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Every now and again, I try to reason with him. I don't think he ever considers other people's views.
effed, uneffable, etc..
Every now and again, I try to reason with him. I don't think he ever considers other people's views.
I read your views, they suck
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 pe ioning 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 iden y 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/20...on-alec-group/
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ALEC is a prime instigator/agitator in the VRWC campaign to over/take over America.
But you flat out blow them off instead of trying to understand why they mean something to me and others.
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?
ALEC - America’s Secret Political Power
http://www.truth-out.org/print/10890
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 do ents 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 ins utions 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 ins utions 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/...epr+%28CEPR%29
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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.
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-...comm_ref=false
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://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153774
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 led 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.
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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, at udes or values."
"Not include instruction in political action skills nor encourage political action activities."
http://www.truth-out.org/alec-behind...ols/1327678212
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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.
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/previe...rporate-greed/
Here's concise history with all the VRWC/Repug/conservative strategy and tactics of how they ed 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...ply-side-myth/
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://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153774
sexist!
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.
Not in my experience.
There is more (facts) in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your fantasies.
sexists. all of you.
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.
I didn't cite any statistics you dumb mother er. 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?
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/17thReportC...eport_Card.pdf
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 en ies, 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...ns?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.
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.
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