As Paul Cienfuegos points out, single-issue advocacy -- whether you're battling the Keystone pipeline, the nuclear industry or what have you -- only addresses one corporate harm at a time. The latter are merely symptoms of we the people allowing corporations to exercise corporate constitutional rights. They have been winning these rights for over two centuries, almost entirely through the U.S. Supreme Court. But there is a movement in this country that has been building through the last decade, 150 communities throughout the U.S. and climbing, who are starting to pass legally-binding, locally-enforcable laws that reign in corporate constitutional rights -- in fact that prohibit corporations from exercising any of their constitutional rights: their free speech rights, their property rights, their contract rights, their search and seizure rights, their judicial rights, etc. Every one of these ordinances strips corporations of their constitutional rights, elevates the rights of the community above the so-called rights of the corporation, and bans all sorts of these single-issue corporate harms, which are normal and legal at the state level.

Best of all, this movement includes conservatives, liberals and progressives, tha is, people across the political spectrum. We, as Americans, need to understand that we are in an emergency situation in the United States. We are in an ecological crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, and that the kind of activism that we have been doing for nearly a century, is *not* working. We have more and more single-issue groups but the situation for all of us is getting worse. I applaud Al Franken for his effort (bravo!), however we all have to get involved in a mass movement to push back collectively against corporate constitutional rights. And we can start in our own communities.

Tim is calling for creative solutions. Those solutions are already happening at the community level across this country (mainly on the East Coast but the movement is spreading). That's the Community Rights Movement. The idea is that your community can identify the corporate harms that need to be challenged and stopped, not through begging and pleading but through passing locally-enforcable laws at the city or town or county level that do all these extraordinary things in a single law that you can pass through the ballot box or through an elected official's vote. Paul Cienfuegos is a leading organizer on the West Coast in this movement. To learn more, check his web site:

http://paulcienfuegos.com/

No to public financing of elections. Allow individuals only to donate, and to only donate to candidates. No corporate donations, no union donations, no PACs.

While I applaud the hope and perseverence of one who chips away with a popsicle stick at the granite boulder crushing their legs, I also recognize its futility. Similarly, all of these suggestions are little band-aids on a system that is simply corrupt, anachronistic, and failed. Like trying to cure the cancer of an already-dead patient by spraying the tumors with Bactine.

Get this, everybody: We do not live in a democracy. We are, the great vast majority of us, wage slaves. We don't have any real say, and what little say we garner through these little referenda (and by "voting", LMFAO) is nothing but a placebo administered to us as a distraction. We work to serve the banking system and its subsidiary, the US Government. They hand us worthless paper that we, in our sheepish obedient turn, hand right back to them, with interest. We get nowhere. On average, we acquire no wealth in our lifetimes, and collectively accumulate only debt. Even the "American Dream" of home ownership is a myth. On average, we don't own homes. Banks and landlords own homes. After you pay off your home (with payments totalling more than twice what it was actually worth) in 30 years, you generally die, or move into assisted living or hospice care. And your house goes back on the market, and another mortgage loan is taken out. And so on. This is because the system is designed this way.

The sources of all of the problems being addressed here, and by Mr. Franken, are the monetary system, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the ridiculous, outdated, unfair capitalist machine that robs the average citizen to feed the rich. Sadly, Mr. Average Citizen doesn't even understand how that system works, because the capitalist establishment has taken charge of educating the citizens. And nowhere in any school curriculum will you find the words, "The Federal Reserve Bank is a private corporation owned by a small group of powerful banking families."

The Fed has to go. And so does "legal tender". And so do "property rights". It is an outdated system invented by ancient barbarians, and unnecessary in the age of science and technology. It is time to reallocate the resources of this earth, in a fair and equal way. The earth and all its contents (oil, natural gas, minerals, metals, water, air) belong to everyone. The oil under our feet doesn't belong to the Rockefeller family. It belongs to everyone. A government "by the people, for the people" would recognize that as irrefutable.

But, we do not have a government "for the people". It's a government "for the rich people." That's understandable, of course... the people who set the system up were rich people.

It's time to stop worshipping Thor, everybody. We have figured out he's not real! It's time to rebuild our system at the very roots. When the roots are rotten, you can't rescue the leaves.

Shut down the Fed!!!!