Packing the Supreme Court?

[Derec]

I think that what the democrats are trying to do too. They are telling a conservative court to back off and not try to block their legislation.

Isn't that pretty much extortion? You either rubberstamp all our legislation or we pack the court.

Should Trump have threatened the same when SCOTUS nixed one of his policies? If it would have been beyond the pale for Trump to do it, then it is so for Biden too.

 

[Derec]

It’s not unprecedented for Congress to adjust the size of the Supreme Court to defeat white supremacy. We’ve done it three times before.

Last time was in the 19th century, 150 years ago. And yet this guywants to do this again, for partisan advantage.
And calling everybody he disagrees with "white supremacy" is not any more valid if he is black.

On three separate occasions, Congress changed the size of the Supreme Court to help defeat white supremacy.
Today's far-right majority has been reviving Jim Crow. We must learn from history and do what it takes to stop them.

Saying that SCOTUS "has been reviving Jim Crow" is too ridiculous for words. I have not noticed any "colored" water fountains or segregated lunch counters lately.
I think Jones is one of those black supremacists who thinks that it would be "white supremacist" for SCOTUS were to mandate that universities could not discriminate based on race.
For the record, I do hope SCOTUS decides the correct way on racial preferences and declares them unconstitutional.

We must #ExpandTheCourt.

Expanding the court for non-partisan reasons would be one thing. There is an argument to be made to expand the size of the court to the number of circuits, which is 13.
But it should be done in a balanced manner. For example, let Democrats and Republicans in the Senate pick two expansion justices each.
Expanding the court because you don't like their rulings is just a craven grab for power.

Good idea.
As to FDR's court packing, though his attempt to do so failed, the court did not revoke any more New Deal stuff.

Nothing good about the idea or the racist justification for court packing.

 

[lpetrich]

Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties’ - NOEMA

We predicted political upheaval in America in the 2020s. This is why it’s here and what we can do to temper it.
By Jack A. Goldstone and Peter Turchin
September 10, 2020

Almost three decades ago, one of us, Jack Goldstone, published a simple model to determine a country’s vulnerability to political crisis. The model was based on how population changes shifted state, elite and popular behavior. Goldstone argued that, according to this Demographic-Structural Theory, in the 21st century, America was likely to get a populist, America-first leader who would sow a whirlwind of conflict.

Then ten years ago, the other of us, Peter Turchin, applied Goldstone’s model to U.S. history, using current data. What emerged was alarming: The U.S. was heading toward the highest level of vulnerability to political crisis seen in this country in over a hundred years. Even before Trump was elected, Turchin published his prediction that the U.S. was headed for the “Turbulent Twenties,” forecasting a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe.

They then describe how elites tend to get more and more of society's wealth for themselves, how they tend to make it difficult for others to join them, and how they tend to make governments less effective and less solvent by depriving governments of tax revenue.

That tends to lead to revolutions. Tensions grow between elites who want to maintain their privileges and those who try to rally ordinary people to support changes that will make a more inclusive social order. "Each side works to paint the other as a fatal threat to society, creating such deep polarization that little of value can be accomplished, and problems grow worse until a crisis comes along that explodes the fragile social order."

In preindustrial societies, they find cycles of roughly 300 - 400 years, each one having an integrative period, a period of social cooperation and growth followed by a disintegrative period, a period of social strife and decline. In an integrative period, commoners do well, but elites end up wanting more and more. This produces immiseration of the common people and strife among the elites as they fight over top positions, thus starting a disintegrative period. This period continues until enough of the elites are killed or exiled or demoted to commoner status. That then starts a new integrative period.

The United States is close to an ideal case of an industrial society to study. It is one of the first nations to start to industrialize, it is close to autarkic, at least in theory, and it has not suffered much external threat over most of its existence.

Peter Turchin and his colleagues find analogous cycles over the US's history. From the Revolution to the 1820's was an integrative period, ending in the aptly named Era of Good Feelings. It was followed by the Jackson Era, the beginning of a disintegrative period that lasted through the Gilded Age. The Progressive Era of the first decades of the 20th cy. were the beginning of the next integrative period. It continued through the New Deal Era and World War II, culminating in the Eisenhower Era. It was followed by the Sixties Era, and that began a disintegrative period that continued through Gilded Age II, something that we are still in.

I'm reluctant to proclaim the end of Gilded Age II, because of what disappointments Presidents Clinton and Obama were.

What this has to do with packing the Supreme Court I'll get to in my next post.

 

[lpetrich]

Authors Jack Goldstone and Peter Turchin continue

This year, the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police have delivered a double-barreled crisis to U.S. politics. America has reacted with a nationwide, months-long series of urban protests. But this explosion of protest is not just the result of this year’s events. The U.S. has weathered epidemics and racial protests before and produced legislation that made the country better as a result. What is different this decade is that these events are occurring at a time of extreme political polarization, after decades of falling worker’s share in national income, and with entrenched elite opposition to increased spending on public services. These trends have crippled the U.S. government’s ability to mount an effective response to the pandemic, hampered our ability to deliver an inclusive economic relief policy and exacerbated the tensions over racial injustice that boiled over in response to the video of Floyd’s death.

Back in October 2020, they discussed possible scenarios for the outcome of the elections last year. If Trump won a narrow electoral-college victory, there would likely be massive protests of the outcome, with Trump likely calling out Federal troops to suppress those protests, only making them worse.

If Trump loses, he is likely to contest the outcome as a “rigged” election.

They expected massive protests, demanding that Trump honor the outcome of the election, but those protests did not happen. Instead, when the vote counting got close to completion, many people celebrated as it became apparent that Trump lost.

Or Trump may call on his many armed civilian supporters to defend their “all time favorite president” (as he put it) against so-called “liberal tyranny.”

2021 January 6. Need I say more?

After going into detail about election-outcome scenarios, the authors describe how the integrative parts of US history had social contracts between the various parts of society, like the New Deal of the second one.

But since the 1970s, that contract has unraveled, in favor of a contract between government and business that has underfunded public services but generously rewarded capital gains and corporate profits.

While this new neoliberal contract has, in some periods, produced economic growth and gains in employment, growth has generally been slower and far more unequal than it was in the first three postwar decades. In the last twenty years, real median household income has stagnated, while the loss of high-paying blue-collar jobs to technology and globalization has meant a decline in real wages for many workers, especially less educated men.

As a result, American politics has fallen into a pattern that is characteristic of many developing countries, where one portion of the elite seeks to win support from the working classes not by sharing the wealth or by expanding public services and making sacrifices to increase the common good, but by persuading the working classes that they are beset by enemies who hate them (liberal elites, minorities, illegal immigrants) and want to take away what little they have. This pattern builds polarization and distrust and is strongly associated with civil conflict, violence and democratic decline.

At the same time, many liberal elites neglected or failed to remedy such problems as opiate addiction, declining social mobility, homelessness, urban decay, the collapse of unions and declining real wages, instead promising that globalization, environmental regulations and advocacy for neglected minorities would bring sufficient benefits. They thus contributed to growing distrust of government and “experts,” who were increasingly seen as corrupt or useless, thus perpetuating a cycle of deepening government dysfunction.

Good description of Gilded Age II.

Oops, ran out. The connection will come in the next post.

 

[lpetrich]

How can Americans end our current Age of Discord? What we need is a new social contract that will enable us to get past extreme polarization to find consensus, tip the shares of economic growth back toward workers and improve government funding for public health, education and infrastructure.

They then got into two cases of nations that got to the brink of calamity but successfully escaped it.

The United Kingdom in the 1820s was coming apart. After defeating Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington became the leader of an elite group that sought to maintain the dominance of the traditional landlord elites. s prime minister and then leader of the House of Lords, Wellington sought to ignore, rather than adjust to, the new realities of the booming cities of Birmingham, Manchester and other burgeoning cities of the fast-growing industrial economy. Meanwhile, the workers of these cities demanded political reforms that would give them a voice in Parliament.

Like the "Corn Laws", which kept food prices low, forcing down workers' standards of living. This led to protests, like one in Manchester in 1819, one which was dispersed with cavalry troops, killing 10 to 20 and injuring hundreds, the Peterloo massacre.

Nonetheless, Wellington not only refused any legal changes, he sought to clamp down on the agitation for voting reforms. New laws were passed to expand police power and block public assemblies; newspapers were closed; protestors and journalists were jailed. Still, popular agitation continued, and there was even an attempt to assassinate several cabinet ministers.

Would the UK have a revolution? Instead, the leaders accepted the Reform campaign. In 1830, Wellington's Tories lost control of Parliament and Reform supporter Lord Grey of the Whigs became Prime Minister.

Grey’s initial efforts to pass a Reform bill were frustrated, and Grey threatened to have the King create enough additional Whig peers to force the bill through. The Tories then relented, and in 1832, Parliament passed the first Reform bill, which expanded the franchise, undermined the clientage of the landed elite and gave representation to the residents of the factory cities.

In other words, Lord Grey threatened to pack the House of Lords.

The authors then got into the New Deal, though they did not mention FDR's threat of court packing. Though it did not get very far, it was enough to make the Supreme Court back off from invalidating New Deal measures.

As a result of the New Deal, the US went from

A century later, it was the United States that was coming apart. In the early 1930s, democracy was retreating in Europe while the U.S. economy had fallen into a depression, with a dust bowl in the Great Plains and millions of industrial workers losing their jobs. Prohibition had heightened cultural conflict and crime, while nativist demagogues (such as radio personality Father Coughlin and Louisiana Governor Huey Long) stirred fear.

to

Labor organizations were strengthened, and public works programs provided jobs for construction workers, craftsmen and artists. The resulting buildings were decorated with monuments to the dignity of labor. It took years to transition to an economy based on mechanization, skilled labor, strong unions and public education, but the result was a country strong enough to fight the rising tide of global fascism and emerge as the world’s leading economy.

 

[lpetrich]

So in both Britain in the 1830's and in the US in the 1930's, it was necessary to pack something that was being obstructionist, the House of Lords in Britain and the Supreme Court in the US.

So it may be necessary to pack the Supreme Court, and maybe also the Senate with DC statehood.

 

[Derec]

So it may be necessary to pack the Supreme Court, and maybe also the Senate with DC statehood.

Necessary for what? Partisan advantage for Democrats?

Democrats would not be advocating for DC statehood if it did not give them virtually guaranteed two senators. It's all a cynical and craven grab for power, just like the court packing bill.

 

[zorq]

So it may be necessary to pack the Supreme Court, and maybe also the Senate with DC statehood.

Necessary for what? Partisan advantage for Democrats?

Democrats would not be advocating for DC statehood if it did not give them virtually guaranteed two senators. It's all a cynical and craven grab for power, just like the court packing bill.

Or maybe the Dems would advocate for DC/PR/Guam anyway, many / most Dems believe that everyone deserves to have a fair say in how they are governed.

Do you suppose that the R's are opposed to statehood for DC on principles and not politics? The R's were refusing to let more than 8 justices on the SC in 2016. They packed the court down to 8 because they felt 8 justices gave them a political advantage. They packed the court up to 9 justices in 2017 because they they then felt that 9 justices would give them a political advantage.

I admit that the political situation is cynical though. Turnabout is fair play, but that that philosophy is just about as cynical as you can get.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Ted Cruz' lies are so naked and so craven.

I think we should take a propaganda lesson from the (f)right wing and refer to him by his full, real name:

Rafael Edward Cruz

 

[Derec]

Or maybe the Dems would advocate for DC/PR/Guam anyway, many / most Dems believe that everyone deserves to have a fair say in how they are governed.

I do not think even you believe that Dems would be in favor of adding several reliable R Senators.

Do you suppose that the R's are opposed to statehood for DC on principles and not politics?

Of course it's politics! But let's not pretend that Dems are any better.

The R's were refusing to let more than 8 justices on the SC in 2016. They packed the court down to 8 because they felt 8 justices gave them a political advantage. They packed the court up to 9 justices in 2017 because they they then felt that 9 justices would give them a political advantage.

Delaying the confirmation is not the same as court packing. And had Hillary not fumbled the 2016 election, it would have been moot anyway!
Court packing is what the Dems are trying to do now - add 4 new justices for Biden to appoint.

I admit that the political situation is cynical though. Turnabout is fair play, but that that philosophy is just about as cynical as you can get.

This is not turnabout. Turnabout would be preventing Trump to appoint Notorious ACB. But of course, they lacked the control of the Senate.
Turnabout would also be the Republican president with a congressional majority increasing the size of the court form 13 to 19 after Dems increased it from 9 to 13.

 

[zorq]

I do not think even you believe that Dems would be in favor of adding several reliable R Senators.


Of course it's politics! But let's not pretend that Dems are any better.

The R's were refusing to let more than 8 justices on the SC in 2016. They packed the court down to 8 because they felt 8 justices gave them a political advantage. They packed the court up to 9 justices in 2017 because they they then felt that 9 justices would give them a political advantage.

Delaying the confirmation is not the same as court packing. And had Hillary not fumbled the 2016 election, it would have been moot anyway!
Court packing is what the Dems are trying to do now - add 4 new justices for Biden to appoint.

I admit that the political situation is cynical though. Turnabout is fair play, but that that philosophy is just about as cynical as you can get.

This is not turnabout. Turnabout would be preventing Trump to appoint Notorious ACB. But of course, they lacked the control of the Senate.
Turnabout would also be the Republican president with a congressional majority increasing the size of the court form 13 to 19 after Dems increased it from 9 to 13.

Just so you know there was serious talk from Republican leaders including Ted Cruz about permanently withholding any nominations of SC justices if Clinton beat Trump in 2016 and the R's held the senate. The R's WERE packing the court down to 8, and likely would have continued to do so except that 9 suddenly became more expedient.

As for whether Dems would vote to allow two reliable R senators, you're right. There is likely no Dem politican who would vote that way. But I personally know a handful of Dem voters who believe in long term democracy more than short term political advantage who would vote to give more people a fair voice in their government regardless of their likely voting patterns.

 

[Swammerdami]

It's all a cynical and craven grab for power, just like the court packing bill.

Completely backwards. It was the McConnell-Hawley-Trump-Jones crowd that were corrupt and craven to pack the Supreme Court with right-wing scum like Brett Kavanaugh.

If the Ds fail to move to restore the Court's ideological balance, it will be a dereliction of their duty to democracy.

 

[TomC]

It's all a cynical and craven grab for power, just like the court packing bill.

Not as transparently partisan and cynical as Mitch McConnell claiming both "We can't hold a vote on Obama's nominee because there's an election coming in a year." And also "We must hold a vote on Trump's nominee because there's an election coming in a month."

McConnell made it very clear that the TeaParty Republicans don't care about the American electorate or the Constitution. They're all about political power by any means necessary.
Tom

 

[TomC]

But I personally know a handful of Dem voters who believe in long term democracy more than short term political advantage who would vote to give more people a fair voice in their government regardless of their likely voting patterns.

I suppose I'm one of them, although I recoil in disgust at being described as a Democrat.

I think that SCOTUS should be larger. Because the USA is bigger and more complex than it used to be.

"Two heads are better than one, and 15 are better than 9."

But let's face it. TeaParty Republicans like McConnell turned the SCOTUS into a partisan political football. I hate the fact that it has been done. But I'm putting the blame for this squarely on the GOP and their lies.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

So it may be necessary to pack the Supreme Court, and maybe also the Senate with DC statehood.

Necessary for what? Partisan advantage for Democrats?

Democrats would not be advocating for DC statehood if it did not give them virtually guaranteed two senators. It's all a cynical and craven grab for power, just like the court packing bill.

Funny that you don’t condemn the corrupt acts to which both initiatives are counterbalancing responses. Almost as if you were a right wing extremist.

 

[lpetrich]

Debate Over ‘Packing’ Supreme Court Divides Biden Panel - The New York Times - "The bipartisan group voted 34 to 0 to send the president a report analyzing ideas like Supreme Court expansion, but it declined to take a stand."

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Democrats would not be advocating for DC statehood if it did not give them virtually guaranteed two senators.

There likely are Democrats who think like that, but certainly not all Democrats and I doubt most Democrats think that way. Your narrative of me as a Democrat is very inaccurate. As a Democrat, in order to take a position on this issue, I would want to know (1) what are the cost-benefits, one cost is citizens not having votes in the Senate and having only non-voting delegation in the House, but do they pay less taxes or some other thing that allegedly balances out the lack of representation and (2) how do the people of DC feel about statehood; (3) are there other solutions to the problem of not having the same rights; and (4) apparently, historically one of the benefits of this setup was that govt controlled the area for security reasons but somehow, I think now that there are a gazillion people there and the area is vast and so probably far more people are affected than originally conceived. So, overall, without knowing much about this tangent, I'd be for it, if it is the best solution and I lean in that direction merely because lack of rights is a big problem. I doubt I am different from most other Democrats on the issue.

Now, it is interesting that you are making those attacks against forum members' motivations, though. That's because the opposite viewpoint is "lost" on you for some reason: that citizens of DC are denied the same rights as everyone else. That is a major problem and too authoritarian. When right-wingers see a situation like this, they start screaming "The Democrats are trying to [INSERT CONSPIRACY PROJECTION HERE] because they are communists!!1111!one" Meanwhile, again, it's actually Reich wingers who are violating principles of liberty and fairness and trying to retain that edge of power or at least it's the goal of some of them and many of the others are sheeple.

That is the typical situation we deal with in many other political issues, much like in the instance of the op. To review--right-wing Senators refused to to do their jobs so that they could get more opportunities for conservatives in the Supreme Court. And it worked. Right-wingers are the ones who violated principles of fairness and liberty. And some of the hoped-for extremists are in the Court now. Trump put way more federal judges in place than anyone else ever did, too. He has packed all courts with authoritarian weirdos, extremists, and other corrupt bastards.

This is an actual problem.

...

...

How should grownups deal with the existence of the problem? They should identify the problem. Admit it is there. Then, they should analyze the situation, including possible solutions. Then, discuss.

That is the opposite of "YOU JUST WANT TO BE TYRANTS!!!11"

So, Derec, are you going to concede it's an issue or waste everyone's time projecting and politicizing and attacking?

Are you going to discuss potential solutions and the cost-benefit of any of them?

I'll start the grown-up conversation for you. Of course it's an issue! Next, here's a solution--Expanding the court and getting some Biden-picks on the Court. Conservatives would scream he's adding communists and it is a take over and they'd be Jade Helming the situation. This is typical, though. Call them dumbasses and liars. It would be fair.

One problem with this potential solution is Republicans would then have a lot of precedent and scare tactics (like those you employ) to then expand the court again when they are in control of government again and just add more conservatives. Or they might block nominations again until Biden is out and a Republican President is in and so even just the first expansion of the court would be conservative extremists.

That doesn't seem to be how we want our government to be, going back and forth like that, increasing polarization of citizens and government, wasting time of Congress every cycle to write new legislation to expand the court and then more nomination drama, too.

So what are your thoughts on solutions?

 

[lpetrich]

Progressive Caucus on Twitter: "BREAKING: ..." / Twitter

BREAKING: After thoughtful consideration, the Progressive Caucus membership has voted to endorse the Judiciary Act.

This bill would add 4 seats to the Supreme Court, bringing the number of seated justices up to 13.

We're proud to join the fight to restore balance to the bench.

Today's bench was filled by a partisan, right-wing effort to entrench an anti-democratic faction and erode human rights.

It has gutted the Voting Rights Act and public sector unions, entrenched unconstitutional abortion bans, and failed to overturn the discriminatory Muslim Ban.

As a co-equal governing body, Congress cannot sit by while this attack on the constitution continues unchecked.

The urgent work to restore American democracy must include expanding the Supreme Court.

In the House of Representatives, the Judiciary Act was introduced by 3 CPC members: @RepJerryNadler, @RepHankJohnson, and @RepMondaire. In the Senate, it was introduced by @SenMarkey.

We're grateful to our colleagues for their leadership in this fight.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Endorses Judiciary Act to Expand the Supreme Court | Press Releases | Congressional Progressive Caucus

H.R.2584 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): Judiciary Act of 2021 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
Rep. Johnson, Henry C. "Hank," Jr. [D-GA-4] (Introduced 04/15/2021) - 45 cosponsors, 2 original: (original ones) Rep. Nadler, Jerrold [D-NY-10]* and Rep. Jones, Mondaire [D-NY-17]*

The cosponsors include lots of people on the progressive side, like AOC and Pramila Jayapal.

S.1141 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): Judiciary Act of 2021 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
en. Markey, Edward J. [D-MA] (Introduced 04/15/2021) - 2 cosponsors, 0 original: Sen. Smith, Tina [D-MN] and Sen. Warren, Elizabeth [D-MA]

Going to "Text":

SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be cited as the “Judiciary Act of 2021”.

SEC. 2. Number of justices; quorum.

Section 1 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking “a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum” and inserting “a Chief Justice of the United States and twelve associate justices, any eight of whom shall constitute a quorum”.

Thus going from 9 to 13.

I think that that's one of the jobs of Congressional staffers, to look for what existing laws will have to be revised for some new ones.

 

[lpetrich]

Congressional Progressive Caucus Endorses Supreme Court Expansion | HuffPost Latest News

"The critical issues that impact our day-to-day lives ― such as voting and civil rights, reproductive freedom, climate justice, and consumer and workers’ rights ― are being decided by a GOP-packed conservative supermajority on a United States Supreme Court, which is destroying its own legitimacy with partisan decisions that are upending decades of precedent and progress in this nation,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), the bill’s lead sponsor. “I want to thank Chair Jayapal and the entire Progressive Caucus for endorsing and supporting the Judiciary Act.”

“A clear majority of Americans supports Court expansion because the people understand what’s at stake,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.). “I’m thrilled that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is with us in this fight.”

Congressional Progressive Caucus backs measure to expand Supreme Court | TheHill

Demand Justice, a progressive group pushing for an expansion of the Supreme Court, hailed the caucus’s endorsement, calling the effort “the only way to restore balance to the Supreme Court.”

“The Congressional Progressive Caucus has been on the cutting edge of fighting for the bold action needed to protect democracy and create an economy that works for everyone, and with this endorsement, the CPC is giving a major boost to the only reform bold enough to rebalance a Supreme Court that currently threatens any progress on issues progressives care about,” Brian Fallon, the executive director of the group, said in a statement.

 

[Trausti]

Nope.