Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
MORNING MESSAGE: The Worst Goldman Sachs Settlement Yet
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "...while each of these deals has been shameful, destructive, and outrageous, the $22 million agreement with Goldman Sachs which the SEC announced today - another one in which the guilty party "neither confirms nor denies wrongdoing" - looks like the worst one yet. The SEC has the power to shut Goldman Sachs down for what it did, and the offenses it describes are felonies. But they just gave out another slap on the wrist - no, make that a pat on the wrist - with today's announcement."
Media Gives GOP Cover On Buffett Rule
Media echoing GOP messages on the Buffett Rule. TPM's Brian Beutler: " [President Obama] first described it at the White House last September, shortly after the GOP’s persistent refusal to take any new tax revenue from wealthy Americans sank his bid to pass major deficit-reduction legislation ... this was a small piece of a broader package of fiscal policies Obama had introduced ... The real point was to pull back the veil on the GOP’s true vision for the country, force them to deal sensibly on key national priorities ... high-profile members of the commentariat have forgotten all of this history."
Small biz gets the bill for big biz tax havens. HuffPost: "If they were to cover the cost of corporate abuse of tax havens in 2011, the average U.S. small business would pay $2,116, according to a report released Tuesday by consumer group U.S. PIRG ... The U.S. Treasury loses an estimated $100 billion a year due to tax haven abuse, with $60 billion of that being tax avoidance by U.S. corporations, according to a Senate investigation. Another study by the GAO found that at least 83 of the top 100 publicly traded corporations use offshore tax havens."
Small biz not worried about regulation or taxes. W. Post: "The Hartford Financial Services Group asked 2,000 small businesses to describe their biggest barriers to success and found that complaints about government regulations and taxes were quite low down on the list ... Interestingly, the more successful a business is, the more likely it is that it will believe that government regulations are a problem."
Speaker Tries New Poison Pill On Transportation Jobs Bill
Boehner may politicize stopgap transportation funding bill with Keystone provision. Roll Call: "Passing a short-term measure that includes Keystone is a key step for Boehner. He hopes to include some energy provisions in a final transportation conference, because the rules require one chamber to include a provision in its version of a bill if it is to be considered in order during conference proceedings. More significantly, it could help coax holdout conservatives to back the bill."
NJ Gov. Christie's decision to kill unfinished rail tunnel project slammed by GAO. NYT's Paul Krugman: "The governor asserted that the projected costs were rising sharply; the report tells us that this simply wasn’t true. The governor claimed that New Jersey was being asked to pay for 70 percent of a project that would shower benefits on residents of New York; in fact, the bulk of the financing would have come either from the federal government or from the Port Authority ... The governor poses as a man willing to make hard choices for the future, but what he actually did was sacrifice the future for the sake of personal political advantage."
CA agency approves revamped high-speed rail plan. AP: "To reduce costs, the authority proposes a high-speed line through California's Central Valley then connecting it to existing urban rail lines in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas ... Sacramento, the state capital, and San Diego, a major tourist destination, will not be directly connected to the high-speed rail line as envisioned in the project's initial phase. Even a bullet train connection to Anaheim, home of Disneyland, was removed to save money ... The Legislature has until Aug. 31 to authorize the bond sale that would get the project started."
Breakfast Sides
Austerity is killing Spain, notes NYT edit board: "Spain is already wracked by a depression-level unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent (and approaching 50 percent for those ages 16 to 24). But it is in for even higher levels of misery under the austerity budget that Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy unveiled at the end of March, after the European Union rebuffed his pleas for more fiscal flexibility ... They could be avoided if Ms. Merkel and her misguided partners would finally recognize that restoring the competitiveness of Europe’s economically weakened south requires more investment in reform and growth and less obsessive targeting of short-term deficit arithmetic."
Taxpayer subsidized Exxon pays CEO $35M salary. Reuters: " Exxon Mobil Corp's chief executive earned 20 percent more in 2011 than the year before, and the company said it saw no reason to change its pay practices ... proxy firm ISS criticized Exxon's compensation practices, and argued that the company's shareholder returns did not justify executives' pay packages. Returns, ISS said, were inflated by higher crude oil prices ... Exxon said that it had spoken with a number of shareholders about its compensation practices following a non-binding 'say on pay' proposal that won approval with 67 percent of shareholder votes."
Trade pact with Colombia under fire before Latin America summit. NYT: "The president of the AFL-CIO, Richard L. Trumka, wrote to Mr. Obama last week warning him not to certify that Colombia has complied with a side agreement requiring that nation to do more to stop the decades-long killings of labor leaders there. On his way to Colombia, Mr. Obama will stop in Tampa, Fla., whose port handles a significant amount of trade with southern neighbors."
Fed appears split on next steps. Bloomberg: "William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed, and Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said the 2014 time-frame is needed to lower unemployment from 8.2 percent. Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota said rising inflation may prompt an interest-rate increase as early as this year, while Philadelphia’s Charles Plosser said policy should hinge on economic performance, not a calendar commitment."
The Founding Fathers loved mandates, finds TNR's Elner Elhauge: "n 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington ... In 1792, a Congress with 17 framers passed another statute that required all able-bodied men to buy firearms ... It enacted a federal law requiring the seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. That’s right, Congress enacted an individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance. And this act was signed by another framer, President John Adams."
