Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/06/new-gilded-age-2.html
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If you know the name Robert Bork, it’s probably in the context of his failure to secure Senate confirmation when Ronald Regan put him up for the Supreme Court (his sins from his days in the Nixon administration caught up to him).
Well, also because the Dem establishment then was still liberal enough and still remembered the 1930s enough to view him as what he was: a dangerous Libertarian radical.
I’m looking forward to reading this article.
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Bork resigned his judgeship in 1988 and served as a professor at the George Mason University School of Law and other institutions.
/SFX: dramatic chord at this unexpected turn of events!
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Is he still alive? I suppose I could look. I just feel like it would be a shame if he didn’t live to see his work come to fruition.
Of course, they are allowed to do those things. They just don’t, because it’s left to them to decide whether to do it or not. And who reduces pressure leading to the money hose? Nobody with their lips against the spurting end of the money hose.
His supposition seems based on the belief that the people at the top are good, caring, and empathetic. Essentially, the traits that are missing from most of the people who rise to the top.
Since he exists in that realm, among the wealthy, I’m certain he knew the truth of the situation, and instead banked on normal people believing the rich had those qualities.
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Died: December 19, 2012
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So is this where we get the concept that something is Borked, when we mean broken?
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I think it was a combination of that and the Swedish Chef. Bork was a real pop culture figure in the 1980s, so much so that The Simpsons modeled the appearance of Springfield’s judge on him:
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The best game show is Mork, Bjork, Bork or Pork.
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Also the guy that fired Archibald Cox.
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Because normal people do have those qualities and - for better or worse - we tend to assume that other people are like us rather than being utterly alien. Even when faced with incontrovertible evidence, alas.
Just when you think no-one could do worse things with Bork’s legacy in regard to anti-trust that the “free” market fundies, Il Douche proves you wrong:
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Before acquiring the current meaning, to conservatives “To be Borked” meant “to be screwed by reprehensible means”. As they believed progressive senators had so shamefully done (using malignant truths) to nominee Bork. The opposite of Moscow Mitch’s fair and impartial treatment of Merrick Garland.
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I am no fan of Bork’s legacy, but in the big book “Everything You Know Is Wrong” there is a chapter that claims anti-trust law was never intended to help consumers, but rather a way to protect already established smaller companies. Maybe someone can find the chapter online - here is some text from a review of the book: Dominick T. Armentano claims that antitrust regulation was never intended to help consumers; his “The Antitrust and Monopoly Myth” attempts to demonstrate that such laws have primarily served “to bludgeon aggressively competitive firms that innovate and lower costs and prices.”
Tom
Here is a little about one of Armentano’s books, but not everyone agrees with it: https://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=31
It was also about protecting the employees and eliminating violent strikebusting, if one is to believe Edmund Morris’ biography of Teddy Roosevelt. Which, I think it a pretty credible source.
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these days he’d be rejected just because he was nominated by the other party
“sorry buddy we’re keeping it open until our guy gets in”
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Let’s just hope a Democratic Senate can implement the “McConnell Rule” such that all Republican judicial nominees by a Republican POTUS are “McConnelled” until the Presidency goes Democratic.
It relates to what happened in his supreme court nomination:
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