Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy.

The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period.

Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

Think Progress: Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

Postal Service Cuts Could !nterfere With Elections, Delay Vote By Mail Ballots

With Con­gress debat­ing plans to shut down post offices and pos­si­bly elim­i­nate Sat­ur­day mail deliv­ery, some elec­tion offi­cials are wor­ried that bring­ing the U.S. Postal Ser­vice out of the red could harm elec­tion pro­ce­dures — per­haps even in time for the Novem­ber 2012 pres­i­den­tial election.

In Novem­ber the Postal Ser­vice announced it lost $5.1 bil­lion in fis­cal 2011, not includ­ing the man­dated $5.5 bil­lion owed to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to pre­fund retiree health ben­e­fit payments. For the ser­vice to return to prof­itabil­ity, it must cut $20 bil­lion by 2015.

Sen­ate leg­is­la­tion would pro­tect Sat­ur­day ser­vice for the next two years, but a House bill would per­mit a reduc­tion to five-day-per-week mail deliv­ery six months after enact­ment. The Postal Ser­vice has said it intends to cut Sat­ur­day ser­vice unless Con­gress requires it to continue.

Steve Mon­teith, the Postal Service’s man­ager of trans­ac­tion cor­re­spon­dence, said tak­ing away Sat­ur­day deliv­ery or shut­ting post office doors could force elec­tion offi­cials to send bal­lots out a day ear­lier to make sure they arrive on time.

Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Rep. Dar­rell Issa, who chairs the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee, co-sponsored the House bill. The service’s finan­cial losses, he said, put elec­tions at risk.

“Fun­da­men­tal reforms are needed to pro­tect the finan­cial via­bil­ity of the United States Postal Ser­vice, includ­ing its ser­vices that are inte­gral to vot­ing,” Issa said.

Full Arti­cle: The Daily Caller.

Who Killed the Postal Service?

The Postal Service just announced roughly $3 billion in service cuts that will slow down the delivery of first-class mail for the first time in 40 years. Starting in April, it plans to shutter more than half of its 461 mail processing centers, stretching out the time it will take to ship everything from Netflix DVDs to magazines. One-day delivery of stamped envelopes will all but certainly become a thing of the past.

The announcement is just the latest sign of a sad and increasingly dire fact: the Postal Service is in shambles. This past fiscal year, it lost a mere $5.1 billion. In 2012, it's facing a record $14.1 billion shortfall and possible bankruptcy. In order to turn a profit, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says the agency needs to cut $20 billion from its annual budget by 2015. That's almost a third of its yearly costs.

How did it come to this?

The culprits include the Internet, labor expenses, and, as with pretty much every problem our country faces now, Congress.

Obama's Kansas Speech a Game-Changer

The Democratic Strategist

WaPo columnist Greg Sargent takes a look at President Obama's speech in Osawatomie Kansas, and finds it to be a critical point of departure, "a moral and philosophical framework within which literally all of the political and policy battles of the next year will unfold, including the biggest one of all: The presidential campaign itself." Citing Obama's emphasis on "inequality itself as a moral scourge and as a threat to the country's future," Sargent continues:

Obama's speech in Kansas, which just concluded, was the most direct condemnation of wealth and income inequality, and the most expansive moral defense of the need for government activism to combat it, that Obama has delivered in his career...

The clash of visions Obama tried to set the stage for today -- a philosophical and moral argument over government's proper role in regulating the economy and restoring our future -- is seen by Dems as more favorable to them than the GOP's preferred frame for Campaign 2012, i.e., a referendum on the current state of the economy and on Obama's efforts to fix it. Hence his constant references to the morality of "fairness."

"We simply cannot return to this brand of you're-on-your-own economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country," Obama said, in what will probably be the most enduring line of the speech. A number of people on Twitter immediately suggested a new shorthand: "YoYo Economics."

That line is key in another way. Dems believe inequality will be central in 2012 because they think there's been a fundamental shift in how Americans view the economy, one rooted in the plight of the middle class and in the trauma created by the financial crisis.

A New York Times editorial affirms Sargent's evaluation of the President's speech: