Psychopolitik 2.0

See what happens when everybody puts aside their differences & works together?:

The Senate voted Wednesday to extend for a year key provisions of the nation’s counterterrorism surveillance law that are scheduled to expire at the end of the month. In agreeing to pass the bill, Senate Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections to the USA Patriot Act.

The Senate approved the bill on a voice vote with no debate. It now goes to the House.

Bipartisanship.  If it doesn’t have an entry in Urban Dictionary, then it needs one.

One of these is a question to which “sure!” is not a sane response.  See if you can guess which one:

1. “Hey man, I got some pizza.  You want a slice?”
2. “We’re going to see a movie, wanna come?”
3. “Does the US Constitution allow the president to order the massacre of a village of civilians?”
4. “While you’re up, could ya grab me a brew?”

That, even with (to hear the talking heads tell it) control of the White House & both chambers of congress by Hippie Librul Socialist Pacifists, such a quaint concept as “just because an agent of the government says someone is X doesn’t mean it’s true” still has to be explained is rather instructive.  How is that not seen as a sign of societal decay?

If only those terrorists would just fill out their subversion papers, this could all be avoided:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.”

There’s even a $5 filing fee.

LOL…hey, anybody else notice how expansive this law could be?

By “subversive organization,” the law means “every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State.” (emphasis mine)

Technically, if taken literally, this would define all political parties as “subversive organizations” since their purpose for existing is to argue that they should control the government…

Parting thought: “two or more persons”…suppose there’s a pair of conjoined twins, with one of them interested in radical politics & the other not.  Would that count as a subversive organization (since the twin has no choice but to go with their other half)?

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”.

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“…

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.

…crap like this happens:

Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.

But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.

The documents, obtained over recent months by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, concern most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003, after the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security.

Do I even need to say where the attitude displayed here comes from?  It’s as if merely lacking a government seal of approval renders you an UnPerson, quite the common trick.

The Obama administration has vowed to overhaul immigration detention, a haphazard network of privately run jails, federal centers and county cells where the government holds noncitizens while it tries to deport them.

But as the administration moves to increase oversight within the agency, the documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.

Honestly, just how long does it take to fire people?

The Obama administration has actually argued not only that the gov’t arbitrarily UnPersoning people is an option to remain open, they even argued that the Supreme Court shouldn’t even consider the case saying otherwise.  Last week, while the media was elsewhere, they won.  See, health care policy isn’t taking up all of their attention, they found plenty of time to leave the door open to indefinite detention without charges.

Props.