Feingold responds

First let me say the following. I am not sure whether or not this is his canned response (all elected officials have them) or not especially since it does address a lot of the points I made in my original letter to him. However, I still disagree with him on the very specific point that we need a Constitutional Amendment to go further on this. Senator Feingold is looking at this singularly in the context of this one case.

In this one case we're discussing, federal elections spending is at issue. So he narrows his focus to change the decision based on this one issue. However, my issue is larger than that. What the Supreme Court did was not a one-off out of character move. It was not relegated to this one case nor will their process affect just this one decision.

It was what enabled them to come to their conclusion, the obvious application of Corporate Personhood that allowed them to make the assumption that corporations, since they are viewed as people by the courts, have the same rights as people and hence this somehow impeded their free speech.

So while the good Senator and I agree completely on the disastrous ramifications of this court decision, our remedies couldn't be any more completely different. He discusses passing laws that will cripple aspects of the ruling however I see that as a futile choice. What is to stop conservatives from challenging the laws in court and having the conservative, pro-corporation Supreme Court make the same exact decision in their favor once again, thus striking the new laws down?

The only Supreme Court proof option is to eliminate Corporate Personhood all together with a Constitutional Amendment. There is no other way and no, this is not a kneejerk reaction to a single case. Ever since the initial court mistake that allowed this glitch become precedent we the people have had an ever shrinking voice in our democracy at the expense of corporate money. It's time to change this for once and for all.

Here's Senator Feingold's response. (Below is the Op-Ed he enclosed as a .doc file)

Dear Mr. Poole,

Thank you for contacting me about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. I appreciate hearing your suggestions.

I agree that the U.S. Supreme Court made a terrible mistake in deciding this case. Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president. Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns. Just six years ago, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was 'firmly embedded in our law,' yet this Court has just upended that prohibition, and a century's worth of campaign finance law designed to stem corruption in government.

The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections. However, it is important to note that the decision does not affect the ban on unlimited "soft money" contributions, which was the central provision in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) that Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and I authored. The ban will continue to prevent corporate contributions to the political parties. Knowing of your interest in this issue, I have attached a newspaper op-ed I wrote in response to the Supreme Court's decision.

In the coming weeks, I will work with my colleagues to pass legislation restoring as many of the critical restraints on corporate control of our elections as possible. Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue.

ENCLOSED OP ED:

High court opens the floodgates
By Russ Feingold

In its ruling in the case of Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court unraveled campaign-finance laws that stood for more than a century. The court was originally presented with a relatively narrow legal issue in the case, but chose instead to consider a much broader question: whether to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Theodore Roosevelt was president. Now the court has handed down its ruling, and made a terrible mistake in giving corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns.

It is important to note that the decision does not affect the ban on "soft money" contributions, which was the core provision in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain-Feingold. That ban will continue to prevent corporate contributions to the political parties from corrupting the process. But the decision does significantly increase corporations' clout in campaigns.

For decades, corporations could only contribute to candidates and pay for political ads from funds collected from their administrative and executive employees and kept in special accounts called PACs. With the court's decision, corporations will now be able to dip into their huge general treasuries to pay for independent advertising. With their enormous resources, corporations can now vastly outspend the candidates and other outside parties in almost any race.

With the gates opened for a virtually unlimited amount of corporate money, I fear that our elections will become like NASCAR races — underwritten by companies. Only in this case, the corporate underwriters won't just be seeking publicity, they will be seeking laws and policies that the candidates have the power to provide.

During the 2008 election cycle, Fortune 500 companies alone had profits of $743 billion. By comparison, spending by candidates, outside groups, and political parties on the last presidential election totaled just over $2 billion. There's just no comparison; corporations and unions have the resources to effectively dominate federal campaigns.

Just six years ago, the state of campaign-finance law was quite different. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act that Sen. John McCain and I championed was constitutional, it noted that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was "firmly embedded in our law." Yet the court only a few years later has upended that prohibition.

A majority of the court ignored several time-honored principles that have served for the past two centuries to preserve the public's respect for and acceptance of its decisions. One is the concept of "judicial restraint," the idea that a court should decide a case on constitutional grounds only if absolutely necessary, and should rule as narrowly as possible. Here, the court did just the opposite — decided the constitutionality of all restrictions on corporate spending in connection with elections in an obscure case in which many far more narrow rulings were possible.

The court also ignored stare decisis, the historic respect for precedent, which Chief Justice John Roberts termed "judicial modesty" during his 2005 confirmation hearing. It's hard to imagine a bigger blow to stare decisis than the court's decision to strike down laws in over 20 states and a federal law that has been the cornerstone of the nation's campaign-finance system for 100 years.

Finally, the court ignored the longstanding practice of deciding a case only after lower courts have fully examined the facts. Here, because the broad constitutional questions considered by the Supreme Court were not raised in the court below, there was no factual record at all on which the court could base its legal conclusions.

We now face the undoing of laws that have helped to prevent corruption in government for more than a century. Some will say that corporate interests already have too much power and that members of Congress listen to the wishes of corporations instead of their constituents. While the campaign-finance system certainly needs further reform, I can only imagine how much worse things will be in a system where the views and interests of American voters are completely drowned out by corporate spending.

Russ Feingold makes a horrible judgment call...

Sadly enough Russ Feingold who was right on The Patriot Act and right on The Iraq War and did so by using the logic that rushing to a judgment call out of response to something immediate is a major long term ramifications-having mistake applies the same logic to the horrific Supreme Court case ruling that basically allowed Corporations free reign over our elections.

That would be a rational point to make if the Supreme Court hadn't spent the last 30 years ruling for corporations over individuals and worse using the mistake of "Corporate Personhood" to trample the spirit of the Constitution.

I respect Russ as much as any Senator in that chamber however I will call him out if I disagree with him and sent the following letter to him today to plead for sanity on this issue.

Dear Senator Feingold,

I have been a supporter of yours since you first ran for office and have even volunteered on a local level for your campaign when I lived in the Oshkosh area. I have always thought you to be a voice for the people in a Senate Chamber that is too often a place where the voices of the people are drown out by the voice of Big Business Interests.

It's been your steady, independent judgments on serious issues like The Patriot Act and the Iraq War, unpopular as they may have been at the time but correct as they were long term that have made me stick with you even when my devotion to the party began to waver.

I understand that you have always called for calm and rational thought and not overreacting to a current situation in a way that would hurt us down the line. It was that line of thinking that made you so correct in the two aforementioned examples I cite here.

However your recent statement where you oppose a Constitutional Amendment that would prevent Corporations from having a direct voice in our election process and ultimately expands the original mistake of Corporate Personhood further than any court previous ever has, has me shocked and saddened.

In the cases I mentioned before, our choices were made on fear and were in fact irrational. Even though we had other terrorist attacks on US soil, the original WTC attacks in 1993, the Oklahoma City Bombing... we had never had an attack of such magnitude on US soil and it drove even the best Congressmen and Senators to make rash decisions based on their own fears and the fears of their constituents.

This is different altogether because this is not a one time blunt object type of shot from the bow from the Supreme Court. This is in fact, a repeated process where the more conservative Supreme Court has ruled consistently with the Corporation over the Person.

Over the course of 30 years the courts became more conservative and Supreme Court judges were specifically vetted by previous Administrations for their right wing ideology while Democratic Administrations chose Centrist/Moderate Judges that did not swing the balance back to a complete center.

In that ideology lie the principle that money equals power and that people do not overrule the almighty corporation.

I don't need to give you a history lesson of the mistake that created corporate personhood nor would I insult your intelligence by running down the plethora of cases that have proven that the Supreme Court is far from an independent impartial observer in these cases any longer. I know you already know these examples and are a very smart man.

It's for that very reason that I cannot fathom for the life of me why you would oppose such an important measure. Especially when the biggest beneficiary of such a move would be the strengthening of your pet cause, Campaign Finance Reform.

A few wealthy Corporations already own the media thanks to poor decisions by previous Administrations and their FCC appointments to deregulate/relax media ownership laws. In doing so they use their outlets to spout pro corporate propaganda and control the narrative on most of the issues you're attempting to pass. Jon Stewart pointed this out on The O'Reilly Factor just last night about how Fox News creates the narrative and people become hysterical about real issues.

The point of this is to drive panic so nobody regulates industry or changes how they are working internal scams to continue boosting profits through the roof. The news never covered war profiteering, much of which involved their parent company's other corporate holdings. Never bothers to cover much in the way of corporate scandal until it blows up so large that they can't avoid it (Enron). They protect the narrative that Big Business can do it better than the Government and that we should trust them no matter how corrupt they may be.

It's sort of backfiring on them now as banks have become the scourge of America for their reaping huge profits at the expense of regular people who work hard and see similar corporations outsource their jobs and create massive layoffs all to make their CEOs and major shareholders more money.

Americans, despite what Fox or other corporate owned media might say, are mostly united on one thing. They are tired of being ripped off.

By giving in to this Supreme Court decision and in effect a huge swath of previous incorrect decisions and future slanted decisions you're saying, "Yes, I think corporations should have the same equal rights as the American People."

They already try to bounce around the McCain-Feingold laws and start "advocacy groups" to sell their issues to people in a confusing way and by saying that distribution of campaign ads and materials by ultra rich corporations should be allowed and basically uncapped, pretty much ends the democratic process as we know it.

Ask third party candidates who deserve as much as anyone to have their ideas heard, how not having a voice in the media or any money to put out a serious ad campaign works for them? Now think of it like this. Aside from the candidate they support running their own ads they will have corporate backers putting out endless ads in support of this person. They will have multiple PR firms putting out and coordinating messages that presents a completely unfair advantage.

For the major party candidate on the losing end of such a corporate war it's going to be an incredibly steep uphill climb to battle the amount of market saturation and name recognition that their opponent will have going for them. For the third party candidate, why even bother getting into the race? Unless you're Ross Perot and a billionaire, there's no chance at all you will be heard... and considering how often they are ignored now you just eliminated a major portion of the Democratic Process.

The reason for the amendment has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with fair elections and upholding the forefathers' intent behind the concept of a Democracy. Thomas Jefferson, often wary of such meddling be it by businesses or clergymen, was strongly opposed to businesses having a large say in Government politics.

As a Democrat who often attends local Jefferson-Jackson dinners, I would plead with you to use his frame of mind on this issue for guidance.

The need for an Amendment is to provide clarity as to the place of the people in their government. Corporations often do not pay taxes, or avoid doing so with off shore shelters, yet we're willing to give them not so much equal but rather superior placement in the laws of society and the elections that decide who controls it?

This to me is an abomination of Constitutional purpose.

Aside from what political gains this would make for Democrats or your pet causes, since that is not the point of this, I want to appeal to your sense of history and Constitutional fairness.

We are at a tipping point in America in terms of how powerful we have allowed Corporations to become. The corporate elite have managed to use their unlimted lobbying resources to have practically every major law and regulation, most notably Glass-Stegall, overturned in their favor and what we see now is a stifled Democracy where in order to have a chance at any major office you need to be vetted at a pro-business advocate. We see now a country whose economic future is in dire straights. Where the top 1% own 3/4ths of the country's wealth and the rest of us grovel for a steady job that can just pay the bills while we drown in debt over house payments or overpriced health care costs.

The last thing we need is the Supreme Court to continue to advocate against our well being in their pro-corporation stances. And since Bush and Rove stacked the lower courts with like-minded judges, the judiciary as a whole can work against the rights of the individual versus the rights of the corporation.

Most certainly the makeup of the court can and will change from time to time but what should be a constant is that no court should be able to rule that corporations, who do not do their fair share to be a loyal American citizen, are in fact people in the eyes of the law.

An American citizen pays taxes here, has their jobs here and resides here, does not break the laws on a regular basis here and does not have the financial wherewithal to influence their representatives. And unfortunately because of this their individual voices are often ignored or responded to with a form letter that hardly does enough to address their very real concerns.

Preventing corporate personhood and preventing corporate tampering with elections prevents undue foreign influence on our elections. It prevents undue foreign influence on our laws, most notably the constant war to avoid regulatory measures that we purposely put in place to protect the American citizen.

Once you end Corporate Personhood you realize that they do not have the same right to free speech that the American people were granted via the blood of our ancestors fighting for such freedom over the years. Did corporations go to war? Or did they just profit from their involvement of it?

Please Senator Feingold, as one of your greatest supporters I plead with you to make the choice that supports the American citizen over the rights of the Corporation. This is not the rash judgment of one Court Decision this the result of an Avalanche of recent cases that proves that the defense of corporations in the Federal Court system has gone too far and needs to be written into law in a way that prevents future misinterpretation of law to give corporations an unfair leg up on the rest of us who pay the taxes that grease the skids and allow them tax breaks to build in new locations, buy more equipment, hire more workers, etc. We pay the taxes and corporations reap all the benefit including practically them owning most of Congress thanks to their constant lobbying and offering of post-Congressional opportunities.

The scales of justice are tilted. Please help us place the weight back on the side that is launched into the sky at the moment. It would be nice for America if all of us had a shot at equality for once.

Sincerely,
Robert Poole, Jr.

More on the Afghanistan CIA bombing...

Last week I wrote up an article on Cause and Effect. I want to discuss the cause and effect because some statements came out that change the initial snap conclusion of the last post, but rather could prove disturbing in the ultimate scheme of things.

I went by the timeframe in which three news articles were posted but there was smoke to that fire after all. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed 8, 7 of which were CIA agents reportedly. They said they did this because of drone attacks the US had made on them. Now, we're in a war supposedly and I don't feel bad for Al-Qaeda members being picked off during it. They knew what they were getting into with the two WTC bombings, the Cole bombing, the Embassy bombing, etc. So frankly I have no sympathy for them.

My problem was the first half of my cause and effect note - the one where Afghans were irate about NATO/US raids that killed civilians. The Cause in my post was actually justifiable drone attacks. The effect was them bombing us. In a war this is something that happens and it is hard to avoid.

What isn't hard to avoid is when we make foolish, war crime decisions on the battle field which is what those Afghan protests were about.

What we did there was beyond the pale. The type of stuff that creates sympathy amongst the Afghan people for the Al-Qaeda cause and works as a recruitment tool for generations of new terrorists.

In the raid US/NATO troops went into three buildings, grabbed out 10 people, most of which were children. Handcuffed them so they posed no armed resistance... and killed them.

From the London Times:

“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.

-snip-

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That’s why his wife wasn’t killed.”

A local elder, Jan Mohammed, said that three boys were killed in one room and five were handcuffed before they were shot. “I saw their school books covered in blood,” he said.

The investigation found that eight of the victims were aged from 11 to 17. The guest was a shepherd boy, 12, called Samar Gul, the headmaster said. He said that six of the students were at high school and two were at primary school. He said that all the students were his nephews. In Jalalabad, protesters set alight a US flag and an effigy of President Obama after chanting “Death to Obama” and “Death to foreign forces”. In Kabul, protesters held up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding “Foreign troops leave Afghanistan” and “Stop killing us”.

So while the cause wasn't correct in my initial posting of the Afghan incident last week, the effect could be the same. Increased terror attacks now and for years down the road, just as I mentioned with the Yemen situation. Our actions help in the creation of new terrorists. We may not want to hear it but it's true. The longer we seem imperialistic and invade countries at will to push our own agendas, the more enemies we create.

And as critical I am of Obama, I know damn well this isn't all his fault. He didn't start both of these wars. Hell, we were running ops in Yemen before Obama ever took office. And as US Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg points out, it was Dick Cheney's personal authorization of the release of the Saudis who fueled the resurgence of Al-Qaeda in Yemen to begin with. Tough on terror that guy.

I just want Obama to earn that Nobel and make the right call. That call is withdrawal. There are very few Al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan now. Less than 100 by some estimates. The longer we stay there the more we make clear that the entire purpose for being there is to protect and prop up the Karzai Government, which took the recent elections by stealing them... the way Karzai's friend Bush did in 2000 and 2004.

Karzai is illegitimate to the Afghan people. Our presence is illegitimate to the Afghan people. How many of those people are going to join Al-Qaeda's cause if it means getting us out of there? How many Iraqis did the same thing, not for love of Al-Qaeda but to fight against us occupying their nation?

This is all common sense logic. Sadly enough, not enough people in our Government have the willpower to use it.

Cause and Effect

Just a quick update that further illustrates my point about what happens when you attack civilians...

These articles all were posted within a span of hours of each other...

1. Afghan probe says NATO fighting killed children
http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/6708561/

2. Afghans Protest Civilian Deaths
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126218273073510225.html

3. US citizens killed in Afghanistan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8435502.stm

Hmmm...

But I've had military people tell me how beloved we are over there and how grateful the people are. Yeah... it looks like it. I never want to be this "beloved" ever.

Rp

Got to love all that Change he's working for...

First some spot on, must see political toons about Obama's Health Care Reform plan:






And aside from Health Care, it's good to know that we're doing the same kind of crap that Bush and previous Administrations did... which of course helped stoke the fires overseas and make 9/11 happen.

Last week when there was a Christmas plane incident, practically identical to the Richard Reid shoe bomber situation, it was learned that the guy had ties to Yemen.

So what does Holy Joe Lieberman do? Call for pre-emptive strikes! Of course, murder is the ONLY solution to deal with potential murderers!

However, one has to wonder what the hell Joe is talking about since we already have been preemptively striking Yemen for OVER A YEAR.

In fact just a week before the failed "attack" (I say that loosely because one moron trying and miserably failing to do something of this scope really isn't an all out "attack"), we were killing people in Yemen. Illegally I might add. We have not declared war on Yemen.





Look, if al-Qaeda is actually plotting attacks in Yemen or anywhere else, the route to go is not military action. It's cooperating with other governments and rounding up suspects personally. Not using planes or drones and blanketing an area with bombs. What tends to happen when we do this is we kill civilians (in this case 63 of them, 28 being children). What happens when you kill those civilians? You killed mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and you turn off those people to your cause... and worse you probably just recruited family and friends of the victims to fight with your enemy.

And then situations like last week occur.

You reap what you sow. If you always go up to someone and slap them in the face and tell them it's for their own good, you'd better expect it when they finally get tired of it and punch you in the stomach out of retaliation.

Two wrongs don't make a right. This guy needs to be tried and convicted and get a life sentence... just as Reid did. However, we're still committing wrongs in these situations too and we need to realize that we are accountable for our actions. And what we have done to people in Iraq and Afghanistan may seem hard to control today but when the kids there who suffered through the violence we brought to them grow up... we'll have a much bigger base of angry people (or "terrorists" as we'll label them) looking for revenge... revenge that we earned against us.

Rp

Where we went wrong…

I look back now at the 2008 Campaign season with the sort of disdain you hold for your worst enemy. Hindsight is 20/20 and as a very strong liberal it’s hard not to feel completely and utterly betrayed by how events occurred. As liberals went we weren’t sure what to make of the field, once deemed the “best field of contenders in Democratic history” by many in the media. Best field for whom?

Aside from Dennis Kucinich the field was lacking any real liberal or progressive candidates. Of the main three, John Edwards was the only one using the populist rhetoric that attacked the central issues that are plaguing this country. But even he was lacking the bonafides to make anyone believe him. Russ Feingold put it succinctly when he said Edwards was using his platform but didn’t have the Senate record to back it up.

Liberals bit their lip and decided to choose the unknown quantity (Obama) who was speaking with hopeful change rhetoric over the known quantity (Clinton) who had in a previous Administration shown that they were as pro-corporation as the Reagan Republicans were.

We’re only a year in and the disappointment and frustration couldn’t be any worse. Any liberal with a brain knew exactly how this was going to go when Rahm Emanuel was named Chief of Staff. Rahm, who famously recruited rich Republican businessmen to run as Democrats because it would be an easy seat pick up had helped (along with Chuck Schumer in the DSCC) to weed out real liberals and progressives in primaries. Specifically intervening for corporate candidates and raising so much money for them that the real progressives had to bow out or face a humiliating defeat.

Rahm kept this process going once he became Obama’s top guy by keeping Progressives out of nearly every cabinet post and purposely keeping them out of policy meetings. Every progressive campaign promise was jettisoned for whatever pro-corporate policy they could support. Gays & Lesbians were given lip service but complete inaction for their rights. Single Payer advocates were purposely excluded from the negotiating table and then arrested at Congressional Hearings by order of the corporatist Democratic allies of Obama’s Administration. Obama also escalated the war in Afghanistan and managed to do so the week before he picked up a Nobel Peace Prize that he won for just not being George W. Bush. Pretty ridiculous.

Health Care “Reform” passed the Senate by a 60-40 vote this week and now goes to committee where I bet the contentious atmosphere between what House Democrats want and Senate Democrats want stalls the process quite a bit.

Still if the bill that ultimately passes resembles anything like what the Senate passed, we would have all been better off with nothing. Mandating people buy insurance when they really can’t afford to and eliminating almost all cost control provisions just means that you fed insurance companies a huge amount of customers that they can continue to overcharge. Sure there are no pre-existing conditions to fear but also no real regulatory methods in which to prevent insurers from jacking prices up any time they would like as well. There’s nothing to really like in this bill.

The whole thing is a byproduct of the Democratic sell out to lobbyists in the Health Care Industry. They spent $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress and by the end they owned them all. It’s sickening.

But it opens up the reality of what the process should have been all along. Health Care, as pressing as it is as an issue for most Americans should have been second on the docket.

Campaign Finance Reform should have been first. Of course this would require a President who wasn’t a complete sell out to corporate interests or Republican rhetoric and Obama is neither.

Still the ONLY way for real reform on the issues in a way that benefits the entire populace and not just the top 1% of this country is to make CFR the #1 issue to change.

And it requires a real overhaul not just a small change here or there like the Democrats pathetically weak lobbyist gift rule changes from 2006.
To me this reform is the one that changes all reform after it because taking private money out of the game makes the Congress accountable to one special interest: constituents.

Before I break down the concept that I propose let me say two things.

1. I think this is a plan BOTH Republicans and Democrats would support. No, not the elected ones but the grass roots. But you have to sell it differently to each constituency. There is something to like for both.

2. This plan is very strict but if enacted I assure you the Presidency and Congress would no longer be stooges to CEOs and lobbyists.

So here’s the plan, point by point.

• All parties that want to participate in national Presidential elections must fulfill signature requirements to be placed on ballots in at least 3/4ths of the 50 states. By meeting participation guidelines they will receive public funding equal to the other candidates and receive equal time on each national debate.

• For local Congressional and Senate elections, candidate must receive prerequisite signatures to receive money and guaranteed debate slot/time.

• To qualify as a candidate all candidates must divest in all stocks, bonds and financial holdings aside from personal home real estate. All assets must be liquid at the time of campaign opening and this includes all immediate family (parents, siblings, spouse, children, grandchildren). This will eliminate any impropriety from being assigned to a committee and steering dollars to friends or companies that you are personally invested in. Failure to liquidate assets will result in automatic disqualification from campaign and should offense not be discovered until after the race is over, a candidate will be expelled from their seat retroactively for such a violation.

• The election cycle is 6 weeks for party primaries and 6 weeks for the national campaign.

• Each candidate will receive the same amount of public funding. This will be used for live campaign events (speeches, travel). Each campaign will additionally receive an equal amount of primetime TV ad time, networks cannot refuse to air any candidates’ ads or they will be stripped of their FCC license.

• Corporations and Special Interest Groups are banned from airing ads. The way the law will be written, these groups will be defined as political parties rather than advocacy organizations and by definition the private money they will collect would be in violation of federal law. A candidate will be limited to only representing one political party so they cannot have an advocacy group represent them, to which that group would then need the prerequisite signatures to receive a spot on the ballot.

• Employers and Unions are strictly prohibited from organizing for or advertising/advocating on behalf of a candidate.

• Political Parties will be granted a specific amount of money, capped to a certain amount, in which they can use to organize grass roots and build party loyalty. They will be allowed, within their financial construct, to advocate for their party’s candidates but due to the limited amount of funds, they would make better use of the funding by building a ground campaign for multiple elections rather than one at a time.

What this does is majorly clamp down and end all outside money from coming into a campaign. It prevents the process from being closed to just two parties and eliminates the need to be one of the financial elite to run for office. It eliminates special interest ads which usually smear candidates and obfuscate facts. It eliminates pressure from employers and union organizing behind a candidate.

When I say this will appease both parties, it will. It takes the corporate money out of every bill. Makes the candidates beholden to the will of their constituents and gives regular people a chance to run for office and make a difference (whereas that is nearly impossible now). The Left will be ecstatic about this. In the Health Care debate this makes Single Payer a legitimate option and eliminated many of these corporate run tea bagger town hall attacks that helped screw up the debate. It would prevent the Max Baucuses and Joe Liebermans from being able to have a seat let alone selling out the entire country for some of their rich buddies. And it opens doors for Green Party Candidates, Libertarians, etc to all have equal time on the main stage and have their views listened to and heard.

The Right will be excited because this all but ends the Democratic stranglehold on Unions and the work Unions do on campaigns. It also eliminates many of the 527 groups they hate, most notably MoveOn.org, from being a serious threat to their way of life.

If you market this for the reasons they would like the bill to each separate group, you can create a groundswell to get this type of reform passed. The media will try to fight it tooth and nail. The elected corporate sell out politicians will as well. But with a legitimate push from the grass roots on both sides, they might have no choice but to relent.

And then we’ll have a system where the laws are made of the people, by the people and for the people. Just as our forefathers seemed to intend originally, or at least they implied as much.

The End of My Support for the Democratic Party

I haven't written anything since election day but if you look back at my final posts they couldn't have been any more spot on. I warned people to look past the pretty image presented by the packaging of change and selling of hope. You could tell something was completely different about Obama as soon as he was nearing election day and in the days preceding in it was all about him ignoring the progressives and liberals that elected him and going after the right with the help of his DLC/Blue Dog corporate Republican as Democrats' recruiter, Rahm Emanuel. Most of what I wrote below was lifted (with a few alterations) from what I posted in a reply to a thread on Democratic Underground, but it explains my disappointment and abandonment of a party I spent 21 years strongly supporting and being very participatory in.

In all of this time off of writing I stayed away specifically because of my disgust with my party. I worried that this would be the direction they took us and they did so with glee. I have had a lot of personal things and work related stress to handle on the side so rattling off more angry diatribes about politics and specifically the selling out of my values by my party was just too much to handle. I think I will be posting again. Out of frustration for what is happening and because everyday is just an extended continuation of George W. Bush. Just as Bill Clinton was a continuation of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before him.

I have no hope left for our country so long as it elects people who believe in corporatism over what's best for their constituents. We liberals never really had a choice. Obama, Hillary... even John Edwards. All were fake populists who really were corporatists. Edwards at least took an anti-corporatism plank in his election. However there were no real choices in 2008. It was sickening. I documented this before.

And now the rant I posted on DU.

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I have a very hard time supporting this President or this party anymore after their continuous blatant sell out to corporate interests.

At first I used to think this was Democrats just being weak and spineless. I mean come on, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi sure play the part of ineffectual cowards well enough. However I realized that all along we have been played for suckers. Democrats are not weak at all. They are not caving either. They don't support us at all. They're using us for votes. They really do believe in the pro-corporatist crap they put out there to enrich their well connected friends. Washington is a hustle for them. They get into office and make as much money as they can. OBSCENE amounts of money. And the only way to do this is to load up your buddies or companies you have a vested interest in and watch as your family, friends and even yourself once you retire from the role of bank robber, er, Congressperson get rich as hell.

Liberals and good hearted Democrats are probably just as easy to use as the people on the right. Think about it. The right is easy to use because they are intellectual lightweights who are incurious to facts and are pulled along on emotional social issues like Abortion and Gay Rights that conflict with years of bigoted teachings in their families and churches.

The Left while far more educated on all issues and topics can be used emotionally as well. Especially now. After 30 years of watching their jobs disappear, watching their loved ones die or suffer because of health care corruption, watching their friends and family be shipped to wars of choice meant to enrich corporate buddies in the military corporate industries, seeing the Constitution shredded and watching friends and loved ones discriminated against because of their sexual preference... we were ripe for change. And ripe to be used.

The cheerleaders will say, "Obama never said he was going to do ______". The problem is he never really had to. He said "Hope" and "Change" which IMPLIED far more than some of his conservative promises.

I remember many of those same cheerleaders who are saying these things now telling us after the primaries that Obama had to play to the right and move to the center to win the election and that once he was elected he wouldn't be so centrist because nobody ever stays completely at the center.

The problem was it wasn't an act. The entire time he was spouting "Hope" and "Change" he was moving to the center right for good. Positioning himself permanently. That's never really how these elections are supposed to work. Previously, moving to the center was always just a tactic to assuage fears from the undecided independents.

After 8 years of Bush, "Hope" and "Change" meant a LOT more than Obama's ardent supporters on this site care to admit or understand. Bush was CHANGE in the other direction. He took the Reagan era and put it on steroids. They declared war on the Constitution and Geneva Conventions and two countries all at once. They used their secret tactics and federal agencies to attempt political warfare, not just on elected politicians but also on political interest groups. They pushed Washington even further into the realm of corporate piggy bank than anyone had before (a tough task considering the three Presidents before him) and they almost ruined the nation economically doing it.

Change from that has to be drastic by the very nature of the amount of damage caused. Going to the left is the only direction politically and policy wise that we can possibly move to after Bush-Cheney.

Instead Obama and his corporate cronies decided that they would make the smallest changes possible and on the things that mattered most, continue the Bush Doctrine of Corporation over Citizen.

He defended and expanded Bush's State Secrecy rules. He refused to go after anyone for torture or war crimes. Never closed down Gitmo and pushed out an Administration policymaker that was working on that on their behalf. He announced a draw down in Iraq but wants to keep tens of thousands of troops there and is increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, an unwinnable war with no real end goal other than to prop up a corrupt election stealing government.

He decided gay rights were better to talk about in speeches to pacify the base then to actually defend. He decided Health Care Reform should in fact be a corporate giveaway and worked with Max Baucus to make it so. All so he can declare victory over a major issue, even though that victory just made it completely worse. He employed corporate cronies all throughout his cabinet and Administration and made sure that two of the biggest from Goldman Sachs got to enrich all of their Wall Street friends while refusing to really make the necessary changes to end what got us in this situation in the first place.

Where is Teddy Roosevelt's big stick? There's got to be a stick lying around in Washington SOMEWHERE.

A few months back I wrote a post on Democratic Underground (a fairly liberal site that wasn't completely supportive of the party, so much as the principles for which it stood) asking whether you consider yourself a Democrat anymore or not. I was on the fence. I'm off of it. I don't anymore. I was slammed pretty heavily for even asking such a question.

From the time I was eleven I followed politics and supported this party. I always sold myself the idea that Republicans represented big business and Democrats represented the rest of us. That Democrats actually had morals and believed in the concept of right and wrong.

My eyes have finally opened. They started to during the Clinton years but I like most here, wrote that off and blamed the Republican Congressional Majority. There's just no excuse this time around. We have full control and they don't care. THEY don't represent us. And for the past few decades, I wonder if they ever did.

Rp