Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Money Talks

by Jeffrey Toobin
April 11, 2011

Eight of the current Supreme Court Justices are known for their zeal in questioning lawyers. That tendency was on display last week during the oral argument over the constitutionality of an Arizona law known as the Citizens Clean Elections Act, a law that attempts to do a little something about campaigns in which one candidate has a great deal more money than the others. Roughly, the law says that the ones who are outspent should receive a modest subsidy from state funds. By the end of the questioning, however, it had become clear that a majority of the Justices will probably declare the Arizona law unconstitutional. In apparent frustration, Justice Stephen G. Breyer departed from custom and allowed himself a despairing comment about the Court’s treatment of campaign-finance laws, which he has long, and mostly futilely, defended. “It is better to say it’s all illegal than to subject these things to death by a thousand cuts, because we don’t know what will happen when we start tinkering with one provision rather than another,” he said.

The modern history of American campaign-finance reform began about a century ago, in the Progressive Era, when the Tillman Act of 1907 outlawed direct contributions to political campaigns by corporations. Congress tightened some regulations in response to the Watergate scandal, but, with the Buckley v. Valeo decision, in 1976, the Court began relaxing the rules. In that case, the Court asserted for the first time that an individual’s decision to spend money in support of a political cause was, like giving a speech or carrying a campaign sign, protected by the First Amendment. It is this metaphor—that money is speech—that is driving the current Court’s revolution in campaign-finance law.

In many other respects, this Court’s commitment to free speech is admirable. Earlier this year, Chief Justice John Roberts gave voice to the best American tradition of tolerance when he (along with seven colleagues) overturned a damage award against a fringe religious group. The Westboro Baptist Church, which, as it happens, is more of an extended family than an actual church, had launched one of its odious anti-gay publicity stunts near a funeral at which a mother and father were grieving the loss of a son in Iraq. Understandably, perhaps, a judge had awarded five million dollars in a civil suit brought by the father, but the Court recognized that such a judgment threatened the free-speech rights of all unpopular groups. “Speech is powerful,” Roberts wrote, but it was the Court’s duty “to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

The problem is that there is more than one way to stifle public debate. The idea behind limiting campaign contributions and expenditures is to insure that the voices of the wealthy don’t drown out the voices of those who are less well off. A surreal moment during the Arizona argument summed up how peculiar the Court’s campaign-finance jurisprudence has become. Springing a well-planned trap, Roberts told the lawyer defending the Arizona law, “I checked the Citizens Clean Elections Commission Web site this morning, and it says that this act was passed to, quote, ‘level the playing field’ when it comes to running for office. Why isn’t that clear evidence that it’s unconstitutional?” To many ears, levelling the playing field hardly sounds like a sinister activity, worthy of the Supreme Court’s ultimate sanction. Indeed, as recently as 1990 the Court upheld a campaign-finance law because of “the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.” But the Court explicitly overruled that decision last year in the Citizens United case. For better or for worse, Roberts is right: leveling the playing field is now verboten.

The implications of the Court’s approach are now becoming more clear. In the Citizens United case, the majority decreed, in an opinion written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, that corporations and other organizations could bypass the old limits by giving unlimited amounts not to candidates but to nominally independent groups that support them. (Corporations, of course, traditionally give more to Republicans.) But the logic of the decision—and the views expressed by the majority at the argument last week—suggests that in the future the Court will allow corporations to skip the third parties and give money directly to the candidates. It also implies that any limit on the size of contributions, by individuals or corporations, may now be held to be unconstitutional. The Court did suggest that requirements calling for the public disclosure of contributions might pass constitutional muster, but Congress shows no inclination to enact any such rules. President Obama’s DISCLOSE Act, which would have bolstered disclosure requirements, died in Congress last year. (Clarence Thomas, the silent Justice during oral arguments, believes that even disclosure violates First Amendment rights.)

During the 2010 campaign, Karl Rove pioneered the partisan exploitation of Citizens United by directing Republican donors to American Crossroads and American Crossroads GPS, his largely unregulated political operations. As he told Fox News, “What we’ve essentially said is, if you’ve maxed out to the senate committee, the congressional committee, or the R.N.C. and you’d like to do more, under the Citizens United decision you can give money to American Crossroads.” Rove’s organizations, which raised seventy-one million dollars in the 2010 cycle, have vowed to raise a hundred and twenty million for 2012. Crossroads GPS is supposedly limited to grass-roots activities and public-policy analysis—categories for which it is not currently required to disclose how much it raised or from whom. Needless to say, these categories are so broad that they can, in effect, function like campaign spending.

It is customary to point out that Citizens United also frees labor unions to make unlimited expenditures. Because unions generally favor Democrats, this observation is supposed to lend a gloss of bipartisanship to the Court’s reworking of a century of laws. But, these days especially, any notion of an equivalency of means between unions and corporations is, to put it mildly, far-fetched. So the vulgar truth about Citizens United, the doomed Arizona law, and related future cases remains: the five Justices appointed by Republicans are thrashing the four appointed by Democrats—to the enormous advantage of the G.O.P. Coincidence? You be the judge. ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/04/11/110411taco_talk_toobin

Benton Harbor emergency manager strips power from all elected officials

By Todd A. Heywood | 04.15.11 | 6:05 pm

The Emergency Financial Manager of the city of Benton Harbor has issued an order stripping all city boards and commissions of all their authority to take any action. The order, signed Thursday, limits the actions available to such bodies to calling a meeting to order, approving the minutes of meetings and adjourning a meeting. The bodies are prohibited under the act from taking any other action without the express authority of the Emergency Financial Manager, Joseph Harris.

Actions such as Harris’ are explicitly allowed under a newly approved law which granted sweeping new powers to emergency financial managers. That legislation had drawn large protests, including attempts by some protesters to take over the state capitol building. The sit-in resulted in numerous arrests.

Harris’ move comes as Detroit Public Schools’ emergency financial manager Robert Bobb announced that he would use powers granted to him under the act to change union contracts.

Watch for more from Michigan Messenger’s Eartha Jane Melzer.

Harris’ order is below.

Joe Harris Orders _5


http://michiganmessenger.com/48278/benton-harbor-emergency-manager-strips-power-from-all-elected-officials

Brewer Vetoes Birther Bill In Arizona

Eric Kleefeld | April 18, 2011, 10:28PM

Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), who has been a darling on the right for her battles with the Obama administration over illegal immigration, health care and other issues, has now taken a potentially bold step against the Tea Party base: She has vetoed a "birther bill" -- a piece of legislation motivated by conspiracy theories about President Obama place of birth, requiring candidates for public office to submit proof of U.S. citizenship to the state Secretary of State before they could appear on the state's ballot.

"I do not support designating one person as the gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate, which could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions," Brewer said in her veto message, the Associated Press reports. Brewer herself is a former Arizona Secretary of State.

"In addition, I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on Earth to submit their early baptismal circumcision certificates' among other records to the Arizona secretary of state. This is a bridge too far."

Earlier, Brewer had foreshadowed her decision with skeptical statements about the bill: "I think my big concern probably, just shooting a little bit from the hip, is the fact that I don't know if we regulate federal elections."

It should be noted, however, that the bill had previously passed the legislature with margins that would potentially be veto-proof: 20-9 in the Senate, and 40-16 in the House. The question, then, is whether Brewer's veto would take the wind out of the bill's sails or if its backers will try to override the veto and be able to hold on to their numbers.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/brewer-vetoes-birther-bill-in-arizona.php?ref=fpa

U.S. Debt Tops $14.3 Trillion for First Time

Monday, April 18, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

(CNSNews.com) - The national debt has passed another historical milestone, topping $14.3 trillion for the first time ever, according to data released by the U.S. Treasury late Monday afternoon.

When the Treasury opened for business on Friday, April 15, according to the Treasury’s Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt stood at $14.27 trillion ($14,270,792,119,184.89). By the close of business Friday, the debt had climbed to $14.31 trillion ($14,305,336,580,992.11), an increase of $34.54 billion ($34,544,461,807.22).

Friday’s $34.54-billion jump in the national debt almost equaled the $38.5 billion the Republican House leadership said would be cut from spending for the remainder of this fiscal year by the continuing resolution that the Congress passed on Thursday and President Obama signed Friday.

The federal government is now perilously close to hitting its legal limit on debt.

At the close of business Friday, according to the Daily Treasury Statement published Monday afternoon, the Treasury only had legal authority to borrow another $40.821 billion.

(The legal limit on the debt that Congress and President Barack Obama set last February is actually a bit lower--at $14.2940 trillion--than the total federal debt of $14.3053 trillion that the Treasury reported for the close of business Friday. The total debt reported by the Treasury can exceed the curent legal debt limit of $14.2940 trillion because a small portion of the total federal debt is exempted from the limit. As of the close of business Friday, the portion of the debt that is subject to the legal limit had reached $14.253179 trillion.)

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/us-debt-tops-143-trillion-first-time

Obama ran against Bush, but now governs like him

Posted on Mon, Apr. 18, 2011
Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: April 19, 2011 10:06:20 AM

WASHINGTON — He ran as the anti-Bush.

Silver-tongued, not tongue-tied. A team player on the world stage, not a lone cowboy. A man who'd put a stop to reckless Bush policies at home and abroad. In short, Barack Obama represented Change.

Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into George W. Bush.

On the nation's finances, the man who once ripped Bush as a failed leader for seeking to raise the nation's debt ceiling now wants to do it himself.

On terrorism, he criticized Bush for sending suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and denying them access to U.S. civilian courts. Now he says he'll do the same.

On taxes, he called the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy wrong, and lately began calling again to end them. But in December he signed a deal with Republicans to extend them for two years, and recently he called the entire tax cut package good for the country.

And on war, as a candidate he said that the president didn't have authority to unilaterally attack a country that didn't pose an imminent threat to the U.S., and even then the president should always seek the informed consent of Congress. Last month, without a vote in Congress, he attacked Libya, which didn't threaten the U.S.

Big differences remain between Obama and Bush, to be sure. His two nominees to the Supreme Court differ vastly from Bush's picks. Obama does want to end the tax cuts for the wealthy. He also pushed through a massive overhaul of the nation's health insurance system.

Yet even on health insurance, his stand wasn't so much a reversal of Bush's approach as an escalation. Bush also pushed through a massive expansion of Medicare by adding a costly prescription drug benefit — at the time, the biggest expansion of a federal entitlement since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Indeed, some of the differences between the two presidents are measured in gray, not black and white as once seemed the case.

Some of the changes in Obama can be attributed to the passion of campaign rhetoric giving way to the realities of governing, analysts say.

"He is looking less like a candidate and more like a president," said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "He has discovered that it's much easier to make promises on the campaign trail than it is to keep them as president."

At the same time, some of the surprising continuity of Bush-era policies can be tied to the way Bush and events set the nation's course, particularly on foreign policy.

"Morphing into Bush was not a willful act," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It was acquiescence to the policies his predecessor shaped and the cruel realities that Obama inherited."

For example, Obama found he couldn't easily close the prison at Guantanamo Bay because he couldn't find a place, abroad or at home, willing to take all the terrorist suspects held there.

"Bush created, on the military and security side, new realities from which no successor, Democrat or Republican, could depart, "Miller said. "It's like turning around an aircraft carrier. It cannot happen quickly."

Among the ways Obama has reversed his earlier promises and adopted, extended or echoed Bush policies:

DEBT

In 2006, Bush had cut taxes, gone to war, and expanded Medicare, and increased the national debt from $5.6 trillion to $8.2 trillion. He needed approval from Congress to raise the ceiling for debt to $9 trillion.

The Senate approved the increase by a narrow vote of 52-48.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voted no.

"Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally," Obama said in 2006. "Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."

Now Obama's on the other side. He's increased the national debt to $14 trillion, and needs Congress to approve more debt. Moreover, Obama's aides now say that congressional meddling to use that needed vote to wrangle budget concessions from the White House would be inappropriate and risk financial Armageddon.

What about Obama's own vote against the president in a similar situation? A mistake, the White House said.

TAXES

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama opposed extending the Bush tax cuts on incomes greater than $250,000 a year past their expiration on Dec., 31, 2009.

In 2007, he said he was for "rolling back the Bush tax cuts on the top 1 percent of people who don't need it." In a 2008 ad, he said, "Instead of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest, I'll focus on you."

As president, Obama proposed letting those tax cuts expire as scheduled, while also proposing to make permanent the Bush tax cuts for incomes of less than $250,000.

But he didn't get Congress to approve that. When the issue came to a head last December, Republicans insisted on extending all of the tax cuts or none, and Obama went along lest the tax cuts on incomes below $250,000 expire even briefly. His final deal with the Congress also added a one-year cut in the payroll tax for Medicare and Social Security.

"What all of us care about is growing the American economy and creating jobs for the American people," Obama said. "Taken as a whole, that's what this package of tax relief is going to do. It's a good deal for the American people."

He said again last week that he wants to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, this time on Dec. 31, 2012.

TERRORISTS

As a presidential candidate, Obama vowed a broad reversal of Bush's policies toward suspected terrorists.

Most pointedly, he said he'd close the prison in Cuba and try suspected terrorists in civilian courts, not in military tribunals.

"I have faith in America's courts," he said in a 2007 speech. "As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists."

He ran into a torrent of opposition, however. Members of Congress balked at transferring suspected terrorists to U.S. prisons. New Yorkers balked when his administration said it would try accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan.

Last month, he changed course, saying he'd keep Guantanamo Bay open, and would try Mohammed before a military court.

The reversal, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, "is yet another vindication of President Bush's detention policies by the Obama administration."

Echoing Bush, Obama's also asserted that he has the power to hold suspected terrorists without charges or trial, and that he has the power to kill U.S. citizens abroad if his government considers them a terrorist threat.

WAR POWERS

During his campaign, Obama signaled that he'd be far more circumspect than Bush was in using military power. He did say he'd send more troops to Afghanistan, which he's done, and that he'd attack al Qaida terrorists in Pakistan, which he's also done.

But he opposed the Iraq war from the start, and said he didn't think the president should wage war for humanitarian purposes or act without congressional approval, absent an imminent threat to the U.S.

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," he told The Boston Globe in 2007.

"In instances of self-defense, the president would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action."

On March 19, the U.S. attacked Libya on humanitarian grounds, absent any threat to the U.S. and without approval from Congress.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/18/112346/obama-ran-against-bush-but-now.html

Quickie: Paul Ryan collected Social Security benefits as a teen

Posted on Thursday, January 27, 2011 by GottaLaff

Look who benefited from a socialist program:

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father’s death.

With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college. To make ends meet, Paul’s mother returned to school to study interior design. His siblings were off at college. Ryan remembers this difficult time bringing him and his mother closer.

Thanks to Marxist commie gay Social Security, Paul Ryan got a college education, an accomplishment that is oddly frowned up on by conservatives and tea baggers as being “elitist” these days.


http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2011/01/27/quickie-paul-ryan-collected-social-security-benefits-as-a-teen/

Poll: 70 Percent of "Tea Party Supporters" Oppose Medicare Cuts

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:31 AM
David Weigel

I've yet to see a poll that asks this question the right way. The Washington Post's poll found a lot of public readiness for small Medicare cuts. No poll has yet asked what voters think of Paul Ryan's plan, specifically. But Marist just dropped a nice present in the Democrats' laps.

Screen shot 2011-04-19 at 10.12.58 AM

Again, too bad they say "cut Medicaid" (which no one is suggesting) and not "turn Medicaid into block grants" (which Ryan is suggesting). Those are pretty ugly numbers, though. Opposition to entitlement cuts is an 80 percent issue, one that Obama is even able to move the needle on. If Democrats can keep portraying the cuts as worse than they are -- this was done successfully in the 2005 Social Security fight -- there's a win here.

Meanwhile, look at the numbers on taxes, which are easier to poll about.

Screen shot 2011-04-19 at 10.13.15 AM

Independents favor tax increases on the wealthy (and, yes, a bunch of people who'll get hit but aren't all that wealthy) by a 2-1 margin. Obama shifted the dial with his speech, moving overall support from +23 to +34. Conservatives are very worried about deficit talk whenever it bleeds over into the tax issue, because voters are willing and ready to raise taxes on other people in order to cut the deficit. And as Jonathan Chait keeps screaming into the darkness, the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, like the Reagan tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans, were never that popular.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2011/04/19/poll-70-percent-of-tea-party-supporters-oppose-medicare-cuts.aspx

10,000 Students Take to DC Streets, Calling for Action on Climate & BP Spill

by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York
4.18.11

powershift-march.jpg

Photo credit: Jamie Henn, 350.org

I spent the weekend in DC at Powershift -- an important event that brings together thousands of students, community leaders, and activists from around the nation -- watching the next wave of the youth climate movement grow. There were amazing speeches from Van Jones, Bill McKibben, and Tim DeChristopher, as well as appearances by Al Gore and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Today, the event culminates in real action -- thousands of those activists are now taking to the streets to confront Congress and the White House on climate inaction. They're also stopping at the US Chamber of Commerce -- the nation's biggest anti-climate lobbying force -- and BP headquarters to call out the oil giant for filing a multibillion dollar tax refund on its spill cleanup expenses. Check out some amazing pics from the front lines of the march:

Amazing photos of the event are streaming in from activists using Twitpic, and these are just a few. Follow the #powershift on Twitter for more.

Here's a demonstration in front of the US Chamber of Commerce:

powershift-chamber-commerce.jpg
Photo via @GZornick via Twitpic

And here's a cool overhead shot of the activists marching down the streets of DC:

powershift-march-dc.jpg
Photo credit: earonne via Instagram

Powershift marchers headed for Congress, despite the rain:

rain-powershift-capital.jpg
Photo credit: Ryan Olson via Twitpic

And here's a shot from the protest at BP headquarters, shortly before the execs inside drew the blinds:

bp-powershift-rally.jpg
Photo credit: doyoucopyover via Yfrog

It's pretty amazing -- 10,000 young, engaged activists spread across DC, calling for climate action and better democracy. But guess what the nation's mainstream news outlets are lending their coverage to instead?

cnn-not-powershift.jpg
Screenshot of CNN, which has yet to cover the march, snapped by Ben Wessel

It's an inspiring event, and precisely the sort of action that needs to start kicking into high gear if we're to make any significant progress in the fight for clean energy and a livable climate in the near future. The youth are revved up and ready to fight against corporate interests, big polluters, and opportunistic politicians.

Sing it, Powershift ...


http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/10000-students-take-dc-streets-action-climate-bp-spill.php

Chris Hedges speech Union Square NYC - April 15th 2011 - Throw Out The Money Changers



We stand today before the gates of one of our temples of finance. Where greed and profit are the highest good. Where self-worth is determined by the ability to amass wealth and power at the expense of others. Where laws are manipulated, rewritten, and broken. Where the endless treadmill of consumption defines human progress. Where fraud and crimes are the tools of business.

The two most destructive forces of human nature—greed and envy—drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins, and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system. They place themselves at the center of creation. They disdain or ignore the cries of those below them. They take from us our rights, our dignity and thwart our capacity for resistance. They seek to make us prisoners in our own land. They view human beings and the natural world as mere commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Human suffering, imperial wars, climate change, poverty, it is all the price of business. Nothing to them is sacred. The Lord of Profit is the Lord of Death.

The pharisees of high finance who can see us this morning from their cubicles and corner offices mock virtue. Life for them is solely about self-gain. The suffering of the poor is not their concern. The 6 million families thrown out of their homes are not their concern. The tens of millions of pensioners whose retirement savings were wiped out because of the fraud and dishonesty are not their concern. There failure to halt carbon emissions is not their concern. Justice is not their concern. Truth is not their concern. A hungry child is not their concern.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky in “Crime and Punishment” understood the radical evil behind the human yearning not to be ordinary but to be extraordinary. The desire that allows men and women to serve systems of self-glorification and naked greed. Raskolnikov in the novel believes—like those in this temple—that humankind can be divided into two groups. The first is composed of ordinary people. These ordinary people are meek and submissive. They do little more than reproduce other human beings in their own likeness, grow old and die. And Raskolnikov is dismissive of these lesser forms of human life.

The second group, he believes, is extraordinary. These are, according to Raskolnikov, the Napoleons of the world, those who flaunt law and custom, those who shred conventions and traditions to create a finer, more glorious future. Raskolnikov argues that, although we live in the world, we can free ourselves from the consequences of living with others, consequences that will not always be in our favor. The Raskolnikovs of the world place unbridled and total faith in the human intellect. They disdain the attributes of compassion, empathy, beauty, justice and truth. And this demented vision of human existence leads Raskolnikov to murder a pawnbroker and steal her money.

The priests in these corporate temples, in the name of profit, kill with even more ruthlessness, finesse and cunning than Raskolnikov. Corporations let 50,000 people die last year because they could not pay them for proper medical care. They have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, Palestinians and Pakistanis, and gleefully watched as the stock price of weapons contractors quadrupled.

They have turned cancer into an epidemic in the coal fields of West Virginia where families breathe polluted air, drink poisoned water and watch the Appalachian Mountains blasted into a desolate wasteland while coal companies make billions. And after looting the U.S. treasury these corporations demand, in the name of austerity, that we abolish food programs for children, heating assistance and medical care for our elderly, and public education. They demand that we tolerate a permanent underclass that will leave one in six workers without work, that condemns tens of millions of Americans to poverty and tosses our mentally ill onto heating grates. Those without power, those who these corporations deem to be ordinary, are cast aside like human refuse. It is what the god of the market demands.

When Dante entered the “city of woes” in the Inferno he heard the cries of “those whose lives earned neither honor nor bad fame,” those rejected by Heaven and Hell, those who dedicated their lives solely to the pursuit of happiness. These are all the “good” people, the ones who never made a fuss, who filled their lives with vain and empty pursuits, harmless perhaps, to amuse themselves, who never took a stand for anything, never risked anything, who went along. They never looked hard at their lives, never felt the need, never wanted to look.

Those who chase the glittering rainbows of the consumer society, who buy into the perverted ideology of consumer culture, become, as Dante knew, moral cowards. They are indoctrinated by our corporate systems of information and remain passive as our legislative, executive and judicial branches of government — tools of the corporate state — strip us of the capacity to resist.

Democrat or Republican. Liberal or conservative. It makes no difference now. Barack Obama serves corporate interests as assiduously as did George W. Bush. And to place our faith in any party or established institution as a mechanism for reform is to be entranced by the celluloid shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave.

We must defy the cant of consumer culture and recover the primacy in our lives of mercy and justice. And this requires courage, not just physical courage but the harder moral courage of listening to our conscience. If we are to save our country, and finally our planet, we must turn from exalting the self, to subsuming of the self for our neighbor. Self-sacrifice defies the sickness of corporate ideology. Self-sacrifice mocks opportunities for advancement, money and power. Self-sacrifice smashes the idols of greed and envy. It demands that we rise up against the abuse, injury and injustice forced upon us by the mandarins of corporate power. There is a profound truth in the biblical admonition: “He who loves his life will lose it.”

Life is not only about us. We can never have justice until our neighbor has justice. And we can never recover our freedom until we are willing to sacrifice our comfort for open rebellion. The president has failed us. The Congress has failed us. The courts have failed us. The press has failed us. The universities have failed us. Our process of electoral democracy has failed us. There are no structures or institutions left that have not been contaminated or destroyed by corporations. And this means it is now up to us. Civil disobedience, which will entail hardship and suffering, which will be long and difficult, which at its core means self-sacrifice, is the only mechanism left.

The bankers and hedge fund managers, the corporate and governmental elites, are the modern version of the misguided Israelites who prostrated themselves before the golden calf. The sparkle of wealth glitters before them, spurring them faster and faster on the treadmill towards destruction. And they seek to make us worship at their altar. As long as greed inspires us, greed keeps us complicit and silent. But once we defy the religion of unfettered capitalism, once we demand a society that serves the needs of citizens and protects the ecosystem, rather than the needs of the marketplace, once we learn to speak with a new humility and live with a new simplicity, once we love our neighbor as ourself, we will break our chains and we will make hope visible.

Who Does Our Government Really Work For?

Posted on April 19, 2011
by jeff61b

The ongoing federal budget debate reconfirms what most of us already know: that many politicians are more responsive to corporate lobbyists and campaign dollars than to the needs of the American people.

The web site opensecrets.org shows how many millions upon millions of dollars members of Congress receive in campaign funds from corporate Political Action Committees. In the recent budget battle, you can clearly see the effects these campaign contributions have on our lawmakers. It’s little wonder why they’re proposing to cut or eliminate corporate taxes altogether.

After receiving campaign contributions of $21 million from the health insurance industry, $6 million from HMOs and $15 million from the pharmaceutical industry, members of Congress obediently promised to stop all funding for health care reform, so health insurance companies could continue to deny you insurance due to a pre-existing condition or drop you as soon as you have serious health problems.

After getting $17 million in campaign contributions from the credit card industry, they fought to stop funding for consumer protection agencies that protect us from excessive penalties, fees and interest rate increases charged by credit card companies.

After getting over $20 million from big industrial polluters, they tried putting provisions into the budget bill to prevent the EPA from enforcing laws to stop companies from polluting our air and our drinking water. Generally, the Environmental Protection Agency would be prohibited from protecting the environment.

These are just some of the powerful special interests with big money behind them, that managed to get special riders put into the budget bill to benefit their particular industry.

But millions of senior citizens, people with health problems, and people who are unemployed due to the recession, don’t have lobbyists and don’t have much money to contribute to political campaigns. They have no wealth and no power. So, according to Nobel prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, Republicans are now proposing to cut about $3 trillion over ten years from programs that help the poor, the unemployed, the sick, and the elderly. But that $3 trillion in cuts won’t reduce the deficit one penny because they are also giving $3 trillion in new tax cuts that go only to the very wealthy.

So they’re proposing to take benefits away from the most truly needy people in our society in order to give trillions of dollars to the wealthiest Americans. In every possible sense, many in Congress are actively trying to steal from the poor, the middle class, and even the moderately well-to-do and giving to the very rich and powerful.

And it will remain this way until we enact some kind of meaningful campaign finance reform.

Far from being a “nanny state” as Republicans claim, too many people in our government work for the highest bidder. More than ever, they protect the wealthy and the powerful instead of looking out for the people who need help the most.

http://thepragmaticprogressive.org/wp/2011/04/19/who-does-our-government-really-work-for/

Local activists protest tax havens for corporations

Fern Shen
April 19, 2011 at 6:00 am

tax day protest Crowd

As the average American hustled off to the post office yesterday – the deadline for mailing federal income taxes was midnight – activists gathered in downtown Baltimore to remind them that many American corporations are able to avoid those pesky payments by hiding income in offshore tax havens.

“Those people up there at Bank of America are laughing at us because we pay taxes,” said Charles Schafer, a spokesman for MoveOn.org’s Baltimore Council, speaking to a crowd of about 40.

The protesters were positioned on Light Street, across from the bank’s downtown Baltimore building. The Charlotte, N.C.-based company, which has not had federal income tax expenses for the second year in a row, is “a tax dodger,” according to MoveOn and the Maryland Public Interest Research Group, which had assembled a crowd bristling with signs that read, “Make Deadbeat Corporations Pay!” and “Are You Tired of Being Trickled On?”

“We want them to pay their fair share,” said Shafer, before a few members of the group went into the building to try and drop off a “tax bill” for what they figure the bank owes taxpayers: $3.95 billion.

“And we want our representatives to stop writing loopholes for the wealthy,” Shafer said.

A spokesman for Bank of America has answered the charges being leveled by Move.On, which has staged protests at branches across the country and showed up uninvited at the company’s investor conference in New York last month.

“Bank of America takes its role as a corporate citizen very seriously and pays taxes in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations,” bank spokesman Jerry Dubrowski told The Charlotte Observer.

The bank says the reason it has paid no income taxes is simple: corporations pay taxes on their profits, and troubled Bank of America posted a pre-tax loss of $5.4 billion in the U.S. in 2010.

Maryland PIRG and MoveOn pointed to a PIRG report, “Tax Shell Game,” which they said shows “how an unbalanced tax code allows many major corporations to avoid billions in taxes by stashing huge amounts of profits in offshore tax havens.”

Bank of America, for example, has more than 100 offshore tax havens, according to PIRG.

In the Cayman Islands alone, more than 18,000 U.S. corporations maintain tax havens.

Taxes avoided by corporations are essentially extra taxes imposed on individuals, argued Joanna Neumann, state director of Maryland PIRG.

“The weight of corporate tax dodgers is putting the burden on the rest of us and that’s not fair,” Neumann said.

According to the report, the average Maryland taxpayer pays an additional $472 to compensate for the income lost to tax havens.

Among the other corporations mentioned in the report was General Electric, which it said “appears to have paid no federal income taxes in 2010, despite reporting profits of $5.1 billion.”

The Baltimore protest was part of a nationwide Tax Day campaign called “Make Them Pay.” Similar events were scheduled to take place all over the country yesterday, targeting other large corporations for their use of loopholes to avoid paying taxes: “The Deadbeat Dozen”— GE, Bank of America, Google, BP, Amazon, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Boeing, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Goldman Sachs and Chase.

Former New York Times reporter on tax inequities

Taxpayers who want to learn more on this subject should check out the piece in the current Baltimore City Paper by former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston: “Let Us Count the Ways: nine reasons the rich get richer thanks to U.S. tax policy. ”

Here’s a link to the full version of the story, commissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and run in a number of them across the country.

Some tidbits from the boiled-down version in CP:

* John Paulson, the most successful hedge fund manager of all, bet against the mortgage market one year and then bet with Glenn Beck in the gold market the next. Paulson made himself $9 billion in fees in just two years. His current tax bill on that $9 billion? Zero. Congress lets hedge fund managers earn all they can now and pay their taxes years from now.

* Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers, have not paid any income taxes since at least 2004, their divorce case revealed. Yet they spent $45 million one year alone. How? They just borrowed against Dodger ticket revenue and other assets. To the IRS, they look like paupers.

* Rich got richer. Since 1980, when President Reagan won election by promising prosperity through tax cuts, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980 became $1.01 by 2008.  Those at the top did much better. The top 1 percent’s average yearly income more than doubled to $1.1 million.

Two protesters at 2011 Tax Day protest in Baltimore. width=

http://www.baltimorebrew.com/2011/04/19/report-suckers-pay-taxes-corporate-america-avoids-them/

Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq

By Paul Bignell
Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.

Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on Fire is published next week, said: "Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.

"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize."

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.

Not about oil? what they said before the invasion

* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous..."

* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: "Let me just deal with the oil thing because... the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It's not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons..."

* BP, 12 March 2003: "We have no strategic interest in Iraq. If whoever comes to power wants Western involvement post the war, if there is a war, all we have ever said is that it should be on a level playing field. We are certainly not pushing for involvement."

* Lord Browne, the then-BP chief executive, 12 March 2003: "It is not in my or BP's opinion, a war about oil. Iraq is an important producer, but it must decide what to do with its patrimony and oil."

* Shell, 12 March 2003, said reports that it had discussed oil opportunities with Downing Street were 'highly inaccurate', adding: "We have neither sought nor attended meetings with officials in the UK Government on the subject of Iraq. The subject has only come up during conversations during normal meetings we attend from time to time with officials... We have never asked for 'contracts'."


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq-2269610.html?service=Print

Syria 'lifts emergency law'

Government approves bill lifting emergency law, in place for 48 years, following demands by pro-democracy protesters.
Last Modified: 19 Apr 2011 14:49



Protesters have been calling for an end to emergency rule, which has been in place since 1963 [Reuters]

Syria's government has passed a bill lifting the country's emergency law, in place for 48 years, just hours after security forces fired on protesters.

Tuesday's move is a key demand of pro-reform demonstrators who have been holding protests across the country for weeks.

A senior lawyer said Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, was yet to sign the legislation, but that his signature was a formality.

According to the country's official SANA news agency the government also abolished the state security court, which handled the trials of political prisoners, and approved a new law allowing the right to peaceful protests.

However the interior ministry also passed a law that says citizens must obtain permission to demonstrate, the agency said, hours after the ministry imposed a total ban on political gatherings.

Syria's emergency law gave the government a free hand to arrest people without charge and extended the state's authority into virtually every aspect of citizens' lives.

Cal Perry, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Damascus, said the three steps were a major concession to protesters.

"The people on the ground here really wanted to see not only that court dissolved but also the state of emergency lifted because of these abitrary detentions, as they would put it.

"But the government is certainly going to draw a line between what they call peaceful protesting and an armed insurrection."

Hours before the decision, security forces had fired on protesters in the city of Hom, killing at least six people.

Rights groups say that more than 200 people have been killed in the protests which started in the southern city of Daraa one month ago, inspired by uprisings gripping Arab nations.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/2011419135036463804.html

Cost Of Tax Cuts For America's Rich Exceeds Value Of Budget Cuts

First Posted: 04/18/11 08:26 AM ET Updated: 04/18/11 10:16 AM ET

NEW YORK -- Today, as Americans submit their tax returns, the wealthiest earners will each reap hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax savings.

As part of a law passed late last year, the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest Americans were extended for two years. The estimated cost to the government of that portion of the tax deal, $42 billion this fiscal year, exceeds the stated $38 billion value of the savings from the federal budget cuts lawmakers approved last week.

Those budget cuts, which will affect many services for poor Americans, add more strain to a still weak economy, leading some economists to lament that this allocation of federal resources is not the most efficient way to promote economic growth.

"I don't think it's a good time to be trimming federal outlays if you're interested in the vulnerability of the economy," said economist Gary Burtless, formerly with the Labor Department and now at the Brookings Institution. "I'm not quite sure where the theories come from that this is going to strengthen economic growth over the next 12 to 18 months. It's going to have the reverse effect. It's going to slow it down."

In the wake of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the economic recovery has been uneven. The financial sector, which employs some of the country's wealthiest citizens as its executives, has seen profits rebound. Pay at top financial firms has multiplied, while wages for most Americans have stagnated.

Between January 2008 and January 2010, the private sector lost nearly 8 million jobs. Last year, payrolls began to expand, but the pace of the recovery has been slow. With companies reluctant to spend their reserve cash on hiring, the unemployment rate remains high. Last month, 8.8 percent of the workforce was unemployed, a figure that would be significantly greater if it included the millions of jobless Americans who have entirely given up looking for work.

Thanks to the tax cut extension passed last year, struggling Americans will get to keep a few thousand dollars that otherwise would have gone to the government. A family making between $50,000 and $75,000, for instance, saves just over $2,000 on average, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. From a broad economic perspective, that's money Americans can spend on themselves, theoretically boosting demand, stimulating business activity and generally helping promote a recovery.

But the extension of the tax breaks for the wealthy have proven more controversial, especially as job-creation has remained slow. Under the extension, a family that earns between $500,000 and $1 million gets an average $25,000 tax break, according to the Tax Policy Center. A household earning more than $1 million gets more than $130,000.

Over two years, tax cuts for the wealthy will cost the government about $120 billion and will create or save about 290,000 jobs, according to analysis by the White House-aligned research group Center for American Progress. That's a cost of about $400,000 per job, many of which will likely yield salaries far below that value.

The tax extension seems especially hard for critics to swallow in light of last week's federal budget deal, which calls for spending cuts of about $38 billion. In comparison, tax breaks for the wealthy will cost the government $42 billion during this fiscal year, according to Michael Linden, director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress.

The cuts come at a period of economic weakness, when those who most rely on government services struggle to put food on the table. Last week, the International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth -- by the same degree as it cut its forecast for Japan, whose economy faces a major strain as the country attempts to rebuild after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

But some fiscal restraint is necessary for supporting long-term economic growth, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. In theory, government spending cuts encourage private businesses to boost their own spending, thereby helping stimulate economic activity. A reduction of public spending might also help stem inflationary pressures and boost investors' confidence.

While these proposed cuts represent only a small percentage of the year's budget, they are an important first step, said Zandi, who has advised lawmakers from both parties.

"I think it's entirely appropriate to focus on discretionary spending, and how we can reduce it going forward," Zandi said. "My druthers would not have been to cut as deeply right now, until the economy is off and running."

The deficit-reduction plan put forth by President Barack Obama in a speech on Wednesday includes a combination of cutting spending and ending tax breaks for the wealthy when those naturally expire. He laid out a strategy for reducing the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years, calling for additional cuts across the board.

"If they make serious cuts over time, that's actually going to be quite good for the economy," said Andrew Lo, professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "It's bitter medicine, but we've got to take it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/tax-cuts-rich_n_848933.html