Maybe They Are After Us
David R. Jones, Esq., President and CEO, Community Service Society of New York, at Huffington Post:
I’ve always been particularly contemptuous of conspiracy theories, whether it’s U.N. sponsored black helicopters, the dangers of the Trilateral Commission, or alien abduction. It’s never been the way I see things, although as a kid I had a period of concern over sitting on toilets and baby alligators that kids bought at the circus and flushed into New York City sewers.
But now I am joining mainstream America in its paranoia. This week we’ve witnessed the dissolution of ACORN, the leading national advocacy group for the poor, shut down with the active help of the Congress from both parties, and the stunning decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission which…
Clay County, Kentucky: Precinct Worker Testifies She Stole Votes
Bill Estep writes in the Lexington Herald-Leader:
FRANKFORT — A former Clay County precinct worker testified Friday that top election officers in the county taught her how to change people’s choices on voting machines to steal votes in the May 2006 primary.
Wanda White testified that Clerk Freddy Thompson — the county’s chief election officer — helped show her how to manipulate voting machines along with Charles Wayne Jones, the Democratic election commissioner.
The scheme involved duping people to walk away from the voting computer before they had finished their selections, then changing their choices, said White, the Democratic judge in a precinct in Manchester.
White said she stole more than 100 votes that election. “It was easy done,” she said.
White said she also went into the booth with people who had sold their…
Ron Paul Wins the CPAC Straw Poll for President, What’s Next?
In his own words, on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Show, here is Ron Paul:
Justice for Sale: What Can ‘The People’ Bid to Have Democracy in America?
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship writes on Huffington Post:
That famous definition of a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything — and the value of nothing — has come to define this present moment of American politics.
No wonder people have lost faith in politicians, parties and in our leadership. The power of money drives cynicism deep into the heart of every level of government. Everything, and everyone, comes with a price tag attached: from a seat at the table in the White House to a seat in Congress, to the fate of health care reform, our environment, and efforts to restrain Wall Street’s greed and prevent another financial catastrophe.
Our government is not broken; it’s been bought out from under us, and on the right and the left and…
Bill Maher: ‘Corporatist’ Evan Bayh Is What’s Wrong With Senate (Video)
Reports Huffington Post on a Bill Maher interview with Anderson Cooper:
Evan Bayh is not a centrist, he’s a corporatist, according to Bill Maher.
Maher appeared on “Anderson Cooper 360″ Tuesday night to comment on the state of affairs in Washington, D.C. He argued that Evan Bayh, the retiring Senator from Indiana, is what’s wrong with Congress. The Senate is “where legislation goes to die,” Maher says, because “corporatist Democrats” like Bayh act like Republicans.
Maher told Cooper that politics are not polarized enough and that the U.S. lacks a real progressive party.
Lawrence Lessig: How to Get Our Democracy Back
Lawrence Lessig writes in the Nation:
Editors’ Note: We encourage readers moved by this essay to sign the Change Congress petition, a drive to enact solutions proposed in this article. Click here to sign. A video commentary by Professor Lessig can be viewed here.
We should remember what it felt like one year ago, as the ability to recall it emotionally will pass and it is an emotional memory as much as anything else. It was a moment rare in a democracy’s history. The feeling was palpable — to supporters and opponents alike — that something important had happened. America had elected, the young candidate promised, a transformational president. And wrapped in a campaign that had produced the biggest influx of new voters and small-dollar contributions in a generation, the claim seemed…
Corporation Says It Will Run for Congress
CATHERINE RAMPELL writes on the NY Times’ Economix:
Following the Supreme Court decision implicitly granting corporations the right to free speech (by determining that political spending is a kind of speech), a corporation has decided to take what it believes to be “democracy’s next step”: It is running for Congress.
With more than a twinge of irony, Murray Hill Incorporated, a liberal public relations firm, recently announced that it planned to run in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.
Here is the company’s first “campaign” ad:
Why Do People Vote Against Their Own Interests?
BBC News reports:
Last year, in a series of “town-hall meetings” across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms.
What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.
Polling evidence suggests that the numbers who think the reforms go too far are nearly matched by those who think they do not go far enough.
But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform — the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state — are often the ones it seems designed to help.
In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently…
Lies, Damned Lies, and State of the Union Addresses
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
While the capitalist media is treating Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address as some kind of “political pivot,” I didn’t hear much of the unexpected.
There was the usual economic nationalism, call for tax breaks for people who already have money, and stoking the flames of war while telling damned lies.
John Stewart: ‘Corporations Now Have More Rights Than Gay People.’
Congress needs to challenge this ruling now. It seems like the most important things that presidents have done for the last forty-five years is appoint Supreme Court judges (notwithstanding declaring unlawful wars). Via the Daily Show:
Douglas Rushkoff On Corporations As Uber-Citizens
Long-time friend of disinformation Doug Rushkoff always has great insight on cultural matters. This considered essay following the Supreme Court’s controversial decision last week permitting corporations to finance political parties is one of the best I’ve read so far:
Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling was positive in one respect: it made law out of what was already happening. While corporations earned “personhood” back in the 1860’s when a court clerk (likely bribed) added this language into the margins of another court decision, they never quite had the rights of citizenship before. They already write our laws (through lobbies) elect our leaders (with money) and create public opinion (with money and PR). If you’re interested in how and why that happened, please read my book Life Inc. But they have always tended to do so by…
Keith Olbermann: Supreme Court Ruling Makes Every Politician ‘A Prostitute’
This may be the one time I can say I don’t think Olbermann is guilty of bombast. He recently abandoned the long, special comment format on his show and instead makes two nightly “quick comments” (because I think even his core audience was getting tired of the long-winded tirades) but if there’s a reason to get worked up, it’s this. I know disinfo.com visitors have plenty to say and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on KO’s special comment “U.S. Government for Sale”:
2009 Was Record Year for Lobbyists
This is why we need more action from the Obama administration on this. The recent disastrous Supreme Court decision on campaign financing will make 2009 seem like child’s play to these people.
Arthur Delaney writes on Huffington Post:
The lobbying industry demonstrated its resilience last year in the face of the recession and is fully expected to smash previous spending records. On Wednesday, lobbyists filed their fourth-quarter reports, offering the first glimpse at their spending totals for the year.
Here’s what HuffPost has found so far by looking at some of the biggest companies in the banking, health care and energy industries: The heavy hitters indeed hit harder than ever in 2009.
To wit: The Chamber of Commerce, lobbying muscle for all manner of businesses on all manner of issues, spent an eye-popping $71 million on…
The Case For An Electronic Congress
Should Congress become virtual, meeting over the internet rather than in a physical building in Washington D.C.? Conor Friedersdorf argues on Politics Daily that doing so would make our leaders more accountable to constituents and would fight the influence of special interests:
As professional lobbyists grow ever more powerful, it is increasingly consequential that members of Congress spend significant stretches of time hundreds or thousands of miles from their constituents, but mere minutes away from every K Street firm.
An e-Congress wouldn’t merely result in legislators more attuned to their constituents by virtue of spending their working lives among them — it would make influence peddling far more difficult on lobbying firms, who’d find it more expensive and time-consuming to get face-time.
The Problem Of Politics
Aaron Cynic at Diatribe Media:
Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed electoral politics over to corporations, who will undoubtedly spit in the court’s face and sue it for not giving them their right to blatantly buy elections sooner. In a 5-4 decision handed down by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and backed by five Republican presidential appointees, the court ruled that corporations and unions can spend their own treasury funds on broadcast ads or billboards in favor of a particular political candidate or urging the defeat of another. Speaking for the court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy invoked the idea of corporate personhood, stating “The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech.”
Plenty of people…
Rep. Grayson: “If This Ruling Goes Unchallenged, Then You Can Kiss Your Country Goodbye”
The ever-vigilant Florida congressman, Alan Grayson, weighs in on the Supreme Court ruling today. “It will be the Senator from GE and Microsoft now!”
Obama Curbs Secrecy of Classified Documents
So what do disinfo.com visitors think? Dick Cheney must be rolling in his virtual grave. What message is President Obama sending while doing this on vacation?
CHARLIE SAVAGE writes in the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared on Tuesday that “no information may remain classified indefinitely” as part of a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch’s system for protecting classified national security information.
In an executive order and an accompanying presidential memorandum to agency heads, Mr. Obama signaled that the government should try harder to make information public if possible, including by requiring agencies to regularly review what kinds of information they classify and to eliminate any obsolete secrecy requirements.
“Agency heads shall complete on a periodic basis a comprehensive review of the agency’s classification guidance, particularly classification guides, to ensure the guidance…
The Price Is Right! Payoffs for Senators to Move Forward Health Care Bill
This is the way business has ALWAYS been done in Washington: Do not kid yourself, folks … CHRIS FRATES writes on the Politico:
Ben Nelson’s “Cornhusker Kickback,” as the GOP is calling it, got all the attention Saturday, but other senators lined up for deals as Majority Leader Harry Reid corralled the last few votes for a health reform package.
Nelson’s might be the most blatant — a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.
But another Democratic holdout, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took credit for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers, while denying it was a “sweetheart deal.” He was clearly more…
As The U.S. Congress Travels More and More, The Public Pays
BRODY MULLINS and T. W. FARNAM write in the Wall Street Journal:
EDINBURGH — The expenses racked up by U.S. lawmakers traveling here for a conference last month included one for the “control room.”
Besides rooms for sleeping, the 12 members of the House of Representatives rented their hotel’s fireplace-equipped presidential suite and two adjacent rooms. The hotel cleared out the beds and in their place set up a bar, a snack room and office space. The three extra rooms — stocked with liquor, Coors beer, chips and salsa, sandwiches, Mrs. Fields cookies and York Peppermint Patties — cost a total of about $1,500 a night. They were rented for five nights.
While in Scotland, the House members toured historic buildings. Some shopped for Scotch whisky and visited the hotel spa. They capped the…
