Studs Terkel and Bill Moyers in their 1984 documentary for CBS News
When Studs died in 2008, Bill presented this brief tribute, including excerpts from a documentary the two made in 1984 for CBS News.
With oil pump jacks as a backdrop, President Barack Obama speaks at an oil and gas field on federal lands, March 21, 2012, in Maljamar, NM. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
In fact, according to the website Politico, “Energy industry bigwigs have spent the past three-plus years talking trash about President Barack Obama’s policies, but that’s not stopping their executives and employees from filling his campaign war chest.”
“Workers from some of the country’s largest oil, gas and electric utility companies — including ExxonMobil, BP and Exelon — have given $772,000 to Obama’s campaign through mid-April, according to donation data for this election cycle compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.”
That’s less than half of what the sector has given to Mitt Romney and doesn’t include industry contributions from the Koch Brothers and others to anti-Obama super PACs, but it’s still impressive. Among the contributors are Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention Committee, and Exxon attorney Gregory Kenney, who told Politico, “[Obama]’s been fine. He left us to compete in the free-enterprise system. I don’t take judgment.”
Matt Yglesias writes in Slate that Mitt Romney’s Liberty University commencement address included a line about the correlation between education and family values, and economic prosperity. In his speech, Romney pointed out that “for those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and marry before they have their first child, the probability that they will be poor is 2 percent. But if [all] those things are absent, 76 percent will be poor.”
Yglesias writes:
“These are striking numbers, but they raise the age-old question of correlation and causation. Does this mean that the representative high-school dropout would be doing much better had he stuck it out in school for a few more years? Or is it instead the case that the population of high-school dropouts is disproportionately composed of people who have attributes that lead to low earnings?
When it comes to early pregnancy, surprising new evidence indicates that Romney and most everyone else have it backward: Having a baby early does not hamper a young woman’s economic prospects, as Romney implies. Rather, young women choose to become mothers because their economic outlook is so objectively bleak.” [Read more]
Bella Abzug, center with hat, smiles as she holds up her ERA sign in a pro-equal rights demonstration on New York's Fifth Avenue, Aug. 26, 1980. (AP Photo)
Money Unlimited: “In one sense, the story of the Citizens United case goes back more than a hundred years. It begins in the Gilded Age, when the Supreme Court barred most attempts by the government to ameliorate the harsh effects of market forces. In that era, the Court said, for the first time, that corporations, like people, have constitutional rights.” [Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker]
How the ‘War On Women’ Quashed Feminist Stereotypes: “When Phyllis Schlafly is forced to concede that not all feminists are ugly, it’s clear that something has gone awry on the right. Sure enough, in April, Schlafly, a conservative crusader who has been peddling stereotypes of women’s activists as physically and socially unappealing for decades, thought she should warn cadets at the Citadel not to fall for one. ‘Some of them are pretty,’ she said. ‘They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.’” [The Washington Post]
We’re proud to collaborate with Mother Jones in sharing insightful journalism related to money and politics. We’ll be posting this weekly roundup every Friday. Share your thoughts about these must-read stories and always feel free to suggest your own in the comments section.
A quick look at the week that was in the world of political dark money…
Hoosier (super PAC) daddy?: Tea party candidate Richard Mourdock unseated six-term Sen. Richard Lugar in this week’s Republican primary in Indiana, thanks in no small part to super PACs. As iWatch News’ Michael Beckel reports, pro-Mourdock groups spent even more than his campaign. Overall, Sunlight Foundation notes, the contest saw “the biggest outside money dump of any congressional race thus far.” At $2.2 million, the top outside spender was the antitax super PAC Club for Growth Action, which ran anti-Lugar ads like this:
Joe Arpaio, the 79-year-old “love him or hate him” Maricopa County Sheriff, was hit with a civil rights lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department this week, alleging civil rights violations, racial profiling and unlawful arrests by his “volunteer posse.” Arpaio, who doesn’t shy from controversy, says the charges are politically motivated and vowed to fight the suit.
Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, said, “Leadership starts at the top and all of the alleged violations that are outlined in the complaint are the product of a culture of disregard for basic rights… that starts at the top and pervades the organization.”
In 2009, NOW on PBS Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa interviewed Arpaio as an addendum to an Exposé report on immigration policy in Arizona, in collaboration with local reporters from Arizona’s East Valley Tribune.
In this new feature, we’ll share stories from around the Internet that we’re passing around here at Moyers HQ. Share your own “must reads” from today below in the comments section. We’d love to hear what you’d recommend!
The New York Times Dealbook: JPMorgan Discloses $2 Billion in Trading Losses
“JPMorgan Chase, which emerged from the financial crisis as the nation’s biggest bank, disclosed on Thursday that it had lost more than $2 billion in trading, a surprising stumble that promises to escalate the debate over whether regulations need to rein in trading by banks.”
Rolling Stone: How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform by Matt Taibbi
“It’s bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it — with a big assist from Congress and the White House.”
President Barack Obama high-fives late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel as Caren Bohan, a Reuters journalist and president of the White House Correspondents' Association watches during the most recent White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
All figures through March 2012
The Center for Responsive Politics produced this infographic (click to enlarge) about those formidable fundraisers known as “bundlers.” These well-connected and well-heeled FOOs and FORs have usually maxed out on their personal contribution limit ($5,000) and are willing to go the extra mile, asking wealthy friends and contacts for political donations. They collect that money in “bundles” and write large checks to the candidates’ campaigns. Some very successful bundlers have raised upwards of $1 million. They are sometimes rewarded with ambassadorships or other appointments when their candidate gets elected.
After the Jack Abramoff scandal, Congress passed laws that require candidates to disclose registered lobbyists working as bundlers for their campaigns. In 2008, Senators Obama and McCain promised to disclose information about any bundler who raised over $50,000. This year Obama is continuing that practice, but Mitt Romney is not. He has only disclosed the identities and amounts raised by the 22 registered lobbyists raising money for his campaign. President Obama’s campaign doesn’t accept money from registered lobbyists. Learn more about this year’s bundlers at OpenSecrets.org.
In this new feature, we’ll share stories from around the Internet that we’re passing around here at Moyers HQ. Share your own “must reads” from today below in the comments section. We’d love to hear what you’d recommend!
Newspapers and magazines carrying pictures of President-elect Francois Hollande are seen in a bookshop in Paris Monday. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)
The New York Review of Books: How to End This Depression by Paul Krugman
“The depression we’re in is essentially gratuitous: we don’t need to be suffering so much pain and destroying so many lives. We could end it both more easily and more quickly than anyone imagines — anyone, that is, except those who have actually studied the economics of depressed economies and the historical evidence on how policies work in such economies.”
Click on the wheel to visit the Guardian website.
Just as President Obama’s views on same-sex marriage have evolved over time, laws across the country have also evolved to grant — and sometimes deny — LGBT rights on a range of issues. The Guardian newspaper website launched a new interactive yesterday that details the laws in each state regarding same-sex marriage; hospital visitation; hate crimes; adoption; and workplace, school and housing discrimination. Compare the laws in your state or region with the rest of the country. You can even sign in to Facebook and focus on rights in the states your friends live.
