Is Obama Going To Continue Making The Federal Judiciary Overly Friendly To Corporate Criminals?

When's the last time we asked you to sign a petition? Right… never. But our friends at Daily Kos are offering the kind of strategic initiative that appeals to us. They want progressives to express their frustration with President Obama's tendency to fill the judiciary with corporate lawyers. It's been making a lot of us sick? Not you? Did you know that just over 70% of President Obama's judicial nominees have been corporate lawyers? And less than 4% have been public interest lawyers… just 10 since he was inaugurated in 2009!

Their petition to the President is short and to the point:

Every day we learn about the multiple ways large corporations are destroying democracy in this country. It is time to stop nominating corporate lawyers to the federal bench, and to instead nominate qualified public interest lawyers.

As Kos activist Paul Hogarth put it, "If you want to know how we got awful court decisions like Citizens United, "it’s because we have too many corporate lawyers on the judiciary. And we need to level the playing field."

George W. Bush was the first president to appoint a Chief Justice since Reagan elevated Nixon appointee William Rehnquist in 1986. Years earlier Rehnquist had served as a GOP polling thug in Phoenix whose job was to intimidate Hispanic-Americans and prevent them from voting. What better choice for Chief Justice? When he finally joined Satan in Hell, Bush nominated John Roberts (2005), a corporate hack from the white shoe DC firm Hogan and Hartson (now Hogan Lovells, which represents every kind of criminal predator on the face of the earth, from pharmaceutical conglomerates and banksters to murderous dictatorships). Lawyers from these kinds of firms don't have the same kind of moral compass that normal people have. Completely unfit to serve, he was confirmed on September 29, 2005 78-22, half the Democrats joining every Republican to back him. Among the Democrats still in the Senate who voted for him back then were Tom Carper, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu, Pat Leahy, Carl Levin, Patty Murray, Bill Nelson, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, and Ron Wyden. Most progressives voted NO (as did then-Senator Barack Obama). No Roberts, no Citizens United? He was sure a force behind that anti-democracy ruling, something the senators who voted to confirm him should be helped accountable for. Hard to imagine that the same Obama who had the good sense to vote against confirming John Roberts has nominated Georgia right-wing extremist Michael Boggs.

One thing that has most cheered me politically in recent months is the tumultuous reception-- by normal people, not political types or the media folks who regurgitate their press releases and talking points-- that voters have given too independent progressive Marianne Williamson in CA-33. The first legit opportunity to break the two-Beltway-party monopoly since Bernie Sanders pulled it off in Vermont. And, yes Democrats fought and denigrated Bernie in Vermont the same way they're fighting and denigrating Marianne here in L.A. The love trying to paint her as a "New Age guru," something less than serious. Yeah, less serious than "ex"-Republican hack Wendy Greuel? Here are some of the statements Marianne has made about why she's running. Do you think she'll be rubber-stamping any corporatist moves Obama makes in his last two years in office?

The biggest threat to our country today is not from armies invading our shores. The biggest threat to our democracy is not bombs falling from the sky over an American city. No, our biggest threat is a pattern of a thousand cuts-- the slow but now constant chipping away at our democratic freedoms-- one capitulation to moneyed interests at a time, one politically gerrymandered district at a time, one government surveillance program at a time, one limiting of our voting rights at a time, one intimidation of journalists at a time, one Patriot Act at a time, one National Defense Authorization Act at a time, one Trans Pacific Partnership so-called trade deal limiting our sovereignty at a time. So at what point-- after how many moments when Americans mutter to ourselves “Ya gotta be kidding me!”-- do we stand up to our own government and say, “Hey, guys! Whose side are you on??”

…I am running for Congress because I believe America has gone off the democratic rails. A toxic brew of shrinking civil liberties, expanded corporate influence and domestic surveillance is poisoning our democracy.

We are currently in the process of dismantling the most basic social contract between the American people and our government, as "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people" has transitioned before our eyes into "a government of a few of the people, by a few of the people, and for a few of the people." A purpose of American progress is to expand the democratic franchise, not constrict it. Yet today, that franchise is being narrowed for everyone. The American people now need to defend our country against a hostile takeover by multi-national corporate interests.

…The undue influence of money on our politics is the issue underlying all other issues, and we need a national movement supporting a Constitutional Amendment outlawing the undue influence of money on our politics. If elected, I will work with those in and outside Congress who are working on this already-- for I feel, as many people do, that getting money out of politics is the greatest moral challenge of our generation.

The polar opposite of a DCCC mystery meat candidate, who is forbidden from putting anything substantive on a website, on Marianne's official campaign website, there's a page called Democracy At Risk. It starts with a quote from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis-- no Clarence Thomas or John Roberts: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Democracy itself is at risk today, fiercely assaulted by combined forces of money and power. This assault is in my view our single largest challenge – the issue underlying all other issues.

This organized, well-funded assault seeks the destruction of our bedrock democratic foundations: voting rights; fair representation; and the principle of one person, one vote. Voter suppression laws being passed throughout the country violate our voting rights. Politically driven gerrymandering, making a shift from voters choosing winners to winners choosing voters, violates the principle of fair representation. And Citizens United has substituted the formula of one dollar, one vote for the democratic principle of one person, one vote.

A solid drift in the direction of the financial dominance of our politics-- aided and abetted, indeed led in some cases, by our own Supreme Court-- now threatens to overpower our democracy. In fact, contrary to recent Supreme Court rulings, money is not speech and corporations are not people. The citizens of a democracy have the right to organize around ideas and not just money. Yet, money dangerously controls not only our politics but even our discussion of political issues.

We need a state by state rejection of politicized gerrymandering (California has joined Iowa and Florida in starting this process). We need a Constitutional Amendment to override Citizens United to make way for public financing of our political campaigns, and possibly an Amendment as well to guarantee every citizen the right to vote. In addition, we need to repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that gave permission for media cross-ownership and helped tear down the firewall between journalism and corporate promotion. Once the distribution of our news became controlled by a relatively few corporate entities, our society’s political conversation became narrowed to a dangerous degree. The narrowing of our political options inevitably followed.

These issues are the cornerstones of any serious effort to reclaim our democracy.