Friday 27 January 2012

Bill Moyers | Fighting Back Against Corporate Personhood
Bill Moyers, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.: "Citizens United is but the latest battle in the class war waged for thirty years from the top down by the corporate and political right. Corporations were endowed with the rights of 'personhood' but exempted from the responsibilities of citizenship. That's the doctrine picked up and dusted off by the John Roberts Court in its ruling on Citizens United."
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Fracking Company: EPA Decision to Test Contaminated Wells in Dimock "Undercuts" Obama's Commitment to Natural Gas
Mike Ludwig, Truthout: "The Environmental Protection Agency announced last week its plans to sample and test water from 60 homes near Dimock, Pennsylvania, to determine if residents are 'being exposed to hazardous substances.' Cabot Oil and Gas, a company that was fined $120,000 in 2009 for fracking mishaps and contaminating water in the area, sent a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson on Wednesday complaining that the water testing 'undercut the president's commitment to this important resource.'"
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Record Numbers of Incarcerated Mothers Bad News for Women, Children, Communities
Gina McGalliard, Truthout: "'A lot of women who end up in prison were already single parents at the time of their incarceration, [so] they might not have strong family ties,' says Law. 'A lot of women who are in prison have histories of abuse, either childhood and/or adult abuse, which means they might not have the same connections and trust in their families that men who end up in prison do. So their children are actually five times more likely to end up in foster care than [those of] men in prison.'"
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Occupy Oakland: An Illustrated History
Susie Cagle, Truthout: "From the beginning, the Oakland Commune set Oakland's occupation apart in its acceptance of the local homeless population. The camp was consistently referred to as not only a political meeting ground and organizing space, but also a replacement for the city's failures in its everyday existence. Some people were living there to make a point, but others were living there because they needed to, and all were welcomed - until the camp was cleared in the early morning of October 25."
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ALEC Behind Push to Require Climate Denial Instruction in Schools
Steve Horn, DeSmogBlog: "Maneuvering to dupe schoolchildren is about as cynical as it gets. The corporations behind the writing and dissemination of this ALEC model bill, who are among the largest polluters in the world, would benefit handsomely from a legislative mandate to sow the seeds of confusion on climate science among schoolchildren."
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Kaplan College Closes North Carolina Dental Program After Fraud Exposed
Danny Weil, Truthout: "Kaplan recruiters had signed them up for an 18-month dental assistant program, promising the program was about to be nationally accredited - but the promise was never realized. The program was unaccredited then and still is now. Kaplan, as is their business plan, targeted low-income and minority students, most of whom must borrow from the federal government to pay their tuition."
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Inventories Give Boost to Fourth Quarter Gross Domestic Product
Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research: "While the 2.8 percent growth is the strongest figure since the second quarter of 2010, it is not an especially rapid pace given the severity of the downturn. With GDP approximately 6 percentage points below its potential, assuming CBO's potential growth rate of 2.5 percent, it would take close to 20 years to return to potential GDP at this pace."
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Why Do Conservatives Vote Against Their Own Interests?
Robert Weiner and Jaime Ravenet, Michigan Chronicle: "Conservatives campaign on promises of restoring the American Dream, but they ignore the facts concerning whom their policies actually benefit. In the end, their policies diminish overall economic mobility. When conservatives talk about 'focusing on the family,' what they really mean is they want you to worry about your family to deflect the economic issues that they are not solving and in fact are making worse."
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The Power to Break Up the Big Banks
Micah Hauptman, Public Citizen: "If regulators do their jobs properly, the resulting institutions should be simpler, smaller, and safer. Those firms would be less likely to fail - and less dangerous in the event that they do. Take Bank of America, for example. In its current form, it is a 'grave threat' by any reasonable definition of that phrase. On Wednesday, Public Citizen filed a petition with financial regulators, calling on them to break up the bank and reform it."
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Occupying Libido: Negotiating a Landscape of Hypocrisy and Hungry Ghosts
Phil Rockstroh, Pacific Free Press: "Still, both major U.S. political parties remain unmoved by the opinions of their constituents and unresponsive to their needs. To vote for either a Democratic or Republican candidate (i.e., the well vetted stooges of the 1%) is to cast a vote in favor of the only political party allowed in the rigged process - The Big Money, Perpetual War Party."
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Firm Implicated in Keystone XL Conflict of Interest Does "Community Relations" for Big Oil in the Amazon
David Hill, Truthout: "The Keystone XL pipeline isn't the only controversial oil project that consultancy Cardno ENTRIX, caught up in a conflict-of-interest scandal over the pipeline's potential environmental impact, has been involved with."
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NATO and CIA Covertly Arming Syrian Rebels in Order to Weaken Iran
Daan de Wit, DeepJournal: "'French and British special forces trainers are on the ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while the CIA and U.S. Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers,' writes the well-informed former CIA officer Phil Giraldi."
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The Libertarian and the Lobbyists
MSimon Johnson, Project Syndicate: "The revolving door between Congress and lobbying firms appears to have been central to how the financial sector became deregulated, which effectively allowed excessive risk-taking in the run-up to the crisis. Big financial firms can more readily buy the necessary political protection (in the form of deregulation), enabling them to become even bigger and more dangerous. This incentive structure has only become more extreme since the financial crisis of 2008."
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When New Obama Chief of Staff Was NYU Executive, School Ceased Recognizing Union
Josh Eidelson, In These Times: "In The University Against Itself, GSOC activist Susan Valentine wrote that NYU campaigned against GSOC with 'classic techniques such as interference from supervisors (faculty, in this case) and the threat - and fulfillment - of firings.' Several aspects of the campaign, Valentine charged, would have been illegal had workers been covered under the Labor Relations Act."
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NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Urged to Resign After Police Conceal Role in Anti-Muslim Documentary
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now!: "Representatives from the New York City Muslim community, together with local ethnic and interfaith groups, gathered at City Hall Thursday calling for the resignation of New York City Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly and police spokesperson Paul Browne after it was revealed an anti-Muslim film, 'The Third Jihad,' was screened to nearly 1,500 officers during training."
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*BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES*

Can you imagine the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln - who beat Stephen Douglas and two third-party candidates - being determined by corporate money spent on television, radio and newspaper ads?

The issue of slavery - and possible civil war - were dramatically presented to the nation in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. These occurred in 1858, and - in the absence of television, the radio and the Internet - defined the essential issue of the 1860 presidential race: slavery.

Lincoln had, by the time of the presidential race, already created a lofty rhetorical record that helped propel him to the White House. This included his famous "House Divided" speech in which he declared, "a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free." Lincoln later denounced "groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong."

With the rise of television a century later, political debates were brought into every home. As the courts allowed more and more money from different sources to be spent on ads, the debates began to take place within the context of the "messaging" (ads) - most of it negative - that had been bought by political contributions.

Since the Citizens United decision, the airwaves have been flooded with basically unrestricted third-party ads, many financed by unidentified corporate contributors. The party debates have devolved into "gotcha" moments rather than a serious exchange of opinions on problems facing the US.

Lincoln would not have survived such a circus of corporate influence over elections. He would have been derided by the media as too gawky and earnest to be a competitive candidate for the White House. Moreover, he would not have escaped the withering assaults on his character spread across state and national airwaves.

Our greatness as a nation and the caliber of our leadership are diminished when literally hundreds of millions of dollars are spent "defining" office seekers on TV. Some studies have shown that most television watchers can't even distinguish between campaign ads and what is on the news. It all blends together to create a candidate's image. We end up voting on political consultant and ad agency caricatures of candidates.

When money is legally determined to be equal to speech, without financial limitations, and corporations are determined to be legally people, then the ability of people to control the destiny of a "democracy" is dramatically diminished.

A new book (which you can get from Truthout), "Corporations are not People," lays out the case for restoring our nation's future to the citizens of the nation, uninfluenced by big money and corporate financial interests in elections.

We deserve leadership the likes of which Abraham Lincoln brought to the US. Unfettered corporate and big money campaign influence shouldn't be allowed to reduce our choices to individuals who are for sale to the highest bidders.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

Avoiding a Catastrophic War With Iran
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

One Hundred Brooklyn Community Members and Occupiers Peacefully Disrupt Foreclosure Auction
Read the Article at Occupy Wall Street

The Self-Destruction of Newt Gingrich
Read the Article at Salon

Romney's Tax Return Nightmare Worsens After Errors Found in Financial Disclosure Statements
Read the Article at Talking Points Memo

Tired and Broke, Santorum Heads Home to Do Taxes
Read the Article at The Associated Press

Google and the End of Privacy
Read the Article at Mother Jones

Thanks to Occupy Arrests, US Falls 27 Places in Worldwide Press Freedom Rankings
Read the Article at The Washington Post

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