Citizens United - How to Handle a Pernicious Ruling

For those of you who aren't familiar, a quick synopsis:

On January 21, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The 5-justice majority, over a stirring dissent by Justice John Paul Stevens, used the case to overturn two prior court decisions that limited the role of corporate money in politics and to issue a sweeping new rule: For-profit corporations have a constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence federal and state elections. Litigation Group attorney Scott Nelson was co-counsel for the key congressional sponsors of the McCain-Feingold law, who filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court.

The decision is likely to be enormously harmful. Corporations already dominate our political process-through political action committees, fundraisers, high-paid lobbyists, personal contributions by corporate insiders, and more. On the dominant issues of the day-climate change, health care, financial regulation-corporate interests are leveraging their political investments to sidetrack vital measures to protect the planet and its people. Citizens United offers them new tools to influence and intimidate lawmakers.

So where does that leave us?  We are going to see a lot more corporate money in politics.  If they choose to, they can completely overwhelm the process - it will mostly be done through front groups like the Chamber or Commerce.  It's going to have a huge chilling effect on people in office as well as the people who may choose to go into politics.

Corporations don't eat or breathe and they live forever.  That means they don't care about clean food or air, and they don't care about the risk of death.  Bottom line, except for their mandate to maximize shareholder profits, they don't care.   About anything.  They should not be put on equal footing, legislatively, to "natural" people.

The only way to undo this is to overturn it.  It can be done through another court ruling or through a constitutional amendment.  It will be a difficult slog, but it's the right thing to do.  We cannot afford in this country to have elected officials afraid to stand up for their constituents.  Get educated on this decision, get educated on our options, take action before it's too late for humans to maintain our democracy - by, for, and of the people.  Human people.

The Actual End Times Puppet Show

This really blew me away when I saw it. Wow. Just, Wow.

Art Car Construction

Incorporate California Today!

California needs to become a corporation, fast!  I think it may be the only way to save the State.  Think about it.  If we incorporated, we could be the largest employer in the United States.  Of course, all businesses chartered in the State would become subsidiaries of California Inc.

Why the hell would I suggest this radical course of action?  Bailout money.  California, as a corporation, would be too big to fail and the Federal Government would print money faster than Limbaugh can deliver the smackdown to a dissenting Republicant.

Think of the press conferences!  Geithner and Obama telling us how important we are to the Nation.  Media outlets burning through hours of programming talking about all the superficial and unimportant details of the "painful" reorganization.  Our former State representatives jockeying for a prime spot in the new management team.  

Of course, our CEO would have to be let go as a sacrifice to the pissed off taxpayers.  I wouldn't feel too bad.  If Gray Davis was kicked to the curb over the VLF, Schwarzenegger should have seen this coming from a mile away.

Argh, I can't keep this up.  It's too depressing.

:(

Darwin's Taxi - The Evolution of Dry Earth Community Transit

Designs and work photos of the 2009 Mutant Vehicle, "Darwin's Taxi - The Evolution of Dry Earth Community Transit". It's taking shape. The frame is very solid and safe. We are all very excited to get to the "art" part of making and Art Car soon.

For questions or comments, please call T.R. Lingly @ (TBD).

Election Integrity - Best Vision I've Seen Yet

By James Strait via Mark Crispin Miller.

Machines, software, and all esoteric voting methods and procedures are forever incompatible with transparency of process. Transparency being defined as a process where the average literate voting citizen may be randomly culled from the population and then be able to perform any function within the elections process.

That is my standard…and it is a hard sell because it is simple. Modern people have come to believe that sophisticated equals complex and shiny, when in reality elegant processes are always a function of accomplishing specified work with the fewest actions.

Jim James Strait

www.straittalks.com
www.weirdmissouri.com
www.wifi1460AM.com
www.wnjc1360.com
www.VoiceoftheVoters.com

As a consultant who does process redesign for a living, I couldn't agree more.

Alright People - What are We Going to Do About This?

I am disturbed thinking about what this means:

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - A gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before apparently committing suicide, officials said.

Investigators said they had yet to establish a motive for the massacre, which was at least the fifth deadly mass shooting in the U.S. in the past month alone(emphasis mine).

The 5th? Really? I am so angry at such a wide swath of people for inciting such violence. The political parties have gotten so mean and vile (and I *do* blame the Republicans more than the Democrats on this one), calling each other traitors, communists, evil-doers, and generally whipping their "followers" into hate-filled frenzies. Some of Palin's crap in that last election is unforgivable.

• I am angry with the greedy bastards who pillaged the country for as much money as they could get their filthy little hands on, which has caused so much hardship for so many people.
• I am angry that people suffering from the resulting hardship are looking for easy blame, rather than trying to genuinely understand what happened, and prevent it going forward.
• I am angry at politicians and media organizations who hope to get benefits, ratings, and votes from dumbing-down their rhetoric and giving people easy, largely false answers.
• I am angry with spineless Democrats who are more interested in their own stupid careers, than making the hard choices that might make a difference.
• And finally, I am angry that people see violence as a way out. What the hell is happening out there that murder and death seem preferable to any kind of life? Have we been that desensitized to violence or have we, as a society, just ceased to give our citizens anything to live for?

I hate to feel this way. We have to fix it.