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Why Go After Fauci Now?
3 hours ago
Showing posts with label US Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Supreme Court. Show all posts
Saturday, January 23, 2010
It's NOT JUST The Money It's What They Do With It: Neuropsychology And Corporate Electioneering
.Every one is acting sooooo surprised.
Lets get something straight...
The courts ruled corporations have 'personhood' hundreds of years ago in England and they STILL rule that way in the United States.
Therefore, as-is, corporations have the right to 'freedom of expression'
How you spend money IS a form of that.
Any questions?
Look... That's just the publicly visible tip of the monetary-electoral iceberg anyway... The fact that corporations use their money to influence elections.
Lets talk about HOW they'll spend the money to do that now that corporations can more freely 'contribute' to candidates and electoral campaigns.
Hint... It won't be spent on Get-Out-The-Vote phone banks for the candidates.
It will be invested in advertising.
CAREFULLY crafted political neuro-psychological advertising.
Designed with your mind in mind.
Think of it however you like... in awe or abject terror.
A nation of sheep being led to the socio-cultural slaughter willingly.
The next time someone asks you why you believe something
political, or why you think Coke is better than Pepsi... consider:
The Real Deal... Neuro-Advertising:
Advertisers and Politicians Hunt for the "Buy-Button" in Your Brain (Buy! Buy! Buy! [Vote!])
Using a form of marketing known as neuromarketing, corporations and politicians are using MRIs, EEGs, and other brain-scan and medical technology to craft irresistible media messages designed to shift buying habits, political beliefs and voting patterns, as described in the World Business Academy's video "Spellcasters.".
By measuring activity in different parts of the brain in response to an ad or other media message, advertisers and political consultants can create advertising campaigns that tap into the pre-conscious brain. The idea is to assess central nervous system response to certain ads, the better to skirt the viewers' rational thought.
Since the dawn of commerce, sellers have tried to figure out how to best pitch their wares, grab attention and close the deal. Sales pitches have always been designed to create a willing buyer, often by creating needs and wants and then offering up a new product to satisfy them.
Clever and unscrupulous sales pitches are nothing new. They helped create a nation of smokers until litigation revealed that tobacco companies hid known risks. The court cases led to big damage awards, new warning requirements and, finally, fewer smokers.
The use of music, images and emotion to manipulate the consumer and voter is also nothing new. But neuromarketing involves a degree of intrusiveness and manipulation that needs to be exposed and stopped. Consumers pushed back when advertisers turned to subliminal advertising - the practice of flashing an image for a tiny fraction of a second, too fast for the cognitive brain to process.
It's time to push back again. [In Full]
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Thursday, December 18, 2008
December has been an interesting month for marijuana... The USSC invokes the Commerce Clause just ahead of a new pro-pot Commerce Secretary
...Or:
December has been an interesting month for marijuana... First The U.S. Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Raich "Commerce Clause" Based Ruling Limiting States Rights, Then Came Obama's New Commerce Secretary Bill Richardson, Who Is Assuredly Pro-Legalization.
"Since 1965, America has arrested over 20 million Americans for violating marijuana laws," explains Armentano. "Penalties include probation and mandatory drug testing; loss of employment; loss of child custody; removal from subsidized housing; asset forfeiture; loss of student aid; loss of voting privileges; loss of adoption rights; and loss of certain federal welfare benefits, such as food stamps. In human terms, some 34,000 state inmates and an estimated 11,000 federal inmates are serving time behind bars for violating marijuana laws. In fiscal terms, this means U.S. taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders."
Alternet:
Could Obama's Pro-Marijuana Commerce Secretary Spell a Golden Era for Pot Reform?
By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on December 18, 2008
December has been an interesting month for marijuana, or cannabis as it is known to scientists and all too few others. To kick off the month, the U.S. Supreme Court decided against reviewing a California state appellate court ruling arguing that its medical marijuana law trumped federal law. That, in effect, set the stage for better implementation of medical-marijuana law in not just California, but every state that has one, while also reminding local police that the job of enforcing federal drug policy is, in fact, not its job.
Two days later, the oldest stash of cannabis ever found was unearthed from a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi desert, aptly reminding humankind and its ass-backwards politicians that pot has been around a lot longer than lobbyists. If the eye-candy archaeological slideshow didn't fully illustrate the value of such a stash, the scientists did.
"As with other grave goods, it was traditional to place items needed for the afterlife in the tomb with the departed," explained Ethan Russo, lead author of the Journal of Experimental Botany paper that announced the find.
But as readers pondered packing their own trusty pot for use in the afterlife, better news broke on the same day: President-elect Barack Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to his Cabinet as secretary of commerce. Given that Obama had already confessed to inhaling -- "that was the point," he classically cracked -- and once declared the hyperbolically named War on Drugs "an utter failure," adding that America needed to "rethink and decriminalize" American cannabis laws, Richardson's nomination to Commerce was cause for celebration. After all, Richardson signed a bill in 2007 making New Mexico the 12th state to legalize medical marijuana.
"So what if it's risky? It's the right thing to do," he said of his decision. "My God, let's be reasonable."
Reason is indeed what proponents of decriminalization have been crying for after four consecutive presidential terms derailed their hopes and maneuvers for legalized cannabis, medical and otherwise. But something has always stood in the way of that inevitability, and it has usually leaned quite heavily on the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause, which states that Congress has the right to regulate commerce between the United States and other nations, as well as between its own states. It remains the most widely interpreted clause in the Constitution and has been more abused than the American people's goodwill. In the landmark case Gonzales v. Raich, the U.S. Supreme Court, under the distracted leadership of Justice Antonin Scalia, sided with the Bush administration's argument that banning the homegrown cultivation and consumption of marijuana is a federal imperative, even when no cannabis changes hands or travels across state lines.
The lunacy of the ruling even threw rightward justices like Clarence Thomas, Jr. off their creaking rockers.
"Certainly no evidence from the founding suggests that 'commerce' included the mere possession of a good or some personal activity that did not involve trade or exchange for value. In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession and consumption of marijuana … Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana.
If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything -- and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."
In Full @ Alternet
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