The Long Crisis

Archive for the ‘New America’ Category

Today a domestic terrorist flew his light aircraft into a seven story office building in Austin Texas that housed a tax office for the Internal Revenue Service. Our government officials expressed great relief that the attack was not carried out by Al Qaeda or some other foreign terrorist group and was therefore deemed not to be a terrorist act.

While they are correct in that the attack was not carried out by Al Qaeda the initial public statements were incorrect in not identifying the act as terrorism. The attack upon the IRS was carried out by something much worse, a domestic terrorist. The pilot of the aircraft had apparently earlier torched his house in an Austin subdivision and left behind a suicide note saying that he was mad as hell at his tax bill, and the national health care stalemate, and the bailout helping corporations rather than people. He opposed the federal government and our laws and flew an airplane into a federal occupied building housing an IRS tax unit to express his extreme anger at the United States government. If that’s not an act of domestic terrorism, then what is?

It is actually foolish and wrong for government officials and media talking heads to breathe a sigh of relief because the pilot was not a member of Al Qaeda. The fact that he is one of ours, a homegrown terrorist, is far worse. Consider the actions of homegrown terrorists at Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and now a government occupied office building in Austin, Texas. Then consider how many millions of Americans own guns, are former military members trained in explosives and warfare, are fed up with the way our government is currently working, resent the bailout of wealthy bankers and corporate executives at the expense of the tax payer, and who are mad as hell about it all and near some kind of breaking point.

It is a sad state of affairs when government officials who are charged with protecting United States citizens from terrorist acts won’t even call an act by a homegrown terrorist, such as flying an aircraft into an office building, an act of terror. Perhaps their tune will change as more facts are known. Then an over reaction will probably occur. We may not be too far removed from being required to get a government permit to travel beyond our front yards.

The fact is that the risk of domestic terrorism is far greater than that of Al Qaeda being able to launch another terrorist attack on United States soil. An additional risk, as the government attempts to prevent further acts of domestic terror, even though the government will not publicly acknowledge domestic terrorist attacks as terrorist attacks, is that individual freedoms are further eroded due to a police state mentality of surveillance and regulation.

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While I disagree with president Obama on a number of issues, especially the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, I feel that his statement about the recent Supreme Court decision regarding election funding is spot on.

Obama’s statement on the issue was triggered by a 5-4 ruling by the court’s justices on Thursday, January 21, 2010, that removed long-standing campaign finance limits and allowed corporations to spend freely in campaigns for president and Congress as well as in local elections. In the ruling, the court’s conservative majority said the limits had violated corporations’ constitutional right to free speech.

“This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way — or to punish those who don’t. This ruling strikes at democracy itself,” Obama said.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Supreme Court’s decision is that it grants corporations, that are definitely not individuals, constitutional rights to free speech. It is deeply disturbing that the Supreme Court, which is tasked with protecting American’s constitutional rights, should extend the right to free speech to legal entities such as corporations that clearly were not intended to have such rights by our founding fathers.

The decision rolls back all of the campaign funding laws in the American democracy that were designed to protect our democracy against the efforts of special interest groups, such as corporations and their lobbyists. Now with the 5 to 4 Supreme Court ruling, the floodgates are open for unlimited amounts of cash being used to buy politicians and to influence the voting process through TV advertising and other means.

President Obama’s statement that the decision is a direct blow to democracy is absolutely the truth. In the United States, much of the control of our government has already passed to special interest groups who use lobbyist and the use of cash to influence legislation that is favorable to their special interests. Now that the Supreme Court has opened the financial floodgates for corporate cash to flow through In unlimited amounts you can bet your bottom dollar that’s the corrupting influence of money will be felt throughout the political system.

January 21, 2010, is a sad day in American history. With our democracy already under severe attack by special interest groups the Supreme Court ruling May well be the death blow to any semblance of democracy within the American form of government. It is hard to believe that the five members of the Supreme Court who voted in favor of a corporation being granted constitutional rights to free speech, thereby giving them the ability to use unlimited amounts of cash to influence legislation designed for their benefit at the expense of the public, were thinking of protecting the Constitution.

One has to wonder if the wide spread corruption within our government has spread even to the highest court in the land. In my opinion, this five to four Supreme Court decision could not possibly be based upon the proper interpretation of the law of the land, but upon the influence that lobbyist groups already have upon certain Supreme Court justices.

Sadly, American democracy has become more like fascism than most Americans would care to admit. The recent Supreme Court decision will only make matters far worse as it places a tremendous amount of political power in the hands of corporations that will use that power to punish those politicians whose policies they disagree with and to reward those who help them to pass legislation favorable to their interests. The unsavory relationship between corporations and politicians that the Supreme Court decision will lead to is the very definition of fascism.

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Today is an extremely important day for Democrats in Massachusetts, and for that matter across the nation. Within just a few hours the results of the Senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown, a former Cosmo nude model of all things, will be known. The political upset of the last century may be in the making.

Democrats now are operating under the assumption that Democrat Martha Coakley will lose today’s election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. In the debate over how Democrats could possibly lose the race — which has major repercussions for President Obama’s agenda — Coakley herself is taking more and more of the blame. Some Democrats and liberals aren’t waiting for the polls to close to turn against Coakley and her campaign.

Ted Kennedy occupied the Massachusetts Senate seat for more than 40 years. Sen. Kennedy was at the head of a political juggernaut machine in Massachusetts. When former Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley won the Democratic primary election it was believed by most political observers that she would be a shoe in to win the general election. After all, Scott Brown was basically a throwaway candidate. The Republican powers that be in Massachusetts did not want to sacrifice a leading candidate to a race that they felt was not winnable. So initially, Scott Brown was not expected to even come close to winning the election, much less becoming a Republican senator in a heavily Democratic district of the state.

Should Martha Coakley lose the Democratic Senate seat the implications for president Obama and his agenda will be profound. The Democrats would lose their 60 vote cram down margin in the Senate and would likely lose their ability to pass even the present health care legislation. In addition, losing Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat would put every incumbent Democrat on notice that they to are at risk for the 2010 and 2012 election cycle.

In fact, many political pundits would go so far as to say that the loss of the Democratic Massachusetts Senate seat would be the beginning of the end for not only president Obama’s aggressive agenda, but would signal that many American voters are absolutely angry at the direction that the country has been taking under the Obama administration.

While many Democrats will point the finger at Martha Coakley for running a poor campaign the reasons for her loss, should she lose, probably run deeper than that. The poor economy and the seemingly control of the Obama administration by the hated bankers, the fear and resentment surrounding Obama’s health care bill, the bail out of AIG, the bail out of the automobile industry, and a general feeling that president Obama has fallen far short of keeping his campaign promises are all indicators that the Democrats have dropped the ball and stand to lose big time in the midterm elections.

It is about four in the afternoon as I write this article. I expect that by nine o’clock or so this evening the results of the Massachusetts election for Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat will be known. For team Obama and all Democrats the next few hours must be nervous ones indeed. A Republican upset in Massachusetts will invigorate a struggling Republican party. In fact, president Obama may become one of the earliest lame duck presidents on record.

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