Tag Archives: Jim McGovern

Bernie Sanders ~ Vermont Senate Votes to Overturn Citizens United

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Reader Supported News | April 13 2012

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) welcomed today’s Vermont Senate passage of a resolution calling on Congress to propose a constitutional amendment to undo a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that threw out a ban on corporate campaign spending.

“I congratulate the Vermont Senate for this important vote. Citizens United was one of the worst decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court. The people of Vermont and across America are totally disgusted with the huge amounts of money that billionaires and corporations are now throwing into the political process as a result of that misguided decision,” Sanders said.

“The Vermont Senate has now added its strong voice to a grassroots movement that is growing all across the United States,” he added. “We must overturn this disastrous decision.”

The Vermont Senate resolution asks Congress to consider an amendment to clarify that “money is not speech and corporations are not persons under the U.S. Constitution.”

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US Using Loophole to Quietly Sell Arms to Bahrain

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Josh Rogin (Foreign Policy) | Reader Supported News | February 1 2012

How the Congress can, with straight faces, oppose the sale of arms to Bahrain on grounds of Human Rights violations with the arrests going on in this country against Occupy protestors beats me. And no, I’m not advocating the sale of arms to any country, just commenting on the hypocrisy ~Gillian

President Barack Obama‘s administration has been delaying its planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain due to human rights concerns and congressional opposition, but this week administration officials told several congressional offices that they will move forward with a new and different package of arms sales – without any formal notification to the public.

The congressional offices that led the charge to oppose the original Bahrain arms sales package are upset that the State Department has decided to move forward with the new package. The opposition to Bahrain arms sales is led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), and also includes Senate Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee chairman Robert Casey (D-PA), Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Wyden and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) have each introduced a resolution in their respective chambers to prevent the U.S. government from going through with the original sale, which would have included 44 armored, high-mobility Humvees and over 300 advanced missiles.

The State Department has not released details of the new sale, and Congress has not been notified through the regular process, which requires posting the information on the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) website. The State Department simply briefed a few congressional offices and is going ahead with the new sale, arguing it didn’t meet the threshold that would require more formal notifications and a public explanation.

At today’s State Department press briefing, The Cable asked spokeswoman Victoria Nuland about the new sale. She acknowledged the new package but didn’t have any details handy.

Our congressional sources said that State is using a legal loophole to avoid formally notifying Congress and the public about the new arms sale. The administration can sell anything to anyone without formal notification if the sale is under $1 million. If the total package is over $1 million, State can treat each item as an individual sale, creating multiple sales of less than $1 million and avoiding the burden of notification, which would allow Congress to object and possibly block the deal.

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It Takes People Power to Make Clear That Corporations Are NOT People

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Jim Hightower | Nation Of Change
November 30 2011

In the Nov. 8 elections, the national media gave extensive coverage to a proposed “personhood amendment” to Mississippi’s state constitution. This was an extremist anti-abortion ballot initiative to declare that a person’s life begins not at birth, but at the very instant that a sperm meets the egg. However, extending full personhood to two-cell zygotes was too far out even for many of Mississippi’s zealous antagonists against woman’s right to control her own fertility, so the proposition was voted down.

Meanwhile, the national media paid practically zero attention to another “personhood” vote that took place on that same day over a thousand miles from Mississippi. This was a referendum in Missoula, Montana, on a concept even more bizarre than declaring zygotes to be persons with full citizenship rights.

It was a vote on overturning last year’s democracy-killing decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the now-infamous Citizens United case. A narrow five-man majority had decreed that — abracadabra! — lifeless, soulless corporations are henceforth persons with human political rights. Moreover, said the five, these tongueless artificial entities must be allowed to “speak” by dumping unlimited sums of their corporate cash into our election campaigns, thus giving them a far bigger voice than us real-life persons.

Missoulians, of course, cannot single-handedly overrule the Supremes. But they can be in the forefront of a grassroots movement for a constitutional amendment reversing the Court’s perverse ruling. And that’s just what the people there did, with a whopping 75 percent of voters calling on Congress to send such an amendment to the states for prompt ratification.

We can all be Missoula! Get your city, county and state to join the call.

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