Author Topic: Corruption in Government (Read 76825 times)

AGelbert · « **Reply #165 on:** August 25, 2016, 03:20:47 pm »

Water Is Life, Oil Is Death: The People vs. the Bakken Pipeline in Iowa and the Dakotas

Posted on Aug 22, 2016

By Paul Street

People opposing the Dakota Access pipeline project, also known as the Bakken pipeline, rally in Des Moines, Iowa. (Barbara Rodriguez / AP)

The American version of democracy focuses on elections and candidates. As the venerable left intellectual Noam Chomsky observed in June, “Citizenship means every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It’s a very destructive ideology … a way of making people passive, submissive objects.” Chomsky added that we “ought to teach kids that elections take place, but that’s not [all of] politics.” There’s also the more urgent and serious politics of popular social movements and direct action beneath and beyond the election cycle.

We might refine Chomsky’s maxim to read “and let rich guys run the world into the ground” or “let rich guys ruin the world.” With anthropogenic (really “capitalogenic”) global warming, the nation and world’s corporate and financial oligarchs are bringing the planet to the brink of an epic ecosystem collapse.

We might also put some meat on the bones of Chomsky’s pedagogical advice by “teach[ing] kids” about the people’s politics being practiced in the upper Midwest and northern Great Plains by citizen activists fighting to help avert ecological calamity by blocking construction of what North Dakota Sioux leader David Archambault II calls “a black snake” of “greed.” The snake in question is the planet-baking Dakota Access/Bakken pipeline, what Iowa activists call “The Next Keystone XL.”

While Iowa Berned, Dakota Access Worked Behind the Scenes

As progressives flocked to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ impressive rallies in Iowa over the past year, the Texas-based company Dakota Access LLC, a division of the ecocidal corporation Energy Transfer Partners LP, moved methodically ahead with its plan to build the Bakken pipeline. This $3.8 billion, 1,134-mile project would carry 540,000 barrels of primarily fracked crude oil from North Dakota’s “Bakken oil patch” daily on a diagonal course through sacred North Dakota Sioux tribal sites and burial grounds, South Dakota, Iowa, the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and many other major waterways, to Patoka, Ill. It would link with another pipeline that will transport the black gold to terminals and refineries along the Gulf of Mexico for export to the global market.

In March, five weeks after Sanders essentially tied Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, the corporate-captive Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) approved the giant Iowa portion of the project, granting Dakota Access eminent domain across the entire route through 18 counties—the last major administrative hurdle for the project. The “regulatory” boards in the other three states had already signed off. There was still some slim hope that the Army Corps of Engineers could be persuaded to block the project. That hope was dashed July 25.

Dakota Access construction crews have begun moving dirt and tearing up farmers’ crops along the pipeline’s projected path. Pipeline workers with out-of-state license plates are showing up in hotels, motels and camps—and on dating sites like “Plenty of Fish”—along the route. Construction began in South Dakota, North Dakota and Illinois in May. Pipe has been laid in Lee County in Iowa’s southeast corner and Lyon County in the northwest. Last week, a pipeline trench crossed the popular Chichaqua Valley Trail in central Iowa. A young woman from central Iowa reports that a local dating website is “swarming” with out-of-state pipeline workers staying in campsites and elsewhere.

Dakota Access first applied to the IUB for a pipeline permit in the fall of 2014, just before Sanders’ first visit to Iowa. Slowly but surely, as media-driven popular excitement over the largely Iowa-focused presidential contest built last year, the company quietly pressed ahead with a public relations offensive (with a strong emphasis on “jobs for Iowans”) against the opposition of environmentalists and concerned citizens. There was only one formal IUB public hearing, and it lasted just one day. The opponents of the pipeline represented a cross-section of Iowans. The proponents were almost entirely from construction unions, many from out of state. Opponents who attended multiple “informational meetings” staged by Dakota Access reported numerous blatant inconsistencies, contradictions and lies in the “facts” presented by the company. While the state dived further into the quadrennial caucus commotion, Dakota Access moved the pipeline through the required administrative and public relations hoops under the media-politics radar.

The stakes are high in the fight against the project. “If the Bakken Pipeline is built,” the progressive lobbying organization Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) notes, “it would seriously harm Iowa’s already impaired water quality, threaten the integrity of the fertile farmland of thousands of everyday Iowans, and contribute to our dependence on fossil fuels. This steers us away from developing renewable energy infrastructure and curbing the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.” CCI is part of a broad statewide anti-Bakken group called the Bakken Pipeline Resistance Coalition (BPRC) that includes more than 30 organizations. BPRC is engaged in the difficult work of grass-roots politics and direct action—both legal and extra-legal—beneath and beyond the major-party and candidate-centered presidential election extravaganzas that take early root in Iowa (thanks to its first-in-the-nation caucuses) every four years.

A Fake ‘Public Utility’

The IUB’s decision in March was rich with Orwellian irony. Iowa law forbids the condemning of agricultural land for private development. It is true, as Dakota Access argues, that the law excludes utilities under the jurisdiction of the IUB from the private development limitation. And that includes pipelines if they serve a “public purpose.” But this pipeline would simply transport oil through Iowa and therefore serve no discernible public good for the state and, in fact, promises to do considerable harm to the state’s environmental and financial health. Opponents rightly point out that like all pipelines, it will eventually spill, and Dakota Access LLC will leave Iowa holding the bag for the cleanup.

Like something out of Kafka, the IUB will have no power to enforce any kind of public regulations whatsoever on the operators of the private interstate pipeline they approved as a “public utility.”

The IUB’s decision was another example among many that Iowa is up for sale to big business under the right-wing administration of Republican Gov. Terry Branstad.

The giant Canadian pipeline company Enbridge and Marathon Petroleum are impressed by Dakota Access’ success in gaining the approval of “regulators.” The two corporations recently put up $2 billion ($1.5 billion from Enbridge and $500,000 from Marathon) to purchase 49 percent of the Bakken pipeline. A likely consequence if the project is completed is that Canadian tar-sands oil will flow through the pipeline—and Iowa—toward the Gulf Coast. That oil is one of the most carbon-rich, planet-cooking fossil fuels on earth. Dire environmental concern about the mining of Canadian tar sands oil was the main reason climate activists like Bill McKibben engaged in high-profile protests of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline—a leading news story a few years ago.

Read the other two pages of this three page article at link below:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/water_life_oil_death_people_vs_bakken_pipeline_in_iowa_dakotas_20160822

Agelbert NOTE: The concentration of Mens Rea Criminal Corporate Corruption of the Federal and many State Governments in the USA (and the world, for that matter) based in TEXAS is evidence that the Nietzsche style Empathy Deficit Disordered Territorial Imperative is an integral part of the MORALLY BANKRUPT Texan culture and world view. TEXANS, of all people on the planet, are the greatest threat to the biosphere that humanity has ever faced.

One way or the other, the TEXAN Oil & Gas worshipping culture will soon end.

TEXAN has his morning coffee

The Fossil Fuelers in general, and TEXANS IN PARTICULAR, DID THE Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME, but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks, they are trying to AVOID DOING THE TIME or PAYING THE FINE! Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!

AGelbert · « **Reply #166 on:** August 26, 2016, 09:10:16 pm »

Agelbert NOTE: The NEXT time some worshipper of Capitalism tries to claim buying a 600K property is 'normal' in the USA, please let them know they need a refresher course in basic mathematics. NOBODY, even in the bracket above middle income, can afford to buy a property like that without a mortgage (as Senator Sellout Sanders recently did).

Venturing Into ‘the Capitalist Labyrinth’ (Video)

Posted on Aug 23, 2016

In this week’s episode of “On Contact,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges sits down with Rob Urie, author of “Zen Economics,” to discuss “the capitalist labyrinth.”

The two dive into the concept of the “economic man” or “economic woman” that Urie introduces in his book. Urie explains that humans are conditioned to feel that capitalism is a “natural” state of being. It’s “the integration of psychology with corporate desire,” he explains.

Urie and Hedges then discuss the “radical alienation” produced by capitalism, particularly how the system is responsible for nuclear weapons, climate change and even imperialism. “Alienation is the bedrock of consumer culture,” Hedges notes.

Capitalism, they agree, has a “self-destructive” quality that “leads to the inability to rectify the excesses.” In addition, they explore the idea that science is not objective. “Science has been harnessed to capitalism in a very destructive way,” Hedges says.

They also address the history of capitalism, particularly the ways it used to “regulate itself,” with Hedges citing the New Deal of the 1930s as one example. Urie states that neoliberalism today is “the philosophy of the ruling elite,” but argues that neoliberalism existed prior to the Great Depression of the 1920s:

“It’s the philosophy of the world where you’ve got the ruling elite, and there’s this self-justification, which comes through societal rewards … so upper-class, ruling-class leaders can look at their classmates and say, through the logic of capitalism , that ‘we’ve earned this.’ ”

The episode ends with Hedges and Urie breaking down the harmful relationship between government and business. “Government isn’t intrinsically corrupt,” Urie argues.

Watch the entire video below.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/capitalism_alienates_integrates_psychology_with_corporate_desire_20160823

AGelbert · « **Reply #167 on:** September 11, 2016, 01:45:55 pm »

Quote

stephen whitaker

Talking about FAIRNESS, as much as LAW:

The PSB, being a court, and the Rising Tide folks not being a party, the Board is required to hear from the ‘public’ only by written comment filed with the Clerk or at a duly warned public hearing.

The current ‘Modus Interruptus’ is not entirely a result of a few people not playing nice, but by a continuing grievous failure of those supposed to be representing the interest of the public, the Department of Public Service, simply not doing its job.

When the public feels that the system is rigged, the protections failed, the fix is in, and the captains of industry are going to have their way, with collusion from the Governor and his Commissioner of Public Service, protest and even revolt is a time tested tool of bringing broader attention to the injustice.

The DPS lost it years ago and corrective measures are needed. The statutes provide for the appointment of an Independent Public Advocate. The Board should exercise this option.

up votes 31 | down votes -11

Margolis: Drowning in a tide of arrogance

Sep. 4, 2016, 7:54 pm by Jon Margolis 25 Comments

Demonstrators from Rising Tide Vermont and the Vermont Workers’ Center gather at the Public Service Board building in Montpelier last year. File photo (at link) by Erin Mansfield/VTDigger

(Editor’s note: Jon Margolis is VTDigger’s political columnist.)

In early August, a federal judge ruled that the Public Service Board’s decision to ban the public from a hearing “cannot be sustained under the First Amendment.”

The board complied.

Sort of.

Told that it must allow “public attendance” at its Aug. 4 hearing about extension of a gas pipeline through a park in Hinesburg, the PSB decided to allow six members of the public into the hearing room.

“It turned out to be eight,” said Lisa Barrett, the retired lawyer who was the plaintiff in the lawsuit filed after the board first said it would permit no one (later amended to allow reporters) to enter the hearing room in Berlin, a “training room” of the Agency of Natural Resources that has space for about 70 spectators.

The PSB, Barrett said, “complied with the letter of the court order.”

Now, to be fair to the Public Service Board, it should be noted that some of its antagonists appear equally indifferent to the First Amendment. Members of a group called Rising Tide Vermont have attended earlier hearings neither to listen nor to speak but to shout, thereby depriving others of the right to listen or to speak.

As U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss noted in her ruling, “There is, of course, no First Amendment right to disrupt adjudicatory proceedings. … To the extent disruptive participants make it difficult to see or hear the board’s proceedings, they may impair the First Amendment rights of other members of the public.”

The First Amendment exists primarily to limit the power of the government. Rising Tide is not the government and so may not, strictly speaking, be bound by those limits.

Then again, perhaps private individuals should follow the spirit of the Constitution even if not bound by its letter. John Franco, the lawyer who argued the case in court on Barrett’s behalf, said, “People have a First Amendment right to go to hearings, to speak and to listen. Interfering with (that) right is a very, very bad thing to start doing.”

Rising Tide does not see it that way.

“This is frankly an unjust process,” said Will Bennington, the Rising Tide spokesman. Bennington denied that the protesters had shouted; they were singing. But he did not deny that the aim was to “prevent (the process) from going forward.” In the view of Rising Tide, Bennington said, pipeline owner Vermont Gas Systems is “stealing from 80-something-year-old widows. We have no intention of letting them make their argument.”

Hmm. Let’s parse this for a minute. A small, un-elected band of devoted — arguably zealous — people has arrogated to itself the power to interrupt if not to halt the legal proceedings of a state agency operating according to laws passed by the elected representatives of the people.

The difference between this zealotry and fascism is … just what?

Especially because there is no evidence that the zealots speak for a majority. No one has taken a poll, but state legislators tend to know what their constituents think (otherwise they don’t stay in office), and two who represent the area to be served by the pipeline, Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, and Rep. Harvey Smith, R-New Haven, report that most of their constituents seem to have accepted the PSB’s earlier decision that the pipeline is in the public good.

“It hasn’t been a hot topic,” Smith said.

Bray, citing cost overruns and apparent inconsistency with state’s renewable energy goals, has his own reservations about the wisdom of the project. But while he noted that a vocal minority in his district opposes the pipeline, “in general, most people accept it as reasonable.”

As long as fairness is in the air, let’s show a little toward the pipeline opponents, too. The Public Service Board, while it operates within the law and its proceedings are available online, is perhaps the most aggravating, imperious and haughty agency in all of state government.

This does not mean the three commissioners and their 24-person staff are imperious and haughty people. They may or may not be. It’s the law that makes the board — a quasi-judicial body — all but impervious to public sentiment. Its job is to determine whether a proposed project is in “the public good.” With precious few exceptions, it decides that it is.

Just the other day, for instance, it ruled that a proposed solar project in Morgan met that “public good” test. The residents of Morgan were almost to a person opposed to the project. That didn’t matter. Perhaps it shouldn’t. The PSB’s decision may have been the right one. But it’s easy to see why many rank-and-file folks don’t like it.

They dislike it even more because, as in the case of the gas line, utilities whose projects get PSB approval often resort to eminent domain, seizing (and paying for) property — or the limited use of property, through easements — whose owners do not want to sell it.

The board itself has no power of eminent domain. The utilities do. The law gives it to them. But it’s all part of the same process, and not everyone makes the distinction. Eminent domain is often necessary. The constitutions of both the United States (Fifth Amendment) and Vermont (Chapter 1, Article 2) specifically authorize it. But it is a sweeping exercise of government power, often maddening to the affected property owners and their friends and neighbors.

To some extent, then, the board and its staff are not responsible for their bad rep. But some of their actions exacerbate it. Just consider its original order to close that hearing:

“Access to the hearing site will be controlled by law enforcement officials, who will only permit the entry of the parties, their counsel, their witnesses, the board members, board staff, and the court reporter. All persons who attend … will be required to present a form of valid photo identification (e.g., a driver’s license, a passport, a government employee badge) in order to enter the hearing site.”

And no one on the PSB staff thought to say something like, “Uh, boss, won’t somebody point out that this sounds like the directive of an agency of a police state?”

Not if an agency doesn’t care what anybody thinks.

Furthermore, as Judge Reiss’ decision points out, the PSB did not bother to take other steps to deal with its (legitimate) concern about protesters disrupting the hearing. It didn’t even bother to ask the disrupters to stop disrupting, or, failing that, to leave the hearing room. It could have arranged with law enforcement to have the disrupters ejected.

It did not. Instead, it just ordered the meeting closed. Two of the three board members, including Chairman James Volz, are lawyers. So are at least six members of its staff. It boggles the mind to suppose that not one of them knew their order could not stand.

Asked whether that had been discussed, PSB chief counsel June Tierney, generally cooperative and accommodating in an interview, declined to answer.

Perhaps the Public Service Board and Rising Tide Vermont deserve each other.

Quote

Barbara Alsop

As you point out, Mr. Margolis, utilities get what they want before the PSB, even when they don’t do due diligence. This has been true from the time of rural electrification, when the naysayers were the current ratepayers who didn’t want to subsidize extension of electricity to rural towns. Then the “public good” was not in much doubt since electricity was obviously the path to the future.

The issue of utilities is not so clear any more. The regulators and the companies have reached an agreement that more is generally better, and they get along just fine without public input. But times are changing, as is the climate, and when the state won’t work to stop the changes, someone else has to assert the true public good. In 1992, the world first tried to slow the leviathan of climate change in Kyoto, and the US said no dice. In the years since, science has become a dirty word in this country, and the people have to protect themselves when their government doesn’t do it any more.

24 | -12

http://vtdigger.org/2016/09/04/margolis-drowning-in-a-tide-of-arrogance/

AGelbert · « **Reply #168 on:** September 18, 2016, 01:50:38 pm »

The Largest Prison Strike in U.S. History Enters Its Second Week

The largest prison strike in U.S. history has been going on for nearly a week, but there’s a good chance you haven’t heard about it. For months, inmates at dozens of prisons across the country have been organizing through a network of smuggled cellphones, social media pages, and the support of allies on the outside. The effort culminated in a mass refusal to report to prison jobs on September 9, the anniversary of the 1971 Attica prison uprising.

“This is a call to action against slavery in America,” organizers wrote in an announcement that for weeks circulated inside and outside prisons nationwide, and that sums up the strikers’ primary demand: an end to free prison labor. “Forty-five years after Attica, the waves of change are returning to America’s prisons. This September we hope to coordinate and generalize these protests, to build them into a single tidal shift that the American prison system cannot ignore or withstand.”

Since Friday, details on the strike’s success have trickled out of prisons with some difficulty, but organizers and supporters have no doubt the scale of the action is unprecedented, though their assessment is difficult to verify and some corrections departments denied reports of strike-related activities in their states.

Prisoners in 24 states and 40 to 50 prisons pledged to join the strike, and as of Tuesday, prisoners in at least 11 states and 20 prisons continued the protest, according to outside supporters in Alabama. Tactics and specific demands varied locally, with some prisoners reportedly staging hunger strikes, and detainees in Florida protesting and destroying prison property ahead of the planned strike date.

“There are probably 20,000 prisoners on strike right now, at least, which is the biggest prison strike in history, but the information is really sketchy and spotty,” said Ben Turk, who works on “in-reach” to prisons for the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World union helping to coordinate the inmate-led initiative from the outside.

Small rallies and demonstrations in support of the strikers were staged in dozens of U.S. cities and a couple of foreign countries, but so far the coordinated strike remains largely ignored on the outside.

“The strike has been pulled off, but we’re not quite breaking through to getting mainstream media,” Turk told The Intercept, noting that the strike was widely covered by independent media. “I talk to people who aren’t in that milieu and aren’t seeing it on their social media, and they’ll be like, ‘We didn’t hear about it, there’s nothing about it anywhere.’”

That’s bad news for the strikers, who rely on the support of outsiders to push for more radical reform but also depend on their outside visibility to mitigate retaliation by prison officials.

A week into the strike, a couple of groups were providing updates on the action, which organizers say will carry on indefinitely, as well as outside demonstrations of solidarity.

The information blackout is largely due to prison officials’ ample discretion in the details they choose to disclose. As the strikes began, reports emerged of several facilities being put on lockdown, some preemptively, but the only way for outsiders to get updates would be to call each facility and ask, usually getting no explanation about the reasons for a lockdown. Reports also emerged claiming that prison leaders in Virginia, Ohio, California, and South Carolina were put in solitary confinement as a result of the strike, according to the Alabama supporters.

The Alabama Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment, while corrections departments in Virginia, Ohio, and California — three of the states where strike-related disturbances were tracked by outsiders — denied that inmates in those states participated in the strike.

A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections said that prisons there had resumed normal operations after several hundred inmates staged protests and work stoppages at four facilities. The spokesperson added that several inmates identified in the disturbances were transferred to other regional institutions and will be disciplined “in accordance with procedure.” At the Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan, some 150 prisoners identified as “ringleaders” of the protests were also removed to other facilities after prisoners assigned to kitchen work declined to report to their jobs on September 9 and some 400 prisoners staged a peaceful protest. The situation there grew more tense a day later when prison guards went through the facility to remove suspected leaders, the Wall Street Journal reported, and the prison remains on lockdown.

Retaliation against strikers is also hard to track, but outside advocates said that several leaders were put in isolation and denied communication privileges, making it even harder for information to come out.

In one instance, at the Ohio State Penitentiary, Siddique Hasan, a well-known prison activist sentenced to death for his role in a 1993 prison uprising, was accused of plotting to “blow up buildings” on September 9. Hasan, an organizer with the Free Ohio Movement, was confined to isolation and denied access to the phone for nearly a month before the strike — a deliberate effort to prevent him from communicating with the outside about it, supporters said.

“What people have to realize is that these men and women inside prison — they expected to be retaliated against, but they sacrificed,” said Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, a former prisoner and a supporter of the Free Alabama Movement, the prisoner-led group that first called for the nationwide strike.

“People on the outside are not understanding they are being bamboozled,” he added, expressing disappointment that the strike hadn’t garnered more attention. “A lot of people are not realizing the value in what’s going on, they don’t realize that it’s slavery, that slavery still exists.”

While the most ambitious to date, the September 9 strike was hardly the first such effort by prisoners. Prison protests have been on the rise in recent years, following a 2010 strike during which thousands of prisoners in Georgia refused to work, an action that was followed by others in Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, and Washington. In 2013, California prisoners coordinated a hunger strike against the use of solitary confinement that at its peak involved 30,000 prisoners. And this year, prisoners rioted at Holman prison in Alabama — one of the facilities most actively involved in the current strike — and went on strike in Texas.

Pelican Bay State Prison, where inmates in long-term solitary confinement organized a hunger strike in 2013 that grew to include 30,000 prisoners at its peak.

Across the country, inmates are protesting a wide range of issues: from harsh parole systems and three-strike laws to the lack of educational services, medical neglect, and overcrowding. But the issue that has unified protesters is that of prison labor — a $2 billion a year industry that employs nearly 900,000 prisoners while paying them a few cents an hour in some states, and nothing at all in others. In addition to work for private companies, prisoners also cook, clean, and work on maintenance and construction in the prisons themselves — forcing officials to pay staff to carry out those tasks in response to work stoppages. “They cannot run these facilities without us,” organizers wrote ahead of the strike. “We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves.”

Prisoners on strike are calling for the repeal of an exception listed in the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which bans “involuntary servitude” in addition to slavery, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

That forced labor remains legal in prison is unknown to many Americans, and that’s something strikers hope to change with this action. But it’s also a sign of how little the general public knows about the country’s massive prison system. “A nation that imprisons 1 percent of its population has an obligation to know what’s happening to those 2.4 million people,” Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, wrote in a blog post about the tepid response to the strike. “And right now, we don’t know.”

But while information on prisons is notoriously hard to obtain, a potentially larger problem for the striking prisoners is the seemingly limited interest in their plight, which remains confined to a few activists, family members, and formerly incarcerated people, even at a time when criminal justice issues and prison reform are high on the agenda of social justice advocates and politicians alike.

Prisoners themselves have been largely excluded from the last few years’ debate on mass incarceration, but the very fact that they were able to coordinate a collective protest of this scale, with all its limitations, is testimony to their determination that the prison system needs radical change, strike organizers say.

“When you have people who are inside, locked up, who have overcome all these obstacles and barriers and have organized in 24 states, 40 to 50 prisons,” said Glasgow, “that means all of us out here need to start stepping up.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/the-largest-prison-strike-in-u-s-history-enters-its-second-week/

AGelbert · « **Reply #169 on:** September 26, 2016, 06:19:35 pm »

Police Killings Won’t Stop

Posted on Sep 25, 2016

By Chris Hedges

PAGE 1 of 2

The corporate state, no matter how many protests take place in American cities over the murder of unarmed citizens, will put no restraints on the police or the organs of security and surveillance. It will not protect the victims of state violence. It will continue to grant broader powers and greater resources to militarized police departments and internal security forces such as Homeland Security. Force, along with the systems of indoctrination and propaganda, is the last prop that keeps the corporate elites in power. These elites will do nothing to diminish the mechanisms necessary for their control.

The corporate state, by pillaging the nation, has destroyed capitalism’s traditional forms of social control. The population is integrated into a capitalist democracy by decent wages and employment opportunities, labor unions, mass-produced consumer products, a modest say in governance, mechanisms for marginal reform, pensions, affordable health care, a judiciary that is not utterly subservient to the elites and corporate power, the possibility for social, political and economic advancement, good public education, arts funding and a public broadcasting system that gives a platform to those who are not in service to the elites. These elements make possible the common good, or at least the perception of the common good.

Global capitalism, however, is not concerned with the cohesion of the nation-state. The relentless quest for profit trumps internal stability. Everything and everyone is pillaged and harvested for profit. Democracy is a mirage, a useful fiction to keep the population passive and compliant. Propaganda, including entertainment and spectacle, and coercion through state-administered surveillance and violence are the primary tools of governance. This is why, despite years of egregious police violence, there is no effective reform.

Propaganda is not solely about instilling an opinion. It is also about appropriating the aspirations of the citizenry into the vocabulary of the power elite. The Clintons and Barack Obama built their careers mastering this duplicity. They speak in words that reflect the concerns of the citizenry, while pushing through programs and legislation that mock those concerns. This has been especially true in the long campaign to curb excessive police force. The liberal elites preach “tolerance” and “professionalism” and promote “diversity.” But they do not challenge the structural racism and economic exploitation that are the causes of our crisis. They treat the abuses of corporate oppression as if they were minor administrative defects rather than essential components of corporate power.

Naomi Murakawa in her book “The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America” documents how the series of “reforms” enacted to professionalize police departments resulted in placing more money and resources into the hands of the police, giving them greater power to act with impunity and expanding legally sanctioned violence. All penal reform, from President Harry Truman’s 1947 Committee on Civil Rights report to the Safe Streets Act of 1968 to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to contemporary calls for more professionalization, have, she notes, only made things worse.

The fiction used to justify expanded police powers, a fiction perpetrated by Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Obama, is that a modernized police will make possible a just and post-racial America. White supremacy, racism and corporate exploitation, however, are built into the economic model of neoliberalism and our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” A discussion about police violence has to include a discussion of corporate power. Police violence is one of the primary pillars that allow the corporate elites to retain power. That violence will end only when the rule of these elites ends.

Quote

The calls for more training and professionalization, the hiring of minority police officers, the use of body and dash cameras, improving procedures for due process, creating citizen review boards, even the reading of Miranda rights, have done nothing to halt the indiscriminate use of lethal violence and abuse of constitutional rights by the police and courts. Reforms have served only to bureaucratize, professionalize and legalize state abuse and murder. Innocent men and women may no longer be lynched on a tree, but they are lynched on death row and in the streets of New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte and dozens of other cities. They are lynched for the reasons poor black people have always been lynched—to create a reign of terror that serves as an effective form of social control.

The wreckage left behind by deindustrialization created a dilemma for the corporate state. The vast pools of “surplus” or “redundant” labor in our former manufacturing centers meant the old forms of social control had disappeared. The corporate state needed harsher mechanisms to subjugate a population it condemned as human refuse. Those on probation and parole or in jails or prisons grew from 780,000 in 1965 to 7 million in 2010. The kinds of federal crimes punishable by death leaped from one in 1974 to 66 in 1994, thanks to the Clinton administration. The lengths of prison sentences tripled and quadrupled. Laws were passed to turn inner-city communities into miniature police states. This had nothing to do with crime.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/police_killings_wont_stop_20160925

AGelbert · « **Reply #170 on:** October 25, 2016, 09:16:49 pm »

List of good and bad politicians (Grades A to F

) in the fight for Drug Laws sanity.

http://www.drugpolicyaction.org/voter-guide/list.php

AGelbert · « **Reply #171 on:** November 04, 2016, 09:29:13 pm »

Has the Party of Lincoln Turned Into the Party of Sedition?

http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/has-party-lincoln-turned-party-sedition

AGelbert · « **Reply #172 on:** November 06, 2016, 07:23:52 pm »

Voter ID Laws are the New Jim Crow

AGelbert · « **Reply #173 on:** November 09, 2016, 08:48:57 pm »

November 9, 2016

The Urgency of Now - A Message from Paul Jay

Paul Jay concludes our election night coverage with a promise to our viewers to be a platform for movements trying to organize.

TRANSCRIPT of above Video: PAUL JAY, TRNN: As I said earlier, I don't think there's a party more responsible, assuming you're not happy about Trump's victory, if you are then I'm surprised you're watching us. But for other people who are not so happy and we've talked about the policies of the Clinton administration, of course Bush and the continuation of the economic policies of the Obama administration.

I think it’'s primarily the economic policies that are responsible for this. She asked Trump's language of noninterventionism in foreign affairs certainly appealed to people. But it was fundamentally the shifting of even more vast amounts of wealth into fewer and fewer hands that created this condition and the promises of Donald Trump I think by any objective measure will not alleviate those problems for people but as one of our guests said earlier, this is like, giving the finger, excuse me. This is just 'we don't believe any of you and we kind of don't believe Trump either but we're going to just give you the finger up because we don't know what else to do here'.

The xenophobia, the racism, all of this we've seen before in history. There's nothing new about blaming the other, blaming minorities. There's certainly nothing new in American history about this. We're going to be opening up a restaurant in the Real News building called Ida B.’s table and it's named after Ida B. Wells who was a very courageous journalist, investigative journalist, African American woman who exposed systemic lynching. One of the things in her investigation she exposed was that when unemployment went up amongst white workers, lynchings went up. And that it wasn’t just anger from white workers, that it was being deliberately organized by employers to let white workers vent by going out and lynching black workers.

So there's nothing new in what we're seeing here. But as dismal as this all might look for progressive people and I personally do think this is not the best of scenarios that could have happened tonight. There is also something here which is that the economic situation is smoke and mirrors. The economic recovery is false as far as any serious economist I've talked to. The federal bank threw tons of money at banks to make them look solvent. But the real bottom line of the economy is that demand low wages have hardly moved at all. Real demand is extremely low and it's going to get lower. Trump's policies are far from what he promised, are not going to increase jobs.

Certainly, not going to increase worker’s' wages which means the recession is likely to deepen here. The geopolitical threat in spite of Trump's talk, I don't personally believe it. I said personally in the broadcast I think it's going to be more of a Cheney situation with very aggressive foreign policy by Pence. Pence's critique of Clinton is she was weak on Russia. Pence and Trump have talked about we're going to put an end to ISIS. They've talked about bombings at a great scale. But Pence is as provocative with Russia as Clinton is. We'll see.

The number one problem we're all facing here, the really deep crisis and perhaps the most dangerous thing about what happened tonight is that we are now going to have a congress and a president that don't believe human caused climate change is real. If there was ever a time for all of these movements, whether it's black lives matter, whether it's climate change and whether it's workers fighting for rights. If it was ever a time for all of these movements to converge, merge, and not just take to the streets but work on various kind of electoral strategies and mass organizing, clearly it's now.

At the Real News we hope to be a platform for discussing and debating what comes next and we've done some of that tonight. We're going to continue. And let me once again stress the importance of the climate change issue which got almost no discussion whatsoever in this presidential election. We have a new film out called the Koch Brothers war on climate science. Well, Koch Brothers are going to get their way for the next two years until 2018 and maybe beyond.

It’s a very dangerous time. Very dangerous moment. But we humans have seen very dangerous times before. Whether it'’s before leading into the first world war before leading into the second world war. I say that with some meaning because we discussed a little bit earlier that there's going to be an I think disillusionment here of Trump supporters where their lives just don't get better. It doesn't matter that we know what is really coming down the pike here. Given this Trump-Pence alliance and Pence's connection with Karl Rove and the global agenda of these people, and it's not just these people because certainly democrats do the same thing. But the answer they have in these situations is war. And we need to be very aware of this and on guard for this.

So, we hope on the Real News that we will obviously be following all of this and we hope you will join us. So, thanks for sticking with us tonight and we'’ll be back tomorrow to talk about the post-election fall out and as I said we will be a platform in terms of everyone discussing what needs to be done and what needs to be done next. Thanks for joining us on the Real News Network.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=17636

AGelbert · « **Reply #174 on:** November 10, 2016, 10:42:09 pm »

Donald Trump Ran on Protecting Social Security But Transition Team Includes Privatizers

Zaid Jilani

November 10 2016, 6:17 p.m.

Donald Trump campaigned on protecting Social Security. At the Miami GOP presidential debate in March, he said he would “do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is; to make this country rich again.”

Quote

In August, his campaign told CNNMoney that “We will not cut Medicare or Social Security benefits, but protect them both.”

But two of the people said to be helming the president-elect’s Social Security Administration (SSA) transition team have a record of hostility to the program.

In an email obtained by The Intercept, unions representing Social Security employees reported that they had been notified of the names of four SSA veterans who were picked to run the transition team.

They are Mike Korbey, former senior advisor to the principal deputy commissioner in George W. Bush’s SSA; former Reagan SSA commissioner Dorcas Hardy; former SSA Inspector General Patrick O’Carroll; and former SSA General Counsel David Black.

Korbey is a long-time right-wing activist who has argued incorrectly that Social Security is “broken and bankrupt.” He worked for an organization called United Seniors Association, a sort of conservative counterpart to the AARP, that pushed for George W. Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme — and was hired by Bush to help tout his failed push for changes.

Dorcas Hardy, a Reagan administration SSA veteran, has also called for privatizing the program — in 1995, she took part in a press conference at the libertarian Cato Institute to advocate for that idea.

The SSA cannot unilaterally privatize the program. That takes legislation that Congress has to pass and the president has to sign. But if these are indeed the people the Trump administration is picking to helm the SSA, it’s a signal that he may be far more open to cutting benefits or privatizing the program than he let on.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/donald-trump-ran-on-protecting-social-security-but-transition-team-includes-privatizers/

AGelbert · « **Reply #175 on:** November 10, 2016, 10:46:22 pm »

Quote from: Eddie on November 10, 2016, 09:04:49 pm

Taken from a list of what are considered the worst 13 Supreme Court decisions in history, I don't think it's a coincidence that five of them have occurred since 1992, and four of them since 2000.

Kelo v. City of New London (2005): Taking land from one private party to give it to another is a valid public use under the Takings Clause, the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo. The decision allowed New London to condemn Susette Kelo's land and transfer it to a private developer as part of a "comprehensive redevelopment plan."

Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission (1992): A developer purchased vacant lots on South Carolina beaches. The state, seeking to prevent beach erosion, passed a management act which prevented Lucas from building homes on the land. That, according to the Supreme Court, was a total destruction of all "economically viable use" and a per se taking. Not only are the case's factual conclusions implausible, but as UCLA Law professor Jonathan Zasloff notes, the opinion is full of "expressly and needlessly anti-environmental" views.

Bush v. Gore (2000): You don't have to be a Democrat to question the wisdom of this Supreme Court case. In a partisan split, the Supreme Court's five Republican appointees halted the recount of contested ballots in Florida, handing the election to George W. Bush. Even Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has come to regret the ruling.

Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker (2008): Want to send a message to corporate wrongdoers? Don't expect the Roberts Court to make it easy. Following the Exxon Valdez oil spill, one of the greatest environmental disasters of the time, and after years and years of litigation, Exxon was finally held responsible for its negligent captain and hit with $5 billion in damages. Then the Supreme Court ruled that Exxon couldn't be subject to punitive damages in excess of compensatory ones, dropping total damages down to $500 million. Not only did Exxon evade billions in damages, the Supreme Court's ruling increased the value of its stock by $23 billion in two days. That was particularly a boon to Justice Alito, who chose to recuse himself from the case because he owned Exxon stock.

Citizens United v. FEC (2010): Perhaps the most hated decision from the Roberts Court, Citizens United held that political donations are speech protected by the First Amendment, opening the floodgates to unlimited personal and corporate donations to "super PACs." Though widely unpopular, the ruling isn't going away anytime soon. It would take a constitutional amendment or a new Supreme Court makeup to reverse the decision.

- See more at: http://blogs.findlaw.com/supreme_court/2015/10/13-worst-supreme-court-decisions-of-all-time.html#sthash.hcE74pmY.dpuf

Then there is:

Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980)

Made it legal to obtain a patent for GMO's, which led to the GMO seed monopoly and the glyophospate that poisons our food and is building up in our soil. Also legal to patent GMO animals, btw.

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/447/303.html

Kaley v. United States (2014)

The Supreme Court upheld the right for someone accused of a crime to have all their assets seized, even money clearly not connected to criminal activity....even the money you need to pay for your attorney.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/02/kaley_v_united_states_terrible_supreme_court_decision_lets_the_government.html

The Supreme Court has failed to protect us in recent years from the slow erosion of our liberties as guaranteed in the Constitution....by upholding most of the Patriot Act, which is probably the worst law ever passed by Congress.

I could go on. Anyone who thinks we need more Scalias, Burgers, Thomases, and Alitos should really try to understand how they've caved to law enforcement interests, corporate interests, and the Deep State, and screwed the American citizens.

Three or four more of them, and the US Constitutions will be completely gutted in a few years. That's really what you want?

Excellent post, Eddie.

AGelbert · « **Reply #176 on:** November 10, 2016, 10:54:36 pm »

Palloy said,

Quote

Despite everything that Trump has said about the corrupt establishment, we are going to see Trump working with the establishment, BEING the establishment, and failing in everything except tax cuts for the rich.

BINGO!

AGelbert · « **Reply #177 on:** November 11, 2016, 02:39:35 pm »

'I wonder who owns that beautiful Trump hotel?'

His lawyer says 'everything will be done legally' to create a 'blind trust' for President Trump but ethics experts says having your kids manage your billions isn't 'blind'

President-elect Donald Trump has said his company is worth $10 billion and that he will put three of his children in charge while he is president

The Trump organization includes hotel properties, golf courses, naming rights, a winery, modeling, and other business ventures

Trump counselor Michael Cohen says the company will go into a 'blind trust' During Trump's presidency

Three of Trump's children will run the business along with a 'large executive team' that has been with Trump for decades

Watchdog group says it's 'ridiculous' to call it a blind trust

Could foreign governments book Trump hotel rooms to woo the new administration?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3924574/I-wonder-owns-beautiful-Trump-hotel-lawyer-says-legally-create-blind-trust-President-Trump-ethics-experts-says-having-kids-manage-billions-isn-t-blind.html#ixzz4PjHEbaFf
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

AGelbert · « **Reply #178 on:** November 11, 2016, 06:33:24 pm »

Ralph Nader, "Democrats Have Lost Their Identity"

AGelbert · « **Reply #179 on:** November 12, 2016, 02:23:16 pm »

GO,
As you know, I was never a Hitlery supporter. Consequently, I am puzzled by your reference to Hitlery as if I preferred either of the two corrupt candidates.

Also, my post mocking the racists with a hamster eating a burrito was something I thought you would agree with and even get some good laughs out of, since you told me you were NOT glad that Trump had won. :coffee:

However, your recent post with a picture of Trump and the words, "Mr. President", along with your seeming association with racists by sarcastically saying you were a member in good sanding of the "deplorables", implies that you are a Trump supporter. I apologize for believing you were not a Trump supporter. I am saddened that you see no fascist threat from him and his deplorable, empathy deficit disordered, racist, xenophobic world view.

I wrote a post recently that you never replied to. Feel free to do so at your leisure. I am not your enemy, GO. I am a loyal servant of Jesus Christ. As you know, Trump and all the pseudo-Christian deplorables in his administration are not. I am reposting my recent post so that you can review it and respond. Thank you.

Quote

Quote from: Golden Oxen on November 09, 2016, 03:16:29 pm
Quote from: agelbert on November 09, 2016, 03:03:51 pm
Quote from: Golden Oxen on November 09, 2016, 02:28:36 pm
Quote
If GO is happy about this (S)election, he will soon be very disappointed.

Your analysis of my feelings and future outlook of our situation are as accurate as your totally wrong analysis of the election Agelbert, which was presented with your usual manner of factual pseudo scientific BS material.

One with half a brain would realize that a religious Gold Bug zealot and Lite Doomer are not the makeup of a happy camper.

My only satisfaction comes from the end of the **** Clintons.

Don't come **** on me again AG, my future responses will not be so kind nor generous in my understanding of your anger at being conned by the Leftist MSM and their total Bull **** Propaganda that you swallowed hook line and sinker.

Kindly vent your anger at them in the future, not me.

My, my, what vitriol. All I said as that I believe you will sorely be disappointed. Please feel free to describe exactly what part of what I posted was "BS". I was disagreeing with you, not attacking you. I am not angry at you. If you are not happy about a Trump win, all you need to do is say so. There is no need for such overt hostility.

I urge you to calm down. You are a good man that wants the best for the USA. So do I. Peace, brother.

Sorry Agelbert. This election has angered the geezer and made him very testy.

Never have I witnessed so many mediocre evil people in a horrible never ending cacophony of lies and skullduggery. Realizing they are actually the countries leaders has made it all the worse for me. I feel as if I expired and am in Hell of late.

A thousand apologies for misreading your posting.

Will take your splendid advice and stop posting for a while until I recover my cool. Regards, GO

Thank you, sir. Times are hard and we are all distressed by the increasing number of cracks in the road of our lives when we are increasingly in need of less misfortunes. The picture below is a metaphor of this (S)election.

Personally, I am not so much angered by the (s)election results, as saddened by them. Besides the Trailer Trash Trump thing, we've got a Governor in Vermont now that is going to make life very difficult for wind and solar Renewable energy growth by vowing to VETO ANY RE subsidies while ADDING lots of Republican red tape baloney for RE project site approval and Organic agriculture while simultaneously working diligently to protect fossil fuel subsidies and other pollution product vested interests along with GMO crops and commercial pesticide use on Vermont farms. As if that wasn't enough grief, the white supremacists here are VERY happy with the new governor.

Here's a map from 2015 showing the racist demographic in the USA. Compare it with the map of Trailer Trash Trump's wins. I may be wrong, but I thing that corroboration and causation are linked.

The most racist areas in the United States

This lady, although she does not reference any map, sees the link too:
White Supremacy wins—for now.

By Denise Oliver Velez

Wednesday Nov 09, 2016 · 3:40 AM EST

732 Comments

KKK cross burning (graphic at article link)
attribution: Confederate till Death - English Wikipedia

Time to wake up, you white people of good faith.

Look in the mirror.

See Amerikkka for what it is without the gloss.

See something black folks have been trying to tell you.

It’s not “populism” or “economic anxiety.”

Call it by name — White Supremacy.

I thought the black and brown firewall, with a little help from our white friends would hold back the tide.

I was wrong. My bad.

Thanksgiving is coming. A time many of you gather with friends and family.

Killing racism starts at home.

Maybe it’s time for you to start speaking up and fighting back.

Lord knows we black folks have been doin’ it for centuries.

My people survived slavery and Jim Crow.

We’ll survive Donald Trump too — though I’m sure there will be deaths — there always are.

America has a white supremacy problem.

You are either part of the problem, or part of the solution.

Choose.

P.S. I ain’t leaving. The bones of my enslaved ancestors are buried here. They helped build this place with blood, sweat, tears, and laughter. I’ll fight on. In their name.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/09/1594035/-White-Supremacy-wins-for-now

I'm not leaving either. The only way I leave Vermont and my keyboard is feet first. Thanks again for your cordial apology and reply.

God Bless you and yours.

November 12, 2016 Agelbert NOTE: I too am glad that Hitlery is not President.

I wrote this in A Disqus comment before the election:

Quote

agelbert > Sekhmetnakt • 14 days ago

It's 6 evil stuff of one and half a dirty dozen for the other. The only sane choice is Jill Stein.

 

I also wrote, on more than one occasion, that Hitlery was just Trump in Drag.

All that said, there is an upside to this sorry situation. The upside I see to Trailer Trash Trump's Administration with a Republican House, Senate and Supine Corporate friendly Supreme Court is that now the Right Wing Fascists will have no cover for their skullduggery.

They, as is their rapacious and boundless greed based wont, will overreach and "deliver" a destroyed Medicare, Social Security, degraded environment, less environmental protection, more sickness, more war and more social decay. Scapegoating minorities will be, of course, tried. But I am pretty certain it ain't gonna work this time.

I will be personally negatively affected directly because with the voucher system on Medicare, I will probably NOT be able to afford a new pacemaker replacement operation when the one I have had since 2007 gives out in about two years (according to the last battery check). I'm sure you don't consider my misfortunate a good thing.

Trump is very, very bad for you, GO, not just me and many minorities. You will be sorely disappointed if you don't think so now. Watch and observe diligently and objectively. The Truth will be revealed.

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