5 Hidden Facts About Ruth Bader Ginsburg & The Supreme Court (Moment of Clarity)

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1. Michael Joyce onFaceBook
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   PEACE and JUSTICE in the USA. Please read this by Geoffrey Ginter for an understanding #1 of the nature of (Supreme) Court and #2 our vote to change it. Thank you
   Geoffrey Ginter
   September 20 at 11:17 PM ·
   There’s a lot to unpack with the Supreme Court of the United States. But it’s not that difficult to understand. The difficulty lies in the perceptions the public has with “what the supreme court is“. The very word “supreme“ holds very heavy connotations…
   More people should take a stab at reading the constitution. They invoke it an awful lot, but I doubt many people have read it. The following are just two excerpts from Article 3 of the constitution that deals with the judiciary:
   From Section 1: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish”
   The constitution does not state how the lower courts are to be organized in any way. It only states that Congress will “establish them“. So “packing the court“ is not the end of the line. Another Congress can completely re-order them. Shrink them? Expand them? It’s all a policy choice.
   That includes the number of justices on the Supreme Court. The first supreme court of United States only had six justices. Now we have nine. There’s nothing to stop Congress from putting it down to five, or up to 11 or 13. Congress is in charge. And we are in charge of Congress. Just because we’re doing an absolute shit job today (and have for at LEAST the last 40 years or so) doesn’t mean we can’t change our minds and do a stellar job tomorrow.
   From section 2: “In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”
   We are used to thinking of the supreme court as the final arbiter in all cases. But 99% of all cases that go before the Supreme Court are appeals. They have a very narrow definition of their “original jurisdiction”. And Congress can make exceptions about what they can hear under appeals. All Congress hast to do is write a law, say Single Payer Healthcare, and say that the Supreme Court shall have no jurisdiction in this case. End of story.
   Would that be politically easy? It depends. Congress only does what they are told to do. They bend in the direction of wherever the pressure sends them. Right now, the oligarchy is supplying all the pressure. If you want that to change, then you’re gonna have to change. Big time! That means organizing. That means getting angry, and meaning it. You can’t apply pressure if you don’t mean it.
   But if you’re not willing to apply that pressure, then just go home. Try to make the best of it. Make yourself as comfortable as possible.
   Because if you think we’re going to be allowed to “vote our way out of this“, then you should be aware of the following:
   Most of the voting machines in this country are electronic. They are privately owned. They have no paper trail. They have proprietary technology that makes it illegal to audit them to find out what happened. Political and computer scientists have been screaming about this since the early 2000s. No one paid attention. Welcome to “here we are”. I hope cable TV was worth it….
   We have a system of political segregation call gerrymandering – essentially politicians choosing their voters instead of the voters choosing their politicians. And it’s 100% bipartisan. Democrats raise a “fuss about it“ but they do it too.
   There is no amount of “voter suppression“ that both parties won’t take advantage of when it suits their purposes. For example, I direct your attention to the Democrats successfully getting the Green party off the ballot in multiple battleground states, disenfranchising untold numbers of voters. Not, uh, very democratic…
   The Republicans are blatant and disgusting in there naked disgust of voters. They practically brag about their efforts to suppress the vote. But Democrats, on the other hand, when they’re not engaging in direct voter suppression, happily take it vantage of it, too.
   Now, we all have to vote. We have to vote in massive numbers. We must vote because untold masses died so that we could.
   But voting is the easy part. In many respects, it’s the least significant part, under our current circumstances.
   Having said that, I understand why millions don’t vote. I understand why they think their vote means nothing. I understand their anger, their frustration, and their willingness to spit in the eye of everyone that has oppressed them. I understand it. But “Having reasons“ to not vote doesn’t get them off the hook for not voting.
   For everyone who thinks your vote doesn’t matter, I hear you. I get it. And under our current circumstances, especially with the above mentioned electronic voting machines, I agree with you. But there’s one thing that cannot be denied;
   The oligarchy doesn’t want you to vote. They want you to give up. They want you to go to sleep and stay that way. They want you to be obedient, docile, & subservient. Maybe the best place to start to change the system is to have 100% voter turn out. No matter who you vote for, I guarantee you that nothing will turn their bowels to water faster than that.
   Still, if voting is the only thing you do, then you’ve done very little. More is required.
   But, there’s no point in doing anything if you can’t look the system in the eye, see it for what it is, and recognizing that it was designed to be against you.
   And only we can change that. No politician will. Even the ones that “want to“, if they are to be believed, can’t do it without the people strongly and forcefully behind them.

2. Lee, an awful lot of subpreme court rulings are 5/4, with conservative majorities. By design. I would rethink the influence of lower court 91% agreement. I think that’s mixing apels and bonobos. These days conservative lower Fed court folks have little deposition or judicial decisions on their resumes. Tanks to Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, and especially Moscow Mitch.

3. Inconvenient Questions:
   Why Did Ginsburg Not Retire around 2015 When Obama was still President and She Was Already Gravely Ill?; Why Did She Humanize the Reactionary Scalia with Scenes of Opera and Conviviality?

4. “Health Care, Health Care, Health Care”; Obamacare/ACA Is at Stake in Battle Now Beginning over Replacement for Justice Ginsburg; GOP Villainy Takes Center Stage as Moscow Mitch Promises Confirmation Vote This Year; Trump Wants Confirmation Before November 3, but Mitch Is Coy; He Tells His Members to Stay Ambiguous; In Supreme Court Case Starting November 10, Ten Essential Medical Benefits, Protection for Pre-Existing Conditions, Kids on Parents’ Policies, and Other Vital Features Needed in Pandemic Could All Be Destroyed; Defense of Social Security, Roe v Wade, Voting Rights, Dreamers, Labor Could Become Hopeless; Use Your Vote as Your Family’s Passport to Survival!

5. Inconvenient Questions:
   Why Did Ginsburg Not Retire around 2015 When Obama was still President and She Was Already Gravely Ill?;
   Also, Why Did She Humanize the Reactionary Scalia with Scenes of Opera and Conviviality?

6. You misunderstood me. I didn’t say it was of no consequence. I’ll address your comment on the next episode of my podcast “Common Censored.”

7. I want to see Citizens United abolished. I want to see Electoral College abolished. I want to see term limits on Supreme Court Judges. But then none of this will matter when mother earth gives up her dead.

8. Omg Lee, not to sound creepy but I think I’m falling in love with you lol, there’s nothing like a smart man ♥️

9. Lee, I normally agree with you on most things, but how do you reconcile the disastrous Citizen’s United decision as not being of major consequence? It opened the gates of hell and that only represented a teeny weeny fraction of the influence of the court?

   Hmmm. I don’t THINK so.