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.

The practice of corporations asking for and getting toothless regulation to avoid the danger of real regulation has a long history of success. Corporate tools in Congress have routinely passed regulation to allow dangerous levels of poisons to be spewed into the environment in the guise of “protecting the public” by making specific limits on pollutants that the polluters can live with. We saw the same thing with the Baucus-orchestrated debate on medical insurance “reform” that resulted in the Unaffordable Healthcare Act.

YARMUTH/JONES AMENDMENT STATES THAT MONEY IS NOT FREE SPEECH AND AUTHORIZES PUBLIC FINANCING

At this writing, this is the least known of the amendments despite (or perhaps because) of the fact that it is a bipartisan effort to address the issue of money in politics, sponsored by Congressmen Walter Jones (R-NC) and John Yarmuth (D-KY). It explicitly states that money is not free speech, thus empowering Congress to regulate it. It further explicitly authorizes Congress to establish a mandatory system of public financing. Finally, it creates a federal holiday for the purpose of voting in federal general elections.

The problem with this bill is that it does not explicitly state that corporations are not people. Under the Supreme Court doctrine that they are people under the Fourteenth Amendment they could continue to assert all the constitutional rights of human beings, including but not limited to the right to contribute to political campaigns. This would leave things largely unchanged until such time when members of Congress might decide to give up the system by which they ascended to office.

DEUTCH/SANDERS AMENDMENTS TO LIMIT CORPORATE PERSONHOOD TO “NONPROFIT” CORPORATIONS

The Sanders proposal is perhaps the best known of all the resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment. It is essentially identical to the one introduced earlier in the House by Ted Deutch (D-FL) in declaring that for-profit corporations do not have personal rights and that they cannot donate to political campaigns or ballot measures. It also allows Congress and the States to set limits on personal expenditures in such campaigns.

The Sanders resolution has received a lot of publicity due to Senator Sanders’ reputation for representing people over corporations. Because of this, it has not been widely scrutinized by his adoring public or the alternative media. This has resulted in many people not understanding its serious problems.

These amendments attempt to curb corporate power without affecting the ability of unions or 501.c4s to influence elections. In carving out an exception for nonprofits to a ban on corporate contributions, the claim that they would “prohibit corporate spending in all elections” rings false. Citizens United itself was incorporated as a 501.c4 “public interest” nonprofit. These nonprofits are allowed to lobby and to participate in political campaigns and elections without revealing the source of their funding.

Excluding unions from a ban on bundled money in elections is not justifiable on philosophical or practical political considerations. If corporations are associations of people who join together in their own self interest, then so are unions. Failure to admit this will guarantee the principled opposition of those who believe, rightly or wrongly, that unions have too much power in elections. Regardless of the truth of this supposition, it makes no sense to have this fight when many union members are concluding that the politicians their PAC money is supporting no longer serve their interests.

MCGOVERN AMENDMENT DECLARING THAT CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE

The amendment proposed by Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) states that corporations are not people and are subject to regulation by the States and federal government.

The McGovern amendment would not address the issue of whether money is free speech, or whether unions are subject to the same restrictions as corporations. Although the protections afforded corporations under the doctrine of corporate personhood would be removed, it would still be up to Congress and the States to impose limits on corporate or union spending.

MOVE TO AMEND PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH THAT CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE AND MONEY IS NOT FREE SPEECH

Move to Amend has proposed an amendment that would address most of the shortcomings of all the resolutions that have been introduced to Congress thus far. It explicitly states that corporations are not people, that money is not free speech and that ALL entities established by the laws of the US, the States or foreign governments are subject to regulation through federal, state and local law. It establishes that corporations have no rights under the constitution and that no privileges granted these associations by governments is inherent or inalienable. Like the Deutch/Sanders amendments, it allows Congress to regulate individual donations. It also requires that all contributions must be publicly disclosed.

The major problem with the amendment is that it does not make contributions by these entities illegal. Instead, it states that:
“Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.”

A PROPOSAL TO ABOLISH CORPORATE PERSONHOOD, END BUNDLED PRIVATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS AND CONTROL LOBBYING

The following language is designed to incorporate the best features of the previous amendments and to also address the other method by which corporate money can be used to corrupt elected officials, the promise of well-paying jobs in private industries which they have the duty of regulating.

While the wording of this proposed amendment is subject to debate, it is intended to abolish corporate personhood, establish that it is illegal for any state-created entity to contribute to political campaigns or ballot initiatives and to remove incentives for lobbyists and members of Congress to put the interests of corporations over those of We the People.

SECTION 1. The rights, responsibilities, and privileges granted to “person” or “persons” as enumerated in this Constitution, its amendments, and extended through case law are exclusively reserved for human beings.

SECTION 2. All non-living entities established by law in the United States shall be subordinate to any and all laws enacted by the people and their elected governments. Corporations shall be defined as “persons” only for the purposes of contracting, suing, being sued, transacting business and continuity of operations as people come and go, as defined under state and federal law. Corporate charters do not limit the liability of officers of corporations or board members from criminal prosecution for acts authorized by them on behalf of the corporation.

SECTION 3. No non-living entity may donate to political campaigns directly or indirectly. All donations must come from the personal assets of individuals or via public funds expressly authorized by law to be used for that purpose. Congress and the states are empowered to limit or abolish individual donations.

SECTION 4. No person shall be employed by any member of Congress who has been employed by an industry subject to regulation by any committee on which that member of Congress is or has been a member, nor shall any member of Congress nor any individual in their employ be legally able to receive remuneration for services rendered to any corporation in any industry subject to regulation by such committees for a period of 10 years.

SECTION 5. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to abridge individual rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion or other inalienable rights of the People.

SECTION 6. Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

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Dr. Rick Staggenborg, a psychiatrist, is a former medical director with the Veterans Administration.  He is also the founder of Take Back America for the People and Soldiers for Peace International.

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.

The argument began when Stahl asked, “What’s the difference between compromise and cooperate?”

Cantor replied: “Well, I would say cooperate is let’s look to where we can move things forward where we agree. Compromising principles, you don’t want to ask anybody to do that. That’s who they are as their core being.”

Then Stahl noted, “But you know, your idol, as I’ve read anyway, was Ronald Reagan. And he compromised.”

Cantor retorted, “He never compromised his principles.” And Stahl recalled, “Well, he raised taxes, and it was one of his principles not to raise taxes.”

“Well, he — he also cut taxes,” bumbled Cantor, a moment before his press secretary blurted from off camera: “That just isn’t true. And I don’t want to let that stand.”

Over a rolling image of Reagan announcing his 1982 tax increase — sometimes described as the largest tax hike in American history — Stahl notes, a bit mischievously: “There seemed to be some difficulty accepting the fact that even though Ronald Reagan cut taxes, he also pushed through several tax increases, including one in 1982 during a recession,” as Reagan intones, “Make no mistake about it, this whole package is a compromise.”

In fact, Reagan compromised on many issues, including an agreement negotiated with the late Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill to improve the solvency of Social Security for the past several decades. As Timothy Noah explained cogently in The New Republic (and not for the first time), Reagan repeatedly raised taxes in the years following the gigantic, budget-busting 1981 tax cut. Noah quotes former White House and Treasury official Bruce Bartlett, who served under Reagan and wrote a paper last year on “Reagan’s Forgotten Tax Record,” demonstrating beyond any doubt that the GOP icon raised taxes at least 10 times during his two terms as president and also during his governorship of California. In that paper, Bartlett destroys the mythology of Reagan, which has been made concrete by the right-wing activist and lobbyist Grover Norquist with the “anti-tax” pledge signed by most Republican politicians.

It is understandable that Republican presidential aspirants, including the present crop, would seek to associate themselves with Reagan, a formidable leader who was often underestimated by Democrats. It is understandable, too, that they would emphasize the aspects of his career that appeal to their constituents, and elide the painful episodes of compromise and even disaster that marred his presidency. But in an election year when every Republican candidate has vowed to refuse any compromise on taxes that will reduce future deficits, the urge to erase history and distort facts must be exposed over and over again — because the lies are so often repeated by right-wing pundits and politicians.

The real history: Reagan was forced to raise taxes because his cuts didn’t “pay for” themselves, as the mythology also insists — and he didn’t raise taxes enough to avoid a legacy of deficits that only Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase on the top tier began to remedy. The Bush tax cuts, like Reagan’s, set the nation on its current fiscal path, worsened by his multitrillion-dollar misadventure in Iraq. When the Republicans debate again, someone ought to test whether they will acknowledge those basic facts — or whether they will insist on the “big lies” of Republican fiscal stewardship.

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.

This is the same Saudi monarchy that rushed its forces into Bahrain last March to crush a popular uprising. But that doesn’t trouble the Obama administration; for two years it has been aggressively pushing the Saudi arms deal, which includes $30 billion in fighter jets built by Boeing. Forget human rights or the other good stuff Democrats love to prattle on about. As White House spokesman Josh Earnest put it, “This agreement reinforces the strong and enduring relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia and demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a strong Saudi defense capability as a key component to regional security.”

The rationale for the first big arms deal since 1992 with the tyrannical Saudi monarchy is that a better-armed Sunni theocracy is needed to counter the threat from the Shiite theocracy in Iran. Once again, the U.S. is stoking religious-based fratricide, just as we did in Iraq. Only this time, we’re on the side of Saudi Sunnis oppressing Shiites both at home and in neighboring Bahrain. That oppression — along with a U.S. invasion that replaced Tehran’s sworn enemy in Sunni-led Baghdad with a Shiite leadership that had long been nurtured by Iran’s ayatollahs — is what enhances the regional influence of Iran.

If Iran ever does pose a regional military threat because of its nuclear program or any other reason, real or concocted, it will be NATO forces that will take out the threat, not the Saudis, who will still be polishing their latest-model F-15s as icons of a weird conception of modernism.

The real reason for this deal is that it is the only sort of jobs program that Democrats are capable of pushing through an obstructive Congress. The administration boasts that the arms package will result in 50,000 jobs in 44 states, underscoring the warning from Dwight Eisenhower, the last progressive Republican president, about the power of a military-industrial complex that has tentacles in every congressional district. As Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an Armed Services Committee member who championed this sale, put it: “The F-15 is a world class aircraft built by hardworking folks right here in St. Louis. I am thrilled for all of the skilled men and women on the F-15 line that this important, big order that I have stood side-by-side with them in working to secure is finally happening.”

A Democrat running for re-election, McCaskill added, “These are important jobs in our community. I will continue advocating for sales of Boeing products wherever appropriate.” Being a good Democrat, she doesn’t reference Boeing’s profits, which are increasingly dependent upon arming the rest of the world.

That’s the win-win of government-generated profits and jobs on which the Democrats are counting to defeat the Republicans, both through campaign contributions from the more rational among the wealthy and the votes of ordinary people who, despite being seriously hurt in this economy, have nowhere else to turn.

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.”

By the military? Until Dec. 31, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limited the powers of local governments and law enforcement agencies from using federal military personnel to enforce the laws of the land. No longer. The NDAA renders the Posse Comitatus Act a dead letter.

Connoisseurs of subversion and anti-terror laws well know that “associated forces” can mean anything. See, for example, one of the definitions of “enemy combatants” minted after 2001: “associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.” Like those memory pillows I saw on discount in Macy’s on New Year’s Day, the phrase “directly supported” will adjust itself to the whim of any ingenious prosecutor.

Obama issued a signing statement simultaneous with passing the act into law. Theoretically, he’s against signing statements. In 2008 he said, “I taught the Constitution for 10 years, I believe in the Constitution, and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We’re not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress.”

Actually, whatever Obama may have taught, a signing statement, whether issued by Bush or Obama, doesn’t have the force of law. Obama’s Dec. 31 signing statement was designed to soothe the liberal vote, as the president expressed “serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists” and insisted that, by golly, he will never “authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.”

This pious language was part of a diligent White House campaign to suggest that (a) there is nothing in the act to perturb citizens, but (b) anything perturbing is entirely the fault of Congress, and (c) Obama solemnly swears that so long as he is president he’ll never OK anything bad, whatever the NDAA might be construed as authorizing, and anyway (d) there’s nothing new about the detention provisions because they merely reiterate those of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, signed by Bush in 2001.

To take the last point first, the NDAA expands the 2001 law and codifies ample new powers, plus new prohibitions regarding any possible removal of prisoners in Guantanamo. As for Congress, its performance was lamentable, but as Senator Carl Levin, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, has convincingly inferred, the real reason the White House threatened a veto was because the bill, as then drafted, might have limited what the executive branch deems its present powers of indefinite detention without trial.

Amid the mutual buck-passing, what Congress and the White House connived at, beating back all obstructive amendments, was the framing of cunningly vague language about the dirty work afoot. Jonathan Turley, a great champion of constitutional rights and civil liberties, puts the trickery in a nutshell: “The exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement … is the screening language for the next section … which offers no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial” (emphasis in the original).

That’s the heart of the matter. And in ambiguity we can see certainty: The writ of habeas corpus can now be voided at the whim of a president, whether it be Obama reversing himself on the personal pledges in his signing statement or any successor, as can the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel.

One day, perhaps soon, the Supreme Court will rule on the act’s constitutionality. For now, as ACLU director Anthony Romero said after the signing, Obama “will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.” America is an empire on which the sun never sets, and so, appropriately, the statute applies across the planetary “battlefield” that constitutes the Great War on Terror.

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.

Unfortunately, the interests of the American people and individual members of Congress are not always one and the same. The funding mechanism was created precisely to remove the power of the purse from the industry’s handmaidens in Congress. During 2007 and 2008, the height of Wall Street excess, conservatives cut the funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission, whose job it was to patrol the markets. They apparently want the ability to deny the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the means to stand between the unscrupulous financial salesmen and their unsophisticated prey.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican, further warned that the bureau “will directly affect every American household by limiting their choices when purchasing financial products, restricting the availability of credit to consumers” and so forth.

Limit consumer choice? Restrict the availability of credit? Jolly good, I say. If taking poison off the shelves means limiting consumer choice, that’s OK. And if some people can’t get a loan under reasonable standards, so be it. And really, how does requiring that financial contracts be written in plain English challenge the sanctity of free markets?

There is a moral case for protecting ordinary folk from abusive or fraudulent financial products, but also a selfish one. We who were not foolish, lazy or reckless during the housing bubble also paid a price. When the slick operators’ practices brought the financial markets to their knees, the taxpayers had to bail them out or face another Great Depression. They continue to suffer from the Great Recession that followed. (The operators, meanwhile, ran off with their sacks of upfront fees and the pickings from working-class pockets.)

We don’t want that to happen again, do we? One may argue with reason that other factors also crushed the financial markets — government guarantees for risky mortgages, shoddy and corrupt work by the financial ratings agencies and a policy of low interest rates to keep the game going. But a well-built jetliner has any number of backups ready to keep the thing flying should one system malfunction.

Obviously, there’s lots of money in letting Wall Street feed the little guys into the grinder. The financial, insurance and real estate industries have given Washington politicians $135 million in 2011-2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Republicans received 56.3 percent of that largesse, versus 37.7 percent going to Democrats.

While many of the contributors are fine, upstanding citizens, one still senses a monetary motive behind the Republican campaign to defang the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In the end, the Republican position would seem more aimed at defending the cons than the Constitution.

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.

Santorum’s hopes were hardly dashed by Romney’s one-short-of-a-baseball-team margin of victory. He had the good fortune to have been completely written off a few weeks ago, thus helping his performance land in the coveted “better than expected” category.

In such circumstances, one must always ask: better than expected by whom? In this case, it’s the fraction of a fraction of likely caucus-goers who had been polled over the last month. At various points, the surveyed few had rotated their affections among Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann. Perhaps Santorum entered the final days as the man-of-the-hour because it was he the minute hand was passing on caucus day. “Santorum will now head to the next phase of the campaign with momentum,” reports Politico. Oh-kay.

With more journalists dissecting the caucuses than voters for Romney, the commentators deserve commentary. The most potent review of the bunch comes from The New Yorker’s George Packer. He marvels at how political reporters quickly began to regard Santorum’s loony remarks — about Obama “siding with evil” in Iran or engaging in “absolutely un-American activities” — as simply routine rhetoric. At that point, Packer observes, “there isn’t much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate’s mood.”

And that they did and will continue doing until the 270th electoral vote is counted.

My mood darkened considerably in the run-up to Iowa, as the few plausible Republican candidates felt obliged to disavow every position that I admired. For example, the individual mandate requiring almost everyone to buy health insurance makes supreme sense. The mandate was a necessary piece of Romney’s health-care plan for Massachusetts, but the former governor abandoned the concept after it became part of the Democrats’ national version. And why did Gingrich have to renounce that nice ad he made with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promoting a bill to address global warming?

In the sad politics of our day, the consequential gets lost in a series of sideshows. Who turns up in the Iowa dark for the caucuses is all-important, not how representative they are. And what they’re turning up for seems to matter even less.

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.

In a December radio commentary, I noted that people have coined useful phrases to describe groups of animals — a gaggle of geese, for example, or a pride of lions. But what, I asked listeners, should we call this herd of political critters? The emails poured in, suggesting such juicy phrases as a pandermonium of right-wingers, an egoswarm, a klutz cluster, a cawcaphoeny (with apologies to crows), a giggle of candidates, a flub of Republicans, a pod of nimrods … and, simply, an embarrassment.

OK, many of you are down on President Obama, and others are just pure-blooded Republicans — but, seriously, having seen these six in action, don’t you have to ask yourself, in the words of the old Peggy Lee song, “Is that all there is?”

In Iowa’s presidential scramble, the biggest players were not the candidates, but an insidious and ever-growing force that voters couldn’t even see: corporate cash.

Welcome to the Brave New Political World created out of thin air by the Supreme Court two years ago. In its now infamous edict in the Citizens United case, the court’s five-man majority of laissez-faire ideologues decreed that unlimited sums of money from corporations and the rich can be funneled into independent electioneering committees, dubbed “superPACs.” These outfits are then free to bombard the airwaves with nonstop ads to elect candidates they support. In the Iowa caucuses, an unprecedented $12.5 million went into the campaigns — two-thirds of that was spent not by candidates, but by the superPACs.

The court theorized that superPACs would operate entirely independently from their favored candidates. What a fantasy! In fact, the candidates themselves have merely dispatched their top staffers and millionaire funders to create and run superPACs on their behalf, so “separation” is a legalistic fraud.

Second, although the SuperPACs operate under benign, nondescript names like Restore Our Future (Romney’s) and Make Us Great Again (Perry’s), they have become each candidate’s nuclear bombs of negative campaigning, doing the sleazy work of sliming opponents with attacks. In addition, the Supremes also theorized that superPACs would report the names of their donors, but — surprise — most are simply not doing so.

What the court has achieved by hurling the Citizens United monkeywrench into America’s democratic machinery is truly stunning. It has made corporate money supreme in our elections, drastically increased the number and ferocity of negative campaign ads, and dangerously hidden the identity of funders and candidates who are quietly conspiring to buy public office. To help repeal Citizens United, go to United4ThePeople.org.

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.

Unlike the incumbent Democrat, fifteen of the thirty candidates running in New Hampshire’s crowded Republican primary on Tuesday, including all of the major GOP candidates, filed full or nearly complete slates of delegates and alternate delegates.

“I’m sure this was merely an oversight by President Obama’s re-election team,” says Richardson. “Like a bloated bureaucracy, in a billion-dollar campaign like President Obama’s — one that’s literally drenched in Wall Street money — it’s easy to imagine that the left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing.”

Not that he’s complaining, mind you. Richardson, 56, of Jacksonville, Florida, launched his anti-war, anti-Wall-Street, pro-Occupy campaign last fall after his pleas to more well-known progressives to run — former Labor Secretary Robert Reich topped his list — fell on deaf ears.

“The President has very obviously forgotten what the Democratic Party stands for,” he says. “So I can’t say I’m really surprised that he forgot he needs the help of real flesh-and-blood Democrats to get re-elected as well. I haven’t.”

Richardson is on the Democratic primary ballot in several other states, including Missouri, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas and will be launching a petition drive for a spot on the Wisconsin ballot tomorrow. “I’m happy to take all the delegates he wants to leave on the table,” says the long-shot challenger. “We’ll be waiting to have a talk with him when he gets to Charlotte next September.”

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.

It did have the good fortune to elect as state treasurer a savvy local woman who, as Time put it, “never got the memo about dodging tough issues.” Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, led the charge in very serious pension reform that confounded all the usual expectations of failure.

Furthermore, she came with the kind of personal story that thrills news magazines everywhere. Her grandfathers were hardworking Italian immigrants, one a chef and the other a butcher. These are hero jobs in a state where great veal “parm” and nice beaches have long prevented a total stampede to the Sun Belt. Her father was a metallurgist at Bulova, until Bulova moved off for cheaper labor, leaving him jobless. Did I forget to mention that Raimondo studied hard, became a Rhodes scholar, obtained a law degree at Yale and made a pile managing investments?

To be honest, Raimondo’s success did not entirely emerge out of an unwillingness to dodge tough issues. “To dodge” implies that there’s a place to which one can move. Like other states, Rhode Island had reached the dead end of menacing budget numbers. To change the metaphor, the tough issues were snapping at a state balancing on the edge of Newport’s Cliff Walk with killer boulders below, then drowning waves, then sharks. Raimondo arrived at an opportune time for — how shall we put it? — new thinking.

The memo that Raimondo had fortunately failed to receive was the one about turning public employees into public enemies. Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin apparently got theirs.

It’s true that Americans everywhere had lost all sense of humor at teachers’ demands that taxpayers fund their retirements starting at age 52, “as we were promised.” But said teachers were also taking serious hits in the pension fixes, and there was no need to pile on more hurt. Raimondo never talked to public employees as “the problem,” but as fellow victims. She always noted, “This is about math, not politics.”

Feeding anti-organized labor passions on the right, some Republicans made the issue about smiting unions, in addition to changing their deal. Not content to merely make public-worker benefits more like private-sector ones, Kasich tacked an item onto a reform bill that would have curbed a public-employee union’s ability to collect dues (and therefore exist). In a referendum, Ohio voters rejected the package as too nasty. Ohio is heavily industrialized with union traditions.

Raimondo recognized that Rhode Island is much the same. Clearly, she could do politics, as well as math.

Was Rhode Island “the little state that could”? Perhaps. For certain, it was the
little state that had no choice.

“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.