Yeah. This is a sweet gig. I want to stay here. In fact, I want to … move up. Be in the leadership. Be a mover and shaker. Now how am I gonna do that beyond kissing the speaker’s ass (and those of his damn deputies, too) and voting however he (or she) tells me to?

It will take money for that Republocrat to ascend higher in the House’s toadying ladder of leadership. Lots of money. And as we know, House members (and senators) have a vehicle to collect and dispense money to other House members — the leadership political action committee. A principal reason for the existence of leadership PACs to is buy friends and influence on Capitol Hill. Apparently, hard work and intelligence are insufficient.

For example, suppose our young Republocrat wants to donate money to another incumbent (or challenger identified by the National Republocratic Party as worthy of being admitted to the club) or to the national party itself. As a private citizen, she can only give the legal maximum of $2,100 to her would-be friend’s campaign committee. But if that incumbent has a leadership PAC, then she can give $5,000 per year from her leadership PAC to that PAC.

If our Republocrat’s sitting in a safe district, she can encourage donors to give to her leadership PAC instead of her re-election campaign committee. She can use the donations in the leadership PAC to make friends with others in the House — by giving $5,000 to the leadership PAC of someone she wishes to be friendly with (or buy, to be blunt). The more money in her leadership PAC, the more influence she can peddle.

As the Center for Responsive Politics notes:

By making donations to members of their party, ambitious lawmakers can use their leadership PACs to gain clout among their colleagues and boost their bids for leadership posts or committee chairmanships. Politicians also use leadership PACs to lay the groundwork for their own campaigns for higher office. And some use their PACs to hire additional staff—sometimes even their family members—and to travel around the country or eat in some of Washington’s finest restaurants. The limits on how a politician can spend leadership PAC money are not especially strict. Also, lacking a requirement that lawmakers disclose their affiliations with leadership PACs, these committees have been able to slip under the radar for years.

And big money is involved. And big donors chip in. Contributions to politicians’ leadership PACs reported to the Federal Elections Commission from 1990 and into the 2012 election cycle total $286,110,856. Only about $3.5 million came from individuals; $268,358,732 came from other PACs. On the Hill, outside PACs feed leadership PACs at five grand a clip. That adds up over time.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision of two years ago, so-called super PACs are getting most of the media attention — even though super PACs were created as a result of the Court’s July 2010 SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission decision. Leadership PACs have been overlooked because, it appears, super PACs raise (and hide) a helluva lot more money. But leadership PACs, over time, have raised enormous amounts of moolah.

Super PACs differ from leadership PACs, according to the center. Such PACs, also known as independent-expenditure committees, may raise as much money as they want. No limitation are placed on the size of donation a contributor may make. Super PACs may not donate money directly to political candidates. But they can spend as much money as they want to “overtly advocate for or against political candidates.” According to the center, at least “290 groups organized as Super PACs have reported total receipts of $32,008,813 and total expenditures of $34,335,760 in the 2012 cycle.” (See the list here.)

The 2012 election cycle is far from over, with the greatest amount of spending yet to come. But in a little more than a year and a half, super PACs have pulled in more than $32 billion. You’ve seen how that money has been used in advertising to support or, more often, attack presidential candidates in the primaries so far. Florida’s a pricey state for ad buys, so super PACs will raise even more and spend even more.

So far, in the 2012 election cycle, leadership PACs have pulled in nearly $12 million, a third of the identified super PAC donations. But in the 2010 election cycle, the leadership PACs hauled in more than $52 million. That’s a lot of $5,000 checks.

The current speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner, wrote plenty of them. In fact, in 2006, when he wanted Republicans to vote for a free-trade agreement with Oman (Oman? Really?), he had already “invested” in the vote of my then-congressman. Boehner’s leadership PAC, the Freedom Project, gave my then-House rep $10,000 — $5,000 in the 2004 election cycle and $5,000 in 2006. From a post I wrote in 2006:

In fact, Rep. Boehner’s leadership PAC since 1997 has disbursed more than 530 checks worth $5,000 each to House incumbents and GOP House candidates. That’s more than $2.6 million of largesse spread among the faithful. The PAC shipped off more than $189,000 in 64 smaller checks. And there’s the $15,000 sent each year since 2002 to the National Republican Campaign Committee.

Here’s the list of recipients of checks from the Freedom Project.)

Boehner is speaker in significant measure because he spread the wealth and, in turn, received political support as he climbed higher in the House. (But apparently he didn’t spread enough to the tea party conservatives swept into the House in 2010. They’ve balked several times at his leadership. And they’re learning how to play the PAC game.) That’s the primary role of leadership PACs: financially support other incumbents and candidates in return for political support later.

You’ll read a great deal in coming months about super PACs and their big-money influence on the 2012 elections. But over the long term, political power in Congress is heavily influenced by leadership PACs and how they’re used.

Oh, by the way, leadership PACs are regulated — but loosely. Funds in leadership PACs cannot be allocated to personal use. But after a senator or representative leaves Congress, that prohibition no longer applies.

Here’s the lede from a November 2010 New York Times story by Eric Lipton about abuses of leadership PACs:

Henry Bonilla, a Texas Republican and former member of Congress, has tapped into his political piggy bank to fly around the United States, eat at some of San Antonio’s finest restaurants and to cover bills at luxury hotels like The Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla. [emphasis added]

And later in the story:

Former members are largely free to spend the money left over in their political action committees however they choose. [emphasis added]

Apparently, you can take it with you.

Nice gig, eh?

Bats have a bad rep. Think bat and you likely think bat with rabies. Think bat and you likely think dirty bat or bat as vampiric bloodsucker. Think bat and you likely think evil harbinger of doom and destruction. (Okay, that last one’s a tad over the top … but you get the idea.) Bats have fewer defenders than fear-laden critics.

But bats, the only mammal structurally capable of sustained flight, are just creatures with significant ecological — and economic — roles. Hate mosquitoes and other insects? They’re on the nighttime menu for bats. Like bees, many bats pollinate plants and spread seeds. Bat shit (sorry; bat guano) is rich in nitrogen and is a profitable fertilizer. Bats’ ability to navigate in the dark (echolocation) is a subject of significant scientific study.

But in the past five years, up to 6.7 million bats are estimated to have died in 16 states and Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. Three species face extinction — the little brown bat, the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat. A malady called white-nose syndrome is killing them.

Researchers gleaned the estimate by counting bats in winter trips to caves. Bats roost densely, reports Darryl Fears of The Washington Post. So researchers take digital photographs of bats snoring through winter and literally count noses of bats. In 2009, researchers estimated bat deaths at about 1 million. The new figure has alarmed scientists. Says Mylea Bayless, conservation programs manager for Bat Conservation International in Austin, Tex.:

We’re watching a potential extinction event on the order of what we experienced with bison and passenger pigeons for this group of mammals, The difference is we may be seeing the regional extinction of multiple species. Unlike some of the extinction events or population depletion events we’ve seen in the past, we’re looking at a whole group of animals here, not just one species. We don’t know what that means, but it could be catastrophic.

White-nose syndrome, reports Fears, is caused by a fungus called Geomyces destructans. The fungus eats through the skin and membranes of bats. The syndrome was first observed in in 2006 in Howe Caverns near Albany, N.Y., a popular tourist destination down the road from me. Reports Fears:

Since then, biologists in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, Indiana and other states have returned to caves and mines during the annual winter hibernation of bats and reported alarming numbers of fresh dead to wildlife and gaming agencies.

The extensive demise of bats threatens forest health — and segments of the economy based on forests.

The paper products industry could also be hard hit if pests such as the emerald ash borer proliferate in the absence of bats. Loggers in states such as Vermont “ought to be concerned, but I don’t think the word has really gotten out to these folks,” said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity in Richmond, Vt.

“It certainly behooves people concerned about the health of forests — loggers or ecologists — to pay attention,” Matteson said. “But it’s hard to make a direct connection between 7 million bats dead and what happens to forest pests.”

I still don’t like bats. I’ll still duck when they flit over my deck. But none of us should be happy that nearly 7 million have died with no apparent recourse to a cure. The potential extinction of any species — even one that fills many of us with fear and loathing — must concern us.

More on bats:
• white nose syndrome
• the economic cost of losing bats
• the science of bats (video)

photo credit:
• vampire bat by Michael & Patricia Fogden/Corbis

On Nov. 8, the [student] newspaper published a full-frontal photo of a streaker who ran onto the field during that weekend’s home football game. The decision prompted outcry from some readers and from university administrators who said it was “in very poor taste.”

If this photo was so controversial and in “very poor taste,” why did the university require two months to decide to give Isom four hours to clean out his office and get outta Dodge?

No doubt lawyers were consulted. After the photo was published, the university’s vice chancellor for student affairs, Virginia Hardy, presaged what would come to pass:

We will be having conversations with those who were involved in this decision in an effort to make it a learning experience. The goal will be to further the students’ understanding that with the freedom of the press comes a certain level of responsibility about what is appropriate and effective in order to get their message across.

Learning experience my ass. The goal of the lesson being taught here is to warn student journalists and their advisers to not cross the university when it comes to maligning its image.

First Amendment be damned; protect the good name of the university — and its abilities to maintain a flack-polished, positive public image so that it can recruit and retain students and faculty and continue to raise money for the university’s endowment and other needs.

I wonder what Sandra Mims-Rowe, retired editor of The Daily Oregonian and a six-time Pulitzer Prize receipient; Dan Neil of The Los Angeles Times, another Pulitzer Prize recipient; Margaret O’Connor, former photo editor of The New York Times and two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, and Rick Atkinson, journalist, author and three-time Pulitzer recipient, think about canning the adviser. These distinguished journalists are graduates of East Carolina University touted on the university’s website.

The university’s blunt message to student reporters and editors (and future student media advisers) is obvious: Journalism is about maintaining others’ standards of taste rather than their own editorial judgments on how to depict reality. In other words, protect the university’s image.

The university is wrong here: Publishing photos of a person who streaked nude across Bagwell Field at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in a game against the University of Southern Mississippi is news occurring in a public forum. Security staffers tackled the man at the 50-yard line. The photos depicted that. Thus the photos provided a visual account of how security staffers handled themselves in a difficult situation. That’s what newspapers do: Hold government (in this case, the university) accountable for its actions.

The editor, Cailtin Hale, defended the newspaper’s decision:

This decision was made because we felt that our audience, which is primarily the ECU student body, should have access to unedited and factual photos of the streaking incident at last Saturday’s ECU football game. While the photos may be seen as offensive to some, the photos were not meant to be seen as sexually suggestive or insulting, but instead an accurate account of Saturday’s events. [emphasis added]

But the newspaper’s editors did not stop with merely publishing controversial photos. This is a cops and courts story: The paper followed the court case, covering the arrest of the person accused of being the streaker, and doing a follow-up on the court appearance in which the accused was given back his clothes and allowed to apologize to the court.

But all this doesn’t hand Isom, the student media adviser since 2008, his job back.

Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said firing a man who has advised student publications professionally since 1994 raises First Amendment concerns. From a center press release:

“There’s no camouflaging what this is, which is retaliation for an editorial judgment made by the students that was completely within the students’ authority to make,” LoMonte said. “They’re clearly punishing the adviser for something he not only didn’t control, but legally couldn’t control.”

Isom said he has no problem fighting his termination, and isn’t ruling out legal action against the university.

“If I was not willing to stand up for a First Amendment issue, then I wouldn’t have been advising them the way that I was advising them,” he said. “I would have told them, ‘Yeah, don’t run any controversial pictures, don’t make anybody mad.’”

In my teaching career, I have advised three collegiate newspapers. Students occasionally err in judgment. Such errors in student judgment are the cost universities must bear if they offer journalism programs and encourage independent student newspapers. But not all decisions universities find appalling are errors in student judgments.

This ECU case was not an error in judgment by editor Hale and her staff. They captured a reality that occurred in full view of fans sitting in a 50,000-person stadium. I would have been disappointed in a judgment to not run photos of an event with so many witnesses.

Isom should sue. He did nothing that warranted the university stripping him of his job and his reputation. The university should save itself the cost of defending against the lawsuit and hire him back. Immediately.

Then again, this is the university that graduated Vince and Linda McMahon, founders and chief executives of World Wrestling Entertainment. Maybe the university prefers to wrestle in the mud of public opinion.

And you’d be wrong. According to the fiscal 2011 financial report by the nation’s bookkeeper, the Government Accounting Office, some government agencies cannot soundly manage their fiscal affairs.

The GAO said in a press release today it cannot

render an opinion on the 2011 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.

As was the case in 2010, the main obstacles to a GAO opinion on the accrual- based consolidated financial statements were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.

Surely the feds have tackled this problem, right? They’re getting a handle on it, right?

Well, no. In his fiscal 2010 press release, the GAO director said the office could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government because of three factors:

• serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD) that made its financial statements unauditable.
• the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies.
• the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.

The press releases of Gene Dodaro, comptroller general of the United States and GAO director, are pretty easy to write. All they require is cutting and pasting from the previous year. That’s because fiscal 2011 is the 15th consecutive year the GAO “has been unable to render an opinion” on the finances of the federal government. As I wrote last year about the fiscal 2010 financial report,

You know the company’s in trouble when the auditor tells the company that its bookkeeper can’t manage the company’s finances, reconcile balance sheets among different departments, or prepare credible financial statements.

The financial report includes records from 24 major federal agencies and departments. Dodaro said last year that 19 of the 24 agencies received clean bills of financial health. This year, too, he said, while the majority of agencies received unqualified opinions, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security “have consistently been unable to receive such audit opinions.”

Auditors hand out unqualified opinions when they find evidence that financial information and accounting procedures are sound. A qualified opinion is not optimal. Inability to render any opinion may be evidence of mismanagement if not malfeasance.

Dodaro reported Social Security and Medicare accounts, too, could not receive unqualified opinions. Even if 19 of the 24 agencies are fiscally accountable, the sheer size of the share of the federal budget held by the DoD and Social Security alone — about $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2011 — continue to give pause about money management abilities in the federal government.

Regarding Medicare in 2011: The GAO’s difficulty in rendering an opinion was

primarily related to the achievement of projected reductions in Medicare cost growth. The consolidated financial statements discuss these uncertainties, which relate to reductions in physician payment rates and to productivity improvements, and provide an alternative projection to illustrate the uncertainties.

Dodaro also cited material weaknesses involving an estimated $115.3 billion in improper payments, information security across government, and tax collection activities.

Consider what Dodaro said in the fiscal 2010 report. Sound familiar?

In addition GAO was unable to render an opinion on the 2010 Statement of Social Insurance because of significant uncertainties, primarily related to the achievement of projected reductions in Medicare cost growth. The consolidated financial statements discuss these uncertainties, which relate to reductions in physician payment rates and to productivity improvements, and provide an illustrative alternative projection to illustrate the uncertainties.

Dodaro cited material weaknesses involving an estimated $125.4 billion in improper payments, information security across government, and tax collection activities.

Dodaro gives the Department of Homeland Security some props for attaining a qualified opinion for the first time since fiscal 2003. Gosh — only eight years to partially get its financial house in order.

When next you hear a a gaggle of politicians say they are trying to “do the work of the American people” in their wrangling over how to reduce the deficit, tell them get their own fiscal house in order first. Hire more and better accountants and auditors to work in the DoD, the DHS, and Social Security and Medicare. Demand a full, accurate accounting of how your tax dollars are spent.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

When a Hellfire missile fired from a drone aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency struck ground in Yemen last month, it killed two American citizens. One was New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki, 40; the other was Samir Khan, 25, who publishes media for Al Qaeda promoting terrorism.

Al-Awlaki, says the American government, is a terrorist. Officials say he had crossed the line between propagandist and operations planner. That earned him a spot on a kill-or-capture list nearly two years ago. Is he a bad guy? Probably. Did he deserve to die? Perhaps. But neither “probably” nor “perhaps” is the standard for conviction in American criminal trials — beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, reports Charlie Savage of The New York Times, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel more than a year ago crafted a 50-page memorandum. It justified the killing of an American citizen without benefit of trial, reports Savage. According to the unnamed sources quoted by Savage, the document provided steps to bypass the Fourth and Fifth amendments regarding unreasonable seizure and due process of law. Such extralegal acts, coupled with the American military’s global reach, raise troubling questions few in power — or seeking power — are willing to address publicly.

The Obama administration has refused to detail its role in the killing of al-Awlaki. The memorandum itself is secret. Savage’s reporting, using sources who refuse to go on the record, notes that the document lays out only the case for capturing or killing the charismatic propagandist — no one else. That is, perhaps, until another American citizen is labeled a terrorist. And Khan? No secret memorandum permitted his killing. Merely collateral damage, reports Savage.

If the Obama administration believes it has a legally sufficient case for killing an American citizen without due process, then it ought to make it public. Now. Release the memorandum for inspection. After all, wouldn’t that be the change toward transparency we were told we could believe in?

The American Constitution, it seems, is caught between a rock — the threat of terrorism on American soil — and a hard place — the rule of law. We have seen how the previous administration treated due process using a contorted legal argument for enhanced interrogation, or what many argue is torture. The Obama administration has trumped that, using a secret memorandum to justify the killing of an American citizen.

As a nation, we are wading into an increasingly dangerous, ambiguous moral quagmire. At home, we have watched as the Patriot Acts have traded privacy for security. Abroad, we have begun to demonstrate a willingness to forsake our centuries-old value system embodied in the Constitution. Writes John Farmer Jr., dean of the school of law at Rutgers:

Moreover, the killing of Awlaki illustrates just how far the government has come over the past decade in its willingness to depart from prior legal and military doctrine to battle al Qaeda. In virtually every respect, the action taken against Awlaki — the targeted killing of an American citizen by a CIA-fired missile outside the battlefield zones of Iraq or Afghanistan — would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

We have the ability to kill whomever we wish. (It may take some time. But we got bin Laden.) We spend as much money on the American military as the rest of the world combined spends on theirs. According to Andrew Bacevich in his book “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War”:

The United States currently has approximately 300,000 troops stationed abroad, again more than the rest of the world combined (a total that does not include another 90,000 sailors and marines who are at sea); as of 2008, according to the Department of Defense, these troops occupied or used some 761 “sites” in 39 foreign countries, although this tally neglected to include many dozens of bases in Iraq or Afghanistan; no other country comes even remotely close to replicating this “empire of bases” — or to matching the access that the Pentagon has negotiated to airfields and seaports around the world.

Don’t mistake my comments for a pacifist’s rant. It is time to reflect on military actions taken in our collective name that offend the Constitution. But that won’t happen in a climate in which a presidential candidate proclaims that in his administration, America’s military will reign supreme. Here’s the GOP’s Mitt Romney last week:

The United States should always retain military supremacy to deter would-be aggressors, and to defend our allies and ourselves.

I’d like to believe that the United States will always be able to defend itself at home and abroad. But if Mitt wants more for the military, we have to ask: Don’t we have enough already? Is more the wisest use of money given so many pressing domestic needs?

Something important is missing in the plethora of presidential candidate debates past and future. Where is the intelligent reflection on the costs of American extra-constitutional actions and the size and function of its military? Where is the discussion of whom we have become — and why — and how, if possible, we can return to whom we once were?

But such discourse is unlikely. We have a president who faces a struggling economy and the conduct of two wars while pretending not to be a Republican. He has challengers who believe opposition to gay marriage, adherence to tax pledges, protection of the “job creators” in high income brackets, and whether Romney is a Christian should trump any other issues.

No one wants to talk about the erosion of privacy and the rule of law. Keeping America secure no matter the cost is the ticket to staying in or obtaining power. These issues surrounding America’s military might and presidentially condoned, extralegal actions taken with that might are ugly and complicated. It may well be there are no angels anywhere — merely demons of necessity on the one side and weaklings on the other, as a friend told me. But politicians, the public, the press, and pundits should raise the issues much higher on the national radar — or we might remain in James Forrestal’s state of semiwar permanently.

h/t: Dr. Sam Smith, Andrew Bacevich

Too many of us blithely consider poverty to be limited to certain geographical locations such as the “inner city.” Too many of us believe poverty is limited to, perhaps, mostly a certain skin color. Too many of us attribute poverty to the lack of an “appropriate” work ethic, a lack of ambition, or a desire to “cheat the system.” The poor live in cities, they’re not white, they’re lazy, and they’re sucking up my tax dollars unfairly.

Discard that attitude. It’s disgusting. Poverty privileges no race, no gender, no occupation, no geography.

Last year, the ranks of those reduced to the federally defined poverty line grew by 2.6 million Americans. News reports show 46.2 million Americans live in poverty, the highest number in the 52 years the federal government has tracked that number.

Forget, for the moment, who or what is responsible for leaving tens of millions of Americans economically disadvantaged while mere dozens of Americans forge financially so far ahead of 99.9 percent of us.

Forget, for the moment, those who callously led many Americans into a bankrupted poverty with foolish, deceitful decisions about lending money for home mortgages a few years ago, amplifying the ranks of those in poverty.

Forget, for the moment, the decisions to be “globally competitive” by corporations at the expense of those American jobs they’re all suddenly saying they want to create.

Forget, for the moment, the social, political, and economic decisions taken by so many that have created a permanent underclass with no significant voice in Congress. Forget, for the moment, that too many of us have chosen not to listen to the voice of those in poverty. They may be unheard, but they are not invisible.

Forget, for the moment, the folly of members of Congress and the president in fighting each other while claiming to “love America” — and forgetting to love Americans one by one, especially those whose American dream has been yanked from underneath them — or was never there in the first place.

Focus on someone you know. You’ll realize you know someone who lives in poverty — and probably more than one.

Now begin remembering. Find a way to speak for those people you know who live in poverty. Don’t waver because of self-assumed guilt. Act. Demand better from your member of Congress. Demand that a living wage become a reality. Demand creation of meaningful jobs.

And be selfish — the American economy will not recover with one-sixth of Americans unable to be the avid consumers and irritated taxpayers the rest of us have become. If you want your economic circumstance to improve, attack the root causes that place your neighbor in poverty.

The Massachusetts Democrat may have scored a few points with voters. But his decision is really only inexpensive grandstanding. He said in August he’ll seek a sixth term in 2014. And he’s a shoo-in to win. He won his fifth term in 2008 with 66 percent of the vote and faced a primary opponent for only the first time in decades.

And who would want to face a sitting senator who has, thanks to his leadership PAC and campaign committee, $3 million in the bank and zero debt? And whose personal wealth, tops in the U.S. Senate, hit nearly $190 million entering 2010?

So Kerry enacts his no-lobbyist rule:

I’m not meeting with a lot of lobbyists; I’m meeting with people I choose to meet with, who can inform me, assist in the process of crunching numbers and dealing with consequences, and so forth.

Kerry doesn’t need to deal with lobbyists or fundraise to be re-elected. So his pledge is specious. This is not a harsh criticism of Kerry; it’s merely political reality. And it’s the context The Globe left out of its online story. It would have taken only five minutes and a few quick Web searches to do.

Readers deserved more. The Globe should have provided the context surrounding Kerry’s simplistic political theater.

After the turn of the century, hundreds of multinationals, such as Pfizer and H-P, nominally headquartered in the United States had a problem. They had about $300 billion in profits parked overseas. They wanted to bring that money home — a process artfully called repatriation of funds.

Their opponent was the U.S. tax code: To repatriate profits, the code said they’d have to pay 35 cents on every dollar brought home. So they sweet-talked (that’s called lobbying) their friends in Congress (their hired elected minions) to fix the problem. Their congressional chums were glad to help out by lowering the tax bite to 5 cents for every dollar brought home. The lobbying effort was a good investment: For every buck the corporations spent, they got $220 back.

But the fix created an image problem for members of Congress. If they handed out a 5 percent tax rate on hundreds of billions of dollars, their constituents would label them corporate teat-sucking, barking gongbats. After all, the folks who voted these congressional miscreants into office paid up to five times that rate in income tax in 2010. In the past tax year, if your income was about a mere $8,500, you paid 15 percent in income tax. If you made about $35,000, you paid a 25 percent rate. So you see the political image problem your members of Congress faced.

Ah. Slap a patriotic label on the tax break. And thus was born the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. The corporations cranked up their reliable K Street lobbying machine and told Americans that this tax break, also known as the Homeland Investment Act, would lead to jobs. Yep, plenty of jobs for folks who need them. How patriotic of very large corporations to think of the little guy. Well, they, um, lied. And they’re about to lie again.

Profits brought home but little used for jobs

Analysts say 92 percent of that $299 billion in repatriated profits did not create jobs. Instead, corporations bought back stock, shaved their debt, bought other companies, and paid out higher dividends to investors. The little guy saw chump change for job creation.

The corporations want to do it again. They want another tax holiday. This time, the lobbying machine has cranked up a campaign called WIN America . WIN stands for “Working to Invest Now” in America. This is their mission:

We have an opportunity right now to strengthen our economy, pay down our debt, put people back to work, and invest up to $1 trillion in America. Currently, there is over $1 trillion earned by American businesses trapped overseas. We strongly support corporate tax reform – it is essential to keeping us competitive. But as Washington works on broader reform – likely to be a long process – an essential first step would be to allow these worldwide American businesses the freedom to bring up to $1 trillion in global earnings home to invest it now into our still fragile economy. Unfortunately, our broken tax system actually penalizes U.S. businesses that want to bring their global earnings to America. We are left with a choice: provide businesses with incentives to invest their global earnings here at home, or preserve the status quo and keep the money overseas. [emphasis added]

A linguistic masterpiece: A repetition of deceit

WIN America proponents say they want to put people back to work. They didn’t do this the first time. Ironically, the Congressional Research Service, which provides analysis to our elected barking gongbats, agrees in a May 2011 study:

A conceptually similar proposal was enacted as part of the American Jobs Creation Act (P.L. 108-357). The provision provided a temporary reduced rate for repatriated earnings, with the condition that the repatriated earnings be used for domestic investment. While empirical evidence is clear that this provision resulted in a significant increase in repatriated earnings, empirical evidence is unable to show a corresponding increase in domestic investment or employment. [emphasis added]

As S&R reported more than two years ago, the nation’s largest corporations shed jobs as they trotted home with about $300 billion taxed at 5 percent.

Why should we believe they’ll create jobs this time? Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman doesn’t think they will:

[T]here’s a push for a repeat of this disastrous performance. And this time around the circumstances are even worse. Think about it: How can anyone imagine that lack of corporate cash is what’s holding back recovery in America right now? After all, it’s widely understood that corporations are already sitting on large amounts of cash that they aren’t investing in their own businesses. [emphasis added]

Yep. A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that non-financial firms in the S&P 500 had — get ready for this — $1.2 trillion in cash. That’s 59 percent more — more — than the $703 billion in cash they had in 2008. And these guys want to bring home, they say, another trillion bucks at 5 percent? To create jobs?

Cutting jobs while profits high

Now, this is simplistically put, but …

The United States has a jobless rate of more than 9 percent because corporations and businesses large and small cut jobs — the larger the corporation, the greater the job cuts. That’s how people become unemployed.

Corporations have a large hoard of cash. If they chose to do so, they could create jobs right now and reduce the nation’s unemployment rate. But they say “demand” is too weak. Bah — put people back to work. They will spend money. Demand will follow. They will return to their status as taxpayers.

Yet these corporations that wish to repatriate a trillion dollars cheaply, these corporations with a trillion bucks in cash on hand, these corporations that have said in writing that they wish to put people back to work, are cutting jobs right now while enjoying high profit margins. From The Washington Post‘s Jena McGregor last month:

On August 1, global bank HSBC said it would cut 25,000 jobs between now and 2013, on top of thousands more previously announced. On July 29, pharmaceutical giant Merck said it would be shedding up to 13,000 jobs. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has also been trimming thousands of jobs. Such mass cuts were enough to drive the number of planned layoffs to a 16-month high … The number of announced job cuts in July reached more than 66,414—up 60 percent from this June and 59 percent from July 2010. At the same time, many companies have been reporting healthy profits.

We live in an age when “the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent,” according to The Washington Post. We live in an age when 25 chief executives of the nation’s largest companies were paid more than the companies shelled out in federal income tax. (See The New York Times‘ compendium on executive pay.)

We live in an age of the transfer of wealth and power from 312 million of us to a few hundred. In fact, you need only your fingers and your toes to count the wealthiest and most powerful among us. And they are not members of Congress.

The meanest deceit: Not telling how many U.S. jobs are created

Such extreme transfer of wealth bothers me (although not as much as it does some liberals and progressives). But that’s not the issue here.

Corporations are telling us they want a tax break from 35 percent to 5 percent to bring home profits from overseas. They say they will create jobs.

But they will not tell us if they created any U.S. jobs. Thanks to The Post‘s Jia Lynn Yang, we now know the depth of corporate deceit:

Some of the country’s best-known multi-national corporations closely guard a number they don’t want anyone to know: the breakdown between their jobs here and abroad.

So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.

Some of the same companies that do not report their jobs breakdown, including Apple and Pfizer, are pushing lawmakers to cut their tax bills in the name of job creation in the United States.

But experts say that without details on which companies are contributing to job growth and which are not, policymakers risk flying blind as they try to jump-start the hiring of American workers. [emphasis added]

Yep. Corporations won’t tell us about creating jobs in America. Yang reports that companies have recently stopped putting jobs numbers in annual reports. One company has flatly lied about tracking jobs data, Yang reports:

You won’t find Procter & Gamble’s U.S. head count in its filings, either. When initially asked for the number, company spokesman Paul Fox wrote in an e-mail: “We do not track nor report U.S.-specific jobs numbers vs. jobs overseas.” After it was pointed out that P&G’s chief executive, Bob McDonald, had cited such figures in a Cincinnati Enquirer op-ed piece, Fox acknowledged the company did track that data. The number of U.S. employees is 35,000 out of 127,000 total, or 28 percent.

Among those refusing to report job numbers, reports Yang, are Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Apple, and Pfizer.

Apple and Pfizer are listed as supporters of WIN America. In 2004, H-P repatriated more than $14 billion through the American Jobs Creation Act for, it said, “strategic acquisitions.” In 2005, H-P said it would lay off 14,500 workers.

Proctor & Gamble brought home more than $10 billion seven years ago. Pfizer repatriated $37 billion, then whacked 10,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its workforce.

The WIN America mission euphemistically describes corporate profits overseas as trapped by a broken tax system that penalizes U.S. businesses. No. They could choose to bring home about $650 billion, paying the 35 percent rate, rather than about $950 billion at 5 percent. It’s a choice.

They just don’t want to pay the top tax rate. Period. The wool pulled over American eyes is the promise to create American jobs.

They didn’t, and they won’t. Call your member of Congress. Tell him or her to demand corporate accounting of U.S. jobs created — or no tax break.

“Come in,” I say. You stride in and sit in the chair next to me. The phone in your hand chirps. You glance at it, then at me. I frown. You sigh and put your phone in your pack.

“What can I do for you?” I ask.

“I want to write well,” you say. “How do I do that?”

I nod. “How much do you read?” I ask.

“Not a lot,” you say.

“Why do you not read more?” I say.

“I do not like to read,” you say. “It takes too much time.”

“That is too bad,” I say.

“Why?” you ask.

“To write well,” I say, “you need more words to choose from. When you read, you find words you do not know but need to know.”

“Why do I need more words?” you ask.

“If you have more words in your mind,” I say, “then the voice in your head will be clear to those who read the words you choose to show your voice. That is a great boon to those who write and those who read.”

“So I should read more?” you ask.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. Learn a new word each day. Or each hour, if you can.”

“What should I read?” you ask.

“Find those who write well,” I say. “Then ask them what they read.”

“If I read more, will it be worth it?” you ask. “I like to write, not read.”

“No one who writes well likes to write,” I say. “It is a hard search for just the right word, then the search for the next right word. And the next. That is why you need more words to choose from. To write well is pain; it is blood sweat; it is to pluck just the right word from all the words in your mind, time after time after time.”

“But,” I say as I smile, “after you write — if well — it is joy with no end.”

You rise from the chair. As you do, you reach in your pack and grasp your phone.

“Thank you,” you say. I nod, but I sense you are not sure what I have said to you has worth.

As you leave, you punch at your phone with your thumbs.

I watch you text as you leave. I doubt you will read more.

I sigh, and turn back to my book.

h/t to Stephen King: “Read a lot. Write a lot.”

A-B’s corporate response to slowing sales? Repackaging. The corporation has sunk 18 months and untold millions (it won’t say how many) into redesigning the can that contains the same beer. Says A-B executive Rob McCarthy:

The bow tie and the prominence of the bow tie came through both for current drinkers and for potential drinkers as just a powerful symbol of the quality and heritage and authenticity of the brand.

New package. Same beer. New style. Same substance. Well, so what?

If your substance is insufficient to attract attention, then you have a choice: Adopt a new style, or fix the substance. In America, the choice is often the former — in business as well as politics.

Anheuser-Busch’s response to declining sales is to adopt new messaging rather than focus on the taste of the beer. Apparently you can’t mess with the Bud formula.

Consider how this operates in politics. Take what Harry Schuhmacher, editor and publisher of Beer Business Daily, says about the redesign of the Bud can:

It’s bolder and cleaner, representing a packaging trend in many consumer goods. Beer companies typically redesign their labels every five years or so, so it was time to freshen up the packaging to update it to the times.

And now this revision:

Mitt Romney’s image is bolder and cleaner, representing a packaging trend in many political campaigns. Politicians typically redesign their image every five years or so, so it was time to freshen up the packaging to update it to the times.

I’m not picking on Mitt. Pick your politician and use him or her instead.

Now let’s rewrite McCarthy’s promo for the new Bud can design:

The carefully designed visuals and altered messaging that bypass gatekeepers came through both for current voters and for potential voters as just a powerful symbol of the quality and heritage and authenticity of the brand.

As we face a nauseating media diet of mercilessly negative political ads for the next 14 months, remember the new Bud can.

New package. Same beer. New style. Same substance (or, rather, lack of substance).

Demand more than a powerful symbol of the quality and heritage and authenticity of the brand from those who seek to represent us in Congress and the White House. Demand to know the substance behind the brand — if any.