Search results for "Citizens United"

Why the United States Government is Damaged Goods (Part 2 of 2)

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On January 21, 2010, the 235-year lifetime of the first North American federal republic, which once called itself the United States of America, came to an abrupt end. On this date the Supreme Court of the nation issued an irrational and false ruling, in the so-called “Citizens United” case, born of a lack of any valid national visionary focus that effectively recognized and bestowed on every organized collective entity the full rights and privileges of a singular citizen. Our national constitution was designed to provide a process for managing collectives and overarching rights to limit their operation against the individual and personal choice. By according individual citizen rights to collectives, the court destroyed this balance. The result was the creation of an irremediable failure within the foundation of balanced decision making in the Constitution, resulting in the final destruction of any voice from the people at the ballot box.

Kenneth Arrow

Collectives are not and can never be functionally equivalent to individuals. The critical difference is in the quality of decision making. Individuals make choices based on their own sense of truth and their will to act upon it (or not). Collectives aggregate the opinions, true and untrue, fantastic and incomplete, of their members by various means, but never as an individual. The essential unfairness of this was conclusively demonstrated in the 40’s by Kenneth Arrow, in a PhD thesis that foreshadowed a lifetime of work for which he later received the Nobel Prize in Economics. In brief, Arrow showed that, given a group of three or more people, all expressing preferences according to their own desires, there was no possible way to combine their individual judgments to achieve a collective decision that would be non-dictatorial, representative, decisive, and fair, among necessary qualities. The main difference is that the individual decides, but the group decision making process, even conducted with perfect transparency, necessarily diffuses the inevitably illogical and irrational way the conclusion was reached, protecting the guilty within the group by spreading moral responsibility across the whole body of participants, both innocent and guilty. Of course, Arrow’s Paradox may also be taken as a proof of the inevitable inadequacy of any collective form of government to achieve all the ideals one might reasonably expect of it.

Today we already see our dead nation rotting away as a direct result of the single decision in Citizens United; however, a great many of the foundations of our nationhood had already been undermined or had never been implemented at all, as I noted yesterday in comparing the colonial treatment of the black man, who could be enslaved, to the treatment of the red man, who lost both life and society to avoid enslavement. Equality of opportunity and social redress for the injustices of slavery seem to have slowly, painfully advanced. The survivors of the great North American Genocide for the most part languish in poverty without social services or infrastructure, though some have won the proverbial jackpot by having control of petroleum sources or legalized gambling. The privilege gap between the Mashantucket Peqod, a tiny tribe that operates the vast Foxwoods Casino complex in Connecticut, and the Hopi inhabitants of Third Mesa in dry, red rocky, desolate, Arizona is now as vast as the income inequality of our nation as a whole, if not more so.

The Constitution elaborates a mechanical government and gives it force, while the Bill of Rights offers a set of vague and unenforceable promises to protect the individual from the depredations of government and the mob or horde. What can we possibly do to rescue our communities from the global plan of legalized slavery that is now sliding into place with the surety born of an alien invasion of overwhelming might? Old-style humans increasingly organize to own and control all property and, since property is essential to life, all living things as well. They have conspired to take control of all aspects of government, including the ability to define what government is and is to be. They have announced loudly their intention to make our presently oppressive government a refined instrument of total social and economic control, to accelerate the attrition of the weak by deliberately increasing the death rate through destruction of social and medical services and infrastructure, and to trap a planet in their incredible solipsistic delusions of personal grandeur. Such is the legacy of our pastfathers.

For over two centuries the worst of such bullies progressively gained greater control over the Federal government, the US military, and the know-nothing cults displaying their self-generated delusions and ignorance under false-flag Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which, as “religions of the book,” are peculiarly susceptible to such spiritual derailment when subjected to ignorant literal reading of their largely irrelevant and obsolete texts.

And what has all this social terrorism of the meek and powerless achieved for our nation? I refer you to the table “American Shame” from the New York Times, where you will find the US has the poorest performance among all “advanced economies” in income inequality, food insecurity, prison population, and mathematics education. At the same time, US life expectancy at birth is significantly worse than all advanced nations except Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Slovakia. Our unemployment rate is higher than every country but Slovenia, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

Monday, July 4, we celebrate our nation’s birthday and honor the vision of what our nation might have been had we been a truer and wiser people, less inclined to reliance on imagined history and other myths of the past, and more willing to replace fear with love. Now that we have witnessed the cycle of our old nation, like Greece, Rome, and other false social constructs, cycling to an ignominious end in a convulsion of greed, bullying, and imperialism, we know better for the future. It is now our task to build new ways of living on the remaining working parts and reusable structures of that which we now transcend.

Our own transhuman destiny calls those of us who understand and have experienced the full dimensions of complete freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity to accept our role as teachers and leaders in the founding of a new social order. From this day we shall move forward in time with the future, at last to build that great and fabulous society of which we have always dreamed.

Our own celebration this year might be viewed as a “Launch Party” for the “New Age,” which we eagerly look forward to helping to create. There’s mighty work afoot. Let us begin to prepare for the second great North American federal republic—the nation that is to be, that will realize the ambitions of humanity to be safe and at peace, where all can grow into the fullness of their abilities.

Hail, Columbia!

—Dan Massey

 

Why the United States Government is Damaged Goods (Part 1 of 2)

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When I was growing up in Chattanooga in the 50s, I somehow acquired the belief that the United States of America was the best country in which to be born and live. I gave thanks to my god of the day I had been born an American, and wondered at the miracle of such privilege in a world torn by war, famine, disease, and poverty, in which it seemed no group of national cults could exist in peace.

Before Kent State was the Boston Massacre

When I went to college in the Boston area at the start of the 60s I was abruptly exposed to a very different view, no less idolatrous, but couched in historical ideals and events that supported two related viewpoints on which our republic was founded—a desire for intense socialization of agrarian freedoms on the one hand, simultaneously opposed and supported by mercantilist and capitalist interests where commercial advantage could be found. In Boston, we thought all the unrighteous capitalists were slave owners in the slave states.

In the 90s I moved with my family to the National Capital Region of Virginia and, in the 00s to the District of Columbia. Virginia (and Maryland and Southern Pennsylvania) really evoke the terrible realities in the birth of a new cult of nationhood. It is impossible to visit Manassas, Antietam, or Gettysburg without recalling the thousands of lives sacrificed to fear, disunity, and greed, where the soil is soaked with yet more thousands of liters of blood. And, having grown up in Chattanooga, I already knew the horrors of Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Chickamauga. I remembered the words of that hideously false, yet weirdly inspiring line from The Battle Hymn of the Republic which says “…as he died to make men holy, we shall die to make men free.” Can mass emotional insanity built on ignorance reliably serve the cause of love and truth? We now know it cannot, does not, and never has. Today we are heir to the results of living with such foolish ideas.

Once we moved to the District, I saw how Jefferson’s forced decision to have the national capital at its present location initially captured, within one city-to-be, the national vision of union based on unity without uniformity, avoiding New York in favor of a fresh start where Georgetown and Alexandria competed for economic favor, based on different social models. I contemplated the Rosicrucian geomancy that L’Enfant drew on in planning the city, as well as the artistic ideals inspired by Paris and other great cities of Europe in that day. I understood how the desires for balanced and fair peace had inspired this most occult design, as if the greatness to be of the city and the republic for which it stands could be invoked and established within an urban architecture designed to be a subliminal parable of truth.

The National Mall, designed by the McMillan Commission at the start of the 20th century, ripped the ramshackle and decrepit commercial heart out of the original, unplanned collection of businesses, services, and residences that occupied the swampy flats west of Capitol Hill, moved the city plan closer to its Masonic origins, yet made me feel I had entered a Federal Disneyland recreation of the Roman Forum on a much grander scale, where everything was brand new classical revival and beaux-arts architecture, a gleaming alabaster city “undimmed by human tears.” Unfortunately, to me the brilliance of this parklike setting for our Federal buildings and monuments was drenched in the human blood spilled to achieve the triumphalist vision of a newborn world empire. This especially came home to me when the World War II memorial was completed. Emperor Trajan, the prolific builder of second-century Rome, would have been proud.

Those who walk the streets of this city patrol the paths of destiny. When we marched for equality in October 2009, the light of truth on which this city was founded and designed broke through the ocean of clotted blood and stinking death wrought by foolish greed, showing us the glorious rainbow of a better age, unconquerable and soon to be all there is.

Can the future learn from the past? Or must the future be imprisoned by the limited wisdom of the past? How can our nation escape the prison of literalistic and untruthful government and triumphalist imperial ambitions in which it seems trapped? Today, Lincoln’s words continue to apply, “…a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great war, testing whether that nation…can long endure…” Now as we realize and expose how cruelly our nation continues to fail to build on the ideals for which so much life was sacrificed to the worship of greed, from the Revolution through the Civil War, we more clearly see the roots of oppression that prevent human freedom and social progress. In answer to the implied question, we now know this new nation has not endured, and has finally been destroyed by a bunch of ignorant humans flying a false flag of Supreme authority. Will yet another war be needed to achieve liberty, freedom, justice, and equality for all?

See how far we have lost our way as a national cult of freedom. Colonial sentiment was strongly anti-slavery, but the political power of slaveholders could not be denied, even as the extraction and financial industries cannot be denied today. Jefferson wrote of the King, in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence:

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, capturing and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to drestrain this execrable commerce.”

General Jeffrey Amherst

Does our nation live up to this standard today? Or have we actually become suborners of true freedom to serve delusions of historical and religious mythology? Or were we ever willing to put the interests of the powerless who depend on us for survival behind our personal greed and national desire for empire. For example, our national myth ignores the intentional genocide against the American aboriginal peoples (the “indians” that fought the “cowboys”), which began with the policies of British Commander Jeffrey Amherst, who conducted biological warfare against the Indian population of Ohio, among other things, directing his troops to deliberately infect gift blankets with smallpox. It is likely these actions by British troops caused a major smallpox epidemic among the native population.

Such mass social cruelty to an entire people has continued unabated to this day. After personally starting the French and Indian War (out of abyssal ignorance) George Washington led forces that ferociously destroyed the villages and societies of the Iroquois Confederation across New York state. He was known to the Indians as Caunotaucarius, which means “devourer of villages.” Many years later, when Washington was President and the settled Seneca were suffering under the continual abuse and cruelty practiced on them by American frontier rogues, they sent a delegation, headed by Cornplanter, their great spiritual leader of the time, who had encouraged them to adopt agrarian ways compatible with European frontier development. This delegation was to beg the great white man for mercy from his government and to require the frontier citizens to obey treaties and the law. After Cornplanter made his appeal, the delegation was given gifts and promises and sent home. On the way back they were robbed several times and, of course, nothing changed on the frontier. In retrospect it is easy to see that, in those days, the President and Federal government were powerless to control the frontier. It seems there has been no time when our nation was willing to live up to its grand promises for its aboriginal peoples.

This discussion continues tomorrow.

—Dan Massey

 

When will we move to impeach certain Supreme Court justices? (Part 2)

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

“In the Potemkin justice of the Roberts
court, the right to vote 
is under attack,
while the power to buy elections

is sanctified by law. Corporations
are called people under a
faux doctrine
of free speech, while women are denied
standing 
to combat discrimination.”
– Brent Budowsky Editorial from The Hill, April 9, 2014.

 

 

Most of us came of age with nearly blind trust in this once-austere body, this third branch of government charged with deciding the most challenging questions of our time. But times have changed, and so has the purpose and direction of the Supreme Court. It’s literally gone off the rails, insane. 

So, yesterday, we formally joined the national conversation by asking when the grassroots-at-large will rise up, start paying more attention to this judicial menace, and act by using the formidable power vested in the people to reshape The Supreme Court?

Budowsky’s April 9 editorial offers a prescription for us, a place to start in the near term:

Democrats, liberals and populists should promote a constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court decisions, propose statewide ballot initiatives to take back America from special interests, and make corruption in Washington a defining issue to mobilize the Democratic base, rally political independents and transform the 2014 and 2016 elections.

 

It’s one thing to make corruption in Washington a defining issue, but what of the larger picture? Which body reigns above us all and makes possible the Koch Brothers and their spawn? stands with the National Rifle Association in its total misunderstanding of the Second Amendment? restricts voting among known Democrats wherever and whenever possible? The list of shame goes on and on.

We have seen the rise of something worse than winning or losing a couple of elections. Pre-eminent constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe calls it the “Roberts Anti-court Court,” not just for the Court’s dismal showing, especially in the last several years with it’s rash of constitution-shredding decisions in favor of monied, self-interested litigants, but for it’s dramatic restructuring of the procedures and rules they formerly operated within, delimiting class actions, and forcing involuntary binding arbitration.

Tribe’s must-read book is entitled, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution.

“Since 2005, the Roberts Court has issued a string of decisions that make it harder to hold the government accountable in court when it violates the Constitution.”

“The result is a shrinking judicial role in enforcing the Constitution and protecting our liberty.”

[The Roberts Court is] “far more sensitive to the substantial burdens of litigation than to the potential benefits of lawsuits.”

“Whereas the midcentury court saw itself as a protector of the powerless, the Roberts Court is mostly uninterested in that role . . . it has dealt critical legal rules a death of a thousand cuts—leaving many of our rights intact but making them effectively impossible to enforce in any court”

Tribe urges us to “seek justice elsewhere . . . the democratic process, social movements, arbitration, our communities and families, consumer report websites and other means of ensuring that everyone comply with the law. Indeed, the Constitution presumes that democracy, not litigation, is how we’re supposed to resolve many disputes.”

Arthur Bryant, Chairman of Public Justice, a national public interest law firm, writing Thursday for the National Law Journal, agreed with Tribe’s analysis but goes a step further, “We must keep fighting for justice in the courts” and “keep working hard to make the Supreme Court a pro-court court. We need courts to provide access to justice to all.”

First, we need to keep using the courts, as much and as best we can, to hold corporations, the government and the powerful accountable—exposing the truth, righting wrongs and making the wrongdoers pay.

Second, we need to keep fighting to preserve and expand access to justice. Nothing could be more important.

The bottom line is that we cannot accept an anti-court Supreme Court. We need to develop a pro-court court. Then we need to do what everyone in America should be able to do: Go to court and get justice.

 

You can learn more about some of the more egregious recent decisions by the Court by taking a look at  Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, unconscionably awarding people’s free speech to corporations who have exploited this new right only further consolidate corporate and political power; Shelby County v. Holder, a gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, legalizing political graft.

Educate yourself for this inescapable campaign to unseat the worse of the worse as it revs up into full gear. Sign the petitions against Chief Justice John RobertsAntonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. And, connect with organizations and people in your own community who want to step forward to rescue America from these misguided justices. We need really, really wise justices to protect the voiceless, and these three are not that.

Click here for yesterday’s Part 1.

For more:

Budowsky: History to Impeach Roberts

We Cannot Let and “Anti-court Court Eliminate Access to Justice

Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution

And, to learn why VenusPlusX thinks this is important, read A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, and catch our unique mix of posts and videos 24/7 that will get us all to that better future, sooner rather than later.

When will we move to impeach certain Supreme Court justices? (Part 1)

“Five conservative Republican men serving on the Supreme Court,
led by a chief justice who has violated 200 years of judicial precedent,
despite pledging under oath during his confirmation hearings to respect
judicial precedent, are waging a legal war of mass destruction against
core principles of American democracy . . .”

Brent Budowsky Editorial from The Hill, April 9, 2014.

 

Antonin Scalia Flickr/creative commons

Antonin Scalia
Flickr/creative commons

Every June, I get nervous about the Supreme Court, and the Roberts’s court in particular. My knees have been shaking at the very idea that they may rule anyway now to give Hobby Lobby and all corporations/employers’ the right to disallow contraception coverage, something that is mandated by and totally funded by for the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

When I was growing up in the 50s, my parents impressed upon me the reverence they paid to the Supreme Court, whose justices served selflessly for life to decide the hardest decisions American’s face. I held this view up until the retirement of Justice William J. Brennan in 1990. At the time, I was close friends with his daughter and happen to be privy to the fact that he stayed on longer than he wanted to boost the progressive voices then on the court. But a lot has changed since then. George Bush was elected in 2000 and proceeded to pack the court with conservative judicial activists instead of stalwarts of justice. So now, we find ourselves looking for grounds for impeachment starting with the two of the worse, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, along with their enabler, Chief Justice John Roberts.

This right-wing majority in the Supreme Court is now forcing us to endure the most terrible, constitution-shredding rulings I never could have imagined: In 2009, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates by giving organizations free speech prerogatives, formerly reserved for individuals, in allowing political spending by outside groups, something that has since clearly hijacked the democratic political process. Then in 2013, the court decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted, savaged really, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, striking down its Section 4 as unconstitutional, the formula that subjected certain jurisdictions (mostly in the South with its bad voter protection histories) to pre-clearance by the Department of Justice before implementing new changes in their voting laws and practices. And, also last June, in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the Court held that aggregate campaign contribution limits were invalid under First Amendment, newly legalizing a long-ago rejected form of outright political graft.

There are already numerous petitions to call for the impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Roberts has even prompted a petition from his own right wing, for siding with the progressive side of the court which upheld that people can be forced to get coverage under Affordable Care Act, just as with car insurance, a widely accepted premise.

Both Thomas and Scalia have been participated in partisan fundraising, which would be be considered a clear violation of ethics. Thomas’ wife, Ginni, was also on the payroll of at least one of these organizations, Thomas says he “forgot” to disclose. An analysis of Scalia’s public statements and speeches could hold the key to his ouster because they were seditious. Unfortunately, ethics censure is voluntary for Supreme Court justices. They are not held the same standard of conduct that all other federal judges are held to, and under which they can be impeached.

Budowsky urges us to mobilize:

Democrats, liberals and populists should promote a constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court decisions, propose statewide ballot initiatives to take back America from special interests, and make corruption in Washington a defining issue to mobilize the Democratic base, rally political independents and transform the 2014 and 2016 elections (from The Hill)

What will you do to address this most important threat to American democracy in our history?

This post continues in Part 2 with a discussion and analysis of Laurence Tribe‘s new book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution.

For more:

Budowsky: History to Impeach Roberts

We Cannot Let and “Anti-court Court Eliminate Access to Justice

Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution

And, to learn why VenusPlusX thinks this is important, read A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom, and catch our unique mix of posts and videos 24/7 that will get us all to that better future, sooner rather than later.

 

 

Time to Make Corporations into People? Give me a Break!

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

We want to continue an earlier discussion of the fallacies of the decision of the US Supreme Court in the Citizens United case from a viewpoint of pure logic and how it is a subject with which the legal profession as a whole seems quite unfamiliar.

The essential error in the decision in that case stems from the assumption that a corporate person is functionally equivalent in society to an individual. The patent falsity of this concept is well known to political scientists of the rationalist school since the 1940s; however, rationality is not a feature of today’s US political discourse.

It is quite common for societies to enact laws that are completely contrary to physical, social, and motivational reality. Indiana once legislated that the value of pi should be 4. Such misconceived law is always destructive. In fact, if our society were to ever enact sane, rational legislation it would be a cause of great celebration. The pillars of society—religion, government, and commerce—were never intended to function for the benefit of the public, rather they were developed by men to dominate and enslave people in service to a small conspiracy of worthless bullies.

Our liberation from enslavement is the recognition that these pillars rest upon the unsound foundation created by the violent suppression of erotic freedom, and our collective and unquestionable destiny is to undermine these foundations and demolish the false channels of support they offer to the delusions of a failed legacy social order. Anarchism (not anarchy) is the process by which we systematically replace old, worn, and coercive systems now enforced by the religion, government, and commerce with new, adaptive, voluntary systems that care for each human in equal measure.

Today we are witness to the initial quivering, the aura, the sense of deja vu of the American body politic as its collective psyche ramps up to the quadrennial grand mal seizure known as a “Presidential election.” Once again we test whether an irrational convulsion of uninformed public opinion can be exploited by the media to herd the ignorant, and everyone else caught up in the stampede, into the slaughterhouse. It makes no difference which slaughterhouse you choose—all provide equivalent service and none exist to foster the best interest of yourself or the converging mob of marching morons. And today, leading one of the marching moron contingents, is a descendant of George Romney, who was once the leading right-wing candidate for the presidency, with none other than “the movie actor who once played George Gipp” as his vice. What a load of vice that would have been!

Just yesterday little Romney, the spitting image of the man who once drove American Motors and a good part of Michigan into the toilet, spoke up with great faux-intellectual profundity to inform his audience that “corporations are people, my friend.” It is hard to imagine how any sane person would expect people to believe this or to vote for anyone who did. The parasites that perpetually inhabit the judicial chambers of the Supreme Court may be beyond the reach of common sense, but candidates are not so immune. Both people and politicians well understand the differences between individual decision making and that of groups. Our most skilled legislators have been expert at the manipulation of these differences to their advantage, while anyone who has personally faced corporate anonymity has experienced the difference first hand.

Groups of people, no matter how organized, whether as corporations, governments, or religions, are not in any way equivalent to individuals. Most critically, they are fundamentally incapable of prioritizing their desires or agendas in a way that fairly and equally addresses the needs of all their members. As an individual, you are free to consider your alternatives and choose what seems to best meet your perceived needs. If you are a very thoughtful person, you may make a brief cortico-thalamic pause before taking condign action. And you may, of course, be undecided until you are able to collect additional information.

While a group or team may make its best effort to simulate such a personal and individual process, the model being followed is inevitably deficient. It is easy to see how this deficiency develops. A rational individual follows a four-step process in taking action, which has been conveniently summarized in the acronym “OODA.” OODA stands for “orient, observe, decide, act.” OODA is executed in a loop, and the loop is executed as rapidly as practically possible to be maximally responsive to a shifting situation. When a committee tries to follow this process it is necessary to divide the labor or require synchronization of activities. In either case the behavior and capabilities of each team member combine with those of every other to diffuse personal responsibility for the decision or the outcome of the action.

In such a case, when no one bears personal responsibility, there is no possibility of accountability and thus no way to recursively improve the quality of decisions. A rational individual learns from mistakes. Groups will repeat mistakes unless solutions (which may themselves be mistaken) are dictated by a single individual. Let’s examine one case in which the diffusion of responsibility comes home to roost and unarguably shows the foolishness of imagining collectives to be individual persons.

On December 3, 1984, a Union Carbide Corporation pesticide plant in Bhopal, India leaked around 32 tons of toxic gases, including methyl isocyanate gas which led to the worst industrial disaster to date. The official death toll was initially recorded around 5,000. Many figures suggest that 18,000 died within two weeks, and it is estimated that around 8,000 have died since then of gas-poisoning-related diseases.

This disaster was caused by incompetent design, operation, and maintenance of a hazardous industrial facility. The largely anonymous parties who could have prevented it through greater technical competence and more attention to detail caused the deaths of 26,000 people. If this were a single, simple case of manslaughter, someone would be charged and punished, if only to discourage others from following their example. But how is any enforcement to be levied against the responsible firm? If the firm is a person, then there must be a way to make enforcement take on personal significance. But there is no personality in a company, no potential for collective accountability. Rather, the structure of most companies encourages the guilty to scapegoat the innocent and suffer no consequences at all for evil actions.

Financial judgment, the vehicle by which the judicial system imposes penalties on companies, is clearly inadequate. If a company can avoid responsibility for its crimes by a cash payment, why is not the same generosity extended to individuals? If an individual can be executed for premeditated murder, what comparable judgment applies to a company? Shall the entirety of its assets be seized? Should the corporate structure be dissolved? Should the company be forced to cease all operation?

There is no equitable answer to this challenge. There is no congruence or even similarity between persons and companies. Anyone who asserts such is non-rational and thus non-sane. It should be no surprise that an ignorant, thoughtless, and bigoted politician holds such views. It is truly tragic when delusional beliefs are held by the persons who seek responsibility for giving true meaning and value to our system of government.

—Dan Massey

The Newseum—Vainglorious Journalism Leads to Triumphalist History

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The Newseum sits on Pennsylvania Ave. in the District of Columbia next door to the Canadian embassy about halfway from the White House to the Capitol. A magnificent architectural accomplishment in glass and some white metal (aluminum?), it contains a vast 7-story atrium. Everything that can be transparent is transparent. The parable for the news media seems rather obvious. And you can enjoy this Disneyesque production for a mere $21.95, for two days’ admission. If this seems a bad value, it’s probably because all the Smithsonian museums are free and have nicer gift shops.

Inside, arranged like the Stations of the Cross, are the tiers of exhibits, interactive playgrounds, working studios, more exhibits, a gift shop, and a food court. Unlike Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré or Guadalupe, the faithful are taken to the top of the mountain by an all-glass joy of an elevator. And then descend by ramps and steps to worship at each Station of the Press. Make no mistake. This is not a rational or logical endeavor. This is a monument to one of the religious cults of our nation–the so-called “Free Press.” As such, its pretentions are not limited by either fact or truth, but go to serve the great myth that is American “constitutional” government by the People. A basically good idea executed rather haphazardly, compared to what it promised.

A casual viewer may think that every major event in the last 200 years was initiated and orchestrated by the press. Further reflection shows that, even when events occurred unexpectedly, the initial and follow-up press coverage defined the public memory and archival record of the events, including multi-generational effects (e.g., future history). As an example:

We are shown how the rogue bureaucrat J. Edgar Hoover, could infiltrate the highest levels of our government through corruption, criminal conspiracy, and blackmail, even as a feckless press elevated him as a national icon of progressive law enforcement and public safety. Nowhere in this paean to Hoover and the press of the day, heavily sponsored it appears by the FBI, did I note reflection or self-criticism or even comprehension of the possibility that the press had been gullible co-conspirators in Hoover’s aggrandizement, which so distorted the realization of our national values throughout most of the 20th century and linger with us today.

There are many exhibits presenting a collective, synthetic record of events assembled from selected press reports. Where a death blow was dealt to all human freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution in the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, the Newseum is silent. On as issue of grave importance and representing serious injury to the press, the press is silent, not only in reaction, but in acknowledgment of the destructive reality. They might as well be dead.

And so the press, with its collective ignorance and cultural biases, records the events of time. The stories and, finally, myths that arise from this shallow sloppiness become fixed in the minds of people and define what is considered to have been true, even it, as often happens, the press record bears no meaningful or logical relationship to the reality of the event.

The serious question raised by this subtle distortion of reality in the mainstream media is how it affects the development and interpretation of history, our national myth. For historians will draw on recorded data, and the mainstream media produce more data and content than any other private agency. So it is easy to see that the slant of the historical record is shaped by prevailing media assumptions of the period being analyzed. While a historian may find arguments and events advantaging one side or another in some dispute, his analysis may not penetrate to the underlying errors of thinking that distort the positions on both sides of a dispute. So when the media focus on a particular event uncritically, this naive approach tends to define the simplistic story of a complex issue. History is largely written by the winners of any dispute. Triumphalism is a great failing of the human spirit. And from this emerges bulshyte, not history.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

When we examine the so-called historical narratives of our own or other cultures, we quickly find much that is commonly believed that has no basis in reality at all. One need only consider the legends of the founding of our nation and the roles of George Washington to know that this is not the Native American view, not the French-Canadian view, and certainly not the Primitive Mormon view of what the United States is and what it stands for in terms of “freedom.” Our own national myth, enshrined in endless hours of fantasy contemplating and analyzing such delusions as “manifest destiny” and “states’ rights,” begins to resemble Horatio Greenough’s half-naked statue of George, a fitting symbol for the founder of a nation that glories in empire rather than service to humanity, no matter how little it relates to the man himself.

 

—Dan Massey

 

Edelman’s Lisa Manley, Climate Change Activist

Lisa Manley is a Corporate Social Responsibility Executive with Edelman, one of the largest Public Relations firms. She has 20 years of experience in global sustainability strategy and engagement, and recently offered “Five Observations from UN Climate Week.” It gives us a bird-eye view of the outcomes from a business point of view.

Manley was inspired by all the events that took place over a week ago, including the People’s Climate March that drew more than 300,000 environmental activists. She acknowledges how lackluster the outlook has been since 2009’s disappointing climate conference in Copenhagen but points out several take-aways from this year’s Summit in New York, suggesting high hopes for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris next year. “Optimism is on the rise,” is her perspective.

Hewlitt-Packard's Gabi Zedlmayer at "Leader's vision for a low carbon economy" NYC Climate Week 2014 Flickr/creative commons

Hewlitt-Packard’s Gabi Zedlmayer at “Leader’s vision for a low carbon economy” NYC Climate Week 2014
Flickr/creative commons

Manley asserts “partnership is the new leadership” by citing promising new collaborations of businesses and governments, such as We Mean Business and RE100, and The World Bank global efforts building a coalition among businesses and governments to support carbon pricing.

Manley goes on to say that “business has new and compelling voices in the dialogue” noting that 100 CEOs attended this year’s Summit. She highlights Apple’s Tim Cook who believes that innovation induces economic growth, particularly in the area of renewable energy.”

“Our cities are likely where the change happen fastest,” says Manley, believing that as we look forward to Paris’s UNFCCC next year the focus will shift from nation states to what can be accomplished by major cities.

The world’s architects are leading the way with impressive commitments to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) of urban areas by changing how buildings and cities are planned, designed and constructed. For instance, at the International Union of Architects (UIA) World Congress in August 2014, member organizations representing over 1.3 million architects in 124 countries unanimously adopted the 2050 Imperative — a declaration to eliminate CO2 emissions in the built environment by 2050. This is a significant commitment, considering urban areas generate 70 percent of all GHGe, mostly from buildings. Looking ahead to 2035 (and accounting for population growth and expected human migration), 75 percent of the built environment will be either new or renovated.

Manley concludes, “communication and engagement are critical as we continue to pave the path forward.” She brings to our attention an inspirational film shown to world leaders at the opening of the UN Summit, WHAT’S POSSIBLE, demonstrating that “climate change is solvable — but engagement and action are essential.” She notes that “two years ago, the NYC climate summit sparked 1 million social shares, last year it was 2 million and this year it was 83 million!

Continuous dialogue, commitments and follow-through will be crucial to motivate citizens and stakeholders as we build alignment by mid-century around paths for zero emissions. This week certainly provided a vital spark of optimism that we must maintain to achieve the success needed at climate summits in Lima, then in Paris and beyond. The impacts, challenges and opportunities of climate change are evolving in the hearts and minds of citizens around the world, opening doors of opportunity for continued communication and engagement.

Full article available here. Talk to your family and friends and the business you work for. Find out what you can do in your own community to make it greener. Redouble your efforts to reverse the destruction of planet earth. Okay?

 

Scalia’s Cry for Help: Impeach Me!

The most recent insanity expressed by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:

…[T]he separation of church and state “doesn’t mean the government cannot favor religion over non-religion.”

…[S]ecularists concern over the overreach of religion into the government and every aspect of the public sphere is “utterly absurd” …

…[T]he Constitution’s only obligation is to protect Christian’s [sic] freedom of religion and was never intended to protect Americans from religious imposition.

Antonin Scalia Photo by Stephen Masker Flickr/creative commons

Antonin Scalia
Photo by Stephen Masker
Flickr/creative commons

The only pronouncement from Scalia that could be considered rational: I’m guilty of sedition. I am guilty of putting my religious fundamentalism ahead of all reason and justice. Impeach me, please!

Like an errant child, he is begging for our discipline, and we should oblige him by redoubling existing efforts to impeach him once and for all. There are other offenders of his ilk on the Court but he is by far the worst.

It is so very sad to see the psychological ravages of religious fundamentalism so sharply on display, especially by a person with immense power. Taken to its extreme, American religiosity erodes the very brains wherein it resides. Patient Zero is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a very, very sad case, indeed.

Scalia’s religiosity and his powerful position on the Court aren’t centered on anything good, nothing greater than his/the radical right-wing agenda aimed at obliterating any progress since the 17th century, even since the Dark Ages, when religious hierarchies controlled every aspect of human life. His views parallel Sharia Law in practically every respect.

Scalia’s extreme religiosity has distorted his thinking so much that he is no longer capable of rational thought, or his job in interpreting the United States Constitution. The shreds left of his humanity have become devoted to openly pursuing his objective of making religion, specifically his distorted view of catholicism, the law of our land. Several Court decisions over the last few years reflect this in-bred malignancy, even as he continues his campaign to make religion supreme, in our schools, for corporations, and in government. Pundits rightly label him a Vatican surrogate.

In the last 100 years, progressives (both religious and not) have succeeded in demanding equal protections and rights guaranteed in the Constitution, including such things as the civil rights of minorities and a woman’s right to exercise her own healthcare decisions. Scalia and his minions’ reactionary behavior and actions against these inevitable gains are militant in their expression, totalitarian by any measure.

Progressives are not “shoving their disbelief down our throats,” as Scalia and others contend. This favorite screed of the radical right wing is just a fear reaction from those who have never accepted, and will never accept, the intended idea of the separation of church and state, that each person has the right to their own (personal) religious freedom, an unassailable human right that protects all of us with freedom from religion.

We often forget to remind ourselves that the puritans who left England were basically banished to the The New World because of their religious extremism, and their philosophical progeny has been at work to destroy our Constitution practically from the start. It’s an uphill battle to contain this extremism, to call it out for what it is, and we must continue to wrest freedom from the jaws of radical religiosity.

As ordinary citizens we have the power. Find out what you can do today to end the reign of freedom’s fiercest enemies, starting by calling for Scalia’s impeachment.

Scalia must go. United States Supreme Court Justices can be impeached for sedition and intentional distortion of our founding Constitution. Please sign this petition, and campaign among your family and friends to help end the scourge of religious fundamentalism, here and abroad.

 

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Related:
When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices? (Part 1)
When Will We Move to Impeach Certain Supreme Court Justices? (Part 2)
Religion: Real and Fake
When Free Speech Becomes Sedition
Right-Wingnuts Bless Progressives

Our September Round-Up

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, photo by 5oulscape Flickr/creative commons

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, photo by 5oulscape
Flickr/creative commons

This is our September round-up in case you missed some of our posts. If you like our unique mix of news and opinions, follow us on Twitter/VenusPlusX, and like our page, Facebook/VenusPlusX.

We kept up with many of our key issues with a discussion of how and why police bias is the chief cause of criminality in Culturally Inept Policing Schools Criminals; the psychology behind domestic violence in A Women’s Problem is a Men’s Issue; and the underlying ecology of progress in Everyone Needs Examples, Including Bad Examples. These followed our extensive take on the real legacy of the Michael Brown shooting.

We continued to monitor the Federal Communication Commission’s impending ruling which would destroy the inherent democracy built into the Internet by urging our visitors to participate in the Internet Slowdown Action earlier this month with Take Action On Wednesday For Net Neutrality, and outlined other things people can do in Today: Actions You Can Take To Assure Net Neutrality.

We asked you participate in the Fast Food Walkout with Support Tomorrow’s Walkouts To Raise Wages, and then cataloged the results in StrikeFastFood Protesters Walk Out, Get Arrested, Succeed.

We published Income Inequality Dampens Economic Growth for Rich and Poor Alike, a follow up to The Wealthy and Powerful Aid Social and Powerful Social and Economic Justice Activists and List of Organizations Working on Income Equality. And, we couldn’t overlook the Billions Wasted By Right-Wingnuts.

We covered the People’s Climate March, the next day’s Flood Wall Street sit-in, and the Climate Summit at the United Nations, with Climate March This Sunday Be Counted and Salutes and More Salutes and Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?

The Global Poverty Project with aims to eradicate world poverty by 2030 and their Global Citizens Festival made a deep impression, We Are Here, We Are Here.

We commended actress and United Nations Ambassador Emma Watson’s succinct but bulls-eye redefinition of feminism for a new generation, in Salutes!

We riffed on lots of stories in the news, such as how recent research by Credit Suisse showed that profits go up in relation to the number of women in management and operations, in The Liberation of Women Will Change the World.

And, we continued to feature videos as part of our Sexual Freedom Project. Send us your video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you. This month: Gender Neutrality in Public Restrooms and Don’t Yuck Somebody’s Yum. (More videos.)

So stay tuned!

 

We Are Here, We Are Here

Let’s talk about our part
My heart touches your heart
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about living
Had enough of dying, not what we all about
Let’s do more giving
Do more forgiving, yeah
Our souls were brought together so that we could love each other

“We Are Here” (by Alicia Keys, 2014, Listen here)

The 3rd Annual Global Citizens Festival in New York City’s Central Park is underway right now. If you haven’t heard, it’s a presentation of the Global Poverty Project which is committed to ending world poverty by 2030.

The Project’s goals aim to redouble the efforts and financial support of governments, corporations, and individuals in the areas of of education, vaccination, and sanitation and water. You couldn’t buy a tickets to hear Alicia Key’s, JayZ, No Doubt, and other headliners. You joined the movement by registering as a Global Citizen and then did something concrete to help end poverty. More than 80% of today’s attendees are these activists.

Prime Minister of India, Narenda Modi, speaking to the Festival on behalf of 800,000 young people in India committed to improve sanitation and drinking water, joined with representatives from Scandanavian countries, Denmark and Norway, and Caterpillar Foundation in leading the way towards increasing financial commitments and hands-on aid to areas of extreme poverty. But, just like these lucky concert-goers, you can do your own part.

If you are not here, you can tune in at globalcitizen.org/festival or to MSNBC on television, right now. If you missed Alicia Keys singing this song, we’re highlighting it here. Just consider what is taking place today.

Alicia Keyes Flickr/creative commons

Alicia Keyes
Flickr/creative commons

We are united more than ever before, singing along with Alicia: “Right now it don’t make sense,” “Our souls are brought together so that we could love each other.” We can help heal this world by working together. It’s within our reach, but we have to reach.

Almost half of the world, over 3 billion people, live in poverty. Fourteen children die every minute of every day due to poverty, hunger, and preventable diseases.

What will you do today to make a difference? Start by singing along with Alicia.

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here

Bombs over Baghdad, tryna get something we ain’t never had
Let’s start with a good dad
So real but it’s so sad
And while we burnin’ this incense, we gon’ pray for the innocent
Cause right now it don’t make sense
Right now it don’t make sense
Let’s talk about Chi town
Let’s talk about Gaza
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about Israel
Cause right now it is real
Let’s talk about, let’s talk Nigeria
In a mass hysteria, yeah
Our souls are brought together so that we could love each other
Brother,

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here

No guns made in Harlem, but yet crime is a problem
He wanna shine, they wanna rob him
Single mother, where they come from?
How we gonna save the nation, with no support for education
Cause right now it don’t make sense
Right now it don’t make sense
Let’s talk about our part
My heart touch your heart
Let’s talk about, let’s talk about living
Had enough of dying, not what we all about
Let’s do more giving
Do more forgiving, yeah
Our souls were brought together so that we could love each other
Sister,

We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are here
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh

Oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh, oh

We are here (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
We are here for all of us (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
(oh, oh)
We are here for all of us (oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
(oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh)
that’s why we are here, why we are here (oh, oh)

Cause we are here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here, why we are here
We are, here
We are here for all of us
We are here for all of us
That’s why we are here,
Why we are here

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