of course, Congress would have the option of invoking it’s favorite strategy, doing nothing, so political pressure would have to be applied continuously throughout (those reluctant to do the right thing being branded corporate lackeys, etc.).