Countdown: The Chamber of Commerce, Inside The Plot to Buy America

The Chamber's Foreign Influence

B Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, George Zornick, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, and Tanya Somanader
ThinkProgress
October 6, 2010

CORPORATE ETHICS

Following the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January, the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce has taken record-breaking steps to influence the 2010 midterm elections. Pledging to spend an unprecedented $75 million this year, the Chamber is in the midst of launching one of the largest partisan attack campaigns to defeat Democrats, including candidates like Jack Conway (KY), Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA), Jerry Brown (CA), Rep. Joe Sestak (PA) and  Rep. Tom Perriello (VA). Having aired more than 8,000 campaign ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates alone and having spent 85 percent of its current expenditure on Republicans, the Chamber's spending has "dwarfed every other issue group and most political party candidate committee spending."

It is well-established that the Chamber has used dues from corporations like health insurance giant Aetna to try to defeat health care reform, received contributions from bailed-out banks to lobby against Wall Street reform, and solicited funds from Fox News' parent company News Corporation for its election season attack campaign.

But a new ThinkProgress investigation reveals that the Chamber is leveraging foreign companies to help fund its activities. Foreign corporations that join the Chamber pay dues that go into the Chamber's general account, which the Chamber then employs to fund its attack campaign. The Chamber "firmly denies the charge, saying its internal accounting rules prevent any foreign money from being used for political purposes."


But, as a New York Times editorial notes today, foreign money is fungible, so "it is impossible for an outsider to know whether the group is following its rules." "We want to know what the system is. Basically, they claim they have a system, it's not enough to simply trust them, we need to verify," said ThinkProgress' Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews yesterday. While Congressional members and watchdog groups are calling for further investigation into the charges, such campaign actions fall into "something of a regulatory netherworld" leading campaign finance watchdogs, lawyers, and current and former federal officials to believe regulatory agencies like the IRS or the FEC will not examine them closely. Thus, with the Citizens United ruling and the Chamber's abuse of its 501(c)(6) standing, the Chamber is set to use "unlimited money from donors who have no fear of disclosure."


HOW IT WORKS

Continue reading here.

Feds: Arizona is major supplier of weapons used by Mexican drug cartels

by Jay Crandall, Special Projects Producer
azfamily.com
Posted on October 4, 2010 at 9:56 PM
Updated Monday, Oct 4 at 9:58 PM

Federal authorities are saying Arizona has now become a major supplier of the weapons being used by Mexican drug cartels. If the guns are purchased legally, how are they ending up in the hands of traffickers?

Blackwater's Black Ops

By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation
September 15, 2010   |    This article appeared in the October 4, 2010 edition of The Nation.

Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

Governmental recipients of intelligence services and counterterrorism training from Prince's companies include the Kingdom of Jordan, the Canadian military and the Netherlands police, as well as several US military bases, including Fort Bragg, home of the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and Fort Huachuca, where military interrogators are trained, according to the documents. In addition, Blackwater worked through the companies for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the US European Command.

Continue Reading here.


Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. You can read his blog on TheNation.com here.

WATCH Jeremy Scahill discuss Blackwater's Secret Relationship with Big Business on
Democracy Now!

The Real News: "Creative Destruction" and Fascism

 The RealNews
 Sept. 29, 2010

Prof. Robert Pollin, Director of PERI Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst:

Austerity is Not a Solution: Why the Deficit Hawks are Wrong

 

Record income inequality threatens democracy

By The Editorial Board
STLToday
Posted: Thursday, September 30, 2010 9:00 pm

“With the middle class gone and the laborer condemned to remain a lifelong wage-earner ... all the conditions are ripe for a crowning class-conflict equalling in intensity and bitterness anything pictured by the most radical follower of Karl Marx.”

Income inequality is at record levels in the United States, the Associated Press reported earlier this week after crunching new numbers from the Census Bureau.

In fact, income inequality was only slightly greater in 2009 than it was in 2008. But the trend toward greater income inequality has been apparent since the early 1980s — the decade when Gordon Gekko, a fictional character in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” first extolled the virtues of greed.

History — even fairly recent history — is not America’s strong suit. We ignore it at our own peril.
As far back as 1915, when Wisconsin statistician Willford King published the first comprehensive study of income and wealth in the United States, income inequality stoked fears of those concerned for the future of democracy.

Mr. King, whose words are quoted at the top of this editorial, was no socialist. His intention was to demonstrate that all Americans were sharing in the nation’s explosion of wealth. But that’s not what he found.

Instead, he discovered that the richest 1 percent of Americans controlled a staggering 15 percent of the nation’s wealth.

In the end, Mr. King decided that conditions weren’t yet quite ripe for the kind of class warfare that soon would break out in Russia.

As bad as things were here, he found, there were even greater concentrations of wealth and less social mobility in European nations such as Prussia and France.

That’s not true any more. So why aren’t more ordinary Americans concerned about the growing chasm between the super rich and everyone else? Perhaps it’s because they have no clue how wide it has become.

A new study by Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely, professors at Harvard Business School and Duke University, sheds unflattering light on the question. They asked a nationally and politically representative group of 1,000 Americans to estimate how much wealth is controlled by the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans.

Continue reading here.

Conservatives Just Killed 240,000 Jobs

Posted by Terrance Heath
Alternet.org
October 5, 2010


Conservatives in Congress just fired 240,000 American workers.  Conservatives in Congress just essentially added 240,000 more Americans to the ranks of the unemployed. However you frame it, people who want to work and have been working
are soon to be out of work, thanks to GOP Senators members who refused to reauthorize — even for three months — a stimulus program so successful it won praise from Republicans like Mississippi governor Haley Barbour.

Steve Benen explains.

At issue is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund, which should have been one of the most popular programs in Congress. A key component of the Recovery Act, the fund subsidizes jobs with private companies, nonprofits, and government agencies, and has single handedly put more than 240,000 unemployed people back to work in 32 states and the District of Columbia.

Governors, including Mississippi’s Haley Barbour (R), have sung its praises, and urged its extension. In July, CNN called the TANF Emergency Fund "a stimulus program even a Republican can love."
Except, Republicans didn’t love it. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) led the floor fight this week, and was even willing to accept a compromise: instead of a year-long extension that Democrats had requested, Durbin sought a three-month extension, at a cost of just $500 million, in order to keep the fund alive through the end of the year. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) refused to allow it.

"The majority has known this program was going to expire at the end of this month all year and has taken no steps to reauthorize this important social safety net program," said Enzi, who blocked Durbin’s request for "unanimous consent" for a reauthorization.

Of course, GOP Senator Judd Gregg (N,H.) killed a Democratic effort at reauthorization in March of this year. Just last week, GOP Senator Orrin Hatch shot down Democratic Senator Max Baucus’s attempt to reauthorize the program as part of a "tax extenders bill." And the House approved a bill reauthorizing TANF back in May.

Continue reading here.

Election 2010 - Republicans Plan Broad Attack on Women's Rights if Elected

By Steven Leser 
Oped News.com
October 5, 2010


It became clear to me shortly after writing my last article (1) that among the many crazy ideas espoused by many of its Tea Party candidates, the Republicans have a special focus in mind if elected. Republicans have simmered in anger for over 40 years at the progress of the women's equal rights movement. Finally, now, in 2010, they feel comfortable enough to run on a broad spectrum of policies that are blatantly anti-women's rights.

My last article mentioned that:

"While we are accustomed to Republican candidates being against a woman's right to have an abortion, five high-profile Tea Party Republican SENATE candidates, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ken Buck of Colorado, Joe Miller of Alaska, Sharron Angle of Nevada, and Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, are even against a woman's right to have an abortion in the case of rape or incest! Women would have to have their rapists baby. Girls raped by an uncle or cousin or their fathers would have to give birth to a child from a resulting pregnancy."

------------------------

There are a few updates to that. I also found out that the GOP's NY Governor hopeful, Carl Paladino, is also for outlawing abortion for women even in the case of rape and incest. The reason that is so important is that if somehow, Roe v. Wade were overturned, the states would have the right to allow or prohibit abortion. With Paladino at the helm, New York's women would have no right to an abortion in virtually any situation. To say that this is out of touch with the wishes of the women of New York is an understatement.

I also found out that several Republican candidates, Ken Buck running for Senate in Colorado among them, want to limit the contraceptive options available to women.

We already know from data that the reason that women do not get equal pay for equal work has to do with family issues and planning. Women tend to outperform their male colleagues in pay up to the time they start a family and then they fall behind. Women who opt to never have families go on earning more than their male colleagues.

If you add restrictions on abortion and contraception to that equation, you are going to push the progress of women's equality back to what it was in the 1950's. Women are going to be reduced to having no choice but to be stay at home mothers taking care of their families. There is nothing wrong with that role for women AND men who choose it, but to have it forced on anyone because of restricted family planning options is criminal.

From their rhetoric, it's also clear that Republicans are back to wanting to punish women for having sex outside of marriage and want to trap women into having children if they dare to have sex either inside or outside of marriage. They want to destroy women's ability to plan a family and thus plan a career around their family plans.

By now some of you probably think I am exaggerating. It isn't possible, some of you are thinking, that Republicans really want to punish women for pre-marital sex. You would be wrong. This is what North Carolina Senator Jim DeMint had to say on the subject:

"[I]f someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom."

Continue Reading here.

BREWER'S DAMAGE TO CHILDREN - Education, Healthcare for Kids - Brewer Doesn't Care, She Just Cuts

terrygoddard.com
Oct. 4, 2010

Jan Brewer has never hesitated to attack the welfare of our children.  Later today, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, she is scheduled to declare this 'Arizona's Child Health Day.' Yet, her cuts to children's healthcare and education are the meanest and most devastating Arizona has ever experienced.

"At the beginning of this year, Jan Brewer tossed tens of thousands of children off of Arizona's KidsCare health insurance," said Attorney General Terry Goddard. "Her cuts to education, so far, are more than one billion dollars.  Now, she is trying to destroy First Things First, our program for early education, which we know is the most effective way to help kids succeed in school."

 

"Arizona children are forced to suffer for her horrible budget management," added Goddard. 

Here is a partial list of the budget damage Jan Brewer has done to children and families:

• Tens of thousands of children removed from the AHCCCS KidsCare program.   
• New enrollment in KidsCare remains frozen.
• State support for community health care centers has been wiped out, cutting off programs for the very poor.
• 4,200 children have lost behavioral health services.
• 20,000 poor children removed from the list for child-care subsidies.
• Severe cuts to in-home services, forcing more children into foster care.
• 300 developmentally disabled children have been cut off from state service.
• 850 severely ill children removed from Children's Rehabilitative Services.
• Substance abuse treatment denied to parents, putting a large number of children at further risk.
• Support for grandparents caring for grandchildren has been eliminated.
• CPS is no longer required to investigate all cases of child abuse.

In November, if voters pass Proposition 302, they will destroy the voter-approved program that funds early education in Arizona (First Things First).

  

"The debate on early education is over," said Goddard.  "There is no question that the best way to improve educational outcomes is to ensure - through early education - that children are ready to learn before they enter the first grade.  Jan Brewer is willing to sacrifice early childhood support and everything that goes with it - better test scores, higher graduation rates, and a better-trained work force."



"Rather than doing the hard work necessary to balance the budget - without this kind of damage to children - she is giving in to her lobbyist handlers and letting them call the most painful shots.

Change eyed in regulation of Arizona provisional ballots

Change eyed in regulation of Arizona provisional ballots

by by Alia Beard Rau
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 29, 2010

Each election, thousands of provisional ballots are thrown out in Arizona because the voter went to the wrong polling place. 

State elections officials say workers tell voters who show up at the wrong precinct on Election Day that their ballots may not be counted, but allow them to vote there anyway. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and other voter-advocacy groups say they want the state Legislature to change what are some of the toughest laws in the nation so the votes of these wayward thousands can be counted.

ACLU of Arizona on Tuesday released a report analyzing how state law impacts provisional ballots, particularly provisional ballots cast at the wrong precinct in Maricopa, Pima, Coconino, Pinal and Yavapai counties. The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires states to allow voters to cast a provisional ballot when there is a question about the voter's eligibility. But the act allows each state to set its own criteria for such ballots.

Arizona is one of 30 states that requires voters to cast a provisional ballot in the voter's assigned precinct to be counted.

The ACLU analyzed data from the November 2008 presidential general election and found that of 131,476 provisional ballots cast in the five counties, 13,467 were discarded because the voter cast the ballot at the wrong precinct.

According to the Arizona Secretary of State's Office, 14,929 ballots statewide were discarded in that 2008 election because of a wrong polling place.

Statewide data for this year's primary election is not yet available. But in Maricopa County, 1,059 provisional ballots were discarded because voters cast them at the wrong polling place, county elections spokeswoman Yvonne Reed said.

Following the election, Arizona election officials go through all provisional ballots by hand to determine whether they should be counted. In addition to a wrong polling place, ballots can be discarded if the voter can't provide proper ID, was later determined to be ineligible to vote or had already cast a mail-in ballot.

Linda Brown, executive director of the Arizona Advocacy Network, said research conducted by her group has shown that Arizona typically distributes - and discards - more provisional ballots than most other states. Since 2005, members of her group have stationed themselves at polling places. She said they wanted to help alleviate confusion surrounding voter ID rules and discovered that many people had problems finding the correct polling place.

"People would say they had been to three polling places, and nobody could tell them where to vote," Brown said.

Brown said she had seen the statistics from the November 2008 election and "was appalled."

"We've had elections decided on 50 to 100 votes," she said. "These things matter."

One of the causes of the voter confusion, according to the ACLU and Brown, is that population shifts in Arizona regularly result in changing polling locations and their boundaries. Between 2006 and 2008, about 40 percent of the polling locations in Maricopa County changed, according to the ACLU.

ACLU of Arizona Executive Director Alessandra Soler Meetze said poll workers are instructed to tell voters they are in the wrong place and have maps to help them find the correct precinct. But she said workers can give lost voters provisional ballots and may not make it clear that the ballot will not be counted.

"A lot of this comes down to poll-worker training and voter education," Soler Meetze said.

The counties offer ways for voters to find their polling place online or by telephone. But Brown said on election days, at least in Maricopa County, the website freezes up because of high traffic, and the hotline can have a long wait.

Reed said workers cannot unequivocally tell a voter whose name doesn't show up on a precinct's voter list that their ballot won't be counted because that's not always the case. For example, if someone recently moved to the area, their name may not yet be on the precinct-voter list even though that is their correct polling place.

"We instruct them that they are not listed, and this is more than likely the wrong place," Reed said. "We can't turn a person away. The law won't allow us."

Secretary of State Ken Bennett is pushing to move from having a large number of small precincts to a smaller number of larger polling centers that would allow voters to cast their ballot at any center within their county.

Several other states, including Colorado, have been trying this format. Yavapai County tried it at a few polling locations in a May 18, 2008, special election.

Spokesman Matthew Benson said technology would allow a poll worker to use a computerized system to determine the appropriate ballot for each voter and print it out on the spot. Benson said the idea is at the research and discussion phase.

Soler Meetze said in the meantime, voters need to double-check their polling places, and election workers need to make sure voters understand that a provisional ballot cast at the wrong place will not be counted.

Brown said voters can avoid the problem by voting by mail. The deadline to request an early ballot for the Nov. 2 election is Oct. 22.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/09/29/20100929wrongprecinct0929.html#ixzz11QQCbIiF

Bernie Sanders: Republicans do not want America to succeed

by David Edwards
Rawstory
Sunday, October 3

Sen. Bernie Sanders told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday that Republicans are more interested in gaining power than they are in helping the country.

"I think in his heart the president is a very, very decent guy," said Sanders. "He wants to do what most Americans want him to do: to reach out, bring people together.

"But what has happened is the Republicans have said no, no, no. They have waged more filibusters than any time in the history of this country. They have been the party of no and obstructionism," Sanders continued. "At some point, what the president has got to understand is they do not want America to succeed. They're into politics."

Pressed by Schieffer if that was fair to say the GOP didn't want the US to succeed, at least with a Democratic president in the White House, Sanders said yes.

"That's a strong statement to make," Schieffer said. "Is it really fair to say they don't want America to succeed?"

Continue reading here.

Corporate Profits 'Near-Historic' In Second Quarter, Thanks To Cost-Cutting

By William Alden
The Huffington Post  
10- 4-10

Corporate America finished the second quarter with "near-historic" profits, largely by cutting costs, laying off employees and streamlining operations, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Profits for companies in the S&P 500 soared 38 percent from the same period last year, hitting $189 billion, the WSJ says, the sixth-highest quarterly total ever. S&P analysts expect the trend to have continued in the third quarter.

Since 2008, corporate profits increased 10 percent -- but revenue was down 6 percent, the WSJ says. To achieve the impressive quarterly results, companies have had, as the WSJ puts it, to "streamline" their operations. This means firing workers, outsourcing labor and shuttering unprofitable (or less profitable) divisions.

The robust state of corporate profits presents a paradox: companies won't spend their money until the economy improves, but the economy won't improve until they spend their money. An increase in hiring, for example, would help drive a recovery. The New York Times reports this "chicken-and-egg" phenomenon, noting that near-zero interest rates have encouraged companies to borrow money and simply hoard it because, as the NYT puts it, "they can." Combined, companies have $1.6 trillion in cash, the paper notes. In the first quarter of this year, their cash reserves represented the highest percentage of assets since 1964.

"They are still holding on to more cash in the same way that Noah built the ark," Gluskin Sheff chief economist David Rosenberg told the NYT.

As HuffPost's Shahien Nasiripour reported in August, bank profits during the second quarter rose 21 percent to almost $22 billion, the highest level in three years.

All these corporate profits came as the country as a whole got poorer. The net worth of households and non-profits dropped 2.8 percent during the second quarter to $53.5 trillion, erasing two quarters of gains. The figure hadn't been that low since the third quarter of 2009. And here is the rest of it.