After exposing Clarence Thomas for accepting hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow a while back, ProPublica is out with another bombshell report on the corrupt conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court. Samuel Alito is in the barrel this time for accepting an unreported luxury Alaskan fishing trip on the dime of GOP megadonor and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer:
Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.
In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion…
In light of that hefty return, Singer’s investment in Alito’s stay at a fishing lodge for the rich and famous is a pitifully small bribe. No wonder he’s a hedge fund billionaire.
Before publishing their story, ProPublica gave Alito a chance to respond. He ignored them and published a whiny rebuttal in the WSJ instead, where he claims that he didn’t even know this rich fishing guy owned those hedge fund thingies, okay? Also, he wasn’t obligated to report the trip because shut up, that’s why.
Here’s a WSJ gift link if you’re interested in Alito’s snippy obfuscations and huffy denials. But you can get the flavor of it by recalling his outraged sotto voce “not true!” exclamation during President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, after Obama correctly predicted the court’s corrupt Citizens United ruling would “open the floodgates for special interests.”
When he’s busted publicly, Alito blusters and demands deference. It’s a tell. More from ProPublica:
Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.
“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet…
Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.
Read the ProPublica piece for much, much more, including a brief account of a third GOP megadonor who hosted Alito and Scalia on separate Alaska trips more than 15 years ago at a luxury commercial fishing lodge. The common thread is Federalist Society major domo Leonard Leo.
Leo is the pimp in this long-term vice operation that subverts a branch of the U.S. government, peddling corrupt conservative judges to GOP megadonor sugar daddies. It’s gross, and everyone who is involved should resign, but they won’t. I’m not sure if the Dems on the judiciary committee can turn up the heat on this scandal since their majority depends on the precarious health of an 89-year-old senator.
At least we know about it, thanks to ProPublica’s old-fashioned shoe leather reporting. I threw them a few quid to thank them. They take donations here if you’re interested.
Open thread.
dmsilev
I think my favorite part was Alito whining in the WSJ that the seat in the private plane he rode on would just have been vacant and it would have been a real waste to just let that go so really he was doing the responsible thing by accepting a ride.
Jerzy Russian
Yes, that piece in ProPublica was pretty damming. In most Earth analogues scattered throughout the multiverse, Alito would have been driven out long ago, or not even seated in the first place. Since we can’t travel between the various multiverses, we will have to make due with Obama’s Time Machine: someone needs to go back in time to change the party affiliation on Alito’s voter registration card to “Democrat”. Once this is done, normal standards will retroactively be applied to him.
Old School
Sounds like there has a been a lot of them.
Anyway
Earlier this year Leo and his corrupt society received a 2 BILLION gift from yet another GQP sugar-daddy/mega donor… we (um, they) have too many billionaires
lowtechcyclist
I think that if the Dems retake the House next November, they should impeach Thomas and Alito in 2025. While it goes without saying that the Senate won’t convict, just as they didn’t convict Trump, this needs to be done.
Amir Khalid
If Justices of the Supreme Court are not subject to any internal disciplinary system, who has the authority to police them? The answer surely cannot be “no one”.
lowtechcyclist
@Anyway:
Damned straight! That 90% top income tax rate was one thing right about the 1950s.
Elizabelle
Think the story is going to have legs. We need to go after some resignations, and pound Leonard Leo back into the hole he emerged from.
Expand the Court to 13. We are not safe with this illegitimate, corrupt configuration.
Yes, this will take patience and a lot of hard work. But the rightwing laser beam focused in on this for years, and we have to meet their focus.
Jerzy Russian
@dmsilev: I think this is a side effect of the writers strike. The regular writers of our timeline are out on strike, and the replacement writers are frankly not that good.
Old Man Shadow
Be as brazen of a group of hacks as you can possibly be. Really rub people’s noses in it.
It’ll make it that much easier whenever we can get a pack of Democrats in Congress who want to reform the courts.
Old School
@Amir Khalid:
In theory, Congress can. In practice, it seems unlikely that’ll happen.
Manyakitty
@Amir Khalid: and yet…
The Moar You Know
Alito is the worst piece of trash sitting in the Court and yes I’m including Justice Thomas.
ETA: at this point I’d like to see all the sitting Justices get the ProPublica treatment, “good” ones too, because it is obvious that the Supreme Court has become the last bastion of open pay-to-play bribery in the nation.
lowtechcyclist
@Amir Khalid: Absent impeachment by the House and removal by a 2/3 vote of the Senate, yes, the answer is ‘no one.’
I’m not sure what can be done about this. If some easier means of sanctioning or removal is created, we can count on the Rethugs to abuse it the moment they control Congress.
Chris T.
So, using the $100k figure each way and putting in a bit more for misc expenses, Singer “paid” $240,000 or just under a quarter million bucks, and:
That’s a 1000-to-1 return!
narya
@Elizabelle: Markey introduced/is about to introduce a bill to that effect. He was on Chris Hayes last night. Unfortunately, he was kinda garbled in his speaking–all over the place a lot of the time, instead of focused.
Steeplejack
Definitely donate to ProPublica. I do so occasionally and just threw in a few more bucks.
Omnes Omnibus
Again, during my short tenure as an state level ALJ, I recused myself from a case because counsel for one of the parties was married to a teacher who worked with and was friends with my mother. Probably overkill, but that’s the fucking point. If there is any doubt, recusal is the right thing to do.
cmorenc
@The Moar You Know: I OTOH would give Thomas the slight edge as “most corrupt” because his shrewish far-right political activist wife Ginny is literally in bed with him 24/7, and not merely on exotic vacations paid for by billionaires with business before the court.
Redshift
@Amir Khalid: In addition to impeachment, Congress has the power to investigate and impose regulations on the Supreme Court, and has many times in the past, no matter what Roberts thinks. (Weird how “originalism” doesn’t apply to that, huh?)
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: We need to win more seats in Congress and the senate to make that possible.
Layer8Problem
Pimp is such an ugly word. Operating at the level he’s at let’s call Leo “the concierge of corruption,” with a tip of the hat to James Spader’s Blacklist character.
Redshift
@Chris T.: The always-surprising thing about GOP officials is not that they’re for sale, but that the price is so cheap.
206inKY
Thank you for emphasizing ProPublica’s role in this reporting.
The WaPo placed their Alito article right before a hit piece on the Teamsters, with just about the most anti-union headline possible (“This Teamsters president has big plans to stop your UPS deliveries in August”), and sold a bunch of adjacent advertising to UPS to hype its pay and benefits.
Edmund dantes
Definitely time for us to form a blue ribbon panel to figure out just what might be done. Cause no one ever saw this coming and thought hey maybe this is something we should plan for the next time we get in power.
Elizabelle
@narya: Yes. And I think we can motivate voters with Expand to 13. They saw what happened with the Dobbs decision, and how the USSC is ready to strike down other important civil and societal protections.
Leonard Leo is not going to look so good in the spotlight.
Elizabelle
@Edmund dantes: oh shut up
David Anderson
@Redshift: Make all Justices nominated by Presidents who received ever received less popular votes than an opponent to work from the Washington DC Greyhound bus station without any funds to hire clerks.
West of the Rockies
@cmorenc:
His wife is grotesque, but he should not be exonerated because an evil woman made him make bad choices. He is clearly a toxic adult male all on his own.
Ken
You’d think judges would be more careful about going on fishing vacations. I’m sure Whittington thought he was among friends….
Josie
I hope ProPublica is not done with their digging. I would love to see the layers of the onion peeled back on a couple of other right wing justices. I’m pretty sure there is more to find.
Jeffro
@Chris T.:
It’s kind of unreal just how much ‘bang for the
buckbribe’ the billionaire class gets.It’s why I’m 110% certain Putin owns many dozen GQP officials, and for a pittance, too.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
The Republican Party, as it currently stands, is the most expansive, successful, and influential criminal organization in the history of the United States.
patrick II
Alito “did not know” that the same person who flew him to Alaska would have cases before the court. That is one of the reasons you fill out the forms, asshole. Someone would have told you.
Captain C
Alito must be used to having extremely incompetent researchers and vetters on his staff, given that he was howling in his bullshit prebuttal about how it was impossible to know who has a financial interest in the cases in front of him.
Whether this is because of low expectations of competence, or the fact that diligent ones who find such conflicts tend not to stay employed by Alito is left for the reader to decide.
Captain C
@dmsilev:
Apparently, “could have chosen not to go on a luxury fishing trip with (and funded by) someone who might have high profile cases in front of the SCOTUS” did not occur to him as a legit option.
Geo Wilcox
Singer also ponied up cash for the initial Steel report before handing it over the the Clinton machine. There is more to this dirty slime ball than meets the eye.
apocalipstick
@dmsilev: That’s the kind of reasoning you get with an elite law-school education.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Especially dumb because a vacant seat would have meant less jet fuel would have been used. Every kind matters when it comes to fuel.
Amir Khalid
If a Justice is convicted of, say, taking a bribe, do they still need to go through the impeachment process to be removed from the Supreme Court?
Jeffro
@dmsilev:
@Captain C: as a few folks noted in the thread downstairs, this whole concept of it being ok to accept billionaire largesse just because it’s lying around applies to, oh, piles of cash too.
suzanne
@dmsilev:
It’s that good ol’ Yankee thrift at work.
Edmund dantes
It’s interesting to see Jack Smith was involved in the whole IRS “scandal” of the Obama years from the DOJ side, and he was starting to follow that little line of all these non-profits are actually defrauding the government. Which the GOP hissy fit about the IRS “scandal”helped to derail all of it.
The same names all keep popping up on the GoP side of that too.
apocalipstick
@Elizabelle: I agree with Elie Mystal: expand the court to 25, like other federal courts of appeal, and have the 9 or 11 who will hear the case chosen by lot.
lowtechcyclist
@Geo Wilcox: You mean Starr report?
trucmat
I thought Thomas and Alito were just partisan hacks. I knew they were speaking fees corrupt but didn’t realize they were corrupt to the point they’d be taking de facto bribes from petitioners before the court. Impeach!
Old School
Do Taylor Swift concert tickets have any value if the seat goes unoccupied if I don’t sit there?
A steak and lobster dinner that I don’t eat may well just get thrown away, so can you really assign a price to that?
apocalipstick
@Amir Khalid: Yes, maybe, kinda sorta. SCOTUS is not covered by the ethics rules of other federal courts, and the only Constitutional reference to SCOTUS discipline is impeachment.
Fraud Guy
How long until they collect the full set?
Fraud Guy
@Amir Khalid:
Well, they no longer do remote arguments since the pandemic is over, so it’d be hard for him to serve.
JaySinWA
@Geo Wilcox: If he was involved in the Steele report, SInger was hedging his bets.
Just a regular business thing, doncha know,//
BeautifulPlumage
OT, but did part 2 of the Baier interview actually run last night? I’m not seeing coverage.
MomSense
@apocalipstick:
Yes, I agree too. The problem we have is not that we can’t reach consensus on the preferable outcomes. The problem is that we do not have the ability to accomplish our preferred policy outcomes because we do not have the political power that comes with consistent voter turnout and electoral wins.
The GOP are far more sophisticated voters. They have been voting consistently since 1972 without the need for constant GOTV. They wanted power and they showed up.
They achieved control of the courts and even with the burden of the most corrupt POTUS hold a slim majority in the House, an effective tie in the Senate, total control of 22 states and control of 57 out of 98 legislative chambers. They voted in every election.
The same pundits/talking heads who constantly criticize and act like they are the only people who know how to fix our broken country are often unwilling to discuss or downright hostile to the idea that voting and winning elections is the only thing that will get us out of these messes.
Geminid
I was looking for Virginia primary news at the Bearing Drift political site, and found an article by Chris Saxman:
Saxman listed 16 out the 40 Senators who retired, resigned or lost primaries last night, with a combined tenure of 380 years. Two- Lionel Spruil (28 years) and Joe Morrisey (12 years including 8 as Delegate)- lost Democratic primaries yesterday, and Jennifer McClellan (18 years) resigned earlier this year to take a seat in Congress.
Saxman listed 23 Delegates with total tenure of 249 years, and added Del. Mark Keam, State Senator Jen Kiggans (who took the 2nd CD seat, and the late Delegate Ronnie Cambell to the list to bring the total of General Assembly experience to 649 years.
Redistricting was the catalyst for many of the retirements and primary contests.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JaySinWA: I haven’t dug into the Singer related part of it, but IIRC it was a Bush-aligned group or law firm that first hired Steele, and by the time he submitted his report Jeb had dropped out?
Baud
@Geminid:
Interesting how age and experience is pitched as a good thing when Dems nominate a bunch of new faces.
Baud
@MomSense:
I agree with you.
brendancalling
The gift link isn’t working for me.
Even without reading it, it’s hilarious to know that Alito is so thin-skinned he threw a public tantrum about an article that hadn’t even been published, practically guaranteeing more people will read it. Is he related to Barbra Streisand?
Steeplejack
@BeautifulPlumage:
It did, but apparently it was anticlimactic. No more big revelations.
Delk
If your private jet doesn’t have empty seats, your private jet is too small.
Nora
This is SO Alito’s modus operandi: do something outrageous with the expectation that nobody will dare criticize you and then whine to the high heavens when someone actually takes you to task for obvious corruption. Remember how he squealed after the Dobbs decision was leaked? More and more I’m convinced he was the leaker then.
Ocotillo
Since there doesn’t appear to be a remedy to hold accountable the justices when you have a party determined to protect their majority on the court and will not vote to convict in an impeachment, is there a way to investigate through DOJ Leo and the bribing billionaires? Have they committed a crime?
catclub
@Chris T.:
Multiplication is hard. I think that $2.4M X 1000 = $2.4B,
so if it was a $240k ‘gift’ then I think it is 10,000 to 1.
Of course, Alito was 99% sure to vote for Singer’s side anyway.
Scout211
Commenters in the overnight thread reported that there were not the bombshells in the second part as in the first. The one part that is getting wide attention is this part: Link
BeautifulPlumage
@Steeplejack: so no addition attention for the walking NPD? Good, very good.
BeautifulPlumage
@Scout211: I saw that clip but thought it was from Tuesday. Thanks.
JaySinWA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I found some reporting that claims that the Republican funding ended before Steele got on the case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.html
That link is to the NYT [Maggie Haberman warning but a Jane Meyer New Yorker article that I can’t read apparently confirms] and covers the Fusion link between Singer and later the DNC. Apparently Steele was hired after Singer’s group pulled out.
So Singer and the Washington Free Beacon couldn’t have handed the stuff over, but it was commonly reported incorrectly and then corrected by AP and others
ETA From this wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier#Republican_operation_does_not_produce_dossier
Jeffro
This would also be a novel defense! “Ah, quitcher complainin’ Pro Publica, I wuz gunna rule for the oligarchy anyway – it’s kind of my thing, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Sheesh…like a free Alaska trip and some Kobe steaks were going to suh-WAY my vote! They already HAD my vote, ya nimrods!”
catclub
@Scout211: Lets see if he applies it to the Sackler family.
Scout211
Oops! I think you are correct. Sorry. I’m on my phone and didn’t read the date correctly. It was from the first part.
So the second part was a nothing burger.
scav
Ism’t worrying about not flying empty seats around all sorts of GREEN Tree-hugging WOKE behavior?
Ksmiami
@Redshift: Bingo. They’re obsessed with the baubles of wealth, not the work behind it. Fuck it, sometimes I think money is better spent buying Congress and Supreme Court justices. It won’t work because the corruption is 99 percent coming from the GOP.
StringOnAStick
Something tells me those decisions against Argentina and pro Singer’s hedge fund have a lot to do with the continuing death spiral of the Argentina currency and economy, so take a now Ailito, such additional suffering you’ve caused! Might even cause the collapse of a major country!
Geminid
@Baud: Saxman* is neutral as to whether this is a good or a bad thing. I think Democrats generally benefit from the changeover. They are putting up capable candidates, and the retirees and primary losers are from safe Blue seats. This fall’s General Assembly elections should tell the tale.
We definitely did well to get rid of “maverick” Senator Joe Morrissey. Lashresce Aird will be much more a team player. Ms. Aird lost her Delegate seat in the Youngkin mini-wave of 2021.
* Chris Saxman is a retired Republican Delegate. He does some good political commentary for Bearing Drift, which is published by a nest of disaffected Republicans. Former Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling also writes for the journal.
Old School
@BeautifulPlumage: I saw a clip where Trump talked about Biden being primaried by JFK, Jr.
I’m not certain if that was from part one or two.
laura
This motherfucker- so thin of skin, so aggrieved, so arrogant, so entitled, so what’s a guy to do but pimp himself out to at least on big rich daddy that we know of and then refuse to recuse for how may years and how many cases? Compare and contrast with Justice Kagan who kindly refused a gift box of bagels, see also Justice Brown Jackson who disclosed $1,200 of what must have been the most elaborate of flower arrangements from Oprah herself. Someone’s going to need to send an expedition party up Leonard Leo’s ass to find out who’s hand controls the puppet and we need confiscatory tax rates to wring the rot out of the idle rich. And we need to demand No Power Without Accountability. harumph!
Baud
@Geminid:
The headline wasn’t neutral, emphasizing experience lost.
That is a good thing.
catclub
any interview where trump does not admit to more crimes now rates that way.
laura
This motherfucker- so thin of skin, so aggrieved, so arrogant, so entitled, so what’s a guy to do but pimp himself out to at least on big rich daddy that we know of and then refuse to recuse for how may years and how many cases? Compare and contrast with Justice Kagan who kindly refused a gift box of bagels, see also Justice Brown Jackson who disclosed $1,200 of what must have been the most elaborate of flower arrangements from Oprah herself. Someone’s going to need to send an expedition party up Leonard Leo’s ass to find out who’s hand controls the puppet and we need confiscatory tax rates to wring the rot out of the idle rich. And we need to demand No Power Without Accountability. harumph! Instead, we’ll likely get a Nina Tottenberger amusing story explaining that Alito is just an avid, yet thrifty, outdoorsman.
catclub
@Jeffro:
I would suspect that this is actually the case in most bribery cases.
The people who are likely to decide in favor of X are also the most likely to to take a gift from X.
Elizabelle
@apocalipstick: Wow, I like Elie Mystal’s idea of 25.
Will look for a link. Also hope for term limits for the Supremes. 18 years should be plenty.
StringOnAStick
@catclub: Yeah, probably true. The “gifts” are just a way of making sure everyone involved shares in the spoils. I mean, how sad would it be that Singer got billions and Ailito got nothing but a handshake? The heaven’s would cry out over the unfairness of it all.
/////s
Jimmy the Fish
@lowtechcyclist: billionaires will get most of their income through capital gains, which were taxed at a top rate of 25% in the ’50s (versus 23.8% now)
JaySinWA
@catclub: Perhaps, and a lot of the current scandal seems to be keeping people in the fold rather than converting the opposition. Making sure they have a friendly audience that doesn’t get seduced by someone with competing interests.
OTOH I’m not sure most bribery starts that way. My guess would be the briber picks low hanging fruit that could go either way and give them a nudge. Once they are in one camp they will get locked in. Similar to the spy recruitment practice or the drug dealer giving you a “taste” for free.
James E Powell
@Elizabelle:
No disrespect, but term limits would require a constitutional amendment and that is just not going to happen during our lifetimes.
trollhattan
@West of the Rockies: Yeah, just as Anita told us all those decades ago. “High-tech lynching” my aging ass.
trollhattan
@Scout211: And yet Trump fans everywhere: “He’s so smart and he always tells the truth, even when it’s not popular.”
Uhhhh.
Elizabelle
@James E Powell: Perhaps. But 25 sounds like a great place to start!!
Geminid
@Baud: Saxman’s headline did not emphasize the experience lost as much as describe it. This is a singular phenomenon that Saxman has been reporting on since early Spring. Saxman doesn’t say it’s good or bad, just that it’s significant. And it is; to my knowledge, nothing like this has happened before.
HumboldtBlue
Arkley is Eureka’s own, well, he’s originally from Arcata. But he made his millions on bad mortgages and thought he could buy influence in Humboldt County in general and Eureka specifically. He spent a lot of money and time — hell, in 2006 he founded a newspaper to go after the local rag, a newspapering redwood with 200-year-old-roots, the Times-Standard (which was destroyed by another billionaire asshole altogether) after it refused to endorse his wife for mayor — trying to run things locally and finally gave up and moved his ass to Louisiana.
He’s everything a right-wing asshole is and more. Small, petty, a thorough-going twat, although he did revive a historic theater in downtown and threw some more of his money at downtown redevelopment, but then flounced off after he didn’t receive what he thought was his due in fawning praise and deference.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Because this isn’t individual quid pro quo corruption. This is endemic systemic corruption that offers a glide path for those willing to sell their souls for power.
Anyway
I had Alito’s number at his confirmation hearing where he lied, evaded and refused to answer questions while his wife theatrically sniffed and clutched her pearls at how mean the D questioners were. He came across as a big ole drama llama HACK.
Elizabelle
The wind is just howling out there today. Rather enjoy listening to it.
Thinking it might be howling in the North Atlantic, too. Be safe and effective, rescuers looking for the $$ubmersible.
Elizabelle
@Anyway: Drama Llama Lindsey Graham was best supporting actor in that one, as I recall.
Bill Arnold
@brendancalling:
It’s especially funny that the public tantrum is paywalled (as of 2023/06/21), and that propublica addressed it thoroughly in their actual published piece, taking full advantage of time and causality.
Timill
@James E Powell: I /think/ you can get there without an amendment: define the Supreme Court in law as composed of 9 justices who have served 18 years or less, plus all other living (emeritus) Justices. It won’t kick them off, but it will diminish their influence. Emeritus Justices can pick one case a year to sit in on…
Only Thomas would go Emeritus immediately, though both Roberts and Alito would probably be there by the time it came into force. It would also add O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter and Breyer back into the mix.
Ken
@Timill: Don’t forget Scalia!
(I’m thinking back to after he died; there were some decisions in progress, and some conservative hacks came up with the very special idea that his expected opinion should be included in those.)
Geminid
@Baud: Joe Morrissey was an anomaly, a white Democrat representing majority-Black Delegate and Senate districts. He rode a reputation as “fighting Joe Morrissey,” the pugnacious attorney willing to stick it to the powers-that-be. Morrisey represented a lot of clients from Black communities in Richmond and beyond. He won another term as Delegate after a jail sentence, and then beat an incumbent Senator in 2019.
Morrissey has lost his law license a second time, and probably for good. Now he is like a paralegal with another lawyer working with (or for) him.
Elizabelle
@Timill: That’s a promising idea, too.
Mike in NC
Ron DeSaster has been making noises about how he hopes to have the chance to add a few more extremely corrupt justices to the Supreme Court.
Jay
OzarkHillbilly
OT but damn, I’m getting old. Courtesy Diner on Kingshighway Is For Sale
I lived 2 blocks away in the late ’70s/early ’80s. Many was the 2AM Slinger I ate there.
Steve in the ATL
@JaySinWA: just like Cole did to us with that first post on Balloon Juice being free….
JML
Alito is the absolute worst. Arrogant, corrupt, unpleasant, and evil.
misterpuff
Ayup. They’sa really bitin’ this mornin’.
Pop open another Bud Light and cast out anotha line!
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Right, and now the mofo takes my private plane everywhere without paying me a dime.
arrieve
Purely anecdotal: Several years ago, a friend argued a case before the Supreme Court and I spent the day observing arguments in several cases. Though Clarence Thomas as per his reputation did not ask any questions, that didn’t mean he didn’t talk. He was yukking it up with Scalia on his left and occasionally Breyer (I think) on his right while the other justices were asking questions and the lawyers were answering. And tilting his chair back and rocking like a hyperactive toddler.
I didn’t know that much about Alito then, but every time he opened his mouth he might as well have had a giant flashing arrow pointing at his head that said “ASSHOLE! ASSHOLE!” Smug and contemptuous. The other justices, even Thomas, appeared to be human beings. Alito, not so much.
(My friend lost the case, but Scalia wrote a scathing and very entertaining dissent. He was an asshole supreme, but he believed in the Fourth Amendment.)
cmorenc
@West of the Rockies: The question is: which is the more corrupt, Thomas or Alito, given they are each grotesquely corrupt. I gave Thomas the nod by the margin of Ginny’s nose because as an extreme far-right partisan activist, she has Thomas by the ear AND nose 24/7 and the last word with him every night.
Baud
@arrieve:
Since they changed the format in the pandemic, Thomas talks now.
ETA: Scalia didn’t really believe in the Fourth Amendment, but was probably better than the other Republicans.
twbrandt
OT, but Elon fucking Musk continues to be openly transphobic. He posted this today:
I won’t link to the tweet, but here is a Gizmodo article about it.
There is no reason to remain on that platform.
rikyrah
So, the GOP are hotter than fish grease about the resolution Hunter Biden’s cases😒😒😒
Now, they care about the disparities in the Criminal Justice System?🙄🙄
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZT8JPMJyv/
rikyrah
So….no slam against ProPublica….
But, how come not one of these stories was broken by Supreme Court reporters🤔🤔
Dan B
@twbrandt: Elon is a monster. I’m cis, gay, and cis. It would be nice to have a campaign on Twitter to call out his racism, transphobia, and homophobia. Flood the zone.
Baud
@rikyrah:
They want to remain Supreme Court reporters.
trollhattan
@rikyrah: Well, Hunter Biden had all those newkewlar secrets too, see? Right there on his laptop, with the guns and drugz.
Kay
@twbrandt:
I think he’s annoyed he piled in to the idiotic Joe Rogan/RFK Jr anti vaxx car. Ooops!
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: the fact that he lets you get the first post on almost every thread is an obvious quid pro quo, but nice try!
The Pale Scot
I wonder how John would about us as neighbors?
https://expatalachians.com/climate-change-and-the-coming-appalachia-land-rush
twbrandt
@Kay: Could be, but he’s also a horrible person.
Sure Lurkalot
Greg Palast toots his own horn muchly for my liking but he’s been on to Paul “The Vulture” Singer for a while now.
https://www.gregpalast.com/paul-singer-the-vulture-chewing-argentinas-living-corpse/
Citizen Alan
@dmsilev: One response I saw was: “It wasn’t a bribe because if I didn’t take the money, it would have just sat there.”
Mai Naem mobile
@Layer8Problem: i call Leonard Leo the Door Dash of USSC bribes. I don’t think Door Dash would like the comparison but Leo is delivering the bribes.
Kay
The bold disruptor libertarians who refused all safety measures and regulation are mad that the government hasn’t rescued them fast enough:
I’m so sorry they got a 19 year old involved in this tragedy. Poor kid.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist:
Yep. Just as a President who has the absolute support of 37 Senators in all things is a dictator in every way that matters.
The Moar You Know
@Dan B: you can’t fix Elon or his damnable platform by using Elon’s platform. The ONLY solution is to go elsewhere.
Kay
@twbrandt:
He Tweeted yesterday that the mRNA research looks amazing and holds real promise for breakthroughs. Not a quote, but that was the point. I think the dopes realized they don’t want to commit too much to anti vaxx ideology in case there are miraculous advances.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
anybody watching what is apparently an absolute roasting of John Durham in front of Gym Jordan’s Committee on Self-Owning and Paste-Eating? I’m hoping to watch some of the clips later
ETA: how it’s going
Acyn @Acyn 1h
Citizen Alan
@apocalipstick: I doubt anyone will go for that, but I quite like the idea of simply not having a set number of Justices. Every President is guaranteed one SCOTUS nomination during the first year of his first term … and that’s it. If a Justice dies in office, that’s so sad, Alexa play Despacito. But it won’t affect Judicial nominations because the President already got his one and doesn’t get to replace someone who died. That way, we won’t have this obscene spectacle of a President reshaping the entire judiciary for generations because 2 or 3 very old people all happened to die during the same administration.
Dan B
@The Moar You Know: I’d like the tweets to be a middle finger exit. Elon would probably boot people who insulted him anyway because “free speech@”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: Sorry, no. Such a President could not be removed by impeachment, but that alone does not make them a dictator.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid: Will these retirements shift VA blue or red, or is it too soon to tell?
James E Powell
@Anyway:
It may be a flaw in my character, but I assumed Alito was horrible because Bush Jr nominated him.
Jay
@Kay:
the sub is a carbon fibre tube, only one other has ever been built, and it was never launched, and it’s already been repaired twice in 4 years. Tends to delaminate under pressure. The driver’s bubble is plexiglass, which is common, but it’s only rated to 3,000ft, not the 4,000 that the Titanic is at, and all of the firms that built the sub, never built a sub before, or even a boat, at best, they were aerospace.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Didn’t she very dramatically leave (not quite run out, as I first typed) the chamber at one point?
I remember that histrionic old gasbag Bobby Byrd, desperate to die in office, citing “Mrs A-Lee-Tow’s TEEYAHS!” in explaining his vote to confirm.
Roger Moore
@JaySinWA:
One of the things I notice is that these junkets are rarely just the billionaire and his Justice; there’s a whole crew along. That means getting the Justice to come is at least as much about proving the billionaire sugar daddy’s pull to all his billionaire buddies as it is about ensuring the loyalty of the Justice. It’s a hell of a flex.
Citizen Alan
@laura: I remember being surprised when the Chief Judge of the Bankruptcy Court in North Mississippi announced that attorneys were no longer permitted to send candy and desserts to the Clerk’s and Judge’s office at Christmas because in his view it was unethical for anyone at the Court to accept a $10 Whitman’s Sampler. It amazes me that the level of professional goes down the higher you go up in the judiciary.
Jay
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: One retiree- long-term Senator John Edwards- represents a Roanoke area district that is now rated R+2. I think the rest of the retiring or defeated Democrats represented safe districts.
The new map will play a large factor in the fall elections. Analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) shows Democrats with the advantage in more districts than the Republicans, with a smaller amount of tossups still making the result for both houses uncertain.
These elections will get a lot of national attention I think, especially because Virginia’s current laws regarding abortion rights are so much more liberal than in states to its south and west. Bristol may end up the closest location for a safe abortion for residents of 5 different states
Kelly
I have a similar thought but kinda from the opposite direction. Appoint a new supreme court justice every 2 years or maybe 4 years. Eventually we’d have 40 or so. The impact of any one person or era would be diluted. We can afford them.
Citizen Alan
@cmorenc: Thomas wins because of his refusal to recuse himself from Bush v Gore even though his wife worked for the Bush campaign (as was Fat Tony’s son, Eugene, I think). If he’d had even the tiniest scrap of ethical character, Thomas would have recused, the lower court would have been affirmed, the recount would have continued, and the world would be a better place today.
Bill Arnold
@catclub:
If the undisclosed
bribegift to Alito shifted that probability from 99 percent to 99.5 percent, it was still a very respectable return on investment.These gifts are reminders to justices that they should remain loyal to the gift-givers and their ideologies-of-the-moment.
Baud
@Kelly:
I agree.
ETA: We’d probably cap out at no more than 20, given age and retirements.
Elizabelle
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker’s satirist:
Elizabelle
@Citizen Alan: No Bush v. Gore, no Iraq invasion. Millions of deaths, no?
@Kelly: I like that idea too. Gaming the composition of the Supreme Court by the hard right is destroying it as an institution and threatens all of us.
Old School
@Kelly:
Intriguing.
We’d have to come up with a way to prevent future McConnells from just not considering someone though.
Baud
@Old School:
Much more of a risk of tit for tat in that situation, assuming Dems control the Senate as often as the GOP does.
Citizen Alan
@Elizabelle: I remain convinced that President Gore’s FBI would have averted 9/11. And then, the Republicans would have mocked the very idea of terrorists flying planes into buildings, dismissed the whole thing as “wagging the dog,” and gone right back to impeaching Gore over that one time he talked to a donor and used the wrong telephone.
WereBear
I gave them money for Clarence Thomas, so I gotta donate for Alito, too.
May it be a series!
Roger Moore
@Baud:
My general impression is that most of the conservative justices have one or two issues they take personally and will sometimes vote with the liberals on. As an example, Scalia was really concerned about the confrontation clause of the 6th Amendment and regularly sided with the liberals when that was implicated. Gorsuch obviously has great concern about anything touching on Native Americans. Those kinds of hobby horse issues are interesting, but it’s hard to see them as making one conservative notably better than another.
Kay
@Jay:
Oh, no. Those poor people. I’m a little claustrophobic – I could never do it. I once had to jump off a boat in North Carolina wearing a survival suit (everyone did- it was some kind of safety requirement to go with the UNC research vessel- long story). Anyway. A survival suit is like a tiny little space you are trapped in and the water you’re bobbing in pushes IN on this tiny little space. An absolute nightmare.
Elizabelle
@Citizen Alan: President Gore would have taken the threat to airliners way more seriously.
The whole thing was such a tragedy, and its aftereffects continues today. (Alito, for fuck’s sake, who would not be anywhere near the USSC.)
The Lodger
@James E Powell: IIRC Alito was considered favorably by a lot of Senators because he was considerably less ridiculous than Harriet Miers.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Agreed.
dirge
Not actually true.
1: The impeachment power does not specifically mention judges of any kind, but it’s generally assumed to include SCOTUS under “officers of the US.” This seems reasonable to me, but one could argue otherwise, if in the mood to troll.
2: Justices keep their appointments “during good behavior,” which is for some reason usually read to mean “for life,” but congress can and should clarify that with legislation. Obviously a heavy lift politically, but I think the constitutional case is quite compelling.
Trivia Man
@Chris T.: math check: it’s 10,000:1 ROI.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: @Jay: From comes these little jewels:
Where have we heard that BS before? How often?
PaulWartenberg
I know impeachment isn’t workable, but let’s just try getting them disbarred from the appropriate legal associations and arrest them for bribery and violations of ex parte laws.
rikyrah
He has an entire produce store in his yard 🤗🤗
I miss my late Elders who gardened 🥺🥺
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8JPp4Yw/
catclub
This. duh.
Jeffro
Reading that really shocked me, but it’s true. Wow.
Roger Moore
@Old School:
My feeling is that we need some kind of limit on how long the Senate can keep a nominee sitting, after which they’re considered to have given their tacit consent. It should be something like 3 months for a Cabinet Secretary or Supreme Court justice; 6 months for ambassadors, undersecretaries, and Appeals Court justices; and 1 year for any other Presidential appointment. The Senate can always reject an appointee they disapprove of, but they shouldn’t be able to just sit on a nomination and leave a post vacant indefinitely.
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly: .
The certifying boards are in the pocket of big O-ring.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: I just saw that one too. Always cuts to the chase, that Borowitz!
It is just POURING here and (with the exception of the occasional dog walk) I love it. It’s been so long since we’ve had any rain!
Jay
@Kay:
I help build the Australian Navy’s Deep Sea Rescue Vehicle, the USN’s DSRV, a bunch of commercial and military ROV’s, NewtSuits, and the fiber optic/sensor network at the bottom of the Salish Sea.
You don’t McGyver a sub. They did.
And the filthy rich pay $250,000 each for a 3 hour tour of the Titanic.
Eat the rich.
Delk
That sub was using a $30 Logitech F710 wireless PC game controller from 2010.
Link
catclub
@Elizabelle:
OTOH, no Obama in 2008.
catclub
@Delk:
Wireless is always rock solid on ships that are heavy with electronics and radars.
cursorial
Scanning this thread, it seems like
a) Billionaires have an inexplicable tendency to go on deep-sea adventures in poorly designed submersibles
and
b) Corrupt supreme court justices go on vacation with billionaires a lot
Anything we can do to help these trends cross paths?
Jay
@cursorial:
there is also “space tourism”,……….
Martin
@cursorial: I mean, it is a novel solution to the lifetime appointment problem – all federal courts must deliberate inside a poorly designed submersible.
Baud
@cursorial:
Heh.
Scout211
Man who used stun gun to attack Michael Fanone on January 6 sentenced to over 12 years in prison
Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
James E Powell
@The Lodger:
Harriet Miers’s nomination was scuttled by the right-wingers. They feared another Souter.
Betty Cracker
@catclub: Pretty sure Obama would consider that a fair trade. He might have found another path to the presidency in the counterfactual world we’re considering anyway — he’s an extraordinarily talented politician, the best I’ve ever seen.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: Yes. Reveling in the rain.
Martin
@Delk: I wouldn’t use a Logitech one. But you could do a lot worse than a wireless PS4 or PS5 controller – those things are indestructible. I challenge the Pentagon to commission a controller that is more reliable and durable.
Mai Naem mobile
@HumboldtBlue: I’ve heard of plenty of big GOP donors’ names but I’d never heard Arkley’s name. So after reading the ProPublica article I googled his name. Jeezus. This guy is such a POS there were a couple of websites devoted to his douchebaggery. Apparently when the dance school in town didn’t give his daughter the starring role in the Nutcracker he bought the building the school was in and shut it down. He also doesn’t like homeless people but doesn’t want to do anything constructive about it. Just make them disappear so he doesn’t have to concern his beautiful mind about it.
Amir Khalid
I think we need another post.
Lyrebird
@twbrandt:
UGH!!!!
But thank you for reporting!
Martin
So I read that California no longer has the most expensive gas in the country and I wonder what we’re doing wrong.
See, there’s a lesson from our decoupled energy market. In CA, rate increases are tied to a reduction in usage. You make more profit if your consumers use less energy. So we have really high rates, but relatively low bills because we simply don’t use as much electricity as the rest of the country, per capita. Y’all are wasteful.
We need to do the same with gas. High prices are a feature because the fastest path to climate catastrophe is cheap gas.
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile:
That’s comically evil. Does he tie damsels to railroad tracks too?
James E Powell
@Scout211:
I was just about the post that latest bulletin from FAFO HQ.
While I have some sympathy with the complaint that the higher-ups aren’t on trial, we cannot overlook the necessity of bringing the lower downs to justice. People need to understand they cannot do these things no matter how upset they are about political outcomes.
Ken
As I hear more about OceanGate, it’s sounding like the liability lawsuits will be a slam-dunk.
Though from what I’ve heard about the passengers, some of the parties involved might skip the lawsuit and go straight to having everyone involved with the company murdered.
trollhattan
DeSantis now claiming to be an expert in heroin and crack cocaine. Okay, Meatball, please proceed.
I trust they checked Meatball’s luggage for any stowed immigrants. “Guys, can you take me to Pelosi’s house? I need to drop a little something off, for her.”
Ohio Mom
@Timill: O’Connor has dementia, so cross her off the list. (Not that I’d miss her reprise, I am carrying a grudge against her for sticking us with Bush 2, a grudge that will most likely outlive her).
On another note, I’m not finished with this thread so maybe this has already been raised: These two justices have been on the take for many years, why are we only now hearing about it? So much wasted time.
Martin
@twbrandt: Not only did Ieave the day he walked in with a sink, but I’ve since firewalled twitter.com once the autoplay animal cruelty videos started going around and they did nothing to stop it for several days. I don’t need to see that shit, even in an embed.
Kay
@Martin:
Good to see you Martin. You were missed.
trollhattan
@Martin: We also have geographic isolation from the majority of US refining compounded by our unique winter/summer formulations. Plus, Chevron are lying, cheating bastards.
Winning!
Kay
Guess who is the Moms for Liberty speaker at their summit in Philapdelphia?
RFK Jr. The guy idiots on the Right and Left keep telling me is a liberal.
I don’t mind that all of these bros are Right wingers. I just wish they would admit it. It’s exhausting playing this stupid game where they insist they aren’t wingers.
Scout211
This is good news.
Georgia poll workers targeted by Trump cleared of false election fraud claims
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes. This is because there are safety standards that ensure vehicles are unlikely to be the problem. If you ignore those safety standards, you can’t expect your results to match. It’s like someone deciding to fold their umbrella because the rain isn’t getting them wet.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: We’re only hearing about it because the media gave the justices the benefit of the doubt. They assumed that the senate confirmation process could, if nothing else, find 9 honest people in the country. They missed the part where Mitch McConnell enters the play with the express goal of building a machine that finds dishonest people who present as honest people.
The thing is, once reporters learn that there are nuts in that tree, they will never forget that there are nuts in that tree. The free ride is over.
The new lesson is that the GOP will not give up on that machine, so they’re going to have to defend it by inventing scandals for the justices that were not the product of that machine. Prepare for AI generated photos of KBJ participating in a drive-by in Compton.
Jay
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I gather the House is voting on a censure of Adam Schiff, based on a motion by either Marge or Granny Boebert or Lena “Santos” Luna. I can’t keep up with the waves of crazy
Martin
@Kay: Thank you, and to the others who have expressed similar sentiments.
trollhattan
@Kay: He’s the JEB! Bush of Jill Steins. With antisemitism!
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: How are the winters in CA? Use your furnaces a lot, do you?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Nonna Pelosi is just tired of their nonsense
Roger Moore
@Delk:
There was a lot of discussion about that, and the general impression I got was this was not a problem. The example used for comparison is that USN submarines apparently use Xbox controllers for many functions. A good quality commercial controller is probably more reliable than something they bodged together themselves for a vastly higher price.
scav
It is rather a shared business model. “Break Everything” widened to included the customer base, all in the name of unfettered innovation & profit (“If it doesn’t kill, it’s not making a killing.”). Focus on the high-end brand-conscious market and sell the status and the Xtreme: your crash-test dummies not only come to you, they pay for the priviledge.
prostratedragon
Never mind.
The Thin Black Duke
@Martin: Hey. Welcome back, dude.
evodevo
@cursorial:
Just what I was thinking….
Jay
I feel sad for the Submarine community, commercial, research and military.
Back in my day, a Russian Mir research sub got trapped in a tangle of lost nets in the Med.
We loaded air portable containers with specialized gear and slept at our desks for 2 days, in case our aid was needed. Same thing with the Kursk. Lining up air transport, charter boats,….. constantly touching base,…..
Barbara
@Martin: No, what you really need to do that with is water.
H.E.Wolf
Off-topic: The CA disbarment trial of John Eastman is in its 2nd day. Here is a Twitter thread from one of the people live-tweeting the trial: https://twitter.com/TomDreisbach/status/1671560400238944256
Yutsano
Two quick points:
A) DO KAVANAUGH NEXT!!!
B) Methinks the Alito doth protest too much…
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
A few people on twitter have started deploying this photo on RFKjr-related threads:
This photo posted on Instagram on July 18, 2021 shows Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., second left, with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, left, anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger and former President Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, right. The account, run by Bollinger, has since been removed. (AP Photo)
From How a Kennedy built an anti-vaccine juggernaut amid COVID-19 (MICHELLE R. SMITH, December 15, 2021)
twbrandt
@Martin: I despise the man. Since I am gay it’s personal for me.
Good to see you back, btw.
Barbara
@Yutsano: Imagine the mental anguish of someone bending over backwards to make the world safe and hospitable for billionaires but never being able to afford the trappings of a billionaire lifestyle. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the predicament of the current Supreme Court justices who have been appointed by Republicans, beset with a longing for luxuries of the ultrawealthy so great that it leads to all manner of ethical lapses and whiny self-justifying idiocies.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
nobody uses carbon fibre, fiberglass or amarid for subsea pressure vessels. The change in pressure causes delaminiation, as the resin shears from the fibres.
It’s fine for a “wet” ROV, but not a pressure hull.
Their “plan” was to use embedded sonic sensors on the inside of the hull to detect delamination, which won’t protect against a sudden hull failure.
They have already had to do major repairs to the hull twice, in less than 3 years.
prostratedragon
@StringOnAStick: I have vague recollection of that from when the matter first came up, and it’s exactly the outcome that was feared. Coming out of their crisis of the early 00s, they got concessions from many lenders, then along comes this Singer fellow with a shopped judge in New York State. Would need to refresh my memory.
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus: Coastal, not so much except the north coast. Homes there usually have heat, just don’t need to use it much of the year. The rest of the joint, yeah it gets cold. Natural gas forced air probably the most common. Nobody has oil furnaces anymore. Well, those there weird guys.
He’s right about our electricity rates, especially from the big for-profit utilities. Higher than most states. Here’s PG&E
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-rates-work/Residential-Rates-Plan-Pricing.pdf
trollhattan
@Bill Arnold: She has a Psalm poking out of her head.
trollhattan
@Yutsano: What if they discover Kavanaugh is sponsored by Bud Light?
WaterGirl
@Scout211: A good day for Michael Fanone.
Feathers
Elliott Management is just straight up evil. That Supreme Court Justices are even talking to Paul Singer is bad, forget the whole bribery angle. They should be considering that their reputation could be damaged even being in the same room.
If people are wondering why we can’t use seized Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine, it’s because vulture funds like Elliott have bought the Russian debt and will sue to get paid before Ukraine and tie the whole thing up in court for years. I’m certain that Elliott is in on this, I just don’t have the energy to look for it today. Elliott also tend to hide their hand on stuff like this.
I follow a very nice autistic/ADHD illustrator/animator on Twitter. She was sad the other day because she can’t sell her work on any platform that takes dollars, because there’s a 70% hit when they convert to Argentine dollars. Why? Fucking Peter Singer and Elliott and their demands that Argentina pay them full face value on debts they bought at pennies on the dollar. Yeah, the IMF as well, but vulture funds were in there, too.
Garbage humans.
Anyway
@Mai Naem mobile:
There are so many of them hard to keep track. plus there are heirs of the original benefactors –like harlan Crow’s dad was a big GOP donor and the nephew of the guy who funded the Paula jones stuff against Bill Clinton is now contributing to his own GQP pet peeves etc etc. And of course the Kochs and the Mercers are multi-generational donors.
catclub
@Baud: as long as he overpaid and the dance school got lots of money out of it.
haha, the dance school would have been a tenant and gets nothing.
catclub
@trollhattan: wow. 34 cents/kwh minimum
I am in massachusetts and paying 15 cents/kwh with no demand monitoring
trollhattan
@catclub: And somehow they’ve managed to declare bankruptcy, twice, kill hundreds via mismanagement, and still provide the electricity and gas to most of NorCal. Am beginning to think the fix is in.
catclub
@Feathers:
ummm, that case was settled in 2016, after about 13 years in the courts, IIRC.
I think most of her problem now is Argentina’s present 100% inflation, which should not be due to a $4B settlement 7 years ago.
Elliott may be trash, but I think the US courts ruled for them to maintain/assert the power of US courts to oversee these bonds, and similar ones. So they get some blame too.
catclub
@trollhattan:
Rooftop Solar panels looking better and better?
trollhattan
@catclub: Just need the right doods. We had Solar City out a few years back and they declared “nope” but there are a lot more installers these days. Plus, the equipment keeps dropping in price
ETA we have PG&E for gas but a local utility for electricity, and the rates aren’t as dire but still tiered by time of day/day of week. Tore out the main gas furnace last winter, so a little less impacted by Big Gas than before.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: So, per capita consumption in CA has been flat over the last 40 years. It’s doubled in the rest of the country. So unless your point is that winters in the rest of the United States got twice as long, you are merely trying to dodge the issue.
Bart
Like someone on Twitter observed today, with these articles on Alito andThomas, ProPublica really depantsed those specialized Supreme Court reporters who’d been “observing” the court for years and even decades and never looked into any of this. Just basically access journalism from the “experts”.
Princess
@trollhattan: No one lives in San Francisco any more. It’s much too crowded.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
This is a key point. If you follow conventional market rules, utilities have an incentive to encourage consumption. Even if they’re limited in their ability to increase hourly rates, they still make more money as the quantity billed goes up. California changed the rules so utilities are allowed to charge more per kWh if average consumption goes down, so their profits actually increase if consumption decreases. By rearranging the incentives that way, California has managed to keep consumption under control.
Martin
@Barbara: We’re trying to. The problem is that 80% of our water goes to agriculture, and that’s a pretty big problem for folks outside of California since they eat that water. Our ag export industry is fundamentally an export of water to other states.
But the most immediate solution is to eat less beef/dairy since an astonishing share of that ag water is for feed for the states beef and dairy industry (CA is the nations largest dairy state and dairy is the states largest ag export). We export about half of the states agricultural production, and ~3/4 of that goes to other states, not other nations.
We’re approaching the lowest residential water usage in the nation (good job Connecticut for that title) but that’s not remotely the problem. And it’s a tough problem to solve other than what we’re doing which is paying farmers to not grow crops, leading to Dr Oz running around a misgendered grocery store complaining about the price of vegetables.
sdhays
@Roger Moore: I’ve long thought this too. Advise and consent shouldn’t mean that a Senate Majority Leader can ignore their chamber’s responsibility just to fuck with an Executive Branch it doesn’t like.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
LOL. True, I suppose, if her Lord is Satan/The Adversary.
(I consider her to be a mass killer. Lawyers: is there a word for somebody who commits many acts of homicide?)
NotMax
@Roger Moore
Don’t get me started on electricity rates on Maui.
My consumption basically flat month to month. Since last year, monthly bill 160% of what it was then.
Martin
@Roger Moore: Correct. The result is called the Rosenfeld Effect.
It had another important benefit – until this happened, it was taken as a law of economics that GDP was dependent on energy consumption. That in order to have economic growth, you had to consume more energy, and so by implication – any form of conservation was a call to undermine the economy.
CA disproved this global theory by growing economically while resisting growth in energy consumption, ushering in a new economic system of decoupled GDP and energy usage. Other markets theorized this, but CA was the first place to actually demonstrate it. That’s still not widely recognized but it’s a key concept to internalize if you want to make any headway on climate change. The GOP still broadly holds that increased energy consumption is necessary for economic output, but so does many other nations.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I wish more people would get this point. California isn’t being especially wasteful of its water; it’s just that we grow and export so much food that we’re effectively exporting water. That’s not good for a state with perennial drought problems.
Amy!
Okay, so now we know why he thought it wasn’t true. He was already doing the backstroke in the outflow of that cesspool.
Roger Moore
@sdhays:
The worst part is that bullshit about holds and blue slips. The net result is that individual senators can hold up a lot just by being dicks about it, even if their party is in the minority. The Senate depends so much on unanimous consent that one intransigent Senator can grind the whole chamber to a halt if they want to be a dick about it, so they tend to get their way on whatever issue they are angry about so the rest of the Senate’s business can actually get some attention.
This, IMO, is the thing that really drives so much of the disfunction in Congress: the job has grown. The obscure Senate procedural rules might have been OK when the government was a lot smaller and there were just fewer things to do. You could have unlimited debate on every bill and require unanimous consent to get even minor procedural stuff done. With so much more to do, the system is grinding to a halt. There are now about 1400 positions in the government that require Senate confirmation. If they approve one position per day- which can only work with lots of stuff getting rammed through on unanimous consent- they’ll just about finish approving them all by the time the next election rolls around. And that’s one per calendar day, not per day the Senate is in session. And that’s just the positions requiring Senate confirmation, without considering all the legislation that needs to pass. You just can’t run a system like that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: That is added info. Thank you.
Chris T.
@catclub: Typo, sorry… (was originally going to do it as percentage, changed mind, lots of adjustments on the number of zeros)
Chris T.
@Martin:
WA added a new CO2 tax (at the wholesale level). Retailers have used that as an excuse to jack up the pump price. It’s not clear where this will level off.
Sparks
@Roger Moore: Yeah, but I don’t see a way out of the problem. We Californians feed the nation and we really have to. Just wish the farmers treated the crop workers better.
pacifico1213
@lowtechcyclist: No, he does not.
rikyrah
@Martin:
Hi🤗🤗🌞🌞