Empathy. Who doesn’t want some?
I mean, I suppose that some part of me, as a conservative, would love for some judge to come along and say, “There, there, I’ll make sure those mean Democrats don’t do stuff you don’t want. I’ll overturn the election.”
Only that isn’t the direction the “empathy” crap flows. It only seems to flow from the far left. It is a river of molten manure that springs and flows from the radical left and routinely runs its banks over conservatives and ordinary Americans.
In the case of Sonia Sotomayor, that crap river flowed right over New Haven, Connecticut firefighters who made the mistake of playing by the rules against a system increasingly geared toward running all over them as white males. But it is a river that would have ran over every single American to the tune of billions of dollars had the Supreme Court not reversed her decision.
Here’s that story:
Sotomayor Ruling Could Have Cost Consumers Billions
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 10:56 PM
By: Phil Brennan
A decision rendered by Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, fortunately reversed by the Supreme Court on April 1, 2009, could have been extravagantly costly to American consumers, according to the Steve Milloy’s authoritative Junkscience.Com.
Charging that her nomination represents a potential threat to U.S. Consumers and to the economy in terms of energy and the environment, Milloy reported on her 2007 Second Circuit decision in Riverkeeper, Inc. V. EPA 475 F. 3d 83′
Milloy wrote that in her ruling Judge Sotomayor sided with “extreme green groups” who had sued the Environmental Protection Agency because the agency permitted cost-benefit analysis to be used in the determination of environmental protection technology for power plant cooling water intake structures.
Cost benefit analysis involves the balancing of the total expected costs of a proposal or project against its total expected benefits in order to determine its economic feasibility. Do the benefits outweigh or justify the cost?
According to Milloy, had the EPA been required to abide by Judge Sotomayor’s decision, U.S. Consumers would have been forced to pay billions of dollars more in energy costs every year as power plants producing more than one-half of the nation’s electricity would have had to undertake expensive retrofits.”
Noting that President Obama said he wanted somebody “who has the intellectual firepower but also a little bit of a common touch and a practical sense of how the world works,” Milloy said that in the Riverkeeper case Sotomayor didn’t display too much of a “common touch” and “practical sense” when it came to the cost-benefit analysis.
Senators, Milloy advised, should probe whether Judge Sotomayor “lacks the common-sense realization that the benefits of environmental regulation ought to outweigh its costs — a worldview with ominous implications given the nation’s present rush toward cap-and-tax global warming regulation and other green mindlessness.”
Indeed, writing for the majority decision that overturned Sotomayor’s ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia:
noted that forcing compliance under Sotomayor’s reasoning would make companies spend nine times the amount necessary to accomplish “nearly the same benefit to the environment that cheaper technologies would achieve.”
Spend nine times more for very nearly the same benefit. And liberals wonder why conservatives call them “insane.”
Now, it just so happens that “common touch” and “practical sense” didn’t matter very much when we voted for our president, either. So why should it matter to us when we put yet another black-robed master over us for the rest of her life?
Let’s hear what Obama said he wanted:
“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
The guy we voted for as our president said he planned to bankrupt fully half of our source of electricity.
“Empathy” means millions of Americans freezing to death in the dark.
Get ready for it. Because Obama’s and Sotomayor’s crap river is going to flood right down your family’s throat.
Looking over Sotomayor’s record indicates that she doesn’t have a whole lot of legal sense, either. She has had her cases overruled six out of seven of the times that they have come before the Supreme Court. That is how radical, and how incompetent as a judge, she truly is.
Cases Reviewed by the Supreme Court
• Ricci v. DeStefano 530 F.3d 87 (2008) —decision pending as of 5/26/2009 [update as of 6/29/09: reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)].
• Riverkeeper, Inc. vs. EPA, 475 F.3d 83 (2007) — reversed 6-3 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg)
• Knight vs. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2006) — upheld, but reasoning was unanimously faulted
• Dabit vs. Merrill Lynch, 395 F.3d 25 (2005) — reversed 8-0
• Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh, 396 F.3d 136 (2005) — reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Breyer, Kennedy, Souter, Alito)
• Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp., 299 F.3d 374 (2000) — reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)
• Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997) — reversed 7-2 (Dissenting: Stevens, Breyer)
Sonia Sotomayor is a judge who has been humiliated with an 8-0 smackdown of her judicial reasoning. She has been overruled – meaning her legal judgment was contradicted as wrong – six out of seven times. And if that isn’t bad enough, the ONLY time her decision was actually upheld (Knight vs. Commissioner), her reasoning for the decision was faulted by every single judge on the panel.
In the recent Hew Haven Firefighter case (a.k.a. Ricci v. DeStefano), Sotomayor was not only overruled on the close 5-4 as was reported; her underlying legal reasoning that compliance with Title VII justified “race-based preferences” as a matter of summary judgment was tossed aside by all nine justices.
So what do you do when you have a judge who has displayed such a shocking lack of common sense that she would have imposed billions of dollars on the American taxpayer to accomplish virtually nothing had her decision not been overruled by the Supreme Court? What do you do when you have a judge who has been overruled six out of seven times by the Supreme Court?
You put such a judge on the supreme court, where she cannot possibly be overruled, that’s what.
Sonia Sotomayor has said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” And she said it not once, as was earlier maintained by liberals, but seven times. There’s no defense of such a remark made even once, let alone seven separate times. All one has to do to see how racist it is is to replace the words “Latina woman” with “white male” and the words “white male” with “Latina woman.”
And where do you put a judge who is clearly influenced by racial – and frankly racist – thinking? On the Supreme Court, where her racial bias can become a fixed part of the institution for a generation to come.
Tags: better conclusion, cost benefit analysis, empathy, EPA, firefighters, Obama, reversed, Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor, Supreme Court, white male, wise Latina woman
Start Thinking Right 
August 7, 2009 at 9:16 am
False – I have read ginsgurg’s descent three times and cannot find the alleged criticizm of her reasoning. Also, the facts of the case are that faced with a lawsuit the city referred the test to an independent Civil Service Board that held five hearing with testimaony on both sides and voted not to accredit the promotional test. So the city decided not touse it.These hearingw is what was reviewed in the 70 plus page opinion of the District Court Judge and what Soromayor’s panel reviewed and upheld. The right-wing activists ignored these facts and held that the city needed to have substanial evidence before it could even refer the test to the Board and threat of being sued is not enough.
Lets carry tis reasoning to where a city is threatended with a lawsuit and decides to use the test result. It is sued and a judge issues an injunction not only to using the test but staying any promotions. So the city is now faced with costly litigation and who knows with appeals howlong before the matter is resolve. In the Ricci case, the board having not accredited the test, the city would certainly have face an injunction had it decided to use the test.
The real farce is using tests for promotion. Most of these test include material not necessary for command and are fogotten as quick as the courses many of us crammed for both in high school and college. My step-son ranked second in a promotion test but was denied promotion but through performance was promoted to deputy chief of the Detroit Police Force.
August 7, 2009 at 9:49 am
You should seriously consider learning how to spell, Jim. It’s kind of difficult for me to seriously consider somebody’s “criticizm.” It really undercuts your “testimaony.”
Ginsburg looked at the New Haven issue and even THIS judicial activist immediately recognized that there was something seriously wrong with the decision. The reason the case went forward was because Sotomayor said it needed to be reviewed. And you’re right in the sense that the city of New Haven DID want to throw out the test – but only because they were told by a black leader that they would be sued if they didn’t.
It wasn’t the “rightwing activists” who ignored facts; it was YOU ideologues. If nothing else, hindsight CLEARLY shows that I am right and you are wrong; the case got overturned – which becomes the 7th time in 8 cases before the Supreme Court that Sotomayor was slapped down. Legal people KNEW this would be an issue and even the New York Times predicted the decision would be overturned. But there was NOTHING wrong with it, was there??? I find it unconscionable that anyone would support penalizing those white firefighters simply by virtue of the fact that they were white rather than black. If you can’t understand how unconstitutional and immoral that “interpretation” of the law is, I have no hope for you.
I have to laugh at your final point. It would have been far more fitting had your stepson finished near the top of the promotion test and then been denied promotion because he was the wrong race. Because that’s what happened to fifteen firefighters. It’s what you support.
August 26, 2009 at 7:59 am
Michael,
I couldn’t have said it better myself, on all points. The U.S. has become a country of PC sheeple who fear saying or doing anything that might be misconstrued as being racist or sexist or any other “ist”. Decisions are made and politicians are voted into office not based on their qualifications but rather on the color of their skin or their ethnicity. This PC nation voted into office a man known to be lacking in both qualification and experience to be president of the United States, and regardless of numerous adverse statements that he was going to raise taxes among other disconcerting issues that would have a negative impact on our way of life, some of which have come to fruition, and therefore we can only surmise that the only criteria for the majority vote was to elect the first black president and nothing else mattered. The damage caused by that decision, will effect all of us for generations. And he in turn went on to nominate Sotomayor whose nomination was based not on her qualifications, for she obviously is not qualified, but rather based on her ethnicity. If she were a white woman saying what she said about black men, she would have been excoriated. (He then went on to place a tax cheat as head of the IRS. You have to appreciate the irony in that placement but that is for another topic.) When you elect a candidate based on race, ethnicity or sex then you are placing someone in office who is not qualified to best perform the job of that office. The most important criteria for electing anyone into any position is not their gender, or race or ethnicity but rather how well they will do their job and for the benefit of the people who elected them and not as a platform for their own personal agenda or that of the PC brigade. We have become a nation afraid to speak the truth whose back and spirit have been broken by PC. All that the majority can now do is say, “Baaa”, and follow the rest of the herd and the remainder of us who are able to think for ourselves are relegated to just sit and watch with astonishment at the stupidity of the masses.
August 26, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Kamren,
You said it pretty well YOURself.
I would submit that Sotomayor is “qualified” by her experience, but DISqualified by her performance (e.g. being overturned for her stupid and perverse rulings again and again). But, yeah, in the end she isn’t qualified to serve on that Court. None of the liberals who believe they have the right to ignore the Constitution’s clear meaning and make up the law as they go along are “qualified” to serve on that court.
We live in a country that has embraced racism – as long as it’s “politically correct” racism. We live in a country where racist entities like the Black Caucus are celebrated, even as these racist organizations advance racist causes to advance their racist agendas. We live in a country where illegal immigrants are being allowed to sweep across our borders while liberals change our very social structure in order to win their votes so they can stay in power forever. And somebody like you or me points it out – well, we must be “racists.”
Well, I don’t even care any more. I now know that the people leveling these charges against me are terrible people, and are the REAL racists. They are using racism as a political club to attack their opponents. It’s not about race; it’s about an agenda by terrible people to advance the next godless socialist government utopia.
I’m a big guy, which may be why people don’t get in my face when they deal with me to my face. But in blogging, when X or Y liberal calls me a “racist,” I just respond by saying, “That is a terribly racist thing to say, you racist bigot.” It’s water off a duck’s back. If the people making the charge weren’t demonstrated hypocrites (it’s fine to have a Black Caucus, but evil to have a White one) and racists (it’s okay to advance a racist agenda as long as it’s the “correct” race being put down), I’d probably think about it. But as it is, they don’t even matter.