Why Republicans have such a major advantage over Democrats

In full compliance with ethics and financial disclosure rules

There are multiple reasons for fascist Republican Party advantage over the Democrats. One is decades of ruthless, divisive radical right propaganda intended to foment irrational fear, anger, bigotry, distrust and belief in crackpot lies and conspiracies. Another is the electoral college. Another is the moral and ethical rot that has settled into the federal government, especially in the last 5 years or so. Conflicts of interest are now normalized and accepted. Senators and representatives can always fall back on lies and illusions such as defense of their voters’ interests as justification to screw the rest of the country and planet as long as it serves their personal interests, mostly wealth, power and re-election.  

The New York Times writes on a key weakness within the Democratic Party that will most likely neuter Democratic Party efforts to pass meaningful legislation on climate change and probably most anything else. The NYT writes:

Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned half a million dollars last year from coal production, is preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry — despite urgent calls from scientists that countries need to quickly pivot away from coal, gas and oil to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Mr. Manchin has already emerged as the crucial up-or-down vote in a sharply divided Senate when it comes to Mr. Biden’s push to pass a $3.5 trillion budget bill that could reshape the nation’s social welfare network. But Mr. Biden also wants the bill to include an aggressive climate policy that would compel utilities to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to wind, solar or nuclear energy, sources that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Mr. Manchin holds the pen and the gavel of the congressional panel, with the authority to shape Mr. Biden’s ambitions.

But Mr. Manchin is also closely associated with the fossil fuel industry. His beloved West Virginia is second in coal and seventh in natural gas production among the 50 states. In the current election cycle, Mr. Manchin has received more campaign donations from the oil, coal and gas industries than any other senator, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets, a research organization that tracks political spending.

The NYT points out that Manchin directly profits from polluting industries. He owns stock worth $1-5 million in Enersystems Inc., a coal brokerage firm he founded in 1988. Last year, Manchin made $491,949 in dividends from his Enersystems stock. His son, Joseph, took the company over in 2000 after Manchin was elected West Virginia secretary of state. Maybe that was part of why our corrupt ex-president felt comfortable with not divesting himself from his companies. There were precedents out there for him to point to and no meaningful federal laws to eliminate conflicts of interest. What this boils down to is having an ethically compromised fossil fuel corporate owner writing fossil fuels emissions policy. That's a fox in the hen house. 

Manchin's spokesman defends the situation, asserting that “is in full compliance with Senate ethics and financial disclosure rules.”

Yeah, Manchin might be in full compliance with Senate ethics and financial disclosure rules, but if so, so what?

Questions: 

1. On balance, who is more corrupt and morally compromised congressional fascist Republicans or congressional Democrats? 

2. Will Manchin let the Democrats pass climate change laws commensurate with what experts are desperately telling us is needed, or will Manchin’s personal agenda triumph over climate change? 

3. For the most part, what is Manchin’s personal agenda, (a) wealth, power and maybe re-election, (b) protecting jobs in West Virginia, or (c) a roughly equal mix of the two? 

4. Are federal ethics and financial disclosure rules adequate to protect the public interest, or are they mostly a smoke screen that corrupt politicians and bureaucrats can point to as evidence of their honesty and service to the public interest?

Why the tax code favors the rich and powerful: Our pay-to-play two-party political system

Based on 2010 data -- it probably

has gotten worse for the bottom 40%

Context

There is an agreement between congress and the consumer tax preparation industry about simplifying taxes for consumers. The deal is this: Congress agrees to not pass laws simplifying taxes for consumers and in return the consumer tax preparation industry agreed to provide free tax prep services for filers with incomes below a certain level, $70,000 if memory serves. Of course, few consumers are aware of this free service. That is how the industry wants to keep it. To keep consumers in the dark and fed BS, the industry lobbies congress to not spend money advertising the existence of the free service. And finally, when some consumers do try to use the free service, the industry tries to trick them into making various payments. The whole thing is a scam to serve the tax prep industry, not consumers.  

That exemplifies how our two-party pay-to-play system fails to work for consumers doing their taxes, but works great for the industry. It keeps our taxes complicated and revenues flowing to them. It's a win-win for the industry, but a kick in the guts for us plankton, sardines and minnows. 

But us plankton, sardines and minnows is not what this post is about. There is another layer of pay-to-play tax sleaze for the big fish and whales. Feeding the big fish and whales is what this is about.

How Accounting Giants Craft Favorable Tax Rules From Inside Government

Feeding the big fish & whales

NYT: “Audrey Ellis went from PwC to the Treasury Department.

Two years later, she returned to her old firm, which promoted her to partner.”

The New York Times writes: 

Lawyers from top accounting firms do brief stints in the Treasury Department, with the expectation of big raises when they return.

For six years, Audrey Ellis and Adam Feuerstein worked together at PwC, the giant accounting firm, helping the world’s biggest companies avoid taxes.

In mid-2018, one of Mr. Feuerstein’s clients, an influential association of real estate companies, was trying to persuade government officials that its members should qualify for a new federal tax break. Mr. Feuerstein knew just the person to turn to for help. Ms. Ellis had recently joined the Treasury Department, and she was drafting the rules for this very deduction.

That summer, Ms. Ellis met with Mr. Feuerstein and his client’s lobbyists. The next week, the Treasury granted their wish — a decision potentially worth billions of dollars to PwC’s clients.

About a year later, Ms. Ellis returned to PwC, where she was immediately promoted to partner. She and Mr. Feuerstein now work together advising large companies on how to exploit wrinkles in the tax regulations that Ms. Ellis helped write.

Ms. Ellis’s case — detailed in public records and by people with direct knowledge of her work at the Treasury and at PwC — is no outlier.

The largest U.S. accounting firms have perfected a remarkably effective behind-the-scenes system to promote their interests in Washington. Their tax lawyers take senior jobs at the Treasury Department, where they write policies that are frequently favorable to their former corporate clients, often with the expectation that they will soon return to their old employers. The firms welcome them back with loftier titles and higher pay, according to public records reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with current and former government and industry officials.

The NYT goes on to point out that industry veterans working in government have had, an “enormous impact.” They (i) officially approve tax loopholes their former firms use, (ii) give tax breaks to former clients, and (iii) block efforts to rein in tax shelters. Talk about the deep state. There it is, working quietly, but fat and happy. 

The NYT mentions some examples. A former PwC partner in the Trump Treasury Department helped write regulations that allowed large multinational companies to avoid tens of billions of dollars in taxes. After doing his deep state duty for PwC, that partner went back his old job at PwC. Similarly, a senior executive at RSM, a major accounting firm, took a high level job at Treasury, and his office then expanded a tax break in ways that RSM wanted. After his deep state service he returned to work at RSM. See how that works? It is fun and easy. Well, at least for the big fish and whales. 

NYT interviews with some former industry executives viewed these practices as a major part of why tax policy is heavily skewed to favor the wealthy at the expense of most everyone else. NYT found that this is bipartisan. In the last four presidential administrations, there were at least 35 cases of people going from big accounting firms to (i) Treasury’s tax policy offices, (ii) Internal Revenue Service offices, or (iii) the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, followed by a return back to the same firm. The NYT writes: “In at least 16 of those cases, the officials were promoted to partner when they rejoined their old accounting firms. The firms often double the pay of employees upon their return from their government sojourns. Some partners end up earning more than $1 million a year.”

The NYT comments on current politics: “President Biden and congressional Democrats are now seeking to overhaul parts of the tax code that overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans.”

One can easily see why big fish and whales love Republicans with its deep state operating in obscurity, but hate at least some Democrats. Whether Democrats actually will increase taxes on the rich remains to be seen. My guess, there is about a 35% chance that will happen before the 2022 elections. Industry lobbyists backed by campaign contributions are quietly swarming all over congress to make sure that all proposed tax hikes are blocked as quietly and industry fingerprint-free and politician accountability free as possible. At least some Democrats are susceptible to this kind of pay-to-play pressure (free speech persuasion). It takes only one Democrat in the Senate to side with the big fish and whales for the idea of tax increases on the rich to die and fade away.

Questions: Is there such a thing as a deep state where industry executives work in government for a while to write and/or approve tax breaks their employers want and then return to the private sector to be rewarded with some of the added value their tax breaks protected or created? What is the approximate chance the Dems will actually be able to pas tax hikes on the big fish and whales before the 2022 elections? Which party do the big fish and whales prefer on tax policy, the Dems, the Repubs, or are they seen as about the same? 

Brett Kavanaugh: A vengeful Christian nationalist Supreme Court judge

An opinion piece the Washington Post published summarizes the reasons why the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation was so divisive and bitter. This is a nice reminder of how corrupt and partisan sham the process was. The FBI never investigated most of the allegations against Kavanaugh on the orders of Corrupt Donnie, our toxic ex-president. The WaPo writes about the Republican white wash in an article entitled, The Senate knew about Kavanaugh’s partisan history. It confirmed him anyway.:

Occasionally, his votes or some news story will renew the bitter sense among many Americans that he got away with a lie in denying Christine Blasey Ford’s and Debbie Ramirez’s allegations of sexual misconduct, as well as a third such accusation, from his Yale years, that Senate Republicans all but bottled up.

Earlier this summer, reports said the Justice Department had confirmed that, in 2018, the FBI received more than 4,500 tips against Kavanaugh and sent “relevant” ones to the Trump White House, where they disappeared. This month, Kavanaugh joined the 5-to-4 ruling allowing a Texas antiabortion bounty-hunting law to take effect, though it plainly violates court precedents upholding a constitutional right to abortion. To many, that provided further evidence — along with his previous support for a Louisiana antiabortion law — that he’d bamboozled Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who provided the linchpin vote for his confirmation after he assured her that he respected those precedents as “settled law.”

The hearing record signaled that Kavanaugh was a Republican with an ax to grind long before his televised tirade in 2018 dismissing the misconduct allegations as a Democratic “political hit” — payback for Donald Trump’s election and Kavanaugh’s role in Ken Starr’s Javert-like pursuit of the Clintons.

He warned us then: “What goes around comes around.”

Even before Kavanaugh arrived to solidify their ranks, the Supreme Court’s conservatives generally took the Republican Party’s side in political cases. They allowed unlimited corporate spending on elections and ended federal “preclearance” of voting changes in states with histories of discrimination. With Kavanaugh’s decisive assist in 2019, they ruled 5-to-4 that federal courts were powerless to block partisan gerrymandering. Throughout 2020, he and other conservative justices generally stuck together — and with Republicans — in opposing state rules making it easier and safer to vote amid the pandemic; Trump openly complained that such changes would doom Republicans by increasing Democrats’ turnout. In one case, Kavanaugh echoed Trump’s criticism of counting mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day.

The WaPo article goes on to assert that of the six Republican Christian nationalists (CN) justices on the Supreme Court, only four (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett) are conservative ideologues. That is nonsense. All six are radical CN ideologues, not conservative ideologues. These people are far beyond simple conservatism. CN majorities have overturned some precedents to get radical outcomes regardless of the consequences.

Kavanaugh, along with Chief Justice Roberts tend to be more deceptive about their political agendas. Roberts’s incrementalism appears to be an attempt to show the court is nonpartisan while moving inexorably into deep radicalism. WaPo asserts that Kavanaugh’s caution appears to be that of a former partisan, who wants to minimize blowback against his FRP (facsist Republican Party). Those two probably do not want to see jarring headlines like “COURT OVERTURNS ROE!” They can get to their fascist ends in small-appearing and thus less-obvious increments. The recent shadow docket decision to allow a clearly unconstitutional Texas anti-abortion law to stand is an example of this incrementalism. 

The WaPo article argues that the Republican “six-pack’s” record “makes a mockery of recent protestations from Barrett and Democratic appointee Stephen Breyer that the justices really are apolitical.” Barrett’s assertion of being non-political came at a recent purely political event with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell’s role in ramming Barrett onto the bench was about as blatantly partisan and political as it can get. She is the product of politics and her political acceptability was necessary for her to be nominated in the first place.  

The article points out that Kavanaugh was in both the conservative legal movement and in FRP politics. After law school, he spent nearly four years with Ken Starr investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton, which started off looking at financial matters. Finding nothing there, it metastasized in a search for something else. The FRP witch hunt led to Monica Lewinsky and Clinton’s impeachment. In private practice, Kavanaugh joined in politically charged legal disputes, including Bush v. Gore. His partisan legal politics got him jobs in George W. Bush’s White House as a counsel and then staff secretary and then a nomination him for the D.C. appeals court. the WaPo comments: “Midway through his 12-year tenure, a Washington Post columnist wrote that Kavanaugh was ‘nothing more than a partisan shock trooper in a black robe.’” That sounds about right. A vengeful partisan shock trooper.

Questions: Is it fair to criticize Kananaugh and the other FRP justices on the Supreme Court as radicals that have moved beyond conservatism? Or, (i) has the Overton Window[1] moved so far to the right that CN radicalism is now the standard for conservatism, or (ii) the FRP CNs are just standard, old-fashioned conservatives, but the Overton Window has moved so far to the left that some people see the judges as radical right CNs? Or, has the FRP and CN movement passed from what used to be called radical to what used to be unthinkable (see image below)?

Footnote: 

1. Wikipedia on the Overton Window (OT):

The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. ....  an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians' individual preferences. According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.

The point of the FRP’s and CN’s divisive, crude radical right rhetoric and norm-busting behavior is to push the OT to the far right, making far right radicalism appear to be normal and mainstream. For the radical right, this reflects the knowledge that most Americans fundamentally oppose what the FRP and CN movement want to do to government and society. They have no choice but to create illusions and to sow reason-killing division and polarization, and reason-killing emotions such as distrust, intolerance, fear, anger and bigotry.

Radical conservatives want to push the window to the right,

radical liberals want to push it to the left --

maybe the window can be stretched in both directions

at the same time with echo chambers siloing the rhetoric and ideas 

off from each other

A reminder that Christian nationalist ideology opposes secular education

MSNBC reports that as part of her testing for higher level power in the FRP (fascist Republican Party), maybe a run for president in 2024, radical right Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is trying to raise her national visibility and score points with the Republican base. Noem is trying to advance her career by taking a deep dive into radical fundamentalist Christian nationalist (CN) dogma and rhetoric.

She spoke in Iowa last July and told conservatives that she doesn't recognize the United States anymore. “When I grew up, people were proud to have a job. They weren’t confused on the difference between boys and girls. We prayed in schools – which by the way, in South Dakota, I’m putting prayer back in our schools.”

At the conservative outlet Real America’s Voice, Noem argued that Americans should look at government actions to insure that they “line up with the word of God [to] see if they're Biblical.” That the United States is a democracy, and not a theocracy, does not faze Noem. The CN Supreme Court now sees prayer as protected free speech. In that same interview, Noem went further. Right Wing Watch posted this excerpt:

“We’ve seen our society, our culture, degrade as we've removed God out of our lives.... When I was growing up, we spent every Sunday, every night, every Wednesday night in church. Our church family was a part of our life. We read the Bible every day, as a family, together.... I don’t know if families do that as much anymore, and those Biblical values are learned in the family, and they're learned in church.... We in South Dakota have decided to take action to really stand for Biblical principles.... I have legislation I’ll be proposing this year that will allow us to pray in schools again.”

Apparently, the governor is indifferent or hostile to a separation of church and state. Noem wants to apply “Biblical principles” to help “re-center” children in schools.

As discussed here before, it is core CN ideology is to get rid of all secular public education and replace it with a religious fundamentalist “education” based on CN dogma. CNs are dead serious about getting and using power to impose their radical fundamentalist vision of America on government and society, whether people want it or not.

Questions: Is it clear what Biblical principles Noem wants to teach American children, e.g., do not lie or do not steal? Can those values by taught by families in the home, even families that are not religious (Noem referred to religious learning in the home and at church, not in public schools)?

American debt default is on the horizon

The Washington Post writes:

Democrats have set up a similar type of strategy that, if successful, will force Republicans to accept their fair share of the national debt that now tops $28 trillion. If this strategy fails, the federal government could run out of funding authority and enter another congressionally forced shutdown — the fourth in less than a decade — and create a debt crisis that could rattle global financial markets.

McConnell has declared that Senate Republicans will not vote to increase the Treasury’s authority to continue borrowing, which is the same as voting to allow a default. As he has done before, McConnell has essentially created a new rule out of whole cloth to justify his actions.

“Let me make it perfectly clear. The country must never default. The debt ceiling will need to be raised. But who does that depends on who the American people elect,” McConnell told Punchbowl News on Tuesday, acknowledging he will vote for a policy outcome he says he doesn’t want to occur.

The WaPo article points out that since Dems control the White House and Congress, McConnell is arguing that Dems alone are responsible for the government’s creditworthiness and preventing a potential economic calamity. There never has been any rule or political norm like that. In the past the when debt ceiling was increased, it usually was bipartisan and done under regular Senate order that requires at least 60 votes to end debate on the legislation.

As usual, McConnell and other congressional Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that the purely Republican 2017 tax cut for rich people and corporations adds nearly $1 trillion in federal debt each year. There was no Republican concern for federal debt. McConnell's move is pure partisan politics. The GOP is willing to blow everything up to block domestic spending. The GOP is willing to go deep into federal debt for military and rich people and corporation spending, but on spending for the rest of us.

In the past, both parties played politics with the debt limit, each blaming the other, but neither was willing to actually allow a default. These days, the GOP arrears to be willing to default to get what they really want, Democrats out of power. Once back in power, they will be OK with debt increases as long as it isn't for domestic spending. 

In 2019, McConnell vote to suspend the debt limit for two years, arguing that failure to do so would "be a disaster and, quote, put our full faith and credit at risk." That is still true.  

Rich people, corporations and the military get service and money. Most of the rest of us get screwed. 

Maybe Democrats can back down by dropping both infrastructure bills, but that alone won't be enough. There is still accumulating debt from current spending. It may be the case that congressional Republicans will not back down and that would force us into a default, but right now that feels unlikely. Attitudes since the 2020 election have hardened and further polarized, not gotten better. 

It will be exciting to see how this stink bomb plays out. If it ends with serious default, the pain most Americans will feel starting within a few weeks after a default will be serious to catastrophic, especially in these times of the Republican COVID pandemic ripping through the economy. Then the political finger-pointing will commence. We have until late October, maybe a bit longer before the default happens.

Questions: 

1. Since the American people voted Dems into power in 2020, is the onus on the Dems to back down to avoid default as McConnell now argues, or on the fascists to back down and with until they get back in power?

2. Who is most at fault here, (i) the Dems, (ii) the fascists, (iii) the American people, or (iv) voters, or is the blame spread about equally among all those groups?

How can one spot a partisan ideologue?

Context

One of the complicated aspects of the human mind is its ability to unconsciously distort inconvenient or unpleasant reality and truths into a false perception of something much less inconvenient or unpleasant. The human capacity to create false but reassuring perceptions is prodigious. It happens fast, almost in real time, effortlessly[1] and unconsciously. We even delude ourselves into a false belief that what happened was done consciously and under our rational control. One observer called that time and reality distorting aspect of mind The User Illusion.  

One of the things that happens is that reality and truth is unconsciously processed through various innate human and personal factors such as biases, mental heuristics (rules of thumb), life experiences, social situations, culture (including race), sex, psychological factors, education, knowledge or ignorance of a particular subject, level of tolerance of ambiguity, cognitive strengths and weaknesses, self-image, self-esteem, moral values, political, economic and religious ideology, time orientation[2], etc. Those things can act as filters or lenses that can increase or decrease distortion of reality, truths and facts, and resulting beliefs and behaviors. The final output in a given situation, beliefs and behaviors, depend on personal and social traits and circumstances and the reality, truths and facts the mind is working on. Multiple filters are probably simultaneously at play most or all of the time for most issues in politics.

In at least one political context, judges deciding legal disputes, it is critically important to be able to recognize personal bias and thinking flaws associated with various factors, including personal political, religious and economic ideology. Blindness to personal ideology, tends to lead to flawed decisions based on partisan motivated reasoning. The question is how can one spot an ideologue and if so, how can one convince and ideologue that they are unreasonably biased when that is in fact the case?

Is Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas a biased, closed-minded ideologue?

The topic I wrote about and posted yesterday focused on a speech that Thomas gave in defense of the current Supreme Court. he like things the way they are because, in my opinion, he is a rigid radical ideologue and the court is packed with like minded Republican radical ideologues. Of course he does not want to see the court changed in any way that would dilute his ability to ram through his heavily biased, radical Christian nationalist, laissez-faire capitalism vision of reality, morality, society and government. In my opinion, Thomas is a raging ideologue and that is a significant part of what has made him, among other undesirable things in a judge, closed minded and intolerant.

This post focuses on just one point, evidence or lack thereof of ideological presence and influence on how Supreme Court judges say they see themselves and on what basis they decide cases. From the same Washington Post article I referenced yesterday:

In recent weeks, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, during a book tour, has emphasized that he and his colleagues are not “junior league” politicians. Last week, the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, told a crowd in Kentucky that justices are not a “bunch of partisan hacks” and that their divisions are based on competing judicial philosophies, not partisanship.

Thomas was also asked whether the legal questions he confronts on the bench ever conflict with his Catholic faith. Without giving examples, Thomas said, “There are some things that conflict very strongly with my personal opinion, my policy preferences, and those were very, very hard, particularly early on.”

“I don’t do a lot of hand wringing in my opinions and tell people, ‘oh, I’m really sad.’ That’s not the role of a judge. You do your job and you go cry alone.”

Clearly, some Supreme Court justices do not see themselves as politicians in black robes. Most all federal judges would probably say the same thing. But is that true? I doubt it at least for Republican judges. They have to pass ideological litmus tests to be nominated, e.g., anti-abortion, anti-government, etc. That is part of a radical ideological package called Christian nationalism.

More importantly in terms of evidence of ideological bias is in statements Thomas made in his speech. First, he explicitly said he has policy preferences and some of his decisions that contradicted his preferences, i.e., his ideology, “were very, very hard.” Second, he said about the bad decisions, “you go cry alone.”

If that is not evidence of ideological bias and emotional reaction, what is it? Instead of going home and crying alone, he should be proud to do the job of deciding on the basis of the law, not his wounded ideology and feelings.

People will differ in what they believe his comments mean. Some will say, of course judges have their ideology and sometimes dislike decisions the law forces them to make. A rebuttal to that is that if they have a strong ideology going in, and must pass rigid mandatory ideological litmus tests to even be nominated, that makes them biased politicians because they are human. Just because these people are unaware of what they are and deny their humanity does not make it true. Most everybody claims to be unbiased, fact-based and rational, especially judges. Science evidence on this point is overwhelming and not disputed among experts: Most everybody is self-deluded.

Another sleight of hand that justices like to use to cover the unpleasant reality is resort to the argument that they are not political, but instead merely express different “judicial philosophies.” What is the difference between a judicial philosophy and a political, religious and/or economic ideology? Judicial philosophy reflects ideology, so it is a distinction without much of a difference at least for Thomas. And, Thomas appears to sometimes apply a philosophy, if that’s what it is, called originalism. Presumably that is his judicial philosophy, but the onus is on him to tell us what basis he decides on.  

He is arguably inconsistent about his originalism. Some observers analyze his collective decisions as more conservative outcome oriented than reliably originalist. That smells a lot like more like politics than principled legal reasoning.

One last point that is important here, the Supreme Court intentionally operates in what is convincingly argued to be more opacity than is needed. Why excess secrecy? To hide bad things like the influence of politics, bias and flawed reasoning on decisions. Two critics of court and government secrecy wrote in 1973 (my blog post on this is here):

Our thesis may be simply stated: basic democratic theory requires that there be knowledge not only of who governs but of how policy decisions are made. .... We maintain that the secrecy which pervades Congress, the executive branch and courts is itself the enemy. .... For all we know, the justices engage in some sort of latter-day intellectual haruspication[3], followed by the assignment of someone to write an opinion to explain, justify or rationalize the decision so reached. .... That the opinion(s) cannot be fully persuasive, or at times even partially so, is a matter of common knowledge among those who make their living following Court proclamations. (emphasis added)

Thus, the onus is on the two-party system, including federal judges, to show that judges are not a “bunch of partisan hacks” as the radical right judge Barrett nicely put it. Why the litmus tests? Why resort to crackpot legal theories such as originalism (assuming originalism means anything coherent at all, other than a means of getting desired ideological results)? Why the unjustifiable secrecy?

I leave the questions of whether it is even possible to pick less biased and political judges, and how to do that for another time.

Questions: It is fair and reasonable to accuse Thomas of being a rabid, radical Christian nationalist and laissez-faire capitalist extremist who judges cases on that conglomeration of ideology whenever he can get away with it, or is there no good way to assess the role of either ideological bias or judicial philosophy in a judge?

Footnotes:

1. Of course there is biological effort in unconscious thinking , which is in essence input data processing. Calories are burned. But the effort is unconscious and we are unaware of it. That is unlike conscious thinking which is easily tired, distracted and bamboozled. We are generally at least somewhat aware of that aspect of our minds. We are mostly or completely unaware of the working of our unconscious minds. For the most part,** we only know this about ourselves by learning from science, not by directly experiencing it.

** Maybe some people trained in deep meditation and self-awareness have been able to teach themselves to somehow sense or become aware of some of the contours of how the unconscious mind works. That's something I am unfamiliar with and thus cannot express an informed opinion about.

2. Regarding time orientation: From a 2017 research paper: 

Time orientation is an unconscious yet fundamental cognitive process that provides a framework for organizing personal experiences [and perceptions of reality] in temporal categories of past, present and future, reflecting the relative emphasis given to these categories. Culture lies central to individuals’ time orientation, leading to cultural variations in time orientation. For example, people from future-oriented cultures tend to emphasize the future and store information relevant for the future more than those from present- or past-oriented cultures.

From another 2017 research paper:

This article investigates the relationship between an individual’s political ideology and risk perception of climate change, and particularly whether this relationship is affected by one’s time orientation and knowledge. We confirm that individuals with a higher ideological agreement with liberalism perceive a higher risk of climate change. This positive effect, however, is further augmented by individuals’ future time orientation, and lessened by their knowledge of climate change. Our findings suggest that it requires a more tailored strategy in climate communication in order to improve policy making and implementation.  

Among the behavioral biases, how individuals deal with the present and future is an important one. According to the construal level theory of Trope and Liberman (2010), as the temporal distance increases, risks in the future are mentally construed at a more abstract level compared to those in the present. This bias, however, may be mitigated when individuals possess a strong future time orientation. In other words, differences in individuals’ time orientation may influence the magnitude on which political ideology affects climate risk perception. 

3. Haruspication: the act or practice of divination from the entrails (guts) of animals slain in sacrifice, mainly sheep and poultry livers; haruspicy had its heyday as a religion in ancient Rome. I call this governance by chicken guts.