Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Short Quiz

Post by johnkarls »

SHORT QUIZ
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1. Is Dana Milbank a long-time OpEd columnist for the Washington Post whose columns are syndicated in 200 newspapers nationwide?

2. Did our 2/14/2008 meeting 7 years ago focus on Dana Milbank’s book “Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government” (Random House 2008)?

3. Was Dana Milbank’s thesis in “Homo Politicus” that “campaign contributions” are in fact bribes in every sense (except legally) and nothing happens in THE CESSPOOL THAT IS WASHINGTON DC except as the result of bribes (aka campaign contributions)?

4. Did our 2/14/2008 meeting also focus on “The Squandering of America” (Knopf 2007) by Robert Kuttner, a 20-year columnist for Business Week who had served, inter alia, as an investigator for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and as the Executive Director of President Jimmy Carter’s National Commission on Neighborhoods?

5. Did Robert Kuttner’s “The Squandering of America” strike the same theme that “campaign contributions” are in fact bribes in every sense (except legally) and nothing happens in THE CESSPOOL THAT IS WASHINGTON DC except as the result of bribes (aka campaign contributions)?

6. But did Robert Kuttner’s “The Squandering of America” go one step further in disclosing that “campaign contributions” are just as commonly the result of EXTORTION BY THE POLITITIANS as BRIBERY OF THE POLITITIANS?

7. Was Exhibit A for extortion by the politicians Presidential Candidate Barack Obama raising “campaign contributions” in 2007 from hedge-fund managers who wanted to preserve capital-gains tax rates for their compensation as hedge-fund managers?

8. Did we also study for our 2/14/2008 meeting how it would be malpractice by their tax advisers if Hollywood actresses/actors do not also receive capital-gains tax rates for all of their compensation for participation in movies?

9. Would it also appear that President Obama’s popularity in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) is caused by the ability of multi-national companies to pay no U.S. income tax on their profits from exporting American jobs, and that not long ago Microsoft alone had amassed more than $1 TRillion in its foreign tax-haven subsidiaries producing media articles about how Microsoft stock was being evaluated by securities analysts as a bank rather than a software company since, for Microsoft, its software business had become the proverbial “teat on the whale”?

10. If one were a skeptic, would it require much imagination to suspect that the reason why so many common-sense solutions to our country’s most pressing problems are never adopted is that they present too tempting a target for politicians as a source for “campaign contributions”?

See, for example, our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns posted in the first section of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org to --
-- renew 1968 Executive Order 11387 to halt the export of American jobs, to reduce or eliminate American unemployment, and to cause the real income of American workers once more to rise, or
-- provide the final development costs for thorium fission in order (A) to eliminate global warming, (B) to eliminate the dependence of the U.S. and its allies on members of OPEC (the long-standing Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries) and, in the case of Europe, natural gas imports from Russia; and (C) to eliminate the gaping U.S. balance-of-payments deficit and resulting piling up of our foreign national debt -- with an energy source which is incapable of exploding (which is why after a successful 18-month demonstration project in the 1960’s, the U.S. turned instead to uranium and plutonium), for which meltdowns are physically impossible, which has such an incredibly-high burn-up rate that virtually no radioactive waste is produced, and which is so much cheaper than any other energy sources that all of the countries of the world would rush to use it (making unnecessary, for example, the military invasion of such countries as China to prevent them from bringing on line one new monster-size coal-fired electric plant EVERY MONTH!!!).

11. Could America’s annual TRillion-dollar budget deficits and its cumulative national debt (now over $18 TRillion which is more than 100% of the size of our economy) both be eliminated virtually overnight if the U.S. government charged the clients of lobbyists what the governmental decisions they are obtaining are worth, rather than letting the politicians “sell” those decisions for “campaign contributions” for only a few cents on the dollar of what they are actually worth?

12. Upon its founding, was America the laughing stock of Europe because its Articles of Confederation under which it operated until 1789, and its Constitution under which it has operated ever since, both provided (quoting Sec. 9 of Article One of the Constitution which parrots almost ver batim the Articles of Confederation) -- "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: and NO PERSON HOLDING ANY OFFICE OF PROFIT OR TRUST UNDER THEM, SHALL, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE CONGRESS, ACCEPT ANY PRESENT, EMOLUMENT, OFFICE, OR TITLE, OF ANY KIND WHATSOEVER, from any King, Prince, or foreign State”? [Emphasis added.]

13. Was America idealistic in wanting to prevent any of its officials from accepting bribes from foreigners? Was this contrary to common practice in Europe?

14. Did the Clinton Foundation (aka The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation) accept, without the consent of Congress, contributions from foreigners?

15. If Hillary Clinton was prohibited by the U.S. Constitution from accepting any gifts, etc., from foreigners without the consent of Congress while she was Secretary of State, is it acceptable for such gifts to be accepted WHILE SHE WAS SECRETARY OF STATE by the foundation of her husband and daughter -- a foundation on whose Board she herself has served both before and after her term as Secretary of State and whose Board is currently listed on the Foundation’s official website as including “Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton” as if to emphasize, however erroneously, that she still is the Secretary of State (and, perhaps, imply that she is the future President of the U.S.)?

16. In other words, instead of donating to the worthy causes supported by The Clinton Foundation either directly or through other organizations, why are the foreigners donating to The Clinton Foundation? Do they expect a quid-pro-quo for routing their donations through The Clinton Foundation?

17. Do the Clintons receive compensation for their work for their Foundation?

18. Aside from the fact that the U.S. Constitution prohibits gifts from foreigners but says nothing about “campaign contributions” (aka bribes) by Americans, should there be a difference between the two?

19. Is adequate protection provided by American legal decisions which require an explicitly-agreed quid-pro-quo for successful criminal prosecutions?

20. In other words, aren’t Dana Milbank and Robert Kuttner correct that everyone in Washington DC knows how to “play the game”?

21. In other words, a politician who accepts a “campaign contribution” from a lobbyist and then fails to do what the lobbyist wants, though the politician could never be sued for Breach of Contract because there is no explicit quid-pro-quo, will NEVER receive another “campaign contribution” from ANYONE, not just the lobbyist whose client was “double crossed”?

22. Is our author, Zephyr Teachout, unfairly criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court for its Citizens United decision which accorded labor unions and corporations First Amendment “Free Speech” rights?

23. In other words, isn’t it true that courts are supposed to try to follow their previous decisions (“stare decisis”) so that the citizenry believes that there is a “rule of law” rather than ad hoc legal decisions based on pure whim?

24. And isn’t it true that corporations are accorded some Constitutional rights such as “Free Speech” while being denied other Constitutional rights that are only accorded to human beings?

25. And hadn’t the U.S. Supreme Court already accorded The NAACP “Free Speech” at the height of the Civil Rights Movement when The NAACP was advertising for oppressed African-Americans to become legal clients of The NAACP in violation of state laws prohibiting the solicitation of legal clients?

26. Now that Citizens United has crippled Campaign-Finance Reform Legislation, what can be done about what Dana Milbank and Robert Kuttner call “The Best Government Money Can Buy”?

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