| Monday, June 27, 2005 |
| The (rich) people's court |
The latest rash of Supreme Court decisions raises a troubling prospect for the left: that when it counts, its beloved moderate-liberal axis, and not just the hated axis of Freeper (Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas) is in thrall to big corporations against the interests of average Americans.
First there was the dreadful Kelo v. New London decision (5-4 with the "liberals" in the majority), which essentially turned the "ownership society" upside down by ruling that city leaders can decide that your hard-earned property is better off being owned by someone else... then today, the Court ruled ... unanimously ... that the entertainment industry, unable to find an old-fashioned marketing response to the file sharing phenomenon, are free to try and sue it out of existence.
On another case, the Court seemed to revert to form with a 6-3 ruling that cable companies can monopolize the broadband Internet market by forcing consumers to use their services, and withholding use of their underground lines by rival Internet companies. The deicision will limit choice to consumers, while throwing a big, fat bone to the Gilded Agers in the Bush administration. Vindicating my loathing of him -- temporarily suspended due to my agreement with him on Kelo -- Clarence Thomas reasoned in this case that judges should defer to the "expertise" of the political appointees at the FCC, "which concluded that limited access is best for the industry" (AP); a startling turnabout from his Kelo dissent, in which he foreshadowed the grave consdequences of a "city officials know best" policy on home seizures. I guess Thomas is only for the little guy when he stands in the way of "urban renewal..." |
posted by JReid @ 11:52 AM   |
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