Gregg Smith at Electric City Weblog (John Galt … on the Bench?), quotes District Court Judge Nels Swandal, who was sitting in on the case Wallace v State:

Ayn Rand correctly observed that the right to life is the source of all rights-and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. These principles are embodied in the Montana Constitution in Article II, Sections 3 and 29.

The case has to do with voter-passed initiative I-143, which outlawed game farming (grandfathering existing operations) in Montana, specifically, the right to shoot an animal for remuneration.

Here are the cited sections of the constitution:

Those who wrote the constitution were not likely thinking about Ayn Rand as they inserted these two clauses. Save for the part about “a clean and healthful environment”, I’m hearing more ‘Founding Fathers’.

Both sides of this case have legitimate claims. Claimants are saying that their rights were unconstitutionally violated because their right to use their own property was abridged without just compensation. The public is saying that its rights are superior to individual private property rights when it comes to shooting captive game for a fee. No matter the outcome, someone is going to be harmed.

Gregg concludes:

Heaven forbid some organized group of activists decides that they don’t like what you do for a living.

It is said that one difference between right and left is that those on the right cannot handle nuance. This is one of those cases. I suspect that the public overstepped its boundaries in passing I-143 – I find shooting captive animals offensive, but as the father of four daughters I also find pole dancing offensive. That doesn’t mean we should outlaw it. But communities can, if they so desire, restrict such behavior, no matter who owns the pole. Individuals have private property rights, the public has the right to regulate the use of that property for the greater good. There are limits on each. Hence, a court system.

It’s a question of where to draw the line, and in participating in the ensuing discussion over there, I am left with the impression that they cannot handle anything beyond a bright red demarcation – Ayn Rand correctly observed that the right to life is the source of all rights-and the right to property is their only implementation.

That statement would be OK if it did not contain the word “correctly”.

But they make a strong case nonetheless – not that there is never a case where the public can prohibit certain business activities, but rather that in this case, the public overstepped. If they, and Swandal, had left Rand out of it, they would made a much clearer and stronger case.

Still, they have manage to convince me that I-143 was a taking, and that just compensation was owed. Officially, I concede. I’m unclear on the matter of spread of disease, but that doesn’t appear to be the matter at the fore. So my taking ensuing the discussion down that road was an unintended diversion.

But citing Rand from the bench … c’mon now. Suppose another judge cited Karl Marx’s views on private property. It would be as meaningful.

Gregg is going to read the entire body of the opinion in Wallace v State. I look forward to his thoughts and conclusions.

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Honestly, this woman is so stupid she makes Sarah Palin look like a Rhodes Scholar. Oddly, the history lesson she is parroting is not far from right wing teaching, what they tell us is “Econ101”.

From Bloomberg:

Senators from both parties said the Democratic president should avoid filling the [Supreme Court] vacancy with an “ideologue.”

Allow me to translate: No liberals, please. Roberts and Alito, ideologues, are conservative ideologues, and therefore not ideologues. Are you getting this? It’s easy once you understand how we talk without saying what we really mean.

Here’s more: It is said that conservatives cannot handle nuance. Here is Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) on the coming appointment:

“I think the criteria should be to follow the law, not to make the law.”

Once again, translating: “Don’t upset the existing power structure.”

But the idea that the Supreme Court should “follow the law” is absurd. Cases come before the court because of differing interpretations of the law, which is vastly complex. If “the law” were written down somewhere so we could look it up when we needed to, we wouldn’t need a Supreme Court.

This is an academic exercise, but I think worth doing. It is a contrast between our perceived system of governance, and the real one. Here’s perceptions:

The people are all-powerful. We elect representatives who write and execute laws, and who appoint judges who interpret those laws. We have three branches of government, each held in check by the other two.

Obama recently said that in approaching Iran, it is important to know that “Iran is a very complicated country with a lot of different power centers.”

True about Iran and true about our country as well, as Obama well knows. What I am trying to do here is to recognize various power centers that exist in our country, and put them in order of the amount of power they exercise. It’s a useful thought exercise.

The corporations – these are a wide variety of entities that operate in different sectors (finance, oil, communications, etc. ) but who often enough support one another. Their power extends far beyond our borders, and our military often does their bidding under the guise of humanitarian interventions.

The mainstream media Since it is owned by the corporations, it is a merely subset.

Military and intelligence agencies – these are vast, mostly secretive, and are largely funded in secret.
The president, or the executive branch. It is powerful, but submits to the will of the corporations and the military. Mainstream media, owned by the corporations, ‘vets’ presidential candidates and determines who is “viable” and who is not.
Wealthy families and individuals these are people with massive fortunes who exercise great sway over tax policy and are usually virtually in control of the localities where they live. Most people do not recognize their names, for instance, ask any Montanan who Denny Washington is.
Think tanks These are intellectuals who are funded by and serve corporations and wealthy families. They are a safe harbor for government officials while they are out of power. They also have large sway over favored opinions of government officials, providing pseudo-science to support public policies that favor their funding sources.
The Senate – more powerful than the House because its members have longer terms, and because a minority there can usually thwart a majority in the lower house. Cannot be ‘gerrymandered’.
The House of Representatives Our most democratic body, and most susceptible to swings in public temperament. Gerrymandered.
Large land owners This is odd, as they could also be called a subset of “wealthy families”. Ownership of land conveys power, as in Montana, where though ranchers are a minority, and not our wealthiest citizens, they usually hold a large share of seats in the state legislature, often the governorship, US Senate and House seats as well. They are, in Montana, also known as the “Department of Livestock”, an unelected organization the elected governor never trifles with. Interesting.
The “courts” Oddly, ordinary citizens still have the ability to challenge power centers through the courts, and often do so. Corporations are trying to bring this source of power under control with their campaign to demonize “trail lawyers”, that is, people who sue corporations.
State Governments Powerful, but no power beyond their jurisdictions, and little sway over federal officials.
Municipalities Mini-fiefdoms having locally focused power, but little beyond city limits. These tend to be very democratic.
Public opinion As of this moment, public opinion means virtually nothing in our democracy, as it is easily swayed and manipulated by the other powers. But if it is focused and enraged, it can thwart every other power center. Witness: The USSR. Not the USA, however. Odd that the USSR was more democratic than us.
Other communication sources This would include the “alternative media”, the Internet, town halls and public meeting forums. Note that the Internet was once seen as a great source of organizing power, as when protesters used it to upset the corporate apple cart in Seattle in 1999. But it has largely been neutralized, and corporations are hard at work to bring it under their control.

That’s all I can think of right now. I expect that others would add others, such as state and local police, labor unions, and the NFL? You tell me. Also, I expect everyone would re-order and re-word what I wrote.

Add: Organized crime -not sure where it fits, but it exists everywhere. As noted in comments below, I overlooked religious institutions, academia, lobbying groups. Academia is largely subordinate to other power groups, as it is merely training the next generation of managers of the existing institutions. (There is constant pressure exerted on colleges to avoid dabbling in freedom of expression – i.e. – Horowitz.) Non-corporate lobbying groups exert their power on Congress, but Congress itself is subordinated to other more powerful forces. But they are very good at getting money out of the treasury. Religious institutions don’t appear to me to have much power over government, though fundamentalists that vote en masse to exert more influence than those that merely attend to spiritual needs of followers.

Wilson is a city in North Carolina of about 48,000 people. Its residents were fed up with Embarg, a Time Warner company, and the poor service it was providing for internet, TV, and wireless phone signals. They decided to do for themselves what Embarg would not do for them – provide low cost high-speed wireless services.

Brian Bowman, the city’s Public Affairs Manager: “I have a 10Mbps up/down connection at my house. Can’t get half that from the cable company. I buy it directly from the City of Wilson. After less than a year of residential service, almost 3,000 Wilson citizens are subscribing to Wilson’s fiber optic network. Local businesses can get up to one Gbps.”

Here’s Embarg’s reaction:

Embarg: “We would love to deploy DSL everywhere. We try to make smart financial decisions not only for shareholders but customers. In the very rural areas, sometimes it would take two, three or more years to even pay for the investment.”

This is odd – two or three years to pay for an investment is not outlandish. But Embarg is up against it, in that Wilson can quite easily do for itself what Embarg will not do. It’s not new technology, not rocket science. It’s something any community in the country can and should do. But right wing economics demands that if a private concern cannot make money providing a public utility, the public has to suffer.

So, Embarg and Time Warner did what any free-market loving company would do – the went to the state legislature to shut down Wilson’s city-provided services.

Rather than admit defeat to the pesky local service and go quietly, Time Warner Inc. and Embarq decided to take the fight to the state government, lobbying for several years to get the state government to pass laws to try to destroy the local effort. And sure enough, thanks to a lot of hard work (and money), the cable companies are close to getting their wish — North Carolina’s State Senate have proposed bills to not only effectively crippling or banning the local service, but also to prevent such services from getting funds under the broadband portion of the national Stimulus law.

Says Bowman:

“If the cable/phone companies really want a level playing field, they’d open their books just like we do in the spirit of open meetings and open records law. They don’t want a level playing field. They want to be the only team on the field.”

This is not untypical right wing thinking – private companies know all about free markets, and don’t much like them. They use their money and influence to 1) get regulations protecting themselves from competition; 2) prevent regulations that affect them negatively, and 3) buy access to the commons.

It should come as no surprised that Wilson could provide itself with better service than Embarg, and at a lower price. The rest of the world is years ahead of the American telecommunications industry in providing high speed wireless services. Our companies are too busy in a turf war to think much about customers.

Arlen Specter has switched parties, and is now a Democrat. He was one of two or three remaining moderate Republicans. Since the Democratic Party has a whole wing full of moderate to rightist Republicans, he’s in good company.

I wondered for years about Specter – he’s the man who originated the “Magic Bullet” theory in the JFK assassination. It’s plainly ludicrous, but since it’s official truth, it’s probably in all the kids’ history books now, and Lee Harvey Oswald will officially be the assassin forevermore.

Lately I came to understand the nature and need for a cover-up of the true events of 11/22/63, and realized that Specter was operating on a higher plane than I ever gave him credit for. So no more mystery.

The switch is politically motivated, and hardly philosophical. And liberals are a far cry from holding any kind of majority in the senate, so sixty or 59 votes means nothing. It’s mostly a move designed to save the career of an aging senator, a good and smart man who will probably die in office.