Month: July 2012

There’s something wrong with that IRA

by digby

This really should be a bigger deal. If you want to run for president and ostensibly represent all the people of this country, you should have more respect for the spirit of the law:

Another suggestion is that in 2009 he paid income taxes significantly below the 13.9 percent he paid in 2010. This is more plausible, and potentially more damaging politically, even if perfectly legal.

After all, the one year’s tax returns that he has released raise doubt about his campaign’s claims that his offshore accounts did not save him one penny of tax. Putting business assets into an individual retirement account invested in a Cayman Islands corporation allows Mr. Romney to avoid the “unrelated business income tax” — a 35 percent levy — on at least some of his I.R.A.’s earnings, a tax that he would have had to pay if his I.R.A. were held directly by a financial institution in the United States.

With an I.R.A. account of $20 million to $101 million, the tax savings would be more than a few pennies.

The I.R.A. also allows Mr. Romney to diversify his large holdings tax-free, avoiding the 15 percent tax on capital gains that would otherwise apply. His financial disclosure further reveals that his I.R.A. freed him from paying currently the 35 percent income tax on hundreds of thousands of dollars of interest income each year.

Given the extraordinary size of his I.R.A., we have to presume that Mr. Romney valued the assets he put in his retirement account at far less than he would have sold them for. Otherwise it is quite a trick to turn contributions that are limited to $30,000 to $50,000 a year into the $20 million to $101 million he now has there. But we cannot be certain; his meager disclosure of tax records and financial information does not indicate what kind of assets were put into the I.R.A.

Mr. Romney’s Cayman Islands and Bermuda corporations also probably allowed him to avoid limitations on deductions for investment expenditures that would otherwise apply. So we don’t need any more tax returns to know that Mr. Romney is an Olympic-level athlete at the tax avoidance game. Rich people don’t send their money to Bermuda or the Cayman Islands for the weather.

Nobody says a vastly wealthy man like Romney shouldn’t be able to keep most of his vast wealth and pass some of it to his heirs, but this is certainly not what the IRA law was envisioned to do. It’s supposed to be an incentive for average Americans to save some money for retirement. It’s called and Individual Retirement Account after all. Average Americans aren’t allowed to “invest” more than five or six thousand a year and they hope against hope that they’ll be able to gain a few percent a year and take advantage of compound interest. There is no way in which a man of Romney’s means needs any “help” in that department and to use the IRA to shelter his investments and avoid millions of dollars in taxes may be legal, but it’s slimy.

It’s very hard to fathom why a man worth hundreds of millions of dollars (and who has already sheltered hundreds of millions for his heirs using equally dodgy methods) is so greedy that he couldn’t make himself pay a reasonable amount of taxes even as he was running for president — which he has been doing for the past eight years. After all, if he paid normal taxes on his wealth over the past few years he’d still be worth hundreds of millions of dollars! How much money does this man need?

Given a clear choice between being a stand-up, straight arrow, beyond reproach in his finances, Romney chose to behave like a typical Master of the Universe. He has made a choice: he cares more about hoarding every last penny of his vast wealth than he does about being president.

Update: Harry Reid is a wily old bird:

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?

As Peggy Noonan said, “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to…”

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That’s not what centrism means, Joe

by David Atkins

Joe Lieberman won’t be getting an invite to the Democratic national convention, and it appears all of maybe three Democrats are upset about it:

But when Democrats and Republicans gather in Charlotte, N.C., and Tampa, Fla., later this summer, Lieberman will receive less homage than a local councilman. He will be left out of the festivities altogether.

Some Democrats think keeping Lieberman away is a mistake. After all, he served as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, becoming the first Jewish American to run atop a major party’s ticket.

He also presided for several years as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, which helped transform the ideology of the Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for Bill Clinton’s election in 1992…

“Joe Lieberman is a victim of polarization. He’s another person cast aside by people who aren’t interested in centrist views,” said Professor Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, who has worked as a scholar in residence in the Senate.

Ross Baker should be embarrassed to have been quoted as saying such a ridiculous thing in print. A political scientist should know better.

Joe Lieberman is not a centrist. He is a man who holds some left-leaning positions on social issues and climate change, and extreme right-wing views on invading other countries, slashing social services, banning certain kinds of videogames, and keeping taxes really low on the wealthy. As The Hill notes at the very end of the article:

His vote for Democratic legislation is often more assured than is support from centrists facing tough reelections, although he did vote last week against a Democratic proposal to end the Bush tax rates for income above $250,000.

In an election against Gordon Gekko incarnate, Lieberman votes against the very popular position of ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy while sitting in a safe blue seat in Connecticut. And there’s surprise that he’s not part of the Democratic convention where economic populism will be a major theme?

Holding contradictory partisan views doesn’t make one a “centrist.” Supporting lower taxes on the wealthy while supporting action on climate change isn’t “centrist.” A hypothetical candidate who wanted to ban abortion entirely while supporting single-payer healthcare wouldn’t be a “centrist,” either. A centrist is someone who supports milquetoast, inoffensive positions on a variety of issues: say, simplifying the the tax code while raising taxes slightly on just the richest incomes. Or advocating toothless carbon exchanges as a “solution” to climate change. Or decrying abortion but wanting to make it “safe, legal and rare.” Or converting welfare programs into work programs.

You know, the mainstream positions of the modern Democratic Party. That’s centrism. It’s not the voters’ fault if centrism has been wholly adopted by one political party while the other sits squarely in crazyville. That’s just the breaks.

Politicians like Lieberman who take some centrist positions from the sometime left while advocating other extremist positions from the modern right don’t get to claim the mantle of centrism. They’re just extremists on a less diverse set of issues. And nobody should be surprised if they don’t get an invite to the centrist party’s big shindig.

Update: As multiple commenters have pointed out, there’s also the simple fact that when Joe lost the Democratic primary, he left the party to stay on as Senator. So he’s not a Democrat anymore. Why anyone is surprised that he’s not at the Democratic Convention is beyond me.

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Blue America endorses Sue Thorn WV-01

by digby

Howie made the announcement earlier today:

Blue America is proud to be officially endorsing Sue Thorn today. Sue is a grassroots community activist whose ideas about the role of government hearken back to a time when West Virginians very much saw government as a way of balancing the inordinate power of corporations and the wealthy arraigned against ordinary working families. Her opponent is freshman David McKinley, or, as folks in northern West Virginia like to call him, Moneybags McKinley. He’s a millionaire member of the top 1% and Blue America wants to help Sue Thorn send him packing.

Before coming to Congress, McKinely was already a career politician, working the system to please his dirty-dealing campaign contributors, sleazy coal CEOs and shady special interest groups, at the expense of or the ordinary working families. After a slim victory against his DCCC-backed Blue Dog opponent in 2010, McKinley joined the Tea Party caucus. Now that he’s facing Sue Thorn, a real populist Democrat with widespread grassroots support, he’s proved he’ll say or do anything to get re-elected.

Anything? You betcha!

• McKinley ran for office railing against taxpayer-funded mass mailings, or franked mailings, during election years, calling them an “abuse” of taxpayer funds. Now, he ranks as one of the top spenders in the House, spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars mailing constituents campaign propaganda, full of conservative talking points.

• He campaigned with Tea Party rhetoric against big banks and bailouts, then accepted thousands in donations from the banking industry and supported legislation that turns regulatory power over to the bankers.

• McKinley says he is a “Friend of Coal” and claims to support coal miners, but refuses to sponsor coal mine safety legislation along with the rest of the WV Congressional delegation. Mining deaths and rates of black lung disease are on the rise in WV, but McKinley has proved to be a puppet for the profit-hungry coal industry, working in back-room deals to dismantle the EPA, weaken the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and push through anti-regulation bills that would pollute WV communities and poison the water supply.

Sue Thorn was asked to run for Congress because the people of West Virginia’s first CD were sick of representation by conservative Democrats who vote with the Republicans and DC insiders who vote to slash safety net programs that benefit working families. Sue is not a career politician. She’s worked in economic development and community organizing and she aims to bring people together, not divide them. When we first spoke with her, we asked why she had decided to run.

“I’m running for Congress because I’m sick of the rich getting richer and the rest of us getting left behind. The extreme conservative Republicans currently controlling the House of Representatives don’t have the middle class in mind. They’re focused on passing bogus legislation that will keep campaign donations coming in from Big Oil, super PACs, corrupt CEOs and greedy special interest groups. At a time when the gap between the rich and the poor in this country is at its highest since the great depression, the House Republicans are recklessly voting for tax break for millionaires. I’m running for Congress because we need to rebuild the middle class.”

This is a winnable race, but Sue won’t be doing it with the help of the DCCC. They’re sitting this one out, after wasting a fortune trying to elect a Blue Dog Democrat in 2010 that the people of WV-01 didn’t want. Sue’s running in a traditionally Democratic district, previously represented by Democrats for over 40 years. She even pulled in 13,000 more votes than McKinley in the primary. But she also has to contend with McKinley’s campaign coffer of $1.4 million. Please consider helping her with a contribution here on our Blue America page.

She and Howie had a lively chat this morning over at Crooks and Liars which you should check out. Sue is the real deal.

There was a time when West Virginia was a solid Democratic as you could get. Yes, there are some “cultural” reasons why they no longer are, but the real problem in this poor state is economics. The Dems used to offer something for the poor, the working class and the union worker and it’s just not so obvious that they give a damn about any of that anymore. Certainly, they haven’t been delivering. So, they see politics is social conservative terms instead.

Sue Thorn is offering the right message at the right time. It would be a beautiful lesson to the establishment if she were to win — or even make a good showing. I highlighted the fact that she won 13,000 more votes than McKinley in the primary to show that this is winnable. The DCCC isn’t interested, but we should be.

You can donate to her and all the other Blue America candidates here.

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Big Bad Rush is frightened too

by digby

I’m so enjoying the 1% squirm over the Olympic celebration of British National Health Care. David discussed the specifics in this post this morning, so I’m just going to share my pleasure at Rush Limbaugh’s confusion:

Okay, I jabbed Kathryn in the ribs and I said, “That’s how the libs want all of us to live. That’s where global warming –” Minus the smokestacks and the pollution, they want to get rid of modernity. Anything modern, get rid of it. That’s when the planet was not being destroyed. I know, Industrial Revolution. But in terms of simple, non-technological, no electricity, that’s what the extremists of the environmental movement want. Of all the things of historical note in Great Britain, United Kingdom, the things they chose to highlight about themselves in that opening ceremony scared me more, because that’s a free people basically honoring socialism and collectivism. The ChiCom people had no choice. They are under orders and under guns. In the UK a free people decided to do it.

Imagine that. A free people honoring the fact that they don’t have to die and leave their families paupers if they happen to get sick and can’t work. Shocking.

By the way, Rush is a liar, (in case there was any doubt.) He insisted that the British hate their health care system. If 70% satisfaction is defined as hating their health care system, I guess he might be right.

Moreover, these Brits hate our “exceptional” form of health care with a passion:

Britain is now embroiled in a healthcare argument of its own, prompted by a proposed shake-up of the NHS. And the phrase on everyone’s lips is “American-style,” which may not be as catchy as the “death panels” that Palin attributed to socialized medicine but which, over here, inspires pretty much the same kind of terror.

Ask a Briton to describe “American-style” healthcare, and you’ll hear a catalog of horrors that include grossly expensive and unnecessary medical procedures and a privatized system that favors the rich. For a people accustomed to free healthcare for all, regardless of income, the fact that millions of their cousins across the Atlantic have no insurance and can’t afford decent treatment is a farce as well as a tragedy.

But critics here warn that a similarly bleak future may await Britain if a government plan to put more power in the hands of doctors and introduce more competition into the NHS succeeds — privatization by stealth, they say.

So frightening is the Yankee example that any British politician who values his job has to explicitly disavow it as a possible outcome. Twice.

“We will not be selling off the NHS, we will not be moving towards an insurance scheme, we will not introduce an American-style private system,” Prime Minister David Cameron emphatically told a group of healthcare workers in a nationally televised address last week.

In case they didn’t hear it the first time, Cameron repeated the dreaded “A”-word in a list of five guarantees he offered the British people at the end of his speech.

“If you’re worried that we’re going to sell off the NHS or create some American-style private system, we will not do that,” he said. “In this country we have the most wonderful, precious institution and also precious idea that whenever you’re ill … you can walk into a hospital or a surgery and get treated for free, no questions asked, no cash asked. It is the idea at the heart of the NHS, and it will stay. I will never put that at risk.”

It’s good that Rush is scared. And the fact that he’s scared of America’s greatest ally in the GWOT and other international adventures is just frosting on the cake. We know the French hate us for our freedom, but it’s pretty clear that everyone else in the world thinks we’re not much more than a colossal throwback banana republic at this point. Not that Rush cares about that. But he seems to be worried that this virus could threaten his own perch in the .001%. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

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Being stupid and disrespectful is not against the law

by digby

I supposed he’s lucky he didn’t get tasered on some pretext and thrown into the hospital:

Robert Bell had just left a West Village bar last August when four New York City police officers walked by. A moment later, the Edison man “expressed his dislike and distrust for police officers by raising his middle finger toward them,” according to a lawsuit he just filed.

In other words, Bell gave the cops the finger.

One of the officers noticed and confronted Bell, seeking an explanation.
“Because I don’t like cops,” the financial services recruiter replied. He was then handcuffed, taken into custody and held in a jail cell for two hours before being released and issued a summons for disorderly conduct. Bell’s criminal case was soon dismissed when the arresting officer, Peter Play, failed to appear in court.

There is this little thing we call the First Amendment to the constitution. It applies to all kinds of unpleasant speech, from right wing CEOs expressing their horror at gay marriage to corporate executives spending their shareholders money in elections to buy influence in government to Larry Flynt’s sickening misogyny. But there is nothing the First Amendment is supposed to protect more vigilantly than a citizen’s right to verbally insult his government, whether it’s a policeman on the street or the president of the United States. It is the most fundamental purpose of the free speech right and for these thuggish officers to abuse their power and call such insults “disorderly conduct” is chilling.

I believe this happens all the time, actually. Many of the tasering incidents I chronicle are the result of citizens failing to be properly respectful toward authority rather than threatening to the police or others. It’s a fine line, I understand, and I suppose the cops can be forgiven for failing to see the difference in many cases. But that is all the more reason for not using pain compliance willy nilly.

As I said, this fellow is lucky that he wasn’t shot with 50,000 volts of electricity for his “disorderly conduct.” In plenty of jurisdictions, they would have done it and all they would have had to do is say they “felt” threatened to justify it. It happens every day.

The best cops don’t react to “disrespect” and understand they have better things to do than police the attitudes of the citizens. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of officers who have internalized the military mentality that permeates our police agencies these days and feel that they are in a war zone where attitudes are a threat.

This case is pretty clear cut. And the victim is filing a federal law suit:

Legal experts and law enforcement officials say Bell has a case, and courts have generally backed his position in similar instances. What he did could be seen as offensive in some circles or defiant in others, they say, but it was not illegal.

“I can’t arrest you for giving me the finger, any more than I can arrest you for calling me nasty names,” said Jon Shane, a retired Newark police captain who is now an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “Sure it’s stupid and disrespectful. But it’s not against the law.”

That’s right, being stupid and disresepectful is not against the law. I wish more of my fellow citizens understood this, much less the police who are often far too quick to take offense and call it a threat.

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Our Marie Antoinettes are getting a little bit nervous

by digby

For years I’ve been writing that the wealthy are “begging for pitchforks” with their royalist behavior in the wake of economic crisis that seems to come straight out of the French aristocracy. (I would guess that only in America do they they simultaneously claim they are “middle class”.) The smugness and entitlement of these “job creators” has been something to behold, particular among the Masters of the Universe who are largely responsible for the recent crash.

Way back when, I wrote about celebrity millionaire Ben Stein whining about his meager salary and got this in response from Tyler Cowan (the economist who is currently feverishly defending income inequality.) :

I read about this guy and his pitchfork and it genuinely scared me, especially his description of Ben Stein and his intermingling of the political and the aesthetic.

I must admit it gave me a little thrill. If only my metaphorical pitchforks really had such power. But that was the last I heard of any such thing as the nobles being frightened of the rabble. Mostly it’s just been more whining and complaining about how nobody understands them.

Experiencing Soshulism Firsthand

by David Atkins

I have often said that the instant cure for much of what ails America would be to make every adult citizen spend at least three months living overseas in a social democracy of their choice, be it Japan, South Korea or most of Europe. Fear of universal healthcare, belief in exceptionalism and general ignorance of the existence of other cultures usually derives from never having stepped foot for more than a week at a time outside of tourist traps in a country outside the U.S. Or, in many cases, never having stepped foot outside the country at all.

Dave Johnson at Scrutiny Hooligans points to a great L.A. Times column exemplifying this point earlier this month by David Horsey:

In the mid-1980s when I was a graduate student in England, my parents came to visit and my mother ended up getting a first-hand look at socialized medicine.

It was my dad and mom’s one-and-only trip to Europe — a very big deal — and I wanted to show them as much as I could. We crossed the English Channel to France and drove to see the cathedral at Chartres. The first night there, Mom slipped and sprained her ankle. By morning, she couldn’t walk and was in need of a doctor. We ended up at a hospital where, with no wait at all, she got X-rays and a friendly, highly competent female doctor checked her out and wrapped her leg.

As we were leaving, my mother asked where she should pay the bill. This was hard to translate — and not just because of the gap between French and English. The hospital staff tried to explain that there was no charge. My mom did not think that was right. She felt responsible. She wanted to pay. After a bit of back and forth, it began to dawn on her that not only was there no bill, but the very idea that there should be one was foreign to these citizens of a country where healthcare was a right, not a commodity.

When we got back to England, Mom had a cast put on her leg. In the little village clinic, there was a bit of a wait and the doctor was perfunctory, but the deal was the same as in France: free of charge.

My mother’s experience with socialized medicine made her feel like a bit of a freeloader. She was, after all, not a taxpayer in either of these countries. Still, she did learn something that many Americans — and particularly many members of Congress — do not understand: European-style socialized medicine is not a hellish system without redeeming qualities. Doctors are expert and treatment can often come without a wait. If you are poor, you do not have to seek primary care in an emergency room, as is often the case in the United States. Even tourists do not need to worry if they hurt themselves or get sick; care is available for everybody.

It is a fact that European countries spend far less on healthcare than the USA. It is also a fact that Europeans, as a whole, are healthier than Americans. You would not learn that by listening to conservative opponents of the new healthcare law. They seem to believe the most damning complaint to be made about “Obamacare” is that it is moving the country toward a European-style, government-run system.

The most effective fuel for the plutocrats’ fire is still the ignorance of their rubes.

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Prescient quote of the century

“…the Republicans will join hands with the southern Democrats to try and repeal or undermine every social reform the New Deal has put in. The hue and cry against labor has already started! The republicans have not had an idea since Benjamin Harrison’s time and the southern democrats have not had one since Appomattox—and I foresee an unofficial coalition of them running the country.”

Esther Murphy, in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, late 1942, cited in Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (Farrar Strauss, 2012), p. 96.

She was right about everything but the “unofficial.”

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Institutionalizing the buying of elections

by digby

This is a very good question and a very good answer:

I don’t think most people know that Super PACs must disclose their donors. Perhaps what’s more interesting is that Super PAC donors don’t seem to mind having their names associated with the Super PAC. It’s as if they want people to know they are buying political influence. Those people are a different breed of millionaire.

But they aren’t alone, they are just the most obvious. The 501c4s that Jane Mayer talks about really are secretive and they are powerful. If you doubt it, check out this piece about the re-emergence of Zombie Turdblossom:

On the evening of June 29, Amedeo Scognamiglio, a jewelry designer on the Isle of Capri, met friends for drinks at the elegant Grand Hotel Quisisana. Around midnight, Scognamiglio says, “I noticed some familiar American faces.”

He took to Twitter. “What,” he wanted to know, “is Karl Rove doing at the Quisisana with Steve Wynn?!” The answer came zinging right back from @KarlRove: “Part of a group enjoying really good Bellinis on a beautiful Capri night!” Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its July 30 issue.

Rove is a tech-geek. On Sept. 11, 2001, he was the only White House staff member connected to BlackBerry e-mail on Air Force One as the plane ferried President George W. Bush back and forth across a panicked nation.

When he made his Bellini Twitter message, Rove was on the Amalfi Coast honeymooning with his third wife, Karen Johnson, a Republican lobbyist. On Twitter, Rove didn’t refer by name to Wynn, though the two men are friends. Earlier in June, the casino mogul joined a select group of guests at the Rove-Johnson nuptials in Austin. All of this, be assured, has more than gossip-page significance: Wynn is just one of many mega-wealthy backers whose enthusiasm and checkbooks have fueled a Karl Rove Renaissance that’s redefining the business of political finance.

The bespectacled 61-year-old, once known as Bush’s Brain, left the White House five years ago. His patron was sinking in the polls, and Rove himself had barely escaped criminal indictment. Now he’s back — big time, as his friend former Vice President Dick Cheney might say.

In a performance that rivals Rove’s nurturing of a famously inarticulate Texas governor into a two-term president, the strategist is re-engineering the practice of partisan money management in an effort to drum Barack Obama out of the White House.

Consider the case of Wynn, the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts Ltd. Variable in his political allegiances, the gambling magnate has said publicly that he voted for Obama in 2008, only to change his mind over what he came to perceive as the president’s regulatory hubris.

In swooped Rove. As first reported by Politico, he persuaded Wynn that the best way to oust Obama was to contribute millions of dollars to a Washington-based group Rove co-founded in 2010 called Crossroads GPS.

Wynn’s preference for anonymity in such transactions posed no obstacle. That’s the whole idea behind Crossroads GPS. Although its initials stand for “Grassroots Policy Strategies,” the organization was set up to receive unlimited, undisclosed contributions from industrialists, financiers, and other loaded insiders such as Wynn.

“We do not comment on specific donations,” says a Wynn spokesman.

In the realm of campaign finance, the Internal Revenue Service classifies Crossroads GPS as a nonprofit, nonpolitical “social welfare” organization — a 501(c)(4) in tax code parlance — that doesn’t have to identify its backers.

As they began planning how to make Obama a one-term president, Rove and Gillespie saw most Republican outside organizations as either one-shot affairs, like the Swift Boaters, or preachers to the base that pushed candidates to the extreme right. The anti-tax Club for Growth fit in the latter category. Some wealthy political benefactors had their own groups, Rove says, most of which were run by a single strategist who siphoned off enormous fees for as long as the sponsor would tolerate it.

Rove pitched his proposed startup as a more professional alternative, one built to have impact in 2010 yet endure long beyond.

“The business model of a consultant-driven, vendor-directed entity that hired itself increasingly lacked credibility with donors and was unsustainable,” Rove explains. Among those who were convinced and made big contributions: Richard Baxter Gilliam, a Virginia coal mogul; Houston homebuilder Bob Perry; and Harold Clark Simmons, a Dallas industrialist.

A vacuum at the once-mighty RNC made Rove’s work easier, and more urgent. At RNC headquarters, Michael Steele, the chairman for the 2009-10 cycle, was ineffective as a fundraiser and prone to mishaps, such as getting into public scraps with the radio host Rush Limbaugh and suggesting that Republicans needed a “hip hop” overhaul.

To guide Crossroads, Rove convened a board of directors of conservative notables — Chairman Mike Duncan of Kentucky had served as chairman and treasurer of the RNC; Director Jo Ann Davidson of Ohio had also led the RNC and oversaw the 2008 Republican convention — a signal that it would be beholden to no single candidate or contributor.

The board hired as chief executive officer Steven Law, an affable attorney and campaign veteran who had worked on Capitol Hill for Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who’s now the chamber’s minority leader, and for President Bush in the Department of Labor. As general counsel of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2007-08, Law spearheaded a successful drive to kill the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, a pro-union measure. The locus of the party’s financial strategizing shifted to Rove’s living room on Weaver Terrace in Northwest Washington.

During sessions of the “Weaver Terrace Group,” representatives of the embryonic Crossroads organization gathered with counterparts from groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Tax Reform, and Americans for Prosperity, the funding vehicle affiliated with the billionaires David and Charles Koch. Crossroads served as referee, says CEO Law.

“Conservative activists tend to act like six-year-olds on soccer teams,” he explains, “with everyone grouping around the ball and getting in each other’s way. Karl’s idea was that all of these organizations should share information, coordinate polling, reduce redundancy.”

He swears that he’s trying to make the Republican Party stronger. And I assume it his preferred vehicle for these plutocrats’ agendas. But clearly this is where the power is centered in American politics today and that power does not reside in elected officials. In fact, elected officials are their minions. The people, unfortunately, are pretty much irrelevant.

I urge you to read the entire Rove article. That little scene in Capri that opens it up is perfectly symbolic.

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California’s Proposition 32: The next big, deceptive corporate attack on working families

by David Atkins

Never content with record income inequality and corporate profits, America’s billionaires are forging ahead with an attempt to destroy what is left of the labor movement. And they’re doing it by attempt to use anti-corporate populism to fool the voters In California, that takes the shape of the odious Proposition 32 in California, which does this:

“Restricts union political fundraising by prohibiting use of payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. Same use restriction would apply to payroll deductions, if any, by corporations or government contractors. Permits voluntary employee contributions to employer or union committees if authorized yearly, in writing. Prohibits unions and corporations from contributing directly or indirectly to candidates and candidate-controlled committees. Other political expenditures remain unrestricted, including corporate expenditures from available resources not limited by payroll deduction prohibition. Limits government contractor contributions to elected officers or officer-controlled committees”

Here’s how the Yes on 32 campaign, funded by Republicans and corporate backers, is selling it:

Special Interests control Sacramento. Corporations, business associations and unions gave $89 million to state politicians & campaigns for the 2010 elections alone. The special interests will stop at nothing to defeat this proposition – spending millions, spreading lies and misinformation – to keep politics as usual. We need your support to fight back.

The measure kills special interest spending! Awesome! Except the only spending it kills are from entities that take payroll deductions. There’s only one type of entity that does that: unions.

And based on the anti-special-interest wording alone, the early polling is showing this deceptive proposition well ahead:

The early polling shows 60-28.9% support for CTA-opposed Proposition 32, the measure that would further tilt the political landscape in favor of wealthy special interests that already outspend labor unions by a 15 to one ratio.

The California Democratic Party Executive Board just met in Anaheim this weekend and officially endorsed against this measure. Obviously, labor in California will be engaged in a big push against it.

But the only real antidote to this deceptive power grab by corporate America against working families is education. This is one of the most deceptive measures ever put on the California ballot: what we can do to help (beyond getting involved in phonebanking and precinct walking–contact your local Dem County Committee if you live in California) is have conversations with everyone we know, letting them know that this Trojan Horse is not what it seems. As The Guardian says:

Californians are used to ballot initiatives that claim to do one thing, but in reality do exactly the opposite. However, even by the standards of misinformation now commonplace in our elections, November’s most controversial ballot measure, Proposition 32 – which its supporters call “Stop Special Interest Money Now” – really “takes the giddy biscuit”, as Bertie Wooster (or, for that matter, Mitt Romney) might say.

So what does Prop 32 say it would do, and what would it really do?

Its supporters claim that Prop 32 is a balanced measure that limits corporate and union influence on state elections, to the extent allowed by federal election law. Indeed, pro-Prop 32 ads focus on spending in Sacramento by AT&T and PG&E, rather than on spending by labour unions.

In reality, “Stop Special Interest Money Now” would do nothing of the sort. Though AT&T and PG&E (both unionised firms) are undoubtedly peeved at being singled out, Prop 32 would have almost no impact on the ability of corporate executives to contribute unlimited money to candidates or campaigns, but would have a devastating impact on the ability of unions to participate in state politics. Its restrictions on unions are so sweeping that it would prevent them from communicating with their own members on political issues. Worse still, Prop 32 would enhance the ability of super political action committees (PACs), and other wealthy groups that are exempt from the measure, to dominate elections.

This is not genuine campaign finance reform but a bill of rights for billionaires, which would be a game-changer in California politics. California voters have twice before rejected rightwing initiatives to destroy labour’s political voice, in 1998 and 2005. Unable to win by honest means, conservative groups decided to come up with something more deceptive this time round.

To appreciate just how misleading this measure is, one has to understand who supports and opposes it, and why. Prop 32’s principal backer, the Lincoln Club of Orange County, co-produced Hillary: The Movie, which was at the heart of the 2012 landmark supreme court decision Citizens United and which led to a flood of special interest spending. The Lincoln Club boasted it was “instrumental” in pushing Citizens United, and celebrated the decision as a victory for political free speech. Since its founding in 1962, the Lincoln Club has consistently sought to weaken rules that stop big money from dominating elections, and Prop 32 would go a long way to achieving that goal.

Other backers of Prop 32 include Orange County anti-union activists and rightwing billionaires (often one and the same), and the usual suspects among Republican activists. And if the polls are tight come November, we will likely see an influx of pro-Prop 32 money from the same 0.1% currently funding conservative super PACs at the federal level. Opposed to Prop 32 are the nation’s leading good-government groups – Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and others. Common Cause California has accused the measure’s conservative backers of “trying to use our anger and mistrust to change the rules for their own benefit” and of “laughable” deception, while the League of Women Voters says that Prop 32 is “not what it seems, and it will hurt everyday Californians”. Sacramento Bee senior editor Dan Morain, meanwhile, says the initiative “wears a soiled white hat” and is “dripping with cynicism”.

If Prop 32 passes in November, rightwing activists will promote a tsunami of ballot initiatives designed to drive down working conditions in both the public and private sectors. California’s workers could soon face the weakest labour standards in the country.

This is the biggest threat to California’s future in decades. It’s up to all of us to stop it.

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