I keep having to stop reading this and come back to it because it reads like every conspiracy theory coming true. All of the "evil rich men conspiring to rule the world" is just here in front of us in plain black and white... and probably nothing will change. frustration runs high
Niall Ferguson wrote a book called The Square and the Tower which is basically "of course the Bavarian Illuminati existed, the tragedy is they weren't more effective." Ferguson has a point: if you get a bunch of smart elites together to try and make the world a better place, they should end up with a positive impact just because that's what they're trying for. Of course, he also makes the point that Henry Kissinger is a hand print on the ass of history because he just frickin' knows everyone so... li'l of Column A, li'l of Column B. Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto actually gets into Bohemian Grove in a studiously non-fiction way, including quoting Nixon on it ("the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine"). He paints a portrait of Herbert Hoover and his hangers on, camping fishing and deciding who among the anointed they would back for this that or the other board position. Fundamentally, it's a country club cookout for the white Republicans who run California and, by extension, vast swaths of the world's economy. I think we fundamentally accept this: rich, powerful people have buddies, too, and we're never truly surprised when we find out that Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones shared a dorm room freshman year. We grumble and gripe but our gears don't grind until they start fucking us over. The United States veered towards socialism in the '30s because it had been leaving poor people in the dust for 70 years previously... and the powers-that-be were primarily interested in protecting the rich after the collapse of Wall Street. Russia ended up the USSR because the venal power structure of the Czars didn't make any attempts to modernize the middle class. We look at Clarence Thomas being the opposite of impartial and we see them rubbing our fucking noses in it. Marie Antoinette never actually said "let them eat cake" but she lived it.
The most benign theory I've heard is that these "perks" are given to the justices to dissuade them from retiring. It'd be interesting to see if the majority of these trips and gifts are occurring while a democrat is in the white house, but yeah, of course I think that theory's absolutely bunk.
Well. It turns out that "the most benign theory" is 1. True and 2. Not really benign at all. lol A level of absurdism one such as myself can only aspire to. I also very much dislike the specter of RBG's doings, but at least she reported things. Objectively; This has to stop. It won't. I'm not passionately opposed to increasing SCOTUS salaries, but something tells me that people like Clarence Thomas have an insatiable lust for power.In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
George Priest, a Yale Law School professor who has vacationed with Thomas and Crow, told ProPublica he believes Crow’s generosity was not intended to influence Thomas’ views but rather to make his life more comfortable. “He views Thomas as a Supreme Court justice as having a limited salary,” Priest said. “So he provides benefits for him.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg disclosed taking more trips than any other justice in 2018, totaling 14. She visited Tel Aviv, Israel where she was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Genesis Prize Foundation. Shortly following the award ceremony, she disclosed being provided transportation, food and lodging as a tourist and guest of billionaire Israeli businessman Morris Kahn.
Well obviously most of the court has usually already made up its mind and works backwards from there using bogus philosophies like cOnStiTuTiONaL oRiGinALiSm after "deliberations", but this corruption is about what happens before their minds are made up on any particular case, imho. Like billionaire buddies making generalized appeals to protect the interests of the wealthy and religious.