Corporate News and FAIR

To understand more about corporate media, one cannot turn to corporate media for enlightenment. Currently media is failing to teach what is actually happening in the world. When all the polls say that some percentage of people believe this or that to be true when it is obviously false, we cannot blame the education system we have decimated but we can blame those who provide us with continuing education on the most powerful educational tool to ever exist: television.

To get an alternate view of the way corporate media frames the news, I look forward to new installments of FAIR-TV, because, well, I just like to see the television actually used for educational purposes:



Subscribe on YouTube. It is only a few minutes a week or so, and that is probably the least and best thing you might do to help yourself understand the bias in the corporate owned television media. 

How the Koch Brothers Bought the GOP

How the Koch Brothers Bought the GOP
  from Rolling Stone - October 9, 2004 - [inset article]

All it takes is a few hundred million dollars, political leaders to bow and scrape before you, and a willingness to game the system.

The Koch brothers have built a political operation that rivals traditional GOP arms like the Republican National Committee. In the 2012 election, political groups connected to the Koch network raised nearly $400 million. For 2014, the Koch network is hardly scaling back its ambition, seeking to create a $290 million war chest. That alone would be $74 million more than the RNC spent on the last midterm, in 2010. "They are set on taking over the GOP," says University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs, who has likened the Kochs' political influence to that of robber barons, calling their activities "the 21st-century version of how you buy yourself a government in America."

The hub of the Koch network, Freedom Partners, is organized under the tax code as a chamber of commerce, making "dues" paid to the organization tax-deductible. In 2014 Freedom Partners raised nearly $255 million. Tax benefits are not supposed to be applied to funds used for political activities but Freedom Partners simply claims it does not engage in political activity. It makes grants instead to a constellation of loyal political nonprofits like the Center to Protect Patient Rights and the 60 Plus Association. Freedom Partners also gives huge sums to Americans for Prosperity - a reincarnation of the Kochs' 1990s front group Citizens for a Sound Economy - and smaller grants to the Tea Party Patriots.

The sway of the Koch network transcends any rift between the Tea Party and the GOP establishment. Top politicians allied with both camps, including 2016 presidential hopeful Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. assembled in June for a private gathering of the Koch donor network at a beachfront golf resort in Orange County, California. McConnell began his speech extolling Charles and David Koch: "I don't know where we'd be without you," he said in a leaked audio recording from the event. Then, as if reading from Americans for Prosperity talking points, McConnell promised the gathering that, should the GOP recapture the Senate, it will "push back against regulatory overreach," working to block federal funding "on health care, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency."

In addition to electioneering, the Koch machine works to advance a bottom-line-driven agenda through groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council - an alliance between industry and mostly GOP politicians. ALEC pursues a national agenda at the state level, introducing nearly identical bills in state legislatures. Koch Industries is a significant funder of ALEC and has a seat on its corporate board. In recent months, ALEC has been working to kneecap the solar industry, seeking to levy a steep tariff - a so-called sun tax - on home producers of solar power. For Koch Industries, the hypocrisy is glaring. Charles Koch rails against "political" forms of profit-seeking, including: "Lobbying governments to hamper competitors."

An Old Analogy Becomes Archaic: Now A Rising Tide Lifts Only Luxury Yachts

SATURDAY, OCT 4, 2014 08:30 AM CDT

Income inequality’s sick joke: A rising tide only lifts luxury yachts

New research reveals a startling truth about inequality: When the rich get richer, everyone else loses big

SEAN MCELWEE

EnlargeDavid Koch, Mitt Romney (Credit: AP/Evan Agostini/Charles Dharapak/photo montage by Salon)

For a long time, the right has argued that we shouldn’t worry about inequality because the true concern is the reduction of poverty. Conservatives also maintained that higher levels of inequality were unimportant because “a rising tide would lift all boats,” and high levels of inequality propelled the economy forward. New research by Branko Milanovic and Roy van der Weide decimates these myths. Milanovic and van der Weide find that inequality doesn’t fuel growth for the whole economy, but rather, just the rich.

Before we get to the research of Milanovic and van der Weide, it’s important to understand how mainstream thought on inequality and growth has changed recently. For a long time, mainstream economists didn’t spend much time worrying about distribution. Nobel laureate Robert Lucas declared, “Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution.”

Once rampant inequality did become an increasingly mainstream concern, Martin Feldstein insisted that the question is “not inequality but poverty.” Economists believed that redistribution slowed down economic growth, and that attempts to reduce inequality would, as a result, only worsen poverty. The reasoning had at least two strands of thought: First, since the poor tend to consume most of their income, it was good for the rich to have more wealth to invest in the future — inequality would increase savings. Second, inequality provided incentives for individuals to work harder to take home more of the pie.

There is now a burgeoning literature showing that these assumptions aren’t true, and that inequality actually reduces growth. That’s because the reasons for accepting inequality were actually backward. Instead of motivating the rich to invest, higher inequality meant that the poor took on more and more debt, destabilizing the economy. Without enough poor and middle-class families consuming their products, businesses had fewer customers, and less revenue. Further, instead of providing the poor and middle class an incentive to better their lives, higher inequality gave the rich a reason to pull up the ladder, leaving the poor behind. Instead of working harder, the rich sit back on their wealth. The poor and middle class, disenchanted by lack of opportunity, have less money to invest in their own education (and are therefore are increasingly burdened by debt). Inequality thereby reduces growth by reducing both demand and upward mobility.

So Milanovic and van der Weide decided to investigate how inequality affects growth across the income spectrum. They used a state-level survey conducted once every decade to estimate annualized income growth at different income percentiles. What the researchers find is that the old story of “trickle down” economics have no support in the data — instead, inequality boosts growth only for the rich.

The charts below show income growth across different percentiles. Each line shows annualized growth over a decade with the horizontal axis defining growth by quintile. The first chart shows that during the relatively equal period of 1960 to 1970 (red), when inequality was lower, growth was strong and equally distributed (it actually slightly favored the poor). During the 1980-to-2000 period (blue and green) growth favored the rich; however, their gains weren’t enough to make up for the massive losses to the poor and middle class. Finally, in the period between 2000 and 2010, growth for everyone was abysmal in the wake of a massive financial crisis (see the purple line of the final chart).

As Milanovic tells Salon, “You know it used to be that the U.S. growth was pro-poor, in the sense, that the growth rates among the poor were higher than amongst the rich. Now it’s the opposite.”

When the authors dug deeper and looked at individual states, they found that, “inequality is negatively associated… with subsequent real growth for the population located below the 25th percentile, and positively with growth for the population belonging to the top decile.” In simple language: Inequality benefits the rich and harms the poor. A rising tide doesn’t lift all boats — just the luxury yachts.

Using the data the authors have developed, we can discover what growth would look like in a more equitable society. The chart below shows annual income growth between 1960 and 2010 by percentile in yellow. The chart is sloped upward, meaning that the income of the richest grew by 1.8 percent each year, while the growth of the poorest grew by .7 percent each year. However, if inequality was reduced by one standard deviation (the difference between Connecticut and South Carolina) across the country, income growth for the poor would more than double, to 1.6 percent each year.

This has important political implications. First, we should not assume that the mere fact that inequality reduces economic growth will be enough to convince the rich to reduce it. Inequality benefits the rich immensely. Second, the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats has been so utterly disproved it should be embarrassing to state in public. Yet reformicons like Michael Strain continue to repeat the mantra, “Growth Beats Inequality.” That is false. Between 1960 and 2010, GDP increased by an annualized rate of 3.2 percent (a total of  378 percent) but incomes for the poorest 5 percent increased by only .7 percent a year. However, if we had reduced our gini coefficient (the standard measure of inequality) by only 9 percent, to the level of Japan, we could have doubled income growth for the poorest Americans.

There is also hope, however. The growth rate of the 1960s to 1970s was rapid and equitable. Compared with growth rates from the massively unequal 1990-to-2010 period, everyone was better off. So there is some reason to believe the rich could support more equitable policies. But the rich won’t be so easy to persuade — in a massively unequal society, even modest economic growth still benefits economic elites. Don’t worry about growth; worry about inequality.

Sean McElwee is a writer and researcher of public policy. His writing may be viewed at seanamcelwee.com. Follow him on Twitter at @seanmcelwee.

Plutocratoons

Supreme Court for Billionaires not the People

The Supreme Court That Made It Easier to Buy Elections Just Made It Harder for People to Vote in Them

John Nichols on September 29, 2014 - 8:17 PM ET   The Nation

US Supreme Court Building (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

In case there was any remaining confusion with regard to the precise political intentions of the US Supreme Court’s activist majority, things were clarified Monday. The same majority that has made it easier for corporations to buy elections (with the Citizens United v. FEC decision) and for billionaires to become the dominant players in elections across the country (with theMcCutcheon v. FEC decision) decided to make it harder for people in Ohio to vote.

Yes, this Court has messed with voting rights before, frequently and in damaging ways. It has barely been a year since the majority struck down key elements of the Voting Rights Act.

But Monday’s decision by the majority was especially blatant—and immediate. One day before early voting was set to begin in Ohio on Tuesday, the Supreme Court delayed the start of the process with a decision that will reduce the early voting period from thirty-five days to twenty-eight days.

Assaults on early voting are particularly troublesome, as the changes limit the time available for working people to cast ballots and increase the likelihood of long lines on Election Day. And changes of this kind are doubly troublesome when they come in close proximity to high-stakes elections, as they create confusion about when and how to vote.

American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Executive Director Freda Levenson decried the ruling, calling it “a real loss for Ohio voters, especially those who must use evenings, weekends and same-day voter registration to cast their ballot.”

The ACLU fought the legal battle for extended early voting on behalf of the National Association of Colored People and the League of Women Voters, among others.

“To make (the Supreme Court ruling) even worse,” Levenson told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “this last-minute decision will cause tremendous confusion among Ohioans about when and how they can vote.”

Ohio Republicans had no complaints. They have made no secret of their disdain for extended early voting, which has been allowed for a number of years and which has become a standard part of the political process in urban areas where voters seek to avoid the long lines that have plagued Ohio on past Election Days.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a top Republican, has taken the lead in efforts to restrict voting. In June, he established a restricted voting schedule. Husted’s scheme was upset by lower-court rulings. In particular, the courts sought to preserve early voting in the evening and on Sundays, which is especially important for working people.

Fully aware of that reality, the Supreme Court scrambled to issue a 5-4 decision that “temporarily” allows the limits on early voting to be restored. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy voted to allow Husted to limit voting, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan opposed the ruling.

Monday’s ruling was not a final decision; the Court could revisit the matter. But that won’t happen in time to restore full early voting before his year’s November 4 election.

The Court is sending a single of at least tacit approval of controversial moves by officials in other states—such as Wisconsin and North Carolina– to curtail early voting and access to the polls. Legal wrangling also continues over the implementation of restrictive Voter ID rules in those states and others—with special concern regarding Wisconsin, where a September federal appeals court ruling has officials scrambling to implement a Voter ID law that had been blocked by a lower-court judge.

Expressing disappointment that a narrow majority on the Supreme Court has permitted “changes that could make it harder for tens of thousands of Ohioans to vote,” Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, said, “Courts should serve as a bulwark against rollbacks to voting rights and prevent politicians from disenfranchising voters for political reasons.”

Weiser is right.

Unfortunately, the High Court is focused on expanding the influence of billionaires, not voters.

Climate Change / Fiore