Climate and the Constitution

My colleagues are I recently completed work on a short outreach video that features the Chairperson of 350PDX, Adriana Voss-Andreae, MD/PhD, telling her climate warrior troops that a critical piece of the solution for climate restoration is a Constitutional Amendment that will nullify corporate personhood and end money being treated as speech. 

Adrian does a masterful job of making the case for a 28th Constructional Amendment.  Now, we hope the video will add to the grassroots movement already pressing for Constitutional change.

Here is a link to Climate and the Constitution...  https://vimeo.com/115086397

Nature's Trust

Written by University of Oregon Law Professor, Mary Christina Wood, Nature's Trust provides a thoroughly researched review of the trust responsibility of government at all levels in America, to the people and to future generations.

Here is how Professor Wood puts that responsibility in the introduction of Nature's Trust.

The sovereign trust obligation offers a catalyzing principle to citizens worldwide in their common struggle to hold government's accountable for protecting life-systems. Nature's Trust and the primordial rights inculcating it create a populist manifesto that surfaces at epic times through the generations of humanity. These principles stand no less revolutionary for our time and our crises than the forcing of the Magna Carta on the English monarchy in 1215 or Mahatma Gandhi's great Salt March to the sea in 1930.  Resonating deeply and resolutely within the ancestral memory of humanity,  trust principles must now revive to stir a global assertion of citizenship in defense of humanity and all future generations.

Professor Mary Christina Wood has done an enormous service to society by reminding us how deeply entrenched the trust responsibility is in global governance.  We live in a time when the American political process has devolved in a circumstance of  'He who has the money makes the rules.'  Climate change, driven by the human addiction to dirty coal and oil, is a challenge that is not being addressed, primarily because of the failure of our elected representatives to recognize and live up to their trust responsibilities to the people and to future generations.

Trust law is no panacea. The best way to put government back on track would be a Constitutional Amendment that says, 'Corporations are not People' and 'Money is not Speech'.   That's a very tough nut to crack. For now, Mary Christina Wood's  illumination of  natural trust law has inspired a number of court challenges, demanding a proper government response to climate change.  Nature's Trust provides a solid foundation for legal remedy against our government's failure to meet it's obligation to protect nature and the commons for future generations.

This is a very important book. I give it my highest recommendation, with one caveat. The price tag - $40 for a paperback book - creates an unfortunate accessibility problem. I would love to have Nature's Trust for reference in my own library. Perhaps, at some point, they will come out with a different edition at a more reasonable cost.  For now, when I need to visit this book, I will go to the library.

Here is a link to author Mary Christina Wood, appearing on the Bill Moyers PBS Show, talking about Nature's Trust...  http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-climate-crusade/

America Has a White Millennial Problem

This is a very interesting and somewhat troubling picture of young adult America. I don't think the polls are presenting an accurate picture of where most of millennials are politically. I think young people want clean air, reproductive freedom of choice,  and a biosphere that is protected from brutish exploitation by mindless profiteers. 

Maybe young people aren't polling so strongly for Democrats because they recognize that the Democratic Party is part of the problem.  What they want is a progressive alternative that is forward thinking, life-affirming, and sustainable.  To get that, the corruption that is pervasive in American politics must stop.  We need a 28th Amendment that says 'Corporations are not People' and 'Money is not Speech'.  That is the way to energize millennials. Give them a worthy pathway into the future..EMPDX.

Sean McElwee wrote this piece for AlterNet. Nice work Sean...

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

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Salon [1] / By Sean McElwee [2]          

 

December 17, 2014  | 

 

Nearly anytime Democrats lose an election, there is a pervasive narrative that, just around the bend, there will be an “emerging Democratic majority.” Originally projected to occur between [3] 2004 and 2008, it now appears further away than ever after last month’s midterm blowout. Republicans have a stranglehold on the House, where they control [4] their largest number of seats since 1948. That lead will be incredibly tough [5] to chip away at. Democratic chances of regaining the Senate in 2016, once considered a near certainty, are looking iffy [6]. Republicans control 31 governorships, as well as [7] 68 of 98 state legislative chambers. Democrats still have a strong chance of winning the Presidency, but given the importance of the states for shaping income distribution [8] and policy [9], even that victory will ring hollow.

Yet again, the Democratic Party faces bleak governing prospects in the short term, with only the nebulous promise of a demographic windfall somewhere off in the future — and even that prospect should be little comfort to progressives. While the “millennial” generation has widely been seen as the key to future of Democratic successes, there are reasons to believe that the liberalism of millennials, at least on certain key issues, has been overstated.

 

Yes, there is a strong case that younger voters on the whole are more liberal. For instance, a study by the Center for American Progress finds [10] that while the mean American’s ideological position is 209 (with 0 being most conservative and 400 being most progressive), those under 29 score 219.7 (Obama voters scored 244).  But while millennials are more socially liberal across the board, there are stark racial divides on economic issues. Younger voters are more likely than older voters to agree [11] with the statement, “Labor unions are necessary to protect the working person” and “the government should be doing more to solve problems.” These questions, however, are rather vague and positively worded. And other data suggest a large gap between white millenials and millenials of color. For instance, young white men [12] supported Romney in the 2012 election.
White millenials are also significantly less [11] supportive of Obama (54 percent) than black millenials (95 percent) and Hispanic millenials (76 percent). The most recent poll [13] of Obama finds that young whites and older whites have virtually identical approval ratings. A recent Pew survey of millennials finds [14] that on economic issues, there are strong gaps between young whites and young non-white millenials (see chart).
[15]
On social issues, however [14], these gaps are virtually non-existent. This suggests that while social liberalism will continue to be a political winner, economic liberalism may be tougher to sell to white millenials. Additionally, while white millenials say they [16] want to live in a racially equitable society, they are no more likely than their parents [17] to support policies to make that society come about. ”At the same time, whites [18] primed [19] with the reality of growing diversity become are less likely to say they support diversity and more likely to support the Republican party.”
Furthermore, even as minorities make up a larger and larger percentage of the electorate, these racial changes will not inevitably benefit Democrats. While Republicans have never won more than 40 percent of the Latino vote  – the claim  [20]that Bush won 44 percent in 2004, as widely reported, now appears to have been incorrect — they could do so in the future. Pew data, for example, show [21] that third generation Hispanics are more socially liberal, but more economically conservative than older Hispanics.
[22]
Additionally, a recent Gallup poll shows [13] support for Obama among younger Black Americans is modestly lower than support among their older counterparts. This actually hold strue among millenials as a whole; as there appear to be age gaps that would render the Democratic advantage ephemeral. Harvard’s Institute of Politics finds [23] that there is a distinct difference between the way young millenials (18-to-24) and older millenials (25-to-29) view Obama. Meanwhile, a 2012 American University poll finds [24] that college students in swing states supported Obama by 35 points, while high schoolers (13-to-17) in swing states supported Obama over Romney by only 7 points.
Discussing the future always presents challenges, particularly in the realm of politics. However, when we look at the ideologies that shape the parties, we can see a few general trends from these data. First, the economic liberalism of the millenial generation appears to be driven primarily by people of color [25], rather than by younger, more liberal whites. (On social issues, the generation appears to be more liberal across the board.) Second, while millenials lean Democratic, they are still effectively up for grabs. White millenials, the data show, may become suspicious of further government programs to advance racial equality, and young people of color may be open to a Republican party that eschews virulent racism. Finally, electoral structures combined with the geographic locations [26] of Democratic voters will bias the system toward Republicans for at least another decade, and possibly longer.
It’s difficult to know what parties will do to remain viable in a shifting American political landscape. However, it’s by no means certain that a new “Democratic majority” will be an economically liberal one. It’s plausible that the new Democratic party will embrace an Andrew Cuomo-esque neoliberalism. The Democratic party that appears to be emerging will be friendlier to finance and economically conservative, but also very socially liberal, particularly on gay marriage and women’s rights. The Democratic party will be committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions but not at a terrible price to businesses. Public goods will be sold off at bargain basement prices and the safety net will be expanded only slowly, if at all. Both parties will pretend that racial grievances are a thing of the past and present a rosy vision of color-blind America. The ideological distance of both parties on foreign policy will remain where it is today: virtually indistinguishable. This is not inevitable, but what we know about millenials, particularly white ones, suggest this is the most plausible scenario. In the battle for the soul of the Democratic party, millenials might not be on Team Elizabeth Warren.

 

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/america-has-white-millennial-problem

Links:
[1] http://www.salon.com
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/sean-mcelwee
[3] https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/status/542835205548310528
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/09/in-the-states-the-gop-is-in-its-best-position-since-the-great-depression/
[5] http://cookpolitical.com/story/8123
[6] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393732/will-democrats-take-back-senate-2016-michael-barone
[7] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/11/the_other_gop_wave_state_legislatures__124626.html
[8] http://web.utk.edu/~nkelly/papers/inequality/KellyWitko.pdf
[9] http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412635-state-approaches-to-the-tanf-block-grant.pdf
[10] http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/03/pdf/political_ideology.pdf
[11] http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/05/pdf/millennial_generation.pdf
[12] http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/26/young-voters-supported-obama-less-but-may-have-mattered-more/
[13] http://www.gallup.com/poll/179921/obama-loses-support-among-white-millennials.aspx
[14] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/chapter-2-generations-and-issues/
[15] http://www.salon.com/2014/12/14/americas_white_millennial_problem_why_the_next_great_generation_might_not_be_a_liberal_one/millennial_1/
[16] https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/5edc56c3-f8c8-483f-a459-2c47192d0bb8/a0ba0ce883749f4e613d6a6338bb4455
[17] http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/5/917.abstract
[18] http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/02/0956797614527113.abstract
[19] http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/13/1948550614546355
[20] http://www.pewhispanic.org/2005/06/27/hispanics-and-the-2004-election/
[21] http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/v-politics-values-and-religion/
[22] http://www.salon.com/2014/12/14/americas_white_millennial_problem_why_the_next_great_generation_might_not_be_a_liberal_one/screen_shot_2014_12_12_at_8_55_48_pm/
[23] http://iop.harvard.edu/blog/iop-releases-new-fall-poll-5-key-findings-and-trends-millennial-viewpoints#sthash.Yk1PMHLA.dpuf.
[24] http://www.american.edu/media/news/20121101_poll_obama_romney.cfm
[25] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/19/midterm_demographics_didnt_sink_the_democrats_124701.html
[26] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/upshot/why-democrats-cant-win.html
[27] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on America Has a White Millennial Problem
[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/race
[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/millennials
[30] http://www.alternet.org/tags/economy-0
[31] http://www.alternet.org/tags/generation
[32] http://www.alternet.org/tags/republican-0
[33] http://www.alternet.org/tags/democrat
[34] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B






 

A Few Things That Suck

Here, we have another Earthmanpdx video. This one focuses on some of the things that are wrong in America, and about a Constitutional amendment as the best way to get our nation back on  a course that puts the public interest ahead of corporations, bankers,  and self-absorbed billionaires. 

The link is https://vimeo.com/113999042

At the end of the day, the way out of the mess we are in is to support www.movetoamend.org

Top 0.1 Percent Has More Wealth Than Bottom 90 Percent

This post comes from an article on the Mother Jones  blog by Inae Oh.

It's a reflection of what is fundamentally wrong in America.  Less than 160,000 families have more money than the other 316 million of us combined.    Stunning, shameful, incredibly corrosive to our economy and our democracy:.. those are some words I would choose to describe this circumstance.

Economics is pretty simple at its most basic.  Markets are a place where sellers come to deal with people who have the need to buy at least the necessities among all those things for sale. But, when the vast majority of people are no longer able to participate in that marketplace, because they have almost nothing to exchange for even basic needs like  food, shelter, and healthcare; when that happens,  the entire idea of a marketplace is undermined.    Sad to say, that is exactly what is wrong with America's today.  In effect, our economy is trapped in a malaise caused a tiny fraction of us owning all the wealth. 

All of the political power in America has fallen into the hands of big bankers, bloated corporations, and the super-rich.  Until that changes,  nine out of ten of us will continue to get the very short end of the stick.
_________________

From Inae Oh's Mother Jones blog piece...

While a complex web of factors have contributed to the rise in income inequality in America, a new research paper says most of the blame can be largely placed in the immense growth experienced by the top tenth of the richest 1 percent of Americans in recent years. From the report:

The rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0.1% wealth share, from 7% in 1979 to 22% in 2012, a level almost as high as in 1929. The bottom 90% wealth share first increased up to the mid-1980s and then steadily declined. The increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality.

So, who are the 0.1 percent among us? According to Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the paper's researchers, the elite group is a small one, roughly composed of 160,000 families with assets exceeding $20 million, but their grip on America's wealth distribution is about to surpass the bottom 90 percent for the first time in more than half a century.  Today's 0.1 percent also tend to be younger than the top incomers of the 1960's, despite the fact the country as a whole has been living longer—proving once again, that there has truly never been a more opportune time to be rich in America:

The Mid-Term Elections - Last Gasp of Obstructionism Before Genuine Renewal?

This past week, common sense got whacked in the national mid-term elections.  Around the country, citizens who voted put Republicans firmly in power in both houses of the United States Congress. Republicans also took firm control of state legislatures around the country. How could this happen, given the narrow interests that Republicans support and the abject obstruction they represent on most important issues? 

The biggest reason for this political debacle is the corrosive influence of corporate power and money on our election process.  The conservative majority on our Supreme Court opened the floodgates on legalized bribery with their 'Citizens United' decision on campaign finance.  Corporations and billionaires  are able to buy the politicians and public policy they want by pouring essentially limitless amounts of money into our elections. Our system is rigged to serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

By a wide margin, the Republican Party is the principle conduit for the corruption of our politics. But the Democrats are only marginally better.  Both parties are up to their ears in a system built on moneyed influence.   The vast majority of politicians that are attracted to elective office these days are unprincipled opportunists lining up to feed at the 'dirty money' trough. 

A big part of the problem lies with citizens who don't vote.  Only about a third of the electorate voted in this mid-term election.  Most of those non-voters were registered Democrats or Independents. Some of their failure to vote can be attributed to indifference, but many citizens are just fed up with the open influence peddling that has replaced honest discourse in our system of governance.   Right or wrong, they register their displeasure by dropping out of the voting process.

Republicans don't have that problem. They cater to a handful of single issue voting blocks, who come out to support conservative politicians. I'm talking about gun extremists, anti-abortion zealots, anti-gay evangelicals, and people who have an aversion to taxation of any kind.  Only about twenty percent of registered voters make up the Republican base. They tend to be older, whiter, and male. No matter. They can be counted on to vote.  What amazes me is how many of these misguided souls are poor. For them, a vote for a Republican is ultimately always a vote against their own interests.  Because the Republican Party is a corporatist party.  They really don 't care about their base. They support the bases'  narrow issues, so the base will keep showing up with their votes on election day. The actual constituents  Republican represent are Wall Street bankers, self-absorbed billionaires, and corporatists that are focused on profit to the exclusion of all else.

So, here we are. Republicans, who have successfully obstructed and thwarted most of President Barack Obama's progressive agenda for the past six years, are now the majority in both houses of Congress.   They will continue to obstruct meaningful climate legislation, and they will continue to try to derail the affordable care act, the President's single most important legislative achievement.

Moreover, they will leverage their majority to push legislation that will 'amnesty' billions of dollars of corporate profits that have been hiding in plain sight for years in foreign banks to avoid being taxed.  They will squeeze the life out of the regulatory process by denying operating funds to the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies, whose job it is to protect the public from bad corporate behavior.  They will look for reasons to funnel more  and more government money to military contractors, despite the fact that the Untied States already spends more on its military than all of the rest of the world combined.

The Republican majority will not do anything to help the middle class. They will not raise the minimum wage, or support job creation programs. They will aggressively resist any initiative that does not serve the interests of  their big money enablers. They will deny the most basic science, when it doesn't fit their political agenda.  Forget about meaningful action on climate change. Forget about reproductive choice. Forget about any kind of useful environmental legislation. The Republican game is more tax breaks for billionaires,  more subsidies for dirty energy, more cuts to anything that helps the middle class. 

The next two years are looking pretty bleak. Even before this last election, the American Congress only registered a 15% approval rating among voters.  The level of public discontent has never been higher, and it can only get worse. 

I see a silver lining in this unfortunate set of political circumstances .  We elect our governments  to protect us against foreign enemies, to maintain law and order, to nurture a healthy economy, to look out for the well being of all citizens.  That's a tall order for Republicans, whose stated goal is to 'drown government in a bathtub'.  Until the next election, Republicans will be in the lead. If they perform as they have over the past few decades, they will fail miserably in their responsibility. Despite their expertise in shifting blame, they will find it difficult to avoid being tagged with the ineptitude that will surely be reflected in their lack of achievement for anyone other than Wall Street, billionaires, and craven corporatists.

By 2016, the public disgust with the corporate plutocracy that has displaced democracy in America will likely be at a fever pitch.  In the next two years, I expect Republicans to thoroughly discredit themselves. 

Echoes of the coming public backlash can be seen in some of the state-level initiatives that passed in this most recent election.  In Wisconsin, Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Florida, dozens of communities had initiatives on the ballot calling for a Constitutional amendment that eliminates 'Corporate Personhood' and repudiates 'Money being treated as Speech'.  These political referendums all passed by as much as 70% of the voters, including many that characterize themselves as conservatives.

I am convinced that Move to Amend [ www.movetoamend.org }  is the .key to restoring true  democracy in America.   Its Constitutional agenda would take away citizen rights and 'personhood' status from corporations. It would affirm that corporations are nothing more than state chartered legal fictions that, by law, must be accountable to the people for their actions.  The Move to Amend Constitutional Amendment also says that money is property, not a form of speech. Having boatloads of money should not include the right to use it to buy politicians and pervert the American political process.   What we see every time Move to Amend finds its way onto a local ballot, is that voters sign on with their overwhelming support.

The most important response to America's political malfeasance over the next two years is to expand awareness of the Move to Amend agenda.   As a citizen, I believe serving that end is the most important thing I can do.

We cannot count on politicians to deliver the fundamental political change we need. It must come from the grassroots.  'We, the people' must step up and demand the brand of governance the founders of our nation intended, free of corporate dominance; and free of moneyed influence.   We must become the change we wish for.

My name is Earthmanpdx

I was looking for a handle for my twitter account. A number of ideas came to mind. The one that I liked best was Earthmanpdx.  It is an audacious way to identify one’s self.  But, when I discovered that no one else was using it, I figured, ‘why not me?’

What does Earthmanpdx stand for?   It means I am a citizen of the Earth first and foremost, and I happen to live in pdx,  which is code for Portland, Oregon, USA.   Yes, I have a USA passport, and I grew up pledging allegiance. I do identify as an American citizen, but even more so, I see myself as a citizen of the Earth. My first obligation is to nurture and preserve the Earth and its living biosphere. That, to me, is the principle responsibility of every human; protect the integrity of our planet’s living fabric. Job one for every human person on Earth should be to do no harm. 

For the longest time, humans have taken for granted the rich living bounty of our planet. Up until a few decades ago,   the planet’s  biosphere was resilient despite the ravages of human exploitation.  When I was born, the planet’s population was about 2.5 billion human beings. Now, in 2014, in just the past sixty-some years, the number of humans on Earth has nearly tripled to 7.3 billion,  and demographers believe by the end of this century we could have nearly 11 billion, all needing food, water, and shelter at a minimum.  The biosphere we all depend on, the only one we have, is suffocating.   Human demand is outstripping  the planet’s ability to provide.   An unbiased examination of the facts leaves no room for any other conclusion.

I recently read that since 1970, less than fifty years ago, the number of non-human life forms on the Earth has dropped by 52%.  In the same time frame, the human population on Earth doubled. The correlation couldn’t be more obvious.   

We dump millions of tons of our cultural waste into our oceans. We have stripped the sea’s fish stocks to the point  of collapse.  We are using up the planet’s aquifers and fresh water resources.  We have cut down vast areas of forestland. We have replaced our biologically resilient landscapes with industrial monocultures.  We are consuming massive quantities of coal and oil, fossil forms of energy that have choked the atmosphere with pollutants that are directly linked to an unprecedented planetary warming.

People are the problem. We are taking too much of the planet’s rapidly dwindling resources.  Mindless exploitation is no longer an option.  We must mend our ways. It’s either that, or doom future generations to a vastly diminished quality of life.

 Many millions of people around the world recognize that humanity is in severe need of a course correction. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the earth’s population continue, business as usual. They still don’t get it.  That must change.  Reaching a tipping point in global human awareness has to be the primary focus.  

When I chose to identify myself as Earthmanpdx, it is because I want to be a change agent fully engaged in the process of charting a worthy future for humanity.  I am looking for ways to draw people to a life-affirming worldview that respects nature and is sustainable over the long term. 

The good news is there are worthy answers to nearly all of the major global challenges we face.  Human induced atmospheric warming, and the sea level rise, weather extremes,  and other global scale consequences that go with burning fossil fuels,  can dramatically be curbed by choosing a rapid transition to inexhaustible forms of clean energy like solar and wind.   We have the ability to provide reproductive choice to every person, thus slowing the growth of the human population. We can create a regulatory framework for restoring our water, forest, and ocean resources.  We can create a human culture on Earth that assigns proper value to nature and focuses on building a future that can be sustained for generations to come.  To some extent, it is already happening, but not fast enough.  The impediments to progress are much less technical than they are political.  

In America, the Constitution says that government is supposed to be ‘of, by, and for the people’.   In fact, it no longer works that way.  Democracy has been replaced by a plutocracy, in which a handful of very rich bankers, billionaires, and multi-national corporations use their money and influence to buy politicians and shape the public policy they want.

For any chance at a better, more sustainable future for all life on Earth,  the first order of business must be to push back against the stagnation and corruption that has taken over our economic and political system.

Achieving the level of transformation that is sorely needed will be no easy task.  A handful of big money manipulators have amassed an incredible amount of political power.  They will not go away quietly. 

So, what is the prescription for renewal recommended by Earthmanpdx?

An initiative called Move to Amend is growing across America. It’s agenda is simple and straightforward. Move to Amend is entirely about  building a grassroots movement that calls for a Constitutional Amendment that would strip corporations and the rich of their ability to unduly influence our economy and our political process.  A proposed 28^th Constitutional Amendment  would say that 'Corporations are not People' and ‘Money is property, not Speech’.   

There has never been a law that said ‘corporations are people’.   They are in fact, state chartered legal fictions that are supposed to be accountable to the people.   Likewise, the idea of ‘money being speech’ has never been codified in law, instead, it is a corrosive idea that gained legitimacy through legal precedence created by a series of corrupt, high court decisions.

I believe that Move to Amend is focused on the critical struggle of our time. Blunting corporate power.  An amendment that ends corporate personhood and clearly defines money as 'property not speech',  must become a  national calling.  No matter where one’s activism is focused – social justice, economic fairness, environmental protection - the common thread that offers the best hope for achieving positive change is a 28^th Constitutional Amendment as presented by Move to Amend.

______________________

My best years are behind me.  In the  time that I have remaining, I intend to be Earthmanpdx, serving as a change agent for a better future by championing Move to Amend’s Constitutional agenda.  I urge every person to think about who they are, consider the reality that we all face, then join the movement to achieve a constitutional amendment that says ‘Corporations are not People’ and ‘Money is not Speech’.   

Here is a link to Move to Amend's website...  www.movetoamend.org






   

Pay 2 Play

Here is another outstanding wake-up call to the American people. Your political system; your government at every level, local, state, and national is egregiously corrupt.    This film demonstrates clearly that America is no longer a democracy. It is a Konfederacy of Kleptocrats  for sale to any billionaire, banker, or corporate executive willing to shell out big money to buy the public policy they want, with no regard for the consequences.

This is the core issue... the core challenge of our time. The singular focus on profit above all else is shredding the fabric of life on Earth.  Fixing this problem must be job one. 

Here is a link to a trailer for the feature documentary, Pay 2 Play...http://vimeo.com/87025347

He3re is a link to the webpage for Pay 2 Play...  http://pay2play.nationbuilder.com/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=advertising-pay-2-play-20140910-2&utm_campaign=Advertising%20-%20Pay%202%20Play%20-%2020140910

Queen of the Sun

A lovely person named Betsy Valle recommended a documentary video to me. It's called, Queen of the Sun.  This video is about some wonderful humans, who work with bees and have a profound affection for them.  It's also about industrial agriculture and the devastating impact it is having on bees.

I met Betsy Valle, who lives in North Portland, through Paul Maresh and Pam Allee, two people who are seriously involved in urban bee husbandry.  Paul has some of his bee hives in Betsy's yard, which is covered with plants and flowers that are good for bees.

When I visited Betsy Valle's yard with Paul, I was struck by the nature of the bees when Paul was present. They were calm, as if they knew him and recognized him as a 'friendly' presence. Though a hive can have as many as 60,000 bees, they all seem to be connected and work together as one organism.

Bees are incredibly important to the health of the biosphere. They are responsible for pollinating 40% or more of the plants we depend on for food.   Healthy bees are a reflection of a healthy environment.

Unfortunately, bees are in big trouble these days. A phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder is reflected in huge numbers of bee colonies dying off.  There are a number of factors that contribute to colony collapse.  Mass market industrial agriculture has led to massive monocultures like the almond crop in California. Growing a single crop like almonds to the exclusion of all other plants means that bees starve, when the almonds are not in bloom. 

Even worse is the impact of pesticides and herbicides. A class of these poisons called neonicotinoids are chemical nerve agents that can kill bees outright in high enough concentration. Even in low concentration , they disrupt bee immune and nervous system function.  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature  reviewed 800 scientific studies that looked at the impact of neonicotinoid ag chemicals on pollinators and found the link to be 'incontrovertible'.

Queen of the Sun reveals the wonderful synergy that links organic beekeepers with their bees.  It also shows what the bees are up against. The picture is not pretty, but clearly all is not lost.  Many people around the world are working to protect bees.  

I met Paul, Pam, and Betsy, all of whom are champions for bees, because I am preparing to produce a brief outreach video for Move to Amend, that uses a beekeeper's perspective to make the case that the future of bees and the biosphere in general depends on stripping bankers, bad billionaires, and business tycoons of their undue influence over our political process.

We know that pesticides and herbicides are a very significant factor in bee colony collapse.  Our government is the place we citizens must look to for a credible response to these chemical poisons. That is not happening because the gigantic multinational corporate interests behind these ag chemicals are using their wealth and influence to obfuscate the truth and resist changes in government policy that would help bees but threaten their billions in poisonous  profits.

My wife and I are going to look into putting a bee hive or two in our backyard.  I am also recommending Queen of the Sun as a wonderful way to spend 90 minutes to anyone who hasn't already seen it.  And, I am looking forward to completing my Move to Amend Outreach video,  Beekeeper's Logic.

Finally, I want to thank my new friends, Paul, Pam, and Betsy, for championing bees and for being all around good souls.

Here is a link to a video trailer for Queen of the Sun...  http://www.queenofthesun.com/

Why Elizabeth Warren Should be the Next President of the United States

In her own words, Senator Warren speaks to Netroots Nation Conference and lays out what she stands for.  She is the leader that we desperately need to be the next President of the United States.

Senator Elizabeth Warren

Here is the link...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDOsAAwTKes

The U.S. Supreme Court - A Corporation's Best Friend

There is nothing written in law that gives corporations human rights, but that hasn't stopped the Supreme Court. Over the years, conservative majority's on the court have issued ten decisions that have bolstered corporate personhood, and seriously undermined the rights of the nation's human citizens in the process.

I pulled the article below from Mother Jones.
 ____________________________

10 Supreme Court Rulings—Before Hobby Lobby—That Turned Corporations Into People

Last week's decision is the latest in a 200-year-long line of rulings giving businesses the same rights as humans.

By Alex Park | Thu Jul. 10, 2014 6:00 AM EDT

 

                         

 

Hobby Lobby is the latest in a 200-year-long line of rulings giving businesses the same rights as humans. 

     

Last week's Hobby Lobby ruling charted new legal territory by granting corporations the same religious rights as real people. The rationale [1] behind the decision—that expanding constitutional rights to businesses is necessary to "protect the rights of people associated with the corporation"—is far from novel. A line of Supreme Court rulings stretching back 200 years has blurred the distinction between flesh-and-blood citizens and the businesses they own, laying the groundwork for Hobby Lobby [2] and the equally contentious Citizens United [3] ruling. Here's a timeline of the corporation's human evolution:

 

1809 (Bank of the United States v. Deveaux) [4]: In the early days of the republic, when state and federal courts were still working out their jurisdictions, the Bank of the United States—a precursor to the US Treasury—sued a Georgia tax collector named Peter Deveaux for property he had seized when the bank failed to pay state taxes. Deveaux argued that, because corporations weren't people, they couldn't sue in federal court. Chief Justice John Marshall agreed. This meant businesses could only sue or be sued in federal court if all the shareholders, and at least one member of the opposing party, lived in the same state. According to Burt Neuborne, a corporate law professor at New York University, Wall Street banks hated this decision because it restricted suits to state courts where judges were partial to the banks' local clients—typically Midwestern farmers.

 

1844 (Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad v. Letson [5]): It soon became apparent that Marshall's decision in Bank of the United States was unworkable because it put corporations outside the reach of the federal courts. Thirty-five years later, after hearing the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston Railroad [5] case, the Supreme Court shifted course, ruling that corporations were "citizens" of the states where they incorporated. Still, it was difficult for a corporation to sue or be sued in federal court unless all its shareholders lived in the same state.

 

1853 (Marshall v. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad [6]): The Supreme Court later upheld the notion that corporations were citizens, but only for the purposes of court jurisdiction; they did not have the same constitutional rights as actual people. The court also ruled that, for litigation purposes, shareholders would be considered citizens of their company's home state. This made it easier for corporations to sue or be sued in federal court by eliminating jurisdictional conflicts.

 

1886 (County of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad [7]): Now that corporations were legally citizens, corporate attorneys worked to expand their rights. When California officials levied a special tax [8] on the Southern Pacific Railroad, the railroad sued, arguing that singling out the company violated its rights to equal protection under the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect freed slaves. In a strange twist, the court reporter—a former railroad man—wrote in the published notes on the case that the 14th Amendment did, in fact, apply to the company. Even though this notion appeared nowhere in the high court's actual ruling, 11 years later the court declared it was "well settled [9]" that "corporations are persons within the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment," citing Santa Clara. 

 

1898 (Smyth v. Ames [10]): Building on the Santa Clara decision, the court voided a Nebraska railroad tax, ruling that it was akin to the government taking a corporation's property without due process—a violation of its 14th Amendment rights. (The decision was overturned in the 1944 Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas decision [11].)

 

1906 (Hale v. Henkel) [12]: Having blocked unlawful seizures of corporate property, the court went on to shield companies from other kinds of intrusion. Writing for the majority, Justice Henry Billings Brown found that corporations, like people, are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment (although the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination did not apply). 

 

1931 (Russian Volunteer Fleet v. United States [13]): A Russian shipbuilder, Russian Volunteer Fleet, sued the US government, claiming that government officials had unlawfully seized property worth more than $4 million. The high court sided with the company, ruling that even foreign corporations are protected from unlawful government seizures under the Fifth Amendment, which ensures fair treatment by the legal system.

 

1977 (United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co. [14]): After a criminal trial for two linen companies and their owner was dismissed due to jury deadlock, federal prosecutors appealed the decision. The Supreme Court ruled that a second trial violated the companies' rights to be tried only once, expanding the double jeopardy rule to include both humans and corporations.

 

2010 (Citizens United v. FEC) [15]: In the run up to the 2008 election, the Federal Elections Commission blocked the conservative nonprofit Citizens United from airing a film about Hillary Clinton based on a law barring companies from using their funds for "electioneering communications" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The organization sued, arguing that, because people's campaign donations are a protected form of speech (see Buckley v. Valeo [16]) and corporations and people enjoy the same legal rights, the government can't limit a corporation's independent political donations. The Supreme Court agreed. The Citizens United ruling may be the most sweeping expansion of corporate personhood to date. 

 

2014 (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby) [17]: Corporations are legally people with the right to free speech, but do they have religious rights? Apparently, they do. In 2012, Hobby Lobby, an Oklahoma-based craft store chain, sued the federal government, arguing that a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring it to provide contraception coverage for employees violated shareholders' constitutional rights to freedom of religion. The Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby and found that corporations can assert the religious rights of their owners, greatly expanding the power of shareholders while creating a world of confusion [18] for corporate attorneys.

 

The Future: If a corporation has First Amendment rights, could it also claim Second Amendment protections? Amazingly, this is a question some scholars are seriously pondering. As Darrell A.H. Miller wrote in his 2011 article "Guns, Inc." in the NYU Law Review [19], "If Citizens United is taken seriously, the Second Amendment, like the First Amendment and like many other provisions of the Bill of Rights, guarantees liberties to natural and corporate persons alike." Bang!

 

---

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/how-supreme-court-turned-corporations-people-200-year-saga

Links:
[1] http://www.omaha.com/money/court-rulings-trigger-renewed-debate-over-corporate-personhood/article_55f847ac-6d18-5c9b-acbe-c25de887a756.html
[2] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/hobby-lobby-supreme-court-obamacare
[3] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/citizens-united-amendment-flowchart
[4] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a3_2_1s50.html
[5] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/43/497/case.html
[6] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/57/314/case.html
[7] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/case.html
[8] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/10/when-corporation-freed-slave
[9] http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=lawreview
[10] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/169/466/case.html
[11] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/320/591/case.html
[12] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/201/43/case.html
[13] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/282/481/
[14] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/430/564/
[15] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/08-205/opinion.html
[16] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/424/1/case.html
[17] http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf
[18] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/07/hobby-lobbys-other-problem
[19] http://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-86-number-4/guns-inc-citizens-united-mcdonald-and-future-corporate-constitutional

Life, Liberty, and Happiness

Have you read the Constitution? An amazing document. It starts out, ‘We the people… We the people, in order to form a more perfect union’.  What does that mean? It's about governance; governance that serves the people; all of the people, not just a privileged few, who happen to have money and influence.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.   We’re all supposed to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.    Our government, the one we elect under our Constitution, is supposed to work for us. Job one for the people we elect is to work for us, and our right  to life, liberty, and happiness.

That’s not happening. It’s not happening. Not even close. Our government has lost its way.  It has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.  Those who have the money have the influence and make the rules.  It’s that simple.

The word corporation appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.   When Jefferson and the founding fathers wrote the Constitution in the 18^th century,  they knew well the threat posed by the power and wealth of corporations. In the 18th century, it took an act by the legislature to charter a corporation. They had to have a civic purpose, and by law,  they had a limited life. When they’d served their purpose, they were supposed to go away.

A lot has changed since then. Now U.S. chartered corporations can live forever. They no longer need to serve a public purpose.  They put profit and shareholder interest above pretty much all else. Most troubling of all,  they have finagled something for themselves that used to be, and rightfully should  be, only for human, flesh and blood people.  Corporations are now considered persons under the law.   When I said finagled, that’s exactly what I meant. There has never been a law passed that says corporations are people.  There’s nothing in the Constitution about corporations. They are and always have been artificial legal constructs that are chartered with the understanding that they are accountable ultimately to the people.  How did corporations become ‘persons’?  It turns out, the entire fiction of corporate personhood began with and continues to expand under a perverted precedent established by the United States Supreme Court.  It started in 1886 with a decision known as Santa Clara versus Southern Pacific. The court’s decision said nothing about corporate personhood. It was a clerk of the court, a former corporate lawyer, who inserted language in the notes that accompanied the court’s decision that said, corporations are considered to be persons under the law.   From that deceitful court clerk’s notes, a legal precedent was established.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. In 1976, the Supreme Court gave us the Buckley versus Valeo decision that said ‘money equals speech’. In 2010, the majority corporate conservatives on the  Supreme Court gave us Citizens United, which opened the floodgates for corporate political contributions. In 2014, the same court majority led by Chief Justice Roberts gave us McCutcheon vs. FEC, which expanded corporate political influence even further.   

Bottom line: Our elections are driven by influence money, and our politicians, too often, have become sociopaths, willfully feeding on obscene amounts of corporate cash  It is bribery on a massive scale, made legal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It would be easy to point the finger at the Republican party. The GOP is the corporatist party. They get the lion’s share of corporate influence money, and they have rarely been shy about where their loyalties lie. That would be with Wall Street, multi-national corporations, and the like.  But there's no denying, the democrats are also part of the problem.  They too have become accustomed to trading their legislative votes for campaign cash.

These days, nothing much worth doing gets done in Congress because that’s the way the corporate minders and lobbyists want it. In Washington, meaningful change on pretty much anything of consequence is damned near impossible.  The same kind of thing is happening at the state and the local level. The corruption is nearly complete. Our political system is dysfunctional.  Too many of the people we elect to office are hacks, who are shamelessly willing to take the money and serve the rich and powerful interests that put them in office.

Every single challenge of consequence to the American people languishes because of bought and paid for political intransigence.

The mess we find ourselves in starts with two very bad ideas bolstered by the corrupt actions of the U.S. Supreme Court. One is the idea that corporations are people. The other is the idea that money is speech.

When money is speech, the only people politicians listen to are those who offer them wads of cash. Corporations have also used their deep pockets to capture control the print media, radio, television broadcasters, and they now working to consolidate their control of the internet.  As long as money is treated as speech, Wall Street and large corporations will decide public policy, not the American people. 

Moreover, when corporations are treated as persons under the law, they can use their ‘human’ rights to subvert the rights of  flesh and blood living citizens in a whole range of ways. A company like Monsanto can lie and withhold information about the impact of its genetically modified seed, and its herbicides that kill beneficial insects like honey bees. Personhood was the shield cigarette makers used to lie and deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. Personhood allows corporations guilty of criminal activity to use their ‘right against self-incrimination’ to avoid prosecution. Personhood bestowed on a corporation allows them to be unaccountable for their profit driven actions.  It is the fiction they hide behind to profit, while the consequences of their actions are left for taxpayers to cleanup. 

Fixing what’s broken about our country starts with the way we govern ourselves.  That means, we must focus our grassroots energy on a Constitutional remedy to our political malaise. In fact, anything short of that will hardly slow down the corruption in government.

If what I have written resonates with you, join the resistance. Become a part of the solution, Support Move to Amend’s initiative for a 28^th Constitution Amendment, a 'We the People'  Amendment' that will say ‘Corporations are not People’ and ‘Money is not Speech.’


Here is a link to Move to Amend...  www.movetoamend.org



 

Success is Often About Constituency Building

I learned about constituency building from my friend and colleague, Bill Hoagland. In the late-eighties and early nineties, Bill was the Hydrogen Energy Program Manager for the U.S Department of Energy.  I first met Bill at a symposium on hydrogen energy held at UCLA in Los Angeles.  I ended up teaming up with him to do documentaries and educational videos about hydrogen energy.  In 1993, we started a non-profit group called, Hydrogen 2000.   Over a dozen years,  we produced video material that was distributed world-wide.  The media work we were doing on hydrogen outreach at that time was groundbreaking.  Hydrogen 2000 accomplished some things and made some headway, but our success at building the constituencies needed for a transition to a renewable hydrogen economy was modest at best.  It turns out, we were just ahead of the times. Hydrogen is emerging prominently as part of the clean energy agenda of the European Union.  Many of my entries in this blog report on hydrogen and renewable energy development.

One thing I took from my years focused on hydrogen was my appreciation of the critical importance of constituency building.   More recently, I have come to believe the American people must aggressively resist the corporate oligarchy our nation has become.  The best way forward I know, given that priority, is to support a group called Move to Amend.  It's entire reason for being is to champion a Constitutional amendment that says Corporations are not people and money is not speech.

So I decided to become associated with MTA, with the idea that I might make a contribution in the area of constituency building.   Media messaging must be created that very specifically reaches out to every kind of  group or cause that counts American voters as members.  It will take more than one or even a handful of motivated filmmakers to elevate Move to Amend 's Constitutional agenda.  

Take organized labor for instance.  I would like to see two minute outreach videos tailored to each of the major national labor organizations.  SEIU, CWA, ILWU, UAW, etc, etc. I would like to see these messages embedded in the web home pages of every union local in America. Many union leaders and workers are already on board. Millions of others would surely support a Constitutional Amendment,  if aware.

All citizens,  of every age, gender orientation, or ethnicity  have a stake in the fight with corporatists and oligarchs..  Environmentalists, educators, students, religious groups;  people with all types of  life affirming activism are natural constituents for Move to Amend. The more media outreach is done  with these various, diverse constituencies, the faster we will reach the groundswell needed to  affect real change.

David Delk,  leader of the Portland chapter of Move to Amend, recognizes the importance of media outreach. He was willing to work with me to develop a series of  short videos for the internet.   An initial cut of our first one,  Citizen's Amendment, has just been posted.  The link is    https://vimeo.com/94987111  It's the first of three we're doing. 

These videos are full of aspiration, despite their very modest, even home baked production values.   I would love to inspire a firestorm of video creativity, by dozens, hundreds, even thousands of  filmmakers.  We want them to apply their skills and passion to the process of  constituency building for Move to Amend.

Move to Amends'  webpage  indicates  they are looking for a person to handle media outreach.   Let me say, lest there be any misunderstanding, that I am not a candidate for that job.  It should go to someone young  and energetic, who has a record of creativity, especially with the emerging social media.  Once that person is in place, I hope she or he will broaden MTA's outreach and engagement with independent filmmakers.  I also will urge them to launch  a library of video b-roll with creative commons licensing.  I'm willing to contribute video material to such a library. I'm sure others would as well. Quality b-roll  is an important part of  a large share of the activist videos that are made. Having such a library on line would be a huge added motivation for filmmakers to champion Move to Amend.

I have no illusions that the little video pieces we are dong will win any prizes. They are modest by design and execution.  What I hope to see is a swarm of young, talented, social media savvy people get on board with this.  Move to Amend needs them. The world needs them.  Let's  get things rolling.  We needed to be at critical mass with Move to Amend's agenda yesterday.  Times a'wastiin'...

I Stand With Move to Amend

At the beginning of 2014,  while recovering from yet another surgery on my spine, I concluded that I needed to be more assertive as a citizen in pushing back against what I consider to be the greatest threat to peace, prosperity and the natural world. The threat I'm talking about is the abject corruption of our political system. The corrupted U.S. Supreme Court has handed the super-rich and large corporations the ability to buy our elected officials and our political process,  A series of court decisions, most recently Citizens United and McCutcheon vs. FEC,  allows those with  wealth to give unlimited amounts of campaign money to politicians.  In effect, this legalized form of bribery gives these special interests the ability to shape public policy, putting their own interests over the public good.

Every issue; every challenge we face as a society is impacted by this egregious and,  unfortunately, legal brand of political racketeering.

We know that the vast majority of the American public wants economic fairness,  an expanding job market,  a living wage for everyone. The vast majority wants equal rights and equal justice for women, for minorities, for all citizens, regardless of age, creed, gender or ethnicity. The polls show that most people want to protect our environment and the planet's biodiversity. It's clear that the biggest share of American voters are against the militarization of our law enforcement and the constant drumbeat for war and conflict with other nations. 

The public wants to trust their print and broadcast media. They want it to report the news honestly, without bias, without hidden agenda.  Instead, what we have - very nearly across the board -  is a  media that filters and shapes its news coverage to serve corporations and wealthy conservatives.

Probably the biggest issue facing all of humankind is global climate change.  It's already happening. The science is undeniable. Without some seriously assertive action, the effects of atmospheric warming will swamp coastal cities around the world well before the end of this century.  We're already experiencing a very unsettling increase in extreme weather events - floods, draughts, heat waves,  tornadoes, hurricanes.  Something like ninety-seven  out of a hundred climate scientists  around the world are all standing together, sounding the alarm.  Climate change could kill millions, perhaps billions of humans, destroy our environment, and devastate civilized society for centuries to come.

What are we doing about it? Very little, it turns out, because those who benefit from our continued dependence on dirty, fossil fuel energy are using their wealth to maintain their continued profiteering from coal, oil, and gas.  They sell a feckless kind of climate denial through their control of our public media. They pay off our elected officials to maintain their profits by obstructing  public policy that encourages a transition to clean, renewable forms of energy.

It doesn't matter what constituency you count yourself a part of , the enemy of progress, of any kind of  meaningful change, is the same. It's the small cabal of corporate leaders and super wealthy individuals who use massive amounts of money to resist change and thwart any idea that puts the common good over their private interests

Bottom line: no matter your cause,  the real enemy of progress is our broken system of governance. Making it right requires that we  do two things: reign in corporate power, and refute the influence of money on our politics. How do we do that?

Eliminating the sewer money and corruption from American politics will be no easy task, though it really isn't terribly complicated. When you examine all the facts, the answer is abundantly clear.  The culprit is the U.S.  Supreme Court.  The foundation of virtually all the corruption of our political system is built on two morally bankrupt legal constructs, sanctioned by a corporate conservative majority on the court.  The first bogus construct is the idea that money is equal to free speech. That's fine for those that have money. The problem is it disenfranchises the 99% of citizens who don't have big money to buy off politicians. The second corrosive legal construct is the idea that Corporations have the same rights as humans.  

The current law of the land says  a rich person's wealth is a form of free speech and that corporations can claim personhood to get away with all kinds of unethical or even illegal behavior. This must change.

The answer is pretty straight forward.  We need to change our Constitution.  We need a new, 28th Constitutional Amendment that says specifically and unequivocally that corporations are not people. They do not have the same rights as human citizens.  Second, this 28th Amendment should say that money is not the same as free speech, and that just because you have big money doesn't mean you get to use it to pervert our political system.

Move to Amend is a national grassroots campaign that is focused on accomplishing one goal - a Constitutional amendment that says Corporations are not people and money is not speech. Every American who cares about our nation and our planetary future should be standing with Move to Amend. 

My goal in becoming engaged with Move to Amend is to help build broad, well-informed citizen constituencies for the cause. This is a movement that crosses political boundaries.  It's not Democratic, or Republican, or libertarian.  Conservatives should embrace Move to Amend's Constitutional agenda as readily as liberals and progressives.

I am now working with David Delk, the leader of Move to Amend's chapter in Portland, Oregon.  We are developing a series of short outreach videos that  focus tightly on specific constituencies. The first three videos are currently in production.  We will be releasing them on the internet.  We hope they will inspire other filmmakers to do their own videos to expand the public's awareness and enthusiasm for Move to Amend.

Stay tuned. More on this in my next post.

McCutcheon Vs. FEC

Well, today the Supreme Court did it again. It ruled there should be no limits on campaign spending in our elections.   The floodgates have now opened for billionaires like the Koch Brothers to own America's political system.  It was bad enough when the slug bait conservatives on the court voted 5-4 for Citizen's United, the first step on the road to 'he who has the money makes the rules'. 

McCutcheon Vs. FEC effectively removes all remaining limits to the amount of money a corporation or an individual can spend to influence our elections.   We no longer have a democracy.  We have an oligarchy controlled by super-rich plutocrats.

The sad thing is most Americans still seem to be in the dark about this.  Just last week, a poll revealed that 52% of Americans don't know who the Koch Brothers are.   That is very disturbing, given the fact that the Koch's, who inherited their wealth from their father,  are the poster boys for egregious spending to buy the politics they want.

Though corporate conservatives, most of whom are Republican, are primarily responsible for the sewer money politics that prevail in this country, both parties are guilty of feeding on dirty money from the Koch's and other super rich political manipulators.

There is only one answer that will restore our Constitution. That is a 28th Constitutional Amendment that says specifically that Corporations are not people and money is not speech.  The people we elect to govern our country will not make this happen. They are part of the problem.  To make this right, the American people must step up and stand together in a grass root effort to rid our politics of big money influence.

There is a group called Move to Amend. It's one and only focus is on a Constitutional Amendment that says corporations are not people and money is not speech.  I support Move to Amend.  Every American has a duty to stand together to support Move to Amend's unambiguous and straightforward Constitutional remedy.

The Constitution is supposed to serve the interests of all the people, not just the rich and powerful.  If you aren't already onboard,  take the time to learn about Move to Amend, then join us and become part of the solution. We all have a stake in this fight.  It's time to step up and be counted.

Visit the Move to Amend website...www.movetomend.org

Populists want Fairness

I pulled this piece on populism from the Campaign for America's Future website. The author is Columnist Richard Eskow.   I believe Eskow is right. America is not a moderate nation or centrist nation as the media likes to say. An overwhelming majority of our citizens want fairness. They want a political system that works for all the people, not just the richest, and they don't believe corporate rights should be put ahead of human rights.

_______________________________

The Populist Moment

February 3, 2014

Richard Eskow

 

 

Of all the myths that circulate in Washington, perhaps none is more prevalent or intractable than the one that says that the United States is a “moderate” nation – and that the “center” of public opinion lies somewhere between the views of conservative Democrats and those of less extreme Republicans (a relative term at best).

The polling data shows conclusively that this is wrong, but the mythology refuses to die.

According to the myth, the rise of populism is to be condemned as “polarization,” a situation that the capital’s insider subculture routinely laments – even when it involves something that in other historical moments would be described as “a debate.”

In this worldview, “populists” are as extreme as Tea Party radicals and are to be treated with equal disdain. At best they’re useful naïfs who can be trotted out to stir up the base at election time, then to be conveniently sidelined again for the next four years. And that worst they’re childlike ideologues, to be condescended to and dismissed.

In this worldview, anyone who labels himself a “liberal” or “progressive” is pushing a hopelessly sentimental ideology that has been thoroughly rejected by an increasingly conservative public. If only these “extremists” on both sides would get out of the way, so the legend goes, then conservatively inclined Democrats could get together with their more pragmatic Republican colleagues to carry out the kinds of policies the American people want: deficit reduction, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, privatization, and other grown-up initiatives.

There’s one problem with this worldview: Poll after poll has consistently shown that it is wrong. It turns out that the American people, like those politicians of the left whom the pundits love to decry, are a pretty populist bunch.

Overall, more Americans still describe themselves as “conservative” then liberal, but that figure has fallen slightly as liberal identification has risen. And bear in mind: no major American politician has defended the “liberal” label for many decades, certainly not in the fearless way that Franklin D. Roosevelt did.

But self-labeling is probably the least significant part of the political equation. Politicians insist that the real key to victory lies in winning over independents and winnable members of the opposite party. (They tend to underplay the importance of turnout, which is driven by enthusiasm among the base. Fortunately, as were about to see, those two issues line up nicely – at least for the Democrats.)

if you believe that, then a key question for Democrats becomes: where do these two groups stand on populism?  The answer, as they say, may surprise you – especially if you are a Washington politician, pundit, or political consultant.

The classic definition of an “economic populist” is a person who feels that wealth is unfairly distributed in this country. Unsurprisingly, most Republicans don’t feel that way. According to surveys collected by PollingReport.com, more than a third of them agree that our economy’s distribution of wealth is unfair. That includes an overwhelming 80 percent of Democrats and 62 percent – nearly two-thirds – of “independents.”

That means that a Democratic candidate who pushes populism has a chance of attracting two-thirds of independents and more than one-third of the opposition party’s voters.

This enthusiasm translates into a desire for more government action, and the poll numbers become stronger as the questions get more specific. Of those polled by Pew, 53 percent thought that the government should be doing a lot to reduce poverty, for example, and 82 percent thought that it should do either “a lot” or “some” to help the poor.

More than two-thirds of those polled thought the government should do “a lot” or “some” to reduce inequality. Fifty-four percent of voters thought taxes should be raised on corporations and the wealthy. And voters have consistently said that the government should place more emphasis on spending to improve the economy than it should on reducing the budget deficit – at a time when it has consistently done the opposite.

What’s more, 69 percent of voters would rather protect Social Security then reduce the deficit and only 18 percent disagree. And yet cuts to Social Security have been proposed by both the Democratic president and his Republican opponents in Congress. Previous polls have shown that this opposition to Social Security cuts was shared by three-quarters of Republican voters, and even 76 percent of self-described Tea Party members.

Is it any wonder the polls also show that Americans are disillusioned with their system of government?

Americans are “populist” on the minimum wage, too. A Quinnipiac poll shows that voters overwhelmingly favor raising the minimum wage, by 71 percent to 27 percent.

Overall, Americans continue to believe that our government should be doing more to fix our broken economy. The Quinnipiac poll showed that 39 percent of voters consider the economy the highest priority for President Obama and Congress, and 20 percent of them gave other economically related issues the top ranking, but only 23 percent ranked the federal budget deficit the highest.

And yet, budget discussions will undoubtedly center on the extent and nature of additional cuts to be made. But there are signs of a potential shift on the horizon. We’ve seen an increasing number of leaders rise to national prominence on a populist platform, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. There’s been a shift in rhetoric from the President and other Democratic leaders, along with a renewed emphasis on populist issues like an increase in the minimum wage.

Still, the cultural forces that knit Washington’s tribal figures together are strong. That city’s myths and rituals are powerful. The call of self-interest, whether it involves revolving-door corporate jobs for lesser figures or hedge-fund driven wealth for former presidents, is undoubtedly even stronger.

That means there will be an ongoing temptation to respond to this shift in public opinion by offering some form of Populism Lite, a set of watered-down proposals designed to look like the fundamental change people want. But you can’t fake change. You certainly can’t fake change in an economic reality which people live through, and suffer through, on a daily basis.

The signs increasingly indicate that, however much the folkways of Washington may resist, this nation has entered a Populist Moment. If you live and work inside the Beltway, you ignore it at your own peril.