What I’m Blogging

When I was languishing away at the dreaded International Greed Enablement Corp, I couldn’t believe the things that that company did. Things to further the bottom line, things that squeezed every ounce of “value” out of their employees. Things that revealed them to have not one iota of concern for anything other than the the almighty dollar. I thought they were unique in this regard, and then I read this book.

Bakan, Joel. 2004. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Penguin Books. ISBN 0670889768.

What I liked about this book: It’s a well thought out and explained essay on the origin, growth and function of the corporation as an institution. It is also a warning that, if left unchecked, the corporate form will seek to maximize it’s influence and profits at the expense of the public good and the ruin of democratic institutions.

What I disliked about this book: It was far too short…

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It was on this day in 1987, the U.S. Senate rejected the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork on a vote of 58 to 42. It was one of the most controversial nomination hearings in history.

…they objected to a nominee for political reasons…

In the first hundred years of the American republic, the Senate took its role in the process of selecting Supreme Court justices very seriously. Between 1794 and 1892, 81 nominees were sent to the Senate and 22 failed to make it onto the court. Senators did not hesitate to say that they objected to a nominee for political reasons.

But after 1894, as the power of the presidency grew, the Senate started approving nearly every nominee that came down the pike. Between 1894 and 1968, only one nominee was rejected by the Senate, John J. Parker of North Carolina. He was nominated by Herbert Hoover.

Robert Bork, a distinguished legal scholar was nominated by President Reagan to lead the conservative revolution on the court. And in his confirmation hearings, Bork decided to enter the debate about his ideas head-on and openly discuss his originalist views of the Constitution and his belief that there was no right to privacy.

In the years since he was voted down, in 1987, no nominee to the court has openly debated with senators about legal philosophy the way Bork did. Most nominees have refused to answer at least some of the questions asked of them, and no nominee has been rejected since.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
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