Wall Street Abandons Obama, Democrats

Employees of financial-services companies have
given Democrats $20 million less than they have
given to Republicans during the current election
cycle. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By Caitlin Dickson, The Daily Beast

19 August 12

In a reversal from 2008, employees of financial-services companies have given most of their $128 million and counting in 2012 political donations to groups and candidates on the right. Sorry, Obama.

n 2008 Wall Street loved Barack Obama. Four years later, even after billions in bailout money went to the banks under Obama's watch, the tide has turned - by about $20 million.

That's the difference between what securities and investment firms and their employees have given to Republican candidates, the GOP, and right-leaning political-action committees during the current election cycle ($56 million) and what they've given to Democrats ($35 million), according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Goldman Sachs and its workers, for instance, made more than $6 million in political contributions in 2008, according to the CRP, which based its research on data provided by the Federal Election Commission. Some 75 percent of that loot went to the Democratic Party or one of its candidates, and 25 percent went to Republicans. In the 2012 cycle, the firm or its employees have so far given nearly $5 million, with the majority (56 percent) going to the GOP.

One reason for the shift, according to the CRP, might be that people in finance tend to donate to the party that controls Congress and therefore the finance committees. In 2008 that was the Democrats. Today it's the Republicans.  READ MORE

Congress' Big Gift to Monsanto

—By Tom Philpott

| Mon Jul. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

 

If you want your crops to bear fruit, you have to feed the soil. Few industries understand that old farming truism better than ag-biotech—the few companies that dominate the market for genetically modified seeds and other novel farming technologies. And they realize that the same wisdom applies to getting what you want in Washington, DC.

According to this 2010 analysis from Food & Water Watch, the ag-biotech industry spent $547.5 million between 1999 and 2009. It employed more than 100 lobbying firms in 2010 alone, FWW reports, in addition to their own in-house lobbying teams.

The gusher continues. The most famous ag-biotech firm of all, Monsanto, spent $1.4 million on lobbying in the first three months of 2012, after shelling out $6.3 million total last year, "more than any other agribusiness firm except the tobacco company Altria," reports the money-in-politics tracker OpenSecrets.org. Industry trade groups like the Biotechnology Industry Organization and Croplife America have weighed in with $1.8 million and $524,000, respectively.

What fruits have been borne by such generous fertilizing of the legislative terrain? It's impossible to tie the fate of any bit of legislation directly to an industry's lobbying power, but here are two unambiguous legislative victories won on the Hill this month by Monsanto and its peers.   READ MORE
 

The Unlearned Lessons of the BP Gulf Disaster

Fire boats battle a fire at the off shore oil rig Deepwater
Horizon April 21, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast
of Louisiana. (photo: US Coast Guard via Getty Images)

By Robert Weissman, Common Dreams

21 April 12

he BP disaster reminded the American people about some essential truths relating to corporate behavior, the need for regulatory controls over corporations, the need for effective sanctions.Eleven people died when BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, causing the worst oil spill in US history.

The BP disaster taught us many things: Giant corporations cannot be trusted to behave responsibly, and have the ability to inflict massive damage on people and the environment. We need strong regulatory controls to curb corporate wrongdoing. We need tough penalties to punish corporate wrongdoers. There is no way to do deepwater oil drilling safely. And it is vital that citizens harmed by corporate wrongdoers maintain the right to sue to recover their losses.

Unfortunately, Congress and the Obama administration have refused to learn the lessons from the BP disaster:   READ MORE

Susan G. Komen: The Tip of the Iceberg

Women successfully campaigned against Komen's
decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood.
(photo: Gallo/Getty Images)

By Cliff Schecter, Al Jazeera English

12 February 12

Organisations that influence social, cultural and political issues in the US have been hijacked by the far right.

erhaps over the past week you've heard of the foundation named after Susan G Komen? You know the folks I'm talking about, the ones who have turned breast cancer fundraising into a non-stop Nike-like branding campaign that translates into helpful suggestions, like how you should chomp down on the extra crispy bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to fight cancer (get heart disease, but cure cancer!).

Yeah, those guys.

They've had a bad week or two, to put it kindly. But their self-immolation at the hands of Tea Party cranks, such as their recently resigned senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, is worth looking at for what it tells us about the demise of institutions in the US. Because the thing is, their corruption of a charity meant to help find a cure for breast cancer with their Sharia Christianity, is only one of many examples of this phenomenon in the United States.

Whether it's the courts, Congress, state legislatures, media, churches, academia, non-profits or a variety of other institutions, these important organisations that set the social, cultural and political parameters in our democracy, and served us well (overall - on the issue of race, for example, it took many of them a while to get with the programme) have been thoroughly hijacked by what the late historian Richard Hofstadter referred to as those exhibiting the "paranoid style".   READ MORE

The Foreclosure Crisis: A Government in Denial

Foreclosed homes behind a padlock in North
Las Vegas, 11/17/11. (photo: Jewel S
amad/AFP/Getty Images)

By Bruce Judson, New Deal 2.0

14 January 12

s we start the New Year, the executive branch and Congress continue to pretend the gravest risk to our economy and social stability does not exist: the ongoing foreclosure crisis. The financial crisis began with the housing crisis and it will not end until we resolve housing. Government policymakers who seemingly ignore this basic fact are leading the nation to another potential catastrophe.

This past week, a number of important events occurred in Washington, including important recess appointments by President Obama. However, the most noteworthy event did not make front page news: the Federal Reserve's (apparently) unsolicited memo to the committees of Congress that oversee financial services warning of the dangers the current housing market poses for the economy.

This represents an extraordinary action and underscores both the seriousness of the continuing crisis and the absence of meaningful discussion of the problem in Washington. Bernanke's memo reviewed federal actions to date and effectively concluded that they were unlikely to solve this national tragedy. The memo concluded, in part: READ MORE

SNL's Seth Meyers Mocks Congress for Saying Pizza is a Vegetable

By Heather

Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers had a bit of fun this weekend by mocking the Republicans in Congress for wanting to classify pizza as a vegetable in an attempt to fight the Obama administration's attempt to make federally-subsidized school lunches more healthy -- House Republicans Say Pizza Is a Vegetable.
READ MORE

Throw the Bums Out

Grover Norquist, president of a taxpayer advocacy group, Americans for Tax Reform, speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

Saturday 17 September 2011

by: William B. Daniels, Truthout



With recent polls announcing the approval rating of Congress as a whole is below 20 percent, the implication is that the voters from each district and state should throw their bums out. It is the 276 members of the Norquist faction in the House and Senate who are committed by a private pledge to Grover Norquist to kill the president's American Jobs Act that should be shown to the door first.
READ MORE