More Nonsense from the Court

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How’s about that affirmative action decision, huh? There’s a lot of good — and also stupid — commentary out already. The good starts with the dissents written by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson.

I’ve spent a large part of the day yelling at telephone trees that refuse to connect me to real people, and I don’t have the energy to write much. See you tomorrow.

 

8 thoughts on “More Nonsense from the Court”

  1. I wish I could get my hands on the guy at Bell labs that invented the phone menu and get a little justice but he is probably long gone now.

    The court: time to go after legacy admissions and big contribution admissions. Since Rs want to spin it as return to meritocracy :as we know there never was one not at all.

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  2. It says alot that they didn't wipe out Affirmative Action for Military Academies, Roberts wrote “This opinion… does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”. Judge Jackson had an answer for that: “The Court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom”

    This is of course a horrible decision but it is the law now. Time for democrats to demand equal funding for k-12 for every child in this country, make that the law.

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  3. "But their decision was surprisingly silent on other determining factors in the application process, such as legacy status, donor relationships, recruitment for athletics, employee relationships, and other special recommendations — allowing colleges to continue give those students preferential treatment."

    https://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-outlawed-race-based-170833530.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

    So you can't get a break if you are bright and black but if your daddy went to Yale because granddaddy was filthy rich then you get in even if you are dumb as Donald Trump. I might be able to accept the brutal equity of admissions based on scores if the policy is really admission based on scores. But between the lines, this is institutional inequity. It has the Federalist Society's fingerprints all over the smoking gun. 

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  4. Somebody wake up Dante!

    AVR's (Automated)/and IVR's (Interactive) – Voice Response systems form "A New Curcle of Hell, maha!

    Dante's dead, so let me add "Gulag's 10th Circl of Hell":

    The Technological Level.

    That 10th Level of Hell might include some inventors (Think Elon Musk – but not Bill Gates – types).

    But mostly, it's focus will be people who used technology to screw others out of time and/or money.  Think:  Telemarketers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Niarobian Prince wannnabes, and others of their grifting ilk!

    tRUMP looks like he might be working on creating an 11th Circle of Hell:  Consisting of himself (with other family members having potential.  We're lookin' atchya, Donnie Jr.!

    Hunter's got nothin' on your use of illegal phatmaceutical use, amirite, Jr?!?!?!

     

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    • Seriously. I wanted to buy something online from Best Buy using my Best Buy store card. But first I wanted to check current balances on said card. I found I couldn’t get into my account. The username/password thing wasn’t working. It would ask me for more information, which I would provide, and then it would tell me that what I provided didn’t match their records. So I tried calling. The telephone tree kept telling me to do stuff I’d already done that didn’t work. I could not get through to a real person. Finally I called again and instead of asking for help with my account I asked for help with a purchase (which wasn’t entirely untrue), and then I finally got a real person who connected me with another real person. This person was able to tell me what my balances were, and gave me more directions for logging into my account. Which didn’t work. Through a chat box I miraculously got hold of a tech person who suggested I clear cache and cookies and try again, and toward the end of the day I got to look at my account and see for myself that all was well. And then I tried to order the item, and the system didn’t recognize my store card number. I called again and got another phone number for customer service at the bank (Citibank) that manages the store card. But it was late by then so I didn’t call it. I called the Citibank number this morning and got stuck in another stupid phone tree that didn’t go anywhere. So I tried ordering the item again, and lo, this time it worked and the order went through. But that nonsense ate up most of the last 24 hours except for when I was sleeping.

  5. A long time ago, I wrote / installed a telephone banking system ("press 1 to make a transfer…") and from time to time I have to deal with these stupid beasts. They're a good idea but often implemented badly, wasting mountains of your time, often failing to do their job, after they've sucked away 20 minutes of your patience.  I had to navigate two of them yesterday, in signing up for utilities, until I finally got through to human beings who got the job done.

    (Side note: the phone banking system was called "Easy-Touch" , and my boss, who was having an affair with another manager at the bank, often cajoled her into providing the voice prompts that customers heard – Miss Easy-Touch, indeed)

    Thank God for Justice Jackson's brilliance to stick it to that sanctimonious pimple, Clarence Thomas,

    Jackson continued: “He [Thomas] does not dispute any historical or present fact about the origins and continued existence of race-based disparity (nor could he), yet is somehow persuaded that these realities have no bearing on a fair assessment of ‘individual achievement’.

    “Justice Thomas ignites too many more straw men to list, or fully extinguish, here. The takeaway is that those who demand that no one think about race (a classic pink-elephant paradox) refuse to see, much less solve for, the elephant in the room – the race-linked disparities that continue to impede achievement of our great Nation’s full potential,” she wrote.

    …for Jackson, the first Black woman to serve as a justice. It’s a term in which she has emerged as a sharp questioner and writer on the bench. Thomas, the second Black man to serve on the court, had a term that was shaped by an ethics scandals, all while he has flexed more power on the court as a leading member of its rightwing majority.

    Supreme court justices typically end a dissent with the words “I dissent” or “I respectfully dissent.” But Jackson’s dissent eschews that custom altogether, instead calling out the majority for allowing affirmative action at military academies but not universities and calling the court’s decision a “tragedy”.

    “The Court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom (a particularly awkward place to land, in light of the history the majority opts to ignore),” she wrote.

    “It would be deeply unfortunate if the Equal Protection Clause actually demanded this perverse, ahistorical, and counterproductive outcome. To impose this result in that Clause’s name when it requires no such thing, and to thereby obstruct our collective progress toward the full realization of the Clause’s promise, is truly a tragedy for us all.”

    I have a new hero, and her name is Ketanji Jackson.

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  7. King Solomon inspired court we do not have.  Only wisdom gives a court the ability to put their thumbs on the scales of justice properly to really make things fair for all citizens.  This decision just seems to replace a mess with a new and bigger one.  I hardly see that as wisdom or a path to fairness for all citizens.   

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