National Institute on Money in State Politics Double Standards Galore I happened to be flying on American Airlines the morning after the company declared bankruptcy. Exactly nothing bad happened to my flight. Nobody passed the hat to buy aviation fuel. The flight attendants offered the same dismal snacks. It was business as usual. American will get to stiff its creditors, its employees, its pensioners, and sail happily onward, not even required to replace its managers. Meanwhile, millions of underwater homeowners are denied the protections of bankruptcy laws. If only homeowners were airlines. Welcome to the age of the double standard. After more than a decade of business lobbying, in 2005 bankruptcy laws were revised to tilt against consumers. Want another one? Meanwhile, more than 200,000 small time drug users who didn’t kill anybody are doing hard prison time. In the trial, 18 top Massey executives took the Fifth Amendment. In principle, criminal charges against Massey senior executives are still possible. Advertisement You might like: Workers on the Edge
INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE. NEWS, COMMENTARY & INSIGHT Rootstrikers Rootstrikers, or sometimes Root strikers, is a self-described nonpartisan grassroots activist organization created by Harvard law school professor Lawrence Lessig[1][2] and political activist Joe Trippi (a Democratic campaign worker and consultant) for the purpose of fighting political corruption in the United States and reducing the role of special interest money in elections.[3] According to Lessig, who has called for a Second Constitutional Convention,[3] the idea is not to hack at the branches of the problem but rather focus on its root,[4][5] which Lessig views as a corrupt campaign finance system, and hence he named the organization rootstrikers.[6][7] The name "Rootstrikers" is based on a quote from the first chapter of Henry David Thoreau's book Walden:[1][9] "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root". Positions[edit] In his 2012 book One Way Forward, Lessig proposes what he termed the Anti-Corruption Pledge. Activities[edit]
Would Obama Declare 3 Days of Peace to Pay for Food for Starving Afghans? The most little-understood fact of war, in my opinion, is the sheer, mind-boggling, nearly incomprehensible magnitude of the money which is spent on a daily basis to keep the occupation and boom-and-zoom operations going. Former General Barry McCaffrey put the "burn rate" of US taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan at $9 billion per month, which is fully one-half the average yearly state budget for the 50 states. Two months of this kind of spending is the entire Pell Grant appropriation for 2010. More than one-third of that "burn rate" (and you have to hand it to McCaffrey for not caring how this sounds to the public, literally burning taxpayer money) is fuel costs, both aviation and ground. ...international accounting firm Deloitte puts the cost of fuel for the additional troops at nearly $1,000 a day per soldier — more than $350,000 per year. That's $350,000 per year, per soldier, each of the 100,000 or so of them. BBC reports: 2.5 million are in imminent danger. That's a lot of money, right?
Jeff Connaughton: Obama and the Rule of Law Long silent and now contradictory, President Obama needs to deliver a clarifying speech about our financial markets and the rule of law. Speaking in Kansas on December 6, he said, "Too often, we've seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there's no price for being a repeat offender." Just five days later on 60 Minutes, he said, "Some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn't illegal." Which is it? The President is confusing "legal" with "difficult to prosecute successfully." Moreover, the President is misleading us when he says that Wall Street firms violate anti-fraud law because the penalties are too weak. The Obama Justice Department hasn't tried a single Wall Street executive in a criminal court. For three important reasons, the President needs to explain why the Justice Department has filed away its investigations of big banks and Wall Street firms without indicting anyone. Why didn't this happen?
Who We Are Rootstrikers began in April 2011 as a project of Fix Congress First, an organization founded by Lawrence Lessig and Joe Trippi. You can read more about our mission here. In addition to our network of activists and volunteers, we are: Lawrence Lessig | Founder Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Lessig serves on the Board of Creative Commons, The American Academy, Berlin, AXA Research Fund, iCommons.org, and on the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale. Szelena Gray | Executive Director Szelena first became involved in social movement-building while in college, where she led several campus-wide campaigns for gender equality and was appointed to the dean's council on the status of women. Jay Costa | National Coordinator, Street Team Outside of Rootstrikers, Jay is a member of the staff at MapLight, where he designs web products, such as Voter's Edge.
A Predator State – the worst bits of Capitalism, Communism and Feudalism « forensicstatistician We live in a Capitalist country, right? We believe in the power of markets, don’t we? That’s what seperates us from the spectre of Communism that haunted us from the 1950s to end of the 1980s, isn’t it. But, just to soften the edges, we have a bit of a heart too. Sounds plausible doesn’t it. In the face of bank collapse our politicians ennacted sizeable bailouts. The consequence has been Austerity and Inflation. Yes we have a mixed economy, but one that is instead the worst of both worlds; privatised profits and yet socialised losses. It is a form of Crony Capitalism, and a slipperly route back to the retrograde structure of Feudalism. “What did the new class… set out to do in political terms? Predator State But this message isn’t being voiced by any policitician, or even any economic or political commentator. “In a true market economy, bad choices get penalized. Why can’t any major mass movement whether from the left or (especially!) Like this: Like Loading...
No One Is Above the Law, Even Megabanks Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is the co-author of “13 Bankers.” The American ideal of equal and impartial justice under law has repeatedly been undermined by attempts to concentrate power. Our political system has many advantages, but it also provides motive and opportunity for resourceful people to become so strong they can elude the legal constraints that bind others. The most obvious example is the oil and railroad trusts at the end of the 19th century. A version of the same process is happening again today, but what has become concentrated is not a vital energy source or the nation’s transport arteries but rather something much more abstract – financial sector risk. In early 2009, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. The confidence in the system is so fragile still. Thankfully, this lawlessness – and it is that – nettles some regulators and prosecutors. Mr. Ron Paul has expressed concern about big banks.
Open Culture 6 Shocking Revelations About Wall Street's "Secret Government" Photo Credit: john flanigan November 30, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. We now have concrete evidence that Wall Street and Washington are running a secret government far removed from the democratic process. These documents show how top government officials willfully concealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts that enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms. The secret Wall Street bailouts totaled $7.77 trillion, 10 times more than the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress in 2008. So what does this all mean? 1. As many of us suspected, all the big banks were on their knees begging for help – secretly – while telling their investors, the public and Congress that all was well. 2. 3.
Tom Ferguson: The Devil and Rick Santorum – Dilemmas of a Holy Owned Subsidiary By Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author of many books and articles, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. Cross posted from Alternet The father of the Investment Theory of Politics reveals what pundits miss in the GOP’s failure to lead its own electorate and its evangelical problem. Election night in Iowa was a heavenly moment for Rick Santorum. But it was not God who saved Rick Santorum. Now, as the wall of Super Money comes down on him like a ton of gold bricks, Santorum is likely fated, like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Perry himself, to flame out after a brief moment of glory and go back to working with the energy and health care enterprises that helped make him a millionaire after leaving the Senate. A Party Built for the 1 Percent No less important were the implications for GOP campaigns and political rhetoric.
Freud puts capitalism on the couch - macrobusiness.com.au | macrobusiness.com.au A fascinating article has been written by Eliot Spitzer for The Slate which details the massive lying that went on during the GFC. It raises an intriguing question. What functions do lying and truthfulness play in financial systems? The assumption commonly made is that lying and deception are “bad” and truth telling is “good”. Spitzer starts his critique by personalising the banks’ deception, a telling way of conveying moral outrage. Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. Due to some excellent research by Bloomberg journalists – yes, real journalism remains as achievable as it ever was, the MSM need not be asleep — a pattern of wholesale deception has emerged. The truth is that finance is always based on, if not outright lies, at least various shades of deceptiveness. The neo-liberal view is that free markets are better because they tame our wicked natures.
Guess The Politician... And Follow The Money A few days ago we presented a roster of the top contributors to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign as reported by OpenSecrets. Today we have done the same for two other candidates, representing two previous election cycles: 2008 and 2004. The first table shows Romney's key contributors to date. The other two are the blacklined candidates. We are confident everyone can guess who they are, but just in case they are presented unredacted below the chart. It is ironic that nothing really changes at the end of the day in terms of whose bidding is ultimately performed by the president, whoever it may be. For the 3 confused people out there, here is the same chart but unredacted . Source: OpenSecrets here, here and here. And due to popular request, here is John McCain '08, whom Goldman liked about 75% less than O'Bama. Here are some relatively pertinent words on the matter from Jon Stewart from circa 4 years ago (h/t nolsgrad).