McConnell's Place in Hell

Dear Group, In school it used to be taught (and perhaps still is) that the U.S. Supreme Court's wise judges with their king-like, life-long appointments served the purpose of interpreting the Constitution, assuring the "rule of law", and guaranteeing that our majority-rule democracy did not run roughshod over the human and Constitutional rights of the minority. It all sounded very august and comforting. I recall only vague awareness of dissent over how the Supreme Court functioned. I saw, but did not really understand, the "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper stickers. In high school history there may have been a passing mention of FDR's attempt to "pack" the court with sympathetic judges. I was blissfully naive. With the perspective of age, experience, travel, and thought I now understand the Supreme Court merely as a sort of ballast to wildest impulses of the Congress, the President, and the people. The Republican/Libertarians have understood this for decades and have worked systematically to fill the Court with judges sympathetic to the concerns of the wealthy. You might ask "What about abortion? What about the 'right' to keep and bear arms? Aren't those those the rallying cry of the Republicans?" Well, in a word, no. Certainly many Republican voters are passionately devoted to these issues, as carefully framed by the Republican thought machine and spoon fed by Fox News, Sinclair News, Rush and company. Indeed, one can hardly be a Republican without paying homage to gun rights and banning abortion...but they are just rallying cries, not the main point. Does anyone think most of the mega-wealthy members of the Koch donor group are passionately devoted to gun rights and banning abortion? Hardly. A primary, perhaps the primary, goal of the Koch donor group is to change the composition of the Supreme Court to represent the interests of business and the mega-wealthy over the interests of lesser folk, workers, unions, and, of course, Democrats. Soon you will hear of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Janus v. AFSCME. It is likely to be another 5-4 decision, couched in supposed defense of the First Amendment Right of "free speech." You might recall the deceptively named "Citizens United" decision (Citizens United-Part I) was also based on a supposed "free speech" right. In Citizens United "free speech" was the personal right of corporations to political speech. On the one hand corporations are supposed to have the "free speech" right as persons to spend unlimited money on political advertising. On the other hand, "free speech" is applied as a cudgel against mandatory union dues in Janus v. AFSCME. Read the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity logic around Janus' "free speech" here. Mr. Janus contends that, based on "free speech" he need not pay union dues. Never mind the union bargains for all employees and Janus would benefit from the results of that bargaining. In fact, there is even a unanimous Supreme Court case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, from 1977, that will be overturned when the current court finds in favor of Janus. When Janus v. AFSCME was argued back in February, Grover Norquist (famous for his quip about shrinking government to a size where it could "drown in a bathtub") commented tellingly on his partisan hope for the Supreme Court to declare Janus the winner: “Try funding the modern Democratic Party without union dues. Good luck.” Why does Mitch McConnell deserve a special place in hell? I offer this quote about Janus v. AFSCME from an article I encourage you to read here entitled "Little Scalia": It was for moments like these that Senator Mitch McConnell, in 2016, had engineered the unprecedented nullification of President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, when he blocked a Senate vote on Merrick Garland. To partisan Democrats, McConnell’s galling land grab wound up being a fitting antecedent to Donald Trump’s election: first a stolen Court seat, then an illegitimate president. For partisan Republicans, though, a solid right-wing vote on the Supreme Court made the chaos and lunacy of the Trump presidency tolerable. “But Gorsuch” has become the “Keep Calm and Carry On” of Trump-era conservatism. Never forget that Mitch McConnell stole a seat on the Supreme Court from a moderate nominee, Merrick Garland, in order to push a 5-4 doctrinaire majority on the Supreme Court that shifts the judicial ballast toward the mega-wealthy, a shift that could far outlast the horror of the Trump Presidency by decades. This is not just "playing politics," this is class warfare on a grand scale. The Koch funded Republican chattering class is using specious arguments around the First Amendment to tip the judicial scales back to the 1920s, possibly to the Gilded Age of the late 18th Century. Those focused just on guns and abortion are missing the point. Keep to the high ground, Jerry