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posted by martyb on Friday August 19 2016, @01:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the !progressive dept.

Democracy Now! reports via AlterNet

Ken Salazar is a former U.S. Senator from Colorado who now works at WilmerHale, one of the most influential lobbying firms in Washington. Some groups have criticized Salazar's selection due to his vocal support of fracking, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Keystone XL pipeline.

In addition to Ken Salazar, other leaders of the transition team include former Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Maggie Williams, the director of Harvard's Institute of Politics.

[...] WilmerHale [represents] corporate clients across the board--Cigna, for instance. Cigna is a healthcare giant that is fighting for a merger with Anthem. WilmerHale represents them, Delta Airlines, Verizon, investment firms, a mining company. So, WilmerHale is a major law and lobbying firm.

Ken Salazar is not a registered lobbyist at WilmerHale; he is a partner there. Interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton had published a year ago an op-ed deriding the revolving door where lawmakers leave office and become lobbyists or help special interests. And she had specifically said that she was concerned about lawmakers who go into that line of work, public policy work, for corporate clients, but do not register as a lobbyist, which seems to fit the description of Ken Salazar.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @05:01AM

    by Francis (5544) on Friday August 19 2016, @05:01AM (#389931)

    Wrong, the issue we have is that we let the Supreme Court rule that money was speech and that corporations were people and didn't amend the constitution to fix the problem.

    Our government functioned just fine until that change was made sometime back in the '70s.

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  • (Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Friday August 19 2016, @06:47AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Friday August 19 2016, @06:47AM (#389960)

    Don't be a weasel. You either believe in free speech or you don't. Be honest and go ahead and say you don't.

    Double dog dare ya you have the stones to actually explain how you want to ban speech by people you don't approve of. Lemme guess, the legacy media should be the only ones to be able to tell is what the issues are and what we should think about them. You probably would license em just to make sure they all stay on the plantation.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @02:10PM

      by Francis (5544) on Friday August 19 2016, @02:10PM (#390069)

      Sigh, this ignorance again.

      Money is not speech, speech is speech. Allowing a small group of oligarchs to flood the airwaves with so much of their speech that nobody else's message gets through is not free speech. It's an infringement of other people's speech. Same goes for AM radio stations and Fox News that don't even bother to try and cover news accurately.

      They represent an existential threat to the republic and need to be stopped.

      What's more, a corporation is not a person. As a bumper sticker I saw said, "I'll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one."

      And it's not about legacy media, it's about requiring that the media cover things from more than one angle. We used to have the fairness doctrine and limits on media conglomeration that largely dealt with the issue. Just because you're a sheep that believes that we can't have an independent media that covers more than one side of the issues, doesn't mean that's true. Back before all the media conglomeration there'd be multiple papers, radio or TV stations covering the same news and competing with each other over scoops. It wasn't a perfect system, but it meant that the news was generally well covered for the important topics of the day.

      We lost our second paper years back and pretty soon after the one surviving paper took a hard turn to the right.

      • (Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Friday August 19 2016, @05:30PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Friday August 19 2016, @05:30PM (#390176)

        I rest my case. Just a small poke and the hate flows against any speech you disagree with and "BAN IT!"

        You probably don't even know what Citizens United was even about, and don't care. But for anyone else it was dead simple. The Democratic Party (elected wing) in the FEC tried to ban a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton. In oral argument at the Supreme Court one of the Justices cut to the chase and directly asked the question at the heart of it, that if instead of a film would the FEC also be attempting to ban a book with the same content. When the Democrat said yes the case was over. Everyone knew instantly what the verdict would be because only one verdict was possible. Francis up there and most Democrats are still, years later, butthurt because the Supreme Court did the right thing.

        Back before all the media conglomeration there'd be multiple papers, radio or TV stations covering the same news and competing with each other over scoops.

        You have to be joking. Back when there were exactly three news directors at three newtorks taking their script from exactly one newspaper was better? Who cares how many newspapers you have left, soon it will be zero because their business model is obsolete. Look at the Internet. A new voice can start literally with nothing. Matt Drudge started with an AOL subscription. You can too.

        But here is francis and friends' bottom line.

        THEY WANT TO BAN BOOKS. THEY WANT TO BAN TV STATIONS. THEY WANT THE POWER TO BAN RADIO. THEY WANT THE POWER TO REGULATE THE INTERNET. They want the power to regulate newspapers too but they are dead so who cares.

        I want anyone reading this to scroll back up to francis's post and keep one thought in mind as you reread it. Who will be deciding when you or your organization has had 'enough free speech'? Who will decide when Fox News has become 'fair' and whether the NYT, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and ABC are 'fair.' By what criteria will they be tasked with deciding? Will they, as the lead lawyer in Citizens United wanted, be equally tasked with making sure our books are also 'fair and balanced' or will they back off of that demand... for now? Whoever it is will be a government employee. So the government will be in charge of deciding who can criticize it and how they may do so. What will you do when it is Donald Trump's administration deciding whether your favorite author is 'fair'?

        No.

        Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

        That is enforcable. It is easy to know when the government has crossed that line.

        • (Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @06:10PM

          by Francis (5544) on Friday August 19 2016, @06:10PM (#390199)

          First off, whether or not I agree with the speech, having only one POV being expressed is a very dangerous thing. You seem to be OK with that only POV being the one from moneyed interests, but I'm not. Why do you hate freedom?

          As for the previous state of affairs, 3 TV stations and usually at least 2 different papers. For most major cities there were even dozens of minor neighborhood papers. They still exist to a point, but there's nothing stopping a company from buying up media in the same market and consolidating it into something that's then consolidated with media across the country.

          Lastly, the first amendment means that they can't play favorites. It doesn't mean that they can't set ground rules over the speech. Libel and defamation are both illegal, but by your argument that would be a violation of the first amendment. Same goes for fraud. Nobody gets to engage in those practices because they're damaging to the republic. Same goes for moneyed interests buying up all the advertising space to post their agenda.

          Ultimately, the first amendment is about ensuring that people have the ability to communicate on a largely even playing field. Allowing for people to shout over all the other views is extremely damaging to the ability of the people to control their government. Being rich should not come with bonus opportunities to express yourself beyond what people normally have. And certainly not by laundering the money through corporations.

          • (Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Sunday August 21 2016, @04:47AM

            by jmorris (4844) on Sunday August 21 2016, @04:47AM (#390893)

            First off, whether or not I agree with the speech, having only one POV being expressed is a very dangerous thing. You seem to be OK with that only POV being the one from moneyed interests, but I'm not.

            Not at all. I grew up in a world where my viewpoint wasn't heard on the mainstream media. Then in the 1990s I found Limbaugh out on the crappy AM band nobody cared about and around the turn of the century we got FNC on our cable. It was something entirely different from what I thought possible, something in the ballpark with what I though being talked about openly. But the Internet also came around that time and almost instantly showed the potential up upend the monopoly on the media the Progressives had. The difference is I simply welcome the additional voices, you want to shut them up.

            Citizens United was a case of essentially crowdfunded journalism, people banding together to fund what the 'media' should have been doing had they actually been in the journalism business. You want that sort of thing to be illegal. I on the other hand don't care how many fauxumenteries Micheal Moore farts out so long as we can play the game too. You can't stand the idea of ideas you disagree with getting exposure.

            You blither on mindlessly about corporate influence but say not a damned word about Comcast == NBC == Democrat Party, Disney Corp == ABC == Democrat Party, Viacom == CBS == Democrat Party, Carlos Slim == NYT == Socialist, Jeff Bezos == WaPo == Democrat Party, The US Government == PBS/NPR == Democrat Party, etc. The labor unions pour billions into the Democrat Party but a bunch of people form a corporate entity to push a counter narrative and you want them in jail.

            Lastly, the first amendment means that they can't play favorites.

            But that is the last thing you guys want. You want government approved corporate 'journalists' to be the only ones who can speak.

            Being rich should not come with bonus opportunities to express yourself beyond what people normally have.

            I'll remember that when some rich celebutard is dominating the airwaves with idiocy. Somehow I doubt you want to silence Katy Perry when she is blithering mindlessly about how great Hillary is instead of shutting up and singing. So you just don't like rich people who disagree with you.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @02:10PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @02:10PM (#390070)

      Limiting money's impact on the political process is in keeping with the equal protection clause. The whole value of free speech is that it allows ideas to thrive or die based on their inherent value not on the political power wielded by those the ideas appeal to. By allowing an unevenly distributed resource like money be used as political speech, you grant more political power to the rich and they are now more equal than others and the ideas they like continue on for that reason alone. IOW, money=speech kills the value of the right to free speech for most of the people.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @06:53AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @06:53AM (#389963)

    and didn't amend the constitution to fix the problem.

    Your position seems to be that, to the legal system, the Supreme Court is always right. So what's the point of the constitution or any amendments? The Supreme Court could just arbitrarily override anything when it's convenient.

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @02:04PM

      by Francis (5544) on Friday August 19 2016, @02:04PM (#390063)

      That's how the constitution works. The Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on what is and isn't constitutional. And they have a general resistance to overturning precedence.

      And yes, they can arbitrarily override things when convenient. That's a result of people being appointed to the court for political reasons rather than because of their sound jurisprudence. Scalia and Thomas are particularly egregious examples.

      It shocks me a bit that people around here don't know that. Well, the non-Americans not knowing that is understandable, but Americans should know that.

  • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday August 19 2016, @07:14AM

    by cubancigar11 (330) on Friday August 19 2016, @07:14AM (#389967) Homepage Journal

    You are lucky that curroption was formalized. You haven't lived in countries where corruption happens behind the scenes and pointing it out can get you arrested.

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 19 2016, @02:14PM

      by Francis (5544) on Friday August 19 2016, @02:14PM (#390074)

      I disagree, a corrupt system like that is one that will eventually change. At some point people will get fed up with it and have enough civil disobedience that it changes. Or the system just fails under its own weight.

      A system with formalized corruption can generally go on like that indefinitely as there's going to be people that don't see it and it's generally more stable so the civil unrest is somewhat less likely.

      • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday August 19 2016, @05:17PM

        by cubancigar11 (330) on Friday August 19 2016, @05:17PM (#390162) Homepage Journal

        That is just wishful thinking in a globalized world. Let us change our understanding of the system first by acknowledging that:
        1) There are no land masses left to discover.
        2) There are no land masses where you can declare yourself a winner, do whatever-the-hell you want to, and basically become the system.
        3) That revolutions are going to happen.

        Look at the the latest history - look in middle east which was apparently going through some sort of "spring". Just see what is happening there. Which country is funding which authoritarian regime. What is happening to the mastermind of this butcher (HINT: she is about to become the most power woman in the world). Let us just accept the fact that your situation under a system that accepts and formalizes corruption is way way waaaaaaay better than people participating in a revolution against a corrupt system that is several continents away from your country. This is a globalized world and time has come for us to modify our behavior accordingly. Tough for you, but I don't think you are billionaire.

        When the so called world-wars were happening, only a handful of countries were fighting each other albeit all over the world. The failure of system you are hoping for, this time, will be true world war where all the countries will be fighting with each other and all the governments will have nuclear weapon. There is no shorter way.

        • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Friday August 19 2016, @05:20PM

          by cubancigar11 (330) on Friday August 19 2016, @05:20PM (#390169) Homepage Journal

          *****

          3) That revolutions NOT are going to happen.

          Filler for our mighty STUPID filter. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.