HOW ABOUT 'OCCUPY' THE US SUPREME COURT?
The global protests are demonstrating that despite concerns that the US was killing dissent after 911, public outrage over global abuses cannot be silenced. Protestors differ in their pet concerns, but are generally aware that the US is a global empire (now in decline) that is internationally exploitative and domestically corrupt. The extent of this corruption has been described by James Galbraith (son of illustrious Canadian born John Kenneth) in his 2008 book 'Predator State', as mentioned in my earlier post on this blog.
Galbraith also mentions how corporate lobbying has co-opted major sections of the US judiciary in addition to the Congress and Senate so that laws are written and interpreted for corporations - or rather the 'reactionary' ones - who make money by flouting laws, public interest, and illegality, as opposed to a more progressive business element which would rather operate under a higher standard of rules and ethics.
Last year's decision by the US Supreme Court which destroyed any chance of reforming campaign finance by ruling that corporations could provide unlimited funds to officials running for office (described by Chomsky as a dagger blow at the heart of functioning democracy, and others as a license to buy elections) proves the top judges of the most powerful 'democracy' are also infected by the disease of 'free markets' and absence of regulatory oversight. In short, they are corrupt.
One does not need a law degree to understand that free speech or freedom of expression does not equate to a license to bribe officials running for office. It could have meant that corporations could spend money on ads to support particular candidates, policies or parties....... but that would not serve the corpo-rat interest.. ... which butters the bread on all sides to ensure it gets its way regardless of which candidate or party wins.
Isn't it time to 'occupy' the US Supreme Court? And Congress..... the Senate?
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
THE US RATING DOWNGRADE
WHY DOES THE WORLD CARE ABOUT S&P WHEN IT DESERVES A FFF RATING?
The world markets seem to be thrown into a tizzy by the recent downgrade from AAA of the United States. Newspapers were full of stories yesterday about the impact on international markets and the increased pessimism about the world economy following the downgrade of the US's debt rating. This is strange. The world markets are reacting thus to a 'rating' downgrade by Standard & Poor to a AA status, which is hardly bad.
The US has been living 'beyond its means' for decades now, ever since the Reaganite 'revolution' of killing taxes and social programs, except the biggest 'high-society' program that has been animating the US economy for decades - the high-tech, mega-dollar, 'defense' industry. Many writers including Bacevich, Chalmers-Johnson and the 'leftist' Chomsky have written about how the 'permanent war-economy' has been kept going since the Second World War which had left the US the biggest industrial power by far.
(This 'economy' - the greatest American tribute to Keynes with the significant difference that the beneficiaries of this perverted Keynesianism are the super-rich and their collaborators in the politico-bureaucratic-industrial-military complex - has reached all-time heights under Obama, and is now at $ 2 trillion/year, making Washington D.C. the world's most 'corrupt, captivating and corrupting' place on Earth, as well as the world's greatest haven for Corpo-Rat lobbyists.)
But that lasted only a few decades and by the end of the 20th century much industry had been won by Japan and Germany and then shuffled off to places like Mexico and most of all, China, by 'capitalists' whose loyalty is to the rate of return their capital earns, not to any body-politic.
The recent fight to raise the American debt ceiling also centered on the same issues - the super-rich apparently deserving no tax increases and the increasingly desperate poor and the disappearing middle-class deserving to lose even more of their greatly diminished social programs, at least so far as the Republicans were concerned.
As James Galbraith has written, the US has become a 'Predator State', in which corporate predators have been given full license (especially under the Bush/Cheney regime) to engage in wholescale 'looting' of the public institutions of the Rooseveltian New Deal - health care, social security, housing finance, education, and so on, with the additional benefit of almost complete freedom from regulatory oversight.
Hence Enron and its rape of California on electricity (while Lay's buddy appointed head of the energy regulatory commission by 'Dubya' 'fiddled' on), Blackwater and the obscene privatisation (mercenarism) of military activities, the subprime fraud and the resulting Great Recession, HMOs which are really health mercenary organisations, attempts to privatize social security and thereby put pensions in the hands of mutual funds, and so on.....
Obama's attempt to bring universal health-care to the tens of millions who had no access had led to his being portrayed as a Hitler, and a crippling of his health-care plan, and ongoing effort to scuttle it, even though the plan fails to deliver what the majority of Americans want - a single-payer government funded plan, which is what virtually every developed Western nation successfully has. The insurance companies and HMOs who live rapaciously off this multi-trillion dollar industry simply will not allow such a colossal prize to slip from their fingers, as their profits matter more than the health of Americans - whether those Americans have coverage or as in nearly 50 million cases, do not.
With all this as background, the US arguably deserved a rating downgrade far below AA. But its status as the world's leading military power (as it spends more on weapons of mass murder than the rest of the planet combined) and the continuing status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency as well as the need by various countries who hold hundreds of billions of dollars (China, India, and others) in foreign currency reserves to protect those holdings, continue to prevent the US dollar from crashing.
The dollar deserves to crash (hence the huge increase in gold price) but too many countries who hold dollars would also lose if it did, along with the generalised crisis the toppling of the world's reserve currency would have on everyone. As for the chances of 'default' which the rating downgrade itself addresses, this is unlikely, as Greenspan said on TV - the US would simply continue to 'print money' to pay off its debts...
(The 'Federal Reserve' is neither 'federal' (it is a private bank which simply creates new dollars from thin air - entries in electronic ledgers - for which it earns interest that must be paid) nor is there a reserve for the electronically 'printed' new money it has been consistently creating to pump up bubbles. It is accused of being behind many of the world's extended conflicts, with the cabal of super-rich bankers behind it profiteering from those wars....)
Those factors should have caused far greater tremors in world markets than the S&P downgrade. Apparently people have forgotten that S&P, along with Fitch and Moody's, made billions of dollars during the years leading up to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, providing AAA imprimaturs on trillions of dollars of junk securities. When hauled before the US Senate (see the excellent documentary 'Inside Job') their response (with no exceptions) was that their ratings were merely 'opinions' that investors could not rely upon as a guide to investment! This testimony alone should have led to regulation to bring these ratings agencies to heel, but it didn't. No prosecutions resulted either of the ratings agencies themselves or the investment banks that sold those junk securities and then 'bet' against them.
So to put it plainly - what is S&P's credibility in the downgrade it has given? Shouldn't world markets treat them as mere 'opinions', not to be taken seriously as guides to investment? Or to put it differently, shouldn't the markets be giving S&P, Moody's and Fitch, a FFF rating for their starring role in the creation of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression?
The world markets seem to be thrown into a tizzy by the recent downgrade from AAA of the United States. Newspapers were full of stories yesterday about the impact on international markets and the increased pessimism about the world economy following the downgrade of the US's debt rating. This is strange. The world markets are reacting thus to a 'rating' downgrade by Standard & Poor to a AA status, which is hardly bad.
The US has been living 'beyond its means' for decades now, ever since the Reaganite 'revolution' of killing taxes and social programs, except the biggest 'high-society' program that has been animating the US economy for decades - the high-tech, mega-dollar, 'defense' industry. Many writers including Bacevich, Chalmers-Johnson and the 'leftist' Chomsky have written about how the 'permanent war-economy' has been kept going since the Second World War which had left the US the biggest industrial power by far.
(This 'economy' - the greatest American tribute to Keynes with the significant difference that the beneficiaries of this perverted Keynesianism are the super-rich and their collaborators in the politico-bureaucratic-industrial-military complex - has reached all-time heights under Obama, and is now at $ 2 trillion/year, making Washington D.C. the world's most 'corrupt, captivating and corrupting' place on Earth, as well as the world's greatest haven for Corpo-Rat lobbyists.)
But that lasted only a few decades and by the end of the 20th century much industry had been won by Japan and Germany and then shuffled off to places like Mexico and most of all, China, by 'capitalists' whose loyalty is to the rate of return their capital earns, not to any body-politic.
The recent fight to raise the American debt ceiling also centered on the same issues - the super-rich apparently deserving no tax increases and the increasingly desperate poor and the disappearing middle-class deserving to lose even more of their greatly diminished social programs, at least so far as the Republicans were concerned.
As James Galbraith has written, the US has become a 'Predator State', in which corporate predators have been given full license (especially under the Bush/Cheney regime) to engage in wholescale 'looting' of the public institutions of the Rooseveltian New Deal - health care, social security, housing finance, education, and so on, with the additional benefit of almost complete freedom from regulatory oversight.
Hence Enron and its rape of California on electricity (while Lay's buddy appointed head of the energy regulatory commission by 'Dubya' 'fiddled' on), Blackwater and the obscene privatisation (mercenarism) of military activities, the subprime fraud and the resulting Great Recession, HMOs which are really health mercenary organisations, attempts to privatize social security and thereby put pensions in the hands of mutual funds, and so on.....
Obama's attempt to bring universal health-care to the tens of millions who had no access had led to his being portrayed as a Hitler, and a crippling of his health-care plan, and ongoing effort to scuttle it, even though the plan fails to deliver what the majority of Americans want - a single-payer government funded plan, which is what virtually every developed Western nation successfully has. The insurance companies and HMOs who live rapaciously off this multi-trillion dollar industry simply will not allow such a colossal prize to slip from their fingers, as their profits matter more than the health of Americans - whether those Americans have coverage or as in nearly 50 million cases, do not.
With all this as background, the US arguably deserved a rating downgrade far below AA. But its status as the world's leading military power (as it spends more on weapons of mass murder than the rest of the planet combined) and the continuing status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency as well as the need by various countries who hold hundreds of billions of dollars (China, India, and others) in foreign currency reserves to protect those holdings, continue to prevent the US dollar from crashing.
The dollar deserves to crash (hence the huge increase in gold price) but too many countries who hold dollars would also lose if it did, along with the generalised crisis the toppling of the world's reserve currency would have on everyone. As for the chances of 'default' which the rating downgrade itself addresses, this is unlikely, as Greenspan said on TV - the US would simply continue to 'print money' to pay off its debts...
(The 'Federal Reserve' is neither 'federal' (it is a private bank which simply creates new dollars from thin air - entries in electronic ledgers - for which it earns interest that must be paid) nor is there a reserve for the electronically 'printed' new money it has been consistently creating to pump up bubbles. It is accused of being behind many of the world's extended conflicts, with the cabal of super-rich bankers behind it profiteering from those wars....)
Those factors should have caused far greater tremors in world markets than the S&P downgrade. Apparently people have forgotten that S&P, along with Fitch and Moody's, made billions of dollars during the years leading up to the sub-prime mortgage crisis, providing AAA imprimaturs on trillions of dollars of junk securities. When hauled before the US Senate (see the excellent documentary 'Inside Job') their response (with no exceptions) was that their ratings were merely 'opinions' that investors could not rely upon as a guide to investment! This testimony alone should have led to regulation to bring these ratings agencies to heel, but it didn't. No prosecutions resulted either of the ratings agencies themselves or the investment banks that sold those junk securities and then 'bet' against them.
So to put it plainly - what is S&P's credibility in the downgrade it has given? Shouldn't world markets treat them as mere 'opinions', not to be taken seriously as guides to investment? Or to put it differently, shouldn't the markets be giving S&P, Moody's and Fitch, a FFF rating for their starring role in the creation of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression?
Friday, June 10, 2011
JUDICIAL REFORM NOT JUST APPOINTMENTS
JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS
Recent stories in the Globe and other newspapers about impending appointments to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal for Ontario (CAO) have raised the usual arguments about judicial 'activism' after the Charter and the political leanings of appointed judges - conservative or liberal. The more 'dangerous' topics of judicial integrity and accountability have largely been avoided.
The Globe's article (Supreme Court under scrutiny) did mention obliquely that under Madam McLachlin the Court had cut down appeals it heard by some 30-40% - surely a loss when this brings down the percentage of CAO cases which are heard to some 3%, making the CAO essentially a court without oversight or accountability.
It also mentioned that Mme. McLachlin's tenure has resulted in a court severely diminished in dissent and one in which judges have 'diluted' their positions to avoid controversy, making it a 'tame' court, which kowtows to power (presumably including powerful interests such as the federal bureaucracy). Gowlings lawyer Brown commented on how the court has given differences in appellate court positions the short shrift and how this is an 'intolerable' situation. How does all of this make Mme. McLachlin an 'able jurist'?
But the high profile of the Supreme Court notwithstanding, its actual influence is less than supposed. 'Justice' or 'injustice' as the case may be, is dispensed by lower courts, which are essentially limited to one level of appeal (the appellate court) for some 97% of cases in Ontario and similar percentages across Canada. That is the gaping hole in the Canadian system. In Switzerland for instance, a litigant is assured 2 levels of appeal.
What this means in practice is that the decisions of the Supreme Court can be set aside, distorted or simply ignored in the majority of cases by lower court judges using the age-old trick of inventing 'distinctions' between cases to avoid applying the applicable case-law. When the oversight is limited or non-existent, integrity suffers. Even if the appeal court in question is acting honestly, it will not examine the lower court's 'findings of fact', or consider that those findings may be falsifications.
There is no remedy for plaintiffs who are robbed of justice by dishonest judges who falsify facts, law and case-law. No lawyer would in any case even dare allege such criminal falsification. And a private individual who files an affidavit alleging and describing such falsifications will simply be ignored by the Supreme Court, and the Judicial Council will summarily shut-down the complaint claiming it is not a court, and inform the complainant that he/she is really only alleging 'error', thereby proving its bankruptcy - moral, intellectual and judicial.
Both the Supreme Court and the Council are of course chaired by the 'Chief Justice of Canada', currently Ms. McLachlin.
The mythology that judges are 'honourable justices' who never lie but may occasionally make 'noble' errors, is one of the greatest obstacles to justice, as dispensed in courts lower than the Supreme Court (that court's high profile and international scrutiny make falsifications by it untenable; its contribution to injustice is to deny worthy applications for leave to appeal without explanation). At best lawyers on the losing side of such injustice may claim 'bias' or a 'mockery of justice'. But such acts are really obstruction of justice by rogue judges.
The Council dismisses most complaints without investigation and operates like a private club with secrecy. It is really a public relations agency for judges, only tangentially concerned with justice. When the publicity from miscarriages became too intense, it publicly mourned their 'alarming incidence', but the corrective action it prescribed was only a 3-day course for judges, something akin to a band-aid for cancer.
The immunity from suit and liability that judges enjoy also emboldens this blatant abuse of judicial power, which our legal system pretends does not exist. The overwhelming majority of criminal miscarriages of justice took place before the Charter was put in place. Not a single judge responsible resigned, showing a distinct absence of judicial ' honour'.
The worst known case of miscarriage - Milgaard - was effectively 'whitewashed' by the judge conducting the public inquiry into it that no one except the Milgaard family wanted. The judge did however blame the victim's mother for delaying her son's release - she had to be punished for 'bringing the system into disrepute'. It is hard not to imagine that the Judicial Council broke out the champagne when the inquiry report came out; certainly they did not display any concern or outrage over this blatant cover-up.
The Council's dismal role in correcting judicial misconduct is clearly evidenced by the record. What is needed is the 'disbanding' of the Council - its 'smashing'- and its replacement by a new process where juries of citizens armed only with integrity and common sense hear complaints against judges, and are empowered to make recommendations - for discipline, damages, or even criminal indictments where judge(s) have obstructed justice. This will however be a sea-change, resisted by all the interests currently benefiting from judicial corruption.
The issues facing Canadian justice are not limited to the selection of judges - fundamental processes are in need of reform. Lawyer Raj Anand mentioned in one of the Globe's articles the need for reform to enable affordable access for minorities and others who are not 'well-heeled'.
Judicial independence was never meant to be freedom from oversight or accountability, let alone subservience to unseen interests. But that is what we may have. These matters deserve public debate and scrutiny, without which no reform is possible.
Recent stories in the Globe and other newspapers about impending appointments to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal for Ontario (CAO) have raised the usual arguments about judicial 'activism' after the Charter and the political leanings of appointed judges - conservative or liberal. The more 'dangerous' topics of judicial integrity and accountability have largely been avoided.
The Globe's article (Supreme Court under scrutiny) did mention obliquely that under Madam McLachlin the Court had cut down appeals it heard by some 30-40% - surely a loss when this brings down the percentage of CAO cases which are heard to some 3%, making the CAO essentially a court without oversight or accountability.
It also mentioned that Mme. McLachlin's tenure has resulted in a court severely diminished in dissent and one in which judges have 'diluted' their positions to avoid controversy, making it a 'tame' court, which kowtows to power (presumably including powerful interests such as the federal bureaucracy). Gowlings lawyer Brown commented on how the court has given differences in appellate court positions the short shrift and how this is an 'intolerable' situation. How does all of this make Mme. McLachlin an 'able jurist'?
But the high profile of the Supreme Court notwithstanding, its actual influence is less than supposed. 'Justice' or 'injustice' as the case may be, is dispensed by lower courts, which are essentially limited to one level of appeal (the appellate court) for some 97% of cases in Ontario and similar percentages across Canada. That is the gaping hole in the Canadian system. In Switzerland for instance, a litigant is assured 2 levels of appeal.
What this means in practice is that the decisions of the Supreme Court can be set aside, distorted or simply ignored in the majority of cases by lower court judges using the age-old trick of inventing 'distinctions' between cases to avoid applying the applicable case-law. When the oversight is limited or non-existent, integrity suffers. Even if the appeal court in question is acting honestly, it will not examine the lower court's 'findings of fact', or consider that those findings may be falsifications.
There is no remedy for plaintiffs who are robbed of justice by dishonest judges who falsify facts, law and case-law. No lawyer would in any case even dare allege such criminal falsification. And a private individual who files an affidavit alleging and describing such falsifications will simply be ignored by the Supreme Court, and the Judicial Council will summarily shut-down the complaint claiming it is not a court, and inform the complainant that he/she is really only alleging 'error', thereby proving its bankruptcy - moral, intellectual and judicial.
Both the Supreme Court and the Council are of course chaired by the 'Chief Justice of Canada', currently Ms. McLachlin.
The mythology that judges are 'honourable justices' who never lie but may occasionally make 'noble' errors, is one of the greatest obstacles to justice, as dispensed in courts lower than the Supreme Court (that court's high profile and international scrutiny make falsifications by it untenable; its contribution to injustice is to deny worthy applications for leave to appeal without explanation). At best lawyers on the losing side of such injustice may claim 'bias' or a 'mockery of justice'. But such acts are really obstruction of justice by rogue judges.
The Council dismisses most complaints without investigation and operates like a private club with secrecy. It is really a public relations agency for judges, only tangentially concerned with justice. When the publicity from miscarriages became too intense, it publicly mourned their 'alarming incidence', but the corrective action it prescribed was only a 3-day course for judges, something akin to a band-aid for cancer.
The immunity from suit and liability that judges enjoy also emboldens this blatant abuse of judicial power, which our legal system pretends does not exist. The overwhelming majority of criminal miscarriages of justice took place before the Charter was put in place. Not a single judge responsible resigned, showing a distinct absence of judicial ' honour'.
The worst known case of miscarriage - Milgaard - was effectively 'whitewashed' by the judge conducting the public inquiry into it that no one except the Milgaard family wanted. The judge did however blame the victim's mother for delaying her son's release - she had to be punished for 'bringing the system into disrepute'. It is hard not to imagine that the Judicial Council broke out the champagne when the inquiry report came out; certainly they did not display any concern or outrage over this blatant cover-up.
The Council's dismal role in correcting judicial misconduct is clearly evidenced by the record. What is needed is the 'disbanding' of the Council - its 'smashing'- and its replacement by a new process where juries of citizens armed only with integrity and common sense hear complaints against judges, and are empowered to make recommendations - for discipline, damages, or even criminal indictments where judge(s) have obstructed justice. This will however be a sea-change, resisted by all the interests currently benefiting from judicial corruption.
The issues facing Canadian justice are not limited to the selection of judges - fundamental processes are in need of reform. Lawyer Raj Anand mentioned in one of the Globe's articles the need for reform to enable affordable access for minorities and others who are not 'well-heeled'.
Judicial independence was never meant to be freedom from oversight or accountability, let alone subservience to unseen interests. But that is what we may have. These matters deserve public debate and scrutiny, without which no reform is possible.
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