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updated at the same time as the rest of the blog is. That means that changes in
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The picture we’ve shown on the past few updates was taken
a few summers ago at a lake in the middle of Cape Cod, MA, a few miles north of
Hyannis. Watch for a new picture to identify in a few days. And now read on.
I recommend that
all of you go online to read E.J. Dionne Jr.’s column entitled “The Citizens
United Castastrophe” published earlier this week in the Washington Post and carried in my local area in the Palm Beach Post. For those of you unable to access it, I
include a copy below, as it appeared online.
I urge all of you to pass on the message in its last paragraph to your
Senators and Representatives.
While Dionne
apparently has said it all, I might add that the Citizens United decision is
possibly the greatest threat to democracy in America since George the Third. (And we have five Supreme Court Justices who
apparently do not recognize that.
Justice Scalia has even suggested that those who object to ads made
possible by the Citizens United decision can always change their TV channel or
shut their sets off. I get the feeling
that the majority on the Court is drifting in the direction of declaring that
screaming “fire” when there is none in a crowded theatre is a right protected
by the First Amendment.)
Jack Lippman
The Citizens United Catastrophe
By E.J.
Dionne Jr., Published: February 5
(Washington Post)
We have seen the world created by the Supreme Court’s
Citizens United decision, and it doesn’t work. Oh, yes, it works nicely
for the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, especially if they
want to shroud their efforts to influence politics behind shell corporations.
It just doesn’t happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a
plutocracy.
Two years ago, Citizens United
tore down a century’s worth of law aimed at reducing the amount of corruption
in our electoral system. It will go down as one of the most naive decisions
ever rendered by the court.
The strongest case against judicial
activism — against “legislating from the bench,” as former President George W.
Bush liked to say — is that judges are not accountable for the new systems they
put in place, whether by accident or design.
The Citizens United justices
were not required to think through the practical consequences of sweeping aside
decades of work by legislators, going back to the passage of the landmark
Tillman Act in 1907, who sought to prevent untoward influence-peddling and
indirect bribery.
If ever a court majority legislated
from the bench (with Bush’s own appointees leading the way), it was the bunch
that voted for Citizens United. Did a single justice in the majority
even imagine a world of super PACs and phony corporations set up for the sole
purpose of disguising a donor’s identity? Did they think that a presidential
candidacy might be kept alive largely through the generosity of a Las
Vegas gambling magnate with important financial interests in China? Did
they consider that the democratizing gains made in the last presidential
campaign through the rise of small
online contributors might be wiped out by the brute force of millionaires
and billionaires determined to have their way?
“The appearance of influence or access,
furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.”
Those were Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words in his majority opinion. How did he
know that? Did he consult the electorate? Did he think this would be true just
because he said it?
Justice John Paul Stevens’ observation
in his dissent reads far better than Kennedy’s in light of subsequent events.
“A democracy cannot function effectively,” he wrote, “when its constituent
members believe laws are being bought and sold.”
But ascribing an outrageous decision to
naiveté is actually the most sympathetic way of looking at what the court did in
Citizens United. A more troubling interpretation is that a conservative
majority knew exactly what it was doing: that it set out to remake our
political system by fiat in order to strengthen the hand of corporations and
the wealthy. Seen this way, Citizens United was an attempt by five
justices to push future electoral outcomes in a direction that would entrench
their approach to governance.
In fact, this decision should be seen
as part of a larger initiative by moneyed conservatives to rig the electoral
system against their opponents. How else to explain conservative legislation
in state after state to obstruct access to the ballot by lower-income
voters — particularly members of minority groups — through voter identification
laws, shortened voting periods and restrictions on voter registration
campaigns?
Conservatives are strengthening the
hand of the rich at one end of the system and weakening the voting power of the
poor at the other. As veteran journalist Elizabeth
Drew noted in an important New York Review of Books article, “little
attention is being paid to the fact that our system of electing a president is
under siege.”
Those who doubt that Citizens United
(combined with a comatose Federal Election Commission) has created a new
political world with broader openings for corruption should consult reports
last week by Nicholas
Confessore and Michael Luo in the New York Times and by T.W.
Farnam in The Washington Post. Both accounts show how American politics has
become a bazaar for the very wealthy and for increasingly aggressive
corporations. We might consider having candidates wear corporate logos. This
would be more honest than pretending that tens of millions in cash will have no
impact on how we will be governed.
In the short run, Congress should do
all it can within the limits of Citizens United to contain the damage it
is causing. In the long run, we have to hope that a future Supreme Court will
overturn this monstrosity, remembering that the first words of our Constitution
are “We the People,” not “We the Rich.”
An Epidemic Which
Can Kill You
If
something happens to me twice within a two week period, I have to assume it is
happening to others as well and is clearly not just an infrequent
occurrence. What is more important is
that what happened is potentially dangerous.
A
few weeks ago, waiting to be seated at a nearby restaurant, the hostess
announced that someone had left their engine running in a red Lexus 350. Since no one responded to her message, I
strolled over to the car, found the door to be unlocked (as I expected since
most newer cars with an engine left running usually cannot be locked from the
outside), opened it, leaned in and pressed the button shutting off the
engine.
Most
recently, in the clubhouse of the community where I live, someone made the same
kind of announcement to those there.
Again, no one stepped forward to claim ownership of the blue Infiniti
whose engine was running, and again, after waiting a few minutes, I went out to
the unlocked car, pushed the button and shut off the engine. How often is this happening, I wonder?
Ignoring
the fact that leaving an empty unlocked car with an engine running makes things
easy for car thieves, it is extremely dangerous as well because the engine is
spewing out exhaust which includes odorless carbon monoxide. Out in a parking lot, this isn’t going to do
much harm, but in a closed garage, it can be fatal. The same drivers who didn’t hear the
incessant beeping of an alert signal reminding them that their car’s engine was
still running in a parking lot might miss it in their own garage as well,
particularly if they were in a great hurry to get out of their car due to a
bout of urinary urgency accompanied by partial or temporary deafness, neither
of which can be as fatal as odorless carbon monoxide poisoning is. How often do you read about such deaths in
the papers?
I
recommend that all drivers, particularly those with cars with push button
ignitions rather than keys, (1) always make certain they turn off their engine
when leaving their vehicles, (2) familiarize themselves with the beeping alert
signal their vehicle provides if they fail to do so, (3) have their hearing
checked, (4) wear their hearing aids, if they have one, when in their cars, and
most of all, (5) install a carbon monoxide alarm in their home, available at stores
such as Home Depot or Lowe’s for about $25, in the room adjacent to the garage.
JL
A Judge’s Dilemma
Sid Bolotin
The judge entered the
holding-cage area in the basement of the courthouse. The smell of human
sourness made him gasp. His neatly arranged, clean robes made his appearance
almost ludicrous in contrast with the unwashed disheveled prisoners. Ordinarily
he never came down here to view the accused before they appeared in his
courtroom, but the horrendous nature of this crime compelled him to come to see
these five perpetrators. They were easy to spot as they huddled slightly apart
from the other prisoners… as if they were pariahs among their own kind. His
revulsion tasted like bile as he began an internal dialogue with himself.
“How
can I be expected to apply the law impartially to these animals?”
“They
should be shot or lynched…somehow removed from society for the heinous misery they’ve
caused.”
“They
deserve execution, so why bother with the playact of a trial that wastes the
state’s money to create a media circus?”
After
staring a few moments, he turned and plodded up the stairs to his chambers. He
plopped onto his couch, wearily dropped his head back, and watched through
half-closed eyes as his clerk, Donna, puttered with the papers on his desk.
“Well,
Spencer,” she spoke from years-long familiarity, “you’ve got a tough one,
haven’t you? Can you handle it?”
“I
really don’t know, Donna,” he sighed. “I just saw them in the tank downstairs.
They were cozily huddled together and chitchatting as if they were waiting to
attend a concert. They were so blasé that I felt like vomiting. Their crime
deserves capital punishment. Damn the liberals for pleading their cause based
on their abused childhoods. Why don’t the God-damn liberals ever champion the
victim?”
“Wow,
Spencer, what a turn-a round. I never expected you to suggest capital
punishment. You’ve always sided with promoters of rehabilitation. You’ve always
declared yourself as pro-life. You’re always saying that if we execute, we
foster violence with violence. Do you think you should recluse yourself?”
“I’m
actually toying with the idea,” Donna. “I shudder when I think of fielding the bullshit
from the defense lawyers. And, I’m nauseous when I consider that I will have to
also look into the faces of the victim’s family. How can I see their misery and
impartially administer points of law? We know those bastards are guilty. The
poor girl’s boyfriend identified them without question. After all, they had
slashed his throat and dumped him, thinking he would die. Why not just let him
avenge his girlfriend by hanging those roaches one at a time?”
“Spencer,
you’re tired and disillusioned. You’re talking a little ragtime. Are you
positive you can handle this? I’ve never seen you this distraught. You can’t
allow yourself this kind of thinking. You represent what’s so great about our
legal system. In spite of your personal feelings I know that you’ll preside
with your usual impartial management of the trial.”
“I
hope your right, Donna. These feelings go so deep this time that I think I
could execute them myself. She was only 18, Donna, a lovely, smart young woman
ready to contribute goodness to the world. Why did she have to die like that …
being raped, then shot by those animals?
If their lawyers manipulate the facts to create doubt, the jury could
get hung up, and they could go free. They really deserve to die you know… even
the juvenile.
“Spencer,
please don’t talk like that. You’re due to start in 15-minutes. Why not
meditate and calm yourself. I’ll see to it that you are not disturbed.”
Judge
Spencer closed his eyes as Donna left the room. He breathed quietly, following
his breath as it entered and left his nostrils. He counted his exhalations
while sitting erect on the couch. He thought of his Zen teachings that called
for right action as his mind scurried to-and-fro like a mouse seeking cheese in
a maze. He thought of many past cases he had tried that had resulted in the
perpetrators escaping justice because of some slick lawyering, and how impotent
he had felt. How could he resolve this dilemma of impartial trial versus
miscarriage versus justice? As he continued to quietly watch his breath, his
mind became still, like the ripples smoothing out after a rock has dropped into
a lake. He became conscious of a firm resolve shaping deep within his being, as
he sensed his right action crystallizing.
“Judge
Spencer, Judge Spencer, you’re on in five minutes.” broke his reverie as Donna
called to him through the half-opened door. He rose from the couch, glanced at
the door thoughtfully for a moment, and then stepped purposefully to his desk.
He
took his pistol from a drawer, lifted his robe, tucked the weapon into the
waistband of his pants, and strode resolutely toward the courtroom door.
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