Corporations have First Amendment rights now

Well, now the Chinese government can start a corporation in the US and have unlimited Freedom of Speech to influence our campaigns. Bin Laden can start a US corporation and influence politics. Sure they could have done it before, but with guidelines. Now they can do as much as they want. Israel already knows this as AIPAC is the most influential lobbying group in Washington. How much power will they have now?

As each Presidential election becomes more expensive than the last election, money clearly is influencing politics in the country. A country that was founded on giving the People the right to vote, now is governed not by the vote, but by money. Now, the one with the most money wins, not the one with the most votes. Sure, the one with the most money eventually gets the most votes. If not, they can buy the company that counts the votes and throw the election.

If corporations are given the rights of human beings, then when they merge is that same sex marriage? When they put another corporation out of business, is that murder? Obviously, no. They are not human beings. Corporations are merely a legal construct designed to give a human being some additional perks, like limited liability, etc. But no corporation has ever been born, they are incorporated. No corporation can go to jail. No corporation can get married. No corporation can eat or have sex. No corporation can die, they are merely dissolved. No corporation can serve our country and enter the military or send their child to the military.

Also, if the rich person running a corporation has enough money to influence politics, aren't they given an unfair advantage that the person without money. Most of the People are poor and getting poorer. How will their voice be heard now as the ones with the money control the TV and other news sources.

Corporations have First

Haiti

I cannot believe the American government's response to Haiti.

Soldiers swarming in with guns. They are too afraid to move until more guns show up. Food and medicine sitting at the airport behind the guns. Doctors not being allowed to land at the airport by the American's. The American military wants to land more guns instead.

There is virtually no reports of security issues. There will be security issues if the American troops keep hiding behind their guns.

It makes our troops look like cowards. They are afraid to put down the guns and go help people. I imagine the troops are afraid of poor, black people. Are they afraid they will rise up against their oppressors? The troops are trained to kill and not to help. I guess it is not their fault.

Put up the money and I will put together an army of people that can get the food and medicine to the people of Haiti without guns. Guns are not needed. Put down the guns and pick up some shovels, move some medicine around, and move the food.

MLK Day

Today I remember two things from MLK Jr.:

1. "...the US is the largest purveyor of violence on the planet..." I'm quoting from memory, so it might not be exact...but I just listened to it again today.

2. He said something about Gandhi embodying the teachings of Jesus like no one else has. I don't have the exact quote.

Thank you MLK for being such a huge example of bravery for us all to attempt to emulate. It would take me a life time to try and be as brave as you were in making just one of your many speeches. I can only hope that others will be brave enough to say what needs to be said, despite the consequences.

What are Republicans offering?

Hey, I'm no fan of Democrats, but what is going on with Republicans these days?

They say the weirdest things and don't offer any real action plans or constructive alternatives. They seem to just say no to everything, except for defense spending and favors for the elite, ruling class.

They say they want less government and they still think that tax breaks will create opportunities for a majority of the People. Yet their actual plans create more barrowing...which translates to more taxes for future Americans...and more government through more policing, security and military. They have had so much power for so long that it is obvious that their policies have failed the nation.

Now, the Democrats are just doing the work that Republicans used to do. I'm really not a fan of them either. But, at least with them, they aren't as racist.

What is this push for more government intrusion

There seem to be some in the media that want America to become some sort of a theocracy...by media, I mean the corporate media, like Fox and any large news business. By theocracy, I mean that they wish our laws and behaviors to be based on their religious views.

I am talking about a particular brand of conservative evangelical Christian, although I have seen similar behavior in a localized setting with Mormons. What I mean is that some people have a particular view on how one must behave. It is mostly justified with religious beliefs. However, there seems to be a lot of hypocrisy in their beliefs, so it is hard to figure out the logic to their rules sometimes.

They honestly think that if all of the People behaved as they said, there would be some sort of religious revival on a national scale and all the problems in our country would go away.

I think they want to go back to a day when us whites had even more privileges than we do today.

The problem here is that they are really recommending that certain behaviors be outlawed based on their views. Not on views created by democratic process. This will require massive government intervention to enforce.

I mean look at our prison system. The largest of any country on the planet. All across the US, more and more people are arrested for marijuana usage. Most of them are just using pot and not even selling or growing. Has this record amount of arrested stopped the usage? No. Has it turned public opinion against pot? No. Are more and more people saying that we should make pot legal? Yes.

So, these wacky "Christians" want our government to start policing people to act certain ways. Soon, homosexuality will be illegal and the police will be breaking down doors looking for gay behavior.

It is also these same people who seem to be the ones affraid of everything. They don't feel good unless they are hiding behind some guns and tanks. They insist on larger and larger armed forces and more and more government.

These are also the same people who usually say we need less government. They mean they don't want to hand out social service due to the inability of our economy to support a large portion of our population.

But really, they are asking for larger and larger government. More military...larger government. More police....put people in jail for things like using scatological language or if women vote or if a child exercises any free will.

Anyway, why do they want such a large, intervening government? Do they want thought police next...what if we act like they want but secretly don't believe in their weird beliefs?

And who will decide the right "Christian" values to legislate?

Three children killed by US troops per day in Afghanistan

Over 1000 Afghan children from the civilian population were killed in 2009 by US troops. This averages out to three children being killed per day in Afghanistan by US soldiers and mercenaries ("contractors") using US made weapons. Obviously, they are funded by the US government. They probably assume that the People know about what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq. Therefore, the People are to blame for the suffering they must endure.

How does this make America safer?

How can American pundits and politicians claim any sort of moral superiority?

I hear frightened, immature, privileged and racist talking heads (on TV, the Internet and radio) going on about Muslim extremists and terrorist. Who is the terrorist of these children and their families in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Avatar is considered by some to be a story about what is happening today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Corporate power in America

There are differing perspectives. Corporate powers have expanded over the last 100 years. Workers rights have contracted. Some people think this is good, some people think this is bad.

Manufacturing has moved from the US. Jobs have left the land. The military now has plenty of people to hire. Poverty and hunger are spreading.

Hard fought workers rights, that were won during the first part of the 1900s, have been eroded.

In the media, all I hear is about how unions are bad and are hurting the corporations that hire union members.

I don't hear much about how wages have gone down over the last several decades. I don't hear about how much more poor the People are getting. Sure for a while we didn't complain. Some of us could use their homes as a credit card. It didn't matter that we couldn't afford to buy anything. Some of us were fooled into thinking this was OK, since we could barrow the money to get what we want. I guess we thought that some day, maybe, we would start to make more money. Odd, this isn't the trend. The trend is that we the People will make less money. Yet the myth of more wealth in the future continues.

Now more people are poor. There are more people talking about how hard things are right now. Homes are being taken.

For some people the idea is to empower the employer, the corporations. The claims are that if we give them tax cuts they will hire more people. Well, they might hire more people, but they are in the business of making a profit, not of taking care of their workers. The business of expanding the number of employees and the business of hiring US workers is only done if it will be more profitable.

The truth should be told, instead of this 1984 double speak stuff. The tax cuts are to expand the corporate profits and not to create more jobs, which may or may not benefit the People. This might translate into more jobs as the politicians claim, but there is nothing in the design that actually aims to do that unless the legistlation specificallly mandates more workers.

Think about it. The vast majority of the People are workers. Very few Americans are executives and/or board members of large corporations. No corporation is a member of the People.

So why make policy based on the interests of the corporations. Well, that answer is obvious in the current, corrupted system.

The other perspective is obvious. If you pay the People more money, they will buy more stuff and the economy will do better and then we can pay the People more and then the economy gets better.

Hungry people

I heard a comment that made me pause today: "For less than the cost of the Bailout to CitiBank, the world could end hunger."

How much safer would the US be if hunger was ended? What would be the benefit to the US? It would be immense.

There are 6.7 billion people or something like that. There is food for 11 billion people. And yet, there are over one billion people who experience chronic malnutrition. Hunger doesn't always end lives. If the children come out of this condition, they have chronic health problems and even brain damage.

Shouldn't food be a human right? Especially with the abundance of food that this world produces.

What is the big problem with gay people?

So what is the big problem with gay people?

I know America has a tradition of hating those that aren't in the mainstream, has a history of violent racism, has a history of near genocide....aren't those times behind us yet?

Can't we grow up America?

OK, so you think being gay is a sin. Big deal. You are welcome to your beliefs but why do you want to police other people and make them behave the way you think is appropriate?

"...the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."

People died for this concept. It isn't supposed to please the status quo, it is supposed to protect the minority. If one group of people does not have these rights, then it isn't a right. It is a privilege.

And what is wrong with gay marriage? We are talking about civil marriages. It doesn't force a church to change the way they do weddings. I already know churches that do gay weddings, even they don't stand up in court. They do stand up in the eyes of God. Isn't the church marriage the one that matters? "Give unto Rome, that which is Rome's" I think, applies to leaving to the government, what the government does. What we do in our spiritual life is our right to express as we want.

But, there are some among us that think the rights of the Constitution are only for the few and not for all.

They wish to expand government, to police our behavior. They want the government to make people act in the way that a radical few think is the way a good christian should behave. If you don't behave this way, then the government will come and take care of you.

The worst decade for America in a long time

I'm just going to quote Democracy Now!:

The Washington Post reports the past decade was the worst for the US economy in modern times. There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999. And the net worth of American households has also declined when adjusted for inflation. This compares with sharp gains in every previous decade since data were initially collected in the 1950s. Wall Street also registered its first-ever negative decade on a total return basis. Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research, said the benchmark S&P 500 is down about ten percent over the last ten years.

Sam Stovall: "It’s a dismal decade because, whether you go back to 1900, this is the first decade in which the S&P 500 lost money when you include dividends reinvested. Even in the 1930s, we were able to eke out a ten percent total return, because we had dividend yields that ranged anywhere from five to ten percent during that ten-year period.”

OK. Well their story says it all really.

What's up with US support of Israel?

I cannot figure out why there is so much support for Israel and the crimes they are committing.

Most human rights experts agree that Palestine is an apartheid state. Israel kills innocent women and children at a ratio of 100 to one. For every Israeli that is killed, 100 Palestinian are killed...too many are young children.

Palestine is cut off, it is surrounded. Israel is collectively punishing the people of Palestine. They are supported by the US. They get money from the US Congress, they get US support in the UN, they get our weapons, our helicopters and they get our bull-dozers. Israel is almost unanimously accused of war crimes and maybe even crimes against humanity, but nothing is done about this.

Israel ignores international laws and the borders established by international treaty.

They say they are acting in self defense, but only a mad man would think was self defense. They are targeting the civilian population of a land that they occupy. They have cut off their economy, their water, their electricity, their hospitals. The Palestinians are impoverished and down troden.

I can understand Congress and the President supporting Israel. There is AIPAC. Israel funded lobbyist have great sway with most in Washington. I can understand fanatical Christians...they are trying to push God's hand and hurry up the second coming. But, why the great majority of the People's support? How can a near unanimous voice from the world be stopped by pressure from the US? Is that democratic? Isn't the US supposed to be this beacon for democracy and justice and human rights?

It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Happy New Year

Have a prosperous new year. May 2010 bring you light and freedom. May democracy spread throughout our lives and our personal liberties expanded.

May the angels spread peace and happiness and security in you daily life.

I pray that we all get the same message from Jesus that Gandhi did.

What is so wrong with workers

How come the workers of this country must shoulder all the burdens of the economy in the US? For the last several decades wages have stagnated and fallen. Workers were forced and encouraged to borrow more money. As they became more indentured, so to speak, they had to wager their homes with second mortgages.

Workers have less and less spending power as the decades go by.

Workers become dependent on employers for health care and stay with employers only for medical insurance.

I sometime hear conservative pundits in the news and on the Internet demonizing workers and unions. Wages seem to be so much of a burden, but those wages get spent in the economy and everyone benefits.

Now they will be mandated to buy private health insurance with lower and lower wages. And those in unions will be taxed on their health insurance benefits.

There were many rights fought for in the early 1900s that have been slowly eroded on.