Sonia Sotomayor Is Trying to Warn Us About the Supreme Court’s Dirtiest Open Secret ( slate.com )

People care when their drinking water is contaminated with lead. They care if their medicines aren’t safe and effective, or if somebody takes all the money out of their investment accounts. Those things don’t make people happy. Yet it’s administrative agencies that are guarding against that and protecting their rights. So when the Supreme Court starts to dismantle important features of these agencies, it matters because it’s destabilizing a really important part of government

Burn_The_Right ,

Be sure to thank a conservative for this SCOTUS. Conservatives did this. They will never stop.

Carrick1973 ,

Absolutely agreed. The middle class is disproportionately paying for the taxes in this country and the only thing I want mine used for is to keep us safe and maintain our infrastructure. The Republicans and this disastrous Supreme Court is doing everything in their power to divert taxes from the beneficial usage that many want it to be used for to tax cuts for the super wealthy and giveaways to corporations. Fuck them all and I'd rather see our country divide and burn than drown slowly in this cesspool of shit.

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

We don't think about it a lot, but part of the cost of buying groceries is also the cost of garbage service. Everybody has to pay for the disposal of their own waste. For most households, it is a minimal cost, and it may even be so minimal that it's rolled into another expense that you don't even see (included with rent, municipal taxes, etc.).

For manufacturing, however, it's a totally different story. Industry produces huge amounts of waste, and often they don't pay to dispose of it properly. The word "giveaway" is exactly right. We are, paying for their cleanup expenses.

captainlezbian ,

You cannot have a functioning industrial/post industrial society without a bureaucracy. The chevron deference was an acknowledgment of that

sunbrrnslapper ,
@sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world avatar

I wish the EPA had the kind of power it did in Ghostbusters (original).

grue ,

Yes, it's true: since the ruling, the EPA has no dick.

themeatbridge ,

You know, everyone hates that guy, but he was the only reasonable person in that movie.

Ghosts aren't real, and the Ghostbusters were reckless. Egon and Ray built an unstable containment apparatus without permits or inspections in an old firehouse with shoddy electrical wiring. They built back-pack carried laser weapons capable of annihilating a city block with an errant crossing of the streams.

Ray also manifested StayPuft Gozer.

Venkman was a charletain and a fraud, as well as a narcissistic sociopath.

Winston was just a guy they hired off the street.

Shutting down their nuclear "ghost containment" apparatus was the responsible thing to do. Walter Peck deserves a medal, or maybe a prosthetic device for his downstairs mixup.

Crackhappy ,

Thanos did nothing wrong.

Carrick1973 ,

Thanos is the hero we need

qantravon ,

First off, in the world of Ghostbusters, ghosts absolutely are real, though their appearances seem to be somewhat sporadic.

Second, Peck was a man who abused his power and nearly caused an apocalypse.

I'm not saying the Ghostbusters were entirely in the right, but Peck absolutely went too far because of his own personal biases. When he first went to the firehouse to investigate, he started out just fine. When he asked to see the containment unit, Venkman asked a perfectly valid question, "why do you want to see it?" From there, Peck immediately went off on a tangent, accusing the Ghostbusters of being frauds, and threatening legal action, to which Venkman responded in kind.

The next time Peck shows up, he has barged in and shuts everything down without thought of the consequences. Even the people he brings along for support think it's a bad idea.

It's like somebody built a bomb in their back yard, and instead of properly defusing it, he insists they take a sledgehammer to it.

Imagine how this goes if he kept his cool in the first meeting. Venkman likely shows him the containment unit, and Spengler explains how it works. If it really does run afoul of EPA regulations, the Ghostbusters get a fine, and are asked to bring their equipment into compliance. Maybe they have to retrofit a few things, but in the end, there's probably no explosion of ghosts, and possibly Vinz Clortho and Zuul never manage to link up (as their meeting was facilitated by the chaos of the aftermath), preventing Gozer from entering our dimension.

grue , (edited )

You know, everyone hates that guy, but he was the only reasonable person in that movie.

Much like the EPA!

They built back-pack carried laser weapons capable of annihilating a city block with an errant crossing of the streams.

Those were "unlicensed nuclear accelerators" -- way worse than mere lasers.

Empricorn ,

Ghosts aren't real

You make some good points, but how can you expect people to read past this!? In-universe, ghosts are 100% real. That's the entire premise of the movie!

steal_your_face , (edited )
@steal_your_face@lemmy.ml avatar

I would argue they have a tiny dick and no balls, but potato potato.

cmbabul ,

We are being actively dragged back in time to a point where it was less difficult for the rich and powerful to control us like livestock

gravitas_deficiency ,

The darkly amusing part is that they’ve also expanded access to firearms and defended the second amendment in a lot of ways. It’s almost as if they’re asking us to solve the problem ourselves.

negativenull ,
@negativenull@lemmy.world avatar

It may be useful to defend the 2nd amendment now, to galvanize a portion of the population. But when it's no longer useful, they'll clamp down hard on that too (just like Reagan did when the Black Panthers started arming themselves in the 80s)

psycho_driver ,

My MAGA dad got pretty pissed off when I told him it'd be the Republicans who come to take his guns away.

Rottcodd ,

It's really very, very simple.

Regulation of things like pollution serves the interests of the people broadly, but undermines the interests of a handful of obscenely wealthy sociopaths.

And much of the current Supreme Court explicitly works NOT to serve the interests of the people broadly, but to serve the interests of the obscenely wealthy sociopaths.

And that's it, right there. Just as has happened in numerous past civilizations, the power structure in the US has become so warped and corrupted - so entirely in the control of sociopaths - that it not only no longer even pretends to serve the interests of the people, but tends to explicitly work against their interests.

And the hell of it is that the ruling class is so far gone in corruption and shallow self-interest - so sincerely deeply mentally ill - that they don't recognize that ultimately they're working against their own interests - that serving the interests of the people maintains the health of the society from which they benefit, and that working against the interests of the people undermines that health. Like any other mindless parasite, they're going to destroy their host, and in so doing, ultimately destroy themselves.

And the US will just be added to the ever-growing list of societies destroyed through the machinations of a relative few profoundly mentally ill people granted undue wealth and power.

Nachorella ,

Welp, that about sums it up.

DarkDarkHouse ,
@DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

America has an oligarch problem

psycho_driver ,

Have you seen my can of Oligarch-B-Gone?

skulblaka ,
@skulblaka@sh.itjust.works avatar

Humanity has an oligarch problem.... We aren't the first, and I'd be surprised to hear we were the last.

makyo ,

It was a good(?) run

Rottcodd ,

Mm... sort of.

The US had the enormous advantage of starting its life with material resources of which most can only dream, so it couldn't help but achieve some fairly significant success, and as long as things were relatively easy, it generally did. But it never quite managed to pull its head out of its ass. Its material advantages made it so that it generally managed to get by in spite of the fact that it's head was firmly lodged up its own ass, but that also meant that it never learned anything. So it just stayed in a diminishing circle of bad decisions until it reached a point at which smart decisions were necessary, and it revealed itself to be mostly incapable of making them.

And at the moment, it's actually subject to a mass movement that lauds the days of the bad decisions as the good old days, since the people still have their heads too far up their asses and can't recognize the reality that they were always bad decisions, that the prosperity that accompanied them was simply due to the US's enormous material advantages and in spite of, rather than because of, the bad decisions, and that a return to those bad decisions in an era in which those material advantages have been squandered is just going to make things even worse.

Which, granted, is still sort of a "good run" - much smarter people have still failed to do even close to as well, since they were stuck starting out with pretty much nothing but disadvantages.

But one can't help but wonder what could've been had we not had our heads so firmly lodged up our asses...

BrianTheeBiscuiteer ,

Turn America fascist (ANY%)

tabarnaski ,

And the hell of it is that the ruling class is so far gone in corruption and shallow self-interest - so sincerely deeply mentally ill - that they don't recognize that ultimately they're working against their own interests

I come across this sort of comment more and more - the fact that sociopath billionaires extending their influence to the political and judicial system are, in fact, mentally ill.

Believe me, they're not.

They know very well what they are doing. It's just that their wealth isolates them from the consequences of it. They don't care about healthcare, climate change, education, unemployment, because that's for the 95% to worry about. They are rich enough to don't give a fuck, and they feel safe doing so.

Rottcodd ,

They know very well what they are doing. It’s just that their wealth isolates them from the consequences of it. They don’t care about healthcare, climate change, education, unemployment, because that’s for the 95% to worry about. They are rich enough to don’t give a fuck, and they feel safe doing so.

And that rather obviously describes someone who's rather obviously mentally ill.

Specifically, they lack empathy and have little to no conscience, so have little to no concern for the harm their decisions might cause to others. Those are the hallmarks of both antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy.

tabarnaski ,

They have a conscience, they have empathy, it's just that they only do for their friends, families or people in their social circles.

Most people act like this. There are people working in terrible conditions in Bangladesh or China to create stuff the western countries buy at Walmart, forever 21, Amazon... Where's the empathy for them? Where's the empathy for the guy that lost his job 6 months ago and has been sleeping in a tent since, and only got 75 cents after 2 hours of panhandling?

Individually, we can't help everyone so we often look the other way. That doesn't make us psychopaths.

Furthermore, saying rich people have mental illness frames the problem as a psychological one when in reality it is a socio-economic problem that requires a political solution.

Serinus ,

To further your point, I've never understood why American billionaires want us to be more like Russia. Yes, it will make line go up in the short term. Do they know what happens to Russian billionaires? They have a tendency to fall out of windows.

I don't know why they think they can get one of those without the other.

nondescripthandle ,

Well I don't get to vote for the Supreme Court and last time court expansion was talked about it couldn't even get through the opposition within the Democratic party. All I can do is vote for this to continue of vote for it to get worse. Sorry.

verdantbanana ,
@verdantbanana@lemmy.world avatar

and that is what your parents were told by their parents who were told by their parents

same things your kids will tell your grandchildren who will then go on to tell your great grandchildren

"Kept voting the same party in and the outcome was always the same because of that damn other party! and that same other party is making sure my party can't do anything!"

doing something over and over without changing any variables but expecting a different result than the one you keep getting is insanity not voting

protist ,

The Supreme Court had consistently been moving many issues to the left over many decades until very recently, so I don't know what you're talking about here at all. This is the direct result of the Republican Party, from Mitch McConnell refusing to even entertain the possibility of Obama filling Scalia's seat to Trump appointing 3 justices. There's a dose of Ginsburg's narcissism in there too, she should have retired.

AlternatePersonMan ,

There's been debate about changing the size of the supreme court for a long time. The problem is that if one party does it, the next one can do the same to stack in their favor. That said, just 9 members that are permanent installed with no oversight makes them arguably the most powerful body in the nation. Just one crooked member can be devastating.

I don't have a perfect solution, but I'd start with something more like 21 members, strict oversight into their finances, a third party that mandates recusal, and a shelf life.

The damage of these 6-3 decisions could last decades or worse. They certainly don't represent the people that are much closer to 50/50 conservative/liberal than 2/3 extremely conservative.

JackiesFridge ,
@JackiesFridge@lemmy.world avatar

The issue I have with Dems NOT stacking the court given the chance is that the GOP absolutely would - and might still if they wanted to future-proof their stranglehold. Stack the court. Get a shim in place (SCOTUS term limits, oversight, anything). Don't worry about what the GOP might do, worry about what they ARE doing and maybe try getting ahead of the problem for a change.

reddig33 ,

You vote for the Supreme Court every time you vote. The people you elect appoint justices who work their way up,and approve justices in Congress. Local elections matter. Even there you are either voting for people who are working their way up or appoint other judges.

nondescripthandle ,

Yes and none of the people on my ballot want to expand the court that's the point.

makeasnek ,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Probably because you don't vote in the primaries. That's where people with more fringe ideas are located. Vote them up if they share your fringe idea. You can complain about the "system" all you want, the people who run the system were put there through primaries and generals. Learn how to use the tools available to you.

nondescripthandle , (edited )

The primaries were decided mathematically before my state got a chance to vote. My primary vote didn't matter this year and this isn't the first time this has happened. Downballot all the usual suspects won as well since turnout is always lower when this happens.

takeda ,

You vote for the person who selects the people for SCOTUS. There are two very old members (Thomas and Alito) that will likely be replaced in the next 4 years. Are you willing to let trump replace them with 40 year olds and fuck us for decades to come?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • politics@lemmy.world
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •