The Supreme Court has decided to do away with the distinction between a corporation and an individual for the purpose of campaign donation--thereby, opening the door to allowing corporations like Banks, Insurance Companies and Unions (the axis of Evil) unfettered campaign spending and the consequential currying of poltical favor. This distinction has been around for over one hundred years!
Why don't we just close down the polling centers and hold votes on Wall Street, Justice Scalia?
Opinion was 5-4: Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy for.
Sotomayor, Stevens, Ginsberg, Breyer against.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 22, 2024
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[image: Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 22, 2024]
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 22, 2024
By Tony Wikrent
*Strategic Politi...
17 hours ago
Posts
What? Where's the review of premiere episode of The Deep End? Who cares about the Supreme Court when there's artful legal drama to discuss. I'm disappointed. You must work for NBC.
ReplyDeleteBlack balled it. What did you think of it?
ReplyDeleteThese appeals court judges (They are NOT "Justices" - they stand for profit over people; corporations before living beings; and look for legal formulas as a means to screw people over) were bought off LONG ago. They had the concept of corporate personhood ingrained into their legal pinhead brains, decades ago.
ReplyDeleteAppeals court judges, i.e. politicians in black robes, are bag men (and women) for the oil, insurance and utility interests, large banks, Big Pharma, Big Agriculture, Defense contractos, the telecomm industry, etc. They do not see the injured woman in court or hear the actual testimony of real witnesses. They read a stale, dry-ass record of the proceedings. They ACTIVELY LOOK for reasons to overturn decisions that benefit poor people, and the average worker.
They look for errors by the judge, who actually listened to the case and made decision based (at least somewhat) on what he saw and heard in court.
They don't care whether someone on death row is actually innocent (given, the percentage is very low); they care whether the person's lawyer provided a competent defense and whether the "correct procedures" have been followed. Yes, what a GREAT system, indeed.
Angel, I apologize for this rant on your blog. (You may delete this later.) The reality is that the system is rigged - and it always has been. We, as a society, delude ourselves into thinking that it matters if we vote for the piece of trash with a D behind her name, or the piece of putrid filth with an R behind his name. WE ARE SIMPLY OPERATING UNDER A GAME OF TWO-CARD MONTE.
Remember Kelo v. City of New London? The "conservatives" were on the right side, whereas the "liberals" decided that the city condemning the property FOR COMMERCIAL INTERESTS was a correct use of eminent domain, because it (somehow) benefits the public use. Who knew that private economic development constituted public use?!?!
Freedom of speeach + freedom of association = Still having freedom of speech once one associates.
ReplyDeletethe new york times is a corporation, do they have any first amendment rights to publish a newspaper?
ReplyDeletewhat's wrong with people expressing themselves through the corporate form? the more speech, the better. i am much more interested in the views of a large important corporation than the views of some hippie professor
The reason why they were never permitted to give before is because of CORRUPTION.
ReplyDeleteTo 5:24,
ReplyDeleteOf course you are much more interested in the views of some soul-less behemoth. You are a tool. Let the TV do the thinking for you. It's easier that way.
Angel and Nando - That holding was certainly a surprise and I am still trying to work out how I feel about it. On the one hand, it seems to allow corporations to have greater leverage with regard to elected officials - which would most likely be negativly exploited by the corporations. On the other hand, we have been innundated with PACs for the last several years and (as I understand it) corporations can fund multiple PACs which seems like to effectively skirts the previous prohibitions on corporations.
ReplyDeleteI am also sensitive to something that I pick up from Nando's comments - we as a society seem to be becoming less interested in doing the "right" thing - the thing that respects the rights of others - and more interested in forcing other people to do what we want or just following procedure. I see this in Scalia's shocking and terrible comment about the death row inmate and certainly in using eminent domain to take private property from one party and then give it to another private party. However, I don't have a suggestion about how this trend can be reversed - do you?
Well, unfortunately, doing the 'right thing' is not even on the radar of most courts. They are supposed to follow the law. And in this case, the law and the politics of those that appointed you. Maybe Supreme Court "Justices" should be appointed by the judges at the lower level Federal Courts (by a vote) or something to that effect. Because the politics would be minimized. The Founding Father seemed to think that lifetime appointment would be sufficient to cure the ills of the political nature of the appointment. However, the Justices remain loyal to the president's politics and there no real reason why. They could abandon political leanings altogether... there's nowhere to go from Supreme Court. But they don't. I don't know how to fix it.
ReplyDelete