Commentary « Silver Buzz Cafe

Koch Brothers Donate $1 Million To Overturn California Law

We wrote a few days ago about how the Koch brothers are the astroturfers behind the Tea Party. Associated Press is reporting today that the Koch brothers have donated $1 million to the campaign for Proposition 23, an effort to have California’s greenhouse gas emissions law (AB32) revoked. [...]

Hypocrisy Rules The Right

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s article about how the oil billionaire Koch brothers are astroturfing the Tea Party comes the news of their hypocritical approach to business. We also list the many hypocritical Republicans who slammed and voted against the Recovery Act but have then supported applications for funds from it, or taken credit for obtaining them. [...]

It’s Started – How a Huge Corporation Is Buying Our Government

In a recent series we wrote about the legal ways that individuals, organizations and corporations can influence our lawmakers, particularly those in Washington, DC. We’ve also commented on a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations to be legally treated as individuals when it comes to spending money on political campaigning. It even opens the doors for foreign companies to become more deeply involved in our internal affairs. We thought that the first signs would be increased spending on electioneering during the midterms, but there’s now much more ominous proof of the dangers that critics of the Supreme Court ruling foresaw. [...]

The Internet and the World Wide Web – Part 3 – Current Issues

In previous articles in this series we explained the history and mechanics of the Internet and web and how they are governed. In this one we’ll start looking at the issues concerning people directly involved with the running of the Internet and web, governments, companies and users. [...]

California Fails To Halt Extortionate Health Insurance Rate Increases

Back in February the United States Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to Anthem Blue Cross President Leslie Margolin calling on the company to publicly justify its decision to raise premiums by as much as 39% for its California customers. Although Anthem and the other insurers postponed the price hikes until the investigation was over, the CIC cleared the way on Wednesday for the company to implement scaled-back rate hikes. [...]

Political Influencers and Lobbyists – Part 6 – Effective Or Not?

There is an understandable suspicion that, since money talks, individuals and groups that can spend large amounts of money get more from the politicians and parties that they support than most voters. In the concluding article in this series on political influencers and lobbyists, we’ll look at that suspicion. [...]

GOP Spreads Lies While More Medicare Part D Checks Are Mailed

The Department of Health and Human Services has mailed out a third round of $250 checks to help seniors who enter the Medicare Part D coverage pay gap (the “Doughnut Hole”) for prescription drugs. Meanwhile, the GOP wants to roll back the health care reform benefits and privatize Medicare and Social Security. [...]

Political Influencers and Lobbyists – Part 5 – 527s

In previous articles in this series we’ve looked at interest groups, political lobbying and Political Action Committees (PACs). Today we’ll look at another tax-exempt group named after section 527 of the United States Tax Code, 26 U.S.C. [...]

Why Net Neutrality Matters

The technical world has been abuzz for a few days over the news that Verizon and Google have made a pact that could affect the future of the Internet. Today, we explain the issues and why they affect us all. [...]

Cloned Cow Controversy Continues

After the revelation that milk from a cloned cow had entered the food chain in the United Kingdom, it now appears likely that meat has too. [...]

Cloning Controversy – Got Milk, Milk, Milk?

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) said today that it is going to investigate a claim that milk from the offspring of a cloned cow is being sold for public consumption. The issue was raised in an article in last Friday’s International Herald Tribune newspaper. In it, a British dairy farmer was quoted anonymously [...]

Political Influencers and Lobbyists – Part 3 – Lobbying

In the previous article in this series we looked at political interest groups. In this one we’ll look at the $3.5 billion lobbying industry. [...]

Some Thoughts On The Immigration Issue

Yesterday a federal judge stopped the most controversial aspects of Arizona’s new law on dealing with illegal immigrants from becoming enforceable. Today we’re taking a broad look a the thorny issue of illegal immigration. [...]

Political Influencers and Lobbyists – Part 1 – Introduction

We all know that corporations and special interests spend a lot of money trying to influence what and who we vote for. There are many legal channels for trying to influence voters and lobby politicians who are in office. We’ll take a brief look a them today and will then take a more detailed look that will describe how they work, who the major players are, how much they spend and who receives their money. We’ll also try to identify their actual impact on previous campaigns. [...]

The Right Wing Disinformation Machine

The Intelligence Community has been using propaganda and disinformation to worry and confuse the enemy since time immemorial. However, the GOP and its political channel, Fox News, is using the same techniques to cause confusion and mayhem to pursue their, so far ill-defined, agenda. [...]

BP Oil Leak Temporarily Stemmed

The watered down financial reform bill passed yesterday, but that event was eclipsed by BP’s announcement that they have temporarily capped the oil well that has been out of control for almost three months. Today we take a brief look at possible outcomes. [...]

Are The GOP Leaders Mentally Ill?

Key GOP leaders bowed to pressure from the ultra-conservative Club for Growth this week and pledged to work to repeal the recent health care reform bills. If you look at the list of benefits that click in this year alone, it’s hard to understand why anyone would want to repeal them.

The Republicans [...]

Wall Street Reform Bill Introduces New Consumer Protections

When the House passed a watered down version of the Wall Street reform and consumer protection bill last Friday, President Obama said that he was pleased that it contained 90% of the things he had asked for. He didn’t mention that the 10% they’d omitted contained the most important provisions and that Wall Street will remain largely free to gamble and crash, damaging taxpayers and their customers, just as they did in 2008. However, the consumer protection provisions in the bill fared better than the financial institution regulatory side, despite fierce opposition from the credit card companies and large banks. [...]

Watered Down Wall Street Reform Bill Passes

While the country tries to recover from the effects of the Wall Street meltdown, the House passed a financial reform bill in the small hours of Thursday after a night of back room dealing that significantly weakened the intent of the bill. Today we’ll look at what got lost. We’ll discuss the benefits to consumers tomorrow. [...]

Why Is The Taxpayer Subsidizing The Oil & Gas Companies?

The oil and gas industry has been very successful at providing campaign contributions and lobbying Congress over the years to minimize government regulation of their cash cow. They’re not only good at extracting favors, they also extract billions of Dollars in government subsidies every year. [...]

Businesses Prevail - The GOP Reveals Its Priorities

One of the strange things about a catastrophe is that politicians love to use such events to grandstand their wares. The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is that it has sharply delineated the White House’s and the Republican opposition’s approach to who should be held accountable. [...]

Best Practices?

As the ongoing saga in the Gulf of Mexico evolves and congress interrogates BP executives, it’s worth having a look at the regulatory and safety regimes imposed on the offshore oil drilling industry here and overseas. The whole world is watching this incident and it’s already very obvious that The United States government has been lax in it’s oversight of the industry. [...]

BP Oil Disaster Spill Estimator

BP has consistently understated the amount of oil being spilled into the Gulf of Mexico every day since the blowout and explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 10, 2010. It may be that they don’t have an accurate figure, or they may simply be trying to stave off fines that may be related to the size of the spill. We’ve produced an estimator to try to track what may be happening. [...]

Who Needs A Queen Anyway?

It’s the Queen’s Official Birthday today. The Queen in question, of course, being Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, whose regular name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. She was born on 21 April 1926. No, we aren’t confused. We’re writing this article today, June 12, 2010, because the Queen has more than one birthday – quite a lot more, in fact. [...]

Beyond Pointing – Part 2 – Prevention Is Better Than Cure

The British Petroleum (BP) oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is still evolving. BP has managed to reduce the flow rate into the open ocean but a lot more remains to be done. In this article we look at what could have been done to avoid this disaster and to help avoid similar ones in the future. [...]

Beyond Pointing - Part 1 - Who's Who In The Gulf Disaster?

The catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico may run for a few more months, but the cleanup will take years and the legal fights could take decades, despite British Petroleum’s (BP’s) assurances that they will repair the damage and pay all costs. In this, the first of two articles on the situation, we’ll look at the major players, both before and after the accident occurred. [...]

It's Time To Move To Arizona!

When the Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, signed a controversial illegal immigrant removal bill into law a few weeks ago there was an immediate, nationwide reaction. She has legitimate concerns, but she may have bitten off more than she can chew. [...]

Updating Our Memories

Every Memorial Day I check the family web site and scour the web for items about the ship that my father served on during World War II. It’s a chance to try to learn more about what he and his friends did during those awful years. I’ve found some really interesting material over the years, but the best finds were photos and videos. [...]

Wall Street Reform Bill Should Help Main Street and Consumers

Last Thursday the Senate voted 59-39 in favor of passing the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, popularly known as the “Wall Street Reform Bill” and in congress as “The Stability Act.” A month ago it looked very likely that congress would only manage to pass a very watered down bill, mainly because of very strong lobbying from Wall Street. Today we look at what it is aimed to do and how it is likely to change on its way to the President’s desk. [...]

President Obama signed the second part (reconciliation) of the health care reform bill on March 30, 2010. That's great, but the provisions that will cover the uninsured haven't clicked in yet.

Our elected officials started work on the proposed health insurance reform bill on July 30, 2009. Harvard researchers estimate that 122 Americans die every day as a result of not having health insurance.

So, the estimated number of uninsured Americans who have died while the politicians in the Senate and Congress played politics and delayed new benefits for the sake of the health care insurers is

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