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Well, why don't you come up with the answer for them to pay more money to buy it.Quote:
Originally Posted by boutons_deux
You are a chronic complainer, but never have valid conclusions.
Don't you remember people saying things like this would happen?
Don't blame the "repugs." Blame Obama, and the demonrats who made Obamacare real.
I actually like this move, because it builds support for a hard core public insurance option, once the uninsured find out how expensive the exchanges are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Cobra
Obamacare was screwed by the health care system, not by Barry and the Dems.
It also shows how 100% bad faith the Repugs are. Repugs will anybody over anything for politics.
The State of the 4-Year-Olds
In 1971, when he was a senator, Mondale led the Congressional drive to make quality preschool education available to every family in the United States that wanted it. Everybody. The federal government would set standards and provide backup services like meals and medical and dental checkups. Tuition would depend on the family's ability to pay.
And it passed! Then Richard Nixon vetoed it, claiming Congress was proposing "communal approaches to child rearing." Now, 42 years later, working parents of every economic level scramble madly to find quality programs for their preschoolers, while the waiting lines for poor families looking for subsidized programs stretch on into infinity.
And President Obama is trying, against great odds, to do something for 4-year-olds.
People, think about this for a minute. We have no bigger crisis as a nation than the class barrier. We're near the bottom of the industrialized world when it comes to upward mobility. A child born to poor parents has a pathetic chance of growing up to be anything but poor. This isn't the way things were supposed to be in the United States. But here we are.
Would it be different if all the children born over the last 40 years had been given access to top-quality early education - programs that not only kept them safe while their parents worked, but gave them the language and reasoning skills that wealthy families pass on as a matter of course?
We'll never know.
Mondale's Comprehensive Child Development Act was a bipartisan bill, which passed 63 to 17 in the Senate. It was an entitlement, and, if it had become law, it would have been one entitlement for little children in a world where most of the money goes to the elderly.
?After Gerald Ford became president, the early childhood education bill's supporters tried to resurrect the plan. They had hardly done anything besides agree that they probably ought to wait until after the 1976 election, when they were hit with a political tsunami. Members of
Congress started getting hundreds and hundreds - sometimes thousands and thousands - of hysterical letters accusing them of plotting to destroy the American family.
This was before constituent e-mail, when that kind of outpouring was shocking, particularly since a number of the writers seemed to believe that Congress was plotting to allow children to organize labor unions and sue their parents for making them do chores.
"That was really the beginning of the Tea Party. The right wing started to turn on this thing viciously," said Mondale. "They said it was a socialist scheme. They were really pounding the members of Congress and a lot of people got cold feet."
Nobody really knew where it was all coming from. A reporter for The Houston Chronicle traced the hysteria back to a man in Kansas who had written the leaflet, based on information he'd received from a revival in Missouri, which he told the reporter he had since learned was almost all completely wrong.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=...&sub=Columnist
Have the Repugs DONE ANYTHING since 1970 that advanced American civilization (and not just for the 1% and corps) ?
You motherfuckers who vote in Repugs have plenty of stinking shit and blood on your hands.
Meet Donors Trust: The Little-Known Group That Helps Wealthy Backers Fund a Right-Wing Agenda
Since 1999, the nonprofit charity Donors Trust has handed out nearly $400 million in private donations to more than 1,000 right-wing and libertarian groups.
When it comes to the wealthy funders of right-wing causes, the big names are well known: billionaires like the industrialist Koch Brothers and the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, super PACs like Americans for Prosperity and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. Now, through them, hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into right-wing causes and candidates. But now it turns out this web of dark-money donations is even more secretive than we previously thought. That’s because the operations of a largely unknown group have now come to light. They’re called Donors Trust, a nonprofit charity based in Virginia.
Since 1999, Donors Trust has handed out nearly $400 million in private donations to more than 1,000 right-wing and libertarian groups. The fact Donors Trust has been able to quietly do so appears to explain why it exists: Wealthy donors can back the right-wing causes they want without attracting public scrutiny. Donors Trust is classified as a "donor-advised" fund under U.S. tax law, meaning its funders don’t have direct say in where their money goes. That in turn allows them to remain largely anonymous.
http://www.alternet.org/meet-donors-...tter797084&t=3
VRWC/Corporate War on Employees is over and won.
Disposable Workers: Why Throwaway Employees are Bad Policy
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http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/disposable-workers-why-throwaway-employees-are-bad-policy.html#bQ1rrTfizkP6QsgI.99
Former Republican: How the GOP Turned Into a Racket Ripping Off Vulnerable Americans
As with many religions, political parties have a tendency to start as a movement, transform into a business, and finally degenerate into a racket designed to fleece the yokels. One organization which has gone out of its way to illustrate this evolution is the Republican Party. And it has done so with a national scope and fundraising apparatus that would have made Jimmy Swaggart or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker mute with awe.
By "Republican Party" I mean both the formal party and its extended apparat: talk radio and the Fox News empire, pressure groups like the Family Research Council, allegedly "educational" 501(c)3 organizations like the Heritage Foundation, direct mail outfits descended from the original Richard Viguerie mother ship, polling firms like Rasmussen's, and the Tea Party itself (the latter nevertheless asserts its non-affiliation with the GOP despite its having sponsored [3] the Florida Republican presidential candidates' debate in 2011).
True believers in this multi-faceted scam are usually careful to make a (false) distinction between the institutional GOP and the so-called conservative movement. The Republican Party and its grandees, according to this fable, are not "true conservatives." By 2008, the operatives of the racket were already saying this about George W. Bush, but that assessment required them to perform the mental gymnastics of forgetting that only a few years earlier, they were eager [4] to nominate [5] Dubbya to the next available vacancy in the Trinity.
Unchastened by its electoral drubbing in 2012, the GOP circled the wagons once again. Is their former colleague, the war-disabled Bob Dole, pleading with the Senate GOP to ratify a harmless United Nations treaty recommending international standards for treatment of the handicapped? No way, the UN's black helicopters might descend on America [11]! Are hurricane victims still out of their homes in the depth of winter? Screw 'em, they're not our constituents [12]. Is the GOP's filibuster of a nominee for secretary of defense (and a former GOP colleague to boot) unprecedented? Precedents were made to be broken, and traitors have to be punished. Indeed, freshman Senator Ted Cruz, visually and substantively reprising the role of Joe McCarthy [13], has even implied treason, slyly insinuating that nominee Chuck Hagel might be in the pay of North Korea or Iran. It doesn't even end there: the lunatic Right is now suggesting that John Brennan, the CIA Director-designee, and certainly a man involved in killing his share of Muslims [14], is himself a secret Muslim convert, just like his boss, the president!
Shocking as all this is, it should not be surprising. Belief in the rapture (a word found nowhere in the Bible) has been around as a formal theological precept since John Darby [15] fabricated the notion in the early 19th century. Yet when the promised apocalypse fails to arrive on schedule, it is only the weak-willed who renounce the sacred dogma. The anointed remnant knows that the great disappointment was merely a test of their faith, so they redouble their adherence to the sacred text, whether the author is St. John the Divine or Ayn Rand. The refusal of the world to end on October 22, 1844 may have caused some disenchantment among the Millerites [16], but more than a century and a half later, the Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels [17] has sold over 65 million copies (more than sales of Merriam-Webster dictionaries). In like fashion, the complete failure during the last 30 years of tax cuts for the wealthy to increase revenue, kick-start economic growth, or help the middle class has not dented the faith of the true believers -- nor has it reduced the personal wealth of hucksters like Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, or Dick Armey, who profitably dispense economic snake oil to the rubes wholesale.
As the GOP narrowed and hardened its dogma, the affluent, educated suburbs drifted away from the Church of Reagan, leaving the organization to an increasingly less educated, southern, rural, and downscale white voting base (needless to say, the executive wing of the party is decidedly not downscale in its personal finances; they know, just as surely as L. Ron Hubbard knew, that there is gold to be mined from the suckers). The slide among both voters and elected officials has been frighteningly steep since 2008. Compared to the current crop [18] of congressional GOP freshmen and sophomores, even George W. Bush looks like Henry Cabot Lodge. The party of Abraham Lincoln (a genuine architect of popular enlightenment through his establishment of land grant colleges) has degenerated into Scientology for rednecks who think embryology, evolutionary biology, and geology are lies from the pit of hell [19].
The deeper causes of this lunacy lie beyond the GOP, for the party is a symptom of a peculiar American sociology as much as the Republican Party is a cause of many of the political ills we face. One suspects the real cause is ultimately a confluence of long-term historical trends. The 40-year-long deindustrialization of the country and the associated weakening of upward mobility for blue-collar Americans are significant factors. Along with deindustrialization came the catastrophic decline of industrial unions [20], which had once been a secular political outlet for constructive action and social assimilation for workers. The symbiosis of politics and religion in American life, a phenomenon almost unheard of in other advanced democracies these days, infused many politicians with a taste for self-righteousness and apocalyptic brinksmanship that are fatal to a system designed for separation of powers, compromise, and moderation. Finally, the Cold War lasted too long, and left a permanent garrison state; it also left a paranoid world view that demands enemies foreign and domestic. If the monolithic world Communist conspiracy is no longer with us, the Muslim caliphate will serve nicely in its stead. If there is no longer an internal Red menace boring from within, there is a secret Muslim poised to become CIA director.
Contrary to some observers [21], I do not believe the GOP is finished as a national party. It is too well entrenched in too many state legislatures due to gerrymandering. In turn, the state legislatures can gerrymander congressional districts thoroughly enough so that it is unlikely Republicans will lose control of the House at least until the census of 2020. Dixie and the Tornado Belt are prone to send candidates of the intellectual caliber and world view of James Inhofe [22] to the Senate for the foreseeable future, thus assuring a veto over legislation via the filibuster. The voting base itself, endlessly stoked by talk radio and Fox News, thrives on its martyr-like self-image as a persecuted remnant of Real Americans; and all the would-be messiahs they adore are Republicans, not third party candidates. There is also just too much money to be made by hucksters, so it is doubtful that the GOP will go the way of the Whigs. And, who knows, another national catastrophe like 9/11 or an asset collapse could once again put them at the helm of the country to summon the demons lurking in the national id.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...able-americans
Secretive Donors Trust Pumps Far More Money Into Climate Denial And Inaction Than Kochs And Exxon Mobil Combined
According to Goldenberg, the total contributions of Donors Trust from 2002 to 2010 dwarfs the amounts given by Exxon Mobil or even the Koch Foundation:
By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 think tanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.
The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...ial-fu-001.png
Finally, in the case of Donors Trust at least, there is complete anonymity for contributors:
“The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It’s also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing,” said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.
“These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them,” Davies said.
Donors Trust has been dedicating more of its resources to the relatively young Franklin Centre for Government and Public Integrity, marking a strategic shift away from activism centered in Washington, D.C., and towards efforts to scrap climate policy at the individual state level.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...obil-combined/
How The Financial Sector Sucks $635 Billion Every Year From The Real Economy
Before the Great Recession, the financial sector had consistently been eating up a greater and greater share of the economy. In 2007, it accounted for a whopping 40 percent of corporate profits. Before 1950, the financial sector made up less than 3 percent of GDP; now it makes up more than 8 percent.
According to a new report from Demos, the financial sector siphons off $635 billion annually in funds that otherwise might go to productive uses, rather than flipping financial assets back and forth:
In recent years, the financial sector share of aggregate GDP has been in the range of 8.3%, an increase from the historic level of 4.1%. By inferring that the historical increase in financial sector share of GDP is attributable to the value diverted from capital intermediation, the excessive wealth transfer to the financial sector is in the range of $635 billion per year. In terms of capital investment loss, one would apply a multiplier to the annual wealth transfer figure since recovery of the annual cost to the capital intermediation system would enable greater upfront investment by businesses and governments.
Research has found that a large financial sector can actually impede economic growth. An International Monetary Fund study showed that “at high levels of financial depth, a larger financial sector is associated with less growth. Our findings show that there can be ‘too much’ finance.” Currently, the six biggest banks hold assets equal to 60 percent of America’s GDP.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...-real-economy/
Not-So-Smart ALEC: The Right Wing vs. Renewable Energy
Yves here. This post is useful not simply for its discussion of the economics of green energy but also for showing how think tanks fabricate findings to support their political message.
By Frank Ackerman, senior economist at Synapse Energy Economics, and a senior research fellow at GDAE at Tufts University.
Renewable energy is clean, sustainable, non-polluting, reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, improves the health of communities surrounding power plants, and protects the natural environment. Who could be against it?
Answer: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a lobbying group that is active in drafting and advocating controversial state legislation. They’re not just interested in energy: in recent years ALEC has supported Arizona’s restrictive immigration legislation, the “Stand Your Ground” gun laws associated with the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and voter identification laws proposed in many states. ALEC’s priorities for 2013 include making it harder to bring product liability suits against manufacturers of defective products, ending traditional pension plans for public employees, promoting the diversion of public education funds into private schools and on-line education schemes, and supporting resistance to “Obamacare” health policies.
When it comes to energy, ALEC wants to speed up the permitting process for mines, oil and gas wells, and power plants – and to eliminate all state requirements for the use of renewable energy. The latter goal is packaged as the “Electricity Freedom Act.” In numerous states, ALEC has used studies by Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute (BHI) to claim that the “Electricity Freedom Act” will free ratepayers from the allegedly immense costs and job losses of renewable energy standards.
In a recent study for the Civil Society Institute, my colleagues and I at Synapse Energy Economics analyzed the ALEC studies of the costs of renewable energy. Our report found fundamental flaws in both the energy data and the economic modeling used by BHI.
University of Arizona economist Alberta Charney has examined STAMP’s findings for her state. Charney compared three models’ analyses of a combined $1 billion increase in state taxes and $1 billion increase in state government spending. The IMPLAN and REMI models, widely used to study employment impacts, both projected that Arizona would gain about 8,000 net new jobs from this package; STAMP estimated a net loss of about 9,000 jobs. Charney attributed this to the biased assumptions underlying STAMP’s treatment of government spending and taxes.
It’s no wonder that ALEC favors BHI’s economic model: STAMP has never seen a government program that it liked or a tax cut that it disliked. Those who want an objective analysis of the costs and benefits of renewable energy, however, will need to look elsewhere.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/...+capitalism%29
VRWC-controled, financed stink tanks cranked out biased "studies" with absolutely wrong bullshit to support the enrichment and protection of the VRWC.
Since 2011, 105 Wage Supression Bills Have Been Introduced In State Legislatures
Since January 2011, legislators from 31 states have introduced 105 bills reflecting ALEC’s “model” legislation designed to suppress the wages of low-paid workers in the United States — these bills aimed to repeal state minimum wage laws, reduce minimum wage rates for youth and tipped workers, weaken overtime compensation policies, and prevent local governments from establishing living wage ordinances. Of these 105 bills, 67 were directly sponsored or co-*‐sponsored by ALEC-*‐affiliated legislators from 25 different states. [...]http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/28/1653171/wage-suppression-bills/
While only 11 of the 67 ALEC-affiliated wage suppression bills were ultimately passed into law, the cumulative impact of the 105 bills that have been introduced over the past two years remains significant. The persistent introduction of legislation to weaken or repeal wage standards drains the political momentum behind improving wages and workplace standards for low-paid workers by forcing a defensive fight over protecting the standards that already exist. As retail and fast-food workers in New York, Chicago, and cities across the country take collective action to improve wages in the nation’s fastest-growing low-wage industries — and as dozens of legislatures consider new proposals to increase minimum wages this year — ALEC’s wage suppression agenda serves as a significant source of inertia undermining the current push for better wages and workplace standards.
How AT&T Is Planning to Rob Americans of an Open Public Telco Network
AT&T has a sneaky plan.
It wants to exploit a loophole in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s rules to kill what remains of the public telecommunications network — and all of the consumer protections that go with it. It’s the final step in AT&T’s decade-long effort to end all telecommunications regulation, and the simplicity of the plan highlights a dysfunction unique to the American regulatory system.
AT&T and other big telecom carriers want to replace the portions of their networks that still use circuit-switching technology with equipment that uses Internet Protocol (IP) to route voice and data traffic. But because the FCC previously decided that it has no direct authority over communications networks that use IP, this otherwise routine technological upgrade could lead to a state of total deregulation.
We are already living with the consequences of the FCC IP decision: an uncompetitive broadband market. Our broadband providers enjoy the kinds of high profit margins that would make a 19th-century robber baron blush. And our ability to use these networks to communicate openly and freely is under constant assault. Meanwhile, consumers in other countries not only have better access, but they pay far less for far better services.
But there are large portions of the public telecom network that don’t use IP, and that are still subject to varying degrees of regulatory oversight — including traditional landlines, alarm circuits, and many of the “special access” connections that carry voice and data traffic from cellular towers.
Now AT&T wants approval to convert all of this to an all-IP system. And because of the FCC’s flawed view of IP, this move would jettison all of the public interest protections that govern common carriers like AT&T. (The centuries-old “common carriage” concept applied to entities like railroads, shippers, and telecoms that transport goods often using public rights-of-way; since these functions are critical to commerce, common carriers are usually regulated even if they don’t operate in monopoly markets).
The immediate consumer impact of AT&T’s proposal would be swift and severe:
Higher prices.Remember what happened after California partially deregulated AT&T in 2006? The price of some basic voice services tripled. AT&T wants to make this happen everywhere. Also, the ability of many smaller wireless carriers to offer competitively priced services is based on specific regulations that prevent special access providers like AT&T and Verizon from charging exorbitant rates.These protections against monopoly prices will disappear if AT&T gets its way.
Service disruptions.Brinksmanship between AT&T and smaller wireless carriers that use the public network to transport their own traffic would lead to telecom blackouts. Just look at how cable customers are held hostage in carriage spats between cable providers and content owners. The rules that require carriers to get networks back online after outages would also be history if the FCC approves AT&T’s petition.
Inequality and discrimination. Seniors, low-income families, and rural residents — all of whom are more likely to rely on fixed-line voice services or dial-up internet access — would especially feel the pinch. Carriers that are now required to offer universal service will be free to redline poor neighborhoods and disconnect consumers at will. Elderly grandmothers living on fixed incomes rely on rate-regulated landlines to stay connected, but they need not worry: AT&T has an expensive wireless plan they can purchase instead.
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02...telco-network/
In screwed news... ALEC is behind a new bill in Tennessee, which blocks public unions from participating in the political process.
House Bill 913 forbids the Tennessee State Employees Union from using dues money for anything but collective bargaining, enforcing union contracts, or assisting members with grievance procedures.
The plan is especially insulting to public employees considering state employee collective bargaining is prohibited in the state, and Republicans enacted a law last year, which eliminated the word “grievance” from state legislation.
The United States Chamber of Commerce is pushing the measure, which was written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, and it's being sponsored by State House Republican Chair Glen Casada.
The GOP got access to huge sums of corporate cash through Citizens United, and now they want to make sure Democrats can't compete in campaign fund raising. Leave it to ALEC to figure out how to destroy unions and steal elections all in one fell swoop.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/15129...ncies-and-more
Corporate-Americans can have no restrictions on their "free speech as money", but ALEC/USCoC intends to the deny Human-Americans' free speech.
Fuck the neo-Confederacy, which is just like the old Confederacy.
How ALEC Has Undermined Food Safety By Pushing ‘Ag Gag’ Laws Across The Country
Two more states are considering bills that would prevent whistleblowers from exposing cruel or unsafe practices in factory farms, joining five other states with similar “ag gag” bills. If passed, the pending legislation in Tennessee and California would require that evidence of animal abuse be turned over to law enforcement authorities within 24 to 48 hours.
Such bills are touted — and, in some cases, sponsored — by agriculture industry officials as a lawful attempt to stop animal cruelty in farming operations. But they actually undermine advocates’ work to develop animal cruelty or food safety cases against the agricultural industry.
And it turns out the real basis for the bills has its origins in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative think tank that has been behind such legislative pushes as “stand your ground” gun laws, voter ID laws and laws mandating states teach climate change denial in schools. Several of the lawmakers who are pushing ag gag laws have agriculture industry ties and ties to ALEC — nearly one in four Iowa lawmakers who voted for Iowa’s ag gag law, for example, are members of ALEC.
In 2002, ALEC introduced a piece of mock legislation titled the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, which labels people who interfere with any animal operations “terrorists” and made it illegal for anyone to enter “an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.” ALEC began pushing the legislation in 2004, and several of the bills currently being considered borrow language from AETA — Indiana’s bill aims to keep farming operations “free from the threat of terrorism and interference from unauthorized third persons,”
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/19/1741691/alec-food-safety-ag-gag/
ALEC is right up there with Monsanto as 100% evil, 100% anti-Human-American.
Kochs, Chamber of Commerce Bankroll Judges’ Seminars On Corporate Crime And Capitalism
The Louisiana federal judge overseeing the civil trial over BP’s alleged gross negligence in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident attended a seminar in 2009 called “Criminalization of Corporate Conduct” sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 13 other funders. In 2011, that same judge dismissed a wrongful-death claim in a suit brought against ExxonMobil and Chevron USA for exposure to radioactive substances. Another judge who attended that seminar voted in a 2-1 holding to reject emissions caps that both the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber had opposed in briefs in the case.
In all, 11 percent of U.S. federal judges attended all-expense paid seminars whose top contributors included conservative foundations and major corporations between 2008 and 2012, according to an analysis by the Center for Public
Integrity. Sponsors often pay for participants airfare hotel stays and meals. Tim Meko reports:
Leading the list of sponsors of the 109 seminars identified by the Center were the conservative Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, The Searle Freedom Trust, also a supporter of conservative causes, ExxonMobil Corp., Shell Oil Co., pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and State Farm Insurance Cos. Each were sponsors of 54 seminars.
Other top sponsors included the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (51), Dow Chemical Co. (47), AT&T Inc. (45) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (46), according to the Center’s analysis.
It is not just the sponsorship of these seminars that creates at least the appearance of a conflict. Many of these seminars are outwardly devoted to addressing corporations’ liability and/or economic theories. For example, a seminar called “Corporations and the Limits of Criminal Law.” was funded by AT&T, BB&T, BP America, Cigna, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, FedEx Corp. and others. Another called “The Moral Foundations of Capitalism” was funded by that same group of sponsors and the Chamber of Commerce. A host of others are generally themed around economics and tort liability.
Outcry about these all-expense paid judicial education programs was louder before 2007, when the body that oversees judges started requiring judges and seminar hosts to disclose information about their programs. As a result of these disclosures and the work of the Center for Public Integrity, we now know that conservative groups and corporations with a stake in major litigation are bankrolling these junkets. The new rule, however, does not require disclosure of how much each entity contributed.
Aside from contributions to particular seminars, the Center’s reporting traces millions of dollars more in contributions to two schools that host the bulk the majority of these seminars. It found that ExxonMobil reported “giving $20,000 to George Mason specifically for its judicial training program. The oil company gave an additional $30,000 to the university’s Law & Economics Center, which hosts the conferences. Between 2003 and 2007, the ExxonMobil Foundation gave the think tank $150,000.” The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation has also contributed millions to George Mason University, and other foundations and corporations contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to George Mason’s judicial education program and a similar program at Northwestern University. One major sponsor of these programs known for its corporate-influenced program ceased holding seminars on 2011.
Not every seminar fit into this category. The Open Society Foundation and the Robina Institute, both of which have social justice missions, sponsored one seminar — on human rights and international law. CPI has an excellent tool for viewing all contributions by seminar, judge, sponsor, and several other factors here.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...nd-capitalism/
Powerful Right-Wing Groups Are on a Stealth Mission to Make America Look Like Texas
“You may not have heard about it,” DeMint continued. “We’ve been cultivating bright ideas, building coalitions and working with others like the State Policy Network to make these things happen.” SPN is a nonprofit that nurtures conservative think tanks in all fifty states; its president, Tracie Sharp, was sitting near the front at the event and was warmly acknowledged by the speakers several times.
Other conservative leaders have spoken even more glowingly of the way that state-level political investments can shape the future of conservatism. “We have, us fellow warriors for liberty, a rendezvous with destiny,” said Henry Olsen, an American Enterprise Institute vice president, at a meeting of conservative think tank leaders last November at the Ritz-Carlton resort on Amelia Island, Florida. “Reagan’s generation did too, and their task was to plant the tree of liberty in the garden of Roosevelt. Our task is to protect that tree against the gales and gusts of Hurricane Barack, and to help nurture that tree so that it grows into a grove and forest.”
At the same event, Grover Norquist proclaimed that with SPN’s support, Republican governors might “turn their states into Texas or Hong Kong”—laboratories of the free market. “It’s a wonderful opportunity,” he added.
These media-savvy organizations—which frequently employ former journalists to churn out position papers, news articles, investigations and social media content with a hard-right slant—bolster the pro-corporate lobbying efforts of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Like ALEC, State Policy Network groups provide an ideological veil for big businesses seeking to advance radical deregulatory policy goals. Interviewed at the San Francisco event this past January, SPN’s Sharp maintained that her organization is loosely connected and has no coordinated agenda. But if the last four years are any guide, conservative think tanks are on the march, working from a similar script to tear down organized labor and promote extreme right-wing policies in state capitols from Alaska to Florida.
Financial support for SPN-affiliated think tanks has increased by tens of millions of dollars over the last four years, disclosures show. In areas with the most concentrated investments, particularly the Midwestern states referred to in DeMint’s speech, budgets for state-level political groups have doubled, outpacing their counterparts on the left. Without control of the White House, corporations anxious to push back against taxes and regulations, along with a cadre of wealthy right-wing donors, have invested in these state-level think tanks, partisan media outlets, training institutes and online advocacy efforts. Some existing organizations have been expanded, and others founded to fill what conservative planners viewed as a tactical void.
Americans for Prosperity, known largely for its affiliation with the billionaire Koch brothers and for organizing Tea Party rallies, is part of this state-focused spending spree. The group has opened new local chapters or more than tripled the funding for existing chapters in key states. This increased spending has helped Americans for Prosperity recruit conservative activists and deploy them during contentious policy debates. Audit reports collected by the New York State Attorney General’s office show that Americans for Prosperity went from spending about $4.9 million on state chapter activities in 2009 to $10.6 million in 2011, the last available disclosure. Those figures do not necessarily account for the television, radio and Internet advertising purchased by the group when lobbying on state policy issues (which has reportedly reached over $4 million in places like Wisconsin), or the ubiquitous bus tours it has sponsored around the country.
Under Sharp’s leadership, State Policy Network has grown, opening new think tanks (now numbering fifty-nine) and forging close relations with ALEC, which brings together conservative state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists to draft “model legislation.” In 2009, ALEC gave Sharp an award to thank her for “getting SPN members more involved” with the organization. “This special acknowledgement belongs to those who have put in dedicated time and energy through ALEC,” said Sharp, who accepted the award onstage with lobbyists from Verizon and Altria.
http://www.alternet.org/print/powerf...ica-look-texas
State Policy Network, an umbrella coordinating ALEC, Heritage, Heartland and others
http://my.firedoglake.com/cgibson/20...olicy-network/
ALEC-Sponsored Bill To Repeal North Carolina’s Renewable Energy Standard Narrowly Passes Out Of Committee
Yesterday, the North Carolina House Commerce Committee narrowly passed a bill that would repeal the state’s successful renewable energy standard. Currently, 29 states and the District of Columbia have adopted Renewable Energy Standard’s (RES) to encourage electric utilities to expand the power they generate from renewable sources such as solar and wind.
In 2007, North Carolina became the first state in the Southeast to adopt such a standard — Senate Bill 3 passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support and requires state utilities to supply 12.5 percent of renewable energy by 2021. Since then, clean energy companies have generated billions in revenue and have created thousands of in-state jobs — all while reducing pollution and saving ratepayers money.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...-of-committee/
Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC
Walker's Anti-Paid Sick Day Law in Wisconsin Brought to ALEC
In May of 2011, Governor Walker pushed Senate Bill 23 to override a Milwaukee ordinance providing for paid sick days. It appeared to be the first paid sick days preemption bill passed in the country.
Milwaukee's ordinance specified that paid sick days could be used if a worker is ill or needs to care for a sick child, and passed via referendum with over 70 percent of the popular vote in 2008. The 2011 state law not only steamrolled local democratic will by overriding a law passed overwhelmingly in a popular vote, but also repealed the rights of working people to get medical treatment they need, care for their children, and help safeguard the health of their families, coworkers and customers.
A few months later, at ALEC's August 2011 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, the bill was brought to the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee of the ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force.
Meeting attendees were given complete copies of Wisconsin's 2011 Senate Bill 23 (now Wisconsin Act 16) as a model for state override. ALEC's Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee at the time was co-chaired by YUM! Brands, Inc., which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
Legislators attending the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee meeting 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 state chapter of the National Restaurant Association lobbied for Senate Bill 23 to repeal Milwaukee's sick days ordinance, as did the local branch of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an ALEC member.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/15527...e-tied-to-alec
ALEC, financed by United Corporations of America, works relentlessly to fuck over Human-Americans and the environment, to the benefit of UCA, 1%ers.
6 Charts That Show How Conservative Politics Are Destroying America
In each of the charts below look for the year 1981, when Reagan took office.
Conservative policies transformed [3] the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then:
http://www.alternet.org/print/econom...roying-america
Conservative Groups Dominate Efforts To Convince Supreme Court To Hear Cases
conservative groups utterly dominate the game of seeking to influence which cases the Supreme Court hears. Although the Supreme Court receives about 9,000-10,000 petitions a year seeking their review of a case, only a tiny fraction of these petitions are granted — this year, for example, the Court will only hear 77 cases with full briefing and oral argument. So often the most decision the justices make in a case is the decision to hear it in the first place. There are many views that five justices would support if forced to express their opinion, but that is no guarantee that those views will someday make their way into a Supreme Court opinion.
In light of this fact, conservative organizations have clearly made a significant investment in trying to make sure cases that favor their views catch the justices eye. Eight of the ten most frequent filers of amicus briefs seeking to influence which cases are heard by the Court are solidly on the right:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/...5174168394.png
There are a number of possible explanations for why conservatives completely dominate this area of Supreme Court litigation, the most obvious of which is that massive corporations and right-wing billionaires simply have more money to throw at hiring lawyers with the skills and influence to convince the justices to take a case. Even relatively prosperous left-of-center groups, however, likely stay out of this game because of the Roberts Court’s conservatism. Indeed, the Chamber isn’t just the top filer of amicus briefs asking the Court to hear cases, the corporate lobbying group is also one of the most successful litigants — if not the most successful litigant — before the Supreme Court.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...to-hear-cases/
The puntive, inhumane VRWC War On Employees
Raise the minimum wage? Hell no, lets:
Abolish the Minimum Wage? It’s No Fantasy
The premise—Abolish the Minimum Wage—is far from the current mainstream debate. Since its creation in 1938, the minimum wage has been venerated. For years, public discussion has focused on raising it, and although such increases are a constant point of contention between Democrats and Republicans, people have rarely questioned the rule’s existence.
But the deregulation of government over the past 15 years, now coupled with the rise of an unforgiving libertarianism on the right, has allowed lawmakers to re-examine programs and policies that haven’t been touched for decades—the Glass-Steagall Act separating banks and investment firms as well as federal welfare are gone. Now Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the minimum wage are threatened.
In the end, for people like Roberts and Dorn, it is not about the statistics. It is about vague ideas like liberty and justice. Unfettered capitalism would correct what is wrong, they say, if only barriers like regulation and taxes would disappear.
“The minimum wage,” Dorn said, “interferes with individual freedom and economic freedom.” :lol :lol :lol
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...tasy_20130408/
and we see how taxpayers top up the Welfare Queen Walmart's shitty wages by $Bs/year with food stamps, Medicaid while Walmart pockets $10Bs/year in profits.
"Most of us don’t need legislation to protect us in the labor force.”"
oh yeah? he's just the garden-variety fucking libertarian ideological sociopath, like all the Randian assholes here. And I bet he doesn't pay his maid's health insurance while wanting to kill ACA entirely.
Bernstein with the killer bitch slap:
This “laissez faire market ideology,” Bernstein said, not only “trumps common sense and empirical evidence” but objectifies labor—people—who are treated like commodities when economists remain locked up in the ivory tower and look at society through a narrow lens. "
The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making
Where there is the possibility of democracy, there is the inevitability of elite insecurity. All through its history, democracy has been under a sustained attack by elite interests, political, economic, and cultural. There is a simple reason for this: democracy – as in true democracy – places power with people. In such circumstances, the few who hold power become threatened. With technological changes in modern history, with literacy and education, mass communication, organization and activism, elites have had to react to the changing nature of society – locally and globally.
The Foundations of Social Control
The new industrial elite accumulated millions and even hundreds of millions by the end of the 19th century: Andrew Carnegie was worth roughly $300 million after he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901, and by 1913, John D. Rockefeller was estimated to have a personal worth of $900 million. In the late 1880s, Rockefeller met Frederick T. Gates, a minister, educator, and administrator in the Baptist Church when they were negotiating the founding of a new university, which resulted with a pledge of $600,000 from Rockefeller to found the University of Chicago in 1889. At this time, Rockefeller hired Gates as his associate in charge of Rockefeller’s philanthropic ventures. Gates became central in inculcating the notion of “scientific benevolence” within Rockefeller’s philanthropies. As Gates wrote in his autobiography, “I gradually developed and introduced in all his charities the principle of scientific giving.” Gates advised Rockefeller to form a series of “self-perpetuating” philanthropies.
The circumstances in which the Rockefeller Foundation emerged are notable. In 1913, a coal strike began at a Colorado mine owned by the Rockefellers in the small mining town of Ludlow, where roughly 11,000 workers (mostly Greek, Italian, and Serbian immigrants) went on strike against the “feudal domination of their lives in towns completely controlled by the mining companies.” Repression quickly followed, culminating in what became known as the Ludlow Massacre in 1914, with the Rockefellers hiring the National Guard to attack the strikers and destroy their tent city, machine gunning the crowd and setting fire to tents, one of which was discovered to have housed eleven children and two women, all of whom were killed by the fire.
The Congressional Walsh Commission was founded to investigate the activities which led to violent labour repression at the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company in Ludlow, though the scope of the Commission was expanded to study philanthropic foundations themselves. The Commission’s founder, Frank P. Walsh, explained:
...
...the creation of the Rockefeller and other foundations was the beginning of an effort to perpetuate the present position of predatory wealth through the corruption of sources of public information... [and] that if not checked by legislation, these foundations will be used as instruments to change to form of government of the U.S. at a future date, and there is even a hint that there is a fear of a monarchy.
Through the educational system, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations, advertising, marketing, and the media, America and the industrialized states of the world developed a unique and complex system of social control and propaganda for the 20th century and into the 21st. It is imperative to recognize and understand this complex system if we are to challenge and change it.
http://www.alternet.org/media/propag...century-making
The victory of the 1%/VRWC Class Warfare over the 99% is now so total even "(bogus) progressives" like Obama and Dems have simply quit fighting for the 99%, the Have-Nots
America is fucked and unfuckable.
Randian Kansas, with ALEC, epitomizes the VRWC/Repug war on employees
Kansas Bans Communities From Making Contractors Pay Prevailing Wages On Public Projects
On Tuesday, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R) signed a law aimed at prohibiting local governments from requiring contractors to pay prevailing wages on public works projects:
“HB 2069 prohibits cities, counties, and local government units from using ordinances, resolutions, or law to require private employers to provide leave, benefits and higher compensation.”
Prevailing wage and living wage policies require employers receiving public funds to pay workers wages in line with the cost of living or industry standards of the community. Kansas’ new law prohibiting these measures will go into affect on July 1, and it leaves state and federal prevailing wage requirements in place, although Kansas repealed its state prevailing wage law in 1987. Two counties, Sedgwick and Wyandotte, will have their local prevailing wage laws currently on the books overturned.
The law is also similar to prevailing wage repeal proposals that have been tied to the controversial business-front group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Since 2011, 105 bills “aimed to repeal or weaken core wage standards at the local level” have been introduced in 31 state legislatures, and of those 67 were “directly sponsored or co-sponsored by ALEC-affiliated legislators.” A model of the ALEC repeal proposal is available on its website. Other states, including neighboring Missouri, have also seen attempts to overturn prevailing wage laws part of larger efforts to undermine labor rights.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...ling-wage-ban/
Koch Brothers Plan to Buy up Eight Major Newspapers
The billionaire oil moguls Charles and David Koch are pushing ahead with their plans to purchase several news outlets across the United States, according to a detailed report in the New York Times on Sunday.
At a recent seminar in Aspen, one attendee reported that the brothers — infamous for bankrolling conservative candidates and causes — put forth the question of, “How do we make sure our voice is being heard?” Their answer, it seems, will be to purchase the entire Tribune company, which constitutes a huge swath of American print media:
The papers, valued at roughly $623 million, would be a financially diminutive deal for Koch Industries, the energy and manufacturing conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., with annual revenue of about $115 billion.
Politically, however, the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas. The Los Angeles Times is the fourth-largest paper in the country, and The Tribune is No. 9, and others are in several battleground states, including two of the largest newspapers in Florida, The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. A deal could include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, which speaks to the pivotal Hispanic demographic.
http://www.alternet.org/media/koch-b...jor-newspapers
Class Warriors on the rampage.
Forced arbitration by a corporate-lacky abritrator, screwing away investor power of class actions, as encouraged by the JINO anti-Human-American Repug SCOTUS.
"Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. — a well-known investment advisor holding more than $2 trillion in assets for millions of investors — is trying to eviscerate its customers’ rights.
In the fine print of Schwab’s terms of service, there’s a forced arbitration clause and a ban on consumers joining together in class actions."
http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/acti...tion_KEY=12178