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Save Our Democracy

Bob Fertik — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:33:47 +0000

5966 of 10000 people have signed this petition.

Background

In January, five radical Republicans on the Supreme Court overturned 100 years of American law.

They gave huge corporations a Constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of money to elect candidates at all levels, from Mayor to President.

As President Obama declared in his State of the Union address, this ruling "will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people."

In 2009, the Chamber of Commerce spent $145 million to defeat healthcare and global warming laws - twice as much as the Democratic Party. In November, they could spend 10 or 100 times as much simply to defeat all Democrats.

This radical ruling could destroy American Democracy if we do not act in time for this November's elections. Please join our nationwide movement to keep Corporations out of politics.

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We Need Government Funded Media

davidswanson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:09:19 +0000

By David Swanson

What it would have cost us to publicly fund independent media that would have prevented the invasion of Iraq wouldn't amount, in a year, to what we spend on a month of occupying that country.

Diverting the cost of a month of war to a year of giving substance to our "freedom of the press" would mean that the last time someone asked you about the Teabaggers' genius in being smart enough to talk dumb enough to persuade everyone to be racists would, in fact, be the LAST time anyone would ask you how a creation of the corporate media manages to get coverage from the corporate media.

But what do I mean by government-funded independent media? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Aren’t we better off with a completely worthless and counterproductive corporate media system than with government-controlled media? Maybe, but I said publicly FUNDED, not government CONTROLLED. And the choice is between that sort of communications system or nothing. Corporate news rooms, journalism, and investigative reporting are dying out as surely as if a plague were spreading among reporters; and they were already dying out before the internet came onto the scene. We need to take a lesson from current European or early American history and begin treating the press as the public good that Jefferson and Madison considered it, or give up on the accountability imposed on government officials in the United States just a few decades ago.

"The Death and Life of American Journalism" by Robert McChesney and John Nichols will persuade anyone with basic reading skills of the above assertions. I highly recommend reading this book, and skipping only the first page of the introduction. The authors begin by quoting a mass-murderer who libels the blogosphere and opposes "opinion" to "serious" news. But they don't mean it any more than they mean to focus on early nineteenth century US history at the expense of examining more deeply the successes of European governments in the current era. That's just packaging for xenophobes.

The book is a tour de force, providing an extremely persuasive analysis of where our communications system is headed if left alone, and a terrific survey of ways in which we can rescue it from disaster. In short, the book shows us that corporate media is dying as a form of substantive political reporting. We need a different approach. But I'm not sure we don’t also need to work within the existing and dying system, as we could have done decades ago but never have, as a step toward a long-term solution.

That is to say, in the wake of "Citizens United" we cannot possibly compete with corporate ad buys and shouldn’t try. Civic groups and labor unions and concerned Americans should not give funding to any organization or political candidate who will pass a penny along to the corporate media. Instead we should finally create our own media outlets with all of the money we waste on each election cycle.

We don't have to do so in the corporate manner. McChesney and Nichols point to other approaches, such as the L3C Low-Profit Limited Liability Company. A low profit would be more of a profit than Air America managed, and its funding and purpose would not subject it to the same risks. While we need long-term public investment in media, we need short-term private investment in the same to achieve the public understanding necessary to get us there.

Then we need the emergency and long-term steps McChesney and Nichols prescribe, including a return to better subsidized postal rates for print media, an expansion of AmeriCorps to include journalist training, an investment in high school media, and serious government funding of news reporters:

"If by 2020 we roughly doubled the number of full-time working journalists in the United States," McChesney and Nichols write, "to, say, 160,000, it would require a U.S. government subsidy of $7.2 billion in 2009 dollars." That amount of money is what the Pentagon refers to as "a rounding error."

The fact is that the fourth estate is a more critical public good than the military, police, fire, electricity, roads, water, wall street bailouts, or many other things we treat as public goods, or -- for that matter -- healthcare, retirement income, education, or many other things that some of us try to force our government to treat as public goods. And yet we do not even ask that freedom of the press be supported in any way by our elected representatives. Despite our own nation's history and many other nations' current experience of publicly funding journalism without allowing politicians to censor and direct it, we are unable to even imagine such a thing, preferring to stick with the ever worsening pretense of corporate journalism in the name of a perverted freedom of the press that has been reduced to freedom of speech for corporate conglomerates.

We need to read "The Death and Life of American Journalism" and to think hard about the fate of media outlets that are not discussing this book despite it's convincing prediction of their early demise. If these institutions would rather perish than change, how much concern can they have for the future of you or me or our children's children?

Government killing Americans abroad, okay?

davidswanson — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:00:27 +0000

12 Leaders Cosponsor Amendment to Block Corporate Election Buying

davidswanson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:28:24 +0000

Congresswoman Donna Edwards' bill proposing a Constitutional Amendment to deny corporations the free speech rights of persons in the form of unlimited election ~~bribery~~ spending has now been cosponsored by: John Conyers, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jim McGovern, Keith Ellison, Chellie Pingree, Barbara Lee, Andre Carson, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Betty Sutton, Raul Grijalva and Ed Markey.

With the exception of Carson, these congress members are also all cosponsors of the Fair Elections Act, which seeks to address the fairness of our elections by providing public financing for campaigns.

Approaches to fixing the corporate ownership of our elected officials are proliferating, and many organizations and individuals will be backing more than one of them. Here are some of the courses of action already underway:

Constitutional Amendments

Legislation

House Amendments and Legislation

Senate Amendments and Legislation

State Legislation

State and Local and Organizational Resolutions in Support of a Constitutional Amendment

Congresswoman Edwards understands the need to build a popular movement better than any congress member I've seen before and is working to help build a campaign at http://freespeechforpeople.org Please go there and sign on, and then click on "Get Involved" to take further action.

We are eventually going to need to provide free media to campaigns, publicly fund campaigns, prevent the private funding of campaigns, require verifiable vote counting, open up ballot access to candidates, undo the gerrymandering, deny corporations rights that should belong only to real people, and much more. And to do some of the things we need to do we will have to amend the Constitution.

This means either winning over two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of states or winning over two-thirds of states to have a convention and three-quarters of states to ratify amendments. Whichever route we take is going to require state-level organizing and national coordination. We are going to have to win clean election reforms at the state level to produce better legislatures before we can do what needs to be done.

And as we do this, I think we will lose the horror many of us have of holding a Constitutional Convention. Even if such a convention does pass undesirable amendments such as a ban on marriage for some Americans, we can mobilize in 13 states to refuse ratification to that amendment.

If, however, we do not amend the basic structure of our Constitution, we are not going to have anything human or decent to look forward to in this country. No public financing law will allow us to outspend the corporations that have been unshackled by the US Supreme Court.

Let's get to work. Twelve sponsors on an amendment in the House gets things started. Let's have at least 24 by next week.

Brave New Films Takes on Imperial Presidency

davidswanson — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:05:07 +0000

Reps Edwards and Conyers Introduce Constitutional Amendment to Overrule SCOTUS on Corporate $

davidswanson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:15:32 +0000

Congresswoman Donna Edwards has just introduced a Constitutional amendment, together with Congressman John Conyers.

More below!

PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS APPLAUD REP. DONNA EDWARDS FOR FILING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BILL TO OVERTURN US SUPREME COURT RULING ON CORPORATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS

HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIR JOHN CONYERS, JR JOINS FILING

"Free Speech Rights Are For People, Not Corporations"

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland introduced today a constitutional amendment bill to overturn the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing unlimited corporate money in elections. Congressman John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is a co-sponsor of the amendment bill.

A coalition of public interest organizations and independent business advocates praised the Congresswoman’s action. The groups, Voter Action, Public Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance, say the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC poses a serious and direct threat to democracy. Immediately following the Court's ruling on January 21, 2010, the groups launched a constitutional amendment campaign at www.freespeechforpeople.org to correct the judiciary's creation of corporate rights under the First Amendment over the past three decades.

"Free speech rights are for people, not corporations," says John Bonifaz, Voter Action's legal director and the director of http://www.freespeechforpeople.org. "Our history has included prior amendments to the US Constitution which were enacted to correct egregiously wrong decisions of the US Supreme Court directly impacting the democratic process. The Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC demands a similar constitutional amendment response. We applaud Congresswoman Edwards and Congressman Conyers for taking this critical step toward restoring the First Amendment to its original purpose."

"The Citizens United decision is wrong as a matter of law, history, and our republican principles of government," says Jeffrey Clements, general counsel to http://www.freespeechforpeople.org. "The decision is devastating to our democracy, which is already dominated to a dangerous degree by corporate interest money. Congresswoman Edwards and Congressman Conyers are showing the leadership we need in Congress at this hour."

"The First Amendment was never intended to protect the likes of ExxonMobil, Pfizer or Goldman Sachs, nor should it," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "Public Citizen thanks Representative Donna Edwards for her courage and leadership in responding to the Supreme Court majority's aggression with a proposal for a constitutional amendment to restore the First Amendment to its rightful purpose: guaranteeing the speech rights of real, live persons."

"An amendment allowing regulation of corporate spending in elections is not only necessary to correct the twisted logic of the Citizens United ruling," says Charlie Cray, director of the Center for Corporate Policy, "but will also go a long way towards rousing us as citizens to assert our authority over the now presumptively untouchable corporations."

"The American Independent Business Alliance is pleased to see Representatives Edwards and Conyers respond to public outrage over the Supreme Court's rewrite of our Constitution," says Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the American Independent Business Alliance. "America's independent businesses are among those which recognize that we need to limit corporations to their appropriate role--doing business. Allowing giant corporations even more power over our elections and government would be as bad for business as it is for democracy."

In addition to the filing of Congresswoman Edwards’ amendment bill, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts joined the call today for a constitutional amendment. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Senator Kerry said: "[W]e need a constitutional amendment to make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals."

For more information on the constitutional amendment campaign, including a video interview of Congresswoman Edwards, see http://www.freespeechforpeople.org

Do Those Who Oppose Torture Oppose War?

davidswanson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:45:05 +0000

An Appeal on "Closing Gitmo"

Given that human rights organizations and activist groups want rights restored, not abuses moved from one location to another,

Given that said organizations are independent of and not legally bound in subservience to the Democratic Party,

Given that the funding to close Gitmo and move that particular illegal death camp to Illinois will be included in the "emergency war supplemental",

Given that this will likely lead all the Republicans in the House to vote No on $33 billion for wars, wars that involve murder and torture and lawless imprisonment, all on a larger scale than what happens at Gitmo,

Given that we then need only 40 Democrats to vote No to block the war funding,

Given that with the resources of human rights groups for once turned against the supreme international crime of aggressive war we could win over 40 Democrats,

Given that we had 32 last June and 34 in December and the public is turning further against the wars,

Given that many have publicly committed to voting No already at http://defundwar.org ,

Given that the public is increasingly understanding the need to choose between wars and jobs,

Given that a clean break with imperialism would open many new doors in our struggles for civil rights and the rule of law,

It is at least worth asking:

WILL ORGANIZATIONS THAT OPPOSE TORTURE OPPOSE OR SUPPORT THE $33 BILLION WAR BILL?

In Solidarity,

David Swanson

PS: You can't be neutral on a moving train.

Blocking War Funding Just Got Easier

davidswanson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:03:36 +0000

By David Swanson

Last June we were handed an opportunity to block the funding of our illegal, murderous, counterproductive, catastrophic, and hated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president insisted on an off-the-books "emergency supplemental" bill, and the Senate added an IMF bailout to the bill, leading all the Republicans in the House to commit what for years they'd called treason: they all voted No on war money.

So, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No, and we could have stopped the thing, at least temporarily. We had a week-long knock-down drag-out fight, with the White House telling freshmen Democrats they would be "dead to us" if they didn't vote Yes. And we still persuaded 32 Democrats to vote No.

Then we continued building opposition to the wars, and awareness of the need to choose between wars and jobs. But we had to hope that we would again be handed a "supplemental" vote and that again some crazy scheme would be found to get all the Republicans to vote No. If these wishes could be granted, then we would only have to find 40 Democrats to stand with the majority of Americans, soldiers, Iraqis, and Afghans. Otherwise, we'd need 218 congress members.

Our wishes have come true. President Obama has insisted on another "supplemental" this spring for $33 billion. And funding to close Guantanamo and move "the Terrorists" to "the Homeland" has been added into the bill.

Of course, the Democrats think this will force the Republicans to vote for closing Gitmo. Democratic loyalists and president worshippers are celebrating this genius stroke, oblivious to the fact that the funding of wars will destroy our nation along with those the wars are waged against, nevermind exactly where we imprison people. In reality, this maneuver will force the Republicans to vote against the war funding. And that will give us a chance.

We only need 40 No votes from Democrats in the House if the Republicans are voting No, and we can get them. Here's the whip list: http://defundwar.org Have at it!

Rep Delahunt Backs War to Please Obama

davidswanson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:22:18 +0000

By David Swanson

Add Congressman Bill Delahunt to the list of misrepresentatives who claim to oppose wars when a Republican is president but agree to support them when a Democrat moves into the White House.

When Bush was president, Delahunt sometimes voted for war funding bills and sometimes voted against them. The inclusion in the bills of lipstick measures, such as relief for hurricane victims, etc., was not a decisive factor. Delahunt appears to have voted No when the Democratic leadership was most accepting of that action. But, with all the Republicans voting Yes, there was never a chance of a No vote actually helping to block funding.

Since Obama became president, Delahunt has voted yes at every opportunity to support the funding of wars that the majority of his constituents have opposed for years. Several weeks back, I had the opportunity to speak with some of Delahunt's more engaged constituents as part of a book tour, including members of Cape Codders for Peace and Justice. They had taken to calling their congressman "Dela-Won't" and had largely given up on him. I encouraged them to sit-in at his office and demand opposition to war funding. I was encouraged when I heard that they had done so and that he had agreed to meet with them.

Apparently, Delahunt met with a coalition of groups and refused to commit to voting No on war money. As is typical of congress members who take their orders from the president or a party leader, Delahunt didn't say he would vote Yes, he just refused to commit to voting No. Spineless servants of a party boss want to vote against unpopular bills if the bills are guaranteed to pass and they can be sure that no one will punish them for their action, but they want to keep open the option of voting yes if their vote becomes necessary for passing the bill. This is why the behavior of the people we think of as the best congress members largely amounts to voting No on bills that have been guaranteed passage and voting Yes on bills that have been guaranteed to fail.

About 30 people met with Congressman Delahunt, including military veterans, Cape Codders for Peace and Justice, members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Greens, Socialists, anarchists, and representatives of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). Everyone was united in pressing the single request that Delahunt vote against the next $33 billion for wars.

Bruce Taub, the state coordinator for PDA-Massachusetts, represented his organization's 4,000 members who are united in opposing more war funding. He reported that Delahunt refused to commit to voting Yes or No. Taub said that Delahunt offered two reasons for his position (or lack thereof). One was the fascistic-sounding nonsense that Delahunt called his "concern for the safety of the Homeland." Delahunt cannot be unaware that the wars are making us all less safe, just as he cannot have been unaware of that when he voted against funding them in the past.

The second reason was, in Delahunt's words: "President Obama is my leader. I respect him and trust him. I think he is earnest, someone who wants to genuinely do the best he can for the country, someone who considers all the options and is a thoughtful intelligent man. And if he thinks a supplemental is needed, I give that great deference."

And if he told you to jump off a bridge?

He may be telling you to risk your political career. He himself can afford to sacrifice dozens of servile Democrats and get himself reelected two years later, just as Clinton did. You want to run for reelection on nationalizing Massachusetts's disastrous healthcare plan AND using the money people need for jobs to fight hugely unpopular wars? Are you sure that's what you want to do, Bill? Congressmen Kucinich and Grayson don't need Rahm's support because they have gone public with a commitment to decency and peace. You want to obey a president who would throw you under a bus without a second's thought? You want to do that because you think he's earnest and have bowed down before him as your leader? You expect to have no regrets for this on your death bed?

We claim to have separated church and state, but we obviously have not separated stupid blind faith and obedience from the rhetoric of our statesmen. Or stateswomen. Last June Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who had voted against war funding while Bush was president, voted Yes with the explanation "I want to support my president." Congressman Donald Payne, who voted No on war funding when Bush was president and last June as well, told me last weekend that he would not commit to a No vote on the $33 billion, and this purely because Obama is president.

Payne gave no credence to talk of protecting the "Homeland" by killing Afghans and Iraqis. Payne made a lengthy speech about his passionate opposition to the wars and his desire to move our resources to human needs. Then he told me that he would like to vote No on the funding but could not commit to it because Obama is president. I blogged about this on DailyKos, where criticizing Obama is considered at least a misdemeanor. One of the comments posted in reply read:

"The 'only difference' is a different person is President? That's all the difference in the world, when one President is the apex of neoconservativism and the only President ever to govern with that philosophy, and the other is the only President to EVER run against neoconservatism [sic]. Bush wanted us in those countries, killing and destroying, as long as it made big corporations as rich as possible. He believed foreign occupation was limitlessly good. Obama believes foreign occupation is inherantly [sic] destructive to everyone involved, he watched the effects of it growing up in Indonesia and resented it everyday, not to mention its effect on his entire family history through Kenyan occupation; it's part of the understanding of and rejection of tribalism that has guided his entire life. From being the only Democratic candidate of the main three in 2008 to have had [sic] written a bill saying 'no permanent bases in Iraq', to his refusal to fear-monger on Iran, to his perfect handling of the protests there this year, to his pledge in the Cairo speech not to have permanent bases in Iraq OR Afghanistan (unprovoked by any progressive pressure and completely on his own) [sic], to his beating the 6/30/09 deadline to withdraw out of all Iraqi town and cities [sic], to his rush to get troops deployed quickly as logistically politically possible [sic] in order to begin withdrawing out of Afghanistan by July 2011, to his books that outline his thought process as inherently anti-occupation from childhood, assuming Obama will act like Bush with the same variables is an incredibly ignorant statement. This is because the problem with not giving Obama any more credit than Bush is that you're giving Bush the same amount of credit as Obama despite having done NONE of the things in the last paragraph, but rather for being the penultimate [sic] neocon and invading countries at every opportunity - and that, as someone who opposes wars vehemently, turns my stomach. I respectfully submit that this is what the Congressman gets that you do not."

So, there you see? Obama's obliging Congress has escalated the wars. There are more troops and mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan than ever during the Bush years, a larger military budget than ever, bases in more nations than ever, a dramatically increased use of drones, a complete failure to withdraw from Iraq the one to two brigades a month for the 16 months of Obama's presidency as promised, horrific war crimes routinely reported, and we are supposed to view the wars as decreased and improved because of a story about the president's childhood. This is what we've come to. Congress members don't believe this hooey. They just want the Party to fund their campaigns, throw them pork, and make them chairmen. But Party loyalists around the country actually think this way. That is fundamentally what is wrong with our country and what could end up killing us all, even though these president worshippers are still in a minority on the question of war.

Delahunt knows his constituents are paying a heavy economic price for these wars and that a majority does not want them funded. Anyone in search of such information need look no further than http://defundwar.org And, to his credit, Delahunt has agreed to hold a public meeting on the topic of war funding. Let us hope the outcome is not yet another elected representative bragging about his willingness to defy the will of the public.

I think we can count on Delahunt's constituents not to ease off on the pressure until he does, not just says, the right thing.