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"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power": Benito Mussolini
Voltaire on Freedom
"...So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." Voltaire, François Marie Arouet (1694-1778), Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
Darwin on Effect of Early Brainwashing
"It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason." - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
It was impossible to save the Great Republic
"But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons. The government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket."
Mark Twain
E.O. Wilson on population growth and sustainability
"The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct." - E.O. Wilson
Jefferson on Corporations
“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
How despicable and ignoble war is
Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! - Albert Einstein
Do not despair due to hostility or exclusion
Do not despair due to hostility or exclusion by popular, small minded, or greedy men and women, simply because they reject or cannot understand your truths. Stand up and declare your reality, in defiance of their ignorance and self-serving falsehoods. -- Chris
Anger Looks to the Good of Justice
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." -- St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Aside from the fact that Thomas thought heretics should be put to death ;-) he really has hit on something here!
"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father - Source: Dogwood Papers
"There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961
The weak do what they must. . .
"The strong do what they will, and the weak do what they must." - Thucydides (c. 460 B.C. - c. 395 B.C.)
Sustainability and Population Growth
"A sincere concern for the future is certainly the factor that motivates many who make frequent use of the word, "sustainable." But there are cases where one suspects that the word is used carelessly, perhaps as though the belief exists that the frequent use of the adjective "sustainable" is all that is needed to create a sustainable society."
"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"
The Primary Political Question: "Who benefits? Who pays?"
To cut through the cant of "responsibility," we must ask the double question "Who benefits? Who pays?" This is the first question to ask when a politico-economic system of distribution is proposed. It focuses our attention on operations and their consequences rather than on words. The answer to this double question largely defines the properties of a system. We take it as axiomatic that every social action entails both gain (profit) and cost (loss). We can indicate the way profit and loss are distributed by three alternative verbs: privatize, commonize and socialize. -Garrett Hardin 1985
Thomas Paine on the Defense of Custom
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
From the Introduction to Common Sense, January 10, 1776
Taking A Position Because It Is Right
Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Galbraith on Respectability
“Political conservatism benefits from the deep desire of politicians, Democrats in particular, for respectability -their need to show that they are individuals of sound, confidence inspiring judgment. And what is the test of respectability? It is broadly whether speech and action are consistent with the comfort and well-being of the people of property and position. A radical is anyone who causes discomfort or otherwise offends such interests. Thus in our politics, we test even liberals by their conservatism.” - John Kenneth Galbraith
They love the liars and hate the truth, Mencken
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars: the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." - - H. L. Mencken - (1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist
a lie so subtle
"Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, 'There is something not right,' no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code." - Carl Gustav Jung
Repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed,
"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed." -John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath
Need to write an Oregon Public Records request?
Click on this link and they will write a request for you:
“Its hard to give, Its hard to get, But everybody needs a little forgiveness.” Patty Griffin - from "Forgiveness"
American “Democracy” and Responsibility
"we also have to be precise about the roadblocks that keep people from acting responsibly: A nominally democratic political system dominated by elites who serve primarily the wealthy in a predatory corporate capitalist system; which utilizes sophisticated propaganda techniques that have been effective in undermining real democracy; aided by mass-media industries dedicated to selling diversions to consumers more than to helping inform citizens in ways that encourage meaningful political action."
- Robert Jensen, Professor of journalism, University of Texas at Austin. From Op-Ed, July 8, 2008
OUR UNDISPUTED OVERLORDS
“Big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are again the undisputed overlords of politics and government. The White House, the Congress and, increasingly, the judiciary, reflect their interests. We appear to have a government run by remote control from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute. To hell with everyone else.” - Bill Moyers - PBS Commentator
The Politics of Anti-Semitism
The Politics of Anti-Semitism, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, confronts how the slur of "anti-semite" has been used to intimidate critics of Israel's abuse of Palestinians. It includes essays by Uri Avnery, Edward Said, Michael Neumann and Bill and Kathy Christison and more.
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom"
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." -- Somerset Maugham
Human Insensitivity, Arrogance, Ignorance, Greed and Folly
There is perhaps no more certain sign of human insensitivity, arrogance, ignorance, greed and folly than the constant growth and destructive expansion of human populations across the globe—a self-worshiping, voracious cancer that continues to plunder and trash our planet and its creatures while almost imperceptibly picking away at the very support systems of life as we know it. - Me (and many others before)
I am a nature photographer specializing in wildflowers, birds, and other criters.
Some of my wildflower and other photos can be found at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherchristie/sets/
And
http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?where-photographer=Christopher+Christie
These photos can be downloaded without charge for personal use and are used for educational purposes in the publications of many organizations, most often for free.
My professional training is in microbiology (BS Microbiology, Honors / Distinction in) and medical technology. I have worked as a microbiologist, medical technologist and Greyhound bus driver. In the late 1980's I grew over 100 native species in a small nursery. Besides identifying, photographing and growing native plants, I enjoy birdwatching, gardening and hiking in the Great Basin and local mountains. In the fall and winter, I used to do raptor counts along the Burnt River in the Hereford area for the East Cascade Bird Conservancy.
“We are swimming with the snakes at the bottom of the well - So silent and peaceful in the darkness where we fell - But we are not snakes and what's more we never will be And if we stay swimming here forever we will never be free” Patty Griffin - from "Forgiveness"
Mysteries
Pictograph From San Rafael Swell, Utah
Endangered Peninsular Bighorn Sheep
Bighorns in Anza Borrego State Park, CA, 1998
Not One More Death, Not One More Dollar
Message On Main Street to End the War
Peace On Main Street
Need money For Schools?
Winnie Moves to New Meadows, Idaho
In 1944 Winnie's house at the logging camp was moved on the back of a truck. In those days, logger's homes were often moved from camp to camp on R.R.flatcars or trucks.
[Edited 12/14/11] Listening to the American media, like NPR and Fox News, or to Presidential candidates, and the like, who constantly berate the rest of the world, like Russia, or any country that defends their sovereignty from the parasitic demands of western capitalists, or who seriously defend the rights of Palestinians against the illegal murderous acts of the Zionist Israeli state, as Iran, Syria, Libya or pre-war Iraq have done, for example, you get the idea that we, the US, are the "Pillar of International Law" and "Democratic Freedoms" -- the ultimate arbiters of "moral authority."
We are God. We decide for the world what is moral or immoral, right or wrong. We don't subscribe to the International Court--we just tell them who to try for war crimes before or after we and NATO bomb target countries and their civilians into submission. You can hear our righteous role promoted in the media, some churches, and from Congress every day--we make the rules by virtue of our power and not to be questioned so-called moral authority--governed of course by who has the most money to influence elections and our most moral Congressional legislation. The fact that our government now consistently violates and trashes our Constitution, civil liberties, and traditional American democratic values is not worthy of notice, and in fact, many Americans realize that they dare not speak of it for fear of retribution.
We get government by the well off, imperial empire, drone killing of citizens without trial, indefinite detention, war without end, extreme inequality, increasing poverty, medical care we can't afford, foreclosures and homelessness, crumbling schools and infrastructure, and tear gas when we protest, but despite the reality of our lives, our government and media lecture us and the rest of the world on the virtues of American democracy.
Well, much of the world disagrees with the hypocrisy represented by the policies, wars and other actions of the US government, but you won't hear that from most of the American media or Congress.
Here are two infinitesimally small, but recent, examples of what much of the world really thinks: __
NNIMMO BASSEY: The U.S. delegation should understand that the citizens of the United States are not living on a separate planet. We have only one planet. And it’s important that the delegation from the U.S. should stop stopping global action against global warming. They have done this from 1997. They can’t keep on bullying the world. If they don’t want to act, they should get out of the convention. Simple message: we can’t allow this any further.
There are many ways to view the world's carbon emissions: by national totals or emissions per person; by current carbon output or historical emissions; by production of greenhouse gases or consumption of goods and services; by absolute emissions or economic carbon intensity. Our interactive map allows you to browse all of these different measurements, each of which provides a different insight. Together they highlight the complexity of divvying up responsibility for climate change and some of the tensions at the heart of the global climate negotiations.
Our interactive map allows you to browse all of these different measurements, each of which provides a different insight. Together they highlight the complexity of divvying up responsibility for climate change and some of the tensions at the heart of the global climate negotiations.
See link above for interactive map. __
There are no magic answers
"There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future." -- Noam Chomsky
Just a "few" bits and pieces on domestic American politics tonight.
In This Edition: [Edited 10/29/11]
- Dennis Kucinich on Occupy Wall Street & National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act - Recent Occupy Wall Street Polls (oldest first) - Study Confirms Wealth Distribution in United States is Most Unequal Among Industrialized Nations - CBO Study Shows Growing Inequality - Noam Chomsky at Occupy Boston--Three Part Video - Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (Bad) News - Article on Rick Perry "Flat Tax" - Bob Dylan--High Water [For Charley Patton] _____
Dear Friends, An Iraq War veteran who survived two tours of duty gets his skull fractured in ... Oakland! 53 activists arrested in Atlanta. SWAT teams deployed to boot out peaceful protesters. Recent actions against Occupy protesters are irresponsible and tragic. They're an assault on our democracy. These protesters are bravely exercising their right to freedom of expression, to bring attention to a political and economic system that's rigged against most Americans. I stand with them; and, all Americans -- left and right -- should join me in protecting their freedom to non-violently create change.
This isn't a Democratic or Republican movement. It's not about one party or one policy. It's about standing up to a financial system that's completely backwards. Wall Street banks get billions in bailouts and emerge with massive profits. Most Americans see a program of austerity in a painful economic climate -- benefit cuts, high unemployment, declining wages, and crumbling infrastructure. Congress moved swiftly to "save" banks (something I strongly opposed), and now Congress is paralyzed, unable to create jobs and to save our middle class.
It's no surprise Americans are standing up. Our country's economic policies have consolidated and accelerated wealth to the top. One percent of Americans now control 42% of our wealth. It's not radical to think this is out of balance or to demand a government that is of the people and for the people. I've been to these protests, and I can tell you they're filled with honest, hard working Americans who are concerned with the direction of our country and our economic future.
I am deeply concerned. I'm concerned about an economic system which tethers job creation to China and big banks. We shouldn't have to borrow money from China -- or Japan or South Korea -- to get out of this ditch. We should stop the Fed from giving billions to the big banks. We have to take back the power to manage our own economy, to regain control over our monetary system, consistent with the U.S. Constitution. That's why, one month ago, I introduced the National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act. The legislation would put the Federal Reserve under the Department of the Treasury, and it would help us recapture control of our financial system. As part of the NEED Act, Congress would use its constitutional power to invest in America, creating millions of jobs by putting billions of dollars directly into circulation. And since this money is adding real, tangible value to our national wealth, it will not generate inflation.
We need a financial system that is of the people and for the people. We need to take it back from the big banks. We need economic and social justice. I will continue to support the Occupy movement. I will continue to fight for legislation, including the NEED Act, that sets America on a path of jobs for all, health care for all, education for all, retirement security for all, and peace.
Let's keep this movement alive. Let's keep fighting for economic and social justice. Keep occupying Wall Street. And, with your help, I'll keep occupying Congress. With respect, Dennis Kucinich P.S. Please forward this email to your friends and family, and share it on Facebook and Twitter. Let's spread this movement, and continue to support the Occupy protests. __
After over a month of demonstrations, numerous dismissals, and thousands of arrests, Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum. Over the last two weeks, polls have poured in revealing that Americans familiar with the protests largely support them. And since that familiarity will continue to increase, we can only conclude that the country's support for the movement will keep on growing. When you've got NYT pundit Charles Blow unfurling his hipster flag comparing OWS to legendary 90s band Nirvana, you know a tipping point has been reached!
Recent polls prove that when Americans hear this band, they dig it. Here’s a round-up:
Oct. 9-10 Time Magazine/Abt SRBI: This poll showed a 54 percent favorable rating of OWS, compared to a mere 27 percent thumbs up for the Tea Party. . . . .
Oct. 13-16 United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll: Here, a majority of those polled – fully 59 percent – said that they backed the goals of the protests from what they "know about the demonstrations." And 68 percent supported the Democratic surtax on millionaires to pay for the cost of their jobs plan, a policy cited by OWS protesters in a recent Millionaire's March in New York City.
Oct. 17 Quinnipiac poll: This survey of New York City voters revealed that the Big Apple is on board with OWS. 67 percent agreed with the views of the Wall Street protesters and a whopping 87 percent believed it's okay that they are protesting. . . . .
Bottom line: If this thing continues to grow – and there is every indication that it will – the Occupy Wall Street could become the definitive movement for an entire generation. On Sunday, Noam Chomsky addressed Occupy Boston and called the movement "unprecedented." "There's never been anything like it," said Chomsky. "If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead – because victories don’t come quickly – it could turn out to be a real historic, a very significant moment in American history." _
Forty-three percent of Americans agree with the views of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll that found a widespread belief that money and wealth should be distributed more evenly in America.
Twenty-seven percent of Americans said they disagree with the movement, which began more than a month ago in lower Manhattan and has since spread across the country and around the world. Thirty percent said they were unsure. . . . . __
A new study released Thursday has found the distribution of wealth in the United States is among the most unequal among industrialized nations. The United States ranked in the bottom five on a combination of issues including poverty prevention, health and access to education—ahead of only Greece, Chile, Mexico and Turkey. The study was done by the German-based Bertelsmann Foundation. Meanwhile, a new study here in the United States has found New York State has the highest income inequality of all 50 states and that the New York City metropolitan region has the highest income inequality of any large metro area. __
By Robert Greenstein, Richard Kogan and Paul N. Van de Water Revised October 28, 2011
The new deficit-reduction plan from a majority of Democrats on the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the "supercommittee") marks a dramatic departure from traditional Democratic positions — and actually stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate's "Gang of Six," and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission. The Democratic plan contains substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan. The Democratic plan features a substantially higher ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases than any of the bipartisan plans.
Although the new plan thus moves considerably closer to Republican positions than any of the bipartisan plans, Republicans have been quick to reject it. . . . .
The flat tax is such a popular idea in conservative circles that Texas Governor Rick Perry is trying to revive his presidential primary campaign by proposing one.
Except for the flat tax part.
It turns out Perry’s plan isn’t flat, doesn’t eliminate the current tax code, as many conservative elites claim to want, and would likely blow a huge hole in the federal budget.
Perry’s plan doesn’t scrap existing tax law altogether, but rather creates a new, parallel tax code that taxes individual and corporate income at 20 percent. Investment income would go untaxed. Every tax payer would have a choice between staying in the current system, or transferring over to the new one. But as Michael Linden, a tax expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, points out, the new, simpler, alternative code would constitute a tax increase for most Americans and a huge tax cut for wealthy Americans, creating incentives for a small well-to-do sliver of the country to make the switch, and for everyone else to stay put.
. . . .
“For most people who don’t have big capital gains and dividend income, they’re going to stay in the current system,” Linden explained. “It’s not a flat tax.”
. . . .
“For very wealthy people who do have big capital gains and dividends — they’ll take the new one, but even that’s not really a flat tax. It’s 20 percent on ordinary income and zero percent on investment income.”
. . . .
“The wealthy will end up benefitting from a very simple tax code, and they’re going to end up paying really low rates,” Linden said. “Of the richest 400 taxpayers, fully 66 percent of their total adjusted gross income came from capital gains and another seven percent came from dividends. So basically for the very wealthy you’re going to save nearly 75 percent of income from taxation. It’s just a massive tax cut for very wealthy.” . . . . __
What follows is a small collection of some of the articles and videos from alternative voices that cover some of our ongoing national issues--latest first.
- Dean Baker: Statement from Dean Baker on President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform - Report: from "Citizens’ Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America’s Economic Future" - Nader: Missing the Mark on Deficits - Kuttner on DN!: Obama Deficit Commission Criticized for Proposals to Slash Social Security, Medicare - Greenwald & Roberts: Fabricating Terror Through Entrapment - Quigley, DN! & Chomsky on WikiLeaks & More - Chomsky on Post-Midterm America (Video) - Bill Maher on The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear (Video) __________
[Both the Democratic co-chair, Erskine Bowles, a Wall Street insider, and Alan Simpson, Republican former Senator, are "conservatives" with agendas reflecting their social place and perspective.]
For Immediate Release: November 30, 2010 Contact: Alan Barber, (571) 306 2526
Washington, D.C.- CEPR co-director Dean Baker released the following statement today regarding the national Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform:
"The charter that created President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform explicitly states that: 'a vote on the approval of a final report is required not later than December 1, 2010.' Former Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of the commission, have now said they intend to directly violate the commission's charter by delaying a vote until Friday, December 3rd.
"This changing of the rules, which further reduces the time for Congress to consider any recommendations from the commission, is typical of a commission that was ill-conceived from the onset. The fundamental premise of the commission is that the country suffers from serious deficit problems that Congress is unable to address through its normal processes. This view does not correspond with the facts as can be easily shown.
"There has been no explosion of spending whatsoever. This is entirely an invention of those with their own agenda. The Congressional Budget Office shows that non-interest spending was 19.8 percent of GDP in 1980. Its analysis of President Obama's 2011 budget projects that non-interest spending will be 21.1 percent of spending in 2020. This means that in 40 years, spending other than interest will have increased by just 1.3 percentage points of GDP.
"Rather than being a cause for concern, the rise in the deficit in the downturn has been essential for sustaining demand in the economy. Annual demand in the private sector has fallen by more than $1.2 trillion as a result of the collapse of the bubbles in residential and non-residential real estate. This led to a plunge in construction and also consumption that was driven by housing bubble wealth. Remarkably, the co-chairs of the commission never seemed to have considered a tax on the financial sector as a source of revenue (a policy that is even recommended by the IMF), in spite of the fact that it was largely responsible for the current crisis.
"The projections of longer-term budget problems are almost entirely due to a projected explosion in health care costs. The United States already pays more than twice as much per person for its health care as other wealthy countries with the same or longer life expectancies. This ratio is projected to rise to three and four to one in the decades ahead.
"However, rather than honestly discuss the problems of the U.S. health care system, Simpson and Bowles have used the projections of exploding health care costs as an argument for gutting Medicare and Medicaid, leaving tens of millions at risk of not being able to afford health care.
"It is time to impose some honesty on the commission's co-chairs. Under the law, the report is due tomorrow. If they don't have a report on December 1, the commission will have violated it's own charter and Simpson and Bowles should look for another vehicle to pursue their agenda."
Members of “Citizens’ Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America’s Economic Future” Demand Equal Media Coverage for Middle Class Economic Agenda, Growth Strategy for Deficits
For Immediate Release: November 30, 2010 Contact: Alan Barber, (571) 306-2526
Washington, D.C.- A new report from the Citizens’ Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America’s Economic Future demonstrates that the White House deficit commission proposals are “fundamentally misguided” and take the economic debate in the dangerous direction of austerity. The group of well-known experts and leaders of civic organizations released their own “Report and Recommendations of the Citizens’ Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America’s Economic Future,” on Tuesday, November 30.
The report, written by Jeff Madrick, a member of the commission and Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, with contributions from Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Roger Hickey, Robert Borosage and Richard Eskow of the Institute for America’s Future, Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect and Demos, and Robert Pollin of the Political Economy Research Institute, and additional work by other members of the commission.
The 36-page report contains a plan to maintain investments needed to speed up economic growth and produce jobs while lowering the federal deficit to a sustainable level in the long term. The report and links to related materials are posted at ourfuture.org/citizenscommission.
[From the Report: "Much, if not most, of the current public discourse is misleading and poorly informed. The federal deficit tripled between 2008 and 2009, reaching $1.5 trillion and 10 percent of GDP in 2009. This was the culmination of a process that began with the passage of the first Bush tax cuts, accelerated with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and peaked with the economic collapse of 2008. It therefore follows that any reasonable short-term plan should focus the causes of our current deficit. Yet most of the measures currently being debated fail to do so. Despite the role that tax cuts played in creating today's deficits, many such plans would lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans while increasing them for the middle class. They would also restrict government efforts to bring us out of our current economic crisis, weakening the economy and reducing future government revenues.
Future deficits will be driven almost exclusively by the explosive growth in health care costs. Those who advocate for increased austerity are failing to address true the causes of government spending. Furthermore, there is no evidence that implementing policies to reduce government deficit would increase private spending. As we note (see Appendix I), there is ample evidence that such spending cuts would create more unemployment, making a second recession possible and even likely." added by Chris]
The release of the paper coincides with the announcement of a nationwide campaign to oppose the job-killing, middle-class-devastating austerity measures proposed by Republicans in Congress, President Obama's deficit commission co-chairs, and perennial deficit hawks such as Peter G. Peterson, and some Democrats.
The recent reports by the two deficit commissions -- one appointed by President Obama and the other from the private Bipartisan Policy Center -- do not lack specifics. In fact, they are so specific that they obscure the need for a more explicit public philosophy that reveals both their value biases and their establishment thinking.
The compositions of the two task forces clearly are designed to achieve a legislative consensus on Capitol Hill. There are self-styled centrists, moderates, conservatives and liberals. There are no paradigm-busters, few challengers of assumptions, no backgrounds from unorganized labor, elderly or youth activists. Even Trade Unions advocates are rare. About the only eyebrow raisers are provided by the relentlessly wise-cracking co-chair of Obama's Commission-former Wyoming Republican Senator, Alan K. Simpson.
It is true that both panels do include very modest cuts in the vast bloated military budget whose empire takes half of the entire federal government's discretionary spending (not including the insurance programs Medicare and Social Security). Already a tentative suggestion by the Commission's Co-Chairs to "save" $100 billion in the Pentagon budget by 2015 was called "catastrophic" by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. The two reports make no mention of ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, or stopping contractor lobbies from bleeding the Pentagon dry, which would be a solid rejoinder to Gates.
That's the problem throughout these reports. They do not come to grips with the need for fundamental changes to expand the economy as if people matter first, to locate new revenues, launch long-overdue public works programs with their jobs throughout communities in America, and reduce the kind of deficits which are empty calories that create no real wealth, such as corporate welfare bailouts and giveaways.
For example, there is much reference to tax reform that rearranges tax rates. The private task force-chaired by Alice Rivlin and former Senator Pete Domenici (R- NM)-would eliminate special tax rates for capital gains and dividends. Fine. But why not also shift the incidence of some taxes from workers to a Wall Street tax or what may be called a tiny sales taxes on purchases of speculative derivatives, as well as stocks and bonds that economists Dean Baker and Robert Pollin say would raise several hundred billion dollars a year?
The Rivlin-Domenici report noted but did not recommend a carbon tax-another major revenue-raiser that would reduce pollution, greenhouse gases and advance solar energy and energy conservation. An added humane and economic benefit is that less coal burning would also save thousands of lives a year from air pollution, according to the EPA. Instead the Task Force proposed a sizable regressive national sales tax.
Under health care, both reports go for what they call medical malpractice reform. What they mean is not doing anything about the 100,000 Americans who die and many more sickened every year from hospital malpractice, not to mention adverse affects from drugs and hospital-clinic infections. No, by reform they mean cutting back on judicially-decided damages now being awarded to far less than the one-out-of-ten victims who even file a claim. Grotesque! A Business Week editorial years ago said the medical malpractice crisis is malpractice. Prevention is the way to save lives and money-a policy entirety ignored by the two commissions.
There is no mention in either report about ending notorious foreign corporate tax havens for U.S. companies that would bring in nearly $100 billion a year. And, remarkably, though some mention is made of tax compliance, they ignore the regular estimate by the Treasury Department of $300 billion a year in uncollected taxes.
Not surprisingly, the two establishment reports did not consider the enormous economic savings from adopting a single payer-full Medicare for all-health insurance system. (See: here)
Three other large areas were ignored. First is cracking down on corporate crime, including at least $250 billion dollars in annual health care billing fraud and abuse. (See: here). Both the fines, the disgorgement back to the defrauded and the deterrence to corporate crime amount to large sums of money.
Second, the commission-co-chairs and the task force avoided recommending the proper pricing of our commonwealth assets that are regularly given away free (eg. the public airwaves and hard rock minerals, such as gold and silver, on federal land) or at bargain basement fees (the national forest timber and other minerals).
Third, although both reports emphasize the need for economic growth (which produces more tax revenues to reduce red ink), there was no reference to revising global trade agreements that have left our country's huge trade deficits and its workers in dire straits. Keeping industries and jobs from moving to repressive regimes like China for reexport to the U.S. should not have been ignored. But then, look at the composition of these Task Forces and you'll see why.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions. - See Also:
. . . . ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, the only thing worse than the economics is the politics. The economics are totally perverse. Bowles talks about being on a path to an economic crisis. Of course, we’re in an economic crisis. We’re in a prolonged recession that bears more resemblance really to a depression. And you cannot get out of a depression by austerity. The idea that you should have an arbitrary set of cuts in the deficit at a time when you need more public spending is totally perverse. It’s the economics of Herbert Hoover. It’s the politics of the Republican right. And it’s one more indication of the capture of the Obama administration by Wall Street.
I mean, Erskine Bowles gets over $300,000 a year for attending a few meetings of Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, on whose board he sits, so he gets more money in board fees than 99 percent of Americans earn. And you’ve got three privately funded commissions by the Peterson Foundation, Pete Peterson, proposing the same stuff. It’s intended to create a drumbeat to carry out a wish list that has long been the goal of fiscal conservatives, that has nothing to do with this crisis. Social Security is in surplus for the next 27 years. So, the idea that you can somehow get the budget closer to balance by cutting Social Security is perverse. It’s politically insane.
And if the President had the kind of spine that we hoped he had when we elected him, he would be saying, "No way are we going to balance the budget on the backs of working people." Instead, I think the risk is that the President is going to embrace some version of this. And the hope is that the four progressives on the commission, three of whom have already said "no way," plus Max Baucus, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee who’s on the commission, will view this as a threat to his prerogatives as a Senate committee chairman. The best thing about this commission is that maybe it will deadlock.
. . . .
ROBERT KUTTNER: I think the problem is that the editorialists of this country—if you read this morning’s New York Times editorial—are saying, "Well, gee, anything that the left and the right don’t like must be pretty good." And that’s exactly wrong. I mean, this is a case where the so-called center just completely has it wrong. You cannot get out of a depression by having deeper cuts in spending. And I think if you look at the criticism of the Federal Reserve policy of buying treasuries because it doesn’t know what else to do, in the hope that that will lower interest rates and somehow stimulate recovery, the Fed is doing that as a last resort because Congress is opposed to increasing social investment. The only way you can really get out of a prolonged slump like this is to increase social investment in job creation, in the infrastructure, in the clean energy that the country needs. And yet that path seems to be blocked. And instead of fighting for some degree of public investment, Obama, who, after all, appointed this commission, is at risk of embracing at least some of its proposals.
So I think the only thing that’s going to block this—and we heard some of this from Rich Trumka—the progressive movement needs to put forward its own version of a budget that would cut defense spending, cut tax loopholes, insist on suspending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and dramatically increase social investment, and explain to the American people why that’s a better route out of the real crisis that we’re in. There’s one resource I want to commend to all of your viewers and listeners. It’s a new website, ourfiscalfuture.org, which proposes a counter-strategy for getting the economy out of this mess. That’s a coalition of progressive think tanks—Demos, where I’m a fellow, Economic Policy Institute, Century Foundation. And we have a huge fight on our hands, because the other side is investing tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars in a propaganda effort on behalf of austerity. It’s backed by Wall Street. And all we can do is try and argue that this whole set of proposals is bad economics and bad politics for the Obama administration and the Democrats. . . . .
And the other thing that’s deceptive is that at the same moment that the Republicans on the panel are proposing this deal, they’re also demanding that the Bush tax cuts from 2001, which expire at the end of this year, be extended not just for the 98 percent of Americans who make less than $250,000 a year, as President Obama proposes, but for very, very rich people. Now, continuing those tax cuts for very rich people would add almost a trillion dollars to the deficit over the next ten years, and yet the commission is treating that as absolutely untouchable, because there’s no way the Republicans would buy into that. So, you’re absolutely right. I mean, if we want to do something about the deficit in the long run—and we should not be doing anything about it in the short run. In the short run, with the economy in the condition that it’s in, we need more deficit spending, not less. But if we want to deal with the deficit in the long run, restore higher tax rates on the people who got us into this mess, who are still making an absolute killing and, unlike working people, who can afford to pay higher taxes.
In Oregon, the Somali-American man accused of trying to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland has pleaded not guilty. Nineteen-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested Friday after an FBI sting operation. Lawyers for Mohamud suggested in court that the government may have manufactured a crime. Undercover FBI agents orchestrated much of the bomb plot—supplying Mohamud with money, providing materials to construct the fake bomb and blocking Mohamud from leaving the Portland area to take a job in Alaska. Attorney Stephen Sady accused FBI agents of “basically grooming the individual” to commit a crime. In Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder denied that Mohamud was a victim of entrapment.
The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who -- with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI's own undercover agents -- allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon. Media accounts are almost uniformly trumpeting this event exactly as the FBI describes it. Loyalists of both parties are doing the same, with Democratic Party commentators proclaiming that this proves how great and effective Democrats are at stopping The Evil Terrorists, while right-wing polemicists point to this arrest as yet more proof that those menacing Muslims sure are violent and dangerous.
What's missing from all of these celebrations is an iota of questioning or skepticism. . . . .
When the US government has to go to such lengths to create “terrorists” out of hapless people, an undeclared agenda is being served. What could this agenda be?
The answer is many agendas. One agenda is to justify wars of aggression that are war crimes under the Nuremberg standard created by the US government itself. One way to avoid war crimes charges is to create acts of terrorism that justify the naked aggressions against “terrorist countries.”
Another agenda is to create a police state. A police state can control people who object to their impoverishment for the benefit of the superrich much more easily than can a democracy endowed with constitutional civil liberties.
Another agenda is to get rich. Terror plots, whether real or orchestrated, have created a market for security. Dual Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff, former head of US Homeland Security, is the lobbyist who represents Rapiscan, the company that manufactures the full body porno-scanners that, following the “underwear bomber” event, are now filling up US airports. Homeland Security has announced that they are going to purchase the porno-scanners for trains, buses, subways, court houses, and sports events. How can shopping malls and roads escape? Recently on Interstate 20 west of Atlanta, trucks had to drive through a similar device. Everyone has forgotten that the underwear bomber lacked required documents and was escorted aboard the airliner by an official. . . . .
What is it really all about? Could it be that the US government needs terrorist events in order to completely destroy the US Constitution? On November 24, National Public Radio broadcast a report by Dina Temple-Raston: “Administration officials are looking at the possibility of codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.” Of course, the legislation will not come out of Congress. It will be written by Homeland Security and the Justice (sic) Department. The impotent Congress will merely rubber-stamp it.
The obliteration of habeas corpus, the most necessary and important protection of liberty ever institutionalized in law and governing constitution, has become necessary for the US government, because a jury might acquit an alleged or mock “terrorist” or framed person whom the US government has declared prior to the trial will be held forever in indefinite detention even if acquitted in a US court of law. The attorney general of the United States has declared that any “terrorist” that he puts on trial who is acquitted by a jury will remain in detention regardless of the verdict. Such an event would reveal the total lawlessness of American “justice.”
The United States of America, “the city upon the hill,” “the light unto the world,” has become Nazi Germany. It was the practice of the Gestapo to ignore court verdicts and to execute or hold indefinitely the cleared defendant in the camps. The Obama regime is in the process of completing Dick Cheney’s dream by legislating the legality of indefinite detention. American law has collapsed to the dungeons of the Dark Ages.
This Nazi Gestapo policy is now the declared policy of the US Department of Justice (sic).
Anyone who thinks the United States is a free society where people have liberty, “freedom and democracy” is uninformed.
Since 9-11, the US government, through Presidents Bush and Obama, has increasingly told the US public that “state secrets” will not be shared with citizens. Candidate Obama pledged to reduce the use of state secrets, but President Obama continued the Bush tradition. The Courts and Congress and international allies have gone meekly along with the escalating secrecy demands of the US Executive.
By labeling tens of millions of documents secret, the US government has created a huge vacuum of information.
But information is the lifeblood of democracy. Information about government contributes to a healthy democracy. Transparency and accountability are essential elements of good government. Likewise, “a lack of government transparency and accountability undermines democracy and gives rise to cynicism and mistrust,” according to a 2008 Harris survey commissioned by the Association of Government Accountants.
Into the secrecy vacuum stepped Private Bradley Manning, who, according to the Associated Press, was able to defeat “Pentagon security systems using little more than a Lady Gaga CD and a portable computer memory stick.”
Manning apparently sent the information to Wikileaks – a non profit media organization, which specializes in publishing leaked information. Wikileaks in turn shared the documents to other media around the world including the New York Times and published much of it on its website.
Despite criminal investigations by the US and other governments, it is not clear that media organizations like Wikileaks can be prosecuted in the US in light of First Amendment. Recall that the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Outraged politicians are claiming that the release of government information is the criminal equivalent of terrorism and puts innocent people’s lives at risk. Many of those same politicians authorized the modern equivalent of carpet bombing of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, the sacrifice of thousands of lives of soldiers and civilians, and drone assaults on civilian areas in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. Their anger at a document dump, no matter how extensive, is more than a little suspect.
Everyone, including Wikileaks and the other media reporting the documents, hopes that no lives will be lost because of this. So far, that appears to be the case as McClatchey Newspapers reported November 28, 2010, that ‘US officials conceded that they have no evidence to date that the [prior] release of documents led to anyone’s death.”
The US has been going in the wrong direction for years by classifying millions of documents as secrets. Wikileaks and other media which report these so called secrets will embarrass people yes. Wikileaks and other media will make leaders uncomfortable yes. But embarrassment and discomfort are small prices to pay for a healthier democracy.
Wikileaks has the potential to make transparency and accountability more robust in the US. That is good for democracy.
Bill is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Quigley77@gmail.com
AMY GOODMAN: What are your thoughts today? For example, we just played this clip of New York republican congress member Peter King who says WikiLeaks should be declared a foreign terrorist organization.
NOAM CHOMSKY: I think that is outlandish. We should understand- and the Pentagon Papers is another case in point- that one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population. In the Pentagon Papers, for example, there was one volume- the negotiations volume- which might have had a bearing on ongoing activities and Daniel Ellsberg withheld that. That came out a little bit later. If you look at the papers themselves, there are things Americans should have known that others did not want them to know. And as far as I can tell, from what I’ve seen here, pretty much the same is true. In fact, the current leaks are- what I’ve seen, at least- primarily interesting because of what they tell us about how the diplomatic service works.
AMY GOODMAN: The documents’ revelations about Iran come just as the Iranian government has agreed to a new round of nuclear talks beginning next month. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cables vindicate the Israeli position that Iran poses a nuclear threat. Netanyahu said, "Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of sixty years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history, there is agreement that Iran is the threat. If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind closed doors, with can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace," Netanyahu said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also discussed Iran at her news conference in Washington. This is what she said:
HILARY CLINTON: I think that it should not be a surprise to anyone that Iran is a source of great concern, not only in the United States. What comes through in every meeting that I have- anywhere in the world- is a concern about Iranian actions and intentions. So, if anything, any of the comments that are being reported on allegedly from the cables confirm the fact that Iran poses a very serious threat in the eyes of many of her neighbors and a serious concern far beyond her region. That is why the international community came together to pass the strongest possible sanctions against Iran. It did not happen because the United States said, "Please, do this for us!" It happened because countries- once they evaluated the evidence concerning Iran’s actions and intentions- reached the same conclusion that the United States reached: that we must do whatever we can to muster the international community to take action to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. So if anyone reading the stories about these, uh, alleged cables thinks carefully what they will conclude is that the concern about Iran is well founded, widely shared, and will continue to be at the source of the policy that we pursue with like-minded nations to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Secretary to Hillary Clinton yesterday at a news conference. I wanted to get your comment on Clinton, Netanyahu’s comment, and the fact that Abdullah of Saudi Arabia- the King who is now getting back surgery in the New York- called for the U.S. to attack Iran. Noam Chomsky?
NOAM CHOMSKY: That essentially reinforces what I said before, that the main significance of the cables that are being released so far is what they tell us about Western leadership. So Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. The results are rather striking. They show the Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel- that’s 80. The second major threat is the United States- that’s 77. Iran is listed as a threat by 10%.
With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority- in fact, 57–say that the region would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. 80, 77, say the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. 10 say Iran is the major threat. This may not be reported in the newspapers here- it is in England- but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments, and to the ambassadors. But there is not a word about it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and the Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. This seeps its way all through the diplomatic service. The cables to not have any indication of that.
When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here- Clinton and the media- have drawn. There’s also a minor problem; that’s the major problem. The minor problem is that we don’t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what was selected from the range of what they say. So there is a filtering process. We don’t know how much it distorts the information. But there is no question that what is a radical distortion is- or, not even a distortion, a reflection–of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population does not matter, even if it’s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy.
There are similar things elsewhere, such as keeping to this region. One of the most interesting cables was a cable from the U.S. ambassador in Israel to Hillary Clinton, which described the attack on Gaza- which we should call the U.S./Israeli attack on Gaza- December 2008. It states correctly there had been a truce. It does not add that during the truce- which was really not observed by Israel- but during the truce, Hamas scrupulously observed it according to the Israeli government, not a single rocket was fired. That’s an omission. But then comes a straight line: it says that in December 2008, Hamas renewed rocket firing and therefore Israel had to attack in self-defense. Now, the ambassador surely is aware that there must be somebody in the American Embassy who reads the Israeli press- the mainstream Israeli press- in which case the embassy is surely aware that it is exactly the opposite: Hamas was calling for a renewal of the cease-fire. Israel considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to bomb rather than have security. Also omitted is that while Israel never observed the cease-fire- it maintained the siege in violation of the truce agreement- on November 4, the U.S. election 2008, the Israeli army invaded Gaza, killed half a dozen Hamas militants, which did lead to an exchange of fire in which all the casualties, as usual, were Palestinian. Then in December, Hamas- when the truce officially ended- Hamas called for renewing it. Israel refused, and the U.S. and Israel chose to launch the war. What the embassy reported is a gross falsification and a very significant one since- since it has to do the justification for the murderous attack- which means either the embassy hasn’t a clue to what is going on or else they’re lying outright.
AMY GOODMAN: And the latest report that just came out- from Oxfam, from Amnesty International, and other groups- about the effects of the siege on Gaza? What’s happening right now?
NOAM CHOMSKY: A siege is an act of war. If anyone insists on that, it is Israel. Israel launched two wars- '56 and ’67- in part on grounds its access to the outside world was very partially restricted. That very partial siege they considered an act of war and justification for- well, one of several justifications- for what they called "preventive"- or if you like, preemptive- war. So they understand that perfectly well and the point is correct. The siege is a criminal act, in the first place. The Security Council has called on Israel to lift it, and others have. It's designed to- as Israeli officials have have stated- to keep the people of Gaza to minimal level of existence. They do not want to kill them all off because that would not look good in international opinion. As they put it, "to keep them on a diet." This justification, this began very shortly after the official Israeli withdrawal. There was an election in January 2006 after the only free election in the Arab world- carefully monitored, recognized to be free- but it had a flaw. The wrong people won. Namely Hamas, which the U.S. did not want it and Israel did not want. Instantly, within days, the U.S. and Israel instituted harsh measures to punish the people of Gaza for voting the wrong way in a free election.
The next step was that they- the U.S. and Israel- sought to, along with the Palestinian Authority, try to carry out a military coup in Gaza to overthrow the elected government. This failed- Hamas beat back the coup attempt. That was July 2007. At that point, the siege got much harsher. In between come in many acts of violence, shellings, invasions and so on and so forth. But basically, Israel claims that when the truce was established in the summer 2008, Israel’s reason for not observing it and withdrawing the siege was that there was an Israeli soldier- Gilad Shalit- who was captured at the border. International commentary regards this as a terrible crime. Well, whatever you think about it, capturing a soldier of an attacking army- and the army was attacking Gaza- capturing a soldier of an attacking army isn’t anywhere near the level of the crime of kidnapping civilians. Just one day before the capture of Gilad Shalit at the border, Israeli troops had entered Gaza, kidnapped two civilians- the Muammar Brothers- and spirited them across the border. They’ve disappeared somewhere in Israel’s prison system, which is where hundreds, maybe a thousand or so people are sometimes there for years without charges. There are also secret prisons. We don’t know what happens there.
This alone is a far worse crime than the kidnapping of Shalit. In fact, you could argue there was a reason why was barely covered: Israel has been doing this for years, in fact, decades. Kidnapping, capturing people, hijacking ships, killing people, bringing them to Israel sometimes as hostages for many years. So this is regular practice; Israel can do what it likes. But the reaction here and the rest of the world of regarding the Shalit kidnapping- well, not kidnapping, you don’t kidnap soldiers- the capture of a soldier as an unspeakable crime, justification for maintaining and murders siege... that’s disgraceful. . . . .AMY GOODMAN: What do you think the United States should do in this case?
NOAM CHOMSKY: What the United States should do is very simple: it should join the world. I mean, there are negotiations going on, supposedly. As they are presented here, the standard picture is that the U.S. is an honest broker trying to bring together two recalcitrant opponents- Israel and Palestinian Authority. That’s just a charade.
If there were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party and the U.S. and Israel would be on one side and the world would be on the other side. And that is not an exaggeration. It should not be a secret that there has long been an overwhelming international consensus on a diplomatic, political solution. Everyone knows the basic outlines; some of the details you can argue about. It includes everyone except the United States and Israel. The U.S. has been blocking it for 35 years with occasional departures- brief ones. It includes the Arab League. It includes the Organization of Islamic States. which happens to include Iran. It includes every relevant actor except the United States and Israel, the two rejectionist states. So if there were to be negotiations that were serious, that’s the way they would be organized. The actual negotiations barely reach the level of comedy. The issue that’s being debated is a footnote, a minor footnote: expansion of settlements. Of course it’s illegal. In fact, everything Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza is illegal. That hasn’t even been controversial since 1967.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to come back to this in a minute. Noam Chomsky, author and institute professor emeritus at MIT, as we talk about WikiLeaks and the state of the world today.
[music break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Noam Chomsky, world-renowned dissident, author of more than 100 books, speaking to us from Boston. Noam, you wrote a piece after the midterm elections called Outrage Misguided. I want to read for you now what Sarah Palin tweeted – the former Alaskan governor, of course, and Republication vice presidential nominee. This is what she tweeted about WikiLeaks. Rather, she put it on Facebook. She said, “First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop WikiLeaks’ director Julian Assange from distributing this highly-sensitive classified material, especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a journalist any more than the editor of the Al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine “Inspire,” is a journalist. He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” Noam Chomsky, your response?
NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s pretty much what I would expect Sarah Palin to say. I don’t know how much she understands, but I think we should pay attention to what we learn from the leaks. What we learned, for example, is kinds of things I’ve said. Perhaps the most dramatic revelation, or mention, is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government – Hillary Clinton, others – and also by the diplomatic service.
To tell the world– well, they’re talking to each other- to pretend to each other that the Arab world regards Iran as the major threat and wants the U.S. to bomb Iran, is extremely revealing, when they know that approximately 80% of Arab opinion regards the U.S. and Israel as the major threat, 10% regard Iran as the major threat, and a majority, 57%, think the region would be better off with Iranian nuclear weapons as a kind of deterrent. That is does not even enter. All that enters is what they claim has been said by Arab dictators – brutal Arab dictators. That is what counts.
How representative this is of what they say, we don’t know, because we do not know what the filtering is. But that’s a minor point. But the major point is that the population is irrelevant. All that matters is the opinions of the dictators that we support. If they were to back us, that is the Arab world. That is a very revealing picture of the mentality of U.S. political leadership and, presumably, the lead opinion, judging by the commentary that’s appeared here, that’s the way it has been presented in the press as well. It does not matter with the Arabs believe.
AMY GOODMAN: Your piece, Outrage Misguided. Back to the midterm elections and what we’re going to see now. Can you talk about the tea party movement?
NOAM CHOMSKY: The Tea Party movement itself is, maybe 15% or 20% of the electorate. It’s relatively affluent, white, nativist, you know, it has rather traditional nativist streaks to it. But what is much more important, I think, is the outrage. Over half the population says they more or less supported it, or support its message. What people are thinking is extremely interesting. I mean, overwhelmingly polls reveal that people are extremely bitter, angry, hostile, opposed to everything.
The primary cause undoubtedly is the economic disaster. It’s not just the financial catastrophe, it’s an economic disaster. I mean, in the manufacturing industry, for example, unemployment levels are at the level of the Great Depression. And unlike the Great Depression, those jobs are not coming back. U.S. owners and managers have long ago made the decision that they can make more profit with complicated financial deals than by production. So finance – this goes back to the 1970s, mainly Reagan escalated it, and onward- Clinton, too. The economy has been financialized.
Financial institutions have grown enormously in their share of corporate profits. It may be something like a third, or something like that today. At the same time, correspondingly, production has been exported. So you buy some electronic device from China. China is an assembly plant for a Northeast Asian production center. The parts and components come from the more advanced countries – and from the United States, and the technology . So yes, that’s a cheap place to assemble things and sell them back here. Rather similar in Mexico, now Vietnam, and so on. That is the way to make profits.
It destroys the society here, but that’s not the concern of the ownership class and the managerial class. Their concern is profit. That is what drives the economy. The rest of it is a fallout. People are extremely bitter about it, but don’t seem to understand it. So the same people who are a majority, who say that Wall Street is to blame for the current crisis, are voting Republican. Both parties are deep in the pockets of Wall Street, but the Republicans much more so than the Democrats.
The same is true on issue after issue. The antagonism to everyone is extremely high – actually antagonism – the population doesn’t like Democrats, but they hate Republicans even more. They’re against big business. They’re against government. They’re against Congress. They’re against science –
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we only have thirty seconds. I wanted ask if you were President Obama’s top adviser, what would you tell him to do right now?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I would tell him to do what FDR did when big business was opposed to him. Help organize, stimulate public opposition and put through a serious populist program, which can be done. Stimulate the economy. Don’t give away everything to financiers. Push through real health reform. The health reform that was pushed through may be a slight improvement but it leaves some major problems untouched. If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it is almost all attributable to military spending and this totally dysfunctional health program.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, you were continuing your perscription- your advice that you would give to President Obama today.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the economy is a disaster. There is 10% official unemployment, probably twice that much actual unemplyment. Many people unemployed for years- this is a huge human tragedy, but it’s also an economic tragedy. These are unused resources which could be producing to make the things that this country needs. The United States is becoming kind of a third world country.
The other day, I took a train from Boston to New York- that’s the star of the Amtrak train system. It took about, maybe twenty minutes less than the train that my wife and I took sixty years ago from Boston to New York. In any European country, or really any industrial country it would have taken half the time. Plenty of non-industrial countries, too- Spain is not a super-rich country, it’s just introducing a 200-mile-an-hour railway. This is just one example. The United States desperately needs many things: decent infrastructure, a decent educational system, much more pay and support for teachers, all kinds of things. And the policies that are being carried out are designed to enrich primarily financial institutions; and remember that many of the major corporations like, say, GE and GM are also financial institutions, that is a large part of their activities. It’s very unclear that these financial institutions do anything for the economy. Some economists here- mainstream ones- are finally beginning to raise this question. They may harm it, in fact. What they do is enrich rich people, and that’s where policies are directed to.
An alternative would be to stimulate the economy. The demand is very low- those corporations have money coming out of their ears, they’ve got huge profits. But they don’t want to spend it, they don’t want to invest it. They would rather profit from it. Financial institutions don’t produce anything, they just shift money around and make money from various deals. The public has some consumer demands, but it’s very slight. We have to remember that there was an $8 trillion housing bubble that burst, destroying the assets for most people. Now they’re desperately trying to keep a little to save themselves. The only source of demand right now would be government spending. It doesn’t even have to affect the deficit- it can be carried out by borrowing by the FED which sends interest right back to the Treasury- if anyone cares about the deficit, which is actually a minor issue, I think. That should be the major issue.
There should be massive infrastructure spending, there should be spending on simple things like weatherization. We should have a substantial program to reduce the very severe threat of global warming. But that’s unforunately unlikely with the new Republican legislatures and with the effects of the massive corporate propaganda to try to convince people that it’s a liberal hoax. The latest polls show that about a third of Americans believe in anthropogenic global warming- you know, human contributions to global warming. That’s almost a deathnail for the species. If the U.S. doesn’t do anything, nobody else will.
"What's happened over the past roughly 35 years is that both parties have drifted to the right, i don't think that the terms liberals and conservatives mean much . . . .
". . . most [conservative people] of them more or less have social democratic attitudes… they think their should be more money spent on health, more on education, more on assistance to the poor, but not welfare, uh Reagan succeeded in blackening the term welfare. . . . . "
. . . the attitudes of the population are quite different [from the elite]. In fact if you look over the years . . . the general will of the population is quite different from policy on major issues. . . ."
[See "The Foreign Policy Dis-connect: What Americans Want From Our Leaders But Don't Get" I.E.:"How can a U.S. president sustain a deeply unpopular foreign policy, seemingly uninfluenced by electoral setbacks or popular disapproval? Should the president be more responsive to public preferences? In [this] important and ambitious new book, Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton bring to bear an impressive array of survey data in order to answer these and other questions central to the study of public opinion and U.S. foreign policy."—Matthew Baum, Perspectives on Politics: ]
"A considerable majority think that the United Nations ought to take the lead, not the United States in international crises . . . ."
". . . and remember, we have a business run propaganda system, I mean, it shouldn't be a secret, and business of course would like to have smaller government--would like to get the business off our back. . .because that means that they get on our back, . . . it gives concentrated private power even more power than it has now. So people call themselves Libertarians and say we don't want to be run by others--they're saying we want to be run by private tyrannies. . . that's the part that isn't expressed.
"When people are asked 'do you want more taxes--No--horrible' Here April 15th--that' s considered a date of mourning--some alien force is coming to steal your money. That's quite interesting--that's the result f decades of intense propaganda to try to get people to hate the government so that the corporate sector can run things without interference. And of course the corporate sector wants a big government--they don't want to cut the government--they just want a nanny state for themselves. . . . . If there was . . . a functioning democratic culture, people would celebrate April 15th. They would say April 15th is the day when we collaborate to implement the policies we chose, but they don't say that."
"I would drop the term left. I mean what we call THE LEFT in the media IS WHAT USED TO BE CALLED MODERATE REPUBLICANS…. AND THE REPUBLICANS ARE JUST RASHLY, OPENLY THE PARTY OF PRIVATE POWER, PRIVATE TYRANNY. I mean they talk about the common man and elites, but so does everyone. But if you look at the policies, that's what it is. . . . . Take say Obama. . . the core of his funding in the 2008 election was actually financial institutions, and a when groups of investors get together to control the state, what we call an election, they expect to be paid back, and they were. . . . [People] should be demanding a functioning democratic society in which decisions are actually made by the public inter own organizations, their own meetings. . . .
On the economy.
[share of financial sector corporate profits increased tremendously (I've seen number s that indicated they more than doubled from 17 to around 40%), hollowing out of productive industry (offshoring, and etc.)] The consequences [of Republican and Democratic policies] are for . . .30 years, maybe a little more, wages for the majority, real wages, have pretty much stagnated, working hours have increased, people have been getting by by having two adults working, so a lot more women in the workforce at lower wages, and by debt, and by asset inflation, like say the housing bubble--well that's just not viable. And meanwhile these same people see that there is plenty of wealth around but it is going into very few pockets. The top 1% or even 0.1% of the population have been making out like bandits. So we now have this incredible inequality maybe back to the 20's. . . .and this is part of people's consciousness. I'm working harder, things are getting worse, I'm working more hours, benefits, which were never very good have declined, meanwhile other people are getting very rich, something's wrong--give me an answer. They were right to ask for an answer. They are not going to get it from the Democrats--the people who are called the left--because they are the ones who have been denying, and implementing the policies. . . they are not going to say yea, it's true that's what happens we participated [in your demise.] . . . a policy of setting working people in competition with each other throughout the world.
My point is the Democrats are not going to say this--obviously the Republicans won't say it, the press won't say it--so what comes along is George Will, the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, and others who say look I have an answer. . .I mean it is off the wall as far as reality is concerned, but . . . at least it's an answer. . . .
On Wall Street, banks, and the financial Institutions:
"a real question is to what extent do we need them? . . . Pul Volcker . . . said the only useful innovation in the financial sector for the last couple of decades is the ATM machine. . . ." [the context being that the financial sector was largely responsible for the financial collapse and our current economic woes]
"So instead of just saying ok we'll bail you out and then pay you off [with public taxpayer money], … we own you now and we'll reconstruct you in a socially useful way that would require the kind of mass popular organization that for example led to the new Deal--the New Deal didn't come out of no where. . . .instead Roosevelt said 'Force me to do it.. . .'"
"If we're going to pretend to be a democracy, let's become one."
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Bill Maher on The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
Comments to the blog have been at least temporarily discontinued due to the posting of a personal e-mail by an anonymous user. ______________________________
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: _____________________
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.
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."
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
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 (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:
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
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.
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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
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, also on the Impossible Dream album (The album was professionally recorded and about, say, 3619 times better!)
"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.
