Cole writes: "There is no guarantee that the successor to the late Justice
Antonin Scalia will be a liberal. But only if Cruz wins the presidency can
we expect a nominee as hard right as Scalia. In all likelihood, the court
has just shifted at least somewhat to the left. And that shift could be very
good news for the country's politics."
Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and John Roberts. (photo: AP)
Could a Post-Scalia Court Restore Campaign Finance Sanity & Pull Back From
Plutocracy?
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
15 February 16
There is no guarantee that the successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia
will be a liberal. But only if Cruz wins the presidency can we expect a
nominee as hard right as Scalia. In all likelihood, the court has just
shifted at least somewhat to the left. And that shift could be very good
news for the country's politics.
Much depends on whether Obama can get enough Republican senators to buck
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and confirm a nominee this year. (Some, like
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), likely would on principle, since they tend to believe
that the president has a right to his pick). Absent that, the rest will
depend on the outcome of the November election. In my own view, that
election is the Democrats' to lose, since the GOP horror show has almost
certainly chased away swing vote groups such as Latinos, soccer moms, urban
Catholics, workers, etc. But life is unpredictable.
American politics in my view is off-kilter because of the conservative
Reagan-Bush court we have had for decades. In the two-centuries long class
struggle between the very rich and the rest of Americans, during the past
three decades the rest of Americans have been soundly trounced. You'd have
to go back to the Roaring Twenties or the age of Robber Barons in the 19th
century to find an America so polarized by wealth, with so many excluded
from any real power or access to economic opportunity. In Eisenhower's
America, the top 1% had 25% of the privately held wealth. They now have
upwards of 40%. Finance was perhaps 10% of the economy. It is now 20%. The
top 1% did not take home 20% of the nation's earnings every month back then.
And our politics was not bought and sold by a handful of billionaires. The
Supreme Court has not been innocent in all this.
A 2008 Supreme Court decision allowing Indiana to require a photo ID to vote
led to dozens of Republican legislatures passing such unfair laws. Political
scientists have demonstrated that these laws adversely affect the ability of
minorities, the poor, the aged and other Democratic constituencies to vote.
The GOP excuse for these laws, that they are necessary to prevent voter
fraud, has been shown to be completely without foundation. There is no voter
fraud to speak of in the US, and what little it is does not take the form of
voting under a false identity.
Comedian John Oliver over at HBO had some fun with Republican obscurantism
on the voting issue last night.
The 2008 Crawford v. Marion County Election Board decision was reached with
a 6-3 majority. But if we could get a new justice who realized that the
voter ID laws are in fact an unfair burden for people, and could change the
mind of one of the remaining 5 who voted to allow them in 2008, we might be
able to overturn these laws as unconstitutional. (You have to take off work
to go get an ID, which many Americans cannot afford to do; if they ride the
bus to work they don't have a driver's license; the laws are just a way to
confine the electorate to old rich white people).
Or consider gerrymandering. The reason the House of Representatives is in
the hands of the Republicans today even though more votes were cast overall
for Democratic members of Congress by the public is because of
gerrymandering by state legislators. Texas is a notorious example. But in
seven states, now, the public has used referendums to institute neutral
commissions to draw districts. The Arizona legislature challenged the
constitutionality of taking these decisions out of the hands of the state
lawmakers, but even the Roberts court turned back the challenge. Scalia,
Roberts, Thomas and Alito dissented. Any further appointment by a Democratic
president will strengthen the majority on this issue. Even just striking
down scams like dividing Austin up into 8 voting districts attached to rural
counties, or the snakes, salamanders and other strange animals drawn around
minority districts in places like the Carolinas, would take the country
toward greater equity and justice.
The notorious Citizens United ruling of 2010, orchestrated by the
billionaires' best friend, John Roberts, arguably ruined the politics of
this country and made us altogether into a plutocracy.
The craziness of our political season stems in part from equating money to
speech and removing restrictions on campaign donations. In the old days,
because of more effective campaign finance rules, in order to run for
president you had to get the backing of a whole gaggle of people. If you
said a few embarrassing things, as Donald Trump has (in spades!), in the old
days the gaggle would peel away. Since the rules didn't allow you just to
buy the election by yourself, you'd be forced to drop out if even your
backers thought you were batcrap crazy. But now, with billionaires
self-financing or with billionaires putting in dark money, the guano insane
can stay in the race indefinitely. In some instances, addled plutocrats like
Sheldon Adelson install a voice pull-string in their puppet candidates (Robo
Rubio is Adelson's toy), forcing them to parrot nonsensical sentences over
and over again. Or Haim Saban makes Hillary give that ridiculous AIPAC
speech over and over again about Israel, which bears no resemblance to
reality.
Citzens United was another one of those 5-4 decisions, and a new, less hard
line justice would allow the court to chip away at it and even just overturn
it.
There is no guarantee that the court can or will take a new direction now.
But it could. And if it does, then we 99% could maybe get our country back.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and John Roberts. (photo: AP)
http://www.juancole.com/2016/02/could-a-post-scalia-court-restore-campaign-f
inance-sanity-pull-back-from-plutocracy.htmlhttp://www.juancole.com/2016/02/
could-a-post-scalia-court-restore-campaign-finance-sanity-pull-back-from-plu
tocracy.html
Could a Post-Scalia Court Restore Campaign Finance Sanity & Pull Back From
Plutocracy?
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
15 February 16
here is no guarantee that the successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia
will be a liberal. But only if Cruz wins the presidency can we expect a
nominee as hard right as Scalia. In all likelihood, the court has just
shifted at least somewhat to the left. And that shift could be very good
news for the country's politics.
Much depends on whether Obama can get enough Republican senators to buck
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and confirm a nominee this year. (Some, like
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), likely would on principle, since they tend to believe
that the president has a right to his pick). Absent that, the rest will
depend on the outcome of the November election. In my own view, that
election is the Democrats' to lose, since the GOP horror show has almost
certainly chased away swing vote groups such as Latinos, soccer moms, urban
Catholics, workers, etc. But life is unpredictable.
American politics in my view is off-kilter because of the conservative
Reagan-Bush court we have had for decades. In the two-centuries long class
struggle between the very rich and the rest of Americans, during the past
three decades the rest of Americans have been soundly trounced. You'd have
to go back to the Roaring Twenties or the age of Robber Barons in the 19th
century to find an America so polarized by wealth, with so many excluded
from any real power or access to economic opportunity. In Eisenhower's
America, the top 1% had 25% of the privately held wealth. They now have
upwards of 40%. Finance was perhaps 10% of the economy. It is now 20%. The
top 1% did not take home 20% of the nation's earnings every month back then.
And our politics was not bought and sold by a handful of billionaires. The
Supreme Court has not been innocent in all this.
A 2008 Supreme Court decision allowing Indiana to require a photo ID to vote
led to dozens of Republican legislatures passing such unfair laws. Political
scientists have demonstrated that these laws adversely affect the ability of
minorities, the poor, the aged and other Democratic constituencies to vote.
The GOP excuse for these laws, that they are necessary to prevent voter
fraud, has been shown to be completely without foundation. There is no voter
fraud to speak of in the US, and what little it is does not take the form of
voting under a false identity.
Comedian John Oliver over at HBO had some fun with Republican obscurantism
on the voting issue last night.
The 2008 Crawford v. Marion County Election Board decision was reached with
a 6-3 majority. But if we could get a new justice who realized that the
voter ID laws are in fact an unfair burden for people, and could change the
mind of one of the remaining 5 who voted to allow them in 2008, we might be
able to overturn these laws as unconstitutional. (You have to take off work
to go get an ID, which many Americans cannot afford to do; if they ride the
bus to work they don't have a driver's license; the laws are just a way to
confine the electorate to old rich white people).
Or consider gerrymandering. The reason the House of Representatives is in
the hands of the Republicans today even though more votes were cast overall
for Democratic members of Congress by the public is because of
gerrymandering by state legislators. Texas is a notorious example. But in
seven states, now, the public has used referendums to institute neutral
commissions to draw districts. The Arizona legislature challenged the
constitutionality of taking these decisions out of the hands of the state
lawmakers, but even the Roberts court turned back the challenge. Scalia,
Roberts, Thomas and Alito dissented. Any further appointment by a Democratic
president will strengthen the majority on this issue. Even just striking
down scams like dividing Austin up into 8 voting districts attached to rural
counties, or the snakes, salamanders and other strange animals drawn around
minority districts in places like the Carolinas, would take the country
toward greater equity and justice.
The notorious Citizens United ruling of 2010, orchestrated by the
billionaires' best friend, John Roberts, arguably ruined the politics of
this country and made us altogether into a plutocracy.
The craziness of our political season stems in part from equating money to
speech and removing restrictions on campaign donations. In the old days,
because of more effective campaign finance rules, in order to run for
president you had to get the backing of a whole gaggle of people. If you
said a few embarrassing things, as Donald Trump has (in spades!), in the old
days the gaggle would peel away. Since the rules didn't allow you just to
buy the election by yourself, you'd be forced to drop out if even your
backers thought you were batcrap crazy. But now, with billionaires
self-financing or with billionaires putting in dark money, the guano insane
can stay in the race indefinitely. In some instances, addled plutocrats like
Sheldon Adelson install a voice pull-string in their puppet candidates (Robo
Rubio is Adelson's toy), forcing them to parrot nonsensical sentences over
and over again. Or Haim Saban makes Hillary give that ridiculous AIPAC
speech over and over again about Israel, which bears no resemblance to
reality.
Citzens United was another one of those 5-4 decisions, and a new, less hard
line justice would allow the court to chip away at it and even just overturn
it.
There is no guarantee that the court can or will take a new direction now.
But it could. And if it does, then we 99% could maybe get our country back.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
