U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

you are wrong if you think we disagree on the desired ends.

https://heygrillhey.com/static/f0c62ab3592ac05efafd719f308ecc88/Brisket-Burnt-Ends.png

A post about wanting something better, met with utter cynicism and a basic "shut the fuck up hippie" implied.

Dude, come on. Most people in America who are likely to be open to a left-wing political message are also likely to be in positions of economic precarity, for a variety of reasons: shitty job, too many kids, health issues, whatever. They can't afford to stop working. I could probably afford to take a month off work, but what would it solve? If I won the Powerball, I would achieve my political goals through bribes, but in what universe is "economic damage" gonna push a country like the US left?

As I high school student in April 1970 I owned and wore a t-shirt emblazoned with a large stylized fist upraised and the word "STRIKE!", all in bright red and legible from 100 ft away. I'm sure we all recall the resulting general strike after Kent State killings that paralyzed the US economy a few universities and colleges, mostly in NY and CA.

Unperson otm. I have a wife and two kids and a mortgage. All I would gain from a general strike would be divorce, eviction, and homelessness. Tell me how that improves things. I'll wait. Take your time. I would love to hear a workable and constructive plan.

Ah yes, we all want something better but aren’t willing to do fucking anything to get it. Great strategy there.

Well, there is systemic "better" and then there is local better. Volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food pantry, say, or mentoring and tutoring at-risk kids, actions such as these may not solve systemic problems, but it does make lives better. So I guess that is better with an asterisk. Still, I doubt the people working hard toward at least a semblance of better would appreciate being dismissed as not good enough.

I would not consider myself an optimist, but I am frequently buoyed by the energies and initiatives of people I see actually working hard toward goals for the good of society, whether full-time labor organizers or just volunteers trying to work with(in) a broken system.

we all want something better but aren’t willing to do fucking anything to get it.

We can see you are angry about this. Hmmm. What else was there. Oh, yes.

I indict myself as part of that comfortable class (as Alfred rightly did, too)

So, you recognize you are part of the "we" you're so angry at. But, when you think about this in terms of asking yourself what's stopping you from changing, what kind of answers do you get? Is it really that you are "too comfortable" as you proposed earlier? And if you broke out of that comfort what would you do differently?

I ask, because all of us have asked ourselves these exact same questions and attempted our own honest answers. Since you have not just indicted yourself for the state of the world (ilx is transnational), but seem to be indicting the rest of us as well, I'd like to hear what you consider to be the honest answers to your self-indictment and what those answers mean to you.

If the real answer is you are just venting frustration, that's OK, but realize you're yelling at us for a frustration we didn't cause and can't fix and we are frustrate, too.

We’re pretty much in the midst of a slow cascading collapse of the Liberal Establishment with no ability to affect any of it on a national level(for a while, at least), and all we can do besides getting involved locally is just vent and yell at each other online.

It sucks because all the false fronts of mass democracy still exist and still get sold to and browbeaten into us, but the linkages have either be allowed to rot away or were sold 25 years ago.

Nobody is happy about it, but the best we can do electorally at this point is to let the makeup of the SCOTUS guide our voting decisions. That is where our votes can have the most immediate real world impact. Also where inaction and protest voting will have generational negative impacts that can do incalculable damage (there is currently no higher political power in this country) which can’t be erased or undone unless karma, death, the presidency, and the Senate all line up in the “good” column, multiple times. Which is a pipe dream.

Trump ascending to the presidency was far from the worst thing that happened when HRC lost. The indirect damage of three Trump appointed SC justices ranks 1000x worse.

^^^^^^

any of the federal judges he appointed, really

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/02/supreme-court-likely-to-block-epa-ozone-regulation/

Supreme Court conservative majority likely to block EPA ozone regulation BEFORE a lower court has even ruled on it!

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared sympathetic to a group of states, companies, and trade associations seeking to temporarily block a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air pollution from power plants and other industrial facilities in 23 states that do not want to adjust their emissions policies. During approximately 90 minutes of oral arguments, the court’s conservative justices voiced skepticism about the process that the EPA followed in implementing the rule, while the court’s liberal justices questioned the wisdom of putting the rule on hold before any lower court has had a chance to weigh in.

The law at the center of the case is known as the “good neighbor” provision of the Clean Air Act. It requires “upwind” states to reduce emissions that affect the air quality in “downwind” states.

In 2015, the EPA issued new air-quality standards for ozone pollution, which at high levels can cause major health problems. The new EPA standards triggered an obligation for states to submit plans to indicate both how they would comply with those standards and, in particular, how they would reduce emissions that affect the air quality in downwind states.

well, cool, that'll save everyone time and money!

xps Trump ascending to the presidency and ALL court appointments go hand in hand - it was a major reason why the GOP refused to disavow and hedged their criticisms during the campaign because it was obvious to them how much they'd gain since they were already projected to retain control of the Senate (as well as Congress, which would mean massive legislative victories outside of judiciary picks). One of the most aggravating things about the 2016 election was how too many voters failed to realize this even though it should've been blatantly clear by everything the GOP had been attempting in the past couple of years and how Obama's veto or decisions were literally the only thing getting in the way.

And of course Roberts is cool with Thomas not recusing from the immunity case, despite Thomas' wife sending texts and emails to Trump's Chief of Staff and government officials around the country related to January 6 and trying to overturn the electoral college results.

And Dem senators and Merrick Garland are so muted and ineffective in their response to any of the above.

Trump stays on ballot. Unanimous.

Not at all a surprise -- even the vote.

Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.

Which means there ain't no way of stopping a Trump-like phenomenon in the future unless Congress creatures pass legislation.

does anyone know what "other potential means of federal enforcement" be?

I don't think this is that crazy--you could have Texas refuse to put Biden on the ballot because of reasons and then there'd be a total shitshow

Some justices concurred in result, but added the language Alfred noted, and therefore not in all of the 5 member majority opinion . Barrett and the 3 libs differed slightly

x-post - maybe talking about what the Justice Department can do, rather than Congress

lol bunch of fucking cowards, the lot of them... they know that legislation like that will never, ever be passed by Congress because it will always be tied to a particular politician who is a member of a particular party, and thus will be impossible to get over the twin hurdles of the filibuster and the presidential veto

maybe they shoulda called witnesses at Trump's impeachment trial

so the majority opinion I think attempts to protect all insurrectionists now and in the future who want to run for federal office.

The calculation being that they're most likely to be running as Republicans. Should that change, they'll figure something else out.

“State-by-state resolution of the question whether Section 3 bars a particular candidate for President from serving would be quite unlikely to yield a uniform answer consistent with the basic principle that the President … represents all the voters in the Nation,” the court added.

And we can't have inconsistency between the States on something so important.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/supreme-court-trump-colorado-ballot-disaster.html

I would hope that after Trump we'll never have another insurrectionist with a serious shot at becoming president

The SCOTUS as it presently stands was never going to thread the needle between either eliminating Section 3 as a meaningful part of the US Constitution or opening an ugly can of partisan worms with the potential to destroy all future US elections. They aren't judicious enough for that.

that moment Scalia died and the immense joy I felt feels like an eternity ago

This and Israel have sealed Trump’s reelection

everyone's a pundit these days

a one-note one, at that

Take that to the containment thread

no containing him

FP'd beamish, please join me everyone

love to have expatriates talk shit about the country they ran away from, fuck off forever

Hey, I didn’t run away-I fucking escaped

The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to keep Donald Trump on Colorado’s ballot was styled as a unanimous one without any dissents. But the metadata tells a different story. On the page, a separate opinion by the liberal justices is styled as a concurrence in the judgment, authored jointly by the trio. In the metadata of the link to the opinion posted by the court, however, this opinion is styled as an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, authored not by all three justices but by Sonia Sotomayor alone. Even a techphobic reader can discern this incongruity through careful copying and pasting, piercing the facade of unanimity that the conservative justices sought to present.

Yea Mark Stern of Slate was tweeting about the metadata. I just wished Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagan had written a dissent, but sadly they ultimately went along with the result and the supposed value of of a 9-0 judgment. Plus there was no published dissent from them on the delay and the handling of the immunity case, or for that matter on whether, per new code of ethics, their colleague Thomas should be participating in any of these cases.

fyi sleeve I will stop talking shit about the US when I stop having to file a goddamn tax return every year

love to have expatriates talk shit about the country they ran away from, fuck off forever

― I painted my teeth (sleeve), Monday, 4 March 2024 22:45 (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Expat (I prefer the term migrant) here, to hell with that bullshit! You’re as bad as the people who say we shouldn’t have a vote despite, y’know, citizenship making it an inalienable right. Much as I’m pissed off about Gaza, and the US coddling of Netanyahu, I’m holding back on deciding on my DFL voting choices until nearer the time, apart from voting for Ilhan Omar, a given.

sleeve's comments are based on that specific poster, iirc, who popped in the hour RBG died while we were all experiencing intense fear and despair, to talk about how her legacy was bullshit. and often shows up to post condescension about their superior knowledge of American politics and tell us how we should feel.

they also post a lot of interesting stuff as well on a variety of topics...but I get where sleeve is coming from. as I learned this weekend by playing peacemaker between two squabbling friends, sometimes when you're worried and angry, you don't want your neighbor coming over escalating your anger and worry by telling you how bad things are in hyperbolic fashion, over and over, when you already know these things and are aware of them.

For many reasons, I suppose I’m immune to the sleeve-offending poster’s schtick but resenting Americans who are living outside the US *on ILX* is kind of dumb no matter what.

yeah I'm familiar enough with sleeve to not be truly offended here, but I thought it was kind of funny to try drum up FPs for beamish's whatever post and then follow it up with something way more aggro and fairly close to love it or leave it territory

fled fascist spain? sorry your opinion on franco is invalid u coward

don’t worry expats, we’ll all burn.