The Republicans in Congress fear anti-tax zealots.
These include Grover Norquist, who has at his disposal a number
of billionaires willing to bankroll the defeat of any Republican
who dares to violate Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. They also
include the voters of the so-called Tea Party; their initial
outrage over bank bailouts has been redirected into
anti-government activism by professional operatives hired by
Norquist’s billionaires. It would be fair to say that
Norquist’s extremist billionaires own the Republican
Party. As a result, Republicans in Congress demand deficit
reduction without tax increases on wealthy individuals or
businesses. If they get their way, the economy will spiral
into Depression.
Why? As a result of high unemployment, shrinking benefits
and wages which don’t keep up with the cost of living, American
consumers are unable to spend enough to create the demand which
will drive businesses to hire more employees and will give banks
the confidence to lend. In addition, $500 billion every
year is sent out of the country instead of being spent here
because of our trade deficit; that’s a further drag on our
economy. State and local governments can’t take up the
slack; instead, they’re cutting expenditures and jobs.
Only economic stimulus by the national government can save the
economy. That requires deficit spending until the recovery
is solid and self-sustaining.
A reduction in government spending, as the Republicans demand,
will reduce stimulus and be a drag on the economy.
Unemployment will increase, business will stagnate, and
government revenues will decrease, thereby undoing the deficit
reduction. Further deficit reduction will simply extend
the process in a vicious cycle as every reduction in government
spending to reduce the deficit causes a further loss of private
income and government revenue, followed by a demand to reduce
spending again to avoid an increase in the deficit.
But can government spending which puts money into the hands of
the many who are primarily consumers, and which thereby creates
jobs, continue or even increase without increasing the
deficit? It can, if taxes are increased enough on great
wealth and high incomes. How much is enough? I don’t
possess the necessary data to calculate that, and it depends on
how much stimulus spending will occur anyway. A minimum of
$500 billion per year in stimulus spending is needed merely to
balance the loss from the trade deficit; more is needed if we
are to recover economically. A number of economists have
estimated that a $1.2 billion increase in stimulus is needed.
Until now, all of the discussions on the revenue side have been
about taxing incomes and maybe financial transactions, but none
about taxing wealth. It shouldn’t be off the table.
When we tax real estate at the state and local level, we are
taxing property. Other forms of property shouldn’t be
exempt. Real estate taxes pay for the services which
presumably benefit the owners of those properties. Well,
the owners of businesses and of financial assets benefit from
many public services, too, such as national defense, law
enforcement, education, infrastructure and laws which protect
property ownership and contractual obligations. Therefore,
it’s perfectly legitimate to have a property tax on forms of
wealth other than real estate. Actually, the fact that
real property is taxed while most other forms of property aren’t
is a leftover from earlier times in which real property was the
primary form of wealth. That ended with the industrial
revolution. Now the ownership of businesses and financial
assets is the prime source of wealth. It’s long past time
for the system of taxation to catch up with economic realities.
It’s not necessary to have a property tax on the modest savings
of the middle class. A tax on non-real estate wealth in
excess of a couple million dollars will generate significant
revenues, and it will chip away at the present drift toward a
hereditary and entrenched plutocracy which corners both economic
and political power.
The bottom line is that, by increasing taxes on the highest
incomes and by initiating taxes on excess wealth which is not
already taxed, it will be possible to have our cake and eat it
too: reduce the national government’s budget deficit while
retaining and perhaps increasing those expenditures which enable
consumer spending, generate jobs and rescue the economy.
The increase in government revenues from a revitalized economy
will further reduce the deficit.
The right-wing argument that today’s deficit spending must stop
because it is leaving a debt for our descendants fails to
account for the damage our descendants will suffer from a
collapsed national economy, with rampant unemployment, crumbling
infrastructure, inferior education and health care, street
begging and crime. The Republican approach is a lose-lose
game: either run up our descendants’ debt or leave them with a
crippled country. A win-win game is a better
alternative. We can have our cake and eat it too. We
can reduce the debt we’re leaving to our descendants while
revitalizing the country which they will inherit.
Throttling our Thirst for Poison
by Charles Boyer
Bill McKibben is the world’s most significant voice in
confronting the crisis generated by global warming... Last month
McKibben spoke ... in the prelude to a conference on the subject
sponsored by Progressive Christians Uniting and held at the
Presbyterian Church in Claremont. Several hundred religious
activists from around the area met for two days to hear world
authorities on the subject, to plan specific actions and to
engage in services of worship. McKibben is an active Methodist
layman and teaches a Sunday School class at his local Vermont
congregation. He also preached Sunday morning at
Claremont’s largest protestant church.
James Hansen, a NASA scientist, recently wrote, “If humanity
wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which
civilization developed and to which life on earth is adopted,
paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggests that
CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most
350 ppm.” In response, McKibben has generated a worldwide
movement centered around the “350” focus, believing that the
currently verified 410 ppm.. is deadly. The movement’s
short-term goal is the reduction of the use of fossil fuels,
while forcing the producers to pay for the environmental
degradation they generate. These atmospheric insults are simply
part of the cost of doing business.
There is now all but a unanimous conclusion by the scientific
community that the carbon spewed into the air has already raised
the earth’s temperature by more than a degree. While warmer air
holds more moisture than cooler air, it falls to the ground
unevenly. This means floods more severe than have ever
been recorded, and droughts that disable entire nations. Vermont
and Thailand have been inundated, while Texas and Sub-Saharan
Africa are increasingly parched.
One wonders why saving the planet from the inevitable
destruction caused by global warming is not at the top of
everyone’s agenda. Yet there is a sturdy resistance to
taking any of the steps necessary to halt our rush to the
precipice. Among the several states, California has
generated the greatest concern leading to legislative action.
The State has its own version of “cap and trade.” But
there is opposition even to the small steps taken. What is the
contrary argument? “It’s bad for business.”
The lead editorial in the
Wall
Street Journal of October 31 makes the negative
case. It cites, among other things, that the Western
States Petroleum Association calculates these new laws will cost
… stockholders $540 million in the first two years. In
that period Conoco-Phillips alone will earn 14 billion! While
there is obviously a trade-off between climate change policies
and economic competitiveness—that translates “profits”—the
increasing corporate control of every aspect of American society
makes it difficult to deal with what may be the most critical
issue facing this planet. Most American politicians are
now indebted to corporate money. That means keeping the cash
coming trumps the need to reduce atmospheric pollution. One
wonders if both corporations, and the politicians in their
pockets, would rather have us go off the cliff into
environmental oblivion, than to take the simplest steps in
controlling global warming.
Of course saving the planet will come at a cost. We will have
to develop new sources of energy, which means, in the interim,
some jobs will go out of style. We will be paying higher
costs for the fuels we now consume. We may need a tax on
all carbon generation to cover the costs involved in dealing
with the destruction now caused in the air we breathe and the
atmosphere which controls our weather. These costs are already
build into our economy.
The Wall Street Journal complains that
even these simple steps now on California’s books, are futile
since the rest of the world is not taking similar
measures. So California should do nothing at all. I am
hardly compelled by the argument that I should continue to drink
poison because everybody else is gulping it down. Paying $6 a
gallon for gasoline would be a bitter pill, but that is probably
what it would take to throttle our thirst.
Americans
Disagree with Tea Party
In the latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted November
9-14, more Americans say they disagree (27%) than agree
(20%) with the Tea Party movement. A year ago, in the
wake of the sweeping GOP gains in the midterm elections, the
balance of opinion was just the opposite: 27% agreed and 22%
disagreed with the Tea Party. At both points, more
than half of Americans offered no opinion about the Tea
Party.
Throughout the 2010 election cycle, agreement with the Tea
Party far outweighed disagreement in the 60 House districts
represented by members of the Congressional Tea Party
Caucus. But as is the case nationwide, support has decreased
significantly over the past year; now about as many people
living in Tea Party districts disagree (23%) as agree (25%)
with the Tea Party.
The Republican Party’s image also has declined substantially
among people who live in Tea Party districts. Currently, 41%
say they have a favorable opinion of the GOP, while 48% say
they have an unfavorable view. As recently as March of 2011,
GOP favorability was 14 points higher (55%) in these
districts, with just 39% offering an unfavorable opinion.
Among the public, 36% now say they have a favorable opinion
of the Republican Party, down from 42% in March, 2011.
Hey, Republicans!
Endangered by pollution
Abe Lincoln on Labor and
Capital
"... There is one point ... to which I ask a brief
attention. It is to place capital on an equal footing
with, if not above, labor, in the structure of
government. It is assumed that labor is available only
in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless
somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it
induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next
considered whether it is best that capital shall hire
laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own
consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their
consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally
concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or
what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that
whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that
condition for life.
“Now, there is no such relation between capital and
labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free
man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired
laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all
inferences from them are groundless.
“
Labor is prior to, and
independent of, capital. Capital is only the
fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor
had not first existed.
Labor
is the superior of capital, and deserves much the
higher consideration.”
Abraham
Lincoln, Address to Congress, 1861
Air Force dumped
Soldiers’ Corpses in Landfill
The US Air Force dumped the cremated, partial remains of
at least 274 dead soldiers in a landfill before halting
the secretive practice in 2008, the Washington Post
reported on December 8, 2011. Dumping was accomplished
at Dover Air Base, which is the main point of reentry
for US war dead. The Air Force did not disclose the
dumping to families of deceased soldiers.
Question: How much does the Air Force value the
lives of our soldiers?
Republicans Finally
Target Wealthy
Senate Republicans proposed
to cut the federal budget by restricting access of
millionaires to jobless benefits, food stamps, and
Medicare.
Yes indeed, today’s Republicans are seriously tough on
the wealthy.
Source:
Financial Times , December 4, 2011
Income
Inequality Rising in California
by Alyssa Anderson and
Jean Ross
The California Budget Project examined data from the
Franchise Tax Board, and found that income gains accrued
mainly to the wealthy. Between 1987 and 2009, more than
33% of income gains went to the top 1% of Californians,
and almost 75% went to the top 10%. The bottom 90%
received just over 25% of total income growth.
During the last two decades, the average income for the
top 40% of Californians jumped by more than 20%, after
adjusting for inflation, while incomes declined for
Californians in the bottom 80% of the income
distribution.
Over the last two decades, the average income of the
top 1% of Californians increased by 50%, after adjusting
for inflation, while the average income of the middle
fifth fell by 15%. In 2009, the average income of the
top 1% was $1.2 million — more than 30 times that of
Californians in the middle fifth.
Nearly 1 in 6 Californians now lives in poverty, the
largest share in over a decade. California's
millionaires, who account for a fraction of a percent of
the population, had combined incomes of more than $100
billion in 2009 — 11 times the income needed to lift
every Californian out of poverty. In other words,
redistributing 1/11th of the income of the top 1% would
end poverty in California.
California is home to
some of the widest income gaps in the nation.
At the state level, California has the seventh-widest
income gap among the 50 states, ranking between Alabama
and Texas. In addition, the income gaps in the Los
Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas rank third
and seventh, respectively, among large U.S. cities.
Source: LA
Times, December 6
The Most Important News Story of
the Millennium
by Bill McKibben
The most important piece
of news this year was a new set of statistics
released last month by the Global Carbon
Project. It showed that carbon emissions from our
planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and
2010. In fact, it was arguably among the most
important pieces of data in the last three
centuries, almost certainly the largest absolute
jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution .
It means that we’ve all but lost the battle to reduce
the damage from global warming. The planet has already
warmed about a degree Celsius; it’s clearly going to
go well past two degrees. It means, in political
terms, that the fossil fuel industry has delayed
effective action for the 12 years since the Kyoto
treaty was signed. It means, in diplomatic terms, that
the endless talks underway in Durban should be more
important than ever--they should be the focus of a
planetary population desperate to figure out how it’s
going to survive the century.
But instead, almost no one is paying attention to the
proceedings . . One of our political parties has
decided that global warming is a hoax--it’s two
leading candidates are busily apologizing for anything
they said in the past that might possibly have been
construed as backing science. President Obama hasn’t
yet spoken on the Durban talks.
Who are the 99%? In this country, they’re those of us
who aren’t making any of these deadly decisions. In
this world, they’re the vast majority of people who
didn’t contribute to those soaring emissions. In this
biosphere they’re every other species now living on a
disorienting earth.
You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was
radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience
in DC in August against the Keystone Pipeline?
We’re not radical. Radicals work for oil
companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and
goes to work changing the chemical composition of the
atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical
as that, not in all of human history. And he and his
ilk spend heavily on campaigns to make sure no one
stops them--the US Chamber of Commerce gave more money
than the DNC and the RNC last cycle, and 94% of it
went to climate deniers.
Corporate power has occupied the atmosphere. 2011
showed we could fight back. 2012 would be a good year
to step up the pressure. Because this time next year
the Global Carbon Project will release another number.
And I’m betting it will be grim.
Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar
at Middlebury College and co-founder of 350.org. His
most recent book is Eaarth:
Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.
California Assembly
Must Open Spending Records to Public
December 2, 2011-- A judge ruled that individual
office budgets for California's 80 Assembly
members are public records and must be released.
It was unclear, however, when/whether the State
Assembly planned to do so.
The court ruling could lead to the disclosure of
information previously deemed secret under
the Assembly’s narrow interpretation of its
own open records law.
In his ruling, Superior Court Judge Tim
Frawley declared existing law "reflects a
strong presumption in favor of public access to
legislative records." The judge sided with The Sacramento Bee
and LA
Times lawsuit claiming that Assembly
leaders (John Burton) were shielding spending
documents from the public by relying too heavily
on exemptions in the Legislative Open Records Act.
source: AP
DCC
Memo on Golden State Water
On behalf of the
Democratric Club of Claremont, Ivan Light
presented the following memo to the
California Public Utilities Commission at
their hearing on Golden State Water’s request
for rate increase in Claremont on December 6.
The Democratic Club of Claremont wishes to bring
the following facts to the PUC's attention in
regards to the proposed rate hike for Claremont
that is requested by Golden State Water.
-
GSW's rates are already much higher than
those prevailing in neighboring towns.
- GSW overpays its executives in the opinion
of industry sources.
- GSW's dividend of 12% to stockholders vastly
exceeds industry means.
- GSW's proposal penalizes customers who have
conserved water.
For these reasons, the Democratic Club of
Claremont believes the proposed rate increase is
unwarranted, and should be rejected.
Americans Spent
$448 billion on gasoline in 2011
December 9, 2011
-- American drivers
spent more than $448
billion on gasoline since the beginning of the
year, according to the Oil Price Information
Service. This sum broke the previous record for
gas expenditure that was set in 2008, and there
are still two weeks of driving yet to go in
2011.
It's also a huge jump over 2010 when U.S. drivers
spent more than $100 billion less on gasoline,
mainly because gasoline was cheaper in 2010 than
in 2011. The Organization of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries will top $1 trillion in net
oil exports for the first time, or 29% more than
last year.
The money Americans spent on gasoline in 2011 is
approximately what it would have cost to build an
electrical grid that would meet the entire energy
need of the United States from wind power in
Nebraska alone. It is also approximately one sixth
of the cost of the Iraq War, 2003-2011.
source: LA
Times
Why We Occupy D.C.
The following was
approved by consensus by the General Assembly of
Occupy D.C. on November 30, 2011.
We
have been captives of corrupt economic and
political systems for far too long. The concentration
of wealth and the purchase of political power stifle
the voices of the increasingly disenfranchised 99
percent. Corporate dominance subverts democracy,
intentionally sows division, destroys the environment,
obstructs the just and equitable pursuit of happiness,
and violates the rights and dignity of all life.
Occupy D.C. is an open community of diverse
individuals, facing different forms of oppression and
impacted by economic exploitation to differing
degrees, but united by a shared vision of equality for
the common good. The harsh economic conditions that
have plagued the poor, working class, and communities
of color for generations have begun to affect the
previously financially secure. This acute awareness of
our common fate has united us in our struggle for a
better future. We recognize that inequality and
injustice systemically affect every aspect of our
society: our communities, homes, and hearts. To build
the world we envision, we commit ourselves to
overcoming our personal biases so we can successfully
challenge systems of oppression in solidarity.
We are peaceably assembled at McPherson Square,
practicing direct democracy on the doorstep of K
Street, the epicenter of destructive corporate and
governmental relationships. Recognizing that the term
‘occupy’ is associated with exploitation, violence,
and imperialism, we are reclaiming it to mean the
peaceful liberation of public space. In this
disenfranchised city, we are insisting that our
economic and political systems serve the people’s
interests. Now is the time to advance and complete the
struggles of the many who came before us.
We are assembled because…
- It is absurd
that the 1 percent has taken 40 percent
of the nation’s wealth through exploiting labor,
outsourcing jobs, and manipulating the tax code to
their benefit through special capital tax rates
and loopholes. The system is rigged in their
favor, yet they cry foul when anyone even dares to
question their relentless class warfare.
- Candidates in
our electoral system require huge sums of
money to be competitive. These contributions from
multinational corporations and wealthy individuals
destroy responsive representative governance. A
system of backroom deals, kickbacks, bribes, and
dirty politics overrides the will of the people.
The rotation of decision makers between the public
and private sectors cultivates a network of public
officials, lobbyists, and executives whose aligned
interests do not serve the American people.
- The entrenched
two-party system overlooks public interests
by pursuing narrow political goals. This climate
encourages candidates to polarize voters for
individual power and personal gain. Citizens’
meaningful input has been compromised by
gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, and
unresponsive politicians. Residents of Washington,
D.C., continue to lack autonomy and legislative
representation.
- The 1 percent
benefits from economic, political, and legal
structures that oppress communities long
targeted by displacement, denial of sovereignty,
slavery, and other injustices. These persecuted
but resilient communities continue to suffer
through generations of disproportionately higher
rates of unemployment, poverty, criminalization,
and homelessness. Facets of the 1 percent campaign
to blame these groups for these problems while
obstructing healing and restoration.
- Those with
power have divided us from working in
solidarity by perpetuating historical prejudices
and discrimination based on perceived race,
religion, immigrant or indigenous status, income,
age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation,
and disability, among other things. These
divisions have inhibited our ability to work in
solidarity, though today we recognize the power of
uniting as the 99 percent.
- Financial
institutions gambled with our savings,
homes, and economy. They collapsed the financial
system and needed the public to bail them out of
their failures yet deny any responsibility and
continue to fight oversight. Corporations loot
from those whose labor creates society’s
prosperity, while the government allows them to
privatize profits and socialize risk.
- Corporate
interests threaten life on Earth by
extracting and burning fossil fuels and resisting
the necessary transition to renewable energy.
Their drilling, mining, clear-cutting,
overfishing, and factory farming destroys the
land, jeopardizes our food and water, and poisons
the soil with near impunity. They privilege
polluters over people by subsidizing fossil fuels,
blocking investments in clean energy and efficient
transportation, and hiding environmental
destruction from public oversight.
- Private
corporations, with the government’s support, use
common resources and infrastructure for
short-term personal profit, while stifling efforts
to invest in public goods.
- The U.S.
government engages in drawn-out, costly
conflicts abroad. Numerous acts of
conquest have been, and continue to be, pursued to
control resources, overthrow foreign governments,
and install subservient regimes. These wars
destroy the lives of innocent civilians and
American soldiers, many of whom suffer adverse
effects throughout life. These operations are a
blank check to divert money from domestic
priorities.
- Government
authorities cultivate a culture of fear to
invade our privacy, limit assembly, restrict
speech, and deny due process. They have failed in
their duty to protect our rights. Exacerbated by
profiteering interests, the criminal justice
system has unfairly targeted underprivileged
communities and outspoken groups for prosecution
rather than protection.
- Corporatized
culture warps our perception of reality.
It cheapens and mocks the beauty of human thought
and experience while promoting excessive
materialism as the path to happiness. The
corporate news media furthers the interests of the
very wealthy, distorts and disregards the truth,
and confines our imagination of what is possible
for ourselves and society.
- Leaders are
trading our access to basic needs in
exchange for handouts to the ultra-wealthy. Our
rights to healthcare, education, food, water, and
housing are sacrificed to profit-driven market
forces. They are attacking unemployment insurance,
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, creating
an uncertain future for us all.*
Lay-Offs Enrich Romney
During his political career, Mitt Romney has bragged
about his experience as a businessman while
deflecting criticism of layoffs caused by his
company’s private equity deals. He claims that he
left Bain Capital in 1999 so he’s not responsible
for their subsequent depredations. But in the years
since, thanks to a generous retirement arrangement,
Romney has financially gained from Bain deals that
resulted in layoffs, job loss, and upheaval for
companies, workers and communities.
One lucrative deal for Bain involved KB Toys, a
company based in Pittsfield, Mass., which one of the
Bain’s partnerships bought in 2000. Three years
later, when Mr. Romney was the governor of
Massachusetts, KB began closing stores and laying
off thousands of employees. Romney made money on
these layoffs. More recently, Bain Capital led the
private equity purchase of Clear Channel
Communications, the nation’s largest radio station
operator, which resulted in the loss of 2,500 jobs.
Source: NY
Times December. 18, 2011
Our Bill of Rights
By Bob Gerecke
The participants in Occupy Wall Street and its
offshoots throughout the USA have often been
evicted forcibly from the public spaces which
they’ve occupied. The Claremont city
government, however, made the constitutionally
correct decision to allow them to exercise their
rights undisturbed.
The US Constitution guarantees our rights to
exercise free speech, assemble peacefully and
petition our representatives. That’s what
the Occupiers are doing. Furthermore, the
speech which they are exercising is political
speech; the Supreme Court has always protected
that above other kinds of speech, because
protecting political speech is the primary
purpose of the First Amendment to our
Constitution.
Local authorities have evicted or arrested
Occupiers for violating curfews, sleeping in
public places, erecting tents or not having
latrines. I’m not aware that our
Constitution conditions the exercise of the
rights to speech, assembly and petition upon
avoiding any of these conditions.
If the Occupiers were interfering with others’
rights, that would be a different matter.
If an exercise of free speech or assembly harms
someone or infringes on someone’s rights, judges
may decide, under the circumstances, that speech
or assembly may only be exercised in other ways
which do not violate other rights.
However, here in Claremont, the Occupiers aren’t
blocking access to City Hall, nor to the
sidewalk or street. They aren’t harassing
pedestrians or drivers, and they aren’t shouting
down anyone else who expresses a different
opinion. The small area between City
Hall’s steps and doors isn’t normally used by
anyone for any other purpose, and it’s easy to
walk past the Occupy on either side to enter
City Hall. In fact, the Occupy encampment
seems to have been positioned for the purpose of
allowing anyone to pass by conveniently.
In short, they are assembled peacefully as an
act of political speech, and they are not
interfering with anyone else’s rights.
Apparently, Claremont’s city attorney agrees,
since she has stated that, since they aren’t
interfering with any other use, they aren’t
violating the intent of the city’s ordinance
against camping on public property, which
specifies that its purpose is to prevent
obstacles to public use. Even if they
were, I would argue that their and our
constitutional rights to free speech, assembly
and petition outweigh the right to relax in a
park or even to pass through one of many
sidewalks and streets which we can use to reach
a destination. Sure, they can exercise
constitutional rights somewhere and somehow
else, but that doesn’t justify making them do
so, because the rest of us have options to
exercise lesser rights in other ways, too.
If our city government had decided to evict the
Occupiers, it may have gotten away with it,
because they don’t have the resources to fight
back in court. However, the American Civil
Liberties Union and volunteer attorneys have
represented persons across the political
spectrum – including neo-Nazis – whose rights
have been violated by government, and they have
prevailed, collecting damages and legal
costs. It could turn out to be expensive
for the city to evict peaceful practitioners of
constitutional rights.
GOP Attacks Judiciary,
Constitution
By Erwin Chemerinsky
The attack on the federal judiciary by Republican
candidates for president has reached a new low and
should be denounced by everyone. In November, Texas
Gov Rick Petty announced that if elected president,
his "appointees to the federal bench will not
receive a lifetime appointment."Now [Eye of] Newt
Gingrich pledged that if elected President, he would
defy Supreme Court rulings with which he disagreed,
and that judicial review to ensure that the
government complies with the Constitution has been
"grossly overstated."
In Thursday's debate in Iowa and in a media
conference call on Saturday, Gingrich declared that
courts are forcing us into a constitutional crisis
because of their "arrogant overreach." He repeatedly
blasted federal judges for imposing "elitist
opinions" on the rest of the country. He has called
for impeaching judges, abolishing judgeships and
even eliminating courts whose rulings he dislikes.
In recent years, the high court has handed George
W. Bush the presidency by 5-4 vote, greatly expanded
the rights of gun owners under the 2nd Amendment,
limited abortion rights and authorized corporations
to spend unlimited money in election
campaigns. And most of the federal district court
and court of appeals judges today were appointed by
Republican presidents.
Source: LA Times,
December 20
Does the US Need
Foreign Oil?
By Ivan Light
The opinion is frequently encountered that the US
needs foreign oil because of dwindling domestic
supplies; that’s the sovereign explanation offered
for imperialist wars such as Iraq. “We wanted
their oil” or “we wanted their pipeline.” This
opinion does not hold water. Consider that for
the war in Iraq a trillion dollars was expended, and
that for only half that money, the US might have
forever solved its energy problems with wind power
from the great state of Nebraska. The
expenditure would have built the national grid that
is needed to distribute the wind power to users.
We spent a trillion dollars, and did not get the
eternal energy security that half the money would
have obtained for us. Would someone have done this
who just wanted energy independence and security?
Arguably, the oil companies wanted access to Middle
oil Eastern oil, and they sent the US military to
get it for them. The oil companies, after all, want
to protract and prolong our national dependence on
their product. But this lamentable situation is not
the same as the US needing the oil that the oil
companies sent us to fetch. In fact, putting
it that way wrongly sends the message that the
constant imperialist wars are in our national
interest.
The problem is not that the US needs oil for energy.
That problem is easily solved. Rather, the problem
is that oil companies call the foreign policy shots
in Washington DC, and the American people unwisely
foot their bill in treasure and blood. We are paying
for our own enslavement.
The Voorhis
Voice is published by the Democratic Club of
Claremont, PO Box 1201, Claremont CA
91711. The newsletter’s name commemorates
the late Jerry Voorhis, a talented and
courageous Congress member from Claremont.
Newsletter Editor
Any registered
Democrat may join the Democratic Club of
Claremont
on our web
site!
Access our website:
http://www.claremontdems.org
Select: Get Involved > Join Us
(Complete the form. Then…)
Select: Get Involved > Donate to the
Club This will take you to the Act
Blue website where you can pay your annual dues
online.
P.S. – Part of your dues and contributions
may be contributed to Federal and State
candidates. Individual contributions will be
deposited into the club’s Federal account, subject
to the Federal Elections Campaign Act.
Non-individual contributions and contributions of
individuals who so request will be deposited into
the club’s State account. Contributions are
limited under State law. No anonymous
contributions of more than $50 will be
accepted. Federal law requires us to use our
best efforts to collect and report the name,
address, occupation and employer of each
individual contributor. Political
contributions are not tax-deductible. FPPC
#841491. FEC #C00404319