Carol Ché -Porter - Time for Change

I'm not a constituent, but when you pull this bull-shit in NH you deserve to be booted from office.


From Now Hampshire:

In four short years Carol Shea-Porter has evolved from a rabble-rousing, town hall disrupting anti-war activist who once had to be forcibly removed from a President George Bush event in Portsmouth to a Member of Congress who instructed armed security guards to remove a frustrated voter from her own town hall event in Manchester on Saturday.

In the appended video, Shea-Porter can be seen instructing security to remove a man for standing to ask a question without a ticket. Shea-Porter previously held a lottery to determine who could ask questions . She can also be heard taunting the man on his way out by saying, “I do hope the movie theater can be a little quieter for you.”

Nice, Gotta love the taunting of the constituent. No doubt that will be on a campaign commercial in the next election.

And you have to love the fact that she's apparently forgotten completely where she started. Not only has she completely failed to meet with the constituents in anything but a hyper-controlled and small meeting, but she's denigrating those who are using her former tactics. (h/t Hot Air)

She chose what sounded like a derogatory reference to opponents, some of whom sprang from the Tea Party rallies across the country against Obama's fiscal agenda.

"They walked around me and they're videotaping me," Shea-Porter said at the Spring Street home of an Obama supporter, according to Foster's Daily Democrat.

"I chose to go there because I wanted to talk to them about what this is really about. And I ask you to do that also. Don't be so divided and so put off that you don't feel like you can have a conversation."

That's fine and admirable, but this is when it got a little unhinged.

"Find those tea-baggers who don't like the idea of this and talk to them. You won't get all of them, but I think when they realize we're still going to be an employer-based insurance system in this country, and that it is a choice – one choice among many choices – it takes away that sense of fear, that sense that they're losing control over their lives.

and

The irony is, of course, that Shea-Porter used to be a "tea-bagger'' on the left. She stalked then-congressman Jeb Bradley at town hall-style meetings the 1st District Republican incumbent held throughout his district.

Time for a Chénge.

Canadian Medical Association Says Canadian Healthcare Broken

Here's statements on the Canadian Healthcare System being broken. Not much details though.

SASKATOON — The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

...

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that "a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it's possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

He has also said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This "activity-based funding" would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said.

I hadn't realized that hospitals were paid in lump sums. That sounds like a guarantee for inefficiency. There isn't any incentive to do anything more than the minimum. Also makes you wonder how they pay their staffs and improve facilities. Not that they need to go overboard like hospitals in the US with massive luxury hotel style improvements, but every facility requires repair and updating periodically.

Apparently they are looking for a solution, but don't want what the US has either.

Doig, who has had a full-time family practice in Saskatoon for 30 years, acknowledges that when physicians have talked about changing the health-care system in the past, they've been accused of wanting an American-style structure. She insists that's not the case.

"It's not about choosing between an American system or a Canadian system," said Doig. "The whole thing is about looking at what other people do."

"That's called looking at the evidence, looking at how care is delivered and how care is paid for all around us (and) then saying 'Well, OK, that's good information. How do we make all of that work in the Canadian context? What do the Canadian people want?' "

Can't blame them for trying to find what works, but from what I see here, they aren't going to find it.

Ethics for the Intelligence Officer

Interesting piece that Schneier quotes. I can't get to the article, but the quote is the point.

Draft Statement of Ethics for the Intelligence Community

Preamble: Intelligence work may present exceptional or unusual ethical dilemmas beyond those of ordinary life. Ethical thinking and review should be a part of our day to day efforts; it can protect our nation's and our agency’s integrity, improve the chances of mission success, protect us from the consequences of bad choices, and preserve our alliances. Therefore, we adhere to the following standards of professional ethics and behavior:

1. First, do no harm to U.S. citizens or their rights under the Constitution.
2. We uphold the Constitution and the Rule of Law; we are constrained by both the spirit and the letter of the laws of the United States.
3. We will comply with all international human rights agreements that our nation has ratified.
4. We will insist on clarification of ambiguities that arise between directives or law and the principles of this code. We will protect those within our institutions who call reasonable attention to wrongdoing.
5. Expediency is not an excuse for misconduct.
6. We are accountable for our decisions and actions. We support timely, rigorous processes that fix accountability to the responsible person.
7. Statements we make to our clients, colleagues, overseers and the U.S. public will be true, and structured not to unnecessarily mislead or conceal.
8. We will resolve difficult ethical choices in favor of constitutional requirements, the truth, and our fellow citizens.
9. We will address the potential consequences of our actions in advance, especially the consequences of failure, discovery, and unintended or collateral consequences of success.
10. We will not impose unnecessary risk on innocents.
11. Although we may work in secrecy, we will work so that when our efforts become known, our fellow citizens will be proud of us and of our efforts.

Interesting in that I find this hard to stomach when the operative is answerable to the politician who doesn't have to meet these requirements.

Missing His Own Lesson

Obama in Portsmouth on the Government Insurance option.

Now, the only thing that I have said is that having a public option in that menu would provide competition for insurance companies to keep them honest. Now, I recognize, though, you make a legitimate -- you raise a legitimate concern. People say, "Well, how can a private company compete against the government?" And my answer is that if the insurance -- private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining -- meaning, taxpayers aren't subsidizing it, but it has to run on charging premiums, and providing good services and a good network of doctors just like any other private insurer would do, then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time.

(APPLAUSE)

I mean, if you think about it, you know, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. I mean, it's the post office that's always having problems. So, right now, you've got private insurers who are out there competing effectively even though a lot of people get their care through Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA. So, there's nothing inevitable about this somehow destroying the private marketplace as long as -- and this is a legitimate point that you're raising -- that it's not set up where the government is basically being subsidized by the taxpayers. So that even if they're not providing a good deal, we keep on having to pony out more and more money. And I've already said that can't be the way the public option is set up.

OBAMA: It has to be self-sustaining.

So does he really want to use the USPS as an example of a program that competes with private enterprise? I can see his point in a twisted sort of way, that private health insurace should be able to compete against the governments plan, but what about those people who don't get the choice? If your company dumps your insurance policy and you can't get a non-government plan what are you getting? And how would a government plan save the economy and help the deficit if it works as well as the postal service?

Daniel Hannan on HealthCare Reform

I saw this on Beck last week. Hannan is quite informative on the British NHS and provides some interesting information about its history that many people seem to forget.

HANNAN: Listen, our system, our NHS came out of a peculiar time, we were basically under full mobilization when we invented this, right? It was.

(CROSSTALK)

HANNAN: It's Word War II, 1944. So, it was a time when we had food rationing, when everything had been nationalized, when he had hugely high taxes, you know, because everything had been conscripted into the war.
That was the product — that was the thinking that led to the state health care system.

I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system in peacetime and massively expanding the role of the state when there's no need.

BECK: Because they would say that this is going to save us money.

HANNAN: Well, you know it is the single biggest item of our government budget. And, it's — you know, the state generally doesn't do things as efficiently as the market does. Of course, it doesn't. If you know that you're getting the same treatment without paying for it, you have no incentive to keep costs down.

The NHS came out of a time when Britain was not only broke, but almost broken. The NHS was a great thing at the time because it ensured that people would at least be capable of getting the minimum health support for regular lives. That's not the problem today in the USA. Why would we choose to strap on a system that all examples show ends in inefficiency and red tape?

And the truly disturbing point:

HANNAN: We have 1.4 million people employed by the National Health Service. It is the third biggest employer in the world after the Red Army in China and the Indian National Railways. Most of those 1.4 million people are administrators, that the managers outnumber the doctors and nurses. And that is the electoral bloc that makes it almost impossible to get rid of.

So, if you do this thing, if — you know, you're going to decide.

That bothers me to no end. If we become like the Brits, our version of NHS will be disturbingly powerful just as an electoral bloc. Imagine how the Unions are salivating over that bit of gold that they can pack into their coffers. Power in that combination will be destructive to everyones detriment.

Good for Them

Saw this linked at Insty. I'm rather glad that they feel this way. Now if they can get the Congresslime to listen.

The White House disagreed this afternoon with the contention by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, that the disruptions at town hall meetings are "un-American," as the Democratic congressional leaders contended in a USA Today op-ed this morning.

"I think there's actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America," White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton told reporters on Air Force One when asked about the comments.

"The President thinks that if people want to come and have a spirited debate about health care, a real vigorous conversation about it, that's a part of the American tradition and he encourages that, because people do have questions and concerns ...And so if people want to come and have their concerns and their questions answered, the President thinks that's important. Now, if you just want to come to a town hall so that you can disrupt and so that you can scream over another person, he doesn’t think that that's productive. And as a country, we've been able to make progress when people actually talk out what our problems are, not try to shout each other down."

I agree that it isn't very productive, but that method of protest is very common on the left, including in Obama's own support organizations. I just would like the meetings to have sufficient civility that it wouldn't happen. No doubt the SEIU bullying people out of the room as has been seen at several of the town hall meetings is sufficient proof of their own tactics.

At his town hall meeting in Portsmouth, NH, tomorrow, Burton said, President Obama "thinks that we're going to be able to have a constructive conversation tomorrow and he'll continue to do that at the town hall later in the week and throughout this effort."

No doubt Obama will have a nice supportive meeting in Portsmouth. Seeing that it is probably the most liberal city in the state it would be surprising that it isn't just loaded with his supporters and union storm troops. I'd be surprised if the seats are already all occupied for the event.

I wonder how many Free Staters are going to try to get in. Should be interesting.

The Specter of Tort Reform

No not related to the Obamacare fiasco, rather a little gift Arlen (D) wants to hand out to the bar.

Arlen Specter became a Democrat this year, but there’s one party we’re confident the Pennsylvania Senator will never abandon—the trial bar. He’s recently introduced legislation to repeal two important Supreme Court business rulings in order to create a new lawsuit bonanza.

In Stoneridge v. Scientific Atlanta, five Justices ruled in 2008 that companies can’t be sued merely for doing business with another firm that commits fraud. This followed the 1994 precedent in Central Bank of Denver v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, in which the Justices limited liability claims against alleged “aiders and abettors.” Both decisions undermine “scheme liability” suits, which are the kind of elastic legal claim that gives U.S. civil justice a bad name.

Enter Mr. Specter and Rhode Island’s Jack Reed, who say the decisions deny fraud victims their day in court. Their bill would amend the 1934 Securities Exchange Act specifically to authorize a private right of action for aiding-and-abetting liability. The two Supreme Court rulings interpreted the law narrowly to apply only to primary offenders, who can still be sued by genuine—and even not-so-genuine—victims of fraud.

Nice that he thinks so much of those poor lawyers that he want to help them make even more money against the fair decision by the SCOTUS.

Spending Like Barney Frank on Meth

This is disturbing. I was irritated when they were proposing four new planes which the Military didn't request, now they've jumped the number to eight.

WASHINGTON -- Bipartisan opposition is emerging in the Senate to a plan by House lawmakers to spend $550 million for additional passenger jets for senior government officials.

The resistance to buying eight Gulfstream and Boeing planes comes as members of both chambers of Congress embark on the busiest month of the year for official overseas travel. The plan to upgrade the fleet of government jets, which was included in a broader defense-funding bill, has also sparked criticism from the Pentagon, which has said it doesn't need half of the new jets.

"The whole thing kind of makes me sick to my stomach," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) in an interview Sunday. "It is evidence that some of the cynicism about Washington is well placed -- that people get out of touch and they spend money like it's Monopoly money."

Several other senators said they share the concerns and will work to oppose the funding for the jets when the legislation is taken up by the Senate in September, including Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz.,) Jack Reed (D., R.I.), Richard Burr (R., N.C.), Christopher Bond (R., Mo.) and John Thune (R., S.D.).

The funding for new planes is "a classic example of Congress being out of touch with the realities of deficit spending," said Mr. Thune.

Nice to see that at least there is issues with this in both camps. This is completely out of control. They want to, allegedly, reduce the deficit, and pay for all these new entitlements, yet they still seem to think that spending more on toys for their own use is a good idea.

This makes the cash for clunkers spending seem responsible.

MaineCare the Smell of Obamacare

Here's something you should be interested in. Just think of this as the end game when it gets to the national level.

A hospital in Maine lost its challenge to a state law requiring all hospitals to provide free, unlimited health care to low-income families after the 1st Circuit sided with a lower court and tossed the complaint.
Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, Maine, is a nonprofit hospital with a "tradition of voluntarily providing free and reduced price medical care to low income families," according to the ruling. It sued state officials, alleging that the free-care laws were tantamount to unconstitutional takings of property.
The hospital further argued that "there is no difference in the government occupying a room or the government ordering that a room be made available to someone it designates."
But the Boston-based federal appeals court sided with a district judge in dismissing the complaint, noting that the hospital "is not required to serve low income patients; it may choose to stop using its property as a hospital, which is what makes it subject to Maine's free care laws."
Maine has required hospitals to provide free, unlimited medical services to low-income patients without reimbursement since 1989. Maine pays for some treatment through its Medicaid program known as "MaineCare," but reimbursements are often well below the hospitals' actual cost.

Fascinating eh?

We Should Follow California Why?

Saw this at Q&O.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Small businesses that received $682 million in IOUs from the state say California expects them to pay taxes on the worthless scraps of paper, but refuses to accept its own IOUs to pay debts or taxes. The vendors' federal class action claims the state is trying to balance its budget on their backs.
Lead plaintiff Nancy Baird filled her contract with California to provide embroidered polo shirts to a youth camp run by the National Guard, but never was paid the $27,000 she was owed. She says California "paid" her with an IOU that two banks refused to accept - yet she had to pay California sales tax on the so-called "sale" of the uniforms.

Now that is audacity at its most brazen. Where is the shame?

Why Not Fix the Parts That Are Broken

Krauthammer puts it in plain wording. Fix it first.

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).

What to do? Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.

(2) Real health-insurance reform: Tax employer-provided health care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It's economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness.

Read it. It's at least a logical way to start and would be in everyone's best interest. Well except for the lawyers.

The Reasoned Discourse Continues

Hmm. I wonder who called out the SEIU brown shirts? Oh, that would be Obama.

At a townhall last night in St. Louis, Kenneth Gladney, 38, a local conservative activist said he was attacked by Obama supporters, one of whom used a racial slur against him before the attack. From the emergency room at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, Gladney, who is black, told the St. Louis Dispatch: “It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked.” In Tampa, Florida, protester Barry Osteen was pushed in the face by Democratic Club Treasurer Karen Miracle, and union members allegedly assaulted another concerned citizen. Both of the events were organized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Asked about the possibility of people concerned about Obama showing up at their event, in Tampa, SEIU spokeswoman Kim Diehl told the St. Petersburg Times: “We’re prepared. We have strategies to deal with it if it should come up.”

And what did the Obamateur say?

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told senators to focus on the insured and how they would benefit from “consumer protections" in the overhaul, such as ending the practice of denying insurance based on preexisting conditions and ensuring the continuity of coverage between jobs.

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.

And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.

So much for rule of law. They should be very careful. They are inciting violence and the SEIU has started it. No doubt the nut jobs on the right will start showing up looking for a fight. And they will be prepared for more than this poor guy was.

If Obama really wanted civil discourse he wouldn't have been advising them to punch back twice as hard. This only will lead to escalation. Don't be surprised when it happens. But if you're there don't start anything and bring a video camera.

Note: When I did a google search of this incident I only got 18 hits on the victims name. I wonder where the Ministry of Truth has been.

Jeanne Shaheen - Coward

She makes me nauseous.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) on Thursday issued a harshly worded press release condemning the Tea Party Coalition “and other groups opposed to health care reform” for protesting staff office hours on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Protesters were present at office hours held today in Grafton and yesterday in Hampstead,” the press release states.

“It’s a disgrace for an organization to deliberately try to prevent people from getting help from their elected representatives,” said Shaheen. “The people who come to my office for help are veterans needing assistance with the VA, senior citizens who need help with Social Security, and small business owners who are having trouble in our tough economy. New Hampshire citizens have a right to get the help they need from the federal government. Their rights have been trampled on.”

“These are not town hall meetings but rather office hours that we host in Town Halls across the state in order to make our caseworkers available to New Hampshire citizens who need help,” said Shaheen. “The organizations that staged these protests knew these weren’t town hall meetings because we called them to tell them so. I recognize the right of people on both sides of the aisle to protest, but impeding the ability of New Hampshire citizens to get the help they need is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. They should be ashamed.”

Ah yes thank you Jeanne. Please now provide us with the details of the "organization" that you keep blaming, but you seem unable to name. I really really think your constituents need to know who this evil enemy is.

Oh and don't forget that Jeanne isn't having any face to face town hall meetings that I've been able to find. It appears she's doing them in meetings where you have to phone in. How quaint. Can't even face the constituents that may be displeased. Coward.

Can't take the heat, maybe you should stay the hell out of politics.

White House Snitch Line

I've been mulling this over for a bit. This article gets to the point that I have been pondering.

So what has the White House told supporters to do when you run across those who spread "disinformation" about the new attempt by the Obama administration to install the anti-competitive practices of a "public option" into a federalized universal health care initiative?

Report them.

Whether its communicated through e-mail, web sites, blogs, or even casual conversation the executive branch of the federal government is asking you to make them aware of this "disinformation" because they can't keep track of all of the dissenters themselves.

From Tuesday's White House blog entry:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Pardon me for asking such an obvious question, but what concern is it to the president or his administration if private citizens have disagreements, discussions, and dissections of his proposed take over of the health care industry?

Last I checked I had the constitutional right to do so.

Do you find it disturbing that the White House is collecting information from citizens on those that oppose them? I do. Where does it lead? Terrorist watch list? Do you get a visit from the Secret Service or the FBI? Especially if you are making an impact?

There could likely be many good reasons for the White House to set up an e-mail address "flag@whitehouse.gov." -- Like reporting a suspicious truck parked in a place it's not supposed to be. Or the systematic movement of people that seek to attack the nation. Or even a suspicious piece of baggage that should not be left unaccompanied.

But reporting your neighbors for simply disagreeing on the unknown outcomes of a federally controlled, centralized universal governmental control of health care is not an acceptable use of such an effort.

Perhaps it would be different if we felt the administration was dealing with us honestly. At this point, they've all but admitted that they will have to raise taxes on the middle class. That cheery news, coupled with catching significant personalities on video--i.e. Barney Frank, Jan Schikowski, and President Obama -- all opining about their desire for a new "public option" to lead to a single payer system, gives the nation pause and little confidence to think that what the president says at prime time press conferences is genuine.

So what should our response be?

Greater demands for free speech...

Louder volumes at town hall meetings...

Bigger belligerence the tighter they squeeze...

In short, when free speech is threatened, screeching screams of volition are the only thing preventing the mandated, manhandled, chokehold of silence.

So go ahead... report me... I will shout louder!

Hmm. Probably a good idea. Probably also a situation to start applying the Rules for Radicals. Shouldn't we be making a new rule #4?

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

Think on this, if they have a snitch program, start using it. Find where the populists vary from the elitists and report them. And then report the elitists as well. Report newspapers who report even moderate disagreements with the Administration. Report the CBO.

Now how do I get some group to actually ask its members to do this?

My Guess is Simon Jester

Heh, this is pretty funny.

The Obama-Joker poster shows President Obama with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick and also has the word "socialism" printed in bold, dark letters under the image of his face.

It's unclear who created the image and who is posting it across the city. No one has taken credit so far.

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous.

Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.

"Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery," says Hutchinson, "it is mean-spirited and dangerous."

What a shame that it bothers him so much. I guess I can post the image.


This is something that Simon Jester would definitely do.

UPDATE: Been googling this stuff and found that Vanity Fair did this to Bush. Though I have to say that this representation on Obama is a bit more sinister. (Obviously Bush was EVIL and Obama is the ONE.)

And does this fall under Rule #5?

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

I wonder why the tea party organizations don't use more of Alinsky's rules? Turn about is fair play.

Troubling Restriction of Rights

I'm a bit fascinated that this is the Administrations position.

Earlier this year, at Supreme Court oral argument in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the government raised eyebrows by arguing that it believed that it can constitutionally ban the publication of books (if, as is always the case, the publisher is a corporation) that contain even one line arguing for the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office. The government based its belief on the Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which upheld a blanket ban on corporate political spending in order to prevent "distortion" of campaigns. Faced with the full constitutional ramifications of Austin — for the government's position flows naturally from Austin — the Supreme Court asked the parties to reargue the case on September 9, to consider whether Austin should be overruled.

Austin was based on the assumption that the government could limit some speech in order to enhance the voices of others, although the case tried not to frame it that way. Rather, the Austin Court argued it was dealing with a "different type of corruption, the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth... ." To most people, that sounds like an egalitarian argument, not one about "corruption." Which would be fine — it is perfectly acceptable to favor things on egalitarian grounds — except that the First Amendment to the Constitution appears to forbid the government from making such determinations. As the Supreme Court stated in in the landmark case Buckley v. Valeo, "the concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment, which was designed "to secure 'the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources,'" and "to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people."

Worrisome in how this could spread. Could this move to stifle blogs since they are published by large corporations? Just because a corporation is the means of the free speech does that mean that you have no right to use that mechanism?

Please read all of the article. It has more perspective.