I continue to be enraged about last week’s Supreme Court, enabling corporations to gain more power over the rights of American citizens. This article from the Washington Post makes some basic points for those of us who want to understand how this happened and what it reflects. This is not a time to sit back and be passive. One hundred years of constitutional law has been reversed - that’s alarming and it will affect all of us. Stay informed and use your voice to protest until we get an ammendment to offset this horrific ruling.

Court’s campaign finance decision a case of shoddy scholarship

By Ruth Marcus
Saturday, January 23, 2010; A13

In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.

Many of those commenting on the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission have focused on the power-grab part. I agree with them. It was unnecessary for the court to go so far when there were several less-radical grounds available. It was audacious to seize the opportunity to overrule precedents when the parties had not pressed this issue and the lower courts had not considered it. It was the height of activism to usurp the judgments of Congress and state legislatures about how best to prevent corruption of the political process.

“If it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more,” a wise judge once wrote. That was Chief Justice John G. Roberts — back when — and dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens rightly turned that line against him.

As bad as the court’s activism, though, was its shoddy scholarship.

First, the majority flung about dark warnings of “censorship” and “banned” speech as if upholding the existing rules would leave corporations and labor unions with no voice in the political process. Untrue. Under federal election law before the Supreme Court demolished it, corporations and labor unions were free to say whatever they wanted about political candidates whenever they wanted to say it. They simply were not permitted to use unlimited general treasury funds to do so. Instead, they were required to use money raised by their political action committees from employees and members. This is hardly banning speech.

Second, in the face of logic and history, the majority acted as if there could be no constitutional distinction between a corporation and a human being. Untrue. The Supreme Court has long held that corporations are considered “persons” under the Constitution and are therefore entitled to its protections. For more than a century, Congress has barred corporations from making direct contributions to political candidates, with no suggestion that it must treat corporate persons the same as real ones; that prohibition stands, at least for now. The “conceit” of corporate personhood, as Stevens called it, does not mandate absolute equivalence. That corporations enjoy free-speech protections does not mean they enjoy every protection afforded an actual person. Is a corporation entitled to vote? To run for office?

Third, misreading its precedents and cherry-picking quotations, the majority acted as if the chief case it overturned was an outlier. In that 1990 case, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a six-member majority came to the unsurprising conclusion that a state law prohibiting corporations from making unlimited independent expenditures from their general funds was constitutional. The court dismissed this ruling as “a significant departure from ancient First Amendment principles.” Again, untrue.

In a 1982 case, the court — in a unanimous opinion by then-Justice William Rehnquist — noted that Congress, in writing campaign finance law, was entitled to “considerable deference” in taking into account “the particular legal and economic attributes of corporations and labor organizations” and had made “a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process.” Four years later, even as it carved out an exception for nonprofit corporations, the court reaffirmed “the need to restrict the influence of political war chests funneled through the corporate form.”

The Citizens United majority relied heavily on a 1978 case overturning a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporations from spending their own money to defeat certain referendums. But that decision specifically noted that “a corporation’s right to speak on issues of general public interest implies no comparable right in the quite different context of participation in a political campaign for election to public office.”

Fourth, the majority bizarrely invoked the “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” defense. Under the Austin ruling, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy argued, lawmakers unhappy with being lampooned in the movie “could have done more than discourage its distribution — they could have banned the film.” Beyond untrue. There is no scenario under which works of art about fictional lawmakers could be limited by campaign finance laws.

That the majority would stoop to this claim underscores the weakness of its case — and the audacity of the result it has inflicted on the political process.

marcusr@washpost.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-shure/yet-again-the-media-sells_b_424201.html

In the past week, the fashion industry and its promoter, women’s magazines, have yet again sold girls and women down the river. First, Marie Claire’s Austrlian division took the spotlight with its February cover that refrains from using photo shopping with its nude photo of former Miss Universe 2004, model Jennifer Hawkins. Then the New York Times reported “The Triumph of the Size 12s,” a story about “plus size model” Crystal Renn. There is something very wrong when exposing the real curves of a beautiful woman in the nude is deemed a radical move (because she is presented with her real body, not a fake one) and when a knock out gorgeous woman, with a terrific figure is touted to be a “plus-model,” suggesting that she is still too large to be deemed “normal” bodied.

The thin, athletic, sexy ideals of beauty have become the “new normal” and that’s frightening for our kids and all who are coming of age - not to mention the parents who are raising them. I hear the refrain of “I’d feel less guilty about eating food when I eat fewer calories” way too frequently. What do we do with the reality that just 15 years ago 35% of high school students thought they were overweight while today 90% think they are overweight. Do we sit around and suck it up, accept that this is the best we can hope for from our modern culture. Not this mother’s daughter; not this mother of two grown daughters.

We deserve to be really angry about the current state of affairs that has a fashion culture and media industry feeding us ideals that cause us to feel guilty for our hungers, obsessed with our appearance, and hating the very bodies that we need to sustain us. In leading ParentTalk workshops for A Chance to Heal Foundation, I hear fathers and mothers expressing fear for their children and confused about how to help them. They, too, are influenced by the perfectionistic, lookist American culture and are scared for their children if they don’t measure up to the current body-ideal standards.

Trouble is lurking around the bend when the norm requires girls and women to choose the lower calorie option over the food source that will satisfy their hunger and sustain their energy and mood. As my client this week so aptly stated “When I eat the lower caloric food, I end up getting hungry and then feel guilty for feeling hungry.” She is left criticizing herself for having the very thing that she is trying to get rid of - her appetite. One way or another she is faced with guilt – either for having hunger or for depriving herself of that hunger. “I don’t deserve the food because I’m not at my lower weight.” With the goal of having a body size that is smaller than what is natural and healthy for one’s body, deprivation is required. But we don’t have deprivation without the inevitable backlash in the form of compulsion, often culminating into a binge.

The cycle goes on in variations on the same theme for many. Angry that they “can’t” eat the food they are hungry for (food that would satiate their hunger and nutritionally anchor them) and angry that they aren’t able to maintain a lower weight because it’s an unrealistic weight to support their body. It is the rare teen or women’s magazine that includes articles on eating to maintain a healthy weight for each person. Instead we are inundated with articles on tricks of the trade for losing weight, selling the concept of losing as a virtue for which to aspire.

Dieting is no virtue, it’s a ruse. The diet industry is greedy and much like other industries, wants to make money at our expense. Diet programs hook us on the idea that we are more likable if we are losing weight and less likable if we do not strive for a body weight that is “lower.” How else would they become a multibillion dollar industry if they didn’t convince us to hate the way we look and drive home the idea that we would feel so much better if we looked some other way…any way, just not the way we look without dieting.

We deserve better. As my client tells it, the battle is “never ending,” because whenever she reaches her goal, “it’s never good enough and there is none of the promised relief.” For others there is immediate relief that is followed by deep grief and disappointment when they inevitably gain most of their weight back.

My client and others wish that the voice within would go away and shut up, once and for all. I remind her that won’t happen. Hoping and thinking it could actually happen will only make the drive to lose that much greater. Instead I suggest to you, as I did to her, to take on the voice within and talk back to it. Talk back, disagree, argue, recognize the lies, dismiss the idea of the perfect body as ridiculous and damaging. Treat the fashion designers and the media like drug dealers, don’t just accept what they’re pushing, resist it and fight back.

While I would love to protect myself and others from being around cigarette smoke, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist,  Karen Heller makes an important point by questioning how when we begin to regulate certain behaviors (such as smoking cigarettes on a college campus in the outskirts of Philadelphia) we may be setting ourselves up to fall along the slippery slope that leads to other rights being infringed upon? When institutions start to ban behaviors that have been legal and mainstream, I think that we need to question it really deeply rather than simply respond by saying “Oh” - which is precisely what I might  have done had I not read Karen’s article today.  Read on to see what you think.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/20100109_Karen_Heller__Let_students_choose__even_the_wrong_ways.html

Karen Heller: Let students choose, even the wrong ways

By Karen Heller

Inquirer Columnist

College administrators have been acting recently more like parents than educators. Widener University announced an all-campus smoking ban - including outdoors - to be launched this summer. Lincoln University instituted a fitness graduation requirement for obese students, later downgrading the class to a suggestion after being charged with discrimination.

I don’t know about you, but I went off to the University of Chicago to make my own choices, wise and otherwise. The dumb ones - an exceptional number committed during freshman year - were as instructive as any classroom lectures. Long after I forgot most basic laws of chemistry, I know that running laps on an outdoor track in winter, fueled by beer while sporting scant clothing, is an enterprise better in concept than execution, and not worth repeating.

With the best of intentions, Widener, Lincoln and other schools are taking greater steps in deciding what’s in the best interests of their students, who, despite behavior to the contrary, are legally adults. Administrators are extending the definition of in loco parentis.

“Regulating this behavior is completely antithetical to freedom, especially as they’re not really harming anyone other than themselves,” argues Vic Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania’s legal director. “If people aren’t doing something illegal, doing something they may find pleasurable but is bad for them, then they’re just showing bad judgment. Universities should not be taking steps to prohibit something that is otherwise lawful.”

Many of us loathe tobacco, but that doesn’t abrogate its legality. Some studies indicate that outdoor smoking poses health risks to non-smokers but, let’s face it, all smoking poses health risks, while “outdoors” constitutes a sizable territory. Despite massive efforts promoting healthier diets, obesity remains a national health problem, epidemic among African Americans. Lincoln is an historically black college. But that doesn’t make reforming the overweight an educator’s job.

“College is the first opportunity for most students to be responsible for what they do 24/7. They’re going to make mistakes like we all do,” says Temple constitutional law professor David Kairys. “We are in this period where we should be aware and worried that more kinds of government and institutions are compelling conformity that is being thrust on us.” The courts are filled with cases arguing the legality of restricting off-campus behavior, including “sexting.”

Even with the best of intentions, governing conduct in higher education seems an impediment to the very learning and freedoms schools promote. It’s infantilizing students on the cusp of adulthood.

“This is a little like the virtue police, determining what constitutes pure living,” Walczak says. “What’s next? Regulating when and what kind of sexual relations you can have?” Some religious colleges and universities already do that.

These schools mean well. A healthier population is generally more productive. And promoting better choices is a sound investment. Healthy citizens tend to work and live longer, less dependent on social and health services.

Civil rights experts see these lifestyle rules as a start towards moderating behavior, a way to enforce conformity. “With the more conservative Supreme Court, we may see much more leeway for regulation, many more limitations on free speech, privacy and discrimination,” Kairys says. “Schools may become more involved in regulating student behavior though you think of universities as bastions of freedom promoting the whole marketplace of ideas.”

Rather than repressing poor choices, why not promote and reward good habits long before college? In America, as long as an adult isn’t harming anyone else, we’re entitled to our foolish choices. Without them, there would be no beer pong, rush week, the freshman 15, or Big Ten rivalries verging on holy war. Indeed, college seems predicated on the yin and the yang of great ideas and questionable conduct.

Contact columnist Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.