Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a constitutional amendment entitled the Saving American Democracy Amendment which would overturn the Supreme Court decision in a case called Citizens United vs. FEC which defines corporations as people.





The text of the amendment states:

SECTION 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.

SECTION 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.

SECTION 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.

SECTION 4. Congress and the States shall have the power to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own spending, and to authorize the establishment of political committees to receive, spend, and publicly disclose the sources of those contributions and expenditures.

There is a petition to show support for the amendment here. Please think about signing it.

Apparently, when I wasn't looking the live action Alvin and the Chipmunks films have been so successful that there is a third film entitled Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked being released today.

As of this writing, the film is hovering at 10% critical approval according to Rotten Tomatoes a far cry from the 21% of the second film and the 26% of the original.

But while critics seem to shrug these films off, people tend to adore them. A lot. Moviefone created a graph to illustrate the popularity in cash.

Since the singing chipmunks were once lonely little orphans who were rescued by their talent manager, Moviefone decided to compare the Chipmunks' movie dollars with some real charities devoted to animal welfare and art achievement.

click for larger version


These films have made more almost ten times more than the Make-A-Wish foundation received in donations for 2009. Of course, that is all Chipmunk films compared to a single year of donations. But if we look at individual film grosses it doesn't get much better.

The first film made $217,326,974 domestically and $361,336,633 worldwide. The second film dwarfed that with a haul of $219,614,612 domestic and $443,140,005 worldwide.

But according to the graph, the Make-A-Wish foundation received a little over 97,000,000 in 2009 and the Environmental Defense Fund made slightly over $134,000,000.

Some others?

American Friends Service Committee for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010 had a total income of $27,585,741

Feeding America for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010 charted $25,284,767 in individual contributions.

Having never seen any of the chipmunk films, I am not criticizing them as films...but I find it shockingly sad that people would rather collectively give $217,326,974 to watch a film about three computer generated chipmunks than give a similar amount to an actual charitable organization doing some good in the world.

Our individual priorities affect this country just as much as the priorities of the United States government and Wall Street. Americans are more than happy to stand in long lines waiting to spend $500 for an iPad 2 but balk at the government helping those in need.

A world where we are more amenable to showering money on critically reviled entertainment than in donating money to organizations which actually help others isn't a very noble world at all.

In October 2010, I wrote about a subscription based fire department in Tennessee. At that time, the Cranick family called 911 and the firefighters refused to show up because the Cranick's hadn't paid the $75 subscription fee.

This time, the firefighters showed up. And watched a house burn to the ground.

Vicky Bell told WPSD-TV that she called 911 when her mobile home in Obion County caught fire. Firefighters responded but did not put out the blaze because she does not subscribe to the local fire service.

The subscription is a fee paid to a local town. No fee, no services.

Rural residents who want fire protection can get service from the nearby town of South Fulton, but they must pay a $75-a-year fee. South Fulton Mayor David Crocker said that if the city's firefighters responded to people who didn't pay there would be no incentive for anyone to subscribe.

See? It is all about incentive. If we just help everyone who needs help, then nobody will pay for help. Capitalism at its finest.

Who would create such a policy?

A local newspaper further pressed Mayor Crocker about the city’s policy, which has been in place since 1990. Crocker, a Republican who was elected in 2008 and serves with a county commission where every seat is also filled by a Republican...

Oh....right.

It is a common refrain from the right that defense spending creates jobs and boosts the economy.

In September, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stated that defense cuts would increase unemployment.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is warning members of Congress that threatened defense cuts in the order of $1 trillion over the next decade would add 1 percentage point to the U.S. unemployment rate, a senior defense official said on Thursday.

In October 2011, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) claimed:

As a fiscal conservative, I tend to oppose increasing government spending for the purpose of job creation. But I think we must understand that the defense industry is unique in that it relies entirely on federal government dollars. We don’t spend money on defense to create jobs. But defense cuts are certainly a path to job loss, especially among our high skilled workforces.

But this isn't really all that...um....true.

Dean Baker, macroeconomist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently blogged about a new study done by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts.

Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employment requirement tables, they find that on a per dollar basis spending on health care or energy conservation creates 50 percent more jobs than spending on the military. Spending on education creates more than twice as many jobs as spending on the military.

The report, entitled The U.S. Employment Effect of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: 2011 Update, makes it very clear while military spending may create some jobs, there are far more productive ways to create jobs.

Since mid-2011, the impact of military spending on job creation has been discussed prominently in the United States, as one component of the broader debate on how to reduce the federal government’s fiscal deficit. The figures we present here aim to help clarify that debate. Our key finding is that spending on the military is a poor source of job creation relative to spending on the green economy, health care, education, or even personal household consumption.

The U.S. government spent $689 billion on the military in 2010.2 This amounts to about $2,200 for every resident of the country. The level of military spending has risen dramatically since 2001, with the increases beginning even before September 11, 2001. In constant dollar terms (after controlling for inflation), military spending rose at an average rate of 5.3 percent per year from 2001 – 2010, i.e. through the full eight years of the Bush presidency and the first two years under President Obama. By contrast, the overall U.S. economy grew at an average annual rate of 1.6 percent over this past decade. As a share of GDP, the military budget rose from 3.0 to 4.7 percent between 2001- 2010. At the current size of the economy, a difference between a military budget at 4.7 rather than 3.0 percent of GDP amounts to $250 billion.

Domestic spending gives you more bang for your buck, too.

Nevertheless, because spending on clean energy, health care, and education produces substantially more jobs overall per $1 billion in spending, it also creates more good jobs. This includes jobs paying within a mid-range, which we define as between $32,000 - $64,000 per year, as well as high-paying jobs, i.e. those paying over $64,000.

There are many reasons why non-military domestic spending is more productive. Many have heard of the old $400 claw hammer and a $9,000 wrench but now the military is spending $400 per gallon of gas.

Parachuting a barrel of fuel to a remote Afghan base takes sharp flying skills, steady nerves and flawless timing.

It also costs a lot of money—up to $400 a gallon, by military estimates.

But the Pentagon is stuck with the expense for the foreseeable future, especially given the recent deterioration in U.S.-Pakistani relations.

"We're going to burn a lot of gas to drop a lot of gas," said Capt. Zack Albaugh, a California Air National Guard pilot deployed with the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron.

I care more about teachers than $400 a gallon drums of gasoline. How about you?

Cartoon from Ampersand