They Still Don’t Get It

January 23, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
They Still Don’t Get It
By BOB HERBERT

How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children.

The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many.

While the nation was suffering through the worst economy since the Depression, the Democrats wasted a year squabbling like unruly toddlers over health insurance legislation. No one in his or her right mind could have believed that a workable, efficient, cost-effective system could come out of the monstrously ugly plan that finally emerged from the Senate after long months of shady alliances, disgraceful back-room deals, outlandish payoffs and abject capitulation to the insurance companies and giant pharmaceutical outfits.

The public interest? Forget about it.

With the power elite consumed with its incessant, discordant fiddling over health care, the economic plight of ordinary Americans, from the middle class to the very poor, got pathetically short shrift. And there is no evidence, even now, that leaders of either party fully grasp the depth of the crisis, which began long before the official start of the Great Recession in December 2007.

A new study from the Brookings Institution tells us that the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the U.S. is in the suburbs. You don’t hear about this from the politicians who are always so anxious to tell you, in between fund-raisers and photo-ops, what a great job they’re doing. From 2000 to 2008, the number of poor people in the U.S. grew by 5.2 million, reaching nearly 40 million. That represented an increase of 15.4 percent in the poor population, which was more than twice the increase in the population as a whole during that period.

The study does not include data from 2009, when so many millions of families were just hammered by the recession. So the reality is worse than the Brookings figures would indicate.

Job losses, stagnant or reduced wages over the past decade, and the loss of home equity when the housing bubble burst have combined to take a horrendous toll on families who thought they had done all the right things and were living the dream. A great deal of that bleeding is in the suburbs. The study, compiled by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, said, “Suburbs gained more than 2.5 million poor individuals, accounting for almost half of the total increase in the nation’s poor population since 2000.”

Democrats in search of clues as to why voters are unhappy may want to take a look at the report. In 2008, a startling 91.6 million people — more than 30 percent of the entire U.S. population — fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, which is a meager $21,834 for a family of four.

The question for Democrats is whether there is anything that will wake them up to their obligation to extend a powerful hand to ordinary Americans and help them take the government, including the Supreme Court, back from the big banks, the giant corporations and the myriad other predatory interests that put the value of a dollar high above the value of human beings.

The Democrats still hold the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress. The idea that they are not spending every waking hour trying to fix the broken economic system and put suffering Americans back to work is beyond pathetic. Deficit reduction is now the mantra in Washington, which means that new large-scale investments in infrastructure and other measures to ease the employment crisis and jump-start the most promising industries of the 21st century are highly unlikely.

What we’ll get instead is rhetoric. It’s cheap, so we can expect a lot of it.

Those at the bottom of the economic heap seem all but doomed in this environment. The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston put the matter in stark perspective after analyzing the employment challenges facing young people in Chicago: “Labor market conditions for 16-19 and 20-24-year-olds in the city of Chicago in 2009 are the equivalent of a Great Depression-era, especially for young black men.”

The Republican Party has abandoned any serious approach to the nation’s biggest problems, economic or otherwise. It may be resurgent, but it’s not a serious party. That leaves only the Democrats, a party that once championed working people and the poor, but has long since lost its way.

Bankers’ Sense of Entitlement

January 24, 2010
Editorial
Bankers’ Sense of Entitlement

We suspect most Americans would be baffled to realize that bankers see themselves as victims of the Obama administration’s financial policies. But there you go.

Irate at the administration’s decision to impose a fee on the largest banks, the bank lobby has hired a top lawyer to challenge the levy all the way up to the Supreme Court. Their case seems to rest on the perplexing argument that the fee would amount to a bill of attainder, which singles out a specific group of people and violates their right to due process. But the levy is aimed at a class — very large financial institutions. There are other taxes, fines and fees that operate in the same sort of way.

The push-back against the fee underscores bankers’ peculiar sense of entitlement. They feel entitled to the public support dished out by the Treasury, the F.D.I.C. and the Federal Reserve. Yet they do not believe they should be made to contribute toward the effort to save the economy from their reckless behavior.

President Obama articulated the fee as a way to recover the $117 billion cost of the direct financial bailout. It would apply to financial institutions with more than $50 billion in assets. (Bank of America, the country’s largest bank, would have to pay about $1.5 billion a year.)

Mr. Obama could have gone further. Government assistance to the banks went far beyond the Treasury’s bailout — large guarantees from the F.D.I.C., copious lending from the Federal Reserve, extremely low interest rates. And the damage caused by the banks exceeded $117 billion by an order of magnitude.

A levy on big banks’ assets could also be seen as a way to slow the further consolidation of a banking system that already has too many banks considered too big to fail. It fits the administration’s avowed interest in limiting the size of commercial banks by tightening limits on their market shares. In any case, having spent trillions to drag the economy back from the brink of the abyss, the government needs the money.

And the money is there. Goldman Sachs said last week that it would set aside 35.8 percent of last year’s revenue to pay bonuses. That is down from the 48 percent Goldman doled out for bonuses in 2008. But it adds up to an obscene $16.2 billion, more than 10 times what the proposed levy is expected to cost the bank each year.

Bankers would do well to stop trying to avoid this fee, and they should stop trying to block broad-based reforms intended to create a more solid financial system.

Health Care Crisis

What is going to happen to Health Care Reform?  Is it Dead? Will the House go back and start again on a much smaller concise bill?  Will the House try and pass the Senate bill?
What does the President want? Why hasn't He said more? Is he playing nice with Republicans? If he is it is not working and He needs to stand up for His base and Independents. He needs to stand be4 the people who elected him and tell it just like it is. No pussyfooting' around, no sweet talk, No hands across the isle because the republicans do not want it and have said so more than once.
Click links to see articles

Obama weighs Paring Goals for Health Bill

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, showed little new willingness to collaborate with the Democrats.

A New Search for Consensus on Health Care Bill


Do the Right Thing By PAUL KRUGMAN  OP-ED

The Court’s Blow to Democracy

January 22, 2010

Editorial

New York Times

With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.

Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.


As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.

The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)

The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.

This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.

The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.

The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.

After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme naïveté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.

These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.

With Populist Stance, Obama Takes On Banks

 I am always updating my blogg if I find an article or a video that helps support what I report

January 22, 2010

 Obama calls for Limits on Banks

By JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — The tougher approach to financial regulation that President Obama outlined on Thursday reflected a changed political climate, the rebound in big banks’ fortunes after their taxpayer bailout and a shift in power within the administration away from those who had been seen as most sympathetic to Wall Street.
In calling for new limits on the size of big banks and their ability to make risky bets, Mr. Obama was throwing a public punch at Wall Street for the third time in a week, underscoring the imperative for him and his party to strike a more populist tone, especially after the Republican victory Tuesday in the Massachusetts Senate race.
In announcing his proposals Thursday at the White House, Mr. Obama said if the financial industry wanted a fight over new restrictions, it was a fight he was ready to have.

President Obama, with his economic adviser Paul Volcker at his side, told the banking industry on Thursday he was ready to fight.

The new approach was welcomed by the White House political team and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and delivered by a less enthusiastic economic team on orders last month from Mr. Obama.
It was also a victory for Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman and outside adviser to Mr. Obama.
Until Thursday, when he stood beside the president at the White House announcement of the new policy, Mr. Volcker truly had been on the outside of administration decision-making. And, in frustration, he had been increasingly vocal about the need for the administration to clamp down on what he described as the casinolike operations at the big banks that nearly destroyed the financial system in the first place.
In adopting the tougher line, Mr. Obama set aside a more limited approach to regulation that had been championed since last year by his economic team, led by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Yet even Mr. Geithner of late has been moving toward a tougher stance on Wall Street, in part out of anger that big banks, having ridden a taxpayer bailout back to comfortable profitability, are now rewarding themselves with big bonuses and fighting harder in Congress against the administration’s initiative to tighten regulation of the financial system.
The issue reignited speculation, common in the administration’s early months, that Mr. Geithner and perhaps Lawrence H. Summers, the senior White House economic adviser, were not long for the Obama world given broad public perceptions that they remained too close to the financial industry.
But numerous administration officials said that both men had earned the trust and confidence of Mr. Obama, who believed they had not received credit for stabilizing a financial system that by all accounts was on the verge of collapse when the president took office.
His pique on that score came through in his televised interview with ABC News on Wednesday, after the loss in Massachusetts, even as Mr. Obama empathized with Americans’ anger about the bailout effort, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, that he inherited from George W. Bush.
“Now if I tell them, ‘Well, it turns out that we will actually have gotten TARP paid back and that we’re going to make sure that a fee’s imposed on the big banks so that this thing will cost the taxpayers not a dime,’ that’s helpful,” Mr. Obama said. “But it doesn’t eliminate the sense that their voices aren’t heard and that institutions are betraying them.”
To change that, he added, “We’re about to get into a big fight with the banks.”
That fight is sure to continue testing Mr. Geithner, as well as Mr. Summers and lesser-known members of the economic team who are seen by others in the West Wing as politically tone-deaf. Yet Mr. Geithner, in an interview, said he foresaw no problems.
“Just because things seem populist doesn’t mean they’re not the right thing to do,” he said.
The administration’s new tack suggests just how much big banks have miscalculated Americans’ intensified resentment against the bailout — anger stoked by persistent high unemployment, banks’ stinginess in lending to small business and the revival of Wall Street’s bonus culture.
They have become the perfect foil for the White House as it tries to lead the Democratic Party out of its post-Massachusetts morass — and to change the channel from the seemingly unending debate over health insurance. As the White House hopes to define the fight, the enemy is not big government but big money.
One problem for the Obama team, as some Congressional Democrats lament, is that its moves of late look poll-driven and overly reactive to the Democrats’ implosion in the Bay State race. To be sure, worse for the White House than Scott Brown’s win is the fact that the Republican won as an agent of change just as Mr. Obama did in 2008 — only this time, of course, the change was not from Bush administration policies but from Mr. Obama’s.
Despite the timing, however, all three of Mr. Obama’s recent policy stands have been in the works for some time. That is not to say they were not politically motivated; for some months, the administration has been concerned about Mr. Obama’s slipping support in the polls and many Americans’ perception of his administration as too cozy with Wall Street.
The president’s proposal last week for a tax on about 50 of the nation’s biggest banks to recoup any losses from the bailout began taking shape at the Treasury last August for inclusion in the budget that Mr. Obama will send to Congress in February, administration officials said.
Aside from its value as a way to raise $90 billion over 10 years, a time frame in which Mr. Obama is eager to cut deficits, the bank tax helped mute long-running criticism of Mr. Geithner for his opposition last summer to European leaders’ calls for taxing bank bonuses and transactions.
Earlier this week, with action heating up in the Senate over legislation for regulating banks, administration officials spread the word that Mr. Obama’s proposal to create an independent consumer protection agency was “non-negotiable.” Industry lobbyists have made killing the agency a priority, while liberal groups have made its creation a test of Mr. Obama’s leadership.
Mr. Obama personally weighed in with a lengthy meeting at the White House on Tuesday with the panel’s chairman, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut.
Until now, the president has had a low profile on the banking bill, though the House debated its version most of last year before passing it in December.
Some Democrats complain that the White House was too absorbed by the health care issue, but they acknowledge the banking issue was widely seen as an insider’s game over arcane issues like derivatives trading that have little resonance with the public.
Now that has changed. As Thursday’s call for new bank limits showed, the president personally is taking the lead as First Populist.
“Never again,” he said, “will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail.”

Reactions to the Bank Proposal

January 21, 2010, 12:51 pm

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Update | 2:50 p.m.
Excerpts of reactions from around the econoblogosphere to the administration’s (still somewhat hazy) bank proposal:

“The problem of ‘too big to fail’ isn’t that some institutions are large, it’s that there is currently no statutory authority to wind down a financial conglomerate in the way that the F.D.I.C. is currently authorized to unwind banks. More effective supervision, coupled with the authority to seize and wind down large firms, is the appropriate remedy to ‘too big to fail.’” — Rob Nichols, president of the Financial Services Forum
“I am concerned, as a general matter, about arbitrarily limiting the size of the banks, since our modern, complicated, global economy demands that the United States have at least a few banks capable of providing a very wide range of services each on a large enough scale to be efficient. However, there certainly may be circumstances in which regulators ought to push a bank or banks to be smaller in general or smaller in certain activities.” — Douglas J. Elliott, Brookings Institution
“Now note we have to move two other pieces of reform in order to make this credible: we need a system where parties are aware of the derivatives holdings of an investment bank precrisis, say through a clearinghouse or exchange, so to make resolution credible and prevent panics. We also need a new resolution authority to handle these firms in a manner that won’t destroy the system.” — Mike Konczal, Roosevelt Institute
“The banks of course will scream blue murder, while at the same time trying to say that those kinds of walls exist already. But they can’t have it both ways.” — Felix Salmon, Reuters
“In principle, I am against attempts by government to structure industries. But I take the view that the political economy of small banks is better than that of large banks. Large banks find it easy to persuade regulators that they are doing wonderful things and find it easy to persuade politicians that they need to be bailed out. Maybe small banks would find this task somewhat harder.” — Arnold Kling, EconLog
“We believe providing for strengthened regulatory oversight and flexibility like that originally proposed by the administration, as opposed to arbitrary restrictions on growth and activities, is a more effective way of mitigating systemic risk and ending ‘too big to fail.’” — Tim Ryan, president and C.E.O. of Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association
“Will the White House have the courage of its convictions and really fight the big banks on this issue? If the White House goes into this fight half-hearted or without really understanding (or explaining) the underlying problem of unfettered banks that are too big to fail, they will not win.” — Simon Johnson, BaselineScenario and M.I.T. Sloan School of Business
“Should the proposal go through, it will force some banks to close down or sell off certain units. The more likely — and most desired — response would be for Goldman and Morgan to give up their bank holding company status and go back to obtaining their funding from the market. The higher cost of capital and challenge of raising funds will make it harder for them to be so big. That’s the point.” — Daniel Gross, Slate
“I don’t think we’ll get anywhere near the amount of change we need when all is mostly said and little actually gets done — but this is a move in the right direction. Too bad it didn’t happen months ago.” — Mark Thoma, Economist’s View
“But it should be absolutely clear that banks which are too big to fail must be shrunk, and that using government-guaranteed consumer deposits to trade securities for profit is a terrible idea. It is a relief to see these holes in the regulatory structure get some attention.” — The Economist
“Perhaps it’s time to recognize the limits of regulators, no matter how diligent and sophisticated they try to be. If you can’t truly keep on top of a complex industry that changes constantly, maybe the wiser course is just to limit what the individual players can do.” — Edmund L. Andrews, Capital Gains and Games
“This wouldn’t have done anything to stop Lehman, which also had very little to do with commercial banking.” — Ezra Klein, The Washington Post
“How does it affect the political economy of bank lobbying?” — Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
“Without more detail on how the limits on the market share of liabilities will be measured and enforced, it’s hard to say how effective they’ll be, but that’s probably the best angle to take when thinking about shrinking bank size.” — Tim Fernholz, The American Prospect

Geithner on the Bank Proposal

January 21, 2010, 7:24 pm

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is being interviewed on the “PBS NewsHour” tonight about the administration’s new bank proposal, a k a “the Volcker Rule,” released today. Here are a couple of highlights from the interview, according to a transcript released by PBS. (Sorry, I can’t find a link yet.)
Here is how Mr. Geithner explains today’s banking proposal:
The basic principle is that banks that have the privilege of taking advantage of the safety net should not use that to subsidize risky activity. I think it’s a simple principle, I think people can understand that and we’re going to do it in a careful, well-designed way.
And here he is asked what motivated the timing behind this announcement, but doesn’t really answer:

JUDY WOODRUFF: A couple of questions about the timing, Mr. Secretary. Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, who heads up the Economic Recovery Board for the president, he has publicly advocated this for the last year. He’s been very open about it. He told reporters last summer the president had said no to this. What changed the president’s mind?
MR. GEITHNER: I am – I would just want you to know – very close to Paul Volcker, have enormous respect for him. And the president and I have been talking to him about this for a long period of time. And you saw in the House bill that passed the House and even in the draft Senate bill a provision that was very responsive to Paul Volcker’s ideas. And this provision would give the Fed the authority to impose these types of restrictions, exactly these types of restrictions. We thought it was time now to provide a little more clarity though about what this would mean because as I said, we’re at this critical moment where we need to make the last push to get reforms through the Senate. And that’s why –

MS. WOODRUFF: But why not do it earlier?
MR. GEITHNER: Well, we’ve been – again, we’ve been working on how best to do this for some time. And we thought now was the time to bring some clarity to it.

MS. WOODRUFF: And I also ask because as you well know, there are voices out there today saying this is largely politically driven, that coming on the heels of the Massachusetts Senate outcome, a Republican won. You have polls showing Americans increasingly unhappy about administration policies, a sense the administration has been too soft on Wall Street, that that’s really what’s behind this.
MR. GEITHNER: That’s not what’s behind this. I’ve read that. I’ve heard that. But the president asked us to work on this going back several weeks. We’ve provided these recommendations to him two weeks ago. And again, the timing is driven by the fact that we’re at this moment in this very important cause we’re fighting, which is to get financial reform through this next stage of the process in the Senate.

The New Bank Proposal

January 21, 2010, 12:15 pm

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Here’s the full text of the White House’s news release on its (new) bank proposal:

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
January 21, 2010
President Obama Calls for New Restrictions on Size and Scope of Financial Institutions to Rein in Excesses and Protect Taxpayers

WASHINGTON, DC — President Obama joined Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Bill Donaldson, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Congressman Barney Frank, House Financial Services Chairman; Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Banking Committee and the President’s economic team to call for new restrictions on the size and scope of banks and other financial institutions to rein in excessive risk taking and to protect taxpayers.

The President’s proposal would strengthen the comprehensive financial reform package that is already moving through Congress.

“While the financial system is far stronger today than it was a year one year ago, it is still operating under the exact same rules that led to its near collapse,” said President Barack Obama. “My resolve to reform the system is only strengthened when I see a return to old practices at some of the very firms fighting reform; and when I see record profits at some of the very firms claiming that they cannot lend more to small business, cannot keep credit card rates low, and cannot refund taxpayers for the bailout. It is exactly this kind of irresponsibility that makes clear reform is necessary.”

The proposal would:

1. Limit the Scope — The President and his economic team will work with Congress to ensure that no bank or financial institution that contains a bank will own, invest in or sponsor a hedge fund or a private equity fund, or proprietary trading operations unrelated to serving customers for its own profit.

2. Limit the Size — The President also announced a new proposal to limit the consolidation of our financial sector. The President’s proposal will place broader limits on the excessive growth of the market share of liabilities at the largest financial firms, to supplement existing caps on the market share of deposits.

In the coming weeks, the President will continue to work closely with Chairman Dodd and others to craft a strong, comprehensive financial reform bill that puts in place common sense rules of the road and robust safeguards for the benefit of consumers, closes loopholes, and ends the mentality of “Too Big to Fail.” Chairman Barney Frank’s financial reform legislation, which passed the House in December, laid the groundwork for this policy by authorizing regulators to restrict or prohibit large firms from engaging in excessively risky activities.

As part of the previously announced reform program, the proposals announced today will help put an end to the risky practices that contributed significantly to the financial crisis.

Special Comment: Pandora's Box

Click the link to go to the written word of Keith's comment and all the comments.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Keith and Congressman Grayson The Decision

Click the link above to take you to the written word by Alan Grayson about the Supreme Court Ruling, He was actually there when the decision came down.....

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

SaveDemocracy.net

If you are as mad as I am that the Supreme Court today decided 5{all republican}to 4 to change dramatically the way our elections are going to be held in the future. Please go to this link and sign a petition.
In 10 years there will be no fair elections because all our candidates will be bought and paid for by big corporations, they will no longer be known by states but by who purchases them.
And of course all republicans are absolutely behind this change 100%, and any chance that the congress can put a little pressure to bear on corps will never happen without a bipartisan vote.

If you think that the Democrates have big government well you ain't seen nothin' yet.  The tea partiers think they got handed a real peach of a deal. I agree with Keith and Congressman Grayson that in a couple of years there will be no parties to speak of, only Corporations. 

Our constitution talks about freedom of speech, freedom from persecution, that all men are created equal in the sight of God. That our Government is for the people, by the people, and of the people not corporations. The supreme Court gave Corporations the status and rights of an individual. Somehow that is just plain wrong.

The Christian Monitor's View

Supreme Court opens the money gates

By allowing more corporate and union money in federal campaigns, the high court risks corrupting lawmaking. Watchdogs must stay alert.

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By the Monitor's Editorial Board / January 21, 2010

The Supreme Court on Thursday opened wide the gates to allow more corporate and union money to finance political campaigns – and potentially influence politicians and lawmaking.
That’s unfortunate, and means that the role of watchdogs tracking the money trail will be more important than ever.
It’s not as if corporations and unions have so far had their wallets glued shut. They can fund issue ads that are important to their interests. And they’re allowed to form political action committees that directly support candidates, as long as the donations are collected voluntarily from employees and union members.
But even members of Congress, whose energy is increasingly diverted to fundraising, have long recognized the potentially corrupting effect that big money can have on them. More than 100 years ago they banned corporations from donating directly to federal candidates.
Thankfully, the justices upheld that ban Thursday, as well as disclosure rules about contributors. But in a divisive 5-to-4 ruling, they overturned other important restrictions.
In time for this year’s midterm elections, corporations and unions can now spend directly from their treasuries on ads to support or defeat candidates – as long as those ads are produced independently and not coordinated with a campaign. They may also run ads right up until election day, instead of pulling them 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy grounded the ruling in First Amendment rights. Corporations and unions – like individuals – have a right to free speech, the majority reasoned. “The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,” he wrote.
But Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.” Indeed, when voters say they want “change” in Washington, the influence of money on politics is the kind of thing they’re talking about.
The high court has the final word, but not the only word. Groups that track campaign fundraising will need to raise their voices when they find wrongdoing or worrisome signs – even as they have more money to watch. Those groups include nonprofits; the news media; and the official watchdog, the Federal Election Commission.
Yet the traditional media are downsizing and the FEC, which has an equal number of Republican and Democratic commissioners, has a poor track record. The FEC could be strengthened if its members were recommended to the president not by the Senate, which has a vested interest in a watchdog with no bark, but by an independent commission.
Transparency is now more important than ever, and so is beefing up the competition to corporate and union donations – small donors and public campaign financing. The Internet has given small donors a much bigger voice, but that can be amplified even further by Congress.
Now is the time for lawmakers to pay serious attention to proposed legislation that would allow House and Senate candidates to choose to run for office without relying on large contributions, big money bundlers, or donations from lobbyists. If candidates commit to raising a certain amount of small donations, they can qualify for competitive public funds for their campaigns.
Thus, candidates would divert far less energy to fundraising – which can take as much as 40 to 50 percent of the time of members of the House, who face election every two years. And, candidates would be less beholden to monied special interests.
The Supreme Court has significantly altered the landscape of campaign finance. The next election will reveal how the new arrangement works in practice.
Watchdogs must keep their eyes open.

Supreme Court Opens Floodgates for Corporate Spending in Elections

Batten Down the Hatches: Supreme Court Opens Floodgates for Corporate Spending in Elections

WASHINGTON, Jan 21, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Americans deserve accountability, transparency and ethical standards for corporate electoral activity in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, says Change to Win Chair Anna Burger Anna Burger, Chair of Change to Win and Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU, released the following statement condemning today's United States Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: "Today the US Supreme Court lifted the floodgates and started dismantling century-old restrictions on corporate electoral activity in the name of the 'free speech rights' of corporations--meaning if you are a 'corporate person' (aka a CEO or corporate official), you are now free to hit the corporate ATM and spend whatever of your shareholders' money it takes to elect the candidates of your choice.

"Unlimited corporate spending in federal elections threatens to drown out the voices of the people who should really be at the center of the political process, i.e., voters and candidates. Unleashing corporate spending will only serve to distort and ultimately delegitimize the electoral process.

"Let's be clear: corporations have already been shilling out a lot of cash for political activities, letting their shareholders and managerial employees know exactly which candidates they want to win or lose elections and paying heavy sums for attack ads, direct mail and other forms of public communication through PACs.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO East, January 20-22, 2010. Miami, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO East, January 20-22, 2010. Miami, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO East, January 20-22, 2010. Miami, FL.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO East, January 20-22, 2010. Miami, FL.

"But with today's Citizens United decision, the Court has given corporate managers the green light to bypass the checks and balances, use unlimited amounts from the general treasury--funds that should be used to increase the value of the business or pay dividends to shareholders--to instead pay for public communications expressly advocating the election or defeat of the candidates of their choice.

"Our democratic process was meant to protect the people not profit margins and today's decision makes the need for an effective system for public funding, effective disclosure regulations, and other reforms of federal elections all the more pressing.

"We look forward to working with concerned individuals, officials and groups to remedy to the greatest degree possible the unfortunate consequences of this Supreme Court decision, through legislation and other appropriate means." Change to Win is a 5.5-million member partnership of five unions founded in 2005 to represent workers in the industries and occupations of the 21st century economy. Change to Win is committed to restoring the American Dream for a new generation of workers - wages that can support a family, affordable health care, a secure retirement, and the opportunity for the future. The affiliated unions are: Service Employees International Union, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Laborers' International Union of North America, and United Farm Workers of America.

Citizens United President David Bossie, right, meets with reporters outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010, after the Supreme Court ruled on a campaign finance reform case.  Floyd Abrams was the lawyer for the case.
12:24 p.m. ET, 1/21/10