Misogyny, Dark Money, and Corporation as Uber People

Update III: Koch brothers revealed as John Birchers, racist and anti-Semitic

Update II: Opus Dei comes to Washington D.C.

Update: Why Harris and Hobby Lobby Spell Disaster for Working Women (Jafee, In These Times)
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Throughout U.S. history, nothing has spooked the political body as much as alarms sounded about the presence of insidious forces embedded in our community, bursting with bad intentions, amoral character and rapacious appetites.

Examples from the 20th-21st centuries are clear: African-Americans, anarchists, uppity women who want to vote, peace activists, sewer socialists, communists, artists, civil rights workers, immigrants and terrorists have all at times fit the bill for the purposes of narrow ideological interests intent on consolidating their political-financial power at the expense of the liberty of the disfavored citizenry.

In the wake of the Citizens United, McCutcheon and the misogynistic Hobby Lobby decisions [among others] by the five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, the Roberts Court has created a class of citizens (non-human entities) with more rights than the typical American, and imbued with immunity from the criminal justice system:  The corporation, formerly chartered by the individual states to deliver a specific economic purpose for a specified benefit of the community, now aligned with closely held ideological interests such as the Koch brothers who endeavor to reengineer American society.

These cases are not decided out of naiveté or an academic misreading of the law by the justices.

This is a extra-judicial project constructed by raw and hostile socio-economic powers that resemble nothing so much as 20th century fascism with their concomitant political taunts against minorities and creation of a prison state.

Tortured, contrived jurisprudence by the allied, ultra-activist Roberts Court is simply a manner to engineer the transformation of power of narrow ideological and financial interests to the specific detriment of non-favored citizenry, an enterprise that could never be accomplished through the legislative process.

The judicial reasoning is fallacious and obvious: "In his dissent, Justice Stevens (in Citizens United) acknowledged that 'we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment.' That traces back to the time when the 1907 Tillman act banned corporate contributions, the precedent overturned by the Court. In the early 20th century, legal theorists and courts came to adopt and implement the Court's 1886 (Santa Clara) principle that these "collectivist legal entities" have the same rights as persons of flesh and blood, an attack on classical liberalism that was sharply condemned by the vanishing breed of conservatives as 'a menace to the liberty of the individual, and to the stability of the American States as popular governments' (Christopher Tiedeman)," notes Noam Chomsky in reaction to the Citizens United decision.

The maintenance of this Republican Party-economic royalists' long-term project's aims and objectives is ongoing.

Today, even as the servants of economic royalists such as Scott Walker and virtually the entire Republican Party attack the working class for organizing and selling their work product, the rightwing is calling for the Court to sanction the use of dark money into our formal electoral system in an attempt to eliminate any popular accountability, and insulate huge moneyed interests from the criminal justice system under the rubric of the new judicial doctrine of civil rights for invisible, non-human forces that were never recognized by the United States Constitution but have been created by a handful of Supreme Court justices for the benefit of a very few uber people.

Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth, Inc. v Francis Schmitz, et al (Case No.  14-C-139) now before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit may become the judicial vehicle through which the Court constructs a new doctrine in which any individual associated with a special class of interests becomes immune to campaign finance law and law enforcement.

We will soon see whether individual appellate justices in the Seventh Circuit define their legacy by acclaiming the lawless acquisition of political power by societal forces such as the Koch brothers, Christopher Cline and various other anti-social, criminal minds in American society.

One would think the trajectory of the drive to power for royalists would be addressed constantly by the Democratic Party, and it should be their number one appeal to the public.

J.B. Green argues this morning it's imperative:

Don't buy any of the crap about the narrowness or 'nuances' of the Hobby Lobby ruling. It established a precedent that begs to be broadened, and this is a High Court majority that is willing to go there. It's only a matter of time.

No one should be shocked either, that the court's right-wing (the term 'conservative' would be an insult to real conservative jurists in this context) majority is oblivious/hostile to worker rights. They have demonstrated that proclivity at every opportunity. ...

The Supreme Court of the United States has been dominated by politicized hacks since Bush v. Gore, although too many Dems have trod gingerly around the strong language needed to make it a front and center issue. The Hobby Lobby decision sends a clear warning that those days should be over. And if we needed an additional reminder that employer-linked insurance is a booby-trapped mess, and we really need to push harder for a single-payer system, here it is.

Hobby Lobby is a booby-trapped mess, but more broadly the case represents the ongoing project of a corrupt Supreme Court and its allies.

The presence of insidious forces embedded in our community, bursting with bad intentions, amoral character and rapacious appetites is a fact that cannot be ignored if our country is to continue to bear any resemblance to a classical liberal, constitutional democracy in the future.

Scott Walker Withdrew Election Board Appt after Unanimous John Doe Vote

Scott Walker still hides from Wisconsin and
offers no comment on the secret router and
email system used by Walker and his aides

No serious observer sees Scott Walker as having a shot in hell of becoming the next president, as Walker incredibly still refuses to commit to a four-year term, should he be reelected as Wisconsin governor.

D.C. pundits don't count as serious for obvious reasons.

Walker has myriad shortcomings, arguably the most compelling are the corruption and criminality from the law enforcement investigations empowered by Wisconsin's John Doe statute. (The text of the Wisconsin statute is newly and heavily annotated online).

Now, news has broken that Walker "withdrew his own 2011 appointment of then-Government Accountability Board Chair David Deininger following a unanimous vote by the board to proceed with an investigation of the allegations"  concerning possible "illegal coordination between Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and a host of conservative organizations," One Wisconsin Now reports.

Here's One Wisconsin Now's press release in its entirety:

MADISON, WI -- Just released filings related to the ongoing John Doe investigation into allegations of illegal coordination between Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and a host of conservative organizations show Gov. Walker withdrew his own 2011 appointment of then-Government Accountability Board Chair David Deininger following a unanimous vote by the board to proceed with an investigation of the allegations.

"This is exhibit A that Gov. Walker's ouster of Chair Deininger was about one thing: The board's willingness to investigate alleged illegal activity leading to Gov. Walker's recall election win," said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now. "There are no depths to which the Governor will not sink to derail the investigation of his operation."

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Former judges on the state Government Accountability Board voted unanimously last year to authorize the investigation of fundraising and spending by Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and his allies during the recent recall elections, according to a Tuesday court filing." The paper reports the vote of the non-partisan board comprised of retired judges took place in June 2013.

But in early November 2013, Gov. Walker withdrew Deininger's nomination to the board, giving no reason other than concerns that the Senate would not confirm him. It was unclear why the Republican-controlled Senate would refuse to confirm Deininger, a former Republican legislator who was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Republican Governor Tommy Thompson. At the time, Republican Majority Leader Sen. Scott Fitzgerald claimed of the decision "No, there's no connection," to decisions under Deininger's leadership during the recall elections.

"The veil is down and the truth is apparent," said Ross. "The Government Accountability Board unanimously voted to authorize the investigation of Gov. Walker's political activities and Gov. Walker used his power to remove its chair."

Gov. Walker made news when, after pledging he was cooperating in the investigation, he had his campaign file a brief seeking to have a case in the investigation moved to the conservative majority-led Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

One Wisconsin Now filed a formal letter Monday with the seven justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, urging four of the court's justices to recuse themselves from a legal request by the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker related to the ongoing John Doe investigation surrounding allegations of illegal coordination between Republican-aligned groups during the recall of Walker. Justice Bradley, who is considered to be one of the liberal justices on the court, previously recused herself from John Doe proceedings, as her son practices law with Dean Strang, one of the attorneys involved in the case.

In its letter, available here, One Wisconsin Now writes that two of the groups reported by media to be involved in the investigation, Club for Growth (CfG) and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), financed over $8 million in spending to elect the four justices, who constitute a conservative majority on the court.