Blog

Let the church bells peal somberly, for we progressives have suffered an unexpected and tragic loss that leaves an awful void in our movement. I speak, of course, about the recent passing from America’s political scene of a lady who truly was a shooting star: Michele Bachmann.

So perkily quirky, so ridiculously right-wing, so piously hypocritical, so incoherently pontifical – the Minnesota Congresswoman, tea party sparklie, and flash-in-the-pan presidential pretender was a gusher of good news for the progressive cause every time she opened her mouth. Alas, though, faced with likely defeat in her own district next year and an ethical mess involving her campaign finances, Bachmann has announced she’ll not run again, prompting a nationwide pity party among progressives.

Even in her passing, however, she left us with some typical Bachmann bon mots, including this promise: “I will continue to work vehemently and robustly to fight back against what most [Democrats] want to do, to transform our country into becoming.” Yes, “Stop America from Becoming!” is her battle cry, which I think means she’s robustly against the future and will vehemently fight to stop it. (more…)

Corporate shareholders are revolting! In the very best sense of that term.

More and more investor groups today are rebelling against the top managers of some of the corporations they own. Why? Because the executives have been gambling on political races – not with their own money, but with the money that shareholders have invested in the corporations. In other words, the execs are treating investor funds as their personal pile of political chips – not even bothering to tell the shareholders about it, much less asking permission or consulting them on whom to support.

While Washington fiddles with proposals to require that corporate executives at least inform investors about all political use of their money, shareholders themselves are taking action. Since 2010, there has been a doubling of shareholder resolutions at corporate board meetings to force executives to disclose such spending and reveal the process for deciding which candidates to back. (more…)

These are hard times in Northern Ireland, where unemployment is rampant and Prime Minister David Cameron’s corrosive austerity medicine is killing hope.

Yet, the people of a depressed town named Enniskillen are rubbing their eyes in disbelief at a remarkable revitalization of their town centre. Practically overnight, a blight of abandoned stores has been transformed into a vibrant scene of reoccupied, fully-stocked shops enjoying a business boom. But wait: Having rubbed their eyes and peered closer, the denizens of Enniskillen see that this is not a miracle – it’s a mirage. The spiffy new streetscapes are nothing but posters plastered over the old vacant buildings.

Why this lie? Because Cameron, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and other heads of state are coming to the G8 Summit being held this month at a five-star, luxury golf resort just down the road from Enniskillen. Yes, extravagance adjacent to depression. Organizers, however, don’t want the eyeballs of these world leaders to be singed by economic reality. Thus, they have put a half-million dollars into the town centre to create a Potemkin Village so that G8 participants will not have unpleasant memories from passing through Enniskillen on their way to the resort, where they will discuss the magic of austerity for the masses and more tax cuts for the superrich. (more…)

Isn’t it interesting that the ethics of corporate pay shift 180 degrees as you take the elevator from the work floor to the executive suites? Interesting… and infuriating.

Down below, corporate morality dictates that it’s in the best interest of shareholders to hold costs down by paying as little as possible to employees who produce a company’s products and services. At the tippy-top of the hierarchy, however, corporate morality does a complete flip-flop, decreeing that shareholder interests are best served by paying top dollar to executive employees, in order to attract “top talent.” And these moral relativists wonder why corporate morale stinks these days.

For a clue, they might check the latest inequality numbers. The annual paycheck for a CEO of a typical large corporation topped $9.7 million last year, meaning they have increased their haul by more than 36 percent since the Great Recession ended in 2009. Meanwhile, in the same three years, median pay for all employees working below the top floor didn’t even keep up with inflation. (more…)

I think of a “social welfare charity” being like The Little Sisters of the Poor – not The Little Koch Brothers of the Plutocracy.

Yet, the brothers have created their very own social welfare charity, which they used as a political front group for funneling $39 million into campaigns against Democrats last year. Interesting, since, under IRS rules, 501(c)(4) “charities” are supposed to do philanthropic work for the welfare of all, not political hatchet jobs for billionaires. In fact, the law bans these tax-exempt entities from spending more than 49 percent of their funding on political efforts to promote their “issues.”

Yet, hundreds of these (c)(4)s – mostly right-wing – are flagrantly violating the tax law by operating primarily as political fronts for funneling secret corporate donations into raw, partisan campaigns. How did they get their privileged status as charities? By outright lying to the IRS, then defying the agency to stop them as they dump millions of corrupt dollars into our elections. (more…)

It’s been nearly 50 years since poverty in America was a front-burner issue on our nation’s political agenda – and it’s time to move it up again.

Even as those at the top of our society have grown fabulously richer in the past decade, those in the economic middle have seen incomes stagnate and fall, opportunities decline, and poverty become not about someone else, but about them. Numbers that were not even imaginable half a century ago are now our cold reality – 50 million poor people, 51 million more who are “near poor,” almost one-in-four children under five years old living in poverty, and no sign of this mass decline decelerating.

The face of American poverty, however, has changed somewhat. In the sixties, the poor had largely been born into it and were out of most people’s sight – tucked away in backwater rural counties and isolated urban ghettos. This kind of poverty persists, but today’s big jump in numbers comes from families that have been knocked down from a middle-class life – dismayed to find themselves among the long-term unemployed, grabbing at temporary low-paying jobs, and buying meager groceries with food stamps. (more…)

Little Eric Cantor, the prancing political prissy who serves as the GOP’s House majority leader, apparently thinks he’s too slick to get caught in an outright legislative lie – or maybe he thinks we rubes are too dumb to figure out that he’s trying to slick us.

Either way, a crude deceit is at the very heart of his “Working Families Flexibility Act,” which he recently slid through the House. It eliminates a central piece of America’s middle-class framework, namely the 8-hour workday and 40-hour week. Under the 1938 Fair Labor Law, bosses can make hourly employees work extra, but only by paying an overtime wage for the added hours.

Cantor claims his bill would improve this New Deal protection by letting corporate managers require extra hours on the job without overtime pay by offering “comp time” to the employees. In other words, work more hours now in exchange for taking-off those same number of hours later on.

With a wink at corporate lobbyists, Eric slyly refers to this switch as “women-friendly,” allowing working moms the flexibility to decide when to take time off. Therein lies the lie. (more…)

My state of Texas seems to have an inordinate share of nincompoops in public office. But it’s only fair that office holders from other states be considered before deciding which one is the nincompoopiest of all.

Give credit to Pennsylvania, for example, whose GOP governor, Tom Corbett, recently scored big nincompoop points by explaining why his state ranks 49th in job creation. “Many employers,” the guv grumbled, during a radio interview, “say ‘we’re looking for people, but we can’t find anybody that has passed a drug test’.” Yes, the old my-constituents-are-a-bunch-of-drug-addicts dodge! That’s world-class nincompoopery. Did I mention that Tom’s voter approval rating is down to 38 percent?

But compare Corbett to one of the Lone Star State’s congress critters, Steve Stockman. Steve’s re-election campaign has put out a bumper sticker with this uplifting thought: “If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.” Wow – that’s two nincompoopisms in only eight words!

Still, even Steve can’t hold a candle to Rep. Louie Gohmert, the mouth that never shuts. Vice-chair of a House homeland security sub-committee, Gohmert recently revealed an astonishing piece of intelligence on the terrorist threat to the US of A. Al Qaeda, he informed the whole world, has set up radical Islamist camps on the “other side” of the Texas-Mexico border. Really? No. But the Islamist alarmist proceeded to tell us that Mexican drug gangs are teaching al Qaeda infidels how to cross the border into Texas, and they’re also being trained “to act like Hispanics.” (more…)

Step right up, folks, and take your chances in the Amazing New American Workplace. Constantly high unemployment! Low wages always! No employee bargaining power! A corporate paradise!

This paradise has enriched the already-rich investor elite and rewarded top executives with multimillion-dollar pay packages. It also lets corporations treat the masses of people in today’s workforce like Kleenexes: Just use ‘em and toss ‘em – after all, they’re cheap, plentiful… and disposable.

Indeed, taskmasters-in-suits have now redefined the term “hired” to mean that you’re tethered to a corporation full-time, but you actually work and get paid for only the few hours a week when the boss calls. This nefarious practice, known as “on-call shifts,” is all the rage among national retail chains. Such giants as Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, and Urban Outfitters require employees to work without set schedules and to be available to have their strings yanked at any time, day or night, even on weekends, with as little as two hours’ notice. Likewise, if customer traffic in a store is slow, retail workers who got dressed up, battled the morning commute, and reported on time, can simply be sent away after an hour or so – with no pay for their lost hours. (more…)

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court pretends, they certainly are loudmouths, constantly telling us how great they are and spreading their names everywhere.

Amazingly, though, these corporate creatures have suddenly turned demure, insisting that they don’t want to draw any attention to themselves. That’s because, in this case, corporations are not selling, they’re buying — specifically, trying to buy public office for their pet political candidates by funneling millions of corporate dollars through such front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In turn, the fronts use the money to air nasty attack ads that smear the opponents of the pro-corporate candidates.

Why do corporations need a middleman? Because the ads are so partisan and vicious that they would appall and anger millions of customers, employees and shareholders of the corporation. So, rather than besmirch their own names, the corporate powers have meekly retreated behind the skirt of Republican political outfits like the Chamber.

But don’t front groups have to report (at least to election authorities) who’s really behind their ads, so voters can make informed decisions? No. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizen United edict in 2010, such groups can now pour unlimited sums of corporate cash into elections without ever disclosing the names of their funders. This “dark money” channel has essentially established secret political campaigning in America.

[Corporations'] panic over having a little sunlight shine into their deepest bunker reveals just how destructive they intend dark money to be for our democracy. (more…)