freshwest

freshwest's Journal

July 5, 2014

As an attorney, you know that an Article 5 Convention is not necessary to resolve Citizens United.

That is not what Move to Amend is asking for to change that ruling. They want an amendment, not a convention:

We the People, Not We the Corporations

On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule.

We Move to Amend.

"...corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

~Supreme Court Justice Stevens, January 2010

ACTION ALERT: Tell the Senate Any Amendment Must Include Ending Corporate Personhood!

July 1, 2014

Senate Joint Resolution 19 is a proposed Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United, but it doesn’t address corporate constitutional rights at all.

Move to Amend has vowed that we will not support any halfway measures that don't amend the Constitution in two necessary ways:

1) Make clear that only human beings, not corporations have Constitutional rights;

2) Make clear that money is not speech and campaign spending can be regulated.

Tens of thousands of volunteers across the nation have been building a grassroots movement over the past four years from the bottom up. This movement came from everyday people taking this issue to their city governments, to town meeting debates, to candidate forums, to newspaper opinion pages, and to the ballot box directly. Nearly 600 cities and towns have now passed amendment resolutions.

Polling shows 80% of the American public believes that corporations should not have the same rights as people. State legislatures have been pressured to stand up as well, with 16 states passing resolutions calling for an amendment. “Ending Corporate Personhood” was a major theme in the demands that came from Occupy encampments across the country.

The plan is that this amendment will get a vote in the Senate this year -- before election season. We cannot allow a proposal that doesn’t address corporate constitutional rights to get traction -- the amendment must match the demand of our movement: “A Corporation is Not a Person! Money is Not Free Speech!”

Fill out the form below to send a message to the authors of SJR19 -- let them know that Corporate Personhood MUST be included in the language of the amendment:

https://movetoamend.org/amend-sjr19

https://movetoamend.org/

It is a slow and tedious process, not funded by the right who will fund a convention to get their way. They announced their intent years ago, to dissolve the New Deal part of federal government and repealing all progressive amendments past the 10th, thus returning to states rights, or as they call themselves now, the Tenther Movement.

The ones asking for the convention are Paul Ryan and his ilk, and have already stated their plan, to repeal the 14th with its clauses of Birthright Ciizenship, Due Process and Equal Treatment under the Law when they get 38 state legislatures 'red' to vote for it. Most of our current liberties and laws hinge on that Amendment, which was needed to remedy what the fabled 4th didn't do to help minorities.

Now we see 2 states have been hoodwinked with this fallacy that an Article 5 Convention is required to overturn both Citizens United and the McCutcheon decisions. It is not, and to open the toolbox will allow the Koch brothers to rewrite and repeal whatever is in the Constitution that do not fit their agenda.

If it is held, this will be their agenda as they bus in their paid supporters to make it happen. They have gotten just about everything they have on their list, playing the CT, Tea, GOP and the general public who don't understand how the Koch brothers are coercing us to accept a convention they'll have a prominent hand in. The media and their think tanks have all the needed verbiage to make it pull the wool over our eyes, which they have done a good job of so far:

BERNIE SANDERS Uncovers 1980 Koch Agenda- "What Do the Koch Brothers Want?"

What else do the Koch brothers want?

In 1980, David Koch ran as the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential candidate in 1980.

Let’s take a look at the 1980 Libertarian Party platform.

Here are just a few excerpts of the Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on in 1980:

“We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”

“We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

“We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”

“We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”

“We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”

“We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”

“We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.”

“We support the eventual repeal of all taxation.”

“As an interim measure, all criminal and civil sanctions against tax evasion should be terminated immediately.”

“We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.”

“We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”

“We condemn compulsory education laws … and we call for the immediate repeal of such laws.”

“We support the repeal of all taxes on the income or property of private schools, whether profit or non-profit.”

“We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

“We support abolition of the Department of Energy.”

“We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”

“We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”

“We specifically oppose laws requiring an individual to buy or use so-called "self-protection" equipment such as safety belts, air bags, or crash helmets.”

“We advocate the abolition of the Federal Aviation Administration.”

“We advocate the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration.”

“We support an end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children.”

“We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.”

“We call for the privatization of the inland waterways, and of the distribution system that brings water to industry, agriculture and households.”

“We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.”

“We call for the abolition of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”

“We support the repeal of all state usury laws.”

In other words, the agenda of the Koch brothers is not only to defund Obamacare. The agenda of the Koch brothers is to repeal every major piece of legislation that has been signed into law over the past 80 years that has protected the middle class, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the most vulnerable in this country...

Tomorrow it will be Social Security, ending Medicare as we know it, repealing the minimum wage. It seems to me that the Koch brothers will not be content until they get everything they believe they are entitled to.

Our great nation can no longer be hijacked by right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers.

For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, for the sake of our economy, we have got to let democracy prevail.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/koch-brothers

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a7980koch

to kpete:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

We've heard these memes for years, Americans have come to believe this is how it has to be. An explanation of their beliefs are here:

How Freedom Became Tyranny

Rightwing libertarians have turned “freedom” into an excuse for greed and exploitation.

George Monbiot - December 19, 2011

Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

Right-wing libertarianism recognises few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. In the UK it is forcefully promoted by groups like the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange. Their conception of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.

So why have we been been so slow to challenge this concept of liberty? I believe that one of the reasons is as follows. The great political conflict of our age – between neocons and the millionaires and corporations they support on one side and social justice campaigners and environmentalists on the other – has been mischaracterised as a clash between negative and positive freedoms.

More at the link about the meaning of positive and negative freedoms and how words are used against us:

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/19/how-freedom-became-tyranny/

I do not wish to live under the Kochstitution and that is what will happen if we don't take the regular process of amending, but instead go for the heady idea of an Article 5 Convention. It is the fondest dream of the ultra conservatives and the Libertarians.

JMHO.

July 4, 2014

Thanks! but we're also told there was an unedited version:

The Declaration of Independence as Thomas Jefferson originally presented it.

The Unedited Declaration of Independence - Thomas Jefferson, 1776

Note the emboldened text:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur 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 & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

to MohRokTah:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5193766

Which I interpret to mean the slave trade, the paying of natives and importing mercenaries to attack Americans although that was addressed elsewhere. Others say this paragraph was about slaves rising up against their chains. But many blacks throughout history felt the document promised emancipation. Dred Scott was encouraged by the Bill of Rights but lose to the corporate SCOTUS o his day, but later freed. So I respect both views, yet will entertain another one.

Jefferson and the rest of the Founders are rightfully called out on their own slave holding, plantation owning ways, as most of the influential men of the time were - but not all of them. Definitely not Thomas Paine, when he wrote:

African Slavery In America

A very good read that excoriates on every level the creation by international actors and even more so, the practice of slavery in the America of his day:

http://www.constitution.org/tp/afri.htm

Yet the bigotry continues:

http://progressiveerupts.blogspot.com/2013/02/african-slavery-in-america-by-thomas.html

The Founding Fathers had arrayed against their ideals from the Enlightenment the most vicious and entrenched set of corporations that were able to influence nations on both sides of the Atlantic. They were of the most politically influential international corporations. Some of these still exist, they outlive us by centuries, but are not in the public mind. We know how hard it is to fight fossil fuel, munitions and other corporations that devastate our planet and the lives of people. It remains a stalemate.

Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations

http://www.thenation.com/blog/37038/thomas-jefferson-feared-aristocracy-corporations

USSC decisions shows how well positioned they are now, just as they were then. None of this was in a vacuum, and the elimination of slavery required a Civil War and amendments, all of which are being threatened by current calls for an Article 5 Convention to open up the Constitution to be retooled by the Koch brothers. It is what the Reichwings wants more than anything, to make null and void the words of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most inspirational pieces of literature in the world:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/340/Declaration.html

Self-evident to them, but not to many of their day, nor to many in the world now, unfortunately. That view has always been controversial to some, NOT self-evident. We see this clearly from the USSC which is busily taking our human rights, granting them to corporations.

The elements that fought the philosophy of the Founders, removing the power of social place by birth, as a universal right, were not going to let go that power easily. They extorted the men whose philosophy they denied any validity to except when they could narrowly apply it to themselves. They reject the overall purpose of government to enforce our rights now, as they did then. Such exclusion cannot last and must be ended.

There was an opposing philosophy which still maintains it is all about one's blood and birth, condemning all persons who were not white males with inherited wealth to penury and servitude. The Founders were set in a nation that was not the nation which evolved from their time, but were instead living in a time of violent and unashamed privilege.

That revolting and unjust philosophy sought to negate the ideals of the Founders as much then as it did less than a century later when it erupted again, lying in wait, founding the Confederacy, in direct opposition to 'All Men Are Created Equal.'

Their leaders called that belief the fatal mistake of the Founders, against 'God's Will' in their 'Christianity,' when the Founders sought to escape that. They have not changed their words much.

One should remember that the Founders were Deists, not Dominionists. Neither Jesus or any other defined deity is in their writings. It's why they are being written out of history:

'Nature's God' explores 'heretical origins' of religion in U.S.

But the title of the book referred to is actually:

Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Not sure why the newspaper went with an alternate title. The book reviews I posted or the OP is worth the read:

http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/1218137537

It is also why propaganda is being used to turn modern Americans away from them and our government. But it's not really the men that are objectionable, nor slavery, devil worship or the alleged international conspiracy they claim to hate, while saying nothing of the corporatist conspiracy that takes away human rights. The salesjob being presented claims they have something new and better to offer. It is not new, and it is not better:

They [who] seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 15, 1941

What we are being forced into with corporations being treated as people is exactly what is happening now. The corporations of today, just as those days, had more power than nation-states and can not be left to themselves by a free people, as we keep hearing espoused, because:

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

~ Thomas Jefferson

It is the seed of Equality the Founders wanted to plant and see grow they hate, as it interferes with their profits:

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

~ George Washington

The simple words of the Founders led the USA to embark on ending the slave trade in time, as Jefferson himself realized it must do, and which the Confederacy rejected, along with the rest of the Enlightenment:

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Imagine ourselves with our consciousness grounded in 2014 being transported back in time to those days. Where it was a fact of life that black men, women and children were displayed naked, like livestock, with no regard to their humanity, natural modesty or other feelings. And forbidden to learn to read, to object to their families being torn asunder for commerce. And where rape, beatings, torture and death were going on either in full sight or known about.

Just picture that reality in which this nation was born, like the Boko Harum world, where kidnapping and being anti-education for girls and women, but also boys and men, is seen by them as a good thing, like it was here by some. And the kidnapped are sold off for commerce, their bodies not their own. And resistance to that is rewarded with death. And what is it that they claim they are doing this for?

To stop western ideas. Not just music, movies, atheism, homosexuality or the evils of capitalism, although that is likely how they got their first converts. But to stop the ideas the Founding Fathers stood for, Equality and the Freedom of Religion, and so many other things.

Now we have the stories out of Thailand where men have been drawn and quartered by boats to keep their slaves in the international fishing business in line and living in tortorous, deadly conditions for the profits of the owners of the fleet of fishing ships. Many other examples are available. because Equality is not a settled issue in the world now, no more that it was then, by any means.

The horrors of the slave trade in practice was worse than most can imagine, and is why the voices of people of color with all the outrage and pain they've known for years, despite the discomfort of whites or the privileged, MUST BE WELCOMED as our kindred spirits opposing reactionaries. Those are the enemies, not those we need to be educated by whenever they grant us the gift of their wisdom and pain, and how they survived and their remedies to move forward.

We must not forget what underlies such systems of brutality and genocide both then and now, the belief that all people are NOT created Equal. Many facets of this are being discussed and fought over now, but that's the belief system we must overcome, or we will all be undone.

JMHO, quickly penned.

July 4, 2014

Sure they're partying about their success at destroying America right now, though...

Congressmen Booze As Government Shutdown Looms

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014605578

Not just drunk with booze, but power, too, scheming to force the government to default to destroy it...

16 Ways Default Will Totally Screw Americans

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110218177

Rand Paul says default can be 'framed as a reasonable idea' and Tom Coburn wants to default to face a 'managed catastrophe.'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3820816

To which I said:

A 'managed catastrophe' by these gangsters? We're officially in hell!

But, never fear, the GOP has a plan! Give that bridge and all roads over to the private sector, just the same as the platform Charles Koch ran on:

“We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation.”

“We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of the public roads and national highway system.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298

We should never, ever, give the theocratic traitor Rand Paul the benefit of the doubt on anything!

July 3, 2014

"In zones of conflict there is no free will... This is a situation where lives are at stake."

This is the atmosphere the NRA, GOA and OC want to have here. With defiance of federal law in NV and mobs forcing federal immigration buses to turn around and flee in CA, this is coming here in full view. It was in slow motion but is gathering steam.

All the freedoms of civil society are under attack, our speech, control of our bodies, the freedom to move about and the freedom to associate. Nice going there, ya troglodytes with an additional finger served to those who don't get it.

No difference between those who make women run the gauntlet to get to clinics in the USA and the Talibans and the Boko Harums of the world treating girls and women as despised, with no education or control over the most intimate parts of their lives, in a state of terror like rats in a maze with shocks applied for the slightest deviation from irrational parameters on their behavior with no warning.

In the meantime, media serves us the World Cup, ideology, diversions and fantasy to keep our eyes off what is encroaching the people of the world. But none of the Libertarians and RevolutionNow guys are in the street marching to stop what is done to half the world's people.

Because women are just 'hysterical,' a term made up by men to explain the intense distress bordering on torture that they'd also feel if confronted with such callousness. Oh, please shut up you hens, the elephants are busy dancing on you and no one wants to hear your squawking.

Humanity is either being mutated into something it never was, or else it is just showing what it was always about, animalistic and instinctive, not really 'human' after all.

Yes, I'm a bit bummed. "So sue me," as Obama said to Boehner. Lucky for me, I've already been impoverished by the discrimination handed out to so many, so there's no profit there. And as far as my culinary value, as an old farmer woman once told me, "They can kill me, but they can't eat me."

Oh, I forgot I could be ground up and fed to hogs or something. Never mind, the freedom to rot in peace may be taken away, too.

Hyperbole. It's what's for Breakfast.

July 3, 2014

K&R for the best post office news yet!!

July 3, 2014

Appreciate McDermott, the OP and analysis more than you'll ever know. You have my heartfelt thanks.

July 3, 2014

Protest at this location, Sun. July 13, 5:00 p.m.:

Join the week of action to protest the Hobby Lobby decision & attacks on women's rights: July 3rd - July 13th.

Join WORD--Women Organized to Resist and Defend

Event listings:

Seattle, WA.

Sun. July 13, 5:00 p.m.

Future Hobby Lobby site, Aurora Ave N at N. 130th

Info:

seattle@defendwomensrights.org

or 206-568-1661

Part of national actions, more at this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5186889

Please pass the word!

July 3, 2014