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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Duck’s lame more of same ─ 112th morphs into 113th Congress

Citizens United
v.
Federal Election Commission

Besides a hangover, what follows frenzy?
Editing by Carolyn Bennett

 “Progress Waddles forward: Risks and Opportunities in the Lame Duck Session” [Public Citizen’s Claypool] “U.S. elections leave House and Senate balance nearly unchanged” [WSWS’s Martin]

The 112th Congress this coming Tuesday begins its “Lame Duck” Session offering Americans an inkling of whether the 113th Congress will match its predecessor’s plague of rabid tribalism: “partisan obstructionism.”

Citizen beware

Lame duck lawmakers,” Rick Claypool writes, “are notoriously unpredictable. They no longer need to worry about raising money for reelection so they are freer to stand up to corporate lobbyists and other moneyed interests; however, because they are not seeking reelection, they are also less accountable to their constituents. Even worse than that:

They are vulnerable to offers of cushy jobs at lobbying firms where former lawmakers all-too-often receive six-figure salaries in exchange for doing Corporate America’s bidding and perpetuate Washington’s ‘revolving door’ problem.

The 112th Congress’s lame duck session, scheduled to extend from November 13 through December 14, “is fraught with opportunities and threats,” Claypool says; and Public Citizen has laid out its positions for and against critical issues and action.

For forty years Public Citizen has been standing up to corporate power and holding government accountable.

Public Citizen supports

Final passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (H.R. 3289, S. 743)

The Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act (H.R. 3313, S. 1787),  a tiny (0.03 percent) tax on Wall Street’s risky high-speed speculation, to help stabilize the financial system and raise more than $350 billion over 10 years

An end to taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuel corporations

Laying groundwork for major reform in the 113th Congress to fight corporate money flooding and de-legitimizing U.S. elections

Top priorities include restoring accountability and transparency with the DISCLOSE Act and Shareholder Protection Act, an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose political spending; continuing to grow support for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Public Citizen opposes

Any attempt to cut or weaken Medicare, the popular and successful program providing universal healthcare for seniors [the qualifying age for Medicare should actually be lowered, not raised, so that everyone can benefit from this single-payer system]

The Independent Regulatory Agency Analysis Act (S. 3468), which would give Wall Street-friendly members of any White House administration the power to impede independent regulators such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Bills that would deregulate parts of the derivatives market: H.R. 1838 would explicitly allow bailouts for bad swap deals while H.R. 3283 would remove U.S. regulations for U.S. swaps conducted abroad

An attempt to give banks legal immunity ─ even when they push predatory loans they know consumers will not be able to pay back

An attempt to undermine patients’ rights by letting the medical industry go virtually unpunished when patients are harmed or killed by the industry’s negligence or recklessness.


A
 fter the frenzy, what?

What will the 113th accomplish when winning the White House outstripped resources to win the Congress, a resulting situation that, according to Patrick Martin’s article today at the World Socialist Web Site, “perfectly suits the right-wing purposes of the reelected Obama White House to have a Republican-controlled House serve as its political partner and, in the face of opposition from below, give the Obama government an excuse to ─

Cut social programs cuts,
Hand out tax breaks to corporate America,
Continue militarism and attacks on domestic and international human and democratic rights

Bipartisan hold to status quo, leveraged against “We the people”


P
opular sentiment, Martin writes, played little role in the 2012 U.S. elections outcome, which were dependent largely on which of two domineering political parties controlled a U.S. state’s redistricting process ─ the power to draw district boundaries, and thus rig election results.

U.S. House ─ November 6’s vote did little to change the picture in the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans will hold a sizeable majority: once all the seats are decided, perhaps 235-200.

U.S. Senate ─ The two-seat gain in the U.S. Senate “shifts the Democratic caucus further to the right ─ as many of the victorious Democratic candidates openly rejected liberalism and pledged themselves to fiscal austerity and bipartisan collaboration with the Republicans: among them

Indiana’s conservative Democrat Joe Donnelly and Maine’s Independent expected to vote with Democratic Party Augus King
Incumbents Jon Tester (Montana), Dianne Feinstein (California), Bill Nelson (Florida), Robert Casey (Pennsylvania), Tom Carper (Delaware), Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
Newcomers Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota) and Tim Kaine (Virginia)




Sources and notes

“Progress Waddles forward: Risks and Opportunities in the Lame Duck Session” (Citizen Vox, Rick Claypool), November 9, 2012, http://www.citizenvox.org/2012/11/09/progress-waddles-lame-duck-risks-opportunities/

Citizens United

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the First Amendment prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions.

The decision reached the Supreme Court on appeal from a July 2008 decision by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

The nonprofit group Citizens United [had] wanted to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television broadcasts in apparent violation of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (commonly known as the McCain–Feingold Act or ‘BCRA’). In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that portions of BCRA §203 violated the First Amendment. Wikipedia


Rick Claypool

Rick Claypool is an online organizer in Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. Before joining the staff at Public Citizen, he assisted with outreach and organizing at a grassroots anti-hunger organization in Pittsburgh, wrote advocacy and investigative stories for an alternative newsweekly in Toledo, Ohio;  and in northwest Ohio, he taught courses in cultural theory and analysis. http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=2875

Although contributors to PC’s blog are staff members of Public Citizen, their views are their own, “those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of Public Citizen.”

Public Citizen

Public Citizen is a national nonprofit organization that has been standing up to corporate power and holding government accountable since 1971. It fights for:

Openness and democratic accountability in government

Right of consumers to seek redress in the courts

Clean, safe and sustainable energy sources

Social and economic justice in trade policies
               
Strong health, safety and environmental protections

Safe, effective and affordable prescription drugs and health care


Public Citizen, http://www.citizenvox.org/about-2

“U.S. elections leave House and Senate balance nearly unchanged” (Patrick Martin, November 10, 2012, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/cong-n10.shtml

Profile briefs

Joe Donnelly: elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Tenth Congress and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 2007-present); was not a candidate for reelection to the House of Representatives but was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 2012 for the term ending January 3, 2019, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000607

Angus Stanley King Jr.: fills the seat vacated by retiring Senator Olympia Snowe, elected in 2012 to the U.S. Senate as an independent representing Maine; widely expected to caucus with the Democratic Party. King served as Maine’s 72nd Governor (1995 to 2003). Wikipedia


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