This is Olbermann at his best: his special comment on the Citizens United vs Federal Elections Commission decision. It took me a whole day to figure it out: This is what Olbermann was protesting against by making those campaign contributions, knowing full well he would be called out on it. See the video here. Here is a segment of the closed caption transcript, which I have copy edited for accuracy.
The next nine men and women on the Supreme Court will get there not because of their judgment nor even their politics. They will get there because they were appointed by purchased presidents and confirmed by purchased senators. This is what John Roberts did today. This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual democracy is left in this democracy. It is government of the people, by the corporations for the corporations. It is the dark ages. It is our Dred Scott. I would suggest a revolution, but a revolution against the corporations? The corporations that make all the guns and the bullets? Maybe it won’t be this bad. Maybe the corporations, legally defined as human beings but without the pesky occasional human attributes of compassion and conscience, maybe when handed the keys to the electoral machine, they will simply not redesign America in their own corporate image. Let me leave you with this final question. After today, who is going to stop them? Good Night.
I wish everyone would also rise up and ask the current Governor of Iowa to reappoint the three Supreme Court Justices who were ousted in the mid-terms due to their ruling on gay marriage.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/5/justice_for_sale_right_wing_groups
The first special comment I heard him make was on same sex marriage at least a couple years ago that someone forwarded to me via email. I became an instant fan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIIcaDDyd_I
The one posted here though is frighteningly powerful. Still trying to catch my breath after this one…
Sam, this is just one of many that are this good.
Also, there is a conversation about corporate personhood brewing on my facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/efc1964?ref=name
I just watched the video. When he first started hosting this program, I watched him a few times, but not since then. It’s pretty amazing to see someone on television saying this stuff. In addition to his words, he’s got one hell of a gaze. The power of the gaze is really what television offers, right? He doesn’t let anyone off the hook, he tells it how it is, and at the same time he physically shows up behind his words. What a damn shame.
Yes, I understand and agree and appreciate your clarity. Incorporation inandofitself is not a bad thing. We have let the system run wild and given our power away to such.
My comment was akin to pointing out the immense flaws in our judicial system and not accounting for all the vast good it does to have it, and the vast number of good people working within it.
Thanks for your response, Eric.
Eric, your comment below emphasizes that there really is a value in entrepreneurship, a term that I’ve taken into my vocabulary because of a good friend who also happens to be my boss lately. This friend has helped me to understand the possibility of making a career according to my values, which often means doing things or starting things myself. I have to say that Planet Waves is right at the top of my list of role models as well, not only because we share values but because you have made something with those values.
Eric, your comment below emphasizes that there really is a value in entrepreneurialism, a term that I’ve taken into my vocabulary because of a good friend who also happens to be my boss lately. This friend has helped me to understand the possibility of making a career according to my values, which often means doing things or starting things myself. I have to say that Planet Waves is right at the top of my list of role models as well, not only because we share values but because you have made something with those values.
It depends on the corporation…Planet Waves is corporation. Early on, Chelsea and I recognized that we could strengthen our project by giving it an identity, and by claiming the privileges of incorporation…and it deserves a distinct identity in the business community. As a corporation, we are entitled to many rights of an individual. The difference is we recognize that the power we have as a corporation comes with responsibilities. We recognize the corporation exists for a purpose, and we fulfill that purpose: which exceeds the making of profits. As the leader of a corporation, I say that profits are on our list of priorities, so that we can grow and prosper; but obviously that is not our only priority.
In many ways we have to fight fire with fire in the corporate system, and take up the power ourselves. Planet Waves, Inc. is my response to Comcast and all its peers. I may have told this story, but on the morning we had planned to go to Olympia and ‘elope’ and found the corporation, I had a dream in which a voice said: read The Powers That Be. I had to special order it, and when I read through its 600 or so pages the that summer and autumn, I was amazed at the synchronicity of having that dream just hours before going to incorporate. From that book, I learned that many of the nation’s most influential media (up to the late 1970s, when the book covers) were family-run business — such as CBS, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Creating a place for myself and others to publish is my response to a media world where it’s rather challenging to get your work out there, though most people don’t quite recognize this. In part through the power of incorporation, we can create an entity that exists for the benefit of the participants and the community — based on the values that we espouse and want to cultivate. We are a creature of both our own creativity and of society, and we exist in service of a goal that benefits everyone. And as a Washington State corporation, my articles of incorporation are in the same drawer or right near those of Microsoft. We are peers.
On a personal note, I was not content to have others as in other editors or companies accept or reject my ideas; I want to relate directly to you, my audience. And as a result, you get to have that benefit; you get a place that has easy access and an open mind and is a project that is open to direct community participation. This is possible because I am — we are — confident enough, and resourceful enough, to be sailing the high seas with our devoted crew.
Yes.
“A major landmark on the road to the Civil War, the Dred Scott decision was overturned with the adoption of the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution in 1865 and 1868. These amendments ended slavery and established firmly the citizenship of all persons, regardless of race, creed, or previous condition of servitude. As for Dred Scott, two months after the Supreme Court’s decision, Emerson’s widow sold Scott and his family to the Blow family, who freed them in May of 1857.”
I am wondering what and where will be the ruling that must come about to overturn the Corporations own us all law of today? Somewhere there is a legal team coming up with a plan. Because we are back to that not-fine-at-all-line — Corporations Are Not People. Nor really are they made up of people. They are virtual structures within which people are employed. Is this the Matrix?
From the Wiki article on the Dred Scott decision —
The United States Supreme Court ruled seven to two against Scott, finding that neither he, nor any person of African ancestry, could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules. Moreover, Scott’s temporary residence outside Missouri did not bring about his emancipation under the Missouri Compromise, since that would improperly deprive Scott’s owner of his legal property.