Head of Planned Parenthood Attack Campaign Makes a New Allegation (Updated)

by Sofia Resnick, Investigative Reporter, RH Reality Check

David Daleiden, the 26-year-old CEO of the Center for Medical Progress, doubled down on allegations that Planned Parenthood has broken federal laws at this year’s Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of social conservative politicians and leaders.

Repeating allegations that Planned Parenthood illegally “harvests” and “sells” fetal tissue and murders fetuses that are “born alive,” Daleiden offered a new unfounded charge: He said Planned Parenthood is committing these acts in Washington, D.C., the summit’s host.

“Planned Parenthood’s flagship location in the capital of our free country is one of the locations recently partnered with the biotech company StemExpress to harvest and sell baby body parts,” Daleiden said Friday evening, on stage at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in D.C.

Robert Reich: Capitalism Can Be Reformed, But America's Wealthy Class Will Fight It

The American economy is once again dominated by monopolies. New rules are needed.

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

Can American capitalism be saved from its most predatory, selfish instincts?

Could the U.S. economy spread its wealth—if the public and political class understood how today’s unprecedented domination by monopolistic corporations have undermined opportunity, wages and income, and public confidence in the future?

In other words, what would it take to reshape the marketplace so Americans do not feel they are endlessly emptying their pockets almost everytime they access health care, use bank or use credit cards, repay student loans or bills for necessities such as Internet access—which have been steadily ticking upward and outpacing income growth.

University of Kansas Case Exposes Koch Campus Strategy

Seth Shulman

Documents released last month in the settlement of a lawsuit at the University of Kansas offer a revealing window into an underreported Koch brothers' strategy: targeted, politicized funding on college campuses.

Consider the details of the case:

When, in March, 2014, economist Art Hall testified before the Kansas state senate urging repeal of the state's renewable energy standard, he identified himself -- accurately -- as the executive director of the Center for Applied Economics at the University of Kansas School of Business. As preferred by the university, Hall also noted that he did not speak for the school or the Kansas Board of Regents, claiming the views he expressed were "his alone."

But, as the documents recently released by the university show, Hall left out some pertinent information: The funding for the research on which his testimony was based came from a grant from a foundation controlled by Charles and David Koch; his academic center was founded and endowed by the Kochs; the foundation paid a portion of his salary, and Hall took the position as the Center's first executive director directly after having spent seven years working for a Koch subsidiary as an economist and lobbyist.

How America built its empire: The real history of American foreign policy that the media won’t tell you

Perry Anderson sits down with Salon to discuss the Cold War, Hiroshima, American exceptionalism, Iran and more

Patrick L. Smith

The other day I wrote Perry Anderson, the subject of the following interview, to ask what he thought of the foreign policy debates, such as they are, among our presidential aspirants. Logical question: Anderson, a prominent scholar and intellectual for decades, has just published “American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers,” a superbly lucid account of U.S policy’s historical roots and the people who shape policy in our time.

“Current candidates’ f/p talk leaves me speechless,” came Anderson’s terse reply.

Perfectly defensible. Most of what these people have to say—and I do not exclude the Democratic candidates—is nothing more than a decadent, late-exceptionalist rendering of a policy tradition that, as Anderson’s book reminds readers, once had a coherent rationale even as it has so often led to incoherent, irrational conduct abroad.

Republicans Answer Pope With Bill Banning Govt From Protecting Climate

Dave Johnson

In honor of Pope Francis’ address to Congress, House Republicans are taking up their “Responsibly And Professionally Invigorating Development”, or RAPID, Act. (Democrats are calling it the “Regrettably Another Partisan Ideological Distraction.”)

With this bill Republicans are basically saying “This is our answer to you, Pope-guy.” The bill bans government from even considering whether a project will contribute to climate change: “A lead agency may not use the social cost of carbon in the environmental review or environmental decision making process.”

The Greek Bailout: Germany's Pyrrhic Victory

By Christopher Lawrence, Truthout | Op-Ed

Alexis Tsipras and his party, Syriza, pulled off an unexpected and decisive victory in the Greek parliamentary elections on September 20. Together with his coalition allies Anel, Tsipras now has a workable majority in the Greek Parliament with which to push through the draconian measures of the latest bailout package. But the real victor was Germany and its eurozone allies, who have insisted all along that democracy can play no part in European Union governance.

Anti-euro parties did worse than expected in the elections. The biggest issue, the terms of the bailout, was a foregone conclusion, and Greeks stayed away from the polls in droves, leading to the lowest turnout in Greek history. Greece's creditors will sleep easier with Tsipras firmly in charge, but there are ominous signs on the horizon. And Germany's leaders may well find their victory to be hollow if it leads to a bigger economic crisis and stimulates the spread of nationalist sentiment across the continent.

Paul Krugman: Dewey, Cheatem & Howe

Item: The C.E.O. of Volkswagen has resigned after revelations that his company committed fraud on an epic scale, installing software on its diesel cars that detected when their emissions were being tested, and produced deceptively low results.

Item: The former president of a peanut company has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowingly shipping tainted products that later killed nine people and sickened 700.

GOP Candidate Kasich Caught Providing Food Stamps to White Communities but not Black Communities

Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich likes to portray himself as a “person of faith.” However, his actions as Ohio congressman during the late 1990s, and more recently as governor of the Buckeye State, suggest that he is a callous, self-righteous, racist, hypocrite. He now is openly providing food stamps to white communities in Ohio, but not black communities.

In 1996, as Representative of Ohio’s 12th District and Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Kasich co-sponsored legislation to limit the amount of time certain people could receive food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). People without dependent children and considered able-bodied were required to be employed at least half-time or enrolled in a job training program for a minimum of 20 hours a week – regardless of whether or not such employment opportunities existed.

Dean Baker: How Big Pharma Is Price-Gouging You

SWe pay roughly twice as much for our drugs as the average for other wealthy countries.

By Dean Baker

The United States stands out among wealthy countries in that we give drug companies patent monopolies on drugs that are essential for people’s health or lives and then allow them to charge whatever they want. Every other wealthy country has some system of price controls or negotiated prices where the government limits the extent to which drug companies can exploit the monopoly it has given them. The result is that we pay roughly twice as much for our drugs as the average for other wealthy countries. This additional cost is not associated with better care; we are just paying more for the same drugs.

This is not an issue about the free market. The free market doesn’t have patent monopolies. The monopoly power provided by a patent is a government policy to promote innovation. There are problems with patent monopolies in many areas, but nowhere is the issue worse than with prescription drugs.

Americans Are Paying Way Too Much On Rent, And It’s Only Going To Get Worse

by Bryce Covert

More than a quarter of renters in the United States have to put half of their income toward paying rent. But that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that things are almost certainly going to get worse.

A new report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and Enterprise Community Partners Inc shows that in 2013, 11.2 million households who rented, or 26.5 percent of the total, were severely burdened, or their rent consumed more than half of their income. While that’s a slight dip from the record high of 11.3 million reached in 2011, it’s risen by nearly 60 percent, adding more than 3 million people, since 2000. About half of all renters are paying more than the recommended 30 percent of income toward rent.

Public Pension Fund Study: High Fee Strategies Like Private Equity Lose Billions Compared to Cheaper Alternatives

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Yves Smith

The Maryland Policy Institute issued a report this summer on the impact of high fee strategies on public pension fund returns. The results are devastating as far as high-fee strategies, both alternative investments like hedge funds, infrastructure funds, and private equity are concerned, as well as active managers. Needless to say, followers of John Bogle would not be surprised, but a horde of pension consultants have apparently succeeded in persuading public pension fund staff and trustees that they can find someone with a hot hand who can deliver them sparking performance…if they are willing to ante up for it.*

I’ve embedded the short, tartly worded paper at the end of the post and urge you to read it in full. It shows the high cost of investing in high fee strategies:

The study also shows that a passive index that mimics the investment allocation of the typical state pension fund outperformed the peer group median by 1.62 percent per year over a five-year period. On an initial $50 billion pension fund, this difference over five years is equivalent to $6.8 billion in foregone income.

Noam Chomsky: Why Powerful Factions in America Are Hellbent on Spreading Mideast Chaos

The Republican Party isn't even functioning as a real party anymore, says Chomsky.

NOAM CHOMSKY: The role of concentrated power in shaping the ideological framework that dominates perception, interpretation, discussion, choice of action, all of that is too familiar to require much comment. Tonight I’d like to discuss a critically important example, but first a couple of words on one of the most perceptive analysts of this process, George Orwell.

Orwell is famous for his searching and sardonic critique of the way thought is controlled by force under totalitarian dystopia. But much less known is his discussion of how similar outcomes are achieved in free societies. He’s speaking, of course, of England. And he wrote that although the country is quite free, nevertheless unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. Gave a couple of examples, provided a few words of explanation, which were to the point. One particularly pertinent comment was his observation on a quality education in the best schools, where it is instilled into you that there are certain things that it simply wouldn’t do to say—or, we may add, even to think. One reason why not much attention is paid to this essay is that it wasn’t published. It was found decades later in his unpublished papers. It was intended as the introduction to his famous Animal Farm, bitter satire of Stalinist totalitarianism. Why it wasn’t published is apparently unknown, but I think perhaps you can speculate.

Manufacturing Neoliberalism: How the Council of Foreign Relations Marketed Global Capitalism

Posted By Joan Roelofs

There are conspiracies! Some are secret and others overt. The most important of them usually have a public and a private aspect. Yet even those with plenty of data in the full light of day are secret in one sense: they are barely known by the general public and mostly ignored by those who are supposed to be telling us what is going on and what makes things happen: scholars, journalists, and pundits. Thus the obscurity of the Council on Foreign Relations. It may surface as a tagline for the wise men and women of NPR and PBS forums, but its workings and impact remain largely unexamined.

Wall Street’s Think Tank by historian Laurence Shoup is a much awaited sequel to Imperial Brain Trust (Shoup and William Minter, Monthly Review Press, 1977). This is how he describes the CFR:

The think tank of monopoly-finance capital, the Council on Foreign Relations, is the world’s most powerful private organization. The CFR is the ultimate networking, socializing, strategic-planning, and consensus-forming institution of the U.S. capitalist class. It is the central “high command” organization of the plutocracy that runs the country and much of the world. (p. 7)

 Why Is College So Expensive if Professors Are Paid So Little?

 These are educational professionals, and they need to be compensated like they are.

By Michelle Chen

 As the fall semester begins on the small-town campus of St Michael’s College in Vermont, Sharyn Layfield is entering the autumn of her educational career with the freshman writing seminar, The Examined Life. Lately, though, she’s been examining her own career with both mild pride and disappointment. With a degree in creative writing, she’s been working short-term teaching jobs since her 30s, often skirting poverty, never achieving the job security traditionally associated with academia. Now in her 60s, approaching retirement age modestly in a compact mobile home, she’s helping build one of Vermont’s few adjunct unions to help colleagues gain the respect on the job she has long been denied.

As an organizer with a newly formed SEIU local, she acknowledges she’s “too old to benefit from the improvements for many more years,” but she’s organizing because “others have lived as I have—hand-to-mouth—and I want that to change for them…. Our goal is to be respected, included, and paid for the work we do; it’s that simple.”

Hedge funds get cheap homes, homeowners get the boot

By Jared Bennett

Julius Uwansc was in trouble with his mortgage after refinancing in 2009, just after the real estate bubble popped. Like millions of others, he found himself owing more on his house than it was worth.

The Nigerian-born father of four moved into his house on Richardson Road in Gwynn Oak, Maryland, in 2005. “We loved it because it has this big yard where the kids can play,” Uwansc says.

But soon after closing on the loan, Uwansc began having trouble making payments. He believed he had worked out a loan modification with Bank of America in 2011 after signing paperwork, but the bank disputed the terms Uwansc thought he had secured. When he didn’t pay the amount the bank said he owed, it claimed he was in default.

Researchers reveal when global warming first appeared

When global warming became clearly evident in the temperature record

University of New South Wales

The indications of climate change are all around us today but now researchers have revealed for the first time when and where the first clear signs of global warming appeared in the temperature record and where those signals are likely to be clearly seen in extreme rainfall events in the near future.

The new research published in Environmental Research Letters gives an insight into the global impacts that have already been felt, even at this very early stage, and where those impacts are likely to intensify in the coming years.

Gaius Publius: They Knew – Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago

An explosive story reported by Inside Climate News, an award-winning climate organization, and Frontline, reveals that Exxon knew as early as 1977 that earth’s climate was being seriously disrupted, and would continue to be disrupted, by carbon dioxide emissions, and yet in the 1980s they pivoted to financing an aggressive climate denial effort anyway.

That denial effort continues to this day, financed through the American Petroleum Institute and fronted by actress Brooke Alexander (whom I’ve called “Lying Pantsuit Lady“).

Noam Chomsky: Why the Republican 'Radical Insurgency' Is So Panicked About the Iran Nuclear Deal

Chomsky lays out aid the geopolitical and historical context for this important agreement

By Vijay Prashad / Frontlin

On September 2, the United States’ support for the Iran nuclear deal was secured. President Barack Obama’s team negotiated the deal along with other countries of the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Germany). The Republicans in the U.S. Congress had threatened to pass a resolution that would block Obama’s signature on such a deal. Obama had said he would veto any Bill that constrained his hand to sign that deal. He needed 34 Senators to back him in order to secure his veto. When Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said she would support the President, the deal was safe.

Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., told me that Barbara Mikulski’s vote was “a big relief”. She said that the Iran deal was “a huge victory for diplomacy over the real threat of war with Iran”. Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council agreed. Obama, they said, “has proven to the U.S. that security is better achieved through diplomacy than through militarism”. Emad Kiyaei of the American Iranian Council told me just after Barbara Mikulski’s announcement: “There is no ‘better’ deal and the opposition has not introduced a viable alternative, except more coercive policies that to date have not slowed—rather accelerated—Iran’s nuclear programme.”

Paul Krugman: Labour’s Dead Center

Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time leftist dissident, has won a stunning victory in the contest for leadership of Britain’s Labour Party. Political pundits say that this means doom for Labour’s electoral prospects; they could be right, although I’m not the only person wondering why commentators who completely failed to predict the Corbyn phenomenon have so much confidence in their analyses of what it means.

But I won’t try to get into that game. What I want to do instead is talk about one crucial piece of background to the Corbyn surge — the implosion of Labour’s moderates. On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest was that every candidate other than Mr. Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative government’s austerity policies.