$850,000,000,000,000,000

That's the estimated costs of the death star that over 30,000 people petitioned to begin building by 2016.



Apparently its not going to happen.

Here's the petition and the response.

Aside from the costs, the administration makes the following arguments against it:

- The Administration does not support blowing up planets.


- Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

Is the right to petition threatened?

The author of "Reclaiming the Petition Clause: Seditious Libel, ‘Offensive’ Protest, and the Right to Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances" (info in Amazon) thinks so:

EVERY four years, we witness the spectacle of the presidential nominating conventions. And every four years, host cities, party leaders and police officials devise ever more creative ways of distancing protesters from the politicians, delegates and journalists attending these stage-managed affairs.

The goal is to trivialize and isolate dissenting speech without actually banning protest outright. One result is something of a Potemkin village: government proclaims its full commitment to respecting the First Amendment without actually permitting any observable dissent to take place near the convention.

Tampa, Fla., which will host the Republicans from Aug. 27 to 30, and Charlotte, N.C., which will host the Democrats from Sept. 3 to 7, are already following the trend. Charlotte has adopted an ordinance that expands the power of the local police to detain, search and arrest persons in its downtown core. (The Charlotte ordinance also bans camping on city-owned property, a clear response to the Occupy movement.) Tampa is also considering new municipal laws to limit, and in some instances flatly prohibit, downtown protest activity.

Citizens generally have a right to use public streets, sidewalks and parks for expressive activity — unless the government has a substantial reason for requiring expressive activity to take place somewhere else or at another time. Because the rights of speech, assembly and association do not include a right to communicate a particular message to a particular audience, the government’s willingness to let would-be protesters speak somewhere else, some other time, has usually been seen by courts as satisfying the First Amendment.

. . . Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not accorded the Petition Clause much legal significance. When litigants have pressed Petition Clause claims, the justices have noted that all First Amendment rights are “cut from the same cloth” and thus “are inseparable.” However, in Borough of Duryea v. Guarnieri, a Petition Clause case decided last year, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that there could be cases “where the special concerns of the Petition Clause would provide a sound basis for a distinct analysis” and where the rights of petition and free speech “might differ in emphasis and formulation.”

This suggests that the court could be sympathetic to carefully devised arguments focused on the right to petition. Officials in Charlotte and Tampa should not reflexively equate dissent with criminality (or domestic terrorism), nor should they have to be sued to do the right thing.

I strongly advise 2301 students to read this op-ed. It's worth a class discussion. The right to petition for grievances has a long and important history which led to the establishment of the U.S. as we know it. It may well be the right that all other rights rest on. If this right is threatened, what else is threatened?

American Censorship Day

In case you missed it.

The media is trying to figure what to make of OWS

From Slate:

The mainstream media thrives on simple solutions. It has no idea whatsoever of how to report on a story that isn’t about easy fixes so much as it is about anguished human frustration and fear. The media prides itself on its ability to tell you how to clear your clutter, regrout your shower, or purge your closet of anything that makes you look fat—in 24 minutes or less. It is bound to be flummoxed by a protest that offers up no happy endings

Why is the top 1% so powerful?

They are the ones who contribute to lobbyists:

If you want to understand how the top 1 percent have accumulated such power in American politics, look no further than Washington’s K Street lobbying corridor. Wall Street has long been the dominant player in the capital. “The banks,” Senator Dick Durbin said in 2009, “are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

The financial sector has spent more money on campaign contributions and lobbying than any other sector of the economy—$4.6 billion on lobbying since 1998, according to Open Secrets. This year, commercial banks and securities and investment firms have spent over $82 million on lobbying, employing over 1,000 lobbyists.

The Tea Party's Lucky, Things Could Have Turned Out Much Worse

A day after the most significant street protests in Iran since the end of the 2009 uprising there, members of the Iranian Parliament called on Tuesday for the two most prominent opposition leaders to be prosecuted and sentenced to death for stirring unrest.


read on....

Community College's Fight Back

It might be a useful exercise to follow how community colleges' react to the Legislative Budget Board's proposed budget -- remember that this is not a final budget. The legislature will haggle over this all spring and probably over the summer. CHanges in the budget will tell alot about which groups in Texas are powerful and which are not.

Community college instructors are represented by a professional organization (which we have the option to join) called the the Texas Community College Teacher's Association, TCCTA. The organizations legislative affairs are overseen by a lobbysist named Beamon Floyd, who also represents the insurance industry in the state. I've heard him speak and he is an articulate defender of the lobbying profession and reminds audiences of its constitutional roots.

Here is the full text of TCCTA's response to the proposed budget:

Dear Colleague,

The preliminary budget for the next biennium was filed in the House of Representatives today (Wednesday), with severe cuts to the state's community colleges. The proposed budget includes a seven percent cut in formula funding, as well as a 25 percent funding cut in the "hold harmless" for small schools.

The budget also proposes the shuttering of four community colleges—Brazosport College, Frank Phillips College, Odessa College, and Ranger College. Rep. Jim Pitts, the chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, explained this morning (Wednesday) that these institutions were chosen on the basis of enrollment growth, compared to other two-year colleges around the state.

Another significant element of the proposed budget is an 82 percent decrease in funding for community college health benefits, which will push the burden for these services to the colleges, themselves.

In all, funding cuts for community colleges under this proposal total approximately $266 million.

During discussion in the House chamber, it was emphasized repeatedly that this budget is a preliminary document and will see significant changes before a final budget is adopted. Indeed, we have already observed bipartisan questioning of its provisions and "push back" from members of both parties.

It will be very important in the coming days that legislators hear from their constituents so they can understand the full impact these cuts would have on their communities. TCCTA members are urged to engage in this process, by talking with peers about these developments, and reading the TCCTA Blog to keep updated.

Members who contact their representatives should be polite but firm and clear about how this issue will affect them, their students, and their institutions ( see the TCCTA Guide to Political Participation). It is our belief that the proposed cuts, while having a serious impact on our ability to educate our students, will do very little to solve the budget crisis the state finds itself in. The imbalance between the serious consequences of the cuts, measured against any possible savings, should be pointed out to legislators.

In the several conversations we have had with legislators, it is clear that they perceive this only as a starting point, and that they are open to discussing other options. TCCTA is working diligently to learn more about the intentions of budget planners and make clear to them the concerns of our members.

We will continue to update members as information becomes available. Members are encouraged to watch the TCCTA blog closely, and attend the Legislative Update Session at the TCCTA convention in San Antonio next week, featuring the Association's lobbyist, Beaman Floyd.
To aid you in your communication, the TCCTA Legislative Program, Talking Points and Bill Tracking are available on our Web site, at http://www.tccta.org/legis/

Fred Newbury, 
TCCTA President
Richard Moore, 
Executive Director

Other organizations are certainly doing the same. I'll post links to their activities. This is a perfect demonstration of lobbying - the right to petition - in action. I'll try to make the most of it.

- TCCTA: Proposed Budget Cuts Detailed.

City and County Lobbying in Texas

As we begin to discuss the right to petition in 2301, here's information about the amount of money Texas cities and counties spent on lobbying over the past five years.

The American People Hire Patton Boggs Lobbyists Jack Weldon

From the Onion.

The Gallup Poll comments on the joke.

Regarding Standing: Who Has the Right to Sue?

The concept of "standing" refers to whether the court has the jurisdiction to hear a particular case, which is a nice way of saying that a litigant does not in fact have the right to sue, or take a case to court. The current court has increasingly restricted the concept of standing, meaning that access to the courts has contracted recently. Cases, like the one involving  have been the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, not on the merits, but because the person who brought the case forward was not directly affected by the law.

Linda Greenhouse predicts that the Supreme Court will get tangled up now that conservatives want to challenge the constitutionality of the health care law, among other things.

Lobbying Firms Prepare for Possible Switch in House Control

After hiring Democrats for the past four years, they are hiring Republicans.

Is There a Right to Secrecy?

The Supreme Court considered arguments that ballot petitions should be secret. The case is Doe v. Reed.

- Doe v. Reed - ScotusWiki
- Doe v. Reed: Citizens United, Part Two
- Doe v. Reed : First Amendment Coalition
- Election Law: Doe v. Reed Commentaries

New Link: Lobby Data

I added a link to my "Lobbyists" section below. Lobby Data is a pay service for people who want info on lobbyists, but there are some free links which you might find useful.