SCOTUS conservative majority, wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America

Shortly after Nixon appointed Rehnquist, the GOP decided to turn the Supreme Court into an ideological and highly partisan arm of the Republican Party.
Rehnquist came to prominence as an Arizona attorney who would work on Election Day trying to prevent Blacks and Hispanics from voting. Reagan made him Chief Justice when Burger retired.
Beginning 30 years of corporate friendly judicial activism.

 Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito are dangerous far right ideologues and corporate shills who appear to work every day against the interests of American citizens, putting the power and "Rights" of  their corporate owners first.

 Hopefully when Scalia, clearly in the throes of dimentia, retire The next POTUS, (Hillary?) will replace him with a less corrupt, misogynistic. homophobic, racist, science denying justice?

(Fingers crossed)

But, for now, the GOP and corporate America control the Supreme Court, just the way Fred Koch and the rest of the neo fascist John Birchers had planned long ago.

Whenever conservatives on the court have had the opportunity to tilt the playing field toward their own side, they have done so. And in other recent cases, the court has weakened the capacity of Americans to protect themselves against corporate power.

The conservative majority seems determined to bring us back to the Gilded Age of the 1890s.

In the wake of this week’s decision gutting the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, its actions must now be viewed through the prism of the conservative movement’s fifty year quest for complete control. Progressives and Liberals will still win occasional and sometimes partial victories, as they did Wednesday on same-sex marriage.
This ruling however, should not distract from the hubris and the arrogance of power displayed in the voting rights decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts. His opinion involved no real Constitutional analysis. He simply substituted the court’s conservative's opinion for Congress’ unanimous legislation in deciding which states should be covered under the Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act

 The voting rights decision should be seen as following a pattern set by the rulings in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Citizens United in 2010.

 Bush v. Gore had the effect of installing the conservatives’ choice in the White House and allowed him to influence the court’s subsequent direction with his appointments of Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

Citizens United swept aside traditions and precedent nearly a century old and to the Founders’ deep concern over political corruption-- by vastly increasing the power of corporate and monied interests in the electoral sphere.

Tuesday’s Shelby County v. Holder ruling will make it far more difficult for African-Americans to challenge unfair electoral and districting practices. For many states, it will be a Magna Carta to make voting more difficult if they wish to. The Constitution, through the 14th and 15th Amendments, gives Congress a strong mandate to offer federal redress against discriminatory and regressive actions by state and local governments. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her scalding but very precise dissent, “a governing political coalition has an incentive to prevent changes in the existing balance of voting power.”

In effect, existing majorities may try to fix election laws to make it far more difficult for their opponents to vote them from power in later elections. Republican legislatures around the country passed a spate of voter suppression laws disguised as efforts to guarantee electoral “integrity” for just this purpose within hours of the ruling.

Remember when conservatives did not have a clear court majority, they screamed and bitched about “judicial activism.”, which seems to be code for any decision they do not agree with.
 Now that they have the capacity to impose their will, many of the same conservatives defend extreme acts of judicial activism by claiming they involve legitimate interpretations of the "true" meaning of the Constitution.

It is an inconsistency that tells us all we need to know. This is not an argument about what the Constitution says. It is a battle for power.
And, despite scattered progressive triumphs, it is a battle that conservatives are winning; with issues directly related to political and economic influence, the court’s conservative majority is operating as a right wing political faction, determined to shape a future in which Democrats, Liberals and progressives will find themselves at a distinct disadvantage.

The rollback of the New Deal, Civil Rights, Women's rights and consumer protections is happening while we watch!

Republicans sneak huge changes in existing law, all aimed at women.

Red state Republicans have worked hard on one thing.

Abortion.

Not jobs, not strengthening the economy, or helping citizens.

Abortion.

Ohio Regressives added a large number of abortion laws, including the redefinition of pregnancy to their budget....

That's right, the budget... These were snuck in at the last moment, never debated, never discussed, never questioned. And that bastion of right wing thugery Kasick signed it.

Demanded that abortion clinics have transfer rights with hospitals, and then prohibited the giving of such rights.

Declared that pregnancy begins at fertilization, instead of when the egg attaches to the uterine wall, thereby making ANY birth control that prevents attachment, like an IUD an "Abortion", therefore unavailable.

Rape crisis clinics received a gag order, if they counsel sexual assault victims about abortion, they  lose their public funding

Forces women seeking legal abortions to undergo a state-mandated, medically-unnecessary vaginal ultrasound -- even if women don't want one, and if their doctor doesn't recommend one. Ohio Republicans proudly declared they want to put themselves between patients and their physicians, prescribing specific procedures for no medical reason.

Women will also be required to pay for the state-mandated, medically-unnecessary ultrasounds they do not want and their doctors do not think they need, out of pocket.

 Physicians will be legally required to deliver a Republican-written, partisan, anti choice speech to women seeking legal abortions. Whether the doctor believes what's in the script, or even wants to say those words to his or her patient, has been deemed irrelevant.

The bill does provide funding for "crisis pregnancy centers," which are run by forced birth or religious organizations and do not provide accurate health information to patients.

Any abortion providers that manage to remain open under these restrictions are compelled to tell women "of the probable anatomical and physiological characteristics" of a fetus during various stages of its development. They must give women seeking abortions information on adoptions and alternative family planning options; All requiring the forced birth of the unwanted or non viable fetus.

And if a woman is able to obtain an abortion in Ohio and develops some sort of medical issue during the procedure, clinics will no longer be allowed to transfer these patients to public hospitals for additional care. In the midst of a crisis, these patients must find a private hospital to help them, at their own cost of course.

North Carolina decided that 7th grade teachers must lie to their students, and tell them that abortion prevents having healthy full term pregnancies later.

Why do the forced birth regressives use falsehoods, intimidation and legislative chicanery instead of using facts and the strength of their argument?

Why do these jackholes demand that an unwanted child be born, then vote to strip any help that mother or child might get....

A bunch of religiously motivated men, deciding that THEY know what is best for women's bodies...
Hubris, willful ignorance, and the desire to punish women for having sex...

Why else would they demand that the HPV vaccine that prevents a cancer causing STD, and comprehensive sex education as a bad thing?