WHY A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO END CITIZENS UNITED IS INEVITABLE

It is amazing how hard some people will work to convince others that doing what is absolutely necessary is impossible. Imagine if most people chose to believe that it is too late to do anything about climate change. Even if they were right, doing nothing due to widespread acceptance of the idea would amount to humanity turning its back on its children, dooming them to live through the collapse of human civilization.  As another example, the biggest obstacle to global peace is arguably the widespread acceptance of the self-fulfilling prophecy that war is inevitable. What if it became commonly understood that war is always a choice and they only benefit the corporations of the military-industrial complex that essentially dictates foreign policy to decision-makers in Washington? It is possible that war would become unthinkable, if we are willing to make that happen.

Global climate change and global peace, like nearly every issue that Congress and the White House have failed to address, are problems for all but the few who pay for the elections of our representatives in Washington. Congress and the White House routinely put the immediate interests of corporations over those of the rest of us. The short-sighted approach of the Wall Street criminals who dominate the government is setting the US and global economies up for a fall that will make 2008 look like a mild downturn. The economic devastation would leave us woefully unprepared to deal with the human crisis that would result. Well-respected experts like Helen Brown are warning us to prepare for a state of permanent martial law in the wake of the coming economic collapse.

The problem then is that until we change the US system of campaign finance, there is little hope for human civilization. There is a large and growing movement to do so through the only means that a corrupt Supreme Court has left us, a constitutional amendment. You would think that the recent 54-42 vote in the Senate would have caused naysayers some pause, but that does not seem to be the case. A recent article in Alternet made the claim that this meant the movement “collapsed with a predictable thud,” overlooking the fact that the vote itself was a historic milestone on the path to the inevitable enactment of an amendment that will be the first giant step toward establishing democracy in the US since the constitution itself.

What casual observers of the amendment movement consistently fail to recognize is that there is a specific path to passage that should be obvious to anyone who thinks through the problem of getting a corrupt Congress to pass an amendment that will undercut the very system that got most of its members into office.  Any solution will clearly need to involve making support for an amendment a crucial campaign issue in Congressional elections. If voters can be made to use this issue as a litmus test for their support, we can and will elect a Congress that will pass an amendment. Such a Congress will have proven that it is willing to put the interests of its constituents over those of the corporate patrons of the current occupants of Congress. Then, they can get on to dealing with other aspects of corruption that critics of the amendment complain it would not address.

Movement leaders can take much of the blame for the failure of recognition of this clear path to victory. The idea has been floating around since before Citizens United was decided, as the Roberts Court’s call for briefs that would expand the original question to gut campaign finance reform made it obvious which way it was going to come down. After the decision, some of us immediately got to work promoting not just wider awareness of the problem, but recognition of the solution. Unfortunately, early supporters gave up on the strategy after the 2010 election failed to yield results. This was surprising, given that the lack of success in electing candidates pledged to support an amendment was predictable. Not only was the idea new, but organizers failed to achieve buy-in from many groups working on the issue. Move to Amend, which had the most boots on the ground early in the battle, rejected the idea outright and refused to work with any group that did not support the amendment they wrote or their strategy to see it passed.

In 2010, Public Citizen issued a call for pledges to support an amendment that would overrule Citizens United. I was one of dozens of candidates for the House and Senate who answered the call. We will never know how many more candidates might have been willing to take the pledge had it received wider publicity through other groups working on the issue and the “alternative” media that treated it as just one issue among many rather than the central problem halting progress on addressing the rest. People for the American Way was Public Citizens’ only partner. Its role was confined to mentioning the campaign on its website and listing candidates who had made a pledge. Despite an effort to revive interest in the idea in 2012 and the ease with which pledges were obtained, another four years passed before the idea finally began to catch on.

In 2012, both Public Citizen and People for the American Way declined to continue what came to be most widely known as the Pledge to Amend campaign, despite the obvious fact that it was a strategy that could only succeed over several election cycles. The same was true for other groups that were approached. Most of them did not seem to appreciate the significance of the idea. Although Pledge to Amend is the name of the same strategy recently adopted by Move to Amend, its steering committee explicitly rejected the idea in 2012 as premature whenever the question came up. Move to Amend is now calling for people to solicit pledges of support for an amendment that would reform campaign finance and abolish corporate constitutional rights (corporate personhood), but there is little evidence that their local affiliates around the country have responded. As a result, it appears that another election cycle is likely to be wasted.

The earliest serious effort to organize a movement around the idea of making support for an amendment a campaign issue seems to have started in Oregon in 2014. In 2013, various groups around the state came together in a successful effort to get an amendment resolution passed in the state legislature. By 2014, they were looking for another project. At that time, the national steering committee of Move to Amend had failed to provide strong leadership in giving local affiliates around the country a new objective once those who had worked passed amendments in their communities had succeeded. They suggested working on getting pledges from state legislators, seemingly ignoring the fact that the amendment had to pass Congress first. The Oregon Democracy Coalition decided to pursue what they call the Ask the Candidate strategy, first suggested by Public Citizen in 2010.

The effort is off to a slow start, but is likely to serve as a model for groups around the US by the time of the 2016 election. It is based on the idea of forming local groups in every community and empowering them to raise awareness of the issue of corruption and the way to address it in ways of their own choosing. The coalition has quickly grown from its original six members (considering all of the Move to Amend locals in the state as one group) to 29.  It is reaching out to public interest organizations in the environmental, peace, economic justice, labor and other movements that have largely been working in isolation. All of these groups are realizing that their efforts will be fruitless until we have a government that puts our interests over the corporate patrons of our so-called representatives. While there have been dozens of other strategies proposed that merit support, none have the momentum of the movement to amend the constitution.

As the alternative media and activists nationwide increasingly become aware of the central role of reforming campaign finance in moving America forward, the model used by the Oregon Democracy Coalition is likely to become the nucleus of a truly grassroots movement for an amendment in communities around the country. It might even just become the way that we finally build the fabled “progressive movement” that cynics have written off as impossible to achieve.

PATTERN RECOGNITION IS THE KEY TO PRECOGNITION

With the Arab Spring and the Revolution that has become visible in the Occupy movement in the US and around the world, many people are beginning to have hope for the first time in their lives that the imposition of a permanent fascist New World Order that would enslave us all can be stopped and reversed.

The question is, is this starry eyed optimism or are the pessimists who dismiss the Revolution as a temporary phenomenon right? The answer may depend on how you view the situation. In any event,the pessimists are guilty of accepting a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they do not believe that democracy or the end of war are possible, they will not see how they may be wrong. Therefore, they will not know how to help the Revolution succeed and even if they try, their efforts could lead to the opposite effect of what they want if they promote division rather than the union of the international front against fascism and war that has the collective power to crush the corporatocracy if enough people believe that it can.

Whether the pessimist or the optimist proves to be the realist depends on whose vision prevails. That is why we must encourage doubters to suspend their disbelief in the possibility that we can save human civilization and join us in convincing others that war can and will end when enough people reject the self-fulfilling prophecy that it is inevitable.

If you wish to know the objective truth of something you must seek to understand it from every point of view and find that which is true from all of them. To understand the world as it is enables one to understand the world as it should and can be, if we apply our collective will to creating that world.

Planning for the future in what seems like a chaotic world situation requires a unified world view that sees the future as one of many possibilities. To develop such a way of looking at the world, you must have a clear grasp of what is important to attend to based on a good understanding of what has led us to the present moment.  

In today’s world of information overload that may seem impossible, but it is not. The key to overcoming America’s Attention Deficit Disorder is to help our neighbors understand what issues are fundamental to the process of taking America back for the people. In selectively focusing attention on information that answers the most pressing questions of how to create a united front against fascism in America and war in the world, patterns begin to emerge that make the importance of new information easier to recognize.

Once enough people understand the pattern of recent history, the collective consciousness will shift in the direction of positive change that is possible only through collective action. It is not true that history repeats itself. History is made by those who refuse to accept this futile proposition.  Those who make history are those who study the mistakes of the past to find new paths that we can take together to a more promising future.

Some look at world history as one of endless warfare and an individualistic struggle for supremacy in a hostile universe. These people implicitly reject the idea of democracy in the belief that selfishness is an indelible part of human nature. Thus, the falsely believe that history repeats itself regardless of the efforts of individuals and societies to change.This worldview is distorted by the failure to recognize the abundant evidence to the contrary.

Those of us with the faith that men and women are capable of governing themselves know that they are wrong. It is those who reject the idea that we cannot individually and collectively change history who will be the agents of the change for which the world is clamoring. The stubborn refusal of pessimists to challenge the self-fulfilling prophecy that their own neighbors cannot be trusted to make sound judgments about what form our society should take is a danger to democracy itself and ultimately, to the survival of human civilization.

There are examples to be found throughout history of social cooperation creating critical positive change. Here are a few:

-There have been many centuries in which Jew, Christian lived in harmony throughout much of the world.
-In the American Revolution, men put aside fundamental differences on the issue of slavery in order to ensure that they did not all become enslaved by the fascist Old World Order of the British Empire.
-Americans came together in crisis of the Great Depression to try social experiments that would have been unthinkable ten years earlier, at the height of the Red Scare.                                                                       
-There was shared sacrifice during WWII and a sharing of the benefits of the economic prosperity that followed, including with the vanquished nations of Germany and Japan.
-Throughout the history of the US there has been an evolution toward democracy punctuated with stunning successes by both the forces of democracy and those of the fascist mindset that currently controls the US government and its military.

When trying to develop a strategy to create the fundamental social and political changes that must be made to save human civilization from the depredations of the selfish elite class, we must keep in mind the lessons that history provides. If we apply to our current situation the lessons of both our successes and failures in the past, we can together create a road map to peace based on mutual respect, empathy and a deep appreciation of our interdependence. Any such map must lead to a world in which all enjoy the benefits of liberty and justice. Only in such a world is democracy possible. Without democracy, there can be neither true freedom nor peace for anyone.

If we begin with the assumption that democracy is possible, then we must assume that we are capable of achieving the consensus necessary to create a government and a society that will function according to the wishes of We the People. One of the fundamental contradictions in the American collective consciousness is that we can somehow force the other side to accept our vision of America through waging a Civil War for the hearts and minds of our neighbors using weapons of ridicule and invective.  This has led to a social psychological disorder I call America’s Borderline Split.

US society has the characteristics to merit the diagnosis: Idealization and devaluation of our leaders, self-destructive anger, generally unstable emotions, and a disturbing tendency to be preoccupied with death while doing little to help ourselves overcome our self-destructive behaviors. Like the individual with borderline personality disorder, we feel profoundly empty and as a society struggle to maintain a coherent image of ourselves and others as basically worthy of love despite the imperfections all humans share.

We are so busy fighting each other that we cannot come together to fight the real enemy: fascism. Our common enemy is not those who vote for leaders whose policies we despise, or even the corporate Puppets in Congress. The real enemy is the small group of counter-Revolutionaries that was never happy that the US government was designed with a view toward creating a society in which each citizen had an equal voice in the operation of the government. From the Hamiltonian Federalists to the modern Republican Party, there has been a never-ending battle between those who believe that democracy is necessary and possible and those who have no faith in We the People to decide our collective or even individual destinies.

Those who reject the notion that we can achieve the consensus necessary to assure the continuity of progress toward democracy are the COINTELPRO agents among us. Wittingly or unwittingly, they serve as agents of the State in helping to divide us, just as the survival of human civilization depends on our coming together. Some might assume that these are those who would consider themselves “conservative,” but they would be wrong. Many self-identified liberals are so used to despairing at the corporate media and politicians manipulating the public discourse that they have given up hope of reasoning with those with whom they disagree. The truth is that both sides are entrenched in a pit of despair and loathing. Only we can free ourselves from this trap. The time for recriminations is over. Politics does not have to be a battlefield if we learn to think of each other as fellow Americans and citizens of the world.

A world in which everyone has the right to the benefits of freedom, justice and peace starts with the idea that such a world is possible. If you do not believe that it is then you cannot conceive of how to help create it. If you do not consider what it would take than you will miss the obvious signs that such a world is right in front of us in the near future, if we work to get there from here. If you believe as I do that the pattern of history is coming to a dramatic punctuation point, the signs are all around you.

The pattern of change is unmistakable if you know what to look for. The Occupy movement is the most obvious sign of a Tectonic Paradigm Shift that is taking place in human consciousness. At the same time, international activist communities are learning better how to unify their efforts, a world ecumenical movement is building and vast networks are forming that are connecting the dots that represent our individual interests. Projects like John Perkins' Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream are painting a picture of a world in which it is generally recognized that the interest of each of us is intimately connected to the best interests of all.

All humans are much more alike than they are different. The commonalities that we share make us human. Our differences give rise to the variation in thought that can help us adapt to a world that is changing in dangerous ways. As long as we continue to think of ourselves as members of this or that group first rather than fellow travelers on Earth, we constrain our individual and collective power. Only by uniting can we realize our potential to change the world into one fit to leave our children.

WINNING THE CLASS WAR FOR THE 99%

There have been a slew of constitutional amendments introduced in Congress recently, each claiming to “reverse Citizens United.” This is the result of pressure from activists passing resolutions around the country calling for an amendment that would actually do this, which none of the amendments introduced to date would do.

Each of these amendments is limited to giving states and the federal government the right but not the obligation to control the flow of corporate money in elections. It is preposterous to expect that a Congress dominated by corporate money would even consider using such a power if by some miracle the thing were passed. Do not be fooled by these generally well-meaning efforts by members of Congress trapped in the mentality that they must work on only what is possible now. The fact that they are working with colleagues who have accepted the self-fulfilling prophecy that they have no choice but to sell their loyalty to the highest corporate bidder is no excuse. While some willingly sell their loyalty, others feel this is the only way that they can make a difference in Congress because they have to be re-elected to do the public any good.  

The 99% cannot give up on the electoral process if they want to effect real change. They need to recognize that we do have real representation in Congress, but they will only take risks when they know we are backing them. Some members of Congress have been elected and re-elected without being tainted by corporate money. Senator Bernie Sanders comes immediately to mind as an example. We have to ask the question why is he afraid to do what must be done: introduce a constitutional amendment that would abolish corporate personhood outright? He knows as well as anyone that only by ending the power of corporations to buy members of Congress can we hope to elect those who will put the interests of We the People over those of They the Corporations. The answer may seem clear but it is not as simple as many people think.

Although Bernie doesn’t rely on corporate money to run, he has to realize that planting a dagger in the heart of the corporatocracy would invite retaliation, making himself the target of right-wing campaign PACs like Karl Roves’ Crossroads. In addition, he would be setting the corporate Democratic leadership up by making support for the amendment a campaign issue. We all saw what happened to Dennis Kucinich and Anthony Weiner when they dared challenge Democratic leadership to put the interests of American citizens over those of their corporate Puppetmasters: Kucinich was marginalized even by real liberals in Congress like Peter DeFazio of Oregon, while Weiner was left twisting in the wind when he got caught in a scandal that had nothing to do with the performance of his duties as a Representative.

As long as Democrats and independents in Congress are cowed into following the Democratic leadership in lockstep toward the Right, voters will continue to abandon the party in disgust. Many are concluding that a party willing to be led by the nose by the same corporate entities that have wholly bought the Republican Party is not worth their support. The perception is that the difference between the two is not important enough to fight for. The Democratic Party has not so much been abandoned by their supporters so much as they have been abandoned by it.  

Democrats supporting the amendments presently in Congress fall into two categories. There are those like Max Baucus who have long ago sold themselves out to corporate interests, and those who believe that incremental change is their only choice. Baucus took in over $6 million dollars in the election cycle preceding the Democratic effort to bail out a failing medical insurance industry that was cynically labeled “reform.” The resulting gift to the corporations that comprise the medical-industrial complex was obvious. What was less obvious to many is that this was the intent of Democratic leadership when they decided to take on the issue. There are lessons here we must heed if we are going to get a constitutional amendment introduced and passed that will accomplish what the members of Congress proposing the current bills claim.



Prior to the public debate about the public option and its far worse alternatives, Rahm Emanuel put Democratic leaders on notice that single payer was off the table. Inside sources say that Howard Dean was told that he would not be a player in the debate if he could not get Democracy for America to support the public option bait-and-switch. DFA responded by claiming that their million-plus members supported the public option strategy when a simple poll would have proven otherwise. In getting other progressive leaders and members of Congress to fall in line, they managed to sell to the Democratic rank and file the self-fulfilling prophecy that single payer was “not politically possible.” 



This Machiavellian plan to satisfy corporate interests in the name of “reform” was reminiscent of the Bush Administration’s marketing of the Medicare Modernization Act that appears to have been designed to kill Medicare by establishing an unfunded prescription benefit plan whose costs were deliberately and grossly misrepresented. Among other gifts to the medical-industrial complex, pharmaceutical manufacturers were given the power to set their own prices by a ban on the government negotiating drug prices. In what came as a shock to those who are unfamiliar with how some Democrats receive underserved credit for being “liberal,” Oregon’s Senator Ron Wyden crossed party lines to cast the deciding vote for this bill that is putting the viability of the Medicare program at risk.



Not surprisingly if you follow the money, Wyden introduced the only serious competitor to the public option plan, the Healthy Americans Act. It was so bad that it received bipartisan support. While quickly shelved, key elements of this mandate plan were quietly put into the Orwellian-titled “Affordable” Care Act, including massive cost shifting to the consumer that was not taken into account in the CBO analysis. As a result, health care costs continue to rise even while the Democrats proclaim victory in producing health care ”reform.” 



The bait-and-switch going on in Congress now is even more insidious and dangerous. If we do not call on these members of Congress to abandon their effort to placate the public while doing essentially nothing about the problem, the movement to abolish corporate personhood will be split and a historic opportunity lost just when the economy, the environment and the families of those serving in wars for corporate personhood cannot stand the delay. 



This is a call to action for those who understand the difference between abolishing corporate personhood and enshrining it in the constitution through an amendment that would validate the doctrine by recognizing that Congress should have the power to regulate it. If corporate personhood is abolished then there is no need to regulate corporate money going to campaigns because it will be illegal.



Those of us engaged most deeply in this modern abolition know just what is at stake. In our educational efforts we need to let the public know the danger of supporting this pig with lipstick. We can pass an amendment abolishing corporate personhood outright and win the war being waged against the 99% if we focus our efforts on making support for a proper amendment a campaign issue in 2012 and beyond.

ECONOMIC SLAVERY AND THE MODERN ABOLITION MOVEMENT

The famous case of San Mateo v Northern Pacific railroad has been described as the precedent that later Supreme Courts used to justify the principle of corporate sovereignty over the people of the US. This case was argued but not decided on the basis of the legal theory that corporations have all the rights of human beings under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, the fascist Robber Barons of the post-Civil War era were asserting their right to determine the shape of the future America by virtue of their economic power over average Americans and the corrupt body that Congress had become.

Let us put aside any quibbling about when corporate personhood became established law in the minds of the majority of corporate members of any of the previous or subsequent Supreme Courts. Suffice it to say that the chain of logic that led directly to the decision in Citizens United was based in large part on the amendment that was written to free former slaves. Thus began the slide into fascism that has led to the threat of permanent economic slavery in the New World Order of the United States Empire.

For the first time since the Great Depression, the people of the United States are feeling the same lash that the victims in other countries of the international corporate terrorists have known for years. Now that the banksters, international financiers, war profiteers, Big Oil and the medical-insurance complex have devastated the US economy, the apparent victors of the war on the US middle class are dividing the spoils among themselves. After decades of moving jobs overseas and chipping at the social safety net, the fascists who control the US government are fighting for supremacy in the New World Order without regard to the welfare of the economic slave class they have created.

An angry but divided US public cannot assert its sovereignty over its own government. Only by coming together in the interest of liberty and justice for all can those fighting fascism in the US salvage the American dream of a democratic Republic. The great divide between those who regard themselves as conservatives and those who think of themselves as liberals is due to a difference in perception of whether our government more closely resembles fascism or socialism. Achieving consensus on the answer to that vital question is central to the task of establishing a democratic Republic in the United States.

Those of us who do not form our opinions by considering only the corporate propaganda promoted by the mainstream media know that the answer lies in the study of the rise of corporate power over the US government. The problem then becomes one of how we awaken both those on the Right and Left who refuse to acknowledge the simple fact that America has become a primary nexus in the network of international fascism. As one WWII veteran tearfully told me one day: “I didn’t fight and my brothers didn’t die for the nation we have become.”

There is an answer to the seemingly unsolvable problem of melding the collective political power of the Right and the Left. It lies in helping others understand that a system of corporate welfare with all power and privilege going to the most wealthy Americans is not a democracy and certainly not socialism. Benito Mussolini coined the term fascism to refer to just such an unholy alliance between corporation and state, with each using the power granted to them by We the People and an activist Supreme Court to improve their positions in the fascist New World Order. When we agree that the government we are trying to overthrow through a nonviolent democratic revolution is a fascist one, the scales fall from the eyes of those who have accepted the myth that democracy exists in the United States.

There is only one issue that has the potential to bring enough Americans together to Take Back America for the People. A modern abolition movement to strip corporations of the power to buy Congress and to dictate policy and legislation is the means by which we will finish the Revolution. Doing so is the only means to ensure liberty and justice for all Americans and Peoples everywhere who are threatened with slavery in the fascist New World Order. A movement is building to amend the constitution to do just that. Restoring the hope of democracy in America is a nonpartisan issue. Anyone who understands the danger of ceding the functions of government to corporate interests that want only to increase their wealth and power is welcome in the fight to end the system of corporate plutocracy that now threatens the survival of human civilization.

Most of those who have been working for decades to amend the constitution are holding to a strategy with a 20-30 year timeline for success. It focuses solely on an educational process that will indeed take this long if not coupled with efforts to get the amendment on the floor of Congress. Once in place, support for it can be used as a litmus test in every subsequent Congressional election. The implementation of this strategy requires that leaders of the abolition movement realize that no modern revolution will succeed without using the political power we hold in a nominally democratic society to force our government to do our will. If we refuse to consider the idea that there are men and women in Congress who are honest enough and tired enough of continuous competition for corporate cash we may miss the chance to be part of movement that will lead to the introduction and passage of the amendment that is our mutual goal.

Those who give up on the political process have an unrealistic vision that somehow a grassroots Army of people will join them with no hope for immediate political victories beyond the local and occasionally state levels. Forgetting that Senators like Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley and House members like Kucinitch and Ron Paul are speaking out loudly against corporate control of the electoral process, they are ignoring the quickest route to the passage of the amendment. With the threats of global climate change, a permanent depression, mass famine and endless war threatening to decimate the population we cannot afford such a long range strategy. To rely exclusively on education divorced from political action would be to risk abandoning millions of  innocent victims to their fate at the hands of a ruthless international corporatocracy.

No revolution has ever succeeded except though a process leading to democracy. Empires from Persia to Macedonia to Rome to the USSR and Nazi Germany have learned from hard experience that violent subjugation of people will always in the end destroy the power structure that it depends on to maintain order among the Peoples so enslaved. If America, Israel and their allies do not learn this lesson soon, they may become the victims of a violent revolution that could dwarf the French Revolution in its carnage. If we can prevent that then we will have ended the ongoing Civil War that has divided and conquered Americans since the bloody battles across five Aprils ended in 1865. Only when we see and act upon our mutual interests will we have the collective power to finish the American Revolution and free the world from the fascist control of the Puppetmasters of the US government.

In the end, it will be the Tea Party that saves the Republic. It is the job of progressive activists to reach across the great divide that separates those in the US who all claim to love freedom and democracy. The only way to move forward as Americans and members of the global community is to put aside lesser differences in the cause of liberty and justice for all. This means talking to those who may not agree with our vision of the America and the world that we will never create unless we do so together. In learning how to talk tone another with mutual respect and compassion, we may live to see the end of war.

TAKING THE OFFENSIVE

The only way to win a war is to take the offensive. It is clear that the political leaders of the Right are waging war on the middle class and that the Democratic Party will not take the offensive as long as they are dependent on the same sources of campaign cash as the Republicans. The international corporate terrorists who have seized control of the US government, military and media have been playing offense for decades. It is time that We the People got out of the trenches and attack the corporatocracy where they are most vulnerable: their weak and corrupt Puppets in Congress.

The only way to challenge the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United is through amending the constitution. Since we cannot muster support for a constitutional convention given the fears on both the Left and the Right that the “other side” will prevail, we must get such an amendment introduced and passed in Congress. Those who think that we can restore the democratic Republic by electoral and campaign finance reform legislation are not paying attention. The Supreme Court has made it clear that public financing is off the table for now the Democratic leaders are too deluded to even whimper about the theft of votes on a massive scale.

The seeming paradox of how to get an amendment passed in Congress has baffled even such luminaries as Thom Hartmann, Jim Hightower and Amy Goodman, all of whom seemed to ignore the fact that dozens of candidates in 2010 were willing to run for Congress on a pledge to amend. Where were they when we were trying to point out that by making this a campaign issue, with their assistance we could have challenged both Republicans and corporate Democrats? Hartmann alone has three million listeners and viewers every weekday. He and Hightower sit on the boards of the largest and most influential progressive organizations in the nation. Goodman has thousands of loyal followers. The idea that they fail to realize their collective power is incomprehensible.

Hartmann declined to have me on the show when I was running for the US Senate. He repeatedly dismissed the idea that passing an amendment was possible when I called in to the show to talk about why I think corporate personhood can be abolished. Hightower stopped answering my emails and ignored my phone calls. Goodman covered the 2010 Netroots Nation, where we met for the second time.   I watched her interview a candidate who appeared to be 25 years old, only to ignore my speech the night before about the critical importance of electing candidates who had taken the pledge. 

One might ask why this topic is treated as unimportant by these pundits of the Left, who are often referred to as “gatekeepers.” Many have speculated that only Democrats can walk through that gate. Worse, closet Blue Dogs like my opponent Ron Wyden are treated as though voters have no choice but to re-elect them. This is what I refer to as the politics of fear on the Left. These gatekeepers are so frightened of Republican rule that they will not even give exposure to candidates like me who had no serious chance of defeating a 30 year incumbent in Congress.

Rather than question the motives of these great spokespersons of the Left, I would prefer to think that the problem is a failure of imagination. Hope for change is great, but real change will only happen when partisan Democrats and Republicans are willing to challenge our elected representatives of both parties. President Obama told us throughout his presidential campaign that we needed to create the change that would compel him to do what must be done to save American economically, socially and morally. We cannot expect him to do much better than he has if we do not demand that Congress challenge corporate interests and stand up for We the People.

Thousands of us worked for real health care reform but the single payer, Medicare-for-all solution was all but ignored by Congress. Instead, we were treated to the spectacle of watching 13 doctors, nurses and lawyers arrested at the Senate Finance Committee hearings for asking questions about why single payer was off the table when representatives of the medical-industrial complex were all at that same   table. It was predictable that the Democratic leadership would sell out the American people in the end from the outset. When the public option plan was unveiled as the starting point to negotiate with a party that never met a corporate robber baron it didn’t like, it was obvious that any real reforms would be traded away in the end.

The same can be said for promises of real financial regulation, winding down the wars, protecting citizens facing foreclosure and essentially anything else that Americans need or want. If the gatekeepers of the Left continue to see their only function as getting Democrats elected, we have already lost the battle for democracy in America. Further capitulation to corporate Puppet masters will lead us inevitably the rest of the way down the slippery slope of fascism. If on the other hand progressive pundits wake up to the fact that we have very little time to act then we may still have reason to hope.

The abolition of corporate personhood is not just another issue. It is THE issue that must be addressed in order to get a Congress willing to put the interests of Americans over those of transnational corporations. The beauty of the concept is not just that it strikes at the heart of corporate power over government but that it is the only issue that is likely to bring together people who consider themselves conservatives with those who think of themselves as liberals. With 80% of both self-described conservatives and liberals opposed to Citizens United, the time has never been better to come together as Americans to fight for justice.

With the enormous unpopularity of Citizens United making this issue one of the few on which most Americans agree, the failure of pundits on the Left to aggressively promote Move to Amend is stunning. The easiest way to build a progressive movement is to build it around one central issue on which all progressives and in this case most conservatives agree. Those who have been fighting for single payer health care, an end to the war and economic and environmental justice must realize that the only way to assure victory is to force candidates seeking federal office to take a firm position on whether they are running to serve We the People or the corporations that currently have a stranglehold on the US government.

It would take little political courage to champion the cause of the abolition of corporate personhood. The popularity of such a position would virtually guarantee victory for anyone running for either of the two major parties who would support it. The enthusiasm gap between the Left and the Right would become a thing of the past. The only downside for candidates who take this position is that it will likely cost the jobs of corporatists in their own party. Until we have candidates who will put their country over their party, nothing will change. That is why it is critically important that everyone who hopes for change will become active in the Move to Amend campaign to abolish corporate personhood.

THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF KILLER BEES

In order to study the problem of how psychopaths came to control the United States government and use it to further the expansion of the Anglo-American Empire to create a fascist New World Order, it is instructive to consider the evolution of the Africanized bee, commonly referred to as the killer bee.

Like the rise of fascist power, the problem of killer bees was caused by the carelessness of those working to improve the species who did not appreciate the consequences of their actions. The bee was bred for its superior adaptability to hostile environments and its superior skill at gathering honey. This is a close analogy to the way that the super-rich economic elite were encouraged over time to become ever more aggressive in their pursuit of wealth. The myth that anyone can succeed in America was fostered by the notion that individual rights were supreme, even when they conflict with the rights of society as a whole.

Like these insects, the economic elite have been spreading until they now have invaded every nation in the world to one degree or another. In the US, the control of the government is almost entirely in the hands of the Puppet-masters of the government. This makes these international corporate terrorists particularly dangerous. They have increased in numbers to the point that when they swarm they become a danger to the life of democracy in America. Their invasion and control of the Hive mind that is the collective consciousness of Southerners mirrors the invasion of the killer bees in the same geographic region. Both types of insect are equally dangerous to individuals when in a swarm.

Unlike killer bees, the economic elite in America are not cross-bred but as in other royal lineages are quite inbred. That is the key to exterminating their wealth and power. While greed merely makes them stupid, inbreeding leads to genetic defects that make them developmentally disabled. As a result, they never develop the compassion necessary to become fully human. Having never suffered sufficiently, they lack the capability of understanding the consequences of their actions and are at great risk of the mental illness of greed. This manifests as the delusion that they alone are ordained by God to rule over their fellow Americans, who they regard as economic slaves fit only to serve their whims and gratify their boundless sense of entitlement.

The lack of ability to understand how normal people think is the great advantage of the People over these psychopaths. Our view of the world is one in which compassion is a given and cooperation does not depend solely on immediate reward. Friendship to us means caring about others, while for them it is a means to satisfy their selfish ends and is absent when the “friend” is unable or unwilling to serve their self-centered interests. It is a lonely world for those who like killer bees are driven to outcompete their seemingly weaker relatives with whom they share common genes.

Amateur sociologists like Ayn Rand and professional biologists like E.O. Wilson differ on the relative survival value of cooperation versus competition. While Rand has argued that all species survive by selfish competition, Wilson and others point out that it is only through cooperation but insect species and other animals and even plants have survived environmental stressors that have caused the extinction of more genetically diverse species. It is the willfull ignorance of the selfish that will inevitably result in their removal from the gene pool as the waste of protoplasm that they are.

There have been other invasions of aggressive species throughout the history of humankind, but never one so deadly as the worldwide invasion of the fascists who now control much of the world. Other Empires have risen and collapsed from the accumulated weight of the greed and immorality that is the inevitable result of their unbounded lust for wealth and power. In this global age, the destruction of this latest Empire could come with blinding speed if the People of the Earth come to realize the collective power that a People united can wield in the cause of liberty and justice for all. It is this knowledge of our interdependence that is our greatest weapon in the war against fascism and war.

The only way to protect ourselves from killer bees and other dangerous insects like the corporate elite is to keep them separated so that they cannot swarm. By working one interest group against another, we can use their own tactics of dividing and conquering to eradicate the selfish and destructive mutant species of fascists from the world. As an example, if we focused our organizing efforts to unite the Left and Right to fight the universally unpopular medical insurance companies we would force their Puppets in Congress to abandon them to their fate in the interests of their own political survival. After that we attack the centralized energy interests of coal, oil and nuclear that are leaving a swath of environmental destruction and war in the wake of their advance. Finally, the banksters will be isolated with no one left to defend them against the righteous fury of a People too long denied economic justice because of their wealth and power.

The way to simultaneously attack all of these interests is to attack the Queen bee which is corporate personhood. This is the source of power of the drones that are destroying the planet with their endless search for the honey that is money. This will require a constitutional amendment and that will require a united front against fascism and war that is built on the common interests of all the people of the United States who are artificially divided into Left and Right, Democrat and Republican, religious and irreligious and other self-imposed distinctions.

When the people of the United States end the un-Civil War and unite to finish the Revolution, democracy will be restored. The Left and Right must eventually come together to end fascism in America. Then it will be up to us to determine whether we want to live in a nation that values individual privilege over the collective good. A People who are not virtuous enough to run their own government in the best interests of all is a People that do not value democracy. As long as one of us is not free, none of us is truly free.

I have a deep faith in the essential goodness of all people so have no doubt as to the outcome. Democracy is the most deeply held value of all Americans and all those who understand its true nature. Self-government is the ultimate means of obtaining liberty and justice for all. Until we put this belief into action we risk losing the liberty we cherish. If the dis-United States of America can once more strive to form a more perfect union, the last and greatest hope for Mankind shall not perish from the Earth.