The Tea Party Freak-Out Obscuring the Truth About Secret Right-Wing Money

A defanged IRS means never having to say you’re accountable.

By Karoli Kuns / The Washington Spectator | June 30, 2015

In the United States, money spent on candidates, politics, or public policy is protected speech under the First Amendment. What happens when protected speech is wrapped in a cloak of secrecy?

How to reconcile Citizens United, which gave corporations the same rights as individuals with regard to political speech while shielding them for any accountability for that speech?

TISA Leaks Part Deux: More Evidence of Concerted Attack on Democracy

A WikiLeaks analysis shows how 52-nation Trade in Services Agreement threatens both net neutrality and personal data privacy

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

One day after it leaked a trove of documents related to the massive, pro-corporate Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), WikiLeaks on Thursday published another four chapters of the proposed 52-nation trade deal, covering key areas ahead of the next negotiating round on Monday.

As with Wednesday's documents, Thursday's batch of texts reveals "a concerted attempt to place restrictions on the ability of participating governments to regulate services sectors, even where regulations are necessary to protect the privacy of domestic populations, the natural environment or the integrity of public services," WikiLeaks declares.

Argentina Shows Greece There May Be Life After Default

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Martin Guzman

When, five years ago, Greece's crisis began, Europe extended a helping hand. But it was far different from the kind of help that one would have wanted, far different from what one might have expected if there was even a bit of humanity, of European solidarity.

The initial proposals had Germany and other "rescuers" actually making a profit out of Greece's distress, charging a far, far higher interest rate than their cost of capital. Worse, they imposed conditions on Greece -- changes in its macro- and micro-policies -- that would have to be made in return for the money.

The Torture of Absolute Power

"...these torture procedures produced no information of any value. We sold our soul to the devil and got nothing at all in return."

by Robert C. Koehler

“The existence of the approximately 14,000 photographs will probably cause yet another delay in the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as attorneys for the defendants demand that all the images be turned over and the government wades through the material to decide what it thinks is relevant to the proceedings.”

This was the Washington Post a few days ago, informing us wearily that the torture thing isn’t dead yet. The bureaucracy convulses, the wheels of justice grind. So much moral relativism to evaluate.

The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

Experts say attacks like the mass shooting in Charleston have been a growing threat.

—By Jaeah Lee, Brandon Ellington Patterson, and Gabrielle Canon | Tue Jun. 30, 2015 6:00 AM EDT

The US law enforcement community regards homegrown violent extremists, not radicalized Islamists, as the most severe threat from political violence in the country, according to a new study from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Released late last week, the report comes amid renewed focus on the problem ever since a 21-year-old avowed white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a growing body of research highlighting the threat from right-wing extremists, but who or what exactly does that term encompass, and how big really is the problem? Mother Jones examined various reports and contacted experts to find out more.

What are "far-right" or "right-wing" extremists? While there is no uniform definition, these terms loosely encompass individuals or groups associated with white supremacist, anti-government, sovereign citizen, patriot, militia, or other ideologies that target specific religious, ethnic, or other minority groups. (Meanwhile, how to determine which violent attacks constitute an act of terrorism has been a subject of renewed debate.)

The public's political views are strongly linked to attitudes on environmental issues

But politcal views are not a major factor on biomedical, food safety and space issues

Pew Research Center

July 1, 2015 (Washington) - Public attitudes about climate change and energy policy are strongly intertwined with political party affiliation and ideology. But politics play a more modest, or even peripheral, role on public views about other key issues related to biomedical science, food safety and space, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

The chart below highlights the wide mix of factors tied to public attitudes across a broad set of 22 science issues. It illustrates the strength of connection between political affiliation and opinion, and it shows issues for which other factors - such as educational attainment, knowledge about science, religious affiliation or demographic characteristics - are strongly tied to the public's views.

Was Greece Lured Into “Strategic Deficits”?

Dave Johnson

The job of a lender is to evaluate risk and price a loan accordingly. If there is risk you charge a higher interest rate. That way you still make money on a broad portfolio of loans even when there are a few defaults.

That’s the job of a banker, supposedly. It’s what they are supposed to be good at. If they are bad at their job, give loans to deadbeats (or countries that can’t pay you back) you lose money, and probably shouldn’t in the business of being a lender.

Goldman Sachs Doesn’t Have Clean Hands in Greece Crisis

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 30, 2015

Are Goldman Sachs executives Lloyd Blankfein, Gary Cohn and Addy Loudiadis losing any sleep over elderly pensioners waiting outside shuttered banks in Greece, desperately trying to obtain their pension checks to pay their rent and buy food? Are these Goldman honchos feeling a small pang of conscience over the humiliation by creditors of this once proud country? Perhaps Blankfein, who famously espoused that he’s “doing God’s work” might shed a tear or two for the small child clinging to her elderly Grandmother’s hand as she searches in Athens for an ATM that will give her $66 from her bank account – the maximum allowed per day under the newly imposed capital controls.

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case That Will Likely Wipe Out Public-Sector Unions

By Mark Joseph Stern

On Friday the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case next term that could wipe out public-sector unions. These unions require all public employees in a certain profession to pay fees associated with nonpolitical union representation, like collective bargaining. Now 10 California teachers, along with the Christian Educators Association International, are suing to halt the collection of these fees. They believe that mandatory union payments constitute compelled political speech in violation of the First Amendment.

There is virtually no chance that the Supreme Court will disagree. Over the last several years, Justice Samuel Alito—undoubtedly unions’ biggest enemy on the court—has been tightening the noose around unions’ necks. Joined by his fellow conservatives, Alito has issued two rulings that restricted public-sector unions’ ability to collect mandatory fees. In the second of these cases, Alito essentially telegraphed that he was prepared to rule that the entire system of mandatory fees is unconstitutional—overturning settled precedent in the process. Next term, he will have that opportunity. And there is every reason to believe he (and the court’s other conservatives) will take it.

Slow-motion tragedy for American workers

Lung-damaging silica, other toxic substances kill and sicken tens of thousands each year as regulation falters

By Jim Morris, Jamie Smith Hopkins, Maryam Jameel

PORT BYRON, New York — Six weeks before Chris Johnson was born in 1974, the U.S. government issued a warning about a substance that would nearly kill him 30 years later.

The substance was silica, a component of rock and sand that is the scourge of miners, sandblasters and other workers who breathe it in. When pulverized into dust, it can cause silicosis — a scarring of the lungs that leads to slow suffocation — as well as lung cancer.

Dean Baker | The Federal Reserve Board, Jobs and the Rewriting of Economic History

As most people know, economists are good at rewriting history. We have seen this in the last few years as the collapse of the housing bubble and the ensuing downturn has been turned into one of those unavoidable tragedies that could not have been prevented. After all, no one could have imagined that house prices wouldn't keep going up forever or that anything bad might happen if prices actually fell.

In reality it was possible, and in fact easy, for those who pay attention to data to know that house prices would fall and that the consequences for the economy would be very bad. But most discussions of the crisis treat it as a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, and absolve the economists in policy positions from any responsibility.

Joseph Stiglitz to Greece’s Creditors: Abandon Austerity Or Face Global Fallout

Simon Shuster

Nobel laureate tells TIME that the institutions and countries that have enforced cost-cutting on Greece "have criminal responsibility"

A few years ago, when Greece was still at the start of its slide into an economic depression, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remembers discussing the crisis with Greek officials. What they wanted was a stimulus package to boost growth and create jobs, and Stiglitz, who had just produced an influential report for the United Nations on how to deal with the global financial crisis, agreed that this would be the best way forward. Instead, Greece’s foreign creditors imposed a strict program of austerity. The Greek economy has shrunk by about 25% since 2010. The cost-cutting was an enormous mistake, Stiglitz says, and it’s time for the creditors to admit it.

The Greek Debt Crisis and Crashing Markets

by Michael Hudson

Back in January upon coming into office, Syriza probably could not have won a referendum on whether to pay or not to pay. It didn’t have a full parliamentary majority, and had to rely on a nationalist party for Tsipras to become prime minister. (That party balked at cutting back Greek military spending, which was 3% of GDP, and which the troika had helpfully urged to be cut back in order to balance the government’s budget.)

Seeing how unyielding the opposition was, Syriza’s stance was: “We would like to pay. But there’s no money.”

Paul Krugman: Greece Over the Brink

It has been obvious for some time that the creation of the euro was a terrible mistake. Europe never had the preconditions for a successful single currency — above all, the kind of fiscal and banking union that, for example, ensures that when a housing bubble in Florida bursts, Washington automatically protects seniors against any threat to their medical care or their bank deposits.

Leaving a currency union is, however, a much harder and more frightening decision than never entering in the first place, and until now even the Continent’s most troubled economies have repeatedly stepped back from the brink. Again and again, governments have submitted to creditors’ demands for harsh austerity, while the European Central Bank has managed to contain market panic.

TPP-- How Did Venal Corporate Special Interests Turn Their Defeat Into Victory?

posted by DownWithTyranny

The catastrophic trade package that Obama and Boehner are so determined to deliver to their Big Business and Wall Street contributors doesn't appear ready to die-- not by a longshot. While progressives were celebrating how they had beaten them back last week, the Dark Forces regrouped and came back, with a vengeance. Thursday the House voted 286-138 to pass the TAA (H.R. 1295), a piece of the package that had to be resolved with the Senate's version. At least the Republicans backed away from their mean-spirited and ugly demand that the money for retraining displaced workers by stolen from Medicare. That allowed many Democrats to rally around Boehner and pretend that everything was wonderful with at least this part of the TPP package.

The Five Horsemen (and One Horsewoman) of Europe’s Monetary Apocalypse

Even now, the collective madness grows.

By Don Quijones

As the late great U.S. comedian and social commentator extraordinaire George Carlin once said, the table is tilted, the game is rigged. Nowhere is this truer than in today’s Europe, where power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bankers and bureaucrats. The result is that representative democracy is on its last legs and national sovereignty (that dirty “S” word) could soon be a thing of the past.

Europe’s tilted table is dominated by the five presidents of its main institutions. Politico calls them, the “Five Horsemen of the Euro’s Future.” Or as I call them, the “Five Horsemen of Europe’s Monetary Apocalypse.” At the head of the table – the same negotiating table that is now being used as a platform for browbeating Greece’s upstart leaders into submission (see this image for that table and those sitting around it) – is Mario Draghi, Europe’s central banker-in-chief.

The Church of Self-Help

SThere’s a reason the poor don’t rise up over inequality. Because our culture shames them.

By Helaine Olen

The question of why we aren’t angrier about our increasing income inequality is back, courtesy of Thomas Edsall at the New York Times. In a Wednesday op-ed he asks, “Why are today’s working poor so quiescent?”

While Edsall believes living conditions are better for the poor than they were in the past (affordable televisions and air conditioners go a long way!), he flags something else to blame for the lack of public rage: the United States’ individualistic culture, one that has left all of us ever-more skeptical of appeals to group action. “There is very little social support for class-based protest,“ he notes.

What's Killing the Babies of Vernal, Utah?

A fracking boomtown, a spike in stillborn deaths and a gusher of unanswered questions

By Paul Solotaroff | June 22, 2015

Every night, Donna Young goes to bed with her pistol, a .45 Taurus Judge with laser attachment. Last fall, she says, someone stole onto her ranch to poison her livestock, or tried to; happily, her son found the d-CON wrapper and dumped all the feed from the troughs. Strangers phoned the house to wish her dead or run out of town on a rail. Local nurses and doctors went them one better, she says, warning pregnant women that Young's incompetence had killed babies and would surely kill theirs too, if given the chance.

"Before they started spreading their cheer about me, I usually had 18 to 25 clients a year, and a spotless reputation in the state," says Young, the primary midwife to service Vernal, Utah, a boom-and-bust town of 10,000 people in the heart of the fracked-gas gold rush of the Uintah Basin. A hundred and fifty miles of sparse blacktop east of Salt Lake City, Vernal has the feel of a slapdash suburb dropped randomly from outer space. Half of it is new and garishly built, the paint barely dry after a decade-long run of fresh-drilled wells and full employment. "Now, I'm down to four or five ladies, and don't know how I'll be able to feed my animals if things don't turn around quick."

Minnesota Loses the Race to the Bottom – And Wins

Isaiah J. Poole

CNBC, the business porn channel for one-percenters, released the results of its latest ratings of “top states for business” and, to its barely disguised surprise, it was not Texas, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Florida, or any of the other states where Republican governors and conservative legislatures have cut government spending, lowered taxes on the wealthy and moved to weaken unions.

Instead, it was union-friendly, tax-and-spend Minnesota.

Paul Krugman: Hooray for Obamacare

Was I on the edge of my seat, waiting for the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare subsidies? No — I was pacing the room, too nervous to sit, worried that the court would use one sloppily worded sentence to deprive millions of health insurance, condemn tens of thousands to financial ruin, and send thousands to premature death.

It didn’t. And that means that the big distractions — the teething problems of the website, the objectively ludicrous but nonetheless menacing attempts at legal sabotage — are behind us, and we can focus on the reality of health reform. The Affordable Care Act is now in its second year of full operation; how’s it doing?

The U.S. computer industry is dying and I’ll tell you exactly who is killing it and why

I, Cringely

This is my promised third column in a series about the effect of H-1B visa abuse on U.S. technology workers and ultimately on the U.S. economy. This time I want to take a very high-level view of the problem that may not even mention words like “H-1B” or even “immigration,” replacing them with stronger Anglo-Saxon terms like “greed” and “indifference.” The truth is that much (but not all) of the American technology industry is being led by what my late mother would have called “assholes.” And those assholes are needlessly destroying the very industry that made them rich. It started in the 1970s when a couple of obscure academics created a creaky logical structure for turning corporate executives from managers to rock stars, all in the name of “maximizing shareholder value.”

Lawyers arguing in court present legal theories – their ideas of how the world and the law intersect and why this should mean their client is right and the other side is wrong. Proof of one legal theory over another comes in the form of a verdict or court decision. We as a culture have many theories about institutions and behaviors that aren’t so clear-cut in their validity tests (no courtroom, no jury) yet we cling to these theories to feel better about the ways we have chosen to live our lives. In American business, especially, one key theory says that the purpose of corporate enterprise is to “maximize shareholder value.” Some take this even further and claim that such value maximization is the only reason a corporation exists. Watch CNBC or Fox Business News long enough and you’ll begin to believe this is the God’s truth, but it’s not. It’s just a theory.

Fight to Defend Trans Fats Funded With Dark Money

By Ben Norton

A conservative Washington think tank that opposed a federal ban of trans fats has also actively campaigned against climate science and environmental regulation, and is funded by secret donors.

The government on Tuesday announced a ban of industrial partially hydrogenated oils, the primary source of artificial trans fats, giving food manufacturers three years to remove them from their products. Food and Drug Administration acting commissioner Stephen Ostroff said the ban “is expected to reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year.”

WageCrushers.org Tracks the Groups against Family-Supporting Jobs

Submitted by PRWatch Editors

Today, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publisher of the award-winning ALECexposed.org, launches WageCrushers.org, a web resource devoted to exposing the corporations, trade associations, "think tanks," and front groups working hard against better wages, benefits, and family-supporting jobs for the American workforce.

"Because local campaigns to pass city and county ordinances to raise the wage and expand access to paid sick days are winning across the country, the Wage Crushers are doubling down in their efforts to hold down wages and disempower working people. With this new online resource, the Center for Media and Democracy pulls back the curtain on the powerful special interests that are literally leading the charge against the higher wages and benefits, like paid sick days, that support working families," said Mary Bottari, deputy director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

James K. Galbraith: Europe's Malpractice of Greece

The Greek patient is in a bad way and needs a potent remedy to make a swift recovery, but Europe's financial hospital seems to have forgotten its Hippocratic Oath.

A modern hospital is equipped with a variety of specialized wards. One of them is the intensive care unit, or ICU. Here go those who are especially sick and in need of the most devoted attention. The existence of the ICU recognizes that illness and operations do not affect all patients in the same way. Some, who are robust, recover quickly. Others who are weaker, or older, or sicker, may require different treatments and more help.

Europe's financial hospital has been busy for five years, dealing with victims of the world crisis and of the lending binge that came before it. Ireland, Portugal, Spain and (to a degree) Italy have filled the beds. They have taken the medicine, and followed the prescribed routine. Not one has fully recovered. But then again, none of those countries were ever lethally sick - at the worst, they suffered declines of 5 to 10 percent of GDP, and have been more or less stable for the past few years.

Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman: Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research

The spy unit responsible for some of the United Kingdom’s most controversial tactics of surveillance, online propaganda and deceit focuses extensively on traditional law enforcement and domestic activities — even though officials typically justify its activities by emphasizing foreign intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

Documents published today by The Intercept demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud and financial scams.

Paul Krugman: Slavery’s Long Shadow

America is a much less racist nation than it used to be, and I’m not just talking about the still remarkable fact that an African-American occupies the White House. The raw institutional racism that prevailed before the civil rights movement ended Jim Crow is gone, although subtler discrimination persists. Individual attitudes have changed, too, dramatically in some cases. For example, as recently as the 1980s half of Americans opposed interracial marriage, a position now held by only a tiny minority.

Yet racial hatred is still a potent force in our society, as we’ve just been reminded to our horror. And I’m sorry to say this, but the racial divide is still a defining feature of our political economy, the reason America is unique among advanced nations in its harsh treatment of the less fortunate and its willingness to tolerate unnecessary suffering among its citizens.

Getting Our Story Straight: Honestly Framing the Climate Crisis

By Zhiwa Woodbury, Truthout | Op-Ed

As a lifelong eco-activist, I always thought it was a critical mistake to name the crisis caused by excessive carbon emissions into the atmosphere "Global Warming." It made it sound like it was about the weather, when in reality it is about the end of life as we humans have always known it.

I was somewhat encouraged when the term "Climate Change" entered the conversation, because at least it is a more accurate scientific term for what is happening. But as Per Epsen Stoknes points out in his new book on the psychology of the climate crisis, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, this term has fared no better at conveying the urgency and seriousness of this mortal crisis to the average (distracted) American consumer.

Sneak Attack on Net Neutrality Picks Up Steam in Congress

by Amy Kroin

“Maybe every so often we can be on the side of the American people,” Rep. Jose Serrano said, “and not corporations.”

Those are fighting words — but unfortunately the House majority doesn’t seem to be heeding them. Not when it comes to Net Neutrality.

On Wednesday, the House appropriations committee voted against two amendments — one from Serrano, one from Rep. Nita Lowey — to remove anti-Net Neutrality language from a must-pass government-funding package.

Military Sexual Assault Reform Blocked Again in Senate

by Emily Crockett, Federal Policy Reporter, RH Reality Check

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s quest for military justice reform faced another setback on Tuesday, when the Senate blocked a vote to include the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA) as an amendment to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The amendment failed on a 50-49 vote; it had majority support, but did not get the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster. Last year, the MJIA fell five votes short of overcoming a filibuster.

Opinion: Goldman Sachs’ vampire squid is coming to your neighborhood

Lock your doors — the Wall Street firm wants to lend you money

By Marek Fuchs

When it comes to how well Goldman Sachs GS, +0.16% gets along with Main Street, it’s basically always been a case of pistols at dawn. Of course, when it comes to Goldman and members of the larger public, the feud never settles at sunrise. It just sort of grinds on indefinitely.

Now, though, Goldman is going to pluck up its courage to troll for business along Main Street, getting into the business of small loans to us little people. Tire treads looking a bit worn? Call Lloyd Blankfein, your friendly neighborhood bank mogul. The Goldman CEO, who once said his company had no moral obligation to tell you that it was betting against what it was selling, will help you finance a new set.