Today's Must-Read: The "Conservative" Court

Digby has a post on one part of the Kavanaugh hearings that I think everyone should know about. This graphic says it all:

This is from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The post includes a transcript of his opening statement. Key quote:

There is a feature to these eighty cases. They almost all implicate interests important to the big funders and influencers of the Republican Party. When the Republican Justices go off on these partisan excursions, there’s a big Republican corporate or partisan interest involved 92 percent of the time.

A tiny handful of these cases don’t implicate an interest of the big Republican influencers — so flukishly few we can set them aside. That leaves 73 cases that all implicate a major Republican Party interest. Seventy-three is a lot of cases at the Supreme Court.

Is there a pattern to those 73 cases? Oh, yes there is.

Every time a big Republican corporate or partisan interest is involved, the big Republican interest wins. Every. Time.

Let me repeat: In seventy-three partisan decisions where there’s a big Republican interest at stake, the big Republican interest wins. Every. Damned. Time.

And Kavanaugh will just make it worse -- a lock on the Supreme Court for the oligarchy.

Today's Must Read: The Perils of Privatization

I started thinking about privatization of public facilities after reading this article at Crooks and Liars:

A controversial bill signed into law this afternoon by Gov. Chris Christie would allow for fast-tracking the privatization of many public water systems in New Jersey.

The Water Infrastructure Protection Act removes the public vote requirement to sell water systems throughout the state under emergency conditions that many systems currently meet.

Hmm -- "removes the public vote requirement." How very democratic of them -- will of the people, and all that.

Then I ran across this one at Baloon Juice, which focuses on my home town:

Looting the public treasury for private benefit — it’s bipartisan! At In These Times, Rick Perlstein (The Invisible Bridge, Nixonland, Before the Storm) introduces us to “Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago, the privatized metropolis of the future“:

… For over a decade now, Chicago has been the epicenter of the fashionable trend of “privatization”—the transfer of the ownership or operation of resources that belong to all of us, like schools, roads and government services, to companies that use them to turn a profit. Chicago’s privatization mania began during Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration, which ran from 1989 to 2011. Under his successor, Rahm Emanuel, the trend has continued apace. For Rahm’s investment banker buddies, the trend has been a boon. For citizens? Not so much.

He goes on about the supposed benefits:

That is the promise of privatization in a nutshell: that the profit motive can serve not just those making the profits, but society as a whole, by bypassing inefficient government bureaucracies that thrive whether they deliver services effectively or not, and empower grubby, corrupt politicians and their pals to dip their hands in the pie of guaranteed government money…

What no one seems to want to talk about -- at least, no one who is touting privatization as the remedy for our tottering infrastructure, not to mention the perennial manufactured "crises" in Social Security and Medicare -- is that you're inserted another layer of potential abuse into the system: suddenly, someone has to make a profit off of something that has been functioning without having to make a profit.

However, the rush to outsource responsibility for housing the poor became a textbook example of one peril of privatization: Companies frequently get paid whether they deliver the goods or not (one of the reasons investors like privatization deals). For example, in 2004, city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations at Lawndale Restoration, the largest privately owned, publicly subsidized apartment project in Chicago. Guaranteed a steady revenue stream whether they did right by the tenants or not—from 1997 to 2003, the project generated $4.4 million in management fees and $14.6 million in salaries and wages—the developers were apparently satisfied to just let the place rot…

The head-scratcher here is that the taxpayer is going to have to pay for this, ultimately, by reimbursing the new owners for the purchase price (often inflated) and by paying for any maintenance the owners care to do. Higher rates for everyone, coupled with a decrease in service. Something else that no one wants to talk about.

I'm not going to point fingers at Republicans or Democrats on this one -- it's a bipartisan effort.

And from the standpoint of value for the dollar, it's really, really stupid.

Some things really should not be subject to the profit motive. Like just about anything that we, as taxpayers, are footing the bill for.

Now We Know

Why Brian Brown's fundraising appeals have gotten so desperate:

In a time when virtually every nightly newscast, political debate, even television series delves into discussions about marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples, the beleaguered National Organization for Marriage (NOM) can’t seem to raise enough money to cover its expenses. According to analysis of the organization’s 2013 tax filings done by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), NOM raised $5.1 million in 2013, dropping by over 50% since 2012. Just 2 donors accounted for more than half of the organization’s funding – further evidence that everyday Americans have little interest in furthering NOM’s extremist agenda. In addition, the NOM Education Fund also dropped by nearly $3.5 million in funding -- a drop of almost 70% since the previous year. NOM ended the year more than $2.5 million in debt.

Any guesses on which two churches are the major donors? Oops -- did I say that out loud?

I don't normally gloat, but in this case, I'll make an exception.

About Wall Street

This sort of says it all:

Out In the Open

It seems there's been a spate of public honesty lately, usually from people who probably shouldn't have opened their mouths. The latest example to cross my radar is one Alessio Rastani, a stock trader who tells all. From David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

But of course, the greatest honesty in his rant is not about his love of profit from economic calamity, but rather his frank admission that the financial industry owns the world's governments lock, stock and barrel. Some would call that arrogance. I would call it a frank assessment of reality. Senator Durbin has already admitted as much for the American government; the only surprise is in hearing such candor from one of the Wall St. players on the inside.

So you see, it's not that I'm paranoid. It's just that I can connect the dots.

Maybe, Just Maybe

the president has learned something from the HCR debacle.



As quoted at AmericaBlog:

Now, unsurprisingly, these reforms have not exactly been welcomed by the people who profit from the status quo – as well their allies in Washington. This is probably why the special interests have spent a lot of time and money lobbying to kill or weaken the bill. Just the other day, in fact, the Leader of the Senate Republicans [that would would be Mitch McConnell] and the Chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee [that would be John Cornyn (R-tX)] met with two dozen top Wall Street executives to talk about how to block progress on this issue.

Lo and behold, when he returned to Washington, the Senate Republican Leader came out against the common-sense reforms we’ve proposed. In doing so, he made the cynical and deceptive assertion that reform would somehow enable future bailouts – when he knows that it would do just the opposite.

What's amazing to me is that the Republicans are coming out as such transparent tools. Of course, their supporters get their news from Fox, which isn't going to mention any back-room deals between them and Wall Street. And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, Inc., Bankers can pour as much money as they want into Republican campaigns without worrying about silly things like contribution limits.

I just wish Obama would get behind DADT repeal that way.