LOWDOWNRoberts. Alito. Kennedy. Scalia. Thomas. Memorize these names!

Why are we letting corporate Supremists steal our democracy from us?

VOLUME 13 NUMBER 8 ! AUGUST 2011

E D I T E D B Y J I M H I G H T O WE R A N D P H I L L I P FRA Z E R

The

recurring theme in the strip was a two-player baseball com-petition in which both the kid and the tiger simply made upthe rules as they went. In one strip, Calvin has hit the ballthrown by Hobbes,and he’s scampering

toward home plate:Calvin: Ha Ha! A home run!Hobbes:You didn’t touch allthe bases!Calvin: I did, too.Hobbes: No, you didn’t. Youdidn’t touch seventh base.Calvin:Yes, I did! I touched the water barrel right after the front porch.Hobbes:That’s not seventhbase. That’s twelfth base!Calvin: I thought the garagedoor was twelfth.Hobbes:The garage door is twenty-third base. Youtouched them all out of order,and you didn’t touch the secretbase.Calvin:The secret base?? What’s the secret base?!Hobbes: I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.

That exchange between a six-year-old and a stuffed tiger pretty well sums up the nonsensical political gamesmanship being playedout today by the five-man lineup of corporatists on the Supreme Court: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony

Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. They are on an un-restrained ideological tear, making up their own rules to score bigpoints for corporate power. Reasoning? Try twenty-third base!Precedent? Throw it out! History? Rewrite it! The Constitution? Slide by it! Judicial restraint? Only for liberals! Logic? That’s a secret! The rule of law? The law is us!

Only, this isn’t a game. Barely six years into Roberts’ tenure, he and his narrow majority have thoroughly politicized the Court. The one branch of our national government that was intentionallydesigned by the Founders to set the rule of law above politics hasbeen turned into another political front group to advance corporaterule. The Constitution granted life tenure to the justices specificallyso they could feel free to stand up to wealthy wrongdoers—particu-larly those avaricious business schemers who wanted to endangerthe people’s rule by establishing, as Jefferson put it, “the aristocracyof our moneyed corporations.“

Hiding under robesIn case after case, the five

hard-core Republicans of theRoberts Court have been chop-ping furiously at the hard-earnedlegal rights of workers, con-sumers, voters, and others whodare to challenge the power ofbig business elites to reign overus, both politically and econom-ically. There has been way toolittle public attention focused on (much less a sustained politi-cal challenge to) what hasbecome a spectacular abuse of government power. A sur-vey last year by the Pew Centerfound that nearly three-fourthsof Americans have no idea whoJohn Roberts is. Eight percentnamed Thurgood Marshall as

the chief justice (and I certainly wish he was, even though he’s beendead for 18 years).

It’s not that the public is stupid, but that the Court deliberatelyhides itself. No C-SPAN or other television cameras are allowed,even in the relatively few times the justices convene in public ses-sion. The bulk of the justices’ official policy-making work takes place

A

BILL WATTERSON IS MARK TWAIN——with a drawing pen.He is a master cartoonist, but also a sharp-witted observer of the absurd, with an impish sense of humor. From 1985-1995,Watterson penned “Calvin and Hobbes,” the truly marvelous comic strip that featured six-year-old Calvin andhis stuffed tiger Hobbes. In Calvin’s inventive and iconoclas-tic mind, Hobbes was a genuine tiger (and his best friend)and they shared boundless adventures that challenged con-ventional thinking and defied authority, often crashing rightthrough the prescribed social order of the ‘real’ world.

{{||

Leveling the playing field cansound like a good thing. But in a democracy, campaigning for

office is not a game.—— Chief Justice John Roberts, fumbling a sports

metaphor in a June ruling that does, indeed, tilt the political field to assure that corporate-backed players win the crucial money game.

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behind closed doors. They practically never have pressconferences or give interviews, and some have evenrefused to let the media cover their ‘public’ speeches.

Curiously, mass media outlets show little journal -istic curiosity about the doings of this tiny but enor-mously powerful third branch of our national govern-ment. If Obama so much as sneezes, newscastersand pundits are all over it, and hordes of reporters and analysts constantly poke into the back rooms and dark corridors of Congress. Yet, nine black-robedmandarins—with the power to overturn the decisionsof the two elected branches, as well as decisions bystate governments and even of the voting public—sit in splendid obscurity in an imposing, white marblebunker, periodically tossing out rulings that essen- tially make law.

When the mass media do cover the Court (usuallyonly when a new justice is named or a major edict ishanded down), the reporting is superficial, even lazy.Two months ago, for example, the New York Timesran an “analysis” of decisions in the 2010-2011 term,concluding that the hallmark of the Roberts Court is“defending free speech.” Never mind that it is cor-porate speech that they have radically enhanced, tothe detriment of your voice and mine. But the Timesdidn’t probe.

It’s time for you and me to probe, because theRoberts-Alito-Kennedy-Scalia-Thomas cabal is openlyaligning itself with the all-out political push by such far-right billionaires as the Koch brothers to impose acorporate plutocracy over America (see February 2010and June 2011Lowdowns). “Come on, Hightower,” youmight say, “such learned jurists wouldn’t be engagedin such extremism.” Oh? Remember Bush v. Gore inDecember 2000? In that case, five justices abruptlyshoved their way into totally unprecedented, overtlypartisan territory to dictate who would be America’spresident. With no need to do so, they imperiouslyinterrupted a recount of the people’s vote in Florida,usurped jurisdiction from state courts, invented a legal theory out of thin air, and arbitrarily seated cor-porate-favorite George W in the White House.

This was so far beyond the bounds of the Court’srole, such an arrogant act of magisterial extremism,that none of the usurpers were willing to claim thedecision as their own. None put their name on theopinion. Also, in an extraordinary confession, the opin-ion itself concedes its legal shoddiness by saying thatit’s a one-of-a-kind decision that should not be cited asa precedent for any other case. Tellingly, it hasn’t been.

Eleven years later, three of those five Bush v. Gorejudicial extremists—Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas—are still on the bench, forming a solid core of today’scorporate cabal.

Also, while it’s not widely known, Roberts himselfwas a key member of Bush’s election-stealing team in Florida. A protégé of Republican attack dog KennethStarr, Roberts was a corporate lawyer in Washington

at the time (becoming a multimillionaire by helpingsuch clients as Big Coal defend the abominable min-ing method of mountaintop removal). He was flown toFlorida to polish legal briefs and do a dress rehearsalto prepare Bush’s lead lawyer for getting the Supremesto seize the election for the Republican.

In 2005, George W returned the favor by entrust-ing the top spot on the nation’s highest Court to thisradical corporate activist. With the addition of Alito in 2006, Corporate America had its slim ideologicalmajority in place.

Not only did pro-corporate decisions begin to flow,but the cabal also became brazen about its alliancewith the right-wing Republican network that’s nowpushing aggressively in Washington, state capitals,and all of America’s courts to rewrite laws so an “aris-tocracy of our moneyed corporations” can rise abovethe American people’s democratic rights and authority.Jeff Shesol, author of Supreme Power (a history ofFDR’s fight with the Court), wrote a June New YorkTimes op-ed about this “flurry of judicial fraterniza-tion,” warning that it threatens to destroy the Court’scredibility as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.Here’s a sampling of their fraternization:

In 2010, Scalia was a featured partici-pant in the Koch brothers’ annual politi-cal retreat, joining assorted billionairesand GOP operatives as they plottedstrategy and raised money for defeat-ing Democrats. And this January,when tea party Republicans marchedtriumphantly into Washington to taketheir seats in Congress, they were

welcomed by Scalia, who presented a constitutionaltutorial to the newly minted partisans.

In 2008 and 2010, Alito lent hissupreme prestige to the fund-raisingefforts of the right-wing, anti-Democrat mag, American Spectator.He served as chief draw and keynotespeaker at the group’s 2008 fund-raiser, where he regaled wealthy fun-ders with Joe Biden jokes. In 2009,he headlined a fundraiser for theKoch-backed Intercollegiate Studies Institute (whichboasts the right-wing video trickster and criminalactivist James O’Keefe among its alumnae). Also, in 2010, Alito was the chief sparklie at a high-dollarevent for the Koch-funded Manhattan Institute.

Thomas, too, has put his judicial impri-matur on the Koch boys’ annual pluto-cratic political gathering. He addressedtheir 2008 getaway at a Palm Springsresort, apparently enjoying four daysthere on the tab of the Koch-fundedFederalist Society. He also is closelytied to the Heritage Foundation, which

CEOS HIDE PAYCHECKSTOP EXECUTIVES OF suchcorporate giants asAmerican Airlines, IBM,General Mills, Lowe’s, andMcDonald’s have a secret,and—shhhhhh—they’relobbying in Congress to keepit from you and me. Whatthey don’t want us to know is that CEO pay is a whole lotmore—mucho, mucho more—than they dole out to theirtypical worker.

Oh, you knew that already?Of course corporate bosseshave not exactly been shyabout stuffing their pockets,but what most people don’tknow is just how outrageousthe income gap has become.

A new provision in lastyear’s financial reform law,however, requires majorcorporations to report annu-ally on this pay disparity.Corporate chiefs know justhow infuriating these num-bers will be to their down-sized employees, and howimmoral they will seem tomany consumers, investors,and the general public.Hence, their rush toCongress.

As usual, Republican lawmakers have greeted the poor rich executiveswith open arms, soothingtheir fevered brows with a hush-up bill to repeal thedisclosure provision, let-ting the execs keep theirdirty little secret from us.Rep. Nan Hayworth, theGOP’s point person on thispiece of plutocratic pamper-ing, resorted to absurdity to rationalize the repeal,asserting that comparingpaychecks would “confuseinvestors.”

Bovine excrement! Such savvy investors as the Sisters of Charity of theBlessed Virgin Mary havebeen leading the charge forpaycheck comparisons.What’s truly confusing isthat Republican lawmakers are so willing to exposethemselves publicly asshameless corporate butt kissers.

|2 Hightower Lowdown August 2011

DoSomething!" Brennan Center for Justice: www.brennancenter.org" Common Cause: www.commoncause.org" Free Speech for People: freespeechforpeople.org" Move to Amend: movetoamend.org

" People for the American Way: www.pfaw.org" Public Campaign: www.publicampaign.org" Public Citizen: www.citizen.org" Think Progress: thinkprogess.org

Several public interest organizations and grassroots groups are challenging the corporatization of the Court. For information and action, check out these:

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is richly financed by the Kochs. In 2009, he was thefeatured draw at a fundraiser for the group, whichoften takes part in Supreme Court cases—and whichemployed Thomas’ wife, Ginny, from 2003-2007, pay-ing her $686,000 that the justice “inadvertently omit-ted” from his financial disclosure filings. In addition,Thomas is corruptly entangled with Dallas real estatebillionaire and right-wing political funder Harlan Crow.Even though Crow’s financial and political interests aredirectly affected by the high court’s rulings, Thomashas been injudiciously accepting a steady flow of giftsfrom the tycoon, including: a $175,000 donation fromCrow to a Georgia library project dedicated to Thomas;a $2.8 million gift for an historic preservation projectbeing developed under Thomas’ supervision near hischildhood home; and a $500,000 donation to Thomas’wife, Ginny, last year so she could start a tea party lobbying and political group (which, by the way, takesan aggressive partisan stance on legal questions thatwill soon come up for Justice Thomas’ consideration,including Obama’s health care law).

Good grief! Is there no code of ethics outlawingsuch rank conflicts of interest for federal judges? Yes.But, conveniently, Supreme Court justices have beenexempted from the code.

Soiling clean electionsThe Lowdown has periodically exposed the Court’s

slaphappy extremism and its make-up-the-rulesactivism as found in such now-infamous cases asCitizens United (see Sept. 2009, March 2010, and Feb.2011 issues). In that 2010 ruling, using contorted lan-guage that even Orwell could not have dreamed up,the five actually re-wrote the laws of nature, decree-ing that lifeless corporate entities are “persons” witha constitutional right to “speak” in every Americanelection. These necromancers then invented a “voice”for corporate-speak: money. They ruled that top exec-utives of these inanimate for-profit constructs are entitled to spend unlimited sums of corporate cash(money that belongs to shareholders, not to them) to run secretly funded campaigns for or against any-one they choose.

Interestingly, none in this bloc of five has ever run for office, much less won. So they have no real-life experience with the way big money suffocatesdemocracy, both in politics and in the close confinesof government decision-making. Worse, all of them

express an uncommonly deep contempt for a trulydemocratic process, in which the people would reignover corporations, allowing grassroots human endeavorand ideas to trump the blunt force of money.

They really should talk to their shrinks about thispsychosis. But, meanwhile, they keep working outtheir contempt on us, not only by jacking up the cloutof corporate players, but also by slapping down grass-roots efforts to give people power a path around theever-rising money barrier:

2006. Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia,and Thomas vote to overturn limitsthat the people of Vermont placed oncampaign contributions.

2007. The same five throw outWisconsin’s effort to keep corpora-tions from swamping their electionswith last-minute ad blitzes.

2008. The same five strike down the “millionaire’samendment,” a part of the McCain-Feingold electionfinance reform passed by Congress in 2002; this pro-vision had allowed candidates who were confrontedby self-financed millionaire opponents to raise moremoney than otherwise allowed in order to level theplaying field. June 27, 2011. The same five kill the “matching funds” provision ofArizona’s Citizens Clean ElectionsAct—a provision that was key tomaking the state’s extremely pop-ular and successful public financingsystem work.

The Arizona ruling was a stingingslap in the face to the conscientious citizens of that state. Arizonans have labored diligently to free their politics from the corruption of big money,while also opening the possibility of holding office to those who don’t have piles of money or don’t wantto be beholden to those who do. Nauseated in the1990s by an epidemic of gubernatorial and legislativescandals, the people themselves launched a grass-roots initiative to get the democracy-destroying cor-rosion of special-interest political contributions out of their elections. In 1998, Arizona voters emphati-cally said, “yes.”

Their Clean Elections Act established a voluntarypublic financing system that gave office-seekers of

August 2011 Hightower Lowdown 3| GOLDMAN JOBS TO SINGAPOREGOLDMAN SACHS keepsstriving to give greed a badname. It was a major playerin designing the taxpayerbailout of Wall Street, get-ting $10 billion for itself anduntold billions more in back-door subsidies from theFederal Reserve. You mightrecall that the public ration-ale for this government res-cue of private banks wasthat they would then havethe capital to invest in jobcreating enterprises.Instead, they took themoney and ran, leavingAmerica’s workaday fami-lies mired in a joblessswamp with no relief insight. Meanwhile, Goldmanquickly returned to payingoutlandish, multimillion dollar bonuses to its topmucky-mucks.

Now, to add insult andeven more injury to the dam-age it has done to our econ-omy, the banking giant hasquietly informed about athousand of its US employ-ees that their jobs are beingshifted to Singapore, wherecheaper bank employeesare available. This stiffing ofAmerica comes at a timewhen Goldman is piling uprecord profits, including$2.7 billion it raked in duringjust the first three months ofthis year. Perhaps the bankneeds extra money to paybigger executive bonuses.

Goldman has, however,made one new Americanhire as part of its US jobretrenchment plan. FormerRepublican Sen. JuddGregg has joined the GoodShip Goldman as an “inter-national advisor.” With 26years in Congress, Greggcan help steer the bankthrough any political tem-pest stirred up by Goldman’slatest act of greed.Presumably, he’ll be able torally his old GOP colleaguesin the Senate. After all, theyvoted unanimously last yearto save a tax break thathelps corporations shiftAmerican jobs overseas.

LOWDOWNThe

EDITORS: Jim Hightower, Phillip FrazerRESEARCH: Laura Ehrlich CIRCULATION: John ErnstCOPY WIZ: Cody Garrett ILLUSTRATOR: Brian Duffy

DESIGN: Sahu Barron INTERWEB EMISSARY: Deanna ZandtPUBLISHER: Phillip Frazer

The Hightower Lowdown (ISSN 1524-4881) is publishedmonthly by Public Intelligence Inc., 375 South End Ave#14P New York NY 10280. ©2011 in the United States.Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY. Subscriptions: 1 year, $15; 2 years, $27. Add $8/year for Mexico orCanada; add $12/year for overseas airmail. Back issues $2postpaid. Allow 4-6 weeks for receipt of first issue and forall subscription transactions. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to: The Hightower Lowdown, P.O. Box 20596, NewYork, NY 10011.Moving? Missed an issue? Call our subscription folks toll-free at (866) 271-4900 or write lowdown@pipeline.com.Send us fan mail or hate mail at: P.O. Box 20596, New York,NY 10011 or editors@hightowerlowdown.org.Printed with 100% union labor on 100% recycled paper.

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all parties and all economic classes an alternative, no-strings-attached way to finance their campaigns.By agreeing not to take any special interest contribu-tions, these candidates received a fixed sum of publicmoney—enough for them to be com-petitive under normal campaign con-ditions and have their voices heard.However, abnormal happens. So, ifclean-running contenders found theirvoices being drowned out by a flood ofspecial interest cash flowing to a rival,the “matching funds” provision allowedthem to get a limited level of extramoney from the public fund to helpcounter the free-spending opponent’sunfair advantage.

It is this matching mechanism thatthe mammon-worshipping Supremeswent after. Why? Because it works.Former Governor Janet Napolitano, forexample, says she could not have even considered running for Arizona’s top office without the availability of this funding alternative, but with itshe won two terms. A majority of all parties’ candi-dates use the Clean law, and it is enormously popularwith the public.

But the corporate powers hate, hate, hate it, for itdiminishes their political control. Having failed againand again to repeal it at the state level, they turned to the vipers nest of Koch-funded, right-wing policyfronts to find a way for the federal courts to inter-vene and do their dirty work. With support from theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council (see Feb. 2011Lowdown) and the Institute for Justice, this cliquedeveloped a perversely-novel theory of law, framed itinto a lawsuit, and had the Republican leader of thestate house, John McComish, sign on as plaintiff.

The Roberts quintet happily swallowed the per-verse legal theory fed to them in the case, known asArizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett. Turning bothcommon sense and the Constitution topsy-turvy, theCourt found—get this—that Arizona’s matching provi-sion gives cash-poor candidates an unfair advantageover those flush with money. Huh?

Well, explained the five, money speaks in politics,and the speech of the rich is inhibited if they know that their money-raising can result in “counterspeech”

from opponents. Corporatespeak, good; counters-peak, bad. In a twisted and overwrought opinion forthe majority, Alito wrote that public matching fundsimpose an “unprecedented penalty on any candidate

who robustly exercises [the FirstAmendment right to buy an election].”

Okay, I edited-in that last bit, butthat’s precisely what the Court’s major-ity (and the Koch brothers) are actuallysaying. Not only are they freeing bigmoney to shout as loud as it wants inour elections, but the Court has nowallowed the money interests to quashthe political speech of others.

The good news is that Roberts &Company only nixed the matching pro-vision, not the Clean Election Act itself.At least not yet. As Roberts wrote: “We do not today call into question thewisdom of public financing.”

Stop them before they rule againThese guys are a clear and present danger to

our democratic rights, not only in election cases, but also in a rising flood of upside-down economic rulings—including their shameful June decisioninvolving Walmart’s discrimination against womenemployees and their ridiculous ruling in April allowingAT&T to defraud customers. Both of these court opin-ions eviscerate the people’s right to hold corporationsaccountable by filing class-action lawsuits.

The Roberts Five are not objective and reasonedjudges. They are crass political operatives disguised in robes of authority, deliberately contorting the lawto transfer huge chunks of the people’s power to cor-porate suites.

Roberts. Alito. Kennedy. Scalia. Thomas. Memorize these names, for they are thieves. Put

their names and deeds into every political discussion.Spread their infamy. Distribute wanted posters! Make bumper stickers. Send emails and letters-to-the-editor. Chastise Republicans for coddling them,Democrats for doing nothing, and tea partiers for giving these ultimate Big Government authoritarians a pass. Go to the “Do Something” box on page twoand hook up with groups that are taking action.

It’s up to us.

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13:8 August2011

WHY ARE WE LETTING CORPORATESUPREMISTS STEAL OUR DEMOCRACY FROM US?CEOs hide paychecks......................... 2Goldman jobs to Singapore...............3The bluebird isn’t singing...................4

PERIODICALSCLASS

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THE BLUEBIRD ISN’T SINGINGECONOMISTS AND politi-cians keep their fingers onthe pulse of the Dow JonesAverage, feeling every tickin this narrow measure ofWall Street wealth.

But the truer indicator ofAmerica’s economic healthis in the Doug and DoreenJones Average—how areworkaday folks like Dougand Doreen doing? Theexperts say we’re in thethird year of recovery fromthe Great Recession, sosurely the bluebirds of happiness are chirpingagain in Jonesland. But, listen: silence.

The moneyed elites whocaused America’s disas-trous economic crash aredoing great. Since therecession ended in June2009, CEO pay is back in the stratosphere, corporateprofits have jumped up bynearly half, corporations aresitting on a record $2 trillionin cash, and the Dow JonesAverage has soared by 90percent, with nearly all ofthat gain being pocketed bythe wealthiest 10 percent ofAmericans who own morethan 80 percent of all stocksand bonds. The sounds youhear on Wall Street arecheers and the pop-pop-pop of champagne corks.

Yet, more than half ofAmericans say the reces-sion is still raging in their zipcodes, and nearly a third ofthem describe it as a fullblown depression.

In this ‘recovery,’ those atthe top of corporate Americaare eliminating hundreds ofthousands of jobs, knockingdown wages and benefits,and unleashing their lobby-ists on Washington andstate capitals to shredunemployment benefits,health care, education, jobtraining, worker rights, andother underpinnings ofAmerica’s middle class.

If a bluebird did show up in Doug and Doreen’s yardthese days, it wouldn’t bechirping—it’d be dinner.

|4 Hightower Lowdown August 2011

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These guys are a clear and present danger to our

democratic rights, not only in election cases, but also in a rising flood of upside-downeconomic rulings—includingtheir shameful June decision

involving Walmart’s discrimina-tion against women employees

and their ridiculous ruling in April allowing AT&T to defraud customers.

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