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The Conduct of Judge Alsup | 101 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
...we do have an election coming up. When our legal system fails ...
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 08:13 PM EDT
You comment about the obligation of "we the people." Very good. What,
exactly, are "we the people" supposed to do about the situation? And
which people, exactly, are supposed to do what?

Here is something on that topic which has a rather ironic twist:

Since I live in Alabama, I will get to vote for or against someone named Roy
Moore for a position on the Alabama Supreme Court. Remember him? He is the one
who put up a statue depicting the Ten Commandments in front of the Alabama
Supreme Court a few years ago, and it was ordered to be removed by a federal
judge. As things ended up, Roy Moore was not on the state supreme court after
that. He is still not sorry about having done that, and I am sure one can
predict his stands on certain other current hot-button issues without my going
into detail.

Now, what to do? For example, there is a lot of discussion about the influence
of money on elections for state judicial positions, including in particular
state supreme court seats all over the company. Lots of money gets spent by
special interests trying to whipsaw the public. Well, during the primary system
guess which candidate did not take any of that kind of money and ran an
extremely low-budget word-of-mouth campaign. Roy Moore. His opponents spent very
large sums to defeat him and each other, and very large sums of money from
not-exactly-well-known sources were thrown into the usual attack ads and all the
rest of what can be expected these days. But none of that money was spent by him
or on his behalf, and he said many times that he does not want that kind of
support. Nevertheless, he won the Republican primary without that support.

The Democrats, who did not expect to face Roy Moore in the general election,
were resigned to having their candidate lose in the general election. Thus, they
did not really care very much who they nominated and ended up nominating a very
weak candidate. Now, in a further ironic twist the Democrats have induced that
fellow to leave their ballot slot open for someone else, and the son of a former
federal judge has been put up instead. All of those interests which have a lot
of money to spend behind the scenes and spent it on two losing candidates in the
Republican primary are now digging in their pockets to support the new
candidate. All of the state's newspapers are supporting the new candidate. The
New York Times, which rarely lets a chance go by to depict the sorry state of
affairs in benighted Alabama and wastes even fewer opportunities to instruct the
people of Alabama how to conduct their affairs, is of course not supporting Roy
Moore. Business leaders are saying that if Roy Moore gets elected then capital
and investment is going to flee from the state. Add all this up together. It is
a truly amazing spectacle.

Now. What am I, a voter in Alabama, supposed to do in view of the fact that we
have an election coming up? Should I vote for a man of principle in spite of the
fact that lots of interested parties do not like his principles? For, he has his
principles. Practically no doubt about that. Or ought I to vote against him? If
I do not completely agree with him about his principles, then should I vote
instead for the one on whom so much money is being thrown at the election and
the one who will be the most pleasing to outsiders who own big hunks of the
local economy?

An interesting dilemma.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The Conduct of Judge Alsup
Authored by: soronlin on Saturday, November 03 2012 @ 11:21 PM EDT
I'd never tell anyone not to vote, because it is the only way the little person
can hope to change things, but as a way of achieving change it is desperately
flawed.

If you happen to live in a safe seat for the other party, your vote will never
make a difference.

Your choice is generally between two evils and a bunch of no-hopers with no
track-record.

The only skill a politician has to master to get into office is to get people to
vote for them. That is almost unrelated to their skill at running a country.
(And entirely divorced from their skill at being a judge.)

Almost every single member of every single government thinks they are above the
common man, and often that they are not subject to the same standards of
behaviour.

No matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

We don't get to choose who is on the ballot
Authored by: DCFusor on Monday, November 05 2012 @ 02:37 PM EST
The legal system failed a long time ago in what used to be
smoke-filled-back-rooms. Now both sides are bought in fee simple by entities
that overlap hugely.

As if what I can do in my bedroom or doctors office (the main things they hit
on) were the real problems we face, and as if just one party created them....

Wake up people, you've been had already. It won't matter one bit who you vote
for. Both are vetted by the money-that-be.

---
Why guess, when you can know? Measure it!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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