The Yale-Harvard Supreme Court: Us versus Them

Over the past few weeks, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has rendered several major decisions. These have either been applauded or vilified depending on which side of the political spectrum one is on. Personally, I could care less about the decisions, which from my perspective have less to do with legalities than compared to the tactics of divide and conquer as practiced by Oligarchs for centuries. But what is disturbing, is the sever lack of universal representation that currently, and in the past has comprised the jurist that sit on this nine person corpus.

Since 1956, at any given time, there have NEVER been less than three justices from Harvard and/or Yale sitting on the SCOTUS. And since the appointment of Anthony Kennedy in 1988, Harvard and Yale graduates in concert have comprised a majority of the court. When Elena Kagan was confirmed, it made all sitting on the SCOTUS had either attended Yale (Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor) or Harvard (John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer) for law schools. Can you say American aristocracy? 

I say this because in Washington of recent decades, it appears that the prevailing assumption as it pertains to the SCOTUS is that, the best minds and smartest people for the job graduate from either Yale or Harvard. Albeit a possibility of fanatical truism, in reality such never has, or will be the case. As such, unlike representative bodies like the Senate or the House of Representatives, the SCOTUS is not representative of AMERICA at all. Sure you got black and Latino persons, and some white men and white women, but that just doesn’t cut the cake and rather too simplistic in a diverse population inclusive of regional distinctions in thinking as ours.

This disproportionality in the number of justices from Harvard and Yale is frightening and should be to all. It is a form of legal aristocracy because there is none when it regards diversity of the legal educations of the folk who happen to be on the most important political body in our nation. I mean is it impossible to find a great and smart legal mind from the halls of Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, University of Virginia, William and Mary or the University of Tennessee? Nope, the Yaleharvarification of the SCOTUS aint about quality of the mind, but moreso of the Presidents whom appoint them and the legal field good ole boy network.

In simple terms, this is all about limited access networking. First, for the past 26 years every president has been a graduate of Yale or Harvard. This may be why among other things; all of the sitting members of the SCOTUS are either Catholic or Jewish. And it seems that all clerked on the Supreme Court once upon a time ago. If this constitutional republic is to function at full capacity and utility of its citizenry, diversity of education at the highest ranks of government, in particular the SCOTUS is paramount and a matter of survival.

When our elected officials, the folk who are responsible for making these sections and appointments to government positions we did not have a say of choosing and working on behalf of the citizenry, limit their pool to a small body, it works against the best interest of the nation. I mean, we saw what happened when African Americans and women were added, so why restrict the applicant pool in this instance?

The danger is that under the present results of this process, we get a narrower perspective on life because people in the restricted pool are reinforced to think the same and have more in common than different.

Imagine where our nation would be if we did this in all fields. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, Fred Smith of Federal Express attended the University of Memphis for his MBA, Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College and Warren Buffet went to University of Nebraska. I guess if you are starting a business or not looking for a job there are different requirements compared to obtaining a SCOTUS appointment. Could you imagine a field of Business dominated by just two schools? Oh that is right, you can, and well argue the observation in the affirmative since it were the Harvard and Yale Finance MBA’s that blew up and crashed Wall Street and the national and global economies.

Where would we be if science, technology and medicine operated in this manner? This would mean no University of Tennessee Medical Center or St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, no John Hopkins, Duke, Stanford, Cornell, Chicago, Vanderbilt, Berkeley, Cal Tech, MIT and Washington University in St. Louis.

The entire ideal of just two schools running the decision that will impact the entire nation is feculent. It is clear that other factors may be involved that may not even benefit the citizenry but rather the government and corporations since they are people now legally as a consequence of several recent court decisions. Most should be able to detect how many modern SCOTUS decisions benefit global plutocrats more than us, and in concert with the media and the criminal behavior of bankers and financiers; like the other two branches of our government, the SCOTUS seem to repeat a narrative of a future that George Orwell would have described as being manufactured to serve the interest of all and everything except justice, truth, virtue, and liberty. If my corollary is correct, this will not result in anything good for America.

Wifing Politicians: I don’t love these politicians (plutocrats)

I am writing to satisfy one issue, and that is why do folk take up for these political plutocrats regardless of political affiliation? It is as if folk cannot see they are all in the same gang of scratch my back crony-capitalist crooks. And for those unaware, crony capitalism refers to the intercourse between the state and corporate power. These cats have two sets of laws, one for us common folk and one for the elite folk. This manifested by two kinds of economic models of capitalism which breaks down to the over-regulated capitalism we have to abide by and the protected and unregulated variety for corporations, cartels and said participants.

Personally, as a libertarian, I unlike conservatives or liberals or progressives believe that part of the price of freedom is allowing others to have their freedom equally. Moreover, I believe whether I agree or like or dislike something, if it is peaceful and voluntary and harms no one, I can tolerate such. Unfortunately, this is not the game played by the ruling political elite regardless of party affiliation.

And even with all of the empirical evidence we observe, we allow these folk to play us like a fiddle, telling us things that do not even make sense yet many of us accept without question because we love our politicians. Love them so much we will let them lead us to poverty and a penal existence. So enthralled with them that we allow them, the federal government to give billions tax free in the form of TARP and even more via Quantitative Easing and all that so they can make loot in the markets at the cost of money that in theory should have gone to pay salaries of average employees. 

The real concern is that in order to do this, we have to be complicit in our own death. To accomplish this, they make up stuff; I mean artificially contrive stuff as well as the proof to support the stuff they made up in an effort to communicate impending doom. Take Global warming for example (ironically newspeaked into climate change) or any environmental cause. This the strategy used by plutocratic political elite and it is grounded in their sense of “moral absolutism” that makes them feel that since they have money, money shouldn’t be an issue to you thus your value as being regular folk, only exist to make them believe “WE” need them to tell us what to do.

We can also look at the civil rights and black power movements as examples. What did these folks do then? Well we were it before global warming and the environment. First, they focus on inequality amongst various societal sub groups like African Americans and encourage us to act against these certain political targets. It was just a few weeks ago the democratic held an all-nightclimathon talking about global warming.  This was 28 democratic senators all because some rich cat said he wanted to put $100 million behind politicians dealing with global warming. And we all know, including the money behind them, the politicians and the masses, that 60 percent in America think the economy is the most important issue to address and climate change next to the bottom, especially us black folk. Why, because climate change makes them wealthier.

In the early 1970s, Aaron Wildavsky, the former Dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at California Berkeley described their play book as being designed to “have middle class civil servants, hire upper class whites, to use lower class blacks” to stack the front line to complain against the political institution or policy (or lack of) at hand. And this minus-sum game as Wildavsky describes, often leaves African Americans worse off than we were before.

Take the recent election of Barack Obama. The change and hope mantra had folks wanting to tear the club up. But in 2014, what do we see? We see home sales going up for those with a price tag of $10 million plus, but not regular folk, especially if they are African Americans. Black Americans, Obama's most loyal supporters, are among the hardest hit by this uneven recovery.


The average price for a kilowatt-hour (KWH) of electricity hit a record of 13.5 cents in March based on data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: meaning it was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. In March, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also shows that shrimp prices jumped 61 percent from a year earlier. Cost for pork items, especially bacon are also dramatically on the increase.  Ironically the story line is due to a disease. The increases of cost in agricultural and beef products have been conveniently blamed on a drought (disease and drought equally environment). 

All to make you think there are more things (the environment) which are more important than feeding your family, earning a living and maintaining a roof over your head (humans). Think about it PETA will tell you not to eat meat and that slaughtering cows is inhuman but they get their lot from VISA, who owns Omaha Steaks and got big loot in the Kentucky Derby (can’t make this ish up). 

You might be a progressive, but you are not a progressive elite and you, if defined as such are not seeking the same goal as they are.  The recession officially ended in June 2009, but we still are down 6 million jobs from pre-recession levels and now these cats got us believing that Obamacare and the economy are separate issues. But fact is that the new trend is not giving part-time workers company health coverage like Target, who will no longer offer health insurance to part time workers. Meaning, class, African Americans will be the hardest hit by this.

The disparity between rich and poor has blossomed since 2009 and the job participation rate is way worse, not to mention the average person has less money to spend and is taxed much more - all when our nation's debt is our greatest concern because WE paying the debt. And you know how I know we paying the debt? Because, more than 23 million American households rely on food stamps. Households operationally defined let us say as being four per household which equals 92 million Americans. And although more whites on welfare than blacks, we rely on it disproportionately more than whites.

This one reason why neither democrats nor republicans will ever simplify the tax code because this is the plutocratic politician’ main source of revenue (taking huge contributions (bribes) in exchange for tax breaks for the super-wealthy. They want inflation because the math proves that inflation (when prices go up) raises GDP subsequently making federal debt cheaper to service every year. But where we live and everywhere else, median household income is down 7% since 2000. And don’t forget if we removed the top 1% households from this equation, the decline for the bottom 99% would be more than closer to 30% (my math). Thus via the tax code and quantitative easing, the purchasing power we have is slowly being siphoned and swindled and given on purpose by our government to super rich folk, who in turn get to borrow money from the Fed at an interest rate of zero.

American politics is completely, owned, run and operated by the most powerful economic elite that politics and corporate America can proffer, which leaves out the democracy this republic was created on for the rest of us.  Yawl, especially black progressives, needs to stop wifing these politicians.  I mean if black folk regardless of political orientation put as much into protect, defending and believing in self and our communities as much as we wife these politicians, we wouldn’t have am problems. But we don’t, and now a majority of us believe and trust the government. When did we start to believe in and trust the government I ask again? Of all folk, African and Native Americans should never trust the government, especially the federal government. But that is just me, and unlike most, I don’t love these politicians.

The government is coming after you…even if you did nothing wrong

It seems each day I am reminded of how poorly informed the average American is.  This is especially true for the average African American, who speaks of politics through the jaundiced lens of faux progressivism and protecting our president and his political party no matter what they do. But for some reason, I think this is because as a community, things have changed.  When I was growing up in Memphis during the city sanitation strikes, African Americans never trusted the government or politicians, even if they were black.  I mean when someone like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. goes out of his way to threatened to accuse Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin of having a homosexual relationship, just to protect white racist democrats, unless the protest they had planned in 1960 at the Democratic Convention was cancelled, it is easy to see why such was the case and why the majority of us, traditionally never trusted democrats or republicans regardless of race.

Today, African Americans actually believe in and trust the government to do what is best albeit facts suggest otherwise. The stark reality is that things will only continue to get worse and we with our heads in the sand, will accept anything our political puppet masters tell us. Unfortunately, by the time we wake up, it may be too late and like everybody else, we will find out that the government is coming after us…even if we did nothing wrong.

Some may say this is an overstatement, but for the folk that do assert such, I suggest you read the Bill of Rights and the history of the French Revolution, as well as observe the parallels for themselves. The problem is that having a Mulatto President got black folk thinking it is all good.  Just the presence and appearance of our swarthy-skinned President makes people think it is alright, making them accept without question, or even more problematic, not pay attention to the real world around them.

But if we would just look around, we would see that the gap between what the poorest make and what the wealthiest bring home has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. According to the current administration, we are in year five of the “economic recovery” yet we have no job creation in concert with many companies cutting their payrolls. Add to this the observation that U.S. food prices are up nearly 20 percent so far this year and steadily rising. To believe the words of any politician, in particular this administration about the economy is getting better borders on psychosis.

What did we get by awarding the current administration with 93 percent of the African American vote in 2012 and 95 percent among that group in 2008? Economically we are worse than we were in 2009 and our participation in the labor market has been steadily falling farther since that same year. Simple truth is that since his election, economic improvements have occurred for all other ethnic groups in America with the exception of blacks.

Now the next step is domination by police and military enforcement.  Now "the most transparent administration in history" has just ordered U.S. Army to seize every Apache helicopter in use by the National Guard and prior to this, the U.S.Postal Service, EPA, IRS, NOAA, the Department of Education & 90 agencies, have been and are purchasing and storing BILLIONs of round of hollow point ammo and thousands of military rifles for domestic use only. Not to mention that recently, the administration convinced their plutocratic buddies in the cell phone market to agree to add a phone kill switch beginning in July 2015 which they say is about the rash of cell phone thefts but is really about is about disabling cell phone cameras to keep the free people from posting and sharing government abuse and violence to other via the internet. Maybe even worse is that the FBI just announced that they plan to have 52 million photos in its NGI Face Recognition Database by next year (everybody, not just criminals).

And if you want to see two examples of this, that have nothing to do with race, all we have to do is look at what happened with Miriam Carey and more recently with Nevada rancher Clive Bundy. The Carey story tells us one thing: that if you are a black woman, you cannot get scared with men in swat regalia in mass pull guns out on you when you are with your child.  Doing so gets you murdered legally and the Whitehouse will cover for this murder, call all the news media and tell the world you was shooting at police, trying to attack the Capitol, was crazy and on major medication when in fact she had no gun, and the autopsy report, made public six months after she was shot dead revealed that the 34-year-old woman had no drugs in her system and was struck by five bullets from behind, two of which were in the head.

Clive Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management, whose Director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser and son (RoryReid), is being forced by the government to give up his land, or have his cattle killed until he does: land which his family has worked over 140 years. Why, because Reid’s sons represents a large Chinese energy company that wants to build on the land. Some say well both are wrong. I just disagree, if the government can say any land is federal, then they can even claim your land and home by asserting such, like they did this man here.

Fact remains, no matter where we look, we see the military training in public streets and preparing for martial law right in broad daylight,  and we don’t say anything. Likewise we see Nationwide,Police assaulting and murdering innocent people with zero consequences, even when they are handcuffed in the back of cars .Why? Because we are silient, don’t want to rock the boat and say nothing about the administration of our current President even if it is true. They way things are today, policing in USA is roping in as many people as you can, see how many have guns or warrants, and then basically throw back the innocent ones. The problem is that they end up sweeping up a lot of innocent people and charging them with pointless crimes, fueled by a war on drugs that only results in the mass incarceration only the poor and people of color and more prisions. And each year, Obama’s Budget show federal prisons (not Education) is here he sallocates most of our tax dollars. For example, Obama’s FY 2014 Budget requests a total of $8.5 billion for federal prisons a 3.5 percent increase over the FY 2012 appropriated level.

We as a people and a nation need to be honest with ourselves. As it currently stand, we are immaterial and disposable. The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy run by plutocrats, inclusive of our present President. Ours now, due to our own ignorance, is a government dominated by the political influence of the elite and wealthy Americans for their benefit alone over what is best for ordinary citizens. Don’t sleep, what they did to Miriam Carey and are doing to Clive Bundy, has nothing to do with race and they will do it to you and I also.