Puget Sound Liberals Weekly Newsletter #220
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Contents * Featured Articles Opportunities Petitions Communication to Our Members Commentaries from Our Members Jonathan Rosenblum: Reichert Tried To Deny Health Care
Like His To Others Bob Olson: Health Care Reform Will Lower Deficits* Brett Hill: Complain to Attorney General* Amelia Kroeger: After Success, What? Helen Montgomery: Republicans First Mandated Health Insurance
Coverage Joe
Martin: Tea Party Has Misplaced Targets Ray
McBain: Republican Party Line Supports Hate Liberals and Democrats Links to the Beef What the Obama Administration Should Do Now** State and Local Links
to the Beef Nation and World Links to the Beef Featured Advocacy Group: Center for Corporate Policy Our Liberal Spirit Our
Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean
Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and
Competent Spending ·
Investment for
Productivity ·
Quality
Health, Education, Jobs, Income ·
Environmental
Protection and Energy Independence ·
Security and
Equal Rights ·
Justice and
Peace Everywhere ·
International
Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives oppose all of these Let’s
End Our National Nightmare
Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More on Conservative opposition to our
American Dream Washington State’s 5 Major Needs · Federal Funding for Health and Education · Substituting
a Progressive Income Tax · Replacing
Conservative Legislators Quote of the Week Success is a journey, not
a destination." Ben Sweetland
Calendar of Events
Friday, April 9 at 6 PM at 338 - 10th Avenue, Kirkland
- Making Democracy Work Fundraiser supporting
the Greater Seattle League of Women
Voters.
Saturday, April 30 - May 2
at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle - Wellstone Action Campaign
Management Fundamentals, including:
· Activist track: For people interested in citizen lobbying,
issue advocacy, and community organizing, this track provides skills in how to
win on issues.
· Campaign track: This track focuses on how to be an effective staff or
volunteer member of a winning progressive campaign.
· Candidate track: This is for people who have made the decision to run
for office.
Varying cost. To
register.
Opportunities
Commentaries
that have addressed major issues
Obtain
a free ‘Corporations Are Not People’ bumper sticker.
Petitions
Tell
federal land management agencies to protect wildlife habitat.
Tell
Speaker Nancy Pelosi thanks and that you support her.
Tell
your senators to support a strong financial reform bill.
Tell
Anglo American to stop its Pebble Mine which threatens Alaskan fish and
wildlife.
Endorse
Connie Saltonstall to replace anti-choice Bart Stupak.
Communication
To Our Members
Our Newsletter’s Future
Our Puget Sound Liberals
newsletters have now been distributed by email weekly for 4 1/4th
years. I have hoped that we could be
placed on a firmer basis by become an educational arm of such an organization
as the Economic Opportunity Institute, Sightline, Northwest Progressive
Institute or Fuse, but none of these have shown any interest. Another possibility is a coalition of labor,
educational and other liberal organizations, such as those which emerged to
counteract BIAW’s attempt to elect Conservative Supreme Court justices. But after succeeding, this coalition faded
away.
When we have completed 5 years in January, 2011, I
would like to quit or at least reduce my responsibility for our newsletter. Unless one or more others volunteers to
assist, this newsletter may be reduced to several times a month, once a month,
as needed, or discontinued.
We have offered a large
number of Washington Liberals an opportunity to become more knowledgeable and
effective Liberals, although the number who have seriously taken advantage of
this opportunity may be only a small proportion of these. Enough have taken advantage to justify the
small expense of providing our newsletter.
Commentaries
From Our Members
Jonathan Rosenblum:
Reichert Tried To Deny Health Care like His To Others
I was pleased to hear that Congressman Dave Reichert
is getting excellent medical attention and is expected to make a full recovery
from a subdural hematoma [“Reichert recovering from blood on the brain,” news,
March 26].
It’s too bad that he sought to deny health-care access
to 32 million Americans, who, faced with the same medical condition, would want
and deserve the same lifesaving care he enjoys.
Jonathan Rosenblum
Bob Olson: Health Care Reform Will Lower Deficits
Primary to controlling our national debt is containing
the daily cost of failed health care. Our new health-care bill does this by
putting a tourniquet on a financial hemorrhage. Bounding this hemorrhage may very
well save the lives of “45,000 people who die every year because they don’t
have access to health care” (as reported by Sister Simone Campbell in an
interview).
Danny Westneat [“Free to have health care for all,”
column, March 21] suggests that meeting the costs to implement full health care
now is necessary. These costs are often misrepresented: Increased taxes will
only affect the rich and budget deficits are projected to decrease. The full
cost will not be realized until 2014 — after a rebounding economy is enhanced
by wage-earning, taxpaying, medically insured Americans.
I’m appalled at deterrence to this bill on
“constitutional” grounds, objecting that everyone must buy health insurance
from a “private” company. This requirement came about to appease the same
ideologues who put a stop to the single-payer government plan successful in
other nations.
Hopefully, bipartisan wisdom will replace polarized
bigotry to build a bridge spanning conflicts and creating opportunities to
reclaim security for American workers. Bob Olson
Brett Hill: Complain to Attorney General
Thanks Dave. I think you should send out a special
note to encourage people to call our Attorney General and register a complaint
about this lawsuit challenging health reform. I called and they took my name,
and indicated they were tracking all comments. Thanks, Brett Hill
Amelia Kroeger: After
Success, What?
Hi Dave, you who wrote:
“After Success, What?
Democrats have successfully passed health
care reform, albeit less reform than is needed.
We can learn from this success to produce more successes which expand
our freedoms and opportunities. We can
use reconciliation procedure to make further health care and other reforms.
What we should not do is rest on our
success, any more than football players can rest after completing a winning
play. We must continually access our
situation, its vulnerabilities and opportunities, and decide what successes are
needed and possible. We should then
attempt them.”
Agreed.
I'm thinking #1 mellowing the recent Supreme ruling (as we work toward a
Constitutional amendment); and #2 Securing strong regulation for Wall
Street/banks. Amelia Kroeger
Helen Montgomery:
Republicans First Mandated Health Insurance Coverage
The
idea of mandating purchase of insurance was a Republican idea, in line with
their taking responsibility theme.
Also consider this: Reagan
said Deficits don't Matter. Cheney said
Reagan proved deficits don't matter.
According to Republicans, Deficits suddenly matter when Clinton, Obama,
or any Democrat comes into office. Helen Montgomery
Joe Martin: Tea
Party Has Misplaced Targets
Published by Seattle Times
on 3/31/2010
I concur with columnist Jerry Large that fulminating
opponents of the recently passed health-care overhaul are about something more
than disgruntlement. [“Sickly response to health care,” NW Monday, March 29.] There is a nasty and dangerous undertone to
what is going on here. Though so-called tea-party leaders have gone to great
pains to distance themselves from those who shouted racist words at some black
members of Congress, there can be no denying overt and covert racism are at
play in the generalized virulence expressed.
Many individuals in this overwhelmingly white
reactionary movement simply cannot stand that we have our first black
president. Other citizens who are angry and confused about real problems such
as unemployment and underemployment have been co-opted by the hate mongers of
the Rabid Right.
Large mentions the malicious hate blogger Mike
Vanderboegh, who urged on the vandalism that occurred in the wake of the
health-care vote. Ironically, Vanderboegh is living off a government program
and receives a monthly Social Security disability check. There are many others
screaming about health-care reform who are beneficiaries of Social Security and
Medicare. At one time, these programs were castigated as experiments in
“socialism” that would destroy the country.
One can only hope that if ever a critical mass of
tea-party members takes a moment to honestly look at history and reality, maybe
they will start critiquing that area of government where waste and profligacy
is thoroughly ingrained: the Pentagon. Joe Martin
Ray McBain:
Republican Party Line Supports Hate
How petty the Republicans are! They at once (after
being "defeated") begin their attacks on persons, not on ideas. They
are the party of NO, the party of "Let's get back in power so we can stop
all progress for the citizens and return to making the rich richer".
Showing Pelosi in flames is surely inflammatory!
Perhaps she has cause to institute a libel suit. Or a harassment suit. Or a
hate crime suit. And surely their wave of attacks provides justification
for progressives (and even Democrats) to begin targeting Republican individuals
as demons, liars, demagogues (not that most Americans alive today know what
that word means), greedy, fascist, hate-mongers, racists, and so on.
By the way, Dave, I saw a few minutes of Karl Rove
speaking on Jay Leno show the other night. He is promoting the Republican
attack point of view, the script they all carry in their hip pockets, the lie
that the newly passed health care reform bill will bankrupt the nation
in the next decade. Karl probably authored that talking point and made sure it
was included in their script.
The Republicans can sure stick together. Does that
mean there is not even ONE Republican who has integrity? Honesty? Honor? I
wonder what hold their leadership has on the "members" to force them
to always vote the party line. "Party line". Fifty years ago that
phrase was being associated with the Communist Party. Supposedly all of its
members took their orders from Moscow. I wonder who is the Moscow of America
today for the Republicans. Surely the top candidates include Cheney and Rove.
The pre-eminent fascists to-be. Ray McBain
Liberals
and Democrats
Who Are Behaving Like Nazis?
It
is bizarre that Tea Party Conservatives accuse President Obama of being a Nazi,
since Tea Party Conservatives are the ones who are physically attacking health
care reformers just as Nazis physically attacked their opponents in order to
obtain power. It is Tea Party
Conservatives, not President Obama who are behaving like Nazis.
FBI arrests Christian
hate group members that planned to kill policemen.
Conservatives
no longer pretend to stand for law and order.
Conservatives
lie when they accuse Liberals of also inciting violence.
Is America tending toward
Nazism?
What the Obama Administration Should Do Now
It is easy to understand why
the Obama Administration failed to respond quickly to reduce Wall Street
speculation and to maintain fiscal responsibility. The Obama Administration was distracted from
these by first passing the stimulus-recovery bill. And then by placing a priority upon health
care reform to avoid the problems that Bill Clinton encountered by delaying it.
The necessity of doing these
quickly became much more obvious when Wall Street speculation resumed. And when Tea Party conservatives expressed
their opinion that the Obama Administration was favoring Wall Street over Main
Street and was running huge deficits.
And when Republicans hypocritically accused Democrats of these when the
Republicans were doing them.
So it is only with the
advantage of hindsight that I suggest how the Obama Administration should now
proceed. They should first become clear
that we need to change from our present Borrow,
Consume and Speculate mindset and practice to an Earn, Conserve and Invest mindset and practice, similar, but not
identical to the one which prevailed following World War II. The difference is that, as described by John
Kenneth Galbraith, after World War II large companies could raise their prices
and then allow their unionized workers to raise their wages to track their
productivity. Now, government regulation
and unionization should enable workers to earn a fair proportion of their
productivity.
Even before the oil price
shocks of the 1970s and the Carter and Reagan deregulation, planned
obsolescence was beginning to introduce consumerism and the introduction of
credit cards was beginning to introduce borrowing. But these greatly increased following
President Reagan’s assault on unions. As
earnings declined, borrowing increased.
Once the Obama Administration
understands that speculation must be virtually eliminated, it should take its
advice from Joe Stiglitz, Robert Kuttner, Paul Volcker, James Galbraith and
Dean Baker. These people should probably
be placed in formal positions, even having Joe Stiglitz replace Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner.
First to be
considered should be the imposition of a .25% tax on stock market transactions,
to greatly reduce the number of people who are speculating on stocks. Instead of having their 401(k)s filled with
stocks which are speculative and subject to crashes, people should be allowed
to put use their retirement savings to buy additions to their future social
security payment. Until they retire,
these savings would be available to reduce our federal deficits.
Note that the reduction of
the number of people holding stocks would not hurt the stock market’s primary
function of enabling investors to obtain the money their investments have
created. Following World War II, the
stock market performed this function well even though very few people owned
stocks.
When powerful Wall Street
lobbyists complain about the .25% tax, a .3, .4 or .5% tax should be
threatened.
Second,
people can buy life insurance on their spouses because they will suffer
financially if their spouses die. They
cannot buy life insurance on strangers because they would suffer no such
losses. Hedging is like life insurance,
except that no restrictions have been placed upon it. It should be possible to hedge against an
event that would cause financial damage in the absence of a hedge. But it should not be possible to hedge
against an event that would not cause financial damage in the absence of a
hedge. Such naked hedging should be
banned, or there should be a fee high enough to greatly discourage it, with the
fee adding to deficit reduction.
Note that a reconciliation
procedure can only be used to deal with changes in federal revenues. So both the stock transaction fee and a fee
on naked hedging would qualify as would the following suggestions.
Third, the Glass-Steagall
act, perhaps with some modifications should be enacted to prohibit investment
banks from using and risking funds deposited in commercial banks and guaranteed
by the government. As with all of these
recommendations, advice should be sought from the advisors listed above and
appropriate modifications made.
The following taxes and fees
should then be considered, each of which would increase government revenues and
reduce the federal deficit, perhaps even eliminating it.
· Charge
large Financial Corporations a Financial
Crisis Responsibility Fee to raise $117 billion. Dean Baker has suggested
the fee could be 4 times as large as proposed by President Obama.
· Repeal
tax breaks for households with annual incomes over $250,000: $43 billion per
year.
· Eliminate
the tax preference for capital gains and dividends: $80 billion per year.
· Levy
a progressive estate tax on large fortunes: $40-60 billion per year.
· Establish
a new higher tax rate on extremely high incomes: $60-70 billion
· End
overseas tax havens: $100 billion per year.
· Eliminate
subsidies for excessive executive compensation: $18 billion per year.
In
addition, the following tax breaks could be eliminated, without causing nearly
as many job losses as the money saved could be used to create.
Estimated
Cost
Tax
break 2010 2010-14
Employer-provided
health benefits $155 billion $924 billion
Home
mortgage interest deduction $108 billion $646 billion
401(k)
plans $53 billion $343 billion
Charitable
donations deduction $47
billion $274 billion
State
and local tax deduction $30 billion $268
billion
Capital
gains exclusion on home sales $30
billion $235 billion
These taxes and fees will
affect Wall Street and other high income people, but still leave them as well
off as they would have been without the Bush tax cuts. Conservatives will complain that high income
people create jobs, but they should be challenged to prove it. High income people buy luxury goods, often
imported, and engage in speculation.
Others such as charities may
complain that their donations will be reduced.
But they lost more money through purchasing speculative stocks than they
would lose from reduced donations.
Notice that all of these
actions would increase federal revenues, such that they could be passed through
reconciliation procedures. After
receiving advice and making modifications, these fees and taxes should be
imposed, perhaps one at a time, a few at a time or all at once. By doing a one or a few at a time, the Wall
Street lobbyists will find it difficult
to hit a moving target. As they are expressing opposition to one, one
or several others are passed.
In addition, large financial
companies should be warned that if they fail again, they will be handled as
occurs with other bankruptcies. Their
stockholders would lose their stocks. As
owner, the government could bar the company from hiring lobbyists. It could break it up into separate companies
on a regional or other basis. The
company could then be turned over to its bond holders with the warning that
they will not be bailed out.
Many small banks and credit
unions should be encouraged and enabled to increase their loans to appropriate
entrepreneurs and consumers. Those which
are in difficulty due to depressed commercial office prices should be assisted
instead of being declared bankrupt and merged, since unlike housing prices,
commercial office prices should rebound when the economy recovers.
In addition, assistance
should be given to people whose houses are being foreclosed. In appropriate cases, the houses should be
bought by the government to provide low cost houses near jobs, with the same or
differing occupants who could not benefit from any increase in housing
value. Such houses will reduce urban
sprawl, commuting, congestion and environmental damage.
In other cases, judges should
be allowed to adjust the amount of mortgages and mortgage payments so that the
mortgage holder could keep the house. In
other cases, people whose homes are foreclosed should be able to continue to
live there as renters.
Another possibility is to
assume that although some mortgage holders knowingly committed fraud, mortgage
brokers always did so when they approved fraudulent documents. If financially feasible, these mortgage
brokers and perhaps loan officers should be fined to pay back what the received
through creating toxic mortgages.
It would have been better if
the Obama Administration had implemented the above immediately after taking
office. But better late than never. By implementing them now, the deficit is
reduced and the increased revenues fund the highest priority, job creation.
In addition, by opposing
these measures, Conservative Republicans will reveal their hypocrisy concerning
both favoring Wall Street and being fiscally irresponsible. This may partly defuse discontent among both
the Tea Party and Coffee Party groups.
Note
that commentator E.J.
Dionne Jr. makes a similar recommendation.
Health Care Reform
54
Democratic Senators, Bernie Sanders and Joseph Lieberman voted for the health
reform bill passed using reconciliation procedures. 3 Democratic Senators: Ben Nelson of Nebraska
and Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas and 40 Republican Senators voted
against it.
United Steel Workers President Leo
Girard presents the following
description of the health care reform passed by Congress and signed by
President Obama:
Setting the Record Straight:
What You Need to Know about Health Insurance Reform
March 23, 2010 - President Obama today signed historic health
insurance reform legislation, a massive bill that will help most Americans have
health care. Your union is working hard to dissect every word to determine what
it means for you and your families. Here’s what we can tell you today:
What this means right now for union-negotiated plans and
VEBAs:
·
You will NOT lose your union-negotiated
private health insurance plans because of reform. Nothing in this bill changes
our right to collectively bargain health plans and employers cannot drop
existing plans because of reform.
·
Current collectively bargained plans are grandfathered,
meaning much of the new law does not apply to those plans until after they
expire.
·
We will NOT let employers or insurance
companies use reform as an excuse to bully us into unnecessarily expensive
premium hikes. Don’t let them threaten or intimidate and keep our members
informed to combat this.
·
NO high-cost benefits will be
taxed under provisions in the Senate reconciliation or “fixes” bill until at
least 2018, and the impact of the tax on insurers should be lessened through a
variety of changes and exemptions. That bill is expected to be passed by this
weekend.
Here’s how reform helps you and your family this year,
even under current collectively bargained plans:
·
Children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be
denied health insurance coverage. In the coming years, pre-existing condition
discrimination will become a thing of the past for everyone.
·
Health care plans will allow young people to remain on
their parents' insurance policy until their 26th birthday.
·
Insurers will be banned from dropping people when they
get sick.
·
Adults who are uninsured for six months or more because
of pre-existing conditions will have access to affordable insurance through a
temporary subsidized high-risk pool.
Here’s how reform helps our retirees:
·
Effective 1/1/11, co-pays for preventive screenings will
be eliminated to help older Americans more quickly and affordably identify and
treat diseases such as cancer and diabetes.
·
Cuts wasteful spending to extend the life of the Medicare
Trust Fund so seniors can better afford premiums which have doubled over the
past eight years.
·
Reduces costly health problems by assisting pre-Medicare
retirees with insurance costs and banning discrimination based on pre-existing
conditions.
·
This year, this bill will provide help for early
retirees by creating a temporary re-insurance program to help VEBAs and
employers offset the costs of providing healthcare benefits for retirees age
55-64.
Reform immediately begins to lower health care costs for
American families, small businesses and retirees:
·
This year, small businesses that choose to offer
coverage will begin to receive tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to
help make employee coverage more affordable.
·
This year, new private plans will be required to provide
free preventive care.
·
The Secretary of Health and Human Services will set up a
new Web site to make it easy for Americans to seek affordable health insurance
options. The site will also include helpful information for small businesses.
Stay informed. Get the facts. Visit www.usw.org/healthcare.
Read
how health care reform will help ill seniors stay in their homes.
Health
care reform will reduce financial inequality and make people healthier.
Health
care reform includes cost control incentives.
Health
care reform will add only about .5% to Medicaid costs for California and Texas.
Job Creation
New
jobs bill gains 105 house co-sponsors.
Regulating Wall Street
Our
government did not make a profit by bailing out Citigroup. We lost money big time.
Read
this to understand financial
regulatory reform proposals.
Housing Prices
It
seems that a condition of being a source on the housing market for NPR is
having missed the housing bubble. Morning Edition ran
a piece on President Obama's new housing plan in which Mark Zandi claimed
that a main benefit was that it could stop the decline in house prices. Since
there continues to be enormous oversupply in the housing market, as shown by a
record vacancy rate and falling rents, it is extremely unlikely that house
prices will stabilize until they return to at least their pre-bubble levels. It
is also not clear why anyone would want to make homes more expensive for future
buyers as a matter of policy. Dean Baker
Student Loans
The health care reform bill includes historic
investments to make education more affordable, and delivers on a key campaign
promise. It:
·
Ends subsidies to
special-interest private lending companies.
·
Doubles funding
for Pell Grants to help more students afford a college education.
·
Will cap a
graduate's annual student-loan repayments at 10 percent of his or her income.
·
Helps an
additional 5 million Americans earn degrees and certificates over the next
decade, by revitalizing programming at our nation's community colleges.
Nuclear Disarmament
Another big win for
President Obama
Here’s the Beef
What
MoveOn did to support health care reform.
Will
Republicans suffer from totally opposing health care reform?
Republicans won’t be able
to repeal health care reform.
Ralph Nader says the
answer to our present mess is more citizen involvement.
By not filling out census forms, Conservatives may reduce resources for their communities.
State and
Local
Here’s the Beef
Without
Yucca Mountain, Hanford nuclear waste now has nowhere to go.
The
Washington Food Policy Forum would directly address issues
such as food costs, access to healthy food, environmental impacts of our food
choices, and finding ways to keep our working farms working and enhance our
soils so they can produce healthy food for the next generations.
Survey
indicates ways in which Oregonians conserve energy.
Redevelopment
of urban centers instead of suburban construction is increasing.
Nation
and World
Featured Advocacy Group
------------------------------- Center for Corporate
Policy --------------------------
The
Center for Corporate Policy has released the following Commentary:
PUBLIC
INTEREST GROUPS CONDEMN SUPREME COURT'S RULING ON CORPORATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS
and CALL FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO OVERTURN COURT DECISION
"Free
Speech Rights Are For People, Not Corporations"
WASHINGTON,
DC – A coalition of public interest organizations strongly condemned today's
ruling by the US Supreme Court allowing unlimited corporate money in US
elections and announced that it is launching a campaign to amend the United
States Constitution to overturn the ruling. 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. They aim, through their constitutional amendment
campaign, to correct the judiciary's creation of corporate rights under the
First Amendment over the past three decades. Immediately following the Court's
ruling, the groups unveiled a new website devoted to this campaign.
"Free
speech rights are for people, not corporations," says John Bonifaz, Voter Action's legal director.
"In wrongly assigning First Amendment protections to corporations, the
Supreme Court has now unleashed a torrent of corporate money in our political
process unmatched by any campaign expenditure totals in US history. This
campaign to amend the Constitution will seek to restore the First Amendment to
its original purpose." The public interest groups say that, since the late
1970s, a divided Supreme Court has transformed the First Amendment into a
powerful tool for corporations seeking to evade democratic control and sidestep
sound public welfare measures. For the first two centuries of the American
republic, the groups argue, corporations did not have First Amendment rights to
limit the reach of democratically-enacted regulations.
"The
corporate rights movement has reached its extreme conclusion in today's Supreme
Court ruling," says Jeffrey Clements, general counsel to
www.freespeechforpeople.org and a consultant to Voter Action. "In recent
years, corporations have misused the First Amendment to evade and invalidate
democratically-enacted reforms, from elections to healthcare, from financial
reform to climate change and environmental protection, and more. Today's
ruling, reversing longstanding precedent which prohibits corporate expenditures
in elections, now requires a constitutional amendment response to protect our
democracy."
In
support of their new campaign, the groups point to prior amendments to the US
Constitution which were enacted to correct egregiously wrong decisions of the
US Supreme Court directly impacting the democratic process, including the 15th
Amendment prohibiting discrimination in voting based on race and the 19th
Amendment, prohibiting discrimination in voting based on gender.
"The
Court has invented the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights to
influence election outcomes out of whole cloth," says Robert Weissman,
president of Public
Citizen. "There is surely no originalist interpretation to support
this outcome, since the Court created the rights only in recent decades. Nor
can the outcome be justified in light of the underlying purpose and spirit of
the First Amendment. Corporations are state-created entities, not real people.
They do not have expressive interests like humans; and, unlike humans, they are
uniquely motivated by a singular focus on their economic bottom line. Corporate
spending on elections defeats rather than advances the democratic thrust of the
First Amendment."
"With
this decision, the Court has abandoned its usual practice of adjudicating
non-constitutional claims before constitutional ones, a radical departure that
indicates how far the Roberts Court may be willing to go in order to serve the
powerful 'business civil liberties' agenda," says Charlie Cray, director
of the Center for Corporate Policy. "While the immediate effect is likely
to be a surge in corporate cash in election campaigns, this could also signal
the beginning of a sustained attack on the rights and ability of everyday people
to govern the behavior of corporations, which, if successful, could effectively
eviscerate what's left of American democracy."
“American
citizens have repeatedly amended the Constitution to defend democracy when the
Supreme Court acts in collusion with democracy's enemies, whether they are
slavemasters, states imposing poll taxes on voters, or the opponents of woman
suffrage,” says Jamin Raskin, professor of constitutional law and the First
Amendment at American University’s Washington College of Law. “Today, the Court
has enthroned corporations, permitting them not only all kinds of special
economic rights but now, amazingly, moving to grant them the same political
rights as the people. This is a moment of high danger for democracy so we must
act quickly to spell out in the Constitution what the people have always
understood: Corporations do not enjoy the political and free speech rights that
belong to the people of the United States." For
more information on the constitutional amendment campaign.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here’s the Beef
Immigration reform should
and may happen this year, but it will be difficult to achieve. For
more.
‘Don’t ask. Don’t tell’ softened, but not eliminated.
Our
Liberal Spirit
After Success, What?
Since this week resembles
last week in that the house passed health care reform last week and the senate
passed it this week. So I am repeating
the quotation and this commentary.
Democrats have successfully
passed health care reform, albeit less reform than is needed. We can learn from this success to produce
more successes which expand our freedoms and opportunities. We can use reconciliation procedure to make
further health care and other reforms.
What we should not do is rest
on our success, any more than football players can rest after completing a
winning play. We must continually access
our situation, its vulnerabilities and opportunities, and decide what successes
are needed and possible. We should then
attempt them.
Recommended Books – See our list of books for liberals
Nomi Prins, 2006, Other People’s Money. The Corporate Mugging of America.
Just as Wendall Potter who
worked as a private health insurer has revealed their strategies to
successfully avoid paying health care costs, Nomi Prins who worked for Wall
Street speculators reveals their strategies to successfully stop and evade
regulations. She reveals how none of the
various supposed reforms have sufficiently revealed and punished those Wall
Street speculators, such that they continue their unethical and illegal
speculation.
Needed reforms include
reviving the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial and investment banks, a
financial transaction tax to inhibit speculation, a ban on naked derivatives,
and other measures such as stiff financial penalties and jail terms for
violators.