According To US District Judge, All Men (And Corporations) Are Created Equal

Is it possible that our Founding Fathers actually intended for wealthy corporate lobbyists and special interests groups to have a financial say-so in determining who is elected by way of their deep pockets? U.S. District Judge James Cacheris thinks so.

Wake Up America.. You are being outbid for your choice of elected leadership!!

A U.S. judge has ruled that the campaign finance law banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates is unconstitutional, saying that a recent Supreme Court decision gives companies the same right to donate as individual citizens enjoy.

In a ruling issued late Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Cacheris tossed out part of an indictment against two people charged with illegally reimbursing donors to Hillary Clinton's 2006 Senate and 2008 presidential campaigns.

Cacheris says that under the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision last year, corporations have the right to give to federal candidates.

The ruling from the federal judge in Virginia is the first of its kind. The Citizens United case had applied only to corporate spending on campaign activities by independent groups, such as ads run by third parties to favor one side, not to direct contributions to the candidates themselves.

Cacheris noted in his ruling that only one other court has addressed the issue in the wake of Citizens United ruling. A federal judge in Minnesota ruled the other way, allowing a state ban on corporate contributions to stand.

"(F)or better or worse, Citizens United held that there is no distinction between an individual and a corporation with respect to political speech," Cacheris wrote in his 52-page opinion. "Thus, if an individual can make direct contributions within (the law's) limits, a corporation cannot be banned from doing the same thing."

In court papers, federal prosecutors defending the law said overturning the ban on corporate contributions would ignore a century of legal precedent.

"Defendants would have the court throw out a century of jurisprudence upholding the ban on corporate political contributions, by equating expenditures — which the Court struck down in Citizens United — with contributions. This is, however, equating apples and oranges," prosecutor Mark Lytle wrote in his argument to keep the indictment intact.

In the count that was tossed out, defendants William P. Danielczyk Jr. and Eugene R. Biagi were charged with helping funnel corporate funds to the presidential campaign of Clinton, now the U.S. secretary of state. Specifically, they were charged with using money from the corporation they controlled, Galen Capital Group, to reimburse individuals who made contributions in their own names.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, which is prosecuting the case along with the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, said Friday that the office is reviewing the ruling. Prosecutors have the option to appeal the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

Defense lawyers, though, said the implications of the Citizens United case are clear.

"Corporate political speech can now be regulated, only to the same extent as the speech of individuals or other speakers," Biagi's lawyer, public defender Todd Richman, wrote in court papers. "That is because Citizens United establishes that there can be no distinction between corporate and other speakers in the regulation of political speech."

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that supports campaign finance reform, said Friday that Cacheris overstepped his bounds and ignored Supreme Court rulings issued before Citizens United that explicitly upheld the ban on corporate contributions. If the Supreme Court had wanted to overturn the ban, it could have done so directly in Citizens United.

"This decision ought to be appealed, and it ought to be overturned," Wertheimer said.

University of Virginia law professor Daniel Ortiz said the ruling "pushes the outer limits of the Citizens United logic." He said he does not expect it to stand.

The Citizens United case makes a distinction, Ortiz said, between independent expenditures by corporations that are not coordinating with a federal candidate's campaign, and direct campaign contributions.

As a practical matter, Ortiz said that even if Cacheris' ruling stands, its practical effect may be negligible because corporations would be subject to the same contribution limits imposed on individuals — $2,500 per candidate per election. Cacheris himself makes a similar point in his ruling, saying in a footnote that "this finding hardly gives corporations a blank check."

On the other hand, individuals can form an unlimited number of corporations, which could create a significant loophole in the law if unchecked.

Under existing law, corporations that want to contribute directly to federal candidates must form a political action committee — 1,683 corporate PACs existed at the start of the year, according to the most recent count from the Federal Election Commission. PACs are allowed to contribute to a candidate at twice the amount of an individual — $5,000 per election instead of $2,500 — but those PACS must use segregated funds and face strict limitations on how much they can raise and from whom.

In the pending case, Danielczyk, 49, and Biagi, 76, who live in the Washington suburb of Oakton, Va., allegedly reimbursed $30,200 to eight contributors to Clinton's 2006 New York Senate campaign, and reimbursed $156,400 to 35 contributors to her 2008 presidential campaign.

Cacheris, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan who is also the brother of prominent defense lawyer Plato Cacheris, allowed most of the indictment against Danielczyk and Biagi to stand. If the government does not appeal Cacheris' ruling on the constitutionality of corporate contributions, the case is scheduled to go to trial in July. 

Article by Mathew Barakat, Associated Press

50 Mind Blowing Facts About America That Our Founding Fathers Never Would Have Believed

If our Founding Fathers were alive today, what would they think of America?  Surely they would be very proud that the United States stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and has built some of the most amazing cities that the world has ever seen.  

They would probably be surprised that the country they founded went on to become the greatest economic machine in the history of the world, and they would be absolutely astounded by things like our interstate highway system and the Internet.  However, there are quite a number of things that they would be horrified about as well.  

The fact that over 40 million Americans are dependent on the federal government for their daily food would be deeply disturbing to our founders.  Also, the fact that the U.S. government has accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in human history would be incredibly distressing to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the founders.  But perhaps most of all, our founders would be absolutely disgusted that the land where Americans could once be free to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has become so tightly regulated and controlled that Americans dare not even squeak without the permission of the federal government.

Needless to say, our founders would certainly not understand many of our institutions or many of the advanced technologies that we have today.  But without a doubt they would be able to grasp how far we have fallen as a nation and how far we have strayed from the fundamental principles that they enshrined in our founding documents.  The United States is a much different place today than it was in 1776, and unfortunately many of the changes have been for the worse.

The following are 50 mind blowing facts about modern America that our Founding Fathers never would have believed....

#1 In 2010, not only does the United States have a central bank, but it also runs our economy and issues all of our currency.  The Federal Reserve has devalued the U.S. dollar by over 95 percent since 1913 and it has been used to create the biggest mountain of government debt in the history of the world. 

#2 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that U.S. government agents can legally sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, place a secret GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of you everywhere that you go.

#3 The 50 wealthiest members of Congress saw their collective fortunes increase by 85.1 million dollars to $1.4 billion in 2009.

#4 The U.S. government has accumulated a national debt that is rapidly approaching the 14 trillion dollar mark.

#5 All over the United States, asphalt roads are being ground up and are being replaced with gravel because it is cheaper to maintain.  The state of South Dakota has transformed over 100 miles of asphalt road into gravel over the past year, and 38 out of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan have now turned some of their asphalt roads into gravel roads.

#6 Americans now owe more than $849 billion on student loans, which is more than the total amount that Americans owe on their credit cards.

#7 In 2010, Americans waste an astounding amount of food.  According to a study by the California Integrated Waste Management board, 63 percent of the average supermarket's waste stream is food. When you break that down, it means that each supermarket wastes approximately 3,000 pounds of food each year.

#8 The city of Cleveland plans to sort through curbside trash to ensure that people are actually recycling properly.  If it is discovered that some citizens are not recycling they will be hit with very large fines.

#9 Once upon a time, U.S. industry was the envy of the world.  But since 1979, manufacturing employment in the United States has fallen by 40 percent.

#10 Even though the U.S. population has exploded in size, the number of Americans with manufacturing jobs today is smaller than the number of Americans who were employed in manufacturing in 1950.

#11 Having one out of every eight Americans enrolled in the food stamp program is now considered "the new normal" and Americans continue to drop into poverty in astounding numbers.

#12 One out of every six Americans is now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.

#13 A family of four actually has difficulty surviving on an income of $50,000 a year in America in 2010.

#14 Barack Obama is backing a proposal to create a national database that will store the DNA of all individuals who have been arrested, even if they end up not being convicted of a crime.

#15 In 2010, it takes the average unemployed American worker over 8 months to find a job.

#16 The U.S. government has made some parts of Arizona off limits to U.S. citizens because of the threat of violence from Mexican drug smugglers.  The federal government has actually posted signs more than 100 miles north of the Mexican border warning travelers that certain areas are unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers.

#17 One recent survey of last year's college graduates  discovered that 80 percent moved right back home with their parents after graduation.

#18 In one of the very first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a U.S. military judge ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.

#19 The average American worker now pays literally dozens of different kinds of taxes each year.

#20 In recent years the U.S. government has spent $2.6 million tax dollars to study the drinking habits of Chinese prostitutes and $400,000 tax dollars to pay researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires, Argentina to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior when drunk.

#21 Christians are being arrested and thrown in jail in some areas of the United States for quietly passing out Christian literature on public sidewalks.

#22 The Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice has announced that it will begin using cutting edge analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents and will place "potential offenders" in prevention and education programs.

#23 Organic milk is now considered such a national crisis that the FDA has been conducting military style raids on Amish farmers in the state of Pennsylvania.

#24 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that they are considering a crackdown on farm dust.

#25 According to a new CDC report, nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis.

#26 Oakland, California Police Chief Anthony Batts says that due to severe budget cuts there are a number of crimes that his department will simply not be able to respond to any longer.  The crimes that the Oakland police will no longer be responding to include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism.

#27 Today, Americans are losing their homes in staggering numbers.  One out of every seven mortgages was delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010.

#28 Many of our leading scientists are now calling themselves "transhumanists" and are openly proclaiming that a future where men have fully merged with machines is inevitable.

#29 Americans who spend large amounts of cash are viewed as "potential criminals" by the U.S. government in 2010.

#30 New full body security scanners going into airports all across the United States can actually see through our clothing and produce very clear and very detailed images of our exposed bodies as we walk through them.

#31 The U.S. financial system has become a massive gambling parlor in 2010.  As a result, a horrific derivatives bubble has developed that threatens to destroy our entire economy at any moment.  Nobody knows exactly how big the derivatives bubble is, but low estimates place it at around 600 trillion dollars and high estimates put it at around 1.5 quadrillion dollars.  Once that bubble pops there simply will not be enough money in the entire world to fix it.

#32 The U.S. government is spending an amount of money equivalent to approximately 25.4 percent of GDP this year.

#33 Today, 10,000 people make 30% of the total income in the United States.

#34 A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation discovered that 250 employees of the Defense Department used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations.  However, the investigation also found that the Pentagon investigated only a handful of those cases.

#35 According to a recent poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.

#36 Approximately 57 percent of Barack Obama's 3.8 trillion dollar budget for 2011 consists of direct payments to individual Americans or is money that is spent on their behalf.

#37 A recent Department of Justice guide for investigators of criminal and extremist groups lists "constitutionalists" and "survivalists" alongside organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood.

#38 The U.S. trade deficit has exploded to nightmarish proportions over the past two decades.  Every single month tens of billions more dollars goes out of the United States than comes into it.  Essentially, the United States is becoming far poorer as a nation each and every month.

#39 Factories are closing in droves across the United States because the American people would rather buy things made in China.

#40 Millions upon millions of good paying middle class jobs are being shipped off to China and they are never coming back.  Meanwhile, U.S. politicians stand by idly and do nothing.

#41 Some analysts now believe that China could become the largest economy in the world by the year 2020.

#42 If the U.S. government was forced to use GAAP accounting principles (like all publicly-traded corporations must), the annual U.S. government budget deficit would be somewhere in the neighborhood of four to five trillion dollars.

#43 According to one recent survey, 28% of all U.S. households have at least one person that is currently searching for a full-time job.

#44 The U.S. dollar continues to rapidly decline in value.  An item that cost $20.00 in 1970 will cost you $112.35 today.  An item that cost $20.00 in 1913 will cost you $440.33 today.

#45 Major international organizations are actually proposing that the United States start considering the adoption of a truly global currency.

#46 Students at a high school in Missouri have built a car that they claim can get up to 450 miles per gallon.  On another note, some of the top energy experts in the world believe that thorium could solve our energy problems and supply very cheap energy for society for hundreds of thousands of years.  But in today's world technologies such as these are endlessly suppressed by the rich and powerful.

#47 One Colorado high school student is seeking an explanation from officials at his school after he was ordered by security guards to remove American flags from his truck because they might make other students at the high school "uncomfortable".

#48 Three California high school students were recently forced to remove their American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo.

#49 Memorial crosses erected along Utah public roads to honor fallen state troopers have been found unconstitutional by a federal appeals court and now must be removed permanently.

#50 One group of high school students made national headlines recently when they revealed that a security guard ordered them to stop singing the national anthem during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

Article by The Economic Collapse