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WATCH: Occupy Wall Street Protests Ignite Progressive Political Fire In Washington

2011-10-05T12:40:00Z

WASHINGTON -- With the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations inspiring scores of similar protests nationwide, a progressive conference in the nation's capital has drawn thousands of activists dedicated to harnessing that energy into a full-blooded political movement.

The conference is an overhaul of the annual progressive event hosted by Campaign for America's Future, which teamed up with Van Jones, former adviser to President Barack Obama, for a three-day gathering starting Monday dubbed "Take Back The American Dream." Like most major political events in recent years, the conference was dominated by economic concerns, with the political prominence of too-big-to-fail banks, widening income inequality and rampant unemployment taking center stage. Speakers at the conference and activists in attendance excoriated Beltway politicians for focusing on the federal budget deficit instead of addressing the American jobs crisis.

Leaders at the conference also pressed progressives to focus their energy beyond Obama, highlighting broad dissatisfaction with an administration that has repeatedly derided liberals, dismissing many of the activists present at the conference as "the professional left." The message from progressive leaders -- who included Jones, economist Robert Reich and The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, among others -- was clear: Neither political party in Washington is listening to working Americans struggling through the worst recession since the Great Depression. Progressives will have to continue hosting events like Occupy Wall Street that bring voters into the streets and pressure political leaders to take action on the jobs crisis. Progressive members of Congress have already taken note, with the Progressive Caucus -- the largest alliance of House liberals -- endorsing Occupy Wall Street amid the conference cheerleading.

Conference events continue through Wednesday, with an official Occupy D.C. jobs rally scheduled for the early afternoon.

WATCH: Occupy Wall Street Protests Ignite Progressive Political Fire In Washington

2011-10-05T12:40:00Z

Conference events continue through Wednesday, with an official Occupy D.C. jobs rally scheduled for the early afternoon.

#OccupyWallStreet Protests Spark Optimism At Progressive Political Conference

2011-10-03T22:31:00Z

WASHINGTON -- Progressive leaders have flocked to the nation's capital for a conference devoted to organizing a political movement to overwhelm the Tea Party. They are tapping into the national energy surrounding the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations in New York, which have sparked other demonstrations in cities around the nation.

The conference, dubbed "Take Back the American Dream," is an overhaul of an annual event hosted by Campaign for America's Future, a progressive think tank and advocacy group. Economic concerns are the top focus of the conference, with speakers bemoaning growing income inequality, rampant joblessness and what they consider Washington's catering to the demands of large corporations.

The high-profile protests in New York City are having a significant effect on the conference; the official schedule on Monday was changed at the last minute to include a special opening plenary updating attendees on events in New York, as other activists distributed a faux-newspaper dubbed "The Occupied Wall Street Journal."

Although the conference is sponsored by a D.C.-based organization and features many progressives who are based in the nation's capital, most of the conference has been dedicated to focusing activist energy outside Washington and on public demonstrations akin to those taking place on Wall Street. Van Jones, a former Obama adviser who was ousted amid pressure from former Fox News host Glenn Beck, summed up the conference's goals in a speech that prompted a standing ovation from the packed house of organizers.

"I'm not mad at the Tea Party. I'm not mad at them for being so loud. I'm mad at us for being so quiet," Jones said. "They're not wrong to stand up for what they believe in, silly as it is. We've been wrong. We have the wrong theory of the presidency. ... We went from having a movement to a movie, as if the movement we were a part of was based on a slogan called 'Yes he can.' I believe it was called, 'Yes we can.'"

The annual Campaign for America's Future conference has been a mainstay of progressive politics in recent years, but its popularity has eroded, in part because of frustration with the Obama administration among some on the left. The audience at this year's conference, however, is remarkably more optimistic and energetic than that of last year's event, with hundreds of attendees reveling in the news coming from the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Dissatisfaction with President Obama's ability to capitalize on the progressive energy that helped catapult him into the White House is clearly on display. Jones and many lesser-known political activists called on attendees to stop waiting on the administration and start taking action in their own neighborhoods. Speaking at a panel on protests targeting Wall Street banks, Guido Girgenti, a student organizer from Occidental College in Los Angeles said the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon had made his job a lot easier.

"A lot of young people never learned how to engage in politics. They were fed that the Obama campaign was the peak of progressive politics," said Girgenti. "Today, my feed is full of 18 to 20 year olds, and everyone wants to go to an occupation. It's amazing."

At the same panel, Phoenix, Ariz., resident Sharon Stewart drew a connection between the current resurgence of progressive confidence and a longer history of progressive activism.

"I remember some of this energy around the Obama campaign, the same kind of feeling from that," Steward said. She also mentioned the 1999 protests of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. "I think the Battle for Seattle maybe kicked off some of this stuff that's happening now," she said.

Patent Reform Bill Signed Into Law After Years Of Debate

2011-09-16T16:05:00Z

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- President Barack Obama signed the long-debated patent reform bill into law on Friday, finally ending a seven-year nightmare for innovation advocates who had initially hoped to significantly overhaul the patent system.

Obama has repeatedly said the bill will spur job growth, a characterization that has been challenged by patent experts.

"It really doesn't create jobs for anybody except maybe patent lawyers," says James Besson, a lecturer at Boston University School of Law and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center on Internet and Society.

Congress has been wrestling with the legislation for the better part of a decade, steadily eroding the bill's original purpose and instead delivering favors to a host of politically entrenched corporate players, from banks and trial lawyers to multinational drug companies.

While standing next to Eli Lilly Chief Executive John Lechleiter at a science and technology-focused high school in Alexandria on Friday, Obama again invoked the spirit of entrepreneurship and the job-creating power of innovation, saying the bill will make it easier and faster for inventors to obtain patents.

"We can't afford to drag our feet any longer, not at a time when we should be doing everything we can to create good innovative jobs," Obama said. "We should be encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit anywhere we find it."

But in many key industries today, patents have become a tremendous barrier to innovation, rather than a facilitator. And granting more patents faster may well exacerbate the problem.

When Congress initially began considering patent reform during the first term of President George W. Bush, the bill was designed to fix a broken litigation system. A series of federal court decisions had authorized the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to begin issuing patents on software and "business methods."

While patents had historically been restricted to new gadgets, these new patents were notoriously broad in scope and vague in definition, allowing their owners to launch lucrative lawsuits against companies making generally unrelated products. Inundated with applications, the USPTO issued hordes of patents on generic or commonly-used business techniques.

Inventors who actually intended to bring new products to market could not know if their new products would violate some vague, decades-old patent held by a lawsuit specialist -- and would therefore invite a barrage of time-consuming litigation. Hundreds of companies dubbed "patent trolls" sprang up that did not produce any goods, but made their money suing for patent infringement.

In 2005, the House passed a version of patent reform that directly targeted these poor-quality patents and the legal system that was encouraging thousands of frivolous lawsuits every year, predominantly targeting computer, internet and software companies. But the bill never cleared the Senate, and as drug companies threw their weight around Capitol Hill, the substance of the legislation was steadily worn away. Limiting patent infringement damages, making it harder to sue for patent infringement, or making the patent review process more rigorous would encourage makers of generic drugs to produce versions of patented drugs and increase the costs of patenting new drugs -- both outcomes that threatened Big Pharma's profits.

In 2010, Congress dropped all attempts to reform the patent litigation system, opting instead to focus on resolving disputes over who receives a patent when two people come up with the same new invention at roughly the same time. The bill changes the U.S. from a "first-to-invent" standard to a "first-to-file" standard, which is more consistent with patent systems abroad. This eliminates the need to hold court proceedings to determine which inventor independently came up with their idea within a span of a few weeks or months, but it does not address most of the issues with the patent litigation system.

The congressional decision to pass on litigation reform has changed the way traditionally innovative companies operate. Patent trolls are no longer small operations. The nation's largest tech firms -- Apple, Oracle, Google, Microsoft and more -- now devote tremendous resources toward acquiring patent portfolios and filing lawsuits against each other. Google, which has been late to the game, is widely believed to have purchased cellphone maker Motorola Mobility in large part to enable it to defend itself from patent lawsuits and file new lawsuits of its own.

Patent Reform Bill Signed Into Law After Years Of Debate

2011-09-16T16:05:00Z

Obama has repeatedly said the bill will spur job growth, a characterization that has been challenged by patent experts.

But in many key industries today, patents have become a tremendous barrier to innovation, rather than a facilitator. And granting more patents faster may well exacerbate the problem.

Obama Pushes Medicare Cuts In Jobs Speech

2011-09-09T00:20:32Z

WASHINGTON -- In his jobs speech before Congress Thursday night, President Barack Obama appeared to call on congressional Democrats to cut Medicare, a politically toxic proposal that undercuts a previous Democratic campaign strategy.

Obama pushed to cut Medicare during the debate over raising the federal debt ceiling, urging lawmakers from both parties to accept a "grand bargain" that involved cutting both Social Security and Medicare. Obama's move upset congressional Democrats, who saw a proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to radically cut Medicare as an attack ad opening going into the Nov. 2012 elections. House Republicans voted for the Ryan proposal en masse, just months after hordes of GOP freshmen were swept into office amid advertisements vowing to protect the hugely popular entitlement program.

Democrats won an unexpected special election in New York earlier this year by attacking the Republican candidate, Jane Corwin, as an enemy of Medicare, based on her views on the Ryan budget plan.

"Now, I realize there are some in my party who don’t think we should make any changes at all to Medicare and Medicaid, and I understand their concerns," Obama said during his speech Thursday. "But here’s the truth. Millions of Americans rely on Medicare in their retirement. And millions more will do so in the future. They pay for this benefit during their working years. They earn it. But with an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don’t gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won’t be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it. "

Medicare faces long-term problems due to the rising costs of health care, a uniquely American problem sparked by protections the U.S. government provides for health insurance companies and drug manufacturers. Obama's health care reform bill attempted to lower those costs, but his call now to "reform" Medicare is sure to be interpreted as a call to raise the eligibility age for Medicare, something Obama urged during the debt ceiling debate to no avail.

As Ezra Klein reported for the Washington Post on Wednesday, Obama is planning a separate deficit reduction package that liberal groups expect to include raising the eligibility age. Making this change for both Medicare and Social Security hits poorer participants in the programs hardest, since they are more likely to die at a younger age.

UPDATE: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee released a statement criticizing Obama's Medicare comments and deriding several of Obama's jobs proposals as ineffective.

"Tonight, President Obama proposed corporate tax cuts paid for with cuts to Medicare benefits. Forcing Americans to choose between jobs and Medicare is unthinkable, especially for a Democratic president," the statement reads. "America needs a massive government investment in jobs – not Medicare benefit cuts, not corporate tax giveaways, and not telling the unemployed to work for big corporations for free."

Patent Reform Bill Passes Congress After Final Round Of Votes On Special Interest Favors

2011-09-08T23:28:46Z

WASHINGTON -- As expected, the U.S. Senate passed patent reform legislation by a vote of 89 to 9 on Thursday evening, paving the way for the bill to be signed into law by President Barack Obama. But the bill, which has spent the better part of a decade working its way through the legislature, couldn't be approved without one last set of votes on giveaways to entrenched special interests.

It has taken Congress more than seven years to pass patent reform, and the corporate fight that sprung up around the bill meant rich rewards for those on Capitol Hill. Millions of dollars in campaign contributions have poured in over the course of the debate, with nearly every conceivable corporate interest weighing in, from Wall Street banks and drug companies to Silicon Valley tech giants and Texas trial lawyers.

President Obama has repeatedly called the patent bill an easy job-creator, though that assertion has been roundly rejected by patent experts.

As it stands, the bill has been broadly uncontroversial since March 2010, when Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) reached a compromise that stripped the legislation's efforts to reform the patent litigation system. The compromise will leave companies free to secure questionable patents -- the combover haircut, the crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich -- and secure huge patent infringement judgements from companies in court, a practice that has become especially popular in the technology sector.

Removing the teeth from the bill, however, made it a prime target for special interests seeking specific favors, and Congress has continued raking in campaign contributions over the past 18 months.

The amendments the Senate considered on Thursday were perfect examples of such pet projects. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) openly acknowledged the highly targeted nature of the disputes, noting that her amendment was an effort to reverse a provision "supposedly targeted at a single earmark for the banking industry," which she said had been "broadened" in the House version of the bill so that "many other technology companies will be affected."

Cantwell's amendment was designed to limit the scope of an obscure measure known as "Section 18," which was indeed originally intended to help Wall Street banks shake off two questionable patents from a company called DataTreasury. The company has no employees and more than 1,000 shareholders, but has raked in at least $400 million by suing banks over two patents on the idea of processing checks electronically. It owns the type of broad, vague patents that intellectual property experts loathe, but banks have been unable to overturn them in the court system, which grants significant deference to the decisions of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Prolific Wall Street fundraiser Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) dropped a provision into the bill targeting the DataTreasury patents, but as Cantwell said, that provision expanded slightly in the House version. According to a memo from the Republican Study Committee, just four companies formally objected to Section 18 in the House.

One of those companies was Intellectual Ventures, a firm which owns tens of thousands of patents but, like DataTreasury, makes no products, instead profiting from legal threats. The company has long been the subject of derision among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but it is headquartered in Cantwell's state, and she has toured its offices.

Cantwell has received $6,000 from the company's employees this year -- not an epic amount, but enough to convince a senator to promote a dead-on-arrival amendment. Cantwell's amendment to restrict Section 18 to DataTreasury, excluding Intellectual Ventures patents, died with just 13 yea votes and 85 senators opposed.

The more serious endgame threat to the larger bill came from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). Coburn had wanted the patent office to keep the fees it collects from applications and spend as it sees fit, but House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) stripped out Coburn's provision, maintaining congressional control over the money. Coburn's effort to reverse Ryan Thursday threatened the overall bill's very passage.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Leahy acknowledged the Coburn amendment's ability to derail the legislation, urging his colleagues to vote against it.

"This amendment can sink years of effort by both Republicans and Democrats ... over a mere formality," Leahy said. "We should not kill the bill over this amendment."

Leahy won narrowly, garnering 50 votes to Coburn's 48 and defeating the Oklahoma Republican's amendment. Had the amendment passed, the Senate would have been forced to kick the bill back to the House, triggering months of further negotiations.

Patent Reform Refuses To Die, Congress Keeps Cashing In

2011-09-06T23:12:00Z

UPDATE: The patent reform bill cleared a filibuster on Tuesday by a vote of 93 to 5.

WASHINGTON -- The seemingly endless congressional circus known as patent reform still carries on.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced he would allow senators to submit amendments to the legislation later this week, after the bill clears a filibuster. The legislation, which the Senate approved in March by a vote of 95 to 5, is all but certain to clear that filibuster in a vote scheduled for Tuesday night. But those fresh amendments, however few in number, indicate that Congress will capitalize on the massive special interest melee surrounding the patent bill for as long as it can.

Senators now claim to be tied up over an obscure provision in the bill known as "fee diversion" -- something that has essentially become a matter of debate between Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's operations are funded by fees the office charges to patent applicants. Congress generally takes those fees and diverts a significant chunk of them to other government functions. The Senate version of the patent reform bill that passed this March allowed the PTO to maintain independent control of all the fees it collects. That raised concerns for House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan, who stripped the provision from the House version of the bill.

"There's still some political wrangling going on some of the finer points, but this bill just doesn't do much," says James Bessen, a lecturer at Boston University's law school and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center on Internet and Society.

The fee diversion provision has little to do with the original goals reformers had in mind when Congress began considering patent legislation during the first term of President George W. Bush. Since then, patent reform has roped in just about every corporate heavyweight on Capitol Hill, from multinational drug companies to Silicon Valley tech giants to Wall Street banks to Texas trial lawyers.

And a year and a half after leaders from both political parties agreed to gut much of the bill's basic substance, the certain-to-pass legislation has continued to draw attention from campaign donors. The Senate could have simply rubber-stamped the House bill and sent the legislation to the president's desk. By refusing to do so, members of Congress get a few more chances to cajole those donors -- each additional legislative step for the bill allows lawmakers to ask for another round of contributions.

TROLL TRAUMA

For years, tech companies have been bombarded by frivolous lawsuits from firms dubbed "patent trolls" -- shadowy companies that don't actually produce products, instead making money buying up patents and suing other companies for patent infringement. This troll business model depends on the tremendous volume of patents the PTO has approved over the years -- some of them vague and bizarre -- from the comb-over haircut to the concept of sending email over a cellphone. When armed with a vaguely defined patent, trolls can sue a company and often even win judgments.

Reformers say the resulting system actively discourages innovation. Any time an inventor brings a new product to market, she may be accidentally infringing on a little-known, loosely defined patent, and find herself in court. Patent attorneys know this and intentionally tailor patent applications to include the broadest possible language, giving their owners the greatest capacity to sue in the future.

As a result, the PTO grants a huge number of patents with boundaries that often go undefined until the patent owner goes through a lawsuit. That legal uncertainly leads many companies that are sued for patent infringement to settle out of court, often for tremendous amounts of money.

But overhauling the patent litigation system by making it harder to sue or lowering infringement damages would have lessened the consequences for infringing on certain patents.

And that could have threatened profits for pharmaceutical giants, so Pharma brought its lobbying weight to the patent reform table, and eventually defeated the Silicon Valley companies that favored patent reform, convincing both political parties to gut the proposed bill in March 2010.

"Our inability to lasso the patent problem will hog-tie our innovation as a country going forward, and this legislation, sadly, does not get the job done," said Ed Black, President of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a lobbying group for tech firms.

The patent litigation system broke down after Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) announced that Congress would not, actually, be overhauling it. The lack of substantive public policy change in the resulting bill may have even convinced some Silicon Valley companies to stop supporting it and instead begin using the unreformed patent litigation system to their advantage.

Corporate behemoths like Oracle and Microsoft began filing patent-troll-style lawsuits against their competitors. This summer, a consortium of tech giants including Microsoft and Apple made a multi-billion-dollar bid to buy up a collection of patents owned by the bankrupt Canadian telecom giant Nortel. The move was an open assault on Google, which responded by inking a deal to purchase cell phone manufacturer Motorola -- and its tremendous vault of patents.

REFORM, REFORMED

After jettisoning plans to overhaul patent lawsuits, Congress tasked itself with the far more modest goal of churning through the backlog of patent applications awaiting review from the Patent and Trademark Office -- currently around 700,000 applications. The White House entered the fray, with President Barack Obama repeatedly insisting that the legislation will create jobs. Obama even enlisted economic adviser Austan Goolsbee for a brief explainer video in March.

WATCH:

Goolsbee proclaims that the main problem with the U.S. patent system is the length of time it takes to get a patent. It now takes about three years for a patent application to be approved, Goolsbee notes, and the economy would be more prosperous if that time were reduced. He says the Obama administration's plan -- otherwise known as the Leahy-Hatch compromise -- will reduce that time by 40 percent. This would make America a better place to be an entrepreneur, Goolsbee declares, closing the video by saying, "We've got the greatest inventors in the world, and it's time we give them the help they need to bring this country where it needs to be."

Lawmakers have deployed similar talking points. Speaking from the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, Reid said the bill would "unlock the job-creating potential of each patent."

But critics say today's patents are geared more toward their ability to generate lawsuits than their ability to generate jobs.

"Just how many genuinely new ideas are there out there?" said Black. "People always use the example of Edison and the light bulb. Who really thinks that there are half a million light-bulb-type ideas every year?"

THE FEE DIVERSION

In addition to addressing fee diversion, the patent reform bill does two things: It creates a new process at the PTO for challenging patents after they have already been granted, and it changes the U.S. patent system from first-to-invent to first-to-file.

The proposed PTO system is designed to provide a less costly arena than the federal court system for challengers to take on low-quality patents, but it is unlikely to be heavily used. If a company challenges a flimsy patent at the PTO and loses, after all, the patent owner has a potential target for its first patent infringement suit.

The first-to-file switch simply makes it easier to resolve disputes when multiple people file the same patent. Under current law, if several people claim the same patent, the first person to invent the idea gets the patent (the U.S. is the only country with this patent system). Under the reform bill, the first person to file the application will win. This is not a conspiratorial sign-off on patent theft -- stolen ideas still don't get patents -- but it does harmonize the U.S. system with the rest of the world's patent laws.

But the latest Senate patent scuffle doesn't even directly deal with new processes at the PTO -- it's over how the office is funded and what happens its fees.

Sen. Coburn is now hitting the op-ed pages over fee diversion, demanding the patent reform bill be killed unless the PTO is given total control over the fees it collects.

"If Congress does not make this fix, President Obama should veto [the bill]," Coburn said in a Tuesday op-ed in the National Review. "Otherwise, he will be complicit in a scheme that is rigged to rob the very people we say we want to help -- America's job creators."

Of course, one way to slow the flood of patent applications and increase the PTO's funding would be to simply raise some of the fees the PTO charges to patent holders.

"Fees should just be a whole hell of a lot higher, especially renewal fees," said Bessen, the Harvard fellow. "That would weed out a whole lot of garbage, but nobody seems to want to confront that simple reality."

Patents must be renewed every four years, and hefty renewal fees, Bessen notes, would discourage patent trolls from filing patents on unproductive inventions in hopes of cashing in through a future court proceeding. Fee increases are not included in the current bill.

Patent Reform Refuses To Die, Congress Keeps Cashing In

2011-09-06T23:12:00Z

UPDATE: The patent reform bill cleared a filibuster on Tuesday by a vote of 93 to 5.

WASHINGTON -- The seemingly endless congressional circus known as patent reform still carries on.

TROLL TRAUMA

But overhauling the patent litigation system by making it harder to sue or lowering infringement damages would have lessened the consequences for infringing on certain patents.

REFORM, REFORMED

WATCH:

Lawmakers have deployed similar talking points. Speaking from the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, Reid said the bill would "unlock the job-creating potential of each patent."

But critics say today's patents are geared more toward their ability to generate lawsuits than their ability to generate jobs.

THE FEE DIVERSION

But the latest Senate patent scuffle doesn't even directly deal with new processes at the PTO -- it's over how the office is funded and what happens its fees.

Sen. Coburn is now hitting the op-ed pages over fee diversion, demanding the patent reform bill be killed unless the PTO is given total control over the fees it collects.

Of course, one way to slow the flood of patent applications and increase the PTO's funding would be to simply raise some of the fees the PTO charges to patent holders.

Obama's Close Ties To CEOs Whose Firms Dodge Taxes

2011-09-01T13:20:00Z

WASHINGTON -- As the nation struggles with a stagnant economy, President Barack Obama has preached overhauling the U.S. tax code to spur economic growth. But as he gears up for what looks to be a tough reelection campaign, the president has surrounded himself with the current loophole-riddled system's prime offenders: corporate executives whose companies have profited off of those loopholes while reaping millions for themselves.

Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank, named in a new report 25 major American corporations whose CEOs were paid more last year than their firm's total U.S. income tax bill. Of those business elites, 10 have substantive ties to Obama -- including some who have official economic policy advisory positions in his administration -- according to a HuffPost analysis of the report.

All told, these 10 CEOs with Obama connections brought in over $158 million for themselves last year. Their companies' federal tax bill, however, was a combined net benefit of $5.4 billion -- meaning the federal government actually owed these companies billions of dollars. Eight of the 10 firms not only did not pay taxes; they received large refunds. The 10 companies scored combined U.S. profits of $26.8 billion.

HuffPost's calculations are based on data compiled in the report by the IPS. The IPS figures, in turn, are drawn from documents the companies filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Obama has repeatedly spoken of improving the corporate tax code by closing special loopholes for politically connected companies and using that money to lower the official corporate tax rate. President Ronald Reagan embarked on a similar project in 1986, enabling the federal government to increase tax revenues even as it lowered the formal tax rates. Although corporate tax revenue is at postwar lows, Obama's plan is much less ambitious: He doesn't want to actually increase tax revenues at all. The benefits from closing loopholes would exclusively flow straight to other corporations.

But Obama has given several of the executives who benefit most from the current system prominent economic advisory positions. The Obama administration declined do comment for this story.

Of Obama's corporate favorites, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and Honeywell CEO David Cote have served in the highest-profile public positions associated with the administration. Immelt has been pilloried with criticism ever since Obama named him head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. GE required massive amounts of government aid when the subprime mortgage bets made by its financial wing, GE Capital, resulted in enormous losses during the financial crisis. While the company is headquartered in the U.S., a majority of its employees are based abroad (GE is somewhat unique among major companies for disclosing this figure, a fact Immelt has touted in recent speeches), and it has a robust staff of former U.S. Treasury officials who deploy complicated accounting maneuvers to lower the company's tax bills. Immelt made $15.2 million last year, with GE's $3.3 billion tax benefit accounting for more than half of the 10 companies total tax benefit.

Cote has received far less public scrutiny than Immelt, although he may have greater influence over U.S. economic policy. Obama named Cote to a previous super-committee on economic policy, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, known as the Simpson-Bowles panel. An Obama nominee, Cote was the second-ranking Republican on the Commission, behind former Sen. Alan Simpson. Once derided by liberals as an obsessively conservative approach to cutting the deficit, the Simpson-Bowles panel's recommendations have increasingly been used by congressional Democrats to fend off more radical proposals from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican leadership. Cote scored $15.2 million in pay last year, while Honeywell secured a $471 million tax benefit. Honeywell told HuffPost that it complied with tax laws and that its executive pay standards are guided by executive performance. The company also said it is proud of Cote's government work.

Ford CEO Allan Mulally, Boeing CEO James McNerny Jr. and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg all served on Obama's Export Council, which the president established in 2010 to help advance his goal of doubling the exports of American products to other countries by 2015. Seidenferd stepped down as Verizon CEO earlier this year, but he is currently chairman of the company. Combined, the three executives secured $58.4 million last year, while their companies scored a combined $767 million federal tax benefit.

Ford notes that its tax bill this year is particularly low relative to its profits due in part to a law allowing companies who post hefty losses to qualify for tax breaks in future years. Ford lost $2.7 billion in 2009 and $6.5 billion in 2010. Mulally was paid $17.9 million and $17.0 million in those years.

Obama has placed other executives on separate economic panels. eBay CEO John Donahoe served on the White House Council for Community Solutions, Qwest Communications CEO Edward Mueller chaired the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris is co-chair of Obama's Advanced Manufacturing Partnership and Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown was on the President's Management Advisory Board. These four CEOs hauled in a combined $57.2 million last year and received a total tax benefit of $714 million. Qwest was recently acquired by CenturyLink, which distanced itself from Mueller's pay, saying it was set by Qwest's board, not CenturyLink's.

Although Dow Chemical scored robust international profits for 2010, it was the only one of the 10 firms tied to Obama to post a loss on its U.S. operations during the year. Liveris recieved $17.7 million in total compensation.

Of the 10 CEOs, International Paper CEO John Faraci has the loosest tie to Obama. The president invited Faraci to travel with him to Brazil for the signing of a preliminary trade agreement, and Faraci spoke favorably of the deal during the trip.

"It's no surprise that the CEOs that IPS chose to look at are earning more than their corporations paid in taxes in 2010 given how many major corporations pay no taxes at all," said Bob McIntyre, Director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a separate think tank that works exclusively on improving U.S. tax policy. McIntyre is currently working on a separate report that he says has found "dozens" of top corporations who have paid no federal income taxes in recent years.

When asked to comment on the discrepancy between CEO pay and federal income tax bills, the companies emphasized that they complied with federal law on their taxes. Others said the report was unfair, because it does not count the other types of taxes companies pay -- state, local and payroll taxes. Several also noted that their tax bills appear larger if you count "deferred taxes" in the calculation. One of the most prominent ways to defer taxes, however, is to stash money in offshore tax havens such as Panama that do not tax corporations. So long as that money remains abroad, companies never actually have to pay U.S. taxes on it. The hypothetical future taxes that firms would have to pay if they brought the money back is included in the "deferred tax" number that companies report in annual filings. Deferred taxes, in turn, are typically included in corporate calculations for their "effective tax rate."

The IPS report by contrast only looks at actual money companies expected to pay -- or receive -- from the federal government in income taxes for the year. State, local and payroll taxes do not directly effect the federal budget deficit. The formal federal income tax rate for large corporations is 35 percent.

"This report is just the latest piece of evidence -- you've seen a lot of press reports on some very big companies that show they actually pay very low taxes despite the officially high tax rates," Chuck Marr, director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told HuffPost. "Think about the gut-wrenching cuts that are going to be made in education, in innovation and research. Those are just going to be worse if we don't address the corporate sector. So, if we're gonna put scientific research on the table, corporate taxes should be right there with it."

Democratic Senator Demands Action From Obama On Foreclosures

2011-08-30T20:50:00Z

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Tuesday urging him to address the nation's devastating foreclosure crisis as part of a new plan to create jobs.

"We can and should adopt an aggressive strategy to reduce foreclosures nationally," Merkley wrote. "There are as many as 5 million foreclosures anticipated to come -- this is a huge tragedy for individual families but it is also a drag on our communities and our economy."

Merkley's call to address foreclosures comes as Obama is poised to make what his administration is billing as a major new jobs initiative, with the nation continues to struggle with an unemployment rate over 9 percent.

The collapse of the housing bubble has left many families owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. As families struggle to pay their mortgages, they have less money to spend on other activities. This lack of spending, in turn, means businesses cannot sell as many products and are unable to hire more workers. A July 2010 report from the International Monetary Fund suggested that foreclosure problems added 1.25 points to the unemployment rate -- or more than 10 percent of the current unemployment rate.

In his letter, Merkley specifically suggested three policies designed to curb foreclosures and applauded Obama for vowing to "go back to the drawing board" on housing policies which have failed to stem the tide of foreclosures since Obama took office. Foreclosures accelerated dramatically during the final years of the Bush administration and have remained high. Obama's signature foreclosure relief effort, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), is almost universally regarded as a disastrous failure.

Among the policies Merkley advocate for was the "right to rent" proposal developed by economist Dean Baker from the Center on Economic and Policy Research. Baker suggested giving foreclosed families a right to rent their homes at market rates for several years after their bank seized their home. Banks are generally reluctant to act as landlords, so the plan would encourage banks to work out affordable mortgage modifications with troubled borrowers. Merkley also suggested implementing new refinancing initiatives for borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth.

Merkley previously called on Obama to beef up the administration's anti-foreclosure efforts before this year's State of the Union address, asking the president to roll out new policies in his speech. Obama introduce any new initiatives during the speech.

Another Rick Perry Staffer Ensnared In Teacher Death Bond Scheme

2011-08-26T20:50:00Z

WASHINGTON -- Texas Governor Rick Perry's ties to Swiss banking giant UBS go beyond his relationship with former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas). Perry's current chief of staff and top press person for his campaign, Ray Sullivan, spent five years as a lobbyist for UBS in Texas -- a tenure that began the same year Gramm made his macabre pitch for Perry to enable Wall Street gambling on the deaths of Texas teachers.

Sullivan reaped between $300,000 and $600,000 lobbying for UBS between 2003 and 2008, according to data compiled by Texans for Public Justice, a nonpartisan government transparency group. Disclosure forms only require lobbyists to indicate a salary range, not a specific salary. Sullivan had several other lobbying clients during those same years. He has been described in the local Texas press as a member of Perry's trusted inner circle.

Sullivan worked for Perry both in the governor's mansion and in the late 1990s when Perry was then lieutenant governor. Sullivan started working for UBS in May 2003. That November, Perry aggressively pushed the Texas teacher pension fund and state teacher associations to sign off on a UBS plan to take out life insurance policies and annuities on retired Texas teachers -- an elaborate scheme in which the state of Texas would serve as a something of a bookie, setting up Wall Street bets on how long those teachers would live.

According to confidential notes obtained by the Huffington Post, the Perry administration had been elaborately briefed on details of the plan and was making a "hard sell" to teacher groups in behind-the-scenes meetings. When the plan leaked to the press in December 2003, however, the Perry camp claimed to have had only tangential involvement after receiving an inquiry from Gramm. The deal soon fell apart.

Gramm, a chief architect of the scheme, drew the critical attention of several Texas newspapers at the time, but Sullivan's involvement received much less scrutiny, though his longstanding ties to Perry create the same appearance of corruption and cronyism.

"Sullivan is classic example of the way Perry works," explained Andrew Wheat, research director with Texans for Public Justice. "There's a coterie of insiders that move back and forth between the governor's office, the governor's campaign and the corporate lobby. ... It's a beautiful relationship for everybody except the public."

Sullivan and Perry and did not respond to requests for comment for this story, nor did UBS representatives.

Another Rick Perry Staffer Ensnared In Teacher Death Bond Scheme

2011-08-26T20:50:00Z

Sullivan and Perry and did not respond to requests for comment for this story, nor did UBS representatives.

Former Lawmaker Decries Corporate Control Of Government

2011-08-23T16:30:00Z

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers rarely speak candidly about the relationship between large corporations and government, avoiding the ugly realities surrounding campaign contributions and legalized corruption. But occasionally when lawmakers leave office, they're more frank about the intersection of business and politics. In an interview with The Huffington Post, former Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) issued a stark warning about the government's inability to rein in the growing power of multinational corporations.

"Because [corporations] have become so international and global in nature, it's highly questionable whether governments can actually control corporations to a sufficient degree to prevent them from controlling governments," said Kanjorski, who served for 26 years in the House of Representatives until he was ousted last year amid a swarm of Republican congressional victories.

Two of the most worrying examples of the increasing ungovernability of corporations, Kanjorksi argued, are the current push to bestow tax breaks on American firms for stashing capital overseas and the failure to implement a new rule breaking up too-big-to-fail banks.

A coalition of tech firms, drug companies, energy conglomerates and lobbying front-groups have been pushing for a tax holiday on corporate cash that companies hide overseas. American companies hold money in nations that have very low tax rates, such as Panama, in order to avoid paying into the government's coffers.

Current laws allow that money to remain untaxed until companies bring it back to the U.S, and naturally, some of the firms who are most active in this kind of tax avoidance are now lobbying to be allowed to bring the money back at a rate as low as 5 percent.

"I'm not saying we shouldn't adjust our tax code otherwise -- there are thing we need to do there -- but to give them a free ride, what are you encouraging? The next guy who doesn't like the law will just do the same thing," Kanjorski said of the proposed tax holiday. "The reality is, why should we be bargaining with super-national corporations who are actually acting against our interest in avoidance of what our law is? We are impotent to get them to respond."

Kanjorski was speaking from experience. The district he represented has long been neglected by corporate America. Home to the small cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, the 11th District of Pennsylvania was a significant manufacturing hub for much of the 20th century, but firms shipped most of those jobs elsewhere decades ago, leaving the region struggling economically well before the financial crash of 2008 devastated the national labor market.

The recent turmoil in stock markets suggests the fiscal fallout from 2008 is not over. The European Union continues to be shaken by financial difficulties, with major banks in several countries still holding onto a variety of problematic debts, including loans to nations like Greece that appear unlikely to be able to repay in full. The E.U.'s failure to quell concerns of further financial troubles has unsettled investors in U.S. financial giants, with Bank of America hit particularly hard, falling 45 percent in the past three months, including a 7.9 percent plunge on Monday.

As Congress cobbled together its reform bill in response to the crisis, Kanjorski wrote an amendment that gave regulators the authority to break up big banks if they were deemed a risk to the financial system. A stronger amendment that would have required the six largest banks to be dismantled failed in the Senate.

But Kanjorski said he's concerned that his plan only made it through Congress because top regulatory officials and top financiers had reached an understanding that it would never actually be used.

"There may have been a tacit agreement between the regulatory people and the financial institutions that they were not going to implement this provision -- they were just going to let it float," Kanjorski said. "I think that would be unfortunate."

Kanjorksi refused to specify which regulators he believed may be unenthusiastic about the proposal, but said many of the "outgoing" regulators, particularly FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, have done a "terrific" job. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recently announced that he will be continuing in his post for some time and has frequently been criticized for too closely associating with big banks. The Treasury Department declined to comment for this story.

"Hey, these are very powerful people controlling huge amounts of money and influence," Kanjorksi said, referring to big bank executives. "What we need is a very strong prudential regulator. We need a philosopher king, and I nominate Paul Volcker. Somebody like Paul Volcker could take this thing and run with it."

Kanjorski is now running Kanjorski & Associates, which dubs itself a public policy consulting firm, allowing it to conduct quasi-lobbying activities without formally registering as lobbyists. But Kanjorski said his consulting business does not work with Wall Street firms -- he's focused instead, he says, on businesses in Pennsylvania.

While many big U.S. banks are generally on stronger footing than many of their European brethren, financial giants here also continue to face lingering concerns surrounding predatory and exotic mortgages from the peak years of the housing bubble, along with legal risks from more recent improper foreclosure proceedings. But U.S. banks' exposure to European banks has also become a significant concern for investors, which Kanjorski said his amendment was designed to combat.

"Our banks are so intertwined now between Europe and the U.S. that if you take the situation with the bonds, they could either bring down our banks, or force the U.S. to bail out the European banks," Kanjorksi said.

Bank of America spokesman Jerry Dubrowski said that his company has "more than enough" capital to run its business, noting that its official capital ratios are more than double regulatory minimums. Those ratios, however, are calculated based on asset valuations that investors currently view as overly optimistic. The bank's $65 billion stock market value is far below the $222 billion value that the company lists in its most recent SEC filing.

Kanjorski said his proposal did not imply that the U.S. government needs to micromanage corporate affairs. There's a difference, he said, between limiting corporate power in order to preserve a viable economic architecture and dictating how every aspect of a business ought to operate.

"I'm not saying we should get involved in capital in all things, but where it's abusive, you damn well should."

Did Mike Pence's Office Edit His Wikipedia Page To Make It More Flattering?

2011-08-18T19:00:00Z

WASHINGTON -- The office of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) appears to have been editing the congressman's Wikipedia page to present a more flattering portrait of the hardline conservative lawmaker.

According to the entry editing history for the Mike Pence Wikipedia page, a user named "HouseofRep." made six separate revisions of the page in April of this year, ranging from minor tweaks to significant overhauls. Those revisions included a host of content from Pence's official bio at his website, prompting a review for potential copyright infringement by Wikipedia. The user HouseofRep. responded to the review, posting, "Just to note, the Early Life, Education and Career section is currently correct. We own the rights to his bio page at mikepence.house.gov and have emailed wikipedia verifying that." The website mikepence.house.gov is the congressman's official website.

The user removed a reference to Pence's old job as a conservative talk radio host, and added several awards, leadership positions and positive descriptions of Pence's conservative record. HouseofRep. also changed the heading of a section labeled "Early life, Vagina, Education and Career" to read simply, "Early life, Education and Career." In addition, the user removed the phrase "chris is a loser" from another subheading.

Pence is currently running for governor of Indiana.

Congressional staffers frequently spend time editing Wikipedia pages for lawmakers, so much so that there is even a Wikipedia page devoted media attention from Capitol Hill staffer edits of Wikipedia entries. Mike Pence's office did not respond to a request for comment.