SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
tom turnipseed
Progressive Activist and Longtime Common Dreams Contributor Tom Turnipseed Dead at 83
A self-identified "reformed racist' who spent decades fighting for progressive causes has died.
Mar 09, 2020
Lawmaker, political campaigner, progressive activist, and longtime Common Dreams contributor Tom Turnipseed (August 27, 1936 - March 6, 2020) died on Friday at the age of 83.
A man who considered himself a "reformed racist" who once managed the presidential campaign of the infamous segregationist and racist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, Turnipseed later--"disturbed by the visceral racial hatred he saw while on the campaign trail"--recanted his bigoted ideologies and spent the remainder of his life speaking out against hatred and fighting on behalf of progressive causes.
"He was at peace and without pain, for which I am grateful," Judy Turnipseed, Tom's wife, wrote in a Facebook post in which she announced his passing. "Tom Turnipseed was my best friend, my lover, my hero for 57 years. He made me happy and sometimes he made me cry. But always he made me proud."
Tom, his wife continued, "fought for racial, social and economic justice. He set an example for us, his wife and kids, that was hard to live up to. In his honor, I will try to carry on his legacy. Tom, I will forever miss you."
In a 2010 column for Common Dreams, Turnispeed lamented the reality in which the United States had become a place where hunger and homelessness were rampant while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. He wrote:
The U.S. defense budget is $720 billion, which includes the Pentagon base budget, Department of Energy nuclear weapons activities and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We far outstrip the rest of the world in defense spending, surpassing the next closest country by more than eight times. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that the U.S. military budget accounts for 43% of the world's total military spending.
If we heed the words of Eisenhower and stop the madness we call war, if we require the wealthiest to pay their fair share, then perhaps we can end hunger and homelessness in America. There will be food, not bombs, and we will no longer destroy the hopes of our children.
Turnipseed, the Post & Courier reports,
was a South Carolina senator from 1976 to 1980, and ran for a number of other offices through the years, including the U.S. House, governor and lieutenant governor. He ran as a Democrat for SC attorney general in 1998, garnering 46 percent of the vote statewide in a race against Republican Charlie Condon.
On Saturday morning, third-term Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin lamented Turnipseed's passing.
"There is and will only ever be one Tom Turnipseed," Benjamin says. "Tom led one of the most colorful lives in South Carolina political history and left this world with an indelible mark as a fighter for social justice, as an advocate for the homeless, a proponent of peace, and as a true believe in environmental justice."
According to The State:
During his gubernatorial and congressional runs, he went door to door giving out turnip seed packets that asked for people's votes, saying he would "plant the seed of good government."
He campaigned against the death penalty, rising utility prices and redistricting plans that he believed would exclude black voters in South Carolina.
A 1982 article described Turnipseed as "dapper and charming, outrageous and impolite ... affronting his legislative colleagues by, among other things, appearing with a couple of disc jockey buddies on the floor of the Senate and singing country songs about rising gas prices."
"Tom Turnipseed was a force of nature and had a hell of a life experience," current South Carolina Democrat Party Chairman Trav Robertson said on social media. "He was the first of what is now called a progressive."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Homeless Plan Has Good Ideas -- And Scary Ones
Homelessness is finally catching the attention of the media, everyday people and even politicians in the Midlands of South Carolina. We've heard much about compassion, humanity, respect and some sensible approaches to ending homelessness.
Jun 19, 2013
Homelessness is finally catching the attention of the media, everyday people and even politicians in the Midlands of South Carolina. We've heard much about compassion, humanity, respect and some sensible approaches to ending homelessness.
A community approach to homelessness has challenged the Midlands for years. Recently, City Councilman Cameron Runyan has led on the issue. In April, he called for several public meetings to solicit solutions from our diverse community. People responded. Every meeting was full, with all seats taken and people lining the walls, eager to speak or hear others' ideas. Council members and the mayor were there to hear from service providers such as Transitions Homeless Center, United Way, and The Free Clinic, as well as from volunteers, neighborhoods, downtown business owners and the homeless themselves. Most speakers were positive and made excellent suggestions. A few spent their time painting the homeless as subhuman pariahs who must be eliminated from the community immediately.
On June 4, Councilman Runyan presented his report, "Columbia Cares: A Vision for Addressing Homelessness," to Council and the public. The six goals Councilman Runyan synthesized from community input were aspirations most of us can agree on. The lofty ideals include bringing "humanity to the response" and meeting the "unique needs of the individuals in need."
Other goals, some more specific, are ones we can rally around: "Create opportunities for people to work." The homeless we know are crying out for jobs. Provide "public hygiene facilities." The homeless and downtown residents agree on this. "Bring accountability to those in poverty." As in the rest of the population, there are responsible homeless people and there are irresponsible homeless people who give others a bad name. "Address the root causes, not just symptoms." Yes!
We support the report's proposal of an induction center, a "one-stop-shop" triage to identify the needs of the homeless and direct them to community resources. The greater Columbia community can probably agree on that as an efficient way to assist the homeless toward overcoming the obstacles on their way to self-sufficient living.
Then comes the scary part. Councilman Runyan's plan also contains ideas that volunteers in the homeless community believe smack of banishment, exile and the questionable redirecting of personal assets. These ideas we will oppose as strongly as we support the positive ones.
Leave Town
The plan states that if the homeless violate existing laws -- such as loitering, panhandling or urban camping -- they must go to the induction center, go to jail or leave town. How convenient! Banishment is one way of clearing Columbia's streets of undesirables. The plan no doubt includes this last option of getting the homeless out of town in hopes of sending our problems away for someone else to deal with, rather than facing them ourselves. Surely those of all faiths are struck by how far afield that approach is from the admonition of our faith tradition to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and welcome the stranger.
Go to the Retreat
Scary idea number two is sending those found physically or mentally deficient to a proposed facility called The Retreat. This facility, a 100-plus-acre privately owned facility 10 to 15 miles outside of town, is referred to in the plan as the shelter of last resort. So we are separating outcasts with physical, mental and social problems from the mainstream of our culture and sending them to a "Retreat" where they will take part in a work program and be concentrated away from civil society. Makes us mindful of the giant sign across the main entrance of the Auschwitz work camp in Poland: Arbeit macht frei; labor makes you free.
Redirect Resources
The Funding the System section of the "Columbia Cares" report states that the cost of the retreat facility and other programs will be defrayed in part by "payments currently being lost" such as food stamps, housing and disability. These items will be redirected to the provider of the service. This sounds like a plan to have the residents' Social Security disability checks turned over to the provider. This will certainly require new legislation -- and the plan is appalling.
We who volunteer with the homeless will strongly support positive solutions to ending homelessness -- and will work to let the public know the whole story when plans are made concerning the homeless.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Honoring King: Creating a Coalition for Social Justice
Jan 19, 2011
The 12th annual King Day at the Dome march and rally at the South Carolina State House on January 17 brought together a coalition of organizations and individuals who are working to fulfill the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They advocated cooperative activism for more jobs, affordable housing, better health care for the poor and disabled, and to oppose drastic cuts for public education, as well as a draconian Arizona styled immigration legislation that will be very costly, financially and morally.
Our event has had the highest attendance of any King Day birthday celebration in the country since 2000, with this year's crowd filling the front plaza and including two busloads from Detroit. More than 50,000 people participated in 2000 in our first such march and rally sponsored by the South Carolina NAACP to protest the Confederate flag flying atop our State House along with the United States' and South Carolina's state flags. In a disrespectful gesture to the massive protest, the South Carolina General Assembly brokered a "compromise" among themselves that moved the rebel flag from atop our state capitol to the Confederate soldier's memorial monument in front of the State House on July1, 2000.
The Confederate flag has been a symbol of white supremacy, waved by the Ku Klux Klan, racist rednecks and assorted devotees of the Confederate morality when they lynched and terrorized black people from the Civil War to the present day. The KKK waved the rebel flag as they burned black churches in South Carolina in the '90s. In 1962 it was placed atop the State House in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement. At the Confederate soldier's monument the rebel flag has remained a visible statement of in-your-face disrespect to people of color. At the rally we renewed the S.C. NAACP's call to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House grounds.
Dr. Lonnie Randolph said it was an atrocity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession from the union on December 20th in Charleston with a "gala". South Carolina's secession and subsequent firing on Fort Sumter to defend slavery started a war that killed over 600,000 soldiers, and is nothing to celebrate. He declared it is as offensive to black people as it would be to Jewish Americans if we "celebrated" their oppression under Nazis Germany.
The NAACP held a protest march and rally against the secession "celebration" in Charleston and I was in a picture on the front page of the local newspaper participating in the march. On December 29 Dr. Randolph held a media conference that I attended. 3 days later I received a handwritten letter from an unnamed person who signed the letter, "a fairly intelligent redneck who loves South Carolina" and printed "Sons of the Confederacy, Senior Vice President" on the envelope. He began the four page diatribe with, "Mr. Tom Turnipseed, Since you seem to love the black people (Re: Your recent smiling face while Lonnie Randolph did the usual BS on TV and you marching in Charleston) Do you realize the blacks are taking over and whites like you are helping and cheering them on?...They have a truckload of children (without) a daddy so they get a bigger welfare check...the white race creates everything in America". As a life member of the NAACP serving on the SC NAACP's planning committee, I've raised the wrath of racists who have picketed our law office with signs calling me a race traitor.
The immigration issue is also threatening to racists. Dr. King said "We may have come on different ships, but we are in the same boat now." Wade Henderson, CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Coalition spoke at our rally against the immigration legislation pending in South Carolina, calling for coalition action to defeat it.
Passage of the law will require State resources for additional law enforcement personnel, more prison space, the defense of legal challenges. We will lose tourism dollars due to boycotts and lose labor for the tourist and construction industries and to harvest our crops, all while vital government services are cut. Morally, the bill violates our values by jailing peaceful, hard-working people and separating children from their families, as well as by racial profiling.
Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) was on the King Day agenda. HHH members are working to remove the negative stereotyping of homeless and become responsible, productive citizens with jobs, affordable housing and health care.
John Holmes, chairman of Homeless Helping Homeless (HHH) quoted Dr. King, "we are all interdependent, all interrelated. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother."
Our interdependent coalition at King Day at the Dome will work for social justice to fulfill Dr. King's legacy.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Struggling for Peace in the Season of Christmas
Dec 25, 2010
Santa Claus is the icon for the marketing madness that dominates the season
named for Jesus Christ, who taught us to love everyone everywhere. Jesus was an
activist for peace and poor people who drove the money changing marketers out
of the Temple,
and became a martyr for social justice. Our ever lengthening Christmas season
is make or break time for retail marketing and the economy as we struggle to
make ends meet in the aftermath of the great recession. Before Halloween,
Santa Claus was seen popping up among the pumpkins in TV
ads. We decorate the mantle in our den with a diverse collection of
Santas and his elf-like predecessors of ancient religious and pagan groups who reveled
at annual mid-winter celebrations. Increasingly, Santa has become the
supreme symbol of out-of-control consumerism. The
Jolly Old Elf of mass marketing rules the day named for Jesus in the most materialistic
culture in world history. We are caught up in a frenzy of advertising, buying
and selling, that diminishes the relevance of the birth and exemplary life of Jesus.
On Monday of Christmas week the largest newspaper in South Carolina had two
thirds of its front page occupied by an article titled "From paintings to
gizmos to toys, Christmas bringing folks to stores" and a picture of a
young boy and his mother rummaging through giant stacks of
toys in a local store. On most days since October, the paper has become a wrapper
for a big bundle of advertising inserts for local retail stores.
Not surprisingly, Christmas is the most likely time of the year to
experience depression under the pressure of such marketing madness. Especially
for Christians, Christmas should be the happiest time of the year as they
celebrate the birth of Jesus with family and friends. But according to the
National Institutes of Health, Christmas is the time of year that people
experience the highest incidence of depression. Mental health specialists
say there is a significant increase in complaints about depression at Christmas
time and a survey revealed that 45% of the depressed respondents feared this
most festive time of the year. Health care providers and law enforcement
report the highest incidences of suicide and attempted suicide during the
Christmas season.
I began feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness around Christmas when
I was about 12 or 13 years old and retreated to my bedroom even though Santa
Claus was coming to town. Maybe I worried too much about whether I had
been bad or good, naughty or nice, but visions of sugar plums didn't
dance in my head and I didn't have myself a merry little Christmas.
I would become despondent and would tell my Mom
and Dad I didn't feel like going to school.
Mother took me to the Doctor and his diagnosis was seasonal affective
disorder (SAD), caused by the dark winter weather. I don't know for
certain why I got depressed, but I still tend to get irritable and down-in-the
dumps during the holiday season. I am 74 years old and dread of the
holiday season has haunted me since I was a kid. When I was in high school and college I was diagnosed with bi-polar
disorder and received electro-convulsive (shock) treatments as therapy.
A major reason for depression is that people get angry and regretful at
Christmas because of commercial and social pressure to spend too much money on
gifts and go further in debt, and attend or host too many parties. Many are
depressed due to a victim mentality created by excessive reflection on the
inadequacies of life in comparison with other people who seem to have more
happiness and possessions. I dwell on missed opportunities of the
past and coulda, woulda, shoulda speculation rather than focusing on an
awareness and the reality of the present. Others dread Christmas because they
are expected to attend social gatherings with people they'd rather not be
around and have dinner with their extended family and argue politics etc. Especially,
in our economic crisis, folks feel bad because they can't afford to buy
nice gifts for their family and friends. At least for Christians, the greatest
gift at Christmas is Jesus Christ, who gave his life in the struggle for peace,
justice and poor people.
With over a trillion dollars budgeted for the military and defense
related expenditures in 2011 we should emulate Gandhi,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesus who engaged in civil disobedience and gave
their all for peace and poor people. Jesus rejected the vengeful
"eye for an eye" in favor of "turning the other cheek"
in universal love. After Jesus turned over the tables of the money
changers in the temple he was arrested, tried and crucified. Rather than joining
in the excessive commercialism symbolized by Santa, those of us who believe in
what Jesus did should love all people and become activists for peace and poor
people.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Poorer
Hunger and Homelessness in America
Nov 28, 2010
"There's nothing surer; the rich get rich and the poor get poorer," was a slogan of the roaring 20s. The famous phrase was adapted from "Ain't We Got Fun," a popular song recorded in 1921. So what's new in America in the first decade of the 2000s?
Nothing! America's top 72 wage earners averaged 84 million dollars each in income last year, according to Social Security Administration data. The richest 1 percent of us earned 24 % of the nation's total income, the highest since 1928, just before the Great Depression. On the other hand, 14.3 % were living in poverty in 2009, according to the U. S Census Bureau. 50 million people from 17.4 million families are so poor they couldn't buy sufficient food last year. About one million children from more than a third of these households missed meals regularly according to a recent study by the Department of Agriculture. At dinner, families gather to share together. But for the children, dinner time can be the cruelest part of the day. Almost 1 in 4 of them doesn't know when they will have their next meal.
Because there is a high turnover and many homeless people stay hidden, homeless and hunger counts are only estimates. The Department of Housing and Urban Development reported a count of 643,067 homeless persons nationwide on a single night in January 2008. 1.6 million used emergency shelters or transitional housing during 2007/2008, suggesting that 1 in every 50 persons in the US used the shelter system at some point. 170,000 families lived in homeless shelters. With home foreclosures at record highs and continuing unemployment, homelessness is increasing.
Republicans in the U.S. House have blocked a bill that would have extended jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed beyond the holiday season. About 2 million people will lose their benefits if they are not extended, according to the National Employment Law Project. The blocked benefits would save the jobless from hunger and homelessness during the most severe recession since the 1930s and boost spending in the economy that will generate more jobs. Long-term unemployed workers are likely to spend their benefits right away on rent, food and other necessities, and create jobs in our economy. The Congressional Budget office estimates the "multiplier" effect of spending $65 billion on unemployment insurance extensions will increase gross domestic product $104.7 billion which translates into 488,000 payroll jobs.
The plutocrats controlling our government with campaign contributions and slick lobbyists oppose extending benefits to unemployed people. They fight to keep their unjust tax cuts and sit on the billions in bailout cash they received that we were told would save the economy and create jobs for poor and unemployed people. U. S. companies reported after-tax profits of $1.22 trillion last quarter, the highest on record dating back to 1947, according to the Department of Commerce.
When will some of their government bailout welfare for the rich trickle down to poor and working people?
My wife, Judy and I are sponsors of an organization called Homeless Helping Homeless and volunteer at the local winter shelter. And, along with about 35 other people from diverse backgrounds, we have fed an average of 150 mostly homeless and hungry people every Sunday afternoon for the past 7 years at Finlay Park in downtown Columbia, South Carolina. . Each server brings a dish or two--turnip greens, mac and cheese, fresh fruit, banana pudding. Pastries are donated by local super markets. Our picnic provides a nutritious and tasty meal for the homeless and many of the servers. We are known as Food Not Bombs, a national organization that encourages feeding hungry people rather than supporting military madness.
Our a-frame sign, set up near the entrance to our picnic, has a famous quote from a speech by former General and President Dwight Eisenhower that describes the military industrial complex:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
The U.S. defense budget is $720 billion, which includes the Pentagon base budget, Department of Energy nuclear weapons activities and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We far outstrip the rest of the world in defense spending, surpassing the next closest country by more than eight times. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that the U.S. military budget accounts for 43% of the world's total military spending.
If we heed the words of Eisenhower and stop the madness we call war, if we require the wealthiest to pay their fair share, then perhaps we can end hunger and homelessness in America. There will be food, not bombs, and we will no longer destroy the hopes of our children.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Tea Partiers Prefer Secession Rather Than Health Care for the Poor
Nov 09, 2010
Tea Party oriented Republicans who will control the US House of Representatives want to repeal "Obama Care". Southern Republicans like Governor Rick Perry of Texas and US Representative Zack Wamp of Tennessee have threatened Secession from the Union because of federal mandates in "Obama Care".
In South Carolina, Republican State Senator Glenn McConnell is President Pro-Tem of the South Carolina Senate and one of our most powerful politicians. He also opposes Medicaid mandates. Recently, officials of South Carolina Health and Human Services asked McConnell to help continue funding health care for poor people. He replied, " When the money provided by the state for Medicaid is gone, the insurance program for the poor must simply stop providing services." "Your obligation under the constitution ... is to the taxpayer of this state and not to bureaucrats in Washington, D.C." South Carolinians pay both state and federal taxes that fund Medicaid, but by refusing to allocate $1 billion of our state tax revenue for this program over the next decade, South Carolina will lose $ 4 billion from the federal government for health care for 656,000 poor people, who are disproportionately black and children.
Tea Party states' rights activists say their struggle against health care continues the struggle of Jefferson Davis and the secessionists in 1860. Rev. Cecil Fayard, chaplain in chief for the national Sons of Confederate Veterans, said "The War Between the States was fought for the same reasons that the tea party movement today is voicing their opinion."
Senator McConnell opposed removing the Confederate flag from atop the South Carolina State House in 2000 and finally brokered a compromise that placed the rebel flag in front of the state capitol at the Confederate soldier's memorial monument. McConnell is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Secession Camp #4, and a Civil War re-enactor who owned a Confederate memorabilia store in Charleston. He founded and Chairs the Hunley Commission that raised a Confederate submarine from Charleston harbor. The Commission is restoring the sub for the Hunley Museum in Charleston with $22 million that is coming from state and federal funds according to their fund-raising organization. McConnell was recently photographed in Civil War military regalia with two African- Americans dressed as slaves at a meeting of the National Federation of Republican Women in Charleston. The Sons of Confederate Veterans work closely with the Confederate Heritage Trust.
The Confederate Heritage Trust is putting on a play and grand ball in Charleston on December 20th, celebrating the Secession of South Carolina from the United States in 1860. Neo-Confederates claim that secession was an issue of states' rights rather than slavery but William Preston, a secessionist leader in South Carolina, said, "Slavery is our King; slavery is our Truth; slavery is our Divine Right." South Carolina's Declaration of Secession refers to Northern States; "Those States...have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery...They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes." Several thousands of those slaves from South Carolina served in the Union army in the Civil War that was started in Charleston by South Carolinians when they bombarded Fort Sumter in April, 1861. At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War.
I was also a champion of the lost cause of Dixie. In 1964-65, I became the first Executive Director of the South Carolina Independent Schools Association. Now emphasizing academic and athletic excellence, originally the private schools were created to allow white children to avoid racial desegregation in public schools in counties with large populations of blacks. Several were named for Confederate figures like Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Wade Hampton.
I was an aide to George Wallace and then his National Campaign Director (1967-1971). Confederate flags were waved and racial slurs shouted at Wallace rallies throughout the country. My great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier and my grandfather was a Klan member. I named my only son Jefferson Davis Turnipseed. I was a racist who used my Confederate heritage to deny my racism.
I returned to South Carolina in 1972 and helped organize a coalition to reform electrical utility regulation that included African Americans. Electric rates for low volume residential users were 5 1/2 times higher than for industrial users and a disproportionate number of the mostly poor low volume users were black. The rate hike hearings offered an opportunity to bridge the divide between poor blacks and whites. Our successful coalition helped me realize how prejudiced I had been against black people. I became an anti-racist activist and was elected to the SC Senate by an interracial coalition of everyday people. I am a life member of the NAACP, and was a leader in the effort to remove the rebel flag from our State House. Our law firm was co-counsel in a successful suit against the Klan for burning a black Baptist Church in South Carolina in 1998. These terrorist Klansmen waved the Confederate flag as they destroyed the church.
If a prejudiced devotee of Dixie like me could change, maybe there is hope for Secessionist Tea Partiers to change and allow poor black and white folks to have adequate health care.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Money Talks: Corporations Become Humans and Curse Their Creator
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, gave corporations, unions and individuals First Amendment rights to donate unlimited amounts of money to buy political ads for candidates without disclosure. Meanwhile, corporate fat-cats, whose corporations are created by government, rant and rave against government and condemn government creation of public sector jobs programs for the poor and unemployed.
Oct 13, 2010
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, gave corporations, unions and individuals First Amendment rights to donate unlimited amounts of money to buy political ads for candidates without disclosure. Meanwhile, corporate fat-cats, whose corporations are created by government, rant and rave against government and condemn government creation of public sector jobs programs for the poor and unemployed.
In Citizens United the five conservative justices composing the majority said, "... this court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or to the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy." Can we keep faith in a government whose highest court makes such an absurd comment about big bucks being spent by "speakers" sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce and other special interests who lobby government for corporate and big moneyed interests? The Chamber's lobbyists led the defeat of the Disclose Act to close the loopholes created by the Citizens United decision.
Foreign corporations contribute money that goes into a Chamber of Commerce fund used to pay for political ads to defeat candidates who do not tow the line for their profits over people agenda. Playing key roles in the effort are Karl Rove who was George W. Bush's political hatchet man and the late Lee Atwater's protege, and Ed Gillespie, former Republican National Committee Chairman and another Bush advisor. They are involved with a group called Crossroads GPS and its associated organization, American Crossroads. The groups are running ads in key Senate and Congressional races and are trying to raise $52 million for ads in the November elections
The Court's conservative majority of justices were appointed by conservative politicians in the White House and confirmed by conservative US Senators who owed much of their political success to wealthy contributors and corporate interests. The history of corporate influence and control of our government is depressing.
In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company the U.S. Supreme Court "ruled" that corporations are "persons" and have the same rights as human beings based on the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect the rights of former slaves. However, in the decision itself the Supreme Court never ruled on personhood, but a former railroad president named J.C. Bancroft Davis who was the court reporter put the "ruling" in the decision's headnote:
"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
Headnotes are not law but subsequent cases dealing with the issue accepted the headnote as precedent to give corporations rights under the Fourteenth Amendment like natural persons. Justice William O. Douglas's later lamented that, "corporations were now armed with constitutional prerogatives."
The Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976 said donations could be restricted as potentially corrupting, but there should be no ceiling on expenditures since that could be like limiting speech itself (money equals speech). The McCain-Feingold law in 2002 closed a loophole that allowed companies to spend money "independently" just before elections designed to defeat targeted candidates, but that loophole was re-opened with Citizens United. The Court struck down the provision of the McCain-Feingold Act that prohibited all corporations, both for-profit and not-for-profit, and unions from broadcasting "electioneering communications" that mentioned a candidate within 60 days of a general election.
Ironically, government initiatives that would put people to work rebuilding our infrastructure are condemned as socialism by the plutocrats of corporate America. In an Orwellian twist the money magnates would have us forget that corporations are created by government statutes. Government limits their personal liability for acts perpetrated by them under the auspices of their corporations.
Corporations would not exist if government statutes did not allow them to make profits and shield shareholders from liability if the corporation is caught stealing, or otherwise damaging people. Corporate employees, including CEOs and other officers of a failing corporation can lose their jobs but are not personally liable to the corporation's creditors for their mismanagement. Corporations control the system that creates them by making campaign contributions to our elected officials, and by lobbying and influence peddling. Hiring relatives and staff of members of Congress also helps the big money interests to manipulate our government. Such tactics have enabled them to water down attempts to regulate their out-of-control greed that caused the worst economic recession since the great depression.
Democracy dies when corporations are given the rights of human beings and corporate bribery becomes free speech.
Keep ReadingShow Less
War Steals From the Poor and Unemployed
Sep 20, 2010
Military spending is causing huge deficits and wasting money needed for education, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and developing clean, renewable energy. 14.9 million Americans are unemployed. 50.7 million Americans did not have health insurance and 43.6 million or 14.3% lived beneath the poverty level in 2009, according to the Census Bureau and the numbers are even higher now. Expenditures for our bloated war complex are about 55% of all discretionary spending. We have spent more than a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and much more in bribes to government officials, and tribal chiefs and payments to corrupt private contractors. According to the Democratic Leadership Council, US military spending accounted for 44% of all money spent globally on war, weapons and the military in 2009. Our military spending is as much as all of the next 15 countries combined. The number of people killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is anywhere from 100,000 to a million or more depending on who does the estimates. Statistics on the number of civilians and military personnel killed are often distorted by military propaganda.
Glorification of the mass terrorism of war by media, politicians, weapons makers and other violence peddling war profiteers is depressing. Killing people by war and willful violence is the most demented activity of our species. War is intrinsically evil. Peacemakers like Jesus, Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are real heroes rather than the war complex hyped "warriors" who "fight for our freedom" by killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan so the US can control their governments and natural resources. Metaphors like the war on poverty seem inappropriate in describing anti-poverty programs, which are diminished by the diversion of resources to make war. Lyndon Johnson took on the pervasive poverty of the 1960 by promoting broad anti-poverty social programs like civil rights, education, Medicare and Medicaid as part of his Great Society.
Rather than advocate more social programs that provide jobs, Obama wants to tinker with middle class tax cuts and a roll back on tax breaks for the fat cats, but how much will trickle down to poor and unemployed people?. When a reporter asked Obama to discuss his views on the poverty agendas of LBJ and Dr. King, he answered, "I think the history of anti-poverty efforts is that the most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy. It's more important than any program we could set up. It's more important than any transfer payment we could have." Economic growth and tax cuts that increase corporate profits will not eliminate poverty. Such praise of Reagan's supply side economics isn't new for Obama.
During the presidential campaign in 2008, Obama said, "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." Does Obama model his super smooth style after Reagan's slick salesman act?
Reagan was a mediocre movie actor when he became the host of the General Electric Theater on NBC. General Electric launched his political career by sponsoring a national speaking tour for their handsome, look-um-in-the-eye, all-American guy, who promoted their conservative philosophy. He was the ideal political huckster for corporate America's unbridled greed. Reagan put a nice face on the mean-spirited politics of fear and greed, blaming welfare mothers, social programs, government regulations and the "evil empire of the Soviet Union" as causes for America's troubles. Scapegoating poor people and criticizing government programs enabled him to deliver a giant tax break for the rich, roll back health and safety regulations, and push through a gigantic military buildup for corporate defense contractors like General Electric. His racially charged attacks on affirmative action hurt racial minorities and women.
Obama's smooth rhetoric can't conceal his role in bailing out Wall Street, cutting deals with corporate interests to dilute the healthcare reform bill, and developing financial regulations in closed-door meetings with bankers.
Rather than praising Reagan, Obama should make Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt his role models and work to establish social programs which provide jobs for poor and working class people. LBJ can also teach Obama that endless wars won't work. We should end tax cuts for the rich and transfer funds from war and Wall Street to social programs that put people to work and reduce poverty.
Keep ReadingShow Less
A Tea Partier, A Green Partier, and the Action Figure
Will Jim DeMint, Alvin Greene or Tom Clements win the SC Senate Seat?
Aug 14, 2010
South Carolina's US Senate race is a media extravaganza. Jim DeMint, the radical right Republican incumbent and tea partier and Alvin Greene, a mysterious, unknown Democrat and action figure enthusiast who has been indicted on a felony obscenity charge are joined by Tom Clements, a peace and environmental activist. Newcomer Clements is the Green Party nominee and a life-long activist involved with vital public interest issues affecting South Carolina, the United States and the world. Clements excels in political research and advocacy.
DeMint, a former paper salesman and ad executive, is the hero of the far right. Media is drawn to the enigmatic Greene, giving him more coverage than any candidate in America according to the Pew Research Center. DeMint is the most ultra-conservative Senator in Congress. Greene would stimulate the economy by selling action figures of himself, which could include a jailbird, considering his indictment for showing pornography to a teenage student. But Clements' record of public service and activism gives him the credibility to be a Senator for all the people.
I don't know Jim DeMint or Alvin Greene personally. I do know Tom Clements. The candidates should have debates on critical issues such as war and peace, jobs with a living wage, economic and social justice, climate change, clean green energy, conservation of natural resources, health care, education, immigration reform, regulation of the finance industry and the national debt. The media has let us know plenty about DeMint and Greene. South Carolinians need to see and hear Tom Clements on these issues and understand why he will be a great senator.
The State in Columbia, SC reported that Clements has worked for Greenpeace International for 13 years. He has challenged leaders on nuclear issues in Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Europe. In South Carolina Clements led the environmental organization's nuclear weapons watchdog efforts on operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS).
South Carolina has the most nuclear industry activity per capita of any state. This includes making nuclear weapons and electric power generation. Clements has led efforts to clean up deadly radioactive waste at the "bomb plant" aka SRS. He led the organizing of our demonstrations there which drew positive media coverage. Tom opposes bringing more nuclear waste to South Carolina and advocates a clean energy park at SRS that would help develop offshore wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable technologies and would create new jobs in our economy.
Clements led the fight in South Carolina against rate increases for utilities whose plans for costly nuclear reactor projects will force consumers to pay a decade in advance, and divert resources from developing energy efficiency and sustainable, non-polluting alternatives.
Clements has been recognized for his work as the Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth, and received the Grassroots Activist of the Year award from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
Working with Greenpeace International and as Director of the Nuclear Control Institute, Clements interacted with official representatives of other countries, at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, and at embassies in Washington, D.C. and abroad. He was a human rights activist in Central and South America, is fluent in Spanish and served in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica. He also worked for Peace Brigades International in Colombia, verifying human rights violations by the army, and paramilitary and guerrilla forces.
Clements says DeMint works for corporate interests rather than the people of South Carolina. "Jim DeMint is obviously more concerned about raising money for questionable radical candidates in other states than he is about listening to the people of South Carolina," said Clements. "DeMint is AWOL and needs to come home and join in the discussion about who the people will choose to represent them."
Clements contends that "military madness is killing our people, undermining our economy, and threatening our security. Costly and misguided military adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan and expensive military bases around the globe continue to severely undermine our economy and threaten to bankrupt us financially and spiritually." "The military budget for the Pentagon and other agencies comes close to $900 billion. Including costs for expenses incurred by past military spending, the tab comes to a whopping $1.4 trillion, or 48% of the budget. We now see the highest military spending in the past 60 years with over $1 trillion having been spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001."
South Carolina can do better than Jim DeMint and his radical right agenda. It is time to turn away from our legacy of militarism, racism and fundamentalism.
We have the highest ratio of military personnel and civilians working for the military to non military related people of any state. The military brings big bucks to our economy. Much of our media glorifies and romanticizes war even more than the national media. The Christian Coalition was founded in South Carolina and Lee Atwater brought fundamentalists from their revival tents into the "big tent" of the Republican Party.
The three bumper stickers on my car say "War is Terrorism, With a Bigger Budget" and "Peace on Earth" with "Tom Clements for US Senate" in the middle.
Tom Clements wants to end war and make peace. Find out more about him. I support Tom, a green partier who works for peace and social justice.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Secrecy Sucks: Spooky, Snoopy Spies Run Amuck
Since
9/11, a collection of secret intelligence groups
called the United States
Intelligence Community (IC) has become a monstrous, overlapping
hodge-podge of spooks with some 850,000 people having top secret
clearances,
according to the Washington Post.
The clandestine tangle of CIA spooks and related "national
security" groups like military intelligence, civilian contractors and
mercenaries has grown so much that its actual cost, or size, is unknowable and
out-of-control according to the Post's
series of articles. The
mainstream media icon is p
Jul 23, 2010
Since
9/11, a collection of secret intelligence groups
called the United States
Intelligence Community (IC) has become a monstrous, overlapping
hodge-podge of spooks with some 850,000 people having top secret
clearances,
according to the Washington Post.
The clandestine tangle of CIA spooks and related "national
security" groups like military intelligence, civilian contractors and
mercenaries has grown so much that its actual cost, or size, is unknowable and
out-of-control according to the Post's
series of articles. The
mainstream media icon is publishing Top Secret
America after a two year investigation of the huge US
intelligence complex. The
expose paints a troubling picture of turf wars in a disconnected
spy network that can't "connect the dots". It is
especially disturbing because the Post
is an establishment and neo-liberal oriented paper. It is usually
supportive of a rather hawkish foreign policy and expenditures for the military
industrial complex. The
articles reveal a vast and unmanageable assortment of spooky, snoopy spies.
According to their websites the United
States Intelligence Community (IC) is a cooperative
federation of 16 separate US
government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities
they consider necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection
of the national security of the United
States. Member organizations of the IC
include military intelligence, civilian intelligence and analysis offices in
federal executive departments. The
IC is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) who is said to be
subject to the authority, direction and control of the President and is
responsible for overseeing and directing national security by serving as the
head of the sixteen-member IC.
The DNI website says the Washington Post's series of
articles "do not reflect the Intelligence Community we know. We
accept that we operate in an environment that limits the amount of information
we can share. However, the fact is, the men and women of the Intelligence
Community have improved our operations, thwarted attacks, and are achieving
untold successes every day." Actually, the fact is, spooky
infighting at enormous expense.
Obama's first intelligence chief was Admiral Dennis
Blair who had friction with the White House and turf fights with CIA Director Leon Panetta. According to media
reports, one of Blair's senior aides said they were frustrated with a
lack of guidance from the White House and likened their situation to an
invisible dog fence. The aide and
Blair joked with each other that they never knew where the no-go lines were
"until we got zapped."
I don't know much about spooks thwarting attacks, or
their turf fights, but I did stand in a line of anti-war protestors and got
zapped for it by the spooks in 2004. Dick Cheney came to my hometown of
Columbia, South Carolina
in 2004 to a fund-raiser for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign at the home
of an insurance company bigwig. Along with about 30 other peace activists
I stood in a line across the street from the event holding a hand painted sign
proclaiming "Dick Cheney is a War Criminal." Local police on
duty at the event who knew me were friendly, but I was photographed and asked
to identify myself by a grim-faced spook with Cheney's entourage.
About three months later my wife and I were waiting to board
a flight at the Columbia
airport when one of the security officers who was my friend told me he was
required to meticulously search through my baggage. I asked him why
and he said, "You are on the search list".
Retired Air Force General
James Clapper has been nominated by Obama to be the fourth chief spook since
the DNI was established. Pledging to increase trust with Congress,
Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee he would be candid with
lawmakers, if confirmed as the next director of national intelligence.
Senators at Clapper's confirmation hearing voiced skepticism
about the ability of the next overseer of the nation's 16 spy agencies to
manage the sprawling intelligence community which the last three directors
struggled with, mainly because of turf fights between the National Security
Council and the CIA.
Clapper insisted he would be able to exercise the necessary
authority using the powers the DNI already has, rather than "going through
the trauma," of another reorganization and "would not agree to take
the position if I was going to be a titular figure or hood ornament."
During his confirmation hearing he also said his 46 years'
experience working in the intelligence field makes him uniquely qualified for
the job
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California praised Clapper after the
hearing. Feinstein is the committee chairwoman and said she thought
Clapper would be "a strong DNI...whose will was going to prevail."
She also said Clapper's friendship with CIA
Director Leon Panetta meant clashes between the two were less
likely. I reckon we should clap for Clapper, a spook for 46 years
who learned how to lie with a straight face a long time ago.
Democracy dies when government lies. Secrecy
sucks. How many of us are on the lists of suspects with so many
spooks and spies running amuck?
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy