Outside Groups Eclipsing G.O.P. As Millions Pour In

At a time when the Republican National Committee remains weighed down by debt, outside conservative groups, freed from contribution limits by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year, are playing an ever larger role and operating in an increasingly coordinated fashion. In the coming months, the conservative groups will consult among themselves as they open pre-election advertising barrages against Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats. 

Read the whole article: NYTimes

How to Fix the Wealth Gap Without Killing America’s Dynamism: Mark Dow

The gap between the rich and the poor is big and getting bigger in America.

"The distribution of market income became more unequal almost continuously between 1979 and 2007," according to the report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Here's how the numbers break down over that time span:

• Income for the top 1% grew 275%
• Income for the 60% in the middle class grew 40%
• Income for the poorest 20% grew by 18%

Source: The Daily Ticker

Obama's Recovery Act worked just fine, thank-you

Source: ThinkProgress

CHART: ‘Life Without Stimulus’ — The U.S. vs. The U.K. | At Tax.com, Martin Sullivan rebuts those who claim that the 2009 Recovery Act (i.e. the stimulus) did nothing to boost the economy. “Republicans constantly remind us that the Obama stimulus — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — did not work. They voted against it. In the United Kingdom the government is led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. His government did not adopt stimulus,” Sullivan noted. “After three and a half years, U.S. GDP is just about returning to the pre-recession peak. That’s awful. But it’s far better than the U.K. where GDP is still five percent ($750 billion in US terms) below its pre-recession peak.”
(HT: Catherine Rampell)

There is no liberal, or libertarian, or conservative who should defend this corruption

There is no liberal, or libertarian, or conservative who should defend these policies. There is no liberal, or libertarian, or conservative who should defend this corruption. The single problem we all should be able to agree about is a political system that has lost is moral foundation: For no American went to war to defend a democracy "dependent upon the Funders alone." No mother sacrificed her son or daughter to the cause of a system that effectively allows the law to be sold to the highest bidder.

Read Larry Lessig's article on Huffington Post

Koch Brothers lie to Congress, claiming no involvement in XL pipeline

In recent months Koch Industries Inc., the business conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has repeatedly told a U.S. Congressional committee and the news media that the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline has "nothing to do with any of our businesses."

But the company has told Canadian energy regulators a different story.

Read the whole story in the Guardian

Proof that "we need to deregulate our job creators" is bullshit

Source: Suzy Khimm at WonkBlog

The United States is the fourth-easiest place in the world to do business, according to a new World Bank report measuring business regulation. Trailing only Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand,  the U.S. has performed well in terms of basic measures of business entry, expansion, operations, and insolvency.

The one area where the US comes up short? The ease of paying taxes--based on the number of payments, the time spent, and the total tax rate, we rank 72nd in the world. According to the report, the average business spends an average of 187 hours per year filing taxes, with a total tax rate of 46.7 percent--considerably above the 35 percent average that’s typically cited. So, yes, the World Bank report takes some of the steam out of conservative complaints about overly burdensome business regulations in the US. But complaints about the corporate tax code still resonate.

Quarterly report for the super committee

The super committee is doing an excellent job achieving it's primary goal of getting reelected. The six House members of the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction raised at least $371,690 from the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector in the third quarter of 2011, according to Public Campaign analysis of filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) released today with the New Bottom Line Campaign. Co-Chair Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) raised the most out of House members from the sector, bringing in $158,240.

Key Facts from the Analysis:

• The top recipient of Wall Street money on the committee so far is Co-Chair Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), who took $158,240 from the financial sector in the third quarter of 2011.
• Insurance interests provided the largest chunk of money from the sector, giving 28%, or $103,350, in donations to the House members.
• 92% of the sector’s donations came in amounts of $1,000 or more.
• PACs representing some of the country’s biggest financial firms handed over money to committee members, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Capital One, and the American Bankers Association.

Read the whole story at PublicCampaign.org

"Occupy" Coward: Eric Cantor Cancels Philly Speech

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was scheduled to give a speech on income inequality at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School today -- a sign that as much as he’s bad-mouthing the protests popping up around the country, the message from them has him paying attention. But he abruptly canceled it in the face of looming protests -- including from constituents who drove 300 miles from Virginia -- about his policies.

Just two weeks after Cantor called the Occupy Wall Street protesters a “mob” who were “pitting Americans against Americans,” he was to speak on the very topic Americans are angry about -- the gross inequality between the one percent at the top and the 99 percent of Americans who are shut off from a political system that caters to the rich at the expense of everyday people.

The thing is, though, he wouldn't have addressed their demands. An aide let it slip to Politico that his speech would be about how “we make sure the people at the top stay there.” Oops.

Read the whole story on Huffington Post

Even Worse Than Citizens United

Source: NYTimes

The Justice Department is right to defend as essential the century-old ban on direct corporate contributions to political candidates for federal office. In a brief to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the lawyers challenge a wrongheaded ruling by Judge James Cacheris of Virginia, arguing that the ban serves the government’s strong interest in preventing political corruption.


In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court said corporations and other organizations could make unlimited independent expenditures in political campaigns. But the court said it was not overturning the ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates’ campaigns.

Flouting that precedent, Judge Cacheris ruled that the “logic” of “Citizens United requires that corporations and individuals be afforded equal rights to political speech, unqualified.” He also flouted a 2003 Supreme Court case upholding the ban on direct corporate donations. Judge Cacheris has no basis for rejecting those two decisions, which bind the lower courts until the Supreme Court overturns them.

As the government contends, he was wrong in ruling that contributions from corporations “pose no greater risk of corruption or its appearance” than those from individuals if they stay within the $2,500 limit that individuals are allowed to donate. A corporation is “easy and inexpensive to form,” the government’s brief says, and it can create “a web of subsidiaries and affiliates” and “multiply its capacity to make contributions.”

Without the ban on direct corporate donations, individuals could easily get around their contribution limits by funneling money through corporate entities. That would blow an even bigger hole through crucial campaign finance laws.

We the People declare independence from corporate rule

Citizens united against Citizens United: A grassroots campaign to restore democracy

Thank you Mitt Romney! Thank you for standing tall, speaking so forthrightly, and rallying so many democracy-loving Americans to join together in THE political fight of our time.

When this well-heeled seeker of the GOP presidential nod hopped atop a hay bale at the Iowa state fair in August, dressed in preppie-casual togs, he looked as natural as a goose in a tuxedo. But then, after a somewhat testy exchange with fairgoers who had challenged him to end corporate tax breaks rather than cut benefits for people, Romney punctuated his opposition to that idea by blurting out one of the stranger tenets of right-wing theology: "Corporations are people, my friend," Mitt said, with a little condescending chuckle.



 The rest of this story is on Jim Hightower's blog

A corporation is not a person until...

...Texas executes one...

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

	BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Propose A National Convention, Release Potential Demands

Number one and two priorities are a ban on private contributions to politicians seeking or holding federal office and instead public financing for campaigns, and a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court.

Read the whole article in the Huffington Post

Krugman: Money talks in American politics

Money talks in American politics, and what the financial industry’s money has been saying lately is that it will punish any politician who dares to criticize that industry’s behavior, no matter how gently — as evidenced by the way Wall Street money has now abandoned President Obama in favor of Mitt Romney. And this explains the industry’s shock over recent events.

You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.

And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining.

Read the whole article at the NYTimes

Wall Street Occupies Washington With Massive Campaign Contributions

On Nov. 12, 1999 President Bill Clinton signed into law the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a Depression-era law that created a firewall between commercial and investment banking. Repealing this law was one of the top legislative goals of the financial industry. In the 1998 election cycle, commercial banks spent $18 million on congressional campaign contributions, with 65 percent going to Republicans and 35 percent going to Democrats. Securities and investment firms donated over $40 million. The mega-bank Citibank spent $1,954,191 during that cycle, and it was soon able to merge with Travelers Group as a result of the repeal of banking regulations. Between 2008 and 2010, when new financial regulations were being written following the financial crisis, the finance, insurance, and real estate industries spent $317 million in federal campaign contributions, with $73 million of that coming from Political Action Committees (PACs). The hold of campaign contributions is starkly bipartisan. As Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) explained to Real Clear Politics in an interview last year, he couldn’t get a vote on a windfall profits tax on bonuses at bailed out banks due to campaign contributors. “I couldn’t even get a vote,” Webb explained. “And it wasn’t because of the Republicans. I mean they obviously weren’t going to vote for it. But I got so much froth from Democrats saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fundraising.”

Read the whole article: ThinkProgress

A quarter of 1% of US population gives 68% of the political contributions

Source: OpenSecrets.org

Laura Spicer: Thanks to Madison for leadership on constitutional amendment on corporate personhood

Dear Editor: The people of Boulder, Colo., want to thank the people of Madison. You inspired the nation and Boulder to follow your leadership and again make history. In November, Boulder seeks to pass ballot measure, 2H, a referendum utilizing “Madison” language to call for a constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court decisions that gave corporations constitutional rights (corporate personhood), and equated money with speech. Like Madison, we are standing up for democracy and want to end billionaire and corporate dominance in our society.

We need the support of cities like Madison, which believe that demanding a constitutional amendment that puts people in charge of corporations will ultimately create a government that is truly “by the people and for the people.” This is essential to achieving our common goals of economic security, justice for all, and a safe and healthy environment. Most importantly, it will convey to our children and grandchildren that their voices count.

Thank you, Madison. Your leadership and success have inspired us. We are grateful. Please visit www.yeson2h.org and support us in getting one step closer to national change. Together, we can do this!

Laura Spicer
Yes On 2H Campaign
Boulder, Colo. 

Source: The Cap Times

Why #OccupyWallStreet? Four Reasons from DC Douglas

Dylan Ratigan's Get Money Out Phase 2

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#OccupyWallSt v2: What Cross-Partisanship Must Mean

By Lawrence Lessig

I'm a liberal. I believe in a woman's right to choose. I believe gays should be free to marry. I believe that society has an obligation to help the worst off. I believe public education should be free and fantastic. The government should not be allowed to spy on me, or my neighbors, whether they are citizens or not. Business should not be allowed to pollute the environment. Markets, I believe, when properly regulated, produce extraordinary innovation and spread wealth. I believe no one should be permitted to buy an election, human or not. I believe equality is a means to a better society.

Regulation is necessary to keep the powerful true. And swift and efficient justice is necessary when the powerful are not true. I believe in the Great Society, even if we've not found it yet. I listen to NPR. I am a card carrying member of the ACLU.

But I also believe that the only way to fix this Republic is through cross-partisan reform. We must, I believe, find a way to work with people we don't agree with to make this Republic work again. People who think differently from how we do about a wide range of substantive policy questions -- from taxation to regulation to Internet policy to federalism.

Yet as I walked through the #OccupyWallSt protest Wednesday, and asked people about such cross-partisanship, I was not encouraged. There is an anger and frustration among those on the Left. They feel they've tried compromise before. It got us this. They're not interested in more of this. They want something different. They want change. The sort of change they can really believe in.

And I realized then just how hard it was going to be to get people to understand what cross-partisan must mean. It does not mean compromising on substantive issues. It does not mean finding the middle between Left and Right. It does not mean the incoherent "bipartisanship" that too often takes over DC -- giving us the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on drugs, and the sort of justice system that executes Troy Davis.

It means instead a constitutional cross-partisanship: The recognition that however much we disagree about substantive issues, we have to be able to agree about the system within which we work out those substantive disagreements. That however much we disagree as Democrats and Republicans, there has to be a foundation of agreement as citizens -- about at the very least the system within which disagreement gets resolved.

That system for us is a democracy. Or more precisely, a representative democracy, cabined by a constitution that both limits the power of government and checks the power of one branch against the others. It is the rules of the game. The terms upon which competition happens.

Sometimes those rules don't work. Or they don't work anymore. Sometimes they defeat the objectives of not just one side in a competition, but all sides. And when that happens, all sides need to stop the competition for a moment and fix the rules. All sides must cooperate to make competition between all sides work again.

This is the cross-partisanship that I mean.

The Republic that our framers gave us does not work anymore. It does not work for the Left. It does not work for the Right. Federalist 52 promised us a Congress "dependent upon the People alone."
The last 15 years have produced a Congress dependent upon the Funders primarily. Members of Congress spend between 30% and 70% of their time raising money to get back to Congress or to get their party back in power. As they do this, they obviously -- obviously -- bend themselves and their policies in a way that makes it easier for them to raise money. And as they do that, they send a clear message to America. Like a father fingering his Blackberry rather than playing with his kids, Congress shows us that we don't matter. And like that kid, we get it. 75% of Americans believe "money buys results in Congress." Only 12% of Americans have confidence in what Congress does.

12%. We need to keep that number in context. There were more who believed in the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than who believe in this Congress today. This Republic is lost. And it is way past time for us to get it back.

But we won't get it back unless we find a way to work across the diversity that is America. Not to shove that diversity into a blender. But to find common ground about what's gone wrong, and to commit to a common path to fixing it. We, as Americans, may not have common goals. We do, however, have a common enemy.

That enemy is the corruption of Congress. The single fact that most all of us agree about is that our Congress is bought, and our politics, corrupted. Not the buying of quid pro quo bribery. Congress is not criminal. But you don't have to be a criminal to be corrupt. The corruption that is our Congress is in plain sight. It is legal, indeed, protected by the First Amendment. It is the bending and contorting to feed the fundraising frenzy that occupies the majority of the life of too many in Congress. And everyone -- from Bill O'Reilly to Jon Stewart (really, watch) -- should be able to agree that this corruption is at the root of the problems facing this Republic. And that until we remedy this corruption, this Republic will remain lost.

I was hopeful about #OccupyWallSt because it is the first mass movement that might accurately speak to this more fundamental corruption. For as I explained here before, the story of Wall Street is this story of government corrupted. Not just in the lead up to the collapse, but more brazenly and terrifyingly in the aftermath of that collapse -- when Wall Street effectively blackmailed both Republicans and Democrats to block any meaningful reform. #OccupyWallSt should be to call out this corruption, and unite a movement across the nation to demand that we change the system that permits this corruption. This is the root in Thoreau's "there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root." This movement could be that one.

If it were, then it would be a million times more important than what happened in Madison. There was no way to understand the protests in Madison except as Democrat against Republican, as Left versus Right. The same with the Tea Party which, try as its leaders might, is only ever understood in America as the Right against the Left.

But as Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler told a packed and rapt audience at Harvard last month, we have to find a way to resist the business model that depends upon "making us hate each other." We must find a way to look beyond our differences, to bracket those differences, so we can fix the system within which those differences compete. We need a time out, to fix the rules so that politics is not just a game to feed the ratings of cable news and Comedy Central.

I agree with you, Mark Meckler, that there is a business model of hate. It is the business model of too many, and it is destroying this Republic. So let's put the fight over Medicare or Social Security aside for a moment, and find a way to fix this Republic. Not by criticizing those who dress differently (as is the Fox News meme of the day about these protesters), but by recognizing the passion of people who love this country every bit as much as you, and by working to unite us against our common enemy: The corruption that is this Congress.

Larry Lessig's keynote at the Conference on the Constitutional Convention

Larry Lessig's keynote at the Conference on the Constitutional Convention at Harvard Law School on September 24th.



Source: Larry Lessig via Jeff McLean

Time For A Constitutional Convention? It's the Integrity, Stupid...

This article was written by a conservative who attended the Conference on the Constitutional Convention held at the Harvard Law School, September 24–25, 2011. Citizens from both sides of the political spectrum agree that corporate money is corrupting the US government.

Read article here:

Money that flows like raw sewage from K Street to the Capital

“Money that flows like raw sewage from K Street to the Capital. Money that corrupts. Money that influences. Money that changes our nation from a democratic republic to a sinister oligarchy of career politicians, corporate fat cats, ward healing bosses, and the lobbyists who tie them all together.”

former Michigan Chief Judge, Thomas Brennan.

Panic of the Plutocrats

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 9, 2011

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

Unregulated money growing in politics

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

MSNBC - Dylan Ratigan with Sunlight Foundation's Lisa Rosenberg

Lawrence Lessig joins Dylan Ratigan Show to discuss proposed constitutional amendment

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Business executives call for end to anonymous cash

An alliance of business executives is posing a challenge to its corporate brethren: stop giving out anonymous cash.

The nonpartisan Committee on Economic Development wants companies to be upfront about their political activity, even though new laws have made it easier for them to do it under the radar. The group, made of about 200 executives, has also called on Congress to pass new disclosure laws.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64448.html#ixzz1a3Eysk00

Lawrence Lessig on How We Lost Our Democracy

Click the link for an excerpt from Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig. Source: Rolling Stone

Dylan Ratigan on #OccupyWallstreet and 2012

Source: Youtube
More:

http://OccupyWallSt.org

http://www.getmoneyout.com/

Scumbag Koch Brothers

Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales

Bloomberg article about the billionaire Koch Brothers who are determined to bring the American government for the benefit of their personal greed.

Constitutional Amendment Introduced to Overturn Citizen's United

Source: SustainableBusiness.com

Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD) has introduced a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn Citizens United.

In 2010, the US Supreme Court issued a disastrous ruling that allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money influencing the outcome of elections. Only a Constitutional Amendment can overturn a Supreme Court decision.

The decision opened the floodgates of anonymous corporate funding, much of which has been used to fuel misinformation on climate change and support fossil fuel interests at the expense of the renewable energy industry.

Edwards' Amendment specifically re-asserts Congress' authority to regulate and limit corporate spending on elections.  It's less sweeping than the People's Rights Amendment, which would make it clear that corporations do not enjoy the same Constitutional rights as people.  But it is a huge first step toward this broader Amendment.

She also introduced an Amendment in February 2010, but it expired at the end of that Congress.

Here's a short video clip of Rep. Edwards discussing her Amendment last week on MSNBC.

Ask your Representative to co-sponsor the Amendment:
U.S. Capitol switchboard: 202-225-3121 Give the operator your zip code and ask to be connected to your Representative (there's no bill in the Senate yet).

Interview: Schweitzer’s plan to bring Canadian health care to Montana

Excerpts from Sarah Kliff at WonkBlog

(Sean Sperry - AP) Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is no stranger to aggressive, and controversial, attempts at health reform. In 1999, he began chartering much-publicized buses to Canada, where seniors could fill prescriptions at lower costs. He’s asked for permission to create a Medicaid drug prescription program for all his citizens (Health and Human Services said no.) and to import medications from Canada.
 
In advance of health reform, Schweitzer has a new idea: build a statewide, universal health-care system, modeled after that of Saskatchewan, the Canadian province just north of Montana.

Read the whole story from Sarah Kliff at WonkBlog 

Regulatory uncertainty: A phony explanation for our jobs problem

Excerpts from: Larry Miscel at the Economic Policy Institute

Job creation has finally returned as a front and center priority in Washington. The prescription for spurring job creation, however, depends on the diagnosis of the underlying problem. Policymakers are currently invoking two very different explanations for the jobs crisis. The more persuasive explanation is that the demand for goods and services is depressed because of the collapse of the housing and stock market bubbles—the financial crisis—that has led to both a deleveraging (paying off debts) of households and a cratering of the construction sector. The initial shock of the bubble’s burst then cascaded into non-construction business investment that dried up as customers disappeared. Finally, all of this led to state and local governments cutting back services and jobs as tax revenues plunged.

There is a competing story, widely told by Republican politicians and business trade associations, which claims that business investment and hiring is being held back by uncertainty over future regulations and taxation. As Maine Senator Susan Collins said in introducing her bill to put a moratorium on all new regulations: “Businesses, our nation’s job creators and the engine of any lasting economic growth, have been saying for some time that the lack of jobs is largely due to a climate of uncertainty, most notably the uncertainty and cost created by new federal regulations” (Kasperowicz 2011).  Her view has been repeated by others, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (2011) and the Chamber of Commerce (Donohue 2011).

An examination of current economic trends, and especially what employers are doing in terms of hiring and investment, debunks this story about regulatory uncertainty as the cause of our dismal job growth. An examination of what employers and their economists are saying again and again in private surveys (cited later in this paper) makes it clear that what businesses actually identify as their primary set of challenges does not fit this story either. In other words, what the heavily politicized trade associations in Washington are saying does not correspond to the real challenges facing both large and small businesses, even as they themselves perceive them.

What is the flawed reasoning behind the “uncertainty” argument?

What is the logic behind the “uncertainty” argument for our poor job growth? Based on numerous media reports, we know that firms have substantial cash on hand to invest (Monga, Mattiloi, and Chasan 2011), but that they are not using it for new hires or investments. We also know that firms are making a third more profit than they did before the recession (Eisenbrey et al. 2011), so they are not being held back by current profitability or the ability to finance investments. There is no mention of any demand-side problems in the rhetoric coming from House leaders, so presumably they believe that businesses have ample customers.



In conclusion, when looking at both what employers are doing in terms of hiring and investing and what they (and their economists) are saying in private surveys, it’s nearly impossible to make the argument that uncertainty about regulations is holding back the economy. A Bloomberg News (2011) editorial makes the point even more broadly:

“There is no doubt that certainty is generally preferable to uncertainty, in the economy as in most aspects of life….But there is no evidence that uncertainty has increased during the Obama presidency, or that, if it has, the president’s policies are responsible for it…The charge of ‘creating uncertainty’ is a way to blame Obama for the U.S.’s economic trials without having to explain the connection.”

Read the whole story by Larry Miscel at the Economic Policy Institute

Why the 2012 Election Will Cost $6 Billion

Source: Business Week

The 2012 election is shaping up to be the most expensive ever, by a lot. Between congressional contests and the Presidential campaign, the 2008 race came in at about $5 billion. This go-round is on track to exceed $6 billion, thanks in large part to recent court decisions that relaxed limits on corporate and union spending. All that money sloshing around—much of it hard to trace to the giver—infuriates government accountability groups. But it absolutely delights the man most responsible for making it happen: James Bopp Jr.

Never heard of him? The 63-year-old proprietor of a small law firm in Terre Haute, Ind., Bopp is far from a household name. In Washington, though, he is revered by campaign fundraisers for his three-decade-long crusade to eliminate restrictions on political contributions, which Bopp, a conservative Republican, sees as a violation of free speech. It was Bopp who filed the initial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission lawsuit that ultimately led the Supreme Court to rule, in 2010, that corporations and unions could spend unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates as long as they didn’t give the money to the candidates themselves.

Over the years, Bopp has filed numerous lawsuits in state and federal courts seeking to knock down fundraising limits, always on the lookout for test cases that could one day end up before the justices. He filed 21 of the 31 lawsuits challenging campaign finance regulations tracked by the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center. His work cleared the way for the creation of so-called Super PACs, independent campaign fundraising groups that amass unlimited donations. These PACs are now at work raising tens of millions of dollars from labor, business, and individuals to support—or attack—Presidential candidates. Bopp’s advocacy led to the end of state restrictions on spending in judicial elections and to the repeal of state laws providing additional public funds to candidates whose opponents spend more.

His latest mission: challenging state and federal laws that bar corporations from donating directly to candidates. The way Bopp sees it, if companies can spend money to elect or defeat candidates, why shouldn’t they be allowed to donate directly to the politicians? “The only justification for contribution limits is the size of the contribution, not the contributor,” he says. The point of the First Amendment is “to ensure robust participation by citizens,” he adds. “If you want people of average means to participate, you have to protect groups,” including corporations owned by stockholders.

To that end, on Sept. 21 he argued a case in a U.S. appeals court to overturn a Minnesota state law banning corporations from donating to candidates. In a separate case, a federal judge in Virginia recently cited the Citizens United case in throwing out the federal prohibition on company contributions. Bopp has filed a brief in support of the judge’s ruling, which is now on appeal. No matter how the courts decide these cases, the issue of corporate contributions may eventually end up before the high court—where, as Citizens United demonstrated, his argument could find a receptive audience. “I don’t think anybody has a better track record at identifying test cases and investing in them than Jim Bopp,” says former FEC Chairman Michael E. Toner, a Republican who specializes in election law at the Washington law firm Wiley Rein. “These cases can’t reach the Supreme Court unless someone invests in them at the trial level.”

In his polo shirt and khakis, Bopp does not exude the typical power-lawyer vibe. The desk in his storefront office is piled high with papers he hasn’t gotten around to filing. But his effectiveness in the courtroom is undisputed. “It’s safe to say that groups on the left and right have Jim Bopp to thank for their newfound freedom,” says Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington. The research group, which tracks political contributions, says independent groups spent $69 million to influence the 2006 midterm elections. In 2010, after the Citizens United decision opened the door to corporate and union cash, it ballooned to $305 million.

Scott E. Thomas, a former Democratic FEC chairman now with the law firm Dickstein Shapiro in Washington, agrees Bopp has been extremely effective. But Thomas is not applauding his success. Like other supporters of restrictions on corporate and union contributions, he says that despite the desire to promote free speech, Bopp is actually helping monied interests drown out the voices of regular people. Bopp, he says, has all but gutted the 2002 campaign finance law intended to restrain the influence of corporations and wealthy donors. “We should now call the statute ‘the Federal Election Campaign Act paid for and authorized by Jim Bopp,’” says Thomas. “He keeps coming back and back and back.”

That’s exactly Bopp’s strategy. Instead of mounting an assault on an entire statute all at once, he tends to tightly focus his cases in hopes of eliminating one provision within the law. He then comes back later to attack another part, chipping away at the whole over time. He got his start in 1978 as a 30-year-old lawyer for the National Right to Life Committee, where he helped the anti-abortion movement incrementally challenge abortion rights laws—a tactic he later adapted to campaign finance. His first challenge to campaign regulations was a case in 1983 that overturned FEC limits on voter guides, such as those National Right to Life once distributed in churches. He argued the recent Minnesota campaign case on behalf of an anti-abortion group, Minnesota Concerned Citizens for Life, claiming it should be allowed to give money to candidates. Bopp set up the James Madison Center for Free Speech in 1997 to collect donations to support his work.

Bopp has turned down offers to close up shop and sign on with powerful, big-city firms. He has no interest in leaving Indiana, where he was born and serves as a Republican National Committee member. “We thought it was a more culturally conservative area to raise our children, and we weren’t forced to move because clients were willing to come to me in Terre Haute, even though they were in D.C. or other places.”

These days, plenty of people seek him out. “Jim had been a lonely guy out there, litigating and litigating,” says Bradley Smith, a Republican former FEC chairman who founded the Center for Competitive Politics, which is critical of campaign contribution limits. “I don’t think Jim is as lonely as he used to be.”