Thousands of protesters demonstrated near the White House to oppose the planned Keystone XL pipeline.

President Obama has come under increasing criticism, largely from Republicans, for the decision to delay approval of a massive and controversial transnational pipeline.

More than 50, mostly Republican, members of the House sent the president a letter decrying his administration’s decision to put off a decision on the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

The Obama administration earlier this month pushed back action on the pipeline to 2013 at the earliest after a huge outpouring of opposition to the project. Thousands of protesters had converged on the White House to demontrate against it.

Because the project would cross the U.S. border, it requires a permit from the State Department.

Connie Mack (R-Fla.), along with 56 other members of the House, signed a letter recently demanding the president reconsider his decision to delay approval of the pipeline.

That letter followed earlier criticism from GOP House Speaker John Boehner, who opened fire against the delay after a meeting with the premier of Alberta to discuss the project.

“President Obama says ‘we can’t wait’ to act on jobs,” Boehner says. “And yet that’s exactly what his decision on the Keystone energy project has out-of-work Americans doing: waiting.”

However, opponents cite potentially great environmental harm from the pipeline, particularly in a key aquifer along its planned route through Nebraska.

The process by which the administration had been considering Keystone also became a flashpoint due to the influence of corporate lobbying.

Paul Elliott, who worked on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, actively lobbied the State Department and Congress about the project for a year and a half before he officially registered as a lobbyist, according to State Department email messages which later were made public.

(Read a complete explainer of the Keystone XL pipeline, and its controversies, online here.)

In fact, the administration only agreed to delay consideration of the pipeline after a number of left-leaning lawmakers, particularly Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), asked the independent inspector general of the State Department to investigate the matter. Sanders and others asked Obama to hold off any decision on Keystone until the probe was complete.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

The Occupy The Highway march to Washington represents a new, political, phase of the movement.

Seen in one way, the 20 or so Occupy Wall Street protesters who have marched more than 200 miles from New York to Washington are be a bit late to the party.

When the marchers set out on foot earlier this month, they did so as a statement to tell the so-called congressional supercommittee not to retain the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

In that sense, the protesters needn’t have bothered. By the time the protesters actually enter the capital on Tuesday, supercommittee members will have already declared defeat all on their own.

But in another, crucial sense, these protesters represent the future of the Occupy movement. In its first two months of exuberant existence, Occupy has been both praised and criticized for having avoided any direct political engagement.

No more.

By taking a stand on specific issues — those of tax rates and federal spending — the “Occupy The Highway” marchers will be walking the entire movement into the realm of political force. It’s a first step, to be sure, but an important one.

This march represents a clear way that the movement can fight even more effectively for the 99 percent despite having lost the ability to form encampments in New York and other cities nationwide. No doubt the Occupiers will have to feel their way through their path of political advocacy, but it needn’t be as difficult as some may fear.

The protesters ought to reach out to those politicians who have already embraced their movement, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, or Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. These trusted political leaders could help guide Occupy on effective political advocacy without getting co-opted.

Done in a smart, savvy kind of way, getting more deeply involved in policy and politics could well keep the movement ahead in public opinion. Polls clearly indicate Americans continue to back the goals of Occupy, even if they had begun to question the movement’s use of encampments.

Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington. This article was first published as Walking Into Washington, Protesters Will Be Marching Occupy Into The Future on Blogcritics.

The group of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who have been hiking toward Washington to protest potential proposed cuts to Social security and other federal safety-net programs are scheduled to reach their destination Tuesday, a day ahead of the mandated deadline for the so-called congressional supercommittee to release its recommendations to cut the federal deficit.

“They’re marching to call out the congressional Super Committee, which could cut a deal before Wednesday slashing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to protect tax breaks for the 1%,” says an email sent Sunday by MoveOn.org, a prominent progressive advocacy organization. “The marchers’ stories are powerful, and Congress needs to hear them before they slash programs that so many people rely on.”

The supercommittee was tasked with identifying more than $1 trillion in ways to close the federal budget deficit over 10 years. It is increasingly unlikely supercommittee Democrats and Republicans will strike a deficit deal, however.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO OF THE OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTESTERS MARCHING TO WASHINGTON:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

After an early-morning eviction from Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street found a temporary new home at a park at 6th and Canal in lower Manhattan.

Occupy Wall Street continued to move forward Tuesday, following an early-morning police raid which emptied Zuccotti Park, the protest’s focal point for 59 days.

According to an online post not directly affiliated with Occupy, the protesters’ website streamed live video as the raid unfolded. The website also urged people to “get to the park immediately for eviction defense.” Demonstrators shouted “We love our country” and “You don’t have to do this.”

The nationwide Occupy movement stood in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, urging supporters to call the Civil Rights Division of the federal Justice Department in Washington at (202) 514-4609.

After the raid, in which 70 protesters were arrested, city officials declared Occupy Wall Street could return to the park, but not with tents, tarps, or other camping gear. 

Protesters reportedly won a court order Tuesday, allowing them to return to the park with tents. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed to fight that court order, however. Zuccotti Park remained closed Tuesday morning. Protesters appeared to be marching back to the park in the late morning to “take it back.”

Occupy Wall Street announced a 9 a.m. post-raid rally and general assembly on its Facebook page, posting: “This is not the end, but a new beginning. The 99% will not stop until we have a just society. The 1% are afraid, they are outnumbered. You cannot evict an idea whose time has come! Over a hundred arrests will not stop us. Beating and pepper-spraying us will not stop us. This just shows that they are scared, and we are winning! State repression is a condition of our victory!”

Following the raid, Occupy Wall Street more strongly emphasized a large demonstration planned for Thursday.

“It is more important than ever that you come and show that the 99% is here to stay and we are stronger than ever,” protesters posted on Facebook.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

Helping to enact a new proposed Constitutional amendment to roll back Citizens United would seem to be right up the Occupy movement's alley.

The Occupy movement so far has steered clear of articulating any clear policy goals, or engaging at all in the political process. That’s been smart, because the movement’s been able to grow as quickly, and effectively, as it has precisely for this reason. If Occupy had become about this bill, or that legislation, or whatever, the movement easily could have become too narrowly defined and been diminished as a result.

But now a political issue has come along that is as big as Occupy itself; one that is at the core of what animates the movement, and itself would rely on the kind of geographically dispersed support that Occupy represents. It’s been said often that the Occupy movement is diverse, and that the protesters themselves have differing views. However, if there is any single overarching grievance behind the entire movement, it would be too much corporate influence in our lives, and in our government.

Several Democratic senators on Tuesday unveiled a new proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution, an amendment which would strike back specifically at last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision that gave corporations even greater unfettered reach into our government.

The constitutional amendment would authorize Congress to regulate the raising and spending of money for federal political campaigns, including independent expenditures, and allow states to regulate such spending at their level. It would also provide for implementation and enforcement of the amendment through legislation.

“By equating campaign spending with free speech, the Supreme Court has essentially ruled that the wealthiest among us should have the loudest voices in our elections,” says Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, one of the sponsors of the proposed amendment. “The American public is fed up with the outsize influence that money has on our politics. This constitutional amendment will restore the balance to our system that the American people expect in a democracy. It is time to return our elections to the hands of everyday citizens rather than the special interests.”

The fact is that it is hard, by design, to enact a new amendment to the Constitution. It’s been amended just 27 times in all of U.S. history, and 10 of those all came at once as the Bill of Rights. The Constitution’s not been amended successfully in 20 years. Even an amendment as basic as the Equal Rights Amendment has failed.

Given the fact that this new proposed amendment would cut into the influence of big, deep-pocketed corporations, you can bet those corporations will fight back hard to prevent it. It will take the sustained pressure of a movement the size and power of Occupy to get it done. Moreover, enacting a new amendment takes more than just convincing Washington to do so.

An act of Congress is only the start of a long process. To become enacted, an amendment must be ratified be three fourths of the state legislatures.

That’s 38 of the 50 states, and that’s where Occupy’s geographical reach comes in. Whether in Oakland, Calif., New York City, or Wichita, Kan., Occupy has proven its staying power to keep the pressure on its message. It will take that strength and commitment to ratify this new amendment. It would have to be the Occupy movement versus corporate influence, day in and day out, until that 38th legislature finally did the right thing.

It would seem to be just the kind of fight the Occupy movement was built for.

Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington. This article originally was published as “The Political Issue Uniquely Suited to the Occupy Movement,” on Blogcritics.

The well-established progressive group MoveOn.org plans its own national anti-Wall Street protests, alongside OWS.

In just a few short weeks, Occupy Wall Street has done more than merely spawn hundreds of other Occupy protests across the country and around the world. It’s given birth to an entire movement which has rejuvenated the whole of the American left, almost literally overnight.

Labor unions, progressive advocacy organizations, and others have all rushed to associate themselves with Occupy, and that association has clearly become a two-way street. The unions and others have been supporting Occupy with financial, media, and other forms of support.

But these organizations also very much seem to want to tap into all of this new energy on the left.

Democracy For America, an organization associated with former Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, has begun offering yard signs and bumper stickers “co-branded” with its own imprimatur, and that of Occupy.

Famously leaderless and non-hierarchical, there’s no one with the Occupy movement empowered to fight off this potential “infringement” of the Occupy brand.

More recently, though, another Washington progressive heavyweight, MoveOn.org, has taken its association with Occupy Wall Street a step further.

MoveOn.org has begun to plan its own phalanx of anti-Wall Street protests separate from those of the Occupy movement. MoveOn’s calling its brand of protests “Make Wall Street Pay.”

“How is this connected to Occupy Wall Street? Our goal is to launch targeted local campaigns to complement the amazing work being done by brave Occupy Wall Street protesters—-something MoveOn members around the country have been asking for,” Lenore Palladino of MoveOn.org says in an email. “And we’ll continue to do everything we can to support and stand in solidarity with #Occupy.

“There are plenty of ways to take action to Make Wall Street Pay—from helping homeowners facing illegal foreclosures to a campaign encouraging municipalities, schools, and organizations to move their money to local banks to protesting at branches of Wall Street banks,” she says.

In truth, these MoveOn.org demonstrations won’t be the first non-Occupy protests out there, of course. Although Occupy Wall Street clearly has become the most well-known of the protests, it’s never held a monopoly. Others have been demonstrating alongside Occupy.

The New Bottom Line, for instance, is a coalition of community organizations, congregations, labor unions, and others which has been staging demonstrations across the country, to challenge established big bank interests on behalf of struggling and middle-class communities in much the same way as Occupy. However, while the New Bottom Line shares the spirit of Occupy, it’s its own distinct entity.

Occupy, itself, also has accommodated independent groups within its own movement, such as Stop The Machine, which helped establish Occupy DC.

MoveOn.org’s own Wall Street protests could be different in at least one important way, however.

Occupy Wall Street and the other protest groups so far have not only resisted establishing internal leadership hierarchies, they’ve also not not wanted to put forward any specific demands or engage in any significant way with the political process.

It’s not clear that MoveOn.org’s protest apparatus would operate under such constraint. MoveOn.org, after all, was itself established more than a dozen years ago as an effort to try to head off the Republican-led impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Indeed, MoveOn.org today runs its own political action committee (PAC) right in the nation’s capital.

None of this is to say that there is necessarily anything nefarious, or even wrong, in what MoveOn.org is doing.

Any efforts to turn the anti-Wall Street protests toward a more explicitly political agenda — and doing so from within the established Washington progressive establishment — could wind up changing the complexion of the entire movement very quickly.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

The Occupy Wall Street protests have spawned nationwide rallies, marches, demonstrations — and meditation.

Yes, you read that right: meditation.

Friends from the Baltimore Shambhala Center, with which I’m affiliated, have begun regularly heading downtown to Occupy Baltimore — cushions in hand — to engage in sitting meditation.

As a Buddhist adage says, “Don’t just do something, sit there.”

Meditation helps to generate calm abiding and what we call bodhicitta, or the enlightened mind, a mind capable of boundless compassion.

The meditators from Shambhala are meditating at Occupy Baltimore to lay a ground for a demonstration filled with basic goodness, which as the Buddha taught, is the essential nature of all living beings.

It’s appropriate and wonderful to see that, of all Buddhists, that Shambhala has taken this on.

That’s because a key teaching of Chogyam Trungpa, the late Tibetan Buddhist master who founded Shambhala, was to create “enlightened society.” Indeed, the name Shambhala itself comes from the name of a mythical enlightened kingdom.

Once you start thinking about just what an enlightened society could look like, it would seem to share at least much of what the Occupy protesters talk about.

Ronald Coleman, a representative of the worldwide Shambhala organization, described what an enlightened society could look like at a conference in the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan.

The Shambhala and Buddhist teachings recognize not only that all people want to be happy and free from suffering, but that they are inherently decent and good by nature, he notes. 

“All human beings — whatever their culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, or age — have the complete ability to lead dignified lives, to realize their innate wisdom, and to create a brilliant, vibrant society based on kindness and compassion. This is not a theory or mere wishful thinking. It is the profound understanding that comes from the careful study and contemplation of the human mind and the nature of existence,” he says.

That begins, Coleman says, with a focus on the respect and care of all living beings.

This includes care for the environment in which we live, but it also extends to the human realm, Coleman explains.

“The Buddhist and Shambhala teachings tell us that all beings without exception are blessed with basic goodness and bodhicitta, and that a poverty-stricken mind can be transformed into the wisdom of equanimity that enriches the world,” he says. “An enlightened society therefore respects all cultures, peoples, languages, and communities; treats them with equal dignity and complete tolerance; and finds it own strength in openness and diversity.”

An enlightened society doesn’t embrace materialism, but does accept that everyone needs a decent standard of living.

“In the face of excessive materialism, people yearn for the true wealth that comes from contentment, simplicity, and community,” Coleman says. “An enlightened society will encourage the cultivation of many forms of richness, including healthy family lives, strong and safe communities, an equitable distribution of resources, and support and care for those in need. It will invest in improving the health of the population and in ensuring that everyone has access to a standard of living that sustains their health and wellbeing as well as that of their families and dependants. That security is not an end in itself, but creates a supportive environment that encourages all citizens to realize their full potential.”

It’s important to note that one need not be Buddhist, or even religious at all, to embrace these concepts.

Chogyam Trungpa was always very clear that Shambhala and its teachings not be sectarian in any way, but rather even secular such that they could be accessible to all, and that all could benefit.

YOU CAN WATCH CHOGYAM TRUNGPA TALK ABOUT ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY HERE:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

Under pressure, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has backed off an earlier demand that thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters be evicted from Zuccotti Park.

“This morning at 6 o’clock, MoveOn members, union members, community organizers and thousands of others gathered in Zuccotti Park to stand in solidarity with the people who are occupying Wall Street and to defend them from eviction by Mayor Bloomberg,” according to an email statement from the progressive advocacy group MoveOn.org.

MoveOn.org circulated an online petition in support of the protesters Thursday, seeking 250,000 signatures to send to Bloomberg urging him to allow the protest to remain in Zuccotti Park, which is near Wall Street.

MoveOn.org provided online video from the announcement that Occupy Wall Street had won their right to remain, now that their protest is in its second month.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade

The "Declaration of the Occupation" originally was published in the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

Three weeks into the Occupy protests that began on Wall Street and have now spread to every corner of the nation, bemused and befuddled commentators and lawmakers in Washington still insist on claiming that the demonstrations lack a clear objective or set of demands. But that’s not really true.

While the protesters are not marching in support or opposition to this or that specific legislation or individual policy, the brave and spirited folks animating this new movement certainly do have a clear goal. Their agenda is admittedly broad, but that simply speaks to just how wide and deep corporate influence has become in our country.

The long list of grievances is reflective of just how widespread the tendency of big business and the super-wealthy is to “place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality.” Those aren’t my words. They come directly from the protesters themselves, from their own published “Declaration of the Occupation,” approved entirely by consensus back on September 29.

As with any strong declaration, the protesters begin with a powerful preamble:

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individualsto protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

The protesters go on to enumerate a pretty complete list of what’s wrong with our country today, from the illegal foreclosure process which has led to too many Americans losing their homes, to the poisoning of our food supply through negligence, and undermining the farming system through monopolization, and of course the bankers who happily took our tax dollars for bailouts only to turn around and resume paying themselves exorbitant bonuses at our expense.