HOW TO FIGHT CORPORATISTS

Mr. Pugger at the T.V.

Repeata por favor: WHY?

Word is that jobs – employment – and the economy are the priority.  Global warming and climate change must take a back seat.  However, one isn’t exclusive of the other.  The two are compatible and complementary.

For example, make every roof in the United States white.  Spend bailout money for labor and materials to Re-roof the Nation, changing every single dark-roofed structure in the country, using ONLY U.S. manufactured materials and union family-wage labor.  This simple action will significantly lower the planetary temperature, and start the nation moving on the rehabilatation and restoration of our environment.

Get real.  Quit subsidizing the poisonous consumer culture.  Why do we support a consumption-based capitalist system?  Why are there no options to lifetime indenture to a corporate behemoth?  Why are we dutifully trudging forward on a downward path to oblivion?  Why are we giving up, surrendering individuality, self-sufficiency, and independent living for a voluntary enslavement to a destructive ethos that is killing the planet?

Why are our leaders so clueless?  The facts are plain, the evidence overwhelming, and the results self-evident before our very eyes.  We’ve flunked any “stewardship of the earth” test in favor of an “eat everything in sight” survival panic.  We have overgrazed our range.  Starvation may finally depopulate our habitat.  Climate change may cleanse it via our extinction.  Hopefully, tenacious life will find a new way with a new shepherd who truly minds the flock, instead of one whose only thought is to fleece and eat it.  JL/12-09

Here are some good ways to fight back and unplug from the corporatist state.  

10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics** (Adapted abstract from Fran Korten, YES! Magazine – Link below).

The Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in politics is outrageous.  What can be done?  10 ideas:

1.   Amend U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings.

Congresswoman Donna Edwards and constitutional law professor Jamie Raskin speak out against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC and call for a mass movement of people to support a constitutional amendment. Visit FreeSpeechforPeople.org to learn more and get involved! READ MORE: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/145361/a_constitutional_amendment_to_wrench_control_away_from_the_corporations/

2.   Require shareholders to approve political spending by their corporations. Britain has required shareholder approval since 2000.

Thomas Paine, American patriot and author warned us to watch, guide, and stop the powerful elite if we want humanity in general to succeed.  Paine proposed that any bill that enriches a corporation or grants a corporate charter should be enacted in one session of the legislature, and confirmed in a second, AFTER A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE, to stop corporate raids on the public treasury.  READ MORE: https://johnlegry.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/independence-day-2009/

3.    Pass Fair Elections Now Act for federal financing for Congressional elections.

4.    Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free broadcast air time.

We need a reformed public ownership of uncensored airwaves, subject to strong democratic citizen oversight.  Free PBS and the Wilson Center!

5.    Ban political advertising by corporations that receive government money, hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad.

6.    Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns.  Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes this, calling it “The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act.”

7.    Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national exchanges if they make political contributions and expenditures.  Another Grayson, which he calls “The Public Company Responsibility Act.”

8.    Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used to influence public opinion.  Grayson calls this “The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act.”

More details are available on the congressman’s Web site. READ MORE: http://www.alternet.org/politics/145339/grayson%3A_fight_now_or_%27kiss_your_country_goodbye%27_to_exxon%2C_wal-mart

9.    Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of political commercials that his or her company pays for.  A personal favorite: let’s see these sleezebags shill their own dirty work.

10.  Publicize reform options, inform the public of who is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry.  Citizens must act.  Grassroots anger at corporate power is high, and when the public is angry, action is inevitable.

** READ MORE: Fran Korten, YES! Magazine http://www.alternet.org/rights/145441/10_ways_to_stop_corporate_dominance_of_politics

10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You By Scott Thill, AlterNet.

Tired of getting pushed around by faceless big business? Here are 10 ways to push back!

Our global culture is rife with users, and we just sit back and take it.  No more.  Drop these bombs.  You’ll get change faster than you can say, “Teabag this!”

1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it. Even academia says it’s OK. Move to the city and rent.  You’ll end up there anyway when your suburb runs out of water and malls.  One can have a good credit rating again — meaning above 660 — within two years after a foreclosure.

2. Unplug your cable. The easiest way to kill the so-called news networks is to cut them off at their enablers.  Pull your cable bill’s plug, or shut down your satellite.  Cable companies balk at offering channels on an a la carte basis and instead raise the price of their mediocre bundled offerings.  You don’t need old-school TV anymore.  In our digital age, you can go online for news and entertainment.  Streaming video sites like YouTube, or torrents, which are the future now, offer most favorites.  The BitTorrent protocol houses the people’s media library, dedicated not just to pimping out the same crap seen on network and cable, but often stunning artistry left for dead by the side of the mainstream.  Murdoch and other media asshats will hate you for unsubscribing, but you won’t miss 80 percent of the shit you watched when it’s gone.

3. Kill your landline. Chances are, your carrier is a privacy sellout you’re already paying double.  If you have a cell account, you don’t need a landline, so they’re just jacking you for money.  Nowadays, there are easier ways to chat up your pals, from Twitter and Facebook to Apple’s iChat, for free, riding the Internet.  Bottom line? Landlines are just ways to chain your wallet to the wall.

4. Reacquire your wealth. The easiest way for the Federal Reserve to pick your pocket is through your accounts and investments, which can be liquidated in the blink of a discount window‘s eye.  Withdraw cash, close accounts, and take it somewhere besides Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase or another bailout addict.  Right now, worry about another economic clusterfuck.  Banks left standing after the financial crashes are fatter than ever, hoarding cash instead of lending it to survive the next crisis they have already priced into the market.  Thanks to Congress, the Fed and the last two administrations, they’ve got your cash sitting in their vaults, whistling while they wait.  Take it out.

5. Pacify your portfolio.  Chances are you still own a retirement or investment portfolio. If you haven’t checked it out recently, chances are it’s poisoned by hyperleveraged funds invested in oil, housing, malls, SUVs or a shady Ponzi scheme.  Get out now, unless you want to be a dick about it.  Commodities like oil and food are hot, but they’re infested by destructive speculators.

The easiest way to make change in capitalism is by manipulating your money.  Make sure your retirement isn’t invested in Exxon or worse.  Put your money in solar stocks, and forward-looking investments, if you must fund anything.  In capitalism, you are what you pay for, not what you say about what you pay for.

6. Take credit. If you have more than two credit cards, you’re simply asking for trouble.  Scoring over $38 billion in corrupt overdraft fees and dragging their well-heeled feet on foreclosure modifications, banks aren’t done squeezing the public out of its last pennies.  Stop them, cut off the money.  No extra credit?  Great, no extra crap.  Pay off the cards you keep by any means necessary, and then pay off monthly.  That pisses off credit card companies no end.

7. Avoid CDs and DVDs: At least, stuff that isn’t in collectible form.  There is still a place for material goods in our mounting environmental chaos, but it is shrinking fast, like natural resources.  Discs are wasteful and obsolete; plastic uses oil, paper uses trees and water.  You can get anything you want these days online.  CDs and DVDs are the easiest fat to axe.

8. Stop buying bottled water, factory-farmed beef and new cars, especially hybrids.  The first offense is an oil industry bailout, the second is a climate-change massacre, and the third is a waste of time and money.  Electric cars will be here soon; walk or use public transportation until then.  Have to drive miles to work? Consider how much it costs, and add that to the paycheck you could get closer to home.  Our climate crisis demands that we kill as many emissions as possible to keep the planet from overheating.  A few more degrees and we could be looking at outright extinction of the human race.  Ergo, also decrease the amount of methane farted out by hordes of cows in Cow-schwitzes across America.  If you think carbon dioxide is a killer, it’s nothing compared to methane.  Throw in the heresy of using oil to make plastic bottles to store the same water that’s no more pristine than what’s already in your tap, and you have the hat trick from hell.  If you can do only one thing on this admittedly ambitious list, do these three things for instant impact.

9. Do not watch whiny bitches.  Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and other compromised gossips ranting about everything from Tiger Woods to Barack Hussein Obama are a waste of everyone’s time, except of course the people who pay them to spout their nonsense, and those who watch it to confirm their already mindless prejudices and political objectives.  Spend your time reading and ranting about more important matters.  Like your sex life.

10. Start or join a third party. “You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?”  Our country is run by a single party comprised of political animals assembling on the fence.  They will do whatever they can to stay in power, even if it is madness.

The two-party system you have today is already a three-party system, housing a well-meaning minority, middle-way sellouts and batshit loonies.  Someone needs to babysit all those kids.  Why not you?  Worried about leaving your party?  Don’t be; it already left you.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144679/10_ways_to_screw_over_the_corporate_jackals_who%27ve_been_screwing_you?page=entire

TEABAGGER MEMORIAL

VOTE!

VOTE!

Tom Paine, author-patriot, 1737-1809

TEABAGGER MEMORIAL

Liberty crowning defiant American democracy.

VOTE!

PUBLIC ENEMIES 1 and 2

BILLIONAIRE BASTARDS:

Meet the Billionaire Brothers Funding the Right-Wing War on Obama, Think Progress. by Faiz Shakir, et al.

They’re the 9th richest people in America and they’re pushing hard to upend President Obama’s progressive agenda.

Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama’s progressive agenda. They loom in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. Ranked as the 9th richest men in America, the Koch brothers sit at the helm of Koch Industries, a massive privately owned conglomerate of manufacturing, oil, gas, and timber interests. David and Charles are also responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform. Over the years, millions of dollars in Koch money has flowed to various right-wing think tanks, front groups, and publications. At the dawn of the Obama presidency, Koch groups launched television and radio ads deriding the recovery stimulus package as simply “pork” spending. The Cato Institute — founded by Charles — as well as other Koch-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, produced a blizzard of reports distorting the stimulus and calling for a return to Bush-style tax cuts to combat the recession. David’s Americans for Prosperity (AFP) placed calls and helped organize the very first “tea party” protests. AFP, founded in 1984 by David and managed by astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips, mobilized “tea party” opposition to health reform, clean energy legislation, and financial regulations.

STOPPING CLEAN ENERGY: David Koch presents himself as a champion of science. Nevertheless, Koch has done more to undermine the public’s understanding of climate change science than any other person in America. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, funded by Koch, wages an underhanded campaign to falsely charge that a set of hacked e-mails unravels the scientific consensus that global warming is real. Despite the brothers’ extravagant wealth, Koch’s Americans for Prosperity has run populist ads mocking environmentalists as spoiled brats. Koch Industries has spent nearly $9 million dollars so far to misinform the public on climate change legislation. Koch-funded operatives attempted to crash the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this week, and may succeed in scuttling any prospect for addressing climate change.

STOPPING HEALTH REFORM: Much of the fierce opposition to health reform can be credited to the Kochs. Their Patients United has blanketed the country with ads distorting provisions of the health reform legislation, particularly the public option. Koch groups foster extremism. A speaker with the Patients United bus tour compared health reform to the Holocaust while an eight-by-five foot banner at AFP health care rallies read, “National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany” superimposed over corpses from a concentration camp. AFP channeled anger into Democratic healthcare town halls in August. It wasn’t the first time Koch groups helped hijack the health reform debate. In 1994, Americans for Prosperity, then known as Citizens for a Sound Economy, worked closely with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to bring mobs of angry men to health reform rallies [to intimidate] then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

A LONG HISTORY OF STOPPING PROGRESS: The Koch brothers clearly have a financial stake in blocking reform. Koch Industry oil refineries are major carbon dioxide polluters, and Georgia-Pacific, a Koch Industries timber subsidiary, is one of the largest contributors to the loss of carbon-sink capacity. According to the EPA, Koch Industries is responsible for over 300 oil spills in the U.S. and has leaked three million gallons of crude oil into fisheries and drinking waters. Their opposition is a long family tradition of trying to shift the country to the far right. Fred Koch, father of Charles and David helped to found the John Burch Society in the late 1950s. The John Burch Society harnessed Cold War fears into hate against progressives, warning that President Kennedy, Civil Rights activists, and organized labor were in league with communists. His sons continue to galvanize hundreds of thousands of middle class people into supporting the Kochs’ narrow agenda of cutting corporate taxes and avoiding consumer regulations [to the ruin of our equality and democracy]. READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/politics/144455/meet_the_billionaire_brothers_funding_the_right-wing_war_on_obama

Obama Far Outdoes Bush in Escalating War — The Numbers Will Surprise You By David DeGraw, Amped Status.

Increasing numbers of deployed soldiers, mercenaries and drones all add up to Obama being more of a war president than Bush, in terms of hard numbers. READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/world/144449/obama_far_outdoes_bush_in_escalating_war_–_the_numbers_will_surprise_you

Copenhagen Won’t Be Enough — Only a ‘Human Movement’ Can Save Civilization from the Climate Crisis By Fred Branfman, Sacramento News & Review.

A strange cloud envelops human civilization as its leaders fail to take the measures to protect it in Copenhagen that they themselves endorsed just five months ago.

To be or not to be, that is the question.–William Shakespeare, Hamlet. READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/144451/copenhagen_won%27t_be_enough_–_only_a_%27human_movement%27_can_save_civilization_from_the_climate_crisis

The Public Option That Isn’t Public At All By James Ridgeway, Mother Jones Online.

As the Senate negotiates its health-care reform bill, liberals appear ready to throw in the towel on a real public option. READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/politics/144446/the_public_option_that_isn%27t_public_at_all

SOME LIGHT, SOME DARK

State of Mind

COAL:

We can’t afford the fiction of “clean” coal anymore.  Coal is dirty.  It cannot be cleaned within the foreseeable future by any known technology – all lies, wishful thinking and futuristic theory certainly not withstanding.

We will kill all life as we know it on this planet if we do not reduce our current rate of carbon emissions.  Trust the science, not the propaganda spin of the coal merchants.  Time is running out for human survival on this earth – and if not this one, which one?  Coal burning accelerates our suicide.

Earth is in the midst of its Sixth Great Species Extinction.  Do we want to go the way of the dinosaurs?  Do we want to watch our sons and daughters, grandchildren, spouse, friends or ourselves die in our own waste and secondhand smoke?

Stop coal energy production at once.  Lead and start mass development of alternative clean energy resources today: wind, water, solar.  Protect life from ignorance, superstition, lack of vision, and selfish greed.

We have to change our basic survival assumptions if we are going to cope with this self-inflicted disaster.  Bite the bullet: stop it now.  Coal is a fuel for dead men on a dead planet.

Spokane Considers Community Bill of Rights by Mari Margil YES! Magazine

Thousands of people voted to protect nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.

Of all the candidates, bills, and proposals on ballots around the country yesterday, one of the most exciting is a proposition that didn’t pass.

In Spokane, Washington, despite intense opposition from business interests, a coalition of residents succeeded in bringing an innovative “Community Bill of Rights” to the ballot. Proposition 4 would have amended the city’s Home Rule Charter (akin to a local constitution) to recognize nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.

A coalition of the city’s residents drafted the amendments after finding that they didn’t have the legal authority to make decisions about their own neighborhoods; the amendments were debated and fine-tuned in town hall meetings.  READ MORE:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/05-8

How a Public Jobs Program Could Put America Back on Track By Julianne Malveaux, The Progressive.

The same nation that created a Works Progress Administration in the 1930s should create another one in the 21st century.

Eighty years ago this week, the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression. We need to apply the lessons from that era to our own to relieve the needless suffering of the Great Recession.

In just two days, between Oct. 28 and 29, 1929, the stock market plummeted by 25 percent. Between September and November of that year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 40 percent of its value. By July of 1932, the Dow had lost nearly 90 percent of its value.

By then the Great Depression was raging, with unemployment rates rising to 25 percent.

To combat unemployment and alleviate poverty, the federal government engaged in a massive public works and jobs program through the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Private markets weren’t about to create jobs, and the public sector became the employer of last resort. The job creation from the WPA provided survival and sustenance for millions of American families. Where is the contemporary WPA?  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143710/how_a_public_jobs_program_could_put_america_back_on_track

Thousands of Right-Wingers Rally at Capitol to Hear Lies About Health-Care Reform, Courtesy of Bachmann and GOP Leaders By Adele Stan, AlterNet.

Days before a health bill is expected to pass the House, Republicans rallied their flock with the help of FOX News, Michele Bachmann and leading conservative groups.

Thousands of right-wingers rallied yesterday on the lawn on the U.S. Capitol building to hear a parade of Republican lawmakers warn them of an alleged threat to their freedom embedded in the secret channels of the health-care reform bill unveiled last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Lawmakers expect to vote on the bill this Saturday.

Congressional star power was provided on the podium by the likes of Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who called for the rally from the hallowed platform of Sean Hannity’s FOX News program. Other big names on the Capitol podium included House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio; Joe “You Lie” Wilson, R-S.C., (who got a huge ovation from the crowd) and Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., who promised that he was doing all he could to ensure that “not one Republican” votes for the health-care reform bill.

Actors Jon Voight and John Deszo Ratzenberger (the guy who played Cliff on Cheers) provided the glamor quotient.  READ MORE:

http://www.alternet.org/politics/143768/thousands_of_right-wingers_rally_at_capitol_to_hear_lies_about_health-care_reform%2C_courtesy_of_bachmann_and_gop_leaders

REPUBLICAN INSURANCE NAZIS

Jon Stewart Gets Teary-Eyed Over the Plight of Glenn Beck’s Internal Organs

Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet

POLLUTER BORN EVERY MINUTE

Coming to America -Triptych

[See also POLLUTER BORN EVERY MINUTE reprise for full post]

TOO DAMNED MANY PEOPLE

WAYS TO REDUCE CARBON FOOTPRINTS:

ACTION: (Measure: Lifetime carbon dioxide saved in Metric Tons. Data from U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s personal emissions calculator and calculations by OSU statistics professor Paul Murtaugh.  Annual totals based on lifespan of 80 – female expectancy U.S.  Source: Paul Murtaugh).

Recycle newspaper, magazines, glass, plastic, and aluminum cans – 17 tons

Replace old refrigerator with energy-efficient model – 19 tons

Replace 10 incandescent light bulbs with energy-efficient ones – 36 tons

Replace single-glazed windows with energy-efficient windows – 21 tons

Reduce miles driven from 231 to 155 per week – 147 tons

Increase car’s fuel economy from 20 miles per gallon to 30 – 148 tons

REDUCE NUMBER OF CHILDREN BY ONE  – 9,441 tons

Under current conditions, each child in the U.S. adds about 9,4441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the parents’ carbon legacy during his lifetime.  That’s 5.7 times more than the average childless person.

A child born in China has a fifth of the impact of a child born in the U.S.

The carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of having a child is almost 20 times more important than other ecologically minded lifestyle choices like driving a fuel-efficient car, recycling or being energy-efficient.

The same conclusions also roughly apply to fresh water consumption. Fresh water has been and will continue to be cause for international conflict. The amount of fresh water on planet earth is finite and we’re running out.

Many children are born to people who are not ready or willing to raise them.

Many parents are less ecologically responsible out of convenience, e.g. using disposable instead of cloth diapers; buying an SUV instead of a compact (“The family is so much safer.”  Not in the long run, Mom; bad choice for the grand children too, if any).

Abstracted: “Not So Carbon Friendly” Jennifer Anderson, Portland Tribune.  Sound Off – Comment: www.portlandtribune.com

TIME IS SHORT

According to the best science, we’ve got ten years left to take this issue on seriously and save our butts.  It may well be less, no one can accurately predict the rate of decay.  It will take most of us to accomplish any earthly salvation, but if we don’t confront and dispose of our garbage, which includes, but is not limited to: religion; overpopulation; short-term economic self-interest; and our ostrich-like tendency to duck and cover in order to avoid seeing our approaching doom, we’re screwed.

We must stop over consumption, kick capitalism into a servant’s status in our democratic life, and curb the excesses of individual and tribal (read also national) self-interest.  Impossible, you say?  That’s my point: good luck and the spin of prayer is about all we seem willing to invest in our own survival.

Homo sapiens, Man the “wise,” we called ourselves; Homo sapiens sapiens, man the “doubly wise” some scientists call us now.  Yeah, right.  First step: pick up the shovel and find a place to pitch in; there’s a lot of work to do quickly, and it must be done well.  No me-first crap, one for all and all for one.  Meet you in the trenches.

A GOOD Place to Start: Center for Biological Diversity

Japanese fishermen riding a boat loaded with slaughtered dolphins at a blood-covered water cove in Taiji harbor, Japan’s Wakayama prefecture. US environmentalist Ric O’Barry has filmed dolphin hunting at the town of Taiji as an eco-documentary called “The Cove” which has started screening in the US.(AFP/HO/File)

Published on Friday, September 11, 2009 by Agence France Presse

Japanese Town Starts Dolphin Hunt Under global Spotlight by Kyoko Hasegawa.

TAIJI, Japan – To animal rights activists it’s a cruel and bloody slaughter; for Japanese it’s a long tradition: this week fishermen in a picturesque coastal town embarked on their annual dolphin hunt.  Every year, crews in motorboats here have rounded up about 2,000 of the sea mammals, banged metal poles to herd them into a small, rocky cove and killed them with harpoons, sparing a few dozen for sale to marine aquariums.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/11-4