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In Citizens United II, How Justices Rule May Be an Issue Itself – NYTimes.com

11 Jun

The Montana Supreme Court has decided that “that a state law regulating corporate political spending was constitutional notwithstanding Citizens United.” The US Supreme Court is expected to reverse that decision later this week. However . . .

The main question on Thursday, then, will be how the court will reverse the Montana decision. It could call for briefs, set the case down for argument in the fall and issue a decision months later. Or it could use a favorite tool of the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — the summary reversal.

Nine times so far this year, the court has issued an unsigned opinion ruling on the merits of a dispute without full briefing or oral argument. Such rulings have been the subject of criticism from practitioners and the legal academy. These critics say it is a mistake to resolve cases without adequate information and deliberation. It is also problematic, they add, to do so anonymously.

The latest critique arrived this month in The Tulane Law Review in an article by Ira P. Robbins, a law professor at American University. It was called “Hiding Behind the Cloak of Invisibility,” and it considered “per curiam” opinions, ones issued “by the court” without indication of authorship. “In the first six years of Chief Justice Roberts’s tenure,” Professor Robbins wrote, “almost 9 percent of the court’s full opinions were per curiams.”

Such opinions suggest that what they have to say is so simple and obvious that no serious judicial effort is needed. Yet not a few unsigned majority opinions have come with dissents. That combination — an unsigned majority decision and a signed dissent — was “an oxymoronic form, one that simultaneously insisted on both institutional consensus and individual disagreement,” Laura Krugman Ray, a law professor at the Widener University School of Law, wrote in 2000 in The Nebraska Law Review.

Prof Ray believes that this is a history-making case and that all “should sign on to what he or she subscribes to.” We agree. But we also fear that we are increasingly ruled by powerful cowards. We’ll see.

via In Citizens United II, How Justices Rule May Be an Issue Itself – NYTimes.com.

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A Practical or Coalition Strategy for “Truth and Traditions” Party as Paleocon Greens

5 Jun

By Charlie Keil

There is NO split in the Republican Party unless there is a real T for Truth Party that old-fashioned, paleo-conservatives can vote for happily with confidence and in good conserving conscience. By Traditions, plural, we mean the diversity of eco-moralities that once upon a time (pick your pre-industrial era) kept all of us in some kind of balance with “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” If there is no real TnT Party most of those Ron Paul teaparty voters stay trapped inside the Republican Party at election time. You can guess who will win big in 2012, a divided but ‘big tent’ Republican Party. Same party that elected colorful women to governorships in New Mexico and North Carolina. Continue reading →

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We Live in a Market State

3 Jun

In 2002 Philip Bobbitt published The Shield of Achilles, his response to Francis Fukuyama’s prediction of an era of world peace based on the triumph of capitalism over Soviet communism.  In a brilliant review of this book published the following year in New Left Review, Gopal Balakrishnan summarized Bobbitt’s predictions for the future of the capitalist society to come:

“An entirely new political form [of state], the market-state has arisen to supplant [the nation-state]. . . . the market-state ceases to base its legitimacy on improving the welfare of its people.

Instead, this new form of polity simply offers to maximize opportunities—‘to make the world available’ to those with the skills or luck to take advantage of it.  ‘Largely indifferent to the norms of  justice, or for that matter any particular set of moral values, so long as law does not act as an impediment to economic competition,’ the market-state is defined by three paradoxes.  Government becomes more centralized but, yet weaker; citizens increasingly become spectators; welfare is retrenched, but security and surveillance systems expand.  Bobbitt etches the consequences imperturbably.  The grip of finance on electoral politics may become so tight as to erase the stigma of corruption.  Waves of privatization will continue to roll  over the state, eventually dissolving large parts of it into a looser, shifting ensemble of subcontracted and clandestine operations . . . .

Public education will implode as parents seek to augment the human capital of their children with early investments in private school.  Inequality and crime could grow to Brazilian proportions.  Civil liberties will have to be reconceived to accommodate far-reaching anti-terrorist dragnets.  Some of the fictions of citizenship will gradually give way to more realistic weighted voting systems.  Representative government itself will become increasingly nominal as media plebiscites openly assume the function f securing the assent of atomized multitudes.  National security spin-doctoring will become so pervasive as to engender a new epistemology of managed opinion.”

Gopal Balakrishnan, Antagonistics (London: Verso, 2009), pp. 54-55

By Hayden White, via ARCADE: Literature, the Humanities, and the World.

International – Robert Wright – Do Obama’s Drone Strikes Imperil America? – The Atlantic

31 May

Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence until May of 2010, gave the Times a simple analysis of Obama’s penchant for drone strikes: “It is the politically advantageous thing to do–low cost, no U.S. casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.”

Tuesday night’s Frontline episode on Al Qaeda in Yemen didn’t add much substance to the Times-Post analysis, but it lent a visual dimension, showing us the craters left by lethal drones and the al Qaeda forces who are energized and expanded by the strikes. ‘We’re at war with America and it’s allies,” says an al Qaeda footsoldier.

via International – Robert Wright – Do Obama’s Drone Strikes Imperil America? – The Atlantic.

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‘Why Don’t We Try Peace?’: An Interview With Dennis Kucinich | The Nation

30 May

Tell the truth. Peace is the way.

We need to go back to 9/10/2001, before our transit into a world of endless fear. As part of our journey we need to have a very open, honest discussion in the context of a national effort at truth and reconciliation. Because we have proceeded to so distort the meaning in this country as to our choices to defend America, which impacts international policy and domestic policy. A slaughter of innocents abroad, a diminishing of civil rights at home—we need to go back to truth telling in America to talk about what were the precedents of 9/11, how can we recreate America without fear. And the only way we can do that is to really understand what happened, why it happened, the effect that it’s had on the country, the wrong choices that have been made, who’s responsible for those choices, calling them forward to get them to admit that they made a mistake, having those who cashed in on it held accountable—we really need to do that. We will not ever get out of this never-ending war against terror unless we start to tell the truth. Until we do that, whoever’s in the White House may not matter that much.

via 'Why Don't We Try Peace?': An Interview With Dennis Kucinich | The Nation.

The NATO-industrial complex – NATO – Salon.com

24 May

“The Pentagon and defense industry should be thankful,” wrote the magazine, “that politicians don’t make military-spending decisions based on public opinion.”

Missile-defense is one of the oldest boondoggles in defense spending. Now the goodies are being palmed off on NATO, to be paid for by US taxpayers. It’s like shoveling our tax dollars into a high-tech rabbit hole.

Uncertain defense budgets help fill in the context of industry’s push to expand missile defense under the NATO umbrella. In 2012, it is a lonely major transatlantic project on the defense-spending horizon. The new issue of NDIA’s magazine National Defense features an article lamenting the diminishing prospects of “shiny objects” in Allied budgets. “Some contractors might decide to wait for the good times to return,” editorializes the magazine, “but most others are going to be following the money to what is increasingly becoming industry’s more reliable cash cows: Maintenance, repairs and logistics support.”

The “cash cow” of maintenance may help pass the lean times, but it doesn’t launch research labs and production lines that can stay active indefinitely as can a sophisticated and essentially open-ended missile defense system. …

With NATO missile defense, it is the U.S. taxpayer picking up the tab. “A significant European role in financing [NATO missile defense] is unlikely in present circumstances,” says Ian Anthony, research coordinator for nuclear weapons and arms control at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “I doubt if European countries could find the domestic political support for funding it.” Continue reading →

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It’s time for a Corporate Spring – AlterNet – Salon.com

23 May

Our economy is dominated by a monoculture business model, Kelly says, driven largely by publicly traded corporations that have built in pressure from Wall Street for maximum short-term earnings. But a healthy, living economy needs biodiversity. We can find this if we begin to look around — across the U.S. and the world — where there are businesses designed not for maximum profit, but with a mission-driven social and economic architecture. One of these models is the “social enterprise.”

The Social Enterprise Alliance defines these organizations as “businesses whose primary purpose is the common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of the marketplace to advance their social, environmental and human justice agendas.” And one of the defining characteristics is that “The common good is its primary purpose, literally ‘baked into’ the organization’s DNA, and trumping all others.”

Here’s an example. Remember Working Assets? Starting out as a progressive-minded credit card company in the ’80s, it added phone service — first long-distance in the ’90s, then cellular in 2000 — and now it has created the subsidiary CREDO Mobile. The company operates as a for-profit business, which is privately owned, with most of the employees owning the stock, so it doesn’t have to bow to Wall Street pressures. They use their profits to help support causes they believe in — so far the amount of money donated is $70 million and counting.

via It’s time for a Corporate Spring – AlterNet – Salon.com.

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Americans Elect defeated by American indifference – Alex Pareene – Salon.com

15 May

Ignore the snarky tone of the article. It has some useful information. Too bad Americans Elect didn’t find more interest.

Poor Americans Elect. The well-funded experiment in fielding a third-party presidential candidate selected by the Internet is this close to giving up. It doesn’t have a candidate. It was apparent back in March that none of the declared candidates would meet the threshold of support necessary to qualify it for the online primary votes scheduled for May. Since then, no white knight has emerged….

A lot of the more prominent AE supporters and many of the people involved in organizing the group are disillusioned Republicans — like former Giuliani speechwriter John Avlon and former Bush strategist Mark McKinnon — which helps explain why AE keeps going after people who only appeal to … disillusioned moderate Republicans.

AE dreamed that superstars like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg or former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would decide to jump into the race once AE did the hard work of securing ballot access. You may note that neither of those candidates represents a significant national constituency whose interests are currently being ignored by the two major parties.

via Americans Elect defeated by American indifference – Alex Pareene – Salon.com.

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Council to Ask Banks to Describe Efforts to Aid Poor Areas – NYTimes.com

15 May

As a huge trading loss at JPMorgan Chase intensifies criticism of the nation’s big banks, the New York City Council plans to vote on Tuesday to require banks to make public their efforts to be socially responsible before the city decides where to deposit the billions of dollars it keeps in banks….

Cleveland and Philadelphia have had laws in place for over a decade similar to the one being proposed in New York, and now the financial crisis has led several other cities to consider them. Pittsburgh recently passed a bill that requires banks that want city deposits to submit community reinvestment plans every two years. Los Angeles, Boston, and San Diego are all considering similar measures.

It’s  a start, but Bloomberg is opposed, naturally.

via Council to Ask Banks to Describe Efforts to Aid Poor Areas – NYTimes.com.

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Don’t Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon’s Budget Could Boost the Economy | The Nation

13 May

However, the crucial question is not how many jobs are created by spending, for example, $1 billion on the military. Rather, it is whether spending that $1 billion creates more or fewer jobs when compared with spending $1 billion on alternative public purposes, such as education, healthcare and the green economy—or having consumers spend that same amount of money in any way they choose.

In fact, compared with these alternative uses, spending on the military is a poor source of job creation. As we see in the graph (right), $1 billion in spending on the military will generate about 11,200 jobs within the US economy. That same $1 billion would create 16,800 jobs through clean energy investments, 17,200 jobs within the healthcare sector or 26,700 jobs through support of education. That is, investments in clean energy, healthcare and education will produce between 50 and 140 percent more jobs than if the same money were spent by the Pentagon. Just giving the money to households to consume as they choose would generate 15,100 jobs, 35 percent more than military spending.

via Don’t Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon’s Budget Could Boost the Economy | The Nation.

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