Look for power in the shadows

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos started a post this way:

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett isn’t going to answer any of the big questions truthfully, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI] knew that. So instead of inviting Barrett to be dishonest, Whitehouse explained the forces that put her in that Senate hearing room with the specific agenda—killing the Affordable Care Act, ending marriage equality, overturning Roe v. Wade—she is on the record as having (but is currently pretending not to have). Whitehouse described the Senate hearing room as being like a puppet theater, with “forces outside of this room who are pulling strings and pushing sticks and causing the puppet theater to react … When you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for power in the shadows."

Conservatives have spent $250 million to get control of the courts. They want something in return for that amount of money. They didn’t get what they wanted on same-sex marriage. But there were 80 other cases decided by “the Roberts Five” – cases that got no votes from justices appointed by Democratic presidents – where there was an identifiable Republican donor interest. In all those cases the donor interest won. An example is limiting the power of a civil jury. “It’s a crime to tamper with a jury. It’s standard practice to tamper with Congress.” Clawson included videos of Whitehouse’s testimony. The three together are about a half hour. I watched the videos and took notes and added comments. I recommend you watch them too. Every so often the camera turns to Barrett. Her expression show she does not like what Whitehouse is doing. He talks of evidence of the puppeteers: People came forward to support the nominee before there was a nominee. It it hard to explain the hypocrisy and the rush until we look in the shadows. In 2010 the National Federation of Independent Business led a major lawsuit opposing the ACA. Before then their largest donation was $21,000. After the case was announced, 10 donors gave $10 million. In the three major cases – ACA, abortion rights, and same-sex marriage, Whitehouse identifies the nasty guy, the GOP platform, and various senators who have said they want them all to be reversed, that they can’t do it through a democratically elected Congress, and that they intend to vote only for justices who will overturn them. Democrats are making a big deal of this because the GOP and the nasty guy have already made a big deal of it. He laid out the big scheme: Big amounts of anonymous money behind three lanes of activity. The Federalist Society has taken over the selection of candidates. We know this because the nasty guy has said so, many times. The Federalist Society also vetted and chose Barrett. While Whitehouse is talking her stony face shows she knows who selected her and why and she’s there for it. Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) does the PR campaign for nominees. For each of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh one donor gave $17 million. Various legal groups bring test cases, sometimes asking to lose in lower courts to more quickly get their cases before the Supremes. They fund an orchestrated “flotilla” of amicus (friend of court) briefs pretending to come from different “interested parties” all saying close the same thing. And that thing is telling the justices what to do. In one case, about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Donor’s Trust (which exists to scrub donor names), one of these groups that write and coordinate briefs, spent $23 million. There may be three lanes of activity, but they all work closely together and they’re all funded by the same people. GOP senators filed anti-ACA briefs, signed by Carrie Severino, the head of the JCN. It also funds the GOP Attorneys General Association – they are the plaintiffs in the ACA case to be heard by the Supremes in November. And they selected the nominee. Some group of people, with a huge amount of money, wants the ACA gone. Their minions – the GOP in Congress – couldn’t get it done. So they’ve turned to the Supremes, after buying the nomination process. A big question is why do they want the ACA gone (not explored here). Whitehouse turned to those 80 cases, each decided 5-4 with no Dem appointee in the majority. In each case there is an identifiable GOP donor interest. In each case that interest won. These cases are not about big public issues. They’re about power. There are four categories of cases. One: expand unlimited dark money in politics – the winners are a very small group, the ones with unlimited money and a motive to spend it in politics. Two: whittle away at the civil jury, even though it is in the Constitution. It’s annoying to corporate powers. A civil jury has to ignore the power of the person in front of them and actually apply the law. It’s illegal to tamper with a jury. Easier to make it powerless. Three: weaken regulatory agencies. Who else other than polluters – such as the oil industry – want to hide who they are? Polluters want weak regulatory agencies. Four: weaken minority voting, such as saying the pre-clearance part of the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed, on no evidence and after wide support of both parties in Congress. Can’t do it through Congress? Do it through the courts. Another example is gerrymandering, which the Supremes have permitted. Case after case, an 80-0 sweep, in cases about political power, about big special interests, about people who want to fund campaigns, about people who want to get their way without actually showing up. A victory pattern like that is not a fluke. Dark money has a lot to do with it. Dark special interests who want to get their way and weren’t able to through Congress. Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted an article by Donald Ayer and Alan Raul that appeared in USA Today about the GOP using a deeply unfair practice to confirm Barrett:

Indeed, if Senate Republicans force Judge Barrett through in the waning weeks before a presidential election — after denying President Obama any opportunity for Senate consideration of his nomination of Judge Merrick Garland nearly a year before the 2016 election — the American people will unavoidably see the Supreme Court as just another forum for power politics and political players.

Which is what it is. From the new episode of Gaslit Nation (which I’ll have to read this weekend) Sarah Kendzior tweeted a quote referring to the judicial philosophy espoused by Antonin Scalia and taken up by Barrett:

They call themselves originalists, they cloak themselves in faux constitutional veneration, but they don't have respect for the constitution. They twist the documents of the Founders into justification for autocracy.

One of the replies:

Originalism is the desperately narcissistic fantasy that it is possible to discern the precise intentions of people you have never met – and the even more desperately narcissistic fantasy that such discernment should be used to dictate the affairs of people you will never meet. – John Nichols

After all that one needs a bit of fun. Two videos are here and here. Turn on the sound.