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(Mods, let me know if I need to delete this and repost in Small Questions Sunday.)
The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) hears Moore v United States today. According to SCOTUSBlog, at issue is "Whether the 16th Amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized sums without apportionment among the states". Since that's not very helpful, I'll quote The Atlantic's summary instead:
Mother Jones, NPR, CBS, and Foreign Policy (of all the friggin' places) are running articles breathlessly proclaiming DOOM! for the US tax code, or at least the ability of Democrats to pass wealth tax laws. This Forbes article seems to be a pretty good explanation of what's at issue but I'll admit that I'm not well-versed enough in tax law to understand the full ramifications of what a Moore victory would mean for the ability of the federal government to raise revenue. On the other hand, I can't say I'm sad about the idea of a wealth taxes getting a bullet to the head. What am I missing or not considering as I read about this from the various outlets?
I'll come out with a prediction that Gorsuch will bite the bullet and be willing to simply follow the letter of the amendment clearly and obstinately. He is, after all, the originator of the buttfore test from Bostock, and the preeminent justice who actually thinks the federal government has to follow the treaties it has signed to the letter. If anyone will read the amendment and declare unrealized gains obviously not income and therefore not taxable, it's him.
Roberts will squish and try to legislate from the bench, saving the way congress currently taxes despite it being clearly unconstitutional and Neil saying so, but that's an easy prediction. It's in his nature, it's what he's there to do, and it's why Bush put him on the bench. Maybe he'll try to steal the opinion from Gorsuch, who would absolutely savage any existing structures if they counteract the letter of the law.
I'm sure all three opposition women will join Roberts in allowing a wealth tax, but I'm at least hopeful Kagan will have a clever excuse. I never expect cleverness from Sotomayor or Jackson, just party-line votes as a good foot soldier.
However, the rest of the conservative wing is up in the air. Kavanaugh is another squish like Roberts, and Barrett seems to be leaning the same way on anything not abortion. You'd figure Alito and Thomas would be pleased to prevent Congress from reaching its tentacles into another pot of gold, but they're also most amenable to business interests, and if the tax code would be flipped on its head due to a decision, I can see either of them ruling to delay disruption somehow in a narrower ruling.
Anyone else care to personally prognosticate?
Not me, but I appreciate the analysis. Aside from the most obvious party line predictions, I don't have any special insight into the supreme court. They seem mostly like a black box to me.
Any thoughts on the recently adopted code of conduct for the supreme court?
And did they ever find that leaker?
I have rough impressions of the personalities of the justices. Gorsuch as an obstinate contrarian, Kagan as the only liberal who can write, Roberts as there to grease the gears and make sure nothing much happens too fast, and so on. I'm still waiting on Barrett and Kavanaugh to justify themselves, and thus far I'm not impressed. Kavanaugh, especially, seems like Roberts' lackey more than anything else, almost how Thomas was characterized as Scalia's lackey for many years.
I haven't read much about the code of conduct in particular, just that there is one, but in general I think it's a cudgel to be used against the conservative justices, because that's how its implementation has been characterized. I have a low opinion of Propublica and they were one of the main drivers of negative reporting on, for example, Thomas. It's important to know that while Congress can determine the size of the Supreme Court, they can't actually do much else in terms of regulation. Reading up, it appears they just used the same code of ethics (not code of conduct) that was already used in lower courts, and just formally adopted it for the Supreme Court. This prevents Congress from squawking for a time, but the problem wasn't the lack of code of ethics, the problem was and is 6 republican appointees, and that problem still goes in search of solution. This is a defensive measure, and it might work, but I don't have high hopes of anyone being principled or consistent.
Except Neil Gorsuch. I don't particularly like his rulings, but by god the man has brass balls and is willing to swing them around when the law is clear and the judges are specious. He will burn down the law on technicality and sleep soundly having done his job well. Maybe one day he'll recuse himself over something that none of his colleagues would even consider, and we'll say it's the code of ethics come home to roost.
You don't explicitly lay out how a code of conduct that applies to everyone equally is biased against Conservative justices. Is it because you think conservative media outlets are incapable of doing investigative journalism? That only Conservative justices are likely to violate said code of conduct? That everyone is corrupt, but the public/congress will selectively pressure corrupt Conservative justices?
If it came out that, say, Soros was buying houses and fancy vacations for some of the liberal justices I'd anticipate Fox News, talk radio and the Matt Gaetz' of the world would convulse in a collective orgasm and talk about it nonstop for the next three months. Do you disagree?
I thought I was clear: the only reason anyone cares about a code of ethics is because of politicized reporting smearing conservative justices. Therefore, the code of ethics itself is but a cudgel to be used against said justices.
Yes, this too. I don't think Propublica is worth the paper its printed on, and I don't trust them to tell me anything bad about Democrats, or anything good about Republicans.
Yeah, but it won't come out, because that's not the media landscape that exists in reality. In reality, the Hunter Biden laptop full of incriminating evidence is pre-bunked as a non-story and literally every single major media enterprise gets with the program in lockstep fashion. I wouldn't anticipate Fox News doing much about, since last I've checked they're just as much at war with the Republican base as any Never Trumper has ever been. That's one reason why Tucker is out.
He'd be the only one talking about. Him, us here, maybe /pol/, maybe /r/conspiracy, and other fringes of the internet. No major media would cover it seriously, instead the story would be how Republicans are melting down over racist conspiracy theories.
I don't know what world you're living in where you can model outcomes as you have. There just seems to be so much counterevidence that it feels nostalgic, like you expect Walter Cronkite to walk through the door and gently tell you all the things you need to know.
To be clear, "the media" are, at their core, just a ton of very smart and driven people who also happen to be, mostly, progressive. Nothing stops driven conservatives from reporting on the misdeeds of liberal justices, other than a lack of conservative reporters (as in Trace's earlier post), or a lack of misdeeds.
I think it's entirely possible the liberal justices haven't done anything similarly bad? Thomas's actions are specific things that might or might not have happened. I could see an alternate history where Thomas didn't do what he did. I can see a history where the liberal justices and thomas both did similar things. So I can also see a history where Thomas did that and liberal justices didn't do something similar. Like, Bob Menendez chaired Foreign Relations, and he happened to be a democrat. It totally could've been a Republican who did that, but it wasn't.
(also: Liberal Media didn't seem hesitant to report on Menendez's misdeeds. Obviously supreme court justices are more of a sore spot, but it's a comparison)
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