US Politics Mega-thread - Page 210

The 2012 election was the most expensive in history, but there remain some gaping holes in our knowledge about who paid for what. The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering a proposal to add more transparency in future elections, but it won't happen without a fight.

The SEC proposal would require publicly traded companies to disclose all of their political contributions. And that would force companies to decide, in effect, if being linked to a candidate or partisan position is worth the impact political advocacy might have on its bottom line. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is vowing to fight the effort to tighten disclosure rules.

On April 28 2013 09:05 oneofthem wrote:
the singaporean model of paying government officials as executives, if you take away the corporate fascist veneer that's so rich over there, might be a good idea in stemming money from politics.

lobbying and such politically charged secondary career for politicians just pay so much more than being a congressman. it takes a serious true believer to not be swept up in the washing cycle. a congressperson is either independently wealthy, or beholden to what she can earn in lobbying. this kind of seriously imbalanced and unchecked incentive is bound to cause drastic problems if left unchecked.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- A national group of prominent GOP donors that supports gay marriage is pouring new money into lobbying efforts to get Republican lawmakers to vote to make it legal.

American Unity PAC was formed last year to lend financial support to Republicans who bucked the party's longstanding opposition to gay marriage. Its founders are launching a new lobbying organization, American Unity Fund, and already have spent more than $250,000 in Minnesota, where the Legislature could vote on the issue as early as next week.

WASHINGTON -- Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army's hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.

Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, "No thanks."

It's the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.

Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there's a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

"If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way," Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army's chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.

Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.

Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank's many suppliers are located.

If there's a home of the Abrams, it's politically important Ohio. The nation's only tank plant is in Lima. So it's no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol's Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.

On April 29 2013 03:19 Rassy wrote:
IT'S OFFICIAL: The Rich Are Getting Richer And Everyone Else Is Getting Hosed
In case you were hoping that America's three-decade-long trend toward extreme wealth inequality was starting to reverse itself, Pew has some bad news for you.

Nothing has changed.
The rich are still getting richer... and everyone else is still getting hosed.
Pew's latest data looked at how American households have fared since the depths of the recession.
The richest 7% of American households--8 million with more than $836,000 in net worth--did quite well from 2009 to 2011.
Their average net worth rose from $2.5 million to $3.2 million, a 28% jump.
The other 93% of American households, meanwhile, lost out.
Their average net worth dropped from a measly $140,000 to $134,000.
In case that's not depressing enough for you, take a look at what happened to the relative wealth shares of these two groups of households over the 2009-2011 period.
The richest 7% of American households went from owning 56% of the country's net worth to owning 63% of it. That left only 37% of the country's net worth to everyone else.
The source of this relative wealth bonanza for the richest households, not surprisingly, is the stock market.
America's richest households own most of the stocks in this country.
The stock market has more than doubled since the 2009 lows and is hitting new highs.
The value of houses, meanwhile--the most valuable asset for almost "everyone else"--has risen only slightly. And house prices are still well below their pre-recession bubble peaks
Now, if you're in the 7% of households that are getting richer, you might think this trend is perfectly fine. After all, who minds getting rich?
The problem, unfortunately, is that America's growing wealth inequality is hurting the purchasing power of mainstream American consumers. And these consumers provide the spending that drives most of the economy. (Rich folks actually don't spend that much as a percentage of the economy).
So with "everyone else" getting hosed, the health of the overall economy is deteriorating. That's hurting the ability of companies owned by the richest households to grow. And their lack of growth will eventually be reflected in the value of the stocks owned by the richest households. (Eek!)


Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-getting-richer-2013-4

This is not realy a suprise tbh as the rich are rich for a reason,they make more monney so inequity should naturally rise.

On April 29 2013 03:19 Rassy wrote:
IT'S OFFICIAL: The Rich Are Getting Richer And Everyone Else Is Getting Hosed
In case you were hoping that America's three-decade-long trend toward extreme wealth inequality was starting to reverse itself, Pew has some bad news for you.

Nothing has changed.
The rich are still getting richer... and everyone else is still getting hosed.
Pew's latest data looked at how American households have fared since the depths of the recession.
The richest 7% of American households--8 million with more than $836,000 in net worth--did quite well from 2009 to 2011.
Their average net worth rose from $2.5 million to $3.2 million, a 28% jump.
The other 93% of American households, meanwhile, lost out.
Their average net worth dropped from a measly $140,000 to $134,000.
In case that's not depressing enough for you, take a look at what happened to the relative wealth shares of these two groups of households over the 2009-2011 period.
The richest 7% of American households went from owning 56% of the country's net worth to owning 63% of it. That left only 37% of the country's net worth to everyone else.
The source of this relative wealth bonanza for the richest households, not surprisingly, is the stock market.
America's richest households own most of the stocks in this country.
The stock market has more than doubled since the 2009 lows and is hitting new highs.
The value of houses, meanwhile--the most valuable asset for almost "everyone else"--has risen only slightly. And house prices are still well below their pre-recession bubble peaks
Now, if you're in the 7% of households that are getting richer, you might think this trend is perfectly fine. After all, who minds getting rich?
The problem, unfortunately, is that America's growing wealth inequality is hurting the purchasing power of mainstream American consumers. And these consumers provide the spending that drives most of the economy. (Rich folks actually don't spend that much as a percentage of the economy).
So with "everyone else" getting hosed, the health of the overall economy is deteriorating. That's hurting the ability of companies owned by the richest households to grow. And their lack of growth will eventually be reflected in the value of the stocks owned by the richest households. (Eek!)


Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-getting-richer-2013-4

This is not realy a suprise tbh as the rich are rich for a reason,they make more monney so inequity should naturally rise.

On April 29 2013 04:20 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Have to disagree there. The fall in house values was overall a good thing. Prices had gotten too high for people to afford and lead to a supply glut that ultimately caused the recession and the sluggish recovery. The only people who lost purchasing power are those who wanted to use their home equity to finance current consumption (generally a bad idea).

On April 29 2013 07:17 HunterX11 wrote:


Propping people's living standards up is obviously a bad thing as opposed to lifting them up, but taking away the prop and letting people fall still hurts. And it's especially invidious since the banks have been bailed out and absolved of all sin, and the human beings who lost money (whether they were greedy, or ignorant, or mislead, or criminally defrauded) get squat (or maybe a one-time payment of a few hundred or thousand dollars for having lost tens of thousands of dollars). Easy credit and reliance on mortgages equity as an ATM are significant factors that were used to mask growing inequality and stagnant wages for decades, and while the new normal might just be an adjustment to the way things were "supposed" to be, that reality is one that sucks.

On April 29 2013 13:10 oneofthem wrote:
that's a distorting way of putting things. securing people's deposits and maintaining credit flow are regular functions of the banking system. bailing out bad risk takers in the speculative and abusive side is quite different.

On April 29 2013 02:18 oneofthem wrote:
gotta keep the soviet armor at bay...by building tanks soviet style