Welcome to the Oligarchy

Over the last several years, the conservative movement sought to rein in what they saw as government intrusion into areas where the believed it ought not to be involved. Over the few weeks it has become clear that the movement wishes to dismantle our form of representative democracy and replace it with a neo-feudal society headed by an oligarchy.

While the Republicans in congress hold the full faith and credit of the United States Hostage as they try to extort the elimination of the social safety net as their price for doing what everyone says has to be done, the Supreme Court has been laying the groundwork for corporation to supplant the our elected representatives as policymakers for the nation. Last week, they denied class status in a sex-discrimination case brought against corporate behemoth, Wal-Mart on flimsy grounds. Research conducted by Barbara Ehrenreich and Nelson Lichtenstein clearly show evidence of a corporate climate that institutionalized gender bias in the realm of promotion, a claim 5 Justices said they found so egregious that a Jury should not even have to power to consider the merits at trial.

Then today the gang of 5 sought to chill political speech, when they ruled that Arizona's public campaign financing law, which sought to provide relative parity between candidates and their ability to spend money on speech as going to far. They clearly showed that, in this decision, they want only those with unlimited financial resources to have a say in our elections.

What can we do about this?

First, we need to pressure Congress to extend the ethical codes that govern our federal judiciary to the Supreme Court. These codes define conflict of interest, and specify when a justice must recuse themselves from a case. It also defines what conduct would be unbecoming of a justice. It would prohibit them from engaging in partisan and political activity or accept gifts that might be viewed as means to curry favor. Our founders wished to see a judiciary that could act as arbiters of justice and not become law unto themselves. Remember every member of the House and one third of the Senate will be up for reelection, if the cries for this become deafening, the incumbents might fear ouster if they try to block such a measure.

Second, contact your Senators and voice concern over the ethical behavior of members of the Supreme Court and that members of the Judiciary committee should investigate the issues that have arisen. Clarence Thomas has had many issues, from the financial disclosure documents that failed to report his wife's income as a political operative, to the gifts he has received from the likes of Christopher DeMuth and Harlan Crow who had interest in many cases before the court. Justices Thomas, Scalia and Alito all engaging in partisan political activites, such as the speeches given by Thomas and Scalia at one of the Koch Brother's Secret Retreats. Investigate the activities in the full light of day and then if the evidence suggests that they may be true draft articles of impeachment against any Justice whose conduct falls short of the ethical behavior we expect of our Supreme Court.

Remember, political change can only come from the governed. We need to see the political activism like the world saw in 1968. We need to harness the spirit of Egypt, Tunisia, Wisconsin and tell the likes of John Boehner, and Mich McConnell and their patrons that we will not allow our nation to devolve into an oligarchy as we sweep them from power.

A Victory for Equality

Today, the State of New York embraced equality and voted to allow gays/lesbians/trans-gender to marry and receive the same rights afforded to heterosexual couples. This was a bi-partisan effort where many Democrat and Republican legislators stood up to be counted on the right side of this historic vote. Let this be a lesson to others on what can be done if we all work together for justice and equity. One can only imagine the party going on at the old Stonewall Inn tonight.

Media Review: The Return of Countdown

Keith Olbermann returned to television yesterday when his show Countdown: With Keith Olbermann debuted on Current TV, and is showing a bit of rust after his long hiatus. The show looked quite familiar but seemed to lacking in something. One thing that surprised me is how much he tried to make the new show like the old show rather than take the blank page he was handed and go take the concept further.

I don't know what I was expecting, but the debut seemed to be lacking in something. At his best, Olbermann is the modern generation's equivalent of Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite. His special comments health care rank among the most poignant moments I have seen on television. He captured the moment and framed the issue in a way that it seemed our nation's leaders were afraid of.

Yesterday, let us be frank, was slow and uneventful. The day lacked the type of stories that would normally provide good fodder for commentary. We had the Obama impersonator getting yanked, Rick Perry flirting with RLC, and the Jon Stewart interview. Not much excitement there.

I will say that, compared to Lawrence O'Donnell's show, he came out on top. The Michael Moore and Markos Moulitsas segments really set the stage for what could be greatness yet to come. I look forward to seeing more of those segments, and perhaps new segments to add humor and insight as opposed to Worst Persons or Time Marches On.

Where are the Jobs?

Recently, Speaker Boehner took time out from holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to try and cripple medicare or demand draconian cuts in federal spending to ask once again "Where are the Jobs?" What is even funnier was his assertion that under his leadership the House has been focused upon job creation. That seems to be an interesting take on the facts.

Since he took up the gavel in January, the legislation that has come out of the House has been concerned with cutting spending. This move towards austerity does have a tendency to hurt job growth. When the government cuts spending it can have both a direct and indirect. The federal government can cut funding to various agencies that are forced to layoff its own staff, thus increasing unemployment. It can cut funding to the states, which can cause states, counties and cities to layoff their staff, increasing unemployment. All of these layoffs create a lessened demand in the market for goods and services, thus potentially causing layoffs across the broad spectrum of private sector industries. In short cutting government spending during a fragile recovery can stall or reverse job gains.

Conversely increasing government spending in such a manner so as to directly put people to work can increase the pace of recovery. There are currently many ways to put people to work. There are billions of dollars worth of infrastructure repair projects that need to be done to prevent disasters such as Katrina from wiping out wide swaths of a major city. We can push to bring broadband internet to all corners of the nation, and try and catch up with nations such as India who are further ahead of us in that regard. We can invest in research into clean energy and transportation research. We can bolster the staffs of the agencies charged with protection our borders, financial markets as well as workplace and food safety so that they have the personnel to perform their job effectively.

When you put these people to work you begin to thin the unemployment rolls and thus reducing expenditures in that program, and subsequently other poverty prevention programs that these newly employed may have relied upon before. These people will then contribute payroll taxes which will replenish the national coffers. These people will now have money to buy goods and services again, thus creating demand for those goods and services. This demand creates a need to hire more people to meet the demand, putting more people back to work.

Contrary to Speaker Boehner's assertion that taxes and regulation are hampering job creation, most businesses cite weak demand as their primary reason for lack of private sector job creation.

So I say to you Speaker Boehner, "Where is your jobs bill that addresses demand?"

Follow the Money

In the post Citizen's United political reality, the presence of unprecedented amounts of money in our political system has sought to remake our government. With this decision, Harry "Lighthorse" Lee's pronouncement of the Constitution of 1787 as being a gateway to oligarchy comes to fruition.

Take for example the struggle the President and others have had in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many called for a reexamination of the financial regulations and the agencies charged with enforcement. The resulting legislation, while lacking the teeth of Glass-Stegall it at least sought to establish an agency charged with ensuring that consumers would not fall victim to predatory lending and other unsavory practices. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, believes this is a bad idea. And the head of the House Banking Committee believes that government and its regulators exist to serve the banks. These positions are not unexpected if you see who their major campaign contributors are. The financial services industry has given over $5 billion dollars in campaign contributions directly to federal legislatures, an investment they certainly expect to pay dividends in the form of favorable legislation and regulations. On today's Cenk Uygur show a journalist from Wall Street Journal said financial regulation would harm job creation, and parroted the views of the financial sector.

Protecting consumers in the marketplace is one function that our federal government is uniquely positioned to perform effectively. Consumers should know, in plain language, what the contract for credit they are entering into entails of them. An agency charged with ensuring this practice should find at its head someone who is not on the financial services industry payroll. Elizabeth Warren is someone who understands this, and that is why the Republicans in the Senate have been against her appointment as well as anyone to head an agency that would protect the consumer from the financial services industry.

In Oliver Stone's film JFK, X told Jim Garrison to follow the money if you wanted to know who killed Kennedy. If you want to know why your elected representatives are taking the positions they are, you should follow their money. Look at who are their largest campaign contributors, and how their voting record supports those donors. When in doubt, follow the money.

Blind Allegiance?

As Americans, we should pride ourselves in the notion that we have numerous means to involve ourselves with our political system. What should worry us is that many abdicate this responsibility to others, and blindly follow one party or the other without questioning its leaders over their decisions.

For much of W's term in office, few if any people seriously challenged the direction he was bringing his party and the nation. Commentators such as Limbaugh and Hannity called anyone who did challenge the President unpatriotic. When the administration began to assault the notion security in one's papers and home by demanding the telecommunications companies turn over customer records without the benefit of a warrant, Qwest dared to challenge that in court, and for that found their government contracts cancelled.

This behavior is not limited to the right, Democrats are just as guilty of this fault. Over the last few years, Barack Obama has not lived up to the promises he made in his campaign. He has moved the Supreme Court to the right to the point where states such as Texas, Kansas and Louisiana feel confident in passing legislation that repudiates Roe v. Wade because the court has shifted sufficiently to the right. He allowed congress to wait until a lame duck session to take up the extension of the Bush tax cuts, and allowed the minority party to dictate terms. The same issue pressed before the recess going into the elections would have forced Congress take a position, and dare anyone to vote against the extension of the middle class tax cuts, with voters waiting in the wings to cast judgement.

In America, a citizen's responsibility to the governance of the nation does not end at the ballot box, it begins there. If we are truly going to honor the memory of our nation's founders, we as a nation need to become more involved in the system. A President shouldn't expect a free pass when it comes to re-election, he should expect a primary challenger who will keep him honest. He should expect hard questions from constituents from both sides of the aisle to be reminded that America is a land of diverse opinion. In the future our political system should reflect this diversity, by embracing measures that would encourage third, fourth and fifth party participation. This would be something we could do to increase participation and break the stranglehold that corrupting interests seem to have on our government.

Now that Wienergate has played out...

Now that Anthony Wiener has admitted to sending the tweet in question , can we now go on to more important matters.

This story is not what needs to dominate the public discourse, since it is in many ways a non story. Did Rep. Wiener exercise poor judgment in carrying on the way hi did? Yes, he did, though compared to John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mike Ensign, his antics were downright sophomoric. If someone with the Name Wiener enters public life two things are certain, one is a sense of humor and the other is thick skin. Some of the shots such as him with a me sign or the alleged pussy shot (featuring him and his tabbies) are cute and funny in most contexts.

While his actions were juvenile and showed a lack forethought, they were not criminal. Anthony Wiener did not solicit money from his parents to use as hush money, nor did he father a child with the domestic help, nor did he even use campaign money to help keep the issue silent and at bay. He proved that he was human.

There are people who have the right to sit in judgement of his actions, and I am not one of them. Due to the nature of his actions, his wife is one of them. Whether or not they are able to successfully work through this and strengthen their relationship. That is by definition a private matter and should not be food for public consumption. The others are his constituents, should he decide to run for reelection. They have to decide if his actions have detracted from the zealous advocacy he has shown those who elected him while in their service. I have a couple of friends who live in his district who, barring something unforeseen still plan on voting for him in 2012.

Now that all of this that has become known as Wienergate has played out, isn't it time that we focus our attention on something more pressing such as the debt ceiling vote, the budget and maybe jobs and education? Just an idea.

The Hypocrisy of the Pro Life Right

One look at the slate of bills promulgated by the Republicans in Congress and the State Houses across the nation points out that the pro-life movement and their sympathizers in government care nothing about lowering the instance of abortion in the nation. In fact it points to a movement that seeks to marginalize women and return them to a status that would resemble the lot of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

In the first five months of the year, legislatures have raced each other to see who could come up with the most restrictive abortion bill short of an all out ban. Coming in a close second are bills that seek to eliminate funding to non-profit agencies whose primary goal is the promotion of women's health issues and access to medical care for women. In short Koch Industries subsidiary, otherwise known as the Republican Party has declared war on women.

Within all of this debate, no serious proposal to promote contraception, including the promotion of condom use could be found. If one is truly wishing to see abortions become a rare event, it would only make sense to seek to promote the use of contraception so that the instances of unintended pregnancies begin to diminish.

In the not too distant past, when HIV and AIDS were synonyms for death, safe sex became fashionable. Condoms awareness exploded and even the schools began to include safe sex as a topic within health education program. Condoms also are unique, in that not only do they have a good record of protection against STDs but they also, prevent unintended pregnancies.

So next time you see the Pro-Life people proselytizing about their cause, challenge them to put the same effort towards promotion the use of condoms. If they are serious about ending abortion, they should readily embrace this cause. If they balk, ask them point blank, are the trying to resign women, especially poor women to breeding class of their own conception?

The Race to the Bottom

These days it has become too routine to turn on the news and find out that a Republican governor proposes to cure their state's budgetary problems by eliminating that which actually benefits the citizens of their state.

Chris Christie, when he is not commandeering a police helicopter to make a short trip to his son's

baseball game, keeps busy by trying to undermine the successes New Jersey has earned over the years. He told the federal government that they could keep their money and cancelled a tunnel project that would have employed hundreds and helped alleviate congestion on the existing structures linking NJ with New York City. He then proposed to cut the eligibility threshold for Medicaid to less than $6000 for a family of 3...or so that a person who works 20 hours per week at minimum wage would be too wealthy for assistance.

In Florida, Rick Scott refused money to help create a modern rail network in his state. He didn't want the jobs or the prosperity that jobs and work might bring to his state.

Go to Texas, and witness what Rick Perry and his cohorts did this legislative session. At the beginning of the session the Governor may declare some projects emergency priorities and thus getting them moved up on the list of projects to debate on the floor of the legislature. With the state facing a large deficit, the emergency priority included nothing that addressed this. Instead his emergency priorities were, an assault on women's health and reproductive rights, replicating the Arizona Papers Please law and getting guns on college campuses. Proposals that would have brought jobs, such as the proposal to allow slot machines at the state race tracks could get the same expedited treatment.

In all of these examples, the governors of these states are falling all over themselves to shower money on business interests and paying for it by gutting education, funding for nursing homes, and programs that actually work to help the citizens and attract businesses by providing a well educated workforce capable of innovating with the best on earth.

In 2012, you must ask yourself, is the person you are voting for working in your best interests, or for his wealthy patron's interests.

Deregulation Illustrated

All we here coming from the Republicans in Congress, is that to grow jobs we need to lower taxes and cut regulations. The concept becomes laughable. George W. Bush did that and the nation's economy bled jobs and caused a global economic crisis. Leaving the tax debate aside, let us look at what deregulation looks like in a manner that most might be familiar with.

Take a look at Facebook or Android market. They operate on a model of limited oversight as to the what app developers can place in the marketplace. How many times have we, or someone we know, discovered that some of these apps were little more than malware delivery vehicles. One click and you have spammed your entire friend list, and then need to work hard to undo any damage caused. This causes grief, and perhaps the expense of having any virus or malware professionally removed.

On the other hand, Apple's App Store controls the content in its marketplace. They examine apps that developers wish to sell in their marketplace to ensure that it is free of malware and won't harm the device it used on. This regulation hasn't stifled business, except in the cases where the developers business model is to spread spam or malware. The Apple App Store is the benchmark by which all others are judged for its ease of use, ease of access and the volume and breadth of its offerings.

There is no evidence that proper regulation harms the market, in fact it is quite the opposite. Proper regulation keeps the market fair and prevents harm to the consumer, and therefore is beneficial.

What we learned from the events of Arab Spring

This past spring, the world witnessed several populist uprisings across the Arab/Muslim world which sought to bring about democratic reforms. In places such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the people used social media such as twitter and facebook to organize mass protest demonstrations against their respective governments. These protests successfully forced the Egyptian and Tunisian governments to step aside and make way for democratic reforms. In all these populist movements, with little direct U.S. intervention have proved successful in setting the groundwork for true democratic reforms in the region.

In this light, the Bush Administration's path to War in Iraq was clearly the wrong move that has produced poorer results. The U.S. has been in Iraq for almost 8 years and does not seem any closer to seeing a stable Iraqi government. It is not out of the realm of imagination that had the U.S. simply continued the Iraq policy of enforcing the no-fly zones and using the U.N. to apply economic and diplomatic pressure on Saddam's government, that populist uprisings could have happened there as well this spring. Like Egypt and Tunisia, Iraq was a fairly modern company which boasted a healthy technological infrastructure, the elements utilized in mobilizing the protests elsewhere. We could have achieved the same end result, the removal of Saddam from power, without spending billions of dollars, and without the loss of life all have suffered over the last 8 years.

The Lies the Right are telling America about Debt Limit Increase

For the last month, the Republicans in Congress have been telling lies to the American people and are playing partisan games with the financial health of the word markets. The demand amendments which stipulate spending cuts in exchange for the passage of this bill. This is a debate best left for the ongoing budget negotiations.
In reality a vote to raise the debt ceiling does nothing to increase spending, other than ensuring that interest on our bonds is paid in a timely manner, and all the other bills are paid in a timely manner as stipulated in the budget passed for this fiscal year. No increase of spending can occur without corresponding legislation authorizing such spending. There is nothing to be gained in stalling something that all parties recognize as necessary for the good of the nation and the financial markets.
Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic caucus offered to support a clean bill, one that simply raises the debt ceiling, thus reassuring markets and announcing to the world that the U.S. will continue to pay its obligations like clockwork. Speaker Boehner has flatly refused and continues to listen to Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers and continue a course of brinkmanship that might destroy the world's financial markets and reduce us to little more than a 3rd world country. Even Ronald Regan emphasized the necessity of performing this task as he was working with his Congress to hammer out a budget agreement. To do otherwise is plain irresponsible.
After they do what must be done, the House and Senate should begin to examine the only responsible budget proposal made this year. The People's Budget, created by the Progressive Caucus is the only one that seriously addresses America's future and its fiscal stability. This budget calls for shared sacrifice to stabilize our nation's finances while it invests in the future. This budget plan creates a balanced budget in 3 years, produces a budget surplus in 2021, and by then drives the national debt down to less than 65% of GDP. It does this while investing in infrastructure repair and modernization, education, and clean energy driven energy independence. Call upon your members of congress and tell them to pass the damn debt ceiling increase and take up the People's Budget.