Only Money Has Free Speech

As it is now, advertisers make the decisions about the media, not the people, because the media exist for the purpose of making money. . . .

The fact that people with money can hire lobbyists to represent them in Washington limits equity in the political system. Poor people don’t have the money for this—if they spent everything they had, they couldn’t get enough money together to equal the lobbying power of the rich. After an election, people don’t have access to government, because lack of money prevents them from having equal access to the people in power. That’s an inequity that’s built into the system. That’s where money is more powerful than people.

People do have a right to vote. But whom do they have a right to vote for? They have a right to vote for whoever is chosen. That’s our dilemma right now. It starts with how much it costs to run for office—it now costs $3 million to run for governor in Tennessee. That rules out a lot of people. So the choice is between two people who are willing to spend $3 million, which is not a democratic choice. You can say that the people have a right to vote, but they only have the right to choose between two millionaires or people whom other people with money are willing to back.

—Myles Horton, The Long Haul, © 1990, pp. 169-170

ALEC Corporations: Boycott Them

Corporate members of the American Legislative Exchange Council write model legislation and pressure state legislatures to adopt it. These laws break unions, take away worker protections and environmental regulations, capture control of government for use of corporate interests at the expense of the public good. They include: AT&T, Kraft Foods, UPS, Walmart, Amazon.com, FedEx, Frito-Lay, HP, JC Penney, McDonalds, Microsoft, Miller Brewing Company, Outback Steakhouse, Sprint Nextel, Sony, Time Warner, United Airlines, Verizon, Visa, American Express, KFC/Taco Bell, Walgreens, and hundreds of others. Money you spend there will be used as weapons against democracy, against the middle class, against the environment, against civil liberties. Check the list before you buy. Shop at the smallest, most local places.

For Whom Does the Post Exist?

Postmaster Mark Jamison writes an excellent article in Steve Hutkins' wonderful blog, savethepostoffice.com, about the big issues: does USPS exist merely to serve advertising mass mailers, or does it have an obligation to serve the nation? USPS management and frequently its Office of the Inspector General, and many of the people on the Postal Regulatory Commission, on the Board of Governors, in Congress, and the president, have the wrong answer.

Privatized Postal Disservice

This article, “Privatised mail: a second-class delivery” in The Guardian sheds light on some of the chaos and hardship resulting from privatized postal service. Undelivered mail stacks up in the apartments of privatized carriers in Holland, who are paid piece rates amounting to far less than the minimum wage.

The longer version of the same article, “In the Sorting Office,” in the London Review of Books, includes some of the political history in the Reagan-Thatcher era that brought the privatization about.

The winners from Holland’s liberalization of the postal market were the big organizations who bulk mailed. The losers? Almost everybody else.

The author, James Meek, wrongly accepts that the Internet necessarily means less demand for postal service. The opposite is true. Customers e-mailing documents to USPS to be printed at and delivered from the destination post office could be the biggest boon to mail since paper.

USPS: Vultures Roosting in the Eagle's Nest

The vultures on the verge of destroying the US Postal Service are not merely circling. They've landed in the nest, ready to plunder and privatize, having fully captured USPS management and oversight. It's clear to many that the the Post Office has enemies in Congress, to wit Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), among others. But it's also apparent that there are those in management and oversight who are just as determined to destroy the Post Office, who are in the service not of the American people but of those who consider the USPS their competition and who are eager to devour the advantages it currently maintains.

The postmaster general plans to make drastic cuts that will do away with first-class service, give the pickings to FedEx and the like, and continue propping up bulk mailers (who currently pay less than what it costs the USPS to process and deliver their junk mail). Those cuts will devastate small towns and inner cities, reduce the USPS to a third-class bulk mailer, and replace its middle-class workforce with a workforce of the working poor. All this for what?

Abdicating 6-day delivery to private postal services would, by Government Accountability Office estimates, save costs of only 4 percent of the USPS budget. USPS management has admitted that it wiped one small-town post office off the map because it "'cost' the USPS $1,500 a year more than it made in sales of stamps and money orders." Never mind the mandate that the USPS serve all Americans. Never mind that the USPS is not meant to make a profit but rather to be a self-sustaining service to the American people. Never mind that closing a post office because it is not "profitable" is against the law.

The devastating cuts proposed by the postmaster general—the projected savings of which are absurdly small—will serve only to weaken the USPS, not strengthen it, not put it on firm financial footing. All of the aspects of USPS service that are on the chopping block—6-day delivery, half the distribution network, half the retail network, half the workforce—represent USPS's greatest assets. So why proceed when the financial savings are so small and the resulting loss so devastating? The only conceivable answer is that the intent is not to save money or alleviate the USPS's financial difficulties, but to serve the interests of the vultures ready to devour this national treasure.

The planned devastation of the USPS is based not on need but on greed. The claim of financial emergency is a pretext to break the USPS up and feed the choice bits to the private mailing industry.

The postmaster general says he expects to close 16,000 post offices in six years—that's half of the nation's post offices! And he plans to close or consolidate as many as 313 of the 487 processing plants by 2013—destroying first-class service while estimating the destruction would "save" costs equal to only 4 percent of USPS's budget. When this happens—and USPS management is proceeding fast, in violation of federal law—there will be no more 44-cent postage. Only FedEx rates. There will be no more service to rural, remote, and distressed areas. Newspaper and magazine delivery will be eliminated.

The Internet could be the biggest source of new business imaginable. Customers could e-mail documents to the USPS, which would then print and deliver them from the destination post office. This would be a hugely popular service: next-day delivery anywhere in the country, of anything you can send to a printer. Fast, cheap, and hard copy. All it would require is leadership interested in providing a service to the public.

But what we have now is leadership more interested in providing profit to private moneyed interests than in serving the American people. That is the end result of setting up a public service to function "more like a business," as was done in changing the U.S. Post Office Department to the US Postal Service in 1970-71.

The United States Postal Service is a national treasure that needs to be saved from the formidable forces arrayed against it. And those forces are not only in Congress, but in the USPS itself. Those who seek to save the USPS will not succeed unless they recognize the threat within, and they must do so very quickly or it will be too late.

~~~

John Nichols writes good Save the Post Office columns in The Nation and The Capital Times. And there's always a lot of good information at Save the Post Office, which Steve Hutkins puts together.

Moral war?

Every so often someone applauds what he calls a "moral" war, as Krugman does once again here: "the Civil War and World War II are the two great moral wars of our history, and they should be remembered with pride."

Once again, I have to respond:

The Civil War was never about slavery. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."--Lincoln Lincoln preserved the union to preserve its power. Shame on you, Professor Krugman, for calling Lincoln's war moral. You know better. If Lincoln had permitted the states to dissolve the union, we would not have the power to do the great evil we have wreaked in every small country we've meddled in since the end of WWII.

We entered WWII to punish the Japanese, who attacked our war-making capability in the Pacific. We prided ourselves in fighting the evil Hitler. In beating him, we became him. The list of countries the U.S. has attacked with our military, CIA, gifts and sales of weapons, gifts of money for weapons and military . . . is almost endless. The tail of war profiteering has wagged the dog of U.S. policy since Eisenhower succeeded in his quest, begun in WWI, to create the military-industrial complex he warned us of too late. "I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."--Mohandas Gandhi The enemy is not an evil dictator. The enemy is evil itself. We do not win by doing evil.

--TomRW

"When Does the Greed Stop?"

It's not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans. It's not a matter of conservatives vs. liberals. Those distinctions are becoming less meaningful all the time. What's really happening is a great battle between corporate interests and the interests of ordinary people. There's nothing conservative about today's Republicans. And there's absolutely nothing radical about today's Democrats. What is radical is the current all-out attack on the middle class and the blatant contempt for working families.

The mainstream media are owned by those corporate interests. We're not going to get a straight story from them any more than we are getting a straight story from Scott Walker about Wisconsin's supposed budget crisis. If the rich were to actually pay taxes instead of getting an abundance of tax breaks and loopholes, there would be no budget problem. But Walker's actions have nothing to do with economics or the state budget.

The purpose of this manufactured "crisis" is to create an opportunity to strip workers' of their collective bargaining rights. Those workers are teachers, librarians, and nurses--ordinary people who deserve not only reasonable compensation for the important work they do, but also the right to bargain collectively with their employer.

Do the math. The middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate. The extremely rich are getting much, much richer. The poor are getting poorer. In Wisconsin, the last remaining vestiges of workers' rights are under an all-out onslaught.

When choosing sides, it's crucial to accurately assess what sides are really in opposition. The very powerful are diverting attention away from themselves and creating false oppositions and false divisions in order to distract the unwary and take advantage of people's fears and loyalties.

When you find yourself in a battle, you can't fight effectively unless you know exactly who it is who has identified you as their enemy.

"What is the price? we ask the other side. What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more are you requiring? When does the greed stop?"

These questions were posed by the Lion of the Senate, Edward Kennedy, some years ago on the Senate floor. Here are the answers I'm hearing:

"What price?" There is no limit.

"When does the greed stop?" When ordinary women and men stand up and say, with one voice, "It stops now."

The Price of Inequality

This article, adapted from The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do, by Eduardo Porter, explains that wider communications, bigger companies, and deregulation are creating a pay structure where fewer and fewer people are taking more and more of the money, leaving the vast majority with no hope of sharing the benefits. This is a natural process. Wealth concentrates until the only people who can buy anything don’t need to, and the economy collapses. Both that article and this one point out that, in Frank Rich's words, "America can’t move forward until we once again believe . . . that everyone can enter Frontierland if they try hard enough, and that no one will be denied a dream because a private party has rented out Tomorrowland." Bob Herbert points out that in the recession of 2008 to the present, many unemployed people have lost that hope. As Paul Krugman says in The Conscience of a Liberal 2007 (p. 18), “Middle-class societies don’t emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be created through political action.” The political actions we need are progressive taxation, regulation to prevent abuse of economic power, public education, and a social safety net. And we should focus not on Gross Domestic Product, which harmfully accrues disproportionately to the wealthy, but on the average income of the poorest half or poorest 35% of the people, as recommended by Muhammad Yunus, "banker to the poor" and Grameen Bank founder.

Too, corporate executive pay often is more plunder than compensation.

Fox, Meet Henhouse

Over and over and over again former lobbyists from various industries are hired to regulate the very industries they previously represented as lobbyists. Something about that just smells wrong, doesn't it? And this malodorous putrefaction continues assaulting the national senses regardless of which party is in power. The moneyed interests don't really care all that much who is "in power," because they can all be bought, for pretty damn cheap.

So we had this great landslide election last year, and we celebrated with tears streaming down our faces and cheered until we were hoarse because we'd ushered in "change we can believe in." But at the Fighting Bob Fest last month, Jim Hightower reminded us that what we won last November was "a chance to make progressive change" and that "our agitation is more important than ever."

In an article entitled "Ignore and Consent," Daniel Schulman recounts the "vetting" last week in the Senate Agriculture Committee of Scott O'Malia, who is "a Republican Senate staffer selected by President Obama to fill an open seat on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission."

According to the CFTC website, "Congress created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 1974 as an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity [agriculture and energy] futures and option markets in the United States." This is no mere advisory committee (some clout); this is a regulatory agency (more clout).

But according to a previous article Schulman coauthored with David Corn,

O'Malia . . . worked as an aide to [Senator Mitch] McConnell [R-Ky.] for nine years before becoming the director of federal legislative affairs for Mirant, an Atlanta-based electricity company. At Mirant, according to House and Senate records, O'Malia was registered in 2001 and 2002 to lobby for deregulation on a number of legislative fronts. [emphasis added]

Doesn't that just give you goosebumps? Oh, those lucky hens to have such a conscientious guardian for their henhouse!

During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama had this to say about about the role of lobbyists in government:

We're here because for too long, the doors of Washington have been thrown open to an army of lobbyists and special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play—who have shredded consumer protections, fought against commonsense regulations and rules of the road, and distorted our economy so that it works for them instead of you....

We must reform our lobbyist-driven politics. We must reform the waste and abuse in our government. We must reform the rules of the road that let Wall Street run wild and stuck Main Street with the bill. We must change Washington now....

This change will not be easy. It will require reforming our politics by taking power away from the lobbyists who kill good ideas and good plans with secret meetings and campaign checks. [emphasis added]
—Barack Obama, Green Bay, Wisconsin, September 22, 2008

Do the folks in the administration think we have forgotten this stuff? Do they think we gave the Dems a mandate because Obama is a swell guy and we like his panache? No question, Obama knows how to talk the talk. But we need to see some better progress on walking the walk. Since when does "change we can believe in" equal "business as usual"?

Then there was this little snippet today at MSNBC's FirstRead: "A new Obama administration policy limiting the roles of lobbyists on federal advisory committees is stirring up 'absolute fury,' a lobbyist is quoted as saying." "Absolute fury," that is, on the part of the lobbyists. Poor things. Absolute fury. Can you imagine? This potential reform is mild compared to the shakedown that's in order. I'll call your "absolute fury" and raise you one "populist outrage."

So, it's time to agitate (I'm agitated, aren't you?) and make the most of the chance we gave ourselves last fall to make real progressive change. Write to members of the Senate agriculture committee and tell them boot the foxes out of the henhouse.

The Power of Big Money (videos)

"If you are concerned about public policy in general in this country, health care, the environment, whatever it may be, we have got to pay attention to the power of big money." --Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT (emphasis added)

Here's what Senator Sanders has to say about the power of big money in Washington:

The answer is

public funding for elections.

Here's what Lawrence Lessig of Change-Congress.org has to say about the need to reform the system and wean our politicians from big money:



—Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School, Palo Alto, CA

Return to a Two-Party System: A Proposal to Overthrow the Corporatocracy

A two-party system is a good idea—give the voters real choice, engage in real civic discourse—those kinds of goodies. Good idea—provided that there are really two parties. What we have now is like a 1.25-party system, and all 1.25 of them are owned and operated by Corporations R Us. Andrew Sullivan points out that the Republican Party "is essentially a regional party now—representing the South in the national discourse. And its rhetoric seems divorced from any desire to actually hold responsible public office."

Moreover, much of the antics on the right amount to mindless distractions. Why, oh why do we spend so much time fulminating about Beck? He's theater without substance. There's absolutely no reason to take him seriously. Why should we give a flying fig about him? Paying attention to him just encourages him. Stop that.

What's really going on, what we're being distracted from, is how the Dems we elected, who supposedly are going to bring "change we can believe in," are backing themselves into their corporate masters' corner. We keep pushing, trying to get them into our corner. And we are having some effect. It remains to be seen, though, whether it will be enough to put them into our corner.

And if that's not enough, the Supreme Court is poised to give the corporations even more power. Monsanto may as well run for office in 2012. In the face of such an all-out onslaught on democracy, what possible significance could a goon like Beck have? We're in serious deep weeds here, people. The corporations are eating our American Dream for lunch and we're whining about Beck? Beck?

At least with the Republicans dancing to the corporations' tune, there's not so much of an ideological disconnect. After all, they believe the rich should be getting richer and that the corporations are the only ones entitled to entitlements and handouts. Right? It's more of a screeching dissonance with the Dems. This is change we could believe in? You're kidding, right?

So here's what I propose. Let's ask the progressives in Congress—Kucinich, Grijalva, Feingold, Frank, and their ilk—to split from the corporate-owned Dems and form their own party. Let's ask them to sign a pledge to pass serious corporate-donation and lobbying reforms and accept no corporate funding.

Think for a minute about an empowered progressive party: real progress on environmental reforms, Medicare for all, economic justice, an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, upholding workers' rights, comprehensive immigration reform, real education reform, and the return of a strong middle class and lessening of the huge gap between the very rich and the rest of us.

Now this would take a lot of work, because, of course, the opposition would make no such pledge. They'd have a lot of money, and we'd have, well, us. The quintessential grass roots. We'd have to be really serious: donating our time, our money, and our brilliance to the overthrow of the corporatocracy. But it would be worth it, wouldn't it, to return power to the people? I think if we really wanted to, we could do it.

Now, who's with me?

A Big Day for Corporatocracy

The Supreme Court is about to decide whether corporations have the same rights as individual citizens. This is something worth paying close attention to, because the ramifications are enormous. The Bill Moyers Journal did a great job of presenting both sides of the argument last week. I urge you to watch the whole thing or read the transcript (or both).

The case in question, which could overturn a hundred years of campaign finance reform, is Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. An editorial in the LA Times written by Doug Kendall, founder and president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a think tank and public interest law firm in Washington, DC, explains:

The case involves a film, "Hillary: The Movie," which sharply attacks Hillary Rodham Clinton and her presidential candidacy. It was produced by Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group, to coincide with the 2008 presidential primary season. The Federal Election Commission saw the movie as no different from a standard-issue attack ad -- just longer -- and considered it subject to restrictions imposed under the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law as an "electioneering communication."

Citizens United began as a seemingly inconsequential case about the extent of the FEC's power to regulate such communications, but that was transformed at oral argument in March into a much bigger deal. Citizens United pressed for a sweeping rejection of congressional authority to regulate campaign spending by corporations, and the court's conservative justices were plainly sympathetic to this broad argument [emphasis added].

Kendall goes on to explain that the essential question of the case is whether a corporation has or should have the same rights as an individual. How could you possibly have a healthy democracy if corporations, with their enormous resources, aren't restricted in how they participate in the political process? Does it really make sense to grant corporations the same rights as citizens?

So are we going to let them vote too?

That's where you see the absurdity of the notion of granting corporations the same rights as citizens. Are we going to start handing CEOs special corporate ballots? They probably wouldn't be interested in that, because, of course, one puny little vote wouldn't be enough.

Kendall continues:

In his historic run to the presidency, Barack Obama broke every political fundraising record, raising nearly $750 million from more than a million contributors in 2007 and 2008. Now consider a corporation such as Exxon Mobil. During 2008 alone, Exxon generated profits of $45 billion. With a diversion of even 2% of these profits to the political process, Exxon could have far outspent the Obama campaign and fundamentally changed the dynamic of the 2008 election....

The line between corporations and individuals when it comes to constitutional protections is as old as the United States. The framers wrote the Constitution to protect citizens and the people and never once used the word "corporations."

Early Supreme Court rulings embraced this distinction, holding that the legal rights of a corporation derive from its corporate charter, not the Constitution.

We've been heading down two contradictory roads for some time now. According to Kendall, one road leads to democratic progress, "moving toward broader enfranchisement and more meaningful political participation for individual Americans." The other is the road to greater and greater corporate power and influence. At some point--and this may be it--we will be pulled much more in one direction than the other. There's a tremendous lot at stake.

Our campaign finance laws are puny in the face of the enormous power the corporations wield, addressing only some abuses of corporate power. They need to be strengthened, not overturned. We had all better hope that the Supreme Court does the right thing.

Otherwise that "tap, tap, tap" you hear will be yet another nail being driven into the coffin of democracy.