Last Call For All The Money

To recap, 2013 marked the fifth straight year of record US corporate profits.



But corporate taxes are too high and crushing business, and our economy is stalled out.  Or it could be that the rich are screwing us over at a record pace.  Corporate profits in the US have tripled since 2000.  Median real wage growth since 2000 for workers?  Flat, if not fallen. 




The American worker hasn't seen a dime from the these massive profits.  Now keep in mind that Republicans want to cut corporate taxes further to give corporations more profit.  They're not investing it in workers or wages or jobs, that's for damn sure.

So where's it going?





The top 1% account for about 40% of the wealth in this country, which is a terrible problem.  But that's misleading.  The bottom half of the top 1% account for only 7%.  The next 40% of that is about 11%.  But the top tenth of the one percent account for more than 21% of the wealth, and the top 1% of the one percent alone has 11% of the wealth of the entire US.  That share for the super-wealthy has doubled since 1998.

So the money is not going to anyone you know.  Not to your paycheck.  Certainly not to your schools or roads or water mains.  The rich are getting richer.  The rest of us are getting nothing.

But let's keep voting for Republicans who want to eliminate corporate taxes while telling us a rising tide floats all boats.  It floats yachts.  It drowns those who can't afford the damn boat.

Burned Out And Hungry

The United Nations has issued its first major report on global climate change since 2007, and the 2014 version is far more dire and feeding the world will only get worse as nations like the US and China continue to ignore the situation.

Global warming makes feeding the world harder and more expensive, a United Nations scientific panel said.

A warmer world will push food prices higher, trigger "hotspots of hunger" among the world's poorest people, and put the crunch on Western delights like fine wine and robust coffee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a 32-volume report issued Monday.

"We're facing the specter of reduced yields in some of the key crops that feed humanity," panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in press conference releasing the report.

Even though heat and carbon dioxide are often considered good for plants, the overall effect of various aspects of man-made warming is that it will reduce food production compared to a world without global warming, the report said.

The last time the panel reported on the effects of warming in 2007, it said it was too early to tell whether climate change would increase or decrease food production, and many skeptics talked of a greening world. But in the past several years the scientific literature has been overwhelming in showing that climate change hurts food production, said Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science and lead author of the climate report.

We've wasted another seven years since the last report and effectively done nothing thanks to the GOP and corporate America.  There's no reason to believe anything will improve in the future when nearly half of a major American political party doesn't believe the problem even exists (or in evolution, or the fact some Republican senators think that the Earth is only 6,000 years old for that matter).

So no, it's not going to get better as long as the anti-science wing of the GOP continues to wield outsized power.

A Strong Right Croissant

France's xenophobic (if not downright white supremacist) Front National party is making big gains in the countryside after Sunday's local elections.

Marine Le Pen, FN leader, said her party now has up to 1,200 municipal councillors.

“Today, we have clearly entered a new phase in our implantation (in national politics)," she said. "Today the Front National is shaking up the traditional duo of the Socialists and (centre-Right) UMP.”

Sunday's runoff round of voting came after a week that saw French unemployment surge to a new record - making a reverse of first-round losses by the Socialists unlikely, and a cabinet reshuffle by Mr Hollande possible as soon as Monday.

Some 80 per cent of the French want him to dismiss Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, according to a Harris Interactive poll this week, and Manuel Valls, the ambitious and tough-talking interior minister, is their favourite to replace him. Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, is also seen a contender.

Final turnout last Sunday was 63.5 per cent - a record low for local elections in a country with a strong attachment to its mayors, who wield considerable power.

Dissatisfaction with Mr Hollande's tenure and a string of legal intrigues involving opposition conservatives were expected to dampen turnout. Next presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2017.

Hmm, record low turnout in regional elections leads to big gains for far-right wing nutjobs.

Now where have I read that story before?

Last Call For Swing State Voter Suppression

As I keep saying, the entire point of Republican voter ID laws is to make fewer Democrats vote. 2014 and 2016 will remain uphill battles as long as these laws are in place in swing states like Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Pivotal swing states under Republican control are embracing significant new electoral restrictions on registering and voting that go beyond the voter identification requirements that have caused fierce partisan brawls.

The bills, laws and administrative rules — some of them tried before — shake up fundamental components of state election systems, including the days and times polls are open and the locations where people vote.

Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin this winter pushed through measures limiting the time polls are open, in particular cutting into weekend voting favored by low-income voters and blacks, who sometimes caravan from churches to polls on the Sunday before election.

Democrats in North Carolina are scrambling to fight back against the nation’s most restrictive voting laws, passed by Republicans there last year. The measures, taken together, sharply reduce the number of early voting days and establish rules that make it more difficult for people to register to vote, cast provisional ballots or, in a few cases, vote absentee.

In all, nine states have passed measures making it harder to vote since the beginning of 2013. Most have to do with voter ID laws. Other states are considering mandating proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or a passport, after a federal court judge recently upheld such laws passed in Arizona and Kansas. Because many poor people do not have either and because documents can take time and money to obtain, Democrats say the ruling makes it far more difficult for people to register.

There's no other explanation for this other than Republicans want fewer people to be able to vote, period.  Higher turnout helps Democrats, as 2008 and 2012 showed.  When turnout is low, as in 2010, Republicans win overwhelmingly, if not crushing Democrats completely.

If Republicans can reduce black and Latino turnout by 10% in swing states, they're no longer swing states.

They're red states.  And the GOP knows it.

The Best Free Speech Money Can Buy

This is how our politics works in the post-Citizens United era:  super wealthy casino mogul Sheldon Adelson spent $92 million on the GOP in 2012 and feels he is entitled to purchase the Republican candidate (and President) in 2016.  As such, Republican hopefuls flocked to kiss his ring this weekend as he hosts the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual convention.

Several prospective Republican presidential candidates have gathered in Las Vegas for the opening round of what has been dubbed “the Sheldon Primary,” an event emblematic of how warped the system for financing presidential elections has become.

The Sheldon Primary is named for Sheldon Adelson, the wealthy casino owner who, with his wife, poured more than $92 million into the 2012 elections. Despite all that money, Adelson made some bad bets in the last election, first on former House speaker Newt Gingrich to win the Republican nomination and then on Mitt Romney to defeat President Obama in the general election.

He is now looking toward 2016 with a fresh eye, determined, according to The Post’s Matea Gold and Philip Rucker, to find a non-extremist candidate who can actually win the presidency. Those who are looking at running would be happy to have that kind of financial support. Some of them have come to Las Vegas on Friday for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, but also to meet privately with Adelson.

Adelson has become a symbol of the new system of financing presidential elections. He and others play under legal rules. But this new financing structure has had a corrosive effect on public confidence in government and politicians. It is why so many Americans feel shut out of the process.

One trained seal barking for cash this weekend at So You Want To Be President is Ohio's own governor, John Kasich.

Gov. John Kasich can say all he wants that he isn’t interested in running for president. Yet here he is this weekend, along with a few others whose national ambitions are far less ambiguous, rubbing elbows with top donors.

Kasich delivered the luncheon keynote Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s spring conference, held at casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s opulent spread on the strip.

“All the things we believe in? They work,” Kasich told a ballroom crowd of about 300.

They're all here, because Adelson owns every single one of them.

Besides Kasich, the list of Saturday speakers included New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador.

Jeb Bush the former governor of Florida, headlined a private dinner for upper-level RJC donors Thursday evening. And former Vice President Dick Cheney will speak Saturday evening over dinner. There are plenty of other faces familiar to political junkies, too, including Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary under President George W. Bush.

All of them are auditioning to Adelson.  What GOP voters actually want, Adelson will tell them.  $100 million is chump change to a guy worth tens of billions.

The Ghost Of Bushie Future

The Romney Country Club wing of the GOP is getting very, very nervous about not having anyone who isn't completely insane in 2016 to try to stop Hillary Clinton.  To that effect, they're taking a page from the Clinton playbook and running the fundraising numbers on drafting Jeb Bush.

Many of the Republican Party’s most powerful insiders and financiers have begun a behind-the-scenes campaign to draft former Florida governor Jeb Bush into the 2016 presidential race, courting him and his intimates and starting talks on fundraising strategy.

Concerned that the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal has damaged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s political standing and alarmed by the steady rise of Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), prominent donors, conservative leaders and longtime operatives say they consider Bush the GOP’s brightest hope to win back the White House.

Bush’s advisers insist that he is not actively exploring a candidacy and will not make a decision until at least the end of this year. But over the past few weeks, Bush hastraveled the country delivering policy speeches, campaigning for Republicans ahead of the fall midterm elections, honing messages on income inequality and foreign policy, and cultivating ties with wealthy benefactors — all signals that he is considering a run.

Many if not most of Mitt Romney’s major donors are reaching out to Bush and his confidants with phone calls, e-mails and invitations to meet, according to interviews with 30 senior Republicans. One bundler estimated that the “vast majority” of Romney’s top 100 donors would back Bush in a competitive nomination fight.

“He’s the most desired candidate out there,” said another bundler, Brian Ballard, who sat on the national finance committees for Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008. “Everybody that I know is excited about it.”

The same geniuses who gave us Johnny Volcano and Mister Forty-Seven Percent are now betting their billions on Jebbie.  And he'd have even more baggage than the two of them combined, with his brother's failures, his father's failures, and his own myriad of screw-ups as governor of Florida, starting with charter schools and Stand Your Ground.

The Screeching Shamnesty crowd will never accept him either, and the GOP's only remotely useful argument "Can America really afford another Clinton in the White House?" evaporates the second Jeb Bush gets involved and reminds all the voters of the recessions, depressions and economic destruction the last two of them caused.

Over on the other side of the fence, Jazz Shaw asks an important question involving Jeb:

But in order for this next primary cycle to play out according to the preordained script, we have to have a big, conventional wisdom, establishment candidate to face down the grassroots upstarts, right? And if turns out that Christie is damaged goods and it’s not Bush, then who would it be?

Good question.  Not a whole lot of candidates left for the big money wing who aren't already also-rans from 2008 and 2012.  There's a reason why Jeb was passed over twice.

Last Call For Earl Ray Doing The Right Thing

Democrats in West Virginia broke with the party and passed legislation for a 20-week abortion ban, when earlier this year the Supreme Court found such a ban in Arizona to be unconstitutional.  The West Virginia bill headed to Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who rightfully vetoed the bill as a waste of taxpayer resources as it meant defending something that would be struck down by SCOTUS as unconstitutional anyway.

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) vetoed a bill late Friday that would have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, calling it unconstitutional and a "detriment" to women's health.

Earlier this month, the West Virginia legislature became the first Democrat-controlled body to pass a 20-week abortion ban. The legislation would have made it a felony, punishable by no less than a year in prison, to perform an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy except in cases where a woman's life is endangered, according to the Charleston Gazette.

Tombin said in a statement that he voted the bill because his legal team advised him it was unconstitutional and added that the legislation unduly restricted the physician-patient relationship.

"All patients, particularly expectant mothers, require the best, most unfettered medical judgment and advice from their physicians regarding treatment options," he said in the written statement. "The medical community has made it clear to me that the criminal penalties this bill imposes will impede that advice, and those options, to the detriment of the health and safety of expectant mothers.”

What a crazy concept, having legislators stay out of doctors' decisions for their patients.  Oh wait, isn't that the same agument the wingers use against Obamacare (only that's not true, the bill doesn't legislate doctors' decisions.)

Republicans sure seem to like having big government tell doctors how to do their jobs, however.  Funny how that works.

Not Helping On The Climate Thing

Just to make it clear, there's helpful strategies for dealing with climate change deniers...and then there's Gawker's Adam Weinstein, who thinks it's time to start dealing with professional climate deniers through legal means as they put all of us in jeopardy.

I'm talking about Rush and his multi-million-dollar ilk in the disinformation business. I'm talking about Americans for Prosperity and the businesses and billionaires who back its obfuscatory propaganda. I'm talking about public persons and organizations and corporations for whom denying a fundamental scientific fact is profitable, who encourage the acceleration of an anti-environment course of unregulated consumption and production that, frankly, will screw my son and your children and whatever progeny they manage to have.

Those malcontents must be punished and stopped.

Deniers will, of course, fuss and stomp and beat their breasts and claim this is persecution, this is a violation of free speech. Of course, they already say that now, when judges force them into doing penance for comparing climate scientists to child-rapist and denial poster-boy Jerry Sandusky.

But First Amendment rights have never been absolute. You still can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You shouldn't be able to yell "balderdash" at 10,883 scientific journal articles a year, all saying the same thing: This is a problem, and we should take some preparations for when it becomes a bigger problem.

Willful, profiteering public deniers of climate change can compare themselves to Galileo all they want, pretending that they're voices of sanity in a cruel wilderness. But Galileo had science on his side. He had a telescope aimed at the cosmos. Climate deniers have their heads jammed in the sand... or in a barrel of money.

I agree with Weinstein that the multi-billion dollar effort to convince Americans that there is nothing we can or should even bother doing about climate change is pretty awful.  Unfortunately, it's not criminal.  (However I have the same problem with anti-vaxxers, and at least you can make individual child endangerment arguments there from a legal standpoint.)

But this is entirely unhelpful and just feeds the "climate cult/persecution complex" that all of these guys are counting on.  It's playing into their hands and frankly, it's stupid to do so.

The entire point is that this is a battle of public opinion, and Weinstein is doing more damage than good.  Besides, the real problem is of course Republicans who are trying to make climate research all but illegal in the first place.

Weathering The Storm

House Republicans have decided that if they pass legislation to simply force NOAA to stop doing climate research, then the problem just goes away from both a scientific and political aspect.

House Republicans want government scientists to focus on predicting storms, not climate change.

The House will vote next week on a Republican bill to require the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to focus its efforts on storm predictions instead of researching climate change.

Members will consider the Weather Forecasting Improvement Act, H.R. 2413, as early as Tuesday.

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) introduced his bill last year after tornadoes hit his home state. Those storms led him to argue on the House floor the government spends too much on climate change research and not enough on developing weather forecasting tools to predict tornadoes and other events.

His bill does not explicitly kick the government out of the climate change business. But it does say NOAA must "prioritize weather-related activities, including the provision of improved weather data, forecasts, and warnings for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy, in all relevant line offices."

Last year, Bridenstine released a statement saying the intent of the bill is to "protect lives and property by shifting funds from climate change research to severe weather forecasting research."

"The bill does not increase spending but rather shifts funding to make improved severe weather forecasting a higher priority of the Federal government," he said in July.

In other words, "tornadoes kill people, climate change is a myth, you can't have money for both."  And of course if you don't support this bill, you want tornadoes to kill schoolkids.  This'll pass the House easily, and probably the Senate.

After all, if we can't predict the exact path of a tornado 12 hours down the road, how can we possibly predict climate, because derp.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition

• Russian President Vladimir Putin called President Obama to discuss what the White House is calling a possible "diplomatic solution" to the crisis in Ukraine.
• A Washington State man is suing the Idaho State Police after he alleged an Idaho State Trooper pulled him over for the sole reason he had Colorado license plates, where marijuana is legal.
• General Motors has expanded its ignition switch recall began in February by nearly 1 million to 2.6 million vehicles made from 2003 to 2011.
• President Obama met with Saudi King Abdullah to reassure him that ongoing developments in Iran and Syria will not harm Saudi interests.
• Firefox browser maker Mozilla saw three board members resign in the wake of the firm hiring former CTO Brenden Eich as CEO despite protests over Eich's support of California's anti-gay Prop 8.

Last Call For Rep. Mike Rogers

Michigan GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, head of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, is retiring.  But don't cry for him, he's heading for the wingnut talk radio circuit where the real money is.

“There is a whole celebrity political class in Washington, D.C., today that I think is doing a huge disservice to the functionality of our national security — who are using it to foment their isolationalist tendencies — and I think it is dangerous, really dangerous,” said Rogers, also criticizing some Republicans for “talking just like Obama’s foreign policy.”

He’s been a lonely voice, he says, for rational debate about what U.S. intelligence agencies do to protect the country.

“I don’t think I can change that dialogue unless I have a national platform,” he said

He downplayed his importance in Congress, saying a citizen legislature required new blood.

“Everybody knows their time. This institution is going to be fine — maybe even better off — who knows,” he joked.

He said he will become a radio talk show host for after his term ends in December — returning to a college passion. He plans to have former intelligence officials and ex-spies on his show but will also be talking about topics across the political spectrum.

“I did one radio show when I was in college that was a disaster — let’s give it a whirl — maybe I’ve gotten better at it,” he joked.

Rogers’ new radio show will air nationally starting in January as a syndicated host at Cumulus Radio.

“It gives me a chance to talk to people in their cars, in their living rooms, in their kitchens about these issues — about American exceptionalism, about national security,” he said.

 Cumulus owns hundreds of radio stations across the country, so his show will get national airplay.  It won't be the last you hear of this guy, that's for sure.

Governor Skeletor Collects The Loot

Why shouldn't Gov. Rick Scott use corporate lobbyist cash to fund his trips when the GOP has total control of the government in Florida and can write laws to make it legal?

Months before Florida Crystals Corp. won a no-bid contract to farm sugar on state-owned land, its top lobbyist and president met with Governor Rick Scott in the home of King Juan Carlos of Spain.

They got access during a 2012 trade mission underwritten by corporations including the company, which is co-owner of the Domino Sugar brand. The trip, intended to recruit businesses to Florida, also provided a lobbying opportunity for those already in the state. After the meeting at the palace, Florida Crystals executives joined Scott at a reception they sponsored, featuring Spanish omelets and dry-cured ham.

Governors increasingly are using corporate money to fund their excursions, often from businesses that stand to benefit from state decisions. While taxpayers traditionally paid for trade missions, at least 15 states have started collecting donations to cover costs, including six since 2010. Scott, a 61-year-old Republican, has tapped the private money most often, making 10 overseas visits in the past three years, twice the pace of his predecessor, according to public records.

“It’s an opportunity that the vast majority of people and companies never get,” said Hayden Dempsey, a Tallahassee lobbyist and former aide to the governor who went on the Spain trip. Scott, he said, was “very accessible.”

In the months after, Scott approved a 30-year lease extension that Florida Crystals sought on 8,700 acres of state land. He also signed a bill helping the company limit payments to clean up pollution near its South Florida farms.

That's how government works. Lobbyists buy the government with trips and loot and get the laws they need to make tons of profit at taxpayer expense, and they even get to destroy the environment free of charge. And all of this is 100% legal, because the laws are written to make it this way.  Free speech baby, free speech.

So what if regular Floridians get exploited and harmed?  Who cares?  They don't have the corporate billions.  If their rights meant anything, God would have made them rich enough to afford free speech.

It's the GOP way.

Someone Please Show Condi Rice The Door

Because her failures as National Security Adviser and as Secretary of State got us and kept us in two ridiculous wars that we'll be paying for in several ways for decades, anything she has to say about foreign policy is automatically void and meaningless.

Speaking before a group of over 2,000 attendees at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner in Washington D.C., former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice revived speculation in her future political prospects with a speech in which she took aim at America’s “weary” foreign policy under President Barack Obama.

“Right now, there’s a vacuum,” Rice said, according to a report via The Weekly Standard’s Stephen F. Hayes. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.”

Rice sited the ongoing civil war in Syria, the return of Al Qaeda to Iraq, China’s antagonism toward Japan and the Philippines, and Russia’s aggression in Europe as examples of how the post-Cold War order is beginning to fray.

“I fully understand the sense of weariness,” she revealed. “I fully understand that we must think: ‘Us, again?’ I know that we’ve been through two wars. I know that we’ve been vigilant against terrorism.”

“I know that it’s hard,” Rice continued, “but leaders can’t afford to get tired. Leaders can’t afford to be weary.”

And leaders can't afford to lie us into two wars of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands.  But keep telling yourself that running Condi Rice in 2016 is going to somehow work out better than McCain or Romney.

Run the war criminal, Republicans.  Watch what happens.

PS, if four deaths in Benghazi disqualifies Hillary Clinton from the White House, then Condi Rice disqualified herself about a thousand times over again.

StupidiNews!

• The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court ruling stopping parts of Texas's abortion laws, meaning the restrictions on clinics involving hospital admitting privileges will go into effect.
• New research estimates one out of every 68 US kids has autism, a 30 percent increase from 2012's estimates.
• After being indicted on corruption and firearms trafficking charges, California's Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, State Senator Leland Yee, has withdrawn from the race.
• FIFA officials say last-minute problems with Rio's World Cup venues are forcing the organization to "rethink" how it will handle the 2018 tournament.
• New studies show that medical marijuana laws may actually lower the violent crime rate in a state, but the jury is still out on full legalization's effects on crime.

Last Call For Bridge Trolls

Gov. Chris Christie, please pick up the white courtesy phone.  Your last shot at the White House 2016 is calling and may be a bit delayed in arrival.

The Port Authority official who oversaw the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge said he informed Gov. Chris Christie about it at a Sept. 11 memorial while the closings were occurring, according to the findings of an internal investigation released by lawyers for the governor on Thursday.

The official, David Wildstein, told Mr. Christie’s press secretary, Michael Drewniak, of the Sept. 11 conversation at a dinner in December just before his resignation from the Port Authority, according to the report.

The report said that Mr. Christie did not recall any such conversation, and it found no evidence that he was involved in the scheme, which snarled traffic for thousands of commuters in Fort Lee, N.J., from Sept. 9 through the morning of Sept. 12.

In other words, Christie is now dumping everything on his aides and playing dumb as his official position.  Oh and his own investigation says he's innocent.  Sure he is.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said today that former aides were "inexplicably stupid" when they allegedly shut down lanes of busy George Washington Bridge and flooded a New Jersey town with traffic.

The exclusive interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer was his first television interview since his January press conference on the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal.

"When things were first reported, I said: 'This can't possibly be true. Because who would do something like that?'" Christie told Sawyer. "Sometimes, people do inexplicably stupid things."

Good luck sticking with that story, Chris.  You're going to need it.