It was a change in government that few Americans seem to realize. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court put us on notice that we were no longer going to be a government “of the people, for the people and by the people”. It was a political coup.
Conservatives have hypocritically complained for decades about “activist judges”. They claim that liberal activist judges ignored or reversed legal precedents (like Jim Crow laws) and created laws from fictional rights. But no liberal Court has ever been as activist as our current U.S. Supreme Court, certainly not to the extent of fundamentally destroying our democracy. True, the U.S. Supreme Court did intervene to change the outcome of a Presidential election in 2000, but ignoring the popular vote to choose a president is relatively minor compared to what they did to us last week.
Last week the activist conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, decided that we would no longer have a government of, by and for the People and we would now have a government of, by and for insurance companies and corporations. The radical activist Judges reversed decades of legal precedents, including rulings by previous Supreme Courts, and decided that in between the lines and hidden behind the words of the Constitution of the United States was the intent of our Founding Fathers that corporations, even multi-national corporations, have all of the same rights as any individual person who was a citizen. Among those rights was the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money to affect the outcome of any election. For example, if a mayor or city council in your city refuses to allow a chemical company to dump toxic waste into the ground water, that corporation can spend millions of dollars to create a recall and millions more to make sure a candidate who will let them pollute is elected.
Now some people are naïve or disingenuous enough to suggest that money has nothing to do with the outcomes of elections because ultimately it comes down to votes. A candidate with no money won’t be heard by the electorate. Who will have the money to run ads to counter the non-stop negative ads or robocalls or all of the other negative campaign tactics used in elections? A candidate with no money can’t run a voter registration or “get out the vote” operation. There already are examples of how money from corporations have corrupted government: big money contributions from corporations have gotten pro-business judges elected in numerous States. Judges elected with the financial support of corporations have reversed long-standing legal precedents, reverse jury verdicts and created almost insurmountable obstacles for individual citizens to get justice. Legislatures also have been co-opted by corporate dollars. For example, we recently saw how a couple Senators who take millions of dollars from health care corporations and insurance companies completely obstructed a Health Care Reform Bill that would have benefited every American citizen.
So Judges Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito have reversed over 60 years of laws, fabricated a right and set into motion the end of our democratic institutions. Shame on them and shame on us if we don’t fight back this hostile but subtle coup.
FiegerTime - Geoffrey Fieger's Blog 
NEWS FLASH: Campaign finance reform was pablum, and the hypocritical Congress knew it would be overturned by the US Supreme Court. It was proably all decided at a cocktail party in Georgetown. Yes, Senators, Congressmen and administrative officials all know each other and meet regularly on social occasions and discuss our nations business. To make the show all the more dramatic, it was a “deeply divided” Court that did the preordained deed. In the ultimate misdirection, the case was argued March 24, 2009 and REARGUED September 9, 2009 and Decided January 21, 2010. Well played.
KENNEDY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,C. J., and SCALIA and ALITO, JJ., joined, in which THOMAS, J., joined as to all but Part IV, and in which STEVENS, GINSBURG, BREYER, and SO-TOMAYOR, JJ., joined as to Part IV. ROBERTS, C. J., filed a concurring opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which ALITO, J., joined, and in which THOMAS, J., joined in part. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part,in which GINSBURG, BREYER, and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.
There is an oligarchy which controls BOTH political parties and the Courts. The right – left paradigm is an elaborate smokescreen. The bankers, corporations, insurance companies and other high placed puppet masters OWN CONGRESS and apparently President Obama as well. Otherwise there would be a simple solution: Congress passes a law that states that corporations shall not be considered “persons” on freedom of speech and campaign contributions issues. Those actions are ultra vires: acts taken by a corporation or officers of a corporation that are outside of the powers or authority granted to them by law or under the corporate charrter. Oops, I forgot, those entities donate to the Congress and their PACs provide the muscle to defeat their congressional opponents, outside the duopoly of the two parties.
Hope: the internet to organize, then civil disobedience.
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many — they are few”
excerpt from “The Mask of Anarchy” by Percy Bysshe Shelley 1819
This has nothing to do with the post. I just heard from Mark Lindsay about your brother passing away. You don’t know me and I realize that this was not unexpected but I just wanted to tell you and your family how sorry I am about his life ending when he was so young. Sometimes life is just not fair. My sympathy and prayers go out to you all during this difficult time. Any event like this is a huge blow to the family but you can take some comfort in the fact that Doug lived a full life and enjoyed it. I do regret that he never had the chance to go to Egypt but that is probably one of the few regrets that he actually had. Take care.
Geoffrey,
I’m so sorry to hear of the loss of your brother, Doug. I know this in not the appropriate forum, but I want you to know that as a teenager in the ’70’s. I really connected to Doug’s and the Knacks music. My heart felt compassion and sympathy goes out to you and your family.
Kevin
Publisher
International Model and Musician
I utterly and totally agree with your statements, as most do, concerning the Supreme Court’s decision to allow corporations to “donate” unlimited amounts of money to candidates. Really, it is too bad that they didn’t do this prior to 2004 so that you could have donated “X” number of dollars to John Edwards and not have to go through your indictment and trial in the Fieger, Johnson, Edwards non-scandal that you and your partner Ven were involved in. I voted for Kerry/Edwards in 2004. I would have voted for John Edwards if he hadn’t dropped out of the primaries and had made it to the general election of 2008. Considering his views on tort reform, I understand why you would have been a supporter of him also.
Now, speaking of Ven, supposedly, really I don’t know, he is helping out my ex. His page on your site has his motto as, “Do unto others…” Are we just supposed to fill in the rest with whatever we want? Obviously, he is just putting that Christian bullshit there to get a few more clients since he is helping out a nutjob, who has no money, and will never have any money, and is putting her children through the same hell that she went through as a child like Kelly Rawlings.
I have lived Jesus’ do unto the other’s motto with her. I have tried to teach it to her. No matter what she did to me, I kept following the rule of “Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.” It never worked with her. She wants to threaten me? She gets nothing.Now I’m taking a new stance with her, “Do unto her as she has done unto me.” That is not the way that I normally work, but the other way hasn’t produced any positive results.
I respect you Geoffry Fieger. I’ve been to your office and fixed one of your glass doors. I used to work for Cory DiNardo. Another idiot, but a damn good artisan. Jack Kevorkian helped make you a household name in my home. I believe that everyone should be able to choose their own destiny without government involvement. That goes from lighting up a cigarette to putting on a seat belt to dying when and how one wants.
Ms. Rawlings and myself are in the same boat, we are both poor, and her having access to a law firm such as yours for little or no money is comparable to me, by myself, trying to stand up to our federal government.
This case is of no value to you, so please ask Mr. Johnson to take a step back and leave it alone. If you do not believe me about her craziness, please go to my website. You can tell Mr. Johnson to do so also and he can either use it to prepare, because I laid everything out there, or he can see how she is not a stable parent to our 2 beautiful daughters, Alyssa and Madeline.
I would also like to say that I am sorry to hear about your brother, Doug. Being a DJ, primarily a topless bar DJ, I enjoyed and played a couple of songs by The Knack, namely, “Good Girls Don’t” and “My Sharona.” I used to change the words of “My Sharona” to my scrotum. Anyway, I am sorry to hear of his passing.
Thank you for your time,
Jason Garland
I actually read a study somewhere (I forget where) that found that, in general, people with higher intelligence tend to be more liberal. Surprise, surprise.
Julie