Supreme Sacrifice

The United States Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States, in 2010. Top row (left to right): Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Bottom row (left to right): Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has been behaving erratically, like some kind of kangaroo court we might find in a poor Banana Republic .

“A banana republic is a politically unstable country that economically depends upon the exports of a limited resource (fruits, minerals), and usually features a classed society — a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy, the rich élites of business, politics, and the military.” (Wikipedia)

Chief Justice Roberts and his cronies Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy keep bending We the People over the bench and giving us the shaft.  They seem to think the key to interpreting the US Constitution is “What’s good for the 1% is good for the country.” Of course, some of the US Founders shared that belief, but they were largely overruled then (and repeatedly since). It has taken the 1% a long time to engineer their coup d’état of the US, but now they may be poised to execute their final blows.

What’s next? Will they break the original copy of the US Constitution from its sealed case, set it on fire, and then piss on it? Will they announce an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to privatize the Court?

What the 1% wants

Clearly, the honor and integrity of the High Court is being sacrificed on an alter of greed. For the highest Court in the land and perhaps the most prestigious court in human history, that is the supreme sacrifice.

The 1% is having its way with us and our public institutions, and they would like nothing better than for us to lose all faith in those institutions. They’d like us to become so enraged at our own government that we would rise up like an angry mob and tear it down for them, delivering the coup de grâce (killing blow) to our civic society ourselves. But eff that. We need a good government and a good Supreme Court. The problem with the Court is some of the Justices on it, not the Court itself.

We need to impeach the bad apples on the Court and get on with purging corruption from the rest of the halls of government.

Poor Richard

How the Corporate Right Hijacked America’s Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent

 AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

A study by the Constitutional Accountability Center found that the Chamber of Commerce had won 65 percent of its cases heard by the court under Chief Justice John Roberts, compared to 56 percent under former Chief Justice William Rehnquist (1986-2005) and just 43 percent of the cases that came during the Burger court (1969-1986).

But that’s only the beginning. “The Roberts Court,” wrote Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, is “slowly but surely… giving corporate America a handbook on how to engage in misconduct. In case after case, it seems big companies are being given the playbook on how to win even bigger the next time.”

How did we get here? What is the Powell Memo?

“In 1971, Lewis F. Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.”

“Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy. ” http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html

Related PRA 2010 Posts:

• Money = speech?
• Soveriegnty and “Papers, please”
• Supreme Court For Sale
• Bye, bye, bye, Miranda
• The Attack Without Mercy
• Inalienable rights and wrongs