"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
--1820 -- Thomas Jefferson
The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
-- John Adams
This has to be the worst idea on foreign policy I have heard yet to come out of the Obama administration. A major attack in Afghanistan is sure to turn more people against us, increase terrorism, and lessen our natural security. No wonder they are warning us that a terrorist attack is a certainty in the next six months. The last time the Taliban officially told the U.S. government “NO” on the pipeline in Helmand was shortly before 9/11.
“US to launch Fallujah-style attack in Afghanistan
As US and British troops prepare to attack the town of Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, military commanders and the media are openly comparing the operation to the November 2004 siege of Fallujah, one of the bloodiest war crimes of the Iraq war.
The operation in central Helmand province, long an area of intense resistance to the US-led occupation, will constitute the largest military offensive since Washington invaded the country in October 2001. At least 15,000 troops are expected to lay siege to the Helmand river valley town, which has 80,000 inhabitants and is said by the US military to be a stronghold of the Taliban.
A total of 125,000 people live in the district around Marjah, which is an agricultural center 350 miles west of Kabul. The population has been swelled by Afghans fleeing villages occupied by US Marines last summer, following President Barack Obama’s order shortly after he took office to send 21,000 more troops into Afghanistan.
US Marines, frustrated and enraged over casualties suffered at the hands of an unseen enemy who is able to attack and then blend back into the local population, will be unleashed against the town in a violent military assault, with predictable results.
This is a terrible idea. Most people in the U.S. want no part of this. The LA Times quotes the mentality behind this coming assault, during which many people will most assuredly die.
Racists, birthers, and war-lovers. It’s no wonder many Americans (myself included) have no stomach for politics any more. It’s been reduced to this, the political “movement” known as the Tea Party (Tea Baggers). They are still pushing that “birther” story.
This speaker, (a man I’d never heard of) spoke at the right-wing fringe fest for rich white people known as Tea Party Nation. This man claims that the Bible is a better birth record for Jesus than an actual legal birth certificate, which President Obama released to the press long, long ago. This is what passes for logic in American politics these days, and it’s depressing because so many people are believing it and not even questioning. The Tea Party people are delusional and racist, or they would have accepted Obama’s birth certificate a long time ago. They can’t drop it because they are so overcome with hate for a non-white president it has completely consumed them. This is typical of this anti-government cult.
When the blight of the Tea Baggers and their “movement” has vanished from the landscape of American politics, and when Democrats grow some spines, it will be worth being interested in politics again. Until then, it’s not. Unfortunately, the Tea Partiers are determined to win elections in 2010 and as more and more people succumb to the insanity that is the Tea Bagger movement, it looks less likely that anything good will get accomplished by our government this year or next. The TPers might even win some seats in Congress.
She couldn’t even remember, “Energy, no Taxes” and whatever else she scribbled on her hand for her Q&A? She must have no memory at all. Those are major Republican talking points.
So I guess this means writing on your own skin with a hotel pen is OK; teleprompters not OK. When Rahm Emmanuel says “retards” it’s horrible. When Rush says “retards” it’s fine. We have learned so much about Sarah in only 2 days. Also on Sunday she told FOX Noise she is going to run for president.
While watching Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Nation snarling speech Saturday night it occurred to me she was like a folksy version of Ann Coulter. Nasty, snide, arrogant, above it all, and beyond any rules. It was a juvenile display of behavior, really. Does she represent the tea baggers? I don’t know, but it’s fun to watch a right-wing movement that began with sour grapes at losing an election devolve into the very bowels of sourness in such a short time. Here is an accurate description of it.
This was the Palin we saw at the 2008 Republican convention, the snarling pitbull in shimmery lipstick. I know journalists aren’t supposed to use words like mean and dumb, but I can’t help it. Palin is one of the meanest people on the public stage today. She wallows in it. She loves it! Also? Possibly one of the dumbest. But mean works, and so does dumb. And so do lies, and there were many mean, dumb lies in her speech.
Yes, there were many. Palin, the Tea Party Queen, now makes her living lying on demand for pay. I don’t know what she did as governor, but now, she is all about spreading lies for a paycheck.She’s a paid operative to spread misinformation where ever she can, as long as it’s to put down half of America — the Democrats and progressives, even the left-leaning Republicans.
Palin using the old "handprompter"
One odd moment of many: after criticizing Obama for using a teleprompter, as she read her speech from her notes on the podium, and then did a Q&A, all apparently pre-determined questions. In this photo on the right, Oliver Willis caught Palin reading off of her hand! (He also points out that she made fun of President Obama during her speech for his use of a teleprompter.)
What hypocrisy! They should at last bury the teleprompter criticism once and for all, after this.
But what I noticed most of all during her speech was it’s snide, snotty, 3rd grade behavior aspect. She sounded like a bully daring us to disagree with her, threatening to punch us if we did. She did not make any good solid points that I’m aware of, but she did criticize, call names, use ad hominems, straw man arguments, and other funny devices to lower her entire speech into the gutter. The Tea Bagger crowd lapped it up and begged for more.
It was nasty Attitude Porn. She has become her own mythology, the Pitbull with Lipstick. This is from Salon’s Joan Walsh.
Senators are still not asking the right questions. If we want to be smart about “fighting terrorism” we have to go to the root cause of why it happens. Instead, we are making it worse by escalating the killing and attacks. We are also demanding that Palestinians accept illegal and damaging acts to them (home destruction, land stealing and unprovoked violence) perpetrated in the name of a so-called “democratic” country that we infuse with billions in aid every year. Much of that aid is used for “defense” that kills defenseless people. This does not pass without notice in the Middle East. Does our Congress even care about motives?
The right question was and still is: Why do they want to attack us? And what can we then do to prevent it?
America’s Dark Sideby William Blum
February 06, 2010 Progressive activists and writers continually bemoan the fact that the news they generate and the opinions they express are consistently ignored by the mainstream media, and thus kept from the masses of the American people. This disregard of progressive thought is tantamount to a definition of the mainstream media. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy; it’s a matter of who owns the mainstream media and the type of journalists they hire — men and women who would like to keep their jobs; so it’s more insidious than a conspiracy, it’s what’s built into the system, it’s how the system works. The disregard of the progressive world is of course not total; at times some of that world makes too good copy to ignore, and, on rare occasions, progressive ideas, when they threaten to become very popular, have to be countered.
The white, right-wing extremists’ convention known as Tea Party Nation has begun in Tennessee. Their featured keynote speaker (former Miss Wasilla, Sarah Palin) will talk during a banquet on Saturday night and they have promised to broadcast some of it live online. I have yet to see the place where they will do that, because here is their website and there is no live broadcast page set up. The following summary of the convention is pretty good even if it comes from a foreign news source.
Amazingly, the for-profit Tea Party Nation’s site claims it has members from “foreign countries” which is really hard to believe, since their main goals include promoting what our “founding fathers” wrote and protecting our borders. Now why would someone from a “foreign country” be interested in that stuff?
The speech from former Miss Wasilla promises to be interesting, so I hope someone records it!
Few people care about the “Iraq War” any more, even though we still have thousands of soldiers there, but maybe we should care more what our soldiers are doing there. The U.S. culture of war that celebrates explosions celebrates the blowing up of an oil tanker by apparently bored U.S. soldiers.
Not only is this a big waste of fuel, (all of which has to be flown in to Iraq) but it shows such disregard for the environment of another country and their resources. Is this typical of U.S. military behavior when they are in a foreign country? It’s hard to imagine that it’s atypical since videos like this are routinely cheered about on websites like Military.com, where this video came from. The video was advertised in one of their daily emails as: “Massive Fuel Tanker Explosion in Iraq — Watch as a couple of Soldiers test out their rifles on a fuel tanker”. Ooooh, awesome! It was interesting yesterday during some of the commentary on the “gays in the military” debate that one reason given for backing gays in the military is the “professionalism” of our soldiers.
This has been repeated a lot lately, by people who apparently do not see the videos on Military.com. This doesn’t look like professional behavior to me. It looks like bored boys with big guns doing stupid things. Is this how people in Iraq and Afghanistan see our soldiers?
President Obama is asking for over $33 billion more to escalate the Afghanistan war. Jan. 13, 2010 (Reuters) — U.S. President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress for $33 billion in emergency war funding for a major U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan this year, defense officials said on Wednesday.The money, mainly for the deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and other war costs in the current 2010 fiscal year, would come on top of Obama’s expected request to increase the Pentagon’s overall budget in fiscal 2011 to a record $708 billion, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Remember the concept known as blowback? The U.S. does something that angers someone in the Middle East, and terror attack threats rise. It’s happening again. Blackwater is acquitted, we escalate the war in Afghanistan and move it into Pakistan, and suddenly terror threats in the UK and the U.S. are on the rise.
(In video above) Blackwater continues to operate violently in Afghanistan and Pakistan and surreptitiously in other countries; despite their reckless violence in Iraq. On September 16, 2007, employees of Blackwater opened fire and killed at least 14 Iraqis in the infamous Nisour Square massacre. The youngest victim was Nine-year-old Ali Kinani, who died from a gunshot wound to the head. In this interview . . . . Ali’s father Mohammed talks about his son and the shootings. Two and a half years after the shootings, Mohammed may be the one man standing between Blackwater and total impunity.
This is the presentation given today by President Obama on health care reform.
Read about it here. Republicans still have no health care reform plan at all, despite Obama reaching out to them and telling them that he would consider their points. Instead, they have simply been commanded to distribute more partisan talking points. Like the good little servants they are, they have complied.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, (R-MN) sends out updates of the most recent right-wing political points under the guise of “communicating” with her constituents. This week she emailed her constituents a bizarre ultra-patriotic list of right-wing demands for health care reform that she calls a type of health care reform. It’s meaningless drivel inspired by the Tea Baggers. As one of her constituents, I find this list beyond insulting. I was part of a group that has walked in person to her office more than once to present our health care demands to her, including personal testimonies, and I can personally attest to the fact that she does not listen to her constituents. Bachmann is more concerned with her future political ambitions than in representing the people in her district. Here is what she sent out on February 1st:
It looks like the ACORN-smearer hit man James O’Keefe and his group of men who tried to tamper with the phones in the offices of a U.S. Senator have ties to the U.S. intelligence community, and even, according to some speculation, to Israel intelligence groups. What were they really after? This is shaping up to be the GOP’s next real Watergate. James O’Keefe said he went to Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans’ office to determine “if their phones were working” — not to tamper with the phones. He’s portraying it as a sarcastic prank tied to Landrieu’s vote on health care reform. He claims to be a journalist, but it’s starting to look as though he’s a paid operative for the GOP and other groups tied to anti-health care reform, right-wing elements in intelligence, and obscure think tanks. Could the insurance industry itself be involved? This is a story that is obviously much bigger than O’Keefe and his supporters claim. It seems to indicate that Republicans will stop at nothing to stop health care reform, including intimidating and bugging U.S. Senators.
O’Keefe was arrested last Tuesday along with three others for “interfering with the Democratic senator’s phones”. What were they really trying to do by bugging a Senator’s phones? Piecing together the story from many different news reporters is tough but the best summary (though it’s long) seems to be from Raw Story.
ACORN Pimp O'Keefe
“WASHINGTON — Two of the three men arrested on Monday along with “ACORN pimp” James O’Keefe for “maliciously tampering” with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) phones in her New Orleans office have ties to the United States intelligence community.
The three accused by the FBI of “aiding and abetting” O’Keefe are Stan Dai, Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel. O’Keefe is 25, and the other three are 24.
Dai’s links to the intelligence community appear to be particularly strong. He was a speaker at Georgetown University’s Central Intelligence Agency summer school program in June 2009, and is also listed as an Assistant Director at the Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence at Trinity in D.C. . . . . .The Trinity program received a “$250,000 renewable grant from the U.S. Intelligence Community” upon launching in 2004, according to its Web site. The program’s goals are stated:
This was the best live TV event of last week; and one completely without high expectations or even prior advertising. It took me completely by surprise. President Obama joined Republicans for an hour and a half, sparring with them on serious policy issues and defending himself very well, during their House Republican retreat on January 29th. To watch it all, go straight to WhiteHouse.gov. The transcript is there too. President Obama is so far beyond Bush intellectually and in his composure and ability to communicate. The GOP questioners mainly seemed petty compared to the gravity of issues that face us. He did so well that FOX news cut off the live feed half-way through the debate. Even they knew this wasn’t good for the health of their conservative audience.
“UPDATE: Fox News cut live feed of Obama debate half-way through; GOP aides say allowing cameras was a ‘mistake’
A combative President Obama sparred back and forth with Republicans at a House GOP retreat in Baltimore Friday, telling House members they had backed themselves into a corner by painting his administration as being radical.
It was an unusual question-and-answer session that some observers have compared to Question Period in the British House of Commons, when the prime minister takes questions from opposition lawmakers. And even some conservative commentators admit Obama won the debate and gave himself a much-needed image boost.
Invited by the GOP to attend their annual conference, the president accepted but surprised Republicans with a request to allow cameras into the conference room, Politico reports. The GOP agreed.
Weaving between pleas for bipartisanship and direct criticism of GOP politicking, the president took Republicans to task for voting against last year’s stimulus package and then attending “ribbon cuttings” for projects funded by it.
Howard Zinn recently died at the age of 87, of a heart attack in California. I was very saddened to hear of his death and wonder who can ever replace all that he did. He was an activist, teacher, thinker, consultant, historian, wise man, organizer and general all-around progressive “good guy”. His most famous book is probably the “People’s History of the United States“, which I bought over 10 years ago from a book club, not really knowing what it was. I was certainly surprised to find out what was in it — history from a people’s perspective. If you haven’t read it yet I very much recommend you get a copy. It’s a history book like no other.
Since I started a political podcast in 2005 I happened to read and play audio from a few talks and articles Howard Zinn published. He was a rabble-rouser, but a very likable one. So, many tributes will be written about him. I received one from someone locally I’d like to publish here, perhaps some of his last words to people who wanted advice from him, to a friend of his named Arthur. The topic was whether this is the time, or not, to form a strong progressive movement again. It seems they keep trying and keep fizzling out. Howard Zinn named some people who would be good at putting something like that together, people to organize around, and I was kind of surprised to see the actress Rosie Perez on the list. Really? Well, maybe he just liked her. Here is the story I was forwarded:
From: Rabbi Arthur —
Subject: Howard Zinn’s last advice to America – and to me: A Prophetic Voice in Jewish, Multireligious, and American Life
Howard Zinn’s last advice to America – and to me: A Broad Coalition for Independence From the Corporations & the Military
Dear (name withheld)
Tuesday morning — just two days ago — I wrote half a dozen leaders of progressive thought and action in America, each separately, the letter that follows. One of the people I wrote was the historian /activist Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, whom I have known for 45 years or so. He responded just 90 minutes later, and his response is also below.
It’s ironic that Conservatives used “spread the wealth” as evidence of socialism during the Obama-McCain campaign, because conservatives do spread their wealth among each other — and progressives don’t.
Progressives don’t tend to donate to or support new or progressive media. Even simply done progressive media, as well as radio and professional media should be supported in order to get our ideas out; but it’s not. This is the reason that Air America went bankrupt recently — because its listeners didn’t support it. It’s the reason a lot of podcasts disappear, (or load up on ads) and it’s the reason a lot of liberal blogs fade away (or load up on ads). There is not the financial support among progressives like there is among conservatives. It has nothing to do with “quality” which is subjective anyway, it’s just a fact that liberals and progressives don’t support each other financially.*
Conservatives do, and they emphasize its importance. They always have. It’s why Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and a multitude of conservative talk show hosts are well funded, and progressive media people are generally poor, losing money, or not broadcasting at all. It’s the sad truth and it finally choked out Air America.
Air America Radio, RIP — It Didn’t Have to Be This Way
Conservatives believe in spending whatever it takes to promote their ideas through the media. The crash of Air America shows that progressives don’t have the right attitude.
January 28, 2010from Alternet — I think the New York Times got it exactly wrong on Monday in declaring that “the enduring legacy of Air America’s failure is that political media from either side of the aisle is more successful when run as a business instead of a crusade.”
That very attitude is what has hobbled the growth of liberal talk radio, but conservatives have never thought about media that way and they still don’t. The week before Air America shut its doors the Rev. James Dobson announced he was starting a new radio show with his son Ryan, a 39-year-old tattooed surfer who shares his father’s ultra-conservative views. On Dobson’s Facebook page he asked his supporters to fund the new show. “Your participation will be greatly appreciated, especially during this time when startup costs will be very expensive. The budget for the first year, including the costs of radio airtime, will be about two million dollars.”
Quote: “The people don’t want a phony Democrat. If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.” — President Harry Truman – May 17, 1952.
We need to replace Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman and replace him with Elizabeth Warren, the woman in the video from the Daily Show, above.
Tonight is the State of the Union address, something the President of the U.S. does once a year to tell Congress where we are and what’s on agenda for the year. Ho-hum. We already know where we are. The country is in miserable shape and major legislation continues to gather dust. We know what we need — jobs and a better economy and some forward movement on anything. Ms. Warren is currently the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP and she is twice as smart as Bernanke and has none of the baggage. As you can see, she knows exactly what’s going on and what needs to be done. Get these banking criminals out of our government and replace them with people we can trust who know what is going on, and half the battle will be done.
“Funding for abstinence education was eliminated as well.” — Michele Bachmann
Yelling about abstinence like Bristol Palin.
Imagine eliminating funding for telling people not to have sex!
That is a quote in a news release from my wacky, troubled Congresswoman, super-conservative Tea Party Queen II, Michele Bachmann. What exactly is “abstinence education” and why does it have to be funded? What part of “don’t do something” is so complicated we need to elaborate on that? It should be easy enough to incorporate that little idea into a general health class without additional funding, (unless the plan is to spread it through the poor neighborhoods where the minorities live.) Abstinence is abstinence; it is the lack of doing an act. I don’t see the point of devoting money to fund teaching something that is a single, simple concept. I’m sure your average person understands how not to have sex, so what’s to teach? I can’t imagine spending our money to increase the number of times and ways someone tells people not to do something or they’ll get pregnant. Do Republicans think some people don’t make the connection between sex and babies? Come on, that’s a Cave Man concept. Even they got it. But this is how Rep. Michele Bachmann would prefer we spend a lot of taxpayer money: nagging people about something that Cave Men (and women) knew. What a waste of money, all to appear “pro-life”.
Republicans somehow consider a lack of funding for abstinence education as an attack on pro-life ideals. Odd how the Republicans think they are the pro-life party, but they are the ones always screeching for war and more death and destruction, instead of diplomacy and negotiations. Or, that used to be the case, until our new “peace” president who decided to expand the drone wars and the war in Afghanistan. (Funny thing the Republicans aren’t clamoring to be BFFs with Obama and his war plans.)
One of our top wacky Republicans, Bachmann spoke at the “March for Life” rally, which oddly enough was not an anti-war rally! It was a rally against abortion on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The idea behind being ‘pro-life’ to Republicans is: Unborn=precious. Born-Expendable (“. . . and who the hell cares anyway. Welfare babies are on their own. We got ours”, etc.)
Here is more from Bachmann’s news release, where she insinuates Democrats are against life itself.
“I [Michele Bachmann] was pleased to join thousands of fellow Minnesotans at the Capitol in St. Paul, and I issued the following statement to commemerate the event:
“As millions of Americans March for Life today, it’s important to remember what is at stake because in one year alone, we’ve seen an onslaught of attacks on life and the unborn from this Congress and this Administration.
“We saw Democrats vote overwhelmingly against an amendment that would make Planned Parenthood ineligible to receive money for so-called ‘family planning’ services through appropriations funding for the Department of Health and Human Services.
What should Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke do? Step aside and let someone else fill the job. The U.S. needs some fresh financial thinking. Bernanke himself is partially to blame for our bailout mentality and seems to have no concept of how angry people are that bailout recipients won’t even be named. We want to know where the money went. We want to know how it’s been spent. Since he won’t tell us, and because he has caused many of our financial problems, he needs to be replaced. Read below for Senator Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vermont) hold on Bernanke’s reappointment.
Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman
Jan. 25 2010–Over the weekend, economist Greg Mankiw posted on his blog a note from a friend who works for the White House. Mankiw’s friend drew a line connecting Obama’s “populist pivot” following the Massachusetts Senate election to the growing backlash over Ben Bernanke’s reappointment to serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve. He explained that the timing of the pivot and the announcement of new regulations on the banks was purely coincidental. “This policy process has been in the works for months,” he wrote, adding:
“Regardless of how one evaluates the wisdom of the policy (and I fully acknowledge that reasonable people can differ on this), in practice the timing of the announcement (coming after the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat) is being interpreted as “the Administration has finally decided to cave in to the populist temptation.” As a result there is a lot of uncertainty about whether Bernanke will be reappointed and whether the new policy signals that the Administration is going to dump him. Honestly, dumping Bernanke was NOT the point of this announcement.” Mankiw’s friend wrote that this could become a “self-fulfilling prophesy,” however, now that Bernanke is losing support in the Senate.
The Federal Reserve has four main responsibilities: to conduct monetary policy in a way that leads to maximum employment and stable prices; to maintain the safety and soundness of financial institutions; to contain systemic risk in financial markets; and to protect consumers against deceptive and unfair financial products.
An Israeli riot policeman prevents from neighbors and activist to enter the area of a house demolition in the city of Jaffa, January 17, 2010. Photo by: Oren Ziv/ Activestils.org
Help and sympathy for Haiti — wonderful. But none for Palestinians must surely be glaringly apparent to them. Gaza has yet to rebuild from the devastating war which destroyed so much of their infrastructure over a year ago. They can’t even get building supplies. Would the world wait a year for rebuilding supplies to arrive in Haiti?
Given recent threats to the US and the UK, it’s valid to question when will we will be safe from terrorism. Simple: when people don’t want to kill us. That day will probably never come unless we manage to eradicate hate and violence in the world; or besides that, at least the reason why people hate us. What makes others hate us? It’s something that should be seriously investigated. It’s been communicated to us many times that part of the cause of Western hatred is the Israel-Palestinian conflict, as the U.S. and the UK and most countries not in the Middle East side with Israel. As a result the Palestinians suffer horribly and we show them none of the concern or aid for their poverty and children and lack of basics that we have shown Haiti in the last nearly 2 weeks.
The sporadic violence done to Palestinians by Israelis ranges from shootings to demolished homes, stolen land, and one-sided war that ends in slaugher of Palestinians. The last slaughter took place about a year ago and led to 1,400 dead, most of them civilians. The implied support of this slaughter by the U.S. makes us so much less safe than if we’d simply stop helping Israel kill people. But we don’t, and this threatens our national security. Why don’t we solve the problem? Because we approach “national security” back-assward.
A recent home demolition story, from January 17, 2010 (pictured above).
“Police arrived at 8am with faces covered and aggressively ordered the family out, pointing weapons at an elderly woman and children in the home. The elderly resident required assistance during the raid but her daughter was denied entry in order to help. On arrival of local community representatives police removed their masks but refused to display identification throughout the day.
The Dakkeh family have been through the courts to challenge impending demolitions in their neighbourhood that now threaten more than a hundred residents. The properties are owned by resident families and have been passed down through generations predating the State of Israel. Decades ago the land was an orange orchard but today it stands as an urban Jaffa neighbourhood. Despite this, the Tel Aviv Municipality continues to zone the area as agricultural land, rendering nearly all homes illegal even though they are built and occupied by the owners of the properties.”
Read more here. How much of a fraud is all this talk about “national security” since we are not addressing it? Read on.
It’s doubtful that Barack Obama is really running the United States. Corporations are really running the United States, and it’s about to get much worse. Because of the passage of yesterday’s Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in favor of corporations, elections in the future will be bought and democracy as we know it (or thought we knew it) is mostly over. Essentially the Activist Judges™ on the High Court said corporations are not only people, but they also have the same rights to free speech as humans have, and presumably, they have all the “inalienable” rights that the U.S. Constitution gives to actual persons. This is like the dawn of Political Artificial Intelligence, without the actual intelligence!
This must also mean corporations have the right to things like stockpiling firearms and forming militias, like the 2nd amendment gives us “People”. It also must mean that corporations can vote in elections, since these are rights people have too. Wow. In fact, the whole Bill of Rights could be given to corporations. Corporations are legally people and they have the same rights, according to our Activist Judges™ (or Xtreme Judges) and money equals free speech. They have overturned about a century old law that says corporations do not have unlimited rights to donate to campaigns. As of yesterday though, they have more rights to donate money to campaigns than actual people do. If this is to stand true for corporations, then at least people should be able to donate a million or maybe five million to a political campaign if they want! Why not? Let’s remove all money barriers to buying elections and stop pretending that’s not what this about. Elections have been semi-bought for a long time, but individual people still have that pesky $2,000+ limit and Big Oil no longer has any limit at all. If they don’t like the environmental candidate, the environmental candidate is history.
Seriously, if you want to do something about this, you can check out this campaign. MovetoAmend.org is a project of the Campaign to Legalize Democracy.
“We the corporations”
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule.
We Move to Amend.
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:
Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate “preemption” actions by global, national, and state governments.
www.350.org"
