… Rich, private, corporations and their interests. That’s who mostly won this week with the three most recent Supreme Court Decisions. To be truthful, two of the three decisions progressed the interests of the wealthy corporations. In my opinion, it was not a stellar week for the US Supreme Court.
Before I get started, remember, I’m not a legal expert. So the accuracy of my conjectures may not be 100%.
I’ll start with the ruling that deals with the public display of the Ten Commandments. I can see why the court made the ruling it did, and I’m not really for or against the ruling itself. It’s just another example of how far away from God this country continues to slip. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the religious beliefs of the founding fathers played a big part in how they shaped our government. The last time I checked, our national motto was, “In God we trust”. You can read about this specific ruling here:
High court split on Ten Commandments (CNN)
The next ruling had to do with file sharing and whether an ISP or producers of file sharing software can be held liable for any copyright infringement that may occur by the users of their networks or software. In what was not all that much of a surprise to me, the court ruled in favor the big corporations and media conglomerates, basically saying that yes, they can sue the ISP and/or the software producers if someone misuses their network or software. I guess the RIAA got tired of settling measly $3,000 suites with 13 year olds. They now want permission to go after the big guns. Maybe this was an example of a court that is “out of touch” with some of the modern concerns of this century.
File-sharing services can be liable for music theft (CNN)
Now to the biggest travesty of all the decisions to spew out of the court this week. This is the one I totally disagree with. And I’m not too far off from most of the country as people from both sides of the political line are equally as stumped and worried about the ramifications of this decision. The decision has to do eminent domain. Government has the right to take private property if the acquisition of the property is clearly for the benefit of the “public”. Well, there is no clear benefit to the public in this case as it looks like the major benefactor of this decision is a PRIVATE pharmaceutical company.
Supreme Court backs municipal land grabs (CNN)
My thoughts and fears are best summed up by the following article:
“Hi, I like your view, so I’m taking your house”
My hope at this point is that all my friends that just graduated from the UM law school eventually have a hand in putting this country back together.