Recently Professor Greenwood switched from University of Utah to Hofstra Law School, so he has a new web page with links to all his writings:

http://people.hofstra.edu/Daniel_J_Greenwood/

Sample article titles:

“Should Corporations Have First Amendment Rights?” (a classic)

“Democracy and Delaware: The Mysterious Race to the Top/Bottom”
From the abstract: Re-politicizing corporate law would allow us to see a series of difficult value choices that are currently concealed but ought to be the subject of political debate”

“Markets and Democracy: The Illegitimacy of Corporate Law”

“Introduction to the Metaphors of Corporate Law”

“First Amendment Imperialism”

“The Semi-Sovereign Corporation” (very good)

“Essential Speech: Why Corporate Speech is Not Free” (awesome article!!!)

- Posted by Ted Nace for USTV Media

Guess we can’t be too surprised, though. Hopefully people won’t be nearly as prone to swallow the BS from them the way they have done in the past. I really like how the guy phrases it at the end that they just want to raise the focus on violent crime.

On a website he calls ExposeObama.com, Floyd G. Brown, the producer of the “Willie Horton” ad that helped defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988, is preparing an encore.

Brown is raising money for a series of ads that he says will show Barack Obama to be out of touch on an issue of fundamental concern to voters: violent crime.

By “violent crime” does he mean the war in Iraq? Come to think of it, Floyd, I’m glad you’ve brought that up, since it does seem to be disappearing as an issue from the media landscape.

Brown and GOP strategists say such ads stimulate a debate on crime and punishment and may provide a window into the morality of a candidate.

As well as providing a window into the morality of those who willfully distort these subjects for partisan political gain. Hopefully this will indeed stimulate a debate on crime and punishment. How about a debate on the massive crimes of fraud and theft being waged against the American taxpayer by privileged ruling elites governing from Wall Street who use their position to bilk taxpayers of billions in their money raking pursuit of endless cash through the policy of perpetual war? That’s one debate I think we may be overdue in having, particularly via the platform of the corporate media.

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From his Letter To Madison…

On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.

This principle that the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead is of very extensive application and consequences in every country, and most especially in France. It enters into the resolution of the questions Whether the nation may change the descent of lands holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation of lands given antiently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity? whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole catalogue ecclesiastical and feudal? it goes to hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions; to hereditary orders, distinctions and appellations; to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts or sciences; with a long train of et ceteras: and it renders the question of reimbursement a question of generosity and not of right. In all these cases the legislature of the day could authorize such appropriations and establishments for their own time, but no longer; and the present holders, even where they or their ancestors have purchased, are in the case of bona fide purchasers of what the seller had no right to convey.

Read a complete online copy of the note Here

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she [Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason”] said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.

The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”

“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.

At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”

We’re doomed.

Read The Complete Article

Rick Shenkman follows up with his report “How Ignorant Are We?”

Looks like the answer is unfortunately pretty ignorant.

In a 2006 opinion for a unanimous court written by Roberts, the former corporate litigator, the court told taxpayers they had no right to challenge the State of Ohio’s tax abatements and investment credits extended to DaimlerChrysler. Taxpayers had argued that they and their communities would sustain injury because the less money DaimlerChrysler paid, the less money the state would distribute mandated revenue to its cities.

But Roberts and his colleagues offered a short lesson in neoconservative, supply-side economics: “The very point of the tax benefits is to spur economic activity, which in turn increases government revenues.” Apparently, the conservative activists of the Bush-Roberts Court have rejected the observation of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that “A constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory.”

When the DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno case is read together with Kelo v. City of New London (2005) - a controversial case permitting private homes to be condemned so that the land on which they sit can be transferred to a private developer - the result is a population stripped of all defenses against corporate power. Workers and taxpayers cannot fight against corporations that take property for the benefit of profit-making, and they are just as powerless to seek redress in court when a town’s officials give the store away to a corporation.

Read the complete article Here from In These Times

As the encomiums for George Carlin have rolled in from stand-up legends, celebrities and scholars, his death at 71 has also been noted at a diminutive, iconic and iconoclastic radio station in Manhattan, WBAI-FM.

Its broadcast of the comedian’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” became a landmark moment in the history of free speech. In a 1978 milestone in the station’s contentious and unruly history, WBAI lost a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that to this day has defined the power of the government over broadcast material it calls indecent.

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Now, broadcasting the seven words „would cost us $360,000 per incident “so those seven words would cost us $2.5 million,” Mr. Riddle said, about equal to the station‚s annual budget. “Now we’d be severely limited in taking a chance on protecting people’s free-speech rights.”

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The station that for generations has spoken truth to power is incongruously situated on the 10th floor of 120 Wall Street, and smack in the middle of the FM dial, at 99.5. Now in its 48th year, WBAI was both an expression, and ringleader, of the counterculture during its peak in the mid-1960s through the Vietnam War.

Observers have said that in its heyday, its on-air personalities, like Mr. Josephson, Steve Post and Bob Fass, extended the popularity of FM radio and explored the possibilities of the medium.

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Mr. Riddle, who joined the station in February, said that “it’s always difficult to run a democracy,” adding that “a lot of people believe in the kind of radio we provide,” since the station does not accept advertising, underwriting or grants.

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On Feb. 17, 2009, a massive but so far little-noted corporate theft of the public airwaves will be consummated as U.S. analog TV stations switch to digital TV (DTV) broadcasting. Digital broadcast technology enables three, four and sometimes more separate channels to be compressed into the space formerly occupied by a single old-fashioned analog TV channel. So when the transition from analog to digital TV occurs nationwide, each of the nation’s more than 1,700 broadcast TV license holders will suddenly have two, three or more additional channels, a gift from the taxpayers worth an estimated $70 billion.

Back in the mid-1990s, the owners of TV stations promised Congress that the advent of DTV would bring with it a wide selection of new programming, educational and children’s shows, frequently updated local newscasts and interactive content, all free, over the new digital broadcast airwaves. Of course, they lied.

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If they are going to act like lemmings, then they should have the lemming for their symbol.

The Democrats should keep the jackass.

That’s my opinion.

- Stephen Bickford, East Hartford, CT

Tomas is a bright light in a dark time.

On May 23 last month Tomas Young suffered a pulmonary embolism in the middle of the night and was found in his home the next day– in a coma. He has been struggling to get better ever since, and is still able to infuse humor into the scariest and darkest moments.

When Tomas emerged from the coma, he asked to see a doctor. He took a long pause and muttered “Dr. Cornell West or Dr. Dre, please.” Then he slipped off to sleep again.

Tomas served as Executive Producer the film’s companion album, “Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq War Veteran”, featuring 23 songs chosen by Tomas, including songs by Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Tom Morello, Michael Franti, Bright Eyes, Lupe Fiasco, Tori Amos, Public Enemy and Serj Tankian. Tomas designated the Iraq Veterans Against the War to receive the profits from this album.

Tomas and his family have been on a medical rollercoaster ride, in an out of the I.C.U., with rapid improvements followed by sudden set-backs. Tomas began to improve and was talking and cracking more jokes when he was struck with an infection that left him back in an unresponsive state in intensive care. When he emerged yet again, he struggled to identify the people in the room. His mom started playing his i-pod and Tomas began to sing. Tomas could barely speak, and his short-term memory was out-of-whack, but he could sing! Hooked up to oxygen, heart monitors and an IV, Tomas sang all the lyrics to Franti’s “Light up Ya Lighter” and Vedder’s “No More”. He also conjured up some Rod Stewart singing “if you like my body and you think I’m sexy, come on baby let me know

While Tomas was in intensive care getting his musical memory back and making nurses laugh their heads off, dozens of Kansas City activists held an anti-war protest in his honor. One protester held a sign that read “We Cherish Tomas Young, a true patriot. Our thoughts are with you. George W. Bush, a mass murderer, we are thinking about you, too!”

When Body of War screened in Los Angeles, Ron Kovic, the Vietnam veteran whose life was the basis for the movie Born on the Fourth of July, stood before the crowd and said

“It was Martin Luther King who once said ‘a time comes when silence is betrayal.’ A time comes when silence is betrayal…We’re not going to be silent anymore in this country. Because of heroic people like Tomas Young. Tomas Young is a hero. Give Tomas your support, give him your love. Give your love and support to every young man and woman who comes home from this war. We support our troops, but we want our troops home now! Bring the troops home now. Keep fighting for peace. Tomas Young is my hero.”

Tomas Young is OUR hero, too.

To help Tomas in his healing process, go to b>www.bodyofwar.com, click on Take Action and do something in honor of Tomas to bring the troops home, including Tomas’ younger brother Nathan.

Please write to Tomas and tell him what you did in his honor :
St. Luke’s Hospital, 4401 Wornall, Kansas City, MO 64111

With hope and optimism,
Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue

We can finally see those who abandoned reporting for cheerleading and flag-waving and cheap ratings having to squirm over their role in sending other parents’ kids into Iraq. I say “other parents’ kids” because I never met any bigwig among those I worked with in TV news who had kids in the armed forces.

Given how TV networks danced to the White House tune sung by the Roves and Fleischers and McClellans in the first years of W’s reign, it’s fitting that it took the words of a longtime Bush insider to force their self-examination over Iraq. Top media figures had shunned years of well-documented criticism of their Iraq failure as religiously as they shunned war critics in 2003.

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In February 2003, there was huge mainstream media skepticism about Powell’s UN speech … overseas. But US TV networks banished antiwar perspectives in the crucial two weeks surrounding that error-filled speech. FAIR studied all on-camera sources on the nightly ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS newscasts: Less than 1 percent - 3 out of 393 sources - were antiwar. Only 6 percent were skeptical sources. This at a time when 60 percent of Americans in polls wanted more time for diplomacy and inspections.

I worked 10-hour days inside MSNBC’s newsroom during this period as senior producer of Phil Donahue’s primetime show (canceled three weeks before the war while the network’s most-watched program). Trust me: too much skepticism over war claims was a punishable offense. I and all other Donahue producers were repeatedly ordered by top management to book panels that favored the pro-invasion side. I watched a fellow producer get chewed out for booking a 50-50 show.

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This does invite the question as to where was McClellan all the while this was going down and when he had a chance to actually either publicly try to stop it, or at least not allow it to happen with his complicity. One may wonder whether McClellan clearly sees history’s writing on the wall and this is his attempt at trying to absolve himself from his complicity in this whole criminal affair, hoping to try to avoid having his name listed on the international war crimes tribunal indictments when they eventually get issued. However, some of his comments and his recent efforts, particularly the flack he is taking from the reich-wing of American politics does shed some light on his sincerity in regards to his speaking out. To his credit, he stood up pretty well to the over-the-top and irrational (and factually vacant) assault from TV’s bully boy Bill O’Reilly, which you can watch here in it’s entirety courtesy of The Brad Blog.