None Dare Call It Corruption

Krugman.   Talking about the Supreme Court's decision to interfere in the legal process regarding a vicious suit to try one more time to damage Obamacare. Who else has the guts to risk their position in the mainstream press by telling the truth?

"...let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Judges who support this cruel absurdity aren’t stupid; they know what they’re doing. What they are, instead, is corrupt, willing to pervert the law to serve political masters. And what we’ll find out in the months ahead is how deep the corruption goes."

I have been saying since Bush v. Gore that we are in a frightening era never before seen in this country: an era in which a majority of the Supreme Court is corrupt.  Not overly ideological, not ignorant of the law, corrupt.  A half century and more of Republican Supreme Court packing, dating back to the Nixon-era fight that put the despicable racist Rehnquist on the Court, has resulted in a clear majority of Justices that are committed, not to some sort of imaginary Conservative world view, but simply to taking the opportunity, when it presents itself, to damage our democratic way of government in order to give more and more control of the country to the richest among us.

For a while I have thought of writing an article about the legal opinions of Antonin Scalia, which over time have become less and less a matter of serious analysis of the law and more and more a sort of taunting of the rest of the country with the fact that he can do whatever he wants, regardless of whether it is either legal or just.  And yet, despite the fact that even a non-lawyer can find huge irrationalities, and even deliberate misstatements of precedent in many of his decisions, he is still the judicial equivalent of Paul Ryan, with the press holding up his absurd, vicious reasoning as a model of Conservative thought.  Well, now is not the time for that* but let us just look at the results:

The overturning of the 2000 Presidential election on an absurd pretense, giving control of the country to an incompetent, corrupt President who destroyed our economy, destroyed our military and left our country an international pariah, while succeeding at only one thing: transferring massive amounts of money from the American people to a minuscule cabal of rich capitalists.

The crafting of a decision, in the Citizens' United case, which defied all logic, and was based on the absolutely insane premise that rich campaign donors would not take advantage of the decision to tilt the political playing field even farther in their own direction.

The decision to essentially do away with all regulation of politics that were based on race, again on a laughable claim that white racists throughout the country would not seize on this as an opportunity to resume a centuries-long campaign of discrimination against minority groups.

And the result of all of this?  An out of control, subversive party, which built its base on stoking hatred and greed, which was well on its way to deserved oblivion, has been brought back from the dead, to resume its zombie stalking of the good Americans who still remain.

But of course, we can wait for hell to freeze over before anyone but Krugman has the honesty to say this in the mainstream press.  Because ownership of the press was just one more gift given to the rich by Republican rule, so anyone else who tries to tell the truth is silenced.  Thank heaven for the internet, so that at least a record will continue to exist that some people in the country knew exactly what was going on, and that it wasn't just a gigantic accident caused by people who couldn't possibly have known what the consequences of this corruption would be.  Sad to say, that's just about the best that can be hoped for at this point.

*i.e. I'm too lazy to do it today.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Please do write that article!
Anonymous said…
ahh would this be the same Supreme court who called Obamacare a tax when we were lies to by the president when he said this is absolutely not a tax.

Maybe that's because we are too stupid to be told the truth
Green Eagle said…
Apparently we are too stupid to tell which is better- ten million people getting medical care and the rate of medical cost increase being dramatically cut, or the insurance companies getting another big payday from the Republicans.
isaac said…
I hope I live long enough to see this court run out on a rail. Before the Rehnquist court, I did have respect for the institution. I was young during the Warren Court, and saw a majority that seemed genuinely to care about the interests of the weak.

I saw those guys take some courageous steps that expanded the rights of the individual, and screw government and corporations, if they didn't like it.

Now we get the opposite, and the infamous 5* will go down in history as the worst bunch and biggest crooks ever on the court.

*Whenever I see that a particularly bad Extreme Court decision came down 5-4, I don't need to ask which 5 it was
isaac said…
After last week's election I read a couple of pundits ragging on the Democrats that said that voters should vote keeping in mind the kinds of people who would be voting on Court vacancies. They seemed to be ridiculing this as a consideration while voting.

One thing I can say to that is "Clarence Thomas," one of the worst, laziest and unqualified lumps of useless flesh ever to sit on the Court, or to breathe oxygen.

I will never forgive Bush for sticking him with that POS. A bigger FU to the country and to black people as a Justice to replace the iconic Thurgood Marshall just isn't possible.

The Founders intended the Court to be beyond and outside politics, and uninfluenced by it, but it's really nothing but politics--FROM the Court.

Jean Valjean said…
Highway to Hell for those 5.
Weird Dave said…
I wrote to SCOTUS about the ACA.

I don't expect them to listen to me.
Green Eagle said…
Dave, have you got 30 or 40 million to donate to the Republican party? If you do, they will listen very carefully.
Weird Dave said…
To quote the honorable Antonin Scalia, "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court Justice can be bought so cheap, the Nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined."

I would say $100,000,000.00 at least.
Green Eagle said…
Maybe $100 million for the whole set of 5.

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