Armstrong Economics Blog/Rule of Law Re-Posted Apr 15, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

As expected, the Democrats will introduce a bill to change the Supreme Court turning into the first WOKE institution to permanently change the face of the United States once and for all. Biden pretended to create a commission to study changing the Supreme Court and within a matter of days, they proposed stacking the Supreme Court adding four Justices to ensure the Court will be WOKE.

The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, frequently called the “court-packing plan”, was a legislative initiative proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) to add more justices to the Supreme Court in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding the New Deal legislation. FDR was trying to take the United States as close as possible to Communism thanks to the New York Times and their star journalist Walter Duranty (1884-1957) who convinced FDR to recognize the Communist government of Russia (see film Mr. Jones).

The New York Times journalist Walter Duranty on March 31, 1933, denounced reports of a famine. The NY Times was so left, it could not possibly walk a straight line. They were so pro-Communism for they saw Marxism as the way to a new future. It was Duranty who met with Roosevelt to convince him that Communism was working and to encourage his New Deal. The mainstream press in the 1930s was very much touting Communism as the solution to the Great Depression and once more that are all touting “equality” once more to alter the United States once and for all into the new European style socialist state.

On February 5, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt announced a plan to expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it more efficient. Critics instantly charged that Roosevelt was trying to “pack” the court and thus neutralize Supreme Court justices hostile to his New Deal. The Supreme Court over the first two years of the Roosevelt Administration had struck down several key pieces of New Deal legislation on the grounds that the laws delegated an unconstitutional amount of authority to the executive branch and the federal government.

Roosevelt won in 1932 and his reelection in 1936 was a landslide, the highest win for the Democrats in American history post-Civil War when they were the Southern Democrats championing slavery. FDR issued his proposal in February 1937 to provide retirement at full pay for all members of the court over 70. If a justice refused to retire, an “assistant” with full voting rights was to be appointed, thus ensuring Roosevelt a liberal majority. Most Republicans and many Democrats in Congress opposed the so-called “court-packing” plan. The Constitution ensured that judges were there for life.

Article III Section 1
The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Actually, it was Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) who argued for the right of re-election with respect to presidents. The people, he said, were the rulers of a republic. And presidents were the servants of the people. If the people wanted to elect the same president, again and again, they had the right to do this. However, when it came to appointing judges, Franklin argued for the Scottish legal system where lawyers appointed judges – not politicians. The notes are available from the framing of the Constitution. They are a great insight into the thinking process that created the United States.

James Wilson (1742–1798) who eventually became a Supreme Court Justice, argued in support of having one person appoint judges. He said experience showed that large bodies could not make appointments fairly or openly.
John Rutledge (1739–1800) who also became a Supreme Court justice, disagreed saying that by no means should the president appoint judges. He said that method looked too much like a monarchy. Interestingly, it was Benjamin Franklin who argued that in Scotland judges were appointed by lawyers. They always chose the very best lawyer to be a judge to remove the competition in their own self-interest.

The delegates voted on the issue. They agreed that the legislature would decide how many judges would sit on the Supreme Court. The president would appoint the judges. The legislature could establish lower courts from time to time. The president would appoint those judges as well. The Constitution, therefore, requires the president to submit nominations to the Senate for its advice and consent. Since the Supreme Court was established in 1789, presidents have submitted 164 nominations for the Court, including those for chief justice. Of this total, 127 were confirmed (7 declined to serve). While politicians continue to think if they appoint a justice they will always vote in their favor, as I have reported before, that has never been the case. It was Chief Justice Roberts, appointed by President Bush Jr., who upheld Obamacare as a tax and has refused to accept any case regarding the 2020 election.

In April 1937, before FDR’s bill came to a vote in Congress, two Supreme Court justices panicked and were intimidated switching sides to support FDR’s New Deal. They switched sides creating a narrow majority to uphold as constitutional the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act. The majority opinion acknowledged that the national economy had grown to such a degree that federal regulation and control was now warranted. That became the justification for socialism. Instead of simply requiring people to save a portion of their earnings, the government seized their funds and then invested them into government bonds.  Roosevelt’s reorganization plan was thus unnecessary, and in July the Senate struck it down by a vote of 70 to 22. Soon after, Roosevelt had the opportunity to nominate his first Supreme Court justice, and by 1942 all but two of the justices were his appointees.

The Democrats are toying with changing the entire face of the nation. With Biden stacking the court, everything from the Second Amendment to Abortion and taxes will be altered forever. They will be hurling the United States ever closer and closer to Revolution. Ah – how history repeats for the LEFT always seek totalitarianism. Had we only listened to Ben Franklin.

I have been warning that the United States will split. You are witnessing its demise.  The Democrats do not have a mandate. Every member of the leftist mainstream press is officially a traitor to everything the Founding Fathers fought for. My family has been in this country from the beginning. My cousin has the musket our ancestor used during the Revolution. We have come full circle. The spirit of the Founders was that everyone was to enjoy their pursuit of liberty. The Democrats disagree with that principle.

Welcome to the WOKE Democratic Revolution where to them, God is dead. Some are starting to believe that this has become a religious war between the believers and atheists. Everything from the Cancel Culture designed to eliminate free speech to forced registration of all guns and their argument to dispense with the 4th and 2nd Amendments and allow the police to just burst into your home to search for guns without any evidence you even have a gun.

Then this teaching in schools that all white people are inherently evil racists but somehow if you are a Democrat you alone are the exception is amazing. After all, the founder of the Democratic Party was Andrew Jackson who was a ruthless slave owner who was memorialized on Confederate stamps.

It was the Democrats who initiated the American Civil War because they were the party of slavery. It was LBJ, who is known to have pushed Kennedy’s Civil Rights bill against initial resistance from Southern Democrats and he explained that by doing so they would bind the blacks to the Democratic Party and they would retain power.

Biden and the Democrats DO NOT have the mandate to change the core principles of this nation. Without the consent of the governed, this is simply tyranny. I have stated many times, a Republic is the worst form of government because they run on one statement, and then enact other measures without the consent of the people. Biden is even disgracing his own son Beau Biden’s memory who won the Bronze Star Medal for his service in Iraq. I seriously doubt he died to fight for transforming the United States into WOKE where it is improper to even call one’s father, father!

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.