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Citizens United, the misbegotten Supreme Court case granting corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections, has entered its terrible twos.
Already, we've seen the first results of this Wild West approach to money in politics and it's not pretty. Everyone is using the biggest gun they can buy now that the Supreme Court shot the sheriff. And, as many of the guns are unregistered, anonymous character assassination abounds. The scandal of money in politics today is not what little remains illegal, but what is done legally.
“Every week I would work different hours, and budgeting to make rent and cover my expenses became difficult because I didn’t know how much I would earn each month,” explains Janet, a former Tommy Hilfiger salesperson.
we have to constantly ask a fundamental question: what is our economy for? What is the purpose of the game and therefore, what principles should guide the rules we set?
It’s not often that good news comes out of Washington. Today is an exception: the Obama Administration is expected to deny TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sand pipeline application.
Few professions have been spared from the corrupting effects of today's intense focus on profits and the bottom line within corporate America. The medical profession has been one of the most notable casualties of this push, as top drugmakers have showered doctors with ethically questionable or illegal financial incentives to prescribe certain drugs.
The Corporate Reform Coalition – made up of institutional investors managing a combined total of $800 billion in assets, as well as public officials, legal scholars, good government groups and CEOs – will hold a telephone press conference to discuss a petition calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue rules on corporate political spending.
The only thing that separates progressives and conservatives when it comes to taxes is more or less a matter of percentages: what is the best tax rate for each income bracket? Or, how much income tax should corporations pay? In fact, these debates are all variations on the same theme -- taxing wealth and income. A real distinction would start to arise if we started talking about changing what we tax.