While I will always believe that the legacy of the Bush Administration has truly destroyed American democracy through their addition of far right-wing Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito. Moreover, their right-wing jilted Citizens' United decision has allowed -- and will continue to allow -- far more Republicans to have gained offices in November's past election than should have gained office.

Notwithstanding, it continues to "boggle my mind" how the average American continues to be blind to the Republican Party's consistent neglect and contempt of their needs on the Congress floor in exchange for always voting in favor of the wealthy. This was evident this past summer when ever Republican senator voted against extending unemployment benefits for the hard-working American who lost their job(Olympia Snow may have been the lone exception).

Yes, I would have loved to see tax breaks die for the wealthiest Americans, but I realize the Republican Party ALWAYS chooses party over country, and it may have not been possible.

What would have been really, really nice during Obama's first year in office when he had both Senate (non-filibuster) and House majorities was for him to have brought back the Fairness Doctrine for media. He could have shut-up those big mouths at Fox News and AM radio for good. I really don't know why he didn't do it.

Yves Smith who runs the Naked Capitalism blog and Rob Parenteau who is editor of The Richebächer Letter and the head of the financial advisory firm MacroStrategy Edge have an op-ed in the New York Times that points to one of the significant developments in the global economy over the past twenty years, a switch in the behaviour of corporations which are eschewing investment in productive assets in favour of financial ones as well as passing on a greater share of profits to corporate executives and shareholders. This switch in corporate behaviour has significant implications for the global economy.

Over the past decade and a half, corporations have been saving more and investing less in their own businesses. A 2005 report from JPMorgan Research noted with concern that, since 2002, American corporations on average ran a net financial surplus of 1.7 percent of the gross domestic product — a drastic change from the previous 40 years, when they had maintained an average deficit of 1.2 percent of G.D.P. More recent studies have indicated that companies in Europe, Japan and China are also running unprecedented surpluses.

The reason for all this saving in the United States is that public companies have become obsessed with quarterly earnings. To show short-term profits, they avoid investing in future growth. To develop new products, buy new equipment or expand geographically, an enterprise has to spend money — on marketing research, product design, prototype development, legal expenses associated with patents, lining up contractors and so on.

Rather than incur such expenses, companies increasingly prefer to pay their executives exorbitant bonuses, or issue special dividends to shareholders, or engage in purely financial speculation. But this means they also short-circuit a major driver of economic growth.

Their op-ed references a 2005 report by Jan Loeys and David Mackie of JP Morgan entitled Corporates Are Driving the Global Savings Glut which found that rise in the corporate savings rate has truly been a global phenomenon cutting across all regions and including both financial and non-financial corporates. They also found that relative to the past, the financial sector has played "an unprecedented role in boosting corporate saving, as benefited from record low funding rates, and the impact that this had on interest sensitive sectors."

While we normally think of savings as a net positive, that's not the case here. What we are seeing a pilfering of corporate assets primarily for the benefit of their executives. Rather than invest in productive capacity, profits are being redistributed internally to upper echelon management and shareholders in part because taxes on retained earnings, a policy switch that dates to the Reagan era, are too low. Indeed, Smith and Parenteau find that policymakers need to create incentives for corporations to reinvest their profits in business operations. They suggest two approaches: one way to do this would be to impose an aggressive tax on retained earnings that are not reinvested within two years. Another approach would be a tax on the turnover of corporate financial investments that would raise the cost of speculating with profits, rather than putting them into the business.

Wow, what a disgusting sham ABC just tried to pass off as a debate.  Taking cues from FOX, they hit him with everything but the kitchen sink.

I was so pissed that I logged on to Obama's website and gave him my very first political donation of the election cycle: $10.  It's not a lot of cash, but multiplied by a thousand or ten thousand and you've got a tidy little sum.

So, if you are feeling angry at the corporate media's attempt to influence our government, then hop on over to Obama's campaign and drop a Hamilton on him.  

Here is the link: https://donate.barackobama.com/page/cont ribute/main?source=homedropdown

There's more...

It has been clear for some time now that the corporate media is actively excluding John Edwards from its coverage of the 2008 race.

After Iowa, there was every reason for the corporate media to have started including John Edwards in its narrative. After all, even though Edwards had been third place since the summer, trailing Hillary by double-digits in several polls, he erased that gap completely, and he did so on a relative shoestring budget. As BruinKid has shown, Hillary and Obama each spent twice as much per vote as Edwards.

But instead of paying more intention to Edwards, since Iowa the corporate media is paying less attention. The corporate media blackout of John Edwards continues, and it's getting worse.

There's more...

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation being considered by the House and the Senate are deceptive at best.

The frame "comprehensive reform" suggests that federal immigration laws are broken and need a top-down overhaul to make them work.

However, the laws are not broken; rather, they are being broken by illegal employers and illegal foreign workers, because the federal government has simply failed to enforce them until recently.

There's more...