Oddly enough, this will not be called judicial activism:
The Supreme Court on Monday effectively upheld an Arizona program that aids religious schools, saying in a 5-to-4 decision that the plaintiffs had no standing to challenge it.
The program itself is novel and complicated, and allowing it to go forward may be of no particular moment. But by closing the courthouse door to some kinds of suits that claim violations of the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, the court’s ruling in the case may be quite consequential.
Justice Elena Kagan, in her first dissent, said the majority had laid waste to the doctrine of “taxpayer standing,” which allows suits from people who object to having tax money spent on religious matters. “The court’s opinion,” Justice Kagan wrote, “offers a road map — more truly, a one-step instruction — to any government that wishes to insulate its financing of religious activity from legal challenge.”
The decision divided the court along the usual ideological lines, with the other three more liberal members — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — joining the dissent.
The Arizona program gives taxpayers there a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit of up to $500 for donations to private “student tuition organizations.” The organizations are permitted to limit the scholarships they offer to schools of a given religion, and many of them do.
Of course, I have not been a lawyer for 23 years, so it would be wholly inappropriate for me to have an opinion on this matter. If I were, I would simply note that I am thrilled with the prospect of paying for people’s religious “educations” in the future. Thanks, right-wing hacks!
eemom
it’s getting ooooooold Cole…..
eemom
also too, remember how you parroted your buddy Glennzie about how Kagan was gonna move the Court to the right?
bwaaaahaaaaahaaaaa.
Judas Escargot
So met me get this straight: Taxing YOU to provide for health care and infrastructure? Teh Soc1alism.
Taxing ME so you can indoctrinate your sponge-brained offspring into believing in your particular choice of imaginary friend? Okie-dokie.
(IMO the ‘no standing’ argument is the tell here. They know there’s no valid argument to support their decision, so instead they take away your right to have the case heard).
mapaghimagsik
Counting down until there are exceptions so that “certain religions” don’t get the credit in 3..2..
jibeaux
It will be interesting to see whether they make any mention of this particular point of view when these guys inevitably discuss whether the ACA’s tax penalty is evil unconstitutional mandate lifeblood-sucking soshulism.
Dan
It seems that one more method of our Constitutional right of seeking redress is being throttled or strangled, yes?
eric
if you can deaden the sense of class division in society by creating other divisions the seemingly matter more to the lower classes, you can keep stealing their money forever. Now you may say that there will come a time of pitchforks and torches, but the current police apparatus will render it impotent. The Right turned all economic conflicts into misdirected social conflicts as to what is necessary for the Nation to flourish. Here, is another example. Turn questions of education into religio-moral questions and the right-wing masses wont question the underfunding of public education by their Galtian masters.
jibeaux
and by “point of view”, of course, I mean “what should be legally binding, extremely recent precedent” but I predict will play out somewhat differently. I don’t have my crystal ball handy, but I’m guessing some profound difference will be found between the concepts of a tax credit and a tax penalty.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Dan:
What makes you think you had that right in the first place? According to the Supremes, you never did. They’re just putting their foot down for all us silly proles that mistakenly thought we had that right.
maya
@mapaghimagsik: This will in no way be interpreted as a Supreme judicial green light for the 9/11 Mosque.
taylormattd
But my understanding is that Elena Kagan is an unqualified centrist, and that Obama stabbed us all in the back / threw us all under the bus / punched hippies by nominating her.
BR
Here’s an old post on it from mistermix:
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/05/10/let-the-speculation-begin/
wasabi gasp
Wish I could fast-forward this country twenty years so I could enjoy all the crazy while my legs still have some skedaddle left in ’em.
taylormattd
@eemom: Jinx.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@maya:
That’s because the courts will be hard at work denying Islam status as a ‘religion’ so it can be properly regulated to prevent that radical Creeping Sharia.
taylormattd
@BR: omg. “Slightly more qualified than Miers”. Ugh. I love how the fact that she was solicitor general is always swept under the rug as irrelevant.
Dan
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Some days I am that pessimistic and depressed. Some days I am more idealistic and optimistic. Sadly, those good days are now counted in hours and the bad ones in weeks.
Just Some Fuckhead
@taylormattd:
I remember you Obots swearing Kagan was a supergenius that could sway conservative members of the court over to her side.
eemom
@taylormattd:
it makes me absolutely insane — ok, more so than usual — to hear anyone compare Elena Kagan to Harriet Miers. That’s like comparing Laurence Tribe to….oh, say, Glenn Greenwald.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuckie! How nice of you to join us.
Oh, and bullshit. I NEVER said that.
taylormattd
@Just Some Fuckhead: bwahahahahaha.
In your delusional PUMA mind.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom:
Really? The way you talk out of both sides of yer mouth, I’d be careful with a declaration like that.
Bullsmith
Bush v. Gore struck down the idea that each citizen’s vote deserved to be counted. Citizens United put the politicians openly up for sale. Now the government can pick and fund religious education as it pleases.
The 2nd amendment’s secure. How many of the rest are even fully functional right now? The first amendment’s in absolute tatters.
Bob Loblaw
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yeah, I remember that too. She was going to be ever so charming and brilliant and bend Anthony Kennedy to her will.
Hmm, I’m beginning to think that every single person who ventures forth an opinion on supreme court nominees is completely and utterly full of shit. Every single one. Odd, that.
ruemara
The creator of my grassroots group think posting Obama pictures in FB is activism. She’s… a mature person. When you post things like this and we all wonder why we lose on issues, remember, the quality of the activism can often be astounding. I also include those who immediately use anything as a gripe against Obama.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Bob Loblaw:
How many times has she failed now?
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
ok then, since you love to research my prior comments and God knows you apparently never have anything better to do, here’s a little project: go find where I ever said that.
I did say on numerous occasions that Kagan is a brilliant woman and would be a solid liberal on the Court. Was I wrong about that? Or was asshole Glenn wrong in his stupid-ass slander?
John Cole
Poking you with a stick to start the freak show NEVER gets old. What, did you wait thirty whole seconds before reacting to this post?
Not that there is any chance in stopping your sophistry, I don’t remember ever “parroting” Glenn’s rhetoric, and what I remember Glenn arguing is that on certain issues, like, for example, executive power, she would be a shift to the right from the existing justice, John Paul Stevens. Additionally, his argument was that as Stevens was the standard bearer for the left flank, a move to the right was inevitable with the Kagan pick. I fail to see how this vote in any way confirms or refutes that speculation.
Not that that will stop you from screaming at the top of your lungs this entire thread.
goblue72
@Bob Loblaw: Who gives a shite? Y’all sound like a bunch of dorks whining on the Internet. So what if wild-assed claims were made? The only point of the entire enterprise was to get a left-leaning justice on the Supreme Court. Full stop. And that is an unmitigated win in the context of a Supreme Court that has gone “all-in” on partisan-ship since Bush v. Gore, and completely thrown judicial impartiality out the window ever since John “Watch Me Call My Balls” Roberts was appointed.
Brachiator
Where are the libertarians on this? Yeah, I know.
So, let’s see. Conservatives don’t want me to be able to pay for women to have abortions via my tax dollars. But they are happy to let me pay for children to learn about nonexistent invisible deities.
Got it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom:
No. I’m too busy to babysit you right now.
But you’ve laid down a clear pattern of bad faith statements in the past so I take whatever you say with a truckload of salt.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brachiator:
.. that forbid abortions thereby rendering them obsolete. Everyone wins!
nitpicker
Finally! Now I can start my madrassa!
eemom
@John Cole:
[whispering]
and he had ZERO basis for either of those claims.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
I don’t think you personally will be taxed to subsidize someone else’s religion, John, at least not until you’re older and can’t get anywhere without a scooter. Since raising taxes is against God’s will what will happen is that there will be spending cuts to make up the loss of revenue from the tax credit, so the people being “taxed” to subsidize religion will be disabled, working mothers, chronically ill, and so on. You have to admit, it’s brilliant; you can simultaneously have the state subsidize your favored religion while screwing the poor.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
that is very amusing coming from you, who are the veritable Platonic form of bad faith.
harokin
@jibeaux: That question is particularly interesting because Kennedy’s distinction between tax credits and expenditures basically follows the Obama Administration position laid out in its briefs.
This “partisan” and “activist” decision came out exactly the way Obama wanted it to.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom:
If you say so.
*beep beep beep beep*
taylormattd
@Just Some Fuckhead: And that failure, John Paul Stevens. He couldn’t convince the wingnut members of the court to not install Bush.
FAILURE!
I’ll protest these centrist failures by voting republican! That’ll learn ’em!
Just Some Fuckhead
@taylormattd: You are being ridiculous and overly defensive. Obots made a case for her persuasive skills in recruiting other justices to her side.
Stevens wasn’t up for nomination, having been nominated and confirmed in 1975.
ericblair
@harokin:
Could you expand a bit on this and its implications? I know it’s cutting into the time spent reading the eemom/JSF faecal matter exchange, but I’m willing to take the hit there.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Y’know, why doesn’t the rest of the court just go on vacation while letting Kennedy decide the cases based on the solid legal doctrine of “Quodam Ego Per Mea Lentacula Habui” as to whether he agrees with Scalia et al. on their argument based on “Quod Liberali Maximus Punget Est Superbum.”
The same as during 2008-2010, when Presidents Collins and Snowe could have decided what laws got passed while the rest of Congress went to the Hamptons
MonkeyBoy
@Brachiator:
As far as I can tell, Libertarians are opposed to any form of publicly funded education. However they see creating vouchers as a first step in eliminating education taxes.
Vouchers help
1) attack school unions
2) privatize education and allow the for-profit free-market to “work its magic”
3) Once all “proper” people have their kids in private schools, what remains of the public schools will be little more than prisons for the very poor or problem students.
4) Most all “proper” private schools will hardly be voucher supported but will also require additional parental payments.
5) The amount of taxes going to vouchers will steadily decrease winding up with the situation where private schools are almost entirely supported by their student’s parents.
Some of you may not know that in many areas of the country, particularly the South, that after desegregation all the “best” parents established private, usually religious, schools so their kids would not have to associate with lowlifes and darkies. In these regions basically the more private schools the worse the public schools are, and these are the regions where vouchers will will even further destroy public education.
4jkb4ia
Scotusblog:
So no one is paying for anyone else’s religion. It is simply that their tax dollars that are supposed to be paying for Medicaid, public safety, and so on are stretched so others can pay for their religion. Nothing to see here, just another day in right-wing fantasy.
(The state is subsidizing the schools by giving people a tax credit.)
AFAIK no one said that Kagan was moving the court to the right on separation of church and state issues.
Comrade Luke
Hey John, don’t know if you care, but for some reason when you (and only you) post something that has a multi-paragraph block quote, only the first paragraph is indented to signify it’s a quote when using an RSS reader (Google Reader in my case).
Again, when the other folks post the entire section they’re quoting is indented, but when you post only the first paragraph gets indented. Makes it hard to see what you’re quoting versus saying yourself.
Just thought I’d let you know in case no one else has.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Comrade Luke:
Separate paragraphs with two underscores (“__”) within the tags and that should keep them separate within the blockquote without the underscores themselves showing.
Matt
@jibeaux:
I’m more interested to see how the Teahadis and their Talibangelical allies square this “win” for them with their plans to prohibit using HSAs to pay for abortion services; the argument from the Right there is precisely what the court refuted here, that “spending tax-advantaged savings” is the same as “spending taxpayer dollars”…
Egypt Steve
Time to pack the court.
K-Thug once said it was time for Obama to find his inner FDR. Is there one? It is past time to turn it lose.
Comrade Luke
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
I’m not talking about *my* blockquotes, I’m talking about the blockquotes in John’s posts.
They show up as a uniform block quote in the post itself, but when you try to read his post in an RSS reader, only the first paragraph is indented.
4jkb4ia
@eemom:
You got a link to that? The last I heard from John on that nomination was that he had been through the hearings, had learned nothing, and was entirely confused.
lllphd
@Brachiator:
ah, dude; you made my point, exactly.
last time i checked, that damn sword of justice tends to cut both ways.
of course, assuming it’s applied even-handedly.
seriously, tho, i honestly wonder if any of the pro-choice folks are considering this angle.
Angry Black Lady
@eemom: zing!
mikkel
@John Cole: No John, this clearly invalidates everything that Glenn has ever written. Even this part:
Of course then he goes on to say that it’s unclear how much she’s willing to fight when it matters, but obviously he was totally wrong and this proves it.
ericblair
@Matt:
Consistency is for soshalist-Islamo-communi-fascists. Why do you hate America?
eemom
@mikkel:
Pro choice and gay equality? Boy, he sure went out on a limb there. And to think that bold prognistication proved to be true.
Mark S.
I don’t know, how is this different from a deduction for a charitable contribution to a religious organization? Granted, it’s a tax credit and not a deduction, but does that matter?
Nylund
This makes me want to start a program exactly identical in all ways, except its a muslim school. Who wants to take a guess at how the wingnuts would react to this?
harokin
@ericblair: I could get 11th dimensional about it, but I think at base this is just an administration that, like every other administration, wants to limit the ability of citizens to challenge their policies in court.
harokin
@Egypt Steve: Except that Obama agrees entirely with this decision and thinks Kagan is just wrong.
taylormattd
@mikkel: Yeah sure. He was fair-n-balanced in these parts of the post too:
Citizen_X
@lllphd:
Aye, there’s the rub. I have a sneaking suspicion that the sword will only cut 4-5 the other way. So, no dice.
4jkb4ia
In fact, here is John’s post when Kagan was confirmed: “blank slate”–“I guess we’ll know if Obama made the right call in a couple of years”. These are not exactly the words of someone tearing his garments over the rule of law.
And yes, John can take care of himself.
FlipYrWhig
IIRC the fight about Kagan, and, before that, Sotomayor, was always about “executive power” issues, not liberal vs. conservative. To someone like Glenn Greenwald, the idea that someone would be a liberal and yet embrace a wide-ranging view of executive power is both predictable and lamentable, because he doesn’t think much of many self-described liberals and he REALLY REALLY CARES about executive power and civil liberties, more so than he cares about most other political issues. I don’t look at politics that way, so I find Greenwald frustrating, and I find John’s Greenwaldian moments frustrating. But the dispute wasn’t “Kagan isn’t a liberal,” or, if it was, it shouldn’t have been; the dispute was “Kagan isn’t to my liking on issues of civil liberties and executive power.”
(The “isn’t a liberal” criticism that should feel very dopey now is the many, many blogosphere slings and arrows cast at Kirstin Gillibrand.)
ETA: Some of the critiques in the Taibbi vein about Obama work similarly. It’s not that his administration isn’t “liberal,” it’s that it’s liberal while also being overly beholden to capital and finance interests. That’s not exactly a left vs. right critique. Neither is Greenwald’s.
Shinobi
I attended an excellent religious college prep school that in many ways made me the well rounded intelligent woman I am today. So while some religious schools are terrible (and yes the sex ed left something to be desired) they all are not. And it was not a recently founded school to help escape desegregation, it was founded in 1833 by catholic missionaries moving west.
HOWEVER, I don’t have kids, but I pay for schools. I don’t get a tax credit for paying taxes to support other people’s kids going to school. If I DID have kids and I CHOSE to send them to private school I would expect to continue to pay the full cost of their tuition in addition to my taxes. That’s the deal, that’s how it works.
El Cid
Jeesh, I don’t think anyone (well, anyone I read or heard) was arguing that Kagan would “pull the court to the right” etc. they meant that she would vote ultra-far right every single time.
I didn’t have a strong opinion on the matter, though that suggestion of criticism above also makes some sense.
It’s being discussed here as if a more liberal dissent is disproof of anyone’s argument about some generalization about how some non-strongly-liberal judge would make the court overall more conservative.
It’s not proof for that argument, either.
What’s more important is that the Supreme Court is following the principles of our Founding Father Gods in urging citizens to give tax money to religious organization-backed institutions.
Anything else is tyranny. Atheistic Muslim communism.
Brachiator
@Mark S.:
Well let’s see. I can get a deduction for a charitable donation I make to my church, the Church of Atheist Jesus. You can get a deduction for a donation you make to your church. Seems fair and equitable.
I can get a deduction for a donation I make to a religious organization that does non religious charitable work.
In both cases, I’m getting a tax break for money I voluntarily give to a church or charitable organization.
So far, so good.
These tax credits take taxpayer dollars and give them to religious schools for a particular, religious purpose, religious education. Right here we are smacking up against the establishment cause. The gummint is directly supporting religion.
On top of it, my money is directly going to religious schools whose beliefs I may object to, but which also might not even allow me to join if I wanted to, or which might have some onerous bar preventing admission.
This stinks. This stinks to high heaven.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Shinobi: I don’t know if you have noticed, but there is a strong alliance between political organizations and religions to target gays. I don’t care if some religious schools aren’t bad, so long as they teach that homosexuality is a sin, I don’t want to pay for it. I don’t want to pay for them to teach people to fucking hate me and to keep pooling together to solve the “gay problem” in the midst of so many real problems. The fact of the matter is that no matter how far it seems like society has come, when it has come to a vote for gay rights, supermajorities are against them. Courts and legistlatures get overturned – generally by a lot of good religious people who want to “protect traditional marriage”. Guess who’s teaching them that?
Barb (formerly Gex)
Fuck. I’m a gay atheist minority woman who is liberal. I fear that I’m the first to get burned at the stake during the next Inquisition.
Cermet
Thank god or is that now dog? for the inferior court – Osama Bin Laden is celibrating the true victory – dog … I mean god will now be supported by taxpayers. Shia is here.
FlipYrWhig
@Cermet:
LeBoeuf?
AhabTRuler
@FlipYrWhig:
No, thank you, I gave it up for Lent.
les
@Mark S.:
Point; and since many religious schools are smart enough to lower tuition for parents who make (tax deductible) contributions to the church, the Arizona law does nothing new. We’ve all been paying for big sky daddy education for ever, through property and income taxes–AZ is just marginally more blatant.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Brachiator: There are no libertarians in America. There are only glibertarian grifters and freemarket boggarts.
When are you going to accept that we don’t live in a Martin Luther King nation, we live in a Martin Luther nation.
That dude was only about the other guy’s church being separated from the state, not his.
fasteddie9318
This became a discussion about Kagan…why, exactly? Because all we do around this place anymore is assemble circular firing squads?
Just Some Fuckhead
@fasteddie9318:
It should be pretty obvious that eemom wanted to dig into the facts and actually reflect on the situation instead of listening to John parrot the same old tired conventional wisdom.
If you could simply isolate her comments from the drek around it, you would surely see this.
Tax Analyst
@Mark S.:
A deduction for charitable contribution only reduces taxable income.
A Tax Credit is a dolllar-for-dollar reduction in the eventual tax that is derived by applying the applicable Tax Rate to the Taxable Income.
Example: Let’s say I have a single AZ resident t/p who earned 40K in wages in 2010. He has itemized deductions of $1,500 in State Income taxes and $8K in mortgage interest. His AZ taxable income is $26,100 at this point, and his AZ tax liability is $728 at this point. If I throw in a $1,000 charitable donation his AZ taxable income becomes $25,100 and his AZ tax liability on that is $694. So that $1,000 deduction only allows a $34 benefit for AZ purposes.
The effect of a dollar-for-dollar credit would depend on whether it was refundable or non-refundable
If refundable it would reduce the $728 tax liability to zero and then the remainder of the $1,000 would generate a refund of $272.
If the credit was non-refundable it would reduce the liabiliity to “0”. Non-refundable credits can only bring tax liability down to nothing, they cannot generate a refund.
Hope this clarifies the difference between “deductions” and “tax credits”.
Mark S.
@Tax Analyst:
Yeah, but is there a difference constitutionally? If Arizona was just giving a deduction for these contributions to these “private student tuition organizations”, would that be all right?
Bob
Hey, it’s called money laundering. If we try that kind of thing we go to jail. If the state tries it to circumvent the constitution, not a problem. More confidence building in our justice system.
Ronzoni
Barbara Tuchman, in “The March of Folly,” finds John Adams lamenting “the corrupt politics [of the British], the vice, the gap between the “Wealth, Magnificence and splendour” of the rich and the “extreme Misery and distress of the Poor … amazing on the one hand and disgusting on the other.” Adams concluded, when government rested on purchased support, true political liberty was … dead ….
Funny, Americans knew this in 1770. Lordy, lordy, what’s happened to us?
ItAintEazy
The hits just keep on coming for the Supremos:
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@ItAintEazy:
On the bright side, after the wrongful executions, Jesus will make it all better for the wrongfully executed, so any mistake will be rectified.
Isn’t Christianism a grand faith? There’s always a mulligan for every life crushing fuck up.
Bill Johnson
Well, it’s only fair – I’ve paid for your ‘religious’ views to be indoctrinated into my children for 50 years now.
What, you don’t see it that way? So what…
Ija
I haven’t been reading the comments in a while, first time back, and what do you know? Another thread devoted to eemom and his/her issues. God. I need to stop reading the comments again. Too boring and tedious, this.