Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has helped to launch NoVoterLeftBehind.net, a project of Democrats for America's Future (DAF). The site is designed to monitor voter registration and to monitor the voting process during the November 2008 election. The goal is to bring attention to any irregularities that occur and to urge "every Democratic candidate to pledge not to concede a single race until every last vote is counted."

"This is about more -- far more -- than who wins the next election, as important as that is. If we can't guarantee the citizens of a democracy that their votes will be counted, every other liberty we hold dear is at risk," said Kennedy in a letter he sent to Democrats across the county.

In the Press Release, Barbara Roberts, former Oregon Governor and Secretary of State, said "from the voter registration process to Election Day challenges and beyond -- DAF will fight every last fight to the very end, insisting that every American is guaranteed a democracy's most sacred right: their vote."

Staying with our current theme of taxes and corporate America, let me direct your attention toExecutive Excess 2008: How Average Taxpayers Subsidize Runaway Pay -- a report from Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

On Wednesday, I wrote that even though it's wrong to simply state that two thirds of corporations do not pay corporate income taxes, heavy criticism can be leveled at the tax code because it's rigged such that a lot of profits escape taxation. This IPS/UFE report takes aim at tax laws that encourage stratospheric executive compensation while costing some $20 billion annually.

The report notes that 30 years ago, the average American CEO was paid some 30 to 40 times that of the average American worker. In 2007, however, CEOs were compensated at a rate 344 times greater than that of the average worker. While the explosion in the pay gap has many causes, federal tax law has played role. And, aside from abetting obscene executive pay, the $20 billion in forgone revenue could be put to other uses.

All subsidies involve trade-offs. Each time we allow executives and their employers to avoid paying taxes they would otherwise owe, we reduce government's capacity to deliver needed services that taxpayers and their families would otherwise receive.

Tax subsidies for excessive executive pay represent a particularly indefensible waste of government resources. At the moment, no serious observer of the American scene is arguing that top business executives, as a group, earn too little in compensation. So why then should government, in any manner, be encouraging corporations and investment firms to pay their executives even more?

A new group the American Issues Project (AIP) has been caught in controversy over an ad linking candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) to former domestic terrorist William Ayers. As a 501(c)(4) organization it is allowed to air a political ad as long as the majority of its spending is nonpolitical, it cannot accept money from corporations, and it must identify the donors that finance its ads in reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The ad however, is being considered by some to be a violation of election law.

The ad "Know Enough" has images of Obama and Ayers, with a narrator asking, "Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?"

Those who are calling the ad illegal consider it to clearly be express advocacy; the ad concerns an election, takes a position on the character and fitness for office of the candidate, and raises no legislative issue. The Ayers ad mentions Obama's name and uses the word "elect." According to the Supreme Court decision in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, an ad can be regulated and considered express advocacy "only if the ad is susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate."

In response, Obama's general counsel wrote letters to television stations, asserting that the Ayers ad is illegal and false, and that its airing is subject to a FEC penalty. The letter states that Obama never called Ayers "respectable" and "mainstream." In addition a letter was sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting an investigation into the group's activities for possible violations of campaign finance law.

According to a Politico story, a spokesman for AIP Christian Pinkston said, "This is a sad ploy to circumvent the First Amendment by a campaign who has no arguments with the merits of our ad. It's the classic maneuver: If you can't win on the merits, file a lawsuit."

AIP submitted an independent expenditure report that indicates the group is spending nearly $3 million on television ads attacking Obama.

GDP
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its preliminary estimate of second quarter GDP growth. The BEA estimates that the economy grew at annualized rate of 3.3 percent in the second quarter. This estimate is a bit higher than the advance figure of 1.9 percent, which the BEA released a month ago. The final second quarter GDP number will be released on Sept. 26. In the first quarter of this year, real GDP grew at a 0.9 percent rate.

The acceleration in real GDP growth in the second quarter primarily reflected a larger decrease in imports, an acceleration in exports, an acceleration in PCE, a smaller decrease in residential fixed investment, and an upturn in state and local government spending that were partly offset by a larger decrease in inventory investment.

Unemployment Insurance Claims
Also released today were unemployment insurance claims. The Labor Department estimates that in the week ending Aug. 23, 425,000 new unemployment insurance claims were made. The figure is 10,000 fewer than the previous week and reduces the four-week moving average of initial claims from 446,250 to 440, 250. The number of continuing claims rose by 64,000 to 3,423,000.