Samuel Alito: A Movement Man Makes Good on Right-Wing Investments

by Peter Montgomery
Posted: 07/03/2014 12:38 pm

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ended this Supreme Court session with a bang, writing the majority opinion in two cases that gave for-profit corporations the right to make religious liberty claims to evade government regulation and set the stage for the fulfillment of a central goal of the right-wing political movement: the destruction of public employee unions.

Neither of the decisions was particularly surprising. Samuel Alito is the single most pro-corporate Justice on the most pro-business Court since the New Deal. Still, Alito's one-two punch was another extraordinary milestone for the strategists who have been working for the past 40 years to put business firmly in the driver's seat of American politics.

Thomas Jefferson: America’s Founding Sociopath

July 4, 2014

Special Report: For many Americans, Thomas Jefferson is the beloved author of the Declaration of Independence so they broach no criticism of him. But the real Jefferson may have been America’s founding sociopath, a man of racist self-interest and endless hypocrisies, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

On July Fourth, the people of the United States extravagantly celebrate the high-blown expressions on human rights that Thomas Jefferson penned in the Declaration of Independence – especially the noble phrase “all men are created equal.” But Jefferson really didn’t believe that or much else that he said and wrote during his lifetime. He was, in reality, a skilled propagandist and a world-class hypocrite.

Yet, rather than subject Jefferson to a rigorous examination for his multiple hypocrisies, many Americans insist on protecting Jefferson’s reputation. From the Left, there is a desire to shield the lofty principles contained in the Declaration. From the Right, there is value in pretending that Jefferson’s revisionist concept of the Constitution – one favoring states’ rights over the federal government – was the “originalist” view of that founding document.



So, Jefferson – perhaps more than any figure in U.S. history – gets a pass for what he really was: a self-absorbed aristocrat who had one set of principles for himself and another for everybody else.

Crushing Occupy Wall Street: It Was All About the Pitchforks

By Pam Martens: July 1, 2014

You know there is something different in the air when Rand Paul is railing against “fat cats” and a fat cat is worrying aloud about pitchforks in Politico Magazine.

It all harkens back to one of the greatest grassroots awareness campaigns in history, variously called Occupy Wall Street or “We Are the 99 Percent.” In a messy, tarp-filled outpost in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the message of enforced inequality via the 99 percent brand was plastered across posters, hand-made t-shirts, street puppets, and even flashed onto skyscrapers in a creative blend of marketing savvy and social activism. From there, it tweeted around the world.

Time Bomb

238 years after its first birthday, America is in deep denial.

By JEDEDIAH PURDY
July 03, 2014

Because American politics is both divided and ineffective, it’s easy to assume that divisiveness is the problem, and being nicer and more cooperative would make government work again. Especially on occasions like the Fourth of July, the temptation is strong to hold hands and call, earnestly, for bipartisan comity. Can’t we all just get along?

No, we can’t—even though much of our partisan division is superficial. The more basic problem is denial. Like a dysfunctional family writ across a continent, we Americans have learned to look away from some of our hardest problems, such as inequality and climate change, and, when confronted with them, wring our hands and pretend there’s nothing we can do—even when we pretend to be making a fuss about them.

Part of the reason for the denial is that doing something meaningful about these problems would deepen our conflict. It would reveal a country divided by material interests, not just partisan rhetoric and style. It would raise the stakes of politics. This is risky, but the chance might open the door to a more hopeful politics.

Why the Shift from Production to Speculation?

By Arthur MacEwan | May/June 2014

Dear Dr. Dollar:

Why has our economy switched so greatly away from manufacturing that produces real goods and services that provide real value and towards speculative, financial activity—everything from mergers and acquisitions to derivatives, off-shore tax shelters, and other scams?
—Glen W. Spielbauer, Dallas, Tex.

The rising role of finance has certainly had all of these impacts (the “scams” you mention). Also, the switch to finance was at the center of the housing bubble, the collapse of the bubble, and the onset of the Great Recession. The switch to finance, however, was not a switch of the economy as a whole; that is, financial firms do not account for a growing share of output (GDP) or employment. The long-term decline in manufacturing has been balanced by the expansion of “services that provide real value”—education and health care, for example.

Katha Pollitt: Where Will the Slippery Slope of ‘Hobby Lobby’ End?

There’s no telling how far religious exemptions will go under Justice Alito’s ruling.

Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams famously said. Unless, that is, you’re talking about religion. Then facts don’t seem to matter at all: right you are if you think you are. The Hobby Lobby case was billed as a test of religious freedom versus the power of the state: Did the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) mean that David Green, the evangelical Christian CEO of a chain of crafts stores, could be exempt from providing coverage for the full range of contraceptives for his employees under the Affordable Care Act? Green balked at including Plan B, Ella (another form of emergency contraception) and two kinds of IUD, because, he claimed, they caused “abortion” by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg.

How Finland Keeps Kids Focused Through Free Play

An American teacher in Helsinki questioned the national practice of giving 15 minute breaks each hour—until he saw the difference it made in his classroom.

Tim Walker Jun 30 2014, 9:42 AM ET

Like a zombie, Sami—one of my fifth graders—lumbered over to me and hissed, “I think I’m going to explode! I’m not used to this schedule.” And I believed him. An angry red rash was starting to form on his forehead.

Yikes, I thought. What a way to begin my first year of teaching in Finland. It was only the third day of school and I was already pushing a student to the breaking point. When I took him aside, I quickly discovered why he was so upset.

Anatomy of an economic debacle: How the Fed proposed bailing out Mexico to pass NAFTA

The inside story of how the supposedly "above politics" bank lobbied -- and facilitated a currency and trade crisis

Matt Stoller

The Federal Reserve is supposedly an independent central bank, that we’re told is above politics. By this telling, it is supposed to be staffed with ramrod straight central bankers, tight-fisted but apolitical. While the Fed can state its opinions on policy matters when asked by Congress, it isn’t supposed to use its power to manipulate the political system. And it isn’t supposed to propose bailing out a foreign country just to get the United States Congress to change policy.

But in 1993, that is exactly what the Federal Reserve did.

Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater

By James Risen, June 29, 2014

WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

Cigarettes and Climate Change

Emmett Rensin July 2, 2014

I am a smoker, and I am in denial. It isn’t that I don’t believe that cigarettes will kill me. I do. It isn’t that I don’t believe that I’m addicted. I know I am. Like most addicts, my denial takes the form of dissonance: I rationalize, I procrastinate, I make token gestures and shop for comparisons. Distraction is easy: I read while I smoke. Anything to avoid looking that monster in the eyes.

These are not novel forms of coping. Among more private kinds of existential crises—the junkie, the smoker, the troubling lump beneath the skin, and the marriage on the brink—denial is rarely outright. You know you have a problem; the trick is in refusing to acknowledge it.

It’s strange, then, that in the case of climate change—a cognitively torturous existential threat exceeding the sum of all our private ones by some incomprehensible order of magnitude—we tell an uncomplicated story about two stark sides. On one hand are the scientists; on the other, the skeptics. The skeptics don’t believe the monster’s there. The scientists (and activists, and journalists) endeavor to persuade them. When this latter side succeeds, the story goes, we will finally take action. In the meantime, we sit and hope that day won’t be too late.

That story isn’t true.

Why is Washington still protecting the secret political power of corporations?

Regulators at the SEC could illuminate the future of campaign donations. But they aren't interested in disclosing the truth – even though voters are

Alexis Goldstein
theguardian.com, Monday 30 June 2014 07.00 EDT

In post-Citizens United America, there is growing concern that the ability for corporations to anonymously funnel money into politics – with no need to disclose these donations to voters, election officials or their own shareholders – will corrupt the political process. Democrats have previously tried and failed to pass the Disclose Act, which would require greater disclosure of donors – but with a divided Congress, many in Washington see bringing meaningful transparency to campaign finance an utterly impossible task.

Still, there is another way to achieve the disclosure of corporate political donations that doesn't require Congress at all: the administration could simply propose new regulations under its existing authority. Unfortunately, despite having a Democratic chair – Mary Jo White – the Securities and Exchange Commission, which could mandate such disclosures, is either too intimidated (or too captured) to act.

The NSA Revelations All in One Chart

By Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson, ProPublica, illustrations by Alberto Cairo, special to ProPublica
Published June 30, 2014

This is a plot of the NSA programs revealed in the past year according to whether they are bulk or targeted, and whether the targets of surveillance are foreign or domestic. Most of the programs fall squarely into the agency’s stated mission of foreign surveillance, but some – particularly those that are both domestic and broad-sweeping – are more controversial.

Supreme Court Ruling in ‘Harris v. Quinn’ Will Undermine Gains Made by Low-Wage Home Healthcare Workers

Michelle Chen on June 30, 2014 - 11:28 AM ET

The Supreme Court reached into the living rooms of homebound people with disabilities today and weakened the institutional backbone of public sector unions. At the intersection of public service and private capital, the case Harris v. Quinn was ostensibly about the cost of union dues, but hinged on a legal theory that could ultimately cost the labor movement far more.

Today’s five-four decision pushed public sector unions a step closer toward death by attrition, by eroding their ability to finance themselves. The ruling specifically blocks unions from collecting mandatory dues from Medicaid-funded personal health aides in Illinois.

Labor in History: Mobtown and the Stirring of America's Unions

Monday, 30 June 2014 10:02
By Bruce Vail, In These Times | Report

Many historians date the first great industrial upheaval of American labor to July 16, 1877, when workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began refusing to work in protest against a round of wage cuts ordered by the company’s senior managers. Battered by years of economic depression, high unemployment and miserable working conditions, the workers in Baltimore and beyond had finally been pushed to the breaking point.

Even without any broad-based union organization, the B&O strike immediately seized the public imagination. The unrest spread rapidly to other railroads before expanding to include workers at mines and factories in widely scattered locations across the country. At its height, the six-week-long "Great Railroad Strike" involved an estimated 100,000 workers in more than a dozen states, and succeeded in paralyzing much of the nation’s transportation system.

Congress Quietly Deletes a Key Disclosure of Free Trips Lawmakers Take

House Ethics reverses decades of precedent as lobbyist-sponsored lawmaker travel expands.

By Shane Goldmacher

It's going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms.

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

Why We Might Be On the Verge of Another Financial Crash

By Thom Hartmann

June 30, 2014  |  The denial of fundamental economic principles is setting the world up for another Great Crash.

Although wages have been flat or declining since the West started following Thatchernomics and Reaganomics in the late '70s and early 1980s, the stock market has risen to all-time highs. Billions—hundreds of billions—have been made by individuals on Wall Street.

Meanwhile, over 60,000 factories have closed in United States just in the past 14 years, and over 50 million Americans are either unemployed or underemployed.

EU Association Agreement with Ukraine Is a Gift to Kleptocrats

Michael Hudson: The agreement, by worsening economic conditions of Ukraine, will guarantee unending violence in the east - July 1, 14

ANTON WORONCZUK, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Anton Woronczuk in Baltimore. And welcome to another edition of The Hudson Report. Now joining us is Michael Hudson. Michael Hudson is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His two newest books are The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and Its Discontents. Thanks for joining us, Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON, ECONOMICS PROF., UNIV. OF MISSOURI, KANSAS CITY: Good to be here.

WORONCZUK: So, Michael, let's talk about the economic association agreement that Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine signed with the E.U. last week. Let's get a sense of what are the details of the agreement. And how does this differ from--let's say, in economic terms, from a full-fledged membership with the E.U.?

HUDSON: Well, I'm going to begin by putting it in the big picture, and then I'll get to the details. The big picture is that this is a form of colonialism almost identical to what Europe did in Africa and Latin America and the Near East. What it did in the 19th century in Africa, where property was owned communally, was it would go to the chieftains of a given tribe, as it did to the Saudi Arabian chieftains, and it would say, well, to make an agreement, you have to register all this oil of your country, but you register it in your own name. And once they registered it in their own name, then Britain or France or the other European powers could make a deal that the chieftains could then sell this property or make contracts on behalf of oil or minerals with the European colonial powers. And that's how the colonial powers pried away all of this property from what had been tribal possession or communal possession.

Gaius Publius: Climate news: Arctic seafloor methane release is double previous estimates, and why that matters

One of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) that Obama’s EPA Clean Power Plan doesn’t count is methane from leaks, for example, fracking leaks, fuel line leaks, transportation leaks, and so on. Yet methane (CH4) is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases known, though very short-lived (most atmospheric methane disappears in about 12 years, becoming CO2 and water vapor).

And one of the cornerstones of the idea that mankind still has a “carbon budget” — that we can still release even more CO2 and other greenhouse gases like methane, though a “limited” amount — is the idea that we can do a good job of modeling climate-changing feedbacks. We can do a good job of modeling some feedbacks, but we’re very bad at modeling others, and some feedbacks have so much randomness about them that modeling them becomes next to impossible.

Noam Chomsky | Whose Security? How Washington Protects Itself and the Corporate Sector

The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs.  In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons.  First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact.  Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it.  Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. -- and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices.  The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond.

There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse.  It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the U.S. and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.

Dean Baker: Robert Samuelson Wants People to Be Unemployed: The Economics of the Economics of the Great Recession

Sunday, 29 June 2014 19:37

The basic story of the Great Recession is about as simple as they come. The economy was being driven by a housing bubble and the bubble burst. The combination of the loss of housing construction, due to the enormous overbuilding of the bubble years, and the loss of the consumption that had been driven by bubble generated housing wealth, created a gap in annual demand of more than $1 trillion. That's all simple and easy.

And what did economists think would fill that gap in demand, manna from heaven? Did they expect another building boom even when vacancy rates were at record highs? Better go study the basics of supply and demand. Did they expect investment to soar at a time of massive excess capacity? That one would not be supported by any studies of the determinants of investment I have seen. Would consumers just ignore the $8 trillion in housing wealth they saw vanish and spend just as though nothing had changed?

Paul Krugman: One Party Is United, the Other, Divided

Matt Yglesias, a commentator at Vox, recently pushed back against claims made by the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and others that the Democratic Party is a fragile coalition held together only by Hillary Clinton's personal popularity. He's right; I'd just like to add a few thoughts.

As Mr. Yglesias wrote, Democrats are remarkably unified on policy. They want to preserve health reform; they want to preserve financial reform (though some would want to push it further); they want action on climate change; and while they may be conflicted on immigration, that's mostly internal soul-searching rather than a division between party factions.

Christian right secession fantasy: Spooky neo-Confederate talk grows louder at the fringes

The religious right is spooked and making scary new allies. Some worry theocratic violence will soon be on the rise

Paul Rosenberg

A Saturday ago at the annual conference of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused President Obama and other Democrats of waging a war against religious liberty and all but openly threatened a violent revolution, AP reported:

“I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States,” Jindal said, “where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren.”

Of course, Jindal’s speech didn’t come out of nowhere. Jindal is notorious as a weather vane, not a leader. So this is a clear sign of the need to take threats of right-wing violence seriously — and to look to its justifications as formulated on the Christian right.

Internet billionaire Nick Hanauer warns of coming revolution

Nick Hanauer, internet entrepreneur, has a message for his fellow "zillionaires": the revolution is coming.

Mr Hanauer, an early investor in internet retail giant Amazon, says like many of his fellow one-percenters, he owns his own yacht, multiple homes and private jet. He says he acquired all his wealth by seeing the potential of the internet and acting on it.

Now, he writes in Politico magazine, he sees a different kind of future, and the outlook for people like him is not a bright one:

If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out.

Paul Krugman: Charlatans, Cranks and Kansas 

Two years ago Kansas embarked on a remarkable fiscal experiment: It sharply slashed income taxes without any clear idea of what would replace the lost revenue. Sam Brownback, the governor, proposed the legislation — in percentage terms, the largest tax cut in one year any state has ever enacted — in close consultation with the economist Arthur Laffer. And Mr. Brownback predicted that the cuts would jump-start an economic boom — “Look out, Texas,” he proclaimed.

But Kansas isn’t booming — in fact, its economy is lagging both neighboring states and America as a whole.  Meanwhile, the state’s budget has plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.

Supreme Court’s Conservatives Attack Public-Sector Unions’ Power, Cutting Dues-Paying Requirement

By Steven Rosenfeld

June 30, 2014 | The U.S. Supreme Court vastly undercut the power of public-sector unions Monday, with the right-wing majority limiting which government employees must pay union dues—cutting into their operating funds for lobbying and other political activities.

The case, Harris v. Quinn [3], concerned the constitutionality of “agency fees,” which are charged by these unions to all workers in a unionized setting, even non-union members.

“This case presents the question whether the First Amendment permits a State to compel personal care providers to subsidize speech on matters of public concern by a union that they do not wish to join or support. We hold that it does not,” Justice Samuel Alito, writing [3] for the Court’s five-member conservative majority, held. “If we accepted Illinois’ argu­ment, we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”

King Rex

A stock baron goes all in on Missouri politics.

By LEE FANG

Rex Sinquefield amassed a fortune by doing nothing. Well, not exactly: In the 1970s, he pioneered the first index funds, investment vehicles that strictly track a broad portfolio of financial assets, such as the S&P 500, leaving no room for individual error or hunches. He did so by capitalizing on a theory, honed by his intellectual mentors at the University of Chicago, that such “passive” investments in the overall market could outperform even the best stock pickers in the country. “Private investment managers can’t beat markets,” he likes to say.

But he prefers his politics a lot less passive: The 69-year-old retired multimillionaire is now betting that he can pick political winners and losers back in his native Missouri.

Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby Debacle

By Steven Rosenfeld

June 30, 2014  |  The Supreme Court’s right-wing majority has struck another major blow against women and Obamacare, ruling on Monday that private employers do not have to include contraceptive coverage in employee health plans if the business owners’ religion is opposed to abortion-related services. The ruling, which dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called "extreme" in comments from the bench, affirmed that corporations—not just individuals—possess religious rights and freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

 

“We must decide whether the challenged HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] regulations substantially burden the exercise of religion, and we hold that they do,” wrote Justice Samual Alito, writing for the 5-4 majority. “Government action that imposes a substantial burden on religious exercise must serve a compelling government interest, and we assume that the HHS regulations satisfy this requirement. But in order for the HHS mandate to be sustained, it must also constitute the least restrictive means of serving that interest, and the mandate plainly fails that test.”

How Did the FBI Miss Over 1 Million Rapes?

Systematic undercounting of sexual assaults in the US disguises a hidden rape crisis.

Soraya Chemaly, June 27, 2014

Earlier this month, a 911 dispatcher in Ohio was recorded telling a 20-year-old woman who had just been raped to “quit crying.” After she provided a description of her assailant, the caller went on to say, “They’re not going to be able to find him with the information that you’ve given.” This incident had its viral moment, sparking outrage at the dispatcher’s lack of empathy. But it also speaks to the larger issue of how we are counting rapes in the United States. Sixty-nine percent of police departments surveyed in 2012 said that dispatchers like this one, often with little training, are authorized to do the initial coding of sexual assault crimes.

That’s important, because miscoding of such crimes is masking the high incidence of rape in the United States. We don’t have an overestimation of rape; we have a gross underestimation. A thorough analysis of federal data published earlier this year by Corey Rayburn Yung, associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, concludes that between 1995 and 2012, police departments across the country systematically undercounted and underreported sexual assaults.

Paupers and Richlings

Benjamin Kunkel

Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty, translated by Arthur Goldhammer
Harvard, 696 pp, £29.95, March, ISBN 978 0 674 43000 6

Capitalist societies today exhibit ‘an arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes’ as bad as or worse than in the 1930s, when Keynes declared this one of ‘the outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live’. (The other – not unrelated – was the failure to achieve full employment.) Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is an intelligent, ambitious and above all informative treatment of the problem. This accounts for much of the unusual excitement surrounding a lengthy, often dry economic tract. But there’s something else to the ‘Piketty bubble’: he is one of the very few contemporary economists eager to revive the old-fashioned spirit of political economy. The story of modern economic thought can after all be told as the shift from political economy, as its practitioners thought of it, to the discipline now simply called economics. With the ‘marginal revolution’ of the 1870s (named for Jevons’s theory of ‘marginal utility’), economics acquired a true scientific basis or – in the other extreme of judgment – lent itself to constructing mathematical alibis for capitalism, whose real behaviour it studiously ignored. Either way, prestige and influence migrated from the area of Smith, Malthus and Ricardo’s work as well as Marx’s ‘critique of political economy’ – a space with open borders onto what are today anthropology, sociology, history and political science – to a smaller and better defined territory, with a stricter methodological charter if not always less imperious claims to the explanation of society. Like all stories, not to speak of economic models, this oversimplifies things, but it traces the shape of the change. Did the marginal revolution ever end? In recent decades the marginalist picture of the free market as the vehicle for maximising everyone’s utility – better known around the house as satisfaction or happiness – has become the vision retailed by politicians, and the notion of economic life as a matter of individuals harmonising their preferences, as opposed to classes wrestling for control of shopfloor and government, has filtered into common sense.

Inequality Begins at Birth

Jeff Madrick

Over the past year, the lack of universal pre-kindergarten for American four-year-olds has become a national issue. In 2013, President Obama proposed to fund an ambitious new nationwide pre-kindergarten program through a new cigarette tax. That plan failed to gain support, but Bill de Blasio gave new urgency to the issue when he swept into the New York mayor’s office promising universal pre-K for all city children—which will begin in the fall. Even as these efforts are being made, however, new research is making it increasingly clear that educational disparities start much earlier.

The value of universal access to early education has long been recognized: it improves the life chances of disadvantaged children and is crucial to keeping a level playing field for all. The United States has fallen well short of this goal. In most of Europe there is universal, good-quality preschool for three- and four-year-olds. In America, recent data show that fewer than half of all three- and four-year olds are enrolled in some form of preschool. Head Start, the main federal program, provides preschool funding for only about two fifths of poor children in this group.

What Americans Think of the Poor

Paul Waldman, June 27, 2014

Be careful how you ask.

The Pew Research Center has released one of their periodic Political Typology studies, and as usual it contains a wealth of fascinating data on what people think about a whole range of issues. One of the most useful things about it is that instead of just asking people whether they consider themselves liberals or conservatives, it constructs a typology based on a series of questions, enabling them to divide people in a more fine-grained way that doesn't rely solely on self-identification (they divide Americans into two strongly conservative groups, one mostly conservative group, one mostly liberal group, and three more strongly liberal groups).

Thomas Frank: Free markets killed capitalism: Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Wal-Mart, Amazon and the 1 percent’s sick triumph over us all

Monopoly is back: Barry Lynn on the concentration of American economic power -- and how we can restore fairness

Barry C. Lynn is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of two important books, “End of the Line” and ”Cornered,” the latter of which describes the dramatic return of monopoly to the American landscape. Both books had a big effect on me when they appeared, as did Lynn’s periodic articles in Harper’s Magazine describing the concentration of economic power in all sorts of different industries. One of the reasons his books startled me is the weird silence of virtually all our other popular economic writers on the subject. Monopoly is back, in a massive way, and yet it seems as though even liberals often have trouble talking about it. If we’re really going to do something about inequality, however, it’s time we looked this thing in the face.

Barry Lynn and I sat down and talked it over last week. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

5 Reasons the Rich Are Ruining the Economy by Hoarding Their Money

By David Atkins

June 26, 2014 | It has been nearly four decades since the Reagan revolution in supply-side economics came to power in the United States. Tax rates on the wealthiest Americans are at near record lows, asset values have been pumped up to record highs, and corporate America is sitting prettier than ever before. There can be no question but that the ideologues who promoted supply-side economics have succeeded in enforcing their vision policy on our lives. But their decades-long experiment has also proven to be structural failure at every possible level (except for padding the pockets of the top 1%.) Here are five things we know without doubt about supply-side economics today:

This Might Be the Biggest Reason to End the Tipped Minimum Wage

Friday, 27 June 2014 10:40
By Emily DiVito, Campaign For America's Future | Op-Ed

Women represent 72 percent of all workers in tipped-wage jobs – those with a federal minimum wage of just $2.13 an hour. That means that women are disproportionately placed in the very compromising position of their having to please customers and impress employers in order to earn enough tips to have decent take-home pay.

Too often, that means enduring sexual harassment.

Thirty-seven percent of all sexual harassment reports filed at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) come from women in the restaurant industry, making it the single largest source of sexual harassment claims in the United States.

Emails: GOP Secured Majority After VA Dem Promised Job, Phone And Car

Sahil Kapur – June 27, 2014, 10:18 AM EDT

The Democratic state senator in Virginia who recently stepped down and handed Republicans the majority was poised to get a state job with employee benefits, a cell phone and possibly a car, as well as a judgeship for his daughter, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.

Virginia State Sen. Phillip Puckett (D) was supposed to go work for the Republican-led state tobacco commission. Emails between Puckett and Tim Pfohl, the panel's interim director, reveal that the two were negotiating as May 29 the terms of Puckett's exit and that Pfohl was going out of his way to avoid an appearance of impropriety or quid pro quo.

What We Can Learn From Lawrence of Arabia?

Saturday, 28 June 2014 10:00
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Video Report

As fears grow of a widening war across the Middle East, fed by reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) envisions a region-wide, all controlling theocracy, we found ourselves talking about another war. The Great War – or World War I, as it would come to be called — was triggered one hundred years ago this month when an assassin shot and killed Austria's Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Through a series of tangled alliances and a cascade of misunderstandings and blunders, that single act of violence brought on a bloody catastrophe. More than 37 million people were killed or wounded.