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Dumb like a fox Congressman wants to
"protect" free speech by eliminating it.
On May 28, 2010 Jon Christian Ryter.com posted a video of Congressman Hank Johnson [D-GA]
arguing to Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the Pacific Fleet that he was placing the 175 thousand citizens of Guam at risk of drowning. How? Johnson argued that Guam was at risk of capsizing and sliding into the Pacific Ocean because of the weight of the 25 thousand US Navy and Marine personnel and their families stationed there. When Johnson lost that embarrassing argument to Willard, he changed his tactic from sheer stupidity to Al Gore stupidity, Johnson chose the safe stupid path and said too many people on Guam posed a risk to the environment: coral reefs and other things that people don't think about, adding that "...people don't like to think about global warming, either. But we have to." I can't figure out why Johnson just didn't use the king of all argument winners with Willard: "...And, my daddy can beat the crap out of your daddy."

Johnson apparently didn't know it, but Guam is part of the Mariana Archipelago which former President George W. Bush made a US protected marine reserve called the Marianas Trench Marine US National Monument to protect the world's largest know reserves of oil and natural gas from wildcatters until the Seven Sisters and China are jointly ready—and can figure out how—to harvest it.

Johnson's Guam remark should have embarrassed the voters of Georgia enough that anyone running against him should have beat him in November, 2010. The GOP, thanks to the Tea Party, backed a woman with no political experience and no reason for people to vote for her other than she was a nice, white Christian woman, Lizabeth Carter. Carter pulled 24% of the vote and Johnson won a second term. The GOP did the same thing in 2012. They backed a radio talk show host and the white pastor of Grace Summit Church in McDonough, Georgia, Chris Vaughn. The voters in Georgia's 4th Congressional District are African-Americans. If the GOP wants to win that district, they have to give themselves a fighting chance—the need a Black candidate.

Sadly, the Tea Party doesn't get it. Because they can muster enough political celebrities like South Carolina US Senator Jim Demint and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to win the GOP primary in left-of-center congressional districts or States for their politically right of center white candidates, no thought is given to how does that rightwing candidate win the general election when their candidate is outnumbered 3 or 4-to-1. They don't. Hank Johnson's father (who never openly identified himself as a communist) was one of the founders of the communist party-led National Negro Congress during the Franklin D. Roosevelt years. This is a case of like-father, like-son. Johnson's father was a recruiter for the International Workers of the World from 1930-34. Speaking before the Turkish-American Alliance on July 18, 2012, Johnson told his audience that "...It used to be all about America, but it's not all about America anymore. We're in new times now and what other countries bring to the table now is important. The whole world is interrelated. We should all be working, and listening to, our world partners, and we should all be world citizens as [Barack] Obama has proclaimed himself to be." I guess that's why the website, Weasel Zippers, noted that plankton has a higher IQ than Hank Johnson."

The Republicans in the 4th Congressional district needed to nominate Cory Jerome Ruth in 2010. First, he was a moderate and not a communist. Second, he's black in a black congressional district. Win or lose, he wouldn't have embarrassed the GOP. When it comes to backing primary candidates, the Republican Party has Hank Johnson's "plankton IQ." The GOP needs to look for candidates that can win the general election—not just the Republican primary. Why would black voters pick a white woman with no political experience to go against Johnson? Because Georgia is one 19 States that use an open primary. Democrats can vote in the Republican primary, which they did in numbers in 2010 to make sure Ruth did not win the primary. The unions in Georgia were convinced Liz Carter would be the easiest Republican to beat in the general election.

Now, once again, just how dumb is Johnson? Dumb like a fox. His new rant is that the only way to protect free speech in the United States is by amending the Constitution to restrict it. Of course, whose speech Johnson wants to restrict with a constitutional amendment (as he said in a private fund-raiser prior to the 2012 election), are "...corporations, along with the people they support...other billionaires, who are stealing your government. And the US Supreme Court was the big enabler with the Citizens United case. They control the patterns of thinking; they control the media; they control the messages you get. So, you're being taught to hate your government; but keep your hands off my Medicare...We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations...I mean, we are all confused..." Mr. Johnson, based on what you said in that gathering of an Annesbrooks HOA Forum, while I can't speak for anyone else, after listening to you in two different videos, I'm absolutely convinced that you are hopelessly confused about the nature of the country we live in. What amazes me is that you're so confused that I'm surprised that anyone who listens to you accords what you say with any real degree of credibility.

Johnson told his audience that "...we're poking fingers at each other saying, well you're black, you're Hispanic, immigration, homosexuals. You know, we're lost on the social issues, abortion, contraception. And these folks," Johnson said, "are setting up a scenario where they're privatizing every aspect of our lives as we know it. So wake up...We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations." Johnson noted that the Supreme Court ruling affirmed that corporations and unions are protected under the 1st Amendment and that laws prohibiting corporations from making political contributions from their corporate coffers were unconstitutional. It's interesting that while Johnson acknowledged that the high court ruling allowed both corporations and unions to engage in political discourse Johnson never mentioned to his constituents that the laws prohibiting political participation one-sidedly affected only corporations.

The interesting thing about Johnson and the social progressive Democrats in the United States—black or white—is that they don't understand the Constitution of the United States. I find that very troubling. Even more than thinking that too many people on Guam will make the island tip over, it's frightening to realize that any member of the Congress of the United States would have so little knowledge of the Constitution not to know that the right of free speech—and the right to worship God without interference from government—under the 1st Amendment is an inherent right—not a conditional right that Congress, or the federal courts, can grant or remit at will.

Tragically, most Americans who read Rep. Hank Johnson's Guam comment laughed and shrugged him off as just one more stupid leftwinger. For that reason, few have taken his latest suggestion about amending the Constitution to allow Congress to decide when free speech is free speech, and why unions have the right to participate in the political process and corporations don't.

Under Johnson's proposal, the federal government—not the Supreme Court—would become the final arbiter of 1st Amendment rights. Johnson said that because "...Corporations control the pattern of thinking in the United States, the Bill of Rights...should be amended so that the government has the power to restrict freedom of speech rights of corporations." Interestingly though, not the free speech rights of labor unions, or social progressive political action groups. Under Johnson's cultural hegemony argument, Congress would have the right to limit corporate free speech since in his view corporations, which are technically "legal person," are not really people, and therefore have no constitutional rights. In liberal reality, the two most financially powerful private enterprise entities in the world are corporations and unions. One usually supports Republicans. The other—Big Labor—always backs the Democrat. Interestingly, green corporations or corporations owned by leftwingers were never troubled with the restrictions that muzzled conservative corporations.

So much for fair play in a Democratically-controlled government. With the Supreme Court protecting the 1st Amendment rights of corporations to campaign for candidates and speak out on the issues with enough dollars behind their words to influence how the voter thinks—and votes. The Supreme Court decision on Citizens United has frightened the left because without cheating and manipulating the votes in the State legislatures as the money barons did in order to enact the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th Amendments, there is no way two thirds of the States would vote to ratify the 28th Amendment that would give extremely partisan social progressive (communist) politicians the right to stifle dissent from both the States and the American people.

 

 

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