US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

stats, charts & graphs are very comforting

http://www.politicususa.com/en/obama-citizens-united

^^ wow, thanks for that link aerosmith. I had not even heard about this and it seems like a smart & needed move to a huge problem

the corporations = people equation isn't even the most chilling precedent set by Citizens United, that concept has been floating in common-law for almost a hundred years now. though it was certainly a wake up call for people to realize that the concept is now effective law, the real hyperspace jump into science fiction with Citizens United is the entire concept that Money is indistinguishable from Free Speech. even as a metaphor, it just doesn't hold, and it is a shocking thing to admit as law because it is a basic admission of Plutocracy, it's a strike at the heart of the Constitution.

and all the cases which have come up since are just deeply impossible to understand due to this metaphorical confusion, like the Arizona law where several Corporations banded together to take out Campaign Fund matching under the pretext that if your opponent gets an infusion of funds every time you buy an advertisement, your Free Speech is inhibited (because why would you even bother to speak if doing so 'strengthens' your opponent?). i.e. if Money equals Free Speech, and speaking gives your opponent Money, which is Power, then Campaign Fund matching discourages Free Speech. That does not follow unless you've already swallowed the metaphor as an operative reality, which they have.

The other breakdown is in how Free Speech has become disconnected from accountability, which we see whenever anyone complains when they suffer any repercussions after having said something disagreeable. The thing about Citizen's United is that this is a new form of Free Speech where the speaker remains nebulous and unidentifiable and can lie with no impact on reputation. Obama's signing law would actually bring things a step back closer to Free Speech as we know it, where we actually know the identity of the 'people' / 'corporations' who are 'speaking' / 'spending' at us.

I'm still torn about Citizens United, honestly.

worst soccer club name ever

how are you torn about Citizens United specifically, Alfred? it's a tangled enough knot -- you can't easily dismiss many of the precepts, I have a friend at Brennan Center who's spent much of the last year working on undermining it, including work on that Arizona case, and it's not easy. at the same time, the decision was made with a purpose that seems pretty clearcut and anti-democratic so I'm interested in your conflict over it

as a free speech case, basically.

My decision is very complicated, and not reducible to a Huffington Post blog point. I should point out that before the decision in the past five years, more money has poured into Democratic coffers than GOP ones. Also, I really don't see how things can get much worse regarding corporate control over control. Corporations will find lots of ways to circumvent existing restrictions.

Finally, I'm pretty much an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment.

Greenwald otm last January:

Ultimately, I think the free speech rights burdened by campaign finance laws are often significantly under-stated. I understand and sympathize with the argument that corporations are creatures of the state and should not enjoy the same rights as individuals. And one can't help but note the vile irony that Muslim "War on Terror" detainees have been essentially declared by some courts not to be "persons" under the Constitution, whereas corporations are.

But the speech restrictions struck down by Citizens United do not only apply to Exxon and Halliburton; they also apply to non-profit advocacy corporations, such as, say, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions, which are genuinely burdened in their ability to express their views by these laws.

well I hear you there. but if more money poured into Democratic coffers during the last five years, you have to admit the balance has now been completely destroyed by the CU decision. that link upthread showing a factor of 10 to 1. Whatever unassailable First Amendment underpinnings the decision rests on, the result was a new form of Free Speech in which the speaker remains anonymous, and this was by design. It's not just that corporations aren't people; it's that they can 'say' things that everyone will hear without anyone being able to know who was speaking.

The concept that Money does not just enable Free Speech but is in and of itself a form of it -- signing that concept into law was a break from the real world, and it obviously made things worse concerning corporate control, I don't think you can shrug it off there. It was a philosophical victory and it was a warped one

This is one of the major problems I have with free speech absolutists (and w/ kantian absolutists in general).

The concept that Money does not just enable Free Speech but is in and of itself a form of it -- signing that concept into law was a break from the real world, and it obviously made things worse concerning corporate control, I don't think you can shrug it off there.

I have to read the decision again; it's been thirteen months since the last time. I don't agree with your conclusion.

I think if it were left unaddressed, the first post-Citizens United presidential election would find many free speech junkies (I include myself among them) having cause to question whether they're willing to extend "speech" to include "money being contributed to political campaigns by corporations." Because if the ruling were to stand as-is, Planned Parenthood & the ACLU are gonna look downright hilarious next to the amount of cash Exxon et al will dump into whichever Republican runs. Citizens United is part of a group attempt, imo, to make Gingrich's dream of the permanent Republican majority a reality.

To me ascribing personhood to a corporation for the purpose of granting it rights seems silly, though I do understand the argument that if a corporation can be held liable for damages, then some form of personhood...accrues? pertains? but yeah - I think undoing CU is a partisan move. But so is CU. There's an uncomfortable meeting of abstract principle & political reality in it. And basically if Bong Hits for Jesus dude gets ruled against then the court doesn't get to dole out free speech to its preferred customers.

btw if you read that case & pay close attn to the majority decision & concurring opinions you'll come to the unescapable conclusion that we are totally fucked

http://i.imgur.com/RmU8a.jpg

^after he signs Neanderthal's exec order

really we only need ONE Republican party, the Dems will do just fine

Last week, we discussed the extent to which the Obama administration’s rescue of the American automotive industry has been a success. Today, E.J. Dionne Jr. pauses to take note of those who got this challenge “utterly wrong.”

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen keeps giving Obama credit for saving GM, and Benen castigates Republicans who disliked that socialist takeover and were sure it would fail.

Now if only Obama could push Congress on creating jobs for those who are not in the auto industry.

can't wait till the gop congressional majority post-2012 impeaches him for taking bin laden out. behind the scenes they'll gloat that they goaded him into it

While the US may not be able to do much in Syria, can I dream that Obama would at least speak up regarding the brutality going on there and encourage the European Union that is more involved economically than other parts of the world, to implement embargos?

Expecting any foreign policy issue that's not Bin Laden related to be discussed in the White House or mainstream US media now is very naive I know.

curious why you say that is. because the bin laden home videos are jessica lynch-y? maybe there's only so much influence you have as president of the country whose financial industry started the recession

Preventing Al Quadas takes more than stopping Bin laden. Polls in the mid-east continue to show unhappiness with what is perceived as the US's failure to support the Arab spring, and failure to play a tougher role re Israel. While the White House is quietly behind the scenes supporting Syrian protestors, the silence from the President the past few weeks, while intended to show that protestors are not US pawns, seems to be too restrained.

I'd also like him to speak up today re whatever knuckleheaded things Boehner is gonna say to a Wall Street audience today re medicare, medicaid, the debt and the deficit.

the spring is happening, just not fast enough to your liking? a middle east full of democracies would be epic. i'm with you though about hoping he engages the assholes in the house. but again the paul ryan budget plan fail/donald trump birth certificate joke candidacy/white house correspondents dinner routine/bin laden assassination sequence was pretty heartening, reflecting the president's growing command of statesmanship, no?

If he agrees to cuts in Great Society programs, no.

OTM

My gay brethren are taking charge.

Right, he should not quietly give indications that he would agree to compromises on medicare, medicaid, and Social Security, while he talks tough. He has to keep up the verbal battle too.

The US support for the Arab spring is not happening fast enough:

Four days after the first mass shooting, Hillary Clinton called Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad “a reformer.” The first, weak U.S. sanctions came on April 29 — 45 days after that first call for freedom. On Friday, as troops turned heavy machine guns and artillery on protesters, Europe finally followed suit. A White House statement threatened further measures, but said they would depend on the regime’s actions — as if it had not yet done enough.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-the-west-so-sluggish-on-syria/2011/05/05/AFmaPPTG_story.html

Yes this columnist is sometimes too sympathetic to neo-con interventionist viewpoints for me, but this time I kinda agree with him.

More dirt on Mitch Daniels that the political elite columnists ignore:

when Daniels worked as a top executive at Eli Lilly & Co., one of the world’s largest drug firms, the pharmaceutical giant’s reputation was tarred by some of the nation's ugliest drug scandals.

In the decade that Daniels climbed the corporate ladder at Eli Lilly, the company was illegally marketing its leading osteoporosis drug, Evista, as well as its blockbuster antipsychotic, Zyprexa, putting tens of thousands of patients in harm’s way. Lilly pleaded guilty to two criminal misdemeanors, paid more than $2.7 billion in fines and damages, settled more than 32,000 personal injury claims — and copped to one of the largest state consumer protection cases involving a drug company in U.S. history, a review by iWatch News shows
...

In a statement, Eli Lilly said the agreements to settle the Evista and Zyprexa criminal allegations did not happen under Daniels’ watch as president of North American operations.

But given his senior management position in the company, “I would have hoped that he would have known about some of these issues, and if he didn’t, why didn’t he? That needs to be evaluated” said Stephen Sheller, a Philadelphia class action attorney instrumental in the Zyprexa settlement.

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/05/09/4499/during-mitch-daniels%E2%80%99-decade-eli-lilly-drug-giant-paid-billions-fines-and-settled

could also belong in the right-wing thread, but this article is FUCKING SCARY

http://www.alternet.org/story/150868/the_devos_family:_meet_the_super-wealthy_right-wingers_working_with_the_religious_right_to_kill_public_education?akid=6932.44250.eUY5pr&rd=1&t=2

So amazing their name is actually DEVO

THE DEVOS FAMILY IS TERRIFYING, I'VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS.

I keep TRYING to tell people, but they keep BUILDING SHIT like museums and sports facilities in the city of Grand Rapids, which they basically own already.

laurel otm

I've always suspected that Delta or American Airlines or whichever the hell of them first instituted direct flights from GRR<-->NYC and GRR<-->Wash DC inside the past decade, created those flights to give these Calvinistic oligarchs more convenient access to the halls of power. Creeped me the hell out 8 years ago or whenever they started, and creeps me out now.

wish i'd been paying more attention. i knew they were evil before, but only vaguest notions as to why. now i'm on board with you, laurel. *fervently continues to research*

My college used to not accept any donations/grants from Amway as a point of autonomy/independence from commercial presssures (or any other kind, either) but while I was there our old-school pres retired and a slick, more MBA type was chosen for the position and one of his first actions was to "strengthen ties with our local scientific community" or some self-serving bullshit and gobble down Amway's money ASAP. God only knows where that relationship is now but I pity their science depts.

ERIK PRINCE'S SISTER MARRIED A DEVOS, WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED?

are we not scum
we are devos

Also I remember hearing a community organizer speak, a man who worked with poor and homeless communities in Grand Rapids, who met with the developers of the Van Andel Arena sports complex. The stadium was built on the bones of a depressed downtown area, and they razed a whole bunch of low-income housing to get the land, and the developers agreed with the organizer that they would set aside a certain number or percentage of jobs in the new facility to go to people from that low-income group, and it was explained to us that the deal was sealed with a handshake.

When the arena actually opened, the deal was null and void. And this is in a religious community where your word is supposed to be your bond -- normal people deal with each other based on trust all the time. The community guy was being naive maybe but that's just it, these fuckers base their supposed legitimacy on their MORAL STANDING and religious lives/professed beliefs.

I hate oh how I hate.

From table's link:

Gary North explains why getting students out of public schools is key to the Christian dominionist camp. “So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”

Well I think that clears things right up, DON'T YOU???

yeah that quote was what gave me the howling fantods

"train up"

You can snigger all you want but it's from "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" or whatever. BIBLE BIBLE BIBLE LET ME JUST HIT YOU WIHT THIS BIBLE DID YOU MAYBE NOTICE THAT I HAVE A BIBLE ALSO YOU WILL HAVE TO READ THIS EVERY DAY IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER SO BUY ONE FROM ME NOW BUY TWO BUY SIX SOME DAY THE WHOLE WORLD WILL BE FORCED TO BUY BIBLES FROM ME MWAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAAAAA

the paul ryan budget plan fail/donald trump birth certificate joke candidacy/white house correspondents dinner routine/bin laden assassination sequence was pretty heartening

inevitable/trivia/worse trivia ie showbiz/making OBL bigger than Nuremberg Nazis

unwell. xp

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_05/targeting_the_very_existence_o029452.php

In March, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum expressed his disdain for public education. “Just call them what they are,” Santorum said. “Public schools? That’s a nice way of putting it. These are government-run schools.”

Campaigning in South Carolina over the weekend, Santorum went even further. (via Steve M.)

Rick Santorum, a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, even raised the specter of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy in a speech here Friday night while explaining why his grandfather emigrated to the U.S. His uncle, he said, “used to get up in a brown shirt and march and be told how to be a good little fascist.”

“I don’t know, maybe they called it early pre-K or something like that, that the government sponsored to get your children in there so they can indoctrinate them,” Santorum said.

There is a fair amount of this talk going around. At a home-schooling rally in Iowa in March, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain — all Republicans who’ve expressed an interest in the presidential race — raised the specter of ending public education in the United States altogether.

This also includes far-right media. CNSNews’ Terry Jeffrey argued a few weeks ago, “It is time to drive public schools out of business.” Townhall columnist Chuck Norris has begun calling public schools “indoctrination camps.”

...

GOP debate last night was non-stop lolz btw