Paul Buchheit - Five Preposterous, Persistent Conservative Myths

With the mainstream media in the hands of the mostly conservative wealthy, it's difficult for average Americans to learn the truth about critical issues. The following five conservative claims are examples of mythical beliefs that fall apart in the presence of inconvenient facts:

1. Entitlements are the Problem

Beyond the fact that we're 'entitled' to Social Security and Medicare because we pay for them, these two government-run programs have been largely self-sustaining while supporting the needs of millions of Americans.

Medicare is much less costly than private health care. Social Security, which functions with a surplus, would not be in danger of a long-term shortfall if the richest 10% (those making over the $106,800 cutoff) paid their full share.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/02-0

Jill Richardson - Forget the Farm Bill: Where We Should Set Our Sights This Year For Real Change

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I don't care about the 2012 farm bill. Here's why.

The sustainable food and agriculture movement has a lot of momentum and a lot of opportunities right now, but only limited resources in terms of lobbying power. The movement has a large amount of people who care, but a relatively small amount of money compared to entrenched agriculture interests. It has a few strategically placed sympathetic appointees and elected representatives in the government. But, unfortunately, Dennis Kucinich alone cannot pass the vastly revamped farm bill we need.

But outside of Washington, the ranks of those who care about localizing our food supply and making agriculture more sustainable are growing every day. After all, delicious food is a powerful recruiting tool. The sustainable food movement is not powerless. Not nearly. But the movement can make far more progress if it focuses its energy on more winnable issues. Focusing on the farm bill for the whole of 2012 will use up endless resources and result in relatively little gain.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154718/forget_the_farm_bill%3A_where_we_should_set_our_sights_this_year_for_real_change

Mark Karlin - Scalia Believes Innocent People Can Be Executed, So He's Not Going to Care About People Dying From Not Having Health Insurance

In 2000, most legal pundits said that Bush v. Gore would never make it the Supreme Court, because voting was a states' right issue. Boy, were they wrong.

In fact, many legal analysts and scholars prognosticate about Supreme Court behavior as if it were of a single mind looking at the Constitution and the law in a serious, scholarly way.

But that perspective of considering the law conscientiously in terms of precedent and the nation's founding legal document forgets one thing: four of the Supreme Court justices are total partisan hacks. Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts are activist right wing judges who decide many major cases for political reasons first - and then find twisted legal justifications for their decisions. Kennedy usually joins with them in major 5-4 decisions that have political impact.

Scalia appears to be the major enforcer of political allegiance to the Federalist Society and the Koch brothers. The man is so dangerously ideological that he even declared, in a dissenting opinion, that there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent an innocent person from being executed. He argued that, "this Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is actually innocent."

Read More:

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13417

Steven Rosenfield - Protesters Beware: U.S. Supreme Court Expands Invasive Strip-Searches

Occupy and political protesters beware. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday held that local police can strip-search anyone who is arrested for minor offenses if they are to be held within the jail’s general population before being released. 

The 5-4 decision, with the Court’s conservative majority overruling its four moderates, is a further erosion of the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unlawful search and seizure. It overturns laws in 10 states that place limits on suspicionless strip-searches and upholds a technique used by some local police forces against Occupy protesters last fall, prompting protesters to sue.

Among the jurisdictions seeking expanded authority to strip-search anyone arrested were the City of Chicago, where the NATO summit will be held this May and where protests have been planned, as well as the state of North Carolina, where the Democratic National Convention will be held in early September in Charlotte.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154804/protesters_beware%3A_u.s._supreme_court_expands_invasive_strip-searches

Jim Garrison - Martial Law by Executive Order

President Obama's National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order of March 16 does to the country as a whole what the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act did to the Constitution in particular -- completely eviscerates any due process or judicial oversight for any action by the Government deemed in the interest of "national security." Like the NDAA, the new Executive Order puts the government completely above the law, which, in a democracy, is never supposed to happen. The United States is essentially now under martial law without the exigencies of a national emergency.

Even as the 2012 NDAA was rooted in the Patriot Act and the various executive orders and Congressional bills that ensued to broaden executive power in the "war on terror," so the new Executive Order is rooted in the Defense Production Act of 1950 which gave the Government powers to mobilize national resources in the event of national emergencies, except now virtually every aspect of American life falls under ultimate unchallengeable government control, to be exercised by the president and his secretaries at their discretion.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-garrison/martial-law-under-another_b_1370819.html

Jonathan Benson - IRS wants 4,000 new agents, $300 million budget to enforce Obamacare

More than quadrupling an estimate it put forth last year for new agents, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) now says that it will need more than 4,000 new agents to enforce the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. And in addition to these new agents, the IRS is also asking for more than $300 million in new funding to help fortify the infrastructure it will supposedly need to unconstitutionally force Americans to purchase government healthcare.

The constitutionality of Obamacare is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and yet the IRS is already acting as though the overhaul is definitive law. According to IRS budget requests, the agency says it needs a massive cash infusion to "continue the development of new systems and modifications of existing systems required to support new tax credits." But in reality, this money will more than likely be used to spy on Americans and fine them for failing to purchase adequate health coverage.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/z035409_IRS_Obamacare_agents.html

Cenk Uygur - Supreme Court Might Decide Their Second Election

It was a similar crew of conservative justices on the Supreme Court that decided that their long-held beliefs on states' rights were irrelevant and made George W. Bush our next president in 2000. Now, they're back!!! And they might decide yet another presidential election. 

It was a similar crew of conservative justices on the Supreme Court that decided that their long-held beliefs on states' rights were irrelevant and made George W. Bush our next president in 2000. Now, they're back!!! And they might decide yet another presidential election.

Imagine the damage it does to President Obama to strip him of his signature accomplishment right before the election. It would also allow the Republicans to say -- "See, we told you so! It was unconstitutional all along. It was a wild, socialist over-reach of big government." It creates a permanent stain on the law -- as if there was something horribly wrong with it all along. And it takes it off the books at a moment when it is still relatively unpopular. So, before any of the popular provisions are put into effect it would go in the record books as a complete disaster.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/supreme-court-health-care-law_b_1387080.html

David Swanson - The Statues in Our Public Spaces Lie

There are lies of omission as well as commission, and the statues in Charlottesville, Va. -- typical of other towns -- do both.  We have statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, a generic Confederate soldier, George Rogers Clark, Lewis and Clark (with Sacagawea kneeling like their dog), and on City Hall a triptych with Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.  We have a monument to the War on Vietnam.  And that's it.

Here are some things not memorialized in any major statue or monument in Charlottesville: Queen Charlotte, for whom the town is named; any individual or generic native member of the people who lived here before the Europeans; any individual or generic settler or farmer or merchant or slave.  There is no commemoration of the genocide of the native races or the enslavement of Africans.  There is no individual or generic recognition of those who struggled against and ended slavery, those who advanced human rights following the Civil War, or those who took great risks to end Jim Crow.  There is no individual or generic recognition of those who struggled for labor rights, children's rights, women's suffrage, environmental protection, educational advancements, or peace.  There is no recognition of police officers, firefighters, or of those who have pioneered the nonviolent tools that during the past century have proved so much more useful than wars in changing the world for the better.  Charlottesville is a university town that has been home to brilliant and influential educators, authors, artists, scientists, and athletes.  They are not recognized individually or generically.  There is no park and statue for Edgar Allen Poe or William Faulkner.  Mary Chapin Carpenter and the Dave Matthews Band and many others have made music that enriched a lot of lives, but none of them apparently have ended enough lives through violence to get themselves so much as a little plaque.  Sam Shepard, Sissy Spacek, Jessica Lange and many other wonderful performers have either lived too recently or failed to slaughter enough Indians.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Statues-in-Our-Public-by-David-Swanson-120329-355.html

Robert Scheer - Five Hypocrites and One Bad Plan

The Supreme Court is so full of it. The entire institution, as well as its sanctimonious judges themselves, reeks of a time-honored hypocrisy steeped in the arrogance that justice is served by unaccountable elitism.

My problem is not with the Republicans who dominate the court questioning the obviously flawed individual mandate for the purchasing of private-sector health insurance but rather with their zeal to limit federal power only when it threatens to help the most vulnerable. The laughter noted in the court transcription that greeted the prospect of millions of the uninsured suddenly being deprived of already extended protection under the now threatened law was unconscionable. The Republican justices seem determined to strike down not only the mandate but also the entire package of accompanying health care rights because of the likelihood that, without an individual mandate, tax revenue will be needed to extend insurance coverage to those who cannot afford it.

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/five_hypocrites_and_one_bad_plan_20120329/

Thirty Companies Contribute $41 Million to 524 Members of Congress, Receive $10.6 Billion in Tax Rebates

A new report to be released Wednesday, March 21 by U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) found that thirty unusually aggressive tax dodging corporations have made campaign contributions to 524 (98 percent) sitting members of Congress, and disproportionately to the leadership of both parties and to key committee members. The report, "Loopholes for Sale: Campaign Contributions by Corporate Tax Dodgers," examines campaign contributions made by a total of 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies in 2006, 2008, 2010 and to date in 2012, and is available at http://www.uspirg.org/reports/usp/loopholes-sale.

Loopholes for Sale focuses on campaign contributions by 30 companies – dubbed the “Dirty Thirty” – that a previous U.S. PIRG/CTJ study found collectively paid no federal corporate income taxes between 2008 and 2010 while receiving $10.6 billion in tax rebates and spending millions to lobby Congress. Altogether, these companies spent $41 million on campaign contributions during the four most recent election cycles, with each member of Congress receiving $58,000 on average (top recipients and donors listed below).

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/03/21-3