A followup to last night’s rant on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. BarackObama.com has posted a form to send a letter to your local rep. It can’t hurt…
Posts Tagged: politics
22
Jan 10
It’s time to abandon the filibuster
The Dems aren’t the ones refusing to compromise. In fact, they’re bending over backwards to try to compromise with each other and get ANY, even one or two Republican votes. No one is budging. The stakes have gotten way too high to hold to a non-legislated procedural rule.
22
Jan 10
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: SciFi Dystopian Disasters Set to Come True
For awhile there, it looked like all the paranoid cyberpunk fiction of the 80s and early 90s was just silly. The US had elected its first black president, we were on the verge of getting some kind of major health care reform and things were finally starting to move on reforming banking and finance.
Then came MA special election and Pelosi announcing she didn’t have the HCR votes in the House. That was bad. That was disappointing. It’s nothing compared to the unmitigated disaster that is the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.
Since it’s not getting anywhere near the news coverage it should, and frankly, it takes a little bit of time for the ramifications to sink in, I’ll be blunt about what this means:
Corporations can now spend whatever they want on politics.
Let that sink in for a moment. Imagine this had been reality in 2008. Obama spent $740.6 million (Bloomberg) on his presidential campaign, much of it raised is small donations from millions of supporters online. Now imagine that Halliburton was able to spend whatever they wanted on the 2008 campaign. Their 10-k showed $1.124 billion in cash and $1.538 billion in net income for 2008.
So Halliburton, with their petty cash, could have outspent Obama, in favor of McCain (or whatever further right candidate they would choose). And oh, by the way, all those “this ad is approved by… ” such and such disclaimers? Yeah, those are gone too.
This is complete fucking disaster. Democracy, as if it wasn’t already at a discount, is now officially for sale to the highest bidder. Hello Neuromancer, hello Snow Crash, we are on.our.way.
And just for special irony, the entire argument is based around the notion that a corporation is a person, and is therefore entitled to the same rights to free speech as a person. Incidentally, you as an individual can now spend gazillions on campaigns too.
But back to the irony: in order to “protect” free speech, your voice can now be completely, utterly outspent by a “legal person” with no motivation except shareholder value (time to buy more stocks?).
Justice Stevens explains just how little sense this actually makes, in the dissent:
The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corpo ration. While that glittering generality has rhetorical appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. Nor does it tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering that some of its shareholders oppose. It does not even resolve the specific question whether Citizens United may be required to finance some of its messages with the money in its PAC. The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.
In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our soci ety, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be man aged and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legiti mate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.
Just who is Citizens United and what was the case actually about? From their website:
Citizens United is an organization dedicated to restoring our government to citizens’ control. Through a combination of education, advocacy, and grass roots organization, Citizens United seeks to reassert the traditional American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty and security. Citizens United’s goal is to restore the founding fathers’ vision of a free nation, guided by the honesty, common sense, and good will of its citizens.
Setting aside the spectacular irony of the first sentence, the rest of it pretty standard fair libertarian buzzwordium.
The organization’s president, David N. Bossie, “led investigations ranging from the Whitewater land deal to the transfer of dual-use technology to China and to foreign fundraising in the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign” (bonus points if you can dissect the special irony about the foreign fundraising). You can read the rest about them for yourself.
The case was about this film they did and, essentially, that they thought they should be able to spend more money promoting it during the 30 day pre-primary window (again, from Stevens: “All that the parties dispute is whether Citizens United had a right to use the funds in its general treasury to pay for broadcasts during the 30-day period”) than the law allowed.
Really, that’s it. I couldn’t make this up. Somehow we got from that dispute to OMFGUNLIMITEDFUNDING.
You know when the last time we had a legislature that was so divided that hardly anything could get passed and there was a really awful, really important supreme court ruling? The 1850s. Scary.
5
Jan 10
The 00s in review, part 1, possibly of 1
Well, since everyone is doing lists…
Best moment
The US electing Obama.
Worst moment
Katrina. Yes, it was worse than 9/11. Sorry, it just was. 9/11 may have had a more profound impact on world events and American politics, but ultimately Katrina was a far more horrifying event. (note: I realize this is a profoundly American view. The worst moment for humanity was by far the Indonesia tsunami.)
Douche of the decade
Wow, it was a spectacular decade for douchebaggery. On the list of obvious choices you have Bush or anyone in his administration, Osama bin Laden, Brownie, credit card companies, all the neocon leadership, James Dobson, H1N1, Musa Hilal, RIAA, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Pope Ratz, Rupert Murdoch, and anyone who voted or lobbied for deregulation of the financial industry. Ultimately, unfortunately, it has to go to us, all of us. For letting these idiots get elected, for not doing enough to fight to curb carbon emissions, for not holding anyone in our government or media accountable. Sorry, but you and me and everyone else is the Douche of the Decade. You may now buy yourself a hat or a shirt or whatever as a prize.
Idiot of the decade
Pseudo-tie: Intelligent Design proponents and climate change deniers. Its pseudo since these two crowds often happen to be the same idiots. Both of these movements are like the new religions of the 21st century. ID isnt even pseudoscience, its really just mythology: a bunch of made up horseshit used to control people. And climate change deniers. Wow. I really dont care how financially beneficial it is for you to spout your nonsense. You know why? Cause all that money you might be able to leave to your progeny wont be worth fuckall if the planet becomes inhabitable. Or even if it just starts to suck hard enough to throw us all back to the stone age and your accrued currency will be laughed at for not being potable water.
Sucker of the decade
I could repeat the above, but that’s lazy, so instead: Anyone who bought real estate in 2005/6. Bonus points if you got an ARM.
Best movie of the decade
In retrospect, there were actually a surprising number of great movies, from Fellowship of the Ring to Fahrenheit 9/11 to Food Inc to District 9 to An Inconvenient Truth. I’ll give the nod to Al Gore, if for no other reason than Truth was the most important topic.
Worst movie of the decade
Attack of the Clones. If you had told me in the 1990s that there would be three more Star Wars movies and that I would fall asleep during one of them I would have been sure you were high. Alas… Plenty has been written about all the failings of this movie, from the comical courtship to the astonishingly tensionless action sequences, to say nothing of the actual title. What gets the film the award is that it confirmed that, indeed, the prequels were going to suck. The Phantom Menace left some doubt, after all the lightsaber duel at the end kicked ass, but AotC took a big fat wooden stick and stabbed it deep into the heart of our Star Wars Childhoods, and then twisted it a few times.
Runner up: Cloverfield. The only movie where I’ve actually seen people go to the theater manager and ask for their money back.
Best tech of the decade
RSS and Blogs. That’s right, stupid and simple. Nothing did more to empower so many as keeping web sites simple, giving non-technical users better software, and bringing about a standardized distribution format (Atom is still better, but that’s irrelevant to the point here…). I get asked whats the difference between a blog and web site? a lot. For a long time, I used to just say nothing really. But then I started answering a different question: what makes a blog a blog? A blog is a web site whose format is a list of content. That sounds like a non-answer, but when you look at all the various attempts to revolutionize web navigation (remember when mouseovers were like the greatest javascript trick ever? Or, anything in Flash, see the next entry), the revolution was make a list, and do it in a way that computers and humans can digest the list with equal accuracy.
Best tech of the decade 2
Cloud computing. Despite it befuddling CNN reporters, on-the-fly provisioning and scaling are one of the most fundamentally positive changes to computing. From the short-turnarounds to the benefits of everyone getting their data into a datacenters. And don’t listen to those CNN reporters. Your data is MUCH better off in a datacenter than on DVDs stored in your file cabinet. Yes, there have been a few outages, and there will certainly be more. Guess what, your stuff is still better off in the cloud. Seriously, just ask yourself, who is more likely to lose all your precious photos, Flickr or you? Does your home office have redundant power and backups and electronics-safe fire suppression? I didn’t think so.
Worst tech of the decade
Flash. Yes, I realize that it was around in the 90s, but Youtube, banner ads and ActionScript 3 took Flash to a whole new level of distribution and ambition in the 00s. Never has a technology put more power to crash more computers into the hands of so many.
Im not even sure where to start with all the ways that Flash is awful, but Ill try: Its proprietary, it incurs tremendous overhead for development and maintenance (and bandwidth…), its chock full of opportunities for memory leaks and namespace collisions, its only pseudo-searcheable (and even that is a recent development)… sigh, this is just making me angry. Heres a google link if you need more reasons.
Final thought: If you want to see just how much Flash wrecks your browsing experience, install Flashblock.
Worst tech of the decade 2
Identity. Or the lack thereof rather. How many logins and passwords do you have? How many times do you have to update your physical address if you move? This might be the singular failure of this century, so far, by the tech industry. OpenID isnt going to get it done. OAuth is promising, but it still doesn’t really feel like a solution to this problem. There is a lot of work to be done on identity in the Teens.
Best TV
Battlestar Galactica.
Worst TV
Battlestar Galactica.
Best album
American Idiot.
Most obnoxious musical phenomenon
I couldn’t really do Worst album since Im sure its something I would refuse to listen to. In lieu of that, I have to go with Maroon 5 and all their similar genre of pop. This Loves whiny, choppy, horrid self was inescapable in public spaces for much of the middle part of the decade and personified a large amount of the useless, annoying music that drives people away from pop after they get out of puberty.
And you thought I was going to say Britney.
Neatest phenomenon
Voter turnout. Its amazing how well a bad president motivates people.
Most annoying phenomenon
The destruction of written English. I’m as guilty as the next person of having typed lol a gazillion times in the last ten (okay, 15 for me…) years. But really look at this. Wow, just wow.
That’s it for now.
5
Jul 09
Bloomberg is the Last “Real” Republican
It struck me the other day that Mike Bloomberg is the last “real” Republican; i.e. in the sense that he runs a tight a fiscal ship, wants government to stay out of personal lives (libertarians would cite the smoking policies as a major exception), he sells out the poor, he fights the unions and he’s business friendly. Now, I’m not saying I’m a Bloombergy fan, but imagine if guys like him had control of the GOP for the last decade instead of the tag team of of the fundies and neocons.
20
Jun 09
Iran protest at the UN, videos
Iranians, you are not alone. Uploaded these direct from the protest to Youtube…
11
Jun 09
NY vs. CA, Fail Style
Floyd Norris’ has a great quip
New York has long been competitive with California, which replaced it as the most populated state. Now they are in a tight race to see which state has the least functional government. It is too soon to declare a winner.