Forty-Years of Originalist B.S.
By acting on what he professed to be John F. Kennedy's wishes, Lyndon Johnson enacted the U.S. Revenue Act of 1964, which lowered the top marginal tax rate from 91% to 70%. But that was not enough for the 1%. They wanted the power of their “economic liberalism” that they had lost when their greed and hubris created the Great Depression. They put up one of their own as a candidate in the 1964 Presidential election. Barry Goldwater, a card-carrying member of the racist John Birch Society and a vocal proponent of their "free market" economic policies. But his racist rhetoric and non-stop preaching on the "free market" system put off American voters so much that he could not connect with everyday Americans. He lost in a landslide defeat to Democratic Lyndon Johnson, 486 to 52 in the Electoral College. Because of that defeat, the Koch family and its racist John Birch Society were exiled beyond the far-right fringes of the Republican Party.
The Koch family did not stay out of American politics but searched for a politician who could speak and act like a man of the people while still being kept on a short leash by the 1%. The 1% still did not have the power of their "economic liberalism" they had before their greed and hubris (sense of self-privilege) crashed America's economy during the first three years of the Great Depression. What would be better than a grade-B actor who had shown he could sound and act like an ordinary man in some of his roles? They chose California Governor Ronald Reagan and groomed him to be their man in the White House. After Reagan was elected, he reinstated their "economic liberalism" for his 1% benefactors but added tax cuts for the 1% for the GOP's "starve the beast" economic policy. That made their economic liberalism into a "new or neoliberalism, " which would be the start of America's economic and political decline.
The new goal of their economics was not to try to regain the powers of their economic liberalism from outside the governments but to deprive the government of funds necessary to pay its expenses from inside-of the government. The goal was to bring the government as close to bankruptcy as possible and then declare it insolvent. The politicians would then send in their “financial managers,” taking all elected and appointed powers and selling all public properties and programs to their 1% benefactors in closed auctions. This is “working” in the red states because all states have to balance their budgets by the end of their fiscal years. But look at Flint Michigan to see how well starve the beast combined with the G.O.P.’s “laissez faire”, hands off policy works. They want to privatize all of America so the 1% can profit off what Americans used to be able to partake in freely.
Reagan’s two terms were all about laying the foundation for the 1%’s long-range coup d’etat the plans of which were laid out in Lewis F. Powell Jr.’s “Confidential Memorandum” [1.]. Written for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after the Environmental Protection Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act were signed into law by President Nixon in December 1970. The DC politicians had finally listened to the people and wrote legislation to curb the greed and hubris of the 1%. The Chamber considered those two laws to be direct attacks on their “free market” economics. Reagan’s tax cuts were meant to fund the 1% as they carried out the plan laid out in the “Memo”.
Scalia graduated from Harvard Law School and. In the early 1970s, he served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, eventually becoming an Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald Ford. He spent most of the Carter years teaching at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the first faculty advisers of the fledgling Federalist Society. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Scalia as a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Four years later, Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court,
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia defined "originalism" this way: "The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted."
I am not sure why Scalia was allowed to use “originalism or textualism” to begin with. They go against what the real Founding Fathers (not the Federalists who were compromised by the landed gentry’s illicit fortunes) wanted the Constitution to be. The Non-Federalist Founding Fathers crafted the U.S. Constitution to be a living document by adding the instructions on how to evolve (amend) it in Article V:
Constitution of the United States of America
Article V [2.]
“The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress.”
Making the Constitution a “living document” would afford individual rights and privileges to the people despite the Federalists.
After completing the Constitution, the Convention turned to whether to amend the Constitution with individual rights and freedoms. No individual rights and freedoms existed during the colonial era and the feudal systems. The wealthy in both times kept all their slaves and serfs, dirt poor and uneducated. They knew educated slaves would not tolerate the wealthy using them.
The only ones who wanted the Constitution to be a “dead” document were the Federalists for their benefactors, the landed gentry. Originalism was made up by Scalia so the justices could interpret the Constitution to benefit not the people but the wealthy. Forty years worth of the originalism must be reversed. Scalia, Thomas, Alito and any other Justices getting paid by the wealthy to do their bidding have in effect taken bribes and must be removed. The Representatives and Senators blocking taking legal action against criminal Justices, must be ignored and dealt with later. Over forty years of these cretins chipping away at our democracy and increasing the power of the wealthy has brought us to this point. It has not only been the SCOTUS and the G.O.P. doing this but also has been the “establishment Democrats” doing the same or at least slowing down what was needed to correct it. The Reagan tax cuts are still in the tax code, still giving the wealthy the funds for their next January 6th. Every administration since Reagan’s has carried over those tax cuts to get the kickbacks from the 1%. Joe now has been given the tools by the originalist Justices, that can and should be used to correct this forty-year nightmare. But Joe cannot do it because he has been compromised by the ki8ckbacks for t5he last 49 years. Prove me wrong Joe…
[2.] The Constitution of the United States | National Archives