Our Downward Spiral Since Citizens United

The corrosive influence of unlimited money in politics continues to grow.

By Norm Ornstein

October 15, 2014 Every once in a while, David Brooks writes a column in The New York Times that makes one just cringe. That was the case with his "Don't Worry, Be Happy" treatment last week of the impact of Citizens United on our politics. By defining the impact narrowly—does either party gain from the Supreme Court ruling and the new Wild West of campaign financing?—and by cherry-picking the research on campaign finance, Brooks comes up with a benign conclusion: Citizens United will actually reduce the influence of money in elections, and, I quote, "The upshot is that we should all relax about campaign spending."

Without mentioning his good friend's name, E.J. Dionne destroyed that case in his own Washington Post column. But a broader critique is necessary. First, Citizens United—and its progeny, SpeechNow.org and McCutcheon—are not really about whether Republicans get a leg up on election outcomes. They are about a new regime of campaign spending that dramatically enhance corruption in politics and government by forcing lawmakers to spend more and more of their precious time making fundraising calls, raising money for their own campaigns and their parties, and getting insurance against a last-minute blitz of "independent" spending that trashes them when they have no time to raise money to defend themselves. It also gives added traction to extreme groups threatening lawmakers with primary devastation unless they toe the ideological line.

ALEC’s new assault on America: Why the far right isn’t relying on Congress

While the nation fixates on congressional midterm results, here's what Big Money's front group has its eye on

Heather Digby Parton

You know it’s getting close to an election when every political junkie gets obsessed with polling, and men like Nate Silver and Sam Wang are spoken of in hushed tones usually reserved for sports stars and religious figures. As of today it’s not looking good for team D to hold the Senate and there are a lot of reasons why that’s a bad thing for America. Not the least of those is that the Republican party has lost its mind and they are likely going to elect some more fringe characters along the lines of Ted Cruz to the allegedly “greatest deliberative body in the world.”

I had been of the opinion that this wasn’t going to be such a travesty since it’s probably going to last only last two years, but the advent of this new ISIS war and the hysteria around immigration and Ebola means that the congress has quite a bit of leverage over the administration and could demand some very ugly concessions just to keep the government working in a time of crisis. (Yes, they will do that, don’t kid yourself.) So it’s probably a mistake to be sanguine about this election not being important. When the world is blowing up you really need the government to work properly.

What will it take to rein in Big Money?

On Oct. 16, 2014, Ellen Weintraub -- a member of the Federal Election Commission, an agency launched in 1975 after the Watergate scandal to watchdog campaign spending -- visited North Carolina to talk about the rising influence of money in U.S. politics. Institute for Southern Studies Executive Director Chris Kromm joined Weintraub and state Rep. Pricey Harrison on a panel in Raleigh to discuss the new threats money poses to our democracy, and what can be done about it. The following is an edited version of Kromm's remarks.

* * *

Greetings, and thank you for inviting me to be part of this critical discussion about money in our democracy.

I'm especially honored to be here with two individuals -- Commissioner Weintraub and Rep. Harrison -- who have shown remarkable leadership, at the federal and state level, in helping us grapple with this question of how best to ensure that money isn't allowed to drown the voice of ordinary voters.

Report: Senate Report on CIA Will Sidestep Look at Bush 'Torture Team'

According to sources who spoke with McClatchy, five-year inquiry into agency's torture regime ignores key role played by Bush administration officials who authorized the abuse

by Jon Queally, staff writer

According to new reporting by McClatchy, the five-year investigation led by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee into the torture program conducted by the CIA in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 will largely ignore the role played by high-level Bush administration officials, including those on the White House legal team who penned memos that ultimately paved the way for the torture's authorization.

Though President Obama has repeatedly been criticized for not conducting or allowing a full review of the torture that occured during his predecessor's tenure, the Senate report—which has been completed, but not released—has repeatedly been cited by lawmakers and the White House as the definitive examination of those policies and practices. According to those with knowledge of the report who spoke with McClatchy, however, the review has quite definite limitations.

Paul Krugman: Sins, Both Moral and Intellectual

When the going gets tough, the people losing the argument start whining about civility. I often find myself attacked as someone who believes that anyone with a different opinion is a fool or a knave. As I've tried to explain, however, this is mainly about selection bias. I don't spend much time on areas where reasonable people can disagree, because there are so many important issues where one side really is completely unreasonable.

Obviously someone can disagree with my side and still be a good person. On the other hand, there are a lot of bad people engaged in economic debate - and I don't mean that they're wrong; I mean that they're arguing in bad faith.

Leaked TPP Chapter Exposes Sweet Deals for Big Pharma and US Bully Tactics

U.S. pushing rules that 'favor big corporate right holders, and undermine the public’s freedom to use knowledge,' intellectual property expert says

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

WikiLeaks on Thursday released a second updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Intellectual Property Rights chapter, charging that it will hinder affordable access to medicines globally, increase online surveillance, and impinge on civil liberties while benefiting Big Pharma and other corporate interests.

"Our first impression in reading the document is the extent to which the United States has sought hundreds of changes in intellectual property norms, some small and subtle, others blunt and aggressive, nearly of all of which favor big corporate right holders, and undermine the public’s freedom to use knowledge," declared James Love of Knowledge Ecology International.

In the U.S., Downward Mobility and Vulnerability Is a Widely Shared Experience

By Joseph Stiglitz

October 14, 2014 | NEW YORK -- Two new studies show, once again, the magnitude of the inequality problem plaguing the United States. The first, the U.S. Census Bureau's annual income and poverty report [2], shows that, despite the economy's supposed recovery from the Great Recession, ordinary Americans' incomes continue to stagnate. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, remains below its level a quarter century ago.

It used to be thought that America's greatest strength was not its military power, but an economic system that was the envy of the world. But why would others seek to emulate an economic model by which a large proportion -- even a majority -- of the population has seen their income stagnate while incomes at the top have soared?

Conservatives continue to get Iraqi WMD story wrong

10/15/14 10:21 AM——Updated 10/15/14 04:16 PM

Steve Benen

The New York Times has a powerful, front-page article today on Iraqi chemical weapons from the Saddam Hussein era. It’s an impressive piece of investigative journalism from C.J. Chivers – which the right is unwisely seizing on for reasons that don’t make sense.

The article itself doesn’t need embellishment. As Jessica Schulberg summarized, the Times’ report reveals that “between 2004-2011, American troops fighting in the Iraq War found over 5,000 chemical warheads, shells, and aviation bombs. The discoveries were never publicly disclosed by the military; U.S. soldiers who were exposed to nerve agents like sarin and mustard gas while attempting to remove conventional weapons were denied appropriate medical care and ordered to remain silent about yet another miscalculation of the Iraq War. “

How Economists With Bad Ideas Wreck Your Life, America's Economy, and the World

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

October 13, 2014  |  Many of us have long known in our guts that something about mainstream economics doesn't add up. As a new, must-read book proves, we were right. For decades, dubious, false and nonsensical ideas have dominated public discourse and decision-making, from the irrational belief in the efficiency of markets to a willful blindness about the inequalities of wealth and economic opportunity in a system that has been rigged for the benefit of the few. Author Jeff Madrick has just come out with his latest challenge to the pernicious ideas that have captured the minds and clouded the judgment of huge numbers of orthodox economists and the legions who follow their advice: Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World. [3] In this brisk and accessible volume, which should be on Econ 101 syllabi, Madrick outlines the wrong-headed propositions, fictitious models, shoddy research, and partisan agendas that have made a reexamination of the entire field long overdue, especially in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. Madrick’s book is part of a healthy movement to set the record straight and chart a new direction for an economics that can serve the whole of society and lead to sustainable growth.

Corruption of the Health Care Delivery System

Higher Integrity Health Care for Evidence-Based Decision Making

LEBANON, NH – The foundation of evidence-based research has eroded and the trend must be reversed so patients and clinicians can make wise shared decisions about their health, say Dartmouth researchers in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

Drs. Glyn Elwyn and Elliott Fisher of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice are authors of the report in which they highlight five major problems set against a backdrop of “obvious corruption.” There is a dearth of transparent research and a low quality of evidence synthesis. The difficulty of obtaining research funding for comparative effectiveness studies is directly related to the prominence of industry-supported trials: “finance dictates the activity.”

The Stock Market Has Lost Confidence in Central Banks as Gods

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 14, 2014

Yes, there is a wall of worry that the stock market is no longer climbing but is now descending. The greatest worry, that makes all others pale in comparison, is that the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, has nothing left in its monetary arsenal but one bullet – Fed-Speak, otherwise known as spin.

After three bond buying programs known as Quantitative Easing (QE) flooded Wall Street with bountiful amounts of play money while failing to significantly lift wages or economic growth, the U.S. central bank now has a balance sheet that has quadrupled since the 2008 crisis to $4.4 trillion. That it would be allowed to engage in QE4 in the next crisis is highly doubtful since QEs have proven to be financial bubble makers, income inequality makers and of little help to the average citizen.

Top 25 Most Censored Stories of 2013-2014

The presentation of the 2013-2014 Top 25 stories extends the tradition originated by Professor Carl Jensen and his Sonoma State University students in 1976, while reflecting how the expansion of the Project to include affiliate faculty and students from campuses across the country has made the Project even more diverse and robust. During this year’s cycle, Project Censored reviewed 237 Validated Independent News stories (VINs) representing the collective efforts of 260 college students and 49 professors from 18 college and university campuses that participate in our affiliate program.

Paul Krugman: Revenge of the Unforgiven

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The world economy appears to be stumbling. For a while, things seemed to be looking up, and there was talk about green shoots of recovery. But now growth is stalling, and the specter of deflation looms.

If this story sounds familiar, it should; it has played out repeatedly since 2008. As in previous episodes, the worst news is coming from Europe, but this time there is also a clear slowdown in emerging markets — and there are even warning signs in the United States, despite pretty good job growth at the moment.

Study: Only 58 percent of votes cast on tamper-resistant systems counted

A Rice University study of tamper-resistant voting methods revealed that only 58 percent of ballots were successfully cast across three voting systems. The researchers concluded additional work is needed to make voting both secure and user-friendly.

The study, "Usability of Voter Verifiable, End-to-End Voting Systems: Baseline Data for Helios, Prêt à Voter and Scantegrity II," examined three new end-to-end voting systems – systems that give voters the option to both verify the system is working properly and to check that their votes have been recorded after leaving the polling place.

Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Campaign to Dismantle the Post Office

run75441 | October 12, 2014 10:00 pm

Guest Post by Steve Hutkins a literature professor who teaches “place studies” at the Gallatin School of New York University.

This is Part 1 in a series of 3 articles as written by Steve Hutkins in 2012. These articles originally appeared on the “Save The Post Office Blog”. Steve lives in a small town in New York’s Hudson Valley. He has no affiliation with the U.S. Postal Service—he doesn’t work for it, nor does anyone in his family. Like millions of Americans, he just likes his local post office, and he doesn’t want to see post offices being closed.

The leaders of the Postal Service have made no secret of their plans for reforming the postal system. They have issued white papers, given speeches, presented “optimization” programs, and appeared before Congressional committees. The plans are clear: eliminate the layoff protections in union contracts; cut the career workforce by nearly half while tripling the number of non-career workers; reduce service standards for first-class mail; do away with Saturday delivery; give management control of workers’ benefit plans; consolidate over 250 processing plants; and close 15,000 post offices.

Billions set aside for post-Saddam Iraq turns up in Lebanese bunker

Rory Carroll, The Guardian
12 Oct 2014 at 19:08 ET

Stuart Bowen, who investigated corruption in Iraq, says US and Iraqi governments ignored appeals to recover money

More than $1bn earmarked for the reconstruction of Iraq was stolen and spirited to a bunker in Lebanon as the American and Iraqi governments ignored appeals to recover the money, it has been claimed.

Stuart Bowen, a former special inspector general who investigated corruption and waste in Iraq, said the stash accounted for a significant chunk of the huge sums which vanished during the chaotic months following the 2003 US-led invasion.

Computerized Election Theft and the New American Century

Monday, 13 October 2014 00:00
By Jonathan D. Simon, Truthout | News Analysis

Is it futile to combat computerized vote-counting fraud, given the more general disenfranchisement of the American public? This and the emerging battlefield of corporate versus public interest is explored in this adapted excerpt from "CODE RED" by Jonathan D. Simon.

Many despairing observers of The New American Century have asked me whether - given the recent revelations about NSA surveillance, along with other signs that American democracy is deteriorating irrespective of which party governs - an honest vote counting system would even matter anymore. A fair question to which I believe the ultimate, if uneasy, answer is "Yes."

There was a brief glimpse during the Occupy movement of what public anger at American Systemic Injustice might come to if it found a way to assemble, to come out of its isolated private homes and apartments and shelters and cubicles into the public squares of the nation. It was a powerful image, one that so shook US rulers in their corporate and governmental corridors of power that they soon resorted to a federally-coordinated blitzkrieg to empty those squares and kill Occupy before it multiplied any further and before the Bastille was in any real danger.

Private Donors Supply Spy Gear to Cops

There’s little public scrutiny when private donors pay to give police controversial technology and weapons. Sometimes, companies are donors to the same foundations that purchase their products for police.

by Ali Winston and Darwin Bond Graham, Special to ProPublica, Oct. 13, 2014, 8 a.m.

In 2007, as it pushed to build a state-of-the-art surveillance facility, the Los Angeles Police Department cast an acquisitive eye on software being developed by Palantir, a startup funded in part by the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm.

Originally designed for spy agencies, Palantir's technology allowed users to track individuals with unprecedented reach, connecting information from conventional sources like crime reports with more controversial data gathered by surveillance cameras and license plate readers that automatically, and indiscriminately, photographed passing cars.

The LAPD could have used a small portion of its multibillion-dollar annual budget to purchase the software, but that would have meant going through a year-long process requiring public meetings, approval from the City Council, and, in some cases, competitive bidding.

Voiceprints Being Harvested by the Millions

LONDON — Oct 13, 2014, 3:10 PM ET
By RAPHAEL SATTER Associated Press

Over the telephone, in jail and online, a new digital bounty is being harvested: the human voice.

Businesses and governments around the world increasingly are turning to voice biometrics, or voiceprints, to pay pensions, collect taxes, track criminals and replace passwords.

"We sometimes call it the invisible biometric," said Mike Goldgof, an executive at Madrid-based AGNITiO, one of about 10 leading companies in the field.

The Deficit Is Down and the Deficit Hawks Are Furious

Monday, 13 October 2014 00:00
By Dean Baker, Truthout | Op-Ed

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the deficit for the 2014 fiscal year that just ended was $460 billion, considerably lower than they had previously projected. This puts the deficit at 2.7 percent of GDP. At that level, the size of the debt relative to the economy is actually falling.

Not only is the deficit down sharply from its levels of 2009 and 2010, when it was near 10 percent of GDP, it is below the levels that even the deficit hawks had targeted back in those years. In other words, even if we had followed the lead of deficit crusaders like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the deficit would be no lower today.

If anyone thought this would make the deficit hawks happy, they are badly mistaken. They are furious.

They won, we lost: How corruption became America’s national pastime

How the nation's corporate elite "extorts hard working people for their own political and financial gains"
Janine Wedel

What does “SWIMNUT” know that the world’s supposed experts on corruption or the elites who gather each year for skiing and schmoozing in Davos do not?

This anonymous commenter was responding to an online article about the 2013 ranking of the world’s most corrupt countries, as measured by the best-known international arbiter of corruption, the organization Transparency International. In TI’s survey, the experts canvassed perceive Somalia, North Korea, and Afghanistan as the worst transgressors. But “SWIMNUT” sees it differently:

Not quite sure how corruption is defined but I think the US needs to be included as one of the most corrupt “civilized” countries in the world. . . . In the US . . . we have created a political elite that extorts hard working people for their own political and financial gains.

“SWIMNUT” wasn’t the lone voice of skepticism.

This Alabama Judge Has Figured Out How to Dismantle Roe v. Wade

His writings fuel the biggest threat to abortion rights in a generation.
by Nina Martin October 10, 2014

In 2005, the Witherspoon School of Law and Public Policy held a conference in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The school’s name was something of a misnomer: Rather than grant JDs, Witherspoon staged seminars and lectures offering lessons in what it summarized as “the comprehensive biblical foundation for our common law and constitutional government.” Its target audience was homeschooled young men. The school itself was a project of Vision Forum, a Texas-based ministry whose founder was also a leader in the Christian Patriarchy movement, which preaches, among other things, that husbands should vote for their wives.

Most sitting judges would go to great pains to avoid such a gathering. But Tom Parker, then a few months into his first term on the Alabama Supreme Court, gladly accepted an invitation to speak at that year’s Witherspoon retreat. Before his election to Alabama’s highest court, Parker had been an aide-de-camp to Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose installation of a granite Ten Commandments monument in the state judiciary building had touched off what became for Alabama both a considerable embarrassment and a genuine constitutional crisis. At Parker’s swearing-in, he made it clear that he had sought the bench to continue his old boss’s spiritual fight.

Teenager's mysterious death evokes painful imagery in North Carolina: 'It's in the DNA of America'

Police say they have no evidence of foul play in the hanging death of black teenager Lennon Lacy. But in a case with disturbing racial overtones, his family are left with haunting questions

Ed Pilkington in Bladenboro

Friday 29 August was a big day for Lennon Lacy. His high school football team, the West Bladen Knights, were taking on the West Columbus Vikings and Lacy, 17, was determined to make his mark. He’d been training all summer for the start of the season, running up and down the bleachers at the school stadium wearing a 65lb exercise jacket. Whenever his mother could afford it, he borrowed $7 and spent the day working out at the Bladenboro gym, building himself up to more than 200lbs. As for the future, he had it all planned out: this year he’d become a starting linebacker on the varsity team, next year he’d earn a scholarship to play football in college, and four years after that he’d achieve the dream he’d harboured since he was a child – to make it in the NFL.

“He was real excited,” said his Knights team-mate Anthony White, also 17, recalling the days leading up to the game. “He said he was looking forward to doing good in the game.”

GOP’s scheme to frighten America: 4-point plan of Ebola, Secret Service, Border, ISIS

How Republicans plan to shoehorn fear over 4 very loosely related things through a lens of White House incompetence

Jim Newell

Let whoever said the GOP has no message or plan heading into the final weeks of the election season be damned. They have a plan alright. And no, it’s not this cheap strip of single-ply toilet paper that Reince Priebus distributed last week. It is not Reince Priebus’s list of such specific agenda items as “have big economy good” and “more Constitution.” No one — no one — cared about that. The real message, the real plan, is four-pronged, a bit hazy, dumb, yeah, sure, but artistic and masterful all the same.

The GOP’s strategy for the last month of the campaign is Ebola, Secret Service, ISIS, and the Border. You take any combination of these disparate news events, connect them or don’t as you see fit, and somehow distill your concoction into an argument for why more Republicans should serve in the United States Senate.

The fatal attraction of lead

By Laurence Knight

For millennia lead has held a deep attraction for painters, builders, chemists and winemakers - but historically it's also done untold harm, especially to children. And while it's been banned in petrol, your car still contains several kilograms of it. So have we finally learned how to use lead safely?

Element number 82 is one of a handful that mankind has known for millennia. The oldest pure lead, found in Turkey, was made by early smelters more than 8,000 years ago.

Why is Preet Bharara, the 'scourge of Wall Street', taking a friendly tone towards mortgage bankers?

Preet Bharara, the prosecutor with a legendary record of convicting insider trading cases, says people should lay off Wall Street for the crisis

David Dayen
theguardian.com, Friday 10 October 2014 08.00 EDT

Here’s something you don’t expect to hear from a man who made his reputation by jailing bankers and becoming the “scourge of Wall Street”: ask him if fraud existed during the mortgage crisis and his answer is “the evidence is not there.”

The words come from Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, who prosecuted more Wall Streeters for insider trading than anyone who came before him. Worth magazine this week named Bharara at the top of its “100 Most Powerful People in Finance”. Bharara seems to like his high profile, and appears to be gunning for an even bigger one: he suggested that the new US attorney general of the United States should share all of the priorities of Bharara’s own office.