A voice from the heartland with something to say

A while back I posted a guest editorial from Stephen Anderson.  His editorial took exception to negative letters he read in a magazine and he questioned the accusations that were being leveled at the Occupy movement.  Even though he wasn't exactly singing Occupy's praises he was at least being fair and honest about his observations.  A friend of mine has been in communication with Mr. Anderson and he shared with me the following video that Stephen sent to him.  The video records a speech Anderson gave at an event in St. Paul, Minnesota back in 2008.  The speech was very timely then and it is still worth listening to now.  Mr.  Anderson continues to be a fair and honest observer of society and his style is articulate and entertaining.  Forty-five minutes isn't too long to give to this thought provoking verbal presentation. 

The Assault on America’s Civil Justice System

This is a public service posting:

 

The Assault on America’s Civil Justice System

                                      And Your Constitutional Rights

 

The regular second Tuesday of the month meeting of South Dakota Peace and Justice will investigate the long-term corporate propaganda campaign to convince Americans that they should give up their constitutional rights in the name of tort reform.  With three hundred and twelve million citizens in our country, it is easy for vested financial interests to find an occasional case where the system has been abused.  The case of the elderly woman who spilled scalding McDonalds’ coffee in her lap was not such an incident!

 

The multiple film festival winning documentary, Hot Coffee: Is Justice Being Served? will be shown.  This film looks at numerous cases that have been totally distorted, and the subsequent atmosphere thus created, which prevents our system of justice from redressing egregious damage to our citizens.  Local defense attorneys Mike Wilson and Jim Leach will lead a discussion following the documentary.

 

The general public is always encouraged to attend our free presentations.  We meet at the St. Isaac Joques Church, adjacent to the Mother Butler Center.  The church is located at 221 Knollwood , across the street from the Carmike 10 Theater.   The meeting starts at 7 PM and usually lasts about two hours. Coffee and light refreshment are served.  Please encourage anyone you know who is concerned about the continued erosion of our civil right by the emerging oligarchy in our country to attend.

 

 For further information contact Jim Petersen at 342-6245 or MaryJo Farrington at 716-5166.

 

Help Restore Our Civil Liberties

Friends-

We can put an end to a shocking assault on our civil liberties: Last year's National Defense Authorization Act included language that could allow the military to detain civilian suspects INDEFINITELY without charge or trial.

This year's NDAA could come up for a vote as soon as next week and we have a prime opportunity to reverse this travesty of justice.

Click here to fight back: Email your member of Congress right away:

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/ndaa_next_week/?referring_akid=a6160083.1904117.lFZrva&source=auto-taf

Congressmen Adam Smith and Justin Amash will put forth an amendment to make it clear that the military does not have the power to arrest and indefinitely detain civilians without charging or trying them. Please urge your lawmakers to support their efforts and help us spread word far and wide.

Just click here to email your member of Congress right away.

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/ndaa_next_week/?referring_akid=a6160083.1904117.lFZrva&source=auto-taf

Thanks!

Free Speech and the Influence of Money on Democracy

If you like to pass along false rumors and innuendos about the President -- any president -- and the President’s policies, you can be reasonably confident you’ll never be called out for it by a member of your own political party.  In my opinion, the Republicans excel at this ability, but the Democrats cannot be far behind with this flawed sense of party loyalty.  The news media helps to perpetuate the concept, by ignoring any responsibility for fact checking much of what it passes along to the public.  Nothing new here I suppose, but there are some journalistic accounts of the media exercising its supposed position as “watchdog for the public.” 

The lure of advertising dollars has corrupted the “eye of the public” function of many media outlets in the world today.  The need to maintain large readership/viewership numbers in order to entice advertisers is too strong a need for corporate media businesses.   Unfortunately, the general public has been all too willing to let this undesirable development come about.  Reporting the news is more about money than journalism.  

While we’ve been sleeping, the people that benefit the most from this situation have been quietly solidifying their power over our society.  Numerous examples exist of this constant struggle to promote favor for the few at the expense of the majority.  Some of these examples include eliminating protections for workers and the public safety.  Alarm at this development is small since only a minority of people is able to relate to the overall negative trend.  Far too many people belong to the group of trusting voters who believe their political candidates will become their trusted representatives in power once they get into office.  The truth -- for those willing to seek it -- is less than encouraging with regarding elected representatives and who they represent when they get into office.  Representing the people in public office is more about money than civic duty and protecting the interests of the public.

The Tea Party claims to be an organization that evolved from public dissatisfaction with the political process in this country.  That may or may not be true, but regardless of the virtue of the party’s origins, some observers believe that the Tea Party has been co-opted or corrupted by powerful moneyed interests.  The two major parties seem to be controlled by the people within them that are more concerned with continuing their careers than with promoting ideology to benefit the public welfare.  

Assume for the sake of discussion that you are qualified in everyway to hold an elected office.  What are the chances that you could win an election to an office outside of the state you live in?  Then ask yourself how much money has to do with your answer.   Now ask yourself, who controls the money?

The press and other news media used to hold the upper hand with its ability to gather information and report that information to the public and the public had to rely on them for news information.  Now days many people carry camera phones and other small recording devices.  This is a scary development for entities that would like to filter, disguise, or block knowledge of their activities from the prying eyes of the public.   Even without the official press doing its job, in some ways it is harder today to hide questionable activities from the public.  Some of the responsibility for exposing these questionable activities has been taken over by people involved in demonstrations of public dissent.   Organized dissent worries those entities that don’t want close public scrutiny of their activities. 

Motivated opinion comment/letter writers continue to send their opinions to newspapers and other media outlets in the hope that those letters will be posted and read by others.  Some of those comments and letters do get posted or published and the Internet has made it easier for people to make public comments.  However, compare the impact of any single letter or comment writer’s efforts with the impact of well funded groups or large corporations.  Both are expressions of free speech, but are they equal?

It's a case of "kill the messenger"

Guest editorial

            Few people will deny the U.S. faces a serious economic crisis, an economic

Waterloo if you will. Yet I'm astonished where our letter writers and columnists place the blame.  One thing is certain: if the only advice a noted Ph.D. in economics has to offer Congress, the president, and the public is a silly, asinine fairy tale about 10 beer drinkers, then we as a nation are in serious trouble. No less a personage than Warren Buffet -- the oracle of Omaha and the second wealthiest capitalist in the U.S. -- has bluntly told Congress, "The rich should pay more." He used himself and his own employees as an example, clearly showing how he paid a lower percentage rate on his millions of income than his employees do on their monthly salary. If Congress and Ph.D. economic professors ignore Warren Buffett, don't blame beer drinkers.

            In the November 17 issue of Western Ag Reporter, every other letter writer or columnist gave environmentalists or the Occupy Wall Street movement a whack. Why? Was it tree huggers or was it Paul Volker, chairman of the Federal Reserve, who raised interest rates to 21% in the 1980s, resulting in an economic crisis in rural America?  Who was President of the U.S. when the E.P.A. was created and the clean air and clean water acts passed... socialist Adolph Hitler or Republican Richard Nixon?  Was it the Occupiers or the Banksters that created the housing bubble that ultimately crashed, creating a global crisis?

            After the 1929 crash and depression, numerous restrictions were placed on Wall Street to prevent a re-occurrence. Who removed those public safe guards.. the occupiers or Congress? The power of eminent domain to take private property was granted to corporations. Who changed the rules and constitution? Occupiers or Supreme Court?

Who robbed the Social Security trust fund and left only IOUs and a pending crisis? Occupiers or Congress?  Was it the Occupiers or Congress that negotiated the Free Trade agreements that gutted U.S. manufacturing and exported 10 million jobs to third-world slave labor? Was it a tree hugger or a federal judge who voided a billion-dollar jury verdict in favor of U.S. cattlemen? The ceaseless flow of 35 million illegals have overwhelmed our schools, hospitals, and welfare agencies and spawned unprecedented drug violence. Who condones and even encourages and exploits this illegal flow? Corporate hogs, dairy, poultry, meat packers, and fruit and vegetable growers or the Occupy Wall Street protesters?

            I haven't made a personal inspection of the Occupiers so I can't speak with authority on their lack of cleanliness as some have, but I view them as analogous to canaries in the coalmine. I do know that something is vitally wrong with our nation and that neither Congress nor our President is willing to take other than divisive political actions.

            When 30 major corporations can avoid paying taxes for seven years, when innumerable corporate CEOs like Lowell McAdam of Verizon draw pay of $55,000 per day (yes, per day!), when we have thousands of soldiers stationed in Germany and Japan 65 years after the end of WW II, then something is wrong. Turn off your TV and learn what our real problems are and who's causing them. By the way, what book commanded us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the widows and orphans, and love our neighbor as ourselves? The left wing, socialist Occupiers handbook or the Holy Bible?

                                                                   Stephen Anderson

                                                                   Alma, KS

Naming Rights and Financial Contributions

Some Republicans I know are Republicans because they are loyal to the only political party they have ever been members of.  They can’t conceive of not being Republicans.  A few others have realized that they are disenchanted with the direction of the party and they have made a partial step away from it by claiming to be independents.  The same things can be said for numerous Democrats.  It’s like growing up in a religious denomination and being told that every other denomination is wrong; it’s scary to think that the group you are a member of might not be all that righteous.

In truth, what appears to be happening is that certain factions within groups have ascended to dominance while the other members have languished in their complacency.  The attitudes of society have overtaken the idealism's of the groups we thought we knew because we grew up in them.  One reason for this is that there are professional people who are paid to devise ways to make these groups more effective political tools.  Those professional manipulators have expanded their abilities at an accelerating rate with the assistance of technology and money.  The more willing these individuals are to “sell out” their own group’s core ideology for the sake of other agendas, the more money they can attract.  While you were sleeping, your religion and/or your political party changed into a tool for people with money that want to be powerful.

In western South Dakota, there are lots of good people that have belonged to one political party all of their lives.  They are good neighbors, good citizens, and the kind of people that you would like to have watching your back for you when times get tough.  They sort of shake their heads when they learn that T. Denny Sanford makes another large contribution to help fund some organization and, in appreciation, that organization changes its name to include Mr. Sanford’s name.  It seems harmless enough and it isn’t as though T. Denny invented the practice.

On January 21, 2010, the US Supreme Court assisted the manipulators with the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.  The Supreme Court decision appears to be confirming what has been happening slowly for a long time and at a much faster rate during the last eleven years.  Money trumps everything else, if you have enough of it.  If things weren’t lopsided enough already, one group is looking to make it more so.  This group wants to eliminate the continuing restriction against direct political contributions by corporations.  Perhaps the Republican and Democrat parties are in for name changes in the near future; judging by their actions they are already sold out to or beholding to their moneyed and corporate contributors.

Occupy Rapid City joins national protest of Citizens United ruling

Guest Post

For immediate release

On Friday January 20, 2012, Occupy Rapid City will participate in a national protest: 
Occupy the Federal Courthouse: 

On the second anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited undisclosed amounts of corporate money in political campaigns there will be occupations of Courthouses around the country. This effort is being promoted by the national group Move to Amend, which is organizing for an amendment to the US Constitution denying person hood to corporations. The effect of so-called "Super-PACS" may already be seen in the current election cycle. Our country continues to have the best politicians that money can buy. This is a concern in South Dakota as well as in national elections. We believe that when the voices of the 99% of the American population are ignored in favor of the 1%, then it is past time to implement public financing of elections.

We will meet locally at the Rapid City Federal Courthouse (9th and Main and St. Joe) at 4:30 pm. All are welcome. This is not solely an "Occupy" event. It is an open citizen protest against the Supreme Court Citizens United ruling.

Occupy Rapid City shows no signs of slowing. With weekly consensus-based meetings continuing, the activists are still reaching out for new ways to support the nation-wide effort for the promotion of social, economic and political change. On January 15th a candlelight vigil has held in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. in downtown Rapid City.
The next ORC teach-in will be January 31 at 5:30 pm at the RC Public Library Room B. Lilias Jarding will present on corporate energy–coal, oil, nuclear–with emphasis on uranium mining in and around the Black Hills. Karen Hall will talk about how to lobby the SD Legislature effectively and the online tools available.

Group participants still show enthusiasm for continuing their weekly Saturday demonstrations in downtown Rapid City, in support of the greater movement.

For further information on Occupy Rapid City please see:

http://occupyrapidcity.org/

Contact:
Clay Uptain
605-341-0724
dcu777@rushmore.com

Indefinite detention without charges

Dear Friend,

Osama bid Laden may be dead, but the War on Terror is still being used as an excuse to sacrifice our values and our rights.

On New Year's Eve, President Obama signed a bill into law that gives him and future presidents the power to use the U.S. military to pick up and indefinitely detain civilians accused of supporting terrorism -- including American citizens -- anywhere in the world without charges and without a trial.

This represents a further entrenchment of the Guantanamo mindset that jettisons our most cherished values and our constitutional rights all in the name of national security.

I just signed a petition telling President Obama and Congress to close Guantanamo and end indefinite detention. I hope you sign it, too.

You can find out more information and sign the petition at the link below.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/gitmo/?r_by=33280-3451380-E_TjpKx&rc=confemail

Indefinite detention without charges or trial is fundamentally contrary to the democratic values that our system of government rests upon.

The worst thing we can do in the face of this is remain silent.

Protest for Marc Wisecarver May 14, 2010

A protest in support of Marc Wisecarver was held in front of the federal building in Rapid City, South Dakota, on May 14, 2010. Members of the news media were invited and there were almost as many reporters present as there were protestors. Mitch Wisecarver and his mother spoke to the reporters and they gave out information packets to help inform the reporters and observers about Marc’s situation.

Video clips, pictures, and short articles about the protest appeared on news casts and in the local papers. However, as it is with most news reports, the whole story is still a mystery to the general public. The protesters displayed signs that called for an investigation of the judiciary in west river South Dakota area. Other signs called for the release from incarceration of Wisecarver. At least one placard implied that racism could be a cause for the injustice the protesters were trying to bring to light. The reality of the situation is that the protesters don’t know why this situation has evolved the way it has and they are asking for an answer to that question as well as the release of Marc Wisecarver.

The protesters and the Wisecarver family point out the constitutional issues of Marc’s legal case. The incident that the case is based on occurred on Wisecarver’s horse ranch. Wisecarver does not dispute the facts of the incident, but stands fast in his assertion that he was protecting himself and his property, as allowed by tribal, state, and federal law. The case was dismissed from tribal court on the basis of self defense. In federal court, Wisecarver was found not guilty of an assault charge levied against him for this incident. Apparently, on an additional charge the court instructed the jury to find Marc guilty of depredation of government property if the jury agreed that he had used justifiable force. The conviction based on that instruction was reversed on appeal and the case has been remanded back to the lower court.

This is the third attempt to convict Marc of an alleged crime associated with his act that it appears the jury agrees was self defense, using justifiable force. Marc has been incarcerated for fifteen months. In the meantime, the BIA agent that Marc says was trespassing has not been charged or investigated. The situation inspires more questions than it provides answers for. Currently, there are numerous groups that assert that certain portions of our United States Constitutional rights are under attack, one specifically, the right to bear arms in defense of our persons and our property. Equal justice under the law is also hard to identify in certain elements of this case.