The Commentariat -- October 7, 2014
Internal links & illustration removed.
Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog analyzes the practical effects of the Supreme Court's decision not to hear any of the marriage equality cases & explains why their decision was a surprise. ...
... The Washington Post has an interactive graphic of the each state's status re: gay marriage. ...
... Rick Hasen sees a done deal: "... you may think that this could well be reversed once there is a circuit split, perhaps in a case from the 5th or 6th Circuit. But remember, there will now be all of these children from legal same sex marriages performed until the Supreme Court could decide to take a case from another circuit. The idea that Justice Kennedy would let that happen, knowing there could well be a reversal down the line seems unlikely. ...
... Garrett Epps of the Atlantic: "I don't see how [Monday's] decision doesn't signal that even within the Court, the fight is over.... The four dissenters in United States v. Windsor -- the Defense of Marriage Act case -- may have looked around the conference table last week and realized they would never get five votes to overturn the lower courts; that is, that Justice Anthony Kennedy was committed to taking his Windsor opinion to its fullest extent." ...
... Jeff Toobin: "Same-sex marriage will be the law of the land -- inevitably but not immediately." Toobin thinks the reason for the Court's deciding not to decide is that neither the four ultra-conservative justices nor the four more liberal justices trusted Justice Kennedy to be their fifth vote. Conservative justices, in Toobin's view, are hoping a Republican president will replace Justice Ginsburg, tipping the balance of the Court even further their way, while the more liberal justices are hoping the momentum gay equality rights has gained will force the Court in future years to rule with public opinion. ...
... Caitlan MacNeal of TPM: "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) conceded that the state of Wisconsin lost its fight to ban same sex marriage on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to hear gay marriage cases in multiple states.With the Supreme Court's punt back to the appeals court that struck down the ban, county clerks in Wisconsin have started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. And Walker seems to have accepted that this is the end of the road for the state's ban." (CW Update: Yeah, but Walker had a good day, all-in-all. See links further down the page on the 7th Circuit's ruling upholding Wisconsin's voter ID law, estimated to disenfranchise some 300K likely-Democratic-leaning voters.) ...
... Ed Kilgore: "... so long as there is an opportunist or two in the [GOP] presidential field who's frantic for right-wing support (I'm looking at you, Bobby Jindal!), the odds of this issue being 'off the table' in Iowa are very low." CW: Oh, Ed, I do believe I've found us just such an opportunist. ...
The Supreme Court's decision to let rulings by lower court judges stand that redefine marriage is both tragic and indefensible. By refusing to rule if the States can define marriage, the Supreme Court is abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution. The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws is astonishing. This is judicial activism at its worst.... When Congress returns to session, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment to prevent the federal government or the courts from attacking or striking down state marriage laws. -- Sen. Ted Cruz (RTP-Texas) ...
Because inaction is just another word for "activism" in upside-down Right Wing World. -- Constant Weader
MEANWHILE, Kate Nocera of BuzzFeed; "... hardly any Republicans have reacted to the news.... Sen. Mike Lee was one of the few GOP members to issue a statement. His home state of Utah was one of the states where a marriage ban was overturned by an appeals court and the state is now moving forward with allowing same-sex couples to marry. Lee called the Supreme Court decision to not review the appeals 'disappointing.'" ...
... NEW. Charles Pierce is not too sure of Mike Lee's powers of legal analysis. ...
... CW: I'm not a fan of Andrew Sullivan's, but today he expressed my own sense of why we have enjoyed such remarkable progress in the extension of gay rights: "The reason we persuaded so many in so short a time is that so many unknown private individuals [[ from Thanksgiving tables to church meetings to office cubicles to locker rooms -- simply told the truth about who we really are. It took immense personal courage at times -- and each moment someone came out, more light, more reality, seeped into the debate."
CW: Worth remembering: a mere two-and-a-half years ago, we had a Democratic President who was "still evolving" on gay marriage. ...
... Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "... while this is a massive win for gay marriage, it could surely have been done so much more bravely. For all practical purposes, it kicks the question of same-sex marriage down the road yet again. It's a big, big win but achieved in a small way, and possibly for very wrong reasons.... The court should not be in the business of gingerly surfing public opinion until it's safe enough to ride that wave into shore." ...
... CW: Besides, by deciding not to decide, The court has deprived us of a classic, entertaining Scalia rant. ...
... Jeff Toobin in the New Yorker: "It is a day to note and to celebrate a civil-rights revolution that is nearing a complete victory. But it is also a moment when other progressive causes are losing ground in the Supreme Court. On race and voting rights, the Roberts Court's likely direction is all too clear." ...
... CW: Something that struck me immediately about the Court's decision to, at the very least, kick the gay marriage can down the road, was this: What John Roberts cares most about is increasing the already-outsized advantages of elites, particularly moneyed elites. Preserving gay marriage bans matters very little within that framework. Voter suppression, on the other hand, aims to keep liberal-leaning voters from electing marginally reformist/inclusive Democrats. The same is true of Roberts' quest to undo anti-discrimination laws & policies. The outlier is his choice to support most of the ACA; the only way I can connect that to my supposition on his overarching philosophy is to posit that he believed a victory for the inane "broccoli argument" would undermine the institution of the Court itself. The one elitist Roberts most wants to protect is himself.
Paul Waldman reviews what the current conservative justices said during their confirmation hearings about their possible pro-choiciness. You might think they were obfuscating.
Voter Suppression, Ctd. Scott Bauer of the AP: "A federal appeals court ruled Monday that Wisconsin's requirement that voters show photo identification at the polls is constitutional, a decision that was not surprising after the court last month allowed for the law to be implemented while it considered the case. State elections officials are preparing for the photo ID law to be in effect for the Nov. 4 election.... The American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project asked the U.S. Supreme Court last week to take emergency action and block the law." Thanks to Nadd2 for the link. ...
... Rick Hasen: "Regardless of where you stand on the merits of the constitutional and voter id problem, it is unconscionable to roll out voter id without adequate time for everyone who wants to get id to do so.... As a matter of substance, this is vintage Judge [Frank] Easterbrook: crisp writing but heartless and dismissive. Judge Easterbrook picks out the evidence from the record he likes, and dismisses the evidence he does not like." Do read the whole post. I probably should title this graf "Our Corrupt Judiciary." When a court has to write falsehood after falsehood to justify it's position, just maybe the position is untenable. ...
... CW: One thing to bear in mind on all these voter suppression laws is that voting is not a Constitutional right in the U.S. (as it is in many [most??] other countries). The 26th Amendment (1971) reads, "
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
... Now wouldn't it be nice if that phrase "on accunt of age" had been omitted? I don't know if the 26th Amendment has ever been cited to counter voter-suppression laws, where the purpose & effect is to disenfranchise college students, but it sure as hell should be.
Steve M. "What we should worry about with regard to Ebola is not that ISIS and the Zeta drug gang will conspire to send infected bioterrorists across the Rio Grande, or whatever the hell it is Fox viewers fear. What we should worry about is that the outbreak in West Africa won't be contained soon despite the fact that we know how to contain Ebola outbreaks. If the delivery of protective gear is being delayed by petty bureaucrats [in Sierra Leone] engaged in partisan politics, those petty bureaucrats are multiple murderers."
Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: "The Justice Department is preparing a fresh round of attacks on the world's biggest banks, again questioning Wall Street's role in a broad array of financial markets. With evidence mounting that a number of foreign and American banks colluded to alter the price of foreign currencies, the largest and least regulated financial market, prosecutors are aiming to file charges against at least one bank by the end of the year, according to interviews with lawyers briefed on the matter. Ultimately, several banks are expected to plead guilty."
Evan Osnos of the New Yorker profiles Larry Lessig, whose quixotic attempts to secure campaign finance reform a/k/a "corruption of the system" remains, well, quixotic. CW Hint: If you want this to work, Larry, you must bring some talented crooked politicians into the fold. They know how the system works & they know how to exploit it. There are many to choose from, although a few would have to work from jail.
Peter Baker of the New York Times reviews Panetta's Complaint. ...
... Dana Milbank: Panetta's "level of disloyalty is stunning, even though it is softened with praise for Obama's intellect."
Hadas Gold of Politico: "New York Times reporter James Risen said Sunday that none of the current leak investigations would be happening if President Barack Obama did not hate the media so much, the Morning Sentinel of Maine reports. 'I don't think any of this would be happening under the Obama administration if Obama didn't want to do it,' Risen said at Colby College in Maine after he received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy award for journalism. 'I think Obama hates the press. I think he doesn't like the press and he hates leaks.'"
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Max Fisher of Vox: "Author and former Democratic political consultant Naomi Wolf published a series of Facebook posts on Saturday in which she questioned the veracity of the ISIS videos showing the murders and beheadings of two Americans and two Britons, strongly implying that the videos had been staged by the US government and that the victims and their parents were actors. Wolf published a separate Facebook post, also on Saturday, suggesting that the US was sending troops to West Africa not to assist with Ebola treatment but to bring Ebola back to the US to justify a military takeover of American society...." ...
... Dave Weigel, now with Bloomberg Politics (thus a colleague of Mark Halperin's!), has more. ...
... CW: A while back, some readers were accusing me of being a right-wing mole since I never (or almost never) linked Wolf's stuff. I believe I responded that I thought her views were fairly batty. Well, case closed. ...
... In Wolf's defense, Rush Limbaugh has an opinion not far removed from hers on the Ebola crisis. Limbaugh's theory is that Obama has indeed arranged to bring Ebola into the U.S. in order to sicken white Americans because they enslaved Africans. (To be fair to Rush, he expresses his theory in a lot of abstruse blather.) Jonathan Chait has a nice little survey of Rush's obsession with slavery. Rush thinks whites got a bum rap; not that many people of European descent kept slaves, Rush notes, & white Americans even fought a war to free their slaves. ...
... CW: In addition, the similarities between the name of the President & the name of the virus are so striking that one can hardly assume a mere coincidence: (1) Both have five letters; (2) Both have three syllables; (3) Both begin with a vowel; (4) The 2nd letter of both is "b"; (5) Both end in the letter "a"; (6) Both are African words.
Ed Kilgore gets some more mileage out of Mark Halperin's debut "scoop" for Bloomberg Politics: "Halperin suggests ... Jeb [Not-His-Real-Name Bush] would be insane not to run, such are his vast talents and the hosts of important people (e.g., donors) 'panting' (Halperin's own word for one of them) to make him president.... The problem here is in considering Halperin a 'journalist' in the normal meaning of the term. His niche is to serve as a courtier and a vanity mirror for what Digby so aptly labeled The Village, the small group of elite beltway-centered movers and shakers who want to form the political world in their own image.... Does any of this make sense from the point of view of honest journalism? No, but that's not Halperin's gig, and I am quite confident he does not care about our mockery."
Senate Race
Out with the Old? James Carroll of the Louisville Courier-Journal: "After two polls in his favor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has slipped behind Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes in his re-election bid, according to the latest Bluegrass Poll. Grimes, Kentucky's secretary of state, now leads the five-term senator 46 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, the survey found. Libertarian candidate David Patterson had 3 percent support in the poll, while 7 percent of likely voters said they were undecided.... Perhaps the most alarming number for McConnell is that 57 percent of registered voters surveyed said that after 30 years in office, it's time for him to be replaced. That sentiment was shared by 33 percent of conservatives and 27 percent of Republicans." CW: I'm not getting my hopes up. Much.
Beyond the Beltway
Charles Pierce details the atrocities of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission (i.e., school board), which in a secret session yesterday, tossed the teachers' union contract, established work rules that will remind you of the conditions under which tenant farmers & company-town denizens lived in the bad old days, & cut benefits to retired teachers. The governor appoints three of the commission's members & the mayor appoints two. Thanks to MAG for the link.
Okra Bust. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "Georgia police raided a retired Atlanta man's garden last Wednesday after a helicopter crew with the Governor's Task Force for Drug Suppression spotted suspicious-looking plants on the man's property. A heavily-armed K9 unit arrived and discovered that the plants were, in fact, okra bushes.... Marijuana eradication programs, like the one that sent the helicopter up above the Georgia man's house, are typically funded partly via the Drug Enforcement Agency's Cannabis Eradication Program. Many of these funds come from the controversial asset forfeiture programs, which allow law enforcement officials to seize property from citizens never even charged - much less convicted - of a crime."
Randal Archibold of the New York Times tells the horrifying story of Mexican policy likely slaughtering high school boys last month. "The state prosecutor investigating why the police opened fire on students from their vehicles has found mass graves in Iguala -- the small industrial city where the confrontations occurred -- containing 28 badly burned and dismembered bodies. The prosecutors had already arrested 22 police officers after the clashes, saying the officers secretly worked for, or were members of, a local gang. Now they are investigating whether the police apprehended the students after the confrontation and deliberately turned them over to the local gang.... The students were not known to have criminal ties.... The mayor and the police chief of Iguala are now on the run...."
News Ledes
Los Angeles Times: Some Ebola experts are concerned the current strain of the virus may spread more readily than has been assumed.
New York Times: "Warplanes from the American-led coalition fighting militants of the Islamic State were reported on Tuesday to have struck targets in Syria near the Turkish border in support of Kurdish forces locked in street fighting with the militants. If confirmed, the reports could indicate an escalation in American-led efforts to help the Kurds resist, if not repel, an onslaught by the Sunni militants whose forces control portions of Syria and Iraq."
Washington Post: "At an announcement in Stockholm on Tuesday, the Nobel Prize committee awarded this year's prize in physics to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura. The three men -- Akasaki from Meijo University, Amano from Nagoya University (both in Nagoya, Japan) and Nakamura from UC Santa Barbara -- produced blue light beams from their semi-conductors in the early 1990s." The Los Angeles Times story is here.
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Reader Comments (16)
"Ultimately, several banks are expected to plead guilty."
But ultimately, just as in every other instance, no person, real or fictitious, will ever go to jail.
Meaning that the actual people running the banks will continue to chalk up these convictions and their concomitant fines as simply the cost of doing business, let the shareholders assume those costs, take their multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses, and move on to the next criminal activity.
As long as no actual person has to pay a price this will never stop. That's Eric Holder's legacy.
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. -- Ambrose Bierce
When I first read the posting above on Naomi Wolf I got her confused with Naomi Klein and I thought something must have seeped into her brain matter and made her wacky. Once I got the Naomi's straight, I could breathe a sigh of relief that another sane person hadn't gone off their chomp.
Yes, Grimes to beat the Turtle Man, but she's either pandering to her base or she's sincere when she backs up the coal industry (she must know it's a dying animal), she touts her toting of guns ("I don't agree with Obama about guns"), but she's a democrat and thems what we want no matter what?
I personally think it's bad form to severely criticize a president who hired you before he leaves office. Obviously there will be differences between this agency and that and don't we want all those differences of opinions? If one is concerned about the ranker the Republicans have produced from the very beginning of the Obama administration you would think you could keep your mouth shut and not give more fodder for Fox and all their right wing friends. Party first? Obviously not.
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/federal-appeals-court-rules-in-favor-of-voter-id-law/article_63a3ad4f-d7fc-5f21-a69a-436d4933e7bf.html
It is looking again as though the state of Wisconsin is influencing the courts: the day before the state is to respond to the ACLU's request to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay, the appellate court came out with a ruling that the Voter ID law is constitutional, giving more ammunition for the state's case.
Coincidence? I don't think so: consider this rapid sequence of events: the Wisconsin Supreme Court breaks with tradition ( and, some say, legality) and proposes a rule change within the DMV that will allow the court to find the law valid ( and it does, even before the change); the state comes up on a Friday with said rule change; on Monday the appellate court releases a letter saying that Wisconsin can implement voter ID.
Three years ago, after Act 10 was shockingly declared okay by Wisconsin's Supreme Court, Justice Prosser admitted that the justices had had their famous dustup ( in which Prosser put his hands around Justice Bradley's neck) in the rush to get the opinion out in time for the legislature, which no longer had the votes to pass it, not to have to act on it again.
It's looking like Walker is pulling ahead in the election. But he is leaving nothing to chance, suppressing the votes of up to 300,000 people who don't have IDs. The court seemed to say that this state of affairs, which Judge Adelman decried in his May decision, is just not believable.
Walker appears to have only one talent, and that is getting ahead politically. Be very afraid if he is the Republican candidate for president .
How to make the best seller list.
Times are tough. If you want to boost book sales, or gain prime time interviews...shelve your conscience and go for a scandalous or shocking sound byte. No need to wait a 'decent' time for revelatory details about your 'former unstinting, devotion to a better world, loyal, trusting, ethical, proud to serve my country/government.' Nah. You can't put it off. Nasty? Yeah, well...whatever. Hence, we get these literary hatchet jobs from former officials within months of their departure to spend time with the wife & family.
It's apple-polishing of the first order. Though apple-polishing of one's self. CW mentions "Panetta's Complaint," which reminded me of a best-seller from the early 70's that also dwelled on self-stroking, so to speak: "Portnoy's Complaint."
I see little difference between Panetta's "pleasuring' and Portnoy's. Tho' the latter was a lot funnier!
This morning over on Charlie Pierce he has an excellent piece on the damn charter schools movement. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Showdown_In_Philadelphia
On Roberts and his Court:
Yes to Marie's speculation that Robert's primary purpose is to preserve, protect and enhance the power of the elite to which he belongs.
And yes, when he doesn't seem to act, like on the gay marriage issue, on that basis alone, his court presents an intriguing puzzle.
But looked at in one way, maybe there's sense to it.
Tho' impossible to see into the fun house of Robert's head, many of his court's decision suggest that his invisible decision-making flow chart is constructed to support and advance the cause of individual human rights only as long as those rights can be extended to organizations that have only legal, that is paper, existence. That is, entities that couldn't exist without the lawyers that give them birth.
Notably, when strictly human rights interfere with the rights of organizations, as in Citizens United, the Hobby Lobby fiasco, and in the many decisions that limit class action lawsuits against corporations, paper entities always win. For the Roberts Court there is no precedent so potent as an article of incorporation.
In this light, gay marriage is an emerging right that does not noticeably interfere with corporate rights so is thus given a pass if not an enthusiastic endorsement.
Since mere flesh and blood humans don't count for much in the Roberts world, it will be interesting to see how voting rights cases fare in his court. As the Right continues to restrict those rights, whether Roberts wants to hear them or not, there are bound to be more voting rights cases working their way to the Supremes.
They can't ignore them all. So far, the Roberts Court has clearly decided that money has a vote. We'll see when it comes down to it, if it is willing to say that people do, too.
@ MAG, re: "Panetta's Complaint." That was the idea. Panetta & the character Portnoy are both self-absorbed, masturbatory putzes.
Marie
Ken, I would also add that being gay and being a member of the elite are not mutually exclusive.
Ken,
Good point about Roberts' attachment to ephemeral, as opposed to flesh and blood, entities. Ephemeral, however, only in terms of incorporation and stock documents. The entities he and his right-wing colleagues so valiantly champion, at the expense of real human beings (oh, except the human beings who make fortunes off their decisions), can, and often do, inflict severe harm and hardship across great swaths of humanity.
But why is it that these people seem unable to allow the tiniest concern for that humanity to inform their decisions, to leak into their thought process, to expand their "two-sizes too small" Grinch hearts?
Well, actually, they do. Only it's done for a very select, elite circle of humanity.
The conservatives on the court display a kind of bubble-generated bigotry against average Americans. A guy like John Roberts has existed so long in his right-wing cocoon that he rarely encounters people who aren't "in the club" so to speak. One of my constant complaints during the Reagan years was that it appeared that very few (maybe none) in his administration acted as if they had any concept of what it was like not to ride in a limo and glad hand the high and mighty.
Of course, John Roberts cut his teeth under those same elite fellow passengers in the conservative Bubble World. Most tendencies toward bigotry come from a lack of familiarity, on a personal level, with those from the group considered "unclean" if you will. I recall a conversation I had once with a fellow employee who had distinct racist leanings. I pointed out to him that he seemed to treat Mr. So and So, a mutual acquaintance who was black, quite decently. "Well", he said, "That's cause he's not a nigger". The Decider was so removed from the real world (perhaps for psychological reasons) that he once made fun of an inmate on death row who had begged him for her life. This isn't just calousness toward another human being, this is treating them like they don't even exist.
You may recall that another rich kid from a privileged background who seemed to have everything handed to him, power, money, prestige, and who started public life as a callow individual, removed from the orbit of most Americans, had a major transformation when confronted with the poverty and misery of poor families in the South on a trip there in the mid 60's. That man was Bobby Kennedy. It can happen, but not if you never leave the bubble.
It has been pointed out on RC and elsewhere, and indeed, in the Andrew Sullivan link, above, that personal familiarity is essential in allowing us to see others as three dimensional human beings and not something fearful or abstract, or worse, without value.
And I think, for four of the conservatives on the court, the pain, suffering, needs, and wants of hundreds of millions of people are just that: an abstract, something almost hypothetical. Whereas, when you golf with the high and mighty and they pay you $100,000 to come and speak at their little clambakes, or take you hunting with them, they become the only real people you know, the only ones with value, and their concerns become your concerns.
This sad state of affairs also demonstrates, ad infinitum, why elections matter. If, as someone as suggested, Anthony Kennedy's chair was filled with a reliable conservative, who could be counted on to sign up with the brigands, they'd all be singing "Onward Christian Soldier" at the start of each term as they gleefully sharpened their swords for the coming slaughter of the unbelievers, the unclean.
And it may not matter anymore if Ginsburg retires now or in two years. If the wingnuts take the Senate in a few weeks, not only won't the president be able to replace her with someone as good, he may not even be able to replace her with anyone the drooling mob don't think they can count on to be turned to the dark side.
And unlike us, the wingers on the court have all the time in the world. Little Johnny and Sammy the Hit Man will likely be there for another 25 years, and I don't think we can count on any Thurgood Marshalls or Bill Brennans or a worthy successor to RBG between now and then.
Long hard times to come, friends.
Re: the disgraceful Panetta's Complaint.
Maybe they both live in a kind of masturbatory cloud of one kind or another, but Alexander Portnoy is a far more interesting--and sympathetic--character than Leon Panetta could ever be after this latest exercise in self-aggrandizement and ass covering at the expense of his former boss.
But Panetta started out as a Republican. Maybe he never really switched parties after all. He certainly has the conservative poison pen thing down pretty well.
And even if he wanted to pen an ass-saving glorification of his own mighty deeds on the world stage, while savaging his president, he should have had the decency to wait until the president's term was over. Nothing like giving aid and comfort to the enemy. And today, in this climate, there can be no other description of the other side. They ARE the enemy.
Asshole.
Not So Amazing Prediction of the Day
If, but more likely when, that Syrian border town, Kobani, is overrun by ISIS, expect the all-war-all-the-time party and its prime exponents of blowing stuff up, McCain, Graham, et al, to blow a gasket.
Clearly, it will be all Obama's fault.
It already is. I'm sure the Breitbarts and Foxes and Newsmax "journalists" (hard to even type that, even with the quotes, in this context) have already typed up their breathless condemnations and calls for Boots on the Ground. Wait....is that Bill (Not a Day in Uniform) Kristol I hear screaming for sending in the troops? Oh, but not his kids, though.
@Akhilleus, re: your not so amazing prediction of the day: Just read Ted Cruz's prepared late-night filibuster text on Obama's weak-kneed failure to bring down ISIS, & his prescription for what a REAL leader would do:
He would fight them in the air
He would fight them over there.
He would fight them on the beaches
Instead of giving speeches.
He would fight on landing grounds
On the desert's sandy mounds.
He would fight them in the fields
He would fight till each one yields.
He would fight them in the streets.
(We would send them nasty tweets.)
He would fight them in the hills,
And not send us the bills.
(The text suggests Cruz gives no credit to Winston Churchill & Dr. Seuss.)
Marie
Paper Cut,
Good Ambrose Bierce quote. His Devil's Dictionary offers much to those inclined to acerbic aphorism.
It is true that corporations have a form of protection that not only provides a bulwark against unreasonable or nuisance suits, but also gifts the less ethically minded with a convenient cover for free-ride adventurism with other people's money.
This isn't new.
As expanded limited liability laws began serving the needs of corporations back in the mid 19th century, some even then recognized the potential for abuse. This is Edward William Cox, conservative politician in 1855 (from Wikipedia):
"Limited liability... permits a man to avail himself of acts if advantageous to him, and not to be responsible for them if they should be disadvantageous; to speculate for profits without being liable for losses; to make contracts, incur debts, and commit wrongs, the law depriving the creditor, the contractor, and the injured of a remedy against the property or person of the wrongdoer, beyond the limit, however small, at which it may please him to determine his own liability."
That part about committing wrongs and getting away with it has found its apotheosis on Wall Street, as those most responsible for the recent economic catastrophe were bailed out and then hid behind the reams of laws crafted by and for them which held them free and clear of all responsibility.
The better to rape and pillage another day.
A few slaps on the corporate wrist, penalties that won't actually penalize, maybe a stern talking to from some circuit court judge, then it's back to business. Because responsibility is a quality that bothers Masters of the Universe almost as little as it does Republican politicians and pundits.
Marie,
I like it, I like it.
The parts about "nasty tweets" and not sending us the bills got a laugh.
Rueful laughter, perhaps, but laughter nonetheless.
I saw a picture of Cruz doing something in front of a camera and it struck me that his handlers have probably insisted on replacing all teleprompters with mirrors. The better for Teddy to admire himself as he flails around like a spoiled three year old.
Of course none of that fighting that Tailgunner Narcissus prescribes would have to be done by him. Or anyone like him.
To wit:
They say that old Ted is as sly as a fox
They say he can go on for days when he talks
He brings along mirrors wherever he goes
While walking and talking and on TV shows
They say he can talk you right into a box
When he puffs out his chest, like all chicken hawks.
Ba-dum-bum.
@Akhilleus: Who could have known folks could take down Ted Cruz with nothing more than a Terrible Poetry Slam?
Marie
Marie,
Now you done it.
Okay, one more for our TPS.
Excuse Cruz views? Never.
Choose Cruz, loose? Ever.
Any bad poetry lovers out here who'd be interested in adopting a lost doggerel or two?
(Somewhere Ogden Nash is pouring himself a strong one.)
I have to side with Marie on the general and specific wackiness that seems to hang over the recent Naomi Wolf postings about ISIS beheadings like an explosive blue fart cloud after a night of uncontrolled drinking.
Ms. Wolf, in what appears to be a post made under duress or confusion, declares that at least three of the "supposed" beheading victims did not die because her sources say so.
In her estimation, if Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders can't verify the kidnapping of specific persons, it didn't happen. Because those organizations, no matter how benevolent their aims, know all, is that right?
So if I, wandering around the Levant (as it seems to be called again, after many decades), intent on disrupting whatever militaristic goals were in the air, were to be abducted and threatened with beheading, these organizations, if consulted, could affirm or deny that outcome, without any dispute. Is that correct?
Jesus.
You know, I realize that we have access to events, information, and data unknown to our forebears, but that doesn't intimate a kind of omniscience. I mean, look at Fox. Most of their stuff, they just make up.
Besides, her rationale, that five people are necessary to stage any one of those Grand Guignol events, begs explanation more accurate than "because I say so".
In fact, the whole thing could be done with two, or even one person.
Set up the camera on a tripod, set your victim and yourself in a good spot (you have, I imagine, more than just a knife with which to threaten the victim), then do your worst.
How is it that the most insensible, unsupportable fancies of dilettantes and tea leaf readers morph into stories worthy of repetition?