How the Supreme Court Is Rebranding Corruption — Ciara Torres-Spelliscy

In thirteen years of hostile decisions, the Roberts Supreme Court has done all it can to legalize corruption. With the Bridgegate case, it gets a chance to wreak even more havoc and possibly end the use of the term “corruption” as a useful legal concept....

That the purpose, wasn't it? If this is not judicial activism, what is?

This approach to corruption sets the Roberts Supreme Court apart from other Supreme Courts. For over a century, previous Supreme Courts upheld campaign finance laws and other regulations which try to keep graft and political intimidation at bay precisely because as the Supreme Court recognized in Ex parte Yarbrough in 1884, “[i]n a republican government like ours, where political power is reposed in representatives of the entire body of the people, chosen at short intervals by popular elections, the temptations to control these elections by violence and by corruption is a constant source of danger…. no lover of his country can shut his eyes to the fear of future danger from both sources."...

But wait, there’s more. The Roberts Supreme Court has also rebranded corruption by changing what counts as white-collar crimes. In Skilling v. US (a case brought by disgraced ex-CEO of Enron Jeff Skilling challenging his 24-year prison sentence for defrauding the company’s shareholders), the Supreme Court agreed with Skilling that he should not have been charged with honest services fraud because his crimes did not involve a bribe or a kickback. This Supreme Court decision led to Skilling getting 10 years shaved off of his original sentence. He was released from jail in 2018 and left his halfway house in 2019. He is now a free man....

As I discuss in my article and my book, the Supreme Court’s role in gutting corruption has been keenly watched by shady politicians and their lawyers. If you pull the legal briefs in criminal cases charging politicians of crimes like bribery and fraud, what you will find is citations to white-collar crime cases like Skilling and McDonnell, as well as citations to campaign finance cases like Citizens United and McCutcheon, as reasons why whatever awful thing the politician did is not actually a crime.

Corruption isn’t a partisan matter. Both Democratic and Republican politicians have been accused of abusing their offices for private gain. And using the Roberts Supreme Court cases to their advantage is equally bipartisan....

Is the intent to install plutonomy, the oligarchy of wealth, under the veneer of representative democracy?

Interestingly, in Western liberal "democracies", the oligarchy of wealth called plutonomy is institutionally formalized through the "sanctity of private property," which includes hereditary transfer of ownership through inheritance, establishing a wealthy elite in power across generations. Looks more like neo-feudalism.

ProMarket
How the Supreme Court Is Rebranding Corruption

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy | Brennan Center Fellow and Professor at Stetson Law

Pam and Russ Martens — The Kavanaugh Nomination’s Money Trail Leads Back to Clarence Thomas

Dark money and conflict of interest on SCOTUS.

Sex scandal is just a canard. The real issues go far deeper.

Not that the sex scandal is immaterial. In fact, the GOP seems to have decided it doesn't need educated white women after having previously decided that it doesn't need college-educated white males and non-whites. The "Big Tent" has narrowed to not-college white males and Evangelicals.

Wall Street On Parade
The Kavanaugh Nomination’s Money Trail Leads Back to Clarence Thomas
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

See also

As expected, the corporate media’s coverage of Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment process is disappointingly superficial. While there’s no doubt sexual harassment is a pressing issue in modern-day America, left-leaning establishment outlets and individuals alike are mired in these accusations, as well as partisan political divides as they fail to recognize Kavanaugh’s very troublesome record of court rulings—rulings that show his verifiable proclivity toward using the government to very literally harass the American people and the rest of the world.

While Congress and the people bicker over their disagreements with Kavanaugh as he testifies, few are discussing what he has in common with both factions of the American ruling class....

The article makes one wonder, is Kavanaugh a proto-fascist, as the US appears to be sliding down the slippery slope since 9/11?

Mint Press News
What the Media Isn’t Telling You About Brett Kavanaugh

Carey Wedler

Kate Bahn — Understanding the importance of monopsony power in the U.S. labor market

With the launch of our new website, we are reintroducing visitors to our policy issue areas. Informed by the academic research we fund, these issue areas are critical to our mission of advancing evidence-based ideas that promote strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth. Through June and continuing in July, expert staff have been publishing posts on our Value Added blog about each of these issue areas, describing the work we do and the issues we seek to address. The following post is about Wages. For previous posts on other issue areas, please go to our Value Added home.

WCEG — The Equitablog
Understanding the importance of monopsony power in the U.S. labor market

Kate Bahn

Kate Martin — Neil Gorsuch was instrumental in defending George W. Bush’s torture program

When Gorsuch took a job at the Justice Department in 2005, the department — then headed by President Bush’s former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales — was in the midst of defending radical claims of unreviewable presidential authority to act in the name of national security. Gorsuch, as Principal Deputy to the Associate Attorney General, became deeply involved in that work. 

President Bush claimed that he could act not only without Congress, and in secret, but that he could violate the law if he decided that national security required it, and the courts had no power to review his actions. These were not academic claims, they were made in defense of outrageous abuses of individual rights carried out in the name of the “war against terror.”…

While the documents about Mr. Gorsuch’s tenure at DOJ working on this case are still incomplete, they contain no indication that he disagreed with or questioned any of these radical legal positions taken by the administration....

Think Progress
Neil Gorsuch was instrumental in defending George W. Bush’s torture program

Kate Martin | Senior Fellow at American Progress

Also

Gorsuch appeared slightly flustered when Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California – the top Democrat on the Republican-majority committee and an influential member of the Senate Intelligence Committee – pressed him on his role advising President Bush in drafting U.S. policy on torture.

She brought up several memos and emails detailing his role helping the White House conclude that "enhanced interrogations" were legal, a memo he drafted helping top Bush aides sell that notion to the public and agreed that a controversial program allowing government surveillance on American citizens without a warrant as part of the war on terror.

Gorsuch said he didn't remember the memos and was reluctant to talk about his "loose recollection of something that happened 11 or 12 years ago." But he reminded Feinstein that he was essentially a lawyer working for a client and not a judge, and he didn't always agree with the administration's more assertive conclusions – although he wouldn't say which ones..

"There was a tug of war in the White House" on the issue, Feinstein answered, and "I want to know which side you were on."

He refused to say.

Thumbs down on confirmation.

US News
Gorsuch Questioned Early on Torture Memo

Joseph P. Williams, Staff Writer

Martin Armstrong — The Supreme Court Just Created a Full-Blown Police State – The End of the USA Cannot Be Far Behind

Citizens United was bad news for American democracy, this decision is very dire news for US liberty. Given the rise of total surveillance and police militarization, the US has fallen under tyranny. It is no shining city on a hill or beacon of freedom. Exceptionalism?

Armstrong Economics

The Supreme Court Just Created a Full-Blown Police State – The End of the USA Cannot Be Far Behind
Martin Armstrong

Fox — Trump To Name Supreme Court Nominees By July

In an interview with Fox News, Trump said would consider “wonderful, conservative, good, solid, brilliant judges in the form of” the late Justice Antonin Scalia. “I’m going to actually lay them out. I’m going to discuss people ... I think before the convention. I want to put 10, 12, 15 names of the type of people that we’d like,” he said.

“From that list, I would choose.”

Huffington Post Politics
Trump To Name Supreme Court Nominees By July

Tim Ahmann and Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Eric Walsh

In an apparent effort to placate conservatives back before he locked down the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Donald Trump said he would release a list of 5-10 potential Supreme Court within the next week. That was 51 days ago.

In an interview with Fox News Thursday evening, Trump pushed out this deadline even further. After host Bret Baier asked if Trump would release his list before the Republican National Convention in July, the real estate mogul offered a noncommittal response. He now says that “I think” the list will be released “before the convention.”

It’s a fairly minor flip-flop, but it fits a pattern that emerged almost immediately after Trump appeared to clinch his party’s nomination Tuesday evening. On his first full day as the presumptive Republican nominee, Trump reversed his position on the minimum wage and said that he is “not necessarily a huge fan” of his own tax plan.…

Think Progress
Trump Is Flip-Flopping On His Potential SCOTUS Nominee, Too

Ian Millhiser

Reuters — Obama considering Nevada’s Republican governor for Supreme Court

WTF

Raw Story
Obama considering Nevada’s Republican governor for Supreme Court
Reuters

Reuters — Senate Republicans vow to preemptively block any Supreme Court nominee from Obama

Chairman Chuck Grassley and the rest of the committee’s Republicans sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying they will not hold hearings on a nominee to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia until the next president takes office in January. Scalia died on Feb. 13.

McConnell afterward said the Republican-led Senate, which must confirm any nominee, will refuse to consider any Obama selection to replace Scalia. McConnell said he was not inclined even to meet with whomever Obama picks.…

Raw Story
Senate Republicans vow to preemptively block any Supreme Court nominee from Obama
Reuters

The GOP powers that be have handed President Obama and the Democrats an opportunity to turn this on them politically. It's a move to harden the base, but the Democrats will use it to nudge the center toward them.

Unfortunately, the courts have become hopelessly politicized and the Constitution should be amended to reflect this by limited terms for judges and justices who should stand periodically in elections like other political officials.

See also

McConnell's desire to preempt any Obama nominee is motivated by the fear that, when confronted by a nominee, his GOP colleagues will confront a Catch-22 in which, regardless of what they say or do, the GOP's prospects for maintaining control of the Senate in 2017 will be worsened.

VOX
The game theory behind Mitch McConnell's Supreme Court strategy
John Patty and Tom Clark

Steven Rosenfeld — How Scalia's Death Could Upend the Presidential Election and Spark the Biggest Political Battle of Our Times

This is actually a boon for democracy and electoral activism and participation since so many interests are involved on the political spectrum. It also underlines the power of SCOTUS as a political institution in addition to a legal one.

AlterNet
How Scalia's Death Could Upend the Presidential Election and Spark the Biggest Political Battle of Our Times
Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Emily Atkin — After Scalia Death, Ted Cruz Says 2016 Election Should Be ‘A Referendum On The Supreme Court’

The single-issue candidate.

Before Scalia’s death, Cruz had repeatedly made the Supreme Court a centerpiece of his campaign, promising to create the most conservative bench in history if elected. He has said that changing the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court would be a huge priority for him as president — and that he would “spend whatever political capital is necessary” to appoint the most reliably conservative justices he could find.

“We are one justice away from the Supreme Court concluding that nobody in this room and no American has an individual right to keep and bear arms,” Cruz told a packed town hall meeting in Iowa last month. “We are one justice away from the Supreme Court striking down every restriction on abortion, and mandating unlimited abortion on demand, up until the time of birth, partial birth, with taxpayer funding, and no parental notification whatsoever. We are one justice away from the Supreme Court ordering veterans memorials torn down all over this country if they contain any acknowledgement of God Almighty.”

Think Progress
After Scalia Death, Ted Cruz Says 2016 Election Should Be ‘A Referendum On The Supreme Court’
Emily Atkin

Dara Lind — Read Justice Ginsburg’s moving tribute to her “best buddy” Justice Scalia

Respect versus reality show. The American public likes a reality show, so that's what they get.

VOX
Read Justice Ginsburg’s moving tribute to her “best buddy” Justice Scalia

Dara Lind

Jeff Stein, Elizabeth Warren: Republicans risk threatening "our democracy itself" over Supreme Court seat

Brad DeLong — Scott Lemieux on How Nino Scalia Tried to Turn Jurisprudence into Partisan Professional Wrestling

Scott Lemieux:
"No discussion of Scalia’s legacy, for instance, can ignore the 2000 decision Bush v Gore, in which the court issued an essentially lawless decision awarding the presidency to the Republican candidate. Scalia did not write the opinion of the Court, but he wrote the more nakedly partisan opinion that preceded it and has defended it aggressively defended it in public ever since.… 

"…had Scalia’s dissents ultimately shaped America, women would not have reproductive rights, the federal government could not effectively regulate health care, LGBT people would not have the right engage in sexual intercourse without fear of arrest – let alone alone the right to marry – and states could single them out for legal disabilities. Women could be excluded from state educational institutions, public schools could teach creationism in science classes and prisoners could be assaulted by prison guards. And, in large part because of Scalia, in America today, the Voting Rights Act has been gutted, the rights of employees and consumers have been curtailed, Brown v Board is more likely to be used to stop integration than to promote it and moneyed interests increasingly dominate elections....

"In a very real sense, the 2016 elections will ultimately result in the confirmation or repudiation of the jurisprudence for which Justice Scalia most prominently advocated…"

Grasping Reality
Weekend Reading: Scott Lemieux on How Nino Scalia Tried to Turn Jurisprudence into Partisan Professional Wrestling
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

See also

Live from [Fill in the Blank:] Nino Scalia: "I think it is very facile for people to say... ...‘Oh, torture is ter...

Live from [Fill in the Blank:] Nino Scalio in... Wonkette: Antonin Scalia Has Magic Jesus Constitution: "Nino Scali...

VOX — At least 14 Supreme Court justices have been confirmed during election years

A key part of the conservative argument will be that it's unprecedented for the president to nominate a candidate during an election year. "It’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year," said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Saturday.

Igor Volsky, a staffer at the liberal Center for American Progress, responded with a tweet listing justices who have been confirmed in election years:

1. Oliver Ellsworth, 1796
2. Samuel Chase, 1796
3. William Johnson, 1804
4. Philip Barbour, 1836
5. Roger Taney, 1836
6. Melville Fuller, 1888
7. Lucius Lamar, 1888
8. George Shiras, 1892
9. Mahlon Pitney, 1912
10. John Clarke, 1916
11. Louis Brandeis, 1916
12. Benjamin Cardozo, 1932
13. Frank Murphy, 1940
14. Anthony Kennedy, 1988

VOX
At least 14 Supreme Court justices have been confirmed during election years
Updated by Timothy B. Lee

"I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time."

Time
President Obama Says He Will Nominate Justice Scalia’s Replacement
Maya Rhodan

Breaking — US Supreme Court Justice Scalia dead at age 79

Shocker. RIP.

BBC
US Supreme Court Justice Scalia dies

The Guardian
Supreme court justice Antonin Scalia dies at 79

Justice Scalia on the need to integrate social, political and economic liberalism in treating legal rights and responsibilities. This is key because many paradoxes of liberalism arise from it.

Marginal Revolution
Antonin Scalia on economic rights
Tyler Cowen

The corpse is still warm and the fight has already begun. Disgusting.

The dynamics of the presidential race make it likely that the other Republican contenders will have to follow Cruz's lead, and with the GOP presidential field unanimously opposed to allowing Obama to fill the vacancy it will be difficult for Senate Republicans to defy them. The small number of Republicans representing blue states may break from the pack, but pressure on the leadership to block confirmation will be intense.

VOX
Ted Cruz and other conservatives are arguing Obama shouldn't get to replace Justice Scalia
Updated by Matthew Yglesias

McConnell, who is the leader of the Republican-controlled Senate, doesn't outright say that if Obama nominates someone that he and other Senate Republicans would refuse to confirm her. But that threat is strongly implied in "this vacancy should not be filled."

Senate Democrats, for their part — including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) — are already saying it would be a "shameful abdication of our constitutional responsibility" to do what McConnell suggests.

I'm waiting for "because Putin."

VOX
Mitch McConnell has no intention of letting Obama replace Scalia
Dara Lind

Martin Pengelly in New York and Ben Jacobs in Greenville, South Carolina

Sara Jerde — Rubio: 'God's Rules' Win Over Supreme Court Decisions

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in a video posted Tuesday that he believes people of faith should ignore laws that violate their religion.Rubio told the Christian Broadcasting Network that no law is "settled," making reference to Supreme Court decisions that legalized same-sex marriage.

“In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin — violate God’s law and sin — if we’re ordered to stop preaching the Gospel, if we’re ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that," Rubio said. "We cannot to abide by that because government is compelling us to sin."

“So when those two come into conflict, God’s rules always win,” he added.

Oops. Rubio apparently doesn't realize that he is making an argument for the religious law of other faiths in the United States — like sharia for Muslims, which Islamic fundamentalists also claim on the same grounds.

Or does Rubio believe that Christianity is the state religion of the United States.

TPM
Rubio: 'God's Rules' Win Over Supreme Court Decisions

Sara Jerde

Doris Kearns Goodwin and Jeff Clements — When the Supreme Court is this wrong, it’s time to overrule them

Surveys show that a large majority of American citizens across the political spectrum oppose the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that opened the door to unlimited political spending by global corporations and powerful unions. Yet when asked about the prospect of passing a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision, too many people argue that it would be “too hard,” even “impossible.” 

This argument lacks historical perspective. Every step on the path to fulfill the promise of the American Revolution was “too hard,” but Americans did it anyway. Hard, yes; yet constitutional amendments have come in waves during times of challenge — and Supreme Court obstinacy — much like our own....

To hope that the current court will fix things is folly. That is why the 28th amendment is necessary to overturn Citizens United, just as Americans have used the amendment process to overturn the Supreme Court six times before. 

Reuters
When the Supreme Court is this wrong, it’s time to overrule them
Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian, and Jeff Clements, attorney

If SCOTUS kills the subsidy part of Obamacare, the economy will feel it and stock rally will be over

The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments soon on whether or not the government subsidies given out under Obamacare are legal. If they strike down the subsidy part of the law--and that's a distinct possibility--then the law itself will be impaired and might not survive.

Even if the law survives, removing the government subsidies could result in a serious blow to the economy and could send the stock market tumbling.

Subsidies aside, Federal Government  spending on health care has increased significantly since the law went into effect. In 2012, before the mandate, Federal outlays for Medicare and Medicaid totaled $814 billion. In 2013 when the mandate to have insurance was postponed for a year, spending on Medicare and Medicaid was $845 billion, an increase of 3.8%.

However, in 2014 when the law took effect, health care spending surged by $84 billion to $929 billion, a 10% increase. We will probably see another $16 billion more for this year.

Here is how the  last three year looks with this year projected.

You can see from these numbers how much the economy can potentially lose. We can go back to very near the pre-Obamacare spending numbers, which means lopping off about $100 billion annually from total spending. That would be a big hit, not to mention the other economic destruction that would come from not raising the debt ceiling. The latter would put the Federal government on a "balanced budget" mode of operation, which would be a disaster.

The Rutherford Institute — U.S. Supreme Court Rules 8-1 that Citizens Have No Protection Against Fourth Amendment

In a blow to the constitutional rights of citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Heien v. State of North Carolina that police officers are permitted to violate American citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights if the violation results from a “reasonable” mistake about the law on the part of police. Acting contrary to the venerable principle that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the Court ruled that evidence obtained by police during a traffic stop that was not legally justified can be used to prosecute the person if police were reasonably mistaken that the person had violated the law. The Rutherford Institute had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hold law enforcement officials accountable to knowing and abiding by the rule of law. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Court’s lone dissenter, warned that the court’s ruling “means further eroding the Fourth Amendment’s protection of civil liberties in a context where that protection has already been worn down.” 

The Rutherford Institute’s amicus brief in Heien v. North Carolina is available at www.rutherford.org. 

“By refusing to hold police accountable to knowing and abiding by the rule of law, the Supreme Court has given government officials a green light to routinely violate the law,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of the award-winning book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. “This case may have started out with an improper traffic stop, but where it will end—given the turbulence of our age, with its police overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, and corporate corruption—is not hard to predict. This ruling is what I would call a one-way, nonrefundable ticket to the police state.”

What would possibly count as "unreasonable" if then police discovery something "by chance." This is carte blanche, or even an invitation to abuse.

The Rutherford Institute — On the Front Lines
U.S. Supreme Court Rules 8-1 that Citizens Have No Protection Against Fourth Amendment Violations by Police Officers Ignorant of the Law

Press Release

David Kravets — Justice Sotomayor says technology could lead to “Orwellian world”

Let's hope that Sonia Sotomajor becomes the next William O. Douglas.

Ars Technica
Justice Sotomayor says technology could lead to “Orwellian world”
David Kravets

h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

Crying for Argentina

Last week, the US Supreme Court made a decision that could force Argentina to pay American billionaire hedge fund managers the full value of its decade-old debts. Argentina’s dollar denominated/pegged debt is one of many cruel legacies of the criminal Washington consensus government under Carlos Menem. Menem was known for being buddy-buddy with Bill Clinton, and excluded the same sort of chill machismo as Clinton, while turning his country into an internationally financed Ponzi scheme. In the 90’s, he was lauded as a hero of fiscal discipline and inflation control, but his real achievement was severely eroding Argentina’s sovereignty and allowing it to become a petri dish for reckless neoliberalism. As poorly managed as Argentina had been before the neoliberal experiment, it should now be clear that establishing a currency board and pegging the peso to the US dollar was a disastrous “solution.”

The current Kirchner government is also deeply flawed, and I have trouble finding anything positive to say about the leadership of my second home country. This government has continually lied about inflation statistics and violated freedom of the press. That being said, Argentina has been struggling for years to build up its dollar reserves by exporting an enormous amount of its agricultural production, at the cost of increased food prices for the poor. Argentina has also seen millions of acres of its land transformed into soybean farms, with all the environmental consequences from the herbicides and fertilizers that go along with it. Meanwhile, the US refuses to allow imports of Argentina’s higher valued agricultural goods, such as meat and citrus, due to grossly outdated health and safety measures that masquerade as protectionism for America’s welfare farmers. So on the one hand, US policy is forcing Argentina to pay back debts in dollars, and on the other hand, US policy is making it difficult for Argentina to actually acquire those dollars! Along with the current disaster in Iraq, it’s hard to see how our current leadership could do a better job of turning the entire world against the US.

This recent series of decisions from our neo-con court system may force Argentina to pay back these illegitimate debts, which could drain billions of its hard earned dollar reserves. This is crony capitalism of the worst kind; sociopath-investors like Paul Singer are using America’s court system to force the sovereign government of Argentina back into client-state status. The already unstable Argentine peso, which has caused some farmers to start reverting to commodity currency, could fall even further as the result of this decision. In the purest sense, it’s hard to see how human welfare, except for the top 0.001%, will improve as a result of this decision.