There clearly is a war in America and it has officially been declared by the United States Supreme Court with their decision to grant corporations unlimited spending for election campaigns.
“This ruling strikes at our democracy itself,” Mr. Obama said, adding: “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections.”
The ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, overruled two precedents: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions. (New York Times, 1-22-10, Adam Liptak)
Mr. Greg Palast, investigative journalist, wrote on his website, “Hidden money funding, whether foreign or domestic, is the new venom that the Court has injected into the system by its expansive decision in Citizens United.” “I'm losing sleep over the millions — or billions — of dollars that could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or, from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or, Bin Laden Destruction Corporation.
Right now, corporations can give loads of loot through PACs. While this money stinks (Barack Obama took none of it), anyone can go through a PAC's federal disclosure filing and see the name of every individual who put money into it. And every contributor must be a citizen of the USA.
But under today's Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.”
Mr. Palast continued, “The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening the door to "mega-corporations" owned by foreign governments. … Congress might be able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations…Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign Legal Center of Washington D.C. says corporations will now have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles.
Malloy also noted that under the law today, human-people, as opposed to corporate-people, may only give $2,300 to a presidential campaign. But hedge fund billionaires, for example, who typically operate through dozens of corporate vessels, may now give unlimited sums through each of these "unnatural" creatures.
And once the Taliban incorporates in Delaware, they could ante up for the best democracy money can buy.”
Mr. Palast describes how corporations poison the campaigns of politicians and deceptively influence the decisions of voters who vote NOT in their own best interests. “Congressional investigators found that in crucial swing races, Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded by a group called, "Coalition for Our Children's Future." The $25 million that paid for those ads came, not from concerned parents, but from a corporation called "Triad Inc."
Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate connection been proven, the Kochs and their corporation could have faced indictment under federal election law. As of today, such money-poisoned politicking has become legit.” (Gregpalast.com, Manchurian Candidates:
Supreme Court allows China and others
unlimited spending in US,1-21-10 elections)
The Supreme Court majority members who appear to create new law cloth from their own looms, appear to be part of the neo-fascist ‘corpora-politico’ uprising in this country. We saw it with Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America, which brought in tanker loads of cash to buy neo-con politicians to fill the seats of Congress on behalf of the international corporate royalists. They were instrumental in crafting an agenda that brought President Clinton to the table with an 18 carat gold nibbed Schaeffer fountain pen embossed with the words “Bill Clinton” along with the White House seal, in hand to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, and create the Commodity Futures Modernization Act-1999, opening the flood gates allowing the laissez-faire, faux-free market capitalists to begin feeding at the Treasury-Federal Reserve’s public cash trough, as they fabricated fake mortgage-backed securities and formulated fictitious and fraudulent derivative contracts. Along with that tall order, they shipped US jobs over to countries with minimal-to-no worker rules, regulations, or minimum wage scales.
Dr. Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, suggested in his 1-25-10 Huffington Post piece titled Leveling the Economic and Political Playing Field, “…to get the privilege of limited liability, corporations would have to give up their political rights in the same way that insurance companies often require people to give up their right to sue and instead submit to binding arbitration. Everyone still has the right to sue, but not in the cases where they have explicitly surrendered this right to the insurance company. Similarly, corporations still have the full right to take part in political activity, but not if they have surrendered this right in order to gain the privilege of limited liability. There is actually precedent for exactly this sort of restriction in the law. Tax-exempt organizations are severely restricted in their ability to support candidates, lobby legislatures, or in other ways take part in the political process. This is not viewed as a restriction on freedom of speech; it is simply a condition of getting tax-exempt status. These organizations are free to engage in as much political activity as they like, but not when they are benefiting from tax-exempt status. There is no reason that the government can't apply the same rules to the political conduct of corporations as it does to tax-exempt organizations. They can do whatever they like, but not when they benefit from the privilege of limited liability.”
Dr. Baker concludes his piece with the following truth, “nless we can do something to reverse the direction of politics in the United States, the burden that the wealthy and corporate America impose on the rest of society will grow ever larger. And we should be very clear: this has absolutely zero to do with free markets and free speech. This is entirely about writing the rules so that the rich can rip off the rest of us.”
And in addition, we have Timmy Geithner threatening Americans by inferring that if Ben Bernanke is not re-nominated by Congress, there will be trouble. "The markets would view this as very troubling thing for the economy as the whole.”
Timmy Geithner appears to be working to help the mega-investment banks avoid President Obama’s financial regulatory reform plan. President Obama is broaching the idea of limiting a bank’s ability, if they consider themselves a banking holding company, to have the government federally insure their deposits, if they trade in risk-based securities for their own accounts, and if they pedal in hedge or private equity funds.
But Geithner would work around such rules by offering banks that are skittish about such government regulation the opportunity to shed their holding company mystery cloak, which allowed them to tap into government TARP funds and feed at the Federal Reserve’s discount cash fund window feeding trough. But now that Obama wants to change the rules, they will remake themselves once again. The Geithner Coup Intervention Plan would allow them to keep their trading and investment crap table operations flowing without financial interruption. Goldman Sachs would be the biggest financial casino operator to benefit from such a Geithner push-back plan.
This is the war against working Americans. We have Trojan horses, such as Timmie-daG-Geithner, inside the White House, being subverted by former Clintonian Treasury Secretary, Paul Volcker, advising President Obama that he needs to move on financial market regulatory reform unless he wants to continue with the Goldman Sachs-business-as-usual plan.
With the Supreme Court siding with the mega-investment banking giants, and the Goliath-like international corporate royalists to secure legislator loyalty and an executive who would likely be bought and paid for to serve their profit oriented purposes, the American worker, and their families will be forced into serfdom. It is coming.
Unless Congress changes the definition of what it means to be a corporation to exclude the ability to engage in campaign contributions, this nation will become the type of nation that we saw Italy become under Mussolini’s rule, whereby corporations and government had a super strong symbiotic relationship. Any change is unlikely, since the process of buying elections, along with secret groups hiding behind PACs selling their be-afraid agenda, cannot be the force of change needed for America to move forward with success.
President Obama will be giving his first State Of The Union address Wednesday. If he doesn’t speak about real changes that will put heavy duty chains around the necks of our financial industry, and dynamic ways to bring jobs to the unemployed, while protecting the economic fires burning all around working Americans from hamlet, to town, to village, to city, as well as illustrating a sustainable vision for the future of the country, his presidency is over.
Thanks for reading, jerry
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
