Montana to Give Corporations Right to Vote

A bill in the state of Montana is being introduced by State Rep. Steve Lavin (R – Kalispell) that would give corporations the right to vote.

According to ThinkProgress, HB 486 would give “…a firm, partnership, company, or corporation [who owns] real property within the municipality, the president, vice president, secretary, or other designee of the entity is eligible to vote in a municipal election…”

You can read the full text of the bill here.

Corporate “personhood” has gone far enough. It was bad enough when the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations (and other entities, like labour unions) could have unlimited, undisclosed independent campaign spending in elections, which created “Super PACs.” It was bad enough when the Supreme Court ruled in the same year in SpeechNow.org v. FEC that individuals could have unlimited contributions to Super PACs.

It was bad enough when a major presidential candidate said that “corporations are people, my friend.” And it was bad enough that the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a case challenging the last hurdle in the way of outright buying elections: unlimited contributions directly to a candidate’s campaign.

Now they are giving corporations the right to vote! My outrage cannot be adequately expressed via text, and I do not wish to use caps lock.

The Montana bill would essentially give someone the right to vote twice in an election. This is ironic, since in the months up until the 2012 elections the Republican Party was running around with their heads cut off screaming about the virtually nonexistent problem of voter fraud, which usually involves a person voting multiple times.

This is all while Montana was pushing through one of those infamous voter ID bills, one that would only allow a person to vote in elections with either a driver’s license or a tribal ID card. This would be possibly one of the most restrictive voter ID bills in the country, as similar laws being fought over in other states and in the courts mostly allow for passports and other forms of government issued identification that are not a driver’s license.

To be fair, the bill was essentially killed only a few weeks ago after it was tabled in Montana’s State Administration Committee.

I can only imagine what could happen if HB 486 were to ever become law anywhere in the United States. Some company… sorry, someone (since corporations are people, my friend) with enough money and power could create countless shadow companies and put their employees, colleagues, or friends “in charge” of them, thereby creating an endless number of “people” to vote in elections.

If anything is a threat to our democracy, it is not the few dozen of people who try to vote twice by pretending to be someone else. If anything is a threat, it is the efforts by some in this country to deny people the right to vote based on the colour of their skin or how much money they make. If anything is a threat, it is HB 486 and the deluge that can follow.

If you live in the state of Montana, please contact your state representatives and tell them to kill this bill!

Nuns Say Romney is Ignorant of the Needs of Poor Families, Call Ryan Budget Immoral (and I Agree)

A group of Catholic nuns that garnered international attention for their “Nuns on the Bus” tour invited Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney to spend time with them so they could show him the needs of struggling families. They did this in response to a recent attack ad from the Romney campaign that attacked social welfare programmes, calling them “demeaning.”

One of the nuns said, “Recent advertisements and statements from the campaign of Governor Romney demonize families in poverty and reflect woeful ignorance about the challenges faced by tens of millions of American families in these tough economic times. We are all God’s children and equal in God’s eyes.” She went on to say, “Efforts to divide us by class or score political points at the expense of the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters reveal the worst side of our country’s politics.”

The same group of nuns have also criticised the proposed budget by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) which would cut government spending to social programmes that help low-income families, among other terrible conservative ideas, in a way to reduce the deficit. It also proposes not cutting defense spending as much as was agreed upon after the debt ceiling crisis last year. Of course, it does not call for an increase in revenue of some kind, such as, I don’t know, letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire for just the top two percent of earner which would bring in over $800 billion (yes, billion) over the next ten years (more than enough to pay for all of “Obamacare”).

Another sister from the group explained their stance by saying, “Paul Ryan has claimed to be a faithful Catholic, and I have no reason to suspect that that isn’t accurate. What we do know, and what the bishops agree with us on, is that the document, the budget that he wrote, is not a moral document. It is not a faithful budget. It is not consistent with the Catholic social teachings. He may claim one thing, but it is clearly in opposition to what we believe.”

I’m going to do something I’ve never done in my life: I’m going to agree with a bunch of nuns.

No. Seriously. I agree with every word they have said (except the parts about God and stuff). Mitt Romney does not and cannot understand what regular people are going through, and Paul Ryan’s proposed budget would go against almost everything Jesus taught about helping the poor and unfortunate. Aside from the Jesus thing, the Ryan budget is just a bad idea. I don’t care if it goes against the teachings of some guy who had a bestseller. It’s just a bad idea to cut funding that millions of American rely upon to survive.

I wonder if these nuns will get a lot of media attention and then Republicans decide to yank out from under them any tax exemptions they may have (which I have no idea if they do), because they are getting involved in politics. When it doesn’t benefit them, then Republicans are all for separation of church and state.

More Green Than Red

There has been this quiz going around the internet called the “I Side With Quiz.” I have been seeing it go around social media sites for, as for as I have seen, a few weeks now, especially Facebook where I spend most of my time now on the interwebs. Friends of mine have been posting their results with who they sided with the most and how surprised, or not, they were with it. I decided to finally take the quiz for myself to see where I stood.

Basically, answer a bunch of questions, and the websites calculates which presidential candidate from the 2012 election you side with the most. It was actually quite enjoyable to take. The questions are set up with yes, no, and “choose your own stance.” Under that last one are different perspectives and stances from what might be alternatives to the dichotomy.

I liked this option, because some things are not so cut and dry. Some things I said yes or no to only on certain conditions or even went further than the yes or no, such as the question which asks if the federal government should regulate and monitor the internet more. There was the obvious no, but I wanted to see if there were more, and there was. I chose “No, and enact legislation preventing any level of government policing the internet.” Always check if you agree more with the other options.

Some of the “choose your own” were stances from the presidential candidates themselves. While taking the quiz I did not know this, but I suspected it when I noticed some of the answers seemed to be some of Ron Paul’s usual rhetoric. As well, you can rate how important the questions and issues are to you on a five point scale ranging from least important to most important.

The only thing I did not like was that they give you the option to answer more questions for certain sections (e.g. domestic policy, science, environment) if you click for a drop down; the button to do this is kind of inconspicuous, and I almost missed it.

Once I finished with all the questions, including the ones I almost missed, I found out that I sided most at 85% with the Green Party’s candidate Jill Stein. I have been a big fan of the Greens since I first discovered them, but I know that they, and pretty much any third party in America, don’t have much of a chance of winning in such a political climate that is dominated by Democrats and Republicans. Even if they did have a chance, that would actually be a bad thing, as liberals and progressives would obviously be divided between Democrats and Greens, letting Republicans win more elections.

Some of the candidates I had never even heard of before. Who the hell is Virgil Goode, who by the way I only sided with at a whopping 5%?

All in all, these are most of my results:

So apparently Ron Paul has it right on only about 33% of things.

There were some I didn’t include, such as Gary Johnson, the one running under the libertarian banner. I agreed with him 51% of the time. Mostly on immigration and domestic policy. Looking at some of what Johnson has said recently though, he seems to have some economically liberal stances as well.

However, as we can clearly see, Jill Stein and I agree on the vast majority of things with President Barack Obama trailing not far behind at 80%. Stewart Alexander is the socialist candidate, and I actually was expecting to side with him the most, as I am a socialist. At least, I think I am. Maybe I really am more green than red. That may be because some of the questions I did forget to check what the other options were and just answered yes or no. Always check!

Nonetheless, it was fun, and I recommend everyone take it. Even if you know who you are voting for (I do), just see how much you really agree with them. There might even be a lively discussion between friends about who really is the best candidate once you share your results.

Democrats Respond to GOP Lies About Obamacare

With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), saying that the individual mandate is constitutional because of the federal government’s taxing ability, Republicans are saying that the President Obama and Democrats have broken their promise to not raise taxes on the middle class. Democrats have responded with, basically, “We’re doing the same thing Mitt Romney did.”

The Congressional Budget Office says that the individual mandate, which again was proposed by Republicans as an alternative to the much preferred public option, is estimated as affecting a little more than one percent of the entire US population, which is those who can buy healthcare but refuse to, in which case they will be fined for it. According to the Washington Post, “When the individual mandate is fully phased-in, those who can afford coverage — which is defined as insurance costing less than 8 percent of their annual income — but choose to forgo it will have to pay either $695 or 2.5 percent of the annual income, whichever is greater.”

In a 2009 op-ed for the for USA Today, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney wrote, “Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar.” Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential Candidate, was at the forefront of the idea for an individual mandate.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said during an interview on Meet The Press, “The penalty is on people who have the wherewithal but refuse to buy health insurance, figuring they won’t be sick and if they do, other people will have to cover it. So these free riders — as they were identified by Governor Romney himself, he said that people who have the ability to pay and don’t can’t expect to be free riders. And I think he had it exactly right.”

However, we would not even be fighting over the individual mandate the Republicans hate so much if Republicans had not proposed it and done away with the public option supported by President Obama, and we would not be fighting over people having to pay penalties for not having health insurance if we had a single-payer system where everyone was guaranteed healthcare. That would be socialism though, and we can’t have that. I don’t even know what that is, but Sean Hannity tells me that it’s bad.

Republicans keep spreading lies and misinformation about the Affordable Care Act, because they know that is the only way to get rid of it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told Fox News that the Supreme Court has “unearthed the massive deception that was practiced by the president and the Democrats, constantly denying that it was a tax.” They denied it being a tax, because it is not a tax. It is a penalty. Even their own presidential candidate once said that, but of course Mitt Romney will flip-flop and say something else in order to beat President Obama come the Fall.

“Obamacare” Upheld by Supreme Court

I am sure it is of no surprise at this point to anyone that the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” was recently ruled constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote. I actually got the news when I was listening to NPR during work, where they originally had said that it had been struck down. Apparently, CNN and Fox did the same thing, and President Obama was watching both of those.

The Affordable Care Act barely passed through Congress and was eagerly signed by President Obama in March of 2010. Key aspects of the ACA were to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, letting children stay on their parents’ healthcare plans until they turn 26, mandating that everyone in the country obtain healthcare or face a penalty, and much more.

The mandate was the centrepiece that was decided on today. Is it constitutional to mandate that Americans have a form of healthcare in order to prevent emergency room visits that our tax dollars go towards covering? According to Chief Justice Roberts and four other justices, yes.

However, it is not because of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which President Obama and Congressional Democrats used as a justification for the mandate, saying that because healthcare is a business that crosses state lines, the federal government can regulate it. It is because of the Taxing and Spending Clause, of all things. The logic behind Roberts’ decision was that the federal government does have the authority to tax people who do not have health insurance. They essentially replaced the word “penalty” with “tax,” which some conservatives are upset about, saying they are playing political, word tricks and legislating from the bench.

One surpsising thing about the ruling was that Justice Kennedy, who 95% of the time (which is no hyperbole) sides with the majority, was in the minority on this very important decision, along with Justices Thomas (who has ties to health insurance companies that opposed healthcare reform), Scalia (who often complains about politicised judges, even though he is by far the most politicised judge in the Supreme Court), and Alito (not much to say about him).

The left, especially President Obama, is very pleased with Supreme Court’s ruling, obviously, calling it a “victory for all people over this country.” The right is extremely unhappy (which is a severe understatement), and Mitt Romney, John Boehner, and many others in Washington are saying that the only remedy now is to repeal “Obamacare.” Of course, conservatives are crying that the Supreme Court is legislating from the bench or being purely political and not being Constitutional in their rulings, because they did not rule in their favour (even though liberals do the same thing, probably just as much).

Romney only wants parts of it repealed, leaving the parts about staying on a parent’s plan for longer, not denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, and more. At that point, nothing will really have been repealed but the mandate, which conservatives in Congress proposed as a replacement for the president’s original plan of having a public option. Their reasoning was that healthcare companies would be able to make up for the loss in profits with the now 30 million new customers, and companies were fine with having that tradeoff.

Boehner and the Congressional Republicans want all of it repealed, yes, even the parts that are clearly beneficial. They immediately called for a measure to repeal the law once the news broke. That vote will take place in the House in a months time. It may pass the conservative House (most likely), but it may not be able to pass the just barely Democrat controlled Senate, and especially not a presidential veto.

This does not settle the issue of healthcare. This was just one stepping stone on the way to a single-payer system. House Democrats even said, if the Affordable Care Act was ruled unconstitutional, that they would propose a universal healthcare system for the United States, what they called “Medicaid for all.” This would more than likely fail in the Republican controlled House. One can only hope come 2012 that true progressives and liberals are put into office and America can finally put forth real, universal healthcare that will benefit everyone. That may just be wishful thinking by a bleeding heart liberal.

Biden Takes Credit For Moon Landing

Despite Vice President Joe Biden having a pretty bad case of foot-in-mouth syndrome, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has a terminal case of it. With so many things that the left has jumped on and the right has just facepalmed over what their presumptive presidential candidate has said, we were all kind of waiting for someone in a really high position to take a shot at it during the election. Biden is our man, and I do not think that I could be more proud of our vice president right now.

For background. In 2008, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” for the New York Times. In it he explained how the government should not bailout GM or the other car companies and that they should instead, what else, go bankrupt. However, he also said that a “managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs…rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.”

Now, he was kind of right. Kind of. The government did perform a managed bankruptcy, but they also combined it with the taxpayer funded bailouts. Mitt Romney is now taking credit for the success of the Obama Administration managing to keep GM and others afloat, even though members of the administration have said that, while they knew of Romney’s op-ed, it was not even in the back of their minds that they should do what he suggested. They had already been planning on a managed bankruptcy, but that it would not have worked without the combination of the bailout, which is correct.

So, following Mitt Romney trying to take some credit where it is not due, Vice President Joe Biden, while talking to crowds at a car dealership in the swing state of Ohio on Thursday, said, “I’ll take a lot of credit for a man having landed on the moon, because although I was in school, I rooted for it.”

Finally, some jokes in politics by the politicians that make fun of stupid politicians when they rightfully deserve it.