A Conversation with Steve

Steve says -


I thought you might want to see this picture of my dog Smash on my hike today.   Ok, I know that's a long shot!

How is everything?   How's the riding?

Steve

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Wes says-

…you don’t need an entrée to write…what a beautiful scene…and dog.

…weather has been incredible in H-Town…we are going on our fourth week of perfect weather…not the usual 2 or 3…absolutely beautiful…mid-50’s in the AM, high in the upper 80’s…blue sky, relatively low humidity…gorgeous, but without your mountain view…

…we are preparing for Matt (1^st born son) and Laura’s engagement party that we are hosting next Saturday, the 23^rd…it is an exciting time in that respect…wedding next March…she is in UT Dental School…Matt is working for a small advertising firm…they are living in mid-town…

…getting ready for the morning ride…knee had been acting up, so went to see the orthopedic guy…prescribed meds…see this x-ray for a good laugh…as long as it is not your knees…

You Don't Want these Knees

Late, 

Wes

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Steve says-

My left knee looks worse than this x-ray, it’s a wreck.   My right knee is pretty good.    I will get a knee replacement in the next 2-3 years.  I’m waiting on Medicare, which starts for me next March.   Not sure where I’ll have it done, but probably in Houston.

Great news about Matt!   That’s very exciting.

Our weather has been wonderful too, Fall is great.   It’s just a little cooler than Houston, around 35-40 when I get up and highs around 70.    All the aspens and cottonwoods and scrub oaks are bright yellow and orange, it’s our favorite time out here.

Tough times politically.    So much of the discourse these days is, as David Ignatius says, willfully stupid.

Steve

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Wes says-

We are in the GIB (Global Idiot Bubble)…and politics and religion are at the center…

Greetings from Idiot America

Click post title to link to the full article…if I recall correctly it is circa 2005…

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Steve says-


Yes, but the religion part is nothing new.   Religious belief is no more crazy today than it has always been.   The difference is that we used to have a secular government.    Maybe you are too young to remember when Kennedy had to come to Houston to guarantee a bunch of protestant ministers that his religious faith would not influence his decision-making.    Now, a politician can’t get elected without guaranteeing the public that his decisions will be informed by his religious belief.   It is a monumental change and a scary one.    And, I don’t trust the Roberts Court to protect us.

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Wes says-

…well, you know me, I am not into politics…but, I have a few comments, questions, thoughts…not too deep…

…when was JFK assassinated? 1961-2…aha, Friday, November 23^rd 1963…I was in 6^th grade and was 10 yo…so, I don’t remember the meeting with the Houston preachers, but I have read that he had to do this type of thing, not the specific, or how many times or when and where…

So, wrt the Robert’s Court and Obama’s choices, are you saying the court is biased toward faith-based thinking (or should I say faith-based non-thinking) and that influences their deliberations?  Will the net change lead to more rational decisions?  I’ve always thought that more women should be judges since they have a (sorry if this sounds sexists) compassionate view…but, these crazy bitchez like Palin and O’Donnell makes me wonder if my over generalization is totally off the wall, however, I am not trying to equate the two, just questioning my prejudices…

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Steve says-


The nature of the Roberts Court is a long conversation, but it is a source of great concern, at least to progressives.   There is a solid 4-member extreme right wing (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito).   These people are young, and are substantially more conservative than the American people as a whole.   And, they are perfectly willing to overturn decades of Supreme Court opinions, as we have seen recently in the Heller (handguns) and Citizens United (campaign contributions) cases.  

In regard to religion, a case several years ago is instructive.   Two Kentucky counties had posted the King James version of the 10 Commandments in their courthouses; the ACLU immediately sued.   The Court ruled 5-4 that this was impermissible in violation of the Establishment Clause of the 1^st Amendment to the Constitution.   A member of that majority was Sandra Day O’Connor.   She has now been replaced by Samuel Alito, who presumably will switch sides; he is a very reliable right-wing vote.   As an aside, all of the members of the right-wing voting block on the Court are Catholic:  Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy.   Is this important?    I don’t know.

The Kentucky 10 Commandments case is now headed back up to the Supreme Court and will be heard this term.   The likelihood is that the decision will change.    In his dissent in the original case, Scalia complained bitterly about the Court’s “hostility to religion.”    Presumably, with Alito having replaced O’Connor, this “hostility” will have changed to “sympathy” and we will start seeing the 10 Commandments posted in all our courthouses.   Here is a good piece about the Kentucky case:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/nine-justices-and-ten-commandments/

The upshot of all this is that the Roberts Court seems much more inclined to allow religion, at least the Christian religion, to play a role in government.

In regard to the women, Sotomayor and Kagan replaced Souter and Stevens, who were both members of the “liberal” group on the Court.    Their appointments don’t change the conservative/liberal balance on the Court, nor did Robert’s appointment to replace Rehnquist.   However, Alito replacing O’Connor moved the Court significantly to the right.   I guess we should be thankful for Palin and O’Donnell; they prove that women can be just as stupid and crazy and dangerous as men.

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Wes says-

…i understand the “conservative – liberal”  distribution of the justices, but have we gone so far in extremis that there will be no crossover voting possible?…recently I heard justice Stevens in an interview say that he is now called a liberal, but when he was first on the court he was a moderate and that he had not changed, but the court (and perhaps the country) has moved so far to the right that he is now viewed as a liberal…he was nominated by Gerald Ford…in any case, Scalia is the scary one to me, very smart, to be sure, but, based on his 60 minutes interview of a few years back, he is in total denial of his biases and believes he can interpret the original meaning of the constitution in an intellectually unbiased manner, regardless of his personal belief system – pretty good mind trick that would be, if it were possible…just look at his voting record…

…in any case, I am gravitating to a place in politics where it is not Left v Right, it is You v The Corporation, and You are loosing…all this divisive political rhetoric at the center of the GIB is just a distraction…we have, and perhaps always have been, not so much a democracy with a capitalistic economic system, but I would say America is a Corporatocracy…if that is even a word…all this political wrangling is just a smoke screen – the earth turns in another dimension…just follow the money…but, in the end it is not really about money, the flow of money is just the telltale, it is about power…and it does not reside with “we the people”…

…you mentioned the Citizens United case, which seemed absolutely incredible to me that the Supreme Court could decide in this manner opening up, essentially unlimited financial support to congress critters from the coffers of the corporations…but, then, more recently I discover that corporations have the same rights as people!...and that has been the case since the beginning of US laws pertaining to incorporation…the problem to me with this is that if you treat a corporation effectively as a person, while limiting the liability of the owners and directors of the corporation, it becomes a creature that has no moral compass…you have an entity that does not give a shit…about anything other than maximizing value…so, to me it is incredulous to really consider a corporation as a person…is this really the way the law views corporations?

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Steve says-

A lot to talk about, this discussion really should be over beer sometime.

There is no question that the Court has moved hard to the right and has become very politicized.    Stevens was nominated by Ford and Souter was nominated by the first President Bush, and both ended up on the “liberal” wing of the Court, because the Court has moved so far to the right.    Nominations to the Court have become very political, and Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito are political figures, they spent their lives in the Republican Party and the Federalist Society.

Thomas is the worst in some ways; he is not very smart and is virulently right-wing.   His wife is a national leader in the Tea Party movement.    He does not speak in oral arguments, never asks questions, hasn’t spoken a word in years.   He is an embarrassment to the Court.    Scalia, amazingly, may be the least dangerous of the bunch.   He actually has some principles, and although I (and many others much smarter than I of course) think his “originalist” approach is utter bullshit, he will occasionally surprise you with a ruling that is based on principle rather than partisanship.   Overall, however, you are right that he is extremely right wing and smart and dangerous.

Roberts and Alito are in another category unfortunately.   They are deeply, aggressively partisan, and routinely will favor the corporation over the individual.   I think you are absolutely right that money and corporate power are ascendant, and unfortunately those forces have 4 very reliable votes on the Court.   Kennedy is the swing vote.   The hardcore right-wing members of the Court are hostile to civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and most individual rights except for gun ownership.    They are pro-corporate, pro-religion and anti-government regulation.    They are the Republican Party’s dream team.

It is too simple to say that Corporations are always treated like people.   A corporation is a fictional entity created under state law, and how it is treated is usually a function of state law and can vary from state to state.   For some legal purposes a corporation is treated like a person, for others it would be otherwise.    But what the Court did in Citizen’s United was shocking; to say that a corporation is entitled to the free speech protections of the First Amendment.    To say that a Corporation is treated like a “person” for purposes of service of process or personal jurisdiction is one thing, but to accord a basic civil right to a fictional business entity is just weird and depressing.   We are seeing the results of Citizen’s United in this campaign cycle; corporations are spending unprecedented amounts of money, and they are doing so anonymously, and at a rate of 9-1 in favor of Republican candidates.   That decision was just a straightforward gift to the corporate world and the Republican Party and I think the majority intended exactly this result.   Campaign finance is not a very sexy issue but is so important, and we are getting our ass kicked badly by the moneyed interests.

You ask about crossover voting.    We are at a point now where, on a case that has political (or corporate) importance, there is a 4-member right wing whose votes are reliably pro-right and pro-corporate.    There is a 4 member left wing (Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan).    And Anthony Kennedy seems to be in the middle.   There is some movement; Breyer switched sides in two 10 Commandments cases, but generally each side has 4 reliable votes.    And, the conservative wing is younger.    In every Presidential election, the media is all focused on the hot button issues, but it is Supreme Court appointments that scare me the most.   Bush was a frightful President, but we will live with Roberts and Alito for a long time.    If Obama should lose in 2012, I fear that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not last another 4 years, and the consequences of another extreme right-wing corporate appointment would be terrible and would be with us for decades.

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Wes says-

OK, thanks for that…

The treatment of a corporation as a person is governed by State law, not Federal…

…the big point on Citizens United is that the Supremes attached 1^st Amendment Individual (human being) rights to an artificial construct, a business entity…

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Steve says-


Yes, that is my big complaint about Citizen’s.   That’s the crux of the opinion, that the right of corporations to spend unlimited money on campaigns can’t be limited because they have a constitutional right of free speech under the First Amendment.   Sounds insane, but there it is.

I need to clarify the other point; it is more complicated than I indicated I guess.   Corporations are all creatures of state law.   Each corporation is incorporated under the laws of a particular state (often Delaware).    For jurisdictional purposes, corporations are considered citizens of two states:  the state of incorporation, and the state where its principal place of business is located.  

On the question of whether a corporation is treated like a person, you have to ask, for what purpose?   Every law, state or federal, will state how it is applied and who is subject to it.   If it applies to all “persons,” then persons will be defined in the statute and may or may not include corporations, partnerships, etc.    For some purposes we want laws to apply equally to corporations just as though they were persons, so living assholes can’t just incorporate to avoid a particular statute.   For other purposes, we want to treat corporations differently.    So, it depends on the legal situation.   Can a corporation commit fraud?   Yes.    Can a corporation commit rape?    Probably not.    So, it depends. 

Even considering the Bill of Rights, context matters.    For example, a corporation is clearly protected by the 4^th amendment search and seizure protections; the police need a warrant to go seizing corporate files and poking through records.    But, free speech?     The point of the 1^st Amendment protection of speech was to give the powerless the right to speak out, not to allow powerful fictitious business entities to overwhelm our political system with their money.

Now see what you’ve done, you’ve gotten me to start ranting.   Sorry.

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Wes says-

…good, now we are in the same place…rant mode…