Main stream media (MSM) refuses to report on Montana's home run hit in the ninth ending with two outs and runners in scoring position. If you belong to the 99%, I take great pleasure in revealing the game ball we call Democracy that went bounding over the park fence.
The Montana Supreme Court upheld a ban on direct corporate spending in political campaigns, rejecting Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling on Friday December 30, the last working day of 2011.
In the case of Montana, or more accurately its voters, "clearly had a compelling interest to enact the challenged statute in 1912,” wrote Chief Justice Mike McGrath for the Court’s the majority opinion. At that time the State of Montana and its government were operating under a mere shell of legal authority, and the real social and political power was wielded by powerful corporate managers to further their own business interests.
The Montana court agreed that past political corruption gives Montana a compelling interest in regulating corporate spending. They also pointed out that corporations can form voluntary political action committees - subject to disclosure requirements - as a way to remain politically active.
To reverse the Montana Supreme Court, however, the justices would have to extract themselves from a quandary of their own making, noted professor Rick Hasen of the University of California-Irvine Law School on his popular Election Law Blog. "If the Court were being honest in Citizens United," Hasen wrote, "it would have said something like: We don't care whether or not independent spending can or cannot corrupt; the First Amendment trumps this risk of corruption."
But by "dress[ing] up its value judgment ... as a factual statement," continued Hasen, the U.S. Supreme Court must now explain why the Montana Supreme Court was not correct to consider the factual record when it came to justifying corporate spending limits in campaign finance laws.
How the Citizens United majority will affect Montana's factual record remains hypothetical.
To reverse the Montana Supreme Court, however, the justices would have to extract themselves from a quandary of their own making, noted professor Rick Hasen of the University of California-Irvine Law School on his popular Election Law Blog. "If the Court were being honest in Citizens United," Hasen wrote, "it would have said something like: We don't care whether or not independent spending can or cannot corrupt; the First Amendment trumps this risk of corruption."
But by "dress[ing] up its value judgment ... as a factual statement," continued Hasen, the U.S. Supreme Court must now explain why the Montana Supreme Court was not correct to consider the factual record when it came to justifying corporate spending limits in campaign finance laws.
How the Citizens United majority will affect Montana's factual record remains hypothetical.
Yet, as with the Nationl Defense Authorization Act, the news falls on deaf ears, if you to listen to network television in America. All news channels talking heads primarily focused discussion on Iowa Caucus news, prefering to dance on lethal topics like abortion and dead issues as a Newt Gingrich presidential bid. Incredibly, what was left from discussion was the indefinate detention of citizens without trial or - as in this case - an unprecedented lower court ruling thrown like a log onto a fire at the beginning of election week.
As of Tuesday, January 3rd 2012, hits for 'Montana Supreme Court' in the last 7 days of news revealed only one reputable publication, The Raw Story, having bothered to cover the ruling. Other hits turned up bloggers on alter.net and a handful of assorted links. Virtually all hits carried an identical lead in, sadly indicating the same story was copied over with very little re-write.
This writer had discovered the Montana ruling through Digg.com, a user-generated news website which permits anyone to submit any story or url, regardless of who the content belongs to. In this case, the submitter was FreakoutNation, who prompted 397 diggers to dig the story into the websites Top 10 News Story listings - inappropriately titled "The Bitch Slap Heard Around The World" - not to be confused as indecent or offensive. The action of the Montana court is quite back-handed by jurisdictional standards, and serves a volley to the partisan Supreme Court of the United States.
What was inappropriate was that the slap was hardly heard from around the world. In fact, the main stream media Has been mute, mostly because every lawyer in the country has a differing opinion on where the case will next turn.
As the G.O.P. caucuses blow millions of dollars in negative character assassination campaigns while poisoning the minds of voters both local and nationwide, we are reminded once again of our brothers and sisters who have lost their homes, who are jobless, who have families to support. They are not in their current position because they are lazy or or unintelligent - they simply did not get the same equal opportunities the rest of us did. These people, whole families, whether couch-surfing or huddled en-mass in the bitter cold, are not going to benefit from the millions of dollars that are bursting from the coffers each candidate. Iowa has a homeless shelter, a 99% movement and has groups of people who are not corporations and who are neither heard from nor represented in the Republican caucuses. The sight off the poor are not reflective of the image the Republican caucuses wish to show America on prime time television. After all, this show belongs to the Job-Killing Republican party, and as with the Rose Bowl Octopus on the January 1st, the huddled masses will go unseen here in Iowa tonight.
What was inappropriate was that the slap was hardly heard from around the world. In fact, the main stream media Has been mute, mostly because every lawyer in the country has a differing opinion on where the case will next turn.
As the G.O.P. caucuses blow millions of dollars in negative character assassination campaigns while poisoning the minds of voters both local and nationwide, we are reminded once again of our brothers and sisters who have lost their homes, who are jobless, who have families to support. They are not in their current position because they are lazy or or unintelligent - they simply did not get the same equal opportunities the rest of us did. These people, whole families, whether couch-surfing or huddled en-mass in the bitter cold, are not going to benefit from the millions of dollars that are bursting from the coffers each candidate. Iowa has a homeless shelter, a 99% movement and has groups of people who are not corporations and who are neither heard from nor represented in the Republican caucuses. The sight off the poor are not reflective of the image the Republican caucuses wish to show America on prime time television. After all, this show belongs to the Job-Killing Republican party, and as with the Rose Bowl Octopus on the January 1st, the huddled masses will go unseen here in Iowa tonight.
As red America drinks the Republican kool-aid, it's the bloggoshere wherein lie the true information heroes. Main stream news outlets suck in every dime of campaign money for the fair trade of 'air time', selling empty blocks of silence where spin doctor's practice the fine art of mind manipulation while employing demographic messages which contain false-truths.
In 2008, Barack Obama spent $750 million dollars to become President of the United States. Factoring in all possibilities of where money could possibly go, one can only surmise that nearly every penny of it went to political advertising, minus some cab fare. The 2008 Presidential election did not permit corporate spending because Citizens United vs. FEC of 2008 failed to affect those races.
But 2010 bore a whole new animal, when suddenly corporate spending on political ads no longer required disclosure. Personal campaign funds across the board were emptied for campaign advertising, but what made the year remarkable was the G.O.P.'s unusual comeback in Congress.
Just when dismal polls shadowed forecasts of any Republican seats to be gained, negative ad campaigning combined with a surge in media growth had resulted in heavy losses for the Democrats. Corporate money greatly favored the G.O.P. candidates in 2010 elections, where special interests found the more willing party. Consequently, the Boner-era Republican hard-liners grew from cash to stash for the ultra-conservatives, where all the way up to the end of the 112th Congress they rode their gifted horse into the ground.
Just when dismal polls shadowed forecasts of any Republican seats to be gained, negative ad campaigning combined with a surge in media growth had resulted in heavy losses for the Democrats. Corporate money greatly favored the G.O.P. candidates in 2010 elections, where special interests found the more willing party. Consequently, the Boner-era Republican hard-liners grew from cash to stash for the ultra-conservatives, where all the way up to the end of the 112th Congress they rode their gifted horse into the ground.
Money injected into main stream news media keep the news corporations fat and healthy. Employees of any main stream news organizations receive benefit packages, salaries, paid holidays and 401k plans. These people, while still the 99%, are dis-associated with their brethren because of who they work for. While they may sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street movement, they are politically bound from participating in these movements.
In other words, if you fear for your job and for the income that it provides, because you fear for the loss of your home and food to eat, then you are compromised, my friend. Your fear governs the truth you believe and report.
Bloggers, on the other hand, are driven by a lack of truth. From the Reagan-era 80's to the infancy of computer networks throughout the early 90's, keeping in-the-know was fleeting, like an information dark age. Newspapers biased news that were affecting sensitive cultural issues, whose holdings included multi-national affiliations which swayed editorial boards to the point of inspiring authors to base fiction.
In other words, if you fear for your job and for the income that it provides, because you fear for the loss of your home and food to eat, then you are compromised, my friend. Your fear governs the truth you believe and report.
Bloggers, on the other hand, are driven by a lack of truth. From the Reagan-era 80's to the infancy of computer networks throughout the early 90's, keeping in-the-know was fleeting, like an information dark age. Newspapers biased news that were affecting sensitive cultural issues, whose holdings included multi-national affiliations which swayed editorial boards to the point of inspiring authors to base fiction.
If corporations are people, as the U.S. Supreme court tells us they are, then are corporations not silencing the very people who work for them? Is this not an aspect of discrimination that the Robert's Supreme court has overlooked?
Bloggers are one rung below website news outlets and - because they can type more than 140 characters -one rung higher than tweets. But because bloggers are free of advertising - as such revenue even websites are dependent - they are not bound to influence the end story to please an editor.
In fact, simply because the vacuum of truth compels them, bloggers are charged as curators of modern history, lest main stream media erase truth from record permanently.
