By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - "Corporations are people, my friends,” said Mitt Romney. And in Citizens United, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that corporations, like individuals, are free to spend unlimited sums in so-called “independent expenditures” for candidates.

The result — as TV viewers in contested presidential states, or in states with contested Senate or key House seats can attest — is an unprecedented flood of money into political ads. Much of it from independent front groups that are spending ever-greater sums of money from anonymous donors largely on attack ads.

What is going on? Clearly, the super rich, the big banks, the corporations are looking to buy these elections. Mitt Romney, the candidate from Bain and the world of what Republican Gov. Rick Perry called “vulture capitalism,” is a major beneficiary. But candidates in both parties work to raise this money, compromising their own ability to stand up for working people.

Consider Romney’s agenda. He’s for tax cuts for the rich, for ending the estate tax that applies to multimillion-dollar fortunes, for sustaining the “carried interest deduction” that allows private-equity millionaires like himself to pay lower tax rates than the police who patrol their streets. It goes on. He’s for a “territorial corporate tax system” that would exempt corporations for any profits earned or reported abroad. This essentially turns the world into a potential tax haven, encouraging companies to move jobs or report profits overseas. No one has been more creative at that than Romney’s own company, Bain Capital, which is notorious for opening shell companies everywhere from the Cayman Islands to Luxembourg.

So naturally, Wall Street bankers, the private-equity billionaires, the multinational companies are lining up for Romney, and flooding pro-Romney groups with money.

With inequality reaching Gilded Age levels, the super-rich are once more looking to buy protection. They are also looking to eliminate any competition.

Oct. 28, 2012

By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - No matter who wins the November 6 election, he will have a mess on his hands.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 will cut $109 billion from the federal budget in 2013 unless Congress is able to figure out how to either reduce the deficit or cut another deal.  The cuts will range from 7-9 percent, and they’ll hit everything – Pell Grants, housing, employment services, and defense.  Already, some government contractors are cutting back in anticipation of sequestration, and some politicians are saying that our national defense will be “hallowed” by sequestration.  While Mitt Romney talks about getting more ships for the Navy, the fact is that all of us will have to do with less if Congress cannot see its way out of this sequester.

Congress pushed itself into sequestration in 2011 when our nation’s credit rating slipped because our leaders failed to pass a budget.  In a showdown with President Obama, this Congress stepped all the way out on the cliff that we are now poised to fall off.  Rather than making reasoned decisions about cuts, the notion of something automatic was supposed to scare everyone into sanity.  The last year, however, has reminded us that few who make public policy are sane.

Most economists are clear that cutting spending during a recession or its weak recovery makes no sense.  Deficit notwithstanding, taking money out of the economy is a prescription for disaster.  We have only just climbed out of a recession, but recovery is not assured.  We face the possibility of a double dip recession by withdrawing money from the economy.

One of the biggest challenges in avoiding the sequester is the fact that the Congress that will convene to attempt to make a deal is a lame-duck Congress. Some will have lost their jobs by January, but they still have the opportunity to pass laws between November and January. They have nothing to lose by continuing their obduracy, and they have few incentives to compromise if they haven’t done so before.

Republicans don’t want to raise taxes, especially on the wealthy, which is one way to avoid the sequestration trap.  Democrats don’t want to cut vital social programs.  That simplifies matters just a bit, but the bottom line is we get more money either by increasing taxes or cutting programs.  We can’t increase taxes on the already beleaguered middle class, and the poor don’t have a penny to spare.  That leaves the wealthy, but they are the sacred cows of the Republican Party.  Cutting social programs hurts those who have already been too hurt.  Congress is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

One of the things we know about sequestration is that it will cost jobs, both in the federal government and with those who work with the federal government.  Our extremely weak recovery, which leaves us with an unemployment rate over eight percent, cannot sustain more job losses.

Our Congress, with a median wealth of $750,000, excluding the value of their homes, cannot fathom the lives or ordinary human beings, people who get up in the morning, pour cereal in a bowl, take a fast crack at the newspaper before hopping a subway or bus on the way to work, put in their hours, often more than eight, and then subway or bus it home.  Many make a pit stop at a day care center or school, and then rush home to put food on the table.  With median wealth of about $20,000, including home ownership, their lives are a far cry from those of their elected representatives.  The gap, perhaps, explains why the American Jobs Act has not yet been passed, though it has languished in Congress for nearly a year.

Sequestration has come up only tangentially in the Presidential debates.  Yet it is one of the most important immediate issues that our nation faces.  Across the board cuts hit more heavily at the bottom than at the top, and those who are already suffering will find themselves suffering more.  It would have been great to have one of the debates focused specifically on this issue of sequestration.  The way this sequestration is implemented is likely to depend on the outcome of the election.  Yet both candidates have been mostly silent on this matter.

What happens after November 6?  Whether President Obama or Willard Romney wins, hard choices will have to be made.

Oct. 28, 2012

Dr. E. Faye Williams

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Many Americans have already gone to the polls. Others will go soon to make a collective decision that will determine the direction of this country for the next half-century or more. From where I sit, the choice could not be clearer.

President Barack Obama’s positions have been firmly rooted in fairness and opportunity. Middle-class and small business tax cuts, development of manufacturing jobs, huge investments in education, infrastructure, and employment re-training to prepare our workers for a new generation of jobs support his ideal of growth from the middle. The First Lady said it best, “When you walk through the door of opportunity, you leave it open for those who follow.”

Questions surrounding Romney’s own taxes highlight concerns that his only interest is to “redistribute” more money from the working-class to the wealthy. After all, he has said that 47 percent of Americans are unwilling to take personal responsibility-- undeserving of the benefits they receive. He’s told us how he “enjoys firing people,”how we should’ve “let Detroit go bankrupt,” and that “corporations are people.”

Health of Americans in general--women, specifically, has been an emphasis of the President’s first term. Obamacareanswers questions of public health that have been asked for over a century and achieves a goal presidents have tried to reach for over fifty years. President Obama created a comprehensive program that’ll increase delivery while lowering costs of care, and we women have greater control over our bodies.

Although his Massachusetts health plan is a near duplicate of Obamacare, Romney’s current prescription for the ill American is to go “to the emergency room.” He suggests protections for those with pre-existing conditions, but, when his veil of misrepresentations is lifted, we learn that unless people maintain uninterrupted insurance they are not eligible.

When President Obama came into office, he was faced with two unfinanced wars—one of which we entered under the deception of the Bush Administration’s lie of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The President has fulfilled his promise to end our involvement in the war in Iraq and has pledged to withdraw our forces from Afghanistan by 2014. Immediate withdrawal from any war is an unrealistic expectation, but the President has authored a plan of transition that’ll get us out of Afghanistan under the best possible circumstance. He has eliminated the threat of Osama Bin Laden and many of his supporters to the world.

For years, Romney sat on the sidelines and condemned the President for “telegraphing” our military withdrawals – first from Iraq and now from Afghanistan. He has simultaneously advocated greater and then lesser US military involvement in the Middle East, and has even suggested preemptive armed conflict with Iran. The war weary American spirit and shrinking treasury should fear this saber-rattling.

It’s obvious the Romney team has begun to understand the aversion of the uncommitted voter to his ultra-conservative views. In these few days before the election, Romney is engaging in, as President Obama said in the last debate, “airbrushing”history by moderating his previously stated positions. He’s trying to make himself more palatable by misrepresenting his philosophies of governance. In other words, he’s saying whatever he feels is necessary to win. I don’t believe the American people will accept the many Romney “U” turns.

Life’s experiences have generally shown me that most people place a great value on truth and consistency. We select friends and close associates on those qualities and the selection of our elected representatives usually follows suit. The reasons for Romney’s level of popularity, despite his many misrepresentations, suggests unfounded animus toward our President rather than an appreciation for Romney.

The choice that is so clear is that we can choose the radical uncertainty of a known prevaricator or we can continue our movement FORWARD.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is Chair of the National Congress of Black Women. www.nationalcongressbw.org. 202/678-6788)