Full Transcript:
The “Build Back Better” initiatives are designed to benefit We the People. Conversely, they the few would find it far more difficult to sustain the last gasp of an outmoded economy by which they have been steadily and unjustly enriched. Consider what it would mean to Exxon Mobile if charging stations for electric cars are more available and easier to find. How would the financial services industry continue to profit from Medicare Advantage plans if vision services, dental services and hearing aids were to be provided through basic Medicare? And, what if the pharmaceutical industry were suddenly prevented from price gouging as Medicare renegotiates prescription drug prices?
Fleecing the people became common practice once the United States Supreme Court insured that the consent of the governed would never be an informed consent. The dark money that secures the justice’s nominations, confirmations, and accommodations constitutes a direct assault on the integrity of the Court. When Samuel Alito told a Notre Dame Law School audience that the court has been wrongly cast as “a dangerous cabal,” he was railing against what is now a common understanding by a citizenry that finally perceives the court for precisely what it is.
The hidden wealth, the dark money politics, and the coddling of kleptocrats defines the justices that have set aside the mission statement, the overarching principles, and the spirit of the law as embodied in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. While masquerading as originalists and textualists, certain counterfeit conservatives have now taken center stage as the most cowardly scofflaws. Alito’s effort to dumb-down the plain text understanding of a shadow docket and an unsigned order is not resonating with the demos.
The Supreme Court has, over the course of recent history, legalized the bribery of public officials. It has embraced the most sociopathic interpretation of corporate personhood whereby such legal fictions can have free speech rights while the executives running them can hide behind the corporate veil for harmful policies. This is true even when such policies are designed to deprive people of their most basic civil liberties up to and including life itself.
The Supreme Court is a product of political process. Senator Mitch McConnell, having blocked then-President Barack Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland, said the presidential election year precluded Senate action on a Supreme Court nominee. Then, four years later, after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, McConnell ensured that Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed just days before the 2020 election. Barrett was introduced by McConnell, at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center in early September of 2021. In what was her first major appearance since her confirmation, she had the gall to say the Supreme Court is ‘not a bunch of partisan hacks.’
It is big-oil, big-finance, and big-pharma that are actively corroding the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic. They have done this by corrupting our executives, our legislators, and our justices. The lack of intellectual rigor, the moral relativism, and the deceptive practices are what we get when we elect prevaricating politicians motivated by self-aggrandizement. They are beholden to big money because money can always sway public opinion.
The Supreme Court was, and is, the greatest enabler of deceptive practices. It is the entity most responsible for ushering in, what has been described as, the post-truth era. It has, through judicial ineptitude, effectively converted what Marshall McLuhan once described as a whirlpool of information, into a cesspool of disinformation. Today, this is evident through the way our elected representatives can deliberately mislead the public, with impunity, on initiatives that could finally produce a beneficial return on our taxpayer investments.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. did not get the popular vote for President based upon his record as a United States Senator. People have not forgotten how he helped the credit card companies push usurious interest rates into the realm of political acceptability. He didn’t get the vote based upon any possible metanoia resulting from tragedy within his personal life. No, Biden got the popular vote because of the other guy’s self-serving antics and the way a “build back better” initiative might help recapture the country from control by foreign potentates.
The current administration didn’t just represent the lesser of two evils. It offered hope for those who still cling to the vision of a more perfect Union, whereby equal justice under law could become a reality, and where domestic tranquility is possible. They voted for someone who would provide for the common defense against microscopic foes, someone who would promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
The United States has very real enemies both foreign and domestic. It is teetering on the precipice. And, the only thing that will restore our nation’s health and vitality is a full embrace of the principle whereby sunlight is the best disinfectant and where full transparency, in every transaction, is part of this country’s unique value proposition. When a coherent value proposition informs our strategic architecture, we will again become this world’s most competitive engine of true benevolence.