Yesterday I wrote a diary about being removed from voting lists. You can find my diary here. Jamess has posted an excellent diary here. Another was posted last night - this excellent diary by JanFAnd as I read the diaries and thought about it, I wondered why these SOS's would take the risk and engage in such immoral and probably illegal activities in order to hijack this election.
The answer, to me is obvious. It is not because our President is black. It is not a concern that he was born in Nigeria or Sweden or even Mars. It is not health care or the economy or religious beliefs or even our President being a meanie. It is the Supreme Court.
The next President will determine the makeup of the Supreme Court for the next few decades. As a result, the direction of this country will be set for at least a generation. Ever since FDR, the Republicans have wanted to obliterate all of FDR's programs that give the everyday person a chance. They also want to obliterate the gains made by LBJ.
The people who pull the Republican strings are not idealogues, they are corporatists. They want a Supreme Court who will bow to the whims of their corporate masters. If the corporatists are able to win this election, think of what it means to this country:
First - Overturn laws that protect the right to unionize, the right to collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is where we got paid vacation, company paid health care, sick time off, 40 hour work weeks (what is that?), safe work environments. Unions are inconvenient to the corporatists and have been in the corporate gunsights for as long as I can remember.
Second - Overturn Environmental Protection . It is inconvenient to have to contain wastes, to have to consider ecosystems, to protect endangered species, to have to maintain clean air standards. It would be extremely inconvenient to fight global warming. A corporate Supreme Court could rule that the government has no right to regulate such things.
Third - Overturn antitrust laws. It is inconvenient to have to compete on a level playing field. Pricing is easy if you are a monopoly on a necessary good or service. Binding agreements help enforce profits.
Fourth - Overturn OSHA regulations. If some guy working for them screws up and gets chewed up by machinery it is his own damn fault. And maintaining a safe workplace costs money - their profit money.
These are not religious people. They really don't care about following their religious tenets themselves. But over the centuries, they have found that the Christian religion can be restated, by overemphasizing certain verses out of context and burying others, into a series of laws that can protect the corporations and make the people their minions.
This has been the goal of the Republican party since FDR. They thought they were getting there with the Warren court, but Earl Warren didn't play ball their way. They thought they could get there with the Reagan appointees, but some didn't quite go far enough - they had too much respect for the constitution and the people of the United States. They almost got there with George Bush. Our more progressive justices had to hang on for GWB to leave.
Whoever is President this next four years will replace several judges. The judges GWB put in are fairly young and will be there a long time.
So why Romney? Why not one of the other candidates? One reason - he is one of them. His morals and beliefs resemble the skin of a chameleon. They change with his environment. They tell him he needs to be left of Teddy Kennedy? He claims to be left of Teddy Kennedy. They tell him he needs to be right of Orrin Hatch? Now he is right of Orrin Hatch. Voters have no idea who they are getting. But the corporatists know exactly who they are getting. They are getting a manservant in the White House. He will do what they want, they will do as they say. It is the Supreme Court. And why risk your name, your integrity and a probable lawsuit on doing things that are clearly unethical and probably illegal? Because by the time the lawsuits are heard, the election will be over. It can't be redone. And the Supreme Court will be changing.
In the health care ruling, Justice Roberts knew this. He knew he could not dare bring the Supreme Court to the attention of the voters. His ruling was such that the health care could be overturned legislatively but the people would not fear the court. They should. Laws that the corporatists don't like can be overturned by judicial fiat, and no legislator will have to be accountable. The justices are free of accountability. This isn't just existing laws. If we elect a progressive congress next time, the corporate court can overturn laws they enact in the future. They can set precedent at the same time. As long as they live.
So the corporations are stirring up emotions about issues that they don't care about. They are pretending these issues matter to them. People are voting on emotion. Corporatists are voting on money. Them getting more. If Romney wins, we no longer will have a Supreme Court. We will have a Supreme Corporation. This is why they must hijack this election. Using any means possible.