Campbell Brown deja vu

While waiting for my dinner at the nearby Thai restaurant last night, I gazed at the big plasma TV screen positioned right in front of me and saw Campbell Brown anchoring the CNN News. She looked familiar. I couldn't help but feeling that I had seen this woman delivering the news somewhere in another universe. Then I remembered exactly where that universe was.

Democracy is dead in the U.S.A.

One of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs is Democracy in which he sings:

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Well, Leonard, I used to believe that, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision that's so wrongheaded, so stupid, so defiant of existing laws that the only basis for it had to pure partisan politics at its most base level, has decided we no longer have democracy in this country -- that, in fact, we have a government that's for sale to the highest bidder.

As a result of the Supremes' blunder, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

This ruling -- perhaps the most blatant example in American history of the Supreme Court re-writing the law -- erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. For some reason, the Court ruled there is no difference between a corporation and a person, thus saying corporations were protected under the First Amendment rights protecting free speech. Who do these five so-called justices think they are kidding? Of course there's a difference between corporations and a person and that difference is embedded in laws of this land. To prove the point, you need look no further than our tax laws: there's personal income tax and an entirely different corporate tax structure.

The five justices completely ignored the Constitution, which assigns and protects rights to the people, the press, religions, even militias. But, by gum, I can't find the word "corporation" in there anywhere. Corporations are one thing and one thing only: creations of the state that exist to make money. To say they have the same right to spend money on candidates as I have to speak about a candidate is patently ridiculous and a complete abandonment of laws that have stood in this country for more than a century. (It was 1907 when Congress passed laws banning corporations from contributing directly to political candidates.)

The court's majority opinion actually had the nerve to say campaign spending by corporations does "not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” C'mon. Let's say our own Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson decided to vote for health care reform and all the insurance companies and all the drug companies and all the hospitals banded together and told Rep. Johnson: "We are going to spend millions of dollars -- whatever it takes -- to make sure you are defeated in the next election" and then they do just that, wouldn't that have, at least, "the appearance of corruption”? Sure it would.

It is vital to the future of this country that justices be appointed to the Supreme Court that will overturn this dangerous decision that was wrong on the law. In the meantime, Congress should pass legislation as quickly as possible that would require two-thirds approval from the shareholders of any public corporation before that corporation could contribute to a political campaign.

If no one else will connect the dots ...

I find it startling that no one seems to have connected this story about how the state desperately needs more transportation money with this one, talking about he EPA's stricter smog controls. If Gov. Hair keeps refusing to enact measures to reduce smog in the state, we stand to lose federal transportation dollars.

And it continues to baffle me why state lawmakers continue to ignore the obvious solution to both problems -- a more widespread rail network. Here's what Vice President Joe Biden said on the subject just two days ago:

“With delays at our airports and congestion on our roads becoming increasingly ubiquitous, volatile fuel prices, increased environmental awareness, and a need for transportation links between growing communities, rail travel is more important to America than ever before."

There is one non-profit group, The Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation, that is trying to promote a system connecting cities in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. That's all well and good, but bullet trains, while necessary, are only part of the solution. The state should be examining heavy rail as an alternative to all highway construction. I was dismayed that Dallas leaders were so short sighted that they never considered rail as an option to the Trinity River tollroad.

This is not, as the Morning News stories cited above might suggest, a city-by-city, region-by-region issue. Systematic change in the way this problem is addressed must come from the top levels of state government. If I were running things, one of the first steps I would take would be to name someone head of the Texas Department of Transportation who realizes (1) the state's environmental and transportation issues are irretrievably linked and (2) more highways are the least feasible solution to the state's transportation and environmental problems.

Another shift that needs to be made is changing the priority from how to get more transportation money to what this money should be spent on. A Texas Transportation Forum concludes today in Austin and from what I've read and heard, not one forward-thinking idea of any sense has come out of it. One idea that doesn't is a plan to tax drivers on the amount of miles they drive. That's an absolutely ridiculous idea. Why? First of all, drivers are already taxed that way -- the more miles you drive, the more gasoline you have to buy and the more gasoline you buy, the more transportation tax you pay along with that gasoline. But even more important it unfairly penalizes those who have tried to help the environment by purchasing fuel efficient or alternative fuel-vehicles. We should be providing more incentives to purchase these vehicles, not strip them away.

Wake up, Texas! Start thinking smart. It's later than you think.

Must Keep Smiling

From the Pundit Kitchen

Want to know the salary of a city employee?

Pick a city, any city in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Then enter the name of an employee of that city in the proper place on this Web page and you can discover how much money that employee makes.

According to its creator, the Web site "provides a database of names, positions and salaries for more than 45,000 individuals who have been or are currently employed by cities." It came from open records requests made for cities with a population of at least 10,000.

I did type in some names of people I know who work for the city of Dallas and got nothing in return, but then I searched in an entire department and found what I was looking for. It turned out the person I was searching for was listed by an initial and not a first name.

A tip of the hat to Rick Wamre at the Advocate for alerting me about the site.

My upcoming AWOL

I won't be posting on the blog for the next three days, but because I had made some mentions about my health -- or lack of it -- to keep the rumors from flying, that has nothing to do with my upcoming absence. (I will admit, however, health reasons kept from writing as frequently as I usually do earlier this week).

No, I'm off to Lubbock to witness and congratulate an outstanding young man on his graduation from Texas Tech University. And, yes, I voted early and, yes, I'll get to spend some time Sunday with my favorite mom.

A Travelers Guide to Wackadoodleonia

What would happen in Gov. Hair, Tom DeLay and those other demagogues got their way and Texas actually seceded from the United States?

Welcome to Wackadoodleonia!!!!

Here's why Rep. Hensarling and others of his ilk are wrong

Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of right here in Dallas was one of the leaders of the Republican revolt against their own President that helped defeat the so-called financial crisis bailout bill. I was against this bill, but not on the same grounds as Rep. Hensarling who couldn't be more wrong on this issue.

I am convinced that, with more protection for homeowners, judicial review of Treasury purchases and more guarantees that taxpayers won't be footing the entire bill for this later, some kind of legislation could still be salvaged.

Hensarling and his crew are against any bailout. The reason they gave yesterday for voting against it -- that they were upset at Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech right before the vote laying the blame for the current financial mess on mismanagement by the Bush administration -- is petty. OK, maybe the timing of the speech was suspect, but what she said is absolutely true.

But even without the speech, Hensarling's crew would have voted against the bailout on the grounds that it rejects free-market principles. And you know what? He's right about that. What makes the totality of his argument wrong, however, is that it is exactly those free market principles -- which left the industry unregulated and unsupervised -- that have failed us miserably and are continuing to play havoc with our economy.

At least President Bush seems to be realizing that perhaps the doctrine he has been fostering on the American people for the last eight years is leading us on the proverbial road to ruin. Why Hensarling and his sheep can't see the same thing is beyond reasonable explanation.

We are the Manchurian Candidate

Yeah. Sure. This is who we should hold up as role models. The Chinese Communists who interrogated American prisoners during the Korean War. Let's pattern our behavior after those guys. You mean we already are?

You must now write "I will not abduct kids without sufficient evidence" 1,000 times

The Third Court of Appeals has agreed with what the sane world has been maintaining for six weeks now -- that the State of Texas had absolutely no reason to invade a religious compound near San Angelo and separate close to 500 children from their parents.

Here is the nutgraph from the ruling: "The simple fact, conceded by the Department, that not all FLDS families are polygamous or allow their female children to marry as minors demonstrates the danger of removing children from their homes based on the broad-brush ascription of every aspect of a belief system to every person living among followers of the belief system or professing to follow the belief system."

It's about time someone in authority uttered the words a lot of us have been saying for a while now.

Keith tells it like he sees it

"Most of us in news are not smart enough to figure out what's going on. We may pretend that we're good enough to do that. But in fact, when we look you in the eye, in the camera, we're really just making it up."
--Keith Olbermann last night on the David Letterman show