World Ends Tomorrow, Details After This Message
A tipping point for the national psyche is here as Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia prepare to rule on health care reform, in a decision as predictable as their 2000 vote to put George W. Bush into the White House rather than Al Gore, leading to John Roberts in the chief’s chair of the Supreme Court.
In throat-clearing mode, Justices pass up a chance to rethink their Citizens United ukase with a 5-4 bloc vote to reaffirm it against Montana’s challenge to disastrous vote-buying in the state’s political history. Corporations are people, the Justices insist against all evidence of inhuman behavior to the contrary.
Such fading prospects for individual thought and feeling are reinforced by news that computers are inching toward “deep learning” to mimic what goes on in the brain with no bothersome baggage from the human heart.
What will such a 2012 brave new world bring? Beyond chances that overturn of health care reform could create an irreversible downward spiral for Obama’s reelection chances, where will it leave a nation rapidly losing all faith in the ability to govern itself in what used to be an American tradition of optimism—-and, yes, hope.
A poignant reminder of such a bygone world comes with HBO’s “Newsroom,” the work of Aaron Sorkin whose award-winning “West Wing” lifted the spirits of as many as 17 million viewers on network TV during the George W. Bush years.
A decade later, Sorkin’s unabashedly liberal take on the media reaches a fraction of that many (2 million) on pay TV and draws skeptical, even cynical reviews for theatrical optimism over JFK’s dictum about public life, “You can’t beat brains.”
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” “You can’t beat brains.”
True dat, assuming said brains incorporate heart as well as reason and logic, none of which seem well represented in the Roberts Court.
Time to review FDR’s speech at the 1936 Democratic National convention after the Supreme Court struck down all his National Recovery Act efforts.
“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in the hate for me- and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”
He won that election with 523 electoral votes. His opponent, Alf Landon, had 8.
FDR was a raging liberal socialist that dismantled many of capitalism’s most cherished ideals and forced a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor and created a welfare state…..that fixed things.
Good lines from that speech. To bad we don’t have anyone on either side of the aisle with those balls anymore.
We might have some if ACA is struck down completely. All those benefits that have already taken place under it will be taken away. That’s not nice – or smart.
I ask again, why is it the left did not say a word when unions were able to take dues from both members and non-members and buy millions in adverstising for a candidate their members may or may not support, but now it is unthinkable that corporate leaders can provide stockholder money to a candidate?
Not a word be spoken when it helped the liberal cause, but the courts supporting the rich psychos in providing money from corporations is a result of a brain dead court.
Slamfu..one big difference with FDR.
He took taxpayer moneys and put it into programs that directly provided jobs. He did not give it to corporations that had no proven track record like Solyndra, nor did he give it to states that filtered off some of the money for state workers before it got to the general public.
And he funded social security with a TAX that was applied to everyone and provided a retirement for the super old (at that time) so they would have some income in their last few years of life. He did not circumvent the constitution with a “fee” on those that did not participate in social security becasue everyone had to participate except for railroad workers and a few cities that opted out.
ACA should be universal and everyone taxed, not the political game that was played that is leading to its downfall because Obama and Pelosi did not have the guts to “tax”.
Well you sorta listed some of the differences right there. Unions take dues from their members, and represent them. The job of a union is to advocate for their members. So when a union spends money on issues they support, its generally in the interest of the people that comprise that union. Is every single member of the union going to agree on everything? Of course not. But overall you’ve got a system where lots of individuals put money in and strive towards a common purpose. It makes sense.
Corporations aren’t using dues from their employees. Their interests are to be profitable only, and often this runs contrary to the interests of the general public and even their own workers. They are using company profits and directing it according to the whims of a board of directors.
One case in the difference would be in the issue of worker safety laws. 100 years ago there were pretty horrendous working conditions, and on the job safety was a joke. Linemen working for electrical companies 100 years ago had a fatality rate within the first two years of 24%, because basically the electrical companies didn’t give a crap. Unions and new regulations were the main driving force in making workplaces much safer. Workplace injuries and fatalities have dropped by 99% in the last 100 years as a result. And as you can see everytime there is a major cave in at a mining company or something like the deepwater platform explosion, the companies involved have spent a great deal of effort to undermine and bypass regulation on safety issues. Don’t even get me started on pollution. Corporations aren’t people. Making them equal to people just puts them in a much better position to undermine the regulations and agencies we created to protect us from them.
I see a vast difference between union and corporate expenditures on political campaigns. Not just the goals, but in the validity of unions who represent people who give money, vs. a large pool of profits shelled out by a small group of people.
RP blaming Obama for the lack of ACA being funded by a tax is sorta silly. Yea, I agree it should be like medicare and SS, but it was the GOP that didn’t want that. The mandate was a compromise position that originated from conservative side and was seen as middle road. Obama contrary to GOP spin isn’t the most divisive president and has offered many such middle road options to the GOP, who then slap it away, and pretend Obama can’t lead. The demonization of the mandate is just more proof of how consevatives complain about a lack of co-operation, get a compromise deal, then move the goal post and cry “partisanship!”. They do it time and again, the GOP has shown they are not at all interested in getting anything done regardless of the price the rest of the nation has to pay. Its not only a very craven plan, its a very obvious one and they should be ashamed of themselves.
And I’m getting a little tired of hearing about Solyndra. One of the things Obama is trying to do is get money invested in new energy alternatives so we can make up some of the ground we have lost to countries like China and Germany who have wisely invested in this stuff. Its a new industry, there aren’t going to be a whole lot of companies with “proven track records”, that’s the whole point. Yes, it didn’t work out. It was an investment that didn’t pan out. That’s going to happen when you are jump starting a new industry that is going to play a big role in our future energy policy. There’s going to be more of them before the industry becomes viable, but that doesn’t mean we stop doing it. Or we could go with the GOP option, basically shelve all the “green” energy stuff and wait until we are reliant on foreign nations to supply the technology for us. Bad idea.
RP
“why is it the left did not say a word when unions were able to take dues from both members and non-members and buy millions in adverstising for a candidate their members may or may not support”
Perhaps because it’s not been happening since 1986? And because corporations were outspending the unions (and trying to eliminate them) even then?
[Chicago Teachers Union, Local No. 1 v. Hudson (1986) was significant for school labor relations, because in it the U.S. Supreme Court found that a union’s process for accommodating nonmember teachers, sometimes referred to as “free-riders,” who had money automatically deducted from their paychecks to cover the union’s costs associated with collective bargaining, did not sufficiently ensure the protection of the First Amendment rights of nonmembers. The Court reasoned that the union’s procedures for collecting these fees were unacceptable, because the monies that they collected from nonunion teachers could possibly have been used for political activities that the nonunion teachers did not support.]
http://lawhighereducation.com/208-chicago-teachers-union-local-no-1-v-hudson.html
Plus the unions will not even be able to assess a fee from non-union members, who are benefiting from the union’s contract, for political spending according to a 7-2 decision by a recent Supreme Court decision (that included some liberal justices, I presume).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/supreme-court-unions-knox-v-seiu_n_1625659.html
RP, two excellent comments, thanks.
“ACA should be universal and everyone taxed, not the political game that was played that is leading to its downfall because Obama and Pelosi did not have the guts to “tax”.”
For want of a word (Bush 1, had the balls), a HCR bill was lost. If the Reps are a bunch of insensitive knuckle dragging plutocrats, then the Dems should hold a Castrati concert on the Mall.
Slam, one word: Ethanol. Wind power and solar. How will they turn out. Hmmmm.
Ethanol is a joke and only exists because certain states have an unusual amount of pull because of how we elect our officials. Screw ethanol and the horse you had to ride in on because your car ran out of gas.
Wind and solar are works in progress. Innovations and economies of scale are already dropping the costs on them. Its going to be the work of decades to implement them but that doesn’t mean we don’t do it. In the meantime we continue to use fossil fuels and nuclear(which I think is underrated by the general public). This exact plan is the one that Obama has been engaged in. Don’t screw fossil fuels because we are still going to need them, but don’t let their current availability and cheapness be an excuse not to research and develop better alternatives. Under Obama we have had steadily increasing oil and natural gas production, and at the same time we are working on catching up in the fields of solar and wind. This is how it should be.
“Under Obama we have had steadily increasing oil and natural gas production,”
Because Bush pushed them. If he hadn’t Obama could not brag about increased production.
Ohio, thanks for the FDR reminder. There once was a time when liberals had the backbone required to get a job done right.
“Because Bush pushed them”
I don’t disagree that Bush was also very pro fossil fuels and pushed them. Also that the path that has been taken with regards to our natural gas and oil production has its roots in the Bush administration. However, Obama has continued them. The right however seems to want to paint Obama as some kind of massive regulator on these industries that is hampering our growth in developing gas and oil production when he is in fact not a bad friend to the industry. If he was the big meanie the right would have us believe then oil and gas production would be way down. But as Obama promised, he was going to pursue Green energy AND also keep our existing, cheap, reliable energy sources going.
“Slam, one word: Ethanol. Wind power and solar. How will they turn out. Hmmmm”
??? Because making ethanol out of corn drove up the price of corn (what??? supply and demand??? No way!), all ethanol, and by extension all alternative energies, and by even further extension, all government investment in everything, is a bad idea and doomed to failure? History does not uphold such conclusions, dduck.
I said one word, Ethanol. It’s gone and was considered by many to be a bad alternative.
If I’m short of supplying my own words, I will consult a dictionary, no exstension needed.
dduck, The extension was yours. I was merely pointing out that it was neither a logical one nor one whose conclusion is held up by history.
RORO, yes, I said Ethanol and expressed scepticisim on the others. …
wonder if the others will work out in the long run, and yes I am a big fan of nuclear and wary of sloppy NG production dangers.