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The U.S. Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. What this nation needs now is separation of wealth and state.

Without such a protection, Americans stand to lose their democracy. They’ll be ruled instead by an aristocracy of 1 percenters.

That’s the 1 percenters’ plan. To them, it was no more than a perk when the U.S. Supreme Court enabled politicians to open their wallets for unlimited, anonymous campaign contributions. That’s because way before the 2010 Citizens United ruling, 1 percenters were working on a takeover. If the 99 percent don’t stop them soon, don’t establish some sort of separation of wealth and state, then the nation will lose its founding precepts — that all men are created equal and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Aristocracies can ignore the governed.

Already the 1 percenters have been extraordinarily successful. The rich really do enjoy advantages. They’ve succeeded in stuffing Congress with their peers. In America, fewer than 1 percent of all people are millionaires. In Congress, 47 percent are. The median net worth of a U.S. senator in 2010 was $2.56 million.

Those guys haven’t experienced what it’s like to try to pay a mortgage, fix the car and keep food on the table for the average household with a median income of less than $52,000. They’re completely out of touch with the 50 million Americans who don’t have health insurance.

In addition, the 1 percenters implemented a system to influence even those lawmakers who are not millionaires. It’s called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Corporations and the rich, like the billionaire Koch brothers, give ALEC money, which it uses to write “model” legislation, like voter suppression laws. ALEC’s lawmaker members, mostly conservative Republicans, pay dues of $50 a year. ALEC entices them to attend swanky conferences with freebies, like ALEC-paid hotel rooms, ALEC-paid plane rides and God knows what else ALEC-paid. Of course, those aren’t bribes. But the free vacations may incline lawmaker members to introduce ALEC-written legislation.

ALEC is sly. It doesn’t come right out and say its “model” voter identification laws are intended to suppress balloting by Democrats. ALEC contends they’re designed to prevent voter fraud. Within the past two years, 10 states passed these laws.

But in-person voter fraud, the kind these identification laws are supposedly intended to prevent, barely exists. In the dozen years since 2000, only 10 cases occurred in the entire United States, according to a study funded by the Carnegie and Knight foundations. (more…)

When we turned on the TV to watch the Republican Convention last night, we saw what appeared to be a hyperactive GOP advance man gesticulating from the stage. But he wasn’t barking out canvassing instructions to local ward heelers or scouting Holiday Inns to find the one with the best lines of sight to the podium.

So who was this guy?

Was he a slightly out-of-shape Secret Service agent waving the crowd back with a little too much enthusiasm? We turned on the sound and learned that the individual in question was Taylor Hicks, the American Idol contestant turned professional performer.

Mr. Hicks’ performance would hardly seem worth mentioning on such an important night if it weren’t for the song he was performing, or the way he was performing it: “Takin’ It To The Streets.” That song stood out from the mid-1970′s pablum of the airwaves, both for Michael McDonald’s soulful (yes, I said soulful) voice, and for its overtly political message:

You don’t know me but I’m your brother
I was raised here in this living hell

I know, I know, boomers are lame. And the ones who reminisce about Michael McDonald songs are the lamest of all. Wave your AARP cards in the air like you just don’t care! But take it from us: That song mattered. And yet here was gray-haired Taylor Hicks, parading and strutting and shakin’ his rump-a before the richest crowd this side of the Romney bundler’s yacht party — and the dullest crowd this side of Forest Lawn:

You don’t know my kind in your world …
Yeah, you … telling me the things you’re gonna do for me
I ain’t blind and I don’t like what I think I see

Get it, people? The “things you’re gonna do for me” guy is Obama, and the rich and pampered crowd at the RNC were the authentic people who can’t be fooled.

I expect that by now you know where I’m going with this, and you’re mostly right — but not completely. The moment wasn’t striking just because of the incongruity of hearing these words sung for the campaign of a couple rich kids anointed by Corporate America to lead the counter-revolution. Nor was it striking just because those words were used as an implicit invocation of the Tea Party, that “populist” uprising that began with brokers on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and became the tool of billionaire executives and Republican apparatchiks.

It’s not just those things. (more…)

Going into the Republican Convention, Mitt Romney had one major political mission: to convince swing voters that he isn’t just the guy who fired their brother in law — that he understands their lives and is on their side.

Given his record as Governor of Massachusetts — 47th among the 50 states in job creation — and his history at Bain Capital, Romney can’t really make the case he has any experience creating jobs.

But the thing that really stands between Romney and swing voters is the perception that he has zero empathy — no comprehension of what life is like for everyday Americans.

So the Republicans tried very hard to tell stories that humanized the otherwise robot-like Romney. But here is the bottom line: when multiple speakers have to testify how authentic you are — you’re not.

The first night of the Convention did feature Ann Romney delivering a simple message: you like me, I love Mitt — so he must not be so bad.

But it also featured a cast of governors doing auditions for 2016 saying very little about Romney and a great deal about their own “successes.” When Chris Christi gave the Convention’s Keynote address, he didn’t even mention Romney until the very end of his speech.

Night two featured Paul Ryan whipping up the right-wing base and delivering brazen lies about the Obama record. Ryan’s speech was a feast for fact checkers. From his assertion that Obama failed to prevent the shutdown of the GM plant at Janesville — which was closed before Obama took office — to his attack on the Obama for failing to take seriously recommendations from the Debt Commission which he himself voted to oppose.

Most egregious was Ryan’s claim that Obamacare “cut” Medicare by over $700 billion. In fact, of course, far from “cutting” Medicare benefits, Obamacare actually improved Medicare benefits and achieved $700 billion of savings for the Medicare program by cutting huge overpayments and subsidies to big insurance companies. Not one Medicare recipient has had his or her guaranteed benefits cut by ObamaCcre — and Ryan knows it.

Of course, all the while Ryan was lying about the fake “Obamacare” cuts in Medicare, he and Romney are planning to eliminate Medicare. They have made clear they want to replace it with a voucher program that would provide a fixed amount of money per person and require that seniors shop for coverage on the private insurance market. Their plan will raise out of pocket costs by $6,400 and eliminate the guaranteed benefit that defines Medicare and has meant that American retirees haven’t had to worry about their health care costs for over half a century.

The final night of the Convention, the Republicans made a concerted effort to “humanize” Mitt Romney. They put up a string of former friends and associates to tell stories aimed at trying to make him seem more caring and human.

Then Bob White, the Chairman of Romney for President and former partner in Bain Capital, talked about his business experience. White told the story of how Romney was asked to come back from Bain Capital and return to Bain Consulting to save it from collapse. Of course White ignored the fact that, as a new article in Rolling Stone indicates, he achieved that recovery through a federal bailout.

The essential role of the government, by the way, is a consistent, though never mentioned, theme that continued when it came to Romney’s “turn around” of the Salt Lake Olympics that receive a larger federal subsidy — $1.3 billion — than all of the previous Olympics combined. (more…)

Last night in Springfield, Mo., while more than 300 Republican insiders were paying up to $25,000 a head to hear a stump speech by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, more than 100 union and community activists were outside letting passersby know about Ryan’s and Mitt Romney’s plans to cut taxes for the wealthy and gut Medicare.

Activists included members of the Springfield Central Labor Council, Missouri Pro-Vote, Communications Workers of America (CWA) Locals 6312 and 6355, Carpenters Local 978, Electrical Workers (IBEW) Locals 453 and 753, Letter carriers (NALC) Local 203, Missouri AFL-CIO, Missouri Alliance for Retired Americans, MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood, Teamster Local 245 and United Transportation Union retirees.

Kay Mills from the coalition Missouri Pro-Vote told KSMU Public Radio:

I think everyone here comes together around the Ryan budget, which makes cuts to programs that have worked as safety nets for years. Cutting Medicare hurts seniors. It cuts Pell grants for college students. Repealing the Affordable Care Act makes cuts to all the programs in place that are helping women now. A million women in Missouri are now be helped by no-costs mammograms, cervical screenings, and pre-natal visits. (more…)

“Seen this? Mitt Romney claiming the President would end welfare reform’s work requirements?”

“The New York Times calls it ‘blatantly false’.”

“The Washington Post says, ‘the Obama administration is not removing the bill’s work requirements at all.’”

“In fact Obama’s getting states to move 20% more people from welfare to work.”

“And President Clinton’s reaction to the Romney ad?”

“It’s just not true.”

Last week Mitt Romney committed himself to picking a Federal Reserve Board chairman who will try to keep workers’ wages down, likely costing them tens of thousands of dollars over the next decade. You remember reading the front-page news stories on this pronouncement?

Of course you didn’t read them, because the media largely ignored President Romney’s statement about his choice of Fed chairs. And all of them ignored its implications for people’s wages and living standards. The media would much rather focus on the ongoing debate over President Obama’s birth certificate or, when we are lucky, tax-policy decisions that might, in the extreme case, make a $1,000- or $2,000-a-year difference to the typical family. The much more important policy decisions that allow people like Mitt Romney to be incredibly wealthy and the rest of the country to be struggling are totally off the media’s radar screen.

Romney’s statement about the Fed fits in the latter category, because he said that he would pick a chair who supports a “strong dollar.” The implication is that he wants the Fed to run policies that keep the dollar overvalued relative to other currencies, making U.S. goods uncompetitive in international markets.

The arithmetic on this is fairly simple. If the dollar is 20-percent above its proper value, then it means that prices of goods produced in the United States are effectively 20-percent higher than those of goods produced in other countries. This strong dollar effectively makes imports 20-percent cheaper than goods produced in the United States. That naturally means that we will purchase more goods produced in Mexico, China, and other countries and fewer goods produced in the United States.

On the flip side, this strong dollar means that our exports are 20-percent more expensive to people in other countries than would otherwise be the case. This is equivalent to putting a 20-percent tariff on everything that we export. Needless to say, this will seriously depress our exports to the rest of the world.

The overvalued dollar is by far the main reason that we have a $600-billion (4 percent of GDP) deficit with the rest of the world. This deficit implies a loss of more than 6 million jobs, the vast majority of which would be in manufacturing. (more…)

I’ve been struck by the baldness of Romney’s repetitive lies about Obama — that Obama ended the work requirement under welfare, for example, or that Obama’s Affordable Care Act cuts $716 billion from Medicare benefits.

The mainstream media along with a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations and sites have called Romney on these whoppers, but to no avail. He keeps making these assertions.

Every campaign is guilty of exaggerations, embellishments, distortions, and half-truths. But this is another thing altogether. I’ve been directly involved in seven presidential campaigns, and I don’t recall a presidential candidate lying with such audacity, over and over again. Why does he do it, and how can he get away with it?

The obvious answer is such lies are effective. Polls show voters are starting to believe them, especially in swing states where they’re being repeated constantly in media spots financed by Romney’s super PAC or ancillary PACs and so-called “social welfare” organizations (political fronts disguised as charities, such as Karl Rove and the Koch brothers have set up).

Romney’s lying machine is extraordinarily well financed. By August, according to Jane Mayer in her recent New Yorker article, at least 33 billionaires had each donated a quarter of a million dollars or more to groups aiming to defeat Obama — with most of it flooding into attack ads in swing states. (more…)

I am often baffled by the insistency of those on the conservative right who contend that we must give more money to so-called “job creators,” so that the economy will start to grow.  Their theory is that if wealthy individuals have more capital (they are the ones who know what to do with it, they claim), they will use that money to create jobs.

This theory has a critical flaw to me: The average citizen must have income first to buy what a business wishes to make or there is no justification to create a business to fulfill the needs of the consumer.  Think about the logic for a second. If consumers have stagnant income and are under increasing pressure to cut their own personal spending, how can they buy any of the new gadgets these so-called “job creators” wish to produce?  It seems much more reasonable to me to stop lining the pockets of the already wealthy and give some of the tax breaks and incentives to the working class. 

Consumers are the ones who deploy the capital via spending in a market economy to tell the so-called “job creators” where to create the jobs.  If the average family has more money in their pockets, they will spend it. Unlike the ultra-wealthy “job creators,” we lack Swiss Bank accounts to put our money in; we need things.  We would spend the money, thus creating demand for the products that the so-called “job creators” wish to supply.

The conservative plan is backwards. Their rewards should not be in tax cuts, but in the increased spending of the working class, and then we all win.  Paying taxes is not punishment for success, but the affirmation that the good that you have done will go to those in society who are not as lucky in the hope that one day they will be able to ascend to a place in society where they too may lend a hand to the next person to continue the upward mobility of society as a whole.

We have lost sight of this fundamental tenant of a society that we are all in this together.  It is not just a good piece of campaign rhetoric; it is just a fact. Why has our society gone backwards in many regards in the last several decades?  It is because our country has put in place policies that favor capital and corporations over the members of society that create the wealth for those entities.  Who gains from offshoring?   Who gains from tax cuts that push money to those who already have enough?  It’s not the working class because these policies have helped to hold our wages flat for decades and consequently force us to shop for ever cheaper goods, thus driving more of our jobs overseas. (more…)

Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan want to turn Medicare into a voucher program, ending Medicare as we know it. See what Florida seniors have to say about the Romney-Ryan plan, and then share this video with your friends.

Among the higher hurdles that American marketing geniuses have tried (and failed) to leap were attempts to convince car buyers to drive the ultra-ugly Edsel, and to convince consumers that what they needed was a “New Coke.” But now comes the marketing leap that even Superman couldn’t clear: selling Mitt Romney as a warm, loose, down-to-earth, regular guy who cares most about America’s working stiffs.

Oops – take that back! Henceforth, do not ever let the word “stiff” be printed, uttered, or implied in the same sentence with Mitt’s name. That was the old Romney image, and it is now officially passé.

The branding of the new, relaxed Romney is being unveiled throughout this week’s four-day Republican National Convention in Tampa. The stage itself – a $2.5 million structure of dark wood and warm tones that’s said to be the most intricate, market-tested piece of stagecraft ever designed – is meant to convey conviviality. Rather than an imposing podium, this one is only six feet high with swooping steps – carefully constructed to make the multimillionaire nominee appear close to the people and “approachable.” (more…)