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REPAIR OUR DEMOCRACY

As the country endures yet another ‘most expensive election ever’, we would do well to remember that no matter what political ideology any candidate claims, nearly all who enter office will owe their job and their fealty to special interests. It is these big-money interests which our government now serves and will continue to serve regardless of which party wins in November. Certainly the election’s outcome might determine how much relative power specific types of special interests wield in Washington (i.e. unions, corporations, lawyers, Wall St, etc.), but that distinction will matter little to constituents languishing under a system still heavily rigged against them.

The good news is that an increasing number of voters are not only aware of this problem, but also care deeply about it. A recent Gallup poll revealed that the only issue voters care about more than corruption is creating jobs. However, the poll also noted that while corruption is a major concern, it is unlikely to be much of a determinant in the way people vote. No reason is given, but most likely voters recognize that any remedy probably won’t come from the same special interest-funded candidates (in both parties) who created this problem in the first place. Lacking a way to impact the issue come election time, voters simply begrudgingly ignore it.

In many ways, both the Tea Party and Occupy movements sprang from the frustration people across the political spectrum feel from this inability to affect real change via their vote. Both groups, with little else in common, have each attempted to bypass a system rigged against candidates whose campaigns are not heavily funded by special interest money. In the current election however, media attention is primarily devoted to the presidential horse race, and so both movements struggle to recapture earlier successes. A perfect illustration of this came with the one-year anniversary of the occupation of Wall Street. After barely registering on the radar of most major media outlets, it was almost immediately overshadowed by Mitt Romney’s “47%” comments.

There is one way built into our system for the people to circumvent the government should it become corrupted: A constitutional amendment. Following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, an amendment has become the favored solution of most reformers outside the political establishment, as well as numerous Democratic officeholders & luminaries within. The appeal lies primarily in an amendment’s ability to circumvent the courts’ proclivity to make free speech rights for special interests paramount over a constituent’s right to be genuinely & honestly represented by his or her government.

But while an amendment makes sense on one hand, and it is certainly possible one might ultimately be necessary to circumvent the courts, virtually all of the language currently being proposed would fail to meet the desired objective. Most versions being bandied about would either leave the problem of systemic corruption largely unsolved, or would have virtually no chance of gaining the broad support necessary to be adopted. Some of the most popular versions unfortunately manage the dubious distinction of accomplishing both.

Amendments merely overturning Citizens United would simply return campaign finance to the 1990’s. Things weren’t really any less corrupt then; they just were more tightly controlled and easily hidden from public scrutiny. Incumbents actually aren’t all that crazy about how decentralized campaigns have become, so bringing the money back into the fold would likely suit them just fine. In the end, overturning Citizens United alone would do little to encourage competitive elections or reduce systemic corruption.

Amendments attempting to go further and actually end corporate personhood and/or allow political spending to be regulated would be relentlessly attacked by conservative-leaning special interests in such a way as to likely crater support among conservative voters. Despite amendment proponents’ claims to understand the need for solutions agreeable to people across the political spectrum, a good deal of the language currently offered would be vulnerable to attacks depicting an unscrupulous Congress rigging elections in their own favor. Thus, any amendment plausibly seen as giving Congress the power to regulate political speech would likely be un-passable due to lack of conservative support.

Of course these attacks won’t come so long as reformers continue to spend countless hours just trying to get a doomed effort off the ground.  Why attack when so many current proposals make the job of undermining potential conservative support for ending systemic corruption that much easier? The more reformers persist in partisan solutions and/or aligning themselves solely with Democratic politicians, the more likely conservatives are to be convinced this issue is simply a liberal ploy to consolidate power.

Corruption is abhorred by all sides, so this is about as nonpartisan an issue as you’ll likely ever find, yet all sides continue to talk past one another and offer solutions the other side is unlikely to support.  Widespread disgust with corruption is too often conflated with widespread support for remedies favored by partisans on one side or the other.

In the end, nothing improves until we set aside our knives and shelve all other disagreements long enough to cooperate on this one issue. Given how it underpins virtually every other single issue of importance, finding motivation to fix the broken system which stymies us all at every turn shouldn’t be as difficult a task as it has been up to this point.

We needn’t resolve any other issue right now, but we must un-rig the system so the contest actually means something again.

Pro sports leagues crack down on gambling and allegations of game-fixing with a ferocity they reserve for no other single issue. They know that if fans believe the contests to be fixed, it is no longer a sport, but rather entertainment alone. Our government could be like the NFL, the gold standard to which others aspire. Instead, it is more like pro wrestling, where only the most gullible believe things aren’t completely rigged. If we un-rig the system, we restore trust in the process and the belief that our votes actually count for something.

Elections do still matter – a little – and we should all get out and vote on November 6th. However, no matter which party takes control in January, special interests will still be calling the shots. This is not a partisan problem, and it won’t be fixed by a partisan solution. The time must come when all sides realize that only by working cooperatively can we end the systemic corruption dragging us all down together. How much more evidence is needed?

By Jeremy Peters  a part-time writer, sometimes activist and full-time participant who believes a worthy cause is never hopeless. He often goes by the pseudonym CommonSenseMan

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How Wells Fargo Profits on Communities of Color

Social geographer, David Harvey, is famous for having noted that economic crises often “reveal the rationality of fundamentally irrational systems.” For Harvey, a crisis discloses the “irrational rationalizers” of our contradictory capitalist arrangement. Philanthro-capitalism, or the popular practice of applying business strategies to social challenges, represents the very core of this contradiction. Firms participating in philanthro-capitalist (ad)ventures privately support the very oppressive systems—white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, to name a few —that they publicly denounce.

 Enter Wells Fargo, the nation’s fourth largest bank and the principal mortgage originator in the United States. Earlier this summer Wells Fargo announced its historic $3.395 million grant in support of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF). The grant represents the single largest corporate contribution to HSF, “the nation’s premier not-for-profit organization supporting Hispanic higher education.” Founded in 1975, “HSF provides American families with the financial and educational resources they need to achieve a college education.” To date, HSF has awarded over $360 million in scholarships and has supported a broad range of outreach and education programs to assist students and their families navigate collegiate life, from gaining admission and securing financial aid to finding employment after graduation. HSF’s strategic vision includes “build[ing] a coalition of corporate and philanthropic partners committed to increasing Hispanic degree attainment.” But Wells Fargo’s largess is as generous as it is ironic. Generous because $3.395 million is a large chunk of change, but ironic because of Wells Fargo’s simultaneously antagonistic relationship with the “Latin community.”

 According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the federal agency responsible for protecting investors and maintaining fair markets—Wells Fargo currently holds somewhere between 4,400,000-4,700,000 shares in the GEO Group, the nation’s largest private detention owner and operator. With over 4 million shares of the GEO Group valued at close to $90 million, Wells Fargo owns nearly 8 percent of the company. The GEO Group owns and/or operates eighteen immigrant detention centers around the country and houses close to 50 percent of all detained immigrants, the preponderance of whom are Latin. Since 2006 the GEO group has been awarded over $1.3 billion in contracts from Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) through the Department of Homeland Security. The company, which posted 1.6 billion in revenues last year, relies on ICE for 14% of its total business operations. If this tale isn’t serpentine enough, a second irony emerged last week when Wells Fargo “agreed to pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that its independent brokers discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom.” According to the New York Times, an investigation by the Justice Department’s civil rights division found that “mortgage brokers working with Wells Fargo had charged higher fees and rates to more than 30,000 minority borrowers across the country than they had to white borrowers who posed the same credit risk.”

 l Furthermore, the Justice Department discovered that Wells Fargo brokers “steered more than 4,000 minority borrowers into costlier subprime mortgages when white borrowers with similar credit risk profiles had received regular loans.” The contradictory nature of philanthro-capitalism is as lucid as it is lurid. We must demand that Wells Fargo immediately end all business practices that profit from community depletion and disinvestment. We must demand that Wells Fargo divest from the GEO Group and cease its well-publicized predatory machinations that disproportionately affect communities of color. This must be done, and it must be done now. If Wells Fargo refuses to divest from the GEO Group, then we’ll have to do it for them. For more information on how to close your Wells Fargo bank account please see the National Prison Divestment Campaign’s website.

Obama for America TV Ad: "Troubled"

YouTube Van Jones'We Are Deep Patriots,They Are Cheap Patriots'

The Big Money In Political Campaigns

             The Big Money In Political Campaigns

To win elections, politicians need to raise money. To get votes, they need to raise big money – a lot of money. In the 2010 Senate elections, the average winning candidate received 1.8 million votes and raised $9.8 million. Candidates who raised 33 percent less money received 33 percent fewer votes, and lost


If a candidate called up voters himself, he’d need to convince 144 people every hour to vote for him (on average over his six-year term). That means he could spare just 25 seconds talking to each voter. (And this assumes he never spends time governing; he’d actually have far less.)


But modern political campaigns speak to voters less directly, with TV ads and billboards. To afford their campaigns, senators need to raise $782 an hour. That sounds like a lot, but a single big donor gives $1,837 on average. Most Americans can’t afford that, but politicians ask lobbyists and the wealthy. Because each big donor gives so much, he or she is worth 2.4 hours of a candidate’s time – over 300 times more than a voter.


Would a busy senator rather talk with 300 voters or one big donor? When it comes time to do his job, and pass legislation, whose interests will he represent?

America has become a country of the rich,for the rich, by the rich !!! The 1 percent rule everything.


The rich (the one percent) own the media, TV networks, radio, news papers, mailing houses,printing company operations, Social internet networks, Cable networks.


The rich give money to politicians, Presidential candidates, Senatorial candidates, Congressional candidates, Govenors, Mayors, State and local represenatives.


Then the politicians give the money back when they buy adds on and in the media. the money stays in the circle of the RICH.

Bush EPA Chief Urges Action On Chemical Hazards

            Bush EPA Chief Urges Action On Chemical Hazards
By Alice Su

Christine Todd Whitman, Environmental Protection Agency chief under George W. Bush, urged the EPA Tuesday to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to impose stricter safety standards on American chemical facilities vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attacks.

“I cannot understand why we have not seen some action when the consequences of something happening are so potentially devastating,” Whitman said in a teleconference that included representatives of labor and environmental groups.

As Bush’s EPA administrator, Whitman was prepared to unveil a proposal requiring chemical plants to use safer processes in the months after 9/11. Under the Clean Air Act’s general duty clause, Whitman said, the EPA had the authority to require hazard reduction at facilities at risk of catastrophic chemical releases.

But the plan was scuttled by the White House, which maintained that chemical hazards could be better addressed by legislation, Whitman said. Congress had moved quickly to pass bills on water safety and bioterrorism, and the EPA thought it was “on the right track” to pass a bill on chemical security as well.

Bob Bostock, Whitman’s homeland security adviser at the time, said EPA officials expected litigation from the chemical industry if it used the general duty clause. “It wasn’t so much that we were afraid we’d lose the litigation,” Bostock said. “We didn’t want to be tied up in litigation for years and years, leaving this unaddressed.”

Legislation never came. Now, Whitman and others are pressing the EPA to act on its own. In March, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, asking her to use the general duty clause to address the “catastrophic risks” associated with current regulations. Whitman wrote her own letter to Jackson in April, also urging EPA action.

A few weeks ago, more than 100 labor, environmental and public health organizations signed a letter asking President Obama to “take executive action to ensure that high-risk chemical facilities fulfill their obligation under the Clean Air Act … ” The letter quotes then-Sen. Obama’s own 2006 reference to chemical plants as “stationary weapons of mass destruction spread all across the country.”

Whitman acknowledged the difficulty of EPA action given this year’s election and the anticipated pushback from industry and the chemical lobby. But Jackson at least has “a White House that is willing to move forward,” Whitman said. If Obama does not get reelected, she said, it will be “even more difficult” to convince the EPA to use its Clean Air Act authority.

Although Whitman never received an official response to her April letter, she said Jackson had given a “green light for internal assessment” of the chemical security issue. The question, Whitman said, is whether anything will be done.

“The likelihood of something happening before the election is very slight,” Whitman said. “But we cannot continue to let politics trump policy. We’ve got to draw the line at some point.”

In an email to the Center for Public Integrity Tuesday evening, an EPA spokeswoman wrote, "We're not going to comment on internal discussions, but no decisions have been made."

Some chemical companies oppose EPA action by pointing to the Department of Homeland Security’s Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS), an interim set of standards passed in 2006 that asks high-risk facilities to assess and report on their security procedures.

Scott Jensen, a spokesman for the chemical industry’s main trade group, the American Chemistry Council, said in a statement that CFATS has “improved security for thousands of facilities.”

Yet CFATS exempts thousands of plants, including about 2,400 water treatment facilities and most oil refineries. It also explicitly bars the Department of Homeland Security from requiring specific security measures, such as adopting safer processes.

Industry officials say chemical security is being addressed by CFATS and EPA action would be duplicative.

But Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace, said, “It’s not a question of duplication. It’s a question of cracks the size of the Grand Canyon. The majority of the industry is escaping.”

The use of chemicals has increased dramatically due to the economic development in various sectors including industry, agriculture and transport. As a consequence, children are exposed to a large number of chemicals of both natural and man-made origin. Exposure occurs through the air they breathe, the water they drink or bathe in, the food they eat, and the soil they touch (or ingest as toddlers). They are exposed virtually wherever they are: at home, in the school, on the playground, and during transport.

Chemicals may have immediate, acute effects, as well as chronic effects, often resulting from long-term exposures. About 47 000 persons die every year as a result of such poisoning. Many of these poisonings occur in children and adolescents, are unintentional (“accidental”), and can be prevented if chemicals were appropriately stored and handled. Chronic, low-level exposure to various chemicals may result in a number of adverse outcomes, including damage to the nervous and immune systems, impairment of reproductive function and development, cancer, and organ-specific damage.

Sound management of chemicals, particularly heavy metals, pesticides and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), is a prerequisite for the protection of children’s health. Due to the magnitude of their health impact on children, the initial focus for action should be placed on the so-called “intellectual robbers” : lead, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyl, as well as on pesticides, but this by no means implies that other chemicals should be ignored.

U.S. Secret Drug War in Honduras: Botched DEA Raid Leaves 2 Pregnant Wom...

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has confirmed its agents were on board a U.S.-owned helicopter with Honduran police officers when four people were shot and killed on a boat earlier this week. Two of the victims were said to be pregnant women. The deadly incident has highlighted the centrality of Honduras in the U.S.-backed drug war. Honduras is the hub for the U.S. military operations in Latin America, hosting at least three U.S. bases.


“The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has confirmed its agents were on board a U.S.-owned helicopter with Honduran police officers when four people were shot and killed on a boat earlier this week.”

How the Middle Class Got Screwed

What Obama Should Learn From Occupy

 The first person I met at Zuccotti Park after it had become Liberty Plaza was Camille Raneem. She had been an Obama supporter and was disappointed, like so many, with his politics since the election. She'd been at Occupy Wall Street (OWS) since September 17, the day the camp sprang up.

"I've been waiting for this for three years," she told me then.

Months later, she elaborated: "The two most shining moments of my life were election night 2008 in Times Square, just because everyone was so together. The second time I had that feeling of just complete and utter connectedness was the second night of Occupy, when we spontaneously organized a candlelight vigil at a couple of different spots by Wall Street."
"Just walking through those quiet dark streets in the middle of the night with the lights, we were all completely silent, a hundred and some odd people in dead silence with their candles, it was beautiful and it took me back to when I started believing that I could have faith in my country again, that I could work together with citizens," she continued. "That's what I felt when Obama was elected. I had that shattered, but I never lost that hope because I knew it was possible."

It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch at this point to say that Obama is responsible for Occupy Wall Street's existence. The failures of his administration to stop the bleeding caused by financial meltdown have been well documented, as well as the disillusionment among many former supporters.

What's been discussed less often is the fact that the Obama campaign trained a lot of first-time political operators, young people as well as older folks inspired for once to go beyond showing up on election day and then left without much to do. Organizing for America was supposed to continue the movement that sprang up around the campaign, but political movements are unwieldy things and the control of the Democratic National Committee shut down much of the free-flowing energy that helped elect the president. For three years, as Raneem noted, activists waited and wondered if they'd made a mistake.
But some of them were planning something else.

The Politics of Personalities 

Marta Evry, a California-based community organizer and blogger at Venice for Change, did asurvey recently of over 1,200 self-selected people, mostly political activists, about their feelings on the Obama administration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she found that many of those who had worked or volunteered heavily for Obama in 2008 were undecided as to whether they will do so again - 47 percent of the respondents. Thirty-nine percent were undecided as to whether they would donate money to the re-election effort (82 percent of them had donated in 2008).

Evry told me herself that she's not going to go back to the Obama campaign unless "something drastic happens." The same is true, she said, for many of the people she worked closely with in 2008. But that doesn't mean they're dropping out of activism - and for many, their alternate solution has come through Occupy.

"There's this kind of damaged sentiment," Raneem told me. "We've already learned our lesson, that is that the powers of the people have to rest in the people."

Amin Husain, who was involved in planning the Wall Street occupation from July on, was one of many who had given his time and effort to Obama in 2008, registering to vote for the first time in his life and going to Philadelphia to work as a legal observer at the polls. "I gave it my true shot," he said. And for him it was the first and the last chance that the Democrats got.

Brook Packard, a musician and educator from Rye, New York, told me that she, too, was not a regular Democratic voter. After 2004 and her disappointment in the choice of John Kerry, she gave what she could, organized marches in her town and traveled to different places to volunteer. "You get sort of worn down; you vote; you work on the streets; you drive people to the polls - and then Obama goes and makes a sweet deal with Wall Street," she said.

The picture of the Obama activist is often of a young person like Raneem, getting involved in politics for the first time during or right after college, but many of them were also like Packard, Evry and Husain: adults who thought Obama might be different than the standard Democratic politicians who'd never inspired them before. And still others, like Stephen Shepherd from Lexington, Kentucky, had been involved with Democratic politics for a while.

Shepherd got his start as a college Democrat at the University of Kentucky, worked on Congressional campaigns in 2006 and then became a field staffer for Obama in the Lexington area in 2008. Though Kentucky obviously didn't swing Obama's way, Shepherd noted that Fayette county had the highest voter turnout in the state and went heavily for Obama. "I was a hard-core Obama fan, just sure he was going to solve every single problem that we had," Shepherd said.
It actually wasn't just Obama's failures (on health care and the Iraq war) that put Shepherd off the Democratic Party, either. He was also disgusted by Jack Conway, now the attorney general of the state and a Democrat, attacking Rand Paul's religion during the 2010 campaign.

Disillusionment with Obama, for many of these activists, led not to a search for another hero - as Micah Sifry noted - but a turn away from the idea of heroes and toward the specific problems that need to be fixed. "The conversations are between people who are looking at the politics of personalities and people who are looking at the politics," Evry noted and Raneem echoed her. Evry continued, "OWS is very issue-oriented. It's not being built around leaders. You start looking at what do you believe in, what do you want to organize around?"

For Husain and Shepherd and others, their disappointment led to questioning the two-party system and returning to activism on the outside. "I got pretty cynical after 2010 and Occupy really re-lit my hopes," Shepherd said. And Raneem points out, "I don't believe that anybody can get anywhere close to running for president without having certain ties and certain interests."

Packard agreed. "With Occupy, by not having a person, an agenda, the dream is shared by everyone and can be worked on by everyone. The dream is similar: no war, no patriarchy, the least among us gets strengthened."

Husain wanted to be sure to note, though, that in Zuccotti Park, at least, the movement was kicked off by people who had always wanted to work outside of the political system. "The anarchists were the first. The hippies were first."
From the Party to the Streets - Using Obama's Organizing Techniques to Occupy
The Obama campaign was a strangely open place; anyone could walk into a campaign office, be handed a walk list or a phone list, given cursory training and put to work. Volunteers were given personal logins to the voter database, demonstrating an extreme amount of trust in people whose backgrounds had not been vetted at all. Given that sort of freedom and responsibility, many were dismayed when Organizing for America (OFA) turned out very differently.

Evry was active with OFA during the battle for health care reform, but was disappointed by the organization's refusal to let activists pressure Democratic lawmakers who weren't supporting the bill. So instead, she and her group did their own organizing to target local Democrats. "I would not have thought to do that four years ago," she said.

That's what the Obama campaign empowered her to do, she noted, and it did so for a lot of young people, who immediately saw an outlet in Occupy for those skills they'd honed with the confidence they felt from winning.
Technology was an important part of the Obama campaign - tools like MyBarackObama.com gave activists experience in self-organizing, so putting together protests on Facebook became second nature. Raneem pointed out that a lot of central people in the media and public relations teams at Occupy in New York had either campaigned for Obama or other Democrats for years. But, now, using those skills for themselves, she said, "At the end of the day they're the hero, not somebody that they've spent 40 hours a week calling other people about."

Husain was part of the original email list that created the "We are the 99 percent" slogan and he pointed out that that slogan didn't come from a vetted, professional, controlled analysis or a trained media team. "It was 256 emails back and forth and a meeting. That came from a visceral place."
Working together is a pleasure in itself - that's been one of the tenets of Occupy's reclamations of public space, that being with other people is in a way its own reward. And that, too, was something that people organizing for the first time with Obama learned. "Human beings were meant to work together," Packard said. "[The Obama campaign] really brought people together, which is maybe why the hope crashed us so."
Evry, too, noticed this, that giving people positive feedback on the campaign (including, ultimately, the victory) kept them coming back. "They start forming community, you start forming these relationships that go beyond the political," she said.

The boost that comes with wins and with solidarity has helped carry Occupy to some startling places. Ironically, some of the things that helped OWS catch on in the beginning didn't look like wins - penned-up girls being pepper-sprayed in the face, 700 arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge - but surviving those things together helped push less radical activists to another level of activism beyond phone banking and calling one's representative.
Packard became involved with Occupy when her husband, Bishop George Packard, received a call from Chris Hedges, asking him to support Occupy's call for Trinity Church to allow them to occupy Duarte Square. Bishop Packard, a retired Episcopal clergyman, was arrested in Duarte on December 17 when, after Trinity refused to grant access to the space, he was one of the people who climbed over the fence and briefly took the square anyway.

"I was always the free radical in the family," Brook Packard said. "It's been sort of a growth for him."
Suddenly, Occupy tactics are everywhere and even state and local politicians have been willing to join in. Packard told a story of a group of senior citizens in her town, who together with county legislator Judith Myers, occupied a bus stop in protest at the elimination of service to their homes.

Shepherd, whose occupation in Lexington, Kentucky, had been in place since September 29 in front of a Chase bank, noted that they, too, have gotten support from state and local politicians, including a state representative, Kelly Flood, who took a handmade sign from Occupy Lexington and presented it to OWS in Zuccotti Park.
Still, Husain noted that there has been tension between what he terms "the very traditional well organized people" and "those who are like 'No, this is an uprising.'"
"There's room for everyone in here," he said, but the debate that remains is between those who argue that Occupy is about the political process and others who say that it's not, "that it's a transformative movement that is going to go beyond any election."

A Declaration of Independence? 

Husain himself is on the side that chose uprising. But he also pointed out that the movement doesn't try to dictate whether people should or should not take part in the process. "Each individual is autonomous; they can do whatever they want; we don't have rules; it's about freedom and empowering each other."
Over and over again these days, pundit after pundit has waggled a finger at Occupy, calling for activists to occupy a voting booth, to not forget electoral politics, to remember, after all, to vote. But few of them seem interested in talking to the Occupiers themselves, many of whom are quite pragmatic about electoral politics.

Raneem pointed out, "For occupiers to come out and overtly ask the American people not to vote, it won't expedite us organizing together any faster."

For Shepherd, he's intrigued by Elizabeth Warren and a fan of Bernie Sanders, but isn't going to work for just anyone "just because they have a D next to their name." He advocates working with local politicians - as he noted, his local Occupy has gotten support from progressive state legislators and in New York, city council members Jumaane Williams and Ydanis Rodriguez have been huge supporters of OWS.

The Obama question even seems moot for some of the people I spoke to for this story - the frustration with the electoral system extends to an electoral college that renders one's vote largely meaningless in either a true-blue state like New York, where Packard wonders whom to vote for, or a solid red one like Shepherd's Kentucky.

Raneem pointed out the way that Occupy the Primaries, in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, put pressure on Republican candidates (and also on Obama) and created space for independent activism around the campaigns and a dialogue about the election. And as the political conventions get closer, new crackdowns on dissent in Charlotte are already drawing scorn.

Evry argued, "If you can come in and take over Zuccotti Park, you can come in and take over the Democratic party."

And perhaps that's true. Perhaps wresting control of the party from those currently in charge would be its own type of declaration of independence. In a way, though, that's what happened with Obama, who ran an insurgent campaign against the presumed nominee, Hillary Clinton and won, only to disappoint.
But in that insurgent campaign, fueled by volunteers and small donors as well as Wall Street money, a bunch of activists learned not to wait their turn either. They learned to make things happen on their own and this year they've taken another huge step, calling into question not just the man who is president, but the way the system works from the bottom up.

As Husain said, "This movement isn't about left and right and center, it's about 'What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States?'"

Hunger Games Movie Brings Out Racism From Fans!

Occupy Draws Strength From the Powerless

         Chris Hedges is a weekly Truthdig columnist and a fellow at The Nation Institute. His newest book is “The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.”
“Those who do not carve out spaces separate from the state and its systems of power, those who cannot find room to become autonomous, or who do not “live in truth,” inevitably become compromised.”

There is a recipe for breaking popular movements. I watched it play out over five years in the war in El Salvador. I now see these familiar patterns in the assault against the Occupy movement. It goes like this. Physically eradicate the insurgents’ logistical base of operations to disrupt communication and organization. Dry up financial and material support. Create rival organizations—the group Stand for Oakland seems to be one of these attempts—to discredit and purge the rebel leadership. Infiltrate the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries, a tactic carried out consciously, or perhaps unconsciously, by an anonymous West Coast group known as OLAASM—Occupy Los Angeles Anti Social Media. Provoke the movement—or front groups acting in the name of the movement—to carry out actions such as vandalism and physical confrontations with the police that alienate the wider populace from the insurgency. Invent atrocities and repugnant acts supposedly carried out by the movement and plant these stories in the media. Finally, offer up a political alternative. In the war in El Salvador it was Jose Napoleon Duarte. For the Occupy movement it is someone like Van Jones. And use this “reformist” to co-opt the language of the movement and promise to promote the movement’s core aims through the electoral process.

Counterinsurgency campaigns, although they involve arms and weapons, are primarily about, in the old cliché, hearts and minds. And the tactics employed by our intelligence operatives abroad are not dissimilar to those employed by our intelligence operatives at home. These operatives are, in fact, often the same people. The state has expended external resources to break the movement. It is reasonable to assume it has expended internal resources to break the movement.

The security and surveillance state has a vast arsenal and array of tools at its disposal. It operates in secret. It dissembles and lies. It hides behind phony organizations and individuals who use false histories and false names. It has millions of dollars to spend, the capacity to deny not only its activities but also its existence. Its physical assets honeycomb the country. It can wiretap, eavesdrop and monitor every form of communication. It can hire informants, send in clandestine agents, recruit members within the movement by offering legal immunity, churn out a steady stream of divisive propaganda and amass huge databases and clandestine operations centers. And it is authorized to use deadly force.

How do we fight back? We do not have the tools or the wealth of the state. We cannot beat it at its own game. We cannot ferret out infiltrators. The legal system is almost always on the state’s side. If we attempt to replicate the elaborate security apparatus of our oppressors, even on a small scale, we will unleash widespread paranoia and fracture the movement. If we retreat into anonymity, hiding behind masks, then we provide an opening for agents provocateurs who deny their identities while disrupting the movement. If we fight pitched battles in the streets we give authorities an excuse to fire their weapons.

All we have, as Vaclav Havel writes, is our own powerlessness. And that powerlessness is our strength. The survival of the movement depends on embracing this powerlessness. It depends on two of our most important assets—utter and complete transparency and a rigid adherence to nonviolence, including respect for private property. This permits us, as Havel puts it in his 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless,” to live in truth. And by living in truth we expose a corrupt corporate state that perpetrates lies and lives in deceit.

Havel, who would later become the first president of the Czech Republic, in the essay writes a reflection on the mind of a greengrocer who, as instructed, puts up a poster “among the onions and carrots” that reads: “Workers of the World Unite!” The poster is displayed partly out of habit, partly because everyone else does it, and partly out of fear of the consequences for not following the rules. The greengrocer would not, Havel writes, display a poster saying: “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient.” And here is the difference between the terror of a Josef Stalin or an Adolf Hitler and the collective charade between the rulers and the ruled that by the 1970s had gripped Czechoslovakia.

“Imagine,” Havel writes, “that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.”

This attempt to “live within the truth” brings with it ostracism and retribution. Punishment is imposed in bankrupt systems because of the necessity for compliance, not out of any real conviction. And the real crime committed is not the crime of speaking out or defying the rules, but the crime of exposing the charade.

“By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such, he has exposed it as a mere game,” Havel says of his greengrocer. “He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted façade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.”

Those who do not carve out spaces separate from the state and its systems of power, those who cannot find room to become autonomous, or who do not “live in truth,” inevitably become compromised. In Havel’s words, they “are the system.” The Occupy movement, by naming corporate power and refusing to compromise with it, by forming alternative systems of community and society, embodies Havel’s call to “live in truth.” It does not appeal to the systems of control, and for this reason it is a genuine threat to the corporate state.

Movements that call on followers to “live in truth” do not always succeed. They failed in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, triggering armed insurgencies and blood-drenched civil wars. They have failed so far in Iran, the Israeli-occupied territories and Syria. China has a movement modeled after Havel’s Charter 77 called Charter 08. But the Chinese opposition to the state has been effectively suppressed, even though its principal author, Liu Xiaobo, currently serving an 11-year prison term for “incitement of subversion of state power,” was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Power elites who stubbornly refuse to heed popular will and resort to harsher and harsher forms of state control can easily provoke counterviolence. The first Palestinian uprising, which lasted from 1987 to 1992, saw crowds of demonstrators throw rocks at Israeli soldiers, but it was largely a nonviolent movement. The second uprising, or intifada, which erupted in 2000 and endured for five years, with armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians, was not. History is dotted with brutal fratricides spawned by calcified and repressive elites who ignored peaceful protest. And even when nonviolent movements do succeed, it is impossible to predict when they will spawn an uprising or how long the process will take. As Timothy Garton Ash noted about Eastern Europe’s revolutions of the late 20th century, in Poland the revolt took 10 years, in East Germany 10 weeks, in Czechoslovakia 10 days.

Occupy’s most powerful asset is that it articulates this truth. And this truth is understood by the mainstream, the 99 percent. If the movement is severed from the mainstream, which I expect is the primary goal of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, it will be crippled and easily contained. Other, more militant groups may rise and even flourish, but if the Occupy movement is to retain the majority it will have to fight within self-imposed limitations of nonviolence.

I do not know if it will succeed. If it does not ,then I fear we will see the classical forms of violent protest that are used by an enraged and frustrated populace; for me such a turn to violence, while understandable, is always tragic. Violence is a poison, even when it is ingested in a supposedly just cause. It contaminates all who use it. I watched this poison work on repressors and the repressed from Latin America to the Middle East to the Balkans. I am not a pacifist. I know there are limits. But I desperately want to avoid going there.

“We would not have a movement if violence or property damage were used from the outset,” Kevin Zeese, one of the first activists to call for an Occupy movement, told me. “People are not drawn to violent movement. Such tactics will shrink rather than expand our base of support. Property damage justifies police violence to many Americans. There is a wide range of diversity of tactics within a nonviolent strategy. Disciplined nonviolence is often more difficult because anger and emotion lead people to want to strike back at the police when they are violent, but disciplined nonviolence is the tactic that is most effective against the violence of the state.”

The organizer Lisa Fithian is an author of one of the most concise arguments for nonviolence, “Open Letter to the Occupy Movement: Why We Need Agreements.” The essay points out that without agreements that enshrine nonviolence, “the young [are privileged] over the old, the loud voices over the soft, the fast over the slow, the able-bodied over those with disabilities, the citizen over the immigrant, white folks over people of color, those who can do damage and flee the scene over those who are left to face the consequences.”

“ ‘Diversity of tactics’ becomes an easy way to avoid wrestling with questions of strategy and accountability,” Fithian and two other authors write of the slogan used by the Black Bloc anarchists. “It lets us off the hook from doing the hard work of debating our positions and coming to agreements about how we want to act together. It becomes a code for ‘anything goes,’ and makes it impossible for our movements to hold anyone accountable for their actions.”

“The Occupy movement includes people from a broad diversity of backgrounds, life experiences and political philosophies,” the article goes on. “Some of us want to reform the system and some of us want to tear it down and replace it with something better. Our one great point of agreement is our call for transparency and accountability. We stand against the corrupt institutions that broker power behind closed doors. We call to account the financial manipulators that have bilked billions out of the poor and the middle classes.

“Just as we call for accountability and transparency, we ourselves must be accountable and transparent,” the authors write. “Some tactics are incompatible with those goals, even if in other situations they might be useful, honorable or appropriate. We can’t be transparent behind masks. We can’t be accountable for actions we run away from. We can’t maintain the security culture necessary for planning and carrying out attacks on property and also maintain the openness that can continue to invite in a true diversity of new people. We can’t make alliances with groups from impacted communities, such as immigrants, if we can’t make agreements about what tactics we will employ in any given action.”

We must assume we are targets. And we must fight back by relying on our strength, which in the great paradox of resistance movements is embodied in our weakness. This does not mean we will avoid being repressed or persecuted. It will not keep us safe from slander, lies or jail. But it does offer the capacity to create internal divisions in the apparatus of the oppressors rather than permit the oppressors to create internal divisions within the movement. Divided loyalties create paralysis. And it is our job to paralyze them, not allow them to paralyze us.

This article was originally posted on Truthdig.

America's Dangerous Game - People & Power - Al Jazeera English

America's Dangerous Game - People & Power - Al Jazeera English

This film examines the covert war in Yemen and asks if the US is creating more enemies than it can capture or kill.

Occupy the SEC exposes how Wall Street is using "regulatory arbitrage" t...

A Planned Economy for the 1%

Occupy the SEC: Former Wall Street Workers Defend Volcker Rule Against B...

Conclusive Evidence That BP Misrepresented Gulf Oil Spill Sent To Congress

       “GRA’s special report has been forwarded to Congress in advance of BP’s upcoming trial and has also been submitted to the appropriate federal, state and county authorities, plaintiff attorneys, and environmental and health advocacy groups who have a stake in the outcome of the trial.”




Gulf Rescue Alliance (GRA) has just sent a briefing package to the Attorney Generals of Alabama and Louisiana which presents evidence they believe has never seen the light of day concerning the how and why of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster and subsequent release of toxic oil into the Gulf—oil that is still gushing from various seabed fractures and fissures.


The evidence provided therein clearly indicates:
The unmentioned existence of a 3rd Macondo well (the real source of the explosion, DWH sinking and ensuing oil spill).
 The current condition of this well being such that it can never be properly capped.
The compromised condition of the seabed floor being such that there are multiple unnatural sources of gushers continuing to pour into the Gulf, with Corexit dispersant still suppressing its visibility.
That the highly publicized capped well (Well A) never occurred as reported, and in fact was an abandoned well, hence it was never the source of the millions of gallons released into the Gulf.
GRA’s special report (a comprehensive compilation of research released by insiders and experts through confidential internet sources) has been forwarded to Congress in advance of BP’s upcoming trial on Monday, February 27th in New Orleans, LA.  Entitled An Expert’s Analysis of ROV Film Footage Taken at the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disaster Site, it has also been submitted to the appropriate federal, state and county authorities, plaintiff attorneys, and environmental and health advocacy groups who have a stake in the outcome of the trial.


“The Gulf Rescue Alliance has no interest in publicity for itself, pointing fingers, finding who to blame or anything else; we are interested in catalyzing action on an urgent basis to save the Gulf from long-term, disastrous impacts by getting actual solutions being applied; solutions that have been blocked by the EPA for the past 23 years.  We hold the EPA directly responsible for keeping in place the destructive response protocols used in this disaster aka Corexit.  The Gulf and the life it supports can’t wait 3, 6 or 12 months for a trial to bring a resolution; nor will a real resolution be possible if no admission occurs of the currently uncapped well. Justice and damage dollars will mean nothing if the Gulf is dead,” said a spokesperson for GRA.


Much of the original underwater video that was analyzed comes from oilspillhub.org*, “an online resource for those studying the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The site provides an archive of the underwater video of the event, as well as additional tools and resources for educators, scientists, and engineers who are expanding our knowledge of environmental issues.”


“Oilspillhub.org is developed and hosted by Purdue University working in cooperation with the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Energy and Environment Subcommittee in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.” - oilspillhub.org


The aforementioned “Expert’s Analysis” makes plain the fact that much information, of which BP et al. was the exclusive source, had been misrepresented with prior deliberation before being submitted to the US Federal Government and other concerned parties.  In many cases the forensic analysis has laid bare a pattern of tampering with evidence in an attempt to mitigate the compensatory and punitive damages BP might be forced to pay.


This extraordinary report goes on to document a scenario in which it appears that BP illegally drilled more than one well at the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Furthermore, the well that was ultimately capped after 87 straight days of gushing oil and gas into the Gulf may not be the one that was licensed by the appropriate US permitting agencies.


The factual sequence of events, and especially the actual response by BP, appear to be far different from those reported in the media and by the Coast Guard.  It is important to note that BP was given a lead position in the unified command structure authorized by the US Federal Government immediately following the burning and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon.  This transference of authority away from the impacted state governments was unprecedented in US history and created a virtual monopoly over the flow of information from BP to the appropriate authorities, as well as to the public-at-large.


From even a cursory reading of this “Expert’s Analysis” it becomes clear that the actual evolution of the BP oil spill fits a narrative that is replete with instances of covering up and altering much essential data and information, which would have served as definitive evidence against BP in numerous foreseen legal actions.  Ultimately, much of the information contained in this report may serve to “indict” not only BP and their corporate co-conspirators on several different violations of federal law and state statutes, but also various departments and agencies within the US Federal Government.


However, this was not the purpose for writing this report; rather this consortium of environmental organizations, health advocacy groups and citizen activists encourage the efficient dissemination of this analysis (and its various assessments) in the interest that the much needed federal programs and state initiatives will be implemented expeditiously to “clean up the Gulf”.  They are particularly concerned and eager to see the proper remediation of the GOM waters, beaches, wetlands and estuaries begin in earnest.


“All this is absolutely relevant to the case at hand; and particularly getting this vital information into the hands of the Attorney General of Alabama and anyone else involved in this trial. But our purpose for doing so is to gain attention to what we consider the real situation: EPA’s continued endorsement of toxic Corexit dispersants being used in the Gulf waters, as well as their enforced ban on safe, non-toxic bioremediation products such as Oil Spill Eater II-an effective EPA tested and approved product used around the world,” said GRA.


“It would seem plausible that government officials knew of the information about the 3rd Well but aided in covering it up similar to the recent PEER report revealing the fact that top White House officials manipulated scientific analyses by independent experts to seriously lowball the amount of oil leaking from the BP Deepwater Horizon.”

The Danger of American Fascism

In 1944 as World War II raged, Henry Wallace (FDR’s Vice President from 1941 to 1945) penned an article in the New York Times about the dangers of American Fascism. Wallace warned of the American Fascist’s deliberate perversion of truth and fact, monopolistic extortion, appeal to prejudice and fear while paying lip service to democracy, intolerance towards the “other,” evasion of laws designed to protect the public good, elevation of money and power before the welfare of human beings to feed insatiable greed. With the exception of right wing isolationism, the piece could have been written today.   Give it a read and draw your own conclusions.

The Danger of American Fascism
By Henry A. Wallace
The New York Times
From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944), edited by Russell Lord, p. 259.

Sunday 09 April 1944

On returning from my trip to the West in February, I received a request from The New York Times to write a piece answering the following questions:

What is a fascist?
How many fascists have we?
How dangerous are they?

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.

The perfect type of fascist throughout recent centuries has been the Prussian Junker, who developed such hatred for other races and such allegiance to a military clique as to make him willing at all times to engage in any degree of deceit and violence necessary to place his culture and race astride the world. In every big nation of the world are at least a few people who have the fascist temperament. Every Jew-baiter, every Catholic hater, is a fascist at heart. The hoodlums who have been desecrating churches, cathedrals and synagogues in some of our larger cities are ripe material for fascist leadership.

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.

The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America. The effect of the war has been to raise the cost of living in most Latin American countries much faster than the wages of labor. The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives. Our chemical and other manufacturing concerns are all too often ready to let the Germans have Latin American markets, provided the American companies can work out an arrangement which will enable them to charge high prices to the consumer inside the United States. Following this war, technology will have reached such a point that it will be possible for Germans, using South America as a base, to cause us much more difficulty in World War III than they did in World War II. The military and landowning cliques in many South American countries will find it attractive financially to work with German fascist concerns as well as expedient from the standpoint of temporary power politics.

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after “the present unpleasantness” ceases:

The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups. Likewise, many people whose patriotism is their proudest boast play Hitler’s game by retailing distrust of our Allies and by giving currency to snide suspicions without foundation in fact.

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

Several leaders of industry in this country who have gained a new vision of the meaning of opportunity through co-operation with government have warned the public openly that there are some selfish groups in industry who are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage. We all know the part that the cartels played in bringing Hitler to power, and the rule the giant German trusts have played in Nazi conquests. Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship. What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us. The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. It was Mussolini’s vaunted claim that he “made the trains run on time.” In the end, however, he brought to the Italian people impoverishment and defeat. It was Hitler’s claim that he eliminated all unemployment in Germany. Neither is there unemployment in a prison camp.

Democracy to crush fascism internally must demonstrate its capacity to “make the trains run on time.” It must develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels. As long as scientific research and inventive ingenuity outran our ability to devise social mechanisms to raise the living standards of the people, we may expect the liberal potential of the United States to increase. If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.

The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan. Democracy can win the peace only if it does two things:

Speeds up the rate of political and economic inventions so that both production and, especially, distribution can match in their power and practical effect on the daily life of the common man the immense and growing volume of scientific research, mechanical invention and management technique. Vivifies with the greatest intensity the spiritual processes which are both the foundation and the very essence of democracy.

The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny. This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy. Until democracy in effective enthusiastic action fills the vacuum created by the power of modern inventions, we may expect the fascists to increase in power after the war both in the United States and in the world.

Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.

It should also be evident that exhibitions of the native brand of fascism are not confined to any single section, class or religion. Happily, it can be said that as yet fascism has not captured a predominant place in the outlook of any American section, class or religion. It may be encountered in Wall Street, Main Street or Tobacco Road. Some even suspect that they can detect incipient traces of it along the Potomac. It is an infectious disease, and we must all be on our guard against intolerance, bigotry and the pretension of invidious distinction. But if we put our trust in the common sense of common men and “with malice toward none and charity for all” go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.

How the FCC Can Take the Money Out of Politics

            “The Federal Communications Commission should forbid television broadcasters from charging for campaign ads, and we should peacefully demonstrate outside the FCC offices at 445 12th Street SW, in Washington, D.C., until it does so.”

By Juan Cole
Professor of History at the University of Michigan.

Big money has always been a problem in American politics, but now humongous money threatens to capsize the ship of state. Billionaires are very, very good at getting rich, mostly through stealth monopolies, relatively sure things (e.g., casinos) or through riding investment bubbles. But they are seldom scientists, physicians or educators, and can often entertain rather cranky beliefs, such as climate change denial or misogyny. Thus, the GOP super wealthy, having produced the tea party in 2010, have now given us national candidates so extreme that they often seem to be running for Supreme Leader of Iran instead of president of the United States. Although the Citizens United ruling of the Supreme Court contributed to this problem, the culprits here are, fundamentally, the length of U.S. campaigns and the cost of television advertising for them.

Ari Berman has shown that about four-fifths of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 for the Republican primary contests was donated by only 196 individuals, who gave $100,000 or more each. Politics has become a game of the super rich, but the money they donate is significant only because of the way it is spent. An increasingly large percentage of it pays for television and radio commercials, and it is used by our new aristocracy to keep pet candidates alive. Newt Gingrich, for instance, might not have made it to South Carolina, where he won, without the backing of a single individual, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Venetian in Las Vegas.

In the 2008 campaign year, about $2.8 billion was spent on television campaign spots nationwide, and the figure is expected to be much larger this time. Although television advertising is not always decisive, politicians can’t afford to bet that it won’t be. Mitt Romney spent $15 million in negative advertising against Gingrich in the Florida primary, which arguably blunted Gingrich’s momentum coming off his South Carolina win. Why should private broadcasters, licensed by the U.S. government in preference of other possible licensees, have been allowed to make massive profits off a public political campaign?

As early as the Iowa campaign, Gingrich began complaining about super PAC-funded television advertisements he said were spreading falsehoods about him on behalf of Romney. Romney responded, “Could I come out and speak about ads, generally, and speak about positive ads and negative ads? Of course, that’s available to everybody. But I’m not in any way coordinating the ads or the approach that’s taken by the super PAC.” Gingrich replied scornfully, “It tells you a lot about Governor Romney ... I’m happy to go all over Iowa and point out that he doesn’t mind hiding out behind millions of dollars of negative ads, but he doesn’t want to defend them. The ads are false.”

Would the Florida electoral contest, for instance, have yielded more light and less heat if each candidate had been apportioned airtime based on an equitable formula? Might not Jon Huntsman or Tim Pawlenty have been able to stay in the race and perhaps overcome initial handicaps if they had been able to advertise for free? We are choosing our presidential candidates the way we choose our favorite television shows, by which one generates the most advertising revenue for the broadcaster. Is that really what the founding generation of Americans had in mind?

The Federal Communications Commission should forbid television broadcasters from charging for campaign ads, and we, the public, should peacefully demonstrate outside the FCC offices at 445 12th Street SW, in Washington, D.C., until it does so.

Like the water or the air, the spectrum over which broadcasters transmit their wares is a finite resource that everyone depends on, and which needs to be regulated by government to prevent chaos and hoarding. But in licensing some corporations to dominate the airwaves, Congress inevitably excluded others. I can’t start a radio broadcast from my home because it would interfere with licensed stations. Because choosing some voices over others is inherently unfair, Congress in the Radio Act of 1927 and the Communications Act of 1934 established a general requirement that broadcasters act in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” This conception of broadcasters as public trustees has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court. The FCC could easily invoke this requirement to demand that campaign commercials be aired gratis.

Moreover, why do electoral campaigns have to last so long? Most democratic countries with a parliamentary system manage to pull them off in about three weeks. Romney announced his candidacy 19 months ahead of the election. Why have rolling state primaries for months on end? Surely it would be possible to have a short campaign season, beginning a month before the primaries, which could be held the same day nationwide. The FCC could also regulate the free ads so that they could be placed only during that month. We don’t vote state by state in the presidential election, so why should we do so in primaries for a national party candidate? The length of the campaign creates the need for big money as surely as the television commercials do. Again, a Huntsman or a Pawlenty, both more likely to do well in a general election than any of the current Republican marathon survivors, couldn’t have been knocked out so easily in a short campaign (their main problem was that they ran out of money).

Repealing Citizens United may be a long and difficult struggle, though a necessary one. But reducing the salience of humongous money in campaigns could be tackled to begin with in these other ways. What is clear is that America is less democratic by the minute, and that bad public policy is being promoted as a result of the dominance of politics by a handful of individuals and corporations. When we hear Republican candidates deny climate change as a result of the massive amounts of carbon dioxide and soot we are putting into the air, we know their ventriloquist is Big Oil. The climate scientists are being outshouted and marginalized by a very wealthy, very small group, and as a result the U.S. is endangering itself and the entire globe.

James Madison, a key shaper of the U.S. system, believed that on any important issue there would be more than one faction in the body politic who would contend with one another until a compromise was reached. He also assumed that despite inequalities of resources, there would be sufficient controversy about legislation that extreme positions would be moderated. But when we have 400 billionaires buying our elections, it is perfectly possible for a handful of cranks to deeply influence the outcome and then to dictate policy positions to their clients, the winning politicians. The moderating influence of the broad electorate has been vitiated. That dynamic has produced what many puzzled voters have termed the Republican “clown car” in this election season. The democratic bargain struck by the founding generation, whereby we all have a chance to influence our country’s destiny, is in danger of being undone, with unimaginable consequences. Occupy the FCC.

This article was originally posted on Truthdig.

Religious Liberty vs. Reproductive Liberty:

A New Political Minefield Pits Women Against the Church

By Lauren Brown Jarvis
     National Communications Director for New Leaders Council

Yesterday, billionaire Santorum supporter Foster Friess stole the political headlines when he told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell in his day, women didn't need contraception, "they used Bayer aspirin." According to Friess, women who kept aspirin between their knees didn't get pregnant and it worked just fine. While I honestly believe Mr. Friess' comments were about abstinence and personal responsibility, his views reveal what is so remarkably wrong with the flawed GOP presidential field and the entire Republican Party.

Mr. Friess, it is not your day, it is 2012. Modern women across the political spectrum do not take their reproductive rights, our right to plan our families, as lightly as you do. Friess' comments reinforce how out of touch Republicans are with the current generation of women AND men. Right-wingers truly believe in resurrecting some bygone, gilded era in American life, when women didn't need birth control, blacks and whites could be separate but equal, and homosexuality didn't exist.

Antiquated positions on almost every issue are alienating Republicans from the growing generation of millennials. These young voters are at a time in their lives when the decision to have or not have children is a paramount one. Men and women of ambition have their entire professional and personal lives ahead of them. These are everyday Americans who know introducing a child into our lives before we are ready, indelibly alters our choices, resources and responsibilities. There are many of us in our mid and late 20's or even our 30's who are not financially or emotionally ready to be parents.

Still, Republicans insist this fight has little to do with women's reproductive rights, choosing to focus on religious liberty. This is another glaring indicator of the GOP's dated and unreasonable thinking. In fact, Los Angeles Times writers Kim Geiger and Noam Levey reported on how the GOP traditionally has backed contraceptive mandates. Republicans must realize in today's America, minorities matter, women matter and the majority of Americans believe in an equitable society for all regardless of party doctrine. With economic doubt and recession all around, Americans are more committed to the preservation of their rights than ever. THAT is what we cling to. The belief Americans deserve to make decisions about our families and our lives free from government intervention. Especially women. An idea evidenced by recent reactions to Susan G. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood, the Catholic Church vs. the President and as of late, Chris Christie vs. the citizens and elected officials of New Jersey. Religious liberty cannot be used as a facade for what is obvious to many Americans. Republicans can't go after the President on the economy anymore, so trumping up charges of eroding religious liberties, is the only mud ball they have left to sling.

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is on record saying he supports states outright banning the sale of contraceptives. Furthermore, he believes contraceptives lead to a lifestyle contrary to the natural order. As we all know, there is nothing natural about sex -- certainly in the GOP, where the candidates running for office have a combined total of 19 children. Gingrich ranks last as a father of two, none with his current wife Callista. Yet, each of the candidates has taken a well-documented anti-abortion, anti-contraception stand. Ron Paul's views on contraception are similar to Santorum's. In the past, Paul has introduced legislation giving states the right to outlaw selling contraceptives. And according to Friess, Santorum supports contraceptive use as long as it's in Africa for AIDS prevention. As a governor, Romney supported a mandate for contraceptive coverage and was lauded by the White House for doing so. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney noted the irony of Mitt Romney "criticizing the president for pursuing a policy that's virtually identical to the one that was in place when he was governor of Massachusetts."

The notion Americans and American women want contraceptive coverage continues to exceed the GOP realm of comprehension. Yesterday's congressional hearing debacle starring Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) was a phenomenal example. Democratic congressmembers lambasted Issa's conduct before walking out. The congressman held a hearing, again, not on reproductive rights, but religious liberty, which is why he was compelled to prevent law student Sandra Fluke from giving her testimony. Issa claims he did this on the basis she was not a member of the clergy. Fluke, a third-year law student, attends Georgetown, a Catholic university, where students have fought for years to have contraceptives included in their health coverage. Fluke's testimony was intended to illustrate contraceptives have medical uses outside of pregnancy prevention. Fluke's views are legitimate and show a great deal of intersection between religious and reproductive liberties. Rush Limbaugh argued in favor of Issa's decision, stating the hearing was really on "whether the [government] has the authority to mandate that anybody provide contraception to their employees, either free or for charge." See? This debate isn't about contraception at all.

However, what everyone should find most problematic are the actions of the women of the GOP. Outside of Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who have broken with their party, women Republicans have also decided to use religious freedom as shield for denying American women preventative healthcare. Several Republican congresswomen spoke at length on how they would fight the President and his attempts to force people of faith to "violate their conscience." They included Representatives Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Sandy Adams (R-FL), Jean Schmidt (R-OH), Diane Black (R-TN), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) and Cynthia Lummus (R-WY). Each was adamant this was not a women's health issue and made sure to reiterate that talking point as often as possible. Representative Black stated, "She came to Washington because freedoms are being taken away." Yet, this group announced it is ready to go hand to hand with the President and Secretary Sebelius, in the name of religious liberty and the disenfranchisement of countless American women who would benefit from contraceptive access.

So who is right? Contraception has no bearing on sexual morality in as much as a man desiring to take Viagra (which is covered by insurance) doesn't make him a sexual deviant. It's a choice, and in America freedom is really about having the choice to make the best decision for you, your future, your family. Our political leaders' eagerness to make the health and wellbeing of American women a wedge issue will not bode well for the GOP when voters head to the ballot box. Reproductive liberty for American women should be as important as any other right we are guaranteed as Americans. At the end of the day, what women ultimately decide to do with our bodies should remain between us, our partners, our doctors, our God. This is the religious freedom we want.