Evans Liberal Politics
October 8, 2010
Robert Reich – The Secret
Big-Money Takeover of America
The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America, Robert Reich.org, October 7, 2010, by Robert Reich, used with permission, quoted verbatim:
Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before – and they’re doing it behind closed doors.
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Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multi-millionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.
No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it’s all secret.
But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America’s stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It’s to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street – already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.
Credit the Supreme Court’s grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy “nonprofits” that don’t have to reveal anything.)
According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.
Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it – thereby revealing the GOP’s true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)
Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove’s and other supposed nonprofits aren’t sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly.
In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before – a government by and for the rich and big corporations — and away from democratic capitalism.
As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That’s why, for example, it’s been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they’re earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it’s so difficult even to extend George Bush’s tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent – even though the top won’t spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year.
The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.
A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax.
But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money.
Right now we’re headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.
We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they’d join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is “not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
What can you do?
1. Read Justice Steven’s dissent in the Citizens United case, so you’re fully informed about the majority’s pernicious illogic.
2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.
3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.
4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.
5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won’t, campaign against them.
6. Support public financing of elections.
7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that’s committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I’m so outraged at what’s happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)
8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).
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31 Percent Unemployment is What I Think Of When I Hear the Expression ‘Compassionate Convervatism’
Evans Liberal Politics
September 5, 2010
31 Percent Unemployment is What I Think Of
When I Hear the Expression ‘Compassionate Convervatism’
Investment in American Workers and American Jobs:
Chances Are It’s Not Going to Happen
Evans Liberal Politics, September 6, 2010, Commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans:
What the CEO’s and big business are doing now is really shameful.
Companies are sitting on a record amount of money (capital from profits at their disposal in record amounts), which they could reinvest in workers and jobs and new equipment, but the business leaders have all decided that would not make them as much money as downsizing until America starts buying again. It’s more profitable now to invest in Chinese and Indian plants and workers and ship the items overseas, where we American’s buy all the plastic crap from Wal*Mart, than it is to have American workers make products.
The main reason we are stuck in the Great Recession for the indefinite future is that America — and here I mean the middle class, or what used to pass for it — CANNOT start buying again until the economic climate improves and workers again can get hired and find better jobs. A quarter of our homes are "under water" and many of the rest of them have debt attached to them, and we have no sources left to tap into for cash to even think about buying luxuries any more. Most of us are barely getting by, if that. The unemployment rate a few months ago for Americans making less than $20,000 a year stood at 31 percent, and it isn’t getting any better anytime soon, folks. Of COURSE we aren’t buying goods! No buying power until the economy improves.
So it’s a vicious cycle, but it’s the business community’s greed that is the problem. (Business profits are actually up, as are CEO salaries, big time.) If the American business community would just use its huge amounts of ready cash and INVEST in American workers and American jobs, EVERYONE would do better, including American businesses. But they will not do this although it is an easy option for them. What investment IS taking place is happening overseas, where Ford and GM, for example, are investing heavily in Chinese plants. American workers want to have a decent life, have expectations of a decent lifestyle, and cost more than Chinese workers, even when you factor in the shipping costs.
The Republican business community speaks of the need to deregulate business and industry so it can again be profitable. If you want to be sick to your stomach, just look at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s page on what they want for so-called "regulatory reform". If you want to see what deregulation and corruption about it did under Bush and Cheney in the oil and gas industry (leading directly to the BP oil spill disaster), read Cheney’s Culture of Deregulation and Corruption, AP on the Center for American Progress, June 9, 2010. The claim is that only once the business community stands deregulated and free to act as irresponsibly as they wish, can the economic climate improve.
This is a huge LIE. Business is very profitable now, Wall Street is doing fine, and profits were up in 2009. (This is actually a big part of the problem. The bailout worked fine for Wall Street and big business, but why should Wall Street or Exxon care if we American workers suffer while profits are good?) Americans have this silly thing called the American dream and workers make three, four and five times what Chinese and Indian workers make. It seems obvious that only if government steps in and makes the tax and economic climate favorable for investment IN AMERICA, for American workers and American jobs, can a true economic recovery take place. The only ways to do this involve government intervention and changes to the tax code. In other words, REGULATING business and forcing it to invest in America. The chances for that now seem to be slim to none.
31 percent unemployment for the poor and greed like this is what I think of when someone speaks of "compassionate conservatism." Let’s face it folk, the business community is pretty thoroughly Republican, and it is their greed and failure to care at ALL what happens to Americans and how much we suffer, which is at fault for all this. ~ Paul Evans
See Surfing in Style through the Great Recession, Campaign for America’s Future on Evans Liberal Politics, September 6, 2010, by Sam Pizzigati: Business Executives Slash Jobs to Win Higher Pay, Promotions.
See Yves Smith’s Op-Ed On Myopic Corporate Greed In Today’s NYT, Daily Kos on Evans Liberal Politics, July 6, 2010, by Bob Swern.
See 1938 in 2010, The New York Times, September 5, 2010, by Paul Krugman, excerpt quoted verbatim:
Check out Paul’s Playlist of 183 Rock and Pop Hits, and have fun with all the artists you love while you surf the web.
Truthout Articles Celebrating Labor Day:
See The Face of Labor in the Streets (Photo Essay), Truthout, September 6, 2010, by David Bacon.
See Trumka: Most Crucial Election in 75 Years, Truthout, September 6, 2010, by Dick Meister.
See Poor Labor Day Gets No Respect. It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of Holidays., Buzzflash Blog, September 5, 2010, by Will Durst.
Also See Social Security and Medicare Don’t Make Hard Times, Military Spending and Tax Cuts for the Rich Do, Buzzflash Blog, September 6, 2010, by BuzzFlash.
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