Yossarian's Roost Resuscitated

Fifty Shades of Whey
@davenewworld_2
·
16h
Police in Greenville, South Carolina are tasing and arresting pro-choice protesters

And it’s very ugly.

Well, they just can't have all those uppity gals trying to take over our wonderful world.

Amid all the high-profile rulings dominating the headlines, a more obscure but far-reaching decision slipped through the Supreme Court, even if it was barely part of the news cycle. It is the case that culminates Chief Justice John Roberts’ crusade to fully legalize corruption — and construct a political system that permanently produces all the extremist rulings now repealing the 20th century.

Cases like this new one, FEC v. Ted Cruz For Senate, don’t get much attention because they seem esoteric and technical. But so many of the more infamous legacies of the Roberts Court — crushing workers, rescinding reproductive rights, shielding big business from accountability, restricting voting rights, eviscerating gun control, complicating the fight against climate — can be traced back to its campaign finance rulings, which equate liberty with corruption.

The Supreme Court’s extremism and corruption are now on full display for all to see, and we've been covering this story tirelessly since way before it became so huge. Now that the **** has truly hit the fan, we have even more work ahead to expose the hidden money and corruption that led to this dark moment.

That Roberts’ doctrine has given oligarchs, corporations, and their front groups a First Amendment right to bankroll political campaigns and now — thanks to the Cruz case — directly funnel cash to politicians’ personal bank accounts. The return on such investments has been all the right-wing laws, obstructions, and judicial edicts that have spewed forth from Washington over the last decade.

Since Roberts was confirmed in 2005 with bipartisan support, corporate media has typically portrayed him as a thoughtful moderate, to the point where polls have shown a majority of Democrats like him. The media has continued venerating Roberts as an earnest victim of the court’s hard-right turn rather than a perpetrator — even after he voted to uphold the extreme Mississippi law banning most abortions at 15 weeks, including in cases of rape or incest.

Left out of this hagiography is the story of Roberts as the bag man behind the curtain — the mastermind engineering the entire superstructure undergirding the court’s extremism.

No matter the controversy of the day, you cannot really understand what’s going on in politics unless you first understand Roberts’ campaign that constructed an entire legal architecture of corruption — allowing moneyed interests to buy the presidency, Congress, and the courts.

Roberts’ plot crescendoed with the Cruz case, but that recent decision was part of a much larger 12-year crusade with a singular objective: creating a government of, by, and for the rich.

“Does Not Mean That These Officials Are Corrupt”
Officially, the United States gets decent marks on anti-corruption indices in comparison to other countries. But that’s because while there is plenty of extralegal graft in the developing world, America made corruption legal by enshrining the right to buy lawmakers and legislation.

This is the real American exceptionalism — and it started with the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision equating money with speech. That ruling created the special class of “issue ads” that front groups still swamp the airwaves with today. One group operating in this space is the conservative dark money network led by Leonard Leo, former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, that built the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority.

However, the normalization of corruption did not accelerate until the court was taken over by Roberts, who previously represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the organization that converts corporate money into government policy.

Under Roberts’ leadership, the court has issued four landmark rulings declaring that the purchase of “influence and access embody a central feature of democracy” (that’s a direct quote from the court).

It started with 2010’s Citizens United. That ruling officially prohibited limits on so-called “independent expenditures,” which not only triggered record amounts of cash flooding into elections, but also narrowed the legal concept of corruption.

Under the new precedent, illegal corruption is now only cash stuffed in an envelope and exchanged for explicit favors — but not most soft forms of purchased influence and access. Industries can use super PACs and “independent expenditures” to effectively bankroll the campaigns of compliant legislators — as long as the quid pro quo is not explicitly written down.

“That [donors] may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt,” the majority stated. “Independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy… Ingratiation and access, in any event, are not corruption.”

Four years later, conservative justices issued the McCutcheon ruling that struck down limits on aggregate amounts of cash that individual donors can funnel to candidates and political parties. Once again, the basis of the ruling was the insane idea that corruption is only explicit quid-pro-quo favors, rather than the perpetual purchase of access and influence.

“Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to such quid pro quo corruption,” the majority ruled. “Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner ‘influence over or access to’ elected officials or political parties.”

A year after that, Roberts’ court used the McDonnell ruling to legalize the very quid-pro-quo corruption it previously said was still prohibited. In that case, the court stipulated that yes, a nutritional supplement industry executive delivered “$175,000 in loans, gifts, and other benefits” to Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell in exchange for him setting up meetings with state officials to promote the company’s products. However, the court insisted that such a quid pro quo is legal, and then berated law enforcement officials for trying to uphold anti-corruption laws.

“Setting up a meeting, calling another public official, or hosting an event does not, standing alone, qualify as an ‘official act,” Roberts wrote in the unanimous opinion. “Our concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the government’s boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute.”

Court Declares Corruption “A Central Feature Of Democracy”
That trio of rulings was a prelude to Roberts’ new FEC v. Ted Cruz For Senate ruling — a piece of judicial performance art designed to let big donors funnel cash not just into politicians’ campaigns, but also into their personal bank accounts.

At issue was a 20-year-old law that prohibited elected officials from using more than $250,000 of post-election campaign donations to repay personal loans they give their campaigns. That may seem arbitrary, but the point of the statute was straightforward: It prevented politicians from loaning their campaigns unlimited amounts of money at profitably high interest rates knowing that favor-seeking donors would pay the lucrative vig after the election — when the politician is positioned to deliver legislative favors.

Such a scheme may seem like a far-fetched subplot from The Distinguished Gentleman or Thank You For Smoking, but it’s all too real.

Two decades ago, donors helped a Democratic lawmaker rake in more than $200,000 of interest on a personal loan that she made to her own campaign. Dissenting judges in the Cruz case documented situations in Ohio, Alaska, and Kentucky where donors helped top state officials recoup their personal campaign loans after their elections — and those donors were then rewarded with state contracts.

One amicus brief from a campaign finance watchdog group noted that even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called post-election fundraising to recoup loans an “unethical practice of shaking down special interests.”

Until now, the law was working as intended: A study found that while self-lending politicians are generally more responsive to post-election donors’ legislative demands, once the $250,000 limit was created, that responsiveness decreased.

But then came the epic legal troll from Cruz, who engineered the case by purposely violating the $250,000 loan repayment limit in his 2018 Senate campaign. His cartoonishly corrupt goal: striking down the limit and in the process reaping himself a personal $545,000 windfall from past self-loans that his big donors could recoup for him.

Cruz’s case was boosted by amicus briefs from fellow GOP senators (including McConnell) and the Republican National Committee. The New Civil Liberties Alliance and the Institute for Free Speech, which filed their own amicus briefs, are bankrolled by the Leo-led dark money network that helped install five of the six conservative justices currently on the Supreme Court.

And now the Texas senator’s bet has paid off: The Roberts Court last month ruled that access — and favor-seeking donors funneling post-election cash to lawmakers’ personal bank accounts via campaign loans is “the sort of ‘corruption,’ loosely conceived, that this Court has repeatedly explained is not legitimately regulated.”

The Roberts-written opinion then declared that campaign donors’ “influence and access embody a central feature of democracy — that constituents support candidates who share their beliefs and interests, and candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to those concerns.”

The Citizens United Era
So to review: In response to the passage of bipartisan campaign finance reforms in the early 2000s, the Roberts Court spent a dozen years dismantling those reforms and then making it legal to spend unlimited sums of money to buy public offices, give gifts to elected officials in exchange for favors, and directly funnel cash to politicians’ personal bank accounts as they write legislation.

At precisely the same time, legislators delivered tax cuts, subsidies, deregulation, bailouts, and other assorted favors to the donors writing the bribe checks — all while Supreme Court justices delivered ever-more extreme rulings to the delight of the dark money network that bought them their seats.

This system of legalized corruption is now almost perfected — but Roberts and his colleagues’ crusade almost certainly will not stop there. Of late, the American Right and lower courts are signaling a new attack on laws that merely require disclosure, insisting that transparency is unconstitutional “compelled speech.” If Roberts soon applies that argument to campaign finance, the buying and selling of democracy that he legalized could happen in complete anonymity.

In Five to Four’s recent podcast reviewing the Cruz case, one of the hosts noted that this is Roberts and his fellow extremists on the court screaming their ideology out loud, “literally saying, yeah, some corruption can be regulated, but light corruption, that’s free speech.”

And that, he argues, is why the campaign finance cases will define this judicial epoch. They have created the superstructure upon which all the other horrible laws and precedent are built — or, more precisely, bought.

“There’s so much awful that the court is doing right now [but] I really do think that the stuff that’s going to define this era looking back will be their campaign finance — and election-related decisions,” he said. “Just like the early 1900s, we call it the Lochner Era for one of the more egregious cases of the court striking down worker-friendly regulations. I think this is gonna be the Citizens United Era.”

The Amazin Jason
@xenex11
·
20h
This final season of America has been absolutely amazing. I mean, it starts with an attack on the capital and ends with a new Supreme Court that is actively dismantling democracy? That's some top notch writing! And it perfectly sets up the Civil War miniseries that will follow...

Bobby Waters

A final thought for Pride Month 2022.
This is Alan. Alan ended his own life on 7th June 1954. He laced an apple with cyanide and ate a bite from it. He did this because the British government chemically castrated, humiliated and prosecuted him for being gay.
Alan is the reason why a chunk is bitten out of the Apple logo…in honour of Alan Turing.
Ok so what did he do? He invented computer science and using his first designs he decrypted the Enigma code - the machine base encryption that the Nazis and the German military used to communicate secret commands to each other in world war 2 - and hence he both saved millions of lives and brought us into the modern age of computing.
Pride month isn’t just about dancing on floats in gold hot pants or flying a rainbow flag. It’s about remembering that everyone has a right to be happy, love who they want to love, and recognise the outstanding contribution that everyone can make in a society free of fear or prejudice.
Remembering Alan…..

Hear, hear!

He is remembered over here.

His face will appear on the new £50 note.

Late, but never too late.

He was a ******* hero, murdered by the government because he was unique.

liked your Retweet
As we are slow-walked into a World War with Russia (& likely China), it's a good time to remember why went we into the first Wold War: to make sure US banks & arms makers got paid. https://pic.twitter.com/kaqR6JhPh7

HA!

The best way to settle down a restless population is to have a responsive government to the people's needs. Take away the insecurity you take away the insecurities that make us strike out in anger or frustration. The increases in violence are in my opinion directly related to the insecurities we face. If we were to rein in the war machine (which means using diplomacy with Russia to end the stupid war and to smooth out our dealings with China, as well as quit fighting endlessly and quit selling weapons), if we were to invest in massive infrastructure programs, institute free medical care, raise the minimum wage to a living wage, reform the justice system to ban slavery once and for all, tax the wealthy heavily (not tokenly), reform the police, and dozens of other programs, people would be a lot less criminal. You will never legislate out racism and other forms of bigotry, but for a time we were at least gaining control over much of it. Taking away the most destructive guns or not making more bullets for them.

This I wrote just now off the top of my head. Right now our politicians are letting us down and we are too complacent to demand better of them. My own best first move suggestion is General Strikes. With General Strikes you don't get beat up by cops because you stay inside your own house.

Colombia needs to focus on the wealth gap, the ridiculous poverty, the extortion of Colombian women and the extremely high unemployment numbers before they worry about climate change.

Colombia needs to be allowed to do their work without our meddling there.

So if Putin wants Britain I should just walk quietly into the gas chamber?


I don't want to be butchered just to give Americans an easy time of it.

Of course not. If statesmanship cannot end the war then Putin is what the propaganda says he is.

I have a couple really good friends in Colombia. One is excited about the new President, the other is worried about becoming Venezuela.

Your worried friend is a dupe of imperialism, likely. Venezuela doesn't need our policing. In fact the US is the biggest cause of "Venezuela."

I am sure you have your fingers on the pulse of Colombia. You know far more than the people living there.