Roberts’ Court Deep In Tank For Privileged (Gigantic Hurl Alert!!!)

The U.S. Supreme Court now sees its central task as comforting the already comfortable and afflicting those already afflicted.

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.

This court has created rules that will have the effect of declaring some corporations too big to be challenged through class actions, as AT&T consumers and female employees at Wal-Mart discovered.

And remember how sympathetic conservatives are supposed to be to the states as “laboratories of democracy,” pioneering solutions to hard problems? Tell that to the people of Arizona.

They used a referendum to establish a highly practical system of financing political campaigns designed to reduce corruption and give a fighting chance to candidates who decide to forgo contributions from special interests.

The people acted, noted Justice Elena Kagan in a brilliantly scalding dissent, after a scandal in which “nearly 10% of the state’s legislators were caught accepting campaign contributions or bribes in exchange for supporting a piece of legislation.”

Corporate Power

Under Arizona’s “clean elections” initiative, candidates who raised a modest amount in very small contributions could receive a lump sum of public money. They could raise no further private funds.

(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com …

via Roberts’ Court Deep In Tank For Privileged (Gigantic Hurl Alert!!!).

Supreme Court Returning Original Intent

The Roberts court is very carefully, across the Constitution, laying the groundwork for a return to original intent, and this is just one of many blocks in the foundation they are building.

Last year it was gun rights and the Second Amendment. There have been a series on free speech, notably in this year’s overturning of California’s restrictions on violent video game sales to minors, and regarding political speech both last term with Citizens United and this term with the overturning of Arizona’s public financing of elections.

Notice that Scalia is being assigned many of these cases, and that his brilliant (and witty) mind is creating clarity where believers in a living Constitution would deliberately create murkiness.

(Excerpt) Read more at punditpress.blogspot.com …

via Supreme Court Returning Original Intent.