No Money, No Vote: Ohio Republicans’ Diabolical Plan For A Poll Tax

by Ian Millhiser

Twenty-four members of the Ohio House of Representatives — all Republicans — cosponsored a bill introduced last week that would require many Ohio residents to pay an actual poll tax in order to vote. Poll taxes are forbidden by the Constitution.

Under this legislation, many voters would have to pay a fee in order to obtain an ID card that they need to vote, thus effectively imposing a tax on the right to vote.

Paul Krugman | Debunking the "Nation of Takers" Myth

Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty in the United States, and the date provoked a flurry of studies correcting some widespread myths. Perhaps the most notable was an enlightening progress report from the Council of Economic Advisers.

What needed correcting? Basically, the "nation of takers" narrative, according to which we have been contributing ever-greater sums toward helping the poor, all without making a dent in the poverty rate.

The 10 Biggest Lies You’ve Been Told About the Trans-Pacific Partnership

You can call it "misleading" or "offering half-truths," but when push comes to a shove, these are lies.

By David Dayen / Salon

Today, the Senate makes a critical test vote on the Obama Administration’s trade agenda, kicking off a process that the White House hopes to end with the signing of an agreement between 12 nations called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In preparation for this vote, President Obama has been deliberately antagonizing his critics, mostly liberal Democrats. Senator Elizabeth Warren is “a politician, like everybody else,” Obama said Friday to Yahoo News, who has “got a voice that she wants to get out there,” framing her concerns as insincere self-aggrandizement. Those concerns, Obama added, are “absolutely wrong.”

This is not the first time that Obama and his aides have depicted opposition on trade as deliberate misinformation designed to stir up a left-leaning political base, or generate campaign contributions; my favorite is the claim that Warren is merely trying to energize a non-existent Presidential campaign.

Court case shows how health insurers rip off you and your employer

Commentary: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan added hidden fees to hospital claims

By Wendell Potter

If you think you’re paying too much for employer-sponsored health coverage, you might want to forward this to the HR department. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that your health insurer has been ripping off both you and your employer—to the tune of several million dollars every year—for decades.

Many Americans, according to various polls, blame Obamacare for every hike in premiums despite the fact that the rate of increase for most folks was actually greater before 2010, the year the law went into effect.

Just Shake Your Head

By Josh Marshall

I always try to remind myself not to criticize with stories like the one I'm about to describe, or perhaps better to say, not to forget the core reason for providing a comprehensive national plan to provide health insurance for everyone who needs it. But this story really puts that sentiment to the test, as well as exposing the perverse politics and perceptions on this issue in Republican-run states.

Luis Lang needs an expensive eye operation to save his eyesight. But he can't afford it, can't get covered for the procedure and he blames President Obama and his over-complicated ACA legislation.

Feds Spent $3.3 Billion Fueling Charter Schools but No One Knows What It's Really Bought

By Jonas Persson, PR Watch | Op-Ed

Madison, Wisconsin - The federal government has spent more than $3.3 billion over the past two decades creating and fueling the charter school industry, according to a new financial analysis and reporters' guide by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). (The new guide can be downloaded below.)

Despite the huge sums spent so far, the federal government maintains no comprehensive list of the charter schools that have received and spent these funds or even a full list of the private or quasi-public entities that have been approved by states to "authorize" charters that receive federal funds. And despite drawing repeated criticism from the Office of the Inspector General for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls within the federal Charter Schools Program - designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools - the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is poised to increase its funding by 48% in FY 2016.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership will lead to a global race to the bottom

The trade deal will lead to offshored American jobs, a widened income inequality gap and increased number of people making slave wages overseas

Rose Aguilar

At a time when economic inequality around the globe continues to widen, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will only make things worse. Unlike what President Obama claims, the agreement will only encourage a race to the bottom, in which a small percentage of people get ridiculously rich while most workers around the globe stay miserably poor. We can’t let that happen.

Today, President Obama is visiting Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon to garner support for the trade deal, which would be signed by the US and 11 Pacific Rim countries. That’s an apt place for Obama to beat the free-trade drum – Nike, like the TPP, is associated with offshoring American jobs, widening the income inequality gap, and increasing the number of people making slave wages overseas. Since the passage of NAFTA in 1993, we’ve seen the loss of nearly five million US manufacturing jobs, the closure of more than 57,000 factories, and stagnant wages. This deal won’t be any different.

Is the Government Harassing and Censoring Scientists for Studying Ties Between Pesticides and Bee Deaths?

By Reynard Loki, AlterNet | Report

Following reports that scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture are being harassed and their research on bee-killing pesticides is being censored or suppressed, a broad coalition of farmers, environmentalists, fisheries and food-safety organizations urged an investigation in a May 5 letter sent to Phyllis K. Fong, USDA Inspector General.

"The possibility that the USDA is prioritizing the interests of the chemical industry over those of the American public is unacceptable," states the letter, which was signed by more than 25 citizens' groups concerned that a forthcoming report by the White House Task Force on Pollinator Health, which is co-chaired by the USDA, will be compromised.

How Republicans have made a science out of white working-class resentment

Right-wingers love to denounce the left's reliance on "identity politics." It's about time they look in the mirror

Heather Digby Parton

My first exposure to the term “identity politics” came from conservative commentators who used it to complain about civil rights. (It usually went hand-in-hand with derisive right-wing phrases like “playing the race card” and “professional poverty pimp.”) Indeed, I assumed for years that it was a catch-all conservative insult for anyone who sought equality and advancement for marginalized constituencies. That’s my bad. As it happens, the term has a serious academic pedigree and is hotly debated in intellectual circles so it’s not just another right wing epithet.

Nonetheless, that is exactly the way the term used today, and there are certain left-leaning types who use it as such as well. Interestingly, both sides lodge a similar complaint in terms of practical politics: “Identity politics” is seen as a scam to dupe racial and ethnic minorities, gays and women into voting for Democrats who pander to their personal concerns, letting their economic interest and the nation’s best interest as a whole be obscured in the process. The right sees this as a matter of ignorance, while the much smaller faction on the left that subscribes to a similar view sees it as a kind of selfish naivete. The left, to be fair, also thinks that right-wingers are being duped into voting against their economic interest by Republicans who pander to their personal concerns about religion and culture. (See: the “What’s the Matter with Kansas” critique.) So, in these lefties minds, it’s an equal opportunity duping. Still one cannot help but notice that most of the people on both sides who complain about their fellow citizens being duped by politicians pandering to their narrow concerns have rarely walked in the shoes of those to whom the pols are allegedly pandering. It undoubtedly looks a little different from that perspective.

Seymour M. Hersh: The Killing of Osama bin Laden

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

Paul Krugman: Wall Street Vampires

Last year the vampires of finance bought themselves a Congress. I know it’s not nice to call them that, but I have my reasons, which I’ll explain in a bit. For now, however, let’s just note that these days Wall Street, which used to split its support between the parties, overwhelmingly favors the G.O.P. And the Republicans who came to power this year are returning the favor by trying to kill Dodd-Frank, the financial reform enacted in 2010.

And why must Dodd-Frank die? Because it’s working.

Another Progressive Champion in the Senate? Alan Grayson Enters the Ring

As a congressman, Grayson has been an advocate for a whole spectrum of issues important to the left.

By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet

In September 2009, after a summer of boisterous healthcare town halls where Democrats fended off thousands of angry Tea Party activists, a Democratic congressman from central Florida stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and flipped the debate on its head with a short speech:

It’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for healthcare in America… It’s a very simple plan. Here it is. The Republican healthcare plan for America: "don’t get sick.” If you have insurance don’t get sick, if you don’t have insurance, don’t get sick; if you’re sick, don’t get sick. Just don’t get sick.…If you do get sick, America, the Republican healthcare plan is this: “die quickly.”

Environmental exposure to hormones used in animal agriculture greater than expected

Indiana University

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Research by an Indiana University environmental scientist and colleagues at universities in Iowa and Washington finds that potentially harmful growth-promoting hormones used in beef production are expected to persist in the environment at higher concentrations and for longer durations than previously thought.

"What we release into the environment is just the starting point for a complex series of chemical reactions that can occur, sometimes with unintended consequences," said Adam Ward, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the IU Bloomington School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "When compounds react in a way we don't anticipate -- when they convert between species, when they persist after we thought they were gone -- this challenges our regulatory system."

Is the news behaving more like advertising?

By Damaris Colhoun

When The Wall Street Journal set out to redesign its digital products, it changed more than the look of its website. The paper is forming teams of engineers, designers, and reporters, adapting their content to mobile and social platforms, making their news experiences more personal, and bringing analytics into the editorial department. In other words, it’s changing the essence of the newsroom.

Similar changes are happening at newspapers around the country. As users continue to discover stories through search and social instead of through homepages, news organizations are stepping up their efforts to track where those users are going and how they’re behaving. They’re moving to meet them where they are, and to deliver them content across a range of devices, especially mobile.