What Do Conservatives Fear Most?

There has been a reemergence of a deeply rooted conservative fear—something close to an ideology—that giving full voting rights to the masses will dangerously destabilize society and usher in rad­ical change.

By Zachary Roth

The following is an excerpt from the new book The Great Suppression by Zachary Roth (Crown Publishers, 2016):

Conservatives just don’t think about voting the way most other Americans do. Liberals, even at the Founding, have seen voting straight­forwardly as a right and as our foremost guarantee of equality. Central to this idea is the need to represent everyone’s interests. Most people don’t really believe that elections have a right an­swer. Instead, we think different candidates will benefit differ­ent groups of voters, and that most people can figure out which candidate is on their side: parents of young children might sup­port a candidate who promises to invest in education, seniors might prefer the one who promises to protect Social Security, and so on. More people participating means more interests are represented, which leads to a more legitimate result and a stron­ger democracy.

But as the election law scholar Rick Hasen has written, many conservatives have never really bought into that way of think­ing. To them, voting is much more instrumental, with the goal of making a sensible collective choice that will produce effec­tive government and promote the common good. That’s how the eighteenth-century New Englanders who gathered on vil­lage greens to vote in public conceived of what they were doing. And that means an informed, independent electorate is crucial. After all, how else can voters be expected to choose wisely? It’s not hard to see how, under this logic, reducing the number of uninformed voters—or less motivated voters, or voters with less of a long-term stake in their community—isn’t antidemocratic, it’s civic-minded.

Sanders Launches 'Our Revolution,' Dedicated to a Progressive Agenda and Better Democratic Party

Reminds supporters of all they accomplished and the work ahead.

By Steven Rosenfeld

Bernie Sanders’ revolution seeking a kinder, fairer, more egalitarian and dignified America will continue, working to elect progressive candidates, introducing nationally significant state ballot measures and pushing the Democratic Party to abide by its recently adopted platform, the ex-presidential candidate told thousands of supporters in a national webcast Wednesday night.

“We changed the conversation regarding the possibilities of our country—that is what we changed,” Sanders said. “We redefined what the vision and the future of our country should be and that is no small thing. And what our campaign showed, making the establishment very very unhappy—and that is a good thing—what our campaign showed the world is that the American people are prepared to stand up to a corrupt campaign finance system, a rigged economy, a broken criminal justice system and the global threat posed by the fossil fuel industry that is destroying our planet through their carbon emissions.”

Why Walmart Matters to 21st Century Working-Class Struggle

What connects the recent movements that have shaken the foundations of US inequality? In her acclaimed book Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, Sarah Jaffe introduces us to the people making trouble from Wisconsin to Ferguson, from Occupy Wall Street to Moral Mondays.

By Sarah Jaffe, Nation Books | Book Excerpt

In chapter three of Necessary Trouble, Sarah Jaffe covers the struggles of Walmart workers fighting for better pay, conditions and rights at work. This excerpt addresses the historical context for that struggle.

The image conjured by the term "working class" in the United States has been one of mostly white men toiling in a factory, wearing hard hats and those oft-evoked blue collars. Our labor policy was shaped around those men and the assumption that workers get health insurance from their jobs, have a pension on which to retire, and make a "family wage" that allows them to support a wife, who stays home to take care of the kids and the cooking and cleaning.

And yet with each year, that picture becomes less and less reflective of reality. The working class never was all white or all male, but now, more and more, the real story of the working class is the story of people like Colby Harris and Venanzi Luna, black and Latina, working in retail, restaurants, or another form of service work. The real story is not that women and people of color have moved into positions of power, but that more men are in "casualized" -- that is, in temporary, part-time, or presumably "unskilled" service jobs.

Real Washington Corruption? Not Hillary's Latest Emails, but Bush-Cheney Ties to Iraq's Wartime Profiteers

Right-wingers upset with Bono conveniently forget about the Carlyle Group and Halliburton.

By Steven Rosenfeld

The latest flurry of right-wing consternation over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State has crossed over into the ludicrous.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that in a year dominated by Donald Trump’s excess the Wall Street Journal’s editorial team and others would parse through the latest batch of emails obtained through federal Freedom of Information requests by longtime Clinton foes at Judicial Watch and fabricate outrage over her State Department staff’s deliberations over granting access to businessmen, pop stars and foreign leaders who previously donated to the Clinton Foundation.

Paul Krugman: The Water Next Time

A disaster area is no place for political theater. The governor of flood-ravaged Louisiana asked President Obama to postpone a personal visit while relief efforts were still underway. (Meanwhile, by all accounts, the substantive federal response has been infinitely superior to the Bush administration’s response to Katrina.) He made the same request to Donald Trump, declaring, reasonably, that while aid would be welcome, a visit for the sake of a photo op would not.

Sure enough, the G.O.P. candidate flew in, shook some hands, signed some autographs, and was filmed taking boxes of Play-Doh out of a truck. If he wrote a check, neither his campaign nor anyone else has mentioned it. Heckuva job, Donnie!

Humans have caused climate change for 180 years

Australian National University

An international research project has found human activity has been causing global warming for almost two centuries, proving human-induced climate change is not just a 20th century phenomenon.

Lead researcher Associate Professor Nerilie Abram from The Australian National University (ANU) said the study found warming began during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and is first detectable in the Arctic and tropical oceans around the 1830s, much earlier than scientists had expected.

U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, auditor finds

By Scot J. Paltrow

The United States Army’s finances are so jumbled it had to make trillions of dollars of improper accounting adjustments to create an illusion that its books are balanced.

The Defense Department’s Inspector General, in a June report, said the Army made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. Yet the Army lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up.

Paul Krugman: Obamacare Hits a Bump

More than two and a half years have gone by since the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, went fully into effect. Most of the news about health reform since then has been good, defying the dire predictions of right-wing doomsayers. But this week has brought some genuine bad news: The giant insurer Aetna announced that it would be pulling out of many of the “exchanges,” the special insurance markets the law established.

This doesn’t mean that the reform is about to collapse. But some real problems are cropping up. They’re problems that would be relatively easy to fix in a normal political system, one in which parties can compromise to make government work. But they won’t get resolved if we elect a clueless president (although he’d turn to terrific people, the best people, for advice, believe me. Not.). And they’ll be difficult to resolve even with a knowledgeable, competent president if she faces scorchedearth opposition from a hostile Congress.

How ‘Think Tanks’ Generate Endless War

U.S. “think tanks” rile up the American public against an ever-shifting roster of foreign “enemies” to justify wars which line the pockets of military contractors who kick back some profits to the “think tanks,” explains retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce.

By Todd E. Pierce

The New York Times took notice recently of the role that so-called “think tanks” play in corrupting U.S. government policy. Their review of think tanks “identified dozens of examples of scholars conducting research at think tanks while corporations were paying them to help shape government policy.”

Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, while the Times investigation demonstrates well that the U.S. is even more corrupt – albeit the corruption is better disguised – than the many foreign countries which we routinely accuse of corruption, the Times failed to identify the most egregious form of corruption in our system. That is, those think tanks are constantly engaged in the sort of activities which the Defense Department identifies as “Information War” when conducted by foreign countries that are designated by the U.S. as an enemy at any given moment.

Richard Eskow: Will The “Fix the Debt” Manipulators Ever Reform Themselves?

I’ll say this for them: The Wall Street billionaires and corporate CEOs behind the “Campaign to Fix the Debt” have a lot of nerve. Once again they’re using cheap scare tactics, along with some manipulative “nudging,” to drum up support for cutting Social Security benefits.

The money behind the latest scare campaign – “How Old Will You Be When Social Security’s Funds Run Out?” – also funds a TV ad that shows jobs, teachers, and roads and bridges vanishing, supposedly because the national debt wasn’t brought under control.

How Trump and Christie Colluded to Steal $25 Million From NJ Taxpayers

An outraged Sarah Silverman says the money should go for education.

By Michael Hayne

The very thought of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a man with all the charm and temperament of Bluto, being commander-in-chief was luckily destroyed. His pathetic and nonexistent presidential run proved that America preferred an even bigger, louder and more unstable narcissistic a-hole in Donald Trump. But since he can't keep being governor of New Jersey forever, the blob of buffoonery has to kiss up to Trump in the hopes that it gets him an unelectable cabinet-level position. Well, that cynical effort appears to be playing out quite beautifully.

The sketchy relationship between Christie and Trump took on a new chapter after a New York Times report showed that Trump's $30 million casino tax debt, something New Jersey officials fought endlessly to collect, was suddenly reduced by a massive amount after Christie took office in 2010.

Police Can Use a Legal Gray Area to Rob Anyone of Their Belongings

When officers categorize wallets or cellphones as evidence, getting them back can be nearly impossible—even if the owner isn’t charged with a crime.

Kaveh Waddell

Last summer, Kenneth Clavasquin was arrested in front of the Bronx apartment he shared with his mother. While the 23-year-old was being processed, the New York Police Department took his possessions, including his iPhone, and gave him a receipt detailing the items in police custody. That receipt would be his ticket to getting back his stuff after his case ended.

But the recovery process would soon turn into a nightmare. Clavasquin’s case was dismissed on December 8, 2015, and one day later, he took a court document proving the dismissal to the NYPD property clerk’s office. He was told that the department had classified his possessions as arrest evidence, to give the district attorney the option of considering them in the case. But the district attorney didn’t, and now that the case was over, the classification meant Clavasquin was about to enter a bureaucratic obstacle course.

Everything Wrong With How Our Justice System Treats Poor People, In One Awful Case

Ian Millhiser

Maria Rivera’s young son spent over a year in Orange County, California’s juvenile detention facilities. When he was released, the county sent a $16,372 bill to Rivera, claiming she needed to pay for the food her son ate, the clothing he wore, and the medicine he took while he was incarcerated.

The debt imposed a considerable hardship on Rivera. She sold her home to cover the debt, although this sale only allowed her to pay off about $9,500. Moreover, the county appears to have charged her significant interest on the unpaid portion of the debt. It eventually obtained a court order requiring her to pay nearly $10,000 more in addition to the funds she raised through the sale of her home.

Paul Krugman: Wisdom, Courage and the Economy

It’s fantasy football time in political punditry, as commentators try to dismiss Hillary Clinton’s dominance in the polls — yes, Clinton Derangement Syndrome is alive and well — by insisting that she would be losing badly if only the G.O.P. had nominated someone else. We will, of course, never know. But one thing we do know is that none of Donald Trump’s actual rivals for the nomination bore any resemblance to their imaginary candidate, a sensible, moderate conservative with good ideas.

Let’s not forget, for example, what Marco Rubio was doing in the memorized sentence he famously couldn’t stop repeating: namely, insinuating that President Obama is deliberately undermining America. It wasn’t all that different from Donald Trump’s claim that Mr. Obama founded ISIS. And let’s also not forget that Jeb Bush, the ultimate establishment candidate, began his campaign with the ludicrous assertion that his policies would double the American economy’s growth rate.

David Sirota: Jobs Report: Donald Trump Joins Economic Experts Who Say The Official Unemployment Rate Is Inaccurate

When Donald Trump on Monday questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s glowing employment reports, it may have seemed like another unsubstantiated outburst from a famously loose-with-the-facts candidate. But in this case, he was joining a bipartisan chorus of businesspeople, economists and lawmakers who say the monthly employment report is an artificial portrait deliberately airbrushed by statisticians to make the jobs picture look better than it really is.

Last week, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy added 255,000 jobs in July, and that the official unemployment rate had remained at 4.9 percent — the lowest it has been since early 2008. In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, Trump derided the report, calling it “one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.”

Social Security and the 1 Percent

by Nick Buffie

In February of last year, the Center for American Progress (CAP) released a report titled The Effect of Rising Inequality on Social Security. The report shows how the increase in economic inequality in the U.S. has led to deteriorating Social Security revenues, often to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year. Earlier research by Dean Baker showed that the upward redistribution of wage income was responsible for 43.5 percent of the projected 75-year shortfall in Social Security funding as of 2013.

Social Security is funded through federal payroll taxes. These taxes are currently applied to the first $118,500 of a worker’s wages; this means that only a portion of high-wage workers’ earnings are subject to taxation. For example, a worker earning $237,000 a year will pay payroll taxes on just half his earnings in 2016; a worker earning a million dollars will pay payroll taxes on less than 12 percent of his earnings. By contrast, any worker making $118,500 or less will have all of his earnings held subject to taxation. This $118,500 “cap” rises in line with average wage growth every year.

Federal Court Delivers a Blow to Municipal Broadband

Candace Clement

The digital divide is alive and well in 2016 and there are still millions of people in the United States living without internet access. And a court decision that came down this week hasn’t helped matters.

On Wednesday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the FCC’s 2015 order to preempt state-level restrictions in North Carolina and Tennessee on municipalities seeking to build their own high-speed broadband networks.

Donald Trump Gives the Game Away

GOP leaders will tolerate Trump so long as he promises huge tax cuts, and GOP voters will tolerate him so long as he's a bigot.

By Brian Beutler

Donald Trump just spent a week showcasing all of the qualities that make him unfit for the presidency. He began by directing a bigoted slander at the family of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq, then followed it up with a sexist defense of serial sexual predator Roger Ailes. He attacked multiple fire marshals at a rally for following the law, used his stature as the GOP standard-bearer to settle personal scores with three prominent Republicans facing primary challenges (Paul Ryan, John McCain, and Kelly Ayotte), and repeatedly lied about having seen Iranian video footage of the United States delivering cash to Tehran.

As his polling tanked, Republican officials grew increasingly panicked and angry; many of them organized a sheepish pressure campaign to get him to drop out of the race altogether. Some Republican National Committee members reportedly began contingency planning for a vacancy at the top of the ticket.

Richard Eskow: The Incredible Shrinking Populist: Donald Trump’s Tiny Economic Vision

On Monday, Donald Trump talked about the economy on television for an hour. That may have exceeded the graduate-level curriculum at Trump University. But the biggest lesson I learned is that Trump contradicts himself more, and becomes more typically Republican, with every passing day.

It’s rare to see Trump put much effort into anything, so it was almost likable to watch him work so hard to read his speech from a Teleprompter. All that concentration! It was like watching a child learn to draw.

Anti-Transparency Agenda Hailed Inside ALEC

Submitted by PRWatch Editors

--A Special Report from Rep. Chris Taylor

I walked into my sixth ALEC conference over a week ago as one of two familiar Wisconsin myths was being told by the queen of the American Legislative Exchange Council, state Senator Leah Vukmir.

It wasn't the one Governor Walker continues to repeat. That's the one where newly elected tea party politicians who had all the power took away workers' rights and faced down thousands of school teachers, firefighters and high school kids (a/k/a "the union bosses," who were actually exercising the First Amendment rights our founding fathers had envisioned).

The Right Wants Glass-Steagall for the Wrong Reasons

By Mike Konczal

It’s impossible to look at any single financial regulation without understanding the problem it is trying to solve and how it would hang together with the rest of the financial regulatory regime. This is why cost-benefit analysis of financial rules isn’t very useful, as any rule depends on all the other rules. It also means that two people who agree on one idea for regulation could still bring about two very different worlds, one significantly worse than the other.

This has happened with Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era separation of commercial and investment banking. Both the Republicans and Democrats endorsed its return in their party platforms. But there are two ways to talk about the reform, a Left and a Right way to imagine what problem Glass-Steagall would solve and what kind of financial regulatory regime you would have after it was reinstated. I think the Right’s way is wrong, dangerously so, and would leave us with a split regulatory regime and a world very similar to 2007.

Dirty War Files Show How Clinton Ally Kissinger Backed Regime of Terror

Files released as Hillary Clinton reportedly courts Kissinger's endorsement

by Nadia Prupis, staff writer

Newly declassified papers on the U.S. government's role in Argentina's 1976-83 "Dirty War" have been released, detailing—among other things—how former secretary of state Henry Kissinger stymied attempts to end mass killings of dissidents.

The files were published just after Politico reported that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is courting Kissinger's support, among other Republican elites.

Kissinger lauded Argentina's military dictatorship for its "campaign against terrorism," which included the imprisonment, torture, and killings of tens of thousands of leftist activists and students, the files reveal.

Trump Trade Position Is Opposite Of What People Think It Is

Dave Johnson

One of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s stronger economic appeals to working-class voters is his position on trade. Trump understands that people are upset that “trade” deals have moved so many jobs out of the country and he offers solutions that sound like he is saying he will bring the jobs back so wages can start going up again.

But a deeper look at what he is really saying might not be so appealing to voters.

Trump says the U.S. is not “competitive” with other countries. He has said repeatedly we need to lower American wages, taxes and regulations to the point where we can be “competitive” with Mexico and China. In other words, he is saying that business won’t send jobs out of the country if we can make wages low enough here.

New Evidence Suggests Big Oil Didn’t Borrow Big Tobacco’s Playbook to Lie to the Public About Climate Change—They Actually Wrote It

In a major blow to ExxonMobil, documents reveal that the common tactical playbook is decades older than previously assumed.

By Reynard Loki

A recent analysis of more than 100 industry documents conducted by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, has revealed that the oil industry knew of the risks its business posed to the global climate decades before originally suspected.

It has also long been assumed that, in its efforts to deceive investors and the public about the negative impact its business has on the environment, Big Oil borrowed Big Tobacco’s so-called tactical “playbook.” But these documents indicate that infamous playbook appears to have actually originated within the oil industry itself.

Lynn Parramore: Stark New Evidence on How Money Shapes America’s Elections

Oversights of two generations of social scientists have weakened democracy.

Outrage over how big money influences American politics has been boiling over this political season, energizing the campaigns of GOP nominee Donald Trump and former Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders alike. Citizens have long suspected that “We the People” increasingly means “We the Rich” at election time.

Yet surprisingly, two generations of social scientists have insisted that wallets don’t matter that much in American politics. Elections are really about giving the people what they want. Money, they claim, has negligible impact on elections.

Joseph E. Stiglitz: Globalization and its New Discontents

NEW YORK – Fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, entitled Globalization and its Discontents, describing growing opposition in the developing world to globalizing reforms. It seemed a mystery: people in developing countries had been told that globalization would increase overall wellbeing. So why had so many people become so hostile to it?

Now, globalization’s opponents in the emerging markets and developing countries have been joined by tens of millions in the advanced countries. Opinion polls, including a careful study by Stanley Greenberg and his associates for the Roosevelt Institute, show that trade is among the major sources of discontent for a large share of Americans. Similar views are apparent in Europe.

Paul Krugman: Time to Borrow

The campaign still has three ugly months to go, but the odds — 83 percent odds, according to the New York Times’s model — are that it will end with the election of a sane, sensible president. So what should she do to boost America’s economy, which is doing better than most of the world but is still falling far short of where it should be?

There are, of course, many ways our economic policy could be improved. But the most important thing we need is sharply increased public investment in everything from energy to transportation to wastewater treatment.

Matt Taibbi: Thomas Friedman Goes to the Wall

High priest of globalization lashes out against the enemies of progress

Thomas Friedman, master of metaphor, has a new set of fixations: walls, webs and the tacking of that presidentially-contending center-left sailboat, Hillary Clinton.

In a pair of recent articles, "Web People Versus Wall People" and "How Clinton Could Knock Trump Out," the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times expresses deep concern that Clinton’s primary-season "lean" toward the politics of Bernie Sanders isn't fake enough.

Dean Baker: NYT Does Impassioned Pitch for TPP in Its News Section

The NYT gave an analysis of changing attitudes towards trade agreements that completely misrepresented the key issues at stake. The headline pretty much said it all, "both parties used to back free trade. Now they bash it."

[...]

Rather these deals are about putting in place a regulatory agenda that is being designed to foster corporate interests. The deals provide a backdoor around the normal legislative process, since many of these measures would not receive the support of democratically elected officials.

Worst recovery in postwar era largely explained by cuts in government spending

by Robert E. Scott

In a story in the Wall Street Journal last Friday, reporter Eric Morath notes that the recovery from the Great Recession has been historically slow. “In terms of average annual growth,” he writes, “the pace of this expansion has been by far the weakest of any since 1949.” Missing from this story is the fact that our historically weak recovery has been accompanied by historically deep cuts in government spending. The figure below compares the strength of expansion for each recovery since 1949 with changes in government spending (it includes data on the strength of each expansion, as reported by Morath). You can see that almost every other recovery was accompanied by an increase in federal, state, and local government spending.

Jeremy Corbyn Launches Bold Progressive Vision to Transform UK

'Our country wasn’t run by Brussels, it’s run by boardrooms across the world,' says Labour Party leader as he calls for pro-worker public investments, peace abroad, and a clean energy transition

by Jon Queally, staff writer

Leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn announced a 10-point plan on Thursday designed to "rebuild and transform" the U.K. while undoing the damage wrought by privatization schemes and concerted attacks on the public good.

[...]

The ten pledges include: An economy that works for all; Secure homes for all; Security at work; Secure our National Health Service and social care; A free national education service; Action to secure the environment; Democracy in our economy; Cut income and wealth inequality; Act to end prejudice and injustice; and Peace and justice abroad

The Federal Minimum Wage Has Been Eroded By Decades of Inaction

Economic Policy Institute

July 25, 2016--This week marks the seven-year anniversary of the last time the federal minimum wage was raised, from $6.55 to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Since then, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has fallen by 10 percent as inflation has slowly eroded its value. However, this decline in the buying power of the minimum wage over the past seven years is not even half the overall decline in the minimum wage’s value since the late 1960s. As the figure below shows, at its high point in 1968, the federal minimum wage was equal to $9.63 in today’s dollars1. That means that workers at the minimum wage today are paid roughly 25 percent less than their counterparts 48 years ago.