The conservative Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling in what is known as the Chevron case. It effectively eliminated the preference courts gave federal regulators charged with interpreting laws, sometimes decades or centuries old.
Better Markets stated:
“This decision threatens to return the United States to the 1910s when the government had very limited ability to protect the health, safety, and welfare of Americans. It’s going to affect everything from airbags in peoples’ cars to the quality of the food they feed their families and the water they drink. It is going to re-order the relationship between the government and the courts and the American people. It also has the potential to return the country to the control of Wall Street banks, financiers, corporations, CEOs, and the modern-day robber barons because it will be much more difficult for the government to constrain their predatory and often illegal conduct in a timely or effective way.
The public must rely on Congress to not only fund the government, something it seems incapable of doing without theatrical deadlines. but to update prior laws so regulators have the basis to perform their job.
Congress has been asleep in regard to current and future threats to citizens. They can't protect children from the well documented harms of social media, keeping in place liability protection for tech companies facilitating or directly causing that harm.
The Supreme Court placed a larger burden on an incapable Congress, one already oriented to the richest elements of our society. Private equity underwriters (PEU) want access to Uncle Sam's wallet but hate paying taxes. Both political teams campaigned on eliminating PEU preferred "carried interest" taxation, yet they never got together over the last fifteen years to accomplish this simple feat.
The ruling makes clear that the advantaged deserve more advantages, billionaires deserve more billions and that they are the focus of the "guards on duty", not we the people. It builds on the Citizens United which turned the passing of money into "free speech." The system has "rich man" momentum, changes are happening exponentially (like the growth of billionaire wealth).
The Federal Trade Commission recently sought public comment on health care consolidation, many of those deals done by private equity underwriters. The PEU lobby wrote:
The private equity industry is an essential pillar of the modern American economy, a catalyst of competition and innovation, and a critical partner to small businesses.Yet, there are thousands of letters detailing the harm private equity firms have inflicted upon citizens. Many are from emergency room physicians. News reports show PEU ownership hurting autistic children.
Don't expect this clown car of Congress to fulfill their current, much less added duties. This group of under performers is too busy making fundraising calls (to the people pushing secondary PEU investments, cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence).
As for insider trading and other SEC violations the public knows Congress excels at profiting from nonpublic information, as did many Federal Reserve Bank Governors. I imagine the Supreme Court, with its hands off approach to judicial ethics, enables similar behavior. That explains the need to minimize whistleblowers, one of the few tools left to equalize the PEU power differential.
Politicians Red and Blue love (PEU) and increasingly, more are one. The Supreme Court just did their bidding. It's a PEU world. Fees, fraud and fealty, oh my!
Update: The Supremes also made it harder for the SEC to go after crypto-criminals, which widely occupy the space.
Update 7-3-24: With Independence Day fast approaching the Supreme Court gave former President Donald Trump immunity which he will use with impunity. I'm not such they could have picked a worse person to enable. The Purge may just be in our future.
Conservative icon Michael Luttig characterized the immunity decision:
“This is indeed an historic day in constitutional history as well as for the nation” and represents the “unsouling of America.”
“America’s democracy and rule of law are this country’s heart and soul,” he continued. “Our democracy and the rule of law are what had made America the envy of the world and the beacon of freedom to the world for almost 250 years now. Today, the Supreme Court cut that heart and soul out of America.”
“No longer can it be said that in America no man is above the law,” he added.
Update 7-4-24: Former Trump DOJ officials suggest the Supreme Court ruling on Presidential immunity gives tacit approval for Trump to weaponize the Justice Department for vengeful purposes.
