…Sen. Bernie Sanders said, “The Koch brothers’ bid to buy elections in America speaks to the obvious need for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and subsequent rulings. In the short term, Congress must pass legislation to require disclosure of the corporations and wealthy individuals behind the ads by outside groups.”

Sen. Sanders said the Koch spending demonstrates that we are no longer a nation of the people, “When one wealthy family spends more money than was raised altogether by the last Republican presidential candidate, it tells us that we are no longer a country of the people, by the people and for the people. We are becoming a country of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.”…

If you haven’t done so already, please take this opportunity to divest yourself of any and all Koch Industry products. I know it will be hard to wipe your ass with something other than Quilted Northern toilet paper, if that’s what you’ve become accustomed to, and wear clothes without Lycra, but desperate times call for desperate measures… Our ancestors gave their lives so that we might be free. The least we can do, I think, is find a substitute for Brawny paper towels.

And, of course, we can support Bernie is his legislative push to see Citizens United overturned. Here, with more on that, is a clip from VT Digger.

…Sanders last December 8 introduced the Saving American Democracy Amendment. His proposal would restore the power of Congress and state lawmakers to enact campaign spending limits, like laws that were in place for a century before the controversial court ruling.

Sanders also is a cosponsor of legislation aimed at curtailing the power of special interest groups by requiring them to disclose more information about their role in purchasing campaign advertisements. The Disclose Act would address some concerns related to the Supreme Court ruling that let corporations pour money directly into campaign ads…

As I just mentioned the other day, in the thread about Ben Cohen’s plan to help us deface our dollar bills, in hopes of spreading the Move to Amend gospel, while there are a great many things wrong in the United States today, I believe that, above all else, we need to focus on getting the money out of politics. Until we do that, I’m of the opinion that no substantive, long-term change is possible. We need to strike at the root of the problem, and stop individuals and corporations from buying our elections under the guise of free speech.

Speaking of the Move to Amend, I don’t generally sign petitions, but their’s, I think, it simple, elegant, and beautiful. Here it is, in its entirety.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, 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.

If you’re so inclined, you can sign it here.

And, as long as you’re signing things, how about a letter to your elected officials? Believe it or not, they do count the letters that come in, and a note encouraging them to back the Disclose Act and the Saving American Democracy Amendment, really could make a difference… Should you choose to join me, you’ll find the contact information for your Congressperson and Senators here.

Oh… One last thing… I know some of you don’t think there’s much difference between Obama and Romney. And, to some degree, I’d agree with you. I think, however, that the Citizens United decision, which was decided 5-to-4 by the Supreme Court, illustrates just how important it is that a Democrat holds the White House, especially when we have as many as three Supreme Court justices who could be retiring over the next four years.

The first is called the DISCLOSE Act, and it’s being championed by Senators Patrick Leahy and Chuck Schumer. The bill, which would require corporations to report all election expenditures, passed the House in June, and it’s up for a re-vote in the Senate tomorrow. If you have an opportunity, please consider calling your Senators and asking them to support the legislation. Here, in hopes of convincing you, is a letter from Leahy and Schumer.

We need your help right now.

When the DISCLOSE Act came up just short of passing in late July, we knew we’d get another chance to control corporate spending to influence elections by voting on it in September — and due to some late changes in the legislative calendar, that vote is tomorrow.

Click here and call your senators to ask if they plan to vote for the DISCLOSE Act — and let us know what they say.

Your calls and your report will help us determine who we still need to convince to support the DISCLOSE Act when it comes up for a vote.

Corporations and special interests are already pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into elections around the country, so this will almost certainly be our last chance to pass this critical legislation before the corporate-funded candidates from this election cycle reach Washington.

Please, call your senators now and find out if we still need to sway them!

So, if you do have a moment, please click here and join us in this attempt to at least somewhat mitigate the fallout from the unfortunate Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which, for the first time, gave both domestic and foreign corporations free reign to influence American elections.

And, once you’ve done that, I’d like to ask that you also weigh in on Net Neutrality. The folks at Daily Kos have joined up with the communications company Credo to launch a new initiative directed at Julius Genachowski, the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Here’s the note I just received, announcing the initiative, and explaining why Net Neutrality is so vitally important tot he future of our nation.

Net neutrality is one of the bedrock principles of the Internet. It means that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must treat all websites equally. They cannot make it easier load some websites, and more difficult to load others. It’s what ensures your ISP can’t privilege Fox News over Daily Kos.

But net neutrality is not the law of the land, so ISPs can abandon it at any time. In fact, Google and Verizon have proposed that net neutrality be abandoned for the mobile web. And they have proposed other violations of net neutrality which would end the Internet as we know it. We cannot allow this to happen.

Nothing good is likely to make its way through Congress anytime soon, so Daily Kos is joining with CREDO to urge Julius Genachowski, the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to take action.

Tell FCC Chairman Genachowski to act–don’t let corporations write their own rules.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of Chairman Genachowski’s first major speech as head of the FCC, in which he committed to protecting net neutrality. However, despite having the votes on the FCC to pass strong net neutrality rules, Genachowski has avoided taking the necessary action to do so. There’s no good excuse for his dithering.

The regulatory vacuum his inaction has created set the stage for the Google and Verizon proposal, in which they are attempting to write the rules that would govern their behavior. To see what happens when large corporations write their own rules, we just need look at Wall Street, or the Gulf of Mexico. We can’t let that to happen to the Internet, too. We must push Chairman Genachowski to act before it’s too late.

Thank you for your consideration, and good night.

And, speaking of the stranglehold that corporations have on the American electorate, did you happen to see that our President seems to now be backtracking on his recent statements about Wall Street bonuses being “obscene” and “shameful”? Yup, it seems as though he’s had a change of heart. Now, according to the President, who spoke to the folks at Bloomburg News yesterday, he doesn’t “begrudge” the individuals who are receiving multi-million dollar bonuses. In his own words, it’s just “part of the free market system.” (And, clearly we wouldn’t want to interfere with the free market system… unless, of course, it’s to pour in billions of American tax-payer dollars.) The whole thing is disgusting, and one can only imagine the sudden change in position has to do with the upcoming 2010 elections, and garnering the support of Wall Street firms for Democrats… And, with that, I give you this clip from economist Paul Krugman:

…The planned overhaul of US financial rules prompted Standard & Poor’s to warn on Tuesday it might downgrade the credit ratings of Citigroup and Bank of America on concerns that the shake-up would make it less likely that the banks would be bailed out by US taxpayers if they ran into trouble again.

The point is that these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what’s happening.

But no. If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet “the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.”

We’re doomed.

If our generation had an ounce of gumption, and if we weren’t all scared shitless, we wouldn’t be reading blogs right now, but smashing windows… Mark my words, change is never going to happen, unless we the people start scaring them more than they scare us.

And, speaking of this Supreme Court decision, I thought that I’d share this message that I just received from my friend Phil:

Jim Hightower said “This is not judicial activism, it’s judicial radicalism – a black-robed political coup over America’s historic democratic ideals. Five men have just overthrown the power of the people’s vote, enthroning corporate money as supreme in all of our country’s elections.”

Justice Stephens in his dissent said, “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

President Obama says this decision “has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It’s a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies,” and “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest.”

And Rep. Alan Grayson (D, Florida) calls this “the most irresponsible decision by the Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision.”

We MUST make sure that Congress acts immediately. They must quickly pass laws to work around this reckless decision that literally could destroy democracy. Members of Congress are working on bills that will require that a corporation’s political expenditures are approved by the majority of its shareholders, that corporations publicly and immediately disclose these political expenditures (CEOs stating who they are on camera saying “I approve this message” as political candidates do), and that public financing is made available to candidates that do not accept corporate dollars. But ultimately this ruling needs to be overturned by a Constitutional Amendment.

We must show Congress that we are behind them in saving democracy in the US. The following sites have petitions to sign that will go to Congress: Save Democracy, Free Speech for People, and Don’t Get Rolled.

And here is a link that has a template letter that you can send to your representatives.

And, after you sign the petitions and write to your Senators and members of Congress, be sure to share the video far and wide.

Please act now, and please spread the word!

And one last thing, as if all that isn’t frightening enough… it’s quite possible that this is the first of several such bombshells to be delivered by the Roberts court. Here’s a clip from the Washington Post:

The Roberts court ended its term last summer avoiding a constitutional showdown with Congress over the Voting Rights Act. But its first major decision of the current term might signal a new willingness to act boldly.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his conservative colleagues delivered a seismic jolt Thursday. They overturned two of the court’s past decisions — including one made as recently as six years ago — to upend federal legislation that says corporations may not use their profits to support or oppose candidates and to declare unconstitutional a large portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act passed in 2002.

“This is obviously such an exceptionally dramatic, high-profile break with precedent,” said Pamela Harris, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown Law Center. “The question is, what will come next? Perhaps they have exhausted themselves on this one case, or it could have the opposite effect and be energizing. I really don’t know which it will be”…

And it makes me wonder, just what might be next…

Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy…

The ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, overruled two precedents: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions….

So, as of right now, corporations will have the same level of control over U.S. elections that they, up till now, have exercised over other areas of American life.

Oh, speaking of which, did you see the headline today that top defense contractors spent $27 million lobbying for the Afghan surge? That’s right. They spent $27 million dollars making the case to our elected officials that a surge in Afghanistan, requiring their products, was necessary. (I don’t have the number handy, but I expect peace groups had considerably less to spend.) And, now, they’ll be have the same kind of influence over U.S. elections.

My favorite quote today was from someone on Reddit, who said, “Coming this November: attack ads by banks against Congressmen who advocate banking reform legislation — paid for by taxpayer bailout money. It’s kind of poetic, isn’t it?

And, as you might have guessed, Lawrence Lessig doesn’t seem too happy about this current turn of events. He’s advocating that people immediately get behind the Fair Elections Now Act, which would, if passed, cap personal donations to political campaigns at $100, and make public funding available for those who meet certain criteria.

And, the People for the American Way are taking it one step further. They’re suggesting that we don’t just legislate around the ruling, but amend the Constitution itself. Here’s a clip:

…There is no quick fix. The Roberts Court’s audacity must be met with bold action.

People For the American Way is launching a campaign to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would nullify the worst part of the Court’s decision by granting Congress the authority to limit corporate influence in elections. This is not something that we take lightly. But the very foundation of our democracy could depend on our ability to overturn this decision…

We support other legislative efforts in Congress to limit the impact of today’s anti-democratic decision – some of which are being talked about by our allies already. But this decision is such a drastic departure from sound democratic principles that we now stand on the precipice, and more is needed.

Congress must move quickly to protect our democratic system and the voice of the people by passing this amendment. From there, we will take our campaign to the states to get the amendment ratified by two thirds of the state legislatures. As the consequences of this decision sink in, more and more Americans will be justifiably outraged. We can make this national movement to amend the Constitution a success — with your help…

If you want to be involved, just click that last link and enter your email address.

And, here, in conclusion, are a few quotes that I found on the subject.

Senator Chuck Schumer: “The Supreme Court has just predicted the winners of the next November election. It won’t be Republicans. It won’t be Democrats. It will be Corporate America.”

Barack Obama: “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans… That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision.”

And this, my friends, is the Bush legacy. This is what happens when criminally-uninformed voters put a far-right ideologue/puppet into the Oval Office. It’s not enough that we have to invest years, undoing all the shit he’s personally responsible for, but, then, on top of it, we have to suffer through the ridiculous decisions of his Supreme Court. And nothing is more ridiculous than this notion that corporations, in the eyes of the law, are people, entitled to the same rights as you and me.

Until a corporation can go to prison for breaking the law, in my opinion, it shouldn’t be given any of the privileges of personhood.

In a presentation last week, Content Director Tony Dearing said that the organization would be staffed by “trained, professional journalists,” and have a total of 30 to 35 employees. (As one assumes that count includes all of the pressmen, sales people, and the like, it’s still unclear to me as to how many of these trained and professional journalists there are going to be, but there will be some.) And, he mentioned, they would be using freelancers to round out their local coverage, as well as partnering with other organizations to provide non-local news. We also learned that hiring at the new organization had already begun, that the plan is to really go live with the new site on July 20 (there’s a kind of placeholder site now, with a few posts), and that the first print issue would come out Sunday, July 26.

And, in addition to this slide deck, there is a short video clip on the site, of Tony Dearing answering a question about whether or not the site, once it launches in earnest, would allow for anonymous comments. Dearing said that they would, but, he added, they would moderate the comments aggressively. Here’s the clip:

And this is what’s interesting me tonight. I’m sitting here wondering what Dearing means when he talks about aggressive moderation. Does he mean that they’ll be deleting posts that they find contentious? Does it mean that they’ll be blocking the IP addresses of those known to turn every discussion into one about Israel and Palestine? Or, does it mean that there will be a strong, consistent voice of authority always at the ready to swoop in and put bad actors in their place?

While I appreciate his desire to establish an online community where substantive, respectful discussions are had – he says he wants to establish A2.com as the local, online “grown-ups table” – I wonder to what extent aggressive moderation might be at odds with their other stated desire, which is to create, as he mentions in another slide, “a place where people can contribute content and gain and share information and opinions on whatever is important in their lives.” As you know from reading the comments here at MM.com, what some folks consider important is often at odds with the general sentiment of the audience. Anyway, it seems to me, as someone who has run an online community for over six years now, that fostering an environment where everyone feels empowered to speak may be somewhat inconsistent with aggressive moderation.

Furthermore, given the way Dearing answers the question – by saying that he’s talked with someone who has actually established an online community – I don’t have a great deal of confidence that he appreciates what he’s getting into. And, I should add at this point that I desperately want this new enterprise to succeed. I think it’s imperative if we want this region to prosper and grow that we have a functioning, active press with the resources to conduct real investigations and hold people’s feet to the fire when necessary. With that said, however, I’m wondering how gracefully this group will make the transition to the web. Sure, it may be like the newspaper business in some ways, but it’s very much dissimilar in others. Online, for instance, you can’t pick and choose which letters to print. You have to print them all. And, if you don’t, people won’t respect you for long. They certainly won’t continue to contribute.

Here’s an interesting scenario… Let’s say someone leaves a negative comment about an advertiser. Do Dearing and company remove the comment? If they do, I don’t think they’ll be long for this market.

To some degree, I think, you have to give up a bit of control to be successful in this new world.

-Its good to see the University openly supporting terrorists now. At least they aren’t trying to hide it.

-Can UM can bring in some little kids so Mr. Ayers can show them how to build bombs? Merging his two loves, building bombs and education…how sweet that would be. I only wish that Tim McVeigh could be there to share some cool stories.

For what it’s worth, I support the University in their decision, just as I supported Columbia when, a few months ago, they provided a forum for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. That, in my opinion, is the role of a university. They should be dedicated to free speech above all else, and to the open, honest debate of ideas… And to those who would take this opportunity to bash the school as a bastion of the far left, I’ll remind you that UM not only graduated Bill Ayers (class of 1968), but also Ann Coulter (Law School class of 1988). It should also be noted that UM is just one of many universities that Ayers will be speaking at in the coming weeks (as he tries to capitalize on his new wave of public interest).

As for Ayers, for what it’s worth, I don’t consider myself a fan. I think it’s great that he’s dedicated himself over the course of the past 30 years to more noble undertakings, but, in my opinion, that doesn’t make up for the fact that he was responsible for acts of domestic terrorism, and very well could have caused good people to have lost their lives. The Vietnam war was certainly something that had to be fought against, but I prefer the course of MLK to that of the Weathermen.

update: As someone in the comments section just pointed out, it looks as though the UM isn’t the only local institution of higher learning to give Ayers a platform. He will also be speaking this afternoon at EMU. See the comments section for details.

Here’s a clip from McKinney’s statement:

I mentioned the word impeachment on the House Floor Thursday late afternoon, but I don’t see it in the official Congressional Record transcript…

And, before you say that she’s a nut, and that such a thing would never happen, I’ll remind you that earlier this year the testimony of British MP George Galloway before the U.S. Senate was likewise scrubbed clean… Our history, my friends, is being rewritten as it happens.