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Inequality What does it really mean?

#361 User is offline   PassedOut 

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Posted 2014-April-27, 11:15

 kenberg, on 2014-April-27, 10:04, said:

I think the anonymity bothers me more than the factual inaccuracy.

Same here.

As Barmar pointed out, we all know that advertisements, political or otherwise, are by nature self-serving. We take that into account. Anonymity spoils our ability to know exactly who is being served.

I would have no problem with political ads that say "I'm Charles Koch of Wichita, Kansas, and I approved this message." Instead, we in Upper Michigan are already being bombarded by commercials produced by "Americans for Prosperity" that explain that only the tea party candidate is truly committed to preserving social security and medicare.
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#362 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2014-April-27, 13:39

It's a small issue, but I always get a wry chuckle out of names such as "Americans for Prosperity". Presumably they want to distinguish themselves from another large group of Americans who are opposed to prosperity. You might think that when a group chooses a name with totally vacuous content people would look at it with suspicion, but we have all become inured to such things.
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#363 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2014-April-27, 15:33

Americans for whose prosperity?

From The Koch Attack on Solar Energy:

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At long last, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have found a new tax they can support. Naturally it’s a tax on something the country needs: solar energy panels.

For the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They particularly dislike state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they don’t need back to electric utilities. So they’ve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive.

Oklahoma lawmakers recently approved such a surcharge at the behest of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative group that often dictates bills to Republican statehouses and receives financing from the utility industry and fossil-fuel producers, including the Kochs. As The Los Angeles Times reported recently, the Kochs and ALEC have made similar efforts in other states, though they were beaten back by solar advocates in Kansas and the surtax was reduced to $5 a month in Arizona.

But the Big Carbon advocates aren’t giving up. The same group is trying to repeal or freeze Ohio’s requirement that 12.5 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2025. Twenty-nine states have established similar standards that call for 10 percent or more in renewable power. These states can now anticipate well-financed campaigns to eliminate these targets or scale them back.

...The Arizona Public Service Company, the state’s largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates. The ad tried to link the requirement to President Obama. Another Koch ad likens the renewable-energy requirement to health care reform, the ultimate insult in that world. “Like Obamacare, it’s another government mandate we can’t afford,” the narrator says.

That line might appeal to Tea Partiers, but it’s deliberately misleading. This campaign is really about the profits of Koch Carbon and the utilities, which to its organizers is much more important than clean air and the consequences of climate change.

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#364 User is offline   blackshoe 

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Posted 2014-April-27, 18:24

 kenberg, on 2014-April-27, 10:04, said:

II do, however, think that large, and I am not sure exactly what large means, financial sources should be disclosed. If I want to give someone a hundred bucks, that's nobody's business but my own (isn't that a Billie Holiday song?). But scale matters here. Somewhere between my hundred bucks and someone's hundred thousand bucks, the nature of the transaction changes. Or so it seems to me. Maybe the problem, part of it, is that the source is known to the candidate but not to the public.

One of the differences between your $100 and someone else's $100,000 is that when you or I donate $100 to someone's campaign, we don't expect him to answer our phone calls, take our "advice" or request or whatever to heart, and do specifically what we want in a particular case. We'd like it if the guy leans our way (and maybe next time we'll give our 100 bucks to somebody else if he doesn't) but we don't expect it. The guy who donates $100,000 has bought his politician, and expects that politician to act accordingly. Or at least he may - not all rich folk are evil manipulators of the democratic process.
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#365 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2014-April-27, 18:58

That's right, not necessarily evil. No doubt there is a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Naturally you donate with some hope that the donation does something, and for many the something will be partly self-interest, partly a hope for a better world. But the sheer magnitude causes problems, it seems to me. I accept that people with position, cash, and powerful friends will have more influence than I will. But some balance has to be found.

Labor unions had their faults, huge faults, but they were a counter-balance to the enormous power of corporations, and corporations also have huge faults. The balance of power has gotten out of whack, and I have no clear idea how to fix it. I think that many people can, at some point, decide that they have enough money. Power is different. It's an unsatisfiable appetite, or it can be.
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#366 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2014-April-28, 09:29

 blackshoe, on 2014-April-27, 18:24, said:

One of the differences between your $100 and someone else's $100,000 is that when you or I donate $100 to someone's campaign, we don't expect him to answer our phone calls, take our "advice" or request or whatever to heart, and do specifically what we want in a particular case. We'd like it if the guy leans our way (and maybe next time we'll give our 100 bucks to somebody else if he doesn't) but we don't expect it. The guy who donates $100,000 has bought his politician, and expects that politician to act accordingly. Or at least he may - not all rich folk are evil manipulators of the democratic process.

But isn't much of the controversy over anonymous donations? If the politician doesn't know who you are, how can there be quid pro quo?

I don't think quid pro quo is what we're most concerned about. I think in most cases people are donating to candidates who they believe are already on their side. What Stevens is complaining about is that the big donors are able to donate to LOTS of candidates who are on their side, so they stack the deck against the small donors, who can usually only afford to contribute to the candidates that represent them directly. Yes, you can contribute to a party instead of specific candidates, but then your donation is diluted among so many candidates that it's almost negligible.

Scale matters.

#367 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2014-April-28, 09:35

 kenberg, on 2014-April-27, 10:04, said:

Move on to modern times. "If you like the health plan that you have, you can keep it. Period." I'm older now and more able to recognize bullcrap when I hear it, so I was not really taken in by this. But no, I don't want him fined or jailed for it. I believe the Dems will pay a price for this in November, but I am fine with letting the voters decide on the matter. And anyway, it wasn't really a lie. The person can keep that plan, he would just have to also get another approved plan. If for some idiotic reason he wanted two plans, he would be allowed to keep his current plan as one of them. This is absurd of course, but it is what we can expect if the lawyers get into it. Depends on what the meaning of "keep" is.

Really? Don't most health insurance plans require you to re-enroll each year, and if the old plan is no longer available you have to select a new one? As I understand it, the insurance companies mostly stopped offering the plans that didn't meet the ACA requirements.

It's not like seatbelt laws, which didn't affect you if you didn't buy a new car. You can't buy an old health insurance plan.

#368 User is offline   mycroft 

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Posted 2014-April-28, 11:23

Yes, but "anonymous" donations mean "I give you some money, which I can do as a person, and you can be an entity that doesn't have to report where you get your money from. You put up a web site that says what I would say, and donate my money, and everyone else's who are going along with me, to politician who will then espouse the values of me and my well-heeled friends that entity - or better yet, spend it on things that 'aid' these politicians, without donating it directly (because that way the entity doesn't have to say how much they're 'donating'). I'm allowed to say the same things, as well - just not as a person, donate the money directly without disclosing how much the politician is into me. So the donations are 'anonymous', but everyone who cares knows who the donors are. There's just no way to tie how much cash to the person. I'm quite certain that, well, 'certain people' will be privy to that secret, and those 'certain people' are also privy to the politicians."

They're not, in fact, anonymous. If they were, there wouldn't be as much of a point. They are, however, not legally disclosable.
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#369 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2014-April-28, 12:14

 kenberg, on 2014-April-27, 18:58, said:

That's right, not necessarily evil. No doubt there is a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Naturally you donate with some hope that the donation does something, and for many the something will be partly self-interest, partly a hope for a better world. But the sheer magnitude causes problems, it seems to me. I accept that people with position, cash, and powerful friends will have more influence than I will. But some balance has to be found.

Labor unions had their faults, huge faults, but they were a counter-balance to the enormous power of corporations, and corporations also have huge faults. The balance of power has gotten out of whack, and I have no clear idea how to fix it. I think that many people can, at some point, decide that they have enough money. Power is different. It's an unsatisfiable appetite, or it can be.


I read something the other day that proposed the notion that a strong middle class had to be a choice made by a country, as capitalism divides itself naturally into haves and have-nots.

To restore the balance of power is to undo the damage done since the Reagan agenda became accepted as legitimate.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
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#370 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2014-April-28, 12:55

 barmar, on 2014-April-28, 09:35, said:

Really? Don't most health insurance plans require you to re-enroll each year, and if the old plan is no longer available you have to select a new one? As I understand it, the insurance companies mostly stopped offering the plans that didn't meet the ACA requirements.

It's not like seatbelt laws, which didn't affect you if you didn't buy a new car. You can't buy an old health insurance plan.


Right. So any sane person, if he thought about at all, realized that it was all bs.Of course it is reasonable to say that he only meant that you can keep it if it is still being offered, but that wasn't the case either.I have the same health insurance plan I had last year, in any reasonable sense of that phrase. Of course it is the 2014 plan, last year it was the 2013 plan, but that is the only change.

Anyway, this is what I meant about lawyers. It depends on what the meaning of "keep" is. And "same".

I most strongly recommend to Democratic candidates this fall that they work on a better response.

Also it won't fly to say "Well, it no longer is offered" if the reason it is no longer offered is the ACA won't accept it. Some seriouis response is needed. I suggest "Yes, he lied, but I am not him. I am running on my own record and my own credentials."
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#371 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2014-April-28, 21:24

 kenberg, on 2014-April-28, 12:55, said:

Right. So any sane person, if he thought about at all, realized that it was all bs.Of course it is reasonable to say that he only meant that you can keep it if it is still being offered, but that wasn't the case either.I have the same health insurance plan I had last year, in any reasonable sense of that phrase. Of course it is the 2014 plan, last year it was the 2013 plan, but that is the only change.

Anyway, this is what I meant about lawyers. It depends on what the meaning of "keep" is. And "same".

I most strongly recommend to Democratic candidates this fall that they work on a better response.

Also it won't fly to say "Well, it no longer is offered" if the reason it is no longer offered is the ACA won't accept it. Some seriouis response is needed. I suggest "Yes, he lied, but I am not him. I am running on my own record and my own credentials."

I think it really keyed on "if you like you health plan" -- he didn't expect that anyone would actually prefer a health plan that was so anemic that it didn't meet the minimum requirements of the ACA.

The problem is that some people just looked at the price tag, not what they were actually getting. These plans were incredibly cheap because they provided very little value, but the customers didn't care. They liked them because they could afford them. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these people could have found new, ACA-acceptable plans for about the same price. But they probably didn't even look (healthcare.gov's problems didn't help, I'm sure), they just made a stink about Obama's claim being a lie.

#372 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2014-April-29, 05:20

My post about this was in reference to the suggestion that political lies should be criminalized. I don't think that this is practical and the present discussion is a fine example of why it is impractical. Truth is often in the eye of the beholder.

Every year there is an open enrollement period during which I can keep my current plan (Aetna pos) or change it. The entire world understands what is meant by "keep my plan". I have Aetna pos in 2014 and if I decide to keep my plan, I will have Aetna pos in 2015. This is how the phrase "you can keep it" is understood by everyone.

It doesn't matter whether Obama thought no one would want to keep it. For one thing, no one believes that is what he meant, but more importantly it is not remotely what he saId. He did not say "Our new plan will be so superior that I am positive that you will naturally not want to keep your old one". He is responsible for what he said, and there simply is no way around it.


About a year ago, I was involved in helping select a house for someone else. An ad said "wall to wall carpenting". The house had carpeting on the stairs, none on the floor. I brought this up and the agent tried to explain why the ad was right. Trying to explain this was a serious error on his part. "Oh, the information is incorrect, we will have to fix that" would fly, even if I was a little skeptical. Explaining that the ad was correct did not fly.

Take Bill and Monica. Unfortunately some of what Bill said was under oath. So the lawyers come in and we discuss legally whether or not there was perjury. This leads to legalistic discussion, very important when something has criminal consequences, but the arguments often become bizarre. The entire world knows that he first said that he had not had sex with her and then acknowledge that he had. Now as far as I am concerned, Ken Starr should have told Linda Tripp to buzz off, he doesn't investigate sex. But to say Bill didn't lie, well, he did. Perjury? That's for the lawyers. It's tough to prosecute, I have been told.

I don't believe that "If you like your plan you can keep it" is in the same league as "I am not going to send American boys to do the job Asian boys should do", and as for Bill, I never got the idea that Monica was being taken advantage of so really it was none of my business. But in each case there was a lie.

Lying under oath is a criminal offense and has ro be dealt with by lawyers. Lying on the campaign trail is a fact of life, much like real estate ads. It's not good, but I do ot favor criminalizing it.

I do very much think that Democratic candidates should be prepared to see this brought up in the fall. I regard, and I think most people who are not totally committed to a party will regard, an explanation of why this does not really qualify as a lie as being way too cute. Just like wall to wall carpenting that has carpeting on the stairs but not the floor. The reaction from the voters to such an explanation will not be favorable.

It's out there, it will have to be dealt with this fall. It's a challenge.
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#373 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2014-May-01, 13:27

Today's SMBC is an amusing take on quid pro quo

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#374 User is offline   gwnn 

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Posted 2014-May-03, 10:28

 kenberg, on 2014-April-21, 15:04, said:

Such an amendment will not happen. Any effort in this direction is a waste. In fact, any argument that such an amendment is needed is at least as strongly an argument that it won't happen. Which is pretty much what PassedOut just said, I guess.

People do still get to vote, the internet creates access to information and a platform for expressing views. If this isn't adequate, we are in deep stuff.

I don't know about others, but I find some of the issues facing us to be complex.

Of course you are most likely right but some people are still trying and that's nice to see. Wolf-PAC is trying to get such an amendment through the states. They just got the first state, Vermont, out of the required 34, to pass their resolution: http://vtdigger.org/...money-politics/
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#375 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2014-May-06, 05:58

North Carolina, Meet Citizens United

June 6, 2012

Quote

A Federal District Court in North Carolina last month, citing a 2011 Supreme Court ruling that rests on Citizens United, struck down a state law that provided additional matching funds to judicial candidates who accepted public campaign money if they faced greater spending from privately financed opponents, including independent expenditures.

By the Supreme Court’s upside-down logic, matching funds violate the free-speech rights of independent groups because their spending triggers additional money for a publicly financed candidate.

The North Carolina Judicial Coalition was set up to re-elect state Justice Paul Newby, who has opposed adoptions by same-sex couples and disallowed a lawsuit challenging alleged predatory lending. He gives conservatives a 4-to-3 advantage over liberals on the State Supreme Court and is being challenged by the more liberal state appellate judge, Sam Ervin IV, a grandson of the senator and son of a federal appeals judge.

As of last week, each candidate had collected about $82,000 and each had qualified for public financing of $240,100. Now, because the state is prohibited from reducing the spending gap with public funds, Judge Ervin’s supporters may have to form a super PAC of their own to keep up with the unlimited spending of the conservative super PAC. This is yet another example of the devastating harm caused by Citizens United.

May 6, 2014

Quote

The ad first appeared on television the Friday before last, a black-and-white spot charging that Justice Robin Hudson coddled child molesters and “sided with the predators” in a North Carolina Supreme Court dissent. It has run constantly since.

As notable as the ad’s content and frequency, though, is its source. It was created and aired not by one of Justice Hudson’s two opponents in Tuesday’s primary election, but by a group that had just received $650,000 from the Republican State Leadership Committee in Washington, which pools donations from corporations and individuals to promote conservatives in state politics and is now broadening its scope to target judicial races.

The sums have been unusual for such elections. The primary race for Justice Hudson’s Supreme Court seat alone has drawn more than $1 million — the bulk of it by independent groups including the Republican committee and an arm of the state Chamber of Commerce, which has spent $250,000 to promote both of her opponents with money from companies including Reynolds American, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Koch Industries.

..The costly and fierce primary shows how the revolution in financing political campaigns, with the surging role of “super PACs” and other groups financed by corporations, unions and other interests, has entered what was the quieter arena of judicial elections.

..Alicia Bannon, a lawyer with the liberal Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, said the Republican initiative was hardly isolated. “We’ve seen a flood of special interest money pouring into state Supreme Court races,” she said. “It often goes toward ads attacking judges’ criminal records, even when the interest group is focused on business interests or other unrelated issues.”

What next? Attack ads funded by outside business interests in the Water Cooler?
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#376 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2014-May-06, 07:09

Quote

What next? Attack ads funded by outside business interests in the Water Cooler?

I have been outed! Who blabbed?


Seriously I think that the biggest problem is that no normal human being would want to run for election for anything anymore. "Coddled child molesters"? Maybe we need to bring back dueling as a way to deal with such accusations. I would hold a press conference, say "You can all go eff yourselves" and walk away. And unlike Nixon, I would not be back two years later.

Maybe it has always been this way. As I have mentioned, and yes I know it is more than once. in 1952 I came home from a Boy Scout meeting to see McCarthy on the tv implying Adlai Stevenson was at best a Communist Fellow Traveler or maybe an outright Soviet agent. Who needs this crap?

The solution has to come from the public. In 1962 in Minnesota the campaign for governor produced, late in the season, corruption charges against the Republican incumbent. The charges seemed iffy, and when Hubert Humphrey came on tv assuring us that the claims were solidly based I decided that for sure they were crap, which they were. The Democratic candidate won, probably based on the charges, but four years later he was ousted by a Republican. Part of the Republican strategy in that revenge campaign was to set up, with great media coverage, a "Last minute phony charges" committee. People remembered what this referred to, and they voted accordingly.

The public needs to make clear its revulsion at the Willie Horton style of campaign ads. The only way to put a stop to it is by making sure that such ads hurt more than they help. GHWB would say, as I recall, "I just don't know where those ads came from". That's not good enough. Running such ads has to cost the candidate votes, or they will continue to be run.

It's a cliche, but we get the government that we are willing to put up with.

And while I am on this soapbox, let me say a few words about the Supremes and prayers at city council meetings. In the supposedly conservative and unimaginative 1950s we, at least some of us, knew enough not to ram our religious views down the throats of others.
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#377 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2014-May-06, 08:27

From How 2014 Is Shaping Up to be the Darkest Money Election to Date:

Quote

April 30, 2014 -- When it comes to voters' knowledge about the deep-pocketed donors who are trying to influence their vote, the 2014 election cycle is on track to be the darkest election in recent history. And that's saying a lot, as each of the last three elections has shattered dark money records set in the preceding cycle.

Posted Image

As the Senate Rules Committee convenes a hearing Wednesday to look at the surge in election spending by nondisclosing groups, we know that in the 2014 midterm cycle, three times more dark money spending has already been reported to the Federal Election Commission than at this point during the 2012 presidential campaign. In that election, 501©(4) social welfare organizations and 501©(6) trade associations, which do not have to disclose their donors to the public, spent more than $310 million.

To see the changes in action, just look at Iowa. At the beginning of April, a group called Freedom Partners ran an ad that accused Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat, of handing out special favors to donors. The ad claims that Braley "takes tens of thousands from his friends in the health insurance industry" who "stand to make billions" from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

"Call Bruce Braley," a masculine voice says in the ad. "Tell him: Stand with Iowa. Stop supporting Obamacare."

As it turns out, the accusations in the ad are false -- as in, flaming "pants on fire" false. Braley, who is running for U.S. Senate, campaigned on overhauling health care, and -- perhaps as a result -- his contributions from the health-care industry amount to a relative pittance.

The organization that targeted Braley, Freedom Partners, is not a PAC or a super PAC. It's a 501©(6) trade association, which, unlike other vehicles for political money, doesn't have to disclose its donors to the public.

Freedom Partners is the poster child for the growing flood of dark money in elections. It has fewer employees and more money than almost any other such entity. Of 19,240 recognized trade associations that filed tax returns in 2012, Freedom Partners' revenues clocked in at No. 9. In its first year, this group outraised established heavyweights such as the National Football League, the American Petroleum Institute, PhRMA, and the Chamber of Commerce -- all of which fall under the same tax classification.

And while trade associations with more than $100 million in annual expenditures employ, on average, more than 500 people and spend only about 6 percent of their outlays on grants to other organizations, Freedom Partners gave more than 99 percent of the $238 million it spent in 2012 to other groups, without hiring a single employee.

The hundreds of millions in grant money it doled out in 2012 provided most of the funding for one of the largest, most complex dark money networks in existence. This network, backed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, was responsible for about 1 in 4 of the total dark money dollars spent in 2012. Members of the network spent more in 2012 than all liberal dark money groups combined have spent in the more than four years since the watershed Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision.

It wasn't until this month, however, that Freedom Partners decided to forgo the network and fight its own battles. Thus one of the largest and most shadowy dark money organizations went after Braley under the guise of grassroots advocacy. It's a sign of more to come.

...

There's a disconnect between the dramatic escalation [of dark money spending] and the Supreme Court's clarity on the issue of disclosure. In the Citizens United decision, the justices were nearly unanimous in their support of disclosure as a means to inform citizens of "whether elected officials are 'in the pocket' of so-called moneyed interests." And just this month, in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC, the majority reiterated that disclosure was a reasonable burden on free speech that may "deter actual corruption and avoid the appearance of corruption by exposing large contributions and expenditures to the light of publicity."

Yet despite the court's recognition that voters should be able to know who's funding their elected officials, spending by dark money groups continues unabated, leaving voters in the dark.

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#378 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2014-May-06, 08:59

 kenberg, on 2014-May-06, 07:09, said:

And while I am on this soapbox, let me say a few words about the Supremes and prayers at city council meetings. In the supposedly conservative and unimaginative 1950s we, at least some of us, knew enough not to ram our religious views down the throats of others.


I see one of your contemporaries authored the majority opinion. He writes that ramming religious views down the throats of others is “deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country.” (Paraphrasing, obv.)
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#379 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2014-May-06, 10:37

 y66, on 2014-May-06, 08:59, said:

I see one of your contemporaries authored the majority opinion. He writes that ramming religious views down the throats of others is "deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country." (Paraphrasing, obv.)


Sometimes I think these folks are trying to convert the rest of us to mikeh's point of view. Myself, I am used to religious folks (correction: some religious folks) thinking that I am on the express train to Hell. If they are right then they get the last laugh. But meanwhile. maybe they could buzz off.
Ken
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#380 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2014-May-19, 09:48

SMBC reminds us that "The rich get richer" starts at an early age:

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