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Corporations are funding policy organizations that are free of the disclosure rules applying to parties, candidates and PACs.
Excerpt from articlee by MIKE McINTIRE and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, NY Times
Two years after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the door for corporate spending on elections, relatively little money has flowed from company treasuries into “super PACs,” which can accept unlimited contributions but must also disclose donors. Instead, there is growing evidence that large corporations are trying to influence campaigns by donating money to tax-exempt organizations that can spend millions of dollars without being subject to the disclosure requirements that apply to candidates, parties and PACs.
The secrecy shrouding these groups makes a full accounting of corporate influence on the electoral process impossible. But glimpses of their donors emerged in a New York Times review of corporate governance reports, tax returns of nonprofit organizations and regulatory filings by insurers and labor unions.
The review found that corporate donations — many of them previously unreported — went to groups large and small, dedicated to shaping public policy on the state and national levels. From a redistricting fight in Minnesota to the sprawling battleground of the 2012 presidential and Congressional elections, corporations are opening their wallets and altering the political world. [Read More]
NY Times Editorial
America’s corporations and their executives are in grave danger, warns Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. According to Mr. McConnell, if President Obama were to find out who was giving hundreds of millions to secretive groups running political attack ads, he would “punish and intimidate” them with all the governmental tools at his disposal.
This is not one of those laughable Internet conspiracy theories. The senator actually wrote this in an op-ed essay in USA Today on Thursday as his explanation of why the Disclose Act, which would end the practice of secret political donations, is “un-American” and an attempt to limit free speech. ....
Mr. McConnell’s charge that the president has loosed the Internal Revenue Service on his enemies is breathtaking. After several years of indifference, the I.R.S. is finally examining whether these “social welfare” groups are abusing their tax-exempt status by spending anonymous donations on political attack ads. The senator compares them to the N.A.A.C.P., but Crossroads GPS and the like exist for no other purpose than to run political ads.
That is a clear violation of the tax code, which says political activity cannot be their primary purpose. The I.R.S. is doing its job, at long last, and that’s what has Republican leaders like Mr. McConnell so worried.
[Read More.]
Excerpt from article by Jeff Spross, for Think Progress
1. Filibustering the American Jobs Act. Last October, Senate Republicans killed a jobs bill proposed by President Obama that would have pumped $447 billion into the economy. Multiple economic analysts predicted the bill would add around two million jobs and hailed it as defense against a double-dip recession. The Congressional Budget Office also scored it as a net deficit reducer over ten years, and the American public supported the bill.
2. Stonewalling monetary stimulus. The Federal Reserve can doenormous good for a depressed economy through more aggressive monetary stimulus, and by tolerating a temporarily higher level of inflation. But with everything from Ron Paul’s anti-inflationary crusade to Rick Perry threatening to lynch Chairman Ben Bernanke, Republicans have browbeaten the Fed into not going down this path. Most damagingly, the GOP repeatedly held up President Obama’s nominations to the Federal Reserve Board during the critical months of the recession, leaving the board without the institutional clout it needed to help the economy.
3. Threatening a debt default. Even though the country didn’t actually hit its debt ceiling last summer, the Republican threat to default on the United States’ outstanding obligations was sufficient to spook financial markets and do real damage to the economy.
4. Cutting discretionary spending in the debt ceiling deal. The deal the GOP extracted as the price for avoiding default imposed around $900 billion in cuts over ten years. It included $30.5 billion in discretionary cuts in 2012 alone, costing the country 0.3 percent in economic growth and 323,000 jobs, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute. Starting in 2013, the deal will trigger another $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years.
5. Cutting discretionary spending in the budget deal. While not as cataclysmic as the debt ceiling brinksmanship, Republicans also threatened a shutdown of the government in early 2011 if cuts were not made to that year’s budget. The deal they struck with the White House cut $38 billion from food stamps, health, education, law enforcement, and low-income programs among others, while sparing defense almost entirely. [MORE]
44 percent of Philly's population is African-American—and nearly 20 percent of voters there may lose the right to cast a ballot this fall.
by AURA BOGADA, The Nation
We’ve seen state officials around the country flat-out lie about the imaginary problem of voter fraud—and we’ve seen how people of color and other marginalized groups stand to have their rights swiftly confiscated in the process. This time, voters in Pennsylvania will feel the brunt of a bill signed into law this past March, which may disenfranchise nearly 10 percent of voters statewide and 18 percent of voters in Philadelphia.
Although Secretary of Commonwealth Carol Aichele has repeatedly stated that 99 percent of Pennsylvania voters were already in possession of the identification needed to comply with the new law, her numbers were way off. The deliberate or accidental overestimate means that the state is stuck with a law that will potentially disenfranchise 758,939 voters.
In a press release dubiously titled “Department of State and PennDOT Confirm Most Registered Voters Have Photo ID,” issued Tuesday, her own office illustrates that more than 180,000 of Philadelphia’s voters lack the proper ID to cast a ballot. More than 44 percent of Philadelphia is African-American.
Pennsylvania’s strict voter ID law means that only certain forms of identification are acceptable. Even government-issued photo ID cards without an expiration date aren’t acceptable. A hearing on the voter ID bill is scheduled for July 25. [MORE]
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) confirms that it has formally launched a criminal investigation into the rigging of the inter-bank lending rate, Libor.
The case could lead to criminal charges being brought against individuals.
Its involvement follows an investigation by US and UK regulators into the manipulation of Libor, which resulted in a record fine for Barclays.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, said he was "delighted" by the decision. "As a government, we will make sure the SFO has all the resources it needs to conduct this investigation in full," he said.
"I want the SFO to follow the evidence wherever it goes, to bring prosecutions if they can."
Last week the bank agreed to pay £290m in penalties after its traders tried to rig inter-bank lending rates, sometimes working with staff at other financial institutions.
Regulators are continuing to look into possible rate manipulation at other banks, while the US Department of Justice is carrying out its own criminal investigations. [MORE]
All the talk of offshoring and outsourcing has Mitt Romney on the defense. But what was good for Bain Capital definitely would not be good for America.
by PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times | Opinion
In a better America, Mitt Romney would be running for president on the strength of his major achievement as governor of Massachusetts: a health reform that was identical in all important respects to the health reform enacted by President Obama. By the way, the Massachusetts reform is working pretty well and has overwhelming popular support.
In reality, however, Mr. Romney is doing no such thing, bitterly denouncing the Supreme Court for upholding the constitutionality of his own health care plan. His case for becoming president relies, instead, on his claim that, having been a successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs.
This, in turn, means that however much the Romney campaign may wish otherwise, the nature of that business career is fair game. How did Mr. Romney make all that money? Was it in ways suggesting that what was good for Bain Capital, the private equity firm that made him rich, would also be good for America?
And the answer is no.
The truth is that even if Mr. Romney had been a classic captain of industry, a present-day Andrew Carnegie, his career wouldn’t have prepared him to manage the economy. A country is not a company (despite globalization, America still sells 86 percent of what it makes to itself), and the tools of macroeconomic policy — interest rates, tax rates, spending programs — have no counterparts on a corporate organization chart. Did I mention that Herbert Hoover actually was a great businessman in the classic mold? [MORE]
The longtime conservative jurist has been one of the nation's most respected and admired legal thinkers on the right.
by NINA TOTENBERG, NPR
Judge Richard Posner, a conservative on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, has long been one of the nation's most respected and admired legal thinkers on the right. But in an interview with NPR, he expressed exasperation at the modern Republican Party, and confessed that he has become "less conservative" as a result.
Posner expressed admiration for President Ronald Reagan and the economist Milton Friedman, two pillars of conservatism. But over the past 10 years, Posner said, "there's been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking."
"I've become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy," he said.
Posner, who was appointed to the appeals court by Reagan, speculated that the leaks about the deliberations over the national health care law — which are apparently designed to discredit Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion upholding the law — would backfire. "I think these right-wingers who are blasting Roberts are making a very serious mistake," he said.
"Because if you put [yourself] in his position ... what's he supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, 'What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?' Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position." [MORE]
Corporations and their legislative operatives have retreats, so why shouldn't We the People?
by Jake Blumgart, AlterNet
The five-day Occupy National Gathering, which drew to a close on July 4, gave participants a venue to network, prioritize issues and vent their grievances with the movement. The event gave those who felt marginalized the chance to make themselves heard, with many expressing frustration at the preponderance of white males in positions of influence.
The movement’s anarchist roots were readily apparent throughout the five days, with horizontalism and a rejection of mainstream political engagement remaining at the heart of Occupy. Issues of student debt, endangered public education, foreclosure, and big bank power were clearly the dominant concerns, although the national security state, environmental issues and police brutality were also discussed. As with any political function there were a certain number of outlier ideologies, but the 9-11 Truthers and the End the Fed contingents were vanishingly small and exerted little influence. (The latter was reduced from the Ron Paul tents that sprang up at many encampments to a lone crier in a Bob Marley T-shirt.)
The National Gathering was largely concerned with maintaining Occupy’s much-vaunted "horizontalism"—a leaderless, non-hierarchal structure—while reinvigorating the movement’s flagging momentum. On the 4th a visioning process was held, where groups of three people, who didn’t know each other, met to formulate what their ideal democratic future would look like. “Another world is possible, but what does it look like? This is our question for the day,” tweeted Melanie Butler, an activist from the Wall Street occupation. Over the course of the day these groups melded together, combining lists and placing tallies next to issues that were repeatedly prioritized in individual groups’ lists. [MORE]
by Bob Warner, Philadelphia Inquirer
More than 758,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania do not have photo identification cards from the state Transportation Department, putting their voting rights at risk in the November election, according to data released Tuesday by state election officials.
The figures - representing 9.2 percent of the state's 8.2 million voters - are significantly higher than prior estimates by the Corbett administration. Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele has repeatedly said that 99 percent of Pennsylvania's voters already had the photo ID they will need at the polls in November.
The new numbers, based on a comparison of voter registration rolls with PennDot ID databases, shows the potential problem is much bigger, particularly in Philadelphia, where 186,830 registered voters - 18 percent of the city's total registration - do not have PennDot ID. [MORE]
by SZELENA GRAY, Rootstrikers
Rootstrikers experiments with techniques to drive a grassroots movement to end the corrupting influence of money in politics. Recently, we launched The Anti-Corruption Pledge, which asks signers to commit to at least one of four principles of fair government. Pledge numbers are steadily climbing, prompting us to consider what the tool's next steps might be. One idea, inspired by our friends at Occupy Albany, is to form a voting bloc.
The Money Out of Politics Working Group from Occupy Albany has initiated a campaign called the Occupy Democracy Project to build the Money Out of Politics (MOP) Voting Bloc. The MOP Voting Bloc is a group of voters who sign up to be notified, at election time, whether or not candidates on the ballot support getting money out of politics, essentially saying to candidates and politicians, "If you want our votes, you need to support getting money out of politics." Matthew Edge, one of the organizers explains: “It’s like a petition, but with teeth: we go door-to-door in competitive districts, canvass festivals and link to the “Join the MOP Voting Bloc” form on the web year round; then it all culminates in a massive GOTV effort where we phone bank, lit drop, door knock, snail mail and e-mail blast everyone who signed up to be contacted.”
Initially the Money Out of Politics Voting Bloc was created to rally around one issue: clean elections, but in an effort to create a broader based coalition, they now will be informing members of the voting bloc about where candidates stand on a constitutional amendment and other campaign finance reform measures.
The Occupy Albany Money Out of Politics Working Group put together this resource on voting blocs. Can a people-powered pledge which allows its signers to determine their own version of clean elections organize to leverage political accountability? We certainly hope so. In workshops we hosted on the pledge, one issue that came up was whether or not we could reasonably expect a politician in the current system to be able to adhere to the principles of clean elections—if they hope to win. Could the promise of support from a massive bloc of voters change that?
[MORE from Rootstrikers]
by ANNA ALMENDRALA, Huffington Post One of the largest states in the nation took an official stand Thursday against the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which ruled that government restriction of corporation or union spending on political campaigns violated the First Amendment right to free speech. California joins Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maryland and New Mexico in calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling. State assembly members Bob Wieckowski (D-Calif.) and Michael Allen (D-Calif.) introduced the campaign finance reform bill in January, calling for the federal government to send a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United to all the states for ratification. The measure also would serve as an official symbol of California's disagreement with the ruling. In an email to The Huffington Post, Wieckowski emphasized California's status as a trendsetter in the fight for campaign finance reform. "A lot of national movements and trends start in California," wrote Wieckowski. "We have the largest population, the most congressional representatives and the largest economy in the country. It was critical for California to take a stand." The last constitutional amendment was ratified in 1992. When asked about the quixotic nature of his resolution, Wieckowski agreed that the fight for campaign finance reform was a challenge. [MORE]
by EZRA KLEIN, Bloomberg
Is the Affordable Care Act really “the largest tax increase in the history of the world,” as Rush Limbaugh so grandiloquently put it? No. It’s not even the largest tax increase in the history of this country.
Or of the past 50 years. Or 20. It’s not even the biggest tax increase scheduled to take effect in the very near future. (That’s the expiration of the George W. Bush tax cuts slated for New Year’s Day.)
Typically, we estimate taxes over 10 years. Contrary to the claims of Republicans such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who says the Affordable Care Act has “six years of benefits with 10 years of tax increases,” most of the law’s tax increases don’t kick in until the latter part of the decade. So a 10-year budget window can be misleading in the case of the Affordable Care Act.
Fortunately, in its 2010 Long-Term Budget Outlook, the Congressional Budget Office resolved this problem, estimating the size of the Affordable Care Act’s tax increase in the year 2020, by which point all the taxes will be fully in effect. So how big is it? One half of one percent of GDP. That’s about the size of Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase or George Bush’s 1991 tax increase, and much smaller than Ronald Reagan’s 1982 tax increase.
Still, it’s a big tax increase. The money, though, is not coming from the source that many suspect -- or even from one that Republicans necessarily oppose. [MORE]
by Associated Press
President Barack Obama marked the Fourth of July by welcoming two dozen U.S. service members as newly-sworn American citizens, saying the contributions they have already made dramatize the need for Washington to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
"Immigration makes America stronger," Obama said. "Immigration makes us more prosperous. Immigration positions America to lead in the 21st century."
The 25 active duty U.S. service members who became citizens Wednesday hailed from 17 different countries, including Mexico, Nigeria and Russia. In front of an audience of family and friends, the service members were administered the oath of allegiance by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in the East Room of the White House. Obama said the varied backgrounds of those taking the oath typified America's long tradition of welcoming immigrants from around the world to its shores.
"Unless you are one of the first Americans, a native American, we are all descended from folks who came from somewhere else," he said. "The story of immigrants in America isn't a story of them. It's a story of us." [MORE]
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Over the objection of broadcasters, the Office of Management and Budget OKs measure to put political ad information on the Internet.
By Justin Elliott, ProPublica
A new rule requiring TV stations to put political ad data on a government website is one step closer to taking effect, as the Office of Management and Budget approved the measure following a mandatory review.
The Federal Communications Commission rule, passed earlier this year, will require broadcasters to post online information including who buys politics ads and for how much. The information, which should help shed light on the expected tsunami of ad spending by campaigns and outside groups in the election, is currently available only on paper at stations.
The approval of the rule by OMB, which was assessing whether it complies with the Paperwork Reduction Act, was first reported by the Sunlight Foundation. The approval came last week over the objections of broadcasters, who have been fighting the transparency measure at every time.
But it's still unclear when the new website with political ad data will be up and running.
When the FCC passed the rule in April, it said stations would have to begin posting political ad files online 30 days after the FCC announces OMB approval in the Federal Register. We now have OMB approval, but the FCC has yet to announce it in the Federal Register. An FCC spokeswoman declined to comment on when that might happen. So stay tuned.
While much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Iceland’s economy is expected to grow by 2.4 percent this year.
by SARAH LYALL, NY Times
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — For a country that four years ago plunged into a financial abyss so deep it all but shut down overnight, Iceland seems to be doing surprisingly well.
It has repaid, early, many of the international loans that kept it afloat. Unemployment is hovering around 6 percent, and falling. And while much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Iceland’s economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year. ...
Analysts attribute the surprising turn of events to a combination of fortuitous decisions and good luck, and caution that the lessons of Iceland’s turnaround are not readily applicable to the larger and more complex economies of Europe.
But during the crisis, the country did many things different from its European counterparts. It let its three largest banks fail, instead of bailing them out. It ensured that domestic depositors got their money back and gave debt relief to struggling homeowners and to businesses facing bankruptcy.
[Read More.]
by BILL ZIMMERMAN, Truthout | Opinion
A tsunami of citizen activism, initiated by Occupy Wall Street, is poised to wash over American society. The coming battle to correct the grotesquely unequal distribution of wealth and power in this country is likely to have an even more profound impact on our society than what occurred in the 1960s.
Fifty years ago, a few white students like me were outraged to find that the sugarcoated view of America we had been taught in the 50s did not match reality. The notions of justice and human rights we had internalized motivated our actions, and as idealists, we opposed the Jim Crow laws in the South and the needless killing in Southeast Asia.
Young activists taking to the streets today harbor no illusions about justice in America. They are cynical, worldly wise and unemployed; many are weighed down by debt. They know they have few prospects for meaningful or even gainful employment. They protest in their own economic self-interest. They are a wholly different phenomenon than the 1960s activists.
In 1958, when I entered the elite University of Chicago, annual tuition was $870. Inflation would make that $6,945 today. But tuition at the U of C this year is $43,851, more than six times as much, making crushing debt inevitable for most students.
Students in my day could drop out for a time, leave their career track to take an offbeat job, become an activist, explore other countries or simply have fun. The multitude of available jobs meant that we were free to drop back in whenever we chose. Not so today. [MORE]
by THOMAS BURR, The Salt Lake Tribune
Still smarting from his unsuccessful presidential campaign, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman won’t attend next month’s Republican National Convention or future GOP gatherings until the party starts to tackle the "bigger" issues.
Huntsman, who says he has been at every convention since 1984 when he was a delegate for Ronald Reagan, told The Salt Lake Tribune in a statement that he’s been asked repeatedly whether he would attend the August convention in Tampa, Fla., but noted that he is skipping it.
"I will not be attending this year’s convention, nor any Republican convention in the future," Huntsman said, "until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States — a future based on problem solving, inclusiveness, and a willingness to address the trust deficit, which is every bit as corrosive as our fiscal and economic deficits."
Huntsman had racked up two national delegates with his third-place finish in New Hampshire and another from the Texas primary, a point that could have guaranteed him a speaking role. But Huntsman has released those delegates to Mitt Romney and endorsed the now-presumptive nominee.
The former Utah governor was uninvited to a Republican National Committee event in Florida in March after he suggested that the nation needed a third-party candidate who offered an alternative to the Republican and Democratic options.
In a statement this week, Huntsman said he wanted his party to return to its moorings that mirrored his last-minute campaign theme of "Country First."
"I encourage a return to the party we have been in the past," he said, "from Lincoln right on through to Reagan, that was always willing to put our country before politics." [MORE]
Excerpt from New York Times editorial:
On the campaign trail, President Obama has explained correctly that recoveries from financial crashes are tortured affairs and that it was an achievement to get the economy growing again a mere six months after he took office. For that, he credits the 2009 stimulus he pushed through Congress, a point well supported by public — and private-sector economic analyses. It’s also worth noting that job growth in the current recovery has actually outpaced the job growth following the Bush-era recession in 2001. The recovery is not unusually weak; what is atypical is the length and severity of the recession that Mr. Obama inherited.
Mitt Romney is having none of that. His campaign has centered on what he calls Mr. Obama’s “failed economic record.” This from a man who says the stimulus was a failure and the rescue of the auto industry a mistake, whose prescription for stabilizing the housing market is to let it crash, whose plan for health care is to repeal the health reform law, and who clings to discredited policies, like more tax cuts for the rich and less regulation for the banks. Mr. Romney’s proposals would take the nation back to the conditions that inflated the bubble and led to the bust. [MORE]
by Joy Resmovits, Huffington Post The states of Washington and Wisconsin will be allowed to wiggle out of No Child Left Behind's rigorous test requirements, joining two dozen other U.S. states that have already agreed to waivers that require them to adopt the Obama administration's education agenda instead, the U.S. Education Department will announce today.
The new waivers mean more than half the states have now won exemptions from the 2002 law, a signature initiative of George W. Bush's presidency that required standardized testing of students and a system of punishments based on the test scores. While advocates credit the law for exposing test score gaps between different groups of students, even the law's original cheerleaders acknowledge its "failing" schools label is too broad, the tutoring remedies it mandates rarely boost student achievement, and the 2014 goal that 100 percent of U.S. students be deemed "proficient" in science and math is unrealistic. [ MORE]
By Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News
Former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman announced Friday that he plans to stay home in protest.
"I will not be attending this year's convention, nor any Republican convention in the future, until the party focuses on a bigger, bolder, more confident future for the United States—a future based on problem solving, inclusiveness, and a willingness to address the trust deficit, which is every bit as corrosive as our fiscal and economic deficits," Huntsman said, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Huntsman had released his delegates to Mitt Romney and is no longer actively seeking office. But active candidates are making the same decision.
The campaign for Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon confirmed Thursday that if the former World Wrestling Entertainment executive wins the Republican Senate nomination Aug. 14, she won't be helping to formally nominate Mitt Romney. "Our focus is going to be on campaigning in Connecticut," McMahon campaign spokeswoman Kate Duffy first told The Connecticut Mirror.
[Read More.]
by Agence France-Presse, The Raw Story The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries. An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or financial transactions proposed in a UN report that accuses wealthy nations of breaking promises to step up aid for the less fortunate. The annual World Economic and Social Survey says it is critical to find new ways to help the world’s poor as pledged cash fails to flow.
The report estimates that the number of people around the globe worth at least $1 billion rose to 1,226 in 2012. There are an estimated 425 billionaires in the United States, 315 in the Asia-Pacific region, 310 in Europe, 90 in other North and South American countries and 86 in Africa and the Middle East. Together they own an estimated $4.6 trillion so a one percent tax on their wealth would raise more than $46 billion, according to the report. “Would this hurt them?” it questioned. [MORE]
Illustration by Pete Ryan
by Pete Kotz, SF Weekly
On July 11, 2008, the price of oil rose to $147 per barrel, a record high. Gas stations engaged in hot pursuit as the price of a gallon rocketed past $4. All hell was about to break loose.
The country's largest banks had already begun to implode through arrogance and ineptitude. Now the oil market had moved in with a thundering uppercut. Airlines and trucking firms watched their costs punch through the roof. So did every other business great and small, since 90 percent of American goods are shipped in some form or another.
"That was the breaking point of the economy," says Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C., government watchdog group. "That's when businesses said they could no longer fuel their trucks, and that fuel costs were overwhelming their payroll."
So began a surge of layoffs that would push well into the next year.
America's political leaders could only muster a simpleton's response. Demand had outstripped supply, they claimed. And it was all the fault of radical environmentalists. If they'd only let us drill for more riches offshore — or on protected lands in Alaska — we could all go back to cranking Toby Keith in our Chevy Tahoes.
It was a fabulous, made-for-TV narrative. Who can forget Sarah Palin shaking her fist at the Republican convention, exhorting the legions to "Drill, baby, drill!" What began as a rallying cry soon became an article of faith at cafés and kitchen tables, executive suites and editorial meetings. [MORE]
How Romney’s monetary success could hurt him with voters.
by EUGENE ROBINSON, Washington Post | Opinion
You can conduct byzantine transactions through opaque investment accounts and private corporations in offshore tax havens such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Or you can credibly run for president at a time of great economic distress.
I don’t think you can do both.
Let me be clear that I have nothing against wealth. In fact, I have nothing against great wealth, which is how I would classify Mitt Romney’s estimated $250 million fortune. We can argue about the social utility of private- equity firms such as Bain Capital, but Romney isn’t responsible for distorting the system so that financiers are grossly overpaid. He just took advantage of the situation.
Increasingly, however, I have to wonder whether the achievement Romney touts as his biggest asset in running for president — his business success — might be seen by many voters as a liability.
The question isn’t whether people can relate to a candidate who has tons of money. It’s whether they will connect with a man who didn’t make his money the old-fashioned way — by building a better widget — but by sending capital hither and yon via clicks of a computer mouse to take advantage of arcane opportunities most people never even know about. [MORE]
This video was shot before it was clear who would emerge from the GOP nominating process, and, before the Global Democracy Movement transformed the conversation in America from "left vs. right" to "1 percent vs. We the People."
It examines the UK Uncut movement, as the people of Great Britian responded to a collusion of interests between government and its richest citizens to redistribute wealth upward from those who need it most to those who need it least. [MORE]
JAYNE LYN STALL, Huffington Post
On this Independence Day, I wonder, if only it were possible for the second president of the United States, John Adams, to magically find himself walking among us today, how, if at all, might he change some of his most famous quotes. Here are a couple to ponder:
"Power must never be trusted without a check."
Now, in light of the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United, John Adams might instead write: "Power must never be trusted with a check."
. . .
here's one quote that Adams might indeed leave unchanged, and something to think about on this American's 236th birthday:
"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it."
We are still fighting for freedom, but over the past hundred years or so, it has been for somebody else's freedom. Nowadays, we must fight against the tyranny of corporations, banks, boardrooms, and country club elitism, the kind that would turn the Oval Office into the Polo Lounge. [MORE]
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