What We Read Today 03 April 2014

Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.

• Supreme Court strikes down limits on federal campaign donations (Robert Barnes, The Washington Post) Wednesday (02 April 2014) The SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) struck down limits on aggregated federal campaign donations by any individual to all campaigns. The $2,600 limit to any individual candidate was not changed. The decision was 5-4, liberals in the minority. The SCOTUS has now decreed that talk is not defined by words but by dollars, at least in aggregate. Free speech is a thousand times “freer” for a billionaire than for a millionaire. And a billion paupers’ “words” count for less than an individual worth $1.01 billion. Econintersect suggests that the SCOTUS needs to issue an ancillary statement: The use of the terminology “Talk is cheap.” is henceforth forbidden.

• Destroying campaign finance laws, another win for the 1%. Another step to a New America. (Fabius Maximus) Fabius Maximus has contributed to Global Economic Intersection. Good collection of pointed criticism. For a one-liner try this from Ari Berman (The Nation):

In the past four years, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has made it far easier to buy an election and far harder to vote in one.

• Why Bachus’ SRO-that-must-not-be-named would prove a tyrant to RIAs (Mark Mensack, RIA Biz) Mansack recounts the circumstances of his testimony being rejected by former Rep. Spencer Baukus (R, AL) in the autumn of 2011. With Baucus now gone, perhaps replaced with someone who will not profess (as Baucus did) that “regulation and Washington are there to serve the banking industry“. With a new chairman in place for the House Committee on Financial Services (Jeb Hensarling, R, TX) Mensack has told Econintersect that he intends to again try offer his testimony to the committee. See GEI News article today on the latest from Mensack and new discussion about regulatory problems involving FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).

• Weather, climate change, the risk to our expensive infrastructure – and our lives (Fabius Maximus) Fabius Maximus has contributed to Global Economic Intersection. This continues a topic that we have been reading and posting here. The connection between extreme weather and climate change is tenuous and should only be considered in a statistical manner, not event-by-event. This is a very good climate change discussion article, as are most of the writings on this topic at this site.  There is more about the economic costs of climate change ‘behind the wall’.
  

• Top 10 States With the Highest Taxes (Eric McWhinnie, Wall St. Cheat Sheet) Surprises? Nebraska is near the top and “Taxachusetts” isn’t in the top 10.

• Fly Me to the Minimoon: Tiny Asteroids Near Earth Touted for Human Exploration (Leonard David, Space.com) NASA is drawing up bold plans to capture a near-Earth asteroid and drag it back to a stable lunar orbit, where astronauts could visit it in the future. But some scientists say that small space rocks called “minimoons” already cruise near our planet and could be visited directly just as they are. But private enterprise is already in this race with a corporation formed a couple of years ago, Planetary Resources, which is developing a program to commercially mine asteroids. Planetary Resources is backed by some big name billionaires. See GEI News coverage here and here and here.

Today there are 12 articles discussed ‘behind the wall’.