L.A. City Council votes unanimously—Corporations are not people & money is not speech

We talked about this vote a few days ago, in a post that also discussed the concept of "corporate personhood" more generally.

The votes are now in, and the city of Los Angeles, in a non-binding resolution, has weighed in (my emphasis):

In a discussion about money in politics, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously agreed Tuesday that corporations are not people and not entitled to the same constitutional protections.

If supported by the mayor, the city would be on record in support of federal legislation that would ensure corporations are not entitled to the same rights as people, especially when it comes to spending money to influence elections. It also proposed language for a constitutional amendment declaring that money is not a form of speech and affirming the right of the federal government to regulate corporations. ...

"Corporations have taken over our society. They are deciding what we eat, how people educate their children and whether or not we have health care," said Sylvia Moore, with the group Move to Amend, which has the broad mission of opposing laws they say prevent the American people from governing themselves. ... The resolution cites Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black's 1938 opinion on the subject: "I do not believe the word "person' in the Fourteenth Amendment includes corporations."

Non-binding, yes, but not without force. As I wrote earlier, "In a popular revolt, grassroots movements count." So does publicity.

This is a growing movement, build around one of the great tasks of this coming century. There aren't that many outcomes if it isn't done reasonably peacefully (see here for the three possibilities I can envision).

Move to Amend is a group that supports a constitutional amendment to overturn corporate personhood. Wish them well, and support them if you can.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry, when asked why he said Obama had declared war on religion, had little answer

Keep in mind, George Bush was a bit of a dense Texan too, and he won two terms (depending how you count it). So sad. Perry is so desperate, and all of these eruptions are getting him news, but it's bad news. He's coming off as a major him-bo.  It's also clear that it's not clear what the man actually believes him.  Every time he gets asked about something he said, he has no explanation for it, as if it were all one big talking point written by someone else.  Because it is.  More from Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress.

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"Slam dunk" evidence that Mars once had water

From NASA:

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water. Analysis of the vein will help improve understanding of the history of wet environments on Mars.

"This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for Opportunity. "This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it. That can't be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It's not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it's the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs."

The latest findings by Opportunity were presented Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco.

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EPA: Fracking linked to water pollution

If the flaming tap water doesn't get you or the earthquakes aren't enough, maybe states can start paying more attention to the water pollution problem now that the EPA is speaking out. It's good to see the EPA confirm what many have been saying for a long time.

The EPA's found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath a Wyoming community where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals.

Health officials advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found hydrocarbons in their wells.

The EPA announcement has major implications for the vast increase in gas drilling in the U.S. in recent years. Fracking has played a large role in opening up many reserves.

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More gay "Easter eggs" uncovered in Rick Perry’s anti-gay ad

Hard to imagine they missed this frame in the ad. Read the rest of this post...

Top US corporations spent more on lobbying than they paid in taxes

Let's not forget about all of the floundering banks during the peak of the crisis that somehow managed to spend taxpayer money that was meant to keep them alive, on lobbying against reform. Corporate America does this because they know that they can easily buy Washington so the laws can be written for their benefit.

The days of the 1% dominating the system has to change if we want to get the middle class back on a growth track. It may not be what the corporate world wants, but it has to happen. Great report by Think Progress. Click through to see the list of 30 corporate giants who spend more on lobbying than they pay in taxes. Read the rest of this post...

Priceless: O’Reilly, whose crew regularly stalks people, freaks out at guy approaching him with camera

You have to watch this video from PFAW's RightWingWatch, it's priceless (and only 55 seconds long). Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who regularly sics his crew on people, in essence stalking them (even on vacation) so they can get you on cam when you least expect it and then pepper you with difficult, accusing questions, found himself at the receiving end of a camera last night, and didn't like it one bit. Not only did O'Reilly appear to shove his umbrella at the guy, but O'Reilly then went up to a cop - looks like Secret Service - and told him to arrest the kid.

I'm not always such a fan of jamming cameras in people's faces, but O'Reilly does this all the time. ALL THE TIME. Remember when he did it to the Huffington Post's Amanda Terkel (who was then at ThinkProgress)? It's creepy, and he loves to do it. But when he's on the receiving end, he kind of loses it. Read the rest of this post...

Another apparent shooting rampage at VA Tech

I am the NRA.

(I have no idea if the shooter is an NRA member, rather this is a pun on the infamous NRA ads that showed proud gun owners saying "I am the NRA." Yeah, well, welcome to another proud gun owner. Two are reportedly dead already, including a cop.)

Per the school paper on Twitter 20 minutes ago:

Students being moved to secure room is Squires Student Center. The Collegiate Times has been evacuated from its office, still has Internet

Virginia Tech is on lockdown, many conflicting reports about where suspect may be

And remember folks: Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry caught wearing "Brokeback Mountain" jacket in new anti-gay ad

I love when Rick Perry does stuff that's totally gay.

UPDATE: It seems the ad has gone viral, but perhaps not in the way Rick Perry wanted.  Check out the rating that users on YouTube have given the ad:

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Elizabeth Warren opens up lead against Scott Brown

Imagine that. Asking for fairness and standing up to Wall Street is popular with voters. Warren has been attacked repeatedly by the right for being too extreme but the polls show this is what people want. It's the Wall Street boot licking that's so popular in Congress and the White House that's unpopular. People are fed up and want real change, not just speeches about change.

Democrat Elizabeth Warren has opened up a lead against Republican incumbent Scott Brown for the first time in their U.S. Senate showdown, but a barrage of attack ads appears to have damaged Warren and Brown’s standing among Massachusetts voters, a new University of Massachusetts at Lowell/Boston Herald poll shows.

Warren leads Brown by a 49-42 percent margin, outside the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points. That number includes voters who say they are "leaning" for either candidate. But even without the "leaners," Warren still leads by a 46-41 percent margin, barely within the margin of error.

The poll of 505 registered Massachusetts voters was conducted for UMass-Lowell by Princeton Survey Research from Dec. 1 - Dec. 6, and shows Warren with her largest lead yet in the campaign. A UMass-Lowell/Boston Herald poll taken in late September showed Brown ahead by a 41-38 percent margin, so the new poll represents a 10-point swing in Warren’s favor in less than two months.

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Limbaugh lies

I'd say Limbaugh is off his meds, but...

Dear old lovable Rush is at it again. This time, he's claiming (falsely, if you believe it) that President Obama claimed America as it was founded doesn't work.

Well, the President did use the phrase "it doesn't work."  Of course, he was referring to Republican dogma.  Let me quote the passage that Limbaugh, as usual, distorts:

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class -- things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security.

It's not even a close call on this one.  Gee, who could the President mean when he refers to Congress during the years 2001 to 2003?  And when he talks about people who want to only cut taxes for the wealthy, and who tried it during the last decade? Hmm... that's a tough one.

Here's how Limbaugh describes that paragraph, as explained by WorldNetDaily:

adio giant Rush Limbaugh says Barack Obama has "outed" himself as a "dumb," anti-American socialist and perhaps Marxist after the president delivered a speech suggesting the American way of life has "never worked."

"After the three years, the cat's out of the bag," Limbaugh said this afternoon."After three years, everybody now knows why I wanted you to fail. Everybody that heard that speech now knows that you said America as founded has never worked. You have outed yourself, Barack, if I may call you that. You've come out. Maybe you'll be on the cover of the next Advocate (a homosexual magazine) because you just outed yourself, sir. You have nothing but contempt for this country."

What's sad is that Rush Limbaugh is the putative leader of the Republican party, along with Fox News. They run the show. You cross them, and you're forced within 24 hours to genuflect with a big apology. It's just one more sign of how the GOP has been taken over by crazies.

I will make one more point. Limbaugh is taking advantage of the President's penchant for not naming names. By not saying "the Republican Congress," "the Republican party," and "George Bush," President Obama left the door open (albeit an awfully small door) for Limbaugh's lie. Next time, Mr. President, name names. Read the rest of this post...

Second City responds to Rick Perry’s latest gay-bashing ad

Here's the God-fearing anti-gay video that Rick Perry released yesterday. God, you see, if upset that the President is letting gays serve openly in the military. God is okay with gays serving in the closet, but not open. He's a detail man, that God.

Here's Second City's response:

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Some other things Teddy Roosevelt said at Osawatomie

President Obama recently gave a speech at Osawatomie, Kansas. (Don't you just love these Midwestern Indian names? Michigan has a Genesee county; Kansas has a Wyandotte county; horrible Kathy Nicklaus lives in Waukesha. Great fun to say.)

Speaking at Osawatomie, Obama quoted Theodore Roosevelt:

“Our country,” [Roosevelt] said, “...means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy ... of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”

Sounds very progressive-sounding, doesn't it? (Yes, I meant that.) It also sounds pretty general, but that's Obama's style it seems; promise the general, deliver the second lieutenant.

Obama went to Osawatomie quoting Roosevelt because Roosevelt also spoke at Osawatomie, in 1910, and in my opinion gave a much better speech (PDF). I mean, how do you compete with this prose, taken just as prose:

There have been two great crises in our country's history: first, when it was formed, and then, again, when it was perpetuated; and, in the second of these great crises - in the time of stress and strain which culminated in the Civil War, on the outcome of which depended the justification of what had been done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, you men who fought through the Civil War, not only did you justify your generation, not only did you render life worth living for our generation, but you justified the wisdom of Washington and Washington's colleagues.

But to the point, Obama appears to have read only Roosevelt's intro, since he quotes just the second sentence. Here are some other things Teddy Roosevelt said at Osawatomie (h/t Kevin Murphy via email; all emphasis and reparagraphing mine):

■ The Constitution guarantees protections to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being.

The creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master. How do you not love that? (Given his immediate need, I'm not sure our Fierce Defender understands who is the master.)

More Roosevelt:

■ There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.

Very modern, yet we're still waiting to implement this, after all these years. It's a straight line, isn't it — from corporate personhood under the 14th Amendment to "money equals speech" to Citizens United and endless cash endlessly buying elections.

Undoing corporate power is one of the tasks of this just-born century. A hundred years ago, Roosevelt considered it a task for the last one. We're late.

On punishment for corporate malfeasance:

■ I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

Incentives matter. Humans held responsible for human behavior when they cause deaths, or worse, kill to win. And I'm a great fan of the Corporate Death Penalty — when corps kill people, they should be killed, their charters revoked. Let the shareholders roll dice to see who gets the shoes.

On Wall Street investing vs gambling:

■ Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered - not gambling in stocks, but service rendered.

If Obama would say that with his deeds, I'll be a Fierce Defender myself.

And finally, Roosevelt making the "living wage" argument, which (once) was an actual core teaching of the Catholic Church:

■ No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community.

Meanwhile, the history of the minimum wage, even under Democratic control of government, is shameful. In real terms, the U.S. minimum wage peaked in 1968.

I'll stop here, but feel free to read the rest of the speech. It's chock full, famous for a reason.

Does Obama's "I get it" speech stand up? I guess that depends on what he actually does, and not what he says.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Federal judge rules that a blogger is not a journalist

And sometimes they're not, and sometimes they are. But the judge's standard for determining whether a blogger is a journalist is bizarre and antiquated.  From AP:

The judge ruled that Cox was not protected by Oregon's shield law from having to produce sources, saying even though Cox defines herself as media, she was not affiliated with any mainstream outlet. He added that the shield law does not apply to civil actions for defamation.

Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.

I'm not affiliated with a mainstream outlet, I don't have a journalism education, as for editing, sure, I edit my posts myself (I suspect the judge meant "having editors"), and I do check facts and believe in journalistic standards such as keeping the confidence of sources, protecting off the record conversations, etc. By this judge's standard, I'm 50-50 on whether I'm a journalist (even though the Economist didn't seem to mind when I wrote for them over ten years ago).

The judge is wrong and right. You do need some kind of standard for determining whether a blogger is a journalist, otherwise anyone kid who creates a Web site can claim he's a journalist, and something about that bothers me. But all the judge does is repeat the old definition of what makes a journalist, something that may not apply 100% in a new more technology heavy age (I'm surprised the judge didn't add "uses a typewriter" to the list).

I do get a chuckle out of the judge saying that real journalists have editors. The real journalists at AP couldn't even get their blog terminology right:

Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.

Unless the woman is some kind of Energizer Bunny of blogging, she didn't produce "400 blogs." She wrote "400 blog posts" on her blog over five years. There's a difference. AMERICAblog is a blog, Daily Kos is a blog, and FireDogLake is a blog. Together, they are 3 blogs. But each site has tens of thousands of blog posts on it.

Calling a blog post a "blog" is a mistake I've heard a lot, and it rankles me. It's also rather funny that the Associated Press, which has "editors," is using blog terminology incorrectly in an article about how bloggers aren't journalists because they don't have the same editing standards, and commitment to accuracy, as "real" journalists. Ha!

Putting that aside for a moment, my dad is a smart man. But I don't want him making Internet policy. At this point in history, one thing doesn't improve with age - your understanding of technology. Not that judges are incapable of learning new issue areas, but I wonder whether we shouldn't have Internet courts, or some kind of specialty "something" created, to handle these kind of issues that are too complicated, and too organic, for someone not well steeped in them.  I don't know that the judge is a borderline luddite, but I have a feeling he might be.

Time to get back to my Selectric. Read the rest of this post...

EU banks borrowed $50 billion from emergency ECB fund

This is of course, on top or billions more already being lent to the banks by the ECB. It's possible - likely, even - that the US Fed has also been helping though we may not know about the Fed's actions for years. While it may not have a 2008-like feeling on the US, that is certainly the feeling over here. One would hope that the EU governments have learned lessons from the US experience when bankers were bailed out, but it's doubtful. Stay tuned because this is not likely to get better in the near term.

The European Central Bank announced that banks across the continent have already borrowed $50bn (£32bn) under the emergency measures announced jointly with other major central banks last week.

That was five times the level expected by market insiders, underlining the strains in Europe's banking markets. Banks across the EU will be told on Thursday how much capital they will be forced to raise to fix their battered finances.

On Wednesday night the rating agency Standard & Poor's piled on the pressure by placing all large banks in the eurozone on negative credit watch. That means powerhouses such as Deutsche Bank and France's BNP Paribas are at risk of being downgraded by the rating agency, adding to unease about the state of the continent's banks.

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Anti-government protests increasing in Russia

The PR-spin days of Putin may be nearing an end. While Russians were fine with his flashy antics a few years ago, suddenly they want more. They want more freedom and less Putin. In the early days of Putin, Russians were just glad to be back on the map after the fall of the Soviet Union. They could tolerate and even accept Putin's desire to be on the front pages.

Russians used to be very insular but thanks to prosperity in the oil industry as well as other areas (software, for example) more and more Russians have circulated outside of Russia. After seeing the world a bit, Putin's games are no longer as attractive as it used to be. If you're going to rub your billions into the faces of the public, you should expect some backlash, eventually. Parts of Russian society have progressed, but not enough and not quickly enough. The Guardian:

With concern inside the Kremlin growing, Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, met their security council, including the interior and defence ministers, the head of the federal security service (FSB) and the country's foreign intelligence chief, to discuss the situation.

Helicopters hovered in the skies over Moscow, while the police presence on the streets of the Russian capital remained strong following two protests that led to hundreds of people arrested.

The movement was triggered by a disputed parliamentary election result that protesters say wildly overstated the popularity of Putin's United Russia party.

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