The Chamber of Commerce is perfect before the U.S. Supreme Court

The Chamber of Commerce can do no wrong before the United States Supreme Court this term, as reported by the Constitutional Accountability Center:

With today’s decision in Southern Union Company v. United States, the Chamber has declared victory in all seven of its cases that have reached a clear outcome (two are additionally classified as “other” because the Court avoided addressing the issue at stake on procedural grounds, and in one the Chamber filed on behalf of neither party).

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JP Morgan continues to slurp at the public trough

According to Bloomberg:

JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fund and our own analysis of bank balance sheets. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy . . . To estimate the dollar value of the subsidy in the U.S., we multiplied it by the debt and deposits of 18 of the country’s largest banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. The result: about $76 billion a year. The number is roughly equivalent to the banks’ total profits over the past 12 months, or more than the federal government spends every year on education.
On his June 22, 2012 show, Bill Moyers discussed this insane state of affairs, and the rampant corruption and criminality of Wall Street with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism. Yves Smith offers this as part of the solution to the ongoing problem with large Wall Street banks:
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean when you say banks should be more like a utility? YVES SMITH: Banks, more than any other business, more than military contractors, live off the government. They depend on government backstopping. They exist only by way of government issued licenses, which if you had open entry you'd see much lower fees. And they get some confidence from the public from the fact that they are regulated. Oh, and the most important thing is they have access to-- MATT TAIBBI: The Federal Reserve. YVES SMITH: --the Federal Reserve. MATT TAIBBI: They're getting huge amounts of free money. YVES SMITH: Well, not just the free money. The Federal Reserve basically guarantees the payment system. You know, that's the really critical architecture that banks control is that, you know, we write checks to each other. We have credit cards. They clear through banks. But the fact that banks can exchange money with each other confidently is because the Fed stands behind that. So there's a much-- there's another layer of Fed backstopping beyond what we think of the way they step in in a crisis or the way they're now intervening to help the banks. So the fact that these institutions really depend in a very fundamental way on government support means they don't have any right to the upside. I mean, they should really be paid like public servants. I mean, I'm not kidding. I mean, and if they had been, if the pay had been ratcheted down after the crisis, I would have had a lot more sympathy for them, even if they just behaved for a couple of years. You know, they were bailed out. And then in 2009 the industry went and paid itself record bonuses, higher than 2007 instead of rebuilding their balance sheets. I mean, this was just a slap in the face for the public. BILL MOYERS: And there's no shame. YVES SMITH: No.

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The real risk of an American dying in a terrorist attack

Comedy Central’s Indecision presents some rather unsurprising statistics that need to be read by every member of Congress. What is an American’s likelihood of dying from a terrorist attack?

According to government statistics, roughly as many Americans are killed annually by unstable furniture and falling televisions as are killed in terrorist attacks.
What else is more dangerous than a terrorist attack? 16 oz. sodas, inconvenience of going through TSA security at an airport (which discourages many people from flying, causing them to die on the highways), use of your bathroom, texting, autoerotic asphyxia, alcohol and tobacco, weather, suicide, hospital infections and doctor errors and stress. One more thing: What is the risk of an American dying in a terrorist attack? Ronald Bailey of Reason suggests a very liberal estimate (an estimate assuming death to be more likely) would be 1 in 1.7 million, and he offers these additional statistics:
Taking these figures into account, a rough calculation suggests that in the last five years, your chances of being killed by a terrorist are about one in 20 million. This compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.
This same article indicates that the U.S. spends $400 million dollars per life saved in antiterrorism security measures (cost$1 Trillion since 2001), but this number doesn’t include military expenses by the United States. It's also important to keep in mind that the U.S. spends more on maintaining a military than the rest of the world combined. Perhaps if Americans weren't so afflicted with innumeracy, we could accept the true (miniscule) risk of dying from a terrorist act, and focus on preventing much more likely forms of death. Perhaps we could spend a significant chunk of that "anti-terrorism" money to combat innumeracy.

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Lawrence Tribe offers a promising new amendment to the U.S. Constitution

At Slate, Lawrence Tribe has offered a new innovative approach to amending the U.S. Constitution with regard to election reform. Tribe's proposed amendment is especially valuable, because it doesn't obsess over neutralizing Citizens United and it doesn't simplistically demonize corporations (to the exclusion of other people and organizations that warp the election -- especially super-rich individuals and shell organization that hide the identities of the donors). Tribe takes serious aim at expenditures, rather than focusing only on contributions. Here is the text of Tribe's proposed amendment:

Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to forbid Congress or the states from imposing content-neutral limitations on private campaign contributions or independent political campaign expenditures. Nor shall this Constitution prevent Congress or the states from enacting systems of public campaign financing, including those designed to restrict the influence of private wealth by offsetting campaign spending or independent expenditures with increased public funding.
Tribe proposed language focuses on a critically important point. The vast pools of unregulated money flowing into the system don't merely distort the natural outcomes of elections; they also distort access to politicians between elections:
Expenditures to support or oppose political candidates, however nominally independent—and lately, the purported independence of super PACs has become a national joke—in practice afforded wealthy people and corporations grossly disproportionate access to holders of public office.
Therefore, anyone worrying only about the outcome of elections is missing much of the story. Tribe also argues that proposed amendments declaring that money is not speech miss the mark:

I am not prepared to abandon all First Amendment scrutiny of regulations imposed on financial backing of political expression. What’s crucial is that regulations treat content neutrally, regardless of whether they address speech itself or the funding of speech, and regardless of the speakers at which they aim.

Additionally, as I reported here, the United States Supreme Court has, in Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, prohibited states from leveling the tilted playing field with public funding. Tribe's proposed amendment also addresses this huge problem. It's not likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse Citizen's United, not when Justice Anthony Kennedy "infamously claimed in Citizens United that 'independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.'" Tribe points out the lunacy of this belief, recognizing that big money buys special access. He urges that it is time for a new groundswell of united citizens to demand "commitment to equality of political influence."

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Who is buying the upcoming election for President?

Bill Moyers reports:

And that’s how the wealthy one percent does its dirty business. They are, by the way, as we were reminded by CNN’s Charles Riley in his report, “Can 46 Rich Dudes Buy an Election?” almost all men, mostly white, “and so far, the vast majority of their contributions have been made to conservative groups.” They want to own this election.

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