Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Lots of stuff today.  First, "The Hollow Cry of 'Broke'" at the NYT:

“We’re broke in this state,” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said a few days ago. “New Jersey’s broke,” Gov. Chris Christie has said repeatedly. The United States faces a “looming bankruptcy,” Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. It’s all obfuscating nonsense, of course, a scare tactic employed for political ends. A country with a deficit is not necessarily any more “broke” than a family with a mortgage or a college loan. And states have to balance their budgets. Though it may disappoint many conservatives, there will be no federal or state bankruptcies.
The federal deficit is too large for comfort, and most states are struggling to balance their books. Some of that is because of excessive spending, and much is because the recession has driven down tax revenues. But a substantial part was caused by deliberate decisions by state and federal lawmakers to drain government of resources by handing out huge tax cuts, mostly to the rich. As governments begin to stagger from the self-induced hemorrhaging, Republican politicians like Mr. Boehner and Mr. Walker cry poverty and use it as an excuse to break unions and kill programs they never liked in flush years.

Amen.  Why John Kasich is pushing a further income tax cut which will widen the budget gap is clearly to screw government and government workers and benefit rich people.  I'm glad to see a major newspaper call Republicans out.

Second, Wisconsin Democrats Announce Recall Effort Against 8 Republican State Senators, at FireDogLake.  This is a terrible idea.  Recall elections should only be used for the most egregious cases of corruption.  It undermines the electoral system and will be used more and more by the losers in the previous election.  The Democrats should allow the Republicans to lay bare their political goals which benefit the wealthy and deteriorate government service.  In the midst of a terrible recession caused by the private sector, Republicans are stuck making the tough choices, and they continually avoid raising taxes and slash public services.  People are finally taking note.  If Democrats were in their place, they would be getting blamed for the inevitable slow down because they raised taxes.  Finally, the cuts required to maintain low tax rates for the wealthy are going to be felt.

Finally, Supreme Court: Corporations don't have 'personal privacy' rights, at the Raw Story:

Claiming they were a "corporation citizen," AT&T tried to use the personal privacy exemption to prevent the disclosure of federal government documents about the company.

The unanimous decision in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T, Inc. reversed a ruling by a US appeals court in favor the telecommunications company.

"Personal' in the phrase 'personal privacy' conveys more than just 'of a person,'" Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his decision. "It suggest a type of privacy evocative of human concerns—not the sort usually associated with an entity like, say, AT&T."

"We reject the argument that because 'person' is defined for purposes of FOIA to include a corporation, the phrase 'personal privacy' in Exemption 7(C) reaches corporations as well," he said.

"The protection in FOIA against disclosure of law enforcement information on the ground that it would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy does not extend to corporations."

"We trust that AT&T will not take it personally," Roberts added. "The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed."

The decision is a striking contrast to the court's ruling in Citizens United, which upended decades of campaign finance regulation, allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns without having to identify themselves.

It is good to see that there are some limits on the citizenship of corporations.  Even the most-business friendly court has some boundary.  Note that the Court of Appeals didn't have the share that feeling.  The Federalist Society has done a lot of court-packing since 1980.