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RE: Obama gives lobbyists the boot
October 9, 2010 at 2:28 am
The notion of corporations having the rights of "persons" dates to an 1819 Supreme Court case, Pad. Some 46 years later we got around to giving Blacks the same status.
As the saying goes "money talks and bullshit walks."
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RE: Obama gives lobbyists the boot
October 9, 2010 at 5:32 am
(November 27, 2009 at 5:16 pm)Meatball Wrote: Obama has issued an executive order barring registered lobbyists from serving in advisory committees related to their lobbying.
This is a baby step in a much bigger, longer battle, but I personally love it. Lobbyists are what's wrong with American politics, and the less power they have, the better.
Obama campaigned on the promise of reducing special interest influence and increasing transparancy in government. He hasn't done much up until now, but if this is what we can expect, I can't wait to see what he does next.
This is one of the best political things I've ever heard besides "democrats in control of congress and the white house".
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: Obama gives lobbyists the boot
November 16, 2010 at 2:18 pm
(October 9, 2010 at 2:28 am)Minimalist Wrote: The notion of corporations having the rights of "persons" dates to an 1819 Supreme Court case, Pad.
I think we need an amendment to the constitution that specifies that a corporation is a "person" for tax, asset ownership, financial liability and other financial accounting purposes only. It does not have any other rights afforded living citizens.
I'd like to think a new supreme court at some point down the road will reverse their Citizens United ruling but given how far to the right wing both parties currently are, I don't look for that to happen anytime soon.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist