dark money, part 1

ever wonder who or what is driving everything that's going wrong with our country?

the following is a list of dark money organizations and the groups that fund them.

do all of the funders only support bad causes? no. is this all of them? not even close. but it's somewhere to start.

3m co.

60 plus association

actwireless

aetna inc

agc construction advocacy fund

alliance for a free society

alliance for quality nursing home care

america votes

american action network

american bridge 21st century

american electric power company, inc.

american encore

american energy alliance

american federation of state, county, and municipal employees (afscme)

american future fund

american health care association

american legislative exchange council

american petroleum institute

americans for job security

americans for prosperity

americans for tax reform

anthem, inc.

arizona free enterprise club

association of american railroads

atlantic advicay fund

berger action fund

boeing co. pac

brenda potterfield

charles schwab

chevron corp.

citizens for a digital future

conservative solutions project

consumer information council

cornerstone policy research action (cpr action)

crossroads gps

crossroads grassroots policy strategies (crossroads gps)

doris fisher

dow chemical co.

edison electric institute

education freedom alliance

eli broad

ending spending

environmental defense action fund

exelon corp.

fair share

free enterprise america

freedom partners chamber of commerce

fuels america

fwd.us

green tech action fund

heartland institute

intel corp.

international association of firefighters

involve america

john fisher

judicial crisis network

kentucky opportunity coalition

larry potterfield

leage of conservation voters education fund

main street advocacy fund

majority forward

merck & co., inc.

metlife, inc.

microsoft corp.

midway usa

mobile consumers for choice and competition

motion picture association of america (mpaa)

national rifle association (nra)

natural resources defense council (nrdc) action fund

ncta (the internet and television association)

neo philanthropy action fund

next century fund

nextgen climate action

online consumers network

open society policy center

partnership for quality home healthcare

partnership project

partnership project action fund

peoples alliance for leadership

pepsico, inc.

pharmaceutical research and manufacturers of america

pierce bullet seal target systems

planned parenthood action fund

planned parenthood federation of america

policy and taxation group

priorities usa

prodential fnancial, inc.

property casualty insurers of america

qualcomm inc.

republican jewish coalition

retail industry leaders association

reynolds american inc.

robert fisher

rockefeller family fund

rockefeller philanthropy advisors

seiu pennsylvania state council

sixteen thirty fund

smith & wesson corp.

southern company

sturm, ruger & co., inc.

susan thompson buffet foundation

tc4 trust

texas public policy foundation

the 45 committee

the advocacy fund

the annual fund

the heritage foundation

the state policy network

tides foundation

union pacific corp.

vote alabama

wellspring committee

william fisher

the morning after

i'm waiting to hear the sanders supporters' reactions - much like the obama supporters when they learned that their candidate could not change the world single-handedly. it must be like waking up after you've slept with someone at a party... sweet talk and too much to drink, followed by that long, angry and disappointed walk home.

it's not that the candidate is not admirable; they are always better than what we end up with. but expecting a different outcome when the other side writes the rules is folly, and naive. of course they win - they own the game.

the winning move is not to play. don't accept the lesser of any number of evils; evil is not something that should be judged by degree. do you say that the monster who eats just 1 child is better than the one that eats 10?

they are a made-up thing, like money and priests. if we all stop believing in them, they will go away.

coincidence or crime?

update: each senator that voted for the pipeline received us$250,000 for doing so.

republicans' pants on fire

politifact, a pulitzer prize-winning political fact-checking organization, has found that republicans lie more than democrats. and the gap is widening.

gay taxes

where rich americans hide their money

a senate probe has accused swiss bank creditsuisse of helping 22,000 rich americans hide more than us$12 billion to avoid paying taxes on it, going back to at least 2001, and has also accused the justice department of being lax about going after the perpetrators.

creditsuisse delivered bank statements to their wealthy customers hidden in magazines, and told them to burn the statements so that there would be no paper trail. the bank even has a special elevator at its offices for these 'special clients to use, that has no buttons and is run by remote control (cool - spy gear!).

senators levin and mccain are leading the charge to reveal the names of the u.s. customers and prosecute them, which may explain why the far right is going after both of them so rabidly (via front groups, of course).

the bank is pushing back.

who owns congress?

when a member of congress votes for or against something, it's because they were paid to. the only real questions are how much and by whom. luckily for all of us, maplight has that info.

are you living paycheck to paycheck?

you're not alone. 3 out of 4 americans are in the same boat. so how do you climb out of that sinking boat? there are 4 simple steps, and you can do it without spending a dime or even much time:

1. vote out any senator that voted down a jobs bill that would have helped veterans. there is just no excuse for that.

2. tell your own senator(s) that you want a jobs bill passed before they do anything else, and before justin bieber gets thrown in jail again (the clock is really ticking).

3. tell members of the house that you want a raise in the minimum wage, because that will help the economy grow, which will lift all boats - including yours.

4. vote out anyone that doesn't do those two things.

see? simple. all you have to do is act, and i promise that you'll feel better than you do right now.

85 people own half the world

conservatives in the u.s. constantly point to the 99% movement and say that they are trying to start a class war. but when the 85 wealthiest people literally own as much as the 3.5 billion poorest people (yes, that's billion with a 'b'), it's clear that the war is already well under way. the real question is, how do you turn it around so that the deck isn't stacked against those who don't have access to drafting their own legislation, health care, lawyers, members of the supreme court, members of congress, the media, and on and on?

especially when you have 1 percenters like this fellow who think it's just great?

some suggestions:
1. update the tax code for individuals and corporations to better reflect their ability to pay.
2. don't let companies sell products in the u.s. if they don't pay taxes here for those sales.
3. don't let companies bid for government contracts if they don't pay taxes for income earned as a result of that work.
4. bar all lobbyists from making contributions to members of congress, judges on the supreme court, or any regulatory agency members, including meals, trips, fund-raisers, etc., directly or through pacs or tax-exempt fronts.
5. do not allow any member of congress to take a job with any company that they regulated while in congress for a period of at least 15 years.
6. evenly distribute public education funds across the country, including locally collected taxes.
7. institute a national curriculum and national testing for all public schools.
8. fire any teachers whose students do not meet minimum standards.
9. increase individual teacher pay based on student outcomes.
10. set national standards for executive pay based on a company's size and earnings.
11. make every media outlet and journalist cite their sources for every story. especially television personalities.
12. raise the minimum wage. the wealthiest people on the planet complaining about making sure that their employees can eat is monstrous.

it's not everything, but it's a start. what would you change?

lazy food stamp recipients?

the gop delights in casting food stamp recipients as lazy, self-entitled, and stay on welfare for life. this video reveals that it's all bunk. (example: the average person on food stamps is on them for 1 year or less, and more than 50% of us will be on some form of 'entitlement' at some point in our lives.)

10 companies that make billions from the u.s. government

the headline tells the story; it's always about the money. more after the jump.

way holier than thou

and here we thought scientologists were bad. now we find out there's a secret religious organization called the family, with cell members in the pentagon, congress, and justice department that believes that its members - simply because they are in positions of power - are above the law.

hmm. smacks of tricky dickless, doesn't it? in point of fact, most of the cult's members are republicans - sc governor mark sanford, nv senator john ensign, ia senator charles grassley, charles colson (of watergate infamy), and on and on.

here's a quote from the group's religious leader, doug coe: 'the family functions invisibly like the mafia. the more you can make your organization invisible, the more influence it will have'.

here's a kicker that shows just how much influence the cult already has in dc: they host the national prayer breakfast, and the group's leader is chummy with hilary clinton.

bears watching. closely. constantly. because in the u.s., no one is above the rule of law.

tricky dickless, please shut up

dick cheney just doesn't seem to get the message that almost all of us loathe him, find him evil & creepy, reject his ideology, and wish he would go riding off into the sunset post-haste. that includes members of his own party, who realize that his continued criticism of an extremely popular president is winning them zero converts.

so how about it, neo-cons: can't one of you put a cork in this guy?

untested medical devices: is your mom at risk?

despite the fact that congress ordered the fda to clean up this mess, the fda approved 228 medical devices without a single full-scale review between 2003 - 2007.

why? who was presi... oh. yeah. duh.

of course, they're probably low-risk items like bandages and tongue depre... what's that? they include metal hip joints, external defibrillators, and electrodes for pacemakers?

oh.

so the real issue seems to be which companies made these items, and who in the bush regime they paid to ignore congress's mandate. anyone got the skinny on either or both?

musings on democrat & republican presidents

in our lifetime, we've seen several presidents. want to know what we remember about each?

dubya (r): the war, of course. and the fact that he appointed 99 people to regulate industries that they used to be lobbyists for. wonder how the economy crashed? consider this a big clue.

clinton (d): brought back domestic spying, which we thought we shed back in the 70's. extremely intelligent but - like kennedy - he couldn't keep it zipped.

bush (r): read his lips - no new taxes. the wimpiest pitch in history, and a wife that looked more like his mother (and acted like it, too).

reagan (r): iran contra. no amrs for hostages (while we were looking, anyway). the most indictments of presidential appointees in history. greed is good. what you feel trickling down is the wealthiest 3% pissing on you.

carter (d): a good man, but a terrible president. killer bunny. a lusting heart.

ford (r): a tripping, flavorless cypher with a good golf game. lost any hope of (re?)election by pardoning tricky dick.

nixon (r): how can you tell when nixon is lying? his lips are moving. but tricky dick established relations with china. (the fact that they now own a sizable chunk of this country is not his fault, however - its ours.)

johnson (d): a yes man from the word go. the question is, what did he really say yes to?

kennedy (d): a great president for everyone but the rich, the military, and the mafia. and a player of the first rank.

barack the magic negro

if we ever needed proof that the republican party still mollycoddles outright racists, chip saltsman has provided it (in spades, if you'll pardon the terribly inappropriate pun).

the funniest and saddest thing: he still doesn't think he did anything wrong.

factory farms get to pollute, period

you've got to wonder how much the corporations behind our factory farms paid for this particular pair of get-out-of-jail free cards: first, they're now allowed to dump their waste into waterways without restriction, and second, they no longer have to report release of hazardous emissions into the air.

factory farms account for slightly more than 6% of current u.s. greenhouse gases, which may be a big part of why the white house fought so long and hard to deny the facts regarding greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.

kinda makes you wonder why we even have an epa, doesn't it? ah well - maybe the next talking head in the white house will do better for us. he could hardly do worse. in the meantime, here's a citizen's guide to confronting factory farms. (merry christmas.)

fcc fire sale continues

as the administration's fire sale on everything of value continues, fcc chairman kevin martin tries one more time to rig the auction of wireless spectrum to vc john doerr, cheating the treasury out of billions at a time when the old dear desperately needs the cash.

remind us: what do we do with horse thieves again?

turd blossom speaks

dubya may be trotting into the sunset under a rain of footwear, but other dangerous neocon loonies continue to spew poison into the heart of america. chief toad: karl rove.

hear him explain why we shouldn't know what kinds of torture we're committing on illegal prisoners of war (oops - we mean 'enemy combatants')! see him show us how obama only won the election because he had more money (now there's a spectacular case of denial, likely the same one that enables turd blossom* to look himself in the mirror each morning)! thrill to his prediction that our new president won't do much differently in iraq!

(heck, if we give him enough money and sacrificed a cheerleader every now and again, we could probably get him to bite the heads off chickens, too.)

* we didn't make this one up - this is actually dubya's pet name for rove.

republicans officially frothing-at-the-mouth crazy-desparate

this image isn't ours. it actually appeared on an official gop website. not only that - the gop group that posted the image also said that senator obama is supported by hamas.

what kind of shithouse rat crazy would throw up this kind of crap? who could possibly be this convinced that their own candidate has no chance of winning as to resort to pandering, racist, inflammatory nonsense? who could possibly sink this low?

sacramento county republican chairman craig macglashan. following some push from the media and the gop central leadership, craig had this to say: "i'm aware of the content. some people find it offensive, others do not. i cannot comment on how people interpret things."

he's right, of course. so why not do what he really wants to do, and put that burning cross right on his front lawn for all of us to interpret as we please? hell, we'll chip in for the wood - anything to help support a fella's right to free speech.