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The Washington Post reports:

The firm, whose clients include labor unions and environmentalists, is seeking to enter the Republican primary for the 8th District seat held by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D).

The firm “wanted to run as a Republican because we feel the Republican Party is more receptive to our basic message that corporations are people, too,” Klein [the campaign manager] said, adding that his client has no particular beef with Van Hollen.

Van Hollen welcomes the competition. “The majority on the Court has made a mockery of our campaign finance laws, and Murray Hill is just mocking the mockers,” said Doug Thornell, a senior adviser to Van Hollen.

…

Murray Hill does face a couple of tiny problems in its effort to get elected to Congress.

For starters, candidates must officially register to vote as a Republican to run in a Republican primary in Maryland.  Late this week, the Montgomery County Board of Elections wrote to Murray Hill, informing the firm that its voter registration application had been rejected.

It seems the corporation does not meet the “minimum requirements” for voter registration, which include being a U.S. citizen and at least 18, according to Kevin Karpinski, a lawyer for the county elections board.

Just another case of The Man sticking it to Corporate America.

The odds are against Murray Hill, Inc.getting on the ballot, but I love the ad and I do think that somehow, someway, in the not-too-distant future, a corporation will find a way through the legal obstacles of registering a corporation to run for public office.  When that hapens, I can only hope it’s a corporation with the same goal in mind – to push the Supreme Court ruling to its limits, and get them to redraw the lines in a sensible way.  I’d start with the premise that corporations are not persons and should not have any rights to political speech.  In fact, they should not even be able to pay their damn lobbyists.  If we got them completely out of the picture, maybe we could get back to a country of people run by people for the people.

Oh, and yes… you can buy a campaign t-shirt.  I think I’ll order mine now.

It’s difficult to describe how disappointed I am with our government right now, especially congress.  We elected a Democratic majority last November, and a “progressive” Democratic president.  We all wanted change.  What we have so far with regard to health-care reform is at best just a tepid shift from the status quo.

Here’s what Howard Dean wrote about the Senate bill in yesterday’s Washington Post:

Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries — in the range of $20 million a year — and on return on equity for the company’s shareholders.

He’s right.  We are never going to get an affordable health-care system in this country as long as it remains a monopoly run by greedy insurance companies.  The only way we can make significant cuts in medical expenses is to first do away with the obscene profits, and second have the government negotiate prices for services.  Giving the people the choice of a government-run public option would be a great start in that direction, but that idea is dead in the water.

Today I read Paul Krugman’s column, and he thinks we should push through passage of this bill even though it is very weak.  Here’s what he has to say:

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.  Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama.  Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.

But meanwhile, pass the health care bill.

…

At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.

…

Look, I understand the anger here: supporting this weakened bill feels like giving in to blackmail — because it is. Or to use an even more accurate metaphor suggested by Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, we’re paying a ransom to hostage-takers. Some of us, including a majority of senators, really, really want to cover the uninsured; but to make that happen we need the votes of a handful of senators who see failure of reform as an acceptable outcome, and demand a steep price for their support.

The question, then, is whether to pay the ransom by giving in to the demands of those senators, accepting a flawed bill, or hang tough and let the hostage — that is, health reform — die.

Okay, I get it, but I don’t like it.  Neither does our fellow contributor Mr. N.J. Barnes who sent me an email this morning:

I actually believe now it’s going to fail. Incredibly, incomprehensively fail. Thanks to Nelson.  Thanks to Liebermann.  Thanks to the Republicans being good at parliamentary stalling and pr even as they are brain-dead in every other way.
 
It’s actually likely to fail.
 
You know, this country and the GOP deserve each other.  They really do.

Yes… the Grand Old Party.  The obstructionist Republicans.  They ruined our country while they were in power, and they continue to ruin it even when they are in what is supposed to be controllable minority.  (Read more about that in Krugman’s column.)

Anyway, the Senate health-care bill leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.  I kind of liken it to buying a very good bottle of Bordeaux a year ago and storing it in the cellar to improve it with some bottle age.  Now it’s time to open it and enjoy it, but it doesn’t pass the sniff test.  The bottle is corked and the wine tastes like shit.  Krugman says drink it anyway.  Dean says select a different bottle.  I have to agree with Dean.

The Washington Post reports:

Four months after he was sworn in, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta learned of an intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress since 2001, a revelation that prompted him to immediately cancel the initiative and schedule a pair of closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill.

The next day, June 24, Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees of the program and the action he had taken, according to Democratic and Republican members of the panels.

…

“Instructions were given not to brief Congress,”  Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in an interview.

…

CIA officials brought the program to Panetta’s attention, and when he realized it potentially conflicted with what the committees had been told, he immediately went to Capitol Hill, according to officials who discussed classified material on the condition of anonymity.

…

Reactions to the Panetta briefing split along partisan lines.

Wow… split along party lines.  Shocking…

Read all about it here.

And for some excellent commentary on this story, read John Nichols’ article in The Nation.  Excerpt:

Pelosi said the Central Intelligence Agency had failed to inform her about the character and extent of the harsh interrogations.

Pelosi accused the CIA of “misleading the Congress of the United States.”

Republican senators screamed.

…

No matter what anyone thinks of Pelosi or waterboarding, there is a clear case for dramatically expanding congressional oversight of the CIA. Of course, more House and Senate members should have access to briefings — and should have the authority to hold CIA officials (and their White House overseers) to account for deliberate deceptions. But that ought not be the first response to the latest news.

Step one must be to get to the bottom of exactly what the CIA was lying about.

That would be nice, but I think it’s going to be a while before we uncover all the misdeeds of Bush’s only successful endeavor:  Mendacity, Inc.

Okay so I am at two days late blogging about Obama’s first speech to a joint session of congress.  Too busy.  Anyway…

I must say that Obama exceeded my expectations again Tuesday night.  I don’t know how he keeps doing that, but he does.  It was a really great speech delivered with perfect pitch.  Exactly what the country needed to hear right now.

Anyone who had doubts about his ability to lead had to be convinced by that speech that he really does understand the problems we face and he is confident that he has chosen effective solutions. 

Republicans, on the other hand, are betting their future that he is wrong and that he won’t be able to lead us out of the hole we’re in.  They say they don’t believe government spending is right, they say it’s wrong to borrow money to spend on government sponsored programs that create jobs. 

They of course know that they borrowed trillions for the war that helped get us into this mess.  Bush never once booked the cost in his budgets or raised a single tax to fund it.  The Republicans approved of that debt spending every lockstep of the way.  Now they say that it’s wrong to spend money on tangible improvements to our own infrastructure that will lay the groundwork for a robust economy in the future. 

The people are on Obama’s side.  His approval ratings are in the high sixties to seventies, and everyone, including Republicans that voted for McCain gave his speech extremely high ratings.

The only time the “red line” ratings dropped at all were when Obama put the Republicans in their place.  But even when he did that, he did it in a nice way, and he made it clear that his administration has inherited many problems from the previous administration – problems that began with policies the Republicans in congress helped Bush implement.  And he also made it clear that it’s the government’s job to solve the problems and that he is eager to work with both parties to find the best solutions.

The question then is whether or not the Republicans understand that the people are not on their side and don’t really like their policies or how they go about presenting them. 

Bobby Jindal, their “rising star,” gave the Republican response on Tuesday night and he came off looking like a huckster with his distortions and attempts to completely flip what Obama said just minutes before him.  People gave him low marks because they did not agree with him and, because he was so obviously distorting the truth, they did not trust him.

I think they just don’t get it.

Why is it that a petite librarian has the conviction to stand up for your rights than gigantic telecom corporations with armies of lawyers?

Read:

Children’s librarian Judith Flint was getting ready for the monthly book discussion group for 8- and 9-year-olds on “Love That Dog” when police showed up.

They weren’t kidding around: Five state police detectives wanted to seize Kimball Public Library’s public access computers as they frantically searched for a 12-year-old girl, acting on a tip that she sometimes used the terminals.

…

“What I observed when I came in were a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman,” said the library’s director, Amy Grasmick, who held fast to the need for a warrant after coming to the rescue of the 4-foot-10 Flint.

…

Flint was firm in her confrontation with the police.

“The lead detective said to me that they need to take the public computers and I said `OK, show me your warrant and that will be that,’” said Flint, 56. “He did say he didn’t need any paper. I said `You do.’ He said `I’m just trying to save a 12-year-old girl,’ and I told him `Show me the paper.‘”

Cybersecurity expert Fred H. Cate, a law professor at Indiana University, said the librarians acted appropriately.

“If you’ve told all your patrons `We won’t hand over your records unless we’re ordered to by a court,’ and then you turn them over voluntarily, you’re liable for anything that goes wrong,” he said.

Well unless you are a telecom company because, if anything goes wrong, you can count on a fascist president and a craven congress to change the law so that whatever it was that might have gone wrong just doesn’t matter anymore.

Well the librarian didn’t buy into that.  When the Feds screamed “Warrant?  Warrant?!  We don’t need no stinking paper!”  Flint didn’t flinch.  She protected the privacy of the patrons of the library.

Maybe the good citizens of this country will take notice and demand the same from the keepers of their personal records and information.

We’ll have to wait and see.

President Bush signed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that was passed by the Senate on Wednesday with the help of, as Paul Krugman put it, the “coalition of the craven” Democrats. 

Bush gave a short speech before signing the bill that basically went like this: “FEAR!  FEAR!  FEAR!  I WILL PROTECT YOU!”  But because his fascist regime needs help from telecommunications corporations to gather phone records, emails, and other forms of electronic communications, and he doesn’t want any citizens checking up on the legality of whatever he’s doing, he added:

“This law will ensure that those companies whose assistance is necessary to protect the country will themselves be protected from lawsuits from past or future cooperation with the government.”

And that is how the Bush Administration operates.  Scare people.  Tell them spying is necessary to protect them.  Claim presidential power to ignore laws or articles of The Constitution that might hinder him.  Get corporations to go along with his plans.  Grant retroactive immunity to them and everyone else involved.  All is well, see?  No laws were broken because now the laws that were in place at the time the laws were broken don’t matter anymore.  Those OLD laws were for pre-9/11 Americans.  We are the new fearful Americans, and we will sell our liberty to a con man so that we can feel safe.

How does the most unpopular president in modern history continue to get away with this total disregard of law and all the principles of individual freedom and liberty?  Well I guess that has to be because congress, lead by the “opposition party” Democrats, is disliked even more than the president.  Why are they loathed?  You have to ask?  Because they are weak!  They are weak minded and weak willed, and they are afraid.  Their weak little minds tell them that it’s political suicide to vote against a bill that helps our government thwart terrorist attacks, even if it contains what is clearly a CYA clause for the president, his staff, and hall his corporate sponsors.

We the people have just been shafted and we know it.

So who will stick up for us if your representatives in Congress won’t? 

The ACLU and The Nation:

A few hours after Bush’s signing, The Nation joined with the ACLU in a lawsuit filed in the US District Court (Southern District) of New York challenging the constitutionality of the Act. The Nation is suing on behalf of itself, our staff and two of our contributing writers–Chris Hedges and Naomi Klein.

…

Hedges, in his reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the so-called war on terror regularly communicates with sources in countries like Palestine, Iran, Syria and Sudan. Klein, in her essential critique of the extension of radical free-market capitalism and the resurgence of imperial militarism, routinely communicates with journalists, political activists, human rights campaigners in the Middle East, South America, and around the world. Sadly, we believe that the communications critical to their reporting could and would be monitored under the FISA Amendments Act. Certainly scores of other journalists would shoulder the same risk.

We are proud, then, to join with other patriots who understand the government’s legitimate interest in protecting the nation against terrorism can be fulfilled without sacrificing the constitutional liberties that make the US worth defending.

We at harikari.com ask you to support them in their cause – OUR CAUSE.  Please donate to the ACLU and keep reading The Nation and spreading the word to anyone who will listen.

It’s called “A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq,” and here are it’s two key points as outlined in an opinion piece in today’s Seattle Post Intelligencer:

First, the United States must find a way to sensibly end its military mission in Iraq — and use the political, diplomatic, humanitarian and economic tools at its disposal to mitigate the negative consequences of the war. Second, the Iraq War has done irreparable damage not just to Iraq but to our country, and the time has come to reform our institutions and put the checks and balances in place to ensure that these mistakes are not repeated.

What about the details?  Here’s how they plan to exert the power of Congress on the executive branch to prevent future colossal failures like Bush’s Iraq War:

It calls for incorporating war funding into the regular defense budget instead of using “emergency supplementals”; eliminating the president’s use of signing statements to alter the substantive meaning of a law passed by Congress; repealing parts of the Military Commissions Act that suspended habeas corpus; and ending the use of wiretapping without a FISA warrant.

Great!  Come on Democrats, let’s put this plan into action! 

Oh wait, there’s a problem… the forty Democratic sponsors of this plan aren’t in congress yet.  They are all running for office.  The group is led by Darcy Burner, who is running against Dave Reichert in Washington’s 8th district.

You can show your support by endorsing the plan here. 

But to put the plan into action, we’ve got to get these people elected.  So come November, vote for these candidates!

Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. – Louis D. Brandeis

The Alternative Minimum Tax instituted in 1969 was put in affect to prevent a very small number of very rich Americans from using accounting tricks to avoid paying any income taxes.  How much were the “very rich” earning in 1969?  Well the alternative tax applied to those who earned $200,000 or more.
 
So what’s $200,000 adjusted for inflation from 1969 to date?  $915,000.  So you can see, the AMT was never intended to reach down into the ranks of the upper middle class, and since the compensation threshold was not indexed to inflation, it’s been a fought over in Congress more and more frequently as middle class incomes rise. 

Just before Congress adjourned a couple weeks ago, they passed a bill that provides some relief for those who would have to pay the AMT for 2007.  The Democrats wanted to pay for the loss of revenue the AMT would have generated by raising taxes on the super rich.  One plan was to make hedge-fund managers pay regular income tax rates on their billions in earnings instead of the lower 15% capital gains tax. 

Whoa!  What a crazy idea.  Why would anybody with a normal job who’s paying 20% to 30% in Federal Income Taxes want billionaires who earn their money by extracting dollars from the economy to pay the same or higher taxes than they do?  I don’t know… maybe because the hedge fund managers are taking so much money for themselves and not contributing anything tangible to the economy.  Maybe they should be stuck with paying a greater portion of total income taxes. 

Ask anyone you know who works for a living if he or she thinks it is acceptable for people that collect most of their income from investments – not from real jobs – to pay a lesser tax rate than they do.  I think you’ll find the idea of the super rich getting discounts on income tax rates makes them very angry.

Back to that AMT bill recently passed by Congress:  Here are two quotes from opposing sides:

“Let me be clear, there is no disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over protecting the middle class from the AMT,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said. “The question is, will we do so responsibly or charge tens of billions of dollars to our grandchildren?”

Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the Republicans’ chief deputy whip, said the Wednesday vote was “a huge victory for us.” The GOP position, he said, “has been consistent down the line. We don’t believe we ought to raise taxes to correct the mistake of AMT.”

I like that… “the mistake of the AMT.”  Remember, the original 1969 tax was targeted at those earning more than $915,000 dollars a year in today’s dollars.  The “mistake” of course is that the 1969 income level was not indexed to inflation.  If it was, it would have continued to affect only the very rich as originally intended.  So why are the Republicans so adamant about not raising taxes on the super rich to offset the loss of revenue?  Pretty simple really.  It’s all part of the Republican plan to shift a large portion of the tax burden from the ultra rich to the middle and lower classes.

NOT TRUE! You say.  Oh really…

Take a look at these numbers that Paul Krugman derived from recent “Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates” reports put out by the Congressional Budget Office:

Here’s what the numbers say about percentage gains in after-tax income from 2003 to 2005:

Bottom quintile: 2%
Next quintile: 2.4%
Middle quintile: 3.9%
Fourth quintile: 3.7%
Top quintile: 16%
Top 10%: 20.9%
Top 5%: 27.7%
Top 1%: 43.5%

It was a boom, all right — but only for a few people.

Leave it to Bush and his congressional foot soldiers to protect “his base” by refusing to raise income taxes on the richest Americans who have seen their incomes increase by 43.5% over the last three years compared to the 2% to 3.7% for bottom 80%

They’d rather run higher deficits than offset the loss of revenue from a “mistake” tax that crept its way into the middle class than transfer the burden to the richest 1% that can easily afford to pay back a portion of what they’ve extracted from the rest of us.

You really, really, really, really need to go read Mr. Fish right now.