The AI Supreme Court

 

     Imagine if 19th century political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who was credited with taking down Boss Tweed in 1871, had a bad acid flashback. The cartoons he had actually produced would've been more nightmarish than ever (and Nast had once famously supplanted Boss Tweed's head for a bag of money).

      Or, to use a more contemporary metaphor, imagine if AI reimagined the Supreme Court in its own imperfect imagination. Artificial Intelligence made headlines last year as tech companies began troweling out their own versions of AI. Immediately, we began seeing a deluge of images and videos ranging from the risible to the nightmarish (Such as this surreal horror show involving female gymnasts and this isn't even the worst one out there.) 

     AI isn't quite there yet in being able to replicate human motion or thought. Not even close. The anomalies range from additional fingers, such as the ridiculous one of Trump praying with six fingers and a rubber suit straight out of Max Headroom, to extra limbs sprouting like something out of John Carpenter's The Thing.

     Artificial Intelligence, which is still not close to being able to pass the Turing Test, lacks self awareness and actual insight into reality. It gives you its best guess of what the actual is without ever actually quite getting it right.

     Now imagine if a particularly sadistic individual were to command an AI program to reimagine the Supreme Court in its last session. The outcome would be what we've just seen. It would've given us, say, Snyder v US.

     Snyder gave us a ruling that has to be seen to be believed. Brett Kavanaugh, in his majority ruling, did some serious legal gymnastics to parse the difference between an actual bribe and a mere "gratuity" for a job well done. It began with a small town mayor named Snyder who accepted a "gratuity" of $13,000 for steering a $1.1 million contract to buy several trucks from a local company.

     Snyder was convicted of taking bribes and the case eventually got bumped up to the corruption-friendly Supreme Court, much the same one that gave us Citizens United. In his ruling, Kavanaugh wrote that “(B)ribes are payments made or agreed to before an official act in order to influence the official with respect to that future official act.” (emphasis mine) And the gymnast sticks the landing by disappearing into the mat!

     In other words, in Kavanaugh's tortured legal reasoning, the difference between a bribe and a gratuity is the date on the bill of sale. If the "gratuity" is made after a stupendously corrupt act, well, then, it's just a businessmans's token of appreciation for a job well done.

     I have a friend who, when he goes into a restaurant, has a habit of paying the server in advance to ensure good service. It's perfectly legal, of course, and it's also quite logical as it ensures he gets good service because the server knows from the outset that they won't get stiffed on the tip. But waiters and waitresses aren't public officials and serving drinks and meals hardly qualifies as working in the public interest. My friend is always assured of getting good service when the tip is paid in advance and it's fallacious to assume the same attitude doesn't apply in public service.

     "Steer this contract my company's way and you'll get a nice fat envelope slipped under the table after the deal is sealed."

     And the promise of a "gratuity" at the end of it all isn't a bribe, according to Kavanaugh and other right wingers on the court who have been caught with their hands in the till over and over and over.

     Then there was the Chevron ruling, which theoretically stripped all regulatory power from the Executive to the Judiciary. This is how CNN broke it down:

"By overturning a 1984 precedent, the court’s conservative majority has made countless regulations vulnerable to legal challenge. The types of executive branch moves that the ruling jeopardizes include a plan to put Wi-Fi on school buses, a new ban on noncompete clauses, health care coverage rules being implemented through Obamacare, and the latest plan to forgive student loan debt..

The so-called Chevron doctrine — named after the case, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council — told courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute in circumstances in which the law in question is vaguely written. The precedent is deeply entrenched in administrative law, with Republican and Democratic administrations alike using it to shield regulatory action from legal attack." 

     In effect, in overturning 40 years of legal precedent (as with overturning Roe v Wade after 49 years), the SCOTUS took the power and judgment of scientific experts at regulatory agencies and placed them into the hands of right wing judges who apparently don't even understand the law. The destruction of any and all federal regulations is obviously the biggest wet dream of corporate scumbags who have always slavered for the chance to fuck up this country and the planet in their quest for more profits. 

     And the gymnast grows an extra pair of legs!

     And then, of course, there was the aptly-named Trump v United States.

     Anyone with even one functioning neuron knows that Roberts' own majority opinion wasn't based on any Constitutional text, case law or sane legal or even logical reasoning. 

     We'd like to think that every schoolchild who's been in the public school system knows that Trump v United States was the exact opposite of what the Founding Fathers envisioned for the new government they'd forged. We'd just wrenched ourselves from the onerous yoke of oppression not from an occupying force led by a democratically-elected head of state but a king who was answerable to no one. Naturally, the Founding Fathers didn't want a reprise of that in the new government.

     So they'd instituted checks and balances, investing the three branches of government with what they considered an equal division of authority. The last thing the Founding Fathers wanted was a Unitary Executive who was answerable to nothing and no one. We'd lived under such a system with the British government for over 150 years and they plainly saw it was not a system that worked with the new American nation.

     The Supreme Court essentially set nearly a quarter of a millennium of legal precedent on its ear and anyone who knows the first thing about the law and this distorted version of the Supreme Court can see that that Trump v. United States wasn't designed to protect the presidency but one person: Donald Trump.

     Essentially, Chevron took power away from the Executive branch and placed it in the hands of the Judiciary. Trump v US did the exact opposite. It gave enormous power to the Executive and took it out of the hands of the Judiciary that should still be a check and balance on Executive power. And both Chevron and Trump v US have one thing in common- They would enormously benefit Trump and his corporate cronies if God forbid we install him in the White House.

     Don't forget: Trump just last month told a bunch of wealthy right wing energy executives that he'd give them whatever they want if they just bribe him with a billion dollars, which takes us back to Chevron (In response, they began drafting Executive Orders for him to sign his first day in office). A billion dollars might seem a tad excessive as far as "gratuities" go. But, if that's ever challenged in the future, count on the SCOTUS to further contort the meaning of the Constitution to make a billion dollar bribe a mere tip.

     And the gymnast flies off the balance beam, grows three heads and morphs into a dinosaur.