http://www.cooperativeresearch.org The Center for Grassroots Oversight aims to provide the public with a means to collaborate on investigations at the grassroots level. en-us http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a091104acornminwage#a091104acornminwage http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a091104acornminwage#a091104acornminwage ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) launches a campaign to register thousands of new voters in Florida, using a referendum that would raise the state's minimum wage as a method to drum up support. One study shows that the referendum, if enacted, would raise salaries among the working poor by $443 million. A coalition driven by ACORN registers some 210,000 new voters, mostly in urban areas, before Election Day. Opponents of the referendum--mostly business leaders and Florida Republicans--fight back by mounting an ad campaign comparing the effect of the raised minimum wage to the devastation wrought by Florida's recent hurricanes, and labeling it a "job killer." They also level accusations of voter fraud, accusing the coalition of filing thousands of fraudulent registrations. National and state Democrats are hesitant to embrace the referendum, even though some polls show that as many as 81 percent of Floridians support it. Presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA) rarely mentions the referendum during his campaign swings through the state. Although Kerry loses Florida and Republicans win a majority of the Congressional elections, the referendum wins in a landslide, garnering 77 percent of the votes cast and winning in every county, including the conservative counties in the Panhandle. In 2010, author John Atlas will write, "Kerry made the fatal mistake of not publicly embracing the minimum wage ballot." mtuck 2013-05-04T19:31:17+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a092810obamaarragop#a092810obamaarragop http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a092810obamaarragop#a092810obamaarragop President Obama tells how his ideas of bipartisan compromise with Republican lawmakers were dashed. Obama reflects on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, signed into law in February 2009. Interviewer Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone asks: "When you came into office, you felt you would be able to work with the other side. When did you realize that the Republicans had abandoned any real effort to work with you and create bipartisan policy?" Obama responds: "Well, I'll tell you that given the state of the economy during my transition, between my election and being sworn in, our working assumption was that everybody was going to want to pull together, because there was a sizable chance that we could have a financial meltdown and the entire country could plunge into a depression. So we had to work very rapidly to try to create a combination of measures that would stop the free-fall and cauterize the job loss. The recovery package we shaped was put together on the theory that we shouldn't exclude any ideas on the basis of ideological predispositions, and so a third of the Recovery Act were tax cuts. Now, they happened to be the most progressive tax cuts in history, very much geared toward middle-class families. There was not only a fairness rationale to that, but also an economic rationale--those were the folks who were most likely to spend the money and, hence, prop up demand at a time when the economy was really freezing up. I still remember going over to the Republican caucus to meet with them and present our ideas, and to solicit ideas from them before we presented the final package. And on the way over, the caucus essentially released a statement that said, 'We're going to all vote "No" as a caucus.' And this was before we'd even had the conversation. At that point, we realized that we weren't going to get the kind of cooperation we'd anticipated. The strategy the Republicans were going to pursue was one of sitting on the sidelines, trying to gum up the works, based on the assumption that given the scope and size of the recovery, the economy probably wouldn't be very good, even in 2010, and that they were better off being able to assign the blame to us than work with us to try to solve the problem." No House Republican voted for the package; only three Republican Senators voted for it. mtuck 2012-12-01T15:06:10+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a032711tentaxsanders#a032711tentaxsanders http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a032711tentaxsanders#a032711tentaxsanders A list of 10 companies that have avoided paying US income taxes is provided by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is pushing for legislation that will close the legal tax loopholes that allow large corporations to avoid the bulk of their tax responsibilities. Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet writes, "Some people call the income tax system with generous loopholes for big companies corporate welfare or corporate entitlements." Sanders's list, based on returns and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents filed in 2009 and earlier, includes: ExxonMobil. The oil giant made $19 billion in profits in 2009, but paid no federal income taxes, and received a $156 million tax rebate. Bank of America (BoA). The financial corporation made $4.4 billion in profits in 2009, and received nearly $1 trillion in Federal Reserve and Treasury Department "bailout" funds. The bank received a $1.9 billion tax refund. General Electric. This multinational conglomerate made $26 billion in profits in the US, and over the last five years has received $4.1 billion in tax refunds. Chevron. The oil giant made $10 billion in profits in 2009, and received a $19 million refund from the IRS. Boeing. The defense contractor received a $30 billion contract from the US Department of Defense in 2009 to build 179 airborne tankers, and received a $124 million tax refund. Valero Energy. This energy corporation, the 25th largest company in the US, garnered $68 billion in sales in 2009, and received $157 million in tax refunds. Over the last three years, Valero has received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction. Goldman Sachs. The financial giant paid only 1.1 percent of its income in taxes in 2008, though it recorded $2.3 billion in profits. It also received nearly $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Citigroup. The financial conglomerate made over $4 billion in profits in 2010, but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion "bailout" from the Federal Reserve and Treasury. ConocoPhillips. The oil conglomerate garnered $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, paid no taxes, and received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction. Carnival Cruise Lines. This entertainment giant made over $11 billion in profits between 2006 and 2011, but paid only 1.1 percent of its income in taxes during that period. 'In a press release calling for "shared sacrifice," Sanders writes: "While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding US taxes altogether. ... [T]he wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit." Sanders writes that "it is grossly unfair for Congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women, and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes." Sanders calls for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating the deductions for oil and gas companies. He is also introducing legislation that would impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would garner as much as $50 billion a year in tax revenues. Sanders says: "We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed, but it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We've got to talk about shared sacrifice." mtuck 2012-09-25T19:25:53+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a121604prsocialsec#a121604prsocialsec http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a121604prsocialsec#a121604prsocialsec The White House prepares to launch a huge PR campaign to win public support for sweeping changes to Social Security, including the creation of individual accounts with the option to invest (and win or lose) in the stock market, and partial privatization of the management of social security investments. In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write: "It was the kind of bold domestic initiative Bush had always hoped would define his presidency. He would get it passed through a massive [public relations] campaign to bring public pressure to bear on Congress." The first major strategy meeting to develop the White House PR campaign centers on two main foci: "Educating" the public about the economic and fiscal problems facing Social Security, the need to fix them, and creating a "crisis mentality" among the public, which, McClellan will write, "would give us a better shot at getting the necessary public support to bring about bipartisan backing for our reform plan in Congress"; Shaping the solution and ensuring that "personal retirement accounts," as the stock accounts will be termed, are included. 'The White House's congressional liaison, David Hobbs, says: "Seventy percent of the battle is defining the problem and putting Congressional leaders on the spot. We need public pressure." The plan is for Bush to travel around the country touting the program, specifically visiting states and districts represented by targeted members of Congress. "Bush would use the re-election hopes of those crucial swing votes in Congress as the lever with which to apply the pressure required," McClellan later writes. McClellan will reflect that, though the marketing campaign is well thought out, the reform plan isn't, writing: "We were spending excessive effort on selling our sketchily designed plan while skimping on other elements of the process that probably should have been at least as important. We weren't spending much time deliberating with members of Congress to work out details of our reform plan--we were doing minimal outreach to Democrats to build the kind of consensus that would make such a dramatic change easier to pass. Instead, we were leapfrogging many of the vital steps and jumping straight to the stage in the process we found most congenial--the public relations effort." McClellan will compare the Social Security campaign to the administration's efforts to market the Iraq invasion, calling it "reminiscent of the way we'd short-circuited debate over the necessity for war in Iraq and chose instead to turn it into the subject of a massive marketing blitz. We used a similar approach as we planned the Social Security campaign. With Iraq, it was a threat that needed confronting, with Social Security, it was a crisis that needed solving." mtuck 2012-07-14T19:43:54+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a041511caswellthrift#a041511caswellthrift http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a041511caswellthrift#a041511caswellthrift Michigan State Senator Bruce Caswell (R-Hillsdale) suggests legislation that would force foster children to use their state-funded clothing allowance only in thrift stores. Caswell says that foster children should get "gift cards" to be used only at Salvation Army, Goodwill, or other thrift stores. He explains: "I never had anything new. I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was--and quite frankly it's true--once you're out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes." Gilda Jacobs of the Michigan League for Human Services says, "Honestly, I was flabbergasted" to hear of Caswell's proposal. "I really couldn't believe this. Because I think, gosh, is this where we've gone in this state? I think that there's the whole issue of dignity. You're saying to somebody, you don't deserve to go in and buy a new pair of gym shoes. You know, for a lot of foster kids, they already have so much stacked against them." Caswell initially admits his proposal would not save Michigan any money, but later says that the proposal would save money. He insists he has no interest in stigmatizing foster children. Jessica Pieklo of the humanitarian organization Care2 writes that the proposal is another example of what she calls "the single-focused attack on the poor and politically powerless" being carried out by Michigan's Republican leadership. "Reasonable checks and transparency in the administration of public benefits is one thing, but Caswell's proposal is hardly that. It is a pronouncement on the value of these kids, poor and almost homeless usually through no fault their own." In a post on Twitter, MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow says: "This is cartoon evil, right? This can't be real. This cannot be a real thing. Gotta be performance art." mtuck 2012-05-29T16:25:38+02:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a012912shadrackraise#a012912shadrackraise http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a012912shadrackraise#a012912shadrackraise State Senator Shadrack McGill (R-AL) tells listeners at a prayer breakfast in Fort Payne, Alabama, that state legislators such as himself deserve pay raises, but raising schoolteachers' pay would lead to less-qualified teachers in the classrooms and violate a "Biblical principle." Alabama legislators were given a 62 percent raise in 2007, and McGill says the raise discourages corruption among lawmakers. The previous low salaries "played into the corruption, guys, big time," he says. "You had your higher-ranking legislators that were connected with the lobbyists making up in the millions of dollars. They weren't worried about that $30,000 paid salary they were getting." By paying lawmakers more up front, he says, they are less susceptible to taking bribes: "He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation." However, if teachers were given pay raises, then people who are not "called" to teach would begin joining the profession, he says. "Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, 'Well, the quality of education's going to go up.' That's never proven to happen, guys. It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach. To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK? And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity. If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance." In 2010, McGill introduced a bill in the Alabama Senate that would tie legislators' pay to teachers' pay, requiring the state to give raises to legislators if it gave teachers raises. He claimed, falsely, that Alabama teachers' salaries were the fourth highest in the nation. Some Alabama Republicans are backing a bill that would give a 2.5 percent raise to teachers with less than nine years' experience. Representative Craig Ford (D-Gadsden) says the small raise unfairly excludes veteran teachers, and the entire controversy surrounding teachers' and legislators' raises is "one of the most absurd things ... the Republican supermajority ha[s] ever tried to pull." Currently, part-time legislators in Alabama such as McGill make more than full-time teachers with master's degrees and 15 years of experience. After the national media picks up on McGill's comments, WAAY-TV airs an interview with McGill taped earlier in the week where he told a reporter he did not believe in the separation of church and state . According to a WAAY report, both the television station's commentators and editorial writers and commentators around the nation "raked [McGill] over the coals" for his comments. McGill tells a WAAY reporter: "Some things got taken out of context. I'm not hearing any negative feedback out of those who were there." The audience at the prayer breakfast was very supportive of his stance, he says. "The point that I was trying to make in the speech is simply that. ... Things ought to be in balance. I believe God made everything to be in balance. He weighed the Earth and the valley and the mountains and the hills on a scale to keep them in balance because he knew he was going to be spinning it real fast, so that's the [g]ist of it. ... Legislators pay ought to be in balance. They don't need to make too much, they don't need to make too little, both lead to corruption. Likewise, I think with teachers salaries, things need to be balanced on their education, based on the performance, class size, etc. Work load. ... But by no means was I insinuating that a teacher should make less." McGill says he hopes that after the economy turns around, Alabama teachers can get raises. McGill says he is learning that legislators such as himself are constantly being pursued by those who want to "turn" an innocent statement "into a dagger and stab you with it." He says that he cannot understand how those who gave him "negative feedback" on his comments can call themselves Christians. mtuck 2012-02-14T14:42:01+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=financial_crisis_261#financial_crisis_261 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=financial_crisis_261#financial_crisis_261 Eurozone policymakers fail to reach an agreement over the weekend on financial aid to bail out Greece, resulting in a sharp market drop on Monday morning as disappointed traders react to the leaders' failure to guarantee the next ?12 billion installment of Greece's original bailout. Widespread speculation is that a disorganized Greek default will send Eurozone single-currency nations, as well as nations around the globe, into another panic. 99PercentPure 2012-02-14T14:33:38+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=financial_crisis_260#financial_crisis_260 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=financial_crisis_260#financial_crisis_260 Instead of releasing ?12 billion ($17.2 billion) to help the Greek government's worsening economic and political crises, EU leaders assembling in Luxembourg for seven hours, from Sunday night into Monday morning, place more pressure on the Greek government after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) required Europe to guarantee Greece's finances for the next 12 months. Rather than act with a sense of urgency, EU finance ministers expect the Greek Parliament and President George Papandreou to pass an austerity bill. Greece's crises threaten to topple the euro and EU financial markets. 99PercentPure 2012-02-14T14:33:01+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a011712factchecknewtsnap#a011712factchecknewtsnap http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a011712factchecknewtsnap#a011712factchecknewtsnap The nonpartisan FactCheck.org finds that recent claims by presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (R-GA) that "more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history" are wrong. In fact, far more Americans were added to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rolls under President George W. Bush than under Obama. Gingrich has made the claim in a number of political speeches (see and ), but his reiteration of the claim during a recent Republican debate in South Carolina has drawn a great deal of media attention . FactCheck finds: "Gingrich would have been correct to say the number now on food aid is historically high. The number stood at 46,224,722 persons as of October, the most recent month on record. And it's also true that the number has risen sharply since Obama took office. But Gingrich goes too far to say Obama has put more on the rolls than other presidents." Information from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s Food and Nutrition Service going back to January 2001 "show[s] that under President George W. Bush the number of recipients rose by nearly 14.7 million. Nothing before comes close to that." Moreover, "the program has so far grown by 444,574 fewer recipients during Obama's time in office than during Bush's." The trend in recent months has been for the number of food-stamp recipients to decline, another fact Gingrich fails to note. FactCheck finds that the rise in the number of Americans on food stamps--currently one out of seven--began during the second term of the Bush presidency. "In the 12 months before Obama was sworn in, 4.4 million were added to the rolls, triple the 1.4 million added in 2007," the organization writes. "To be sure, Obama is responsible for some portion of the increase since then. The stimulus bill he signed in 2009 increased benefit levels, making the program more attractive. A family of four saw an increase of $80 per month, for example. ... The stimulus also made more people eligible. Able-bodied jobless adults without dependents could get benefits for longer than three months." Part of the reason for the higher number of recipients under Obama is the new outreach to eligible citizens by state governments, according to the USDA; many state governments have worked harder to inform eligible citizens of their right to apply for government assistance, and have reduced the amount of information that claimants must provide to receive assistance. FactCheck concludes: "We don't argue that the program is either too large (as Gingrich does) or too small. It has certainly reached a historically high level, and may or may not grow even larger in the months to come. But the plain fact is that the growth started long before Obama took office, and participation grew more under Bush." And it quotes the USDA's Kevin Concannon, who recently told a Wall Street Journal reporter, "I realize Mr. Gingrich is a historian, but I'm not sure he'd get very high marks on that paper." CBS News notes that the White House has called Gingrich's claims "crazy," and finds: "While the number of people on food stamps is indeed at a record level, that's in part because of eligibility rules being relaxed under the administration of George W. Bush. It's also due in part to the economic downturn that began under Mr. Bush. ... [T]hat percentage increase hardly makes Obama the 'best food stamp president in American history,' at least when you look at the question proportionally. The percent increase in beneficiaries during Mr. Bush's presidency was higher than it has been under Mr. Obama: The number of beneficiaries went from 17.3 million in 2001 to 28.2 million in 2008--an increase of 63 percent in years that are mostly considered non-recessionary." US News and World Report agrees with FactCheck, finding that "SNAP participation has been on the rise since well before President Obama took office. Nearly 17.2 million people in FY 2000 participated in the program, a figure that increased by nearly 64 percent by 2008." The Associated Press accuses Gingrich of distorting the facts and notes: "It's gotten easier to qualify for food stamps in the past decade but that is because of measures taken before Obama became president. It's true that the number of people on food stamps is now at a record level. That's due mainly to the ailing economy, which Republicans blame on Obama, as well as rising food costs. The worst downturn since the Great Depression wiped out 8.7 million jobs, pushed the unemployment rate to a peak of 10 percent in October 2009, and increased poverty." The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has found that SNAP is a critical element in keeping poverty-stricken Americans, particularly children and the elderly, from starving during the economic recession . mtuck 2012-02-05T16:32:39+01:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a010912cbppsnap#a010912cbppsnap http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a010912cbppsnap#a010912cbppsnap The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) finds that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the "food stamp" program, is playing a critical role in keeping American citizens from starving during the economic recession. The program has long been reviled by Republicans and conservatives, and recently Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich (R-GA) smeared President Obama as "the food stamp president" (see and ), and falsely claimed that Obama has presided over the largest increase of Americans receiving SNAP assistance in US history . The program benefits a disproportionately large number of children and disabled and elderly people, according to the CBPP. Since the recession began in late 2007, the CBPP says, "SNAP has responded effectively to the recession" in providing much-needed assistance to Americans, particularly since the recession has driven many families into "low-income" status. "According to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, which counts SNAP as income, SNAP kept more than 5 million people out of poverty in 2010 and lessened the severity of poverty for millions of others." As the economy recovers and legislative provisions expire, SNAP spending will decrease, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predictions. "By 2022 SNAP is expected to return nearly to pre-recession levels as a share of GDP. Over the long term, SNAP is not growing faster than the overall economy and thus is not contributing to the nation's long-term fiscal problems." The payment accuracy of SNAP is extraordinarily high, the CBPP claims, refuting the claims of massive fraud made by Gingrich and other opponents of the program. And, according to the CBPP, economists say that the program is "one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus," helping grow the economy as it protects poverty-stricken families. mtuck 2012-02-05T16:30:36+01:00