Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Supremes:
Sam Stein: Justices Scalia And Thomas's Attendance At Koch Event Sparks Judicial Ethics Debate
"Reports that two Supreme Court Justices have attended seminars sponsored by the energy giant and conservative bankroller Koch Industries has sparked a mild debate over judicial ethics.
On Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported that an upcoming meeting in Palm Springs of 'a secretive network of Republican donors' that was being organized by Koch Industries, 'the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes.' Buried in the third to last graph was a note that previous guests at such meetings included Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two of the more conservative members of the bench...
...'This is certainly worth more reporting,' said Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University. 'It is intriguing because the Koch brothers are so politically active and identify with a point of view. I know I would be curious to know exactly what forums the Justices went to. Obviously they could not go to a strategy session about how to elect more Republicans. On the other hand if it was a forum on the meaning of the First Amendment and it didn't involve strategy or fundraising a Justice could appear... It's fascinating and it merits more reporting.'
What complicates the report, as Gillers notes, is that the Supreme Court, very recently, handed down a major decision on campaign finance law that Koch Industries quickly utilized. Citizens United overturned existing law by ruling that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money on federal elections. Koch has always been an active political and philanthropic giver. And its checks have been sent to Democrats as well as Republicans (though weighted more heavily to the latter). This cycle, however, the company has become one of the premier bankrollers of conservative causes, and earned the enmity of Democrats for doing so..."
Taxes:
Bloomberg: Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes
"Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.
Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the 'Double Irish' and the 'Dutch Sandwich' -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.
'It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,' said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. 'We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent,'...
...Google is 'flying a banner of doing no evil, and then they’re perpetrating evil under our noses,' said Abraham J. Briloff, a professor emeritus of accounting at Baruch College in New York who has examined Google’s tax disclosures.
'Who is it that paid for the underlying concept on which they built these billions of dollars of revenues?' Briloff said. 'It was paid for by the United States citizenry.'
The U.S. National Science Foundation funded the mid-1990s research at Stanford University that helped lead to Google’s creation. Taxpayers also paid for a scholarship for the company’s cofounder, Sergey Brin, while he worked on that research. Google now has a stock market value of $194.2 billion..."
Social Media As A Profit Center:
Bill Snyder: Why Facebook is selling you out -- and won't stop
"Facebook and its developers could bring in as much as $1 billion this year; only a bozo would think that Mark Zuckerberg will give that up to protect the privacy of his users..."
Economics:
Democracy Now! - Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz: Foreclosure Moratorium, Government Stimulus Needed to Revive US Economy
"As the Obama administration rejects a foreclosure moratorium and austerity protests grip Europe, we assess the state of the US and global economy with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, author of Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. Stiglitz backs calls for a foreclosure moratorium and says opponents of a new government stimulus 'don’t understand basic economics.' On war, Stiglitz says Iraq and Afghanistan are 'the first wars in America’s history financed totally on the credit card,'..."
Sam Stein: Justices Scalia And Thomas's Attendance At Koch Event Sparks Judicial Ethics Debate
"Reports that two Supreme Court Justices have attended seminars sponsored by the energy giant and conservative bankroller Koch Industries has sparked a mild debate over judicial ethics.
On Tuesday evening, the New York Times reported that an upcoming meeting in Palm Springs of 'a secretive network of Republican donors' that was being organized by Koch Industries, 'the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes.' Buried in the third to last graph was a note that previous guests at such meetings included Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two of the more conservative members of the bench...
...'This is certainly worth more reporting,' said Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University. 'It is intriguing because the Koch brothers are so politically active and identify with a point of view. I know I would be curious to know exactly what forums the Justices went to. Obviously they could not go to a strategy session about how to elect more Republicans. On the other hand if it was a forum on the meaning of the First Amendment and it didn't involve strategy or fundraising a Justice could appear... It's fascinating and it merits more reporting.'
What complicates the report, as Gillers notes, is that the Supreme Court, very recently, handed down a major decision on campaign finance law that Koch Industries quickly utilized. Citizens United overturned existing law by ruling that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money on federal elections. Koch has always been an active political and philanthropic giver. And its checks have been sent to Democrats as well as Republicans (though weighted more heavily to the latter). This cycle, however, the company has become one of the premier bankrollers of conservative causes, and earned the enmity of Democrats for doing so..."
Taxes:
Bloomberg: Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes
"Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.
Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the 'Double Irish' and the 'Dutch Sandwich' -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.
'It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,' said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. 'We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent,'...
...Google is 'flying a banner of doing no evil, and then they’re perpetrating evil under our noses,' said Abraham J. Briloff, a professor emeritus of accounting at Baruch College in New York who has examined Google’s tax disclosures.
'Who is it that paid for the underlying concept on which they built these billions of dollars of revenues?' Briloff said. 'It was paid for by the United States citizenry.'
The U.S. National Science Foundation funded the mid-1990s research at Stanford University that helped lead to Google’s creation. Taxpayers also paid for a scholarship for the company’s cofounder, Sergey Brin, while he worked on that research. Google now has a stock market value of $194.2 billion..."
Social Media As A Profit Center:
Bill Snyder: Why Facebook is selling you out -- and won't stop
"Facebook and its developers could bring in as much as $1 billion this year; only a bozo would think that Mark Zuckerberg will give that up to protect the privacy of his users..."
Economics:
Democracy Now! - Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz: Foreclosure Moratorium, Government Stimulus Needed to Revive US Economy
"As the Obama administration rejects a foreclosure moratorium and austerity protests grip Europe, we assess the state of the US and global economy with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, author of Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. Stiglitz backs calls for a foreclosure moratorium and says opponents of a new government stimulus 'don’t understand basic economics.' On war, Stiglitz says Iraq and Afghanistan are 'the first wars in America’s history financed totally on the credit card,'..."
Thursday, October 21, 2010
What The Corporate Media Leaves Out:
This a crime of omission by the fourth estate. Who else will keep the Banksters honest? Certainly not Congress.
Dan Froomkin: Nine Stories The Press Is Under-reporting -- Fraud, Fraud And More Fraud
"...What we are seeing all around us are the continued effects of a vast criminal enterprise that has never been brought to account, employing a process that, as University of Texas economist James Galbraith explains, involved the equivalent of counterfeiting, laundering and fencing.
So the person with the right expertise to lead us here is a criminologist -- in particular William K. Black, one of the few effective regulators in recent history (during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s), a notorious knocker of heads and currently professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of the book, 'The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One'.
I first interviewed Black in April, and recently checked back in and asked him about this ongoing problem of the mainstream media's inability to properly cover this story. He responded with this breathless and breathtaking list of failings (slightly edited for publication)..."
Government Spending:
Someone should tell Congress, the Pentagon and the MIC-contractors that it IS possible to take a cut out of a ravenous budgetary monster, if you have the political will. In our case the monster eats $700+ billion every year, before 'supplementals' that seem to come begging like clockwork...
BBC News: Defence review: Cameron unveils armed forces cuts
"Harrier jump jets, the Navy's flagship HMS Ark Royal and planned Nimrod spy planes are to be axed and 42,000 MoD and armed forces jobs cut by 2015.
Unveiling the strategic defence review, PM David Cameron said defence spending would fall by 8% over four years.
The RAF and navy will lose 5,000 jobs each, the Army 7,000 and the Ministry of Defence 25,000 civilian staff..."
This a crime of omission by the fourth estate. Who else will keep the Banksters honest? Certainly not Congress.
Dan Froomkin: Nine Stories The Press Is Under-reporting -- Fraud, Fraud And More Fraud
"...What we are seeing all around us are the continued effects of a vast criminal enterprise that has never been brought to account, employing a process that, as University of Texas economist James Galbraith explains, involved the equivalent of counterfeiting, laundering and fencing.
So the person with the right expertise to lead us here is a criminologist -- in particular William K. Black, one of the few effective regulators in recent history (during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s), a notorious knocker of heads and currently professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of the book, 'The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One'.
I first interviewed Black in April, and recently checked back in and asked him about this ongoing problem of the mainstream media's inability to properly cover this story. He responded with this breathless and breathtaking list of failings (slightly edited for publication)..."
Government Spending:
Someone should tell Congress, the Pentagon and the MIC-contractors that it IS possible to take a cut out of a ravenous budgetary monster, if you have the political will. In our case the monster eats $700+ billion every year, before 'supplementals' that seem to come begging like clockwork...
BBC News: Defence review: Cameron unveils armed forces cuts
"Harrier jump jets, the Navy's flagship HMS Ark Royal and planned Nimrod spy planes are to be axed and 42,000 MoD and armed forces jobs cut by 2015.
Unveiling the strategic defence review, PM David Cameron said defence spending would fall by 8% over four years.
The RAF and navy will lose 5,000 jobs each, the Army 7,000 and the Ministry of Defence 25,000 civilian staff..."
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Congress: Who's For Sale And Whom They (Actually) Represent:
Mother Jones: Who Owns Congress? A Campaign Cash Seating Chart
"What if members of Congress were seated not by party but according to the industries which gave them the most money over their entire careers?..."
Economics:
Jordan Stancil: Europe's Voodoo Economics
"Europe's debt troubles have roiled global markets and led to much braying about people who live beyond their means. In the United States, many fear we face a similar reckoning, and deficit hawks in both parties appear to be in the ascendant as Republicans decry President Obama's 'European' tendencies. But something is missing from this discussion, and that is the fact that what helped get Europe into trouble was actually something very American: big, regressive tax cuts that were supposed to pay for themselves but didn't. Thus, the problem is not that we will become Europe but that Europe was trying to become us. And voodoo economics didn't work any better there than it did here.
I am aware that 'tax cuts' and 'Europe' are not concepts that go together in the minds of most Americans. But bear with me while we look at a few examples. If we take the period from the mid-1990s until today, Germany reduced its corporate tax rate by twenty-seven percentage points, while the top income tax rate was cut by 9.5 points. Over the same period, Spain and France slashed their highest income tax rates by about thirteen percentage points, and Italy reduced its corporate tax rate by 20.8 points and its top income tax rate by 6.1 points.
Along with rate cuts that have disproportionately benefited top earners, the long-term trend in Europe, as in America, has been to shift the source of revenue away from taxes on personal and corporate income, as well as away from employers' share of payroll taxes, and on to workers' share of payroll taxes, according to a 2009 report by the EU statistical agency Eurostat. Some countries have also increased the regressive value-added tax to try to pay for cuts in more progressive sources of revenue, like the income tax.
The upshot, according to Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, is that taxation in Europe has become more regressive over the past decade and a half, as European countries fight among themselves to attract capital in an era of intensified integration. 'We have tax competition in Europe, and the result is very simple: the mobile factor of production, i.e., capital, is taxed less and less; consequently, a less-mobile factor like low-skilled labor is overtaxed,' says Piketty...
...Ironically, center-left parties enacted some of the most regressive tax policies. In France, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Socialist government (1997–2002) began steep rate cuts, which were continued by subsequent conservative governments in preparation for the tax-slashing apotheosis that would occur when President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in 2007.
In Germany, the Social Democrat/Green coalition led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005) showed a zeal for tax cuts that surprised everyone. As the important weekly Die Zeit commented in a 2000 editorial: 'The coalition is pursuing a policy that no one would have believed two years ago: the retreat of the state, symbolized by...the forswearing of tax revenue and the biggest cuts in the top tax rates in the history of postwar Germany.'
Why the European center-left went down this path is a vastly complicated subject. But one reason is that center-left parties wanted to be seen as competent economic managers, and this meant not challenging the reigning dogma that growth occurs when capital is liberated. It is not widely enough known in the United States just how deeply this thinking penetrated European public discourse, but it is emblematic that the editorial quoted above from the very Social Democratic Die Zeit did not criticize the Schröder government's tax cuts. It warmly approved of them, and even justified them with the following categorical statement, which could have been taken from a US Chamber of Commerce policy paper: 'There's no doubt about it: The powers of growth in the economy will be strengthened thanks to a lower tax burden, German companies will become even more competitive, and foreign investors will no longer recoil before high German taxes. All that improves the prospect for new jobs.'
With the intellectual battlefield almost entirely ceded in this way, what did the center-right do? It demanded even further tax cuts..."
Energy:
Gizmag: Cleanair system said to cut energy costs by up to 25 percent
"According to the University of Copenhagen’s Prof. Matthew Johnson, approximately one-sixth of the energy consumed in the world is used for heating, cooling and dehumidifying air in buildings. Because that air accumulates toxins and pathogens, he explains, it must constantly be expelled and replaced with new air that’s drawn in from outside. That new air must then be heated, cooled and/or dehumidified all over again. If only the air already in buildings could be cleaned up and reused, far less energy would be used on continuously conditioning fresh air. That’s why Johnson has invented the Cleanair system.
'Every second we pump air into our houses that is too hot, too cold or too moist. And then we spend billions of kilowatts treating that air,' he said. 'If we could clean the air, we could recycle air that already has the perfect temperature.'
Apparently, that’s what his system does. It involves a patented system called Photochemical Air Purification, which incorporates ultraviolet light and photochemical reactions similar to those that occur in the Earth’s atmosphere. This combination is said to remove particles, viruses, ozone, bacteria, organic solvents and hydrocarbons from indoor air, allowing buildings to reduce their energy use by up to 25 percent..."
Mother Jones: Who Owns Congress? A Campaign Cash Seating Chart
"What if members of Congress were seated not by party but according to the industries which gave them the most money over their entire careers?..."
Economics:
Jordan Stancil: Europe's Voodoo Economics
"Europe's debt troubles have roiled global markets and led to much braying about people who live beyond their means. In the United States, many fear we face a similar reckoning, and deficit hawks in both parties appear to be in the ascendant as Republicans decry President Obama's 'European' tendencies. But something is missing from this discussion, and that is the fact that what helped get Europe into trouble was actually something very American: big, regressive tax cuts that were supposed to pay for themselves but didn't. Thus, the problem is not that we will become Europe but that Europe was trying to become us. And voodoo economics didn't work any better there than it did here.
I am aware that 'tax cuts' and 'Europe' are not concepts that go together in the minds of most Americans. But bear with me while we look at a few examples. If we take the period from the mid-1990s until today, Germany reduced its corporate tax rate by twenty-seven percentage points, while the top income tax rate was cut by 9.5 points. Over the same period, Spain and France slashed their highest income tax rates by about thirteen percentage points, and Italy reduced its corporate tax rate by 20.8 points and its top income tax rate by 6.1 points.
Along with rate cuts that have disproportionately benefited top earners, the long-term trend in Europe, as in America, has been to shift the source of revenue away from taxes on personal and corporate income, as well as away from employers' share of payroll taxes, and on to workers' share of payroll taxes, according to a 2009 report by the EU statistical agency Eurostat. Some countries have also increased the regressive value-added tax to try to pay for cuts in more progressive sources of revenue, like the income tax.
The upshot, according to Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, is that taxation in Europe has become more regressive over the past decade and a half, as European countries fight among themselves to attract capital in an era of intensified integration. 'We have tax competition in Europe, and the result is very simple: the mobile factor of production, i.e., capital, is taxed less and less; consequently, a less-mobile factor like low-skilled labor is overtaxed,' says Piketty...
...Ironically, center-left parties enacted some of the most regressive tax policies. In France, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's Socialist government (1997–2002) began steep rate cuts, which were continued by subsequent conservative governments in preparation for the tax-slashing apotheosis that would occur when President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in 2007.
In Germany, the Social Democrat/Green coalition led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (1998–2005) showed a zeal for tax cuts that surprised everyone. As the important weekly Die Zeit commented in a 2000 editorial: 'The coalition is pursuing a policy that no one would have believed two years ago: the retreat of the state, symbolized by...the forswearing of tax revenue and the biggest cuts in the top tax rates in the history of postwar Germany.'
Why the European center-left went down this path is a vastly complicated subject. But one reason is that center-left parties wanted to be seen as competent economic managers, and this meant not challenging the reigning dogma that growth occurs when capital is liberated. It is not widely enough known in the United States just how deeply this thinking penetrated European public discourse, but it is emblematic that the editorial quoted above from the very Social Democratic Die Zeit did not criticize the Schröder government's tax cuts. It warmly approved of them, and even justified them with the following categorical statement, which could have been taken from a US Chamber of Commerce policy paper: 'There's no doubt about it: The powers of growth in the economy will be strengthened thanks to a lower tax burden, German companies will become even more competitive, and foreign investors will no longer recoil before high German taxes. All that improves the prospect for new jobs.'
With the intellectual battlefield almost entirely ceded in this way, what did the center-right do? It demanded even further tax cuts..."
Energy:
Gizmag: Cleanair system said to cut energy costs by up to 25 percent
"According to the University of Copenhagen’s Prof. Matthew Johnson, approximately one-sixth of the energy consumed in the world is used for heating, cooling and dehumidifying air in buildings. Because that air accumulates toxins and pathogens, he explains, it must constantly be expelled and replaced with new air that’s drawn in from outside. That new air must then be heated, cooled and/or dehumidified all over again. If only the air already in buildings could be cleaned up and reused, far less energy would be used on continuously conditioning fresh air. That’s why Johnson has invented the Cleanair system.
'Every second we pump air into our houses that is too hot, too cold or too moist. And then we spend billions of kilowatts treating that air,' he said. 'If we could clean the air, we could recycle air that already has the perfect temperature.'
Apparently, that’s what his system does. It involves a patented system called Photochemical Air Purification, which incorporates ultraviolet light and photochemical reactions similar to those that occur in the Earth’s atmosphere. This combination is said to remove particles, viruses, ozone, bacteria, organic solvents and hydrocarbons from indoor air, allowing buildings to reduce their energy use by up to 25 percent..."
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Economics:
Bruce Bartlett: Neocons Talk Deficit but Won’t Budge on Defense Cuts
"Establishment conservatives love to talk about the need to cut government spending, but they always seem to find an excuse whenever there is a serious effort to actually do it. Last year, for example, they opposed cutting Medicare as part of health care reform. Now they are banding together to stop cuts in defense spending, which is a fifth of the federal budget, even as they also insist that the deficit is our most critical problem.
This hypocrisy was on full display on Oct. 4, as American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol penned a joint op-ed for the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page on why the defense budget should be totally off limits to budget cutters..."
Bruce Bartlett: Neocons Talk Deficit but Won’t Budge on Defense Cuts
"Establishment conservatives love to talk about the need to cut government spending, but they always seem to find an excuse whenever there is a serious effort to actually do it. Last year, for example, they opposed cutting Medicare as part of health care reform. Now they are banding together to stop cuts in defense spending, which is a fifth of the federal budget, even as they also insist that the deficit is our most critical problem.
This hypocrisy was on full display on Oct. 4, as American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol penned a joint op-ed for the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page on why the defense budget should be totally off limits to budget cutters..."
Monday, October 04, 2010
Housing:
Arthur Delaney: Foreclosure Paperwork Scandal 'Same Process' That Fed The Housing Bubble
"The paperwork scandal that has prompted several banks to halt evictions and review their foreclosure procedures is reminiscent of the predatory lending scheme that inflated the housing bubble.
'It's the same process, falsifying documents to make them look acceptable to someone,' said Tom Domonoske, a lawyer and consumer advocate in Virginia. 'They're falsifying foreclosure documents so judges will look at them and say, 'Here's an affidavit. It's signed.''
Domonoske represents Virginia and Donald Naill, who unwittingly found themselves in an exploding mortgage after refinancing in 2006. 'I figured they had my taxes, my Social Security number, that they knew everything,' Naill told HuffPost last year...
...Several of the nation's largest banks have announced in the last two weeks that they are halting evictions and investigating their foreclosure procedures after employees at 'foreclosure mill' law firms admitted in sworn depositions that they never verified information in potentially hundreds of thousands of foreclosure documents..."
Money & Politics:
Washington Post: Interest-group spending for midterm up fivefold from 2006; many sources secret
"Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from.
The $80 million spent so far by groups outside the Democratic and Republican parties dwarfs the $16 million spent at this point for the 2006 midterms. In that election, the vast majority of money - more than 90 percent - was disclosed along with donors' identities. This year, that figure has fallen to less than half of the total, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post.
The trends amount to a spending frenzy conducted largely in the shadows.
The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks. The wave of spending is made possible in part by a series of Supreme Court rulings unleashing the ability of corporations and interest groups to spend money on politics. Conservative operatives also say they are riding the support of donors upset with Democratic policies they perceive as anti-business..."
Politics:
Matt Taibbi: Tea & Crackers
"...A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it..."
Arthur Delaney: Foreclosure Paperwork Scandal 'Same Process' That Fed The Housing Bubble
"The paperwork scandal that has prompted several banks to halt evictions and review their foreclosure procedures is reminiscent of the predatory lending scheme that inflated the housing bubble.
'It's the same process, falsifying documents to make them look acceptable to someone,' said Tom Domonoske, a lawyer and consumer advocate in Virginia. 'They're falsifying foreclosure documents so judges will look at them and say, 'Here's an affidavit. It's signed.''
Domonoske represents Virginia and Donald Naill, who unwittingly found themselves in an exploding mortgage after refinancing in 2006. 'I figured they had my taxes, my Social Security number, that they knew everything,' Naill told HuffPost last year...
...Several of the nation's largest banks have announced in the last two weeks that they are halting evictions and investigating their foreclosure procedures after employees at 'foreclosure mill' law firms admitted in sworn depositions that they never verified information in potentially hundreds of thousands of foreclosure documents..."
Money & Politics:
Washington Post: Interest-group spending for midterm up fivefold from 2006; many sources secret
"Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from.
The $80 million spent so far by groups outside the Democratic and Republican parties dwarfs the $16 million spent at this point for the 2006 midterms. In that election, the vast majority of money - more than 90 percent - was disclosed along with donors' identities. This year, that figure has fallen to less than half of the total, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post.
The trends amount to a spending frenzy conducted largely in the shadows.
The bulk of the money is being spent by conservatives, who have swamped their Democratic-aligned competition by 7 to 1 in recent weeks. The wave of spending is made possible in part by a series of Supreme Court rulings unleashing the ability of corporations and interest groups to spend money on politics. Conservative operatives also say they are riding the support of donors upset with Democratic policies they perceive as anti-business..."
Politics:
Matt Taibbi: Tea & Crackers
"...A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it..."
Friday, October 01, 2010
Economics:
G. William Domhoff: Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power
"This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.
Some of the information might be a surprise to many people. The most amazing numbers on income inequality come last, showing the change in the ratio of the average CEO's paycheck to that of the average factory worker over the past 40 years...
...If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select -- and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit -- gives them the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called "compensation consultants," who give the process a thin veneer of economic respectability.
The process has been explained in detail by a retired CEO of DuPont, Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., who is now chair of the New York Stock Exchange's executive compensation committee. His experience suggests that he knows whereof he speaks, and he speaks because he's concerned that corporate leaders are losing respect in the public mind. He says that the business page chatter about CEO salaries being set by the competition for their services in the executive labor market is 'bull.' As to the claim that CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they 'create wealth,' he describes that rationale as a 'joke,' says the New York Times (Morgenson, 2005, Section 3, p. 1).
Here's how it works, according to Woolard:
The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the outside consultant is an 'expert' on such matters. Furthermore, handing out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator..."
G. William Domhoff: Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power
"This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.
Some of the information might be a surprise to many people. The most amazing numbers on income inequality come last, showing the change in the ratio of the average CEO's paycheck to that of the average factory worker over the past 40 years...
...If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select -- and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit -- gives them the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called "compensation consultants," who give the process a thin veneer of economic respectability.
The process has been explained in detail by a retired CEO of DuPont, Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., who is now chair of the New York Stock Exchange's executive compensation committee. His experience suggests that he knows whereof he speaks, and he speaks because he's concerned that corporate leaders are losing respect in the public mind. He says that the business page chatter about CEO salaries being set by the competition for their services in the executive labor market is 'bull.' As to the claim that CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they 'create wealth,' he describes that rationale as a 'joke,' says the New York Times (Morgenson, 2005, Section 3, p. 1).
Here's how it works, according to Woolard:
The compensation committee [of the board of directors] talks to an outside consultant who has surveys you could drive a truck through and pay anything you want to pay, to be perfectly honest. The outside consultant talks to the human resources vice president, who talks to the CEO. The CEO says what he'd like to receive. It gets to the human resources person who tells the outside consultant. And it pretty well works out that the CEO gets what he's implied he thinks he deserves, so he will be respected by his peers. (Morgenson, 2005.)
The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the outside consultant is an 'expert' on such matters. Furthermore, handing out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator..."
