The PCTC Blog

The Supremes Screw The Pooch; It's Bad, But Not Insurmountable

I get a real sense that many people, including some usually very intelligent people, don’t understand the significance of the Supreme Court’s “free speech” decision in Citizens United v. FEC last week. That’s troubling, because we can’t work to fix a problem unless we understand the problem.

First of all, if you’re one of those who think “corporate personhood” is the culprit, you don’t understand the problem Used properly, “corporate personhood” is a good thing. When you start a business, creating a corporate “person” separate from yourself is a wise move, because it protects you and your family from liability should anything bad happen during the business day. How many folks would choose to not start businesses, if they knew they could lose everything, including the family home and their retirement account, because of a slip and fall or negligence by an employee or your little corporation? And let’s get real; the overwhelming majority of corporations are extremely small; not everyone is Exxon or Wal-Mart.

But corporations are not real "persons" under the law, and they were never meant to be. Put it this way; if we're interchangeable, then shouldn't we all pay the corporate income tax rate, since it's much lower than our rate?

Reposted: The Next Big Reform: Removing Bribery and Extortion From the System

We probably should have made this first on our list, but the terrible economy kind of distracted us, and then the health care debate came up. So, first things first;  we need to push our members of Congress and our Senators to pass a health insurance reform bill, but then we have to take care of a major problem that's made this reform more difficult than it should have been, and is destined to make banking and securities reform, which have to come next, ten times more difficult, as well.

It's way past time for lobbying and campaign finance reform.

A Bad Week for Progressives, or a Wake-Up Call?

It’s been a rough week to be a progressive, to be sure.

First, Martha Coakley lost Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat, which supposedly put the health care reform bill in jeopardy.

Then, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court showed its current stripe and actually ruled that corporations didn’t have enough power in the political arena, and could spend as much as they wanted campaigning for anything they wanted, thus certifying that the more money you have, the more speech you’re entitled to.

Then, to top it all off, Air America radio went belly-up, thus taking away a very important progressive voice from airwaves that have been dominated by wingnuts in recent years.

All in all, a lousy week, huh?

Obama's First Year: A Grade of B and Getting Better

I know many are frustrated with the performance of the guy you worked so hard for during the last election season, but I have to tell you; most of those frustrations are borne out of a warped concept of reality.  A year almost to the day after we finally got rid of the worst president to ever occupy (literally) the White House, liberals are so disheartened they let Ted Kennedy’s seat slip into the hands of a former nude model. And they seem almost giddy about it. One of the most-used and least-useful phrases in a liberal’s arsenal is “it sends a message.” Letting a wingnut win an election doesn’t “send a message.” It gives the wingnuts hope, it makes them giddy, and it gives them credibility.

Liberals’ frustration with Barack Obama is just wrongheaded, and our tendency to do things like take Ted Kennedy’s seat for granted and/or use it to “send a message”  is why the neocons have held court for so long. Why do you think people with no ideas who are against everything keep on winning elections? It’s because we hand them to them on a silver platter. And we do so because too many liberals have the same “all or nothing” penchant that infects the right, and a warped view of how politics works.

Yes, I said warped. Liberals, by and large, have a wonderful view of humanity, and what they’d like to do for it. We have a wonderful spirit and we have lots of compassion. But for some reason, we don’t understand the process, or we think we don’t have to bother with it. For some reason, a far-too-large number of self-described progressives see what they want to see, and not what’s actually there. They saw the word “change” bandied about by a politician throughout 2008, and apparently they imagined the entire world would be covered in sunshine and flowers, the rainforests would all grow back immediately, the climate would change back, everyone would be given an electric car and free health care for life.

Welcome to the real world, folks. Nothing happens in a year. It never has, and it never will. To those of you who saw Barack Obama as a flaming progressive, and feel somewhat betrayed by his actions during his first year, wake the hell up and smell the coffee. It took 40 years to get this messed up, and it took the disaster of the last eight years to wake voters up to the fact that it was messed up. Changing things overnight is simply not in the cards.

Join reality, won’t you? President Barack Obama just had one of the best first years of any president in the post-war era. If you can’t see it, you’re missing something special. You might want to stop focusing on the negatives, and start looking at that half-full glass for a change; I’m just saying…

Note to Progressives: Bullcrap is Bullcrap, Whoever writes it. (Coakley's It. Period.)

I’ve taken on so many right wing articles over the years, I think it’s time I took on a left wing blog for a charge.

I have received a certain article from four different “progressives” thus far, and every time I read it, the first word that comes to mind is "bullshit." It's from a blog entitled "Single Payer Action," and the breathless crap coming from it just really pisses me off. The article is basically about why you should NOT vote for Martha Coakley if you live in Massachusetts, or why you shouldn’t care whether or not Coakley should win election tomorrow if you don’t live there.

Before I get started ripping this piece of crap apart, let me reiterate two things;

One, if you live in Massachusetts, and you do NOT vote for Martha Coakley, you’re a damned fool. It’s unlikely that not having her vote on health care would completely derail reform, but it will make it far easier for Republicans to filibuster everything. It’s not just about health care; Republicans are trying to block everything, and having 41 votes will make that job easier for them.

Second, I am all for a single payer health plan and we do have to work in that direction. In a perfect world, I would love to see us scrap the entire health insurance system and start over. But it’s not going to happen all at once, and anyone who thinks it can has a screw loose. Keep in mind three things; 85% of Americans have health insurance; about 90% of those people get it through their employer, who pays the bulk of the cost; and most people won’t get sick in a given year. To expect a groundswell of support for scrapping the whole system and starting over puts you in Never-Never land, people. It’s just not happening.We will have to work in that direction, step-by-step.

Now, about this article…

First off, the centerpiece of this garbage is a Powerpoint presentation from an idiot from the Cato Institute who's selling a book. The premise of the book and presentation is that Barack Obama is bankrupting us, in order to “enrich() his Wall Street friends, corporate lobbyists and union bosses."

Um, right.

Some Things Transcend Politics: Haiti

Sometimes, you just have to do something... This is one of those times...

It doesn't matter how much you can give, but give something to help the Haitians survive the devastating earthquake that has hit their home. We can always talk later about what led to a lot of the devastation, but for now, just imagine how you would feel if the city you lived in simply collapsed one day, and killed tens of thousands of your neighbors...

I know everyone has it in them; even I've given a few dollars. Give up a couple of cups of overpriced convenience store coffee; one pack of smokes; one issue of your favorite magazine; one video rental; one pay-per-view; because it really does help.

Click below to learn how you can help...

Jesus Christ, Ann and Brit! Give It a Rest!

God Himself warned us about this. The Bible itself repeatedly warns us of false prophets and the danger they cause when they use God’s name to both hold people down and shut off debate. If you’re into the Ten Commandments at all, let me clue you in; you know that one about taking “the Lord’s name in vain”? Well, that wasn’t targeted at the person who smacks his thumb with the hammer and shouts “Goddammit!” at the top of his lungs; it’s targeted to those who will use God’s name and likeness to oppress people and to take away their freedom to speak and act in their own best interests.

False prophets abound these days, folks, especially in the right wing political arena. And it’s time we started calling these assholes out. In fact, I was speaking to God last night, and he’s pretty pissed off, too, and He wants me to start exposing these people more. (He actually called them “assholes” too, that’s how pissed He is.)

The latest incident of “false propheteering” started with former reporter and current Fox News gasbag Brit Hume, as he suggested that Tiger Woods (a) needed forgiveness for whatever people think he had done and (b) had to choose a religion that was forgiveness-ready, and that Christianity was absolutely it. Woods’ current religion, believed by Hume to be Buddhism (although he wasn’t really sure) simply wasn’t good enough, and he should feel free to choose Hume’s religion, which apparently has a drive-thru.

At The Top of the List: Financial Reform -- Lottery Capitalism Has to GO!

For those of you who have just started reading this series of columns, I am discussing the “lottery capitalist” mentality that has gripped our economy and threatens to strangle it if we don’t wake up and fight it off. I call this phony strain of capitalism “lottery capitalism” because it benefits a very small number of people – the jackpot winners – and leaves the bulk of us to split the rest of the money.

A healthy economy is one in which everyone is on essentially equal footing and has an equal opportunity to generate the wealth needed to live freely and comfortably. In a lottery capitalist economy, wealth is based almost solely on luck; the ability to make a living is completely dependent on someone else – the lottery winner – and whether or not they do the right thing from a business perspective.

Think about it. Even during "good times," Americans are one pink slip away from total disaster at any given time. Whether or not we continue to get a paycheck is dependent on whether someone else wants to hire us for a job, and is willing to pay us a reasonable wage.  Virtually all employment is now at-will, which means that, absent a contract, an employer can fire you for any reason, or no reason at all. Want to form a union? The Republicans have successfully taken that right away from you, as well, for all intents and purposes.

In short, lottery capitalism favors a very small number of people, with the vast majority of us forced to cross our fingers and hope for the best, which is why it should come as no surprise to anyone that our financial system is failing. It's rigged in favor of the jackpot winners and against the rest of us. Such economic systems always fail, especially in a supposedly democratic system. 

As a consequence of this lottery capitalist mentality, we have been taught to believe that responsibility is a one-way concept; that we have to be responsible when we borrow money or use a credit card, but the lender has no responsibility at all. Hence, the system is horribly broken, and seems to collapse on a fairly regular basis. We’ve been taught to rejoice during economic bubbles and to take the blame when they inevitably burst. We accept constant,  unrelenting and debilitating penalties as part of our responsibility as a consumer, even as those  entrusted with caring for our money suffer seem to feel entitled to bonuses even as they lose our money.

Broadcasting Industry in Danger -- Lottery Capitalists Run Amok

The Communications Act of 1934 was one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. It established the reality that we the people own the airwaves and those who broadcast over them merely possess a license to use them. No one who holds a broadcast license is expected to make money. If they do, fine; if not, hey; it's not our problem.

In return, licensees have to agree to broadcast programming and information “in the public interest.” In other words, in order to use the public airwaves, they agree to make time available for the public to broadcast messages that may only be of interest to a small segment of the public. In other words, the airwaves are supposed to represent all of the people, not just those with the most cash.

They are our airwaves for a very good reason; a “national security” reason, actually. If there is an emergency, the airwaves are our main lines of communication, folks. When something bad happens or is about to, people need to be able to turn to their radios or their televisions and find out what’s going on. When the power goes out, you can’t turn on your cable tv and your Internet may not work. But authorities can always get information out over AM and FM radio. Broadcast television is somewhat less reliable for information than radio, but there are portable battery powered televisions out there and sometimes visual evidence of a catastrophe has a greater impact on folks than audio evidence, so it’s just as important.

Well, due to our fascination with lottery capitalism, we are dangerously close to losing our broadcast industry. Truly moronic corporate whores thought they could become rich by monopolizing the industry, their attempt failed miserably and now they’ve put our broadcast airwaves at risk by strangling the life out of it. And with the various corporate-whore-friendly modifications to the Communications Act passed by Congress in recent years, our own government sold us out and let them do so.

Lottery Capitalism: Bono's Crazy; File Sharing is Good for Artists

I was reading the New York Times this past weekend when I came across a little passage in an po-ed piece that made me think of another example of lottery capitalism; the music business. How many of us know musicians who are really good, but either never got a record deal, or got a record deal with no support from the record company they signed with? There are probably a few hundred artists and bands who make a ton of money from recording, while the rest of the music business is left to starve. There are a lot of industries like this, but the music industry is actually the best example of how we can move away from lottery capitalism in other areas of the economy.  

The news article in question was an op-ed in last Sunday’s Times, written by Bono, the lead singer for U2. What he says shows a cluelessness brought on by having been a winner in lottery capitalism:

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

I’m sorry folks, but I repeat; this is absolutely clueless.

Lottery Capitalism is Bad for Business

(Part one of a series)

Businesspeople have apparently become phenomenally stupid in recent years. Maybe they were always stupid, but I doubt it. I suppose I can’t blame them; we've been led by some seriously disturbed wingnuts for most of the last 30 years, and they’ve warped the system to the point that it no longer resembles capitalism.

You see, to make money in a truly capitalist system, you’re supposed to earn it; you’re not entitled to become rich just because you want to.

But our system no longer works the way it used to.  I’m 51 years old, so I’m not ancient, but I can remember a time when going to the supermarket was a destination our family took once every couple of weeks. Of course, the supermarket was locally owned and carried mostly local and regional items. When we needed some groceries in the interim, we would go to Lane’s; a little grocery nestled in the basement of the Lanes’ home on Elm Road. If we wanted shoes repaired – you know, back in the days when people did that -- we would take them to the guy who worked in a little shop across from the old Hollywood Theater; his shop, as well, was in the basement of his home. The Hollywood Theater was a little local movie house with one screen, and it was packed every weekend. It was owned by an old lady who looked similar to Elvira Gulch, who lived in an apartment above the theater.

All of those places are gone these days; victims not of a booming economy, but rather a phony economy, in which capitalism’s main purpose – to create a marketplace in which everyone can make a living – has been perverted by the right and changed into a lottery system of sorts. The goal used to be entrepreneurialism, whereby wealth was created on a mostly-equitable basis through hard work, and in which almost every dollar was earned. Now, because of the snake-oil salesmen on the right, wealth is an entitlement for a very few, who don’t actually earn it, but just happen to get lucky and get rich.