As we continue our effort to keep you up-to-date on how money corrupts American government and politics, as well as other news of the day, we’re pleased to publish this daily digest compiled by BillMoyers.com’s John Light.
The rich are different than you and me –> Or at least, megadonors are. Demographically speaking. Jeremy Merrill at the NYT’s Upshot blog: “Only about 30 percent of big donors to campaigns are women, which, in an election that’s forecast to feed on billions of dollars of donations, is a gender gap in political influence.” Hillary Clinton’s donors, however, are the exception. Merrill: “more than 52 percent of her 2016 campaign’s big contributors are women”
Donors spread the good news –> After a successful meeting with Sheldon Adelson, a number of Adelson allies — including wealthy conservatives who formerly supported Gov. Scott Walker — are lining up behind Marco Rubio. Reid Epstein at WSJ: “Marco Rubio met with more than a dozen of Scott Walker’s former top fundraisers Wednesday, as several of the Wisconsin governor’s donors plan to back the Florida senator’s presidential campaign.”
“Trickle-up economics” –> Inequality is rising even more quickly than many experts had previously thought, writes Deirdre Fulton at Common Dreams: “The 2015 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report puts worldwide wealth inequality at a level ‘possibly not seen for almost a century,’ the researchers write. The data also reveals a declining middle class and that the poorest half of the world’s population owns just one percent of its assets. Meanwhile, the number of ‘ultra-wealthy’ people continues to climb.”
RELATED: At The New York Times, John Harwood writes that despite populist rhetoric, most GOP tax plans would serve to make the wealthiest wealthier. “For all their talk of anger and angst among working-class voters, Republican candidates have shied away from economic populism. … All told, the conservative Tax Foundation estimates that Mr. Rubio’s plan would cut taxes an average of 17.8 percent for all taxpayers — but 27.9 percent for the top 1 percent of earners.”
Missing the forest for the trees? –> At Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi argues that Hillary Clinton’s plan to prevent the next crisis doesn’t do enough to crack down on the big financial players whose fraudulent schemes tanked the economy last time around. “The average voter won’t know how absurd and desperate it is to point to faceless ‘shadow’ financiers as villains when the real bad guys are famed mega-firms that are right out in the open, with their names plastered all over every second city block. … Both regulators and criminal prosecutors already have enormous theoretical power over the market. They’re not particularly handicapped by a lack of regulatory tools. The issue is how much political will a future executive plans on exerting.”
Win for kitchen workers–> The company behind a number of popular New York restaurants, Union Square Hospitality Group, is eliminating tipping. Ryan Sutton digs into the details at Eater.
Inside the campaign to kill workers’ comp –> Corporations are trying to opt out of state workers’ compensation and replace it with their own programs. “ProPublica and NPR obtained the injury benefit plans of nearly 120 companies who have opted out in Texas or Oklahoma — many of them written by [lawyer Bill] Minick’s firm — to conduct the first independent analysis of how these plans compare to state workers’ comp. The investigation found the plans almost universally have lower benefits, more restrictions and virtually no independent oversight.”
More on the Democratic debate –> At WaPo’s Plum Line blog, Paul Waldman writes that there was an elephant in the room Tuesday night: How will you deal with a Congress that has repeatedly stymied Obama’s agenda? Waldman: “No candidate is going to tell voters, ‘Here are the things I’d like to do, although, let’s be honest, I probably won’t be able to.’ Even if it’s the truth.” AND: At The American Prospect, Nathalie Baptiste writes that the debates are “proof of the power of disruptive protest,” demonstrating that the #BlackLivesMatter protestors have made a difference.
Half the story –> The media was not keen to replay one aspect of Bernie Sanders’ blistering critique of cable news’s obsession with Clinton’s emails. Lee Fang at The Intercept: “Playing clips from the debate, CNN and other networks focused almost exclusively on the political impact of Sanders expressing solidarity with Clinton about her damn emails — while editing out his comment about the failures of the media to talk about the biggest issues facing America.” David Roberts writes for Vox that while the candidates largely passed the test on climate change, CNN flunked.
The great sort –> At The Monkey Cage blog, Seth Hill and Chris Tausanovitch make the case that while our politicians have become more polarized, regular Americans haven’t. They’ve just sorted more evenly into political parties.
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