• Dr. Ravi Batra, Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University, internally best selling author of "The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos" and "Greenspan’s Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy".

• As we watch...before our very eyes...Barack Obama is transforming himself into Bill Clinton
• New year's resolutions.
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• Funky New Year, Eagles.
• The New Year, Death Cab For Cutie (video).
• Stand, Rascal Flatts.
• Because I Got High, Afroman.
• The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Ennio Morricone.
• Let's Work Together, Canned Heat.
• Let the Day Begin, The Call.
• Happy New Year, Baby, Johnny Otis Orchestra.
• Auld Lang Syne James Taylor.

Well, it's New Year's Eve, and we all have to consider what's right and responsible for us. I've heard from listeners about how they've joined a political party or they're getting active. I've heard from listeners that they've taken over their local Democratic parties. Sometimes it's enough for someone to be informed or even working at being a better parent or friend. It's all good.

And I'm wondering if you were to push yourself just a little bit, what would you do? Would you show up at your local party if you never have? Would you go door to door campaigning for a progressive? Could you make a commitment to call a congressman or congresswoman weekly, or senator, monthly?

My commitment is on a more personal level this year. And it's to change the way I bank away from the banksters. Arianna Huffington" really led the charge on this over at Huffington Post and I think it's a great suggestion. I've been with a large chain bank since we moved here five years ago and I've been meaning to change for years and just never got around to it. It's a fairly inconvenient process. But after the beginning of the year I'm going to find a local community bank or local credit union to support; one that shares my values.

On a large issue for this show I plan to step up my discussions about war. War is legalized mass killing and it's the last option any caring country should engage in, if at all. War means that you've failed. And in war you rarely if ever win, even if it looks like a win. There are so many losers. In Iraq, for example, with over a million dead, four and a half million displaced, five million orphans, war has failed us terribly, and all around the world, frankly, our war in Iraq.

After 9/11 we had an opportunity to be the shining city on the hill that Ronald Reagan talked about and Jack Kennedy talked about in his inaugural, and we didn't. It's easy to say it's Cheney or Bush's fault, and there is a lot of truth to that; those lying war criminals went way beyond anything our legislators authorized them to do, but we have to ultimately deal with the fact that it's our nation that is doing these things and continues to. Liberals, conservatives, those who get involved, and those who don't. If you're a liberal, then you have to get it. We Americans are all in this together.

So what are your resolutions for the new year?

"That very word freedom, in itself and of necessity, suggests freedom from some restraining power. In 1776 we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy - from the eighteenth-century royalists who held special privileges from the crown...

"But since that struggle, man's inventive genius released new forces in our land, forces which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution - all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a problem for those who sought to remain free.

"For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations and banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service...

"Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise...

"The royalists I have spoken of, the royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live...

"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. But in their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 27 June 1936, "A Rendezvous With Destiny" Speech to the Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. ...

*Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.

It depends how narrowly they rule. There's a pretty good consensus that there'll be a 5 to 4 ruling; the conservatives will win. They will give corporations free speech rights and corporations will be able to give money to politicians and political candidates and it will change the political landscape of America.

That's the bad news.

If they do it in a very, very narrow fashion so that it's still within, if they somehow say McCain-Feingold is still legal or whatever, you know, it might not be so terrible. And, in fact, it will probably invite another challenge.

On the other hand, if they kick the door right open, this may well be like Dred Scott. Dred Scott was the 1854 decision that said that African Americans were property rather than citizens, and many people believe that the Dred Scott decision led right to the civil war. And I'm not suggesting that Citizens United would lead to a civil war, but it may well lead to a legislative change, a real significant, like amending the constitution to put the word 'natural' before the word 'persons' in the 14th amendment. It may lead to a constitutional change or a legal change that will strip corporations of personhood because it will have gone too far. And if that's the case, that might actually be a good thing. So, the decision obviously itself would be a terrible thing, but sometimes terrible decisions produce good results.

...

We will see and trust me, I will keep absolutely on top of this. In fact, the reason I took two days off earlier this week and what I'm going to be doing all this coming weekend, is rewriting my book "Unequal Protection", which came out in 2002 which is, according to Ralph Nader, the definitive book on corporate personhood; on this whole issue of how corporations got first amendment rights, fourth amendment rights, fifth amendment rights, fourteenth amendment rights, and how they shouldn't, and how it was a scam from the get go, and how we can fix it.

And I'm rewriting the book because of this Citizens United case coming down and because there's been a lot of case law since 2002 and it's going to be reissued by Berrett-Koehler in May, I believe, although it's still in print right now and you can find it in book stores and all the usual suspects; Amazon and what not and Powell's books.

And as I'm rewriting it I'm discovering a whole lot of nuance in this thing and frankly I am becoming more hopeful, believe it or not, as Ravi Batra, Ravi Batra wrote this book, you know, "The New Golden Age", in which he is talking about it is going to get so bad that the demand to make it better is going to come along. And I think that that's true.