I had an appointment that pulled me away from the first day of the Amy Coney Barrett hearing for part of Tuesday, but I was pounded by emails and messages raving about the Sheldon Whitehouse presentation.
Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, powerfully pulled back the veil and named names of the right-wing money and power behind not only Judge Barrett but federal judicial nominees over recent years. The action extends more deeply into financing the actual lawsuits filed to bring about favorable results for big business and other elements of the right.
So last night I found the Whitehouse presentation on YouTube and my whole point is to pass it along for your edification. It’s quite impressive.
Of course, rich and powerful interests are involved, usually behind the scenes, in matters affecting their business and their ideological interests. But Whitehouse laid out in some detail how what he called “The Scheme” works.
So, instead of me summarizing it, below is a short and a long version of his presentation, via YouTube.
I spent a bit of time as a so-called investigative reporter in my Strib days. But it’s not my strength. Whitehouse and/or whoever helped him put together this presentation on the theme of all-power-corrupts but very-well-funded-elements-with-millions-to-spend-to-rig-the-system-in-their-interests corrupt, well, if not absolutely, very, very efficiently and effectively.
The 10-minute version, contained in a tweet from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and published in this link by Teen Vogue magazine, is viewable here.
But if you’re really motivated, the full 30-minute explanation of how power and money corrupt, but even more money corrupts even more effectively, here’s a link to Sen. Whitehouse’s full 30-minute presentation of what he has learned about how The Empire Strikes Back, in the area of influencing judicial appointments and then big legal cases.
I would say it’s shocking, but maybe it’s too obvious to be shocking that big interests collude to rig the game in their favor. Still it’s impressive how well and how covertly they are able to do it, although not so covert that the veil can’t be pierced.
Reminds me a little bit of Jimmy Stewart’s last stand in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
It is sort of surprising how Teen Vogue has become a must read. But hat’s off to ’em.
I hope your appointment was something more pleasant; like a root canal ;-).
In a serious nation that wasn’t in its death spiral, a plutocratic attempt to corrupt the nation’s courts (most especially its high court) and fill them with dedicated rightwing ideologues (both beholden and partial to those plutocrat interests and hostile to the right to vote in a “democracy”) would be a major story and scandal of historic proportions. In degenerate TrumpAmerica, the nation’s corporate media is off reporting on the latest manufactured smear of Biden (by the highly credible Rudy Giuliani, naturally).
With the “conservatives” on the Supreme Court now blessing Trumpolini’s open gaming of the census to favor Repub interests, the illegitimate “conservative” majority isn’t even pretending any more. Nothing will constrain them.
It’s hard to not be disgusted at the amount of money being spent to subvert the system to benefit a few at the expense of the rest of us.
Barrett knows she’s a shoo-in, so she blatantly refused to answer even simple and legally-straightforward questions, like Feinstein’s as to whether the Constitution permits a president to change the date of a presidential election (he can’t; date is set in Constitutional stone), whether it is a federal crime to intimidate voters at the polling place (Klobuchar actually had to quote the law to the judge, who acted as if she’d never heard of such an voter protection!), and whether there has ever been a US case of a president refusing to accept the results of an election. Harris I think did manage to get this woman to agree that she, herself and she alone, will be the one to decide whether or not she recuses herself from deciding how or whether to “count the ballots” that determine the re-election, or not, of the man who appointed her.
The Dems on the Senate committee did a good job, given that they can’t do anything at all about Barrett’s approval. They did get to point out real failings in this nominee and in our system for the American public, and Whitehouse was stellar in that.
“Barrett knows she’s a shoo-in, so she blatantly refused to answer even simple and legally-straightforward questions . . .”
She is a shoo-in no matter what she says. I can’t understand this reluctance to voice an opinion. She has been vetted and picked for her reactionary views, she has been anointed ?
“. . . like Feinstein’s as to whether the Constitution permits a president to change the date of a presidential election . . .”
Actually, Congress has the sole power to determine Election Day, which it did back in 1845, as I recall. In any event, the President has no authority to suspend or delay an election.
Actually, Barrett has a good underlying point that she has for some reason not expressed clearly:
It’s not the job of a Justice to take a position on the events addressed by a law, but rather on the soundness (in terms of Constitution and precedent) of the law itself.
In these terms her view on abortion would be irrelevant; she would be deciding whether Roe v Wade was properly decided on the above terms.
That’s why Ginsberg had problems with Roe v Wade — it involved a hypothetical right to privacy that had no direct basis in the Constitution.
“It’s not the job of a Justice to take a position on the events addressed by a law, but rather on the soundness (in terms of Constitution and precedent) of the law itself.”
It’s a basic question of the text of the Constitution and statutory law. A candidate for appointment to the US Supreme Court should know that there is no constitutional authority for a President to delay an election unilaterally. She should also know that the date is set by Congress.
Right now, as Americans are voting in record breaking numbers, I have the sincere hope it’s because they are fully awake and aware and angry as hell and about to clear house in an extreme sweep. But just to be certain, let’s all share, share, share the most relevant moments of this REP feverishly rushed debacle of a Supreme Court nomination process. Sen Whitehouse’s video (10 min & 30 min) takes top position. Sens Klobuchar and Harris (now VP candidate on the Biden ticket) score the #2 & 3 slots. Others also stressed key points in pointed and methodical fashion, with strong themes emerging: the REPs only play dirty and their goals include only empowering and enriching themselves and the already wealthy. They are stacking the decks and rigging the game in every way they can possibly imagine, even if it’s illegal. All the while blaming the DEMs for EVERYTHING. And lastly, there is absolutely nothing in it for average Americans, otherwise known as their (clueless and nowhere near as brilliant and genius as them) constituents. Got it??
A simple test: If the current circus in Washington, D.C. , the corruption of the Supreme Court by the money power doesn’t make you feel sick, then you are not shocked by it. The metaphor of a frog in a simmering pot of water comes to mind. When you are no longer shocked by revelations such as these, then they have been normalized and accepted.
The party of Lincoln is now perfectly happy with some of the people all the time and to just work around the rest:
“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Abe Lincoln, 1858, Clinton Illinois
or….
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
P.T.Barnum
Since I’ve always been bored by charts and graphs, was there a question at the end for the nominee? Apparently she needs to be an activist and change the system of big money and special interests, the quantity of cases decided by the Court, require the Court to explain every action it takes with a roll call vote of all the justices, and single-handedly decide every case even though there are 8 other justices. What a terrible burden, and this is only a small list. It is too bad that Justice Ginsberg never fixed all of these problems so that this woman wouldn’t have to. It is also too bad that this Justice will receive no votes from the opposition party unlike Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Another proof that Senators Klobuchar and Smith are no where near bipartisan.
No, there wasn’t a question at the end of Whitehouse’s presentation, as it was clear to any objective viewer that Judge Amy B stood indicted by the “conservative” scheme that Whitehouse revealed. She (and her nomination and the rushed “process” itself) are all products of the rightwing judicial corruption machine.
The rest of your comment seems to be erecting a strawman, er, woman, as it is well known that 5 of the other 8 justices are far right “conservative” extremists, and all Catholic males to boot (although Gorsuch apparently now confesses Episcopalian after being raised orthodox Catholic). So no, Justice Barrett won’t be expected to implement the “conservative” vision of an American dystopia all on her own…
As for your (likely correct) prediction of no Dem votes for Judge Amy while previous women nominees (all made by Dem presidents since O’Connor, of course) received some Repub votes, those ladies were nominated by non-impeached popular-vote winning presidents, and before the stealing of a legitimate nomination by a Repub senate majority leader acting in pure bad faith. McConnell’s Repubs elected to poison the well, and the days of consensus nominees are over for good. The “conservative” movement elected to irreversibly politicize the Supreme Court, and hence wreck it.
Make lobbying illegal!
All polititions take the dark money!
Citizens United.
Politicians will benefit under current law even if they never touch the money that is spent to promote them.
Lobbying is protected by the First Amendment.
Dark money is another matter.
It should be noted that if Gravedigger of Democracy McConnell’s six year Reign of Terror could be ended, we might end up with Whitehouse as the chair of the Judiciary Committee, since he’s been the brains of the operation for some time.
He would be the perfect person to hold investigative hearings into the reactionary plutocrats’ corruption of the courts and why court reform is essential to the future of the country.
I wonder if the three—soon to be four—Federalist Society Catholics on the Supreme Court have read Pope Francis’s most recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti. In it, Pope Francis explicitly condemns the neoliberal, uber-capitalist, anti-environmental agenda that the dark money sources behind the Federalist Society are pushing. Which raises the question: is the Catholicism these Supremes practice/subscribe to closer to the Pope’s or to the Koch brothers? I’m thinking it’s the latter.
Koch brother. One of them died.
Please accept my condolences…
Just trying to help you out.
Not to worry, Harry Bradley died in 1965 and the right wing kookery of the Bradley Foundation lives on.
I’m sure the Koch brother(s) have secured a similar legacy in their estate planning.
But Bradley Foundation is still accurate unlike any present day reference to “Koch brothers”. Accuracy. Truth.