http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-political-action-is-no-by-Chaz-Valenza-100128-675.html
January 28, 2010
Why political action is not working and what to do about it
By Chaz Valenza
Our government is not yet Fascist. To use this term is hyperbole and counter productive.
Calling our current system of governance what it is -- a Corporatocracy -- is powerful because it is a label that precisely defines our current state of affairs.
The term Corporatocracy is simple and descriptive: a form of government controlled by powerful corporations with a veneer of democracy.
Simply put, the wall between our economic system and our form of government has been lowered to the point where money and corporations now have control of our government. We no longer have either a democracy or free markets as market rules are now created by the corporations they are meant to control.
Corporatocracy is its own animal. Once in power this perversion cannot be defeated through democratic means as it has control of the roots of government. This is an important point.
As we have witnessed, petitions, letter writing, emails, phone calls and even our votes are worth so little they are now ineffective.
Voicing opposition by blogging and moaning and commenting on opinion pieces in main stream media has become populous busy work that humors corporate powers who laugh all the way to the bank.
Our representatives barely acknowledge the will of the people, placate majority opinion with half, quarter or obfuscating measures. They cut divergent backroom deals, or overturn fairness and justice publicly with impunity.
Evidence that every branch of our Federal government has been corrupted is now cited frequently. The instances grow more egregious daily:
The Supreme Court: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.
The Congress: Health Care Reform hijacked by mega insurance, medical and pharmaceutical corporations.
The Executive Branch: Federal Reserve and Treasury Department appointments with direct connections, and a documented history of cronyism and criminal activity, with the largest Wall Street firms.
Get used to it. Say it aloud a few times and let those "poor" and "rat" and "tock" syllables roll off your tongue. Corp-poor-rat-tock-racey. Poor, the vast majority of us. Rats, we know who they are. Tock, like tick tock, doing time not really living.
If you worked for or supported the election campaign of Barack Obama, you learned a valuable lesson. Money talks.
Labyrinth - A new strategy to get at the enemy.
This was a lesson we learned in the W. years when we saw the impact of a small lie, and a lot of cash, used effectively by the Swift Boaters.
You and millions of others like you, including me, bought the election with our small contributions.
We may have purchased Mr. Obama the Presidency; unfortunately those with real money, the mega corporate money, had already purchased him and all of the apparatus of government around him.
If the President is sincerely fighting for change, as he would have us believe in his rhetorically ingenious State of the Union Address, he faces formidable foes on both sides of the aisle.
An army of lobbyists, and an Everest of corporate money, will continue to barricade themselves in a closed marketplace, while they erect a labyrinth of laws to assure obscene profits and a workforce of serfs.
Many voices are calling for radical change. They are not mistaken in proposing drastic remedies to dismantle the Corporatocracy. These include amending the Constitution to deprive corporations of their falsely assumed personhood, impeachment efforts against members of the Supreme Court, and the abolition of the Federal Reserve.
Each voice seems to have its own pet yearning to bring down some or other major establishment pillar that will yield a balance between people and self interested organizations, between individuals and the currently "legal" criminal enterprises that rule the day.
How can we ever reach the tipping point and challenge the balance of power? Can it be done legally, without government over-throw and treason?
I believe the answer is yes, but it will not be accomplished without effort and sacrifice on the part of We the People.
Though political action should not necessarily be abandoned, the recognition that it lacks efficacy is prerequisite to accepting an alternative strategy.
The alternative is market-based protest and insurrection. Money talks; who it speaks to, and how loud, is up to us.
Each day we are bombarded with appeals from well-meaning entities that are alternatives to corporate sponsored communications and political influence. When we can afford to make them, contributions to these efforts are important, but only as a starting point.
Several movements in their infancy are means to an end that have the potential of being very effective as thousands, then millions of people take part. They include:
Move Your Money: http://moveyourmoney.info/ Yes, just move your money from a big bank to a local community bank. But don't be surprised to see your community bank fail and be taken over by Big Banking once again. If that should happen you'll be insured by the FDIC. Move your money again.
Use Cash Movement: http://UseCashMovement.org Big Bank and Big Credit Card companies make a fortune whenever you use plastic, debit and credit cards, instead of cash. Both customers and small business can turn this around, promote the use of cash and benefit while Big Banking suffers.
Sell Stocks: I don't believe any retail/small investor, those without connections to inside Wall Street, has any business investing in stock. Yes, the market has come back, the big boys say it's safe to go back in the water. Believe them at your own peril or find a safe haven for your hard earned retirement money and register your opposition by pulling your money out. A sacrifice to give Wall Street the finger, or a smart move? Maybe both.
Boycott Corporations: Everyday we all interact with corporations we hate doing business with for any number of reasons. Operating in today's world, you may not have a choice on some of these matters. But it is always worth questioning authority. Is there an alternative? Can a spend less with these corporations? Do I need their services at all?
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
'Capitalism is evil ... you have to eliminate it'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/30/michael-moore-capitalism-a-love-story
Chris McGreal
Guardian UK
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:37 EST
'Capitalism is evil ... you have to eliminate it'
Michael Moore says of Capitalism: A Love Story, ‘I want audiences to get off the bench and become active.’
After guns and the Iraq war, Michael Moore is now taking on an entire political and economic system in his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. So what message does the man who once planned to become a priest have?
Michael Moore has been accused of many things. Mendacity. Manipulation. Rampant egotism. Bullying a frail old man with Alzheimer's. And that is by people who generally agree with his views. His latest film Capitalism: A Love Story is already out in the US when we meet. He comes storming down the hotel corridor, predictably unkempt in ragged jeans that have the unusual quality of appearing both too large and too small at the same time.
I wasn't sure what to expect. Arrogance, perhaps. Cynicism. But he begins to schmooze while he's still some distance away, shouting he feels he knows me. A few months ago one of Moore's producers interviewed me for the film. I was cut from the finished version but Moore says he watched my every word.
Settled on a couch I ask why he hasn't managed to persuade the downtrodden, uninsured, exploited masses to revolt. "My films don't have instant impact because they're dense with ideas that people have not thought about," he says. "It takes a while for the American public to wrap its head around some of the things I'm saying. Twenty years ago I told them that General Motors was going to collapse and take a lot of towns down with them. I was ridiculed, and GM sent around this packet of information about me, my past writings - pinko! With Bowling for Columbine, I told people that these shootings are going to continue, we've got too many guns, too easy access to the guns. [In Fahrenheit 9/11] I'm telling people that we're not going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we've been lied to."
Capitalism: A Love Story seems the natural culmination of all his others, an overarching look at the insidious control of Wall Street and corporate interests over politics and lives. Its timing is exquisite, coming in the wake of the biggest financial collapse in living memory. And once again Moore is bracing himself: as the film drew to a close at its premiere in Los Angeles, he posted a message on Twitter: "The packed house gets up to grab their torches and pitchforks ..."
The film is certainly shocking. Early on, Moore sets out the meaning of "Dead Peasants" insurance. It turns out that Wal-Mart, a company with a revenue larger than any other in the world, bets on its workers dying, taking out life insurance policies on its 350,000 shop-floor workers without their knowledge or approval. When one of them dies, Wal-Mart claims on the policy. Not a cent of the payout, which sometimes runs to a $1m (£620,000) or more, goes to the family of the dead worker, often struggling with expensive funeral bills. Wal-Mart keeps the lot. If a worker dies, the company profits.
Wal-Mart is not alone. Moore talks to a woman whose husband died of brain cancer in 2008. He worked at a bank until it fired him because he was sick. But the bank retained a life insurance policy on the unfortunate man and cashed it in for $4.7m (£2.9m) when he died. There were gasps from the audience in a Washington cinema at that.
They came again as Moore focused on the eviction of the foreclosed. The Hacker family of Peoria filmed themselves being chucked out of their home because of skyrocketing mortgage payments. Randy Hacker, gun owner, observes that he can understand why someone might want to shoot up a bank. In a final twist, the eviction squad offers the Hackers cash to clear out their yard.
The Hackers are Republicans. So was the widow of the bank worker. It is the gap, between the ordinary American - Democrat or Republican, middle-class or dirt-poor - and predatory banks and mammoth corporations that Moore has made his target ever since Roger and Me, his first film, set out to expose the damage wreaked by General Motors on his hometown of Flint, Michigan.
"One movie maybe can't make a difference," Moore says. "I'll say, what's the point of this? What do I want [my audiences] to do? Obviously I want them to be engaged in their democracy. I want them to get off the bench and become active."
Last summer something happened that renewed Moore's conviction that his film-making was politically worthwhile. "I'm in the edit room and there's Bill Moyers on the TV interviewing the vice-president of Sigma health insurance. Massive, billion-dollar company. He's sitting there, telling the country that he's quit his job and he wants to come clean. That he and the other health insurance companies got together and pooled their resources to smear me and the film Sicko to try and stop people from going to see it because, as he said, everything Michael Moore said in Sicko was true, and we were afraid this film would be a tipping point.
"I came away from that, with 'Wow, they're afraid of this movie, they believe it can actually create a revolution.' The idea that cinema can be dangerous is a great idea."
Moore's critics would argue this is his ego speaking. The idea that his film about the failings of the US healthcare system was on the brink of prompting a revolution of any kind looks all the more far-fetched given how the political fight over the issue has panned out. But if Moore's primary intention is to send up a warning flare, to alert Americans to what is going on in their country but not usually reported, he's been pretty successful.
At the end of Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore makes a pronouncement: "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy." Michael Moore once planned to be a priest. In his youth he was drawn to the Berrigan brothers, a pair of radical priests who pulled anti-Vietnam war stunts such as pouring blood on military service records. In an instructive moment for Moore, the brothers made clear they weren't just protesting against the war, but against religious organisations that kept silent about it.
These days he disagrees with Catholic orthodoxy exactly where you would expect him to - he supports abortion rights and gay marriage - but he credits his Catholic upbringing with instilling in him a sense of social justice, and an activism tinged with theatre that lives on his films.
But what does it mean, to replace capitalism with democracy? He sighs and tries to explain. In the old Soviet bloc, he says, communism was the political system and socialism the economic. But with capitalism, he complains, you get political and economic rolled in to one. Big business buys votes in Congress. Lobbyists write laws. The result is that the US political system is awash in capitalist money that has stripped the system of much of its democratic accountability.
"What I'm asking for is a new economic order," he says. "I don't know how to construct that. I'm not an economist. All I ask is that it have two organising principles. Number one, that the economy is run democratically. In other words, the people have a say in how its run, not just the 1%. And number two, that it has an ethical and moral core to it. That nothing is done without considering the ethical nature, no business decision is made without first asking the question, is this for the common good?"
These days Moore, the son of a Flint car worker, lives in the smalltown surrounds of Traverse City with his wife Kathleen Glynn and stepdaughter Natalie, a four-hour drive and a world away from where he came from. But Traverse City, which is on Lake Michigan, has endured its own decline. Walking along the restored foreshore, a sign says that the city was once a major lumber exporter. Now it is known as the "Cherry Capital" of America.
"When I first got here the theatre was boarded up," says Moore. "It was a mess. I said, look, let me reopen this theatre, I'll create a non-profit. It has brought, like, half a million people downtown in the first two years. If they're downtown they go out to dinner, they go to the bookstore. It livens everything up. Stores open. Now there's no plywood on any windows." This, says Moore, has made him something of a local hero even in a town that votes Republican.
"The county voted for McCain and for Bush twice. But not a day goes by when a Republican here doesn't stop me on the street and shake my hand and thank me. Me, the pariah!"
There are conservatives who get Moore's message, particularly families such as the Hackers who have been betrayed by the system they thought was working for them. But identifying their suffering, and even the cause of their problems, is very different from persuading them that capitalism is evil, although they might just buy in to what Moore says is the core message of his latest film - "that Wall Street and the banks are truly the enemy, and we need to tie that beast down and quick".
His enemies in the rightwing media will be doing everything they can to ensure this doesn't happen, portraying him as a propagandist. And even some of his supporters say he is too willing to leave out inconvenient facts. But there's no denying some very powerful truths in Capitalism, one of which is that it didn't need to be this way in America.
Moore has dug out of a South Carolina archive a piece of film buried away 66 years ago because it threatened to rock the foundations of the capitalist system as Americans now know it.
President Franklin D Roosevelt was ailing. Too ill to make his 1944 state of the nation address to Congress, he instead broadcast it by radio. But at one point he called in the cameras, and set out his vision of a new America he knew he would not live to see.
Roosevelt proposed a second bill of rights to guarantee every American a job with a living wage, a decent home, medical care, protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness and unemployment, and, perhaps most dangerously for big business, freedom from unfair monopolies. He said that "true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence".
The film was quickly locked away.
"The next week on the newsreels - and we've gone back and researched this - they didn't run that," said Moore. "They talked about other parts of his speech, the war. Nothing about this. The footage became lost. When we called the Roosevelt presidential library and asked them about it they said it wasn't filmed. His own family told us it wasn't filmed." Moore's team scoured the country without luck until they were given a tip about a collector connected to the university of South Carolina.
The university didn't have anything archived under FDR's speeches that fitted, but there were a couple of boxes from that week in 1944.
"We pop it in. It was all there. We had tears in our eyes watching it. For 65 years not a single American saw that speech, not one. I decided right then that we're going to fulfil Roosevelt's wishes that the American people see him saying this. Of all the things in the film, probably I feel most privileged that I get to share this. I get to give him his stage." It's a powerful moment not only because it offers an alternative view of American values rarely spoken of today - almost all of which would be condemned as rampant socialism - but also an interesting reference point with which to compare the more restrained ambitions of the Obama administration.
It is hard to imagine any circumstances in which Obama could put forward such an agenda, I suggest. Moore disagrees.
"He could make that speech."
And survive politically?
"He has told people he's going to operate these four years not with an eye on getting re-elected but on getting things done. I have been very happy for the last year. We came out of eight dark years and his election was - what's the word? - the relief I felt that night, I've been filled with hope since then. Now my patience is running a bit thin. He hasn't taken the reins and said: I'm in charge here, this is what we're doing. Do it. I can understand he's afraid but he's gotta do it."
Chris McGreal
Guardian UK
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:37 EST
'Capitalism is evil ... you have to eliminate it'Michael Moore says of Capitalism: A Love Story, ‘I want audiences to get off the bench and become active.’
After guns and the Iraq war, Michael Moore is now taking on an entire political and economic system in his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. So what message does the man who once planned to become a priest have?
Michael Moore has been accused of many things. Mendacity. Manipulation. Rampant egotism. Bullying a frail old man with Alzheimer's. And that is by people who generally agree with his views. His latest film Capitalism: A Love Story is already out in the US when we meet. He comes storming down the hotel corridor, predictably unkempt in ragged jeans that have the unusual quality of appearing both too large and too small at the same time.
I wasn't sure what to expect. Arrogance, perhaps. Cynicism. But he begins to schmooze while he's still some distance away, shouting he feels he knows me. A few months ago one of Moore's producers interviewed me for the film. I was cut from the finished version but Moore says he watched my every word.
Settled on a couch I ask why he hasn't managed to persuade the downtrodden, uninsured, exploited masses to revolt. "My films don't have instant impact because they're dense with ideas that people have not thought about," he says. "It takes a while for the American public to wrap its head around some of the things I'm saying. Twenty years ago I told them that General Motors was going to collapse and take a lot of towns down with them. I was ridiculed, and GM sent around this packet of information about me, my past writings - pinko! With Bowling for Columbine, I told people that these shootings are going to continue, we've got too many guns, too easy access to the guns. [In Fahrenheit 9/11] I'm telling people that we're not going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we've been lied to."
Capitalism: A Love Story seems the natural culmination of all his others, an overarching look at the insidious control of Wall Street and corporate interests over politics and lives. Its timing is exquisite, coming in the wake of the biggest financial collapse in living memory. And once again Moore is bracing himself: as the film drew to a close at its premiere in Los Angeles, he posted a message on Twitter: "The packed house gets up to grab their torches and pitchforks ..."
The film is certainly shocking. Early on, Moore sets out the meaning of "Dead Peasants" insurance. It turns out that Wal-Mart, a company with a revenue larger than any other in the world, bets on its workers dying, taking out life insurance policies on its 350,000 shop-floor workers without their knowledge or approval. When one of them dies, Wal-Mart claims on the policy. Not a cent of the payout, which sometimes runs to a $1m (£620,000) or more, goes to the family of the dead worker, often struggling with expensive funeral bills. Wal-Mart keeps the lot. If a worker dies, the company profits.
Wal-Mart is not alone. Moore talks to a woman whose husband died of brain cancer in 2008. He worked at a bank until it fired him because he was sick. But the bank retained a life insurance policy on the unfortunate man and cashed it in for $4.7m (£2.9m) when he died. There were gasps from the audience in a Washington cinema at that.
They came again as Moore focused on the eviction of the foreclosed. The Hacker family of Peoria filmed themselves being chucked out of their home because of skyrocketing mortgage payments. Randy Hacker, gun owner, observes that he can understand why someone might want to shoot up a bank. In a final twist, the eviction squad offers the Hackers cash to clear out their yard.
The Hackers are Republicans. So was the widow of the bank worker. It is the gap, between the ordinary American - Democrat or Republican, middle-class or dirt-poor - and predatory banks and mammoth corporations that Moore has made his target ever since Roger and Me, his first film, set out to expose the damage wreaked by General Motors on his hometown of Flint, Michigan.
"One movie maybe can't make a difference," Moore says. "I'll say, what's the point of this? What do I want [my audiences] to do? Obviously I want them to be engaged in their democracy. I want them to get off the bench and become active."
Last summer something happened that renewed Moore's conviction that his film-making was politically worthwhile. "I'm in the edit room and there's Bill Moyers on the TV interviewing the vice-president of Sigma health insurance. Massive, billion-dollar company. He's sitting there, telling the country that he's quit his job and he wants to come clean. That he and the other health insurance companies got together and pooled their resources to smear me and the film Sicko to try and stop people from going to see it because, as he said, everything Michael Moore said in Sicko was true, and we were afraid this film would be a tipping point.
"I came away from that, with 'Wow, they're afraid of this movie, they believe it can actually create a revolution.' The idea that cinema can be dangerous is a great idea."
Moore's critics would argue this is his ego speaking. The idea that his film about the failings of the US healthcare system was on the brink of prompting a revolution of any kind looks all the more far-fetched given how the political fight over the issue has panned out. But if Moore's primary intention is to send up a warning flare, to alert Americans to what is going on in their country but not usually reported, he's been pretty successful.
At the end of Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore makes a pronouncement: "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy." Michael Moore once planned to be a priest. In his youth he was drawn to the Berrigan brothers, a pair of radical priests who pulled anti-Vietnam war stunts such as pouring blood on military service records. In an instructive moment for Moore, the brothers made clear they weren't just protesting against the war, but against religious organisations that kept silent about it.
These days he disagrees with Catholic orthodoxy exactly where you would expect him to - he supports abortion rights and gay marriage - but he credits his Catholic upbringing with instilling in him a sense of social justice, and an activism tinged with theatre that lives on his films.
But what does it mean, to replace capitalism with democracy? He sighs and tries to explain. In the old Soviet bloc, he says, communism was the political system and socialism the economic. But with capitalism, he complains, you get political and economic rolled in to one. Big business buys votes in Congress. Lobbyists write laws. The result is that the US political system is awash in capitalist money that has stripped the system of much of its democratic accountability.
"What I'm asking for is a new economic order," he says. "I don't know how to construct that. I'm not an economist. All I ask is that it have two organising principles. Number one, that the economy is run democratically. In other words, the people have a say in how its run, not just the 1%. And number two, that it has an ethical and moral core to it. That nothing is done without considering the ethical nature, no business decision is made without first asking the question, is this for the common good?"
These days Moore, the son of a Flint car worker, lives in the smalltown surrounds of Traverse City with his wife Kathleen Glynn and stepdaughter Natalie, a four-hour drive and a world away from where he came from. But Traverse City, which is on Lake Michigan, has endured its own decline. Walking along the restored foreshore, a sign says that the city was once a major lumber exporter. Now it is known as the "Cherry Capital" of America.
"When I first got here the theatre was boarded up," says Moore. "It was a mess. I said, look, let me reopen this theatre, I'll create a non-profit. It has brought, like, half a million people downtown in the first two years. If they're downtown they go out to dinner, they go to the bookstore. It livens everything up. Stores open. Now there's no plywood on any windows." This, says Moore, has made him something of a local hero even in a town that votes Republican.
"The county voted for McCain and for Bush twice. But not a day goes by when a Republican here doesn't stop me on the street and shake my hand and thank me. Me, the pariah!"
There are conservatives who get Moore's message, particularly families such as the Hackers who have been betrayed by the system they thought was working for them. But identifying their suffering, and even the cause of their problems, is very different from persuading them that capitalism is evil, although they might just buy in to what Moore says is the core message of his latest film - "that Wall Street and the banks are truly the enemy, and we need to tie that beast down and quick".
His enemies in the rightwing media will be doing everything they can to ensure this doesn't happen, portraying him as a propagandist. And even some of his supporters say he is too willing to leave out inconvenient facts. But there's no denying some very powerful truths in Capitalism, one of which is that it didn't need to be this way in America.
Moore has dug out of a South Carolina archive a piece of film buried away 66 years ago because it threatened to rock the foundations of the capitalist system as Americans now know it.
President Franklin D Roosevelt was ailing. Too ill to make his 1944 state of the nation address to Congress, he instead broadcast it by radio. But at one point he called in the cameras, and set out his vision of a new America he knew he would not live to see.
Roosevelt proposed a second bill of rights to guarantee every American a job with a living wage, a decent home, medical care, protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness and unemployment, and, perhaps most dangerously for big business, freedom from unfair monopolies. He said that "true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence".
The film was quickly locked away.
"The next week on the newsreels - and we've gone back and researched this - they didn't run that," said Moore. "They talked about other parts of his speech, the war. Nothing about this. The footage became lost. When we called the Roosevelt presidential library and asked them about it they said it wasn't filmed. His own family told us it wasn't filmed." Moore's team scoured the country without luck until they were given a tip about a collector connected to the university of South Carolina.
The university didn't have anything archived under FDR's speeches that fitted, but there were a couple of boxes from that week in 1944.
"We pop it in. It was all there. We had tears in our eyes watching it. For 65 years not a single American saw that speech, not one. I decided right then that we're going to fulfil Roosevelt's wishes that the American people see him saying this. Of all the things in the film, probably I feel most privileged that I get to share this. I get to give him his stage." It's a powerful moment not only because it offers an alternative view of American values rarely spoken of today - almost all of which would be condemned as rampant socialism - but also an interesting reference point with which to compare the more restrained ambitions of the Obama administration.
It is hard to imagine any circumstances in which Obama could put forward such an agenda, I suggest. Moore disagrees.
"He could make that speech."
And survive politically?
"He has told people he's going to operate these four years not with an eye on getting re-elected but on getting things done. I have been very happy for the last year. We came out of eight dark years and his election was - what's the word? - the relief I felt that night, I've been filled with hope since then. Now my patience is running a bit thin. He hasn't taken the reins and said: I'm in charge here, this is what we're doing. Do it. I can understand he's afraid but he's gotta do it."
Capitalist Tool
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Capitalist-Tool-by-Michael-Collins-100127-259.html
January 27, 2010
Capitalist Tool
By Michael Collins
Just a few cynics doubted the magnificent procession of then Senator Barack Obama to the highest office in the land. He was the redemption of our past sins, the proof that we were a better nation than we had been. After all, race has been at the center of American politics since Bacon's Rebellion was crushed in 1667 but we were moving beyond that. And we did.Race was set aside for most of those who voted.
As it turned out, the campaign wasn't about redeeming anything other than the bill that Wall Street presented to the citizens of the United States in October, 2008. The financial system was grinding its gears, about to flame out in a series of big investment bank failures. The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, told a private session of Congress that absent immediate aid, the financial calamity would be so devastating that Congress should prepare for riots by outraged citizens.
The people spoke in unison as they hadn't in decades. No bailout! Congressional staffers were swamped with a flood of telephone calls, emails, and faxes. The people's will and wisdom was honored and the first bailout proposal was defeated 228 to 205 in the House of Representatives.
Undeterred, The Money Party swung into action. They hit the offices of reluctant supporters and plied them with "contributions" (also known as legalized bribes). More importantly, they put on a show of political unity, something they like to call bipartisanship. Both presidential candidates showed up in Washington and spoke to their party caucuses. They worked their magic and the bailout was complete. Wall Street was saved to wage class war against the citizens once again, at will, with few if any restraints. The prize -- the biggest wealth transfer in history, the looting of the Treasury for private firms, and a free hand to pay their bonuses as they saw fit. It was and is all about them.
Capitalist Tool
President Obama won the election amidst a great hope for change that he'd promised.
What did we get?
Right away, the new president turned the Treasury and economic policy over to consummate, long-term Wall Street insiders, Tim Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, and Larry Summers as economic guru. Geithner "was one of our nation's top regulators" for Wall Street during the great rip off of the Bush years and Summers had helped repeal those pesky laws that restrained big banks from dangerous investments. The foxes were in charge of the hen house. There were more bailouts and the Federal Reserve extended $23.7 trillion line of credit for the big banks.
Then, there were the attempts to help citizens with epidemic foreclosures and usurious credit interest rates. We did get a Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights but the president and Congress forgot to cap those huge credit card interest rates. Unfortunately for the millions of victims of mortgage fraud, the president and Congress couldn't quite figure out how to pass a modest foreclosure relief bill. The sponsor of that legislation threw up his hands, as the president sat it out, and said, the banks "frankly own the place!" No kidding.
It didn't stop there. A few months into the era of hope and change, we found out that the administration was heavily staffed with CitiBank insiders who were doing their best to keep that tottering zombie walking as though it were alive.
All the while, the jobless rate rose month after month until real world unemployment reached 17%. That single digit unemployment figures we get don't include workers who simply give up looking for jobs after months of finding nothing. They're unemployed, none the less.
Instead of focusing on jobs, the administration became obsessed with passing a health reform bill. It was reform, but not for citizen health. It seems that the health of the insurance companies was a bit off after years of bad investments and acquisitions. They needed 40 million new customers and a central role in the new plan. They got both. Citizens are now about to get a Frankenstein health bill that they can't afford. Hard to pay those premiums if you're out of work, or earning flat wages for the past ten years.
Tonight, we're told that domestic programs will be frozen for three years while foreign aid and military expenditures for Obama's new war in Afghanistan won't be touched.
And, to add insult to injury, the president just announced that a big part of NASA will be privatized with the corporations "too big to fail" launching our astronauts into space.
We are nothing to them
It doesn't take much to figure that out.
We lose our jobs. The insiders have theirs forever.
Our wages are flat while Wall Street fat cats get ever increasing bonuses.
We lose our health coverage while Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive branches enjoy the best insurance around.
Commercial credit for most is tight but the big banks have trillions in credit.
Organized crime would never have been this insensitive. At least, they realized that they needed customers with a few bucks to place a bet.
We are in the great decline of the ruling elite, addled by nepotistic inbreeding and cronyism beyond imagination; coddled by the government that they bought and paid for; and ready to take everything that isn't nailed down, only to blame the people for having nothing.
Welcome to the new klelptocracy where insiders make the rules then claim the high ground of intelligence and morality after winning a game they rigged in the first place.
Once, we had a real hope that endured despite the challenges. It helped produce major changes when we demanded them. Now, we're left with scraps from the movable feast that is devouring the nation and we're expected to say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
January 27, 2010
Capitalist Tool
By Michael Collins
Just a few cynics doubted the magnificent procession of then Senator Barack Obama to the highest office in the land. He was the redemption of our past sins, the proof that we were a better nation than we had been. After all, race has been at the center of American politics since Bacon's Rebellion was crushed in 1667 but we were moving beyond that. And we did.Race was set aside for most of those who voted.
As it turned out, the campaign wasn't about redeeming anything other than the bill that Wall Street presented to the citizens of the United States in October, 2008. The financial system was grinding its gears, about to flame out in a series of big investment bank failures. The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, told a private session of Congress that absent immediate aid, the financial calamity would be so devastating that Congress should prepare for riots by outraged citizens.
The people spoke in unison as they hadn't in decades. No bailout! Congressional staffers were swamped with a flood of telephone calls, emails, and faxes. The people's will and wisdom was honored and the first bailout proposal was defeated 228 to 205 in the House of Representatives.
Undeterred, The Money Party swung into action. They hit the offices of reluctant supporters and plied them with "contributions" (also known as legalized bribes). More importantly, they put on a show of political unity, something they like to call bipartisanship. Both presidential candidates showed up in Washington and spoke to their party caucuses. They worked their magic and the bailout was complete. Wall Street was saved to wage class war against the citizens once again, at will, with few if any restraints. The prize -- the biggest wealth transfer in history, the looting of the Treasury for private firms, and a free hand to pay their bonuses as they saw fit. It was and is all about them.
Capitalist Tool
President Obama won the election amidst a great hope for change that he'd promised.
What did we get?
Right away, the new president turned the Treasury and economic policy over to consummate, long-term Wall Street insiders, Tim Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury, and Larry Summers as economic guru. Geithner "was one of our nation's top regulators" for Wall Street during the great rip off of the Bush years and Summers had helped repeal those pesky laws that restrained big banks from dangerous investments. The foxes were in charge of the hen house. There were more bailouts and the Federal Reserve extended $23.7 trillion line of credit for the big banks.
Then, there were the attempts to help citizens with epidemic foreclosures and usurious credit interest rates. We did get a Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights but the president and Congress forgot to cap those huge credit card interest rates. Unfortunately for the millions of victims of mortgage fraud, the president and Congress couldn't quite figure out how to pass a modest foreclosure relief bill. The sponsor of that legislation threw up his hands, as the president sat it out, and said, the banks "frankly own the place!" No kidding.
It didn't stop there. A few months into the era of hope and change, we found out that the administration was heavily staffed with CitiBank insiders who were doing their best to keep that tottering zombie walking as though it were alive.
All the while, the jobless rate rose month after month until real world unemployment reached 17%. That single digit unemployment figures we get don't include workers who simply give up looking for jobs after months of finding nothing. They're unemployed, none the less.
Instead of focusing on jobs, the administration became obsessed with passing a health reform bill. It was reform, but not for citizen health. It seems that the health of the insurance companies was a bit off after years of bad investments and acquisitions. They needed 40 million new customers and a central role in the new plan. They got both. Citizens are now about to get a Frankenstein health bill that they can't afford. Hard to pay those premiums if you're out of work, or earning flat wages for the past ten years.
Tonight, we're told that domestic programs will be frozen for three years while foreign aid and military expenditures for Obama's new war in Afghanistan won't be touched.
And, to add insult to injury, the president just announced that a big part of NASA will be privatized with the corporations "too big to fail" launching our astronauts into space.
We are nothing to them
It doesn't take much to figure that out.
We lose our jobs. The insiders have theirs forever.
Our wages are flat while Wall Street fat cats get ever increasing bonuses.
We lose our health coverage while Congress, the Judiciary, and the Executive branches enjoy the best insurance around.
Commercial credit for most is tight but the big banks have trillions in credit.
Organized crime would never have been this insensitive. At least, they realized that they needed customers with a few bucks to place a bet.
We are in the great decline of the ruling elite, addled by nepotistic inbreeding and cronyism beyond imagination; coddled by the government that they bought and paid for; and ready to take everything that isn't nailed down, only to blame the people for having nothing.
Welcome to the new klelptocracy where insiders make the rules then claim the high ground of intelligence and morality after winning a game they rigged in the first place.
Once, we had a real hope that endured despite the challenges. It helped produce major changes when we demanded them. Now, we're left with scraps from the movable feast that is devouring the nation and we're expected to say, "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
The Corpocracy Rules / For Now
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2010/01/27.html
January 27, 2010
The Corpocracy Rules / For Now
By Allen L Roland
Aided by a mind boggling decision by the Supreme Court allowing unlimited campaign spending by private interests ~ the Corpocracy, where corporate dollars trump individual votes, has revealed its ominous ruling presence and insatiable appetite for power, profit and control but also has set the stage for a major populist revolt.
Now that the Supreme Courthas ruled that corporations may buy and own as many congressman as they can afford ~ it's time for a widespread populist revolt particularly in this mid term election year.
As John Geyman noted last year in the Huffington Post ~ " The scope of corpocracy goes beyond what most of us realize.
According to a 2007 report of the Institute for Policy Studies, 51 of the top 100 economic entities in the world are corporations. Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil each have higher annual revenues than the gross domestic product of Poland or Saudi Arabia. The top 200 corporations account for about one-quarter of total economic activity in the entire world."
Geyman goes on to reveal " that Most of these large corporations are multinational and largely immune from the laws of any one nation. They are free to set up partnerships of convenience across borders, seek out countries that best serve their interests, and often pay little or no taxes." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-geyman/corpocracy-vs-democracy-i_b_241452.html
This is a dangerous time for American where our Republic is rapidly morphing into a Plutocracy or government by the wealthy. FDR warned of this possibility in 1938 ~
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence is Fascism~ ownership of government by individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
The game is on ~ the enemy has been identified ~ as activist groups organize and a few courageous politicians try to implement legislative stop gaps to this insidious corporate cancer but corporate groups are also ready to attack the legislators who dare to oppose them.
Forget Obama, whose allegiance to the corpocracy gained him the presidency, we all need to be involved in this upcoming battle of the people versusthe corpocracyand Bill Moyers sums up the stakesthis election year ~ "The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change~ nothing ~ until the moneylenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM's are wrested from the marble walls, and we tear down the sign they've place on government - the one that reads, 'For Sale.'"
As ChrisHedges, who wroteEmpire Of Illusions, says "Our for-profit health care system makes money off of death, the same way our arms merchants make money off of death. And the inability within our country to face this reality, the inability in a corporatized media to even have this discussion is, I think, evidence of the power of the corporate state, which drives debate, which permits institutions that are morally bankrupt to have a seat at the table. And that is symptomatic of a society in deep decay."
We are beyond the point of no return and only a full fledged populist revolt can right this badly listing Republic. Under G.W. Bush, torture became legal and under Obama, bribery has just become legal.
January 27, 2010
The Corpocracy Rules / For Now
By Allen L Roland
Aided by a mind boggling decision by the Supreme Court allowing unlimited campaign spending by private interests ~ the Corpocracy, where corporate dollars trump individual votes, has revealed its ominous ruling presence and insatiable appetite for power, profit and control but also has set the stage for a major populist revolt.
Now that the Supreme Courthas ruled that corporations may buy and own as many congressman as they can afford ~ it's time for a widespread populist revolt particularly in this mid term election year.
As John Geyman noted last year in the Huffington Post ~ " The scope of corpocracy goes beyond what most of us realize.
According to a 2007 report of the Institute for Policy Studies, 51 of the top 100 economic entities in the world are corporations. Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil each have higher annual revenues than the gross domestic product of Poland or Saudi Arabia. The top 200 corporations account for about one-quarter of total economic activity in the entire world."
Geyman goes on to reveal " that Most of these large corporations are multinational and largely immune from the laws of any one nation. They are free to set up partnerships of convenience across borders, seek out countries that best serve their interests, and often pay little or no taxes." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-geyman/corpocracy-vs-democracy-i_b_241452.html
This is a dangerous time for American where our Republic is rapidly morphing into a Plutocracy or government by the wealthy. FDR warned of this possibility in 1938 ~
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence is Fascism~ ownership of government by individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
The game is on ~ the enemy has been identified ~ as activist groups organize and a few courageous politicians try to implement legislative stop gaps to this insidious corporate cancer but corporate groups are also ready to attack the legislators who dare to oppose them.
Forget Obama, whose allegiance to the corpocracy gained him the presidency, we all need to be involved in this upcoming battle of the people versusthe corpocracyand Bill Moyers sums up the stakesthis election year ~ "The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change~ nothing ~ until the moneylenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM's are wrested from the marble walls, and we tear down the sign they've place on government - the one that reads, 'For Sale.'"
As ChrisHedges, who wroteEmpire Of Illusions, says "Our for-profit health care system makes money off of death, the same way our arms merchants make money off of death. And the inability within our country to face this reality, the inability in a corporatized media to even have this discussion is, I think, evidence of the power of the corporate state, which drives debate, which permits institutions that are morally bankrupt to have a seat at the table. And that is symptomatic of a society in deep decay."
We are beyond the point of no return and only a full fledged populist revolt can right this badly listing Republic. Under G.W. Bush, torture became legal and under Obama, bribery has just become legal.
Five Supreme Court Judges Do Da Corporate Takeover Hustle, And They Must Be Stopped
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Five-Supreme-Court-Judges-by-thepen-100127-257.html
January 27, 2010
Five Supreme Court Judges Do Da Corporate Takeover Hustle, And They Must Be Stopped
By thepen
This the second in a series of action alerts about the fundamental willful and pernicious errors underlying the decision by 5 agenda driven right wing judges on the Supreme Court to gut all restraints on corporate meddling in our elections. Each of these successive alerts will analyze additional derelict aspects of this shameful and truly dangerous decision, to further demonstrate why we the people must speak out and act to reverse it.
In the first alert we made the triable case (which no attorney has written us to dispute) that failing to even bother to distinguish between domestic and foreign owned corporations, and knowingly leaving America vulnerable to the latter BY their ruling, was de facto an act of treason by The Supreme Court 5.
This alert will focus on their abandonment of every prudent rule of judicial review, in favor of haste and the most extreme form of judicial activism, again with specific page number references to the opinion itself.
There are TWO critical action pages related to this, which we are asking each of our participants to submit and also pass on to everyone you know, which will send your message by fax to all your own members of Congress, and President Obama too. You do not need your own fax machine to participate, the action pages do all this for you automatically in real time.
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5 http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
The most bedrock principle of appellate review is that first an appellant must have PRESERVED the issue for appeal, by arguing and getting a ruling on the point of law from the court below, necessitating fact finding by the lower court to create a "record". Innumerable appellants since the beginning of time have had the door to review slammed in their face with the admonition that if they HAD preserved the issue then and only then could a higher court review it.
And in particular, appellate courts have traditionally been loathe to making their own findings of fact (and only in a corrective way) absent very clear error by the Court below, which is as it should be. The role of a higher court is to apply the law to the facts, and make rulings of what the LAW is, not make their own findings of fact. And this is supremely true of the Supreme Court.
So even beyond the outrageousness of the result, it is at least outrageous the way it was reached, and how that reach was justified. As justification, The Supreme Court 5 asserted that some legal emergency existed requiring a broader inquiry in this case, resurrecting a claim already ABANDONED by the appellant in the court below (opinion p. 12). Why directly overturning precedents at least 20 years old would suddenly be such an emergency they do not explain.
And when you actually read the opinion, the only pressure really on the Supreme Court was because so-called Citizens United was bound to LOSE on the case they did preserve (opinion pp. 10-11). The Supreme Court 5 wanted that party to win. This was in itself an over the top act of judicial activism. But even beyond that they were hell bent on undoing as much as 100 years of campaign finance regulation (Stevens' dissent p. 3). Even the most conservative commentators agree this is what they have in fact done.
Appellate courts have been known on occasion to comment (in no binding way) that if an appellant HAD made a particular argument they might have been receptive to it, a kind of higher court invitation for someone to bring an actual case, an actual "controversy". And then there would be a factual record in some subsequent case. But here there was no controversy on the issue on which the ruling was based, for it had already been WAIVED a priori, thereby denying the Supreme Court any jurisdiction to rule on it (Constitution Article III, Section 2, Clause 1).
But even further assuming that the Supreme Court was justified in reopening a can of worms already discarded, the appropriate procedure would have been to return the case to the lower court with instructions, what is called a "remand", and which is done all the time after a ruling of LAW, for the court below to make findings of fact and conduct further proceedings, so that there would be a factual record for them to review, should the appellant wish to appeal to the higher court again in the case of an unfavorable ruling by the lower court.
All these prudent judicial things are exactly what the Supreme Court 5 did NOT do. Instead, they called for hurry up further briefing on the new question of law THEY wanted to rule on (Stevens' dissent p. 4), in a vacuum of insufficient facts to make those arguments of law. Instead, they set a scary new purported standard of review that says they basically can make rulings on any point of law THEY want to raise, whether developed in a lower court by an appellant or not.
This is truly frightening! It means that these five absolute dictators in black robes have now asserted the unheard of prerogative to make their own law pretty much any time they like, if only tangentially related to appellant's actual arguments on appeal (opinion pp. 13-14), a profoundly dangerous NEW standard, to become a new stare decisis if not immediately challenged and reversed by their removal from office. It means they now assert unchecked prerogative to make their own findings of fact whenever necessary to reach the result THEY want to reach.
And they must be stopped. The Supreme Court 5 must be impeached before they go even further off the deep end. Whatever else within the law that Congress can do to counteract this decision must be done, and to make sure such a thing can never, ever happen again.
So please submit both action pages above now. The next alert in this series will analyze the totally bogus basis of the so-called facts the Supreme Court pulled out of sheer hot air in this case.
NEW FOUR COLOR BUMPER STICKERS
In the meantime we are making available for no charge (not even shipping) your choice of one of two new bumper stickers. Take a "Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper sticker, OR a "Impeach The Supreme Court 5" bumper sticker for free. Of course if you can make a contribution (or if you want both), please DO contribute what you can, which is what allows us to send these out for free to anyone who cannot make a donation right now.
We have engaged one of the top commercial printers in the country for printing these, they have gone to press using the highest quality 4 color process, the proofs are absolutely gorgeous, and we will be taking delivery shortly of the first run.
So you can still request your bumper sticker from the return page after you submit either of the action pages above to get in on the first shipping. Or you can do directly to this page and get them there.
Bumper Stickers for no charge: http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers.php
Facebook participants can also submit the action pages at
Corporations Are Not The People: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1029
Impeach The Supreme Court 5: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1030
And on Twitter, just send the following Twitter reply for the Corporations Are Not The People action
@cxs #p1029
And this Twitter reply for the Impeach The Supreme Court 5 action
@cxs #p1030
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/in.htm
January 27, 2010
Five Supreme Court Judges Do Da Corporate Takeover Hustle, And They Must Be Stopped
By thepen
This the second in a series of action alerts about the fundamental willful and pernicious errors underlying the decision by 5 agenda driven right wing judges on the Supreme Court to gut all restraints on corporate meddling in our elections. Each of these successive alerts will analyze additional derelict aspects of this shameful and truly dangerous decision, to further demonstrate why we the people must speak out and act to reverse it.
In the first alert we made the triable case (which no attorney has written us to dispute) that failing to even bother to distinguish between domestic and foreign owned corporations, and knowingly leaving America vulnerable to the latter BY their ruling, was de facto an act of treason by The Supreme Court 5.
This alert will focus on their abandonment of every prudent rule of judicial review, in favor of haste and the most extreme form of judicial activism, again with specific page number references to the opinion itself.
There are TWO critical action pages related to this, which we are asking each of our participants to submit and also pass on to everyone you know, which will send your message by fax to all your own members of Congress, and President Obama too. You do not need your own fax machine to participate, the action pages do all this for you automatically in real time.
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5 http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
The most bedrock principle of appellate review is that first an appellant must have PRESERVED the issue for appeal, by arguing and getting a ruling on the point of law from the court below, necessitating fact finding by the lower court to create a "record". Innumerable appellants since the beginning of time have had the door to review slammed in their face with the admonition that if they HAD preserved the issue then and only then could a higher court review it.
And in particular, appellate courts have traditionally been loathe to making their own findings of fact (and only in a corrective way) absent very clear error by the Court below, which is as it should be. The role of a higher court is to apply the law to the facts, and make rulings of what the LAW is, not make their own findings of fact. And this is supremely true of the Supreme Court.
So even beyond the outrageousness of the result, it is at least outrageous the way it was reached, and how that reach was justified. As justification, The Supreme Court 5 asserted that some legal emergency existed requiring a broader inquiry in this case, resurrecting a claim already ABANDONED by the appellant in the court below (opinion p. 12). Why directly overturning precedents at least 20 years old would suddenly be such an emergency they do not explain.
And when you actually read the opinion, the only pressure really on the Supreme Court was because so-called Citizens United was bound to LOSE on the case they did preserve (opinion pp. 10-11). The Supreme Court 5 wanted that party to win. This was in itself an over the top act of judicial activism. But even beyond that they were hell bent on undoing as much as 100 years of campaign finance regulation (Stevens' dissent p. 3). Even the most conservative commentators agree this is what they have in fact done.
Appellate courts have been known on occasion to comment (in no binding way) that if an appellant HAD made a particular argument they might have been receptive to it, a kind of higher court invitation for someone to bring an actual case, an actual "controversy". And then there would be a factual record in some subsequent case. But here there was no controversy on the issue on which the ruling was based, for it had already been WAIVED a priori, thereby denying the Supreme Court any jurisdiction to rule on it (Constitution Article III, Section 2, Clause 1).
But even further assuming that the Supreme Court was justified in reopening a can of worms already discarded, the appropriate procedure would have been to return the case to the lower court with instructions, what is called a "remand", and which is done all the time after a ruling of LAW, for the court below to make findings of fact and conduct further proceedings, so that there would be a factual record for them to review, should the appellant wish to appeal to the higher court again in the case of an unfavorable ruling by the lower court.
All these prudent judicial things are exactly what the Supreme Court 5 did NOT do. Instead, they called for hurry up further briefing on the new question of law THEY wanted to rule on (Stevens' dissent p. 4), in a vacuum of insufficient facts to make those arguments of law. Instead, they set a scary new purported standard of review that says they basically can make rulings on any point of law THEY want to raise, whether developed in a lower court by an appellant or not.
This is truly frightening! It means that these five absolute dictators in black robes have now asserted the unheard of prerogative to make their own law pretty much any time they like, if only tangentially related to appellant's actual arguments on appeal (opinion pp. 13-14), a profoundly dangerous NEW standard, to become a new stare decisis if not immediately challenged and reversed by their removal from office. It means they now assert unchecked prerogative to make their own findings of fact whenever necessary to reach the result THEY want to reach.
And they must be stopped. The Supreme Court 5 must be impeached before they go even further off the deep end. Whatever else within the law that Congress can do to counteract this decision must be done, and to make sure such a thing can never, ever happen again.
So please submit both action pages above now. The next alert in this series will analyze the totally bogus basis of the so-called facts the Supreme Court pulled out of sheer hot air in this case.
NEW FOUR COLOR BUMPER STICKERS
In the meantime we are making available for no charge (not even shipping) your choice of one of two new bumper stickers. Take a "Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper sticker, OR a "Impeach The Supreme Court 5" bumper sticker for free. Of course if you can make a contribution (or if you want both), please DO contribute what you can, which is what allows us to send these out for free to anyone who cannot make a donation right now.
We have engaged one of the top commercial printers in the country for printing these, they have gone to press using the highest quality 4 color process, the proofs are absolutely gorgeous, and we will be taking delivery shortly of the first run.
So you can still request your bumper sticker from the return page after you submit either of the action pages above to get in on the first shipping. Or you can do directly to this page and get them there.
Bumper Stickers for no charge: http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers.php
Facebook participants can also submit the action pages at
Corporations Are Not The People: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1029
Impeach The Supreme Court 5: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1030
And on Twitter, just send the following Twitter reply for the Corporations Are Not The People action
@cxs #p1029
And this Twitter reply for the Impeach The Supreme Court 5 action
@cxs #p1030
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/in.htm
State of the Corpo-Nation
http://www.opednews.com/articles/State-of-the-Corpo-Nation-by-Kevin-Gosztola-100127-620.html
January 27, 2010
By Kevin Gosztola
This is not the State of the Union speech President Obama will deliver tonight. But, what if he gave an address like this?
Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States, CEOs, and all those from small businesses who are tuning in tonight:
I am here tonight to not only address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber and their corporate financiers but also the very people who I depend on for small donations to make it seem like I am not under the control of corporate and special interests in Washington.
I know that for many Americans watching right now there's been some distress and concern. I would like to reassure you that American Idol will continue in its normal time slot next week. But for now, I suggest that you try college basketball on ESPN, NCIS on USA, Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel, or Real World on MTV if this is not what you would like to view on television tonight. And, of course, you know that Lost will be premiering next week and we wanted to make sure you all could view that so we moved up this address to tonight.
For those of you with the capacity to pay attention to me for an hour, let me begin by saying that I am just as glad as you are that the recession is over. But, that doesn't mean we are in the clear. You know this better than anyone. You've been layed off from your job at the department store you were working at; the bank cannot find your mortgage but yet you are still forced out of your home; the credit card company keeps billing your son or daughter in college for more money; the fatness of your baby is a pre-existing condition so you can't get coverage for your baby's health care; or if you work for a major bank or have a job on Wall Street, you feel like you are supposed to feel guilty for causing the nation's economic problems.
But, let me reassure you. The economy is improving and while the economy continues to improve, while we all work to find our footing and restore our confidence in our daily lives, I want every American to know this: There's a drug for you.
There's an anti-depressant that can treat depression, certain types of social anxiety conditions, post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder in adults over age 18. For more than 15 years, Lozoft has safely and effectively treated millions of people with depression and certain anxiety conditions. Lozoft is available for multiple strengths, so your doctor can decide a dose for you.
Depression is a serious medical condition. Concomitant use of Lozoft with NSAIDS or aspirin may be associated with an increased risk of bleeding. Side effects may include dry mouth, insomnia, sexual side effects, anal leaking, nausea, fever, sweating, atrophy of the muscles, change in mental functioning, sudden stopping of the heart, and increased blood pressure. Talk to your doctor about how Lozoft might help you.
This economy will fully recover soon. Finding answers to the problems we face doesn't require rocket scientists. We haven't needed rocket scientists since the space race and the Cold War. No, our answers lie with the people of this nation who are constantly working to get by and make this country work.
I'm talking about the union worker at GM who will take a pay cut so America can have another shot at having better automotive vehicles than the Japanese; the sheriff who evicts people from their homes even though he knows in his heart he should not; the TSA agent who will gladly perform secondary security searches that involve invading people's privacy so that our country can be kept safe; the scientist working to engineer genetically modified seeds so people don't go hungry; or the private at Guantanamo obediently interrogating terror suspects so our nation can have the best intelligence we need in the make a great effort against people prone to supporting Islamic ideas which lead to violence (formerly known as the "war on terror").
Now, if we are truthful about where we are at in this point in time, we can see that we haven't been fulfilling responsibilities, as we should. The government and the people have failed time and time again. I'm not saying this to play some kind of blame game. I just think the point needs to be made that the problems we face didn't happen overnight and many of them could have been stopped if we as a people had paid more attention. I could go through a long list of where we went wrong, but it would be so similar to what I said a year ago that I won't.
Apparently, you don't think you have to help fix any of the problems I mentioned a year ago because the housing market is barely rebounding, the stock market is good--I'll give you that, we're still addicted to oil, health care reform's like Terri Schiavo--Republicans don't want it to die because they enjoy scoring political points off of it but at the same time it's not really alive anymore, our teachers still don't think they should get fired if they do a poor job--apparently they think like Wall Street bankers they should get rewarded for failure. Our national debt is so unmanageable that I've had Reagan's corpse moved into my office to help lead the way.
Sure, I wish you people would go shopping and buy more. It would make my job easier. I wouldn't have to constantly be thinking about creating new jobs. But, I won't do that. I will suggest, however, that more of you participate in Cyber Monday next winter because you can reduce your carbon footprint and stimulate the economy at the same time.
Americans, we're lucky. We dodged a bullet. We managed to grab a hold of the cliff as we were falling off and pull ourselves up. We were able to survive a massive water boarding that wasn't torture but one hell of an enhanced interrogation technique.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely. If you've got a group energized by a social issue that we in the Democratic Party can use to gain votes in 2010, we need you to go to Whitehouse.gov and sign up to help out now.
TO BE CONTINUED
January 27, 2010
By Kevin Gosztola
This is not the State of the Union speech President Obama will deliver tonight. But, what if he gave an address like this?
Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States, CEOs, and all those from small businesses who are tuning in tonight:
I am here tonight to not only address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber and their corporate financiers but also the very people who I depend on for small donations to make it seem like I am not under the control of corporate and special interests in Washington.
I know that for many Americans watching right now there's been some distress and concern. I would like to reassure you that American Idol will continue in its normal time slot next week. But for now, I suggest that you try college basketball on ESPN, NCIS on USA, Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel, or Real World on MTV if this is not what you would like to view on television tonight. And, of course, you know that Lost will be premiering next week and we wanted to make sure you all could view that so we moved up this address to tonight.
For those of you with the capacity to pay attention to me for an hour, let me begin by saying that I am just as glad as you are that the recession is over. But, that doesn't mean we are in the clear. You know this better than anyone. You've been layed off from your job at the department store you were working at; the bank cannot find your mortgage but yet you are still forced out of your home; the credit card company keeps billing your son or daughter in college for more money; the fatness of your baby is a pre-existing condition so you can't get coverage for your baby's health care; or if you work for a major bank or have a job on Wall Street, you feel like you are supposed to feel guilty for causing the nation's economic problems.
But, let me reassure you. The economy is improving and while the economy continues to improve, while we all work to find our footing and restore our confidence in our daily lives, I want every American to know this: There's a drug for you.
There's an anti-depressant that can treat depression, certain types of social anxiety conditions, post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder in adults over age 18. For more than 15 years, Lozoft has safely and effectively treated millions of people with depression and certain anxiety conditions. Lozoft is available for multiple strengths, so your doctor can decide a dose for you.
Depression is a serious medical condition. Concomitant use of Lozoft with NSAIDS or aspirin may be associated with an increased risk of bleeding. Side effects may include dry mouth, insomnia, sexual side effects, anal leaking, nausea, fever, sweating, atrophy of the muscles, change in mental functioning, sudden stopping of the heart, and increased blood pressure. Talk to your doctor about how Lozoft might help you.
This economy will fully recover soon. Finding answers to the problems we face doesn't require rocket scientists. We haven't needed rocket scientists since the space race and the Cold War. No, our answers lie with the people of this nation who are constantly working to get by and make this country work.
I'm talking about the union worker at GM who will take a pay cut so America can have another shot at having better automotive vehicles than the Japanese; the sheriff who evicts people from their homes even though he knows in his heart he should not; the TSA agent who will gladly perform secondary security searches that involve invading people's privacy so that our country can be kept safe; the scientist working to engineer genetically modified seeds so people don't go hungry; or the private at Guantanamo obediently interrogating terror suspects so our nation can have the best intelligence we need in the make a great effort against people prone to supporting Islamic ideas which lead to violence (formerly known as the "war on terror").
Now, if we are truthful about where we are at in this point in time, we can see that we haven't been fulfilling responsibilities, as we should. The government and the people have failed time and time again. I'm not saying this to play some kind of blame game. I just think the point needs to be made that the problems we face didn't happen overnight and many of them could have been stopped if we as a people had paid more attention. I could go through a long list of where we went wrong, but it would be so similar to what I said a year ago that I won't.
Apparently, you don't think you have to help fix any of the problems I mentioned a year ago because the housing market is barely rebounding, the stock market is good--I'll give you that, we're still addicted to oil, health care reform's like Terri Schiavo--Republicans don't want it to die because they enjoy scoring political points off of it but at the same time it's not really alive anymore, our teachers still don't think they should get fired if they do a poor job--apparently they think like Wall Street bankers they should get rewarded for failure. Our national debt is so unmanageable that I've had Reagan's corpse moved into my office to help lead the way.
Sure, I wish you people would go shopping and buy more. It would make my job easier. I wouldn't have to constantly be thinking about creating new jobs. But, I won't do that. I will suggest, however, that more of you participate in Cyber Monday next winter because you can reduce your carbon footprint and stimulate the economy at the same time.
Americans, we're lucky. We dodged a bullet. We managed to grab a hold of the cliff as we were falling off and pull ourselves up. We were able to survive a massive water boarding that wasn't torture but one hell of an enhanced interrogation technique.
Now is the time to act boldly and wisely. If you've got a group energized by a social issue that we in the Democratic Party can use to gain votes in 2010, we need you to go to Whitehouse.gov and sign up to help out now.
TO BE CONTINUED
Friday, January 29, 2010
Some remedies for the Supreme Court power grab
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00429
Some remedies for the Supreme Court power grab
COMMENTARY | January 26, 2010
It’s easy to find activism, impossible to find original intent behind the Roberts/Scalia group’s ruling on corporate political spending. Martin Lobel suggests six sharp, practical steps to deal with it.
By Martin Lobel
Lobel@LNLlaw.com
Lincoln said that, even in the midst of war, the power of corporations made him tremble for the safety of the country.
The media need to focus public attention on the judicial legislating by the five “conservative” Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in deciding Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. They ruled that corporations have a right to spend as much money as they want to buy ads to support or oppose politicians – a question that the litigants weren’t arguing but that the Justices reached out to decide.
Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito divined that that was the original intent of the drafters of our Constitution even though Jefferson had warned against just such concentrations of power and they ignored Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Bank of the United States v. Deveaux when he referred to a corporation as an “invisible, intangible and artificial being” and “certainly not a citizen.” Apparently they believe that they know better what the drafters of the Constitution meant than Chief Justice Marshall who actually knew the drafters. The only rational conclusion to draw from this action is that “original intent” is merely a subterfuge to justify whatever action Scalia and his followers want to take.
The five “conservative” Justices had no problem substituting their opinion for the carefully balanced Congressional legislation to curb the power of money in elections. Under the now stricken McCain-Feingold legislation, corporations could spend money that was “ voluntarily” contributed to Political Action Committees (PACs) or to overpaid lobbyists who in turn would contribute or bundle contributions to candidates. Whether such contributions were really voluntary or not is open to question, but at least it gave economically powerful interests a means to influence elections without the appearance of a quid pro quo that direct expenditures entail. Apparently, even though the Justices don’t run for office, they felt they were more expert in deciding what influence money has on elections than those who do.
There is another interesting, and I hope unintended consequence, of the decision. Foreign corporations can now influence American politics directly by spending unlimited amounts of money. I can just see the memo now from an American subsidiary of a Chinese corporation to its home office:
“Dear Chairman, The United States Supreme Court has just decided we can directly influence their elections with our money. Please send me $100 million of the US Treasury Bonds we own so we can defeat those politicians who stand in our way of taking over the US economy.”
As long as those five supposedly conservative Justices are there, we are likely to see even more judicial activism and legislating, contrary to the judicial philosophy Chief Justice Roberts espoused at his confirmation hearings. It will be interesting to see what the Court will do with a case seeking to prohibit the publishing of the names of those petitioners opposed to gay marriage on the grounds they might be subject to ridicule or harassment. Will the same First Amendment rights so precious to corporations be struck down when it comes to revealing who signed a petition seeking a referendum opposing gay rights?
Congress still has remedies to protect the country from abusive corporate political spending. Here are several of them:
Congress and the SEC have the power to make sure that corporate political spending reflects the will of the shareholders, not just management. There is absolutely no dispute that boards of directors have a fiduciary obligation to represent the interests of the shareholders, although, unfortunately, since boards are chosen by management, this has been honored more in its breach than its observance.
As a partial solution, the SEC and the FEC should promulgate rules before the next election to ensure that decisions on corporate political spending represent the desires of the shareholders. This could be done by requiring boards of directors to poll shareholders before making any specific political expenditure. Boards should be required to vote on each such political expenditure and publicly reveal every member’s vote. Ads paid for by a corporation or group of corporations should be required to reveal who was paying for it and perhaps, like a candidate, the Chairman of the Board should be required to appear and say the board approved the ad.
In order to prevent money laundering, bundling the cost of such ads under a group’s name should be prohibited so the public really knows who paid for the ad. Shareholders who disapproved of such expenditures should be allowed to get from the corporation their proportionate share of the expenditure. This wouldn’t have much effect if an individual wanted his money, but it would have an effect if pension funds and other large investors demanded their money.
In addition, foreign owned or controlled (5 percent or more?) corporations should be prohibited from spending money to influence American elections.
Congress ought to explicitly prohibit corporations from deducting the cost of such ads from their income so that taxpayers are not subsidizing them.
Congress should prohibit corporations that are government contractors from spending money on such ads. Such spending would seem to fall within the same rationale that the Court recognized in continuing to prohibit direct corporate contributions to politicians or upholding the Hatch Act.
If any member of the Court voted to strike down such clearly constitutional restrictions on corporate spending, it would then be time to discuss impeachment for subverting the Constitution.
We should remember what Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1864:
We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
The passage appears in a letter from Pres. Abraham Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.
Some remedies for the Supreme Court power grab
COMMENTARY | January 26, 2010
It’s easy to find activism, impossible to find original intent behind the Roberts/Scalia group’s ruling on corporate political spending. Martin Lobel suggests six sharp, practical steps to deal with it.
By Martin Lobel
Lobel@LNLlaw.com
Lincoln said that, even in the midst of war, the power of corporations made him tremble for the safety of the country.
The media need to focus public attention on the judicial legislating by the five “conservative” Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in deciding Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. They ruled that corporations have a right to spend as much money as they want to buy ads to support or oppose politicians – a question that the litigants weren’t arguing but that the Justices reached out to decide.
Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito divined that that was the original intent of the drafters of our Constitution even though Jefferson had warned against just such concentrations of power and they ignored Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Bank of the United States v. Deveaux when he referred to a corporation as an “invisible, intangible and artificial being” and “certainly not a citizen.” Apparently they believe that they know better what the drafters of the Constitution meant than Chief Justice Marshall who actually knew the drafters. The only rational conclusion to draw from this action is that “original intent” is merely a subterfuge to justify whatever action Scalia and his followers want to take.
The five “conservative” Justices had no problem substituting their opinion for the carefully balanced Congressional legislation to curb the power of money in elections. Under the now stricken McCain-Feingold legislation, corporations could spend money that was “ voluntarily” contributed to Political Action Committees (PACs) or to overpaid lobbyists who in turn would contribute or bundle contributions to candidates. Whether such contributions were really voluntary or not is open to question, but at least it gave economically powerful interests a means to influence elections without the appearance of a quid pro quo that direct expenditures entail. Apparently, even though the Justices don’t run for office, they felt they were more expert in deciding what influence money has on elections than those who do.
There is another interesting, and I hope unintended consequence, of the decision. Foreign corporations can now influence American politics directly by spending unlimited amounts of money. I can just see the memo now from an American subsidiary of a Chinese corporation to its home office:
“Dear Chairman, The United States Supreme Court has just decided we can directly influence their elections with our money. Please send me $100 million of the US Treasury Bonds we own so we can defeat those politicians who stand in our way of taking over the US economy.”
As long as those five supposedly conservative Justices are there, we are likely to see even more judicial activism and legislating, contrary to the judicial philosophy Chief Justice Roberts espoused at his confirmation hearings. It will be interesting to see what the Court will do with a case seeking to prohibit the publishing of the names of those petitioners opposed to gay marriage on the grounds they might be subject to ridicule or harassment. Will the same First Amendment rights so precious to corporations be struck down when it comes to revealing who signed a petition seeking a referendum opposing gay rights?
Congress still has remedies to protect the country from abusive corporate political spending. Here are several of them:
Congress and the SEC have the power to make sure that corporate political spending reflects the will of the shareholders, not just management. There is absolutely no dispute that boards of directors have a fiduciary obligation to represent the interests of the shareholders, although, unfortunately, since boards are chosen by management, this has been honored more in its breach than its observance.
As a partial solution, the SEC and the FEC should promulgate rules before the next election to ensure that decisions on corporate political spending represent the desires of the shareholders. This could be done by requiring boards of directors to poll shareholders before making any specific political expenditure. Boards should be required to vote on each such political expenditure and publicly reveal every member’s vote. Ads paid for by a corporation or group of corporations should be required to reveal who was paying for it and perhaps, like a candidate, the Chairman of the Board should be required to appear and say the board approved the ad.
In order to prevent money laundering, bundling the cost of such ads under a group’s name should be prohibited so the public really knows who paid for the ad. Shareholders who disapproved of such expenditures should be allowed to get from the corporation their proportionate share of the expenditure. This wouldn’t have much effect if an individual wanted his money, but it would have an effect if pension funds and other large investors demanded their money.
In addition, foreign owned or controlled (5 percent or more?) corporations should be prohibited from spending money to influence American elections.
Congress ought to explicitly prohibit corporations from deducting the cost of such ads from their income so that taxpayers are not subsidizing them.
Congress should prohibit corporations that are government contractors from spending money on such ads. Such spending would seem to fall within the same rationale that the Court recognized in continuing to prohibit direct corporate contributions to politicians or upholding the Hatch Act.
If any member of the Court voted to strike down such clearly constitutional restrictions on corporate spending, it would then be time to discuss impeachment for subverting the Constitution.
We should remember what Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1864:
We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
The passage appears in a letter from Pres. Abraham Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.
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