The US Supreme Court

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Svartalf
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Svartalf » Sun Dec 12, 2021 6:17 pm

if it's getting to that point, it's time to pray for Yellowstone to explode
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Tue Dec 14, 2021 1:24 pm

AAA52088-1A55-4AF4-AD98-09058A833752.jpeg
The bigger trend in the current court decisions is always favoring the state or city. Whether abortions or mask mandates or even guns. We will see, in Heller they said 2nd amendment trumps DC city rule.
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Wed Jan 12, 2022 5:15 pm

Sweet!

'The Supreme Court takes up a case, brought by Ted Cruz, that could legalize bribery'
The details of Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate, a case that the Supreme Court will hear next Wednesday, read more like a paranoid fantasy dreamed up by leftists than like an actual lawsuit.

The case concerns federal campaign finance laws, and, specifically, candidates’ ability to loan money to their campaigns. Candidates can do so — but in 2001, Congress enacted a provision that helps prevent such loans from becoming a vehicle to bribe candidates who go on to be elected officials. Under this provision, a campaign that receives such a loan may not repay more than $250,000 worth of the loan using funds raised after the election.

When a campaign receives a pre-election donation, that donation is typically subject to strict rules preventing it from being spent to enrich the candidate. After the election has occurred, however, donors who give money to help pay off a loan from the candidate effectively funnel that money straight to the candidate — who by that point could be a powerful elected official.

A lawmaker with sufficiently clever accountants, moreover, could effectively structure such a loan to allow lobbyists and other donors to help the lawmaker directly profit from it. According to the Los Angeles Times, for example, in 1998, Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) made a $150,000 loan to her campaign at 18 percent interest (though she later reduced that interest rate to 10 percent). As of 2009, Napolitano reportedly raised $221,780 to repay that loan — $158,000 of which was classified as “interest.”

So in 11 years, the loan reportedly earned Napolitano nearly $72,000 in profits.

And that brings us back to the Ted Cruz for Senate lawsuit. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) wants the Supreme Court to strike down the limit on loan repayments to federal candidates. That decision could potentially enable any lawmaker to make a high-dollar, high-interest loan to their campaign, and then use that loan as a vehicle to funnel donations directly into their pocket. (Pre-2001 FEC rulings permitted candidates to make loans to their campaign at “a ‘commercially reasonable rate’ of interest,” but that apparently did not stop Napolitano from making a loan at a double-digit interest rate.)

And even if lawmakers do not enrich themselves by making high-interest loans to their campaign, the fact remains that every dollar a campaign donor gives to help a campaign pay back a loan from the candidate goes straight into that candidate’s pocket. As the Justice Department argues in its brief defending against Cruz’s lawsuit, “a contribution that adds to a candidate’s personal assets (and that can accordingly be used for personal purposes) poses a far greater threat of corruption than a payment that merely adds to a campaign’s treasury (and that can accordingly be used only for campaign purposes).”

Cruz claims that permitting such contributions is necessary to protect “the rights of candidates and their campaign committees to make constitutionally protected decisions about when and how much to speak during an election.”

While a decision in Cruz’s favor could effectively make it legal for wealthy donors to bribe lawmakers, Cruz has a very good chance of prevailing in a Supreme Court where Republicans control six of the Court’s nine seats.
Yeah, money is speech! How dare the government infringe on that‽

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Joe » Wed Jan 12, 2022 5:44 pm

Well, you know, Texas is a big state and Sloppy Ted needs more $peech than ordinary politicians. :tiphat:
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by JimC » Wed Jan 12, 2022 7:51 pm

Money, power, entitlement, corruption...

Just another day in the US democracy... :tea:
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Wed Jan 12, 2022 9:37 pm

Dollars are people too. Just like corporations.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Tero » Thu Jan 13, 2022 8:03 pm

States get to decide state level mandates. Those hospitals getting federal funds are stuck:
The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the Biden administration from enforcing its sweeping vaccine-or-test requirements for large private companies.
But the conservative-majority court allowed similar requirements to stand for medical facilities that take Medicare or Medicaid payments.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:30 pm

On the ruling described in Tero's post (yeah, another article from Salon):

'The radical right's takeover of the Supreme Court is complete'
The majority opinion rested on the idea that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) exceeded its authority because COVID is not specific to the workplace. They say that because people can also get it elsewhere an agency that is tasked with ensuring workplace safety has no business making this rule. I would just point out that this reasoning is going to come as quite a surprise to the people who have been working from home for the past year and a half, along with school employees, frontline workers and basically anyone who works for a living.

It's absurd. Nothing has been more disrupted by the pandemic than work — you know, that place where people gather inside buildings to spend at least 8 hours with other people breathing all over the place? Of course COVID is being spread at work, probably more than anywhere else. This rationale makes no sense at all. People can get poisoned by asbestos at places other than the workplace but employers are still required to ensure that they can't get it at work. The dissent by the three sane justices made clear how ludicrous the majority's decision was:
"Underlying everything else in this dispute is a single, simple question: Who decides how much protection, and of what kind, American workers need from Covid-19? An agency with expertise in workplace health and safety, acting as Congress and the president authorized? Or a court, lacking any knowledge of how to safeguard workplaces, and insulated from responsibility for any damage it causes?"
What is remains unstated but has been really illuminated in all this is the larger agenda of this Supreme Court. As law professor Kim Wehle explained in this piece for The Atlantic, this ruling is the first salvo in the conservative court's crusade to dismantle the administrative state:
"If Congress is hindered in its ability to employ agencies to fill in the details of its broad mandates, life in the United States could change dramatically. Agencies make rules and regulations affecting stock markets, consumer-product safety, the use and trafficking of firearms, environmental protection, workplace discrimination, agriculture, aviation, radio and television communications, financial institutions, federal elections, natural gas and electricity, the construction and maintenance of highways, imports and exports, human and veterinary drugs, and even the licensing and inspection of nuclear-power plants."
That is the goal. It's grotesque that they would exploit a deadly disease that's killing thousands of people every day to advance it, but they have a mission and nothing will stand in their way. In fact, there's a whole school of thought devoted to the idea that not only is it unconstitutional for the federal agencies to enact regulations, but Congress also has no authority to delegate that task to them in the first place. In this view, public health and safety is solely a state function.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Brian Peacock » Sat Jan 15, 2022 9:11 am

People can also be electrocuted in their homes so regulations about the safety of electrical appliances in the workplace are stupid government overreach.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:34 am

The right wing used to be remarkably concerned about 'activist judges.' Don't hear much about that these days.

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Sean Hayden » Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:47 am

Regulations are expensive opportunity killers...

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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by JimC » Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:33 am

Regulations are evil because they are the method by which governments try to control the people! :lay:

And because they might reduce the profit of corporations... :tea:
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Svartalf » Sun Jan 16, 2022 7:17 am

L'Emmerdeur wrote:
Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:34 am
The right wing used to be remarkably concerned about 'activist judges.' Don't hear much about that these days.
Well, ultraconservative faith judges don't bother them, do they?
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Brian Peacock » Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:49 pm

Amen.
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There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The US Supreme Court

Post by Joe » Tue Jan 18, 2022 7:45 pm

If true, what a dick. :nono:
Supreme Court’s Gorsuch refused to wear mask despite request over Sotomayor’s Covid concerns, report says

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has refused to wear a mask during in-person proceedings, despite a request from Chief Justice John Roberts for all members of the high court to accommodate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s concern about Covid-19, according to a new report Tuesday.

Gorsuch’s continued defiance has led Sotomayor — who has diabetes and is therefore at a higher risk of serious illness from Covid — to attend oral arguments remotely, according to veteran NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg, citing court sources.

When the justices returned to the courtroom last fall to hear arguments in person, Sotomayor was the only one to wear a mask. With the surge of the highly transmissible omicron variant in the winter, however, Sotomayor felt unsafe sitting next to unmasked people, according to NPR.

Roberts “in some form” then asked the other justices to wear masks, Totenberg reported. Gorsuch, one of three justices nominated by former President Donald Trump, was the only one to refuse.

The court did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on NPR’s report. All nine justices have been vaccinated and received boosters for Covid.

Gorsuch sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. He has also refused to wear a mask during the justices’ weekly conferences, leading the 67-year-old Sotomayor to attend by telephone, NPR reported.

Last week, Gorsuch was the only justice in the courtroom not to wear a mask during oral arguments, while Sotomayor and Justice Stephen Breyer both appeared remotely.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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"If you vote for idiots, idiots will run the country." - Dr. Kori Schake

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