9 For the 99 – Restoring the Real Economy

Remember how aggressively our leaders have talked about tackling unemployment and the housing crisis?

Remember all the strong action to make good on their promises?

Me neither.

Remember how all our leaders criticized each other for taking money from Wall Street and other powerful corporate interests?

Remember all the potent steps they took to rid our democracy of corporate money?

Me neither.

You’ve probably heard of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9-tax plan, the scheme he says will get the economy going. Do you think it will work?

Here’s our proposal to restore the real economy. Unlike the solutions proposed by our leaders, these proposals focus on the problems faced every day by most people, not bankers.

We’ll be offering it at OccupyLA in the next couple of days to complement their work.

  1. Support 28A, constitutional amendment overturning U.S. Supreme Court “Citizens United” ruling to stop the flood of toxic corporate cash poisoning our democracy
  2. Prosecute Wall Street crime, not Wall Street protestors
  3. Give citizens same right to borrow taxpayer money from the Fed at the same low interest rates that Wall Street got in the bailout
  4. Cap bank fees and interest rates
  5. Offer real foreclosure relief:  Require banks to provide principal reduction for underwater mortgages, including allowing judges to reduce home mortgage principal in bankruptcy court to encourage mortgage modifications
  6. Repeal unnecessary tax loopholes and other corporate subsidies (overseas tax breaks, local & state tax bribes for moving jobs from one community to another, make corporations pay taxes) and transfer savings to taxpayers and small businesses in the form of tax cuts.
  7. Repeal corporate-backed NAFTA-style trade deals, which export U.S. jobs overseas, reduce wages of American workers to that of laborers in foreign countries and weaken environmental regulation.
  8. Restore traditional separations between federally guaranteed consumer banking from other, riskier, financial business.
  9. Reform student debt, stop predatory practices.

 

 

For more information, check out http://www.wheresourmoney.org

On Facebook https://www.facebook.com/wheresourmoney

Twitter http://twitter.com/ - !/WheresOurMoney

Support 28A http://www.wheresourmoney.org/campaign-2011/

 

 

 

 

 

Action / Citizens United / Congress / Foreclosure / Martin Column / Supreme Court - 10/20/2011

Tweet Charlie: Pop the Corporate Personhood Question

Now that Mitt Romney has taken a stand on corporate personhood, shouldn’t the rest of the Republican field?

Luckily, they have the perfect opportunity to all go on the record this Tuesday at their debate in New Hampshire.

They may need a little help. That’s why we’re tweeting the debate moderator, Charlie Rose, to remind him about this key issue and suggest he should pin the candidates down on their stance.

In case you missed it, Romney made his position clear at the Iowa State Fair in August, when he said, in response to an angry heckler, “Corporations are people, my friend.”

The only other Republican candidate who I found has taken a stand is Ron Paul, who came out strongly against the notion that corporations are people.

Rose also might want to follow up with Romney: if corporations are people for purposes of political contributions, why aren’t they people for the purposes of paying taxes, where they have an entirely separate set of laws that enable corporations to take advantage of all kinds of arcane loopholes, so that many of the largest companies, like General Electric, pay absolutely no taxes?

If Charlie wants to get beyond the rhetoric to the heart of the uneasy feeling most people are having about our political system, he should follow up with these questions:

Is it good for our country for corporate lobbyists to have unlimited access to our politicians to engineer trillions in no strings attached bailouts and other special treatment for their clients, while Americans without that access get screwed?

Is it OK for corporations to buy our politicians with lavish anonymous contributions, making a mockery of our democracy? 

Nothing shows the disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country better than the U.S. Supreme Court’s terrible Citizen United decision last year, which defined corporations as people under the First Amendment for purposes of influencing elections and unleashed a tsunami of anonymous corporate donations to politicians and their PACs.

Isn’t the best way to fix the corporate dominance over our politics to pass a constitutional amendment, like the one we have proposed here, to undo Citizens United?

I’m sure I’m not the only American who’d like to hear the Republican candidates’ answers to these questions. I’m sure plenty of other Americans would like to hear the answers as well.

Tweet Charlie @charlieroseshow. Ask him in your own words or feel free to send him this post.

Go ahead, Charlie, pop the questions.

Citizens United / Martin Column - 10/07/2011

Government Under the Influence

While the media’s grand poobahs have been poopooing the Occupy movement as a bunch of clueless hippies, the occupiers themselves couldn’t be more focused on the source of their frustration.

It’s a political system addicted to corporate cash, with politicians willing to do and say anything to keep it coming.

The occupiers communicate a keen sense of just how outrageously we have been betrayed by a government captured by corporate campaign contributions, lobbyists and the cozy swinging door between government and big business.

Though the occupiers have been criticized for not arriving with a full legislative agenda in tow, the homemade cardboard signs they carry pithily describe the world that has been too often, until now, left out of the political debate between our two parties, which, just like other kinds of addicts, are unable to have an honest conversation about their substance abuse, or to acknowledge the damage it’s done.

The issue of corporate influence peddling has also been largely left out of the media’s horse race political coverage, which focuses on philosophical differences between left and right rather than what the occupiers are focused on – the corporate might that has overwhelmed our politics.

The occupiers know that at the root of our financial collapse, bank bailout, jobless recovery and continuing housing crisis is one root cause – the undue influence of bankers and corporate titans over our political system.


So it’s left to the youth camped out in parks across the country to pose the tough questions.

They’re picking up on the strong rhetoric Barack Obama himself used back when he was a candidate about the need for fundamental change in our political system. But the president abandoned that quest, and now he’s got to raise $1 billion dollars to fund his reelection ambitions.

The occupiers have also picked up on Obama’s call for civility, with their own devotion to process and making sure everybody gets heard. The cynics are having a blast mocking the occupiers’ general assembly meetings. But the atmosphere at the occupations is a world away from the toxic cable talking point battles that have gotten the country nowhere. Let’s see who has the last laugh.

Here at WheresOurMoney, we’re offering a powerful antidote to the toxic flow of corporate money that is poisoning our democracy: a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s wrong-headed Citizens United ruling, which said that for purposes of political contributions, corporations are just like people. This terrible decision will only make a bad situation worse and we’ve got to start the fight against it now. You can read the amendment, get more background on Citizens United, and sign a petition here.

Citizens United / Martin Column / President Barack Obama - 10/06/2011

Occupy Washington

Emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court, big corporations have been busy exercising their newly granted First Amendment rights. Now a growing number of Americans are exercising theirs, assembling in cities throughout the nation to protest the bailouts, budget cuts and other artifacts of the Wall Street financial debacle three years ago this month.

Americans are notoriously slow to rouse, even when they are hurting. And we are certainly hurting: nine percent of Americans are “officially” unemployed; count those who have given up looking or have taken jobs far beneath their skill and ability, and one in five are struggling to stay afloat. Those fortunate enough to hang on to their jobs have to worry about the cost of health insurance, gas and groceries. 81% of Americans say the country is on the wrong track. The other twenty percent are presumably among those who lay claim to most of the wealth of our country.

Eighteen days ago, a few hundred citizens rallied in New York City, inspired by a call to “Occupy Wall Street” proposed by a magazine article. At first, the protestors – largely young people - got a snide blow-off from the New York Times. But thanks in part to some gratuitous pepper spray from the police, media coverage grew along with the protestors’ numbers. Last weekend, thousands marched in New York, while citizens in Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Denver, Madison, Atlanta and Boston have turned out. The list is growing. Participants defy categorization or caricature: they come from all walks of life, all age groups, all ideologies. All share the view that the country has run off the rails.

Europeans have been protesting for months, their economies suffering severe collateral damage from the economic contagion unleashed by the Great Recession here at home. In Iran, Egypt and other Middle East nations, anger at poverty and political oppression boiled over earlier this year; dictators were overthrown.

But until now, most Americans have occupied nothing more than their living rooms – odd, since America’s own citizen revolution has been the beacon of democracy for the rest of the world. Many no doubt are simply too busy and too tired: two wage earner families, with some parents holding two jobs each. Some have lost so much confidence in government and in themselves that their sense of powerlessness has led to personal paralysis. No one can challenge the decision to stay home.

But the choice to stand in protest is the one singular act of political power left to the silent majority of the American people. A radical United States Supreme Court has concluded that corporate donations to politicians – a.k.a. bribery – are a form of “expression” that is protected by the First Amendment. The multinational conglomerates have used their vast wealth to seize control of our country. This has to change, and it has to be done by an amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifying that the right to support candidates and causes in elections belongs only to human beings - you can start the process right here. In the meantime, powerful as they are, corporations cannot march down our streets. Only human beings can do that.

Inevitably, the defenders of the intolerable status quo try to brand protests and protestors as insubordinate. They know that a citizenry, aroused, is a fearsome force. In recent days, as more Americans stand up to denounce the virulently destructive disparity in incomes and opportunities between the corporate elites and everyone else, the corporate hacks on Capitol Hill and the talk radio commentariat indicted the discussion as “class warfare.” Apparently that’s impermissible in our democracy because it challenges the core concept that “we the people” rule, and “we” is supposed to mean all of us. That’s precisely what’s at stake, of course, and the people demanding that it be addressed are nothing short of patriots.

Warren Buffet, the world’s second richest person according to Forbes, told CNN last week: “Actually, there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won.”

As we reported back in 2009, Wall Street has occupied Washington for too long. Now it’s up to us to take it back.

 

Harvey Column - 10/04/2011

Get Off Corporate Crack

I spent last week at the Netroots Nation conference in Minneapolis, a gathering of activists who embrace the progressive label in one way or another.

The news media was there in force, churning out stories about how these progressives are dissatisfied with President Obama’s performance. That’s especially true in his handling of the economy, where unemployment is still too high, the foreclosure crisis is still rampant, the financial sector still hasn’t been adequately reformed after its excesses and Wall Street lobbyists have tangled up in knots even the meager attempts to regulate bankers.

One refrain summed up the frustration with the president’s performance on the economy: “No one has gone to jail.”

But beyond the venting that the media focused on was another, potentially bigger story that has the possibility of leapfrogging the divide between left and right.

That was the emerging demand for a mass movement to rid our politics of the corporate funding that has been as devastating as crack cocaine was in the streets.

Our politicians are hooked on corporate crack, and they will do anything and say anything to get it. They will break any promise, without caring how foolish and hypocritical they look.

This corporate money undermines both parties: Democrats promise to protect workers and consumers but end up promoting ineffective half-measures, while Republicans express support for the free market but actually support the unfettered power of a corporate oligarchy.

I had the opportunity to point out a recent example of how this corporate crack makes fools out of politicians and even the president of the United States during a Netroots session with Jeremy Bird, national strategy adviser to the Obama campaign.

I recounted how one day after reading about a secret meeting between Obama and his Wall Street donors at the White House, I received an email from Obama asking for five bucks, promising a different kind of fundraising campaign that didn’t rely on fat cats.

“Which is it?” I asked Bird. You can read Roll Call’s account here.

Bird responded that Obama’s “multi-faceted” fundraising wouldn’t take money from political campaign committees or lobbyists,  but Wall Street contributions are welcome.

Does the president really see a distinction, or is he just hoping no one is paying attention?

If the politicians are counting on people feeling too cynical and helpless to take action, that may be changing, sparked by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens’ United, which said that corporate campaign contributions are a form of free speech so they cannot be restricted.

During another session, John Nichols, the Nation’s crusading Washington correspondent issued a fiery call for a nationwide movement to promote a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens’ United.

He compared the potential impact of such a movement to the impact of  the movement for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Though the “right to life” movement hasn’t achieved success. Nichols said, it has changed the nature of the debate.
Back on the subject of overturning Citizens’ United, Nichols said, “I can live without the actual constitutional amendment. But I can’t live without the movement.”

We need a movement that labels corporate crack exactly what it is.  It’s not speech. It’s bribery.

 

Action / Around the Web / Congress / Financial Reform Legislation / Martin Column / Outrage / President Barack Obama - 06/22/2011

It's Alive!

Wall Street has weighed in with powerful evidence that the United States Supreme Court was right when it concluded a few weeks ago that corporations are the same as human beings. Turns out, Wall Street has feelings, and they are hurt.

Wall Street is so “irked” at President Obama and the Democratic Party that it is rebuffing their requests for political money, according to the New York Times. “[I]t doesn’t feel good,” when Obama talks about Wall Street greed, complained a Morgan Stanley executive. “The expectation in Washington is that ‘We can kick you around, and you are still going to give us money,’” whined a major Wall Street executive. He warned: “‘We are not going to play that game anymore.’”

That’s just a bluff, of course, because Wall Street has been playing the Washington money game for decades – in fact, as we documented in our two hundred page report (PDF) last year, the nation’s economy is in the toilet now because between 1998 and 2008, Wall Street spent $5 billion on Washington, and Washington, without even a hint of partisanship, rolled over – deregulating the industry and encouraging the orgy of speculation that led to the crash.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case guarantees that big business will always be happy by solidifying corporate control over the nation’s legislative process. Discarding one hundred years of previous decisions, the court held that, under the First Amendment, when corporations spend money in the political process, it’s the same as when people make speeches.

This is a travesty. The practical effect of the decision is to accord huge multinational corporations the power to nullify the First Amendment rights of individual Americans. While you and I are “free” to drag a soapbox on to a street corner and  proclaim to our heart’s content, credit card companies, hedge funds, insurance companies are now “free” to unleash tens of millions of dollars from their corporate treasuries in an attempt to fix the outcome of any political debate in their favor. Sometimes that will backfire, as it did when insurance companies spent $80 million trying to persuade voters to defeat Proposition 103, the insurance reform I wrote back in 1988.  Californians figured out who was on the their side, and who wasn’t. But in the vast majority of lower profile issues, in which elected officials are called upon to choose between the policy choice favored by a huge money donor and the one that’s better for constituents, the money talks.

That’s why, despite the near-collapse of our financial system at the hands of the Money Industry, their lobbyists have still been able to stymie just about every congressional proposal to prevent another crash: reform of derivatives and the student loan system, creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and the recent proposal by the White House to ban banks from speculation.

The tyranny of the British monarchy led to the American Revolution. The Supreme Court’s decision substitutes a corporatocracy for the oppression of kings. So far, the tea parties that seem to be erupting spontaneously around the nation are directing their fire at the bailouts and other encroachments of government. They also need to keep an eye on the corporations that are arguably more powerful than the government already, or will soon be so thanks to the Supreme Court.

Harvey Column / Uncategorized - 02/09/2010