Look busy and check out some of this good reading.

• From Public Citizen and the Harvard Law School, “Fulfilling Kennedy’s Promise: Why the SEC Should Mandate Disclosure of Corporate Political Activity“, September 2011.

The report traces the recent history of campaign disclosure, and sees the SEC’s role as critical. Here’s an interesting point made:

…research in several past and ongoing studies suggests that companies seeking an advantage through lobbying and campaign activities may not be doing their shareholders any favors. Rather, corporate political activity overall may reflect the interests of the managers of the companies, or on a risk-adjusted basis may be less beneficial than other purposes to which shareholder funds could be put.

• “Independent Spending in Washington, 2006-2010.” How has Citizens United v. FEC changed the face of state elections? National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Overall, independent spending that targeted state races consistently paled in comparison to the direct campaign contributions made during the study period. In total, the $41 million spent independently was just 16 percent of the $258 million raised in direct campaign contributions. And while contributions raised directly by candidates have increased since 2006, there was little to no change seen in independent spending between the comparable 2006 and 2010 elections.

Although Washington requires detailed reporting of independent expenditures, intermediary PACs are often created that make finding the original contributors more tedious. The Institute created a diagram, called Taking the Low Road, to display how difficult it can be to follow money from donors through “shell” PACs to the races they targeted.

• “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult,” Truthout.org.

Fair warning!

I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country’s future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and “shareholder value,” the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP’s decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren’t after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5] They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be “forced” to make “hard choices” – and that doesn’t mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

• Fact Sheet from the U.S. State Department, “U.S. Engagement in the Pacific,” September 7, 2011. The report ticks off areas of “engagement,” a lot of which seems to involve military officials on Pacific Island tours. But State also says we’re pushing on climate change, women’s empowerment, and food security, among other things. Read the brief descriptions and make up your own mind.

• “Household Food Security in the United States, 2010,” USDA Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services.

The USDA study indicated that in 2010, 17.2 million households in America had difficulty providing enough food due to a lack of resources. The number of food insecure households in 2010 was relatively consistent with statistics released in 2008 and 2009….

Food insecurity rates were substantially higher than the national average for households with incomes near or below the current federal poverty line ($22,350 for a family of four), households with children headed by single women or single men, and black and Hispanic households. Food insecurity was more common in large cities and rural areas than in suburban areas and other outlying areas around large cities.

• “Cybercrime: Updating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to Protect Cyberspace and Combat Emerging Threats.” Statement of Mr. Pablo A. Martinez, Deputy Special Agent in Charge, Criminal Investigative Division, U.S. Secret Service, before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

The Secret Service has continued its collaboration with Verizon on the 2011 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) to identify emerging threats, educate Internet users, and evaluate new technologies that work to prevent and mitigate attacks against critical computer networks. Researchers from law enforcement and the private sector examined roughly 800 new data breaches. The results from the Verizon study show that two of the noticeable trends in cybercrime over the past couple of years involve the ongoing targeting of Point of Sale (POS) systems as well as the compromise of online financial accounts, often through malware written explicitly for that purpose, with subsequent transaction fraud involving those accounts.

• “Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking Up from the American Dream,” The Pew Charitable Trusts.

So much for the dream.

This report shows that nearly 40 percent of black men raised in middle- class families fall from the middle in adulthood, double the number of white men who do so. In contrast, there is not a notable gap in downward mobility between white and Hispanic men, nor between women of different races.

Lots of details about the downward pressures and what kinds of people are most likely to be falling behind.