How They Do It

Every once in a while, I get an insight.

Sometimes this comes in the form of an NPR report which tells me something about the mechanics of a world about which I know very little.
Actually, this time it was two reports, in tandem.
The first report was about a Congressman who was slugging it out with his Republican opponent, but in the last three weeks of his campaign, he was swamped by a campaign of saturation advertising. The ads had one of those deep movie ad voices, "In a world where Obamacare rules..."And the ad was all about what a terrible person this poor Democrat was.
The money for the ad came from a Super PAC, over $600,000. In the small market which comprised his district, that was enough to carpet bomb his district with wall to wall TV and radio ads.
The Democrat did not have that kind of money, and even if he had, he would not have been able to buy the air time, which was already bought up by the Super PAC.

He got clobbered.

Next report, an interview with Norm Orenstein of a conservative think tank. He explained how the Super PACs run the Congressmen. The term in the House of Representatives is two years, which means you start raising money for your next election, the day you win your election. You walk across the street from the Rayburn Office Building, so you leave government property and your Congressional office, and you walk into the private building--each party has one--and you make phone calls, sometimes two hours, sometime eleven hours a day, asking people for money.
But some part of the day, you sit in your office. A man from a Super PAC shows up and says, "The Super PAC I represent would really like you to vote for this amendment. They would be very disappointed in you if you do not." He will not tell you who is in this Super PAC. He just tells you how he wants you to vote.
You know if you cross the Super PAC they will likely dump $600,000 worth of commercials into your district the last two weeks of your next campaign and you will not be able to even find a spot for your rebuttal commercials.
And you think, "Well, it's just one amendment."
So you have just voted for an exemption to a tax on oil drilling in the Gulf, or to kill a wind farm or to allow a deduction on income taxes for automobiles which cost more than $80,000 or for yachts.
That's how money runs Washington.
It's all legal.
It's all protected by the Supreme Court, Justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas. How much more legal could that be?


PS: I've just re read Article III, "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."
Nowhere can I find anything that says there shall be only 9 justices or that they must have lifetime appointments.
They shall hold their offices during good behavior.
But that doesn't mean they cannot be relieved of their offices except for bad behavior.
Franklin Roosevelt tried to add to the number of Supreme Court Justices. Congress wouldn't go along. But he pointed out those nine old men were standing in the way of economic recovery and he was a leader. He said, I can make these guys irrelevant by adding nine more, of my choosing, who can out vote them.
We don't have to pass Constitutional amendments, which is nigh on impossible. We have only to thwart those reactionary justices as they have thwarted us.
Of course, this could be a game of escalation: Obama appoints 9, so then there are 18 justices. Then the next time a Republican wins, he appoints 9 more and it's a game of escalation until there are as many justices as Congressmen.
But if Obama had enough support in Congress, he could at least make the noises, maybe bump it up by three--A dozen jurors, a dozen justices. Then let the game play out.
If we managed to get the Congress we need this next election, that's something we should keep in mind.