…Chief Justice Roberts knees democracy in the ‘nads as it falls dying to the floor. And takes a dump all over “State’s Rights” in the process. These decisions will prove the worst SCOTUS rules since Dred Scott. Shame Obama didn’t pack the court with a couple of extra appointees when he had the chance back in ’09.
The Re-Baggers are busy jumping in their time machine to take us back to their (imagined) golden time. All they need is a reconditioned DeLorean, a few thousand gigajewels (of unlimited, anonymous corporate funding, courtesy of Chief Justice Roberts) and a Capacity Fox Generator! How far back will they take us? Depends on the number of gigajewels they can get! How far back? Check it out:
1990 – George HW Bush – Discriminate Against the Disabled!
1979 – Jimmy Carter – Eliminate the Department of Education!
1973 – Richard Nixon – Abolish Abortion!
1973 – Richard Nixon – Drive U.S. Wildlife to Extinction!
1971 – Richard Nixon – Return to the Gold Standard!
1970 – Richard Nixon – Unrestricted Polluting!
1965 – Lyndon Johnson – Ban Birth Control!
1938 – Franklin Roosevelt – Restore Child Labor!
1935 – Franklin Roosevelt – Strip Labor of the Right to Organize!
1935 – Franklin Roosevelt - Screw the Aged!
1918 – Woodrow Wilson - Eliminate Public Schools!
1913 – Woodrow Wilson – Abolish the Income Tax!
1868 – Ulysses Grant - Legally Discriminate Against Women, African Americans and well anybody!
There have been a couple of important articles discussing the New Plutocracy, first the seminal piece by Chrystia Freeland who describes the rise of a new global elite who have achieved an Anti-Marxian class consciousness and have transcended the nation state, leaving workers increasingly in the dust about the planet, and another by Kevin Drum in Mother Jones about how the current battle in Wisconsin over public employees’ colleective bargaining rights is the Waterloo of class warfare (in which, I am interpreting, Drum is suggesting the workers are playing the part of Napolean’s forces).
I really need to see if I can dragoon the busy (and now possibly mythical) Fubar into helping me restore our posts between ’04 and ’08 – I had been musing along these lines for some time.
Neither article cited outlines any possible solutions to this dilemma, they are both along the lines of “woe is us, with unions in their death throes, there is no significant funding of a liberal agenda on Capitol hill, and any progessive agenda without funding is dead on arrival.”
In the archived posts, I had posited some thoughts. First, that the future of American labor lies in the sweat shops of Asia. If American Unions continue in the grand American tradition of navel-gazing, they’ll quickly starve to death and leave a shriveled husk. Labor needs to take a page from the turbulent years of the end of the 1800s and early 1900s, and start organizing the overseas sweatshops.
Dangerous? Hell yes, “Communist” China is every bit as nasty and anti-labor as America during the guilded age, except they are perhaps a bit more prone to just shooting outside agitators. Necessary? Of course. As long as there is a pool of desperate workers willing to take any work at any wage under any conditions, in a world of ‘free trade,’ then how can American Labor hope to compete? Kinda reminds me of the mess in Afghanistan – porous border with a nuclear nation we can’t invade that harbors insurgents and has an unlimited, opium-fueled cash source…unwinnable.
But speaking of free trade, that’s the thing we can influence. While we are helping the sweatshop workers of Asia to unite, why not agitate at home to weaken the various ‘free trade’ treaties here at home? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to restore the other 1800s bad tradition of industry protectionism, with all that entails. Rather, I would like to see the ability of a country to restrict and/or tariff goods on the basis of environmental and labor standards. Sure, it’s easy for Chinese goods created in the midst of massive pools of toxic filth and clouds of noxious air and greenhouse gases to compete against American-made goods – but would they do so well if their price included a carbon tax or a pollutions ‘uplift?’ Ditto goods slapped with a ‘Fair Labor’ tax based on level of compliance with some basic labor standards. I would imagine that would make U.S. manufacture of many goods quite competitive.
But in the face of Roberts V. Common Sense, which completed the final stages of Corporate takeover of the U.S. Government, how might we get any such laws passed? By the only tool that remains to us, sadly, the power of the Boycott. It’s folly to attack the Congressional Whores directly. It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of thousands of folks show up to big peaceful rallies with their quaint, hand-lettered signs, they will just do what their Corporate bosses tell them – it’s how they will get elected, or failing that, where their next job/paycheck will come from in the revolving door of Plutocracy.
Nope, we need to bring pressure on the global elites themselves, in the only way they care about – their revenues. Where to start? How about sending a message to Koch Industries. As Robert Reich points out, they are doing an exceptional job of trying to divide and conquer the other 99% of us. About the only power we have right now, as (for a brief remaining period anyway) the world’s richest group of consumers, is the power of our pocketbooks.
In the meantime, we also need to update those old class conflict theories to the 21st Century to get something we can use to raise our own class conciousness and work to raise awareness both here and abroad.
"My name's Little Cletus and I'm here to tell you a few things about child labor laws, ok? They're silly and outdated. Why back in the 30s, children as young as five could work as they pleased; from textile factories to iron smelts. Yippee! Hurray!"
GOP Tea Bagger Senator Mike Lee wants to get our children working again! Just what we need in a time of 10% unemployment – more unskilled workers! Listen, Mike, I was only snarkin’ about y’all bringing back child labor!
*Update 1-20-11* Mike Lee now wants to abolish FEMA! Let the states do all the disaster relief! Hey Mississippi – good luck with them floods & hurricanes, you bein’ the poorest state in the Union and all!
Okay ladies...burkha up!
According to SCOTUS “Justice” Scalia, the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect women from discrimination. His fundee/wing-nut impulse to ‘divine’ the original ‘intent’ (in this case of the 14th Amendment) and ignore precedent seems more akin to Sharia law than contemporary Western Law:
Sharia judicial proceedings have significant differences with other legal traditions, including those in both common law and civil law. Sharia courts do not generally employ lawyers; plaintiffs and defendants represent themselves. Trials are conducted solely by the judge, and there is no jury system. There is no pre-trialdiscovery process, no cross-examination of witnesses, and no penalty of perjury[101] (on the assumption that no witness would thus endanger his soul)[102] Unlike common law, judges’ verdicts do not set binding precedents[103][104][105] under the principle of stare decisis[106] and unlike civil law, Sharia does not utilize formally codified statutes[107] … Instead of precedents and codes, Sharia relies on medieval jurist’s manuals and collections of non-binding legal opinions, or fatwas, issued by religious scholars (ulama, particularly a mufti); these can be made binding for a particular case at the discretion of a judge.
I bet he’s sore that he doesn’t have the power to issue fatwas. Maybe he’ll get his wish under a GOP Presidency, the last one didn’t worry about intent at all, he just ignored the Constitution altogether when it suited him.
*Update 1/5/11* Dublin Anarchist points out that by Scalia’s logic, it should be imperative to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, as the key argument against it was that women were already protected by the 14th Amendment.
Although our people and elected leaders seem increasingly unclear on the concept of the separation of church and state, Shrubya wasn’t able to fully compromise the system (beyond SCOTUS anyway) with Baylor University graduates. I suspect the courts will make short work of Oklahoma’s crazy Muslim-baiting ballot measure.
Judicial activism in liberal courts result in equal rights for Americans. Reactionary judicial activism consists of increasing the rights of corporations over Americans, such as keeping individual campaign contributions in check while allowing unlimited corporate donations. Or continuously letting Big Coal destroy mountains and fresh water streams and to hell with the locals.
*Update 8/6/10* Great analysis of 2 recent rulings in favor of gay marriage along with encouraging prognostication of how SCOTUS might rule.
Forget privatizing Social Security with individual retirement accounts – that idea is so 2003. John “Orange Man” Boehner rolls out the newest GOP plan to ‘fix’ Social Security – everybody will just have to work until they die. What’s next, Orange Man – making up for lost tax revenues by bringing in ‘younger’ workers – like maybe child labor? With loonies like “Ayn” Rand Paul waiting in the wings for the upcoming election I wouldn’t be too surprised to see that concept mooted. And with the current reactionary makeup of the SCOTUS, it’s not inconceivable that they might take a strict ‘Originalist’ interpretation of the Federal Government’s ability to restrict labor practices (they’ve ruled in favor of child labor before).
To personalize this just a bit, my mom is still working in her late 70s, and my dad was working up until his first cancer treatments – I imagine a lot of people could say that Boehner’s fix is already the Status Quo.
Well it’s official now. As predicted, the SCOTUS has thrown out all gun control legislation. I wonder how many Columbines we need to go through before the pendulum begins to swing in the other direction? On a more humorous note, this would be a great time to get arrested for possessing a hand-grenade or an RPG, in order to take that case before the SCOTUS. The Constitution just says ‘arms,’ and I’m sure they never envisioned the weapons of 2010.
*Update 6/29/10* And don’t expect the SCOTUS to reverse their decision anytime soon – Obama’s nominee is Gun-Nuttier than the man she is replacing.
Better not forget the extra foam, barrista, this gun has a hair-trigger!
Regardless of how lame the Obama Administration has been, the recent and upcoming SCOTUS rulings on gun control should be a wake-up call about how wrong the Naderites were about how there is ”no difference between the Democrats and Republicans.’ Shrubya had 8 years to replace retiring liberal and moderate justices with reactionary activists. The result? Sometime this summer you are going to wake up one morning in a country where all gun control laws have been abolished.
You can get a preview of things to come by watching the gun nuts parade around with their weapons in our restaurants and national parks. I bet it won’t be long before we have some dramatic shootout, where one of these unhinged, delusional vigilantes tries to stop an armed robbery and blows away some poor coffee patron. Or maybe a couple of these loons will shoot at each other, thinking they are stopping a robber! Hard to guess, but I’m sure it will happen soon, and sure it will be bloody.
Given the current extremists in the court, my guess is that we are one lawsuit away from a similar overturn of Roe v. Wade.
So stop your whining, suck it up and work hard to make Obama successful, now and in his next run – because we are just one Scalia or Thomas heart-attack away from an appointment of a real justice and a non-loony majority.