Category: National
Response to “Bernie Sanders Files A New Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United”
| January 21, 2015 | 8:48 pm | Bernie Sanders, National, political struggle | Comments closed
By A. Shaw
Bernie Sanders, unlike the rotten majority of judges on the US Supreme Court, believes money is not the US Constitution.
Power corrupts, especially when you buy it.
When democracy is bought and sold, citizens become the mere chattel of the buyer.
The rotten and treacherous majority of judges now sitting on the US Supreme Court held in Citizens United that money is free speech. So, the venal majority argues, a limit on money is also a limit on free speech. And a limit on free speech violates the First Amendment.
So,  five out of nine judges conclude, the government of the people, by the people, and for the people is up for sale to the highest bidder.
Bernie Sanders, by constitutional amendment or legislative struggle, fights to restore the U.S. Government to the U.S. people.
The USA is the US people under the Constitution. This the true essence of the USA.
Citizens United  turns the USA into US people under the cash flow.
Bernie Sanders Files A New Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United
| January 21, 2015 | 8:43 pm | Bernie Sanders, National, political struggle | Comments closed
By: Jason Easley
Source: PoliticusUSA
Wednesday, January, 21st, 2015, 12:30 pm
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is renewing his efforts to rid the country of Citizens United by introducing a new constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court’s decision.
The amendment states:
SECTION 1. Whereas the right to vote in public elections belongs only to natural persons as citizens of the United States, so shall the ability to make contributions and expenditures to influence the outcome of public elections belong only to natural persons in accordance with this Article.
SECTION 2. Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to restrict the power of Congress and the States to protect the integrity and fairness of the electoral process, limit the corrupting influence of private wealth in public elections, and guarantee the dependence of elected officials on the people alone by taking actions which may include the establishment of systems of public financing for elections, the imposition of requirements to ensure the disclosure of contributions and expenditures made to influence the outcome of a public election by candidates, individuals, and associations of individuals, and the imposition of content neutra limitations on all such contributions and expenditures.

  SECTION 3. Nothing in this Article shall be construed to alter the freedom of the press.
Sen. Sanders had to propose a new amendment because legislation that isn’t acted on by the previous Congress expires at the end of the session. Since Congress didn’t act on the amendment the last time Sanders filed it, he is bringing it back in the new Congress.
The key section of the amendment is Section 2. The second section would halt the Supreme Court’s money is free speech interpretation of the Constitution. The first section of the amendment deals directly with the idea that corporations are people, but the second section overturns the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision that money is speech. The second section of the amendment would throw out the entire basis for the Supreme Court’s rulings in campaign finance cases.
When Sen. Sanders introduced this amendment in 2013, he said, “What the Supreme Court did in Citizens United is to tell billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, ‘You own and control Wall Street. You own and control coal companies. You own and control oil companies. Now, for a very small percentage of your wealth, we’re going to give you the opportunity to own and control the United States government.’ That is the essence of what Citizens United is all about. That is why this disastrous decision must be reversed.”
President Obama endorsed the Sanders constitutional amendment in 2012, and explained the rationale behind it, “Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress – to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists. Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.”
The point of the constitutional amendment isn’t passage. The point is to bring attention to the issue of what Citizens United continues to do to our electoral process. The most likely path to overturning Citizens United remains a Democratic presidential victory in the 2016 election. Two of the conservatives Justices who made up the majority in the Citizens United decision are 78 years old. The odds of one or both justices serving the last two years of President Obama’s term and another eight years under another potential Democratic president are slim. (It also wouldn’t be surprising to see the 81 year old Ruth Bader Ginsburg retire before President Obama leaves office.)
The Supreme Court is due for a generational change, and if Democrats control the White House, that change could result in a 5-4 liberal leaning court.
In the meantime, Sen. Sanders is leading the fight to inform the American people about the toxic nature of unlimited money in their electoral process. The movement to overturn Citizens United needs and educated population, because outside of the Supreme Court, public pressure is the best way to get the billionaire dollars out of our elections is to have tens of millions of voices demand it.
MLK, Jr. on the humanity of jazz
| January 17, 2015 | 8:38 pm | African American Culture, African American history, National, Struggle for African American equality | Comments closed

JANUARY 20, 2014

http://kalamu.com/neogriot/2015/01/17/history-video-martin-luther-king-jr-on-the-humanity-of-jazz/

 

Martin Luther King, Jr.

On The Humanity

Of Jazz

 

by: 

In the speech he gave before the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington in August 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., employed the refrain, “Now is the time.”  Was he inspired by Charlie Parker’s, “Now’s the Time,” the original blues that Bird recorded on his Savoy Jazz debut in 1945?  As evidenced by his introductory remarks for the Berlin Jazz Festival the following year, King had a profound appreciation of jazz.

(Mahalia Jackson, wearing corsage, looks over at MLK speaking at the March on Washington.)

In September 1964, as the guest of Mayor Willy Brandt, King spent two days in (West) Berlin.  During the whirlwind visit, he gave a sermon to a crowd of 20,000, visited the Berlin Wall, and attended a memorial concert for President Kennedy.  It’s also long been reported that he gave the keynote address to the inaugural Berlin Jazz Festival, but in recent years that’s been disputed by Bruce Jackson and Professor David Demsey of William Patterson University.  Whether spoken or merely written for the festival’s program, King offers genuine insight about the role that jazz musicians played as they “championed” the search for identity among African Americans. “Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of ‘racial identity’ as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls,” King wrote.  (Read the complete text below.)

Duke Ellington composed “King Fit the Battle of Alabam,” for his 1963 musical, My People.  It was staged in Chicago for the Century of Negro Progress Exhibition celebrating the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.  Alas, it never got to Broadway, but some of the music was later incorporated into the Sacred Concerts.  “King Fit the Battle…” celebrates MLK, lunch counter sit-ins, freedom riders, and satirizes the notorious Birmingham, Alabama Sheriff Bull Connors.  While he was in Chicago, Ellington met Dr. King in a meeting that was arranged by Marian Logan, wife of Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s friend and physician, Dr. Arthur Logan.

One senses that Dr. King would have understood what Stanley Crouch meant in his 2009 Daily News column lamenting the absence of jazz in the public rituals of the Obama administration.  “Jazz predicted the civil rights movement more than any other art in America…Jazz was always an art, but because of the race of its creators, it was always more than music. Once the whites who played it and the listeners who loved it began to balk at the limitations imposed by segregation, jazz became a futuristic social force in which one was finally judged purely on the basis of one’s individual ability.” Or, as King famously put it, “Judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Speaking of Birmingham, here’s the John Coltrane Quartet playing “Alabama” on Ralph J. Gleason’s public television series, Jazz Casual.  Coltrane composed the elegy in commemoration of the four girls murdered in the fire-bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on September 15, 1963.  Trane first recorded the piece on November 18; this was taped on December 7.)

Humanity and the Importance of Jazz

“God has brought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create – and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

“Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. This is triumphant music.

“Modern Jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

“It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of “racial identity” as a problem for a multi-racial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm
that which was stirring within their souls.

“Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down. And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.”

 

>via: http://nepr.net/music/2014/01/20/martin-luther-king-jr-humanity-jazz/

Woman Shocked to See Brother’s Mug Shot Used as Police Target Practice
| January 17, 2015 | 8:22 pm | National, police terrorism | Comments closed

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/01/woman_shocked_to_see_brother_s_mug_shot_photo_used_as_police_target_practice.html

Response to “Bernie Sanders Rips Republicans For Cutting Social Security For 1 Million Disabled Veterans”
| January 16, 2015 | 9:09 pm | Analysis, Bernie Sanders, Economy, National, political struggle, Social Security, Veterans | Comments closed
By A. Shaw
An alliance between GOP reactionaries and DP reactionaries now conspire to make huge 20% cuts in social security disability benefits for 1,000,000 disabled veterans and 11,000,000 disabled US citizens.
Sen. Bernie Sanders stands up for these workers who are about to get robbed.
Even without the assistance of DP reactionaries, GOP reactionaries already dominate the legislative and judicial branches of the bourgeois democratic regime in Washington DC. The DP however still dominates the executive branch of the bourgeois state in Washington DC.
While two branches of the exploitative and oppressive bourgeois regime in Washington plot to cut the financial benefits of disabled workers, these  legislative and judicial branches of the bourgeois regime conspire to cut taxes paid by rich individuals, big corporations, and banks. The regime allows the rich to pay a smaller percentage of their income than the percentage workers must pay.
So, proportionately, the workers bear a heavier load.
The benefit cuts that the reactionaries are pushing intensifies the exploitation of disabled workers.
When these disabled workers were able-bodied and employed, they earned their disability benefits by the deduction on a collective basis of social security taxes from their paychecks.
Now that disabled workers are unemployed, the reactionaries who occupy high places in bourgeois regime intend to renege the government’s promise to pay fair and reasonable benefits.
Of special interest are the cases of 1,000,000 disabled veterans.
Again and again, the bourgeois and imperialist regime in Washington oppresses US citizens, mostly workers, into waging unconstitutional and illegal wars of aggression against the innocent people of foreign countries. The most striking example is the war of aggression by US imperialists and their regime against the completely innocent people of Iraq who have now suffered well over a million war-related fatalities occasioned by an US imperialist invasion and occupation and rationalized by a gigantic and transparent lie that weapons of mass destruction were stored in Iraq.
The US people, including US troops, should have resisted and should now resist the imperial war of aggression against Iraq, just as, earlier, the US people, including US troops, heroically resisted the US imperialist war against the people of Vietnam.
Hundreds of thousands of US troops were oppressed by the  bourgeois regime in Washington into the aggression against Iraq. Thousands of US troops lost their lives and tens of thousands suffered and are suffering disabling injuries.
The disabled came and still come home from the wars, and are welcomed by the rotten, lowdown, filthy, reactionary GOP scum that dominates the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.
The GOP scum tells 1,000,000 disabled veterans, “Thanks suckers,” we, the GOP in the US Congress, are going to cut your money.
Contrary to the lies and rants of the GOP scum in Congress,  these 1,000, 000 veterans fully earned their full social security disability benefits by their lost and torn limbs, by their amputations, and by the destruction of their mental and emotional normality.
The Lord knows we need Sen. Bernie Sanders as Pres. Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders Rips Republicans For Cutting Social Security For 1 Million Disabled Veterans
| January 16, 2015 | 9:04 pm | Analysis, Bernie Sanders, Economy, National, political struggle, Social Security, Veterans | Comments closed
By: Jason Easley
Friday, January, 16th, 2015, 1:23 pm
Source: PoliticusUSA
At a press conference today, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) shredded the Republican budget plans while taking Republicans to task for cutting Social Security benefits for 1 million disabled veterans.
During the press conference, Sen. Sanders said:
I must say that the budget passed last year by the Republican House which called for massive cuts in Medicare,Medicaid, education, nutrition, affordable housing, and other programs impacting the lives of working Americans, while providing huge tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations, is a budget approach which moves us in exactly the wrong direction. And, needless to say, I will do everything that I can to oppose a similar type of budget if that is what the Republicans will be proposing this year.
So, here we are. The middle class is in decline. Millions of seniors are struggling to pay for their food, their medicine and their heat. On the very first day of Congress, the Republicans in the House made a change in its rules that could lead to a 20 percent cut in Social Security disability benefits for 11 million Americans, including 2 million children, over a million veterans, and over 150,000 surviving spouses. In other words, in the midst of massive wealth and income inequality, the Republicans want to make massive cuts in a program that benefits some of the most vulnerable people in this country.
….
Let’s be clear, what the Republican plan is. What they are saying is that either there will be cuts to the disability program, or if that fund is to be replenished, the money will have to come from cuts to Social Security retirement benefits. And, House Budget Chairman Price is already talking about including Social Security cuts in the Budget Resolution that he will be writing. Needless to say, that is totally unacceptable. When we talk about Social Security today what we should be talking about is expanding benefits not cutting benefits. And, I and other members of the Senate are working on legislation to do just that. And, at a time when multimillionaires pay the same amount of money into the Social Security Trust Fund as someone making $118,500 that cap on taxable income must be raised.
The idea that Republicans are poised to cut benefits for 11 million disabled Americans was bad enough and repulsive to Americans on all ends of the political spectrum. What is even worse is that Republicans are planning to cut benefits for men and women who were disabled while risking their lives in service of their country. The Social Security Disability program is paid into by every worker in America. Sanders pointed out that a young worker has a 33% of receiving these benefits at some point in their life.
Veterans who sacrificed their country should not have their benefits cut. People who paid into the program should not have their benefits cut. Disabled Americans, who are living on a few dollars, can’t afford to have their benefits cut. Congressional Republicans don’t have the right to make these cuts to the disability program. The money that has been paid into the system doesn’t belong to them. Those funds were paid into the system by workers who expect their benefits to be there.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently tried to claim that half of the people who are receiving Social Security Disability benefits can work. The reality is that the Disability application process is a difficult one. Fifty-nine percent of those who apply for disability benefits are rejected.
Sen. Sanders was right to go on the attack against the Republican agenda. Veterans and all disabled Americans deserve better from their country than the treatment that they are receiving from Republicans. Liberals, conservatives, and everyone in the middle should stand up in united outrage against the Republican scheme to take from those who can least afford to lose precious resources.
Armed citizen militias build up along US-Mexico border
| January 15, 2015 | 8:45 pm | Analysis, Local/State, National, Texas Border Militias | 10 Comments

Published time: September 10, 2014 16:03 Edited time: September 11, 2014 14:22 

 http://rt.com/usa/186744-citizen-militia-texas-border/
Members of the "Patriots" Huggie Bear (L, not his real name), Ray (C, no last name given) and Will (R, no last name given) patrol in their UTV near a camp of patriots near the U.S.-Mexico border outside Brownsville, Texas September 2, 2014. (Reuters/Rick Wilking)

Members of the “Patriots” Huggie Bear (L, not his real name), Ray (C, no last name given) and Will (R, no last name given) patrol in their UTV near a camp of patriots near the U.S.-Mexico border outside Brownsville, Texas September 2, 2014. (Reuters/Rick Wilking)

Armed militias continue to patrol the United States-Mexico border seeking to repel any migration north, but critics warn that these self-styled ‘freedom defenders’ lingering on private land represent a powder keg that could have “disastrous” consequences.

Near Brownsville, Texas, a group of private citizens simply known as the Patriots were invited to watch 21 acres of border land owned by Rusty Monsees. The group, Reuters reported, has been on the land since early summer, when news reports announced that unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied minors from Central America had crossed the border. In the first half of 2014, around 52,000 children, among many others, attempted the trek, fleeing poverty, violence, and systemic abuse present in their home nations. Many have ended up warehoused in US military installations and other facilities awaiting their fate amongst an inhospitable, nativist climate. President Barack Obama has vowed some type of immigration reform via executive action in the face of an inert Congress. Yet Obama has said he will not move on reform until after congressional midterm elections in November. The numerous militias along the border join the US Customs and Border Protection as well as the Texas National Guard. The Patriots Information Hotline, a networking call center, claims 22 groups of “armed patriots” are patrolling the border, from Texas to California. The US Border Patrol has warned that armed vigilantes taking intimidation tactics too far could have “disastrous personal and public safety consequences.” Yet the Patriots back in Brownsville insist the description “vigilante” is unfair, and that they are not itching to fire their high-powered firearms. “Everybody has this bad taste in their mouth about ‘militias.’ They think we’re out here trying to smoke people and kill them as soon as they cross the border. Which obviously, is not the case,” said “Huggie Bear,” a member of the Patriots who is a former US Army infantry team leader. “Our goal here is to try to deter them from coming. They see us, they don’t know who we are, so that kind of scares people away for a while,” he told Reuters. Militia groups on the border have been invited by private landowners to patrol in certain areas, as is the case with the Patriots near Brownsville. Expenses are usually paid by the militia members, with sympathetic donors also offering support funding, according to Reuters. Monsees said he asked for help on his border land given “illegals” have allegedly poisoned his dogs and shot at his house. “If they [the militia] leave, I’m dead,” he said. Others in the area echo these sentiments, saying the militia groups give them a sense of peace. “Whoever says there’s not a problem by the border wall, they don’t live out here,” said Fernando Rivera Jr., a property owner in Brownsville. Rivera said his son patrols the family’s backyard with a shotgun to deter what he calls criminals from crossing the border. “Now, when they’re on patrol, it’s actually peaceful,” Rivera said. “The dogs don’t bark as much. I can actually get some sleep.” The militaristic Patriots are also equipped with all-terrain vehicles, thick body armor, plastic handcuffs to detain migrants and communications equipment that can supposedly reach Border Patrol agents. The only live fire the group has encountered, according to Reuters, was from Border Patrol, who thought an armed member of the Patriots was an undocumented immigrant. Once shots were fired, the Patriot reportedly dropped his firearm. No one was injured in the encounter. The situation exemplifies the challenges and worries the militias pose to law enforcement. “When there are situations with any individual who is bearing arms in public or on private property, there is always a concern amongst law enforcement of possible misidentification that can lead to friendly-fire tragedies,” said Eddie Guerra, sheriff of Hidalgo County in Texas. Regardless, groups like the Patriots stay vigilant. “If you spot them and shine your light on them, that lets them know that you’re there,” said Will, 25, who came from Indiana to join the Patriots. “Nine times out of 10, they’re not going to come over. “Even if they are going to try to cross again, we’re still making it harder for them, and that’s the reason we’re here.”

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