The Plan of Represent.US to wipe out legalized political corruption

Josh Silver of Represent.US presents the plan: Here is more. The plan boils down to this:

We are protecting our communities and our country from corruption by passing city, state and federal Anti-Corruption Acts. Problem = Corruption. Solution = Anti-Corruption Act. The American Anti-Corruption Act sets a standard for city, state and federal laws that break money’s grip on politics:
  • Stop political bribery by making it illegal for elected officials to raise money from interests they regulate.
  • End secret money by mandating full transparency of all political spending.
  • Empower voters with an opt-in, individual tax rebate for small political donations.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren warns us about the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Elizabeth Warren warns us about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as reported by the Public Citizen Consumer Blog:

Sen. Warren's op-ed in the Post this week is a must-read, and a must-share: it explains how our country's consumer, worker, and environmental protection laws could be undermined by a dispute-resolution clause in the TPP, currently being negotiated. More generally, the danger Sen. Warren describes is a potent illustration of how trade deals that may sound benign in terms of their general aims can contain some pretty radical giveaways to corporate interests. Here's a flavor:
[The Investor-State Dispute Settlement clause, or ISDS] would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.

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Spectator Democracy

From a mass emailing I received from Common Dreams:

In a 2012 interview with Bill Moyers, media scholar Marty Kaplan said, "The notion of spectator democracy has, I think, extended to include the need to divert the country from the master narrative, which is the influence and importance and imperviousness to accountability of large corporations and the increasing impotence of the public through its agency, the government, to do anything about it. So the more diversion and the more entertainment, the less news, the less you focus on that story, the better off it is. Bill Moyers responded: “Are you saying that the people who run this political media business, the people who fund it, want to divert the public's attention from their economic power? Is that what you're saying?” Kaplan responded: “Yes. Let us fight about you know, whether this circus or that circus is better than each other, but please don't focus on the big change which has happened in this country, which is the absolute triumph of these large, unaccountable corporations. This is about as dismal and effective a conspiracy, out in plain sight, as there possibly could be."

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