' Ace Finance & Markets News '

Monday, 3 September 2012

Eric T. Schneiderman: Honoring Labor Day By Rooting Out Wage Theft

Eric T. Schneiderman: Honoring Labor Day By Rooting Out Wage Theft:
Imagine a restaurant dishwasher who is robbed on payday while riding the bus home. A pickpocket steals all of his wages, leaving him with nothing to show for a week of hard work. If the thief were caught, he or she would be arrested and would surely face criminal charges.

Now imagine that same dishwasher, also deprived of his week of wages, except there is a different culprit: his boss. After six long days in a hot restaurant kitchen the boss refuses to pay him because "business is bad" or this was a "try-out week" or because two dishes broke, or for no apparent reason at all. If this culprit were caught, typically he would face only civil charges. He would have to pay the wages owed, and maybe a small penalty as well.

Because civil penalties for wage theft are paltry, employers often treat them as simply a cost of doing business. A 2010 study by the National Employment Law Project found that 21 percent of surveyed low-wage workers in New York City were paid less than the lawful minimum wage, and 77 percent of those who worked over 40 hours per week did not receive legally required overtime pay.

Lawmakers and prosecutors must reverse this trend by treating wage theft as what it is -- theft, and pursuing criminal charges accordingly.

Criminal convictions mean more accountability. And, these employers will have to note the conviction on applications for government aid and licensing forms. Simply put, criminal penalties are a serious deterrent to wage theft; small fines are not.

Some states do treat wage theft as a serious offense. In New York, failure to pay proper wages is a misdemeanor; we also criminalize retaliation against employees for reporting violations. Other states have followed New York's lead. In May of last year, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law the "Wage Theft Bill," which strengthened the state's theft of services statute in relation to nonpayment of wages. It's a felony in Texas to steal services worth more than $1500.

Even where there are no laws directly criminalizing wage theft, prosecutors can use other statutes to target unscrupulous employers, because these firms often violate a host of laws. After all, how likely is it that a construction company using underpaid day labor will be diligent about paying taxes or following building codes? Or that a food processing company with workplace safety and health violations will be meticulous about food safety for the public?

Lawless employers harm not only workers; they endanger the public, deprive schools, parks, and police of needed funds, and undermine honest employers who can't compete with bottom feeders.

Just this year, my office has arrested employers in a range of industries: a car wash operator, the founder of a tortilla factory, a restaurant owner, a construction firm performing public work. Many have pled guilty to a range of charges including false filings, theft of services, falsification of business records, and schemes to defraud. Some of them will be going to jail.

To be sure, not all labor law violations should be treated as criminal cases. Some infractions are inadvertent or minor. But criminal charges are appropriate for employers who stiff their workers altogether or who pay far below the minimum wage; for those who file false tax documents or otherwise commit fraud; for repeat violators who refuse to follow the law, or wrongdoers who obstruct justice by firing employees who testify about violations.

In this time of deep political divisions, there should be nothing controversial about the notion that working people who do their jobs should be paid for their work.

An employer who knowingly violates labor laws is not an upstanding businessman saving a few bucks. In the end, he is hardly any different from the pickpocket, and the law should treat him as such.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

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Mary Pritchard: Money Fears - How to fight financial stress

Mary Pritchard: Money Fear: 12 Ways To Fight Financial Stress:
In the past couple of weeks, I've been blogging on how to cope with stress. Why? Because let's face it, we are one stressed out bunch of people. The scary fact is that, in the American Psychological Association's study "Stress in America," the majority of American adults surveyed reported that their stress had increased during the past five years. And respondents fully realized that their stress levels were taking a toll on their health. In fact, 88 percent of women and 78 percent of men surveyed reported that their stress level had a strong or very strong impact on their physical health.

When asked, "Which of the following, if any, have you experienced in the last month as a result of stress?" Americans responded:

• Irritability or anger (42 percent)

• Fatigue (37 percent)

• Lack of interest, motivation or energy (35 percent)

• Headaches (32 percent)

• Upset stomachs (24 percent)

• Change in appetite (17 percent)

• Change in sex drive (11 percent)

This begs the question: What are we so stressed out about? You name it, it was probably on the list, but the top ten reported stressors among American adults in 2011 were:

• Money (75 percent)

• Work (70 percent)

• The economy (67 percent)

• Relationships (58 percent)

• Family responsibilities (57 percent)

• Family health problems (53 percent)

• Personal health concerns (53 percent)

• Job stability (49 percent)

• Housing costs (49 percent)

• Personal safety (32 percent)

Notice any common themes here? Financial issues (money, housing costs)? Check. Work issues (could be work-related stress and/or job stability concerns and/or money-related issues)? Check. Insecurity about the economy, which relates to both money and work? Check. Relationship issues? Check. Health issues that often connect to relationship or work issues? Check.

But since the number-one reported issue is money, let's start there. Three-quarters of adult Americans are worried about money, and I'm guessing they're not worried about having too much.

If you find yourself among that 75 percent, what should you do? First, identify exactly what you are stressing out about. According to personal finance expert and "Money Girl" podcaster Laura Adams, there are 4 primary reasons people freak out about money:

1) They consistently spend more than they make, living under the threat of ever-present bill collectors.

2) They spend exactly what they make, living paycheck-to-paycheck.

3) They have a huge amount of debt (e.g., student loans) and are finding it hard to make any progress on reducing it.

4) They don't understand how to manage their finances and feel lost or overwhelmed about how to do so.

Getting back to my last blog, as a stressor, money concerns may be both controllable and uncontrollable at the same time. Thus, you should take a twofold approach when coping with them:

Problem-Focused Approaches

Regardless of why you got into debt in the first place, there are a number of things you can do to make your debt more manageable:

1. Seek the help of a professional. You're probably thinking, "If I don't have any money, how can I afford to pay a professional?" Rest assured, a lot of professionals offer free consultations or reduced/sliding rates for their services. Just type "debt services" or "debt consolidation" into Google and see what comes up. Just make sure the company seems reputable.

2. Plan. Make concrete, yet achievable, goals for yourself to get out of debt. If you don't know where to start, talk to a financially savvy friend or financial advisor.

3. Create a budget. The first step is to figure out what you actually spend your money on over the course of a week. You might be surprised at what you can cut out. For example, do you really need to eat out every day, or can you save money by taking your lunch to work? Do you really need premium cable or satellite TV? If you've never done a budget before, there are a number of software programs and apps available for low or no cost to get you started. If you need more ideas, check out these debt-reduction tips.

4. Clip coupons and stock up on bulk and sale items. It may seem like a simple strategy, but there are countless ways to save significantly on your weekly grocery bill. Sure, you may have to try a different brand, but every penny counts when it comes to savings and debt reduction. Plus, you might even find that you like the new brand better.

5. Learn how to cook. Americans spend nearly $400 billion a year on eating out. It's usually much cheaper to buy and cook your own meals. Don't know where to start? Go to the library and check out a cookbook or go to YouTube and watch cooking demos. Culinary adventures await!

6. Shop at secondhand stores. You can usually find good quality, slightly worn (and sometimes even brand new) clothes at Goodwill, the Salvation Army and other secondhand or consignment stores. Since Americans spend nearly $200 billion a year on apparel (not including jewelry), buying used clothes can add up to significant savings.

7. Go green. Find ways you can save on household expenses.

8. Leave your credit cards at home and pay in cash. It's much easier to avoid temptation and racking up even more debt if you leave the credit cards at home. "Don't spend what you don't have" should be your motto for a while.

Emotion-Focused Approaches

1. Try hypnosis. Don't laugh or roll your eyes at me. There's actually some evidence that hypnosis is a valid way to cope with stress -- including financial stress.

2. Vent. Talk to your friends, family, neighbors, pastor, counselor, dog -- just get this off of your chest. Who knows? Whoever you talk to might actually have some helpful suggestions.

3. Take care of yourself. Now is not the time to neglect your physical and mental health. Maybe for financial reasons, you need to cut out that biweekly yoga or tae kwon do class for a little while, but that doesn't mean you can't practice at home on your own.

4. Try to see the glass as half-full instead of half-empty. Don't make your situation out to be worse than it is. This can lead to the "what-the-hell effect," causing you to spend more than you might have otherwise.

Hopefully you're feeling a little less afraid of your financial situation right now. Leave me a comment and let me know what works and what doesn't work for you. Please also leave some ideas of things that have worked well for you in the past. If we put our heads together, we should be able to get out of debt, one penny at a time.

Stayed tuned for next week's installment on coping with work stress.

For more by Mary Pritchard, click here.

For more on becoming fearless, click here.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Please tweet at #AceDebtNews or email your News & Views to our Ace News Desk

Merkel Calls For Solidarity With Euro Nations

Its too little too late for put the Euro Zone back on course! As German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday stresses solidarity with other euro nations while her finance minister expressed scepticism about the European Central Bank’s ability to combat the regional debt crisis, media reports said only a short while ago!

The posts l provide are my views of good recipes and also are shared from a number of contacts, news and blogging services. They are not always tried and tested by me unless it states that l have cooked any myself,whereby it will be noted on the post accordingly.

Please tweet at #AceFinanceNews or email News & Views

Thank you, Ian [Editor]

Saturday, 1 September 2012

Georgia's ethics commission: A sad tale of dysfunctional state government

Perhaps no state illustrates the political perils of ethics enforcement better than Georgia, where the ethics commission has been the nexus of more infighting, vitriol and litigation than a Univision novella.
Keeping track of all the resignations, firings, accusations and countercharges there has challenged even the most knowledgeable observers of Peach State politics. Three executive directors have resigned or been fired since 2006. Two other employees collected $405,000 in damages for allegedly wrongful termination. Lawmakers stripped the agency of 40 percent of its funding, its power to make new rules, even its name.
Today, as public pressure builds for ethics reform in Georgia, the agency faces a host of other challenges:

Two former top-ranking officials allege the commission fired them for investigating suspected campaign abuses by Gov. Nathan Deal.
Thousands of candidate disclosures swamp the agency’s online filing system, paralyzing it at peak periods for many users.
Violators continue to avoid stiffer penalties because the commission has not devoted the resources to formally notifying them.
Thin staffing keeps the staff from reviewing even 10 percent of the tens of thousands of filings it receives each year.

Much of this has come to pass, critics say, because the commission answers to the very politicians it’s supposed to regulate and investigate. Legislative leaders set its budget, control its powers and, along with the governor, decide who its five members will be.
In the view of many of the body’s critics, that system has failed. An independent commission, says former commission chief Teddy Lee, is essential.
“It’s got to be set up in a way that it can’t be manipulated,” says Lee, “by people who have no desire to be overseen or second-guessed.”

Pinching pennies

Tight funding has hobbled the commission as far back as anyone can recall.
The agency, created in 1974 to enforce Georgia’s new campaign finance law, gradually assumed lobbyist oversight and other responsibilities as well. Sometimes lawmakers ponied up more money to help carry out the new duties, but ethics advocates say it was rarely enough.
When Lee took over in 1990, he had just two employees, two typewriters and a photocopier so old that the manufacturer wouldn’t even offer a service contract.
The commission got a modest budget bump with passage of the 1992 Ethics in Government Act, Lee said. The law imposed Georgia’s first limits on campaign contributions in local races and forced lobbyists to register with the state and disclose their frequently lavish gifts to government officials.
Still, Lee said, he and an assistant had to juggle their time just to give ethics complaints a basic once-over. Budget-writers, he said, refused to add money to hire even one full-time investigator.
“If you ever wanted to raise eyebrows on a legislative committee, you asked for an investigator position,” Lee said. “That was a non-starter.”
Lee avoided possible reprisals for sensitive cases over the years even as he watched peers in other states “walk the plank” in similar circumstances. “Sometimes all they’ve got to do is get the drop on you and it’s over,” he said.
After the 2002 election, it appeared Lee’s luck might have run out. Gov.-elect Sonny Perdue, the first Republican to win the office since Reconstruction, asked Lee and other department heads to resign to make room for his own leadership team.
Lee refused, keeping his job after the commission’s chairman rebuffed Perdue in a strongly-worded letter. Georgians’ trust in the agency’s integrity, Lee said, depended on its independence from the political process.
But over the years, politics has cast an increasingly large shadow over the panel’s composition. The governor, initially allowed one appointment, won the power to name a second in 1975 and a three-member majority a decade later. In 2005, the Senate’s new Republican majority took a fourth appointment away from the lieutenant governor, a Democrat. (The speaker of the House selects the fifth member.)
Political pressures continued to bubble up, Lee said. When lawmakers’ personal financial disclosures were first posted online, the commission’s chairman urged him to take them down. “He said, ‘I’ve gotten two calls from two legislators from different parties, and they are really upset,’” Lee recalled. The commission, at its next meeting, agreed unanimously to keep the disclosures online.
By January 2006, though, Lee’s time had come. Two commissioners asked him to step down. They “wanted me to resign and say it was my idea, that I wanted to pursue other opportunities,” Lee said.
Lee refused, and the commission fired him a day later, as members said they needed a “fresh approach.” Steve Farrow, the commission chair at the time, declined to comment in a recent telephone interview.
“If you are doing your job with a state ethics commission, there are people who sometimes have the power to get you back,” Lee said recently. “They are people who want what they want and are used to always trying to get it.”
Commissioners denied widespread speculation that they were doing the bidding of Perdue, who’d recently paid $20,000 in fines and restitution for accepting excess campaign contributions. All three of the governor’s appointees voted to dump Lee, who had overseen the Perdue investigation.
Political considerations factored into Lee’s firing, though, even if the governor’s influence did not, a former commission member said recently.
After a decade and a half of ethics cases against state lawmakers, Lee had “no rapport at all” with them on budgetary matters, said the former commissioner, who asked not to be identified. “Certainly, we have to have some relationships with legislators.”
The friction, he acknowledged, may have been inevitable. “There’s always this dynamic when you have influential legislators who may or may not be happy with what you’re doing,” he said.

Dashed hopes

Despite supporters’ concern about Lee’s ouster, 2006 opened with the promise of being a banner year for ethics enforcement in Georgia.
A new law expanded lobbyist oversight and barred campaign fundraising while legislators were in session. Fines were increased and financial disclosure requirements tightened.
To help with enforcement, lawmakers beefed up the commission’s budget by 68 percent. Flush with funding for the first time, the agency upgraded its online presence to make all candidates’ and lobbyists’ disclosures accessible with a single mouse-click.
Rick Thompson, Lee’s replacement, also created an investigative unit — hiring six veteran police officers who were expecting to use arrest powers the commission had never before employed.
They would be the first full-time investigators at the Ethics Commission, as well as the last. Lawyers and auditors later investigated cases along with other duties, until budget cuts did away with virtually all of those positions as well.
Thompson said he hoped investigators with law enforcement backgrounds could quickly close a backlog of hundreds of pending complaints. Instead, he said, cases bogged down as he sent their reports back over and over for revision. “They didn’t have any strong writing skills,” Thompson said.
The constant rewrites exasperated the investigators, who complained they were being held to unrealistic standards. “We write like cops. We don’t write like attorneys,” former investigator Robert Bentivegna said.
Some of the investigators believed the campaign finance laws were riddled with ambiguities. The rewrites, they said, soft-pedaled their findings and deleted their conclusions.
“In criminal law it’s black and white. You either did it or you didn’t,” investigator Phillip West later testified. “And this was convoluted.”
Within a few months, Thompson fired his new director of investigations, Bill Thompson (no relation), saying he missed deadlines and failed to follow direction. Bill Thompson responded with a whistleblower lawsuit, charging that the real reason for his dismissal was his insistence on pursuing sensitive cases.
In a sworn deposition, Bill Thompson said his former boss initially told him to pursue criminal cases that would send a message to politicians statewide.
“I want to scare the bejesus out of those guys under the Gold Dome,” Bill Thompson said Rick Thompson told him.
But Rick Thompson’s resolve soon wavered, Bill Thompson said, amid worries about the commission’s funding. “Rick … painted almost every politician as a powerful politician that could affect his budget,” he said.
Others blamed the Thompsons’ conflict on personalities more than politics. “Bill … tends to rub on people the wrong way because he wants to do so much and to bring things to light,” Bentivegna said recently.
Several investigators, in depositions in the whistleblower suit, cited potential criminal cases that were never prosecuted.The first case, they said, was to have been against a former legislator suspected of spending tens of thousands of campaign dollars on personal expenses.
“Every time we started to do it, they would pull back on the bridle and say, ‘No, we don’t want to do that,’” West testified in 2008.
Previously, an outside investigator had told commissioners she found no evidence that Rick Thompson manipulated cases for political reasons. The state’s lawyers, while denying wrongdoing, settled the whistleblower complaint in June 2008 for $125,000.
The settlement marked the end of the investigative unit. By then, its remaining members had grown disheartened and already left for other law enforcement jobs.
Bentivegna, now a suburban Atlanta police detective, laments the unit’s demise.
“I’m just a cop at heart,” he said. “I believe if you did something wrong, you should pay the price for it.”
Rick Thompson, for his part, disputes any notion that he showed political favoritism at the commission.
“I was aggressive with Democrats and Republicans both,” he said. “No one in their right mind could say, ‘Rick pulled punches,’ because I went after everybody.”
In depositions, though, some investigators said they believed the commission did indeed pull punches by dismissing solid cases or issuing weak penalties. “It was a joke,” West said.
Rick Thompson noted that Georgia law gives commission members that prerogative.
That, Bill Thompson said in 2007, was the core of the problem. “When you have a commission of five political appointees,” he said, “you’re going to have political decisions.”

An end to rule-making

That wasn’t the end of conflict for the commission. In 2009, the panel ran into another roadblock over new rules that could curtail politicians’ use of private aircraft provided by lobbyists and campaign supporters.
“There were an awful lot of free planes flying around,” former Senate Majority Leader Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, said recently. “There had been some abuses.”
After Johnson asked for clarity, the commission enacted rules in December 2008 on how to calculate the value of those flights. Previously, candidates could estimate as little as they wanted; some didn’t report them at all. The new rules, fashioned after federal election guidelines, set a market value for such flights based on the type of plane and the distance traveled.
But some legislators were annoyed by the regulations, which became the last the commission would write. In April 2009, House leaders pushed through a bill stripping the agency of the power to make any more rules unless the Legislature specifically allowed them.
House leaders also tried to slash the commission’s budget by two-thirds, but never said why. One key Senate budget-writer, though, offered his own assessment of the proposed budget cut.
“Unfortunately, it happens a lot,” longtime Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, said recently. “They’re called ‘grudge cuts.’”
The Senate negotiated the budget reduction down to 30 percent, which still forced layoffs, a 60-percent cutback in office space and an end to subscriptions, maintenance agreements and new office supplies.
Rick Thompson announced his resignation a few months later, in August 2009. Now a consultant primarily to Republican candidates, he says that “no one told me that I had to go.” At the time, though, associates said he complained that political pressures and his frustration over weak ethics penalties led to his departure.

Wheeling and Dealing

Stacey Kalberman, a lawyer transitioning from a career in insurance regulation, took over as executive director in April 2010 but fared no better than her predecessors. She is now embroiled in a dispute over what she regards as her forced departure in 2011.
The falling out revolves around a case Kalberman inherited involving Gov. Deal’s actions while still a congressman. In March 2010, a complainant alleged that Deal’s gubernatorial campaign had misspent money in several ways, including payment for legal fees to defend him in a congressional ethics probe. A half-dozen related complaints followed as Deal won the 2010 Republican primary and general election for governor.
When Deal’s attorneys ignored her request that summer for campaign documents, Kalberman said, she notified the commission and prepared subpoenas. But once Deal became governor and the draft subpoenas were ready for review, she said, commission Chairman Patrick Millsaps refused to sign them.
Millsaps says he doesn’t recall briefings on the Deal probe and denies being asked to sign subpoenas. “That’s something I would remember,” he said.
Millsaps, a Republican whom Deal had just reappointed, “seemed uneasy” when she briefed him about the Deal case, Kalberman later told the state inspector general’s office. Deputy director Sherry Streicker said she too met resistance from Commissioner Kevin Abernethy who, after a similar briefing, “turned white and said he didn’t want any part of this.”
Abernethy, now the commission’s chairman, declined to comment. He has previously denied Streicker’s account.
Millsaps and Kalberman agree that he emailed her in May 2011 with his concern that the commission might run out of money before the year ended.
“Before we jump into ANY grand campaign, I think we need to look at this more closely,” he wrote.
When the two met to discuss the matter in June, the chairman told her commissioners planned to cut her pay by 30 percent and eliminate Streicker’s position altogether.
Kalberman walked out of the meeting. While she insists she did not quit, Millsaps emailed her the next day to accept her resignation.
A few days later, Deal’s executive counsel called Kalberman to suggest another state job might be available — a gesture Kalberman later described as an effort to “keep me quiet.” Deal’s lawyer said he simply wanted to help identify other opportunities.
Cutbacks in the commission’s spending — enacted a week later — eliminated Streicker’s slot and trimmed the director’s pay, potentially saving $120,000 a year in salaries. Much of the projected savings evaporated, though, with the hiring of a staff attorney to perform many of Streicker’s duties and a contract attorney to draft advisory opinions. Streicker, who was still looking for work, said she applied but couldn’t even get a job interview.
Kalberman and Streicker have both filed suit, contending the budget crisis was fabricated to force them out and disrupt the Deal investigation.
Millsaps flatly denies that allegation. The Georgia inspector general’s office, which reports to Deal, conducted a preliminary inquiry and dismissed a charge last November that the governor orchestrated the terminations.
Millsaps contends political pressure on the commission is rare because the targets of ethics complaints fear repercussions if they try to intercede.
“Once they put you on the Ethics Commission, nobody wants to talk to you,” he said. “It really is more isolating than anything else.”

An uncertain future

Today, the commission’s funding has somewhat stabilized. Lawmakers added $200,000 to its $1 million budget for more staff and for computer upgrades designed to allow the online filing system to handle more traffic.
But the years of internal turmoil — combined with an increasing workload and a staff shrunk from 31 employees in 2006 to just 11 — have taken their toll.
The commission found violations in 78 cases over the course of 2008 and 2009 but just 28 in the two-and-a-half years since then, based on analysis of orders posted on the commission’s website. In that period, the average fine fell from more than $2,900 to less than $700.
The agency remains unable to meet one of its statutory mandates — checking all campaign disclosures to be sure they’re filled out properly. Budget-writers this year funded a second auditor, but the commission plans instead to hire support staff to help manage the increased workload. With one auditor, the commission expects to review fewer than one in 10 filings.
Lawmakers continue to resist calls to restore the panel’s rule-making authority — with one exception. Just hours before lawmakers adjourned for 2012, a proposal to let the commission waive late fees was inserted into an unrelated bill on fishing licenses.
A second provision would have allowed the agency to seal closed cases if no significant violations had been proven. That measure sailed through the Senate with no discussion and nearly passed the House until detractors questioned its intent. House Ethics Chairman Joe Wilkinson, who defended his proposal as a way to protect candidates from “frivolous” complaints, says he’ll try again next year as part of a larger proposal to restore full rule-making authority.
Several months after the legislative flap, in July, the commission closed the investigation into Deal’s campaign money that had ignited so much turmoil — dismissing two complaints and negotiating settlements in three others. The governor paid $3,350 in fees and acknowledged minor “technical defects,” a classification that could allow sealing of those files if Wilkinson’s proposal passes in 2013.
Ethics reform seems likely to be a major issue when legislators reconvene in January.
Advocacy groups made a proposed $100 cap on lobbyists’ gifts to lawmakers a signature issue in this year’s legislative races. In non-binding ballot questions, voters from both major parties overwhelmingly backed a gift cap in July.
House Speaker David Ralston upped the ante recently by proposing a ban on all lobbyist gifts. He’s also suggested giving the ethics commission more money and autonomy “so that they are truly independent.” No details have been released on how that might be accomplished.
Advocates such as Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, working with activists ranging from Common Cause to local Tea Parties, are putting together their own ethics agenda. That may well include more transparency for political action committees and broader revolving-door restrictions on ex-state officials who want to become lobbyists.
Even more ambitiously, some talk about applying sunshine laws to the Legislature for the first time.
Whether activists’ ideas will be considered remains an open question. In 2010, House leaders introduced a bill to rename the commission, hike fines, ramp up lobbyist oversight and require thousands of local candidates to file disclosures directly to the commission. A bipartisan coalition of legislators had already signed on to their own ethics reform bill but couldn’t get a hearing, nor could they amend the leadership’s bill, effectively shutting them out of the discussion.
Johnson, the former Senate majority leader, believes the time has come for Georgia to have an independent, well-funded enforcer of campaign finance laws. The trick, he says, will be choosing the enforcers and insuring their impartiality.
“Do you pick them out of the phone book?” he asked. “Do judges do it? Judges have been political appointments.
“Somebody always has a political agenda. …. You still have to figure out how to take the politics out of politics.”

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Daily Disclosure: NRA goes after Democrats in contested Senate races

Until recently, the National Rifle Association’s primary involvement in the 2012 election has been limited to renting booths at state fairs and circulating flyers and bumper stickers, plus the occasional low-budget TV or radio buy.
But thanks to the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, the powerful gun rights group has stepped up its game. A $420,000 ad buy last week followed by a $358,000 buy reported Tuesday shows the NRA is ready to invest in more than just convincing fair- and rodeo-goers to vote against President Barack Obama.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s new ads, released Monday, attack the records of Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who are both running for U.S. Senate — and Federal Election Commission filings indicate Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is the next target.
“Bill Nelson Needs to Go” notes the Florida senator’s approval of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said in a 2004 ruling that gun ownership is “not a fundamental right.”
“You can’t be a pro-gun senator when you back anti-gun judges,” the ad says.
“Stand for Freedom, Stand against Tim Kaine” says that Kaine received a grade of “F” from the NRA for making gun control part of the Democratic National Committee’s agenda when he was chairman.
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action is the lobbying arm of the NRA, according to its website. The institute was established in 1975 both to pursue the group’s legislative agenda and to educate the public.
The organization is a nonprofit and does not reveal its donors. However, the Center for Responsive Politics discovered that conservative nonprofit Crossroads GPS, founded by Republican operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, contributed $600,000.
Because Crossroads GPS is itself a nonprofit, the source of the donation is unknown. The Institute operates primarily on contributions, not membership dues, according to its brochure.
The group is not to be confused with the NRA Political Victory Fund, a traditional political action committee operated by the Institute. The PAC has been making the more modest campaign expenditures. Unlike the Institute, the Political Victory Fund is subject to contribution limits.
The maximum allowable contribution to the PAC is $5,000. The NRA’s PAC has taken in some $11.1 million in the 2012 election cycle and spent $5 million, according to FEC records.
In other outside spending news:

Americans for Prosperity, another conservative nonprofit, released its second ad in two weeks critical of Rep. Joe Donnelly, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Indiana. “Stop Spending Away Our Future,” released Tuesday, follows “Washington-Style Reform,” released last week. According to a press release, the pair of ads is running for two weeks at a cost of $700,000. Donnelly faces tea party candidate Richard Mourdock, who ousted longtime Sen. Richard Lugar in the state’s first competitive GOP primary in decades.
Americans for Prosperity also reported spending $2.5 million on Web, radio and TV placement for its anti- Obama ads “Tick Tock” (posted as “A One Term Proposition”) and “New Ideas,” which were released earlier this month.
A super PAC opposing Nebraska state Sen. Deb Fischer, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from the state, reported spending $215,000 on TV and radio advertising. End the Gridlock has raised a total $252,000, but only 10 percent of that has come from within Nebraska. The super PAC’s biggest contributor is billionaire film producer Sidney Kimmel, who gave $100,000.
The Susan B. Anthony List Inc., an anti-abortion nonprofit, reported spending $165,000 on TV ads opposing Obama. Tuesday the group released an ad critical of then-Illinois state Sen. Obama’s votes on “born alive” bills, the Daily Disclosure reported.
The Susan B. Anthony List Inc. also reported five independent expenditures for… parking tickets? According to the FEC reports, the group paid $100 for tickets related to its opposition of Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Rep. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Tim Kaine in Virginia, Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, U.S. House candidate Christie Vilsack in Iowa and the president.
The union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees released an online ad called “Wisconsin Workers Say ‘We’re More Than Just Paul Ryan and Scott Walker.’” The ad opposes Rep. Paul Ryan, the running mate of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
New super PACs: America Forever in Chatham, N.J.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

Transparency test: Grading the super PACs

Throughout the course of the 2012 election, the Consider the Source team will continue to write profiles about the major super PACs and nonprofits that are spending heavily on political advertising.
In addition to providing basic information about the origin of the organizations and their spending history, today we add a letter grade to each group, indicating how much they reveal about their donors.
Super PACs, which are required to report donors to the Federal Election Commission, generally receive good grades. But they may be marked down if major donations come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
Nonprofit outside spending organizations, which are not required to report their donors, receive a failing grade.
The grades are tabulated by the Consider the Source staff and are subjective. Any organization that would like to dispute its grade or provide a list of donors to the Center, please contact project director John Dunbar via email at jdunbar@publicintegrity.org.

Transparency Grading Scale

A – Excellent: All or nearly all donations of $200 or more are fully disclosed.
B – Good: All donations of $200 or more are disclosed but a small percentage may come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
C – Fair: Majority of donations of $200 or more are disclosed, but a substantial percentage may come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
D – Poor: Majority of donations of $200 or more are NOT disclosed or may come from shell corporations or nonprofits.
F – Fail: Donors are not disclosed.

Transparency Grade: A

Transparency Grade: B

Transparency Grade: C

No super PACs or nonprofit groups received this grade.

Transparency Grade: D

Transparency Grade: F

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.

GOP platform at odds with public on defense spending

In May, the Center for Public Integrity and the Stimson Center unveiled the results of a major poll on defense spending. Our poll found wide consensus among the public and across party lines that the defense budget could use some trimming — around three-quarters of those polled thought there should be cuts for air power, ground forces, and naval forces, and over eighty percent said there is “a lot of waste” in the defense budget. In fact, respondents preferred far deeper cuts than those suggested by either the Obama administration or the Republicans.
During the conventions, we decided to take a look at what the party platforms say, and how that measures up to public opinion. First up: the GOP and presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Romney has made it clear that he intends to expand defense spending if elected in November, having already called for spending a minimum of four percent of the GDP on national defense.
But Tuesday afternoon, as Romney was being officially nominated at the Republican National Convention, his party unveiled the official GOP platform for 2012. Included in the party platform was a thirteen-page section on “American Exceptionalism,” laying out the Republican view of defense and the future of the military.
While the document is light on specifics and heavy on rhetoric, there are some clues for what would be the Romney administration’s national security priorities. And in some very expensive cases, they don’t match up with public sentiment.
For example, the platform includes a call to strengthen American’s nuclear arsenal. “We recognize that the gravest terror threat we face – a nuclear attack made possible by nuclear proliferation – requires a comprehensive strategy for reducing the world’s nuclear stockpiles and preventing the spread of those armaments,” reads the platform. “But the U.S. can lead that effort only if it maintains an effective strategic arsenal at a level sufficient to fulfill its deterrent purposes, a notable failure of the current Administration.”
This line echoes calls from prominent Republican Congressmen who wrote a letter in February calling proposed cuts by the Obama administration a “deep concern.” At the time, the Center reported how campaign finance records show that since 2009 the signers received $1.12 million from the employees and political action committees of the four large defense contractors with a major stake in the nuclear weapons industry. (Spokespeople for House members and companies alike deny there has been any quid pro- quo.)
But the public would prefer that the nuclear arsenal be reduced, not expanded. In fact, respondents on average favored at least a 27 percent cut in spending on nuclear arms — the largest proportional cut of any in the survey. Overall, two-thirds of those polled — 78 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans, and 57 percent of independents — expressed a desire to cut spending on nuclear arms.
In another part of their platform, the GOP claims the Obama administration has “systematically undermined America’s missile defense” and calls for a recommitment to America’s missile shield. However, a pair of recent studies by the Government Accountability Office have called into question the costs and effectiveness of the missile defense program. In one case, as the Center has previously noted, a missile defense system has been cancelled for inefficiency but is still set to cash in on $250 million in taxpayer dollars.
According to the Center’s poll, the public favors cutting 14 percent of missile defense spending. At the same time, 74 percent of those polled believe that pursuing missile defense is important for the country’s national security, which means that Americans want a missile shield- just one that costs less money.
While discussing foreign aid, the GOP insists on relying more on private sector work than government-run programs that are a “proven breeding ground for corruption and mismanagement by foreign kleptocrats.” Corruption and waste in Afghanistan and Iraq is a long-standing problem that has haunted both the Bush and Obama administrations. In July, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction told the Center he believes $6 billion to $8 billion of taxpayer money has been lost to waste and abuse in Saddam Hussein’s former fiefdom; later that month the IG for Afghanistan reconstruction reported to Congress that millions of lost funds have been sunk into construction projects.
While the Center’s poll did not specifically ask about foreign aid, respondents were very clear about their views on Afghanistan: it’s time to get out. 85 percent of respondents expressing support for a statement that said in part, “it is time for the Afghan people to manage their own country and for us to bring our troops home.” A majority of respondents backed an immediate cut, on average, of $38 billion in the war’s existing $88 billion budget, or around 43 percent.
The platform also delves into social issues, calling for an enforcement of the “Defense of Marriage Act in the Armed Forces,” a reference to President Obama’s support for gay marriage. The GOP also pledged that “a Republican Administration will return the advocacy of religious liberty to a central place in our diplomacy” while calling for increased security against human traffickers on the border.
At the very end of the platform is a paragraph about Iran. ”A continuation of [the Obama Administration’s] failed engagement policy with Iran will lead to nuclear cascade,” warns the GOP. “American must lead the effort to prevent Iran from building and possessing nuclear weapons capability.”
The need to contain Iran, a major focus among the “Neoconservative” wing of the Republican party, has also driven the U.S. to increase arms sales to friendly Middle Eastern countries, most notably to Saudi Arabia, which last year purchased $33 billion in arms from America.
And, of course, not all Republicans are locked in with their party on military spending. In recent weeks some noted Republicans have begun calling for a Romney presidency to consider cuts to military spending as a necessity facing the country.
Stay tuned next week when we take a look at the Democratic party platform.

All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.