17 Jan

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Comparison of Proposed Corporate Personhood Amendments

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There are many amendments that have been proposed whose sponsors claim will abolish corporate personhood and/or declare that money is not free speech. Here is a discussion of the problems with the four types that have been introduced in Congress and of two that are being promoted by various groups and individuals to address these problems.

EDWARDS-STYLE AMENDMENTS TO GIVE CONGRESS THE POWER TO REGULATE CORPORATE “FREE SPEECH”

The Donna Edwards amendment is the prototype of a group of amendments that would if passed give Congress the power to regulate corporate money in campaigns. Others falling into this group include the Schrader, Udall and Baucus proposals. Congress had this power before Citizens United but declined to use it. There is no reason to think that a Congress now more thoroughly corrupted by corporate money would use it if by some miracle it were to pass. The fact that Baucus supports it should be evidence enough that it is nothing but a symbolic gesture toward the need for reform.

More importantly, by stating that Congress can regulate campaign contributions, corporate personhood would be enshrined in the constitution. There is a real danger of this happening as members of Congress are becoming dimly aware that the People are demanding that they overturn Citizens United, at a minimum. Such a gesture would be likely to convince a public unaware of the distinction that Congress is doing the only “politically possible” thing when in fact such an amendment would do nothing but cause the abolition movement to lose steam. Continue Reading

Filed Under: Columnists, Featured, The Newswire

10 Jan

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Did Reagan Raise Taxes? Let GOP Candidates Answer

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Politicians and their flacks lie every day, but it is unusual for someone prominent to utter a totally indefensible falsehood like the whopper that just sprang from the mouth of Eric Cantor’s press secretary on national television.

While interviewing the House majority leader, “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl suggested that he might consider compromise because even Ronald Reagan had raised taxes several times. Cantor’s flack then burst out in protest, saying he couldn’t allow her remark “to stand.”

The premise of Stahl’s perceptive question was perfectly accurate, of course. But the rude Hill staffer is scarcely alone in promoting this super-sized lie about Reagan’s tax purity. And it would be worth discovering which of the Republican candidates likewise reject a fundamental truth about their party and its idol.

That video exchange is revealing for several reasons, not least because it shows Cantor trying to suggest that he was always willing to “cooperate” with President Obama and the Democrats during the current session of Congress. The public’s distaste for the obstructionism spearheaded by Cantor and supported by the tea party faction is evident in polling data, which may well worry the ambitious Cantor, who almost openly hopes to depose Speaker John Boehner.

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Filed Under: Featured, Joe Conason

10 Jan

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Arms Dealer Obama Will Win by Default

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Barack Obama will be re-elected not as a vindication of his policies but because the Republicans are incapable of providing a reasonable challenge to his flawed performance. On the central issue of our time — reining in the greed of the multinational corporations, led by the financial sector and the defense industry — a Republican presidential victor, with the possible exception of the now-sidelined Ron Paul, would do far less to challenge the kleptocracy of corporate-dominated governance.

As compared to front-runner Mitt Romney, who wants to derail even Obama’s tepid efforts at regulating Wall Street and who seeks ever more wasteful increases in military spending, the incumbent president appears relatively enlightened. But that is cold comfort.

Not only has Obama been a savior of the banking conglomerates that so generously financed his campaign, but he also has proved to be equally as solicitous of the needs of the military-industrial complex. He entered his re-election year by signing a $662 billion defense authorization bill that strips away some of our most fundamental liberties and keeps military spending at Cold War levels and by approving a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Those two actions represent an obvious contradiction, since the attack on American soil that kept defense spending so high in the post-9/11 decade was carried out by 15 Saudis and four other men directed by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi primarily using funding from his native land. Now Saudi Arabia is to be protected as a holdout against the democratic impulse of the Arab Spring because it is our ally against Iran, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. Saudi Arabia, it should be recalled, was one of only three nations, along with the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, to recognize the Taliban government that harbored bin Laden before 9/11.

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Filed Under: Featured, Robert Scheer

10 Jan

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He Signed It on the Dotted Line

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America changed as the new year stumbled across the threshold, but the big shift didn’t get much press, which is easy to understand. Can there be a deader news day than a New Year’s Eve that falls on a weekend? Besides, alive or dead, habeas corpus has never been a topic to set news editors on fire.

The change came with the whisper of Barack Obama’s pen, as he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual ratification of military Keynesianism — $662 billion this time — which has been our national policy since World War II bailed out the New Deal.

Sacrificial offerings to the Pentagon aren’t news. But this time, snugly ensconced in the NDAA, came ratification by legal statute of the exposure of U.S. citizens to arbitrary arrest without subsequent benefit of counsel and to possible torture and imprisonment sine die. Goodbye, habeas corpus. I wrote about this here before Obama signed the bill, but when a president tears up the Constitution the topic is worth revisiting.

We’re talking about citizens within the borders of the United States, not sitting in a hotel or out driving in some foreign land. In the latter case, as the late Anwar al-Awlaki’s incineration in Yemen bore witness a few months ago, that the well-being or summary demise of a U.S. citizen is contingent upon a secret determination of the president as to whether the aforementioned citizen is waging a war of terror on the United States. If the answer is in the affirmative, the citizen can be killed on the president’s say-so without further ado.

We’re also most emphatically not talking about non-U.S. citizens or possibly even legal residents (though I’d urge green card holders to file for citizenship ASAP). Non-citizens get thrown in the Supermax without a prayer of having a lawyer. Under the terms of the NDAA, a suspect’s seizure by the military is a “requirement” if the suspect is deemed to have been “substantially supporting” al-Qaida, the Taliban or “associated forces.”

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Filed Under: Alexander Cockburn, Featured

10 Jan

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Consumer Bureau Protects the Prudent, as Well

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Let’s set aside the back-and-forth over the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as chief watchdog at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. President Obama named the former Ohio attorney general to lead the agency when the Senate was supposedly out of session, which he’s allowed to do.

Republicans refuse to confirm him without changes that would render the bureau toothless. And they hold that the Senate wasn’t out of session because they had someone whack the gavel every four days, calling the empty chamber to order. Democrats tried the same trick during the George W. Bush administration. The Constitution neglected to define “recess,” so the courts will.

The bigger question is why Republicans oppose an agency that would stop financial companies from cheating and taking advantage of ordinary Americans, which happened to millions during the mortgage mania. They complain that the current setup leaves the bureau “unaccountable” to the American people, in part, because its funding comes automatically out of the Federal Reserve’s budget rather than through the congressional appropriations process.

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Filed Under: Featured, Froma Harrop

10 Jan

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The Unbearable Consequence of Iowa

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So Mitt Romney “won” Iowa by eight votes, giving him the “Big Mo” (that’s momentum) as he marches forth into the primaries. What happened to Rick Santorum’s surge? Did a Dodge Caravan full of supporters break down on the way to the gymnasium? I mean, world history has pivoted on less.

About 123,000 people participated in the Iowa Republican caucuses. That’s only 19 percent of the state’s registered Republicans, who make up only 29 percent of Iowa’s 2.1 million registered voters. The Iowa total accounts for less than 2 percent of America’s 137 million registered voters.

Meanwhile, the caucuses are not especially democratic. A primary lets voters arrive at a convenient time and cast a secret ballot. The caucuses require an hour or more in the evening. Participants gather in a meeting space, where they jostle with friends and neighbors over their preferences. Whom they support is everybody’s business.

The caucuses favor those who don’t work evenings, don’t have babies to breast-feed and can drive in the dark or have others who can drive them. They empower the strong-willed and turn off the privacy-minded.

The heavy weight given the caucuses is not the people’s fault, but that of media in need of “news” in the political quiet of the holiday season. They turn what should be an inconsequential and flawed expression of the people’s will into a rocket on which may ride the future leader of what we used to call the free world.

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Filed Under: Featured, Froma Harrop

08 Jan

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Mediocre Candidates and Corporate Cash Storm Iowa

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And away we go!

Not just into a new year, but –zap! — suddenly we find ourselves catapulted en masse into the turbulent Twilight Zone of the 2012 presidential election. On day three of the year, while most of us were still woozy from our New Year’s Eve celebration, Iowa voted. Well … sort of.

The media’s breathless coverage of Tuesday night’s 1,774 local Republican caucuses in the Hawkeye State offered a mind-boggling blizzard of statistics, but made practically no mention of two telling stats.

First: 5.5 percent. That’s the percentage of Iowa’s eligible voters who ventured out in the cold to pick from the GOP’s rather unappetizing menu of Mitt, Rick, Ron, Newt, The Other Rick and Michele. So the top vote-getters (Romney and Santorum) each got only 25 percent of the paltry turnout of 122,000 Iowans who bothered to show up — fewer people than who live in one block of some big cities.

Second: zero. That’s the number of delegates allocated to the contenders in Tuesday’s Hawkeye hullabaloo. You see, the 25 actual voting delegates Iowa will send to the Republican presidential nominating convention this summer will be chosen in a separate, arcane series of county, district and state meetings. The caucuses are just for show — a glorified straw poll.

But what a show it was! At one time or another in the past year, all six of the active wannabes rose to the top of the heap, only to slip on their own ugly records, lies or slapstick misstatements and then slide back into the muck of negativity and ultra-right-wing goofiness that is the lasting hallmark of this dispiriting Republican group.

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Filed Under: Jim Hightower

05 Jan

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EXCLUSIVE: Obama Campaign Fails to File Delegate Slate for New Hampshire Primary

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OOPS! – OBAMA CAMPAIGN FAILS TO FILE SLATE OF DELEGATES FOR NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY

For obvious reasons, most news coverage of the 2012 New Hampshire presidential primaries focuses on the Republican contest. With rare exceptions, incumbent presidents seeking re-election enjoy a nearly insuperable advantage in their party’s nomination process.

So it’s business as usual in the Granite State, with only one candidate in the Democratic running. Or maybe not quite so usual — because that one candidate isn’t President Barack Obama.

Wait… what?

Section 655:51 of the New Hampshire Election Code required candidates for their party’s presidential nomination to submit slates of national convention delegates to the Secretary of State no later than November 18th, 2011. Only two Democrats did so, and one — Aldous C. Tyler — has since dropped out and endorsed the other, author and political historian Darcy Richardson.

At first blush, that means Obama appears to have surrendered New Hampshire’s national convention votes for his re-nomination.

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Filed Under: Campaign 2012, Darcy G. Richardson, Featured

03 Jan

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The Little State That Could?

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Rhode Island shouldn’t even be a state. It’s basically a city, Providence, with some suburbs, factory towns, a little countryside and Newport. The smallest state in area (19 Rhode Islands could fit into California’s San Bernardino County), the Ocean State has a population of about 1 million (versus San Bernardino’s 210,000).

While many love Little Rhody for its quirkiness, few would recommend the state as a practical model for the other 49. But Time magazine has done just that, showcasing the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (the official name) as an example to the rest — and, to the shock of locals wholly unused to civic praise, a good example, too. “The Little State That Could” was Time’s headline.

Rhode Island was indeed living in a fantasy world of cushy public-employee benefits that were not being properly funded. Unto the generations, politicians had cooked up “helpful” numbers rather than confront powerful unions. The 2008 economic meltdown moved the day of reckoning to today. In this, Rhode Island was not unique.

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Filed Under: Featured, Froma Harrop

02 Jan

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Darcy Richardson Backs Occupy Iowa’s Uncommitted Slate

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On Saturday, during in an appearance on WSUM 91.7, the University of Wisconsin’s student radio station located in Madison, Darcy Richardson encouraged his supporters in neighboring Iowa to come out and caucus for the Occupy Iowa and Healthcare NOT Warfare efforts to elect a slate of progressive, uncommitted delegates in this Tuesday’s caucuses.  Aldous C. Tyler, who was also seeking the Democratic nomination until recently pulling out of the race and endorsing Richardson, was the host of the WSUM weekend program.

“I’ve been encouraging my supporters in Iowa to join with the Occupy Iowa and Healthcare Not Warfare organizations in sending the strongest possible message to the Obama administration,” Richardson told the listening audience.  Supporting an uncommitted slate in Iowa gives progressives the best chance to make their voices heard because of the unique procedural rules employed by Iowa Democrats.  Even then, he cautioned, it’s still entirely possible that the Iowa Democratic Party will refuse to report any results indicating opposition to President Obama’s renomination.

Former state legislator Ed Fallon is organizing the Occupy the Caucuses group, while University of Iowa professor Jeffrey Cox has been spearheading the Iowa Healthcare NOT Warfare group.

Darcy Richardson has qualified for the ballot in New Hampshire, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.  Efforts are underway to secure ballot access in another half-dozen primary and caucus states.

 

Filed Under: Campaign 2012, Featured, The Newswire