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There are now 35 registered lobbyists in Washington DC for every single member of the Senate and House of Representatives, at last count 13,739 in 2009. There are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress working on the health care asco alone. At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations now have a constitutional right to interfere with elections by pouring money into races. The Department of Justice gave a get out of jail free card to its own lawyers who authorized illegal torture. At the same time another department of government, the Pentagon, is prosecuting Navy SEALS for punching an Iraqi suspect. The US is not only involved in senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. now maintains 700 military bases world-wide and another 6000 in the US and our territories. Young men and women join the military to protect the U.S. and to get college tuition and healthcare coverage and killed and maimed in elective wars and being the worlds police. Wonder whose assets they are protecting and serving? In fact, the U.S. spends $700 billion directly on military per year, half the military spending of the entire world much more than Europe, China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and Venezuela - combined. The government and private companies have dramatically increased surveillance of people through cameras on public streets and private places, airport searches, phone intercepts, access to personal computers, and compilation of records from credit card purchases, computer views of sites, and travel. The number of people in jails and prisons in the U.S. has risen sevenfold since 1970 to over 2.3 million. The US puts a higher percentage of our people in jail than any other country in the world. The tea party people are mad at the Republicans, who they accuse of selling them out to big businesses. Democrats are working their way past depression to anger because their party, despite majorities in the House and Senate, has not made signicant advances for immigrants, or women, or unions, or African Americans, or environmentalists, or gays and lesbians, or civil libertarians, or people dedicated to health care, or
human rights, or jobs or housing or economic justice. Democrats also think their party is selling out to big business. Forty three years ago next month, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Riverside Church in New York City that a time comes when silence is betrayal. He went on to condemn the Vietnam War and the system which created it and the other injustices clearly apparent. We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing oriented society to a person oriented society. When machines and computers, prot motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. It is time. Bill Quigley is Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years. He volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bureau de Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port au Prince. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/07-7