Paul Waldman points out that the next President has a good chance of deciding the makeup of the SJC.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/28/why-the-supreme-court-should-be-the-biggest-issue-of-the-2016-campaign/
Just recently Ron Brownstein pointed out that 2016 will likely be sudden death between the GOP Congress and Obama as the GOP will run against and the Democratic candidate-presumably Hillary-will run on Obama's signature achievements-Obamacare, the executive order on immigration, his deal with the Chinese on carbon emissions, etc.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2014/11/if-2016-is-referendum-on-immigration-i.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
What strikes me is how reactionary the GOP sounds, which I guess is appropriate as they are conservatives. All they represent is trying to put the genie back in the bottle-as if we had a utopia prior to Obama coming into office in 2009. Yeah, let's go back to the Bush years! Is that a winning slogan for 2016? I doubt it as even now Bush is so toxic, even Republicans themselves don't want to be seen in public with him.
However, as the SJC is also up for grabs the ante rises even more precipitously.
"Ordinarily, the Supreme Court is brought up almost as an afterthought in presidential campaigns. The potential for a swing in the court is used to motivate activists to volunteer and work hard, and the candidates usually have to answer a debate question or two about it, which they do in utterly predictable ways (“I’m just going to look for the best person for the job”). We don’t usually spend a great deal of time talking about what a change in the court is likely to mean. But the next president is highly likely to have the chance to engineer a swing in the court. The consequences for Americans’ lives will probably be more consequential and far-reaching than any other issue the candidates will be arguing about."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/28/why-the-supreme-court-should-be-the-biggest-issue-of-the-2016-campaign/
I've noted a number of times that the parties have basically been at parity for the last 46 years-since the election of Nixon before which the New Deal liberal Democrat coalition dominated. Despite all the storm and stress between the parties what we end up with again and again-parity; unfortunately according to the pollsters the American people think there is virtue in this parity which David Brooks and his friends christens with the Holy name Bipartisanship. The less Holy name for this is gridlock.
Despite the parity, however, the Repugs have managed a significant advantage in one area: the judicial branch which since Reagan has leaned 5-4 conservative. This is signficant as we've certainly seen the last few years-we saw a significant part of the Voting Rights Act struck down and Citizen's Untied among other major verdicts. In that sense the conservatives have been in power for the last 30 years.
"As much as we’ve debated Supreme Court cases in recent years, we haven’t given much attention to the idea of a shift in the court’s ideology because for so long the court has been essentially the same: divided 5-4, with conservatives having the advantage yet liberals winning the occasional significant victory when a swing justice moves to their side. And though a couple of recent confirmations have sparked controversy (Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor were both the target of failed attempts to derail their nominations), all of the retirements in the last three presidencies were of justices from the same general ideology as the sitting president. The last time a new justice was radically different from the outgoing one was when Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall — 23 years ago."
Just another reason we really need a Democratic President in 2016.
"Whether a Democrat or a Republican wins in 2016, he or she may well have the chance to shift the court’s ideological balance. Ginsburg is the oldest justice at 81; Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are both 78, and Stephen Breyer is 76. If the right person is elected and the right justice retires, it could be an earthquake."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/28/why-the-supreme-court-should-be-the-biggest-issue-of-the-2016-campaign/
Just recently Ron Brownstein pointed out that 2016 will likely be sudden death between the GOP Congress and Obama as the GOP will run against and the Democratic candidate-presumably Hillary-will run on Obama's signature achievements-Obamacare, the executive order on immigration, his deal with the Chinese on carbon emissions, etc.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2014/11/if-2016-is-referendum-on-immigration-i.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
What strikes me is how reactionary the GOP sounds, which I guess is appropriate as they are conservatives. All they represent is trying to put the genie back in the bottle-as if we had a utopia prior to Obama coming into office in 2009. Yeah, let's go back to the Bush years! Is that a winning slogan for 2016? I doubt it as even now Bush is so toxic, even Republicans themselves don't want to be seen in public with him.
However, as the SJC is also up for grabs the ante rises even more precipitously.
"Ordinarily, the Supreme Court is brought up almost as an afterthought in presidential campaigns. The potential for a swing in the court is used to motivate activists to volunteer and work hard, and the candidates usually have to answer a debate question or two about it, which they do in utterly predictable ways (“I’m just going to look for the best person for the job”). We don’t usually spend a great deal of time talking about what a change in the court is likely to mean. But the next president is highly likely to have the chance to engineer a swing in the court. The consequences for Americans’ lives will probably be more consequential and far-reaching than any other issue the candidates will be arguing about."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/11/28/why-the-supreme-court-should-be-the-biggest-issue-of-the-2016-campaign/
I've noted a number of times that the parties have basically been at parity for the last 46 years-since the election of Nixon before which the New Deal liberal Democrat coalition dominated. Despite all the storm and stress between the parties what we end up with again and again-parity; unfortunately according to the pollsters the American people think there is virtue in this parity which David Brooks and his friends christens with the Holy name Bipartisanship. The less Holy name for this is gridlock.
Despite the parity, however, the Repugs have managed a significant advantage in one area: the judicial branch which since Reagan has leaned 5-4 conservative. This is signficant as we've certainly seen the last few years-we saw a significant part of the Voting Rights Act struck down and Citizen's Untied among other major verdicts. In that sense the conservatives have been in power for the last 30 years.
"As much as we’ve debated Supreme Court cases in recent years, we haven’t given much attention to the idea of a shift in the court’s ideology because for so long the court has been essentially the same: divided 5-4, with conservatives having the advantage yet liberals winning the occasional significant victory when a swing justice moves to their side. And though a couple of recent confirmations have sparked controversy (Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor were both the target of failed attempts to derail their nominations), all of the retirements in the last three presidencies were of justices from the same general ideology as the sitting president. The last time a new justice was radically different from the outgoing one was when Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall — 23 years ago."
Just another reason we really need a Democratic President in 2016.
"Whether a Democrat or a Republican wins in 2016, he or she may well have the chance to shift the court’s ideological balance. Ginsburg is the oldest justice at 81; Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are both 78, and Stephen Breyer is 76. If the right person is elected and the right justice retires, it could be an earthquake."
"Consider this scenario: Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2017, and sometime later one of the conservative justices retires. Now there would be a liberal majority on the court, a complete transformation in its balance. A court that now consistently favors those with power, whether corporations or the government, would become much more likely to rule in favor of workers, criminal defendants and those with civil rights claims. Or alternately: The Republican nominee wins, and one of the liberal justices retires. With conservatives in control not by 5-4 but 6-3, there would be a cascade of even more conservative decisions. The overturning of Roe v. Wade would be just the beginning."
P.S. I don't agree with Sumner on too much-actually I probably agree on some things but he makes his business to be very disagreeable on those areas we disagree. If he is advocating for a parliamentary system of government here I may tend to agree.
"I’ve read both sides of the debate over the recent actions by Obama on illegal immigration. And I can’t decide who’s right. Was it a completely lawful decision by an executive exercising prosecutorial discretion, or an outrageous overreach by an executive who essentially re-wrote the law on immigration?"
"And that’s exactly the problem. It ought to be possible to tell whether an outrageous abuse of power has occurred. But our system of government in America is based on a hopelessly vague document called the Constitution, which does not clearly spell out who has the power to do what. If we had a parliamentary system like Britain, it would be immediately apparent whether an abuse of power had occurred."
"On immigration it is the right complaining of an outrageous abuse of power. But it is pundits on the left who worry that the Supreme Court may rule that the ACA does not allow for the federal government to provide insurance subsidies via federal insurance exchanges. Paul Krugman is already warning that a ruling along those lines would be an outrageous abuse of power. There sure is a lot of abuse of power going around! And once again, this problem would not occur under a parliamentary government. They would respond to any court ruling by simply fixing the language of the law."
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=28064
He then goes on to call Obama's immigration move as a win from both a utilitarian perspective and a libertarian perspective.
"As an aside, the immigration decision is a win from the utilitarian perspective. What I don’t see discussed very much is that it is also a win for libertarianism. It will create a small libertopia of about 5 million people right within the US. These people will be terrified of stealing things, for fear of deportation. But they will have little to fear if they don’t violate the property rights of others. They will no longer have to fear the INS—only the groups that all Americans fear (IRS, TSA, NSA, CIA, FBI, local police who need to seize more cash to finance their budgets, and all the other scary groups out there.) And they will have to work to survive–no relying on welfare benefits. That’s not a pure libertopia, but it’s pretty close. In no other time or place did you have legal gay marriage, legal pot, and no welfare. Not even Holland. And yet (formerly) illegal alien communities in many western states will now face that policy regime. I wish them good luck."
I'm not a libertarian at least not economically-though politically here on immigration I certainly am. In a perfect world I'd rather they had access to welfare benefits. By the way who does Sumner claim is surviving by not working but just sitting back relying on welfare benefits? No one in our country. Food stamps have never been a princely sum and the GOP has mericlessly cut and cut it the last 4 years. Anyway you cant live off food stamps alone-for starters you have to actually live somewhere. He loves to obscure this point: there is no one who doesn't have at least one of the two following who is relying purely on welfare benefits to live:
1. A woman with kids
2. Someone with a legally verificiable disability.
He loves to use the phrase 'welfare benefits' without identifying what these are. In fact the only meaningful welfare is TANF-again available only to women with kids. It makes sense for conservatives to do this as most Americans tell the pollsters they hate welfare but then don't want to cut any actual programs.
However, this is ideal. I get that Obama had to make sure they wouldn't be eligible for welfare-meager though it is-as a sop to quell any political outrage over more 'welfare queens.' I do agree with most of the rest of Sumner's paragraph and if this welfare clause makes him like it more maybe Obama wrote this right-as many get all worked up over 'handouts.' I agree that it's a good thing that they have a high incentive not to engage in theft or crime.
P.S.S. I do like the sound of a parliamentary system. Just because it would get rid of the thing I hate more than anything right now about U.S. politics: constant gridlock. That's why I love what Obama did: basically Congress has abdicated it's role so the President must act.
I'm sure any debate on the virtues of a parliamentary vs. 'separations of powers system' has more to it than this. I'm only looking at one aspect-that our SoP system leads to gridlock. Overall, it's tough to argue that Britain is anywhere close to a utopia right now, so it's not a panacea. There may be many other virtues in the SoP not being considered right now. Plus, it's not as if our system has always been this bad-it's mostly been since around 1993 when the GOP who had felt entitled to the Presidency for evermore simply had a 8 year temper tantrum because they lost.
Still to get rid of gridlock would make things a lot less frustrating than they are now. I don't want to rule out parliamentary government too quickly; obviously in reality it's probably impossible to actually make the change legally and politically speaking.
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