SUPREME COURT LETTER

President Obama will give his State of the Union speech tomorrow night. I will be surprised if he does not mention the most recent Supreme Court decision regarding corporate participation in politics ... and deeply disappointed. This is a decision which could, without exaggeration, alter the course of life in America.

I am sending hard copies of the letter below to Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Rep. Henry Waxman. I encourage you to send this letter, or better still, your own version, to your representatives. We are witnessing, I believe, the the culmination of decades of effort to bring about a "corporatocracy" in America. It may not be too late to stop it, but it will take our best efforts.

My thanks to Renny Temple for the Jefferson quote.

Bart

“I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1816

Senator Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Sen. Feinstein:

The Supreme Court’s recent decision to lift virtually all restrictions on corporate spending in the political arena is less an interpretation of the Constitution than it is a direct assault on it. Ignoring a hundred years of legal precedent, the ruling not only elevates corporations to the status of citizens - equating financial influence with free speech - but in effect it reduces actual citizens, with their lesser funds, to second class status.

It isn’t difficult to imagine a situation in which a corporate CEO (or his paid lobbyist) simply picks up the phone and orders a senator or congressperson to vote for or against a particular bill. The legislator would then be face with a simple choice: do as told, in which case limitless funds would be made available for his or her next campaign; or defy the order and expect to be hit by 24 hour-a-day attack ads in all the media. A simple choice, but a difficult one, even for the most honest politician.

If this decision is allowed to stand, America will no longer be a democracy, even in name. Our government will become no more than an extension of powerful, multi-national corporations. I implore you to act quickly and effectively to somehow reverse this heinous decision. All the chips are on the table. If we lose this hand, the game is over.

Sincerely,

CORPORATE GOVERNMENT

It isn't always easy to connect the dots, or even to notice when a new dot has appeared on the screen. Let's see if we can't connect a few: Reckless investors cause worldwide economic meltdown > Fed bails out reckless investors > millions lose jobs, income, homes > lives are brutally interrupted, some temporarily, some permanently > reckless investors receive $140 billion in bonuses > Congress debates special tax on investor bonuses.

Last week's Supreme Court decision to eliminate restrictions on corporate spending in the political arena has its own dire consequences, one of which was suggested by Sen. Dick Durbin on Face The Nation. The same corporations that were responsible for our current economic woes and gladly accepted federal bail out money to stay afloat, can now contact each member of Congress and say, If you vote yes on this special tax, we will crush you beneath a flood of negative advertising. Any politician who favors the tax and thinks he has a future in Washington had better have a plan B.

This is government by corporation, and this is not good.

LOVE AND HAITI IN THE MODERN WORLD

Just a few thoughts on the tragedy in Haiti.

There is a world of truth contained in that popular old bumper sticker, shit happens. If there is one thing you can count on for sure, it is that an earthquake, a hurricane, a tsunami, a train wreck ... something is coming your way, and if not your way, then someone else's way, in which case you will be treated to non-stop videos of the tragedy. What I can't figure out is why we are always so unprepared.

Given the industrial capacity of the modern world and the inevitability of natural disaster, wouldn't it make sense to stockpile food, water and medical supplies in two or three dozen locations around the world, so that when tragedy does strike, and you know it will, instead of sending in Lester Holt and Anne Curry, we could send in the army and the Red Cross ... THE NEXT DAY, not ten days later! This isn't quantum physics or delicate international diplomacy, this is common sense survival of the fittest. Perhaps international cooperation on a project like this could even lead to cooperation on other things. Probably not, but you never know.

Thom Hartman (1150 AM) had a good idea how we could finance it: Executive bonuses in the financial world will amount to more than $100 billion this year. If each of these executives - remember, these are the guys who caused our current world-wide economic crisis - if each of them would tithe the Red Cross, give up just 10% of their bonus, that would be $10 billion. A tidy sum, which, if it didn't cover everything, would certainly get the program off to a nice start. Plus, it might make them feel better about their disgusting bonuses ... I know it would make me fee better.

POLITICIANS FOR SALE

This is one of those stories that should have a big gold star next to it so that a year from now you can come back and see where the s__t actually hit the fan.

In an online article this morning, the Washington Post reported that a new Supreme Court ruling has lifted the limits on corporate funding of political campaigns. The 4 to 5 majority decided that corporate contributions were the same as free speech, and limiting them would be unconstitutional. If I had a web cam you could see my head explode.

Just at the moment when we should be eliminating corporate funding altogether and demanding publicly funded elections, these crackers open the flood gates to even more corruption and bribery. Gimme a break! I don't ask for much, but can I please catch a break here?

COUNTRY CLUB DUES AND DON'TS

Did you get a chance to read Hector Tobar's column in the Times this morning? Give a click to the link and you'll find one of those dirty-little-secret exposés that you just can't believe someone didn't write about thirty years ago.

Tobar, who got his story from a small, downtown rag - the Los Angeles Garment and Citizen (oy!) - reports that private country clubs in Los Angeles - Bel Air, Brentwood, Hillcrest, etc. - pay only a fraction of the real estate taxes one would expect. That's because the land on which they and their golf courses stand has been assessed at a fraction of its real value ... a very small fraction, a miniscule fraction, a single-digit fraction. As an example, the Bel Air Country Club had an assessed land value last year of $5.7 million. That's not per acre, that's for the entire 120 acres.

You know, I don't mind a little fraud now and then; it shows that people care enough about having a good time to cheat. And if rich people want to go to luxurious clubs, attended to by deferential servants with unending smiles, what's it to me? Hey, I played golf at Hillcrest last week - had a fabulous time. But let's be at least marginally realistic about that real estate value. I mean ... $5.7 million? Are you kidding? The valet parking franchise is worth that much.

Rich guys are always saying, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Apparently that applies to Factor's, but not to the clubhouse buffet. Come on, boys. Pony up!

GAME CHANGE

Game Change is the book that pulls back the curtain on the 2008 presidential election, revealing confusion, chaos disaster, unbelievable good fortune, ruthlessness, naked desire, and campaign chest full of gossip. Warning: This book is dangerously wonky. If you have been lured to it by the titillating teasers on every talk show from Hardball to Today, don’t bother. Finding out that Hillary uses Quilted Northern rather than Charmin simply isn’t worth the 400 + pages you’ll have to read through. On the other hand, if you are truly fascinated by the political process, if you want to see how the big boys do it, warts and all, this is the book for you.

Authors John Heillemann and Mark Halperin are both long-time political reporters and analysts. Though they don’t name their sources, the depth of their knowledge makes it obvious that they did a thorough job. Warning 2: Keep a dictionary close by. The book is liberally sprinkled with $2 words that I not only didn’t know the meaning of but had never even seen.

Even though the talk shows promoted the book for the wrong reason – the petty bickering and backstage BS that doubtless goes on in any campaign – this is a great read for anyone who wants to know: where the money comes from; where the money goes; how decisions are made; who the real movers and shakers are; and why the campaign is more important than the candidate. I recommend it.

Security

Comics used to joke: What if the shoe bomber had put the bomb in his underwear? Would we all have to take off our underwear to fly? Be careful what you joke about.

The attempted Christmas day bombing of an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight has caused another DBS move (desperate but stupid) by the administration. Among the proposed “solutions” to resolve the latest terrorist threat: restricting passengers to their seats for the final hour of flight; denying access to the overhead for that final hour; increasing security checks on the way to the plane; using full-body scanners. Good luck with that.

The Washington Post reports that starting today, international passengers flying into the US are being randomly subjected to full-body scans. The scanners have two problems that I can see. First, though the TSA agent viewing the monitor may well be about to guess your cup size, the genital area is (allegedly) blurred; and since that is exactly where the Christmas day bomber hid his explosives, I’m not sure how much good this will do. Second, the Post reports that there are only forty scanners in nineteen airports, with 150 more “on the way.” So beating the scanners is as simple as using an airport or a terminal that doesn’t have one. The Post gave potential terrorists a head start by revealing three of the airports that have them.

Given the huge daily number of flyers, it is simply impossible to thoroughly check every passenger on every flight. To have even a modest impact on the actual threat, something that goes beyond the cosmetic security efforts being used today, the administration would have to take two difficult steps: drastically reduce the number of flights, at least international if not domestic; and replace the current cadre of ill-prepared TSA agents with highly trained – and highly paid – security personnel. They don’t want to do the first because it would cost the airlines too much money, and they don’t want to do the second because it would cost the taxpayers too much money.

Life is filled with difficult choices. It may be time to make one.

IMPERIAL CRUISE

Whenever politics is discussed, you can usually count on someone to break out that old conspiracy theory that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance and allowed it to happen in order to get us out of the Depression. As difficult as it is to believe, Roosevelt probably was directly responsible for World War II. But not Franklin ... Theodore!

In his stunning new book, The Imperial Cruise, James Bradley paints an exquisitely detailed landscape of world politics at the beginning of the 20th century. President Theodore Roosevelt, not quite the same "Teddy" you might expect, sends the largest diplomatic delegation in U.S. history to the far east in 1905: seven senators and twenty-three congressmen accompany the president's twenty-one year old daughter, Alice - the Jackie Kennedy of her day - and the secretary of war (and future president) William Howard Taft to Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and China. Taft, in direct violation of the Constitution, carried secret communications from the president to the emperor of Japan. It seems apparent that these agreements lit the slow burning fuse that exploded on December 7, 1941. This is an extraordinary book for anyone who needs to know the story behind the story.

James Bradley, by the way, is the son of John Bradley, one of the me who raised the flag at Iwo Jima, which prompted the book (and the movie), Flags of Our Fathers. Another WWII history - Flyboys - followed that. Bradley got to thinking about the causes of that war, and this book is the result. It is shocking, completely absorbing, and I recommend it without reservation.