Socialism or Democracy?

Capitalism has failed everywhere it has been tried. The US is the last bastion of corporate capitalism, and everywhere we look we see failures to comprehend and resolve the issues of the day. Yet in one important way, capitalists have succeeded. The top capitalists, the one percent, control more than one third of all the wealth in the country. The rich have succeeded by a series of political maneuvers that have each left a residue of wealth on them, like the ring in a bathtub.

1. The ultra-rich have defeated trade unionism.

The unions once challenged the ultra-rich at the ballot box and won concessions that led to a higher standard of living for all. The ultra-rich countered by passing laws like the Taft-Hartley Act, that nullified New Deal legislation favoring unions and made it possible for companies to kill unions outright. The ultra-rich blamed big unions for the loss of jobs in heavy industry, like steel production, automobiles, and the garment industries. Common people believed the propaganda against unions and stopped supporting them.

2. The ultra-rich have harnessed the government like a mule.

While they decry big government, the ultra-rich are the ones who profit most from it. The war-mongers in congress pay $500 billion or more annually to the ultra-rich to provide guns and bullets and other materials of war--when there is no war going on! The super-rich also get subsidies for various industries like farming and oil extraction. 

Passing democratic social programs will mean unemployment benefits that don't get cut off, living wages determined by unions, medical care for all, day care for working parents, controls on Wall Street and hi-tech entrepreneurs, rent support, and other improvements in the lives of ordinary citizens.

No doubt conservatives will oppose these reforms the same way they oppose gay marriage, by saying that these democratic measures will harm business in some utterly vague way, without giving any details about how that harm will happen or how it will happen. Trouble is, conservatives will have a tough time selling these fears because their policies over the last 20 years have resulted in stagnant wages, permanent unemployment, urban disintegration, and jobs being created everywhere in the world but here.

3. The ultra-rich have set up a system of propaganda that includes a TV Station (Fox News(, a once-proud newspaper (Wall Street Journal), a bunch of loudmouth radio hosts, a sizable number of front groups masquerading as think tanks, and the finest Congress money can buy.

4. The ultra-rich have used defects in the US Constitution to control the government without actually winning elections. They have an unelected Supreme Court doing their bidding, dozens of gerrymandered house districts, and a bunch of Senators representing the trees in small states.

When liberals try to change the way things are today, the ultra-rich raise cries of socialism, which sounds ominous but which has lost all meaning. Socialism is actually the result of democracy, where the majority gets to govern.

Charles Koch spills his guts in WSJ Op-Ed

Charles Koch believes that everything he does is good. Other people are not to be trusted to make decisions that he disagrees with. He is the most conceited, self-righteous, and misguided person in the headlines today.

Koch makes several dubious claims in his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. Koch claims he has spent his life studying the principles that enable people to improve their lives. This statement is demonstrably false. Koch has spent his entire life running a multi-national corporation. This occupation has left him little time for reflection.

Koch lists these principles as dignity, respect, equality before the law, and personal freedom. These are not the principles listed in our founding documents, where the authors discuss life, liberty and the the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution includes a bill of rights that nowhere mentions dignity or respect. Those principles are too vague and ill-defined to serve as the cornerstone of any philosophy. Dignity is an attribute of authority. A judge has dignity, a king has dignity. Respect is a two-edged sword: Respect is earned as well as granted.

Koch lists equality before the law as a fundamental principle, but he has not spent his life donating to legal services for the poor, to ensure that everyone is equal before the law. He lists personal freedom as another fundamental principle, but he runs an organization, a corporation, which tells each employee exactly what he or she should do. Each corporate employee has a written job description that describes exactly what the corporation expects the employee to do for 40 hours a week. There's not much personal freedom there.

Furthermore, the corporation has unwritten rules that restrict personal freedom. The employees must obey all the edicts imposed on them by the executives of the company. They must never question authority, since insubordination is grounds for immediate dismissal. In many ways, a corporation limits the personal liberty of its employees, in the clothes they wear, in the language they use, and in the opinions they must hold about the company and its place in the world.

Koch apparently finds it acceptable to control his employees in this way, but believes that the elected government should never make any rules that affect its citizens. The citizens of a country vote to choose the government and the laws they wish to follow. The citizens of this country choose representatives to make those laws and enforce them. Koch's corporation is a dictatorship. One man makes all the decisions for everyone.

The worst thing that our current government does, according to Koch, is tell people how to run their lives. It does this because it does not trust them to run their own lives, he says. It is Koch who does not trust the people, however. He does not believe a government should rule with the consent of the governed. According to him, no one should have to obey any law he or she disagrees with. This is not a prescription for any real-world government, and it is certainly not a description of how Koch runs his company.

Koch's most egregious lie is when he pretends that his company cares about the environment. The company has won environmental awards, it is true, but these are awards for such things as keeping their oil tankers from leaking. They are not awards for fighting against global warming, because Koch does not acknowledge that greenhouse gases are a problem that has anything to do with him.

Koch is concerned about rearranging deck furniture while the ship is sinking. His refineries only release low levels of greenhouse gases, he says. His company has a fine safety record. He argued for the demise of the ethanol tax credit. But Koch industries is fighting to stop conversion of our energy grid to renewable energy.

Koch has no sympathy for the plight of people all over the world who find their homes threatened by rising sea levels, or watch their crops wither in the ever-hotter sun. Instead, he claims that he is not his brother's keeper. He takes no responsibility for his own actions. He spends vast sums of money to defeat politicians who might be tempted to listen to their constituents and limit the influence of undemocratic corporations.

Charles Koch is the face of evil in our world today.

Our Decrepit Constitution: US Supreme Court merges with the robber barons

The years after the Civil War marked the beginning of modern America. Some people became extremely rich through government largess. The government paid companies to build railroads by giving away the land the rails passed by. Slavery was replaced by a system called sharecropping that tied people to the land like medieval serfs. Factories paid children and women starvation wages and forced them to work 60 hours or more a week. Corporations made even more money than they had before the war using slave labor. Financiers became the heroes of America by loaning the government enough money to end recessions—which financiers were responsible for starting.

The Progressive movement arose in opposition to corporate abuses. For awhile it looked like life would get a little easier for workers. The Supreme Court ruled (Munn v. Illinois (1877)) that legislatures could pass rules to control corporate pricing under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. This decision gave hope that We the People could fight back against the corporations that were sucking the life from the country.

Vain hope. The courts soon became the willing bedfellows of the corporations. The Supreme Court ruling in Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v. Minnesota(1890) struck down a Minnesota act that established a railway commission with the power to set rates and timetables, which were the instruments by which railways exercised their monopoly powers. The Court ruled that the courts, not the legislatures, should decide what rates were appropriate.

This action reversed the spirit of Munn,which appeared to reserve that power for the legislatures, and at the same time made corporations more powerful than the government. The corporations were able to influence legislatures through largess. The people could elect legislatures that looked out for their interests, but the Court now ruled that those anti-corporate elections would count for nothing.

The Supreme Court was moving toward granting corporations full personhood. The framers had not foreseen this development, nor provided for it in the Constitution. The Court declared in Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania (1888) that corporations were persons entitled to protection under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, despite the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended solely to protect the rights of freedmen. This definition gave corporations protection from "unreasonable regulation" and taxation. In practice, it gave them virtual immunity from regulation and taxation, since the courts alone could determine what was reasonable and appeals were costly and time-consuming.

Another pro-corporation development at this time was the principle, right of contract, beginning with Godcharles v. Wigeman, 113 Pa. St. 431 (1866). The court in Godcharles declared that a law requiring laborers to be paid in cash instead of company scrip was degrading to the laborer, because it robbed the laborer of his right to make a contract for himself. By this declaration, the court accepted the fiction that what existed in the law books existed in reality and that a Corporation could not compel a laborer to accept company scrip in lieu of wages, because the laborer had an equal bargaining position with the corporation.

The courts forbade the state legislature to interfere with any contract duly made between two parties and particularly applied this principle to contracts between laborers and corporations, which they considered equal partners in an employment agreement. This policy meant that no law could interfere with an employment contract, no matter how unfair its terms might be to the laborer. Courts ignored the obvious fact that corporations, which had everything, were not equal to laborers, who had nothing. Courts assumed that laborers had the ability to walk away from any contract they did not like, despite the impossibility for most laborers, hardly able to feed and clothe their families, to do any such thing. Right of contract existed only in the minds of corporate lawyers and judges, not in the real world of need and subsistence.

The courts wielded the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause to protect corporations from state regulation. While doing so, they struck down numerous progressive laws that provided laborers with the eight-hour day, the right to be paid weekly, the right to work less than sixty hours a week, the right to be paid in cash rather than company store credits, the right not to pay higher prices than non-employees in the company stores, and many others.

The courts of the late nineteenth century ignored the common law precedents of the eighteenth century in their attitude toward the poor. They forgot the words of Lord Northington: “Necessitous men are not, truly speaking, free men; but, to answer a present exigency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose upon them.” (Vernon v. Bethell (1762)). In modern English, this means, "Poor men are not, truly speaking, free men, but to answer a pressing need, will accept any terms an unscrupulous employer may offer them."

See Arnold M. Paul, Legal Progressivism, the Courts, and the Crisis of the 1890s, Business History Review, 83 (1959) at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/Profiles/Kobach/AmerLegalHistory/Winter2005/Legal%20Progressivism.pdf

A New Bill of Rights for We the People

The current Bill of Rights concerned individual rights to be protected from the government. These rights were important at the time, when a war had recently been fought against the British monarchy. The American Revolution was a clash between those who believed that one class of people, the nobility, was superior to all others, and others who believed that there should be no perpetuated classses. This was the original meaning of the Declaration of Independence, when it declared that all men are created equal.

Authoritarian governments, like the English monarchy, recognized no rights among the people, only obligations. The people had the obligation to respect the sovereign, pay their taxes, and fight for him, if necessary. The American colonists objected to this view of their rights. Many of the colonies had been opposed to the English monarchy and nobility. They objected to the King's attempt to reclaim his full rights, especially the right to tax. The original Bill of Rights addressed the abuses of the monarchy.

Events that led to the American Revolution were imposition of taxes on Americans, who were not represented in the English parliament; reorganization or abolition of American governing bodies; quartering English soldiers in America for the purpose of maintaining a standing army, which could defend or control the colonists; and seizure of arms intended for militias.

Such were the events that still troubled the minds of the Framers of the Constitution in 1789. Such were the evils that the Bill of Rights was intended to combat. But these evils were shortly diminished or rendered harmless. Militias were replaced by a standing army. Representation was provided by a Congress elected every two years. The federal government has never reorganized a state government, except after a civil war. The standing army was never quartered on the populace. The amendments that refer to those ills are no longer relevant.

New ills have taken their place. First among these new ills is inequality between the wealthy and the poor, an inequality of opportunity and an inequality of power. The ills associated with industrialization are rampant: unemployment, dislocation, exploitation of labor, hunger. Corporations, monopolies, and cartels prey upon the people and control the government, the press, and the courts. New rights need to be guaranteed to counter these modern ills.

The starting point for the People's Bill of Rights is the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted by the Fifth Virginia Convention in June, 1776. This declaration of rights was echoed in the Declaration of Independence adopted at Philadelphia in the following month. The Virginia Declaration also influenced James Madison when he drew up the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

People's Bill of Rights

I. All people are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

This is the first article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, here referred to as Mason's Declaration, except that the word “people” has been substituted for the word “men” in the first line. It was appropriated into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, with some important changes. Jefferson's Declaration states that man is endowed by his creator. Mason's Declaration requires no such divine entity. Jefferson's rights are inalienable; Mason's are inherent, and he describes precisely what Jefferson refers to as inalienable, that is, that the people cannot deprive their posterity of these rights by any compact. Jefferson mentions three inalienable rights, namely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Mason defines these rights more succinctly as the enjoyment of life and liberty, and pusuing and obtaining happiness. Mason also adds to these the means of acquiring and possessing property, and the ability to pursue safety.

Dropping this article from the U.S. Bill of Rights has the effect of removing the guarantee of equality. Mason also makes clear that the government is us, not an entity that was created by us and then took on a life of its own. Mason makes the people themselves those who cannot deprive their posterity of these inherent rights. This distinction erases the artificial opposition of the government to the people.

This article also answers the question whether corporations are people: No, they are not. A corporation is an artificial association of people that does not exist in nature and therefore has no inherent natural rights. Corporations, like governments, are creations of the people and responsible to them.

II. All power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.

This article describes the kind of government this is, namely a democracy, since all power is vested in and derived from the people. It also describes the relationship of the government to the people, namely that the government is their creation and its functionaries are servants of the people. In a monarchy, such as Great Britain at that time, all power arises from the monarch, who is responsible only to himself. The people in a monarchy become the servants of the monarch, who can make laws and raise taxes as he sees fit, without their consent. The people have the right to petition the monarch, but cannot force him to alter his course. Any attempt to argue with the monarch is considered treason and can be severely punished. This is why there is no freedom of speech or of the press in a monarchy.

The framers of the Constitution were republicans, that is, they designed a republican form of government. In this sort of government, the people elect representatives who make all their decisions for them. The people become the servants of their representatives, who have all the power. The people hold elections, but the same people tend to return to power again and again, becoming a de facto ruling class, who are out of touch with the people they are supposed to represent.

III. Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; of all the various modes and forms of government that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

This article reinforces the supremacy of the people over their government while it describes the attributes of a true democracy. Mason makes clear he does not necessarily favor a republican form of government unless a republic is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against maladministration. The framers designed a republic that was inflexible and incapable of providing for the happiness of the people. Instead, the current Constitution guarantees the happiness of it rulers and gives them the power to threaten the safety of all. The waging of endless war, as some of our representatives favor, does not lead to the safety of the people; rather, it leads to an erosion of the civil liberties inadequately guaranteed under it. Civil liberties are seriously violated when the government can throw people in prison and hold them indefinitely without a trial, as is currently the case under our Constitution.

Unholy Alliance: Revising the Alien Tort Statute

There is an unholy alliance between corporations and American courts. Corporations do not influence the courts through elections. Instead, they rely on propaganda to create a pro-corporate mindset. The judges internalize this propaganda and usually rule in favor of corporations. In general, they believe that what's good for business is good for the country.

A recent disaster at a clothing factory in Bangladesh has crystallized the issue. A fire broke out in a factory and killed 117 people. Numerous foreign companies, including Walmart and the Gap, used the factory and others like it to make their clothing. The fire safety certification, awarded by the fire authorities in Daka, had expired in June 2012 and was not renewed. The authorities noted that the building had a permit for five stories but the owner had built eight and was adding a ninth when the building collapsed.

The government of Bangladesh has arrested the owner of the building. They may have difficulty convicting him of a crime, however. The investigation following a 2006 fire in Chittagong, Bangladesh, did not lead to a trial, despite discovering numerous violations of safety regulations. The question remains whether Walmart and the other foreign corporations involved with the building will receive any punishment for their part in the crime.

Walmart has recently warned its suppliers not to buy merchandise from subcontractors who have not been authorized by the contractor. Walmart's actions reveal that the company would like to avoid liability in any future disasters. This new, somewhat belated, safety campaign does not exonerate Walmart, however. The Bangladesh government has proven incapable of regulating its garment industry. Walmart knew or should have known about government incompetence before the fire in question, since there have been many such fires, including the one in Chittagong where more than 50 people died.

There is an American law, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), that might have been used by victims of the Bangladesh fire to sue Walmart in American courts. The Supreme Court has been whittling down ATS to make it less comprehensive. In the past, victims of torture in foreign countries have sued individual torturers and won in American court. When victims of corporate criminal conduct began using the law, the Supreme Court changed directions to protect the corporations.

Once they had decided to shield the corporations from civil suits, the Supreme Court discovered, what they had apparently missed in earlier cases, that the Alien Tort Statute did not support “extraterritoriality”, that it could not be applied to crimes committed in other countries. In Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain (2004), the court determined that the Law of Nations, which ATS was intended to enforce, does not include corporate liability.

This theory is nonsense. ATS was passed in 1789. The law of nations has since transformed itself into international law, which does indeed have laws that apply to corporations, including criminal statutes against homicide. What ATS did was to give the victim a chance to recover damages in civil court. By ruling that the law of nations, which is no longer a current legal term, does not include corporate liability, the Supreme Court achieves the purpose of shielding corporations from wrongdoing abroad.ⁱ

Since Sosa, the Supreme Court has gone further to discover that ATS does not apply anywhere outside the United States, effectively castrating it as a tool for individuals to recover damages against corporations.ⁱⁱ We the People can take steps to rectify this injustice by changing the law, but it will not be easy, considering that corporations contribute heavily to the campaigns of our lawmakers, some of whom appear to believe that what's good for the corporations is good for the U.S. Such a law would merely amend the Alien Tort Statute to replace the phrase “Law of Nations” with the phrase “established international law”. Furthermore, the new ATS could state that it applies equally to individuals and corporations. Finally, the new ATS could state specifically that the law applied in any nation where an injustice may have occurred.

i In this instance, corporations have more rights than individual persons, since international law in no way can be considered to exempt persons from its statutes, yet the Supreme Court has discovered that the law of nations does not apply to corporations. This inconsistent treatment of corporations is a proof that the unholy alliance exists and has consequences in the real world.

iiSee http://masrizone.blogspot.com/2013/04/kiobel-v-shell-supreme-court-gives.html.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Remedies (Part One)

The National Initiative Amendment (NIA) is the only way to resolve our Constitutions problems in the long run. There are a number of stop-gap measures we can take without amending the constitution, but these would be just as hard to pass as the NIA, so there would be little point in wasting our energy on them. Once we give the power to amend the Constitution back to We the People, there are a number of measures we can take to restore the balance between competing interests.

1. Increase the number of Senators

The Constitution provides for two senators to represent each state. This has led to many problems, chief among them the fact that California, with 35 million residents, has the same number of senators and the same relative power as Delaware, with under a million. This imbalance leads to defeats for issues of interest to large states, such as gun control.

The U.S. Senate was modeled on the House of Lords. Like the Senate, the Lords became a barrier to passing bills for the common good. The House of Commons partially resolved the problem by increasing the number of Lords. We, the People, could resolve the Senate problem by adding another 100 Senators to be elected at large. By definition, these Senators would represent a larger constituency than any of the current Senators. Small states would still have disproportionate representation, but nothing could stop one of the small-state senators from running at large. Such a candidate must appeal to a broader electorate than one running in a small, homogeneous state.

Other, more drastic measures may be taken. The Senate could be abolished altogether, or Senators could retain the ability to block bills (which is their primary function now) but only for three years.

2. Elect the Supreme Court

Life appointment for Supreme Court Justices was intended to free them from political pressures, giving them liberty to vote their conscience. This idea never worked very well, since the Justices are nearly always members of the elite classes. Recently, the idea of apolitical Justices must appear a cruel hoax. Observers can usually predict which justices will join a majority. Presidents appoint younger and younger justices to prevent the opposing party from gaining a majority on the court. Retiring justices choose the terms of like-minded presidents to give up their seats. The Court has actually become a third legislative body, one with even less variety of opinion than the Senate.

We, the People, should make the Court responsible to us by forcing the Justices to run for election every seven years. Renowned jurists who can't get seats on the current, highly politicized court, should be happy to run for such a prestigious post. Presidents could still fill vacancies with the consent of the Senate, but they would be forced to make better choices if they want their appointees to withstand an electoral challenge.

3. Normalize the Laws

Another measure would be to remove the appellate responsibilities from the court, or abolish the federal bench entirely. The Federal Bench exists side-by-side with the state courts, with many of the same responsibilities. All courts should be combined into a single, national system of district courts and appellate bodies. Instead of striking down laws they deem improper, the judges in this system could replace the offending laws with others that have been passed in other states. Many states have similar legal codes already. This blending of federal with state authority would discourage state legislatures from passing frivolous laws that pander to the electorate.

This system would also discourage well-heeled groups like ALEC from changing the laws, state by state, to favor corporations and the wealthy. Judges would be free to ignore changes made by ALEC and other groups in favor of more moderate laws.

Lawyers should be allowed to practice in any state, since the laws would, over time, tend to be similar. State Bar Associations would lose their monopoly control of the legal profession. Legal professionals could practice in any state without fearing law suits from the State Bar. The cost of legal assistance would decrease, enabling ordinary people to better afford lawyers.

4. Abolish the Electoral College

We, the People, should elect presidents by majority vote. If no candidate achieves a majority, we should hold a runoff election. Third parties would be able to participate in elections without fear that their participation would defeat candidates with whom they agree on most issues.

There is currently a National Popular Vote movement (NPV) to sidestep the electoral college by passing laws in each of the states. These laws commit the states to cast their electoral votes for the candidate who wins the majority of all votes cast in all states. NPV flips current presidential campaigning on its head. Candidates would spend most of their time and money in the largest states instead of in the key swing states.They would have to take positions on important issues instead of avoiding them.

NPV avoids the Amendment process but ends up with laws that can be repealed without using the Amendment process. It also fails to institute a runoff system, as described above. It does not encourage third party candidates, since it will rob them of any electoral votes they might have gotten using the current electoral system. This could lead to appeals through the courts, throwing elections into confusion for other reasons, such as when a third-party argues that the anti-electoral college law prevents third parties from getting the votes necessary to appear on ballots. Current election laws are a tangled thicket that may cause unforeseen problems.

The instability of the NPV, which could be undone by the votes of only a few states (assuming it ever passes) will lead to more electoral confusion, not less. The supporters of this plan have a good idea, but the execution would likely be chaotic and reversible within a few years. NPV will go into effect when the states that have adopted it have enough electoral votes.

NPV now has about 50 per cent of the states necessary to put its plan into action. From here on, however, it will run into the same problem of the electoral college, only in reverse. Each state that passes NPV will now be a state that benefits from the current situation.

Another movement, much less realistic, to reform the electoral college would divide the nation into 50 new states with equal populations. The logistics of this proposal make it impossible. State governments are huge, unwieldy bureaucracies that have taken root in one place for up to 200 years. Moving one of these bureaucracies to a new location would create a complex mess and cost a fortune. Moving 50 of them might take another 200 years.

5. Undo the Corporate Strangle Hold on Our Laws

In the late nineteenth century the Supreme Court discovered that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations, though they couldn't figure out how to use it to help African-Americans. In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to regulate corporations. The Courts permitted the Sherman Act to be used against Unions, which it declared illegal combinations as defined by the law. In United States v. E. C. Knight Company (1895), the Supreme Court upheld the appeal of the American Sugar Refining Company, which controlled 98 per cent of sugar refining in the U.S., because this control did not constitute a restraint of trade.

During the last years of the twentieth century, Congress responded to public concern about corporate lobbyists influence in politics by passing modest reforms. In Citizens United v. FEC (2004), the Supreme Court reversed much of what reformers had accomplished. In his dissent, Justice Stephens cited earlier Court decisions that recognized that corporate spending on elections should be viewed as a business transaction designed for no other purpose than profit-making. Corporations unfairly influence elections with vast sums of money that few individuals can match. Finally, Stephens pointed out that the mere appearance of impropriety fostered by Corporate campaign contributions would have a chilling affect on voter participation.

Stephens' arguments fell on deaf ears. The Court, as so often before, sided with corporations against the interests of ordinary citizens. One protection for We the People would be to limit the power of the Court by limiting its terms and making it easier to overrule their decisions with a national initiative. Critics of the Citizens United decision have proposed a Constitutional amendment to overturn it. A constitutional amendment would require majority votes of both houses of Congress and passage by three-fourths of the state legislatures. The amount of time, energy, and treasure necessary for the effort is enormous. This massive effort, involving millions of citizens, is required to counter the opinions of five Republican Justices. Nothing about our republic is less democratic than this proposition.

An amendment should be passed outlawing corporate spending in political elections. Laws should be instituted imposing heavy penalties for corporate officers who authorize anonymous spending from the corporate coffers.

Warren Buffett, Spin-master Extraordinaire

There has been a lot said recently about Warren Buffett's pro-environmental investments and pronouncements; he's being hailed as an altogether admirable figure, a green-friendly philanthropist.  In this article on Bloomberg in 2012, (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-02/buffett-says-shortcuts-on-environment-can-risk-profits.html)  he said, “A company must invest in the key ingredients of profitability: its people, communities and the environment."

Sounds great, doesn't it?  But I've just been reading in Sierra magazine about Buffett's ANTI-environmental choices, the ones he doesn't say much about:  http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/201305/warren-buffett-coal.aspx.  He is heavily invested in coal:  his MidAmerican Energy Holdings "relies on coal for roughly half of its 18,000-megawatt generating capacity".  In addition, Buffett's Burlington Northern Sante Fe (BNSF) Railway Company earns $5 billion in annual revenues from transporting coal, and it lobbies aggressively on the industry's behalf.

Buffett's BNSF Railway Company is also a 1/3 owner in the proposed Tongue River Railroad, which is currently slated to be built in Southeastern Montana.  Needless to say, the ranchers and Native Americans and Amish farmers who currently live in the area are not happy about it.  But there aren't many of them, and they are easy to miss.  What is also easy to miss, is that the 42-mile railroad will ultimately enable Buffett's company to ship coal to China via the West Coast.  This is significant, because US demand for coal is dropping, and Buffett sees China as his new market. 

The new railroad will also make it possible for  Arch Coal, one of America's largest coal companies, to stripmine the nearby Otter Creek coal tracts, thereby creating one of the largest coal stripmines in the country.

Railroads may be a great form of "green" transportation, as Buffett also pointed out in the article... but NOT when they're shipping coal. That's about as environmentally-UNconscious, and as cynical, as anything I've ever heard of.

Buffett is NOT, ultimately, a green-investment hero. He's a personable ultra-capitalist, who has a way with words.  And ultimately, he is just one more amoral self-promoter, a large and extremely successful corporate shark, out to make all the money he can, and never mind the lives and homes and lands that are devastated in his wake  He may be better than some... but only because that bar is set so very, very low.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Defanging the Senate

The Framers designed the Senate as a stronghold for prominent men. John Adams wrote that all members of the government should be gentlemen, which he defined as friends and connections of the well-born and educated. In those days, prominent men took pride in their erudition. We know what books Thomas Jefferson had in his library because he donated the entire collection to the Library of Congress after the War of 1812. Jefferson was an American patriot, but no isolationist. His library included an extensive collection of Greek and Latin classics, books in modern European Languages like French and Italian, and a broad selection of subjects from astronomy to poetry. He likely would have laughed at the idea, commonly espoused by today's Supreme Court, that only American laws should be consulted.

Adams himself wrote 10 volumes of scholarly books, primarily on government and law. He was both a scholar and an author, as well as a statesman. He believed in the superiority of the natural aristocracy. Adams believed the aristocracy were the only men who should be allowed to govern the new country. He and other framers believed that democracy was dangerous. He favored not a democracy but a republic which he defined as a government run by representatives of the people, not the people themselves.

The Senate was one of the measures taken by the framers to keep government firmly in the hands of the gentlemen. The framers assumed that fewer members in the Senate would make the positions more highly sought after. Originally, the Senators were to be appointed by state legislatures, rather than elected by the people directly. This method of appointment was thought to add even more assurance that only the best men would be elected to the senate. Senators were to serve for six years. This qualification insulated senators from pressure by the people they were supposed to represent. The framers believed senators should represent the votes of the people, not their opinions.

From the beginning, the Senate was a place where a few men could block progress, the inevitable change brought about by the passage of time. Progress happens primarily because people are changeable. New ideas arise for the popular mind to accept or reject as it sees fit. The framers assured that the public would learn new ideas when they guaranteed freedom of speech and religion. They tried to slow progress by omitting the liberal ideals expounded in the Declaration of Independence from the Constitution. The Constitution did not consider all men equal, at birth or at any other time. It consigns Africans to slavery and the original inhabitants to annihilation by making no reference to the rights of indiginous peoples.

During the first 60 years of its existence, the primary function of the Senate was to prevent any anti-slavery laws from passing. It did this by creating gridlock in the government. Each state had two senators, regardless of its population. The pro-slavery states assured that one slave-holding state would be admitted to the union for each new free state. This tactic meant that the number of pro-slavery senators always matched the number of anti-slavery senators. The admission of California as a free state in 1850 doomed the senate deadlock system and led to the Civil War.

The Senate remained a place where a minority faction could block the will of the majority. The Senate was still the bastion of elitism it had always been. During the twentieth century, the Senate opposed internationalism, preferring a protectionist system that they felt favored the wealthy banking and merchant classes in the U.S. The Senate used its veto power over treaties to wreck the League of Nations. President Wilson intended for the League to prevent major wars by creating a forum where the great powers could talk to each other instead of shooting at each other. Without the cooperation of the U.S., the League failed to prevent the next catastrophic war. The Senate still had more damage to inflict on the world, however, by committing the U.S. to a policy of isolationism. In that isolationism, Nazi Germany arose and grew until it was almost capable of taking over Europe. During the 1950s, the Senate used its filibuster power to block civil rights laws, once again delaying inevitable progress.

After the election of Barack Obama, the Senate used its filibuster power to halt most of the president's fiscal programs. This led to a prolonged recession and suffering for millions of Americans. The Senate, representing the wealthy elite, was not affected by the suffering it inflicted on others. By this time, the U.S. government had delayed facing numerous problems, including drug violence, massive incarceration of its minority populations, two disastrous wars, an enormous and expensive military, the collapse of the middle class, violence in its cities, and a country divided against itself to as great an extent as it had been in the 1850s.

The Framers modeled the Senate after the English House of Lords. The House of Lords performed the same function as the U.S. Senate, that is, rejecting legislation aimed at taxing the wealthy and aiding the poor. The British system was not crippled by a Constitution like ours, however, and in 1911 the Parliament passed a law removing most of the power of the House of Lords to reject or delay laws.

The U.S. Senate was certainly as much a hindrance to progress as the House of Lords. In the 20th century, the Senate kept the executive branch from forming critical alliances, enacting treaties that meant the difference between war and peace, and enacting legislation that provided equal rights to African Americans. In the 21st centure, the Senate became even more obstructive, blocking or delaying numerous judicial nominations and refusing to fund agencies that favored the middle class over Wall Street millionaires and corporate executives.

The addition of another layer of checks allotted to the wealthy class in the form of a powerful Senate is a drag on the government at a critical time in our history. After passage of the National Initiative Amendment, the people should pass initiatives that severely limit the power of the Senate as it is currently defined in the Constitution. The number of Senators should be increased by 100 at-large seats, elected by popular vote nationwide. This will increase the influence of larger states like New York and California, while making each Senator less powerful.

An amendment should pass that limits the ability of the Senate to delay a bill by more than 3 months. If the Senate refuses to accept a treaty negotiated by the executive within 6 months, the treaty will automatically be ratified. These reforms should defang the Senators and turn the Senate into a debating club for the wealthy. Its fangs will be removed.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Its Secret Meaning

Our Decrepit Constitution: Its Secret Meaning

The Framers of the Constitution came from the English tradition of common law. Under common law, laws are not written but deduced from similar court cases. An important concept in common law is stare decisis, which requires the court to follow tradition, so that if a court decides a case a certain way, it will be bound by its own prior decision.

A problem arises when a court, especially the Supreme Court, is not bound by its prior decisions. The Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore (2000), rejected previously settled law by overturning the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court. The majority of the Court decided that the Florida Supreme Court did not have the right to interpret Florida election law. This contravened the judgment in Marbury v. Madison (1803), which ruled, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” The Republican majority of the court thus overruled a decision that had stood for nearly 200 years to elect the presidential candidate of their party.

The Supreme Court, in Citizens United v. FEC, overturned 100 years of precedent upholding the Tillman Act (1907) which limited corporate contributions to political campaigns. In doing so, the Court found that the campaign finance law violated the First Amendment, something which was not mentioned in the original claim. The Court thus gave itself authority to rule a law unconstitutional without having a representative case brought to its attention. The Court's failure to abide by its own earlier decisions struck a blow against the means by which the law does not change erratically but in a principled and intelligible fashion.

The result of these rulings was a critical wound to public confidence in the Supreme Court in particular and the law itself in general. State legislatures have begun passing bills that obviously contradict Supreme Court decisions and Constitutional Amendments. The Kansas legislature yesterday passed a bill that defines life as beginning at fertilization and bans abortion based on fetal gender altogether. These provisions of the new bill patently violate the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973). Several other states have passed similar laws limiting the availability of abortion. All of these laws presume that the Supreme Court will overturn a ruling it made 40 years ago. The Court will do this not because of any change in technology or public sentiment, but simply because it does not agree with the earlier decision.

Another provision of the Kansas bill prohibits Planned Parenthood from teaching sex education in the public schools. Supporters of such laws do not claim that Planned Parenthood gives false information in their classes. State Rep. Bette Grande (R-Fargo) introduced a similar bill in North Dakota. Rep. Grande said that Planned Parenthood was not part of the way business was conducted in her state.

This state of affairs has been brought about by the Supreme Court's attempt to set itself up as the supreme branch of government, which may at any time decide to strike down reasonable laws made by legislatures or decisions made by other courts for the simple reason that this court, for obvious political reasons, disagrees with them. The Courts decisions may be described as obviously political because observers can predict which way individual justices will rule based on their political affiliation alone.

The situation resembled the state of affairs in Japan before the issuance of its constitution in 1868. The Japanese lords made legal decisions without consulting precedent or legal codes because there were none. Japanese subjects had to obey the lords because there was no appeal from an arbitrary or unjust decision. The Supreme Court seeks to institute just such a government, where laws are not made by the people, but by Supreme Court Justices, who, like the prophets of the Old Testament, reveal the secret meaning of the Constitution.

Our Decrepit Constitution: Fighting the Corporations

Our Decrepit Constitution: Fighting the Corporations

Recent incidents of gun violence are still fresh is the minds of residents of the states of Colorado and Connecticut. Those states have passed strict gun control regulations. Ninety per cent of the population agree that more gun control regulations are necessary, yet the congress is incapable of action. It seems incredible, but it happens because our laws are not democratic.

Senators and Representatives are elected by constituents. Their constituents exercise only indirect influence over their elected representatives. Constituents only vote every 2 years for Congressmen, or 6 years for Senators. The Constitution permits lobbyists to give money to our lawmakers every day. These sums of money are sometimes very large, but politicians need large sums of money to run for office. Just as important, they must avoid ever offending those groups who might give them large sums of money. If politicians offend those groups, their opponents in the next election may receive support from those same groups.

The only politician directly elected by the people (discounting for a moment the anachronous electoral college) is the President. The Constitution surrounds the president with restraints, however. He cannot make laws. He cannot raise taxes. He cannot dissolve Congress and rule by himself, as monarchs used to do. He cannot schedule new elections when Congress refuses to pass his proposals.

All the president can do is talk, and try to persuade the congress to support his proposals. Since political decisions are influenced by money, not ethics, he cannot exercise moral suasion. The presidency, in some respects, is the worst job in the world. Although the president has very little power to influence anything, he is blamed for everything that goes wrong. The president typically begins his term as a popular advocate for change, and ends it as a despised failure. The fault is not his. The fault is inherent in the Constitutional system.

The Framers created a federal system out of necessity. They did not trust a strong government that could become a tyranny, so they created a system that had three checks on the federal government: the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Courts. This system worked so long as there were no entities strong enough to defy the president.

Stronger entities soon emerged. The first was the faction of slave-holding states. These states eventually attacked the United States directly by forming the Confederacy. The Civil War nearly destroyed the Union and made it impossible for successive entities seeking power to use violence to succeed. The costs of civil war were recognized as unsupportable.

Other entities seeking power did evolve. These entities used money to buy influence in the Congress and the Courts. Giant corporations formed whose influence dwarfed the influence of the president. The government struck back, first by passing anti-trust laws to keep the corporations small enough to control.

Progressives at the state level passed laws to control corporate power within their borders. Progressives passed initiative and referendum laws because the only power strong enough to combat the corporations resides in the people themselves. These new laws controlled the corporations to some degree. California was able to control the Southern Pacific Corporation (SP), which had flourished through government subsidies. SP was a local entity that could be controlled through local (state) laws. Other states set up Utility Commissions under various names to control corporations and protect the people from monopolistic utitlity rates.

These efforts proved successful for awhile. Corporations continued to grow larger, however. The common people were severely weakened by the Great Depression, while the corporations and the people who ran them prospered. World War II brought the beginnings of great prosperity to the corporate elite. The Korean War ushered in an era of massive spending on military weapons. The development of atomic weapons caused unprecedented amounts of money to be spent on technology. This level of spending continued until the end of the Cold War, in 1989. Corporations receiving government subsidies for research and contracts for technology could not ship jobs oversease because weapons series were considered too dangerous to trust to foreigners.

This situation changed abruptly with the advent of consumer electronics products like radios, televisions, and audio equipment. These products used the same technological advances that were funded by the U.S. Government for rockets, guidance systems, and the space program. Corporations began saving money by shipping jobs overseas. Silicon chip manufacturing, a thriving business in Silicon Valley in 1969, was moved to Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and eventually China. Instead of creating employment opportunities in the U.S., corporations fed money into the economies of other countries.

President Reagan led the assault on American unions when he fired striking air traffic control workers. Workers at Atari in San Jose threatened to unionize. In response, the corporate management closed down the San Jose plant and moved their jobs overseas.

Gradually, job opportunities for U.S. workers dwindled. The gap between the common people and the well-off widened. The Supreme Court thwarted attempts to damp the influence of money in electoral politics. The Republicans began suppressing the votes of African-Americans, Latinos, students, and the elderly. Republican governors rolled back hard-won abortion rights.

The U.S. looks more like a third-world country all the time. In those countries, the wealthy few rule the numerous poor. The common people have no chance to redress grievances because they have no power. In other words, there is no democracy.

The U.S. Constitution is badly in need of repair. It needs amendments to establish a right of privacy between a woman and her doctor; to curb the ability of wealthy corporations to buy elections; to prevent politicians from cashing in with legal bribery, otherwise called campaign contributions; to stop publishers from exploiting the work of authors and musicians; to stop corporations from buying up disused patents and using them to blackmail legitimate innovators; to stop gun dealers from supplying criminals with death-dealing weapons; to stop energy companies from destroying the environment.

The list goes on and on. There are far too many potential amendments ever to reach the end, especially when every one of them will be fought with skill backed by money. There is only one solution to this problem. The people must adopt a national initiative which would give them what they never had, a true democracy.

The National Initiative amendment would do just that. All groups advocating a constitutional amendment should join together and support this one. Once this amendment passes, all further amendments will have a much lower bar to pass: They will be passed by a majority of the American people.