Concerning Corporations Having the Rights of Persons and a Response to Libertarian Arguments

There are many folks, especially corporate oriented conservatives and those identifying themselves as libertarians, but also a few liberal free speech ideologues like the ACLU, trying to spin the negative reactions to the recent Supreme Court decision which gave additional speech rights to corporations. They spin the decision in narrow terms associated only with the additional rights corporations acquired from the decision, and to what they see as a right to unlimited speech by every entity, no matter how powerful, and no matter how much those rights diminish the rights of the majority of individual citizens. They do this while ignoring the historical context and views of the Founding Fathers, as well as those of previous Supreme Courts.

Before attempting to address the libertarian arguments, which boil down to free speech at any cost, and the logical consequence that people should be free to form corporations which can then drown out and monopolize speech at the expense of individual speech, here is but a small part of the context leading up to the McCain-Feingold law, presented by Senator Feingold himself:

Court decision opens floodgates for corporate money in campaigns
By SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD   Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010
http://gazettextra.com/news/2010/jan/31/court-decision-opens-floodgates-corporate-money-ca/

In its ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court has undone protections against corporate power that stood for more than a century. This decision is a terrible mistake, which gives corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns.

To see corporations gaining this much power may feel like a new era in American politics, but in fact it’s an old one. The Supreme Court has taken us back to the beginning of the 20th century, when Teddy Roosevelt battled the trusts, including the railroads, steel companies and oil companies.

Wisconsin’s “Fighting Bob” La Follette refused to be intimidated by the trusts. In 1906, he urged the Senate to pass legislation reining in the power of the railroad monopolies, saying “At no time in the history of any nation has it been so difficult to withstand these forces as it is right here in America today. Their power is acknowledged in every community and manifest in every lawmaking body.”

A year after La Follette spoke those words, Congress passed the Tillman Act to keep corporate money from overwhelming our democratic system. Over the next 100 years, further reforms were enacted to curb corporate influence over elections and respond to scandals such as Watergate or the auctioning of the Lincoln Bedroom to the highest bidder—and the Supreme Court consistently upheld them.

The Supreme Court’s decision returns us to a legal framework that fostered a golden era of corporate influence. While the core of the McCain-Feingold law—the ban on unlimited “soft-money” contributions by corporations, unions and wealthy individuals directly to political parties—remains intact for now, the reasoning of the Supreme Court’s decision undermines the very foundation of a host of laws enacted to strengthen our democracy and curb corruption in government.

The court’s decision gives a green light to corporations to unleash their massive coffers on the political system. Oil companies, with virtually no harm to their balance sheets, can now try to “take out” members of Congress who don’t toe their company line on energy policy. Foreign-owned companies—even those owned and controlled by foreign governments—are free to underwrite the candidates of their choice.

This new reality strengthens the grip that corporations already have on our democratic institutions. Time and again, the American people have seen their concerns ignored in favor of wealthy interests: in the approval of trade agreements that sent their businesses and jobs overseas, and the undoing of common-sense safeguards on financial companies that contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, among many other decisions.

I will be working with my colleagues to try to restore the voice of the average citizen in elections. We must not stand by as corporations threaten to dominate our democratic process. [Threaten to dominate? Their lobbyists have already purchased the Congress, the presidency and many state legislatures, this decision just guarantees that it will stay that way. - Chris] In our democracy, it’s the power of the voters—not the power of corporate wealth—that should decide our elections.

[Emphasis Added - Chris]

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., can be reached at 506 Hart Building, Washington, D.C. 20510-4904; phone (202) 224-5323; e-mail russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov.
__
Also worth noting is the following quote from Thomas Jefferson, the principle author of the Declaration of Independence:

“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816

And Jefferson was not alone. In a recent article published in CounterPunch, (Defending the Money Machines, Et Tu, ACLU? http://www.counterpunch.org/fitrakis01272010.html), Fitrakis and Wasserman remind us that "Nowhere in the Constitution do the Founders mention the word corporation. There were six of them at the time of ratification, all strictly limited by state charter to where and what kind of business they could do. They bear scant resemblance to the multi-national behemoths we confront today. Those who wrote and ratified the First Amendment would be horrified by their very existence."
__

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company

Of equal importance is another interesting tid-bit concerning the alleged Supreme Court decision, a poster child for judicial activism, granting corporations the "same right of living persons" back in 1886. Apparently, the Supreme Court never even publicly argued the question. While I was aware of the idea that the high court ruled that corporations had the same rights as people, the facts of the case had not become a part of my consciousness. There are accounts of the case on Wikipedia and elsewhere that attest to the fact that it was never officially and publicly argued, but here is a concise account with links:

(rat haus reality--ratical branch http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html):
This is the text (http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html#118US394) of the 1886 Supreme Court decision granting corporations the same rights as living persons under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Quoting from David Korten's "The Post-Corporate World, Life After Capitalism" (http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/seeingPCW.html pp.185-6):

        

 In 1886, . . . in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the legal rights and protections the Constitutions affords to any person. Because the Constitution makes no mention of corporations, it is a fairly clear case of the Court's taking it upon itself to rewrite the Constitution.

Far more remarkable, however, is that the doctrine of corporate personhood, which subsequently became a cornerstone of corporate law, was introduced into this 1886 decision without argument. According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of arguement in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that:

          "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does."

          The court reporter duly entered into the summary record of the Court's findings that:

          The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Thus it was that a two-sentence assertion by a single judge elevated corporations to the status of persons under the law, prepared the way for the rise of global corporate rule, and thereby changed the course of history.

 The doctrine of corporate personhood creates an interesting legal contradiction. The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. So is a corporation a person illegally held in servitude by its shareholders? Or is it a person who enjoys the rights of personhood that take precedence over the presumed ownership rights of its shareholders? So far as I have been able to determine, this contradiction has not been directly addressed by the courts.

More alternative information about corporations can be found at:
Ending Corporate Governance--Revoking Our Plutocracy
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/
__

More historical context can be found in the defense of the "Fairness Doctrine" by the Supreme Court in 1969, and in the vetoes by former President Reagan, formerly a corporate TV ad spokesperson for General Electric, in the following 2005 article from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). The article also supports the notion that the "Supreme Court" is little more than a political institution, which has been underlined by the recent decision of the Republican Roberts court. The "Fairness Doctrine" even back then attempted to address the huge power of corporations in controlling the informational and ideological content that flows from the "airwaves" i.e., frequencies/channels, which are owned by the American people, but controlled by corporate media. Think FOX "news," CBS, NBC, ABC & etc. Even FAIR's presentation can be interpreted as "soft" in its defense of the rights of Americans to control those frequencies, because it doesn't argue against lax standards, and corporate influence over the "airwaves" has only been expanded over the years through media consolidation, resulting in even fewer corporations controlling the information that Americans recieve.

Here is the FAIR article. (Read the article on the link provided for more useful links):
Extra! January/February 2005

The Fairness Doctrine
How we lost it, and why we need it back
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2053

By Steve Rendall

A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a...frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.

— U.S. Supreme Court, upholding the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 1969.

When the Sinclair Broadcast Group retreated from pre-election plans to force its 62 television stations to preempt prime-time programming in favor of airing the blatantly anti–John Kerry documentary Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal, the reversal wasn’t triggered by a concern for fairness: Sinclair back-pedaled because its stock was tanking. The staunchly conservative broadcaster’s plan had provoked calls for sponsor boycotts, and Wall Street saw a company that was putting politics ahead of profits. Sinclair’s stock declined by nearly 17 percent before the company announced it would air a somewhat more balanced news program in place of the documentary (Baltimore Sun, 10/24/04).

But if fairness mattered little to Sinclair, the news that a corporation that controlled more TV licenses than any other could put the publicly owned airwaves to partisan use sparked discussion of fairness across the board, from media democracy activists to television industry executives.

Variety (10/25/04) underlined industry concerns in a report suggesting that Sinclair’s partisanship was making other broadcasters nervous by fueling “anti-consolidation forces” and efforts to bring back the FCC’s defunct Fairness Doctrine:

Sinclair could even put the Fairness Doctrine back in play, a rule established in 1949 to require that the networks—all three of them—air all sides of issues. The doctrine was abandoned in the 1980s with the proliferation of cable, leaving citizens with little recourse over broadcasters that misuse the public airwaves, except to oppose the renewal of licenses.

The Sinclair controversy brought discussion of the Fairness Doctrine back to news columns (Baltimore Sun, 10/24/04; L.A. Times, 10/24/04) and opinion pages (Portland Press Herald, 10/24/04; Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 10/22/04) across the country. Legal Times (11/15/04) weighed in with an in-depth essay headlined: “A Question of Fair Air Play: Can Current Remedies for Media Bias Handle Threats Like Sinclair’s Aborted Anti-Kerry Program?”

Sinclair’s history of one-sided editorializing and right-wing water-carrying, which long preceded its Stolen Honor ploy (Extra!, 11–12/04), puts it in the company of political talk radio, where right-wing opinion is the rule, locally and nationally. Together, they are part of a growing trend that sees movement conservatives and Republican partisans using the publicly owned airwaves as a political megaphone—one that goes largely unanswered by any regular opposing perspective. It’s an imbalance that begs for a remedy.

A short history of fairness

The necessity for the Fairness Doctrine, according to proponents, arises from the fact that there are many fewer broadcast licenses than people who would like to have them. Unlike publishing, where the tools of the trade are in more or less endless supply, broadcasting licenses are limited by the finite number of available frequencies. Thus, as trustees of a scarce public resource, licensees accept certain public interest obligations in exchange for the exclusive use of limited public airwaves. One such obligation was the Fairness Doctrine, which was meant to ensure that a variety of views, beyond those of the licensees and those they favored, were heard on the airwaves. (Since cable’s infrastructure is privately owned and cable channels can, in theory, be endlessly multiplied, the FCC does not put public interest requirements on that medium.)

The Fairness Doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows or editorials.

Formally adopted as an FCC rule in 1949 and repealed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan’s pro-broadcaster FCC, the doctrine can be traced back to the early days of broadcast regulation.

Early on, legislators wrestled over competing visions of the future of radio: Should it be commercial or non-commercial? There was even a proposal by the U.S. Navy to control the new technology. The debate included early arguments about how to address the public interest, as well as fears about the awesome power conferred on a handful of licensees.

American thought and American politics will be largely at the mercy of those who operate these stations, for publicity is the most powerful weapon that can be wielded in a republic. And when such a weapon is placed in the hands of one person, or a single selfish group is permitted to either tacitly or otherwise acquire ownership or dominate these broadcasting stations throughout the country, then woe be to those who dare to differ with them. It will be impossible to compete with them in reaching the ears of the American people.

— Rep. Luther Johnson (D.-Texas), in the debate that preceded the Radio Act of 1927 (KPFA, 1/16/03)

In the Radio Act of 1927, Congress mandated the FCC’s forerunner, the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), to grant broadcasting licenses in such a manner as to ensure that licensees served the “public convenience, interest or necessity.”

As former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson pointed out (California Lawyer, 8/88), it was in that spirit that the FRC, in 1928, first gave words to a policy formulation that would become known as the Fairness Doctrine, calling for broadcasters to show “due regard for the opinions of others.” In 1949, the FCC adopted the doctrine as a formal rule (FCC, Report on Editorializing by Broadcast Licensees, 1949).

In 1959 Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 to enshrine the Fairness Doctrine into law, rewriting Chapter 315(a) to read: “A broadcast licensee shall afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance.”

It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the government itself or a private licensee. It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, aesthetic, moral and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC.

— U.S. Supreme Court, Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 1969.

A decade later the United States Supreme Court upheld the doctrine’s constitutionality in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC (1969), foreshadowing a decade in which the FCC would view the Fairness Doctrine as a guiding principle, calling it “the single most important requirement of operation in the public interest—the sine qua non for grant of a renewal of license” (FCC Fairness Report, 1974).

How it worked

There are many misconceptions about the Fairness Doctrine. For instance, it did not require that each program be internally balanced, nor did it mandate equal time for opposing points of view. And it didn’t require that the balance of a station’s program lineup be anything like 50/50. [Even though it should have at least suggested that goal. - Chris]

Nor, as Rush Limbaugh [drug use hypocrite who was addicted to the prescription drugs oxycodone and hydrocodone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh#Prescription_drug_addiction) - Chris] has repeatedly claimed, was the Fairness Doctrine all that stood between conservative talkshow hosts and the dominance they would attain after the doctrine’s repeal. In fact, not one Fairness Doctrine decision issued by the FCC had ever concerned itself with talkshows. Indeed, the talkshow format was born and flourished while the doctrine was in operation. Before the doctrine was repealed, right-wing hosts frequently dominated talkshow schedules, even in liberal cities, but none was ever muzzled (The Way Things Aren’t, Rendall et al., 1995). The Fairness Doctrine simply prohibited stations from broadcasting from a single perspective, day after day, without presenting opposing views.

In answer to charges, put forward in the Red Lion case, that the doctrine violated broadcasters’ First Amendment free speech rights because the government was exerting editorial control, Supreme Court Justice Byron White wrote: “There is no sanctuary in the First Amendment for unlimited private censorship operating in a medium not open to all.” In a Washington Post column (1/31/94), the Media Access Project (MAP), a telecommunications law firm that supports the Fairness Doctrine, addressed the First Amendment issue: “The Supreme Court unanimously found [the Fairness Doctrine] advances First Amendment values. It safeguards the public’s right to be informed on issues affecting our democracy, while also balancing broadcasters’ rights to the broadest possible editorial discretion.”

Indeed, when it was in place, citizen groups used the Fairness Doctrine as a tool to expand speech and debate. For instance, it prevented stations from allowing only one side to be heard on ballot measures. Over the years, it had been supported by grassroots groups across the political spectrum, including the ACLU, National Rifle Association and the right-wing Accuracy In Media.

Typically, when an individual or citizens group complained to a station about imbalance, the station would set aside time for an on-air response for the omitted perspective: “Reasonable opportunity for presentation of opposing points of view,” was the relevant phrase. If a station disagreed with the complaint, feeling that an adequate range of views had already been presented, the decision would be appealed to the FCC for a judgment.

According to Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of MAP, scheduling response time was based on time of day, frequency and duration of the original perspective. “If one view received a lot of coverage in primetime,” Schwartzman told Extra!, “then at least some response time would have to be in primetime. Likewise if one side received many short spots or really long spots.” But the remedy did not amount to equal time; the ratio of airtime between the original perspective and the response “could be as much as five to one,” said Schwartzman.

As a guarantor of balance and inclusion, the Fairness Doctrine was no panacea. It was somewhat vague, and depended on the vigilance of listeners and viewers to notice imbalance. But its value, beyond the occasional remedies it provided, was in its codification of the principle that broadcasters had a responsibility to present a range of views on controversial issues.

The doctrine’s Demise

From the 1920s through the ’70s, the history of the Fairness Doctrine paints a picture of public servants wrestling with how to maintain some public interest standards in the operation of publicly owned—but corporate-dominated—airwaves. Things were about to change.

The 1980s brought the Reagan Revolution, with its army of anti-regulatory extremists; not least among these was Reagan’s new FCC chair, Mark S. Fowler. Formerly a broadcast industry lawyer, Fowler earned his reputation as “the James Watt of the FCC” by sneering at the notion that broadcasters had a unique role or bore special responsibilities to ensure democratic discourse (California Lawyer, 8/88). It was all nonsense, said Fowler (L.A. Times, 5/1/03): “The perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.” To Fowler, television was “just another appliance—it’s a toaster with pictures,” and he seemed to endorse total deregulation (Washington Post, 2/6/83): “We’ve got to look beyond the conventional wisdom that we must somehow regulate this box.”

Of course, Fowler and associates didn’t favor total deregulation: Without licensing, the airwaves would descend into chaos as many broadcasters competed for the same frequencies, a situation that would mean ruin for the traditional corporate broadcasters they were so close to. But regulation for the public good rather than corporate convenience was deemed suspect.

Fowler vowed to see the Fairness Doctrine repealed, and though he would depart the commission a few months before the goal was realized, he worked assiduously at setting the stage for the doctrine’s demise.

He and his like-minded commissioners, a majority of whom had been appointed by President Ronald Reagan, argued that the doctrine violated broadcasters’ First Amendment free speech rights [Sound Familiar?] by giving government a measure of editorial control over stations. Moreover, rather than increase debate and discussion of controversial issues, they argued, the doctrine actually chilled debate, because stations feared demands for response time and possible challenges to broadcast licenses (though only one license was ever revoked in a dispute involving the Fairness Doctrine—California Lawyer, 8/88).

The FCC stopped enforcing the doctrine in the mid-’80s, well before it formally revoked it. As much as the commission majority wanted to repeal the doctrine outright, there was one hurdle that stood between them and their goal: Congress’ 1959 amendment to the Communications Act had made the doctrine law.

Help would come in the form of a controversial 1986 legal decision by Judge Robert Bork and then-Judge Antonin Scalia [now supreme Court Justice], both Reagan appointees on the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Their 2–1 opinion avoided the constitutional issue altogether, and simply declared that Congress had not actually made the doctrine into a law. Wrote Bork: “We do not believe that language adopted in 1959 made the Fairness Doctrine a binding statutory obligation,” because, he said, the doctrine was imposed “under,” not “by” the Communications Act of 1934 (California Lawyer, 8/88). Bork held that the 1959 amendment established that the FCC could apply the doctrine, but was not obliged to do so—that keeping the rule or scuttling it was simply a matter of FCC discretion.

“The decision contravened 25 years of FCC holdings that the doctrine had been put into law in 1959,” according to MAP. But it signaled the end of the Fairness Doctrine, which was repealed in 1987 by the FCC under new chair Dennis R. Patrick, a lawyer and Reagan White House aide.

A year after the doctrine’s repeal, writing in California Lawyer(8/88), former FCC commissioner Johnson summed up the fight to bring back the Fairness Doctrine as “a struggle for nothing less than possession of the First Amendment: Who gets to have and express opinions in America.” Though a bill before Congress to reinstate the doctrine passed overwhelmingly later that year, it failed to override Reagan’s veto. Another attempt to resurrect the doctrine in 1991 ran out of steam when President George H.W. Bush threatened another veto.

Where Things Stand

What has changed since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine? Is there more coverage of controversial issues of public importance? “Since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine we have had much less coverage of issues,” says MAP’s Schwartzman, adding that television news and public affairs programming has decreased locally and nationally. According to a study conducted by MAP and the Benton Foundation, 25 percent of broadcast stations no longer offer any local news or public affairs programming at all (Federal Communications Law Journal, 5/03).

The most extreme change has been in the immense volume of unanswered conservative opinion heard on the airwaves, especially on talk radio. Nationally, virtually all of the leading political talkshow hosts are right-wingers: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Oliver North, G. Gordon Liddy, Bill O’Reilly and Michael Reagan, to name just a few. The same goes for local talkshows. One product of the post-Fairness era is the conservative “Hot Talk” format, featuring one right-wing host after another and little else. Disney-owned KSFO in liberal San Francisco is one such station (Extra!, 3–4/95). Some towns have two.

When Edward Monks, a lawyer in Eugene, Oregon, studied the two commercial talk stations in his town (Eugene Register-Guard, 6/30/02), he found “80 hours per week, more than 4,000 hours per year, programmed for Republican and conservative talk shows, without a single second programmed for a Democratic or liberal perspective.” Observing that Eugene (a generally progressive town) was “fairly representative,” Monks concluded: “Political opinions expressed on talk radio are approaching the level of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a totalitarian society. There is nothing fair, balanced or democratic about it.”

Bringing Back Fairness?

For citizens who value media democracy and the public interest, broadcast regulation of our publicly owned airwaves has reached a low-water mark. In his new book, Crimes Against Nature, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. probes the failure of broadcasters to cover the environment, writing, “The FCC’s pro-industry, anti-regulatory philosophy has effectively ended the right of access to broadcast television by any but the moneyed interests.”

According to TV Week(11/30/04), a coalition of broadcast giants is currently pondering a legal assault on the Supreme Court’s Red Lion decision. “Media General and a coalition of major TV network owners—NBC Universal, News Corp. and Viacom—made clear that they are seriously considering an attack on Red Lion as part of an industry challenge to an appellate court decision scrapping FCC media ownership deregulation earlier this year.”

Considering the many looming problems facing media democracy advocates, Extra! asked MAP’s Schwartzman why activists should still be concerned about the Fairness Doctrine.

What has not changed since 1987 is that over-the-air broadcasting remains the most powerful force affecting public opinion, especially on local issues; as public trustees, broadcasters ought to be insuring that they inform the public, not inflame them. That’s why we need a Fairness Doctrine. It’s not a universal solution. It’s not a substitute for reform or for diversity of ownership. It’s simply a mechanism to address the most extreme kinds of broadcast abuse.

See FAIR's Archives for more on: 
Narrow Range of Debate
 & Telecom Policy
__

A Libertarian Viewpoint:

(which ignores the larger context of control by corporations of most of the media easily accessible to most Americans, including newspapers. All we have left are voices on the internet, which except for the power of search engines, are like needles in a haystack.)

On last Friday's Bill Moyers Journal on PBS (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html), Moyer's gave airtime to a libertarian, Nick Gillespie ("Editor-in-Chief of Reason.TV and the website Reason.com,"), as he should. In the segment, he aired a portion of a video incapsulating Gillespie's opinions, which are similar to some I have heard from a libertarian here in Baker City. The quote is below, and my response is interspersed:

NICK GILLESPIE: Whoa, what's got this trio of patriots so riled up about the end of free speech in America? Ironically it's a Supreme Court ruling about a political film that was actually censored by the federal government. To call the apocalyptic rhetoric about the Citizens United overheated is a massive understatement for at least three reasons.

[I'm beginning to think Gillespie is auditioning for a right-wing radio talk show!--Chris]

[Of course McCain Feingold limited when the corporate ad could be shown but did not censor the ad itself. McCain Feingold was in part an attempt to limit the influence of corporations by not allowing them to use their vast sums to buy up all the available time on the airwaves to fill them with nonsense and distortions in the last days of political campaigns. They could air their views ad-nauseum in the corporate controlled media prior to those last days, as they do every single day of your life. - Chris]

Gillespie's Reasons:

1) Twenty-six states already allow corporate donations in this context. Do you think places like Utah, Missouri and Virginia [and Oregon & California] are more corrupt than states that don't allow corporations to voice opinions on political matters?

[26 is barely more than half of of our 50 states. Does that prove anything at all? Where is a study showing that the 26 states allowing corporate contributions in the last days of an election are less corrupt than the other 24 who don't? The fact that bankrupt California and struggling Oregon are included in the 26 holds no water with me. Without such studies I will trust common sense. Additionally, it ignores the reason why I believe most people think that corporate influence is excessive, which goes beyond the decision in question. I do think that most people would agree that corporate influence has affected laws concerning health care and automobile Insurance, including government requirements for a single individual to insure every owned automobile, no matter how much it is driven, with insurance costing the same as if it were driven every day (not to mention an auto insurer's ability to total a perfectly useful car without paying the price for repairs), are influenced by corporate money and influence on policy makers. Just today, an acquaintance told me an insurance company denied his request for insurance unless he could prove he has been driving with insurance, the ultimate catch-22. Readers will likely come up with many more examples.--Chris]

[Gillespie continues]

2)For decades many corporations have been intricately enmeshed within the political process, even going so far as to publicly support specific candidates and specific pieces of legislation. You know them better by names like "The New York Times," "The Wall Street Journal," "The Washington Post," "USA Today," "The Los Angeles Times" and basically every major newspaper in the country. If we can withstand "The New York Times" telling us who to vote for, we can probably withstand Exxon Mobil trying to tell us to vote for Sarah Palin, or against Joe Biden.

[Here, Gillespie ignores the whole reason for limiting corporate control of information by stating an example of corporate control--the corporate newspaper industry. I and many others who feel that corporate speech has gone way to far cite corporate control of the press and the publishing industry as a primary example of how corporations have monopolized speech in those sectors. Sure, you can write a very short letter to the editor, but the papers can write long editorials and continuously print the most obnoxious Op-Eds, editorial cartoons, and book reviews of their choosing. Writers with seriously alternative views, those that challenge the prevailing ideology and power, are forced to go to obscure publishing houses (or blogs) to get their views or books in print, and the mainstream, primarily corporate controlled media, will rarely, if ever, mention their existence or print an objective review.]

3) More speech is never a bad thing, whether it's funded by Citizens United, or by Microsoft, or by the Teamsters Union. And it's especially not a bad thing right before an election when politics matters most. If you want to get exercised over something, don't get bent out of shape over a court ruling that actually increases free speech. Instead turn your ire on a government that is vast and growing and helps or hinders corporations based on political lobbying rather than marketplace forces.

[Here, Gillespie knowingly obscures the obvious difference in money and power between individuals and corporations. The fact that by comparison to real "persons," corporations have enormous sums of money to buy up the available airtime is completely ignored. (This is the same blindspot that allows libertarians to think that poor people exist on a "level playing field" with the rich when seeking economic and social opportunity.) "More speech," when it drowns out the voices of individuals, the people, is obviously a bad thing.

Additionally, most reasonable people, and a Supreme Court decision, accepts that a "person" cannot shout fire in a crowded theater when it would "create a clear and present danger that they will bring about . . . substantive evils." In this case, the "clear and present danger" is that monopolization of speech by corporations, which will, and does, undermine democracy (Schenck v. United States in 1919, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater)). While this decision was modified by "Brandenburg v. Ohio," which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater), that doesn't negate the soundness of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s view, or the reasoning in support of the "Fairness Doctrine."]

See also:

Restoring Trust in Our Democracy: Larry Lessig's Presentation for the Fair Elections Now Act
http://www.fixcongressfirst.org

As we've watched presidents in both parties fail to pass their agendas, it's become increasingly clear that elections are no longer where decisions are made in this country. That weakening of our democracy should frighten everyone equally, whether or not you support the people currently in power.

Our goal is to restore public trust in our government by passing a hybrid of small-dollar donations and public financing of elections.

http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/


http://www.freespeechforpeople.org/


Moyers Journal 2/5/10
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html
MoyersTranscript
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02052010/transcript5.html

The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy

In This Issue:

- Housekeeping; No more comments for now.

- More on Roberts-Kennedy Supreme Court Decision

- Palestine: "This Time 'We' [that is Israel] Went to Far" (Norman Finkelstein)

- Patty Griffin--"Useless Desires"

- Grateful Dead--"Ripple"
__________________________________________

Comments to the blog have been at least temporarily discontinued due to the posting of a personal e-mail by an anonymous user.
______________________________

More on Roberts-Kennedy Supreme Court Decision

See Also:
- More on Corporations as Persons (Corporation Running for Congress Satire)
http://bakercountyblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/baker-birds-gray-crowned-rosy-finches.html

- More on the Corporate Takeover of America: Inverted totalitarianism
http://bakercountyblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-corporate-takeover-of-america.html

- Supreme Court Hands American "Democracy" over to the Corporations
http://bakercountyblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/supreme-court-hands-american-democracy.html
_____
The Founding Fathers Did Not Want Large Corporations

http://www.theseminal.com/2009/03/03/the-founding-fathers-did-not-want-large-corporations/

by Jim Moss :: Filed Under The Economy, U.S. Domestic Issues :: March 3rd, 2009 @ 1:00 am EST

Many proponents of the free market defend our current system of corporate-based capitalism as if it descended directly from heaven into the pen of Adam Smith and then onto the hearts of our all-knowing Founding Fathers. An investigation of the history of the corporation, however, reveals a much different story.

The first corporations appeared in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and were chartered by governments for specific public missions. The largest and most powerful of these early corporations was The East India Company, founded by Queen Elizabeth in 1600 to facilitate trade between England and her colonies. At the height of its power, The East India Compnay held economic control over 1/5 of world’s population and maintained a private army of over 250,000 soldiers. Unjust taxation policies favoring this company insured that the crown, and not the colonists themselves, reaped the benefits from the colonies’ natural wealth and industry.

During the 18th century, Enlightenment ideals began to challenge the power of monarchies and corporations, and the power of the queen’s corporation began to fade. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 signaled not only a victory over the economic tyranny of the East India Company, it also helped pave the way for the political uprising known as the American Revolution. Also around this time, Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations, arguing for free market economics, but against the concept of large corporations, claiming that they limit fair competition among smaller-sized merchants and artisans.

When the United States gained its independence in 1776, there were 336 corporations in the United States, but most had been chartered by state governments for specific public works projects. The Founding Fathers, still mindful of the crushing power once wielded by the East India Company, severly limited the power of corporations and never would have dreamed of nor allowed the trans-national behemoths we see today. In fact, the original limitations seem laughable when we consider our modern corporations:

1) Corporate charters were granted for fixed periods of time, usually between 10 and 40 years.

Today, corporations are assumed to be open-ended in their duration, only ceasing to exist if they can no longer afford to stay in business. (And sometimes being allowed to continue with government funds even when they can’t sustain themselves!)

2) Corporate charters could be promptly revoked for violations of law or for causing public harm.

Back then, there was corporate accountability. Break the law, and you’re out of business. Today, an offending individual or two might (and I say might) see jail time, but the corporate machine just keeps rolling along. And as for causing public harm…

3) Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose. Could you imagine a government official walking into a board meeting at Disney and telling them that they the only business they can be conducting in the whole company is producing cartoons?
4) Corporations could not own property that was not essential to the fulfilling of their chartered purpose. Does that include luxury jets? How about condos in the Caribbean?

5) Corporations could not own stock in other corporations. I’m beginning to see a trend here. Corporations were not allowed to do anything or own any assets that were not specifically related to the purpose for which they were founded. Period.

6) The personal assets of corporate shareholders were not protected from the consequences of corpoate behavior. Oh snap! If still upheld today, this rule would have meant that anyone who owned stock in any of the companies that needed a bailout would have had to have paid for those bailouts out of their own pockets. Owning part of a corporation meant truly being responsible for that corporation.

Were they around today, the Founding Fathers would look at our corporate climate and our economic situation, and they would say, “We tried to warn you!” But Amercia has not heeded their wisdom. Almost as soon as the country was born, big business interests began to chip away at these constraints on corporate power. Stay tuned for Part 2 of “The History of Corporate Power: The Rise of the Robber Barons”.
_____________________

The Roberts-Kennedy Supreme Court Decision

Articles Against the Decision:
_____________________

America, Inc. Is Here. Get With The Program!

By Ernest Partridge
Co-Editor The Crisis Papers
http://www.crisispapers.org/essays10p/program.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24587.htm

February 03, 2010 "Crisis Papers" -- With the Supreme Court Ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, the government of the United States has, in effect, become a subsidiary of Corporate America.

So isn't it time to rethink a few of our government institutions?

After all, the American public has a well-deserved reputation for discarding shopworn institutions that have ceased to serve any useful purpose, and to replace them with imaginative and appropriate innovations Thus passenger railroads were replaced by the airlines and private automobiles, and daily newspapers by television, which is likely in turn to be supplanted by computers and the Internet.

In the same spirit, I propose that we abolish elections and replace them with auctions.

Clearly, the polling statistics show us that the public has lost interest in elections. Furthermore, the Congress has little inclination to reform campaign finance rules. Why should they bother, when last month SCOTUS, in one fell-swoop, scuttled a century of such reforms by the the Congress and previous Supreme Courts (stare decisis be damned!). The decisive push down the slippery slope leading to Citizens United was the Buckley v. Valeo decision (1976) which ruled that "cash is speech." Because numerous studies have disclosed a high correlation between campaign spending and electoral success, Buckley effectively nullified citizen equality at the ballot box in favor of the "free market" principle that the political influence of an individual or a corporation is properly proportional to one's wealth. (See "A Bribe by Any Other Name"). "Citizens United" has pounded the final nail in the coffin of Abraham Lincoln's naive notion of "government of, by, and for the people."

So let's get real! Let's simply acknowledge the obvious facts: that public offices serve private corporate interests, and that legislators' votes are bought and sold by bidders, politely referred to as "contributors." If this is the way things are let's bring the practice out into the open. If elections are irrelevant relics of simpler and more naive times and public offices have become commodities, let's treat them as such, honestly and openly.

Let's abolish elections and instead, select our politicians by auction.

Consider the Advantages:

The auctions could become a public celebration of "the free market," just as elections were at one time celebrations of the archaic notions of "citizen democracy" and "the public interest." The biennial national "auctions" would be televised, with the TV network anchors as auctioneers. Throughout the realm, wealthy stockholders in their mansions would sit spellbound by their TV sets, cheering on the CEOs as they bid for preferred Congressional treatment of the viewer's investments.

"Conservatives" constantly complain about "tax and spend" government programs. If our proposal is adopted, proceeds from the auction might replace taxes. Furthermore, corporate complaints about spending might subside as the government, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the corporate bidders, spends at the behest of those who "bought" it.

Nor is this the end of opportunities for "revenue enhancement." Just think of the advertising space available on our currency, as portraits of Wall Street CEOs, and such notables as Timothy Geithner, Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump and Bill Gates, replace those of the dead presidents.

Still more opportunities: Recently, corporations have taken to purchasing the privilege of having their names placed on major-league stadia. So why not adopt the same practice for government buildings and agencies: "The Archer-Daniels-Midland Department of Agriculture," "The Smithsonian/Boeing Space Museum," "The Goldman-Sachs Treasury Building," "The Dow Chemical Environmental Protection Agency," "The Eli Lilly Center for Disease Control," "The Halliburton Pentagon Building," and "The Exxon/Mobil Department of Energy."

It is well-known that since the Reagan administration, Congressional legislation has largely been written by corporate lobbyists, even though bills have routinely borne the names of legislators. With the privatization of the government we may now, at last, see an end to such political hypocrisy and the resulting public cynicism about government. With no further pretense of representing "the people," politicians may now be openly identified by their correct designations: e.g., "Senator Libermann from Met Life," "Senator Chamblis from Diebold," "Senator Baucus from United Health," "Senator Gillibrand from Philip Morris," "Senator McCain from the National Rifle Association," and so on.

For purposes of identification, the logos of the corporate sponsors might now appear on the jackets of all members of Congress, and on the front of the podia during their public appearances. On the nightly newscasts, the anchors might announce, "this congressional bill brought to you by the good folks at the Chamber of Commerce." And the tobacco companies, relieved of the embarrassment of the health warnings on the cigarette packs, can replace them with the label "proud co-owners of the United States Government."

Finally, the efficiency managers of USA Inc. can go to work and "downsize" the government, most notably by eliminating redundancies. It has long been observed that federal regulatory agencies are eventually "captured" by the private interests that they are supposed to regulate. Now this "capture" can be openly acknowledged, as the Securities and Exchange Commission merges with the New York Stock Exchange, and the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Aviation Agency, etc., become trade associations of their respective industries. And of course, with the privatization of government, the distinction between corporate lobbyists and members of Congress will disappear entirely, as lobbyists officially and openly become legislators and vice versa.

Radical? Not at all! This proposal and all its nuances make complete sense in light of the pending total corporate takeover of the U.S. government that will surely follow Citizens United v. FEC. We will soon see the full realization of the "conservative" doctrine that "society" is nothing more than a market place, and thus that all social problems can best be solved through privatization and the free market. (See "Beautiful Theory vs. Baffling Reality" and "The State Religion").

We have privatized the Postal Service and much of the military, and soon the schools will follow. Now, thanks to the SCOTUS "gang of five," the total privatization of the government of the United States is soon to follow.

So quit complaining and get used to it.

After all, you can't stop progress!

Note: An earlier version of this essay, titled "A Modest Proposal," was published at this site in February, 2003. I can claim some originality with the idea, now much talked about, of the NASCAR-style logo patches, although no doubt others had thought of it beforehand. I was just not aware of these other inventions. The idea of "The Senator from ..." is, of course, an old one with which I was very familiar.

Copyright 2003, 2010, by Ernest Partridge
_____

The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy

By Noam Chomsky

February 03, 2010 "In These Times" --
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5502/the_corporate_takeover_of_u.s._democracy/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24588.htm

Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline.

On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections—a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.

The decision heralds even furthers corporate takeover of the U.S. political system.

To the editors of The New York Times, the ruling “strikes at the heart of democracy” by having “paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.”

The court was split, 5-4, with the four reactionary judges (misleadingly called “conservative”) joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. selected a case that could easily have been settled on narrow grounds and maneuvered the court into using it to push through a far-reaching decision that overturns a century of precedents restricting corporate contributions to federal campaigns.

Now corporate managers can in effect buy elections directly, bypassing more complex indirect means. It is well-known that corporate contributions, sometimes packaged in complex ways, can tip the balance in elections, hence driving policy. The court has just handed much more power to the small sector of the population that dominates the economy.

Political economist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of politics” is a very successful predictor of government policy over a long period. The theory interprets elections as occasions on which segments of private sector power coalesce to invest to control the state.

The Jan. 21 decision only reinforces the means to undermine functioning democracy.

The background is enlightening. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged that “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment”—the constitutional guarantee of free speech, which would include support for political candidates.

In the early 20th century, legal theorists and courts implemented the court’s 1886 decision that corporations—these “collectivist legal entities”—have the same rights as persons of flesh and blood.

This attack on classical liberalism was sharply condemned by the vanishing breed of conservatives. Christopher G. Tiedeman described the principle as “a menace to the liberty of the individual, and to the stability of the American states as popular governments.”

Morton Horwitz writes in his standard legal history that the concept of corporate personhood evolved alongside the shift of power from shareholders to managers, and finally to the doctrine that “the powers of the board of directors “are identical with the powers of the corporation.” In later years, corporate rights were expanded far beyond those of persons, notably by the mislabeled “free trade agreements.” Under these agreements, for example, if General Motors establishes a plant in Mexico, it can demand to be treated just like a Mexican business (“national treatment”)—quite unlike a Mexican of flesh and blood who might seek “national treatment” in New York, or even minimal human rights.

A century ago, Woodrow Wilson, then an academic, described an America in which “comparatively small groups of men,” corporate managers, “wield a power and control over the wealth and the business operations of the country,” becoming “rivals of the government itself.”

In reality, these “small groups” increasingly have become government’s masters. The Roberts court gives them even greater scope.

The Jan. 21 decision came three days after another victory for wealth and power: the election of Republican candidate Scott Brown to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the “liberal lion” of Massachusetts. Brown’s election was depicted as a “populist upsurge” against the liberal elitists who run the government.

The voting data reveal a rather different story.

High turnouts in the wealthy suburbs, and low ones in largely Democratic urban areas, helped elect Brown. “Fifty-five percent of Republican voters said they were `very interested’ in the election,” The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll reported, “compared with 38 percent of Democrats.”

So the results were indeed an uprising against President Obama’s policies: For the wealthy, he was not doing enough to enrich them further, while for the poorer sectors, he was doing too much to achieve that end.

The popular anger is quite understandable, given that the banks are thriving, thanks to bailouts, while unemployment has risen to 10 percent.

In manufacturing, one in six is out of work—unemployment at the level of the Great Depression. With the increasing financialization of the economy and the hollowing out of productive industry, prospects are bleak for recovering the kinds of jobs that were lost.

Brown presented himself as the 41st vote against healthcare—that is, the vote that could undermine majority rule in the U.S. Senate.

It is true that Obama’s healthcare program was a factor in the Massachusetts election. The headlines are correct when they report that the public is turning against the program.

The poll figures explain why: The bill does not go far enough. The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll found that a majority of voters disapprove of the handling of healthcare both by the Republicans and by Obama.

These figures align with recent nationwide polls. The public option was favored by 56 percent of those polled, and the Medicare buy-in at age 55 by 64 percent; both programs were abandoned.

Eighty-five percent believe that the government should have the right to negotiate drug prices, as in other countries; Obama guaranteed Big Pharma that he would not pursue that option.

Large majorities favor cost-cutting, which makes good sense: U.S. per capita costs for healthcare are about twice those of other industrial countries, and health outcomes are at the low end.

But cost-cutting cannot be seriously undertaken when largesse is showered on the drug companies, and healthcare is in the hands of virtually unregulated private insurers—a costly system peculiar to the U.S.

The Jan. 21 decision raises significant new barriers to overcoming the serious crisis of healthcare, or to addressing such critical issues as the looming environmental and energy crises. The gap between public opinion and public policy looms larger. And the damage to American democracy can hardly be overestimated.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
_____

Free Speech for Corporations

There was a very informative Bill Moyers Journal segment last Friday about the Supreme Court decision. His guests on this segment were "Monica Youn, an attorney at NYU School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice, and Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham School of Law."

The whole episode is worth watching (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01292010/watch.html) or reading (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01292010/transcript1.html), but I'll focus on the portion concerning the hypocrisy of Chief Justice Roberts, concerning his testimony at his confirmation hearings regarding the conservative litmus test of "judicial activism:"

BILL MOYERS: The decision seems at odds with some of the very positions taken by some of the people who wrote it. I mean, for example, we've heard a lot from conservatives about "judicial activism." That is, judges, liberal judges, Earl Warren and others, actually making decisions that usurp the power of the legislature. So, let me play you an excerpt from Roberts' nomination hearings, when he is talking about judicial activism.

JOHN ROBERTS: Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around...Judges have to have the humility to recognize that they operate within a system of precedent, shaped by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath...I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent...it is not enough that you may think the prior decision was wrongly decided...the role of the judge is limited; that judge is to decide the cases before them; they're not to legislate; they're not to execute the laws."

Not only did the Chief Justice reach out to overturn precedent, he also went way beyond the case before him:

BILL MOYERS: Is that what he was doing last week?

MONICA YOUN; Absolutely not. This started out as a case about a very narrow issue. It's, is this 90 minute infomercial attacking Hillary Clinton, is this a corporate campaign ad or is it not a corporate campaign ad? And what the court did is they said, "Well, you know, we could rule on that question, but instead let's talk about this entire topic of whether corporate spending in elections should be limited."

BILL MOYERS: In other words, that question was not in the case, that the judges reached out and brought to the court.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: It was not only not in the case, but the parties stipulated [Stipulation: Something stipulated, especially a term or condition in an agreement between parties to a lawsuit.] that they wouldn't have to deal with these questions. And the judges reached out. The justices reached out and decided to make this statement of their view of corporate independent expenditures.

MONICA YOUN; And this is so disturbing, because one reason that, in that clip, the chief justice is paying, you know, homage to the idea of judicial modesty is people recognize that in this system judges are given a great deal of power. Judges can not only say, "Oh, what you did, Congress, was wrong. But forever more, you are barred from doing anything like that again. That option is completely off the table now." But the way that's limited in our constitutional system is that judges are only supposed to decide the particular case in front of them. They're not going to -- they're not supposed to say, "Oh, we don't like that particular area of the law. Let's just go out and change that, just because we have the five votes to do so." And I can think of very little more scary for our democracy than a five, you know, justice majority that finds itself unconstrained by precedent. That finds itself unconstrained by the case before it. And feels like it can just go out there and pursue its own agenda.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: This case did overrule established precedent. It dealt with an issue which could have been dealt with on several different minor grounds. Much, much narrower grounds. And this -- these laws against corporate expenditures came after massive public response to what they perceived to be corruption in the system. Passed by Congress with enormous amounts of support. And there are times when justices should get involved. And say, "No, no, no. There is a minority here that is not being protected. There are interests that the public isn't hearing." But here the justices were not reaching out to protect an unheard minority, but rather to protect one of the loudest voices we already have in our politics.

Other Tidbits:

MONICA YOUN; Well, corporations clearly won this decision. I mean, essentially, what the court does is it awards monopoly power over the First Amendment to corporations. You can think about the last couple of elections as, you know, the slow rise of the grassroots. And as a result, the political parties, for the first time, had an incentive to start reaching out to small donors, to start cultivating grassroots organizing networks. And you saw what happened in the last election. Now, what the Supreme Court has done here is really a power play. It takes power away from the grassroots, and it puts it squarely back in the hands of corporate special interests.

It threatens to make these grassroots networks irrelevant. To say, you know, it's no longer going to be worthwhile for, you know, parties to look for fundraising opportunities, $20, $100, even $2,400 at a time, if they can just have multimillion dollar support directly from corporate treasuries.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: This decision, at base, is about power. And that's why people are responding. That's why people from left and right are responding. This decision means that when you walk past a sign that says Goldman Sachs or Ford, that, what that represents has the same rights that you do to speak about politics, to spend as much money as you want on a political campaign. They are basically equal, and treated as equal entities, even though you're the citizen. That's why there's a really deep grassroots response, is there's a sense that power, political power, is being taken away from the citizen, which is really a core idea of this country.

BILL MOYERS: By permitting corporations to use their own, the money from their own treasuries to advocate for or against a candidate? So, that diminishes the power of the individual?

MONICA YOUN; Well, what the Supreme Court has said by equating money with speech, what the Supreme Court has said is that elections aren't really about votes anymore. What elections are now going to be about is money and who has the most money. And an individual citizen saying, "I can't possibly compete with Wal-Mart, with Exxon Mobil, with Goldman Sachs," is just going to say, "Why should I even bother? My voices will never, my voice will never be heard. My elected official is not going to listen to me. I should just stay home."

BILL MOYERS: But if I understand the decision, it doesn't enable the chairman of Exxon Mobil, or the chairman of GE to write a check to Zephyr Teachout, who's running for Congress from Vermont. It says she can spend as much money as they want to, in the, right up to the election. Right? Advocating that you be elected or defeated?

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Yeah. Or, what happens more likely is candidates getting threatened and encouraged. It's a much subtler form of corruption. Where your mind shifts to say, "Well, do I really want to take on that financial transaction tax if I know that Goldman Sachs is going to do an ad campaign?"

MONICA YOUN; And I think that the threat is going to be even more of an important weapon than direct, you know, "Vote for so and so who we like."

BILL MOYERS: How do you mean?

MONICA YOUN; I think there's going to be a threat of corporate funded attack ads against elected officials who dare to stand up to corporate interests. Corporations have basically been handed a weapon. And when you walk into a negotiation, and you know that one person is armed and is able to use a weapon against you, they don't have to take out that weapon. They don't have to even brandish it. You know that they have it. And every elected official who goes up against an agenda on regulatory reform, on climate change, on health care, will know that the corporation who, you know, he or she is opposing, can fund a, you know, a $100 million ad campaign to take him or her out.

Also, on the Unions vs Corporations distraction:

BILL MOYERS: Well, proponents of this ruling point out that unions are also freed up by the decision. Have they created a level playing field here between the corporations and the unions?

MONICA YOUN; Well, the short answer to that is that if you compare unions' available funds versus corporation's available funds, we're not talking about a real fight here. But I think the more important fight is why should the only people whose viewpoints count in this, be large organizations with money? Whether that be the unions or the corporations? Why shouldn't ideas be dealt with on their merits? And why shouldn't ideas be dealt with by the number of votes they can command, as opposed to the amount of dollars they can spend?
___________________

Articles in Support of the Decision:

Glenn Greenwald [One of my favorite bloggers]:

What the Supreme Court got right
BY GLENN GREENWALD

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/22/citizens_united/index.html

The Supreme Court yesterday, in a 5-4 decision, declared unconstitutional (on First Amendment grounds) campaign finance regulations which restrict the ability of corporations and unions to use funds from their general treasury for "electioneering" purposes. The case, Citizens United v. FEC, presents some very difficult free speech questions, and I'm deeply ambivalent about the court's ruling. There are several dubious aspects of the majority's opinion (principally its decision to invalidate the entire campaign finance scheme rather than exercising "judicial restraint" through a narrower holding). Beyond that, I believe that corporate influence over our political process is easily one of the top sicknesses afflicting our political culture. But there are also very real First Amendment interests implicated by laws which bar entities from spending money to express political viewpoints.

I want to begin by examining several of the most common reactions among critics of this decision, none of which seems persuasive to me. Critics emphasize that the Court's ruling will produce very bad outcomes: primarily that it will severely exacerbate the problem of corporate influence in our democracy. Even if this is true, it's not really relevant. Either the First Amendment allows these speech restrictions or it doesn't. In general, a law that violates the Constitution can't be upheld because the law produces good outcomes (or because its invalidation would produce bad outcomes).

One of the central lessons of the Bush era should have been that illegal or unconstitutional actions -- warrantless eavesdropping, torture, unilateral Presidential programs -- can't be justified because of the allegedly good results they produce (Protecting us from the Terrorists). The "rule of law" means we faithfully apply it in ways that produce outcomes we like and outcomes we don't like. Denouncing court rulings because they invalidate laws one likes is what the Right often does (see how they reflexively and immediately protest every state court ruling invaliding opposite-sex-only marriage laws without bothering to even read about the binding precedents), and that behavior is irrational in the extreme. If the Constitution or other laws bar the government action in question, then that's the end of the inquiry; whether those actions produce good results is really not germane. Thus, those who want to object to the Court's ruling need to do so on First Amendment grounds. Except to the extent that some constitutional rights give way to so-called "compelling state interests," that the Court's decision will produce "bad results" is not really an argument.

More specifically, it's often the case that banning certain kinds of speech would produce good outcomes, and conversely, allowing certain kinds of speech produces bad outcomes (that's true for, say, White Supremacist or neo-Nazi speech, or speech advocating violence against civilians). The First Amendment is not and never has been outcome-dependent; the Government is barred from restricting speech -- especially political speech -- no matter the good results that would result from the restrictions. That's the price we pay for having the liberty of free speech. And even on a utilitarian level, the long-term dangers of allowing the Government to restrict political speech invariably outweigh whatever benefits accrue from such restrictions.

I'm also quite skeptical of the apocalyptic claims about how this decision will radically transform and subvert our democracy by empowering corporate control over the political process. My skepticism is due to one principal fact: I really don't see how things can get much worse in that regard. The reality is that our political institutions are already completely beholden to and controlled by large corporate interests (Dick Durbin: "banks own" the Congress). Corporations find endless ways to circumvent current restrictions -- their armies of PACs, lobbyists, media control, and revolving-door rewards flood Washington and currently ensure their stranglehold -- and while this decision will make things marginally worse, I can't imagine how it could worsen fundamentally. All of the hand-wringing sounds to me like someone expressing serious worry that a new law in North Korea will make the country more tyrannical. There's not much room for our corporatist political system to get more corporatist. Does anyone believe that the ability of corporations to influence our political process was meaningfully limited before yesterday's issuance of this ruling?

I'm even more unpersuaded by the argument -- seen in today's New York Times Editorial -- that this decision will "ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections." What evidence is there for that? Over the past five years, corporate money has poured far more into the coffers of the Democratic Party than the GOP -- and far more into Obama's campaign coffers than McCain's (especially from Wall Street). If anything, unlimited corporate money will be far more likely to strengthen incumbents than either of the two parties (and unlimited union spending, though dwarfed by corporate spending, will obviously benefit Democrats more). Besides, if it were the case that this law restricts the ability of Republicans far more than Democrats to raise money in election cycles, doesn't that rather obviously intensify the First Amendment concerns?

Then there's the always intellectually confused discussions of stare decisis and precedent. It's absolutely true that the Citizens United majority cavalierly tossed aside decades of judicial opinions upholding the constitutionality of campaign finance restrictions. But what does that prove? Several of the liberals' most cherished Supreme Court decisions did the same (Brown v. Bd. of Education rejected Plessy v. Ferguson; Lawrence v. Texas overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, etc.). Beyond that, the central principle which critics of this ruling find most offensive -- that corporations possess "personhood" and are thus entitled to Constitutional (and First Amendment) rights -- has also been affirmed by decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence; tossing that principle aside would require deviating from stare decisis every bit as much as the majority did here. If a settled proposition of law is sufficiently repugnant to the Constitution, then the Court is not only permitted, but required, to uproot it.

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. I tend to take a more absolutist view of the First Amendment than many people, but laws which prohibit organized groups of people -- which is what corporations are -- from expressing political views goes right to the heart of free speech guarantees no matter how the First Amendment is understood. Does anyone doubt that the facts that gave rise to this case -- namely, the government's banning the release of a critical film about Hillary Clinton by Citizens United -- is exactly what the First Amendment was designed to avoid? And does anyone doubt that the First Amendment bars the government from restricting the speech of organizations composed of like-minded citizens who band together in corporate form to work for a particular cause?

What is overlooked in virtually every discussion I've seen over the last 24 hours is how ineffective these campaign finance laws are. Large corporations employ teams of lawyers and lobbyists and easily circumvent these restrictions; wealthy individuals and well-funded unincorporated organizations are unlimited in what they can spend. It's the smaller non-profit advocacy groups whose political speech tends to be most burdened by these laws. Campaign finance laws are a bit like gun control statutes: actual criminals continue to possess large stockpiles of weapons, but law-abiding citizens are disarmed.

In sum, there's no question that the stranglehold corporations exert on our democracy is one of the most serious and pressing threats we face. I've written volumes on that very problem. Although I doubt it, this decision may very well worsen that problem in some substantial way. But on both pragmatic and Constitutional grounds, the issue of corporate influence -- like virtually all issues -- is not really solvable by restrictions on political speech. Isn't it far more promising to have the Government try to equalize the playing field through serious public financing of campaigns than to try to slink around the First Amendment -- or, worse, amend it -- in order to limit political advocacy?

There are few features that are still extremely healthy and vibrant in the American political system; the First Amendment is one of them, and the last thing we should want is Congress trying to limit it through amendments or otherwise circumvent it in the name of elevating our elections. Meaningful public financing of campaigns would far more effectively achieve the ostensible objectives of campaign finance restrictions without any of the dangers or constitutional infirmities. If yesterday's decision provides the impetus for that to be done, then it will have, on balance, achieved a very positive outcome, even though that was plainly not its intent.

UPDATE: I want to add one other point just to underscore how irrational, discriminatory and ineffective these political speech restrictions are. The invalidated statute at issue here exempted media corporations -- such as Fox and MSNBC -- from these restrictions, since the Government obviously can't ban media figures from going on television and opining on elections (the way they do all other corporations). But as Eliot Spitzer noted when urging the Supreme Court to strike down this law (h/t David Sirota), what possible justification is there for allowing News Corp. and GE to say whatever they want about our elections while banning all other corporations (including non-profit advocacy groups) from doing so?

As an elected official who often tangled with wealthy corporations, I recognize that there is a superficial appeal in the prospect of being able to silence their political voices. Of course that is precisely why the First Amendment protects them and why I find myself sympathetic to the First Amendment absolutists in this case. What distinguishes what Citizens United did and what Bill O'Reilly on Fox News -- Rachel Maddow on MSNBC -- does every day? Fox and MSNBC are corporations bombarding the airwaves with political rhetoric, from the right and left, that is as close to "electioneering communications" as anything I can imagine. The McCain-Feingold statute excluded "media companies" from its limitations, a distinction that makes no logical sense. The constitutionality of Citizens United's speech should have nothing to do with what else may or may not go on at the corporation it is part of.

That's what restrictions on political speech almost always do: whether intended or not, they favor the views of certain factions while suppressing others. In this case, it allowed the views of News Corp., GE, and Viacom to flourish (through their ownership of media outlets) while preventing the ACLU and Planned Parenthood from speaking out. As Spitzer said: that is precisely why the First Amendment bars such government efforts to restrict political speech. It is virtually always best -- and Constitutionally mandated -- for the Government to stay out of the business of trying to restrict and regulate political advocacy.

UPDATE II: For those who believe that "money is not speech," I'd be interested in your answers to these questions.

As for the question of whether corporations possess "personhood," that's an interesting issue and, as I said, I'm very sympathetic to the argument that they do not, but the majority's ruling here did not really turn on that question. That's because the First Amendment does not only vest rights in "persons." It says nothing about "persons." It simply bans Congress from making any laws abridging freedom of speech.
____________________________

Follows the article, forwarded by my friend, by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, the neoliberal [Neoliberal definition from Wiki: "Broadly speaking, neoliberalism seeks to transfer part of the control of the economy from public to the private sector, under the belief that it will produce a more efficient government and improve the economic health of the nation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism) ]" media outlet of Wall Street and corporate America. Yes, those are the people who brought you the bailouts and took the country into economic collapse!

James Taranto's partial bio, according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Taranto

James Taranto (born 1966) is an American columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of its online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com. He is best known for his daily online column, entitled Best of the Web Today, in which he links to and comments on news stories and Web sites submitted by readers. He also appears occasionally on Journal Editorial Report.

Most of Taranto's commentary is politically oriented and conservative/neoliberal in perspective. He lambastes various public figures and organizations, from John Kerry, often described as "the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam," to Reuters, for which he uses headlines with excessive use of quotes in mockery of the service's overuse of scare quotes.

Taranto comments occasionally on topics of special interest to him such as the Roe effect (which proposes that parents who support abortion rights will have fewer children, causing support for abortion rights and politically liberal causes to decline among young people) in his column and also wrote an article[1] about it.

Taranto attended California State University, Northridge, but "never bothered to graduate"[2] after clashing with the journalism faculty over free speech and filing a lawsuit against them. [3]

Floyd Abrams is presented in the article by the college drop-out as "The pre-eminent First Amendment expert ," but there is some disagreement on this. Perhaps he should be seen as a person who promotes free speech at any cost, even the loss of popular democracy:

From Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Abrams):

Floyd Abrams (born July 9, 1936) is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment and free speech. He is the William J. Brennan Jr. Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Abrams argued for The New York Times and Judith Miller in the CIA leak grand jury investigation. Abrams joined Cahill Gordon & Reindel in 1963, and became a partner in 1970.

Abrams earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1956, and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1960. He is Jewish and lives in New York City with wife Efrat. Together they have a son, Dan Abrams of MSNBC, and a daughter, Ronnie Abrams. He is a member of the Constitution Project's Liberty and Security Committee[3] and a patron of the Media Legal Defence Initiative.
. . . .
Criticism

In a column on Slate entitled Memo to Cooper and Miller: Fire Floyd Abrams. Hire Bruce Sanford, Jack Schafer felt Abrams's First Amendment argument was weaker than others' on behalf of the reporters in the Valerie Plame affair. Judges David Sentelle and David Tatel "manhandled" Abrams during the December 8, 2004 oral arguments before the appeals court. In the majority opinion, Judge Sentelle found Abrams' assertion that a First Amendment privilege protects Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller from the subpoena to lack merit. They ordered both reporters to talk to the grand jury about their confidential sources or face jail for contempt, which Miller ultimately did. "Maybe a First Amendment legend isn't what this case called for in the first place," said Shafer. "Maybe Cooper and Miller would have been better served by having a criminal lawyer who knows how to bargain." Shafer thought Abrams would never be successful at the Supreme Court: "...my guess is that they won't [agree to hear the case] if it's argued on First Amendment grounds, preferring to let their Branzburg precedent stand."

"As a narrative matter, [Speaking Freely] fails to explain how exactly Floyd Abrams, revered champion of speech, could possibly have lost the [McCain-Feingold] case. The answer, for those readers left puzzled by Abrams's account, is not merely that the arguments on the other side that soft money created the indelible appearance of a corrupt political system were immeasurably stronger than he allows; they were also presented masterfully by the solicitor general's office, led by Theodore B. Olson, and by lawyers for the congressional sponsors of the campaign-finance bill, led by Olson's Democratic predecessor, Seth P. Waxman. Indeed, much of the real story behind how McCain-Feingold came to be upheld is that Abrams and Starr were simply outperformed as lawyers. It may be asking too much to expect Abrams to tell that particular story." Benjamin Wittes, The Washington Post's Book World.

Anyway, here is Tananto's article in the WSJ:

OPINION: THE WEEKEND INTERVIEWJANUARY 30, 2010
The Media and Corporate Free Speech
President Obama says the Supreme Court made a big mistake. The pre-eminent First Amendment expert disagrees.
By JAMES TARANTO

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704094304575029791336276632.html#printMode

New York

I met Floyd Abrams the other evening at the midtown Manhattan headquarters of a multibillion-dollar corporation that a few days earlier had exercised its First Amendment rights to argue that corporations do not have First Amendment rights. I came to the New York Times Co. building not to look in on the competition, but to see the celebrated First Amendment lawyer speak on a panel about press freedom.

Mr. Abrams has represented the New York Times Co. from time to time, most notably in the landmark Pentagon Papers case of 1971. But he and his erstwhile client took opposite sides in the decision we had gotten together to discuss. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which the court decided last week in a 5-4 decision, invalidated federal laws that made certain political speech a crime.

Although Citizens United wasn't Mr. Abrams's case, "I took a special pleasure . . . in this ruling," he tells me over drinks following the panel. That's because it overturned a 2003 decision in a case he lost, McConnell v. FEC, in which a 5-4 majority upheld provisions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law, including one that criminalized corporate funding of "electioneering communication" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Seven years later, with Justice Samuel Alito in the majority, the court reversed that holding.

The First Amendment is the lifeblood of the press. Yet most newspapers—the one you are reading is a notable exception—take an editorial position similar to that of the Times. Why? "I think that two things are at work," Mr. Abrams says. "One is that there are an awful lot of journalists that do not recognize that they work for corporations. . . .

"A second is an ideological one. I think that there is a way of viewing this decision which . . . looks not at whether the First Amendment was vindicated but whether what is simply referred to as, quote, democracy, unquote, was vindicated. My view is, we live in a world in which the word 'democracy' is debatable . . . It is not a word which should determine interpretation of a constitution and a Bill of Rights, which is at its core a legal document as well as an affirming statement of individual freedom," he says. "Justice Potter Stewart . . . warned against giving up the protections of the First Amendment in the name of its values. . . . The values matter, the values are real, but we protect the values by protecting the First Amendment."

A third factor surely is that McCain-Feingold exempted media corporations from its strictures against electioneering. Under this regime, free speech was not a constitutional right but a privilege granted by Congress to companies like those that own the Times and the Journal, but denied to other businesses, labor unions and nonprofit advocacy corporations.

One such group is Citizens United, which produced "Hillary: The Movie," a harshly critical 90-minute documentary. It sued when the FEC denied it permission to broadcast the film via on-demand cable during the 2008 presidential primaries. "Here is a very committed, very conservative entity that does a film attacking then-Sen. Hillary Clinton when she seemed likely to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party," Mr. Abrams says. "I ask myself: Well, isn't it obvious that that sort of speech must be protected by the First Amendment? And then I hear in response to that, 'Well, they could have used a PAC. Or they could have put the film out farther away from the election. Or they could have refrained from taking any money from any corporate grantor.'

"And my reaction is sort of a John McEnroe: You cannot be serious! We're talking about the First Amendment here, and we're being told that an extremely vituperative expression of disdain for a candidate for president is criminal in America?"

Another corporation whose speech was chilled by McCain-Feingold was the American Civil Liberties Union. In his 2005 book, "Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment," Mr. Abrams reports that during the 2004 campaign, the ACLU "broadcast advertisements denouncing the Patriot Act but refrained, as McCain-Feingold required, from criticizing (or even mentioning) President Bush as it did so." Writing for the court in Citizens United, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that if the ACLU "creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate's defense of free speech," it would be guilty of a felony under McCain-Feingold.

Yet even though the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to rule as they did, its Web site has been silent on the decision. Last weekend the ACLU's board met to consider reversing its longstanding opposition to limits on corporate political speech. Mr. Abrams was invited to make a case against the proposed turnabout.

On the other side was Burt Neuborne, a law professor at New York University. "Professor Neuborne argued that the potential for social harm due to the expenditure of large sums by corporate America was dangerous and worse—that it cannot be tolerated," Mr. Abrams recounts. "I argued that the ACLU had been right all these years in its position. I also pointed out that outsiders might think it a bit fickle for them to change their position days after they had achieved one of the great civil-liberties victories in recent years.

"And I said to them: Look, you bring cases, such as one to strike down a law of Congress which was aimed at 'virtual child pornography'—not real children being filmed, but otherwise wholly pornographic. . . . I said: You didn't do it because you wanted to protect the folks who like to watch child pornography. You did it because you thought the government shouldn't be trusted to make content decisions about who watches anything, and because you thought the principle of avoiding governmental control over what is available on the Internet was so strong."

That case, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, went to the Supreme Court. As in Citizens United, the ACLU's position prevailed in a decision written by Justice Kennedy in 2002. But in Ashcroft he was joined by the four liberal justices rather than the conservatives.

Mr. Abrams says that after he pointed this out to the ACLU board, "I warned that I thought the worst thing the ACLU could do is to become just another liberal public-interest group." The board left the question unresolved pending further study.

Mr. Abrams defends corporate free speech on practical grounds as well, arguing that there is no evidence it causes social harm. Federal regulations do not apply to campaigns for state and local office, and "over half the states have allowed unlimited expenditures and contributions by corporations and unions for a number of years. We haven't seen any explosion of corporate domination or union domination of the political landscape." Nor are states without limits more corruption-prone than those with them.

In Mr. Abrams's view, Citizens United advances rather than hinders democracy: "We want, for example, more Gene McCarthys and Ross Perots and individuals to come upon the scene and have a chance to build a war chest and go on out and try to reform the country as they think best."

McCarthy—the antiwar Minnesota senator whose surprising strength in the 1968 New Hampshire primary prompted Lyndon B. Johnson's retirement—was directly bankrolled by a few wealthy donors. That would be illegal today. The high court upheld restrictions on campaign contributions in Buckley v. Valeo (1976). Although such rules were not at issue in Citizens United, Justice Kennedy made clear that Buckley is still good law because unlimited donations create "the potential for quid pro quo corruption."

To Mr. Abrams, this a reasonable distinction: "I think there's room for more governmental involvement with respect to contributions, because there, I think, there is a greater risk of something in the order of quid pro quo corruption. . . . As of right now, the court has struck the balance pretty well."

Yet if there's no evidence from the states that unlimited contributions encourage corruption, isn't there a strong case for overturning Buckley too? Mr. Abrams demurs: "It's a serious argument, and there's no doubt that it raises First Amendment issues. But my reaction is that where we are now is pretty much where we ought to wind up."

He also rejects my suggestion that judicial liberals have become less supportive of free speech in recent decades. "Very few people are really supportive of free speech, whether they're liberals or conservatives," he says. "The First Amendment for many years played the role, when it triumphed in the courts, of protecting the speech of people who tended to be on the left—so it was minorities or the powerless in our society. The liberals on the Supreme Court today would still protect those people and their rights . . . What's changed is that conservatives found some causes which they have used to vindicate genuine First Amendment rights." He says that Justice Kennedy stands "all by himself on the court" as "the single most consistently protective jurist of First Amendment rights."

Mr. Abrams points out that the first restrictions on corporate and union political speech—overturned along with McCain-Feingold in Citizens United—were part of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, a measure that aimed at curtailing labor's power. Taft-Hartley "was vetoed by Harry Truman on the ground that it violated the First Amendment," but the Republican-controlled Congress overrode the veto.

That's a cautionary tale for anyone who seeks advantage by restricting the freedom of others—including media corporations that supported McCain-Feingold because they were exempt from it. If corporations have no First Amendment rights, it is dubious to suggest that media corporations do have such rights.

"The decision in Citizens United provides significant protection for the press in the future," says Mr. Abrams. "The press cannot depend, and indeed ought not depend, upon the largess of Congress to exempt it from regulations on speech that affect the rest of American society. I'm a strong believer not only in protecting the press, but that the press has been the instrumentality which has helped to establish broad protections for all of us through the years."

An example is the 1966 case of Mills v. Alabama, in which the Supreme Court overturned a state law similar to McCain-Feingold except that it applied to the press. A Birmingham editor had been convicted under the Alabama Corrupt Practices Act for publishing an Election Day editorial favoring a local ballot measure.

The law's "electioneering" ban applied only on Election Day, a much narrower restriction than McCain-Feingold's 30- and 60-day limits. The state said the law's purpose was to prevent social harm, namely "confusive last-minute charges and countercharges . . . when, as a practical matter, because of lack of time, such matters cannot be answered or their truth determined until after the election is over."

There was an argument, too, that citizens needed protection from aggregations of power. As Mr. Abrams notes, "many cities, especially small towns, had only one newspaper, and it was the place from which people got most of their news." But "the Supreme Court said unanimously . . . that the notion that a newspaper should be kept from publishing what it wanted to publish—even just one day of the year, even for a supposedly good cause—was alien to this country."

Like any good lawyer, Mr. Abrams can argue in the alternative. I pose a hypothetical: Suppose that Citizens United had gone the other way, that Congress subsequently abolished the media exemption, and that a newspaper corporation hired him to argue that it does have First Amendment rights, even if other corporations do not. How would he make the case? Again he cites Justice Stewart, who held the view that "the institutional press was the only entity set forth in the Bill of Rights as deserving of special protection." Accordingly, Mr. Abrams says, "I would argue . . . that because of the role of the press, it was unconstitutional . . . to bar the press from doing everything it now does."

Later he notes that Citizens United, having been decided 5-4, could be reversed if the court's makeup changes. "I really might have that case one of these days," he says with a chuckle. That would be a supreme irony—especially if his client, once again, was the New York Times Co.

Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for OpinionJournal.com.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com

For responses to this article, see:
Floyd Abrams on Citizens United
http://volokh.com/2010/02/02/floyd-abrams-on-citizens-united/

As for Abram's arguments that relate generally to this case, see:

Where Floyd Abrams has gone wrong: Hillary's case
By Frank X. Askin
September 08, 2009, 2:38PM
http://blog.nj.com/njv_frank_askin/2009/09/where_floyd_abrams_has_gone_wr.html

I have enormous respect for Floyd Abrams as a defender of free speech and the First Amendment dating back to the Pentagon Papers case.

But now Abrams is trying to defend the indefensible - the right of business corporations to use their shareholders' money to support (or oppose) candidates for public office.

That is the issue in the Citizens United case to be re-argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Sept. 9. This involves the much-discussed "Hillary - the Movie," the unrelenting assault on the current Secretary of State prepared when she was still a candidate for President. There are a number of ways for the Court to dispose of the case itself without significantly affecting political campaign finance law. But the Court majority has decided to seize the occasion to reconsider long-standing doctrine which prohibits the use of corporate treasury funds to advocate electoral outcomes. Floyd Abrams is advocating such a change in the law, and he previewed his argument on this week's "Bill Moyers Journal" on public television.

Abrams appeared a bit uneasy about his own position as illustrated by his insistence on coupling his defense of corporate speech with that of labor unions - although union speech has nothing to do with this case and can quite easily be distinguished. Not once did Abrams mention corporate speech without adding "and unions."

First of all, the federal ban on corporate political contributions goes back 102 years to the Tillman Act, enacted by Congress in 1907 at the behest of President Teddy Roosevelt. A prohibition on union political spending was not enacted until the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, passed by a Republican Congress over President Truman's veto on the theory that what is good for the corporate goose is also good for the labor gander.

But there is also a more fundamental distinction between corporate speech and union speech. Any union member forced to pay dues against his or her will (under a collective bargaining agreement) is entitled to reimbursement of any portion of those dues used for political purposes. Corporate shareholders have no similar right. Corporate managers decide which candidates to support or oppose without seeking advise of stockholders and without the latter having any recourse if they happen to support the other candidate. Presumably, a dissenting stockholder could sell the stock, but that is not a particularly viable option. Indeed, most of us have no idea in which stocks our IRAs and mutual funds are invested.

Furthermore, the main case Abrams wants the Supreme Court to overrule (Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce) upheld a Michigan law which restricted only corporate speech and exempted labor unions. The Justices upheld the decision of the Michigan Legislature to do so.

Abrams also tried to hide behind the skirt of the ACLU, which he claimed fully supported his position in the Citizens United case. But the ACLU brief in the case specifically limited its argument to a different aspect of the case and did not call for the overruling of Austin.

Floyd Abrams insists that when the First Amendment forbids abridgement of speech, that includes corporate speech. But the fact is there is nothing in our Constitution to suggest that when the Founders spoke of We the People of the United States they had corporations in mind. Indeed, corporations are artificial entities created by the legislative branches of government and provided with certain economic benefits (such as limited liability) which allow them to amass huge treasuries. The legislatures which created these entities should also have the right to restrict what those entities can do with those amassed funds.
_________________________

Palestine: "This Time 'We' Went to Far" (Norman Finkelstein)

This Time We Went Too Far

By Norman Finkelstein
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24580.htm

"Better than any other book, This Time We Went Too Far shows how the massive destruction visited on Gaza was not an accidental byproduct of the Israeli invasion but its barely concealed objective." — Raja Shehadeh, author, Palestinian Walks

For the Palestinians who live in the narrow coastal strip of Gaza, the December 2008 Israeli invasion was a nightmare of unimaginable proportions: in the 22-day-long action 1,400 Gazans were killed, several hundred on the first day alone. More than 6,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged. The cost of the destruction and disruption of economic life, in one of the worlds poorest areas, is estimated at more than $3 billion.



And yet, while nothing should diminish recognition of Palestinian suffering through these frightful days, it is possible something redemptive will emerge from the tragedy of Gaza. For, as Norman Finkelstein details, in a concise work that melds cold anger with cool analysis, the profound injustice of the Israeli assault has been widely recognized by organizations impossible to brand as partial or extremist.



Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN investigation headed by Richard Goldstone, in documenting Israel's use of indiscriminate and intentional force against the civilian population during the invasion (100 Palestinians died for every one Israeli), have had an impact on traditional support for Israel. Jews in both the United States and the United Kingdom, for instance, are beginning to voice dissent, and this trend is especially apparent among the young.



Such a shift, Finkelstein contends, can result in new pressure capable of moving the Middle East crisis towards a solution, one that embraces justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike. The seeds of hope were thus sown in the bitter anguish of Gaza. This Time We Went Too Far, written with Finkelsteins customary acuity and precision, will surely advance the process it so eloquently describes.



Norman G. Finkelsteins books include Beyond Chutzpah, The Holocaust Industry, A Nation on Trial and Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.

[Finkelstein's] place in the whole history of writing history is assured. — Raul Hilberg, author, The Destruction of the European Jews

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24580.htm


_____

Israeli Commander: 'We Rewrote the Rules of War for Gaza'

Civilians 'put at greater risk to save military lives' in winter attack - revelations that will pile pressure on Netanyahu to set up full inquiry
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24583.htm
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/exclusive-israeli-commander-we-rewrote-the-rules-of-war-for-gaza-1887627.html
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

February 03, 2010 "The Independent" -- A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.

The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as "means and intentions" – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy – devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war – as one of "literally zero risk to the soldiers".

The officers' revelations will pile more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up an independent inquiry into the war, as demanded in the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, which harshly criticised the conduct of both Israel and Hamas. One of Israel's most prominent human rights lawyers, Michael Sfard, said last night that the senior commander's acknowledgement – if accurate – was "a smoking gun".

Until now, the testimony has been kept out of the public domain. The senior commander told a journalist compiling a lengthy report for Yedhiot Ahronot, Israel's biggest daily newspaper, about the rules of engagement in the three-week military offensive in Gaza. But although the article was completed and ready for publication five months ago, it has still not appeared. The senior commander told Yedhiot: "Means and intentions is a definition that suits an arrest operation in the Judaea and Samaria [West Bank] area... We need to be very careful because the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] was already burnt in the second Lebanon war from the wrong terminology. The concept of means and intentions is taken from different circumstances. Here [in Cast Lead] we were not talking about another regular counter-terrorist operation. There is a clear difference."

His remarks reinforce testimonies from soldiers who served in the Gaza operation, made to the veterans' group Breaking the Silence and reported exclusively by this newspaper last July. They also appear to cut across the military doctrine – enunciated most recently in public by one of the authors of the IDF's own code of ethics – that it is the duty of soldiers to run risks to themselves in order to preserve civilian lives.

Explaining what he saw as the dilemma for forces operating in areas that were supposedly cleared of civilians, the senior commander said: "Whoever is left in the neighbourhood and wants to action an IED [improvised explosive device] against the soldiers doesn't have to walk with a Kalashnikov or a weapon. A person like that can walk around like any other civilian; he sees the IDF forces, calls someone who would operate the terrible death explosive and five of our soldiers explode in the air. We could not wait until this IED is activated against us."

Another soldier who worked in one of the brigade's war-room headquarters told The Independent that conduct in Gaza – particularly by aerial forces and in areas where civilians had been urged to leave by leaflets – had "taken the targeted killing idea and turned it on its head". Instead of using intelligence to identify a terrorist, he said, "here you do the opposite: first you take him down, then you look into it."

The Yedhiot newspaper also spoke to a series of soldiers who had served in Operation Cast Lead in sensitive positions. While the soldiers rejected the main finding of the Goldstone Report – that the Israeli military had deliberately "targeted" the civilian population – most asserted that the rules were flexible enough to allow a policy under which, in the words of one soldier "any movement must entail gunfire. No one's supposed to be there." He added that at a meeting with his brigade commander and others it was made clear that "if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot. This is essentially the rules of engagement."

The other soldier in the war-room explained: "This doesn't mean that you need to disrespect the lives of Palestinians but our first priority is the lives of our soldiers. That's not something you're going to compromise on. In all my years in the military, I never heard that."

He added that the majority of casualties were caused in his brigade area by aerial firing, including from unmanned drones. "Most of the guys taken down were taken down by order of headquarters. The number of enemy killed by HQ-operated remote ... compared to enemy killed by soldiers on the ground had absolutely inverted," he said.

Rules of engagement issued to soldiers serving in the West Bank as recently as July 2006 make it clear that shooting towards even an armed person will take place only if there is intelligence that he intends to act against Israeli forces or if he poses an immediate threat to soldiers or others.

In a recent article in New Republic, Moshe Halbertal, a philosophy professor at Hebrew and New York Universities, who was involved in drawing up the IDF's ethical code in 2000 and who is critical of the Goldstone Report, said that efforts to spare civilian life "must include the expectation that soldiers assume some risk to their own lives in order to avoid causing the deaths of civilians". While the choices for commanders were often extremely difficult and while he did not think the expectation was demanded by international law, "it is demanded in Israel's military code and this has always been its tradition".

The Israeli military declined to comment on the latest revelations, and directed all enquiries to already-published material, including a July 2009 foreign ministry document The Operation in Gaza: Factual and Legal Aspects.

That document, which repeats that Israel acted in conformity with international law despite the "acute dilemmas" posed by Hamas's operations within civilian areas, sets out the principles of Operation Cast Lead as follows: "Only military targets shall be attacked; Any attack against civilian objectives shall be prohibited. A 'civilian objective' is any objective which is not a military target." It adds: "In case of doubt, the forces are obliged to regard an object as civilian."

Yedhiot has not commented on why its article has not been published.

Israel in Gaza: The soldier's tale

This experienced soldier, who cannot be named, served in the war room of a brigade during Operation Cast Lead. Here, he recalls an incident he witnessed during last winter's three-week offensive:

"Two [Palestinian] guys are walking down the street. They pass a mosque and you see a gathering of women and children.

"You saw them exiting the house and [they] are not walking together but one behind the other. So you begin to fantasise they are actually ducking close to the wall.

"One [man] began to run at some point, must have heard the chopper. The GSS [secret service] argued that the mere fact that he heard it implicated him, because a normal civilian would not have realised that he was now being hunted.

"Finally he was shot. He was not shot next to the mosque. It's obvious that shots are not taken at a gathering."
________________________

Patty Griffin at Floores in Helotes, TX 28 April 2009

[Sensitive, cerebral, troubled and melancholy--one of America's premier song writers and "Songbirds!"]

Useless Desires, from the Impossible Dream album



"Useless Desires"

Say goodbye to the old street
That never cared much for you anyway
The different-colored doorways
You thought would let you in one day
Goodbye to the old bus stop, frozen and waiting
The weekend edition has this town way overrated

You walk across a baseball field
The grass has turned to straw
A flock of birds tries to fly away from where you are
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye old friend
I can't make you stay
I can't spend another ten years
Wishing you would anyway

How the sky turns to fire against a telephone wire
And even I'm getting tired of useless desires

Every day I take a bitter pill that gets me on my way
For the little aches and pains
The ones I have from day to day
To help me think a little less about the things I miss
To help me not to wonder how I ended up like this

I walk down to the railroad track and ride a rusty train
With a million other faces I shoot through the city veins
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye old friend
You wanted to be free
Somewhere beyond the bitter end is where I want to be

How the sky turns to fire against a telephone wire
And even I'm getting tired of useless desires

Say goodbye to the old building
That never tried to know your name
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye old friend
You won't be seeing me again
Goodbye to all the windowpanes shining in the sun
Like diamonds on a winter day
Goodbye, goodbye to everyone

How the sky turns to fire against a telephone wire
Burns the last of the day down
And I'm the last one hangin' around
Waiting on a train track, and the train never comes back
And even I'm getting tired of useless desires
_____________________________

Grateful Dead--"Ripple"



If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they're better left unsung.
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.

There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then whos to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.

La dee da da da, la da da da da, da da da, da da, da da da da da
La da da da, la da da, da da, la da da da, la da, da da.

Obama: Your Teaching Moment

Your Disappointment In Obama Is Your Teaching Moment

By Carolyn Baker



http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1486/1/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24535.htm
January 29, 2010

-- It's the end of the affair, and the stale taste of limerence stays on your tongue. You were promised the sun, moon, and stars, and you desperately wanted to believe it was real, especially after the betrayal of your former relationship of eight years. You had considered escaping-riding off into the sunset to another country where he couldn't find you, or so you hoped. You feared for your children and what he was setting them up for. You feared for yourself in the face of his brutality and intrusiveness into your life. Though you wouldn't admit it, you secretly prayed for assassination or some elaborate exposure that would take him down.

Then along came Mr. Wonderful with his irresistible smile and infectious inspiration. He wooed you with his charm, that smile, and his engaging discourse-so articulate by comparison with the unintelligible babbling you had put up with for eight years. He cared about you and your children. No longer were you alone; like Martin Luther King, he had a dream-a dream congruent with yours, and the passion you both shared for the dream was hypnotic and felt deeply spiritual. You actually thought that he was a messenger sent from another world to rescue you and take you out of the nightmare. He used transcendent terms like "hope", "change", "yes we can." And not only were you totally surrendered to his embrace, but you begged everyone else to do the same. He's our only hope, you told them and yourself. You could scarcely contain your ecstasy when they all chose him in the last hours of the eight years you had all excruciatingly endured.

It was a new day, one year ago at this time. Your sighs of relief could not have been longer or deeper. You and your children were now safe at last.

But today, you ponder reflectively the past year, and what you have now come to understand is that the hero you married is a prisoner. You believed him when he told you he was free and at liberty to make the changes he proclaimed. You trusted him, committed yourself to him, and fought for him. And now you discover that he's betrayed you and that his actions really aren't that divergent from his predecessor's. In fact, he is a prisoner of the same forces that terrorized you for the previous eight years. Fooled again. Betrayed. You sink into despair and depression. You talk to your friends-the others who also believed in him. You feel those old and familiar emotions you felt from 2001-2008 that you thought you'd never have to feel again. "What can we do?" you ask. "What are our options?"

The affair is over, and you don't know whether to cry, rage, get drunk, stay stoned, or rethink leaving the country. You've married a prisoner; you've made another bad choice. You feel bitter and perhaps a little self-loathing. In fact, you want to take a shower because you feel dirty all over.

OK, I could be talking about a real love affair here between two people-one a professional con artist and the other, an enabler. Or I could be talking about a nation of hopeful citizens who wanted to believe so desperately that their new hero would reverse the course set forth by the sociopaths of the previous administration and lead them forward to a better, more humane life, a more bonded community, a saner world for themselves and their children.

What we all must ask ourselves at the end of a relationship that turned out badly-a relationship at the end of which we felt betrayed and disappointed is quite simply: What is my part? Why did I make this choice? What did I not wish to see? What were the red flags I chose to ignore?

This week, Michael Moore was interviewed by Democracy Now and confessed his sense of betrayal and disappointment with Obama's first year. What I heard from him and hear from almost every progressive liberal who expresses similar sentiments is a jaw-dropping naïveté regarding the nomination of candidate Obama and the system he represents. It is the epitome of the definition of insanity: repeating a behavior proven erroneous without exception, time after time, yet expecting that the next time, the result will be different.

Yet both sadly and fortunately, as is true whenever the betrayer shows his true colors, this is a teaching moment for the enablers. And this particular teaching moment is more important, more momentous than any in our national history. Why? Because of what is at stake in terms of the future of the planet, and that future is inextricably connected with a paradigm to which we have been "married" as a people since the birth of our nation.

Last week's Supreme Court ruling lifting limits on campaign financing by corporations was truly the last nail in the coffin of democracy and sealed the fundamental definition of fascism attributed to Mussolini which was simply, "the corporate state." Abramoff rules, and politicians no longer have any reason to function other than corporate whores. As a friend suggested to me a few days ago, members of Congress should now dress themselves in NASCAR uniforms indicating which corporations own them so that we don't need to bother researching the facts but can see them wearing the information on their bodies.

During the 2007-2008 hyperventilating euphoria of progressives regarding the candidacy of Obama, my website, Speaking Truth to Power, was exposing Obama's corporate connections and forecasting that little if anything would significantly change with his election. I was labeled Debbie Downer from Doom and Gloomville and called a conspiracy nut. And so here we are: Revelations from Matt Taibbi and others regarding Goldman Sachs as the largest contributor to Obama's election campaign, an escalation of war in Afghanistan above and beyond the proportions of Bush's war in Iraq, Obama's sanctioning of Bush's policies on torture, Obama's prone position in relation to Wall St. and his choice to surround himself with economic advisors who were directly responsible for creating economic collapse-I could continue ad nauseum. The similitude between the policies of Bush II and Obama are so glaring that last week, progressive journalist, Danny Schechter, asked, "Has Obama Become Bush II?" (I am particularly fond of the Photoshopped image attending the article-a picture worth more than a thousand words.)

In this teaching moment, those disappointed and despairing of their tryst with Obama have a golden opportunity to ask themselves what his betrayal of them reveals regarding the political and economic systems of America and the reality that no politician can even be nominated for the Presidency by the two-party monstrosity, let alone elected, unless that candidate is permanently dressed in his or her NASCAR uniform. If you do not ask this question, you will continue living out the definition of insanity with every national election because you refuse to look deeply at the fundamentals of how the corporate state functions. You will cover its rotting stench with come cloying cologne of "hope" and thereby not only enable your betrayers but waste precious time by not attending to life and death issues.

My 2006 book, U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You, endeavored first and foremost to leave the reader with an understanding of who owns and operates the American political system. Others have offered their brilliant analyses-Naomi Klein in Shock Doctrine, Mike Ruppert in Crossing The Rubicon, and Kevin Phillips in Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism. Your failed love affair with Obama is now your teaching moment-a critical opportunity to research these four books above and buy out of the putrid, perfidious American political system and buy into making your local community resilient and self-sufficient.

I have long since rejected the American political system and have not voted in any national election since 2000, nor will I again in my lifetime. To do so is to buy into a system that has created what for years I have termed the Toxic Triangle of energy depletion, economic meltdown, and environmental devastation. Every drop of human energy I invest in that system is energy divested from working with my community, my neighborhood, and my loved ones to respond to the current and coming horrors that have been wrought by the three "E's": catastrophic climate chaos, multitudes of environmental refugees, impending global food shortages, the depletion of safe and clean drinking water worldwide, widespread droughts and environmental disasters, unprecedented energy depletion, environmental illnesses and pandemics, and global economic cataclysm.

Visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller, E.F. Schumacher, and Herman Daly have demonstrated that global challenges are most effectively addressed on the local level, where pragmatic responses and options can be created as an alternative to investment in the fantasy of global solutions. That is to say that in the 21st century, "global" is synonymous with "corporate" and therefore guaranteed to exacerbate rather than grapple with the daunting issues confronting the earth community.

Some individuals argue that focusing on re-localization forces us to ignore the global corporatism of an international ruling elite. My response is to ask why we must do one or the other. It is crucial in my opinion to be aware of the powers that be and their machinations, but I must also ask, what realistically, any of us can do to alter or avert their agenda? The answer is nothing; however, there is much we can do to protect ourselves and our communities from it by becoming self-sufficient and resilient.

On Inauguration Day, 2009, I was intrigued as I watched the swearing in of Obama, by the presence of one man standing behind and to the right of Obama--none other than Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. I doubt that the positioning was intentional, but for me, it was symbolic. It forces me to ask, which interests, which ruling elite families are "standing behind and to the right" of Obama? To what extent is he their creation and theirs alone? For that reason, I chose a photo of that symbolic moment to accompany this article. Take a closer look and think about it deeply. On Inauguration Day, I scoured the internet to find a photo of Rockefeller standing behind Obama during the Oath of Office because I knew its symbolism would later be appreciated by many more Americans than just me. This moment is the moment I had in mind.

Some enablers are capable of changing their behavior and making saner choices. For example, those that have a magnetic attraction to prisoners might find themselves losing interest because they have discovered the deeper meaning of freedom-the ability to create with the support of others, authentic, meaningful responses that do not seduce one into the prison system itself.

This particular affair is over. The "hopium" has worn off. It's time to choose whether you will pursue another affair with another prisoner or walk away from all forms of incarceration, theirs and yours. This is your teaching moment.

CAROLYN BAKER, Ph.D., was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for 11 years and a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years. Her latest book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, is unique in its offering of emotional and spiritual tools for preparing for living in a post-industrial world. Her other books include: Coming Out From Christian Fundamentalism: Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred (2007) , U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You (2006) and The Journey of Forgiveness, (2000) She is available for speaking engagements and author events and can be contacted at carolyn (a) carolyn baker.net

Baker Birds: Gray-crowned Rosy Finches

In This Edition:

- Gray-crowned Rosy Finches at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center

- More on Corporations as Persons (Corporation Running for Congress Satire)
==============================

Gray-crowned Rosy Finches

I first encountered the Gray-crowned Rosy Finches well over 20 year ago, back in my rock-hounding days. We were exploring the Darwin Mining District in the Darwin Hills of Inyo County, California when we encountered a gray, brown and pink bird that was apparently roosting in the old mine shafts. A check of the old Audubon bird guide showed them to be Gray-crowned Rosy Finches. That was my last confirmed visual sighting until yesterday.

Gray-Crowned Rosy Finch
Rosy Finch on railing in front of Interpretive Center.

Gray-crowned Rosy Finches, while widespread, are uncommon and rarely seen. If you subscribe to the OBOL (Oregon Birders On Line) list or the birding list out of EOU in La Grande, you will read occasionally of sightings, usually in the country north of Wallowa, but sometimes east of Cove near La Grande. Thats a long trip for a long shot sighting, so local birders were pleased to find out that the Gray-crowns had been sighted in front of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center before Christmas. Interestingly, I first heard that the birds might be there from some none-birding friends visiting from Elgin around New Years. A call to Cheri, who woman's the front desk at the center, confirmed that they were showing up periodically, and had been since around late November.

A few of us made separate visits to the area, including the front entrance to the center, off and on for several weeks without success. Then last week, Sheri saw them again in late afternoon, and they were seen around the same time for several of the succeeding days. Finally, yesterday's visit paid off. After no luck initially while hiking around the center, I went in to speak with Cheri. She said it was about 4 minutes before the time they seemed to be showing up--3:40 PM. I went inside to poke around and 2 to 3 minutes later they appeared. Unfortunately, about the same time, they were immediately scattered due to the fact that the resident Kestrel (sparrow hawk) came looking for dinner. (Two are known to have crashed into the front windows this winter with one fatality--wondering if they were trying to escape the Kestrel?) about 5 or 6 came back briefly and the left seemingly to the back of the building. After trying to find them again, around the building, I noticed one lingering on the railing in front of the building. After I got back up there, it remained long enough for a very short photo session. Due to the calm, half-tame nature of the birds, I was able to get close enough for a decent photo prior to its flying off in search of its friends.

My feeling is that because these Rosy Finches have an affinity for rocky hillsides and talus, both found at the Interpretive Center, and are known to roost communally during winter in mine shafts (of which their are several in the area), bridge supports (like supports found below the building) and buildings, they are likely showing up in the late afternoon to be close to their communal night-time roost.

Primary area to find the Rosy Finches (Dirt is on the lens, not the building!)
Finches, when present, are usually on the railing, supports, or rocks near the walkway.

More about these finches
The three North American species of Rosy Finches, the Gray-crowned, Brown-capped, and Black Rosy Finch, were once considered to be a single species, but have since been separated back to the three individual species. Within the Gray-crowned species, there are 3 or 4 subspecies. The birds at the Interpretive Center appear to be the Gray-cheeked or Hepburn's subspecies, but the Audubon Society of Portland recognized the Gray-crowned Rosy Finch population that is endemic to the Wallowa Mountains and surrounding area as a separate subspecies, the Wallowa Rosy Finch. As the Hepburns and Wallowa subspecies closely resemble each other, at least according to Gabrielson and Jewett, and intermingle on their N. E. Oregon wintering grounds, I can't say with any certainty which subspecies the Interpretive Center's birds belong to, although it is likely a Gray-cheecked/Hepburn's, due to their higher numbers.

To see the Wallowa subspecies alone in its breeding range, one must travel to the alpine zone of the high peaks in places like the head of Big Sheep Creek or the summit area of Brown Mountain. (See the chapter on these birds in "The Birds Of Oregon, by Gabrielson and Jewett, 1940, reprinted as Birds of the Pacific Northwest in 1970.) There they describe their chilly summer breeding grounds:

"The habits of this small finch have made it a species of peculiar interest to ornithologists. It seeks the cold and austere heights for its summer home and there, about the perpetual snow and ice, builds its nests in crevices and crannies in the rocks and forages for food on the surfaces of the snowfields and glaciers. [where] they feasted on chilled insects that had fallen benumbed on failure of their endeavors to cross the frozen areas."

If you would like to see one of these attractive and uncommon finches, late afternoon at the Interpretive Center entrance is your best bet. Remember that there are no guarantees and that their visits, in groups of 5 to 20, have been sporadic since late fall. It is likely that they will be heading back up toward their breeding range before long, especially if the weather stays unseasonably warm. If you head out that way, remember they close at 4 PM.



Learn more about these finches:

All About Birds/Cornell Lab of Ornithology
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gray-crowned_Rosy-Finch/id This site shows the "Interior" subspecies, which lacks the large gray cheek of our birds.

Birds of North America Online
http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna.html/species/559/articles/introduction

BirdWeb
http://birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?id=453

California Department of Fish and Game
nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentVersionID=17741


From the Morgue


As mentioned above, a few weeks ago a Rosy Finch flew into one of the large windows at the entrance and died. The Bird Conservation Network estimates that "At least 100,000,000 [that's one hundred million] birds are killed and even more are injured every year across North America by collisions with windows." (http://www.bcnbirds.org/window.html)



Some of these deaths can be prevented if a pattern of some sort can be placed on your clean, clear wndows. My persoal solution, that seems to work well while fitting my character, is not washing them. ;-) Let that film and spotting thicken up a bit! Not quite the same as a decorative film, but it is effective and economical.

The Bird Conservation Network Recommends:

"Reflective Windows: Put something on the outside of the window to alter the appearance of the entire window. The coverage must be total and allow for openings no larger than 4 inches (10 cm) across.

Options:
1) Hang strips of 1+ inch wide paper / ribbons / string / mobiles every four inches
2) "Frost" or "etch" the glass using techniques popularized by decorating books and websites
3) Sponge or stamp on a decorative pattern with soap or thinned window paint
4) Cover the windows with "CollidEscape" perforated film to make windows visible to birds while allowing those inside clear view to the outside
5) Cover the window with decorative films"

If you do find or receive a dead bird, not one legally hunted of course, be sure to call ODFW to see if you can legally possess it. Besides non-natives like house sparrows and starlings, it is generally unlawful to possess native birds without a permit.
______________________

More on Corporations as Persons
--

(Murray Hill Incorporated is Running for Congress Must See Satire!)
Click Here: http://www.youtube.com/user/murrayhillcongress#p/u
_______________________

Edwards says Amend the Constitution
On January 27, 2010, Congresswoman Donna Edwards announced that she would introduce an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to undo the damage caused the the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysUr0fj3aRY

Join this effort:

http://freespeechforpeople.org

A Little Bit Fishy?

Edited for clarity, 1/28/10.

In a recent editorial from the Baker City Herald Editorial Board (A Little Bit Fishy: http://www.bakercityherald.com/Editorials/A-little-bit-fishy), they complain that "the government risks its credibility when it claims a species is in peril yet can’t answer questions about the species that the public should, and probably will, ask."

I strongly disagree, because the government, has is fact answered the public's questions and provided a good deal of explanatory material in the proposed and final rules from 2002 to 2010. They can't, of course, be held responsible for the public's or the Heralds lack of knowledge concerning the principles of conservation biology and "connectivity," or for not answering questions that haven't been asked.

Bull Trout
Fish & Wildlife Service Photo

The board has printed many editorials that I agree with, especially those that deal with a fiscally conservative approach to spending the people's money (but not their recommendation of a "no" vote on measures 66 & 67), but we come to those conclusions it seems from different perspectives. The main difference to me seems to be that they want to preserve the current system of inappropriate distribution of the country's wealth, including its native flora and fauna, while I would like to change it.

I understand that in a county as "conservative" as Baker County, that a media outlet will tend to sit on the fence or take editorial positions in accordance with the political views of the majority of their readers, which include, among other things, fiscal conservatism, and unfortunately for the biosphere, an animosity toward environmental reforms intended to save the habitats and species that were here before our self-centered and destructive appearance on the historic landscape.

In their editorial, in addition to suggesting that the government "can’t answer questions about the species that the public should, and probably will, ask" they write "of 251 miles of the Powder River and its tributaries proposed as critical habitat, almost one-third — 76 miles —harbor not a single bull trout, according to the FWS." They are of course speaking of habitat that was historically used by bull trout before we altered and nearly destroyed its usefulness to bull trout because of the changes accompanying agricultural development, grazing, mining, logging, and roading activities.

They continue by explaining that "Now we understand that in some cases it’s defensible to protect habitat for a species even when there’s no evidence that species lives there. Terrestrial animals can cover a lot of ground, after all. . . . there are thousands of acres of suitable habitat for lynx on the forest, and it’s reasonable for the forest to try to preserve that habitat because lynx could return. . . . Fish, of course, are considerably more restricted in their movements." These last few statements seem to suggest that the Herald thinks while it may be "reasonable" to protect vacant habitat for terrestrial animals, fish are different because they lack the mobility of land-bound animals, and are restricted to aquatic habitat. The logic of such a notion escapes me given that the principles of conservation biology apply regardless of type of habitat or differences in modes of mobility.

Their greatest concern seems to be that "federal officials say it’s necessary to designate as critical habitat streams where bull trout are absent because those streams are connected to ones where bull trout do live. . . . . That sounds all right in theory. Except the FWS report fails to explain why the isolated bull trout populations in the Powder River system aren’t connecting, as it were, to the streams that have suitable habitat."

I am not a fast friend of the Fish and Wildlife Service or other Federal agencies, and have criticized their perceived failures many times, but a even a cursory look at the Bull Trout listing documents produced over the years reveals that the Herald is mistaken. The agencies have explained and answered these question and more.

Connectivity in the science established by the discipline of conservation biology, consists, in its simplest sense, of the existence of suitable corridors, terrestrial (over land) or aquatic (i.e., streams, lakes, and rivers), to allow for the natural migration of a species. For bull trout, aquatic corridors allow their migration between spawning and rearing habitat in cold, clean upstream waters to and through foraging (feeding), migratory, and overwintering habitat downstream. Much of this downstream habitat has been blocked or degraded to the point that it is no longer useful. In coastal regions, bull trout, if unimpeded by various obstructions, even migrate into salt water ocean harbors for a portion of their lives as juveniles.

A reading of all the recovery plan documents suggests, despite the Herald's claim, that the government has adequately explained the problem: "Currently, habitat fragmentation and degradation are likely the most limiting factors for bull trout throughout the Hells Canyon Complex Recovery Unit. In the Snake River, large dams of the Hells Canyon Complex lack fish passage and have isolated bull trout among three basins, the Pine Creek and Indian Creek watersheds, Wildhorse River, and Powder River. Dams, irrigation diversions, and road crossings have formed impassable barriers to fish movement within the basins, further fragmenting habitats and isolating bull trout. Land management activities that degrade aquatic and riparian habitats by altering stream flows and riparian vegetation, such as water diversions, past and current mining operations, timber harvest and road construction, and improper grazing practices, have negatively affected bull trout in several areas of the recovery unit." ( 2002 Recovery Plan, Ch. 13, p. 4)

Improper Grazing Practices Degrade Water Quality
Degraded Water Quality from Trampled Streambanks Interferes With Fish Reproduction

Also, in the Introduction (Ibid, pp. 4 &5): "Declines in bull trout distribution and abundance are the results of combined effects of the following: habitat degradation and fragmentation, the blockage of migratory corridors, poor water quality, angler harvest and poaching, entrainment (process by which aquatic organisms are pulled through a diversion structure or other device) into diversion [irrigation] channels and dams, and introduced nonnative species. Specific land and water management activities that continue to depress bull trout populations and degrade habitat include dams and other diversion structures, forest management practices, livestock grazing, agriculture, road construction and maintenance, mining, and urban and rural development. Some threats to bull trout are the continuing effects of past land management activities."

Further, in the 2004 "Final Rule," (http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2004_register&docid=fr06oc04-25), the Fish and Wildlife Service explains that:

"The ability to migrate is important to the persistence of local bull trout subpopulations (Rieman and McIntyre 1993; Gilpin 1997; Rieman and Clayton 1997; Rieman et al. 1997). Bull trout rely on migratory corridors to move from spawning and rearing habitats to foraging and overwintering habitats and back. Migratory bull trout become much larger than resident fish in the more productive waters of larger streams and lakes, leading to increased reproductive potential (McPhail and Baxter 1996). Also, local populations that have been extirpated by catastrophic events may become reestablished as a result of movements by bull trout through migratory corridors (Rieman and McIntyre 1993; MBTSG 1998). Activities that preclude the function of migratory corridors may affect bull trout (e.g., stream blockages)." (p. 60025)

Whether the migratory habitat is currently occupied, in the sense that one can always find a fish there, is simply irrelevant. The migratory habitat is necessary for fish to get from one suitable habitat, and isolated population, to another, for purposes that help guarantee the survival of the species.

They explain this further on p. 60024:

"Restoration of reproducing bull trout populations to additional portions of their historical range would significantly reduce the likelihood of extinction due to natural or human-caused factors that might otherwise further reduce population size and distribution. Thus, an integral component of the draft Recovery Plan is the selective reestablishment of secure, self-sustaining populations in certain areas where the species has apparently, but not necessarily conclusively, been extirpated. In this regard, we also note that some habitat areas that would not be considered essential if they were geographically isolated are, in fact, essential to the conservation of the species when situated in locations where they facilitate movement between local populations, or otherwise play a significant role in maintaining recolonize adjacent habitat patches following periodic extirpation events) (Dunham and Rieman 1999). In addition, populations on the periphery of the species' range, or in atypical environments, are important for maintaining the genetic diversity of the species and could prove essential to the ability of the species to adapt to rapidly changing climatic and environmental conditions (Leary et al. 1993; Hard 1995)."

In the Jan. 14, 2010 Proposed Rule (Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 9 / Thursday, January 14, 2010 / Proposed Rules, p. 2279
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/pdf/2010-176.pdf), the government states under "Primary Constituent Elements," the need of the bull trout species for:

"(2) Migratory habitats [i.e., connectivity] with minimal physical, biological, or water quality impediments between spawning, rearing, overwintering, and freshwater and marine foraging habitats, including but not limited to permanent, partial, intermittent, or seasonal barriers."

More explanations on the need for connectivity:

Also under "Criteria Used To Identify Critical Habitat," the 2010 Proposed Rule says on p. 2280, in addition to ensuring "sufficient connectivity among populations," that "(4) In selecting areas to propose as critical habitat, we considered factors specific to each river system, such as size (i.e., stream order), gradient, channel morphology, connectivity to other aquatic habitats, and habitat complexity and diversity, as well as range-wide recovery considerations. We took into account the fact that bull trout habitat preference ranges from small headwater streams used largely for spawning and rearing, to downstream mainstem portions of river networks used for rearing, foraging, migration, or overwintering." On p. 2281 they write, "Our primary consideration for most unoccupied areas is restoring connectivity among populations by protecting FMO (foraging, migration, and over-wintering) habitats."

There is an extended discussion of the effects on human activities and the need for connectivity on p. 2282 of this last document, and it is sprinkled with further commentary regarding the need for habitat connectivity throughout. Also included are references to publications documenting their findings in the government documents.

An internet accessible discussion of habitat fragmentation and the need for connectivity can be found at the Craighead Environmental Research Institute (http://www.conservationgis.org/scgis/ScgNews2/ctspsection/ct96craighead.html). They include the following paragraph:

"Habitat reduction and fragmentation at a variety of spatial scales has been widely acknowledged as a primary cause of the decline of many species worldwide (Ehrlich 1986, Lovejoy et al. 1986, Harris 1984). Habitat fragmentation generally leads to smaller and more isolated animal populations. Smaller populations are then more vulnerable to local extinction, due to stochastic [random] events (Shaffer 1978, Gilpin and Soule 1986), and they are more susceptible to the negative effects of inbreeding depression. To reduce the isolation of habitat fragments, many conservation biologists (e.g. Noss 1983, 1987, Noss and Harris 1986, Craighead et al. 1997, Craighead and Vyse 1995, Paetkau et. al. 1997) have recommended maintaining landscape "connectivity" -- preserving habitat for movement of species between remaining fragments."

The "connectivity" they refer to includes aquatic connectivity for the biological and reproductive needs of fish species.

There is much more to the "connectivity" story, including protection from random disasters in isolated habitat, and the need to reestablish a population where it has been eliminated by one transitory problem or another. Connectivity also serves the genetic diversity of local populations by allowing fish from one locale to mingle and breed with another population elsewhere. If anyone is interested in knowing the current science about habitat fragmentation and connectivity, I suggest beginning with the the works of Michael Soule and Reed Noss.

So, we get back to the original Herald editorial. Is it really true, as claimed by the Herald editorial board, that the government "can’t answer questions about the species that the public should, and probably will, ask?" Why does the Baker City Herald spread false doubt and ignorance that only inflames the public against environmentalists and one of the few agencies in government that is doing something, although less than it could or actually should do, to protect threatened species?

A larger question is why have we allowed private and quasi-public commerce, the agricultural and hydropower sectors of the economy, to expropriate the biologically productive riverine systems, and the water and connectivity needed by fish, for their own benefit? Prior to the construction of dams and irrigation diversion structures, salmon, steelhead and bull trout used to migrate to the headwaters of the Powder, Malheur and other watersheds, but the dams and diversions for farm and ranch irrigation, and electricity production, not to mention the trashing of spawning and rearing streams by privately owned cattle on public lands, have denied the people of those public benefits. How is it that those natural resource gifts have been eliminated in our watersheds and driven to the brink of extinction elsewhere, stolen in a sense from the majority of the population, so as to fill the needs of private enterprise?

Bull Trout
Fish and Wildlife Service Photo

The Financial & Moral Costs of Ignoring Militarism & Empire

The sanctity of military spending

As Washington prepares to demand sacrifice from everyone, the National Security State is exempt as always
Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/26/defense/index.html
Jan. 26, 2010
(updated below - Update II)

Administration officials announced last night that the President, in tomorrow's State of the Union address, will propose a multi-year freeze on certain domestic discretionary spending programs. This is an "initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit," officials told The New York Times.

But the freeze is more notable for what it excludes than what it includes. For now, it does not include the largest domestic spending programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And all "security-related programs" are also exempted from the freeze, which means it does not apply to military spending, the intelligence budget, the Surveillance State, or foreign military aid. As always, the notion of decreasing the deficit and national debt through reductions in military spending is one of the most absolute Washington taboos. What possible rationale is there for that?

The facts about America's bloated, excessive, always-increasing military spending are now well-known. The U.S. spends almost as much on military spending as the entire rest of the world combined, and spends roughly six times more than the second-largest spender, China. Even as the U.S. sunk under increasingly crippling levels of debt over the last decade, defense spending rose steadily, sometimes precipitously. That explosion occurred even as overall military spending in the rest of the world decreased, thus expanding the already-vast gap between our expenditures and the world's. As one "defense" spending watchdog group put it: "The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six 'rogue' states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion." To get a sense for how thoroughly military spending dominates our national budget, consider this chart showing where Americans' tax revenue goes [If you can't make out the corresponding color for each category on the list, it begins with the large blue piece of the pie for military spending on the right side of the pie chart, and then goes down the list and around the circle in a clockwise fashion.]:



Since much of that overall spending is mandatory, military spending -- all of which is discretionary -- accounts for over 50% of discretionary government spending. Yet it's absolutely forbidden to even contemplate reducing it as a means of reducing our debt or deficit. To the contrary, Obama ran on a platform of increasing military spending, and that is one of the few pledges he is faithfully and enthusiastically filling (while violating his pledge not to use deceitful budgetary tricks to fund our wars):

President Barack Obama will ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned.

In sum, as we cite our debtor status to freeze funding for things such as "air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks" -- all programs included in Obama's spending freeze -- our military and other "security-related" spending habits become more bloated every year, completely shielded from any constraints or reality. This, despite the fact that it is virtually impossible for the U.S. to make meaningful progress in debt reduction without serious reductions in our military programs.

Public opinion is not a legitimate excuse for this utterly irrational conduct, as large percentages of Americans are receptive to reducing -- or at least freezing -- defense spending. A June, 2009 Pew Research poll asked Americans what they would do about defense spending, and 55% said they would either decrease it (18%) or keep it the same (37%); only 40% wanted it to increase. Even more notably, a 2007 Gallup poll found that "the public's view that the federal government is spending too much on the military has increased substantially this year, to its highest level in more than 15 years." In that poll, 58% of Democrats and 47% of Independents said that military spending "is too high" -- and the percentages who believe that increased steadily over the last decade for every group.

The clear fact is that, no matter how severe are our budgetary constraints, military spending and all so-called "security-related programs" are off-limits for any freezes, let alone decreases. Moreover, the modest spending freeze to be announced by Obama tomorrow is just the start; the Washington consensus has solidified and is clearly gearing up for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with the dirty work to be done by an independent "deficit commission." It's time for "everyone" to sacrifice and suffer some more -- as long as "everyone" excludes our vast military industry, the permanent power factions inside the Pentagon and intelligence community, our Surveillance and National Security State, and the imperial policies of perpetual war which feed them while further draining the lifeblood out of the country.

UPDATE: I just saw this scary headline on MSNBC [.E. "Report: Alaida aims to hit U.S. with WMDs"], became very frightened, and have changed my mind, as I now realize we need to massively increase our military spending to Stay Safe!!!

The Washington Post is hyping the same report. Apparently, it's breaking news -- meriting screaming red-alert headlines -- that Al Qaeda would like to ("aims to") acquire WMDs and use them against the U.S. But we should all try to remain a little calm, at least. I'm sure if we just buy some more fighter jets, create some better underground bombs, invade a few more Muslim countries, keep more Muslims imprisoned forever with no charges, give the Pentagon, the CIA and their private contractors a lot more unaccounted-for cash and stay out of their way, expand our domestic spying networks even further through private sector telecom contracts, pour tens of billions of dollars more into the coffers of our Middle East client states, and kill a few more civilians with drones, this problem will be handled. It's just a matter of making sure we bulk up our military budget -- and Look Forward, not Backward to what was done in the past -- and we'll be able to Stay Safe from this Terrorist-WMD menace.

As for the deficit, no need to worry about that. We can just freeze programs for national parks and cut Social Security and Medicare.

UPDATE II: Thankfully, some among us will be spared the pain of these budgetary freezes and imminent cuts:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates hosted a meeting with the nation's top defense company executives Wednesday, stressing the need for a closer partnership with them and pledging to work with the White House to secure steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets over time, according to his spokesman. . . .

Gates's meeting was part of a day-long session between Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter and the Aerospace Industries Association, the top trade group for American aerospace firms. The heads of the nation's top two defense firms -- Lockheed Martin and Boeing -- attended, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

Did they mention that Al Qaeda aims to get WMDs and attack the U.S. with them?
_________

Wanted: Tony Blair for War Crimes.
Arrest Him and Claim your Reward
Chilcot and the courts won't do it, so it is up to us to show that we won't let an illegal act of mass murder go unpunished

[The difference between Great Britain and America is that they at least think they have to put on the show of an "inquiry." We don't even bother to produce the charade. Makes sense from the perspective of the powerful: how many recent Presidents would we have to drag before a tribunal? And, more importantly, such truths would no doubt interfere with the profit to be made from the killing.]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/25/bounty-blair-war-criminal-chilcot/print
By George Monbiot

January 26, 2010 "The Guardian" --

The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression.
But there's a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury. As a senior judge told the Guardian in November: "Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants. And actually, it's the last thing the opposition wants either because they voted for the war. There simply is not the political pressure to explore the question of legality – they have not asked because they don't want the answer."

Others have explored it, however. Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had "no sound mandate in international law". Last month Lord Steyn, a former law lord, said that "in the absence of a second UN resolution authorising invasion, it was illegal". In November Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, stated that, without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was "a serious violation of international law and the rule of law".

Under the United Nations charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged. The parties to a dispute must first "seek a solution by negotiation" (article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN security council only "if an armed attack occurs against [them]" (article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq's attempts to negotiate. At one point the US state department even announced that it would "go into thwart mode" to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection (all references are on my website). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.

We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it intended to launch was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet Office explained that "a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists." In July 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, told the prime minister that there were only "three possible legal bases" for launching a war – "self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [security council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case." Bush and Blair later failed to obtain security council authorisation.

As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, revealed, her office had "consistently" advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that "an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression". Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, will testify before the Chilcot inquiry tomorrow. Expect fireworks.

Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg principles as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties". They have been recognised in international law since 1945. The Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair's government in 2001, provides for the court to "exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression", once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted.

There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes, for the obvious reason that in doing so they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don't yet exist. The governments that ratified the Rome statute have been filibustering furiously to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still has not been adopted.

Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws, though it is not yet clear which of them would be willing to try a foreign national for acts committed abroad. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.

All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the international criminal court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government that had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, "moved on" from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.

But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in George Bush's government, at the Hay festival in 2008, and as Peter Tatchell found when he tried to detain Robert Mugabe, nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen's arrest. In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the European Union. He didn't of course, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.

At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

More on the Corporate Takeover of America: Inverted totalitarianism

Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction

By Chris Hedges

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/democracy_in_america_is_a_useful_fiction_20100124/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24491.htm

January 25, 2010 "Truthdig" -- Corporate forces, long before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, carried out a coup d'état in slow motion. The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place.


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

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

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

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

Corporations have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington and thousands more in state capitals that dole out corporate money to shape and write legislation. They use their political action committees to solicit employees and shareholders for donations to fund pliable candidates. The financial sector, for example, spent more than $5 billion on political campaigns, influence peddling and lobbying during the past decade, which resulted in sweeping deregulation, the gouging of consumers, our global financial meltdown and the subsequent looting of the U.S. Treasury. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $26 million last year and drug companies such as Pfizer, Amgen and Eli Lilly kicked in tens of millions more to buy off the two parties. These corporations have made sure our so-called health reform bill will force us to buy their predatory and defective products. The oil and gas industry, the coal industry, defense contractors and telecommunications companies have thwarted the drive for sustainable energy and orchestrated the steady erosion of civil liberties. Politicians do corporate bidding and stage hollow acts of political theater to keep the fiction of the democratic state alive.

There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on "American Idol." Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.

Our transformation into an empire, as happened in ancient Athens and Rome, has seen the tyranny we practice abroad become the tyranny we practice at home. We, like all empires, have been eviscerated by our own expansionism. We utilize weapons of horrific destructive power, subsidize their development with billions in taxpayer dollars, and are the world's largest arms dealer. And the Constitution, as Wolin notes, is "conscripted to serve as power's apprentice rather than its conscience."

"Inverted totalitarianism reverses things," Wolin writes. "It is politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash."

Hollywood, the news industry and television, all corporate controlled, have become instruments of inverted totalitarianism. They censor or ridicule those who critique or challenge corporate structures and assumptions. They saturate the airwaves with manufactured controversy, whether it is Tiger Woods or the dispute between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. They manipulate images to make us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge, which is how Barack Obama became president. And the draconian internal control employed by the Department of Homeland Security, the military and the police over any form of popular dissent, coupled with the corporate media's censorship, does for inverted totalitarianism what thugs and bonfires of books do in classical totalitarian regimes.

"It seems a replay of historical experience that the bias displayed by today's media should be aimed consistently at the shredded remains of liberalism," Wolin writes. "Recall that an element common to most 20th century totalitarianism, whether Fascist or Stalinist, was hostility towards the left. In the United States, the left is assumed to consist solely of liberals, occasionally of ‘the left wing of the Democratic Party,' never of democrats."

Liberals, socialists, trade unionists, independent journalists and intellectuals, many of whom were once important voices in our society, have been silenced or targeted for elimination within corporate-controlled academia, the media and government. Wolin, who taught at Berkeley and later at Princeton, is arguably the country's foremost political philosopher. And yet his book was virtually ignored. This is also why Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney, along with intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, are not given a part in our national discourse.

The uniformity of opinion is reinforced by the skillfully orchestrated mass emotions of nationalism and patriotism, which paints all dissidents as "soft" or "unpatriotic." The "patriotic" citizen, plagued by fear of job losses and possible terrorist attacks, unfailingly supports widespread surveillance and the militarized state. This means no questioning of the $1 trillion in defense-related spending. It means that the military and intelligence agencies are held above government, as if somehow they are not part of government. The most powerful instruments of state power and control are effectively removed from public discussion. We, as imperial citizens, are taught to be contemptuous of government bureaucracy, yet we stand like sheep before Homeland Security agents in airports and are mute when Congress permits our private correspondence and conversations to be monitored and archived. We endure more state control than at any time in American history.

The civic, patriotic and political language we use to describe ourselves remains unchanged. We pay fealty to the same national symbols and iconography. We find our collective identity in the same national myths. We continue to deify the Founding Fathers. But the America we celebrate is an illusion. It does not exist. Our government and judiciary have no real sovereignty. Our press provides diversion, not information. Our organs of security and power keep us as domesticated and as fearful as most Iraqis. Capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, when it emasculates government, becomes a revolutionary force. And this revolutionary force, best described as inverted totalitarianism, is plunging us into a state of neo-feudalism, perpetual war and severe repression. The Supreme Court decision is part of our transformation by the corporate state from citizens to prisoners.

Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He served for eight years as the Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times, where he shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, for coverage of terrorism. Hedges also received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism.

© 2010 TruthDig.com
_______

Billy Bragg and Wilco - The Unwelcome Guest (Written by Woodie Guthrie)