VRWC news: gonna be a long thread [Archive]

boutons_deux

04-13-2011, 01:06 PM

The VRWC's Corporate-American vote$ are the only ones counted by Congress. Human-American votes are a charade fooling the sheeple.

12 Tax-Dodging Corporations Spent $1 Billion To Influence Washington Over The Last Decade

EXXON MOBIL: The oil giant that was the world’s most profitable corporation in 2008 has spent $5.7 million in campaign contributions over the last ten years and $138 million in lobbying expenditures. Its federal corporate income tax liabilities for 2009? Absolutely nothing. Not only did it pay nothing, but it also received a tax rebate the same year of $156 million.

CHEVRON: Chevron spent $4.4 million in campaign contributions and $91 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received a tax refund of $19 million in 2009 while making $10 billion in profits and $324 million in government contracts in 2008.

CONOCOPHILLIPS: The Texas-based gasoline giant spent $2.5 million in campaign contributions and $63 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received “$451 million through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction,” a special tax break, between 2007 and 2009, despite $16 billion in profits over the same period of time.

VALERO ENERGY: Valero spent $4.1 million in campaign contributions and $4.8 million in lobbying expenditures from 2001 to 2010. It received a $157 million tax rebate in 2009 despite $68 billion in sales during the same year. It received “$134 million through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction” over the last three years.

BANK OF AMERICA: Bank of America employees contributed $11 million to federal political campaigns from 2001 to 2010 and spent $24 million lobbying over the same period of time. It made $4.4 billion in profits in 2010 while receiving a tax refund of $1.9 billion.

CITIGROUP: Citigroup employees contributed $15 million to federal political campaigns from 2001 to 2010 and spent $62 million lobbying over the same period of time. It made $4 billion in profits in 2010 while paying absolutely nothing in federal corporate income taxes. It also received a $1.9 billion tax refund.

GOLDMAN SACHS: The mega-bank Goldman Sachs, which is often called “Government Sachs” in insider circles because of its clout over Washington, spent $22 million in campaign contributions and $21 million in lobbying over the last decade. It paid an ultra-low tax rate of 1.1 percent in 2008, while also receiving $800 billion in governmentloans to help weather the financial crisis.

BOEING: The aviation and defense contractor giant gave $10 million in contributions and $115 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It paid a grand total of nothing in federal corporate income taxes in 2010 and received a $124 million tax refund.

FEDEX: FedEx spent $8.7 million in campaign contributions and $71 million in lobbying expenditures from 2001 to 2010. It paid a .0005 percent effective tax rate recently, actually spending 42 times as much on lobbying Congress as it did paying taxes. To do this it utilizes 21 tax havens.

CARNIVAL: The cruise line paid $1.7 million in campaign contributions and $1.6 million in lobbying over the past ten years. Despite the relatively low amount of money it spent influencing Washington, it has gotten away with a super-low tax rate. Over the past five years, its federal corporate income tax rate has been an effective 1.1 percent.

VERIZON: Verizon spent $12 million in campaign contributions and $131 million in lobbying expenditures over the past decade. It paid absolutely nothing in federal corporate income taxes over the past two years and $488 million in government contracts in 2008; in 2010, it made $12 billion in profits.

GENERAL ELECTRIC: General Electric spent $13 million in campaign contributions and $205 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade while netting a tax refund of $4.1 billion over the past five years. It made $26 billion in profits over the same time period.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/13/tax-dodging-lobbying-congress/

boutons_deux

04-13-2011, 05:16 PM

Walker And Prosser Crushed Regulations On Koch Industry’s Phosphorus Pollution In Wisconsin

Shortly after helping to elect Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), Koch Industries opened a new lobbying office in Madison near the state capitol. However, little has been disclosed about the Koch lobbying agenda in Madison. The New York Times reported that Koch political operatives privately pressured Walker to crush public employee unions. But Walker’s major payback to Koch relates to environmental deregulation.

ThinkProgress has learned that the Walker administration, along with state Supreme Court judge David Prosser, has quietly worked to allow Koch’s many Georgia Pacific paper plants to pollute Wisconsin by pouring thousands of pounds of phosphorus into the water.

To fight the challenge to the permit, as well as new regulations on phosphorus, Koch’s close allies in the Walker administration and the Wisconsin Supreme Court went into action:

– Rewriting Environmental Regulations For Koch: Last year, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board called for strict numeric limits on phosphorus pollution. The regulations, which were supposed to be implemented in January, were delayed by Walker’s administration. Hidden inside his infamous budget bill passed in March, Walker then inserted a provision to revise and reduce the phosphorus limits proposed by the Natural Resources Board. Walker’s budget bill was rushed through the legislative process without public hearings.

– Ruling In Favor Of Koch And Other Polluters: In March, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with Justice David Prosser voting with the majority, overturned the lower court decision allowing a public challenge to the permit giving Koch’s Georgia Pacific plants more leeway in dumping phosphorus into waterways.

– Delaying Environmental Regulations For Koch: Earlier this month, the Walker administration announced a two year delay of all phosphorus regulations passed last year. Not only has Walker’s administration called for reduced phosphorus dumping rules, they now have made it clear that no rules will be implemented until 2013.

During this three month period of Koch-enriching policy and legal action, the Koch political largesse has flowed to both Walker and Prosser. The Koch political machine spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads supporting Walker during the budget showdown, organized pro-Walker Tea Party rallies, and mobilized a pro-Walker bus tour. During his recent reelection campaign, Prosser too was boosted by two Koch-linked groups, Citizens for a Strong America and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which ran about $1 million in advertising. A top Georgia Pacific executive overseeing plants responsible for dumping phosphorus in the Fox River sits on the board of the pro-Posser group, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/13/walker-koch-phosphorus/

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Elected judges are politicized, corrupt judges.

z0sa

04-13-2011, 05:23 PM

Vague, one-two sentence commentaries on the VWRC followed by full length article repostings that are filled with random, unacknowledged bolded emphases. No explanation, we're simply supposed to "get it" by taking Boutons' exalted word for it.

How old are you again? Do you lack any sense of dignity or professionalism? Do you really believe ThinkProgress.org appreciates you reposting their articles in full or close to it while bolding what you want and commenting how you will, without even a by-line for the original writer to balance or compensate? And do you understand that we are smart enough to peruse thinkprogress.org on our own?

I realize this is a discussion board; what this thread encourages is not discussion, but mindless spamming, and further dissension.

boutons_deux

04-13-2011, 05:24 PM

GFY

acronym for

GO FUCK YOURSELF

boutons_deux

04-13-2011, 05:25 PM

How MIC rolls:

http://www.truthout.org/print/527

http://www.truthout.org/print/1007

z0sa

04-13-2011, 05:32 PM

GFY

acronym for

GO FUCK YOURSELF

Seems every conspiracy theorist gets mad when you call his antics plainly.

This thread sucks. You know it, but like a child, you feel the forum is yours to pepper with conspiracy theories as you see fit. So it is, in practice. That does not protect you from criticism of your practice.

Winehole23

04-13-2011, 08:30 PM

I'm ok with this thread being a collection area for boutons' VRWC linx. It's much preferable IMO to his endless OT derails, or separate threads for each repost.

Winehole23

04-13-2011, 08:31 PM

Hope it gets as long as Methuselah's beard. :toast

Winehole23

04-13-2011, 08:40 PM

The panel's report is harder hitting than one issued in January by the government-appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which "didn't report anything of significance," Republican Senator Tom Coburn said at the briefing.

More than two years since the crisis peaked, denunciations of Wall Street misconduct are less often heard on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers focused on fiscal issues. But Coburn joined Levin at Wednesday's bipartisan briefing, firing his own sharp attacks on the financial industry.

"Blame for this mess lies everywhere -- from federal regulators who cast a blind eye, Wall Street bankers who let greed run wild, and members of Congress who failed to provide oversight," said Coburn, the subcommittee's top Republican.

"It shows without a doubt the lack of ethics in some of our financial institutions who embraced known conflicts of interest to accomplish wealth for themselves, not caring about the outcome for their customers," he said.

The Levin-Coburn report criticized not only Goldman, but Deutsche Bank, the former Washington Mutual Bank, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision and credit rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's.

"We will be referring this matter to the Justice Department and to the SEC," Levin said at the briefing, though he did not elaborate. A spokesman later said, "The subcommittee does not intend to reveal the specifics of any referral."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_financial_regulation_report

boutons_deux

04-17-2011, 10:26 AM

SEC Delays Corporate Anti-Corruption Measure

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/sec-delays-corporate-anti_n_849230.html?view=print

boutons_deux

04-17-2011, 10:30 AM

America's Richest Taxpayers See Federal Taxes Dramatically Drop

The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/17/us-rich-income-taxes-drop-dramatically_n_850174.html?view=print

==========

Seventeen-Percenter Warren Buffet says: "There is a Class War, and my Class is winning"

boutons_deux

04-17-2011, 10:43 AM

Offshore Banking and Tax Havens Have Become Heart of Global Economy

"Tax havens have grown so fast in the era of globalization, since the 1970s, that they are now right at the heart of the global economy and are absolutely huge," says our guest, British journalist Nicholas Shaxson. "There are anywhere between $10 and $20 trillion sitting offshore at the moment. Half of world trade is processed in one way or another through tax havens."

The United Kingdom, my country, is one of the world’s most important tax havens. And right now in Washington, D.C., I’m sitting in one of the world’s biggest tax havens, as well: the United States. So, this is something we need to really reappraise, the whole geography of the system, and understand how important it is. And when we’re hearing figures of $100-plus billion lost to the U.S. taxpayers, I would argue that is just one aspect of the problem. The problem is much, much bigger.

And looking at the history of this, Wall Street, after the Second World War, they were—after the Bretton Woods agreement, 1946, there was a cooperative international order set up where capital was tightly controlled around the world. Wall Street was very firmly put in its place. And, you know, there were very high taxes on the wealthy. And for about a quarter of a century, this system more or less worked out, and capital was quite tightly constrained. It was also an era of very high, broad-based economic growth, not just in the United States, but around the world. What happened during that period, though, was that the banks, Wall Street, in particular, didn’t—obviously didn’t like these curbs, didn’t like the Glass-Steagall Act that was separating commercial from investment banking, didn’t like interest rate caps, didn’t like these controls. And essentially, they went off to London. And in London, the Bank of England and the city of London said, basically, "You bring your money here, and you can do what you like. You don’t—we’re not going to worry about Glass-Steagall. We’re not going to worry about interest rate caps." And so, what happened is Wall Street piled into London from about the ’60s onwards, and that really marked the unraveling of—part of the unraveling of the Bretton Woods arrangements.

And Wall Street was able to grow incredibly fast offshore, much, much faster than it had been before. And this ability to grow offshore, first in London and then in a wider network of tax havens around the world, this has been one of the great reasons why it has been able to grow so fast. And now we have "too big to fail" banks and this offshore system, the ability of banks in the United States to go elsewhere to do things that allow them to grow faster and take more risks, away from the democratic curbs. It’s one of the reasons why they’ve grown so powerful and why we have got such a difficult situation today with Wall Street having such power over the politicians in this country and my country and others.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/15/offshore_banking_and_tax_havens_have

boutons_deux

04-18-2011, 01:22 PM

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Rick-Scott.jpg

Florida’s GOP House Speaker Pushing Court-Packing Plan To Neutralize Democratic Justices

The measure would add three new justices to the court, all of whom would be named by Republican Gov. Rick Scott. Then it would go one step past Roosevelt by dividing the court in two. The three most senior justices — all, coincidentally, appointed by a Democratic governor — would be consigned to a new criminal division.

This would ensure a conservative-leaning majority on a new civil division, where pivotal cases involving the drawing of new voting districts will land next year. Republicans cite all sorts of reasons for expansion, such as needing to cut the court’s heavy caseload. They ignore the fact that the court’s caseload is now the lowest in a decade.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/18/florida-court-packing/

boutons_deux

04-18-2011, 01:28 PM

FCM fails to report indictment of Wall St, surprise!! Wall St is huge advertizer in the media.

Bipartisan Senators Indict Wall Street, Media Yawns. Six Guys Push Stale Deficit Hype, Media Goes Wild

It should have been the lead story from coast to coast: A bipartisan panel of Senators, including some of that body's most conservative members, released a damning report that slammed bankers, regulators, and ratings agencies - and they made it clear that they'd like to see warrants issued against the CEO of Goldman Sachs and other financial executives.

This report was endorsed by all of its Republican members, including conservative co-chair Tom Coburn and Tea Party Senator Rand Paul. Hey, editors, how's this for a headline? "Libs and Tea Party Senators demand: 'Bring me the head of Goldman Sachs.'"

The media responded with a collective yawn.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/bipartisan-senators-indic_b_850604.html?view=print

boutons_deux

04-18-2011, 01:51 PM

GOP Governors Trying to Kill Environmental Protection Laws

Since the midterm elections, the GOP has been doing more than decimating social programs and attacking women, the poor and the elderly. Emboldened by a coalition of toxic Republican governors, they\'ve been taking their offense to the state level, disabling infrastructure that potentially still has a wall of protection in the Senate. We\'ve seen this in both their union-busting tactics throughout the Midwest and their assault on women\'s reproductive health throughout the country, but the New York Times points out today that they\'re coming for another target: environmental protection. Citing environmental rollbacks in Maine, New Jersey, Florida and North Carolina as well as the Washington GOP\'s disdain for the EPA, the piece illustrates how Republicans are setting up a false dichotomy between jobs and the environment -- as though we\'ve got to choose one or the other.

Governor LePage summed up the animus while defending his program in a radio address. “Maine’s working families and small businesses are endangered,” he said. “It is time we start defending the interests of those who want to work and invest in Maine with the same vigor that we defend tree frogs and Canadian lynx.”

This is, of course, completely false. As Sarah Laskow wrote yesterday in The Mulch, \'comprehensive clean-energy and climate legislation could create 1.9 million jobs,\' while Ryan\'s budget plan not only sacrifices the EPA -- $1.6 billion in cuts -- it also decimates jobs.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/newsandviews/562406

==========

The conspiracy of KOCK BROS, API, and various other big polluters, land developers have paid the Repugs to kill/defund EPA, Clean Air, Clean Water, Species Protection, forests, wetland protection acts/regulations/rules.

CosmicCowboy

04-18-2011, 01:55 PM

This is, of course, completely false. As Sarah Laskow wrote yesterday in The Mulch, \'comprehensive clean-energy and climate legislation could create 1.9 million jobs,\' while Ryan\'s budget plan not only sacrifices the EPA -- $1.6 billion in cuts -- it also decimates jobs.

I don't consider creating hundreds of thousands of new government jobs to be legitimate "job creation"...just another burden on an economy already stretched too thin with too much government spending coupled with too little government revenue.

ChumpDumper

04-18-2011, 02:01 PM

How many government jobs did it say that legislation would create?

boutons_deux

04-18-2011, 02:02 PM

it didn't. CC's knee jerked

boutons_deux

04-18-2011, 02:22 PM

Why Are We Letting Fossil-Fuel Billionaire Pickens Write Our Energy Policy and Push for More Dangerous Gas Drilling

Pickens has essentially written a bill called the NAT GAS Act (“New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions,” H.R. 1380), to switch fleet vehicles such as buses and interstate trucks to “natural” gas.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150644

====

If only natural gas were clean to extract, and didn't need dickhead's "Halliburton law" that excepted fracking from Clean Water statutes.

CosmicCowboy

04-18-2011, 02:27 PM

How many government jobs did it say that legislation would create?

How many civilian jobs did it say would be created and how would those jobs be paid for? Federal grants? Subsidies? Tax credits?

boutons_deux

04-18-2011, 02:35 PM

"Federal grants? Subsidies? Tax credits?"

All of those go to oil and gas co's, and $Ts go the military black hole, why not something to renewable, non-fossil energy development?

Taxpayers pay for oil/gas explorations costs!!

ChumpDumper

04-18-2011, 05:45 PM

How many civilian jobs did it say would be createdThat was right there in the quote, and it had nothing to don with what you were talking about.

Please answer my question.

boutons_deux

04-20-2011, 03:18 PM

Koch Industries Coerced Employees During The 2010 Midterm Elections

Writing today in the Nation, Mark Ames and Mike Elk reveal that Koch Industries mailed a letters to 50,000 employees instructing them on who to vote for in the 2010 midterm elections. The Koch packet given to employees included candidate names, a letter from a Koch lobbyist, and a right-wing screed from the company and the Washington Examiner, an outlet owned by Phil Anschutz, a billionaire who is close to the Koch family. (View a copy of the packet here.)

Corporate coercion of employees is perhaps the most profound repercussion from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year. The Nation spoke to several law experts who noted that “Citizens United frees Koch Industries and other corporations to propagandize their employees with their political preferences.” Before the decision, businesses were prohibited from instructing their employees to vote a certain way.

Not only was Koch active in helping push the Citizens United decision (several of the groups filing amicus briefs supporting unlimited corporate spending were funded by Koch), but Koch actively planned for exploiting the decision. When we exposed a memo outlining the 2010 secret Koch political strategy meeting with fellow right-wing donors, we noted that the summit included a presentation from Karl Crow. Crow is a Koch operative who had penned a memo calling for corporations to exploit Citizens United and aggressively use “employees, vendors, and customers” as tools for advancing business interests in the political sphere

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/20/koch-coerced-employees-during-the-2010-midterm-elections/

===============

If KOCH BROS do it, you can expect other Corporate-Americans to propagandize their Human-Americans. I expect there will be quite a bit of pressure, making the workplace into a "closed shop" of politicized pressure.

If you don't play the employer's political games, you don't advance or even retain your job.

boutons_deux

04-21-2011, 08:12 AM

Capitalism's Crisis Within, and How Larry Summers Still Doesn't Get It

one of the most important economic policy players shaping the environment leading up to the financial crash did not. Former Treasury Secretary and avid deregulator Larry Summers said he wasn't convinced financial "innovation" caused the crisis, a convenient narrative for someone who allowed exotic derivatives to grow unchecked under his watch. (And a bit hard to square with what he said last year on PBS when asked if he had any responsibility for the crash. He said that credit default swaps were "the center of the issue now," and this financial innovation "barely existed [during his tenure at Treasury.]")

He also warned against the demonization of mainstream economics by people who "don't do math," and flagged the dangers of overregulating in the wake of a crisis. Summers suggested that a crisis mentality is what led Communists to create a planned economy, which eventually collapsed. To my ear, Summers himself sounded not unlike communist authorities who deflected blame by simply denying having agency or authority, and striking a disinterested, distancing voice. By the way, in that PBS interview, he said the word "mistakes", "error" or "failure" five times, with his finger pointed not at himself but squarely at Wall Street and corporate America. Arrogance and ignorance, meet evasion and avoidance.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janine-r-wedel/capitalisms-crisis-within_b_851876.html?view=print

boutons_deux

04-21-2011, 08:27 AM

Greenspan's Back to Lead the Charge Against Responsible Regulation

Wall Street bankers, with help from key Republicans in the House and Senate, have begun a major campaign across the country to kill the regulations currently being developed to enforce Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform. A recent speech by the leader of Wall Street bankers, JP Morgan's CEO Jamie Dimon, took direct aim at financial regulation and new, more rigorous capital standards.

The same week, Alan Greenspan -- just a year removed from his mea culpa on "self-regulation" -- said the Dodd-Frank legislation would create the "largest regulatory-induced market distortion" in the US since wage and price controls. Very shortly afterwards Senator DeMint introduced a bill to repeal Dodd-Frank. And House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus led 34 of the committee's Republicans in sening a letter to the six agency heads charged with implementing the Dodd-Frank Act stating that the members are "troubled by the volume and pace of rulemakings."

It is very hard to believe that anyone would propose going back to the policy of "self-regulation" on Wall Street and elsewhere. We tried that during the last 20 years, and it catastrophically resulted in the worst financial meltdown in 80 years, almost destroying the US and world financial systems. It caused more than 3 million homes to be repossessed, drove the unemployment rate over 10 percent, and left millions in economic, and emotional, shock.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-ted-kaufman/greenspans-back-to-lead-t_b_851909.html?view=print

=========

my bet: financial regulation will be gutted, Elizabeth Warren will accomplish nothing, and the next bubble will occur long before unemployment is down to 5% (it probably won't ever be down to 5% again, only by redefining that already-redefined number)

boutons_deux

04-21-2011, 08:42 AM

The New Corporate World Order: American Citizens Paying the Price for Tax-Dodging Companies

The debate over Republicans’ insistence on continued tax breaks for the superrich and the corporations they run should come to a screeching halt with the report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Big U.S. Firms Shift Hiring Abroad.” Those tax breaks over the past decade, leaving some corporations such as General Electric to pay no taxes at all, were supposed to lead to job creation, but just the opposite has occurred. As the WSJ put it, the multinational companies “cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show.”

No less important than U.S. military muscle is the power of the American government to construct and enforce a worldwide trade and finance structure to the advantage of U.S.-based multinational corporations. That is why the companies spend so much money lobbying Congress on matters ranging from regional trade agreements to international banking regulations. It is precisely the impact of trade agreements like NAFTA that has facilitated the erosion of well-paying jobs. And it was the deregulation of international banking standards, led by the U.S. Treasury Department under the past five presidents, that created the conditions for the recent disastrous housing and banking meltdown.

Big government, the devil that Republicans love to inveigh against, is big precisely because it is so active in so many costly ways in serving the interests of our biggest corporations. Corporate lobbyists attest with their every breath that big government and big business are bedmates in a bountiful venture that impoverishes the rest of us.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150688

boutons_deux

04-22-2011, 09:53 AM

Beware of Vampire Squids and Their Stadium Schemes

As the Lexington Herald-Leader reported in a September 2010 editorial entitled “Arena Cautionary Tale,” public revenue from the stadium “isn’t living up to expectations in terms of paying off the debt incurred in building the facility.” As a result, Louisville’s already-strapped government “may be on the hook for an extra $3.3 million beginning in 2012.”

That’s because, as Goldman admits on its website, the deal was funded by a massive commitment of public revenues from taxpayers. If the arena isn’t generating tax receipts committed to funding this $200-million-plus “Tax Incremental Financing” scheme, then taxpayers have to come up with that public money from somewhere else—most likely, from cuts to social services or from tax hikes.

This is the kind of story the Vanity Fair ad is supposed to obscure—the kind of story that got Goldman its Rolling Stone magazine billing as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” It’s a reputation the bank deserves—one that should make every local official in America hesitate the next time that squid slithers into their town.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/beware_of_vampire_squids_and_their_stadium_schemes _20110421/

boutons_deux

04-23-2011, 01:24 PM

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/medicare.jpg

The 46 Year-Long Republican War On Medicare

if Americans want to know why Republicans are so eager to kill Medicare, they should look to the party’s history with the popular program. Leading Republicans actually denounced the program as it was being designed, warning that it would take us down the road to totalitarianism or worse, and other leading Republicans were caught on record plotting to eliminate it after it was created:

- Ronald Reagan: Before he was president, Reagan actually lead a campaign against the creation of Medicare. He ominously warned: “[I]f you don’t [stop Medicare] and I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” [1961]

- Barry Goldwater: Goldwater, a conservative icon, said that establishing Medicare would lead us down the slipper slope of subsidizing alcohol for all: “Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind, why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink.” [1964]

- George H.W. Bush: Bush, who would go on to be president after Reagan, said that Medicare shouldn’t be established because it was nothing more than “socialized medicine.” [1964]

- Bob Dole: In 1996, during his campaign for the Presidency, Dole openly bragged that he was one of 12 House members who voted against creating Medicare in 1965. “I was there, fighting the fight, voting against Medicare . . . because we knew it wouldn’t work in 1965.” [1965]

- Sen. Carl Curtis (NE): During the debate over the creation of Medicare, Curtis said that the “insurance industry has a remarkable record” and that Medicare “is not public welfare. It is not charity. It is not kindness. It is socialism. Socialism is not the answer to anything.” [1965]

- Dick Armey: Armey told reporters in 1995 that “we need to wean our old people away from Medicare.” [1995]

- Newt Gingrich: Gingrich, who is now likely running for president, told a Blue Cross Blue Shield conference how he plans to eventually get rid of Medicare: “Now, we don’t get rid of it in round one because we don’t think that that’s politically smart, and we don’t think that’s the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it’s going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it — voluntarily.” [1996]

- Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX): During an appearance on MSNBC last week, Hensarling referred to Medicare along with Social Security as “cruel Ponzi schemes.” [4/15/2011]

it is a single-payer health care system has little involvement from the private insurance industry that is both incredibly efficient and remarkably popular among the general public. It completely violates the conservative mantra that the market should be the arbiter of all things.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/23/flashback-republicans-medicare-never/

boutons_deux

04-24-2011, 06:43 AM

Anybody got an "equivalent" Dem proposal as mean, and as racist as this Repug:

State Sen. Bruce Caswell's (R) budget proposal would force children in the state's foster care system to purchase clothing only in used clothing stores.

Children who are placed in foster care receive a state-funded clothing allowance. Under Caswell's plan, foster children would receive gift cards redeemable only at places like Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Caswell insists the proposal has nothing to do with stigmatizing poor children and everything to do with saving the state money.

http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/michigan-gop-foster-kids-only-get-used-clothes/

===========

The Repug idea of everybody sharing the pain for the criminal Banksters' Great Depression.

boutons_deux

04-24-2011, 08:51 AM

Corporpations win again, stomping on a poor community to get control of their community beach park for a golf course:

Benton Harbor's EFM suspends city officials' power

Benton Harbor's Emergency Financial Manager has suspended the decision-making powers of city officials, and Joseph Harris may be the first to do so under the new state legislation.

http://www.wndu.com/localnews/headlines/Benton_Harbors_EFM_suspends_city_officials_power_1 19969374.html

Maddow specifically mentioned the Jean Klock Park situation, a story that the Messenger has been following closely for years — and most of the media in the state have been ignoring. A large chunk of that park, deeded to the city on the condition that it remain a public park forever, was leased to private developers to be made into a golf course.

http://michiganmessenger.com/48319/maddow-on-benton-harbor-efm-takeover

boutons_deux

04-24-2011, 09:38 AM

EPA is a key target for corporations. Here's a criminal Governor attacking Clean Water Act for his state.

Governor to EPA: Water guidelines aren’t necessary here

Gov. Scott asks EPA to rescind federal water pollution control rules, saying the state already has guidelines in place that accomplish the same things.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/22/2180947/governor-to-epa-water-guidelines.html#ixzz1KS3Ca1ZF

=========

There's a reason for dickhead's Halliburton exception, exempting fracking pollution of ground and surface water from Clean Water act: more profits for fracking corporations.

boutons_deux

04-24-2011, 09:58 AM

Wall Street still spending against Wall Street reform

They couldn't stop the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation, though they pretty effectively watered it down. That hasn't stopped the banksters from spending like, well, banksters who want to buy their own political system to water it down even more.

Wall Street and the financial industry spent more to lobby Washington in the first quarter of this year than a year ago when Congress was writing sweeping financial-overhaul legislation, according to a Wall Street Journal review of lobbying reports released Thursday. [...]

The disclosures show that 26 of the financial firms and trade associations that spent the most in 2010 collectively spent $27 million in the three months ending March 31, a 2.7% increase from the $26.3 million spent in the comparable period in 2010.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/23/969304/-Wall-Street-still-spending-against-Wall-Street-reform?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

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The 100% falsity of the tea baggers is that they are trashing the Dems and ANY govt while leaving the financial and carbon-energy sectors untouched.

boutons_deux

04-24-2011, 10:14 AM

Madness: Right-Wingers Are Serious About Trying to Undermine Child Labor Laws

allow employers to pay anyone under 20 a six-month “training wage” that falls more than $2 per hour below the minimum wage, eliminate rules establishing a maximum number of hours kids 16 and over can work during school days, allow those under 16 to work up to four hours per school day, allow home-schooled kids to work during school hours and eliminate any limit on how many hours kids of any age can work in agriculture (with a signature from their parents or legal guardians). L.D. 516 would allow teens to work longer hours and later into the night than is allowed under current law.

Children under the age of 14 would no longer be barred from employment. They'd also be able to work all hours of the day, no longer need a work permit from their school and be able to work at motels and resorts so long as they're given a place to lay their weary heads each night. Moreover, businesses that employ children would no longer be subject to inspections from the Division of Labor Standards.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150709http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150709

===============

Repugs just being repugnant. The VRWC has destroyed millions of good paying jobs, and now needs super-low-cost, no-benefits labor to do the shit work of shitty jobs.

boutons_deux

04-25-2011, 05:41 AM

Right-Wing Network Behind the War on Unions

Behind the onslaught is a well-funded network of conservative think tanks that you've probably never heard of. Conceived by the same conservative ideologues who helped found the Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network (SPN) is a little-known umbrella group with deep ties to the national conservative movement. Its mission is simple: to back a constellation of state-level think tanks loosely modeled after Heritage that promote free-market principles and rail against unions, regulation, and tax increases. By blasting out policy recommendations and shaping lawmakers' positions through briefings and private meetings, these think tanks cultivate cozy relationships with GOP politicians. And there's a long tradition of revolving door relationships between SPN staffers and state governments. While they bill themselves as independent think tanks, SPN's members frequently gather to swap ideas. "We're all comrades in arms," the network's board chairman told the National Review in 2007.

Advertise on MotherJones.com

Founded in 1992 by businessman and Reagan administration insider Thomas Roe—who also served on the Heritage Foundation's board of trustees for two decades—the group has grown to include 59 "freedom centers," or affiliated think tanks, in all 50 states. SPN's board includes officials from Heritage and right-wing charities such as the Adolph Coors and Jacqueline Hume foundations. Likewise, its deep-pocketed donors include all the usual heavy-hitting conservative benefactors: the Ruth and Lovett Peters Foundation, which funds the Cato Institute and Heritage; the Castle Rock Foundation, a charity started with money from the conservative Coors Foundation; and the Bradley Foundation, a $540 million charity devoted to funding conservative causes. SPN uses their contributions to dole out annual grants to member groups, ranging from a few thousand dollars to $260,000, according to 2009 records.

According to SPN's website, Roe launched the conservative network "at the urging" of President Reagan himself as a way to shape state-level policy just as Heritage has influenced federal policy.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/state-policy-network-union-bargaining

boutons_deux

04-25-2011, 11:31 AM

Another VRWC lie exposed:

Report knocks legs from under study saying regulations cost the economy $1.75 trillion

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/25/969321/-Report-knocks-legs-from-under-study-saying-regulations-cost-the-economy-$175-trillion?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

boutons_deux

04-26-2011, 11:08 PM

the Tea Party Patriot Summit in Phoenix, Arizona. Prominently displayed was the new group "Dodd-Frank Exposed," with a big booth running this video in a continuous loop.

Although the organization is ostensibly hosted by the “Judicial Crisis Network” — a group that has no actual registration or office — Dodd Frank Exposed is actually run by two veteran astroturf lobbyists, Gary Marx and Robert Bork Jr. Marx is a vice president at Ralph Reed’s lobbying firm Century Strategies. Bork runs his own public relations company called the Bork Communication Group.

Bork, the son of famed Reagan Supreme Court nominee, has made a career coordinating front groups on behalf of corporations facing negative scrutiny.

He later clarified that he was receiving a monthly check from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a corporate-funded front with a long history of peddling industry-friendly studies.

Century Strategies, has a similar history as Bork. Century Strategies created Christian-themed front groups for Enron to lobby for energy deregulation, launched a religion-based direct mail campaign to maintain sweatshops in the Mariana Islands, and was caught up in a money laundering scheme with Jack Abramoff for his casino clients.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/26/970278/-Astroturfing-Wall-Street-reform:-Corporate-lobbyists-behind-Tea-Party-repealeffort?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

boutons_deux

04-29-2011, 04:48 PM

The Next Big Thing In Industry: Water Profiteering

the Global Water Summit 2011, a meet up for corporations that want to profit from water as it becomes scarcer. Sponsored by all the bad actors in the water industry, from Veolia to General Electric, the conference URL was WaterMeetsMoney.com. Even the Koch Brothers' empire was represented (Koch Industries helped pollute water with its fossil fuel operations, so why not profit also from cleaning up the mess?)

The conference started on a sour note with a keynote address from Michel Camdessus, former Managing Director of the IMF. Camdessus is one of the masterminds behind the scheme to force the 1.44 billion people who make $1.25 a day to pay for the full cost of water. It was also disappointing that Kofi Annan appears to be running interference for the water corporations, basically saying in his speech that the time for protest is over and that we all need to get along.

One of the most distasteful moments of the conference, which was held in a Five Star hotel in Berlin, was when Sanjay Bhatnagar, CEO of WaterHealth International, took the mic to brag about how his investors were making piles of money selling water in villages in Africa and India. WaterHealth issues smart cards that are used to fill jugs with water -- a 21st century "innovation" for redistributing wealth from the poor in the developing world to the "global investors" of the company. He is a vocal proponent of the poor paying for water, even as the audience used the hotel's excellent plumbing facilities that are linked to Berlin's sewage system -- a system built using public tax dollars. The irony seemed to escape the 400 plus people attending the meeting.

Another major theme of the meeting was making money from water technologies for mining. During a session chaired by John Veil, the audience heard how producing water for mining and cleaning it up after it's destroyed will be the promised land for the industry. They discussed with glee how fracked gas, known in Europe as shale gas, uses millions of gallons of water that can be produced through desalination or provided in other ways. And after it's horribly polluted, the industry can benefit from "processing" it so that it can be "reused" by the public. Sounds like a science fiction nightmare.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wenonah-hauter/the-next-big-thing-in-ind_b_854796.html?view=print

boutons_deux

04-30-2011, 09:21 AM

The Corporate State Will Continue its Inexorable Advance Until We're Locked into a Permanent Underclass

Corporate capitalism—because it was trumpeted throughout the Cold War as a bulwark against communism—expanded with fewer and fewer government regulations and legal impediments. Capitalism was seen as an unalloyed good. It was not required to be socially responsible.

Any impediment to its growth, whether in the form of trust-busting, union activity or regulation, was condemned as a step toward socialism and capitulation. Every corporation is a despotic fiefdom, a mini-dictatorship. And by the end Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs had grafted their totalitarian structures onto the state.

The Cold War also bequeathed to us the species of the neoliberal. The neoliberal enthusiastically embraces “national security” as the highest good. The neoliberal—composed of the gullible and cynical careerists—parrots back the mantra of endless war and corporate capitalism as an inevitable form of human progress. Globalization, the neoliberal assures us, is the route to a worldwide utopia. Empire and war are vehicles for lofty human values.

Those who hold actual power are the tiny elite who manage the corporations.

The massive redistribution of wealth, as Hacker and Pierson write, happened because lawmakers and public officials were, in essence, hired to permit it to happen. It was not a conspiracy. The process was transparent. It did not require the formation of a new political party or movement. It was the result of inertia by our political and intellectual class, which in the face of expanding corporate power found it personally profitable to facilitate it or look the other way. The armies of lobbyists, who write the legislation, bankroll political campaigns and disseminate propaganda, have been able to short-circuit the electorate.

The reconfiguration of American society into a form of neofeudalism will be cemented into place whether it is delivered by Democrats, who are pushing us there at 60 miles an hour, or Republicans, who are barreling toward it at 100 miles an hour. Wolin writes, “By fostering an illusion among the powerless classes” that it can make their interests a priority, the Democratic Party “pacifies and thereby defines the style of an opposition party in an inverted totalitarian system.” The Democrats are always able to offer up a least-worst alternative while, in fact, doing little or nothing to thwart the march toward corporate collectivism.

The game is over. We lost. The corporate state will continue its inexorable advance until two-thirds of the nation is locked into a desperate, permanent underclass. Most Americans will struggle to make a living while the Blankfeins and our political elites wallow in the decadence and greed of the Forbidden City and Versailles. These elites do not have a vision. They know only one word—more.

They will continue to exploit the nation, the global economy and the ecosystem. And they will use their money to hide in gated compounds when it all implodes

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150790

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Anybody got any positives?

boutons_deux

04-30-2011, 10:53 AM

Did You Fall for It? America's Outrage Over TSA Naked Body Scanners Was Right-Wing PR to Prevent Workers from Unionizing

insight into the Republican playbook against public sector unions, which boils down to this:

1) Manufacture a fake budget crisis in order to frighten the state’s residents;

2) PR the false-crisis hard enough until it breaks out of the right-wing/libertarian pipeline and into the mainstream media;

3) Blame the fake crisis on a fake villain -- “greedy” state employee unions -- thereby pitting the public against state workers.

That way, when Republicans pass new laws destroying teachers and firefighters unions, they’ll come off as heroes defending the public from greedy unions, rather than as sleazy mercenaries carrying out their corporate sponsors’ dirty work.

If anyone is wondering why collective bargaining rights are so important to public sector workers, look no further than the TSA, whose employees suffer the lowest morale and highest attrition rates of any federal agency, year after year. Complaints and lawsuits abound, accusing TSA management of rampant sexual harassment, racism, bullying, wrongful termination and abuse of power. If that didn’t make working in the TSA difficult enough, the recent campaign demonizing TSA agents as modern-day Gestapo-agents turned them into the most hated of all federal employees; passengers, encouraged by incendiary PR, hurled abuses in TSA screeners’ faces, and in a few cases even physically attacked screeners.

, we published an article in The Nation questioning the media-driven anti-TSA campaign, which we argued smelled of AstroTurf.

we uncovered numerous Koch-linked libertarian activists spearheading the campaign to demonize TSA screeners, DC lobbyists specializing in fake-grassroots campaigns setting up “Opt Out” websites while posing as regular Joes, and sleazy Republican hacks who had shown little interest in protecting civil liberties suddenly getting their ACLU on over the TSA’s intrusive pat-downs and “porn scans.” Progressives were understandably drawn into the anti-TSA campaign and hysteria, as the PR campaign cleverly framed it not as a union-bashing operation, but rather, as a purely civil liberties issue.

homophobic Public Advocate of the United States, a Reagan-era anti-gay group, whose leader accused the TSA of pursuing a “homosexual agenda” with its enhanced pat-downs and scans, echoing charges by the leader of the Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, who called for a prohibition of gay TSA screeners because they “might get turned on” while patting down passengers.

If TSA employees are allowed to unionize with collective bargaining rights, it would represent perhaps the single largest pro-unionization drive in decades, adding tens of thousands of dues-paying members to the public sector union rolls, reversing decades of decline and, most importantly, funnel money to pro-labor and predominately Democratic candidates.

So the Republicans gave in and passed a law federalizing airport and baggage screeners, but with one unusual caveat: no collective bargaining rights for TSA employees, unless their boss, the appointed head of the TSA, gave the green light.

DeMint made no bones about which threat bothered him most; unions or terrorists:

"Unionizing the 43,000 security screeners at TSA could give labor unions a $17 million annual windfall in the form of new union dues,"

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150767

Wild Cobra

04-30-2011, 11:16 AM

OK, I'll be post #50...

Just have to point out that Boutons must be raving mad that this isn't a long post. He so far has 72% of the posts and has the last 17 consecutive posts. Winehole is in second place at 10%, but isn't enough to bring much desire for anyone to join in. Chump, Cosmic, and zOsa each have two posts at 4%. The rest of us stopped at one post.

boutons_deux

05-06-2011, 05:42 AM

The Global Economy's Corporate Crime Wave

The world is drowning in corporate fraud, and the problems are probably greatest in rich countries – those with supposedly “good governance.” Poor-country governments probably accept more bribes and commit more offenses, but it is rich countries that host the global companies that carry out the largest offenses. Money talks, and it is corrupting politics and markets all over the world.

Hardly a day passes without a new story of malfeasance. Every Wall Street firm has paid significant fines during the past decade for phony accounting, insider trading, securities fraud, Ponzi schemes, or outright embezzlement by CEOs. A massive insider-trading ring is currently on trial in New York, and has implicated some leading financial-industry figures. And it follows a series of fines paid by America’s biggest investment banks to settle charges of various securities violations.

There is, however, scant accountability. Two years after the biggest financial crisis in history, which was fueled by unscrupulous behavior by the biggest banks on Wall Street, not a single financial leader has faced jail. When companies are fined for malfeasance, their shareholders, not their CEOs and managers, pay the price. The fines are always a tiny fraction of the ill-gotten gains, implying to Wall Street that corrupt practices have a solid rate of return. Even today, the banking lobby runs roughshod over regulators and politicians.

Corruption pays in American politics as well. The current governor of Florida, Rick Scott, was CEO of a major health-care company known as Columbia/HCA. The company was charged with defrauding the United States government by overbilling for reimbursement, and eventually pled guilty to 14 felonies, paying a fine of $1.7 billion.

The FBI’s investigation forced Scott out of his job. But, a decade after the company’s guilty pleas, Scott is back, this time as a “free-market” Republican politician.

When Barack Obama wanted somebody to help with the bailout of the US automobile industry, he turned to a Wall Street “fixer,” Steven Rattner, even though Obama knew that Rattner was under investigation for giving kickbacks to government officials. After Rattner finished his work at the White House, he settled the case with a fine of a few million dollars.

http://www.truthout.org/print/1858

boutons_deux

05-06-2011, 10:54 AM

Citizens United Decision Profoundly Affects Political Landscape

An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics reveals that the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling of January 2010 has profoundly affected the nation's political landscape.

Corporations and unions both benefited from the ruling, being able to use their general treasuries to pay for independent expenditures for the first time.

Unions spent more than $17.3 million from their general treasuries on independent expenditures opposing Republican candidates such as Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and James Renacci (R-Ohio). The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees spent more than $7 million out of their general treasury, the most of any other union.

The National Education Association had a different strategy. It set up a so called "super PAC" and financed it with $3.3 million from its general treasury. Pre-Citizens United unions could only spend money on independent expenditures using funds that were voluntarily donated to their political action committee by union members. Now unions can tap into funds that come directly from union member's dues. Unions are still banned from using their treasuries to donate to congressional campaigns and party committees.

Corporations generally did not directly get involved in political spending but rather donated more than $15 million to a new type of political group known as a "super PAC". These groups may raise unlimited amounts of money from any source as long as the donors are disclosed and the groups only spend money on independent expenditures. The top two corporate donors in 2010 were TRT Holdings and Alliance Resource Partners, which each donated about $2.5 million to the 'super PAC' American Crossroads. Corporate donations are likely higher than reported as conservative non-profit groups spent $121 million without disclosing where the money came from.

The ruling allowed corporations and unions to use their general treasuries to pay for political advertisements that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate, also known as independent expenditures. This ruling subsequently allowed non-profit corporations under the tax code 501c to spend unlimited amounts of money running these political advertisements while not revealing their donors.

Influencing elections cannot, by law, be the primary purpose of the non-profits.

These nonprofits certainly took advantage of their new power, however, spending $61.3 million on independent expenditures in 2010.

Top findings of the Center's study include:

The percentage of spending coming from groups that do not disclose their donors has risen from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 midterm elections

501c non-profit spending increased from zero percent of total spending by outside groups in 2006 to 42 percent in 2010.

Outside interest groups spent more on election season political advertising than party committees for the first time in at least two decades, besting party committees by about $105 million.

The amount of independent expenditure and electioneering communication spending by outside groups has quadrupled since 2006.

Seventy-two percent of political advertising spending by outside groups in 2010 came from sources that were prohibited from spending money in 2006

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/05/citizens-united-decision-profoundly-affects-political-landscape.html#

boutons_deux

05-06-2011, 11:40 AM

Repugs slam court house door in the faces of Human-Americans:

UM doctors get protection from lawsuits

A proposal to give UM doctors working at Jackson Memorial Hospital state lawsuit protection was approved.
By Patricia Mazzei
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE -- In a long-sought move, the University of Miami won a legislative victory on Wednesday when Florida lawmakers agreed to extend state lawsuit protection to university doctors working in public hospitals.

Gov. Rick Scott will likely sign the bill into law. Scott is also expected to sign another lawsuit-limitation bill that passed Wednesday that changes the way people can sue automobile makers.

The vote to give “sovereign immunity” to UM has been years in the making.

The state protects government hospital employees, residents and interns — including those at Miami’s Jackson Health System — from major medical malpractice judgments. But UM medical school doctors who teach at Jackson are not covered by the protected status.

For two decades, UM officials have pushed to receive the same benefit, saying patients often sue the university instead of Jackson because of UM’s deep pockets.

The university spends $40 million a year on malpractice cases, said Ron Book, one of UM’s lobbyists in the Capitol. State protection, he added, could cut that expense in half.

“This good bill will even the playing field,”

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/04/2201086/um-doctors-get-protection-from.html

======

no, You Repug Liar, it tilts the sick-care end of the playing field way up, so dead/maimed Human-Americans have to fight uphill for justice, or even to get a foot in the court house door.

boutons_deux

05-06-2011, 11:59 AM

Senate Republicans Plan to Block Consumer Bureau Nominee

U.S. Senate Republicans told President Barack Obama they will block any nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unless Democrats agree to change the agency’s structure and funding.

The warning, delivered in a letter to the White House, adds to the uncertainty surrounding the agency, created by the Dodd- Frank Act last year over the objections of Republican lawmakers and financial-industry lobbyists.

Forty-four Republican senators, led by Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Banking Committee, signed the May 2 letter made public yesterday. They wrote that they want the agency’s director to be replaced by a board of directors, its funding brought under congressional control and its operations subject to more oversight from other bank regulators.

“No person should have the unfettered authority presently granted to the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” the senators said in the letter signed by Republicans including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “We believe that the Senate should not consider any nominee to be CFPB director until the CFPB is properly reformed.”

Democrats control 53 of the 100 votes in the Senate, so the 44 Republican signatures ensure they wouldn’t be able to garner the 60 needed to overcome objections to a nominee.

“Republicans fought the creation of a strong consumer watchdog from the start and now they are at it again,”

“For far too long, American consumers have fallen victim to fraud, misleading claims, and powerful special interests and the President believes that American families who were the hardest hit by this financial crisis deserve an independent watchdog to protect consumers and prevent predatory lending and other abuses in the future,”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-05-05/republican-senators-to-block-consumer-nominee-absent-changes-1-.html

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Repug whores turning tricks for the Financial Sector Corporate-Americans to screw over Human-Americans.

boutons_deux

05-06-2011, 02:10 PM

After Citizens United, Conservative Undisclosed Donors Spent 10 Times As Much As Liberal Ones In 2010 Election

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/cu5.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/06/citizens-united-conservatives-spent/

===========

And STILL the eliminationist Repugs/VRWC want to bust all unions because they support the Dems.

boutons_deux

05-06-2011, 06:36 PM

Thanks to Decades of Conservative Spin, Americans Are Hopelessly Confused About Taxes, Spending and the Deficit
By Joshua Holland,

http://www.alternet.org/story/150826/thanks_to_decades_of_conservative_spin%2C_american s_are_hopelessly_confused_about_taxes%2C_spending_ and_the_deficit

A few weeks back, Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, felt compelled to take time out of what is presumably a busy schedule to explain that “taxes are, first and foremost, about paying for what the government buys.” That he felt compelled to do so is a sad reflection of the state of our economic discourse.

A good number of Americans are hopelessly confused about taxes, deficits and the debt. And it's no mystery why – conservatives have spent 30 years divorcing the taxes we pay from the services they finance. They've bent themselves into intellectual pretzels arguing that cutting taxes – on the wealthy – leads to more revenues in the coffers. They've invented narratives about taxes driving “producers” to sunnier climes, killing jobs by the bushel, and relentlessly spun the wholly false notion that we're facing “runaway spending” and are “taxed to death.”

And they've had great success. But they haven't done it alone – credit the media with an assist for muddying the waters around our fiscal situation. Consider a poll released this week by the highly respected Gallup organization. Their headline reads, “Americans Blame Wasteful Government Spending for Deficit.” Is that true? Well, here were the options – the only options – that respondents were offered:

Which do you think is more to blame for the federal budget deficit: Spending too much on government programs that are either not needed or wasteful, or not raising enough taxes to pay for needed programs? (Emphasis added.)

“Accordingly,” says Gallup, “Americans generally favor spending cuts rather than tax increases as the way for Congress to reduce the deficit going forward.” According to that distorted narrative – that false choice -- of course they do. I'm sure the results of a poll asking if people would prefer an ice cream sundae or a sharp stick in the eye would prove equally conclusive (not to mention bipartisan).

The problem is that after decades of anti-government rhetoric, there's very little in the way of “wasteful spending” left unless you look hard at the military budget, which neither party seems willing to do in any serious way.

We are, simply, under-taxed relative to the things we want the government to do. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the biggest driver of the projected deficits over the next ten years are not the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or social safety net programs; it's the Bush tax cuts.

Last year, the revenues collected by the federal government were the lowest since 1950 (as a share of our overall economic activity). But it's important to understand that back then, we had no medicare program. The population was younger, and health care costs were a fraction of what they are today – in 1960, just before Medicare was established, we spent 5 percent of GDP on health-care; today, we spend about 17 percent.

As economist Dean Baker noted, if we spent the same per person on health-care as any one of the 35 countries with longer average life expectancies, our deficits would turn into surpluses in a few short years.

Offering health-care to children, seniors and the poor is anything but “not needed.” Is it wasteful? Health-care costs have skyrocketed for years in this country, but more slowly in the public sector than in the private.

While we're clearly under-taxed, the right's anti-tax crusaders have largely had their way shaping the discourse. About 7 in 10 Americans want the deficit to be addressed. Many believe that running a large, short-term deficit is hurting the economy when the opposite is true. We lost $14 trillion in wealth in the financial crash, and that – along with high unemployment and an ongoing foreclosure nightmare – has led to a huge drop in consumer demand. Public spending has, to a painfully inadequate degree, filled some of the gap.

Give the conservative message machine its due credit. While Americans really like the specific things government does – they want low-cost student loans, having fire-fighters and cops on the beat and a whole slew of other services – the abstract idea of “limited government” is quite appealing.

The right's victory in separating taxes from the services they pay for is apparent when citizens are asked what they'd like to see cut in order to cut that deficit. In January, Gallup released a poll on those specifics. They asked which of nine areas of government services they'd like to see cut. Only cutting foreign aid – which represents about two percent of the federal budget – met with the approval of a majority of those surveyed. Even majorities of Republicans opposed cuts to everything but foreign aid and arts funding.

Taken together, this shows how difficult it is for law-makers to arrive at good public policies. Their constituents wants their cake, they want to eat it, but they don't think they need to pay the tab for it. Politicos offer tax cuts to get themselves elected, but then face outraged constituents when they try to cut services. Small wonder that we've only managed to balance the budget in one brief period during the boom years of the 1990s.

We do face serious issues in this country. We need a serious debate about how best to solve them. But we're having that debate in a democracy populated by citizens who have little or no clue where their tax dollars go. And you can credit the anti-tax crusaders and their habitual mendacity for that sorry state of affairs.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America). Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.
© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/150826/
[w2]

boutons_deux

05-07-2011, 11:48 AM

This WI guy is the Poster Child for the nastiest, undemocratic, pro-wealthy smash-mouth, elmininationest Repuglicanism

Curbing Voting Rights in Wisconsin

the law would end same-day registration, eliminate the straight-ticket voting option on ballots, and require voters to present a state-issued photo ID at the polls.

This last provision -- which includes strict guidelines as to what constitutes acceptable identification -- puts Wisconsin in league with more than two dozen other states where Republican lawmakers are pushing voter-ID bills that they claim address the phantom menace of "voter fraud." It has also fueled allegations that Gov. Scott Walker is less concerned with sound policy than with weakening the political power of key Democratic constituencies.

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=curbing_voting_rights_in_wisconsi n

Voter fraud, just another VRWC/Repug LIE to intimidate and disenfranchise Human-Americans, as if disenfranchisement by UCA lobbyists wasn't sufficient.

boutons_deux

05-08-2011, 05:32 AM

The DeVos Family: Meet the Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education

Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But "school choice," as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.

The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business.

Cato Institute founder Ed Crane and other conservative think tank leaders have signed the Public Proclamation to Separate School and State, which reads in part that signing on, "Announces to the world your commitment to end involvement by local, state, and federal government from education."

Milton Friedman, who also made the real goal of the voucher movement clear: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system." The quote is in a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper titled “Public Schools: Make Them Private.”

Joseph Bast, president of Heartland Institute, stated in 1997, “Like most other conservatives and libertarians, we see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling. In fact, after careful study, we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.”

Dick DeVos gave a speech on school choice at the Heritage Foundation. After an introduction by former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett, DeVos described a system of “rewards and consequences” to pressure state politicians to support vouchers. “That has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible,”

Dick DeVos also explained to his Heritage Foundation audience that they should no longer use the term public schools, but instead start calling them “government schools.” He noted that the role of wealthy conservatives would have to be obscured. “We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities,” said DeVos,

Walker wants to expand vouchers in Milwaukee despite the program's failure, made clear by disappointing standardized test results. Walker’s response? To halt the testing. Pennsylvania voucher supporters have already taken care of the pesky issue of accountability by defeating an amendment that would require the students using vouchers to take standardized tests.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150868

boutons_deux

05-08-2011, 03:49 PM

Criminal fraudster Scott doing VRWC bidding in FL:

Florida Cuts Unemployment Benefits To Pay For Corporate Tax Cut

A bill that would establish some of the deepest and most far-reaching cuts in unemployment benefits in the nation is heading for the desk of Gov. Rick Scott…The legislation would cut maximum state benefits to 23 weeks from 26 when the jobless rate is 10.5 percent or higher. If lower, the maximum would decline on a sliding scale until bottoming at 12 weeks if the jobless rate was 5 percent or less.

Florida will “go further than any other state in dismantling its unemployment insurance system.”

“encourages people to get back into the job market.” Research by the San Francisco Federal Reserve has found that workers who qualify for unemployment benefits stay unemployed just 1.6 weeks longer than those who do not qualify for such benefits.

Adding insult to injury, the money saved from cutting unemployment benefits will be used to reduce business taxes in a state where the corporate tax rate is already exceedingly low. Scott had been looking to cut corporate taxes even further, but was rebuffed by the legislature.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/08/florida-benefits-corporate/

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/08/florida-benefits-corporate/

boutons_deux

05-10-2011, 08:24 AM

Another Repug state to block non-Repug voters.

Florida GOP Passes Radical Overhaul Of Election Law, Jeopardizing Voting Rights Of Elderly, Military, Students

– Forces Provisional Ballots: The bill eliminates a long-standing provision that allows people to change their address or name at the polls. For four decades, Florida allowed those with proper photo ID whose name or address had changed due to marriage, or divorce, or a move by a military family to update that information on Election Day. Under HB 1355, those changes would only be allowed for voters moving within the same county. Otherwise, a voter will not have to cast a provisional ballot and later provide identification to the supervisor of elections. As one Florida supervisor of elections told the Florida Independent, the provision is “disturbing” as provisional ballots are often reserved for close races and thus “go uncounted.”

– Cuts Early Voting: HB 1355 also cuts the time for early voting from 14 days to eight. The early voting reform was among former Gov. Charlie Crist’s (R-FL) election reforms to “prevent embarrassments like the 2000 election.” As the Miami Herald’s Joy-Ann Reid notes, “It was a hard-won victory for working people who sometimes can’t get to the polls if they work odd hours, or run out of time to resolve a problem at the polls.” According to Reid, in 2008, black churches and college students “took full advantage of the extra time” — two groups that overwhelmingly voted for President Obama.

– Invalidates Absentee Ballots: The bill severely undercuts the absentee ballot. Under this bill, absentee ballots are determined illegal if the voter’s signature on the certificate does not match the signature on record.” As the Herald-Tribune notes, this will affect “voters who suffer from arthritis, strokes and other ailments that affect their handwriting. Those who fail to update their signatures in time would be out of luck.” The bill states that, if elections results are contested, a court cannot “consider any evidence other than the signatures on the voter’s certificate and the signature of the elector in the registration records” in determining the ballots validity.

– Fines Third Party Voting Groups: Third-party voter registration groups, such as the non-partisan League of Women voters, the NAACP, and the Boy Scouts are also targeted by HB 1355 by requiring these groups to turn in registration cards within 48 hours of signature or face fines. Voter groups note that “the requirement would be difficult to meet if they are registering thousands of voters at a time.” Because of the “undue burden” this provision places on “thousands of volunteers,” the League of Women Voters — an organization with a “91-year history of registering and educating voters” — announced today that it will “cease [its] voter registration efforts in this state” should HB 1355 become law

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/09/florida-voter-law/

boutons_deux

05-10-2011, 08:26 AM

Kock-blocked again, Repugs fuck over USA's Human-Americans to protect UCA's Corporate-Americans.

Texas GOP Rams Koch-Backed ‘Loser Pays’ Bill Through House, Making It Harder To Sue Corporations

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/us-corporate-flag.jpg

As ThinkProgress has reported, brothers Charles and David Koch and their corporate giant, Koch Industries, have played an extensive role in the corporate takeover of government, both at the state and federal level. This weekend, another of the Kochs’ projects surfaced in Texas, as the state’s Republican lawmakers rammed through a Koch-backed bill that would make it harder for consumers, workers, and small business owners to bring civil suits against corporations.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/09/loser-pays-lawsuits/

boutons_deux

05-12-2011, 03:50 AM

Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers At Universities Across The Country

Yesterday, ThinkProgress highlighted reports from the St. Petersburg Times and the Tallahassee Democrat regarding a Koch-funded economics department at Florida State University (FSU). FSU had accepted a $1.5 million grant from a foundation controlled by petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch on the condition that Koch’s operatives would have a free hand in selecting professors and approving publications.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/koch-university-takeover/

boutons_deux

05-13-2011, 09:54 AM

Along with busting unions as a source of Dem $$, the VRWC has been in constant war since St Ronnie's union busting gave mgmt/investors the OK to bust all employees.

10 CEOs Who Got Rich By Squeezing Workers

https://motherjones.com/files/images/ceo_cuts3.png

========

As a result, household income has stagnated for 30 years, and quality/good-paying jobs have declined.

boutons_deux

05-13-2011, 09:56 AM

Is Scholastic Selling Elementary School Kids on Coal

http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_16/coal-kid.jpg

Environmental groups are going after the world's largest publisher of children's books for teaming up with the American Coal Foundation to produce "The United States of Energy," a lesson plan designed for fourth-graders. The foundation, online at Teachcoal.org, is devoted to creating "coal-related educational materials and programs designed for teachers and students."

"We hope that you and your students enjoy this energizing program!" proclaims the teaching guide. The materials use coal, oil, natural gas, and renewables as a starting point for lessons on geography, science, and math, and promise to teach students "that different types of energy (e.g., solar, fossil fuels) have different advantages and disadvantages." But the materials are decidedly lacking on that latter front. The worksheets ask kids to explore the question, "What are the benefits of this kind of energy?" without ever entertaining the possibility that there might be problems to consider as well.

=========

Like cigarette makers and NRA hooking kids on cigs and guns and killing, here's fossil fuel extractors trying to hook kids on their products.

boutons_deux

05-13-2011, 01:35 PM

Vampire squid banks now sucking in the dollars from already-skimpy unemployment funds.

Prepaid Cards Subject Jobless to Host of Fees
By ANN CARRNS

When you’re getting unemployment benefits, you by definition don’t have a lot of cash to spare. So it seems especially unfair that people who receive their jobless benefits on prepaid debit cards are subject to a variety of fees they can ill afford to pay.

A report out this week from the National Consumer Law Center lays out a host of ways in which banks nibble away at jobless benefits with fees the center called “junk.” The prepaid cards are most often used by jobless recipients who don’t have checking accounts, and so are ineligible for direct deposit. Practices vary from state to state because jobless benefits are distributed at the state level, and state governments negotiate the terms of agreements with card providers. In many states, charges apply for using A.T.M.’s, even if they’re in network; checking balances; and even for not using the card enough (inactivity fees, as high as $3).

The report is especially critical of a card issued in five states by U.S. Bank, which charges overdraft fees of $10 to $20 if recipients use more than the amount on their cards. Charging an overdraft fee to someone who doesn’t even have a bank account struck me as particularly ingenious — what are they overdrawing, exactly?

U.S. Bank is able to do this, the report explains, because jobless benefits are typically paid into pooled accounts that then have subaccounts designated for individual recipients. In most states, if a recipient uses the card to make a purchase that exceeds his or her benefits, the transaction is simply denied. But in five states — Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Ohio and Oregon — U.S. Bank lets the transaction go through, and then deducts the amount, plus the overdraft fee, from the recipient’s next benefits check. (The bank issues cards without overdraft fees in several other states.) Those fees can make a big dent, considering that the typical weekly unemployment check is just $294.

Teri Charest, a spokeswoman for U.S. Bank, said in an e-mail that overdraft protection is an option that states can choose to add to their prepaid card programs. But even when it is offered, cardholders must opt in to overdraft coverage. “The terms are clearly disclosed so cardholders are aware of the fee should they need to use it,” she said.

Other banks don’t charge such hefty fees, but some do charge “denial” fees, ranging from 25 cents to $1.50, when an attempted A.T.M. or retail transaction fails for lack of funds. Some even charge for live customer service calls or withdrawing funds using a human teller.

The practice occurs despite a directive from the Department of Labor stating that deducting “overdraft, overdraft fee, or denial fee” from future unemployment payments is “inconsistent” with federal law.

( "We're the banks, we fuck the law every day before breakfast")

The “best” cards, offering free in-network A.T.M. withdrawals, at least two free out-of-network withdrawals, no balance inquiry fees and no inactivity fees, are offered in New York and New Jersey by Bank of America, the report found.

The worst for junk fees, in addition to the U.S. Bank version with overdraft fees, is the Tennessee card issued by JPMorgan Chase. It is one of only two states that fail to offer any free A.T.M. withdrawals.

The report recommends that smaller states band together for more clout when negotiating card terms with banks. And it urges the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take up the cause of excessive fees on prepaid cards when it opens for business this summer. “We hope prepaid cards are high on the agenda,” said Lauren Saunders, managing attorney at the Consumer Law Center in Washington, and the primary author of the report.

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/prepaid-cards-subject-jobless-to-host-of-fees/?pagemode=print

boutons_deux

05-13-2011, 01:59 PM

Bank Overdraft Fees Still Plague American Consumers

Seeing a threat to a multibillion-dollar revenue stream, the banks responded with pro-overdraft marketing campaigns that inappropriately targeted their customers

Bank of America (BAC) agreed to pay $410 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging the bank charged excessive overdraft fees. That suit was just one of several filed against banks from plaintiffs in 14 states that were consolidated in a federal court in Florida. Other banks named in related suits include Wells Fargo (WFC) and Citibank (C). Banks have been taken to task for specifically processing payments from largest to smallest, a way designed to cause more overdrafts, rather than chronologically.

found that overdraft penalty fees are disproportionate to the size of the average overdraft amount, and that the penalties cost consumers tens of billions of dollars each year. In fact, these charges are estimated to cost Americans $38.5 billion in 2011, which is an increase of $18.6 billion since 2000,

the median overdraft penalty fee is $35, up from $27 in 2007. If overdrafts were considered like a short-term loan with a repayment period of seven days, then the annual percentage rate, or APR, on the typical overdraft would be over 5,000%. Additionally, Pew found that as of October 2010, when the data was collected, all 10 large banks it examined retained the right to re-order withdrawals from the highest to lowest amount, and eight out of the 10 banks reserved the right to post withdrawals before deposits -- both practices designed to manipulate account balances to produce the maximum number of overdrafts

The Center for Responsible Lending survey showed that most people don't want high-cost overdraft coverage for their checking accounts, and that opt-ins are largely based on aggressive and misleading marketing rather than clear and accurate information from banks.

I felt a safety blanket with my checking account until I found out that the savings account that I was required to open in order to sign up for overdraft protection cost me $25 a month. After about four months, I decided that the overdraft protection was not for me.

when he tried to cancel the overdraft protection, "I found that it was so difficult to do so because of the pressure that was put on me,"

banks' marketing materials often created the false impression that emergency action was needed on the account. Some examples from the bank letters on file with CRL include: "We Need to Hear From You ... To keep your account operating smoothly ... To avoid any interruptions in how we service your account, we need to hear from you." "Your Debit Card May Not Work the Same Way Anymore Even If You Just Made a Deposit," and "Save Money by Avoiding Retailers' Returned Check Fees."

etc, etc, etc.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/05/13/bank-overdraft-fees-still-plague-american-consumers/

boutons_deux

05-14-2011, 08:21 AM

More brain-washing kids with VRWC lies and propaganda:

Huckabee’s ‘history’ cartoon teaches kids to idolize Reagan

Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is hoping to earn a few extra bucks by teaching children his own special view of history.

The Fox News host has launched a series of cartoons that he hopes will correct the "blame America first" attitude.

"When it comes to American history, our nation is facing an epidemic," Huckabee said in his pitch on the Learn Our History website. "Schools across the country have turned their backs on our children by distorting facts, imposing political biases, and changing the messages behind the important lessons of our history."

In the first $15 episode, members of the Time Travel Academy use their time machine bicycle to go back and explore "The Reagan Revolution."

"Journey to a time when America suffered from a financial, international and moral crisis," the cartoon's trailer suggests.

To illustrate its point, the cartoon depicts a black man with a knife wearing a "disco" tank top. "Gimme yo' money!" he says.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/13/huckabees-history-cartoon-teaches-kids-to-idolize-reagan/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

boutons_deux

05-14-2011, 11:06 AM

Repugs "fixing" a false problem of voter fraud by disenfranchinsing 100Ks

South Carolina Republican Named ‘Legislator of the Year’ For Writing A Bill That Disenfranchises Voters

Governor Nikki Haley (R-SC) is expected to soon sign a Voter ID bill passed by both chambers of the South Carolina Legislature. When she does, South Carolina will become the second state in the country to pass such legislation this year, although Voter ID bills are being considered by GOP-led state legislatures nationwide. According to the ACLU, “nearly 180,000 voters in South Carolina – most of whom are elderly, student, minority or low-income voters – will be disenfranchised as a result of this discriminatory bill.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/14/south-carolina-voter-id-legislator-of-the-year/

boutons_deux

05-15-2011, 08:10 AM

Very easy to imagine which textbooks tea baggers will sell to private/charter schools, teaching LIES as history.

Legal Advocates Slam Tea Party Constitution Classes

Liberal lawyers were very unhappy to hear that the tea partiers wanted the public schools to teach the Constitution based on the writings of the late author of the 5,000 Year Leap, W. Cleon Skousen [2]. Skousen's views on the Constitution are considered well outside the mainstream, and they include ideas drawn from white supremacist dogma and other shady sources. One of his textbooks on constitutional history contained blatantly racist material suggesting that slaves were actually a happy bunch of folks. [3]

http://motherjones.com/print/113271

===========

Whether bullshit religion or bullshit politics or bullshit history, poison young, impressionable kids minds young enough with false world views, and you snared voters, and above contributor$$$, for life.

boutons_deux

05-17-2011, 06:34 PM

More voter disenfranchisement by Repugs, illegal signs intimidating voters BEFORE the photo ID is law:

Even Before NH Voter ID Bill Becomes Law, Illegal Signs Appear At Polling Stations To Disenfranchise Voters

Signs posted at the New Boston Elementary School, one of the five polling locations in the district, this morning read, “Per pending legislation you will be required to produce a photo ID in order to receive a ballot.” They were removed at the request of the New Hampshire Attorney General, but not before voters on their way into the polls turned saw them and turned around.

“Law abiding New Hampshire citizens were discouraged from voting this morning as a direct result of Speaker’s O’Brien terrible piece of legislation, SB129,” said Harrell Kirstein, press secretary for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “Just moments before O’Brien defended this reckless bill in Concord, voters in his own district were walking away from the polls without having cast a vote.”

ThinkProgress has documented recent efforts by legislators in as many as 22 states, including South Carolina, Florida, and Wisconsin, to disenfranchise voters through voter identification laws and other methods. Republicans often justify these proposals by spreading fear about widespread voter fraud, but voter fraud is, in fact, extremely rare. For instance, in Kentucky, which is holding statewide primary elections today, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the state’s voting fraud hotline has not received a single call.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/17/new-hampshire-voter-id/

=========

Since Repugs claim (LIE) to be America's Natural Party, why do they have to lie about voter frand and disenfranchise voters?

Because they can't win without cheating. Cheating Is The American Way.

boutons_deux

05-21-2011, 08:47 AM

Delta airlines votes itself $30M tax break

Delta Gave Georgia GOP Lawmakers Platinum Upgrades, Then Received $30 Million Tax Break

The bill Deal signed into law on Wednesday will save the Georgia-based airline up to $30 million on jet fuel taxes over two years.

The station found that Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle (R) and five Republican leaders in the legislature were given free “upgrades to platinum or gold frequent flyer status,” which include access to special security lines, far more frequent flyer miles, and free upgrades to first class in some circumstances.

While the company did register the upgrades as campaign contributions, the station argues that the company undervalued them. Delta said the upgrades were worth $1,600-$2,400, but renowned consumer reporter Clark Howard said the actual value of the upgrades was closer to $10,000-$15,000 a year, and that they should be registered as gifts from lobbyists, not simple contributions.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/20/delta-ga-gop-lawmakers/

boutons_deux

05-21-2011, 09:08 AM

More tax expenditures to pander to "Christian" Taliban

While Cutting Social Services, Kentucky Gives $43 Million Tax Break To Bible-Themed Amusement Park

A group of private investors and religious organizations is hoping to build a Bible-themed amusement park in Kentucky, complete with a full-size 500-foot-by-75-foot reproduction of Noah’s Ark, a Tower of Babel, and other biblical exhibits on a 800-acre campus outside of Williamstown, KY.

the state approved $43 million in tax breaks for the project. In addition to the tax incentives, approved unanimously by the state’s tourism board, taxpayers may have to pony up another $11 million to improve a highway interchange near the site.

the tax breaks for an amusement park come at a time when state leaders are asking residents to sacrifice as they cut important social programs. “The state has gone through eight rounds of budget cuts over the past three years,” including cuts to “education at all levels” and a pay freeze for all teachers and state workers. Meanwhile, the state cut funding for Medicaid by shifting enrollees to managed care plans, which often make it more difficult for enrollees to access care while increasing administrative costs by up to 20 percent by adding a new “layer of bureaucracy between the Medicaid Department and providers.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/20/kentucky-bible-park-tax-breaks/

Just Doing God's Work :lol

Wild Cobra

05-21-2011, 09:25 AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this theme park is a very old plan. Any moneys it is getting are likely already authorized from the past. Are you suggesting it be yanked after prior approval?

boutons_deux

05-21-2011, 09:37 AM

Wild Cobra

05-21-2011, 11:02 AM

why not? conditions change. The criminal Banksters' Great Depression is quite a change, n'est-ce-pas?

If the for-profit "Christian" fantasy-land-for-ignorant-bubbas can't survive without several $10Ms tax expenditure, then it can't survive.

I thought you were against govt intervention to support private enterprise, bitch. Didn't you want GM and Chrysler to fold rather than be bailed out?
I a against subsidies, but isn't this a tax break? Isn't it the roll of government to make roads to places we as a society wish to go?

This is a huge expenditure, and the tax breaks ease it. My point was that I am laughing at you for attacking this old news.

boutons_deux

05-21-2011, 11:07 AM

"isn't this a tax break?"

It's a tax expenditure.

Old news? Cutting social services to KY hillbillies while maintaining tax expenditures for rich and "Christian" fucks is current.

boutons_deux

05-21-2011, 04:35 PM

Meet The Billonaires Who Are Trying To Privatize Our Schools And Kill Public Education

Two weeks ago, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) marked “a new era for education in Indiana” when he signed into law one of the most expansive school voucher laws in the country, opening up a huge fund of tax dollars for private schools. A few days later, the Wisconsin state Assembly vastly expanded school vouchers, freeing up tax dollars even for private religious schools. GOP legislators in the Pennsylvania Senate say they have the votes to pass a sweeping voucher bill of their own. And on Capitol Hill, House Republicans successfully revived Washington, D.C.’s voucher system after it was killed off two years ago.

This rapid expansion of voucher programs — which undermine and undercut public education by funnelling taxpayer money to private schools — is remarkable. After all, vouchers have been unpopular with the American public. Between 1966 and 2000, vouchers were put up for a vote in states 25 times, and voters rejected the program 24 of those times.

A tight-knit group of right-wing millionaires and billionaires, bankers, industrialists, lobby shops, and hardcore ideologues has been plotting this war on public education, quietly setting up front group after front group to promote the idea that the only way to save public education is to destroy it — disguising their movement with the innocent-sounding moniker of “school choice.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/21/billionaires-privatize-education/

boutons_deux

06-09-2011, 09:37 AM

DeVos, Koch, Scaife, Walton, ALEC, AFC: The Corporate Royalists and Right-Wing Groups Propelling the GOP's Assault on the Middle Class

In January, a small group of Indiana schoolteachers encountered their governor, Mitch Daniels, in a hallway of the state capitol. They were part of an outpouring of Hoosiers who had come to Indianapolis that day to protest Daniels' almost-gleeful political attack on the pay and even the worthiness of public employees. Having the chance, this scrappy group dared to confront his eminence. Why, they asked, was he demonizing and so drastically under-cutting those who educate Indiana's children?

"You teachers are all making too much money," the governor snapped. He then lectured them with a prepackaged factoid: "You are all making 22 percent more than the taxpayers who are paying your salaries."

Hmmm, too much? Let's see--classroom teachers in Indiana earn a middle-class paycheck that averages $47,255 a year for handling a daily workload that would break the back (and haughtiness) of any pompous and pampered governor. Yet they are being belittled and their compensation is being slashed by this peacock of a public employee who sucks up more than twice what teachers get in annual salary, plus gold-plated benefits, assorted perks of office, and a barn full of personal staffers to help him make it through his day. Someone needs to buy Mitch a mirror.

Daniels is one of a flock of far right-wing governors who seem to have flown out of the same dark political hellhole in the past couple of years. Now ruling from the highest roosts of power in more than a dozen states, all of them are pushing vituperative measures designed to disempower and downsize not only public employees and unions, but also the entire workaday majority of their states --the middle class itself. Among other assaults, they are canceling collective bargaining contracts, suppressing union rights, arbitrarily eliminating hundreds of thousands of both public and private-sector jobs, turning over schools and other public functions to low-paying corporations, doing away with minimum wage protections, and cutting unemployment benefits and worker pensions (while simultaneously giving new tax cuts to corporations and millionaires).

Curiously, the governors all seem to have the same playbook. Not only are their agendas alike and the content of their proposals remarkably similar, but they're also parroting the same scripted rationale for their extremist actions: "The sky is falling on our Great State of , but luckily I was elected by the good voters of [Blank] to do the people's will, so I am taking these bold steps to balance [Blank's] budget."

What a crock! First, none of them campaigned on what they're now doing. Second, poll after poll shows that the public supports the workers, not the megalomaniacal governors. And, third, gutting the fundamental workplace rights of wage earners has nothing to do with balancing budgets.

Indeed, if a budgetary fix was really their goal, the governors could easily achieve it by setting up dunking tanks on their capitol grounds, putting their own ample butts on the dunking boards, and charging a dollar a pop for anyone wanting to dunk them. The lines would stretch for miles, and budget deficits could be quickly wiped out, one dunk at a time.

[B]Goons in Gucci's

So where does this sudden, multi-state offensive against the hard-won rights, protections, and democratic power of America's wage earners come from? From the top--from a relative handful of arrogantly rich, right-wing families and corporate chieftains who have long been dedicated to disarming labor, repealing the New Deal, and returning America to the glory days when robber barons ruled. These particular moneyed elites have not idly dreamed of going back to the future, they've been investing hundreds of millions of dollars during the past four decades to assemble a shadowy network of hired political thugs to get them there.

[HISTORICAL FLASHBACK: In the fierce labor wars of the last century, industrial barons employed Pinkertons and other goons to bloody the heads of laborers or simply gun down those struggling for a share of economic and political power. It was brutal, but organized workers persevered and eventually gained a share of economic and political power. From their sweat and blood, America's middle class flowered.]

Today, the bands of nouveau corporate royalists (with coats of arms bearing such names as Coors, DeVos, Koch, Scaife, and Walton) are determined to take back those middle-class gains of yesteryear. They are working to achieve this through a coordinated, long-term campaign to (1) crush the ability of working people to unionize, (2) bust America's middle-class wage structure, (3) eliminate job security, and (4) emasculate government as a force capable of controlling corporate avarice and arrogance.

These latter-day royalists are employing a more sophisticated thuggery than brute force (though don't think they wouldn't resort to it). Instead, their goons are more likely to be in Gucci's than brogans, using dollars and computers rather than clubs and guns. They have been recruiting, financing, training, deploying, and coordinating thousands of political operatives to work through hundreds of front groups, law firms, think tanks, PACs, lobbying offices, media and PR consortiums, faux academic centers, astroturf campaigns, and--of course--compliant politicians.

Among the compliant is our covey of hyperactive governors, all carrying basically the same anti-worker, anti-democratic policy ideas. Their unified agenda wasn't produced by telepathy or freakish happenstance, but by AFC, ALEC, IFL, SPN,* and other obscure organizational acronyms unknown to 99 percent of Americans. But Daniels of Indiana, Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, Scott of Florida, and the rest of the covey have these organizations on speed dial. Behind the non-descript acronyms are aggressive and insidious right-wing wonk shops that have been set up and richly financed by the corporatists to prepare and hand-deliver pro-corporate programs to compliant governors and key legislators. Once delivered, the organizations work (usually clandestinely) to get the programs enacted. Let's peek inside a couple of these acronyms.

AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR CHILDREN.

Forget children, AFC is an astroturf organization spreading the gospel of public education privatization. It is a creature of Michigan's multi-billionaire DeVos family--daddy Richard founded Amway, ranks 62nd among the richest Americans, and owns the Orlando Magic basketball team.

AFC is ramrodded by Betsy DeVos, whose right-wing bona fides are rock solid. Raised in the wealthy, ueber-conservative Prince family (her brother is Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, the infamous private war corporation), she married Dick (son of Richard) and has been a major donor/fundraiser for the GOP, for religious-right political groups, and for a national web of school privatizers. Also, she and the larger DeVos klan are longtime co-conspirators in and co-funders of the Koch brothers' plutocratic political network. Betsy is unabashed about using the family's vast fortune for, as she puts it, "buying influence" in government. In 1997 she bluntly declared, "We expect a return on our investment."

Eradication of public schools is her passion, and AFC is her machine. It's essentially a front group that funnels big money from a cadre of like-minded rich people into other front groups across the country. In turn, these groups funnel AFC's money into local privatization campaigns. Last year, for example, just one political action committee registered by AFC in Indiana amassed $4.6 million from only 13 donors--none from Indiana. The list included Alice and Jim Walton (two billionaire Walmart heirs), a trio of super-rich global speculators (who, interestingly, say they base their risky gambles on poker strategies), a multi-millionaire operator of a national chain of for-profit charter schools, and Betsy herself. Very little of the money stayed in Indiana--more than $4 million was flung out to pro- privatization front groups and candidates running campaigns in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wisconsin. This shell game is repeated in campaigns around the country, with the same core group of gabillionaires putting up the cash.

While you are not likely to have heard of Betsy DeVos, chances are she and her deep-pocket cohorts are behind efforts to privatize schools right where you live. By running money through their maze of shell organizations, they keep their own identities secret. Voters in the six states that got cash last year from the Indiana PAC, for example, might see that a group with the sweet-sounding name of the American Federation for Children is running campaign ads and funding candidates in their area--but there's no disclosure that Amway, Walmart, a trio of poker-guided speculators, and a charter school profiteer are the real source of the effort to undermine their public school system

In campaign after campaign, the 'local' demand for privatization turns out to be little more than AFC money creating the illusion of grassroots support (in fact, the steady infusion of millions of dollars from DeVos, the Waltons, et al. is often the only thing propping up many of the so-called 'school choice' organizations at the local, state, and national levels). AFC will gush money into state initiatives, legislative lobbying campaigns, and political races, especially in the crucial couple of weeks before a vote. The money buys glossy (and often nastily negative) media, creating the impression that there's a groundswell for taking public schools private. "Flooding the zone" is the phrase that AFC's cynical political operatives use to describe this astroturf tactic. Polls consistently show strong public opposition to using tax dollars to fund private and parochial schools, but a little thing like that doesn't deter DeVos and her tiny band of rich ideologues. Through their stealth campaigns, they have helped elect governors who are on board their corporatization crusade. In April, for example, Gov. Mitch Daniels rammed a sweeping, DeVos-backed voucher bill into law. This radical movement is out to eradicate public education (one group funded by DeVos, Koch, and company even calls itself the Alliance for the Separation of School and State, proudly proclaiming that it supports "ending gov- ernment involvement in education").

The vast majority of America's 310 million people adamantly supports public education, but DeVos intends to overwhelm those millions with her millions of dollars, strategically using untraceable money to pervert public policy to her will, one campaign at a time. Last year she launched the AFC Action Fund to focus on state legislative races across the country, with the intention of surreptitiously stacking legislatures with school privatizers.

[B]2. AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL.

"With nearly 2,000 members" explains a brochure of this secretive organization, "ALEC is the nation's largest nonpartisan, individual membership association of state legislators." Maybe your very own local lawmaker is one of them--but you won't get that information from ALEC, which hides its list of legislators from public view.

Nonpartisan? Its website lists 22 legislators from around the country who serve as board members and officers of this tax-exempt legislative service organization. All are Republican. In fact, only token numbers of Democrats are allowed in the club, and all inductees are individually vetted to make sure they will adhere to ALEC's corporate dogma.

Which brings us to the organization's pose as an association of legislators. The "exchange" in ALEC's name is not between lawmakers, but between lawmakers and such behind-the-scenes powers as Altria, AT&T, Bayer, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft Foods, Peabody Energy, Pfizer, Reynolds American, State Farm Insurance, UPS, and Walmart. These giants form ALEC's "private enterprise board," and they are among the self-interested corporations that put up its money and shape its agenda.

State reps pay only a token $50 a year to be members of ALEC, while at least 82 percent of the $6 million yearly budget comes from corporations (ALEC demurely refuses to name its donors, much less report how much each gives, nor will it disclose how it spends the money).

What do corporations get for their tax-deductible donations? A greased skid for sliding their wish list into the laws of multiple states. ALEC is something of a speed dating service. It holds three national conferences a year, plus convening issue-specific policy sessions in 20 to 30 state capitols annually. These are cozy sessions that conveniently gather groups of legislators to meet in private with corporate executives. The two groups schmooze together and develop bills to help extend corporate power over workers, consumers, environmentalists, and others--then the lawmakers go back home to pass the corporations' bills.

ALEC is the ultimate back room for corporate-legislative collusion. Its promotional brochure describes it as a dynamic partnership "that will define the American political landscape of the 21st century."

That's no empty threat. ALEC's tête-à-têtes result in about 1,000 bills being introduced across America every legislative session, and an ALEC official proudly adds, "We usually pass about 200 bills a year." And what pieces of work they are! For example:

Even before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took office this January, ALEC agents were handing him model bills for clubbing teachers and other public employees. Pushing ALEC's attack from inside the legislature were Wisconsin state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, the rancorous, union-busting majority leader who was ALEC's state chairman last year, and state Rep. Robin Vos, the house budget slasher who heads ALEC's state organization this year. Likewise, governors in Indiana, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio have backed anti-union legislation this year that closely resembles ALEC's 'model' bills.
In 2009, ALEC drew up the Voter ID Act to ban university students from using their college-issued ID's as proof of residency for voting. Seven states have adopted this model law, which is intended to bar eligible students from the voting booth. These kids must be disenfranchised, New Hampshire's house speaker bluntly said in February, because they're "voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience." This model bill has been introduced in 18 other states this year in a rather obvious ploy to hold down the student vote in the 2012 presidential election.
Arizona's infamous anti-Latino immigration law was crafted at an ALEC conference. The state senate leader who sponsored the bill was in the meeting, as was an eager executive from Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison operation that stands to get a nice business boost from Arizona's law.
Numerous state bills have been filed to kill, dilute, or withdraw from Obama's universal healthcare reform. Many bear remarkably similar wording, perhaps because they were drawn from a special report churned out by the 'nonpartisan' ALEC, entitled "The State Legislators Guide to Repealing ObamaCare."
One of ALEC's specialties is developing state laws to stop citizens from interfering with corporate whim. For example, when various communities began outlawing the use of genetically altered seeds in their area, ALEC rushed out a model bill to remove local control of seeds--11 states have passed it. Also with such climate-change deniers as Koch and Exxon funding ALEC and sitting on its board, you can guess why this corporate policy front has produced more than 800 draft measures against regulating global warming emissions--and, at least six states are considering bills nearly identical to ALEC's draft resolution for "state withdrawal from regional climate initiatives."

The big lie

Something unconscionable is at work here, something that is shameful, unworthy of our people, and directly contradictory to our country's founding ideals. The richest, most powerful, most privileged people in our land--in cahoots with a horde of the least principled, most venal political opportunists in civic life-- are intentionally savaging the well-being of America's majority and aggressively suppressing the democratic rights that make America America. And for what? Solely for themselves, for the aggrandizement of their own wealth and power.

To pull off this grand political larceny, the narcissistic right has manufactured a huge lie that has largely been accepted as truth not only by the GOP and tea partiers, but also by the mass media, nearly all of the mainline pundit class, and too many fraidy-cat Democratic leaders, including the one in the oval office. The lie is that extreme budgetary measures (they call them "coura- geous") simply must be imposed now, this instant, in order to slay the looming deficit monster that is gorging itself on government spending at all levels.

"In the name of your grandbabies," they cry, "teachers must be fired, rights smothered, pensions abrogated, Medicare tossed aside, little kids cut off from Head Start, and the bright promise of America's shared prosperity dimmed. We have no choice but to slash and burn."

No choice? One hedge fund hustler pocketed $2.4 million last year. Not for the year--$2.4 million AN HOUR. Yet he and his ilk pay a much lower tax rate than you and I do. In recent years, huge corporations like GE, ExxonMobil, and Bank of America have pocketed billions of dollars in profit, yet paid not a dime in federal income taxes. Indeed, far from paying taxes, these three have even been handed millions of dollars in "refunds" from our public treasury in some of their profitable years. Sliding through loopholes created by their lobbyists, two-thirds of corporations in the US pay no income taxes to help cover the priceless benefits they get from our national government.

America does not face a deficit crisis--we face a multi-billion dollar annual tax dodge by the most elite of moneyed elites. The money our society needs is right there--in the coffers of flagrantly rich Fortune 500 corporations and Wall Street banks, in the personal accounts of absurdly wealthy CEOs and fast-buck speculators. America is hardly a poor country. It's the richest in the history of the world, and it ought to have the very best public education program in the world, the most advanced infrastructure network, and the finest system of health care for all.

Yet our 'leaders' only talk of what they can't do, of what must be cut, of how the middle class and the poor must sacrifice, of how Americans must adapt to the new normal of diminished expectations and shriveled democratic power. The ugly truth is that these despicable governors and lawmakers are willingly trashing teachers and butchering our public budgets simply to spare the privileged and plutocratic few from paying what they owe to sustain a just, democratic, and truly prosperous society. This is ridiculous. Let's tax the super-rich! We the People must join together, stand up, push back, and shift the focus in this fight from hardworking teachers to these disgusting deadbeats and their political puppets.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151213/

boutons_deux

06-28-2011, 11:04 AM

VRWC-packed SCOTUS ruling for VRWC-funded litigants

Blow To Public Financing At The Supreme Court Litigated By Koch and Walton-Funded Groups

– Institute for Justice: Founded with “initial seed money” from Charles Koch, the Institute for Justice is a nonprofit litigation group focused on bringing cases to decrease regulations on corporations and to remove clean election laws. Foundations connected to Koch Industries have given the Institute for Justice well over $2.6 million. The Walton Family Foundation, a foundation run by the three children of Walmart founder Sam Walton who have a controlling stake in the company, has donated $1.64 million, and is one of the Institute’s other top donors. Recent 990 disclosures from the group showcase amicus briefs filed in the Citizens United and the Arizona clean election case as top priorities for the Institute.

– The Goldwater Institute: The Goldwater Institute is one of the premiere right-wing think tanks on the state level. Most recently, the group has taken a leading role in challenging the constitutionality of health reform. The Goldwater Institute is funded by a number of conservative foundations. However, both the Walton Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation are among its top donors.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/28/255577/blow-to-public-financing-at-the-supreme-court-litigated-by-koch-and-walton-funded-groups/

boutons_deux

07-01-2011, 05:56 PM

Operating Instructions

The Supreme Court shows corporate America how to screw over its customers and employees without breaking the law.

Depending on how you count "big cases," the Supreme Court has just finished off either a great (according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) or spectacularly great (according to a new study by the Constitutional Accountability Center) term for big business. The measure of success here isn't just the win-loss record of the Chamber of Commerce, although that's certainly part of the story. Nor is it news that—in keeping with a recent trend—the court is systematically closing the courthouse doors to everyday litigants, though that's a tale that always bears retelling. The reason the Roberts Court has proven to be Christmas in July for big business is this: Slowly but surely, the Supreme Court is giving corporate America a handbook on how to engage in misconduct. In case after case, it seems big companies are being given the playbook on how to win even bigger the next time.

http://www.slate.com/id/2298330/pagenum/all/#p2

boutons_deux

07-15-2011, 04:49 AM

The Real Scandal of US Justice

Right-wing judges now dominate the American legal system, from the state level where corporate donations help elect them to the U.S. Supreme Court where ideologues tip the scales in favor of big business.

On the state level, with more than 80 percent of judges in this country elected and money, much of it corporate donations pouring into their campaigns — $200.4 million in the last decade — jurists, whether they admit it or not, are under constant pressure to favor their benefactors.

And on the federal level, take a look, for one, at the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, described by the progressive website ThinkProgress as “probably the most conservative court in the country.”

Among its 16 active judges, “Emilio Garza and Edith Clement were both on President George W. Bush’s ‘short list’ of potential Supreme Court nominees, and Clement serves on the board of the leading organization providing industry-funded junkets for judges.

“Garza, who recently suggested that undocumented immigrants have no right to be free from illegal searches and seizures, is best known as one of five Fifth Circuit judges who held that a death row defendant whose lawyer slept through much of his trial was not denied his constitutional right to counsel…

“[Judge] Priscilla Owen took thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions from Enron and then wrote a key opinion reducing Enron’s taxes by $15 million when she sat on the Texas Supreme Court.”

These, by the way, are the three who ruled last year that a high school cheerleader had no case against her school when it required that she cheer for her alleged rapist and then ordered her to pay the school district’s more than $40,000 in legal fees.

It was also last year, ThinkProgress reports, that the Fifth Circuit “had to dismiss a case brought by Katrina victims against the energy industry because so many judges were required to recuse themselves that there weren’t enough judges left to hear an appeal.

“More recently, two Fifth Circuit judges, Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, ruled in favor of the oil industry in a major drilling moratorium case, despite the fact that they both attended expense-paid ‘junkets for judges’ sponsored by an oil-industry funded organization.

“As of last year, a majority of the court’s active judges had oil investments, even though their court is frequently called upon to resolve questions involving the oil industry.” (One subsequently divested herself of up to $15,000 n BP stock, several weeks after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.)

In May, none of this gave House Republicans the slightest pause when they included in the “Putting the Gulf Back to Work Act” a provision requiring that civil lawsuits arising from drilling in the Gulf must be heard in, you guessed it, the Fifth Circuit.

But at least federal judges are supposed to be bound by a code of conduct. On the United States Supreme Court, adherence to the code is merely voluntary, flouted by Justice Clarence Thomas, whose conflicts of interest, along with his wife’s, have been widely reported; and Justices Scalia and Alioto, who have shown up at political events.

“The court cannot maintain its legitimacy as guardian of the rule of law when justices behave like politicians,” the July 1 New York Times editorialized. “Yet, in several instances, justices acted in ways that weakened the court’s reputation for being independent and impartial…

“Among the court’s 82 rulings this term, 16 were 5-to-4 decisions. Of those, 10 were split along ideological lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy supplying the fifth conservative vote. These rulings reveal the court’s fundamental inclination to the right, with the conservative majority further expanding the ability of the wealthy to prevail in electoral politics and the prerogatives of businesses against the interests of consumers and workers.”

Stanford Law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher told the Times, “This is a court that is, oddly enough, very suspicious of the courts as a place to vindicate rights. The hostility is amped up when it’s a civil-rights-type claim.”

Next session, many say, could be “the term of the century.” With possible major decisions on affirmative action, same-sex marriage, immigration and health care reform, the devastating impact of this right-leaning, ideological court may only get worse.

So if you want to get mad about something, get mad about that.

http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/195-195/6608-the-real-scandal-of-us-justice

=============

If the Dems had ANY balls, they'd impeach C Thomas.

Like Fox Repug Network and all shit spewing from Murdoch's empire, Repug darling Thomas obliterates the bar for propriety and lowers the standing of the legal system, as do so many Repug radical, politicized judges.

boutons_deux

07-15-2011, 05:13 AM

Inside ALEC, The Koch-Funded Group Behind Right-Wing State Laws

ALEC contends that government agencies have an unfair monopoly on public goods and services.

Though the specifics are secret and "restricted to members," ALEC openly advocates privatizing public education, transportation and the regulation of public health, consumer safety and environmental quality including bringing in corporations to administer:

• Foster care, adoption services and child support payment processing.

• School support services such as cafeteria meals, custodial staff and transportation.

• Highway systems, with toll roads presented as a shining example.

• Surveiling and detaining convicted criminals.

• Ensuring the quality of wastewater treatment, drinking water, and solid waste services and facilities. (After all, when someone mentions a safe and secure public water supply, the voter's next immediate thought is: "Only if it's cost-effective!")

Playing Fast and Loose With Nonprofit Status

ALEC annually spends more than $1 million for corporate lobbyists to meet state lawmakers at lavish retreats--lawmakers who will return home and try to shepherd ALEC's corporate-sponsored "model legislation" into law.

However, through an accounting sleight of hand, ALEC hides the identity of the corporations that are paying for the lawmakers' junkets and backing the group's model legislation.

In recent years, ALEC has taken in about $6.5 million in tax-deductible donations: From 1999 through 2009, ALEC reported $743,446 in legislative ("public sector") membership dues, with a two-year membership at $100; during the same 10-year period, ALEC reported $54,504,702 in "gifts," "grants" and other contributions from its corporate and special interest members.

In 2009 alone, ALEC tax returns show that the group spent a combined $2,620,343 on organizing conferences and a membership services program that manages "the recruitment and retention of ALEC state legislator members" and "provides assistance to ALEC state chairs in raising state scholarship funds, tracking the expenditures of these funds, and ensuring that members of ALEC leadership are operating in accordance with ALEC policies and procedures." In 2009, ALEC held $1,042,629 as "scholarship" funds to reimburse lawmakers attending ALEC functions. That's listed on the tax returns not as an expenditure, but as a liability. Through this accounting trick, ALEC retains its tax-exempt status while simultaneously wining and dining thousands of the nation's state lawmakers--who then go on to introduce ALEC's legislation. In each state, ALEC has both a "public sector" and "private sector" chair.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/151627

boutons_deux

07-15-2011, 05:15 AM

ALEC Exposed

ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics. Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for conservatives to “develop alternatives to existing policies [and] keep them alive and available,” ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums.

The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, The Nation has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation. Teaming up with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

“Business Domination Inc. [2],” by Joel Rogers and Laura Dresser

“Sabotaging Healthcare [3],” by Wendell Potter

“The Koch Connection [4],” by Lisa Graves

“Starving Public Schools [5],” by Julie Underwood

“Rigging Elections [6],” by John Nichols

http://www.thenation.com/print/article/161978/alec-exposed

boutons_deux

07-15-2011, 11:19 AM

With ALEC Exposed, Common Cause Demands an IRS Audit of Corporate-Funded Group's Gaming of State Lawmaking

The American Legislative Exchange Council has since 1973 operated in relative secrecy, avoiding scrutiny from the media and watchdog groups as it has sought to impose a one-size-fits-all corporate agenda on all fifty states.

Now, however, ALEC’s scheming to game the lawmaking process [1]—with “model legislation” penned by corporation insiders and their legislative minions, and with resolutions that outline initiatives to protect polluters, privatize public education, break unions and undermine democracy—has been revealed [2].

And the nation’s premier watchdog group is asking the Internal Revenue Service to audit ALEC, an organization that counts among its alumni [3]House Speaker John Boehner, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Ohio Governor John Kasich and other key players in the current push to restructure federal and state government with tax breaks for the rich, regulatory breaks for corporations, privatization strategies and draconian “Voter ID” laws that threaten to make it harder for millions of Americans to cast ballots.

“ALEC spends most of its time developing and distributing model bills to state elected officials, with the intent those bills be introduced and passed in as many state legislatures as possible.” argues Common Cause President Bob Edgar. “It’s time for ALEC to stop masquerading as a nonpartisan public interest group.”

A leak of documents detailing the agenda and activities of the organization, and the influence of wealthy right-wing zealots such as the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch on the organization and its agenda, made it possible for The Nation [1] and the Center for Media and Democracy [4] to bring ALEC out of the shadows.

One day after the details of ALEC’s activities became public, Common Cause asked the IRS to investigate [5] evidence that suggests the group has under-reported its lobbying activities and may have engaged in federal tax law violations.

http://www.thenation.com/print/blog/162043/alec-exposed-common-cause-demands-irs-audit-corporate-funded-groups-gaming-state-lawmaki

boutons_deux

07-15-2011, 11:47 AM

St Ronnie'w War on Employees has paid off immensely (globalization was one of the thrusts)

JP Morgan: Wage reductions have driven corporate profit increases

If you were looking to blow holes in claims that the way to help workers is to make sure corporations are profitable, this report from JP Morgan (PDF) just about says it all (emphasis in original):

[P]rofit margins have reached levels not seen in decades. The challenge, which we have discussed many times before: what is driving these margins? One useful way to deconstruct profits is to measure them from peak to peak, and analyze what changed. As shown in the first chart, S&P 500 profit margins increased by 1.3% from 2000 to 2007. There are a lot of moving parts in the margin equation, but as shown in the second chart, reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in margins. This trend has continued; as we have shown several times over the last two years, US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP (see EoTM April 26, 2011).

ThinkProgress puts this into context in two key ways. First, "since 2009, 88 percent of income growth has gone to corporate profits, and only 1 percent has gone to wages," and second, "the JP Morgan report explains this behavior taking place between 2000 and 2007, meaning that it began long before the Great Recession."

So: Prior to the recession, increasing profit margins were overwhelmingly due to reductions in wages and benefits. Over the past two years, income growth has gone to corporate profit, not the workers who produced the income. And the outcome—as summarized by JP Morgan, not by some dirty hippie socialist—is that "US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/14/994667/-JP-Morgan:-Wage-reductions-have-driven-corporate-profit-increases?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

boutons_deux

07-15-2011, 12:22 PM

ALEC's big this week

ALEC Exposed: State Legislative Bills Drafted by Secretive Corporate-Lawmaker Coalition

This week the Center for Media and Democracy released 800 model bills, legislation that is straight out of the corporate playbook and drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council. The group’s membership includes both state lawmakers and corporate executives who gather behind closed doors to discuss and vote on draft legislation. ALEC has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months for its role in crafting bills to attack worker rights, to roll back environmental regulations, privatize education, deregulate major industries, and pass voter ID laws. Thanks to ALEC, at least a dozen states have recently adopted a nearly identical resolution asking Congress to compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop regulating carbon emissions.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/15/alec_exposed_state_legislative_bills_drafted

Winehole23

07-15-2011, 01:47 PM

The idea that ALEC isn't a charitable organization should be commonsensical but isn't, for some reason. I have no idea how many charitable organizations get by this way -- probably way more than one.

boutons_deux

07-16-2011, 08:58 AM

The Conservatives' ALEC Philosophy: Everything Related to Government Should Be Demonized, Starved or Privatized

In the world according to ALEC, competing firms in free markets are the only real source of social efficiency and wealth. Government contributes nothing but security. Outside of this function, it should be demonized, starved or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

This view of the world dominated the legislative sessions that began in January. GOP leaders, fresh from their blowout victory in November, pushed a consistent message—“We’re broke”; “Public sector workers are to blame”; “If we tax the rich we’ll face economic extinction”—and deployed legislative tools inspired by ALEC to enact their vision. They faced pushback, but they also made great progress—and will be back again soon.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/151662

boutons_deux

07-18-2011, 03:55 PM

ALEC: Democracy's Arch-Nemesis

n an 1864 letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Abraham Lincoln warned, "... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

In the buildup to the bloodiest war of the 20th century, Benito Mussolini said, "Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." He is one of history's most reviled characters for good reason.

Now, corporations like Koch Industries are funneling money into the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy partnership between Republican legislators and corporate lobbyists. Essentially, ALEC's purpose is to pass laws that enrich corporate profits and investor returns by starving the government of revenue, rigging elections and union-busting.

98% of ALEC's funding comes from corporations

ALEC provides "model bills" to state legislatures, all of which are previously seen by ALEC's corporate board. These model bills are aimed at taking the teeth out of government regulation, giving lavish tax breaks to the wealthy, and using the resulting budget deficits to privatize institutions like schools and prisons. These bills are introduced in multiple statehouses with no required disclosure about an outside group of corporate lobbyists originally crafting the legislation. Some of ALEC's notable alumni include Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Governor Scott Walker.

Some of ALEC's model budget bills would repeal capital gains taxes and estate taxes, fattening the pockets of millionaire hedge-fund managers and trust-fund brats while putting public goods and services under the knife. ALEC's 1995 "Sound Federal Fiscal Policy Resolution" falsely antagonizes higher taxes as the source of higher deficits (instead of the aforementioned tax breaks for the wealthy). This would steer lawmakers toward needless budget cuts that systematically starve the states of jobs and tax dollars, blow massive holes in the budget and create whopping revenue shortfalls.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/6656-focus--alec-democracys-arch-nemesis

boutons_deux

07-19-2011, 01:33 PM

Repugs, always advancing the country to the rear

Dirty Money For Dirty Water: Groups Supporting Bill to Gut Clean Water Act Outspend Opposition 23 To 1

The president of the West Virginia Coal Association, Bill Raney, praised the bill’s passage:

HR 2018 is a bipartisan bill that would rein in the Obama EPA and end the agency’s destructive abuse of authority and restore the balance needed to get America working again.

But the West Virginia Coal Association did much more than offer written support for the act; the organization is one of 44 such groups who donated a combined $28.9 million to House lawmakers in a push to secure the bill’s passing and thus limit the EPA’s role in the making, promulgation, and enforcement of clean-water regulations.

Lobbyist money played a pivotal part in what Earth Justice calls the fight of “clean water versus dirty water.” Interest groups working in support of the bill spent 23 times more money than did the opposition. In some instances, lawmakers received as much as $100,000 from lobbyists in support of the measure and not a cent from those opposed.

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/07/19/272023/dirty-money-for-dirty-water-groups-supporting-bill-to-gut-clean-water-act-outspend-opposition-23-to-1/

=========

Corporate-Americans Votes Count, Human-Americans Screwed Again, Again, and Again.

cantthinkofanything

07-19-2011, 01:37 PM

New ChamberLeaks Presentation Emerges, Details More Plans To Sabotage Liberals

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/11/chamberleaks-more-plans/

CoC of course receives anonymous $100Ms from Corporate-Americans, and is lobbying aggressively to allow contributions from foreign companies and sovereign funds, and to lift bans on Corporate-Americans using graft/kickbacks/corruption/payoffs to win foreign business.

COC is (or was) badass. My favorite CD's are Deliverance and Wiseblood. I hope the money doesn't make them lazy.

boutons_deux

07-24-2011, 11:02 AM

http://www.cagle.com/working/110720/bagley.jpg

How Murdoch’s Times of London and Fox News Coordinate Their Deceitful Reporting on Climate Change

If you wondered whether Murdoch’s various news outlets operate in sync when they misrepresent the facts about climate change, consider the deceitful reporting done by Ben Webster, the Environmental Editor for The Times of London. His smears against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were immediately amplified and embellished by Fox News in New York. Both Webster’s story and its Fox News incarnation were used to defame the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and to lend an air of legitimacy to the phony “Climate-gate” scandal that had already been debunked by scientific journals and scientific inquiries .

Today we know that one of the Murdoch employees arrested in Britain, Neil Wallis, was deeply implicated in two hacking scandals, the first pertaining to the News of the World, and the second pertaining to the invasion of computers at the University of East Anglia, the victim of the phony Climate-gate scandal touted by Fox News. So it may be worthwhile to take another look at how deceitful reporting within the Murdoch empire can spread like a virus. Look at the opening paragraphs in The Times of London story:

Climate scientists at the centre of the row over stolen e-mails acted with integrity and made no attempt to manipulate their research on global temperatures, an external inquiry has found.

Their research was, however, misrepresented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which failed to reflect uncertainties the scientists had reported concerning the raw temperature data.

An inquiry panel of leading scientists, nominated by the Royal Society, said that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit may not have used the best methods for analyzing temperature records.

Webster’s second and third paragraphs distort the panel’s findings beyond all recognition.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/24/271670/murdoch-times-of-london-fox-news-reporting-on-climate-change/

boutons_deux

07-24-2011, 11:10 AM

Koch And Exxon Pay To Write State Legislation Repealing Climate Change Laws

According to tax records and other materials acquired by Bloomberg News, Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, and numerous other corporations paid tens of thousands of dollars to write legislation for lawmakers that would repeal carbon pollution reduction programs in various states around the U.S.

These companies working to dismantle environmental programs are members of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which allows private-sector parties to “pay-to-play” – charging thousands of dollars to sit at the table with legislators and craft bills.

According to Bloomberg News, Exxon Mobil donated $39,000 to ALEC last year and the Koch Charitable Foundation donated $75,858 in 2009, the final year in which tax documents were available. Both companies, along with BP, the American Petroleum Institute and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy helped draft legislation that has been introduced in Oregon, New Hampshire, Washington State and New Mexico designed to take those states out of regional cap and trade programs:

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/07/21/275206/koch-exxon-state-legislation-climate-change-laws/

==========

That's how the UCA rolls, they own government.

boutons_deux

07-27-2011, 06:35 PM

shock/crony/pay-to-play capitalism at work by the PIC:

Florida Looks for the Lowest Bidder as It Privatizes 30 State Prisons

GEO Group already manages two of the state's seven private prisons and is a "prime financier of the Republican Party [6]" that gave more than $400,000 to GOP in the 2010 election cycle alone and gave the maximum $25,000 to Scott's inaugural fund.

The Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest corrections company, also has close connections [7] to GOP statehouses across the country. The company has spent $373,000 in political contributions [5] in Florida since 2003, over 60 percent of which have gone to Republicans.

And the private prison industry isn't just lobbying to take over state prisons; it's also "working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences." According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), private prisons spend millions on lobbying [8] to put more people in jail, which translates to more profits for them. Last year, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group made over $2.9 billion in revenue.

http://www.truth-out.org/print/4544

boutons_deux

07-27-2011, 06:52 PM

More the VRWC ALEC conspiracy:

Six Extreme Right-Wing Attacks by ALEC in State Governments

Disenfranchising American Citizens Through Voter ID

Union-Busting

Undoing Efforts to Address Climate Change

Filling For-Profit Prisons Through Anti-Immigrant Bills

Opposing Health Insurance Reform

Privatizing K-12 Education

http://www.truth-out.org/print/4542

==========

An amazing, surprising paper from AEI on decarbonization:

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/Climate_Pragmatism_web.pdf

boutons_deux

07-28-2011, 07:58 AM

Corporate tax evasion/avoidance for the predatory, abusive monopoly in your PC

Microsoft's Use Of Lox-Tax Havens Drives Tax Bill To 7 Percent Of Profit

But Microsoft is straightforward about the core reason for its lower tax bill: It is increasingly channeling earnings from sales to customers throughout the world through the low-tax havens of Ireland, Puerto Rico and Singapore.

Microsoft's pre-tax profits booked overseas nearly tripled over the past six years, to $19.2 billion in the fiscal year that just ended, from $6.8 billion in the year ended in June 2006, according to company filings. By contrast, its U.S. earnings have dropped, to $8.9 billion from $11.4 billion in the same period. Foreign earnings now make up 68 percent of overall income.

The change is fueling its shrinking tax bills. According to its 2010 annual report, by keeping a good chunk of foreign earnings away from the U.S., Microsoft has accumulated $29.5 billion overseas -- and that is before the impact of its last financial year.

In theory, the company has saved $9.2 billion in U.S. federal taxes on that figure, though if it brought the entire $29.5 billion back home tomorrow its tax bill would be lower because of credits for foreign taxes paid and other U.S. deductions.

Microsoft's effective worldwide tax rate fell to 17.5 percent in the last fiscal year, down from 25 percent the previous year and 31 percent in the year to June 30, 2006. The company said it expects to owe tax at an effective rate in the next year of between 19 percent and 22 percent.

Few companies, including Thomson Reuters, pay the standard U.S. corporate rate of 35 percent thanks to loopholes and deductions but the Microsoft tax rate is still at the low end when compared with other large technology companies.

In their last reported fiscal years, Google Inc's effective tax rate was 21 percent, Apple Inc's 24 pct, and IBM's was 25 percent.

===========

The UCA loves the tax policies it pays for.

boutons_deux

07-28-2011, 09:42 PM

How Shadowy Right-Wing Front Groups Engineered Our National Embrace Of Debt Reduction Over Job Creation

– Founded in 2010 by former Bush admin flak Gretchen Hamel, the group Public Notice has quietly pumped millions into advertising about debt reduction: Public Notice sponsored at least $3 million on a debt ad called “Shovel” that falsely claims the spending doesn’t create jobs, an undisclosed amount for online ads promoting a highly produced web series on the evils of government spending, a debt pledge that features pop singer Justin Bieber, and what is believed to be another multimillion dollar ad buy recently for a commercial, appearing like a PSA, that warns that government spending is akin to cocaine addiction. To warp elite opinion, the group sponsored billboard ads at Reagan National Airport and on buses and bus shelters near Capitol Hill. Although Hamel does not reveal her donors, she is connected closely with the Koch network of billionaire and investors. Last year at a right-wing donor conference attended by top hedge fund manager Steve Schwarzman and Charles Koch, Hamel gave a presentation on “Framing the Debate on Spending.”

– Retired investor Pete Peterson has dedicated $1 billion of his personal wealth to reducing government spending; much of that money has gone to a multifaceted marketing campaign: The Peterson Institute has spent $1 million underwriting a movie about the debt, at least $1,010,232 developing a children’s debt sports game that also directs users to a Econ4U, a front group created by infamous lobbyist Rick Berman, and millions more for a TV ad campaign called “Hugh Jidette,” an MTV-U cable television series that misleadingly conflates personal debt with the national debt, a newspaper partnered with the Washington Post, and even a program at Columbia University to develop a national debt-related K-12 curriculum.

– Corporate astroturf lobbyist Rick Berman has spent large amounts orchestrating a scare-mongering campaign over the national debt. Along with his connections to the Peterson network mentioned above, Berman has set up a campaign called “Defeat the Debt” to push the public into believing the national debt is the country’s top priority. He has run ads on television, purchased billboards throughout the Washington D.C. metro area, and aggressively marketed his campaign to Capitol Hill staffers. Last year, Berman purchased an ad during the Super Bowl — spending approximately $3 million — that showed schoolchildren pledging allegiance “to America’s debt, and to the Chinese government that lends us money.”

– A network of other right-wing groups have used a series of public relations gimmicks — like barnstorming bus tours filled with highly paid GOP operatives posing as Tea Party activists — to orchestrate an astroturf effort to build support for cutting spending over creating jobs. Groups like Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Tax Reform sponsored a group called Spending Revolt that toured the country organizing debt-related rallies with Republican candidates last year. The group, which has organized events with the Ohio Coal Association, gained countless local press hits appearing as a genuine citizens groups, despite the fact its sponsors are corporate lobbyists. This year, Americans for Prosperity has continued a separate effort to organize debt-themed rallies. American Majority, a group founded after Obama’s election by two GOP operatives, has quietly provided training efforts across the country to mobilize around the issue of the national debt.

This is only a snapshot of the debt-related public relations campaign; millions more have been spent by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, and other big business advocacy groups.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/07/28/281405/how-shadowy-right-wing-front-groups-engineered-our-national-embrace-of-debt-reduction-over-job-creation/

boutons_deux

07-31-2011, 05:27 AM

UCA never sleeps:

U.S. Chamber To Rank Politicians On Whether They Vote To Keep Contractor Donations Secret

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has written a letter to members of the House telling them that voting for federal contractors to be more transparent about their political spending will negatively impact their legislative scorecard.

"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce strongly supports legislative proposals to ensure that political spending -- or the lack thereof -- continues to play no role in federal contracting decisions," the Chamber's R. Bruce Josten wrote in the letter sent on Wednesday.

"Therefore, the Chamber supports amendments that have been offered by Rep. Cole to several Fiscal Year 2012 appropriations bills considered by the full House, and any similar amendments should they be offered to the remaining FY 2012 appropriations bills," he wrote.

http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/69-69/6826-chamber-of-commerce-to-politicians-quiet-on-donors

boutons_deux

08-01-2011, 02:55 PM

Step-By-Step Guide to Understanding ALEC’s Influence On Your State Laws

http://www.propublica.org/article/our-step-by-step-guide-to-understanding-alecs-influence-on-your-state-laws

boutons_deux

08-05-2011, 05:23 AM

Koch Joins Wellpoint to Help Fight Wisconsin Recalls in Battle With Labor

Republican and Democratic groups are pouring money into Wisconsin with eight legislative recalls scheduled this month and control of the state Senate hanging in the balance.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, based in Alexandria, Virginia, has spent about $370,000 on the special elections, while the Washington-based Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has spent about $250,000, according to documents filed with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board in Madison.

Wellpoint Inc. (WLP), an Indianapolis-based health insurer that has been critical of the new federal health-care law, is among the top donors to Republican organizations active in the contests, including $450,000 to the RSLC and $250,000 to the Republican Governors Association.

Wellpoint gave $842,000 to the RSLC for the 2010 elections. State officials are playing a key role in implementing -- or fighting -- the new health law. Kristin Binns, a Wellpoint spokeswoman, didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

“Big Labor has made Wisconsin their Waterloo,” the RSLC states on its Website, seeking donations to help the Republican lawmakers facing recall elections following their support of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s legislation to take away bargaining rights of state workers. Walker said the law was necessary to trim spending and balance the state budget.
Republican Cash Advantage

Overall, the national groups trying to elect Republican governors, legislators and other state officials almost doubled Democratic fundraising, new Internal Revenue Service records show.

The Republican groups reported raising $28 million between Jan. 1 and June 30, compared with $15 million for their Democratic counterparts. Unlike the national political parties, these committees can accept contributions from corporate and union treasuries, and unlimited donations from individuals.

The RSLC’s chairman, Ed Gillespie, is a former aide to President George W. Bush. Gillespie worked with former Bush political strategist Karl Rove in 2010 to create American Crossroads. American Crossroads and its related organization Crossroads GPS spent $38 million last year in support of Republican congressional candidates. In March, Crossroads GPS spent $750,000 in ads supporting Walker’s new anti-labor law, according to the Center for Media and Democracy.

“Wisconsin is a huge priority,” said Carolyn Fiddler, a DLCC spokeswoman.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-08-04/wellpoint-joins-koch-help-fight-wisconsin-state-senate-recalls.html

boutons_deux

08-06-2011, 08:54 PM

VRWC attack on labor pits unions and other workers against "slave wage" prisoners. No need to export jobs, just give the jobs to prisoners.

New Exposé Tracks ALEC-Private Prison Industry Effort to Replace Unionized Workers with Prison Labor

Many of the toughest sentencing laws responsible for the explosion of the U.S. prison population were drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which helps corporations write model legislation. Now a new exposé reveals ALEC has paved the way for states and corporations to replace unionized workers with prison labor. We speak with Mike Elk, contributing labor reporter at The Nation magazine. He says ALEC and private prison companies "put a mass amount of people in jail, and then they created a situation where they could exploit that." Elk notes that in 2005 more than 14 million pounds of beef infected with rat feces processed by inmates were not recalled, in order to avoid drawing attention to how many products are made by prison labor.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/5/new_expos_tracks_alec_private_prison

The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor

prison labor for the private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair competition with private companies. But this has changed thanks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), its Prison Industries Act, and a little-known federal program known as PIE (the Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program [3]). While much has been written about prison labor in the past several years, these forces, which have driven its expansion, remain largely unknown.

Somewhat more familiar is ALEC’s instrumental role in the explosion of the US prison population in the past few decades. ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act [4] was signed into law in twenty-five states. (Then State Rep. Scott Walker was an ALEC member when he sponsored Wisconsin's truth-in-sentencing laws and, according to PR Watch, used its statistics to make the case for the law.) More recently, ALEC has proposed innovative “solutions” to the overcrowding it helped create, such as privatizing the parole process through “the proven success of the private bail bond industry,” as it recommended in 2007. (The American Bail Coalition is an executive member of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force.) ALEC has also worked to pass state laws to create private for-profit prisons, a boon to two of its major corporate sponsors: Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections), the largest private prison firms in the country. An In These Times investigation [5] last summer revealed that ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees. ALEC has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country’s massive prison population.

http://www.thenation.com/print/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor

boutons_deux

08-08-2011, 11:38 AM

Top Companies Claim To Fight Global Warming, But Sponsor ALEC’s Climate Denial

The fight against global warming pollution requires the investment of everyone, including the world’s multinational corporate giants. Many companies have taken official stances on climate pollution, pledging to reduce their greenhouse footprint in order to reduce the threat of a destabilized climate.

However, a number of these same companies are sponsoring toxic, far-right denial of climate science. The American Legislative Exchange Council pushes an extremist denier agenda throughout the United States, funded in secret by corporations. ThinkProgress has acquired a list of the sponsors of ALEC’s 2011 annual meeting, held last week in New Orleans, LA.

ALEC denies that global warming is causing glaciers to retreat or sea level to rise. Not only does ALEC deny the threat of climate change, they even argue that “substantial global warming is likely to be of benefit to the United States”:

“There is no ‘scientific consensus’ that global warming will cause damaging climate change.”

“Even substantial global warming is likely to be of benefit to the United States.” [ALEC, Energy, Environment, and Economics, 5th Edition]

At the annual meeting, ALEC hosted a session touting the “benefits of carbon dioxide.” ALEC also supports the repeal of Section 526, which prohibits federal purchases of high-carbon fuels.

The radical anti-science agenda of ALEC stands in direct contravention to the official public policies of its funders, which include top health care companies like Bayer, Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, and top energy companies like Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Entergy:

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/08/08/289553/companies-sponsor-alec-climate-denial/

===

:lol at the right-wingers here denying global warming but in fact are just stupidly duped by the VRWC strategy of denying global warming

Winehole23

08-08-2011, 08:41 PM

http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/08/the-national-organization-for-women-defends-bachmann-against-newsweek/

boutons_deux

08-12-2011, 11:54 AM

U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Battles Anti-Bribery Statute

Not only is the Chamber taking on something as seemingly unassailable as an anti-bribery law, but it's doing so just as the movement the FCPA launched is finally taking hold across the globe, corruption fighters say.

And without much organized opposition -- at least so far -- the Chamber's army of lobbyists is making serious headway in Congress, even among Democrats.

The Chamber is not overtly taking a pro-bribery position. Rather, its lobbying blitz couches the proposed changes as tune-ups, a few safeguards needed to protect against overzealous prosecutors.

"Our proposals are aimed at preserving existing law enforcement tools so that the government can pursue the bad actors while ensuring that the good actors have clarity and more certainty under the law, which is clearly lacking today,"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/12/chamber-of-commerce-foreign-corrupt-practices-act_n_919617.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

boutons_deux

08-14-2011, 09:27 AM

Attacks on Science Education Intensify: “There Seems To Be a Lynch-Mob Hate Against Any Teacher Trying to Teach Climate Change”

What’s currently seeping into classrooms across the country is far, far worse—more ideological, and more difficult to stop. We’re talking about outright climate denial being fed to students—and accurate climate science teaching being attacked by aggressive Tea Party-style ideologues.

Science magazine just released a report on the state of affairs out there in this place called America, and it’s ugly. From the piece:

“It’s very difficult when we, as science teachers, are just trying to present scientific facts,” says Kathryn Currie, head of the [Los Alamitos High School’s] science department. And science educators around the country say such attacks are becoming all too familiar. They see climate science now joining evolution as an inviting target for those who accuse “liberal” teachers of forcing their “beliefs” upon a captive audience of impressionable children.

“Evolution is still the big one, but climate change is catching up,” says Roberta Johnson, executive director of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) in Boulder, Colorado. An informal survey this spring of 800 NESTA members found that climate change was second only to evolution in triggering protests from parents and school administrators. One teacher reported being told by school administrators not to teach climate change after a parent threatened to come to class and make a scene. Online message boards for science teachers tell similar tales…

“There seems to be a lynch-mob hate against any teacher trying to teach climate change,” says Andrew Milbauer, an environmental sciences teacher at Conserve School, a private boarding school in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin.

Milbauer felt that wrath after receiving an invitation to participate in a public debate about climate change. The event, put on last year by Tea Party activists, proposed to pit high school teachers against professors and climate change deniers David Legates and Willie Soon in front of students from 200 high schools. Organizers said the format was designed “to expand knowledge of the global warming debate to the youth of our state.” When Milbauer and his colleagues declined to participate, organizer Kim Simac complained to the local papers about their “suspicious” behavior. Milbauer corresponded for a time on the organization’s blog until Simac wrote that Milbauer, “in his role as science teacher, is passing on to our youth this monstrous hoax as being the gospel truth.”

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/08/11/293781/attacks-on-climate-science-education/

===============

Another sign that America is in permanent decline, led down by ideologues paid by the VRWC/UCA and by "Christian" dominionist/creationist/evangelical theocrats. Rationality, critical thinking, and science is being attacked to be replaced by extreme, self-serving ideologues.

boutons_deux

08-23-2011, 07:51 AM

Businessman Behind Effort To Dismantle Health Care Hints At Campaign Against Federal Banking Regulation

network of front groups advancing the “Health Care Compact,” a massive deregulation idea to turn over federal money used for health reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs to state governments along with the power to use that money however they see fit, even if it has nothing to do with actual health care.

The cancer is well-advanced. Therapies that rely upon the federal government to self-restrain will not work. The states must engage. We are left, then, with two broad options:

1. Compacts, that allow for piecemeal deconstruction of the federal state (BTW: Gov. Perry signed the Health Care Compact yesterday, making it the fourth state to join. There will be a big push in 2012 in many more states, and we are adding an Education Compact and Banking Compact to the mix.)

If the Banking Compact looks anything like Linbeck’s Health Care Compact, he could obliterate what’s left of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and the other financial regulators that are already under-staffed and partially captured by bank lobbyists. Linbeck’s “piecemeal deconstruction of the federal state” will be as disastrous for banking regulation as it is for health care.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/22/297469/businessman-behind-effort-to-dismantle-health-care-hints-at-campaign-against-federal-banking-regulation/

boutons_deux

08-24-2011, 10:47 AM

Orwell Watch: More Reengineering of Values via Koch Funded “Deep Lobbying”

The 40th anniversary of the Powell memo is this Tuesday, August 23. Louis Powell’s document articulated a vision and major elements of a plan for how major corporations would reshape social values to produce a milieu more conducive to their interests. As Bill Black wrote:

He issued a clarion call for corporations to mobilize their economic power to further their economic interests by ensuring that corporations dominated every influential and powerful American institution. Lewis Powell’s call was answered by the CEOs who funded the creation of Cato, Heritage, and hundreds of other movement centers.

The result was arguably the most successful proselytization in history. And conservatives are not resting on their laurels. One ongoing effort is to cement right wing values by embedding them in the educational process. As we pointed out in ECONNED and here, that strategy reaped enormous rewards in the law arena. The once fringe law and economics movement, which sought to embed the ideas of neoclassical economics in the legal discipline, is now mainstream, and has served the big businesses who funded this push very well.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/orwell-watch-more-reengineering-of-values-via-deep-lobbying.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

=========

VRWC is real, and is very effective. Result: the planet's economies and natural resources are fucked, as the VRWC concentrates its wealth and power while everybody else slides backward and downward.

boutons_deux

08-28-2011, 07:12 AM

The Wages of Destroying Labor Bargaining Power: Nearly 30% of Job Losses Due to Management Cutting Pie in Favor of Capital

that the benefits of GDP growth, which used to go mainly to labor (via increased hiring and better wages) now benefit capitalists fare more than ordinary workers. The shift towards increases in GDP favoring corporate profits at the expense of labor became pronounced in the weak Bush expansion

High and persistent unemployment in the US has emerged as one of the most important macroeconomic legacies of the 2007-09 world economic crisis. While the decline of business activity in the US was no larger than in Europe, the US is an outlier in its outsized response of the unemployment rate to its decline of output (IMF 2011).

Here we quantify the shortfall of US employment – some 10.4 million missing jobs – and ask: Why did the number of jobs decline so much and why has it recovered so little? Two sets of causes stand out.

First, there has been a changing balance of economic power in the US between management and labour in the past two decades that has led to more aggressive firing of workers when business profits head south.

Second, the large negative output gap (actual real GDP below trend or potential) is not shrinking, due to the “double hangover” persisting in the aftermath of the housing bubble.

The “disposable worker hypothesis”

When the economy begins to sink – like the Titanic after the iceberg struck – firms begin to cut costs any way they can; tossing employees overboard is the most direct way. For every worker tossed overboard in a sinking economy prior to 1986, about 1.5 are now tossed overboard. Why are firms so much more aggressive in cutting employment costs? My “disposable worker hypothesis” (Gordon, 2010) attributes this shift of behaviour to a complementary set of factors that amount to “workers are weak and management is strong.” The weakened bargaining position of workers is explained by the same set of four factors that underlie higher inequality among the bottom 90% of the American income distribution since the 1970s – weaker unions, a lower real minimum wage, competition from imports, and competition from low-skilled immigrants.

But the rise of inequality also has boosted the income share of the top 1% relative to the rest of the top 10%. In the 1990s corporate management values shifted toward more emphasis on shareholder value and executive compensation, with less importance placed on the welfare of workers, and a key driver of this change in attitudes was the sharply higher role of stock options in executive compensation.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/the-wages-of-destroying-labor-bargaining-power-nearly-30-of-job-losses-due-to-management-cutting-pie-in-favor-of-capital.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

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Cisco and HSBC just laid off 10s of 1000s with the announced objective of "increasing profitability", iow, not because they were in financial trouble, but expressly, blatantly to transfer salaries from employees to mgmt and investors.

and here's Bachmann continuing in the same "fuck every worker harder and deeper"

Michele Bachmann Would Consider Lowering Minimum Wage To Match Cost Of Overseas Labor

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/26/305954/michele-bachmann-would-consider-lowering-minimum-wage-to-match-cost-of-overseas-labor/

=========

She was later asked by a reporter whether changes to the minimum wage should also be considered to balance the cost of labor here and overseas.

"I'm not married to anything. I'm not saying that's where I'm going to go," she said.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_18766241

==========

People (employees, patients, etc) really have to be ignorant and unthinking to vote against their best interests when they vote for these crazy fucking sociopathic assholes, over and over and over.

boutons_deux

08-29-2011, 02:38 AM

Foundations paid $42 million to spread anti-Muslim propaganda

"The report, titled “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America,” documents which anti-Muslim organizations have played a part in the rise of Islamophobia throughout the country. The seven foundations include "Donors Capital Fund" and Richard Scaife Foundations, which received more than half of the $42 million spent.

The money has also been given to five key "scholars", including Frank Gaffney, who are considered the masterminds of crafting anti-Muslim propaganda. Those scholars are assisted by the likes of Pamela Gellar and David Horowitz, who help pass off the negative information to Fox News, Allen West, and Newt Gingrich among others.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/28/report-foundations-paid-42-million-to-spread-anti-muslim-propaganda/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

=======

And plenty of ST right-wing assholes got suckered by the VRWC jihad on Muslims.

btw, SOCOM imperialist murderers are now murdering "terrorists" in 100+ countries, and corporate media remains silent, complicit.

boutons_deux

08-30-2011, 05:28 AM

How Corporate and Political Forces Have Almost Neutralized All Avenues of Resistance in US Culture

The only commodity the troll state offers is fear. The corporate trolls, such as the Koch brothers, terrify the birthers, creationists, militia lovers, tea party militants, right-to-life advocates, Christian fascists and God-fearing red-white-and-blue patriots by proclaiming that, unless they vote for Perry or Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann or some other product of the lunatic fringe of our political establishment, the American family will be destroyed, our children will be corrupted and the country will turn socialist. Barack Obama, who they whisper is a closet Muslim, will take away their guns, raise their taxes and bring homosexual couples into kindergartens.

And underneath it all runs the mantra chanted in unison by all the trolls—terror, terror, terror. The troll establishment spins us like windup dolls and laughs all the way to the bank. What idiots, they think. And every election cycle we prove them right.

The trolls dominate or have neutralized every major institution in the country on behalf of their corporate paymasters. The press, education, Wall Street, labor and our political parties are managed by trolls or have been destroyed by them. Sometimes these trolls speak like liberals. Sometimes they speak like conservatives. Sometimes they are secular. Sometimes they are Christians. But the language they use is a cover for the relentless march toward a totalitarian capitalism and a kingdom where the trolls, if not the rest of us, live happily ever after. Rick Perry and John Boehner overtly make war on Social Security. Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi say they would like to save Social Security but are sadly powerless before the decisions of a congressional super committee they helped form. The result, of course, is the same. We get to choose the rhetoric and manner in which we are deceived and disempowered. Nothing more.

A society is in serious trouble when its political pariahs have at the core of their demands a return to the rule of law. This inversion, with our political and cultural outcasts demanding a respect for law, highlights the awful fact that the most radical and retrograde forces within the body politic have seized control. These forces demand that we serve the dictates of the marketplace. They are destroying all legal impediments to corporate exploitation and profit, as well as dismantling the regulatory agencies that once protected the citizen. They defend torture, offshore penal colonies, black sites and kidnapping (they call it “extraordinary rendition”) of state enemies. They protect and abet financial fraud. They wage pre-emptive war. They refuse to restore habeas corpus. Without warrants, they monitor, eavesdrop on and wiretap tens of millions of citizens. They order the assassination of U.S. citizens. They deny due process. They give corporations the status of persons. They ignore the suffering of the unemployed and the poor, slashing basic social service programs while doling out hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds to corporations. On these key issues, the only ones that really matter, there is no disagreement among trolls from either the self-identified left or the self-identified right. All their public disputes in the election cycle are a carnival act.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152205

boutons_deux

09-02-2011, 05:29 AM

The infamous Powell memo that initiated the VRWC as direct response to social progress made in the 1960s.

U.S Right Wing and GOP Presidential Candidates Spreading Paranoid Anti-Muslim Hysteria as Part of Take-Over Strategy

"In 1971, former US Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell submitted a confidential memorandum to his friend, Eugene Sydnor, the chairman of the US Chamber of Commerce, an umbrella group representing American big business. Powell, who was serving on the boards of 11 corporations at the time, warned that America was suffering from a surplus of democratic freedom thanks to the legacy of the New Left and the countercultural revolt of the 1960's. He declared, "No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack." Powell warned that "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries" were joining forces with "perfectly respectable elements of society from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians" to bring down American capitalism.

To roll back the surge of democracy that supposedly threatened corporate predominance, Powell urged the Chamber of Commerce to finance the creation of a new political and cultural infrastructure -- a "counter-establishment" capable of unraveling the liberal establishment. The infrastructure would consist of pseudo-scholarly journals, "experts" promoted through speakers bureaus, campus pressure groups, publishing houses, lobbyists and partisan idea factories masquerading as think tanks. He wrote that operatives of the network would have to affect a "more aggressive attitude," leveling relentless personal attacks against the perceived enemies of big business. By the last days of the Nixon administration, Attorney General John Mitchell was boasting that his conservative friends were going to take the country "so far to the right we won't recognize it."

Though still obscure, the Powell memo is one of the most important documents in American political history. It was the blueprint for the creation of the modern American conservative movement, a political contingent that now controls the Republican Party and influences mainstream American opinion in ways Powell could have never imagined. Powell's vision came to life during the late 1970's, when neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol and former Treasury Secretary William Simon gathered together a small group of business tycoons willing to lay down the millions in seed money necessary to raise up a network of conservative think tanks, talking heads, and magazines that would flood the media with right-wing opinions, capture the courts and take control of Congress. Chief among the right-wing sugardaddies was Richard Mellon Scaife, a reclusive billionaire from PIttsburgh, Pennsylvania who controlled much of the Mellon oil fortune.

Through his various foundations, Mellon Scaife helped finance the creation of the pillars of the conservative movement, from the Federalist Society, which spearheaded the right's takeover of the federal court system, to the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that functions as the outsourced brain of the congressional Republicans, to the Media Research Center, a right-wing watchdog group that has helped manufacture the concept of "liberal media bias." The Tea Party, a far-right constellation of pressure groups bankrolled by extraction industry barons like the Koch Brothers, is the latest incarnation of the corporate funded conservative counter-establishment.

Scaife's name turned up again this month in connection with a familiar cabal of right-wing corporate moneymen financing a small and relatively new political network determined to promote Islamophobia throughout America. According to an authoritative 130-page report by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank based in Washington, Scaife and other conservative sugardaddies have pumped $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 into the Islamophobic network. Most of the money has gone to five figures known for bigoted, extremist views on Muslims, Arabs, and people of color. They are: Daniel Pipes, a neoconservative academic who urged Israel to employ methods of terrorism against Palestinian civilians and "raze Palestinian villages;" Frank Gaffney, a rightist national security wonk who has called the practice of Shariah a form of "sedition;" Robert Spencer, a writer and activist who has said that "everyone knows" most or all terrorists are Muslims; Stephen Emerson, a self-styled terror "expert" who blamed Muslims for the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, which turned out to have been conducted by a right-wing white nationalist terrorist; and David Yerushalmi, a far-right legal activist who has argued that whites are genetically superior to people of color. Behind these figures lies a cadre of equally vitriolic figures like Pamela Geller and Brigitte Gabriel who hype their work. (Read more about the Islamophobic network in my piece, "The Great Fear.")"

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152274

========

No paranoia, the VRWC is real, goes back 40 years, and is 100% responsible for the Human-American shithole the USA has become, and for the permanent decline of USA for the lower 95%.

boutons_deux

09-02-2011, 04:47 PM

ALEC Releases Anti-Health Reform Playbook For GOP State Legislators

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/alec-guide2.png

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy national conservative group, has released a new playbook for Republican legislators determined to undermine and repeal health care reform. “The State Legislators Guide To Repealing Obamacare” contains 14 specific recommendations officials can take to impede the Affordable Care Act, including rejecting ACA grants from the federal government. The Kansas Health Institute points out that last year ALEC essentially drafted legislation in their state and others implementing several sections of the playbook. The actions of legislators in states like Florida show just how closely Republicans are adhering to the manual. In These Times recently published an expose of ALEC detailing how the organization has colluded with the billionaire Koch brothers to privatize key government functions and destroy public services.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/09/02/308936/alec-releases-anti-health-reform-playbook-for-gop-state-legislators/

ManuBalboa

09-02-2011, 05:26 PM

lol...could obama scrub it up anymore this week.

boutons_deux

09-04-2011, 06:39 PM

Roosevelt Explains It All

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2011-09-03-Roosevelt495HufPo.jpg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-schmock/roosevelt-explains-it-all_b_947471.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

========

Roosevelt nails EXACTLY the 21st century situation, which is why the VRWC has for 30+ years trashed Roosevelt. He had the balls to expose their game, their corruption, their wars on everybody else.

boutons_deux

09-07-2011, 05:50 AM

$1 Million Donation to the Kochs? Meet the Wealthy Right-Wingers Helping Fund the Brothers' Agenda

Twice a year, the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch host secretive retreats for an exclusive list of corporate America's rich and powerful to strategize and raise money for their right-wing political agenda.

In a speech that is part of these recordings, Charles Koch thanks donors who gave more than $1 million to the cause. We checked the audio against a list of participants at the Kochs' 2010 seminar in Aspen that was obtained by ThinkProgress.org and did additional research on these individuals. Below are the names Koch read that appeared on the previous guest list.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152318

boutons_deux

09-16-2011, 05:10 AM

Scott Walker and the GOP Reveal Depth of Their Voter-Exclusion Plan

A new Department of Transportation memo reveals how thoroughly Wisconsin Republicans intend to make the newly imposed voter ID process—fiercely opposed by labor—as onerous and expensive as possible for the low-income people seeking the IDs.

Wisconsin's fundamental pillars of democracy have been under sustained pounding ever since Gov. Scott Walker, with a right-wing playbook from the American Legislative Exchange Council tucked under his arm and cash from the billionaire Koch brothers bulging out of his suit coat, was sworn into office back in January.

Within five weeks, Walker had dropped what he privately called “the bomb” on public employees by unleashing legislation known as Act 10, which makes their unions impossible to operate and sustain. The law was approved on a 4-3 vote by the Supreme Court after a fracas in which right-wing Justice David Prosser put his hands on the throat of Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, earning him the nickname “Madison strangler.” Now in effect, Act 10 facilitates the flow of income from public employees to corporations and the investor class in the form of endless new tax breaks.

Clearly, Walker and his allies both in Wisconsin and nationally are intent on constructing a plutocracy that redistributes income and wealth upward to the richest 1 percent and the corporations they control. They have made great progress: The richest 1 percent now vacuums up the same share of national income—about 24 percent—as they did back in 1928. But of course you can’t have a secure plutocracy alongside a thriving democracy; as long as the majority of citizens enjoy full democratic rights, they pose a mortal threat to the privileges of the select few.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152405

boutons_deux

09-16-2011, 08:41 AM

GOP 2012 Strategy: Disenfranchise Democrats, Rig Electoral College

If the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for winning the state.

“State legislatures could gerrymander the Electoral College.”

Think of it as a continuation of the GOP’s war on voting. The most basic of democratic rights should not be a left vs. right issue but one that both parties work to uphold. Unfortunately, instead of improving our democracy, Republicans are working harder every day to undermine it.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/163395/gop-2012-strategy-disenfranchise-democrats-rig-electoral-college

=======

Repugs, like the UCA, don't GAF about USA, Human-Americans, democracy, freedom, only about smash-mouth, corrupt politics and consolidating political power to stuff their own pockts.

boutons_deux

09-18-2011, 05:17 PM

As in Wisconsin, UCA media blocking out true (not tea bagger false) popular demonstrations:

Blackout: CNN, Fox, and MSNBC Ignore Thousands Of US Day Of Rage Protesters

Most Americans are being kept in the dark about the US Day of Rage by the corporate cable news giants at CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC who have imposed a de facto blackout on the protest.

Even though estimates have varied from hundreds to as many as 50,000 protesters flooded into Manhattan and others cities to take part in events around the country to, “nonviolently disrupt the disloyal, incompetent, and corrupt special interests which have usurped our nation’s civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to our liberty, lives and national security,” the three cable news networks have devoted no airtime to the story.

This is becoming an all too familiar scene. In Wisconsin hundreds of thousands of regular people took to the streets each weekend to protest the theft of their rights, and were completely ignored by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.

Sarah Palin’s Iowa tea party speech was 1/50 as big as the Wisconsin protests, yet she was deemed worthy of national media coverage.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/media-blackout-us-day-of-rage

boutons_deux

09-18-2011, 07:08 PM

The theft of the American pension

America is in the midst of a retirement crisis. Over the last decade, we've witnessed the wholesale gutting of pension and retiree healthcare in this country. Hundreds of companies have slashed and burned their way through their employees' benefits, leaving former workers either on Social Security or destitute -- and taxpayers with a huge burden that, as the baby boomer generation edges towards retirement, is likely to grow.

Over the last decade, some of the biggest companies -- including Bank of America, IBM, General Motors, GE and even the NFL -- found loopholes, abused ambiguous regulations and used litigation to turn their employees' hard-earned retirement funds into profits, and in some cases, executive compensation.

many companies, including a lot of the largest companies in the country, were hiring experts to change their pension plans. They all claimed they were doing it to make themselves more modern and better for the mobile workforce, but it struck me as unlikely that a lot of companies would be doing something that was apparently costing them money just to make employees happy. I ultimately figured out that they had found a way to use the accounting rules to profit from cutting benefits.

A striking example was Lucent, which inherited about 100,000 retirees when it was spun off from AT&T. From the beginning, Lucent kept saying, "We are crippled by these retirees," but the truth is, they also received more than enough actual money from AT&T to pay every dime of benefits for all the current and future retirees. Bit by bit, they cannibalized these benefits. They eliminated a death benefit, which is a very simple thing that says, if you work for us for 25 or 30 years, and you die, your widow will get $50,000 dollars or whatever per year. Lucent said they couldn't afford that. So they took it away and saved $400 million that had been set aside physically in the pension plan for these folks. At the same time, they awarded more than $400 million in bonuses to executives.

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/09/17/retirement_heist_interview/index.html

===========

The antecedent, the patron saint of "fuck the employees, while mgmt/investors grab as much as they can steal" was St Ronnie firing 28K ATCs after 2 days strike, was the opening salvo and official Repug Presidential sanctioning of the War on Employees.

boutons_deux

09-26-2011, 09:56 AM

6 Ways the Rich Are Waging a Class War Against the American People

1. Registering the Poor to Vote is 'UnAmerican'

2. Unemployment Benefits Have Created a 'Nation of Slackers'

3. You Can't Really Be Poor if You Have a Color TV!

4. Food-Stamps: 'A Fossil That Repeats All the Errors of the War on Poverty'

5. 'The Main Causes of Child Poverty Are Low Levels of Parental Work and the Absence of Fathers.'

6. Taxing Working People Less Than the Rich Is 'Perverse'

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152512

boutons_deux

09-27-2011, 04:20 AM

Corporate Takeover of the 2012 Presidential Election

These are Super PACs, created to amass millions of dollars in unrestricted corporate cash to back the candidacies of particular presidential wannabes. These groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money — something the candidates themselves are barred from doing. Already, the dummy funds are becoming larger than the candidate's' own campaigns, allowing a few big money interests to pervert our democratic process into their plutocratic plaything.

How few?

As of August, more than 80 percent of the money in Super PACs backing Republican candidates had come from only 35 people writing six- and seven-figure checks.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/671929/the_corporate_takeover_of_the_2012_presidential_el ection/

====

VRWC/UCA buying America, a cheap facsimile of "liberty and justice for all".

boutons_deux

09-27-2011, 04:44 AM

The main VRWC mouthpiece spewing lies to enrich, protect UCA, screw Human-Americans.

Fox’s Roger Ailes Produces New Series To Misrepresent Labor and Environmental Protection Laws as Evil, "Life-Ruining"

Ailes raises a Fox initiative that he cooked up: “Are our producers on board on this ‘Regulation Nation’ stuff? Are they ginned up and ready to go?” Ailes, who claims to be “hands off” in developing the series, later boasts that “no other network will cover that subject … I think regulations are totally out of control,” he adds, with bureaucrats hiring Ph.D.s to “sit in the basement and draw up regulations to try to ruin your life.” It is a message his troops cannot miss.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/newsandviews/671917

goddam, the Repugs and conservatives are stocked full of shitbags.

boutons_deux

09-30-2011, 10:56 AM

Meet the Wealthy Men Trying to Buy Our Upcoming Election

More than 80 percent of giving to Super PACs so far has come from just 58 donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics analysis of the latest data, which covers the first half of 2011. The Republican groups have raised $17.6 million and the Democratic groups $7.6 million. Those numbers will balloon, with American Crossroads, the main Republican Super PAC, aiming to raise $240 million.)

The exceptions are two public employee labor unions, whose massive donations match those of some of the largest moguls. The rest are individuals with vast fortunes at their disposal. They constitute two different tribes.

The conservative red tribe is dominated by businessmen who have built or inherited fortunes. They also include Wall Street investors, oil and gas men, construction magnates, and retail executives. Mormons are well represented.

The liberal blue tribe is dominated by men from Hollywood and media entrepreneurs -- often Jewish -- and the leaders of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The Super PACs are not paragons of transparency, but what has been disclosed gives a sense of where the money is coming from and the interests of those giving it. Based on the donors and the origins of these groups, we can already discern what messages the Super PACs will generate in the home stretch of the campaign.

What follows is a pocket guide to the big money tribes of American politics, what they will tell you -- and what they won't.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/152583

boutons_deux

10-06-2011, 08:45 AM

Of course, he means the GOP/VRWC/conservative destroyed the US economy for the 99%, while gaming the economy, or even escaping from the US economy, to their own benefit.

rights, freedom, liberty, Constitution, unions, labor, socialism/communism/Sharia, "Christ"ianity?

that's all a charade, a lying facade to sucker in the ignorant tea baggers, red-staters, bubbas'.

GOP below is of course too narrow. Should include the entire VRWC, conservatives, financial sector, capitalists that owns both parties.

Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs5/3871-david-stockman-ronald-reagan.jpg

We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.

In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: "Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts -- in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too."

No more. Today there's a "new catechism" that's "little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes" making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in "serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy." Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.

Stockman's indictment warns that the Republican party's "new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:"

Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge

Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering

Stage 3. Wall Street's deadly 'vast, unproductive expansion'

Stage 4. New American Revolution class-warfare coming soon

Warning: this black swan won't be pretty, will shock, soon

His bottom line: "The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing ... it's a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach -- balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline -- is needed more than ever."

Wrong: There are far bigger things to "pity."

First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it's just another TV reality show.

Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are so deep-in-the-pockets of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.

And third, there's a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle ... until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.

So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect.

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=C387638C-41A3-499B-9315-5AF8940C47DD

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=C387638C-41A3-499B-9315-5AF8940C47DD

boutons_deux

10-23-2011, 06:31 AM

Corporate collusion to shut down wikileaks

Credit Card 'Blockade' Halts Donations, WikiLeaks Faces Funding Crisis

ikiLeaks, the whistleblower website that has been at the center of some of the world's most controversial news for the past 18 months, is facing dire economic times, largely, the website says, because Visa, MasterCard and PayPal have refused for more than 10 months to process donations made on its behalf.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/21/127985/without-credit-card-donations.html

boutons_deux

10-23-2011, 06:38 AM

St Ronnie's War on Employees continues unabated. US workforce is the only industrial country without a national sick pay policy.

Corporate Front Group ALEC Pushing For Repeal Of Paid Sick Day Laws Nationwide

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a corporate front group that farms out legislation to almost a third of state legislators nationwide — is drafting legislation on behalf of its wealthy conglomerate funders to repeal these ordinances.

PR Watch obtained documents from ALEC’s 2011 Annual Meeting showing that one of the group’s committees — the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee of the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force — focused its entire meeting on the issue of paid sick leave. Task force members, who are legislators, were given copies of a bill that enables state legislatures to override municipal paid sick days laws. The same bill was used in Wisconsin to override Milwaukee’s paid sick days requirement.

Meeting attendees were given complete copies of Wisconsin’s 2011 Senate Bill 23 (now Wisconsin Act 16), as a model for state override. They were also handed a target list and map of state and local paid sick leave policies prepared by ALEC member, the National Restaurant Association. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Restaurant Association lobbied for SB 23 to repeal the sick leave ordinance, as did the the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC), the local branch of the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an ALEC member). Not surprisingly, ALEC’s Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee is co-chaired by YUM! Brands, Inc., which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Fast food companies have fought paid sick leave across the country.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/19/347793/alec-repeal-sick-days/

"At least 145 countries ensure access to paid sick days for short- or long-term illnesses, with 127 providing a week or more annually."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave#Introduction

==========

Any tea baggers here, or anywhere, against the well-financed, relentless, anti-Human-American ALEC? of course not.

boutons_deux

10-31-2011, 09:27 AM

GRAPH: 147 Companies Control 40 Percent Of Global Transnational Corporate Wealth

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/dotgraph1.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/21/350172/graph-147-companies-control-40-percent-of-global-transnational-corporate-wealth/

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

boutons_deux

11-01-2011, 10:02 AM

The new study – by New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and the Justice at Stake Campaign, a non-partisan reform group – found that a small group of super spenders plays the biggest role, using their money to buy the kind of judges they want hearing their cases. These super spenders are the usual suspects: mainly big business, corporate lobbyists, and trial lawyers. Also high on the list: a disturbing category called “unknown.” In many states, disclosure laws are so weak that special interests can buy judicial elections without the public even finding out.

There is also a lot of one-issue money sloshing around. In 2010, three Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage were voted out of office – after a bitterly fought campaign dominated by money from out-of-state groups like the National Organization for Marriage and the American Family Association. Much of the special interest money is used for attack ads, which leverage hot-button issues to demonize judicial candidates. Has a sitting judge ever reversed a criminal conviction because the law was not followed? Then they must be soft on crime – and not care about victims.

Why does all this matter? Because as money floods into judicial elections, we are getting courts that are filled with judges whose first loyalty is not to justice – or to the general public – but to insurance companies, big business and other special interests. It’s not hard to guess what insurance companies want their judges to do. They want them to rule against people who have been injured – even when they deserve compensation, and they want damage awards to be slashed. Big business wants weak enforcement of laws against discrimination and pollution. On the other side of the political spectrum, trial lawyers want verdicts for plaintiffs – and large damage awards.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/10/31/judges-are-for-sale-and-special-interests-are-buying/#ixzz1cSxaZPKN

=========

More proof that America is (still and always) for sale.

Justice? Liberty? Truth? Fairness?

GMAFB

The legal system is all about $$$

boutons_deux

11-03-2011, 03:10 PM

How the Austerity Class Rules Washington

In September the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan deficit-hawk group based at the New America Foundation, held a high-profile symposium urging the Congressional “supercommittee” to “go big” and approve a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 trillion mandate. The hearing began with an alarming video of top policy-makers describing the national debt as “the most serious threat that this country has ever had” (Alan Simpson) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-government” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt continues to rise, predicted former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A looming fiscal crisis was portrayed as being just around the corner.

An explanation can be found in the prominence of an influential and aggressive austerity class—an allegedly centrist coalition of politicians, wonks and pundits who are considered indisputably wise custodians of US economic policy.

“intellectual hegemony over the course of the debate in Washington, from 2009 until today.”

Its members include Wall Street titans like Pete Peterson and Robert Rubin; deficit-hawk groups like the CRFB, the Concord Coalition, the Hamilton Project, the Committee for Economic Development, Third Way and the Bipartisan Policy Center; budget wonks like Peter Orszag, Alice Rivlin, David Walker and Douglas Holtz-Eakin; red state Democrats in Congress like Mark Warner and Kent Conrad, the bipartisan “Gang of Six” and what’s left of the Blue Dog Coalition; influential pundits like Tom Friedman and David Brooks of the New York Times, Niall Ferguson and the Washington Post editorial page; and a parade of blue ribbon commissions, most notably Bowles-Simpson, whose members formed the all-star team of the austerity class.

Groups like the CRFB and the Concord Coalition, founded by former Congress members in the 1980s and ’90s, have long presented themselves as nonpartisan, penny-pinching critics of wasteful government spending, when really they are anti-government, pro-corporate ideologues whose boards are filled with K Street lobbyists and financial executives. The goal of much of the austerity class is to see government funds redirected to the private sector. (Their ideology, which accepts the accumulation of private debt but opposes government debt, explains why the austerity class ignored the massive housing and credit bubble, which more than any single factor contributed to an explosion of debt worldwide.)

The austerity class’s reach has expanded in the Obama era, boosted by leaders of both parties and an influx of new funding. After consistently approving massive deficit spending under the Bush administration, Republicans suddenly found true religion under Obama (ironically, at a time when precisely the opposite of austerity was most needed). And within the Democratic Party, what Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz calls “deficit fetishism” is viewed as the gold standard for responsible economics

The austerity class’s deep pockets can be traced back to Peterson, a GOP billionaire who served as Nixon’s commerce secretary and founded the private equity Blackstone Group. Since 2008 his foundation has doled out $383 million of his promised $1 billion pledge to a seemingly endless number of think tanks, media organizations, advocacy groups and educational institutions to advance his debt obsession [see William Greider, “The Man Who Wants to Loot Social Security,” March 2, 2009]. This includes six- and seven-figure donations to groups like the CRFB, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. It’s largely because of Peterson that programs like Social Security and Medicare, favored by nearly 90 percent of the public, are savaged as bloated “entitlements” and are consistently on the chopping block.

Among the Petersonites, there was stiff opposition to a larger stimulus or additional recovery measures

http://www.thenation.com/article/164073/how-austerity-class-rules-washington

boutons_deux

11-03-2011, 04:36 PM

Romney Campaign Memo: The Koch Brothers Are The ‘Financial Engine Of The Tea Party’

Americans for Prosperity is led by billionaire Republican donor David Koch, whose endorsement Romney seeks. An Oct. 4 internal Romney campaign memo obtained by The Washington Examiner describes Koch as the “financial engine of the Tea Party” even though Koch “denies being directly involved.” Koch endorsed Romney for president in 2008 and his well-funded group is credited with electing dozens of Republicans to Congress in 2010 and creating a network of Tea Party loyalists who are critical to Romney’s chances of winning the nomination, political strategists say. [...]

The memo says Romney was scheduled to meet with David Koch on August 28 at the billionaire’s home in Southampton, N.Y. — where Koch held a major event for Romney in 2010 — but Hurricane Irene foiled their plans. The two last met in January for lunch in Manhattan at the Links Club, an elite social club for avid golfers.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/11/03/360433/romney-koch-tea-party/

=====

OWS has no financial backing equivalent to tea bagger astro turfers.

boutons_deux

11-07-2011, 09:38 PM

The War Against the Poor

Now, in what seems like no time at all, the fog has lifted and the topic on the table everywhere seems to be the morality of contemporary financial capitalism. The protestors have accomplished this mainly through the symbolic power of their actions: by naming Wall Street, the heartland of financial capitalism, as the enemy, and by welcoming the homeless and the down-and-out to their occupation sites. And of course, the slogan "We are the 99%" reiterated the message that almost all of us are suffering from the reckless profiteering of a tiny handful. (In fact, they aren't far off: the increase in income of the top 1% over the past three decades about equals the losses of the bottom 80%.)

In part, all of this was the inevitable fallout from a decades-long business mobilization to reduce labor costs by weakening unions and changing public policies that protected workers and those same unions. As a result, National Labor Board decisions became far less favorable to both workers and unions, workplace regulations were not enforced, and the minimum wage lagged far behind inflation.

Inevitably, the overall impact of the campaign to reduce labor's share of national earnings meant that a growing number of Americans couldn't earn even a poverty-level livelihood - and even that's not the whole of it. The poor and the programs that assisted them were the objects of a full-bore campaign directed specifically at them.

This was not only war against the poor, but the very "class war" that Republicans now use to brand just about any action they don't like. In fact, class war was the overarching goal of the campaign, something that would soon enough become apparent in policies that led to a massive redistribution of the burden of taxation, the cannibalization of government services through privatization, wage cuts and enfeebled unions, and the deregulation of business, banks, and financial institutions.

The poor - and blacks - were an endlessly useful rhetorical foil, a propagandistic distraction used to win elections and make bigger gains. Still, the rhetoric was important. A host of new think tanks, political organizations, and lobbyists in Washington D.C. promoted the message that the country's problems were caused by the poor whose shiftlessness, criminal inclinations, and sexual promiscuity were being indulged by a too-generous welfare system.

The war against the poor at the federal level was soon matched in state capitols where organizations like the American Federation for Children, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Institute for Liberty, and the State Policy Network went to work. Their lobbying agenda was ambitious, including the large-scale privatization of public services, business tax cuts, the rollback of environmental regulations and consumer protections, crippling public sector unions, and measures (like requiring photo identification) that would restrict the access students and the poor had to the ballot. But the poor were their main public target and again, there were real life consequences - welfare cutbacks, particularly in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, and a law-and-order campaign that resulted in the massive incarceration of black men.

The organized right justifies its draconian policies toward the poor with moral arguments. Right-wing think tanks and blogs, for instance, ponder the damaging effect on disabled poor children of becoming "dependent" on government assistance, or they scrutinize government nutritional assistance for poor pregnant women and children in an effort to explain away positive outcomes for infants.

The willful ignorance and cruelty of it all can leave you gasping - and gasp was all we did for decades. This is why we so desperately needed a movement for a new kind of moral economy. Occupy Wall Street, which has already changed the national conversation, may well be its beginning.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/8291-focus-the-war-against-the-poor

boutons_deux

11-08-2011, 02:28 PM

Are the Koch Brothers Denying Your Vote?

If you live in one of 38 states, billionaire political operatives Charles and David Koch are trying to influence your and your neighbors’ constitutional right to vote. The Koch brothers and their allies have already succeeded in shepherding voter suppression bills through seven states, which amount to about one third of the 270 electoral votes to win the White House.

Through their web of think tanks, nonprofit organizations, family foundations and political donations, the Koch brothers have bought access to democracy’s lifeblood: elections. They’ve used their $42 billion in wealth to support state laws and legislators that erect barriers to the voting booth.

The Kochs’ victims are young people, senior citizens, disabled individuals and people of color– precisely the 99 percent of us who are opposed to the Koch brothers’ political agenda.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/11/08/are-the-koch-brothers-denying-your-vote-video/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet

boutons_deux

11-11-2011, 06:17 AM

Pew Center For Climate Changes Name, Now Sponsored By Energy Companies

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change is now the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), an explicitly corporate-managed organization. “Royal Dutch Shell, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Entergy Corp. will be the principal founding sponsors for the new C2ES,” E&E News reports. The move comes after the Pew Charitable Trusts ended its relationship with the centrist think tank founded in 1998. “The group does receive some funding from independent and foundation sponsors,” center president Eileen Claussen told reporters. The three companies, which she called “strategic partners,” will have seats on the C2ES board. Other contributors include Bank of America, Duke Energy, and General Electric Co. Claussen says

the Shell-sponsored organization will retain its independence. :lol :lol :lol

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/11/10/366887/pew-center-for-climate-changes-name-now-sponsored-by-energy-companies/

=========

Another non-climate-denying source bites the dust.

boutons_deux

11-19-2011, 08:30 AM

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109/1000x306/main.jpg

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-20111109

boutons_deux

11-20-2011, 07:11 PM

A fundamental strategy of the VRWC's "take over the country" is evolving past the point of no return.

Corporate power grows stronger as government wanes

Now imagine another scenario, the "Rollerball" scenario, from the 1975 movie of that name: Corporations have replaced national governments and effectively control the world. There are no more wars, but people surrender their humanity to the primacy of the corporation.

"Rollerball" still seems pretty far-fetched, but the occupiers are right to ring the alarm about the trend. In the aftermath of the 2008 market and economic crash, the financial and political power of major companies has only increased while workers' power has faded amid a global labor glut.

What's more, corporations grow stronger while developed-world governments are badly weakened — in no small part because of the heavier debt burdens they've taken on to try to save their economies with stimulus spending, bank bailouts and payments to the unemployed.

In August, the U.S. for the first time lost its top-rung AAA credit grade from Standard & Poor's, which cut the nation's rating to AA+, citing ballooning debt.

No such downgrade has befallen Exxon Mobil Corp., which remains AAA in S&P's eyes.

Europe's debt crisis is all about governments being too deep in hock, of course. For the moment, that crisis is overshadowing what remains a dire situation for Washington and for many state governments.

Congress' special "super committee" of legislators faces a Wednesday deadline to suggest at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years.

But even if they meet that goal, the debt will continue to grow. The U.S. ran a deficit of $1.3 trillion in the last fiscal year alone.

Meanwhile, dollars pile up in corporate coffers. The blue-chip companies in the S&P 500 index are sitting on a record $1 trillion in cash now, according to S&P. That's up from $647 billion just before the 2008 economic and financial crash.

Clearly, despite the global economy's disappointing growth over the last three years, multinational firms overall have prospered. Operating earnings of the S&P companies are estimated to have reached $231 billion in the third quarter, a new all-time high. Per-share earnings were up 13% from a year earlier.

"We have an economy that works for corporate America even if it doesn't work for anybody else," said Lawrence Mishel, head of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

"Companies depend on governments for all sorts of things," notes Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research in Washington.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1119-petruno-markets-20111119,0,6768632.column

boutons_deux

11-21-2011, 05:39 PM

The VRWC/UCA War To Fuck Employees Deeper and Harder continues

Corporations Pushing Bill to Take Away Overtime from Computer and Web Workers

Dubbed the Computer Professionals Update Act (CPU Act), Senate bill 1747 would change the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to remove overtime protection and compensation from “almost everyone working primarily in information technology” who earns either a salary, or an hourly rate of $27.63,

http://www.truth-out.org/corporations-pushing-bill-take-away-overtime-computer-and-web-workers/1321894342

boutons_deux

11-22-2011, 03:47 PM

The VRWC/UCA War To Fuck Employees Deeper and Harder continues

Typical Hourly Wage Went Up Just $1.23 In The Last 36 Years

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/wagesgraph1027.png

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/27/355082/chart-hourly-wage-36-years/

Any wonder that the median working income is $29K??

boutons_deux

11-23-2011, 06:43 AM

Five Ways that Financial Elites are Destroying Democracy

1. Billionaires replace one person, one vote.

http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223593_screenshot20111020at11.29.1 3am.png

2. The stock market exercises an instant veto.

3. Governments are not permitted to create full employment economies.

http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223859_screenshot20111021at11.51.4 2am.png

4. Hedge fund speculative raids replace elected leaders with technocrats.

http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1321918111_italy10yr.png

5. Financial markets are vetoing Social Security.

Will financial elites replace democracy?

It’s happened before. When New York City almost defaulted in 1975, the Emergency Financial Control Board was established to take financial authority away from politicians. Imagine what might happen if Washington continues on its path to permanent gridlock and if the American people totally give up on their elected representatives. Imagine if the US debt gets downgraded by our whorish Wall Street rating agencies. Imagine if unemployment rises even higher and riots break out in the streets. Wouldn’t it be possible for the congressional supercommittee to turn into the Super-Emergency Control Board run by kindly investors and corporate leaders like maybe a Warren Buffet? Doesn’t having a benign financial emperor sound like a more “practical” alterative to a dysfunctional democratic system?

We’re not there yet but we’re headed that way…unless we dramatically curtail the power and wealth of our financial elites.

The threat to democracy isn’t new to America. President Andrew Jackson identified the threat that elite bankers posed to our fledging democracy when he vetoed the National Bank in 1832. Here’s a small excerpt from his veto message:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. ….In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society -- the farmers, mechanics, and laborers -- who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153169

boutons_deux

11-25-2011, 07:41 AM

The Fascinating History of How Corporations Became "People" -- Thanks to Corrupt Courts Working for the 1%

The Supreme Court, with a right-wing majority under Chief Justice John Roberts, has become a body that leans too far toward the “1 percent” to be considered a neutral arbiter. So whether they know all the ins and outs of the court's profound rightward shift or not, those protesting across the country as part of the Occupy movement are motivated by its corruption as well.

While conservatives constantly rail against judges "legislating from the bench," it is far more common for right-leaning jurists to engage in “judicial activism” than those of a liberal bent. That's what a 2005 study by Yale University legal scholar Paul Gewirtz and Chad Golder found. According to the scholars, those justices most frequently labeled "conservative" were among the most likely to strike down statutes passed by Congress, while those most frequently labeled "liberal" were the least likely to do so.

A 2007 study by University of Chicago law professor Thomas J. Miles and Cass R. Sunstein looked at the tendency of judges to strike down decisions by federal regulatory agencies, and found a similar trend. The Supreme Court's "conservative" justices were again the most likely to engage in this form of "activism," while the "liberal" justices were most likely to exercise judicial restraint.

During the 19th century, however, the robber barons, aided by a few corrupt jurists deep in their pockets, took the concept to a whole new level in the United States. According to legal textbooks, the idea that corporations enjoy the same constitutional rights as you or I was codified in the 1886 decision Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. But historian Thom Hartmann dug into the original case documents and found that this crucially important legal doctrine actually originated with what may be the most significant act of corruption in history.

It occurred during a seemingly routine tax case: Santa Clara sued the Southern Pacific Railroad to pay property taxes on the land it held in the county, and the railroad claimed that because states had different rates, allowing them to tax its holdings would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The railroads had made the claim in previous cases, but the courts had never bought the argument.

In a 2005 interview, Hartmann described his surprise when he went to a Vermont courthouse to read an original copy of the verdict and found that the judges had made no mention of corporate personhood. “In fact,” he told the interviewer, “the decision says, at its end, that because they could find a California state law that covered the case ‘it is not necessary to consider any other questions’ such as the constitutionality of the railroad’s claim to personhood.”

Hartmann then explained how it was that corporations actually became “people”:

In the headnote to the case—a commentary written by the clerk, which is not legally binding, it’s just a commentary to help out law students and whatnot, summarizing the case—the Court’s clerk wrote: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The discovery “that we’d been operating for over 100 years on an incorrect headnote” led Hartmann to look into the past of the clerk who’d written it, J. C. Bancroft Davis. He discovered that Davis had been a corrupt official who had himself previously served as the president of a railroad. Digging deeper, Hartmann then discovered that Davis had been working “in collusion with another corrupt Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Field.” The railroad companies, according to Hartmann, had promised Field that they’d sponsor his run for the White House if he assisted them in their effort to gain constitutional rights.

Hartmann noted that even after the ruling, the idea of corporate personhood remained relatively obscure until corporate lawyers dusted off the doctrine during the Reagan era and used it to help reshape the U.S. political economy.

Nike asserted before the Supreme Court . . . as Sinclair Broadcasting did in a press release last month, that these corporations have First Amendment rights of free speech. Dow Chemical in a case it took to the Supreme Court asserted it has Fourth Amendment privacy rights and could refuse to allow the EPA to do surprise inspections of its facilities. J.C. Penney asserted before the Supreme Court that it had a Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from discrimination—the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to free the slaves after the Civil War—and that communities that were trying to keep out chain stores were practicing illegal discrimination. Tobacco and asbestos companies asserted that they had Fifth Amendment rights to keep secret what they knew about the dangers of their products. With the exception of the Nike case, all of these attempts to obtain human rights for corporations were successful, and now they wield this huge club against government that was meant to protect relatively helpless and fragile human beings.

Such is the power of a corrupt judiciary.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153201

boutons_deux

12-06-2011, 04:02 PM

ALEC Deems Kids Eating Rat Poison An ‘Acceptable Risk’

A top representative for the ultra-conservative group said kids eating rat poison is an “acceptable risk” that does not justify government intervention:

“There are certain levels of acceptable risk in society,” says Todd M. Wynn, director of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, in an interview about the EPA rules with the Heartland Institute’s Heartlander website. “And parents play an important role by weighing the potential risks and benefits of using a product.”

“Unfortunately, EPA expands its reach into the American economy more and more each and every year,” Wynn said. “This year it will be d-Con, but next year another useful product will be burdened by additional regulations or banned outright from the market.” [...]

Aaron Colangelo, an attorney for the NRDC…told the Center for Media and Democracy that “there is not an undue economic burden associated with reformulating these products,” pointing out that the rest of the industry had complied with the new rules without adverse economic impact. Additionally, he said, “the health care costs for treating these kids certainly outweigh the economic costs of reformulation.”

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/12/06/383108/alec-deems-kids-eating-rat-poison-an-acceptable-risk/

===========

economic efficiency (aka UCA profits) outweighs Human-Americans' health.

boutons_deux

12-13-2011, 01:36 PM

Health of Children and Consumers is Threatened by Conservative Push for Corporate Speech Rights

In recent years, corporate lawyers representing industries whose products touch millions of American lives have stopped numerous government efforts to better inform the public about possible health risks with an eyebrow-raising legal strategy. They have asserted a constitutional right not to speak, or say more than they want on labels and advertising, and pro-business federal judges have agreed, rejecting the public’s right to know.

In cases involving manmade hormones fed to dairy cows, heart and lung disease caused by tobacco, the nutritional value of foods contributing to childhood and teenage obesity, and even radiation emitted by cell phones, the industries keep returning to court until a business-friendly judge or majority on an appeals court rules that the First Amendment includes the corporate right not to ‘speak’ if it could harm profits.

“They invoke the Amendment’s protection to accomplish exactly what the Amendment opposes,” wrote U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Pierre Leval, in a lengthy dissent in an early case in which his peers sided with industry and cited the First Amendment to overturn a state law labeling hormone-containing milk products. “The majority’s invocation of the First Amendment to invalidate a state law requiring disclosure of information consumers reasonably desire stands the Amendment on its ear.”

The labeling cases are not the only way corporations have been seeking to enlarge First Amendment speech rights outside the political arena.

This past June the Supreme Court ruled that drug makers’ constitutional speech rights included ‘selling' patient records, overturning a Vermont law that sought to keep the files private. Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent said the Court was setting a dangerous precedent by allowing the First Amendment to be used to avoid reasonable government regulation.

“At best the Court opens a Pandora’s Box of First Amendment challenges to many ordinary regulatory practices that may only incidentally affect a commercial message,” he warned. “At worst, it reawakens Lochner’s pre-New Deal threat of substituting judicial for democratic decision making where ordinary economic regulation is at issue.”

Breyer’s reference to the Lochner Era was shorthand for what many right-wingers would like to see the judiciary do today—roll back government regulation. Lochner refers to the early 20th century then the Supreme Court reversed many workplace rights. It ended when the Court relented to allow the new deal to allow the the New Deal's progressive reforms to take place.

Indeed, today’s corporate champions, such as Washington Post columnist George Will, are pining for an activist judiciary that prioritizes corporate rights above those of citizens. They see nothing wrong with extending the Constitution’s political freedoms given to individuals to modern profit-making corporations. As Will wrote this September in a piece attacking liberals, “So much for the idea that one of the Constitution’s primary purposes is the protection of individual rights against majority tyranny.”

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153408

=============

again:

economic efficiency and wealth creation (aka UCA profits) for Repug/Scotus judges outweighs Human-Americans' health.

Nobody, esp not kids, should be eating packaged food-like substance from BigFood corps. If it's in a pkg, don't eat it.

boutons_deux

12-25-2011, 09:04 PM

http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/johnboehner.jpg

The GOP History of Hostage-Taking

http://consortiumnews.com/2011/12/23/the-gop-history-of-hostage-taking/

boutons_deux

12-26-2011, 06:31 AM

How Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories May Pose a Genuine Threat to Humanity

The paranoia infecting a broad swath of the American right-wing can be comical at times -- think about Orly Taitz and her fellow Birthers. But we laugh at our own peril, because what Richard Hofstadter famously characterized as "the paranoid style in American politics" poses a serious threat to our future: the right's snowballing conspiracy theories could ultimately lead to disaster.

"Agenda 21" is one of a number of silly but dangerous conspiracy theories sweeping through the fever swamps of the right. Although admittedly sinister-sounding, Agenda 21 is just a blueprint for sustainable development, especially in emerging economies. It outlines how wealthier countries can contribute to smarter growth through technology transfers and public education. It stresses the importance of fighting deforestation and conserving bio-diversity -- all things that normal people would consider wise.

The important thing to understand about Agenda 21 is that there is absolutely nothing binding or compelling member countries to implement any part of it. It's not a treaty -- it is entirely voluntary and certainly doesn't have any connection to local governments. Yet for the right, with its long John Birch Society undercurrent of paranoia about international institutions, Agenda 21 represents some kind of dark UN conspiracy to impose socialism on the "free world."

That craziness lies at the heart of Michele Bachmann's quixotic war on energy-efficient lightbulbs. Tim Murphy reported, "The Minnesota congresswoman is part of a movement that considers 'sustainability' an existential threat to the United States, one with far-reaching consequences for education, transportation, and family values."

Agenda 21 is inextricably linked to the most dangerous conspiracy theory going: that 97 percent of the world's climate scientists are lying when they say human activities are contributing to global climate change. This, too, is supposedly in service of the goal of destroying capitalism, which means one has to believe that climatologists around the world are not only all very political -- enough to conspire to deceive the entire world -- but they also all share the same largely discredited ideology.

Today, oil and gas corporations are still funding a bunch of crank climate change deniers in order to avoid regulations that might slow their "short-term interests" in extracting as much wealth as they can from traditional hydrocarbons. And here we have Tea Partiers -- a "movement" nurtured by business-friendly Republican operatives and backed by the Koch brothers' dirty energy money -- being whipped into a frenzy by the likes of Glenn Beck and shouting down local planners trying to do something about rising water levels. They're freaking out about energy-efficient lightbulbs and bike-sharing programs, the very sorts of things we need in order to stave off disaster.

So the next time you hear a wingnut spewing feverish nonsense about "climategate" or the "globalist agenda," remember that this is not just fodder for late-night TV monologues, but the kind of stuff that has in the past brought societies faced with changing environments to their ultimate end.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153554

Wild Cobra

12-27-2011, 04:42 AM

Wild Cobra

12-27-2011, 04:50 AM

Five Ways that Financial Elites are Destroying Democracy

1. Billionaires replace one person, one vote.

http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223593_screenshot20111020at11.29.1 3am.png

Why do you read that tripe? The AFSCME alone spent $87.5 million supporting democrats. Are we to believe all other labor unions combined spent less than $5 million?

link (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303339504575566481761790288.html)

boutons_deux

12-27-2011, 05:56 AM

Link?

yep, class warfare. Haves/1% vs the HaveNots/99%. The eternal class warfare, all societies.

Wild Cobra

12-27-2011, 07:07 AM

Link?

yep, class warfare. Haves/1% vs the HaveNots/99%. The eternal class warfare, all societies.
And the havenots like you blame the haves, rather than striving to better yourself.

Wealth is not a zero sum game. participating in this class warfare like you do is not very ethical.

boutons_deux

12-27-2011, 10:54 AM

"the havenots like you blame the haves"

the haves have gamed the system every chance they get, don't get prosecuted while the havenots get screwed, and get arrested and jailed for victimless crimes.

"Wealth is not a zero sum game"

It mostly is. As the haves have scooped nearly all the gains in American wealth, the havenots have lost. Those two trends are intimately related and will continue to worsen.

Winehole23

12-27-2011, 11:50 AM

the great and powerful boutons has spoken. behold your plight and tremble.

boutons_deux

12-27-2011, 11:52 AM

gfy

Winehole23

12-27-2011, 11:55 AM

effed, uneffable, etc..

Wild Cobra

12-28-2011, 03:56 AM

the great and powerful boutons has spoken. behold your plight and tremble.
Every now and again, I try to reason with him. I don't think he ever considers other people's views.

boutons_deux

12-28-2011, 05:06 PM

I read your views, they suck

boutons_deux

12-28-2011, 05:07 PM

ALEC-Linked Group Revealed As Major Secret Donor In Referendum On Maine Voting Rights

Last month, Maine voters delivered a major rebuke to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and the Republican-held legislature when they approved a referendum restoring election day voting registration rights in the state. Earlier this year, state legislators passed a bill repealing the state’s 38 year-old law allowing citizens to register at the polls on election day.

Tens of thousands of Mainers responded by petitioning for the matter come to a referendum. Issue 1 was one of the most-anticipated votes on election day this year, with pundits watching closely to see how citizens would react to the Republican-led war on voting, which ramped up in states across the country this year.

Recognizing the referendum’s importance, voting rights opponents poured money into the campaign to repeal election day registration. In fact, just two days after the state’s campaign finance reporting deadline, a secret conservative donor funneled $250,000 into the race, allowing the No On 1 campaign to make significant TV ad buys in an inexpensive media market.

Per state law, however, the identity of donors must be revealed within 45 days after the election. In fact, the entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source: the American Justice Partnership.

The AJP is a conservative legal organization based not in Maine, but in Michigan. On their website, the group states they are fighting against “the scheming George Soros money machine” which is “trying to sabotage your right to vote,” a claim apparently made without a hint of irony. Though the AJP doesn’t disclose where its funding comes from, the Bangor Daily News notes that it has partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been instrumental in the proliferation of voter ID laws across the country.

The AJP’s secret $250,000 contribution ultimately accounted for over 78 percent of all the money raised by the No On 1 campaign. In other words, over three-quarters of the funding for opponents of election day registration in Maine came from Michigan. (This money was then used to run ads decrying “outsiders from other states” who were influencing the Maine election.) With Mainers of all stripes explaining to ThinkProgress why they cherish having the option to register at the polls on election day, it’s not altogether surprising that the predominance of financial support for No On 1 came from out of state.

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/12/28/395496/maine-election-day-registration-alec-group/

======

ALEC is a prime instigator/agitator in the VRWC campaign to fuck over/take over America.

Wild Cobra

12-29-2011, 03:08 AM

I read your views, they suck
But you flat out blow them off instead of trying to understand why they mean something to me and others.

boutons_deux

12-29-2011, 07:47 AM

Why should I GAF about your perverted, blindly ideological, 1%-loving/defending views?

Wild Cobra

12-30-2011, 03:12 AM

Why should I GAF about your perverted, blindly ideological, 1%-loving/defending views?
I don't love them. I just don't have this war like hatred towards them that you do. Will you ever stop with your class warfare?

boutons_deux

01-03-2012, 04:48 PM

ALEC - America’s Secret Political Power

http://www.truth-out.org/sites/default/files/010311alec.jpg

http://www.truth-out.org/print/10890

boutons_deux

01-08-2012, 09:53 PM

Concentration of wealth, and political/economic power, is disastrous for Human-Americans.

BlackRock's Surprising Reach into the US Economy

While attention has been focused on the activities of that great vampire squid, Goldman Sachs, investment firm BlackRock has been quietly taking over the American economy. In a presentation scheduled for 2:30 pm on Saturday, January 7 at the Labor and Employment Relations Association meetings at the Palmer House in Chicago, Professor Gerald Davis of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business documents the extensive reach of BlackRock. Aided by the growth of defined contribution pension plans and abetted by the weakness of other financial services firms, notably Barclay’s, during the financial crisis, BlackRock catapulted into first place in 2011 among the top holders of large blocks of shares of publicly-traded companies in the US. With $3.5 trillion in assets under management that they invest on behalf of their clients, the company has become the world’s largest investor. BlackRock manages assets for institutions such as pension funds and mutual funds, and its iShares business is popular with both retail investors and hedge funds who delegate all proxy votes for their iShares to BlackRock.

Among Professor Davis’ startling findings:

Ownership of US corporations is no longer highly dispersed.
In 2011 BlackRock held a 5% stake in 1,803 US listed companies. This is almost triple second place Fidelity’s 677 companies and more than triple third place Vanguard’s 524 companies.
As a result of changes in the nature of equity markets – the growth of exchange traded funds (ETFs) and the decline in the number of new firms going public (IPOs) – the number of publicly-traded corporations has dropped by half since 1997 to about 4,300 listed US companies in 2011.
BlackRock owns a 5 percent stake in more than two-fifths of publicly-traded US companies.

Professor Davis concludes: “Prospects for control of corporations by financial institutions have never been this high in a century.”

UPDATE:

A July 2011 ruling by the DC Circuit Court vacated the SEC's 2010 proxy rule that allowed long-term shareholders’ that own at least 3% of a company’s shares to nominate directors.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/blackrock-worlds-largest-investor?utm_source=CEPR+feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cepr+%28CEPR%29

=====

A read a comment where American 1%er have more solidarity and commonality with foreign 1%ers than they do with 99% Human-Americans and USA. the 1%ers don't GAF about anything but their wealth and their ownership of America.

boutons_deux

01-15-2012, 01:11 PM

What CEOs and Hedge Funds Don't Want the 99% to Understand

As far as CEO compensation goes, under the current stock-based compensation model, it is unambiguously better to have your stock plummet and then partly recover than to have the stock price stay steady over the same period. In fact, the most bloody-minded and self-interested CEO would be wise to drive its stock down immediately after taking over -- and blaming the prior administration for all the problems found -- and then get the stock back to the initial level. The CEO will make a small fortune doing that -- while shareholders make nothing -- and it is a lot easier than producing stock price increases from the initial level.

Though they wouldn't want to admit it, the crash of 2008 wasn't all that bad for the vast majority of big-company CEOs. With the exception of those few CEOs who were sacked, most had terrific air cover: "Our stock may be down 50% but so is everybody else. Really, I'm doing well, all things considered." Even better, CEOs got tranches of stock grants at super-low prices -- in some cases lots of them to keep the CEOs from being depressed that their existing options were "so far underwater." As the market dragged their stock prices up with everyone else's, these CEOs made out like, well, bandits.

Stock-based compensation has produced a volatility machine and that volatility is wrecking the American economy, while it makes CEOs and hedge fund managers rich. The crash of 2008 wasn't a rogue event and it will happen again as long as our rogue system of executive compensation stays intact.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-martin/stock-based-compensation_b_1206800.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

boutons_deux

01-15-2012, 01:15 PM

Men's Earnings Haven't Just Stagnated Over Past 40 Years--They've Fallen

A new report shows that full-time male workers in the United States were making less in real, that is, inflation-adjusted, dollars in 2009 than they were in 1969.

http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/6/Picture_2.png

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153774

boutons_deux

01-27-2012, 06:06 PM

ALEC Behind Push to Require Climate Denial Instruction in Schools

"Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom."

What the excellent Times coverage missed is that key language in these anti-science bills all eminated from a single source: the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

ALEC conducts its operations in the most shadowy of manners (emphases mine):

"Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership inALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve 'model' bills…Corporations fund almost all ofALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills."

The Trojan Horse: The "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act"

The Trojan Horse in this case is an Orwellian titled model bill, the "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act."[PDF]

The bill was adopted by ALEC's Natural Resources Task Force, today known as the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force, at ALEC's Spring Task Force Summit on May 5, 2000 — it was then approved by the full ALEC Board of Directors in June of 2000.

Take back the media by making a tax-deductible donation to Truthout this week. Click here to support news free of corporate influence.

The bill's opening clause reads [PDF], "The purpose of this act is to enhance and improve the environmental literacy of students and citizens in the state by requiring that all environmental education programs and activities conducted by schools, universities, and agencies shall…"

Among other things, the bill stipulates that schools, universities and agencies should,

"Provide a range of perspectives presented in a balanced manner."
"Provide instruction in critical thinking so that students will be able to fairly and objectively evaluate scientific and economic controversies."
"Be presented in language appropriate for education rather than for propagandizing."
"Encourage students to explore different perspectives and form their own opinions."
"Encourage an atmosphere of respect for different opinions and open-mindedness to new ideas."
"Not be designed to change student behavior, attitudes or values."
"Not include instruction in political action skills nor encourage political action activities."

http://www.truth-out.org/alec-behind-push-require-climate-denial-instruction-schools/1327678212

===========

There is nothing on left or center that is anything like ALEC and its sinister activities supporting carbon-extractors/peddlers, UCA, financial sector, etc, etc.

boutons_deux

01-28-2012, 04:40 PM

How Big Banks Are Rewriting the Rules of Our Economy

Big banks are rewriting the rules of our economy to the exclusive benefit of their own bottom line. But how did our political and financial class shift the benefits of the economy to the very top, while saddling us with greater debt and tearing new holes in the safety net?

This weekend on Moyers & Company (check your local listings), Bill Moyers talks with former Citigroup Chairman John Reed and former Senator Byron Dorgan to explore a momentous instance: how the mid-90’s merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group – and a friendly Presidential pen — brought down the Glass-Steagall Act, a crucial firewall between banks and investment firms which had protected consumers from financial calamity since the aftermath of the Great Depression. In effect, says Moyers, they put the watchdog to sleep. Now, John Reed regrets his role in the affair, and says lifting the Glass Steagall protections was a mistake.

http://billmoyers.com/episode/preview-john-reed-on-corporate-greed/

boutons_deux

01-28-2012, 05:09 PM

Here's concise history with all the VRWC/Repug/conservative strategy and tactics of how they fucked up America to their exclusive benefit.

And there's no end in sight to the downward spiral, not a single "OWS candiates" for Congress to vote for. Without OWS legislation, the raping and pillaging will continue, unstoppable.

Selling the ‘Supply-Side’ Myth

Despite Newt Gingrich’s claim that “supply-side” economic theories have “worked,” the truth is that America’s three-decade experiment with low tax rates on the rich, lax regulation of corporations and “free trade” has been a catastrophic failure, creating massive federal debt, devastating the middle class and off-shoring millions of American jobs.

It has ”worked” almost exclusively for the very rich, yet the former House speaker and the three other Republican presidential hopefuls are urging the country to double-down on this losing gamble, often to the cheers of their audiences — like one Florida woman who said she had lost her job and medical insurance but still applauded the idea of more “free-market” solutions.

the “supply-siders” had two key arguments in their favor: first, the economy had stagnated in the 1970s largely due to oil price shocks, inflation and an aging industrial base.

Their second key advantage was that nobody could say for sure what the results of the “supply-side” experiment would be. There was little empirical data to assess how radical tax cuts would play out in the modern economy. One could make common-sense judgments, as George H.W. Bush had done with his “voodoo” remark, but you couldn’t see the future.

No More Mystery

Now, however, with three decades of experience with the experiment, the fallacies of “supply-side” economics are no longer a mystery. For instance, a major obstacle to today’s economic recovery has been the absence of “demand-side” consumers, not the availability of money to build more productive capacity.

And the reason that there are fewer consumers is that the Great American Middle Class, which the federal government helped build and nourish from the New Deal through the GI Bill to investments in infrastructure and technology in the Sixties and Seventies, has been savaged over the past three decades.

Though many Americans were able to cover up for their declining economic prospects with excessive borrowing for a while, the Wall Street crash of 2008 exposed the hollowing out of the middle class. So today, businesses are sitting on vast sums of cash – some estimates put the amount at about $2 trillion.

when the Tea Partiers wave their “Don’t Tread on Me” flags of a coiled snake, they don’t seem to know that the warning was directed at the British Empire and that the banner aimed at fellow Americans was Benjamin Franklin’s image of a snake severed into various pieces representing the colonies/states with the admonishment “Join, or Die.”

Nevertheless, false narratives and false arguments can be as effective as real ones to a thoroughly misinformed population. Thus, many middle- and working-class Americans still cheer when Newt Gingrich references Ronald Reagan and his “supply-side” economics.

But the failure of Reagan’s economic strategy should be obvious to anyone who is not fully deluded by right-wing propaganda. Not only has the national debt skyrocketed over the past three decades, but whatever economic benefits that have been produced have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthy – while the nation as a whole has suffered.

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/27/selling-the-supply-side-myth/

The Reckoning

01-28-2012, 05:12 PM

boutons_deux

01-28-2012, 05:43 PM

Females were "barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen" 40+ years ago, so coming into the workforce by millions in the 80s to try to keep their households afloat and progressing (they failed), of course their earnings over preceding 40 years have gone up.

You want sexism? Females still make 25%+ less than men for the same job.

Wild Cobra

01-28-2012, 07:19 PM

You want sexism? Females still make 25%+ less than men for the same job.
Not in my experience.

boutons_deux

01-28-2012, 07:31 PM

There is more (facts) in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your fantasies.

The Reckoning

01-28-2012, 07:36 PM

sexists. all of you.

FuzzyLumpkins

01-28-2012, 09:10 PM

Not in my experience.

How many female parts changers do you work with? Overall in the technicians sphere what is the percentage of men to women and how on Earth is your non-decisionmaking ass going to know what they make?

Wild Cobra

01-28-2012, 09:39 PM

How many female parts changers do you work with? Overall in the technicians sphere what is the percentage of men to women and how on Earth is your non-decisionmaking ass going to know what they make?
Oh I see.

You are playing the statistics wrong, and not case by case. We have three women out of... I think we have 28 technicians total. Just over 10%. Using the overall statistics creates an improper picture.

It isn't discrimination, it's vocational choices. It's the choice in upper management jobs weather to work so many hours and have almost no family life. Less women choose to have such jobs as well.

Everywhere I have worked, women had equal pay for equal jobs/performance.

FuzzyLumpkins

01-28-2012, 09:57 PM

Oh I see.

You are playing the statistics wrong, and not case by case. We have three women out of... I think we have 28 technicians total. Just over 10%. Using the overall statistics creates an improper picture.

It isn't discrimination, it's vocational choices. It's the choice in upper management jobs weather to work so many hours and have almost no family life. Less women choose to have such jobs as well.

Everywhere I have worked, women had equal pay for equal jobs/performance.

I didn't cite any statistics you dumb motherfucker. You apparently do not understand what "for the same job" means either. And again how do you know what they make? You stalk them too?

boutons_deux

02-03-2012, 05:08 PM

ALEC dicating/brainwashing state legislators how to think and vote, esp about the destruction public schools and their transformation into for-profit (paid by taxpayers) companies, aka (even more redistribution) of taxpayer money to subsidize corporations.

ALEC Education "Academy" Launches on Island Resort

Today, hundreds of state legislators from across the nation will head out to an "island" resort on the coast of Florida to a unique "education academy" sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman [5] and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.

Imagine getting a report card from your teacher and finding out that you were graded not on how well you understood the course material or scored on the tests and assignments, but rather on to what extent you agreed with your teacher's strange public policy positions. That is the best way to understand the American Legislative Exchange Council's 17th Report Card on American Education [7] released last week.

ALEC's education bills encompass more than 20 years of effort to privatize public education through an ever-expanding network of school voucher systems, which divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to private schools, or the creation of new private charter schools with public funds, and even with private online schools

"The secretive process of allowing corporate lobbyists and billionaires to write legislation, which they then pass off to Florida legislators, is a betrayal of the intent of representative government. The closed-door gathering of legislators is not government in the sunshine."

http://www.truth-out.org/print/12174

http://www.alec.org/docs/17thReportCard/ALECs_17th_Report_Card.pdf

boutons_deux

02-04-2012, 12:33 PM

Koch Brothers Convene Super-Secret Billionaires' Meeting for 2012 Elections

At a retreat last weekend, dozens of wealthy donors convened in a large golf resort in Indian Wells, Calif. for a four day conference to raise money and plot out election year strategy,

The summit, organized by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, was cloaked in secrecy. Helicopters, private security and police officers from neighboring cities patrolled the area constantly. In previous years, Supreme Court justices, some of the wealthiest businessmen in the country and Republican politicians like Congressman Paul Ryan have all gathered at these twice-annual events. The Esmerelda Renaissance, the conference venue this year, was guarded carefully with every entrance blocked and the entire 560-room resort rented out. I arrived at the hotel the night before the event, but was followed closely by security and asked to leave the next morning before the Koch meeting guests arrived.

Though the donors will funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election this year, they will not have to disclose a single cent. Using an elaborate array of foundations, nonprofits and other legal entities, the Koch network sponsored bus tours, attack ads, think tanks, and hired Tea Party organizers to shape the midterm elections two years ago.

he hopes to help achieve “aggressive cuts to government spending and to regulation to allow robust economic growth” in January 2013.

The added secrecy was apparent even to local reporters, who were confused about why the multi-golf course Esmerelda Renaissance was locked down and why the hotel staff couldn’t talk to anyone about what was going on.

The jets provided many clues into who was attending the event. A private plane owned by wealthy mutual fund manager Foster Friess flew to the area the morning of the conference, and left the day it ended. Friess is a social conservative who has gained headlines recently for his massive backing of a super-PAC supporting Rick Santorum. He has also attended the Koch meeting in the past.

A plane belonging to billionaire investor Phil Anschutz, another regular Koch attendee and major conservative financier, arrived at a nearby airport during the event. We identified over half a dozen private planes owned by major Republican donors that also arrived in the Indian Wells area during the event, but none of their owners would respond to requests for comment. Some, like Kenny Troutt, a financier of a super-PAC that supported Rick Perry’s bid for the presidency, seem to suggest new participants to the Koch meetings.

A jet owned by Continental Resources, a large fracking company that dominates the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota, arrived at the event. The company, headed by Obama critic Harold Hamm, refused to answer any questions about the Koch meeting.

http://www.alternet.org/story/153998/koch_brothers_convene_super-secret_billionaires%27_meeting_for_2012_elections? page=entire

iow, why your votes don't count at all and/or why if you vote Repug, you'll be voting based on lies.

boutons_deux

02-07-2012, 05:46 AM

Why real household income has been stagnant for 30+ years, why 50% of US workers make $25K/year, $12.50/hour.

How Rich Executives Extract Concessions From Workers -- While Playing the Good Guy in Public

We know—JP Morgan tells us—that wage reductions drove corporate profit increases from 2000 to 2007.

In the wake of the recession, with high unemployment and workers terrified that they'll be next, corporations have moved decisively to push wages down still more, to extract still more profits from workers through reductions to wages and benefits. Lockouts are just one tool of doing that, and they're visible only because they happen to unionized workers, who can fight back at least a little bit.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154033

the US is "civil" society where capitalism demands that employers and employees are locked in a adversarial confrontation, a zero-sum "war", where the employers essentially hold all the weapons, and win every battle. And it all started with St Ronnie, the ex-union leader, firing the air traffic controllers.

boutons_deux

02-07-2012, 05:59 AM

Senate sends union-busting aviation funding bill to Obama

Organized labor, which Democrats hope will provide vital fundraising and organizational support in the November elections, fiercely objected to a provision that makes it harder for airline or railroad employees to form a union.

“Airline and rail workers would suffer significant losses as contracts are jettisoned, collective bargaining rights are cut and legal hurdles will be placed in the way of gaining a voice at work,” 19 unions said in a joint statement when the legislation was announced January 30.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/06/senate-sends-union-busting-aviation-funding-bill-to-obama/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29&utm_content=Google+Reader

==========

The 1% will always screw the 99%, the game is rigged, and there's no unrigging it.

boutons_deux

02-08-2012, 04:39 PM

Ohio Lawmakers Introduced 33 Bills Last Year Based on ALEC Model Legislation

The American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) influence weighs heavy in the Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature, where brazen attempts to crush the collective bargaining rights of public workers and change voting rules in favor of Republicans have made national headlines in recent months. Over the past year, Ohio lawmakers introduced 33 bills that are identical to or "appear to contain" elements of the ALEC's infamous model legislation [4] that promotes a pro-corporate agenda, according to a report released this week by watchdog groups.

At least nine of the 33 bills have passed the State Legislature, including the now-defunct Senate Bill 5, which was poised to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights until Ohioans overwhelmingly voted for a repeal [5] in November.

"At a time when Ohioans are desperate for cooperation ... seeking Democrats and Republicans to come together to create jobs to get our economy moving again, far too often we see legislation introduced that does just the opposite," said Tim Burga, president of the Ohio ALF-CIO. "Far too often, we see the influence of ALEC on the legislation that's introduced, legislation that is anti-worker, anti-consumer and anti-education, and it really seems like it's on behalf of the super-wealthy and the investor class."

ALEC brings together state legislators and lobbyist from some of America's wealthiest corporations to draft model legislation that participating lawmakers can introduce in their homes states. Last year, the Center for Media and Democracy exposed 800 of these model bills, revealing a conservative agenda aimed at privatizing education and prisons while weakening unions and environmental legislation. One model bill, for example, would repeal a state's prevailing wage laws that require certain wage rates for those employed by public projects, making it harder for union workers to compete for contracts.

Elements of 64 ALEC model bills can be found in the 33 bills recently introduced in Ohio, according to the report. Some of the bills have the same content as ALEC model bills, while sections of others match ALEC language word for word.

Included in the list of bills carrying ALEC's stamp is proposed legislation that would require voters to show a photo or state ID to cast a provisional ballot. Another bill signed into law last year allowed Ohio to become the first state to sell a public prison to a private corporation, in this case the Corrections Corporation of America, which donated $10,000 in 2010 to Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich's post-election transition fund.

As of January, 57 members of the Ohio legislature, or 43 percent of state senators and representatives, were ALEC members. Rep. Michael Stinziano of Columbus is the only Democrat on the list, according to the report.

http://www.truth-out.org/ohio-lawmakers-introduced-33-bills-based-alec-model-legislation/1328711032

boutons_deux

02-13-2012, 08:01 AM

ALEC (corporations, wealthy) buying the state legislators, and legislation.

The Big Money Behind State Laws

It is no coincidence that so many state legislatures have spent the last year taking the same destructive actions: making it harder for minorities and other groups that support Democrats to vote, obstructing health care reform, weakening environmental regulations and breaking the spines of public- and private-sector unions. All of these efforts are being backed — in some cases, orchestrated — by a little-known conservative organization financed by millions of corporate dollars.

The American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973 by the right-wing activist Paul Weyrich; its big funders include Exxon Mobil, the Olin and Scaife families and foundations tied to Koch Industries. Many of the largest corporations are represented on its board.

ALEC has written model legislation on a host of subjects dear to corporate and conservative interests, and supporting lawmakers have introduced these bills in dozens of states. A recent study of the group’s impact in Virginia showed that more than 50 of its bills were introduced there, many practically word for word. The study, by the liberal group ProgressVA, found that ALEC had been involved in writing bills that would:

¶Prohibit penalizing residents for failing to obtain health insurance, undermining the individual mandate in the reform law. The bill, which ALEC says has been introduced in 38 states, was signed into law and became the basis for Virginia’s legal challenge to heath care reform.

¶Require voters to show a form of identification. Versions of this bill passed both chambers this month.

¶Encourage school districts to contract with private virtual-education companies. (One such company was the corporate co-chair of ALEC’s education committee.) The bill was signed into law.

¶Call for a federal constitutional amendment to permit the repeal of any federal law on a two-thirds vote of state legislatures. The bill failed.

¶Legalize use of deadly force in defending one’s home. Bills to this effect, which recently passed both houses, have been backed by the National Rifle Association, a longtime member of ALEC.

ALEC’s influence in the Virginia statehouse is pervasive, the study showed. The House of Delegates speaker, William Howell, has been on the board since 2003 and was national chairman in 2009. He has sponsored or pushed many of the group’s bills, including several benefiting specific companies that support ALEC financially, like one that would reduce a single company’s asbestos liability. At least 115 other state legislators have ties to the group, including paying membership dues, attending meetings and sponsoring bills. The state has spent more than $230,000 sending lawmakers to ALEC conferences since 2001.

Similar efforts have gone on in many other states. The group has been particularly active in weakening environmental regulations and fighting the Environmental Protection Agency. ALEC’s publication, “E.P.A.’s Regulatory Train Wreck,” outlines steps lawmakers can take, including curtailing the power of state regulators.

There is nothing illegal or unethical about ALEC’s work, except that it further demonstrates the pervasive influence of corporate money and right-wing groups on the state legislative process. There is no group with any comparable influence on the left. Lawmakers who eagerly do ALEC’s bidding have much to answer for. Voters have a right to know whether the representatives they elect are actually writing the laws, or whether the job has been outsourced to big corporate interests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/opinion/the-big-money-behind-state-laws.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

boutons_deux

02-13-2012, 08:07 AM

Wealthy One Percent That’s Behind Minnesota’s Racist Voter ID Push

The report, by the group TakeAction Minnesota, describes how Minnesota’s wealthiest finance institutions and their executives, lobbying groups, PACs and the chamber of commerce have been pooling funds together, sharing resources, and in some cases sharing office suite space in a collective effort that’s at least partially responsible for a Republican takeover of the state legislature in 2010.

The group’s report shows more correlation than causation when it comes to the voter ID initiative. But it’s instructive in detailing the way serious money is shaping state-level politics where basic civil rights issues like the right to vote are at stake.

An example of this is Wells Fargo executive vice president Jon Campbell chairing the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the state’s top lobby, joining together with the Minnesota Business Partnership, the state’s third largest lobby, for a mega-lobby called MN Forward, which focuses on slashing corporate taxes and cutting government spending. All the entities — the Chamber, the Partnership, MN Forward — have flooded hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past few years into the coffers of Republican candidates, some of whom are architects of a photo ID voter mandate that Republicans would like to have placed on a referendum ballot in November.

Says the report, the banks’ “executives and board members have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates who will make it harder for members of the 99 percent of the population to vote.”

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154107

boutons_deux

02-17-2012, 01:43 PM

St Ronnie War on Employees continues in Repug criminal Scott's FL:

Florida bill would slash minimum wage for tipped workers

“We are being brave and bold and being statesmen and not politicians,” Republican state Sen. Nancy Detert, the committee’s chair, asserted, adding that the bill had been requested by the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association.

“They’re doing this because it benefits employers,” labor attorney Loren Donnell explained to the Tampa Bay Times. “In this economy, you’re talking about lowering an even subminimum wage requirement.”

Cindy Berg, who has been a server for 20 years, has already seen her income cut as tips dried up in the economic downturn.

“Those days of 15 percent tippers, and 20 percent tippers and Christmas tippers are gone,” she remarked. “They are gone.”

“My husband works 60 to 70 hours a week. I work 40, and we’re still barely making it,” she added. “I’ve never been in this position in my life. … It’s just tougher and tougher and tougher.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/17/florida-bill-would-slash-minimum-wage-for-tipped-workers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29&utm_content=Google+Reader

spursncowboys

02-17-2012, 03:28 PM

So male teachers make more money than female teachers?
Male librarians make more money than female librarians?
Male soldiers make more than female ones?
Male CEO's make more than female ones?
I just don't believe it. Especially since woman have been going to college at a higher rate than males, it would be absurd to think any company would be willing to lose that amount of talent.

boutons_deux

02-17-2012, 03:42 PM

"I just don't believe it."

your belief is convincing evidence. :lol

google "men women unequal pay"

"Women earned 59% of the wages men earned in 1963; in 2008 they earned 77% of men's wages—an improvement of about half a penny per dollar earned every year. Why is there still such a disparity?"

Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/equalpayact1.html#ixzz1mfpxL5cg

etc, etc.

"any company would be willing to lose that amount of talent"

1000s of them are willing. White, male, Christian incompetence trumps female competence.

Wild Cobra

02-17-2012, 03:44 PM

boutons_deux

02-17-2012, 03:48 PM

"Not on an equal job basis."

ideology, belief, do you ideological fringe right wingers have any data (and not just from your personal observations)?

Wild Cobra

02-17-2012, 04:17 PM

"Not on an equal job basis."

ideology, belief, do you ideological fringe right wingers have any data (and not just from your personal observations)?
How about showing me the data that shows the same job pays less money for the same performance and availability. Every job I have had, the women were on equal pay footing. There are still many women who choose not to advance in certain management positions, are are not chosen to, because they cannot do the work, when they place family first. That's about it. A male or female who has obligations to children and cannot work 14 hr. days or be on call simply don't get some very high paying jobs.

boutons_deux

02-17-2012, 04:20 PM

Do Your Own Research (tm) -- WC

google "men women unequal pay"

also google Lilly Ledbetter, screwed over for decades doing the same job as men but paid a lot less.

Wild Cobra

02-17-2012, 05:17 PM

also google Lilly Ledbetter, screwed over for decades doing the same job as men but paid a lot less.
Yes, I recall that story somewhat. Are you saying one incident means all?

boutons_deux

02-17-2012, 05:23 PM

no, but the guvmint saw it as a discrimination to be outlawed.

Wild Cobra

02-17-2012, 05:34 PM

no, but the guvmint saw it as a discrimination to be outlawed.
I see.... You are contending the government is always right...

The court transcripts reveled that she was given less favorable performance reviews. She knew the status of here review. If this was the reason or not, we will never really know. The disparity of wages may have been performance, it may have been based on sex, it may have been both.

boutons_deux

03-21-2012, 11:48 AM

More murderous nastiness from VRWC hit team

ALEC Has Pushed The NRA's "Stand Your Ground" Law Across The Nation

The legislation apparently preventing the successful prosecution of Trayvon Martin's killer was reportedly adopted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as model legislation that the shadowy group has spent years promoting across the country with the help of their allies in the National Rifle Association.

Formed in 1973 by conservative activists including Paul Weyrich and state legislators like then-Illinois State Rep. Henry Hyde, ALEC has earned infamy throughout the progressive movement for its ability to promote model legislation favorable to its corporate funders through statehouses across the country.

Legal experts have noted that Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law may prevent George Zimmerman from ever being successfully prosecuted for the killing of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman has claimed that he acted in self-defense, and court precedent indicates that the State has the heavy burden of disproving this in order to win a conviction.

Florida's statute on the use of force in self-defense is virtually identical to Section 1 of ALEC's Castle Doctrine Act model legislation as posted on the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). According to CMD, the model bill was adopted by ALEC's Civil Justice Task in August 2005 -- just a few short months after it passed the Florida legislature -- and approved by its board of directors the following month.

Since the 2005 passage of Florida's law, similar statutes have been passed in 16 other states. This was no accident. In a 2008 interview with NRA News, ALEC resident fellow Michael Hough explained how his organization works with the NRA to push similar legislation through its network of conservative state legislators:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203210004?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MediaMattersForAmerica-CountyFair+%28Media+Matters+for+America+-+County+Fair%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

boutons_deux

03-21-2012, 11:48 AM

boutons_deux

03-21-2012, 11:50 AM

NRA's Campaign For "Stand Your Ground Laws" Continues After Trayvon Martin's Killing

The organization's lobbying arm spent the weeks following his death promoting similar statutes in Iowa, Alaska, and Minnesota.

On March 16, the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) criticized the Judiciary Committee chairman of Iowa's state Senate for failing to hold hearings on "NRA-initiated HF 2215, the Stand Your Ground/Castle Doctrine Enhancement." According to NRA-ILA, the bill would "remove a person's 'duty to retreat' from an attacker, allowing law-abiding citizens to stand their ground and protect themselves or their family anywhere they are lawfully present." The group urged supporters to contact state Senators and tell them to support the bill. NRA-ILA previously told supporters to contact Democratic members of the Iowa House after they "left the Capitol building in an attempt to block consideration of these pro-gun bills" on February 29.
On March 14, NRA-ILA urged Alaskan supporters to contact their state Senators and tell them to support House Bill 80, which it termed "important self-defense legislation that would provide that a law-abiding person, who is justified in using deadly force in self-defense, has 'no duty-to-retreat' from an attack if the person is in any place that that person has a legal right to be." NRA-ILA also promoted the bill on March 5, March 8, and February 29.
On March 5, NRA-ILA executive director Chris W. Cox criticized Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton for vetoing House File 1467, which Cox said "would have removed the duty to retreat for crime victims currently mandated under Minnesota state law and precluded victims from facing prosecution for lawfully defending their lives." NRA-ILA also urged supporters to contact Dayton and urge him not to veto the bill on March 1 and February 29.

The NRA has referred to Florida's statute as "good law, casting a common-sense light onto the debate over the right of self-defense."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201203200019?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MediaMattersForAmerica-CountyFair+%28Media+Matters+for+America+-+County+Fair%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

=========

Is there anything in the center or left of center that approaches the evilness of the VRWC and all its demons?

boutons_deux

03-22-2012, 06:40 PM

How ALEC is Destroying the Teaching of Climate Change Science, One State at a Time

The ALEC Model Bill

As DeSmogBlog reported in January, the Tennessee bill is based on an ALEC model bill passed in May 2000. We explained at the time,

"The bill's opening clause reads [PDF], 'The purpose of this act is to enhance and improve the environmental literacy of students and citizens in the state by requiring that all environmental education programs and activities conducted by schools, universities, and agencies shall…'

Provide a range of perspectives presented in a balanced manner.
Provide instruction in critical thinking so that students will be able to fairly and objectively evaluate scientific and economic controversies.
Be presented in language appropriate for education rather than for propagandizing.
Encourage students to explore different perspectives and form their own opinions.
Encourage an atmosphere of respect for different opinions and open-mindedness to new ideas.
Not be designed to change student behavior, attitudes or values.
Not include instruction in political action skills nor encourage political action activities."

To summarize, under this model bill and its relatives, global warming will be taught as a "theory" among other "credible theories," including those unscientific "theories" peddled by the well-paid "merchants of doubt."

This, of course, flies in the face of the well-accepted scientific consensus, which has proven global warming as the harsh reality, time and time again. The science speaks for itself, and the fossil fuel money funding climate change deniers speaks for itself.

The Tennessee Bill

Key portions of the Tennessee bills are as follows (emphases mine):

"The teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to,biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and humancloning, can cause controversy."
"The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to…respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues."
Neither the state board of education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught."

Look familar? It should.

The bill was opposed by a broad-based coalition, including the National Association of Biology Teachers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Nashville Tennessean, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, the Tennessee Science Teachers Association, and all eight Tennessee members of the National Academy of Sciences.

These voices of reason were no opposition to ALEC, its corporate backers, and the politicians who serve them, which saw the bill pass with little opposition whatsoever.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154655

boutons_deux

03-23-2012, 09:07 AM

The Have's, the VRWC's and ..

1%’s Plan for the Rest of Us – Livestock to be Milked for “Rent”

As Thomas Palley has discussed, and the chart below underscores, the US changed in the early 1980s from a model where rising worker wages were seen as the driver to growth and hence a focus of policy, to one where rising consumer debt levels and asset appreciation were used to substitute for stagnant incomes. (for the 99%)

http://static1.firedoglake.com/1/files/2009/11/productivity-and-wages-300x158.jpg

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/mark-ames-the-one-percents-plan-for-the-rest-of-us-%E2%80%93-livestock-to-be-milked-for-rent.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

=========

St Ronnie firing ALL the 10s of 1000s the ATCs after a 2 day strike gave the President's approval to wage war on employees. Kock Bros' ALEC had been going since the 1970s, and Lawyer Lewis Powell's "the Haves must take back their America" from the "socialist/democratic " advances of the 1960s and 1930s rallied the Haves into action. The Repugs have been hell bent in making the country pay for Dickhead Nixon (and Bork, and Clarence Thomas').

America is fucked by the 1%, and will continue unstoppably to fuck the 99% (see Ryan's budget version 2.0)

boutons_deux

03-26-2012, 05:38 AM

How The Right Wing "ALEC" Teamed Up With The NRA To Get Copycat, "Stand Your Ground" Laws In 21 States

According to Fischer, "The bill was brought to ALEC by the National Rifle Association (NRA), and fits into a pattern of ALEC bills that disproportionately impact communities of color."

It is no surprise that ALEC is hardly a household name. The American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) prefers to do its business in secret. And since ALEC's founding in 1973 by Paul Weyrich (who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and is widely considered to be one of the Godfathers of the New Right); former Illinois Republican Congressman Henry Hyde; and conservative activist Lou Barnett, the organization has successfully stayed out of the spotlight.

If it weren't for the resolute reporting of a handful of investigative journalists and the extraordinary work of the Center for Media and Democracy's ALEC Exposed Web site, not much would be known about ALEC.

Source Watch, a project of the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, described ALEC as a "semi-secretive" organization that "has been highly influential, has operated quietly in the United States for decades, and received remarkably little scrutiny from journalists, media or members of the public during that time." A report by the American Association for Justice, titled "ALEC: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America" described the organization as "the ultimate smoke filled back room."

As John Nichols recently pointed out in The Nation, "the shadowy Koch brothers-funded network ... brings together right-wing legislators with corporate interests and pressure groups to craft so-called 'model legislation.'" And while ALEC is predominantly concerned with cutting tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals, privatization, de-regulation, and weakening, if not eliminating unions, it "also dabbles in electoral and public safety issues. And 'Stand Your Ground' proposals have for seven years been on its agenda."

Last year, when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker unleashed an unprecedented attack on public workers in that state, and Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country began its assault on voting rights, ALEC's fingerprints were all over those initiatives.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154689

boutons_deux

03-26-2012, 05:48 AM

How Ronald Reagan Broke the Air Traffic Controllers Union--And Why That Fight Still Matters

With employers’ “freedom to fire” renewed, entrepreneurial initiative could once again be unleashed. Reagan’s action thus inaugurated a miraculous era of “low unemployment and low inflation.” If we substitute Greenspan’s phrase “freedom to fire” with “break unions, strip them of the right to strike, redistribute wealth upward, and create massive economic insecurity,” then we have a story that is similarly satisfying to the Left. Indeed, the PATCO strike has become the pivotal event—both symbolically and substantively—in almost everyone’s understanding of the massive realignment of class power in the United States in the last few decades.

The PATCO strike may be the watershed moment in the consolidation of the post-New Deal order, but it has also become a bloated political symbol. Fortunately, Joseph McCartin gracefully moves the union and its famous strike from myth to complex historical analysis in his new book Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, The Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America. McCartin’s assessment captures the very real importance of the strike coolly, without reading too much into it: “No strike in American history unfolded more visibly before the eyes of the American people or impressed itself more quickly and more deeply into the public consciousness of its time than the PATCO strike. No strike proved more costly to break. And no strike since the advent of the New Deal damaged the U.S. labor movement more.”

Reaganism is partially a symptom of these changes and partially an agent of them. And if the administration didn’t intend a revolution in labor relations, context matters even more. Somewhere between Nixon’s tolerance of the postal strike in 1970 and Reagan’s destruction of PATCO in 1981, a sea change occurred in the culture of a nation. As the author concludes, PATCO is “prologue to a story still unfolding.” For that reason alone we owe McCartin a debt for setting us straight on what happened in a peculiar dispute that launched a revolution. In strange forms do new ages come.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154595

======

Reagan, along with lots of other shit, launched, approved, encouraged the VRWC War on Employees with the PATCO destruction. As a result, household real incomes has been essentially flat since 1980 while corporate profits (investor gains), productivity, and mgmt pay have skyrocketed. Mission Accomplished

boutons_deux

03-26-2012, 08:01 PM

Lobbyists, Guns and Money

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.

Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.

And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.

Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?

Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/krugman-lobbyists-guns-and-money.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

=====

So no righties here even mention ALEC, ok.

boutons_deux

03-26-2012, 08:01 PM

...

boutons_deux

04-09-2012, 09:55 AM

After the Billions of unsolicited credit cards mailed in the 90s and 2000s to create the largest househeld debt ever, anybody notice cc offers arriving in the mail now after the lull of the Banksters Great Depression?

There's a reason:

Finance as Wealth Transfer Mechanism: An Interview with James Galbraith

*changes* in inequality have a common source. Looking at the major turning points, which were in 1971-3, 1981 and 2000, a leading candidate for that source emerges: the changes in the world financial system.

Until 1971, the world’s economies were largely stabilized under the Bretton Woods system. After 1973, there was a widespread commodities-and-debt boom that tended to reduce inequality in developing countries. After 1980, high interest rates and the debt crisis raised inequality almost everywhere. And finally in 2000 there was a peak; after that interest rates fell, commodity prices recovered, and inequalities around the world tended to ease.

In the face of these global pressures, it’s possible for some countries with very stable policies and strong institutions to resist for a time: for example Denmark does not show rising inequality in our data. Or a country may be insulated from global shocks, as China and India were from the debt crisis in the 1980s (but not in the 1990s). But these cases are very few. In most cases the global forces dominate the picture.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/finance-as-wealth-transfer-mechanism-an-interview-with-james-galbraith.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

boutons_deux

04-12-2012, 12:24 PM

UCA stuffing its pockets with pay slip "tax" deductions

Paying Your Boss: How States Are Letting Corporations Pocket Their Workers’ Tax Payments

According to a new report by Good Jobs First, an organization that promotes accountability in economic development, a growing number of companies are collecting their workers’ income tax payments and keeping them, with the approval of state governments. Instead of having their taxes go to pay for public services like schools or roads, these workers are, quite literally, handing their tax payments to their bosses:

For some people, the personal income taxes they see deducted from their paychecks aren’t supporting public services. Indeed, this is true for workers at more than 2,700 companies in 16 states.

Nearly $700 million is getting diverted each year. And it is very unlikely that the affected workers are aware, given that no state requires that the diversion be disclosed on pay stubs.

Where is the money going? To the employers of those workers. A growing number of states are diverting revenue traditionally devoted to funding essential government services to pay for lavish subsidy awards to corporations for job creation or sometimes simply job retention. The practice of redirecting large portions of the state personal income tax (PIT) withholding deducted from paychecks means many workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/12/463430/paying-your-boss-report/

boutons_deux

04-24-2012, 02:06 PM

ALEC and ExxonMobil Push Loopholes in Fracking Chemical Disclosure Rules

One of the key controversies about fracking is the chemical makeup of the fluid that is pumped deep into the ground to break apart rock and release natural gas. Some companies have been reluctant to disclose what's in their fracking fluid. Scientists and environmental advocates argue that, without knowing its precise composition, they can't thoroughly investigate complaints of contamination.

This weekend, as part of a story on ALEC's political activity, The New York Times noted that the group recently adopted a bill passed in Texas last year as "model legislation" for fracking chemical disclosure. According to The Times, the model bill was "sponsored within ALEC" by ExxonMobil, which runs a major oil and gas operation through its subsidiary, XTO Energy. The advocacy group Common Cause, which provided the documents on ALEC's lobbying efforts to The Times, describes model legislation, in many cases identifying by name the company that proposed it to ALEC's task forces.

http://www.propublica.org/article/alec-and-exxonmobil-push-loopholes-in-fracking-chemical-disclosure-rules

boutons_deux

04-24-2012, 02:08 PM

ALEC Says It Plans To Craft Legislation To Take Down State Renewable Energy Targets

Last July, Bloomberg News acquired tax documents showing that Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil and other energy companies paid membership fees to ALEC in order to help write legislation repealing carbon pollution reduction programs in states around country.

Bloomberg now reports that ALEC is looking to take aim at renewable energy programs in states:

ALEC, a group of state lawmakers and corporations recently criticized for its support of Stand-Your-Ground laws highlighted in the Florida shooting of Trayvon Martin, may write model legislation for state lawmakers to repeal or weaken the mandates later this year, said Todd Wynn, energy, environment and agriculture task force director for the group, in an interview. Stand-Your-Ground laws allows citizens to use force when threatened, even when they can retreat.

The group may also develop an “energy freedom” index that ranks states based on regulation, market intervention and taxes.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/24/469934/alec-plans-to-craft-legislation-to-take-down-state-renewable-energy-targets/

boutons_deux

04-24-2012, 02:08 PM

boutons_deux

05-10-2012, 12:15 PM

Anti-Wind Strategy Memo Envisions News Corp. Ally

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that several conservative groups met earlier this year to coordinate a campaign to turn public opinion against wind power. A confidential memo distributed at the meeting outlined a PR strategy that would, among other things, use media outlets including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to disseminate anti-wind messaging. The goal of the media campaign is to provide "cover" for elected officials to vote against wind power:

The coordinated effort stretches across multi-channels and multi-voices, and appears to come from as many as a dozen separate sources, but the message is the same and stays on point. The created barrage of voices provides enough cover that the elected officials have a way to vote no because they can clearly see they have support for our position.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201205100002?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MediaMattersForAmerica-CountyFair+%28Media+Matters+for+America+-+County+Fair%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

jack sommerset

05-10-2012, 02:00 PM

The troll promised us a long thread even though nobody else seems interested. God bless

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Show Thread & Close Window

boutons_deux

05-10-2012, 02:57 PM

ALEC To Formally Oppose Common Education Standards, Leaving Struggling Students Behind

The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, is planning to formally oppose the Common Core Standards, which set benchmarks for what students should know and be able to do in reading and math at each grade level. Though ALEC misleadingly describes the Common Core as a “federal intrusion” into state education, these standards were actually created and voluntarily adopted by a consortium of states to improve our failing and fragmented education system. By opposing the Common Core, ALEC is choosing to promote local control at the expense of preparing students to be college- and career-ready.

Understanding the importance of the Common Core requires acknowledging the problems with our current education system — an area where ALEC has turned a blind eye. In 2011, only 35% of eighth grade students scored at the “proficient” level or above in math, and only a third of eighth grade students scored at the “proficient” level or above in reading on the nation’s reading and math report card.

These low achievement levels are not always obvious because states like South Carolina currently set their own standards and assessments. This results in a patchwork education system where students could perform well on their state test but not on the nation’s reading and math assessment.

http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/05/10/482087/alec-common-education-standards/

ALEC is also involved in killing public schools by providing states with charter school frameworks

http://alecexposed.org/w/images/5/57/2D4-Next_Generation_Charter_Schools_Act_Exposed.pdf

the objective? transfer taxpayer funds (aka follow the money) to for-profit, non-unionized charter schools.

boutons_deux

05-12-2012, 09:12 AM

How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent

For a generation, America's political-economy has been gripped in a vicious cycle. Those at the top of the economic pile have taken an ever-growing share of the nation's income, and then leveraged that haul into ever-greater political power, which they have in turn used to rewrite the rules of “the market” in their favor. Wash, rinse and repeat.

It's the result of years of institutional investments by the corporate Right to advance a reactionary legal regime in America's courts. In the process, the richest Americans now have their hands in both our legislative and judicial branches, while working America has become a voiceless stepping stone.

“The more pernicious effect of economic inequality comes indirectly through its impact on political inequality,”

“a general pattern throughout history”:

When economic inequality increases, the people who have become economically more powerful will often attempt to use that power in order to gain even more political power. And once they are able to monopolize political power, they will start using that for changing the rules in their favor.

In almost every instance, senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes

A 2005 study by Yale University law professor Paul Gewirtz and Yale Law School graduate Chad Golder showed that among Supreme Court justices at that time, those most frequently labeled "conservative" were among the most frequent practitioners of at least one brand of judicial activism -- the tendency to strike down statutes passed by Congress. Those most frequently labeled "liberal" were the least likely to strike down statutes passed by Congress.

A 2007 study published by University of Chicago law professor Thomas J. Miles and Cass R. Sunstein... used a different measurement of judicial activism: the tendency of judges to strike down decisions by federal regulatory agencies. Sunstein and Miles found that by this definition, the Supreme Court's "conservative" justices were the most likely to engage in "judicial activism" while the "liberal" justices were most likely to exercise "judicial restraint."

Spurred by their overlapping grievances, informed by an increasingly sophisticated of how to produce legal change, and coordinated by strategically shrewd group of patrons, conservatives began investing in a broad range activities designed to reverse their … organizational weaknesses. While similar kinds of organizational development were happening in other domains … in no other area was the process of strategic investment as prolonged, ambitious, complicated and successful as in the law.

In 2005, the Olin Foundation actually declared “mission accomplished” and closed up shop. The New York Times reported that after “three decades financing the intellectual rise of the right,” the foundation’s services were no longer needed.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155379

The VRWC/1% has won the war on the 99%.

GAMEOVER and no way to reverse the outcome.

Enjoy your sterile, academic debates, signifying nothing.

boutons_deux

05-12-2012, 07:28 PM

Conservative Thinktanks Launch Campaign to Turn Americans Against Wind Energy

A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama's energy agenda.

A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using "subversion" to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.

The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project.

The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled 'wind warriors' from across the country in Washington DC last February.

"These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry," said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents.

Among its main recommendations, the proposal calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing "subversion in message of industry so that it effectively because so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it."

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155359

boutons_deux

05-14-2012, 05:20 AM

How Corporations Like Monsanto Have Hijacked Higher Education

Conducting research requires funding, and today's research follows the golden rule: The one with the gold makes the rules.

A report just released by Food and Water Watch examines the role of corporate funding of agricultural research at land grant universities, of which there are more than 100. “You hear again and again Congress and regulators clamoring for science-based rules, policies, regulations,” says Food and Water Watch researcher Tim
Schwab, explaining why he began investigating corporate influence in agricultural research. “So if the rules and regulations and policies are based on science that is industry-biased, then the fallout goes beyond academic articles. It really trickles down to farmer livelihoods and consumer choice.”

a broader look at all corporate agricultural research, $7.4 billion in 2006, dwarfs the mere $5.7 billion in all public funding of agricultural research spent the same year.

In 2005, nearly one third of agricultural scientists reported consulting for private industry. Corporations endow professorships and donate money to universities in return for having buildings, labs and wings named for them. Purdue University's Department of Nutrition Science blatantly offers corporate affiliates “corporate visibility with students and faculty” and “commitment by faculty and administration to address [corporate] members' needs,” in return for the $6,000 each corporate affiliate pays annually.

“We know from a number of meta-analyses, that corporate funding leads to results that are favorable to the corporate funder,”

I thought very deeply about whether my research plan was going to be relevant, and one of the indicators of relevancy would be if the ideas I put forward would get the attention of trade associations, private industry, benefactors, etc.”

it is not so much that the land-grant university has been corrupted by modern agro-industrial influence, as it has been historically successful in focusing on its mission in the context of our Constitutional framework of governance.

Thus, practically from the start, the elites in this country served the interests of those who peddled chemical fertilizers and other agricultural inputs –

The unholy trinity of industry, government and academics promoting industrial agriculture and de-emphasizing or dismissing sustainable methods has a long history and it continues today.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155375

UCA gets the govt policies from the research it buys to increase its profits.

boutons_deux

06-04-2012, 12:15 PM

red-state Christian Taleban in Louisiana destroying their public schools for "Christian" hate, right-wing indoctrination, anti-science, other dumb-down shit.

Louisiana's bold bid to privatize schools

Louisiana is embarking on the nation's boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.

Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.

The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector vendors for classes and apprenticeships not offered in traditional public schools. The money can go to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others.

Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-education-vouchers-idUSBRE8501G020120601

Following ALEC's strategy of destroying/privatizing public education.

boutons_deux

06-19-2012, 05:11 PM

How Top Law Professors Are Working To Expand Corporations’ Constitutional 'Rights'

Corporate America is hijacking the First Amendment.

In the political world, the Supreme Court continues to expand corporate speech rights, opening one more avenue for big money to flow into elections. And in the business world, federal courts have also cited commercial speech rights to block all kinds of government efforts to add health warnings on products or change the way unhealthy products are advertised.
The list is startling. America has an obesity crisis, but food producers and broadcasters beat back voluntary advertising guidelines. Tobacco beat back adding images to cigarette boxes. Milk companies beat back milk hormone labels, as did cell phone makers with radiation labels and video game makers with violence and sexual content labels. These defeats were based on asserting corporate speech rights—arguments with which the courts have all too often agreed.

But behind this depressing trend—which could change if there were more fair-minded federal judges—is an eyebrow-raising corporate ally: esteemed law professors who have been paid by business to expand on their scholarship as private consultants.

They develop pro-corporate strategies in papers and are far better paid than their liberal counterparts. Their work is cited by lobbyists and judges. Whether conservative scholars see the social costs of using the First Amendment as a deregulatory tool is debatable, but what is indisputable is that they are a key pillar in America’s ongoing "war of ideas."

“The work of many of these legal scholars has indeed undercut common-sense standards of free speech rights,”

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155876

boutons_deux

06-19-2012, 05:16 PM

The Loch Ness Monster Is Real; The KKK Is Good: The Shocking Content of Publicly Paid for Christian School Textbooks

Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence.

Have you heard of the `Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? `Nessie,' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all."

Extract from Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc. (1995)

Some scientists speculate that Noah took small or baby dinosaurs on the Ark.... are dinosaurs still alive today? With some recent photographs and testimonies of those who claimed to have seen one, scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence...

, 5 Even Worse Lies from Accelerated Christian Education),

- Science Proves Homosexuality is a Learned Behavior
- The Second Law of Thermodynamics Disproves Evolution
- No Transitional Fossils Exist
- Humans and Dinosaurs Co-Existed
- Evolution Has Been Disproved
- A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur
- Solar Fusion is a Myth

Like the ACE curriculum, A Beka and Bob Jones textbooks promote Young-Earth creationism, are heavily laden with political bias, and at times verge on racism. As shown in the following video, among the dubious, factually incorrect, politically tendentious, and racially and culturally insensitive claims in A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press textbooks are the following:

- Only ten percent of Africans can read or write, because Christian mission schools have been shut down by communists.
- "the [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross... In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."
- "God used the 'Trail of Tears' to bring many Indians to Christ."
- It "cannot be shown scientifically that that man-made pollutants will one day drastically reduce the depth of the atmosphere's ozone layer."
- "God has provided certain 'checks and balances' in creation to prevent many of the global upsets that have been predicted by environmentalists."
- the Great Depression was exaggerated by propagandists, including John Steinbeck, to advance a socialist agenda.
- "Unions have always been plagued by socialists and anarchists who use laborers to destroy the free-enterprise system that hardworking Americans have created."
- Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential win was due to an imaginary economic crisis created by the media.
- "The greatest struggle of all time, the Battle of Armageddon, will occur in the Middle East when Christ returns to set up his kingdom on earth."

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/155926

Big P

06-19-2012, 07:33 PM

lol...desperation

boutons_deux

06-21-2012, 04:25 PM

Exposed: The Other ALECs' Corporate Playbook

he Most Powerful Lobby Firm of Which You've Never Heard

Founded in 1988, Stateside is self-described as the "industry leader" in state and local governmental affairs counseling. The company's home page tempts potential clients with a program that "transcends the conventional categories" of lobbying. The page further explains:

"State and local government relations - done well - protects the bottom line, promotes brand awareness, builds champions among policymakers and safeguards the ability of corporations and associations to succeed."

Stateside's corporate clients are a testament to the success of its strategy. They include the likes of Visa, FedEx, Intuit, Microsoft, the Grocery Manufacturers Association and United Technologies. Past clients have described the firm as "essential," "proactive" and "unmatched."

A lobbying behemoth - the self-proclaimed largest firm of its kind - Stateside has enough tricks up its sleeve to tackle even the most difficult, and often delicate, lobbying cases.

"We came to Stateside Associates asking them to accomplish a complex, nationwide task in a very short time frame. Stateside came through with flying colors, sooner than expected and needed almost no direction after getting the assignment," testified Thomas Kerr, vice president and assistant general counsel for Bayer Corporation.

Despite the complexities inherent to its acclaimed case-by-case lobbying approach, Stateside's successful strategy begins and ends with the same corporate playbook.

In fact, Stateside's founder, CEO and President, as well as former Executive Director of ALEC, Constance Campanella, was among the first to turn the unspoken playbook of corporate America into a concrete lobbying practice.

The playbook's related service at Stateside is now called "Groups Practice" and is run by none other than Behm himself.

So, what exactly is "Groups Practice"?

"Groups" - ALEC, CSG, NCSL, and More

"Groups" is the bland euphemism coined by Stateside's Campanella to refer to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations that provide education and networking opportunities specifically to state-level elected officials. "Groups Practice" is Stateside's name for a stealth lobbying strategy oriented around these Groups.

If advocacy happens through the Groups, then expenses for what is in effect lobbying are considered tax-deductible charitable donations, unlike all other lobbying expenses. In addition, stealth lobbyists don't have to be registered to influence and sometimes even vote on model legislation.

By far the best-known of the Groups is ALEC, infamous for its role in promoting Castle Doctrine and voter ID legislation. ALEC has also been influential in spreading charter schools, tort reform, union-busting and overall deregulation.

But ALEC is far from alone in this game.

The three largest "other ALECs," and the most influential Groups in state politics are the Council of State Governments (CSG), the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation (SLLF). There are similarities in processes and structure among these organizations, but there are also several important differences.

Some, like CSG and NCSL, are essentially professional associations with automatic membership for all state-level elected officials. Though they are supported in large part by public tax dollars, both of these Groups also receive a substantial amount of support from private donors.

ALEC, with its selective membership of a primarily Republican Party membership base, has a right-wing ideological edge that the others lack. SLLF, like ALEC, is a purely corporate-funded Group, but it specifically targets legislative leaders in both the mainstream parties.

However, the shared structure of all the Groups - their nonprofit tax status - allows them all to be exploited, albeit to varying degrees, by their corporate sponsors. Groups are granted their nonprofit, tax-exempt status due to their declared educational purpose. This tax exemption is just icing on the cake for corporate sponsors that gain access to Group legislative membership.

Part One of this series described each of the largest Groups, providing information about membership, meetings, policy positions and in some cases model legislation. This part focuses on how corporate lobbyists use this network of Groups to turn a private agenda into public policy.

Powerful, but Far From Unique

The niche of stealth lobbying is so profitable that in addition to Stateside, other firms also participate. One is MultiState Associates. This firm, founded four years before Stateside in 1984, employs the same overall strategy of using the Groups to promote corporate agendas.

MultiState offers a flexible, "full range" program to respond to the changing needs of corporate clients, which in the past have included Honda North America; Bechtel Enterprises, Inc.; the American Automobile Association; Engineering THE LAW, Inc.' and others that are unlisted. The firm employs a unique, nationwide network of lobbyists that "can assist quickly and efficiently in helping clients strategize."

Just as Campanella has had prominent roles in both ALEC and Stateside, some of MultiState's lobbyists are involved in the same revolving-door of leadership between the Groups and stealth lobby firms. MultiState's Senior Adviser Daniel Spargue, for example, served as the executive director and CEO of CSG for 19 years before jumping ship to accept his current position.

But how exactly do lobby firms like Stateside and MultiState use the Groups (NCSL, CSG, SLLF and ALEC) to advance corporate agendas? What "expertise" did Spargue and Campanella pick up during their time working as CSG and ALEC senior staff?

It is time to turn to the lobbyists' playbook itself.

The Playbook

The objective of the Playbook is to begin with a private agenda and end with a public policy with bipartisan support. These are the six simple steps to achieving that goal.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9889-exposed-the-other-alecs-corporate-playbook?tmpl=component&print=1

boutons_deux

06-24-2012, 02:02 PM

Media dominated by liberals? GMAFB

The VRWC/Repug proganda and slander machine has been sliming and slandering non-stop.

REPORT: Media Overwhelmingly Focus On Rulings Against Health Care Reform Constitutionality

Individual Mandate Invented By Conservative Heritage Foundation, Supported By GOP In '90s. In an article for The New Yorker, Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein wrote:

The mandate made its political début in a 1989 Heritage Foundation brief titled "Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans," as a counterpoint to the single-payer system and the employer mandate, which were favored in Democratic circles. In the brief, Stuart Butler, the foundation's health-care expert, argued, "Many states now require passengers in automobiles to wear seat-belts for their own protection. Many others require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement." The mandate made its first legislative appearance in 1993, in the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act--the Republicans' alternative to President Clinton's health-reform bill--which was sponsored by John Chafee, of Rhode Island, and co-sponsored by eighteen Republicans, including Bob Dole, who was then the Senate Minority Leader.

Message Received: Americans Now Overwhelmingly Believe That The Individual Mandate Is Unconstitutional

http://mediamatters.org/research/201206220002

Americans are fucking stupid and ignorant, which is exactly how VRWC/UCA can lie to them so successfully ABOUT EVERYTHING.

boutons_deux

07-03-2012, 01:53 PM

8 Ways America's Headed Back to the Robber-Baron Era

1. Unregulated Corporate Capitalism Creates Economic Collapse

2. Union Busting

3. Income Inequality

4. Open Purchase of Elections

5. Supreme Court Partisanship

6. Violations of Civil Liberties

7. Voter Repression

8. Anti-Immigration Fervor

The Gilded Age was a horrible time and I fear the nation slipping back into this hell of poverty, violence and hate. I believe that young people largely reject the extremist agenda that is hurtling us through a time machine to the bad old days of the 1890s, but they don’t have the power right now. Republicans know the demographics do not favor them and are trying to fix the game through voter suppression, packing the courts with extremists, and concentrating wealth and power so they can control politicians and the media.

During the Gilded Age, people throughout society began organizing for reform: labor unions, farmers, middle-class reformers. After 1900, this organizing paid off as government began passing reforms to alleviate the most extreme problems of the Gilded Age. Child labor laws, worker compensation for injuries at work, government regulation of the railroads, and the direct election of senators all took power away from corporations and put it back in the hands of the people. It wasn’t perfect, but it started the social reforms that created the American middle-class.

Like in the late 19th century, we need to take back our country from corporate control. We need to create well-paid jobs in the United States, revitalize the labor movement, and pass legislation to respect civil liberties, give undocumented immigrants legal status, and ensure that voting rights laws are enforced. Like our ancestors, we can fix these problems. First we need to recognize that the 1% has declared war upon the middle class and then we can start organizing to create the better tomorrow we crave.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/156111

boutons_deux

07-05-2012, 10:13 AM

Obamacare Opponents Are Fat Cats Masquerading As Small Business

The lead plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the National Federation for Independent Business (NFIB), is a highly partisan front group masquerading as the "nation's leading small business association," critics say. The nation's highest court is expected to rule on the federal health care law Thursday.

Bankrolled By Big Donors, Not Small Business

NFIB Ties to Right-Wing, ALEC

Who Represents Small Business?

Despite the NFIB's right-wing ties and possible financial support from big business interests, it purports to represent small businesses, and says it is challenging the Affordable Care Act because of the law's purported impact on the "small business community" (despite tax credits that help small business provide insurance for employees).

Another small business association, the Small Business Majority, conducted a poll showing that around half of small-business owners want to preserve the Affordable Care Act, while just 30 percent want to repeal it.

Who does the NFIB really represent?

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/156053

boutons_deux

07-07-2012, 06:13 AM

How Climate Change Is Worsened by Attacks on the Public Sector, Science and Regulation

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/156164

AGW deniers are really shills for the VRWC/1% who don't want any disruption in their control of wealth.

boutons_deux

07-16-2012, 08:54 AM

How A Koch-Affiliated Group Is Infiltrating State News Coverage in Mainstream Papers

he Franklin Center is a multimillion-dollar organization whose Web sites and affiliates provide free statehouse reporting to local newspapers and other media across the country. Funded by major conservative donors, staffed by veterans of groups affiliated with the Koch brothers, and maintaining a regular presence hosting right-wing events, the organization boasts of its ability to fill the void created by state newsroom layoffs.

The group's editors claim that their "professional journalism" work is walled off from the organization's more nakedly political operations and say that their "pro-taxpayer, pro-liberty, free market perspective" doesn't compromise their accuracy or independence. But many journalism professionals -- even newspaper editors who reprint the work of Franklin Center affiliates in their own pages -- speak warily of the group's ideological bent.

All but one of the IdahoReporter.com stories quoted Franklin Center parent the Idaho Freedom Foundation and highlighted its opposition to the bill -- which would have barred those under 18 from commercial tanning beds -- a restriction that 38 other states have already instituted because of the dangers of skin cancer and other health concerns.

A March 6 story even based its angle on the Freedom Foundation's opposition to the bill and touted its reasons in the lead paragraph.

"They covered the tanning bill because it is one of those pieces of legislation that impacts the free market,"

But the website's coverage of the tanning issue clearly figured into the Idaho Freedom Foundation's efforts to stop the measure and protect that industry's business owners,

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/156278

VRWC LYING, LYING, LYING.

jack sommerset

07-16-2012, 02:00 PM

I have been waiting for someone to report this story here for awhile now. It appears something is going on here, something not quit adding up if you know what I mean. God bless

Yonivore

07-16-2012, 02:03 PM

I have been waiting for someone to report this story here for awhile now. It appears something is going on here, something not quit adding up if you know what I mean. God bless
What story?

jack sommerset

07-16-2012, 02:17 PM

This story. Nice find by Boutons. God bless.

How A Koch-Affiliated Group Is Infiltrating State News Coverage in Mainstream Papers

he Franklin Center is a multimillion-dollar organization whose Web sites and affiliates provide free statehouse reporting to local newspapers and other media across the country. Funded by major conservative donors, staffed by veterans of groups affiliated with the Koch brothers, and maintaining a regular presence hosting right-wing events, the organization boasts of its ability to fill the void created by state newsroom layoffs.

The group's editors claim that their "professional journalism" work is walled off from the organization's more nakedly political operations and say that their "pro-taxpayer, pro-liberty, free market perspective" doesn't compromise their accuracy or independence. But many journalism professionals -- even newspaper editors who reprint the work of Franklin Center affiliates in their own pages -- speak warily of the group's ideological bent.

All but one of the IdahoReporter.com stories quoted Franklin Center parent the Idaho Freedom Foundation and highlighted its opposition to the bill -- which would have barred those under 18 from commercial tanning beds -- a restriction that 38 other states have already instituted because of the dangers of skin cancer and other health concerns.

A March 6 story even based its angle on the Freedom Foundation's opposition to the bill and touted its reasons in the lead paragraph.

"They covered the tanning bill because it is one of those pieces of legislation that impacts the free market,"

But the website's coverage of the tanning issue clearly figured into the Idaho Freedom Foundation's efforts to stop the measure and protect that industry's business owners,

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/156278

VRWC LYING, LYING, LYING.

boutons_deux

07-26-2012, 02:15 PM

ALEC, Tech and the Telecom Wars: Killing America's Telecom Utilities

One of most insidious, but least reported, campaigns that ALEC has undertaken is to further deregulate and privatize America's telecom system controlled by AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink. It has done this through a series of coordinated programs intended to end state regulatory oversight over the telecom industry, prohibit public broadband services and kill-off the telecom infrastructure, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

Worse, as we will discuss in upcoming articles, the plan to close the PSTN is also being played out at on the national level, where the phone companies have convinced the FCC's Technical Advisory Council to 'sunset' the PSTN into oblivion.

ALEC, working closely with AT&T and Verizon, creates model telecom laws that various elected officials, "water carriers," aggressively promote in state legislatures across the country. To accomplish this it teams up with a host of non-profit influence peddlers such as TechAmerica, one of the leading high-tech lobbying groups, or the Von Coaltion.

These efforts, combined with the policies and programs promoted through the FCC, determine the nation's telecommunications system. No wonder why the U.S. ranks 17th in broadband. Short-term gains have long-term goals. Today, regulatory capture is business as usual.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/alec-tech-and-the-telecom_b_1696830.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

boutons_deux

07-26-2012, 02:19 PM

Murdoch toilet paper doing the VRWC dirty work

The Wall Street Journal Covers Up ALEC Link To Anti-Union School Privatization Law

The Wall Street Journal this morning failed to report ties between the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and controversial "parent-trigger" legislation that would allow parents to take over and convert public schools to charter schools. They also failed to report that the Journal's parent company, News Corp, is a member of ALEC. The Journal's treatment of the legislation also cited no criticism of the proposal, which has been described as an effort "to manipulate parents into letting [the charter school lobby] privatize more public schools.

In the July 23 article, the Wall Street Journal reported on legislation that, according to the article, "empowers parents to take control of a school if enough of them sign petitions" and convert it into a charter school. But the article failed to mention that the proposal is based heavily on model legislation developed by ALEC, a controversial right-wing group that was recently exposed as a significant influence in the pro-charter movement in Georgia.

ALEC has also been behind such controversial legislation as voter ID laws and "Stand Your Ground" legislation. After the group's involvement in these efforts were made public, several of their corporate members left the organization. One of the corporations who remains a member of ALEC, however, is News Corp, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal. The article did not disclose the paper's relationship with ALEC and similarly did not disclose their relationship even while shielding ALEC from critics.

In addition to not disclosing their conflict of interest, the Journal reported on the claims of "advocates" of the legislation, but made no mention of opposition by several parent organizations, including parents who wanted their initial petition signatures in favor of that legislation revoked, because "many parents said that they had been misled about what the petitions called for" as well as "harassment by some signature gatherers." In addition, the nonprofit group Parents Across America pointed out:

According to Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and a public school parent in NYC, "The Parent Trigger was devised as an underhanded trick by the charter lobby to manipulate parents into letting them privatize more public schools. The fact that it has aroused huge controversy and has so far failed to achieve any results in California is one more reason legislators should be wary of passing it here in New York State. Parents want to be involved from the ground up in devising positive reforms to improve their children's schools, like class size reduction or offering a more well-rounded curriculum. They do not want their schools either closed, converted into charters or half their staff fired."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/24/the-wall-street-journal-covers-up-alec-link-to/187296

ALEC enabling shovelling of taxpayer dollars to corporate schools. Neither ALEC nor corporations GAF about education.

boutons_deux

07-26-2012, 02:22 PM

When Is a Phone Call Not a Phone Call? (When ALEC Says So)

SB 1161, co-authored by State Senator Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Steven Bradford (D-Inglewood), has passed the CA State Senate and will come before the Assembly later this summer.

The bill proposes eliminating statewide supervision of all Internet phone service (VOIP) -- until 2020.

As big telecom corporations like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner rebrand themselves as VOIP providers, the ability of California to hold them to basic service guarantees and fair business practices vanishes under this proposed legislation.

But the truth is, there is almost no regulation of Internet phone service (VOIP) being imposed. This is a preemptive strike to prevent future actions on behalf of California consumers, and state-by-state, consumers across the country.

The telecom industry is trying to dictate the terms of their own future regulation as the industry shifts to VOIP networks and make themselves exempt from requirements for telephone service to be affordable, available to everyone, safe, and reliable in an emergency.

This is not just a California issue. Senator Padilla's bill has origins in a model bill by ALEC, The right-wing American Legislative Council, where is it is called The Regulatory Modernization Act.

Similar bills have been brought to many state legislatures, passing in Georgia, Florida, Michigan, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Utah. However Kentucky, New York, Maine and New Jersey have fought and won against IP deregulation,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-rosenberg/when-is-a-phone-call-not-_b_1644103.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

boutons_deux

08-17-2012, 01:27 PM

Paul Ryan and the Long War on Democracy

The passage of major environmental, civil rights and campaign finance reform in the late 1960s and early 1970s sounded alarm bells in the corporate world as these democratic reforms came on the heels of those enacted during the New Deal. The response of corporate America to this spirited wave of public, political activity was to develop and fund a sustained and united countervailing political force to directly confront perceived radicalism and threats to cultural, political, patriarchal, racial and economic hierarchy.

The Powell Memo and the Growth of the Reactionary Right

The strategy and tactics to create a sustained and united countervailing political force was laid out in a memo written by Virginia corporate attorney and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice, Lewis Powell. Many see this memo as the chief catalyst for the paradigm shift in corporate strategy from bipartisanship to far-right acrimony. Written in 1971 at the request of his client at the time, the powerful US Chamber of Commerce, the Powell memo advised the Chamber that corporations needed to organize to stop what he referred to as an "attack on the American free enterprise system" (Powell Manifesto: "Attack of American Free Enterprise System").

The Powell memo went even further, urging corporations to jointly cough up substantial funds to pool for a sustained and coordinated political offensive. More significantly, Powell identified working through the judicial system and an "activist-minded Supreme Court" as essential to shaping "social, economic and political change" for corporate benefit and the assurance of a white, patriarchal hierarchy.

The Chamber of Commerce has always been a leading voice of the right, but since the '60s and '70s upheavals, the US Chamber of Commerce has become an increasingly well-funded and powerful voice on behalf of corporate interests in Washington and a deep-pocketed friend to reactionaries on the campaign trail. In fact, since 1997, the Chamber of Commerce has been deeply involved in political activism and is currently a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10936-paul-ryan-and-the-long-war-on-democracy

iow, the VRWC is real, documented, active, focused, relentless. well financed, and winning, unstoppably, the long war on democracy.

boutons_deux

08-17-2012, 02:35 PM

5 Ways Privatization Is Ruining America

A grand delusion has been planted in the minds of Americans, that privately run systems are more efficient and less costly than those in the public sector. Most of the evidence [3] points the other way.

Private initiatives generally produce mediocre or substandard results while experiencing the usual travails of unregulated capitalism -- higher prices, limited services, and lower wages for all but a few 'entrepreneurs.'

With perverse irony, the corruption and incompetence of private industry has actually furthered the cause of privatization, as the collapse of the financial markets has deprived state and local governments of necessary public funding, leading to an even greater call for private development.

As aptly expressed by a finance company chairman [4] in 2008, "Desperate government is our best customer."

The following are a few consequences of this pro-privatization desperation:

1. We spend lifetimes developing community assets, then give them away to a corporation for lifetimes to come.

The infrastructure in our cities has been built up over many years with the sweat and planning of farsighted citizens. Yet the dropoff in tax revenues has prompted careless decisions to balance budgets with big giveaways of public assets that should belong to our children and grandchildren.

In Chicago, the Skyway tollroad [5] was leased to a private company for 99 years, and, in a deal growing in infamy, the management of parking meters was sold to a Morgan Stanley group for 75 years. The proceeds have largely been spent.

The parking meter selloff led to a massive rate increase, while hurting small businesses whose potential customers are unwilling to pay the parking fees. Meanwhile, it has beenestimated [6] that the business partnership will make a profit of 80 cents per dollar of revenue, a profit margin [7] larger than that of any of the top 100 companies in the nation.

Indiana has also succumbed to the shiny lure of money up front, selling control of a toll road [5]for 75 years. Tolls have doubled over the first five years of the contract. Indianapolis [8] sold off its parking meters for 50 years, for the bargain up-front price of $32 million.

Atlanta's [9] 20-year contract with United Water Resources Inc. was canceled because of tainted water and poor service.

2. Insanity is repeating the same mistake over and over and expecting different results.

Numerous examples of failed or ineffective privatization schemes show us that hasty, unregulated initiatives simply don't work.

A Stanford University study [10] "reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts." A Department of Education study [11] found that "On average, charter middle schools that hold lotteries are neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement, behavior, and school progress."

Our private health care system has failed us. We have by far the most expensive system in the developed world. The cost of common surgeries [12] is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany.

Studies show that private prisons perform poorly [13] in numerous ways: prevention of intra-prison violence, jail conditions, rehabilitation efforts. The U.S. Department of Justice [14] offered this appraisal: "There is no evidence showing that private prisons will have a dramatic impact on how prisons operate. The promises of 20-percent savings in operational costs have simply not materialized."

A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found [15] that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. Various privatization abuses or failures [16] occurred in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

California's experiments [17] with roadway privatization resulted in cost overruns, public outrage, and a bankruptcy; equally disastrous was the state's foray into electric power privatization [18].

Across industries and occupations, according to the Project on Government Oversight [19], the federal government paid billions more on private contractors than the amounts needed to pay public employees for the same services.

3. Facts about privatization are hidden from the public.

Experience shows that under certain conditions, with sufficient monitoring and competition [20]and regulation [21], privatization can be effective. But too often vital information is kept from the public. The Illinois Public Interest Research Group [22] noted that Chicago's parking meter debacle might have been avoided if the city had followed common-sense principles rather than rushing a no-bid contract through the city council.

Studies by both the Congressional Research Service [23] and the Pepperdine Law Review [24] came to the same conclusion: any attempt at privatization must ensure a means of public accountability. Too often this need is ignored.

The Arizona prison system [25] is a prime example. For over 20 years the Department of Corrections avoided cost and quality reviews for its private prisons, then got around the problem by proposing a bill to eliminate the requirement for cost and quality reviews.

In Florida, abuses [26] by the South Florida Preparatory Christian Academy went on for years without regulation or oversight, with hundreds of learning-disabled schoolchildren crammed into strip mall spaces where 20-something 'teachers' showed movies to pass the time.

In Philadelphia [27], an announcement of a $38 million charter school plan in May turned into a $139 million plan by July.

In Michigan, the low-income [28] community of Muskegon Heights became the first American city [27]to surrender its entire school district to a charter school company. Details of the contract with Mosaica were not available [29] to the public for some time after the deal was made. Butdata [30] from the Michigan Department of Education revealed that Mosaica performed better than only 13% of the schools in the state of Michigan.

Also in Michigan, an investigation [31] of administrative salaries elicited this response from charter contractor National Heritage Academies: "As a private company, NHA does not provide information on salaries for its employees."

Education writer Danny Weil [32] summarizes the charter school secrecy: "The fact is that most discussions of charters and vouchers are not done through legally mandated public hearings under law, but in back rooms or over expensive dinners, where business elites and Wall Street interests are the shot-callers in a secret parliament of moneyed interests."

Beyond prisons and schools, how many Americans know about the proposal [5] for the privatization of Amtrak, which would, according to West Virginia Representative Nick Rahall, "cripple Main Street by auctioning off Amtrak's assets to Wall Street." Or the proposal to sell off the nation's air traffic control system? Or the sale of federal land in the west? Or the sale of the nation's gold reserves, an idea that an Obama administration official referred to as "one level of crazy away from selling Mount Rushmore"?

4. Privatizers have suggested that teachers and union members are communists.

Part of the grand delusion inflicted on American citizens is that public employees and union workers are greedy good-for-nothings, enjoying benefits that average private sector workers are denied. The implication, of course, is that low-wage jobs with meager benefits should be the standard for all wage-earners.

The myth is propagated through right-wing organizations with roots in the John Birch Society [33], one of whose founding members was Fred Koch, also the founder of Koch Industries. To them, public schools are socialist or communist. Explained Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast with regard to private school vouchers in 1997, "we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime."

But the facts show, first of all, that government and union workers are not overpaid. According to the Census Bureau [34], state and local government employees make up 14.5% of the U.S. workforce and receive 14.3% of the total compensation. Union members make up about 12% of the workforce, but their total pay [35] amounts to just 9.5% of adjusted gross income [36] as reported to the IRS.

The facts also strongly suggest that wage stability is fostered by the lower turnover rate and higher incidence of union membership in government. The supportive environment that right-wingers call 'socialism' helps to sustain living wages for millions of families. The private sector, on the other hand, is characterized by severe wage inequality. Whereas the average private sector salary is similar to that of a state or local government worker, the MEDIAN [37]U.S. worker salary is almost $14,000 less, at $26,363. While corporate executives and financial workers (about one-half of 1% [38] of the workforce) make multi-million dollar salaries, millions of private company workers toil as food servers, clerks, medical workers, and domestic help at below-average pay.

5. Privatization often creates an "incentive to fail."

Privatized services are structured for profit rather than for the general good. A by-product of the profit motive is that some people will lose out along the way, and parts of the societal structure will fail in order to benefit investors.

This is evident in the privatized prison system, which relies on a decreasing adherence to the law to ensure its own success. Corrections Corporation of America [39] has offered to run the prison system in any state willing to guarantee that jails stay 90% full. "This is where it gets creepy," says Business Insider's [40] Joe Weisenthal, "because as an investor you're pulling for scenarios where more people are put in jail."

The incentive to fail was also apparent in road privatization deals [41] in California and Virginia, where 'non-compete' clauses prevented local municipalities from repairing any roads that might compete with a privatized tollroad. In Virginia, the tollway manager even demanded reimbursement from the state for excessive carpooling, which would cut into its profits.

The list goes on. The Chicago parking meter [42] deal requires compensation if the city wishes to close a street for a parade. The Indiana tollroad deal [5] demanded reimbursement when the state waived tolls for safety reasons during a flood.

Plans to privatize the Post Office have created a massive incentive to fail [43] through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which requires the USPS to pre-pay the health care benefits of all employees for the next 75 years, even those who aren't born yet. This outlandish requirement is causing a well-run public service to default [44] on its loans for the first time.

Also set up to fail are students enrolled in for-profit colleges [45], which get up to 90 percent [46] of their revenue from U.S. taxpayers. Less incentive remains for the schools after tuition is received, as evidenced by the fact that more than half [47] of the students enrolled in these colleges in 2008-9 left without a degree or diploma.

And then we have our littler students, set up to fail [32] by private school advocates in Wisconsin who argue that a requirement for playgrounds in new elementary schools "significantly limit[s] parent's educational choice in Milwaukee."

In too many cases, privatization means success for a few and failure for the community being served. Unless success can be defined as a corporate logo carved into the side of Mount Rushmore.

http://www.alternet.org/print/economy/5-ways-privatization-ruining-america

Privatization is how the VRWC is sucking every possible tax dollar into their pockets. And their providing, as capitalism does, the shittiest possible products and services for the highest possible price, and of course, without compeitition and with long-term, lock-in contracts.

boutons_deux

09-18-2012, 05:16 AM

Colleges Replaced by Prison? Five Curses of Privatization

With the breakdown of the private financial industry, and with the decision by corporations to stop meeting their tax responsibilities, and with the dramatic surge in tax haven abuse, less tax revenue is available to state and local governments. Deprived of funding, governments are forced to consider privatization schemes to balance their budgets. But any such scheme comes with adversity and pain.

The futility of diverting public funds into the hands of profitseekers has been well-documented. Here are a few of the gathering curses of privatization.

1. Public treasures sold off for short-term budget needs

In his 2006 budget President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states. This followed attempts by both the Reagan Administration and Clinton-era Republicans to privatize public land.

Now, with continuing budget shortfalls, the Cato Institute and other libertarian groups are pressing for property deals, with the justification that land should be "allocated to the highest-value use," presumably making it available to the highest bidder for consumption purposes.

That brings us to Paul Ryan's dubiously-named Path to Prosperity, which proposes to sell millions of acres of "unneeded federal land" and billions of dollars worth of federal assets. He's starting in his own backyard: the state of Wisconsin is considering the sale of DNR land for some ready cash. The Path to Prosperity is based in part on Republican Jason Chaffetz' "Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2011," which would unload millions of acres of land in America's west. Worse yet is Rep. Cliff Stearns' perplexing recommendation to "sell off some of our national parks." Mitt Romney also chimed in, admitting that he didn't know "what the purpose is" of public lands.

2. Infrastructure decaying in the hands of profit-seekers

David Cay Johnston describes the deteriorating state of America's infrastructure, with grids and pipelines neglected by monopolistic industries that cut costs rather than provide maintenance. Meanwhile, they achieve profit margins of over 50%, eight times the corporate average.

The government agencies that are usually blamed for the crumbling infrastructure are often staffed with regulators from the industries they're expected to monitor. If and when accidents happen, the companies responsible can plead hardship and demand rate increases from the public.

It's getting worse as corporations become fewer and more powerful. Almost every American adult can relate to the monopolistic phone and Internet industry that controls our public airwaves. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, South Korea has Internet speeds up to 200 times faster than the average speed in the U.S., at about half the cost. Free-market enterprise is simply not working in the U.S. telecommunications industry.

3. Water no longer available for the common good

According to Food and Water Watch, "The finance industry is promoting water privatization as a way to help local governments pay for budget shortfalls and improvement projects." The chief economist of Citigroup concurred: "I expect to see a globally integrated market for fresh water within 25 to 30 years."

But while profits average 12 to 15 percent per year, water and sewer utility rates typically rise 33 to 63 percent, and short-term business ventures are subject to abandonment after just a few years. Desperate local governments often regret their hasty decisions. A Century Foundation report concluded that with privatization "Competition is hard to create and maintain, cost savings (if any) from privatization erode over time, and service quality often suffers."

Numerous examples of water privatization abuse have been documented. In Pennsylvania and California, the American Water Company took over towns and raised rates by 70% or more. In Atlanta, United Water Services demanded more money from the city while prompting federal complaints about water quality. Felton, California privatized its water and received a 74 percent proposed rate increase over three years. Coatesville, Pennsylvania saw an 85 percent increase. Shell owns groundwater rights in Colorado, oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is buying up the water in drought-stricken Texas, and water in Alaska is being pumped into tankers and sold in the Middle East.

In another ominous note for the future, the House passed the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011, which would deny the Environmental Protection Agency the right to enforce the Clean Water Act. Our water is getting dirtier and scarcer. But a hedge fund advisor put a capitalist spin on it, noting the "serious profit opportunities" in water. "If you play it right," he added, "the results of this impending water crisis can be very good."

4. Our children put at risk with unproven educational methods

The few charter schools with good reviews have functioned with limited enrollments, retention policies favoring likely-to-succeed individuals, and an absence of special needs students. This violates a precept underscored by Chief Justice Warren in Brown vs. the Board of Education: "Education...is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." Charters aren't even close to that. The Louisiana Believes project, for example, which will eventually be the country's most extensive voucher system, has only 5,000 slots available for about 380,000 eligible students.

But corporations are rushing headlong into this lucrative new market anyway, while paying little heed to the body of research confirming their relative ineffectiveness. This includes studies from Stanford University, the Department of Education, Johns Hopkins University, and the RAND Corporation.

In addition to their poor performance, charters are more segregated, less likely to accept students with disabilities, and conducive to a widening of the racial and rich-poor education gaps.

Still, despite all the damning evidence, the charter myth persists in the American mind. And it's getting worse. The newest blind rush into privatization heralds 'virtual' schools, which offer lessons to homebound kids on their computers, even at the K-12 level. In what seems obvious to most of us, virtual schools don't work for children. A 2009 Department of Education study on blended online and face-to-face instruction reported results that were "significantly positive for undergraduate and other older learners but not for K-12 students."

A lengthy New York Times investigation of one of K12 Inc's online schools concluded that "By almost every educational measure, the Agora Cyber Charter School is failing. Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll."

5. Colleges gradually being replaced with prisons

America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and despite a falling violent crime rate, more people are going to jail. As explained by Michelle Alexander, "federal funding flows to those agencies that increase dramatically the volume of drug arrests, not the agencies most successful in bringing down the bosses."

So as education funding drops again this year in most of the states, spending on prisons increases. The U.S. spends over two times as much per prisoner as per public school student. California spends more on prisons than it does on higher education.

The profit motive is hastening prison privatization. Quickly. From 1990 to 2009, the number of prisoners in private facilities increased by more than 1600%, from about 7,000 to over 125,000 inmates. Corrections Corporation of America recently offered to run the prison system in any state willing to guarantee that jails stay 90% full.

Yet studies show that private prisons perform poorly in numerous ways: prevention of intra-prison violence, jail conditions, rehabilitation efforts. A 10-month investigation by the New York Times concluded that "the state's halfway houses have mutated into a shadow corrections network, where drugs, gang activity and violence, including sexual assaults, often go unchecked." Even so, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie insisted that "Places like this are to be celebrated."

The U.S. Department of Justice offered this appraisal: "There is no evidence showing that private prisons will have a dramatic impact on how prisons operate. The promises of 20-percent savings in operational costs have simply not materialized."

Prisons, like public land and utilities and schools, are up for sale in America. Essential public needs are fast becoming the newest products on the market.

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17509-colleges-replaced-by-prison-five-curses-of-privatization

boutons_deux

09-28-2012, 12:51 PM

ALEC's (Corporate) Love Affair with Fracking

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Just one look at the cover of the brochure for this year's annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) reveals where some of the corporate bill mill's loyalties lie: with the “natural” gas industry. The full-page ad on the brochure's cover -- paid for by the American Gas Association, a trade group for gas utilities companies -- identifies just one of the corporate underwriters that litter the pages of the conference booklet shared with all of the elected representatives and unelected corporate lobbyists who attended the convention at the luxurious Grand America resort. (To see a pdf of the ad, which appeared in a key spot on the inside cover check downloads below.)

The conference brochure listed some 15 corporations that stand to benefit from the expansion of fracking, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries.

Through ALEC, corporate lobbyists have an equal vote with state legislators on ALEC “model” bills, that are pushed in states across the nation. Often the bills were drafted by the corporate lobbyists before being approved by ALEC "task forces." ALEC's legislative agenda includes efforts to bar taxes on windfall profits of energy companies and numerous bills that would make it harder to regulate carbon or address global climate changes, as well as bills that would make it harder to hold these and other companies accountable when Americans are killed or injured as a result of a corporation's product or practices in regulated industries.

Resolution against taxing windfall profits ALEC's corporate wish list also includes legislation that creates loopholes specifically for companies engaged in the extraction of oil and gas through the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”

As companies have dramatically expanded fracking operations over the past few years, the industry has found an eager companion in ALEC to help facilitate the rush to industrialize land in many rural communities but with few rules to address the problems endemic to fracking. Last December, a "model" bill was approved through ALEC and then pushed in some states that would ensure that a loophole from rules of the Clean Water Act that was created for the industry at the federal level is effectively in place at the state level, along with other initiatives that benefit the oil and gas industry in the states.

Fracking has come under heightened scrutiny over the past year as the public has learned more about the toxic chemicals in fracking fluid, the vast quantities of drinkable water that fracking uses and leaves behind as waste, as well as links between fracking and the contamination of wells and other health and environmental ills.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/09/11698/cmd-special-report-alecs-corporate-love-affair-fracking

boutons_deux

09-28-2012, 01:18 PM

Bill Moyers Exposes the Stranglehold the Corporate & Right-Wing Alliance Has on Our Democracy

This week, Moyers & Company reports on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council . A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge. Using interviews, documents, and field reporting, the episode explores ALEC’s self-serving machine at work, acting in a way one Wisconsin politician describes as “a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests.” In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who’s behind it. “All of us here are very familiar with ALEC and the influence that ALEC has with many of the [legislative] members,” says Arizona State Senator Steve Farley. “Corporations have the right to present their arguments, but they don’t have the right to do it secretly.”

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/bill-moyers-exposes-stranglehold-corporate-right-wing?paging=off

boutons_deux

09-28-2012, 01:22 PM

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: Drone Strikes on People With AIDS?

Right now, in Leesburg, Va., the office of the U.S. Trade Representative is negotiating a so-called "trade agreement" -- the "Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement" -- that could put the lives of millions of innocent civilians at risk. The process is secret: USTR refuses to publish a draft negotiating text, so any American who isn't cleared by USTR to see the text can't say for sure exactly what USTR is doing right now.

I put the phrase "trade agreement" in quotation marks because calling these deals "trade agreements" is fundamentally misleading for many people. The phrase "trade agreement" suggests to some that governments are only talking about "lowering barriers to trade." If you call it a "trade agreement," some people might think, "That doesn't concern me very much. I'll go check to see if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are still married instead." If you called it "an agreement to raise drug prices so people you care about can't get life-saving medicines," more people might think, "I'd better pay attention to this. I can catch up with Brangelina later."

In an agreement that USTR hopes will eventually cover 40 percent of the world's population, the negotiating position of USTR has reneged on previous commitments the U.S. government has made to promote the ability of governments to pursue public health goals in "trade agreements" rather than undermining the ability of governments to pursue public health goals.

And regardless of anything else, that fact alone should be a national scandal. When, at long last, you nail acknowledgement of a fundamental human right to the wall, it should stay nailed there. We shouldn't have to fight USTR on access to essential medicines every time they negotiate a new "trade deal." USTR should cry uncle on this for all time, no matter how much money brand-name drug companies spend on lobbying and political campaigns.

In August 2012, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders noted that the 19th International AIDS Conference "illuminated the profound contradiction" between the U.S. government's goal of "an AIDS-free generation" and "some of the U.S. government's trade policies." MSF noted the need to make antiretroviral therapy available to "more than 7 million people still in need of urgent treatment." To achieve this, MSF said, "antiretroviral drugs need to be available at affordable prices." But, MSF said, USTR is "promoting restrictive trade policies that would make it much harder for patients, governments and treatment providers like MSF to access price-lowering generic drugs."

Leaked drafts of the TPP agreement, MSF said, "outline U.S. aggressive intellectual property demands that that could severely restrict access to affordable, life-saving medicines for millions of people... [T]he U.S. is asking countries to create new, enhanced and longer patent and data monopoly protections for multinational pharmaceutical companies so they can keep competitors out of the market and charge higher prices for longer."

Affordable generic medicines have played a crucial role in expanding access to treatment, MSF noted. But:

demand for newer HIV treatments is growing fast... Access to these ARV drugs will largely be contingent on the same price-busting generic competition responsible for the first wave of AIDS treatment scale up. The TPP's provisions, aimed at creating stronger and longer monopolies and making it more difficult to use legal tools to promote access to generics, could cut off access to these lifesaving medicines for millions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement_b_1871710.html

boutons_deux

09-28-2012, 02:48 PM

SCOTUS Preview Part II: Dividing And Conquering Workers

Ordinary workers and consumers stand on a profoundly uneven playing field when they have to bring well-moneyed corporations to court. While major companies can employ armies of lawyers to protect their interests, middle class Americans rarely have the funds to hire even a single attorney who possesses the same credentials and experience as a major law firm’s army. Indeed, an ordinary family that has just been cheated out of a few hundred or thousand dollars may quickly discover that the cost of hiring any lawyer to recover that money exceeds what they are likely to recover if they win their lawsuit.

For this reason, the law often allows multiple plaintiffs who have suffered similar injuries from the same company to unite together in order to provide a unified front against wealthy corporations. The most common example of this strength in numbers is a class action lawsuit. While few lawyers would be eager to represent a consumer who lost $1000 because of a company’s defective product, many of the best lawyers will eagerly represent a class of tens of thousands of plaintiffs who all suffered the same relatively low-dollar injury. These lawyers normally work on a contingency fee, meaning that they are paid a percentage of the class of plaintiffs’ total winnings — so the bigger the money at stake, the more equal the fight between the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the defendant’s army.

Last year, however, the Supreme Court enabled companies to force consumers to sign away their ability to bring class actions as a condition of receiving a cell phone or a credit card or potentially any other good or service. As a result, it is likely that consumer class actions will eventually become nearly nonexistent, and consumers will lose one of their most important tools in leveling the playing field between them and big business.

This term, the Supreme Court could strike a similar blow against workers. Many federal worker protection laws, including laws guaranteeing a minimum wage, overtime pay and laws preventing discrimination against women and older workers, permit something known as a “collective action” suit. These lawsuits, which are similar to class actions, allow multiple workers who have been underpaid or otherwise mistreated by their employers to join together under a single suit, thus giving them the same strength in numbers that class action plaintiffs enjoy. Yet in Genesis HealthCare Corp. v. Symczyk, the justices could give corporate America a cheap and easy escape valve every time an employer is subject to such a suit.

Collective action suits work in multiple phases. Early on, a single worker must step forward and charge the company with violating federal worker protection law. At a later stage, the law then allows other workers to be joined to the same suit to form the collective action. What happened in Symczyk is that during the intermediate phase of this lawsuit — after the single worker stepped forward but before the other workers could join the suit — the defendant offered to buy off the single worker while giving nothing to the others. Worse, the corporate defendant claims that, because they offered “complete relief” to the single worker, the law requires the worker to take it even if that will kill the collective action suits benefiting all the other workers.

So, the company in Symczyk wants to be able to pick off plaintiffs one at a time, before a collective action can fully form, and thus strip their employees of their ability to bring a collective action in the first place. If the Supreme Court gives the company this power, it will effectively destroy workers’ ability to join collectively against any company smart enough to pay off as few as one of them.

In light of the conservative justices’ recent decision against class actions, workers have every reason to be pessimistic about this outcome of this case.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/28/926531/scotus-preview-part-ii-dividing-and-conquering-workers/

boutons_deux

09-29-2012, 11:25 AM

The TPP: A Quiet Coup for the Investor Class

It would be a relief to report with any certainty that the negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a massive proposed free-trade zone spanning the Pacific Ocean and all four hemispheres—are definitely empowering corporations to the detriment of workers, the environment, and sovereignty throughout the region. Unfortunately, the secretive and opaque character of the negotiations has made it difficult to report much of anything about them.

agreement “have expressed an intent to comprehensively reduce barriers in goods, services, and agricultural trade as well as rules and disciplines on a wide range of topics” to unprecedented levels. Yet despite these grandiose ambitions, details of the negotiations and drafts of the text have been purposefully withheld from Congress and American citizens.

The struggle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership reveals a disturbing trend in American politics. The much discussed Citizens United ruling granting corporations personhood has given way to a trade negotiation process in which corporations are granted more rights than American citizens, their elected representatives, or foreign governments impacted by the deal. That trade negotiations with such an immense potential impact on numerous sectors of the American economy have been conducted in secret is troubling enough. To consider that those negotiating the treaty have willfully ignored experts and elected representatives in favor of corporate interests calls into question the sustainability of American democracy.

http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_tpp_a_quiet_coup_for_the_investor_class

The 1% acts, the 99%, the environment, everything gets screwed except the wealth of the 1%.

boutons_deux

10-02-2012, 06:30 PM

The Repugs deny the Dems any legitimacy, and the Repugs also deny the judicial any legitimacy as a check on Repugs.

G.O.P. Aims to Remake Florida Supreme Court

MIAMI - In a bid to remake Florida's judiciary, Republicans are asking voters to oust three state Supreme Court justices and give the legislature greater power over Supreme Court appointments and judicial rules of procedure.

The campaign against the justices by Republican state party officials, a "super PAC" financed by the conservative Koch brothers and a grass-roots group is similar to the successful push by conservative activists in Iowa during the 2010 election. Voters there defeated three Iowa Supreme Court justices over a ruling that allowed same-sex marriage in the state. A fourth Iowa justice who also ruled in the case is being targeted for ouster this year.

In Florida, the issue is not same-sex marriage but another politically divisive matter: President Obama's health care law. In a 2010 ruling, the Florida Supreme Court removed from the ballot a nonbinding amendment allowing Floridians to refuse to buy mandatory health insurance. The justices ruled that the required ballot summary contained "misleading and ambiguous language" and asked the legislature to fix it. Lawmakers did, and it is back on the ballot this year.

The initial ruling was one of several, including decisions on redistricting and property taxes and going back to 2000, the ballot recount in Bush v. Gore, that have displeased conservatives in the state and in the Republican-dominated Legislature, which has tried since then to exert greater control over the court.

"I am very, very stressed at the entire circumstance," said Justice R. Fred Lewis, one of the three judges targeted in the campaign. "What is going on now is much larger than any one individual. This is a full-frontal attack - that had been in the weeds before - on a fair and impartial judicial system, which is the cornerstone and bedrock of our democracy."

The other two justices being targeted are Peggy A. Quince and Barbara J. Pariente. Mr. Lewis and Ms. Pariente were named by the Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat. Ms. Quince was chosen by both Mr. Chiles and former Gov. Jeb Bush during the 1998 transition. No justice has ever lost a retention battle. All three of these justices were returned to the bench in 2000 and again in 2006.
This year, the campaign in Florida is considerably more intense and organized. For the first time, the Florida Republican Party's executive board announced last week it would oppose the retention of the three justices because of their extensive "judicial activism." It singled out a 2003 case in which the court reversed the conviction of a man who tied a woman to a tree and set her on fire, and ordered a retrial on technical grounds. The United States Supreme Court reversed the decision, saying the justices had applied the wrong standard, and remanded the case to the Florida court. Ultimately, the conviction was affirmed, and the man remains on death row. By announcing its opposition to the three justices, the Republican Party avoids clashing with a law that prevents political parties from endorsing judicial candidates. In its statement, the party said the justices were "too extreme not just for Florida, but for America, too.""I think it's a mistake for a party, as a party, to state a position that a certain judge should be thrown out, because then you are introducing partisanship into a system that is supposed to be nonpartisan," said Bob Martinez, a prominent Republican lawyer who was once the United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida. "And when you have elected officials, on the right or left, criticizing judges publicly it can become very dangerous and it can undermine the public's faith in the judiciary."http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/us/republican-party-aims-to-remake-florida-supreme-court.xml?f=19

boutons_deux

10-02-2012, 06:52 PM

Same VRWC in UK
A rightwing insurrection is usurping our democracy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/01/rightwing-insurrection-usurps-democracy

boutons_deux

10-29-2012, 02:26 PM

Corporate Slush Fund Pays for State Lawmakers’ Junkets
Corporate backers of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have funneled more than an estimated $4 million in gifts to state legislators for travel, hotel rooms, and meals at posh resorts since 2006, according to estimates based on internal ALEC records. The corporate lobby front group is already facing an Internal Revenue Service review of claims that it violated federal law by posing as a charity.

A report (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=71NHkSdjHvX1MRwscf7uAVFAyiyGuuQL) by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Common Cause, and DBA Press says hundreds of “scholarships” provided to lawmakers by ALEC were actually expense-paid junkets to resorts where ALEC hosted meetings to advance its pro-corporate legislative agenda. The report reflects ALEC’s complete record of travel-related payments to lawmakers from 2006 through 2008, when the group was spending about $600,000 annually on the trips, and partial data for the years since then, a period when ALEC has increased its membership by several hundred legislators.

“ALEC has created a scheme to funnel money from corporations to pay for legislators’ trips, amounting to a million dollar-plus slush fund that leaves constituents in the dark about who is really footing the bills for their representatives,” the report said.
The top ten corporate donors to the ALEC scholarship fund were:

https://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/first_chart_alec-1.jpg

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/10/26-2

United Corporations of America, owning and operating America for profit.

boutons_deux

10-30-2012, 05:20 AM

Queen "You People" Ann, education reformer/policy expert, shilling for corporate takeover of public schools, wealth-sucking taxpayer dollars

Ann Romney: We Need To ‘Throw Out’ The Public Education System (http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/10/29/1103081/ann-romney-throw-out-education/)
I’ve been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people’s lives if they don’t get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers’ unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system.

Mitt Romney has made the questionable boast (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/presidential-debate-live-blog-and-fact-check/) that as governor of Massachusetts, he made the state’s public schools number one in the nation. Those schools — with great union teachers — show that standards and certification are part of the solution, not the problem.

http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/10/29/1103081/ann-romney-throw-out-education/

boutons_deux

11-05-2012, 11:40 AM

Bishop Gecko's (1%'s) 10 guiding principles
1. Corporations are the basic units of society. Corporations are people, and the overriding purpose of an economy is to maximize corporate profits. When profits are maximized, the economy grows fastest. This growth benefits everyone in the form greater output, better products and services, and higher share prices.

2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. If workers do not contribute to that goal, they should be fired. If they cannot then find other work that helps maximize profits in another company, their wages must be too high, and they must therefore accept steadily lower wages until they find a job.

3. All factors of production – capital, physical plant and equipment, workers – are fungible and should be treated the same. Any that fail to deliver high competitive returns should be replaced or discarded. This keeps an economy efficient. Fairness is and should be irrelevant.

4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. They should not be used as excuses to constrain the pursuit of profits through regulation.

5. Individual worth depends on net worth — how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. Any person with enough intelligence and ambition can make a fortune. Failure to do so is sign of moral and intellectual inferiority.

6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. They should not receive food stamps, Medicaid (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Medicaid), or any other form of social subsidy. Coddling leads to a weaker society and a weaker economy.

7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. It is the right and responsibility of individuals and corporations to exploit every tax loophole they (and their tax attorneys) can find in order to pay the lowest taxes possible.

8. Politics is a game whose only purpose is to win. Any means used to win the game is legitimate even if it involves lying and cheating, as long as it gains more supporters than it loses.

9. Democracy is dangerous because it is forever vulnerable to the votes of a majority intent on capturing the wealth of the successful minority, on whom the economy depends. The rich must therefore do whatever is necessary to prevent the majority from exercising its will, including spending large sums of money on lobbyists and political campaigns. The most virtuous among the rich will go a step further and run for president.

10. The three most important aspects of life are family, religion, and money. Patriotism is a matter of guarding our economy from unfair traders and undocumented immigrants, rather than joining together for the common good. We owe nothing to one another as citizens of the same society.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2012/1105/Mitt-Romney-s-10-guiding-principles?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feeds%2Fcsm+%28Christian+Scie nce+Monitor+|+All+Stories%29

boutons_deux

12-06-2012, 11:43 AM

How the 1%/VRWC/UCA/conservatives have fucked the 99% hard while enriching themselves.

The Archeology of Decline

Debtpocalypse and the Hollowing Out of America

Think of it as the archeology of decline, or a tale of two worlds. As a long generation of austerity politics hollowed out the heartland, the quants and traders and financial wizards of Wall Street gobbled up ever more of the nation's resources. It was another Great Migration -- instead of people, though, trillions of dollars were being sucked out of industrial America and turned into “financial instruments” and new, exotic forms of wealth. If blue-collar Americans were the particular victims here, then high finance is what consumed them. Now, it promises to consume the rest of us.
In the 1980s, when Jack Welch, soon to be known as “Neutron Jack” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch) for his ruthlessness, became CEO of General Electric, he set out to raise the company’s stock price by gutting the workforce. It only took him six years, but imagine what it was like in Schenectady, New York, which lost 22,000 jobs; Louisville, Kentucky, where 13,000 fewer people made appliances; Evendale, Ohio, where 12,000 no longer made lights and light fixtures; Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where 8,000 plastics makers lost their jobs; and Erie, Pennsylvania, where 6,000 locomotive workers got green slips.
For the first time (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-less-educated-whites-in-us-is-shrinking.html) in American history, the life expectancy of white people, men and women, has actually dropped. Life spans for the least educated, in particular, have fallen by about four years since 1990. The steepest decline: white women lacking a high school diploma. They, on average, lost five years of life, while white men lacking a diploma lost three years.
Similarly, between 1985 and 2010, American women fell from 14thto 41st place in the United Nation’s ranking of international life expectancy. (Among developed countries, American women now rank last.) Whatever combination of factors produced this social statistic, it may be the rawest measure of a society in the throes of economic anorexia.

One other marker of this eerie story of a developed nation undergoing underdevelopmentand a striking reproach to a cherished national faith: for the first time since the Great Depression, the social mobility of Americans is moving in reverse (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/us/harder-for-americans-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html). In every decade from the 1970s on, fewer people have been able to move up the income ladder than in the previous 10 years. Now Americans in their thirties earn 12% less on average than their parents’ generation at the same age. Danes, Norwegians, Finns, Canadians, Swedes, Germans, and the French now all enjoy higher rates of upward mobility than Americans. Remarkably, 42% of American men raised in the bottom one-fifth income cohort remain there for life, as compared to 25% in Denmark and 30% in notoriously class-stratified Great Britain.

This time, it depends on liquidating the assets of the old one or shipping them abroad to reward speculation in “fictitious capital.” Rates of U.S. investment in new plants, technology, and research and development began declining during the 1970s, a fall-off that only accelerated in the gilded 1980s. Manufacturing, which accounted for nearly 30% of the economy after the Second World War, had dropped (http://prospect.org/article/once-made-usa) to just over 10% by 2011. Since the turn of the millennium alone, 3.5 million more manufacturing jobs have vanished and 42,000 manufacturing plants were shuttered.

Nor are we simply witnessing the passing away of relics of the nineteenth century. Today, only one (http://prospect.org/article/politics-industrial-renaissance-0) American company is among the top ten in the solar power industry and the U.S. accounts for a mere 5.6% of world production of photovoltaic cells. Only GE is among the top ten companies in wind energy. In 2007, a mere 8% of all new semi-conductor plants under construction globally were located in the U.S. Of the 1.2 billion cell phones sold in 2009, none were made in the U.S. The share of semi-conductors, steel, cars, and machine tools made in America has declined precipitously just in the last decade. Much high-end engineering design and R&D work has been offshored. Now, there are more people dealing cards in casinos than running lathes, and almost three times as many security guards as machinists.

Meanwhile, for more than a quarter of a century the fastest growing part of the economy has been the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector. Between 1980 and 2005, profits in the financial sector increased by 800% (http://www.amazon.com/dp/%20030747660X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20), more than three times the growth in non-financial sectors.
In those years, new creations of financial ingenuity, rare or never seen before, bred like rabbits. In the early 1990s, for example, there were a couple of hundred hedge funds; by 2007, 10,000 of them. A whole new species of mortgage broker roamed the land, supplanting old-style savings and loan or regional banks. Fifty thousand mortgage brokerages employed 400,000 brokers (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199691924/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20), more than the whole U.S. textile industry. A hedge fund manager put it bluntly (http://books.google.com/books?id=ZLSka4fcmSMC&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+money+that%E2%80%99s+made+from+man ufacturing+stuff+is+a+pittance+in+comparison+to+th e+amount+of+money+made+from+shuffling+money+around .%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=79TxQnakkA&sig=m2pvAmGi-DRXyi47t-OvQe2XZSY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aIi3UIf2LJCx0QGY1oHYDw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CThe%20money%20that%E2%80%99s%20made%20f rom%20manufacturing%20stuff%20is%20a%20pittance%20 in%20comparison%20to%20the%20amount%20of%20money%2 0made%20from%20shuffling%20money%20around.%E2%80%9 D&f=false), “The money that’s made from manufacturing stuff is a pittance in comparison to the amount of money made from shuffling money around.”

For too long, these two phenomena -- the eviscerating of industry and the supersizing of high finance -- have been treated as if they had nothing much to do with each other, but were simply occurring coincidentally.
For some long time now, our political economy has been driven by investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, real estate developers, insurance goliaths, and a whole menagerie of ancillary enterprises that service them. But high times in FIRE land have depended on the downward mobility of working people and the poor, cut adrift from more secure industrial havens and increasingly from the lifelines of public support. They have been living instead in the “pit of austerity.” Soon many more of us will join them.http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175623/tomgram%3A_steve_fraser%2C_the_national_museum_of_ industrial_homicide/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=e255faedf6-TD_Fraser12_2_2012&utm_medium=email

boutons_deux

12-06-2012, 12:13 PM

The net effect of the UCA/VRWC War on Employees

The first chart shows that big American companies now have the highest profit margins in history.

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/50ba6d476bb3f7ea5000000e-906-679/corporate-profit-margins.png?maxX=401&maxY=300

The second chart shows that the companies are now paying the lowest wages in history as a percent of the economy.

http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/50ba6e1769bedd752600001f-902-677/wages-to-gdp.png

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/506c40cbeab8eacd1b000003-971-733/income-inequality.png

http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-need-to-share-more-profits-with-employees-2012-12

boutons_deux

12-10-2012, 03:34 PM

The Memo That Started a Corporate Heist of Our Government

Lewis Powell was a corporate attorney from Virginia who was asked by his friend at the US Chamber of Commerce to write a secret strategy memorandum for the chamber in 1971.

Two months later, Richard Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court of the United States, where he served a number of years.

The memo became a rallying cry among corporate executives for how to reassert corporate dominance over the American economy and its government, which it had lost during the era of the New Deal. The memo openly stated that corporations should punish their political enemies and should seek political power through both the law and politics.

It encouraged challenges to what it saw as left-wing activities by people such as Ralph Nader and US academics.

By 1978, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable defeated pro-labor law reforms through a filibuster by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, which signaled the demise of organized labor as a significant opponent of organized money.

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/thom-hartmann-memo-started-corporate-heist-our-government?paging=off

boutons_deux

12-11-2012, 12:56 PM

For all you Koch-suckers
(http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/how-the-koch-brothers-manipulate-climate-change-studies.html)
How the Koch Brothers Manipulate Climate Change Studies (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/how-the-koch-brothers-manipulate-climate-change-studies.html)

The Koch brothers, Charles and David, are the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, and two of the most obstinate climate change deniers out there.

It actually turns out that they will stop at nothing to try and dirty the reputation of climate science, even going as far as fixing renewable energy studies to provide proof to their cause.

Even when Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist, reported earlier in the year that his 3 year long, Koch-funded investigation proved that global warming did exist, that human activity was largely responsible, and that it is having a far worse effect on the planet than commonly thought; the Koch’s just ignore the results and focused on another study that shows climate change is fake.

Two of the Koch brothers most powerful anti-climate science weapons, are the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heartland Institute, both funded by Koch organisations, and both renowned for their anti-climate change stances.

Under the direction of the Koch brothers ALEC, a lobby group, played a key role in derailing plans to setup the Midwest Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord, a six state cap and trade agreement. Then, there is the Heartland Institute, probably best known for its billboard that it erected in Chicago last May which compared supporters of global warming with ‘Unabomber’ domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski.

Then just recently both organisations have been involved in a campaign against the new Electricity Freedom Act, which looks to increase utilities use of renewable energy and is already used in 29 states, claiming that it dramatically inflates electricity prices.

The reality is that electricity prices in the 29 states where the model legislation is already in effect, has not increased, in fact if anything it has decreased a bit.

When ALEC or the Heartland institute want to make a point, or release an attacking statement against renewable energy or climate change, they usually turn to studies commissioned by the American Tradition Institute, and State Policy Network, both of which are funded by the Koch brothers.

In a recent study undertaken by the Beacon Hill Institute, economist Michael Head admitted to the Washington Post that he and his colleagues manipulated the data to try and influence the results. Not necessarily anything huge, but just by leaving out certain key figures they can make the results seem to prove climate change sceptics when in fact they disprove them.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/how-the-koch-brothers-manipulate-climate-change-studies.html#ouqIVfl483gwEg04.99 (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/how-the-koch-brothers-manipulate-climate-change-studies.html#ouqIVfl483gwEg04.99)

boutons_deux

01-19-2013, 11:14 AM

Two conservative organizations looking to repeal state renewable energy standard policies are the Heartland Institute and the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. These two organizations worked together to write model legislation—the Electricity Freedom Act—to roll back state standards. The policy, which ALEC’s board of directors adopted last October, argues that “a renewable energy mandate is essentially a tax on consumers of electricity that forces the use of renewable energy sources beyond what would be called for by real market forces and under conditions of real competition in generation resources.”

ALEC is known for helping advance corporate interests by writing and pushing for passage of conservative legislation at the state level. The organization has been a force in shaping conservative agendas, including voter identification laws and right-to-work policies. In the environmental sphere, ALEC has targeted states that regulate greenhouse gases and has promoted bills supporting hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”; offshore drilling of oil and natural gas; and nuclear energy. Tax documents show that Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and other energy companies pay membership fees in order to help write legislation repealing carbon-pollution reduction programs in states across the country.

The Heartland Institute is a think tank that promotes skepticism about climate change. Recently, the organization launched a billboard campaign that linked people who care about global warming to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, murderer Charles Manson, and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. One specific billboard featured a mug shot of Kaczynski with the words, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” In a statement, the president of Heartland unapologetically called the billboard campaign an “experiment.”

With ALEC’s ability to successfully pass conservative legislation at the state level and the Heartland Institute’s intentions to attack policies that combat climate change, the threat that state renewable energy standard policies could be repealed needs to be taken seriously and aggressively contested.

ALEC and Heartland seem to be targeting North Carolina first. North Carolina State Rep. Mike Hager (R), a member of ALEC, says he is confident that in the upcoming session in his state’s general assembly, the votes exist to repeal or weaken the state’s renewable energy standard. Rep. Hager is the majority whip and the chairman of the Public Utilities Committee in the North Carolina General Assembly. But the bill that implemented the state’s standard passed 107-9 in the House in 2007—a resounding message Rep. Hager should recognize.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/19/1473251/despite-conservative-attacks-states-continue-to-realize-the-benefits-of-renewable-energy-standards/

boutons_deux

01-27-2013, 11:16 AM

ALEC’s Fingerprints Are All Over the Electoral College Rigging Efforts in Blue States

The corporate-controlled ALEC was instrumental in pushing redistricting tactics spearheaded by a former national Republican Party lawyer, Mark Brayden, who gave a presentation on redistricting to members of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force in December 2010. Wisconsin Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald, a member of that Task Force and former ALEC state chair, received an email invitation in January 2011 for an ALEC “special” conference call with other Wisconsin Republicans to discuss the legality of redistricting; Fitzgerald led the redistricting effort in Wisconsin, and no Democrats were invited to the secret ALEC conference call. Despite being sharply criticized by a court for developing redistricting maps in Wisconsin under a “veil of secrecy,” the new maps have taken effect and the majority of Congressional districts are now out-of-step with statewide voting patterns.
ALEC has been directing Republican-controlled state legislatures in various schemes to sway elections in favor of ALEC’s candidates since the 2010 midterm elections, and Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, made it clear he wants Republicans to use every dirty trick and bit of power they retain to rig the electoral process as part of a national strategy to hand Republicans victories even when they lose elections. Last week, Priebus urged Republican governors and legislators to rig the Electoral College by changing the rules for distributing Electoral College votes, and that is how democracy dies at the hands of ALEC and their Republican lackeys.

If any American thinks for a minute that there are limits to Republican fascists’ efforts to rig elections in their favor, they are blind, because ALEC and the Republican Party are threatening more than Democratic Presidents, congressional seats, state legislatures and governors; they threaten the existence of democracy itself. Americans should be repulsed and mortified it is even possible for ALEC and Republicans to impede the will of the people in choosing their president, but that is the price Democrats pay for sitting out the 2010 midterm elections, because now they will learn the hard way that “elections have consequences” and democracy can die.

http://www.politicususa.com/alecs-fingerprints-electoral-college-rigging-efforts-blue-states.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29

boutons_deux

02-04-2013, 03:46 PM

Koch brothers pour more cash into think tanks, ALEC

Four foundations run by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch hold a combined $310 million in assets according to tax filings obtained by the Center for Public Integrity (http://www.publicintegrity.org/politics/consider-source).

The documents also show that the brothers, principal owners of the second-largest privately held company in the United States, combined in 2011 to donate $24 million through those foundations with much of the money going to support free-market and libertarian think tanks and academic centers.

A $4.5 million grant to the George Mason University Foundation makes up nearly 15 percent of the university foundation’s revenue (http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2011/541/603/2011-541603842-0844073a-9.pdf) for 2011. The school is the largest (http://www.desmogblog.com/koch-and-george-mason-university) recipient of Koch foundation money since 1985, and it houses several free-market and libertarian research centers including the Institute for Humane Studies (http://www.theihs.org/koch-summer-fellow-program/faqs#159), which received $3.7 million from the Koch foundations.

The D.C.-based American Legislative Exchange Council received $150,000 to help finance its activities, including meetings (http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=8072485) where corporate representatives draft model legislation with state legislators. The Koch brothers have decades-long connections with ALEC, which gave the brothers the Adam Smith Free Enterprise Award in 1994 (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/zpj67b00/pdf?search=%22koch%20alec%22).

Two of the Koch-run foundations are among dozens of conservative endowments that give money to Donors Trust, a charitable vehicle that has passed $400 million in anonymous grants to “liberty-minded” think tanks in the last decade.
Other think tanks that received Koch foundation grants in 2011:

The Bill of Rights Institute (http://billofrightsinstitute.org/about-us/directors/): $350,000
The Federalist Society (https://www.youtube.com/user/thefederalistsociety): $260,000
The Jack Miller Center (http://www.jackmillercenter.org/about-us/staff/): $250,000
American Enterprise Institute (http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/american_enterprise_institute): $200,000
Manhattan Institute (http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/trustees.htm): $200,000
Pacific Research Institute (http://www.pacificresearch.org/business-economics/): $100,000
Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.youtube.com/user/AynRandInstitute?feature=watch): $50,000
Heartland Institute (http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-exposed-internal-documents-unmask-heart-climate-denial-machine): $25,000

The above grants came from foundations run by Charles Koch. His brother David’s foundation focused all of its $10 million grant giving in 2011 to the renovation of a theater (http://www.davidhkochtheater.com/) in New York City.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/01/31/12105/koch-brothers-pour-more-cash-think-tanks-alec?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+publici_rss+%28The+Center+for +Public+Integrity+Latest+Stories%29

The VRWC has been and is very real, and is very well financed by the 1% and UCA.

boutons_deux

02-06-2013, 05:31 AM

Corpocrisy: The Systematic Betrayal of American Workers

Free market idealists argue that capitalism works for anyone with a little initiative and a willingness to work hard. That might be true if job opportunities were available to everyone. But the facts reveal a lack of opportunity, largely because the very system of capitalism that's supposed to work for everyone is betraying its most productive members.

It's a step-by-step process of hypocrisy disguised as free enterprise:

1. Let the public pay for the research.

Since World War 2 our federal government has played the dominant role in the research of new technologies, with an emphasis on the long-term basic research that painstakingly perfects design while not yet producing revenue. Corporate R&D, on the other hand, is heavy on the profit-making late stages of development.

Government has contributed significantly to the development of today's most modern technologies. Business has taken full advantage. Even during the frenetic growth of the 1990s, industry funding for computer research declined dramatically while government research funding continued to climb. As of 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.

2. Use the publicly-funded technologies to double profits in 8 years.

From 2003 to 2011 total corporate profits more than doubled from $900 billion to almost $2 trillion.

A big part of that is the financial industry, which has adapted the (nationally built) Internet to fashion trillion-dollar trading schemes. Up until 1985 financial firms never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. Their share recently reached 41 percent.

3. Use the recession as an excuse to cut taxes in half.

For the twenty years prior to the 2008 recession, corporations paid an average annual rate of 22.5% in federal taxes. Since then the average has been 10%.

4. Quietly hoard all the excess money.

Anywhere from $2.2 trillion to $3.4 trillion in cash is being held by non-financial corporations, who have chosen to fatten stockholders rather than invest in new production facilities and the employees needed to make them profitable.

Once again, the financial industry leads the way. Just 12 large banks hold 69 percent of industry assets, close to $8 trillion. But they're not making their money available to consumers or small businesses. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, community banks, which hold less than one-fifth of industry assets, provide over half of all small business loans.

5. Pay existing workers what they earned in 1970.

Less, actually. Average real wages were $17.42 in 2007, down from $19.34 in 1972 (based on 2007 dollars). Wages as a percentage of the economy, at 44% of GDP, are at an all-time low.

Jobs that remain are increasingly low-wage positions. Apple is a good example of the race to the bottom for wages, with an estimated $420,000 profit per employee and a $12 per hour pay rate for its store workers.

6. Eliminate all the other people who helped increase productivity.

Not only are "job creators" failing to create jobs with their cash hoards, but they're also cutting jobs in order to 'streamline' their operations. Evidence comes from The Nation, Market Watch, and Business Insider.

-- Verizon, which made $38 billion in 2008-11 and paid no tax, cut 41,100 jobs.
-- AT&T, which made $9 billion in 20011 and paid no tax, cut 54,000 jobs.
-- Merck, which made $34 billion in 2008-11 and paid a 7% tax, cut 13,000 jobs.

Other leading job-cutters:

-- Citigroup, which made a $28 billion profit in 2010-11 and paid no tax.
-- Boeing, which made $15 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid no tax.
-- IBM, which made $75 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid less than 2% in taxes.
-- HP, which $40 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid an 11% tax.
-- Pepsico, which made a $10 billion profit in 2011 and paid a 6.3% tax.
-- Proctor & Gamble, which made almost $60 billion in profits in 2008-11 and paid 11% in taxes.
-- Google, which avoided about $2 billion in 2011 taxes by shifting revenue to a Bermuda tax haven.

7. Ignore the facts.

And do nothing to address the mistreatment of American workers. CEOs, Congress, and the media are all skilled at this final step of betrayal.

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17786-corpocrisy-the-systematic-betrayal-of-american-workers