Some background on the Wisconsin attack on unions

As described yesterday, Wisconsin governor Walker is essentially put into the governor's office by the Koch brothers. Much of the funding came from Koch Industries. Immediately upon taking office in January of this year Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans passed tax breaks for the corporations and for the wealthy that converted a projected government surplus into a fiscal deficit. Next Walker declared a fiscal emergency and demanded that the government employee unions accept decertification and effective emasculation through a proposed law that prevents them from negotiating with the state on pay or benefits. It's perfectly clear that the actions aimed at the public worker unions are nothing more than a union-busting tactics.

Walker is representing Koch Industries which provided the money that got him elected governor. Koch Industries is famously anti-union, having gone so far as the declare that they will shut down any business they operate that is unionized.

The Koch brothers own the second largest privately owned company in the United States. What we do not yet know is how much of the money that swept into Wisconsin politics last year was unleashed by the Supreme Court's recent made up law, the Citizen's United decision. What we do know is that at least two of the US Supreme Court Justices who enacted the Citizen's United decision have been meeting with the Koch brothers at their recent meeting of millionaires in Palm Springs. The likelihood that the Justices were colluding with the Koch brothers in fund-raising for a conservative anti-union program is very strong.

The attacks on unions by the conservatives have been building in recent years. It's not just the unions themselves, though. It's the fact that unions are one of the pillars of the Democratic Party. The conservatives have been able to destroy ACORN because it was so successful at getting minority voters to register and get out the vote was an earlier success of the conservatives in removing the institutional support behind the Democratic Party. The Koch Brothers - Governor Walker attack on unions in Wisconsin is one more effort in the same direction to make the conservatives politically dominant in American politics. It is very likely that the five Catholic US Supreme Court Justices are complicit in the political attack.

Politically this is an attack on the American people by the big money families and by the heads of large corporations.

A strange Supreme Court ruling written by Scalia

This ruling created some strange bedfellows. Anton Scalia, the court's most conservative member, switched over to join the court's four liberal members. In fact, Scalia wrote the opinion. The issue was whether the federal banking laws preempt similar state laws designed to protect consumers. From McClatchy News Service:

WASHINGTON — In a rebuke of the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that a federal bank regulator erred in quashing efforts by New York state to combat the kind of predatory mortgage lending that triggered the nation's financial crisis.

[...]

The five justices held that contrary to what the Bush administration had argued, states can enforce their own laws on matters such as discrimination and predatory lending, even if that crosses into areas under federal regulation.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the four dissenters, argued that laws dating back to the nation's founding prevent states from meddling in federal bank regulation. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts and justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito.

The ruling angered many in the financial sector, who fear it'll lead to a patchwork of state laws that'll make it harder for banks and other financial firms to take a national approach to the marketplace.

"We are worried about the effect that this ruling could have on the markets," said Rich Whiting, general counsel for the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group representing the nation's 100 largest financial firms, in a statement. The decision "hinders the ability of financial services firms from conducting business in the United States. Even worse, it will cause confusion for consumers, especially those who move from state to state."
[Highlighting mine - Editor WTF=o]

The reported statement [Highlighted above] from the financial sector is very likely accurate.

This decision WILL hinder the national banks from providing uniform services across the nation. It will certainly make it less economically beneficial to consolidate many local banks and create the kinds of mega-banks who helped the massive Wall Street banks create the mortgage crisis.

In other words, it removes some of the economies of scale that caused the creation of banks like Bank of America. That means that regional banks will be able to compete on a more equitable basis, and banking services will be provided in a more competitive market across the nation.

So does that mean that the megabanks will have higher costs and pass them on to the consumers? Half right. The higher costs will mean that there is less opportunity to make mega profits for the top managers. Along with that, the much greater competition will mean that the consumers will get lower prices than is possible when dealing with a single monopoly national bank, or with one of three or four oligopoly banks. Along with lower costs, the bankers will have greater knowledge of the needs of local markets than the mega banks possibly can, meaning the regional banks will have a shift of some competitive power away from the mega banks. The customers will win.

Too bad, Wall Street. You will have less opportunity to cause boom and bust economic cycles. Instead the free market will have the best opportunity to function.

The right-wing lie regarding "30 released Guantanamo detainees " returning to the battlefield

In his impassioned dissent to the 5 to 4 Boumediene decision Justice Antonia Scalia declared that “[the Court’s decision] will almost certainly cause more
Americans to be killed.” To buttress his argument Justice Scalia stated, “In the short term, however, the decision is devastating. At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantánamo Bay have returned to the battlefield.”

Since I have sufficient respect for his ethics as a Jurist [*], I can only suspect that Scalia does not know he was repeating a lie. He said it again to Charlie Rose on the show aired June 21, 2008. The Pentagon has released the truth of the matter in in a Seaton Hall study of the issue.. The report essentially says that the Pentagon has no way of tracing released Guantanamo detainees, so it is reduced to culling unverifiable reports from the press. What is known, however is that the prior released detainees were not released through and process that was even quasi-judicial (some were released by political appointees against the will fo the military, and they were not tracked once they were released. There was only a single possible individual who might have returned to the "battlefield" (whjtever that means) and even that report is highly speculative.

From the summary of the report, here is what is known.

On December 10, 2007 The Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research issued a Report, THE MEANING OF "BATTLEFIELD": An Analysis of the Government’s Representations of ‘Battlefield Capture’ and ‘Recidivism’ of the Guantánamo Detainees, which demonstrated that statements asserting 30 detainees had returned to the battlefield were incorrect. Further developments since then, including recent hearings before Congress at which more information was provided by the Department of Defense, confirm that the 30 recidivist claim is simply wrong and has no place in a reasoned public debate about Guantánamo. This Report concludes the following:

• At most 12, not 30, detainees “returned to the fight.”
• Of these 12, it is by no means clear that all are properly characterized as having
  been so engaged since their release.
• According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data not a single detainee was ever released by a court. Moreover, every released detainee was released by political appointees of the Department of Defense, sometimes over the objection of the military.
• According to the Department of Defense’s published and unpublished data and reports, not a single released Guantánamo detainee has ever attacked any
  Americans.
• The Department of Defense’s statements regarding recidivism are inconsistent with each other and often contradictory.
• This may be because, despite the importance of detainee recidivism, the Department of Defense’s sources of information are media reports.
• Despite national security concerns, the Department of Defense does not have a system for tracking the conduct or even the whereabouts of released detainees.
• The only indisputable detainee who took up arms against the United States or its allies was ISN 220.
• ISN 220 was not released as a result of any legal process, whether a CSRT or a federal habeas proceeding; no detainee has been released as a result of either process.
• The decision to release ISN 220 was made by political officers in the Department of Defense and was contrary to the recommendations of the military officers.
• The Department of Defense has never explained why ISN 220 was released or who is responsible for the decision.
• It is at least plausible that a more transparent process would have resulted in ISN 220 still being detained.

So. No thirty released detainees who have returned to the battlefield. Maybe there is one, and if there had been a transparent judicial process that case represents an individual who should not have been released. The Pentagon political appointees tend to overrule good sense and demand the Pentagon do what they are told.

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[*]That is not to say that I consider Antonin Scalia's theory of of textualism and originalism as he uses it in Constitutional interpretation valid or reasonable. But I do consider him to be a rigorous thinker who, within his limitations, makes every effort to use known facts rather than lies or misrepresentations and then applies his theory to those facts. Scalia is quite inconsistent on his application of originalism because of his limited acceptance of Stare Decisis. The result is that he is able to "logically" justify whatever he wants the law to be rather than being bound by law.

The result is that, while Scalia can always get the result of his decisions to be what he personally wants them to be (See Bush V. Gore), he does it by using his imprecise and non-binding theory of jurisprudence, not by accepting lies or misrepresentations.