We are living in an age of surging income inequality, particularly between
those at the very top and everyone else
Contents contributed and discussions participated by John Zoeller
Bad Bank - 4 views
Giant Pool of Money - 7 views
TED: The rise of the new global super-rich - 6 views
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In the 1970s, the One Percent accounted for about 10 percent of the national income in the United States. Today, their share has more than doubled to above 20 percent. But what's even more striking is what's happening at the very tippy top of the income distribution. The 0.1 percent in the U.S. today account for more than eight percent of the national income. They are where the One Percent was 30 years ago
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two admittedly very rich men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and he found that it was equivalent to the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population, 120 million people
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in 1992, the combined wealth of the people on the Forbes 400 list -- and this is the list of the 400 richest Americans -- was 300 billion dollars. Just think about it. You didn't even need to be a billionaire to get on that list in 1992. Well, today, that figure has more than quintupled to 1.7 trillion
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global plutocracy
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It feels less positive, less optimistic, to talk about how the pie is sliced than to think about how to make the pie bigger
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This is the common dialog: don't worry about the size of the slices, worry about the size of the pie...but what about sustainability?
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One set of causes is political: lower taxes, deregulation, particularly of financial services, privatization, weaker legal protections for trade unions, all of these have contributed to more and more income going to the very, very top
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all of these forces redistribute income: taxes flow from income to the government for public use, regulations force companies to spend some income on reducing externalities, public goods can provided maximum benefit without "spending" on profits for ownership, unions demand income for workers, not owners.
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crony capitalism
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This is what George Washington and the other founders of the US complained about...London's crony capitalists!
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Globalization and the technology revolution, the twin economic transformations which are changing our lives and transforming the global economy, are also powering the rise of the super-rich
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superstar effect is happening across the entire economy. We have superstar technologists. We have superstar bankers. We have superstar lawyers and superstar architects. There are superstar cooks and superstar farmers. There are even, and this is my personal favorite example, superstar dentists
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while it's pretty easy to see how globalization and the technology revolution are creating this global plutocracy, what's a lot harder is figuring out what to think about it. And that's because, in contrast with crony capitalism, so much of what globalization and the technology revolution have done is highly positive
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So what's not to like? Well, a few things
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can become crony plutocracy
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It gets tempting at that point to use your economic nous to manipulate the rules of the global political economy in your own favor
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Amazon, Apple, Google, Starbucks.
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it becomes tempting as well to start trying to change the rules of the game in your own favor
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meritocratic plutocracy can become aristocracy
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Great Gatsby Curve. As income inequality increases, social mobility decreases
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the global plutocracy also happen to be hollowing out the middle class in Western industrialized economies
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At its zenith, G.M. employed hundreds of thousands, Facebook fewer than 10,000
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General Motors and Facebook were about the same size in terms of "market capitalization": this means the total number of shares of stock times its share price. The implication is that the same amount of investment capital can employ hundreds of thousands or 10,000.
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there is no economic rule which automatically translates increased economic growth into widely shared prosperity
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increases in productivity have been decoupled from increases in wages and employment
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worry about structural unemployment
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Its possible that some jobs will never return: structural unemployment means that a person has no marketable job skills.
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all of us here are richer, healthier, taller
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before we learned how to share the fruits of the Industrial Revolution with the broad swathes of society, we had to go through two depressions, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Long Depression of the 1870s, two world wars, communist revolutions in Russia and in China, and an era of tremendous social and political upheaval in the West
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We need a new New Deal
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We created the modern welfare state. We created public education. We created public health care. We created public pensions. We created unions.
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in a totally free labor market, we could find jobs for pretty much everyone.
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in 2005
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Here's the transcript of the TED talk presented by Chrystia Freeland, The rise of the new global super-rich.
TED: Meet Global Corruption's Hidden Players - 8 views
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former Soviet megalomaniacs
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all-powerful leader of Turkmenistan, a Central Asian country rich in natural gas
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spent millions of dollars creating a bizarre personality cult
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40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himself
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renamed the months of the year including after himself and his mother
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cliché, the African dictator or minister or official
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Equatorial Guinea, a West African nation that has exported billions of dollars of oil since the 1990s
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vast majority of its people are living in really miserable poverty despite an income per capita that's on a par with that of Portugal
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Both Equatorial Guinea and Portugal have per capita incomes of $23,000 per year...but most Guineans are very, very poor. Only the extremely high incomes of its tiny elite boost the average up!
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When calculating income in Equatorial Guinea using a median income approach, the number is closer to $10,000 per capita.
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buys himself a $30 million mansion in Malibu, California
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bought an €18 million art collection
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fabulous sports cars
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Gulfstream jet
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Dan Etete. Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeria
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Teodorín Obiang
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daddy is president for life
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a $1 billion — oil deal that he was involved with
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So it's easy to think that corruption happens somewhere over there, carried out by a bunch of greedy despots and individuals up to no good in countries that we, personally, may know very little about and feel really unconnected to and unaffected by what might be going on. But does it just happen over there?
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Well, at 22,
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set up an organization called Global Witness
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This is an example of a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO).
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first campaign was investigating the role of illegal logging in funding the war in Cambodia
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1997, and I'm in Angola undercover investigating blood diamonds.
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the Hollywood film "Blood Diamond," the one with Leonardo DiCaprio
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I'd been speaking to lots of people there who, well, they talked about a different problem: that of a massive web of corruption on a global scale and millions of oil dollars going missing.
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I've repeatedly seen that what makes corruption on a global, massive scale possible, well it isn't just greed or the misuse of power or that nebulous phrase "weak governance." I mean, yes, it's all of those, but corruption, it's made possible by the actions of global facilitators
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Obiang junior.
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He did business with global banks. A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him, one of which was used to buy the art, and American banks, well, they funneled 73 million dollars into the States, some of which was used to buy that California mansion. And he didn't do all of this in his own name either. He used shell companies. He used one to buy the property, and another, which was in somebody else's name, to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place.
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Dan Etete
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he awarded an oil block now worth over a billion dollars to a company that, guess what, yeah, he was the hidden owner of
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with the kind assistance of the Nigerian government
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to subsidiaries of Shell and the Italian Eni, two of the biggest oil companies around
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the reality is, is that the engine of corruption
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our international banking system
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Remember, banks can't make a profit unless they lend money...or collect fees for moving money.
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anonymous shell companies
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secrecy
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failure of our politicians to back up their rhetoric and do something really meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff
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Its because we do not know, and therefore cannot demand more from our politicians.
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take the banks first
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banks accept dirty money
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but they prioritize their profits in other destructive ways too
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It would have been better to say that they have choices to make when it comes to doing business.
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For example, in Sarawak, Malaysia
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has just five percent of its forests left intact
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because an elite and its facilitators have been making millions of dollars from supporting logging on an industrial scale for many years
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the state's chief minister, despite his later denials, used his control over land and forest licenses to enrich himself and his family
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HSBC bankrolled the region's largest logging companies that were responsible for some of that destruction in Sarawak
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earned around 130 million dollars
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And then there's the problem of anonymous shell companies
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they're used quite a bit by people and companies who are trying to avoid paying their proper dues to society, also known as taxes
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shell companies are used to steal huge sums of money, transformational sums of money, from poor countries
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A recent study by the World Bank looked at 200 cases of corruption. It found that over 70 percent of those cases had used anonymous shell companies, totaling almost 56 billion dollars
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shell companies, they're central to the secret deals which may benefit wealthy elites rather than ordinary citizens
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in the Democratic Republic of Congo sold off a series of valuable, state-owned mining assets to shell companies in the British Virgin Islands.
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these shell companies had quickly flipped many of the assets on for huge profits to major international mining companies listed in London
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Congo may have lost more than 1.3 billion dollars from these deals. That's almost twice the country's annual health and education budget combined
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there are typica
4-Food Inc (transcript) - 5 views
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It's the spinning of this pastoral fantasy.
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There is this deliberate veil, this curtain, that's dropped between us and where our food is coming from. The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating, because if you knew, you might not want to eat it.
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The reality is a factory. It's not a farm.
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enormous assembly lines
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animals and the workers are being abused
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a small group of multinational corporations who control the entire food system. From seed to the supermarket, they're gaining control of food
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The whole industrial food system really began with fast food
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The McDonald brothers had a very successful drive-in, but they decided to cut costs and simplify. So they fired all their carhops, they got rid of most of the things on the menu and they created a revolutionary idea to how to run a restaurant. They basically brought the factory system to the back of the restaurant kitchen. They trained each worker to just do one thing again and again and again. By having workers who only had to do one thing, they could pay them a low wage and it was very easy to find someone to replace them. It was inexpensive food, it tasted good and this McDonald's fast food restaurant was a huge huge success.
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When McDonald's is the largest purchaser of ground beef in the United States and they want their hamburgers to taste, everywhere, exactly the same, they change how ground beef is produced.
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largest purchaser of potatoes
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pork, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, even apples
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big big fast food chains want big suppliers
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a handful of companies controlling our food system.
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In the 1970s, the top five beef-packers controlled only about 25% of the market. Today, the top four control more than 80% of the market
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These are both market forces...below, you will see how government policy is deeply involved...
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We've never had food companies this big and this powerful in our history. Tyson, for example, is the biggest meat-packing company in the history of the world.
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A company like Tyson owns the birds from the day they're dropped off until the day that they're slaughtered.
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National Chicken Council
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Special interest, yes, but also an industry association that provides expertise to its membership and to government regulators and elected representatives.
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the integration of production, processing and marketing
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It's all highly mechanized. So all the birds coming off those farms have to be almost exactly the same size. What the system of intensive production accomplishes is to produce a lot of food on a small amount of land at a very affordable price. Now somebody explain to me what's wrong with that.
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These two scenes are Tennessee chicken houses, one that supplies Tyson, the other Purdue. Note that these are likely formerly tobacco farmers. Changing social norms, and government policy, have decreased demand for tobacco.
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This, of course, is abusive...or not, depending upon your perspective: What the system of intensive production accomplishes is to produce a lot of food on a small amount of land at a very affordable price. Now somebody explain to me what's wrong with that...
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When I wanted to understand the industrial food system, what I set about doing was very simple. I wanted to trace the source of my food.
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What really surprised me most as I followed that food back to its source, I kept ending up in the same place, and that was a cornfield in Iowa
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100 years ago, a farmer in America could grow maybe 20 bushels of corn on an acre. Today, 200 bushels is no problem. That's an astonishing achievement for which breeders deserve credit, for which fertilizer makers deserve credit, for which pesticide makers all deserve credit.
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Productivity is an aspect of economic growth. When one sector becomes more productive, some resources can be reallocated to meet other market demands. Widespread productivity increases are even more helpful.
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In the United States today, 30% of our land base is being planted to corn. That's largely driven by government policy, government policy that, in effect, allows us to produce corn below the cost of production. The truth of the matter is we're paid to overproduce, and it was caused by these large multinational interests. The reason our government's promoting corn-- the Cargills, the ADMs, Tyson, Smithfield-- they have an interest in purchasing corn below the cost of production. They use that interest and that extensive amount of money they have to lobby Congress to give us the kind of farm bills we now have. Pollan: A "farm bill," which should really be called a "food bill," codifies the rules of the entire food economy. Farm policy is always focused on these commodity crops because you can store them. We encourage farmers to grow as much corn as they can grow, to get big, to consolidate. We subsidize farmers by the bushel.
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- US consumers spend approximately $2 trillion on food - omnibus "farm bill" is passed approximately every 5 years - everything the Department of Agriculture does is included - amends, or repeals provisions of preceding agricultural acts for a limited time (5 years) - since in 1973, farm bills have included titles on commodity programs, trade, rural development, farm credit, conservation, agricultural research, food and nutrition programs - international trade, environmental conservation, food safety, and the well-being of rural communities - agricultural subsidy programs mandated by the farm bills are the subject of intense debate both within the U.S. and internationally...
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Plus, you can feed it to animals
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Corn is the great raw material.
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starch and you can break that down and reassemble it. You can make high-fructose corn syrup. You can make maltodextrin and diglycerides and xanthan gum and ascorbic acid.
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Corn is the main component in feed ingredients whether it's chicken, hogs, cattle-- you name it.
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tilapia or the farmed salmon
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the average American is eating over 200 lbs of meat per person per year. That wouldn't be possible had we not fed them this diet of cheap grain
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the chief of staff at the USDA was the former chief lobbyist to the beef industry in Washington; the head of the F.D.A. was the former executive vice president of the National Food Processors Association. These regulatory agencies are being controlled by the very companies that they're supposed to be scrutinizing.
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It's remarkable how toothless our regulatory agencies are when you look closely at it, and that's how the industry wants it.
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Here is a perfect example of the Iron Triangle: Kowalcyk is the special interest, the USDA is the executive agency, the Agriculture committees and subcommittees are the Congressional points
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There is a spiderweb of roads and train tracks all around the country moving corn from where it's being grown to these CAFOs. Cows are not designed by evolution to eat corn. They're designed by evolution to eat grass. And the only reason we feed them corn is because corn is really cheap and corn makes them fat quickly.
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There's some research that indicates that a high-corn diet results in E. coli that are acid-resistant. And these would be the more harmful E. coli.
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So you feed corn to cattle and E. coli, which is a very common bug, evolves, a certain mutation occurs and a strain called the "E. coli 0157:h7" appears on the world stage. And it's a product of the diet we're feeding cattle on feedlots and it's a product of feedlot life. The animals stand ankle deep in their manure all day long. So if one cow has it, the other cows will get it. When they get to the slaughterhouse, their hides are caked with manure. And if the slaughterhouse is slaughtering 400 animals an hour, how do you keep that manure from getting onto those carcasses? And that's how the manure gets in the meat. And now this thing that wasn't in the world is in the food system.
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E. coli isn't just in ground beef now-- it's been found in spinach, apple juice-and this is really because of the runoff from our factory farms. 90 confirmed cases of E. coli poisoning. Central to it all-- raw, bagged spinach.
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arbara Kowalcyk and Patricia Buck, Kevin's mother and grandmother, lobby the USDA (executive branch) and two members of the House of Representatives...
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After the first big push to establish food standards, people just got complacent. We reduced funding for the FDA. We've relied increasingly on self-policing for all of these industries. And now we just have, really, lost our system. You're really one of the champions on the hill for food safety and it's a very important cause.
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relied increasingly on self-policing for all of these industries
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We've relied increasingly on self-policing for all of these industries
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We put faith in our government to protect us, and we're not being protected at a most basic level. In 1998, the USDA implemented microbial testing for salmonella and E. coli 0157:h7. The idea was that if a plant repeatedly failed these tests, that the USDA would shut the plant down because they obviously had an ongoing contamination problem. The meat and poultry associations immediately took the USDA to court. The courts basically said the USDA didn't have the authority to shut down the plants. What it meant was that you could have a pound of meat or poultry products that is a petri dish of salmonella and the USDA really can't do anything about it. A new law was introduced in direct response and this law became known as Kevin's Law. It seems like such a clear-cut, common sense type thing. - How are things going? - Fine fine. Kowalcyk: We've been working for six years and it still hasn't passed
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I sense that there may be an opportunity-- an enhanced opportunity-- to get this signed into law this time. I think that from the standpoint of the consumer, a lot of people would support the idea of paying a little more if they could be guaranteed a higher standard of safety. - Kowalcyk: Yeah. - But I also know that there are other players - in the food production chain... - Kowalcyk: We know. ...that tend to worry about that, because it's gonna be seen as an add-on to their costs.
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This is the response of someone who seems concerned more with costs to suppliers than the safety of the food supply...
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Sometimes it does feel like industry was more protected than my son. That's what motivated me to become an advocate
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The industrial food system is always looking for greater efficiency, but each new step in efficiency leads to problems. If you take feedlot cattle off of their corn diet, give them grass for five days, they will shed 80% of the E. coli in their gut. But of course that's not what the industry does. The industry's approach is-- when it has a systematic problem like that-- is not to go back and see what's wrong with the system, it's to come up some high-tech fixes that allow the system to survive.
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But I just started working with ammonia and ammonia hydroxide. Ammonia kills bacteria, so it became a processing tool. I'm really a mechanic. That's really what I am. We design our own machiner
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This is our finished product. Man: Is your meat in most of the hamburgers in the country? Roth: 70%. In five years, we think we'll be in 100%
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When you genetically modify a crop, you own it. We've never had this in agriculture.
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Used to be that your land-grant universities, they developed what was called public seed
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The Corporation (transcript) - 10 views
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CASE HISTORIES
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A LEGAL "PERSON"
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MINDSET
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BOUNDARY ISSUES
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BASIC TRAINING
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PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT
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A PRIVATE CELEBRATION
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TRIUMPH OF THE SHILL
Case Study-Obama's Deal - 3 views
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I remember Patrick Moynihan, the senator from New York, telling me in his very thick Irish accent that he just got this document, 1,273 pages, describing how health care reform should be done and basically says, "I'm not even going to read it."
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The Harry and Louise ads cost and cost and cost us in the Clinton years.
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These ads were supported by many in the MdIC, but most importantly, the health insurance industry.
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What did he do that's different from what Bill and Hillary did? Everything. Everything.
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congressional buy-in on the front end
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former congressional insiders
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Peter Orszag, was the head of the Congressional Budget Office
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top aide to Ted Kennedy.
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top staff guy for Henry Waxman.
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Robert Gibbs, who worked in the Senate, who's now the press secretary.
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the quintessential Washington insider, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle.
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The once powerful Senate majority leader had made enemies. The Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, was an old rival.
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Baucus allowed Republicans on the committee to tear into Daschle's personal finances
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Senate investigators found income tax problems. Daschle had left the government and cashed in, making millions at a Washington law firm. Along the way, a client had provided a limo for Daschle's personal use. Eventually, he paid more than $140,000 in taxes and penalties on the gift
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It's a very bad cloud over this nomination
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Does this really represent the kind of change that Mr. Obama said he would be bringing to his administration?
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Obama quickly, calmly accepted the resignation offer, did not pause, did not look back
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Seven weeks into his presidency, in March of 2009, the new president gathered in one room at one time friends and potential enemies alike.
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This is the BIG PRESS CONFERENCE: ONLY THE PRESIDENT OF THE US CAN COMMAND THIS KIND OF ATTENTION...THE POWER OF PERSUASION...
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Obama's advisers had told him that many of the lobbyists in the room were prepared to cut a deal. Karen Ignagni is the chief lobbyist for the insurance industry.Pres. BARACK OBAMA: Why don't you wait for a mike, Karen, so that-KAREN IGNAGNI, Pres., America's Health Insurance Plans: We entered this year being committed to change, being committed to restructuring and committed to actually helping to get this done
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OBAMA HANDS TO THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY LOBBYIST THE OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW THAT THEY WILL BUY IN AND NOT OPPOSE THIS NEW ATTEMPT...
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Privately, Ignagni was playing hardball. She said she'd support the bill only if everyone was required to buy health insurance.
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Obama had campaigned against the mandate. Ignagni was insisting he reverse himself.
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They want to make sure that they get a requirement that all of us buy health insurance. They want to make sure that we are all forced by to buy products from them. And they want to make sure that there's no alternative other than the private insurance market. That's why they're so adamantly opposed to the public option.
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Obama had also supported the public option, a government health plan, and Ignagni wanted him to walk away from that, too.
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It is not wiping out the private insurance industry, it's just creating a public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. But they wanted no part of that.
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Baucus received more than $2.5 million from special interest groups in the health industry.
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What the campaign contributions often do is that they open doors. They give industries entree to important congressional staffers and lawmakers.
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The Senate bill, you know, frankly, is just an insurance company bill. The insurance companies, actually, literally did write it. There were two senior staffers in Max Baucus's office, one who used to work for United Health Care and one who used to work for WellPoint, who wrote the bill. It's a great bill from the insurance companies' point of view. It doesn't happen to do a whole lot to change the system and to bring reform.
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Liberal outrage arrived in Baucus's own hearing room, as health care activists, one after another, shouted him down.
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There's millions for the insurance industry, the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies, and you're denying the people a voice!
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The activists were especially angry that Ignagni had a seat at the table but they did not.
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Physicians for a Nat'l Health Prgm.: When we received the list of the dates of the hearings and who was being invited, and we saw who was invited, we requested that we have one person invited in the, you know, series of three hearings. They were inviting 41 people total to testify. And they said no
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The committee chair controls who testifies at hearings: no testimony means your views don't exist...
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That spring, Baucus and the White House were also secretly negotiating another deal, this time with the pharmaceutical industry. Their top lobbyist was a classic Washington character.CECI CONNOLLY: Billy Tauzin is a New Orleans politician, a very colorful, lively figure who took over the pharmaceutical industry trade group, PhRMA.Rep. MICHAEL BURGESS (R), Texas: Billy Tauzin is a formidable negotiator. And Billy Tauzin knows how things work on the Hill, and he knows how things work in this town.NARRATOR: His most notorious act took place when then Congressman Tauzin and Senator Baucus pushed through a Medicare prescription drug bill.Rep. BILLY TAUZIN (R), Louisiana: We are about to pass a $400 billion insured drug account for these citizens who have no drug insurance today.NARRATOR: In 2003, in the middle of the night, Tauzin kept the House voting machine open until he could scrounge and wheedle just enough votes to pass the controversial measure.Sen. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH), Health Committee: It was a payoff to two industries, the drug industry and the insurance industry. There was no question about it. They did very, very well out of this bill.NARRATOR: It meant hundreds of billions of dollars for the pharmaceutical industry.Rep. DAN BURTON (R), Indiana: The comptroller general said when we passed the Medicare prescription drug bill that it was the worst piece of legislation, fiscally, that he had ever seen. And he said over time, it was going to be a disaster.
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And just over a year later, Tauzin was hired as the pharmaceutical industry's top lobbyist.Rep. DAN BURTON: Billy got a very good job with PhRMA. I think he makes around $2 million a year. At least, that's what I've been told. Many of his staff people went with him or went to work for pharmaceutical companies. And Billy was the main pusher of the bill.
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In the 2008 presidential campaign, the incident became one of Barack Obama's favorite complaints about the Washington political culture.Sen. BARACK OBAMA, Presidential Candidate: And you know what? The chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that. That's an example of the same old game playing in Washington. You know, I don't want to learn how to play the game better, I want to put an end to the game playing.NARRATOR: But secretly, one year later at Max Baucus's Senate office, the Obama White House was negotiating with Billy Tauzin.
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It's a very Rahm Emanuel idea, get them at the table, make them agree to something with the threat that something worse could be out there if they don't. And once you get this buy-in, that should eliminate pockets of opposition.NARRATOR: Billy Tauzin knew that during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama had promised to slash drug prices.CECI CONNOLLY: PhRMA had some real concerns that there would be an effort by the Democrats to enable the government to negotiate for its prices on Medicare prescription drugs, and this could be potentially a very big hit to the industry.NARRATOR: Tauzin also knew the White House was eager for any early deal that appeared to contain costs.JOHN PODESTA, Co-Chair, Obama Transition, 2008-09: I think he was smart in saying that "If I get in early, I can make a deal that my members can live with."
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PhRMA certainly had deep enough pockets to do some real damage advertising-wise if it wanted to.RYAN LIZZA, The New Yorker: If you can stop $100 million from being spent to attack your plan, that looks very- you know, that's not such a bad deal.
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The president accepted the deal.RYAN LIZZA: There's always two sides of Obama. You have to have the sort of inspirational message. You have to have something to lift up people. But at the end of the day, when you're passing legislation, it is about deal making. There's no other way to do it.
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Once again, it was the liberals in the president's own party who began to criticize the deal.NEWSCASTER: There's also growing concern that the Obama administration secretly made concessions to drug companies.PETER BAKER, The New York Times: The liberals were watching what was going on with increasing alarm because what they saw was the new White House getting in bed with the people that they thought they had been fighting against for all these years.
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For months, the president had been doing deals- insurance and pharmaceuticals, Now it was time to write a bill and to fulfill another campaign promise, to create a Washington beyond partisan politics.DAN BALZ: A bipartisan outcome, even in a minimalist sense, was certainly a very, very high priority of President Obama.NARRATOR: Again, Max Baucus would have to be the point man. Getting through his Senate Finance Committee would be the crucial test.PETER BAKER: If they could get five, ten Republicans, that would have been enough. And Max Baucus was, they thought, their key to getting that.NARRATOR: Baucus had a close relationship with the ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley.Sen. CHARLES GRASSLEY (R-IA), Finance Committee: Senator Baucus and I were still working on what we thought ought to be a- not just a bipartisan bill but a kind of a consensus bill. In other words, something that would get 75 or 80 votes.
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Grassley was under intense pressure from his own party.JONATHAN COHN, Sr. Editor, The New Republic: Charles Grassley is in line for a committee chairmanship. The Republican Party plays hardball with its members. I think the message got through that he was jeopardizing his standing in the party by playing too nice with health care reform.
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You had the Senate leadership in Mitch McConnell and John Kyl saying, "Don't get involved. This is going to be the president's Waterloo. It's our way to win back the Congress.
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Impatient, Emanuel began a campaign to convince the president to change course, to scale back their ambitions.RYAN LIZZA: Rahm Emanuel is all about, as he says, putting points on the board. Just get a deal and get it over with.DAVID GERGEN: Rahm was the guy who was skeptical about trying to go for major comprehensive health care reform. He saw what happened. He was there during the Clinton debacle. He knows how much it takes out of a presidency.DAN PFEIFFER: It was entirely a conversation of feasibility. Option A, pass the comprehensive bill. Option B, smaller bill. And option C, which no one would entertain, would be to do nothing.NARRATOR: The president made the final decision.RYAN LIZZA: Obama weighed in and said, "No, I want to try and get what I campaigned on. I want to try and get the full bill."
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PETER BAKER: Heading into the summer recess is a period of great frustration for the White House. Everything was getting stuck. Everything was sort of slowing down. And as they head into August, they don't recognize what's about to hit them.PROTESTER: You want to kill my grandparents, you come through me first!PROTESTER: God will take care of health care.PROTESTER: You dirty thieves!PROTESTER: We can't afford it!PROTESTER: Afro-Leninism!NARRATOR: Angry citizens, stoked by economic fears, outraged about bail-outs and expanding government-PROTESTER: The things that Obama's doing are the exact things that Hitler did.PROTESTER: No public option!NARRATOR: -focused their rage on the health care bill.Rep. MICHAEL BURGESS: Boom, the summer town halls literally blow up in our faces.PROTESTER: Radical communists and socialists!Rep. MICHAEL BURGESS: The fat really hit the fire when we went home in August for what usually is a fairly leisurely stroll through the district-PROTESTER: Yes, we can!Rep. MICHAEL BURGESS: -a town hall here-PROTESTER: Baby killer! Abortion is murder!
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There was anger out there, and members of Congress listened and they were scared.
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Senator Grassley, the swing man in the president and Max Baucus's bipartisan strategy, felt the fire from his conservative base.Sen. CHARLES GRASSLEY: I had people come to my town meeting with sheets of paper that thick off the Internet and quoting from the bill. You know, I've never had that happen before. People were up on it, and people didn't like what they were reading.TOWN HALL PROTESTER: Democrat or Republican or whoever, senator or congressman, voted this bill, we will vote you out! [cheers]PETER BAKER: Suddenly, the idea of cutting a deal with President Obama no longer looked like it was good politics, no longer looked like it was good policy.
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I had people come to my town meeting with sheets of paper that thick off the Internet and quoting from the bill. You know, I've never had that happen before
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Just as the town hall anger was reaching its boiling point, the president received more bad news.NEWSCASTER: Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, the patriarch of the Kennedy clan, has died.NEWSCASTER: The last in the line of this extraordinary American dynasty is gone.NEWSCASTER: Last night, an American political era came to an end.NARRATOR: The most passionate advocate of health care reform was dead, but some believed Kennedy's death might change the tone of the debate.Pres. BARACK OBAMA: Ted Kennedy's life work was not to champion the causes of those with wealth or power or special connections, it was to give to give a voice to those who were not heard.PETER BAKER: It was an emotional rallying point for Democrats for a while- "Win this for Teddy" kind of thinking.CECI CONNOLLY: Some people thought, "Well, gosh, maybe in memory of Senator Kennedy, some of these old Republican friends of his would rejoin the effort."NARRATOR: The president would redouble his efforts to achieve Kennedy's dream.JOHN PODESTA: After consulting with a number of people, including Senator Daschle and others, I think the president concluded, "I need to take back control of this."
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Senate majority leader Harry Reid would take control of the bill. Talk of a public option was back. The mandates the insurance industry had fought for were watered down. Karen Ignagni didn't like what that might mean for the bottom line.
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Senate majority leader Harry Reid would take control of the bill. Talk of a public option was back. The mandates the insurance industry had fought for were watered down. Karen Ignagni didn't like what that might mean for the bottom line.
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At the White House, they decided a war with the insurance industry was just what the doctor ordered. In his weekly Internet address, the president let them have it.
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The insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking out their massive war chest to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo.
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they decided to play that role when they decided to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat health reform.
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they're funding studies designed to mislead the American people.
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Karen Ignagni and her allies fought back.
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New, hidden taxes that Congress wants on your health care, hidden health care taxes on medicines, medical devices and health insurance
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They secretly funneled millions of dollars to a tough ad campaign by the Chamber of Commerce.
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powerful senators stepped up to support her cause.CECI CONNOLLY, Co-Author, Landmark: There were still some- Senator Lieberman was one, Senator Nelson of Nebraska was another- who still said there's merit to what the insurance industry is saying. And those were critical swing votes.
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To a lot of us, we were very, very upset about it. It was very poorly done. But the only way they could get it through was basically to bribe their members
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It's not a pretty process. There is deal making. That's the way it's been done for a long time. But those deals done in your front parlor can be pretty smelly.
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The ayes are 60, the nays are 39. HR 3590 is passed.
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This was a strictly party-line vote, all the Democrats voting yes, all the Republicans voting no, the final tally 60 to 39.
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The White House wasn't paying attention, but up in Massachusetts, that "Cornhusker kickback" was still hanging in the air. It was almost election day. At stake was Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.
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Ted Kennedy's Senate seat was vacated by his death. Republican Scott Brown's election would mean that the Senate could not be counted on to pass another bill.
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From the very moment that it was clear that Scott Brown was going to win that seat, he began thinking through what the next steps would be to be able to right the ship and get health care done.NARRATOR: The president asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi if she could get the House to pass the Senate bill.
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They just ignored Max in the end. They just felt they could ram this right through and to heck with Republicans, to heck with conservatives
9.1_4-Notes: A Day in the Senate - 0 views
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This page describes a number of Senate Rules, but also the specific procedures that the Senate follows (rules) after an election (every two years) where 1/3 of its members six-year terms have eneded.
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Unlike the House, however, the Senate is a "continuing body"
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majority party caucus
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president pro tempore
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calls the Senate to order
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chaplain leads the chamber in prayer
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Call to order
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Setting the Senate's daily meeting hour
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Leader time
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one of the first actions in the new session, and it is done by Resolution
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Everthing Congress does will require some kind of vote...and a Resolution is what they vote on: HR=House Resolution, SR = Senate Resolution (also HB House Billl and SB Senate Bill)
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tradition and practice
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"unanimous consent"
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This is a "ritualistic" handing over of the operation of the Senate to it majority party.
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Making this request establishes acceptance by the Senate of the prerogative and responsibility of the Majority Leader
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First, the Majority Leader rises (stands), is recognized, and speaks for up to 10 minutes Next, the Minority Leader rises, is recognized, and speaks for up to 10 minutes
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A "Legislative Day"
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The Senate Rules establish certain protocols at the start of each new Legislative Day
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Legislative Day can extend for several days, or even several months
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recess
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adjournment
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Rule VII establishes the first two hours of a Legislative Day as the Morning Hour
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first of these two hours
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morning business
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presents to the Senate any presidential messages, executive communications, and messages from the House that the Senate has received
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petitions and memorials
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committee reports
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introduce bills and joint resolutions, and submit concurrent and Senate resolutions.
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"morning business", Rule VIII provides for a "call of the calendar"
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The Senate maintains two calendars
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The Legislative Calendar
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The Executive Calendar
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he reason for Morning Hour is to assure that the Senate sets aside some time for "Routine Business"
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the Majority Leader may make a non-debatable motion that the Senate proceed to consider any bill on the legislative Calendar of Business
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Senate often prefers to recess in order to avoid the new Legislative Day requirements
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Majority Leader generally provides time during the day by unanimous consent to conduct routine busines
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Resumption of Unfinished Business
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Senate resumes consideration of the unfinished business
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Unfinished business is the matter the Senate was considering at the time it adjourned
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At any time, however, the Senate may turn to other legislative business, or go into executive session to consider a treaty or nomination either by motion or unanimous consent
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Often at the end of a day’s session, the Majority Leader asks the minority leader if certain bills and resolutions have been “cleared” by the members of his party (that is, if all interested Senators have agreed that the measures should be passed and that no live debate is necessary) If a series of measures have been “cleared,” the Majority Leader calls them up in order, or en bloc by unanimous consent, and proposes any amendments on which the interested Senators may have agreed in advance. Each measure is called up and passed in a matter of minutes or less; there usually is no debate, although Senators may have statements inserted in the Congressional Record.
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Finally, the Majority Leader typically makes certain arrangements, by unanimous consent, for the following day. For example, Proposes the time at which the Senate will meet Provides for a period for transacting routine morning business during which Senators may speak briefly Provide his own comment on the anticipated legislative program for the next day before he moves that the Senate recess or adjourn.
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Unlike House members, Senators are given opportunities to use Senate Rules to gain direct access to the Legislative Calendar
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procedure by which a Senator can introduce a bill, or submit a resolution, and then have it placed directly on the Senate’s legislative Calendar of Business, without first having been referred to one or more committees.
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A Senator may rise, seek recognition, send the resolution to "the desk" (the clerks' desk), and ask unanimous consent for its immediate consideration
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The resolution is then read
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“go over, under the Rule"
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placed on the Calendar under the heading of “Resolutions and Motions over, under the Rule,” to be laid before the Senate on the next legislative day
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Committee Referrals & Reports
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A bill may be referred to more than one committee if each has jurisdiction over part or all of i
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concurrently to two or more committees
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may be divided among the committees
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may be referred sequentially
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After a Committee has conducted hearings and markup sessions, the bill may be reported to the Senate to be placed on the Legislative Calendar
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includes a written "report"
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discussion of the policy issue
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Amendments
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section-by- section analysis
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discussion of the committee’s deliberations
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Committee with unfavorable opinions of a bill usually refuse to take any action This is what is meant by a bill "dying in Committee"
6.1_3A1-Notes: Party Functions & Issues - 0 views
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1964 Barry Goldwater..."extremism in defense of liberty is no vice..." Neo-conservatism
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Increasing number of independents (~20% in 1950s to 35% today)
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Lack of party cohesion:
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Little control over nomination process
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Types of primary election: Closed—voting only by party members, no crossover voting Open—voting by all members of the electorate but must choose which primary if there is more than one Blanket/Wide Open (Alaska and Washington)—open to all members of electorate, all candidates for same office on same ballot
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plurality of votes
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some southern states runoff if no majority vote
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Problems with primaries: Fragmentation of political parties Increase in costs for candidates Lengthening of campaign season
6.2_3A5-Notes: Campaign Finance - 0 views
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FECA (1971) Buckley v Valeo (1976) BPCRA (2002) McConnell v FEC (2003) Citizen's United v FEC (2010)
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2012 will be the first election with SuperPAC spending
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FECA also created the Federal Elections Commission
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Appointment by President with Senate approval
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Monitoring of campaign donations and spending
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reports on spending and donations, fundraising by the candidate, payment of expenses by the candidate
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http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/limits.php
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Party-building activities Voter registration drives Get-out-the-vote actions General campaign business Donations of state party organizations Provision for offices, telephones, surveys, canvassing, among others Additional activities with no direct ties to the presidential campaign
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Public financing is provided as "matching funds"
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$1.00 checkoff on federal tax returns
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candidate to raise a total of $100,000—$5,000 in each of twenty states
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individual contributions of $250.00 or less
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Loss of eligibility—less than ten percent of vote in two consecutive primaries primary campaigns
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These early 20th century laws are a reflection of the Progressive Era reforms...What are some of the other reforms?
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contribute unlimited amounts to parties
8.2_3C-Notes: The Mass Media - 0 views
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flaws of candidates
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Polling results—
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"Pack journalism"—homogenization of reports
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"Leaks" (also "trial balloons")
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Official proceedings
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C-SPAN covers Congressional Hearings, and the day-to-day workings of government
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Associated Press United Press International Reuters
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Coverage of Nixon impeachment hearings
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"agenda setting"
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repetition
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Selection
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Allotment
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Priority
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"spin"
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partisan source
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Investigative reporting is expensive
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conflict of interete (advertisers)
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small number of people
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potential decline in the impact of the media
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pre-existing beliefs
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ack of understanding the "other side" of issues
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Reasons for the potential increase in the impact of the media
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Decentralization of access to information
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More control by individuals Ability to become a publisher
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Most important media outlet
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Largest audience
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over-the-air
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ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox
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Public: PBS
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over 98%
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Average of 2.6
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computers replacing TVs still very small, but increasing
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1,500 television stations
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4,500 AM commercial (for-profit) stations
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Lack of competition i
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Radio ownership is concentrated
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Newspaper ownership is concentrated
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Concentration of ownership is one reason for self-censorship by the news media,,, When a news entity can offer a national audience, there are relatively few advertisers that can take advantage: and large advertisers are not likely to be happy about investigative stories that put them in a bad light
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Media are generally owned by for-profit corporatio
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secure advertisements
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mergers
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cost-cutting consolidation
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ross-ownership of print, TV, and internet
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ulnerability to large advertisers
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self-censoring
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decline of investigative journalism
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Partisan press
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particular stance
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Harsh treatment of certain issues or individuals
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Lies of omission
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Emphasis or de-emphasis
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slant
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Advocacy of certain policy positions
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Judicial
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First Amendment protections
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prior restraint
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malicious intent
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obscenity
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Executive
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Federal Communications Commission
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White House Press Corps
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Legislative
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Public Broadcasting System
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Federal Communications Commission
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executive branch
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broadcast (airwaves, not cable
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Regulation of children's programming—Children's Television Act (1990)
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technical standards
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licensing procedures
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Regulation
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Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (1934)
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Freedom of Information Act (1966
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Cable Television Consumer Competition Act (1992)
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shield laws to protect reporters' sources
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Changing concepts of news
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dynamic pictures
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Low-production-cost late night news type shows
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interview shows, not investigative reporting
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trustworthy/newsworthy
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(scandals
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pundits
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Reports on pre-staged photo opportunities ("photo-ops") and very short "sound bites"
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By-passing of network news political media
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Websites for candidates
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Websites for thinktanks, interest groups
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Websites for 527s and now SuperPACs
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agenda
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personality not issues
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disinformation
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"spin" efforts
7.1_3-Federal Elections Law (1971-2010) - 1 views
7.1_3B-McConnell v FEC (Scalia's Opinion) - 0 views
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Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA)
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Also known as "McCain-Feingold", after the two Senators, one a Republican, the other a Democrat, the Bi-Partisan Campaign Finance Reform Act amended and extended the Federal Elections Commission Act (FECA). The BCRA did several things: 1) banned unregulated contributions, known as "soft money",to national political parties by special interests or individuals including funds for "party building activities" 2) Changed several provisions regarding the size of permissible contributions 3) Banned unions, corporations, and non-profit corporations from funding broadcast advertisements, called "electioneering communications" within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary; examples include Right to Life or the Environmental Defense Fund, or even an unincorporated entity (a person, presumably) using any corporate or union general treasury funds
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Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976)
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Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA)
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This is a sad day for the freedom of speech
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a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government
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It forbids pre-election criticism of incumbents by corporations, even not-for-profit corporations, by use of their general funds; and forbids national-party use of “soft” money to fund “issue ads” that incumbents find so offensive
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To be sure, the legislation is evenhanded: It similarly prohibits criticism of the candidates who oppose Members of Congress in their reelection bids. But as everyone knows, this is an area in which evenhandedness is not fairness. If all electioneering were evenhandedly prohibited, incumbents would have an enormous advantage
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if incumbents and challengers are limited to the same quantity of electioneering, incumbents are favored
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Beyond that, however, the present legislation targets for prohibition certain categories of campaign speech that are particularly harmful to incumbents. Is it accidental, do you think, that incumbents raise about three times as much “hard money”–the sort of funding generally not restricted by this legislation–as do their challengers?
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I wish to address three fallacious propositions
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(a) Money is Not Speech
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(b) Pooling Money is Not Speech
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(c) Speech by Corporations Can Be Abridged
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introduce a nonspeech element
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introduce a nonspeech element
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As we said in Buckley, 424 U.S., at 16, “this Court has never suggested that the dependence of a communication on the expenditure of money operates itself to introduce a nonspeech element or to reduce the exacting scrutiny required by the First Amendment.”
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In any economy operated on even the most rudimentary principles of division of labor, effective public communication requires the speaker to make use of the services of others.
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Division of labor requires a means of mediating exchange, and in a commercial society, that means is supplied by money.
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This is not to say that any regulation of money is a regulation of speech
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But where the government singles out money used to fund speech as its legislative object, it is acting against speech as such, no less than if it had targeted the paper on which a book was printed or the trucks that deliver it to the bookstore
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The constitutional right of association explicated in NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 460 (1958), stemmed from the Court’s recognition that ‘[e]ffective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association
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Subsequent decisions have made clear that the First and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee ‘ “freedom to associate with others for the common advancement of political beliefs and ideas,” ’ … .” Buckley, supra, at 15.We have said that “implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment” is “a corresponding right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends
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In NAACP v. Button, supra, at 428—429, 431, we held that the NAACP could assert First Amendment rights “on its own behalf, . . . though a corporation,”
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The Court changed course in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 (1990), upholding a state prohibition of an independent corporate expenditure in support of a candidate for state office. I dissented in that case, see id., at 679, and remain of the view that it was error.
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the organizational form in which those enterprises already exist, and in which they can most quickly and most effectively get their message across, is the corporate form. The First Amendment does not in my view permit the restriction of that political speech. And the same holds true for corporate electoral speech: A candidate should not be insulated from the most effective speech that the major participants in the economy and major incorporated interest groups can generate.
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dissenting
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concurring
The Persuaders - 11 views
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At last, they find the building they've been looking for. They line up the target in their sights. What's this covert mission all about? It's a new kind of urban warfare, a sneaker company's all-out battle for our attention.
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Recall the discussion about the First Amendment implications related to broadcasting messages on other people's buildings...would projecting on government buildings be protected speech?
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I set out on a tour through the modern machinery of selling to meet some of the persuaders up close. My first stop, a downtown New York storefront. I've been invited to a hit party, or something that looks like one. What this really is, is the opening salvo in a marketing blitz for a new airline. They call themselves Song. Song is a subsidiary of Delta Airlines, but you won't find any mention of Delta here. Delta is old-fashioned air travel, and Song is their way of persuading us that they can compete with hip, low-cost carriers like Jet Blue.
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Song was an attempt to target women: Obama's campaign targeted women, young people, and minorities. Events and settings were as important as issues.
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TIM MAPES: She's got three children, a husband. They both work. They have an SUV and a sports car, Nieman-Marcus credit cards, but she shops at Target. She has got a propensity to read kind of high-end literature, but she finds guilty pleasure in People magazine. And she doesn't have an airline.
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Andy Spade
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TIM MAPES: Well, the risk is you invest an inordinate amount of money behind a message that is a fairly ethereal message that, as I say, doesn't feed the bulldog. I mean, this is a business, this isn't an art form. So we have got to ensure that it's communication that drives commerce, not just makes people feel good.
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This is where Karl Rove has an answer: metrics--if it can't be measured, it's not worth doing.
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DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF: The question is an advertising classic: Should the pitch be aimed at the head or the heart? How creative can an ad get and still be an ad?
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KEVIN ROBERTS: Everything works now. You know, French Fries taste crisp. Coffee's hot. You know, beer tastes good, unless you live in America and then, you know, you've got to live with what you get. But all these things now are table stakes.
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DOUGLAS ATKIN: I was in a research facility watching eight people rhapsodize about a sneaker. And I thought, "Where is this coming from? This is, at the end of the day, a piece of footwear." But the terms they were using were evangelical. So I thought, if these people are expressing cult-like devotion, then why not study cults? Why not study the original? Find out why people join cults and apply that knowledge to brands
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KEVIN ROBERTS: You know, we've moved from brands into experiences. Look at Tide, for instance, in the U.S. Tide's no longer a laundry detergent. It's not about getting clothes clean anymore. All detergents get your clothes clean. Tide's about a much deeper – a deeper thing than that. It's an enabler. It's a liberator. It's – I guess you think about moving Tide from the heart of the laundry to the heart of the family.
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This was the ad I asked you to place on a specific network and/or show: BET. What would a political analyst learn from this?
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3-FRONTLINE: The Persuaders - 3 views
6.1_3A-FRONTLINE: Karl Rove Architect (transcript) - 8 views
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Some of the highlighting on this page was done with HTML, and some was done with diigo's tools. It shouldn't matter, but I thought I might mention it in.
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Karl Rove wants a permanent Republican majority.
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As you will learn in during this program, Rove and other Republican strategists understand that the US electorate is decidedly conservative...people who vote in the highest percentages are generally older, more educated, higher SES (socio-economic status).
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Realignment means a fundamental shift of the political party holding power in the executive branch and in Congress. Holding power long enough can also lead to long-lasting influence over the judiciary as well.
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There'd be nothing better for our system for the election to be conclusively over tonight so that— I think it's going to be me— so I can go on and— and lead this country.
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This is, of course, a reference to the 2000 election which was decided by the slim margin of 537 votes in Florida. In an unusual step, the US Supreme Court rushed to hear a lawsuit brought by Bush against Gore (http://teachers.dadeschools.net/jzoeller/APGovt/01_A_Landmark_Supreme_Court_Cases_Summaries_files/0b8f06e4fd86a2c3ef077b8e5e40b79f-124.html)
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key battleground state
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Republican areas
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exit polls
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Virginia. South Carolina
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Pennsylvania
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Florida
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Ohio and Florida
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what was going on in the electorate
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what we counted on and turn-out
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elaborate system designed to plug into key precincts
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war room
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getting tracking polling
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architect of the public policies
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architect of the fund-raising strategy
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architect of the state-by-state strategy
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architect of the travel itinerary
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There is an ongoing debate concerning this shift...the US population has been aging, contributing to US conservatism (note that the Baby Boom is typically labeled 1946-1964, the year of Goldwater's speech. On the other hand, immigration has been pulling in the other direction, with many immigrants and first generation migrants leaning toward the Democratic party.
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Our Republican cause is to free our people and to light the way for liberty throughout the world!
4-Griswold-v-Connecticut (1965) - 0 views
NPR: Administration Touts Lower-Than-Expected Obamacare Premiums | Notes, Topic 5: Heal... - 0 views
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According to a released by the Department of Health and Human Services, "premiums nationwide will ... be around 16 percent lower than originally expected," and 95 percent of uninsured people live in a state with average premiums that are lower than expected.
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So here's the simple takeaway: if allowed to do so, it SEEMS that Obamacare's insurance exchanges will work. Meaning, they will provide private health insurance coverage to people who need it at an affordable price.
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Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says "6 in 10 Americans who currently lack insurance will be able to find coverage that costs less than $100 a month" in health insurance exchanges set to open next week.
NPR: Commander In Chief, Explainer In Chief Tout Health Care Law - 1 views
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President Obama's health care law has so far survived challenges in Congress and the courts. But its biggest test could begin next week. That's when the online marketplaces offering health care coverage to the uninsured are set to start signing people up. The question is, will they come?
John Zoeller