The 1 percent’s “centrist” propaganda war: Why Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren are so threatening to the establishment

Even as America gets younger and more progressive, those in power are insisting that Democrats have gone too far

Conor Lynch

After last Novembers elections, the GOP had a bit of a revelation. Once they had gained control of the congress, bipartisanship suddenly became the mature and necessary thing to do. The people spoke, after all, and had given the go ahead for Republican’s to push through their ideology, and it was now the responsibility of the Democrats to play along. “Serious adults are in charge here and we intend to make progress,” said Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, with an air of superiority. Yes, this is the same fellow who made the following remark a few years back: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” It is also the same party that has fought bitterly against nearly every policy that President Obama has advocated, like health care reform, the economic stimulus, immigration reform, etc.

Paul Krugman: Lone Star Stumble

Remember the Texas economic miracle? In 2012, it was one of the three main arguments from then-Gov. Rick Perry about why he should be president, along with his strong support from the religious right and something else I can’t remember (sorry, couldn’t help myself). More broadly, conservatives have long held Texas up as a supposed demonstration that low taxes on the rich and harsh treatment of the poor are the keys to prosperity.

So it’s interesting to note that Texas is looking a lot less miraculous lately than it used to. To be fair, we’re talking about a modest stumble, not a collapse. Still, events in Texas and other states — notably Kansas and California — are providing yet another object demonstration that the tax-cut obsession that dominates the modern Republican Party is all wrong.

Global Capitalist Crisis and the North American Free Trade Agreement: Reflections 21 Years On

By William I. Robinson, Truthout | News Analysis

Recent US Senate approval won by President Obama for "fast-track" negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal has thrust "free trade" and capitalist globalization again into the headlines. Often referred to as "NAFTA on steroids," the TPP is but the latest in more than two decades of "free trade" agreements that have helped open up the world to transnational corporate plunder.

If we want to understand such deals we would do well to reflect on the first of these, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which went into effect in January 1994. We cannot understand NAFTA without understanding the larger picture of which NAFTA and the TPP form part: the new system of global capitalism and the crisis of that system.

Jamie Dimon’s Legacy: GAO — Americans Face Stark Retirement Prospects

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 3, 2015

The General Accountability Office (GAO) released a sobering study yesterday that looks at how much 55-64 year olds have been able to set aside for retirement. The short answer is: excruciatingly too little. Why that is happening can best be summed up by a headline out this morning at Bloomberg News: Jamie Dimon Becomes Billionaire Ushering in Era of the Megabank.

The GAO study found the following: Approximately 55 percent of households age 55-64 in America have less than $25,000 in retirement savings, including 41 percent who have zero. Most of the households in this age group have some other resources or benefits from a Defined Benefit plan, but 27 percent of this age group have neither retirement savings nor a Defined Benefit plan. For the 59 percent of households age 55-64 with some retirement savings, the GAO study estimates that the median amount saved is about $104,000. While about 15 percent of these households have retirement savings amounts over $500,000, 11 percent have retirement savings below $10,000 and 24 percent have savings of less than $25,000.

Bee Crisis: More Than 40 Percent of Honey Bee Colonies Lost

By Charity Schmidt, PR Watch | Report

A dangerous new pattern in the bee crisis is alarming researchers and advocates. For the first time ever, beekeepers are losing more bee colonies during summer months than the cold winter months.

Beekeepers have reported losing more than 40 percent of their honey bee colonies over the last year, according to a recently released survey.

WikiLeaks Strikes Again: Leaked TISA Docs Expose Corporate Plan For Reshaping Global Economy

Leaked Docs reveal that little-known corporate treaty poised to privatize and deregulate public services across globe

by Sarah Lazare, staff writer

An enormous corporate-friendly treaty that many people haven't heard of was thrust into the public limelight Wednesday when famed publisher of government and corporate secrets, WikiLeaks, released 17 documents from closed-door negotiations between countries that together comprise two-thirds of the word's economy.

Analysts warn that preliminary review shows that the pact, known as the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), is aimed at further privatizing and deregulating vital services, from transportation to healthcare, with a potentially devastating impact for people of the countries involved in the deal, and the world more broadly.

Three suicides linked to blanket suspension of Social Security benefits for 900 in Kentucky

David Edwards

Kentucky attorney Ned Pillersdorf this week linked three suicides to the Social Security Administration’s decision to suspend benefits for 900 people without giving them a hearing.

Last week, the Social Security Administration confirmed that it had suspended benefits for 900 people after congressional investigators accused Kentucky attorney Eric C. Conn and David B. Daugherty, a former SSA judge, of fraud in 1,500 cases.

Memo to Readers: If You Want to Beat Big Finance, You Need to be Able to Take the Fight to Their Terrain

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Yves Smith

During the heyday of the financial blogosphere, even when the site’s following was much smaller than it is now, readers were keenly interested in getting to the bottom of hidden sources of risk, chicanery, and other “man behind the curtain” aspects of the operation of finance.

These issues are even more important now. We are 35 years into a finance-led counterrevolution where conservative interests are rolling back not just the New Deal, but are also pushing as far as they can in reducing the political and economic rights of laborers. And “laborers” is anyone who lives off earned income and does not have his pay directly or indirectly tied to the use of capital.

New Data Offer First Infuriating Glimpse At How The Richest 0.001 Percent Pay Income Taxes

by Alan Pyke

Tax day doesn’t sting much if you live at the gilded edge, according to new data on how the top one-hundredth of one percent and the top one-thousandth of a percent of all filers pay their income taxes. People who make tens of millions of dollars enjoyed falling income tax rates and ballooning wealth for a decade as middle-class taxpayers floundered.

The new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data helps illustrate the logic behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) call for radically reshaping the American income tax system to create pricey new brackets for extremely high earners. The numbers provide a deeper look inside the highest income echelon, breaking out data on income tax rates and total yearly earnings in previously unpublished detail. In the last year of the Bush tax cuts, there were well over a thousand people who reported more than $60 million in earnings but paid federal income tax rates far below 20 percent.

Zombie Patriot Act Will Keep U.S. Spying—Even if the Original Dies

Forget the White House’s doomsday talk about American intelligence going blind. Thanks to backdoor provisions and alternate collection schemes, U.S. spies will keep on snooping.

Shane Harris

Forget the White House’s doomsday talk about American intelligence going blind. Thanks to backdoor provisions and alternate collection schemes, U.S. spies will keep on snooping.

That argument is highly debatable—at least, in the short term. Not only does the U.S. government have all sorts of other ways to collect the same kind of intelligence outlined in the Patriot Act, but there’s also a little-noticed back door in the act that allows U.S. spy agencies to gather information in pretty much the same ways they did before.

The FBI is operating a small air force to spy on Americans

Jack Gillum, Eileen Sullivan and Eric Tucker, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.

Half of All American Families Are Staring at Financial Catastrophe

And they’re turning to payday loans and other lenders of last resort when crises occur.

Kriston Capps

The most frightening finding in the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2014 concerns a matter of $400. Four-hundred bucks. Twenty twenties. Four Benjamins.

Or just enough to crush half of all American households.

Paul Krugman: That 1914 Feeling

U.S. officials are generally cautious about intervening in European policy debates. The European Union is, after all, an economic superpower in its own right — far too big and rich for America to have much direct influence — led by sophisticated people who should be able to manage their own affairs. So it’s startling to learn that Jacob Lew, the Treasury secretary, recently warned Europeans that they had better settle the Greek situation soon, lest there be a destructive “accident.”

But I understand why Mr. Lew said what he did. A forced Greek exit from the euro would create huge economic and political risks, yet Europe seems to be sleepwalking toward that outcome. So Mr. Lew was doing his best to deliver a wakeup call.

Mark Crispin Miller: Neoliberalism and Its Impacts on Free Speech, Education and Democracy

By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout | Interview

Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University and the author of several books, including Boxed In: The Culture of TV, Cruel and Unusual: Bush and Cheney's New World Order, and Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform. He is also the editor of the newly-launched "Forbidden Bookshelf" series of e-books.

Michael Nevradakis: On a global level, how are the media furthering and promoting neoliberal policies and the politics of economic austerity, and how is freedom of the press being threatened?

Mark Crispin Miller: The corporate media worldwide has done an excellent job promoting neoliberal policies in every sector of society and culture. American media, which rank very low in the integrity of their news broadcasts, daily media coverage and commentary, are a kind of endless propaganda drive on behalf of austerity economics. For example, the US press is uncritically promoting a huge attack on public education and public schools, extolling the virtues of charter schools, attacking the teachers' unions and so on. I would say that the press is in the hands of the plutocracy, the 1%, and it has a profound effect on press freedom and freedom of expression.

Study links exposure to common pesticide with ADHD in boys

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

A new study links a commonly used household pesticide with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and young teens.

The study found an association between pyrethroid pesticide exposure and ADHD, particularly in terms of hyperactivity and impulsivity, rather than inattentiveness. The association was stronger in boys than in girls.

Discarding the Elderly

by Paul Buchheit

Elder abuse is defined as "harmful acts toward an elderly adult, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, financial exploitation, and neglect." Financial exploitation comes from the banking industry; neglect emanates from the halls of Congress; and emotions are stirred through the stories of impoverished seniors:

From Reno, Nevada: Here I am at an age when I should be thinking about retiring, desperately trying to find a job. I have used my savings...I'm seeking a court injunction to try and save my home.

From Laurel, Maryland: I am over 60, and I was pushed out of my job because of my age. My rent, car note, and electricity are all two months behind. I can barely get food. Utilities will be cut off soon.

Discarding the Elderly

by Paul Buchheit

Elder abuse is defined as "harmful acts toward an elderly adult, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, financial exploitation, and neglect." Financial exploitation comes from the banking industry; neglect emanates from the halls of Congress; and emotions are stirred through the stories of impoverished seniors:

From Reno, Nevada: Here I am at an age when I should be thinking about retiring, desperately trying to find a job. I have used my savings...I'm seeking a court injunction to try and save my home.

From Laurel, Maryland: I am over 60, and I was pushed out of my job because of my age. My rent, car note, and electricity are all two months behind. I can barely get food. Utilities will be cut off soon.

Neoliberalism Has Created New System of Dual Citizenship for the Poor and the 1%

By Bill Fletcher Jr.

In a lecture at Harvard during my freshman year, a professor—who may have been Martin Peretz—offered an insight that left a profound impact upon me. “Citizen,” the professor noted, was a unique and quite revolutionary concept. Different from many other terms, e.g., “comrade,” the notion of citizen implied a specific relationship between an individual and the polity. It specifically suggested a role for the individual within a state system in which said individual was a participant/actor rather than an observer.

Since the resurrection of the concept of “citizen,” in the context of the French Revolution, the term along with “citizenship” has been contested terrain.(1) There is no universally accepted criteria as to how one becomes a citizen of a nation-state. Countries differ greatly on whether being born in a particular territory is sufficient for such definition; under what conditions one can apply to become a citizen; how and under what circumstances can one’s children become citizens? These questions are not answered the same way in any number of Earth’s nation-states.

Gaius Publius: Why Is Malaysia So Important to TPP? The Strait of Malacca

Because of an excellent catch by Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, I think we can put the finger on why keeping Malaysia in the TPP is important to its proponents. Which may explain why Obama — after all, the first black president — is willing to turn a blind eye to slavery and the murder of trafficked humans. The Strait of Malacca is one of the most important shipping lanes on the planet.

Reuters (my emphasis throughout):

The 900-km long (550 miles) Malacca Strait, linking Europe and the Middle East with the Asia-Pacific, carries about 40 percent of the world’s trade. More than 50,000 merchant ships ply the waterway every year.

About 3.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of Middle East crude passed through the strait and to Japan last year. Middle East crude accounts for 90 percent of Japan’s total imports. Up to 80 percent of China’s crude imports are delivered via the narrow and congested waterway.

So China and Japan have a stake in keeping the Malacca Strait secure, as does India which has a blue water navy patrolling in the Andaman Sea at the western end of the strait.

I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

by Redditt Hudson on May 28, 2015

On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

That's a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, "I can't believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!" He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing

by Redditt Hudson on May 28, 2015

On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom they are working with.

That's a theory from my friend K.L. Williams, who has trained thousands of officers around the country in use of force. Based on what I experienced as a black man serving in the St. Louis Police Department for five years, I agree with him. I worked with men and women who became cops for all the right reasons — they really wanted to help make their communities better. And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, "I can't believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!" He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law.

Leaked Treaty You've Never Heard of Makes Secret Rules for the Internet

By Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation | News Analysis

A February 2015 draft of the secret Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) was leaked again last week, revealing a more extensive and more recent text than that of portions from an April 2014 leak that we covered last year. Together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), TISA completes a trifecta of trade agreements that the administration could sign under Fast Track without full congressional oversight.

Although it is the least well-known of those agreements, it is the broadest in terms of membership. As far as we know, it presently includes twenty countries plus Europe (but notably excluding the major emerging world economies of the BRICS bloc), who, with disdainful levity, have adopted the mantle "the Really Good Friends of Services." Like its sister agreements, TISA will enact global rules that impact the Internet, bypassing the transparency and accountability of national parliaments. The only difference is that its focus is on services, not goods.

How Mainstream is Bernie Sanders?

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment)

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, has trouble being taken seriously by the corporate media, what with him being a democratic socialist and all.

If you go to Google News and put in his name, you get headlines about him being nothing more than a protest candidate, or having “odd views,” or promoting “dark age economics.”

Richard Eskow: The Populist Agenda: The Fight for a Just Society

The obstacles faced by the progressive movement, especially in a post-Citizens United world, aren’t news to anybody who’s been paying attention. But recent developments may also stir an unfamiliar sensation in the liberally minded observer: optimism.

On Wednesday we began reviewing the state of the progressive agenda, starting with jobs and growth and using the “Populism 2015″ platform as a guide, and found some genuine successes.

Even Before TPP And TTIP, US Already Being Forced To Change Laws By Trade Agreements

from the not-so-cool dept

by Glyn Moody

Recently, we looked at how corporate sovereignty provisions undermine democracy by irrevocably binding future governments. The analysis was framed in terms of the UK's situation, but applied more generally to any country that signs up to investor-state dispute (ISDS) mechanisms in trade agreements. In particular, it applies to the US. And yet in President Obama's (in)famous TPP speech at Nike a few weeks ago -- the one where he claimed some of his "dearest friends" were wrong -- he said the following:

[TPP] critics warn that parts of this deal would undermine American regulation -- food safety, worker safety, even financial regulations. They're making this stuff up. (Applause.) This is just not true. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws.

Paul Krugman: The Insecure American

America remains, despite the damage inflicted by the Great Recession and its aftermath, a very rich country. But many Americans are economically insecure, with little protection from life’s risks. They frequently experience financial hardship; many don’t expect to be able to retire, and if they do retire have little to live on besides Social Security.

Many readers will, I hope, find nothing surprising in what I just said. But all too many affluent Americans — and, in particular, members of our political elite — seem to have no sense of how the other half lives. Which is why a new study on the financial well-being of U.S. households, conducted by the Federal Reserve, should be required reading inside the Beltway.

Dean Baker: How NPR Is Doing Right-Wing's Economic Dirty Work on Debt

Billionaire Peter Peterson is spending lots of money to get people to worry about the debt and deficits rather than focus on the issues that will affect their lives.

National Public Radio is doing its part to try to promote Peterson's cause with a Morning Edition piece [2] that began by telling people that the next president "will have to wrestle with the federal debt." This is not true, but it is the hope of Peter Peterson that he can distract the public from the factors that will affect their lives, most importantly the upward redistribution of income, and obsess on the country's relative small deficit. (A larger deficit right now would promote growth and employment.)

10 Crucial Issues Most Politicians—Except Bernie Sanders—Lie About

By Alex Henderson

Bernie Sanders had a lot to say this week, when he officially launched his presidential campaign with a large rally in Burlington, Vermont. The 73-year-old Sanders, who was elected to the United States Senate as an independent but is running for president in the Democratic primary, described income inequality as “the great moral issue [3] of our time” and called for a single-payer healthcare system, major infrastructure projects and legislation that would break up the U.S.’ largest banks. As president, Sanders told his supporters, he would only nominate Supreme Court justices who were in favor of overturning the 2010 Citizens United ruling. If the rally in Burlington is any indication, Hillary Clinton may very well have the type of aggressive Democratic primary challenger that economist Robert Reich and others have been hoping for.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Superpower in Distress

[...]

Delusionary Thinking in Washington
The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower
By Michael T. Klare

Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?

This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”

David Cay Johnston: Free-market dogma has jacked up our electricity bills

Prices for electricity are higher in states that embraced market pricing and are likely to rise even more

A new analysis shows that people pay 35 percent more for electricity in states that abandoned traditional regulation of monopoly utilities in the 1990s compared with states that stuck with it. That gap is almost certainly going to widen in the coming decade.

Residential customers in the 15 states that embraced wholesale markets paid on average 12.7 cents per kilowatt-hour last year versus 9.4 cents in states with traditional regulation.

Paul Krugman; The Big Meh

Remember Douglas Adams’s 1979 novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”? It began with some technology snark, dismissing Earth as a planet whose life-forms “are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” But that was then, in the early stages of the information technology revolution.

Since then we’ve moved on to much more significant things, so much so that the big technology idea of 2015, so far, is a digital watch. But this one tells you to stand up if you’ve been sitting too long!

Don’t Blame the Poor for the Faults of Our Economy

Posted May 20, 2015 at 3:30 pm by Alyssa Davis

When assigning blame for our nation’s persistent poverty problem, many policymakers tend to focus on underlying demographics or behavior of the poor—factors like racial background or the rise of single parent households, instead of the stark economic reality the poorest Americans have to contend with. While demographics and individual behavior have a place in the policy discussion, growing inequality is the primary reason the poverty rate has remained elevated over the last several decades.

America will die old and broke: The systematic right-wing plot to ransack the middle-class nest egg

Despite what conservatives say, the safety net works—which is why the 1 percent wants to stage a hostile takeover

Edwin Lyngar

Through a quirk in state term limits combined with a terrible midterm election, the Nevada legislature has been taken over by amateurs and extremists. The legislature is now debating whether to dismantle the Nevada public employee pension system (PERS), a system that has gotten consistently high marks for transparency, responsibility and stewardship.

This attack on retirement benefits follows a very familiar pattern of fabricating data to destroy retirements that work and that people really like. It’s the same nonsense and lies used to destroy private pensions two decades ago, but this time it’s being done as part of a partisan wet dream of “limited government.” It’s a strategy as American as fast food and crumbling infrastructure.