Psychopolitik 2.0

I will be struck by lightning and survive, twice,  while simultaneously standing on my head perched atop a fencepost and holding the jackpot tickets for both Powerball AND Mega Millions, before anyone — ANYONE!! — with the last name “Bush” wins any position in the US higher than dogcatcher again.  I don’t care if it’s 2026 & it’s Reggie Bush running for mayor of New Orleans after having suddenly rattled off a career of beyond-a-doubt Hall of Fame numbers & multiple Super Bowl rings AND MVP awards, during which he donates virtually his entire NFL salary to local charities, in the time between now & then.  Even if on top of all that at one point during his campaign he were to rush into a burning building and carry out disabled children trapped inside.   Nah.Gan.Ha.Pen.

Now that that is out of the way, go play outside.

Will Wilkinson, summarizing as far as he knows the position of progressives on the Citizens United ruling:

A government that accepts that its rightful power is indeed limited along the lines of a naive reading of the First Amendment  – “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” — will be unable to maintain the integrity of the democratic process against the undermining influence of powerful corporate interests. Since the rights and liberties of most citizens depend on an equitable democratic process, this kind of restriction on government power together with the existence of corporations is a threat to ordinary citizens’ rights and liberties. Crucially, a state that maintains the power to exercise a meaningful countervailing influence against corporate power is less of a threat to liberty than are corporations when the state has tied its own hands.

Does that sound like a fair interpretation of the progressive view?  If you think there’s something wrong with it, what is it? I think this view pretty clearly implies that the Constitution makes some profound mistakes about the sort of government required to protect citizens’ liberty. But maybe it does! So I don’t count “progs think the Constitution is flawed” as an adequate argument against this view.

It’s a fair interpretation.  What’s wrong with it is their decision on emphasis, and the proposed “solution” it leads to.  Compare the following two excerpts from that summary:

A) “This kind of restriction on government power together with the existence of corporations is a threat to ordinary citizens’ rights and liberties.”

B) “This kind of restriction on government power together with the existence of corporations is a threat to ordinary citizens’ rights and liberties.”

The key to the issue is highlighted in B.  Yet the progressive response highlights A.  Funny, since the government without the restriction applied resulted in jack squat of significance.  No Will, “progs think the Constitution is flawed” isn’t an adequate argument, I agree.  I prefer this one: “progs think the proper response to a problem created by government is more government power”.

Obama: “The world is a warzone, and we’ll kill anybody we even remotely think is doing something.  Even if you’re a U.S. citizen, whatever, we finna snipe your ass!”

Glenn Greenwald: “Isn’t this the kind of crap we bitch about when other countries do it?”

Ooh, guess who’s not getting invited to the White House any time soon…

At Balloon Juice, a bunch of comments waxing philosophic on the purpose of the State — in the lead-up time to a State of the Union speech.

Now if only there were a little less “Conservative?  Anarchist?  Same thing!” shot through among most of it…

BTW: no, I will not be live-blogging it.  I only did the VP debate last election because I was expecting to be laughing half of the time.  Instead, I will be engaging in a more productive activity: playing Guild Wars.

Psst…somehow I doubt that is what they meant.  I know that isn’t what I mean at least:

[A]s my liberal friends all seem to be indignantly announcing in the aftermath of the Citizens United ruling, corporations aren’t really people! They’re creatures of statute, and “corporate personhood” is just a convenient legal fiction.  Which is fair enough, but also seems to miss the point rather spectacularly. [...]

Having dispensed with the repellent doctrine of corporate personhood, we can happily declare that journalists enjoy full freedom of the press … as long as they don’t plan on using the resources of the New York Times Company or Random House or Comcast, which as mere legal fictions can be barred from using their property to circulate unpatriotic ideas. You’re free to practice your religion without interference — but if it’s an unpopular one, well, let’s hope you don’t expect to send your kids to a religious school or build a church or something, because those tend to involve incorporating. A woman’s right to choose is sacrosanct, but since clinics and hospitals are mere corporations with no such protection, she’d better hope she knows a doctor who makes house calls. Fill in your own scenarios, it’s easy.

The Left, both anti-state & otherwise, points out the conflation of a legal mechanism for organizing for a common interest, which includes benefits that effectively subsidize such organizations exponentially with size, with a person who cannot claim such benefits on their own.  Julian Sanchez, in response, insinuates an ad absurdium conclusion that cancels out individual rights immediately upon people forming any sort of collective…

How a Cato Institute fellow isn’t familiar with the point of such a basic, common critique (hint: “limited liability”), I have no idea.

Shorter US Supreme Court: “Yeah, we know the band-aid was applied over a gaping ax wound.  That band-aid still has to come off”:

Corporations can spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a landmark decision that allows massive sums to be spent to influence future elections. The 5-4 ruling split the high court along conservative and liberal lines.

It was a defeat for the Obama administration and supporters of campaign finance laws who said that ending the limits would unleash a flood of corporate money into the political system.  The ruling will transform the political landscape and the rules on how money can be spent in this year’s congressional election and the 2012 presidential contest.Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the limits violated constitutional free-speech rights.  “We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers,” he wrote.

In his sharply worded dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation.”

Anyone with two functioning eyes knows that nothing has actually changed here.  Corporate interests have been getting along just fine in the time between the passage of McCain-Feingold, and in fact never left their previous perch.  Besides, preventing someone from running a campaign ad was about as obvious a 1st Amendment violation as you could possibly get.  Taken in context, the particular case was open & shut.

Here’s the rub: the context itself is what’s truly wrong.

Unless you are willing to argue that you can conjure up human life from paper & ink (in which case, you should head your magical ass to Vegas and make some real money), a corporation is not a person.  It is a legal construct, the functional purpose of which is to deflect responsibility for what a business does from the people who actually control it, offloading costs on the rest of the population by way of government favors.  Their direct influence on campaigns is, for the most part, for the purpose of blocking any proposed salve to those affected by their actions*, no matter how piddling the crumbs in comparison to what they receive.  The thought that maybe those efforts are the only thing standing between them & revolt never enters into it, the brains of their owners only function as far as the next quarterly profits report.

Yet the law treats corporations as if they think, eat, breathe, laugh, love, fuck.

Is it constitutional for the government to restrict what a person can say?  Obviously not.  This is what makes the complaints about this from within the “mainstream” so amusing.  They entirely gloss over the root of the issue to instead gripe about the Court not taking into account results when ruling — which, according to their job description, they’re not supposed to do anyway.

That said…no, the federal courts are not a matter of who is closer to the Constitution.  They’re a matter of who gets to pick, and how close they can come to putting in people who agree with them, period.  In an alternate reality where I didn’t reject politics out of hand, and somehow ended up in position to do anything about this, I would be brutally honest about what I’d be looking for, and if the opposition threw a hissy fit over it, whatever.  At least this charade wouldn’t exist.

BTW:

In the 2008 election cycle, nearly $6 billion was spent on all federal campaigns, including more than $1 billion from corporate political action committees, trade associations, executives and lobbyists.

The ruling will almost certainly allow labor unions to spend more freely in political campaigns also and it posed a threat to similar limits that had been imposed in about half of the country’s 50 states. (emphasis mine)

That this isn’t seen as a plus for the mainstream Left shows just how choked blue it has been.  Is it any wonder the Wobblies didn’t bother?

(* – yes, I know the specific case involved an ideological group rather than a business lobby, but the point remains.  The bulk of the screaming concerns business interests, so that’s what I address)

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: “NYPD to help train Haitian police“…

Since the events of yesterday are going to be endlessly hashed out until you find yourself screaming “SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” at the top of your lungs, here’s some related Stupid to chuckle at:

Naive Dem base Stupid: “Mr President, do this & we’ll bow before you!  Never mind that you don’t care & this wouldn’t accomplish anything anyway!”

Pants-wetting wingnut Stupid: “This can mean only one thing: Massachusetts is pro-torture.”

Bonus off-topic Stupid: people are still buying shares in the old General Motors, which no longer exists.

As in “it poops on a lot of stuff“:

As a deal nears for Conan O’Brien’s exit from NBC, one thing is certain: The characters and recurring comedy bits O’Brien originated during his 16-plus years on “Late Night” and “The Tonight Show” will not follow the host when he leaves NBC.

The Peacock owns the intellectual property behind such popular O’Brien characters as Pimpbot 5000 and Conando, as well as recurring segments such as In the Year 3000 and Desk Driving. Sources involved in the settlement negotiations say NBC is keeping the copyrighted and trademarked elements of O’Brien’s shows as part of the deal. That means the bits and characters will likely never be seen after O’Brien’s “Tonight” ends its run Jan. 22.

He created the characters, NBC didn’t.  Yet the characters can’t come with him.  Not exactly an important story in terms of human impact, but still instructive of the general issue.

It cannot, must not, be ignored: there are people among us, hidden in plain sight, who due to their ideology, fueled by a twisted interpretation of religion that rejects the pluralism that liberal Western society holds so dear, see no qualms in killing in the name of God.

I am, of course, talking about American military weapons manufacturers:

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.  The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.” (emphasis mine)

Y’know, when Jesus walked the earth, the imperialists were on the other side…