Paul Krugman: In a "Crankocracy," the Rich Call the Shots

Timothy Noah makes an interesting point in the April 19 edition of The New Republic: at least so far, the most visible effect of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has been not so much a flood of corporate cash into politics as a flood of cash from billionaire cranks into politics.

"Super-rich, hard-right tycoons like Foster Friess (mutual funds), Harold Simmons (chemicals and metals), Bob Perry (home-building) and Sheldon Adelson (casinos) are, through the new vehicle called the super PAC, leveraging their fortunes to seize hold of the political process," wrote Mr. Noah, a senior editor at the magazine, in an article titled "Crankocracy in America." "Super PACs have made it so easy for millionaires and billionaires to spend unlimited sums on behalf of a particular candidate that these groups are now routinely outspending Republican presidential primary campaigns."

Paul Krugman: The Transformation of Ben Bernanke

I’ve been rereading Larry Ball’s impressive and disturbing what-happened-to-Ben-Bernanke analysis — an analysis that, I happen to know, has caused much consternation in some circles. (“Surely it can’t be just groupthink! There must be very good reasons the Federal Reserve hasn’t done more!”)

And I think there’s a way to further refine Mr. Ball’s analysis, published on Feb. 28 on Vox, the Center for Economic Policy Research’s online policy portal — a way that makes more sense of Mr. Bernanke’s retreat from earlier positions, albeit one that still doesn’t cast a very flattering light on the Fed.

How "Centrist" Democrats Are Helping Conservatives - and Failing America's Moms

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

April 16, 2012 - 9:35pm ET 

So a corporate Democratic lobbyist named Hillary Rosen made a gaffe about Ann Romney's resumé. So what? The reality is that Moms of all ages have been wounded by an obsolete and misguided consensus among Washington elites - a consensus that is too often mislabeled as 'centrism.'

This false centrism is based on an utterly discredited ideology of deregulation and government austerity - an ideology that has the GOP in its iron grip and controls much of the Democratic Party apparatus. The Republicans have become too radical to save, but the Democrats need to see the light - and soon - because the results are in and they're indisputable.

The Clintonite economic fantasy of "corporate-friendly Democrats" has failed. From Wall Street deregulation to welfare 'reform,' from Social Security "bargains" to jobs cuts for poor mothers, the record is undeniable: "Bipartisan" Washington's economic agenda doesn't work.

2013 Budget Debate May Be Setting The Standard For Crazy

By Stan Collender

April 19, 2012 - 2:19pm ET 

If you weren't convinced that anything related to the federal budget on Capital Hill is completely nuts this year, just think about these three things, all of which are happening this week:

1. The House is putting together a FY13 reconciliation package based on the GOP/Ryan plan it passed earlier this year even though (1) reconciliation is required to be based on the budget resolution conference agreement between the House and the Senate, (2) there will be no budget resolution conference report agreement this year and, therefore, there will be no reconciliation, and (3) nothing the House considers for its own private reconciliation has any chance of actually (or perhaps ever) being enacted.
2. The Senate Budget Committee is trying to mark up a FY 13 budget resolution that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has already said will not be considered by the full Senate.

Boehner, Pelosi Spar Over History Of ‘Grand Bargain’ Fiasco

Sahil Kapur

April 20, 2012, 5:00 AM

 

Nine months after the famed deficit negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner collapsed, the House’s top Republican and top Democrat spent a full week sparring over what really happened at that critical July 2011 juncture. With a debt-limit driven economic crisis looming, Obama and Boehner neared a “grand bargain” on taxes and spending only to watch it splinter, then break apart completely at the 11th hour.

It started Tuesday, when Boehner told CBS Obama “lost his courage” toward the end and unfairly shifted the goal posts at the last minute — a common GOP claim, which the speaker says forced his exit. Obama demanded more revenue after an agreement was struck, the speaker said, and thus “bl[ew] up the deal.”

Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency

by Justin Elliott
ProPublica, April 20, 2012, 10:50 a.m.

News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

But now many of the country’s biggest media companies, which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations, are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.

ALEC's Other 'Deadly Force' Campaign to Kill Climate Initiatives

Elliott Negin
Director of News & Commentary, Union of Concerned Scientists

The relatively unknown American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) got a black eye recently when news stories revealed it was a prime mover behind "Stand Your Ground" laws in Florida and 24 other states that temporarily shielded the man who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

But the secretive group's influence in statehouses goes a lot further than deadly force, self-defense laws. Since its founding in 1973, ALEC has ghostwritten state legislation across the country on a wide range of issues, from voter ID laws to prison policy to worker protections, as a number of press accounts have pointed out.

What has gone unmentioned, however, is ALEC's longtime stealth campaign to scuttle state--and federal--climate change initiatives, despite the fact that a number of its corporate members publicly acknowledge that global warming is a serious problem. They include General Motors; oil giants BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil; and electric utilities Duke Energy, Entergy and Progress Energy.

MF Global: The Untold Story of the Biggest Wall Street Collapse Since Lehman

By Pam Martens, AlterNet
Posted on April 20, 2012, Printed on April 21, 2012

Only on Wall Street can you bankrupt a company; misplace $1.6 billion of customers’ money; lose 75 percent of shareholders’ money in two weeks; speed dial a high priced criminal attorney and get a court to authorize the payment of your multi-million dollar legal tab from the failed company’s insurance policies; have regulators waive your requirements to take licensing exams required to work in the securities and commodities industry; have your Board of Directors waive your loyalty to the firm; run a bucket shop out of the UK; and still have the word “Honorable” affixed to your name in a Congressional investigations hearing.

This is not a flashback to the rotting financial carcasses of 2008. This putrid saga has been playing out in five Congressional hearings since December with the next episode scheduled for Tuesday, April 24, before the Senate Banking Committee under the auspicious title: “The Collapse of MF Global: Lessons Learned and Policy Implications.” (The title might more appropriately be, “MF Global: Lessons  Never Learned and Policy Implications of a Wild West Financial System Just One TradeAway from the Next Taxpayer Bailout.”)

Before you write that Social Security is bankrupt….

COMMENTARY | April 19, 2012

Two ardent defenders of Social Security offer some context to reporters on the upcoming release of the 2012 Social Security Trustees Report, hoping to offset scary and unfounded headlines.

By Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson

The most important take-away points from the 2012 Trustees Report will be that Social Security has a large and growing surplus; that without any Congressional action, Social Security will continue to pay benefits to America’s eligible working families for decades; and that with modest legislated increases in revenue, it will continue to pay those benefits for the next century and beyond.

Because the economic recovery and wage growth have been slower than expected and the cost of living was higher, this year’s report is likely to project that the number of years that Social Security can continue to pay benefits in full with no Congressional action will be a year or two shorter. But it is still decades away -- and the precise year has fluctuated in virtually every Trustees Report, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. The fluctuation is unsurprising given the uncertainties related to projecting inflation, wage growth, productivity, immigration rates, fertility rates, and other factors so far into the future.

I Don’t Understand Michelle Rhee

by Diane Ravitch

I am trying to understand Michelle Rhee. She has allied herself with the most right-wing governors in the nation, yet she claims to be a Democrat. She has worked with Republican Rick Scott in Florida, Republican John Kasich in Ohio, Republican Chris Christie in New Jersey, Republican Rick Snyder in Michigan, among others. Any governor who wants to cut teachers’ rights and benefits can call on her to stand with him. Wherever there is a governor eager to dismantle and privatize public education, she is there at his side.

In Indiana, she stood with Republican governor Mitch Daniels as he successfully pushed through voucher legislation. In almost every state where charter legislation is under consideration, she is there to promote the glories of privatization. She is active in Georgia and Alabama and many other states, where the charter movement is likely to do serious harm to rural, exurban, suburban, and fragile urban communities, where the public schools are central to the local community.

6 Things You Need to Know About the Government's New Spy Law (CISPA)

By Scott Lemieux, AlterNet
Posted on April 18, 2012, Printed on April 21, 2012

Congress is seriously considering a bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Intended to allow information-sharing both between corporations and between corporations and the government, it presents serious dangers to individual privacy. The most important parts of the proposed act permit corporations to share information about their customers with each other and with the government if they assert that this information-sharing is necessary for national security.

While the need for better sharing of information might be necessary in some cases, in its current form CISPA represents a particular danger – a mutually reinforcing combination of public and private threats to privacy.

ALEC Sends Out an SOS to Breitbart Bloggers

by Rebekah Wilce — April 18, 2012 - 7:52am

Shortly after issuing a press release announcing that it was disbanding its "Public Safety and Elections Task Force" after 30 years, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) held a training for the right-wing blogosphere.

ALEC Director of External Relations Caitlyn Korb spoke yesterday at a Heritage Foundation "Bloggers Briefing," begging conservative bloggers for help while prepping "a very aggressive campaign to really spread the word about what we actually do." Korb appears to be a new ALEC employee who recently worked for the Cato Institute. Both ALEC and Cato have received funding from Koch family foundations. The Heritage Foundation is an ALEC member.

For He's a Jolly Good Scoundrel

Robert Scheer
Posted: 04/19/2012 8:33 am

How evil is this? At a time when two-thirds of U.S. homeowners are drowning in mortgage debt and the American dream has crashed for tens of millions more, Sanford Weill, the banker most responsible for the nation's economic collapse, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

So much for the academy's proclaimed "230-plus year history of recognizing some of the world's most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders." George Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Albert Einstein must be rolling in their graves at the news that Weill, "philanthropist and retired Citigroup Chairman," has joined their ranks.

The Truth Revealed About Debt and Deficits

By Marshall Auerback, AlterNet
Posted on April 18, 2012, Printed on April 21, 2012

It’s hard to open a newspaper or turn on the TV without being bombarded with narratives suggesting that fiscal policy didn’t work and that we therefore need discipline in the form of balanced budget amendments and debt limits. Even those who see themselves as moderates on the issue are embracing a commitment to “eventually” slash deficit spending once recovery gets underway.

But most of this talk arises from a fundamental misunderstanding about the way debt and deficits actually operate.

The Zombie Rises: The Return of Simpson-Bowles

By Robert Borosage

April 19, 2012 - 11:19am ET 

Take a good look at Europe—bloody riots in Athens and Madrid, rising unemployment, spreading poverty and suicide, and a deepening recession—because the current American elite consensus bizarrely wants to drive America down that same path.
Europe's miseries come from imposing austerity before recovering from the recession caused by the financial collapse. Conservatives in Germany and England inflicted harsh measures to enforce budget discipline—hiking taxes, cutting spending.

A huge student loan scam

With the help of Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., for-profit colleges are massively ripping off U.S. taxpayers

By Andrew Leonard

Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a bill with the impressive, everybody-can-get-behind-this title “Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act.” Sponsored by the ultra-conservative North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx, the bill ostensibly took aim at an issue close to small-government-loving hearts: intrusive federal regulation of for-profit colleges — fast growing, highly profitable outfits like DeVry University or the online-only University of Phoenix.

Like so many of the bills passed by the House since Republicans gained the majority in the 2010 midterm elections, the bill was designed to repeal specific actions taken by the Obama administration. In this case, the issue at hand was the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure greater “program integrity” in the for-profit educational sector. Specifically, a new federal definition of what constitutes a legitimate academic “credit hour” and a new requirement that all online providers of post-secondary education be accredited in each and every state in which they do business.

The Evidence That Might Be Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Undoing

Nick R. Martin

April 18, 2012, 5:30 AM 38962

 

There are times when Sheriff Joe Arpaio has seemed untouchable. In his nearly 20 years in office, he has survived political challenges, court judgments and criminal investigations.


But a ruling filed last week by an arm of the Arizona Supreme Court could prove to be a road map to the Republican lawman’s undoing.

A three-person disciplinary panel of the state’s high court said there was enough evidence to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the sheriff and three of his closest allies participated in what the panel believes was federal crime in December 2009.

10 Things Republicans Don't Want You to Know About Taxes

by Avenging Angel

Tax Day 2012 has been a busy one for the propagandists of the Republican Party.  After the GOP successfully filibustered the Buffett Rule in the Senate, House Speaker John Boehner claimed that Republicans are "listening to the American people."  Of course, what Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and their allies don't mention is that the Democratic proposal to implement a minimum 30 percent tax on millionaires is wildly popular.  Then again, the list of things Republicans don't want you to know about taxes is a long one.

How the War on Women Became Mainstream

Wednesday, 18 April 2012 13:15  
By Staff, People For the American Way | News Analysis 

In February 2012 the state of Texas decided to cut off reproductive and preventative health services to 130,000 low-income women. The staggering move caps what has been an escalating war on women’s health in state legislatures and in the U.S. Capitol since Tea Party-backed Republican majorities took control of the U.S. House and the majority of statehouses and took a determined minority in the U.S. Senate. While anti-woman rhetoric has been a mainstay of right-wing politics for decades, in the past two years that rhetoric has been turned into a record number of laws – and hurt a record number of women.


Texas’s move is extreme, but it’s not unusual. In fact, when it comes to women’s health, Republicans in the U.S. Congress and in the race for the presidency are trying to remake America in Texas’s image. In refusing funding for its women’s health programs, Texas has jeopardized women’s health – putting the burden especially on low-income women – and increased the risk of unwanted pregnancies, the main reason for abortions. Eliminating the entire federal family- planning program – a step supported by every Republican in the U.S. House and both major GOP presidential contenders – would do the same on a national scale, all while costing taxpayers billions of dollars in increased health–care expenses resulting from the lack of preventative care.

Hang onto that Paycheck! ALEC "Sharpens Focus on Jobs"

by Mary Bottari — April 19, 2012 - 8:18am

This week the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) announced that it would disband its controversial "Public Safety and Elections Task Force" to "Sharpen its Focus on Jobs, Free Markets and Growth." The disbanding of the source of a few of its more extreme proposals on voter ID, "Stand Your Ground/Shoot to Kill," and AZ SB1070 will do little to clean up ALEC's reputation. Each of ALEC's nine task forces is a little shop of horrors of legislative proposals that only Milton Friedman could love.

Focus on jobs, you say? The Center for Media and Democracy's archive of over 800 ALEC "model bills" has exposed a jobs agenda that is nothing less than a ruthless race to the bottom in wages and working conditions.

Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers

On March 3 Nicole Maurer learned of the proposed settlement between BP and hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast businesses and residents harmed by its 2010 oil spill, the largest in US history.
 
In her cramped but immaculate trailer on a muddy back road in the small town of Buras, Louisiana, Nicole tells me that the two years since the tragedy began on April 20, 2010, have been “a total nightmare” for her family. Not only has her husband William’s fishing income all but vanished along with the shrimp he used to catch but the entire family is plagued by persistent health problems.

Blamed for Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm

Anthony Gucciardi
NaturalSociety
April 19, 2012

Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.

ALEC Wants You To Pay 750 Percent More For High-Speed Internet

The corporate front group may change its social policy stance, but it still plans on robbing you blind.

By Zaid Jilani, Republic Report
Posted on April 18, 2012, Printed on April 21, 2012

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the most powerful corporate front group you’ve never heard of. Drawing the vast majority of its financing from big corporations, the group allows these firms to help write bills that it then secretly passes off to state legislators to get turned into laws.

The organization has come under fire recently for backing “Stand Your Ground” laws and voter suppression efforts, leading to an exodus of some of its strongest corporate funders. But the group’s policy agenda stretches far beyond these areas, and impacts just about every area of American life.

Our Chemical Cocktail Evaluated in New Report

by Paula Crossfield

 

When it comes to the chemicals used in food packaging, there is much we still don’t know. After a recent U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) decision last month to not put further restrictions on bisphenol-A (BPA), a new report today in the Washington Post takes a closer look at studies that reveal that such endocrine-distrupting chemicals are not only ubiquitous, they might also be harmful at much lower doses than previously thought.

The FDA allows around 3,000 chemicals, including BPA and phthalates–a family of chemicals used in lubricants and solvents and to make polyvinyl chloride pliable–at low doses, long considering them additives though they migrate from the packaging instead of being purposefully added by the food manufacturer. But these chemicals are notoriously hard to trace, and have not been studied for their cumulative effects.

Rich Countries Seek to Block UN From Working on Global Finance Reforms

Thursday, 19 April 2012 08:28  
By Rick Rowden, Truthout | News Analysis 

n important fight between rich countries and developing countries over the question of UN involvement in researching and advocating for a new global financial architecture has spilled into the open in the weeks leading up to the April 21-26 quadrennial ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). At issue are apparent efforts by the rich countries to water down and block the key planks of UNCTAD's proposed work plan related to needed reforms in finance and the global financial architecture. The proposed work agenda for the next four years is set to be approved in Doha. 

‘No-till farming’ revolution grows in Indiana

By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:36 EDT

Indiana farmer Mike Starkey does not plow his fields and uses fertilizer only sparingly, but he is on the cutting edge of a growing trend in American agriculture.

Advocates of his “no-till farming” technique say it could provide the low-cost, environmentally-friendly crops the agricultural industry has sought for many years.

Right-Wing ALEC Retreats on Most Controversial Issues

By Brendan Fischer, PR Watch
Posted on April 17, 2012, Printed on April 20, 2012

Under growing public pressure and the departure of multiple corporate members, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has announced it is disbanding the Task Force that has been responsible for some of the organization's most controversial pieces of legislation. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker introduced several bills approved by that Task Force when he was a legislator in the 1990s and early 2000s.

For at least three decades, the corporations, special interest groups, and legislators on the ALEC Public Safety & Elections Task Force (known as the Criminal Justice Task Force until 2009) have approved model bills that promote for-profit prisons and lengthen prison sentences, criminalize immigrants, expand the "war on drugs," thwart evidence-based pre-trial release programs in favor of for-profit bail-bonding, and many other policies.

The War on Public-Sector Workers

Monday, 16 April 2012 09:23  
By Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis 

Politicians across the country are using heaping doses of the politics of envy to try to arouse the anger of workers. However, their targets are not the corporate CEOs pulling down tens of millions of dollars a year in pay and bonuses. Nor is it the Wall Street crew that got incredibly rich inflating the housing bubble and then took government handouts to stay alive through the bust. The targets of these politicians' wrath are school teachers, firefighters, and other public-sector workers.

They are outraged that many of these workers still earn enough to support a middle-class family. Even more outrageous, many of these workers have traditional defined-benefit pensions that assure them a modicum of comfort in retirement. Having managed to ensure that most workers in the private sector did not benefit much from economic growth over the last three decades, the same upward redistributionist crew is turning their guns on public-sector workers.

Little-Noticed But Crucial Senate NLRB Vote Coming

By Dave Johnson

April 16, 2012 - 1:20pm ET 

The NLRB made a rule that makes it easier for unions to organize by speeding up the process. There is a vote coming up on a Senate Resolution to block it, with Republicans saying that giving workers rights would "hurt job growth." The danger is that enough "centrist" Democrats will join with Republicans to pass this. So pay attention.

The Rule

Last year the NLRB approved rules speeding up union-certification elections. This rule is needed because companies have been "filibustering" union elections with various tactics like bringing up meaningless and frivolous issues all the way through to the last stages of the process. All the while they saturate the workers with anti-union, intimidation threats and propaganda. ("We'll have to close the plant if a union comes in" "You can't get raises because unions rules don't allow it." "The unions takes more than half your wages, and calls it dues." "Union thug bosses will give your job to their brothers-in-law." -- the whole time keeping union reps from having access to counter the propaganda.)

Prevention for the Sickest 10 Percent Is Best Treatment Plan for People, Economy

Sunday, 15 April 2012 08:23  
By Jonathan Fleece, Truthout | News Analysis 

Spending on health care in America has skyrocketed over the past 40 years. In 2010, the United States spent an estimated $2.47 trillion on health care. This staggering figure equates to every American spending more than $8,000 on health care. The total spending represented nearly 17.4 percent of the US gross domestic product (GDP). By comparison, in 1980 the share of GDP devoted to health care was only 8.8 percent. This equated to approximately $1,000 per person spending on health care in 1980. In 1970, it was $352 per person. Even when adjusted for inflation this rate of increase in health care spending demonstrates that the US is in the midst of a health care fiscal crisis, and it is getting worse every year.

First They Come for the Muslims

By Chris Hedges

Tarek Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, was sentenced Thursday in Worcester, Mass., to 17½ years in prison. It was another of the tawdry show trials held against Muslim activists since 9/11 as a result of the government’s criminalization of what people say and believe. These trials, where secrecy rules permit federal lawyers to prosecute people on “evidence” the defendants are not allowed to examine, are the harbinger of a corporate totalitarian state in which any form of dissent can be declared illegal. What the government did to Mehanna, and what it has done to hundreds of other innocent Muslims in this country over the last decade, it will eventually do to the rest of us.

Mehanna, a teacher at Alhuda Academy in Worcester, was convicted after an eight-week jury trial of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq and providing material support to al-Qaida, as well as making false statements to officials investigating terrorism. His real “crime,” however, seems to be viewing and translating jihadi videos online, speaking out against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and refusing to become a government informant.

Stephen F. Downs, a lawyer in Albany, N.Y., a founder of Project Salam and the author of “Victims of America’s Dirty War,” a booklet posted on the website, has defended Muslim activists since 2006. He has methodically documented the mendacious charges used to incarcerate many Muslim activists as terrorists. Because of “terrorism enhancement” provisions, any sentence can be quadrupled—even minor charges can leave prisoners incarcerated for years.

Exposing ALEC: How Conservative-Backed State Laws Are All Connected

By Nancy Scola

A shadowy organization uses corporate contributions to sell prepackaged conservative bills -- such as Florida's Stand Your Ground statute -- to legislatures across the country. 

The recent blowing up of the Invisible Children viral video might have some of us thinking that Malcolm Gladwell was onto something with his biting critique of online politics, the so-called "slacktivism" debate. But the attention to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and, even more so, the connected debate over Stand Your Ground gun laws and the distancing of some of the country's biggest companies from ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, shows how online orgnizing actually can work. And that, reasonably, seems to be causing palpitations in the hearts of everyone from Coca-Cola to the Koch brothers.

That's why even if, as Politico reports, the gun debate isn't happening in Washington, the N.R.A. shouldn't be unconcerned.

To itself, ALEC is an organization dedicated to the advancement of free market and limited government principles through a unique "public-private partnership" between state legislators and the corporate sector. To its critics, it's a shadowy back-room arrangement where corporations pay good money to get friendly legislators to introduce pre-packaged bills in state houses across the country. Started in the mid-1970s, ALEC's existence has been long known but its practices, largely, have not; the group hasn't been eager to tie its bills in Wisconsin to those in Ohio to those in North Carolina.

A Guide to the Class Warfare of Presidential Politics

By Michael Kinsley - Apr 12, 2012

Everyone says there’s a class war going on in the U.S. If so, it is, at least so far, a war of words.
It’s also a war in which a principal tactic is to accuse the other side of fighting a class war, while denying that you’re fighting one yourself. Meanwhile, everybody claims to be on the same side: the side of the people, against the aristocratic elitist snobs who … where did I park my tumbrel? In this war of words, certain words take on a special weight or meaning. Here are a few:

-- Elitist. The verbal class war is like a game of pin-the- tail-on-the-donkey (or elephant, as the case may be). The goal is to pin the other side with the label of “elitist.” In my opinion -- purloined from writers such as Thomas Frank and Thomas Byrne Edsall -- conservatives continually gin up an essentially phony cultural class war over social issues, to distract people from the economic class war that the wealthy are winning.

The Campaign to Privatize the World

by David Macaray

 

One of the biggest con games going on at the moment is the sustained attack on the U.S. public school system.  It’s being perpetrated by predatory entrepreneurs (disguised as “concerned citizens” and “education reformers”) hoping to persuade the parents of school-age children that the only way their kids are going to get a decent education is by paying for something that they can already get for free.  You might say it’s the same marketing campaign that launched bottled water.

The profit impulse fueling this drive is understandable.  All it takes is a cursory look at the economic landscape to see why these speculators are drooling at the prospect of privatizing education.  Millions of students pulling up stakes, bailing out of the public school system, and enrolling in private or charter schools?  Are you kidding?  Just think of the money that would generate.

Paul Krugman: Europe’s Economic Suicide

On Saturday The Times reported on an apparently growing phenomenon in Europe: “suicide by economic crisis,” people taking their own lives in despair over unemployment and business failure. It was a heartbreaking story. But I’m sure I wasn’t the only reader, especially among economists, wondering if the larger story isn’t so much about individuals as about the apparent determination of European leaders to commit economic suicide for the Continent as a whole.

Just a few months ago I was feeling some hope about Europe. You may recall that late last fall Europe appeared to be on the verge of financial meltdown; but the European Central Bank, Europe’s counterpart to the Fed, came to the Continent’s rescue. It offered Europe’s banks open-ended credit lines as long as they put up the bonds of European governments as collateral; this directly supported the banks and indirectly supported the governments, and put an end to the panic.

Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Some of us became aware of primatologist Frans de Waal back in 2008 through his concept of inequity aversion:

[W]e did a study in which capuchin monkeys received either a grape or a piece of cucumber for a simple task.

If both monkeys got the same reward, there never was a problem. Grapes are by far preferred (as real primates, like us, they go for sugar content), but even if both received cucumber, they’d perform the task many times in a row.

However, if they received different rewards, the one who got the short end of the stick would begin to waver in its responses, and very soon start a rebellion by either refusing to perform the task or refusing to eat the cucumber.

Paul Krugman: The US Can Learn from Canada’s 1990s Slump

So, is there still a lot of slack in the United States' labor markets? On the face of it, that seems an absurd question to ask, given the persistence of very high unemployment and an employment-population ratio far below pre-crisis levels.

Yet it is being asked, partly because we don't see strong evidence of falling inflation.

But how good a criterion is that? Sharply rising inflation would be one thing — but we don't see that either. And there's actually pretty good evidence that inflation tends to stall out at low but positive levels in the face of prolonged slumps.

If 25,000 people rally in midtown, is that a story?
COMMENTARY | April 15, 2012
 
The Occupy movement, active all winter, has been mostly ignored by the press. Now, along with other groups, it is stepping up its rallies and protests against corporate influence and militarism in America. Will there be any press coverage to speak of?


By John Hanrahan
hanrahan@niemanwatchdog.org

The Occupy movement hasn’t gone away or dissolved but is in action, along with scores of progressive organizations, on a wide front that deserves the attention of the mainstream news media. 

 

Plans are being set for at least one large antiwar demonstration, scores of smaller-scale, nonviolent actions, Wall Street-related issue-education sessions, and civil disobedience training for, possibly, many thousands of people. In addition, various Occupy groups have been setting up forums and teach-ins on aspects of militarism and corporate influence on the nation’s economic and political life.

The Federal Reserve Turns Left

William Greider

April 11, 2012


Washington is lost in a snarl of confusion, cowardice and wrongheaded ideological assumptions that threaten to keep the economy in a ditch for a long time. That prospect is not much discussed in the halls of Congress or the White House. It’s as though the crisis has been put on hold until after the presidential election.
 
As almost everyone understands, nothing substantial will be accomplished this year. President Obama is campaigning on warmed-over optimism and paper-thin policy proposals. Republicans propose to make things worse by drastically shrinking government spending, when the opposite is needed to foster a real recovery. The president, like the GOP, embraces large-scale deficit reduction. In these circumstances, it’s just as well that the two parties cannot reach agreement. After the election they may make a deal that splits the difference between bad and worse. In the worst case, they might inadvertently tip the economy back into recession.

Wells Fargo Now A Major Shareholder In For-Profit Prisons

Even though crime rates in American have either stabilized or gone down, the incarceration rate (especially for people who are in this country illegally) has gone up - way up. (As this video points out, more people are being incarcerated on civil charges, not criminal.)

Naturally, as with most changes in this country, this has more to do with profit than anything else - and now we find that Wells Fargo is a major shareholder in for-profit prisons. Hmm. So this is what's taken the place of mortgages as the banking cash cow?