Saturday, January 23, 2010

Why Five Members of SCOTUS Are Nuttier Than Fruit Cakes!!

by len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the worst decision since Bush v Gore, the US Supreme Court has worked a 'miracle'. Five 'justices' --John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Antony Kennedy --have conspired to turn mere words on paper into living, breathing 'human beings' and have decreed that these corporations, mere 'legal abstractions', have the same rights of free speech as do living breathing human beings. Who is the 'conspiracy theorist', who is nuttiest when five ideologues in robes can dictate to you that you treat mere 'abstractions' --pieces of paper --as if they were people?

The crooks on K-street may resume their on-going auction of the United States knowing that their nefarious bargains have been blessed by the 'high court', a cult of weird robed people who believe weird things! 'Corporations' --mere abstractions --are given license to sell out the nation and call it 'free speech'!

Should you dare to use the term 'conspiracy' to describe the activities of these crooks on K-street --the lobbies for Israel and other foreign entities --you will be labeled a 'conspiracy theorist'! But SCOTUS, meanwhile, gets away with calling words on paper a 'person' and giving them rights! I ask you: who is nuttier? You for believing what volumes of federal laws have called 'conspiracies'? Or --the SUPREME court who believes an embossed piece of paper with a corporate seal from Delaware on it is a real, living breathing person? I will tell you what I think! I think that five members of the Supreme Court of the United States are nuttier than fruit cakes!

Conspiracies Exist: SCOTUS IS One!

The Supreme Court itself has said 'conspiracies eixst' in numerous decisions that you can look up for yourself at Findlaw or Cornell University Law Library online. When there are thousands of pages of case law having to do with conspiracies, the notion that they don't exist is just plain stupid! The only folk trying to discount 'conspiracies' are ring wing nuts who are clearly up to their necks in numerous treasonous conspiracies to undermine American democracy and wage wars of naked aggression and oil plunder! The latest SCOTUS decision is the result and the proof of my charge.

Certain types of conspiracies were made 'legal' long ago. They are called 'corporations' and 'geniuses' on the high court think that they are 'real folk' and treat them accordingly. In fact, corporations are just ink on paper! If that! Today --you can form a corporation online and save the ink! The Supreme Court will think you are 'real' and may even grant you privileges that you have not earned or deserve. If you can afford an office on K-street or if you have enough corporate money to buy some Reps and/or Senators, you might even enlist the US military for a little invasion and resource theft on your behalf! You could line your pockets with the sacrifice of American lives and the lives of your victims.

SCOTUS has said that those 'conspiracies of rich men' are people --living, breathing people --who have rights and among those presumably inalienable rights is the right to bribe office seekers with monies that have most certainly bilked out of you and millions of other people, real people with hearts, lungs, mouths, and opinions. In an absurd Kafkaesque world of GOP manufacture, mere ink and paper have more rights, more power, more clout more impact upon the world than do you, a real person in a real word!
Less than two years after Buckley, Bellotti re-affirmed the First Amendment principle that the Government lacks thepower to restrict political speech based on the speaker’s corporate identity. 435 U.S., at 784–785. Thus the law stood until Austin up-held a corporate independent expenditure restriction, bypassing Buckley and Bellotti by recognizing a new governmental interest inpreventing “the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of [corporate] wealth . . . that have little or no correlation to thepublic’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.” 494 U. S., at 660. Pp. 25–32. (c

This Court is confronted with conflicting lines of precedent: a pre-Austin line forbidding speech restrictions based on the speaker’s corporate identity and a post-Austin line permitting them. Neither Austin’s antidistortion rationale nor the Government’s other justifica-tions support §441b’s restrictions. Pp. 32–47.

--SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, No. 08–205.
Nevertheless, when a 'conspiracy of rich men' has been granted privilege and status, you will be told that 'conspiracies' do not exist! If that were so, why has the US Supreme Court handed down so many cases defining them and applying to them the laws of these United States? And why are there so many US laws having to do with 'conspiracies' if 'conspiracies' did not exist?The fascist domination of American life and debate is possible because people have 'bought into' the pernicious notion of 'corporate personhood'. This notion facilitates More's 'conspiracy of rich men'.

Mere legal abstractions are absurdly accorded rights that, by right, belong only to real, living, flesh and blood people. Corporations are given license to lie about misdeeds, incompetence and corporate criminality, literally, a 'conspiracy of rich men --the Tea Baggers and idiots who have bought into it; and the GOP consultants, firms, and focus groups who dreamed it all up. And, just as egregious, the Supreme Court itself where the majority fussed about a red herring: corporations losing a voice in the political process! The words 'censorship' and 'banned speech' was banded about as if they were truly concerned about it but would not have been if those affected had not been the GOPs corporate sponsors who were clearly most affected.

Is the Voice of 'Labor' Silenced?

One can only conclude that SCOTUS's problem with the law as it had been was that labor unions were on an equal footing with the big, conservative corporations! Before the Supreme Court itself subverted Federal Election laws, both corporations and labor unions were free to voice any political opinion about any issue or candidate whenever they wanted! We can't have that, now can we? Simply, the five right wing extremists on the court have, as they did with Bush v Gore, labored mightily to hatch a rationalization for lies and bulshit, a rationalization that sounds scholarly, legal and erudite but which is, in fact, a lod of codswallop and high falutin' sounding crap!!

I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.

They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth’s sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws.But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!

--Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia

Who is SCOTUS protecting and favoring? The Carvellian quick respons: the richest one percent of the US population which, in fact, owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined. The Supreme Court of the Unites States, infiltrated by the likes of Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts, have partnered with the US right wing to rob the US population with "trickle down theory" and other nonsense utterly unsupported with fact or evidence.

Here are some assorted facts that paint the ugly picture.

  • In the late 1970s, the top one percent of the US population held 13 percent of the wealth; in 1995 it held 38 percent. [Source: Source: Levy, Frank. The New Dollars and Dreams ].
  • The top ten percent of the US population owns 81.8 percent of the real estate, 81.2 percent of the stock, and 88 percent of the bonds. [Source: Federal Reserve Bank data in Left Business Observer, No. 72, Apr. 3, 1996, p. 5].
  • One percent of the US population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. [Source: Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: Harper Business, 1993].
  • The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
  • Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
  • Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...
    Rebecca Blank, who recently left the President's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out, ‘We've gone back to levels of income and wealth inequality that this country hasn't seen since the teens and 1920s.’" [Source: Merrill Goozner, Crash of '99?, Salon.com, Oct. 1, 1999; addendum: since 1999, the date the source was published, the situation is much, much worse. Today --just ONE PERCENT own more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. GOP incompetence and criminality moves so fast these days, it's hard to keep up!].
  • The top one percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 40 percent. [Source: Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World, p. 108].
  • Federal Reserve median family net worth by percentile for 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001 (Federal Reserve Bulletin January 2003, pp. 1-36). Note the small gains for the bottom 75% of the population and larger gains for the upper 25% and that the 1998 to 2001 gains were largest.

    --US Wealth Distributions 1989-2001

Republicans bought the scam because it made them feel good about being greedy, shallow bastards. The appeal is obvious: trickle down rationalized greed but only after the fact; it made one feel good about one's worst impulses, motives, and elitist bigotry.
Why I moderate comments

  • SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
  • Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

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6 comments:

Ken Schaefer said...

Len, I love the way you tell it like you see it. Your articles get right to the point. Thanks for keeping an eye on these crooks. As your friend and a person I wish I ahd known said as Taggart, "What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?!"

Anonymous said...

I have attempted to talk to a few people about this. Their eyes glaze over and they are instantly out of their depth when one addresses any thing so complex as a "corporation", or the difference between free speech and straight out bribery.
The heights of Olympus are not for the common man. We must trust to those who are obviously superior to us, else why would they be rich and powerful in a "free" country?
My sample is very smal, limited to a few I corner at music get togethers and dull parties for weddings and such.
The simple idea that there is no real difference between the policies of Obama and the policies of Bush is beyond them.
Don't these stellar persons belong to different "parties"?
Some are honest enough to simply admit that it scares hell out of them and if I am not able to offer a sound bite solution, they will simply trust to the "system" which must have the blessing of God.
The conservative mind set that the present situation is in place, that the powers that be are doing the best that they might, and that fate will ultimately deliver us to a better time seems almost universal.
One cannot tell anyone anything they do not want to know.
Keep using your spurs, Cowboy.
Don Smith

Tom Degan said...

Are corporations really persons?

Do corporations think?

Do corporations grieve when a loved one dies as a result of a lack of adequate health care?

If a corporation ever committed an unspeakable crime against the American people, could IT be sent to federal prison? (Note the operative word here: "It")

Has a corporation ever given its life for its country?

Has a corporation ever been killed in an accident as the result of a design flaw in the automobile it was driving?

Has a corporation ever written a novel that inspired millions?

Has a corporation ever risked its life by climbing a ladder to save a child from a burning house?

Has a corporation ever won an Oscar? Or an Emmy? Or the Nobel Peace Prize? Or the Pulitzer Prize in Biography?

Has a corporation ever been shot and killed by someone who was using an illegal and unregistered gun?

Has a corporation ever paused to reflect upon the simple beauty of an autumn sunset or a brilliant winter moon rising on the horizon?

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a noise if there are no corporations there to hear it?

Should corporations kiss on the first date?

Our lives - yours and mine - have more worth than any corporation. To say that the Supreme Court made a awful decision on Thursday is an understatement. Not only is it an obscene ruling - it's an insult to our humanity.

http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

William said...

I am of the opinion that these five "Justices" should be immediately arrested for treason. The inevitable result of this horrendous ruling will be that government, at all levels, is now officially for sale to the highest bidder.

I am well aware that most "legislators" are on the "company payroll", Roberts and his gang of soulless cretins have merely legalized the outright theft of government from We The People.

This is nothing short of a stab deep into the heart of our democracy, the outright murder of the republic.

Now, multi-national corporations, whose only allegiance is to their shareholders, are in a position to elect representatives favorable to their position; to get laws written favorable to their greedy ways, to crush opposition.

This may very well be the end of the United States of America.

Stephen Kriz said...

Len - great post. This is the most egregious and dangerous decision in my lifetime. Without sounding maudlin, it may signal the end of American democracy. My voice means nothing compared to ExxonMobil's billions of dollars of "free speech". While these justices might believe that non-human corporations can "speak", corporations clearly cannot cry, suffer, bleed or die. Only human beings can do those things and they most assuredly will, as corporations systematically dismantle workers rights, workplace safety standards, and environmental protections by corrupting elections with their bought and paid for "speech".

Unknown said...

Tom Degan's Daily Rant said...

If a corporation ever committed an unspeakable crime against the American people, could IT be sent to federal prison? (Note the operative word here: "It")

Corporations commit crimes (often unspeakable) almost every day. They get sued and take it out of stockholders ass. They simply build into their budgets the money it takes to PURCHASE immunity.

Now --defense contractors, arguably, have even greater immunity plus a protection racket called the US government. We have witnessed the devolution of the US government to 'protection rackets' and 'shakedowns'. Oh..I almost forgot: INTERNATIONAL OIL THEFT and the ongoing PONZI SCHEME with China.