Image by Democracy Chronicles via Flickr
with Greg Palast
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Greg Palast’s website
August 25, 2019
Greg Palast: Corporate Interests Use Voter Purges To Disenfranchise Citizens + King Koch is Gone–David Koch Dead at 79
Supreme Court
The Openly Plutocratic Domination of U.S. Politics by Paul Street
Image by Pamela Drew via Flickr
by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Official Website of Paul Street
November 14, 2018
So often, underlying structures and institutions of oppression escape serious scrutiny amid our country’s most high-profile political dramas. Take the recent conviction of Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer caught on tape four years ago firing 16 shots into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
Michael Parenti: The Supremely Political Court
Image by takomabibelot via Flickr
with Michael Parenti
Writer, Dandelion Salad
October 11, 2018
Archival, updated 2018 to reflect Trump’s Supreme Court – In his extraordinary 26 minute history of the Supreme Court Dr. Michael Parenti warned us in 1995 that this partisan, aristocratic institution might one day empower an autocratic president. It seems that time has come and two Trump appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, can push the scales of justice in favor of their politics unless there is a groundswell to question and change the legal rules of that institution. Why is so much power being given to 9 unelected, non term-limited judges?
Self-Censored Questions by Career Questioners by Ralph Nader
Image by Federacion de Asociaciones Cannabicas (FAC) via Flickr
by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page, April 3, 2017
April 5, 2017
I’ve always been intrigued by the major questions not asked by reporters at press conferences, not asked by legislators at public hearings or even the questions citizens at town meetings don’t ask public officials. It’s not that they do not know about or could not easily become informed enough about a given issue and ask substantive questions. It’s just that so many taboos are packed into these questioners’ ideological mindset, career goals or concern with what other people over them might think. Maybe it is a culturally-rooted fear of challenging entrenched power brokers.
Swamping the Supremes Department: No Cloture for Judge Gorsuch by Rob Hager
Image by Pamela Drew via Flickr
by Rob Hager
Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 18, 2017
Maine’s Angus King is a swing Independent Senator who caucuses with Democrats. As a former lawyer, like many of his colleagues, he cannot plead ignorance about the historic importance of his vote on the fateful Senate filibuster to deny Neil Gorsuch confirmation as Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee. Confirmation hearings for this far-right, “friendly fascist,” defender of torture, Federalist Society nominee are scheduled to begin March 20. A filibuster will follow. The key vote will come, likely in the first week of April, when Gorsuch supporters vote for cloture (i.e. termination) of the filibuster. The Republicans will need 60 votes for cloture in order to proceed to a vote on confirmation. They only have 52 votes, which is enough for confirmation but not enough to first end the filibuster.
Supreme Court Legalizes Influence Peddling: McDonnell v. United States by Rob Hager
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr
by Rob Hager
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 3, 2016
The Supreme Court has mostly completed its decimation of any anti-corruption law that might have caused any more than the slightest inconvenience for the plutocracy’s political investments. Therefore the Court has now picked up its judicial supremacy ax to perform a similar demolition of laws that regulate the other side of the corruption equation. In a decision announced on June 27, timed as one of three final opinions of its 2015-16 term, the Court turned its attention to protecting the influence peddlers – who are installed by and otherwise benefit from the now freely flowing plutocratic investments – from prosecution for their delivery of the peddled policies.
Who Stole The 2000 Election? (Hint: Not Nader) by Eric Ruder
Image by Elvert Barnes via Flickr
by Eric Ruder
socialistworker.org
June 2, 2016
The myth that Ralph Nader “spoiled” the 2000 election and put George W. Bush in the White House is being resurrected. Eric Ruder remembers how it really happened.
WITH POLLS showing a much closer race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump than was originally expected, Clinton supporters are resorting to frantic warnings that Bernie Sanders could cause a replay of the 2000 elections–when, according to the standard narrative of what went down, Ralph Nader’s Green Party campaign put Bush in the White House.
The SCOTUS Quandary by Rob Hager + Merrick Garland: Where Does Supreme Court Pick Stand on Guantánamo, Death Penalty, Abortion?
Image by Alliance for Democracy via Flickr
by Rob Hager
Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 17, 2016
Obama Nominates a Conservative to Court: Sanders Still Missing Strategic Opportunity
Obama Writes Nomination Insurance for Plutocrats
Obama has decided that, to fill Scalia’s vacant seat for radicals on the Supreme Court the country needs another former partner of a Wall Street law firm, turned prosecutor, and then appellate judge. Another judge obscures the highly political work of the contemporary Supreme Court beneath a veneer of technocratic competence. Just the opposite is required at this time. We need a politician who will make a political case against decisions like the Court’s most important ruling of the past half century that “money is speech,” which was pure politics when decided but has become part of the ordinary technology of plutocracy that a judge like Merrick B. Garland administers with exquisite technical competence to the satisfaction of plutocrats. Chief Judge Garland is a continuation of business as usual. What is demanded by the times is a justice that will eradicate the politicized judicial doctrines that sustain the corrupt business as usual.
Ralph Nader: Scalia, Hillary Clinton and the Upholding of Corporate Supremacy, Part 2
Image by David Shankbone via Flickr
with Ralph Nader
TheRealNews on Feb 22, 2016
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader says both the Republican and Democratic parties are subservient to corporate power.
The Conundrums of Justice Scalia by Ralph Nader + A Cover for Corporatism in Scalia’s “Originalism”
Image by Doran via Flickr
by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
February 20, 2016
The passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia evoked widespread commentary about how outspoken he was both on the Court and at law schools and other forums where he often lectured and sometimes tangled with audiences. Knowing of Justice Scalia’s unusual expressiveness for a jurist, my colleague Robert Weissman and I wrote him a challenging letter in 2006, starting with these words: Continue reading
Scalia’s Black Beemer by Greg Palast
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr
by Greg Palast
Writer, Dandelion Salad
www.gregpalast.com
For Op-Ed News
February 19, 2016
It was one of our team’s weirder investigative discoveries: The recently departed Justice Antonin Scalia— alev ha shalom — in 2011, was ticketed for recklessly driving his black BMW.To his family, I offer condolences. To my readers, I offer the facts. A man’s soul must be laid to rest, but history must not be buried as well, especially now that the Justice’s passing has become grounds for stories that border on historical obscenity, cf. the New York Times, “Liberal Love for Antonin Scalia.”
Scalia Leaves the Plutocracy One Vote Short by Rob Hager
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr
by Rob Hager
Writer, Dandelion Salad
February 14, 2016
The salutary rule of private life that one should not speak poorly of the dead does not properly apply to public persons who we know only through their public deeds. When they choose to lead a political life, which is the only capacity in which we have occasion to know them, and have had an overwhelmingly perverse influence on the course of public affairs, honest historical judgment should not be suspended or falsified for inappropriate application of rules that properly pertain to private life. Biographers will weave the personal attributes, the odd-fellow relationships with Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, membership in Opus Dei, assessments of when one person’s flamboyance crossed the line to another’s buffoonish bombast, to make a fuller portrait for those who might care about Antonin Scalia as a person.
Taxation Without Representation—Déjà Vu by William John Cox + Greg Palast: One Person, One Vote
by William John Cox
Writer, Dandelion Salad
williamjohncox.com
June 7, 2015
Image by Democracy Chronicles via Flickr
The Supreme Court’s acceptance of a case about the allocation of voting districts will have consequences far beyond the millions of U.S. taxpayers its ruling may deprive of representation. A decision that only counts voters, rather than all persons, will undermine the very foundation of the Republic.
American Democracy Now An Oligarchy by Joel S. Hirschhorn + Ivy League Study Says the General Public Has Virtually No Influence on Policy
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Writer, Dandelion Salad
www.foavc.org
April 24, 2014
Image by P.T. Manolakos via Flickr
History has been made. But few Americans are aware of it or angry about it. I say: Wake up Americans. A war has been waged against US democracy, from the inside. Time to pick a side and fight back.
If you are not totally brain dead, distracted by pain or pleasure, or consumed by narcissistic obsessions, face the ugly, painful truth. Continue reading
Boycott Corporatocracy! Boycott Corrupt Elections! by Rivera Sun
by Rivera Sun
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Popular Resistance
April 6, 2014
Image by Joe via Flickr
The recent Supreme Court ruling removing limits to campaign financing should be the final straw on the camel’s back of the American people. Democracy in our country is a standing joke . . . and the trend of politics-for-sale is no longer funny. Wealthy elites and mega-corporations have created a modern day Court of Versailles in which the super-wealthy profit from the abject poverty of the rest of us. The Marie Antoinette’s of our day cut food stamps for impoverished children while crying, “Let them work for their cake!” Continue reading
