Salt City Sinner

posted 7/31/2012 by the Salt City Sinner It all started (or ended, depending on your point of view) on January 21, 2010, when the Supreme Court   ruled 5 - 4   along the ideological fault line   to declare   corporate and union campaign spending a form of protected speech. The decision - Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, 558 U.S. 50 (2010), known colloquially as "Citizens United" - was a catastrophic blow to democracy in the United States. It   opened the floodgates   for   corporate money  , and since the ruling, a tidal wave of private funds have swept through American elections, replacing citizens' voices and interests with an even more thoroughly corrupted bought-and-paid-for corporatocracy than previously existed. NPR reported on the 2010 elections: After the astronomical sums of cash thrown into the 2008 campaign, everyone's pumping in even more - about 10 to 15 percent more - according to Kip Cassino, vice pres...

Jack Abramoff is sorry. He's sorry for what he did. Gosh, he didn't know it was wrong  when he did it, but now that he's had some time to think about it (federally subsidized time in a white-collar "minimum security prison camp" in Cumberland, MD), why, it was a crime , the way he behaved - taking all that money, rigging the system, bilking the rubes and living high on the hog during the Bad Old Years of Republican one-party rule during the high tide of the Bush Administration. I rock the Boris Badenov look much fresher than Abramoff Of course, everyone else was doing it. Don't get Abramoff wrong - he may be sorry for what he did, but he wants to make damn sure that everyone knows that his accusers are as guilty as he is. What Jack Abramoff did was wrong, sure, but what he was really guilty of was being good at the game, baby, going with the flow even though that flow washed him over the line of the law. Abramoff's new autobiography, idioticall...

Any candidate's record should be open for discussion when they run for dog catcher, let alone president of the United States. Still, it has been an interesting and illuminating experience to watch Rick Perry take heavy fire for his HPV vaccine policy as Texas Governor. Now, when I first heard this, my gut reaction was “Good for Perry!” Most GOP opposition to the HPV vaccine, after all, is a sub-set of their opposition to sex education , contraception, and generally any public acknowledgement that teenagers might not spend their lazy Friday evenings at Bible study every week. Well I owe my mom $5 (long story) because by Jove there is a real, bona-fide vaccine conspiracy afoot in Texas! NPR reports that “ In Texas, Perry's Vaccine Mandate Provoked Anger :” While the Republican representatives and senators who controlled the Legislature were dumbfounded and getting angry, Democrats were just dumbfounded. Perry was going to make every girl in Texas get a sh...

It was business as usual on Thursday in Utah. Liquor-control commissioners attempted to hold a closed meeting: the ostensible purpose of which was to discuss acting liquor-control director Francine Giani, and so arguably the meeting was not required to be held open to the assembled press (both the Salt Lake Tribune and KTVX Channel 4 were there and would have preferred to cover the meeting). Depending on what you determine the purpose of the meeting to be, open meeting requirements in this case are a bit of a grey area.  A little background: tensions have been brewing between the commission and Director Giani, who Liquor Control feels is acting as a liaison to Governor Gary Herbert and thereby undercutting citizen supervision by the commissioners. Come down on that one wherever you like, the meeting - much like virtually every government meeting in this or any universe - should have been open, in my opinion. What happened next is quite amusing.  Daw...

A consensus seems to be building amongst a few political writers and policy wonks that the economic situation in America right now is far worse than it seems - that, in fact, what we are witnessing is nothing less than a coup d'etat. Simon Johnson of the Atlantic : In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again)... But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to a...