Wanna Know Why Trickle Down Never Goes Away?

[Kid Berwyn]

“They come to me.” — Jane Roberts, wife of Chief Justice John Roberts.



’They come to me’: Jane Roberts’ legal recruiting work involved officials whose agencies had cases before the Supreme Court

In newly revealed testimony, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts said she worked for “U.S. attorneys, cabinet officials, former senators” and more.

By HAILEY FUCHS and JOSH GERSTEIN
Politico, 01/31/2023

Jane Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, acknowledges having represented a wide variety of public officials — including senior Justice Department officials and Cabinet members — as they transitioned to jobs in the private sector, according to testimony in an arbitration hearing to resolve a lawsuit filed by an ex-colleague against her former legal recruiting business.

A partial transcript of that testimony was included in a complaint submitted to the House, Senate and Justice Department filed in December on behalf of the former colleague.

Snip…

Jane Roberts’ placements included at least one firm with a prominent Supreme Court practice, according to the complaint, which also includes sworn testimony from Roberts herself, in which she notes the powerful officials — whose agencies have had frequent cases before her husband — for whom she has worked.

“A significant portion of my practice on the partner side is with senior government lawyers, ranging from U.S. attorneys, cabinet officials, former senators, chairmen of federal commissions, general counsel of federal commissions, and then senior political appointees within the ranks of various agencies, and I -- they come to me looking to transition to the private sector,” Roberts said, according to a transcript of a 2015 arbitration hearing related to her former colleague’s termination.

In her testimony, Roberts also noted the benefit of working with senior government officials: “Successful people have successful friends.”

Continues…

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/31/jane-roberts-legal-recruiting-work-agencies-cases-supreme-court-00080515

It’s a club and odds are we ain’t in it.

[FakeNoose]

1. She's selling access, and she gets paid a lot for it

This is why talk of "ethics" will fall on deaf ears in SCOTUS.

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Sen. Richard Blumenthal wants an IG.

Perhaps Jack Smith or one of his talented associates can tie Clarence Thomas and John Roberts to the Offshore Wealth the billionaires stash. It’d be easier with transparency, but hedge funds and trust funds and democracy, you know.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. It's all fucking disgusting.

[uponit7771]

26. +1, in the back of my head I want to see a dem spouse doing similar because its hard to believe ....

... these bastards doing this know its against the rules.

I actually don't even know all the rules for judges etc but this looks disgusting on its face and no wonder the USSC sits in the ay of progress in this country more than not

[Hassler]

17. And the rest of us pay everything

[bamagal62]

3. They are all a bunch of criminals.

[Kid Berwyn]

6. Organized State Criminals

Bill Barr: The “Cover-Up General”

"At the center of the criticism is the chief artic­ulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"

by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019

Snip...

For the next two years, as chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Coun­sel, Barr played a key role in shaping Rich­ard Thornburgh’s stormy tenure as attorney general. In a job that was essentially politi­cal, he helped maintain the administra­tion’s ideological purity by screening out judicial candidates who weren’t conserva­tive enough. He also drafted two key docu­ments rationalizing the U.S. invasion of Panama and the seizure of General Manuel Noriega.

Snip...

In mid 1990, as Thornburgh’s own prob­lems with Congress deepened, Barr was tapped to run interference, and was named deputy attorney general. The appointment came just in time for him to draft another landmark tract for the administration, the legal pretext for the undeclared war against Iraq. It would have made any Nixonite proud. Explaining it later to Congress, Barr said he believed there was a “gray zone” between a declared offensive war and an emergency defensive action where “there is latitude for the president, if he believes that the vital interests of the United States are threatened by foreign military attack, there is room for him to respond.”

Barr did not make clear how the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait equaled an attack on vital American interests, but to his credit, at the moment of decision itself, he did counsel the president to soften the impact of his unilateral rush to war by seeking a declaration of congressional support. That piece of advice, much akin to Johnson’s leveraging of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, helped to keep the naysayers at bay.

Barr’s service to the administration, how­ever, wasn’t limited simply to such flashes of political savvy. In 1991 he became active in stone-walling the Iraqgate and the BCCI investigations and further gratified conser­vatives by keeping up the tattoo on their favorite hot-button issues. Embracing im­migration policy as his own, he helped craft an exception rule that automatically barred HIV-positive sufferers from entering the country. Civil libertarians charged illegal discrimination and even racism, since many of those excluded were black Hai­tians. Barr assured Congress that the policy was meant only to keep out people who might be thrown back on public welfare.

Flogging another conservative hobby­horse, Barr fought hard as deputy AG to keep federal courts from expanding their right to review state criminal convictions on writs of habeas corpus. As a devout Catholic, he also pandered to the antiabor­tion crowd, even “torquing” the law in Au­gust 1991 to advance their crusade. The challenge came when a federal judge in Wichita issued an order barring anti-abor­tion demonstrators from blocking access to a clinic. The Justice Department inter­vened to try to force a lifting of the ban. Later asked about this by Congress, Barr gave an exquisitely technical rationale, as­serting that though the demonstrators were “lawbreakers . . . treading on other people’s rights,” they “should be dealt with” in state court, not federal court — thus the federal judge’s order was unenforceable.

Continues...

https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/

Barr is part of a family business.

[usonian]

5. Explainer on what "trickle down" economics means.

[Kid Berwyn]

9. Excellent summation, yours!

How the Supreme Court Favors the Rich and Powerful

ADAM COHEN
TIME, MARCH 3, 2020

Cohen is the author of the new book Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court's 50-Year Battle for a More Unjust America

In 1983, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Raymond Dirks, an investment advisor who passed insider information on to his clients, who used it to make money. It seemed clear that using insider information this way was illegal, but the Court found a dubious loophole. The fascinating thing about the case: the most conservative justices voted to acquit Dirks, while the most liberal ones insisted, in dissent, that he was guilty.

The Dirks case is an example of what has been called the “white collar paradox” – that conservative Supreme Court justices, who rarely vote to reverse convictions of poor criminal defendants, have shown a clear sympathy for rich ones. The conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, one study found, voted for defendants in about 7 percent of non-white-collar criminal cases – and 82 percent of white-collar ones.

Snip…

This Court that loves the upper classes has its roots in Richard Nixon’s election in 1968. Nixon vowed during his campaign to end the poor-people-loving Warren Court and replace it with a conservative one. He was able to do this with extraordinary speed: within months of taking office, he appointed a new, conservative chief justice, Warren Burger, and in his first three years in office he was able to name a total of four new justices. That locked in a conservative Court that is still with us today.

Snip…

Another group the conservative Court quickly came to the rescue of was wealthy campaign contributors. After Watergate, Congress passed a tough campaign finance law, with strict limits on both contributions and expenditures. In 1976, the Court struck down the expenditure limits, on the dubious theory that money equals speech under the first amendment. That let wealthy people spend as much as they wanted to elect candidates, and the Court has been opening the floodgates further ever since. In 2010, in Citizens United v. F.E.C., it took the radical step of saying that corporations have the same right to spend money to elect candidates as people do.

By striking down campaign finance limits, the Court has given wealthy people and corporations more power than ever over government. In the last decade, wealthy donors have spent more than $3 billion on super-PACs, and a single couple, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, gave nearly $300 million, according to “Oligarch Overload,” a new Public Citizen report. These super-donors use their contributions to extract government policies that enrich them further, including lower taxes on the wealthy. It is no coincidence that, as campaign contributions and spending have soared, the 400 richest U.S. families paid lower taxes in 2018 than the middle class. The freedom to spend unlimited amounts of money also gives the very wealthy the ability to promote their favorite social policies on a mass scale — including liberal ones, such as Michael Bloomberg’s aggressive support of pro-gun control congressional candidates.

Continues…

https://time.com/5793956/supreme-court-loves-rich/

[usonian]

10. Good material.

BTW, Time is dropping its digital paywall June 1st.

https://www.axios.com/2023/04/27/time-removes-digital-paywall

[uponit7771]

27. +1,

[Bengus81]

30. Yep...and this

[usonian]

31. Trickle-Down Economics Fails a Sophisticated Statistical Test

https://archive.is/xj32K

December 21, 2020

Last week two British scholars released a study (PDF) concluding that trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Trickle-down theory says cutting taxes on rich people will encourage them to work and invest more, ultimately creating jobs and benefiting everyone. In reality, it increases inequality while not having “any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment,” wrote David Hope, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics’ International Inequalities Institute, and Julian Limberg, a lecturer in political economy at King’s College London.

The study was widely covered, including in this Bloomberg story. But articles haven’t explored how it was that these two scholars managed to undermine a theory that, while questioned, has been used to justify every major tax cut on the rich in recent decades, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which remains President Trump’s most notable achievement.

... lots of different statistical methods mentioned

It’s common to warn in statistics that correlation doesn’t imply causation. But by combining the Mahalanobis distance technique, difference-in-differences analysis, and so on, Hope and Limberg were able to get at causation. Their bottom line:

“We find that major tax cuts for the rich push up income inequality, as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The size of the effect is substantial: on average, each major tax cut results in a rise of 0.8 percentage points in top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect holds in both the short and medium term. Turning our attention to economic performance, we find no significant effects of major tax cuts for the rich. More specifically, the trajectories of real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate are unaffected by significant reductions in taxes on the rich in both the short and medium term.”

[Joinfortmill]

7. Conflicts of interests abound.

[Kid Berwyn]

21. Epidemic of Memory Loss when it comes to reporting.

Justices shield spouses’ work from potential conflict of interest disclosures

Ginni Thomas, Jane Roberts and Jesse Barrett’s clients remain a mystery, fanning fears of outside influences.

By HAILEY FUCHS, JOSH GERSTEIN and PETER S. CANELLOS
Politico, 09/29/2022

A year after Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court, the boutique Indiana firm SouthBank Legal opened its first-ever Washington office in Penn Quarter, a move the firm hailed in a 2021 press release as an “important milestone.”

The head of the office, Jesse M. Barrett, is the justice’s husband, whose work is described by the firm as “white-collar criminal defense, internal investigations, and complex commercial litigation.”

Snip…

Mark Jungers, a former managing partner at Major, Lindsey & Africa, the firm that employed Jane Roberts as a legal recruiter before she moved to Macrae, told POLITICO the firm hired her hoping it would benefit from her being the chief justice’s wife, in part, because “her network is his network and vice versa.”

Roberts lists his wife’s company on his ethics form, but not which lawyers and law firms hire her as a recruiter — even though her clients include firms that have done Supreme Court work, according to multiple people with knowledge of the arrangements with those firms.

The POLITICO investigation found that some spouses of other Supreme Court justices have also had careers of their own, but none currently appear to have the potential to intersect as closely with the court’s work as Barrett, Thomas and Roberts. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch reported no non-investment income from their spouses in 2021. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are not married. Brett Kavanaugh’s wife Ashley Estes Kavanaugh — a former George W. Bush White House aide — reported a salary from her position as town manager of Chevy Chase Village Section 5.

Continues…

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/29/justices-spouses-conflict-of-interest-disclosures-00059549

If an Inspector General ever gets to SCOTUS, they will need a big staff for the job.

[Baked Potato]

8. They will do anything to protect this lifestyle.

Lie, cheat, steal, bribe, blackmail.

[Kid Berwyn]

24. SCOTUS has been very nice to the Offshore Tax Dodger

CLARENCE THOMAS BILLIONAIRE BENEFACTOR HARLAN CROW BOUGHT CITIZENSHIP IN ISLAND TAX HAVEN

Leaked documents reveal the GOP megadonor held dual citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis as he lavished the Supreme Court justice with gifts.

Jason Paladino, Ken Klippenstein
The Intercept, April 25 2023

Excerpts…

The documents were leaked from Henley and Partners, a London-based firm known for assisting the ultra-wealthy in obtaining “golden passports,” which allow the holders to shield assets from their home country’s tax authorities. The firm advertises itself as “the global leader in residence and citizenship by investment” and has been shown to do business with controversial clients. An Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project investigation using the leaked documents reported that the firm was working with a rogues’ gallery of accused financial criminals from around the world. An investigative journalism collaboration, also based on the leaked trove of Henley documents, reported that oligarchs, fugitives, and sanctioned businesspeople were among the clients seeking foreign passports. The passports, granted in 2012, would expire after 10 years unless renewed. It’s unclear if the Crow family renewed them last year.

The revelation of Crow’s history as a dual citizen of a nation considered to be one of the world’s most secretive tax havens raises new questions about the lavish, undisclosed gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, first revealed by ProPublica. On Monday, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to Crow seeking evidence that Crow “complied with all relevant federal tax and ethics laws,” something his dual-citizen status is sure to complicate.

“The American public deserves a full accounting of the full extent of your largesse towards Justice Thomas, including whether these gifts complied with all relevant federal tax and ethics laws,” Wyden wrote to Crow, demanding answers to detailed questions about whether he complied with IRS gift tax rules by May 8. St. Kitts and Nevis passport holders are not subject to a gift tax.

Even among tax havens, St. Kitts and Nevis is considered high risk by regulators, once even appearing on a Financial Stability Forum list of countries that were “non-cooperative” with global efforts to fight money laundering and financial crime. In 2018, the European Union moved the nation to a list of “non-cooperative jurisdictions,” citing its “harmful preferential tax regime.” A 2018 investigation in The Guardian dubbed it “the world’s most secretive offshore haven.” Even when tens of thousands of St. Kitts and Nevis business documents appeared in the “Paradise Papers” leak, company ownership was still hidden because the jurisdiction keeps so little information filed.

“International business tycoons and politicians, who have looted the assets of their nations — and other high wealth individuals — have used the dubious network of offshore tax havens across the world, which includes St. Kitts and Nevis, to hide their assets and income,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee overseeing courts.

Continues…

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/25/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-citizenship-st-kitts/

[Baked Potato]

35. It's disgusting.

[H2O Man]

12. Recommended.

I just watched the third part of the PBS series on the power of fossil fuels, and how that translates to the destruction of the environment and democracy. It's a club, and we ain't in it. We need to find a club of our own, and beat the republicans with it in 2024.

[Kid Berwyn]

25. Black Robed Gold

Despite the recent ruling allowing small fry players to sue Big Oil over the planetary environmental destruction and so forth, SCOTUS sure has supported the Ownership Class over the centuries.

Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years

Vast sums provide power to ‘buy every politician’ and delay action on climate crisis, says expert

Damian Carrington, Environment editor
The Guardian, 21 Jul 2022

The oil and gas industry has delivered $2.8bn (£2.3bn) a day in pure profit for the last 50 years, a new analysis has revealed.

The vast total captured by petrostates and fossil fuel companies since 1970 is $52tn, providing the power to “buy every politician, every system” and delay action on the climate crisis, says Prof Aviel Verbruggen, the author of the analysis. The huge profits were inflated by cartels of countries artificially restricting supply.

The analysis, based on World Bank data, assesses the “rent” secured by global oil and gas sales, which is the economic term for the unearned profit produced after the total cost of production has been deducted.

The study has yet to be published in an academic journal but three experts at University College London, the London School of Economics and the thinktank Carbon Tracker confirmed the analysis as accurate, with one calling the total a “staggering number”. It appears to be the first long-term assessment of the sector’s total profits, with oil rents providing 86% of the total.

Continues…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/revealed-oil-sectors-staggering-profits-last-50-years

“Think of it…Thousands of Trillions.”



“We call them ‘Quadrillions.’”

Let’s nail ‘em with the Club o’ Truth!!!!

[tosh]

13. Disgusting 🤮

[Kid Berwyn]

28. Absolutely.

“We told them it…would…trickle…down!” (HOWLS OF LAUGHTER)



50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/

[dchill]

14. Ethics would just get in the way of all that hard work!

[Kid Berwyn]

29. Gorsuch rolled up his sleeves...

…To make room for the bigger bundles.

Law firm head bought Gorsuch-owned property

The Supreme Court justice did not report the identity of the purchaser, whose firm has had numerous cases before the court.

b y HEIDI PRZYBYLA
Politico, 04/25/2023

For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo.

Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.

On April 16 of 2017, Greenberg’s Brian Duffy put under contract the 3,000-square foot log home on the Colorado River and nestled in the mountains northwest of Denver, according to real estate records.

He and his wife closed on the house a month later, paying $1.825 million, according to a deed in the county’s record system. Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/25/neil-gorsuch-colorado-property-sale-00093579

“A most Enterprising Justice.”

[dchill]

32. Dead giveaway!

[Kid Berwyn]

33. Ow! A decade-long nightmare.

I’d be honored to call that man, “Neighbor.”

Gorsuch and the Federalist Society turds? No.

[The Wizard]

15. The bribing class writes the laws (NT)

[Kid Berwyn]

36. The conservative club that came to dominate the Supreme Court

“Bribing Class” is right!

The conservative club that came to dominate the Supreme Court

In a new audiobook, Law School professor explores the rise of the Federalist Society and why its sway may be waning

Excerpt from Transcript…

Noah Feldman: When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, I knew one thing for sure.

The person that Donald Trump would nominate to replace her would be affiliated with a powerful organization called the Federalist Society.

As a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, I spend a lot of my time watching the Supreme Court — it’s a big part of my job. But this prediction did not take much in the way of high-level expertise.

The two other Supreme Court Justices that Trump had already appointed, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are both affiliated with the Federalist Society. So are 80% of the judges that Trump had already appointed to the courts of appeals.

The Federalist Society is a club for conservative and libertarian lawyers. It’s focused on promoting conservative legal thought and on filling the American judiciary with like-minded allies.

It was founded about 40 years ago by a bunch of law students, nerds really, who felt ostracized on their law school campuses because of their conservative views.

Since then it’s grown to become the most influential legal organization in the United States ever, capable of dramatically redefining American jurisprudence for decades to come.

And sure enough Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who is closely affiliated with the Federalist Society:

Continues…

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/03/in-audiobook-takeover-noah-feldman-lidia-jean-kott-explore-how-federalist-society-captured-supreme-court/

So the Bribing Class created their own association to support what Mussolini in an earlier decade called “illiberal.”

[marble falls]

16. Cause they like trickling on us?

[Kid Berwyn]

37. Call them sociopathic or psychotic, they don't care.

Some people just want to watch the world burn: the prevalence, psychology and politics of the ‘Need for Chaos’

Kevin Arceneaux1, Timothy B. Gravelle3, Mathias Osmundsen2, Michael Bang Petersen2, Jason Reifler4 and Thomas J. Scotto5

1Department of Political Science, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA 2Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark 3SurveyMonkey, Aurora, Ontario, Canada
4Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
5School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
KA, 0000-0002-2884-5238; TBG, 0000-0002-7091-206X; MO, 0000-0002-6234-5624;
MBP, 0000-0002-6782-5635; JR, 0000-0002-1116-7346; TJS, 0000-0003-4801-6821

Abstract:

People form political attitudes to serve psychological needs. Recent research shows that some individuals have a strong desire to incite chaos when they perceive themselves to be marginalized by society. These individuals tend to see chaos as a way to invert the power structure and gain social status in the process. Analysing data drawn from large-scale representative surveys conducted in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, we identify the prevalence of Need for Chaos across Anglo-Saxon societies. Using Latent Profile Analysis, we explore whether different subtypes underlie the uni-dimensional construct and find evidence that some people may be motivated to seek out chaos because they want to rebuild society, while others enjoy destruction for its own sake. We demonstrate that chaos-seekers are not a unified political group but a divergent set of malcontents. Multiple pathways can lead individuals to ‘want to watch the world burn’.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanism

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2020.0147

IMO, a burning world is Petrodollars at work.

[raging moderate]

18. "The American people are tired of being trickled on."

What American hero said this? And WHEN will his prophecy be fulfilled?

[Kid Berwyn]

39. Sounds like Joe Biden.

“Trickle down does not work.”

https://www.facebook.com/CBSNews/videos/president-biden-trickle-down-does-not-work/715803302424509

[raging moderate]

42. Senator George Mitchell coined this phrase.

I finally found the reference. About 20 years ago, Senator George Mitchell said this. Of course, Joe Biden no doubt worked with George Mitchell, and probably they were good friends. So probably Joe Biden quoted this phrase sometimes.

[mountain grammy]

19. Damn right it's a club!

It’s the vast right wing conspiracy Hillary warned about so many years ago.
It’s the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation and many more money pits where the rich members of the vast right wing conspiracy anoint crooks to rule over us.

[Kid Berwyn]

45. Past Time to Stop Playing Nice With the Federalist Society

But we must stop the bastards before they return the planet to Feudalism.



Stop Playing Nice With the Federalist Society

FedSoc is the engine of the conservative legal movement. Why do so many elite liberal lawyers still take its “debate club” act seriously?

BY JAY WILLIS
Balls & Strikes, NOVEMBER 11, 2021

This week, the Federalist Society will kick off its annual national convention in Washington, D.C.: a three-day festival of conservative legal movement luminaries explaining that the correct schools of jurisprudential thought are those that yield the conservative legal movement’s preferred policy outcomes. Given the key roles played by Federalist Society affiliates in fomenting the January 6 insurrection, this particular convergence of states’ rights enthusiasts on our nation’s capital will ideally result in fewer violent coup attempts.

The agenda is a laundry list of familiar right-wing grievances overlaid with the thinnest legalistic veneer imaginable: There are panels to discuss the dire threats to the constitutional order posed by Critical Race Theory, defunding police, and (of course) cancel culture. There are appearances by the author of something called Woke Inc: Inside America’s Social Justice Scam. There is a black-tie optional Antonin Scalia Memorial Dinner featuring a keynote address from Arkansas senator and noted fascism enthusiast Tom Cotton. There is a screening of a short film entitled Roe v. Wade: A Legal History, which I assume leans heavily on footage of middle-aged white guys harrumphing about the scourge of liberal judicial overreach.

Snip…

The Federalist Society, or FedSoc, is a network of conservative lawyers and law students formed in the early 1980s in response to the “orthodox liberal ideology” that ostensibly dominates the legal academy. Today, it sponsors what amounts to a series of glorified law school debate clubs that all serve Chick-fil-a for lunch. The Federalist Society is “about ideas,” per its web site, and aims to foster “fair, serious, and open debate” about the proper role of the legal system.

The other side of the Federalist Society operates largely outside of public view, where it is an integral part of the effort to reshape America in the conservative legal movement’s image. It functions as a feeder system for conservative law students, placing them in prestigious judicial clerkships that propel them to positions of power in Congress, on Wall Street, and in elite universities. Texas Senator Ted Cruz owes his fast-tracked career largely to the connections he made at Harvard Law School’s chapter; a decade later, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley served as president of Yale’s. From Reagan to Bush to Bush to Trump, the throughlines of four decades of Republican politics have been cutting taxes for rich people, demonizing poor and Black people, and installing FedSoc acolytes on the federal bench.

The organization’s influence reached its apex during the presidency of Donald Trump, who more or less outsourced judicial nominations to the Federalist Society’s Rolodex of loyal foot soldiers. An estimated 85 percent of his appeals court nominees came from FedSoc, as did the three Supreme Court justices he plucked from a list assembled with the generous assistance of FedSoc leadership. (The organization is always careful to note that its employees technically take leaves of absence to work on nominations, which is the kind of embarrassingly hollow explanation that only a group of conservative lawyers could imagine would satisfy anyone.) Now, FedSoc operates as a quasi-independent legal wing of GOP politics, recently making headlines for the efforts of its various affiliates to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Even as you read this sentence, it is grooming a new generation of lib-owning ideologues for the next Republican president with the power to hand them a gavel and life tenure.

Continues…

https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/federalist-society-stop-playing-nice/

Un-American greedhheads in search of justification for their selfishness, bigotry and hypocrisy.

[ALBliberal]

20. It's always been infuriating to me as a business major in the mid

80s and later as a tax accountant in large CPA firm how this just kept going and going and going. When our professors at UNM especially the economics professors disproved this theory so conclusively.

[Kid Berwyn]

46. Result: Greatest wealth in human history and it's moved offshore.

About a decade or more ago in a 60 Minutes interview, David Stockman, a Republican Congressman tapped to be Reagan’s first Budget Director, estimated that 7/8 of the wealth in human history had been created from 1981. He said, thanks to tax changes Reagan and Congress wrought, most all of it ended in the pockets of the 1-percent.

Trickle Down" economics was a "Trojan Horse" -- David Stockman

EXCERPT...

In the 1980’s Ronald Reagan ushered in a new era in American economics as he cut the top tax bracket from 70% down to 50% and then down again to 28%. In order to get support for doing this from the people, and also from politicians, a very crafty set of lies were produced. As David Stockman, then Reagan’s budget director, put it: giving small tax cuts across the board to all brackets was simply a “Trojan Horse” that was used to get approval for the huge top tax bracket cuts. “Trickle-Down” was a term used by Republicans that meant giving tax cuts to the rich. Stockman explains that:

"It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

"Yes, Stockman conceded, when one stripped away the new rhetoric emphasizing across-the-board cuts, the supply-side theory was really new clothes for the unpopular doctrine of the old Republican orthodoxy."

"…the Reagan coalition prevailed again in the House and Congress passed the tax-cut legislation with a final frenzy of trading and bargaining. Again, Stockman was not exhilarated by the victory. On the contrary, it seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, as though the democratic process had finally succeeded in shocking him by its intensity and its greed. Once again, Stockman participated in the trading -- special tax concessions for oil -- lease holders and real-estate tax shelters, and generous loopholes that virtually eliminated the corporate income tax. Stockman sat in the room and saw it happen."

"'Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront?' Stockman asked with wonder. 'The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism, just got out of control.'"

CONTINUED...

http://rationalrevolution.net/war/trickle_down.htm

Now, thanks to NSA and a few people with integrity, we've got a pretty good idea where the money is. Let's tax it.

Tax Offshore Wealth Sitting In First World Banks

James S. Henry
07.01.10, 09:00 AM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated July 19, 2010

Let's tax offshore private wealth.

How can we get the world's wealthiest scoundrels--arms dealers, dictators, drug barons, tax evaders--to help us pay for the soaring costs of deficits, disaster relief, climate change and development? Simple: Levy a modest withholding tax on untaxed private offshore loot.

Many aboveground economies around the world are struggling, but the economic underground is booming. By my estimate, there is $15 trillion to $20 trillion in private wealth sitting offshore in bank accounts, brokerage accounts and hedge fund portfolios, completely untaxed.

SNIP...

This wealth is concentrated. Nearly half of it is owned by 91,000 people--0.001% of the world's population. Ninety-five percent is owned by the planet's wealthiest 10 million people.

SNIP...

Is it feasible? Yes. The majority of offshore wealth is managed by 50 banks. As of September 2009 these banks accounted for $10.8 trillion of offshore assets--72% of the industry's total. The busiest 10 of them manage 40%.

CONTINUED....

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0719/opinions-taxation-tax-havens-banking-on-my-mind.html

Either that, or bring out the tumbrils.

[ALBliberal]

47. Thanks for that information. This trickle down stuff awful

Akin to ridiculous notion of flat tax. We need to educate our people.

[malaise]

22. Freaking wow

Rec

[Kid Berwyn]

41. Jane Roberts made $10.3m in commissions from elite law firms

Just read this (Thanks, muriel_volestrangler):

Jane Roberts, married to Chief Justice John Roberts, made $10.3m in commissions from elite law firms, whistleblower documents show

* Jane Roberts was paid more than $10 million by a host of elite law firms, a whistleblower alleges.

* At least one of those firms argued a case before Chief Justice Roberts after paying his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars.

* Details of Jane Roberts' work come as Congress struggles to reform the Court's self-policed ethics.

Mattathias Schwartz
Business Insider, April 28, 2023

Two years after John Roberts' confirmation as the Supreme Court's chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms.

Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country. "There are many paths to the good life," she said. "There are so many things to do if you're open to change and opportunity."

And life was indeed good for the Robertses, at least for the years 2007 to 2014. During that eight-year stretch, according to internal records from her employer, Jane Roberts generated a whopping $10.3 million in commissions, paid out by corporations and law firms for placing high-dollar lawyers with them.

That eye-popping figure comes from records in a whistleblower complaint filed by a disgruntled former colleague of Roberts, who says that as the spouse of the most powerful judge in the United States, the income she earns from law firms who practice before the Court should be subject to public scrutiny.

Continues…

https://www.businessinsider.com/jane-roberts-chief-justice-wife-10-million-commissions-2023-4?r=US&IR=T

What a nice thing, connections. Even nicer when no one can see them, like the Aspens.

“You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover -- Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out west, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work -- to life." — Scooter Libby

Source: https://www.salon.com/2007/01/31/aspens/

The aspens, a white trunk tree, reproduces via shoots fro their roots. One aspen is connected to the others underground.

[malaise]

44. The entire system is corrupt and not just in the US

[Johonny]

34. The same reason slavery didn't just go away in 19th century.

The people with a vested interest owned the power in the government for decade after decade. And look what happened when the tide finally turned and Lincoln got elected. Maybe some 60 to 80 years from now, trickle down greed is good economics will fall out of power in the US. But there will be hell to pay for these people losing power. Civil war? perhaps not, but violence and sedition for sure.

[kairos12]

38. Vile parasites and grifters all. Every time I see that grinning clown Raygun

I want to reach for the nearest receptacle and, to salute him, puke my guts out.

[Kid Berwyn]

40. Reaganusuru

After “Bushusuru”

When President GHW Bush Vomited On The Japanese Prime Minister On Live TV – Now The Japanese Have A Word For It

https://allthatsinteresting.com/bushusuru

More than a charming ritual, barfing at the sight of Reagan is an international sign of intelligence.

[spanone]

43. Supreme Corruption

[3Hotdogs]

48. Eliminating this shit involves a Constitutional amendment. When is some representative gonna introduce one?

Then again ---

An individual state can start the process.