The Daily Parker

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down three decisions in the last few minutes that generally change nothing, though one of them was unexpectedly unanimous.

First, in Arizona v. U.S., a unanimous court (except Justice Kagan, who recused herself) agreed that the supremacy and naturalization clauses make Arizona's draconian immigration law unconstitutional. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion; Republican party operatives Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito dissented in part.

In his dissent, Scalia proposes changing U.S. law to allow individual states to exile people:

Today’s opinion...deprives States of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have no right to be there.

What the...? For argument, even if individual states had that power at some point in U.S. history, states long ago gave it up. By "long ago" I mean in 1865, when the principle of national sovereignty was demonstrated conclusively. Scalia quotes from a 1758 treatise and the Articles of Confederation, and the Sedition Act to shore up his opinion. I'd say he's lost his mind but that presupposes facts not in evidence.

Thomas agrees with the result but dissents on the grounds that, well, the supremacy clause doesn't exist. Actually, he finds "that there is no conflict between the 'ordinary meanin[g]' of the relevant federal laws and that of the four provisions of Arizona law at issue here," which makes his view of the relevant statutes—how does one say?—uniquely narrow.

Alito's partial dissent has a little more nuance, but still comes from a belief in limiting federal power and granting states more authority within their borders.

Second, the Court issued a 5-4 per curiam decision (without a signed opinion) in American Tradition Partnership v. Montana, striking down a century-old Montana law prohibiting corporations from spending money on elections. No surprise there; the party hacks simply upheld Citizens United. However, Justice Breyer wrote a short dissent that encapsulates the frustration the non-stooges on the court feel about the majority:

Montana’s experience, like considerable experience elsewhere since the Court’s decision in Citizens United, casts grave doubt on the Court’s supposition that independent expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so.

Were the matter up to me, I would vote to grant the petition for certiorari in order to reconsider Citizens United or, at least, its application in this case. But given the Court’s per curiam disposition, I do not see a significant possibility of reconsideration.

Finally, the Court ruled 5-4 in Miller v. Alabama that 14-year-old children can't be sentenced to life without parole, no matter what they've done. Justice Kagan delivered the opinion for the rational side of the court, saying the 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments means that children should have a chance at parole, someday. Roberts wrote the general dissent for the other bunch, with Thomas and Alito offering additional dissents because they weren't happy just voting "no" once. Roberts says that life without parole isn't in itself cruel or unusual; Thomas says the decision violates original intent; and Alito says that some crimes are so big they deserve big punishments.

Stay tuned for the big decision on the Affordable Care Act this Thursday...

James Fallows today suggested a parlor game you can play at home:

This is distilled from a longer item earlier today, at the suggestion of my colleagues. It's a simple game you can try at home. Pick a country and describe a sequence in which:

• First, a presidential election is decided by five people, who don't even try to explain their choice in normal legal terms.
• Then the beneficiary of that decision appoints the next two members of the court, who present themselves for consideration as restrained, humble figures who care only about law rather than ideology.
• Once on the bench, for life, those two actively second-guess and re-do existing law, to advance the interests of the party that appointed them.
• Meanwhile their party's representatives in the Senate abuse procedural rules to an extent never previously seen to block legislation—and appointments, especially to the courts.
• And, when a major piece of legislation gets through, the party's majority on the Supreme Court prepares to negate it -- even though the details of the plan were originally Republican proposals and even though the party's presidential nominee endorsed these concepts only a few years ago.

How would you describe a democracy where power was being shifted that way?

I would describe it as a creeping oligarchy, or even, given the party in question, a shuffle towards feudalism. It's nice to know I'm not at home. (And also that James Fallows is a much better writer than I am.)

Continuing my general theme the last few days, the New York Times reminds us what Mitt Romney's biggest backer really wants:

Mr. Adelson’s other overriding interest is his own wallet. He rails against the president’s “socialist-style economy” and redistribution of wealth, but what he really fears is Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on companies like his that make a huge amount of money overseas. Ninety percent of the earnings of his company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, come from hotel and casino properties in Singapore and Macau. (The latter is located, by the way, in China, a socialist country the last time we checked.)

Because of the lower tax rate in those countries (currently zero in Macau), the company now has a United States corporate tax rate of 9.8 percent, compared with the statutory rate of 35 percent. President Obama has repeatedly proposed ending the deductions and credits that allow corporations like Las Vegas Sands to shelter billions in income overseas, but has been blocked by Republicans.

Mr. Obama’s Justice Department is also investigating whether Mr. Adelson’s Macau operations violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an inquiry that Mr. Adelson undoubtedly hopes will go away in a Romney administration. For such a man, at a time when there are no legal or moral limits to the purchase of influence, spending tens of millions is a pittance to elect Republicans who promise to keep his billions intact.

What title should a man get when he donates $100 million to an election campaign? Would that be worth an earldom or a duchy?

I fretted earlier this week about the pattern that has emerged in the U.S., driven primarily by the the Republican Party (though my party isn't guilt-free), to return to the golden age of fiefs and barons. Paul Krugman provided another clear example:

Over the past few days, The New York Times has published several terrifying reports about New Jersey’s system of halfway houses — privately run adjuncts to the regular system of prisons. The series is a model of investigative reporting, which everyone should read. But it should also be seen in context. The horrors described are part of a broader pattern in which essential functions of government are being both privatized and degraded.

[T]he main answer, surely, is to follow the money. Never mind what privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets; think instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians and their friends. As more and more government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or the politicians capturing the corporations? Does it matter?

Do we not remember the phrase "divide and conquer?" As more money and power becomes more concentrated, the competing interests of those without the money and power makes it more and more difficult to form an organized resistance. And by the way, the republican form of government is supposed to be exactly that: organized resistance to power. Krugman's column Friday outlined one way that the right and business interests are attacking republicanism. (Yes, there's irony that the Republican party has done the most to injure republicanism in America.)

Just keep this thought filed away: if your city ever privatizes its police force, move. Immediately.

What do you call a system in which:

• Massive and increasing private wealth;
• Increasing inheritance of that wealth, reducing social mobility;
• Private control over traditionally public resources;
• Debts to private interests that persists after death, sometimes burdening families for generations;
• Increasing economic growth in non-productive ("rentier") sectors with declines in productive sectors, like manufacturing;
• Public officeholders continuing to use their former titles of office long after leaving service;
• Economic policies guaranteed to lengthen an economic catastrophe;
• Increasing authoritarianism and mixing religion and politics;
• Increasing separation of military and civilian societies as the military derives its membership from a narrower sub-set of people;
• Systematic efforts to remove people from the political process; and
• Judges, even at the highest level, making unabashedly partisan decisions that tend to perpetuate the above?

In short, what do you call a system that concentrates wealth—mainly derived from investments, not from production—in a few hands, keeps it there, and makes it difficult if not impossible for everyone else to better his own condition?

Feudalism.

The United States isn't a feudal country, obviously, but a good chunk of the political and economic elite clearly want it to become one. It's still in our power to prevent this. But I'm less and less confident.

The Affordable Care Act has helped 3.1 million people get health insurance:

As a result of the law, the proportion of insured adults ages 19 through 25 has increased to nearly 75 percent.

The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to allow young adults to remain on their parents' family plans until their 26th birthday, even if they move away from home or graduate from school. This policy took effect on September 23, 2010.

"Today, because of the health care law, more than 3 million more young adults have health insurance," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "This policy doesn’t just give young adults and their families peace of mind, it also gives them freedom. It means that as they begin their careers, they will be free to make choices based on what they want to do, not on where they can get health insurance."

And the Republicans want to kill it:

The central pillars of the health care reform law — guaranteed coverage regardless of health status, an individual mandate to buy insurance and subsidies delivered via exchanges — were originally crafted by moderate conservatives and have long enjoyed support in the GOP. But after Obama embraced the template, Republicans ran to the right and abandoned it in an effort to undermine him politically. Now, as they try to sneak back closer to the center, the hard-right base that they’ve empowered is giving them hell.

First came the warning shots from activist groups like FreedomWorks and Club For Growth, which most recently purged the longest serving Republican senator for taking moderate positions in the past. Then came the cries of opposition from conservative legislators in the party. The anger is reflected among high-profile conservative activists who are actively confronting party leaders for straying — and apparently making them nervous.

This is going to be a long 139 days...and I can't wait until the Supreme Court fires off the ACA decision due any day now.

The Dept. of Homeland Security announced today that most undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children will not be deported:

Those who demonstrate that they meet the criteria will be eligible to receive deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal, and will be eligible to apply for work authorization.

“Our nation’s immigration laws must be enforced in a firm and sensible manner,” said [Homeland Security] Secretary [Janet] Napolitano. “But they are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case. Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language. Discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here.”

The order affects people who arrived before turning 16, are still under 30, have lived here for at least 5 years, and have demonstrated through school or military service and staying out of jail that they're the kind of people we want to keep.

I'd like to see Congress actually pass comprehensive immigration reform that grants citizenship to military veterans and grants permanent residence to people who finish two years of college, but that's crazy talk. The GOP doesn't want poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, whether they come from Mexico or Mississippi.

Update: Brian Buetler at TPM points out, "for Republicans, embracing Obama’s move carries the same risk with their base as rejecting it does with immigrants — the voting bloc they’re most concerned about alienating. A hunch: prepare yourself for a deluge of condemnations of executive-branch overreach, paired with real reluctance to say anything meaningful about what the directive actually accomplishes."

That sounds about right.

Because it sounds utterly ridiculous when grown-ups use her arguments:

Sen. Paul is basically reading from Atlas Shrugged. And it's nonsense, as Sen. Sanders demonstrates. Further, I think Paul knows it is.

If you're just tuning in, Ayn Rand believed (as apparently Rand Paul believes) that taxes were only taken by force, and were therefore always illegitimate. She believed that a government levying taxes and providing services from those taxes was doing so "at the point of a gun," even if nearly everyone in the society agreed to the taxes and services.

It's a seductive argument. Of course governments force you to pay taxes—though in the U.S., it's unlikely that the local police will break down your door and haul you off to jail if you don't. But the piece that Rand's argument misses is blindingly obvious: there really isn't any way to ensure that everyone contributes without some sanctions for failing to comply. Otherwise people would simply not pay taxes.

No, it isn't the force that makes taxes illegitimate to the Rands and Pauls of the world. They just hate taxes. In Rand's vision, we wouldn't have governments; private interests would provide everything we needed because the "market" would encourage them to do so. For example, if there were enough demand for nuclear submarines, a company would enter the market and make them as long as doing so were profitable. Same with voting booths, bus service to poor neighborhoods, and firefighting services.

It turns out, there was a time when most things our government supplies came from private interests. We call this time "feudalism," which no doubt Rand Paul would like to see return to the world.

Via Sullivan through Lloyd Grove's review of tonight's HBO documentary on President George H.W. Bush:

Touting his qualifications for the presidency, including jobs as U.S. envoy to China and director of the CIA, he tellingly remarks: “It wasn’t like out of the clear blue sky some hick from West Texas coming in.”

I wonder who he's comparing himself to, there... Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent.

The branding cops from the International Olympic Committee are making sure the London 2012 sponsors get their £1 bn worth:

With far more Olympic funds coming from taxpayers than sponsors, there is some resentment that the public is underwriting a massive advertising platform for big companies who then treat the games as their sole property.

Stricter still are rules within the 35-day Brand Exclusion Zone due to be thrown about half a mile around London’s Olympic Park, where any advertising or endorsement of non-sponsors is forbidden. Given that these sponsors are contributing a massive £1 billion to the games, it’s understandable they want to protect their investment. But with negative publicity for moves such as Visa’s demand that all non-Visa ATMs are removed from the Olympic zone, companies supporting the games are doing themselves few promotional favors by insisting on an over-zealous approach.

The complaints have flooded in, and it looks like the Cameron government may relax the sponsorship laws a bit. Meanwhile, Londoners are annoyed, but then again they're usually so. It's also yet another reason why we in Chicago are happy we didn't get the 2016 games.