GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #784: LUNATICS RUNNING THE ASYLUM

Or maybe the criminals running the courts.

 

Earlier this week the Supreme Court made an announcement that they now have a Code of Ethics. Who wrote this code? Oh yeah . . . about that. They did.

They tried to make it sound like they've always had this code because they borrowed it from the lower courts. For the lower courts, it's essential for a judge to recuse themselves if there is a conflict of interest in a case they've been assigned. If they don't, there is a punishment. If the defendant appeals, then the appeals judge can look at the original judge, and if there's a conflict of interest, and that guy didn't recuse himself . . . yeah. The same goes for the appeals judge when the Supreme Court is looking at it. Except, who watches the Watchmen?

That's right. There is no way to enforce the rules when it comes to Supreme Court Justices. There is no higher court to hand down penalties or to reverse decisions. So their new code of ethics is a fifteen page waste of time.

But they're not worried about that. Why would they be?

The first analogy that came to mind is letting corporations make up their own regulations, and we all know how that worked out. Hence the need for strict corporate regulation. But that goes over a lot of people's heads sometimes. I have a better analogy, one that will be sure to cut to the quick for any law and order kind of person accidentally reading this.

You know who should make up the rules in prison? The prisoners. Get rid of the warden and the guards and everything else, and let them regulate themselves.

I'm not a big fan of prisons, but typing those words made even my butthole clench a little. Perhaps it's time to regulate these Justices. Clearly they can't do it on their own. Or we can continue to laugh at the joke. Too many people would envision themselves as the Joker in a case like this. Edgy people (almost always guys) see themselves as the jester cutting through the bullshit to make room for laughter, and the king can't ever punish the jester, can he?

I suspect these Joker wannabes are more along the lines of this guy, though:

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #758: THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU

Say you're strapped for cash, and you need money fast. You don't have a structured settlement, so you can't call JG Wentworth. So you figure you might as well go to a payday loan company. And you see the interest rates are staggeringly high, but you're kind of stuck, so you have no choice. In order to borrow a few hundred dollars, you wind up having to pay back thousands.

I'm pretty sure the Mafia (not that they exist, Omerta) has a term for that kind of predatory loan practice . . .

There is only one thing standing between you and that situation happening today, and it's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created in the face of the fucking crazy shit bankers pulled that led to the recession in 2008. The CFPB is there to stop this shit from happening to you. So it's no big surprise that all sorts of money lending companies have been trying to put an end to the CFPB for the 12-ish years it has existed.

Except the scumbags might finally have the bureau on the ropes. It's kind of hard to justify shooting a child in the face, much like it's hard to justify suing for the right to abuse American consumers, so they had to take a different tactic, and they have. The CFPB is currently on the chopping block, waiting for a Supreme Court decision to figure out if they get to still protect us from the corporate greedheads.

They're trying to argue that the CFPB is unconstitutional because of the way it gets its funding, and they managed to flimflam a few judges so much that the government actually appealed this all the way up to the Supreme Court. I gotta say, considering the rampant corruption on that particular bench and how they destroyed Roe v Wade on a federal level, the corporate greedheads might actually have a shot at this. The Justices so far have come down in favor of us consumers, but the final decision hasn't been made yet. It's expected at the end of this term.

I can't say it enough: Public Enemy #1 in this country is Corporate Fucking Greed. And here it is again, trying to fart in our faces and call it a summer breeze. We're barely holding onto our shit as it is. If the CFPB falls, then we're fucked.

The supposedly unconstituional way they get their funding is that it's whatever they decide it is up to a certain point. The greedheads are trying to say that's like installing a dictator, but the past has showed that the CFPB has never, not once, abused this system. Not only that, but it's how the bureau maintains its independence. If it got funding any other way, they would be swayed by the interests of those who funded it, and then we have an Ouroboros situation, like most of this country is stuck with. We need to stop eating our own tail. We can't keep going like this. We need to take these corporate scumbags to task. I'd honestly prefer to abolish the very idea of corporations, but I'm sure that's never going to happen. So instead we have to regulate the fuck out of the swine because they've proven, time and time and time again, that if we don't, no one will. They certainly can't be trusted to do it themselves.

I really hope the Supreme Court realizes what killing the CFPB will do to the regular people of this country. A fox in the henhouse? It's more like putting KFC in charge of making sure chickens grow up and lead full lives and die of old age and get buried in a pet sematary, uneaten by the masses.

We've got a lot of time before the term ends. The Justices seem to be on the right path for now, but some of them love a good bribe. Who has more money to bribe a Justice with than the companies trying to kill the CFPB?