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Wall Street Won the 2014 Midterms |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=32070"><span class="small">David Sirota, International Business Times</span></a>
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Wednesday, 05 November 2014 12:40 |
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Sirota writes: "From Illinois to Massachusetts, voters effectively placed more than $100 billion worth of public pension investments under the control of executives-turned-politicians whose firms profit by managing state pension money."
Illinois billionaire and now governor Bruce Rauner is a partner in a firm that manages more than $40 million of the state's $50 billion pension system. (photo: twitter/Quinn for Illinois)
Wall Street Won the 2014 Midterms
By David Sirota, International Business Times
05 November 14
 o recount will be needed to declare one unambiguous winner in Tuesday's gubernatorial elections: the financial services industry. From Illinois to Massachusetts, voters effectively placed more than $100 billion worth of public pension investments under the control of executives-turned-politicians whose firms profit by managing state pension money.
The elections played out as states and cities across the country debate the merits of shifting public pension money -- the retirement savings for police, firefighters, teachers and other public employees -- from plain vanilla investments such as index funds into higher-risk alternatives like hedge funds and private equity funds.
Critics have argued that this course has often failed to boost returns enough to compensate for taxpayer-financed fees paid to the financial services companies that manage the money. Wall Street firms and executives have poured campaign contributions into states that have embraced the strategy, eager for expanded opportunities. Tuesday's results affirmed that this money was well spent: More public pension money will now likely be entrusted to the financial services industry.
In Illinois, Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn was defeated by Republican challenger Bruce Rauner, who made his fortune as one of the namesakes of Golder, Thoma, Cressey & Rauner (GTCR) - a financial firm that manages more than $40 million of the state's $50 billion pension system. Rauner -- who retains an ownership stake in at least 15 separate GTCR entities, according to his financial disclosure forms-- will now be fully in charge of the pension system.
In Rhode Island, venture capitalist Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, defeated Republican Allan Fung. Raimondo retains an ownership stake in a firm that manages funds from Rhode Island’s $7 billion pension system. Raimondo’s campaign received hundreds of thousands of dollars from financial industry donors. She was also aided by six-figure PAC donations from former Enron trader John Arnold, who has waged a national campaign to slash workers’ pensions. Fung slammed Raimondo as a tool of Wall Street, but she eked out a victory after a libertarian-leaning third party candidate, Robert Healy, unexpectedly siphoned votes away from Fung.
In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, handily defeated his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, after raising millions of dollars from the finance industry. The New York legislature is set to send Cuomo a bill that would permit the New York state and city pension funds to move an additional $7 billion into hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, real estate and other high-fee “alternative” investments. Assuming the standard 1 to 2 percent management fees applies, that could generate between $70 million and $150 million a year in fresh fees for Wall Street firms.
Cuomo has not taken a public position on the bill, but his party in the legislature passed it by a wide margin, and he is widely expected to sign it into law.
In Massachusetts, Republican Charlie Baker appeared early Wednesday to have secured a narrow victory over Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Baker was a board member of mutual funds managed by a financial firm that also manages funds from Massachusetts’ $53 billion pension system. Baker is also the subject of a New Jersey investigation over his $10,000 contribution to the New Jersey State Republican Party just months before New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s officials awarded his firm a state pension deal. Christie, whose Republican Governors Association spent heavily to support Baker’s campaign, blocked the release of documents related to that investigation until after the election.
In all, Republicans won 18 gubernatorial races thanks, in part, to the robust fundraising of Christie’s Republican Governors Association. Some of that organization’s top donors are the financial investment firms that manage public pension systems.
Former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney Edward Siedle said campaign cash from the financial industry has fundamentally shaped the debate over how to manage state pension systems.
“Why have all pension reform candidates concluded that workers’ retirement benefits must be harshly cut, but, on the other hand, fees to Wall Street be exponentially increased?” said Siedle, who has published a series of forensic reports critical of the shift into alternative investments. “Why has no candidate dared to propose public pensions dump the costliest, riskiest underperforming investment products ever devised by Wall Street—hedge and private equity funds—in favor of proven ultra-low cost index funds, as recommended by the nation’s leading investors, Warren Buffett and John Bogle?...The answer, of course, is that more money than ever is being spent by billionaires to support a public pension Wall Street feeding frenzy.”
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The Corporate Coup d'Etat Is Nearly Complete |
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Wednesday, 05 November 2014 12:35 |
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Wasserman writes: "All throughout America, right down to the local level, buried in a tsunami of cash and corruption, our public servants are being morphed into corporate operatives."
Former vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The Corporate Coup d'Etat Is Nearly Complete
By Harvey Wasserman, Solartopia.org
05 November 14
 he GOP/corporate coup d’etat is nearly complete.
The Republicans now control the major media, the Supreme Court, the Congress and soon the presidency.
Think Jeb Bush in 2016.
All throughout America, right down to the local level, buried in a tsunami of cash and corruption, our public servants are being morphed into corporate operatives.
Our electoral apparatus is thoroughly compromised by oceans of dirty money, Jim Crow registration traps, rigged electronic voting machines, gerrymandering, corrupt secretaries of state.
The internet may be next. Above all, if there is one thing that could save us a shred of democracy, it’s preserving net neutrality. This fight could in fact outweigh all the others, and may be decided soon. Whatever depression you may now feel, shake it off to wage this battle. If we now lose the ability to freely communicate, we are in the deepest hole of all.
The roots of this corporate coup reach where they always do when empires collapse—useless, cancerous, debilitating, endless imperial war.
Lyndon Johnson lit the fuse in March, 1965. He had a chance to get us out of Vietnam. For many complex reasons—none of them sane—he escalated. He never recovered, and neither has our nation.
In 1967-8, an aroused generation marched for peace at the Pentagon, Chicago and elsewhere. We were accused of shattering the Democratic Party. But in fact we forced Johnson to negotiate a pre-election truce that might have saved the presidency for Hubert Humphrey.
As we all now know, that truce was treasonously sabotaged by Richard Nixon, in league with Henry Kissinger. LBJ knew what had been done, but said nothing. Had he trusted the American public with that knowledge, Nixon would have been gone long before Watergate, the war might have ended far sooner, the Democratic Party might still have meant something.
Instead, the party and the rest of us became prisoners of imperial war, captives of the corporations that profit from it.
From Watergate all we got was a punchless, corporate Jimmy Carter.
And from a dozen hellish years of Reagan-Bush, we got a showy, corporate Bill Clinton…and not a single substantial social reform. But the corporations got NAFTA, gutted social welfare, soaring college tuitions, abolition of New Deal safeguards against Wall Street greed, and much more.
They also got the death of the Fairness Doctrine from Reagan, and then a 1996 telecommunications act from Clinton that gave them full control of the major media. The age of Fox “News” was born in double-think.
Meanwhile Al Gore and John Kerry allowed the corporations to gut our electoral system. Gore won in 2000, saw the election stolen in Florida, and—like LBJ with Nixon’s treason—said not a word. It was absurdly easier to blame Ralph Nader for Gore’s blithe discard than to buckle down and fight for an election protection apparatus to preserve the vote so many had fought and died to win.
Kerry won in 2004, saw the election stolen in Ohio, and repeated Gore’s meek, mute skulk to oblivion. The Democrats let a corporate Jim Crow gut the registration process, deny millions of Americans their vote, install a national network of easily flippable electronic voting machines…and they said nothing.
Along the way the Supreme Court was handed to the corporations. Soon enough, they would open the floodgates.
But from the ashes of the Iraq war and the horrors of Bush 2, enough public power remained in 2008 to finally put an African-American in the White House. With his apparent opposition to the Iraq War, and loads of rhetoric about hope and change, Barak Obama won a mandate to heal the wounds inflicted by yet another Bush corporate presidency.
Obama expanded national medical coverage, and talked the talk of the global ecology and public good.
Then he sank us in the quicksand of Southwest Asia.
In analyzing this latest electoral debacle, our Orwellian corporate bloviators avoid like the plague any mention of corporate money or imperial war.
But like LBJ in Vietnam…Afghanistan and Obama’s other wars have gutted his presidency and all he might have been. They’ve drained our shrunken moral and financial resources. They’ve turned yet another Democratic harbinger of hope into feeble corporate cannon fodder. They’ve battered and alienated yet another generation of the progressive core.
Thus the GOP has been enthroned by a half-century of Democrats who’ve helped drag us into endless war, ignored our electoral rights and sold their souls—and the nation’s—to a zombie army of corporate operatives.
The money power has ruled this nation before. This time it means a whole new level of all-out war against social justice, our basic rights, our ability to live in harmony with our Mother Earth.
Beset by a whole new level of global disaster, we have no choice but to find some completely new answers. Our survival depends on it.
It will take all our creative and activist juices. Nothing is clear except that it won’t be easy.
And that no matter which corporate party tries to lead us there, the path to the promised land does not go through the deadly quicksand of imperial war, empty rhetoric or corrupted elections.
If we’re to get there at all, a whole new way must be found.
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IPCC Report Warns No Planet B |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=28305"><span class="small">Lauren Carasik, Al Jazeera America</span></a>
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Wednesday, 05 November 2014 12:30 |
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Carasik writes: "The window to address the threats of climate change is rapidly closing. The fight to preserve the planet's health is intertwined with broader issues of social and economic justice and demands a unified global effort to confront it. A sustainable and vibrant movement is needed to upend the status quo on climate change."
There is no planet B. (photo: EcoWatch)
IPCC Report Warns No Planet B
By Lauren Carasik, Al Jazeera America
05 November 14
A binding, meaningful and enforceable framework is needed to limit the consequences of global warming
 n Nov. 2, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report (PDF) on the effects of global warming. Its findings were emphatic, stark and categorical: Left unabated, climate change will increase “the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”
The report represents a distillation of the IPCC’s assessments over the past 13 months and will serve as the blueprint for negotiations toward a global treaty at next year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris. The IPCC notes that while no country will escape the deleterious effects of climate change, the risks “are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development” and that limiting the effects of climate change is critical to sustainable development and eliminating poverty.
The window to address the threats of climate change is rapidly closing. The fight to preserve the planet’s health is intertwined with broader issues of social and economic justice and demands a unified global effort to confront it. A sustainable and vibrant movement is needed to upend the status quo on climate change. Such an effort must strike the right balance between conveying the exigency of the crisis, building coalitions among diverse and historically divided constituencies and demanding a reorientation of global priorities set by governments and corporations.
Urgent and growing threat
While critics refuse to accept the IPCC’s conclusive scientific evidence, others have already suggested that the report was too conservative and that it underestimated the threats of global warming in order to achieve consensus among the IPCC’s many constituencies. Many Americans, still loath to acknowledge the link between human activity and increasingly extreme weather, are among the skeptics. Denial of the causes and effects of climate change continues to impede the adoption of urgent and dramatic remedial measures necessary to avert an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.
On Sept. 23, in remarks at the U.N. Climate Summit, President Barack Obama highlighted, “the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate” as the most pressing challenge, which “will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other” global crises confronting world leaders. He emphasized that the world’s largest polluters — the United States and China — should take the lead in reducing emissions. He touted his administration’s initiatives in reducing emissions and investments in clean energy, emphasizing no nation could take a pass on mitigating environmental harms. His comments came only days after the People’s Climate March, the largest climate march in history, which drew more than 300,000 protesters in New York City alone, with parallel demonstrations around the globe. The IPCC report reinforces the urgency of the threat posed by climate change and urges the international community to embrace a combination of adaptation and mitigation strategies, including a dramatic reduction in greenhouse emissions, before the effects of climate change become irreversible.
However, U.S. leaders and the United Nations have thus far failed to muster the political will to surmount entrenched interests and undue corporate influence that are blocking meaningful progress at local, national and international levels. The IPCC offers clear and comprehensive scientific evidence to embolden the masses that turned out worldwide in September to continue pressuring global leaders to elevate the well-being of people over the profit-driven policies that are wreaking havoc on our planet.
The IPCC findings are corroborated by other independent assessments. For example, last month the Department of Defense issued a report concluding that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security. Yet our spending priorities continue to be misplaced. Last year U.S. carbon emissions rose by 2.9 percent, but the U.S. government spent 24 times as much on the military than on combating climate change.
The economic costs of climate change are already staggering. Shaun Donovan, the new director of the U.S. Office of Management and the Budget said climate denial would cost American taxpayers billions of dollars, noting that extreme weather events in 2011 and 2012 inflicted $188 billion in damage.
Despite scientific evidence and eloquent admonitions, the Obama administration has been unable to derail corporate machinations to avert dramatic changes to our global energy policies. In September, even as the climate summit loomed, the White House extended the comment period for a signature component of Obama’s climate change plan after intense pressure from Republicans and the coal industry.
Obama’s commitment to ameliorating climate change is also undermined by the outsize role of climate change deniers and their deep pockets. Among their ranks are many politicians who are beholden to large donors bent on thwarting progress, such as Charles and David Koch — the billionaire brothers behind Koch Industries and funders of conservative causes — and dark money funds that are spent on elections without disclosure of their sources. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industries have expended nearly $103 million in lobbying so far this year alone.
To effectively push for the dramatic reforms necessary to tackle climate change, the role of money in electoral politics must be addressed. In September, Senate Democrats voted to advance a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which relaxed existing rules and restrictions on campaign donations. But the measure failed to garner the necessary votes to advance and received scant media attention.
Capitalism versus the climate
Reports of the climate peril we are facing are dire. Scientists have warned that if global warming continues at its current pace, the earth’s environment will not be able to sustain human civilization by the end of the century. In April, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said that climate change would engender social unrest and battles over food and water within the next five to 10 years.
Still, for many Americans, the fear about climate change has been eclipsed by more immediate concerns. A recent Gallup poll found that only 1 percent of Americans were concerned about the environment, with 41 percent citing more pressing economic concerns. Income inequality continues to grow, with nearly 45.3 million Americans living in poverty. A similar survey by The New York Times/CBS News confirmed the low ranking of environmental issues, even as more than half the 1,000 respondents polled believed global warming is caused by human actions. But the economy and the environment are not separate issues.
In her new book, “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate,” journalist Naomi Klein makes a clear link between climate change and the deregulated capitalism of the past three decades. Klein argues that economic hardship and climate change are the natural outgrowth of unfettered corporate power and suggests that nothing short of a radical paradigm shift can avert the crisis we now face. With lack of action from elected officials, such a shift requires mass mobilization premised on an understanding of our shared humanity and collective fate. And in a globalized economy, fostering solidarity across borders is critical: We will all ultimately lose in a race to the bottom for cheap labor and lax environmental regulations.
There have been some positive signs lately. In September the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, founded and run by heirs to the Standard Oil fortune, announced plans to divest from fossil fuels. Stephen Heintz, the fund’s manager, noted that divestment was both a moral imperative and an economic opportunity. The fund joins 180 other institutions and 650 individuals collectively controlling $50 billion in assets in the global Divest-Invest initiative. Similarly, on Sept. 22, Google announced plans to stop funding the conservative group the American Legislative Exchange Council because the group has been “literally lying” about climate change.
As the IPCC report notes, despite the grim outlook, scalable and affordable solutions are available if we can muster the political will to adopt them. The clarity and urgency of the report provides a platform for activists and civil society organizations to demand a unified, meaningful and enforceable climate change framework at the Paris conference and to insist that safeguarding the environment take primacy over corporate influence and profits.
As one climate marcher’s sign pithily observed, “There is no planet B.”
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FOCUS | Plutocrats Win Control of Congress |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 05 November 2014 11:15 |
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Ash writes: "The mainstream media is spinning last night's election results as a 'victory for Republicans.' In fact it was a victory for the plutocrats who financed the Republican campaigns."
Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes speaking to her supporters. (photo: Getty Images)
Plutocrats Win Control of Congress
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
05 November 14
he mainstream media is spinning last night’s election results as a “victory for Republicans.” In fact it was a victory for the plutocrats who financed the Republican campaigns.
From the electoral maps it looked like a red state uprising. In reality, it was a “white state” uprising. White fear again rules the day in American politics. Not that those who financed the winning campaigns care a bit about the best interests of the white voters in red states – they don’t.
The Democrats say they are the party of the people. But in truth they are largely backed by one-percenters as well. There are some exceptions, but for the most part the reason the Democrats decline to field candidates who would actually challenge the status quo is that the DNC, like the RNC, is awash in status quo money.
In fairness, the billionaire movement favored the Republicans in this election to a significantly greater degree than it did the Democrats, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the past several decades.
It’s easy to say that the Democrats who lost last night were not dynamic or progressive enough, and there may be some truth to that. But there were some pretty good Democrats who lost as well. Alison Lundergan Grimes, Mark Udall, Kay Hagan, and Michelle Nunn are a few examples. Not firebrand progressives by any means, but light years better for their states and the country than the candidates they lost to, certainly.
Since the DNC had a decent budget and overall better candidates, you have to take a look at their game plan. Sure, white fear of a black president had something to do their losses, but you really have to wonder if the Democratic message was clear and strong enough.
Right now Wall Street continues to be more important to the Democrats than Main Street, and they are dying because of it.
Time to put up a fight.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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o it, Mr. President.
