On this Labor Day, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich succinctly describes how Americans are working longer hours for less pay while the benefits of increased productivity flow to the top 1%; this distorted distribution of the wealth we create means consumers don’t have the money to buy what the economy is capable of producing, and the grandiose expectations of the super-rich promote manipulative investments and political deals that eventually crash. We’re stuck in the Great Recession, says Reich, until we have reforms at least as radical as those used during the Great Depression. It’s worth noting that 1% of the population contributes about 90% of the campaign contributions to politicians. That’s our finding from various studies at Democracy North Carolina and no doubt it holds true elsewhere. For the sake of our economy, our jobs, our future, we need more political leaders who don’t depend on the narrow-minded super-rich.

Real Jobs NC, the 527 committee backed by Art Pope, Fred Eshelman and the national Republican Party, has begun sending tons of attack-ad mailers to voters in the districts of several state House Democrats who face tight elections. (See August 18 LINK entry.) Mark Binker of the Greensboro News & Record looks into the claims made in the mailers attacking Rep. Hugh Holliman and finds they use the wrong dollar amounts, cite the wrong legislation, attack laws endorsed by plenty of Republican legislators, but still have some factual basis. It would be interesting to see how Rep. Jeff Barnhart and Sen. Fletcher Hartsell voted on the measures that Real Jobs NC finds so loathsome; the two Cabarrus county Republican legislators are officers of RightChange.com Inc., which Fred Eshelman heads and which gave $100,000 to Real Jobs NC.

A Texas judge has ordered the national Republican Governors Association to pay $2 million to the state’s Democratic candidate for governor in 2006 because the association illegally funneled $1 million to Republican Gov. Rick Perry from the nation’s biggest individual campaign donor that year. The donation came from Bob Perry, the Houston mega-builder and patron of the Swift Boat attack ads; he is not related to Gov. Perry. The Governor has already paid $426,000  to settle his part of the deceitful practice. RGA is appealing, but the attorney for Chris Bell, the Democratic candidate, points out that the RGA was not even properly registered to make donations to Texas candidates. The judge agreed and also noted that the association failed to disclose its donors until well after the election. Under Texas law, the civil penalty can be awarded to the harmed candidate – hmm, what do you think the pros and cons would be for such a law in North Carolina?

The State Board of Elections voted 4 to 1 to fine Gov. Bev Perdue’s campaign committee $30,000 for failing to properly disclose private airplane flights donated to her 2008 campaign. An eight-month investigation by the Board’s chief investigator Kim Strach turned up a hodgepodge of incomplete records and compliance problems with the campaign, but not enough indication of criminal wrongdoing to justify an evidentiary hearing. The two Republican board members backed a request by NC GOP Chair Tom Fetzer for such a hearing, but the three Democrats voted that motion down. In weekly press conferences, Fetzer has succeeded in politicizing the investigation, with contradictory demands that it be sped up, concluded, and more probing, and demands that Board Chair Larry Leake and Director Gary Bartlett resign for protecting fellow Democrat, Gov. Perdue. A higher fine could have been justified for the volume of missing information and the poor cooperation of Perdue’s campaign, which dribbled out information to Strach. But Perdue’s campaign manager, Zach Ambrose, pointed out in a letter delivered to State Board members yesterday that he had given the data for the flights to the election staff in early 2008 to see if the documentation requirements were met. Ambrose got a positive review from the Board staff and gave the material to his campaign compliance officers, but for unexplained reasons they did not include some flights on disclosure reports. This was a snafu not an effort to deceive, Ambrose said: “It seems obvious to me that records related to these flights would not have been given by me to the Board in the first half of 2008 if there had been any intention on my part or on the part of the Committee to conceal information about these flights.” Interestingly, the Associated Press story today mentions Ambrose’s letter, but not the News & Observer, which has been playing up the partisan conflict between Fetzer and the State Board.

The 14 chemical companies that put the most residents in the US at risk from poisonous gas leaks or terrorist attack include JCI Jones’s Charlotte facility that manufactures and distributes chlorine, sulfur dioxide and other hazardous products. A new report by US PIRG says over 800,000 people live within the immediate danger zone around the JCI Jones’ Charlotte facility. The PIRG report details the lobbying and political contributions that the 14 companies and their trade associations have invested to fight proposals requiring chemical companies to assess their risks and shift to less dangerous processes where appropriate. The House-passed Chemical and Water Security Act (H.R. 2868) is stalled in the Senate, thanks in part to this investment which especially targets members of key Congressional committees. Other corporations on the list include Clorox, Dow, DuPont, and Honeywell. JCI Jones makes the list not because of its political spending, which doesn’t register in this report, but because it ranks third among corporations exposing the most people to poisonous gas leaks – 12 million people living around 11 facilities in the US. The report notes that if you think accidents don’t happen, think BP.

Which candidates for the NC General Assembly have the most money to spend before the election? The NC Free Enterprise Foundation posted convenient lists of the cash-on-hand for candidates in the state House and state Senate elections, based on disclosure reports through June 30, 2010. For example, Senate Democratic candidates Margaret Dickson, David Redwine, Jim Leutze and Dewey Hudson trailed their opponents in open seat contests. All House Democratic candidates have 2.4 times as much as Republicans, but Senate Republican candidates are basically even with Democrats, thanks largely to loans many have made to themselves (e.g., Neal Hunt, Richard Stevens and Don East). It will be interesting to see how much money the flush candidates share with their colleagues in tight races. Importantly, Republicans gained control of the state House in the 1994 election after achieving fundraising parity with Democrats for the first time in many decades.