Dirty Hippies » Corruption

Education “Reform”: Putting Middle Men First

Tom Sullivan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:02:09 +0000

Last summer, I asked this question:

Why are millionaires and billionaires targeting public education? For the same reason banksters pimped mortgage loans. For the same reason Wall Street wanted to privatize Social Security. For the same reason Willie ~~Horton~~ Sutton robbed banks.

Answer this question: What is the largest portion of the budget in all 50 states?

A couple of new columns chronicle further moves by what former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch calls “The Billionaire Boys Club” to take their cut of public education tax dollars.

The New York Times has a Sunday piece on billionaires using the “leveraging effect” of philanthropic advocacy to steer public policy. Efforts by the billionaire-funded Gates and the Broad Foundations to promote charter schools resulted in the Obama $4.3 billion “Race to the Top” program which, says the Times , prohibits states from limiting the number of charter schools. According to Ravitch, Obama appointed someone from the NewSchools Venture Fund that promotes charter schools to run “Race to the Top.”

The philanthropists, “some with roots in the loosely libertarian milieu of Silicon Valley or Wall Street,” might have noble intentions, but also have their critics:

“It’s sort of influence-peddling writ large,” said Richard L. Brodsky, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning research organization Demos and a former New York State assemblyman. “The notion that the society is better served by the super-rich exercising their charitable instincts is in the end anti-democratic.”

But not anti-capitalist.

The Sunday Washington Post looks at the growth of “virtual schools.” Ronald J. Packer, CEO and founder of K12 Inc. of Herndon, VA (just outside Washington), controls the country’s largest provider of public virtual schools. The Post reports that between 2004 and 2010, “K12 gave about $500,000 in direct contributions to state politicians across the country, with three-quarters going to Republicans, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.” If K12 were a school district, it would rank 30th largest among the nation’s 1,500 districts.

Packard, 48, took a roundabout route to education. A former Goldman Sachs banker, he was working as a consultant with McKinsey and Co. when he got a call from Michael Milken, the financier who pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 1990 and later became a philanthropist partly focused on education.

Packard joined Milken’s education investment holding firm and ran one of his companies, a chain of preschools. About the same time, Packard was trying to find an online math course for his 6-year-old daughter. Frustrated by the dearth of options, he saw a business opportunity.

He founded K12 in 2000 with a $10 million investment from Milken and Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle Corp., maker of software and hardware systems. William J. Bennett, education secretary under President Ronald Reagan, became the company’s chairman, bringing his conservative bona fides and political connections to a company that originally aimed for the home-schooling market. Bennett resigned from K12 in 2005.

K12 Inc. has the right backers. It has the right location. It bought the right friends. And it had revenues of $522 million in the last year, netting the investors $12.8 million in profits and Packard $2.6 million in total compensation. Says Packard, “For many kids, the local school doesn’t work. And now, technology allows us to give that child a choice. It’s about educational liberty.” [Emphasis mine.]

If that cheese-whiz grifterism doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, you haven’t been paying attention.

Aside from investors, how are virtual schools doing for their presumptive clientele, children? How well are they learning in front of a monitor? The Post reports that there is not yet enough data to be sure, but by standard measures for-profit “virtual schools — often run as charter schools — tend to perform worse” than the traditional public school room.

At the Colorado Virtual Academy, which is managed by K12 and has more than 5,000 students, the on-time graduation rate was 12 percent in 2010, compared with 72 percent statewide.

That same year, K12’s Ohio Virtual Academy — whose enrollment tops 9,000 — had a 30 percent on-time graduation rate, compared with a state average of 78 percent.

Last year, about one-third of K12-managed schools met the achievement goals required under the federal No Child Left Behind law, according to Gary Miron, a Western Michigan University professor who called that performance “poor.”

But not poor enough to get investors to give up on the idea. Not when cracking the education market guarantees investors a steady, recession-proof stream of public tax dollars.

The Nation reports on efforts to “reform” public education through vouchers, charters and privatization. This “gold rush” in the K-12 online learning industry, according to one study “will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.”

Investment banker Michael Moe is one of those who has worked to turn public schools into Wall Street’s next “cash cow,” writes The Nation’s Lee Fang.

A veteran of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, [Moe] now leads an investment group that specializes in raising money for businesses looking to tap into more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money spent annually on primary education. His consortium of wealth management and consulting firms, called Global Silicon Valley Partners, helped K12 Inc. go public and has advised a number of other education companies in finding capital.

To help those companies land lucrative public contracts, Patricia Levesque, former lobbyist, advisor to former Governor Jeb Bush on education reform, told a 2010 education reform retreat of her plans in Florida to sponsor statewide decoy legislation — on promoting religious schools or union busting — aimed at keeping opponents busy while charter school bills fly under the radar.

According to a report in Mother Jones , former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, spoke at the 2010 commencement ceremonies for Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), Ohio’s largest virtual charter school. Bush has teamed up with a Democrat, former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, to launch Digital Learning Now, another “reform” initiative aimed at promoting public funding of for-profit virtual schools. Mother Jones calls online schools

… part of a larger agenda that closely aligns with the GOP’s national strategy: It siphons money from public institutions into for-profit companies (including those that are supporting Bush’s initiative). And it undercuts public employees, their unions, and the Democratic base. In the guise of a technocratic policy initiative, it delivers a political trifecta — and a big windfall for Bush’s corporate backers.

Like K12, Inc., ECOT’s performance falls far short of the hype. ECOT collects an annual $64 million in state tax dollars:

With more than 10,000 kids, ECOT is bigger than some of Ohio’s 609 school districts. But its test scores rank above those of just 14 other districts. In 2010, barely half of its third-graders scored (PDF) proficient or better on state reading tests, and only 49 percent scored proficient in math, compared with state averages of 80 percent and 82 percent, respectively. ECOT’s graduation rate has never exceeded 40 percent.

ECOT spokesmen argue that this is because it enrolls students already far behind in learning.

The stories continue to multiply. Bipartisan-sounding rhetoric aside, the feeding frenzy and the grifterism (see Schools for Scoundrels ) suggest that children’s education is not exactly the top priority for the school reform movement. The players, the performance and the profits in the reform gold rush suggest education reform is not about education. Not about children. Not about America’s future. There’s a conservative political tie-in, sure: big government. But it is only big government when public money is flowing to the wrong people. This “reform” is about the money, about the right people getting their cut of that steady, recession-proof stream of public tax dollars.

Once our public schools have been thoroughly privatized, once middle men control our middle schools, what happens to America’s schools and its workforce once investment gurus decide the K-12 market is no longer the hottest way for savvy investors to feed at the public trough?

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

Even The Language Is Corrupt

Tom Sullivan — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:29:54 +0000

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE MINISTRY OF TRUTH

Immediately and Henceforth,

Naked aggression shall be called “preemptive war”
Propaganda shall be called “news”
State kidnapping shall be called “extraordinary rendition”
Water torture shall be called “enhanced interrogation”
Arbitrary imprisonment shall be called “extrajudicial detention”
Kleptocracy shall be called “privatization”
Securities fraud shall be called “derivatives trading”
Sitting on the ground shall be called “active resistance”
Chemical attacks against sitting civilians shall be called “pain compliance.”

That is all.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Some Persons More Equal Than Others

Tom Sullivan — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:31:56 +0000

As cities around the country trade notes on how to crack down on peaceful Occupy protesters, a chant goes up: ‘Who do you protect? Who do you serve?’ As the empire strikes back, Chris Hayes offers a plausible answer. It’s the reason for Occupy in the first place.

Citing UCLA corporate law professor (and Republican) Lynn Stout, David Kay Johnston writes [emphasis mine]:

Against $15 trillion of mortgage bonds, Stout said, Wall Street marketed credit default swaps in 2008 with a notional value of $67 trillion. Worldwide, traded swaps at their peak equaled $670 trillion or $100,000 for each person on the planet, vastly more than all the wealth in the world. Those numbers make it a mathematical certainty that the swaps were mostly speculation, not hedging.

There is a reason people have taken to the streets — in London, in Madrid, in Athens, in Dublin, in Reykjavik, in hundreds of cities across the planet. In Europe, see IMF austerity measures that require the public to cover the gambling losses of a financial industry unaccountable for committing massive fraud in derivatives. In the U.S., see the deal to immunize banks from prosecution: With few exceptions, state attorneys general want to hand the banks “get out of jail free” cards and sweep the crimes under the rug. See Kelo v. City of New London or Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In literature, see Orwell: All “persons” are equal but some “persons” are more equal than others.

#Occupy is asking the right question — a dangerous question — not only of police, but of the entire system: ‘Who do you protect? Who do you serve?’

The crowds chant,“WHO DO YOU PROTECT, WHO DO YOU SERVE?”

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

With People in Streets, Mubarak Congress Focused on Taking Money Out of Economy

Dave Johnson — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:04:43 +0000

This situation of crony government protecting the connected rich while people are in the streets demanding change is more and more reminiscent of Egypt under Mubarak. In the real world tens of thousands are in the streets around the country demanding taxes on the rich and an end to corporate rule, as a new report lists profitable companies that pay no taxes at all. Today’s jobs report is not enough to even keep up. But in the Congress Senate Republicans filibuster another jobs bill and the “super committee” is looking at how much to take out of the economy and out of the things We the People do for each other — in order to keep taxes low for the rich and their giant corporations.

Filibustering Jobs

Yesterday Senate Republicans again filibustered a jobs bill – a plan to hire people to repair our country’s infrastructure. This is work that has to be done, and right now millions of people need work. But Republicans filibustered this bill. The corporate-owned mainstream media, however, largely refused to tell the public what is happening, instead blaming “the Senate.” The Washington Post headlined, Senate blocks $60 billion infrastructure plan, another part of Obama jobs bill. Politico blamed “both parties,” with Both parties block jobs bills. MSNBC: Senate blocks $60B part of Obama jobs plan. CNN: Competing infrastructure spending measures fail in Senate.

So the big-corporate media leads the public to blame “the Senate” and government, providing few clues that tell people where to apply the pressure that makes representative democracy function.

Big Corps Paying No Taxes, Not Just Low Taxes

From Citizens for Tax Justice report: Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers, 2008-2010,

280 Most Profitable U.S. Corporations Shelter Half Their Profits from Taxes.

“These 280 corporations received a total of nearly $224 billion in tax subsidies,” said Robert McIntyre, Director at Citizens for Tax Justice and the report’s lead author. “This is wasted money that could have gone to protect Medicare, create jobs and cut the deficit.”

30 Companies average less than zero tax bill in the last three Years, 78 had at least one no-tax year.
Financial services received the largest share of all federal tax subsidies over the last three years. More than half the tax subsidies for companies in the study went to four industries: financial services, utilities, telecommunications, and oil, gas & pipelines.
U.S. corporations with significant foreign profits paid tax rates to foreign countries that were almost a third higher than they paid to the IRS on their domestic profits.

Who Are “The Markets?”

Who are we talking about, when we talk about “corporate taxes?” Just who do we mean when we talk about “the markets?” See for yourself why the #occupy movement talks about the 1% vs the 99%.

When you hear about corporations and “the markets,” think about how that connects to this chart:

People In The Streets

Yesterday, in the post, Oakland Occupied — Will Washington Listen At Last?, I wrote about the large demonstrations that are spreading and growing: spreading to more and more cities, and growing with larger numbers in each city. I warned that this is starting to look like Egypt with the people in the streets protesting Mubarak’s cronyism:

A Warning Shot At Washington’s Increasing Irrelevance

As I said, this public protest is spreading and growing. People have had enough and are taking to the streets in increasing numbers. But Washington continues to ignore the public, debating a national motto, as Repubicans block jobs and an elitist “super committee” debates cutting the things government does for the 99%.

Poll after poll shows the public overwhelmingly supports increasing taxes on the wealthy, bringing corporations under control, and reigning in trade agreements that suck our jobs, factories, companies and industries out of the country. People do not want Medicare, Social Security and other essential government programs cut, they want the rich and corporations and Wall Street to start paying their share.

The public wants something done about these problems. They want jobs, they want something done about the increasing

If Congress continues to ignore the people of the country it will not be long before the situation is like Mubarak pretending he is still in charge of Egypt, while the people of the country are in the streets planning how they will run the country without him and his cronies.

Super Committee To Take Money Out Of The Economy

A representative democracy serves the 99%, a plutocracy serves the 1%. Currently in Washington Congress’ elite “super committee” represents the 1%, looking at ways to take more money out of the economy, discussing cutting Social Security at a time when many people have lost their pensions and savings. They are discussing cutting Medicare and other health services at a time when more and more people are in need. They are discussing cuts and cuts and cuts, when working people are falling behind and behind and behind.

But the actual causes of the deficits that have Congress so concerned are ignored. Reagan and the Bushes cut taxes on the rich and increased military spending, and the deficits and resulting debt soared. It is right there in front of our faces. But even with such “concern” about deficits the tax cuts for the rich continue and the huge increases in military spending are left alone. Instead Congress discusses austerity – making the 99% pay for the benefits and bailouts for the 1%.

People are fed up, and rightly so. Poll after poll shows that the public wants taxes on the rich increased to pay for the deficit, infrastructure, education, health care, retirement and the rest of the things We, the People need. But our captured government is only serving the top few when they talk about cutting these things in order to keep taxes low at the top. The 1% would be well-advised to pay attention to what has happened in other countries where government ignores the people and takes care only of the connected rich.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Sign up here for the CAF daily summary.

The 1% – They Always Have Some Mighty Fine Whine

Tom Sullivan — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:54:43 +0000

With their “We are the 99%” chant, Occupy Wall Street protesters call for and end to the corporate corruption of democracy, to America’s two-tiered system of justice, and to the rigged economics that concentrates the nation’s wealth in the hands of the top 1%. By cheating, says Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, who reminds readers that even as it had its hand out for a taxpayer-funded bailout, Goldman Sachs’ effective tax rate was 1% in 2008, “the same year the bank reported $2.9 billion in profits, and paid out over $10 billion in compensation.” At the time, Texas Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett explained that the problem was larger than Goldman Sachs, “With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.”

The other day, I posted a video from Jared Bernstein critiquing the proposed repatriation tax holiday sponsored by Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Taibbi lists four ways in which Wall Street makes a killing cheating the system, but let’s examine how the 1% whines about it all the way to their own banks.

After the finance industry brought the world economy to its knees and their employers went to the American taxpayers for a bailout, traders earning well into six figures whined that they bore no personal responsibility for their participation, and how dare taxpayers balk at paying them their six- and seven-figure bonuses. Wall Street’s Most Unindicted whined, and how dare President Obama call them “fat cats.”

By several measures, the individual tax burden in this country is far lower than it was under that notorious, confiscatory, Democratic despot, Dwight Eisenhower, yet some of the same people mentioned above whine that they are over-taxed by oppressive “big government.” Maybe they just don’t get out (of the country) enough.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce rends its garments over “punishing” government regulations. Business leaders complain that over-regulation is making America uncompetitive, that it will drive domestic corporations offshore to more business-friendly countries. Yet a recent study by the World Bank ranks the U.S. 4th in the world in ease of setting up a business. Just where do the whiners think they are going to go?

Oh, but they whine rhapsodically about the oppressive U.S. corporate tax rate, how we have one of the highest tax rates in the developed world. They know full well that few of our largest corporations actually pay that 35 percent, that they pay small armies of accountants and tax attorneys to ensure that those who pay any tax at all pay closer to 28 percent (estimates vary), while some pay nothing or even get money back from the government, that is, from the American taxpayer. Twenty-eight percent is bit higher than the average effective rate for industrialized countries (about 23 percent), but is that spread really what the whining is about?

According to the GAO, 55 percent of U.S. firms paid no federal income taxes during at least one year between 1998 and 2005. Even then, thousands of firms set up tax shelters in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere and park their profits offshore to evade taxes, waiting — thanks to the first repatriation tax holiday under President George W. Bush — for the pressure of another recession and high unemployment so they can whine to the public once more about how they would create jobs here at home again if only Congress would allow them to repatriate their offshore profits not at 35%, not at 28%, and not at 23%, but at 5.25%. According to the GAO report, that’s a deal only most corporations doing business in the United States and paying nothing in federal income tax could pass up.

All that is preface to this rhetorical question: What reduced tax rate, what reduced level of regulation — short of Somalia’s — would stop these people from whining anyway?

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

Democracy Is Now Un-American

Tom Sullivan — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 03:43:39 +0000

This tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. For people who profess to revere the Constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document.
– Mike Lofgren, former GOP Congressional staffer

After two and a quarter centuries of progress which saw expansion of the franchise from land-owning white men to blacks, women and eighteen year-olds, many conservatives have decided they have had quite enough “more perfect union,” thank you, and have accelerated their efforts to shrink participation in democratic elections.

In recent days, American Thinker posted “Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American,” by Matthew Vadum, reflecting conservative concerns about too many of “those people” participating in government of the people, by the people, and for the people. But American Thinker‘s title says it all:

Registering [the poor] to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

[...]

Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn’t about helping the poor. It’s about helping the poor to help themselves to others’ money. It’s about raw so-called social justice. It’s about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers.

The comments section is a trove of anti-democratic sentiment: “I believe that the vote should be limited to people that own property or a business”; “One person one vote is a recipe for political suicide and the Communist’s dream”; “Unless you pay taxes, you should not be permitted to vote”; “We should not only purge welfare slackers and other un-Americans from the voter rolls — including anyone who is unemployed and therefore not a producer, but voting should be proportional depending on net worth or taxes paid”; etc. Such patriots think their views echo the beliefs of the founders. But then, so does owning other human beings.

Thus, efforts by liberal groups and Democrats to make voting easier are met by the right with legislative hurdles that make it harder to participate. Ari Berman’s Rolling Stone piece, The GOP War on Voting, elaborates on GOP vote suppression efforts:

As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots … In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.

In a lengthy Truthout commentary, “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult,” longtime congressional staffer, Mike Lofgren, provides insider background on the vote suppression effort and details his reasons for leaving his staff job. There is rottenness in both parties, he explains, and Democrats seeking “centrism” may have brought working people NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and permanent most-favored-nation status for China that helped erode the middle class. “But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way,” writes Lofgren. “The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy,” on the Republican side, something Beltway pundits are slow to recognize and/or too cowed to say publicly.

“It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.”

Oft-repeated sentiments from prominent Republicans (and their media mouthpieces) about who are and who are not “real Americans” underpin the effort to keep their fellow Americans from voting. Republicans have spent 30 years demonizing their neighbors: from Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens, to Muslims and gays, immigrants and intellectuals, to people living in what Americans once proudly considered the cultural melting pots of its largest cities. To anyone, writes Lofgren, “who doesn’t look, think, or talk like the GOP base.” More recently, the enemies list has expanded to include school teachers, public employees, and the nearly half of Americans who — according to carefully parsed propaganda — pay “no taxes.”

Most of the GOP elite probably do not believe all the “paranoid claptrap,” says Lofgren, but that doesn’t keep them from feeding “the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink.” Even as the economy shrinks, the conservative message machine has so assiduously widened its citizenship exclusion zone that paranoid patriots may soon find themselves cut off and surrounded in what the founders’ War Department dubbed “Indian country.”

Lofgren, who spent most of that same 30 years working for the GOP on Capitol Hill, now finds himself exiled among the lessers. He concludes:

This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don’t want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are.

As for Lofgren, he retired out of concern for the direction his party is taking America, as well as out of contempt for the “feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats” without the spine to stop them. But retiring, he admits, was also “an act of rational self-interest.” It was fine working on the payroll of an apocalyptic cult so long as its targets were union members and the private sector pensions and health benefits of those people . But once the GOP turned its “decades-long campaign of scorn” against government workers like Lofgren, it was time for him to cash out. “First they came for the communists,” as it were.

The Lofgrens of the Republican Party might long suppress any latent empathy for the struggles of Americans they were hired to serve, but money? Money they understand.

Romney’s Mysterious Million Dollar Donor

Diane Sweet — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:47:41 +0000

Mitt Romney has been kicking ass on the campaign fundraising trail, leaving his GOP rivals in the dust raising $15-20 million through June 30, 2011:

“Obviously, Romney has leveraged his standing in the polls to raise early money in the race,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a professor at Boston University’s College of Communication.

Is Romney’s early campaigning really paying off…or is it really paying off?

MSNBC’s Michael Isikoff reports:

A mystery company that pumped $1 million into a political committee backing Mitt Romney has been dissolved just months after it was formed, leaving few clues as to who was behind one of the biggest contributions yet of the 2012 presidential campaign.

—

“I don’t see how you can do this,” said Lawrence Noble, the former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, when asked about the contribution from the now defunct company.

If the only purpose of W Spann’s formation was to contribute to the pro-Romney group, “There is a real issue of it being just a subterfuge” and that could raise a “serious” legal issue, Noble said. Even if that is not the case, he added, “What you have here is a roadmap for how people can hide their identities” when making political contributions.

I would say that I hope someone keeps a close eye on the Romney campaign’s records, but I’m certain that Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Ron Paul will see to that.

Tread carefully, Mittens…

[Photo by DonkeyHotey]

Can US Hold Corporations Accountable Anymore?

Dave Johnson — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:12:48 +0000

In the UK the News-Of-The-World/News Corp/Murdoch scandal seems to be reawakening democracy. A big, powerful corporation has been found to be engaged in criminal activity, manipulating news, paying off police and politicians, and generally getting its way. The people, press and politicians are rising up, holding the company and its executives legally accountable and are taking back control of their system. Could this happen in the US?

This is my last full day in the UK. The top story in the media for the two weeks I have been here has been the News-Of-The-World “phone-hacking” story that I explained in some detail last week. This newspaper was engaged in criminal activity, was caught a few years ago, but used American-style damage-control techniques to manipulate the government, police and public opinion into accepting that the criminality was limited to the sacrificial lamb they threw to them. So the damage to Murdoch’s News Corp. was limited at the time, and News Corp appeared to have impunity. But, unlike how things are now done in the US, investigative reporters (particularly at the Guardian) continued to dig into the story and continued to reveal to the public that News Corp. was engaging in criminal activity until the story could no longer be ignored by the powerful.

The latest big news is that the head of Scotland Yard has resigned, in part because earlier investigations into Murdoch-corporation activities “didn’t get to the bottom of this.” The press is full of questions about how this criminal company was able to operate for in this manner so long, and who in the government looked the other way. This is now as big a story as the original and ongoing criminal activities of Murdoch’s companies.

Another story is the way executives left Murdoch’s companies and entered government into positions where they could protect the interests of Murdoch’s company, including influencing the phone-hacking investigations. And finally, the story here is about politicians who are “cozy” with Murdoch’s media empire, who were propelled into government by the power of that empire.

Not yet part of the story: the manipulation of government policy to serve the interests of the owners of the criminal company. In fact, just as the media was beginning to touch on this aspect of the story the company took extraordinary steps to build a firewall and attempt to contain the scandal. Top executives in the UK and in England were removed from their posts, an “apology” was printed in all the papers here, and Murdoch himself made public apologies and News Corp started a major counterattack. So far News Corp’s second-largest shareholder, Saudi Prince Al Waleed bin Talal has been kept in the background. Prince Al Waleed was interviewed by the BBC Thursday on his yacht in Cannes. Immediately the firewall began to be constructed.

(These are questions, not accusation. While being part-owner of the conservative News Corp., Al Waleed also speaks out for democratic reform and women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.)

But questions about News Corp. pushing policies that benefit its owners have yet to be pursued. Does News Corp. push climate-change denial to benefit the interests of oil-producing Saudi Arabit? Did News Corp push the invasion of Iraq to benefit Saudi Arabia?

What About In The US?

Does all of this sound familiar to any of you reading this in America?

And so the parallels to American standard-operating-procedure stand out. Criminal corporations manipulating government, police and public opinion. A revolving door through which corporate executives pass into government and protect the interests of their companies. A conservative media empire manipulating news and propelling politicians to benefit their financial interests. Politicians cozy with corporate executives who never seem to be held accountable.

As Richard Eskow wrote the other day, Want to Solve All your Problems, Rupert Murdoch? Become A Banker.,

But there’s an easy way for Mr. Murdoch to protect himself from these inquiries and save his company at the same time: Turn the News Corporation into a Wall Street bank. There won’t be any prosecutions, and the government will even sweeten the deal with billions of dollars in easy money. And if Murdoch follows the trail blazed by bankers like Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, soon they’ll be begging him to acquire more companies.

… By contrast, despite its long list of proven crimes nobody at [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Dimon’s bank has been arrested. Apparently arrests, like the financial consequences of one’s actions, are for borrowers only. And Dimon only appears before our elected representative for cozy private get-togethers, not public enquiries.

Seriously, there was just enough democracy left in the institutions of the UK to enable a media giant like News Corp to be held accountable. Just how accountable is yet to be seen, but with the press in full investigative mode, parliamentary investigations, resignations and arrests at the tops of big, powerful corporations that are way-to-cozy with politicians we are seeing a reaction to this story that is simply not imaginable in our own country today.

Some Tests

Here is one test that will tell us if accountability is still possible here. What follow-up will we see from the Justice Department in response to the revelation that members of the Financial Crisis panel illegally leaked inside information, including plans to investigate foreign banks, to lobbyists? See Financial Crisis Panel Commissioners Leaked Confidential Information To Lobbyists, Report Alleges,

Republican commissioners on the panel created by Congress to probe the roots of the financial crisis leaked documents to partisan allies and shared confidential information with influence peddlers, according to a Wednesday report by Democrats on a Congressional oversight committee.

Another area for investigation is the revolving door through which lobbyists or top people of the criminal corporation became government officials and government officials become executives or lobbyists. Are they using their influence in government to protect the interests of the companines that paid or will pay them? That sure looks like bribery, whatever other words one might use.

Another area of investigations is companies that fund or otherwise infleunce public opinion and politics and campaigns or reward politicians or fund their campaigns. That is bribery, because companies have to act in the financial interest of shareholders and rewarding a politician in the interest of shareholders is bribery by definition.

Please, add some more tests in the comments. What stories have you seen revealing illegal activity and collusion between elected representatives, government officials and big corporations with no one held accountable? Obviously there is Wall Street, mortgage fraud and securities manipulations. There are all the crimes from the Bush era that went uninvestigated. (Who ended up with all that money that went missing in Iraq?) But there are so many instances of crimes reported but not investigated and certainly not prosecuted. There are so many clear cases of big corporations using media to manipulate public opinion. And there are so many cases of our election laws violated with impunity.

Are we going to be able to take back democracy and accountability here? Or not? Will our own Department of Justice start to hold law-violators accountable? Or not.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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A Crack in the Theocratic Infrastructure?

Frederick Clarkson — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:09:06 +0000

Sarah Posner reports at Religion Dispatches about how professors in class at the law school founded by the late Jerry Falwell pressured students to choose “God’s Law” over “Man’s” in an exam question about a notorious kidnapping case. The two professors who taught the class at Liberty University are personally involved in the case. One of them is Dean of the law school, Mat Staver. Students say that their professors were advocates for law breaking.

The professors do their legal work through the Christian Right group, Liberty Counsel, which represents Miller. Liberty Counsel denies that it was involved in the kidnapping.

According to Liberty law students,

“…in the required Foundations of Law class in the fall of 2008, taught by [alleged kidnapper] Miller’s attorneys Mat Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen, they were repeatedly instructed that when faced with a conflict between “God’s law” and “man’s law,” they should resolve that conflict through “civil disobedience.” One student said, “the idea was when you are confronted with a particular situation, for instance, if you have a court order against you that is in violation of what you see as God’s law, essentially… civil disobedience was the answer.”

“Students who wrote that Miller should comply with court orders received bad grades,” Posner reports, “while those who wrote she should engage in civil disobedience received an A” according to three students in the class. They felt they were being taught to “disobey the law.”

A Tennessee pastor, Posner reports, has been charged

“with helping Lisa Miller, an “ex”-lesbian, abscond to Nicaragua with her young daughter Isabella after she flouted a series of court orders requiring Isabella’s visitation with Miller’s former partner, Janet Jenkins. According to the criminal complaint and FBI affidavit, Miller has been in hiding with Isabella since September 2009, living in the beach house of Christian Right activist and businessman Philip Zodhiates, whose daughter Victoria Hyden works as an administrative assistant at Liberty Law School.”

The law school, founded in 2004, “upon the premise that there is an integral relationship between faith and reason, and that both have their origin in the Triune God,” claims a vision “to see again all meaningful dialogue over law include the role of faith and the perspective of a Christian worldview as the framework most conducive to the pursuit of truth and justice.” The law school received accreditation from the America Bar Association last year.
The Foundations class is unlike anything offered at secular law schools, its purpose being to guide students toward a “Christian worldview” of the law. In the 2008-09 academic year, the required texts included David Barton’s Original Intent, which Barton’s website describes as “essential resource for anyone interested in our nation’s religious heritage and the Founders’ intended role for the American judicial system,” and Francis Schaeffer’s Christian Manifesto.

The distinct combination of Schaeffer’s notions of Christian resistance to the secular state, with Barton’s Christian nationalist view of history, certainly places the class in an unambiguous theocratic framework. And while it is unclear at this writing how successful Liberty Law will be in molding a generation of revolutionary theocratic attorneys, it is worth considering that the school was accredited by the American Bar Association last year. It is also worth considering that current Virginia Governor (and former state Attorney General) Bob McDowell is a graduate of Regent University Law School, founded by theocratic televangelist and political operative, Pat Robertson. Regent Law faced some similar controversy about the content of its early courses, when founding Dean Herb Titus taught R.J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law alongside conventional law school texts.

This history not withstanding, there is an ongoing tendency among some who ought to know better to pooh-pooh the influence and capacities of active theocratic elements operating in modern America. And the case at hand suggests that the institutional legacies of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson may have a profound impact on society long after the time when people even remember their names. It also suggests that that future may not be pre-ordained, when we consider that the FBI is investigating the possible role of part of Falwell’s legacy in a federal kidnapping case.

[Crossposted from Talk to Action]

A simple country boy’s solution to the budget “crisis”

Sam Smith — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:04:38 +0000

Some conservatives see all these fact-laden critiques of our various GOP manufactroversies (see Ryan, Paul) and wonder where are the Democratic plans to solve the financial crisis? (I have been asked this, quite vehemently, myself.)

The informed reply goes something like this:

The crisis isn’t real. It’s been fabricated by the neo-liberal politicians whose goal is to eliminate all taxes on rich people and bust structures like unions that afford the non-hyper-wealthy with some leverage in the American political economy. It. Isn’t. Real.
You’re blaming the wrong people. To the extent that I accept arguments that we do need to cut spending (and I do, by the way – read on), whatever problems we do actually have are the direct result of Republican taxation policies.

So, for the sake of argument let’s say America has a serious financial problem. How would I solve it? Well, I’m no economist, but here are some ideas:

Eliminate Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s well over $300B right there. That would pay 1.4 million teachers for five years, ballpark. You know, since teachers are such an ungodly drain on the economy.
Get out of Iraq. There’s another $100B per year. And then get out of the military adventure business for good. Right now the US spends about as much on its military as the rest of the world combined, and there’s no moral, ethical or economic excuse for it.
Take a chain saw to waste in the military budget. Things like the F-22 Osprey, which has already wasted $22B and will likely cost another $75B to finish. By the way, it’s unclear that the damned thing will actually work, and once you get past the contractors and their pet Congressweasels nobody seems to want it.
Let’s have a good, hard look at the corporate tax code, because ExxonMobil, GE, BoA, Chevron, Boein, Valero, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips and Carnival Cruise Lines combined to pay damned near no taxes, despite often-record revenues. In fact, between tax credits, refunds and bailouts, these companies hit us up for trillions of dollars in the past year or two. I’m not accusing any of these companies of breaking the law, and the way the laws work they’re actually required to behave in this way. All I’m saying is, you know, you earn billions and billions in profit, maybe the tax code should be structured so that you pay your fair share in taxes. That’s all.

Once we’ve done these things, then let’s see where we are.

I know, I’m just a simple country boy. And I didn’t major in math by any stretch. But it looks to me like this plan has us up over a trillion dollars in five years (maybe a whole lot sooner, depending on how we parse item #4).

From where I sit, it just doesn’t seem right to go after the little guy first just so we can make sure that Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton and the Koch brothers can have a tax cut.