You could always just not tax corporations at all, which some economists favor. I'd be OK with that as part of a package rolling back corporate privileges and fixing the capital gains tax to match income taxes.
I often find myself facing a choice between teeth and squirrels.
3: Yes. Also, the benefits that make full-time work 'too expensive' for the employer should be earned proportionally to all the hours worked.
I imagine some kind of freely-given-out IRS-integrated time-clock that calculates and determines wages, not only preventing wage-theft but also integrating EITC as a paycheckly rather than yearly payout. But I suppose tripling Wage & Hours enforcers would work about as well.
What if, instead of dicking around with the corporate tax code, we simply nationalized the means of production?
7: You'll have to take my handguns-cotton-candy-and-free-pony factory from my cold, dead fingers, hippie!
3: this is a problem that could be fixed easily with strong labor unions.
Or probably shitty ones that actually existed.
I wonder if he ever met Liddy Dole.
On OP.1, although I'd love to get some of those dinosaurs out, I wonder if in the current environment (where Republican justices aren't even avoiding the appearance of nonpartisanship in any substantive way) this would make decisions a lot more evanescent. If 12 years passed with Republicans in office, by the end, the recent appointees espousing the latest Federal Society line would have a supermajority.
14: and the same in reverse, though. After 8 years of Democrats in office, you might not get a Bush v. Gore.
15: Yes on Bush v. Gore, but Dems don't nominate justices with anywhere near the aggressivity of GOP - huge deference to corporate interests, etc. (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2014/features/thrown_out_of_court050661.php?page=all is extremely depressing, although it doesn't AFAICT put our current four in disrepute.)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2014/features/thrown_out_of_court050661.php?page=all
16: Dems also don't have a pipeline for grooming judicial prospects like that associated with the Federalist Society. Despite representing minority opinions on a whole lot of subjects the right is able to hold back the Democrats because the conservative movement has organizations and systems in place that the left only vaguely echos in an incoherent and unsystematic way. The network of right wing think tanks and wingnut welfare organizations is tightly bound in a way that, e.g. CAP and Moveon are not.
I think you've made the point in 18 before. It is wrong. There is no absence of a pipeline of well-groomed potential Democratic judicial nominees. This bench is often way more pro-corporate than people here would like but that represents the actual state of the Democratic Party.
I will say that there is a serious problem where being left (or left-ish) on economic issues is secondary or tertiarary to the concerns of mainstream legal "liberals" in a way that's been pretty destructive. Breyer for example was an antitrust professor, and while he didn't have the most conservative possible views on the subject he (like most people in his field) basically bought hardcore into law and economics libertarian bullshit in analyzing the economy. Sotomayor's Second Circuit business decisions were routinely pro-corporate, etc. I expect this to change somewhat as the party and world becomes somewhat more economically liberal in the wake of 2008, but it may take a generation or two. To be clear, (a) this represents the actually-existing stste of the Democratic party and (b) the four liberals on the Court are way way better on these issues than the four conservatives, but that's starting from an abysmal baseline.
OK, delete Democrats and insert Progressives. Is there a progressive judicial pipeline I'm not aware of? AFAICT there is nothing on the left even vaguely like the conservative movement within the Republican party when it comes to organization.
20 -- There is a general problem that the Democratic Party isn't as progressive as it should be, but whatever the federalist society does in terms of providing Republican nominees who hold views consistent with the mainstream of that party is done by a variety of Democratic organizations. There's not a significant "progressive" judicial pipeline further to the left of the mainstream Democratic party for the simple reason that such candidates wouldn't be nominated by the President and couldn't be confirmed.
I basically agree with 23, but a hypothetical world in which you had Democratic nominees who were much more progressive on business and labor issues is possible (if the party and President would accept it) without needing to appoint lawless ideologues.
26 before seeing 25. Sounds like we agree.
I feel like the general attitude in 23, as reasonable as it is in general*, is part of the problem. It leaves us in the same position as moderate democratic politicians/media presentation does, namely, one side being moderate procedural liberals and the other side being completely demented far right authoritarians. And since compromises of some sort are inevitable (even with Republicans as they are now) centrist/moderate proceduralism ends up with right wing outcomes, and often pretty extreme ones.
*(As in, for most things and for this thing too in anything approaching sane circumstances.)
What's the most recent seven-or-more-majority decision that was ridiculously pro-corporate? I had been assuming AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion was an example, but it was 5-4.
I'd far prefer stupid, lawless liberals on the Supreme Court to even the most learned and reasonable conservatives.
32 -- this term? The Halliburton and CVS cases come to mind as pretty representative of the consensus spirit on the Court.
That was to 31. I also basically agree with 32 but that doesn't mean we should want stupid or lawless liberals or that we can't do better than that.