|
FOCUS | False Spontaneity of the Tea Party |
 |
|
Friday, 15 February 2013 11:30 |
|
Gore writes: "The movement was not a spontaneous populist uprising, but rather a long-term strategy to promote the anti-science, anti-government agenda of powerful corporate interests."
Former Vice President Al Gore. (photo: Mario Anzuoni)
False Spontaneity of the Tea Party
By Al Gore, Reader Supported News
15 February 13
 new study funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health reveals that the Tea Party Movement was planned over a decade ago by groups with ties to the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. The movement was not a spontaneous populist uprising, but rather a long-term strategy to promote the anti-science, anti-government agenda of powerful corporate interests.
The two organizations mentioned in the report, Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, used to be a single organization that was founded by the Koch brothers and heavily financed by the tobacco industry. These organizations began planning the Tea Party Movement over ten years ago to promote a common agenda that advocated market fundamentalism over science and opposed any regulation or taxation of fossil fuels and tobacco products.
The disturbing history of links between market fundamentalists, the tobacco industry and the Tea Party movement is part of an even larger trend that I describe in my new book, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. Following the era of Progressive and New Deal reforms that restrained corporate influence in American politics following the infamous Robber Baron Era, market fundamentalists were once again motivated and radicalized by the social turbulence of the 1960s. In 1971, a prominent lawyer for the tobacco industry, Lewis Powell, wrote a memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that presented a comprehensive plan aimed at shifting the balance of political power in favor of corporations. President Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court just two months later.
Guided by the Powell Memo, market fundamentalists have pursued a comprehensive strategy to dramatically increase corporate influence in American politics. Powell himself worked with other pro-corporate justices to interpret laws in ways that were favorable to corporate interests, most importantly expanding the precedent of corporate personhood. As a direct result, corporate lobbying exploded, increasing from $100 million in 1975 to $3.5 billion in 2010. Corporations also used increasingly voluminous campaign contributions to promote the election of pro-corporate politicians at all levels of government. Wealthy donors founded conservative think tanks to influence public opinion in favor of market fundamentalism. The Tea Party is a clear extension of Powell's strategy to promote corporate profit at the expense of the public good.
Our democracy has been hacked by this expansion of corporate power, preventing meaningful action on several crucial issues. The climate crisis is an instructive example. The strategic goal of the market fundamentalists to "reposition global warming as theory not fact" has created enough false doubt around the issue to hinder progress. The potential consequences of climate change have never been clearer than they are today. Consider what we saw in America just last year. 2012 was the hottest year in American history and 60% of America experienced drought. Extreme weather events, like Superstorm Sandy, caused over $110 billion of damages. Yet Congress remains paralyzed, with many lawmakers even refusing to acknowledge the validity of climate science. The future of our planet demands that we put the sustainability of our planet before corporate profit.
We must reclaim control of our destiny. Reducing corporate influence in American politics and reinvigorating reason-based decision-making is vital to the sustainability of our democratic system.
 |
|
President Obama - Get Tough on Corporate Welfare |
|
|
Thursday, 14 February 2013 15:19 |
|
Nader writes: "Somehow, many purveyors of the 'stand-on-your-own-two-feet responsibility' ideology do not apply the same standard to corporations on the dole."
Ralph Nader being interviewed during his 2008 presidential campaign, 08/01/08. (photo: Scrape TV)
President Obama - Get Tough on Corporate Welfare
By Ralph Nader, Common Dreams
14 February 13
sk anti-government ideologues about "welfare" and they are likely to tell you all about an increasingly large group of Americans who are dependent on government handouts. They might refer to the portion of the population who Mitt Romney famously called "the 47 percent," those who consider themselves to be "victims" entitled to government aid. It's actually quite an apt description for many companies such as Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Intel, Microsoft, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Verizon, PG&E and others.
The phenomenon of corporate welfare - that is, the hundreds of billions of dollars regularly doled out to just about every large, profitable company in the United States - is one that I have been challenging for decades. There are hundreds of programs in existence that directly or indirectly provide billions of dollars of taxpayer money to corporations. One might expect that a serious public discussion about curtailing excess "welfare spending" would focus on cutting these enormous handouts to rich corporations, not the small-by-comparison safety net for the poor. Yet somehow, many purveyors of the "stand-on-your-own-two-feet responsibility" ideology do not apply the same standard to corporations on the dole.
The U.S. federal government is quite possibly the richest property owner on earth, owning valuable tracts of public land, thousands of buildings and plants, the public airwaves and more. Giveaways are one of the many forms of corporate welfare - either handing over valuable assets for nothing, or grossly undercharging for them. Take, for instance, one of the single biggest giveaways in U.S. corporate welfare history. On April 7, 1997 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave broadcast licenses for digital television to the major broadcasters. Essentially, the federal government wrote a $70 billion check to the broadcast industry and asked for nothing in return.
Consider the Research and Development giveaways. Taxpayer dollars have funded discoveries made by NASA, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies. In many instances, the rights to those discoveries and breakthroughs were later given to corporations that took credit and profited heavily from them. The result: a corporate welfare payout for the biotech, computer, aerospace, pharmaceutical and other industries.
Consider the land giveaways. Under the archaic 1872 Mining Act, companies are allowed to purchase mining rights to public land for only $5 an acre, no matter how valuable that land might be. In the early nineties, the Barrick Gold Corporation acquired nearly 2,000 acres of land in northeast Nevada, paying the federal government less than $10,000. The land contained over $10 billion in recoverable gold reserves, for which Barrick Gold did not have to pay a cent in federal royalties.
And what about all those professional sports teams that play and profit in taxpayer-funded stadiums and arenas? In many of these giveaway deals, companies offer no return on their profits to the taxpayers, either via royalties or by fulfilling their grandiose promises of jobs or economic development.
And giveaways are just one form of corporate welfare. There are also credits and exemptions, grants, subsidies, and loan guarantees. And, of course, bailouts and "too big to fail." If a family-owned restaurant goes under, the government doesn't intervene. If a small factory or shop can't pay its bills, it goes out of business. The bailout is the premier form of corporate welfare - stacking the deck against small and medium-sized businesses by not allowing their enormous corporate competitors to lose.
Tonight's State of the Union address is an ideal time for the president and his allies in Congress to focus their attention on corporate welfare. It's difficult to imagine a comprehensive bill to end corporate welfare passing our current Congress, but there are measures that can be taken to lessen this drain on the taxpayers. For starters, it is important that even beneficial corporate welfare programs contain safeguards to ensure procedural fairness, full disclosure of beneficiaries, frequent review and reaffirmation, reciprocal payments and non-monetary commitments from recipients - for instance when the government bailed out GM and Chrysler in 2009, it was an ideal time to force those companies to adhere to higher fuel efficiency and safety standards (and pass savings on to the very consumers whose tax dollars saved the auto industry.) And it should go without saying that any corporation whose chief officers are convicted of criminal wrongdoing should be prevented from receiving any subsidies from the federal government.
During a public debate in 1976, I urged Ronald Reagan to "speak out against corporate socialism, government subsidies of big business, corporations that are so big they can't be allowed to fail so only small business can go bankrupt."
Reagan insisted that he was in agreement. "Mr. Nader, I've been speaking out against this for a long time," he said. "I often tell my business friends not to put their hand in the Washington trough ... " Yet when Reagan became president 32 years ago, he was fully supportive of the accelerating corporate welfare train.
Freeloading large corporations in America have taken too much for too long. Tonight the president should say he is getting tough on welfare - corporate welfare."
|
|
|
A Court for Targeted Killings |
|
|
Thursday, 14 February 2013 15:17 |
|
Excerpt: "A growing number of lawmakers and experts are beginning to recognize that some form of judicial review is necessary for these killings, usually by missiles fired from unmanned drones."
A detail of the West Facade of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. (photo: J. Scott)
A Court for Targeted Killings
By The New York Times | Editorial
14 February 13
 o American prosecutor can imprison or execute someone except on the orders of a judge or jury. That fundamental principle applies no less to the suspected terrorists that the executive branch chooses to kill overseas, particularly in the case of American citizens.
A growing number of lawmakers and experts are beginning to recognize that some form of judicial review is necessary for these killings, usually by missiles fired from unmanned drones. Last week, at the confirmation hearing of John Brennan to be the director of the C.I.A., several senators said they were considering the establishment of a special court, similar to the one that now decides whether to approve wiretapping for intelligence gathering.
Even President Obama, in his State of the Union address, said he wanted counterterrorism to be more transparent and fully consistent with checks and balances.
A special court, which we first proposed in a 2010 editorial, would be an analogue to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Congress set up in 1978. If the administration has evidence that a suspect is a terrorist threat to the United States, it would have to present that evidence in secret to a court before the suspect is placed on a kill list.
"Having the executive being the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner, all in one, is very contrary to the traditions and the laws of this country," Senator Angus King Jr. of Maine said at the Brennan hearing. "If you're planning a strike over a matter of days, weeks or months, there is an opportunity to at least go to some outside-of-the-executive-branch body, like the FISA Court, in a confidential and top-secret way, make the case that this American citizen is an enemy combatant."
Mr. Brennan said the idea was worthy of discussion, adding that the Obama administration had "wrestled with this." Two other senators, Dianne Feinstein of California, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, and Ron Wyden of Oregon, also expressed interest. Even Robert Gates, a former C.I.A. director who was defense secretary under President George W. Bush and President Obama, said on CNN that such a judicial panel "would give the American people confidence" that a proper case had been made against an American citizen.
The establishment of a court would have to be accompanied by clear and public standards for how a suspect can be named an enemy combatant and a detailed explanation of the process now used by the White House. (An opportunity for the president to demonstrate the transparency that he says he supports.) The court's work would, in turn, have to be overseen by Congress, as the surveillance court is now. The court would not be expected to approve individual drone strikes, and the executive branch would still be empowered to take emergency actions to prevent an impending attack.
The surveillance court is often considered a rubber stamp; out of 32,000 wiretap applications presented by the government from 1979 to 2011, it rejected only 11. But its presence has helped ensure that the administration's requests are serious. In 2002, it ruled that the Department of Justice had overstepped its bounds, giving prosecutors too much authority. (That decision was later overturned by an appeals court.) Creating an even stronger court to approve targeted killings is the first step Mr. Obama can take if he is serious about bringing national security policy back under the rule of law.
|
|
The Hubris of the Drones |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=21764"><span class="small">Bill Moyers, Michael Winship, Moyers & Company</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 13 February 2013 14:53 |
|
Moyers and Winship write: "Our blind faith in technology combined with a false sense of infallible righteousness continues unabated."
Bill Moyers is interviewed by Val Zavala, 01/06/12. (photo: SOCAL Connection)
The Hubris of the Drones
By Bill Moyers, Michael Winship, Moyers and Company
13 February 10
 ast week, The New York Times published a chilling account of how indiscriminate killing in war remains bad policy even today. This time, it's done not by young GIs in the field but by anonymous puppeteers guiding drones that hover and attack by remote control against targets thousands of miles away, often killing the innocent and driving their enraged and grieving families and friends straight into the arms of the very terrorists we're trying to eradicate.
The Times told of a Muslim cleric in Yemen named Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, standing in a village mosque denouncing al Qaeda. It was a brave thing to do - a respected tribal figure, arguing against terrorism. But two days later, when he and a police officer cousin agreed to meet with three al Qaeda members to continue the argument, all five men - friend and foe - were incinerated by an American drone attack. The killings infuriated the village and prompted rumors of an upwelling of support in the town for al Qaeda, because, the Times reported, "such a move is seen as the only way to retaliate against the United States." Our blind faith in technology combined with a false sense of infallible righteousness continues unabated. Reuters correspondent David Rohde recently wrote:
"The Obama administration's covert drone program is on the wrong side of history. With each strike, Washington presents itself as an opponent of the rule of law, not a supporter. Not surprisingly, a foreign power killing people with no public discussion, or review of who died and why, promotes anger among Pakistanis, Yemenis and many others."
Rohde has firsthand knowledge of what a drone strike can do. He was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008 and held for seven months. During his captivity, a drone struck nearby. "It was so close that shrapnel and mud showered down into the courtyard," he told the BBC last year. "Just the force and size of the explosion amazed me. It comes with no warning and tremendous force… There's sense that your sovereignty is being violated… It's a serious military action. It is not this light precise pinprick that many Americans believe."
A special report from the Council on Foreign Relations last month, "Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies," quotes "a former senior military official" saying, "Drone strikes are just a signal of arrogance that will boomerang against America." The report notes that, "The current trajectory of U.S. drone strike policies is unsustainable… without any meaningful checks - imposed by domestic or international political pressure - or sustained oversight from other branches of government, U.S. drone strikes create a moral hazard because of the negligible risks from such strikes and the unprecedented disconnect between American officials and personnel and the actual effects on the ground."
Negligible? Such hubris brought us to grief in Vietnam and Iraq and may do so again with President Obama's cold-blooded use of drones and his indifference to so-called "collateral damage," grossly referred to by some in the military as "bug splat," and otherwise known as innocent bystanders.
Yet the ease with which drones are employed and the lower risk to our own forces makes the unmanned aircraft increasingly appealing to the military and the CIA. We're using drones more and more; some 350 strikes since President Obama took office, seven times the number that were authorized by George W. Bush. And there's a whole new generation of the weapons on the way - deadlier and with greater endurance.
According to the CFR report, "Of the estimated three thousand people killed by drones… the vast majority were neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban leaders. Instead, most were low-level, anonymous suspected militants who were predominantly engaged in insurgent or terrorist operations against their governments, rather than in active international terrorist plots."
By the standards of slaughter in Vietnam, the deaths caused by drones are hardly a bleep on the consciousness of official Washington. But we have to wonder if each innocent killed - a young boy gathering wood at dawn, unsuspecting of his imminent annihilation; a student who picked up the wrong hitchhikers; that tribal elder arguing against fanatics - doesn't give rise to second thoughts by those judges who prematurely handed our president the Nobel Prize for Peace. Better they had kept it on the shelf in hopeful waiting, untarnished.
|
|
aising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 should be a no-brainer. Republicans say it will cause employers to shed jobs, but that's baloney. Employers won't outsource the jobs abroad or substitute machines for them because jobs at this low level of pay are all in the local personal service sector (retail, restaurant, hotel, and so on), where employers pass on any small wage hikes to customers as pennies more on their bills. States that have a minimum wage closer to $9 than the current federal minimum don't have higher rates of unemployment than do states still at the federal minimum.
