Saturday, March 20, 2010

Organizing for America Asked Me To Write A Note To My Representative...

...encouraging support for health care reform.

Here it is:

I'm a strong supporter of health reform because the U.S. is crumbling toward bankruptcy due to our perennial inability to adequately address any of the big issues that face us: export of our jobs, no energy policy, eroding environmental management, degraded food supply protection, and last but not least, pathetic provision of health care.

All of these problems occur because our politicians are beholden to venal corporate interests who perceive proper attention to these matters as impediments to profit. I hope you can prove me wrong on this one issue -- health care -- this Sunday, March 21. And then go further and bring us the public option, generic drugs...and finally, universal single-payer coverage. That, given how often I hear politicians praise the preeminence of our democratic governance, is the least you could do, considering the overwhelming popular support for decent health care.

Please see my message to you, along with the stories and photos of other Americans from your district and across the nation, at http://my.barackobama.com/HereFor
or, read my vitriolic blog at http://cyclopsvuethinks.blogspot.com/

Thank you.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N ( No. 08-205 )

This case, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that corporations share the same rights as citizens, is such a monumental boondoggle of judicial activism on the part of the Court's morally and ethically corrupt conservative majority that I thought Justice Stevens' passionate dissent deserved additional airing. For its brazen disregard of legal precedents to achieve a desired outcome, this decision is only matched for its depraved indifference to morality by one other infamous case: "GEORGE W. BUSH, et al., PETITIONERS v.ALBERT GORE, Jr., et al." -- the case in which George W. Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore with the help of the eagerly compliant and easily corrupted conservative Supremes.

You can read Justice Stevens' entire dissent here:
Opinion of STEVENS, J. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, No. 08–205, CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

(Click "more..." [below] to read a bit of Justice Stevens' dissent...)

JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG,
JUSTICE BREYER, and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, concurring
in part and dissenting in part.
The real issue in this case concerns how, not if, the
appellant may finance its electioneering. Citizens United
is a wealthy nonprofit corporation that runs a political
action committee (PAC) with millions of dollars in assets.
Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002
(BCRA), it could have used those assets to televise and
promote Hillary: The Movie wherever and whenever it
wanted to. It also could have spent unrestricted sums to
broadcast Hillary at any time other than the 30 days
before the last primary election. Neither Citizens United’s
nor any other corporation’s speech has been “banned,”
ante, at 1. All that the parties dispute is whether Citizens
United had a right to use the funds in its general treasury
to pay for broadcasts during the 30-day period. The notion
that the First Amendment dictates an affirmative answer
to that question is, in my judgment, profoundly misguided.
Even more misguided is the notion that the Court must
rewrite the law relating to campaign expenditures by forprofit
corporations and unions to decide this case.
The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its
iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that
the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based
on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corporation.
While that glittering generality has rhetorical
appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. Nor does it
tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering
that some of its shareholders oppose. It does not even
resolve the specific question whether Citizens United may
be required to finance some of its messages with the
money in its PAC. The conceit that corporations must be
treated identically to natural persons in the political
sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify
the Court’s disposition of this case.
In the context of election to public office, the distinction
between corporate and human speakers is significant.
Although they make enormous contributions to our society,
corporations are not actually members of it. They
cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed
and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may
conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of
eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure,
and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate
concerns about their role in the electoral process.
Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if
not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to
guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate
spending in local and national races.
The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering
marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has
placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations
ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907,
ch. 420, 34 Stat. 864. We have unanimously concluded
that this “reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers
posed by those entities to the electoral process,” FEC v.
National Right to Work Comm., 459 U. S. 197, 209 (1982)
(NRWC), and have accepted the “legislative judgment that
the special characteristics of the corporate structure require
particularly careful regulation,” id., at 209–210. The
Court today rejects a century of history when it treats the
distinction between corporate and individual campaign
spending as an invidious novelty born of Austin v. Michigan
Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652 (1990). Relying
largely on individual dissenting opinions, the majority
blazes through our precedents, overruling or disavowing a
body of case law including FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life,
Inc., 551 U. S. 449 (2007) (WRTL), McConnell v. FEC, 540
U. S. 93 (2003), FEC v. Beaumont, 539 U. S. 146 (2003),
FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238
(1986) (MCFL), NRWC, 459 U. S. 197, and California
Medical Assn. v. FEC, 453 U. S. 182 (1981).
In his landmark concurrence in Ashwander v. TVA, 297
U. S. 288, 346 (1936), Justice Brandeis stressed the importance
of adhering to rules the Court has “developed . . . for
its own governance” when deciding constitutional questions.
Because departures from those rules always enhance
the risk of error, I shall review the background of
this case in some detail before explaining why the Court’s
analysis rests on a faulty understanding of Austin and
McConnell and of our campaign finance jurisprudence
more generally .1 I regret the length of what follows, but
the importance and novelty of the Court’s opinion require
a full response. Although I concur in the Court’s decision
to sustain BCRA’s disclosure provisions and join Part IV
of its opinion, I emphatically dissent from its principal
holding.

Now, you should read the whole thing, if for no other reason than to reaffirm your conviction that someone out there still gives a shit about trivial things like the integrity of the Constitution, and the institutions it establishes, not to mention simple morality and ethics, of which the Supreme Court's conservative majority are acutely devoid.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Ruination of the Everglades...

 ... and other bright Republican Business Opportunities

 This story appeared in the New York Times, last week:
Deal to Save Everglades May Help Sugar Firm


And when I found out what a great job Governor Crist is doing on behalf of United States Sugar, I had to sit right down and write the good governor a letter:
Dear Governor Crist,

I want to thank you for your proud defense of the Everglades. Your courage is exemplary and typical of your party's indefatigable leadership. As steadfast, Republican, free-market acolytes so often do, you funnel public money into private hands with aplomb -- the filling of the United States Sugar, and Gunster Law coffers is no exception. I'm sure you are proud of this notable accomplishment, and I'm sure your family is, too. On down through the generations, your descendants can look back, and fondly reflect upon your selfless sacrifice, which turned that once useless, unprofitable, wasteland of drinking-water and wildlife into vast tracts of pollution riddled, over-sized monuments of McMansion indulgence.

Keep up the good work, Governor. We're all going places with you out in front.
 And then I couldn't resist posting a comment on the article, too:
Classic Republican behavior when public money is put at their disposal: socialized medicine for self-inflicted corporate injury. There are absolutely no limits to the volumes of taxpayer money Republicans are willing to funnel into the grossly negligent and blissfully incompetent hands of Republican businessmen who find themselves utterly incapable of running any manner of business, small or large, without public, socialized financial subsidy to rescue them from their own brilliant investment decisions. The solitude of jail is too good for Bush, Crist, Mieux, Buker, et al, but public humiliation -- if they are capable of feeling shame -- might be a good start. Thanks for an informative, but depressing story, Messrs. Van Natta & Cave.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

A Consumer Bill Gives Exemption on Payday Loans

 So, there's this Senator from Tennessee named Corker, whose buddy, W. Allan Jones, starts up a "payday" loan company in 1993, cleverly named "Checks Into Cash," that cleverly robs thousands who live paycheck-to-paycheck of their inadequate paychecks. The good senator stands up to the injustice of regulation and protects his buddy's business from unfair, socialist legislation that would limit a lender's options for robbing these hard-working wage earners of their hard-earned wages (pity W. Allan Jones and his "Payday" colleagues -- cue the violins).

Read an article that outlines Senator Corker's efforts, and eagerness to accept campaign contributions from this hard hit benevolent industry:  A Consumer Bill Gives Exemption on Payday Loans

Of course, here's my irascible comment:

So, if you can't pay back the loan whose 400% interest just consumed your last three paychecks, and a guy with a crowbar shows up at your door and breaks your kneecaps, and you can't afford health insurance, so you die a slow, painful death of gangrene, and your wife and kids end up on the street because they can't make the rent, and a pimp comes along and drags your daughter off to prostitute her, and your son knocks over a liquor store to come up with rent money to put a roof over your now alcoholic wife's head, but instead goes to jail, so now your wife ends up in the mental ward of a city hospital, and your daughter turns up dead of a heroine overdose...it's all good, right? It's just free-market capitalism, in which government has no business intervening, and these four people are just low-rent-losers who deserve their Dickensian fate, and this could never happen to the family of a clever guy like Senator Corker, right?
 Bravo, Senators.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Mayor of Taiji, Japan: In Order to Respect Culture, One Must Condone Brutal Slaughter

        Fishermen in Taiji hunt both dolphins and small whales (source: BBC, AP)

In a BBC article entitled, "Oscar win for film of dolphin hunt in Japan's Taiji" the mayor spoke out in defense of his town's traditional brutality.

In response to "The Cove" winning Best-Documentary at the 2010 Academy Awards, the mayor of Taiji, Japan, home of the aforementioned cove and its morally deficient fishermen (sorry, I usually give fishers and farmers the benefit of the doubt -- not this time), suggested "that the hunt was legal in Japan and called for respect for the traditions of different cultures."

Yeah, right. And genocide in Rawanda should be met with respect for that culture's traditional hacking off of the limbs of tribal enemies, be they women, children, innocent men, what have you.

Sometimes you just have to recognize that your traditions are morally indefensible, change them, and move on.

Cheers for "The Cove."

Republican Business -- Ever Corrupt

Republican wizards of finance have found yet another means to defraud taxpayers and enrich themselves, whilst turning our natural landscape into an uninhabitable, open-sewer. Once again our nation's chief proponents of the free market, Republican politicians and business executives, extend their snouts into the public trough, as they run yet another business into the ground and bury it with debt. This time it's United States Sugar, in Florida. Here's the story:  Deal to Save Everglades May Help Sugar Firm.

And here's my comment:

Classic Republican behavior when public money is put at their disposal: socialized medicine for self-inflicted corporate injury. There are absolutely no limits to the volumes of taxpayer money Republicans are willing to funnel into the grossly negligent and blissfully incompetent hands of Republican businessmen who find themselves utterly incapable of running any manner of business, small or large, without public, socialized financial subsidy to rescue them from their own brilliant investment decisions. The solitude of jail is too good for Bush, Crist, Mieux, Buker, et al, but public humiliation -- if they are capable of feeling shame -- might be a good start.

Thanks for an informative, but depressing story, Messrs. Van Natta & Cave.