But it’s not yet clear that the efforts could have a substantial effect on the 2012 election — or that Democrats won’t exceed Republicans in attracting undisclosed donations to their own newly formed organizations.
Even as Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and his pro-reform allies filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Federal Election Commission demanding donor disclosure, other Democrats were raising substantial contributions for 2012 campaign advertising. And two former White House aides have been talking of setting up their own independent group that could include a nonprofit arm to shield the identities of major donors.
The White House railed against independent campaign spending financed by secret donations in the 2008 and 2010 elections. President Obama has emphasized disclosed and limited donations of the sort he raised at events in San Francisco and Los Angeles this week.
But now there is a growing consensus that Democrats should begin their own efforts to collect large-dollar undisclosed donations, or risk defeat. [Read more]
This can be our moment. A new activism is emerging in the United States and abroad, where people, in unexpected places, are standing up to challenge the rich and powerful. From recent uprisings in Egypt, to young people and workers in Europe marching and striking against shortsighted austerity plans, to the battle of nurses, teachers, firefighters and community members in Wisconsin, and the sit-ins and occupations of banks starting around the country, a movement is starting to grow.
After being battered and on the defensive, we have an opportunity in the United States to go on the offensive to transform the economy and politics of our country and create shared prosperity for all. Corporations have $1.6 trillion in cash reserves and are making record profits. The CEOs of Wall Street and the big banks paid themselves record compensation and bonuses of $135 billion in 2010 ($7 billion more than in 2009). After trillions in bailouts, they are even bigger and more dominant than before the economic crash. Now can be our moment to build a movement that both captures the popular imagination and has a strategy to engage millions of people to improve their lives by harnessing:
To do this, we need to understand how our country and our economy got in the mess they are in, the opportunities we have missed over the last two years and the critical role we can all start playing to fix it. [Read more]
Gov. John Kasich appeared at Diebold’s headquarters here Tuesday afternoon to announce that the company had accepted his administration’s offer of a $56 million package of tax credits, loans and grants to induce the company to stay.
“For the folks that are located in Akron, Canton (and) Green, this is a big save,” said Kasich.
Diebold President and CEO Thomas W. Swidarski said, “If it wasn’t for the governor’s aggressive stand and stepping up through this legislation, Ohio would not have been competitive enough for Diebold to remain here.” [Read more]
Last night President Obama and congressional negotiators cut a deal to keep the government running, cutting “$38.5 billion under current funding levels, per Republican demands,” and $78 billion below what Obama called for in his initial 2011 budget.
Yet as Republicans and Democrats continue to battle over the deficit within a political framing that includes taking aim at Pell Grants for low-income students — which Obama preemptively proposed to cut, calling summer grants “too expensive,” while Republicans want far deeper cuts than that — Head Start funding, and other programs from Main Street Americans, there is one group of Americans that seems to be getting away without having any sacrifices demanded of them: the very richest.
As this chart from from Wealth for the Common Good shows, the top 400 taxpayers — who have more wealth than half of all Americans combined — are paying lower taxes than they have in a generation, as their tax responsibilities have slowly collapsed since the New Deal era as working families have been asked to pay more and more:
[Read more]
It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.
Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin. [Read more]
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Talk about an idea whose time has come.
Today, the Fair Elections Now Act is being re-introduced. Actor Alec Baldwin, who was present at the bill’s introduction, told CNN it was a critical step toward “reducing the influence of corporate lobbyists and special interest money.”
Alec is right. The bill would help candidates remain free from corporate interests by providing public money for their campaigns if they raise a certain amount of small-dollar contributions from voters.
The grip that corporations have over our elections and our lawmakers is unprecedented, thanks in no small part to the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That’s the decision that gave corporations the green light to spend as much money as they want on elections.
What does that decision mean for you? It means that lawmakers are even more beholden to wealthy corporate interests — oil and coal companies, financial giants, agribusiness mega-companies and so forth — and even less likely to act in your interests. After all, those corporations are looking out for their bottom lines and have no problem rolling over citizens to boost profits. They want public policies that advance that goal. They give money to lawmakers so they can ask for favors later.
We saw the effect of the Citizens United decision on the midterm elections: spending by outside groups jumped to $294.2 million in the 2010 election cycle from just $68.9 million in the 2006 cycle. Nearly half of the money spent came from just 10 groups. Two groups formed by Republican strategist Karl Rove combined to spend $38.2 million, more than any single group. Next was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Today, Public Citizen sent a letter to Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), who introduced the measure. The letter said: [Read more]
You knew they were big. You knew they were evil. From the union-busting actions of their minions in Wisconsin and Ohio to their war on health-care reform, to their assault on the environment and their attacks on the science of climatology, Charles and David Koch have earned their place as the focus of progressives’ scrutiny in the age of the Tea Party — the destructive and regressive movement they bankroll. But a new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows that, as bad as you thought the Kochs were, they’re actually worse. And their reach into virtually every aspect of political, economic and physical life on the planet is probably greater than you thought possible.
In The Koch Brothers: What You Need to Know About the Financiers of the Radical Right, author Tony Carrk, policy director of the CAP Action War Room, lays out a case that is breathtaking in its scope, showing how the Koch brothers are using their billions with the aim of reshaping the global economic system in such a way as to enrich themselves and their heirs at the expense of most other inhabitants of the planet.
While much of the report will have a familiar ring (especially to readers of AlterNet, and CAP Action’s own ThinkProgress), The Koch Brothers also addresses elements of the Koch agenda far beyond the well-trodden turf of Americans for Prosperity’s organizing against health-care reform or the pollution rap against Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in the United States, which the billionaire brothers command. [Read more]