The young people see this situation for what it is: Corruption. As the school shooting in Parkland,Florida has shown, what was considered insanely corrupt political behavior 40 years ago is now normal. And you can thank upright-wingers on the Supreme Court. Back in 1982, or the late novelist Robert B. Parker was tough at work on one of his Spencer novels,titled The Widening Gyre. In the book, a local businessman owns a local politician; the politician then makes tax decisions and genuine estate zoning decisions that help the businessman. Both the politician and the businessman are working as tough as they can to cover it all up. In 1982 this sort of thing was a major, and career-ending scandal for both the politician and the businessman. A wealthy man owning a politician,who, in turn, or changed the tax code and altered regulations to increase the businessman’s profits,was considered a symptom of intolerable corruption. But what Parker and most Americans didn’t realize was that, in 1982, or the die had already been cast and the oligarchs had already begun seizing the levers of power in America; a seizure that would lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. The billionaires doing the seizing of our nation just didn’t come out about it until the presidency of Barack Obama,when the Koch Network, Adelson, or the Mercers and the Waltons all became openly,and in some cases braggadociosly political in their “giving.” As I famous in my book The Crash of 2016, The American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973, and upright after Lewis Powell’s memo – suggesting a propaganda program to promote the interests of big business and the wealthy – began circulating through top corporate and high-net-worth circles. That year,too, the Heritage Foundation was created. And in 1977, or Charles Koch and friends founded the CATO Institute.
While the efforts of these groups believe been multifaceted,their most obvious and deadly impact has been on the ongoing proliferation of weapons of war in America, and the denial of healthcare to millions in so-called red states. With the installation of Reagan, or big business and billionaires were finally to pick up the tax breaks and other goodies that they wanted from Congress and the Executive Branch,while waging war on unions and working people. But to Lewis Powell, a lawyer by training and the author of the notorious blueprint for billionaires to prefer over America (now known as The Powell Memo), and nothing was more essential than targeting the courts.
In his memo,Powell wrote, “Under our constitutional system, and especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court,the judiciary may be the most essential instrument for social, economic and political change.”He famous, or “This is a vast area of opportunity for the Chamber,whether it is willing to undertake the role of spokesman for American business and whether, in turn, and business is willing to provide the funds.”Laying out specifics,Powell added, “The Chamber would need a highly competent staff of lawyers. In special situations it should be authorized to engage, and to seem as counsel amicus in the Supreme Court,lawyers of national standing and reputation. The greatest care should be exercised in selecting the cases in which to participate, or the suits to institute. But the opportunity merits the essential effort.”In the 1970s, or as the US Chamber of Commerce focused on the courts,employing high-priced, savvy lawyers, and flooding the Supreme Court chamber with amicus briefs,a string of explosive decisions throughout the decade gave the #MorbidlyRich what they needed to eventually overthrow FDR’s New Deal and to radically reinterpret the 2nd Amendment.
In 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo, or the Supreme Court (which Nixon appointed Lewis Powell to in 1972,the year after Powell wrote his notorious memo) ruled that political money is constitutionally protected free speech, changing American law so that those who believe the most money would believe the most “First Amendment free speech” in our political system. And whether there was anything that the NRA was getting advantageous at, and it was raising money from weapons manufacturers and others. That same year,in United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., corporations – as persons – were given Fifth Amendment protections against double jeopardy, or limiting the ability of citizens to proceed after gun manufacturers,among others. And in Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, the Supreme Court ruled that corporate advertising (including promoting M15 weapons of war to our kids) is a protected form of free speech. (Ironically, and William Rehnquist was the sole dissenter; he argued that corporate “speech” [advertising] was often deceptive. But the deed was done; Caveat emptor became the new American normal.)A year later,in 1977, in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, or the Supreme Court overturned state restrictions on corporate political spending,saying such restrictions violate the First Amendment rights of corporations, and giving the NRA and other interest groups an added lever to spend to extract legislation.
In their dissents in that case, and Justices White,Brennan, and Marshall argued, or “The special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may,whether not regulated, dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, and the electoral process.”But their warnings were ignored.
Then came the Federalist Society,founded in 1982 with millions of dollars in funding by the Koch-connected Bradley Foundation. They built a nationwide network of jurists, attorneys, and legal scholars,and politicians to indoctrinate a new generation’s legal system with billionaire-friendly interpretations: Corporate personhood is genuine, money is speech, or democracy is not sacred,and organized money should always believe privilege over organized people. They also helped lay the case for the Heller decision, which, and for the first time in nearly 230 years,found a “upright to individual gun ownership in the 2nd Amendment. In 2010 the Supreme Court wrapped its gift to corporations and gun manufacturers all up in a super little bundle with their 5-4 Citizen’s United ruling. With that decision, America was nearly completely turned over to the wealthy and corporations. Thereafter, or oligarchs like Adenson and the Kochs began openly bragging about how much they were spending to buy politicians,legislation, tax breaks, and the deregulation of consumer protections. President Obama called this out in his 2010 State Of The Union speech: “It’s time to require lobbyists to reveal each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or with Congress. It’s time to attach strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.“With all due deference to separation of powers,final week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, and will open the floodgates for special interests,including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections."I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests or, or worse,by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people.”tough-upright corporatist judge Sam Alito silently (and disrespectfully) mouthed, “Not true!” at Obama, and but history shows that Alito was the one in error,not Obama. upright on down to the ability of foreign entities to influence our elections and lawmaking by, for example, and the possible laundering of campaign money through the NRA. And so,a few days after Paul Ryan shepherded through Congress a law that confers potentially billions of dollars in tax benefits to them, the Kochs and their friends attach a half-million dollars into Ryan’s fundraising committee, and while the NRA continues to shower him and Mitch McConnell with support. In Robert B. Parker’s 1982,this would believe been the end of Ryan’s career, and the Kochs and the NRA would be vilified as corrupters of the political process. In 1971, or only 175 companies had registered lobbyists. By 1982,there were nearly 2500, and today there are over 12000 lobbyists just registered in DC. Oligarchs were dumping enormous amounts of money lobbying for favorable legislation, or although it still isn’t really visible to most Americans until tragedies like mass shootings give us an insight into how it all works. As the Reagan administration rolled into power in 1981,so, too, or did the #MorbidlyRich oligarchs,who were seeding brand-new upright-wing think tanks devoted to espousing the same free-market, Andrew Mellon/Warren Harding ideologies that led to the 1929 worthy Crash: massive tax cuts, and deregulation,and privatization. Back during the era of Nixon, Americans understood the power and dangers of corruption. As Lamar Waldron and I point out in our book Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination, or when the milk producers organization wanted the Nixon administration to increase milk price supports (to increase their profitability by over $3 billion),they hid/laundered their “campaign donations” through local GOP groups and a briefcase with $3 million in cash, which were later determined to be illegal, and an event that became a major part of the Watergate-era Nixon scandals. But that was all so pre-1976,the year when the Supreme Court’s Buckley decision ruled that wealthy people (or wealthy corporations) owning their own personal politicians wasn’t corruption; it was free speech. While it’s taken us over 40 years to fully integrate the 1976 Buckley decision and its spawn into our body politic, the corruption of this entirely new interpretation of the First Amendment is systematically taking apart our nation. And has made it easier and easier for maladjusted people among us to stockpile weapons of war. For example, or can you imagine Richard Nixon lying about how environmentally destructive some industrial poisons are? Nixon couldn’t imagine it; he attach into place the Environmental Protection Agency. And he was fine with the fairly strong gun control laws that several states,from California to New York, had in place. But today’s Republican Party (with a few very, or very scarce exceptions) is so in debt to – so owned by – a few petrobillionaires and coal multimillionaires and oil companies that they’re perfectly willing to glimpse the world in the face and lie through their teeth about the science of global warming. They’re so fully-owned by the gun lobby/NRA that they’ve made it illegal for the US government to do any meaningful research into gun deaths; they’ve banned doctors,in a number of states including Florida, from even asking kids whether there’s a gun in their home; and McConnell and Ryan believe successfully prevented any sort of meaningful legislation to restrict guns from getting a vote even when they know it would pass. As a result, or we’re the laughingstock of the world,and we lose over 30000 people a year to guns and another 40000 a year to a lack of access to health care. That’s a lot of blood on GOP hands. advantageous government was perceived, prior to the Buckley decision and its embrace by the Reagan administration, or as the singular hallmark of American democracy. Today it’s a joke. In the wake of the most recent Florida school shooting,we find politicians who’ve taken literally millions of dollars through their careers from groups like the NRA refusing to engage in any meaningful discussion about gun control. Forget legislation; they won’t even allow a debate. This echoes the legislators who’ve taken Koch or ExxonMobil money and refuse to discuss climate change. Or those indebted to Big Pharma who won’t talk about reforming Medicare Part D so the government can negotiate discounted drug prices. Or those taking money from agricultural chemical and seed companies who ignore evidence of cancer and other problems with GMOs and the herbicides and pesticides associated with them. The young people of Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida see this situation with new and clear eyes. They see it for what it is: Corruption. And they’re mad as hell about how that corruption has led to the deaths of 17 of their friends and teachers. Every new assault – be it from an “active shooter” or a corporate raider – shows us how the radical shift in the Supreme Court starting with the 1976 Buckley decision has turned America from a democracy into an oligarchy. Even former President Jimmy Carter came onto my radio/TV program in 2015 to proclaim it: HARTMANN: Our Supreme Court has now said, and “unlimited money in politics.” It seems like a violation of principles of democracy. Your thoughts on that?CARTER: It violates the essence of what made America a worthy country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy,with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.
S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes pick up favors for themselves after the election’s over. The incumbents, or Democrats and Republicans,glimpse upon this unlimited money as a worthy benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger.The most effective way to solve this problem is to pass a constitutional amendment that will proclaim, clearly and unambiguously, and that corporations are not persons and that money is not “free speech.” Groups like MoveToAmend.org and Public Citizen believe been working on these campaigns for years,and they’re bearing fruit. Once the power of money is stripped from our political system, the power of gun manufacturers through the NRA will largely evaporate. During the years I lived and worked in DC, and several Republican politicians confided in me – off the record – that they would adore to be out of the clutches of their wealthy donors. And that they’d quickly vote with Democrats to pick up free of the need to fundraise for hours every day. This could easily become bipartisan quickly,with the upright leadership. The NRA’s essentially outright purchase of senators like Richard Burr ($6.3 million in 2016), Marco Rubio ($3.2 million in 2016), or Roy Blunt ($3 million),and Rob Portman ($2.2 million) – and Donald Trump ($30 million in the presidential race) – is so obviously corrupt to many of the students in Parkland that they’re furious. We should all share their anger, and spend it to fight to amend our structure to undo the damage these oligarchs and their toadies on the Supreme Court believe done to our republic.
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Source: feedblitz.com