Feisty - You are right, the country is for sale and has been every since I can remember, and I am 70 yrs old. The Citizens United ruling has nothing to do with it. BTW most foreign money funneled into US elections are to democrats (remember all the Chinese the Clinton/Gore got and the Chinese had to leave the country.) Further if you think people like yourself and your merry band of liberals are donating enough to make Obama reach his $1 billion campaign fund goal, you are more naive than I figured.

BTW most foreign money funneled into US elections are to democrats (remember all the Chinese the Clinton/Gore got and the Chinese had to leave the country.)

Actually I don't - can you provide a source for that?

Hey Fisty, what was the first Presidential campaign that refused public financing? What is the first Presidential re-election campaign to boast it will raise $1B?

I agree that the country is for sale, the question is who is selling it?

At this point, the only logical solution seems to be -- if anonymity is what we crave -- that we all drop big sums of cash off at the local post office, where it will be divided among the candidates according to our stated preferences, but they never know who gave it to them, and third-party ads will be banned.

Corporations still get all the speech they want, if money is your only measure.

Don't like that? I figured you might not.

My own opinion is, of course, that it isn't speech unless you know who says it, and therefore all these anonymous donors are not really covered by the First Amendment unless there is full disclosure.

To date, President Obama has raised the most campaign money from small individual donors than any other candidate. As such, he has been the least indebted to special interests.

Whereas half of Perry's cash has come from big donors. Yesterday is was reported that one donor alone would put Perry on par with Romney. And of course, who that is we do not know, but the Koch brothers are certainly in Perry's back pocket.

Maybe Romeny will catch up. Here's his explanation for why the rich pay less in taxes -- "The problem with rich people is that many of them are smart..." So all you not so rich people who aren't so smart, when will you figure out you're paying more income taxes than the rich?

By Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post:

Somewhere along the way, however, this effort took on a life of its own. What started as a reasonable attempt at political rebalancing turned into a jihad against all regulation, all taxes and all government, waged by right-wing zealots who want to privatize the public schools that educate your workers, cut back on the basic research on which your products are based, shut down the regulatory agencies that protect you from unscrupulous competitors and privatize the public infrastructure that transports your supplies and your finished goods. For them, this isn't just a tactic to brush back government. It's a holy war to destroy it — and one that is now out of your control.

So tell us again right-wing anarchists, who is anti-business?

TruePatriot - the story of the movement to literally eliminate government actually goes back quite a way. Your quote is good because it sums up the ideology so concisely. At far greater length, the origins of the Milton Friedman Chicago School of Economics approach, which is what is actually behind this movement, is told in excruciating and horrifying detail by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

What results, each and every time the Friedman philosophy is put into place, is massive disruption, huge increases in poverty, supression of democracy, and the enrighment of a small elite. It wrecked Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Poland and Russia. The origins of the current global economic problems have their roots in pursuit of the Friedman program beginning with the Reagan Regime.

Thomas Frank, in The Wrecking crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves and Beggared America, describes who the platers were, how they partnered with major corporations and trade associations, and how a political revolving door helped put over devastating legislation and emasculated regulatory agencies, particularly under G.W. Bush. And one of the prime architects was Gover Norquist.

The ultra-right wing actually advocates the ruin of this nation with policies known to be destructive failures.

John A. -- I always enjoy your posts, BTW. I don't agree with everything in The Shock Doctrine, but the basic premise that profit is privatized and debt is socialized hits the nail on the head. Corporate welfare, an interesting anti-capitalism notion from the right-wing.

Feisty - The information is out there, maybe you can google it, try Clinton/Gore Campaign Chinese money or maybe just google John Huang and Lippo Bank for starters. Or maybe Al Gores fund raising at a Buddist monastery and you might even google the Clinton Presidential Library. How is it you can find so much on conservatives but nothing on the liberals?

I'll say this again, and feel free to disagree. I don't think anonymous donating has anything whatsoever to do with free speech and should not be protected under the First Amendment.

Money isn't speech, anyway, because money is completely content neutral. The only speech involved is the actual direction of the money. But even if you could say money was speech, unless ALL donations are allowed to be anonymous, those that are anonymous constitute nothing more than cowardly speech, and I don't care which side we're talking about.

You know why corporations want anonymous speech -- so that their shareholders don't know what they're saying. This is how modern corporations, which you all like to say exist solely for the benefit of shareholders, actually treat their shareholders.

Well, that ... and keeping mountains of money sitting around in low-interest bearing accounts rather than investing it toward future earnings or putting it back in shareholders' pockets.

And all the while, they keep dangling shiny objects in our faces, like Class Warfare. Too funny. How does that apply to shareholders who never get the chance to pay taxes on dividends they never receive?

Ask yourself who benefits from that. It shouldn't be too far to seek. CEOs and other executives who earn unGodly salaries for doing nothing more creative than pushing money around a table. Most of them have no idea about what their companies do or how their workers live, nor do they care. All they care about is that big, fat bonus at the end of the year, and their stock options. While they deny their workers the right to negotiate raises for themselves, they are certainly more than happy to help themselves to huge compensation packages, and cushy severance benefits, even when their companies flounder because of decisions they make. Ask the shareholders of M&I Bank, here in my own state, how they feel about their own company's free speech. You might be surprised what you hear.

They're all just nothing than a new form of confidence men.

It's a wonderful world you live in, no joe. A Brave New World, in fact.

You honestly believe that CEOs know nothing about the businesses they run, and do nothing but push money around on a table and collect bonuses?

I don't even know how to address such breathtaking ignorance.

CEOs are hired to increase the profitability of businesses. That can mean expansion-by getting into new markets for existing products or services, or creating new products or services. It can mean divesting their companies of divisions that are not producing, and have no hope of doing so in the future. Often, those are areas they should not have entered at all, so selling them to another entity makes both the company divesting, and the company acquiring, more efficient- thus, more profitable.

They are responsible to maximize the productivity of the company's employees- so, first and foremost, morale must be maintained at a high level. They must attract the best and brightest for each and every job- from president to janitor- and make sure each feels their value to the corporation.

This is a surface scratch of the responsibilities- but

A CEO who does not do this successfully is known as an ex-CEO.

If the skill set required to do such a job was so simple, so easily obtained, or so non- existent, why, on earth, do you not just march into the doors of a company and apply for the job?

While you're at it, think about baseball players- paid big bucks to throw, hit, and catch balls. Msurely, that does not require a specialized skill set.

I think maybe you should go demand a job in right field with the Cibs. Never mind- we'll gomwith your strengths. Make it left field.

What thenheck is the difference between a car mechanic and a dentist? Should be interchangeable. Both use drills, high powered water jets, have to know the right thing to pull out and replace.

Obama thinks out of work home builders should be re deployed to build roads and bridges. You think any idiot can run a multibillion dollar corporation.

And we wonder why this economy has gone down the toilet.

;

A CEO who does not do this successfully is known as an ex-CEO.

If they're all so smart, then why aren't we doing better?

Besides you just made my point for me. Unlike the average worker, the CEO who DOESN'T still gets a LARGE severance package, and just rolls down the road to the next corporation and fools them all over again

And how does one achieve "maximum productivity"? As I posted yesterday, by reducing jobs.

Do you think I agree with what athletes get paid? Where in my post is there ANYTHING to support that baloney?

And I do think that a lot of idiots run multi-billion-dollar corporations. I know it for a fact because I've met some of them.

Usually on their way down after the fall, whining and kicking and screaming all the way about fairness and what they are entitled to.

Just like liberals, according to you.

Anna Molly said: Well, that ... and keeping mountains of money sitting around in low-interest bearing accounts rather than investing it toward future earnings or putting it back in shareholders' pockets.

Anna, think about this for a moment. The main reason large corporations are sitting on piles of money is because of the uncertainty of the economy. Right now, as you well know, our economic conditions are less than prime. Smart people try to make as few mistakes as possible and the way the economic winds are blowing is anyone's guess right now. What corporate board, in their right mind would invest a pile of cash on expansion, or chasing after something that may go bust?

I would love to invest my savings into a construction company, but I won't. I build a great building and have years of knowledge but the timing isn't right. What choice do I have other than to sit on my savings and wait for the proper time. My situation is pretty much the same as a large corporation sitting on a pile of money... The money has value and the prospective expansion may not prove to be profitable. They aren't just waiting around for the economy to improve, but are seeking assurances from the government that they won't be unjustly slammed. Currently the risk is too great to develop and expand. Whatever causes that risk to diminish past their perceived break even point is when you start to see the money freed up and put to use.

still gets a LARGE severance package, and just rolls down the road to the next corporation and fools them all over again

You mean like Carly Fiorinia (sp?) lol

Brianb ~ Please go back to First Thoughts and review Cardinal Conservative Rule of Rhetoric # 116 --

I believe we have just entered the part of the rhetoric that says, sorry we can't invest money or create jobs because there's simply no demand. And there is no demand because we cut all the jobs and/or sent them overseas to increase "productivity" (i.e., shareholder profit).

So, sorry, Charlie, big profits for us, but no new jobs for you.

For a little chaser, we have now begun cutting public sector jobs by the hundreds of thousands, decreasing what little demand there is by just so much more, and now we're blaming President Obama for not being able to overcome what we have wrought through your kind of thinking ...

And what's that again? ... the fact that there is no demand, and therefore no jobs being created. Well, duh. Back around we come. No investment certainly means no jobs, and no jobs mean no demand, which further means no jobs .....

What rocket science is required to figure that out?

And of course this all leaves wide open the BIG question of how demand will ever be created again, under these conditions.

It's easy to see that you have no answers for this, except to cut taxes for the rich AGAIN, which will by itself do nothing to stimulate the economy precisely because it will not create demand, nor will it create jobs.

It's no wonder that you're uneasy. So I am I.

I have my money out of the market right now, too. Exactly for the reasons you state.

Conservatives have no idea what you're doing. And you guys own it now.

Anna Molly, thanks your a very articulate posts to NONJ and Brain b.

Keep up the good work. I am too frustrated at times to even answer the business won't hire because of "uncertainy" .. view of many on these boards.

I'll second Northstar, AM. Thanks for your very reasoned and erudite posts..

Thank you both. It's clear to me that conservatives have no real answers, and many of them are fully prepared to wait it out until after the election. By then, I'm thinking depression.

By the way, Northstar, I think the whole thing about "uncertainty" is just poppycock. Apple has $70 billion in the bank. What's their uncertainty? They don't want to spend because they know they will get no credit for the recovery, when it comes.

Nobody turns down extra income because they will be taxed on that income, nobody tells their salesmen to slow down on the selling because you are increaseing the company's tax liability, nobody says I hope I don't win the big lotto because I don't want to pay the tax. You either have demand or you don't, if people have money to spend they will spend it and business will expand if necessary to collect their share. Supply and demand, the market will regulate itself right, no demand means no need to supply, it has nothing to do with what kind of a mood the business owners are in. Except that they are in the mood for customers to walk in the door, and if demand outstrips their current capacity to supply that demand then they will expand (hire), and as soon as demand drops below their capacticy they retract (layoff). I don't get it all of a sudden free market, capitalist, conservatives are talking like hippies claiming "bad vibes dude" thats why the economy sucks it is just "bad vibes".

Wow, That Annie Molley is really out in fantasyland. Great entertainment as the liberal mindset reveals itself.

Considering there is no candidate named Obam running... your fictional account is worth... nothing.

The Democratic Super PAC includes many donors, not just Soros, and this is known because this is transparent. And unlike the Koch brothers, Soros does not create AstroTurf groups like Americans for Prosperity or funnel huge sums of money to "think tanks" to devise anti-democracy "strategery."

In the meantime, Soros has joined Mayor Bloomberg in donating money to help minorities in NY transition into jobs--directly--as in real "job creators." I know, how evil is that?!

I agree Dan. George Soros is a devout socialist. He's been working overtime to undermine our republic for quite some time now. His closest allies are the democrat party since they have pretty much adopted a socialist view of this country - big government, large entitlement programs and socialistic medicine.

Soros is a capitalist. But if I had to choose, I'd rather be a socialist than a fascist theocratic plutocrat.

brianb -- how horrble for soros to be so democrat, right? a man who had the wherwithal to find a business and make huge amounts of money. the man survived holocaust europe, grows up, makes money and darn it, he's still helping people -- true blue, darn those dems...

just please remember this country was lead by repub pres during the "roaring twenties," where there were no regulations in business. harding, including coolidge didn't like regulation. and what followed those great non-regulated roaring twenties folks -- the thirties' depression.

history flash --

pres wilson (d), wwI; league of nations, treaty of versailles;

pres harding (r); roaring twenties - big business, no regulation;

pres coolidge (r) = big business, no regulation depression;

pres roosevelt (d) wwII, out of depression

you see the pattern? repubs de-regulate, democrats fix...

What does this have to do with the price of rice in China other than just swooping and pooping your hate?

I wish that we could take the money out of politics. I think we would see that we have more in common as Americans than we think.

:o)

It's waaay past time for some serious campaign reform!

Feisty, I totally agree with serious campaign reform. I don't want my country to fail or to be bought by the highest bidder.

Personally Ladies I think that campaign spending ought to be worth the office you aspire to. In other words if a Congressman makes 125,000 a year they ought to limit to that. Makes no sense to spend more to hold office than your going to make off it.

Personally Ladies I think that campaign spending ought to be worth the office you aspire to

Brilliant idea IR!

Nice posts ladies.

When our candidates are spending insane amounts of cash on get elected to jobs that only pay a pittance in comparison.

Politics is Big $$$.

IR,

If only that was the case. Insanity seems to have won out.

IR, If you can get it on the ballot. You would have my vote.

I can dream I reckon. Sure would put a lot of lobbyists out of work. And the only Candidates you'd get is the ones that want to serve in the public interest cause then there wouldn't be near enough money in it

Unfortunately, IR many make more than the $125,000. Those that aren't wealthy or have a life out of politics get jobs as lobbyists, which are far more lucrative than a Congress-person's salary.

IR, I can dream along with you. Wouldn't it be nice to have candidates that served the public interest not the special interest.

I just finished reading an article in New York Times about Congressman Issa, he has plenty of reasons to spend big money to get his $125,000 salary.

IR, I just read that Mayor M Bloomberg is not inviting the first responders to the 10th anniversary memorial service on 9/11.