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GRAPH: 147 Companies Control 40 Percent Of Global Transnational Corporate Wealth
http://thinkprogress.org/special/201...porate-wealth/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...the-world.html
St Ronnie's War on Employees continues unabated. US workforce is the only industrial country without a national sick pay policy.
Corporate Front Group ALEC Pushing For Repeal Of Paid Sick Day Laws Nationwide
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a corporate front group that farms out legislation to almost a third of state legislators nationwide — is drafting legislation on behalf of its wealthy conglomerate funders to repeal these ordinances.
PR Watch obtained do ents from ALEC’s 2011 Annual Meeting showing that one of the group’s committees — the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee of the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force — focused its entire meeting on the issue of paid sick leave. Task force members, who are legislators, were given copies of a bill that enables state legislatures to override municipal paid sick days laws. The same bill was used in Wisconsin to override Milwaukee’s paid sick days requirement.
Meeting attendees were given complete copies of Wisconsin’s 2011 Senate Bill 23 (now Wisconsin Act 16), as a model for state override. They were also handed a target list and map of state and local paid sick leave policies prepared by ALEC member, the National Restaurant Association. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Restaurant Association lobbied for SB 23 to repeal the sick leave ordinance, as did the the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC), the local branch of the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an ALEC member). Not surprisingly, ALEC’s Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee is co-chaired by YUM! Brands, Inc., which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Fast food companies have fought paid sick leave across the country.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...eal-sick-days/
"At least 145 countries ensure access to paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses, with 127 providing a week or more annually."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave#Introduction
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Any tea baggers here, or anywhere, against the well-financed, relentless, anti-Human-American ALEC? of course not.
GRAPH: 147 Companies Control 40 Percent Of Global Transnational Corporate Wealth
http://thinkprogress.org/special/201...porate-wealth/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...the-world.html
The new study – by New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, the National Ins ute on Money in State Politics, and the Justice at Stake Campaign, a non-partisan reform group – found that a small group of super spenders plays the biggest role, using their money to buy the kind of judges they want hearing their cases. These super spenders are the usual suspects: mainly big business, corporate lobbyists, and trial lawyers. Also high on the list: a disturbing category called “unknown.” In many states, disclosure laws are so weak that special interests can buy judicial elections without the public even finding out.
There is also a lot of one-issue money sloshing around. In 2010, three Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage were voted out of office – after a bitterly fought campaign dominated by money from out-of-state groups like the National Organization for Marriage and the American Family Association. Much of the special interest money is used for attack ads, which leverage hot-button issues to demonize judicial candidates. Has a sitting judge ever reversed a criminal conviction because the law was not followed? Then they must be soft on crime – and not care about victims.
Why does all this matter? Because as money floods into judicial elections, we are getting courts that are filled with judges whose first loyalty is not to justice – or to the general public – but to insurance companies, big business and other special interests. It’s not hard to guess what insurance companies want their judges to do. They want them to rule against people who have been injured – even when they deserve compensation, and they want damage awards to be slashed. Big business wants weak enforcement of laws against discrimination and pollution. On the other side of the political spectrum, trial lawyers want verdicts for plaintiffs – and large damage awards.
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/10/31/jud...#ixzz1cSxaZPKN
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More proof that America is (still and always) for sale.
Justice? Liberty? Truth? Fairness?
GMAFB
The legal system is all about $$$
Last edited by boutons_deux; 11-03-2011 at 03:10 PM.
How the Austerity Class Rules Washington
In September the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan deficit-hawk group based at the New America Foundation, held a high-profile symposium urging the Congressional “supercommittee” to “go big” and approve a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 trillion mandate. The hearing began with an alarming video of top policy-makers describing the national debt as “the most serious threat that this country has ever had” (Alan Simpson) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-government” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt continues to rise, predicted former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A looming fiscal crisis was portrayed as being just around the corner.
An explanation can be found in the prominence of an influential and aggressive austerity class—an allegedly centrist coalition of politicians, wonks and pundits who are considered indisputably wise custodians of US economic policy.
“intellectual hegemony over the course of the debate in Washington, from 2009 until today.”
Its members include Wall Street ans like Pete Peterson and Robert Rubin; deficit-hawk groups like the CRFB, the Concord Coalition, the Hamilton Project, the Committee for Economic Development, Third Way and the Bipartisan Policy Center; budget wonks like Peter Orszag, Alice Rivlin, David Walker and Douglas Holtz-Eakin; red state Democrats in Congress like Mark Warner and Kent Conrad, the bipartisan “Gang of Six” and what’s left of the Blue Dog Coalition; influential pundits like Tom Friedman and David Brooks of the New York Times, Niall Ferguson and the Washington Post editorial page; and a parade of blue ribbon commissions, most notably Bowles-Simpson, whose members formed the all-star team of the austerity class.
Groups like the CRFB and the Concord Coalition, founded by former Congress members in the 1980s and ’90s, have long presented themselves as nonpartisan, penny-pinching critics of wasteful government spending, when really they are anti-government, pro-corporate ideologues whose boards are filled with K Street lobbyists and financial executives. The goal of much of the austerity class is to see government funds redirected to the private sector. (Their ideology, which accepts the ac ulation of private debt but opposes government debt, explains why the austerity class ignored the massive housing and credit bubble, which more than any single factor contributed to an explosion of debt worldwide.)
The austerity class’s reach has expanded in the Obama era, boosted by leaders of both parties and an influx of new funding. After consistently approving massive deficit spending under the Bush administration, Republicans suddenly found true religion under Obama (ironically, at a time when precisely the opposite of austerity was most needed). And within the Democratic Party, what Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz calls “deficit fetishism” is viewed as the gold standard for responsible economics
The austerity class’s deep pockets can be traced back to Peterson, a GOP billionaire who served as Nixon’s commerce secretary and founded the private equity Blackstone Group. Since 2008 his foundation has doled out $383 million of his promised $1 billion pledge to a seemingly endless number of think tanks, media organizations, advocacy groups and educational ins utions to advance his debt obsession [see William Greider, “The Man Who Wants to Loot Social Security,” March 2, 2009]. This includes six- and seven-figure donations to groups like the CRFB, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development and the Peterson Ins ute for International Economics. It’s largely because of Peterson that programs like Social Security and Medicare, favored by nearly 90 percent of the public, are savaged as bloated “en lements” and are consistently on the chopping block.
Among the Petersonites, there was stiff opposition to a larger stimulus or additional recovery measures
http://www.thenation.com/article/164...les-washington
Romney Campaign Memo: The Koch Brothers Are The ‘Financial Engine Of The Tea Party’
Americans for Prosperity is led by billionaire Republican donor David Koch, whose endorsement Romney seeks. An Oct. 4 internal Romney campaign memo obtained by The Washington Examiner describes Koch as the “financial engine of the Tea Party” even though Koch “denies being directly involved.” Koch endorsed Romney for president in 2008 and his well-funded group is credited with electing dozens of Republicans to Congress in 2010 and creating a network of Tea Party loyalists who are critical to Romney’s chances of winning the nomination, political strategists say. [...]
The memo says Romney was scheduled to meet with David Koch on August 28 at the billionaire’s home in Southampton, N.Y. — where Koch held a major event for Romney in 2010 — but Hurricane Irene foiled their plans. The two last met in January for lunch in Manhattan at the Links Club, an elite social club for avid golfers.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/20...och-tea-party/
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OWS has no financial backing equivalent to tea bagger astro turfers.
The War Against the Poor
Now, in what seems like no time at all, the fog has lifted and the topic on the table everywhere seems to be the morality of contemporary financial capitalism. The protestors have accomplished this mainly through the symbolic power of their actions: by naming Wall Street, the heartland of financial capitalism, as the enemy, and by welcoming the homeless and the down-and-out to their occupation sites. And of course, the slogan "We are the 99%" reiterated the message that almost all of us are suffering from the reckless profiteering of a tiny handful. (In fact, they aren't far off: the increase in income of the top 1% over the past three decades about equals the losses of the bottom 80%.)
In part, all of this was the inevitable fallout from a decades-long business mobilization to reduce labor costs by weakening unions and changing public policies that protected workers and those same unions. As a result, National Labor Board decisions became far less favorable to both workers and unions, workplace regulations were not enforced, and the minimum wage lagged far behind inflation.
Inevitably, the overall impact of the campaign to reduce labor's share of national earnings meant that a growing number of Americans couldn't earn even a poverty-level livelihood - and even that's not the whole of it. The poor and the programs that assisted them were the objects of a full-bore campaign directed specifically at them.
This was not only war against the poor, but the very "class war" that Republicans now use to brand just about any action they don't like. In fact, class war was the overarching goal of the campaign, something that would soon enough become apparent in policies that led to a massive redistribution of the burden of taxation, the cannibalization of government services through privatization, wage cuts and enfeebled unions, and the deregulation of business, banks, and financial ins utions.
The poor - and blacks - were an endlessly useful rhetorical foil, a propagandistic distraction used to win elections and make bigger gains. Still, the rhetoric was important. A host of new think tanks, political organizations, and lobbyists in Washington D.C. promoted the message that the country's problems were caused by the poor whose shiftlessness, criminal inclinations, and sexual promiscuity were being indulged by a too-generous welfare system.
The war against the poor at the federal level was soon matched in state capitols where organizations like the American Federation for Children, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Ins ute for Liberty, and the State Policy Network went to work. Their lobbying agenda was ambitious, including the large-scale privatization of public services, business tax cuts, the rollback of environmental regulations and consumer protections, crippling public sector unions, and measures (like requiring photo identification) that would restrict the access students and the poor had to the ballot. But the poor were their main public target and again, there were real life consequences - welfare cutbacks, particularly in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, and a law-and-order campaign that resulted in the massive incarceration of black men.
The organized right justifies its draconian policies toward the poor with moral arguments. Right-wing think tanks and blogs, for instance, ponder the damaging effect on disabled poor children of becoming "dependent" on government assistance, or they scrutinize government nutritional assistance for poor pregnant women and children in an effort to explain away positive outcomes for infants.
The willful ignorance and cruelty of it all can leave you gasping - and gasp was all we did for decades. This is why we so desperately needed a movement for a new kind of moral economy. Occupy Wall Street, which has already changed the national conversation, may well be its beginning.
http://readersupportednews.org/opini...ainst-the-poor
Are the Koch Brothers Denying Your Vote?
If you live in one of 38 states, billionaire political operatives Charles and David Koch are trying to influence your and your neighbors’ cons utional right to vote. The Koch brothers and their allies have already succeeded in shepherding voter suppression bills through seven states, which amount to about one third of the 270 electoral votes to win the White House.
Through their web of think tanks, nonprofit organizations, family foundations and political donations, the Koch brothers have bought access to democracy’s lifeblood: elections. They’ve used their $42 billion in wealth to support state laws and legislators that erect barriers to the voting booth.
The Kochs’ victims are young people, senior citizens, disabled individuals and people of color– precisely the 99 percent of us who are opposed to the Koch brothers’ political agenda.
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/...paign=alternet
Pew Center For Climate Changes Name, Now Sponsored By Energy Companies
The Pew Center on Global Climate Change is now the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), an explicitly corporate-managed organization. “Royal Dutch S , Hewlett-Packard Co. and Entergy Corp. will be the principal founding sponsors for the new C2ES,” E&E News reports. The move comes after the Pew Charitable Trusts ended its relationship with the centrist think tank founded in 1998. “The group does receive some funding from independent and foundation sponsors,” center president Eileen Claussen told reporters. The three companies, which she called “strategic partners,” will have seats on the C2ES board. Other contributors include Bank of America, Duke Energy, and General Electric Co. Claussen says
the S -sponsored organization will retain its independence.
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/...rgy-companies/
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Another non-climate-denying source bites the dust.
How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...-rich-20111109
A fundamental strategy of the VRWC's "take over the country" is evolving past the point of no return.
Corporate power grows stronger as government wanes
Now imagine another scenario, the "Rollerball" scenario, from the 1975 movie of that name: Corporations have replaced national governments and effectively control the world. There are no more wars, but people surrender their humanity to the primacy of the corporation.
"Rollerball" still seems pretty far-fetched, but the occupiers are right to ring the alarm about the trend. In the aftermath of the 2008 market and economic crash, the financial and political power of major companies has only increased while workers' power has faded amid a global labor glut.
What's more, corporations grow stronger while developed-world governments are badly weakened — in no small part because of the heavier debt burdens they've taken on to try to save their economies with stimulus spending, bank bailouts and payments to the unemployed.
In August, the U.S. for the first time lost its top-rung AAA credit grade from Standard & Poor's, which cut the nation's rating to AA+, citing ballooning debt.
No such downgrade has befallen Exxon Mobil Corp., which remains AAA in S&P's eyes.
Europe's debt crisis is all about governments being too deep in hock, of course. For the moment, that crisis is overshadowing what remains a dire situation for Washington and for many state governments.
Congress' special "super committee" of legislators faces a Wednesday deadline to suggest at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years.
But even if they meet that goal, the debt will continue to grow. The U.S. ran a deficit of $1.3 trillion in the last fiscal year alone.
Meanwhile, dollars pile up in corporate coffers. The blue-chip companies in the S&P 500 index are sitting on a record $1 trillion in cash now, according to S&P. That's up from $647 billion just before the 2008 economic and financial crash.
Clearly, despite the global economy's disappointing growth over the last three years, multinational firms overall have prospered. Operating earnings of the S&P companies are estimated to have reached $231 billion in the third quarter, a new all-time high. Per-share earnings were up 13% from a year earlier.
"We have an economy that works for corporate America even if it doesn't work for anybody else," said Lawrence Mishel, head of the left-leaning Economic Policy Ins ute in Washington.
"Companies depend on governments for all sorts of things," notes Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research in Washington.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...6768632.column
The VRWC/UCA War To Employees Deeper and Harder continues
Corporations Pushing Bill to Take Away Overtime from Computer and Web Workers
Dubbed the Computer Professionals Update Act (CPU Act), Senate bill 1747 would change the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to remove overtime protection and compensation from “almost everyone working primarily in information technology” who earns either a salary, or an hourly rate of $27.63,
http://www.truth-out.org/corporation...ers/1321894342
The VRWC/UCA War To Employees Deeper and Harder continues
Typical Hourly Wage Went Up Just $1.23 In The Last 36 Years
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...wage-36-years/
Any wonder that the median working income is $29K??
Five Ways that Financial Elites are Destroying Democracy
1. Billionaires replace one person, one vote.
2. The stock market exercises an instant veto.
3. Governments are not permitted to create full employment economies.
4. Hedge fund speculative raids replace elected leaders with technocrats.
5. Financial markets are vetoing Social Security.
Will financial elites replace democracy?
It’s happened before. When New York City almost defaulted in 1975, the Emergency Financial Control Board was established to take financial authority away from politicians. Imagine what might happen if Washington continues on its path to permanent gridlock and if the American people totally give up on their elected representatives. Imagine if the US debt gets downgraded by our whorish Wall Street rating agencies. Imagine if unemployment rises even higher and riots break out in the streets. Wouldn’t it be possible for the congressional supercommittee to turn into the Super-Emergency Control Board run by kindly investors and corporate leaders like maybe a Warren Buffet? Doesn’t having a benign financial emperor sound like a more “practical” alterative to a dysfunctional democratic system?
We’re not there yet but we’re headed that way…unless we dramatically curtail the power and wealth of our financial elites.
The threat to democracy isn’t new to America. President Andrew Jackson identified the threat that elite bankers posed to our fledging democracy when he vetoed the National Bank in 1832. Here’s a small excerpt from his veto message:
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. ….In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally en led to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant les, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153169
The Fascinating History of How Corporations Became "People" -- Thanks to Corrupt Courts Working for the 1%
The Supreme Court, with a right-wing majority under Chief Justice John Roberts, has become a body that leans too far toward the “1 percent” to be considered a neutral arbiter. So whether they know all the ins and outs of the court's profound rightward shift or not, those protesting across the country as part of the Occupy movement are motivated by its corruption as well.
While conservatives constantly rail against judges "legislating from the bench," it is far more common for right-leaning jurists to engage in “judicial activism” than those of a liberal bent. That's what a 2005 study by Yale University legal scholar Paul Gewirtz and Chad Golder found. According to the scholars, those justices most frequently labeled "conservative" were among the most likely to strike down statutes passed by Congress, while those most frequently labeled "liberal" were the least likely to do so.
A 2007 study by University of Chicago law professor Thomas J. Miles and Cass R. Sunstein looked at the tendency of judges to strike down decisions by federal regulatory agencies, and found a similar trend. The Supreme Court's "conservative" justices were again the most likely to engage in this form of "activism," while the "liberal" justices were most likely to exercise judicial restraint.
During the 19th century, however, the robber barons, aided by a few corrupt jurists deep in their pockets, took the concept to a whole new level in the United States. According to legal textbooks, the idea that corporations enjoy the same cons utional rights as you or I was codified in the 1886 decision Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. But historian Thom Hartmann dug into the original case do ents and found that this crucially important legal doctrine actually originated with what may be the most significant act of corruption in history.
It occurred during a seemingly routine tax case: Santa Clara sued the Southern Pacific Railroad to pay property taxes on the land it held in the county, and the railroad claimed that because states had different rates, allowing them to tax its holdings would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The railroads had made the claim in previous cases, but the courts had never bought the argument.
In a 2005 interview, Hartmann described his surprise when he went to a Vermont courthouse to read an original copy of the verdict and found that the judges had made no mention of corporate personhood. “In fact,” he told the interviewer, “the decision says, at its end, that because they could find a California state law that covered the case ‘it is not necessary to consider any other questions’ such as the cons utionality of the railroad’s claim to personhood.”
Hartmann then explained how it was that corporations actually became “people”:
In the headnote to the case—a commentary written by the clerk, which is not legally binding, it’s just a commentary to help out law students and whatnot, summarizing the case—the Court’s clerk wrote: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Cons ution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The discovery “that we’d been operating for over 100 years on an incorrect headnote” led Hartmann to look into the past of the clerk who’d written it, J. C. Bancroft Davis. He discovered that Davis had been a corrupt official who had himself previously served as the president of a railroad. Digging deeper, Hartmann then discovered that Davis had been working “in collusion with another corrupt Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Field.” The railroad companies, according to Hartmann, had promised Field that they’d sponsor his run for the White House if he assisted them in their effort to gain cons utional rights.
Hartmann noted that even after the ruling, the idea of corporate personhood remained relatively obscure until corporate lawyers dusted off the doctrine during the Reagan era and used it to help reshape the U.S. political economy.
Nike asserted before the Supreme Court . . . as Sinclair Broadcasting did in a press release last month, that these corporations have First Amendment rights of free speech. Dow Chemical in a case it took to the Supreme Court asserted it has Fourth Amendment privacy rights and could refuse to allow the EPA to do surprise inspections of its facilities. J.C. Penney asserted before the Supreme Court that it had a Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from discrimination—the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to free the slaves after the Civil War—and that communities that were trying to keep out chain stores were practicing illegal discrimination. Tobacco and asbestos companies asserted that they had Fifth Amendment rights to keep secret what they knew about the dangers of their products. With the exception of the Nike case, all of these attempts to obtain human rights for corporations were successful, and now they wield this huge club against government that was meant to protect relatively helpless and fragile human beings.
Such is the power of a corrupt judiciary.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153201
ALEC Deems Kids Eating Rat Poison An ‘Acceptable Risk’
A top representative for the ultra-conservative group said kids eating rat poison is an “acceptable risk” that does not justify government intervention:
“There are certain levels of acceptable risk in society,” says Todd M. Wynn, director of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, in an interview about the EPA rules with the Heartland Ins ute’s Heartlander website. “And parents play an important role by weighing the potential risks and benefits of using a product.”
“Unfortunately, EPA expands its reach into the American economy more and more each and every year,” Wynn said. “This year it will be d-Con, but next year another useful product will be burdened by additional regulations or banned outright from the market.” [...]
Aaron Colangelo, an attorney for the NRDC…told the Center for Media and Democracy that “there is not an undue economic burden associated with reformulating these products,” pointing out that the rest of the industry had complied with the new rules without adverse economic impact. Additionally, he said, “the health care costs for treating these kids certainly outweigh the economic costs of reformulation.”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011...ceptable-risk/
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economic efficiency (aka UCA profits) outweighs Human-Americans' health.
Health of Children and Consumers is Threatened by Conservative Push for Corporate Speech Rights
In recent years, corporate lawyers representing industries whose products touch millions of American lives have stopped numerous government efforts to better inform the public about possible health risks with an eyebrow-raising legal strategy. They have asserted a cons utional right not to speak, or say more than they want on labels and advertising, and pro-business federal judges have agreed, rejecting the public’s right to know.
In cases involving manmade hormones fed to dairy cows, heart and lung disease caused by tobacco, the nutritional value of foods contributing to childhood and teenage obesity, and even radiation emitted by cell phones, the industries keep returning to court until a business-friendly judge or majority on an appeals court rules that the First Amendment includes the corporate right not to ‘speak’ if it could harm profits.
“They invoke the Amendment’s protection to accomplish exactly what the Amendment opposes,” wrote U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Pierre Leval, in a lengthy dissent in an early case in which his peers sided with industry and cited the First Amendment to overturn a state law labeling hormone-containing milk products. “The majority’s invocation of the First Amendment to invalidate a state law requiring disclosure of information consumers reasonably desire stands the Amendment on its ear.”
The labeling cases are not the only way corporations have been seeking to enlarge First Amendment speech rights outside the political arena.
This past June the Supreme Court ruled that drug makers’ cons utional speech rights included ‘selling' patient records, overturning a Vermont law that sought to keep the files private. Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent said the Court was setting a dangerous precedent by allowing the First Amendment to be used to avoid reasonable government regulation.
“At best the Court opens a Pandora’s Box of First Amendment challenges to many ordinary regulatory practices that may only incidentally affect a commercial message,” he warned. “At worst, it reawakens Lochner’s pre-New Deal threat of subs uting judicial for democratic decision making where ordinary economic regulation is at issue.”
Breyer’s reference to the Lochner Era was shorthand for what many right-wingers would like to see the judiciary do today—roll back government regulation. Lochner refers to the early 20th century then the Supreme Court reversed many workplace rights. It ended when the Court relented to allow the new deal to allow the the New Deal's progressive reforms to take place.
Indeed, today’s corporate champions, such as Washington Post columnist George Will, are pining for an activist judiciary that prioritizes corporate rights above those of citizens. They see nothing wrong with extending the Cons ution’s political freedoms given to individuals to modern profit-making corporations. As Will wrote this September in a piece attacking liberals, “So much for the idea that one of the Cons ution’s primary purposes is the protection of individual rights against majority tyranny.”
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153408
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again:
economic efficiency and wealth creation (aka UCA profits) for Repug/Scotus judges outweighs Human-Americans' health.
Nobody, esp not kids, should be eating packaged food-like substance from BigFood corps. If it's in a pkg, don't eat it.
The GOP History of Hostage-Taking
http://consortiumnews.com/2011/12/23...ostage-taking/
How Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories May Pose a Genuine Threat to Humanity
The paranoia infecting a broad swath of the American right-wing can be comical at times -- think about Orly Taitz and her fellow Birthers. But we laugh at our own peril, because what Richard Hofstadter famously characterized as "the paranoid style in American politics" poses a serious threat to our future: the right's snowballing conspiracy theories could ultimately lead to disaster.
"Agenda 21" is one of a number of silly but dangerous conspiracy theories sweeping through the fever swamps of the right. Although admittedly sinister-sounding, Agenda 21 is just a blueprint for sustainable development, especially in emerging economies. It outlines how wealthier countries can contribute to smarter growth through technology transfers and public education. It stresses the importance of fighting deforestation and conserving bio-diversity -- all things that normal people would consider wise.
The important thing to understand about Agenda 21 is that there is absolutely nothing binding or compelling member countries to implement any part of it. It's not a treaty -- it is entirely voluntary and certainly doesn't have any connection to local governments. Yet for the right, with its long John Birch Society undercurrent of paranoia about international ins utions, Agenda 21 represents some kind of dark UN conspiracy to impose socialism on the "free world."
That craziness lies at the heart of Michele Bachmann's quixotic war on energy-efficient lightbulbs. Tim Murphy reported, "The Minnesota congresswoman is part of a movement that considers 'sustainability' an existential threat to the United States, one with far-reaching consequences for education, transportation, and family values."
Agenda 21 is inextricably linked to the most dangerous conspiracy theory going: that 97 percent of the world's climate scientists are lying when they say human activities are contributing to global climate change. This, too, is supposedly in service of the goal of destroying capitalism, which means one has to believe that climatologists around the world are not only all very political -- enough to conspire to deceive the entire world -- but they also all share the same largely discredited ideology.
Today, oil and gas corporations are still funding a bunch of crank climate change deniers in order to avoid regulations that might slow their "short-term interests" in extracting as much wealth as they can from traditional hydrocarbons. And here we have Tea Partiers -- a "movement" nurtured by business-friendly Republican operatives and backed by the Koch brothers' dirty energy money -- being whipped into a frenzy by the likes of Glenn Beck and shouting down local planners trying to do something about rising water levels. They're freaking out about energy-efficient lightbulbs and bike-sharing programs, the very sorts of things we need in order to stave off disaster.
So the next time you hear a wingnut spewing feverish nonsense about "climategate" or the "globalist agenda," remember that this is not just fodder for late-night TV monologues, but the kind of stuff that has in the past brought societies faced with changing environments to their ultimate end.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153554
I see you're throwing class warfare grenades again.GRAPH: 147 Companies Control 40 Percent Of Global Transnational Corporate Wealth
http://thinkprogress.org/special/201...porate-wealth/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...the-world.html
Why do you read that tripe? The AFSCME alone spent $87.5 million supporting democrats. Are we to believe all other labor unions combined spent less than $5 million?Five Ways that Financial Elites are Destroying Democracy
1. Billionaires replace one person, one vote.
link
Link?
yep, class warfare. Haves/1% vs the HaveNots/99%. The eternal class warfare, all societies.
And the havenots like you blame the haves, rather than striving to better yourself.
Wealth is not a zero sum game. participating in this class warfare like you do is not very ethical.
"the havenots like you blame the haves"
the haves have gamed the system every chance they get, don't get prosecuted while the havenots get screwed, and get arrested and jailed for victimless crimes.
"Wealth is not a zero sum game"
It mostly is. As the haves have scooped nearly all the gains in American wealth, the havenots have lost. Those two trends are intimately related and will continue to worsen.
the great and powerful boutons has spoken. behold your plight and tremble.
gfy
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