 Friday 20 January 2012 The Future of the Keystone XL PipelineMike Ludwig and Alissa Bohling, Truthout: "Unless TransCanada drops the project or lawmakers take the review out of the State Department's hands, the Obama administration could take another stab at reviewing the pipeline permit. If the current drama is any indicator, the Keystone XL pipeline will continue to be a political headache for the Obama administration." Read the Article Wisconsin Recall Elections a Sure Thing, but New ID Law May Block Anti-Walker Vote Roger Bybee, In These Times: "As in other states, the Wisconsin Republicans felt no obligation to present proof that voter-impersonation fraud - the supposed target of the legislation - actually takes place in more than a tiny handful of cases. But the extreme rarity of this form of potential fraud has seldom been stressed in corporate media accounts. Most stories on the issue simply present statements and counter-statements by the two major political parties ..." Read the Article Afghanistan's Soldiers Step Up Killings of Allied Forces Matthew Rosenberg, The New York Times News Service: "The 70-page classified coalition report, titled 'A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility,' goes far beyond anecdotes. It was conducted by a behavioral scientist who surveyed 613 Afghan soldiers and police officers, 215 American soldiers and 30 Afghan interpreters who worked for the Americans." Read the Article The Old South Lives in Today's DC: Exploitation Then and Now J.A. Myerson, Truthout: "Slavery and colonization are what happen when no one makes laws limiting the courses of action available to those who would amass control of resources by the exploitation of others. By and large, today's American plutocrats use different, kinder tactics to accomplish that goal. They lobby Congress for laws that facilitate their accumulation of wealth and for the repeal of laws that impede it." Read the Article Blood Feud: The Man Who Blew the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever Kathleen Sharp, Dutton Books: "Earlier that day, a nurse had walked up to Jim Lenox and without consent had injected him with an overdose of a drug that stimulated his red blood cells. At the time, that shot had angered Sharon. Now, in light of her husband's slow, torturous death, that injection loomed large in her mind. Had that drug killed her husband? Were others dying in the same way?" Read the Article Supreme Court Rejects Judge-Drawn Maps in Texas Redistricting Case Adam Liptak, The New York Times News Service: "One set of maps was drawn by the Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. Those maps seem to favor Republican candidates. The other set was drawn by a special three-judge federal court in San Antonio, and it increases the voting power of Hispanic voters and seems to help Democratic candidates." Read the Article On the News With Thom Hartmann: Occupy the Courts, and More In today's On the News segment: Online piracy hub shut down (without needing SOPA or PIPA), new human rights filings against the Bush administration, US Army suicides are rising, Elizabeth Warren's money bomb, and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript Active-Duty Soldiers Take Their Own Lives at Record Rate Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times News Service: "The rise in Army suicides has long been attributed to the stress of repeated deployments during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Army officials say there are many other factors at work, including alcohol abuse and a lowering of recruiting standards several years ago that allowed a higher-risk population into the military." Read the Article Despite Everything, Choice Survives in Kansas Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout: "'You know, when we first started talking about reestablishing a clinic in Wichita back in 2010, people were still shell-shocked by Dr. Tiller's murder,' Burkhart admits. 'There was almost a deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the idea of once again offering abortions in this city. Then, once we started to talk about the idea, people came around and became eager to do it.'" Read the Article The Price of Apple James Kwak, The Baseline Scenario: "Most of us already realized, on an intellectual level, that the stuff we buy is made by people overseas who, in general, have much less than we do and work harder than we do, under tougher working conditions. It's harder to ignore, however, listening to Daisey talk about the long shifts (up to thirty-four hours, apparently), the crippling injuries due to repetitive stress or hazardous chemicals, the crammed dormitories, and the authoritarian rules." Read the Article Thanks to Citizens United, Multinational Mega Lobbyist Firm Salivates Over $4 Billion in Campaign Cash Lee Fang, AlterNet: "For the WPP Group, which owns firms involved in the influence game from top to bottom, the more corporate money in elections the better. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with its state affiliates like the Michigan and California Chamber of Commerce, will probably spend tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and running ads this year. We now have parties embracing SuperPACs and begging wealthy donors to cash. Obama's campaign has pledged to raise $1 billion." Read the Article Labor, Consumer Agency Fights Aren't Over: Now Republicans Try to Defund Them Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future: "Republicans were blocking National Labor Relations Board and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau nominees to keep these agencies from doing their jobs under the law, in exchange for a cut of the take. Obama made recess appointments to get them up and operating. Now Republicans are trying to defund the agencies." Read the Article One Million Recall Signatures Versus One Partisan Judge Ernest A. Canning, The Brad Blog: "With polls showing 58% of respondents in WI favor Recall, delay and endless litigation provide the immensely unpopular, Koch-supported governor with a means to cling to power beyond the time envisioned by existing statutes, and in violation of the rights of Badger State voters." Read the Article Bill Moyers Talks With Reagan Budget Director About "Crony Capitalism Bill Moyers, Moyers & Co.: "This weekend, David Stockman, former budget director for President Reagan speaks candidly with Bill Moyers about how money dominates politics, distorting free markets and endangering democracy. 'As a result,' Stockman says, 'we have neither capitalism nor democracy. We have crony capitalism.'" Watch the Video and Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles
As the anniversary of the infamous Citizens United decision nears (January 21), you can count on Jim Hightower to stick it to the Supreme Court (5-4 corporate majority): "If a corporation is a person, where's its navel?" Although Citizens United is generally considered the most recent apogee of the expanding legal concept of corporate personhood, it was - on a more focused level - a case about campaign financing. What the ruling did was nullify a section of the McCain-Feingold election financing reform law. In overturning a District of Columbia federal court ruling, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates of corporate, union and Super PAC expenditures in elections as "third parties." Indeed, Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent from the Citizens United ruling:
The Citizens United decision was really representative of just one part of the growing influence of corporations and big money on our government. However, the danger of corporate personhood as a legally enshrined precedent is hydra-headed. "I'll believe in corporate personhood when one of them is executed in Texas." That's a quip that caromed around the Internet a few weeks back. BuzzFlash at Truthout doesn't support capital punishment, but it would be nice to see a few corporate CEO's hauled into court and held accountable as persons for corporate misdeeds. The best place to start is with Wall Street. If advocates for democracy can get arrested and sentenced for protesting, it's time to put the persons running predatory big business on trial for laws that they have broken. That would begin to make the people behind corporate personhood no longer placed above the law. Meanwhile, if we are going to stop corporations and big money from continuing to buy our government, campaign finance reform remains of the highest priority. Mark Karlin Scott Olsen: Casualty of the Occupation Chicago Joins the Growing Number of Cities That Are Strangling Free Speech Conservatives Freak Out Over Romney's Kryptonite: Money Meet Foster Friess, Rick Santorum's Billionaire Sugar Daddy Republican Racism Is an Air Raid Siren, Not a Dog Whistle Canada High Court Refuses to Hear Torture Cases The Republican Nightmare Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines
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