Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Will Bill O'Reilly Quit?
Bill O'Reilly threatened to quit his show if President Obama raised his taxes.
Speaking on his Monday show, O'Reilly delivered a stinging rebuttal to Obama's speech from earlier in the day. In that speech, Obama introduced his so-called "Buffett Rule" and said that the rich should pay more in taxes. This did not sit well with O'Reilly, who accused Obama of using misleading statistics and of endangering the business climate.
He used himself as an example, saying that he could not ensure his continued tenure on Fox News if his taxes were raised to 50 percent.
"My corporations employ scores of people," he said. "They depend on me to do what I do so they can make a nice salary. If Barack Obama begins taxing me more than 50 percent, which is very possible, I don't know how much longer I'm going to do this. I like my job, but there comes a point when taxation becomes oppressive. Is the country really entitled to half a person's income?"
Of course, if O'Reilly were to leave his show, he might cease to become someone with, in his words, "more power than anybody other than the president." and if he were to only make 50% of his salary it just wouldn't be worth it to him for $8,000,000.00. Bill O the Clown at his finest.
WATCH:
Contradicts Own Claim That He Knows Rupert Murdoch
By Travis Waldron
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) hasrefused repeated calls to investigate News Corporation over alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act tied to the British phone hacking scandal and allegations that the company hacked the phones of 9/11 victims’ families immediately after the tragedy. The investigations, Issa complains, would amount to “picking on [the] media.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) hasrefused repeated calls to investigate News Corporation over alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act tied to the British phone hacking scandal and allegations that the company hacked the phones of 9/11 victims’ families immediately after the tragedy. The investigations, Issa complains, would amount to “picking on [the] media.”
This morning, the host of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal asked Issa about the investigations and if his refusal to probe the company had anything to do with his personal trust in News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch — an issue first raised by ThinkProgress’ Lee Fang. When the host asked Issa if his relationship with Murdoch had anything to do with his refusal to investigate, Issa denied even knowing Murdoch:
HOST: I know you’ve been criticial of ThinkProgress.org that this is coming from, a liberal blog. But they do assert that this has something to do with you saying you trust News Corp. last year because you know Rupert Murdoch. Just want to have you respond to that part.ISSA: Well, first of all, I don’t believe I said that. I don’t know Rupert Murdoch. I believe I’ve met him on one occasion. … I don’t know Rupert Murdoch. I do not trust anybody. My job is not trust.
In February 2010, Fang interviewed Issa about a potential probe into a Saudi Arabian prince’slarge ownership stake in News Corp. When Issa said he was concerned about companies with foreign owners that may have “a different agenda,” Fang asked if that applied to the Saudi prince. Issa suggested that he trusted Fox because “I know Rupert Murdoch“:
FANG: Well what do you think about Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, he’s one of the owners of Fox News. He owns the largest stake in News Corp. outside the Murdoch family.ISSA: Well, I know Rupert Murdoch so I would certainly say he signs onto Rupert’s agenda, not the other way around.
Watch today’s C-SPAN interview followed by the relevant portion of Fang’s 2010 interview with Issa:
News Corp.’s alleged violations of American law, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, are within the investigative jurisdiction of the House Oversight Committee, which is charged with investigating matters in the interest of the American people. But Issa said he isn’t going investigate the company because the Justice Department has already launched its own probe.
MULTI-MILLIONAIRE CONGRESSMAN: ‘I DON’T WANT TO RAISE MY TAXES…DON’T ASK ME’ TO PAY MORE
Responding to an ad produced by the group Patriot Millionairescalling for raising taxes on the wealthy, Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) — who was worth up to $37 million in 2009, the most recent year available — said he doesn’t want to pay anymore in taxes. “I don’t want to raise my taxes,” Campbell said, “I don’t want to raise anybody’s taxes.” Campbell added that billionaire Warren Buffet, who has called for raising taxes, can pay more to government if he wants to, “but don’t ask me and a whole lot of other Americans” to pay too. Watch it:
This morning, fellow multi-millionaire GOP congressman John Fleming (R-LA) said his taxes shouldn’t be raised because he only has $400,000 “left over” after paying off his business and personal expenses.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley Admits There’s No Evidence Supporting Her Claim About Drug Testing The Unemployed
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) admitted today that she was wrong in asserting that half the people who applied to work at a nuclear facility in the state had failed drug tests, yet said she will still push to drug test the unemployed.
Haley has been advancing a plan to force jobless South Carolinians to pass a drug test before they can receive unemployment insurance, claiming an epidemic of substance abuse. The problem was so unbelievable, Haley said last month, that at the Savannah River nuclear site, “[of] everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test.”
So unbelievable, in fact, that a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which owns the site, told the Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney “he had no idea what Haley was talking about.” The site doesn’t even test applicants, just people who have already been accepted, and the rate of those who fail drug tests is less than 1 percent.
At first, Haley’s office doubled down on the claim, blaming others for faulty numbers, but in an interview with the AP today, Haley said she’ll be more careful before blindly repeating things people tell her without checking them:
“I’ve never felt like I had to back up what people tell me. You assume that you’re given good information,” Haley said. “And now I’m learning through you guys that I have to be careful before I say something.”Haley said she’d probably repeated “a million times” the story that about the test failures before being questioned about the assertions after a Lexington Rotary Club on Sept. 8.
The Savannah River Site story has been central to Haley’s drug testing push. “It’s the reason you hear me focus so much on job training,” Haley told the AP.
“I’m not going to say it anymore,” Haley said, but nonetheless said that she’ll continue her push for drug testing, even though the basis for it is entirely incorrect. As ThinkProgress has noted, mandatory drug testing for unemployment benefits is likely unconstitutional. It’s also just bad policy. The purpose of these laws is to save money, but in Florida, one of the first states to implement drug testing for unemployment benefits, the law is actually costing rather than saving the state money. Ohio is also considering a similar law.
GOP Kingmaker Sheriff Tasks ‘Cold Case Posse’ With Investigating Obama’s Birth Certificate
Last week, ThinkProgress noted that GOP presidential candidates Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Michele Bachmann are all courting Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio in the hopes of securing an endorsement. As “America’s toughest sheriff,” Arpaio is also one of the country’s most radical, especially when it comes to undocumented immigrant, whom the sheriff sweeps up by the dozen and forces to wear pink underwear and live in tents.
The lawman is also a birther, it seems, and one willing to use official resources to pursue the bogus conspiracy theory. As birther website WorldNetDaily gleefully reported:
Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio told WND he has assigned a five-member “Cold Case Posse” to investigate the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.The decision, he says, is simply a matter of doing his duty.“This investigation does not involve politics,” Arpaio told WND.
Arpaio’s investigation comes in response to a complaint filed by the Surprise, Arizona Tea Party, which alleges that Obama may be using a forged birth certificate. “I believe Sheriff Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse will be thorough and complete in their investigation,” a spokesman for the group said.
The Cold Case Posse is an officially-sponsored all-volunteer group of people with skills and backgrounds that make them qualified to investigate cases. The group has been inactive in recent months due to “budgetary limitations within the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office,” but apparently a wild goose chase looking into the veracity of the president’s birth certificate is an appropriate use of funds.
Obama’s birth place has long been settled and real estate mogul Donald Trump was drummed out of the GOP presidential field thanks to his fixation on the matter — so why are the GOP’s leading contenders associating themselves with Arpaio, who is hardly mainstream, even without the birther stuff? Courting the sheriff is perhaps not surprising for Perrry, who was reportedly interested in Trump’s endorsement. The Obama campaign even predicted Perry will “probably ask to see the president’s birth certificate,” and Perry’s already secured the backing of birther dentist lawyer Orly Taitz. But Romney and Bachmann have both definitely said Obama was born in the U.S. and have dismissed the birther myth.
Change We Can Believe In
September 20, 2011
Below is the video of the President's Rose Garden Speech on the American Jobs Act which he has told Congress to pass now. Good Luck Mr. President!
Monday, September 19, 2011
MONEY WHERE MONEY BELONGS
This country has elected a group of
unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told, in exchange
for money and power, and march this nation as far backward as they can
get, backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the '30s, or
backward to hanging union organizers, or backward to the Trusts and the Robber
Barons.
If you are somehow indifferent to the elections November 2,
2010 it is nothing short of an attempt to use Democracy to end this Democracy,
to buy America wholesale and pave over the freedoms and the care we take of one
another, which have combined to keep us the envy of the world.
The GOP is taught that freedom is to be seized and rationed.
They can sleep at night having advanced themselves and their puppeteers and to
hell with everybody else.
They see the greatness of America not in its people but in its
corporations. They see the success of America not in hard work but in business
swindles.
They see the worthiness of America not in its quality of life
but in its quality of investing. They see the future of America not in
progress, but in revolution to establish a theocracy for white males, with
dissent caged and individuality suppressed.
They see America not for what is, nor what it can be.
They see delusions, specters, fantasies; they see communists
under every bed and a gun in every hand. They see tax breaks for the rich and
delayed retirement for everyone else. They
fight the redistribution of wealth not because they oppose redistribution, but
because their sole purpose is to protect wealth and keep it where they think it
belongs - in the bank accounts of the wealthy.
They want to make
the world safe for Bernie Madoff.
It is one thing to be attacked by those who would destroy
America from without. It is a worse thing to be attacked by those who would
destroy America from within.
WOW
I bet Michelle's happy with it. His balls however, I'm not sure. Shouldn't have caved on Debt Ceiling and some other major pieces of legislation.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
On the 22nd of May, 1856, as the deteriorating American political
system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks
of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg
stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked
for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts,
Charles Sumner.
Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had
delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.
The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair
and smashed its metal point across the senator’s head.
Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got
to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold
blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and
bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only
because his cane finally broke.
Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry
as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.
In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke
his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner — but when voters in
Brooks’ district started sending him new canes.
There is no political division in this country that Former President
Bush and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no
anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.
There is no line the former president has not crossed — nor will not
cross — to keep one political party in power.
He spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid
that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what had
become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.
And now it is evident that it no longer mattered to him whether that
effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or
laughably transparent.
In 2003 Senator Kerry called Former President Bush Stupid.
That phrase — “appearing to be too stupid” — was used deliberately, Mr. Bush.
Because there are only three possibilities here.
One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your
critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of
a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story
when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the
sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.
This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do
not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do
their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might
still just be stupid, but honest.
No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.
The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately
twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you
decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the
attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on
the troops or even on the nation itself.
The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the
first two options are in some way conflated.
That it was both politically convenient for you and personally
satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which,
sir, you work.
A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You were not the United States of America.
You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a
willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused
to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the
insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, was in
fact, is you.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he
claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably
wrong.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops for having laughed about
the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in
harm’s way.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops because the streets of
Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them
as liberators.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops because his administration
ran out of “plan” after barely two months.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops for getting this country
into a war without a clue.
And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.
We will not receive them, of course.
Mr. Bush will has never apologized and will never apologize.
Not to the troops.
Not to the people.
Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.
And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry’s rhetorical
question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this
meddlesome priest?”
system veered toward the edge of the cliff, U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks
of South Carolina shuffled into the Senate of this nation, his leg
stiff from an old dueling injury, supported by a cane. And he looked
for the familiar figure of the prominent senator from Massachusetts,
Charles Sumner.
Brooks found Sumner at his desk, mailing out copies of a speech he had
delivered three days earlier — a speech against slavery.
The congressman matter-of-factly raised his walking stick in midair
and smashed its metal point across the senator’s head.
Congressman Brooks hit his victim repeatedly. Sen. Sumner somehow got
to his feet and tried to flee. Brooks chased him and delivered untold
blows to Sumner’s head. Even though Sumner lay unconscious and
bleeding on the Senate floor, Brooks finally stopped beating him only
because his cane finally broke.
Others will cite John Brown’s attack on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry
as the exact point after which the Civil War became inevitable.
In point of fact, it might have been the moment, not when Brooks broke
his cane over the prostrate body of Sen. Sumner — but when voters in
Brooks’ district started sending him new canes.
There is no political division in this country that Former President
Bush and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no
anxiety that he and his party will not inflame.
There is no line the former president has not crossed — nor will not
cross — to keep one political party in power.
He spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid
that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what had
become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.
And now it is evident that it no longer mattered to him whether that
effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or
laughably transparent.
In 2003 Senator Kerry called Former President Bush Stupid.
That phrase — “appearing to be too stupid” — was used deliberately, Mr. Bush.
Because there are only three possibilities here.
One, sir, is that you are far more stupid than the worst of your
critics have suggested; that you could not follow the construction of
a simple sentence; that you could not recognize your own life story
when it was deftly summarized; that you could not perceive it was the
sad ledger of your presidency that was being recounted.
This, of course, compliments you, Mr. Bush, because even those who do
not “make the most of it,” who do not “study hard,” who do not “do
their homework,” and who do not “make an effort to be smart” might
still just be stupid, but honest.
No, the first option, sir, is, at best, improbable. You are not honest.
The second option is that you and those who work for you deliberately
twisted what Sen. Kerry said to fit your political template; that you
decided to take advantage of it, to once again pretend that the
attacks, solely about your own incompetence, were in fact attacks on
the troops or even on the nation itself.
The third possibility is, obviously, the nightmare scenario: that the
first two options are in some way conflated.
That it was both politically convenient for you and personally
satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which,
sir, you work.
A brief reminder, Mr. Bush: You were not the United States of America.
You are merely a politician whose entire legacy will have been a
willingness to make anything political; to have, in this case, refused
to acknowledge that the insult wasn’t about the troops, and that the
insult was not even truly about you either, that the insult, was in
fact, is you.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he
claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably
wrong.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops for having laughed about
the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in
harm’s way.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops because the streets of
Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them
as liberators.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops because his administration
ran out of “plan” after barely two months.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.
You Mr. Bush, must apologize to the troops for getting this country
into a war without a clue.
And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.
We will not receive them, of course.
Mr. Bush will has never apologized and will never apologize.
Not to the troops.
Not to the people.
Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him.
And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry’s rhetorical
question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: “Who will rid me of this
meddlesome priest?”
Saturday, September 10, 2011
U.S Government for Sale
This is a note about the Supreme Court's ruling on the case titled "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission."
On the cold morning of Friday, March 6th, 1857, a very old man who was born just eight months and thirteen days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted; a man who was married to the sister of the man who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner;" a man who was enlightened enough to have freed his own slaves and given pensions to the ones who had become too old to work read aloud, in a reed-thin voice, a very long document.
In it, he ruled on a legal case involving a slave, brought by his owner to live in a free state; yet to remain a slave.
The slave sought his freedom, and sued. And looking back over legal precedent, and the Constitution, and the America in which it was created, this judge ruled that no black man could ever be considered an actual citizen of the United States.
"They had for more than a century before been, regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
The case, of course, was Dred Scott. The old man was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States of America, Roger Brooke Tawney. And the outcome, he believed, would be to remove the burning question of the abolition of slavery from the political arena for once and for all.
The outcome, in fact, was the Civil War. No American ever made a single bigger misjudgment. No American ever carried the responsibility for the deaths and suffering of more Americans. No American ever was more quickly vilified. Within four years Chief Justice Tawney's rulings were being ignored in the South and the North.
Within five, President Lincoln at minimum contemplated arresting him. Within seven, he died, in poverty, while still Chief Justice. Within eight, Congress had voted to not place a bust of him alongside those of the other former Chief Justices.
But good news. Roger B. Tawney is off the hook.
This Supreme Court, of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that may actually have more dire implications than "Dred Scott v Sandford," declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th Century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate-beings spend their money on political advertising, are unconstitutional.
In short, the first amendment — free speech for persons — which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections.
None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want — sooner, rather than later — they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from President to head of the Visiting Nurse Service.
And if senators and congressmen and governors and mayors and councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide the laws.
It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold, no actual citizens required in the campaign-fund-raising process.
And the entirely bought and sold politicians, can change any laws. And any legal defense you can structure now, can be undone by the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now.
And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.
Mentioning Lincoln's supposed ruminations about arresting Roger B. Tawney, he didn't say the original of this, but what the hell:
Right now, you can prostitute all of the politicians some of the time, and prostitute some of the politicians all the time, but you cannot prostitute all the politicians all the time. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts this will change. Unless this mortal blow is somehow undone, within ten years, every politician in this country will be a prostitute.
And now let's contemplate what that perfectly symmetrical, money-driven world might look like. Be prepared, first, for laws criminalizing or at least neutering unions. In today's Court Decision, they are the weaker of the non-human sisters unfettered by the Court. So, like in ancient Rome or medieval England, they will necessarily be strangled by the stronger sibling, the corporations, so they pose no further threat to the Corporations' total control of our political system.
Be prepared, then, for the reduction of taxes for the wealth, and for the corporations, and the elimination of the social safety nets for everybody else, because money spent on the poor means less money left for the corporations.
Be prepared, then, for wars sold as the "new products" which Andy Card, chief of staff. once described them as, year-after-year, as if they were new Fox Reality Shows, because Military Industrial Complex Corporations are still corporations. Be prepared, then, for the ban on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on evolution, on separation of church and state.
Be prepared, then, for racial and religious profiling, because you've got to blame somebody for all the reductions in domestic spending and civil liberties, just to make sure the agitators against the United Corporate States of America are kept unheard.
Be prepared for those poor dumb manipulated bastards, the Tea Partiers, to have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system. And then be prepared to watch them be banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American Freedom.
And be prepared, then, for the bank reforms that President Obama has just this day vowed to enable, to be rolled back by his successor purchased by the banks, with the money President Bush gave them his successor, presumably President Palin, because if you need a friendly face of fascism, you might as well get one that can wink, and if you need a tool of whichever large industries buy her first, you might as well get somebody who lives up to that word "tool."
Be prepared for the little changes, too. If there are any small towns left to take-over, Wal-Mart can now soften them up with carpet advertising for their Wal-Mart town council candidates, brought to you by Wal-Mart.
Be prepared for the Richard Mellon Scaifes to drop such inefficiencies as vanity newspapers and simply buy and install their own city governments in the Pittsburghs. Be prepared for the personally wealthy men like John Kerry to become the paupers of the Senate, or the ones like Mike Bloomberg not even surviving the primary against Halliburton's choice for Mayor of New York City.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't even realize it: today, John Roberts just cut their throats too. So, with critics silenced or bought off, and even the town assessor who lives next door to you elected to office with campaign funds 99.9 percent drawn from corporate coffers — what are you going to do about it? The Internet!
The Internet? Ask them about the Internet in China. Kiss net neutrality goodbye. Kiss whatever right to privacy you think you currently have, goodbye. And anyway, what are you going to complain about, if you don't even know it happened? In the new world unveiled this morning by John Roberts, who stops Rupert Murdoch from buying the Associated Press?
This decision, which in mythology would rank somewhere between "The Bottomless Pit" and "The Opening Of Pandora's Box," got next to no coverage in the right-wing media today, almost nothing in the middle, and a lot less than necessary on the left.
The right wing won't even tell their constituents that they are being sold into bondage alongside the rest of us. And why should they? For them, the start of this will be wonderful.
The Republicans, Conservatives, Joe Liebermans, and Tea Partiers are in the front aisle at the political prostitution store. They are specially discounted old favorites for their Corporate Masters. Like the first years of irreversible climate change, for the conservatives the previously cold winter will grow delightfully warm. Only later will it be hot. Then unbearable. Then flames.
And the conservatives will burn with the rest of us. And they'll never know it happened. So, what are you going to do about it? Turn to free speech advocates? These were the free speech advocates! The lawyer for that Humunculous who filed this suit, Dave Bossie, is Floyd Abrams.
Floyd Abrams, who has spent his life defending American freedoms, especially freedom of speech. Apparently this life was spent this way in order to guarantee that when it really counted, he could help the corporations destroy free speech.
His argument, translated from self-satisfied legal jargon, is that as a function of the First Amendment, you must allow for the raping and pillaging of the First Amendment, by people who can buy the First Amendment.
He will go down in the history books as the Quisling of freedom of speech in this country. That is if the corporations who now buy the school boards which decide which history books get printed, approve. If there are still history books. So, what are you going to do about it?
Russ Feingold told me today there might yet be ways to work around this, to restrict corporate governance, and how corporations make and spend their money. I pointed out that any such legislation, even if it somehow sneaked past the last U.S. Senate not funded by a generous gift from the Chubb Group would eventually wind up in front of a Supreme Court, and whether or not John Roberts is still at its head would be irrelevant.
The next nine men and women on the Supreme Court will get there not because of their judgement nor even their politics. They will get there because they were appointed by purchased presidents and confirmed by purchased Senators.
This is what John Roberts did today. This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual Democracy is left in this Democracy. It is government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. It is the Dark Ages. It is our Dred Scott. I would suggest a revolution but a revolution against the corporations? The corporations that make all the guns and the bullets?
Maybe it won't be this bad. Maybe the corporations legally defined as human beings, but without the pesky occasional human attributes of conscience and compassion maybe when handed the only keys to the electoral machine, they will simply not re-design America in their own corporate image.
But let me leave you with this final question: After this ruling who's going to stop them?
On the cold morning of Friday, March 6th, 1857, a very old man who was born just eight months and thirteen days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted; a man who was married to the sister of the man who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner;" a man who was enlightened enough to have freed his own slaves and given pensions to the ones who had become too old to work read aloud, in a reed-thin voice, a very long document.
In it, he ruled on a legal case involving a slave, brought by his owner to live in a free state; yet to remain a slave.
The slave sought his freedom, and sued. And looking back over legal precedent, and the Constitution, and the America in which it was created, this judge ruled that no black man could ever be considered an actual citizen of the United States.
"They had for more than a century before been, regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
The case, of course, was Dred Scott. The old man was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States of America, Roger Brooke Tawney. And the outcome, he believed, would be to remove the burning question of the abolition of slavery from the political arena for once and for all.
The outcome, in fact, was the Civil War. No American ever made a single bigger misjudgment. No American ever carried the responsibility for the deaths and suffering of more Americans. No American ever was more quickly vilified. Within four years Chief Justice Tawney's rulings were being ignored in the South and the North.
Within five, President Lincoln at minimum contemplated arresting him. Within seven, he died, in poverty, while still Chief Justice. Within eight, Congress had voted to not place a bust of him alongside those of the other former Chief Justices.
But good news. Roger B. Tawney is off the hook.
This Supreme Court, of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that may actually have more dire implications than "Dred Scott v Sandford," declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th Century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate-beings spend their money on political advertising, are unconstitutional.
In short, the first amendment — free speech for persons — which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections.
None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want — sooner, rather than later — they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from President to head of the Visiting Nurse Service.
And if senators and congressmen and governors and mayors and councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide the laws.
It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold, no actual citizens required in the campaign-fund-raising process.
And the entirely bought and sold politicians, can change any laws. And any legal defense you can structure now, can be undone by the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now.
And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.
Mentioning Lincoln's supposed ruminations about arresting Roger B. Tawney, he didn't say the original of this, but what the hell:
Right now, you can prostitute all of the politicians some of the time, and prostitute some of the politicians all the time, but you cannot prostitute all the politicians all the time. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts this will change. Unless this mortal blow is somehow undone, within ten years, every politician in this country will be a prostitute.
And now let's contemplate what that perfectly symmetrical, money-driven world might look like. Be prepared, first, for laws criminalizing or at least neutering unions. In today's Court Decision, they are the weaker of the non-human sisters unfettered by the Court. So, like in ancient Rome or medieval England, they will necessarily be strangled by the stronger sibling, the corporations, so they pose no further threat to the Corporations' total control of our political system.
Be prepared, then, for the reduction of taxes for the wealth, and for the corporations, and the elimination of the social safety nets for everybody else, because money spent on the poor means less money left for the corporations.
Be prepared, then, for wars sold as the "new products" which Andy Card, chief of staff. once described them as, year-after-year, as if they were new Fox Reality Shows, because Military Industrial Complex Corporations are still corporations. Be prepared, then, for the ban on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on evolution, on separation of church and state.
Be prepared, then, for racial and religious profiling, because you've got to blame somebody for all the reductions in domestic spending and civil liberties, just to make sure the agitators against the United Corporate States of America are kept unheard.
Be prepared for those poor dumb manipulated bastards, the Tea Partiers, to have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system. And then be prepared to watch them be banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American Freedom.
And be prepared, then, for the bank reforms that President Obama has just this day vowed to enable, to be rolled back by his successor purchased by the banks, with the money President Bush gave them his successor, presumably President Palin, because if you need a friendly face of fascism, you might as well get one that can wink, and if you need a tool of whichever large industries buy her first, you might as well get somebody who lives up to that word "tool."
Be prepared for the little changes, too. If there are any small towns left to take-over, Wal-Mart can now soften them up with carpet advertising for their Wal-Mart town council candidates, brought to you by Wal-Mart.
Be prepared for the Richard Mellon Scaifes to drop such inefficiencies as vanity newspapers and simply buy and install their own city governments in the Pittsburghs. Be prepared for the personally wealthy men like John Kerry to become the paupers of the Senate, or the ones like Mike Bloomberg not even surviving the primary against Halliburton's choice for Mayor of New York City.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh don't even realize it: today, John Roberts just cut their throats too. So, with critics silenced or bought off, and even the town assessor who lives next door to you elected to office with campaign funds 99.9 percent drawn from corporate coffers — what are you going to do about it? The Internet!
The Internet? Ask them about the Internet in China. Kiss net neutrality goodbye. Kiss whatever right to privacy you think you currently have, goodbye. And anyway, what are you going to complain about, if you don't even know it happened? In the new world unveiled this morning by John Roberts, who stops Rupert Murdoch from buying the Associated Press?
This decision, which in mythology would rank somewhere between "The Bottomless Pit" and "The Opening Of Pandora's Box," got next to no coverage in the right-wing media today, almost nothing in the middle, and a lot less than necessary on the left.
The right wing won't even tell their constituents that they are being sold into bondage alongside the rest of us. And why should they? For them, the start of this will be wonderful.
The Republicans, Conservatives, Joe Liebermans, and Tea Partiers are in the front aisle at the political prostitution store. They are specially discounted old favorites for their Corporate Masters. Like the first years of irreversible climate change, for the conservatives the previously cold winter will grow delightfully warm. Only later will it be hot. Then unbearable. Then flames.
And the conservatives will burn with the rest of us. And they'll never know it happened. So, what are you going to do about it? Turn to free speech advocates? These were the free speech advocates! The lawyer for that Humunculous who filed this suit, Dave Bossie, is Floyd Abrams.
Floyd Abrams, who has spent his life defending American freedoms, especially freedom of speech. Apparently this life was spent this way in order to guarantee that when it really counted, he could help the corporations destroy free speech.
His argument, translated from self-satisfied legal jargon, is that as a function of the First Amendment, you must allow for the raping and pillaging of the First Amendment, by people who can buy the First Amendment.
He will go down in the history books as the Quisling of freedom of speech in this country. That is if the corporations who now buy the school boards which decide which history books get printed, approve. If there are still history books. So, what are you going to do about it?
Russ Feingold told me today there might yet be ways to work around this, to restrict corporate governance, and how corporations make and spend their money. I pointed out that any such legislation, even if it somehow sneaked past the last U.S. Senate not funded by a generous gift from the Chubb Group would eventually wind up in front of a Supreme Court, and whether or not John Roberts is still at its head would be irrelevant.
The next nine men and women on the Supreme Court will get there not because of their judgement nor even their politics. They will get there because they were appointed by purchased presidents and confirmed by purchased Senators.
This is what John Roberts did today. This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual Democracy is left in this Democracy. It is government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. It is the Dark Ages. It is our Dred Scott. I would suggest a revolution but a revolution against the corporations? The corporations that make all the guns and the bullets?
Maybe it won't be this bad. Maybe the corporations legally defined as human beings, but without the pesky occasional human attributes of conscience and compassion maybe when handed the only keys to the electoral machine, they will simply not re-design America in their own corporate image.
But let me leave you with this final question: After this ruling who's going to stop them?
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