Corporate Power

Chris Hedges began a recent column, in these days just prior to congressional elections by announcing:

"The lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, which looks set to make sweeping gains in the midterm elections, is the direct result of a collapse of liberalism. It is the product of bankrupt liberal institutions, including the press, the church, universities, labor unions, the arts and the Democratic Party. The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class is guilty."

Earlier this year, we put millions of barrels of oil, billions of cubic feet of gas, and 1.5 million gallons of chemical dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico. Of those dispersants, designed for use on the surface, 800,000 gallons were sprayed directly into the oil gusher on the dark ocean floor, potentially multiplying the damage while keeping it out of sight. Already people are dying.

Keith Murphy, President of Conceptz Communications wrote today:

The Urban Journal show airs at 8pm EST-5pm PST on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio on Ch 169 but the show can be heard right now around the world at The Urban Journal. Feel Free to post on your websites or to send out via Facebook and email.
 
Seg. 1 Mario Flores, Habitat for Humanity International
 
Seg. 2 Martha Love, Census Representative
 
Seg. 3 Bob Fertik, Democrats.com
 
Seg. 4 Derek Dingle, Editor in Chief,  Black Enterprise Magazine
 
 

By David Swanson

David Cole of Georgetown University and formerly of the Center for Constitutional Rights has been doing some good writing, not only on our failure to enforce laws against powerful people, but also on our out-of-control epidemic of incarceration which has struck those too unimportant to gain immunity.

Cole argues persuasively that we lock up a dramatically higher percentage of our people than any other nation because it is mostly poor African-American communities that get hit. He points out that when segregation was legal in the 1950s, African-Americans were 30 percent of the prison population, whereas now, with a monstrously increased prison population, African-Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of it. Sixty percent of African-American high school dropouts have spent time behind bars.

This the second in a series of action alerts about the fundamental willful and pernicious errors underlying the decision by 5 agenda driven right wing judges on the Supreme Court to gut all restraints on corporate meddling in our elections. Each of these successive alerts will analyze additional derelict aspects of this shameful and truly dangerous decision, to further demonstrate why we the people must speak out and act to reverse it.

In the first alert we made the triable case (which no attorney has written us to dispute) that failing to even bother to distinguish between domestic and foreign owned corporations, and knowingly leaving America vulnerable to the latter BY their ruling, was de facto an act of treason by The Supreme Court 5.

This alert will focus on their abandonment of every prudent rule of judicial review, in favor of haste and the most extreme form of judicial activism, again with specific page number references to the opinion itself.

Because of the grave crime against the Constitution committed by gang of 5 right wing judicial outlaws on our Supreme Court yesterday, we are launching two critical action pages at once

Action Page: Corporations Are Not The People http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php

Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5 http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php

By any fair legal definition, the decision yesterday by The Supreme Court 5 constitutes nothing less than an act of TREASON against the people of the United States. Having read and analyzed the entire 183 page decision and all of its concurring and dissenting opinions ourselves, we are fully prepared to support this accusatory conclusion.

By Dave Lindorff

So much for economic “green shoots.”

The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, along with the servile corporate media, have been quick to grasp at and trumpet every little suggestion that things might be improving, as they did when the Labor Dept. announced last week that new unemployment claims had dropped to “just” 434,000, from a high of 684,000 in the week ended March 28 or last year.

Or when the Commerce Dept. reported last month that November housing starts had risen by 8.9% compared to the prior month.

By Dave Lindorff

Attorneys General from 13 states--all of them Republicans--are saying that they are going to sue to block the health insurance reform bill if, when it is finally passed, it still includes a measure giving Nebraska an extra $100 million in Medicaid funds. They charge that this “bribe” was used to get Nebraska’s conservative Democratic Senator Ben Nelson to join fellow Democrats to get the Senate’s version of the bill passed.

By Dave Lindorff

You know, the year 2009 started out kind of nicely. We watched Barack Obama take the oath of office, serenaded by the awesome Aretha Franklin (wearing her awesome hat), after first hearing Pete Seeger sing the real Woody Guthrie verses to "This Land Is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Monument.

By Dave Lindorff

Paul Krugman, one of the few liberal columnists writing for the New York Times, claims that at some point in the hoary past when he “began writing a lot about health care,” he was in favor of a Canadian-style single-payer health care system. He adds that even today if he thought there was “any chance of creating Medicare for All any time in the next decade,” he would be “pushing for single-payer now.”