Thursday 18 February '10 show notes

  • Show live from radio row at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC... a lone liberal confronting a sea of conservatives!
  • Guests:
  • Topics:
    • "Defining Conservatism: The Principles That Will Bring Our Country Back"
    • "Fair Tax" - Time for a second tax revolt"
    • How we can boost our nation’s economic recovery by opening up access to domestic resources and sharing oil and gas revenue with the states?
    • Pink Pig book "exposing government waste"
    • Supreme Court decision in their favor give personhood to corporations.
    • Remove Child Before Folding: The 101 Stupidest, Silliest, and Wackiest Warning Labels Ever
  • Bumper Music:
  • Today's newsletter has details of today's guests and links to the major stories and alerts that Thom covered in the show, plus lots more. If you haven't signed up for the free newsletter yet, please do. If you missed today's newsletter, it is in the archive.
  • Quote: ”A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." -- Theodore Roosevelt.
  • Article: Citizens United: Questions and Answers by K&L Gates..

    "10) How will corporations likely take advantage of their opportunity to make independent political expenditures?

    Just because a corporation may make an independent direct advocacy expenditure doesn't mean that it should. Since the entity or entities financing independent expenditures must be disclosed, a corporation leading the way against a particular candidate risks alienating a significant block of its potential customer or shareholder base. Moreover, upon the first major corporate-funded public communications airing, media coverage is likely to focus on the corporation's involvement in the campaign rather than the content of any advocacy.

    Therefore, most corporations will probably proceed cautiously. If such independent expenditures are made, groups of corporations within an industry may form coalitions or use existing trade associations to support candidates favorable to policy positions that affect the group as a whole. While corporations that contribute to these expenditures might still be disclosed, this indirect approach can provide sufficient cover such that no single contributing entity receives the bulk of public scrutiny.

    Corporations could further lower their profile in such cases by not making contributions specific to a particular expenditure by that third-party corporation. Such independent expenditures can also take the form of advertisements in "under-the radar" sources, such as ideologically-based talk radio, web-based ads or phone banks. Since state and local laws preventing corporate political expenditures will also likely be repealed as a result of Citizens United, small corporations may also become involved in state and local races through regional media."

  • Article: Obama has low-key meeting with Dalai Lama at White House by John Pomfret.

    "In a statement, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that "the President stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People's Republic of China"."

  • Case: Justice J Stevens, dissent, CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION.

    "If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by “Tokyo Rose” during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders. More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans."

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