Daily Kos: Hatch vows "outright war" if HCR improved by reconciliation

Daily Kos: Hatch vows "outright war" if HCR improved by reconciliation

Gosh, aren't a-holes like Orrin Hatch are truly insufferable? Greg Sargent has the latest:

GOP Senator Orrin Hatch is now warning that if Dems pass health care reform via reconciliation it will lead to permanent “war” between the two parties — even though he voted for more than a half dozen GOP bills passed through the process known as...reconciliation.

It's not just that Hatch supported the use of reconciliation throughout the Bush years (as Greg documents thoroughly), it's also that Hatch has been a leader among Republican senators who have over the last year abused the filibuster in historic fashion. For the first time in our nation's history, every single major piece of legislation -- and every major confirmation -- in the Senate has been subjected to the filibuster.

So in a very real sense, Orrin Hatch has already declared "war." That's why you have senators like Jim DeMint calling for health care to be President Obama's "waterloo."

And now that some Democrats are considering mechanisms -- mechanisms that are clearly within the Senate's rules -- to get around Orrin Hatch's war, Hatch is crying about it. Well, tough luck Senator. You're the one who broke the Senate. Deal with it. ..

Johann Hari: This Corruption in Washington is Smothering America's Future

Johann Hari: This Corruption in Washington is Smothering America's Future

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For over a century, the US has slowly put some limits - too few, too feeble - on how much corporations can bribe, bully or intimidate politicians. On Tuesday, they were burned away in one whoosh. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations can suddenly run political adverts during an election campaign - and there is absolutely no limit on how many, or how much they can spend. So if you anger Goldman Sachs by supporting legislation to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, you will smack into a wall of 24/7 ads exposing your every flaw. If you displease Exxon-Mobil by supporting legislation to deal with global warming, you will now be hit by a tsunami of advertising saying you are opposed to jobs and The American Way. If you rile the defence contractors by opposing the gargantuan war budget, you will face a smear-campaign calling you Soft on Terror.

Representative Alan Grayson says: "It basically institutionalizes and legalizes bribery on the largest scale imaginable. Corporations will now be able to reward the politicians that play ball with them - and beat to death the politicians that don't...

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To understand the impact this will have, you need to grasp how smaller sums of corporate money have already hijacked American democracy. Let's look at a case that is simple and immediate and every American can see in front of them: healthcare. The United States is the only major industrialized democracy that doesn't guarantee healthcare for all its citizens. The result is that, according to a detailed study by Harvard University, some 45,000 Americans die needlessly every year. That's equivalent to 15 9/11s every year, or two Haitian earthquakes every decade.

This isn't because the American people like it this way. Gallup has found in polls for a decade now that two-thirds believe the government should guarantee care for every American: they are as good and decent and concerned for each other as any European. No: it is because private insurance companies make a fortune today out of a system that doesn't cover the profit-less poor, and can turn away the sickest people as "uninsurable". So they pay for politicians to keep the system broken. They fund the election campaigns of politicians on both sides of the aisle, and in return, those politicians veto any system that doesn't serve their paymasters. Look for example at Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic candidate for Vice-President. He has taken $448,066 in campaign contributions from private healthcare companies while his wife has raked in $2m as one of their chief lobbyists, and he has loyally blocked any attempt in the Senate to break the stranglehold of the health insurance companies and broaden coverage.

The US political system now operates within a corporate cage. If you want to run for office, you have to take corporate cash - and so you have to serve corporate interests. Corporations are often blatant in their corruption: it's not unusual for them to give to both competing candidates in a Senate race, to ensure all sides are indebted to them. This runs so deep that Congressman James Clyburn says the US has become a "corpocracy." It has reached the point that lobbyists now often write the country's laws. Not metaphorically; literally. The former Republican congressman Walter Jones spoke out in disgust in 2006 when he found that drug company lobbyists were actually authoring the words of the Medicare prescription bill, and puppet-politicians were simply nodding it through.

But what happens if politicians are serving the short-term profit-hunger of corporations, and not the public interest? You only have to look at the shuttered shops outside your window for the answer. The banks were rapidly deregulated from the Eighties through the Noughties because their lobbyists paid politicians on all sides, and demanded their payback in rolled-back rules and tossed-away laws. As Senator Dick Durbin says simply: "The banks own the Senate," so they had to obey. The result was that the banks made staggering profits - and were immediately rescued when they smashed the world economy. The only people who paid for it were the public, all over the world.

It is this corruption that has prevented Barack Obama from achieving anything substantial in his first year in office. How do you reregulate the banks, if the Senate is owned by Wall Street? How do you launch a rapid transition away from oil and coal to wind and solar, if the fossil fuel industry owns Congress? How do you break with a grab-the-oil foreign policy if Big Oil provides the invitation that gets you into the party of American politics?

His attempt at healthcare reform is dying because he thought he could only get through the Senate a system that the giant healthcare corporations and drug companies pre-approved. So he promised to keep the ban on bringing cheap drugs down from Canada, he pledged not to bargain over prices, and he dumped the idea of having a public option that would make sure ordinary Americans could actually afford it. The result was a Quasimodo healthcare proposal so feeble and misshapen that even the people of Massachusetts turned away in disgust.

Yet the corporations that caused this crisis are now being given yet more power. Bizarrely, the Supreme Court has decided that corporations are "persons", so they have the "right" to speak during elections. But corporations are not people. Should they have the right to bear arms, or to vote? It would make as much sense. They are a legal fiction, invented by the state - and they can be fairly regulated to stop them devouring their creator. This is the same Supreme Court that ruled that the detainees at Guantanomo Bay are not "persons" under the constitution and are deserving of basic protections. A court that says a living breathing human is less of a "person" than Lockheed Martin has gone badly awry. ...

Johann Hari: This Corruption in Washington is Smothering America's Future

Johann Hari: This Corruption in Washington is Smothering America's Future

This week, a disaster hit the United States, and the after-tremors will be shaking and breaking global politics for years. It did not grab the same press attention as the fall of liberal Kennedy-licking Massachusetts to a pick-up truck Republican, or President Obama's first State of the Union address, or the possible break-up of Brangelina and their United Nations of adopted infants. But it took the single biggest problem dragging American politics towards brutality and dysfunction - and made it much, much worse. Yet it also showed the only path that Obama can now take to salvage his Presidency.

For over a century, the US has slowly put some limits - too few, too feeble - on how much corporations can bribe, bully or intimidate politicians. On Tuesday, they were burned away in one whoosh. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations can suddenly run political adverts during an election campaign - and there is absolutely no limit on how many, or how much they can spend. So if you anger Goldman Sachs by supporting legislation to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, you will smack into a wall of 24/7 ads exposing your every flaw. If you displease Exxon-Mobil by supporting legislation to deal with global warming, you will now be hit by a tsunami of advertising saying you are opposed to jobs and The American Way. If you rile the defence contractors by opposing the gargantuan war budget, you will face a smear-campaign calling you Soft on Terror.

Representative Alan Grayson says: "It basically institutionalizes and legalizes bribery on the largest scale imaginable. Corporations will now be able to reward the politicians that play ball with them - and beat to death the politicians that don't... You won't even hear any more about the Senator from Kansas. It'll be the Senator from General Electric or the Senator from Microsoft." In 2008, Exxon Mobil made profits of $85bn. So if they dedicated just 10 percent to backing a President who would serve their interests, they would have $8.5bn to spend - more than every candidate for President and every candidate for Senate spent at the last election. And that's just one corporation. ...

To understand the impact this will have, you need to grasp how smaller sums of corporate money have already hijacked American democracy. Let's look at a case that is simple and immediate and every American can see in front of them: healthcare. The United States is the only major industrialized democracy that doesn't guarantee healthcare for all its citizens. The result is that, according to a detailed study by Harvard University, some 45,000 Americans die needlessly every year. That's equivalent to 15 9/11s every year, or two Haitian earthquakes every decade.

This isn't because the American people like it this way. ....

... Look for example at Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic candidate for Vice-President. He has taken $448,066 in campaign contributions from private healthcare companies while his wife has raked in $2m as one of their chief lobbyists, and he has loyally blocked any attempt in the Senate to break the stranglehold of the health insurance companies and broaden coverage. The US political system now operates within a corporate cage. If you want to run for office, you have to take corporate cash - and so you have to serve corporate interests. ..

Doug Kendall: But It Is True, Justice Alito

Doug Kendall: But It Is True, Justice Alito
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Conservatives and progressives may argue this morning about whether President Obama should have criticized the Court and about the severity of Justice Alito's breach of protocol, but Justice Alito faces a bigger problem: Obama's comment is true.
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1 The Court ruled that the First Amendment makes no distinction among speakers -- that the identity of a speaker makes no difference for purposes of government regulation of speech. As Justice Stevens pointed out in his dissenting opinion, this logic leads to some remarkable conclusions: "Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by 'Tokyo Rose' during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders." Stevens also clearly explained that the majority's logic "would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans."... ourt hinted that any regulation that distinguishes between corporations and individuals may be problematic -- raising the question of what other rights currently reserved for citizens the Court might soon extend to corporations. ...

2. To make matters worse, the Court dramatically redefined the meaning and standard of "corruption," ruling that only the strictest and most direct forms of corruption -- e.g. bribery -- are prohibited, and not, as was previously the standard, any "appearance of undue influence." ... If all speakers are treated equally under the First Amendment, and the only corruption Congress can prohibit is direct vote-trading for money, then there is no reason why foreign companies with a U.S.-presence couldn't spend endless amounts of money to influence U.S. elections. Under the logic of the Supreme Court's decision, just as Exxon can now spend millions to oppose a candidate who, for example, supports the climate bill, so, too, could Toyota or other foreign companies. ,,,

Justice Alito's Conduct and the Court's Credibility | CommonDreams.org

Justice Alito's Conduct and the Court's Credibility | CommonDreams.org by Glenn Greenwald

As I wrote at the time, I thought the condemnations of Rep. Joe Wilson's heckling of Barack Obama during his September health care speech were histrionic and excessive. Wilson and Obama are both political actors, it occurred in the middle of a political speech about a highly political dispute, and while the outburst was indecorous and impolite, Obama is not entitled to be treated as royalty. That was all much ado about nothing. By contrast, the behavior of Justice Alito at last night's State of the Union address -- visibly shaking his head and mouthing the words "not true" when Obama warned of the dangers of the Court's Citizens United ruling -- was a serious and substantive breach of protocol that reflects very poorly on Alito and only further undermines the credibility of the Court. It has nothing to do with etiquette and everything to do with the Court's ability to adhere to its intended function.

There's a reason that Supreme Court Justices -- along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- never applaud or otherwise express any reaction at a State of the Union address. It's vital -- both as a matter of perception and reality -- that those institutions remain apolitical, separate and detached from partisan wars. The Court's pronouncements on (and resolutions of) the most inflammatory and passionate political disputes retain legitimacy only if they possess a credible claim to being objectively grounded in law and the Constitution, not political considerations. The Court's credibility in this regard has -- justifiably -- declined substantially over the past decade, beginning with Bush v. Gore (where 5 conservative Justices issued a ruling ensuring the election of a Republican President), followed by countless 5-4 decisions in which conservative Justices rule in a way that promotes GOP political beliefs, while the more "liberal" Justices do to the reverse (Citizens United is but the latest example). Beyond that, the endless, deceitful sloganeering by right-wing lawyers about "judicial restraint" and "activism" -- all while the judges they most revere cavalierly violate those "principles" over and over -- exacerbates that problem further (the unnecessarily broad scope of Citizens United is the latest example of that, too, and John 'balls and strikes" Roberts may be the greatest hypocrite ever to sit on the Supreme Court). All of that is destroying the ability of the judicial branch to be perceived -- and to act -- as one of the few truly apolitical and objective institutions.

Justice Alito's flamboyantly insinuating himself into a pure political event, in a highly politicized manner, will only hasten that decline. On a night when both tradition and the Court's role dictate that he sit silent and inexpressive, he instead turned himself into a partisan sideshow -- a conservative Republican judge departing from protocol to openly criticize a Democratic President -- with Republicans predictably defending him and Democrats doing the opposite. Alito is now a political (rather than judicial) hero to Republicans and a political enemy of Democrats, which is exactly the role a Supreme Court Justice should not occupy.

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Right-wing criticisms -- that it was Obama who acted inappropriately by using his SOTU address to condemn the Court's decision -- are just inane. Many of the Court's rulings engender political passions and have substantial political consequences -- few more so than a ruling that invalidated long-standing campaign finance laws. Obama is an elected politician in a political branch and has every right to express his views on such a significant court ruling. While the factual claims Obama made about the ruling are subject to reasonable dispute, they're well within the realm of acceptable political rhetoric and are far from being "false" (e.g., though the ruling did not strike down the exact provision banning foreign corporations from electioneering speech, its rationale could plausibly lead to that; moreover, it's certainly fair to argue, as Obama did, that the Court majority tossed aside a century of judicial precedent). Presidents have a long history of condemning Court rulings with which they disagree -- Republican politicians, including Presidents, have certainly never shied away from condemning Roe v. Wade in the harshest of terms -- and Obama's comments last night were entirely consistent with that practice. While Presidents do not commonly criticize the Court in the SOTU address, it is far from unprecedented either. And, as usual, the disingenuousness levels are off the charts: imagine the reaction if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had done this at George Bush's State of the Union address.

What's most disturbing here is the increasing trend of right-wing Justices inserting themselves ever more aggressively into overtly political disputes in a way that seriously undermines their claims of apolitical objectivity. Antonin Scalia goes hunting with Dick Cheney, dubiously refuses to recuse himself from a lawsuit challenging the legality of Cheney's actions, and then rules in Cheney's favor. Scalia has an increasing tendency to make highly politicized comments about purely political conflicts, most recently defending torture in an interview with 60 Minutes. As part of Clarence Thomas' promotional efforts to sell his book, he spent substantial time building his conservative icon status with the furthest right-wing media elements -- even parading himself around on Rush Limbaugh's radio program -- and turned himself into the food fight of the week between Democrats and Republicans.

It was clear from Sam Alito's confirmation hearing and his record of appellate opinions that he is a dogmatic, state-revering, right-wing judge. But last night, he unmasked himself as a politicized and intemperate Republican as well. Much of the public will view his future "judicial" and "legal" conclusions -- and those of his fellow Court members -- with an even greater degree of cynicism. And justifiably so. Whatever impulses led him to behave that way last night, they have nothing to do with sober judicial reasoning or apolitical restraint.

Blueprint for Dems

Blueprint for Dems
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In my view, the Democrats--including the president--have absurdly continued to stumble along the path of "bipartisanship" at exactly the same time the Republicans have waged the most vigorous partisan and obstructionist strategy in recent history.

Instead of making it clear that the first two years of the Obama administration would be about digging the country out of the incredible mess that Bush's eight years left us in, (deep recession, financial collapse, record-breaking deficits, disintegrating healthcare system, two wars, lack of respect from the international community, neglect of the environment), Obama, incredibly, has enabled tens of millions of Americans to now believe that Bush's failures are his as well.

Unlike FDR in 1933, who consistently denounced Hoover's Republican policies as the cause of the country's perilous condition, Obama appears very reluctant to be partisan and point out to the American people the cause of our current crises. Can one imagine Obama, for example, telling the American people as Roosevelt did in 1936, "I welcome" the "hatred" of the "economic royalists" whose greed has devastated the country?

In response to Obama's genteel and bipartisan outreach, the Republicans have undertaken an unprecedented campaign of rhetorical savagery. The Right-Wing Echo Chamber of Fox News and talk-radio has implied that Obama is an "illegitimate" president not born in the United States, that he is a friend of terrorists, that he is an antiwhite racist, that he rules unconstitutionally and that his administration reeks of Chicago-style corruption. And those are the respectful attacks!

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The result of all this is that Democrats of every stripe and many independents are perplexed, dispirited and sometimes disgusted. Constituency after constituency has been ignored or rejected. Some examples: ...

[GOP Sate of the Union] McDonnell Rebuttal Heavily Underwritten By Wall Street

McDonnell Rebuttal Heavily Underwritten By Wall Street

This morning, not a whole lot is being said about Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell's GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union address. Given the great fun everyone had after Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's February 2009 attempt, that's probably as good a sign as any that McDonnell's effort, which he executed with new-look stagecraft and a multi-platform promotion, was a success.

Look for this style of SOTU rebuttal to become standard: here's former Bob Dole press secretary Douglas MacKinnon making the eminently sensible case for this in the pages of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

But, as Lee Fang points out over at ThinkProgress, one lost point is the extent to which all that new-look stagecraft was underwritten by Wall Street. He points out that the rebuttal pageantry, as well as the accompanying online media materials, were funded by McDonnell's Opportunity Virginia PAC. Financial disclosures subsequently reveal significant financial industry support:

Fang goes on to note, "When McDonnell opposes Obama's proposed efforts break up big banks, regulate the financial sector, and impose a financial responsibility fee to financial institutions which helped cause the current recession, it should be noted that the very industry McDonnell is fighting to defend underwrote the platform on which he is speaking, both virtually and in Richmond." But it should be noted that McDonnell made only passing mention to those White House efforts. Outside of generic free-market platitudes, McDonnell restricted his comments on the financial industry to a glancing and oblique mentions:

Many Americans are concerned about this Administration's efforts to exert greater control over car companies, banks, energy and health care.

Over-regulating employers won't create more employment; overtaxing investors won't foster more investment.

Top-down one-size fits all decision making should not replace the personal choices of free people in a free market, nor undermine the proper role of state and local governments in our system of federalism. As our Founders clearly stated, and we Governors understand, government closest to the people governs best.

The next-largest contributor, the coal industry, got a stronger shout-out from McDonnell, who urged, "We are blessed here in America with vast natural resources, and we must use them all."

But this is an interesting aspect to the potential shift in the rebuttal presentation -- fancy staging and top-flight production value cost more money. It's going to be really fun to track who pays for these things -- for each political party -- going forward.

Obama Hammers Supreme Court in Speech - CBS News

Obama Hammers Supreme Court in Speech - CBS News

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President Obama is taking aim at the Supreme Court's recent decision to roll back limits on corporate spending on political campaigns in his State of the Union address this evening, saying the high court "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign companies - to spend without limit in our elections."

"Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities," the president will say, according to excerpts provided by the White House. "They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

According to CBS News Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford, "the rebuke of the Court is extraordinary." Many of the justices involved in the 5-4 decision are expected to be in the House chamber to hear Mr. Obama's speech. ...

OpEdNews - Article: The Supreme Court's Partisanship

OpEdNews - Article: The Supreme Court's Partisanship

The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling that lets corporations spend all they want to punish political enemies and reward political friends is a reminder that the panel's Republican majority has become one more potent weapon in the Right's already intimidating arsenal.

Over the past several decades, the American Right has assembled such an array of political weaponry ranging from a vast propaganda apparatus that defines "reality" for tens of millions of Americans to specialized attack groups that can target troublesome figures in the press or academia that it's hard to envision how this powerful grip on U.S. democracy can now be broken.

The Right's influence is so wide and so deep that it can front for wealthy special interests under the guise of "populism" and persuade many Americans that their real enemy is not Big Corporations, but Big Government.

Guided by Fox News and other well-financed parts of the right-wing media, the Tea Partiers apparently believe they are engaged in a movement to free the Republic from the tyranny of the federal government, when they're actually helping consolidate the power of corporations against the only force that can possibly check corporate domination, a democratized federal government.

Adding to this political imbalance, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Jan. 21 to cede more power to corporate money by striking down restrictions on what corporations and other special interests can do to finance attacks on or support for a particular political candidate.

The five Republican-appointed justices left little doubt that they will be very active when partisan questions come before the court, despite their prior assurances that they detest "activist judges" and despite their promises to show great respect for legal precedents. The campaign-finance decision shattered decades of precedents and tilts the political playing field even more in the Republican direction.

This transformation of the federal courts into a powerful line of defense for Republican and corporate interests began several decades ago when the Right denounced "liberal judges" who ended racial segregation and restricted state anti-abortion laws. ...

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Trusting the Law

Still, Gore and his lawyers voiced confidence that the rule of law would prevail, that the U.S. Supreme Court would rise above any partisan concerns and insist that the votes be counted and that the will of the voters be respected.

The Gore team went before Rehnquist's court on Dec. 11 apparently still not cognizant of the reality that whatever they argued, the five conservative justices were determined to make Bush the next President.

At about 10 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2000, five Republican justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Florida recount was flawed and gave the state only two hours to correct the shortcomings and complete the tally.

Since that was impossible, the ruling essentially handed the White House to Bush.

Later, information emerged revealing that the five Republican justices had flipped their legal rationale nearly 180 degrees between Dec. 11, when they were first prepared to rule in Bush's favor, and the night of Dec. 12 when the decision to make Bush the next President finally was announced.

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Yet possibly even more startling than the stretched logic of O'Connor and Kennedy was the readiness of Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas to sign on to a ruling that was almost completely at odds with their original legal rationale for blocking the recount.

On the night of Dec. 11, that trio was ready to bar the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had created "new law." On Dec. 12, the same trio prevented the recount because the Florida Supreme Court had not created "new law," the establishment of precise statewide recount standards.

The five conservatives had devised their own Catch-22. If the Florida Supreme Court set clearer standards, that would be struck down as creating "new law." If the state court didn't set clearer standards, that would be struck down as violating the "equal protection" principle. Heads Bush wins; tails Gore loses.

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Anthony DiMaggio: Supremely Swindled

Anthony DiMaggio: Supremely Swindled

The Supreme Court took a big step this week in extending corporate power in the electoral arena. In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down limits on interest groups wishing to directly fund campaign ads in the run-up to national elections. Previous rules – including the 2002 bi-partisan campaign reform act – prohibited corporations from directly funding campaign ads in Congressional races, either in favor of, or against individual candidates. Those rules have been struck down in this new decision. Previously, rules regulating spending merely required that corporate interests channel their money through formal mediums; corporations were required to filter spending through political action committees (PACs), and were still able to spend unlimited amounts on “issue ads,” although not on ads attacking specific candidates. In this sense, the Supreme Court’s ruling should not be seen as a milestone so much as one of many recent rulings seeking to strengthen corporate power. Buckley v. Valeo (1976) represents one of the earlier efforts to expand the voice of corporations, as the Supreme Court ruled that spending money on campaign contributions was a constitutionally protected form of free speech. The Supreme Court also struck down a portion of the 2002 bi-partisan campaign reform act in 2007, which prohibited corporations and unions from financing political ads during the two months before general elections and the month before primaries.

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There are good reasons to reject the notion that campaign money is a form of free speech that nurtures democracy. One particular danger from the Supreme Court’s actions is the increased probability that businesses will stifle progressive change. Officials who enthusiastically support corporate power may be rewarded by massive increases in spending on issue and candidate ads that benefit them during re-election, while candidates who support progressive reform will be the subject of an organized business onslaught that is without financial restrictions.

The complexities of campaign finance already strongly favored business interests prior to this ruling. It’s difficult to see how reducing restrictions on lobbying will not further tip the scales in favor of business. Consider some of the following evidence regarding the entrenchment of corporate electoral power:

- Business elites already exercise the power of the purse over campaign contributions, in addition to dominating the interest group process more generally. The vast majority of campaign contributions in the 2008 election – 71 percent – came from business PACs and individuals associated with business, contrasted with just 2.7 percent of contributions from labor PACs and those associated with labor. This pattern is longstanding: 75 percent of all contributions also came from business in the 2000 election, with just 5.5 percent from labor. Privileged actors including business, trade and professional associations - which combine to form the heart of the capitalist economy - account for approximately 74 percent of the competing sides of public policy conflicts in Washington, as compared to citizens groups, unions, and all other interest groups, which make up just 10 percent of all actors.

- Business is in the best position to benefit from escalating campaign costs. Incumbents are increasingly forced to raise small fortunes to win or remain in office. While the average winner of a Senate election spent $5.2 million in 1998, that had increased to $8.5 million by 2008 (a 63 percent increase). Similarly, the average House winner spent $650,000 in 1998, and $1.37 million in 2008 (a 110 percent increase). Scholarly studies of Congress find a strong positive relationship between campaign contributions from interest groups and legislators’ voting on bills benefitting those groups. While this relationship is not consistent for public policy issues that are of high salience and strongly contested, the relationship holds for low visibility issues – which account for the vast majority of bills passed.

- Campaign Contributions and spending are most common among those of extreme wealth, not the common person. Consider that the 2008 election was the most expensive in U.S. history, with $5.3 billion raised by all candidates (compared to $4 billion in 2004). In a time when money increasingly dominates elections, those who provide contributions will exercise a major advantage in aiding their preferred candidates. In the 2002 election cycle, the richest .1 percent of Americans dominated this process, providing 80 percent of all campaign contributions. Business power is dispersed across both parties; in the 2008 election, business gave 54 percent of their donations to Democrats, and 46 percent to Republicans. The most dominant of all contributors to both parties – those who are in the best position to gain from the recent ruling – include the finance, insurance, real estate, and health care industries.

- Business interests give disproportionately more to incumbents, helping the current office holders in both parties to solidify their monopoly power and limit democratic competition. In the 1990s, it was common for incumbents in contested elections to receive 83 to 93 percent of the total contributions for their races. Business dominated elections in the U.S. are extremely uncompetitive because of the dominance of incumbents. On average, 86 percent of Senate incumbents were re-elected in the six Congressional elections from 1998 to 2008, while an average of 96 percent of House incumbents were re-elected. “Congressional stagnation” has become a serious problem, considering that the primary requisite for democratic elections is competitiveness. As of 2002, only 39 of the 435 races in the House were won with less than 55 percent of the vote. Essentially, this means that just 9 percent of House races were competitive, meaning they had an electoral margin of victory of less than ten percent. This problem continues today, with just 11 percent of elections being competitive in 2008 and with the incumbency re-election rate at 94 percent for the House and 83 percent for the Senate.

What are we to take from all these statistics? To summarize: elections are already extremely expensive and becoming more so. Business and other privileged actors dominate the electoral process, as they are the main actors in Washington and the primary financial supporters for elections. Finally, elections are largely uncompetitive with corporate financed incumbents monopolizing campaign contributions in order to appeal to the largest number of voters.

Most scholars refuse to take issue with corporate dominated elections. The dominant view in political science is that American elections are generally democratic affairs that allow voters to connect with officials in pursuit of the common good. If elections are uncompetitive, these academics often argue, it’s because the public is already so happy with its leaders and the benefits they provide in the form of constituency service and representation. There’s little reason to take these assumptions seriously in light of the widespread distrust of all levels of government among the public. According to the American National Election Study of 2004, 56 percent of Americans said “the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves” rather than “for the benefit of all the people.” By late 2008 the Program on International Policy Attitudes reported that 80 percent of Americans felt government was run by “a few big interests.” The same study found that 80 percent of Americans felt that “the public should have greater influence on government” than they currently do. ...

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In the arena of political advertising, the Supreme Court’s empowerment of corporate interest groups poses an additional problem. Relaxation of the rules governing campaign ads allows business groups to increase their efforts to manipulate voters’ opinions. Voters often react strongly to political advertising.

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Gallup reports that 55 percent of Americans think that the “same rules [should] apply to corporations, unions, and individuals” for campaign advertising. Their opinions might radically change if they were aware of the electoral trends discussed here. When I teach American Government, my students typically enter the course with little knowledge of politics and elections. Students become far more critical, however, after a review of the facets of the election business discussed above. Most Americans know little about the problems confronting our electoral system. Sadly, their ignorance is likely to continue in light of a Supreme Court ruling that emboldens privileged actors who operate behind the electoral scenes.

Anthony DiMaggio teaches American and Global Politics at Illinois State University. He is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010). He can be reached atadimagg@ilstu.edu

Double Standard For Bernanke: Only 50 Votes Needed In Senate

Double Standard For Bernanke: Only 50 Votes Needed In Senate

When it comes to progressive priorities in the Senate, there's one standard: 60 votes are needed. But for Ben Bernanke, there's a second standard: 50 will be just fine, thank you.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are asking colleagues who are reluctant to support Bernanke's nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman to nevertheless vote with them to end a filibuster and allow a vote on the actual nomination. The reluctant members would then be free to vote no to express their displeasure. Several Democrats have committed to just that and others are considering it.

The public health insurance option was stripped from health care reform because it didn't have 60 votes. An expansion of Medicare took its place but it, too, was dropped for having fewer than 60. Both proposals had at least 50 votes. Dawn Johnsen, a nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, has the backing of progressive organizations, but a 60-vote threshold has held her up for a year. ...

PostPartisan - Not your father's filibuster (or your mother's)

PostPartisan - Not your father's filibuster (or your mother's)

I’m glad to see that my recent columns on the dysfunctional Senate and the wall of Republican obstruction there are stirring up comment, both from a reader whose letter The Post published on Monday and from Colby King, a colleague I admire and usually agree with. We need to put the dysfunction of the Senate front-and-center in our political discussion, and the more debate, the better.

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And, in fact, most of Bush’s nominations were not blocked by the filibuster. At the point the earlier column was written, as I noted, the Senate had approved 22 of Bush’s Circuit Court nominees and 101 nominations to district courts. I was hardly calling for the promiscuous use of filibusters, and it was not being used promiscuously.

That was then. Now, Republicans in the Senate have decided to use the filibuster on just about everything, even the recent defense appropriations bill, which, when all the delay was over, passed with overwhelming Republican support. In his excellent column on the filibuster earlier this week, the New York Times’ Paul Krugman cited important research by Congressional scholar Barbara Sinclair of UCLA on the fact that we are confronting something very new:

In the 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.

Look at those numbers again: The filibuster used to be unusual – 8 percent in the 1960s. Now it’s routine – 70 percent in recent years. The filibuster has become a standard part of the way the Senate does business. That is wrong, and it creates dysfunction.

Here what Sinclair herself writes in “The New World of U. S. Senators,” her essay in Congress Reconsidered:

The last few years, and especially 2007-2008, have seen the Senate closer than ever to true gridlock. The minority party seems to perceive less danger to its reputation in almost constant obstructionism, perhaps because attentive citizens are so split along coinciding ideological and partisan lines….This is not a situation conducing to major policy accomplishments . . . .a legislative body that cannot respond to the problems that concern the people eventually loses legitimacy.

And that is what’s happening now.

10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics | CommonDreams.org

10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics | CommonDreams.org

...

But what can be done to limit or reverse the effect of the Court's decision? Here are 10 ideas:

1. Amend the U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings. Since the First Amendment case for corporate spending as a free speech right rests on corporations being considered "persons," the proposed amendment would strike at the core of the ruling's justification. The push for the 28th Amendment is coming from the grassroots, where a prairie fire is catching on from groups such as Public Citizen, Voter Action, and the Campaign to Legalize Democracy.
2. Require shareholders to approve political spending by their corporations.Public Citizen and the Brennan Center for Justice are among the groups advocating this measure, and some members of Congress appear interested. Britain has required such shareholder approval since 2000.
3. Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which provides federal financing for Congressional elections. This measure has the backing of organizations representing millions of Americans, including Moveon.org, the NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, and the League of Young Voters. Interestingly, the heads of a number of major corporations have also signed on, including those of Ben & Jerry's, Hasbro, Crate & Barrel, and the former head of Delta Airlines.
4. Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free broadcast air time for political messages. This would limit the advantages of paid advertisements in reaching the public through television where most political spending goes.
5. Ban political advertising by corporations that receive government money, hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad. A fear that many observers have noted is that the Court's ruling will allow foreign corporations to influence U.S. elections. According to The New York Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) are exploring this option.
6. Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes this, calling it "The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act."
7. Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national exchanges if they make political contributions and expenditures. Another one from Grayson, which he calls "The Public Company Responsibility Act."
8. Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than for promoting their products. Grayson calls this "The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act."
9. Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of commercials that his or her company pays for, another possibility from the Schumer-Van Hollen team, according to The New York Times
10. Publicize the reform options, inform the public of who is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry. If we are to safeguard our democracy, media must inform and citizens must act.

The measures listed above-and others that seek to reverse the dominance of money in our political system-will not be easy. But grassroots anger at this latest win for corporate power is running high. History shows that when the public is sufficiently aroused, actions that once seemed impossible can, in hindsight, seem inevitable.

Who's activist now? In election spending case, conservatives | McClatchy

Who's activist now? In election spending case, conservatives | McClatchy

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's decision Thursday to lift long-standing limits on corporate campaign spending exalts free speech above fears about political corruption.

The 5-4 ruling exposes how the court's stark ideological divide is stronger than Chief Justice John G. Roberts' stated fealty to precedence and consensus building. It's a markedly activist decision, going well beyond what the justices were asked to do.

And, not least, the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will almost certainly incite further efforts to unravel campaign finance restrictions in the name of the First Amendment.

"Political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court's majority.

...

Legally, the decision could have equally dramatic effects. These include shaping the long-term jurisprudential reputations of Roberts and his colleagues.

During his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing, Roberts assured lawmakers that he would strive to achieve more unified court decisions. He further insisted that "judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent" that binds the court.

However, in what New York University Law School Professor Burt Neuborne called a "terrible, terrible body blow" to the court's institutional standing, Thursday's decision explicitly reversed an entire 1990 decision and part of a 2003 decision. Stevens spent a good portion of his 90-page dissent denouncing the seeming disregard for stare decisis, the principle of heeding past decisions.

"The majority blazes through our precedents, overruling or disavowing a body of case law," Stevens wrote, adding that "the path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution."

Ironically, the 57-page opinion that united the court's conservative wing might also provide ammunition for critics of "activist" judges.

...

Report: Bush order allowing murder of US citizens abroad still in effect | Raw Story

Report: Bush order allowing murder of US citizens abroad still in effect | Raw Story

If a United States citizen was determined to have joined a foreign terrorist group, that person could be legally murdered under orders given by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks.

In spite of an administration change in Washington, D.C., that allowance is still in effect, according to a late-breaking report inThe Washington Post on Tuesday.

The report delves into an increasing American role in Yemen, spotlighting an effort to capture or kill Anwar al Awlaki, an American citizen who exchanged e-mails with alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan.

"After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said," the Post reported. "The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose 'a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,' said one former intelligence official. ...

Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction | CommonDreams.org

Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction | CommonDreams.org

by Chris Hedges

Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d'état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.

The fiction of democracy remains useful, not only for corporations, but for our bankrupt liberal class. If the fiction is seriously challenged, liberals will be forced to consider actual resistance, which will be neither pleasant nor easy. As long as a democratic facade exists, liberals can engage in an empty moral posturing that requires little sacrifice or commitment. They can be the self-appointed scolds of the Democratic Party, acting as if they are part of the debate and feel vindicated by their cries of protest.

Much of the outrage expressed about the court's ruling is the outrage of those who prefer this choreographed charade. As long as the charade is played, they do not have to consider how to combat what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of "inverted totalitarianism."

Inverted totalitarianism represents "the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry," Wolin writes in "Democracy Incorporated." Inverted totalitarianism differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, and finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, boast of replacing decaying structures with a new, revolutionary structure. They purport to honor electoral politics, freedom and the Constitution. But they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.

Inverted totalitarianism is not conceptualized as an ideology or objectified in public policy. It is furthered by "power-holders and citizens who often seem unaware of the deeper consequences of their actions or inactions," Wolin writes. But it is as dangerous as classical forms of totalitarianism. In a system of inverted totalitarianism, as this court ruling illustrates, it is not necessary to rewrite the Constitution, as fascist and communist regimes do. It is enough to exploit legitimate power by means of judicial and legislative interpretation. This exploitation ensures that huge corporate campaign contributions are protected speech under the First Amendment. It ensures that heavily financed and organized lobbying by large corporations is interpreted as an application of the people's right to petition the government. The court again ratified the concept that corporations are persons, except in those cases where the "persons" agree to a "settlement." Those within corporations who commit crimes can avoid going to prison by paying large sums of money to the government while, according to this twisted judicial reasoning, not "admitting any wrongdoing." There is a word for this. It is called corruption.

Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. ...

Stern Lashes Out At Senate Dems, Calls Some Legislative 'Terrorists'

Stern Lashes Out At Senate Dems, Calls Some Legislative 'Terrorists'

Two of the most powerful union officials in the country lashed out at Senate Democrats on Tuesday, jokingly calling some of them legislative "terrorists" and slamming leadership for "squandering" a supermajority in the Senate.

Pointing to the failure of Congress to pass health care reform and effectively stimulate job creation, SEIU president Andy Stern insisted that "unless something dramatic happens here" the country's labor activists will not be eager to help the Democratic Party in the 2010 elections. Speaking at a forum on the state of the American worker at the Center for American Progress, he urged House Democrats to pass the Senate's version of health care legislation with promises that it will be amended after the fact using reconciliation. And he called on President Obama to drive home this point during the State of the Union address on Wednesday.

"Take the Senate bill as it is as the foundation to find ways whether through reconciliation or other legislative processes to try and fix the things that a lot of people think need to be fixed both now in the House and the Senate," Stern said. "I think going through reconciliation we don't have Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman to kick around anymore. So the 58 other senators get to decide something they maybe didn't get to decide the first time around because of the hostage-taking that is going on in the Senate."

Stern wasn't done lashing out at Lieberman, Nelson and the other conservative members of the Senate Democratic caucus. Reflecting on the policy changes that these senators secured during health care negotiations, he argued that the country "should send the national security people over to [the Senate to] explain to them why we don't negotiate with terrorists..."

"Because there are a lot of terrorists in the Senate who think we are supposed to negotiate with them when they have their particular needs that they want met," he added. ...

OpEdNews - Article: United States of Corporate America: From Democracy To Plutocracy

OpEdNews - Article: United States of Corporate America: From Democracy To Plutocracy

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

Plato, ancient Greek philosopher

..."The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."

Alex Carey, Australian social scientist

"The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations."

Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. emeritus Professor of Linguistics

The Obama administration got a kick in the pants from the Massachusetts voters when they filled former Senator Ted Kennedy's seat by electing a conservative Republican candidate. The essence of their message was: stop dithering and start governing; stop trying to satisfy the bankers and please the editors of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, and start caring for the ordinary people.

Two days later, President Barack Obama seemed to have understood the people's message when he announced a "Volcker rule" that will forbid large banks from owning hedge funds that make money by placing large bets against their own clients, using information that these same clients gave them. It was time. Such a policy should have been announced months ago, if not years ago.

On the same day, however, a nonelected body, the U.S. Supreme Court, threw a different challenge to the Obama administration. Indeed, on Thursday January 21 (2010), a Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon itself to profoundly change the U.S. Constitution and American democracy. Indeed, in what can be labeled a most reactionary decision, the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that legal entities, such as corporations and labor unions, have the same purely personal rights to free speech as living individuals. Indeed, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.

The only problem with such a wide interpretation of the U.S. Bills of Rights (N.B.: The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights) is that this runs contrary its letter and its spirit, since it clearly states later on that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the citizenry or States." The words "people" and "citizenry" clearly refer here to living human beings, not to legal or artificial entities such as business corporations, labor unions, financial organizations or political lobbies.

Such entities, for example, cannot vote in an election. Indeed, laws governing voting rights in the United States clearly establish that only "Adult citizens of the United States who are residents of one of the 50 states have the right to participate fully in the political system of the United States". No mention is made of corporations or other legal entities.

However, with its January 19 (2010) decision, the majority on the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court is saying in effect that even if artificial entities cannot vote in an election, they can spend as much money as they like to influence the outcome of an election. Money is speech for them, and the more a legal entity has of it, the more it has a right to become powerful politically and control the political agenda. ...

OpEdNews - Article: KEITH OLBERMAN SAID IT RIGHT, & We see "Worst Media Coverage on the newest Supreme Court DECISION in USA ever"

OpEdNews - Article: KEITH OLBERMAN SAID IT RIGHT, & We see "Worst Media Coverage on the newest Supreme Court DECISION in USA ever"
...

However, Keith Olberman of MSNBC's Countdown gave an outstanding talk on TV today stating that if the Supreme Court had thrown out all spending caps in professional football, all the Sports media would be up in arms and wondering what would become of the smaller NFL franchises once players and teams had the right to gather and spend as much as they want from any source. Yet, as Olberman noted, "The [USA] political press greeted it [Supreme Court Decision] with a Yawn."

Earlier, in the same program, Olberman had warned the USA rightwing pundits to note that the Roberts' US Supreme Court--America's most activist supposedly conservative court ever--had opened the door to Venezuelan-owned owned CITGO throwing its money around in USA elections.

WORST SUPREME COURT DECISION EVER

Similarly, like in the USA football parable noted above--Olberman added that whereby the Green Bay Packers would be forever-bankrupted by such Supreme Court activists if the Court chose to meddle in NFL football agreements the way it has in American election regulations, almost all USA political parties may be wiped from the map:

Good-bye Republicans, Good-bye Democrats, Good-by any hoped-for progressive third party.

Bob Edgar of Common Cause added, "We have to immediately press Congress to pass the Fair Elections Now Act -- public financing of campaigns. It's the only way ordinary people can have a fighting chance that we won't be completely overwhelmed by special interests. We also must make it clear that corporations, unions, or anyone else exploiting the Roberts Court's indefensible ruling will be exposed to public scrutiny. ...

I'm growing very weary of politics - Democratic Underground

I'm growing very weary of politics - Democratic Underground

I'm close to retirement age, it's impossible to switch jobs now because of my age and the economic situation out there, and I am simply tired of arguing about whether WE are right and they are wrong. Up until 2006, we've been under Republican control since 1980 (Clinton was an anomaly) things ave gotten worse everywhere, I should have been at a point where I was looking forward to retiring and comfortably at that, and yet here we are in a depression and the only people secure are the super-rich who picked my pocket over the last decade. The decision by the Supreme Court to give personage to corporations has just about sealed it for me. Yeah yeah, don't give up you say. What is our purpose then? And how do we balance that sledgehammer? We can't. We struggle here on DU for a week to get enough contributions to survive, yet now we too must compete against corporate America? How do we know that some of us in the future won't just be paid shills to undermine the premise of DU? We don't, but I don't know if I'm up for that fight either.

After a year of watching the rookie team in Washington bungle just about everything, backtrack on virtually every promise, wilt under the pressure of an atomic-clock precise noise machine, and generally forget how they got there, I am losing hope that we won't once again be overtaken by thugs and corporate front men in the next two elections. And I am tired of arguing with plants and hit men on this site whose only purpose is to tombstone valued members. I am sick of it all. Imports are gods, domestic autos should fail, foreign workers need OUR jobs, Unions simply drain the workforce. What kind of convoluted thinking is that? We outsource simple help desk jobs to India and keep increasing the unemployment benefits to the jobless here. What the hell happened to us? Too many people on this site think it's fun to jab at the heart of America. And too many people don't see the forest for the trees. What's next, outsourcing web design to China? That should put a knot in a few people's knickers. But I digress.

I am sick of arguing about politics. I've gained noting, convinced no one that my position is better, and the politicians in Washington don't listen to me anyway.

What's the point?

�American Corporatocracy��� : Information Clearing House -� ICH

�American Corporatocracy : Information Clearing House -� ICH

By Paul A. Moore

January 22, 2010 "Information Clearing House" --Schools teach that the United States of America is a democracy. The government was established as "of, by, and for the people" and later on, a President Abraham Lincoln called the nation's people to join and die in a civil war that such a thing might never perish from the earth. Aside from the extent the lesson was ever in accord with the truth, it has today become an outright absurdity. The Supreme Court has declared once and for all that the corporations will rule. The United States of America is now better described as a corporatocracy. The government is owned and dictated to by these capitalist creations whose God is Mammon.

Corporations are, of course, different from people. They are devoid of human emotion. They are constitutionally unable to generate empathy. They feel nothing if people suffer exploitation, if people live in misery, or if people die horribly. Union Carbide was unaffected by the thousands dead and dying in Bhopal. It registered only on the balance sheet, a $470-million loss taken for the sake of future corporate viability under a new name, Dow Chemical. The corporation will not be reasoned with, pleaded with, or shamed into changing course even when life on the planet hangs in the balance. McDonald's is in the process of teaching Starbucks that even the pretense of a social conscience is a losing marketing ploy.
...
The US government has been hollowed out during the rise to absolute power of the corporations. Elections have become an elaborate "reality show" that plays out on corporate television for viewers entertainment. If you watch FOX, your reality is filtered through Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, NBC is General Electric news, CNN is Time/Warner news, ABC brings you into Disney's world, and Viacom regularly checks the iconic CBS news department to make sure Edward R. Murrow is still dead. That is when Viacom is not preparing America's youth for slavery and death through MTV and B.E.T.

The actual counting of the American people's votes is done by the corporations. Little wonder giant defense contractor United Technologies recently moved to take the job off Diebold's hands. Corporate sentinels, the lobbyists, roam the halls of government enforcing discipline among their hired hands, allowing the most servile to feed longest at the public trough. So the Congress has not passed legislation and the Supreme Court has not decided a case, in which significant wealth was involved, in favor of the people in thirty years. Each and every decision of US government now transfers wealth from the people to the corporate masters.

The corporations now have in their sights the last remaining institutional pillars of American democracy. The Business Roundtable, the Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation have been working mightily to crash the public schools. Wall Street is funding the effort to gain control of the Social Security trust fund for its investment bankers. And the whole corporate gang is intent on "starving the beast" or killing state and local governments. Their success in this effort is probably best expressed in Hawaii where the number of days children spend in school has been paired from 180 to 163, and in Detroit where teachers will give $500 a pay period back to the state, and in New Orleans where there are only a handful of public schools left, and in the states from California to New York to Florida where public school budgets have been slashed to the bone.

Then finally, there is the most ominous development of all. The corporations have begun forming their own Praetorian Guard. The massacre of Iraqi civilians and the patrolling of the hurricane ravaged streets of New Orleans have made Xe, formerly Blackwater Worldwide, formerly Blackwater USA, the most famous of the rising corporate armies. Contrary to any notion of cost effectiveness, mercenaries protect US State Department personnel in Iraq instead of the regular military. It seems not to make sense, unless the corporatocracy is looking ahead to a day when they can no longer trust the US military to carry out attacks on an American people's resistance.

Paul A. Moore
Public School Teacher.

Supreme Court Justice Stevens Bemoans Changed Court - ABC News

Supreme Court Justice Stevens Bemoans Changed Court - ABC News
...
The five-justice conservative majority, which has flexed its ideological muscle in many areas in recent years, had been moving toward greater limits on government power to regulate campaign money. Thursday's decision, blurring legal distinctions between corporations and individuals and highlighting free political speech, is the most significant to date.

It outright reverses the 1990 Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and portions of the 2003 case of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, both of which had upheld government limits on corporate expenditures.

Thursday's case originally had come to the justices as a narrow challenge to Citizens United's offering of Hillary Clinton: The Movie. The conservative non-profit corporation had sought to sell the movie attacking then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 election season through a TV video-on-demand service. The justices ratcheted up the stakes last June when they said they would use the case to re-examine the past rulings allowing regulation of corporate spending in races.

...

In his 90-page opinion, Stevens rejected the notion that corporations equivalent to individuals and chastised the majority for not deferring to Congress' fears about corporations' "war chests" and the possible "corporate domination of the electoral process."

"The court's blinkered and aphoristic approach to the First Amendment may well promote corporate power at the cost of the individual and collective self-expression the Amendment was meant to serve," Stevens wrote.
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At the same time, Kennedy also noted that since the late 19th century, states and the federal government have banned direct corporate contributions to candidates. It was not until 1947, he said, that Congress first prohibited independent expenditures by corporations and labor unions. The validity of regulation beyond independent corporate spending, such as bans on direct contributions to candidates, would rest on future litigation.
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