Racists Support Voter ID laws • Libertarian/Republican Idea of Privatization is Harmful • Sarah Palin Supports Anti-Gay Views • No Liberal Media • Gore Vidal Dies • Climate Change Storms Deplete Ozone • Meat Industry Lies • No Fish in 40 Years • more

- Scientists Tell Senate Panel: Climate Change Is Here and Disaster Costs Will Be Huge

Climate scientists who appeared Wednesday morning before a Senate committee hearing on climate change and extreme weather impacts had stark warnings for the lawmakers: climate change is here, climate change is man-made, and climate change is going to cost us big time.

- Storms May Speed Ozone Loss Above the U.S.

Summer thunderstorms across the United States inject water vapour far higher into the atmosphere than was previously believed, promoting a cascade of chemical reactions that could pose an increased threat to Earth’s protective ozone layer as the climate warms.

- 'When It Rains, It Pours': Global Warming Brings Increased, Heavier Storms

The impacts of human-caused global warming are being felt across the U.S. as increased and heavier storms -- predicted by climate scientists -- are confirmed in a report released Tuesday.

- Area in extreme drought increases by size of Texas, report says

Areas of the contiguous United States under extreme or exceptional drought conditions increased by an area roughly the size of Texas - from 13.5% of the land to 20.5% - in the past seven days, according to the Drought Monitor report released Thursday.

- 3 Myths About Protein and a Plant-Based Diet

The first question I am often asked when discussing a whole-food, plant-based diet is, “Where do you get your protein?” Protein has become widely recognized as a miracle macronutrient that, apparently, is challenging to acquire in effective doses. However, this is far from accurate. Let’s clear up three of plant-powered protein's three most-common misconceptions.

- Scientists predict our seas could be empty of fish in 40 years - now one Scottish island is fighting overfishing.

At current rates of decline, scientists predict our seas could be empty of fish within 40 years. With a billion people eating fish as their primary source of animal protein and 200 million people depending on fishing as their only source of livelihood, that would mean a humanitarian disaster.

- Beef Industry Has a Cow Over USDA's Support for Meatless Monday

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an agency notorious for its unabashed promotion of animal agribusiness and animal-based foods. As noted by the Associated Press: "The USDA often promotes the beef industry by encouraging Americans to eat meat."This week, however, the USDA got caught in the line of fire from, of all groups, the National Cattleman's Beef Association (NCBA). Why? Because it (the USDA) touted the benefits of meat-free foods.

- Japan workers 'told to lie about radiation'

A subcontractor at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant told workers to lie about possible high radiation exposure in an apparent effort to keep its contract, media reports said.

- Facts Are Facts

Pro-Israel groups have reacted with outrage - and their own plans for an ad campaign - in response to billboards in New York train stations showing the implacable loss of Palestinian land, and creation of millions of refugees, over the last 64 years. But Henry Clifford, 83, says he's puzzled by the charge the ads are "inflammatory."

- Extremism Normalized: How Americans Now Acquiesce to Once Unthinkable Ideas

That’s how extremist powers become normalized: they just become such a fixture in our political culture that we are trained to take them for granted, to view the warped as normal. Here are several examples from the last couple of days illustrating that same dynamic; none seems overwhelmingly significant on its own, but that’s the point:

- Gore Vidal Dies at 86

American novelist, playwright, media critic, political historian and pundit Gore Vidal died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday following complications with pneumonia. He was 86. A towering figure in both literary and political circles for most of his life, Vidal leaves a legacy seared with adoration, contempt, and mourning for the country of his birth. Born into power, privilege, and steeped in the elite world of Democratic politics, Vidal -- who resided in self-selected exile in Italy for many years -- became a vocal and unabashed critic of US foreign policy.

- The Complete Dishonesty Of Fox News' Economic Context

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum rewrote economic history to blame President Obama for the recession that began in December 2007...

- REPORT: Drudge Funneled At Least 30 Million Visitors To Conspiracy Websites In The Last Year

A ThinkProgress study of the [Republican/Libertarian] Drudge Report reveals the popular internet aggregator has linked 184 times to InfoWars and World Net Daily, two sites that promote the internet’s worst conspiracy theories, since June 2011. By directing millions of visitors to these websites, Drudge is providing critical financial and reputational support to publications that argue 9/11 was an inside job, FEMA is building concentration camps and President Obama was not born in the United States.

- Poverty and the Hypocrisy of the Republicans

“The relatively low social expenditures in the United States partially explains the high poverty rate,” said Gould. “When it comes to alleviating the effects of poverty, the U.S. could learn from its peers.”Some of the major findings: Despite the relatively high earnings at the top of the US income scale, inequality in the United States is so severe that low-earning US workers are actually worse off than low-earning workers in all but seven peer countries; more than one in five children in the US lived in poverty—this level is over two times higher than the peer-country average of 9.8 percent; the average peer countries’ tax and transfer programs achieves a poverty-rate reduction of 17.4 percentage points—an effect nearly two times greater than that produced by such programs in the United States.

- Conservative Media Attack The Muppets For Founding Company's Chick-Fil-A Rebuke

Members of the conservative media are attacking The Muppets for its founding company's decision to sever ties with Chick-fil-A, which supports numerous anti-gay causes. The Muppets have been called "heterophobic, anti-diversity, anti-inclusive bigots," and against family and Christian values. Conservatives, including Fox News, recently criticized The Muppets for allegedly promoting liberal propaganda in their 2011 film.In the wake of criticism, Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy recently defended the company's support of anti-marriage equality groups.

- Sarah Palin On Chick-Fil-A: Republican Shows Support Amid Gay Rights Debate

Sarah Palin waded into the Chick-Fil-A debate Friday night, posting a tweet and Facebook photo showing her support for what she called "a great business."Chick-Fil-A's President Dan Cathy recently sparked controversy when he gave a blunt response to a question about his franchise's "support of the traditional family." [he made openly homophobic and bigoted comments towards gays and lesbians]

- Privatization: The Big Joke That Isn't Funny

The [Libertarian and Republican ideas of] privatization of public goods and services turns basic human needs into products to buy and sell. That's more than a joke, it's an insult, it's a perversion. It generally benefits only a privileged group of businesspeople and their companies while increasing inequality and undermining the common good.

- Fox Guest's Voter ID Law Defense: "Voting Is A Privilege"

Fox News regular Jay Sekulow claimed that voting is a privilege as he went to bat in support of the Texas voter ID law today, and denied that such laws disenfranchise eligible voters. In fact, Americans are constitutionally protected from having their vote denied on the basis of race - which the Department of Justice has said would happen under Texas' law -- and voter ID laws have already disenfranchised hundreds of voters, and could prevent millions more from voting in this year's elections.

Study Links ‘Racial Resentment’ and Voter ID Support
Published on July 20, 2012 on The Nation

A new survey indicates that people who “harbor negative sentiments towards African Americans” are also more likely to support voter ID laws. And the correlation extends beyond party and ideological lines.

Researchers at the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication weren’t surprised to find that most Republicans and conservatives were in favor of voter ID laws—regardless of how they measured on the “racial resentment” scale used in the study. The shocker came when Democrats and liberals who rated highest on the racial resentment scale also indicated support for voter ID laws.

How likely one is to possess or be able to acquire a specific form of voter ID is also affected by race. The Brennan Center released a report illustrating, among other challenges to obtaining identification, the lack of overlap between offices that issue valid voter IDs and high populations of people of color. More than 1 million blacks and half a million Latinos live more than 10 miles away from such offices.

One map in the study illustrates that in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, driver’s license offices that are open more than twice a week are located largely away from rural black populations. An additional map illustrates that areas with high Latino populations also lack offices that issue IDs that will be considered valid if Texas requires them in the upcoming election.

Another Judge Blocks Wisconsin’s Voter ID
A second judge blocked Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Flanagan ruled the measure unconstitutional. Citing obstacles to getting a valid identification, Judge Flanagan wrote that obtaining “a DMV Photo ID can easily be a frustrating, complex and time-consuming process,” adding that any associated costs are significant for poor people. The state is expected to appeal the ruling.

Feds Hand Over Database for State Purges

The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to allow Florida access to the SAVE database, AP reports. The Sunshine State sued the DHS for access, and the Department of Justice sued Florida to block it from conducting a voter purge. A federal judged ruled in favor of Florida’s purge, and now, the DHS is handing over a database meant to identify non-citizens eligible for public assistance. DHS says it will also make the SAVE system available to Colorado and Washington. The battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico and Nevada are expected to acquire the database as well—and Texas is already drafting its demand. The states believe that by identifying non-citizens who are eligible for public assistance, they’ll be able to identify names to purge from voter rolls as well.

Check Out My Voter ID

Memphis city libraries began adding photos to cards so that they could be used as voter IDs—but the Shelby County election commission says the IDs cannot be used to cast a ballot, reports WMC-TV 5. Local Democrats say they may initiate a lawsuit in order compel the election commission to accept the ID.

Iowa Investigates Three Cases of Voter Fraud—and Finds None

Iowa’s Secretary of State “has made it his top priority” to pass a voter ID law in his state. In order to do so, he wants to illustrate at least one example of voter fraud. Yet after vigorously investigating a whopping three possible instances of voter fraud, Matt Schultz’ office can’t conclude that any of them amount to actual fraud, according to the Associated Press. Had Secretary Schultz been paying attention, he might have noticed that fraud occurs only 0.0002% of the time—so it’s unlikely he’ll find anything to bolster his claim.

Sean

The Lie of American Exceptionalism • Climate Change Caused by Mankind • Water Wars? • Fukushima Leaking Radioactive Water into Ocean • Fox Says Muppets are Communists • Dogs and PTSD • Republicans Trying to Kill Post Office • Occupy Art • more

- Coming to a Theater Near You: The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization

And here’s the bad news in a nutshell: if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.  No kidding.

Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who played a major role in the Nobel-Prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells me that the prospect of 130° F days in Phoenix worries him far less than the prospect of decades of acute dryness. “If anything is scary, the scariest is that we could trip across a transition into a megadrought.” He adds, “You can probably bet your house that, unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions, the megadroughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than the ones of the past.”

- Extreme Weather

Given the expected weather pattern shifts due to La Nina, is there cause to bring climate change into the extreme weather debate? The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) believes so. The Nobel prize winning group released a report on November 18 focusing on extreme weather events, linking their increase in frequency to climate change.

- It's Official, Climate Change Caused by Man: Three-quarters of climate change is man-made

Natural climate variability is extremely unlikely to have contributed more than about one-quarter of the temperature rise observed in the past 60 years, reports a pair of Swiss climate modellers in a paper published online today. Most of the observed warming — at least 74 % — is almost certainly due to human activity, they write in Nature Geoscience.

- From Cairo to the Cape, climate change begins to take hold of Africa

The world's poorest communities have begun to experience extreme weather outside the natural variability of African climate. Without a rapid reduction in emissions, the continent faces calamitous temperature rises within this century

- Health ‘first casualty’ of climate change

The World Health Organisation predicts that changing climate conditions will lead to increases in malaria, cholera and dengue fever, as well as losses of life due to extreme weather events

- Horn of Africa Crisis: Drought Zone

As millions in Kenya suffer from extreme hunger, is the US addressing the causes of the crisis or just its syptoms?

- Fukushima Plant Leaks Radioactive Water

Large quantities of highly radioactive water have leaked through a crack in the wall of a treatment facility at the Fukushima power plant, and some may have founds its way into the sea, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], said.

- Fox Business' Follow The Money Unmasks The Muppets' Liberal Agenda: "Brainwashing" Your Kids!

This attempt at right-wing media criticism brought to you by the letter "S"... for stupid.

- NPR’s domestic drone commercial

But listeners of NPR would know about virtually none of that. On its All Things Considered program yesterday, NPR broadcast a five-minute report (audio below) from Brian Naylor that purported to be a news story on the domestic use of drones but was, in fact, much more akin to a commercial for the drone industry.

- The Postal Service Plots Its Own Demise

There are many appropriate targets for Occupy Wall Street protests. But the OWS protesters hit a bull’s-eye when they invaded a National Press Club briefing where Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe—who likes to make like a corporate executive and refer to himself as “Chief Operating Officer of the US Postal Service”—was giving a speech about the need to close local post offices, layoff workers and, though this was unspoken, take the steps that will lead to the privatization of the one of the country’s greatest public assets.[republicans want to kill the US postal service because it's a well functioning public branch of government and unionized. Republicans hate unions and hate any part of government that works well]

- Arizona Outraged At Right Wing Racist Sheriff Arpaio Fiasco, Calls For Resignation

Less than two weeks after Citizens for a Better Arizona announced their intent to form the nation's first ever "Citizens Posse" to hold infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio accountable for gross abuses of power and civil rights violations, an alarming new investigation just released by the Associated Press has found that hundreds of reported sex crimes, including child molestation, have fallen through the cracks of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

- After Duty, Dogs Suffer Like Soldiers

If anyone needed evidence of the frontline role played by dogs in war these days, here is the latest: the four-legged, wet-nosed troops used to sniff out mines, track down enemy fighters and clear buildings are struggling with the mental strains of combat nearly as much as their human counterparts.

- BEST CAPTION AT THE ONION ALL WEEK: Rumors Of Extramarital Affair End Campaign Of Presidential Candidate Who Didn't Know China Has Nuclear Weapons

Republicans are so dumb they reject Cain for extra-marital affairs, but not for being utterly uninformed about the world. And then ironically throw their support behind serial-philanderer Newt Gingrich.

- Occupy Art

Poster artwork inspired by the Occupy movement.

The American century: That was then
The next time you hear a politician insist that America is exceptional, think of it as a secret confession that we aren't.
By Tom Engelhardt
Published December 2, 2011 in the L.A. Times

Tea party activists attend Glenn Beck's 2010 rally in Washington. President Obama and his would-be GOP presidential opponents have touted American exceptionalism in recent speeches. (Jim Lo Scalzo / European Pressphoto Agency)

If you want a gauge of an America on the downward slope, you could look at the recent poll commissioned by the newspaper the Hill, in which a startling 69% of respondents said they considered the country to be in decline. Or you could just consider the soaring language of this season's presidential candidates. Mitt Romney, in a recent Republican debate on foreign policy, was typical, insisting that "this century must be an American century" in which "America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world."

President Obama too is prone to the overheated language of American exceptionalism, announcing frequently his intention to ensure that the 21st century is "another American century."

As a 67-year-old, I grew up in a post-World War II era that, by any measure, was the height of the first American century. As much of the rest of the developed world struggled to rebuild devastated cities, the United States couldn't have been more exceptional, a one-of-a-kind country in producing the big-ticket items both of peace and of war, often from the same corporations.

Back then, there was no need for presidents or presidential candidates to get up and repetitively reassure the American people of just how exceptional we were. It was too obvious to state. After all, when you've really got it, you don't have to flaunt it.

So, the next time you hear any politician insisting that this country is American century-style exceptional, think of it as a kind of secret confession that we aren't. These days, you can feel the uncomfortably defensive snarl (or whine) that lurks in the insistence that our country isn't just another powerful nation in political gridlock and economic trouble.

Think here, if you will, of Rambo's muscles, which were in their own way as much a confession of insecurity as Romney's talk of exceptionalism. Back in the day, the screen western or war hero — Gary Cooper or John Wayne — might be strong and silent, but brute physique was the least of his attributes. He wasn't overmuscled or cartoonishly outsized. As a man of that true American century moment, he didn't have to go out of his way to emphasize his hero-hood and his physical power.

Rambo arrived on-screen in the post-Vietnam War years as a creature of American defeat. It was a time when strong and silent wasn't convincing enough anymore, when a literal arms race seemed necessary, when the pecs of American power needed to be overblown to be overshown.

Romney and crew are, verbally speaking, the Rambos of this 21st century American moment. And their version of nonstop exceptionalism fits well with another strange repetitive feature of the present landscape: the exaltation of the American soldier as a hero of heroes, an exemplar for the nation.

Much of this would have rung weirdly indeed to the ears of Americans in my childhood. They had their own set of outsized fears, but they still lived in a country with a citizen army that a draft ensured just about everyone took part in. Like mine, most families then had at least one WW II vet. And yet no one talked about greatest generations or American heroes or, like President Obama and George W. Bush before him, "the finest fighting force in the world" (or "that the world has ever known"). The soldier was simply an American.

Now, in the world of the all-volunteer Army, with the U.S. permanently, if remarkably unsuccessfully, at war around the world, the military largely exists in a separate sphere, with many Americans having no direct link to the wars being fought in their name and the soldiers who are fighting them.

Yet today, supporting the troops (or "America's warriors," as they are now often called) has become a near-religious duty. This recurrent insistence on their need for support should, like Romney's exceptionalism, be viewed as another kind of secret admission.

After all, the greatest mistake of our era was undoubtedly this: When the Soviet Union suddenly disappeared in 1991, our leaders imagined that they had achieved a kind of American victory never before seen. Where, for centuries, there had been two or more great-power rivals, there was now only the sole superpower (or even hyperpower) of planet Earth, with no significant threat anywhere.

To some, it looked as if this were, by definition, a second post-WW II moment of American exceptionalism. Mistaking military might for global power, they didn't notice that the mightier superpower of the Cold War was also heading slowly downhill in a cloud of self-congratulation. The rest of this grim story we are now living.

Long gone is that American moment and the "century" that went with it. Decline is upon us, and every assurance that it isn't only serves, however subliminally, to reinforce that reality. At whatever pace, our "warriors" and "heroes" are coming home to a distinctly unhappy, unheroic and insecure country, lacking in jobs. In the meantime, our leaders doth protest too much.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, "The United States of Fear," is just out.

Sean

More Tax Cuts for Corporations - Cuts to Green Energy programs Due to Right-wing corporate pressure - Right-wing Assault on Labor - Fish Cruelty - Jesus Rewritten by Republicans

- Fish Say: Flush This!

Fish are not decorations or toys. They have cognitive skills that rival those of primates, use tools, maintain complex social relationships, and communicate with each other using low-frequency sounds that humans can't even hear. Confining fish to a cramped tank or bowl, forcing them to swim in endless circles through the same few cubic inches of (often filthy) water, is just as cruel as chaining or crating a dog 24 hours a day.

- Are Insurers Writing the Health Reform Regulations?

...surprise, insurers don't like being told what to do by regulators. So they're pushing back hard. Consumer advocates who have been in meetings at the White House in recent weeks say they believe the administration is bending over backward to accommodate the insurers.

- Jesus Opposed the Minimum Wage and Other "Truths" of the Religious Right

Nothing shows the unholy tilt of the fringe right into the mainstream more than the growing influence of David Barton, right-wing GOP activist, minister, historian and guiding spirit to aspiring presidential souls from Gingrich to Huckabee. Using his for-profit evangelical WallBuilders as a springboard, Barton makes 400 speeches a year proclaiming that Thomas Jefferson didn't really believe in separating church and state, the Bible proves God hates socialism, and we can save ourselves if we "rebuild our nation's godly heritage" - and we all know whose god he means. Is anything as scary as fervent certitude based on half-truths? May all the gods save us all.

- Dirty Corporate Tax Dodgers INFOGRAPHIC

This is what you get if you vote Republican or Libertarian (or for any conservative candidate).

- The International Assault on Labor

The state-corporate war [carried out by Republicans in the USA] against unions has recently extended to the public sector, with legislation to ban collective bargaining and other elementary rights. Even in pro-labor Massachusetts, the House of Representatives voted right before May Day to sharply restrict the rights of police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees to bargain over health care – essential matters in the U.S., with its dysfunctional and highly inefficient privatized health-care system.

The rest of the world may associate May 1 to the struggle of American workers for basic rights but in the U.S. that solidarity is suppressed in favor of a jingoist holiday. May 1 is "Loyalty Day," designated by Congress in 1958 for "the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom."

- Is An Early Spring Making You Sneeze?

So what does an early spring mean? Although its appearance may make a welcome sight at the end of winter, premature spring can seriously disrupt an ecosystem. Early blooming flowers can be damaged by subsequent cold snaps, which means that the plant produces fewer seeds. And when an animal reacts to shifts in spring differently than its food source, that animal can be harmed. For example, in Europe, unusually warm springs are causing caterpillars to emerge too early. This, in turn, means that the caterpillars transform into moths before some species of birds return from their winter migration, and then those birds struggle to feed their newborn chicks.

- Cutbacks in solar rebates cast shadow over green power

The municipal utility announced recently that it was suspending its program to encourage use of solar power for at least 90 days because of a lack of funds to meet demand from interested homeowners.

- Federal officials reduce Mass. area set aside for offshore wind development

Federal officials are reducing the area they have set aside for developers to build offshore wind farms in rich fishing grounds about 14 miles off Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement had originally set aside a 2,900 square mile-area for commercial wind energy leasing. The region has strong winds and is close to heavily populated coastal areas with high demand for power...

But the agency said on Monday that feedback from Massachusetts commercial fishermen, Gov. Deval Patrick’s office and the congressional delegation convinced it to reduce the area under consideration.

- Disaster Needed for U.S. to Act on Climate Change, Harvard’s Stavins Says

"It's unlikely that the U.S. is going to take serious action on climate change until there are observable, dramatic events, almost catastrophic in nature, that drive public opinion and drive the political process in that direction," Stavins, director of Harvard’s Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said today in an interview in Bloomberg’s Boston office.

U.S. concern about climate change has declined in recent years, according to polls. Americans who agree the Earth is warming because of man-made activity dropped to 34 percent in October, from 50 percent in July 2006, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Almost four dozen lawmakers who have questioned global warming were elected to Congress in November’s midterm elections. [all republicans]

- Making A Killing: New Report Exposes Private Prison Industry's Strategy Of Pay-To-Play [Republicans and Libertarians want to Privatize EVERYTHING]

“Private prison companies have one goal, and that’s to maximize profits,” said Ken Kopczynski, Executive Director of the Private Corrections Working Group.  “States considering privatization should be clear about the problems associated with these corporate facilities—high rates of violence, high staff turnover, lax security, and routine mismanagement.  We should be securing our prisons, not selling them off to the highest bidder.”

Obama Administration Plans Corporate Tax Cut In Year Of Record Profits
by Allison Kilkenny
Published on Thursday, May 5, 2011 by The Nation

As nationwide budget protests continue this week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is prepared to unveil the Obama administration’s plan to lower the top corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to less than 30 percent, and as low as 26 percent.
In order to pay for the cuts, the proposal calls for closing loopholes and slashing exemptions. Politico reports that Geithner has already begun meeting privately with CEOs, academics, labor unions, and liberal and conservative think tanks, and his aides say he is “encouraged by the response.”
Part of that optimism stems from the fact that Democrats and Republicans are both allies of the business world.

One top business lobbyist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said corporate tax reform should be “the easiest piece” of a complex fiscal bargain “because you have people in both parties in the business community.”

Meanwhile, the number of people who filed new applications for jobless benefits leaped 43,000 last week to 474,000, the highest level in almost nine months.
The surge in unemployment comes at a time when U.S. corporations are more profitable than ever. The end of 2010 saw some of the biggest gains in the business world, according to data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. Corporations reported an annualized profit of $1.68 trillion in the fourth quarter, up from the previous record of $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006.

In the first quarter of 2011, Exxon-Mobil, the world’s biggest and most profitable corporation, raked in $10.7 billion. That’s a 69 percent increase over the same quarter last year, and the highest quarterly profit since 2008. This is happening during a time when citizens are searching underneath the couch cushions to scrape together enough change in order to fill their gas tanks so they can go file for unemployment benefits.

Exxon also happens to be one of US Uncut’s top targets. The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States. The company paid zero U.S. income tax in 2009, while enjoying billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies and its CEO’s total compensation reached over $29 million.

Now, in addition to raking in record profits by sheltering revenue in foreign tax havens, Exxon and its Fortune 500 comrades, rest on the brink of enjoying more sweeteners in the form of tax breaks.

Of course, tax havens are only one part of a rigged system that allows corporations to make bank during economic recession. There are also the practices of government subsidies, (read: taxpayer subsidies) outsourcing jobs, and buying off politicians that allow top corporations and their CEOs to flourish while one in four American children survives on food stamps.

While I was watching CNN this morning, a talking head made the comment that the corporations were forced to “go lean” during the recession, but now that the economy is recovering, they refuse to hire simply because they like being lean! Why wouldn’t they? Corporate America is enjoying record profits, so there are no incentives to hire an expensive American worker (with their pesky unions’ minimum wage demands, rational work schedule, and health benefits) when they can outsource the same job for cheap labor overseas.

Another alternative is to just bust unions and treat workers like they’re employed in the third world, a path chosen by Wal-mart, which secured a spot at the top of the Fortune 500 list released today.

Then there’s the problem of corporate lobbying and bribery. Corporate America dominated Washington’s lobbying spending in the first quarter of 2011, according to a report from the Center for Responsive Politics. The US Chamber of Commerce spent just over $17 million in the three-month period. Next was General Electric (the “King of Tax Dodgers”) with just over $9 million, and AT&T with spending just over $6.8 million.

Corporations learn to grease the wheels early, which is why their financial support of political candidates is so bipartisan. Before the presidential election, John McCain received three times more money from the oil industry than President Obama. However, Obama received more in campaign cash than McCain from the employees of some of the biggest oil companies: Exxon, Chevron, and BP, three companies that routinely grace the top echelons of the Fortune 500 list.

It’s no wonder that the big companies with the most money buy the most access and win the most favorable pieces of legislation.

The Obama administration is considering these corporate tax cuts during a time when almost every state is experiencing some kind of budget cut protest. Teachers, police, fire-fighters, unions, students, and their supporters have occupied state Capitols and campuses to demand a one-tier America where everyone (citizens and corporations, alike) sacrifice during times of fiscal crisis.

Sean

What Republicans Really Want

A good segment from yesterday's Rachel Maddow show showing the real goal of the Republican party- doing away with elected officials (they have actually started doing this), privatizing everything (putting corporations in control and doing away with regulation that protects the public), giving tax cuts to the rich and shifting the tax burden to the poor and middle class, etc, etc.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sean