The people behind Super PACs know how to influence elections (or "buy politicians" as it's more accurately known), and how to legally avoid scrutiny.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison said, "The people are the fountain of all power." Hop in the DeLorean and time-jump to today, and the power of the people has been utterly perverted. The job of supposedly leaders is to produce what the money-ballers and power-brokers who bought their office want. And we have the ludicrous "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision - wherein it was ruled that corporations have the exact same rights as individual U.S. citizens and cannot be limited on how much money they can give to a political candidate, *AND* they don't have to disclose having done so.

A whopping $66 million was raised in the first half of this year by independent groups known as "super-PACs" (political-action committees), according to Federal Elections Commission filings. The justification for these money-funneling organizations is that PACs weren't effective enough in buying politicians and super-versions of them were necessary. It's the same exact mentality that decided that Congress wasn't effective enough to pass laws, so we needed the "Super-Congress" to get things done. And we've all how non-partisan, streamlined and effective that's been.

What does this mean to you, me and every other average taxpayer? It means that we are now *OFFICIALLY* irrelevant to the American electoral process, as opposed to the way we've just been peripherally involved for the past several decades. Big money corporations and super-PACs are literally able, legally, to BUY ELECTIONS. Candidates don't even have to bother with fundraising anymore. They just sit back and collect multi-million-dollar "donations" from people and organizations that are formed and run by their own people. They don't need your money anymore. They don't even need your vote anymore. All they need is one or two millionaire/billionaire buddies to buy the ballot box for them. You? You're just there for them to pander to you; to rile you up, spew their spiffy bumper-sticker slogans at; and fool you into thinking they actually give a rat's ass what happens to you.

Although there are currently more than 140 PACs involved, just five groups accounted for more than $50 million of that haul:

Winning Our Future: $27.4 million (directly supporting Newt Gingrich, including $10 million given by Gingrich's billionaire buddy, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson)
Restore Our Future: $15.2 million (directly supporting Mitt Romney)
American Crossroads: $3.9 million (founded and run by Karl Rove, directly supporting Newt Gingrich and anyone and anything that opposes Barack Obama)
Priorities USA Action: $3.1 million (directly supporting Barack Obama)
American Bridge 21st Century: $1.5 million (directly supporting Barack Obama)

Think about that: One man, one multi-billionaire, has given $10 Million dollars to Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. $10 MILLION. And he's got four-or-five more zeroes than that if he feels like throwing another 10-or-20 million into the fire. Someone explain again how that's NOT buying a presidential campaign or the political figure-head in front of it? Never before in the history of American politics has a single couple given more money to a single candidate and had a bigger impact - all courtesy of the Supreme Court and its grotesque decisions that speech is money and corporations are people under the First Amendment.

We're supposed to believe that Adelson won't want something in return if Gingrich gets into the White House? We're supposed to believe that influence won't be pedaled to allow Adelson to build casinos in Florida and elsewhere that he's been prevented by law from doing for decades? We're supposed to believe he's just a "patriotic American who's participating in his Constitutionally protected electoral process" because he's a nice guy?

Bullshit. I'll believe Sarah Palin's IQ is bigger than her bra size first.

Super-PACs may raise unlimited funds from individuals, corporations, or unions to advocate for or against political candidates. They may also spend unlimited funds, though they may not "coordinate" with or contribute directly to a candidate's campaign. And isn't it amazing how often these candidates are seen having dinner with these donors, or playing golf with them, or at a party with them, etc.? But we're supposed to believe they're NOT talking about the campaign or their financing. Why? Because they tell us they weren't, and politicians would simply never lie, especially about something as grave and serious as campaign fraud.

The court in Citizens United rightly approved requirements for public disclosure of donors' names and other information. Unfortunately, political professionals have found a way around that by funneling money first through nonprofit corporations not subject to disclosure requirements. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future, buoyed by $10 million in contributions from casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his family, had purchased $6 million in Sunshine State advertising. Restore Our Future was reported to have spent $7.7 million on behalf of Romney.

That's nearly FOURTEEN MILLION DOLLARS, spent in one state, in one week, for nothing more than repetitive, negative, "attack" ads that have been proven - time and again - to be stuffed full of out-of-context quotes, distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies - all in favor of two pathological liars who want you to believe they are the best possible choice there is to be leader of the United States of America, and by proxy, the leader of the free world.

Super-PACs can avoid disclosing donors by contributing funds raised to 501(c)4 organizations; these non-profit "social welfare" organizations are not required by law to reveal their donors. During the mid-term elections, five super PACs attributed all or nearly all of their contributions to nonprofit organizations.

The dual-structure affiliation of super PACs and non-profits is currently legal, but it's a blatant and obvious end-run around the voice of the voter, and a direct super-highway for corporations, big unions, and wealthy individuals to have unlimited influence on elections and officeholders. This was the reason "soft money" donations to the political parties were banned in 2002, and the ban was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2010. But super-PACs don't *CALL* it "soft money," so the Supreme Court trumped itself, and royally screwed the ordinary voter, by saying that the "soft money" ruling didn't apply.

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works in the areas of campaign finance and elections, political communication, and government ethics, has filed a petition with the Internal Revenue Service, arguing that existing IRS regulations permit these 501(c)4 groups to make far more campaign expenditures than is allowed by the Internal Revenue Code, and requesting that the IRS issue new regulations that better enforce the law.

A collective of Republicans in the House of Representatives have already joined forces to issue a counter-proposal to block the petition on the grounds that it "violates the law of the land, as defined by Citizens United." You got that, didn't you? The politicians opposing the people who are opposing Citizens United, are citing Citizens United as the reason why it can't be opposed. And nobody in Washington sees an inherent, systemic problem with that? THESE are our "best and brightest"?

Unfortunately, because the system is designed to keep power in power, Congress will never reform itself when it comes to campaign finance. The rich will get richer, the powerful will get more powerful, and you and I will sit here, shaking our heads or screaming at the monitor, powerless, frustrated and prevented from doing anything about it by a system that's designed to protect, promote and promulgate itself.

Newt Gingrich can whine and cry that Mitt Romney is spending millions of super-PAC dollars on negative campaign ads that make Gingrich look bad (mainly by pointing out facts from his political past). So what is Newt's solution? His super-PAC spends millions of super-PAC dollars on negative campaign ads against Romney, and justifies it because "Hey ... the law says I can."

And don't look for the Federal Election Commission to weigh in on this. They've already released a statement that they are only responsible for how *elections* are conducted, not campaigns.

And that's why I'm suggesting an end-run around Congress.

By invoking Article V of the U.S. Constitution and putting enormous pressure to fix this dismal fiduciary game of ba-zinga called "politics in America" through voicing opposition - loud and organized - at state constitutional conventions, we the people can take the strangle-hold off our financial and electoral throats and force the U.S. Congress to surgically remove a cancer that has poisoned it from within.

It's either that, or torches and pitchforks.

And, frankly, I'm leaning *WAY* more toward the latter.

In October, 1996, Rick Santorum's wife Karen had a second-trimester abortion. But the Santorums don't like to describe it that way. Instead, they call it "a necessary interruptive surgical procedure to save the mother's life that resulted in the death of the fetus." How that is anything other than the literal clinical definition of "abortion" is something that can only be found in the dementia of faux-Christian hypocrisy.

Newsflash: Calling it anything other than the word "abortion" doesn't change the fact that it was, in fact, an abortion.

What's conveniently lost on Mrs. Santorum is how she and her husband are going after everybody else's families and children every day, for political gain.

But the devastating ordeal of losing their child was apparently not so heart-rending and "deeply, totally personal" that it stopped the Santorums from cashing in with a book about it. Yes, you can buy Letters to Gabriel from most religion-focused book stores for the bargain-basement price of only about 20 bucks. The Santorums define the book as ""a celebration of our son's life."

When posturing in South Carolina last week, Santorum said that "Neither rape, incest or a threat to the mother's health is an excuse to commit the crime of having an abortion." Asked what he would do if his own daughter approached him, begging for an abortion after having been raped, Santorum said he would counsel her to "accept this horribly created" baby, because it was still a gift from God, even if given in a "broken" way. Santorum said that any exception to a prohibition on abortion "would be taking a life" and he advocates that any doctor who performs an abortion should be criminally charged for doing so.

Except ... of course ... for the doctor who performed Karen Santorum's abortion. In the ever-in-your-face Republican hypocritical manner, Santorum says that situation was "different."

Funny how in all that time, he never once mentioned how his views should have applied to his own wife, Karen, who:

had a live-in unmarried relationship with an abortion doctor who is 40 years older than she is;
left that man to begin her relationship with Santorum, whom she described at the time as "a fascinatingly open-minded and pro-choice man"; and
had a voluntary second-trimester abortion in her 19th week of pregnancy.

But whether or not Karen Santorum had an abortion or medically induced the birth of a non-viable fetus shouldn't matter in the eyes of someone with views as extreme as Santorum, as he is one of a disturbingly large group of politicians -- conveniently, all men -- who believe that women should not be allowed to abort under any circumstances. Santorum's even against abortion if there were no hope of the fetus surviving to full term, or even if the woman carrying the fetus risked death by doing so. Karen Santorum would have died if the fetus were not removed, and labor was induced and not halted knowing that the fetus would not survive. How is this not, in every sense of the word, an "abortion"? In Santorum's world, it would probably qualify as "justifiable infanticide."

The hairsplitting debate over whether or not the procedure Karen Santorum had been an abortion only serves to expose the ludicrousness of Rick Santorum's extremism. In his view, it's absolutely not okay for a woman to have doctors remove her life-threatening pregnancy for her, but it is okay for a woman to deliver a fetus long viability so that the child can die slowly, in open air, as "god" intended? Or is it just not okay for any woman to have an abortion if she doesn't happen to be Rick Santorum's wife?

According to Santorum, the U.S. federal government is too big. It's too big to get into our school classrooms. It's too big to get into our mortgages. It's too big to get into providing basic, common survival services for the most down-trodden of Americans. The federal government is just too gosh-darn big.

But there's plenty of room inside a woman's uterus for a huge chunk of the federal government to reside.

Through the tunnel-vision that is Rick Santorum's view of the world: Incest? Too bad. Rape? Too bad. Pregnant at 12 years old? Too bad. Woman dying because of the pregnancy? Too bad. Santorum said Sunday that women should never, under any circumstances, even consider abortion. Instead, they should "deal with it and move on to better times in their life."

Great advice, Rick. That way, every single time that woman looks at her child, she'll see the man who violated her in the most horrific, traumatic, emotionally devastating and vile manner possible. This must be yet another shining example of those "compassionate conservatives" we keep hearing about.

But hey, as long as you don't have to abide by the rules that you demand others have to live by, what's the harm? Right.

It's almost enough to make you forget his central handicap; the fact that he is Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich's primary problem (pun intended) isn't that his marital record is a consistent marry-cheat-marry broken record. It isn't that he's a permanently entrenched Washington politico *AND* lobbyist who thinks telling people he isn't will make it true. It isn't that he's been the architect of the most divisive political campaign strategies in history. It isn't even that he's just a bloated, two-faced, pompous ass.

No, Gingrich's problem is that he exults in being those things, but demands apologies from anyone who points out that he's being them.

Gingrich was one of the leading megaphones in the cries to have Bill Clinton hanged - or at least impeached - for having extra-marital affairs while president. And yet Gingrich dismisses any and all claims that his lifelong habitual adultery is anything less than a side-effect of his "deep passion for America." He loves the country so much that he just can't resist the desire to have sex with women other than his wife. Oh ... and the fact that Gingrich was having an affair DURING the Monica Lewinsky witch hunt ... well, you're just supposed to overlook that because he was "working for America's interests."

While berating Mitt Romney for his multi-million-dollar salary and bonuses while being CEO of a company Gingrich claims helped create the country's financial crisis, Gingrich was collecting multi-million-dollar paychecks from Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac as a "political history consultant," all the while defaming the housing market manipulation that created the country's financial crisis.

Gingrich is a demagogue, and demagogues don't get elected President of the United States. They get on TV a lot, they live opulent lifestyles, they get fat paychecks from Rupert Murdoch, they even win the occasional primary. But they don't win the presidency. Their sole function is to make the election process so dismal, distorted, redirected and unappealing that only the most extreme right-wingers or leftists will want to participate. It makes pushing all those non-political "hot buttons" like abortion, and gay marriage, and Socialist pay and benefits for teachers, and inverse tax structures, all that much easier.

The presidential historian Richard Norton Smith says demagoguery can be defined as "extremism married to flamboyance, and it helps if you have delusions of grandeur." Throw in piousness, arrogance, hypocrisy and a core being that seeks only unilateral power, self-aggrandizement and self-wealth, and you have the recipe for Newt Gingrich.

Other demagogues -- at least as, but never more exemplary of the term - have aspired to the White House and found their general election results ranging from disappointing to humiliating.

• Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who railed against "anarchists" and "pseudo-intellectuals," championed African-American suppression and segregation, all while threatening treason charges against anti-Vietnam protesters in 1968. Wallace took down 13 percent of the vote and carried five Southern states. His effective results north, west and east of those states; el grande huevo. Gingrich said in an interview on "60 Minutes" in 1983 that Wallace's efforts were "genuinely American, just poorly executed."
• Pat Buchanan ran in 1992 and 1996 on a platform consisting primarily of xenophobic isolationism and a personal vendetta against homosexuals and atheists, never made it to the Oval Office so he could implement his plan to build an impenetrable concrete dome over the United States of America. In a Washington Post interview in 1993, Gingrich called Buchanan "one of the great misunderstood genius visionaries of our time."
• Reverend Jesse Jackson tried to make it to the White House riding a wave of nothing but "black power." His vote results were more of a milk-toasty transparent light grey. In a Fox News interview in 2000, Gingrich called Jackson's 1998 presidential campaign "a pathetic waste of time for people who have better things to do than to listen to another African-American preacher try to play politician."

The Republican Party, for all its claims of conservatism, family values and moral superiority, has consistently passed up actual principled conservatives in favor of corporate puppets, religious zealots and insipid candidates who were - from the onset - so patently unqualified and intellectually deficient (Alaska's half-governor, anyone?). This past week, Gingrich said Sarah Palin is "definitely, without question, one of the people I would go to for advice as president" and danced around the prospect of Palin having a cabinet position in his administration.

Throughout his career, Gingrich has done his best to ingratiate himself with the most rabid ideologues in the GOP. In 1990, he advised fellow House Republicans to refer to Democrats with such words as "sick," "pathetic," "destructive," "anti-family" and "traitors." Gingrich personally authored and at-first secretly distributed the infamous "Language" memo to Republican party officials in which words such as "welfare," "despicable" "inhuman," "anti-American" and "Communist" were not only suggested, but advised and required, as part of any Republican's public oratory when referring to Democrats. In literally every instance in which a Republican's provocative or controversial statements were factually tied back to his "Language" memo, Gingrich has harumphed and attributed the suggestion to "more evidence that the liberal media will try anything to make Republicans look bad."

For example, during a November 1994 appearance on "Nightline," Gingrich called Bill and Hillary Clinton "counter-culture McGoverniks." He first indignantly insisted that he had been misquoted, claiming that he "used the term McGovernite, not McGovernik" and dismissed the charge as "one of those things that the Washington Times picked up and therefore it's now history." When shown on-camera that at least four different newspapers, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, all quoted Gingrich as calling the Clintons "counter-culture McGoverniks," Gingrich dismissed the evidence and attributed it to "the liberal media covering for each other through selective reporting," and then declared that he wouldn't discuss that particular issue anymore during the program.

Gingrich is a poster child for bombast, vitriol and shameless invention. He says Obama "doesn't even have the courage to tell the truth about who wants to kill us" and accuses him of "pandering to radical Islam." He claimed that Obama's December 2010 approval to extend the Bush tax cuts, "the economy improved overnight ... literally." In February 2011, when shown a video clip of him making that statement and then a Wall Street Journal analysis showing an economic plummet since the tax cuts were extended, Gingrich asked his interview if he "had any questions that genuinely warranted an answer, instead of liberal tricks with charts and graphs."

There is no claim too inflammatory, reckless or implausible for Gingrich to make, and always with a smug, "to hell with you" air of abject certainty. That's the true mark of the demagogue. He is incapable of measured judgments, and he is unable - and unwilling - to admit to even the potential for being wrong, let alone admit when he is.

Gingrich can't simply something is "X' or "Y." He has to throw in some extreme adverbs to emphasize how right he thinks he is. Obama's national security policy isn't a mistake, or just risky, but "enormously dangerous and potentially the final nail in America's coffin." People who disagree with him aren't guilty of hypocrisy but of "utter total hypocrisy." Obama's refusal to rubber-stamp the approval of Republicans' Keystone XL pipeline bill isn't "unfortunate," but "an example of Obama's grotesque and pathological need to destroy America."

Gingrich laughed at Obama's 2008 campaign pledge to set the minimum wage to $9.50, and called Obama "some kind of Socialist Dudley Do-Right."

Well, keep laughing, Newt. Come November, you'll see what it's like to be "Snidely Backlash."

We allow our politicians to accept bribes, we allow our politicians to militarize the police, and we allow the SCOTUS to tell us free speech costs money, it isn't free. We allow corporations to write our laws and send our politicians on junkets . We don't see the problem with this. We call our selves the free, the brave, and yet we stand silently by watching it happen, if it was our side promoting it, while blaming the other guys. We use individual liberties as an excuse. We use group liberties as an excuse. We use "they deserve it" as an excuse.

We, the baby boomers, have allowed this to happen on our watch and stood by to busy to act. Well unless it was calling the opposition names and spreading misinformation about them. We have been divided and conquered. We cannot seriously call it "The United States of America" anymore. We are just to divided to care.

So repeat after me "We pledge allegiance to the Authoritarian States of America..... "

What say you?

Join the virtual strike to protest two proposed laws in the United States, called SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act. On January 24th, the U.S. Senate will vote on the PROTECT IP Act to censor the Internet, despite opposition from the *VAST MAJORITY* of Americans who have made their disapproval crystal clear.

The Internet blacklist legislation--known as PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House--invites Internet security risks, threatens online speech, and hampers innovation on the Web. Urge your members of Congress to reject this Internet blacklist campaign in both its forms!

Here is the complete text of the SOPA proposal, and here is the complete text of the PIPA proposal.

Congress wants to give corporations unlimited free speech rights and for you to have NONE!

As drafted, the legislation would grant the government and private parties unprecedented power to interfere with the Internet's underlying infrastructure. The government would be able to force ISPs and search engines to block users' attempts to reach certain websites' URLs. In response, third parties will woo average users to alternative servers that offer access to the entire Internet (not just the newly censored U.S. version), which will create new computer security vulnerabilities as the Internet grows increasingly balkanized.

It gets worse: the blacklist bills' provisions would give corporations and other private parties new powers to censor foreign websites with court orders that would cut off payment processors and advertisers. Broad immunity provisions (combined with a threat of litigation) would encourage service providers to over-block innocent users or even block websites voluntarily. This gives content companies every incentive to create unofficial blacklists of websites, which service providers would be under pressure to block without regard to the First Amendment.

Service providers would be forced to monitor and police their users' activities as well, threatening the DMCA safe harbors that have been vital to online innovation over the last decade. SOPA gives the government new powers to go after sites that provide information about tools that might be used to bypass the blacklists -- even though these are often the same tools used by democratic activists around the world to bypass Internet censorship mechanisms implemented by authoritarian governments like Iran and China.

The solutions are literally draconian. There's a bill that would require [Internet service providers] to remove URLs from the Web, which you may have heard about under its other name - government censorship.

SOPA would give both the government and major corporations the power to shut down entire websites accused of copyright infringement with neither a trial nor a traditional court hearing. The legislation is aggressively backed by Hollywood movie studios and major record labels, along with several major news providers, including Fox News and NBC-Universal, which have largely shied away from coverage of the bill.

By pitting nearly the entire tech industry against corporate Capitol Hill insiders from Hollywood, SOPA has prompted a tremendous wave of lobbying in Washington, accompanied by a flood of campaign contributions ahead of the 2012 elections. More than 1,000 lobbyists are currently registered to juice lawmakers on the bill. So once again - and AS USUAL - it's all about politicians being bought-and-paid-for to do what the people bribing them want instead of what the American people want, or what the U.S. Constitution guarantees.

If "corporations are people, too" then SO IS THE INTERNET. But Congress hasn't cared about consistency or ethics or working for the people who they supposedly represent, not for a long, long time. They only care about keeping their corporate puppetmasters happy, and keeping that fat lobby-money gravy train rolling in.

You can see here exactly how these Internet strangulation efforts will directly affect you.

Under current law, companies that believe that their material has been improperly excerpted can request that the infringing material be removed, but cannot demand that entire websites be shuttered. Hollywood and other content providers aggressively police the web looking for such potential "takedowns," and frequently request that legitimate material be removed.

The government's new website annihilation process would involve federal tampering with the domestic Domain Name System -- a basic Internet building block that links numerical addresses where Internet data is stored to URL addresses that people actually type into web browsers. The Chinese government censors the Internet for its citizens by engaging in DNS blocking, restricting access to certain domains.

So, with the passage last month of the "you can be detained indefinitely with no proof, trial or hearing just because somebody thinks you look suspicious" defense bill, we lost the protections of habeas corpus. And this new "Congress will decide what you can and cannot read or access on the Internet" bill, they're trying to kill individual rights to free speech.

I guess the next step will be for Congress to make the NRA's wet dream come true and make gun ownership federally mandatory.

Don't let these corporate-owned charlatans and minions get away with it. Take action to protect the rights that are supposed to protect you.

Now the ball is in the Dems court. They can sit back and do nothing or they can take a page from the Lunchpail Repubs playbook and start the effort to remove the corporatist/fascist/uber conservatives from their party as well.

This graph shows the percent of roll call votes Michele Bachmann was absent for during the her "career" in Congress.

The absentee rate is in red. The two thin black lines provide a context for understand­ing the significan­ce of the absentee rate. The lower dotted line shows the median value for all Members of Congress in that time period. The upper dotted line shows the 90th percentile­. A Member who approaches the upper dotted line is in the worst 10 percent of Congress.

Michele Bachmann, by her own failure to perform her sworn duty as a member of Congress, is in the 99.9904 percentile of the worst in Washington­.

The numbers don't lie. But Bachmann and her supporters sure do.

Where is everyone who was so morally indignant and personally outraged over Barack Obama's "present" votes (313 votes out of 2,784 ... 11.23 percent of his total vote participation)? Oh, they're probably far too busy complaining about the 26 days of vacation he's taken in three years.

And what are some of the votes that Bachmann decided she was too busy to show up for?

• H.R. 501: Final measure to extend the payroll tax holiday, extend Federally funded unemployment insurance benefits, or prevent decreases in reimbursement for physicians who provide care to Medicare beneficiaries.


• H.R. 3630: To provide incentives for the creation of jobs, and for other purposes: Motion to postpone until after Congressional holiday vacation.


• H.R. 502: Providing for consideration of the Senate amendments to the bill (H.R. 3630) to provide incentives for the creation of jobs; and providing for consideration of the resolution (H.Res. 501).


• H.R. 3672: Making appropriations for disaster relief requirements for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes.


• H.R. 2055: Making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012, and for other purposes.


• H.R. 3421: To award Congressional Gold Medals in honor of the men and women who perished as a result of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

But cheer up, Bachmann fans: She *IS* batting 1000 in one area: In her entire Congressional career, Michele Bachmann has personally written and/or sponsored a grand total of ZERO bills that ever even got out of committee, let alone ever came to a vote or were passed into law. Go team.

Tell us again, Auntie Michele, what you did when you were in Congress.

On second thought ... don't. We've already heard all your talking points about your "deep, personal commitment to public service."

In god we trust should be; in gold we trust, yes? Don't you agree, Ron Paul?

And exactly how many more decades will the "Iraqi security forces" need to "train and prepare to provide their own security?" They've been "making progress" since 2003 and STILL can't field so much as a standard battalion of capable soldiers. Does the Iraqi equivalent of the Pentagon have a "retards and incompetents only" policy in its recruiting stations? Or do they save that distinction for the diplomats?

The state department­'s new "private army" DOES NOT DESERVE ONE DIME MORE IN PAY OR BENEFITS THAN THEY'RE ACTIVE DUTY, RESERVE AND/OR NATIONAL GUARD MILITARY COUNTERPAR­TS GET.

There's really nothing else that needs to be said about it.

https://garystlawrence.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/the-state-departments-private-army-high-dollar-low-expectations/

The problem as I see it is simply this, there are to many religious activist trying to use the government to further their own religious beliefs, to institute their particular beliefs upon others by using the power of the government. On the other hand there are those anti-religious activist trying to remove any and all things religious. The wall of separation that started with the Constitution and has continued to be built throughout the history of our Country is needed to protect these religious and anti religious activist from themselves and our government. The wall of separation is also needed to protect the rest of us and our government from them.

The attempt by the current bunch of religious and anti religious activist to impose their beliefs on the rest of us is nothing new to the Country, in fact it has been going on long before the Constitution was signed. The fight has been ongoing based upon the wording of the Constitution and the intent of the founding fathers when writing the Constitution. Like many issues involving the Constitution the wording of the Constitution leaves room for these arguments to continue. It seems the reason for this particular argument is the founding fathers did not define the term " religion" in the Constitution when they wrote in the first amendment "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; nor when they wrote in Article 6 of the Constitution "but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. "

IMHO the intent of the founding fathers was to allow each and every one of us to practice or not practice our beliefs as individuals , the belief was between each of us and our God. Not between the preacher and the government. The founding fathers did not want the government to dictate religious beliefs to anyone nor did they want any specific religion to dictate to the government. Religion is a private matter between the person and the persons God. The founding fathers were wise in that they didn't want church and state mixed.

We as a people have went to far by putting our religious beliefs or our lack of religious beliefs in the political sphere. We have used the wall of separation to make political hay, sway elections and get the government involved in what should be a matter between each of us and our own personal beliefs.

For years, the argument has been made that the amendment, by saying 'the people', meant the people as a whole. And therefore only a state, representing the people, could bring action against the federal government for violating the 10th amendment. And because of the political dealing that has been going on for the past several decades this rarely happened, allowing the federal government to grow and grow in power in ways the founding fathers never wanted to happen. It was why the 10th amendment was put into place in the first place.

When writing our new constitution, there were two schools of thought. One was that we needed to ensure some of the rights that Americans were to enjoy were written down and to never, ever be touched. The other was that was not necessary because the constitution was written in a way that would not allow those rights to be violated because it was a unique document at the time (and since) since it did not establish what rights the people had, but what limits the federal government could operate in. If a power wasn't in the constitution specifically, the federal government could not act. Further, there was fear that if any of our rights were listed in the document, someone may someday make the (wrong) argument that those rights were the ONLY rights that citizens had.

The two sides debated this for some time when finally James Madison came across a compromise. He offered the 9th and 10th amendments to the constitution.

I find, from looking into the amendments proposed by the State conventions, that several are particularly anxious that it should be declared in the Constitution, that the powers not therein delegated should be reserved to the several States. Perhaps words which may define this more precisely than the whole of the instrument now does, may be considered as superfluous. I admit they may be deemed unnecessary: but there can be no harm in making such a declaration, if gentlemen will allow that the fact is as stated. I am sure I understand it so, and do therefore propose it.

The 9th states that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This clearly states that just because a right might not be listed in the document doesn't mean that the people lose those rights.

The 10th amendment states that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This clearly states that unless a power is given to the federal government by the constitution (either as originally written or through amendments) then the federal government is in violation of the constitution of it attempts to assume that power.

Unfortunately, most of this is lost on today's society.

The decision is short and to the point, but has quotes that makes a person who is actually concerned about liberty proud. Especially in considering that this was a unanimous decision.

Federalism has more than one dynamic. In allocating powers between the States and National Government, federalism " 'secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power,' " New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 181. It enables States to enact positive law in response to the initiative of those who seek a voice in shaping the destiny of their own times, and it protects the liberty of all persons within a State by ensuring that law enacted in excess of delegated governmental power cannot direct or control their actions. See Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452, 458. Federalism's limitations are not therefore a matter of rights belonging only to the States. In a proper case, a litigant may challenge a law as enacted in contravention of federalism, just as injured individuals may challenge actions that transgress, e.g., separation-of-powers limitations, see, e.g., INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919. The claim need not depend on the vicarious assertion of a State's constitutional interests, even if those interests are also implicated.

and

The Government errs in contending that Bond should be permitted to assert only that Congress could not enact the challenged statute under its enumerated powers but that standing should be denied if she argues that the statute interferes with state sovereignty. Here, Bond asserts that the public policy of the Pennsylvania, enacted in its capacity as sovereign, has been displaced by that of the National Government. The law to which she is subject, the prosecution she seeks to counter, and the punishment she must face might not have come about had the matter been left for Pennsylvania to decide. There is no support for the Government's proposed distinction between different federalism arguments for purposes of prudential standing rules. The principles of limited national powers and state sovereignty are intertwined. Impermissible interference with state sovereignty is not within the National Government's enumerated powers, and action exceeding the National Government's enumerated powers undermines the States' sovereign interests. Individuals seeking to challenge such measures are subject to Article III and prudential standing rules applicable to all litigants and claims, but here, where the litigant is a party to an otherwise justiciable case or controversy, she is not forbidden to object that her injury results from disregard of the federal structure of the Government.

I'm not sure how many people see the importance of this decision. No longer does an individual have to rely upon a state to stand up to the federal government for 10th amendment violations.

For instance, because of this decision new cases are being brought against the NLRB's decision to ban secret ballots for union elections (as an administrative function though no law has been passed to allow it), the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (although mostly unnecessary now that the court will be hearing some cases on this soon) and against the recent war on medicinal Marijuana that the Obama administration has been waging in California and other states. All of these cases would have been thrown out due to lack of standing because there were directed from the federal government to the states.

Again, reality may come crashing down (indeed, the onerous rights violations in the National Defense Authorization Act (FY 2012) are concerning to say the least) but for a short period of time a faint glimmer of hope can be seen.

The OWS crowd are doing exactly what the businesses they are protesting have done, attempted to gain control of the government to make laws that others should be forced to live under. To them, it isn't that the government has obtained the power that it has over the people of the United States, their issue is that the wrong people are in charge. Our forefathers knew better, they understood that the only way to prevent the abuses of government was to limit it to only what was necessary of it, not a way to solve every problem that presented itself. That understanding has unfortunately been lost on the people of today so much that in the face of that power being used against them, they are bewildered.

Worse, they have directed their ire at the notion of free market capitalism as the best way to ensure freedom in a society. By allowing the people to be the ones to make the decision on how they live, what they buy, where they decide to spend the results of their hard labor we have a society that has produced the greatest freedoms in the history of society. At least, until recently.

Today, however, in an effort to solve problems that government can't solve (being hungry, being poor, having good health, having a good education, taking care of our fellow man, being free from fear, even death) many have been willing to give up our freedoms to try to eliminate the things they should be looking at themselves to correct in their own lives.

Business isn't the problem. Even the most obnoxious company in the world cannot make a single person do anything. At least, not without government. A great example is the recent revelation of mass abuse of chickens at Sparboe Farms. When it was discovered what was happening, businesses cut ties with the distributor because they knew that their customers would not want them to continue providing eggs from them. McDonalds, Target, SuperValu and Wal-Mart all dropped the egg distributor immediately. Sparboe is now paying the price for allowing this to occur at some of their farms and other distributors will take notice. This is how to change a company, the laws many thought were in place to prevent such a thing from happening weren't there, and simply because a law is in place doesn't ensure that such a thing won't happen.

Right now banks are seen as 'the enemy' because they received bailouts from Washington. Only, that's not really what the issue is for many OWS protestors. It isn't that they got bailouts, its that they want bailouts too. This is evident since when the bailouts were first suggested in 2008, many Libertarians and some Republicans said no, but the business backed Democrats and Republicans forged ahead with it anyway. Now those same OWS protestors are supporting the very politicians that called for the bailouts in the first place. They aren't upset with the power that the government has to take money from the hard working people of the country and give it to others who didn't earn those funds, they are only upset with who they went to.

The reality is that if our economy is going to be great again, it has to be free to be so. Business is going to try to make a profit, so they are going to continue to make things and sell things and as a result provide people jobs. When we make it easier to do so, not harder, the economy will respond. Until then, we are going to see modest increases as we have seen for years under the control of this increasingly authoritarian government we have allowed to spring up in the place of what our founding fathers intended. Indeed, over the past several administrations we have seen more regulations attempting to control every aspect of business that Canada has moved ahead of the US as a more free market, and as a result have withstood the economic issues much better than we have.

And the OWS protestors are protesting against the very people who are trying to do make their lives better because they see them as the enemy. Not in providing a better existence for everyone, but because business has done a better job of getting control of the massive power that the government has than they have. Again, it's not that the power exists, only who wields it that they have a problem with.

Crony Capitalism is a bad thing. But the answer is not to end capitalism, it is not to tighten even more control of capitalism, the answer is to stop trying to direct the economy in a way that government can never be effective at and allowing the market to do what it does, provide freedom and prosperity to as many people as possible. Yes, there are many businesses that use government as a tool to ensure their success instead of the market, and this practice should be stopped. But looking at the people who are at fault, the ones with the power, is where we should be looking. Not with the minority of businesses that can only exist and operate at a profit with the assistance of government.

The only good thing that I can see coming out of the terrible crackdown on the protestors by the government is that they might finally have their eyes opened to where the real problem lies. Unfortunately, too many people are being led by the populism of those with desires to control their fellow man, not really help them. At it is this that will again deter them from finally understanding the real point they should be seeing.

While it seems implausible that such fraud and corruption could take place in the highest court in the land this piece of crap has served as law for 125 years. Now, well into the 2nd Gilded Age with no recovery in sight, the time is right to go back and correct a century plus of fraudulent law.

And, such an effort is well under way with Reclaim Democracy and Move To Amend leading the way. Thus far over 30 towns and municipalities have signed on to a resolution calling on their individual state to abolish corporate personhood. It would be a highly positive development if the Occupy Wall Street folks would get behind these two organizations and expedite the effort to abolish corporate personhood.

Otherwise, we have the Corpocracy we deserve.

For example:

This ABC news story suggests that immigration of the right type would create skads of jobs. Amit Aharoni, an Israeli national and a graduate of Stanford Business School, who secured $1.65 million in venture capital funding with two cofounders to launch CruiseWise.com, an online cruise booking company, initially was denied a visa to continue operating his business in the United States. . .

And

"When every other country wants the best and the brightest, we're trying to keep them out. It doesn't make a lot of sense. ... [T]he truth of the matter is we are sending the future overseas," Bloomberg told ABC News today. "We need people to start companies and create jobs. People that come from overseas are something like ... five times more likely to create jobs than people who are here. ... So we've got to do something about this."

Another ABC News report suggest we just kinda wiggle around and skirt WTO/IMF/World Bank/World Court/Nafta, and the afta's regulations, and our lender of most import, China, and buy American when it comes to housing, we could create lotsa jobs.
"Lewendal is convinced that if every builder bought just 5 percent more U.S.-made materials, they would create 220,000 jobs. The Boston Consulting Group agrees, confirming that Lewendal's numbers add up.
In all, the U.S.-made house is being built with more than 120 products from more than 33 states. But builders do acknowledge that using American products can be more expensive."

Another offers a five part plan to get us going again. "Today, there are 1.7 million fewer Americans working than when the President's stimulus bill was enacted. Recommendations are to: Do less not more, Restore Confidence, Eliminate Uncertainty, Get spending under control, Eliminate unnecessary regulation and Repeal Obamacare. "

One fella is recommending an iHuman Revolution; "Ultimately, a truly SMARTER government approach would enable American working class people to compete better in a global economy. We might classify this new political science as "object oriented democracy or cause based initiatives" that provide human based solutions, says James Rickman 3rd, Director iHuman Evolution."

From the folks who for 30 years have worked harder to bring us to where we are, the gop has this to offer: "If we've learned anything during the recession, it's that we cannot tax and spend our way to prosperity. The best way to get people working again is to rein in the growth of government and end the uncertainty facing small businesses. By addressing both issues, our plan revives free enterprise and moves America away from a debt-driven economy. Permanently Stop All Job-Killing Tax Hikes, Give Small Businesses a Tax Deduction, and Repeal Job-Killing Small Business Mandates,"
Strong stuff, don'tcha think? A little dab of that and you could stretch a gnats ass over a telephone pole. The word 'big' must not be in their database. I didn't see anything about 'big' business in their game plan.

This couple writes that 'Pragmatic Caucus' or the crème de la crème of large metros is the key to creating jobs. "While it took four years for Washington to finally pass a series of free trade agreements, metros such as Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Portland and Syracuse are reorienting their economic development strategies towards exports, foreign direct investment and skilled immigration. (See how the 2012 GOP candidates are faring with Latino voters.)"

I really need some help in understanding this one. I am not sure what these metro's might be looking to export. Louisiana crayfish or Chesapeake Bay oysters? I'm aware shipping cost are favorable. One can ship hay from the farm to China for less than the cost to ship it 50 miles down the road. Have they talked this over with the Asian rim? Agree, we could sell it off under FDI for the land value. If China buys in here would they not have the same/similar export problems as US firms? I can see where foreign entities would like to buy non-exportables like toll roads and airports. Maybe that's what they have in mind. And, one would think we are getting all the skilled immigration we can handle through heavy hiring from UC Berkley.

Or, we could just pick up and move North like so many others are doing: "The most popular routes for Immigration to Canada is via a Working Visa, which attracts immigrants with skills and desirable business experience that can contribute to the further of the Canadian economy." Yup, go to Canada and get a job on the shale oil pipelines doing work those Canadians won't do. You would be employed, just not in this country.

I seem to be the only human alive that would like to talk about globalisation and how we lost our economy in the first place. But, that seems to be so far off the table, in fact just conjuring up the thought can lead to a Rick Perry moment lasting hours or longer.

Otherwise - - -.