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Will they know it when they see it?

Monday, May 7, 2012

The IRS is grappling with a problem that only a lawyer, and a demented one at that, could take seriously:

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, the political ad-buying organization cofounded by Republican strategist Karl Rove in 2010, has officially submitted its first tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service, and as expected, the group is formally requesting that the IRS treat it as a nonprofit operating under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

…

The hitch is that the tax code says 501(c)(4) groups “must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare” — the promotion of which “does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”

Rove depends on Crossroad GPS getting that 501(c)(4) status for one reason. Avowedly political groups, like Crossroads GPS’ sister organization, the American Crossroads Super PAC, have to disclose their donors; 501(c)(4) groups don’t (although that could be changing).

In order to promise anonymity to donors giving tens of millions — sometimes $10 million at a time — Rove and his colleagues called Crossroads GPS a “policy and grassroots advocacy” organization.

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The big question the IRS will have to address, therefore, is whether the ads that Crossroads GPS and similar groups call “issue advocacy” ads are, in fact, “on behalf or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”

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That would include ads like one attacking Democratic Virginia Senate candidate Tim Kaine for being “Obama’s partisan cheerleader,” or one savaging Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who at the time was running for reelection, for having “sold out to Obama,” or one attacking progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for, of all things, siding with big banks.

…

The Federal Election Commission’s hair-splitting rules allow Crossroads GPS to make the argument that these sorts of ads aren’t exactly the same as campaign ads. According to the FEC rules, in fact, advertisements from outside groups are only considered reportable as “independent expenditures” if they are “expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate.” For the FEC, that involves literally using one of the magic words such as “elect” or “vote against” in their ad.

This brings to mind the famous observation by Justice Potter Stewart, a perceived conservative at the time, but retrospectively a flaming liberal, who wrote the following in a case in which he was called upon to distinguish hard core (and therefore illegal) pornography from-well, from the other kind of pornography:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Now we shall find out if the IRS knows “direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office” when it sees it. Its job is far easier than Stewart’s. In order to win, Rove must prove that his attack ads are not about political advocacy. That’s equivalent to Stewart having made the hapless defendant in the pornography case prove his movies were not about sex.

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Yet another anti-corporate rant

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Yesterday my wife and I went to Best Buy to replace a dead cordless telephone. This led to a conversation about the fact that I’d recently read that Best Buy isn’t doing too well lately, and is trying to make sure it does not follow the trajectory of Circuit City. This, in turn, got us to talking about a contemporary mystery.

In the case of a Best Buy, as opposed, say, to Bank of America, et. al., there is no such thing as too big to fail. These folks operate on a narrow margin, and when the buying power of the American people declines (after all, how may Ipads can any one member of the 1% need), sales, particularly sales of discretionary purchases, must, perforce, decline. As Krugman and his liberal commie always right ilk keep telling us, the problem with the economy is on the demand side, and it seems to stand to reason that a demand problem would be most pronounced when it comes to products people can do without.

It follows, as the night the day, that it is in the interest of Best Buy, the corporation, to increase demand. And demand, in a recession, is increased, as everyone knows, by getting money into the hands of people who are going to spend it, i.e., into the hands of the poor and those who are fast becoming poor. That means government spending. You know, stimulus.

So, here’s the mystery: Why aren’t the Best Buys of the world, or at least of the U.S., lobbying hard for the type of stimulus spending upon which their very survival may depend? Even if their survival is not at stake (e.g., Apple) they could surely be making more money if more money was being spent.

Could it be that there’s a disconnect between the short term interests of the highly paid people who run these companies and the interests of the companies themselves? After all, if one is in a position to drain multimillions from a company over the course of a few years, as all of these CEOs are, one really has very little interest in the long term survival and growth of the company, and one certainly doesn’t care much how the stock performs once the options have been exercised.

Recently, digby wrote about the fact that Wall Streeters, feelings hurt and feeling misunderstood, are withholding money from Obama, who they have talked themselves into perceiving as someone who is working against their interests. She notes that a number of people have posited a number of reasons for this reaction, but concludes:

It’s always possible that it’s a combination of all these things. But what’s most interesting to me is that in all these cases, these people care nothing for the health of the financial system itself and only care about their own personal wealth, which they falsely believe has been stymied by government rather than the self-created systemic problems that caused the 2008 crash. That indicates that rather than being people who make decisions on the merits; we are dealing with irrational, irresponsible fools who are blaming the wrong culprits; indeed, they are blaming the very institution that kept the system alive so they could live to pillage another day.

I mostly agree, but I don’t think they are necessarily irrational. They are very rationally preferring policies that allow them to drain as much money from the swamp as quickly as they can, conditions left behind being totally irrelevant. That’s rational, provided one has a very crabbed conception of one’s self interest.

From a societal point of view the question is: how do we structure things so that we align the interests of these people with those of the corporations they run, if not with those of the society as a whole. That, it seems to me, could be done relatively easily. They make too much money too fast. If the corporations can’t keep compensation out of the stratosphere, that objective can be easily achieved by bringing tax rates back where they were in the 50s.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, May 4, 2012

A couple of songs by folks I’ve featured before, but both deserve the repetition, and both are in the news lately.

Bob Dylan is getting the Medal of Freedom. Fifty years late, some might argue, but better late than never, and the world knows he deserves it more than some of the half baked people who’ve gotten it from Republican presidents. This is one of the songs that earned him the honor, performed last year at the White House.

Yesterday was Pete Seeger’s 93rd birthday. A man who survived McCarthyism and never lost faith. Here he is singing an absolutely appropriate Dylan song.

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Both sides do it, whether they do or not

Friday, May 4, 2012

Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, entrenched members of the punditocracy, and therefore very serious people, have just written an opinion piece in which they announce to a startled world that it is the Republicans who are responsible for the present state of our dysfunctional government. This bombshell revelation, exposing a fact previously known only to every blogger to the left of Attila the Hun, and Paul Krugman, has struck wonder and amazement among beltway denizens.

Will they be forced to abandon their narrative that both sides do it, and the truth always lies in the middle, in the face of Ornstein and Mann’s persuasive argument? The facts seem to support Ornstein and Mann, but, on the other hand, the Republicans say…

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Wall Street repaying Scott Brown

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Looks like the financial industry has found a way to funnel piles of money to Scott Brown without the mess and bother of donating directly to his campaign fund, to which, in any event, they are limited to a mere pittance. The Boston Globe reports that they’ve been funneling money through a special RNC committee, to which they can donate far more:

US Senator Scott Brown, who played a critical role in the battle over the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul, has used a joint fund-raising committee to collect $2.9 million in political donations over the last year, nearly half of which came from the nation’s financial sector.

A Globe analysis of the money raised by this joint committee, which was launched without fanfare or publicity in March 2011, indicates that this sector’s deep reservoir of support for the Republican senator extends far beyond the contributions made to his campaign committee.

The Scott Brown Victory Committee, a joint venture between the senator and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, can receive donations of up to $30,800 per donor each election cycle, compared with the $5,000 limit for regular campaign committees. According to the reports, Brown receives about 15 percent of the funds, while the Republican senatorial committee receives the rest.

The joint committee’s reports are replete with generous donations from deep-pocketed venture capitalists, bankers, and leaders of some of the country’s largest investment firms who are eager to see Brown defeat his likely Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren, a consumer advocate. Their donations totaled $1.275 million or 44 percent of the total raised by the committee through the end of March.

Surprisingly, the article throughout tells it like it is. Brown is a Wall Street tool, and the Globe makes that clear, even exposing his claim that he voted for Dodd Franks as disingenuous, since the price for his vote was some critical pro-Wall Street changes.

Last time I looked, Wall Street was in New York, but of course Brown makes no attempt to square his willingness to take this money with his criticisms of Warren’s out of state contributions. But apparently, that’s because there’s a crucial distinction. Let Brown’s campaign speak for itself:

“Professor Warren’s fundraising continues to be mostly out-of-state money from extremely liberal donors and special interests that are trying to influence the Massachusetts election,” said spokesman Colin Reed.

Brown’s contributors, on the other hand, while also “mostly out of state”, are, apparently, totally above the fray, and totally uninterested in “trying to influence the Massachusetts election”. Really, it’s just loose change that happened to fall out of their pockets and land in Scott Brown’s war-chest.

The Globe did good work today. It also has a good article about Romney’s non-plans when it comes to regulation of the financial services industry. Actually, as the paper implicitly reports, he does have a plan: repeal the somewhat effectual Dodd-Frank and replace it with nothing. But then, the article only confirms what any thinking person would assume.

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The English Language pleads for mercy under the Republican onslaught

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Richard Grenell, is, or was, Romney’s National Security Spokesman, in charge of dispensing lies concerning Foreign Affairs. In a richly ironic development, he has had to resign from his job defending one form of Republican craziness because his open homosexuality got him in trouble with an entirely different group of Republican crazies. I have no sympathy for the guy, as it is quite difficult to gin up much concern for any gay person who would be personally crazy enough to affiliate with a party, many of whose members would be happy to put him into a concentration camp. But his resignation statement brought me up short:

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, who broke the news Tuesday, suggested that the openly gay Grenell likely resigned because of a “full-court press by anti-gay conservatives.” Grenell confirmed his resignation in a statement to Rubin:

I have decided to resign from the Romney campaign as the Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman. While I welcomed the challenge to confront President Obama’s foreign policy failures and weak leadership on the world stage, my ability to speak clearly and forcefully on the issues has been greatly diminished by the hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues that sometimes comes from a presidential campaign. I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team.

Grenell is described in the articles by members of the press as a “liar”, and though I can’t speak to that directly, it certainly appears that he’s a member of the Humpty Dumpty squad, making words work overtime as he proves he is master over any mere dictionary definition.

No reasonable person could interpret the use of the term “hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues”, coming from a spokesman for a Republican candidate, as anything but an attack on Democrats. Even Humpty Dumpty would draw the line at calling a Republican attack on a Republican “partisan”. Yet where are the Democrats in this story? Nary a peep from our side, so far as I’m aware. From a partisan perspective, they would likely have preferred the guy stay where he was, both because he has a reputation among the press corps as a liar, and because his presence would have been a constant source of friction among the Republicans. It would appear that Republicans can’t help themselves; they simply must blame Democrats for all their self inflicted woes.

But I’m not here to defend the Democrats. They should be able to take care of themselves, though of course, they’re not. I write to defend our sorely traduced language. Our poor words are having their identities stolen left and right. Well, actually come to think of it, mostly from the right. In a country in which our legislators can take the time to legislate against holding hands, can’t they spare a moment or two to legislate a suitable punishment for assault and battery upon our poor defenseless words?

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Business as usual

Monday, April 30, 2012

I, of course, don’t know the whole back-story on this. Maybe, really, truly, the guy wasn’t encouraged to resign. But isn’t it time that the Obama folks just started saying “fuck you” to these people, instead of throwing their own under the bus?

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Friday Night Music

Friday, April 27, 2012

I came upon this song in a sort of haphazard way. I was listening to Eric Clapton and B.B. King in my car, and I was taken with their version of Come Rain or Come Shine. Unfortunately, as I suspected, it was not to be found in video form, so I decided to look for a good version by someone else. Maybe this one can be beat, but I doubt it can be topped. Norah Jones and Wynton Marsalis.

I should admit, by the way, that my attempt to find topical songs each week has pretty much fizzled out. I can’t be blamed entirely. Howe many songs are out there, for instance, about student loans?

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