Paul Krugman: The Money Trap

When Greece hit the skids almost four years ago, some analysts (myself included) thought that we might be seeing the beginning of the end for the euro, Europe’s common currency. Others were more optimistic, believing that tough love — temporary aid tied to reform — would soon produce recovery. Both camps were wrong. What we actually got was a rolling crisis that never seems to reach any kind of resolution. Every time Europe seems ready to go over the edge, policy makers find a way to avoid complete disaster. But every time there are hints of true recovery, something else goes wrong.

And here we go again. Not long ago, European officials were declaring that the Continent had turned the corner, that market confidence was returning and growth was resuming. But now there’s a new source of concern, as the specter of deflation looms over much of Europe. And the debate over how to respond is turning seriously ugly.

CIA Creating Vast Database of American's Personal Financial Records: Report

Collected data goes beyond basic financial records and uses Social Security numbers to tie financial activity to a specific person

- Jon Queally, staff writer 

 

Claiming the same authority as the NSA does for its bulk collection of domestic internet and phone data, the clandestine Central Intelligence Agency is compiling a "vast database" that includes the personal financial records of Americans, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In a news story published Friday, the Journal reporting shows the CIA program "collects information from U.S. money-transfer companies including Western Union" and that  some of the data goes "beyond basic financial records, such as U.S. Social Security numbers, which can be used to tie the financial activity to a specific person."

The Yellen Hearing: Dreams, Reality, and the Fed 

Richard Eskow

Janet Yellen went to Capitol Hill today to be interrogated by some senators about the kind of job she plans to do once she’s confirmed as Chair of the Federal Reserve.

Many politicians expect little from the Fed because they think it has less power and flexibility than it does. For its part, the right thinks it has exercised more power than it has. Yellen won’t transform anybody’s view of the Fed, but at least she has a sense of the gravity of our ongoing economic situation.

EXCLUSIVE: Volkswagen Isn’t Fighting Unionization—But Leaked Docs Show Right-Wing Groups Are

By Mike Elk

After Volkswagen issued a letter in September saying the company would not oppose an attempt by the United Auto Workers (UAW) to unionize its 1,600-worker Chattanooga, Tenn., facility, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was flabbergasted.

"For management to invite the UAW in is almost beyond belief," Corker, who campaigned heavily for the plant’s construction during his tenure as mayor of Chattanooga, told the Associated Press. "They will become the object of many business school studies—and I'm a little worried could become a laughingstock in many ways—if they inflict this wound."

Paul Krugman: Alan Greenspan, Doing His Best to Make Things Worse

Steven Pearlstein, a columnist at The Washington Post, read Alan Greenspan's new book, and discovered that the former Federal Reserve chairman believes that he bears no responsibility for all the bad things that happened on his watch - and that the solution to a financial crisis is, you guessed it, less government.

What Mr. Pearlstein didn't mention in a recent column, but I think is important, is Mr. Greenspan's amazing track record since leaving office - a record of being wrong about everything, and learning nothing therefrom. In particular, it has been more than three years since Mr. Greenspan warned that we were going to become Greece any day now, and declared the failure of inflation and soaring rates to have arrived already "regrettable."

Companies Use Obamacare Confusion To Sell 'Junk Insurance'

Eric Lach – November 15, 2013, 6:00 AM EST

Georgene Mortimer, who runs a winery and lives in Hilton Head, S.C., was recently having trouble accessing the online health insurance exchange. So she decided to check in with the local insurance agent who in 2010 had sold her an individual health insurance policy from a company named USHealth Group. It didn't take long for Mortimer to realize something was off.

"She started to basically tell me how bad the exchanges are, and that the exchanges are only for the very sick people," Mortimer told TPM in an interview last week. "And she said, 'Have you had cancer, heart attack, you or your husband?' And I said no. And she said, 'Good, because if you said yes, I would have had to recommend the exchanges.'"

Stop-and-frisk: only 3% of 2.4m stops result in conviction, report finds

Report by New York attorney general is first detailed examination of policy deemed unconstitutional earlier this year

Adam Gabbatt
theguardian.com, Thursday 14 November 2013 13.18 EST


New York’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy, hailed by the city’s mayor and police chief as crucial in fighting crime, could boast only a 3% conviction rate between 2009 and 2012, according to a report by the state attorney general released on Thursday.

The report by Eric Schneiderman, the first detailed examination of the policy’s arrest and conviction rate, used data from the New York Police Department and the Office of Court Administration to examine approximately 2.4m stops over the three-year period. Those stops resulted in almost 150,000 arrests, but only half of those led to a conviction or a guilty plea.

Paul Krugman: The Mutilated Economy

Five years and eleven months have now passed since the U.S. economy entered recession. Officially, that recession ended in the middle of 2009, but nobody would argue that we’ve had anything like a full recovery. Official unemployment remains high, and it would be much higher if so many people hadn’t dropped out of the labor force. Long-term unemployment — the number of people who have been out of work for six months or more — is four times what it was before the recession.

These dry numbers translate into millions of human tragedies — homes lost, careers destroyed, young people who can’t get their lives started. And many people have pleaded all along for policies that put job creation front and center. Their pleas have, however, been drowned out by the voices of conventional prudence. We can’t spend more money on jobs, say these voices, because that would mean more debt. We can’t even hire unemployed workers and put idle savings to work building roads, tunnels, schools. Never mind the short run, we have to think about the future!

Exclusive: US blocks publication of Chilcot’s report on how Britain went to war with Iraq

Washington is playing the lead role in delaying the publication of the long-awaited report into how Britain went to  war with Iraq, The Independent has learnt.

Although the Cabinet Office has been under fire for stalling the progress of the four-year Iraq Inquiry by Sir John Chilcot, senior diplomatic sources in the US and Whitehall indicated that it is officials in the White House and the US Department of State who have refused to sanction any declassification of critical pre- and post-war communications between George W Bush and Tony Blair.

Americans’ personal data shared with CIA, IRS, others in security probe

By Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Washington Bureau,November 14, 2013

WASHINGTON — U.S. agencies collected and shared the personal information of thousands of Americans in an attempt to root out untrustworthy federal workers that ended up scrutinizing people who had no direct ties to the U.S. government and simply had purchased certain books.

Federal officials gathered the information from the customer records of two men who were under criminal investigation for purportedly teaching people how to pass lie detector tests. The officials then distributed a list of 4,904 people – along with many of their Social Security numbers, addresses and professions – to nearly 30 federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.

Facebook and Microsoft help fund rightwing lobby network, report finds

Ed Pilkington in New York
theguardian.com, Thursday 14 November 2013 09.33 EST

Some of America’s largest technology and telecoms companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and AT&T, are backing a network of self-styled “free-market thinktanks” promoting a radical rightwing agenda in states across the nation, according to a new report by a lobbying watchdog.

The Center for Media and Democracy asserts that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 thinktanks based in each of the 50 states, is acting as a largely beneath-the-radar lobbying machine for major corporations and rightwing donors.

Its policies include cutting taxes, opposing climate change regulations, advocating reductions in labour protections and the minimum wage, privatising education, restricting voter rights and lobbying for the tobacco industry.

TPP Leak Confirms the Worst: US Negotiators Still Trying to Trade Away Internet Freedoms

by Maira Sutton and Parker Higgins

 

After years of secret trade negotiations over the future of intellectual property rights (and limits on those rights), the public gets a chance to looks at the results. For those of us who care about free speech and a balanced intellectual property system that encourages innovation, creativity, and access to knowledge, it’s not a pretty picture.

On Thursday, Wikileaks published a complete draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement’s chapter on “intellectual property rights.” The leaked text, from August 2013, confirms long-standing suspicions about the harm the agreement could do to users’ rights and a free and open Internet. From locking in excessive copyright term limits to further entrenching failed policies that give legal teeth to Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools, the TPP text we’ve now seen reflects a terrible but unsurprising truth: an agreement negotiated in near-total secrecy, including corporations but excluding the public, comes out as an anti-user wish list of industry-friendly policies.

Randy Wray: What If China Dumps US Treasury Bonds? Paul Krugman Inches Toward MMT

Yves here. While I agree with Wray’s post, there’s a small caveat I wish he had included: China will continue to take US dollars as long as it exports to the US. There does not appear to be any near or intermediate term risk of that changing. Ironically, the US and other advanced economies have been urging China to rebalance, as in generate more of its demand for its manufacturing capacity internally and export less. China has not made much progress in that direction. Japan was also encouraged in the 1980s to become more consumer driven. Instead they managed to engineer an bubble and bust, and only Abenomics (not necessarily by design) has led to a reversal of the island nation’s long-standing trade surpluses.

By Randy Wray, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

Our deficit hysterians love to raise the specter of China. Supposedly Uncle Sam is at the mercy of the Chinese, who have a stranglehold on the supply of dollars necessary to keep the US government above water. If the Chinese suddenly decided to stop lending those scare dollars, Uncle Sam would be forced to default.

Can anyone, please, explain to me how the sovereign issuer of the US dollar—Uncle Sam—could ever run out of his supply of dollars? Please, give me one coherent explanation of how that could happen.

Pivotal Trans-Pacific Partnership Section Revealed

Wednesday, 13 November 2013 09:39  
By Staff, PopularResistance.org | Press Release 

The TPP has been shrouded in secrecy from the beginning because the Obama administration knows that the more people know about it, the more they will oppose the agreement. The release of the full Intellectual Property chapter today by Wiikileaks confims what had been suspected, the Obama administration has been an advocate for transnational corporate interests in the negotiations even though they run counter to the needs and desires of the public. 

JPMorgan’s Fruitful Ties to a Member of China’s Elite

By DAVID BARBOZA, JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG and BEN PROTESS

To promote its standing in China, JPMorgan Chase turned to a seemingly obscure consulting firm run by a 32-year-old executive named Lily Chang.

Ms. Chang’s firm, which received a $75,000-a-month contract from JPMorgan, appeared to have only two employees. And on the surface, Ms. Chang lacked the influence and public name recognition needed to unlock business for the bank.

Frank Rich: CBS’s Benghazi Report Was a Hoax, Not a Mistake

Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Lara Logan apologies for her Benghazi report, Bill Clinton calls for Obamacare changes, and The New Republic forwards Elizabeth Warren as the anti-Hillary.

On Sunday, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan issued a short and, many commentators felt, insufficient apology for her now-discredited 60 Minutes report on the Benghazi consulate attack. A year ago, Logan had publicly mocked the notion that the Benghazi attack was a protest gone awry and advocated for a stronger U.S. military response. Should CBS have given her this story? How can Logan or her network satisfactorily explain the botched report? And do you see a double standard at work between Logan's fate (issuing a halfhearted apology, so far) and Dan Rather's much harsher penalty for his questionable 60 Minutes report in 2004?

Lara Logan’s story was not a mere journalistic mistake, but a hoax comparable to such legendary frauds as Life magazine’s purchase of the billionaire Howard Hughes’s nonexistent “autobiography” in the seventies and Rupert Murdoch’s similarly extravagant embrace of the bogus Hitler “diaries” in the eighties. In Logan’s case, she perpetrated an out-and-out fictional character: a pseudonymous security contractor who peddled a made-up “eyewitness” account of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. The point seemed to be to further Benghazi as a conservative political cause (instead, Logan’s hoax boomeranged and extinguished it) and to melodramatically exploit the tragic slaughter of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues as titillating prime-time network entertainment. Logan’s phony source, who in fact was at a beachside villa and not on site to witness anything, cooked up violent new “details” for the Benghazi narrative that seemed to have been lifted from a Jean Claude Van Damme movie.

How Franklin D. Roosevelt Botched Social Security

by ALAN NASSER

 

The seeds of neoliberal economic policy were planted during the founding years of twentieth century liberalism. The Democrats’ current embrace of  fiscal conservatism is claimed by contemporary self-proclaimed New Dealers to be a repudiation of the founding bequest, a capitulation to reactionary Republican dogma. Budget deficits, we are told, were legitimated by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the New Deal as a legacy to future Democratic regimes. The political obligation to enhance social welfare is supposed to have trumped the old-time Hooverian taboo against government expenditures beyond government receipts.

Objections to this policy are thought to have been refuted not merely by Keynesian economic theory but mainly by successful practice: once Roosevelt put into place large scale deficit-funded projects like the Works Progress Administration, the economy was launched into its steepest cyclical expansion to this day, from 1933 to 1937.  Reagan’s tirades against budget deficits are said to be a throwback to pre-Rooseveltian times and outdated orthodoxy. Imagine the chagrin of  “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” when Clinton and Obama betrayed the heritage of the New Deal by seconding the Republican commitment to fiscal orthodoxy. The rustling sound you are supposed to hear is FDR tossing in his grave.

House Pushing Back on Trade Deal; More Detail on How Secret Arbitration Panels Undermine Laws and Regulations

Wow, this is amazing. Word has apparently gotten out even to Congressmen who can normally be lulled to sleep with the invocation of the magic phrase “free trade” that the pending Trans Pacific Partnership is toxic. This proposed deal among 13 Pacific Rim countries (essentially, an “everybody but China” pact), is only peripherally about trade, since trade is already substantially liberalized. Its main aim is to strengthen the rights of intellectual property holders and investors, undermining US sovereignity, allowing drug companies to raise drug prices, interfering with basic operation of the Internet, and gutting labor, banking, and environmental regulations.

The update from the New York Times:

The Obama administration is rushing to reach a new deal intended to lower barriers to trade with a dozen Pacific Rim nations, including Japan and Canada, before the end of the year.

But the White House is now facing new hurdles closer to home, with nearly half of the members of the House signing letters or otherwise signaling their opposition to granting so-called fast-track authority that would make any agreement immune to a Senate filibuster and not subject to amendment. No major trade pact has been approved by Congress in recent decades without such authority.

Dean Baker: The Obama Pledge on Keeping Your Insurance

President Obama has been getting a lot of grief in the last few weeks over his pledge that with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place, people would be able to keep their insurance if they like it. The media have been filled with stories about people across the country who are having their insurance policies terminated, ostensibly because they did not meet the requirements of the ACA.  While this has led many to say that Obama was lying, there is much less here than meets the eye.

First, it is important to note that the ACA grand-fathered all the individual policies that were in place at the time the law was enacted. This means that the plans in effect at the time that President Obama was pushing the bill could still be offered even if they did not meet all the standards laid out in the ACA.

The plans being terminated because they don't meet the minimal standards were all plans that insurers introduced after the passage of the ACA.

Corporate America’s New Scam: Industry P.R. Firm Poses as Think Tank!

How the media fell hook, line and sinker for the propagandist, respectable-sounding "Employment Policies Institute"

 

by Lisa Graves

 

When scholars at University of California, Berkeley, recently released a study finding that low wages in the fast food industry cost taxpayers $7 billion every year in social supports to subsidize salaries of low-income workers, they ran into a respectable-sounding opponent. The professors had argued that the minimum wage should be increased to relieve the burden on taxpayers who underwrite supersize restaurant industry profits.

But as the bona fide academic study rolled out, multiple media outlets ran comments criticizing the report’s numbers and methodology from the scholarly sounding “Employment Policies Institute.”  The Austin Business Journal characterized EPI as a think tank “which studies employment growth,” while the Miami Herald ran a quote from Michael Saltsman, whom the paper named as EPI’s “research director.”

Paul Krugman: Who's Afraid of China?

The Slate commentator Matthew Yglesias recently noted an uptick in warnings from Very Serious People that China might lose confidence in America and start dumping our bonds. In an article published earlier this month, he focuses on China's motives, which is useful.

But the crucial point, which Mr. Yglesias touches on only briefly at the end, is that whatever China's motives, the Chinese wouldn't hurt us if they dumped our bonds - in fact, it would probably be good for the United States.

Saving the Ozone May Slow Earth's Warming Rate

By Tim Radford

November 11, 2013  |  Scientists who looked at the whole history of climate in the 20th century have come up with a new possible explanation for the apparent slowdown in global warming. It is because, they say, of the Montreal Protocol that banned chlorofluorocarbons, also known as CFCs, and saved the ozone layer.

 

The ozone layer was the second great atmospheric crisis of the late 20th century (the first involved the urban smog and acid rain that triggered clean air legislation in Europe and the US). CFCs were the safe, enduring gases used as refrigerants: their only problem was that - once they reached the stratosphere - they unexpectedly began to destroy the ozone layer that screens out harmful ultraviolet light.

Scalia’s chance to smash unions: The huge under-the-radar case

A Supreme Court case being argued Wednesday could take away a tactic that's kept unions alive

Josh Eidelson

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on an under-the-radar case that could deal a major blow to already embattled U.S. unions. As Harvard labor law professor Benjamin Sachs told the New York Times, the case now facing Antonin Scalia and company could be “the most significant labor case in a generation.”

The case, Unite Here Local 355 v. Mulhall, involves the constitutionality of “card check neutrality agreements” between unions and companies they’re trying to organize. That’s the technical-sounding term for agreements that pave the way for unionization by restricting companies from running union-busting campaigns, and by committing companies to recognize a union and start negotiating if a majority of workers sign union cards, rather than holding out for a government-supervised election. In exchange, unions can agree not to publicly shame and slam the company – which means calling off the kind of public pressure campaign often necessary to compel companies to sign away their union-busting rights.

Poverty Is America's #1 Education Problem

By David Sirota

November 11, 2013  |  Google the phrase "education crisis" and you'll be hit with a glut of articles, blog posts and think tank reports claiming the entire American school system is facing an emergency. Much of this agitprop additionally asserts that teachers unions are the primary cause of the alleged problem. Not surprisingly, the fabulists pushing these narratives are often backed by anti-public school conservatives and anti-union plutocrats. But a little-noticed study released last week provides yet more confirmation that neither the "education crisis" meme or the "evil teachers union" narrative is accurate.

Before looking at that study, consider some of the ways we already know that the dominant storyline about education is, indeed, baseless propaganda.

Mistaking Omniscience for Omnipotence: A World Without Privacy

Tuesday, 12 November 2013 09:55
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch | News Analysis

Given how similar they sound and how easy it is to imagine one leading to the other, confusing omniscience (having total knowledge) with omnipotence (having total power) is easy enough. It’s a reasonable supposition that, before the Snowden revelations hit, America’s spymasters had made just that mistake.  If the drip-drip-drip of Snowden’s mother of all leaks -- which began in May and clearly won’t stop for months to come -- has taught us anything, however, it should be this: omniscience is not omnipotence.  At least on the global political scene today, they may bear remarkably little relation to each other. In fact, at the moment Washington seems to be operating in a world in which the more you know about the secret lives of others, the less powerful you turn out to be.

Thom Hartmann: The Plot to Destroy America -- and What We Can Do to Stop It

November 11, 2013  |  The following is an excerpt from Thom Hartmann's new book, THE CRASH OF 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It [3] (Twelve Books, 2013). 

There are very few Americans still alive who heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in March 1933, address the nation as he was being sworn into office. Which is why many Americans today believe that when FDR famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was talking about World War II. But Roosevelt said that long before Hitler had even fully consolidated his own power in Germany.

Instead, the fear—and the war—was here in America. He was speaking of the Great Depression.

The week of his inauguration, every state in the country closed their banks. The federal government couldn’t make its own payroll. A quarter of working-​age Americans were unemployed— some measurements put it at a third— and unemployment in minority communities was off the scale.

Penn and Drexel Team Demonstrates New Paradigm for Solar Cell Construction

For solar panels, wringing every drop of energy from as many photons as possible is imperative.  This goal has sent chemistry, materials science and electronic engineering researchers on a quest to boost the energy-absorption efficiency of photovoltaic devices, but existing techniques are now running up against limits set by the laws of physics.

Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University have experimentally demonstrated a new paradigm for solar cell construction which may ultimately make them less expensive, easier to manufacture and more efficient at harvesting energy from the sun.

Why the Hate-Filled, Retrograde Politics of the Tea Party Are Here to Stay

By CJ Werleman

November 11, 2013  |  After last Tuesday’s creaming in the Virginia governor’s race, and with Tea Party negatives creeping toward 75 percent, the political punditry class has divided itself into one of two camps: those celebrating the demise of the Tea Party versus those forecasting its inevitable end. Who’s right? They're both wrong, because it’s not a movement. It’s a geographical region, and if history has taught us anything, southern folk are a pugnacious bunch.

 

Despite political feel-good rhetoric, there are two Americas. Not just ideologically, but geographically. That’s what still makes this country unique among other Western democracies. America is two distinct nations with a distinguishable border that runs the breadth of the country from the Mason-Dixon line across the southern border of Pennsylvania, finishing in some Baptist church somewhere in rural Texas.

Separating myth from reality on Obamacare

News media scare stories, website glitches hide savings for those who look at insurance alternatives

By Wendell Potter, 6:00 am, November 12, 2013 Updated: 9:59 am, November 12, 2013

My heart sank when I got an email late last month from my friend Robert, who has been battling multiple sclerosis for the past decade. He wrote to tell me that he was among the many Americans who in recent weeks received letters from their insurance companies saying that their policies won’t be available next year.

Insurance companies are sending those letters primarily because the policies they will no longer offer don’t provide enough coverage — or have deductibles that are too high — to comply with the Affordable Care Act. In many cases, however, the policyholders getting those letters are simply victims of a business practice insurers have engaged in for years: discontinuing policies because they’re no longer sufficiently profitable.

Mom as the New Face of Anarchy? Police Terrorize Americans Who Object to Right-Wing Lunacy by Using "Anarchist" Label

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

November 11, 2013  |  Dissent is once again a criminal act in America. People who object to right-wing lunacy used to be called “communists” and treated as enemies of the state. Now “anarchist” is the label of choice used to harass those who disagree.

 

Just ask my 81-year-old mom. In the state of North Carolina, she is a suspected anarchist for wanting children to go to decent schools.

Matt Taibbi: Chase Isn't the Only Bank in Trouble

I've been away for weeks now on a non-financial assignment (we have something unusual coming out in Rolling Stone in a few weeks) so I've fallen behind on some crazy developments on Wall Street. There are multiple scandals blowing up right now, including a whole set of ominous legal cases that could result in punishments so extreme that they might significantly alter the long-term future of the financial services sector.

As one friend of mine put it, "Whatever those morons put aside for settlements, they'd better double it."

Firstly, there's a huge mess involving possible manipulation of the world currency markets. This scandal is already drawing comparisons to the last biggest-financial-scandal-in-history (the Financial Times wondered about a "repeat Libor scandal"), the manipulation of interest rates via the gaming of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor. The foreign exchange or FX market is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily trading volume of nearly $5 trillion.

Paul Krugman: The Plot Against France

On Friday Standard & Poor’s, the bond-rating agency, downgraded France. The move made headlines, with many reports suggesting that France is in crisis. But markets yawned: French borrowing costs, which are near historic lows, barely budged.

So what’s going on here? The answer is that S.& P.’s action needs to be seen in the context of the broader politics of fiscal austerity. And I do mean politics, not economics. For the plot against France — I’m being a bit tongue in cheek here, but there really are a lot of people trying to bad-mouth the place — is one clear demonstration that in Europe, as in America, fiscal scolds don’t really care about deficits. Instead, they’re using debt fears to advance an ideological agenda. And France, which refuses to play along, has become the target of incessant negative propaganda.

Futuristic water-recycling shower cuts bills by over $1,000

By Stefanie Blendis and Monique Rivalland, for CNN

November 11, 2013 -- Updated 1951 GMT (0351 HKT)

(CNN) -- In space, astronauts go for years without a fresh supply of water. Floating in a capsule in outer space they wash and drink from the same continuously recycled source. So why, asked Swedish industrial designer Mehrdad Mahdjoubi, do we not do the same on Earth?

This was the concept behind the OrbSys Shower -- a high-tech purification system that recycles water while you wash. In the eyes of Mahdjoubi, we should start doing it now, before it becomes a necessity.

Counting the Dollars the Rich Want Uncounted 

Sam Pizzigati

Americans are gaining, ever so slowly, a more accurate picture of just how wide the gap has stretched between the nation’s most fabulously privileged and everyone else.

How unequal have workplaces in the United States become? Our best answer happens to come from an unlikely source: the Social Security Administration.

Social Security statisticians each year tally up how much compensation gets reported on W-2s, those forms that employers have to file for all their employees, from clerks to chief executives. Social Security reports these numbers out, by income level, once a year — and in the process paints an incredibly detailed pay portrait of the contemporary American workplace.

Veterans Day, 95 Years On

The Enduring Folly of the Battle of the Somme
By Adam Hochschild
Illustrations by Joe Sacco

In a country that uses every possible occasion to celebrate its “warriors,” many have forgotten that today’s holiday originally marked a peace agreement. Veterans Day in the United States originally was called Armistice Day and commemorated the ceasefire which, at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, ended the First World War.

Up to that point, it had been the most destructive war in history, with a total civilian and military death toll of roughly 20 million. Millions more had been wounded, many of them missing arms, legs, eyes, genitals; and because of an Allied naval blockade of the Central Powers, millions more were near starvation: the average German civilian lost 20% of his or her body weight during the war.

Lara Logan's Bogus "Correction"

Josh Marshall – November 10, 2013, 10:11 PM EST

I just watched the 60 Minutes "correction"/apology tonight and thought was pretty amazing for its brevity, lack of substance and general obfuscation. If you didn't watch 60 Minutes tonight, it won't take long. It only lasted 90s or so. And you can see it here.

In a narrow sense, Lara Logan did say she was "sorry." But the entire 90 seconds was aimed at obfuscating what happened.

Logan said 60 Minutes had found out Thursday that they had been "misled and it was a mistake to include him in our report."

Include him in their report? He was the report.

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses

By Joshua Davis, 10.15.13, 6:30 AM

José Urbina López Primary School sits next to a dump just across the US border in Mexico. The school serves residents of Matamoros, a dusty, sunbaked city of 489,000 that is a flash point in the war on drugs. There are regular shoot-outs, and it’s not uncommon for locals to find bodies scattered in the street in the morning. To get to the school, students walk along a white dirt road that parallels a fetid canal. On a recent morning there was a 1940s-era tractor, a decaying boat in a ditch, and a herd of goats nibbling gray strands of grass. A cinder-block barrier separates the school from a wasteland—the far end of which is a mound of trash that grew so big, it was finally closed down. On most days, a rotten smell drifts through the cement-walled classrooms. Some people here call the school un lugar de castigo—“a place of punishment.”

For 12-year-old Paloma Noyola Bueno, it was a bright spot. More than 25 years ago, her family moved to the border from central Mexico in search of a better life. Instead, they got stuck living beside the dump. Her father spent all day scavenging for scrap, digging for pieces of aluminum, glass, and plastic in the muck. Recently, he had developed nosebleeds, but he didn’t want Paloma to worry. She was his little angel—the youngest of eight children.

Changes to fisheries legislation have removed habitat protection for most fish species in Canada

University of Calgary and Dalhousie University fisheries biologists say federal Fisheries Act revisions were unscientific

Federal government changes to Canada's fisheries legislation "have eviscerated" the ability to protect habitat for most of the country's fish species, scientists at the University of Calgary and Dalhousie University say in a new study.

The changes were "politically motivated," unsupported by scientific advice – contrary to government policy – and are inconsistent with ecosystem-based management, fisheries biologists John Post and Jeffrey Hutchings say.

Their comprehensive assessment, in a peer-reviewed paper titled "Gutting Canada's Fisheries Act: No Fishery, No Fish Habitat Protection," is published in the November edition of Fisheries, a journal of the 10,000-member American Fisheries Society.

Hartz IV reform did not reduce unemployment in Germany

Impact of the Hartz IV reform on curbing unemployment in Germany proved to be exceptionally low 

07.11.2013

The Hartz IV reform of the German labor market has been one of the most controversial reforms in the history of the reunited Federal Republic of Germany. It has been widely seen as the end of the welfare state leading into poverty. At the same time, Germany has been able to reduce its unemployment rate over the last years more than almost any other European or OECD member country. What role did the Hartz reforms, and the Hartz IV reform in particular, play in this success story? A recent publication by Junior Professor Andrey Launov and Professor Klaus Wälde of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) shows that the Hartz IV laws had indeed no noteworthy impact on the decrease of unemployment in Germany. Just in contrast to that, the Hartz I to Hartz III reforms appear to have been more helpful.

Informal elite network changed international politics in the 1970s

international politics

In the 1970s, a network of businessmen, politicians, and academics from the US, Europe, and Japan, also known as the Trilateral Commission, changed the way international politics was conducted. Informal links between Commission members, governments, and organisations paved the way for recognition of the new economic superpower Japan as an equal partner in international politics, concludes University of Copenhagen historian Dino Knudsen, who is the first researcher to get access to the Commission's own archives.

In 1973, American financier David Rockefeller formed the Trilateral Commission out of fear that the world's three industrial centres – the US, Europe, and Japan – were drifting apart. The aim of the Commission was to ensure that particularly the American government understood that it had to collaborate and negotiate with Europe and new economic superpower Japan. The Trilateral Commission is still active and has headquarters in Washington, Tokyo, and Paris.

Bisphenol A is affecting us at much lower doses than previously thought

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a known endocrine disruptor that hijacks the normal responses of hormones. Yet, traditional toxicology studies indicate that only very high doses of this chemical affect exposed animals—doses as high as 50 mg/kg/day. For the past decade, scientists have used modern scientific techniques to probe the effects of BPA on numerous endpoints that are not examined in those traditional toxicology studies. Examining these non-traditional endpoints reveal a very different story. Because of increased understanding of the mechanisms by which hormones and chemicals that mimic hormones work, it has recently become clear that endocrine disruptors need to be studied at much lower doses.

Privatizing Our Vote: The Ultimate Crime

Wednesday, 06 November 2013 15:47  
By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed

When the Supreme Court issued its Citizens United decision in 2010, many in the media predicted that it would usher in a new era of corporate electioneering. They were right, of course, but they only had half of the story.

You won't hear it anywhere in the mainstream media, but over the past decade or so our elected representatives have slowly but surely handed the power to decide our elections over to a handful of giant, mostly Republican-connected corporations.

Billionaires Received U.S. Farm Subsidies, Report Finds

By RON NIXON
Published: November 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — The federal government paid $11.3 million in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies from 1995 to 2012 to 50 billionaires or businesses in which they have some form of ownership, according to a report released Thursday by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based research organization.

The billionaires who received the subsidies or owned companies that did include the Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen; the investment titan Charles Schwab; and S. Truett Cathy, owner of Chick-fil-A. The billionaires who got the subsidies have a collective net worth of $316 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Al Gore: Snowden 'revealed evidence' of crimes against US constitution

Speaking at McGill University in Montreal, Gore said the NSA's efforts to monitor communications had gone to 'absurd' lengths

Adam Gabbatt in New York
theguardian.com, Wednesday 6 November 2013 18.12 EST


Former US vice-president Al Gore has described the activities of the National Security Agency as "outrageous" and "completely unacceptable" and said whistleblower Edward Snowden has "revealed evidence" of crimes against the US constitution.

Gore, speaking Tuesday night at McGill University in Montreal, said he was in favour of using surveillance to ensure national security, but Snowden's revelations showed that those measures had gone too far.

CBS Reporter On '60 Minutes' Benghazi Program: 'We Made A Mistake

Catherine Thompson – November 8, 2013, 8:42 AM EST

CBS correspondent Lara Logan apologized to viewers Friday for a disputed "60 Minutes" report on the Benghazi attack and said the program would issue a correction.

"Today the truth is that we made a mistake," Logan said on "CBS This Morning."

At the center of the dispute is Dylan Davies, a British security contractor who under a pseudonym gave "60 Minutes" a heroic account of his involvement in the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Obama Wants to Cut Social Security

Friday, 08 November 2013 10:49  
By Ben Strubel, New Economic Perspectives | News Analysis 

What Cuts Are Being Proposed?
Obama is proposing, along with the support of Republicans and many Democrats, to change how annual increases in Social Security benefits are calculated. Obama wants to switch to a different formula, called Chained CPI. This switch would result in a benefit cut of $230 billion dollars over 10 years. All this is being done under the guise of “strengthening” the program and “securing it for future generations”.  (See here, here, here, here and here)

Right now, annual increases in Social Security benefits are calculated using changes in CPI (Consumer Price Index) which measures the price increases in various goods and services. Chained CPI is a twist on regular CPI in that it assumes that when the price of one good goes up people will substitute a cheaper good. For instance, if the price of steak goes up people will switch to chicken. While this makes sense for some things, it doesn’t for others. For instance, if the price of natural gas goes up you can’t just change the heating system you have. If the prices of essential prescription drugs go, up you can’t just substitute something different.

How the Koch Brothers Organized the Federal Shutdown

ERIC ZUESSE FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

I covered previously the decades-long Koch-operation that got us to where we are (see those earlier posts here, and here, and here, and here). I shall now describe the money-trail from there to Senator Ted Cruz, who directly headed the shutdown-effort in the U.S. Congress.

The two chief contributors to Cruz's political career donated over a million dollars to it (and no other entity donated as much as $100,000 to it). These two top sources of contributions to Mr. Cruz's political career were Club For Growth, and Senate Conservatives Fund, which together donated over a million dollars to it.

Dean Baker: NYT Endorses Imaginary TPP Deal

Wednesday, 06 November 2013 05:57

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade deal that is being negotiated completely in secret. The main actors at the table are large corporate interests like Wall Street banks, multinational drug companies, and oil and gas companies. This might lead one to think that the end product will be an agreement that furthers the upward redistribution of income rather than benefits the bulk of the population. That seems especially likely since this is a "next generation" trade agreement that is primarily about regulations, not reducing traditional trade barriers like tariffs and quotas.

Nutrient recovery reactor turns human excrement into high-quality fertilizer

By John Vidal, The Guardian
Wednesday, November 6, 2013 2:35 EST

Just a few yards from the choked M4 motorway, beyond the massive settling tanks and a steaming, 500-tonne mountain of black sewage sludge at Slough treatment works, a modern alchemy is taking place that could potentially keep the world in food for a few more years.

The plant is taking the tiny quantities of phosphorus contained in the poo of the Berkshire town’s 140,000 people and turning it into high-quality fertiliser fit to grow organic garden vegetables.

Russell Brand: we deserve more from our democratic system

Following his appearance on Newsnight, the comedian explains why he believes there are alternatives to our current regime

Russell Brand
The Guardian, Tuesday 5 November 2013 12.57 EST


I've had an incredible week since I spoke from the heart, some would say via my arse, on Paxman. I've had slaps on the back, fist bumps, cheers and hugs while out and about, cock-eyed offers of political power from well intentioned chancers and some good ol' fashioned character assassinations in the papers.

The people who liked the interview said it was because I'd articulated what they were thinking. I recognise this. God knows I'd love to think the attention was about me but I said nothing new or original, it was the expression of the knowledge that democracy is irrelevant that resonated. As long as the priorities of those in government remain the interests of big business, rather than the people they were elected to serve, the impact of voting is negligible and it is our responsibility to be more active if we want real change.

Beware: Huge Media Companies Are Selling Corporate Ideology as the 'New American Center'

By RJ Eskow

November 4, 2013  |  “IT’S OFFICIAL,” the box on my screen announced in capital letters. “YOU’RE ONE OF THE BLEEDING HEARTS.”

 

To examine the Esquire/NBC News “New American Center” is to enter a Beltway consultants’ dreamscape, a perceptual interspace where real Americans’ opinions dissolve and are replaced by a chimerical creature whose secret language is only understood by certain insider politicians, corporations and consultants.

That creature’s name is “The Center.”

The survey commissioned by these two news organizations tells us very little about American public opinion. But it tells us a great deal about the insular worlds in which certain journalists and consultants reside.

Wall Street slumlords’ outrageous new scheme: How they could wreck the economy again

Remember mortgage-backed securities and the financial crisis they caused? This latest gambit will put you in shock

David Dayen

You’d think that investors would run away from a new Wall Street innovation as fast as Congress runs away from a good idea. But instead, they’re flocking to the latest product peddled by large banking interests, even though they look almost exactly like the mortgage-backed securities that were a primary driver of the financial crisis. These new securities, backed by rental payments, also have real-world implications for millions of renters, who could end up turning in their monthly checks to Wall Street-based absentee slumlords.

Walmart Is Trying to Block Workers' Disability Benefits

If the Supreme Court rules in the retail giant's favor, it will be easier for companies to deny workers benefits.

—By Erika Eichelberger | Mon Nov. 4, 2013 3:00 AM PST

Last week, amidst a deluge of criticism about Walmart's poverty-level wages, the retail giant announced promotions for 25,000 of its roughly 1.3 million US employees. But although Walmart has raised pay for some of its employees, it is simultaneously fighting to convince the Supreme Court to allow it to more easily avoid paying disability benefits.

Armies and Police Are Being Privatized Around the World and Business Is Booming

By Elliot Hannon

In a world where budgets are tight, and bottom lines daunting, it makes sense that governments around the world have to do more with less, or they just have to do less. Surprisingly, one part of the state apparatus that most countries seem happy to outsource is one of its most fundamental—security. At home, cash-strapped American cities, and even communities, are turning to private forces to protect public order. And a report out of the UN on Monday shows that the private security industry is experiencing a global economic boom that many of its customers would love—the shadowy industry is growing at 7.4 percent a year and is on target to balloon to a $244 billion global market by 2016.

The Superrich Don't Need Our Middle Class Infrastructure

Monday, 04 November 2013 15:36  
By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed 

America is falling apart - and this nation's super-rich are to blame.

There was once a time in America when the super-rich needed you, and me, and working-class Americans to be successful.

They needed us for their roads, for their businesses, for their communications, for their transportation, as their customers, and for their overall success.

This transatlantic trade deal is a full-frontal assault on democracy

Brussels has kept quiet about a treaty that would let rapacious companies subvert our laws, rights and national sovereignty

George Monbiot
The Guardian, Monday 4 November 2013 15.31 EST

Remember that referendum about whether we should create a single market with the United States? You know, the one that asked whether corporations should have the power to strike down our laws? No, I don't either. Mind you, I spent 10 minutes looking for my watch the other day before I realised I was wearing it. Forgetting about the referendum is another sign of ageing. Because there must have been one, mustn't there? After all that agonising over whether or not we should stay in the European Union, the government wouldn't cede our sovereignty to some shadowy, undemocratic body without consulting us. Would it?

The purpose of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is to remove the regulatory differences between the US and European nations. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. But I left out the most important issue: the remarkable ability it would grant big business to sue the living daylights out of governments which try to defend their citizens. It would allow a secretive panel of corporate lawyers to overrule the will of parliament and destroy our legal protections. Yet the defenders of our sovereignty say nothing.

We’re About to Lose Net Neutrality — And the Internet as We Know It

By Marvin Ammori, 11.04.13, 9:30 AM

Net neutrality is a dead man walking. The execution date isn’t set, but it could be days, or months (at best). And since net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently — say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes — the dead man walking isn’t some abstract or far-removed principle just for wonks: It affects the internet as we all know it.

Once upon a time, companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and others declared a war on the internet’s foundational principle: that its networks should be “neutral” and users don’t need anyone’s permission to invent, create, communicate, broadcast, or share online. The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive.

This Week in Poverty: How to Cut Poverty in Half in Ten Years

Greg Kaufmann on November 4, 2013 - 11:07 AM ET

The Half in Ten campaign—launched in 2007 by the Center for American Progress, Coalition on Human Needs and Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights—set an ambitious goal: to cut poverty in half over ten years. Today, it seems almost fantastical on the face of it, given the nation’s polarization and soaring political and economic inequality.

But with 200 coalition members across the nation combatting poverty, Half in Ten remains steadfast, as campaign manager Erik Stegman described at the release of its third annual report, which tracks progress towards the campaign’s ultimate goal.

The Real Reason That the Cancer Patient Writing in Today’s Wall Street Journal Lost Her Insurance

By Igor Volsky

November 4, 2013  |  Monday’s Wall Street Journalfeatures [2] an op-ed from Edie Littlefield Sundby, a stage-4 gallbladder cancer survivor who won’t be able to keep the coverage she currently has. Her insurer, United Healthcare, is pulling out of the individual health care market, forcing Sundby to find new coverage in California’s health care exchange.

Five Steps to Save America's Incredible Shrinking Post Office

By David Morris

November 4, 2013  |  In July 2011 the United States Postal Service (USPS) management announced it would rapidly close 3600 local post offices and eventually as many as 15,000.  And shutter half the nation’s mail processing centers.

 

A frenzy of grassroots activity erupted as citizens in hundreds of towns mobilized to save a treasured institution that plays a key and sometimes a defining role in their communities.  Only when Congress appeared ready to impose a six month moratorium on closures and consolidations that December did USPS management agree to a voluntarily moratorium of the same length.

That moratorium ended in May 2012.  Rather than proceed with closings, management embraced a devilishly clever new strategy.  Instead of closing 3600 it would slash the hours of 13,000 post offices.   That could be accomplished very quickly because reduction in hours, unlike outright closures, requires little if any justification while appeals are very limited.  

Why Healthcare.gov Broke: Two Competing Story Lines

by Charles Ornstein
ProPublica, Nov. 4, 2013, 10:31 a.m.

This weekend brought more than a modicum of clarity to what happened behind the scenes in the run-up to the Oct. 1 launch of Healthcare.gov.

In a devastating story, Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post dissected how politics trumped policy when it came to the Affordable Care Act. In two key paragraphs, they wrote:

Based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials and outsiders who worked alongside them, the project was hampered by the White House’s political sensitivity to Republican hatred of the law — sensitivity so intense that the president’s aides ordered that some work be slowed down or remain secret for fear of feeding the opposition.

Paul Krugman: Those Depressing Germans

German officials are furious at America, and not just because of the business about Angela Merkel’s cellphone. What has them enraged now is one (long) paragraph in a U.S. Treasury report on foreign economic and currency policies. In that paragraph Treasury argues that Germany’s huge surplus on current account — a broad measure of the trade balance — is harmful, creating “a deflationary bias for the euro area, as well as for the world economy.”

The Germans angrily pronounced this argument “incomprehensible.” “There are no imbalances in Germany which require a correction of our growth-friendly economic and fiscal policy,” declared a spokesman for the nation’s finance ministry.

Leaked IPCC report: Humans are adapting — but hunger, homelessness, and violence lie ahead

By John Upton

If you are anything like us, you’re waiting for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to publish the next installment of its epically important assessment report with bated breath. Rejoice: The waiting is over, thanks to an intrepid sneak who leaked the doc ahead of schedule.

The latest leak gives us a peek at the second quarter of the most recent assessment (it’s the fifth assessment report since 1990 by the world’s leading climate change authority). The document, scheduled to be unveiled in March, deals with the severity of climate impacts and worldwide efforts to adapt to it.

Dean Baker: Plutocrats vs. Populists: Good Piece Until the End -- Answers are Easy

Sunday, 03 November 2013 08:17

Chrystia Freeland has a good piece in the NYT on the rise of plutocratic politics in the United States and elsewhere and the populist opposition it has provoked. The piece makes many interesting points but then towards the end strangely tells readers:

"Part of the problem is that no one has yet come up with a fully convincing answer to the question of how you harness the power of the technology revolution and globalization without hollowing out middle-class jobs."

No, this is very far from true. There are very convincing answers to this question, it's just the plutocrats block them from being put into practice.

The great austerity shell game

Here's how the capitalist scam works: let government borrow for crisis bailouts, then insist cuts pay for them. Guess who loses

Richard Wolff
theguardian.com, Monday 4 November 2013 08.00 EST

Center-right governments in Britain and Germany do it. So do the center-left governments in France and Italy. Obama and the Republicans do it, too. They all impose "austerity" programs on their economies as necessary to exit the crisis afflicting them all since 2007. Politicians and economists impose austerity now much as doctors once stuck mustard plasters on the skins of the sick.

Austerity policies presume that the chief economic problems today are government budget deficits that increase national debts. Austerity policies solve those problems mainly by cutting government spending, and secondarily, by limited tax increases. Reducing expenditures while raising revenues does cut governments' deficits and their needs to borrow.

The Man Who Won a Nobel Prize for Helping Create a Global Financial Crisis

BY JAMES R. CROTTY

Eugene Fama just received a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the theory of “efficient financial markets,” the dominant theory in financial economics that asserts that markets work ideally if not constrained by government regulation. The fact that economic “science” teaches that unregulated financial markets work effectively helped financial institutions and the rich accomplish their goal of radical financial market deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s. Deregulation, in turn, not only contributed to the rising inequality of the era, it helped cause the global financial market crisis that began in 2007 and the deep recession and austerity fiscal policies that accompanied it.

Be Very Afraid: The American Economy Is Cannibalizing Itself, and We the People Are Going to Pay a Huge Price

By Robert Reich

November 3, 2013  |  So how to explain this paradox?

 

As of November 1 more than 47 million Americans have lost some or all of their food stamp benefits. House Republicans are pushing for further cuts. If the sequester isn’t stopped everything else poor and working-class Americans depend on will be further squeezed.

We’re not talking about a small sliver of America here. Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers – including the nation’s largest, Walmart – now pay so little that food stamps are necessary in order to keep food on the family table, and other forms of assistance are required to keep a roof overhead. 

Today's Food Stamp Cuts Are Only the Beginning

Arit John, Nov 1, 2013

 

Today 47 million Americans on food stamps will see their benefits slashed by 13 percent as the program takes a $5 billion budget hit. If Republicans have their way, this could just be the beginning. The GOP-led House wants to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $39 billion over the next ten years, which would lower the cap on benefits and boot 4 million people from the program altogether. Though food security has yet to reach pre-recession levels, there will be more cuts to the program over the next few years. The only question is how steep they'll be.

This cut marks the end of increased funding for the program provided by the 2009 Recovery Act. Better known as the Stimulus, the Recovery Act raised the maximum cap on food stamp aid and gave the program's funding a $45.2 billion boost. Between 2007 and 2012 the number of individuals on food stamps rose from 26 million to almost 47 million, and the average benefits rose from $96.18 to $133.41. 
 

New Executive Order Will Help Communities Prepare for Extreme Weather

By Katie Valentine

November 1, 2013  |  President Obama signed an executive order this morning aimed at making it easier for states and communities to prepare for climate change and the droughts, floods and extreme storms that are likely to come with it.

 

The order [3], which is part of the president’s climate action plan [4], will encourage local planners to take the future effects of climate change into account when spending federal money to build infrastructure. The order will also set up [5] the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, a task force of city and state leaders that will advise the federal government on how they can better support climate resiliency. Eight governors have joined the task force, along with 16 mayors and commissioners and two tribal leaders. Most of the task force are Democrats, but the Republican governor of Guam and three Republican mayors [6] have also signed on.

Why Do Poor People 'Waste' Money On Luxury Goods?

Tressie Mcmillan Cottom – November 1, 2013, 6:00 AM EDT

We hates us some poor people. First, they insist on being poor when it is so easy to not be poor. They do things like buy expensive designer belts and $2500 luxury handbags.

[...]

To be fair, this isn't about Errol Louis. His is a belief held by many people, including lots of black people, poor people, formerly poor people, etc. It is, I suspect, an honest expression of incredulity. If you are poor, why do you spend money on useless status symbols like handbags and belts and clothes and shoes and televisions and cars?

One thing I've learned is that one person's illogical belief is another person's survival skill. And nothing is more logical than trying to survive.

Bill Moyers: The Corporate Plot That Obama and Corporate Lobbyists Don't Want You to Know About

By Bill Moyers, Yves Smith, Dean Baker

November 1, 2013  |  A US-led trade deal is currently being negotiated that could increase the price of prescription drugs, weaken financial regulations and even allow partner countries to challenge American laws. But few know its substance.

 

The pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is deliberately shrouded in secrecy, a trade deal powerful people, including President Obama, don’t want you to know about. More than 130 members of Congress have asked the White House for greater transparency about the negotiations and were essentially told to go fly a kite. While most of us are in the dark about the contents of the deal, which Obama aims to seal by year end, corporate lobbyists are in the know about what it contains.

And some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who join Moyers & Company this week. Both have written extensively about the TPP and tell Bill the pact actually has very little to do with free trade.

How the 1 percent always wins: Liberal washing is the right’s new favorite tactic

Here's why plutocrats control our politics: Corporate America knows both parties are up for sale

David Sirota

“What is most striking about the present is not the virtues of moderation but of the potential power of conviction. One detects, behind all the anxiety about 'extremists,’ ‘radicals,’ and ‘militant minorities,’ a degree of envy. On the Right there is a group with enough commitment to a shared project that is willing and able to disrupt the ordinary functioning of government. If only the Left had such wherewithal. We might, at the very least, get something more than than the economically stagnant, politically oppressive Mugwumpery of the Democratic Party.” — Jacobin’s Alex Gourevitch 

This trenchant passage about liberals’ reaction to the Tea Party summarizes a hugely significant yet little discussed truism: American politics has been inexorably lurching to the right not only because of the extremism of the Tea Party, but also because of a lack of Tea Party-like cohesion, organization and energy on the left. There are, of course, many factors that contribute to that sad reality including a successful war on the labor movement; a campaign finance system that makes conservative oligarchs even more powerful than they already are; and a mediasphere that ignores principles and tells liberals everything must be seen exclusively in partisan red-versus-blue terms. One factor, though, stands out for how it so destructively shapes the assumptions that define our political discourse. That factor can be called “liberal washing.”

The Great American Ripoff: The High Cost of Low Taxes

October 29, 2013

by Joshua Holland

 

The American people pay a similar amount for social services – health care, retirement security, disability and unemployment insurance and the like – as citizens of European countries with supposedly lavish social safety nets.

But there are two significant differences. First, we pay a hugely disproportionate share of the costs out-of-pocket*, through the private sector. And when things go badly – when misfortune hits — the safety net that we fall back on is truly pathetic in comparison. Call it the great American rip-off.
 

The Best Evidence Yet That Government Surveillance Oversight Is Nowhere Near Adequate

By Steve Vladeck

As every week brings with it another new disclosure about the scope of the surveillance activities of the U.S. government, defenders of the practice continue to anchor such arguments in what one former government official described as “the most oversight-laden foreign intelligence activity in the history of the planet.” The oversight these defenders trumpet includes the intelligence agencies’ own internal checks; the one-sided, nonadversarial, and largely procedural review of such programs before the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; and the behind-closed-doors demands of the congressional intelligence committees. And, as those who support the government’s surveillance activities are keen to point out, the intelligence agencies must check each and every one of these boxes in order to, among other things, collect all of our telephony metadata; spy on foreign governments; and tap into the backbone of electronic communications service providers—like Google, Facebook, etc.  Not only are these checks and balances portrayed as rigorous, but the current proposals for additional checks and balances involving outside—or at least disinterested—actors are dismissed as simply unnecessary.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s New NSA Bill Will Codify and Extend Mass Surveillance of Americans

by Trevor Timm

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the NSA’s biggest defenders, released what she calls an NSA “reform” bill Thursday.

Don’t be fooled: the bill codifies some of the NSA’s worst practices, would be a huge setback for everyone’s privacy, and it would permanently entrench the NSA’s collection of every phone record held by U.S. telecoms. We urge members of Congress to oppose it.

What Really Happens To People Whose Insurance Is 'Canceled' Because Of Obamacare

Dylan Scott – November 1, 2013, 6:00 AM EDT

President Obama wasn't entirely right in 2009 when he said that if you like your health care plan, then you can keep it. Some people are going to have their health insurance plans canceled, and it does have something to do with Obamacare.

From a political standpoint, that's enough to ignite a firestorm. From a policy standpoint, there's a whole lot more going on here.

What really matters is what happens to the people who are receiving those cancelation letters that congressional Republicans have been parading in front of the cameras?

The bottom line: Almost all of them are going to receive the same or much better coverage, and many of them are going to receive financial help to purchase it.

Book: Jon Huntsman Sr. Told Reid That Romney Didn't Pay Any Taxes For 10 Years

Igor Bobic – October 31, 2013, 6:14 PM EDT33877

 

The word is finally out.

The source of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) infamous claim during the 2012 presidential campaign that Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes in 10 years was Jon Huntsman Sr., the father of fellow GOP rival Jon Huntsman, according to a new book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann called  “Double Down."

Reid bashed Romney with the claim, which he said came from a Republican and a Bain Capital investor, during the summer of 2012 as the former Mass. governor repeatedly refused to disclose the tax documents.

House Passes Bill Written by Citigroup Lobbyists

—By Erika Eichelberger | Thu Oct. 31, 2013 7:48 AM PDT

In May, Mother Jones reported on a Wall Street-friendly bill that was largely written by Citigroup lobbyists. On Wednesday, that bill passed the House—but with fewer yes votes than expected.
The bill, which passed 292 to 122, would gut a section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act known as the "push-out rule." As we reported earlier:

Banks hate the push-out rule…because this provision will forbid them from trading certain derivatives (which are complicated financial instruments with values derived from underlying variables, such as crop prices or interest rates). Under this rule, banks will have to move these risky trades into separate non-bank affiliates that aren't insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and are less likely to receive government bailouts. The bill would smother the push-out rule in its crib by permitting banks to use government-insured deposits to bet on a wider range of these risky derivatives.

The New York Times reported in May that draft bill language written by Citigroup lobbyists was "reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill."