How corporations have laundered political money.

RawStory has a how-to regarding the corporations and how they have managed to fund political ads inspite of the FEC laws. Of course it utilizes Swiss bank accounts and the assholes at the Chamber of Commerce. The new ruling from SCOTUS just makes it that much easier for these greedy carpetbaggers to affect our public elections for their own personal gain. From the RawStory link:

The Supreme Court’s seismic January ruling that corporations are free to spend unlimited amounts of their profits to advertise for or against candidates may have been the latest shakeup of campaign finance – but gaping holes already allow corporations to spend enormous sums without leaving a paper trail, a Raw Story investigation has found.

Campaign finance experts confirmed that though disclosure rules remained intact in the new Supreme Court decision, there are effective methods to circumvent them.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an attorney and campaign finance expert at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said corporations already effectively end-run campaign finance law by shuffling money through trade associations.

“One of their favorites right now is spending through trade associations,” Torres-Spelliscy said.

Trade associations are considered tax-exempt non-profit organizations under US law. While they must report contributions received from other corporations to the Internal Revenue Service, the document itself remains confidential and is not made available to the public.

“Money coming through the trade association doesn’t get disclosed,” Torres-Spelliscy explained. “You can’t tell if it came from particular corporations.”

For example, she said, “The disclaimer form is likely to just say, ‘This is brought to you by the Chamber of Commerce,’ with no extra ability to see behind that.”

The Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest trade association representing at least 300,000 businesses and organizations.

A fellow non-profit that works on campaign finance, the Center for Political Accountability, calls trade associations “the Swiss bank accounts of American politics.”

God Bless those Fucking Loopholes! But the corporations don’t have to rely loopholes now..oh hell no..SCOTUS made it legal for them to lie and obsfucate against candidates that represent the people instead of the Corporatocracy.

It’s an educational read over at RawStory. Check out the entire piece here.

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Lobbyists invited to the Republican retreat?

Oh yes, of course they are! From ABC:

The day after President Barack Obama urged members of Congress to be more transparent about their interactions with lobbyists, the House Republican Caucus headed up Interstate 95 for a retreat where they will be able to mingle privately with… lobbyists.

The annual retreat, sponsored by a non-profit group called the Congressional Institute, is meant to be a chance for members to escape the Beltway to talk about big ideas, hear from rising stars in the party, media pundits, and even visit with President Obama, who will address the caucus Friday.

In between these work sessions, though, there will be less formal gatherings involving several of the Institute’s 14-member board of directors. The vast majority of the Institute’s board is made up by top Capitol Hill lobbyists whose clients include leading drug manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and such major corporations as American Express and Verizon.

Institute Executive Director Mark Strand said the entire event has been scrubbed for potential ethics problems, and everything will be done above board. He explained it this way:

“The institute’s supporters, who include lobbyists, do not plan, attend or participate in any session of the annual conference. They are invited to a reception and dinner and depart the next morning,” he said.(emphasis mine)

“Such a courtesy for a tax-exempt organization’s supporters is commonplace and within ethical rules,” Strand added. “All members of Congress who participate in the conference pay their own expenses. The Institute does not employ a lobbyist nor does it engage in lobbying.”

Oh…and there will be no “transparency” during the reception and dinner, meaning the press will not be allowed to attend. Chew on these facts regarding lobbying Congress:

Last year Washington lobbyists netted $3.2 billion, a 13.7 percent increase from 2007, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics aka OpenSecrets.org.

And it’s the industries most affected by the economic downturn that seem to be doing much of the spending: finance, insurance and real estate, the group found.

Fucking carpetbaggers. Nothing about Congress turns my stomach more than lobbyists. Nothing. They are the hyena pack, ready to surround and consume whatever they see as a threat to their bottom line, regardless of the consequences to Main Street and the average Joe and Jill American.  Below is a list from OpenSecrets of the top 20 corporations and what they spent to lobby Congress in 2009:

US Chamber of Commerce                                                    $73,899,200
Exxon Mobil                                                                           $27,430,000
Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfrs of America                                $26,150,520
General Electric                                                                       $21,470,000
AARP                                                                                     $21,010,000
American Medical Assn                                                           $20,830,000
Chevron Corp                                                                         $20,815,000
Blue Cross/Blue Shield                                                            $20,067,939
Pfizer Inc                                                                                $19,669,268
National Assn of Realtors                                                        $19,477,000
Verizon Communications                                                         $17,820,000
FedEx Corp                                                                            $17,000,000
Boeing Co                                                                               $16,850,000
National Cable & Telecommunications Assn                            $15,980,000
Northrop Grumman                                                                 $15,180,000
Lockheed Martin                                                                     $13,533,782
Business Roundtable                                                                $13,410,000
ConocoPhillips                                                                         $13,382,079
American Hospital Assn                                                           $13,230,696
Altria Group                                                                             $12,770,000

Ain’t that some shit?  Makes me wanna beat someone about the head and shoulders with a Louisville Slugger.

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From our Dept of WTF?

SCOTUS has ruled that corporations now have civil rights. I shit you not. SCOTUS just opened up a huge can of vile, carpetbagging, worms.

You can read the ruling here (pdf). This decision is total crap. Corporations are not human, they are always money-making operations.

I am pretty sure the First Amendment was not created to protect The Corporatocracy.From Public Citizen:

Today, in the widely-publicized Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC, the Justices ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Because today’s decision is made on First Amendment constitutional grounds, the impact will be felt not only at the federal level, but in the states and localities, including in state judicial elections.

Shed a tear for our democracy.

Today, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and city halls. Today, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.

In eviscerating longstanding rules prohibiting corporations from using their own monies to influence elections, the court invites giant corporations to open up their treasuries to buy election outcomes. Corporations are sure to accept the invitation.

The predictable result will be corporate money flooding the election process; huge targeted campaigns by corporations and their front groups attacking principled candidates who challenge parochial corporate interests; and a chilling effect on candidates and election officials, who will be deterred from advocating and implementing policies that advance the public interest but injure deep-pocket corporations.

So, wtf were those five assholes thinking? Th impact of this decision will be widespread and horrific..bet on it.

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Billionaire brothers spend millions to stop ‘the liberal agenda’.

These men rape the earth and make billions doing it. Their father founded the John Birch Society. I don’t give a tinker’s damn how much they give to the Smithsonian or any other non-profit, non-political organization, they are pond scum because they lie to the public at large and they finance the extreme rightwing nutter factory. From The Progress Report:

Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama’s progressive agenda. They have been looming in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. Ranked as the 9th richest men in America, the Koch brothers sit at the helm of Koch Industries, a massive privately owned conglomerate of manufacturing, oil, gas, and timber interests. They are best known for their wealth, as well as for their generous contributions to the arts, cancer research, and the Smithsonian Institute. But David and Charles are also responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform. Over the years, millions of dollars in Koch money has flowed to various right-wing think tanks, front groups, and publications. At the dawn of the Obama presidency, Koch groups quickly maneuvered to try to stop his first piece of signature legislation: the stimulus. The Koch-funded group “No Stimulus” launched television and radio ads deriding the recovery package as simply “pork” spending. The Cato Institute — founded by Charles — as well as other Koch-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, produced a blizzard of reports distorting the stimulus and calling for a return to Bush-style tax cuts to combat the recession. As their fronts were battling the stimulus, David’s Americans for Prosperity (AFP) spent the opening months of the Obama presidency placing calls and helping to organize the very first “tea party” protests. AFP, founded in 1984 by David and managed day to day by the astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips, has spent much of the year mobilizing “tea party” opposition to health reform, clean energy legislation, and financial regulations.

STOPPING CLEAN ENERGY: David Koch presents himself as a champion of science. Next year, because of his donations, a wing of the Smithsonian will be named after him. Nevertheless, Koch has done more to undermine the public’s understanding of climate change science than any other person in America. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, funded in part by Koch foundations, has waged an underhanded campaignHot Air” tour, a nationwide roadshow using a balloon to depict climate change science as “hot air.” Despite the brothers’ extravagant wealth, Koch’s Americans for Prosperity has run populist ads mocking environmentalists as spoiled brats more concerned about their “three homes and five cars” than about economic conditions. In addition to its efforts to misinform the public, Koch Industries has spent nearly $9 million dollarsattempting to crash to falsely charge that a set of hacked e-mails somehow unravels the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring. Koch finances the ” so far on direct lobbying, much of it on climate change legislation. With a team of Koch-funded operatives going as far as the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this week, the brothers may succeed in scuttling any prospect for addressing climate change.

STOPPING HEALTH REFORM: Much of the fierce opposition to health reform can be credited to Koch organizations. As the health care debate began, AFP created a front group, known as “Patients United,” dedicated itself to attacking Democratic health care reform proposals. Patients United has blanketed the country with ads distorting various provisions of the health reform legislation, particularly the public option. Patients United even centered a media campaign around Shona Robertson-Holmes, claiming she had a brain tumor the Canadian system refused to treat. However, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Patients United has been exaggerating Holmes’ case, and that she in fact had a benign cyst. In their quest to block health care reform, Koch-funded groups have fostered extremism. A speaker with the roving Patients United bus tour repeatedly compared health reform to the Holocaust while an eight-by-five foot banner at an AFP health care rally with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) read, “National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany” superimposed over corpses from a concentration camp. Although many were surprised at the level of anger AFP channeled into Democratic healthcare town halls in August, it wasn’t the first time Koch groups have helped to hijack the health reform debate. Back in 1994, Americans for Prosperity, then known as Citizens for a Sound Economy, worked closely with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to bring mobs of angry men to health reform rallies with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

A LONG HISTORY OF STOPPING PROGRESS: The Koch brothers clearly have a financial stake in blocking reform. Koch Industry oil refineries are major carbon dioxide polluters, and George-Pacific, a Koch Industries timber subsidiary, is one of the largest contributors to the loss of carbon-sink capacity. According to the EPA, Koch Industries is responsible for over 300 oil spills in the U.S. and has leaked three million gallons of crude oil into fisheries and drinking waters. So there are clear business-related reasons why Koch would want to block regulatory enforcement, clean energy, labor, and other reforms. But part of their opposition stems from a long family tradition of funding conservative movements to shift the country to the far right. Fred Koch, father of Charles and David and the company’s namesake, helped to found the John Birch Society in the late 1950s. The John Birch Society harnessed Cold War fears into hate against progressives, warning that President Kennedy, Civil Rights activists, and organized labor were in league with communists. By presenting progressive reform as a capitulation to the Soviet Union, Fred Koch and the other industrialists bankrolling the Birch Society were able to galvanize hundreds of thousands of middle class people into supporting their narrow agenda of cutting corporate taxes and avoiding consumer regulations.

Rich irony alert: Obama is not a liberal, you douche nozzles. Anything that makes America better, for the people, is viewed as a liberal agenda by these uber rich racists, environmental rapists and haters. Their agenda is to maintain the status quo for the Corporatocracy..it’s as simple and horrific as that.

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Part Two: Myths and a Cult

We now see the main problem with the US Government is clearly the overpowering of American Democracy by corporatocracy.

Just last Sunday, a New York Times article featured a classic story of corporatism at work. This was something straight off the DEBIT MAP. In the “debate” on health care, 42 representatives entered statements into the Congressional Record directly from talking points handed to them by lobbyists working for Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche. 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats submitted similarly worded claptrap about research and jobs and a provision that would give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to approve generic versions of expensive “biosimilar” biotechnology drugs.

And then there were the insults added to the injury. A lobbyist close to Genentech said: “This happens all the time. There was nothing nefarious about it.”

Right, there’s nothing nefarious about corporations writing our Congressional Record, just big business as usual.

Indeed, there certainly couldn’t be bribery here from the corporate campaign donors. Evan L. Morris, head of Genentech’s Washington office, said, “There was no connection between the contributions and the statements.”

Yes, how could anyone possibly imagine such a connection?

Who’s responsible for this ongoing calamity? What is sustaining this mess?

This brings us to the Myth of Liberalism and Cult of Conservatism.

“Wait a minute”, you may be saying. “I know a lot of liberals and a lot of conservatives. I have liberal neighbors who are quite real. And my parents are conservative, but they are not Moonies.”

That’s true. In fact most people are not totally liberal or totally conservative. Almost all of us share opinions and views from both perspectives. Almost all of us want public safety, public education, and yes, public health. We all want jobs, prosperity and security.

And it’s true both liberals and conservatives are opposed to government abuse of power. Liberals, and a few conservatives, see abuse of power in warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention without charges, torture, and war based on falsehood.

Conservatives, and a few liberals, see abuse of power in bureaucracy, the Department of Education, “unfair” taxes of wealth, Medicare, Social Security, and other public services they call entitlements.

As long as inflexible ideology is not in the mix, there can be common ground with most Americans.

Real liberalism exists as much as conservatism in the public. It’s another story with government. Liberalism has been not only institutionally discouraged in government by the entrenched power of Big Money, it has been actively libeled and slandered by the radical Right. The Right has unilaterally defined the terms and the issues, and framed the debate to their advantage over the past few decades.

The real struggle, of course, is not between liberals and conservatives. It is between corporatocracy and democracy.

The Myth of Liberalism becomes clear when we look at how few liberals there actually are in government. Beyond Sanders, Feingold, and Franken in the Senate, I have a hard time seeing many more. I’m sure there are more than three liberals in the House. Let’s be generous and say about ten percent of the Senate and House of Representatives are liberal. What are they going to do against the ninety percent who do the bidding of their corporate masters?

Contrary to the Right Wing media circus, liberals have not been in charge in decades. And they still are not in charge.

Look at the financial collapse. If liberals were in charge we’d never have de-regulated Wall Street. Clinton was a company man working with the Republicans. It was not liberalism when Obama joined the Bush Administration in the TARP bailout for the banksters.

Look at the health care debacle. If liberals were in charge we’d have a single payer system of health care in this country. Instead we see endless haggle over a so-called public option that still channels money into insurance company pockets. It was not liberalism we saw when Obama met with big Pharma and let them set terms for their participation in the health care debacle.

Look at foreign policy. If liberals were in charge we’d have fewer dead soldiers, or none, returning to our shores. It was not liberalism we saw when Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan. Instead we’ve seen an escalation of troops in Afghanistan and pressure for more.

Look at our state of justice. If liberals were in charge we’d see Dick Cheney on trial for war crimes. Instead we see him fear mongering and undermining democracy at Fox.

It’s plain to see the influence of liberalism at the federal level has been reduced to non-existent.

The Cult of Conservatism, on the other hand, is thriving. And no wonder, it has all the money of corporate America behind it. With that financial leverage, the Cult of Conservatism has enormous access to corporate media. As we all know, money talks. And it talks incessantly in the mainstream corporate media and the Right Wing media of talk radio and Fox.

The Cult of Conservatism does not include all conservative people. I’m not necessarily referring to the fiscally prudent or socially reserved common folk. Many people live a conservative personal life style that doesn’t have much to do with politics.

The Cult of Conservatism is the Right Wing propaganda arm of corporatism. It is the authoritarian voice of a system of indoctrination. The purpose of the Cult of Conservatism is to sell a belief system. They need people to accept without question the idea that conservatism is good and everything else is evil.

The conservatism they promote is based on emotion, not on reason, logic, or fact. Their conservatism is devoid of compassion, love, and concern for the health and well-being of everyone outside their Cult, who is not a fetus. The emotional component of this conservatism is based on manipulation of ignorance, resentment, racism, fear and anger.

The only love exhibited in their world is for wealth and power. They embrace a system of authoritarian social control, through unrestricted surveillance by law enforcement and harsh punishment for those convicted of crimes. Of course this does not include corporate criminals and Republican politicians like Scooter Libby.

Their belief system embraces militarism and war over diplomacy and peace. Patriotism (to the flag, not the Constitution) is their primary virtue, along with obedience and loyalty to the Cult leaders. Above everything else is blind devotion to the bottom line of corporate profit. If more money was made through peace than war, they would be pacifists. Their god is Mammon, cloaked in a superficial facade of pseudo-Christianity. They do not love their neighbor and they do not love their fellow man.

They need the common folk to embrace an ideology that is openly hostile to their economic interests. For the corporatists to prevail, their politicians need the support of those people that would not share the benefits of their agenda.

Thus we were constantly deluged with their messages. For years the Cult worked to undermine, subvert, and destroy the very idea of liberalism. It cast liberals as unpatriotic for not blindly adhering to nationalism, militarism, and corporatism. Liberals were called treasonous for questioning the Bush/Cheney warrantless surveillance and torture crimes.

The Cult worked endlessly to demonize liberalism as ungodly satanic legions of secular humanists out to slaughter babies and burn the flag. The indoctrination is hammered in endlessly. Government can’t do anything right. Government is always the problem. Big Government is bad. Taxes are bad. Tax and spend Democrats are bad. Government regulation of business is very bad. Regulation and public services are socialism. And socialism is very, very bad.

This propaganda is crucial to the success of the corporatocracy behind the Cult. They run a thriving propaganda operation that has successfully redefined important terms through which to push their agenda. The Cult has been quite adept at manufacturing its own myths to confuse the people.

Perhaps the most famous myth from the Cult of Conservatism is the “liberal media”. You see, all the Cult had to do was substitute the inaccurate word “liberal” for the accurate word “corporate” to create their myth. Everyone has now heard the myth of liberal media. This lie has been repeated so often by so many that it has become accepted by at least half the American public.

The Cult has redefined the Estate Tax on inherited wealth as a “Death Tax”. Most Americans would rightly not be overly concerned with how much poor little rich kids scoop up when the wealthy Old Man who was never home finally croaks.

Notice how falsely calling it a Death Tax not only gets attention, it throws in a little fear mongering as well. Death scares everybody, right? Now the Death Tax myth frightens those poor people who would otherwise never have heard of an Estate Tax.

This worked so well, the Cult decided to call health care counseling a “death panel’. See the pattern here?

The Cult claims to represent freedom. And they do in a limited sense. According to Cicero, “Freedom is participation in power.” The Cult of Conservatism has a great deal of power. But their freedom and power is not democracy and freedom for America. It is freedom for the power of wealth.

The Cult must be exposed and its victims need de-programming. This will not be easy. The indoctrinated believers have had their senses of fear, anger, frustration and confusion manipulated and aggravated for a long time. They are suspicious of ideas not fed to them by the Cult.

This indoctrination is so powerful the followers can’t even see the obvious fact that the interests of private and corporate wealth are always held over the interests of the public welfare. The cultists are enraged over health care to the poor and oblivious to the vastly larger corporate welfare handouts to Big Money.

Remember the Cult of Conservatism plays the God card to these frightened souls. As with the Divine Right of Kings, God’s will is invoked as the guiding force behind the Cult. This Cult is as medieval as witch burning and inquisitions. They are proponents of execution and torture. Humanity is not so far removed from the Dark Ages.

The Cult frightens people with horror stories of a non-existent myth of gun control. It promotes imaginary myths of threats from different sexual orientation. Fortunately the God, gays, and guns fabrications and hysteria are losing their hold on folks. I can see some hope in these strange and cruel times.

Let’s compare the results of the latest efforts by the Cult of Conservatism to the efforts of its opposition.

We’ve seen the Fox/Republican Tea Parties, and the angry True Believers carrying ridiculous signs of the fictional “Death Panels”, “We Come Unarmed: This Time”, and “National Socialism Death Camps”. There was nothing positive or constructive or helpful to any person accomplished by these rallies.

Now contrast this image with the reality of a “Life Panel” in Louisiana. There was a free health clinic for the uninsured in the convention center in New Orleans. Over a thousand people without insurance were treated. Some had life-threatening diseases like hypertension and diabetes diagnosed. They surely would have eventually been among the thousands of Americans to die without health coverage. Now they at least have a start towards treatment. This was made possible by donations from compassionate Americans in response to Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on Health Care.

Some real and tangible good is being done. My friends, there are grounds for optimism.

The True Believers are finally becoming more marginalized. We can be thankful for the Tea Parties, where the Hannity insanity-afflicted, Beckerheaded Foxsuckers expose the rampant raging lunacy within their group.

The Cult of Conservatism is finally being challenged by some voices, albeit relatively few, in commercial media. Air America radio and the three evening hours of MSNBC are still dwarfed by the machinery of talk radio and 24/7 right wing propaganda from Fox. But there are others out there doing their part in the struggle for democracy.

What can we do to make a difference? We’ll discuss this in part three of A Simple Explanation.

Crossposted at Dave’s Freedom Rants.

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Random Observations On Corporate Government

The US Government is a corporatocracy. It has become a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.

Corporations are endowed with all the rights and none of the responsibilities of personhood.

The Supreme Court sanctioned corporate money donated to political campaigns as “free speech”.
Both major parties are thus primarily in the service of corporate interests.

Congress rewards their donors with billions of dollars in corporate welfare.

Congress supported Bush’s warrantless NSA surveillance of US citizens, and immunity for telecoms for aiding illegal surveillance by voting for Bush’s FISA Amendment.

Congress was upset to learn Jane Harmon’s e-mail was intercepted, and demanded their members be exempted from surveillance.

A Democratic led Congress authorized money to continue Bush’s wars.

Soldiers’ lives are sacrificed by electrocution for KBR/Halliburton profits and no-bid contracts.

Blackwater/Xe mercenaries murdered Iraqis without facing justice.

Blackwater/Xe mercenaries are becoming private corporate armies and police.

Obama supported Bush’s warrantless NSA surveillance of US citizens, and immunity for telecoms for aiding illegal surveillance by voting for Bush’s FISA Amendment

Obama invoked State Secrets privilege against lawsuits challenging warrantless surveillance.

Obama reversed his stance and censored photos of detainee abuse at the urging of military officers.

Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan.

The Obama Administration avoids confronting Bush/Cheney war crimes and torture by “looking forward”.

The radical Right still accuses Obama of being a liberal socialist.

Corporate media still transmit unquestioned government propaganda.

Investigative journalism in corporate media is disappearing.

The alleged “liberal” New York Times printed Bush Administration WMD lies without question.

The alleged “liberal” New York Times withheld reporting the Bush warrantless surveillance program at the behest of the Bush Administration.

Right wing Fox News still deceives the gullible into thinking that they are fair and balanced.

The network most accused of liberalism is NBC, owned by military contractor corporation GE.

In the frenzied run-up to the Iraq War MSNBC dumped Phil Donahue, and replaced him with radical Right winger and hate radio mouthpiece Michael (Wiener) Savage.

The radical Right still accuses the corporate media of being liberal.

Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex’s influence in government is still ignored by Washington DC.

These days, the military industrial media complex may be the more accurate description.

The US is less a democracy and more a national security state.

In the halls of government money talks and the Golden Rule prevails.
Those with the gold make the rules.

The financial industry, which designed their own de-regulation, over-leveraged shady loans, and wrote our bankruptcy laws have facilitated the downfall of our economy.

The profit-driven medical/insurance/pharmaceutical complex is working to deny health care rights to American people.

Both progressive and conservative interests in our Constitutional directives to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty” will be undermined by corporate agendas.

Even when progressives are elected (both of them) the US Government remains primarily an institutionalized right wing engine of empire and an agent of Big Money.

When the president does it that means it is not illegal.

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What does GM stand for/Economy Falling

General Motors? Gross Mismanagement?

As the US economic house of cards falls- here is another case in point of a failed economy, and a failed ability to manipulate car owners into buying gas hog vehicles. The auto lobby & the government thought they had hoodwinked this country into buying their environmentally irresponsible low fuel efficiency vehicles by passing legislation that would address the mileage efficiency 13 years later. I’m guessing there was back patting , smoking of cigars & much festivity over their “win”. After all, many of the head honchos in government are oil tycoons, so this in bed together arrangement made US auto makers happy & the oil tycoons could laugh all the way to the bank. A fat & happy win-win situation- or so they thought.

Little did they know Consumers would vote with their dollars & refuse to buy the gas guzzling beasts. They practically can’t GIVE these big trucks & SUV’s away now, as many people witness the price of gas soar, and many openly questioning if they will ever come back down.

MSNBC reports:
General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it will lay off salaried workers, cut truck production, suspend its dividend and borrow $2 billion to $3 billion to weather a severe downturn in the U.S. market.

A large chunk of the reduction, he said, would come from cutting health care benefits for salaried retirees over age 65. Those people would get a pension increase from the company’s overfunded pension fund to help compensate for Medicare and supplemental insurance, the company said.

The company will speed up previously announced closures of some truck and sport utility vehicle factories. GM said last month it would close plants in Janesville, Wis.; Oshawa, Ontario; Silao, Mexico; and Moraine, Ohio, but Henderson would not say which closures would be accelerated or when the closures would take place.

GM said it will suspend its $1 per share annual dividend immediately, which will improve liquidity by $800 million through 2009. It’s the first time the company has suspended its dividend since 1922.

The company plans to raise $2 billion to $4 billion through the sale of assets, possibly including its Hummer brand. It also plans to borrow $2 billion to $3 billion by pledging assets, including stock of foreign subsidiaries, brands, stake in its finance arm and real estate. Wagoner said the company likely wouldn’t seek that cash until 2009.

Henderson said the company determined the credit markets are so inhospitable it would be too risky to raise cash that way, so it focused on internal cost-cutting.

GM and other auto companies have been hammered by high gas prices, the weak economy and a rapid shift in consumer tastes away from trucks and SUVs. GM’s sales were down 16 percent in the first six months of this year, led by a 21 percent decline in truck sales.

Just six weeks ago, GM said it would close the four truck and SUV plants and boost production of the smaller, more fuel-efficient cars that customers are demanding. It also announced production of a new car that could get 45 miles per gallon and would go on sale in 2010.

Some analysts have also speculated that GM would declare bankruptcy, but Wagoner said last week that bankruptcy isn’t a consideration.

“I suspect the vast majority of the reductions will be accomplished through initiatives which do not require involuntary actions,” Wagoner said. “Let’s see how it plays out.”

Yes, we will see how it plays out, indeed. Bankruptcy for one of the *big three* auto makers?
They missed the boat on Hybrids at a time when oil prices soared. Their own negligence & greed came back to bite them in the ass. When I go to used car lots, I can’t help notice all the SUV’s & trucks all lined up, with prices slashed & slashed again.

I guess these questions remain…

Why aren’t those jobless people, or retirees without health care, and those with foreclosed mortgages & closed banks buying new vehicles?

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Top 10 Corporate Abusers, vote for the worst of the lot.

By abusers, the report means companies that run afoul of economic and environmental laws. Corporate Accountability International (CAI), picked the companies and they invite everyone to vote on which ones they think are the worst of the worst. From the CommonDreams writeup:

The eight corporations named by CAI are accused of influencing elected officials, undermining democratic decision-making, and endangering the environment and public health. Global warming, war profiteering, and predatory lending figure prominently in the polls.

In other words, some real smarmy bastards my dear reader. Hang on to your hats, here they are:

Read more

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