Paul Krugman: Empowering the Ugliness

We live in an era of political news that is, all too often, shocking but not surprising. The rise of Donald Trump definitely falls into that category. And so does the electoral earthquake that struck France in Sunday’s regional elections, with the right-wing National Front winning more votes than either of the major mainstream parties.

What do these events have in common? Both involved political figures tapping into the resentments of a bloc of xenophobic and/or racist voters who have been there all along. The good news is that such voters are a minority; the bad news is that it’s a pretty big minority, on both sides of the Atlantic. If you are wondering where the support for Mr. Trump or Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Front, is coming from, you just haven’t been paying attention.

How to Spread the World's Wealth Beyond Corrupt Elites

We need a new kind of politics that addresses how rich privilege is directly related to the plight of the poor.

By Simon Reid-Henry

We have reached a crossroads in our history. For all the achievements and riches of our time, the world has never been so unequal or more unjust. A century ago, at the time of the First World War, the richest 20% of the world’s population earned eleven times more than the poorest 20%. By the end of the twentieth century they earned seventy-four times as much. Today, despite seven decades of international development, three decades of the Washington Consensus, and a decade and a half of Millennium Development Goals, our world is even more divided among the haves, the have-nots, and—as President George W. Bush once quipped in an after-dinner speech—the have-mores.

When it comes to wealth, rather than income, the picture is more extreme. Globally, the richest 1% now own nearly half of all the world’s wealth. The poorest 50% of the world, by contrast—fully 3 billion people—own less than 1% of its wealth. Anyone with assets of more than $10,000 a year is an exception to the global norm and is better off than 70% of everyone else alive. Yet most of us are so preoccupied by the relative few with more that we rarely stop to notice this. There is growing awareness today of the consequences in rich countries of rising income inequality: we know what it means to talk of the 1% there. But when it comes to the much greater gaps between rich and poor the world over, we confine ourselves still to talk of “global poverty”.

One Year After the Senate Torture Report, No One’s Read It and It Might Be Destroyed

Murtaza Hussain

One year ago today, the Senate Intelligence Committee published a highly redacted executive summary of its investigation into the CIA’s torture and rendition program. The 525-page summary was shocking in many of its details, revealing the torture and rape of detainees held in CIA custody and encompassing treatment far in excess of even the torture techniques formally authorized by the Bush administration.

Despite the passage of 12 months, the actual report, comprising 6,700 pages, still has not been made publicly available. In fact, reading it appears to be prohibited among officials in the executive branch. Nearly a month and a half after the report’s initial release, it had not even been taken out of the package in which it was delivered to the Department of Justice and Department of State, according to government lawyers. Even the organization that was the subject of the report, the CIA, tightly controlled internal access and made “very limited use” of it, as had the Department of Defense, the lawyers said in a court filing.

Brian Beutler: Trump Proves That Liberals Have Been Right All Along

The left nailed the pathology of the conservative movement years ago. The Donald is just making that impossible to deny.

If you’ve been following Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and his effect on the Republican primary closely, you were perhaps beset Monday by a strange sense of speechlessness—one born less of ineffability than of tedium.

Trump’s plan to prohibit Muslim immigration into the U.S. is indeed extreme, but to students of the Trump phenomenon and conservative politics more broadly, it was neither unexpected nor the source of any new or profound lesson.

Economic Elites Will Only Give Up Power and Wealth When Forced to Do So

By Les Leopold, Labor Institute Press | Book Excerpt

The following is the introduction to Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice, by Les Leopold:

The United States is among the richest countries in all of history. But if you're not a corporate or political elite, you'd never know it. In the world working people inhabit, our infrastructure is collapsing, our schools are laying off teachers, our drinking water is barely potable, our cities are facing bankruptcy, and our public and private pension funds are nearing collapse. We - consumers, students, and homeowners - are loaded with crushing debt, but our real wages haven't risen since the 1970s.

How can we be so rich and still have such poor services, so much debt and such stagnant incomes?

A Safety Net for On-Demand Workers?

A new paper suggests how to better regulate the gig economy, but the plan may only reinforce its worst abuses.

Steven Greenhouse

For many Americans who care about how workers are treated, their biggest concern about the much-ballyhooed “on-demand” economy is the way that Uber, Lyft, and other “gig economy” companies have rushed to treat their workers as independent contractors. For employers, the advantages of this strategy are huge (as I explain in my deep dive for the Prospect about Uber’s questionable labor practices): You don’t have to follow minimum wage, overtime, or employment discrimination laws, you don’t have to make employer contributions to Social Security, Medicare, or unemployment insurance, and your workers can’t unionize.

A new paper, released on Monday, has some provocative recommendations about how to deal with this phenomenon—the nation’s oh-so-cool on-demand companies scurrying to dodge all or nearly all responsibilities and obligations to their workers. The paper posits that workers who get their work through an app or platform—like Mechanical Turk or Task Rabbit—are a new type of worker. The paper—by Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist who once headed Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Seth Harris, a former deputy secretary of labor—says it’s often maddeningly difficult to determine whether Uber drivers, GrubHub deliverymen, or Task Rabbit workers are employees or independent contractors. They say that many workers fall between the two categories (a notion that some experts, like Harvard Law School’s Ben Sachs, take strong issue with), and they propose that Congress update the nation’s labor laws and create a third category of workers: independent workers.

Greenpeace exposes sceptics hired to cast doubt on climate science

Sting operation uncovers two prominent climate sceptics available for hire by the hour to write reports on the benefits of rising CO2 levels and coal

Suzanne Goldenberg

An undercover sting by Greenpeace has revealed that two prominent climate sceptics were available for hire by the hour to write reports casting doubt on the dangers posed by global warming.

Posing as consultants to fossil fuel companies, Greenpeace approached professors at leading US universities to commission reports touting the benefits of rising carbon dioxide levels and the benefits of coal. The views of both academics are well outside mainstream climate science.

In social movements, 'slactivists' matter

A new study of Twitter use during social protests finds that a critical periphery of 'slacktivists' greatly amplify a movement's message

University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication

You know them well. You might even be one of them.

They're the people who tint their Facebook profile pictures with the French flag to support Parisians, or pink to get behind Planned Parenthood. They sign online petitions, share activist videos, and retweet celebrities who take a political stand. They're willing to lift a finger for a cause -- mainly the one used to tap 'like' or 'share' or "retweet."

Some dismiss them as 'slacktivists,' but a new study in PLOS One finds that these peripheral players actually play a critical role in extending the reach of social movements -- even doubling them.

Sanders' Climate Revolution Would Cut 80% of Emissions by 2050

Environmental platform calls for swift shift to renewable power system, a ban on extreme extraction activities, and end of subsidies for Big Oil

by Lauren McCauley, staff writer

A national energy policy that prioritizes the health and well-being of people and planet above the profits of the fossil fuel industry is what voters can expect should Sen. Bernie Sanders be elected President of the United States next year, according to the candidate, who on Monday unveiled his plan to combat the rising crisis of climate change.

The plan calls for a tax on carbon, an end to fossil fuels subsidies, and "massive investments" in energy efficiency and a system powered by non-nuclear, sustainable sources such as wind and solar, enabling a swift transition to a clean energy economy. Sanders estimates these measures would cut U.S carbon pollution by 40 percent by 2030 and over 80 percent by 2050.

Seven Ways Congress Is Trying to Destroy the Endangered Species Act

Members of Congress have introduced more than 80 proposals aimed at gutting the Endangered Species Act this year. Thirteen of these anti-wildlife measures have been added to House and Senate must-pass spending bills. Congressional leaders and the White House are now in intense negotiations that will determine whether these and other anti-environmental provisions are included in the final government spending bill.

By Maggie Caldwell

When one of the leaders in charge of setting our nation's environmental policy boasts about wearing boots made from the skins of endangered species, it is a dark day for anyone who supports the continued protection of creatures great and small. Yet, this is the reality of having Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma heading up the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Inhofe was being flippant when he told a Washington Post reporter that his cowboy boots were probably made from "some endangered species," adding, "I have a reputation to maintain."

Indeed, Senator Inhofe has one of the worst environmental voting records of any sitting senator. And now he and his compatriots on the Hill have one of the most popular and important conservation laws in their crosshairs: the Endangered Species Act. Supported by 90 percent of Americans and remarkably successful in recovering some of the nation's most beloved and iconic creatures - including the bald eagle, American alligator and gray whale - the act is under threat of being dismantled piece by piece, and critter by critter, through legislative fiat.

Big banks may have Fannie, Freddie in their sights, report says

Too-big-to-fail banks are leading a charge to replace the mortgage giants

By Andrea Riquier

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — It’s a housing industry chestnut: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will languish forever in “conservatorship,” the nebulous state they entered as the housing bubble burst in 2008, because no one in Washington has the gumption to make hard policy decisions to change the mortgage giants.

Not so fast, argues a recent investigation by the New York Times.

What President Obama Didn’t Address: Who’s Funding the Hate Campaign Against Muslims?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Last evening, in his speech to the nation from the Oval Office, President Obama reminded Americans that “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes — and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country.” In his concluding remarks, the President told viewers that our nation was “founded upon a belief in human dignity — that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or what religion you practice, you are equal in the eyes of God and equal in the eyes of the law.” (See full video of the speech below.)

What the President didn’t say is that while the recent mass killing in San Bernardino, California was conducted by a married couple who were Muslim, the Muslim community itself has been under relentless assault by homegrown religious extremists since the attacks on the World Trade towers on September 11, 2001.

Killer Drone News Blackout Continues As Mainstream Media Ignore Air Force Whistleblowers

by John Hanrahan

The polls show it and commentators of all political stripes often cite the figures: Killer drone attacks by the U.S. military and the CIA in the Greater Middle East and Africa have strong U.S. public support. According to the Pew Research Center’s most recent poll in May, 58 percent — up slightly from 56 percent in February 2013 — approve of “missile strikes from drones to target extremists in such countries as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.” The numbers of Americans disapproving of drone attacks actually increased from 26 percent to 35 percent over that two-year period — a hopeful sign, but still very much a minority view.

But how well informed can U.S. citizens be on this subject when the major news media time and again ignore or under-report drone-strike stories — as we have discussed here and here in recent weeks? Stories — such as The Intercept’s October series based on a trove of classified materials provided by a national security whistleblower — that would likely raise serious questions about the drone program in many more Americans’ minds if they were actually given the information?

Some Corporate-Owned Colleges Get Certified as Nonprofits to Evade Financial Scrutiny

Mark Karlin

For-profit college companies' first priority is reaping a financial windfall, not providing a quality education. Recently, BuzzFlash reported on the bankruptcy of one such higher-education company, which left students saddled with billions of dollars in federal debt after the investors had made money off of billions of dollars in federal tuition loans.

There has been some renewed White House interest in reining in for-profit colleges - but in the absence of congressional action, little can be done.

What Scott Walker’s Elimination Of Wisconsin’s Living Wage Law Means For Workers

by Bryce Covert

Last year, 100 low-wage workers in Wisconsin decided to sue their governor, Scott Walker (R), over their pay. The state had a century-old statute on the books saying that the minimum wage “shall be not less than a living wage,” enough “to permit an employee to maintain herself or himself in minimum comfort, decency, physical and moral well-being.” The workers said they weren’t making enough to meet that standard, demanding the governor take the required action to increase it.

But this week they were handed a final defeat: A judge dismissed their lawsuit. That’s not because Walker’s administration was found to be in compliance with the statute. It’s because rather than increase the state’s minimum wage, the administration simply erased the law.

When Labor Groups and Silicon Valley Capitalists Join Forces to “Disrupt” Protections for Employees

BY Jay Youngdahl and Darwin BondGraham

At the recently convened White House Summit on Worker Voice, President Obama argued that the central economic problem of the day is making sure that everyone who works hard is “getting paid a decent wage with decent benefits, [and] everybody has some basic economic security.” To achieve these goals, Obama said that the power of workers to take collective action must be strengthened. But if a recent letter signed by a number of union leaders, nonprofit executives and tech investors is any indication, advocates for collective action by workers should be concerned.

Recently, 39 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) staffers and leaders, a network of “alt labor” groups and CEOs of and investors in some of the fastest growing “sharing economy” companies signed an open letter titled “Common ground for independent workers.” The letter argues that the on-demand economy is “fundamentally changing the economic landscape across the country, adding value to consumers’ lives and bringing new opportunities for workers.”

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, An Invitation to Collective Suicide

By Andrew Bacevich

Beyond ISIS
The Folly of World War IV

Assume that the hawks get their way -- that the United States does whatever it takes militarily to confront and destroy ISIS. Then what?

Answering that question requires taking seriously the outcomes of other recent U.S. interventions in the Greater Middle East. In 1991, when the first President Bush ejected Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait, Americans rejoiced, believing that they had won a decisive victory. A decade later, the younger Bush seemingly outdid his father by toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and then making short work of Saddam himself -- a liberation twofer achieved in less time than it takes Americans to choose a president. After the passage of another decade, Barack Obama got into the liberation act, overthrowing the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in what appeared to be a tidy air intervention with a clean outcome. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton memorably put it, “We came, we saw, he died.” End of story.

Hard Left, No Apologies

Joseph P. Williams

LOS ANGELES – He’s host of the most-watched political news program you’ve probably never heard of, especially if you’re middle-aged and watch cable television. An Ivy League-educated conservative-turned-liberal, he’s seized the attention of a coveted viewer demographic, beating out the nation’s largest cable networks – including his former employer.

Cenk Uygur says it’s all part of his grand plan: drive MSNBC and its cable competitors out of business, and teach them a lesson on authenticity in the process.

Who's Behind the Ghost Companies Funding Jeb Bush's Super-PAC?

Two shadowy outfits are helping to bankroll Bush's candidacy.

—By Russ Choma | Wed Dec. 2, 2015 6:00 AM EST

In February, a limited liability company called TH Holdings LLC donated $100,000 to Right to Rise, the super-PAC supporting Jeb Bush's bid for the GOP presidential nomination. That's not extraordinary; quite a few LLCs have donated to the super-PAC, which has so far raised more than $103 million. But TH Holdings is a special case—one that represents the worst-case scenario in the post-Citizens United campaign finance landscape: untraceable corporations shoveling untraceable cash into the political system. Beyond this six-figure contribution, the company appears to have no history of doing business anywhere. And its incorporation records reveal no owners, managers, or officers.

Paul Krugman: Republicans’ Climate Change Denial Denial

Future historians — if there are any future historians — will almost surely say that the most important thing happening in the world during December 2015 was the climate talks in Paris. True, nothing agreed to in Paris will be enough, by itself, to solve the problem of global warming. But the talks could mark a turning point, the beginning of the kind of international action needed to avert catastrophe.

Then again, they might not; we may be doomed. And if we are, you know who will be responsible: the Republican Party.

GOP Again Tries to Kill Net Neutrality With Spending Bill Rider

by Karl Bode

The GOP continues to try and gut net neutrality using fine print. Republicans have buried an anti-net neutrality rider into a government spending bill that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing the agency's open Internet rules. Those rules were voted on in February and went into effect in June, though they're currently being challenged by ISPs in court.

With the government running on a stopgap funding measure that expires December 11, Congressional ISP allies are hoping to use the urgency to kill net neutrality.

Paul Krugman: Challenging the Oligarchy

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
by Robert B. Reich
Knopf, 279 pp., $26.95

Back in 1991, in what now seems like a far more innocent time, Robert Reich published an influential book titled The Work of Nations, which among other things helped land him a cabinet post in the Clinton administration. It was a good book for its time—but time has moved on. And the gap between that relatively sunny take and Reich’s latest, Saving Capitalism, is itself an indicator of the unpleasant ways America has changed.

The Work of Nations was in some ways a groundbreaking work, because it focused squarely on the issue of rising inequality—an issue some economists, myself included, were already taking seriously, but that was not yet central to political discourse. Reich’s book saw inequality largely as a technical problem, with a technocratic, win-win solution. That was then. These days, Reich offers a much darker vision, and what is in effect a call for class war—or if you like, for an uprising of workers against the quiet class war that America’s oligarchy has been waging for decades.

A Decade-Old Gag Order, Lifted

by Jameel Jaffer

More than a decade ago, a man named Nick Merrill approached the NYCLU and ACLU with an unusual request for help. At the time, Nick ran a small Internet access and consulting business, called Calyx, in New York City.

A few days earlier, an FBI agent had come by Calyx’s offices and handed Nick a “national security letter” demanding that Calyx turn over sensitive information about one of its subscribers. The letter included a gag order prohibiting Calyx from disclosing to anyone that it had received the demand. It also included an attachment listing the kinds of information that the FBI wanted Calyx to turn over.

ALEC Invites Politicians to "Plan Your 2016 Agenda" at Scottsdale Confab

By Mary Bottari, PR Watch | News Analysis

This year, the American Legislative Exchange Council's winter meeting, which it calls the "States and Nation Policy Summit," will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the Westin Kierland Resort and Spa from December 2-4.

ALEC has promoted this event as an invitation for legislators to use the meeting to "plan your 2016 agenda."

Impact investing is making headway in Latin America

nvestment strategy grew by a factor of 12 between 2008-2014

Rice University

HOUSTON - (Dec. 1, 2015) - Impact investing, an investment strategy that generates financial returns while directing funds to entities providing goods and services to the poor, is making headway in Latin America, according to an issue brief from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

"Understanding Impact Investing: A Nascent Investment Industry and Its Latin American Trends" outlines challenges and opportunities for the strategy to continue its growth. The brief was authored by Henry Gonzalez, a contributing expert at the institute's Latin America Initiative. His professional experience spans the sectors of finance, emerging markets, impact investing and political and economic development. He is available to discuss his findings with media.

Exxon Targets Journalists Who Exposed Massive Climate Cover Up

'We’ve often wondered if Exxon actually hates our children because they so consistently stand in the way of safeguarding their future,' campaigner said, 'it turns out they apparently hate good journalism as well.'

by Lauren McCauley, staff writer

ExxonMobil has launched a full-throttled "bully" campaign against the graduate students who recently unmasked its scandalous climate change cover-up threatening to pull funds from the university that helped bring to light its dangerous and "most consequential" lies.

In a letter addressed to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and obtained by Politico, the oil giant's vice president of Public and Government Affairs accuses a team of investigative journalism students of violating the school's research policy by "suppressing" or "manipulating" information to produce "deliberately misleading reports" about ExxonMobil's climate change research.

Dean Baker: The Federal Reserve Board's 8 Percent Hike in the Social Security Tax

In the last couple of weeks the prospect of a 0.2 percentage point increase in the payroll tax has become a major issue separating the two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed an increase of this size to pay for system of paid family leave that is part of his platform. While former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also supports paid family leave, she opposes any tax increase on middle-class workers, and insists she can get the money elsewhere.

The intensity of this debate over a tax increase of 0.2 percentage points (at $70 a year for a typical worker), should have people wondering why the candidates aren't talking about the prospect of a much larger tax increase imposed by the Federal Reserve Board. The Fed's tax increase could easily exceed 8 percent of the wages for ordinary workers, yet it is not drawing any attention from the presidential candidates.

The Incredible Shrinking Incomes of Young Americans

It's repetitive for some to hear, but important for everybody to know: You can't explain Millennial economic behavior without explaining that real wages for young Americans have collapsed.

Derek Thompson

American families are grappling with stagnant wage growth, as the costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb. But for many of America's younger workers, "stagnant" wages shouldn't sound so bad. In fact, they might sound like a massive raise.

Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care.

David Neiwert: Donald Trump May Not Be a Fascist, But He is Leading Us Merrily Down That Path

People who have studied the extremist right as a historical and sociopolitical phenomenon in depth are acutely aware of a simple truth: America has been very, very lucky so far when it comes to fascistic political movements.

And now, with the arrival of the Donald Trump 2016 phenomenon, that luck may be about to run out.