Citizens United decision arguably is the single most destructive SCOTUS decision in the history of our country. Wealth = Power, but Power does not necessarily connote inherent wisdom. The exploration of why power tends to corrupt requires more of a public hearing. From Psychology Today: "Power can alter self-perception, leading to feelings of exceptionality and reduced empathy." This leads to acknowledgement of the Dunning Kruger effect, as well. Thus, we are subjected to a Musk, a Thiel, a wealth zombie.
I am amazed at the ground work Lisa Hraves exposes which lead us to that decision, and the long game that has been played over us for more than 50 years. That, nothing about the evolution of Trump or MAGA is new or surprising but an eventuality perpetrated by Roberts, Thomas, Reagan, and wealthy families like the Koch Bros.
Now that the pot is boiling they will have frog legs.
In her book, Graves follows Roberts's rise from Reagan administration apparatchik to clerking for William Rehnquist, who served as chief justice from 1986 until his death in 2005. The Reagan years are treated as formative: Roberts absorbed and internalized a set of constitutional commitments — hostility to affirmative action, opposition to expansive administrative power, skepticism of reproductive rights — that he has pursued consistently across his career, even as he has cultivated a public persona of judicial restraint and moderation.
The Rehnquist connection is significant in Graves's account not only intellectually but institutionally: Rehnquist's most enduring legacy, she argues, occurred in 2000, when the Supreme Court ordered the state of Florida to cease recounting ballots in the disputed presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The 5-4 decision handed the presidency to Bush. Bush went on to nominate Roberts and Samuel Alito to the court, where they joined Clarence Thomas — nominated by George H.W. Bush — forming an enduring partisan trio. In Graves's telling, this chain of events was not coincidental but the product of a decades-long strategic effort to capture the federal judiciary.
While working for the Senate committee, Graves tried, unsuccessfully, to block Roberts's 2003 appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals, in the belief that Roberts was a right-wing ideologue who would use the judiciary to advance his agenda.
The book is, in part, a vindication of that judgment — an argument that subsequent events have confirmed what she argued then and was dismissed for arguing.
Nice review. The purpose of the right-wing ideology being thrust down the craw of American society has always been about the maintenance of the control of it all. Couching it in the claim (albeit hypocritical) of commanding the high moral ground captures the consent of a certain, not insignificant, percentage of the population, i.e. those who are fearful of the self-management of their rights of personal agency. So, what we have reminds me of Carlo Cipolla's observations about human stupidity. The combination of stupid people (i.e. a Ron Reagan for instance and bandits (i.e. Rehnquist for example) results in events that are simply lethal to the integrity of a functioning democracy.
I ceased eating sentient creatures some time ago, so I'll pass on the frogs legs. Wonder whether the wealthy will embrace that. As an aside, at the top of the list of defilements (Kleshas) in the Buddhist Pali cannon is greed.
I think it was in reference to frogs brought to a boil don’t know/feel enough to hop out before they’re dead- not that someone plans to do any eating!!🤔🤣
Lisa’s criticism of the Roberts court is great. Robert’s decisions in Citizens United and Trump v. United States are masturbatory fantasies of the far right come to life.
Citizens United opened the floodgates for dark money in politics. They ruled money is free speech and corporations are people. Ironic because the whole idea behind corporations is to protect the Directors from personal liability.
Alito and Thomas are unrepentant grifters. Supreme Court Justices are sworn to be fair, impartial, above politics and corruption. Can anyone say that's what we've got now?
Why are the Heritage Foundation and wealthy people so evil? Surely they must know what they are doing is undemocratic but they still eagerly do it. What is their vision? Complete subservience of everyone else? Then what? What is it in human nature that makes people evil? And why are the richest people the most evil? I have my own theory it's all driven by sexual competition as we are mainly vehicles that exist to replicate. I guess will humanity ever transcend sexual competition? Or is this it? We just continue to hit each other over the head with clubs as we automate more and more to make it easier and easier to club each other to death. All seems pretty pointless.
The motivation of the rich is pretty obvious. The rich don't want to pay their fair share of taxes and they don't want business regulation for the common good. In short, the rich are motivated by unbridled greed. Democracy gets in their way. A dictator doesn't. The rich have more money than they could ever need or do anything with. Houses, boats, cars. They hardly use them. Not to mention endless investments and financial accounts. It really is a sickness. Did you ever watch The Hobbit series? The rich are like the dragon Smaug.
Yes, Bill, you are correct. Of course, the greed gives them limitless power over government. They do not want rules or laws by which to live. They have no concern for the public good. The question is how to salvage any of the democracy we thought we had.
That is the $64000 question. Trump will do everything possible from here on out to prevent Democratic majorities in the House or Senate. He has much cleverer and more unscrupulous people helping him steal the election than in 2000. He has all of the power of the federal government to prevent Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. On the other hand, we have very smart lawyers and hopefully state government officials who are even now gaming out how Trump will try to subvert the election and how they will counter that. If it's any consolation, the law is on our side.
I agree about ICE. But also, Trump’s DOJ can submit a false affidavit to any federal magistrate judge to seize ballots, as they did recently in Atlanta. And Trump will lie about national security threats to justify election interference, and courts give the president lots of deference on national security determinations. Trump is a psychopath and an ignoramus, but he has clever amoral people around him whose full time job is planning how to steal elections.
"Democracy gets in the way, but THEIR dictator doesn't."
The rich want their future generations to control the world, but history shows that the future generations usually fall into traps of excess and squander most of it away.
M - C - M' is the circuit of capital. M is money. C is a commodity and M' is more money, i.e., M' > M. The latter is the essence of this circuit. M' must be greater than M or money is not transformed into capital.
Capitalists are the conscious representatives of this circuit. Their determining purpose and prime motivating force is to always and everywhere act in the way that increases the size of their capital at the fastest rate possible. Their behavior is determined by their position in the economic system. It's either act in this manner to accumulate or stop being capitalists. Any other considerations are literally beside the point of accumulating capital at the fastest rate possible. "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!"
Therefore, this determining purpose and prime motivating purpose causes them in certain circumstances to be "evil".
And last, this analysis is from the greatest economist to ever live. He was a genius in the fullest sense of the word. And he's the only reason we have this analytical insight.
As a Florida resident, I will never forget, nor forgive, the infamous decision on Bush v. Gore, the corrupt, immoral and treasonable gift of the Supreme Court to authoritarianism and an unforgiveable insult to Florida voters and the Florida voting system.
I agree that Citizens United was a terrible decision. I have always believed that the Dred Scott decision is the worst single decision In US history. I believed for a long time that the Taney Court was the worst in history. My opinion of Dred Scott has not changed. My opinion has changed following the succession of incredibly bad decisions by the Robert's Court: This current SC has supplanted the Taney Court as the worst ever.
not to defend the Dred Scott decision upholding slavery as "property" was a horrible decision, but at least it was based on the Constitution [and right after it Scott was given his freedom by the owner]. The Citizens United decision and many others by the SCt eg the Trump v US decision July 1 2024 asserting the entire WH is immune from criminal law have pushed the entire US into a lawless tyranny which will not be reversed.
the Citizens United decision was contrary to the 1st A and nakedly political - it obviously was designed to empower the lobbies and the corporations. The 1st A is about guarentees to individual liberty, not to groups, associations and corporations which are in fact counter to and quite hostile to individual liberties as anyone who works in or near corporations or lobbies knows. The question is whether individual liberty will be returned or restored, such that the decision will be recognized as wrong and reversed by a new SCt.
Essentially, those of us who are not billionaires, the 99.9999% of Americans, are being crushed under the very large boots of the .00001%. It’s the enshittification of government. I wonder what elections would look like if people had a clear understanding of this. But I don’t think most people want to know.
Many have a sense of what is happening, which is why progressives are gaining traction. Pointing to the constant bombardment of slickly packaged campaigns as an indicator of billionaires efforts in buying elections and stink tank studies might be part of an effective strategy. The term “stink tank” is apt. I expect it will also gain traction
Musk paid $2000 to voters in Wisconsin. These voters filled out the paperwork. Took the money. And then voted however they d*** pleased, which turned out to be for the Dem supported candidate.
As far as I could find, that did not happen. Mr. Musk gave two checks of One Millon dollars each to two voters during a rally in Green Bay, for signing his America PAC petition against "activist judges". He later gave $ 100 to people who signed the petition. Somehow that was all allowed.
Wish I’d thought of it. I’ll happily reuse it as often as possible. Graves said it “…because there’s this whole other structure where fossil fuel companies and fossil fuel CEOs like Charles Koch and others, are spending enormous sums year after year on these so-called think tanks — or as some people call them, “stink tanks.””
I would have missed it if I was listening instead of reading, that’s why I love a transcript.
Yes! In further research, it seems that there were a few million dollar pay offs by Musk, one at least in Green Bay, and in WI the amount paid (offered) per voter was $100. I’m sorry for that mistake. The $2000 number came from a conversation I had while standing in line to “Early In-Person vote” on the first day possible, for Wi Supreme Court race in 2025. The lines were unusually long that day. The folks near me were chatting and laughing. And I had not paid any real attention to Musk’s offers. The folks in line made it clear that they were taking his money and voting however they pleased. I asked the amount. I swear one man said $2,000. Now why? If it was $100. Was he part of a group, pooling the money for some purpose? I don’t know. But Musk and others spent$90 million on a State of Wisconsin Supreme Court race. And their candidate lost. Susan Crawfort won that race. There is hope. People of Wisconsin proved that.
There were legal actions against Musk. But I believe that the $100 payments were in fact paid out.
Ginni Thomas was a sophomore at Omaha Westside when I was a senior. It is no surprise that she became President of the Young Republicans club. Across the street from where she grew up lived Kurt Anderson, founder of Spy Magazine, author of several NY Times bestsellers and host on NPR stations in the NY City area.
This is the clearest (and thus scariest) exposition of the long-term fascist/billionaire conspiracy to take over the US Government. It succeeded.
Orban was just defeated, but he had only been 'Orbanifying' Hungary for 20 years.
We've been Koched/Stoned since at least 1972; if not for Nixon's insane paranoia, his regime would have stretched to now.
The 2000 Brooks Brothers riot involved many of the current office holders as rioters and now beneficiaries of the conspiracy.
Evidence for just how successful this has been includes the $79 TRILLION transferred from the 90% to the 1% since 1975, and this BBC reflection from 2014.
"The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
...
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power. "
There is a silver lining in the trump mess: it has brought all this corruption out of the darkness and into the light. Now, can we get enough dems into Congress and the White House, who are not wedded to big money, to start to fix our broken system?
That's the problem I have with "centrist" and "moderate" Dems: they are happy to return things to the state it was before Trump but as described above the plutocrats have been warping America for a very long time so puting things back to that state will just let the GOP authoritarians regroup and have another go at Orbaning the country.
The Republican Party and its conservative associates (thinktanks, SC justices, billionaire donors, etc.) are like rotten eggs and stink already for decades. They don't work for the American people; they work to protect their own interests at the expense of ordinary people. And indeed... don't underestimate the dynasties. If you want reforms: don't just get rid of Donald, get rid of his family....
And we cannot, must not stop there. We must address the problems Lisa identified which weaponized this Supreme Court, which allowed funding of PACs and Super PACs and the endless stream of billionaire funded not for profits that serve themselves, not the People and the feckless Congress who fails to legislate and spends more time and money on fundraising and carrying favor with despots.
I am not saying throw the baby out with the bath water. We need enforce laws on the books, return parity to the election process, limit terms and create pathways for the People to remove the feckless and corrupt.
I agree, but we do need stronger constitutional guardrails. That we've failed to enforce the laws on the books demonstrates the laws just aren't strong enough to withstand the constitutional assaults by this regime and its enablers. We need some automatic triggers that bypass a corrupt DOJ, SCOTUS and another Mitch McConnell.
Agreed. Whatever we come up with has to ensure measures to prevent abuses. One thing we can do right off the bat that can't be abused is eliminate the electoral college.
A constitutional requirement to bring nominations to the floor for a vote - no sitting on them like McConnell did. What he did was legal, but shouldn't have been. This too can't be abused in any meaningful way. Dems have never pulled a stunt like that, and never would. SCOTUS term limits.
An amendment that explicitly overturns Citizens United. Another to codify freedom of choice. Another to criminalize all forms of voter suppression.
But we need to address the feckless Congress ... term limits, higher ethics and no trading on insider trading, no pay during govt shut down, a health plan and retirement that mirrors that of an average Ametican, and a path for constituency recall of those who fail to fulfill their duty.
Excellent and much-needed CLEAR exposition of the deep corruption of Roberts in particular & the entire right-wing funding eco-system that has turned US public discourse into a trash-heap of, as James Joyce said, "a tissue of lies & subterfuge".
The RPBs, of course, are the creators & most active practitioners of this kakistocratic public corruption.
But the DC Dems unfortunately have played a disturbingly complicit role in failing to challenge the key leverage the right-wing judicial movement has played in consolidating this fetid situation:
the perjury of not just Supreme Court nominees but the entire Federal judiciary of appeals & district courts.
Eileen Cannon is only the most odoriferous example of this habituated practice of conscious lying at Senate hearings, but hardly the only one.
DC Dems have already failed in allowing these charades of hearings to become acceptable, but, as Ms Graves makes painfully clear, RPBs still feel -- correctly -- they can continue to run this insultingly in-your-face travesty of judicial nominations.
ALL Dem nominees -- not just presidential -- have to make clear they will radically change the entire judicial "system", including the sham "hearings" & UN-DO the damage Roberts & his anti-Constitutional cronies have wreaked on the US polity.
As the Talking Heads said, "this aint no party, this aint no disco, no [more] time for foolin' around"
If the Dems can only marginally defeat a clearly demented moron like Trump & his RPB sycophants & fellow grifters, they will deserve every humiliation that continues to come their way.
The US has sustained a total moral collapse. I have proof. Previously an able-bodied clincial social worker, a castastrophic injury during a routine medical procedure in 2016 changed my life forever. I was left permanently disabled, requiring written communication with a transcript (email, chat, text, postal) as an ADA reasonable accommodation. But legal teams don’t like written records. Consequently, 50+ organizations have refused to honor the accommodation that would have provided me with access.
Despite this occurring across all virtually all domains (healthcare, academia, insurance, banking, nonprofit safety nets, federal-level services, state-level services, media, publishing, entertainment, retail, organized religion), I didn’t sue. Social workers engage with systems as agents of change so that the rising tide of corrective action can lift all boats. For 10 years, I’ve spent my productive hours each day advocating for disability access. It’s my “lonely road of defiance,” as Chris Snyder so eloquently put it. https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-increasing-attacks-on-francesca
The outcome is always the same: false hope, empty promises, disdain for the spirit of ADA, and ignoring correspondence. As a result, I have to surrender agency and assign a proxy to manage a credit card issue or schedule a mammogram. Disney sent me an email stating that their offices were “phones only.”
What’s next? Will Disney tell guests in wheelchairs to manage the stairs?
I share your frustration but social workers are hard-wired optimists (we have to be). I want to be a drop in the collective ocean of social change. So, I persist in advocating for disability access despite spectacularly unsuccessful outcomes.
You eloquently sum up all my feelings, brother or sister. My only consolation is that I have few years left to witness this debacle. I hope future generations find solace in their cell phones, x boxes and giant tvs. The death of our democracy makes my soul shrivel.
🙏 As your sister (thank you) I urge you to remember that we are each drops of potential in the ocean of collective social change! But, like the 1980s commercial for the NY lottery, “you gotta be in it to win it.” MAGAs believe that this is Armageddon. I hope they’re right. I’ve read that story and I know how it ends. Light “trumps” darkness. Pun intended. Hang in there!
I feel and live your pain ... was injured in a 'should have been fatal' car accident driving to work ... at an office more than an hour from home, that they paid me mileage to get to and from, yet somehow the incident was not covered by workman's comp (?).
When I needed more than the allotted 3 months to recover, I was told my job is full time and was not allowed flexible FMLA to allow time to do OT and PT needed. So I lost my job ... should have sued under workman's comp, but I lived my job and thought I had a career and seriously believed they would hire me back. I also wanted to work.
Recently the company i work for was acquired, and I am WFH due the the inability of the company to adapt current office space. But that dispensation ends in Sept, I have to renew annually and the new company is not a fan of WFH and partway down the pathway of staffing reductions ... my days are numbered ... too young to retire, too old to get hired by anyone else and not disabled enough to be disabled.
🙏 I am deeply sorry for what you’ve lost, and for the attachments you’ve surely been forced to shed. The deck is stacked against us. Behind our backs and without our knowledge or consent, the laws and regulations that formerly protected us have been gutted. Caveat emptor has replaced good faith and fair dealing. For now.
One commenter on that article remarked the following: "The Atlantic wants Samuel Alito to be a mystery. He isn't. He's what happens when institutions mistake a certain kind of smallness for excellence, and the small man mistakes the deference for proof of his own worth.
He's a type. The mid-century white American male, delivered by meritocracy and historical luck to the apex of power, and left there — unchanged, unexamined, unchallenged — while the world kept becoming something he never consented to. He shares a genus with Donald Trump, with any number of men who rose through systems built for them and confused that passage for destiny.
What Canellos can't bring himself to say is that there's no mystery here, no fall from grace, no man to mourn. What looks like anger is closer to bewilderment. Alito isn't outraged that he's been misread. He's outraged or perhaps confused that he's been read — that what he always was, what his entire cohort always was, is now being named plainly and found ordinary. The prejudice he carried like ballast his entire career is being called prejudice. The shock of that recognition is being mistaken for depth.
It isn't depth. It's a common man, from a common mold, genuinely confused that the deference finally ran out.
We are living in the wreckage not of his transformation but of our own long negligence — the decades we spent treating the banal as the distinguished, and handing it a robe."
This article was too hard to read since it confirms for me that our democracy has been killed. I can only be glad that I have a limited amount of time left with this corrupted situation. I am sorry. I tried throughout my life to be of service to this country having been a child of the antiwar movement and all the rights movements for women, gays and minorities. I spent four decades counseling inmates in state prisons, volunteering at food pantries and wildlife refuges. But greed and money are more important and I have none of either so it makes me a drop in the ocean.
I’ve been reading Rebecca Solnit’s latest. This is my second pass through, having been so moved by the audio version. The Beginning Comes After the End. Based on your comment, I think this book would serve as a balm to your soul. I’ll cut and paste a comment I made elsewhere that elaborates. Take care!
If you have time, Rebecca Solnit’s new book, The Beginning Comes After the End, Notes on a World of Change, is a hopeful read. She looks at the longer timelines. Land being returned to Native Americans because they are better stewards, for example. How one Native American mother/daughter duo held on to one acre of land when the surrounding land was privatized. That one acre, years later expanded to jurisdiction over 100000 acres by the descendants of 14 women, survivors of genocidal policies. That’s just chapter one!
She talks about how we don’t have to know the outcome but only the direction for us to continue walking.
Great conversation. I knew Ginni Thomas played a part in the movement to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, but I had no idea of her influence going back to the early 2000s. How has Clarence Thomas been allowed to not recuse himself in so many situations?
Thank you so much for this post. I’ve learned so much from your “stuff” and with all the information and headlines and bombardments of what dastardly deeds are taking place, it’s hard to see some of the origins ( or oranges😳😉) of the depravity.
I feel better reading that there are people like you and your interviewees out there informing and fighting to get our democracy back! So frightening
Yet the same skies, the same trees, the same earth sustains the billionaires as us - that’s what i don’t understand. Why don’t they care about the planet? And why does having more when people are dying from poisoned air and water all over the world - it would cost them so little if their comfort zone to mitigate. That’s what i don’t understand
Same here. Even if they bought up all the islands in the tropics so they could live apart from the hoi polloi they detest, climate change would affect them there. They cannot escape it. Truly boggles my mind.
What a brilliant and important conversation! Thank you Paul for bringing Lisa to us. So smart, dedicated, insightful, and committed to getting our country back on track.
This is a very important interview. It provides detailed information on the stages whereby American politics have become deeply corrupted. If enough of our citizens can learn about the dark forces that are destroying American democracy, we might be able to reverse the direction in which we are headed. An essential part of that reversal will involve repairing the Supreme Court. If the Democrats manage to regain power, Supreme Court reform should be at the very top of their agenda! Roberts, Alito, and Thomas should be clearly seen for who they are: an existential threat to the American republic.
This is a very important interview. The conversation reveals and summarizes key points on how we got to where we are today. In particular, the small detail about the Tic Toc billionaire who makes money on fast trades explains the recent large fluctuations in the stock market based on Trump’s statements. So many angles to this situation, but there is hope when Wisconsin continues to elect Supreme Court candidates who are Not the recipients of these billionaires. We the people!
Citizens United decision arguably is the single most destructive SCOTUS decision in the history of our country. Wealth = Power, but Power does not necessarily connote inherent wisdom. The exploration of why power tends to corrupt requires more of a public hearing. From Psychology Today: "Power can alter self-perception, leading to feelings of exceptionality and reduced empathy." This leads to acknowledgement of the Dunning Kruger effect, as well. Thus, we are subjected to a Musk, a Thiel, a wealth zombie.
I am amazed at the ground work Lisa Hraves exposes which lead us to that decision, and the long game that has been played over us for more than 50 years. That, nothing about the evolution of Trump or MAGA is new or surprising but an eventuality perpetrated by Roberts, Thomas, Reagan, and wealthy families like the Koch Bros.
Now that the pot is boiling they will have frog legs.
In her book, Graves follows Roberts's rise from Reagan administration apparatchik to clerking for William Rehnquist, who served as chief justice from 1986 until his death in 2005. The Reagan years are treated as formative: Roberts absorbed and internalized a set of constitutional commitments — hostility to affirmative action, opposition to expansive administrative power, skepticism of reproductive rights — that he has pursued consistently across his career, even as he has cultivated a public persona of judicial restraint and moderation.
The Rehnquist connection is significant in Graves's account not only intellectually but institutionally: Rehnquist's most enduring legacy, she argues, occurred in 2000, when the Supreme Court ordered the state of Florida to cease recounting ballots in the disputed presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The 5-4 decision handed the presidency to Bush. Bush went on to nominate Roberts and Samuel Alito to the court, where they joined Clarence Thomas — nominated by George H.W. Bush — forming an enduring partisan trio. In Graves's telling, this chain of events was not coincidental but the product of a decades-long strategic effort to capture the federal judiciary.
While working for the Senate committee, Graves tried, unsuccessfully, to block Roberts's 2003 appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals, in the belief that Roberts was a right-wing ideologue who would use the judiciary to advance his agenda.
The book is, in part, a vindication of that judgment — an argument that subsequent events have confirmed what she argued then and was dismissed for arguing.
Nice review. The purpose of the right-wing ideology being thrust down the craw of American society has always been about the maintenance of the control of it all. Couching it in the claim (albeit hypocritical) of commanding the high moral ground captures the consent of a certain, not insignificant, percentage of the population, i.e. those who are fearful of the self-management of their rights of personal agency. So, what we have reminds me of Carlo Cipolla's observations about human stupidity. The combination of stupid people (i.e. a Ron Reagan for instance and bandits (i.e. Rehnquist for example) results in events that are simply lethal to the integrity of a functioning democracy.
I ceased eating sentient creatures some time ago, so I'll pass on the frogs legs. Wonder whether the wealthy will embrace that. As an aside, at the top of the list of defilements (Kleshas) in the Buddhist Pali cannon is greed.
I don't think the wealthy consider the "little people" to be sentient.
I think it was in reference to frogs brought to a boil don’t know/feel enough to hop out before they’re dead- not that someone plans to do any eating!!🤔🤣
We are all frogs simmering.
That gives us a whole new perspective on the Portland Frogs.
Precisely
I argued with a Lt. General that greed was the primary causative factor of political tragedy. It's nice to hear the Pali Cannon agrees.
That’s why I think America is beyond redemption
That video is very disturbing.
Lisa’s criticism of the Roberts court is great. Robert’s decisions in Citizens United and Trump v. United States are masturbatory fantasies of the far right come to life.
Citizens United opened the floodgates for dark money in politics. They ruled money is free speech and corporations are people. Ironic because the whole idea behind corporations is to protect the Directors from personal liability.
Alito and Thomas are unrepentant grifters. Supreme Court Justices are sworn to be fair, impartial, above politics and corruption. Can anyone say that's what we've got now?
And Roberts is a right wing fanatic.
Don’t leave the Trump dynasty out- deplorable grifters
Mindless drifters who rode and obvious wave.
Why are the Heritage Foundation and wealthy people so evil? Surely they must know what they are doing is undemocratic but they still eagerly do it. What is their vision? Complete subservience of everyone else? Then what? What is it in human nature that makes people evil? And why are the richest people the most evil? I have my own theory it's all driven by sexual competition as we are mainly vehicles that exist to replicate. I guess will humanity ever transcend sexual competition? Or is this it? We just continue to hit each other over the head with clubs as we automate more and more to make it easier and easier to club each other to death. All seems pretty pointless.
The motivation of the rich is pretty obvious. The rich don't want to pay their fair share of taxes and they don't want business regulation for the common good. In short, the rich are motivated by unbridled greed. Democracy gets in their way. A dictator doesn't. The rich have more money than they could ever need or do anything with. Houses, boats, cars. They hardly use them. Not to mention endless investments and financial accounts. It really is a sickness. Did you ever watch The Hobbit series? The rich are like the dragon Smaug.
Yes, Bill, you are correct. Of course, the greed gives them limitless power over government. They do not want rules or laws by which to live. They have no concern for the public good. The question is how to salvage any of the democracy we thought we had.
That is the $64000 question. Trump will do everything possible from here on out to prevent Democratic majorities in the House or Senate. He has much cleverer and more unscrupulous people helping him steal the election than in 2000. He has all of the power of the federal government to prevent Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. On the other hand, we have very smart lawyers and hopefully state government officials who are even now gaming out how Trump will try to subvert the election and how they will counter that. If it's any consolation, the law is on our side.
Since elections are controled by the states, and the bigger states tend to be blue, it is more difficult to falsify the election.
The trick is too keep ICE from doing too much damage.
I agree about ICE. But also, Trump’s DOJ can submit a false affidavit to any federal magistrate judge to seize ballots, as they did recently in Atlanta. And Trump will lie about national security threats to justify election interference, and courts give the president lots of deference on national security determinations. Trump is a psychopath and an ignoramus, but he has clever amoral people around him whose full time job is planning how to steal elections.
"Democracy gets in the way, but THEIR dictator doesn't."
The rich want their future generations to control the world, but history shows that the future generations usually fall into traps of excess and squander most of it away.
the thirst for wealth consumes de facto soulless people - people that have no spiritual life...
I'm trying to reintegrate spirituality into our political life in a totally non-sectartian way, much as our founders seem to have intended.
M - C - M' is the circuit of capital. M is money. C is a commodity and M' is more money, i.e., M' > M. The latter is the essence of this circuit. M' must be greater than M or money is not transformed into capital.
Capitalists are the conscious representatives of this circuit. Their determining purpose and prime motivating force is to always and everywhere act in the way that increases the size of their capital at the fastest rate possible. Their behavior is determined by their position in the economic system. It's either act in this manner to accumulate or stop being capitalists. Any other considerations are literally beside the point of accumulating capital at the fastest rate possible. "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!"
Therefore, this determining purpose and prime motivating purpose causes them in certain circumstances to be "evil".
And last, this analysis is from the greatest economist to ever live. He was a genius in the fullest sense of the word. And he's the only reason we have this analytical insight.
I think the super-rich see politics as a part of the game, and money is how they increase their chances.
They already have more than enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
Some of it may be driven by ideology. For example, banning abortion.
But in other cases, they’re lying in return for industry money: saying smoking doesn’t cause cancer, saying global warming is a hoax.
As a Florida resident, I will never forget, nor forgive, the infamous decision on Bush v. Gore, the corrupt, immoral and treasonable gift of the Supreme Court to authoritarianism and an unforgiveable insult to Florida voters and the Florida voting system.
I am in utter agreement with you on this observation.
I agree that Citizens United was a terrible decision. I have always believed that the Dred Scott decision is the worst single decision In US history. I believed for a long time that the Taney Court was the worst in history. My opinion of Dred Scott has not changed. My opinion has changed following the succession of incredibly bad decisions by the Robert's Court: This current SC has supplanted the Taney Court as the worst ever.
not to defend the Dred Scott decision upholding slavery as "property" was a horrible decision, but at least it was based on the Constitution [and right after it Scott was given his freedom by the owner]. The Citizens United decision and many others by the SCt eg the Trump v US decision July 1 2024 asserting the entire WH is immune from criminal law have pushed the entire US into a lawless tyranny which will not be reversed.
the Citizens United decision was contrary to the 1st A and nakedly political - it obviously was designed to empower the lobbies and the corporations. The 1st A is about guarentees to individual liberty, not to groups, associations and corporations which are in fact counter to and quite hostile to individual liberties as anyone who works in or near corporations or lobbies knows. The question is whether individual liberty will be returned or restored, such that the decision will be recognized as wrong and reversed by a new SCt.
Elbow room, Very helpful post.
Thank you for your kind comment
Essentially, those of us who are not billionaires, the 99.9999% of Americans, are being crushed under the very large boots of the .00001%. It’s the enshittification of government. I wonder what elections would look like if people had a clear understanding of this. But I don’t think most people want to know.
Many have a sense of what is happening, which is why progressives are gaining traction. Pointing to the constant bombardment of slickly packaged campaigns as an indicator of billionaires efforts in buying elections and stink tank studies might be part of an effective strategy. The term “stink tank” is apt. I expect it will also gain traction
Musk paid $2000 to voters in Wisconsin. These voters filled out the paperwork. Took the money. And then voted however they d*** pleased, which turned out to be for the Dem supported candidate.
Susan Borkowski, I’m grateful for your post; a ray of light in the world of Dark Money.
As far as I could find, that did not happen. Mr. Musk gave two checks of One Millon dollars each to two voters during a rally in Green Bay, for signing his America PAC petition against "activist judges". He later gave $ 100 to people who signed the petition. Somehow that was all allowed.
🤣“stink tank”. I love it!🤣
Wish I’d thought of it. I’ll happily reuse it as often as possible. Graves said it “…because there’s this whole other structure where fossil fuel companies and fossil fuel CEOs like Charles Koch and others, are spending enormous sums year after year on these so-called think tanks — or as some people call them, “stink tanks.””
I would have missed it if I was listening instead of reading, that’s why I love a transcript.
They’ll only be able to deny global warming for so long. It’s already obvious to me.
Yes! In further research, it seems that there were a few million dollar pay offs by Musk, one at least in Green Bay, and in WI the amount paid (offered) per voter was $100. I’m sorry for that mistake. The $2000 number came from a conversation I had while standing in line to “Early In-Person vote” on the first day possible, for Wi Supreme Court race in 2025. The lines were unusually long that day. The folks near me were chatting and laughing. And I had not paid any real attention to Musk’s offers. The folks in line made it clear that they were taking his money and voting however they pleased. I asked the amount. I swear one man said $2,000. Now why? If it was $100. Was he part of a group, pooling the money for some purpose? I don’t know. But Musk and others spent$90 million on a State of Wisconsin Supreme Court race. And their candidate lost. Susan Crawfort won that race. There is hope. People of Wisconsin proved that.
There were legal actions against Musk. But I believe that the $100 payments were in fact paid out.
On Wisconsin!
That is awesome!👍
Ginni Thomas was a sophomore at Omaha Westside when I was a senior. It is no surprise that she became President of the Young Republicans club. Across the street from where she grew up lived Kurt Anderson, founder of Spy Magazine, author of several NY Times bestsellers and host on NPR stations in the NY City area.
This is the clearest (and thus scariest) exposition of the long-term fascist/billionaire conspiracy to take over the US Government. It succeeded.
Orban was just defeated, but he had only been 'Orbanifying' Hungary for 20 years.
We've been Koched/Stoned since at least 1972; if not for Nixon's insane paranoia, his regime would have stretched to now.
The 2000 Brooks Brothers riot involved many of the current office holders as rioters and now beneficiaries of the conspiracy.
Evidence for just how successful this has been includes the $79 TRILLION transferred from the 90% to the 1% since 1975, and this BBC reflection from 2014.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
"The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
...
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power. "
There is a silver lining in the trump mess: it has brought all this corruption out of the darkness and into the light. Now, can we get enough dems into Congress and the White House, who are not wedded to big money, to start to fix our broken system?
That's the problem I have with "centrist" and "moderate" Dems: they are happy to return things to the state it was before Trump but as described above the plutocrats have been warping America for a very long time so puting things back to that state will just let the GOP authoritarians regroup and have another go at Orbaning the country.
We can only hope.
These interest groups fund Dems too, although not to the same extent. Crypto funded enough Dems to get the GENIUS Act passed.
The Republican Party and its conservative associates (thinktanks, SC justices, billionaire donors, etc.) are like rotten eggs and stink already for decades. They don't work for the American people; they work to protect their own interests at the expense of ordinary people. And indeed... don't underestimate the dynasties. If you want reforms: don't just get rid of Donald, get rid of his family....
We need to stop electing business people who know nothing about government. They are profit driven, which is often a corruption of the public good.
And we cannot, must not stop there. We must address the problems Lisa identified which weaponized this Supreme Court, which allowed funding of PACs and Super PACs and the endless stream of billionaire funded not for profits that serve themselves, not the People and the feckless Congress who fails to legislate and spends more time and money on fundraising and carrying favor with despots.
I am not saying throw the baby out with the bath water. We need enforce laws on the books, return parity to the election process, limit terms and create pathways for the People to remove the feckless and corrupt.
I agree, but we do need stronger constitutional guardrails. That we've failed to enforce the laws on the books demonstrates the laws just aren't strong enough to withstand the constitutional assaults by this regime and its enablers. We need some automatic triggers that bypass a corrupt DOJ, SCOTUS and another Mitch McConnell.
Be careful. Whatever we use, our opponents will use against us.
Agreed. Whatever we come up with has to ensure measures to prevent abuses. One thing we can do right off the bat that can't be abused is eliminate the electoral college.
A constitutional requirement to bring nominations to the floor for a vote - no sitting on them like McConnell did. What he did was legal, but shouldn't have been. This too can't be abused in any meaningful way. Dems have never pulled a stunt like that, and never would. SCOTUS term limits.
An amendment that explicitly overturns Citizens United. Another to codify freedom of choice. Another to criminalize all forms of voter suppression.
That's just for starters.
But we need to address the feckless Congress ... term limits, higher ethics and no trading on insider trading, no pay during govt shut down, a health plan and retirement that mirrors that of an average Ametican, and a path for constituency recall of those who fail to fulfill their duty.
Excellent and much-needed CLEAR exposition of the deep corruption of Roberts in particular & the entire right-wing funding eco-system that has turned US public discourse into a trash-heap of, as James Joyce said, "a tissue of lies & subterfuge".
The RPBs, of course, are the creators & most active practitioners of this kakistocratic public corruption.
But the DC Dems unfortunately have played a disturbingly complicit role in failing to challenge the key leverage the right-wing judicial movement has played in consolidating this fetid situation:
the perjury of not just Supreme Court nominees but the entire Federal judiciary of appeals & district courts.
Eileen Cannon is only the most odoriferous example of this habituated practice of conscious lying at Senate hearings, but hardly the only one.
DC Dems have already failed in allowing these charades of hearings to become acceptable, but, as Ms Graves makes painfully clear, RPBs still feel -- correctly -- they can continue to run this insultingly in-your-face travesty of judicial nominations.
ALL Dem nominees -- not just presidential -- have to make clear they will radically change the entire judicial "system", including the sham "hearings" & UN-DO the damage Roberts & his anti-Constitutional cronies have wreaked on the US polity.
As the Talking Heads said, "this aint no party, this aint no disco, no [more] time for foolin' around"
If the Dems can only marginally defeat a clearly demented moron like Trump & his RPB sycophants & fellow grifters, they will deserve every humiliation that continues to come their way.
Grear discussion. I knew the supreme court needed reform, just didnt know how much
The US has sustained a total moral collapse. I have proof. Previously an able-bodied clincial social worker, a castastrophic injury during a routine medical procedure in 2016 changed my life forever. I was left permanently disabled, requiring written communication with a transcript (email, chat, text, postal) as an ADA reasonable accommodation. But legal teams don’t like written records. Consequently, 50+ organizations have refused to honor the accommodation that would have provided me with access.
Despite this occurring across all virtually all domains (healthcare, academia, insurance, banking, nonprofit safety nets, federal-level services, state-level services, media, publishing, entertainment, retail, organized religion), I didn’t sue. Social workers engage with systems as agents of change so that the rising tide of corrective action can lift all boats. For 10 years, I’ve spent my productive hours each day advocating for disability access. It’s my “lonely road of defiance,” as Chris Snyder so eloquently put it. https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-increasing-attacks-on-francesca
The outcome is always the same: false hope, empty promises, disdain for the spirit of ADA, and ignoring correspondence. As a result, I have to surrender agency and assign a proxy to manage a credit card issue or schedule a mammogram. Disney sent me an email stating that their offices were “phones only.”
What’s next? Will Disney tell guests in wheelchairs to manage the stairs?
It is a sad fact that the majority don't care about their communities until some catastrophic event.
Since I was young in the 1970’s I have campaigned and protested against Neoliberal economics. Very few cared to even debate it.
I've tried discussing in my community, however, everyone was too busy living their lives.
Now, I have decided that the people, do indeed, get the leaders they deserve.
I used to think that a little education would help - now I know, that even that is worthless.
We live in a World where most people are too self involved to look around their own community.
I'm not alone, there are many people that I've stood alongside that have just completely given up.
The World will be whatever they want it to be … it will sadly be quite ugly and money centric
I share your frustration but social workers are hard-wired optimists (we have to be). I want to be a drop in the collective ocean of social change. So, I persist in advocating for disability access despite spectacularly unsuccessful outcomes.
You eloquently sum up all my feelings, brother or sister. My only consolation is that I have few years left to witness this debacle. I hope future generations find solace in their cell phones, x boxes and giant tvs. The death of our democracy makes my soul shrivel.
🙏 As your sister (thank you) I urge you to remember that we are each drops of potential in the ocean of collective social change! But, like the 1980s commercial for the NY lottery, “you gotta be in it to win it.” MAGAs believe that this is Armageddon. I hope they’re right. I’ve read that story and I know how it ends. Light “trumps” darkness. Pun intended. Hang in there!
I feel and live your pain ... was injured in a 'should have been fatal' car accident driving to work ... at an office more than an hour from home, that they paid me mileage to get to and from, yet somehow the incident was not covered by workman's comp (?).
When I needed more than the allotted 3 months to recover, I was told my job is full time and was not allowed flexible FMLA to allow time to do OT and PT needed. So I lost my job ... should have sued under workman's comp, but I lived my job and thought I had a career and seriously believed they would hire me back. I also wanted to work.
Recently the company i work for was acquired, and I am WFH due the the inability of the company to adapt current office space. But that dispensation ends in Sept, I have to renew annually and the new company is not a fan of WFH and partway down the pathway of staffing reductions ... my days are numbered ... too young to retire, too old to get hired by anyone else and not disabled enough to be disabled.
🙏 I am deeply sorry for what you’ve lost, and for the attachments you’ve surely been forced to shed. The deck is stacked against us. Behind our backs and without our knowledge or consent, the laws and regulations that formerly protected us have been gutted. Caveat emptor has replaced good faith and fair dealing. For now.
There is a fascinating article in The Atlantic today about Sam Alito, which underscores what has been said here. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/samuel-alito-supreme-court-conservative/686756/
One commenter on that article remarked the following: "The Atlantic wants Samuel Alito to be a mystery. He isn't. He's what happens when institutions mistake a certain kind of smallness for excellence, and the small man mistakes the deference for proof of his own worth.
He's a type. The mid-century white American male, delivered by meritocracy and historical luck to the apex of power, and left there — unchanged, unexamined, unchallenged — while the world kept becoming something he never consented to. He shares a genus with Donald Trump, with any number of men who rose through systems built for them and confused that passage for destiny.
What Canellos can't bring himself to say is that there's no mystery here, no fall from grace, no man to mourn. What looks like anger is closer to bewilderment. Alito isn't outraged that he's been misread. He's outraged or perhaps confused that he's been read — that what he always was, what his entire cohort always was, is now being named plainly and found ordinary. The prejudice he carried like ballast his entire career is being called prejudice. The shock of that recognition is being mistaken for depth.
It isn't depth. It's a common man, from a common mold, genuinely confused that the deference finally ran out.
We are living in the wreckage not of his transformation but of our own long negligence — the decades we spent treating the banal as the distinguished, and handing it a robe."
That’s a good article. Definitely recommend.
This article was too hard to read since it confirms for me that our democracy has been killed. I can only be glad that I have a limited amount of time left with this corrupted situation. I am sorry. I tried throughout my life to be of service to this country having been a child of the antiwar movement and all the rights movements for women, gays and minorities. I spent four decades counseling inmates in state prisons, volunteering at food pantries and wildlife refuges. But greed and money are more important and I have none of either so it makes me a drop in the ocean.
Condolences from a fellow drop.
I’ve been reading Rebecca Solnit’s latest. This is my second pass through, having been so moved by the audio version. The Beginning Comes After the End. Based on your comment, I think this book would serve as a balm to your soul. I’ll cut and paste a comment I made elsewhere that elaborates. Take care!
If you have time, Rebecca Solnit’s new book, The Beginning Comes After the End, Notes on a World of Change, is a hopeful read. She looks at the longer timelines. Land being returned to Native Americans because they are better stewards, for example. How one Native American mother/daughter duo held on to one acre of land when the surrounding land was privatized. That one acre, years later expanded to jurisdiction over 100000 acres by the descendants of 14 women, survivors of genocidal policies. That’s just chapter one!
She talks about how we don’t have to know the outcome but only the direction for us to continue walking.
Great conversation. I knew Ginni Thomas played a part in the movement to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, but I had no idea of her influence going back to the early 2000s. How has Clarence Thomas been allowed to not recuse himself in so many situations?
Outstanding conversation, so educational to a non-American like me. Thank you.
And to an American like me! 😏
Thank you so much for this post. I’ve learned so much from your “stuff” and with all the information and headlines and bombardments of what dastardly deeds are taking place, it’s hard to see some of the origins ( or oranges😳😉) of the depravity.
I feel better reading that there are people like you and your interviewees out there informing and fighting to get our democracy back! So frightening
Yet the same skies, the same trees, the same earth sustains the billionaires as us - that’s what i don’t understand. Why don’t they care about the planet? And why does having more when people are dying from poisoned air and water all over the world - it would cost them so little if their comfort zone to mitigate. That’s what i don’t understand
Same here. Even if they bought up all the islands in the tropics so they could live apart from the hoi polloi they detest, climate change would affect them there. They cannot escape it. Truly boggles my mind.
Are they high on their own supply? I honestly don’t know.
What a brilliant and important conversation! Thank you Paul for bringing Lisa to us. So smart, dedicated, insightful, and committed to getting our country back on track.
The Republican Party isn’t a political party it’s a crime syndicate. Traitors one and all.
This is a very important interview. It provides detailed information on the stages whereby American politics have become deeply corrupted. If enough of our citizens can learn about the dark forces that are destroying American democracy, we might be able to reverse the direction in which we are headed. An essential part of that reversal will involve repairing the Supreme Court. If the Democrats manage to regain power, Supreme Court reform should be at the very top of their agenda! Roberts, Alito, and Thomas should be clearly seen for who they are: an existential threat to the American republic.
This is a very important interview. The conversation reveals and summarizes key points on how we got to where we are today. In particular, the small detail about the Tic Toc billionaire who makes money on fast trades explains the recent large fluctuations in the stock market based on Trump’s statements. So many angles to this situation, but there is hope when Wisconsin continues to elect Supreme Court candidates who are Not the recipients of these billionaires. We the people!