Also, I carefully wrote a turn for the worse as there has been many twists and turns on the path between past and present.
I admire your gumption in insisting upon the turn for the worse as if there has been only one and that Roe V. Wade was that moment.
Popular opinion by the numbers within the USofA appears to disagree with your assessment.
>Popular opinion by the numbers within the USofA appears to disagree with your assessment.
The full quote from you was:
>The case can be made that the US took a turn for the worse when the Supreme Court was allowed to go outside its remit of "do the least required" and wrote policy
You seem to be claiming that the supreme court "took a turn for the worse" when it engaged in judicial activism (ie. "Supreme Court was allowed [...] to [write] policy"). Given that, I fail to see how "popular opinion" is a relevant factor in this, unless you think that judicial activism is only bad when it doesn't align with "popular opinion"?
Market dynamics of supply and demand bridge this gap with the same vigor they bring to any other kind of "investment."
Politicians need monetary support, they figure out what kinds of positions are likely to secure that support, they adopt those positions, and the support appears. Do they meet with corporate executives in the graveyard at midnight and sign a contract with blood squeezed from the homeless? No, but it's a bit weird to point to the absence of silly midnight rituals as exonerating evidence when it's pretty clear that the exchange happens without the need for any such nonsense.
1. "legalise directly bribing officials" is a gross misrepresentation of Citizens United v. FEC. As per the wikipedia article, the ruling "prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations"[1]. In other words, it means the government can't prevent corporations from donating to groups that run political ads. "Bribing" has a specific meaning, which involves quid quo pro, and "corporations being able to spend money on political ads" is nowhere near that.
2. at the risk of starting another flame war, the "turn for the worse" happened decades before with roe v. wade, when they ruled that abortion was under the "right to privacy". Regardless of whether you think women should be allowed the right to abortion, justifying it under the 14th amendment is much more egregious than the supreme court ruling that the government can't restrict the speech of groups of people (ie. corporations).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC