When the president and the Senate majority are of same party, the Supreme Court selection process is mostly rigged.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are in a male-controlled institution. They are not stupid; they want to keep their plumb appointments controlled by old men. Same with Red State democrats running.
The “sisterhood” support they might expect is a myth. Even evangelicals still prefer a well documented repetitive misogynist male president, one who they wouldn’t let near their daughters, to an older woman.
Brett Kavanaugh will say anything to get whatever the desired result is. Leopards don’t change their spots.
Mitch McConnell demanding that Senate “rules” (ignored by caveat) in his cover-up document charade from the public is another one of his sick Merrick Garland jokes about the “will of the people.”
It’s this widely rigged system that Nixon, Reagan, the GOP, and now Trump well understood, and actively pursued for a long time. Liberals thought it more important to fight among themselves, even after a candidate was selected. Forgetting that if it wasn’t Hillary, it’s Trump. Absolute stupidity.
Now Trump and his spineless Republican Senate rule and drool over their “politicians in robes.”
If you hold the Supreme Court, you actually hold the entire country. It wasn’t meant to be that way, but that’s how you can work the system with a public that spouts freedom and democracy as a modern hollow refrain; if you can get them to set their smartphone aside.
The present conservative court, for instance, has effectively ruled that one person with a $50 contribution has the same influence as a Koch giving $250 million, in the humorous case called Citizens United.
You don’t have to be a legal scholar to understand the unsupportable legal fictional nonsense of five conservatives making such a silly tortured ruling. The super-rich have the power, and they intend to keep it. Duh.
That’s how the world really works; and has so for many millennia. Don’t blame the poor billionaires for a public that finds “Angry Birds” more important than voting or working for their or their children and grandchildrens’ own future.
The U.S. Supreme (Political) Court supports “pay-to-play” in all its glory as a proper way of doing business for a public vote. If you’re a politician, that would be illegal if you did it directly; but such payoffs are called speech for the wealthy and Corporate America.
Instead of English Royals in 1776 – we have the American Royalty of crony capitalists and Robber Barons. They are supported by the judicial political activism of the Roberts’ “Commerce Clause Uber Alles” Supreme Political Court.
It’s little wonder that less than half of Americans now have trust or respect for the Court.
Many Alaskans have been affected directly by the court’s rulings.
The court ruled upper limit precedent on monetary damages directly affected the Alaska retirement funds. Then Attorney General (now Alaska Sen.) Dan Sullivan gave a massive $97 million of it to his lawyer friends, and the retirement systems received $403 million, 15 percent of a spurious $2.8 billion concocted claim that was never going to exceed the court case precedent $500 billion limit anyway.
Just like Gov. Sean Parnell, again with Sullivan at the helm, crafted a resource tax law that sends pipelines of cash to oil companies as “credits” and other concessions. And yes, oil companies definitely can negatively affect your Permanent Fund Dividend; but more on that in another My Turn.
It’s long past time to expand the court well beyond nine, taking away their lifetime tenure, and let the proportional people’s House of Representatives confirm the choice.
No one should get the right to control America’s future for generations to come because they happened to be the groomed “suck up” in waiting, with a professional non-proportional representative Senate cover-up team working for them.
It is just wrong that some old men (Trump, Pence, McConnell, Grassley, Hatch, Graham, etc.), who have already spent a lifetime fleecing the public, will control the law for generations after they leave, through such a rigged process; which makes respect for the court actions literally untenable.
• Anselm Staack, is registered non-affiliated, is a CPA and an Attorney who has been an Alaska resident for over 44 years. He was the Treasury Comptroller for Alaska under Gov. Jay Hammond and worked directly on the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. He resides in Juneau. My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.
