Crooks and Liars

Fox News Still Makes Viewers Dumber According to New National Survey

karoli — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:00:04 +0000

It's confirmed on a national basis now. Fox News really does make you dumber, as if those of us who have had to watch it for even a few minutes haven't figured that out. Not only does it make viewers dumber, but they'd be more informed and better off if they watched no news at all.

That's a stunning conclusion, because it proves they actually succeed at indoctrinating their audience with falsehoods. Via Huffington Post, news of an updated study to the one last year, this time on a national basis:

Researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University updated a study they had conducted in late 2011. That study only sampled respondents from New Jersey, where the university is located. This time, the researchers conducted a nationwide poll.

The poll asked questions about international news (Iran, Egypt, Syria and Greece were included) and domestic affairs (Republican primaries, Congress, unemployment and the Keystone XL pipeline.)

The pollsters found that people were usually able to answer 1.8 out of 4 questions on foreign news, and 1.6 of 5 questions on domestic news, and that people who don't watch any news were able to get 1.22 of the questions on domestic policy right.

As the study explained, though, people who watched only Fox News fared worse:

The largest effect is that of Fox News: all else being equal, someone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly -- a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all. On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR, they would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well. And people watching only "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" could answer about 1.42 questions correctly.

According to the study, Fox News is more likely to make conservatives dumber, proving that they reinforce factless assertions:

The study showed that the effects of ideologically-pitched media, like Fox News, MSNBC and talk radio, depend on who is listening or watching. On the whole, MSNBC, for instance, had no impact on political knowledge one way or the other. However, liberals who watched MSNBC did better on the knowledge questions, answering correctly 1.89 of the domestic questions and 1.64 of the international questions correctly. Similarly, while moderates and liberals who watch Fox News do worse at answering the questions than others, conservatives who watch Fox do no worse than people who watch no news at all. Talk radio also had differential effects depending on the ideology of the listener, but they were much smaller. None of the other news media had effects that depended on ideology.

The real bottom line? Watch Jon Stewart. Those viewers were better informed than any of the others except NPR listeners.

Mitt Romney: Vote for Me or Some Day, America Will Turn into Europe Eventually

Blue Texan — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:00:24 +0000

Peggy Noonan has always had a soft spot for Willard. In 2008, she angrily accused the GOP's base of rejecting him because he was a Mormon. So Friday, she basically turned her column over to him -- and he laid out the argument for his candidacy.

"I think America is going to decide whether we will put ourself on a path toward Europe—whether we will become another nation dominated by government, where citizens are dependent on government for the things they want in life, where opportunity is sacrificed, where military strength is depleted to pay for government promises, where unemployment is chronically high and wage growth chronically low. That, in my view, is the course the president has put us upon." If Barack Obama is re-elected, "it will be very difficult to get off that path. If I'm elected, I will usher in a period of economic vitality," that will leave the world "surprised."

It's more than a little weird to be running on a hypothetical ("If you don't vote for me, something like this might happen in the future.") Why not run against Obama's actual record?

But let's take a look at these claims, one at a time.

...whether we will become another nation dominated by government...

Under Obama, government has gotten smaller, not bigger. Government spending has increased at the lowest rate since the 1950s. Oh, and taxes are at historic lows. Where is the dominating government Willard talking about?

...where citizens are dependent on government for the things they want in life...

This statement can't be factually rebutted because it's completely fact-free, unless you believe David Cameron and Angela Merkel are giving away free ponies to their citizens.

...where opportunity is sacrificed...

By "opportunity" I'm assuming Willard is talking about upward mobility, and the following European nations offer better opportunities to do better than your parents did than the United States: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Spain -- and France.

...where military strength is depleted to pay for government promises...

Defense spending has increased under Obama -- and the U.S. currently spends more than the next 14 countries combined on defense.

...where unemployment is chronically high...

Unemployment rates in the US and Europe don't look that different over time. But Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republicans and the Netherlands all currently have lower unemployment rates than the US.

...and wage growth chronically low.

Wages have been stagnant in the US since the 1980s.

So Willard is running a completely fact-free campaign -- against a hypothetical that has no basis in reality.

Colin Powell Expresses His Support for Gay Marriage

Heather — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Click here to view this media

As Think Progress noted, you can add former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the list of political figures who have followed President Obama's lead and come out in favor of marriage equality this week.

Powell appeared on CNN's the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer this Wednesday and said he has "no problem with it" and did not see any reason that gay people should not be allowed to be married.

BLITZER: I remember you were chairman of the Joint Chiefs when you installed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the U.S. military that prevented gays from serving openly. I know you changed your attitudes over these years, but what about gay marriage? Are you with the president in supporting gay marriage?

POWELL: I have no problem with it and it was the Congress that imposed "don't ask, don't tell". It was certainly my position and my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred as you'll recall. But as I've thought about gay marriage I know a lot of friends who are individually gay, but are in partnerships with loved ones and they are stable a family as my family is and they raise children, and so I don't see any reason not to say that they shouldn't be able to get married under the laws of their state or the laws of the country however that turns out. It seems to be the laws of the state. There may be religious objections to it and I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage, and they can hold that in sanctity of their place of religion and not bless them or solemnize (ph) them.

But in terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage and allowing them to live together with the protection of law seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president's decision, and I think most Americans increasingly understand that times have changed just like they change between gays in the military and while I was able to support removing that barrier to service. And so I hope everybody will just carefully look at this, and I understand the religious objections to it, but at the same --

(AUDIO GAP)

POWELL: -- diversity and change and my experience with many of my gay and lesbian friends is that they form unions as strong as any other unions I've seen and raise children that are good, strong children and are either heterosexual or homosexual, lesbian, depending on themselves, not because their parents happen to be.

Church Member Defends NC Pastor: LGBT People 'Worthy of Death'

David — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:00:25 +0000

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Members of Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina are speaking out in defense their pastor after he called for "lesbians and queers" to be detained inside electric fences until they all die.

Geneva Sims told WCNC that she had been listening to Pastor Charles Worley's sermon's since the 1970s and agrees with the message.

"He had every right to say what he said about putting them in a pen and giving them food," Sims explained. “The Bible says they are worthy of death. He is preaching God’s word.”

Church member Stacey Pritchard agreed that Worley was just speaking the truth.

“Sometimes you’ve got to be scared straight,” she said. “He is trying to save those people from Hell.”

During a sermon on May 13, the pastor had taken to the pulpit to express outrage over President Barack Obama's support for marriage equality.

"The Bible is against it, God is against it, I’m against it and if you’ve got any sense you’re against it," he preached. “I figured a way out to get rid of all the lesbians and queers. But it isn’t going to pass in Congress. Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals, and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out, feed em, and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce!”

Faith in America Executive Director Brent Childers told WCNC that Worley's message was dangerous to young LGBT people.

"That is what makes young LGBTs feel there is no hope," Childers warned. "When they see this type of rhetoric coming from a so-called Christian pastor, they aren’t going to want anything to do with the church—now or in the future."

“If you defend this pastor’s comments, you are mocking God’s love, God’s understanding and God’s knowledge.”

(h/t: Towleroad)

Mike's Blog Round Up

Michael J.W. Stickings — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Okay, let's look beyond America's (and, in my case, Canada's as well) borders to see what else is going on in the world...

Rodger A. Payne: Is Pakistan a failed or rogue state?

Fruits and Votes: Is Serbia, unlike France, a model of premier-presidentialism?

The Moderate Voice: Is "untrustworthy" Germany NATO's biggest problem?

Musings on Iraq: Is al-Maliki running another unjust Iraqi police state?

IntLawGrrls: Is a China-Japan-Korea free trade agreement on the horizon?

Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (@mjwstickings).

Send tips to mbru@crooksandliars.com

Open Thread

Bluegal aka Fran — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:30:00 +0000

Don't take the Bible too literally, except when it comes to teh geyz? Those Christianists don't speak for me.

Open thread below....

C&L's Late Night Music Club With Bob Dylan & George Harrison

Jared Shade Reynolds — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:00:12 +0000

Title: If Not For You

Artist: Bob Dylan & George Harrison

Happy birthday Bob Dylan!

If Not For You
	Price: $0.99 (As of 05/25/12 06:42 am details)

Myth McConnell

Jon Perr — Fri, 25 May 2012 02:01:26 +0000

In the wake of the debt-ceiling crisis he helped manufacture last summer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell boasted it was "a hostage that's worth ransoming" which "also is a new template" for the future. As it turns out, those threats were among the few true words McConnell has uttered. Because while he's promising once again to blackmail the White House over the debt ceiling, the Kentucky Republican claimed it's because "we'd like to do something about the nation's biggest problem, spending and debt, which of course is the reason for this economic malaise." Of course, as the data show, it's the very austerity policies here and in Europe which are costing jobs and hurting growth.

But Mitch McConnell's myth-making hardly ends there. On the economy, taxes, deficits, health care and so much else, virtually all of McConnell's talking points are tried - and untrue.

(Click a link to jump to the details for each below):

"Obama Made the Economy Worse"
"No Evidence Whatsoever That the Bush Tax Cuts Actually Diminished Revenue"
"Punishing Job Creators"
"We Look a Lot Like Greece Already"
Public Sector Layoffs Are a "Local" Problem
47 Million Uninsured Americans "Don't Go Without Health Care"
The Public Option "May Cost You Your Life"
Democrats Are "Sticking It to Seniors with Cuts to Medicare"

"Obama Made the Economy Worse"

For months, Mitch McConnell (for example, here, here and here) regurgitated the GOP talking point that President Obama "made the economy worse." Sadly for the trickle-down mythmakers of the Republican Party, the facts and the overwhelming consensus of economists - including John McCain's 2008 brain trust - prove otherwise. President Obama not only did not make the American economy worse; no thanks to obstructionist Republicans in Congress he saved the United States from "Great Depression 2.0" and put the nation on the path to recovery.

Start, for example, with the conclusions of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Despite Republican mythmaking that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) "created zero jobs," in November the CBO reported that the stimulus added up to 2.4 million jobs and boosted GDP by as much as 1.9 points in the previous quarter. As The Hill explained, the CBO has found that "President Obama's 2009 stimulus package continues to benefit the struggling economy":

The agency said the measure raised gross domestic product by between 0.3 and 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2011, which ended Sept. 30. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that GDP in that quarter was only 2 percent total...

By CBO's numbers, the $800 billion stimulus added up to 0.9 million jobs in 2009, 3.3 million jobs in 2010 and 2.6 million jobs in 2011.

Mark Zandi, an adviser to John McCain in 2008, was adamant on positive role of the stimulus. Federal intervention, he and Princeton economist Alan Blinder argued in August 2010, literally saved the United States from a second Great Depression. In "How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End," Blinder and Zandi's models confirmed the impact of the Obama recovery program and other federal interventions dating back to 2008, concluding that "laissez faire was not an option":

We find that its effects on real GDP, jobs, and inflation are huge, and probably averted what could have been called Great Depression 2.0. For example, we estimate that, without the government's response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8½ million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation.

"No Evidence Whatsoever That the Bush Tax Cuts Actually Diminished Revenue"

In his version of the Republican myth that "tax cuts pay for themselves," President Bush confidently proclaimed, "You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." As it turned out, not so much.

After Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt with his supply-side tax cuts, George W. Bush doubled it again with his own. (Reagan's performance would have been much worse, had he not raised taxes 11 times to help make up the shocking shortfall.) As a share of American GDP, tax revenues peaked in 2000; that is, before the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded, the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure, and if made permanent, over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP and the stimulus - combined.

Nevertheless, as the Republican Party waged its all-out attack in 2010 to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, the GOP's number two man in the Senate provided the talking point to help sell the $70 billion annual giveaway to America's rich. "You should never," Arizona's Jon Kyl declared, "have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans." For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed to defend Kyl's fuzzy math:

"There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject."

That may have been a view universally shared by virtually every Republican, but it happens to be wrong.

"Punishing Job Creators"

For years, Senator McConnell has been among the legions of Republicans wrongly arguing that even the slightest increase in taxes for the wealthiest Americans is tantamount to "punishing job creators." As his colleague John Boehner put it:

"The top one percent of wage earners in the United States...pay forty percent of the income taxes...The people he's [President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy."

If so, those expectations were sadly unmet under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6 percent during the Clinton administration, the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much.

On January 9, 2009, the Republican-friendly Wall Street Journal summed it up with an article titled simply, "Bush on Jobs: the Worst Track Record on Record." (The Journal's interactive table quantifies his staggering failure relative to every post-World War II president.) The meager one million jobs created under President Bush didn't merely pale in comparison to the 23 million produced during Bill Clinton's tenure. In September 2009, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee charted Bush's job creation disaster, the worst since Hoover.

That dismal performance prompted David Leonhardt of the New York Times to ask last fall, "Why should we believe that extending the Bush tax cuts will provide a big lift to growth?" His answer was unambiguous:

Those tax cuts passed in 2001 amid big promises about what they would do for the economy. What followed? The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II. Amazingly, that statement is true even if you forget about the Great Recession and simply look at 2001-7...

Is there good evidence the tax cuts persuaded more people to join the work force (because they would be able to keep more of their income)? Not really. The labor-force participation rate fell in the years after 2001 and has never again approached its record in the year 2000.

Is there evidence that the tax cuts led to a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation? Again, no. The rate at which start-up businesses created jobs fell during the past decade.

The data are clear: lower taxes for America's so called job-creators don't mean either faster economic growth or more jobs for Americans.

As Jared Bernstein aptly put it earlier this month:

"Tax cuts and job growth? They're just not that into each other."

"We Look a Lot Like Greece Already"

As their last round of hostage-taking of the debt heated up last summer, Republicans including Mitch McConnell warned, "We look a lot like Greece."

hile FactCheck.org was quick to conclude that "whatever it 'looks like' through Sen. McConnell's eyes -- the fact is that the U.S. is not yet a fiscal wreck of Greek proportions," its analysis hardly does justice to the scale of the Republican myth-making. The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen summed it up quite succinctly:

New rule: every time a confused Republican lawmakers compare the United States' fiscal conditions to that of Greece, an angel loses its wings.

Look, the very idea is just crazy. The U.S. has extremely low interest rates and foreign investor are happy to loan us money; Greece has extremely high interest rates and no one is eager to loan the country money. The U.S. has our own currency; Greece has the Euro. We have a great credit rating (for now); Greece has an awful credit rating. We have a manageable debt; Greece has a debt crisis. We're a large country with an enormous economy; Greece is a small country with a small economy. We have one of the world's most stable systems of government (at least until six months ago); Greece's government structure is a little shaky.

For his part, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been decrying the "Hellenization of economic discourse" for months. "Greece -- with a long history of fiscal irresponsibility, very high public debt, and a country without a currency -- doesn't bear much resemblance even to the other peripheral Europeans, let alone the United States."

Here's debt levels (if you ask me the IMF projections for Greece are too optimistic).

Plus there's the having your own currency thing, and the fact that the interest rate on US 10-year bonds is 3.11 percent, on Greek bonds 16.82 percent.

Otherwise we're exactly the same.

Public Sector Layoffs a "Local" Problem

Last fall, Minority Leader McConnell led the GOP opposition to President Obama's proposed $400 billion American Jobs Act. The loss of hundreds of thousands of police, firefighter, teacher and other public sector jobs, he insisted, was a "local" problem.

As it turns out, the 600,000 state and local government jobs already lost since December 2008 is very much a national issue. That "anti-stimulus," it turns out, has added a full point to America's unemployment rate.

Last month, the Economic Policy Institute noted that the private sector had gained 2.8 million jobs while federal, state and local governments shed 584,000 just since June 2009. EPI concluded that the public sector job losses constituted "an unprecedented drag on the recovery":

"The current recovery is the only one that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months."

Back in March, Paul Krugman expressed the same point, but with some inconvenient historical context for the Party of Reagan. "In fact, if it weren't for this destructive fiscal austerity," Krugman explained, "Our unemployment rate would almost certainly be lower now than it was at a comparable stage of the 'Morning in America' recovery during the Reagan era."

We're talking big numbers here. If government employment under Mr. Obama had grown at Reagan-era rates, 1.3 million more Americans would be working as schoolteachers, firefighters, police officers, etc., than are currently employed in such jobs.

And once you take the effects of public spending on private employment into account, a rough estimate is that the unemployment rate would be 1.5 percentage points lower than it is, or below 7 percent -- significantly better than the Reagan economy at this stage.

47 Million Uninsured Americans "Don't Go Without Health Care"

McConnell the "strict obstructionist" was naturally in the forefront of the all-out Republican effort to block health care reform at any cost. As he repeatedly put it in June 2009, "all of us want reform, but not reform that denies, delays, or rations health care." To prove his point, McConnell didn't merely trot out a Canadian patient who came to the U.S. for special treatment, but insisted to NBC's David Gregory that no American does without health care now.

GREGORY: Do you think it's a moral issue that 47 million Americans go without health insurance?

McCONNELL: Well, they don't go without health care. It's not the most efficient way to provide it. As we know, the doctors in the hospitals are sworn to provide health care. We all agree it is not the most efficient way to provide health care to find somebody only in the emergency room and then pass those costs on to those who are paying for insurance. So it is important, I think, to reduce the number of uninsured. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

That President George W. Bush, Tom Delay and Paul Broun among other Republicans also claimed "people have access to health care in America...after all, you just go to an emergency room" doesn't make it any more true. As the numbers show -- 50 million uninsured, another 25 million uninsured, 45,000 unnecessary deaths, one in five Americans "self-rationing" care and 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies being related to medical bills -- the crisis is far worse than the one Mitch McConnell pretends doesn't exist.

The Public Option "May Cost You Your Life"

While Mitch McConnell insisted that the lack of insurance doesn't prevent anyone from getting health care, in 2009 he suggested having coverage could prove fatal. Months before the passage of the Affordable Care Act without the so-called "public option," Minority Leader McConnell said it would be deadly.

That irresponsible fear-mongering came during an appearance on Dennis Miller's radio show in October 2009. Blasting the "opt-out" version of the public option then being considered in the Senate bill, the Senator from the state ranked 45th in health care performance insisted access to coverage could kill you:

MCCONNELL: Well, it doesn't make any difference frankly whether you opt-in or you opt-out, it's still a government plan. You know, Medicaid, the program for the poor now, states can opt-out of that, but none of them have. I think if you have any kind of government insurance program, you're going to be stuck with it and it will lead us in the direction of the European style, you know, sort of British-style, single payer, government run system. And those systems are known for delays, denial of care and, you know, if your particular malady doesn't fit the government regulation, you don't get the medication.

MILLER: Right.

MCCONNELL: And it may cost you your life. I mean, we don't want to go down that path.

As a Harvard Medical School study found, each year the path of no health insurance leads 45,000 Americans to the grave.

Democrats Are "Sticking It to Seniors with Cuts to Medicare"

For two years running, Mitch McConnell has been among the 40 GOP Senator voting for Paul Ryan's House budget plan to privatize and inevitably ration Medicare now used by 46 million American seniors. In the late 1990's, McConnell joined in Newt Gingrich's effort to slash almost 15 percent from the Medicare budget so that the program would "wither on the vine." But when the Affordable Care Act called for savings from the private Medicare Advantage program used by only 15 percent of elderly beneficiaries, it was Mitch McConnell who warned seniors about the mythical danger.

In July 2009, McConnell tried to scare America's 46 million Medicare beneficiaries by declaring, "The administration plans to use Medicare cuts to fund yet another new government program." Hoping to build on the momentum of the GOP's disgusting and demonstrably false "euthanasia" talking point, McConnell cautioned:

"Some in Congress seem to be in such a rush to pass just any reform, rather than the right reform, that they're looking everywhere for the money to pay for it -- even if it means sticking it to seniors with cuts to Medicare."

That salvo comes just two weeks after McConnell promised to defeat health care reform in the Senate, warning America's highest turnout voting block:

"They are going to pay for this plan by cutting Medicare, that is cutting seniors."

Those claims, the New York Times pointed out the day after the Republicans' overwhelming triumph in the 2010 midterms elections were misleading at best and false at worst. But, sadly, they worked.

And so it goes.

As Joshua Green documented last year in the Atlantic, "Mitch McConnell is a master manipulator and strategist" whose "relentless tactics have made his party victorious." But that doesn't make him a truth-teller, except on those rare occasions when he reveals his true motivations. During the debt ceiling stand-off last summer, McConnell briefly got weak in the knees at the prospect of U.S. sovereign default not because it would be a disaster for the nation, but because it could damage his Republican Party:

"I refuse to help Barack Obama get re-elected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy. ... If we go into default, he will say that Republicans are making the economy worse and try to convince the public -- maybe with some merit, if people stop getting their Social Security checks and military families start getting letters saying service people overseas don't get paid. It's an argument he could have a good chance of winning, and all of the sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy," he said. "That is very bad positioning going into an election."

Especially an election which marks the culmination of Mitch McConnell's work over the past three and a half years:

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

Absurdity Today: We Found the Money JP Morgan Lost! Guess Where?

Julianna Forlano — Fri, 25 May 2012 01:00:23 +0000

This week's Absurdity Today! takes on the Republican Wars, climate change, Roku and getting fired from a Christian school for being pregnant, or maybe it was...something else? Laugh here.

Inside the Amazon Shareholders' Meeting -- ALEC, Mic Check and More

karoli — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:30 +0000

As the time for new business at the Amazon shareholder meeting Thursday morning arrived, the audience grew restless. For those of us holding legal proxies or actual shares, a confrontation was coming on issues around political disclosure, climate change, ALEC funding, workplace conditions and Amazon's corporate taxes.

Two shareholder initiatives had qualified for the official ballot: Climate change transparency and accountability and transparency about corporate political contributions to candidates and organizations.

In addition to Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon's board of directors consists of venture capitalists and corporate CEOs, which is fairly typical for a public company. That group, for whatever reason, decided to recommend against political transparency and a climate change disclosure and transparency policy.

Amazon and Political Transparency

Bruce Herbert is founder and CEO of Newground Social Investment, and he was the author and filer of the political disclosure resolution, which he read aloud at the meeting. The resolution called for disclosure and review of all corporate political contributions, who they were paid to, identification of the Amazon official authorizing the disclosure with a statement of their purpose in authorizing it, and for all information on these expenditures to be posted on the Company website.

The board of directors declined to recommend its passage, just as they declined Calvert Social Investing's resolution to disclose Amazon's carbon footprint and plan for minimizing it.

When asked why they would decline these resolutions, Amazon officials would only say the company was considering climate change initiatives. The question of political disclosure was dodged completely. There was utter silence from the company and unfortunately, the shareholders did not follow up on that question as clearly as they should have.

Amazon and ALEC

While the more general political disclosure question went unanswered, there was pointed questioning about Amazon's involvement and funding of ALEC. ThinkProgress reported on Amazon's $10,000 contribution to ALEC's 2011 annual meeting, and it was definitely the subject of shareholder scrutiny. In response, Amazon declared that they review contributions to non-profit and trade associations on an annual basis and had opted not to renew their ALEC membership this year.

Does this mean they won't renew it in 2013? Great question. Twice they stated that they had elected not to fund ALEC, but both times it came with the words "this year," leaving the door open for re-entry when scrutiny isn't quite so sharp.

After they answered that question, they announced the results of the voting on these initiatives, at the very same time that ballots were being collected. In corporate-land, shareholders' votes are only as powerful as the number of shares they hold (and wealth associated with those shares), and so the political disclosure votes, before anyone counted the votes in the room, evidently, were 59 million for, 237 million against, with 44 million abstentions. The climate change resolution fared slightly better but still went down in flames with 69 million for, 227 million against, and 46.6 million abstentions.

Also, it's now on the record that Amazon and its directors and officers oppose having to disclose corporate political contributions to organizations and candidates. Based on their ALEC funding, I'm not optimistic about why they don't want to make these disclosures.

Lest you think the entire room was full of protesters holding proxies, I can testify that at least one man in the room was different. With one question left in the question and answer session, a middle-aged man rose and stepped to the aisle. In a strong voice, he chided the board and officers for their withdrawal from ALEC, saying he was "disappointed [Amazon] gave into political pressure and resigned from ALEC, an organization that has done so much good for people."

As you might imagine, that did not play well with the rest of the audience.

Amazon's workplace conditions

During the part of the meeting where Jeffrey Bezos gave his presentation, we heard that Amazon was going to spend $52 million to install air conditioning in some of their fulfillment centers. This presentation, given with a bit of a defensive edge, was the answer to criticism about Amazon's horrendous workplace conditions, first reported in 2011 after workers in Pennsylvania were subjected to incredibly hot and debilitating working conditions.

We even got to see video of the helicopter flying in the air conditioning units, and heard Bezos remind us not once, but twice, that it was very, very, very expensive to put air conditioning units into existing fulfillment centers. I wanted to remind Bezos that it's also very, very deadly for employees to work in closed warehouses with over 100-degree temperatures in the summer, and having ambulances stationed outside the workplace is hardly an adequate response.

Amazon and Corporate Taxes

Because it keeps expanding its business and making capital expenditures along the way, Amazon's corporate tax rate has been around 3.5%. As they were quick to point out, they have also hired 45,000 people since September, 2008 in the US. Of course, they also tried to pass off payroll taxes as their fair share, which didn't play well with many shareholders. One irate shareholder stood up and called them "sociopaths" for failing to fund the education structure which will (and has) benefitted them up to this point. It was one of the more tense moments, but company officials were ready for the question, and said that as expansion stabilizes, they will be paying more in corporate taxes.

Let me translate: As soon as they've availed themselves of all existing corporate tax loopholes, they'll go ahead and pay some more in taxes right after they've finished making opaque contributions to organizations that can work on their behalf to keep taxes low. It was an answer worthy of an auditor, and indeed, it was the corporate CPA that answered the question.

The many outsiders...

For every person who was seated in the 300-seat auditorium inside the Seattle Art Museum, there was one representing the 99 percent outside the Seattle Art Museum. At the end of the meeting inside, several people stood and mic-checked the board, calling on them to be compassionate, to consider their workers, to consider the environment, and to be honest about how shareholders' funds are spent with regard to political associations. As each stood to be heard, three police officers walked down and escorted them outside in a firm and not necessarily polite fashion.

It's almost de rigueur these days, you know. I imagine there are meetings of these directors at parties where they ask whether or not the cops have had to eject anyone from a shareholders' meeting. But stop for a minute and think about that. In a meeting where each person had to prove their legal right to be present in the room, they were forcibly ejected by police for...what? Disagreeing? Calling for a corporation to be a better citizen? Speaking their minds?

They had a right to speak. Each and every one of them. They had proven that by going through the rigorous review and security checks that got them in that room. Yet they were silenced by the police for simply speaking words those directors did not want to hear. Words their public relations department would have to spin later. Why is a company built on words and books afraid to hear words?

The truth is powerful and convicting. If one doesn't want to hear it, all they have to do is make sure they've got the police with them. Those insiders joined the outsiders and they all raised their voices loud enough to be heard by the waiting television and newspaper cameras outside. They made themselves heard from the inside of the auditorium to the foyer to the outside and hopefully to the outside world, as they chanted over and over...

We are the ninety-nine percent.

Indeed, we are. I am. You are. So we take the small victory of at least one more corporation backing away from ALEC for one year at least, and press on to the next.