CommentsEASTSIDER-Seems to me that much of the back and forth over Amy Coney Barrett‘s nomination to become a U.S. Supreme Court Judge is misplaced. Let’s see what the Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell process tells us about the players and the Court.
The President and the Senate majority’s role in all of this was predictable. And Majority leader Mitch McConnell’s actions should come as no surprise. As Politico put it:
“Call him “Cocaine Mitch,” “Nuclear Mitch” or the steward of the “legislative graveyard.” Mitch McConnell says he’s the “Grim Reaper” anyway, so he’s loving every minute of it.
While his critics have tried to make the Kentucky Republican public enemy No. 1, the Senate GOP leader has embraced the demonization in a bid to protect his Senate majority, his own seat and his title as longest serving Senate GOP leader in U.S. history.”
Like his buddy Donald Trump, Moscow Mitch will literally do anything, even if it destroys any chance of the Senate being the grown-up pillar of our democracy. Anything to stay in office. Wunderbar.
What A Divided Supreme Court Hath Done Already
If you wonder how much worse the Supreme Court decisions could get, look at how low (and I mean low down) the bar already is.
Back in 2018, I wrote a piece called “Aha! U.S. Supreme Court Likes Immortal Corporations Better Than Live People.”
“As I was watching the millions of dollars of PAC money being used to flat-out lie like a rug so the large corporations could defeat reasonable propositions in this week’s election, it came to me in a flash!
The U.S. Supreme Court is perfectly happy to allow unlimited money from immortal Corporations to be used to get their way at the polls and overwhelm any rational pretense of democracy. Think PACs. On the other side, we have frail, very mortal individual people who don’t stand a chance against them.”
The case itself, of course, was Citizens United, a homage to ‘one dollar one vote’ disenfranchisement of the Constitution’s one live registered person, one vote.
As a further example, we have another Supreme Court decision stripping the public of their right to sue companies as a class. Having a class of people, of course, is necessary to obtain a lawyer who can front the enormous expenses of fighting a big corporation in court. In front of a jury.
The actual case was called Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis, and you can find an analysis here.
And I wrote about the devastating impact of the decision here.
“In point of fact, this issue has become so pervasive that the New York Times recently described the process as “In Arbitration, a Privatization of the Justice System.”
The Times article describes a whole litany of horror stories, including how an ER doctor in Philadelphia brought a sex discrimination suit, was forced into private arbitration, had an ‘in the bag’ arbitrator, and is still paying off some $200,000 that the experience cost her even after she lost the case. The article is part two of a three-part report -- it’s a good read, and you can follow the links”
And in a recent no excuses dagger through the heart of all public sector unions, in the 2017 case Janus v. AFSCME, they took away the ability of a public sector union to negotiate mandatory membership or agency fee payments in lieu, to cover the cost of negotiations and representation of all the employees during the term of a collective bargaining agreement.
That article is here.
“Truth is, the vast majority of Americans all have opinions about unions which have been formed through decades of second hand propaganda, rather than personal experience. This trend increases as fewer and fewer Americans are covered by any collective bargaining relationship.
Here’s the goofy part. There is no current existential crisis in public sector labor relations. In fact, the system is working well. We have mature collective bargaining in California, with good oversight, mostly labor peace, lots of multiyear agreements, and a grievance and arbitration system which works for all parties up and down the State. I am told the same is true for the rest of the Nation.”
Pretty simple. Starve the union, organize a decertification petition with unlimited corporate funding, and back to the good old days of doing exactly what you want with no checks and balances. Hot damn!
The Takeaway
I mention all of this for a simple reason. All these decisions were made by the Supreme Court prior to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Taken as a group, they have already had a far reaching and devastating impact on the alleged rights of individuals to act in concert to find ways in which to challenge the big companies with megabuck law firms who can absolutely destroy any ability of an individual to challenge their actions, legal or not.
So just imagine what is likely if the Court is packed via a rogue Senate majority with a ethically bereft leader who knows no depths in toadying and fronting for a wannabe tyrant prior to his probable being voted out of office - within basically a month.
And ask yourself, what does all this say about a nominee who has had had private meetings with, and who has likely made promises in secret to Donald Trump in their personal lust for a place in history? At whatever ethical and moral cost.
So, is this Judicial Temperament or a Naked Lust for Power?
(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Photo image: Rachel Malehorn/Wikimedia Commons; DJ Paine/Unsplash. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
