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

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 Roberts, Antonin 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

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

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 20 Jun 2014 0 comments

Right-wingnuts bless progressives

“The Republican base is driving the party toward a political agenda
that makes its candidates increasingly unelectable
for national and statewide offices.”
— Howard Dean, former Vermont Governor,
the preceding Chair of the Democratic National Committee,
and founder of Democracy in Action, speaking to Politico Magazine

We spent the entire year before the 2008 presidential election, we only realized later, in a state of distress as we contemplated the downfall of our country should it be taken over by right-wing extremists or nut jobs like PTSD-sufferer John McCain. On election night, with Obama victorious, the tears flowed and flowed. We felt like we had rescued triumph from the jaws of defeat, and then felt the same way when he was re-elected in 2012.

In spite of Obama’s shortfalls politically since he took office, the trend towards sanity, particularly with respect to equality rights, has been brighter than it has ever been, despite the racial hatred expressed by the opposition on a daily basis.

Flickr/creative commons

With the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 2010 our joy over Obama has been tampered by the awareness of just how much harm and chaos can still be wrought by hate-filled right-wingnuts. Things were likely to get much worse before they could get better, especially with the rise of tea party madness. Make no mistake, these right-wingnuts, all of whom are white christianists with only a handful of exceptions, are just as misguided and murderous as any fundamentalist theocrat you can find in all the world’s trouble spots. And, just like them, right-wingnut politicians have fueled domestic terrorism.

Since that 2008 election eve, however, we also came to understand that each misstep the opposition makes is a gift because their’s are are always self-repudiating, always damaging to their cause, always distancing the speaker further and further from reality, always a sentiment with no legs therefore no future, always a simplistic hope that is destined to die by its own negativity. The more stupid they behave, the better for progressives, even if the results are not immediately apparent.

It used to be that right-wingnuts kept their racism and sexism under wraps, as much as was possible. For example, Nixon’s “southern strategy,” to enrage poor, low educated, white people to resist progressive ideas and candidates, was a direct result of and backlash against the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, just as much as Jim Crow laws were a reaction against the end of slavery. But since the 60s everything was done behind the scenes, as secretive as possible, civil on the outside but treacherous on the inside.

The inevitability of the population shift toward a non-white America, and in particular the election of a black president, has created another backlash, one so fearsome that right-wingnut’s deepening paranoia and hatred has been fully unmasked. For the last 6 years, they speak and act like we can’t see or hear them, a sure sign of mental disease, making their self-repudiation more rapid and complete, hastening their demise. This modern backlash is good for progressives because it brings our opponents into sharper relief, easier to criticize, and, most important, unseat.

When Mr. Brat, an economics professor of dubious merit, can ride Tea Party ideals to unseat a Republican establishment candidate like Cantor in a Virginia primary, that can only be a gift to the opposition if used well. Unfortunately, in this case, Brat’s Democratic opponent is also another economic professor of dubious merit, from the very same small-bore college in the woods of Virginia, so it’s impossible to say which one will be victorious, but the silver lining is nonetheless there for progressive to take note.

Howard Dean deftly defined this silver lining on Monday in Politico Magazine.

First, competing in every state and every district is still vital. You never know when an opportunity will arise to pull off an unexpected victory . . . Democrats can win everywhere only when we run everywhere. That requires committing to and developing grass-roots talent in the deepest-red and darkest-blue corners of the electoral map.

Second, Americans are so fed up with Congress that even the tea party wants to kick it out. . . House leaders have engaged in very little serious work that would benefit the American people, and voters are sick of it.

Third, organization and shoe leather can beat big money. . . In an upcoming election in which Republicans’ secret corporate money could dwarf Democrats’ progressive message on the airwaves, Cantor’s defeat should remind us that phone calls, door knocks and one-on-one conversations with neighbors can beat back a tidal wave of cash.

Fourth, base support wins elections — unless it drives you outside the mainstream. Cantor’s loss has largely been attributed to his failure to retain the support of a GOP grass-roots base that opposes everything from gun-violence prevention to comprehensive immigration reform. That was bad news for Cantor, but it is even worse news for the GOP nationally. The Republican base is driving the party toward a political agenda that makes its candidates increasingly unelectable for national and statewide offices.

This dynamic stands in stark contrast to the one between Democrats and their progressive grass-roots base, which pushes the party to embrace policy ideas that enjoy broad popular support.

Lastly, and perhaps most important, Democrats need to learn from Cantor’s loss that anything can happen in 2014. Even on the morning of the election, not a single major pundit or politician thought the majority leader would lose. Cantor was considered invincible, and Republicans were expected to win big in November. But voters have minds of their own and the tea party’s right-wing base helped it usher in a truly unexpected result.

The fact is, the Democratic base is much larger than the tea party, and polling shows that most Americans stand with us on issue after issue, from expanding Social Security to raising the minimum wage to getting big money out of politics. If Democrats mobilize our base, stand up for what’s right and force a fight on vote-inspiring issues connected to combating income inequality, we can rack up wins that will stun many in Washington’s pundit class — and elect Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in November.

(The full article, “The Lesson in Cantor’s unexpected defeat” can be found here.)

So progressives take note: Foolish Republicans are there for plucking. Find and support your local candidates who can articulate what we stand for. Let’s sweep both houses of Congress this November!

Flickr/creative commons

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 18 Jun 2014 0 comments

Are you sleeping through a revolution?

Portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Chris Tank located in the MLK Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, DC
Flickr/Creative Commons

“One of the great liabilities of history is the fact that all too many people find themselves amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to achieve the new attitudes and the new mental outlook that the new situation demands.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr., Springfield College Commencement , June 14, 1964

It was empowering this week to re-read and reflect on an oft-overlooked commencement address by Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered 50 years ago at Springfield College.

Just days before the speech, King was arrested with a group of demonstrators attempting to eat at a restaurant and sent to St. Johns County Jail, an infamous building that housed many civil rights pioneers for non-violent demonstrations in and around St. Augustine, Florida. He wasn’t sure he would get out in time to go to Springfield, Massachusetts, for this commencement address, or to Yale University where he was scheduled to speak the following day.

Here are some excerpts from Springfield College address, but we urge you to read it in full.

The theme of this speech cautions all social change advocates and activists to make sure they are not “sleeping through a revolution” by not doing everything possible each day to make the world a better place. He urged his listeners first to adopt a world perspective to understand the breadth of our collective social ills. Next? Wipe out poverty. And, third, recognize the “urgency of the moment.”

As long as there is poverty in this world no one can be totally secure. Somehow we are all tied together in this great system of humanity. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be; and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: “No man is an island entire in itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main,” and then he goes on toward the end to say, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

When we recognize this, King goes on to say, and “are concerned about our brothers who are less fortunate, then we are remaining awake through a great revolution.”

[I]f we are to remain awake through this great revolution, we must work passionately and unrelentingly to remove the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation and from the world.

In exposing the modern problem of failing to “recognize the urgency of the moment,” King’s words cross time, just as pertinent today as they were 50 years ago.

There are people all around who are saying, “Cool off.” There are individuals all around who are saying, “You are pushing things too fast.” And they are saying only time can solve the problem. The only answer that we can give to the myth of time is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation have used time much more effectively than the forces of good will. And I am absolutely convinced that the Wallace’s, the extreme rightists and the individuals committed to negative ends have used time much more effectively in our nation than the individuals committed to positive ends. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people who will bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time. Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals . . .time itself becomes an ally of the primitive and insurgent forces of irrational emotionalism and social stagnation.

The speech happens to elucidate the roots and foundations on which VenusPlusX stands, articulated in our recently release of our Manifesto for a New Age of Sexual Freedom, which begins: “The New Age of Sexual Freedom is synonymous with the end of sexism and racism (the greatest form of sexual oppression), and the end of nationalism for the purposes of war (the greatest form of racism), in the shortest amount of time (because we are killing each other).”

We hope social justice advocates everywhere will be inspired by this speech and more of King’s writings, and reflect on what more then can do, how many other people they can awaken to their cause, and how we can all avoid sleeping through the revolution.

Photo by Anne Adrian
Flickr/Creative Commons

in Cosmic Citizenship / Grassroots / Key Issues / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 16 Jun 2014 0 comments

MSNBC’s Toure: Can a man be a feminist, too?

We were so happy to hear Toure, one of the anchors of MSNBC’s The Cycle, talk about a favorite topic of ours: men can and should ascribe to feminism.

The battle for any identity group’s liberation cannot and should not proceed solely with members of that group, and it never does.

MSNBC’s Toure, on The Cycle
(video below)

Not only is feminism the most modern expression of progressivism, men’s direct involvement is crucial to its continued success in setting aside old, useless, coercive, and harmful systems imposed on society in favor of preserving that which is old and also good, and melding that with new, more humane and voluntary associations. You can read more about the process of true progress in our Manifesto for a New Age of Sexual Freedom.

Toure echoes several feminist memes we wrote about a couple of weeks ago, including our promotion of Zaron Burnett’s’ wonderful essay, A Gentlemen’s Guide to Rape Culture, a piece of work that is both fun to read and highly instructional, a must read for every man, young or old.

I came of age with the birth of modern feminism over 50 years ago. The men I chose to surround myself with, in college and since, were all feminists, ascribing to this renewed vision of how to make the world a better place. We had words to describe men who fought feminism, degraded or ignored it. Luddites, Knuckle-draggers, Unenlightened, and, oh yeah, just Stupid. Because, as Toure has reinforced, the oppression of some contributes to the oppression of many.

As a post-script here, I would feel remiss in not differentiating true feminism from its mangled 1980s radical feminism. The word mangled is appropriate because of this splintering wave’s angry misdirection in rejecting men, and in particular trans women (and trans men). The very idea of non-inclusive feminism is intellectually self-contradictory, regressive (and decidedly not radical) and has contributed nothing but weakening feminism by confusing its underlying principles. Again, the word Luddite comes to mind.

So young women, study feminism’s history to help you understand why it enfranchises all women, all men, all trans people, and everyone in between.

in Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Sex Education / Videos by Alison Gardner 15 Jun 2014 0 comments

New “SecureDrop” is a game changer

Guardian Launches SecureDrop System for Whistleblowers to Share Files

We took to Facebook the other day, so thrilled to see that The Guardian has just launched something called SecureDrop for use by anonymous whistleblowers to securely submit documents and data. Our first reaction?

This . . . will be a real game-changer.

Flickr/creative commons

Game-changer really understates the significance of this matriculation from grassroots efforts such as Anonymous, a loose, silent brotherhood of freedom fighters, and WikiLeaks, a bold and successful effort to organize these nascent efforts. Now the Pulitzer-winning Guardian, a 200-year-old news organization with a growing international media presence, and important progressive voice, has stepped up to formalize the very first secure drop that whistleblowers anywhere can safely bring material directly to the public.

This makes a huge, planet-wide, progressive stride towards our better future, a world free from nationalism and war and the racism on which they are based.

The Guardian’s SecureDrop will be managed by Freedom of the Press Foundation and Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was a hero of my generation of anti-war activists, bringing us the secret Pentagon Papers when we needed it the most, and helped hasten the end the Vietnam War. (The Foundation accepts tax-deductible donations, if you can help that way.)

“A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.” —Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers case, June 17, 1971

Any new material received through SecureDrop will be professionally evaluated, corroborated, and then carefully time-released to the public, protecting the sources to the full extent of the law, while arming ordinary citizens with the information they deserve to know about world governments. Lawyer, author, and international columnist Glenn Greenwald was the Guardian journalist who took receipt of Edward Snowden‘s waterfall of government surveillance secrets, and won his own Pulitzer Prize (and George Polk Award) for doing it. (In 2014, Greenwald went on to found First Look Media and its first online publication, The Intercept.)

Too many people have wrongly labeled whistleblowers outright traitors (Chelsea Manning, for now still incarcerated, and Edward Snowden, in temporary exile, and even Greenwald, and just as they once did Daniel Ellsberg), but all of these accusers are misinformed luddites, failing, tragically, to see that there will be no peace in our collective future unless we live in a world where there are no secrets, no necessity for them under any circumstances.

Manning, Snowden, and Greenwald rightly, and now the Guardian news organization, know with certainty that they have made giant steps toward releasing humankind from the enslavement imposed upon us by a consortium of fear-driven, power-drunk oligarchs who occupy themselves, not with the health or well-being of the all people, but willing do absolutely anything and go to any lengths necessary to control anyone they possibly can in order to protect their selfish special interests, whatever they might be.

We have brave hearts in our midsts, again when we need it the most. We need more of it.

Never fear and never stop exposing the truth and disinformation around you, starting at the grassroots upwards, even to SecureDrop yourself. You can do you part, so what’s stopping you?.

For more about the progressive transference from old and coercive systems to new, and completely voluntary associations, check out our Manifesto for the New Age of Sexual Freedom.

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Transhuman Erotic Freedom by Alison Gardner 09 Jun 2014 0 comments

Misogyny in the news, at last

Editor’s Note: There are few if any links in this post about the recent mass murderer because we have to stop sensationalizing perpetrators instead of sympathizing with the victims.

[Unfortunately]. . . we don’t see misogyny as an ideology, we see it as a given for young men.

— Jessica Valenti, Author, Guardian columnist, and founder of Feministing.com (@JessicaValenti)

God bless the most recent mass shooting victims. Their senseless sacrifice may mark the beginning of a serious discussion about the evils of misogyny, and Valenti is among the few journalists to hit the nail on the head about the root cause of this tragedy, and all the proceeding tragedies, not just mass murders but the 8 youths murdered every day in this country and the thousands of honor killings in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and, of course, rape.

Flickr/CreativeCommons

The roots of racial, sexual, and gender oppression are both overly established and overly ignored, and delaying The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

Misogyny is so endemic in our culture, such a root cause of so many ills (wars, starvation, inequality), women don’t even realize they are unknowingly (and often knowingly) themselves instrumental in strengthening these suffocating roots. Mothers teach their toddlers what their mothers taught them about deference to males. Even ardent feminists might not curtail this deferential behavior in every instance of child-rearing. That is our sad state of affairs, and activists working on all fronts have to keep this subject on the front burner now that it has a running start no matter what their special focus is because each one can trace its roots to misogyny and sexual and racial oppression at the core.

While ignoring the enlarged picture of how much sexual oppression permeates and is ruining society, most media coverage of this recent mass shooting has shown so little restraint in glamorizing the young and good-looking man that is responsible, much more than for his young and not-so-camera-ready predecessors who didn’t leave behind long manifestos and polished YouTube selfless.

Media is just another corporation commercializing the misery of the powerless after all, but still. Even liberal media are fawning over this kid and making his victims practically invisible in their coverage, because, shucks, he’s so attractive-looking.

But there’s something different this time. In the California shooting we are presented with a shooter directly from central casting, a beautiful, erudite boy at war with himself, whose actions are not summarily damned but analyzed in a way to explain his heinous behavior. This is so much more interesting than profiling any of his victims. What’s the matter with us?

Organizations such as Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are there educate us and deserve our support, by why do we continue having so much trouble galvanizing grassroots action, boots on the ground, to challenge the notion that 8 children can be murdered everyday in this country because its just the cost of being an open (and armed) society. This daily tragedy and shame is only highlighted when there is a mass shooting because there is an expected and familiar script, a storm of consumer interest then radio silence again.

In a world we we care for each other and understand the implications of our action, male privilege is no longer a given, it doesn’t exist at all. Like any other privilege it is something only to be selflessly bestowed on those with less privilege. Those that don’t yet understand this essential truth are impoverished in a way that no conquest or accomplishment can ever rectify, so we must god bless them too, and pray that they someday soon obtain the values to understand their own behavior and change it, for their sake and for the rest of us.

Also see:

VIDEO: Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (@ChrisHayes) discuss misogyny embedded in our culture

A Gentleman’s Guide to Rape Culture

“If I Can’t Have Them, No One Will”: How Misogyny Kills Men

in Campaigns / Grassroots / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Transhuman Erotic Freedom / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 30 May 2014 0 comments

A hypocrite the Boy Scouts can love

New Boy Scouts President Robert Gates: ‘I Would Have Supported Having Gay Scoutmasters’

Despite media to the contrary, Robert Gates, the Bush and Obama Administration, Defense Secretary, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans) insiders didn’t view him as a true friend helping to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. He had no problem accepting any and all kudos that may have come his way, however. By now mention of active duty troops and veterans who had to endure nearly 3 extra years of discrimination under Gates, until he finally relented and put a freeze on dismissals. has been dutifully scrubbed from his biography.

But Gates’s latest demonstration of his underlying hypocrisy is revealed by his first public address as the newly appointed President of the Boy Scouts. He actually said . . .

Robert Gates
(WikiCommons)

A year ago, this meeting saw a respectful and civil debate over membership policy. In a democratic process, a strong majority of the volunteer leadership of this movement from all across the nation voted to welcome gay youth into scouting. In all candor, I would have supported going further, as I did in opening the way for gays to serve in CIA and in the military. […]

[…] Given the strong feelings — the passion — involved on both sides of this matter, I believe strongly that to re-open the membership issue or try to take last year’s decision to the next step would irreparably fracture or perhaps even provoke a formal, permanent split in this movement — with the high likelihood neither side would subsequently survive on its own. That is just a fact of life, and who would pay the price for destroying the Boy Scouts of America? Millions of scouts today and scouts yet unborn. We must always put the kids and their interests first. Thus, during my time as president, I will oppose any effort to re-open this issue.

This is a classic, really. Few profiles in public cowardice are so flagrant. It is glaringly obvious now: he was hired exactly because he wouldn’t bring needed change. Due to public pressure, the Boy Scouts had to reverse its discriminatory practice of throwing out young boys because they were gay. The next obvious step was to stop discriminating against scout leaders (often former scouts themselves) by throwing them out because they were gay.

A May 2013 ABC poll found that 56 percent of Americans oppose the organization’s “intention to continue to ban gay adults.”

By not taking this step, the Scouts are further discriminating against gay youth by demonstrating, in fact, that being gay is a bad thing, and that these young gay Scouts shouldn’t need positive adult role models, who happen to be gay. Hypocrisy writ large that will endure through Boy Scout President Gates 2-year term unless we ramp up pressure and right this wrong.

If you can, support and work with organizations such as Scouts for Equality, who, along with more than 1.8 million petition signers have called on the Boy Scouts to end its anti-LGBT practices.

in Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 27 May 2014 0 comments

Science is teaching us all about Lipophilia

Always Hungry? Here’s why

[T]he increasing amount and processing of carbohydrates in the American diet has increased insulin levels, put fat cells into storage overdrive and elicited obesity-promoting biological responses in a large number of people .

. . . obesity rates . . . for adults, are almost three times what they were in the 1960s.

Addressing the underlying biological drive to overeat may make for a far more practical and effective solution to obesity than counting calories.

The latest frontier in nutritional research is revolutionary and important to every person, especially activists who wants to be more effective in changing the world. This ground-breaking information embraces our mission at VenusPlusX to help put an end to coercive systems that delay or otherwise interfere with the New Age of Sexual Freedom, such as the food industry that’s driven solely by greedy corporate interests supported by governments and your tax dollars.

Way back in 1908, a German internist named Gustav von Bergmann coined the term, Lipophilia, meaning love of fat, the first signal that metabolic disorder (rather than calorie imbalance or lack of willpower) causes overeating.

At last, new research picks up on this long-ignored theory and has been able to show a direct connection between sugar and modern processed foods and now epidemic rates of obesity (or even just weighing a little more than you would like too). These modern-day medical research heroes are showing us how stored fat inhibits our ability to absorb healthy calories and causes the overproduction of insulin, a vicious cycle that results in a compensating and progressively increased appetite, and, sadly more stored fat.

As it turns out, many biological factors affect the storage of calories in fat cells, including genetics, levels of physical activity, sleep and stress. But one has an indisputably dominant role: the hormone insulin. . . And of everything we eat, highly refined and rapidly digestible carbohydrates produce the most insulin. . . chips, crackers, cakes, soft drinks, sugary breakfast cereals and even white rice and bread.

Setting aside for a moment our urges for sugar and processed foods (including “diet” and “low fat” items), the only true enemy to this enlightenment is the food industry itself which literally banks on making all calories equal thereby justifying its mass production of super-profitable processed foods from corn, rice, and wheat, all of it from farms subsidized by tax dollars. Always calling for calorie balance and more and more personal willpower is the food industry’s first line of defense of their tax subsidized goldmine, all at the expense of our future health and the trillion-dollar obesity problems (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) that every tax payer is and will for some time be financially responsible for.

So you pay, first giving farm subsidies to produce the raw materials (corn, wheat, rice), then with our health after eating sugar and processed food from pesticide-ridden agribusiness (obesity, diabetes, and more) , then paying trillions in healthcare for millions of people with otherwise avoidable conditions. A lose-lose-lose situation we have solve very soon.

There will be numerous by-products of this research in the years to come, aside from making us all more healthy and effective. For example, we may finally see the end of “fat shaming,” that claims it is ignorance or lack of adequate will power causing people to be overweight. And, it will force a still closer look at corporate agriculture’s role in destroying our health through the mass use of pesticides, products like Monsanto’s RoundUp, now shown to have a direct connection to increased Autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and other ailments.

As more and more is understood how much we have been enslaved and manipulated by corporate interests, we uncover knowledge and get busy taking better care of each other.

Tip: Fed Up, a movie now playing in theaters from An Inconvenient Truth
producer,Laurie David, is all about revealing biologic truth
to the masses about what we are eating. Check it out.

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 25 May 2014 0 comments

Eric Holder explains it all, now it’s your turn

Holder confronts racial issues in address as White House puts discrimination at the fore

Attorney General Eric Holder has withstood savage attacks from his detractors but he has hung on and has emerged as our explainer-in-chief when it comes to racism in this country, really racism everywhere. His recent commencement address at Morgan State University was his most bold and erudite attempt to educate the world, particularly America, on the insidious and subtle nature of racism.

Holder rightly points out that the recent high-profile episodes of racism often mask systematic prejudice and discrimination.

“These [recent] outbursts of bigotry, while deplorable, are not the true markers of the struggle that still must be waged, or the work that still needs to be done,” Holder said.

“The greatest threats,” he continued, “are more subtle. They cut deeper. And their terrible impact endures long after the headlines have faded and obvious, ignorant expressions of hatred have been marginalized.”

In 2009, during Black History Month, Holder began this dialog by calling us “a nation of cowards” without the stomach for an actual conversation about racism. Gradually, with loving care, he (and President Obama) have led us through an increasingly more overt and candid discussion about race, the substance of which will live on as guide to all of us who have the courage to listen, take to heart, and put into action, much like the lessons of Martin Luther King, Jr.

So the next time that the likes of Bundy or Sterling take over the news cycle, it is up to all of us to draw the distinction Holder illustrates to begin a conversation with someone, anyone, about the deep roots of racism that still have stranglehold over our society, and what we can do together to overcome.

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 19 May 2014 1 comments

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