I recent months word has been leaking out about all the shady deals the SCOTUS judges have been making to their benefit…..like Clarence Thomas….
An in-depth New York Timesstory examining Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas‘ membership in an exclusive club of wealthy Americans—and the benefits he has reaped from the association—sparked fresh calls for his resignation on Sunday, with watchdogs and lawmakers decrying the new report as further evidence of deep-seated corruption at the nation’s most powerful judicial body.
Months after his confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991, according to the Times, Thomas was accepted into the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, a group named after the Gilded Age American author Horatio Alger.
“At Horatio Alger, he moved into the inner circle, a cluster of extraordinarily wealthy, largely conservative members who lionized him and all that he had achieved,” the newspaper reported. “While he has never held an official leadership position, in some ways he has become the association’s leading light. He has granted it unusual access to the Supreme Court, where every year he presides over the group’s signature event: a ceremony in the courtroom at which he places Horatio Alger medals around the necks of new lifetime members.”
The new reporting comes on the heels of a series of revelations from the investigative outlet ProPublica, which uncovered decades of trips Thomas took on the dime of billionaire Harlan Crow, who is deeply enmeshed in right-wing politics.
ProPublica also found a previously undisclosed real estate deal between Crow and Thomas, who just recently joined his fellow conservative justices in ruling against affirmative action and student debt relief for more than 40 million Americans.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/clarence-thomas-gifts
Thomas and his wife are not alone….Alito has been caught as well as others….
All this corruption leads one to ask….if this is the case do we really need the Supreme Court?
I mean these judges are proving that they do not think democracy is a good thing….why keep it around?
Vested interests create “checks and balances” primarily to make political systems non-responsive to demands for social reform. Historically, therefore, the checks are politically unbalanced in practice. Instead of producing a happy medium, their effect often has been to check the power of the people to assert their interests at the expense of the more powerful. Real reform requires a revolution – often repeated attempts. The Roman Republic suffered five centuries of fighting to redistribute land and cancel debts, all of which failed as the oligarchy’s “checks” imposed deepening economic dependency and imbalance.
The Supreme Court is America’s most distinctive check. Its deepening bias since its takeover by “conservatives” claiming to be “originalist” interpreters of the constitution, has led to the most widespread protests since Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the court in the 1930s by expanding its membership to create a more democratic majority. Although appointed by presidents and consented to by Congress, the judges’ lifetime tenure imposes the ideology of past elections on the present.
So why are they needed at all? Why not permit Congress to make laws that reflect the needs of the time? The Court’s judges themselves have pointed out that if Congress doesn’t like their rulings, it should pass its own laws, or even a constitutional amendment, to provide a new point of reference.
Should There be a Supreme Court? Its Role Has Always Been Anti-Democratic
Then I agree get rid of it….if greed and personal gain is all they are there for why do we need them…..let them go to Wall Street and steal America’s future .
What say you?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In Saner Thought 