02.05.10
Posted in ALL, Government, Issues, Media, The Supreme Court
at 1:46 pm
The recent Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which removed one of the last obstacles to corporate influence in democracy, has been interpreted by both the right and mainstream pundits as a strong defense of free speech. Having already lampooned here the ridiculous notion that corporations are people with First Amendment rights, I want to put the Court’s reasoning behind its decision to a simple smell test.
Supposedly, the conservative justices are concerned over laws that restrict free speech. Their reasoning (and you can read the decision [pdf] here), goes like this: “Political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it,” and any laws which do burden such speech “must further a compelling interest.”
The Court decided that preventing corporations (and unions) from spending anything they want to influence democratic elections would be an unjustified “chill” on free speech. But they admit that there are situations in which courts can and should restrict some kinds of speech. For instance, the right of citizens not to die of third-degree burns because some nutter yells “fire” in a crowded operahouse (ok, IMAX theatre) is the kind of “compelling interest” usually cited.
“…The U.S. has a compelling interest in ensuring that consumers watching mass televised sporting events are not exposed to political content which may threaten established powers or detract from the consumerist spirit of the games…”
New York Times columnist Stanely Fish, while not necessarily agreeing with the decision, says it reflects a “purity of principle;” i.e., the five justices in the majority brushed aside concerns over corporate corruption because of their single-minded dedication to the First Amendment.
So, basically, if the Court does tolerate any restrictions on speech in the United States of America, it’s for a really really really good reason — a compelling interest. Pundits and anchors may parrot this reasoning to save time and the pain of thought, but you only need to look around a bit to see how empty this is.
Media companies like CBS can restrict the free speech of groups if the ads they’re paying for conflict with their (inconsistent) “standards.” And they can get away with barring that speech even though the private network is using the public’s airwaves. (While planning to show an anti-abortion ad in this weekend’s Superbowl, they’re refusing to air one by an internet dating site whose members are gay — the ad shows two male football fans discovering they like each other when their hands meet in the chip bowl.) CBS lawyers wouldn’t so blatantly snuff out the speech of some groups (again) if they thought they’d lose a lawsuit over it. So by what “compelling interest” argument would the Court back them up?
The United States has a compelling interest in ensuring that viewers of professional sports are not exposed to visual situations in which gays are not depicted as promiscuous or immoral.
To be fair to the Court, though, that ad promotes a commercial service, so it was commercial speech more than political — the Court has declared that they’re especially concerned about restricting free speech when it’s political. Except that CBS was allowed to reject an ad from Moveon.org in 2004 concerning the fiscal irresponsibility of President Bush, clearly a political ad. CBS declares that they reject “issue advocacy” ads, which is practically the very definition of political, but that kind free speech ban is perfectly legal.
The United States has a compelling interest in ensuring that consumers watching mass televised sporting events are not exposed to political content which may threaten established powers or detract from the consumerist spirit of the games.
Speaking of TV content, the Court has upheld FCC rules smacking broadcasters with stiff fines for airing any of a specific number of physical acts or naughty words. (Remember, it was Janet Jackson’s nipple that tipped off that chain of events.) So you can see a scene in Law and Order or 24 in which someone violently floors another with a baseball bat or a 2×4, but not view loving sex or catch a fleeting glimpse of the breast of a human female.
Conclusion? The United States has a compelling interest in ensuring that any graphic and tittilating content broadcast on the airwaves depicts physical violence rather than physical love.
But lets not beat around the bush here. Probably the most fundamental kind of speech that the First Amendment was designed to protect is that of individuals directly protesting (or supporting) the government, whether liberals at a Bush protest or Tea Party protesters dissing Obama. Yet courts routinely uphold the right of the Secret Service to herd protesters into “free speech zones,” out of sight of the public officials and news media that their speech is aimed at.
"Free speech zone" at the 2004 Democratic Convention
The United States has a compelling interest in protecting the image and sensibilities of the president over the free speech rights of citizens.
Clearly, there are sometimes real compelling interests that the Court needs to weigh in ruling on constitutional issues. Whether they admit it or not, the five justices in the majority are not principled defenders of free speech. Rather, they weighed the corporation’s right to unlimited, paid speech against the free speech of individuals and the health of democracy, and ruled in favor of the corporate interests.
The only principle the Court defended was profit.
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01.22.10
Posted in ALL, Government, Media, The Supreme Court
at 4:38 pm
This week the Supreme Court essentially ruled that the founders got it all wrong.
Anyone who reads this space regularly knows I’m not prone to frequent hyperbole, but the consequences of what happened this week in Washington for the United States republic can hardly be overstated.
Last September I wrote about a case coming before the Supreme Court. It supposedly involved free speech, but actually involved whether five judges could be persuaded to consider cash as speech. A slim majority of justices (the “conservative” bloc) just became the “judicial activists” they’ve railed against in the past, overturning decades of legal precedent by confusing money with speech and endorsing the absurd notion that corporations are people, entitled to the same human rights guaranteed to (human) individuals under the Bill of Rights.
“It will be similar to the tyranny that [conservatives] fear from Big Government, only Mickey Mouse will be issuing the decrees…”
In the new United States, corporations will be able to spend as much money as they need to saturate the airwaves, the newspapers, and the Internet with as much political propaganda as it takes (there’s no requirement it has to be true) to decide the course of American democracy in their interests. (Read a synopsis of the decision here, and a moving protest against it here.)
Most conservatives claim that any limit on what an Enron or an Exxon can spend on elections is a muzzling of free speech. But they can’t point to a single actual person who has been denied their right to speech. Supposedly, the founders intended such rights for corporations as well as people, and “free speech” entitles institutions to spend any amount of money to drown out the speech of actual, breathing individuals.
A first-year law student — with one brain lobe tied behind her back — could demolish the argument that no one may control how people or groups spend money: bribing a federal judge is illegal, but is that “free speech” too?
“If you free yourselves from “The Government” only to hand it over to “The Gap,” your freedoms will follow…”
Liberals are justifiably up in arms over this, but why aren’t conservatives, as well? If you count yourself as one, here’s just a few reasons you should be as irate as the rest of us:
You’re against a strong federal government. Congratulations — you’ve just witnessed a big step towards one. One of the checks against a big, bad government is the election of hundreds of different representatives from different walks of life — different parts of the country, different philosophies, different experiences. They’re all too similar as it is, most of them coming from just two parties which themselves are pretty similar. But with no limits on what corporations can spend to shape the system, our senators and congresspeople will get more and more alike with each and every Election Day. And the philosophy all these corporate shills embody will be one and the same.
It will be one which enforces the power of private institutions to roll over anything — anything — in order to grow and produce profit. Individual rights — the ones that the tea party movement purports to protect — will have zero value in this brave new world. It will be similar to the tyranny you fear from Big Government, only Mickey Mouse will be issuing the decrees.
You’re in favor of freedom. Good, so am I. And we have quite a lot of it in the U.S. But do you know why the people of, say, North Korea have so little freedom? It’s not just because they’re barred from traveling to Hawaii. It’s also because their information is tightly controlled. The government controls the media, blocks the Internet. So not only do they know very little about the world and their own country, but they don’t even know what they don’t know.
In the U.S., much of what we know and rely on to help us decide how to vote is already fed to us by the corporate world. The same companies that make aircraft carriers and medical devices produce textbooks and TV news. But the Supreme Court just struck down the last major barrier to near-total corporate control on what you put in your head. The information we receive will soon have even less relevance to democracy, your community, reality, or anything that doesn’t serve the interest of large banks, energy companies, and money itself.
Your tea party movement said it opposed bailing out the banks at the people’s expense. Now Wall Street will have the freedom to put even more bailout-ready politicians in government.
If you free yourselves from “The Government” only to hand it over to “The Gap,” your freedoms will follow.
You’re against taxes. Presumably, that’s because you don’t like spending your money on things for other people. But all the millions more that corporations will now spend on consultants, media buys, attack-ads, attack-feature-films — where do you think it will come from? Out of the salaries of bankers and CEOs? No, it’ll be passed on to consumers, the buyers of everything from gasoline to Gas-X.
So unless you participate in Buy Nothing Day — every day of the year — it’ll come out of your pocket. Tell me how that’s any different from a tax. (Except you get a small say in how your taxes are spent.)
Whether you count yourself as a tea partier or a disciple of MoveOn.org, the Supreme Court has just attacked your freedom in the name of freedom. I can’t think of any greater time for bipartisanship than now.
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01.19.10
Posted in ALL, Barack Obama, Economy, Government, Health
at 11:07 pm
Republican Scott Brown just won the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy. Normally this would only interest political wonks, but by moving one seat from the Democratic to the Republican side of the Senate, the G.O.P. gains more than just a red seat — they gain much greater power to decide whether anything will get done in Washington. And their pre-determined answer is, “no.”
It’s ironic that the most rabid critics of red tape and bureaucracy in Washington are tonight celebrating their new-found power to hamper and filibuster the will of the American majority. Now, I’d be celebrating alongside them if the will of the majority was heinous and nefarious, like legalizing torture or suspending parts of the Constitution they don’t agree with. But we’re talking about things like limiting carbon pollution and expanding access to health care — not exactly dangerous grenades that a hero would throw himself on.
“Ahh,” but the tea-partiers say, “there’s a good reason behind all this negativity. These programs cost money and we shouldn’t be spending what we don’t have. We need to think about the deficit.”
“[The Republicans'] secret plan to control the cost of health care is in the same safe as Nixon’s secret plan to end the war in Vietnam…”
That would make sense, except that self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives forgot about the deficit for eight years while a Republican administration added nearly $5 trillion to the national credit card. Now a Democratic administration wants to spend money on healing people, through greater access to health care, rather than killing them, through a costly, extracurricular war in the Middle East, and conservatives suddenly remember their “core” fiscal values.
(In fact, escalating that other war — Afghanistan — is the only major Obama initiative that the Republicans have supported. Kind of makes you wonder if the G.O.P. will automatically support any policy featuring weapons and explosives. Maybe instead of taking the public option off the table, Obama should have offered a free handgun with every health insurance policy.)
Scott Brown promised to add his vote to those against health care reform. What the heck was his stump speech? “If elected, I promise to reduce Americans’ access to health insurance”? (Cheers, wild applause.) This is particularly sad since Senator Kennedy considered health care “the cause of my life.” Now, the agreement that Democrats reached through excruciating compromise and old-fashioned horse trading may very well fall apart.
But that’s politics, right? If Scott Brown and the majority of the (minority) Republican party choose to value U.S. treasury funds over the health and lives of tens of millions of Americans, that’s their choice. We can question their ethics, but at least they’re fighting the debt, right?
Wrong again. Conservatives have heard that the health care bill is expensive (that’s true — whoever said saving lives is cheap?), but the part they choose not to hear is that it would be paid for. Deficit-neutral. No extra debt. Obama naively assumed that if he made sure the bill didn’t add to the deficit, he wouldn’t be attacked by the deficit hawks. Yet they still said “no.”
“Maybe instead of taking the public option off the table, Obama should have offered a free handgun with every health insurance policy…”
Well, then, the G.O.P. must have their own plan to curb the rapidly rising cost of health care, which is costing the country more and more with every passing year. They’ll introduce that plan right after they kill the current bill, right?
Yeah, right. Their secret plan to control the cost of health care is in the same safe as Nixon’s secret plan to end the war in Vietnam.
I was beginning to agree with some on the Right who have been claiming that President Obama’s election-year talk of change was just empty promises and cynical politics. But now I’m starting to understand what he’s been up against.
For all his faults, Ted Kennedy stood for something. What does Scott Brown stand for?
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01.06.10
Posted in ALL, Government, Issues
at 6:57 pm
Being a U.S. Senator used to be considered a pretty plum job — you get the title, a chance to move historic legislation, and full use of the private cloak room. But the sudden retirement announcements by two Democratic Senators — Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota — have brought attention to the growing frustrations faced by many in the Senate during these highly partisan times.
The specific reasons cited by these two senators were vague, but thanks to the journal of another, unnamed Senator, recovered by a reporter from a chair inside a Washington, D.C. strip club five blocks from the capitol, we have a rare peek inside the daily tribulations of those who serve the country as United States Senators.
Journal exerpt; January 5, 2010
9:05 a.m. Met with top cookie-sellers from Girl Scout Troop #419 from [my state]. Staff member tells me (afterward) they will not be old enough to vote for me for nine years. Could have used those seven minutes for fundraising. Note to self: fire staff.
“…They should just send my carpool-lane dummy [to the hearing] in my place, would anyone know the difference?”
9:52 a.m. Finished writing legislation for my signature issue, Sand for Schools, which aims to supply sand and sandbags to some of the poorest public schools that experience flooding due to poorly maintained plumbing. Hoping to finally put my mark on something around here.
10:24 a.m. Was looking forward to the committee hearing on whether to report a bill to extend the soon-to-expire stop-gap funding for reimbursing historically-black hospitals for erroneously pro-rated claim deductions. I was eager to hear the opinion of the expert we had lined up to testify. On the way there, though, my chief of staff handed me a list of accusations for the expert disguised as questions, as well as my novel which she knows I’ve been trying to finish. They should just send my carpool-lane dummy in my place, would anyone know the difference?
11:41 a.m. Introduced my Sand for Schools bill on the Senate floor. I counted 98 empty desks. Could have sworn I heard some snoring coming from somewhere. I think I made a good speech, though. I saw the 82-year-old parliamentarian nodding away in his chair. At least I reached him. I heard the majority leader had it on C-SPAN in his office, that perked me up for a bit, but then his staffer told me he had it on “mute.” Well, defending schools from flooding is a non-partisan issue, so I should get broad support.
1:27 p.m. Headed to the floor after lunch today to vote on a bill that would streamline regulations for non-profit youth organizations. Was thinking of voting yes (damn, that’s why those girl scouts brought those tasty cookies today!) But my aide warned me to vote no. We’d received stern letters from the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Retailers, the National Association of Realtors, and, for some reason, Lockheed Martin. I was on the floor and was going to vote yes anyway, but my aide must have sensed this because she whispered in my ear that if I vote no I’ll have “plenty of time to become more involved with non-profits in the near future.” Sorry troop #419, but enjoy your flag pins.
2:18 p.m. Received my committee assignments from the party leader’s office. I’ve been bumped from the Special Committee on Aging. Damn it, they knew I was counting on that one to make good with the seniors. Last year I stupidly voted against a bill to move money from airline safety to community VCR programming and safety classes. Nearly a hundred seniors from [my state] called me to complain, more calls than I got about the Iraq war. With no platform to kiss up to the AARP I’m as good as DOA next November.
3:41 p.m. Got some responses from the other senators on my Sand for Schools bill. A Nebraska Republican said it’s not the government’s job to get involved in education. “But I’ll support you if you support my amendment to require a pledge of Christian allegiance in public schools.” Seems every vote has its price around here.
Then a Republican on the Armed Services Committee told me the troops in Iraq need the sand more than the schools, for reinforcing army bunkers in Anbar province. I said, “Surely there’s plenty of sand in Iraq?” He said, yeah, but the contractors (big supporters of his) can charge the government more if they fly in sand from the U.S. I laughed, thinking he was joking, but I guess he wasn’t. He said if my bill ever makes it to conference he’ll gut it like a five-pound bass. I guess that means something where he’s from.
As if that wasn’t enough, the (former Democrat) Independent from Connecticut who last week told me he’d support my bill, today told me he was having second thoughts, that he was facing a tough re-election and didn’t want to look too “pro-school.”
I’m at my wit’s end. Thinking about my life, what I’m doing here. If I dropped the FY 2010 budget on my head on the floor of the Senate, would C-SPAN even cover it?
4:56 p.m. Good news. The whip says he thinks Sand for Schools has 54 votes, enough to pass! Apparently, Dick Cheney didn’t make a dire terror-related warning today, so some media outlets covered education instead, and one of them mentioned my bill! (Yay!) Public service can really get you down, but then you see the power of democracy and the system working and it makes it all worthwhile.
4:58 p.m. I’ve been told to expect a filibuster on Sand for Schools. Don’t think I can reach 60 votes. Staff thinks the minority is blocking all bills that direct the government to “do things,” so that people think the government can’t do things.
4:59 p.m. Headed to Tassels. I don’t care if they find out this time.
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12.17.09
Posted in ALL, Environment, Science
at 1:07 am
Remembering how the United States came together to address a past threat may put the current debate over global warming in perspective.
In this excerpt from a November 1941 radio interview, a few weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a World War II skeptic and an internationalist debate whether to confront the Axis threat, and whether the scandal of the hacked telegrams proves “Global Warring” is an elaborate hoax…
Peter Collins, Interviewer: Mr. Sheldon, what makes you so sure the United States is in any danger?
Ronald Sheldon: The facts speak for themselves, Peter. German forces invaded the Soviet Union in June, and we’ve now seen the first American casualties, 11 sailors on the U.S.S. Reuben James, torpedoed by a German U-boat. We cannot stand idly by as the Axis threat continues to grow. I believe that Global Warring is happening and we must end our isolationism and join this war. If we fail to act, the freedom of all humanity could be at risk.
Charles Perry: You see, Peter, this is the kind of chicken-little, sky-is-falling rhetoric I’ve been talking about. These Global Warring folks are trying to scare you, trying to scare all of us. If we don’t enter the war, they say, Germany and Japan will threaten us all. I say, Phooey! No one’s invaded my house!
“…What’s your reaction to the hacked telegrams that global warring deniers say proves analysts have been fudging the data to exaggerate the Axis threat? …”
Collins: But Mr. Perry, haven’t we already seen concrete instances of German and Japanese aggression? What about the invasion of Poland, of China?
Perry: Look, we’ll never know for sure whether those things happened, but if they did, I’m sure they’re just natural fluctuations in the size of empires. It’s nothing to be alarmed about.
Collins: What do you say, Mr. Sheldon?
Sheldon: Every month we hear more radio bulletins about the expansion of the Axis powers. The evidence is only getting stronger and stronger. Each year we fail to act, it’ll get that much harder to defeat them down the road. Even if we could retool our factories overnight to make nothing but ships and tanks, it would still be months before we could really start to tackle this global warring problem.
But there’s another reason it makes good sense. Investing in our industrial capacity will jumpstart the economy and bring needed jobs to millions of Americans.
Perry: Sounds like another “big government” program to me, Peter. Don’t you see what’s happening? President Roosevelt and the Democrats are manipulating the facts to get Americans to support their socialist agenda. First a “Civilian Conservation Corps,” then a “Securities and Exchange Commission,” and now this?
Besides, joining the war would explode the deficit. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna tighten my belt to support Roosevelt!
Sheldon: You’re dodging the facts here. The Axis powers are on the move. They’re bombing England. The imperial waters are rising. The War Department just released a study showing Axis expansion at a rate of 12% per year, and 1941 is shaping up to be the most expansionist year on record.
And what if the imperial waters begin to rush over the United States? Low-lying areas like Pearl Harbor in Hawaii could be in grave danger.
Perry: You’re talking about things that may or may not happen at some unknown point in the future. What we do know is that we’re still climbing out from a big recession, and now is no time to spend money we don’t have.
And by the way, Peter, the 12% figure my friend here cited? I looked into the history of military expansion myself. Turns out 1941 is not the most expansionist year on record. The entire decade of the 1220’s saw much greater imperial dominance, as the armies of Gengis Khan swept across Asia.
Didn’t kill us then, won’t kill us now.
Sheldon: Now really, this is just–
Perry: You know, humans have an amazing capacity to adapt. It makes no sense to disrupt our present economy on the off chance that Germany or Japan might one day threaten our country. Let’s cross that bridge if and when we come to it. And maybe by then, we’ll have invented a giant curtain with spinning blades that could surround the country and chop up fighter planes when they try to fly in. Just look at the kitchen blenders they’re making these days! The pulverizing sky curtain can’t be far off.
Collins: Mr. Sheldon, what do you say to that?
Sheldon: I just– I’m flabbergasted here. There is a strong military consensus that the Axis powers–
Perry: There you go again with your “consensus.” Of course the military analysts are going to say there’s a threat — if there was no threat they might be out of a job. They have a vested financial interest in seeing Germany as a threat, so you can’t believe what they say.
Sheldon: It’s not just analysts, what about the actual people who have already lost their homes — their countries — to the invading armies? The entire country of France has already fallen–
Perry: Well anyone who would side with the French is immediately suspect in my book. But look, how do you “know” that France has been overrun? Have you seen it? Were you there? No, you heard it from reporters, from the media, which of course is full of liberals and Roosevelt-lovers.
Collins: Mr. Sheldon, what’s your reaction to the hacked telegrams that global warring deniers say proves analysts have been fudging the data to exaggerate the Axis threat?
Sheldon: Look, these telegrams — which, by the way, were illegally obtained — all they show is the normal process of military study, done by sometimes fallible humans, just trying–
Perry: No, what the telegrams show — and the people who revealed them are whistleblowers, heroes, in my book — what they show is deliberate manipulation of data. For example, one of them describes a report on the route of German bombers on their way to London one night in February. British radar spots them flying over Hastings just after crossing the English channel. Then Robertsbridge, and finally London, where they supposedly drop their bombs before returning to the mainland.
Now, there’s a gap in the data between Robertsbridge and London where no radar picks up any airplanes, German or otherwise. Etchingham, Wadhurst, Royal Tunbridge Wells — why no data from these cities? The analysts — and the telegrams reveal this — simply discarded those inconvenient data points, and assumed that those bombers continued to head to London. It’s dishonest, and it reveals a conspira–
Sheldon: There’s no data from that stretch because there’s no radar there!
Perry: Why would they just “cut out” data that fails to confirm their, their pre-conceived assumptions? Frankly, this calls into question all military intelligence, and raises serious doubts as to whether Germany and Japan even exist.
Collins: Well folks, we’re clearly not going to settle this debate tonight. Due to the Nazi occupation of Denmark, the Global Warring summit in Copenhagen has been cancelled, but sources tell me the outlook for an agreement between the U.S. and Allied powers anyway did not appear promising …
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