Why Millennials Don't Vote and What To Do About It {aTV 007}

Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org



More than half of respondents in the survey, released by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, said they think elected officials don’t share their priorities, and almost two-thirds said elected officials seem motivated by selfish reasons. Less than a quarter of the millennials polled said they will definitely be voting in November.
Read more: http://bit.ly/TAWHR7

On Acronym TV this week, two individuals working to fix our Democracy in crisis.

Christina Tobin is the founder and chair of Free & Equal. She has a long history of supporting ballot access, having gathered and defended over 1 million signatures for the Green Party, Constitution Party, Republican Party, Democratic Party, Libertarian Party, Socialist Equality Party and independents. Free & Equal Elections Foundation is a non-partisan grassroots organization, whose mission is to shift the power back to the individual voter through education. Their motto, “More Voices, More Choices.”

Daniel Lee is a lifelong activist. He serves on the national leadership team for the group Move to Amend, which is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy; Move To Amend is calling for an amendment to the US Constitution to unequivocally state that inalienable rights belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns.

The Illegitimacy of the U.S. Government

Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org



In this episode clip (watch the full show here) Shahid Buttar outlines why he thinks the biggest enemy to the U.S. Constitution is a domestic enemy. Also, Kevin Zeese makes the point that the U.S. government is illegitimate.

“Every member of congress swears an oath of office to protect the constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic,” explains Buttar “and the principle enemy to the U.S. Constitution is a domestic one with three letters. The only debate in my mind is whether it is the NSA or the FBI.”

Kevin Zeese adds: “It’s a harsh reality for the country to face. The corporate main stream media’s job is not to give us the truth but to give us the myth that we are the greatest democracy on earth, when in fact I think the democratic legitimacy of this country is disappearing. We just had Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer make that point in his dissent to the (Supreme Court) McCutcheon decision."

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

Kevin Zeese is an attorney and political activist who works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. He co Directs It’s Our Economy, serves on the steering committees of the Chelsea Manning Support Network, and is an organizer atPopularResistance.org.

Dennis Trainor, Jr. is a writer, filmmaker, producer, and activist. His documentary on the Occupy movement, American Autumn: an Occudoc, garnered critical praise from The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and more.  He also wrote and directed Legalize Democracy, a documentary short about the Movement To Amend the Constitution.

My interview with MoveToAmend co-founder David Cobb

I sit down with David Cobb, co-founder of MoveToAmend.org and 2004 Green Party presidential candidate.

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SPECIAL EDITION: Indefinite Detention Bill Passes Both Senate and House

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Is Capitalism Unpatriotic?

I think it just might be...

Bernie Sanders offers Constitutional Amendment to ban Corporate Personhood

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that allowed unrestricted and secret campaign spending by corporations on U.S. elections. The first constitutional amendment ever proposed by Sanders during his two decades in Congress would reverse the narrow 5-to-4 ruling in Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission.

Public Citizen's webpage: Citizen.org
People For the American Way: PFAW.org
Center For Media and Democracy: PRwatch.org

FREE THE CORPORATIONS!

So there’s been a lot of noise recently about ending corporate personhood.
You can check out Public Citizen’s “Don’t get rolled” campaign for more info, or you can check out MoveToAmend.org.

The idea is, that since the Koch Brothers fought the legal case of Citizen’s United vs the FEC and won, and since the conservative majority on the supreme court said that Corporations should have unlimited free speech, laws limiting corporate influence in our elections that helped to slightly unfuck our elections system, going all the way back to President Teddy Roosevelt, has been overturned.

Now, Move To Amend wants to amend the constitution to state clearly, once and for all, that Corporations are NOT PEOLE. I think that this would be a great step forwards for progress, and an essential one as we move forwards through this next century. If we don’t end corporate personhood, our nation may not be around another century.

But I also think it’s not likely to happen without a hell of a lot more people getting off their ass and making a stink about it at town hall meetings with their congresspeople, challenging their congresspeople- both democrats and republicans- to either support this movement or face primary challengers, to support this movement or face electoral challengers.

But there’s a legalistic approach we can take while that movement is building. TAKE THINGS TO THEIR LOGICAL EXTREME.

Vaclav Havel would often, in his plays, take some nugget of absurdity thrown down my Czechoslovakia’s communist government, and using logic, take that absurdity to it’s logical ends, in which things would break down into surreality. I propose that we do exactly this.

If corporations are people, fine. They’re people. But let’s explore what that really means:
If a corporation is a person, it cannot be owned by anyone. Owning another person is slaveholding, which is specifically banned by the 13th amendment.

Just as we’ve decided that Corporations are protected by the 1st amendment, they must be protected by all the other amendments as well. Like the 13th amendment, which states:

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Why are we allowing law abiding corporations to be sold into slavery? And who is doing this selling? WALL STREET. Every day... well, every weekday, people down on wall street sell shares of ownership in the corporate people we all know and love. Wall Street is nothing but a slave trading pit! It’s really time we put an end to the slave trade once and for all! Close down wall street!

If it’s illegal for a person to own another person, it’s certainly illegal for GE or Verizon to own so many other people. GE owns people like GE Electric, GE Energy, GE engineering, and Verizon owns people like MTV and Comedy Central. It’s time to set all of these slaves free! Nobody can own anybody else! End slavery! Free the corporations!

When executive boards dictate new business plans, spending a corporate person’s money for them, anti-slavery orgs should be suing on behalf of the poor corporation! This is akin to elder abuse! Where did GE sign over it’s power of Attorney to these people to start making financial decisions on his behalf? I want to see GE’s signature on the legal documents giving these people the power of attorney! If GE didn’t sign, then these people are fraudulently managing GE’s finances! It doesn’t matter that they do such a good job that GE actually makes money on it’s taxes. What matters is the LAW. And these people may be acting illegally.
Lastly, there’s the slaveowners themselves. Most CEOs are majority shareholders, I mean slaveowners. And thus they are the most guilty of slaveholding, and should be arrested and jailed.

FREE THE CORPORATIONS!

Politics and Ethics: What does it mean to be free?

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Ralph Nader and Judge Napolitano on C-SPAN

View the entire program here:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/225457

Unfortunately, the C-SPAN isn't allowing this to be embedded, so you have to watch it over on their site.

Bipartisanship; Congress Wants to Take Away Your Citizenship

This is a rude way to wake up, but here it is: Democrats want to be able to take away your citizenship. Republicans want to be able to take away your citizenship. And I agree with John Boehner!? Fuck!

From the New York Times [full article at link]:

The Terrorist Expatriation Act, co-sponsored by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, would allow the State Department to revoke the citizenship of people who provide support to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or who attack the United States or its allies.

Some Democrats expressed openness to the idea, while several Senate Republicans expressed concern. Mr. Brown, who endorsed aggressive tactics against terrorism suspects in his campaign for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s seat, said the bill was not about politics.

Yeah, it isn't about politics. At least not in the traditional left-vs-right thing. This is about the government being able to decide who has rights, and who doesn't.

“It reflects the changing nature of war and recent events,” Mr. Brown said Thursday. “War has moved into a new dimension. Individuals who pick up arms — this is what I believe — have effectively denounced their citizenship, and this legislation simply memorializes that effort. So somebody who wants to burn their passport, well, let’s help them along.”

Identical legislation is also being introduced in the House by two Pennsylvania congressmen, Jason Altmire, a Democrat, and Charlie Dent, a Republican. The lawmakers said at a news conference that revoking citizenship would block terrorism suspects from using American passports to re-enter the United States and make them eligible for prosecution before a military commission instead of a civilian court.

It would also make them ineligible for trial, a lawyer, etc, and fully eligible for a all expense paid trip to our prison at Guantanamo. Oh shit, remember that? We still haven't closed that fucking thing. And what do you have to do in order to be suspected of aiding a terrorist? Give a candybar to a seven-year-old whose name was erroneously put on the no-fly list? Would that be material support?

Citing with approval news reports that President Obama has signed a secret order authorizing the targeted killing of a radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki, Mr. Lieberman argued that if that policy was legal — and he said he believed it was — then stripping people of citizenship for joining terrorist organizations should also be acceptable.

Yeah, if the government can ASSASSINATE WHOMEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT, why not take away the rights of specific "problem citizens?" Then we can put them in camps. Er Guantanamo. Well it's sort of the same thing. That's just sound logic-- good job Lieberman.

Several major Democratic officials spoke positively about the proposal, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Noting that the State Department already had the authority to rescind the citizenship of people who declare allegiance to a foreign state, she said the administration would take “a hard look” at extending those powers to cover terrorism suspects.

“United States citizenship is a privilege,” she said. “It is not a right. People who are serving foreign powers — or in this case, foreign terrorists — are clearly in violation, in my personal opinion, of that oath which they swore when they became citizens.”

So fucking what? If they're guilty of a crime, put them in jail for it. There's absolutely NO REASON for stripping people of all their rights in the eyes of the law-- which unfortunately is what a loss of citizenship means these days. The legal precedents set by John Yoo and the George W Bush administration still stand.

And it seems like every corrupt asshole in DC is behind this thing. Except John Boehner, who is opposed to it. I never thought that I'd agree with John Boehner.

Several Republican officials, though, were skeptical of the idea. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, questioned the constitutionality of the proposal.

“If they are a U.S. citizen, until they are convicted of some crime, I don’t see how you would attempt to take their citizenship away,” Mr. Boehner said. “That would be pretty difficult under the U.S. Constitution.”

What the fuck?! How did I end up on the same side of an issue as JOHN BOEHNER?!?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she supported the “spirit” of the measure, although she urged caution and said that the details of the proposal, like what would trigger a loss of citizenship, still needed to be fleshed out.

What's the matter Pelosi? Is it not "brownshirty" enough?

The proposal would amend an existing, although rarely used, program run by the State Department. It dates to a law enacted by Congress in 1940 that allowed the stripping of citizenship for activities like voting in another country’s elections or joining the army of a nation that is at war with the United States. People who lose their citizenship can contest the decision in court.

The 1940s, when we were scared out of our minds of Communist infiltration. Yeah, let's go back to McCarthyism! Because that was a time when America was at it's best.

The Supreme Court later narrowed the program’s scope, declaring that the Constitution did not allow the government to take away people’s citizenship against their will. The proposal does not alter the requirement of evidence of voluntariness.

That means that if the proposal passed, the State Department would have to cite evidence that a person not only joined Al Qaeda, but also intended to relinquish his citizenship, and the advantages it conveys, to rescind it.

Uhm, I'm going to guess that with their history of fucking kidnapping people off the street for having a "terrorist sounding name" and sending them to have their genitals mutilated in CIA black sites in Morocco, that the government might not really give a fuck about your ability to "explore your options."

Several legal scholars disagreed about the legality and effectiveness of the proposal.

Kevin R. Johnson, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis, argued that it was “of dubious constitutionality” because merely joining or donating to a terrorist group fell short of unequivocal evidence that someone intended to relinquish his citizenship.

Does it strike anybody else as completely fucking insane that this debate is even happening? When did America run out of good ideas? When did we just give up on the idea of Liberty?

Peter H. Schuck, a Yale University law professor, said the Supreme Court might allow Congress to declare that joining Al Qaeda created a presumption that an American intended to relinquish his citizenship, so long as the program allowed the person to rebut that view.

What, are we in 3rd grade? We need them to take a loyalty pledge to stay in the Treehouse Club? This proposal does NOTHING aside from strip a person's rights as a human being away. America isn't a club, it's a set of ideals. We've fallen so far away from them as of late, that revoking citizenship is a dangerous move.

Mr. Lieberman portrayed the proposal as a reaction to increasing involvement in Islamic terrorism by United States citizens, including Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American man who was arrested in connection with the failed attempt to set off a car bomb in Times Square last Saturday. Mr. Shahzad was granted American citizenship last year.

However, Mr. Lieberman emphasized, the measure would apply only to people who commit such acts in the future. Senate aides said that it would apply only to acts undertaken overseas.

Oh wait, you only have to worry about it if you're an Arab and have a foreign sounding name? Or be some America-hater who wants to go see other countries? Well fuck it then, nevermind, I'm white and xenophobic, so I never go anywhere! You go ahead and do whatever you want!

Scholars Reject Obama's Warrantless Wiretaps as illegal

From Wired.com

The Obama administration’s position that the government can force mobile carriers to hand over cellphone tower location information on their customers without a warrant is wrong, two legal scholars say.

"Because CSLI acquisition is hidden, indiscriminate and intrusive, and because it reveals information over a period of time, it should be subject to the highest level of Fourth Amendment oversight (the same procedures used for wiretapping and video surveillance)," the scholars wrote late Friday.

The scholars are Susan Freiwald, of the USF School of Law, and Peter Swire, of Ohio State University.

Their words, published by the American Constitution Society, came a month after the Justice Department made its claim in a little-noticed case that the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures did not apply.

Most Americans have or will carry a mobile phone in their lifespan, so the outcome could have wide-ranging privacy ramifications. Smartphones, like the iPhone, use cell-tower information to power geo-location applications like Google Maps.

In a case pending before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the government maintains it can require federal judges to order mobile phone companies to release historical cell-tower information of a phone number without probable cause — the standard required for a search warrant.

While judges have differed on the issue, the resulting evidence can be used in a criminal prosecution. The case on appeal concerns a Pennsylvania judge who rejected the government’s position in a drug prosecution that the new administration inherited.

Mobile-phone providers keep cell-site information for up to 18 months. Historical cell-site location information includes the tower connected at the beginning of a call and at the end of the call. The government does not claim a warrantless right to cell-site information for future calls, only for calls already dialed.

[more after the jump]