Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
If you wonder whether Fukushima has left the Japanese worried about nuclear energy, this beaming young woman is holding the first smartphone with a built-in radiation detector, just announced by Japanese carrier SoftBank. The next big fear for Fukushima is that the spent fuel storage ponds will run dry because their jury-rigged cooling systems will fail, or because another earthquake will hit.
I keep reading about how Romney can’t close the deal with the fundagelicals no matter what he does. Christ, what does he have to do? Beat up a gay kid?
Oh. Oh, dear. Ummm, yeah. sorry.
Also too, Rmoney’s”support” of gay adoption lasted less than one day
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m helping a long-shot local statehouse candidate with his campaign finance filing. I’m his treasurer. It’s not difficult. There’s the Handbook of Ohio Campaign Finance to refer to, and we file with the Secretary of State online. I enter the donor name and address on a form and once the report is filed, those names are publicly available.
We met with a small business owner 2 weeks ago. He wanted to fire questions at us for 45 minutes and then (possibly) donate. It was like a competition to see which side could speak more quickly, interrupt the other more often, and listen not at all. I thought he won that in a walk, so didn’t expect a donation after that disaster of an inquisition. His name is on the door of the local business he owns and operates, and when I file my next report, his name will also be on the candidate’s donor list, because we seem to have survived the hazing: he wrote us a check. Will that matter to his customers in this overwhelmingly Republican county? I don’t know. I hope not. I know that we had local volunteers for John Kerry in 2004 who work at the for-profit hospital here. They parked across the street in the supermarket lot when we met for phone banking, because they were afraid they’d face repercussions at work if it became known that they were volunteering for that Alinskyite radical Leftist, Senator John Kerry.
Contrast that with the absolute cowardice and incessant, bleating whining of the moneyed few, speaking through an editorial in Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ:
Shareholder proxy season is coming up, and along with it a new batch of politicized shareholder resolutions. The underreported story this year is the flowering of a long-planned political campaign intended to stop companies from exercising their free-speech rights to influence government. Corporate directors need to know what they’re up against.
The campaign is traveling under the assumed name of “disclosure,” which sounds innocuous and is hard for CEOs and corporate boards to oppose. The specific target is to get companies to publicly disclose what they spend on politics—their donations to candidates or PACs, how much they spend on lobbying or government affairs, which industry associations they contribute to, and even in some cases the political contributions of executives.
It’s part of a multiyear campaign by unions, left-wing activists and their factotums to expose and then vilify companies that disagree with them.
The campaign has gained speed since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling that restored First Amendment rights to unions and corporations.Corporations are not democracies. They are businesses organized for the purpose of making money to increase value for all shareholders, not to serve the narrow goals of some shareholders.
The political left is using this disclosure campaign not to serve the interests of shareholders, but to further its own policy agenda. It is an abuse of the proxy process, and companies would be wise to resist it in the interest of their business, their shareholders, and their country.
And, here’s the great Richard Trumka, in his advocate’s hat, responding:
Your editorial “The Corporate Disclosure Assault” (March 19) falsely claims that disclosure of corporate political expenditures is not in the best interest of all shareholders. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizens United, which upheld the First Amendment rights of corporations to make independent political expenditures, explicitly relied in part on the principle that “prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.”
Current law enables businesses to spend for many political purposes without disclosure, whether to the public or their shareholders. The editorial’s suggestion that businesses should be able to conceal their political spending in order to avoid criticism or controversy disserves shareholders. As Justice Antonin Scalia recently observed in another case, Doe v. Reed, which rejected First Amendment-based claims for keeping secret the identities of ballot-petition signers, “Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.”
Unions have long been required to make public disclosures of their political and other spending. Corporations that spend to influence politics have no legitimate gripe against shareholder disclosure resolutions that would require them to publicly disclose that spending—and they have ample opportunity and resources to explain why that spending advances shareholder value and the public interest.
Richard L. Trumka
President
AFL-CIO
Washington
They want what they always want: all of the rewards with none of the risk. Risk is for the people who can least afford it.
Obviously, if people knew what they were up to, people might not like itPost + Comments (25)
Actual journalism has been committed:
That’s because oil is a global commodity and U.S. production has only a tiny influence on supply. Factors far beyond the control of a nation or a president dictate the price of gasoline.
When you put the inflation-adjusted price of gas on the same chart as U.S. oil production since 1976, the numbers sometimes go in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. If drilling for more oil meant lower prices, the lines on the chart would consistently go in opposite directions. A basic statistical measure of correlation found no link between the two, and outside statistical experts confirmed those calculations.
“Drill, baby, drill has nothing to do with it,” said Judith Dwarkin, chief energy economist at ITG investment research. Two other energy economists said the same thing and experts in the field have been making that observation for decades.
The statistics directly contradict the title of GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s 2008 book “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less,” as well as the campaign-trail claims from the GOP presidential candidates.
I can’t wait to see how the Politifact folks will spin this.
Pretty fascinating little development in downstate West Virginia:
One of the nation’s biggest oil lobbyists in January warned the President that he could make life very uncomfortable for his re-election chances if he didn’t approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
The oil industry’s top lobbyist warned the Obama administration Wednesday to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline or face “huge political consequences” in an election year.
Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said it would be a “huge mistake” for President Barack Obama to reject the 1,700-mile, Canada-to-Texas pipeline. Obama faces a Feb. 21 deadline to decide whether the $7 billion pipeline is in the national interest.
“Clearly, the Keystone XL pipeline is in the national interest,” Gerard said at the trade association’s annual “State of American Energy” event. “A determination to decide anything less than that I believe will have huge political consequences.”
Jump to six weeks later:
Soaring gasoline prices are threatening to undercut President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects and offering Republicans an easy target. With prices pushing $4 a gallon and threatening to go even higher, Obama sought Thursday to confront rising public anxiety and strike back at his GOP critics.
Obama said dismissively that all the Republicans can talk about is more drilling — “a bumper sticker … a strategy to get politicians through an election” — when the nation’s energy challenges demand much more. In a speech in Miami, he promoted the expansion of domestic oil and gas exploration but also the development of new forms of energy.
For all the political claims, economists say there’s not much a president of either party can do about gasoline prices. Certainly not in the short term. But it’s clear that people are concerned — a new Associated Press-GfK poll says seven in 10 find the issue deeply important — so it’s sure to be a political issue through the summer.
You do the math. I’m thinking Big Oil already has, and they’re liking the numbers they see. The Republicans and the Village certainly aren’t above concern trolling President Obama, either. Remember, he’s “bad for business” when he doesn’t give corporations the “certainty” of a negative tax rate and all the steak fajita grandes they can eat on Tuesdays.
Presidents may not be able to do much about gasoline prices, but oil companies sure as hell can.
Make The Gas Face For Those Little White LiesPost + Comments (132)
What the price of gas has done over the last 12 months (top green line there):
What FOX News makes out of the green line:
“Man, Mr. Murdoch’s third period math class is effin’ hard. But just leave out the uninteresting data points AND BLAME PRESIDENT MELANIN MCDARKGUY LOL HOMEWORK’S DONE. I bet I get a B plus for this one.”