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Robert Reich discusses the relationships between defense contractors and political spending. He calls on President Obama to sign an executive order forcing big government contractors to disclose the details of their political activities.

This week’s reports from the New York Times about Walmart’s practices in Mexico are breathtaking. The Times found “credible evidence that bribery played a persistent and significant role in Walmart’s rapid growth in Mexico.” The Times interviewed an executive of Walmart’s Mexican subsidiary who “bought zoning approvals and reductions in environmental impact fees.” According to the New York Times, when lawyers for Walmart discovered this activity and informed senior management, then Walmart CEO Lee Scott ordered Walmart’s internal investigative protocols revised to give the targets of internal investigations more control over those same investigations. The specific reports about conduct in Mexico were ignored, the executives involved were promoted and a senior in-house lawyer who objected subsequently left Walmart. The apparent result was that Walmart grew dramatically in Mexico at the expense of its Mexican competitors, leading to Mexico becoming Walmart’s second largest market after the United States. The executive identified in Walmart’s in-house investigator’s notes as “most responsible” was promoted to head of all U.S. Walmart stores.

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it is a crime for a U.S. company to bribe an official of a foreign government — just as it is a crime to bribe an official of the United States government. It is also a crime in Mexico to bribe an official of the Mexican government. And bear in mind that the Times story does not describe the acts of isolated individuals — it describes conduct and elaborate efforts to suppress the results of internal investigation of that conduct involving multiple top executives over a period of years. In other words, the New York Times story describes “credible evidence” of criminal activity and the willful neglect of criminal activity involving individuals at the highest levels of one of America’s largest corporations.

Nothing like this has happened since the collapse of Enron and Worldcom in 2002. And Walmart is of course a more important company than either Enron or Worldcom. Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States. And in the days since the Times story appeared, the Washington Post has reported that Walmart has participated in an aggressive lobbying campaign to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act which makes bribing foreign officials a crime. (more…)

Today, thousands of 99 Percenters will march on K Street in Washington, D.C. as a part of an action called “Take Back The Capitol,” taking aim at the lobbying firms that corporate interests use to influence the federal government.

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy. The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period. Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

Here’s the full list of the 30 corporations identified and what they paid in federal taxes as opposed to lobbying:

To follow today’s actions, check out Take Back The Capitol’s website, and find instant updates about the protest through the hashtag #99indc. ThinkProgress will be covering today’s events at our 99 Percent Movement special topics page.

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Zaid Jilani also serves as editor of the 99 Percent Movement Special Topics page at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Zaid grew up in Kennesaw, Ga., and holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs with a minor in Arabic from the University of Georgia. Prior to joining ThinkProgress.org, Zaid interned for Just Foreign Policy and was a weekly columnist at The Red & Black, the University of Georgia’s official student newspaper. He is a co-editor at the Georgia-based blog Georgia Liberal and a regular on RT America’s The Alyona Show and The Thom Hartmann Show and has been a guest host on Al Jazeera English’s The Stream. He is also an occasional contributor to the op-ed pages of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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This is republished from Think Progress Economy.

CNN’s Lisa Sylvester follows two Maryland Alliance for Retired Americans retirees who are walking the beat on Capitol Hill to protect Social Security and take on big business lobbyists.

If Jim DeMint gets his way, the Senate will vote any day now on repealing the historic Dodd-Frank financial-reform law. While Senator DeMint is receiving a big assist from conservative lobbying groups, his amendment is sure to fail given the Democratic majority. Still, the tireless war against Dodd-Frank – a law that marks its first anniversary next month – will go on.

Like the assault on the health-care law, the campaign to roll back financial reform is a sophisticated operation bolstered by big money and animated by ideological fervor. What’s different is that cracking down on Wall Street is popular with the American public, and so – DeMint’s frontal assault aside – much of the push to destroy Dodd-Frank has been carried on over power lunches and in the back offices of congressional committees.

Opponents of financial reform have mounted a three-pronged attack.

First, Republican lawmakers hope to block the funds that executive-branch agencies need to implement Dodd-Frank. The legislation that President Barack Obama signed last July is more akin to an outline than a detailed regulatory mandate. It will only have teeth when numerous rules are written and oversight mechanisms are put into place. Getting the money for this work wouldn’t have been a problem if Democrats still controlled the House–but they don’t anymore. (more…)

By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

Stacia Haley in Seattle worked all her life and raised a child as a single parent. Yet she has no retirement income other than Social Security.

[Social Security] is all many of us will have, if we live long enough to retire.

Stacia is right. Some 64 percent of America’s retirees rely on Social Security for 50 percent or more of their income.

Yet the man Wall Street wants to make speaker of the House supports raising the retirement age for Social Security, lowering the hammer even more on low- and middle-income Americans, who die earlier than the rich. (And what about that income gap? Well, never mind.)

This is just one of the extreme positions John Boehner holds while he salivates in the wings as House minority leader, angling for a Republican takeover of Congress bought and paid for by corporate America.

By now there should be no question that if Boehner becomes speaker, corporations will call the shots — and the insurance companies, drug manufacturers and Wall Street firms have been busy paying big time for the privilege. Boehner’s campaign to date has collected nearly $7.1 million. Putting that sum in perspective, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has received $2.9 million. Meanwhile, the “Boehner for Speaker” fundraising committee has racked up another $2 million. (more…)

Zach Carter
Economics Editor, AlterNet; Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future

A full 90 members of Congress who voted to bailout Wall Street in 2008 failed to support financial reform reining in the banks that drove our economy off a cliff. But when you examine campaign contribution data, it’s really no surprise that these particular lawmakers voted to mortgage our economic future to Big Finance: This election cycle, they’ve raked in over $48.8 million from the financial establishment. Over the course of their Congressional careers, the figure swells to a massive $176.9 million.

The complete list of these Crony Capitalists is below, along with the money they pulled in from Big Finance, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org). The career data goes back to 1989. Of the 69 House members who voted with Wall Street on both the bailout and financial reform, 60 are Republicans, while nine are Democrats. All 21 Senators who voted with Wall Street on both issues are Republicans, and Republicans raked in over
90 percent of the total campaign contributions.

Here’s a chart showing Wall Street’s total contributions to this crowd for the 2010 cycle, by political party:

And here’s one showing total Wall Street contributions over the course of their careers:

These aren’t the only politicians carrying water for Wall Street–only the most flagrant. Some of the bank lobby’s savviest servants on Capitol Hill do their dirty work early in the legislative process. They push through technical amendments and deploy complex procedural tricks to defang a bill, but when the final vote comes, they can still create the appearance of taking a stand against Wall Street’s interests. Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., is a master of this technique, and Tea Party favorite Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was able to claim credit for voting in favor of reform after demanding–and receiving–a host of big bank giveaways in return for his vote. (more…)

 By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO 

Millions of Americans are living in fear–for their jobs. When a job disappears, working people are gripped with a fear that high-flying hedge fund managers not only refuse to grasp, but ridicule. Because the only thing Wall Street really fears is accountability for its actions and oversight of its unfettered profit-making at the expense of the rest of us. 

Today, we’ll be back in the street to take on The Street–this time on Washington, D.C.’s infamous K Street, haven for the big-monied Wall Street lobbyists. We in the union movement, together with allies like Americans for Financial Reform, are building on our grassroots action last month on Wall Street–where tens of thousands of mad-as-hell workers demanded Wall Street pay for the mess it made and start putting our taxpayer money back into generating jobs. We’re also carrying out our promise to America’s working people to make Congress prioritize passage of Good Jobs Now. 

The recent uptick in job creation is good news–but far from enough. Job creation is the top priority for the millions of working- and middle-class voters in this country. Some 21 percent of employed U.S. workers believe it is “very” or “fairly” likely they’ll get fired or “downsized” within the next year, according to a recent Gallup Poll. That’s the highest level of fear about economic security and job loss since Gallup began gathering the data back in 1975. According to Gallup: 

Further reflecting today’s lack of job security, 38 percent of Americans employed full- or part-time say they are “not at all likely to lose their jobs over the next year”–down 19 points from April 2007, and by far the lowest level of self-professed job security Gallup has measured since 1975. 

If laid off, 44 percent of U.S. workers say they could go barely a month before experiencing significant financial hardship. 

That’s the basis for real fear. 

Meanwhile, as millions of high school and college students graduate in coming weeks, the class of 2010 faces the worst job market in a generation, with unemployment among high school graduates averaging 22.5 percent over the past year and 9 percent for college grads under age 25. Economists know the longer high unemployment persists, the worse off young workers will be in terms of lifetime earnings. 

This is not the economic future I want to leave for our nation’s children. So why does Wall Street want it–and why are so many Washington, D.C., lawmakers doing its bidding? 

The American people have long recognized the disparity between our paychecks and those of limo-lounging CEOs. Now we see the Wall Street-Washington nexus: the Big Banks that spend billions to kill financial reform in Congress and the puppets who carry their water–former Capitol Hill lawmakers bought and paid for by Wall Street. But, as economist Simon Johnson writes, the American people know what’s going on and 

understand that Wall Street took over Washington and has run it, in large part, for too long. 

Big Banks are spending $1.4 million a day to fight financial reform and employing 940 former federal officials. The current crop of revolving-door lobbyists includes 54 former staffers on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the House Financial Services Committee (or a current member of that committee), 33 former chiefs of staff and 28 former legislative directors. Citigroup leads the Big Banks with 55 revolving-door lobbyists, though the federal government was its largest shareholder for much of this period (2009-2010), according to a report out this week. 

Our chance to slow Wall Street’s takeover of Washington, the Wall Street Accountability Act, is making great progress in Congress–and its passage will go a long way toward repairing the damage done to our nation by a failed generation-long experiment in market radicalism. 

But the act also needs to be strengthened so it covers private equity funds as well as hedge funds and gives the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission the power to force disclosures by these funds to their investors. Wall Street should be taxed not just for the direct costs of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, as President Obama rightly proposes, but also for the real costs of addressing the job loss that continues and for the trillion-dollar subsidies the Federal Reserve gave to the financial sector in the form of free credit. 

Lawmakers need to recognize that a strong Wall Street Accountability Act is necessary for the nation–and also for their own self-interest. Because let’s face it: Right about now, lawmakers too timid to hold Wall Street accountable or too tied in with the Big Banks’ lobbying industry should be getting a good taste of what it’s like to fear losing your job.

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

 “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place”

That was Sen Richard Durbin, the powerful Senate Democratic whip, irate as the banking lobby, with foreclosures soaring across the nation, blocked a core reform for beleaguered homeowners that would give judges the right to modify mortgages in bankruptcy court.

But it isn’t just the banks. Agribusiness is protecting its obscene subsidies. The insurance companies are deploying legions of lobbyists to gut the public plan in health care reform, the heart of the Obama plan. The utilities are carving out exceptions for coal plants. Multinationals are clearly on way to disemboweling Obama tax proposals. The military industrial lobby is a good bet to frustrate DOD Secretary Gates modest procurement reforms.

This isn’t about America being a “center-right country,” the myth that pundits still peddle about the American people. This is about Congress being bought and sold, pure and simple. Each night, Washington slurps on political fund-raisers. Each day, the deals get cut; the favors get done. Now with Republicans lining up lemming-like to obstruct anything Obama, Congress can be bought on the cheap. The lobbies have only to enlist (suborn, bribe, seduce, finance) a few of what the press insists on describing as “moderate Democrats” in the Senate to stop any reform they don’t like.

What’s often forgotten in this squalid exchange is that the very Americans the legislators preen to represent are the victims of their various corruptions.

For example, with the swine flu alert sweeping the country, President Obama and the Centers for Disease Control urge people with flu symptoms to stay home. This is a common sense measure to limit the spread of what might be a dangerous virus.

Only one problem, as the New York Times reminds us in an editorial this morning. About 60 million Americans don’t have paid sick leave. Many can be fired if they stay home. And if not fired, many simply can’t afford to lose the hours.

43% of private sector American workers have no paid sick days at all. And needless to say the most vulnerable have the least protection. A 2007 EPI study showed that workers at the bottom of the wage scale, those making less than $7.38 an hour, are five times less likely to have sick days than workers at the top of the scale, those making greater than $29.47 an hour. Only 16% of low-wage workers have access to paid sick days.

This is a barbarity that is dangerous to your health. Women — who tend still to be disproportionately in part-time and low wage work — are particularly at risk.

More than 160 countries, the Times tells us, have laws that ensure all their citizens receive paid sick leave and more than 110 of them guarantee paid leave from the first day of illness. The US does not. The reason goes no further than the influence of money on politics.

We once provided much of our social contract through the corporation rather than the Congress. Strong unions could negotiate a family wage, health care, overtime pay, paid sick leave, paid vacations, and pensions. Many non-union employers offered benefits similar to those provided by union companies. But over the last decades of this conservative era, as unions grew weaker under attack, more and more corporations simply shredded those agreements.

Now we’ll have to enact these basic guarantees — central to what Franklin Roosevelt called the Economic Bill of Rights — in law. But each reform will have to overcome the resistance of entrenched lobbies, buying the protection of compromised legislators.

In 2005, Senator Ted Kennedy and Rep. Rosa DeLauro introduced a bill entitled the Health Families Act that would mandate up to seven paid sick days for employees in firms with more than 15 employees (and pro-rated leave for part-time employees). You’d think this would be a no brainer. It never came to a vote in the Senate. Obama pledged to support seven day paid sick leave in his campaign. Many Democratic lobbyists will dine well off of that pledge.

In area after area, Americans are suffering from the accumulated corruptions of our moneyed politics. In the fifth labor of Hercules, an arrogant king tries to demean the hero by hiring him to clean out the Augean stables in a day. The stables containing the largest herd of cattle in civilization, had never been cleaned. Hercules, with a little help from Athena, changes the path of two rivers and quickly washes out the accumulated filth. But no one is about to change the course of the Potomac to cleanse the backrooms and lobbies of Capitol Hill. The only current strong enough to do that is an aroused public angry enough to sweep away those who stand in the way. Despite rumblings, despite growing awareness of the damage wrought by a sordid and selfish era, we aren’t there yet.