#gopistherichsbitch — Public Fediverse posts

This is how you get your way when democracy doesn't give it to you. You do an end-run around democracy so you can have minority rule forever! Who needs democracy, congressmen, senators or presidents when you own the judiciary?

Court decision in clean water case is more legislating from the bench https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/26/supreme-court-clean-water-kavanaugh/?

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"The Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Clean Water Act isn’t just a disaster for efforts to control pollution, although it is that, too. It is yet another illustration of the conservative supermajority’s aggressive willingness to rewrite statutes to its liking, abandon precedent and lunge to intercede in disputes that could be easily sidestepped.
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Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (good for him!) joined the court’s three liberal justices in a far more reasoned interpretation of the Clean Water Act that would have respected text and precedent while still finding for the Sacketts.

Once again, the conservative justices reveal themselves to be textualists of convenience. The Clean Water Act requires a permit for dumping pollutants — and this includes the backfilling that the Sacketts were doing to prepare their lot — into the “waters of the United States.” Such waters are explicitly defined to include “wetlands” that are “adjacent” to streams, rivers and other navigable bodies of water covered by the law.

The majority agrees on all this but then waves its magic statutory wand to redefine, and narrow, the meaning of “adjacent.” It transforms the definition to apply solely to wetlands that are actually adjoining — that have a “continuous surface connection” — to the larger body.

This disrespects — actually, it ignores — the law’s text and traditional methods of statutory interpretation. As Kavanaugh noted, dictionary “definitions of ‘adjacent’ are notably explicit that two things need not touch each other in order to be adjacent.”
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No longer, according to the majority, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Kavanaugh charitably labeled the majority’s approach “unorthodox” and “atextual.” Another word might be lawless. The majority’s approach blithely dismissed some 45 years of consistent interpretation through eight presidential administrations, Republican as well as Democrat. Even the Trump EPA thought adjacent meant adjacent.
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Sackett reinforces what we already knew: This is a court that doesn’t like government regulation and it is going to do what it can — text and precedent be damned — to neuter it. Thus the majority, in last year’s West Virginia v. EPA, invented a “major purpose” test to limit the reach of another major environmental law, the Clean Air Act. In this case, it adopts another new test — when Congress exercises such power “over private property” it must use “exceedingly clear language” — to rewrite the Clean Water Act to its liking.

As Justice Elena Kagan explained in a concurrence joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, this is nothing short of another judicial power grab. “The vice in both instances is the same: the Court’s appointment of itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy,” Kagan wrote.

And why? Not because the law compels it, but because the majority doesn’t like the law. “Congress, the majority scolds, has unleashed the EPA to regulate ‘swimming pools and puddles,’ wreaking untold havoc on ‘a staggering array of land-owners,’” Kagan observed. “Surely something has to be done; and who else to do it but this Court? It must rescue property owners from Congress’s too-ambitious program of pollution control.”

More judicial power-grabbing to follow. The court next term will consider whether to ditch the four-decade old practice, known as Chevron deference, of having courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws they administer when the statutes are ambiguous. If Chevron falls, as seems all but inevitable, courts will be even more firmly in the driver’s seat to control policymaking.

This isn’t right, and it is also unnecessary. When the court reached out to take Sackett, the Biden administration was in the midst of rewriting the rules on how the Clean Water Act applied to wetlands. But the majority had its votes. Why wait? Why hold back? That could be the motto of this radical and impatient court."

Part 6
Besides lame culture war issues that really don't matter, the GOP has nothing to offer Americans economically except tax breaks for the wealthy.

"Ambitious policy solutions can break through partisan paralysis and change America. It's time to go big"

How to end gridlock and ensure Democratic power — with a bold progressive agenda https://www.salon.com/2022/12/26/how-to-end-political-gridlock-and-ensure-democratic-power-pursue-a-bold-progressive-agenda/

#GOPInBedWithRich
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch

"The public health framework
Seeing crime through that kind of public health lens fits with a broader argument I made last year and can apply to liberal or progressive policies more broadly: "[E]nvironmental health, racism, gun violence, injury and violence prevention, healthy housing, and reproductive and sexual health" are all recognized by the American Public Health Association as major areas of concern, and their list "also intersects with human rights in the field of global health, and deals with issues of income inequality, education, housing, incarceration, nutritional equity, literacy, health care coverage and access."

The public health framework can also provide a coherent overarching narrative:

The challenge for Democrats and progressives is to do what Republicans and conservatives have been doing for decades: Craft a coherent ideological narrative that makes sense of what people already feel. But for Democrats, it's not just about vague free-market fantasies, or romantic longings for a past that never was. It's about concrete things people can do to empower themselves through government action, creating a future with more possibilities for all.

In the conclusion to Cantril and Free's "The Political Beliefs of Americans," the authors called for "a restatement of American ideology to bring it in line with what the great majority of people want and approve" which "would focus people's wants, hopes, and beliefs, and provide a guide and platform to enable the American people to implement their political desires in a more intelligent, direct, and consistent manner."

A public health narrative can make sense of the "operational liberalism" identified in that book and can address diverse social movements that energize Democratic base, as well as the multi-pronged project of court reform. It also speaks to the failures that led to such extreme economic inequality in America, as well as the disastrous failures of neoliberal policy that both enabled and sought to justify it. Adopting a public health framework to make sense of our politics and bring us together to solve our most difficult problems might well help Democrats win elections, but that's not the point. Far more important, it could restore a common framework for overcoming the partisan polarization and political gridlock that seems inescapable today, but doesn't have to be."

Part 5
Besides lame culture war issues that really don't matter, the GOP has nothing to offer Americans economically except tax breaks for the wealthy.

"Ambitious policy solutions can break through partisan paralysis and change America. It's time to go big"

How to end gridlock and ensure Democratic power — with a bold progressive agenda https://www.salon.com/2022/12/26/how-to-end-political-gridlock-and-ensure-democratic-power-pursue-a-bold-progressive-agenda/

#GOPInBedWithRich
#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch

"Criminal justice reform
...As I wrote earlier this month, crime and inflation were "two Dems-in-charge/situation-out-of-control narratives ... custom crafted in the Fox News ecosystem" which the New York Times took a lead role in spreading farther across the political spectrum during the recent midterm campaign, "crowding out other contrasting narratives in the process."

New York was clearly the epicenter of this issue, and bail reform was a key focus. Early in December, civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger, who heads Zealous, a criminal justice reform initiative, co-authored a commentary on the bail reform question, specifically calling out Democrats who blamed it for midterm losses. "Research has established no connection between bail reform and any increase in crime," he wrote, and "New York City has remained secure even though headlines could make one think otherwise." Three of New York's five boroughs "are among the safest 15 counties in the U.S." he noted, while Nassau County, just east of the city on Long Island — where 64 mayors recently called for the repeal of bail reform — has twice since the law's implementation been ranked the safest place to live in the country.

In short, the panic over a supposed crime wave and bail reform in New York was pure political bullshit. "Democrats lost because they ran from the truth about bail reform," Hechinger writes, "amplifying lies instead of championing what should have been their policy win. In short, they made themselves indistinguishable from Republicans on this topic."

..."Other candidates who told the truth about bail reform's success and stood strong against fear-mongering won," Hechinger notes, and that shouldn't be surprising. As I noted above, the actual policy behind the notion of defunding police — meaning the reallocation of funding to social workers, mental health and other social services — is overwhelmingly popular.

The logic behind policies of mass incarceration is at least as bad or worse, as Hechinger noted in an email to Salon:

We invest more than any other society in the history of the world on policing, prosecutions and punishment. So if the current massive investments into these approaches actually worked, you'd expect we'd be the safest and healthiest society in the word. We're obviously far from it, by police and politicians' own admission. We need to follow facts and reasoned solutions, not fear: Why we need to abandon our current approaches that only further drive violence by creating environments of isolation, shame, economic deprivation, and violence — the very characteristics of overpolicing and prisons parallel the very drivers of violence itself.

The alternative already exists, he continued:

People don't have to "imagine" what non-carceral, non-punitive, non-police responses to public health and safety look like. The safest and healthiest communities are those with greater community investments, not more police. One need look no further than wealthy white suburbs to see how substance use, mental health issues, interpersonal violence and conflict between and among young people are dealt with largely without police.

...Perhaps most important is restorative justice, a concept described at length in Lois Forer's 1994 book "A Rage to Punish":

Restorative justice programs recognize that punishment and prison neither heals trauma nor holds actors accountable...In Brooklyn, when survivors of violence are informed that the restorative justice program Common Justice is an option, they choose it over the normal process over 90% of the time. And recidivism rates among those who complete the program are near zero.

The second approach is violence interruption:

The "Interrupters Model" pays and trains trusted insiders of a community to anticipate where violence will occur and intervene before it erupts, work in neighborhoods and hospitals, meet with survivors to help and prevent retaliation, and work with people at highest risk for causing harm...

...Hechinger concluded by saying we need to "understand things police enforce as 'crime' as public health issues — and that includes violence — that we, as a society, have failed to properly address, and can address."

GOP conspires to undermine democracy via the judiciary by stacking the courts with GOP partisans!

While advising Trump on judges, Conway sold her business to a firm with ties to judicial activist Leonard Leo https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/20/trump-conway-leonard-leo-00074690

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPCorrupt
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch

"Longtime judicial activist Leonard Leo appears to have helped facilitate the sale of former White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway’s polling company in 2017 — as she was playing a key role in advocating for Leo’s handpicked list of Supreme Court candidates
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The transaction came at a critical moment for Conway — shortly after her ownership of The Polling Company had come under scrutiny from a congressional oversight committee for potential “conflicts of interest,” likely creating pressure to unload it even though its value was unclear because she was its biggest asset and committed to her White House job.
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It’s the latest example of how Leo has used his network to secure and protect allies at the highest levels of government to successfully advance his decadeslong agenda of shifting the Supreme Court rightward for the next generation.
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If Leo helped facilitate the transaction, it could violate ethics laws designed to prevent executive branch employees from obtaining benefits from people with whom they interact in their official capacities, said Bruce Freed, president of the nonpartisan Center for Political Accountability, which tracks corporate spending in politics. Federal ethics laws prohibit executive branch employees from using their positions for private personal gain and from accepting gifts.

“It really shows Kellyanne as a vehicle for Leo, the leading role Leo has played and how Trump became his instrument,” said Freed, after reviewing the documents.
...
The financial deal between Conway and CRC adds to an emerging picture of the extent to which groups associated with Leo — who now controls more than $1.6 billion in conservative donor funds — interacted with key players in the conservative movement’s efforts to reshape the judiciary. The New York Times first reported the windfall donation to a Leo-controlled group, among the largest single contributions ever to a political nonprofit.

Leo served on the board of a group led by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, and he and the Thomases have maintained a longstanding friendship. Leo’s network has been among the most prolific forces behind the new conservative majority, successfully advocating to confirm Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as well as to block former President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland.
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Yet she lobbied inside the White House for the specific conservative justices Leo preferred as part of his decadeslong agenda of shifting the balance of the court sharply rightward, according to news reports, her recent memoir and other public records.
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During the same time frame Conway was a senior adviser to Trump, she was under pressure to sell The Polling Company. In a May 9 statement, then-House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland, said the White House had not produced evidence of a certificate of divestiture. The sale to CRC a few months later reduced political pressure on her.

Ethics specialists pointed to the possible involvement of BH Fund as a key question looming over the sale.
...
Brett Kappel, a lobbying and government ethics counsel at the Harmon Curran law firm in Washington who also reviewed the documents at POLITICO’s request, said the transactions appear to be connected.

“Based on the available documentation and the timing of the filings, it certainly appears as though these transactions are related,” said Kappel, who has represented candidates and political committees on both sides of the aisle. Still, Kappel cautioned it may depend on whether Conway was advising the president on court nominations at the same moment she sold to constitute a clear violation of ethics rules.

Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, a non-partisan progressive group that investigates corporate influence in politics and alerted POLITICO to the financial records and timestamps, said it was concerned about whether the Leo-affiliated groups rewarded Conway for her advocacy by purchasing her business at a time when its value was unclear.

It also raises “serious concerns” about how Leo will use his new, “no-strings-attached” $1.6 billion windfall, arranged through a series of transactions that appear to have avoided tax liabilities, to influence the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, said Herrig."