Friday, August 11, 2023. The illegitimate Supreme Court gets a lot more crooked thanks to Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Ron DeSantis wants to dumb down America further, shame on parents who allow him to, and much more.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is facing growing calls to
recuse himself from a case that could hamstring Congress' ability to
enact a federal wealth tax, a policy that progressive lawmakers and
economists say is needed to rein in out-of-control inequality.
Late last week, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter urging Chief Justice John Roberts to "take appropriate steps to ensure that Justice Alito will recuse himself" from Moore v. United States, which the Supreme Court recently agreed to take up.
The lawmakers' demand was prompted by a friendly interview that Alito gave to The Wall Street Journal's opinion section, which in June allowed the right-wing justice to get out in front of a ProPublicastory on his luxury trip with billionaire hedge fund titan Paul Singer.
The interview late last month was conducted in part by David Rivkin Jr., an attorney who is representing the plaintiffs in Moore v. United States. The case, which is mentioned in passing in the Journal's write-up of the Alito interview, concerns whether unrealized gains such as stock appreciation can be subject to federal taxation.
Unrealized gains are currently untaxed in the U.S., allowing
billionaires such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk to accumulate massive fortunes
while paying little to nothing in federal income taxes.
Supporters of the Moore plaintiffs, who are specifically challenging
an obscure foreign earnings provision in the 2017 Republican tax law,
have encouraged the Supreme Court to explicitly address the
constitutionality of wealth taxes in its ruling.
"This case presents the court with an ideal opportunity to clarify that
taxes on unrealized gains, such as wealth taxes, are direct taxes that
are unconstitutional if not apportioned among the states," the right-wing Manhattan Institute argued in a May amicus brief. (Proponents of a tax on unrealized gains, such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), have expressed confidence that such a tax is constitutional.)
The Manhattan Institute is chaired by Singer, whose private jet flew Alito to an Alaska fishing trip that the justice did not disclose.
"Alito needs to recuse himself from the case deciding the
constitutionality of a wealth tax," Americans for Tax Fairness, a
progressive advocacy group, said
Wednesday. "First he accepted lavish gifts from billionaires and failed
to disclose them. Then he gave a buddy-buddy interview to one of the
case's anti-wealth tax lawyers. Enough."
Alito's a crook. Sadly, he's not the only one on the Court. Crooked Clarence is back in the news.
Clarence Thomas's day: - Have a limo bring him to a billionaire's private jet - Have the jet fly him to another billionaire's yacht - Have the yacht drop him at another billionaire's private island - Have a trillionaire buy him a new home - Claim SCOTUS needs no ethical oversight
An investigative report published Wednesday by Pro Publica outlines
the utterly corrupt lifestyle of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The most right-wing of the nine justices, the most consistent advocate
of the interests of the super-rich and enemy of democratic rights, has
lived like a billionaire throughout his three decades on the high court.
The report, published under the headline, “Clarence Thomas’ 38
Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court
Justice to Luxury Travel,” is a devastating exposure of corruption and
criminality.
The report declares:
Thomas has
secretly reaped the benefits from a network of wealthy and
well-connected patrons that is far more extensive than previously
understood…
During his three decades on the Supreme Court,
Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans
can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives
have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered
him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private
jets to fetch him including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737.
The
gifts include “at least 38 destination vacations, including a
previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas.” This is
better than one expensive vacation every year of Thomas’s 32 years on
the court. In addition, there were “26 private jet flights, plus an
additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and
college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at
luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an
uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.”
These
trips were largely unreported, either by the corporate media or by
Thomas himself in his annual financial filings with the court. Pro Publica observes,
“Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose
flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics
experts.”
At least four billionaires, representing several
sectors of the US economy, have been identified as sponsors of Thomas.
There may be others, but these four, as profiled by the New York Times and Pro Publica, include:
Harlan
Crow, heir to the commercial real estate giant Trammell Crow, founded
by his father, which became the largest US owner of real estate. Harlan
Crow controls the family holding company, Crow Holdings, with assets of
$20 billion.
David Sokol, oil and finance executive, who made his initial
fortune at Berkshire Hathaway, the massive investment firm founded and
headed by Warren Buffett, before resigning in disgrace over an insider
trading scandal.
The late H. Wayne Huizenga, whose
fortune derived from Waste Management, the leading waste disposal firm
in North America, Auto Nation, once the largest auto dealer, and
Blockbuster video. He also owned at one point or another most of the
professional sports teams in Miami, Florida.
Paul
Novelly, oil executive, whose family owns the billion-dollar independent
Apex Oil and several other oil industry firms, most involved in trading
and storing heavy oil products, including fuel oil and asphalt.
What
these billionaires have in common, besides enormous wealth, is an
extreme right-wing political perspective, opposing any restriction on
the capitalist market and any effort to provide state support for
working people whose jobs and living standards have been devastated by
market forces.
They were not “personal friends” of Thomas, as the
justice claimed of Crow when his financial ties with the real estate
mogul was brought to light by Pro Publica earlier this year.
All four began their relationships with Thomas only after he had become a
Supreme Court justice in 1991, when he was in a position to reinforce
the drastic shift to the right in the high court which was already under
way.
Thomas occasionally reported trips and gifts from Crow, but
never for any of the other three, although these relationships were
extraordinarily lucrative as well.
The illegitimate Court can't be mocked because it's already make a mockery of itself and of the law. Impeachment is required but, as Betty notes, a Republican controlled House refuses to take the measures required.
The verdicts of late and the scandals have destroyed the Court's image. That really kicks off with DOBBS where the Court ignored and overturned precedent. This is Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Experts"
There's no rebuilding the image -- or the integrity -- with the same crooked members. And the Court had been the only branch with any real consistent support from We The People.
Brett
Edkins, Managing Director of Policy and Political Affairs for Stand Up
America, issued the following statement in response to reports that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted gifts and travel likely worth millions of dollars from four billionaires.
“Today’s
ProPublica report brings to light a litany of new ethics violations by
Justice Thomas, including accepting and failing to disclose extravagant
gifts and luxury travel paid for by his billionaire benefactors. The
Supreme Court’s legitimacy hangs by a thread. Justice Thomas' pattern of
misconduct is a stark reminder that we cannot trust Supreme Court
justices to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard on their own.
The Supreme Court needs a code of ethics now.
“It’s
time for Congress to behave like a coequal branch of government and
address corruption on the Supreme Court with the urgency it demands,
including by passing the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency
Act. This latest report from ProPublica begs the question: what is it
going to take for our leaders in Congress to do their jobs and finally
hold this Court in check?”
Stand
Up America is a progressive advocacy organization with over two million
community members across the country. Focused on grassroots advocacy to
strengthen our democracy and oppose Trump's corrupt agenda, Stand Up
America has driven over 600,000 phone calls to Congress and mobilized
tens of thousands of protestors across the country.
Chris Hayes noted Clarence's corruption last night.
Donald Trump, former US president, is running for the GOP's presidential nomination while he hopes to avoid a federal conviction in one of many cases currently working their way through the courts. His attorneys feel that Clarence is their inside judge if they're able to kick any of the cases up to the Supreme Court.
Donald's not the only nightmare wanting to be president of the United States currently.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr is willing to destroy his own name and his family's name as he pursues the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
In some good news, he still has the support of Tulsi Gabbard. You know Tulsi, right? She ran for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2020. Remember how many delegates she was awarded in 2020's contest? Two. Maybe Junior can get two as well. Joe Biden won the nominations with 2687 delegates. But Tulsi -- Tulsi Garbage, as Trina has dubbed her -- only got two.
Today, Tulsi says she left the Democratic Party and preaches hates against LGBTQs and embraces Moms For Bigotry and takes that scarred acne face where ever cameras can be found as she attacks Joe Biden. She never points out that she refused to hold Joe accountable for the Iraq War in the only debate she was in with Joe -- Jake Tapper not only gave her a chance, when she flubbed it, he came back around to her and gave her a second chance. She not only defended Joe and excused him for his support of the Iraq War, she later dropped out of the race and endorsed Joe -- not Bernie, she endorsed Joe. That's why I find any of her hateful criticism so puzzling -- she endorsed Joe. In March 2020, she endorsed him. When does she take accountability for that? When does she take accountability for anything?
Another crazy that Junior has in his corner is Naomi Wolf -- and if her med dosage is correct on the day of the primary, she'll vote for him. He's spent recent days announcing he will not call for Medicare For All. He doesn't believe in it. He believes Barack Obama wasted time and leverage trying to address healthcare. This is the man, please remember, who believes the free market will solve climate change.
+ One of RFK Jr.’s super PACs has been paying thousands to a xenophobic outlet called Creative Destruction Media
that blasts out alarums about the threat of “Black and brown invaders”
with a “primitive culture”. Not much of a surprise there. Last month,
RFK Jr stood with the big irrigators in Arizona who are sucking the
Colorado River dry and smeared immigrants for stepping on their arugula
plantations….
+ Which imperial family’s disintegration has been more complete: the
Windsors, Kennedys or Cuomos? According to a story in the NYT this week,
Madeline Cuomo, the sister of former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, worked
with a pro-Cuomo group called We Decide New York, Inc. to smear and intimidate women who had accused Cuomo of sexual harassment.
+ DeSantis auditioning for the Joker in the next Batman reboot?
+ Is it any wonder he’s campaign is in free fall? DeSantis is now polling less than half of the support from people who pick a candidate not named Trump.
+ DeSantis, who was billed as the political Ken doll for the Moms of Liberty demographic, is now polling at 11% nationally among GOP women.
+ In a desperate effort to reverse his slide into political oblivion,
DeSantis used his autocratic powers as Florida governor to remove the
elected state attorney in Orlando, a black reformist prosecutor named
Monique Worrell, saying she’d been weak on criminal prosecutions.
Worrell responded by saying, “I am your duly elected state attorney and
nothing done by a weak dictator can change that.” Meanwhile, DeSantis
has taken no action against the DA of Jacksonville, despite the fact the
city has the highest murder rate in Florida. Of course, he’s white and a Republican.
+ This latest action has means that DeSantis has nullified the
electoral decisions of more than 15.5 percent of the voters in the
state, leaving 3.3 million Floridians without their elected choice of prosecutor.
+ Here’s DeSantis defending his plan for death squads on the southern border:
+ “These people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same.” This
is certainly calls out for a deeper probe into DeSantis’ time in
Fallujah, as well as Guantanamo.
Ron DeSantis is a clear and present danger as his campaign makes more clear with each passing day. At SALON, Amanda Marcotte writes:
Another
week, another lesson in a truth that will not be heeded by the
mainstream media: Republicans are liars, and you should never take what
they say at face value. This time it was over yet another education
scandal in Florida under the leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
It started when the College Board, a non-profit that manages
educational standards for those seeking higher education, announced that
Florida had banned an Advanced Placement (AP) psychology course that
over 30,000 Florida high school students had enrolled in for the fall.
Long story short: The DeSantis-signed bill barring schools from offering "instruction"
in gender or sexual orientation, dubbed the "don't say gay law" by
critics, made it impossible for teachers to address very basic ideas
like "sexuality is a part of the life experience." Rather than offer a
substandard program, the College Board was forced to pull the AP
classes, which many students could use for college credit, from the
schools.
In
response to the bad press, the GOP-controlled Florida government went
into heavy spin mode, releasing a letter claiming the AP Psychology
course can be "taught in its entirety," but only "in a manner that is
age and developmentally appropriate." This was widely— and falsely — reported in the press as a "reversal," with even LGBTQ-oriented sites getting caught up in the hype. Thankfully, the team at Popular Information was on hand to
debunk the lie, pointing out that the "developmentally appropriate"
language is a poison pill that amounts to a de facto ban on the AP
Psychology course.
"A
teacher can exclude the content in AP Psychology related to sexual
orientation and gender identity and put their students at risk of not
receiving college credit," Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria explain. "Or a
teacher can include those topics and risk losing their certification and
their job." Despite reports implying otherwise, therefore, Florida
schools are canceling the classes.
All
this confusion is very much by design. The mixed messages coming from
Republican leaders on what is and isn't allowed in schools serves a
larger purpose: making it so impossible for teachers to do their jobs
that they give up even trying.
In
some cases, teachers leave the profession or move to a less hostile
state to work. In others, it's more a quiet-quitting, as the limitations
force teachers to offer a substandard education to their students, out
of fear that actually challenging kids to learn will cross some legal
line that will land teachers in serious trouble. Either way, children in
red states are losing access to quality education.
He's
carrying out a war on information. Shame on any parent who is okay
with their child's education being sub-standard because Ronald wants to
promote racism and homophobia. In ten to twenty years, when your kid is
trying to get a job, do you really think, "We sent them to Florida
public schools" is going to look good on a resume? It's not. That's
especially true if they try to get employment outside of Florida. You
are allowing him to harm your child's future -- including their
potential income making power. I have no idea why you would try to doom
your own child.
The works of William Shakespeare are now being censored in some Florida schools amid confusion stemming from Gov. Ron DeSantis’
new book-challenge law, HB 1069, which has spawned an uptick in book
bans and increased scrutiny surrounding schools' education materials.
After
the Florida governor approved and promoted the legislation last week,
media specialists said that the English playwright’s works — many of
which are longtime staples of American high school curriculum — would
likely be deemed unfit for classroom use, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Education in Florida has been ravaged by book banning for the last
year under the “don’t say gay” law as well as other laws that allow
parents to object to almost anything in curriculums. In fact, according
to the Parental Rights in Education law, Diaz is inviting any Florida
educator to lose his or her job—or worse—by verbally recommending “Romeo
and Juliet” to a student or including it in a curriculum.
The
confusion and fear sown in Florida’s educational standards are a part of
the wrecking operation by far-right groups such as Moms for Liberty and
their would-be Il Duce, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis. A small
Evangelical Christian and fascist-minded constituency has lit the
bonfire of book banning in Florida’s schools and in those of other
American states.
The
numbers and types of books that have been removed from Florida schools
are truly staggering. In February, in Martin County, Florida, over 80
works, by authors such as Toni Morrison, James Patterson and Jodi
Picoult, were removed from elementary school libraries at the request of
a single parent, who wrote that these works had no “serious literary,
artistic, political or scientific value for students.”
The parent, Julie Marshall, is the head of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty.
“One of the books removed, Picoult’s novel The Storyteller
(2013), is a bestseller that tells the story of the granddaughter of a
Holocaust survivor who meets a former SS officer. “Banning The Storyteller is shocking,” Picoult told the Washington Post, “as it is about the Holocaust and has never been banned before.” This ban recalls the censorship of the graphic novel Maus in Tennessee, an action with distinct overtones of anti-Semitism.
“When one parent in Pinellas County [Florida] complained that Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye
(1970), had a rape scene in it, the principal of the local high school
banned it, and it was subsequently banned in the entire county. In
February over 100 high school students protested the decision.”
Recent banning
also includes a graphic novel based on the diary of Holocaust victim
Anne Frank, which “was removed from the library at Vero Beach High
School in Florida after a complaint from one parent.”
The crusade
against culture is not simply one of exclusion, but of active historical
falsification. Last month Florida’s State Board of Education approved
standards for African American history curriculums that include such
historical revisionism as the claim that slavery gave black people a
“personal benefit” because they “developed skills,” and that a racist
pogrom against blacks in Ocoee, Florida, in 1920 included “acts of
violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”
This
week, Ron DeSantis, now a candidate for the presidential nomination of
the Republican Party, reinforced his fascist credentials by telling the
media that the standards are “probably going to show some of the folks
[i.e., slaves] that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith
into doing things later in life.”
This is little more than a
rephrase of the South Carolina senator and arch-defender of slavery John
C. Calhoun’s notorious 1837 speech before Congress, arguing that
African American slaves “had attained a condition so civilized and so
improved, not only physically but morally and intellectually … in the
course of a few generations it has grown up under the fostering care of
our institutions, as reviled as they have been, to its present
comparative civilized condition.”
A Civil War was fought to
destroy the “fostering care” of those institutions, and it is a marker
of the decline of political culture under capitalism that DeSantis can
openly echo the reactionary sentiments of the slaveowners.
The
book banning, restrictions on Shakespeare and the teaching that slavery
was a positive good serve to wipe away all that is progressive and
enlightened in world culture and American history and to teach
subservience, conformity and worship of authority to a generation of
young people now coming into struggle against war, climate change and
the very fascism with which the Republicans, with the acquiescence of
the Democrats, are poisoning the cultural air.
Florida parents are failing their children right now. Advancing Ronald to the White House would fail all of America's children. Valerie Strauss (WASHINGTON POST) reports:
We know what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and his allies in the state legislature don’t want students
to learn in public school classrooms — but here’s what the state just
approved for use in classrooms: material created by a nonprofit advocacy
organization called PragerU, which says it offers “a free alternative
to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.”
The
materials include videos, magazines and books that in some cases
disparage the Black Lives Matter movement, deny that police unfairly
target Blacks, question the impact of human use of fossil fuels on the
environment, and call out “climate alarmism.” There are videos on “How
to Embrace Your Femininity” and “How to Embrace Your Masculinity,” one
on “How to Be a Rational Patriot” that says the United States was
founded on “Judeo-Christian values,” and one under the categories of
“Life Lessons and “Judeo-Christian values” called “How to Learn to
Forgive.” Topics covered under the PragerU Kids banner are divided into
categories for grades K-2, 3-5 and 6+ and are wide-ranging, including
financial literacy, history, civics, character development and life
lessons.
The
move by the Florida Department of Education is the latest in the
DeSantis administration’s efforts to dictate what teachers can say about
specific topics. Laws now forbid teachers from discussing sexual
orientation and gender identity and restrict what they can say about
race and racism in the United States. The department banned an Advanced
Placement (AP) class on African American studies and threw the use of an
AP class on psychology into question because of discussions of race and
gender, respectively. It has also censored textbooks and instructional
materials, removing material it says is leftist indoctrination.
PragerU
was founded in 2009 by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager and
screenwriter/producer Allen Estrin and is promoted as being in the
“mind-changing business.” It offers 2,600 videos on its YouTube channel
and other materials on its website that it says are aimed at “promoting
pro-American values,” some of which have been challenged by historians
for accuracy.
Despite
strong backlash from Democrats and fellow Republicans, Florida Gov. Ron
DeSantis is tripling down on his state’s newly approved social studies
curriculum guidelines that erroneously teach students that enslaved
people “developed skills” that they could use for “personal benefit.”
Since
news of the state’s new standards gained attention in mid-July,
DeSantis has faced criticism — including from four of the five Black
congressional Republicans, almost all of whom support former president
Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
“What slavery was really about was separating families,
about mutilating humans and even raping their wives,” said Republican
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is also running for president. “It
was just devastating. So I would hope that every person in our country —
and certainly running for president — would appreciate that.”
But
DeSantis is continuing to defend the standards. In a recent NBC
interview this week, the governor stated that enslaved people “developed
skills in spite of slavery, not because of slavery,” adding that “it
was them showing resourcefulness and then using those skills once
slavery ended.”
In
the interview, DeSantis also defended the steps his administration has
taken in the past year to overhaul various aspects of that state’s
education system. “We’ve been involved in education, not
indoctrination,” he said. “Those standards were not political at all.”
The controversy is the latest in a string of education-related fights for DeSantis, including the state’s rejection of the AP African American History course, the dismantling of the state’s tenure system, and the conservative takeover of the small New College of Florida. With each move, DeSantis has attempted to model what he would do nationally as president.
Videos
that compare climate activists to Nazis, portray solar and wind energy
as environmentally ruinous and claim that current global heating is part
of natural long-term cycles will be made available to young
schoolchildren in Florida, after the state approved their use in its
public school curriculum.
Slickly-made
animations by the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group
that produces materials on science, history, gender and other topics
widely criticized as distorting the truth, will be allowed to be shown
to children in kindergarten to fifth grade after being adopted by
Florida’s department of education.
Teachers who use the materials “will not be reprimanded, cannot be pushed back on about it, we are approved on the curriculum”, said Jill
Simonian, director of outreach at PragerU Kids, the youth arm of the
organization. “More states are following. Florida – I’m applauding. This
is step in the right direction.”
But
experts who have studied the videos and other PragerU output have
warned that many of Florida’s 3 million public schoolchildren risk being
exposed to a form of rightwing indoctrination that conforms to the
worldview of the organization’s funders but bares little resemblance to
reality.
A group
of LGBTQ veterans who were discharged because of their sexual
orientation sued the Defense Department in federal court Tuesday,
arguing it violated their constitutional rights when it failed to update
them to honorable discharges after it repealed the “don’t ask don’t
tell” policy more than a decade ago.
“The
U.S. Armed Forces allows that discrimination to live on in the
discharge papers carried by LGBTQ+ veterans, denying them privacy,
benefits, and pride in their service,” reads the class action lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of five veterans.
Veterans
who were discharged under “don’t ask don’t tell” for their actual or
perceived sexual orientation often received discharge paperwork that
identifies their sexuality as the reason for their discharge, according
to Tuesday’s lawsuit. The discharge papers, known as DD214s, also burden
veterans “with discharge rankings below honorable” and bar them from
reenlisting.
“Discharge
paperwork bearing these markers carries the legacy of the anti-LGBTQ+
policies that the military has now disavowed,” the lawsuit says.
While
the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy has been inactive for
years, the government “has taken no steps to correct this discrimination
systematically,” the suit argues.
