LEGIONS OF THE RIGHT

By Robert P. Bomboy

               They used to say you didn't have to look farther than your front door to know what was going on in the world. But it's worthwhile now to try to see the larger picture. If you do, you might be shocked.

            Over the past 25 years, by design, forces of which most of us are unaware have worked assiduously to make sure that Big Business and the richest one percent have gained the upper hand.

LOBBYING

               If you ask yourself, "Who makes the laws?" you'll be surprised at the answer.

Washington lobbyists get lots of money to put Big Business and special interests first. They do the research and actually write the bills that favor Big Business and work against us. Two thirds of congressional staffers say they depend on their favorite lobbyists for the information they use to propose and pass bills. Lobbyists provide the honey that individual congressmen and senators take and turn into law. And that law, by and large, benefits You Know Who - no, not us. We don't stand a chance.

There are 535 members of Congress and 10,000 lobbyists in Washington. Meaning that, if you take out your calculator, you can picture 18 lobbyists swarming like honey ants around each and every congressman and senator in Washington.

When Donald Trump declared that he would "drain the swamp" we can be forgiven if most of us thought he would get rid of those 10,000 pesky lobbyists representing Big Business and the rich. But that wasn't what Trump meant at all. He, after all, is one of the super-rich, and who he works for is Big Business. We saw that during the battle over Trump's Unaffordable Care Act. It came out that while he and his legions would slash away at the coverage of Obamacare, they were planning more than $600 billion in additional tax cuts for the rich.

GERRYMANDERING

As far back as the early 1800's, hardly 25 years after the founding of our nation, political parties were corruptly contriving to twist and elongate the boundaries of voting districts, making them look like writhing salamanders. A governor named [CQ] Elbridge Gerry did the dirty work, and a smart newspaperman tagged him for it, creating the word GERRYMANDER.

Pennsylvania is one of the nation's most gerrymandered states, and ranks very high up on the ladder of political corruption, higher even than our neighbors, New York and New Jersey with all their Mafiosos. The 11th Congressional District, where we live, is almost as twisted as the original salamander, weaving its way 170 miles from north to south, in, out, and around Carbon, Columbia, Cumberland, Dauphin, Luzerne, Montour, Northumberland, Perry, and Wyoming counties. Look on the map and see if you could follow a trail of breadcrumbs through that much twisted territory.

If you decide to gerrymander you do it to create as many voting districts as possible with majorities for your party. That's why our Pennsylvania voting districts have such strange "salamander" shapes: they ramble from pillar to post, from hither to yon, from A to Z, to capture as many Republican voters as possible.

            Across the nation in 2010 conservative Republicans had a plan to throw millions into elections where they thought they had a chance to take over state legislatures and governors' mansions. They wanted to win the state legislatures and governors' offices because it's the state legislatures that redraw and rearrange the voting districts; and, like the original gerrymandering governor, Elbridge Gerry, go-along governors can make that process easier.

Their plan worked. Across the nation in 2010 Republicans won majorities in 10 out of the 15 states, including Pennsylvania, that were due to redraw and reapportion their election districts. With that power behind them, here in Pennsylvania the Republican winners redrew our election districts to give their party uneven breaks. They created salamanders of every description, some so strange and irregular that they might have been the ink blots of Rorschach tests.

By 2012 and the next election, with the voting districts redrawn to favor the Republicans, they were in a position to run the table. In 2012, Pennsylvania Democrats won 51 percent of the popular vote for the House of Representatives, where the greatest and most unassailable power now is. But, thanks to the redistricting, they won only five out of 18 House seats -- fewer than one-third of them. The 13 Republican winners made the House of Representatives even more conservative than it had been before.

PACKING THE SUPREME COURT

               Since 2005 a little known but extremely powerful group of conservative lawyers, the Federalist Society, has been behind the appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court: John Roberts that year, Samuel Alito in 2006, and Neil Gorsuch this year. With Gorsuch confirmed last month, they now represent one-third of the court's members.

               Since the early 1990s the Federalist Society has followed, most rigorously, a plan of its own. Find very intelligent students coming into law schools across the nation; help them in every way to get through law school (their support group numbers 75,000 lawyers); make sure these students graduate as lawyers; then keep them interested and involved with conservative lawyers. The Federalist Society has chapters everywhere, and they're not like the Odd Fellows. Lawyers in the chapters continually work on problems, participate in practice groups, take pro-bono legal cases where they confer together, author articles in law journals, create strong relationships with the news media.

As the law school graduates advance in their careers, they become known and recognized. Inevitably, with the support of the Federalist Society, these conservative lawyers have risen to positions of prominence in the courts, including the federal courts, where their conservative legal philosophies have led them to render conservative decisions.

The Federalist Society knows them and the conservative principles they stand for. John Roberts was known in this way. Samuel Alito was known. Neil Gorsuch was known.

               So when Donald Trump, in his ignorance, was campaigning and wanted a list of lawyers he might appoint to the Supreme Court, the Federalist Society gave him a list, and Neil Gorsuch's name was on it.

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