Bill Moyers RAWKS !!! Another ass-kicking show tonight, including more on the Supreme Court decision

[marmar]

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html



February 5, 2010

Last month, the Supreme Court significantly weakened existing campaign finance laws. The Court's ruling in Citizen's United v. FEC — the latest and most sweeping of a long string of court defeats for the existing campaign finance regulations — leaves the legal and financial landscape of elections in a state of great uncertainty. Lawmakers, attorneys and legal experts have been scrambling to shape responses to the ruling at both state and federal levels of government. Some are trying to address the ruling with narrow legislative fixes while other groups are hoping to use the general opposition to the ruling to pass sweeping reforms.

The Sunlight Foundation, an organization committed to increasing government transparency, has a list of laws proposed in response to Citizens United here.

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February 5, 2010

The Supreme Court's January 2010 decision of the Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission on campaign finance regulations has caused a stir around the political spectrum. A poll from Angus Reid Public Opinion found that 65 percent of people surveyed disagreed with the Supreme Court's decision — 67 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Republicans, and 72 percent of independents.

Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie says all that worry is misplaced in a much-watched video "Three Reasons Not to Sweat Citizens United." "If you want to get bent out of shape about something, direct your ire at a massive and constantly growing government that has its hands in virtually every aspect of economic and social life in America," Says Gillespie.

Harvard legal scholar Lawrence Lessig disagrees, viewing the ruling as a another step in the takeover of democracy by big money. In an article for THE NATION entitled "How to Get Our Democracy Back: If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress," Lessig calls for a constitutional convention to make public financing of campaigns the law of the land, "What both sides must come to see is that the reform of neither is possible until we solve our first problem first — the dependency of the Fundraising Congress."

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February 5, 2010

While many in Congress, the press and the public have given up on the idea of even a limited public option in health care reform, Flowers and her group, Physicians for a National Health Program, are standing firm for a single-payer plan. Specifically, they want to extend the Medicare program, which they see as a functioning single-player plan, to the nation as a whole. Flowers has testified before Congress and penned Op-Eds and she has been arrested three times in her attempts to get Congress and the White House to pay attention to single-payer.

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Government brought to you by the letter K Street and the number $X billion?

Bill Moyers has spent years digging into the complex and controversial relationship between money and politics in America. As JOURNAL guest Robert Kaiser, author of SO DAMN MUCH MONEY, THE TRIUMPH OF LOBBYING AND THE CORROSION OF AMERICAN GOVERMMENT, noted: "There's a wonderful quote about it from Bob Dole, from 1983 or '2. Where he says, 'you know, poor people don't contribute to campaigns.' And there it was. You know, 30 years ago, the whole story is right in that phrase."

We've collected many of those reports in our special video player. Here you'll find an in-depth investigation into the world of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in CAPITOL CRIMES as well as analysis of campaign finance reform and the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court case. You can explore and share JOURNAL, NOW WITH BILL MOYERS and MOYERS ON AMERICA coverage of money and politics in the video player below. You'll also find online tools — like the Sunlight Foundation's Party Time (tracking campaign fundraising parties) and The Center for Responsive Politics' documentation of the bi-partisan revolving door between politics and lobbying.

[shondradawson]

1. I have a post on the board about the need to reconsider the powers

bestowed to the Supreme Court. Perhaps you will read, "We, The People, In Order To Form A More Perfect Union," and raise resolutions to restore our democracy into the hands of the people.

I thank you very much for giving this matter the much needed attention it deserves.

[Echo In Light]

2. K&R