Does Roger Ailes set the agenda for the GOP? GOP Kingmaker: Fox News chief and the Republican Party. Transcript and video of Cenk Uygur MSNBC TV May 23, 2011

Posted on May 23, 2011 by William Brighenti


I am excited to share our first-ever “power panel.” I like pronouncing things in different ways. David Sirota, radio host, Jane Hamsher, the founder of Fire Dog Lake, and Adam Green, of the Bold Progressives. Look at all those lovely progressives. That is an all-star progressive panel. I love it. Guys, first topic is Fox News, a new report out in “New York” magazine about how they secretly run the Republican Party. Not sure I’m surprised by that, but I find one of the quotes interesting. A person said — you can’t run for the Republican nomination without talking to Roger, and every single candidate has consulted with Roger, but he hasn’t found any of them compelling, quote, he finds flaws in every one, said a person familiar with his thinking. David, let me start with you. Is he the boss of the Republican Party?

I think there’s something to that. My take is Roger Ailes is a businessman first. He works for Rupert Murdock and they want to make a lot of money, and they’re interested in having a strong nominee. Especially if it’s a conservative candidate that can rally Fox’s viewership. Can he win without kissing his ring?

No. It’s clear at this point that Roger Ailes has to say we’re going to get behind a candidate before they can expect to win. In telling fashion, now that he’s casting his gaze on Chris Christie, the White House is doing opposition research on him. Roger Ailes has his limits, he thinks Glenn Beck is — and Sarah Palin made a huge blunder. This is when so much media consolidation is in the power of one person and Roger Ailes has successfully leveraged the ever-expanding empire to where he can virtually block out the sun.

And it turns out, you mentioned Palin in there. An insider apparently says he thinks Palin is stupid, which is, wow, okay. And of course Fox News shot back saying if he finds who that insider is, he no longer will be an insider, which to me is not much of a denial.

She gave that blood libel speech which may have been the stupid — —

No, absolutely. I think they screwed up here, right? The whole point that Fox did, and I think the most damaging part was they would say we’re fair and balanced, the rest of the news media should listen to us. But look at the other quotes from the article. Chris Siroti says he’s just got it. We’re going into an election period and he doesn’t want Fox to be seen as the front of the Republican party, referring to Roger Ailes, of course, but way too late, right?

It would be interesting to see what would happened if a focus group of Fox viewers read this article that really pulled the veneer away from Fox. Fox’s big argument is away from elitism. This is a gatekeeper role, and also at a point when Sarah Palin needed a ride across the nation, Fox loaned her their personal corporate jet and gave her a ride. I actually encourage all Fox viewers to read this article.

Cenk, if i can add one thing to that, what’s interesting about this piece is it makes very clear that Fox is not conservative television. It’s Republicans party television. There’s a big difference between an ideological perspective and having a complete partisan perspective. I think that’s what Fox’s interest is in, Roger Ailes’ interest, in the Republican party and the political power rather than an ideological message that is based in some sort of conservative principle.

I think that’s exactly right. I think you nailed it. When Glenn Beck goes conservative and tea party, they liked it in the beginning, and all of a sudden they thought it was getting out of control and hurting the Republican party, not hurting the conservative movement, and all of a sudden they show Glenn Beck the door.

I think Roger Ailes is perhaps the most powerful guy in the country, there he is with Chris Christie deciding who should be the candidate, inviting him along with Rush Limbaugh. I think you guys nailed it. It’s the elitism of Fox news deciding who will run the country. Didn’t they do this before? You know, back in, of course, in 2000 most famously Fox news picked president Bush’s cousin, and he was the one who declared Bush as president. Isn’t this part and parcel of the problem and why the rest of the media have to start ignoring these guys who are clearly a propaganda machine?

Absolutely. I don’t feel like I can give much insight. This is confirming what we’ve been saying for years. The media and Fox viewers need to read this article and get out of our system the fact that Fox is in any way, shape or form a legitimate news outlet. It’s not.

Let’s stay on presidential politics for a second. Trump says he might get back into the race. Let me show you a quick bite here.

It was just a decision I made, but who knows, stranger things have happened.

You would not rule out a late entry if nothing pans out for the GOP?

I would not rule it out, no.

Can I get an across the board agreement from all you guys, Trump, clown of the earth, totally not relevant?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think he’s very successful at getting his name in the headlines, and he’s done it once again.

We’re absolutely clear on that. Now, speaking of presidential candidates, Biden apparently in Cincinnati told a bunch of funders he might run in 2016. He would be 74 at the time. Does that make any sense?

I think it is absurd, but isn’t the most absurd. Biden’s job is going to Capitol Hill and being the great compromiser. They’re living in bizarro land and not adding anything that the American public cares about. They’re not dealing with the jobs situation, not dealing with health care, not dealing with the things that Americans want. They’re listening to people who think that cutting medicare is a good idea, and Biden has to sell this in 2016? I think he’ll have a tough time.

David and Adam, any chance he runs or can win?

I think there’s a chance that he’s going to run. I think it won’t be a situation like Al Gore in 2000 where he’s sort of the presumptive nominee, and I don’t think that Joe Biden hasn’t made it necessarily a name for himself, which I think will probably be necessary for a Democratic candidate in 2016.

Adam?

Yeah, 2016 will be an opportunity for us to elect a real progressive president. I don’t think an old Democrat is the same as a bold progressive. We’ll be looking for that kind of ideal candidate. We need one in 2016.

I knew you were going to go there. Let’s go to the senate races. One? Ohio, Montana, Missouri, Minnesota. I know, Adam, you were part of the people that commissioned a poll in those states. Let me show the Ohio numbers. When you ask people, hey, are you opposed to cutting medicare to balance the budget, boy, are they opposed to it. 76%. 61% opposed to cutting medicaid, and 80% opposed to cutting social security. What message do you think those Democratic senators in those races get out of a poll like that?

The message is don’t even come close to cutting social security, medicare and medicaid benefits. It’s a political loser. Myself, Jane and David, all of us in the end of 2010 we were toll told as progressives, don’t take your ball and go home. Get in line, and our answer is we’re supporting Democrats, but we warned you if you dropped the ball, your turnout will not be, we’re telling you way in advance, don’t go there, do not cut social security and medicare. It will be those voters in Ohio, Missouri, and other places. You have to have principles.

They’re getting great political capital out of this, saying the Republicans are coming after your medicare. Do you think there’s a chance they’ll strike a deal, cut medicare and social security anyway?

That’s been their line all along. We need to cut it to save it so the Republicans won’t do it because they’ll do worse. The message of this poll should be that is just nothing that people will ever believe. If you cut it, you cut it. You take away your boogeyman: you have that wonderful Ryan vote that’s now like the beast that ate Cincinnati. And if they try and say we’re going to do this grand compromise, we’ll just cut it a little bit, they’ll not only take that beast away, they’ll piss everyone else off. I don’t know why they would do it, but it seems like something they want to do.

Last thing, Dave, remember the president came out and gave a speech and said I’m going to do three times as many spending cuts as tax increases, basically, can we walk that back?

I think the poll actually, what it does is creates an interesting dynamic where you may have the senators up for reelection being the ones who are giving voice to the idea that the president’s plan to reduce medicare and potentially cut social security is wrong. In other words, you may have a situation where these seemingly most electorally vulnerable democrats are the ones leading the charge within the Democratic party to tell the president he is off base.

All right. Well, let’s see how it turns out. Very interesting, no question. David Sirota, Jane Hamsher, and Adam Green, the power panel. Thank you guys.

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Horrifying Super-Duper PAC. Transcript and Video of Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks.

Posted on May 21, 2011 by William Brighenti

Just when you thought that money has corrupted our political system as much as it possibly could, the Republicans are here to the rescue to prove you wrong and show you how much more it could be corrupted.

The man in charge of this effort is a lawyer named James Bopp. If you are familiar with the corrupting influence of money, he’s actually an old school corrupter. He’s been doing this for a long time.

He’s the guy who came up with the 527s back in the beginning of 2000, 2001, etc. At the time, the Democrats fought it. Now everybody does 527s: that’s outside money that pours in to basically buy our politicians. He came up with that. Of course, he did that for the Republicans. And he’s the one who pushed the Citizens United case. So this guy has been a disaster for the country.

And he’s got a brilliant new idea: it’s called a Super Duper PAC. It’s not just a political action committee, a PAC, it’s a Super PAC that allows not only to raise outside money that is unlimited as Citizens United allows for but he wants to bring in politicians to do the fund raising, and he wants to earmark the money if they want to for that specific politician.

To give you a sense of how this works. If John Boehner wanted to raise money from an executive at JP Morgan Chase or at Exxonmobil, he could only get $2,500 from him. Under Citizens United, they still can’t give money directly to John Boehner above that, but they still could spend it on their own in that race or they can give it to a different group because of Citizens United.

But what this proposal does is if John Boehner says to that JP Morgan executive, instead of giving me $2,500, give me $250,000, but don’t give it directly to me, but give it to the Super PAC, and the Super PAC will then say, if you want, spend it only on John Boehner’s race. The only thing is because of the law, you are not allowed to coordinate with John Boehner. Who cares.

So the Republican Super PAC would come in and say, we are not coordinating with John Boehner, we just happen to spend all of the money pulverizing his opponent, ran like a million negative ads against him. Basically all of the rules that exist right now, the very little rules left, are obliterated. They can spend unlimited amounts of money raised by politicians for politicians, and then a guy like John Boehner knows that I’m not just getting $2,500 here and $2,500 there, I know that that company is putting in a million bucks or ten million bucks to make sure I get re-elected.

Now what do you think John Boehner is going to do? He’s going to work for them. He’s going to do whatever they tell him to do. He always does that to a large extent anyway but this makes it even bigger and more grotesque and with absolutely no check out.

Some are complaining that this would be, parts of it, would be illegal.  James Bopp says we cannot coordinate the spending but we can coordinate the fundraising, and he might have a decent argument there, given Citizens United and given we have a completely right-wing Supreme Court that’ll say yes to any unlimited money case. But there are other aspects of it that might be wrong in terms of how they spend the money, and it cannot really be unlimited money that goes into these campaigns, etc. That gets into the details of the law.

But here’s what Bopp says: what difference does it make? First of all he says, I’ll just do this anyway and we’ll win the election and then we’ll worry about it later, and that part is implied. The second part is just flat out what he says, I would love to take it to the Supreme Court. Let’s go to the Supreme Court. They will rule for me anyway. They’re conservatives. They’re in my back pocket. Although he doesn’t say this, but why do you think we filled the Supreme Court with all of those conservative corporate judges but that they will rule in favor of the corporations.

And the corporations will spend this money and they will buy our politicians for a very cheap price and they get billions and billions as they do now in subsidies, loopholes, they won’t have to pay their taxes, etc., and then they’ll cut your medicare, your social security, they’ll increase your payroll taxes, etc., and make the middle class pay and make sure that the corporations are untouched. If you thought it was bad before, wait till they unleash the Super PAC.

We’re in massive trouble. The only answer is a full-scale rebellion. I don’t mean physically, I don’t mean with arms like the right wingers, I mean politically. We have got to get together, a merry band of men, that is going to rebell against this, and go state by state. If we have to, we have to pass an amendment that corporations are not human beings, they should not have the freedom of speech that human beings have, they should not have special rights.

Right now they have special rights. A corporation is a legal fiction, it is an entity created by the government, funny enough. And it says that the people that run the corporation or even the shareholders are not even responsible for the actions of the corporation so that is a special right that they have. So if they pollute a river and somebody dies from that pollution as an example, they are not criminally responsible, not the shareholders, not necessarily the executives, etc. That’s the special rights that they have.

On top of that, they get all of your rights and more. They get freedom of speech, so-called freedom of speech to spend money to buy politicians and they have the gobs of money you don’t have to buy those politicians.

These corporations are the Borg. They think resistance is futile. They are taking over. And their complete conquest is nearly finished. That’s why we need a rebellion. And we need to get together and fight against this big money otherwise we will have entirely lost our democracy.

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Proof that Eric Cantor and GOP Republicans are screwing you for money. Transcript and video of Cenk Uygur

Posted on May 21, 2011 by William Brighenti

Cenk Uygur: The Republicans are brazen. Eric Cantor spoke to the CME Group: they specialize in derivative products; in fact, private exchanges for derivative products. These are the most dangerous financial products out there. Markets for derivatives crashed the economy in 2008 and nearly caused a worldwide economic collapse. But who cares, they pay Republicans. So Cantor spoke to them to collect the money. And he even encouraged them. And by the way, one thing they speculate on is oil. So they make money on your gas prices going higher. And Eric Cantor, the House Majority leader for the Republicans, loves them.

CANTOR: Now the grow piece, it comes back to what you do here. You provide the center, it’s almost like the center of the universe for liquidity. It is ultimately providing a service to investors and to small business owners at the end to control and predict their risk and try to minimize the cost of goods that they buy and ultimately to lower their costs of operating so that there can be a cheaper outcome whether it is good and capital or what have you. And you’ve managed to be able to serve that function in the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) Group for so much of this country and the world and you’ve also managed to position as a true world leader. We want that in every arena. We want to help you continue to lead for America, that means we gotta do our part when you see the implementation of Dodd-Frank coming at you like a barreling train. We want to help control that so that we can get some sensible, sensible follow up to that legislation. It’s very troubling. But we’ve got similar instances in much of, a lot of other areas. It’s not just financial services where federal bureaucracy has rum amok. So the Republicans and our growth agenda are very focused on stopping regulations that negatively impact people who want to create growth and value. Whether it’s the EPA, the FDA, the FCC, the SEC, the CFTC, you name it, there’s an acronym for a federal agency causing harm right now. We’re trying to pull that in.

Cenk Uygur: I don’t know if you understood the importance of that little speech right there. He’s going to the guys who are endangering the whole world economy with derivatives trading, they’re taking massive risks, and he’s saying I will do whatever you want me to. He’s telling his bosses, he says, what you do is great; you are the world leaders. Basically he’s thanking them for taking that kind of wild risk with the entire world economy.

Why? Because he doesn’t give a damn. He gets paid by those guys. He’s there to collect money. It’s said, it’s pathetic. And did you hear him? That Dodd-Frank bill, the one that regulates you guys so that you don’t destroy the economy again, and it barely regulates you, is very troubling. We’re trying to destroy it right now so you have no regulation, so you can take any risk you like, you can run amok. You can make a little bit more money in the short run and destroy the economy in the long run. I want to help to encourage you; I’m a Republican.

And then he says that he wants to gut everything. FDA, the Food and Drug Administration: who needs safe food or safe drugs, let’s destroy it.

SEC: they regulate the Wall Street guys even more, and the stock market, etc., making sure there is no insider trading. Maybe we can get rid of those guys, too. In fact, the Republicans are looking to defund them as we speak, not entirely, but Draconian cuts.

So, hey, those no cops looking out. So robbers, you can do anything you like as long as you give me a paycheck, Eric Cantor said.

EPA: We’ll get rid of that. Pollute as much as you like. Who cares. It all comes out of the American taxpayer, and Republicans don’t give a damn. All they care about are their donors.

That was a perfect little microcosm of what the Republicans actually care about. They’re sucking up to his bosses, those corporate donors that destroyed the economy in 2008, that led to 10% unemployment, 8 million jobs lost, 28% of the houses still today are underwater because of the calamity caused by those derivatives. And they’re going to do it again, and Eric Cantor and the Republican Party can’t wait to help them do it.

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The Rat PAC. GOP Looking to Super PAC for Help. How the Republican Super Pac Works.

Posted on May 18, 2011 by William Brighenti

The Republican party is deeply corrupt and today we got the latest example of that. GOP members of the Senate voted overwhelmingly in support of a bill that would speed up and expand offshore oil drilling, even though experts say that such a move has almost nothing to do with lowering gas prices. But what it does do is make these oil companies much richer. It comes a day after Senate Republicans blocked an attempt to repeal $21 billion in oil subsidies tor the five big oil companies. This is part and parcel of what the GOP is these days: they are corporate robots. To further prove that point they’re furiously trying to repeal all regulations on the banks right now so that they can make even more money by taking wild risks and endangering the whole economy. Now why would they do that?

In 2010 alone GOP Congress members received $58,797,874 in contributions from the financial industry. They are not your representatives. They are the representatives of the multinational corporations who buy them. But as corrupt as the GOP is, it is about to get worse.

Now the Republicans are trying to solicit unlimited contributions from a so-called Super PAAC. Now here’s how it works. Let’s say a candidate approaches a wealthy donor to contribute to their re-election campaign. Under federal law, that person can only give $2,500 to the candidate. In the past, that’s the end of the conversation. But under the new plan, the candidate could ask that same donor to pony up an unlimited amount of money to the Republican super PAC. Now the donor could specify that all that money be spent supporting that particular candidate or attacking their opponents. Then the super PAC could buy ads, send out mailings, and all those things that a political campaign does.

So if it wasn’t clear enough that the politicians were bought before, this will make it super clear. They will literally be working for the highest bidder. It’s a disaster in the making. Let’s see if anyone can stop it. We’re going to talk to Independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, who I know is not in favor of the super PAC. Senator Sanders, how do you stop it? It looks like they’re on a steamroller, headed in that direction The more money they have, the more misleading ads they can run. How do you get in front of it?

In this particular indicates, I think the lawyers are going to have to take a hard look at it, because it certainly violates the spirit of existing campaign finance law, as weak as that law currently is. Because what you’re having is the RNC setting up another organization with the same members that exist in the RNC to violate the limits on campaign contributions, and to be able to bring in huge amounts of money without any transparency: to do it in secret, and that is a violation of the law. So I think the lawyers are going to take a deeper look.

But the deeper issue, as you just articulated, is that big money owns and controls much of what takes place in the United States Congress. We had a bad situation before, since Citizens United, the situation is much, much worse. And in a variety of ways we’re going to have to take apart Citizens United. We need to pass legislation to minimize what it is doing. And at the end of the day, we probably will have to pass a constitutional amendment, which brings forth the radical opinion that, guess what, a corporation is not a person and that a handful of billionaires cannot pollute and take over the political system by spending unlimited sums of money in secret in order to elect candidates who support their agenda.
I couldn’t possibly agree more with on you that front. I do want to discuss the legal issue with you more. The guy who is leading this for the Republicans, a guy named James Bopp, Jr., and he’s the one who created the 527s in the first place, those are the nonprofit groups that do the attack ads, he’s the one who brought the Citizens United case in the first case, and he’s the one who is pushing the super PACs. And to your point about how it might be illegal, here’s what he says, “Who cares?… The supreme court doesn’t care and I don’t care? the FEC [Federal Election Commission] doesn’t care? No one that matters cares.” Wow, what a quote, but you know what? Is he right about that, Senator Sanders? The Supreme Court is 5 to 4 conservatives. If it goes there, we’re going to win anyway. It doesn’t matter whether we’re right or wrong.

The answer is we have to give him credit for his incredible arrogance and for his contempt for the political process, and for his belief that, in fact, the supreme court with a 5 to 4 vote is there to protect big-money interests. I’m not so sure that he is right. Even the supreme court I think may take a hard look at this and rule that it is absolutely in violation of existing campaign finance law. I think in this case they may have gone too far. But the end of the day, the point that he is making is saying, money runs everything, and we can’t be stopped.

And you’re asking me how ultimately we fight back against that. Well, the way you fight back effectively is through grass-roots organizing. These guys may have billions of dollars, they may have the supreme court, they may be able to atract the money from the Koch Brothers and all the billionaires, but if we can build a strong grass-roots movement of politically conscious people who understand that the function of government is to represent working people and the middle class and not billionaires, you know what? We can beat them.

And I think one of the important points that we now have is to make it very, very clear. How corrupt the system is, to what degree the billionaires and large corporations are manipulating the campaign finance system in order to give tax breaks to the rich, in order to continue unregulated free trade, in order to deregulate Wall Street and the oil companies and environmental protection laws. So I think their arrogance may be something that we can effectively use against them.

Senator Sanders, I think that the system is corrupt, as you said, and I agree, but I want to get into the more specifics. I believe the Republican party is a wholly owned subsidiary of these corporations. I don’t think they are honest actors. I don’t think they think, “Oh, how about this drilling law, how will it affect the American people? How about these oil subsidies, how is it going to affect the American people?” I think they only care about how it affects their bottom line. Do you think that’s accurate?

Let me speak as an Independent, and that’s as the longest standing Independent in the United States Congress. I think at this particular point, not all, but many Republicans are doing what they are doing, not for these great philosophical reasons, but for the fact that what they do can attract huge sums of money. You can get money from Wall Street when you talk about deregulating Wall Street and not bringing back Glass-Steagall Act , for example. You get money from the oil companies when you talk about continuing to give them these tax breaks despite the fact that they are making billions in profits. You get money from the military industrial complex if you continue to support large military budgets and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So if you’re asking me are there feelings just philosophical and not related to the money that’s coming in and their dependence on big money and corporate interests, I would think you’re right. But as an Independent, to say it’s only the Republicans and not any Democrats I think would be inaccurate. I think there are a number of Democrats who you can make that charge against as well.

I am glad you said that. I couldn’t agree more. I think it affects the Democratic Party as well. I think the only difference is that the Republicans are wholly bought by the corporations; the Democrats are partly bought by the corporations. A quick example: blue-dog Democrats, a lot of them lost in the last election; a third of them are already lobbyists, working for the same corporations that they supported while in the House, and those are Democrats.

I think a better example is, the middle class is collapsing, and poverty is increasing and the rich are getting richer. What you’re seeing from the Republicans, for example, is tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, oil companies profits are soaring, they are protecting the tax loopholes for the oil companies. They areworking day by day by day for the interests of the wealthiest, the most powerful people. The needs of the middle class and working families are not being heard at all. In fact, as you well know, the budget that passed the House is going to decimate medicaid, voucherize medicare, huge cuts to education, environmental protection and the needs of our kids. so this is the party that is there to protect the interests for the wealthy and the powerful. We need to educate, we need to organize, we need to defeat them, we need to put pressure on those Democrats who are also indebted to corporate interests.

Absolutely. We need to fight back. And the one leading the fight is Independent Senator, Bernie Sanders.  Really appreciate your time tonight.

Good to be with you.

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Banksters: fraud, false claims, and more fraud. Wall Street banks: too big to jail?

Posted on May 17, 2011 by William Brighenti

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside JP Morgan Chase’s annual shareholders meeting demanding justice for what they called unfair foreclosure practices. And it looks like they might be getting what they want. Wow. That would be surprising.

We are finally seeing some signs of the government starting to crack down on banks that are playing a role in this mortgage crisis. The New York Times is reporting that the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has requested information from Wall Street banks in recent weeks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom. He specifically requested meetings with representatives from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

Schneiderman is investigating into the secularization of loans, the pooling of thousands of home loans into securities subsequently sold to investors. He is attempting to determine if the banks knew that billions of dollars of these loans would fail when packaging them into securities.

Some say Scheiderman is grandstanding. I say, go get them, Eric. These guys knew they were passing this junk. We see all the emails.

And they were selling off to things like our pension funds. If they profited off that fraud, there should be an incredibly high price to pay, civil and criminal.

Also today the Huffington Post reported that a set of confidential Federal audits are accusing some of the nation’s largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in the handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government backed loans. Apparently five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General. They specifically examined Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Ally Financial.

Sound familiar? Yes, they are the same list of banksters. Allegedly the auditors found that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims. Last year in the robo-signing scandal, banks were found to have filed false court documents in foreclosure cases

Fraud, false claims, and more fraud. This is not a free market. This is the average guy getting ripped off, then getting thrown out of his home, and then the taxpayers paying the bill. And who are the only ones making money out of all of this? Of course, the big banks who regularly engage in this fraud. There has got to be an end to it.

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Over a barrel. Defining the GOP’s love affair with big oil.

Posted on May 17, 2011 by William Brighenti

Right now, the Senate is voting on a Democratic bill to stop wasting billions of dollars on subsidies for wildly profitable oil companies. Unfortunately, but not too surprisingly, it’s not expected to pass. Tea Party people, do you get it? These Republicans don’t give a damn about the budget and they don’t give a damn about you. They are willing to blow a huge hole in that budget just to help oil guys. All they want to do is deliverer those big, fat payoffs to their donors.

But on the upside, Republicans are now on the record. They just voted to give away billions of your money to big oil again. Now, by our account, only two Republicans voted to end the subsidies. They are both from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. The rest, by voting against this bill today, just agreed to give $21 billion to the biggest oil companies, not just in the country but in the world. And by the way, they are also the most profitable companies in the world. Independents, do you see what’s going on here?

The Republicans don’t give a damn about the free market. They are perfectly happy to give huge companies even bigger advantages by skewing the tax code in their favor. They also don’t give a damn about what real Americans actually think. 74% of Americans support ending these insane oil subsidies. You think the Republicans are going to listen to them? Of course not. They are going to listen to their donors, the oil companies who paid them to be their representatives.

Joining me now to talk about this very issue is Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Budget Committee. Thank you for joining us and our petition on twitter, the young turks petition, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Menendez all joined. Thank you for that.

Thank you for what he have done to galvanize the American people on this. It is important if they haven’t been heard yet, they can go to endbigoilsubsidies.com and let their voices be added to the tens of thousands who have spoken out about these big oil subsidies.

This bill, we just got the word, failed 52-48 so big oil will get to keep their subsidies subsidies.

52-48, we had the 52. It actually — in the ordinary world, won 5-48 consistent with what the American people want but because the Republicans demanded a filibuster-proof vote of 60, they were able to stymie the vote and protect the big oil subsidies.

Now that’s a great point and it should not be understated. The Republicans aren’t just voting against getting rid of these oil subsidies, they are filibustering this bill to make sure under no circumstances do the oil companies pay their fair share.

Yes, a straightup vote, we won.

That’s right and so let’s talk about how we can actually get it done, since they just filibustered it, right? Is it possible the Democrats come into the negotiations on when you talk about balancing the budget and cutting spending and saying, look, we are not going to cut a dime until you cut here, otherwise, no deal?

Look it is really important that we not walk away from this fight. This is the first inning. As I said, the American people are going to continue to make their voice be heard. It is ridiculous, while the Republicans are looking at getting rid of medicare ten years from now, at wiping out planned parenthood, at cutting back savagely on head start programs and saying that the reason they have to do all of this is because the most important issue is our debt and deficit, but it’s not as important as protecting big oil and the totally unnecessary subsidies that they get from the American taxpayer. That’s an argument that we need to continue to have. It resonates in Rhode Island, people in Rhode Island are absolutely fed up with getting clobbered at the pump and we are going to continue to bring this up over and over again.

Senator Schumer said something similar, I want to play that video for you and get your reaction.

Our plan to cut the deficit begins with ending wasteful subsidies to big oil. The Republican plan, as embodied the Ryan amendment, which almost every Republican in the House voted for, begins with ending medicare as we know it. That’s a bright line difference between our side and theirs.

So Senator Whitehouse, given what you said and what Senator Schumer just said, a clear point, will you guys be running ads against the Republicans on this just to pressure them so we can actually get that $21 billion back for the American people?

I’m not in the ad running business, but I’m going to speak out on this every chance I get. And I’m going to continue to force votes on this over and over again. Do you remember when they tried to filibuster Wall Street reform? They won on the first vote, they won on the second vote, they won on the third vote but when it became clear that there was going to be a fourth vote and a fifth after that and a sixth and a seventh, as many as it took, they collapsed under public pressure. And I think we need to keep bringing that public pressure.

Absolutely right.

Do you remember Joshua going around the walls of Jericho? The walls of Jericho did not come down the first time Joshua went around that city.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, thank you very much. Cenk, thank you.

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Best Buy proved to be the Worst Buy of my entire life

Posted on May 14, 2011 by William Brighenti

Best Buy Proves to be Worst BuyDo you remember the days before the big chain stores when there was customer service? I can recall going to G. Fox and being waited on by a sales representative without sending out a search party. I can also recall a “no questions” asked policy of returning merchandise.

About a month ago, during the crunch time of tax season, I purchased an expensive laptop on sale at a Best Buy nearby. At the time of purchase, I knew that I would not have the time then to set the computer up, install various programs, go out and purchase additional programs (since my older computer had Windows Xp and this new laptop had Windows 7), install these new programs as well, and transfer all of my data files onto the new computer. Such a laborious process often consumes a week’s time if all goes well; otherwise, it could consume an eternity.

So I left the laptop sealed and packaged in what appeared to be a flawlessly intact box, believing that it was better left protected in styrofoam, hermetically seal plastic wrap, and a thick cardboard casing than on a desk, prey to six very curious cats. Of course, I foolishly thought that if there were any problems with the laptop, that I could exchange it at Best Buy for another laptop. How dumb!

Yesterday when I finally had time to set up the new laptop, I opened the box, only to discover that the monitor screen had been damaged, making the computer completely useless. Consequently, I hopped into my car and drove down to Best Buy, expecting to exchange the computer for an undamaged one. How dumb again!

When I attempted to exchange the laptop, the manager on duty regarded me with the suspicion of a Gestapo officer examining my DNA. In spite of my repeated assurances that I had not dropped the laptop–swearing up and down that I had not even removed it from the box–he was as unmoved as an IRS agent seizing the very last dollar from my bank account. I explained to him that I had deliberately kept it in its protective styrofoam, sealed and unopened, and stored it in a safe place in my home, away from any temperature extremes, until I was prepared to set it up. My pleas of innocence were of no consequence. He refused to exchange it.

He did, however, offer to send it back to the manufacturer, adding, with the look of “don’t hold your breath’, that it would be entirely up to the manufacturer as to whether the damaged laptop would be replaced by Toshiba. It then occurred to me that Best Buy was simply throwing me under the bus to the whim of a manufacturer located perhaps in some very far off distant land.

The young lady at the desk, who processed my service requisition to have the laptop sent back to Toshiba for possible consideration of an exchange, explained that unless customers return their damaged laptops within an hour or so after purchase, that they are often regarded with the suspicion of having damaged the laptops themselves. I then regretted not having brought a urine sample. I then looked in vain for a lie detector test behind the customer service desk.

So I decided to post this blog entry to make other individuals aware of Best Buy’s posture toward its customers. There’s an old saying: buyer beware. I would also caution when purchasing anything at Best Buy, be afraid…be very afraid, and be certain to bring along your attorney, a notary public, and two witnesses. Needless to say, I recommend never buying anything at Best Buy. But if you do not mind being regarded as a liar, then I suggest before you purchase a laptop from Best Buy, that you have the sales clerk remove it from the box, plug it in, and then test every possible feature and program on that laptop for hours, if not days, before removing it from the store.

Best Buy proved to be the Worst Buy of my entire life.

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Larry Mendte: You’ll never guess what taxes U.S. corporations pay

Posted on May 13, 2011 by William Brighenti

In a prior commentary, I pointed out that GE paid no Federal income taxes in 2010. I also pointed out that the top 100 companies in the United States paid only 6% on average in Federal income taxes last year, instead of the 35% of income taxes that they were supposed to pay; that’s less than the rate that middle class families pay.

I would also like to add now that more than half of the foreign companies that do business in the United States pay no Federal income tax. And also that 38% of American companies pay no income tax.

ExxonMobil in 2009 made $34.8 billion in this country and paid $0 in income taxes. In fact, they claimed a tax benefit of $838 million. They got money back.

Now ExxonMobil does do a lot of business overseas, and guess what? They did pay $15.8 billion in foreign taxes to foreign countries in 2009.

So let’s recap, shall we? ExxonMobil, an American company, paid no American income taxes and, in fact, got $838 million back; however, they did pay $15.8 billion in foreign taxes to foreign countries.

So don’t you think that we could ask GE and ExxonMobil to pay just a little bit more in taxes?

All this talk now occurring in Washington about raising taxes means nothing. The wealthiest Americans and the biggest biggest companies in this country are suppose to pay 35%, but because of the loopholes and deductions, they pay far less than that.

If you want to get serious about balancing the budget, get rid of many of the loopholes and deductions. Congress needs to deal with tax reform. If they don’t, then all this talk about deficit reduction amounts to what GE and ExxonMobil pay in taxes…nothing.

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Larry Mendte: Tax loopholes for big corporations. GE paid no Federal income taxes.

Posted on May 13, 2011 by William Brighenti

 General Electric, one of the biggest companies in the world, paid no corporate income taxes last year. Now that’s not to say that they didn’t spend any money on taxes. They spent a lot of money on taxes. For instance, they spent $21.5 million lobbying Congress: you know, to create loopholes in the tax code that they can take advantage of. And then they spent $150 million to pay 950 accountants to take advantage of those loopholes. All that money, and it’s still a bargain. Let me illustrate their big net tax savings.

Assume that they had to pay 35% taxes on the $5.1 billion that they made just in this country. That would have resulted in Federal income taxes of $1.785 billion. $0 is such a better number for GE. GE, they bring good things to life for themselves.

But it’s not just GE. Of the top 100 companies in America, all of which are supposed to pay 35%, they paid an average 6% in corporate income taxes.

And it’s not just companies. Individuals, especially wealthy individuals, used deductions to lower their tax rate in half, sometimes lower.

So all this talk in Washington about raising the tax rate for families making over $250,000 per year means nothing. What you have to do is reform the tax code and get rid of most of the loopholes and deductions.

Actually you could lower the tax rate into the teens for everybody and still balance the budget just with tax reform. But that’s never going to happen because there’s too much money involved. Just ask GE: “We bring good things to life.”

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Lies, bigger lies, and the susceptibility of the American public to political propaganda

Posted on May 13, 2011 by William Brighenti

Adolf Hitler spewing propaganda to the German publicAdolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels believed that if one told a big lie and repeated it many times that the majority of the general public would believe it. In fact, Goebbels further believed and said, “the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.” Such techniques were not invented by Hitler or Goebbels. Vladimir Lenin was aware of their effectiveness prior to Hitler’s rise to power.

Telling lies to the general public is not only not new, it also is not a governmental practice restricted to foreign lands. After William Casey’s first staff meeting as head of the CIA in 1981, he was quoted as saying,

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

Lenin speaking to a crowd in Red SquareAnd one may recall the lies of the Nixon administration during the Watergate investigations of the 1970s in its attempt to deny its innumerable crimes.

What they all believed and knew is that you could fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and too many of the people too much of the time. What Casey and other American politicians also know is that you need not fool all of the people all of the time, since if you fool enough of the electorate William Casey with Ronald Reaganenough of the time, you could discredit the rest of the people and get re-elected as well as push through your political agenda.  Recall that Hitler seized power by fooling only a third of the people.

Of course, politicians employing propaganda to achieve political ends and control of the populace need the assistance of the media to do so. Radio and films were used very successfully by the Nazis to brainwash the people of Germany against the Jews and other races. Today the radio, the press, television, and the internet are all exploited by governmental forces to distort the truth and disseminate false information in order to achieve political ends. Yes, political ideology, driven by greed and desire for power and control, justify the means however untrue and unjust the message is.Michele Bachmann giving a speech to the American public

So one should not be incredulous about whether this technique of deliberately promulgating disinformation is occurring today in our American debate about taxes. Republican Representative Eric Cantor from Virginia, Republican Representative Michele Bachmann from Minnesota, former Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty, Republican Representative Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, Eric Cantor speakingand other Republican Congressman and Congresswomen have been charging that corporate tax rates are too high and, as a result, are responsible for the loss of jobs and the outsourcing and the moving of operations overseas. Consequently, their proposed solution to our loss of jobs is simply to reduce, if not eliminate, corporate taxes. What is not surprising to me, since disinformation had been employed so successfully in the past by many leaders in government, is that a large segment of the American public is buying into this argument.Tim Pawlenty speech

But it is a false argument. Although the United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates at 35%, its effective tax rates after all deductions, write-offs, and credits is lower than those in other countries. In 2009 corporations paid effectively 26% of their profits in income taxes. In contrast, during the golden era for the middle class in our country, corporations effectively paid 49% of their profits in income taxes. During those prosperous years for America, corporate taxes made up 40% of all income taxes paid by both individuals and corporations, as compared to now, when they only make up 18% of all individual and corporate income taxes.Paul Ryan speech

Also contradicting the argument by Cantor, Bachmann, Pawlenty, and Ryan that the corporate tax rate is hurting corporations doing business in our country is the fact that these companies are now reporting record-breaking profits. At the end of 2010, corporations posted an annualized profit of $1.65 trillion in the fourth quarter. In the first quarter of 2011, the top 500 companies reported an increase in profits of 81% over those reported last year. And even though corporate profits climb higher and higher, corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP continue to descend. Corporate tax revenue in 2009 came to just 1 percent of gross domestic product – the lowest collection level since 1936, or three-quarters of a century ago.

Furthermore, many large corporations pay no taxes. Last year, Exxonmobil, GE, Bank of America received tax subsidies in billions of dollars. Although these multinational corporations pay tax abroad, they pay little, if any, taxes here in the United States in comparison.

As many of you know by now, jobs have been going overseas because people in China, India, Cambodia, the Philipinnes, and elsewhere are willing to work for wages less than those for which the American worker would work.  Some, in fact, work for wages as low as 22.5 cents per hour.  That is the principal reason why jobs have been exported overseas by American corporations:  the cost of labor in these countries reflecting a poverty level of existence.

But why do Cantor, Bachmann, Boehner, Ryan, and others of the same ilk propose such nonsense as the reduction of corporate tax rates to increase jobs in America? Why do they tout the voodoo economics of don’t tax the rich and the powerful because manna from heaven will trickle down on all of us if we do not? Are they propagandizers as Hitler, Goebbels, Lenin, others were? Are they doing the bidding of corporate sponsors in order to solicit more and more millions of campaign contributions? Are they on the corporate payroll as political mouthpieces?

Ever since the United Citizens Decision, the corporate floodgates to political donations have opened up to such an extent that its deluge makes that from Hurricane Katrina appear as a rain puddle in comparison. The Republican party receives hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate donors, and it is safe to say that it is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of virtually all of the multinational corporations. And the returns to their “investments” in the campaigns of political mouthpieces of the Republican party are most attractive, with the millions in corporate contributions paying off billions in tax subsidies and lower tax rates.

Although increases in corporate profits are at all-time highs, unemployment rose in the first quarter. Recall that during the Bush era, when taxes on the rich were cut, millions of American jobs were lost. In contrast, when taxes were raised on the rich during the Clinton era, 22 million American jobs were created.

So this argument of cutting taxes on corporations and the rich in order to create jobs is mere disinformation, or to put it more bluntly, political propaganda. Our political candidates are paid mouthpieces of these multinational corporate interests, proposing and perpetuating legislation at the expense of all Americans but the elite rich, the ultimate donors and employers (i.e., as the principal stockholders) of our governmental representatives. Our political system has become totally corrupt by money, with the pay-to-play rules of a governmental form of representation.

So until we get all money out of politics, our governmental representatives in their perpetual and ever increasing need for millions and millions of dollars of campaign contributions in order to obtain re-election, will continue to disseminate disinformation to the American populace and will fail to represent them on the bread-and-butter issues, and, in fact, on any issue in opposition to their corporate employers.

Abraham Lincoln was naive.  You need not fool all of the people all of the time. You need only fool enough of the people enough of the time to rig the game and steal from the American populace.  The propaganda methodologies of Hitler, Goebbels, and Lenin are still at work serving the powers that be, successfully being employed to achieve the political ends of the few at the expense of so many.

The Barefoot Accountant

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