What Silicon Valley Has Planned for Public Education

What Silicon Valley Has Planned for Public Education

Alison McDowell (2017

This troubling presentation concerns a well-advanced plan by corporate America to gradually replace public schools with 100% digital education. The attack on American schools is multi-pronged – with anti-public school forces closing schools, laying off teachers and neglecting crumbling infrastructure while stealthily increasing the availability of digital notepads, Chrome books and other digital platforms in existing schools.

Education Reform 2.0 would build on high stakes testing and school closures to replace teachers with digital learning platforms designed to incorporate “cradle to grave” tracking of students’ skill sets and online activity. Increasingly employers would rely on this information to determine suitability for employment.

The institutional backers of this digital revolution include some of the most powerful corporations and foundations in the US. Prominent names include the Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Goldman Sachs, the Institute for the Future (offshoot of Rand Corporation), Amazon, Google, Dell (the company Snowden worked for), and Halliburton.

The US military is also involved and planning and development of 100% digital learning with Army Research and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) assuming responsibility for the “behavior modification” (ie mind control aspects) that reward students for appropriate engagement with the digital platform.

McDowell describes how many schools across the US are already replacing class time with Skype sessions with Halliburton “mentors” and on-line math lessons with carton “peers.”

Proponents of 100% digital learning are working closely with focus groups to “market” this new technology that tracks and mind controls children to skeptical Americans who value their privacy.

At 38 minutes, McDowell shows a promotional film for “tracked online learning.” It explains how high school and adult learners are earning “edu-blocks for a variety of learning experiences (including reading books, volunteer work, watching videos and “teaching” skills to other learners. Also how companies are already using your ledger blocks to evaluate potential employees’ suitability for specific projects or even investing in their university education by paying their tuition. One edu-block enthusiast describes how participating in the online program is enabling her to reduce her student loan debt.

The ledger is designed to keep track of all the YouTube videos you watch and even all the texts you send (and delete).

Immigrants for Sale

Immigrants for Sale

Directed by Axel Caballero (2012)

Film Review

Immigrants For Sale is a documentary about the $5 billion a year private detention industry. Corrections Corporation of America, The Geo Group, and the Management and Training Corporation run over 200 facilities across the US, a total of 150,000 bed spaces. Because these facilities are paid by the number of beds they fill, they have absolutely no incentive to speed up the legal process that might lead to detainees’ release. As one facility auctioneer puts it, thanks to harsh immigration laws and skyrocketing refugee numbers, there’s an “endless supply of product.”

The film closely examines the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right wing corporate lobby group founded by the Koch brothers, in writing anti-immigrant legislation adopted by various states and championing the construction of new private detention facilities. In most cases, state legislators with cozy relationships with ALEC and industry lobbyists impose these monstrosities on local communities against their wishes.

The filmmakers interview detainees’ families, immigrant rights groups and even former correctional officers who describe scandalous human rights violations by CCA et al, as well as their failure to provide nutritional food or adequate medical care or toilet facilities.

As a psychiatrist I was most appalled by the negligent and abusive treatment of mentally ill detainees. Because these facilities earn $197 a night to house detainees, they have no motivation to identify detainees with mental illness and transfer them to more appropriate treatment facilities. Detainees have no legal right to legal representation and often their families have no idea where they are. Both make their situation even more precarious. One mentally ill detainee featured in the film was beaten (one beating required hospitalization) and humiliated by corrections officers for three years before his mother secured his release.

Fortunately there is growing grassroots resistance to the private detention industry. One community successfully blocked – through sustained protest activity – the construction of a new detention facility. Another, Littlewood Texas, has been bankrupted by their decision to help bankroll a private detention facility. It remains vacant and unsold to this day.

Has the Tough on Crime Era Ended?

Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice

Edited by Inimai Chettiar and Michael Waldman

Book Review

Michelle Alexander’s 2010 book The New Jim Crow has helped spark a national debate on the mass incarceration of Africans. Solutions, a collection of essays, is intended as a response. As many are written by presidential hopefuls, the range of solutions is cautious. None of the authors support the most obvious (and popular) criminal justice reform, namely legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana use.*

Likewise there are no essays by anti-Wall Street senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Both were viewed as prospective presidential candidates when Solutions was being readied for publication.

That being said, I was intrigued to see so many Republican politicians, both of the neoconservative Christian and the libertarian stripe, abandon their tough-on-crime rhetoric to argue for reducing prison populations. The forward, by Bill Clinton, argues that despite extreme political polarization on other issues, ending the incarceration of Americans for minor and victimless crimes is one area ripe for genuine bipartisan cooperation.

In his essay, Marc Levin, Director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, suggests that conservatives, applying their core principles of personal responsibility, accountability and limited government, have become “the most vocal champions of prison reform.” In this regard, he and other key conservatives have clearly parted company with the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which continues to lobby for tough-on-crime legislation and increasing prison privatization.

Levin and editor Inimai Chettiar hold up Texas, Georgia, South Carolina and Pennsylvania as model states, due to their shift from prison building to community based alternatives. As Levin readily admits, Texas reforms were driven by a need to control ballooning prison costs in an era of severe budgetary shortfalls. He brags how Texas has saved taxpayers billions of dollars by eliminating mandatory minimum sentences (allowing judges more discretion in sentencing), by offering drug and mental health treatment as an alternative to incarceration, by increasing formal rehabilitation and through various measures aimed at increasing the employability of ex-offenders (including a provision for law abiding ex-offenders to seal their criminal record).

A few of the essays read like stump speeches, full of vague ideological platitudes without meaningful detail on how prison reform can be accomplished. Others are surprisingly detailed.

Here are some examples:

Vice-President Joe Biden (D): reads like a stump speech and quotes extensively from Martin Luther King. He calls for restoring police staffing cuts and more genuine community policing. Doesn’t explain where the funding will come from, given the massive debt this administration has racked up for bank bailouts and the wars in the Middle East.

Hillary Clinton (D): reads like a stump speech, with frequent references to what Robert Kennedy would do and “my friend” Nelson Mandela. Calls for respect for the law, ending inequality, reforming mandatory minimum sentencing, ending racial profiling by the police, increasing use of drug diversion (ie mandatory treatment as an alternative to incarceration), restoring police staffing cuts, increasing community policing and restoring voting rights to ex-offenders. She also makes no mention of how all this would be funded.

Ted Cruz (US Senator Texas – R): calls for more jury trials and an end to mandatory minimum sentencing. Proposes a federal law requiring prosecutors to disclose all exculpatory** evidence before an accused can enter into a plea bargain. Also supports the Military Justice Improvement Law. This would increase military convictions for rape by transferring responsibility for prosecution from unit commanders to independent federal prosecutors.

Mike Huckabee (former Arkansas governor – R): would eliminate waste by treating drug addicts, rather than incarcerating them. He would also work to build character in American young people by strengthening families.

David Keene (former president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the American Conservative Union: would reduce the number of crimes punishable by prison, end three strikes laws (which require mandatory life imprisonment for a third felony), amend grounds for probation revocation so they’re only used to protect communities from violent criminals and end arbitrary police violence against African Americans for nonviolent crimes.

Martin O’Malley (former Maryland governor – D): would abolish the death penalty because it’s expensive, ineffective, wasteful and unjustly applied (poor minorities are far more likely to receive the death penalty because they can’t afford adequate legal representation). He states that only six other (mainly authoritarian) countries have the death penalty: Iran, Iraq, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. (For some reason he omits Egypt.)

Rand Paul (US Senator Kentucky – R): would end mandatory minimum sentencing, police militarization, disproportionate sentencing of minorities for drug crimes and civil asset forfeiture laws.** He would also allow juvenile/nonviolent offenders to have their criminal records sealed.

Rick Parry (former Texas governor – R): calls for increasing use of drug courts, expanded rehabilitation and mandatory drug and mental health treatment in lieu of incarceration.

Marco Rubio (US Senator Florida – R): would require federal government and regulatory agencies to publish all federal laws and regulations in one place, would end civil forfeiture laws and would rein in “out of control” regulatory agencies. (Me, too. I think they should start putting corporate white collar criminals in jail, but I doubt this is what he means).

Scott Walker (Wisconsin governor – R): advocates for more workplace drug testing and more programs to reduce heroin addiction.

James Webb (former US Senator Virginia – D): would appoint a federal commission on mass incarceration to study the problem some more (you can’t make this stuff up).

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*At present marijuana has been legalized for recreational purposes in four states (Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Colorado) and for medical purposes in 11 other states. Marijuana possession has been decriminalized or reduced to a misdemeanor in many other states. Cannabis possession for any purpose remains a felony in only six states (Wisconsin, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Alabama).
*Exculpatory evidence is evidence that tends to exonerate a defendant of guilt.
**Civil asset forfeiture is a legal tool that allows law enforcement officials to seize, (without due process) property they assert has been involved in certain criminal activity. The burden remains on the defendant to initiate separate legal action to recover their property, even if they’re acquitted or charges are dropped.

Solutions is published under a Creative Commons license and can be downloaded free at Solutions

America’s Favorite Billionaires

The Koch Brothers Exposed

Robert Greenwald (2014)

Film Review

The Koch Brothers Exposed examines the myriad of ways America’s favorite billionaires are using their inherited wealth to make themselves the dominant players in the US political system.

Their father Fred Koch made his fortune in the 1920s by helping Stalin establish the Soviet oil industry. On his death, Charles and David Koch used their inheritance to found Koch industries, the second largest privately* held corporation in the US. It has holdings in oil and gas, coal, paper products, plastic and consumer goods.

Koch Industries is notorious for breaking environmental laws (and other crimes, such as stealing 2 million barrels of oil from Indian reservations**). They have paid millions in fines in seven states for criminal pollution. Thanks to their generous campaign donation, George W Bush reduced the 97 counts in one federal indictment to one count – lowering their fine from $370 to $20 million.

Their Georgia Pacific plant in Crossett Louisiana, which discharges toxic chemicals to natural streams (illegal under the Clean Water Act), is responsible for more than a dozen cancer deaths. Yet instead of stopping the toxic discharges and cleaning up the streams, the Koch brothers bribe Republican politicians (through campaign donations and other perks) to weaken and discredit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the entity responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act.

Determined to roll back the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the minimum wage, labor rights, electoral financing reform, environmental protection laws and federal and state workplace safety laws, the brothers have spent more than $80 million creating and funding conservative and libertarian think tanks and Astroturf organizations – such as Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party. They are also the primary funders, along with Exxon, of the climate denial movement.

They provided the financial backing in the Citizens United case***, in addition to sponsoring the attendance of two Supreme Court justices at an Americans for Prosperity conference. The prior involvement of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in this Koch brothers group posed a clear conflict of interest. Both had an ethical and legal obligation to recuse themselves. Obviously they didn’t.

The Koch brothers are also major funders and backers of Canada’s tar sands industry and the Keystone pipeline, as well as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The latter writes model legislation for state legislators to use in creating vote suppression, labor rights and workplace safety legislation, as well as laws promoting anti-immigrant campaigns and prison privatization.

Meanwhile the Koch Foundation uses educational grants to over 150 cash-strapped colleges and universities to influence their educational policies. The grants are always conditional, ie dependent on hiring professors who share the Koch brothers conservative philosophy.

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*A privately owned corporation is one in which partners provide the capital and share the profits, as opposed to publicly owned corporations in which shareholders provide the capital and share in the profits.
**Charles and David’s younger brother Bill blew the whistle on this operation in 1999.
***Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a constitutional law case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations and labor unions. According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, a major agenda behind the decision was to retroactively decriminalize extensive past donations the Koch brothers had already made to Republican campaigns – in other words to keep them out of jail.

How Citizens United* Kept the Koch Brothers Out of Jail

The video below is an interview with Investigative reporter Greg Palast regarding his 2012 book Billionaires and Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps. Palast is best known for exposing the fake “ex-felon” scrub list that illegally disqualified tens of thousands of law abiding Florida African Americans from voting in the 2000 presidential election.

According to Palast, the real agenda behind the Citizens United decision was to keep the notorious Koch brothers** out of jail for illegal corporate donations they had made to Republican campaigns. In other words, the ruling decriminalized extensive lawbreaking by the Republican Party’s favorite billionaires. Apparently it’s was no accident that Ted Olsen, the Citizens United attorney, also happens to be legal counsel for Koch Industries.

The Koch Brothers’ Long History of Flouting the Law

As Palast reveals at the beginning of the interview, he was an FBI investigator prior to becoming an investigative journalist. During the late eighties, he was directly involved in investigating Charles Koch for illegally siphoning oil (beyond what Koch Industries had paid for) from Indian reservations. According to Palast, the FBI had videos of the whole operation, as well as numerous witness statements, including one from David and Charles’ younger brother Bill. The US attorney in Oklahoma went so far as to file an indictment against subject 67C (their code name for Charles Koch), when Koch leaned heavily on Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles (Rep 1988-2005) to have the federal prosecutor replaced and the indictment quashed.

With the possibility of criminal prosecution off the table, brother Bill Koch filed a civil lawsuit over the oil theft under the False Claims Act. The latter private plaintiffs to sue, on behalf of the government, companies and individuals which have defrauded it.

In December 1999, the jury found that Koch Industries had stolen oil it didn’t pay for from federal land, and the company paid a $25 million settlement to the federal government.

The FBI next turned its attention to 350 criminal violations of environmental law, mainly due to faulty pipelines dumping oil sludge into rivers. After George W. Bush became president in 2000, the US Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges. Two days before the trial, Attorney General John Ashcroft agreed to a plea bargain. The company pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled a civil lawsuit for a fraction of the criminal penalty.

The FBI – and Congress – Investigate Illegal Corporate Donations

Next on the FBI list of crimes was the smear campaign Koch Industries secretly funded, through the Campaign for Our Children’s Futures. This was in 1994 when corporate campaign donations were still illegal. The campaign, caused 25 incumbent Democrats to lose their seats, which meant Clinton lost Congress in the 1994 midterm election and again in 1996.

The illegal campaign donations were funded through an entity called Triad Management Services. Senator Fred Thompson, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee attempted to undertake an investigation into Triad. According to Palast, it was shut down the same day (ethically challenged) Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott made a deal with President Bill Clinton not to investigate his illegal campaign donations from the Indonesian billionaire James Riady.

*In Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruled that setting limits on campaign expenditures on corporations and labor unions violates their first amendment right to free speech.

**The Koch brothers are major funders of several conservative think tanks and lobbies, such as the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, the CATO Institute, and right wing Astroturf groups, such as the Campaign for America’s Future, the Campaign for a Fair Economy and the Tea Party). They’re also the major beneficiaries of the Keystone Pipeline

Profits, Not Crime, Drive Incarceration Rates

Inmate-run call center

This second post deals with the corporatization of US prisons and the private companies who profit from high incarceration rates.

US rates of violent and property crime have been declining steadily since 1990. Logically dropping crimes rates should produce a drop in incarceration rates. Yet until 2009, when 26 states acted to reduce prison populations, the exact opposite was true. As crime rates declined in state after state, the number of people they locked up skyrocketed.

Presently the US “enjoys” the highest incarceration rate in the world. At 500 per 100,000 population, it’s  five times higher than other developed countries.

A number of factors contribute to this disgrace. In my view, the first and most important is the enormous profit potential of American’s prison industry, resulting in major pressure on state legislatures from private for-profit prison companies and their friends at the American Legislative Exchange Council place on state legislatures. The second is a raft of tough-on-crime legislation driven by deliberate neoconservative race-based fear mongering. The third is the systematic defunding of mental health services in the US, leading to the warehousing of mentally ill patients in federal and state correctional facilities.

Profit, Not Crime, Drives Prison-Building Spree

Prison privatization, which began under Reagan in the 1980s, has turned incarceration and immigration detention into a multibillion dollar growth industry with its own trade shows, conventions, mail order catalogs and state and federal lobbyists. Unsurprisingly Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Wackenhut and the 16 other for-profit prison companies are major campaign donors to federal and state lawmakers who advocate tough-on-crime and tough-on-immigrant policies. These are usually the same legislators who sponsor bills to replace state prisons with private for profit correctional facilities.

Who’s Making Big Bucks Off Prison Privatization?

The booming private prison industry provides numerous opportunities for banks and other corporate interests to skim off profits at taxpayer expense:
1. The Wall Street investment banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs) who issue the bonds to finance the building of state and local prisons.
2. The private companies who run prisons – Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut are the largest, but there are now 18 altogether. CCA also operates our federal immigration detention facilities and helped write Arizona ‘s controversial immigration law.
3. Private companies that provide food services, health care, and assorted security paraphernalia to prisons.
4. Bed brokers who, in Texas, earn $2.50 – 5.50 per man-day (for the duration of a prisoner’s sentence) by recruiting prisoners from out of state.
5. Major corporations who save on labor costs in 37 states by contracting cheap prison labor.

The list of corporations employing cheap prison labor is extensive: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, JC Penny, Best Western Hotels, Honda, Chevron, BP, Victoria’s Secret, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more.

Virtual Slave Labor

Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage ($7.25). Not all do, though. In Colorado state prisons, they get about $2 per hour. In private prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour.

As Vicky Pelaez writes in Global Research, thanks to dirt cheap prison labor, manufacturing jobs that corporations previously outsourced to third world sweatshops are returning to the US. She gives the example of a company operating a maquiladora (Mexican assembly plant near the border) that closed down operations and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California.

The virtual slave labor that occurs in state prisons also drives down wages in neighboring communities. Pelaez gives the example of a Texas factory that fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoners at the private Lockhart Texas prison, who assemble circuit boards are assembled for IBM and Compaq.

BP also made profitable using of cheap prison labor in cleaning up Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many US corporation employ prison labor to staff their call centers. According to NBC News, If you recently called your motor vehicle department or received a telemarketing call from Microsoft or Hitatchi, it’s likely the person on the other end was a prisoner.

Another great resource on the scandalous prison industrial complex are is the excellent series Nation at Risk  at Deconstructing Myths.

photo credit: The Politics of Information

To be continued.

States Save Billions by Downsizing Prisons

This is the first of four posts on America’s scandalous prison industrial complex. I start with the good news. Thanks to the budget crisis most states have faced since the 2008 economic crash, US prison populations have shrunk by 600,000.

States Save Billions by Downsizing Prisons

An important silver lining of the 2008 economic downturn has been a decline in the US incarceration rate. Despite two decades of declining violent and property crime rates, the US still enjoys the highest incarceration rate (500 per 100,000 population) in the world. Nevertheless, thanks to the recession-related budget crisis in 48 state capitols, America’s prison population has started to fall. According to CBS News, between 2009 and 2012, it fell from a peak of 2.2 million to 1.57 million.

In 2013 prison populations rose slightly (there were an estimated 1,574,700 inmates on December 31, 2013 – an increase of 4,300 prisoners).

What explains this overall decline in prison occupancy? Between 2008 and mid-2013* every state except Montana and North Dakota faced yearly budget shortfalls. Because states aren’t allowed to run deficits, most had to make substantial cuts in “essential” state programs, including education, housing, highway maintenance and repair – and most importantly prisons.

In 2010, the last time such costs were calculated, the average annual cost of incarceration was $28,000 – $40,000 per inmate.

This definite budget breaker has led 26 states to resist lobbing by private prison operators such as Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut, Cornell Corrections and their friends at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and enact legislation to reduce prison numbers.

California’s Criminal Justice Realignment Act

California clearly leads the nation in this initiative. When the US Supreme Court (in May 2011) upheld a lower court ruling ordering them to reduce prison overcrowding, Sacramento had the hard choice between borrowing money to build more prisons, paying private prisons in other states to take their offenders or adopting the Criminal Justice Realignment Act. This legislation works to move nonviolent offenders out of the prison system, as well as finding alternatives to custodial sentences for new nonviolent offenders. Under the Realignment Act, the number of inmates in California prisons has dropped by 25,000 since 2011. The count of offenders on parole is down about 30,000, and prisoners held in private out-of-state prisons is down 10 percent.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation estimates that it saves $1.5 billion a year through realignment and will save another $2.2 billion a year by canceling $4.1 billion in new construction projects.

25 Other States Work to Cut Prison Populations

According to the ACLU and NORML, 25 other states are saving money by cutting and/or slowing the growth of their prison populations. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia are working to to reduce their incarceration of nonviolent offenders by decriminalizing marijuana.*

• Alabama – passed law allowing a sentencing commission to set new guidelines for nonviolent crimes.
• Alaska – decriminalized marijuana
• Colorado – shut down large penitentiary in view of falling crime rates and passed a ballot initiative in 2012 legalizing marijuana use for recreational purposes.
• Connecticut – became 17th state to repeal death penalty in April 2012, as well as decriminalizing marijuana.
• District of  Columbia – decriminalized marijuana.
• Florida – closed eight prisons that were built in anticipation of a crime wave that never occurred
• Georgia – passed bill reducing sentences for low level drug offenses and theft, creates drug and mental illness courts and establishes graduated sanctions, such as community service, for probation violations.
• Hawaii – passed law requiring the use of risk assessments in pretrial and parole hearings, to enable the identification of individuals who pose the most risk to public safety, as well as those who can be safely supervised outside of prison or jail.
• Illinois – passed SB 2621, reinstating a program that allows prisoners to reduce their sentences through good behavior and participation in reentry programs. The bill also provides incentives for prisoners to participate in programs, such as drug treatment, that reduce recidivism.
• Kansas – passed a law allowing judges to divert individuals convicted of low-level crimes from prison to less expensive and more effective substance abuse treatment.
• Louisiana – passed one law allowing prisoners serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes to go before a parole board to prove they are ready for release and another allowing inmates who have committed repeat low-level offenses to appear before a parole board after serving one-third of their sentences.
• Maine – decriminalized marijuana
• Maryland – passed a law increasing the number of offenses that must/can be charged via citation instead of arrest and detention.
• Massachusetts – decriminalized marijuana
• Minnesota – decriminalized marijuana
• Mississippi – decriminalized marijuana
• Missouri – passed one law reducing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses and another sending fewer people back to prison for technical violations of probation and parole, such as a missed meeting or failed drug test.
• Nebraska – decriminalized marijuana
• Nevada – decriminalized marijuana
• New York – decriminalized marijuana
• North Carolina – decriminalized marijuana
• Ohio – decriminalized marijuana
• Oregon – decriminalized marijuana
• Rhode Island – decriminalized marijuana
• Vermont – decriminalized marijuana
• Washington State – created the LEAD program, which diverts individuals charged with low-level offenses into community-based services, such as drug treatment, immediately after arrest and before booking. Also passed a ballot initiative in November 2012 legalizing recreational marijuana.

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*In 2013, increasing tax revenues enabled all but two states (Washington and California), to balance their budgets without major cuts.
**In most instances decriminalization means no prison time or criminal record for first-time possession of a small amount for personal consumption. Instead the offense is treated like a minor traffic violation.

photo credit: abardwell via photopin cc

38 States Call for Constitutional Convention

 

Can Red and Blue States Unite to Save Democracy?

One news item receiving virtually no corporate media attention is that thirty-eight state legislatures have officially requested a constitutional convention under Article V of the US Constitution. There has only been one constitutional convention – the first – in 1787. Article V requires Congress to call a constitutional convention if 2/3 of (34) states request one.

Most, but not all the resolutions are from red states calling for a balanced budget amendment. However two blue states, California and Vermont, have requested a constitutional convention to end corporate personhood and restrict corporate funding for elections.

Tallying the numbers is a bit complicated. According to the Congressional Record, forty-nine states* have requested constitutional conventions. Eleven of these forty-nine states later rescinded their requests.

ALEC Seeks to Restrict Delegate Freedom

Forbes Magazine argues you also have to subtract the states which have passed a delegate limitation act. This would prohibit delegates from considering any amendments other than those requested by their state.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the lobby group founded and funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, is very keen to see all states pass a delegate limitation act and have even drafted model legislation.

ALEC and the corporations they represent believe the delegates to a constitutional convention must be closely controlled to prevent a runaway convention from passing amendments unfriendly to corporate interests – e.g. an amendment ending corporate personhood and limiting the ability of corporations to overrule state and municipal laws. Three states (Georgia, Indiana and Florida) have passed delegate limitation legislation. Another seven states (Idaho, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin) are considering it.

Using a Balanced Budget Amendment to Abolish the Fed

Clearly ALEC is calling for a balanced budget amendment in the hope it will force the federal government to cut spending for Social Security, Medicare and other social programs. This strategy could backfire if it leads to a debate on abolishing the Federal Reserve and stripping private banks of their power to create money.

Eliminating federal debt will be extremely difficult, if not impossible without scrapping a system in which nearly all our money is produced as debt (i.e. loans by private banks). There’s growing grassroots support on both the right and the left to abolish the Fed (see James  Corbett’s excellent documentary explaining how banks create money out of thin air.) A constitutional convention could be the ideal scenario to make this happen.

Why Red and Blue States Need to Work Together

California and Vermont are only the first of many blue states in the Move to Amend coalition seeking a constitutional convention to end corporate personhood. The vital question here is whether red states seeking a balanced budget amendment will be open to talking to blue states seeking to limit the de facto ability of corporations to overturn state and municipal laws.

The corporate media has been extremely cagey of late about magnifying the distrust and enmity between the two camps. I find this quite sad as there are many issues on which the so-called “extreme” right and left agree, like ending NSA spying, ending the wars in the Middle East, abolishing the Fed, restoring civil liberties guaranteed under the Bill of Rights, ending the President’s abuse of executive power and curtailing the power of the corporate oligarchy.

I think it’s a very good sign that a non-partisan group called Friends of the Article V Convention is keeping count of the states. There has been some talk the Friends may file suit if Congress fails to set wheels in motion for a constitutional convention.

States Seek Broad Range of Amendments

In addition to requesting a constitutional convention to pass amendmentss calling for a balanced federal budget and an end to corporate personhood, various state petitions seek amendments to limit federal income taxes, to begin negotiations for a world federation (i.e. one world government), to change apportionment for the Electoral College and the House of Representatives, to increase federal revenue sharing, to end federal interference in school management, to guarantee a right to life, to end unfunded federal mandates, to end judicial taxing power, to establish term limits for federal office holders and to restrict new laws to a single subject.

There are a few more I would add to this list, including constitutional amendments abolishing the Electoral College, restoring Posse Comitatus and limiting the ability of the President to rule via executive order. I’m sure readers have their own personal favorites.

*The 49 states which have formally requested a constitutional convention:

• Alabama: balanced budget, June 2011
• Alaska: federal fiscal restraints and term limits, April 2014
• Arizona: ending judicial taxing power, Mar 1996, rescinded 2003
• Arkansas: right to life amendment, May 1977
• California: abolish corporate personhood, June 2014
• Colorado: unfunded federal mandates, June 1992
• Connecticut: prohibit interstate income tax, May 1958
• Delaware: balanced budget amendment, Feb 1976
• Florida: balanced budget, term limits, limit laws to 1 subject, April 2014
• Georgia: balanced budget, Feb 2014
• Idaho: limit income tax, April 1989, rescinded 1999
• Illinois: increase federal revenue sharing, June 1976
• Indiana: right to life, balanced budget, 1977, 1979
• Iowa: balanced budget, June 1979
• Kansas: balanced budget, May 1978
• Kentucky: change apportionment for House, Oct 1965
• Louisiana: balanced budget, May 2014
• Maine: limit income tax, April 1941
• Maryland: right to life, Jan 1977
• Massachusetts: right to life, 1977
• Michigan: balanced budget, Nov 2013
• Minnesota: change apportionment for House, May 1965
• Mississippi: right to life, Feb 1979
• Missouri: unfunded federal mandates, Mar 1993
• Montana: change apportionment for Electoral College, Mar 1973, rescinded 2007
• Nebraska: balanced budget, April 2010
• Nevada: right to life, unfunded federal mandates, June 1979
• New Hampshire: balanced budget, May 2012
• New Jersey: right to life, April 1977
• New Mexico: balanced budget, Feb 1979
• New York: federal interference with school management, Oct 1972
• North Carolina: balanced budget, Feb 1979
• North Dakota: end judicial taxing power, Mar 1996
• Ohio: balanced budget, Nov 2013
• Oklahoma: change apportionment for Electoral College, May 1965, rescinded 2009
• Oregon: balanced budget, Feb 1979, rescinded 1999
• Pennsylvania: balanced budget, Feb 1979
• Rhode Island: right to life, May 1977
• South Carolina: balanced budged Feb 1979, rescinded 2004
• South Dakota: unfunded federal mandates, rescinded 2010
• Tennessee: balanced budget, April 2014
• Texas: balanced budget, Mar 1979
• Utah: right to life, rescinded 2001
• Vermont: corporate personhood, April 2014
• Virginia, change apportionment for House, May 1964, rescinded 2004
• Washington: change apportionment for House, Mar 1963
• West Virginia: increase federal revenue sharing, Jan 1971, rescinded 2001
• Wisconsin: change apportionment for Electoral College, Mar 1963
• Wyoming: change apportionment for House, mode of amending constitution, Feb 1963, rescinded 2009

Photo credit Wikimedia Commons

Also posted in Veterans Today