davidswanson
davidswanson's JournalHow Newt Gingrich Saved the Military Industrial Complex
The idea of economic conversion, of retooling and retraining pieces of the military industrial complex to build what other wealthy nations have (infrastructure, energy, education, etc.) converged with the end of the Cold War two decades back. It was time for a peace dividend as well as a little sanity in public spending. Among the cosponsors of a bill to begin economic conversion in the late 1980s was a guy by the name of Leon Panetta.
Standing in the way was Congressman Newt Gingrich (Republican, Lockheed Martin).
As Mary Beth Sullivan recounts ( http://MIC50.org ),
"On the first day of the opening of the 101st Congress, Speaker [Jim] Wright convened a meeting of members who had proposed economic conversion legislation, and their aids. The purpose was to ensure that all proposals be joined into one, and that this legislation be given priority. To dramatize the importance of this bill, it would be given number H.R. 101."
Seymour Melman, a leading proponent of the bill recounts what happened:
"Supporters of such an initiative did not reckon with the enormous power of those opposed to any such move toward economic conversion. In the weeks that followed, these vested interests waged a concerted and aggressive campaign in Congress and the national media to bring down Jim Wright over allegations of financial misconduct."
"The allegations," Sullivan writes, "had little substance, but Newt Gingrich, representing a headquarters district of Lockheed Martin, led the Republican attack. Sadly, they won. According to Melman, 'Their media campaign drowned out any further discussion of economic conversion … A historic opportunity had been destroyed."
The military industrial complex survived and thrived and is growing even to this moment with plans to grow on into the foreseeable future, even as we're falsely told it's being cut back. Our nation trails others in the areas of education, health, retirement security, life expectancy, infant mortality, environmental sustainability, poverty, and -- in so far as anyone has measured it -- happiness. Instead we have a military that costs as much as the rest of the world's put together, and much of the rest of the world's is purchased from our weapons makers. We have aircraft carriers, bombs, missiles, helicopters, bases, drones, and billionaires to make up for our crappy schools and lousy trains.
While I understand how exciting Newt Gingrich's sex life may be, there may be other things he has to answer for as well.
War and Being and Nothingness
The best book I've read in a very long time is a new one: "The End of War" by John Horgan. Its conclusions will be vigorously resisted by many and yet, in a certain light, considered perfectly obvious to some others. The central conclusion -- that ending the institution of war is entirely up to us to choose -- was, arguably, reached by (among many others before and since) John Paul Sartre sitting in a café utilizing exactly no research.
Horgan is a writer for "Scientific American," and approaches the question of whether war can be ended as a scientist. It's all about research. He concludes that war can be ended, has in various times and places been ended, and is in the process (an entirely reversible process) of being ended on the earth right now.
The war abolitionists of the 1920s Outlawry movement would have loved this book, would have seen it as a proper extension of the ongoing campaign to rid the world of war. But it is a different book from theirs. It does not preach the immorality of war. That idea, although proved truer than ever by the two world wars, failed to prevent the two world wars. When an idea's time has come and also gone, it becomes necessary to prove to people that the idea wasn't rendered impossible or naïve by "human nature" or grand forces of history or any other specter. Horgan, in exactly the approach required, preaches the scientific observation of the success (albeit incomplete as yet) of preaching the immorality of war.
The evidence, Horgan argues, shows that war is a cultural contagion, a meme that serves its own ends, not ours (except for certain profiteers perhaps). Wars happen because of their cultural acceptance and are avoided by their cultural rejection. Wars are not created by genes or avoided by eugenics or oxytocin, driven by an ever-present minority of sociopaths or avoided by controlling them, made inevitable by resource scarcity or inequality or prevented by prosperity and shared wealth, or determined by the weaponry available. All such factors, Horgan finds, can play parts in wars, but the decisive factor is a militaristic culture, a culture that glorifies war or even just accepts it, a culture that fails to renounce war as something as barbaric as cannibalism. War spreads as other memes spread, culturally. The abolition of war does the same.
Those who believe that war is in our genes or mandated by overpopulation or for whatever other reason simply unavoidable or even desirable will not be attracted to Horgan's book. But they should read it. It is written for them and carefully argued and documented. Those who, in contrast, believe it is as obvious as breathing air that we can choose to end war tomorrow will find a little sad comedy in the fact that the way we get people to choose to end a long-established institution is by rigorously persuading them that such choices have been made before and are already well underway. Yet, that is exactly what people need to hear, especially those who are on the edge between "War is in DNA" and "War is over if you want it." Most human cultures never produced nuclear bombs or genetically engineered corn or Youtube. Many cultures have produced peace. But what if they hadn't? How in the world would that prevent us from producing it?
Evidence of lethal group violence does not go back through our species' millions of years but only through the past 10,000 to 13,000. Even chimpanzees' supposed innate war spirit is not established. We are not the only primates who seem able to learn either war or peace. Annual war-related casualties have dropped more than ten-fold since the first half of the twentieth century. Democracy is no guarantee of peace, but it is allowing people to say no to war. Of course, democracy is not all or nothing. Some democracies, like ours in the United States, can be very weak, and weaker still on the question of war. What allows nations' leaders to take countries into war, Horgan shows, is not people's aggressiveness but their docility, their obedience, their willingness to follow and even to believe what authorities tell them.
Mistaken theories about the causes of war create the self-fulfilling expectation that war will always be with us. Predicting that climate change will produce world war may actually fail to inspire people to buy solar panels, inspiring them instead to support military spending and to stock up at home on guns and emergency supplies.
I wish Horgan had looked more at the motivations of those in power who choose war, some of whom do profit from it in various ways. I also think he understates the importance of the military industrial complex, whose influence Eisenhower accurately predicted would be total and even spiritual. It's harder to work for the abolition of war when the war industry is behind your job. I think this book could benefit from recognition of the U.N. Charter's limitations as compared with the Kellogg-Briand Pact, in its acceptance of wars that are either "defensive" or authorized by the United Nations. I think Horgan's view of the Arab Spring and the Libyan War is confused, as he thinks in terms of intervention in countries where the United States had already long been intervened, and he frames the choices as war or nothing. I think the final chapter on free will is rather silly, confusing the philosophical point of physical determinism with how things look from our perspective, a confusion that David Hume straightened out quite a while ago.
But Horgan makes a key point in that last chapter, pointing to a study that found that when people were exposed to the idea that they had no free will they behaved less morally, choosing to behave badly, of course, with the very same free will they nonetheless maintained. Being free to choose, we can in fact choose things that most of us never dare imagine. Here's John Horgan's perfect prescription:
"We could start by slashing our bloated military, abolishing arms sales to other countries, and getting rid of our nuclear arsenal. These steps, rather than empty rhetoric, will encourage other countries to demilitarize as well."
Or as Jean Paul Sartre put it -- (Look, ma, no research!) -- "To say that the for-itself has to be what it is, to say that it is what it is not while not being what it is, to say that in it existence precedes and conditions essence or inversely according to Hegel, that for it 'Wesen ist was gewesen ist' -- all this is to say one and the same thing: to be aware that man is free."
Constitutional Amendment to Create Public Financing Introduced by Kucinich
I recently recommened a comprehensive Constitutional amendment addressing the corruption of our elections.
http://davidswanson.org/node/3537
The largest piece of it, largely inspired by an amendment drafted by Russell Simmons, had not been introduced in Congress . . . until now.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just introduced HJRes100 which proposes this Constitutional Amendment:
Section 1. All campaigns for President and Members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be financed entirely with public funds. No contributions shall be permitted to any candidate for Federal office from any other source, including the candidate.
Section 2. No expenditures shall be permitted in support of any candidate for Federal office, or in opposition to any candidate for Federal office, from any other source, including the candidate. Nothing in this Section shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
Section 3. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds.
Section 4. The Congress shall, by statute, provide criminal penalties for any violation of this Article.
Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This does not state that corporations are not people or bribery is not speech or the moon is not made of cheese, but it proceeds accordingly and handles the corruption of our elections as effectively as anything I've seen. No amendment is completely comprehensive, but no completely comprehensive amendment is likely to get passed (or even read). I also doubt very much that Congress will ever advance any such amendment, at least until there is a serious threat from two-thirds of the states to circumvent Congress with a Constitutional Convention.
But if there is an amendment to build the list of cosponsors on, this looks like the one. This looks to me like something that the anti-corporate-personhood movement, the clean elections movement, the peace movement, and every other cause for peace, justice, or representative government should get behind. I don't mean get behind a politician or a party or censor your own complete demands. I mean get every possible Congress member to cosponsor this bill, which exists because of our movement.
Blocking funding without providing public financing is a half-solution. Limiting private election spending while leaving loopholes is no solution. Prohibiting private spending, creating public financing, and making those laws enforceable is a huge chunk of the solution.
We can all remember "H J Res 100". Now to ask our misrepresentatives to sign on!
Republicans Boo the Golden Rule
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. An important rule to live by. So is this corollary: Friends don't let friends watch presidential primary debates.
I think the clip at this link is a safe dose bit.ly/xVAIF6 and I have survived it myself or I would not urge it on others.
I recommend it to you only because I believe it is important for us to stop and ask what it means for a group of people who tend to promote both Christianity and the combination of Christianity with politics to have just booed the golden rule.
In this video Congressman Ron Paul describes Pakistan as a sovereign nation and suggests that the United States should not be bombing it. Paul also proposes that there should have been some attempt to capture Osama bin Laden rather than murdering him. Paul promotes the rule of law and goes so far as to advocate that the United States only fight wars that have been declared by Congress (a standard that would eliminate the past 70 years' worth of wars). To that the response is cheering from at least some section of the audience.
Then Newt Gingrich says that the proper thing to do with enemies is "Kill them." That, of course, receives ecstatic applause.
What could Paul say in response? He could have quoted almost anything Jesus Christ or Ronald Reagan or Ayn Rand had ever said and been booed for it. He chose a response that further guaranteed booing: he opposed U.S. exceptionalism. He suggested that other nations might merit the same respect as our own. If another nation were doing to ours what we do to others, we wouldn't like it, Paul pointed out. Perhaps we should follow the golden rule, he said. And he was booed for that.
And yet Paul goes on to speak against launching a war on Iran, and in support of ending our current wars; and some group of people — not necessarily, but possibly, some of the same individuals who had just been booing — start cheering instead.
I don't think the audience members, by and large, dislike the golden rule in personal relations. And I don't think they dislike peace. They seem neutral or positive toward demanding an end to wars and avoidance of more wars. What they object to is the notion that national enemies deserve any respect. They are fiercely opposed to loving national enemies, much less turning the nation's other cheek. But they'd be totally fine with avoiding wars if uppity foreign nations agreed to stay in their place.
People may all have value, in this non-world-view, but only one nation has value, and its value is supreme. Fall under suspicion of hostility toward the United States, and the proper treatment for you is murder. Belong to a nation other than the United States, and the significance of losing your life as collateral damage is negligible.
Now, we do erroneously apply lessons from personal relations to politics all the time. We try to relate to elected officials as friends rather than constituents. We imagine politicians driven by emotions and social relations when they are clearly driven by financial bribery or partisan pressure.
But I don't think applying the golden rule to international relations involves this sort of mistake. Paul is not here analyzing what drives government officials, but rather proposing what ought to. It's hard to argue that the golden rule ought not to guide our collective behavior toward other populations. That is to say, if we had a government that represented our wishes, we ought not to wish for it to treat large numbers of foreign people in ways that we would not like foreign nations to treat us. This is a point that Paul has made more powerfully in this advertisement: bit.ly/l1xej1
The golden rule in foreign relations conflicts dramatically with almost everything about U.S. foreign policy from the Monroe Doctrine down through the Carter Doctrine and right up to our kinetic overseas contingency operations, extraordinary renditions, indefinite detentions, enhanced interrogations, surgical strikes, and all the other weasel words we use to mean the kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, and murder of human beings. But that doesn't prove the golden rule is wrong. On the contrary, it proves our foreign policy is wrong.
Our military is in some 150 other countries. We would never stand for another military in our country. Therefore, we should get out of everybody else's.
We bomb and invade and occupy nations we falsely accuse of possessing weapons. We would never stand for being bombed and invaded and occupied even though we really have those weapons. Therefore we should stop doing that to other nations.
We rain hell from the sky on families to protect women's rights and spread freedom. But if our roofs were being blown off, and our limbs as well, we would not feel we had gained any rights or freedom. Therefore we should stop treating war as an acceptable instrument of national policy.
The golden rule is, in fact, an excellent guide to foreign policy. It even goes places Ron Paul would not. If we were starving or struggling to make loan payments to international sharks or finding it impossible to compete against subsidized foreign goods while forbidden to invest in our own products, we would appreciate some relief from any nation willing to offer it. The problem is not foreign aid or international involvement. The problem is pushing instruments of death on the rest of the world's peoples because an elite at home and abroad profits from weapons sales. The problem is imposing our will by force and the threat of force on people who are not threatening us.
The golden rule is of less help in shaping domestic policy, in which there is not a domestic we and a foreign they, and on which agreement among the domestic us is often more divided. While virtually all of us would prefer not to be bombed, not all of us favor creating a decent civilized healthcare system or education or energy system or retirement security. Ron Paul favors the position of whoever backs doing nothing, no matter how large the majority of the people who prefer to jointly create something that makes each of them better off. Where there is not unanimity, you have to violate the golden rule in favor of majority rule with protections for individuals. But on foreign policy there is unanimity. None of us want a Chinese military base in Texas. Therefore we should stop building them around the borders of China.
There is another rule I would much rather break than the golden rule. It is the rule that says that because Ron Paul has disastrous domestic positions we are forbidden to point out how revealing his excellent foreign policy stands are in presidential primary debates.
Charlottesville, Va., City Council Passes Resolution Opposing War on Iran
The City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and the University of Virginia, passed on Tuesday evening, January 17, 2012, a resolution believed to be a first in the country, opposing the launching of a war on Iran, as well as calling for an end to current ground and drone wars engaged in by the United States and urging Congress and the President of the United States to significantly reduce military spending. Below is the text of the resolution, followed by an account of how it came to be. As other towns and cities have been inquiring about how they can do the same, this may prove helpful.
RESOLUTION
Calling on Congress and the President to Redirect Military Spending to Domestic Priorities
WHEREAS, the severity of the ongoing economic crisis has created budget shortfalls at all levels of government and requires us to re-examine our national spending priorities; and
WHEREAS, every dollar spent on the military produces fewer jobs than spending the same dollar on education, healthcare, clean energy, or even tax cuts for household consumption; and
WHEREAS, U.S. military spending has approximately doubled in the past decade, in real dollars and as a percentage of federal discretionary spending, and well over half of federal discretionary spending is now spent on the military, and we are spending more money on the military now than during the Cold War, the Vietnam War, or the Korean War; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. military budget could be cut by 80% and remain the largest in the world; and
WHEREAS, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform proposed major reductions in military spending in both its Co-Chairs' proposal in November 2010 and its final report in December 2010; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, with the support of Charlottesville’s then Mayor Dave Norris, passed a resolution in June 2011 calling on Congress to redirect spending to domestic priorities; and
WHEREAS, the people of the United States, in numerous opinion polls, favor redirecting spending to domestic priorities and withdrawing the U.S. military from Afghanistan; and
WHEREAS, the United States has armed forces stationed at approximately 1,000 foreign bases in approximately 150 foreign countries; and
WHEREAS, the United States is the wealthiest nation on earth but trails many other nations in life expectancy, infant mortality, education level, housing, and environmental sustainability, as well as non-military aid to foreign nations;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, calls on the U.S. Congress and the U.S. President to end foreign ground and drone wars, refrain from entering new military ventures in Iran, and reduce base military spending in order to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, re-train and re-employ those losing jobs in the process of conversion to non-military industries, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy.
##
The story behind this resolution begins with a conference held in September, 2011, in Charlottesville at which experts from around the country presented their views on the growth of the Military Industrial Complex. The proceedings of that conference were published as a book on Martin Luther King Day, the day prior to passage of the resolution. They can be found at http://MIC50.org
The resolution was passed on the 51st anniversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex.
Two city council members in September attended the conference, Dave Norris and Kristin Szakos. A candidate for city council who was elected in November also attended, Dede Smith. Those three members were well informed, understood the issues, understood the public's position, and had enough backbone to face controversy. Norris had already been an early supporter of a resolution on military spending passed in 2011 by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
The resolution that came out of the conference and which is included in the book is almost identical to what is above. It does not, however, include mention of Iran. The resolution presented to the new City Council at its first public meeting on January 3, 2012, is posted on the website of the longstanding peace organization in Charlottesville, the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice: http://www.charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2630
At that meeting, Norris proposed adding in the words about Iran. A report on the meeting and video are posted here: http://www.charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2657
As you'll see at the link, we had several members of the public speak in support of the resolution and we presented a petition with hundreds of additional signatures. At that time, our three reliable council members publicly expressed support, but one of them suggested changes should be made. A fourth, Satyendra Huja, also expressed weak support, while the fifth, Kathy Galvin remained silent.
By January 12th, the City Council had made public its amended version, the only significant change being the addition of the language on Iran.
The council was scheduled to vote at its January 17th meeting, and on the morning of the 17th made public a proposal from Galvin to radically revise the resolution, omiting any reference to war on Iran or to the existence of both ground and drone wars, claiming the military is protecting our rights despite the erosion of our rights facilitated by war, inaccurately describing the powers the Constitution gives the President, expressing support for the office of the President less than a month after the power to imprison people without trial was made a part of that office, asking the President and Congress to "continue" working to redirect military spending to domestic priorities which falsely implied that such work was already underway, eliminating a paragraph pointing to the tradeoffs our wealthy nation makes in comparison with other countries by funding the military so heavily, and claiming that reducing military spending might endanger the safety of troops.
We immediately privately and publicly urged our three most reliable city council members to recognize this as unacceptable and to stand strong for the previous version of the resolution. See these statements: http://www.charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2672 and http://www.charlottesvillepeace.org/node/2673
The three original supporters, Norris, Smith, and Szakos told us they agreed.
Come time for the meeting, we packed the room. We also had enough people arrive early and sign up to speak that we dominated the public speaking period at the start of the meeting. And the people who spoke really outdid themselves. We also presented the council with a peace lily. The video will soon be posted here:
http://charlottesville.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=2
We had so packed the room that some people had to stand. To accomodate us, the council changed the agenda and addressed the resolution first. Galvin made her proposals. Norris spoke for the strong resolution. Smith did the same. And when Szakos did the same we'd won. With three voting in favor of the stronger resolution, Huja joined them and Galvin abstained, while everyone else applauded.
Corporate Personhood Cannot Withstand Organized Persons
There are many schemes now for undoing the doctrines under which corporations claim constitutional rights and bribery is deemed constitutionally protected "speech." Every single one of these schemes depends on a massive movement of public pressure all across the homeland formerly known as the United States of America. With such a movement, few of the schemes can fail. Without it, we're just building castles in the air. Nonetheless, the best scheme can best facilitate the organizing of the movement.
The U.S. Constitution never gave any rights or personhood to corporations or transformed money into speech. It ought not to be necessary to amend a document to, in effect, point out that the sky is blue and up is not down. If the Supreme Court rules that Goldman Sachs can send legislation directly to the White House and cut out the congressional middleman, will we have to amend the Constitution to remove the Goldman Sachs branch of government? Where will this end?
The Constitution also never gave the Supreme Court the power to overturn every law passed by Congress. In fact, the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to set exceptions and regulations on what types of cases the Supreme Court can take. So, Congress could take some types of cases away, although it might have to be a great many.
The Constitution also allows the Congress to impeach and remove Supreme Court justices. Congress could remove the most corrupt one or two or three or four or five and only consent to new justices opposed to corporate personhood.
Congress could also just ignore the Supreme Court on this matter and pass a flood of legislation regulating and stripping corporations of their outrageous claims to power, compelling the court to take up case after case.
The reason none of these things is happening is, of course, the weak link smack in the middle of them: Congress.
Lower courts and/or state legislatures could likewise place sanity and decency above the "Citizens United" Supreme Court — if judges or delegates had the nerve to become what the New York Times might mock as "justice vigilantes." The Montana Supreme Court has just done this, so it can't be simply dismissed.
Amending the Constitution seems harder and more extreme than most other schemes. But that fact is itself a reason to favor amending the Constitution. Doing so ought not to be viewed as extreme. It is a sign of disease in our political system that we view it that way. There is tremendous benefit in the act of amending the Constitution itself, and we should have amended it and completely reworked and rewritten it many times by now. Instead we've barely tweaked the thing, and with the exception of an amendment on Congressional salaries proposed in 1789 and finally ratified by Michigan in 1992, we haven't touched the Constitution at all in over 40 years. By amending it through a process with popular support, we can reassert the power of the people over the government and open up the possibility of amending the Constitution further.
We have a horribly outdated broken system of government that stifles democracy. The closest thing to democracy in it is the process by which it can theoretically be amended. I would strongly favor amending the Constitution even if it were only to cross a t or dot an i. Amending it to end corporate personhood and money-speech is, thus, an important goal for multiple reasons. And it opens up the possibility of creating other systemic reforms in the process if we convene a new Constitutional Convention.
Amending the Constitution can be begun by Congress and completed by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Or it can be begun by two-thirds of the state legislatures and completed by three-quarters of them. So, one weak link is the states. Another possible weak link is the Congress. The only way to strengthen either of them is with intense, deep, and wide-spread nonviolent people power. And that power can be energized by and organized around a desired amendment. This approach has the advantage of building power in the states, where state legislatures and courts can be urged to also attempt other approaches to the same problem. And it has the advantage of circumventing Congress if necessary. If you ask me, most people are underestimating the likelihood that such circumvention will be necessary.
A great boost to the effort is MoveToAmend.org's development of what many now see as the ideal amendment:
Section 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law. The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.
Section 2. Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure. Federal, State and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed. The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
Section 3. Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
This is very similar to the amendment proposed by FreeSpeechForPeople.org:
Section 1. We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this Constitution to be the rights of natural persons.
Section 2. People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.
Section 3. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people's rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, and such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.
The above has the advantage of having been introduced already in the U.S. House by Congressman Jim McGovern as HJRes88. Promoting that amendment can help build the movement, but the text of it leaves wealthy individuals who are not corporations but actual flesh-and-blood billionaires the power to consider the spending of money on elections as protected speech. The MoveToAmend version does not have this weakness.
Other amendments are also worth promoting despite various limitations. Congresswoman Donna Edwards' HJRes78 also does not address money as speech and does not address the overarching question of corporate rights (the problems with which are not limited to elections), but it does create the power for Congress and states to regulate and restrict (it does not say eliminate) corporate political spending. Similarly, so does Congressman Ted Deutch's HJRes82.
Of course everything need not be in one amendment if more than one can be passed. Senator Tom Udall's SJRes29, like Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur's HJRes8, Congresswoman Betty Sutton's HJRes86, and Congressman Kurt Schrader's HJRes72, goes after money as speech by giving Congress and states the power to limit election spending. But I want to eliminate, not limit, private election spending. Even MoveToAmend's amendment says that the government can "regulate, limit, or prohibit" such spending, and even the regulating or limiting won't simply happen automatically. First the Congress or the state legislature that benefits from not regulating or limiting will have to turn on itself.
Then there's Congressman Deutch's HJRes90, and Senator Bernie Sanders' SJRes33, which goes after corporate personhood, but only for for-profit corporations. This leaves a loophole for not-for-profit corporations and entities such as labor unions or PACs like Citizens United. Any such loophole not only makes this amendment hard to pass into law, but the loophole would very likely be exploited by the wealthiest elite to the great disadvantage of ordinary people and of labor unions. This amendment, in a later section, gives Congress and the states the power to limit (it does not say eliminate) election spending by any organization or individual, including candidates themselves. But how, if at all, would such power be used?
Public Citizen at Democracyisforpeople.org proposes language that tries to block corporations from setting up front groups while at the same time permitting election spending by any corporation not "created for business purposes." But why create years of lawyering over what is and is not a business purpose? Why not just get the money out of the elections?
Russell Simmons has proposed an amendment that does that. It does not deal with corporate personhood in its many other areas, but it does address elections as directly as anything I've seen. It does not mention states, and I am convinced that including states' rights to outlaw bribery is essential to getting this approved by three-quarters of the states. This amendment does not bother to say that corporations are not people or that speech is not money, but simply proceeds as if that and the blueness of the sky were obvious. (Yet it may be absolutely necessary to state that corporations are not people and that money is not speech in order to build the public movement required for passage.) This amendment also requires criminal penalties for violation:
Section 1. All elections for President and members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be publicly financed. No political contributions shall be permitted to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. No political expenditures shall be permitted in support of any federal candidate, or in opposition to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. Nothing in this Section shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
Section 2. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds and provide criminal penalties for any violation of this section
Section 3. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation
Section 4. This article shall be inoperative unless it is ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution.
Arguably more will be needed than even MoveToAmend's comprehensive amendment. If we block off corporate spending except through the media, guess what the media will become even more than it is now! Without public financing, free media for candidates, and disintegration of media monopolies, the reform effort breaks down. Without other electoral reforms, the choices of candidates could remain extremely limited. We should have automatic registration, reasonable ballot access, an election day holiday, publicly hand counted paper ballots, a limited election season, no more electoral college, a larger House, no more Senate, and the popular power to legislate by initiative, along with numerous other possible reforms that could be combined into a coherent package by a Constitutional Convention, and which could be underscored by the individual national right to vote that is scandalously absent from the Constitution now.
An amendment proposed by Wolf-pac.com includes public financing:
"Corporations are not people. They have none of the Constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician, directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed."
It's not clear to me, however, that corporate lawyers and former corporate lawyers serving as judges could not construe a great deal of electoral spending as something other than indirect giving to a politician. It would also help if this amendment rejected the notion of spending money as speech. Lawrence Lessig has posted an amendment at Lessig.tumblr.com that, like this one, creates public financing but limits rather than outlawing private financing.
An amendment proposed by RenewDemocracy.org includes a right to vote:
"The right of the individual qualified citizen voter to participate in and directly elect all candidates by popular vote in all pertinent local, state, and federal elections shall not be questioned and the right to vote is limited to individuals. The right to contribute to political campaigns and political parties is held solely by individual citizens. Political campaign and political party contributions shall not exceed an amount reasonably affordable by the average American. The rights of all groups, associations and organizations to other political speech may be regulated by Congress but only as to volume and not content and only to protect the right of the individual voter’s voice to be heard."
The strength of this amendment in providing the right to vote and directly elect (thus eliminating the electoral college and allowing national vote counting standards, among other reforms) is, to my mind, weakened by the failure to simply get rid of the money and provide public financing. This is also, of course, not an amendment to remove corporate personhood across the board. Of course, if we had a Congress that would back this amendment, we might have a Congress that would effectively implement it. Lacking either at the moment, I'm more inclined to find a solution that does not rely on Congress to pass a bunch of wise and democratic laws.
GetMoneyOut.com has posted an amendment that also does not take on corporate personhood but does address election spending quite well, including the money-is-speech nonsense, and rather randomly throws an election day holiday into the same amendment. It does not, however, explain who will pay for elections or mention public financing:
"No person, corporation or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, campaign contributions to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or any amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office."
Drawing on the best of all of these drafts and proposals, let me dare to offer the following:
PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION
The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law. The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
All elections for President and members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be entirely publicly financed. No political contributions shall be permitted to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. No political expenditures shall be permitted in support of any federal candidate, or in opposition to any federal candidate, from any other source, including the candidate. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds and provide criminal penalties for any violation of this section.
State and local governments shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for state or local public office or any state or local ballot measure.
The right of the individual U.S. citizen to vote and to directly elect all candidates by popular vote in all pertinent local, state, and federal elections shall not be violated. Citizens will be automatically registered to vote upon reaching the age of 18 or upon becoming citizens at an age above 18, and the right to vote shall not be taken away from them. Votes shall be recorded on paper ballots, which shall be publicly counted at the polling place. Election day shall be a national holiday.
Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press. During a designated campaign period of no longer than six months, free air time shall be provided in equal measure to all candidates for federal office on national, state, or district television and radio stations, provided that each candidate has, during the previous year, received the supporting signatures of at least five percent of their potential voting-age constituents. The same supporting signatures shall also place the candidate's name on the ballot and require their invitation to participate in any public debate among the candidates for the same office.
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No doubt, that can be improved upon. All will be possible if people get mobilized. Cities are passing initiatives and resolutions already demanding an end to corporate personhood. Localities are restricting corporate rights. State legislatures are considering throwing their support behind the movement. State courts are in some cases already there. Books are being published, forums held, and groups organized. An effort that must be largely educational is well underway. Events are planned in over 100 cities and towns on January 20th and 21st. Now is the time to join this movement.
David Swanson is the editor of a new book called "The Military Industrial Complex at 50," and a campaigner for RootsAction.org.
How Much Is an Earth, and Do You Have One in Extra Large?
A new book suggests that "It's the economy, stupid," may be more than political strategy; it may also be the key to environmental sustainability. The book is "Green Washed: Why We Can't Buy Our Way to a Green Planet," by Kendra Pierre-Louis. The argument developed is not just that the consumer choices of an individual won't save the planet without collective action, but also that the only collective action that will save us is abandoning the whole idea of consumer choices.
Pierre-Louis lays the groundwork for her argument by walking us through the hazards of supposedly environmental approaches to numerous fields. First is clothing, in which a big trend is toward organic cotton. While reducing pesticides is all to the good, Pierre-Louis writes, growing cotton -- any cotton -- is a rapid way to exhaust the earth's stores of fresh water. Among the preferable proposals the author suggests is creating or altering your own clothing so that it means more to you and you throw it away less rapidly. The low-hanging fruit in improving our clothing practices is in quantity, not quality: buy less clothing!
Next comes diet. Our poisonous farming practices are killing the Mississippi River, exhausting our underground water supplies, drying up the Colorado (on this I recommend the 3-D movie "Grand Canyon Adventure"
, eradicating biodiversity, eliminating soil, and consuming fossil fuels. Genetically modified crops are outrageous failures on their own terms, resulting in increased, rather than diminished, use of pesticides and herbicides. Last week, I would add, the Obama administration approved new Monsanto corn despite 45,000 negative public comments and 23 positive, corn that will mean the widespread use of a major ingredient in Agent Orange as herbicide. According to Pierre-Louis, we cannot ethically shop our way out of this, not even by buying local, and we couldn't even if products were meaningfully labeled and the accuracy of the labeling was verified. Instead the easiest solution lies in the fact that, in the United States, we throw away 40 percent of the food we buy. Stop doing that! Start buying and using only what you need.
What about toiletries? Did you know there's antifreeze in makeup and deodorant? Were you aware there are irritants, poisons, and carcinogens in lots of toothpastes, shampoos, and soaps. You'll be proud to learn that hair-care products banned in many countries are quite popular and profitable in ours. Makeup tends to be such nasty stuff that it becomes hard not to find it unattractive. And shopping right won't fix this. "Natural" on a label means absolutely nothing. "Organic" might mean something when there's a USDA Certified logo and when there's an indication of how much of the product is organic. But nobody's actually checking to make sure labels are honest. It is helpful to buy products with the fewest and clearest ingredients, but -- as in other areas -- the obvious solution here is to stop slopping quite so much goop on ourselves.
Then there are cars. In an absolute sense, despite the small U.S. population, as well as on a per capita basis, the United States has more cars than anywhere else. Our 3 percent of the species produces 45 percent of automotive greenhouse gas emissions. I'm less scornful than Pierre-Louis of people who buy a Toyota Prius in order to appear environmentally correct. What in the world is wrong with that? It's certainly better than waving a "Drill, Baby, Drill!" flag. The trouble is that, as Pierre-Louis points out, even if all of our cars ran on air, the manufacturing of the cars, and the construction of the roads and highways, would still destroy life as we have known it. We need to create ways to live without all the driving, ways to lie without moving as much, or to live with walking, or with mass transit.
An electric car doesn't make things worse; it just doesn't solve the problem. A metal water bottle may make things worse. Plastic water bottles are a disaster, of course. The plastic ends up in the ocean, or in shower washes and toothpastes, or in the stomachs of fish eaten by larger fish eaten by us. But the manufacture of metal water bottles does all kinds of environmental and cultural damage. The solution -- by this point you may see it coming -- is to use public water fountains, drink at home out of a cup or a glass, and not settle on something else to buy to solve your hydration needs. Stop buying stuff!
Environmental labeling on house construction is as misleading as on food and shampoo, and Al Gore's "green" 10,000-square-foot home is, even though a retrofit rather than new, just too darn big to be green. We need to build smaller houses, and longer-lasting houses. In fact, we need to build longer-lasting furniture and everything else that goes into the houses. Furniture is for life, or for several lives, not to keep just until a new catalog comes in the mail. We need to retrofit old buildings and build up density, not create starter castles with high-tech enviro-innovations. Rammed earth houses make sense, as do straw-bale houses, cob building, and underground or earth-sheltered homes. Small ones, meaning ones like our parents and grandparents found plenty big enough.
Pierre Louis turns next to energy and, somewhat discordantly points out the problems with coal. Are there people who really believe the "clean coal" nonsense? If so, there's a chapter here just for them.
Ethanol comes in for as serious criticism as coal. It can be as bad for the air as gasoline, and it takes almost as much energy to produce it as is produced in it. The author might have made a similar but even stronger case against nuclear energy, but for some reason skipped it. Instead, she focuses on the limitations of solar and hydro power. Pierre Louis's recommendation, as you may have guessed by now, is to seek the easy and massive gains to be had through increasing efficiency and reducing consumption. These are two separate approaches, and the second one may be the larger. We can use energy more efficiently, but -- even more so -- we can just use less of it.
In fact, we can use less of lots of things. We have more and more televisions in our homes, even as useful content available through those televisions shrivels away like a shallow lake. Why?
A quarter of U.S. leisure time is spent doing something I consider a chore and Pierre Louis comes close to considering ecocide, namely shopping. Why? Seriously: what in the world for?
Now, one way in which we could do less of everything and stop trying solutions that cause new problems of their own would, of course, be to slow, halt, or reverse the growth of the human population. For some reason this idea is not developed in the book. Perhaps the author thinks it's unnecessary. More likely, she thinks there is something easier and more effective and, therefore, more urgent. Regardless of whether the population is growing, we need to break free from the idea that something else must be constantly growing: the economy.
What if shopping were not a patriotic duty? What if buying lots of cheap plastic disposable crap wasn't the way to make sure our neighbors have careers or incomes? The most significant reductions in U.S. carbon emissions have come as a result of economic recession. We need a different economic system, one that does not depend on infinite economic growth in a finite world. But might there not then be great unemployment and suffering as a result of insufficient shopping?
I'd like to suggest part of the answer, as I think Pierre-Louis frames the problem a little more clearly than the solution, and I think there's at least one piece of the puzzle that can easily be provided. Right now over half of our public treasury, our federal discretionary spending, goes into something not mentioned in "Green Washed" or just about any other environmentalist book, despite the fact that it is our greatest consumer of petroleum and most wide-ranging destroyer of our environment. I mean the war machine.
If instead of military spending, we invested our public riches in human needs, we might -- through some trial and error -- see our way clear to a world not based on growing our economies. We could invest in green energy jobs, in research, and in experiments in local sustainable lifestyles. We could invest in education, mass-transit, and healthcare. We could invest in retirement security and unemployment security, and reduce the number of hours people needed to work, commute, and shop. We could rally people around a national and global campaign of nothing less than saving the world by becoming citizens rather than consumers.
There's not much that you couldn't do with a trillion dollars a year and the will to put it to good use instead of continuing to pour it into waste and destruction.
What We Owe to Bertha von Suttner
Just saying her name sounds like a joke: Baroness Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner, Gräfin, née Countess Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau. And when she began talking about ending war in mid-nineteenth century Austria it wasn't her name that was treated as a joke. Yet by the turn of the century, her idea seemed to be one whose time had come.
Bertha von Suttner's novel "Ground Arms," or "Lay Down Your Arms," was widely described as the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" of war abolition. It was doing and would accomplish for war what Harriet Beecher Stowe's book had for slavery. I can't encourage you strongly enough to take a quick break from the inanities of presidential debates and football announcers and buy the book, borrow the book, or read it free online.
It was principally this book, along with years of activism, journalism, and organizational leadership in the peace movement (and not a single Iranian scientist's murder) that won von Suttner the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel website reads: "The effect of Die Waffen nieder [Lay Down Your Arms], published late in 1889, was … so real and the implied indictment of militarism so telling that the impact made on the reading public was tremendous."
The impact was not so much the love of the novel's characters. Nor was it a new understanding of how hellish war can be. The power of the impact, I think, came from the way the book framed war abolition within a story of advancing civilization. Humanity was developing, according to this story, after endless eons of fighting off ferocious beasts and fighting off ferocious humans. Violence was on the wane. The beasts were gone, and the humans were learning to speak and negotiate. City states were united as nations. Blood feuds were left behind. Dueling among individuals was being replaced by discussions, arbitrations, courts of law, and -- more importantly -- by a new conception of honor. No longer would disgrace fall on the man who tolerated an affront so much as on the buffoon who delivered it.
War itself was being civilized. The Red Cross was seeking to tend the wounded. Atrocities were being banned. Disputes among royals were being mocked by republicans as proper grounds for wars. Arbitration was proving itself as an alternative to slaughter. With slavery and pillage being left behind, with religion beginning to fade, with the technology of weaponry rapidly advancing, war was losing its economic motive, it's theocratic justification, and its suitability as a test of individual skill or courage. The ending of war was an idea that went from fringe craziness to mainstream popularity during Bertha von Suttner's lifetime, and in great measure because of her. The Nobel website reports:
"In August of 1913, already affected by beginning illness, the Baroness spoke at the International Peace Congress at The Hague where she was greatly honored as the «generalissimo» of the peace movement. In May of 1914 she was still able to take an interest in preparations being made for the twenty-first Peace Congress, planned for Vienna in September. But her illness - suspected cancer - developed rapidly thereafter, and she died on June 21, 1914, two months before the erupting of the world war she had warned and struggled against."
When the idea of ending slavery came and developed and took hold and spread, it could not be stopped by the occurrence of a sudden catastrophic outbreak of slavery. Slavery is not like a hurricane. It was a practice that went on and could be ended. It might be brought back, but only slowly, not in a mad rush of passion before anyone had time to think it through. War was different. The ending of war was an idea whose time had come. And then time halted. Time froze. The evolution of civilization was instantly thrown into reverse.
In von Suttner's novel, a crowd begins to sing pro-war songs in excitement over a new and exciting war, and her two main characters, husband and wife, converse:
"'See, Martha," exclaimed Frederick, 'this spark which spreads from one to another, uniting this whole mass and making every heart beat higher, is love --'
'Do you believe so? It is a song inspiring hate.'
'That makes no difference; a common hatred is but another form of love. When two or three or more are bound together by the same feeling, they love one another. When the time arrives for a nobler, broader aspiration than the interests of nationality, namely, the cause of humanity, then our ideal will be attained.'
'Ah, when will that time come?' I sighed.
'When? One can speak but relatively. As a length of time compared with our personal existence -- never; when compared with the existence of our race -- tomorrow.'"
Peace activists, like suffragettes, and like reformers of all kinds in this period, accepted that they might not succeed during their lifetimes, that like Dr. Martin Luther King they might not make it to the mountain top, but they were completely and absolutely confident that in the coming decades or centuries victory would be won. No doubt, that confidence contributed to their willingness to work for their good causes despite the slow or invisible pace of progress.
Now, of course, we are up against environmental destruction and the potential for complete elimination of our species through war. We feel we do not have the time to toil slowly for our descendants' inevitable advancement. But here's the important point: we don't need long. We as a culture reached the point of outgrowing war a century ago, and the course of progress was thrown off track. War makes absolutely no more sense today than male nipples or fathers giving away brides or the prohibition on ending a sentence with a preposition. War is an anachronism. It's a freak meme traveled forward in time purely because of the power it has to disrupt cultural advancement.
World War I, once it had ended, only strengthened the drive to end war, but it also strengthened the opposing forces. World War II did the same, and the strength it gave to the pro-war forces was much greater. The idea of ending war was set aside as a dream because its time had come and it had not been fulfilled. Nothing looks weaker than an idea whose time has come and gone. But ending slavery remained a sensible cultural advance that had once appeared fantastic and naïve. So did ending feuds and duels and corporal punishment and infanticide and witch burning. Living in an environmentally sustainable manner is another idea whose time has come and is rapidly going. This idea cannot be fulfilled without ending war, but ending war missed its chance; and so environmentalism steers clear of pacifism, to its own serious -- possibly fatal -- detriment.
An idea whose time has come and gone is an idea that can be rapidly revived. Renaissance is a common concept because we have had cultural renaissances before. They require humility, and they require work, but they are far easier and more fruitful than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Corporate Personhood Worse, Ending It Easier, Than You Think
Don't take it from me. Take it from the book being published today that will mainstream the movement to end corporate personhood: "Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do, And What You Can Do About It," by Jeff Clements with foreword by Bill Moyers.
Clements traces the development of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood back long before the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision two years ago this month, in particular to President Richard Nixon's appointment of Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court in 1972. Led by Powell's radical new conception of corporate rights, Clements shows, the court began striking down laws that protected living breathing persons' rights in areas including the environment, tobacco, public health, food, drugs, financial regulation, and elections.
In 1978 the Supreme Court ruled that corporations had speech rights that prevented banning their money from an election, a conclusion that might have been nearly incomprehensible a decade earlier before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and various corporate foundations began filling our public discourse with phrases like "corporate speech." In 1980 Congress forbade the Federal Trade Commission from protecting children or students from junk food advertising and sales. In 1982 corporate speech rights in the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a state law that had attempted to block energy companies from promoting greater energy consumption. In the 1990s, the Monsanto corporation, whose genetically engineered drug was banned in many countries, won the right to include it in milk in the United States and the "right not to speak," thereby overturning a law requiring that milk be labeled to indicate the drug's presence.
Decision after decision has extended corporate rights to a position of priority over actual human rights on everything from food and water and air to education and healthcare and wars. The ground has shifted. In 1971 Lewis Powell argued on behalf of the cigarette companies that they had a corporate person's right to use cartoons and misleading claims to get young people hooked on nicotine, and he was laughed out of court. In 2001, the Supreme Court struck down a state law banning cigarette ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds. The reason? The sacred right of the corporate person, which carries more weight now than the rights of the people of a community to protect their children ... er, excuse me, their "replacement smokers."
And why do corporate rights carry so much weight? One reason is that, as Clements documents and explains, "transnational corporations now dominate our government" through election spending. This is why a civilized single-payer health coverage system like those found in the rest of the wealthy nations of the world is not "practical." This is why cutting military spending back to 2007 levels would mean "amageddon" even though in 2007 it didn't. This is why our government hands oil corporations not only wars and highways but also massive amounts of good old money. This is why we cannot protect our mountains or streams but can go to extraordinary lengths to protect our investment bankers.
"Since the Citizens United decision in 2010," Clements writes, "hundreds of business leaders have condemned the decision and have joined the work for a constitutional amendment to overturn expanded corporate rights." You might not learn this from the corporate media, but there is a widespread and growing mainstream understanding that abuse by oversized mega-corporations has been disastrous for ordinary businesses as well as communities, families, and individuals. Clements' turns out to be a pro-business, albeit anti-U.S. Chamber of Commerce, book.
And what can be done? We can build an independent, principled, and relentless Occupy movement and include as a central demand the amending of the U.S. Constitution to end corporate personhood. Clements' book offers a draft amendment, a sample resolution, a collection of frequently asked questions (and answers), a list of organizations, websites, resources, books, and campaigns.
This is doable, and it is what we should do this election year so that in future election years we might actually have elections.
Obama Crowned Himself on New Year's Eve
These were among the complaints registered the last time this nation had a king:
"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
"He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
"He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
"For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
"For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
"For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."
To prevent the U.S. government from behaving like a king, the drafters of the U.S. Constitution empowered an elected legislature to write every law, to declare every war, and to remove its executive from office. To further prevent the abuse of individuals' rights, those authors wrote into the Constitution, even prior to the Bill of Rights, the right to habeas corpus and the right never to be punished for treason unless convicted in an open court on the testimony of at least two witnesses to an overt act of war or assistance of an enemy.
President Barack Obama waited until New Year's Eve to take an action that I suspect he wanted his willfully deluded followers to have a good excuse not to notice. On that day, Obama issued an unconstitutional signing statement rewriting a law as he signed it into law, a practice that candidate Obama had rightly condemned. The law that Obama was signing was the most direct assault yet seen on the basic structure of self-governance and human rights that once made all the endless U.S. shouting of "We're number one!" significantly less ludicrous. The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police-and-war state.
President Obama has claimed the power to imprison people without a trial since his earliest months in office. He spoke in front of the Constitution in the National Archives while gutting our founding document in 2009. President Obama has claimed the power to torture "if needed," issued an executive order claiming the power of imprisonment without trial, exercised that power on a massive scale at Bagram, and claimed and exercised the power to assassinate U.S. citizens. Obama routinely kills people with unmanned drones.
The bill just signed into law, as sent to the President, said this:
"Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force."
In other words, Congress was giving its stamp of approval to the unconstitutional outrages already claimed by the President. But then, why create a new law at all? Well, because some outrages are more equal than others, and Congress had chosen to specify some of those and in fact to expand some of them. For example:
"Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war."
And this:
"The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following: (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force."
Jon Stewart explained when those detained without trial under the law might be released: "So when the war on terror ends, and terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion, you are free to go."
An exception for U.S. legal residents and citizens was kept out of the bill at President Obama's request.
So why did Obama threaten to veto the bill initially and again after it passed the Senate? Well, one change made by the conference committee was this (note the crossed-through text):
"The Secretary of Defense President may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary President submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States."
The reference here is to military tribunals. The President — that is, the current one and future ones — need not hand someone over even to a military tribunal if . . . well, if he (or she) chooses not to.
That was the most power Obama could have transferred to the White House in this bill. But it was not absolute power, and was therefore not good enough. Hence the signing statement, the relevant portion of which begins:
"Moving forward, my Administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded."
This is Bush-Cheneyspeak for "I will not comply with the following sections of this law despite signing it into law."
After having persuaded the Congress to remove an exception for U.S. legal residents, Obama has the nerve in the signing statement to assert, not that the law makes any such exception, but that he personally will choose to do so, at least for U.S. citizens. Future presidents may lock U.S. citizens up without trials, but Obama won't do so. He promises:
"I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law."
The first two sentences above are highly unusual if not unprecedented. Most, if not all, of Bush and Obama's law-altering signing statements up to this point have not sought to clarify what a particular administration would choose to do. Rather, they have focused on declaring parts of the laws invalid. Usually this is done in a manner misleadingly similar to the third sentence above. By claiming the power to interpret a law in line with the Constitution, Bush and Obama have each on numerous occasions asserted the view that the Constitution grants presidents far-reaching powers that cannot be restricted by legislation. If Obama had wanted to deny that this law could be applied to U.S. citizens (or legal residents), the above paragraph would look very different, although equally unusual in that it would then be rejecting power rather than claiming it.
Also note, as Marcy Wheeler has already pointed out, Section 1021 applies to any detention, and Obama promises only not to subject U.S. citizens to indefinite military detention. While locked away forever without a trial you'll be able to take comfort that yours is a non-military imprisonment.
Also, remember that Obama claims and exercises the power to kill U.S. citizens or anyone else (arguably at least as serious a violation of rights as imprisonment!), and for that he will use the military if he sees fit, or even allow the military to operate freely.
Also notice that legal residents are not included in the category of citizens.
Next, Obama declares Section 1022 on military custody "ill-conceived." His personal right to a waiver, won through the conference committee, was not enough. Obama insists on also erasing this section of law: "I reject," he writes,
"any approach that would mandate military custody where law enforcement provides the best method of incapacitating a terrorist threat. While section 1022 is unnecessary and has the potential to create uncertainty, I have signed the bill because I believe that this section can be interpreted and applied in a manner that avoids undue harm to our current operations. I have concluded that section 1022 provides the minimally acceptable amount of flexibility to protect national security. Specifically, I have signed this bill on the understanding that section 1022 provides the executive branch with broad authority to determine how best to implement it, and with the full and unencumbered ability to waive any military custody requirement, including the option of waiving appropriate categories of cases when doing so is in the national security interests of the United States. … I will therefore interpret and implement section 1022 in the manner that best preserves the same flexible approach that has served us so well for the past 3 years and that protects the ability of law enforcement professionals to obtain the evidence and cooperation they need to protect the Nation."
Obama goes on to reject several other sections of the law, including restrictions on his unlimited power to rendition prisoners to other countries. Among the notable rejections is this:
"Sections 1023-1025 needlessly interfere with the executive branch's processes for reviewing the status of detainees. Going forward, consistent with congressional intent as detailed in the Conference Report, my Administration will interpret section 1024 as granting the Secretary of Defense broad discretion to determine what detainee status determinations in Afghanistan are subject to the requirements of this section."
In other words, U.S. prisoners held in Afghanistan will not be given even any formal pretense of a legalistic review of their status unless Obama and his Secretary of "Defense" see fit.
I've just been editing a forthcoming book in which one of the contributors writes:
"In 1971, Congress passed the Anti-Detention Act, 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a), which states that "no person shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." Fred Koramatsu, who had brought the unsuccessful case before the Supreme Court, was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor. Congress apologized and provided for limited reparations for this heinous act."
The author is referring to the unconstitutional indefinite detention of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. This type of criminal abuse for which Congress had to apologize and pay reparations, and for which there is a misleadingly pro-war-looking memorial hidden between the U.S. Capitol and Union Station, has now been effectively sanctioned by our Constitutional Scholar in Chief.
My chief regret is that we have not seen the major resistance we could have, and without any doubt would have, seen to this if only Obama were a Republican.
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