Today’s political chatter was just bizarre. The talking point on the Sunday talk shows, pushed hard by Republicans and enabled by the media, was that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden needs to explain his stance on “court-packing,” that is, adding more justices to the Supreme Court. Some Democrats have begun to talk about that outcome if the Republicans ram through Amy Coney Barrett in these last few days before the election.
This conservative (can we even call it that any more? Pro-business, pro-wealthy, pro-power-in-the-hands-of-the-very-few-and-very-wealthy) Court is so disturbing. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that a Texas federal court, benched by Trump loyalists, had stayed the lower court’s decision to strike down Governor Abbott’s move to limit ballot boxes in Texas to one per county! That quickly?! And my guess is the next court would be the Supreme Court without RBG. This is voter suppression, it is not democratic, it is not fair. My question is, why don’t Biden and Harris just say, “It is NOT off the table any more, with the hijacking of the court the Republicans have forced upon the majority, adding Justices is NOT OFF THE TABLE. Then they are strong, take the mystery out of it and get the focus where it belongs, on cheating, law-breaking, hypocritical Republicans, desperate to make power grabs while they can.
Arrrrgh.
I want to send your letter to every news outlet so they see how they are letting Republicans control the narrative.
It seems Democrats are always playing defense because of language. We accept the existing terms and then fight an uphill battle.
Instead of “Defund the Police”, which repulses the average American, we should have immediately defined it as “Reimagining Social Services” (or anything more descriptive) and played offense with that slogan.
Likewise, Heather’s insightful perspective today on how Republican’s have used their minority power to jam the federal courts with conservative judges, should be an opportunity to re-label what we want to do.
Instead of “Court Packing”, which has a negative connotation, why not “Court Leveling”. Joe and Kamala, then, don’t have to duck the question (which looks bad) but, rather, go on offense explaining to the American people how the courts currently misrepresent the ideals of the popular majority.
Thank you, Heather. Today's letter shone a light on a few things that have been hanging around the fringes. For instance, the American people, as you noted, get distracted by the hot button issues, and don't really notice the bigger picture, let alone grasp how all these moving parts add up.
Even before Trump's pin-ball game of an administration, voters have been deliberately kept engaged in such 'oh, new flashy object' type distractions, all the better to disguise the Republican long game of turning the country into a corporate theocracy.
Connecting the dots would have shown the confluence of activities from Lewis Powell and the new-born Federalist Society, but also the influence of University of Virginia economist James Baker and his part in the establishment of the various right-wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and now the Mecates Center, and the money thrown at universities to teach more libertarian agendas.
Threaded into this is the long libertarian influence of the Koch Brothers, beginning with their father's position in the John Birch Society of old.
Democrats have never really grasped, until maybe now, what the GOP has been up to. We've put so much of our capital on winning the White House every four years, and left the wide open field of the Senate, not to mention state houses, to be taken over by the GOP. And speaking of state legislatures, let us not forget ALEC, busily writing 'draft legislation' for state legislators to pass to further the conservative agenda. And in the states where they've established Republican majorities in the legislature, they've been able to control the redistricting every decade, thus promoting their insidious gerrymandering. With GOP friendly federal courts, up to and including the Supremes, they've controlled the entire game for over forty years, while Dems were still focused to keeping a Democrat in the White House!
We have to get a helluva a lot smarter, a helluva lot faster, or this country really will be toast.
Will the Democrats pack the court? What Kamala Harris should have said:
You meant “unpack” Mr Vice President. Will the Democrats unpack the court? Republicans have been running a project for the past 40 years to pack the courts and under the administration of President Trump, this plan has come to fruition. Two supreme court judges stolen from the Democrats to give Republicans a 6-3 majority. Fifty one appellate court judges, nominated by President Trump for life long tenure, many of whom were rated as unqualified by the American Bar Association, appointed after minimal debate in the senate due to partisanship and the rush to approve any “judge” whose only qualifying criterium was partisan lean - actual legal qualifications and experience as a judge not needed.
Unpack the court? Yes - the Biden administration will look to restore justice for all - not maintain justice for the minority. President Trump didn’t win election with a majority of the vote. He’s a minority president. The 54 Republican senators represent states that make up 47 percent of the US population. A minority representation. How many of the 51 appellate court judges appointed were black? How many were LGBTQ? Zero. Not one. Many appointees have openly expressed anti-LGBTQ views. This is not a justice system. This is minority rule by the privileged.
The constitution gives control of the courts to congress. There is nothing in the constitution that limits the number of supreme court judges to nine. “Thirteen circuits, thirteen judges” is a bumper sticker - it’s not a long term solution to the injustice system created by the hyper-partisanship of a backward-looking Republican party. President Biden supports changes to the supreme court. Those changes are up to congress but they will be carefully considered to restore justice and prevent a repetition of the court packing that we have seen under the minority party rule of the Republicans.
Yesterday I watched both Barbara Kopple films, "Harlan County, USA" (United Mine Workers strike) and "American Dream".(The Hormel strike in Austin, MN) They each represented the last gasp of union power. The owners, with all the money and leverage, killed the unions. Business took control by refusing to negotiate. Refusing to acknowledge the inhumane working conditions. Refusing to acknowledge the value of workers. The workers at Hormel went on strike when it was revealed that Hormel profits were up 170%. Still, the owners offered workers a 4% raise when the inflation rate was 7%. The devastating conditions of inequality in the nation continued to expand from that day on. Giving business more power has always been a Republican ideal. It is now solidly cemented as the law of the land.
On a slightly different subject, I was incensed to hear President Trump's words at the White House on Saturday. Besides the obvious Hatch Act violation, it was personally insulting to be told that he is going to vote 'these people' into oblivion. I am one of 'these people' and he clearly has no intention of governing a huge swath of the American people. Of course, it is no surprise coming from Trump but I should not be hearing this from the balcony of the 'Peoples' House'
This entire scenario, and this trend is sickening. Embarrassed to admit, but I have not paid enough attention to this judicial system in my life to see what was going on. I was very focused on the Clarence Thomas debacle at the time, as I was in the middle of a situation where I had blown the whistle on my boss at a major network radio station. He was an abusive tyrant but his biggest ‘sin’ was rigging contests on the air and negotiating with vendors and gave the desired bids to those who included side work on his home(s) and benefits for his kids. (The abuse barely got notice from the company principles, needless to say)
I left the industry the next year, married and had a baby, never looked back.Years flew by.
Over the years there were times when I ‘zoomed in’ on judicial news but it wasn’t until Obama and the Merrick Garland situation arose that I was drawn to the courts with laser focus. And when Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in I was crushed, shocked, and devastated. That was when I really started to panic about the SCOTUS.
And now this!
I am ready to take to the streets on this.
The anxiety knowing this is nearly inevitable, and cannot be undone is so upsetting! I want to yell like a little kid and cry, ‘this isn’t fair!’
And I feel the guilt. Had I been paying better attention all these years couldn’t I have done anything to help shape this disaster? Could I have learned more, worked harder, led others...?
The media is either hungry for a horse race and are grasping at anything to make Biden look bad to balance how horrible trump is or they are republicans themselves. The biggest con has been a paper like the New York Times pretending to be against trump where in reality they hired Maggie Haberman who is his spokesperson. The courts are gone for a generation if not effectively forever.
- cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control.
When people or a nation are subjected to tyranny by a minority without granting their consent or support the result is resistance and rebellion. The rebellion is not necessarily violent if the majority has the ability to recapture power and control through peaceful democratic means. However, resistance to suppression of the will of the majority is inevitable and ultimately results in removing the minority from power.
This lesson has been taught repeated throughout history and is not limited to anyone culture or nation. The present Republican Party seems to be oblivious to this constant. They seek to maintain their hold on power and authority despite popular vote losses while also continuing to suppress the will of the majority opposing them. They do not seek to expand their support significantly amongst the population at large by modifying their positions. Rather they only further double down on their pursuit of tyrannical authority.
History tells us without exception the end result will be the majority will remove them from positions of authority and power. Let us all hope this is accomplished peacefully through the power of the ballot.
So, as a follow up to my first post here, someone I know on Facebook posted a “social experiment” suggestion: look at both Biden and trump’s Facebook pages and see how many of your ‘friends’ follow each one. I tried it. I am absolutely stunned. Of my Facebook ‘friends’ 9 ‘liked’ Biden. NINETEEN ‘liked’ trump!!!! I just don’t even have words for this at the moment. I am horrified and will need to think carefully on how I will deal with this and what I will say, if anything. There is clearly work to be done and we cannot be complacent or we will end up with a repeat of 2016. God help us all.
I find the Democrats' reluctance to go on the offense baffling. The Republican side consistently sets the conversation's parameters by attacking the Democrats, who take the defensive position, rather than by countering with a more truthful offense. It sure looks to me that the Rs are packing the Supreme Court, yet the Ds are behaving as if a fait accompli cannot be called out, and instead react to Republican speculation. it's bizarre, and disheartening; it continues to feel as if the parties are having two different conversations.
Thank you, as always, Heather for your hard work to make sense of this craziness. I am amazed and appalled at the focus on Biden’s refusal to discuss the issue of potential future “court packing”. As Heather states, it is a future hypothetical issue, vs the very real efforts of the current regime. I grew up in a mostly liberal rural area in New England. I recently saw a post on Facebook by a former high school friend saying “that’s it, I will never vote for him because he says we don’t ‘deserve’ to know his position on court packing”. She is a rabbit trump supporter that I have been arguing with on Facebook for the past 4 years. Others have taken up the argument on that post and I have refrained thus far but I am struck by the large number of *females* that I considered friends in high school who are openly angry, rabid trump supporters. I don’t understand how they can support him and, to avoid argument, I haven’t asked. There are plenty of males, too, from the same pool of people. Given our liberal leanings in this area, it worries me. Everyone please keep up the effort to get out the vote for Biden and Harris, I suspect that there are more people like my former classmates than any of us realize and it’s a frightening thought.
The Constitution, as the originalists know full well, was written in order to establish an oligarchy, not a true democracy. Voting and the acquisition of public power in all three branches of government was strategically limited (even if more broadly based than in Britain) and changing the electorate through the system of amendments--which requires those in power to vote against their own continued dominance--is difficult. Judge Barrett is a hypocrite of the Phyllis Schlafly school of hypocrisy: she adheres a radically backward-looking agenda that limits women's rights to their own bodies, that proposes that in marriage men should dominate, but craves the public world of the courts, university life, and publicity. She is a living model of exactly what she is trying to prevent other women (especially) from achieving. She is not Scalia: he was not a hypocrite.
This reminds me of Pence's behavior at the VP debate. The moderator asked me to explain exactly how he was going to cover pre-existing conditions without the Affordable Care Act. Instead of answering the moderator at all, he demanded that Sen.Harris talk about "packing" the court. When she did not, he badgered her with "Answer the question!" and he got away with it - neither Harris nor the moderator pointed out that he was avoiding answering the question he had been asked.
This conservative (can we even call it that any more? Pro-business, pro-wealthy, pro-power-in-the-hands-of-the-very-few-and-very-wealthy) Court is so disturbing. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that a Texas federal court, benched by Trump loyalists, had stayed the lower court’s decision to strike down Governor Abbott’s move to limit ballot boxes in Texas to one per county! That quickly?! And my guess is the next court would be the Supreme Court without RBG. This is voter suppression, it is not democratic, it is not fair. My question is, why don’t Biden and Harris just say, “It is NOT off the table any more, with the hijacking of the court the Republicans have forced upon the majority, adding Justices is NOT OFF THE TABLE. Then they are strong, take the mystery out of it and get the focus where it belongs, on cheating, law-breaking, hypocritical Republicans, desperate to make power grabs while they can.
Arrrrgh.
I want to send your letter to every news outlet so they see how they are letting Republicans control the narrative.
You’re the Best.
It seems Democrats are always playing defense because of language. We accept the existing terms and then fight an uphill battle.
Instead of “Defund the Police”, which repulses the average American, we should have immediately defined it as “Reimagining Social Services” (or anything more descriptive) and played offense with that slogan.
Likewise, Heather’s insightful perspective today on how Republican’s have used their minority power to jam the federal courts with conservative judges, should be an opportunity to re-label what we want to do.
Instead of “Court Packing”, which has a negative connotation, why not “Court Leveling”. Joe and Kamala, then, don’t have to duck the question (which looks bad) but, rather, go on offense explaining to the American people how the courts currently misrepresent the ideals of the popular majority.
Thank you, Heather. Today's letter shone a light on a few things that have been hanging around the fringes. For instance, the American people, as you noted, get distracted by the hot button issues, and don't really notice the bigger picture, let alone grasp how all these moving parts add up.
Even before Trump's pin-ball game of an administration, voters have been deliberately kept engaged in such 'oh, new flashy object' type distractions, all the better to disguise the Republican long game of turning the country into a corporate theocracy.
Connecting the dots would have shown the confluence of activities from Lewis Powell and the new-born Federalist Society, but also the influence of University of Virginia economist James Baker and his part in the establishment of the various right-wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and now the Mecates Center, and the money thrown at universities to teach more libertarian agendas.
Threaded into this is the long libertarian influence of the Koch Brothers, beginning with their father's position in the John Birch Society of old.
Democrats have never really grasped, until maybe now, what the GOP has been up to. We've put so much of our capital on winning the White House every four years, and left the wide open field of the Senate, not to mention state houses, to be taken over by the GOP. And speaking of state legislatures, let us not forget ALEC, busily writing 'draft legislation' for state legislators to pass to further the conservative agenda. And in the states where they've established Republican majorities in the legislature, they've been able to control the redistricting every decade, thus promoting their insidious gerrymandering. With GOP friendly federal courts, up to and including the Supremes, they've controlled the entire game for over forty years, while Dems were still focused to keeping a Democrat in the White House!
We have to get a helluva a lot smarter, a helluva lot faster, or this country really will be toast.
My friend's wife posted this elsewhere:
Will the Democrats pack the court? What Kamala Harris should have said:
You meant “unpack” Mr Vice President. Will the Democrats unpack the court? Republicans have been running a project for the past 40 years to pack the courts and under the administration of President Trump, this plan has come to fruition. Two supreme court judges stolen from the Democrats to give Republicans a 6-3 majority. Fifty one appellate court judges, nominated by President Trump for life long tenure, many of whom were rated as unqualified by the American Bar Association, appointed after minimal debate in the senate due to partisanship and the rush to approve any “judge” whose only qualifying criterium was partisan lean - actual legal qualifications and experience as a judge not needed.
Unpack the court? Yes - the Biden administration will look to restore justice for all - not maintain justice for the minority. President Trump didn’t win election with a majority of the vote. He’s a minority president. The 54 Republican senators represent states that make up 47 percent of the US population. A minority representation. How many of the 51 appellate court judges appointed were black? How many were LGBTQ? Zero. Not one. Many appointees have openly expressed anti-LGBTQ views. This is not a justice system. This is minority rule by the privileged.
The constitution gives control of the courts to congress. There is nothing in the constitution that limits the number of supreme court judges to nine. “Thirteen circuits, thirteen judges” is a bumper sticker - it’s not a long term solution to the injustice system created by the hyper-partisanship of a backward-looking Republican party. President Biden supports changes to the supreme court. Those changes are up to congress but they will be carefully considered to restore justice and prevent a repetition of the court packing that we have seen under the minority party rule of the Republicans.
Yesterday I watched both Barbara Kopple films, "Harlan County, USA" (United Mine Workers strike) and "American Dream".(The Hormel strike in Austin, MN) They each represented the last gasp of union power. The owners, with all the money and leverage, killed the unions. Business took control by refusing to negotiate. Refusing to acknowledge the inhumane working conditions. Refusing to acknowledge the value of workers. The workers at Hormel went on strike when it was revealed that Hormel profits were up 170%. Still, the owners offered workers a 4% raise when the inflation rate was 7%. The devastating conditions of inequality in the nation continued to expand from that day on. Giving business more power has always been a Republican ideal. It is now solidly cemented as the law of the land.
On a slightly different subject, I was incensed to hear President Trump's words at the White House on Saturday. Besides the obvious Hatch Act violation, it was personally insulting to be told that he is going to vote 'these people' into oblivion. I am one of 'these people' and he clearly has no intention of governing a huge swath of the American people. Of course, it is no surprise coming from Trump but I should not be hearing this from the balcony of the 'Peoples' House'
This entire scenario, and this trend is sickening. Embarrassed to admit, but I have not paid enough attention to this judicial system in my life to see what was going on. I was very focused on the Clarence Thomas debacle at the time, as I was in the middle of a situation where I had blown the whistle on my boss at a major network radio station. He was an abusive tyrant but his biggest ‘sin’ was rigging contests on the air and negotiating with vendors and gave the desired bids to those who included side work on his home(s) and benefits for his kids. (The abuse barely got notice from the company principles, needless to say)
I left the industry the next year, married and had a baby, never looked back.Years flew by.
Over the years there were times when I ‘zoomed in’ on judicial news but it wasn’t until Obama and the Merrick Garland situation arose that I was drawn to the courts with laser focus. And when Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in I was crushed, shocked, and devastated. That was when I really started to panic about the SCOTUS.
And now this!
I am ready to take to the streets on this.
The anxiety knowing this is nearly inevitable, and cannot be undone is so upsetting! I want to yell like a little kid and cry, ‘this isn’t fair!’
And I feel the guilt. Had I been paying better attention all these years couldn’t I have done anything to help shape this disaster? Could I have learned more, worked harder, led others...?
So now, here we are. Now what do we do!?
The media is either hungry for a horse race and are grasping at anything to make Biden look bad to balance how horrible trump is or they are republicans themselves. The biggest con has been a paper like the New York Times pretending to be against trump where in reality they hired Maggie Haberman who is his spokesperson. The courts are gone for a generation if not effectively forever.
Tyranny:
- a nation under cruel and oppressive government.
- cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control.
When people or a nation are subjected to tyranny by a minority without granting their consent or support the result is resistance and rebellion. The rebellion is not necessarily violent if the majority has the ability to recapture power and control through peaceful democratic means. However, resistance to suppression of the will of the majority is inevitable and ultimately results in removing the minority from power.
This lesson has been taught repeated throughout history and is not limited to anyone culture or nation. The present Republican Party seems to be oblivious to this constant. They seek to maintain their hold on power and authority despite popular vote losses while also continuing to suppress the will of the majority opposing them. They do not seek to expand their support significantly amongst the population at large by modifying their positions. Rather they only further double down on their pursuit of tyrannical authority.
History tells us without exception the end result will be the majority will remove them from positions of authority and power. Let us all hope this is accomplished peacefully through the power of the ballot.
So, as a follow up to my first post here, someone I know on Facebook posted a “social experiment” suggestion: look at both Biden and trump’s Facebook pages and see how many of your ‘friends’ follow each one. I tried it. I am absolutely stunned. Of my Facebook ‘friends’ 9 ‘liked’ Biden. NINETEEN ‘liked’ trump!!!! I just don’t even have words for this at the moment. I am horrified and will need to think carefully on how I will deal with this and what I will say, if anything. There is clearly work to be done and we cannot be complacent or we will end up with a repeat of 2016. God help us all.
I find the Democrats' reluctance to go on the offense baffling. The Republican side consistently sets the conversation's parameters by attacking the Democrats, who take the defensive position, rather than by countering with a more truthful offense. It sure looks to me that the Rs are packing the Supreme Court, yet the Ds are behaving as if a fait accompli cannot be called out, and instead react to Republican speculation. it's bizarre, and disheartening; it continues to feel as if the parties are having two different conversations.
Thank you, as always, Heather for your hard work to make sense of this craziness. I am amazed and appalled at the focus on Biden’s refusal to discuss the issue of potential future “court packing”. As Heather states, it is a future hypothetical issue, vs the very real efforts of the current regime. I grew up in a mostly liberal rural area in New England. I recently saw a post on Facebook by a former high school friend saying “that’s it, I will never vote for him because he says we don’t ‘deserve’ to know his position on court packing”. She is a rabbit trump supporter that I have been arguing with on Facebook for the past 4 years. Others have taken up the argument on that post and I have refrained thus far but I am struck by the large number of *females* that I considered friends in high school who are openly angry, rabid trump supporters. I don’t understand how they can support him and, to avoid argument, I haven’t asked. There are plenty of males, too, from the same pool of people. Given our liberal leanings in this area, it worries me. Everyone please keep up the effort to get out the vote for Biden and Harris, I suspect that there are more people like my former classmates than any of us realize and it’s a frightening thought.
The media either can't learn or are complicit.
The Constitution, as the originalists know full well, was written in order to establish an oligarchy, not a true democracy. Voting and the acquisition of public power in all three branches of government was strategically limited (even if more broadly based than in Britain) and changing the electorate through the system of amendments--which requires those in power to vote against their own continued dominance--is difficult. Judge Barrett is a hypocrite of the Phyllis Schlafly school of hypocrisy: she adheres a radically backward-looking agenda that limits women's rights to their own bodies, that proposes that in marriage men should dominate, but craves the public world of the courts, university life, and publicity. She is a living model of exactly what she is trying to prevent other women (especially) from achieving. She is not Scalia: he was not a hypocrite.
I really hope that Democrats win the presidency and a senate majority and that they DO add 4 moderate to left-leaning Supreme Court Justices.
This reminds me of Pence's behavior at the VP debate. The moderator asked me to explain exactly how he was going to cover pre-existing conditions without the Affordable Care Act. Instead of answering the moderator at all, he demanded that Sen.Harris talk about "packing" the court. When she did not, he badgered her with "Answer the question!" and he got away with it - neither Harris nor the moderator pointed out that he was avoiding answering the question he had been asked.