Earlier this month, Richard Clarke, who served for both Democratic and Republican Presidents, including a stint as the cyber security czar for the Bush administration, denounced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for plotting with a group of military contractors to hack into progressive groups. Clarke was in DC speaking at a cyber security conference hosted by Symantec. Although Clarke focused his remarks about the growing threat of global cyber terrorism, ThinkProgress spoke to the longtime public servant about the ChamberLeaks story we originally broke.

According to documents first reported by ThinkProgress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s attorneys began working with three military contractors — Berico, HB Gary, and Palantir — to come up with a proposal to discredit groups like ThinkProgress, the SEIU, StopTheChamber.com, MoveOn.org, and others. The tactics proposed included spying on families, using malware computer viruses to steal private information, using fake documents to embarrass liberals, and creating fake identities to infiltrate their targets.

Clarke denounced the scandal in no uncertain terms. Noting accurately that the Chamber “took foreign money in the last election,” a story also uncovered by ThinkProgress, Clarke said the Chamber had potentially conspired to commit a “felony”:

FANG: Hi. You talked a lot about classifying and recognizing cyber security threats, but you mostly focused on foreign threats. I’m curious about a story that broke last month, that the US Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest trade association, based here in DC, had contracted or attempted to contract military defense firms like HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico, to develop proposals to use the same type of cyber warfare tactics normally reserved for Jihadi websites against left-wing activists, trade — labor unions, and left of center think tanks here in America. What do you think about that type of threat from a lobbyist or a corporation targeting political enemies, or perceived enemies here in the US?

CLARKE: I think it’s a violation of 10USC. I think it’s a felony, and I think they should go to jail. You call them a large trade association, I call them a large political action group that took foreign money in the last election. But be that as it may, if you in the United States, if any American citizen anywhere in the world, because this is an extraterritorial law, so don’t think you can go to Bermuda and do it, if any American citizen anywhere in the world engages in unauthorized penetration, or identity theft, accessing a number through identity theft purposes, that’s a felony and if the Chamber of Commerce wants to try that, that’s fine with me because the FBI will be on their doorstep in a matter of hours.

Listen here:

Clarke, the author of a new book called Cyber War, was right to point out that hacking into progressive groups constitutes a felony. There are a number of federal and state statutes that prohibit the theft of private computer information.

Recently, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) formally requested documents from the NSA and Defense Department relating to contracts with two of the firms involved in this scandal, Berico and HB Gary. Nineteen other lawmakers have called for a wider investigation.

The United States is one of the only countries in the developed world that does not guarantee its workers some form of paid sick leave. However, two cities — San Francisco and Washington, D.C. — have passed their own laws to guarantee workers paid time off when they’re sick.

In 2008, Milwaukee, Wisconsin became the third U.S. city to require paid sick leave for workers, when voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum, but the measure has been tied up in the Wisconsin courts ever since. Today, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals finally ruled that the law can move forward. The Wisconsin Supreme Court deadlocked over the issue last year, giving the Court of Appeals the power to affirm the law.

However, Wisconsin’s Republicans are now moving legislation to block Milwaukee, or any other Wisconsin city, from ever implementing the law:

Republican legislators have drafted a bill that would prohibit municipalities from setting paid sick leave requirements that exceed state requirements. State law requires firms provide sick leave, but not paid time off. The proposal passed the Wisconsin Senate on a 19-0 vote on March 3, and awaits a hearing by the Wisconsin Assembly on Labor and Workforce Development. Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) supports the legislation, said communications director John Jagler.

Wisconsin’s state Republicans — along with Gov. Scott Walker (R) — have already made their contempt for workers well known, passing a bill that stripped public employees of their collective bargaining rights. But refusing to provide paid sick leave to workers is short-sighted, dismissing the myriad benefits such a policy provides.

After all, the U.S. economy loses $180 billion in productivity annually due to sick employees attending work and infecting other workers. And lack of paid leave not only means sick employees coming to work, but sick children being sent to school by parents who can’t afford to take time off to care for them.

The common argument against providing paid sick leave is that it will drive up costs for businesses. However, the Drum Major Institute released a study examining San Francisco’s paid sick leave law and found “no evidence that businesses in San Francisco have been negatively impacted by the enactment of paid sick leave.”

Wisconsin’s Republicans have already demonized their public employees in order to pass union-busting measures and propose draconian cuts to health care and education. Denying workers paid sick leave, which Wisconsinites voted for by a huge margin, would be adding insult to injury. Protests against the legislature’s move to block the paid sick day measure are taking place at noon today.

Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, Associate Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Yesterday, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and an anti-tax zealot, bragged that Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate have pledged to him that they will oppose any deficit reduction proposal that includes increased taxes:

“I’ve talked to the Senate leadership and House leadership. They’re not voting on tax increases and they know that,” Norquist told The Hill Friday.

Norquist said he has received the same promise from Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.), Mike Crapo (Idaho) and Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), who are negotiating a deficit reduction package with Democrats.

Let’s put aside, for the moment, that a promise of this nature marks Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) as deficit peacocks of the highest order. Given Norquist’s apparent veto-power over Congressional Republicans, what kind of deficit reduction package will they be allowed to support?

It’ll be ugly, that’s for sure. We can safely assume that Mr. Norquist will give the thumbs down to any proposal that would allow currently “temporary” tax cuts to expire. Of course, that includes the entire panoply of Bush tax cuts, but it also includes dozens of other tax cuts that are routinely extended at the end of every year. Keep all these tax cuts in place, and the deficit in 2015 will be about $1.1 trillion — that’s almost $600 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline, and nearly $300 billion higher than the president’s budget proposal. To get that deficit down to under $500 billion, without any tax increases, would mean a 15 percent across the board spending cut.

To put that number in perspective, the current proposal from the House Republicans to cut $61 billion from discretionary spending — which would mean hundreds of thousands of job losses, slower economic growth over the long term, massively rolling back services for children, undermining the safety and health of all Americans and seriously fraying the social safety net — amounts to 6 percent of discretionary spending.

For Republicans to keep their promise to Norquist, they’ll need cuts more than twice as big, and not limited to just discretionary spending.

But Norquist isn’t the only one taking promises from Republicans. GOP budget chief Paul Ryan (R-WI) has also promised “no changes” for current retirees or for those near retirement. That means a true across the board spending cut is pretty much out of the question, since you can’t cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by 15 percent without making a few rather substantial changes.

To keep both of their promises, then, the GOP will need to cut the rest of the budget by more than 30 percent just to get the deficit down to under $500 billion. If the Pentagon gets exempted from massive cuts, then everything else will have to be cut by 50 percent. Read more

Our guest blogger is Heather Boushey, Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Unemployment insurance provides benefits to workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own and are actively seeking re-employment. In the wake of the Great Recession, the unemployment insurance system has been effective in helping families hardest hit by unemployment. In 2009 alone, unemployment benefits lifted 3.3 million families out of poverty.

Even though the unemployment rate remains at a near record high, CNN Money is reporting that a number of states are looking to cut back on benefits:

The jobless may soon find their state unemployment check is not in the mail. A growing number of states are looking to cut back on jobless benefits to minimize the increase in unemployment taxes businesses pay. State officials are concerned that these tax hikes could deter companies from hiring.

Some states, such as Florida and Arkansas, are debating reducing the number of weeks that the jobless can collect state unemployment. Others, including Indiana, want to limit the number of people eligible for benefits.

We knew this day it was coming. The unemployment insurance system is just that, an insurance system and, quite simply, not enough in “premiums” were paid in advance during the years the economy was growing in the 2000s to cover benefits if unemployment rose. During the Great Recession, states did not have enough money saved up to pay out benefits to the millions of unemployed and, as a result, they’ve been borrowing to the tune of tens of billions of dollars from the federal government.

As of March 21, 2011, 32 states and the Virgin Islands had insolvent trust funds and owed $45.9 billion to the federal government. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that by fiscal year 2013 the amount of outstanding loans could grow to over $68.3 billion. These loan balances are significant, ranging from around one percent to over six percent of state’s total budgets. Now, those loans are coming due.

To address the problem, the Center for American Progress has laid out a comprehensive plan that not only addresses the immediate solvency crisis in the hopes of limiting unemployment benefit cuts in the near term, but also shores up the system for the next recession. Read more

A Superior Court judge found yesterday that the $820 billion in public education cuts implemented by Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) last year violated the New Jersey state constitution. As George Zornick explained, New Jersey law requires the state “to equalize public education funding for all students, meaning that poor, urban districts must receive the same relative amount of funding as wealthy suburban districts.” Christie, predictably, has derided the judge’s finding as “crazy,” and said that he has no idea how he will balance the New Jersey budget if he is not allowed to gut public education.

But there is one simple solution that Christie is still standing firm against: a millionaire’s tax. Christie cut $820 billion from the education budget last year, but restored $250 million this year, leaving him $570 million shy of fully reversing the cut. Conveniently, a income tax increase for millionaires that was recently introduced in the state legislature would raise more than $600 million:

The measures would increase the rate of the New Jersey gross income tax for taxpayers with taxable incomes exceeding $1,000,000 in taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2011. The bill provides for adjusted income taxation at the following bracket at the following rate: over $1,000,000 is adjusted from 8.97% to 10.75%…According to the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services the tax hike would generate between $600 million and $637 million in annual revenues.

Last year, the New Jersey legislature passed a millionaire’s tax that Christie vetoed, but state Democrats say they may insert the measure into their budget this year. “Unquestionably it should [be in the budget],” said state Rep. John McKeon (D). “We all believe that those who earn a million dollars or more should be a part of the solution.”

Christie, however, has reiterated his opposition to the tax, with state Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff saying that Christie will veto the measure again if it comes to his desk. Overall, the judge’s report found that New Jersey’s budget has been shortchanging poorer school districts by about $1.6 billion, meaning that students from poorer parts of the state were not having their funding requirements met even before Christie took out his meat cleaver.

In response to the the “robo-signing” scandal and other mortgage abuses perpetrated by the nation’s biggest banks, a group of state attorneys general have floated a settlement that would involve the banks writing down $20 billion in underwater mortgages, in exchange for avoiding litigation. (Underwater homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their house is currently worth.) The effort is being led by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller (D).

The banks, of course, have cried bloody murder over the proposed settlement, calling it a “naked shakedown” by regulators. Congressional Republicans parroted the banks’ language, and one Republican attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli (VA), broke with his colleagues and likened the idea of reducing mortgage principle for underwater homeowners to “welfare.”

Now, six more Republican attorneys general have sided with the banks and against homeowners. First, attorneys general Greg Abbott (R-TX), Pam Bondi (R-FL), and Alan Wilson (R-SC) co-signed a letter with Cuccinelli objecting to the mortgage modification portion of the settlement:

Yesterday’s letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News, was signed by attorneys general Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia, Greg Abbott of Texas, Pam Bondi of Florida and Alan Wilson of South Carolina…The settlement offer “appears to reach well beyond the scope of our enforcement role, and, in some instances, far exceeds the scope of the misconduct which was the subject of our original investigation,” according to the letter, which was verified by Brian Gottstein, a spokesman for Cuccinelli.

A key objection is the “moral hazard” created by the proposal to reduce homebuyers’ loans because it “rewards those who simply choose not to pay their mortgage,” the attorneys general said.

The Republican attorneys general of Oklahoma, Alabama and Nebraska sent a similar letter last week. In reality, the proposed settlement lets the banks off too easy, as $20 billion in mortgage reductions won’t actually go that far, considering the extent of damage the housing market has suffered.

Many homeowners are underwater through no fault of their own: Wall Street malfeasance and a lack of prudent regulation caused a housing bubble to grow and burst, plunging home prices steeply downward. Also, as Paul Krugman noted, the settlement only calls for modifications that benefit bank and homeowners alike:

The proposed settlement only calls for loan modifications that would produce a greater “net present value” than foreclosure — that is, for offering deals that are in the interest of both homeowners and investors. The outrageous truth is that in many cases banks are blocking such mutually beneficial deals, so that they can continue to extract fees.

But even this modest proposal has earned nothing but scorn from Republicans, who are once again content with allowing Wall Street to avoid paying for its sins.

Last week, ThinkProgress documented conservative efforts in twelve states to shift the tax burden onto the middle class even while cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy. In three states, conservatives are going even further, proposing massive estate tax cuts for millionaires even as income inequality is at its worse since the 1920s. Here are the details:

MAINE: Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage’s (I) tax reform package would raise the state’s estate tax exemption from $1 million to $2 million — allowing four hundred of the state’s wealthiest estates to escape taxation. At the same time, the tax plan would raise property taxes on middle class Mainers while freezing healthcare funding for working parents, cutting money for schools, and raising the retirement age for public workers. Republican legislators want to go even further, and are currently considering eliminating the estate tax altogether.

OHIO: In January, House Speaker William Batchelder (R) called Gov. John Kasich’s (R) proposal to completely eliminate the estate tax one of the Republican-controlled legislature’s “top priorities.” But already the bill has garnered strong opposition from local governments, who depend on estate tax revenue and are already concerned state spending cuts. Even while finding room for estate tax reductions, Kasich’s proposed budget cuts 25 percent of funding for local schools, $427 million for nursing homes, $1 million for food banks, $12 million from children’s hospitals, and $15.9 million from an adoption program for children with special needs.

NEW JERSEY: In his 2011 budget proposal, Gov. Chris Christie called for raising the state’s estate tax exemption from $675,000 to $1 million even while proposing cuts to the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit and homestead rebates for working poor families. And last year Christie vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature that would have raised taxes on the state’s millionaires to help fund property tax relief for Main Street.

Last December, the federal government set the precedent for estate tax cuts when the bi-partisan tax deal signed by President Obama cut the estate tax rate to its second lowest level since 1931.

– Kevin Donohoe

Potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) earlier this month endorsed giving multinational corporations a huge tax break by allowing them to bring money they have stashed offshore back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate. Usually, money brought back to the U.S. is subject to the statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

A group of multinational corporations have launched a quiet lobbying campaign to try ginning up interest in this idea, which is known as a tax repatriation holiday. In addition to Romney, they seem to have won another convert in House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who supported a tax holiday during a speech yesterday on his “pro-growth economic plan“:

We must make America competitive again by lowering the corporate tax rate to at least 25% – equal to our competitors. And we will do it as part of fundamental tax reform, which will minimize the impact on government revenues.

Forging consensus on this type of fundamental tax reform will take time, so in the meantime I propose that we allow U.S. multinational companies to bring back almost $1.2 trillion in overseas profits at a lower tax so they can invest in our economy here at home.

Both the corporations themselves and the Republicans supporting a tax holiday claim that allowing companies to repatriate billions of dollars at an extremely low tax rate will spur domestic investment and job creation. However, in 2004 Congress approved a repatriation holiday; it resulted in corporate executives lining their own pockets, not investing in new jobs.

Kristen Forbes, who was on President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers when the last repatriation holiday was approved, said that it “didn’t accomplish the stated goals of bringing jobs and investment to the US.’’ In fact, the holiday encouraged corporations to stash more money overseas, because they figured they could sucker Congress into consistently approving tax holidays.

The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have, thus far, been opposed to the idea of a repatriation holiday occurring outside of comprehensive corporate tax reform. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said that approving another tax holiday “makes a farce out of the whole system.” Even Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who is usually adamantly opposed to fair corporate taxation, said of a repatriation holiday, “probably from an accounting and tax standpoint, that’s not a good way to go.”

Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) has played a leading role in the Republican assault on workers’ rights, pursuing a bill to strip his state’s public employees of collective bargaining rights. But he has also been actively pushing his state’s assets into the hands of private corporations, with his main job creation plan being the formation of JobsOhio, a private entity that will be tasked with coaxing business into the Buckeye state. Similar schemes have not worked in other states, but Kasich has plowed forward nonetheless

Part of Kasich’s plan for financing his new, privatized development agency (of which he will be chairman) includes leasing the state’s liquor stores to JobsOhio, which will then use the money to run its operations. Kasich claims that this will work because Ohioans are increasing their alcohol consumption:

The success of Gov. John Kasich’s plan to recruit new business to Ohio will hinge heavily on just how much Ohioans drink alcohol. Kasich last week unveiled his state budget proposal, which includes a plan to lease the state’s liquor distribution operation — which of late has drawn record profits — and use the cash to fund his private economic development machine.

“Over the years people drink more. It’s just a natural revenue stream,” Kasich said last Tuesday while outlining his proposal, drawing a smattering of laughter from reporters. “So, everybody wanted to buy it. Everybody was interested in it.”

Whether Ohio’s best “natural” asset is its booze intake is up for debate. But all jokes about Ohio’s increasing drunkenness aside, a deeper look at the numbers indicates that Ohio is getting the short end of the stick on this deal. As Ohio Budget Watch found, Kasich’s plan involves the state selling about $7 billion in expected revenue from state liquor stores to JobsOhio for just $1.5 billion:

Profits on liquor sales generate $228 million for the state of Ohio every year. JobsOhio is set to take over liquor sales oversight and own that revenue stream. They, in turn, will sell 30 years worth of that revenue — worth around $6.8 billion — to a group of investors (recruited by a Wall Street firm, who will of course take a cut) in return for a lump sum payment to the state. According to the administration, they expect to receive about $1.5 billion in return for this $6+ billion in state revenue.

And because JobsOhio doesn’t actually have any money to pay even the $1.5 billion, it will “turn to Wall Street to issue bonds to finance the deal.” As Plunderbund noted, “Wall Street, which obviously expects a return on its investment, won’t finance the deal unless Ohio (i.e. Kasich) is willing to allow them to essentially buy a twenty to thirty year revenue stream for pennies on the dollar.” Thus, Kasich is selling his state’s liquor stores at fire-sale prices, even as it faces billions in deficits.

A group of multinational corporations have been undertaking a quiet lobbying campaign in an attempt to goad Congress into approving what it known as a tax repatriation holiday. Such a holiday would allow these corporations to bring money they have stashed overseas back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate. Usually, repatriated money is subject to the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent, and remains untaxed until it comes back to the U.S.

The corporate case for this tax break is that it will bring a flood of capital into the U.S. that will be spent on domestic investment and job creation. 2012 Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney is pushing the policy by making similar claims. However, research into a previous repatriation holiday — enacted by Congress in 2004 — shows that it did not deliver the promised returns in terms of investment or job creation, instead going to line the pockets of corporate executives.

Not only that, but the 2004 tax break also wound up increasing the amount of money corporations stow offshore, as they parked even more of it there in the hopes that Congress would approve another holiday somewhere down the line:

Research by Northwestern’s Brennan indicates companies rationally concluded that if they were granted one special one-time tax break, they might very well be granted another. That gave them the incentive to attribute even more of their profits to foreign operations, like a shopper waiting for an end-of-season sale. By the end of 2006 the total “permanently” reinvested abroad had exceeded the 2004 peak. It has continued to grow since.

Of course, it makes sense that corporations would simply leave money overseas, rather than pay the statutory tax rate, if they are convinced that Congress will continue to approve misguided tax breaks over and over. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said that approving another tax holiday without closing the myriad loopholes in the corporate tax code “makes a farce out of the whole system.”

As CAP’s Seth Hanlon noted, the nonsensical U.S. corporate tax code combines the ability to stow tax-free cash overseas with a slew of loopholes; these have driven corporate tax revenue down to one of the lowest points in history. Approving another repatriation holiday would fix none of those problems and constitute just another giveaway to corporations that already aren’t paying their fair share.

In 2010, 18 percent of the country — nearly one in five households — reported not having enough money to provide food at some point during the year. Last month, food prices increased by 3.9 percent, in the largest jump since 1974. Vegetable prices increased by nearly fifty percent, driven in part by weather disasters damaging crops in place such as Australia and Russia.

These trends are occurring at the same time that unemployment has remained unacceptably high, leaving many Americans with nothing but the social safety net standing between them and going hungry. But as National Journal’s Tim Fernholz reported, the House Agriculture Committee has called for a reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) in a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI):

One part of the agriculture budget that has seen increases is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) where spending has tripled over the last ten years. Given the economic downturn and high unemployment which has left many Americans with few options, an increase in nutrition assistance spending is to be expected….But much of the cost increase has come through government action as opposed to the kind of macroeconomic forces that naturally result in increased subscriptions.

The letter’s co-authors — House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) and ranking member Collin Peterson (D-MN) — are correct that, in the face of the Great Recession, food stamp benefits were increased. But those increased benefits have (unfortunately) already been reduced to pay for a jobs bill that Congress passed last year.

And at the same time they’re pointing to food stamps as an area ripe for cuts, Lucas and Peterson say that the tens of billions in annual agriculture subsides that the U.S. provides should be off-limits for reductions. At the moment, 61 percent of the subsidies that the U.S. provides for agriculture go to just ten percent of recipients. Though some restrictions on rich farmers receiving subsidies were placed into the 2008 farm bill, they were mostly ineffective. And entrenched lawmakers on the agriculture committee help to keep it that way:

The 15 congressional districts receiving the most in payments accounted for about a quarter of all farm aid…Representatives from nine of those districts serve on the House Agriculture Committee, including the panel’s top Democrat and Republican.

At the moment, 90 percent of agriculture subsidies go toward the production of just five crops — corn, wheat, rice, soy and cotton. “Most of that 90 percent went to the large farming corporations,” said Annie Shattuck of the Institute for Food & Development Policy. “Much of those commodities were not used for food, but for animal feed and industrial applications. Cotton is not even a food.” Yet lawmakers on the Agriculture Committee feel that this wasteful spending is more important than helping Americans families weather the Great Recession.

Last month, ThinkProgress revealed a campaign organized by lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against its opponents using three security contractors, Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal. During an Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) asked military officials to provide contract information related to the government’s business with the firms involved in the Chamber proposal. Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), requested that the information be made available to the full subcommittee.

Palantir, Berico, and HBGary may have used techniques and technologies developed under military contracts in their pro-Chamber campaign. For months, the security firms — who named their collaboration “Themis,” after the Roman goddess of law and order — worked on behalf of the Chamber’s law firm, Hunton & Williams LLP, creating electronic dossiers on political opponents of the Chamber through illicit means.

What is known about the business relationship between these firms?

BERICO TECHNOLOGIES: Berico’s co-founders, CEO Guy Filippelli and COO Nick Hallam have issued a statement claiming that Berico “does not condone or support any effort that proactively targets American firms, organizations or individuals,” calling the actions “reprehensible.”

However, Berico’s initial proposal to Hunton & Williams called for the “open source collection of information on target groups and individuals that appear organized to extort specific concessions through online slander campaigns.”

Furthermore, Berico COO Nick Hallam signed a contract with HBGary in November to “better conduct cyber investigations and corporate campaign analysis” in response to the request of Hunton & Williams.

In December, Hallam signed a nondisclosure agreement with HBGary to use Palantir on behalf of Hunton & Williams to “provide information, insight, and analysis relating to nongovernmental organization corporate campaigns and labor union corporate campaigns.”

In pursuit of this unethical project to proactively target the Chamber’s political adversaries, Berico employees then uploaded data scraped from Facebook onto Palantir’s servers.

Emails indicate that Berico CEO Guy Fillippelli met with Hunton & Williams partner Bob Quackenboss, the primary contact with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to negotiate pricing of the spying campaign.

PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES: In his testimony, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander described how Palantir’s tools provide the defense and intelligence communities “a way of visualizing what’s going on in the networks” [of terrorists]. Alexander explained that military contracts generally specify whether technologies developed for the defense department can be used for commercial applications.

Palantir co-founder and CEO Dr. Alex Karp has issued a statement that Palantir has “a commitment to building software that protects privacy and civil liberties.” However, Palantir was in fact the company that first asked HBGary to conduct illicit invasions of privacy.

Palantir was the first company approached by Hunton & Williams to conduct the pro-Chamber espionage campaign in the middle of October, 2010. Even before learning the identity of the law firm’s corporate client, Palantir’s Matthew Steckman then asked Barr to provide “digital intelligence collection” and “social media exploitation” — i.e., illicit and unethical hacking. Emails indicate that the pro-Chamber spying was approved by Palantir founder Alex Karp, the board of directors, and Palantir general counsel Matt Long.

Under contract from Berico, Palantir developed a database designed to hold data scraped from social media sites, and both Berico and HBGary uploaded such illicit data to the Palantir servers. It is unknown whether Palantir has deleted all such data scraped from Facebook and LinkedIn for their projects. It is also unknown how much data scraped from social media sites still resides on other Palantir projects.

After the conspiracy was revealed, Berico and Palantir have cut ties with HBGary for its “reprehensible” “cyber attacks.” Palantir has now suspended software engineer Matthew Steckman “pending a thorough review of his actions.”

However, top officials of the Themis companies signed contracts to work together to use Barr’s “abhorrent” and “reprehensible” methods on behalf of Hunton & Williams and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Simply disowning HBGary and putting a “26-year-old software engineer” on leave shouldn’t make the questions about the extent of this unethical conspiracy go away.

View a timeline of the ChamberLeaks events.

Like many Republican governors, Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has released a budget that lays off thousands of state workers and slashes education and Medicaid funding, but still cuts Florida’s already low corporate income tax rate by two and a half percentage points. During an interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow last night (which didn’t air, but was posted online), Scott defended his budgeting moves, saying that his cut in the corporate income tax — and his desire to eventually phase that tax out entirely — is part of promoting “fair taxes” in the Sunshine state:

We want to make this the place where people say ‘look, its got a fair government, we have fair taxes.’ We don’t have an income tax, I’m getting rid of the business tax…We’re going to reduce it by two and a half percent this year, down to three percent, and then phase it out over the next few years.

Watch it:

Placing the burden of deficit reduction onto public workers and those who depend on public services, while simultaneously doling out new corporate tax cuts, certainly isn’t fair. But it’s even less fair considering that Florida has one of the nation’s most regressive tax systems, with no personal income tax and a high reliance on sales taxes.

Florida’s poorest 20 percent of residents currently pay 13.5 percent of their income in taxes, while the richest one percent of Floridians pay just 2.6 percent. In fact, Washington is the only state in the nation where a poor family can expect to pay higher taxes than in Florida, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “The bottom line is that many so-called ‘low-tax’ states are high-tax states for the poor, and most of them do not offer a good deal to middle-income families either. Only the wealthy in such states pay relatively little,” ITEP wrote.

Adding insult to injury, Scott wants to lower a corporate tax that is already riddled with giveaways and loopholes. The Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy has found that “exemptions from the corporate income tax cost more than $1 billion annually, and the state loses several hundred million dollars each year because of ‘tax avoidance behavior’ by companies.” Instead of addressing these problems — or introducing some progressivity into his state’s personal tax code — Scott is proposing a new tax cut for corporations that his state can ill-afford.

When President Obama warned that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision “will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our election,” conservatives began damage control literally before the President could even finish his sentence. Justice Sam Alito infamously mouthed the words “not true” while Obama was speaking. Of course, we subsequently learned the Chamber of Commerce was raising money from foreign corporations and then placed this money in the same account which funds their political attack ads.

Someone is now bankrolling a lawsuit to undermine the longstanding ban on political contributions by non-U.S. citizens:

[A] suit challenging the foreign contribution ban is being brought on behalf of a Canadian who wants to support President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and a dual Israeli-Canadian citizen who wants to contribute to Obama’s opponent and also to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), to help prevent a “government-takeover of the health-care system in the United States,” according to the suit. It says both plaintiffs are legally authorized to live and work in the United States, but are not permanent residents.

The fact that this lawsuit has been filed is not itself significant — anyone can file a lawsuit making whatever legal claim they would like. What is significant, however, is the fact that the case is being litigated by two high-dollar attorneys from a firm whose clients include some of the biggest corporate beneficiaries of the Citizens United decision  — including Koch Industries and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Two lawyers from the law firm Jones Day, Warren Postman and Yaakov Roth, represent the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. Both lawyers are top graduates of the Harvard Law School who clerked on the United States Supreme Court from 2008-09. In other words, they are not the kind of lawyers who come cheap. In 2005, Jones Day charged as much as $370 an hour for lawyers with a similar amount of experience, and an attorney from one of Jones Day’s top competitors tells ThinkProgress that a fourth-year associate at their firm bills as much as $440 per hour today.

It’s highly unlikely that Postman and Roth’s clients are the ones paying their bills. One is a very young attorney who earns more than enough to live comfortably, but not nearly enough to hire two $440 an hour litigators. The other is a medical resident at a New York hospital, a job which earns less than half the young lawyer’s salary.

To be clear, a court decision in favor of Jones Day’s clients would not necessarily allow BP or the Dubai Sovereign Wealth Fund to immediately start buying U.S. elections. The lawsuit only asks the court to allow lawful residents make campaign contributions. Nevertheless, such a decision would be a significant crack in the wall protecting American democracy from foreign money. There are any number of foreign corporations who would love to see that happen.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — which is charged with policing the country’s futures markets — said last week that speculation on energy futures, including oil, is at an all-time high. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law gave the CFTC the ability to issue limits on oil speculation, but agency missed the deadline for implementing the new rules, partly due to reluctance from conservative members of the CFTC board (which is a problem President Obama can address in June).

But even if the CFTC were stepping up, budget cuts favored by House Republicans would render market oversight vastly more difficult. H.R. 1, the House Republican-approved spending plan for the remainder of 2011, cuts the CFTC budget by nearly one-third, which would force the agency to lay off nearly 30 percent of its staff. CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has said that if the GOP budget cuts were implemented, “We would not be able to police…or ensure transparent markets in futures or swaps.”

And Republicans are forging ahead with these budget cuts even though they agree that oil speculation is increasing prices:

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), a senior House Energy and Commerce Committee member, recalled prior oil-speculation hearings and said “there was no question that that had some impact” on the 2008 uptick. “I think there is a combination of reasons for the recent spike,” he said in an interview yesterday.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the House Appropriations subpanel in charge of EPA and the Interior Department, said policies at the departments he oversees play a role in rising prices but agreed that speculation does as well. “Traders look out and see what’s about to potentially happen, so it has to do with speculation,” Simpson said in an interview. “That adds to the overall equation.”

Both Whitfield and Simpson voted for the budget cuts in H.R. 1. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), however, voted against H.R. 1 (one of just three Republicans to do so) and sent a letter to the CFTC asking that it enforce the speculation limits set out in Dodd-Frank. “Most oil market experts agree that excessive, unnecessary speculation by Wall Street traders is part of the problem,” Jones wrote. “Further delay by the commission leaves consumers and markets exposed to manipulation at a time when this nation can least afford it.”

Gensler appeared before a House appropriations subcommittee today to request increased funding for the CFTC, but the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Jack Kingston (R., Ga.), was unmoved.

Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) has already used his state’s budget gap to justify stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights, slashing education spending, and gutting health care services. At the same time, he’s proposed a slew of giveaways to corporations, including a tax break for oil companies and opening up Ohio’s state parks to oil and gas drilling.

Now, Kasich is proposing a fifty percent cut to funding for the Office of Consumers’ Counsel (OCC), which represents Ohio citizens in disputes with utility companies. Kasich’s office is using the shabby state of Ohio’s budget to justify the move:

“That something might be a worthy cause or important program doesn’t change the fact that Ohio’s broke,” Kasich spokeswoman Connie Wehrkamp said in an e-mail. “If we want to start creating jobs we have to stop believing we can balance the budget with imaginary money and once again respect the honesty of hard choices.” Asked how cutting OCC’s budget helps fix Ohio’s financial problems, she replied: “It’s all taxpayer money.”

But the catch here is that that the OCC is not funded with taxpayer dollars: it’s entirely funded by assessments on the utility companies themselves. “If you cut our budget, that money goes back into the pockets of the utilities,” said attorney Janine Migden-Ostrander, who leads the OCC. “It does not go back to the citizens of Ohio.” Even if the utility companies passed the savings on to consumers, they would total less than $1 per taxpayer per year.

Nearly the entire OCC budget goes to paying salaries and benefits of the OCC staff, so cuts to its budget simply means that it will handle fewer cases. Over the last two years, the agency’s advocacy has saved consumers about $54.5 million. “It is a disgrace to cut their budget in half when it is money not taken from the state coffers,” said state Rep. Vernon Sykes (D). “It cripples the people’s advocate against the law firms and economists hired by the utility companies.”

The Columbus Dispatch noted that Ohio’s utility companies “contributed heavily to Kasich’s gubernatorial campaign.” Anthony Alexander, a top executive for First Energy “was among the top individual donors.”

Last month, ThinkProgress broke the story that lobbyists representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce solicited a proposal from private security firms to hack and sabotage their perceived political opponents, including labor unions and even ThinkProgress. Several members of Congress later demanded an investigation into the matter.

During an Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) asked Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, and Dr. James Miller Jr., deputy under secretary of defense for policy, to provide contract information related to the government’s business with the firms involved in the Chamber proposal. Watch it:

As ThinkProgress has detailed, the security firms — HB Gary Federal/HB Gary, Berico Technologies, and Palantir — have worked on several projects for the military. In the proposal for the Chamber, the three security firms proposed to use the same tactics typically reserved for Jihadi terrorists against the Chamber’s perceived opponents. ThinkProgress will have a deeper report on the security firms later today.

Click here to read a timeline of the events related to the ChamberLeaks scandal.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) appeared on MSNBC last night, where he strongly rejected the idea that Social Security cuts should be on the table during current budget talks. “I’ve said clearly and as many times as I can, leave Social Security alone. Social Security has not added a single penny, not a dime, a nickel, a dollar to the budget problems we have. Never has. And for the next 30 years, it won’t do that,” Reid said. “Two decades from now, I am willing to take a look at it. I am not willing to take a look at it now.”

House Republicans, meanwhile, have stated their intention to suggest “bold reforms” for Social Security in their 2012 budget, which House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) plans to release during the first week of April. At Politico’s “Playbook Breakfast” today, which Wonk Room attended, Ryan was asked about Reid’s position. Ryan said that Reid’s stance “just boggles my mind,” before later admitting that Social Security is “not a driver of our debt”:

I’m boggled. That just boggles my mind…I would argue, even though, it’s not really a driver of our debt, it’s not a significant part of our debt problems, it would build great confidence, fixing Social Security on a bipartisan basis, because it would tell not only the credit markets that Americans are getting their act together, it would buy us more time and space with them, it would show that our government’s not broken.

Watch it:

So, in Ryan’s mind, one of the most popular and vital social programs in the country’s history needs to be tweaked not because it’s driving the debt, but because it would reassure the markets. But remember, if nothing is done to Social Security, it will still pay full benefits until the year 2037. After that, the program is projected to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which is close to full benefits once inflation is accounted for. There are certainly progressive changes that could be made to bolster Social Security and provide more support for those at the bottom end of the income chain, but Ryan’s desperate quest to take an axe to the program is entirely unwarranted.

Of course, Ryan’s ultimate goal, as explained in his Roadmap for America’s Future, is to simply privatize Social Security, even though such a move wouldn’t put Social Security onto a path to solvency, as money would have to be diverted to the costs of setting up private accounts. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has said that the Republicans’ 2012 budget would contain “cost containment goals” for Social Security, but without any explanation for how to achieve them.

Potential Republican 2012 presidential candidate Haley Barbour (MS) has been rolling out his economic vision this week, with his stated desire to “change the damaging policies that pose an even greater threat to our economic future.” One of the cornerstones of his economic plan is a huge cut in the corporate tax rate:

There is a global battle for capital, and right now, American companies are sitting on more than $1 trillion locked overseas because of our mistaken tax code. We need to unlock that capital so it can be invested in new plants, new equipment and new jobs here in America, not overseas. While we’re at it, let’s finally cut our corporate income tax rate as nearly every one of our competitors has done over the last decade.

Barbour envisions cutting the current corporate income tax, which stands at 35 percent, in half. “We need to cut the corporate income tax in half like the rest of the world,” he said.

Already, corporate tax revenue in the U.S. is at one of its lowest points in history, and the U.S. raises less in corporate tax revenue than many of its main trading partners. And the reason for this is simple: there are myriad loopholes, credits, and outright giveaways in the tax code that allow many corporation to pay little or no corporate income tax. Major corporations such as Boeing, Bank of America, and General Electric have paid nothing into the Treasury in recent years.

The Congressional Budget Office has found that a cut in the corporate tax rate is an ineffective job creation measure, saying that such a move “does not create an incentive for [corporations] to spend more on labor” and “is not a particularly cost-effective method of stimulating business spending.” But Barbour may have another motivation for gifting a tax break to the corporate world.

After all, Barbour spent years as a D.C. lobbyist, during which time he represented some of the largest multinational corporations. Barbour’s clients have included Microsoft, Bellsouth, Lockheed Martin, Nestle, United Health Group, “and a bevy of energy, pharmaceutical and tobacco companies.”

As governor of Mississippi, Barbour currently presides over a state with a 10.1 percent unemployment rate. He also has a history of implementing regressive tax hikes, while Mississippi has been mired at the bottom of national rankings when it comes to education, quality of life, and business climate. But as we showed in this report yesterday, Barbour is hardly alone amongst conservative governors in believing that corporations need lower taxes while the working class should pay more.

As part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the Federal Reserve has been directed to implement a cap on what are known as interchange fees — the fees that banks charge retailers to process debit card transactions. This cap was added to Dodd-Frank via an amendment proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) that passed by a 64-33 vote.

The Fed has proposed capping the fees at 12 cents, far below the current 44 cents per transaction that the banks charge. This has led the banks to launch an all-out lobbying campaign to delay (and ultimately repeal) the Durbin amendment. Yesterday, nine senators introduced legislation to delay the new rules for two years, presumably giving the banks ample time to cajole lawmakers into repealing the cap altogether:

Five of the nine senators who co-sponsored Tuesday’s legislation opposed the debit fee limits when Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois pushed the original legislation through the Senate last year…Only one co-sponsor voted in favor of the amendment, and the other three co-sponsors were not Senate members at the time.

That one co-sponsor who affirmatively voted for the Durbin amendment last year, but is now trying to delay its implementation, is Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE). Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who is leading the charge to delay the Durbin amendment, said, “I think there is a little bit of buyers’ remorse as I talk to senators in the hallway.”

As the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal pointed out, “interchange rates in the United States are among the highest, if not the highest, in the developed world.” The fees have grown by more than 300 percent in the last decade. It’s worth noting that the American Banker’s Association applauded the effort to block the new regulation.

The cap would cost the nation’s biggest banks — and therefore save retailers, large and small — about $14 billion in fees per year. “The proposed regulations will benefit consumers by lowering the billions of dollars annually in non-negotiable swipe fees paid by merchants to large banks and the dominant credit card networks,” said Ed Mierzwinski of U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. Nelson last year agreed that this step to rein in the big banks needed to be taken. What changed between then and now?