Bush v. Gore & Citizens United

These two cases by the supreme court have striking similarities. First they are both targeted at elections. Bush v. Gore essentially secured George W. Bush's first term presidency. Citizens United is also made during a critical election time that will heavily favor Republican congressmen by lining their pockets with more corporate funding. Most importantly, both cases are a 5-4 split between the conservative and liberal members of the court. In both cases the justices in the minority do not simply write a decent but write a scathing decent accusing the majority for making illogical arguments and ignoring decades of court precedents while focusing on novel niches in others.

It is also curious that both of these cases completely contradict the conservative's court stance on federal and states rights. Bush v. Gore stepped into a debate with the Florida state government asserting that the state law was unconstitutional in allowing Gore to recount votes in the 2000 election. The decision is so novel that it is unlikely to be used as precedent for any type of law and it is largely seen as a political play by the court to declare a conservative as president to replace the conservative justices about to retire. Citizens United uses the bill of rights to declare corporate personhood allowing corporations to spend much more on political campaigns. It largely ignores the actual content of the case to make a (some say insane) stretch declaring corporations equal to real people. They make this argument using a tactic using a precedent that they have been largely using to over rule other cases. The same goes for Bush v. Gore. It largely relied on precedents made by the liberal Warren court to justify their ruling. The minority view in both cases took an opposing stance on bases they would normally support. This obviously smells like a partisan fight and not a fight for justice.

Citizens United will no doubt have an immediate positive effect on the Republican party who have in the past decades been in favor of deregulating big business. The Supreme Court have shown their political bias clearly in Bush v. Gore. Yet the politicking done by the court is not in the interest of the American people. It is done to promote a conservative agenda and to fortify the conservative majority within the court.

The Citizens United case has polled disfavorably with most Americans, yet the actions of the court are largely invisible. People chide the Democrats for not being effective. They sight their slight majority in congress and a Democratic president without noting the third branch of the federal government. Currently it is staffed with ideological remnants of the Reagan and Bushes. In congress we have political gridlock over healthcare, but in the Supreme Court, longstanding civil rights cases are being tossed in the dumpster with out much attention.

The Court has always been making political decisions. Whether it be seen in hindsight as favorably (plessy v. ferguson) or inhumanely cruel (dred scott v. sanford). Yet this court is purposely nosing deeper and deeper into elections of the two other federal branches which is unique in history. This undermines separation of powers and creates an atmosphere where each branch is nestling inside each other rather than being critical. It might even get sloppy if Republicans take the majority of congress. Two branches will then be right leaning while only the executive branch will have a liberal majority and probably the most limited in influencing legislation or interpreting it. America is still under the shadow of Reagan era ideologies that have recently proven suicidal. The purging of these toxic politics will take a lot longer than I think most people hope for.

Starting A Story

Hi, I'm Ralph. My favorite thing to do is to run on the ocean. Yes, it's a little strange. Okay. There was this weird thing that happened to the oceans that wasn't that long ago really. Ah, okay not a lot people really do it any ways. It's much easier to ride a boat or something.

I was on the beach when I saw this guy run right onto the beach from the water. He looked tired and sat down for a rest and to get some water. I went up to him because obviously I was curious. I said, “Hey, guy. What just happened?” He was all worn out, and gestured to give him some more time to catch his breath.

I was so excited – really really excited. I was looking at him carefully trying to see if he was some weird fish or something. No he wasn't, but he had some weird clothes on for sure! There was a large backpack pack – a camping one, ocean camping?

He got back some breath. Apparently he was from another country because he had a real think accent. I don't know where he was from, god. “Gweyll Yai vun vun on vater fromz how you says Earope.”

I was confused and all. So I got the idea and asked him, “So, Huh? You ran from Europe?”

The guy said some more stuff like, “Tsdats eyet. Yai iz much much tired. Yai fall sleeps now.”

Ovbiously I said, “Geeze. Wait. That's not enough.”

He mentioned this was the last think he could say, “Yoo run run vast and stay vup. Yoo stoop and shink. Vater is dafferint lately. Try. Try. Snore. Snore.”

Okay so he was right – he was all right. I gave a good run and, man, I was jogging on water! The water felt like it was ground, but when I stopped it got back to normal and I sank. I had the swim all the way back. I was soaked in my clothes and that dude was asleep on the beach.

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That's how I got the idea any ways. I wanted to cross the ocean just like that guy did. I wondered if he ran non-stop or if there were places to stop on the way. It seemed like it would take forever to run that far. How could he run non-stop from here (here is Texas) from Europe?

I didn't see that guy again, so I couldn't ask him any more questions. I asked people around me about and everyone seemed not to care. I did notice the television was talking about how the ocean was getting weird. It was like it wasn't very important though. They didn't mention running on it.

I decided to practice every day. After school I would get a snack and then ride my bike to the beach. I found some cool goggles at the store that I wore.

I wasn't used to running all that much. It took a long time of me just running around to get used to it. I was wondering how the heck that guy made it all the way from Europe. I could barely get any where.

But I improved a bit. I got a life jacket when I started going out far. I would sometimes loose track of how far off I'd run off – I'd get so pooped that I just sank into the water and rested a little bit. It was hard to get back running if I had fallen in.

I perfected a technique using a boogey board. I could stand on it in
the water and hop out real quick and start running again. I had the boogey board tied to me so I could snag it as I started to run again. But I realized why that guy I first saw running had that backpack. I'm sure I need lots of stuff to do ticky tasks. Imagine all the crazy things I would have to deal with crossing the Atlantic. Storms and Sharks, bur, crazy.
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Anti-Wikipedia... for now....

I have noticed the major flaw with wikipedia is not how factually correct it is. I have not run into many articles that are well written at all. I am not saying that there are spelling errors and such. What I am referring to is its patchy nature and its almost inherent inarticulateness. It's obvious that pages consist of several authors who probably never met. Pages often take jarring turns in content and often its segments are illogically ordered.

Even if the information is factually correct, the way the article is written can be so bad that it obscures the facts it contains. The more I read wikipedia articles the more I become dissatisfied with them. Now I am skeptical that I can even use it to discern simple facts. I am currently making a concerted effort to ignore it if I can. I think the more I use it, the more I emulate its ad hoc style and suffer at articulating ideas. At times it is more important to be coherent than factually correct. Even if you know information, it does not materialize into something useful unless you know how to explain your knowledge to someone else in a clear and lucid manner.

People in a Crowd

When I read writings on Socrates I was surprised when he talked about how the many are dim witted. This seems rather conceited and arrogant to assume you are smarter than most people. I mean, even if you are, I wouldn't suggest dwelling on that fact. It would be a better use of that smart brain to do smart things instead of marvel at how smart you are.

I realize now that I was foolish. The term is not used to say that only a few people are smart and most others are dumb. It is used to describe how people act when they are in a mob. People in a crowd start thinking less and worry more about how they appear to the crowd.

I came to this realization suddenly a day after I went to a soccer match. I did not stand up during the national anthem. I did not stand to protest of anything. I did not stand because the act of standing means nothing to me. If the national anthem came on the television I would not get off the couch and stand. I would wager that this is true for many of the people at this sporting event. So why do they stand? The answer is so that other people see their standing. Once in a crowd, one must convert a lot of thinking and actions to acting like the crowd. It is very possible to be saying things you are not actually saying if you are not aware of how you are acting in a crowd and lost in yourself.

The day after the match my parents confronted me as they were upset. They conjured many reasons that I stayed seated. Of course all of this was in their head. People normally do not fantasize about why people are sitting down, but they do if everyone else is standing up. In a crowd you must do and say things that you do not mean just to keep other people from assuming you are saying something you don't mean. It seems like a silly situation and I can see why many philosophers look down at people acting in a crowd. When you behave in a crowd you are thinking about what other people are thinking about you and not about other things. It is like having a conversation with people but a conversation where you are saying something with hopes to say nothing.

Lately my paintings are things that are cultivated. They begin as faint images. I layer little by little with no concern for time. They begin to cake with layers. Each layer speaks with the space surrounding it and what lies beneath it. How each layer interacts is usually discovered much later then when it is first applied. At the surface this process seems to say that each layer is random, and I take credit in place for the randomness that creates it. I do not see this as such.

The randomness that I am possible to create is separate from the randomness anyone else is able to produce. So even if one reduces my paintings to randomness, it is at least my personal randomness and not anyone else's.

Part of the process is the passing of time. I tend to set a painting away with enough time to forget it to the point that it becomes fresh. At this point the painting process is more like me interacting with the painting. It is not so much a painting I have created. It is more like running into a stranger. Yet it does bear the mark of myself that I cannot erase clean with time. But with time, I as a person have changed. I have had more experiences and I am not the same thing. It is like talking to my past self in a way that is possible.

Then I, as do many painters, come to an impasse about when to stop painting. If I view the paintings I make to conversations to my past selves, how do I end the conversation? This conversation is also nothing of the content of a normal conversation between two people. People rarely carry a pad of paper with a pencil and give to a friend that scribbles with you back and forth. This is the conversation I am having with my past. It is a conversation that is easy to start but hard to end. I guess I would have to figure it to be a collaboration of past selves to an image. Each one has a say in what it should look like. The end comes not as a handshake good bye but as a democratic electorate ending a vote. The end comes when there runs out of people.

A democracy does not elect perfection but a majority what the electorate thinks is right. Each time I paint I do not creating know that what I do is perfect. I do what I do because I think it is what is right for the painting.

But the voters currently cannot articulate what the other voters think. I am not saying that the voters do not react to the each other, but I would say they do this with out awareness. Voters do not go out of their way to influence the thoughts of other voters. They simply put down what they think and that is that. I am uncertain whether this will be a permanent feature.