News bit 'n chunk: Clarence Thomas investigation??; Tax data leaker gets whacked

From the Snowball’s Chance Files: Raw Story reports:

“Highly unusual”: Body that governs federal courts 

hints at Clarence Thomas investigation

At the behest of an anti-corruption watchdog group, the Judicial Conference of the United States (JCUS) has issued a report suggesting that it may be conducting a rare investigation into Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Earlier this week, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) issued an update on its request to the JCUS to publish its Report of the Proceedings from its September 2023 meeting, arguing that “public interest” necessitated information on efforts to have Justice Thomas referred to the Department of Justice for alleged violations of financial disclosure laws. The JCUS’ report only said there was an “ongoing review of public written allegations of errors or omissions in a filer’s financial disclosure reports,” but the CLC viewed that as a significant development.  

Even though the JCUS — whose membership consists of the chief justice of each federal circuit court, the Chief Judge of the Court of International Trade and a US district judge from each circuit — is charged with regulating judicial ethics, it’s unable to impeach judges or remove them from the bench. However, it does have the power to refer judges to the DOJ for investigation that can potentially lead to civil penalties.

The statistical analysis division of my minions have analyzed this matter upon my polite request (at gunpoint). The supercomputer worked the equations. It barfed up a result indicating that that any meaningful action against Thomas The Corrupt Grifter and Fibbing Liar from CLC, JCUS and/or the DoJ is in the Snowball’s Chance in Hell category, i.e., less than 0.1%.

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The USA Today reports:

DOJ: Ex-IRS employee who leaked Trump's tax returns 

intentionally got job to disclose records

A former Internal Revenue Service contractor, who leaked tax information about Donald Trump and other wealthy individuals to news organizations, got his job to intentionally to spread the confidential records, according to Justice Department prosecutors.

Charles Edward Littlejohn, 38, of Washington, pleaded guilty in October to unauthorized disclosure of tax return and return information. U.S. District Judge Ana Reye scheduled sentencing for Jan. 29. Prosecutors recommended Tuesday he receive the maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Littlejohn evaded IRS protocols to detect and prevent large downloads from government computers and then saved the tax returns on multiple devices, including an iPod, according to court records. He also obstructed the investigation by deleting and destroying evidence of his disclosures, according to court records.

ProPublica reported in 2021 on a trove of tax-return data about the wealthiest Americans. It found the 25 richest people legally pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than many ordinary workers do.

“And the human impact of Defendant's crimes is enormous,” prosecutors wrote. “Many victims have come forward, expressing anger and embarrassment about the exposure of their personal financial information. Worse, it appears that the harm may continue indefinitely” because stories continue to be published.

According to the IRS, on April 5, 1870, IRS Commissioner Delano forbade tax assessors from furnishing lists of taxpayers for publication. On July 14, 1870, Congress passed a revenue act stating, “no collector … shall permit to be published in any manner such income returns or any part thereof, except such general statistics …” Thus, up until 1870, tax returns were public records.

Some history according to Professor Pomp (his real name) about the the debate and law surrounding public access to individual tax returns: 

To fund the Civil War, the Revenue Act of 1862 imposed an income tax on individuals. At a time which predated reliable mail, the public was notified of their tax liabilities through newspaper advertisements.

In 1870, when the income tax had become unpopular, Congress prohibited the publication of tax returns. Public disclosure was revisited in 1913; by 1918 the public was permitted to view lists of individual taxpayers, though this information was not allowed to be published.

Fueled by corruption concerns, the Revenue Act of 1924 required the disclosure of names, addresses, and tax liabilities. The New York Times published the taxes paid by thousands of persons. In 1926, however, the law was changed due to privacy concerns and the failure of the disclosures to uncover tax evasion. Only the taxpayer’s name and address, but not their tax liability, could be published.

A resurgence in favor of disclosure emerged in 1934, during the Great Depression. The tax liability (as well as name, address, gross income, deductions, net income, and credits) of taxpayers was made public in an attempt to deter tax evasion. But critics of this approach, concerned that compromised taxpayers would be targeted by criminals and con artists, managed to repeal the law.

The law remained unchanged until, in the aftermath of Watergate, Congress enacted IRC section 6103.

Qs: So, is Littlejohn a patriotic hero or a socialist scumbag? Should tax returns once again be made public records, at least for people having a net worth of, say, $10 million?

What!!?? That incompetent 

jackass makes how much??

PS: On some reflection, I vote for making tax returns public once again, just to kill off some of the rot.

News bits: Christian ‘charity’; Vitamin & mineral science bit; Gutless Democrats; Etc.

A newspaper in Spokane Washington reports:

More than 200 Spokane churches were asked to open their doors to 

homeless people during dangerously cold weather — four agreed

It’s the same every year.

A dangerous cold snap is forecast. Hundreds of unhoused people are in danger of freezing to death, and there isn’t a clear plan to keep them warm. With the clock ticking, the city scrambles.

Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown criticized the city’s perpetual lack of planning during her run for office last year, and pledged to put a better system in place. But when a blast of arctic air descended on Spokane and brought temperatures below zero during her second week in office, she, too, was forced to scramble at the last minute.

The city’s efforts this year were also aided by a small group of volunteers and homeless service providers who had spent months working behind the scenes on an ambitious project to keep people from freezing.

The plan was simple: Open the churches.

The idea of using churches to house homeless people during cold weather has been long in the making. In theory, it makes sense: Hundreds of Spokane churches sit empty every night. With city shelter space consistently below what's needed, why not ask the faith community to help?

But making that vision a reality has been an uphill battle.

That speaks for itself. Repeal tax break privileges for churches. 

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The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports on some new data from people who participated in this 2 year COSMOS study (COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study):

Abstract

Background

Longer effects of multivitamin-mineral (MVM) supplementation on late-life cognitive function remain untested using in-person, detailed neuropsychologic assessments. Furthermore, insufficient evidence exists for healthcare providers to recommend daily MVM supplements to prevent cognitive decline.

Conclusions

In COSMOS-Clinic, daily MVM supplementation leads to a significantly more favorable 2 year change in episodic memory. The meta-analysis within COSMOS cognitive substudies indicates that daily MVM significantly benefits both global cognition and episodic memory. These findings within the COSMOS trial support the benefits of a daily MVM in preventing cognitive decline among older adults.

That's interesting. Maybe there is something good about taking daily vitamins and minerals. All this time and there has been insufficient research to get this information.

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Gutless Democrats: A sickening WaPo opinion describes the cowardice of Senate Democrats:

This country has no more devoted a public servant than Judge Todd Edelman of the D.C. Superior Court. While other law graduates joined white-shoe firms, Edelman, a friend of mine since college, spent years as a public defender, as a labor union lawyer and, for the last 14 years, on the D.C. bench, where he is now presiding judge of the civil division.

President Barack Obama nominated him in 2016 to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But this was during then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and Edelman, caught up like other nominees in the Republicans’ refusal to move Obama’s judicial picks, never got a vote, or even a hearing.

President Biden nominated Edelman to the same court in 2022. Republicans struck again, this time with an ugly, Willie-Horton style smear campaign. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) fabricated an outrageous lie, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that a man Edelman released in a pretrial hearing “went on to murder — to murder — an 11-year-old.” In reality, the man in question hadn’t murdered anyone, but Blackburn badly distorted the facts of a case to suggest that Edelman was to blame for a child’s death.

This time, Democrats controlled the Senate. They could have, and should have, called out Blackburn’s nonsense and confirmed Edelman. Instead, they cowered. They shied from defending Edelman, or even pointing out the facts; .... The months dragged on, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) refused to schedule a vote before the Senate recessed for Christmas break. Two weeks ago, the White House pulled the plug rather than resubmit the nomination for the new session of Congress.  

We live in a world in which MAGA types such as Blackburn use disinformation as a matter of course. That’s a given. But if Democrats are so cowardly that they won’t fight back and won’t answer the lies with truth, then the battle to preserve our democracy is already lost no matter who wins at the polls.

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Jamelle Bouie writes an opinion for the NYT (whole opinion is here not behind a paywall):

Jan. 6 Cannot Go Down the Memory Hole

Letting Trump Off the Hook Will Change the Shape of History 

But despite this unambiguous evidence of insurrection, there is a concerted effort — either out of skepticism or denial — to present the events of Jan. 6, including the schemes that led up to the attack on the Capitol, as something else. The legitimate protest of an exuberantly disappointed group of ordinary American voters, perhaps, or — in the rendering of Trump’s most devoted apologists — a last-ditch effort to save the Republic itself from the illegitimate grasp of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

It is tempting to say that the facts contained in the Jan. 6 committee report will stand on their own, that the body of evidence is simply too great to sustain a posture of skepticism and denial. But facts are mediated to us through our beliefs, experiences and interests. Most people do not and will not believe facts that cut against those beliefs, experiences and interests.

In the case of the Ku Klux Klan testimony,** it was in the political, social or ideological interests of many Americans — from partisans of the Democratic Party to leading members of the national press — to downplay the significance of the testimony. The same is true today of the facts gathered by the Jan. 6 committee.

** From the Senate Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, an 1871 investigation of reports of vigilante violence against freed people and their white allies in the states of the former Confederacy. The committee released its report as an 8,000 page, 13-volume collection of testimony from 600 witnesses.

In other words, the world in which the attack on the Capitol of the United States by the vengeful followers of a defeated president is just ordinary politics gone a little wild is a world in which Trump and his rioters eventually won.

In my opinion, Mr. Bouie understands the human condition and our political situation pretty well. 

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Trump, Nikki Haley & the "Instant Karma" of Racism in the GOP

Is there anything more pathetic than watching Nikki Haley continually assert that the US is not a racist country, only to be subjected to racism by Trump and the MAGA-hordes for her own South Asian heritage? And will she ever learn? No. Blinded completely by ambition, Haley long ago sold her soul to a toxic Republican party with obvious racist markers for political gain. Most recently, she was asked by Brian Kilmeade in a Fox interview a few days ago if she was "involved in a racist party." Her reply was as patently absurd-- and offensive-- as every aspect of the GOP in 2024:

"NO. WE'RE NOT A RACIST COUNTRY, BRIAN. WE'VE NEVER BEEN A RACIST COUNTRY."

 As Politico notes:

On the one hand, she wants credit for being the first minority [Indian-American] woman governor, the same one who led the charge, under pressure, to take down the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds following the racist terrorist attack at a Black church in 2015 — that same church President Joe Biden visited last week to woo Black voters. Race had a lot — if not everything — to do with those events.

It wasn’t the first time she stumbled on race. Just last month, Haley failed to name slavery as a leading cause for the Civil War, only to come back later with “of course the Civil War was about slavery, we know that,” following a torrent of negative reports which forced her course correction.

 

Does she really not notice the racism directed squarely at her in the ongoing present by Trump? I mean, even after saying,  "I would pardon Trump if he is found guilty," in late December, Trump re-posted,  on Jan. 8, a false meme asserting that the US Constitution "disqualifies Haley from presidential or vice presidential candidacy."  It's pretty clear she's running for a VP slot on the Trump ticket, or some other major position, even as Trump continues to "other" her as un-American woman supposedly ineligible to run for office as she is doing right now.. So even though he's insulted her ethnic background as recently as Jan. 8, she set herself up for some real instant karma in an interview on Fox & Friends this past Tuesday. There, Haley showed an eagerness, yet again, to whitewash US history (literally)  in exchange for Trump and MAGA approval, by saying "The US was never a racist country."  She also made a speech which sounded triumphal after the primary result in which she was a distant third.

So, what was her reward for sucking up to Trump and ignoring her own history of being an object of his racist rants?  This is what Trump posted hours after the primary speech she made on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform: 

Anyone listening to Nikki “Nimrada” Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary. She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope. Nikki came in a distant THIRD! She said she would never run against me, “he was a great President,” and she should have followed her own advice. Now she’s stuck with WEAK POLICIES, and a VERY STRONG MAGA BASE, and there’s just nothing she can do!

  

Did you get that, Nikki NIMRADA Haley? That's called a lesson in racism 101. Making the barb worse than it would otherwise be is the (intentional?) misspelling of her given first name, Nimarata.  I doubt she'll learn her lesson, though. Trump has used her given name to "other" her in the past, and she continues to pursue a career in the racist's shadow. Still, her grovelling despite being treated like a second class citizen by Trump and others in the MAGA-sphere illustrates the blind lust for power and nihilism that IS  the Republican party today. At the risk of sounding mean, she richly deserves every bit of this abuse. She knows damn well about racism in the country's history and ongoing present. She is even willing to suffer its indignities in the desperate hope of getting to once again serve in a racist Trump administration.

 

 

News bits: Christian nationalism attacks; Senate Democrats retreat; Etc.

Rolling Stone reports about an apparently illegal CN (Christian nationalist) effort to get MAGA churches in to support DJT’s planned kleptocratic, theocratic, plutocratic dictatorship: 

Christian Nationalists Team Up on Illicit Push 

to Get Churches to Campaign for Trump

Far-right “apostle” Lance Wallnau and Turning Point USA are partnering on a campaign to turn swing-state churches into Trump turnout machines

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS ARE joining forces to recruit swing-state, MAGA-leaning churches to help elect Donald Trump in 2024. It’s a brazen effort to transform religious congregations — which are technically supposed to keep electoral politics out of the pulpit — into a campaign powerhouse for the former president.

During a weekend broadcast of his podcast, the influential Christian nationalist “apostle” Lance Wallnau unveiled a new collaboration with Turning Point USA that aims to get “civically enlightened” pastors to turn out their faithful for the “America First agenda.” The effort will be primarily focused, Wallnau said, in the purple states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia.

For weeks, Wallnau has been dropping hints about a swing-state effort to turn out coreligionists for Trump. And during the Saturday broadcast of the Lance Wallnau Show, he announced that he’s joined forces with Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a powerful conservative group that has recently embraced Christian nationalism, including by promoting a 50-state prayer tour at the nation’s state houses.  

The partnership — which Wallnau is referring to as a “Courage Tour” — seeks to spur conservative churches directly into the political arena. This is risky business: Under a 1954 law known as the Johnson Amendment, churches and other nonprofits are banned from “engaging in any political campaign activity.”

The law is rarely enforced, and has been skirted by churches of all political orientations — whether by pastors who make their personal endorsements public or by congregations organizing turnout-boosting efforts like “souls to the polls.”

As one can see from the two highlighted paragraphs, our pants and our defenses are down. The law protecting us is not enforced. 

We left to the mercy of merciless, bigoted Christian Taliban zealots working to impose Christian Sharia law on all Americans, other than CN elites of course.  

Christian Taliban elites Charlie Kirk (left)

and Lance Wallnau (right)

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The New Republic raises a great question about Senate Democrats:

Trump Pocketed Millions in Foreign Payments. 

Why Won’t Senate Democrats Investigate?

Jamie Raskin and House Democrats unearthed dynamite. But they can’t subpoena. Senate Democrats can. So—will they?

Earlier this month, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released an explosive report documenting that Donald Trump’s businesses pocketed at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments during his presidency. Disturbingly, the report noted that Democrats could have uncovered far more such foreign booty but were thwarted when GOP capture of the House deprived them of subpoena power.

So why aren’t Senate Democrats—who do have subpoena power, as they are in the majority—following up on the House Democrats’ investigation?  

Then there’s the politics. A big reason Republicans have manufactured fake scandals about President Biden and foreign dealings is to ensure that Trump’s actual corruption—and his likely criminality—gets lost in a fog of both-sides news coverage. [That’s an example of the FTZWS* propaganda tactic]

Again, us Americans are hopeless with our pants and defenses down. Law enforcement is broken. The Dem Party is a sick joke. The pro-kleptocratic dictatorship GOP is morally rotted to is core. The MSM is still mostly clueless, subverted and incompetent. Some Churches are being weaponized against democracy, our civil liberties, inconvenient truth and good faith sound reasoning.

* Flood the zone with shit

Pants down engagement posture

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Raw Story reports about another ferocious Christianity attack on democracy, secularism, truth and sanity:

Trump lawyer Alina Habba blames mysterious 

‘demonic plan’ for ex-president’s court cases

Alina Habba told a group of nearly 90,000 prayer warriors Sunday that the many court cases of Donald Trump were the work of Satan, new video shows.

Habba appeared on the Arc of Grace Ministries’ live broadcast to detail her battle to save America’s justice system from what she described as a nefarious foe.

“There’s God’s plan and then there’s the demonic plan,” Habba explained to Amanda Grace and 87,000 viewers of the online prophet’s YouTube show. “We need to fight these people that are obviously coordinated and are trying to have a crusade of election interference.”

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is mucho confused. He says that some Trump supporters are “out of touch with reality.” He says he is having a “hard time understanding why” Trump's legal issues don’t “seem to be moving the needle” with more voters. Poor Mittens. He’s soooo clueless it’s almost adorable. Maybe if he engaged in some more tax evasion, that would cheer him up.

Q: Why do churches that go along with attacks like this on democracy, innocent people (the ‘demons’) and the rule of law still get tax break privileges? Are we crazy-go-nuts, or are things just supposed to work like this?

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From the Rut Roh, We’re Hosed Files: Also meanwhile, back to the USSC rauchfest. During oral arguments yesterday, several of the Republican authoritarian radical right plutocrats signaled that they are ready to rip the guts out of nearly all federal agencies. The Hill reports, incorrectly calling the authoritarian plutocrats “conservatives”:

The Supreme Court’s conservatives appeared inclined to cut back the regulatory power of federal agencies, with several justices during a pair of arguments Wednesday seeming ready to overrule a legal doctrine that has bolstered agencies’ authority for decades.

Over more than three hours of argument, the justices put the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer on defense as she sought to preserve Chevron deference, which instructs courts to defer to agencies’ interpretation of federal law if it could have multiple meanings.

The practice has strengthened presidential administrations’ ability to regulate wide aspects of daily life. The range of examples referenced at the arguments revealed the breadth of Chevron’s impact: artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, environmental protections and more.

Although several conservative justices railed against the precedent during Wednesday’s arguments, it remains unclear whether a majority is willing to outright overrule Chevron, which would mark a major legal victory for business and anti-regulatory interests. The court could instead narrow the doctrine’s scope without explicitly disavowing it.

In particular, three members of the high court’s conservative wing — Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — reiterated their long-publicized concerns about the precedent’s viability.

“The government always wins,” Gorsuch said.

Gorsuch in particular hates federal agencies. His seething anger apparently dates back to the 1980s when his mommy was head of the EPA and got hounded out of power when she tried to gut the EPA’s regulations and power. Gorsuch is blinded by his authoritarian hate his huge grudge lust. Evidence of blindness is his insulting, arrogant blatant lie “the government always wins.” In reality, the special interests who run the government usually win and us regular people usually lose.

Neil Gorsuch - do not be fooled by his smiley

face, he is driven by radical plutocratic rage and hate

CNN reported about Gorsuch yesterday:

Neil Gorsuch has a grudge against federal agencies. 

He holds their fate in his hands

Anne Gorsuch, a former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, cut a flamboyant, defiant figure in early 1980s Washington as she slashed air and water quality regulations.

She fought with environmentalists, was held in contempt by Congress and eventually resigned under pressure from the Ronald Reagan White House that had championed her. Her memoir was, appropriately, entitled: “Are You Tough Enough?”

Her son Neil Gorsuch, a Supreme Court justice since 2017, has shown his own brand of defiance and anti-regulatory fervor.

In recent years, Justice Gorsuch has voted against regulations that protect the environment, student-debt forgiveness and Covid-19 precautions. 

He has led calls on the court for reversal of a 1984 Supreme Court decision that gives federal agencies considerable regulatory latitude and that, coincidentally traces to his mother’s tenure. The Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases on Wednesday testing that 40-year-old case known as Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which has become the touchstone for resolving conflicts over agency power.

See, it’s rut roh time, especially for the EPA and environmental protections for American citizens.

…/- - -/…

Dot dot dot / dash dash dash / dot dot dot.  That’s Morse Code for SOS.  Most everyone is familiar with that distress designation.

What does 'SOS' mean?

According to an article in USA Today: Many think "SOS" stands for "save our souls" or "save our ship," but it actually doesn't stand for anything. SOS is a Morse Code distress signal.

Morse Code is a system that uses dots, dashes and spaces to communicate letters and numbers. It was first created during the 1830s by Samuel F.B. Morse but was later improved in 1851 to create the simpler, more precise International Morse Code System.

The original distress signal was CQD, which stood for “seeking you, distress", or "all stations, distress," according to PBS. This was widely used by the British, while Germans used SOE and the Americans used NC, which meant "call for help without delay."

* * *

Okay, okay, that’s already TMI. 😁 Enough history lesson. Where could I possibly be going here?  Well, I’ll tell you. Step right this way… 👇

I’m going “religious” on you. Religion-wise, I’m wondering how, or if, our consciousness is the same thing as our soul.

When it comes to “religion talk,” there is a lot of talk about our souls. The religious believers want to save them for all of us. They want to “Save Our Souls.” 

Now the questions: 

• If you are a religious believer, how do YOU see the two, consciousness versus the soul?
• If you are not a religious believer, how do YOU see the two, consciousness versus the soul?  For example, is consciousness just an “awareness” whereas the soul is “something different/apart/religious/holy/morality driven/etc.?”
• Talk about these phenomena called “consciousness” and “soul.”  No matter your place on the religion spectrum, including off of it, give us your take.

News bits: Various items

From the Oops, Unintended Consequences Files: China Told Women to Have Babies, but Its Population Shrank Again -- The number of babies born in China declined for the seventh straight year in 2023.

Playing with Pugsley on the 

Liangma River in Beijing

Where’s all the babies?: Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden.

Wealthy countries have been trying to boost their birthrates for decades. The results have been pretty similar. History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little that its government can do to reverse it. And as a country’s population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one.

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A note about the USSC case that could gut federal agencies: Maybe the reason the USSC took up a nearly identical case to go with the first one was to get Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson back on the decision. She recused herself from the first case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo because she was an appeals court judge of that case. So, five months after she recused herself, in an extraordinary move the USSC accepted a second, nearly identical case Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce that Jackson Brown is not conflicted out of. The most likely reason for taking that 2nd case was to get all 9 justices on the decision. 

I interpret that to mean that, to make the political optics look as good as possible, the six radical authoritarian Republicans want Brown Jackson on the decision because they plan to gut federal agency power. Doing that will shift massive power from government to morally rotted, deeply corrupt, elite brass knuckles capitalist plutocrats. This step by the radical USSC would mark a major step in the dismantling of protections for American democracy, the rule of law, and indirectly most of our remaining civil liberties. The NYT comments:

The fishermen are represented by two conservative groups, Cause of Action Institute and the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Both have financial ties to the network of foundations and advocacy organizations funded by Charles Koch, a billionaire who has long supported conservative and libertarian causes.

As usual for the MSM, the NYT continues to fail to understand the nature of the American  radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement. It is not conservative. It is staunchly authoritarian, anti-democracy, anti-transparency and morally rotted. It is all about transferring a lot more power and wealth to those who already have vast power and wealth.

When power flows from government to special interests, elite plutocrats in this instance, civil liberties inevitably come under pressure. One must keep track of the flow of power. Power doesn’t just go away. It tends to flow to where existing wealth and power already are.

This reporting well and truly scares the bejesus out of me. With some luck, I misread the tea leaves. But I just can’t envision any other highly plausible reason for the USSC to take up that 2nd case. Now I’m deeply worried.

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From the Brass Knuckles Capitalism Files: Research shows drug prices in the United States are nearly double those in other well-off countries. The NYT comments:

In 2018, they were nearly double those in France and Britain, even when accounting for the discounts that can substantially reduce how much American health plans and employers pay.

“The U.S. market is the bank for pharmaceutical companies,” said Ameet Sarpatwari, an expert in pharmaceutical policy at Harvard Medical School. “There’s a keen sense that the best place to try to extract profits is the U.S. because of its existing system and its dysfunction.”

The NYT points to six factors unique to the US: (i) the absence of governments negotiating drug prices, (ii) no price control laws, (iii) incentives that reward doctors, hospitals and middle men to all make more from higher drug prices, (iv) a fragmented and complex system that adds cost but delivers little or nothing in return, (v) companies game the patent  system, and (vi) the core brass knuckles capitalist moral imperative of charging what the market will bear (which is defined by the drug companies, not defined in terms of adverse impacts on people who cannot afford what drug companies say they can afford -- it is capitalism-centric, not consumer-centric).

It is no wonder at all that the American people are being fleeced horribly in the name of sacred, infallible unregulated brass knuckles capitalism. 

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From the Clueless Blowhards & Arrogant Hypocrites Files: The Hill writes: Pope Francis urges avoiding pornography, ‘winning the battle against lust’ -- Pope Francis on Wednesday encouraged Catholics to avoid pornography, while noting sexual pleasure “is a gift from God.” Pornography undermines sexual pleasure and such “satisfaction without relationship” can lead to forms of addiction, the pontiff argued during a catechesis on the “vice of lust” at his general audience in Saint Peter’s Square on Wednesday.

If porn has some effect to reduce unwanted babies, that is good. The Pope (1) needs to deal with wanton lust and rape in his own morally rotted institution, and (2) support all those hundreds of millions of babies born into hopeless poverty that his hypocrite church commands and encourages poor people to have.  

In my opinion, the arrogance, hypocrisy, self-delusion and sheer lunacy about social issues that comes from Catholic popes is staggering.

This one is for you Francis