Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.

Audio Stream | Podcast | Mp3 Download

This week on Uprising:

* Supreme Court Opens Flood Gates for Corporate Influence
* Why the Democrats Lost Massachusetts
* Black Agenda Report on Haiti Aid as Invasion
* Andrej Grubacic on Organizing in the Age of Obama

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Supreme Court Opens Flood Gates for Corporate Influence

The United States Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in the case Citizens United Vs. Federal Elections Commission, to overturn the 2002 McCain Feingold Campaign finance law limiting corporate and union funding in elections. In a 5-4 decision, Bush appointees, Justices Roberts and Alito joined justices Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy in voting against the law on the basis of protecting the free speech rights of businesses. But the plaintiff, Citizens United, cast the decision as a way for small businesses and non-profit advocacy groups to band together to “counterbalance the political speech of the super-rich.” The Supreme Court overturned its own 2003 precedent when it ruled that McCain-Feingold was constitutional in an earlier challenge. As campaign spending continues to break records over the years, this decision could result in an even greater barrage of advertisements for voters. New York’s Democratic Senator Charles Schumer denounced the ruling, saying “”The Supreme Court just predetermined the winners of next November’s elections… It won’t be Republicans. It won’t be Democrats. It will be corporate America.” Under the 2002 law, corporations, organizations and unions were required to funnel their money through political action committees or PACs that were regulated. Now, spending can come directly from a corporation on a given side of an issue or candidate and campaigning can be financed right up until the very moment before an election result is announced. In spite of the ruling, corporations and other entities are still required to disclose the identities of funders, and still forbidden from making direct contributions to candidates.

GUEST: Scott Nelson, attorney with Public Citizen’s Litigation Group

For more information, visit www.citizen.org, and www.dontgetrolled.org.

Why the Democrats Lost Massachusetts

Republican candidate Scott Brown has won the special election in Massachusetts to fill the seat of the late Senator Edward Kennedy. Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley 52% to 47% in a victory that seemed unlikely just weeks ago. The Democrats were hoping to hold onto the seat to preserve a filibuster proof 60-vote super-majority in the Senate. The election results will impact the federal health bill coming up for a vote as Democrats try to deal with the conservative populism of the so-called tea party activists. Scott Brown initially supported the 2006 Landmark Health Care Reform in Massachusetts, but does not support the federal health care bill citing the failure of the Massachusetts plan to contain costs. Approximately 97 percent of Massachusetts residents are covered by health insurance which is by far the most in the nation. However, insurance premiums in Massachusetts are skyrocketing with an expected 10 percent increase scheduled for 2010. Additionally, the “jobless recovery” set against the backdrop of the “bonus culture” for bankers has fueled a populist sentiment which allowed Brown, the more dynamic of the two candidates, to run on a platform of “change.”

GUEST: Norman Solomon, Syndicated columnist of “Media and Politics” and author of “War Made Easy”

Read Norman Solomon’s article at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/20-0

Black Agenda Report on Haiti Aid as Invasion

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is called Haiti Aid as Invasion.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Andrej Grubacic on Organizing in the Age of Obama

A new poll by USA Today and Gallup found that a majority of Americans want President Obama and the Democrats to suspend their work on the healthcare bill and consider alternatives being suggested by the Republican Party. With the late Senator Kennedy’s seat being lost to Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts this week, the political landscape is looking grim for Democrats who just a year ago felt victoriously invulnerable. The tide of support for President Obama seems to have been replaced by a new wave of reactionary rightwing populism that is palpably shifting the electoral dynamic. Some see it as a pattern similar to what is seen when any Democrat sweeps into office after a particularly game-changing Republican. Others feel vindicated in organizing outside of the electoral system. But how do progressives learn to effectively organize? How do people in other parts of the world organize? Joining us to help answer such questions is radical historian Andrej Grubacic, a lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute, the Z Media Institute and until recently a Professor at the University of San Francisco. He is also the co-author with legendary activist and historian Staughton Lynd of the book Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History. He is well known as an anarchist theorist, and is also the co-founder of Global Balkans network of Balkan anti-capitalists in diaspora.

GUEST: Andrej Grubacic, lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute, co-author of Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. — Aristotle