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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThom Hartmann proposes that Ongoing bribery of RW SC Justices is meant to keep them in line
Thom Hartmann asks the question - why do right wing billionaires go beyond just getting their Justices on the Court? Why is it necessary to keep bribing them for decades?
His answer - to keep them from drifting left, as others have. In the past, other conservative Justices have used the protection of the lifetime appointment to move left and do what they felt was right. The billionaires want to make sure this never happens again.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/have-billionaires-outfitted-justices-062
Have Billionaires Outfitted Justices with Golden Handcuffs to Stop Liberal Drift?
The GOP & the billionaires who fund them learned their lesson. Never again would they allow a rightwing justice to stray beyond the rigid ideological boundaries set at that justices confirmation
Theyre not going to risk their lifestyles second-country passports, private jets and yachts, mansions in multiple nations, and complete authority over vast empires of wealth and the power associated with it with a penny-ante bribe for a vote once in a while.
A simpler and, I think, more cogent argument to explain this behavior is that these billionaires are fitting their target justices with golden handcuffs.
And they must feel the need to do so because history shows that justices once they have lifetime tenure and are otherwise not answerable to anybody, including voters, lobbyists, or special interests tend to become more liberal the longer theyre on the bench.
Thom says it's not about bribing them vote by vote. It's not transactional specifically. It's to keep them focused on the needs of billionaires, not the needs of working people. To make the Justices feel like they are part of the oligarch class and to have affinity for that class.
Ponietz
(4,337 posts)keep_left
(3,211 posts)...about David Souter, particularly when he started moving to the center after just a couple of years on the Supreme Court. And not long after Clarence Thomas was appointed, Souter was no longer a reliable conservative vote.