"What happens to a democracy when its highest court dedicates itself to defending privilege?" (E. J. Dionne Jr.)

"The United States Supreme Court now sees its central task as comforting the already comfortable and afflicting those already afflicted."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his WaPo column "The Supreme
Court’s continuing defense of the powerful"

by Ken

After I put up my Monday post on the last day of the Supreme Court term, I looked at the photo I included of Chief Justice "Smirkin' John" Roberts -- a happy choice, I thought, showing the chief in stomach-churning full smirk -- and the block of text that accompanied it:

"Laws like Arizona's matching funds provision that inhibit robust and wide-open political debate without sufficient justification cannot stand."

-- Chief Justice "Smirkin' John" Roberts, in his opinion
in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett

And I kept thinking, somebody here is stark, staring nuts, and I don't think it's me.

Listen to the chief thunder away in high rhetorical "let freedom" ring mode against laws that inhibit robust and wide-ranging debate. How can you not want to stand and salute?

Unless, that is, you happen to have a working brain. Not necessarily a particularly good one, just a working one -- with, say, a measurable IQ. In which case you know that this is unmitigated bulldoody. The chief purports to be defending our sacred value of free speech, but of course he isn't at all. He's talking about the raw, and apparently undiminishable, brute force of money. And nobody with a functioning brain could under any imaginable circumstances confuse that with "speech."

With the exception of a small group of mental defectives who have found their way onto the Supreme Court and there enshrined as constitutional law that money is speech.

Now Smirkin' John, whatever else he is, is not an imbecile. He knows that this "laws that inhibit robust and wide-ranging debate" is a flat-out lie. There simply isn't any possibility that he doesn't. And so he lies. But then, he spends most of his time on the High Court lying -- lying in the service of the people who matter most to him, the people who can afford to buy the most "free" speech, apparently including his.

Similarly, when Nino Scalia clambered up on his high horse (poor horse!) earlier this week, striking down the California law seeking to end sales of especially violent video games to minors, an blithered in his usual bullying sarcastic (and of course cretinous) way about there being no difference in rights between children and adults, longtime NYT Supreme Court watcher Linda Greenhouse blogged the other day about this now-you-see-it, now-you-don't ability to recognize such differences. It's an interesting piece, but she got bogged down in speculation about the connection to traditional right-wing hatred of the Miranda decision and rule. I think that's way too specialized.

Throw out a challenged to orthodox social values, especially the right-wing ones, and the kiddies' rights will vanish faster than the speed of light. A case, say, about a school newspaper's right to publish without administration censorship. I admit I can't be absolutely sure about "Slow Anthony" Kennedy (though I wouldn't be terribly optimistic), but I don't think there's any question what tune the thug chorale of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito would sing.

Because these thugs don't believe in the First Amendment. I actually heard some clown on NPR this morning talking about the just-completed Supreme Court term having been a big one for the First Amendment. No, it wasn't. They only use the First Amendment now as a weapon for forcing right-wing messaging upon the innocent. Right, like the rights of free expression of the powerful are in any danger of being infringed. Throw them a few cases where it's the rights of the powerless -- or even, probably, the marginally less powerful -- are at issue, and I think you'll see their Stalinist stripes come out of hiding right quick.

And the chance that Smirkin' John (or Clarence or Nino or Sammy) would ever do anything to actually encourgage "robust and wide-open political debate"? I believe the technical term is "slim to none."


E. J. DIONNE JR. ON THE COURT'S COMMITMENT
TO FREE SPEECH IN THE ARIZONA ELECTION CASE

This is the column from which I poached the lead for the top of this post, to which E.J. adds: "If you are a large corporation or a political candidate backed by lots of private money, be assured that the court’s conservative majority will be there for you, solicitous of your needs and ready to swat away those pesky little people who dare to contest your power."

He goes on to talk about the striking down of the Arizona adopted-by-referendum election law's provision of providing additional funds to candidates who accept public financing face big-spending privately financed candidates, with reference to Justice Elena Kagan's notably stinging dissent.

If you are a large corporation or a political candidate backed by lots of private money, be assured that the court’s conservative majority will be there for you, solicitous of your needs and ready to swat away those pesky little people who dare to contest your power.

For years, opponents of campaign finance reform have accused those who want to repair the system of trying to reduce the amount of political speech. But Arizona’s law, as Kagan pointed out, “subsidizes and so produces more political speech.” And then there was this shot at Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion: “Except in a world gone topsy-turvy, additional campaign speech and electoral competition is not a First Amendment injury.”

Indeed, Roberts had to argue that those terribly downtrodden candidates financed with private money had their speech “burdened,” simply because their publicly financed opponents had the means to respond.

Kagan and the dissenters stood up for free speech. Roberts’ majority defended paid speech. The dissenters want to allow candidates to talk; the majority wants to enhance money’s ability to talk.

Roberts was especially exercised over any notion of “leveling the playing field” between private-money candidates and their challengers. He even included a footnote calling attention to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission’s Web site, which once said the law was passed “to level the playing field when it comes to running for office.” Horrors!

Kagan archly noted the “majority’s distaste for ‘leveling’ ” and then dismissed its obsession, observing that Roberts failed to take seriously the Arizona law’s central purpose of containing corruption. Leveling was the means, not the end.

I'm not doing justice to E.J.'s careful discussion of the ins and outs of the election-law case, so I hope you'll read the whole column. I'm more interested at the moment in the larger implications. Of course E.J. is on top of those as well:

[P]ay heed to how this conservative court majority bristles at nearly every effort to give the less wealthy and less powerful an opportunity to prevail, whether at the ballot box or in the courtroom. Not since the Gilded Age has a Supreme Court been so determined to strengthen the hand of corporations and the wealthy. Thus the importance of the Wal-Mart and AT&T cases, the latter described by the New York Times as “a devastating blow to consumer rights.” Will the court now feel so full of its power that it takes on the executive and legislative branches over the health-care law?

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt warned that the courts had “grown to occupy a position unknown in any other country, a position of superiority over both the legislature and the executive.” Worse, “privilege has entrenched itself in many courts just as it formerly entrenched itself in many legislative bodies and in many executive offices.”

What happens to a democracy when its highest court dedicates itself to defending privilege? That’s the unfortunate experiment on which we are now embarked.

I don't see how it could be said better than that.

#

Texas, the new right-wing paradise, is in fact a "basket case," says Joshua Holland

If you're going to make crazy-ass demands like that, then maybe there's no place in the "Texas Miracle" for you.

"French cuffs and cowboy boots are, like sauerkraut ice cream, an eclectic combination, but Perry, who wears both, is a potentially potent candidate for the Republican presidential nomination because his political creed is uneclectic, matching that of the Republican nominating electorate. . . ."

-- George F. Will, in a WaPo column,
"Rick Perry: A Texan's 'exceptionalism'"

"Conservative mythology now holds up Texas as a shining example of right-wing governance in action. Republicans would have us believe that gutting the state's social safety net, denying workers the right to bargain collectively and relentlessly cutting taxes unleashed a torrent of 'job creation' and, ultimately, prosperity. . . .

"He slashed taxes to the bone, handing out credits to his political cronies like they were candy. He decried the evils of Big Government while hypocritically using federal stimulus funds to help close Texas' budget gap in the short term, and now he's using the state's longer term fiscal disaster -– one of his own creation -– as a premise for destroying an already threadbare social safety net serving the neediest Texans. . . . Texas is indeed a shining example of conservative governance, as well as an almost perfect model for winning the race to the bottom."

-- Alternet's Joshua Holland, in "Texas Is a Shining
Example of Right-Wing Governance in Action
and That's Why It's a Complete Basket-Case"

by Ken

Often, we know, columnists don't write the heads for their columns, but this one sounds like the work of one of the country's most egregious scumbag poseurs. It's pretentious gibberish designed to paper over the true bona fides of a moron who dreamed of lifting himself into the lofty echelon of a sociopathic thug. As we know, sometimes dreams do come true.

The kindest thing an impartial observer could say about Rick Perry is that he's an embarrassment, as opposed to a disgrace, to the human race. Like so many other right-wing devils, he has systematically flouted law and decency to turn his bailiwick into a paradise for the plutocratic elites.

Which reminded me of the Joshua Holland piece last week on Texas I've quoted from above, which I've been meaning to say something about. The notion that Rick Goddamn Perry could be anyone's idea of a serious presidential candidate would boggle the mind if there weren't all those other Republican candidates apparently being taken seriously.

Under governor Rick "Goodhair" Perry's term in office, Texas has indeed been a model of conservative governance, but the truth is that it has resulted in anything but prosperity for the people of the Lone Star State. In fact, Texas is not only a complete basket-case, it would be faring far worse today without the help of policies enacted by Democrats at the federal level – policies Perry lambasted as "irresponsible spending that threatens our future."

Of course the Radical Right masks its greed and selfishness in lies and delusions, and Lies and Delusions Central is the Wall Street Journal, which has been trumpeting a number it came up with" "37% of all net new American jobs since the recovery began were created in Texas."

The Journal then spun that fact like this:

Capital -- both human and investment -- is highly mobile, and it migrates all the time to the places where the opportunities are larger and the burdens are lower. Texas has no state income tax. Its regulatory conditions are contained and flexible. It is fiscally responsible and government is small. Its right-to-work law doesn't impose unions on businesses or employees.

In the Journal's hyper-partisan view, the lesson to be learned is that "the core impulse of Obamanomics is to make America less like Texas and more like California, with more government, more unions, more central planning, higher taxes." That spin was echoed during last week's GOP debate by none other than Newt Gingrich, who asked, "Why [would] you want to be at California's unemployment level when you can be [at] Texas's employment level?"

James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas, scoffed at the whole narrative, telling AlterNet, "the notion that our state government is a model is almost enough to beckon the spirit of Molly Ivins back from the shades." Galbraith said "Texas has been a low-tax, low-service state since the time of the Republic," and noted that it's "therefore impossible that this fact suddenly accounts for its better job performance over the past few years." (Texas' record of job creation under Perry is the same as it was under former governor Ann Richards, a Democrat.)

"Texas is an energy state benefiting from high oil prices and the incipient boom in natural gas," explained Galbraith. "That's an accident of nature." He added that the state "went through the S&L crisis, had major criminal prosecutions and more restrictive housing finance regulations this time around; hence it was not an epicenter of the subprime housing disaster. That's called a learning experience." Tighter regulation of the lending industry is also anathema to today's GOP. [Links onsite.]

Left out of the new right-wing narrative, says Joshua, is Texas's 20 percent population surge in the last decade, almost two-thirds of it Hispanic.

A surge in people created greater demand for goods and services, which leads to more jobs. But the jobs being created in Texas aren't keeping up with the state's expanding workforce -– the Wall Street Journal somehow failed to mention that during the exact same period in which it was adding all those new jobs, Texas' unemployment rate actually increased from 7.7 to 8 percent (it also failed to note that 23 states -- including such deep blue ones as Vermont, New York and Massachusetts -- enjoy lower unemployment rates than Texas).

But Joshua is most worked up over the notion that Texas has been "fiscally responsible."

Perry certainly adhered to the conservative playbook, offering massive tax breaks without the deep cuts in services that might inspire a voter backlash. As a result – an entirely predictable one – the Austin American-Statesman reported that "state lawmakers have spent much of the year grappling with a budget shortfall that left them $27 billion short of the money needed to continue current state services."

CNN adds that while Perry was railing against the Democratic stimulus package passed over the fierce resistance of conservatives, the state "was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years," and "it plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money." The stimulus package created or saved 205,000 jobs in Texas, second only to California. But as James Galbraith told AlterNet, while "the state budget has not yet been cut drastically" due to the stimulus boost, "the key phrase is 'not yet.'" Now that the stimulus has run its course, "if projections for the current budget cycle are correct, things will get much worse in the next year."

Indeed, those cuts are now on their way. The Texas legislature imposed draconian cuts to Medicaid, cut tuition aid to 43,000 low-income students and is weighing $10 billion in cuts to the state's education system. According to Texas state senator Rodney Ellis, D-Fort Bend, the 2012-2013 budget will underfund "health and human services in Texas by $23 billion, 29.8 percent below what is needed to maintain current services."

But Perry's tax breaks are indeed part of the state's jobs picture; as Time magazine's Massimo Calabresi noted, Perry established several massive business tax breaks "designed to lure companies from other states."

Joshua notes that "the funds have been controversial," with millions of dollars going to --

whose officers or investors are major Perry campaign donors and Perry has allowed them to keep their subsidies in many cases even when they fail to deliver promised jobs. More important for the purposes of judging Perry’s job-creating record, even those that do produce jobs don’t necessarily create long-lasting ones, or increase the state’s overall prosperity.

Joshua cites a report "written for Perry last spring" by Michael Porter of Harvard Business School which argues "that such tax breaks 'ultimately don't support long-term prosperity,' because companies that can move easily 'are looking for the best deal and when the deal runs out they move' again, taking their jobs with them."

And what the "Texas Miracle" has been creating, says Joshua, is "crappy jobs." He quotes the American Independent's Patrick Brendel: "Texas has by far the largest number of employees working at or below the federal minimum wage." The state is "tied with Mississippi for the greatest percentage of minimum wage workers." California, he notes, is at the other end of the spectrum, at under 2 percent.

At a fundraiser this week, Rick Perry, who despite toying with the idea of secession in the past may now be eying a White House bid, told a group of Republican fat-cats that in his state, "you don't have to use your imagination, saying, 'What'll happen if we apply this or that conservative principle?' You just need to look around, because they've been in play across our state for years, generating real results."

In this, Perry is absolutely, 100 percent correct. He slashed taxes to the bone, handing out credits to his political cronies like they were candy. He decried the evils of Big Government while hypocritically using federal stimulus funds to help close Texas' budget gap in the short term, and now he's using the state's longer term fiscal disaster -– one of his own creation -– as a premise for destroying an already threadbare social safety net serving the neediest Texans. As a result of these policies, plus immigration and other external factors, his state's added a lot of low-paying poverty jobs without decent benefits. He's added very little in the way of "prosperity."

In the final analysis, Texas is indeed a shining example of conservative governance, as well as an almost perfect model for winning the race to the bottom.

Is it any wonder that George Will hearts Rick Perry?

#