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After our The Danny Tisdale Show last week where we discussed the (not to) Supreme Courts decision to open the flood gates for money spent directly from their general funds to influence campaigns, with Dr. Linda Rock regarding her Gloria Browne-Marshall Read-In event at St. Philips, then we saw this article:
Much has been made of late about the hyper-partisan political environment in America. On Tuesday, Sen. Evan Bayh explained his surprising recent decision to leave the Senate by lamenting a “dysfunctional” political system riddled with “brain-dead partisanship.” It seems you’d be hard-pressed to get Republicans and Democrats inside and outside of Washington to agree on anything these days, that if one party publicly stated its intention to add a “puppies are adorable” declaration to its platform, that the other party would immediately launch a series of anti-puppy advertisements.
But it appears that one issue does unite Americans across the political spectrum.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that the vast majority of Americans are vehemently opposed to a recent Supreme Court ruling that opens the door for corporations, labor unions, and other organizations to spend money directly from their general funds to influence campaigns.
As noted by the Post’s Dan Eggen, the poll’s findings show “remarkably strong agreement” across the board, with roughly 80% of Americans saying that they’re against the Court’s 5-4 decision. Even more remarkable may be that opposition by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents were all near the same 80% opposition range. Specifically, 85% of Democrats, 81% of Independents, and 76% of Republicans opposed it. In short, “everyone hates” the ruling.
The poll’s findings could enhance the possibility of getting a broad range of support behind a movement in Congress to pass legislation that would offset the Court’s decision. Of those polled, 72% said they supported congressional action to reverse its effects. Sen. Charles Schumer, who’s leading the reform effort in the Senate, told the Post that he hoped to get “strong and quick bi-partisan support” behind a bill that “passes constitutional muster but will still effectively limit the influence of special interests.”
The findings of the poll are a bit surprising considering the fact that the case split the Supreme Court, with the five conservative justices in favor and the four more liberal justices against it. The decision was almost universally hailed by Republicans in Washington, who saw it as a victory for the free speech provided for under the Constitution, while President Obama and prominent Democrats in Washington almost universally derided it as a dark day for American democracy.
However, Sen. John McCain, one of the original sponsors of the campaign finance law struck down by Court’s decision and one of its few prominent Republican opponents, may have been prophetic when he predicted Americans would turn against the Court. McCain told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that there would be a “backlash” once awareness grew about “the amounts of union and corporate money that’s going to go into political campaigns.”
Perhaps the new poll numbers show that McCain might have been onto something.
By Brett Michael Dykes is a contributor to the Yahoo! News blog
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freedom to spend on political issues is a right to free speech and should never be outlawed,like the smoking bans do,which in effect take away the citizens rights tio free assembly and association.Besides the taking away of property owners rights by claiming them to be public spaces which they are not.
This is where second hand smoke really becomes a joke,remember its nearly 94% water vapor and air…..now lets get to the facts of toxicology and dose makes the poison:
According to independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke……..
They did the figures for what it takes to meet all of OSHA’S minimum PEL’S on shs/ets…….Did it ever set the debate on fire.
They concluded that:
All this is in a small sealed room 9×20 and must occur in ONE HOUR.
For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes
“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes
“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up.
“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes
For arsenic 2 million 500,000 smokers at one time
The same number of cigarettes required for the other so called chemicals in shs/ets will have the same outcomes.
So,OSHA finally makes a statement on shs/ets :
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997
WHAT! DILUTED BELOW PERMISSABLE LEVELS
Hi Brett,
A Facebook Fried of my shared the link to your interesting article above.
It has taken me 59 years to start believing more consistently that EVERYTHING — even what at first feels negative — happens for a GOOD reason, and the MORE we can believe that’s true, the sooner we will learn and appreciate what the good reasons are. Some people call this perspective “being an eternal optimist,” and sometimes that has a negative connotation. (That seems like an oxymoron!) But scientists believe this Earth is 4.55 BILLION years old. And Einstein proved that everything is relative. So it’s not surprising that to humans, any significant social change — positive or negative — can seems like an eternity!
The question mark at the end of your post’s title invited my eternal-optimist-self to play the “Positive WHAT-IFing game.” I learned this game about 15 years ago. It helps people think of GOOD reasons for what initially feels bad. Those good reasons help people better and more hopeful about a good and “bright” future. More on how to play the Positive WHAT-IFing game” at these 2 links:
http://mindmapsunleashed.com/2009/12/what-if/
http://whatanicewebsite.com/Connee/positivewhatif.htm
The good feelings this game creates are in direct proportion to how much positive language and present tense (instead of future tense) verbs plays use in their +WHAT IFs.
Here’s the positive WHAT-IFs I came up with:
+WHAT IF this Supreme Court ruling is “a bright day for American [or any] democracy,” because it results in enough articles and discussion so that Americans finally realize and admit that the way our government really works is as corrupt as other countries?
+WHAT IF finally recognizing and admitting this enables Americans to finally recognize and remove “the beam in our eye” instead of spending our money and time trying to help our global neighbors remove “the splinter in their eye”?
+WHAT IF our being so honest causes the % of Americans and their elected lawmakers to (hopefully rapidly) increase from the now 80% to close to 100%, so that it creates the ““backlash” John McCain predicted on CBS’s “Face the Nation” (about “the [now unlimited] amounts of union and corporate money that’s going to go into political campaigns”)?
+WHAT IF that blacklash motivates Americans to take action (hopefully non-violently, but it wouldn’t be first time in U.S. history that violence was necessary) to end political corruption in our government?
+WHAT IF this backlash is symbolically the end of “pre-ambling” our way to creating and sustaining the “more perfect union” envisioned verbally almost 223 years ago, in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution? What helped me come up with this +WHAT IF is remembering that (as you and many of your readers may know) “A More Perfect Union” was the title of Barack Obama’s March 18, 2008, campaign speech. His (brilliant) speech was intentionally delivered near Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The following excerpt from his speech helped me believe that now-President Obama is a also a Positive WHAT-IFfer:
“This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation — the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election….And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”
A video and full transcript of of this amazing speech is at this link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23690567/ns/politics-decision_08//
+WHAT IF 223 Earth years is equivalent to 2 “nation years”, which would mean that our nation is no longer pre-ambling (i.e., crawling) toward our our more perfect union, and our nation is now a toddler who can walk — and even run! — toward what we want? I know our nation can RUN because we already have A WINNING TRACK RECORD from having ended slavery, and reformed our voting and civil rights systems. We know we haven’t reached the Finish Line yet, but appreciating our Track Record should help us “keep on keepin’ on” toward that Finish Line.
+WHAT IF we soon decide as a nation that the day the U.S. Supreme Court “handed down” this decision to us was a “bright” day, not just for Americans but for HUMANITY?
+WHAT IF we collectively decide that this court decision is our invitation to “Walk Our Talk,” to keep putting one national foot in front of the other, and NEVER again taking our eye off humanity’s eternal vision (dream) of equal rights and representation for ALL?
+WHAT IF our governmental reform efforts — no matter HOW LONG they take — make the United States the global perfect example of how a government and elected officials can ignore special interest groups and instead use our time and resources to protect and enhance the COMMON good?
+WHAT IF our reform efforts and results inspire people in ALL nations to also completely end political corruption in their governments?
+WHAT IF this U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling results in the end of political corruption ON THIS PLANET, even if no one alive today lives to see that global transformation?
+WHAT IF all people on this planet 223 years from now (or MUCH sooner, of course!) feel that the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court “got it VERY right” with this ruling? I think this “future feeling” would be equivalent to the gratitude that (most) Americans and many people around the world feel today feel toward the late-1770s “[f]armers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution” to risk their lives to start crawling for future generations.
The +WHAT IF game helps create “future good feelings” that our future selves experience, which enables them to cheer our present-day selves to do whatever it takes to win the ultimate AMAZING RACE!
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