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Money in politics: A history of legalized corruption & the new Gilded Age: Draft.

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2013-04-19T14:38:00.001-07:00

Of all of the important political and social issues that plague our nation and our world today, almost all of them share a commonality. There is an old biblical saying “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. -1 Timothy 6:10.” Such can be summed up by the state of our political system. The faith of the people when it comes to our elected officials is at its lowest point ever recorded. According to a recent Gallup Poll, Just 13% of people polled approve of the job our congress is doing on our behalf. (Newport, 2013) A person can easily speculate into why public opinion is so low. They can cite ideological differences, partisan bickering, watered down legislation, the amount of vacation days taken by our officials, and even the inability to pass something that 90% of the American people want, but when it comes down to it do our representatives really represent us? Or do they represent someone else?

There is another old saying: “money talks.” If money talks then it must have a voice and if it has a voice then somewhere someone is going to listen to that voice. If money is power, and has a voice, then those who possess that money also have that power and that voice. As the influence of those with that money increases so does their representation. It’s their interests that are served because they have the loudest voice. So what happens to those without that money; the low wage server, the factory worker, the cashier, the poor, sick, elderly, what happens to their voices? Wages for those groups of people have stagnated, and in many sectors declined over the last forty years. (Greenhouse, 2013) How do these stats and others tie into the idea that money is corrupting our political system? In order to really understand the effect that money plays in the political system and how everything ultimately leads back to it one must understand first what it has done in the past. Money corrupting the political system is not a new thing. It’s not even a new thing in America; in fact America has had a history of moneyed interests paying politicians to do their bidding. All of human society can be looked at as going through cycles, such the same with political campaign spending, and to understand where we are, we have to look at where we have been.

The earliest use of money in politics in America comes as early as an election which in involved a young Colonel George Washington in the year 1758. Washington’s campaign for the House of Burgesses paid for votes in a sum equal in today’s dollars of $8,000 worth of booze and food. (Weaver) This of course led to a rule to be passed by the House of Burgesses which “provides that no one should be qualified to hold a seat in that house, who should, before his election, either himself or by any other person or persons on his behalf and at his charge, directly or indirectly give, present or allow any person or persons having voice or vote in such election any money, meat, drink, entertainment or provision, or make any present, gift, reward, or entertainment, &c., &c., in order to be elected." (Weaver) So we already have a good demonstration of vote buying and the first rules against it, however there are a lot more examples of political corruption leading up to the current situation we find ourselves in today.

Going forward into the 19^th century and to a time that was fondly known as the “gilded age” there were many occurrences of political corruption related to both money and power. The 1800’s were a time of corporate domination, political scandal, and corruption. It’s started with the spoils system advocated by President Andrew Jackson that rewarded political allies with positions in office and stated “to the victor go the spoils of the enemy.” (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) Such a system of rewarding political allies was not just wrong, but further allowed for the use of cronyism in our political system. The issue with the spoils system is that it allowed those with deep pockets that were able to finance political campaigns to get a return on investment in those campaigns, often leading those donors into positions of power that allowed them to be able to crush their competition, enact legislation to further their own interests, and shut out the voices of regular people.

Nonetheless the spoils system remained for over 50 years from 1829-1883. (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) During that time large donations from railroad magnates like Jay Cooke were funneled into the Republican Party in the year 1872 to the tune of $50,000. At the time that equaled a quarter of the entire budget of the Republican Party and was used to help secure the win of President Ulysses S. Grant. An unnamed historian was quoted as saying “Never before was a candidate placed under such great obligation to men of wealth.” (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) Obligated they are. When money is given to a candidate for elections the donors expect something in return. Grant’s presidency was marred with scandal after scandal from corrupt political appointees and even the vice President. These scandals included Black Friday, Credit Mobilier, Whiskey Ring, and the Indian Ring. (Grant Administration Scandals) Credit Mobilier was one of the greatest scandals of the 19^th century because of how it was set up to benefit congress as well as the leader of the company Congressman Oakes Ames. It begins when the Union Pacific Railroad was hired to build the first transcontinental railroad in America. Two men, one named Thomas Durant, and George Train set up a new company called Credit Mobilier to basically be the one to build the railroad while being able to profit from government money related to its construction. It’s important to note that Thomas Durant was also the vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad. The fraud was simple, Union Pacific made contracts with Credit Mobilier to build the railway, paid through check. Credit Mobilier used those checks to buy stock in Union Pacific. While this practice was technically legal it was still using taxpayer funds in order to line the pockets of wealthy individuals by doing things like inflating the prices of actual construction in order to create more profit and adding nine extra miles of track onto the project in order to reap extra profits without the risk. The government corruption angle came into play when Thomas Durant was replaced by Congressman Oakes Ames in 1867. Ames offered members of congress shares of its stock at a discount under market value. Those members of congress were able to sell those shares for enormous profit, and as they were congressmen, they were also able to vote for more appropriations to the corporation in which they owned shares. (Kennedy, 2001) It was a great example of a grand larceny of taxpayer money going right back into the pockets of our politicians.

This is the core of what happened in the gilded age. Another example of the depths of corruption in the halls of congress was the Salary Grab of 1863. This scandal which was once again legal had congressmen many of whom we’re voted out already and finishing up the lame duck session of congress voted themselves a retroactive pay raise of 50% back to the first day of the congress! (Lee J. Alston, 2006) The majority of congressmen participating in this salary grab were some of the same ones that were a part of the Credit Mobilier scandal that had a massive public backlash during the elections. It was this scandal and many others like it that led to progressive reforms in subsequent years. One of these reforms is was that signed by president Chester A. Arthur that ended the spoils system. However there were many more problems that needed to be addressed for truly progressive reform. Although civil servants could no longer be solicited for campaign contributions, that didn’t stop corporations from being able to dig into their massive profit margins to prop up business friendly candidates. An example of this was a campaign manager named Mark Hanna that was able to successfully solicit campaign contributions from many of the nations’ largest corporations for William McKinley’s’ presidential campaign. Those donations he added would be "according to [their] stake in the general prosperity of the country." (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) There has been speculation on how much was raised by Mark Hanna for the McKinley campaign; some studies cite it somewhere around $3,000,000 to $16,000,000 (Chandler, 1998) either way this shows a massive amount of money spent on McKinley’s political campaign. No one is really sure how much of that came from corporate spending, but one can safely assume that at least a fairly large amount came in the form of corporate donations to the Republican Party. Not so long after the McKinley campaign did another scandal erupt involving a very large political donation from the New York Life Insurance company, this secret donation was equivalent to $1.25 Million in todays’ dollars and went straight into the pockets of the Republican Party because as the Vice President of New York Life Mr. George Perkins put it “We felt that the assets of the New York Life Insurance Co. would be jeopardized by Democratic success.” (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) Reformers were even more determined after the revelation of the secret donations and the rampant corruption of the last few administrations and the oversized representation that was given to those donors.

Remember all of this took place during the gilded age, where massive wealth inequality existed. The average American workers wages did not compare at all to the excesses of corporate privilege. In fact workers’ wages were not enough to even support their families, they worked in terrible unsafe conditions, and no longer worked beside their employers as it was in times past but were separated. (The War Between Capital and Labor, 2011) Worker protections were near non-existent, and child labor was rampant. Injuries and deaths related to work in the factories were incredibly high “around 1900 25-35,000 deaths and 1 million injuries per year occurred on industrial jobs.” (The War Between Capital and Labor, 2011) Injured workers or families of deceased workers were unable to hold factory owners accountable and because of the massive corporate and business campaign donations to Congress as well as presidential races and bought courts, those workers were not represented by the government. Strikes were often met with violence, often from state governments sending militias out to deal with strikers and even the National Guard. (The War Between Capital and Labor, 2011) It was the rampant inequality and lack of representation for the worker that led to the progressive reforms of the 20^th century.

While the 19^th century was filled with scandal, inequality, corporate donation, and wage slavery, the first half of the 20^th century made a lot of progressive reforms especially when it came to campaign contributions and voter representation. Starting in 1904 in response to accusations of fundraising impropriety (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) President Theodore Roosevelt called for a ban on all corporate contributions for all political purposes. Called the Tillman act it prohibited corporate campaign contributions but did not require disclosure of any campaign records. (Primer on Disclosure and Electronic Filings, 2010) Further limits on campaign spending were enacted in 1910 with the Federal Corrupt Practices Act that created limits on individual campaign spending, however its limit on House and Senate candidate spending was overturned by the Supreme Court. (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) The legislation itself was not strong nor was it was really enforced until its revisit in 1925. Despite the strong new limits placed on corporate and individual contributions there was a strong interest in the ability by these organizations to be able to make political donations in return for endorsing favorable legislation. That led the creation in 1940 of the first Political Action Committee, or PAC. PAC’s were able to skirt past the rules on political campaign spending because it collected campaign money outside of standard dues. It’s interesting to note here that this PAC, called the Congress of Industrial Organizations was actually a labor advocacy PAC created to get around the fact that unions were also unable to by law contribute to political campaigns. (Encyclopedia.com, 2005)

Even these limits on campaign financing from unions, corporations and individuals were not enough to stop corruption of the political system. PAC’s were able to do an end run around the laws and still contribute to political campaigns in secret. Senator Richard Nixon famously had to defend $18,000 in secret campaign gifts as well as a dog given to him in which his daughter named “Checkers.” (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) Later on then President Nixon also ran into more trouble by collecting over $20 Million in secret campaign donations for his reelection bid, some of that is speculated to have went to fund the Watergate break-in. (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) It also estimated that $700,000 of that money was in cash, and all of it was collected before a law that would require discloser statements be issued from campaigns would take effect. The Watergate Scandal was indeed a turning point in campaign finance law that led to two important changes. One important change was to update the Federal Election Campaign Act or FECA, those changes become the modern bedrock of campaign finance law, and the other change was that the Federal Election Commission was created to oversee campaign spending. These changes really represent the last truly progressive step in campaign finance laws. The issues that came after the era of progressive reform ends up leading into some of our modern campaign spending and corruption problems.

It’s important to note that during the time of the all progressive reform when it came to limits on campaign financing, a large number of very progressive policies were enacted, and that economic growth had soared. The New Deal policies during that time period ensured that workers had representation in the workplace and the limits on campaign spending made sure that voters had representation in congress. Taxation was progressive and income inequality was at a lower level than it is even today. (Krugman, 2007) The social safety net provisions in the New Deal would not have been possible without the limits on corporate contributions. Corporations are by their very nature profit making machines, and lower taxes increase profit margins. So that in order to maximize profits, it only makes sense to influence those that have control over passing tax policy.

However with the laws that were in place during the 1970’s it was very difficult to get past those hurtles especially with FECA the law of the land. In 1975 Senator James Buckley challenged the constitutionality of FECA in a landmark court case. In fact the very next day the amendments to FECA were signed into law is when Senator Buckley along with Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed suit against Francis R. Valeo, the Ex Officio member of the FEC. (Court Case Abstracts) This suit essentially maintained that the limits on campaign contributions were unconstitutional under the first amendment. The plaintiffs argued that “limiting the use of money for political purposes constituted a restriction on communication violative of the first amendment, since virtually all meaningful political communications in the modern setting involve the expenditure of money.” (Mares, 1996) The outcome of this case that was decided in 1976 by the Supreme Court was that some of the rules put in place by FECA were upheld, for example the limits on individual and committee contributions to candidates were kept in place. The limits in a candidate spending his or her own money, as well as independent expenditures, and limits on total campaign spending were overturned by the Supreme Court. Those rules were considered violations of free speech and therefore protected under the first amendment. Money now equaled speech. However a rule that that did limit campaign spending was put into place that was dependent on if the candidate voluntarily accepted public financing of his or her campaign. The decision of Buckley v. Valeo is still the law of the land and is still disputed by various groups today as perpetuating a climate of inequality. It also begs the question, if money is speech, and by law it is. Do people with more money have more speech rights than those with less money? Another important question to ask is in an age of growing income inequality, with more and more money flowing to the top, has the political power of the poor been overtaken by the wealthiest individuals and corporations that are able to exercise more “political speech”?

Despite this monumental success for those who wanted more influence in the political system using money to “buy their way in” it didn’t seem to be enough. The 1980’s saw the increased use of “soft money”. Soft money is unregulated, undisclosed, and unlimited campaign contributions. (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) Both the Democrats and Republicans raised $45 Million in soft money in 1988. It didn’t get better in the 1990’s. Campaign contributions caused senators to back a failing savings and loan company run by Charles Keating. In a senate investigation several senators including still serving Senator John McCain received $1.3Million in contributions. McCain advocated to the senate on behalf of Keating, one can safely assume why. (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) The following year the use of soft money saw a 91% increase since 1988. Both Democrats and Republicans raised $86 Million that year alone. The reason that soft-money was legal is because it wasn’t given to a specific candidate, and often went to expenditures such as buildings as well as going out to the states for local get-out-the-vote drives. (Jasperse, 1992) A Vice President of common cause in 1992, Susan Marnes was quoted saying “we basically have a Federal Election Commission which has written regulations which allow this money to come in through the back door.” “Common Cause estimates that Republicans and Democrats each raised $25 million in soft money during the 1988 presidential campaign. The group says Republicans have raised $45.5 million and Democrats $15.7 million in soft money since then.” (Jasperse, 1992) At the time Republicans on average tended to raise more in soft money than Democrats. Despite the advantage, Bill Clinton was elected in 1996, it wasn’t so much the funding, but it’s how that money was used, and Bill Clinton used his $122Million in soft money to purchase “issue ads” to great effect over the Republican contenders $144Million in soft money. (Asawin Suebsaeng, 2012) However those donations came at a price, rides on Air force 1, coffee with the President, and sleepovers at the White House were just several of the perks given to those donors who gave to the DNC. (Kroll, 2012) Not only that, but it was later found that the DNC also illegally received $65,000 from wealthy donors through an L.A. area Buddhist Temple.

Those events caused a political upheaval of the senate in 1994, and the Republicans took control. However an unlikely pair of bipartisan senators, Democrat Russ Feingold, and Republican John McCain, who decided to become a reformist after the Keating scandal, teamed up in order to reform the system. (Kroll, 2012) The McCain-Feingold bill banned soft money; it also banned the use of union and corporate funds to be able to make ads about a candidate. Earlier drafts of the bill also attempted to ban PACs; however it was dropped in order to focus on soft money. It took nearly seven years to be able to get McCain-Feingold passed. The two senators faced many amendments that would’ve handicapped the bill, and a House that narrowly let the bill go through by a 51 vote margin, however with much luck and little ceremony the final bill was signed on March 27, 2002. The day McCain-Feingold was passed it was immediately challenged. The National Rifle Association had already drawn up the paperwork to challenge the new bills’ constitutionality and had a staffer from a law firm waiting for the courthouse to open. (Kroll, 2012) However the NRA wasn’t the first challenger to the McCain-Feingold bill. Senator Mitch McConnell, who serves now as a Senate Minority leader for Alabama, ended up filing his case McConnell vs. FEC in a deal with the NRA to team up while swapping his name with the organizations. (Kroll, 2012) His entire argument against the banning of soft money was based on the premise that: “[It] constitutes the most threatening frontal assault on core First Amendment values in a generation." As Buckley v. Valeo had established years earlier, political money was speech, protected under the first amendment, and so according to McConnell and his lawyers, any limits on campaign financing are unconstitutional under the precedent set by the Buckley decision. McConnell had a history of trying to eliminate campaign finance laws; however he focused on the FEC, while he couldn’t challenge the laws themselves, he could defund the agency and therefore make them unable to enforce that regulation. Another tactic used by McConnell to fight campaign finance regulation was to influence nominations to the agency so that the agency would be filled with “ideologues hostile to campaign finance law.” One such appointee, Donald McGahn literally told a group of student that he would just not enforce the laws he was hired to enforce. He just wouldn’t do his job. In the real world, if someone wouldn’t do their job, they would be fired. If someone had an ideological opposition to what he/she was supposed to do for a living, they would not be there long. However government does not work that way, and in within the last six years the McConnell strategy severely crippled the FEC’s effectiveness. Almost half of all groups that were supposed to disclose donors did not do so during the span of 2004-2010. (Kroll, 2012) However much to the dismay of Mitch McConnell, all of McCain-Feingold was upheld in the 2003 by the Supreme Court with a 5-4 decision.

However even with the victory of McCain-Feingold that was seen a great victory for campaign finance reformers, opponents of campaign finance reform, and proponents of legalized bribery through campaign donations finally achieved their greatest victory yet. Citizens United vs. FEC. A great deal of reform was eliminated with this decision handed down by the Supreme Court. In 2008 during the Democratic Primaries, a conservative non-profit group named “Citizens United” produced a movie called “Hillary: The Movie”. It was a critical documentary on candidate Hillary Clinton. Due to its political nature, and the fact that they planned on airing it using an on-demand video service on cable TV, the video ended up being subject to the rules governed by the FEC involving “electioneering communication” as well as limits on who can fund these types of ads. (Money in politics)Citizens United sued the FEC first in federal court, and lost, and then appealed that decision with the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision Citizens United had won its case, and also won far more. The decision allows corporations, unions, and other special interest groups to be able to spend unlimited money to advocate for the election or defeat of electoral candidates. The decision essentially gives corporations and unions individual first amendment speech rights protected under the constitution. That protected speech comes in the form of political campaign spending. An important part of the dissenting opinion of the court is as follows: “In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.

The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907.” (Legal Information Institute, 2010) Citizens United removed many of those limitations, and increased the influence of corporations and special interest groups on elected officials. After the Citizens United decision was rendered, America saw the formation of something called a Super-PAC. Recall that a PAC, or Political Action Committee, was created to skirt existing campaign finance laws and provide funding for advocacy for or against a candidate. Super-PACs take this idea to an extreme. They’re known as independent expenditure groups that are able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money from corporations and wealthy donors. Unlike PACs, Super-PACs are unable to donate directly to a candidate. However they can run issue ads for or against candidates. (Politics, 2013)There are also groups known as 501c4 nonprofit “social welfare groups” that are able to raise and spend unlimited money on political ads so long as they were “primarily engaged in enhancing social welfare.” (Barker, 2012) The rules governing the use of 501c4 nonprofit organizations are extremely unclear, although they are supposed to promote social welfare through advertising, there are no clear rules on what counts as social welfare. 501c4 groups are also not required to disclose donors to the FEC, effectively concealing the identities of those who fund these groups. The rise of the Super-PAC also coincided with the rise of election costs during the 2012 election. In total Super-PACs alone spent nearly half a billion dollars on presidential, and congressional elections. (Vine) Keeping true with historical trends, the Republican Party ended up raising and spending more money on congressional races than their Democratic opponents. Restore our Future; the Super-PAC that supported Mitt Romney outspent Barack Obama’s Super-PAC Priorities USA Action by at least two-to-one. (Vine) $142,097,462 spent to support Mitt Romney, compared to just $64,799,242 spent to support Barack Obama.

The 2012 election was the most expensive election in our nations’ history, totaling somewhere around $6 Billion, (Hudson, 2012) most of that was spent by, PACs, Super-PACs, 501c4 “social welfare groups” and independent organizations. With that said, the questions posed earlier in this paper can now be answered. With all of the money now being spent, by corporations and wealthy donors in the political system, and with money being treated as free speech, and corporations being treated as individuals possessing free speech, it’s safe to assume that corporations have more speech rights (money) than the cashier, the factory worker, and the elderly person on a fixed social security income. Since those corporations and wealthy donors possess more speech, they are heard more loudly than others with little speech. This has led to a situation where our congress now represents the wealthy and special interests instead of the American people. Also with all of the money being spent on elections, the price of being able to win an election has also increased. The average cost of winning a House seat, is $1.4Million, whereas the average cost to win a Senate seat, is $8.5Million. (Gilson, 2010) A recent study also shows that on average at least four hours of the day of a typical Congressman is spent raising money. (Grim & Saddiqui, 2013)That’s at least twenty hours a week on the phone soliciting for campaign money, and that doesn’t count time spent at fundraisers. The easiest way to get that money is to reach out to wealthy donors, corporations and special interests, which then expect a return on investment if the congressman wins his or her election. So this is where America is at, wealthy donors now control the high cost of running for office, and demand returns on their investments, those returns include lucrative government contracts, relaxed regulation, and lower taxes on their businesses, and personal incomes. Tax rates for the wealthiest Americans are at the lowest point they’ve ever been. (Gilson, Plutocracy Now, 2013) While corporate profits have soared. (Schwartz, 2013) However workers have seen almost none of the gain, because the politicians no longer represent the workers.

There is hope however, throughout our history reformers have fought the corrupting influence of money in politics and have won stunning regulatory victories. There are groups of reformers at this moment working within the system to stop the corruption. There are even Super PACs out there that have been created to fight Citizens United by raising money, raising awareness and bypassing the bought and sold congress and going directly to the states. To what end? To fight for a constitutional amendment that bans corporate personhood, reverses citizens united, and overturns the Buckley decision. These groups include the “Get Money Out Campaign” “Wolf PAC”, and “Represent US.” Already some states have introduced resolutions that will call for a constitutional convention to amend the constitution with these new provisions. Enshrining the ban on money in politics is certainly a difficult endeavor, however with the help of volunteers and local representatives alike, they may be able to finally end the corrupting influence of money in our political system and take the government back from the wealthy corporations, and back to the people.

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Primer on Disclosure and Electronic Filings. (2010). Retrieved from Public Citizen: http://www.citizen.org/congress/article_redirect.cfm?ID=15165

The War Between Capital and Labor. (2011, December 26). Retrieved from Academic American History: http://www.academicamerican.com/recongildedage/topics/gildedage2.html

Asawin Suebsaeng, A. K. (2012, August 9). 250 Years of Campaigns, Cash, and Corruption . Retrieved from MotherJones: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/campaign-finance-timeline-dark-money

Barker, K. (2012, August 18). How Nonprofits Spend Millions on Elections and Call it Public Welfare. Retrieved from ProPublica.org: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-nonprofits-spend-millions-on-elections-and-call-it-public-welfare

Chandler, A. D. (1998). A short note on the expenditures of the McKinley campaign of 1896. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 88-91.

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Gilson, D. (2010, September). The Price of Admission to the House and Senate. Retrieved from MotherJones: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/incumbent-campaign-fundraising-advantage-congress

Gilson, D. (2013, April 18). Plutocracy Now. Retrieved from MotherJones: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/taxes-richest-americans-charts-graph

Grant Administration Scandals. (n.d.). Retrieved from United States History: http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h234.html

Greenhouse, S. (2013, January 12). Our Economic Pickle. Retrieved from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/sunday-review/americas-productivity-climbs-but-wages-stagnate.html?_r=0

Grim, R., & Saddiqui, S. (2013, January 8). Call Time For Congress Shows How Fundraising Dominates Bleak Work Life. Retrieved from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html

Hudson, J. (2012, November 6). The Most Expensive Election in History, by the Numbers. Retrieved from The Atlantic: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/most-expensive-election-history-numbers/58745/

Jasperse, P. (1992). Givers' 'soft money' helps keep political parties fueled. Milwaukee Journal, A8.

Kennedy, R. C. (2001, February 19). On This Day. Retrieved from New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0315.html

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Newport, F. (2013, March 11). Congress Approval Stagnant at low level. Retrieved from Gallup Politics: http://www.gallup.com/poll/161210/congress-approval-stagnant-low-level.aspx

Politics, C. F. (2013, April 11). Super PACs. Retrieved from Open Secrets: http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php

Schwartz, N. D. (2013, April 8). Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/economy/corporate-profits-soar-as-worker-income-limps.html?pagewanted=all

Vine, J. S. (n.d.). How much are Super PACs spending? Retrieved from The Wall Street Journal: http://projects.wsj.com/super-pacs/

Weaver, J. C. (n.d.). The first election of Washington to the House of Burgesses. Retrieved from New River Notes: http://www.newrivernotes.com/old_nrn/va/1electgw.htm

2013-04-06T17:08:00.003-07:00

Subjects today are the Arkansas Oil Spill, The Monsanto Protection Act, and a GA school still has segregated proms. Tweet us at #TYTCommunity for live feedback.

2013-03-03T14:11:00.001-08:00

Jeremy Bird is trying the impossible, he's trying to turn Texas into a blue state. His site is called .Battleground Texas and his aim to get minority and democratic voters to the polls to put Texas on the list of so called battleground states. Now of course he faces many challenges. On our second part of Saturdays TYT Community show broadcast, our panel featured independent journalist Brad Friedman from Bradblog.com to discuss GOP voter suppression in states like Texas as well as the future of the GOP.

2013-03-03T12:40:00.001-08:00

Last night I had the great opportunity to sit down with Brad Friedman from Bradblog.com on TYT Community to talk about sequestration. That $85 Billion a year we're cutting is a drop in the bucket compared to what we're really wasting in military fraud and waste. As well as fraud and waste in the federal reserve.

These Republicans are not conservative, they are pigs at the trough of our tax dollars, and as long as their friends profit, they will waste your money all day.

So what is sequestration? It's a made up crisis that was used to slash domestic spending, and while it does cut defense, it's not what the beltway, mainstream media is portraying it as.

Here is the discussion:

Make sure to subscribe to our channel http://www.youtube.com/user/TYTCommunity

And definitely check out http://www.bradblog.com/ for more of Brad's expert analysis.

2013-02-26T11:49:00.001-08:00

All this week you're going to be hearing about the sequester. The spending cuts from both defense and domestic spending. But what you wont hear about is the truth. The sequester crisis was made up as a way to force cuts to social security and medicare.

They will say we need to cut those to protect defense spending, but it's not until you look at the absolute waste in the pentagon that you realize that their argument is bullshit.

For one, the sequester leaves funding alone for spending required for any active wars we are currently in. This whole plan will save the defense contractors that have absolutely defrauded the taxpayer (YOU) and still get contract deals.

In this video I spell out everything you need to know about the sequester:

2013-02-20T07:11:00.001-08:00

Our Panel talks about the need for an increase in the minimum wage as well as common conservative myths surrounding the idea of raising it.

2013-02-07T09:06:00.001-08:00

However I have been doing other projects. In addition to full time school I have been collaborating with a couple of friends to revive the TYT Community show, the first new episode should be up on the web soon.

I have also been editing, producing, and starring (not sure if that's the right word) in YouTube videos discussing current issues. It's like my blog, but without all the reading.

You can find it here: www.youtube.com\JCWaldorf

Please like and subscribe to my channel to help me continue to be independent.

2013-01-16T15:25:00.003-08:00

So today president Obama released a 23 point plan of executive actions he can take to help curb gun violence. While calling on congress do pass legislation such a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

The freakout from the right is amazing. Going so far as to target Obama's kids.

This is an ad released from the NRA that calls president Obama an "Elitist Hypocrite" for not wanting to put guns in school.

The whole is premise of this dumbass ad is to say "well Obama's kids get secret service guards so we should get guards too."

This is stupid, for one the president gets over 30 death threats a day, thirty!

I don't know any person that gets thirty death threats a day. Is it such a stretch that someone would threaten his family? OF COURSE! Of course they would, there are some crazy people out there.

Speaking of crazy, NRA president David Keene went on Mike Huckabees radio show and said this about the 23 executive actions

“Make no mistake about it: Overall, this is an anti-gun agenda pushed by an administration that is a committed anti-gun administration,”

And Mr. Wayne LaPierre had this to say:

“It’s not about protecting your children. It’s not about stopping crime. It’s about banning your guns … PERIOD!”

So here we ago again. Yes president Obama proposed that congress pass an assault weapons ban, but I don't think he or the NRA have anything to worry about. Not with this congress.

The political reality is that congress will not pass an assault weapons ban, it's not even on their radar. Sure you have Diane Finestein calling to put a ban on the floor, but come on. Do you really expect the Republicans to pass this? I'd be amazed if they even put it on the floor for a vote.

Well at least without massive public pressure.

You can bet the NRA and the gun lobby will be fighting any legislation tooth and nail, so if progressives want to see action on assault rifles and high capacity magazines, get ahold of your congressmen and let your voices be heard.

The president has done all he can do.

2013-01-10T14:43:00.004-08:00

Yesterday I talked about Alex Jones and his pro-gun rant on CNN. I mentioned that gun control laws are not likely to be passed.

I want to explain here why I think that is, despite the continued use of guns in violent crime, the increase of mass shootings, the outrage primarily from the left and the polling data that shows that a great deal of Americans are open to some reform.

USA Today/Gallup Poll. Dec. 19-22, 2012. N=1,038 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 4.




"Please say whether you favor or oppose each of the following: A law which would require background checks before people -- including gun dealers -- could buy guns at gun shows."

		Favor	Oppose	Unsure
		%	%	%
	12/19-22/12	92	7	-
	2/8-9/99	83	16	1

"Please say whether you favor or oppose each of the following: A law which would ban the sale and possession of high-capacity ammunition clips that can contain more than 10 bullets."

		Favor	Oppose	Unsure
		%	%	%
	12/19-22/12	62	35	3

We still have a deep partisan divide over the issue of 2nd amendment rights.

Pew Research Center. Dec. 17-19, 2012. N=1,219 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3.4.

"What do you think is more important -- to protect the right of Americans to own guns, or to control gun ownership?"

		Protect right to own guns	Control ownership	Unsure/ Refused
		%	%	%
	12/17-19/12	42	49	9
	Republicans	69	27	4
	Democrats	20	72	8
	Independents	47	42	11

And there is the fact that the words gun control are always mistakenly linked to the idea of banning all guns, which is NOT what gun control means.

Nonetheless, according to the Pew Research polling data more people feel safe with guns in the home.

Despite the data showing otherwise.

"Compared to homes without guns, the presence of guns in the home is associated with a 3-fold increased homicide risk within the home. The risk connected to gun ownership increases to 8-fold when the offender is an intimate partner or relative of the victim and is 20 times higher when previous domestic violence exists."

"Family and intimate assaults with firearms are 12 times more likely to result in death than nonfirearm assaults. This research suggests that limiting access to guns will result in less lethal family and intimate assaults."

-John Hopkins Bloomberg school of public health

And then you also have stories like this one. Also this one.

You also have the NRA now having a negative approval rating because it's stance on arming teachers which is proving to be unpopular.

The NRA now has a negative favorability rating, with 42% of voters seeing it positively while 45% have an unfavorable view. That represents a 10 point net decline in the NRA’s favorability from the week before the press conference when a national poll we did found it at 48/41. Its image has taken a hit with both Democrats (from 29/59 to 22/67) and Republicans (71/19 to 66/18).

The NRA’s focus on putting more guns in schools is likely what’s driving the decline in the organization’s image. Only 41% of voters support the organization’s proposal to put armed police officers in schools across the country, with 50% opposed. Democrats (35/57) and independents (38/51) both oppose the push and even among Republicans only a narrow majority (52/39) supports it.

On the broader issue of giving teachers guns, only 27% of voters are supportive with 64% opposed. There’s bipartisan opposition to that concept with Republicans (35/50), independents (31/59), and Democrats (19/77) all standing against it. Gun owners (37/52) oppose it as well.

The holidays and the fiscal cliff took a lot of the spotlight off gun control measures, but in general 53% of Americans say they support stricter gun laws with 40% opposed.

-Public Policy Polling

So despite all this why do I continue to think that there will be little action on gun control laws? Well for one we have divided government. We could hardly get a deal on the fiscal cliff passed in time, and that had a deadline where all Americans were going to be hit with tax increases.

Gun control legislation however does not have any imposed deadline, so the congress can continue to push it off until the general public forgets about it. That has essentially been the position of congress every time we have a mass shooting. Remember Columbine? Tuscon? Aurora? Wisconsin? Now Sandy Hook.

Now President Obama and Joe Biden do promise some action on gun control, but Obama has also promised to close Gitmo, raise taxes on people making over 250k a year, and not put entitlements on the table in order to deal with the deficit. So excuse me if I don't have faith in his ability to do what he says he will do when you look at his track record.

Another reason, and I'm going all philosophical on you now, is because we have a culture of fear. We have a media that sensationalizes tragedies to get ratings. We also have people like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox news spreading fear. Fear of the government, they often use Hitler and Mao as examples as to why any regulation is bad. Some Americans also fear minorities, Blacks and Latinos. Trayvon Martin is a great example of this, I think if Trayvon had been a white teenager in a hoodie there is a good chance Zimmerman would have let him be. There is sense of needing protection from the government and other Americans, as Alex Jones demonstrates during many of his paranoid rants.

So back to government, the gun manufacturers have a vested interest in making money, they are after all corporations, and with money they have the ability to spend that money on elections, influencing candidates. In 94% of congressional elections money determines the outcome. Gun manufacturers give money to the NRA, and the NRA uses it to give money to pro-gun politicians. If you take a stand on any type of gun control, your NRA funding is gone.

With all of these factors, and the efforts of many conservatives and libertarians alike that do not want to see any restrictions on their right to bear arms and contribute to the NRA, I'm convinced and saddened that right now, we may only only see token reform.

My advice to fellow progressives, if you want to see any movement on common sense gun regulation, you have to get the money out of politics so the people can decide, if a majority continues to want some tougher gun regulation than that is the only way.

2013-01-06T10:43:00.002-08:00

So the full details of the Fiscal ~~Cliff~~ Curb deal are now known. I broke it down on my YouTube channel a few days ago. It's basically a long list of giveaways to the rich, and enshrining the Bush tax cuts into law for 97% of Americans forever.

Key Provisions include:

That's not really a great deal. This whole fiscal cliff was designed to help solve our deficit. This deal adds $4 Trillion to our deficit over the next 10 years.

However, the unemployment extension is a great thing, and sorely needed because of the economic activity it provides, but it's merely scraps tossed out to the people who need it most. The clear winners of this deal are the corporations and the rich.

This deal not only failed to raise any revenue or provide stimulus, it's also chock full of corporate socialism. Yes I said Socialism, you know the kind we don't like.

In a great piece by Matt Stoller he outlines 8 corporate subsidies that were part of this deal.

These subsidies include some of the following:

$43 Million in tax breaks for NASCAR
$165 Million for Railroads to maintain their tracks. (Shouldn't the railroad companies be doing that?)
$150 Million for Hollywood studios.
Tax incentives for mining companies to buy safety equipment and train employees to mine safely. (Once again why are we paying the companies to not kill their workers?)
$1.6 Billion to Goldman Sachs in tax free financing from a 9/11 liberty bonds program.
$9 Billion Off-shore financing loophole for banks. Encouraging outsourcing and keeping money in foreign banks

And the list goes on while the cost to taxpayers goes up. Remember this is our money. Taken right out of our pocket and given to Goldman Sachs. While the CEO Lloyd Blankfein, referring to Social Security told CBS,

"You're going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower people's expectations of what they're going to get."

While he rakes in a whopping $16.1 Million salary from Goldman Sachs and was the recipient of Federal bailout money under TARP. This is absolutely insane. The wealthy and corporations are robbing us blind and they're buying our politicians to do it.

The reason I bring up Lloyd Blankfein and Social Security is because of the coming debt ceiling fight. Remember we've kicked the sequester down the road and raised taxes, now comes the part where we really get robbed. The part where Republicans demand spending cuts, and where Obama will give it to them. The fight has already started with threats of a government shutdown.

Now the president could use the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling as many democrats have been calling for, but Obama himself has balked at the idea.

This leads to me think, based on Obama's record of folding on negotiations where he has the leverage, that we are going to end up with deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs for the poor.

I'd love to be wrong about this, I really would, but with the horrible Fiscal Cliff deal, the fact that Obama has already said to have put Medicare on the table for cuts, and the fact that during the fiscal cliff negotiations he offered changes to social security benefits. I am really skeptical that we're going to get anything short of a grand larceny from the poor and middle class.

So if you think the fiscal cliff deal was a win for democrats because we got some tax increases, than you haven't been paying attention to the details.

When it comes to politics, always read the fine print.

2013-01-01T19:40:00.002-08:00

The Senate has voted on a bill to avert the fiscal cliff, and as I write this the House is debating it on the floor.

Now I mentioned that there are some Democrats and Republicans that don't like this deal. But now it seems there might be enough support in the House for it to pass. It also looks like Joe Biden is the one that was able to make a deal with McConnel as opposed to Harry Reid, I'll get into the details tomorrow, it's awesome.

The reason congress has been in such a rush to get a deal now is because of the markets, they open tomorrow and they want a deal.

This shows the priorities that this congress has. Take the farm bill, congress just didn't want to make a new deal for another five years, instead they just kinda sat on it until finally to coming to an agreement to extend the 2008 farm bill. But when it comes to the demands of wall street, they work the entire holiday to hammer out a deal that ends up favoring the defense contractors and the Republicans anyway.

and they call this compromise?

It's very indicative of just who the politicians are really working for.

It's another cave by the president to the right wing extremist party and a set up to cut spending even more in the upcoming debt ceiling fight. After all how could the Republicans not be cocky when every time the president says he wont budge, he ends up folding.

Bottom line, the coming debt ceiling fight is going to be awful. If you're like me and think this is a bad deal, just wait. The worst is yet to come.

2012-12-31T08:53:00.000-08:00

Even though 99% of the media is hung up on the fiscal cliff, I want to cover a topic that is close to me. It's about food stamps, which is a part of the farm bill.

Back in October I made a video about it and uploaded it to TYTnation.

It's my hope to educate people about the realities of food stamps, how it's barely enough to get by, and how congress will hurt families (especially children) if it calls for more food stamp cuts while corporations make obscene profits and pay little taxes.

I know as well that most of congress will never take this challenge, and that will hopefully show how much of a disconnect they have with the American people, who are struggling every day to recover.

I've wrote before about how the wealthy have made 93% of the gains in the recovery, and how the middle class and the poor were hit hardest by the recession and have lost ground in the recovery.

It's not about being dependent, it's about having the rug taken out from under you and at least being able to feed your kids. Not only that but most people on food stamps work for a living and still fall below the poverty line, it's not right.

Anyway, please like and share this video, and subscribe to my channel as more videos will be coming in the new year.

Until then, have a safe, happy, awesome New Year!

Here is a link to my petition, lets get it rolling! http://signon.org/sign/washington-food-stamp

2012-12-30T12:52:00.002-08:00

The clock is ticking out on the Fiscal ~~Cliff~~ curb deal to avoid returning taxes back to the Clinton era rates as well spending cuts in the Defense budget, domestic spending and the end of the unemployment extensions.

Pundits have literally been screaming at the leaders in Washington to make a deal, but only to placate the markets and avoid the defense cuts.

I've been an advocate of going over the cliff and letting the tax cuts expire for the millionaires and billionaires. Remember that the wealthy took 93% of the gains in the recovery so it's only fair they should be the ones to take a cut and have to tighten their belts.

While the ending of the extension of unemployment benefits sucks, at least the right can no longer hold it hostage for future debt fights as a way to pressure the president to extend tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, like in 2010.

I'm also fine with going over the cliff because we need to cut defense and use that money for either debt reduction or massive infrastructure spending to create jobs and build our way out of this recession.

We also have to remember that any changes to the tax code made after January 1st are retroactive, so if the president proposes a tax cut for 98% of Americans it would go into effect immediately and no one in that group would see any effect on their tax rates.

We also got the political angle of this, sequestration is ultimately a win for president Obama. Our president was given a mandate by the voters to tax the rich, help create jobs, and solve the deficit without doing it on the backs of the poor and middle class. To be honest the American people do not care as much about the debt and deficits as they do about jobs.

Americans also care about fairness. The wealthy should not be paying less in taxes than a middle class family. Those people on Social Security should not be paid less in benefits so that a multimillionaire can get a tax cut. The most profitable companies on Earth should not get a tax refund for normal operations.

It's a loss for Republicans because they're now faced with taxes going up for everyone because they showed their true colors by holding out for a deal that protects the rich while advocating for entitlement reform. And let's see them try to block a tax cut for 98% of Americans so they can try and cut taxes for the rich if we do go over the cliff.

The latest news is that the Senate is completely stalled, and with the deadline now passed it looks very likely that we're going to go over the curb.

Way to go Republicans, despite President Obamas best efforts, he still wins and you've only showed for the thousandth time that you're the party, for and of the very rich.

2012-12-19T12:42:00.001-08:00

Ever since Sandy Hook happened I've been trying to make sense of the tragedy, getting as much information as I can. And the one thing I can say overall is...

I'm irritated.

I'm irritated because we had another mostly preventable massacre of our children.

I'm irritated because I spent the last few days fighting with people who insist that we don't have gun problem.

I'm irritated because both the right and left are to blame for allowing this to happen.

I'm irritated because the right only blames mental health, video games, and violent movies.

I'm irritated because the left only blames assault rifles and high capacity magazines.

I'm irritated that it took this long for any politician to have the balls to even start having this discussion in the first place.

I'm irritated with the argument that because criminals will find a way to get guns, why should we bother with any regulation.

I'm irritated that people still equate gun control with the notion that it means banning all guns.

Lastly:

I'm irritated that one day I will fear my future children going to school because someone will be able to legally purchase a high powered weapon and kill them and then themselves because they were mentally disturbed.

All of these things have been chafing me the entire weekend and beyond. I hear the same arguments from people. "Criminals will get guns anyway so regulation wont work." or, "It's my right to have a gun, the constitution says so." or "More guns will make us safer." and my favorite stupid comment of the day "You liberals want to ban our guns because....you're communists and hate freedom!"

I've come to the conclusion that no matter how many facts and statistics and good arguments I present, the people who make these arguments will not listen. They will cling to their fears and delusions despite the fact that owning a gun in the home makes you more likely to be killed by it. Nancy Lanza is a prime example, as well as that three year old who found his uncles gun and accidentally killed himself with it. Or how about suicide, people with guns in the home are more likely to commit suicide with it than defend their homes. On and on, over and over with the lies, with the anecdotes, the NRA posters on Facebook saying "Guns don't kill people"

Maybe not, but it sure makes it a lot easier!

Every time I ask this simple question; Is your right to acquire a weapon without a background check or waiting period more important than our children's lives.

Is not having a minor inconvenience in your day when you go to get a weapon worth being able to save the lives of the most innocent among us?

Do our second amendment rights overshadow the right to life for someone else?

Is it worth waiting a little a longer to get a gun and having to pass a background check and a mental health screening knowing that this will help prevent crazy people from getting a hold of a weapon?

It is to me, as a responsible gun owner I am more than willing to go through a background check and mental health screenings to get a gun. And I don't need an assault rifle with a 30 round magazine. No one does.

Which brings me to the crazies convinced that the U.N. is going to take over and that they need their guns to fight the government.

Fight the government...a government that has drones, tanks, choppers, hellfire missiles, etc. The most powerful military on Earth, and hillbillies think them and their semi automatic bushmasters can make a dent against it.

Talk about a delusion.

Another thing that bothers me is the fact that both sides are not looking at the entire issue. We do have a gun problem as the left says, but we also have a mental health problem as the right says, but what neither say is that we also have a poverty problem.

It's really a complex issue.

But I see three factors that can be addressed in order to prevent another Sandy Hook tragedy:

The first and simplest fix is to prevent certain kinds of guns from getting into certain peoples hands through sensible regulation.

Next we increase funding for mental health services and expand the health care law to include funding for treatments of many common mental illnesses and personality disorders.

And then we go after poverty and the massive amount of income inequality in this country. As income inequality rises so does violent crime. That's a big problem and a big factor on why there is so much violence in our culture today. People are stressed out, working longer hours for less pay, producing more but gaining less. Less money means that people will avoid the doctor for things like depression and anxiety. We also have to look at depression caused by factors like unemployment, and divorce. Divorce rates are linked with disagreements on finances, and divorce is the number one cause of suicide in U.S. cities.

People who keep a gun in their home are almost twice as likely to die in a gun-related homicide and 16 times more likely to use a gun to commit suicide than people without a gun in their home.⁷

The common theme is between all of these factors is the gun. Currently there are 88 guns for every 100 people per capita, the highest in the world.

The prevalence of guns isn't the only issue, but it's one of the biggest parts of the culture of violence in America. Now many pundits, especially on the right point the finger at violent video games and movies. Calling them murder simulators.

But in reality human beings have had a long history of killing each other, and that was way back before video games and movies. So this argument is simply a way to point the finger away from the three majors factors that are part of the gun violence problem.

As an avid gamer and someone who knows many in the gaming community, we can all attest to the fact that violent video games do not create violent people.

Gun violence is usually the result of mental illness, financial problems, emotional distress, and access to cheap, easy to acquire weapons.

If we focus on these factors then maybe we can actually do something to prevent another Sandy Hook, Columbine, Tuscon Arizona, Virginia Tech, etc. We just have to acknowledge all of the factors and be willing to do something about it.

Come on America, time to get our heads out of our asses and do something.

2012-12-12T11:24:00.003-08:00

Yesterday house Republicans came out with a new offer to solve their so called fiscal cliff crisis.

Surprisingly, it involves...wait for it...extending the Bush tax cuts permanently.

Oh gee, what a shocker. It's the same old stupid plan they always come back with. Tax cuts, deregulation. Shrink the government via spending cuts, blah fucking blah.

It's backed up by the same tired old promises that if you cut taxes for the wealthy, it will create jobs, and increase revenue. The same bullshit plan Bush peddled back when he cut taxes in 2001 and then again in 2003.

Here's the problem, it DOESN'T WORK.

Unemployment is still high, wages are flat, the rich are richer but the middle class and the poor have gained no ground. (and in most cases have lost ground) and debt has soared. But these magical shitwizards have been peddling this same lie that tax cuts for the rich and cutting spending on the middle class is somehow going to magically grow the economy, solve the debt, and increase the living standards of all Americans!

I have better odds of shitting a unicorn.

Um...ouch?

Speaking of unicorns, I guess if North Korea can convince it's people that they found a unicorn lair, our politicians can convince us that the wealth with trickle down if we just give them a little more.

What did Albert Einstein say about insanity again?

"doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

There is study after study after study that show that tax cuts on the wealthy have little economic impact, and even people on Fox News like Bill Kristol, Ben Stein, and Ann Coulter are saying that if we raises taxes on the rich it's not going to be the end of the world.

Don't get me wrong here, those right wing pundits are only acceding because they don't want the sequester to cut the Pentagon budget. But no matter their reasons, they're still arguing for something that makes sense.

I've mentioned before about how I'm perfectly okay with going over the cliff. In fact I prefer it. Defense needs to be cut massively and the tax cuts for the rich need to go.

It's really that simple.

After the fact President Obama can cut taxes for the middle class and the poor retroactively.

President Obama should stop listening to these moronic offers and just jump over the damn cliff already.

2012-12-11T09:19:00.002-08:00

Today is another dark day for labor, this time it hits home, literally.

Governor Snyder, despite massive public opposition, is planning on making Michigan the 24th so called "Right to Work" state.

Right to work is an extremely disingenuous title for this legislation. In fact the whole premise is deceptive. Here's why:

Right to work doesn't have anything to do with the right to work, it gives the choice for employees to opt out of paying union dues in a unionized shop. For someone who doesn't want their money going to a union that sounds fair to them, but those who do not pay still benefit from union contracts negotiated on their behalf by members who pay dues. It's a free rider problem.

So much for the conservative value of not being a freeloader.

Thinkprogress.org

The ability to opt out of paying union dues has a significant effect on the unions ability to collectively bargain for things like wages, benefits packages, and pensions. Without money from dues unions are not able to run ad campaigns and operate on behalf of workers.

We've all seen the effect of declining union membership. As the chart shows as union membership have declined, so have middle class wages. In fact, in 2010 union membership had declined to the lowest rate in over 70 years.

Let's compare wages to corporate profits over that same 70 year period.

The red line is corporate profits, the blue line is wages. See a problem?

Not if you're a CEO, but for the middle class this is an absolute disaster.

7 out of the 10 poorest states are red, southern, and have right to work laws in place. If it doesn't work there, why would anyone think it could work anywhere?

It's all about perception:

According to a 2011 Gallup poll 52% of respondents approve of labor unions. while 42% disapprove of labor unions. Once again we see the 70 year number pop up as labor unions see the lowest approval ratings within that time frame especially in 2009 when approval hit the record low of 48% approval.

There's a sharp partisan divide in the Gallup numbers as well, with 78% of Democrats giving approval to unions while Republicans only gave them an all time low of 26% approval.

Part of this mentality is probably due to unions being considered more pro democrat.

That's not always true, although now unions do favor democrats more often, it might surprise you to know that the largest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police regularly backed Republicans until this election cycle. The FOP backed George W. Bush in 2000, and 2004, and John McCain in 2008. The normally Republican leaning International Association of Firefighters also made a surprise move by backing President Obama this election cycle. This shows that even public sector unions don't always vote for democrats. There was even a Republican pro-union super pac called the "Lunch Pail Republicans" that contributed $678,000 exclusively to Republican candidates running for House and Senate seats. Though I'm not sure how pro union you can be when you regularly back candidates whose opponents are usually backed by actual unions.

There is another reason for the partisan divide on unions.

Stories like this, from Fox News tend to anger...well pretty much everyone. But stories like these are often used as anecdotal evidence that unions protect the bad, lazy workers. But that's a myth. This particular story from Fox News is a great example. What Fox doesn't really explain, is why those people were rehired after a two year period of unemployment. What happened was that the employees filed an appeal to the union. The company and the union agreed to leave the decision to a third party arbiter. Both the union and GM were sworn to comply with the decision of the outside third party. That means the decision was not made by the union, and the union itself only presented the case to GM, it couldn't force GM to rehire these worksers. Let's have merriam-webster break it down:

arbitration
noun (Concise Encyclopedia)

Process of resolving a dispute or a grievance outside a court system by presenting it for decision to an impartial third party. Both sides in the dispute usually must agree in advance to the choice of arbitrator and certify that they will abide by the arbitrator's decision. In medieval Europe arbitration was used to settle disputes between merchants; it is now commonly used in commercial, labour-management, and international disputes. The procedures differ from those used in the courts, especially regarding burden of proof and presentation of evidence. Arbitration avoids costly litigation and offers a relatively speedy resolution as well as privacy for the disputants. The main disadvantage is that setting guidelines is difficult; therefore the outcome is often less predictable than a court decision. See also mediation.

So in this case, the arbiter was the one who forced GM to rehire these loathsome workers, not the union.

I also always hear the argument that unions kill jobs, but that in itself is a logical fallacy. Why would a union, who's workers depend on the success of a company, kill the company? It makes no sense. We've seen many unions take pay cuts to avoid layoffs.

Anti-Labor proponents counter this by bringing up Hostess that on it's website says:

We are sorry to announce that Hostess Brands, Inc. has been forced by a Bakers Union strike to shut down all operations and sell all company assets

What a load of crap.

Hostess was in trouble long before the final round of contract negotiations with the bakers union. But it wasn't unreasonable demands that killed the twinkie, but a long string of dumbass CEO's that kept hiking their own pay despite two bankruptcies. They also had painful concessions from the unions but still the CEO's continued to blame unions for the companies woes.

It's these and other factors, such as jealousy of union pay and benefits ("Those damn union people get paid too much!") that set the stage for politicians to set up right to work laws.

These politicians lie to the people by telling them that unions are the problem, and that they should have the "choice" to not pay union dues. Not only that but they promise jobs, higher pay and better economic outcomes. Sounds kinda like what they promised with that whole trickle down economics plan.

How did that work out again?

There is no evidence that right to work even increases employment.

But that didn't stop Michigan republicans from cramming this law through in a record of 7 hours, and it also didn't stop governor Snyder from flip-flopping into supporting this disgusting law.

What this law boils down to is an attack on the middle class and another redistribution of wealth to the top from the pockets of hard working middle class people. And to those who point out one or two of the douchebags that do take advantage of collective bargaining (see the Fox News article) Remember that for every douchebag, there are hundreds of honest middle class workers who don't deserve the shaft. One or two examples do not represent the whole.

2012-12-04T13:49:00.002-08:00

If you've been paying attention to the news cycle lately, odds are you've heard of the Fiscal cliff:

You know, that gaping maw of economic oblivion that lies before us at the end of the year. The one that threatens to throw us into a new recession starting January 1st.

You know, Or not.

Truth is the Fiscal cliff is little more than a proxy for the Republicans to use to gut Medicare and Social Security.

Often touted as "entitlement reform", the Republican plan is to use this contrived crisis as a way to cut your benefits in order to lower corporate taxes. President Obama even introduced corporate "tax reform" last month.

It's important to note that because of loopholes and deductions many corporations don't even pay taxes. Many of these companies are in the energy business as well as Defense contractors.

The worst is GE, which pays an astounding -18.9% Effective tax rate.

Yes that's right, they got money back.

They greased politicians from both sides by donating to Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, and Senator Scott Browns' reelection campaigns.

Republicans say they can eliminate loopholes in the tax code while lowering tax rates and still add revenue. Except that math doesn't actually work.

You see many of the loopholes in the tax code benefit middle class families, such as the Mortgage interest deduction, the earned income tax credit, the exclusion of employer-sponsored health insurance, and the exclusion of employer pension benefits are all loopholes that are helpful to the vast majority of America.

Excluding Medicare benefits from taxation is another huge loophole that benefits seniors.

So what's left are charitable deductions, capital gains and the exclusion of gains at death and the gift exclusion. Basically a way to get your inheritance tax free.All of these loopholes benefit the wealthy, and when combined still do not come close to an amount of revenue that averts the fiscal cliff. Since they mainly benefit the wealthy anyway it's very unlikely that those loopholes will be eliminated.

So while their so called "tax reform" will not bring us close to solving the fiscal cliff, the Republicans want to lower rates, and instead get a deal by cutting entitlements.

They'll start by raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67, which was outlined in the Simpson-Bowles commission. And they'll also reduce the cost of living adjustment (COLA) for people on Social Security.

That takes money you paid for your retirement right out of your pocket and gives it to rich in the form of tax cuts.

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, who makes $16.1 million a year, wants you to work more and get less, so he can get a tax cut.

So why do I think the Republicans are going to push themselves off the fiscal cliff?

Simply put, it's because of who makes up the Republican party.

Old. White. Males.

Not all of course, but they make up a sizable portion.

The senior voting block is a major constituency for the Republican party, and they don't want anyone touching their Medicare or Social Security.

And then you have Wall Street, that gives a lot of campaign contributions to the Republican party, coming out and demanding entitlement cuts to solve the deficit. Most notably people like Lloyd Blankfein, and David Cote, who are members of a CEO Fiscal Leadership Council.

These two sides are directly opposed, and it's leading to a split between the Republican voting base, and the donor base.

Add to that the pledge to Grover Norquist that many Republicans have signed, even though some have backed away from it, they still insist that rates not be raised.

And then you have president Obama being uncharacteristically tough in these negotiations by presenting his plan that that will raise rates on the top 2% of income earners and saying that there will be no deal without tax increases.

Tax increases that the American people support.

If Obama continues to stand fast the Republicans may have no choice left but to fall off the cliff in order to not alienate either of their main constituencies.

Jan 1st is going to be very interesting.

2012-11-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

Picture this scenario,

You lost your job, due to outsourcing, restructuring, or layoffs.

You burned through your savings trying to make ends meet while you search for work, but a bad economy and competition from hundreds if not thousands of other unemployed workers have made your job hunt last longer than 6 months with no end in sight.

But the bills, the bills don't stop coming, and while you do your best to cut down on things you use, that mortgage payment amount you owe becomes hard to reach and despite your best efforts, you fall behind.

Bill after bill, late fee after late fee takes its toll, and over time, your credit is ruined.

But that's okay right? The economy is picking up again, jobs are being added but for some reason every place you apply to never calls back.

To many Americans this is an all too familiar scenario that many are living in as I write.

The sad fact is that there are already two strikes against this person, the discrimination the long term unemployed face (people who have been unemployed for longer than 6 months), and a bad credit report.

Not to mention the fact that are still roughly 15 million Americans that are jobless, and many more working part time but are looking for full time work.

So three strikes.

For the people in this scenario, it's an out, and that's a huge problem.

I want to focus on employment discrimination for those with bad credit (for the purposes of keeping it real, I have to mention that employers cannot actually see your credit score). The problem is this: There are a lot of people looking for work, employers literally have hundreds of job applications to go through. An easy way to eliminate stacks of potential employees from the list is to first, eliminate the long term unemployed, and then eliminate those who have bad credit.

It's an employers market.

In a good economy people tend to turn a blind eye to this discrimination. Citing the fact that since there are so many jobs around that people in this situation must just be irresponsible and lazy.

But this attitude towards hardworking people who through no fault of their own have a bad credit report persists into hard economic times. Where there are layoffs and businesses going bankrupt or firing workers who then have nowhere else to go to pay their bills. Or if someone gets sick or injured and loses their job and acquires medical debts that they cannot pay.

According to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Medicine 62.1% of all bankruptcies are attributed to medical debt.

Bankruptcy really isn't the best thing to have on your credit report.

Neither are defaulted student loans, which attribute $76 Billion of the total 1 trillion dollars in total student loan debt.

Thankfully, there are eight states with laws on the books banning employers from using credit scores in their hiring decisions. And there have been less than successful attempts at federal legislation.

A bill introduced in 2009 called "H.R. 3149 Equal Employment for All Act" was the first attempt at stopping people from being discriminated against because of their credit. But it was essentially killed in committee through aggressive lobbying. Organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Consumer Data Industry Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable opposed the bill, spending roughly $24 Million dollars in lobbying that was used to kill the resolution, versus the $2 Million used to support it. That is 9.8 times more money, no wonder it got crushed.

Some of that money went unsurprisingly to some of the members of the House Financial Services committee where the bill was being introduced, members like Randy Nuegebauer (R-TX) who received $26,050 in campaign contributions from Credit agencies and finance companies, Spencer Bachus (R-AL) who received $57,250 in contributions, Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) got a whopping $76,400 and, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) received $16,350 in contributions. All of these committee members received campaign contributions from interest groups that opposed H.R. 3149. And it's not just Republicans, you go through the list and there are many Democrats that received campaign contributions from firms that fought this resolution.

This election cycle, TransUnion itself gave money to Tennessee Republican Bob Corker's campaign through a PAC as well as donating to President Barack Obama. Experian also gave nearly $250,000 to Republicans and nearly $80,000 to Democrats alone as well as spending nearly $500,000 on lobbying.

It's safe to say that some of that money will go to fighting a new bill called, H.R.321 sponsored by Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) which is this congress's version of the Equal Employment for All Act. It's currently being held up in committee as well and is looking like it will suffer the same fate as the bill before it.

During a 2010 hearing on H.R. 3149 Representative Nuegebauer actively argued against the proposed bill by saying:

"I just wanted to respond in that I think what is interesting is I think about 60 percent of the businesses in this country use credit reports as one of the tools that they use in making a final determination. So this is not like--evidently, there has been some reason to correlate that as a part of the screening process, that credit reports are being helpful. Otherwise, we wouldn't have such a large number of employers using that tool."

Interesting, but not true, in fact Mr Cohen debunked that whole argument with this:

"Eric Rosenberg with TransUnion said in a hearing in Oregon during sworn testimony that his company had zero statistical evidence to document that employees with bad credit checks are more likely to steal or commit fraud than workers with perfect credit. A study at Eastern Kentucky said the same thing, as highlighted in The Hill in an article this morning about these studies."

This is a clear case of needing to follow the money. These credit ratings agencies aggressively market businesses to use their services. So it's in their best interests to fight laws that would stop employers from using credit checks. If something like this were in place, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian would lose a lot of business. So they lobby the government, grease the palms of politicians and the poor guy who lost his job and fell behind on his mortgage gets screwed.

And for what?

Amy Traub of the Denver Post writes:

"There is little social science research showing a clear link between someone's personal consumer behavior and their performance on the job. In fact, the few studies that exist have found no correlation between personal credit reports and the propensity to commit a crime."

So employers will continue to be able to deny people work that would help them climb out of their financial hole, because of the fact that they're in a financial hole.

And sometimes, the information in a credit report is wrong, in fact consumer studies report that up to four out of five credit reports contain errors. Of course studies commissioned and underwritten by the three credit agencies dispute that.

This is wrong.

Given that 60% of employers look at credit reports as a factor in who they hire and the fact that I have old medical and school loan debt, the odds of me landing a job are low. Add in the fact that I am a student that has been unemployed for longer than six months and that's a recipe to stay jobless, something I hope to put an end to.

But people like me have little recourse because employers have no obligations to tell you why you did not get hired, so there are literally no protections from this kind of employment discrimination.

We need a solution, because for people in this situation, there is literally no way out.

2012-11-15T11:43:00.002-08:00

For over ten years we have been told by our politicians that tax rates on the rich were too high. If only the government would unleash wall street, reduce the burden on "job creators" and let the markets go free that America would be awash in wealth and it's people swimming in jobs.

Instead we're awash in debt with no jobs to be found.

Well okay, we've had job some job growth.

According to the National Employment Law Project, 60% of the job losses in 2008 were middle income jobs in construction, office management and manufacturing, most of these types of jobs have not come back to pre-recession levels. Taking the place of those are low wage jobs that make up 58% of the jobs created in the recovery. Those jobs include retail sales, food preparation, home health and customer service.

Low wage industries overall generated 1.7 million jobs since 2010, around 43% of the total employment growth in the U.S. Middle income industries only contributed 22% of employment growth in the same time period.

How's that trickle down working out for you?

There's more: According to SimplyHired.com the nations top three employers were the Air Force, Taco Bell, and the Army National Guard.

So while we've had some job growth with our insanely low tax rates on the wealthy, most of those involve workers saying the phrase, "Do you want fries with that?"

It's not only the prevalence of low skill, low income jobs that is the problem, but it's stagnant Income for middle class families. You know the people who still have middle income jobs, well they are earning less than they used to since the 1970's. Remember how the Bush tax cuts we're supposed to trickle down to the workers? Instead Median household income has only grew at a modest 1.6% between 2001 and 2007 (The Bush tax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003) and then fell 4% during the recession.

Ouch.

Yet the wealthy have done awesome over the last ten years, and even after the financial meltdown that sent our economy reeling. 93% of the income gains in the first year of the recovery went to the top 1%.

Even before the recovery the Bush tax cuts helped to increase the after tax income for the top 1% of taxpayers by 74% between 1996 and 2006, and the top 0.1% saw their income double in that time period.

Now let's go to the debt aspect of the Bush Tax cuts for the rich.

Over the last decade the Bush tax cuts have added a trillion dollars to the deficit. How is it that a party that screams about deficits and cutting costs and talks a big game about not leaving debt to future generations can justify giving away so much money to the already very wealthy?

Well they can't.

They have to wrap it up in a lie, a slogan.

That's where we get the term "job creators" from. But the term itself is incredibly disingenuous as it's consumers that are the engines of job creation. Billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer says its best:

"jobs are the consequence of the feedback loop between customers and businesses. For this reason, it is middle-class consumers and the demand they create that are our true job creators, not rich business-people."

I love that guy.

He also makes a great point when he says that,

"Capitalists are idea creators, not job creators."

The logic to what Hanauer says is that regular people come up with ideas, while wealthy corporations don't have to, because they have already established themselves with a previous idea. So why are we not incentivizing people to come up with new ideas but instead giving more and more money to those who are already wealthy and have no incentive to innovate other than to cut costs?

Crony capitalism.

A great example of this is the fossil fuel industry. There is little innovation there but they make billions of dollars each quarter as well as being subsidized by the taxpayers to the tune of billions a year. Yet fossil fuels are still roughly the same technology as they used a hundred years ago. Sure refineries are made more efficient with newer technology but the premise is the same, you burn it and it makes power.

Back to the issue of tax cuts.

A recent study from the Congressional Research Service that came out in September found that tax cuts for high earners is linked to income inequality, yet have no significant relationship with investment and that the correlation between economic growth and the top tax rates is not strong.

Well what about GDP growth?

"The top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was over 90%, and the real GDP growth rate averaged 4.2% and real per capita GDP increased annually by 2.4% in the 1950s. In the 2000s, the top marginal tax rate was 35% while the average real GDP growth rate was 1.7% and real per capita GDP increased annually by less
than 1%."

FAIL!

So let's recap, lower tax rates on the wealthy have led to stagnant wages for the middle class, an increase in income inequality, less jobs, less GDP growth, increased debt and a decrease in middle class jobs.

What an unmitigated disaster these tax cuts have been.

Yet the Republican party continues to insist that the wealthy should not have their tax rates increased as part of the coming fiscal cliff deal. What a brazen display of disregarding the facts all so they can make themselves and their corporate donors even more rich at the expense of everyone else

We need to end this grotesque failure for the American people and pressure our politicians to do what's right.

Tax the rich.

2012-11-14T16:00:00.001-08:00

I thought this was already clear Mr. Obama.

America will not tolerate a grand bargain.

In his first press conference since reelection President Obama answered some tough questions from reporters on subjects like the Patraeus affair, the so-called fiscal cliff, climate change and Syria.

But the most important question that was asked was this one by Jessica Yellen:

"You’ve said that the wealthiest must pay more. Would closing loopholes instead of raising rates for them satisfy you?"

During his answer President Obama didn't really address the tax rates for the wealthy, except for saying that he doesn't want to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. But his focus was really on removing deductions and loopholes.

That's great, but...

Nowhere does he state that tax rates on the wealthy will be increased in this deal. I'm understandably skeptical that Obama will actually raise taxes on the wealthy, which would be a great way to raise revenue to pay down the debt, instead his focus like I said was to get rid of loopholes and deductions. And that's a completely different thing.

And then we get to what really disturbed me when the President mentioned entitlements:

"let’s also then commit ourselves to the broader package of deficit reduction that includes entitlement changes and it includes, potentially, tax reform, as well as I’m willing to look at additional work that we can do on the discretionary spending side."

We know what that means.

Anytime politicians talk about reforming taxes and changing entitlements (hell even calling them entitlements buys into the Republican narrative), it really means we're going to cut Social Security, Medicare, Food stamps, and other programs set up to help regular Americans and then lower corporate taxes.

I think I should remind you of what President Obama said in the debates.

"Governor Romney and I both agree that our corporate tax rate is too high."

Fuck.

Keep it real though, Obama wanted to lower tax rates on manufacturers to 25%, and the rest to 28%. But it's still a reduction and those taxes are going to be made up by screwing the poor and middle class.

Any time taxes go down for the wealthy, everyone else ends up making up the difference. Whether it's the middle class and the poor making up for it in a reduction of services and programs, or the future generations make up for it with massive debt.

Either way corporations and the wealthy pay less, and you get screwed.

Yet president Obama seems so intent on bringing us the grand bargain. You know, the plan where he cuts 3 trillion in spending for only 1 trillion in revenue.

What a joke.

The Bush tax cuts added nearly 1 trillion dollars to the deficit,

So why not just end them? Which would happen if Obama lets us go over the fiscal cliff. There's your 1 trillion in revenue right there and he didn't have to do a damn thing.

Oh and it would give him leverage in order to really help the middle class.

In a recent poll 53% of Americans would blame the Republicans if we go over the fiscal cliff, and 51% say they're expecting it to happen.

Mr. President you have the ball in your court, run with it!

This is like having a 1st down near the end zone and punting it.

The sad truth is the president is not a progressive, he wants to cut entitlements to lower corporate taxes, those are NOT progressive positions.

Americans are far more progressive in their ideals. According to a Huffingpost poll a majority of Americans are saying hands off to cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the purpose of deficit reduction.

Americans are also saying that the rich should pay more in taxes. 66 percent of people polled by Gallup state that they are in favor of raising taxes on individuals making over $200,000 and families making over $250,000.

Simply put, we do not want the grand bargain. It's a robbery from the middle class and the poor and a giveaway to the rich. This election sent a message all right, but not the one the president thinks he heard.

We want the wealthy to pay the tax rates under Clinton, and we will not abide by cuts to our earned benefits to pay for lowering corporate taxes.

Got it Mr. President?

2012-11-09T14:29:00.003-08:00

Whether or not the conservatives or David Axelrod thinks so, America has given president Obama a mandate. To do what?

Raise Taxes

In exit polls 6 in 10 people polled on election day said that taxes should be raised, with nearly half of them saying they should be raised on the wealthiest Americans. Not to mention ballot initiatives have shown that Americans are willing to increase taxes in states like California and Arkansas, as well cities like Austin and San Antonio to fund programs we've all come to expect from good government.

So what does the house think about this? Surely speaker Boehner and the Republicans, now that their party has been handed a defeat, would take a more conciliatory tone with president Obama and finally get the message and agree to some revenue concessions right?

Nope.

In fact in an interview with Diane Sawyer the speaker said:

"Raising tax rates is unacceptable."

Perhaps alluding to the continuing obstruction in the house and senate from the "party of No." he adds:

"Frankly, it couldn't even pass the House. I'm not sure it could pass the Senate."

So there we are, one expensive election over with, and we still have gridlock to look forward to.

Amazingly after all of this president Obama continues to think that he can work with this congress.

“I’m not wedded to every detail of my plan. I am open to compromise. I am open to new ideas,"said the President. “But I refuse to accept any approach that isn’t balanced.”

The president has to understand, that it's not balance the Republicans are seeking. The Grand Bargain, which consists of the result of the simpson-bowles commission on deficit reduction will raise $1 in revenue for every $3 in spending cuts, equaling $4 trillion. Even that wasn't good enough for the Republicans who walked away from the deal.

The democrats and the president have been extremely generous, offering to make significant spending cuts and asking only a tiny bit in tax increases. And Boehner keeps saying no.

Well it's time to stop being nice. The Republicans will continue to block any tax increases on the wealthy to help pay down our deficits. But the President has an opportunity.

The Fiscal Cliff.

The Fiscal cliff is where the bush tax cuts for everyone, as well as unemployment extensions will expire. As well as where automatic spending cuts from the military and domestic expenditures will kick in as part of the last debt deal. This will obviously have some negative effects on the economy, but it's also leverage.

In 1995 president Bill Clinton was going head to head with then speaker Newt Gingrich over the budget. They were unable to reach a deal, so Clinton let the government shut down. After a week of boarded up offices Gingrich and the Republicans finally offered to make a deal. It also helped usher in an era of compromise.

The fiscal cliff could be president Obama's shut down moment. For the last four years the President has agreed with almost everything the Republicans have proposed. In the debt deal Speaker Boehner remarked how he got 98% of what he wanted. Because of that the Republicans think Obama is weak and will fold on the issue of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. This one move could yank congress back to reality.

All we have to do, is go over the cliff.

It's a risky maneuver but if the president comes out as strong as he was in the campaign he can use the political capital he earned to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and finally get it through to the Republicans that he will not accept their obstruction anymore.

It will hurt the economy in the short term but I think it's our best chance to get rid of the biggest contributor to our deficit today, and finally be able to tackle the debt, and show the Republicans that we mean business.

Come on Obama, be a progressive and take Boehner off the cliff.

2012-11-08T14:55:00.001-08:00

Two days ago Americans made their voices heard in one of the most important elections I've ever taken part in. It was a rebuke of the obstructionist tactics of the right and clear sign that the Tea Party movement that took the nation by storm in 2010, is largely over. Many of the Tea Party congressmen were hoisted out of office to be replaced by progressive champions like Elizabeth Warren. It appears the political pendulum has finally swung back to the left.

It's now an opportunity to bring forth a progressive agenda to counter the 30 year old Reagan revolution that has led to so many of our current problems. This is a list of some of the problems we need to tackle to bring the country forward.

1. Citizens United:

There is no doubt that this election was the most expensive election in history. The Atlantic Wire had a breakdown of just how much this election cost. Even though people power won this time, there's no guarantee that the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson will not try it again. Just imagine if the Republicans had ran a better candidate than Romney and had all of that dark money. Scary, and a lot of that corporate money went to defeat some very important ballot initiatives in the states. Like California's proposition 37 that would mandate that GMO's be labeled.Companies like Monsanto and Hershey's contributed to $44 Million to fight prop 37 compared to their opponents who raised $7.3 Million. That money went to ads that warned consumers that GMO labeling would cost them more money in the grocery store, as well as increasing costs for small businesses and grocery chains.

Another ballot initiative that failed due to the a blitz of big corporate ads was Michigan's Proposition 3. Prop 3 aimed to create a renewable energy standard within the state constitution. The law is aimed at reducing the states consumption of coal which makes up 58% of the energy usage in Michigan. It also aims to make 25% of the energy Michigan uses come from clean, renewable energy sources by 2025. The Koch brothers group Americans for Prosperity chipped $1.5 Million into ads that opposed the measure. Citizens United needs to be #1 on the list of things to overturn on the Progressive agenda to make sure that corporations can no longer give money to campaigns used to mislead the public into voting against their own interests. Also I'm a huge proponent of Wolf-Pac.com and their effort to amend the constitution to remove the influence of money in politics. I strongly suggest signing up with them and getting involved in the fight.

2. The Drug War:

With the recent election came great news for proponents of Marijuana. Colorado and Washington state fully legalized recreational pot. And Massachusetts legalized medicinal pot, joining the other 17 states that now allow for medical Marijuana. Regardless of that, Federal law still consideres Marijuana to be a schedule 1 drug and therefore illegal under Federal law. That needs to be changed. The Progressive agenda involves ending the drug war completely and no longer keep putting people into for profit (or any) prisons for nonviolent drug offenses. That not only saves money but it's the right thing, and the progressive thing to do. Ending the prohibition of something that is not even close to being as dangerous as alcohol or tobacco, and has been proven to have medical benefits, such as easing the pain of arthritis, or helping to control spontaneous epileptic seizures, as well as countless industrial uses. Classifying marijuana as being as dangerous as cocaine and other schedule one drugs is simply ignoring the facts. Marijuana is much safer than alcohol, according to professor Robert Gable who wrote an Op-ed in the New York Times:

"when it comes to the chances of immediate death by chemical toxicity, marijuana is about a hundred times safer than alcohol or cocaine."

One.Hundred.Times.

NORML, the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, has a great chart on some of the potential medical uses of Marijuana as well. Pushing President Obama as well our congress to end this war on drugs and fully legalize Marijuana at the Federal level, should be a big part of the Progressive agenda for the next four years. History and public opinion are on our side.

3.Climate Change:

Hurricane Sandy finally brought the discussion back to climate change. It had been absent save for a joke during the RNC by former candidate Mitt Romney who said:

"President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. MY promise … is to help you and your family."

Number of fires & acres burned

I don't think tax rates are going to matter much when climate change gets through with us. Climate change needs to be jumped on now. We're already at the point where we're too late to stop the damage we've already caused to the environment, but that doesn't mean we can't do more to stop further damage and disruption of our planet. Here are some scary facts: This July was the hottest on record, and this summer was the third hottest ever. We broke hundreds of heat records, had a record drought that will soon be impacting food prices, devastating fires, and there has been a reported 600,000 square kilometers of arctic sea ice that was lost, more than has ever been recorded.

Loss of Arctic Sea Ice during August Melt

This is probably the most important thing we can do now to help future generations, and the time to act on it is now. The Progressive agenda involves getting as many of our politicians to begin passing legislation to reduce the amount of Carbon we put into the atmosphere. Such as opposing the keystone XL pipeline that would ferry the extremely dirty tar sands oil from Canada to Texas at great environmental cost. The tar sands hold the largest amount of trapped carbon in the world. In a New York Times Op-Ed James Hansen writes:

"If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk."

Not exactly a rosy picture to paint for the future, but we're very well on our way to destroying ourselves for cheap oil.

Even though Carbon emissions are now at a 20 year low, partly in thanks to Hydraulic Fracturing, natural gas is still adding to our global warming problem. As well as a host of other problems related to the process widely known as fracking. Hydraulic Fracturing is a method of injecting water, chemicals, and sand into underground shale rocks in order to fracture them and release natural gas that is trapped in them for use. Although the process doesn't emit carbon it does emit methane, another gas that contributes to global warming. Although Natural gas doesn't emit as much carbon as burning coal, it still releases carbon in the atmosphere. Slowing the inevitable. Not to mention is has some other problems, like how it has led to contamination of drinking water, as well being linked to earthquakes. It's hard to get an honest description of fracking and it's effects because the companies that do it are Halliburton and Shell, and they're not exactly transparent. The fluid used is a proprietary mix that is kept secret. For a great breakdown on how fracking works I suggest checking out the movie Gasland by Josh Fox

Another part of the climate change portion of the progressive agenda is aggressively developing and championing renewable energy. That means supporting ballot initiatives such as the previously mentioned proposal 3 in Michigan. So far over 30 states have amendments that are similar to proposal three, but we need to do more to back clean energy and ensure it has more than adequate funding. Which leads me to...

4. Oil Subsidies:

I have no idea how on Earth anyone can justify sending $7 Billion dollars in tax subsidies annually to the wealthiest energy corporations that have ever existed, while also allowing companies like Exxon Mobil to pay a 17.6% effective tax rate. That's literally highway robbery. So how do they justify it? Simple: they don't even admit the subsidy exists. Former senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts argued that oil companies don't receive any form of subsidy. It's helpful to know that Brown was one of the biggest brown nosers to the energy industry and in return received money directly from the Koch brothers and one of their PACs. It's political contributions like these that not only go to Republicans but to Democrats as well that need to be stopped in order to pursue the Progressive agenda. If we're going to be successful in ending the dominance of big oil, big coal and natural gas over our nations energy policy and make us truly energy independent and sustainable we have to first remove the influence of money in politics, (see item #1) get rid of bought politicians and end these wasteful subsidies to the fossil fuel cartels and instead fund clean, sustainable energy solutions.

5. Tax Policy:

Throughout this campaign we have heard president Obama on the campaign trail promising to make the wealthy pay their fair share. As progressives we should push to make president Obama honor that promise to close loopholes and deductions and increase tax rates for those making over $1 million a year back to the Clinton tax rates of 39%. Putting a small tax on financial transactions and increasing the taxes on capital gains has the promise to also bring in increased revenue, estimated to be around $386 Billion over the next 10 years. Keeping taxes low for the middle class and the poor should also be a focus in the Progressive agenda. Lower taxes on the middle class will help spur demand and increase job growth. More middle class jobs leads to a broadening of the tax base and in turn that can go towards...

6. The Debt:

Tackling the debt is a major concern for everyone. We can't always operate on borrowed money. The last Democratic President, Bill Clinton knew a few things about how to balance a budget. A good share of the money raised by new revenues should go to new investment (to create jobs) and debt reduction. Medicare and Social Security can also be tweaked without cutting any benefits so they will remain solvent for future generations.

7. Entitlement Spending:

The progressive agenda should be to retain and expand the social contract of America. The healthcare law Obama passed makes a great start by saving $716 Billion in medicare spending by cutting waste and reimbursements to private medicare advantage plans and instead puts it back into medicare itself. The healthcare law though should be expanded into a full single payer system to meet the progressive value of making sure everyone gets full coverage and the insurance companies can no longer profit or serve as middlemen when it comes to peoples health and well being. As of right now since the states are able to opt out of the expanded medicaid provision the poorest among us may still go without insurance. That is unacceptable. Progressive values state that healthcare is a human right. Social Security should also strengthened, the most simple way to do that is to make it so the wealthy are not eligible for benefits, as well as increasing the tax that goes to social security for people making over $500,000 a year. If you're making that much, why do you need a supplemental retirement income? These fixes will help strengthen our social contract and ensuring that the programs remain solvent without cutting benefits.

8. Labor Rights:

Labor rights are one of the most fundamental values of being a progressive. Fair wages, 40 hour work weeks, equal pay and benefits and the creation of a strong middle class are all things that have resulted from the progressive movement. The sad truth now is that all of those things are in grave danger. Today Union workers represent around 12% of the workforce, and only 7% of private workers. Only 37% of government workers are unionized yet they are blamed by conservatives for jobs losses and deficits. Public opinion of unions dropped in 2010 to 48%, probably in response to the harsh anti-union rhetoric and right to work laws put in place and championed by wealthy conservative business owners that see unions as a hamper to increasing their bottom lines. We should renew our support for labor because fair wages and benefits will help to regrow a strong middle class that in the end will help ensure that businesses prosper as well.

9. Civil Liberties:

This is a huge, huge issue. As progressives we should be the champions of civil liberty. Which is why NDAA, the Patriot act, torture and other abuses of civil liberties should be done away with. Trapwire, CISPA, ACTA and other other legislation that would stop the internet from being free and open should be fought tooth and nail no matter who is president. That is why the progressive agenda should focus on putting pressure on legislators to shoot down these blatant violations of our rights. And if they approve these things they should be primaried from the left until they understand that our rights need to be left alone. Not only that but torture should never be the American way of doing things, we are better than that.

These are just some of the major issues we need to fight for as progressives. In order to accomplish these goals we will need to remove money in politics, end gerrymandering so that Democrats and Republicans will no longer have "safe" districts that will vote them in due to party affiliation but instead need to make their cases based on their records and policies. In 2014 we will have mid term elections in the house and you better believe the conservatives will be ready and come armed with big money. We need to fight to get real progressives elected to the house to give us a majority in order to push president Obama to the left. We should define the word liberal again with it's true meaning:

With these goals in mind we can bring America forward and return us back to the shining city on the hill, with liberty and justice for all.

2012-11-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

Last night was a big victory for the Democratic party and progressives. Barack Obama handily bested Mitt Romney with 303 electoral votes and 50% of the popular vote. Mitt Romney pompously had no concession speech written as he was so confident of his win, showing just how self absorbed and divorced from reality the man really is. Now thankfully we no longer have to see his smug face on TV or hear him "approve this message".

But Barack Obama wasn't the only major democratic victory.

Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, putting us on the track to legalization and ending the wildly stupid and completely failed war on drugs. Washington state also legalized recreational marijuana. In Massachusetts medical marijuana also passed with a majority. There are now 15 states where medical marijuana is legal.

I'm predicting the snack food industry in Colorado and Washington state are going to see a big boom. Especially Funyuns, I love those things.

And there are more victories:

Todd "legitimate rape" Akin was crushed legitimately by Claire McCaskill in Missouri. I guess Missouri women had a way of shutting that whole thing down. Also Richard "god intended you to have that rape baby" Mourdock, who is the by the way also famous for saying that compromise is getting democrats to agree with you, was defeated in Indiana by Democrat Joe Donnely. Don't worry Richard, even though losing is a horrible thing, god intended for it to happen so you should just accept the wonderful gift of being unemployed.

Allen West of Florida also joins the ranks of the Tea Party unemployed when he was defeated by Patrick Murphy in a tight race. Of course Allen West still hasn't conceded the race. True to Tea Party fashion West has a hard time admitting reality as it so often has a liberal bias and is demanding a recount. Hmm, a recount in Florida, that sounds familiar.

Deadbeat Dad and Tea Party darlin' Joe Walsh was also unseated by Tammy Duckworth, the Iraq veteran who lost her legs in an apache helicopter crash. Good riddance to bad politicians!

Elizabeth Warren also laid the hammer down on Scott Brown, crushing him with a victory of 54% to 46% of the vote in Massachusetts returning Mass to its liberal roots. Elizabeth Warren is a great progressive and so it's a huge huge victory!

Unfortunately there is some good news for the Tea Party, Michele Bachmann barely retained her seat in Minnesota. I'm guessing all she had to do was stare at people with those crazy eyes to scare them into voting for her.

All in all in the senate races the Democrats picked up three seats bringing them to a total of 55.

Unfortunately the house still retains a Republican Majority so we will probably continue to see obstruction in the house until hopefully the midterm elections where Democrats can finish cleaning up the red tide that has messed up congress. John Beohner and Eric Cantor the undynamic duo still retain their seats so we can look forward to more years of drinking, crying, and bad spray tans.

Paul Ryan also narrowly kept his seat in Wisconsin. So sadly he wont become a P90x trainer anytime soon. Hopefully he will go the way of Palin and end up on Fox news only to be forgotten in two months.

Back to good news.

Gay Marriage scored a huge victory in Maryland and Maine as the ballot proposals were passed by popular vote. Minnesota rejected a state amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman in a very close margin, 51 to 49 percent in favor.

With all the victories it's definitely a time to celebrate, but I also want to stress how important it is not to take these for granted. We progressives still have a lot of work to do now that the easy job of getting Obama reelected is over there is much more work to do. We still have a massive deficit to fix, NDAA, Money in politics which is still the most corrupting influence on our democracy. We still have oil subsidies, low taxes on the wealthy and climate change staring us in the face. These are the problems we face and our work is just beginning to try fix these and other problems our great nation faces.

So with that in mind we need to remember not to be complacent, not to waver from our progressive values, and to hold our elected officials accountable when they do something we don't agree with.

The fight for progressive values continues, and it's fight we can only win if everyone stays involved.

2012-11-06T11:16:00.001-08:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I have some serious issues with our President. Whether it be the drug war, drone strikes or the lack of arrests on Wall Street for the ones who not only crashed our economy but profited immensely off taxpayer bailouts.

Despite these and other issues, I cast my ballot today for Barack Obama.

Why?

It's the Supreme Court stupid.

That right now is the most important issue when I think of who I am voting for. What kind of supreme court do I want. One that's even more conservative than it is now? Just look at the kind of decisions we've already had from the court. Citizens United which expanded corporate speech rights, and Knox vs SEIU that will the effect of limiting the power of unions to compete with the campaign fundraising ability of corporations.

With a Romney presidency expect union rights and women's rights to be eroded even more.

Say goodbye to Roe v. Wade, they only need one more conservative justice.

With a more conservative supreme court it wont matter who is in office when the court will be able to rule everything the president does as unconstitutional, and you can forget about overturning Citizens United.

But It's not just the court.

It's tax policy too. Romney's plan is to cut taxes 20% across the board and raise military spending by two trillion dollars. Despite his promises of it being revenue neutral it will explode the deficit even if he cuts every program that helps the poor, the sick and elderly.

The result will be massive income inequality and debt, worse than what we have now. There is a Turkish born host I've come to admire that is convinced there will be an economic collapse. On his show, The Young Turks Cenk Uygur explains that every time there has been a large amount of income inequality, such as in the 1920's, we have had an economic collapse.

He's right.

Romney's policies have the purpose of redirecting as much money to the rich as he can before that collapse happens.

President Obama, though he's a corporatist, center right governing president, will try to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut entitlements in an effort to balance the budget.

Essentially I'm saying that Romney would take us off the cliff, and I'll be damned sure that I don't help make that happen.

This is no time for a protest vote.

I won't lie, the green party candidates tempted me at the polls today, I also liked and supported Rocky Anderson, because I think the Democratic party has become too centrist, too establishment and not progressive enough. Nonetheless I know that the greens and other third parties will never have a chance to compete as long as we have money in politics controlling who gets the most ads, and who pays for the debates.

The money is the problem.

So while I call myself a progressive, I held my nose and voted for the man who's not going to take us off a cliff. In the hopes that we can try to change the system he operates in instead of letting the Tea Party and Mitt Romney burn it down.

It's my hope that after today, after Obama wins, we can shift our focus to the real issue. The big green elephant in the room.

Money in Politics.

"Do you think that gun ownership in this country does more to protect people from becoming victims of crime, or does more to put people's safety at risk?" Options rotated

Protect
people

Put safety
at risk

Unsure/
Refused

2012-11-02T18:45:00.003-07:00

Our society has a drug problem. But it's not what you think.

The problem with drugs, is how we treat those who do them. In America we have some of the toughest drug laws in the western world. We lock away more people in the United States than anywhere else. More than Iran. More than China.

Think about that...

Half of the people in Federal prison are there for drug offenses. While around a quarter of state and local prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses.

We spend 228 Billion dollars a year on the Federal prison system. Imagine being able to eliminate half of that money spent to incarcerate non violent drug offenders,and instead spending it on treatment programs for those taking hard drugs.

You know, crack, cocaine, and meth. The really dangerous ones. Not to mention prescription drugs, that are very much legal.

Most of the drug offenders are there for use and possession of Cannabis, or Marijuana. Surveys show Cannabis as the third largest recreational drug in America. And 50% of Americans favor the legalization of Marijuana. According to Gallup polling as of 2011.

But nonetheless a DEA official by the name of Michele Leonhart has no idea whether or not Marijuana is more dangerous or addictive than crack or heroine. Even in the face of many studies that show that it is not as harmful to health nor is it as addictive as other drugs and therefore shouldn't be classed as a schedule one drug along with the likes of heroine and methamphetamine's.

Jill Stein said it best in her presidential debate:

"Marijuana is dangerous because it's illegal, it's not illegal because it's dangerous."

So why are we spending so much money locking people up for something that isn't even as harmful as alcohol or tobacco? It's a long history when it comes to why we made marijuana illegal, and not really the focus of this article. But I can tell you one of the reasons why we continue to have harsh drug laws is because of the private prison industry and the influence of money in politics.

The private prison industry makes money off incarcerating people, in fact: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, the two largest prison corporations made over $2.9 billion in revenue in 2010.

Those corporations use a strategy of lobbying, direct campaign contributions as well as networking in order to influence politicians into making laws that are meant to put more people into those private prisons. The three main prison corporations contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 Million to state politicians according to ThinkProgress.org

Besides the human cost of being incarcerated, the drug war and the associated stigma of being convicted of a drug offence (even a minor one) can follow a person forever.

A good example of how the drug war can haunt someones life and prevent them from getting back on their feet is a guy I used to know from high school.

His name is Justin Musser, and he's living out of his truck.

A former recreational user of marijuana, Justin was hit with a charge of marijuana possession September of last year. He ended up paying over $2000 in court fees and drug classes as well as six months probation. No longer a pot user, Justin has tried to get back on track after losing his house but faces job discrimination due to the drug charge on his record. Even his plans of going to college have been taken away as he is unable to borrow federal student loans to help cover his tuition costs, as well as to help him pay for things like food and rent.

With no options, as well as no way to afford food as there is now a law preventing college students from being able to get food assistance unless they work at least 20 hours a week. Justin has had to put his life on hold just to be able to afford food.

Having to quit school to eat is not something one should have to do in the richest country on Earth.

It wasn't until recently Justin had to move his camper due to complaints from people in the area, now with nowhere to go, and no money Justin finds it incredibly hard to find the strength to keep up his dreams of one day having a normal life.

"Its just what life is throwing at me. Handling this with dignity is going to be the hard part."

Justin Posted on his Facebook wall, explaining to friends what he continues to go through.

The problem with this drug war is that it takes away dignity from those who are trying to get their lives back on track. With so many doors closed by the stigma of having marijuana classified as a schedule one drug; so many people have found it extremely difficult, especially in this economy to rebuild their lives.

The hypocrisy of the current administration as it pertains to the drug war is that the president himself has done marijuana before. Barack Obama knows personally how harmless smoking marijuana really is, and yet he hasn't done anything to promote legalization. He has even increased raids upon dispensaries in states where medical marijuana is legal under state law. The Obama administration continues to raid dispensaries and use his authority to overrule state laws.

Why? It's the money.

Sadly as long as there is money involved, coming from the private prison corporations, from paper companies, to big pharma that all see hemp as a danger to their business interests. Getting Marijuana decriminalized is going to be nearly impossible to do. While people like Justin and many others will continue to suffer a stigma for doing something that harms no one, and even more people will continue to fill our prisons and jails in order to feed the for-profit prison industrial complex while also filling the pockets of bought politicians in Washington.

This drug war is unconstitutional, anti freedom, and anti American.

We can do better.