LET THE SHAMELESS COMMENT WHORING BEGIN.
I wanted to take one last swing at the stuff oozing out of the dark places of the internet over the Supreme Court’s ruling on the PPACA, because if anything it’s gotten BETTER over the last 24 hours.
Ed Burmila from Gin and Tacos makes the point that when Roberts was confirmed, one of the issues raised during his confirmation was that he was a tool of the healthcare industry. Alternatively, as the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grimm notes, he might just have been terrified of the dystopian hellscape the four conservative justices wanted.
The Atlantic’s Jon Lovett has a lovely twitter short story on Chief Justice John Roberts in the Supreme Court lunchroom, and let’s all join ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser in pouring out some liquor for Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has finally gone full wingnut.
As promised, here’s a cat picture, along with five other pretty good pictures from Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff.
Now, there is a conspiracy theory that John Roberts changed his vote very, very late in the process, and discrepancies in the opinions seem to support that theory. As to why, beyond the aforementioned “Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy would undo the last sixty years of legal reasoning regarding the Commerce Clause” theory, there’s always the “John Roberts has ‘cognitive problems’ due to epilepsy medication” theory, or the “President Obama and David Axelrod blackmailed him, because he’s potentially gay” theory.
Of course, the GOP has already set a date to vote to repeal the PPACA for what feels like the fiftieth time, which will predictably die a quick death at the hands of Harry “The Hitman” Reid. This is all high Washington Kabuki theater for the benefit of us rubes in the flyover states, because even if the GOP gets majorities in both Houses of Congress and Romney wins the Presidency, they can’t repeal the PPACA in its entirety. Besides, even if they did, they even admit they don’t have anything to replace it with.
Switching gears, lost in yesterday’s healthcare hubbub was this piece from TPM’s Ryan J. Reilly: “for the first time in American history, the House of Representatives has voted to hold a member of the President’s Cabinet in contempt of Congress when it voted to approve the measure to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt yesterday.” Congressional Democrats boycotted the vote and walked out on to the Capitol steps as the vote was about to be taken.
And finally, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has penned his latest magnum opus, “The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia”. A tremendous article detailing how the big Wall Street banks conspired together to manipulate markets and fleece the American taxpayer for billions of dollars. They did this by shaving percentage points off the interest rates for municipal bonds, cheating towns and cities out of interest profits. While the amounts may only have been tens of thousands of dollars, they pulled this scam on literally every single town, city, county, and state the in country. It’s basically the plot from Office Space writ large. What makes it even better is that all the conversations were recorded by the banks themselves. Everyone knew they were being recorded, and no one cared.
However, more damaging than the evidence that Wall Street has become no different than the Mafia, is the incontrovertible evidence that the corruption is aided and abetted by our political system. Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who was President Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary before declining due to bribery allegations, is specifically named as a recipient of dirty Wall Street cash.
Wall Street fleeced billions of taxpayer dollars out of hospitals and schools to pay for gigantic bonuses and lap dances. If that doesn’t make you angry, nothing will.
