\u2022 The Supreme Court of the United States has blocked a lower court\u2019s order requiring the state of Texas to redraw state and congressional districts<\/a>. The Western District court had ruled that the districts had been gerrymandered \u2014 set up deliberately with the intent of discounting the votes of nonwhite citizens in Texas. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 partisan decision, said, you know, whatever<\/em> \u2014 racial gerrymandering to disenfranchise black and Hispanic voters is totally cool with them. Hey, after all, that\u2019s how those five justices got appointed and approved in the first place, right?<\/p>\n This is just the latest in the ongoing, unbroken string of weird coincidence. As in the disgraceful Shelby County<\/em> ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act, and in Citizens United,<\/em> and in every other such decision, it always just happens to turn out that it\u2019s the \u201cpro-life\u201d justices who decide against voting rights for nonwhite citizens and who seek to strike down any limits on corporate power.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just the darnedest thing. After all, these justices were all appointed thanks to a generation of politicized white evangelicals who have insisted that it is their sacred Christian duty to ensure the judiciary is stacked with anti-abortion judges. Yet every one of the judges appointed and supported by this anti-abortion effort has been \u2014 unwaveringly \u2014 opposed to full and equal voting rights for nonwhite American citizens while also fighting to restore the no-holds-barred unregulated corporatism of the Lochner-era court of the Gilded Age.<\/p>\n Just a weird coincidence, I guess. Just one of those things. I mean \u2014 it\u2019s not like the white evangelical political movement that replaced what had formerly been an evangelical religious movement is deliberately<\/em> trying to deny full equality to nonwhite Americans, right? And just because every<\/em> result of the religious right has been a boon to corporate power doesn\u2019t mean that this was its agenda all along. Shelby County<\/em> and Citizens United<\/em> were just unfortunate, unintended side effects, right?<\/p>\n \u201cWe demand judges who will criminalize abortion!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow about judges who will demolish voting rights and overturn all limits on corporate power?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, that.\u201d<\/p>\n How long does that pattern have to continue before we\u2019re allowed to talk about\u00a0what it obviously, undeniably means?<\/p>\n \u2022 I do not care for our credit overlords<\/a> \u2014 the unelected, unaccountable \u201ccredit rating\u201d agencies that play an increasingly large role in all of our lives, jacking up the cost of living for low-income people in every arena.\u00a0The global crash should have put them all out of business thanks to the terrific job they did \u201crating credit\u201d before the subprime meltdown.<\/p>\n Much of their business model seems indistinguishable from a protection racket \u2014 \u201cNice credit ya got there, buddy. Shame if anything happened to it.\u201d\u00a0When your business model involves selling subscriptions to allow people to check for errors in your work, then your business model requires lots of errors in your work. Particularly when you\u2019ve made the grudging correction of such errors yet another revenue stream. Their profession, in other words, involves\u00a0them\u00a0not being very good at their job.<\/p>\n And they\u2019re not very good at their job. (See, again, 2008<\/em>.) Equifax just managed to expose personal\u00a0data on some 143 million Americans<\/a>. What kind of data? Everything \u2014 names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver\u2019s license numbers,\u00a0you name it. After initially trying to charge $30 per person\u00a0to freeze credit records for those affected \u2014 potentially \u201cearning\u201d hundreds of millions from the breach \u2014 Equifax has reluctantly agreed to bear some<\/em> of the cost for its own screw-up. Maybe.<\/p>\n