Kavanaugh’s Rage Is Not Evidence of His Innocence
October 4, 2018 at 5:54 pm | Posted in Abuse of Office, Conceited, Disinformation, Dysfunctional Politics, Judicial Misjudgment, Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: Anthony Kennedy, Brett Kavanaugh, Brittney Martin and David A. Fahrenthold, Christine Blasey Ford, David Ignatius, E.J. Dionne Jr., Eugene Robinson, Lori Rozsa, Molly Roberts, Sarah Kaufman, Shamus Khan, Suniya S. Luthar, US Supreme Court, Washington Post
Photo in 1887 of the actor Richard Mansfield, by Henry Van der Weyde (1838-1924; London,
There is intense disagreement about Brett Kavanaugh’s fitness to become one of the Justices on the Supreme Court.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on September 27, 2018, the committee and the world tried to decide whether to believe Christine Blasey Ford’s assertion that a drunken Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at a party when she was 15 years old, or whether to believe Kavanaugh’s denial.
Both Ford and Kavanaugh showed strong emotions during the hearing.
This post is about the interpretation of Kavanaugh’s rage, frustration, and dread.
Some Senators and others have interpreted Kavanaugh’s rage as evidence of his innocence. It is not.
About the diverse interpretations, see this article by Lori Rozsa , Brittney Martin and David A. Farenthold.
Kavanaugh’s rage is because the unwritten rules of entitlement that he absorbed as a teenager were violated: he was not allowed to escape being held accountable for acts for which only the less privileged were supposed to be held accountable.
Those rules said that anyone of his social class, of his wealth, with his connections, with his accomplishments and talent, would never suffer the consequences of breaking the rules that apply to lesser mortals.
These unwritten rules are exposed by Shamus Khan, in a revealing article in the Washington Post. Khan explains why Kavanaugh lies so readily, and so self-righteously. Khan also notes that privilege also makes some kids callous – a notable feature of Kavanaughs judicial rulings, of his work for George W. Bush. It would also lower his internal barriers to sexually abusing others. As noted in an article by Suniyah S. Luthar, those same unwritten rules, combined with greater resources, explain the surprising fact that rich kids are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol than are middle class kids or disadvantaged kids. That was another striking feature of the Kavanaugh’s behavior during high school and college.
Parenthetically, similar violations of expectations of special status underlie the rage of white supremicists and of male supremicists.
Kavanaugh also exhibited frustration. Based on media reports and on the current distribution of power between the two political parties, Kavanaugh had become convinced that his bid for a judgeship on the Supreme Court was unstoppable. But now his ascension to the Supreme Court is leaking away, and he doesn’t know how to stop the leak.
At the hearing, Kavanaugh also radiated dread. He knows that his wife and his daughters will no longer look up to him and trust him. He knows that friends and colleagues will re-evaluate him.
It is not just Kavanaugh’s past behavior that is at issue. His present behavior is problematic.
During the Senate hearing, Kavanaugh lied repeatedly, while under oath.
Eugene Robinson and David Ignatius give valuable insights about Kavanaugh’s lies and character.
Molly Roberts shows why it is quite believable that Christine Blasey Ford vividly remembers who attacker was, and who was laughing, while having difficulty remembering other details about the party at which Kavanaugh assaulted her.
Kavanaugh tried to evade answering inconvenient questions by attempting to change the subject (as Trump does). Kavanaugh tries to change a troublesome question about himself into an analogous question about his questioner.
Here is an example of his Kavanaugh’s deflection of an inconvenient question, as quoted from an article in the Washington Post by Sarah L. Kaufman
“He went back to being combative, even at times overly hot, inappropriate and rude. He challenged Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on her questions about whether he’d ever drunk so much his memory was affected. “Have you?” he said.”
A qualified judge would never have put up with a deflecting, topic-changing non-answer like that.
Kavanaugh also tried to claim that the accusations against him were part of a conspiracy. That was another misleading attempt at changing the subject. The time-line of Ford’s accusation refutes Kavanaugh’s claim, as is demonstrated by an editorial in the Washington Post.
Altogether, Kavanaugh’s behavior at the hearing was behavior he would not tolerate from any party who was appearing before him at a trial at which he was the Judge.
Kavanaugh lied repeatedly during the Senate hearing. He lied while under oath. E.J. Dionne Jr. has provided a superb account of Kavanaugh’s lies, and why Kavanaugh is unfit to be a judge. His article has links to extensive compilations of Kavanaugh’s lies. Eugene Robinson also has a penetrating account of Kavanaugh’s lies at the hearing, and how it shows Kavanaugh’s unfitness for serving as a judge.
Kavanaugh’s unjustified sense of entitlement, his lies in the Senate hearing, and his tactic of avoiding answering unwelcome questions by trying to change the subject, are all un-judgelike. They disqualify him from the Supreme Court.
His presence on the Supreme Court would further degrade respect for the Supreme Court’s decisions.
His defects also disqualify Kavanaugh from serving a a judge on any court, including the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is the court he now serves on.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, why have you so sullied your judicial legacy, by recommending someone as unfit as Brett M. Kavanaugh?
June 4 = Tianenmen Square Day
June 4, 2016 at 10:54 am | Posted in Abuse of Office, Enemies of Freedom, Fairness, Judicial Misjudgment | 3 CommentsTags: China, Tiananmen Square, freedom, fairness, patriotism, government for the people, Chen Guangchen, People's Liberation Army, Tiananmen Square Day
A Chinese Type 59 tank at the Beijing Military Museum. A Type 59 main battle tank on display at the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution in western Beijing. On June 3, 1989, People’s Liberation Army soldiers on Type 59 tanks began firing on civilian demonstrators at Muxidi near the military museum.
(Wikipedia) Photo by Max Smith.
Today is June 4 – Tiananmen Square Day.
It is a day to honor the love of freedom, the desire for the rule of law, the insistence on fairness, and the true patriotism of the students and others who demonstrated in Tianenmen Square in Beijing, and in other cities, throughout May and early June of 1989.
It is a day to honor the bravery and patriotism of Tank Man.
They were not a threat to China. But China’s self-appointed rulers felt the student’s ideas to be a threat to their rule. So the self-appointed rulers crushed the demonstrations, and sometimes literally crushed demonstrators, with ostentatious cruelty.
For more background, see these previous posts on this blog: here, here, and here.
The student’s chose black as the color to symbolize agreement with their goals.
To honor them and their goals, wear something black today.
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The Koch Conspiracy to Subvert American Democracy
January 29, 2016 at 5:16 pm | Posted in Dysfunctional Politics, Enemies of Freedom, Enemies of Planet Earth, Global warming, Judicial Misjudgment, Presidential election | Leave a commentTags: Antonin Scalia, Charles Koch, Chief Justice John Roberts, Citizens United, Clarence Thomas, Dark Money, David Koch, Greed, Jane Mayer, oligarchy, plutocracy, Supreme Court
David H. Koch in 2007, as cropped and rotated from a photo taken by freddthompson
The remarkable new book, ‘Dark Money’, by Jane Mayer, shows that a many-fingered long-lasting conspiracy by very wealthy, very greedy, very defensive individuals, underlies much of what has degraded and coarsened American political life over the past two and a half decades.
The conspiracy was instigated by Charles and David Koch.
The conspiracy is driven by the self interest of Charles and David Koch and their co-conspirators. They all rationalize it to themselves as the defense of liberty – but only of those liberties that benefit themselves.
It is a conspiracy to subvert American democracy. Jane Mayer shows that it was started when Charles Koch concluded that he couldn’t achieve his goals via the open political process.
Prominent members of this group are (quoting from Mayer’s page 4) “Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf oil fortunes; Harry and Lynde Bradley, midwesterners enriched by defense contracts; John M. Olin, a chemical and munitions company titan; the Coors brewing family of Colorado; and the DeVos family of Michigan, founders of the Amway marketing empire.”
Their convocations impose utmost secrecy: no mobile phones, no notes, no audio or video recording. The eleborate precautions are described on page 9 of Jane Mayer’s book.
That it is a conspiracy is proven by its secrecy.
Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have been speakers at these meetings.
Were Scalia and Thomas paid to speak? How much?
Was their air travel and lodging reimbursed, or paid directly by the meeting’s sponsors? Almost certainly.
Scalia’s and Thomas’ attitudes on issues that were likely to come before the Supreme Court may have been influenced by those at the secret meetings at which they spoke. But more likely, they were invited to speak, and agreed to speak, because they were known to already favor plutocracy over democracy.
In turn, that almost certainly influenced how they voted when the Supreme Court was reaching its decision on Citizens United.
The Supreme Court’s majority decision on Citizens United enabled wealthy donors and the executives and board members of wealthy corporations to have much more influence – per person – on elections and on elected officials, than do ordinary citizens such as you and I. As a result, PACs became prominent. A PAC is not supposed to coordinate in any way with the candidate it supports, but news stories too numerous to count cite direct contacts and indirect signalling between candidates and ‘their’ PACs (yes, that is how some of the PACs are described in news stories), and there is much transfer of personnel between the campaign staff and the PAC and vice versa. PACs provide an effective way of influencing political outcomes, and are one of the Koch conspiracy’s major tools. No more ‘significant political say for each active citizen’. The political voice of a director of a PAC, of a lobbyist or of a politician who has an affiliated PAC, or of a wealthy individual, a corporate executive, or a member of a corporate board that contributes importantly to a PAC, is much louder than the voice of any ordinary citizen. This has seriously corrupted American political life, and has greatly attenuated poltical democracy.
Because of – or as evidenced by – their participation in these secret meetings, Scalia and Thomas were biased, and should have recused themselves from the decision on Citizens United.
If asked, Scalia and Thomas might claim that they attended and spoke as private citizens, that they were merely speaking for themselves, exercising their Constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and of speech.
As private citizens? Hah! No one believes that for a moment.
By virtue of their special status, Justices of the Supreme Court are always seen – accurately or inaccurately – as reflecting upon the Supreme Court when they speak on any topic having political ramifications.
By virtue of their special status, Justices of the Supreme Court receive special treatment at airports. Unless their hosts proved travel in a private airplane, both Scalia and Thomas probably availed themselves of that special treatment in their flights to and from these Koch-sponsored events. Private citizens do not receive this special treatment.
Doesn’t the Supreme Court issue guidelines on the out-of-court activities of its Justices?
Federal employees receive such guidelines, to reduce as much as possible both impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.
Common sense says:
Attendance and giving a speech at a public meeting is proper for a Supreme Court Justice, as long as that attendance is not subsidised nor paid for.
Attendance at secret meeting is proper for a Supreme Court Justice, as long as the meeting is within the premises of the Supreme Court, and includes all of the Justices.
It is not proper for a Justice of the Supreme Court to attend and speak at a secret meeting on political policy, outside of the Supreme Court, and probably without even the knowledge and assent of all of the other Justices.
Two Justices of the Supreme Court committed a serious breech of ethics, casting great doubt upon their impartiality.
You can thank the Koch conspiracy for that.
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Political contributions, the BuyPartisan Mobile app, and Citizens United
August 22, 2014 at 7:55 pm | Posted in Dysfunctional Politics, Fairness, Judicial Misjudgment | 2 CommentsTags: Al Kamen, Android mobile devices, Apple mobile devices, BuyPartisan, Citizens United, Colby Itkowitz, corporate political contributions, Editors of the Washington Post, iPad, iPhone, iPod, partisan, partisanship, political contributions by businesses, political contributions by corporations, Spend Consciously Inc., Supreme Court
A US two dollar bill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar
“US $2 obverse”. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_$2_obverse.jpg#mediaviewer/File:US_$2_obverse.jpg
There is a new free app for mobile devices, BuyPartisan, developed by Spend Consciously, Inc. (Although the app is presently available only for Apple devices, Spend Consciously plans to release a version for Android devices in the very near future.)
The SpendConsciously.com web site suggests that you use your mobile device to scan the barcode of the product you are considering. The app will display the political donations of the CEO, Board of Directors and employees of the company that produced the product. On the basis of that information, you can decide whether or not to buy the product. You can also tell your friends what you have found out.
Two related articles (one by Colby Itkowitz, and one by Al Kamen and Colby Itkowitz) in the Washington Post describe what they discovered by using the app.
Subsequently the Editors of the Washington Post disparaged the new app, claiming that it would intensify political polarization.
But in coming to that conclusion, the Editors forgot an important new factor, namely, the Supreme Court’s misguided ruling on Citizens United.
The ruling on Citizens United magnifies the impact of an individual CEO + Board of Directors on an election far above above that of an ordinary citizen. A CEO and Board of Directors can favor their preferred candidate by using the vast financial resources of his corporation to the candidate or proposed law that they personally favor. You cannot.
“1900 New York polling place” by E. Benjamin Andrews – Andrews, E. Benjamin. History of the United States, volume V. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. 1912. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1900_New_York_polling_place.jpg#mediaviewer/File:1900_New_York_polling_place.jpg
In an election, a voter has two kinds of votes.
There is a direct vote, by making a choice on a ballot.
There is an indirect vote, by contributing or not contributing to a candidate or to a proposed law.
The CEO and Board of Directors’ huge contribution easily drowns out the much smaller contribution that is feasible for most ordinary citizens. The Supreme Court’s illogical decision dramatically undercuts your indirect vote. The Supreme Court’s ruling implicitly transforms the United States into an oligarchy.
The money that the CEO can appropriate in this manner is derived from the company’s sales to its customers.
Your only way of influencing the amount that the CEO and Board of Directors has available for this legal but unjust diversion of corporate funds? Either buy or do not buy from their company.
The Supreme Court’s politically partisan decision on Citizens United has thus linked buying decisions to political positions.
The linkage acts whether or not you – or the Editors of the Washington Post – recognize its presence.
That is why citizens now need to determine the political preferences of the CEO and Board of Directors of any company they might use.
Without apps like BuyPartisan, a great deal of time consuming detective work would be required for you to obtain that information. The app makes it easy.
Contrary to the position taken by the Editors of the Washington Post, using this app is now imperative for good citizenship.
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Humane Executions
July 29, 2014 at 5:17 pm | Posted in Brain and mind, Crime and punishment, Fairness, Judicial Misjudgment, Terrorism | 1 CommentTags: bullet, cervical collar, Charles Lane, Clayton Lockett, death penalty, Editors of the Washington Post, ethical, Eugene Robinson, executed, execution, Fairness, humane, Joseph R. Wood III, lethal injection, moral, neck brace
A woodcut showing a rabid dog in the Middle Ages. “Middle Ages rabid dog” by Unknown – Scanned from Dobson, Mary J. (2008) Disease, Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Quercus, p. 157 ISBN: 1-84724-399-1.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Middle_Ages_rabid_dog.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Middle_Ages_rabid_dog.jpg
Execution by lethal chemical cocktails has recently become more difficult. Some of the makers of the required chemicals refuse to sell them for that purpose. The remaining makers desire anonymity, to avoid becoming the target of protests. Worse, some of the recent chemical executions have been botched, and seem to have produced drawn-out painful deaths.
All of these problems could be eliminated by returning to an older technique: death by bullet.
But the shooting should not be performed by a firing squad. Too many things can go wrong with a firing squad.
Instead, use a device that softly but firmly holds fixed the head and chest of the condemned. A commercially available cervical collar might be one part of the device. The condemned should be lying horizontally, face up, unable to move, on a special table having a soft surface.
The execution would be carried out by one or more gunshots from behind the head.
The gun could be fired by either a person or a computer. Computer-controlled firing would be less subject to mistakes. Sensors viewing the vicinity of the condemned could provide signals to the the computer so that the gun could fire only when no other person was in the line of fire.
Note: The general design described above is hereby released into the public domain by thepoliblog.WordPress.com. It is not patentable.
That covers the how. What about the why?
As long as the death penalty is imposed fairly, its morality is clear. We kill mad dogs, attacking wild animals, and armed enemy soldiers. We kill terrorists. We kill madmen and criminals who try to kill the police, and madmen who attack the public. We kill cancers. No matter how morally advanced we become, we will always regard such killing as justified.
But can the death penalty be imposed fairly?
Some claim that the death penalty can never be imposed fairly on an individual who is now under our control. Why not treat such a person as a prisoner of war? Why not restrain them instead of killing them? Why not try to rehabilitate them? These are difficult questions which I hope to address in a later posting. But for the present, recall that we do not use these alternatives for mad dogs. Recall that the intrinsic dignity of human beings may be a too-sweeping and vaguely founded concept, and likewise for the concept of free will. And recall that many innocents have been killed by seemingly reformed but unreformed parolees: different person’s brains are wired differently.
On these matters I have to agree with Charles Lane, and have to disagree with Eugene Robinson, who is usually one of the most insightful analyzers of public issues, and with the Editors of the Washington Post.
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The problem with ‘Stand Your Ground’
February 23, 2014 at 10:37 pm | Posted in Disinformation, Fairness, Judicial Misjudgment | 7 CommentsTags: ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Facebook, George Zimmerman, gun control, guns, Jordan Davis, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dunn, Sierra Club, Stand Your Ground, Trayvon Martin
2007 photo copyrighted by Jeff Dean, and uploaded by hime to Wikipedia, which describes it as a compact semi-automatic Smith & Wesson .45 ACP Chief’s Special — Model CS45.
‘Stand your ground’ laws have figured in two recent cases in which young unarmed black men were shot and killed.
George Zimmerman killed Travon Martin, and Michael Dunn killed Jordan Davis.
In both cases, the killer’s excuse was that he thought that the young black man had a gun.
The problem with ‘stand your ground’ laws is that it is too easy to claim that you feared that the person you shot had a weapon, and was about to use it on you.
You can claim this even if it wasn’t true. You can make up your fear after the fact.
No one can ever disprove your claim, because it rests only on what you say you believed at the time. Your claim need not depend upon on any externally confirmable matter of fact.
This is one of the most easily-abused legal ideas of all time.
One of the leading pushers of ‘stand your ground’ laws is ALEC. Besides promoting ‘stand your ground’ laws, ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) acts as a mouthpiece for those who see short-term financial gains in delaying recognition of human-caused global warming. According to the Sierra Club, Mark Zuckerberg recently had Facebook join ALEC, because he wants its support for some of his own agendas. (The Sierra Club is urging everyone to sign a petition asking Mark Zuckerberg to withdraw Facebook from that unscrupulous organization.)
Although it is obvious, it bears repeating: neither of the unjustified killings that were cited above would have occurred if the killer hadn’t happened to have a gun handy.
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The State Department and the Afghan Interpreters
November 21, 2013 at 12:25 pm | Posted in Abuse of Office, Conceited, Fairness, Judicial Misjudgment | Leave a commentTags: Afghanistan, Chuck Hagel, Commander in Chief, Department of Defense, House of Representatives, Pentagon, President Obama, Secretary of Defense, Senate, State Department, U.S. Congress, Washington Post
Lithograph of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Currier & Ives, 1865.
Afghani’s who served as interpreters for US forces in Afghanistan knowingly exposed themselves to risk by doing so. They now face dramatically increased risk as the US presence winds down. The Taliban have a long-established record of making examples of those who have cooperated with US forces.
After all, the Taliban have assassinated Afghanis who have cooperated with outside humanitarian groups, or even with the Afghani government. They will surely attack those who helped US forces.
Realizing the danger to themselves and their families, some Afghan interpreters have applied for visas to the US.
The State Department has denied visas to most, even though the visas have already been allocated by the US Congress. According to articles (here, here, here, and here) in the Washington Post, “the State Department says there is no serious threat against [the interpreters’] lives.”
This should remind you of the judges in civil courts who refuse to grant restraining orders, pooh-poohing the fears of those who are begging for protection from a spouse or ex-boyfriend. Those judges are the enablers of the events you later read about when the newspaper reports the murder of the person who asked for the restraining order. The judges are never the ones who suffer for their bad judgement.
In exactly the same way, the State Department employees whose magical source of infallible knowledge tells them that “there is no serious threat” are not the ones who will pay the price of being wrong.
Denying these visas is both cruel and unjust, and extremely harmful to US efforts in all future conflicts.
These brave interpreters accepted a huge risk in helping us. Their help saved many US lives, and were essential to anything we achieved over there. We owe them gratitude and protection. If we do not shield them, no one will be foolish enough to help us in any similar situation.
Chuck Hagel, as the Secretary of Defense, would be well advised to urge the State Department to reverse the decisions made by its incompetent employees.
President Obama, as Commander in Chief, should issue an Executive Order establishing a policy to admit those who have exposed themselves to local hostility by helping us.
Congressional committees in both the Senate and the House should ask the State Department why it has taken actions that are completely contrary to US interests, to fairness, and to the expressed desires of Congress.
The State Department should identify the incompetent employees who are making decisions that are so unjust and so contrary to US interest, and revisit their decisions. Those employees should be moved them to more suitable positions, where they will have no discretion over matters like these.
Decisions on this matter need to be made by people who have hearts and brains. Those currently making the decisions have neither.
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Rename Labor Day
September 3, 2012 at 3:11 pm | Posted in Fairness, Judicial Misjudgment | Leave a commentTags: Citizens United, Fairness, Labor Day, Republican, Romney budget, Ryan budget, Supreme Court, Unions
Militia aims bayonets at strikers in Lawrence, Mass. in 1912.
From the Wikipedia article on Labor union. In the public domain.
We have to rename Labor Day.
Labor Day was created to honor the contributions of ordinary hard working folks, and the labor unions that had improved the safety, wages and benefits of their members. Wherever there was competition to hire good workers, that increased the safety, benefits and wages of non-members, as well.
Those union-won benefits put more money into the pockets of those with immediate needs. They spent that money right away, buying products and services. Businesses made more and hired more, reinforcing the growth. That produced widespread prosperity.
But now businesses and Republican legislators have worked together to suck the air out of the labor unions. In the same way that the gains won by unions spilled over to non-union workers in an earlier time, so did the losses sustained by unions spill over to non-union workers now.
That is a major contributor to our present problems: scarce jobs, most people afraid to spend, budget deficits at all levels of government.
All this is explained clearly in a recent article in the Washington Post. The article also has good suggestions on what to do about it.
But under the present conditions, it is hypocritical and cynical to have a holiday called Labor Day.
To be honest, we should change the name to Plutocracy Day, and devote it to singing the praises of our oligarchs, since they condescend to allow a little – a tiny fraction, but still not nothing – to trickle down to the rest of us.
We should also limn their elected and appointed henchmen in national and state government. These politicians, including judges who claim not to be politicians, have been indispensable in converting the US from a democracy back to a plutocracy, just as it was in the good old days before October 1929. They have also hoodwinked a large part of the populace into thinking that the Republicans and the oligarchs are on their side, fooling them into not feeling the fingers of those who are picking their pockets. They have even fooled people into thinking that Romney’s and Ryan’s budget plans will reduce the deficit, even though they will actually increase it.
Judges were not the least effective in producing this change. The article cited above shows how the judges did it. And who can forget how the extremely partisan Republican majority in the present Supreme Court chose to lift the restrictions on how wealthy individuals and corporations could pour money into influencing elections. The Supreme Court has lost all moral authority, buts its legal authority sufficed for this scam.
Mr Belly Button and the Green Party re: Citizens United
August 19, 2012 at 8:08 pm | Posted in Conceited, Judicial Misjudgment | 3 CommentsTags: ChiefJustice Roberts, Citizens United, Constitution, democracy, Green Party, Move to Amend, Occupy, oligarchy, Paul Ryan, plutocracy, Public Citizen, Romney, super PAC, Supreme Court
On January 20, 2012, I participated in a demonstration in a small park that faces the Supreme Court. The demonstration decried the Court’s absurd decision in the Citizens United case.
Citizens United is the case that ignored the fact that corporations are purely legal entities, created solely to shield their executives and board members from personal legal liability for the corporation’s actions, and – secondarily – to obtain favorable tax treatment. They are not political entities, and their political preferences are certainly not independent of the private political preferences of their executives and board, effectively magnifying the personal influence of those individuals on the outcome of the election.
The Court’s decision favored plutocracy and oligarchy over democracy. It did so because that is what Chief Justice Roberts and his cronies, like Willard Mitt Romney and his cronies, really believe in. True to its purpose, the decision spawned the sudden appearance of the super-PACs, with their hidden, very rich donors.
The Court’s decision also spawned efforts to enact a Constitutional amendment that would overturn the Court’s decision. The demonstration I attended was in support of such efforts. It was organized by a group that I had never heard of before: Move to Amend.
Those participating in the demonstration were diverse, and included many who, like me, had no connection to the organizers. Some of the participants were from the Occupy movement. It was the first time that I had personally encountered any.
The demonstration was in the morning, and during the demonstration the organizers issued an invitation to an open discussion that afternoon about what could be done next. The discussion was held in a building adjacent to the Supreme Court. I attended.
The meeting was led by one of the main organizers of the morning’s demonstration. I will call him Mr. Belly Button, because he was impressed by the fact that every human had a belly button, and no corporation did. He insisted on showing his to all assembled.
Mr. Belly Button announced that he would next show us Move To Amend‘s proposed amendment to the Constitution. He said that he was eager for discussion and comments, but that they would not result in any changes of wording. The wording was already fixed, unchangeable.
Move to Amend‘s proposed amendment is good. But before the meeting I had come across another proposed amendment, S. J. Res 29, that was more general, and covered aspects of the problem that were not covered by Move to Amend‘s version. The inability to influence the wording of Move to Amend‘s proposed amendment made it pointless to raise this issue. That was a loss for the whole effort to obtain an amendment that would fix the Citizens United decision, and related prior decisions by the Court.
(S.J. Res 29 was proposed by Senators Udall (New Mexico), Bennet (Colorado), Harkin (Iowa), Durbin (Illinois), Schumer (New York), Merkley (Oregon), Whitehouse (Rhode Island), Begich (Alaska), and Shaheen (New Hampshire).)
Because the wording of the proposed amendment was fixed, the focus of the discussion became what to do next.
One particularly self-esteeming gentleman from Atlanta said that eventually the whole Constitution should be rewritten, because those who wrote it were not representative, and included slave-holders.
That is important enough to require some comments.
The barons who imposed the Magna Carta on the King of England were not at all egalitarian. They were not elected by the adult population that would be affected by their action. So by the logic of the gentleman from Atlanta, England should now revise the Magna Carta.
To embark on rewriting the Constitution from scratch would ignore the law of unintended consequences, the twistiness and contingence of historical branching, all of which result from the complexity of human society. Rewriting the Constitution in one fell swoop would be extraordinarily foolhardy. But neither Mr Belly Button nor any other of the dominant voices at the meeting blanched or voiced any objection. They even hinted at favoring an eventual complete rewriting of the Constitution.
Any system of government that works fairly well should be changed only incrementally, testing the results of each small step before going on to the next change. The evolution should resemble biological evolution during an interval that contains no planetary-scale geological or astronomical catastrophes.
That applies also to Paul Ryan’s goal of sweepingly reorganizing and rescoping the government, which underlies and goes far beyond his proposed budget.
It is worth noting some aspects of those in attendance.
Move to Amend appeared to me to be a fixed group of individuals who moved opportunistically from issue to issue. I got the impression they waited for the emergence of the next new issue that they could ride, and changed the name of their group accordingly. Most or all of the organizers seemed to be leading activists in the US Green Party.
As far as I could glimpse their underlying agenda, it seemed pretentious and grandiose. Fortunately, because the group regarded pragmatism as synonymous with impurity, their agenda is unlikely to ever be implemented, or even to contribute to policies implemented by others.
As noted earlier, the audience was much more diverse than the organizers. Many were practical and non-doctrinaire. In particular, I was very favorably impressed by those from the Occupy movement. They had thought long and hard about the issues. That was understandable, in view of the personal sacrifices they were making. Unlike the organizers, those from the Occupy movement were very focused on the effectiveness of proposed actions and policies.
Another organization, Public Citizen (URL1, URL2) is partnering with Move to Amend to promote Move to Amend‘s proposed amendment to the Constitution. Public Citizen is presently trying to encourage people to push for the amendment right now. That is a big mistake. This is the wrong time, even though the deformation to the electopral process that has been wrought by the Citizens United decision is presently in full view. The politically aware portion of the citizenry are and will be focused exclusively on the election until it is over. For the moment, talking about Citizens United is a waste of time, money and energy, and will detract from the attention that activists are willing to give to the issue after the election.
Is Scalia showing the early signs of dementia?
June 28, 2012 at 4:38 pm | Posted in Judicial Misjudgment | 1 CommentTags: Scalia, Supreme Court
In his dissent from the Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s immigration law, Justice Antonin Scalia’s bizarre off-topic rant suggests that he can no longer judge what is appropriate to his current courtroom activity.
(See http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/justice-scalias-partisan-discredit-to-the-court/2012/06/27/gJQAoVEG7V_print.html and http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-jr-justice-scalia-should-resign/2012/06/27/gJQApkO06V_print.html)
This, together with the blatantly partisan character of his previous recent rants (see the URLs above) seriously undermine confidence that he is still judicially competent.
Indeed, Scalia’s impaired ability to judge the appropriateness of his behavior may be an early sign of dementia. Although most 76 year olds have not developed dementia, a non-negligible fraction have, or are beginning to do so. He ought to see a neurologist.
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