July 7, 2013

The Right’s Made-up ‘Constitution’

from Consortium News:


The Right’s Made-up ‘Constitution’
July 6, 2013

For Tea Partiers and libertarians, it is an article of faith that the Constitution tightly constrained the federal government and gave broad powers to the states. But that is bogus history — mere propaganda — and suggests that the Right’s rank-and-file has never read or understood the document, says historian Jada Thacker.

By Jada Thacker


The Cato Institute’s Handbook for Policy Makers says, “The American system was established to provide limited government.” The American Enterprise Institute states its purpose to “defend the principles” of “limited government.” The Heritage Foundation claims its mission is to promote “principles of … limited government.” A multitude of Tea Party associations follow suit.

At first glance the concept of “limited government” seems like a no-brainer. Everybody believes the power of government should be limited somehow. All those who think totalitarianism is a good idea raise your hand. But there is one problem with the ultra-conservatives’ “limited government” program: it is wrong. It is not just a little bit wrong, but demonstrably false.

The Constitution was never intended to “provide limited government,” and furthermore it did not do so. The U.S. government possessed the same constitutional power at the moment of its inception as it did yesterday afternoon.

This is not a matter of opinion, but of literacy. If we want to discover the truth about the scope of power granted to federal government by the Constitution, all we have to do is read what it says. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/07/06/the-rights-made-up-constitution/

July 6, 2013

Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the Earth?

Noam Chomsky: Who Owns the Earth?

Friday, 05 July 2013 11:41
By Noam Chomsky, Truthout | Op-Ed

(This article is adapted from a commencement speech by Noam Chomsky on June 14, 2013, at the American University of Beirut. )

With wrenching tragedies only a few miles away, and still worse catastrophes perhaps not far removed, it may seem wrong, perhaps even cruel, to shift attention to other prospects that, although abstract and uncertain, might offer a path to a better world - and not in the remote future.

I’ve visited Lebanon several times and witnessed moments of great hope, and of despair, that were tinged with the Lebanese people’s remarkable determination to overcome and to move forward.

The first time I visited - if that’s the right word - was exactly 60 years ago, almost to the day. My wife and I were hiking in Israel’s northern Galilee one evening, when a jeep drove by on a road near us and someone called out that we should turn back: We were in the wrong country. We had inadvertently crossed the border, then unmarked - now, I suppose, bristling with armaments.

A minor event, but it forcefully brought home a lesson: The legitimacy of borders - of states, for that matter - is at best conditional and temporary. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17402-who-owns-the-earth

July 6, 2013

The New Guy on Campus (cartoon)

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/student_loan_shark_20130705/

July 5, 2013

The State of Dissent in America: Flex Your Rights

The State of Dissent in America: Flex Your Rights

Wednesday, 03 July 2013 10:33
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | News Analysis


When we occupied Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, during the Autumn of 2011, we often marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill to express our many grievances. We were always accompanied by a large contingent of police officers and other members of the national security state, some obvious and others not so much. Along the way, we would pass the Newseum, which has the First Amendment engraved in large letters on the front of the building. We made it a habit to pause at the Newseum and read aloud in unison the words of the First Amendment. The reason for doing so was to let everyone know, including the security state, that we have the right to protest peacefully and that we were exercising that right.

We live in a time when there is much to protest. The government is dysfunctional, ruled by plutocrats who pass laws for their corporate friends that cause real harm and suffering for the people and ecological collapse of the planet. Many activists with whom we work recognize that the traditional tools used to effect change within the system - petitions, lobbying, electing supportive legislators or running for office - largely fail in the current political environment.

Our most effective option is strategic and militant, nonviolent protest in all of its many forms, from boycotts to rallies to hunger strikes. And it is our First Amendment right to use these tools. But rather than respecting and supporting our right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of our grievances, the national security state and legislators are chipping away at our rights in more extreme ways than ever before.

Even our right to know what is being done in our name is disappearing. The White House and Congress are doing more in secret and are cracking down on those who reveal their actions. Whistleblowers are being charged under the Espionage Act and journalists are being spied upon. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17354-the-state-of-dissent-in-america-flex-your-rights

July 5, 2013

Keiser Report: Crony Capitalism & Collusion with Govt

Published on Jul 4, 2013

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss Tiny Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who is now working for 'pennies' while the world tries to recover from the global financial disaster that he partly created by acting like a penny stock company. Max and Stacy also discuss interests rates on savings accounts being slashed across the United Kingdom as banks no longer need to attract deposits in this post Tiny Dick Fuld world in which the government and the central bank provide unlimited 'free' cash against which they can lend and in which hunky Mark Carney has been brought in to oversee the new property market 'boom' times. In the second half, Max talks to Paul Sommerville of Sommerville Advisory Markets (sam.ie) about the story of Anglo Irish bank, the toxic hedge fund masquerading as a bank which was run by charlatans lending to just twenty or thirty toxic individuals. The Anglo Irish story is one of crony capitalism and collusion with government and regulators, one where the Chairman's loans were bed and breakfasted and over which the burnt speculators are outing each other's role in the crimes.

July 5, 2013

The Basic Economics of National Health Insurance - Professor Richard D Wolff

Published on Jul 2, 2013

PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 16, 2011 The US now has one of the most expensive health care and insurance systems in the world ...........................

July 5, 2013

Mass Protests (cartoon)

July 4, 2013

Amy Goodman: This Independence Day, Thank a Protester

from truthdig:


This Independence Day, Thank a Protester

Posted on Jul 3, 2013
By Amy Goodman


More than 160 years ago, the greatest abolitionist in U.S. history, the escaped slave Frederick Douglass, addressed the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass asked those gathered, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” His words bear repeating this Independence Day, as the United States asserts unprecedented authority to wage war globally, to spy on everyone, everywhere. Independence Day should serve not as a blind celebration of the government, but as a moment to reflect on the central place in our history of grass-roots democracy movements, which have preserved and expanded the rights proclaimed in the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Douglass answered his question about the Fourth of July, to those gathered abolitionists: “To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

Douglass not only denounced the hypocrisy of slavery in a democracy, but worked diligently to build the abolitionist movement. He fought for women’s suffrage as well. These were movements that have shaped the United States. The civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s set a permanent example of what can be achieved by grass-roots action, even in the face of systemic, violent repression.

Today, movements continue to shape our society. The trial of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, would not be happening now in Florida were it not for a mass movement. Sparked by the seeming official indifference to the shooting death of yet another young, African-American male, nationwide protests erupted, leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor. A month and a half after Martin was killed, Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_independence_day_thank_a_protester_20130703/

July 4, 2013

The State of Dissent in America: Flex Your Rights

The State of Dissent in America: Flex Your Rights

Wednesday, 03 July 2013 10:33
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | News Analysis


When we occupied Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, during the Autumn of 2011, we often marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill to express our many grievances. We were always accompanied by a large contingent of police officers and other members of the national security state, some obvious and others not so much. Along the way, we would pass the Newseum, which has the First Amendment engraved in large letters on the front of the building. We made it a habit to pause at the Newseum and read aloud in unison the words of the First Amendment. The reason for doing so was to let everyone know, including the security state, that we have the right to protest peacefully and that we were exercising that right.

We live in a time when there is much to protest. The government is dysfunctional, ruled by plutocrats who pass laws for their corporate friends that cause real harm and suffering for the people and ecological collapse of the planet. Many activists with whom we work recognize that the traditional tools used to effect change within the system - petitions, lobbying, electing supportive legislators or running for office - largely fail in the current political environment.

Our most effective option is strategic and militant, nonviolent protest in all of its many forms, from boycotts to rallies to hunger strikes. And it is our First Amendment right to use these tools. But rather than respecting and supporting our right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of our grievances, the national security state and legislators are chipping away at our rights in more extreme ways than ever before.

Even our right to know what is being done in our name is disappearing. The White House and Congress are doing more in secret and are cracking down on those who reveal their actions. Whistleblowers are being charged under the Espionage Act and journalists are being spied upon. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17354-the-state-of-dissent-in-america-flex-your-rights

July 3, 2013

The Most Secretive Court in America May Also Be the Most Conservative

from truthdig:



The Most Secretive Court in America May Also Be the Most Conservative

Posted on Jul 3, 2013
By Bill Blum


By the end of this month, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is expected to issue what could be the most important order in its 35-year hidden history, ruling on a motion filed by the ACLU that asks the court to publish all of its prior opinions evaluating the meaning, scope and constitutionality of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Codified as part of the omnibus Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, this is the law that empowers the FBI and the National Security Agency to obtain secret orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court compelling third parties such as phone companies to produce “tangible things” such as individual phone activity records related to foreign intelligence or terrorism investigations. The orders are accompanied by admonitions forbidding disclosure of their existence.

The section served as the legal basis for the surveillance court order published in June by The Guardian that directed Verizon Business Services to produce on an ongoing daily basis “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’... for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

So how will the surveillance court rule? If past practice is any indication, the motion will be denied in an order that is either kept under seal, worded very generally or heavily redacted for public consumption. From its inception through 2012, the court rejected a scant 40 government surveillance applications while approving nearly 34,000, virtually all of which have remained classified. ..........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_most_secretive_court_in_america_may_also_be_the_most_conservative_20130/