The Libertarian Delusion

The free-market fantasy stands discredited by events. The challenge now: redeeming effective and democratic government

by Robert Kuttner

The stubborn appeal of the libertarian idea persists, despite mountains of evidence that the free market is neither efficient, nor fair, nor free from periodic catastrophe. In an Adam Smith world, the interplay of supply and demand yields a price that signals producers what to make and investors where to put their capital. The more that government interferes with this sublime discipline, the more bureaucrats deflect the market from its true path.

But in the world where we actually live, markets do not produce the “right” price. There are many small examples of this failure, but also three immense ones that should have discredited the libertarian premise by now. Global climate change is the most momentous. The price of carbon-based energy is “correct”—it reflects what consumers will pay and what producers can supply—if you leave out the fact that carbon is destroying a livable planet. Markets are not competent to price this problem. Only governments can do that. In formal economics, this anomaly is described by the bloodless word “externality”—meaning costs (or benefits) external to the immediate transaction. Libertarian economists treat externalities as minor exceptions.

Racists Are Still Trying To Prevent Minorities From Voting-- And Doing Well For Their Efforts - See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2015/03/racists-are-still-trying-to-prevent.html#sthash.GB94VvHz.dpuf

posted by DownWithTyranny @ 10:00 AM

Above is a 10-minute highlights video of President Obama's speech yesterday at the Selma 50-year anniversary memorial. The White House has also released the entire two hour and thirteen minute speech. After the speech, the President and his family led the march-- which included 100 Members of Congress and former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura-- across the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate general and later KKK Grand Dragon and Alabama senator.

If Rudy Giuliani was listening, he must have been confused to hear President Obama paint a soaring and idealistic picture of the hopeful America he loves. Obama: "We gather here to honor the courage of ordinary Americans willing to endure billy clubs and the chastening rod; tear gas and the trampling hoof; men and women who despite the gush of blood and splintered bone would stay true to their North Star and keep marching toward justice... We have to recognize that one day’s commemoration, no matter how special, is not enough. If Selma taught us anything, it’s that our work is never done. Our march is not yet finished."

And the loser is...

by Tom Sullivan

Remember Solyndra, that failed solar tech startup the GOP tried to hang around President Obama's neck like an albatross? Mitt Romney campaigned in front of the closed Solyndra factory in 2012, trying to deflect attention from his vulture capitalist record at Bain Capital. See, the problem was that Big Gummint was perturbing the economic gods with clean energy subsidies, "stifling free market competition by picking economic winners and losers."

Yesterday, I concluded a post noting that it is some kind of article of faith on the right that "government shouldn't pick winners and losers." Rather than call them hypocrites this fine Sunday morning, let's just say they apply that principle somewhat unevenly.

For Love of Country (and Money)

Scott Beauchamp

“I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Rudy Giuliani said recently to a room of right-leaning businessmen at Manhattan’s 21 Club. ”He doesn’t love you, and he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”

Giuliani was right; it was a horrible thing to say. Following an expected pattern, he later walked his remarks back a bit. In a Wall Street Journal editorial, Giuliani claimed that he “didn’t intend to question President Obama’s motives or the content of his heart.” That’s quite a humble concession coming from someone like Giuliani. He’s right that we can’t know the content of man’s mysterious heart. But we can know the contents of his bank account.

Koch Mandates to Cut Education Spending Spread Like a Cancer

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The Koch brothers' philosophy of the consolidation of wealth by the few is spreading like a cancer. Just look at how their hand-picked governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker - who received massive financial backing from the Kochs - is now being touted in the corporate media as a Republican contender for president in 2016.

Walker, who never graduated from college (leaving Marquette University in Milwaukee for mysterious reasons), has mercilessly attacked education in Wisconsin - starting with the teachers unions and recently extending to the University of Wisconsin.

Not Guilty: Flood Wall Street Protesters Vindicated By Manhattan Court

Judge rules NYPD violated demonstrators' First Amendment rights

by Sarah Lazare, staff writer

In a ruling on Thursday hailed as a vindication, a Manhattan court has determined ten climate activists "not guilty" on charges related to a thousands-strong climate protest that "flooded Wall Street" in New York City's financial district in September of last year.

Over 100 people—including one dressed as a polar bear—were arrested at the civil disobedience, which took direct aim at the role of capitalism in driving global warming and overall planetary destruction. Timed to coincide with a United Nations summit of heads of state and corporate leaders, the direct action followed the People's Climate March, which featured over 400,000 participants and was led by communities from the front-lines of the climate crisis.

Now They're Saying It in Public: Professor At Koch-Funded University Department Calls For 'Less Democracy'

Garett Jones of George Mason University claims that less democracy would lead to better governance.

By Zaid Jilani

By now, it's common knowledge that the Koch Brothers more or less own the Republican Party – having spent twice as much in election 2012 as the top ten unions combined.

But a lesser-known aspect of Koch influence is their spending on ideological warfare. The Kochs not only spend big in our elections, but they also finance a network of think tanks, advocacy campaigns, and even educational curricula in order to spread their message.

Doubt over climate science is a product with an industry behind it

With its roots in the tobacco industry, climate science denial talking points can be seen as manufactured doubt

Graham Readfearn

It’s a product that you can find in newspaper columns and TV talk shows and in conversations over drinks, at barbecues, in taxi rides and in political speeches.

You can find this product in bookstores, on sponsored speaking tours, in the letters pages of local newspapers and even at United Nations climate change talks.

New models yield clearer picture of emissions' true costs

Costs of fossil fuels sharply rise when health, environment factored in

Duke University

DURHAM, N.C. - When its environmental and human health toll is factored in, a gallon of gasoline costs us about $3.80 more than the pump price, a new Duke University study finds.

The social cost of a gallon of diesel is about $4.80 more than the pump price; the price of natural gas more than doubles; and coal-fired electricity more than quadruples. Solar and wind power, on the other hand, become cheaper than they initially seem.

Dean Baker: The Federal Reserve Board's Plan to Kill Jobs

There is an enormous amount of political debate over various pieces of legislation that are supposed to be massive job killers. For example, Republicans lambasted President Obama’s increase in taxes on the wealthy back in 2013 as a job killer. They endlessly have condemned the Affordable Care Act as a jobs killer. The same is true of proposals to raise the minimum wage.

While there is great concern in Washington over these and other imaginary job killers, the Federal Reserve Board is openly mapping out an actual job killing strategy and drawing almost no attention at all for it. The Fed’s job killing strategy centers on its plan to start raising interest rates, which is generally expected to begin at some point this year.

Warren: Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch Received $6 Trillion Backdoor Bailout from Fed

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 4, 2015

Yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee held the first of its hearings on widespread demands to reform the Federal Reserve to make it more transparent and accountable.

Senator Elizabeth Warren put her finger on the pulse of the growing public outrage over how the Federal Reserve conducts much of its operations in secret and appears to frequently succumb to the desires of Wall Street to the detriment of the public interest.

“The interests of the wealthy”: How the rich control politicians — even more than you think

Esteemed political scientist Michael Jay Barber tells Salon why America is a democracy ... for fat-cat donors

Elias Isquith

The American populace, as a whole, is not always a paragon of good judgment. Yet there’s at least one issue that they’ve got a pretty good handle on — the incredible degree of what Lawrence Lessig has described as a form of legalized corruption, and the detrimental effect it has on the U.S. government overall. Polling on this question can get a little tricky, because it can be difficult to know for sure what respondents are thinking of when they answer the question). But when Americans are asked to list the nation’s most pressing concerns, it’s become quite normal to find a dissatisfaction with government, or a concern about ethics and corruption, at or near the top.

According to a new study from Brigham Young University professor Michael Jay Barber, Americans’ sense that their government doesn’t work for them but rather for the wealthy and powerful is well-placed. In his research, Barber found what many might expect and fear — that politicians are paying much more attention to their financial backers than to anyone else. Constituents included. And even in this era of Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and Wall Street supremacy, the distance between what voters want and what politicians care about is even greater than you’d think.

This Billionaire Governor Taxed the Rich and Increased the Minimum Wage -- Now, His State's Economy Is One of the Best in the Country

Carl Gibson

The next time your right-wing family member or former high school classmate posts a status update or tweet about how taxing the rich or increasing workers' wages kills jobs and makes businesses leave the state, I want you to send them this article.

When he took office in January of 2011, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 percent unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota's first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history. Pawlenty prided himself on never raising state taxes -- the most he ever did to generate new revenue was increase the tax on cigarettes by 75 cents a pack. Between 2003 and late 2010, when Pawlenty was at the head of Minnesota's state government, he managed to add only 6,200 more jobs.

Himalayan ice shows chemicals ban is working

A unique study of frozen ice cores from the Tibetan Himalayas has shown that international agreements on phasing out the use of toxic persistent organic pollutants are working.

The research paper in the leading American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology has been named as the journal's most read paper of 2014.

Pollution is driving force behind growth of nuisance algal scums, study finds

Potentially toxic microbes which pose a threat to our drinking water have undergone a dramatic population explosion over the last 200 years as a result of pollution, research involving experts from The University of Nottingham has found.

The study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, looked at more than 100 lakes in lowland and alpine areas of North America and Europe and found that populations of cyanobacteria -- also known as blue-green algae -- have significantly increased since the 1800s.

Lester Brown: 'Vast dust bowls threaten tens of millions with hunger'

Over his 50-year career, Lester Brown has become known for his accurate global environmental predictions. As he enters retirement, he warns the world may face the worst hunger crisis of our lifetimes

Suzanne Goldenberg

Vast tracts of Africa and of China are turning into dust bowls on a scale that dwarfs the one that devastated the US in the 1930s, one of the world’s pre-eminent environmental thinkers has warned.

Over 50 years, the writer Lester Brown has gained a reputation for anticipating global trends. Now as Brown, 80, enters retirement, he fears the world may be on the verge of a greater hunger than he has ever seen in his professional lifetime.br />

The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site'

Spencer Ackerman

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Gaius Publius: Tobacco Deaths, TPP and the “Trade” Courts

Yves here. Obama’s pending trade deals, the TransPacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, have few fans at Naked Capitalism. But we are always looking for ways for like-minded readers to to alert friends and colleagues to the dangers of the proposed pacts and hopefully take action against them. This post gives concrete, accessible examples of some of the uses made of investor-state dispute settlement panels, which Gaius calls trade courts (even though they are actually secret arbitration panels) by Big Tobacco.

This piece is about corporations as predators, as plunderers, in a literal sense. Please follow closely; I want to get past the sense that “predator” is a metaphor. I want to make the case that the word is a literal description of the way the rich harvest the world.

Richard Eskow: “His Own Man’s” Man: Jeb Bush and the Return of Wolfowitz

Last week the nation was treated to the sad and embarrassing spectacle of Jeb Bush, mollycoddled scion to an empire of failure, proclaiming that “I’m my own man.” Here’s a simple rule of thumb: Anyone who has to say he’s his own man, or woman, isn’t. The 62-year-old Mr. Bush has been coasting on his family’s power and privilege since he was a weed-smoking, Steppenwolf-listening prep school student in the sixties.

From prep school slacker to presidential frontrunner: Now that’s a “Magic Carpet Ride.”

Dean Baker: Throw the Truth Out the Door: President Obama Has to Pass a Trade Deal

Wow, this stuff just keeps getting worse. Apparently anything goes when the big corporations want a trade deal. Otherwise serious people will just make stuff up, because hey, the big campaign contributors want a trade deal to make themselves richer. The latest effort in creative myth-making comes from Third Way, which tells us that post-NAFTA trade deals aren't job losers like NAFTA.

As Jim Tankersley and Lydia DePillis point out, this implicitly tells us that all those pro-NAFTA types weren't right in telling us that NAFTA would create jobs. (Hey, when did these folks stop telling us things about trade that were not true?)

Paul Krugman: Cranking Up for 2016

Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is said to be a rising contender for the Republican presidential nomination. So, on Wednesday, he did what, these days, any ambitious Republican must, and pledged allegiance to charlatans and cranks.

For those unfamiliar with the phrase, “charlatans and cranks” is associated with N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor at Harvard who served for a time as George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser. In the first edition of his best-selling economics textbook, Mr. Mankiw used those words to ridicule “supply-siders” who promised that tax cuts would have such magic effects on the economy that deficits would go down, not up.

Lawmakers Nationwide Launch Concerted Assault on Women's Rights

Since the start of the year, anti-choice bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country.

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

An array of anti-choice legislation is being rolled out in state houses around the country, putting women's health at risk and illustrating how Republican gains in the 2014 elections have exacerbated the fight over reproductive rights.

Already, 57 percent of American women of reproductive age live in states that are considered 'hostile' or 'extremely hostile' to abortion rights, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which studies sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world.

Failed Theory Posed by Wall Street Dems Puts Hillary Clinton in a Bind

The Hamilton Project, led by the presumed presidential candidate's adviser Robert Rubin, serves up a prescription for the middle class that won't help much—and defies the recommendations of her friends at CAP.

Lawrence Mishel

There was a time where it was plausible to argue that more education and innovation were the primary solutions to our economic problems. But that time has passed. You cannot tell that, however, to the Wall Street Democrats and their Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.

They’re not ready to change just yet, even though most of the Democratic Party has. This shift was signaled by a recent report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) Commission on Inclusive Prosperity, which is co-chaired by Lawrence H. Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in President Barack Obama's first term. The report calls for full employment (a "high pressure economy," as Summers calls it), a more welcoming environment for collective bargaining, higher labor standards (overtime, minimum wage, earned sick and paid family leave), changes in corporate governance, and large scale public investment to address middle-class wage stagnation.

Did the GOP Just Give Away $130 Billion of Public Property?

A giant Anglo-Australian mining company is getting the rights to a huge copper reserve—and we don’t know what American taxpayers are getting in return.

Rep. Alan Grayson

In December, two Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, pushed Congress and the president into giving away what could amount to over $130 billion in public property.

That’s enough to provide every single unemployed American a minimum-wage job for an entire year. That’s enough to pay for a year of tuition at a public institution for every college student in the US.

The Christian Right Is Quite Scary, But the GOP's Economic Agenda Is America's Big Nightmare

The Republican corporate agenda is a serious threat to society.

By Lynn Stuart Parramore

Woe to the American president who says anything sensible on the subject of religion. President Obama forgot that unwritten rule recently at the National Prayer Breakfast when he pointed out what an eighth-grader could tell you: that acts of violence have been committed in the name of many faiths, not just Islam:

“Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. … So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.”

Cue Christian right fake freakout.

Paul Krugman: Weimar on the Aegean

Try to talk about the policies we need in a depressed world economy, and someone is sure to counter with the specter of Weimar Germany, supposedly an object lesson in the dangers of budget deficits and monetary expansion. But the history of Germany after World War I is almost always cited in a curiously selective way. We hear endlessly about the hyperinflation of 1923, when people carted around wheelbarrows full of cash, but we never hear about the much more relevant deflation of the early 1930s, as the government of Chancellor Brüning — having learned the wrong lessons — tried to defend Germany’s peg to gold with tight money and harsh austerity.

And what about what happened before the hyperinflation, when the victorious Allies tried to force Germany to pay huge reparations? That’s also a tale with a lot of modern relevance, because it has a direct bearing on the crisis now brewing over Greece.

Government wonders: What’s in your old emails?

By Lindsay Wise

WASHINGTON — If you’ve been remiss in cleaning out your email in-box, here’s some incentive: The federal government can read any emails that are more than six months old without a warrant.

Little known to most Americans, ambiguous language in a communications law passed in 1986 extends Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure only to electronic communications sent or received fewer than 180 days ago.

How Insurers Can Hit You With $10,000 Health Care Bills—Even When You're Covered

Insurance companies are finding new ways to screw customers—undermining promises made by Obamacare boosters that the law would protect against medical bankruptcy.

By Julie Appleby

After Pam Durocher was diagnosed with breast cancer, she searched her insurer’s website for a participating surgeon to do the reconstructive surgery.

Having done her homework, she was stunned to get a $10,000 bill from the surgeon.

The U.S. just barely cracks the top 20 countries when it comes to retirement security

By Jonnelle Marte

Want more retirement security? It might be time to move to Switzerland.

The United States ranked 19th in the world for retirement security, according to an annual ranking of 150 countries by Natixis Global Asset Management. It’s held that spot for three years.

Paul Krugman: Money Makes Crazy

Monetary policy probably won’t be a major issue in the 2016 campaign, but it should be. It is, after all, extremely important, and the Republican base and many leading politicians have strong views about the Federal Reserve and its conduct. And the eventual presidential nominee will surely have to endorse the party line.

So it matters that the emerging G.O.P. consensus on money is crazy — full-on conspiracy-theory crazy.

Why Don’t Americans Know What Really Happened in Vietnam?

Instead of confronting the truth, we scrubbed the record clean—and we’re still paying for it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

Christian Appy

The 1960s—that extraordinary decade—is celebrating its 50th birthday one year at a time. Happy birthday, 1965! How, though, do you commemorate the Vietnam War, the era’s signature catastrophe? After all, our government prosecuted its brutal and indiscriminate war under false pretexts, long after most citizens objected, and failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. More than 58,000 Americans were killed along with more than 4 million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

So what exactly do we write on the jubilee party invitation? You probably know the answer. We’ve been rehearsing it for decades. You leave out every troubling memory of the war and simply say: “Let’s honor all our military veterans for their service and sacrifice.”

It Wasn’t About Oil, and It Wasn’t About the Free Market: Why We Invaded Iraq

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad’s new book not only interrogates the motivations behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but also reveals a cautionary tale for the present.

BY Danny Postel

I was reluctant to review Muhammad Idrees Ahmad's The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War. With all the dramatic developments in the Middle East today—the ISIS crisis, the siege of Kobanê, the deepening nightmare in Syria, the escalating repression in Egypt, the fate of Tunisia’s democratic transition, the sectarianization of regional conflicts driven by the Saudi-Iranian rivalry—delving back into the 2003 invasion of Iraq seemed rather less than urgent. It’s hard enough just to keep up with the events unfolding day-to-day in the region. Reading—let alone reviewing—a detailed study of the internal processes that led to the United States toppling Saddam Hussein over a decade ago seemed remote, if not indeed a distraction.

How growing income inequality is hurting Social Security

By Michael A. Fletcher

Here’s another reason to be concerned about income inequality: it poses a direct threat to the already shaky fiscal health of Social Security, according to a report released Tuesday by the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

The nation’s old-age pension and disability insurance program is funded by a payroll tax that this year applies to wages of $118,500 and below. But the amount of revenue coming in is not as large as it could be, now that an increasing share of wage growth is going to people who make more than that, and the wages of many Americans are stagnant, or even in decline. That is adding fiscal stress to a program already struggling with the demands of an aging population.

Six ways your tech is spying on you – and how to turn it off

Compared with what’s already happening, Samsung’s warning not to discuss sensitive issues in front of its TVs seems pretty tame. But you can fight back

Alex Hern

So, your TV might be spying on you. It probably just wanted to join in with the rest of the technology in your life, because let’s face it: if you live in the 21st century you’re probably monitored by half a dozen companies from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. (And if you wear a sleep tracker, it doesn’t even stop then.)

Compared with some of the technology that keeps a beady eye fixed on you, the news that Samsung’s privacy policy warns customers not to discuss sensitive information in front of their smart TVs is actually fairly tame. The warning relates to a voice-recognition feature that has to be explicitly invoked, and which only begins transmitting data when you say the activation phrase “hi, TV”.

Greenwald: Shedding Light on the Exercise of Power in the Dark

SUBHEADINGGOESHERE

By Todd Krainin

Glenn Greenwald might be the single most polarizing figure in American journalism.

In the 12 months between May 2013 and May 2014, the self-made blogger, civil libertarian and investigative journalist was called "treasonous" by Republican Representative Peter King of New York, given a prestigious Polk Award for national security reporting, accused of "paranoid libertarianism" by The New Republic and awarded a Pulitzer Prize for public service.

The Ideas and Institutions Holding Up Society Are Disintegrating

By Terrence McNally

Economic meltdown ... environmental crises ... seemingly endless warfare. The world is in critical condition. Bad news? Good news? Or both?

Many of the ideas and institutions that define our culture are breaking down -- and that's a good thing, say Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman. In their 2010 book, Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There from Here [3], they write that today's crises are part of a natural process: clearing out what no longer serves us to make room for a new way of being. Are they cockeyed optimists or do they see things others miss?

Right-to-work laws are every Republican union-hater's weapon of choice

Anti-union laws don’t help the economy, don’t create jobs and don’t end ‘compulsory union membership’. They can only kill off unions

Michael Paarlberg

There are few crusades in American politics more quixotic than bashing unions. They are a threat that exists mostly in the imaginations of their opponents: an all-powerful, resurgent labor movement that scares investors and imperils the economy, despite representing just 11% of the US workforce. Right-to-work laws are their weapon of choice.

Last week, the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case that could very well finish off American unions in the last bastion where they have any significant presence at all, the public sector. The case, Friedrichs v California Teachers Association, will decide if right-to-work laws (designed to bankrupt unions by encouraging employees who benefit from collective bargaining agreements to not pay for them) will extend to all public employees nationwide – an outcome Justice Samuel Alito has all but promised to deliver.

Exposing the Republican Party's Sleazy Playbook to Destroy Social Security

By Thom Hartmann

In one of its first actions, the Republican House of Representatives of the 114th Congress, changed its rules to manufacture a Social Security crisis.

GOP Representatives Tom Reed and Sam Johnson introduced a procedural rule change, which was buried on page 30 of 32 in House Resolution 5. It forbids the House from transferring money between the Social Security Retirement Fund and the Social Security Disability Fund, a move that Congress has made 11 times in the past, irrespective of which party was in control. The result is that the Disability Fund, which is expected to run out of reserves next year, cannot be helped using money from the Retirement Fund. Without this “easy fix”—as the New York Times called it—recipients of Social Security Disability will see a 19% cut in benefits.

Edward Snowden revelations: GCHQ ‘using online viruses and honey traps to discredit targets’

Documents released by the American former CIA employee claim that the agency is at the forefront of efforts to develop “offensive” online techniques

Cahal Milmo

Britain’s GCHQ has a covert unit which uses dirty tricks from “honey trap” sexual liaisons to texting anonymous messages to friends and neighbours to discredit targets from hackers to governments, according to the latest leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Documents released by the American former CIA employee claim that the Cheltenham-based intelligence agency is at the forefront of efforts to develop “offensive” online techniques for use against criminals, and individuals and regimes considered to pose a threat to national security.

The Tax Loophole (Almost) Everyone Should Want to Close

Step-up in basis for capital gains explained

James Kwak

In his latest round of tax proposals, President Obama finally called for what is probably the single most obvious change that should be made to the tax code: an end to the step-up in basis at death for capital gains taxes. (The other candidate for “single most obvious change” is eliminating the “carried interest” exemption that allows fund managers to pay capital gains tax rates on their labor income — managing people’s money.)

What is step-up in basis, you may ask? Ordinarily, if you buy something for $100 and sell it for $200 — say, a share of stock — your $100 in profit is a capital gain, which counts as a form of income, and you pay tax on it. The capital gain is calculated as your sale price of $200 minus your “cost basis” of $100. You pay tax at a lower rate than on ordinary “earned” income, like your wages, for reasons that not everyone agrees on. In addition, you also benefit from the fact that you can decide when to sell the stock, so you can defer paying capital gains tax for as long as you want, without interest — so the longer your holding period, the lower the effective annual tax rate.

Richard Eskow: More Evidence "Centrist" Solutions Can't Save Us

We have become a profoundly unequal society. That reality is explored in new detail in a recent study from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). Even more importantly, the INET study shows that it will take a dramatic shift in policy to restore the equilibrium. Unless we can build momentum for a new political agenda, we’ll be divided into a small minority with fabulous wealth and a permanent underclass with few hopes or prospects.

Unfortunately, our mainstream political dialogue shows no sign of adapting to these realities. As the INET study confirms, mainstream Democratic ideas won’t protect us from this dismal future.

Paul Krugman: A Game of Chicken

On Wednesday, the European Central Bank announced that it would no longer accept Greek government debt as collateral for loans. This move, it turns out, was more symbolic than substantive. Still, the moment of truth is clearly approaching.

And it’s a moment of truth not just for Greece, but for the whole of Europe — and, in particular, for the central bank, which may soon have to decide whom it really works for.

How American Oligarchs Are Pushing America to the Brink of Fascism

It used to be more difficult for the ultra wealthy to buy American democracy.

By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet

As the American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is, "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Well, it may well be on our doorstep. And the oligarchs are plotting their final takeover by using their economic dominance to capture governmental power; specifically, the governmental power which sets the rules for the very marketplace that provides the oligarchs with such massive wealth.

Wall Street Pays Bankers to Work in Government and It Doesn't Want Anyone to Know

By David Dayen

Citigroup is one of three Wall Street banks attempting to keep hidden their practice of paying executives multimillion-dollar awards for entering government service. In letters delivered to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the last month, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley seek exemption from a shareholder proposal, filed by the AFL-CIO labor coalition, which would force them to identify all executives eligible for these financial rewards, and the specific dollar amounts at stake. Critics argue these “golden parachutes” ensure more financial insiders in policy positions and favorable treatment toward Wall Street.

“As shareholders of these banks, we want to know how much money we have promised to give away to senior executives if they take government jobs,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a statement. “It’s a simple question, but the banks don’t want to answer it. What are they trying to hide?”

Paul Krugman: The Long-Run Cop-Out

On Monday, President Obama will call for a significant increase in spending, reversing the harsh cuts of the past few years. He won’t get all he’s asking for, but it’s a move in the right direction. And it also marks a welcome shift in the discourse. Maybe Washington is starting to get over its narrow-minded, irresponsible obsession with long-run problems and will finally take on the hard issue of short-run gratification instead.

O.K., I’m being flip to get your attention. I am, however, quite serious. It’s often said that the problem with policy makers is that they’re too focused on the next election, that they look for short-term fixes while ignoring the long run. But the story of economic policy and discourse these past five years has been exactly the opposite.

'Suppressed' EU report could have banned pesticides worth billions

Science paper recommended ways of identifying hormone-mimicking chemicals in pesticides linked to foetal abnormalities, genital mutations, infertility and other diseases including cancer

Arthur Neslen

As many as 31 pesticides with a value running into billions of pounds could have been banned because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon, the Guardian has learned.

The science paper, seen by the Guardian, recommends ways of identifying and categorising the endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that scientists link to a rise in foetal abnormalities, genital mutations, infertility, and adverse health effects ranging from cancer to IQ loss.

The Global Fight Against Corporate Rule

Activists are challenging rules that grant corporations the right to sue governments.

Robin Broad and John Cavanagh

Over the past several decades, multinational corporate Goliaths have helped to write and rewrite hundreds of rules skewing tax, trade, investment and other policies in their favor. The extraordinary damage these policies have caused has become increasingly apparent to the communities and governments most directly affected by them. This, in turn, has strengthened the potential of a movement that’s emerging to try to reverse the momentum. But just like David with his slingshot, the local, environmental and government leaders seeking to revise rules to favor communities and the planet must pick their battles carefully.

One of the most promising of these battles takes aim at an egregious set of agreements that allow corporations to sue national governments. Until three decades ago, governments could pass laws to protect consumers, workers, health, the environment and domestic firms with little threat of outside legal challenge from corporations. All that changed when corporations started acquiring the “right” to sue governments over actions—including public interest regulations—that reduce the value of their investments. These rights first appeared in little-known bilateral investment treaties. Twenty years ago, corporate lawyers embedded them in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Today, more than 3,000 trade and investment agreements and even some national investment laws grant foreign investors these powers.

We need our own Tea Party: The fight is much more than Hillary v. Warren

The Democratic Party's a corrupt, empty husk. But it offers a way forward if, like Maddow, we have the right debate

Bill Curry

It’s barely 2015 but 2016 is busting out all over. No fewer than 24 Republicans threaten White House runs. In January a dozen or so went to Iowa to pay homage to popular xenophobe Steve King at an event King humbly dubbed the Freedom Summit. At a tonier soiree that same weekend in Rancho Mirage, California, the Koch brothers pledged to raise precisely $889 million to buy the election outright.

Democrats can’t hold summits because only one of them, ex-Virginia Senator Jim Webb, has so much as filed an exploratory committee. But their game is on too. Obama’s populist-tinged State of the Union speech was widely seen as an attempt to frame the next debate. Hillary Clinton hasn’t filed yet but an ‘independent’ Super PAC aims to raise $300 million in her name. (Someone should tell her.)

Paul Krugman: Ending Greece’s Nightmare

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza coalition, is about to become prime minister of Greece. He will be the first European leader elected on an explicit promise to challenge the austerity policies that have prevailed since 2010. And there will, of course, be many people warning him to abandon that promise, to behave “responsibly.”

So how has that responsibility thing worked out so far?

While Deflategate and Chaitgate Rage, America Quietly Robs Its Elderly

A wild new report on the wide-scale scamming of ordinary investors has arrived

By Matt Taibbi

Remember the Matthew McConaughy scene in Wolf of Wall Street? The one where the Lincoln man is doing that weird pound-the-sternum chant and blasting coke and martinis over lunch while he gives Leo de Caprio his famous "Fuck the client!" speech?

That's the scene where Leo's whacked-out boss talks about the three keys to success on Wall Street: jerking off, cocaine and "revolutions," i.e. keeping the client on the investment Ferris wheel indefinitely, while you burn him for fees. On and on it goes, the park is open, 24/7, 365 days a year…

People identified through credit-card use alone

Analysis suggests that making data anonymous is not enough to protect consumers.

Boer Deng

Figuring out what data can be used to identify someone has long befuddled those tasked with keeping information private. Sometimes, the data sets they use to obscure underlying identities fail to do so. A computer-science graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, once uncovered the medical history of then-Massachusetts governor William Weld from de-identified insurance records, for example1.

So it is not particularly shocking that Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a computer-security researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, and his colleagues managed to identify one individual from a sea of ‘anonymized’ credit-card data.

Righting History, 54 Years Later

by Abby Zimet, staff writer

On Jan 31, 1961, fifty-four years ago this week, nine young black men - eight students from nearby Friendship College and a civil rights organizer - sat at the whites-only counter of McCrory's five-and-dime in downtown Rock Hill, South Carolina and ordered burgers and cokes. They were asked to leave. When they refused, they were dragged out, arrested, held in jail and eventually convicted of trespassing. In court, they were ordered to pay a $100 fine. They refused again, opting to serve 30 days at hard labor at a prison farm. The tactic ultimately dubbed "Jail - No Bail" helped galvanize civil rights protests across the South by halting the de facto subsidizing of oppression and for the first time putting the financial burden of illegal jailings on cities and counties, rather than civil rights organizations.

On Wednesday, the eight surviving members of the Friendship 9 were back in a Rock Hill courthouse to hear their sentences vacated and their convictions overturned by Circuit Court Judge John C. Hayes III, the nephew of the judge who original sentenced them decades ago. The men were represented by Ernest Finney Jr., 83, who had defended their case 54 years ago and later served as South Carolina Supreme Court's first black chief justice. In his ruling for acquittal, Hayes argued the convictions had been “predicated upon values and beliefs that have since been deemed to violate the fundamental guarantees" of the Constitution. "We cannot rewrite history," he said, "but we can right history."

Corporate Law’s Original Sin

By Kent Greenfield

The public be damned,” railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt snorted at a reporter in 1882. The impertinent scribe had asked whether Vanderbilt ran his railroads with an eye toward public benefit. At the time, Vanderbilt was among the most powerful men in American business—and by his own estimation the richest man in the world. His figurative middle finger to the American public was big news, appearing on the front page of hundreds of newspapers within twenty-four hours.

The week before his comment, two trains had collided on his railroad inside the Fourth Avenue tunnel in New York City, killing two passengers and injuring hundreds. Many New Yorkers blamed the accident on Vanderbilt’s unwillingness to cut into profits by spending money on safety measures. His contemptuous words, spoken as he dined in his private train car, salted an open wound. The satirical magazine Puck ran a cover cartoon of a ballooned, profligate Vanderbilt wearing a diamond pin, smoking a stogie, and leaning back in a leather chair with a foot on the throat of an eagle dressed in Uncle Sam garb.

Paul Krugman: Punished for Playing by the Rules

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the international business editor at The Telegraph, recently wrote that Europe's slide toward deflation amounts to a "betrayal" of Southern Europe. This sounds over the top, but it is the simple truth. So let me elaborate with a picture I find illuminating.

The chart here shows core inflation (which excludes energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) in Germany, Spain and the euro area as a whole.

How Roy Cohn Helped Rupert Murdoch

Special Report: Through Fox News and a vast media empire, Rupert Murdoch wields enormous political clout in the United States, but his entrée into the world of Washington power came from the notorious McCarthyite Roy Cohn who opened the door into Ronald Reagan’s Oval Office, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Rupert Murdoch, the global media mogul who is now a kingmaker in American politics, was brought into those power circles by the infamous lawyer/activist Roy Cohn who arranged Murdoch’s first Oval Office meeting with President Ronald Reagan in 1983, according to documents released by Reagan’s presidential library.

“I had one interest when Tom [Bolan] and I first brought Rupert Murdoch and Governor Reagan together – and that was that at least one major publisher in this country … would become and remain pro-Reagan,” Cohn wrote in a Jan. 27, 1983 letter to senior White House aides Edwin Meese, James Baker and Michael Deaver. “Mr. Murdoch has performed to the limit up through and including today.”

How More and More U.S. Corporate Profits Escape the Corporate Income Tax

The effective corporate income tax rate is almost exactly the same in the United States as in other OECD countries. (While the U.S. statutory corporate tax rate is well above the OECD average, the many loopholes in the U.S. corporate tax bring the effective rate down substantially.) Then how is it that corporate taxes account for a much smaller share of GDP in the United States than in other high-income countries? The answer lies in forms of incorporation that allow U.S. corporate profits to be taxed at the lower individual income tax rate.

John Miller

Two changes paved the way for more and more profit to escape the corporate income tax in the United States. The federal government extended limited legal liability, which protects owners from losing their personal assets if their business fails, to some partnerships and “pass through” corporations not subject to the corporate income tax. Then the tax reform of 1986 cut the top tax bracket of the individual income tax to 28%, well below the statutory corporate income-tax rate. That opened up a large tax advantage for owners who paid individual income taxes on their profits instead of corporate income taxes.

Pass-through businesses—-S-corporations (which afford up to 100 owners limited liability), partnerships (including limited liability partnerships in which all the partners enjoy limited liability), and sole proprietorships—-have flourished over the last three decades. In 1980, corporations subject to the corporate income tax (called “C-corporations”) generated nearly four fifths (78%) of business net income, a measure of a business’s profitability. By 2007, pass-through businesses’ share of net income surpassed that of C-corporations. In fact, partnerships, S-corporations, and sole proprietorships each outnumbered C-corporations.

US companies cut more than 1m jobs a month. When did workers stop mattering?

Even when the economy is healthy, companies lay off hundreds of thousands of people a week, and up to 1 million a month. The problem: they still see workers as an obstacle to higher profits

Suzanne McGee

IBM will reportedly announce this week the largest corporate layoff ever, at a reported 118,000 jobs. If it does, it is hardly the first time IBM or any other big company will have sacrificed its workers to appease the gods of Wall Street.

At American Express, spending by the company’s cardmembers is growing, and so are revenues and profits. But not payroll: American Express just surprised financial markets by announcing plans to slash 4,000 jobs, cutting the number of employees by 6%.

The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

Opinion: Some ugly truths about the bank bailouts

ould you have saved your home with $19,065?

By David Weidner

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — More than 4 million Americans lost their homes in the wake of the financial crisis, but the vast majority of lenders survived through government assistance rushed to Wall Street in the fall of 2008.

The main bailout vehicle, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, was hailed six months ago as a success by the Treasury Department. That came after Popular Inc., one of TARP’s repayment laggards, paid the $1.22 billion due to taxpayers.

Paul Krugman: Much Too Responsible

The United States and Europe have a lot in common. Both are multicultural and democratic; both are immensely wealthy; both possess currencies with global reach. Both, unfortunately, experienced giant housing and credit bubbles between 2000 and 2007, and suffered painful slumps when the bubbles burst.

Since then, however, policy on the two sides of the Atlantic has diverged. In one great economy, officials have shown a stern commitment to fiscal and monetary virtue, making strenuous efforts to balance budgets while remaining vigilant against inflation. In the other, not so much.

Evidence Grows Showing Wall Street as a Negative Economic Force

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 27, 2015

Earlier this month, Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup, published a stunning indictment of Wall Street as a job creating engine. Clifton reported that the U.S. now ranks 12th among developed nations in business startups with countries such as Hungary and Italy having higher startup rates. Of equal concern writes Clifton, “American business deaths now outnumber business births.”

Clifton has a theory on why America’s crisis in creating new businesses is a well-kept secret.

A Staggeringly Lopsided Economic Recovery

Zoë Carpenter

Just how strong is the economic recovery? Democrats have offered somewhat contradictory answers to that question recently. The picture President Obama painted in last week’s State of the Union address was mostly rosy. “The shadow of crisis has passed,” he declared, citing “a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, and booming energy production.” And indeed, the US economy added more jobs in 2014 than it has since 1999, and unemployment is at its lowest point in more than six years.

The competing, bleaker, view—described most forcefully by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren—is that the good numbers don’t accurately reflect the reality lived by America’s workers. Middle-class families “are working harder than ever, but they can’t get ahead,” Warren argued in an early January speech. “Opportunity is slipping away. Many feel like the game is rigged against them—and they are right.” The tide may be rising, but it’s failing to lift most of the boats.

GOP's Frightening Plot to Build Laboratories for Plutocracy in States They Control

Right-wing initiatives such as tax cuts and 'right-to-work' legislation are on the table.

By Zaid Jilani

In the American political tradition, states are known as “laboratories of democracy,” miniature examples for the rest of the country to learn from. Following the 2014 elections, Republicans gained more power in state legislatures than they've had in their party's history, controlling 69 of the 99 different state chambers across the country.

With these wide majorities, these Republicans are using these laboratories to put into action some of their wildest plutocratic legislative dreams, everything from enacting discriminatory legislation against gay and lesbian Americans to assaulting the rights of workers, to clawing back laws at every level that protect the public interest.

Dean Baker: Why Rand Paul Is Wrong About Social Security Disability

The Republican Congress decided to make overhauling the Social Security disability program one of its first orders of business. On the first day of the new session it put in place a rule change that would make it difficult to address the shortfall the program is projected to face some time next year.

Republican leaders like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul justified this change by insisting that half the people getting disability had the sort of back aches and occasional anxieties that we all face. The difference is that they get checks from the government rather than working. For this reason, Rand argued the program is in serious need of reform.

The Triumph of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

To understand perverse military decision-making, follow the money

by BEN COHEN & WINSLOW WHEELER

In his farewell address in January 1961, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower famously cautioned the American public to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

In his farewell address in January 1961, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower famously cautioned the American public to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

When Liberals Were Organized

Progressives seeking a model for an effective Congress could learn from the nearly forgotten history of the Democratic Study Group.

By Julian E. Zelizer

When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 1994 for the first time in 40 years, one of Speaker Newt Gingrich’s earliest moves was to end the public funding for the Democratic Study Group (DSG), a caucus of liberal Democrats that had been created in 1959. It was one of Gingrich’s shrewdest maneuvers. As Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, a staunch conservative then and now, wrote in an internal memo, “The demise of the DSG severely damages the power structure of the House Democrats.”

Roberts was right. The DSG is almost forgotten today, but its history suggests lessons for the current generation of Democrats. Since 1994, congressional liberals have failed to replicate a powerful, independent organization like the Democratic Study Group. They have been dependent on a House leadership that is sometimes but not always sympathetic to their goals. The closest thing to a DSG, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has been a pale imitation of its predecessor, a fragile informal coalition that has lacked the same kind of leadership, money, publications, communications strategy, or clout. As liberals prepare for the start of the 114th Congress and hope for stronger Democratic returns in 2016, they would benefit from looking back at the history of the DSG to see just how much a vibrant and robust caucus can offer.

Save the Honeybee, Sterilize the Earth

A decade ago, people started panicking about the collapse of the honeybee population and the crash of our food supply. But today there are more honeybees than there were then. We have engineered our way to a frenzied and precarious new normal.

Josh Dzieza

To drive through California's Central Valley is to witness farming on a baffling scale. For hundreds of miles along either side of Highway 99—which splits the valley from the college town of Chico in the north to the sprawling, boxy city of Bakersfield in the south—are orderly corridors of grapevines and cherry trees, followed by flat expanses of yams, followed by fields of carrots and the gigantic harvesters that yank them from the ground by the thousands. Dwarfing all these crops, however, are row after row of snaggly black-limbed almond trees, punctuated occasionally by monolithic towers where the nuts are shelled. In recent years, these almond groves have grown to cover almost a million acres; they now produce four-fifths of all the almonds in the world.

The Central Valley is a paradoxical place, both desolate and tremendously fertile. As Joan Didion, a native of the region, wrote in 1965, the towns there “hint at evenings spent hanging around gas stations, and suicide pacts sealed in drive-ins,” yet “U.S. 99 in fact passes through the richest and most intensely cultivated agricultural region in the world, a giant outdoor hothouse with a billion-dollar crop.” Generations of farmers have transformed this arid and flat valley into a machine that produces more than a third of the vegetables in the United States and nearly two-thirds of the fruits and nuts. To keep running, it must be fed with tremendous quantities of fertilizer, flooded with water pumped from deep underground or diverted from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, doused with insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, and harvested by an arsenal of lumbering machinery. But for the system to work, it also needs bees.

Why industry is trying to tell you how to think

Erin Quinn and Chris Young explain how they investigated the top message peddlers influencing public policy — and why you should care.

By Erin Quinn, Chris Young

The nation’s most politically active trade associations appear to be more interested in lobbying the public than they are in lobbying lawmakers.

That’s the main takeaway from a new Center investigation by Erin Quinn and Chris Young.

Removing the Social Security Tax Cap Would Benefit Most Workers

by Yves Smith

Yves here. As we and others have discussed at some length, the concern over Social Security funding is vastly overhyped. As Nicole Woo discusses in this Real News Network interview, one simple fix, that of eliminating the cap on who is subject to the tax, would solve most of the gap that is anticipated in long-term projections. And the Social Security tax as now constituted is regressive and thus promotes inequality, so lifting the cap also moves the tax system toward being more progressive. That’s before we get to the MMT issue that “taxing” to fund any government activity is a political mechanism that is a holdover from the gold standard days, and not how government functions are funded operationally.

In fact, with more and more promised pensions being slashed, and investment returns flagging thanks to QE and ZIRP, the notion that ordinary people can save enough for their retirement is a chimera. Thus preserving and strengthening Social Security is more important than ever.

Democrats Should Listen To What Sen. Whitehouse Said About Education

Jeff Bryant

A curious thing happened this week on Capital Hill: A politician said something about education that made sense.

The “something” didn’t come from President Obama.

In the president’s annual State of the Union address, “K-12 policy largely took a back seat,” Education Week’s Alyson Klein observed. Indeed, the issue was barely in the car. Although the president took credit for “the highest math and reading scores on record” and a high school graduation rate at “an all-time high,” there were no strong claims about the success of his programs, no bold, new initiatives, and no combative stances against the oppositional positions on K-12 policy.

How charter school foes are failing

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- As charter schools continue to expand, new research indicates liberal opponents are failing to make effective arguments aimed at curbing the education reform movement.

Opponents' strategy of stressing the role of private companies in running the schools has been largely unsuccessful, said Sarah Reckhow, political scientist at Michigan State University and lead author of the study.

American liberals and conservatives think as if from different cultures

Political conservatives in the United States are somewhat like East Asians in the way they think, categorize and perceive. Liberals in the U.S. could be categorized as extreme Americans in thought, categorization and perception. That is the gist of a new University of Virginia cultural psychology study, published recently in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Additionally, the study indicates that thought styles - whether analytical or holistic - can be changed through training, enough so to temporarily change political thought and the way a person might vote.

New police radars can 'see' inside homes

Brad Heath, USA TODAY 1:27 p.m. EST January 20, 2015

WASHINGTON — At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance.

Those agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service, began deploying the radar systems more than two years ago with little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the U.S. Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person's house without first obtaining a search warrant.

Hello people, goodbye soil

Humans erode soil 100 times faster than nature

A new study shows that removing native forest and starting intensive agriculture can accelerate erosion so dramatically that in a few decades as much soil is lost as would naturally occur over thousands of years.

Had you stood on the banks of the Roanoke, Savannah, or Chattahoochee Rivers a hundred years ago, you'd have seen a lot more clay soil washing down to the sea than before European settlers began clearing trees and farming there in the 1700s. Around the world, it is well known that deforestation and agriculture increases erosion above its natural rate.

Hours After State Of The Union, Senate Targets National Parks

by Claire Moser - Guest Contributor Posted on January 21, 2015 at 9:18 am Updated: January 22, 2015 at 8:54 am

Just hours after President Obama’s State of the Union address highlighted the effort to protect more public lands and waters than any other administration, the U.S. Senate is poised to vote on a controversial and unpopular proposal that aims to block the protection of new parks, monuments, and historic sites around the country.

Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer’s (R) proposal, which is being offered as an amendment to a bill that would approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, would add additional paperwork and cost to every locally-driven conservation effort that requires federal designation or land purchase by a U.S. agency.

The Davos oligarchs are right to fear the world they’ve made

Escalating inequality is the work of a global elite that will resist every challenge to its vested interests

Seumas Milne

The billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this week are getting worried about inequality. It might be hard to stomach that the overlords of a system that has delivered the widest global economic gulf in human history should be handwringing about the consequences of their own actions.

But even the architects of the crisis-ridden international economic order are starting to see the dangers. It’s not just the maverick hedge-funder George Soros, who likes to describe himself as a class traitor. Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive, frets about the “capitalist threat to capitalism”. Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, fears capitalism might indeed carry Marx’s “seeds of its own destruction” and warns that something needs to be done.

Dean Baker: Democrats Take on Wall Street With Financial Transactions Tax

The House Democratic Party leadership made a remarkable step forward last week in putting out a proposal for a financial transactions tax (FTT). The proposal is part of a larger package which includes a substantial tax credit for workers, and also a limit on the tax deductibility of high CEO pay, but the FTT portion is the most remarkable.

There has long been interest in financial transactions taxes among progressive Democrats. The list of people who have proposed financial transactions taxes over the years includes Representatives Peter DeFazio and Keith Ellison, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders.

How To Pull Earth Back From The Brink

Johan Rockström, World Economic Forum

Bill and Melinda Gates said a simple pie chart in a newspaper breaking down the major causes of death among children forced them to ramp up their philanthropic effort. Bill Gates remarked, “If you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.”

Last week, two research papers unambiguously identify the key priorities to reduce global systemic risk and ensure long-term prosperity. The first tracks the “Great Acceleration” in human growth and activity largely since the 1950s. The other, by myself and 17 international colleagues, identifies nine planetary boundaries and calculates that Earth has now transgressed four. Our global civilization is now in a danger zone. It would be prudent to pull back from the brink.

CU Denver study shows cities with more transportation options most resilient

Unexpected gas price spike could be ruinous for some commuters

DENVER (Jan. 20, 2015) - Researchers at the University of Colorado Denver studying how the region would react to a sudden spike in gas prices, found those living closest to their work, in areas with more compact street networks and better multi-modal infrastructure, would be more resilient than others.

"A city that has invested heavily in transit, walking, and biking infrastructure - even if experiencing minimal ridership today - would likely be able to withstand a shock to the system such as rising gas prices far better than a city that has not made such investments," said study author Wesley Marshall, PhD, PE, assistant professor of civil engineering at the CU Denver College of Engineering and Applied Science, the top research university in Denver.

Plunge in Treasury Yields Is Forecasting More Than Just Deflation

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 15, 2015

Plunging yields on U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, record low yields on the sovereign debt of countries in the European Union, together with plunging industrial commodity prices, are sending a crystal clear message to stock markets: there is a glut of supply and too little demand from consumers.

Such a supply-demand imbalance brings about price wars. Thus we have Saudia Arabia slashing prices on oil to its customers in an attempt to grab market share, triggering a global price war in oil; supermarket pricing wars in Britain; gas station pricing wars in the U.S.; mutual fund fee pricing wars; magazine price wars. There is even a chicken nuggets pricing war.

Rahm Emanuel’s offensive new pension-gutting scheme

The mayor of Chicago is now arguing that pension funds are not part of city government at all. How convenient!

David Sirota

On its face, Chicago’s municipal pension system is an integral part of the Chicago city government. The system is included in the city’s budget, it is directly funded by the city, and its various boards of trustees include city officials and mayoral appointees. Yet, when it comes to enforcing the city’s anti-corruption laws in advance of the Chicago’s closely watched 2015 municipal election, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is suddenly arguing that the pension funds are not part of the city government at all.

The counterintuitive declaration came last month from the mayor-appointed ethics commission, responding to Chicago aldermen’s request for an investigation of campaign contributions to Emanuel from the financial industry. The request followed disclosures that executives at firms managing Chicago pension money have made more than $600,000 worth of donations to Emanuel. The contributions flowed to the mayor despite a city ordinance — and an executive order by Emanuel himself — restricting mayoral campaign contributions from city contractors.

APS authored Congressional letter to feds asking to crack down on solar industry

Lauren Gilger, Maria Tomasch

PHOENIX - Arizona’s largest utility company has been at odds with the solar panel industry for years.

Now, APS is asking the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on solar companies for deceptive practices.

But they didn’t ask them directly.

Six Arizona Congressmen sent letters to federal regulators asking them to investigate solar leasing companies.

The mystery of shellshock solved

Scientists identify the unique brain injury caused by war

Adam Lusher

When the war poet Wilfred Owen wrote of “men whose minds the Dead have ravished” he was attempting to describe the mysterious effects of shellshock which started appearing during the First World War and of which he himself was a sufferer.

Now, a century after the first cases began to appear, scientists believe they have for the first time identified the signature brain injury that could explain why some soldiers go on to have their lives blighted by the condition.

Paper Exposing Manipulation of Electricity Prices Stymied by Editor with Private Equity Ties

Yves here. I’ve read the detailed traffic between the author Eric L. Prentis and the publication in question, Energy Economics, and have also run them and his paper by academics who have or are supervising significant research and publication efforts. They gave the Prentis paper high marks and agreed that the actions of Energy Economics and its parent Elsevier were troubling, given that the editor who failed to move the routine review process forward has strong ties to the private equity industry. As one put it, “On its face, this conduct raises very grave questions.”

By Eric L. Prentis

How Research Journal Publishing is Being Subverted to Support Ideology — Rather Than the Truth

The allies of Wall Street’s private equity firms appear to use obstruction and delaying tactics when research threatens to expose how they prey on citizens and communities.

I have published previously in academic journals and am familiar with their quality standards and usual practices. The experience I had with Energy Economics, a top-tier publication in that niche, over a paper that was eventually published in another well-regarded, but non-US publication, was such an extreme departure from the norms of academic publishing as to strongly suggest that the reason for inexplicable delays and the eventual refusal to review my paper, is due to the fact that the paper effectively called out private equity price manipulation in electricity markets. As I will demonstrate, my paper was peculiarly re-assigned to an editor with strong ties to the private equity industry who then failed to move it forward in the editorial process, in violation of the policies of the publisher, Elsevier.

The Key To Closing The Income Gap Is An Idea Almost Nobody Is Talking About

by Alan Pyke

After simmering for years among progressive politicians, concern about economic inequality and flagging upward mobility in America seem destined to define the next federal election cycle for both parties. Jeb Bush’s (R) fundraising organization for a possible 2016 White House bid calls itself Right to Rise, and Mitt Romney (R) says that enhancing economic mobility and reducing poverty would be focal points of his campaign should he run again.

That is the political context into which the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity issued a comprehensive slate of policy recommendations on Thursday. The Center for American Progress-convened group, co-chaired by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and his British counterpart Ed Balls, laid out almost 200 pages of ideas for restoring the connection between people and profits. The report casts unchecked economic inequality as a threat to democracy itself, and offers specific suggestions for how to reverse wage stagnation, class tension, and corporate profiteering in both the United States and other industrialized republics.

Republicans and Wall Street Say to Hell With Protecting the Public!

by Bill Moyers

Since December, Congress has twice passed measures to weaken regulations in the Dodd-Frank financial law that are intended to reduce the risk of another financial meltdown.

In the last election cycle, Wall Street banks and financial interests spent over $1.2 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions, according to Americans for Financial Reform. Their spending strategy appears to be working. Just this week, the House passed further legislation that would delay by two years some key provisions of Dodd-Frank. “[Banks] want to be able to do things their way, and that’s very dangerous.” MIT economist Simon Johnson tells Bill.

The Integrity of Ambassador Robert White

At the start of the Reagan administration, Ambassador Robert White refused to cover up the rape-murders of four American churchman in El Salvador and paid for his integrity with the end of his career. His death last Tuesday at age 88 marked the passing of a courageous diplomat, writes ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman.

By Melvin A. Goodman

The death of Ambassador Robert E. White is a reminder of what an American envoy can do to advance our principles and to guide our foreign policy. As an ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s, White demonstrated a commitment to social justice and human rights. Sadly, he was dismissed from the Foreign Service by Secretary of State Alexander Haig because the Reagan administration had decided on a policy of militarism in Central America.

Bob White was the ambassador in El Salvador in December 1980 when four American churchwomen were raped and murdered by the armed forces of the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government. The evening before their murders, two of the women had dinner at White’s home to discuss the problems that relief workers were having in El Salvador. At the grave site for two of the women, White repeated over and over again that “This time they are not going to get away with it.”

How the Top-Down Imposition of Unproven Charter Schools Is Roiling Parents and Communities

A fight over education in Nashville might come your way next: It's a proxy for dangerous right-wing education ideas.

By Jeff Bryant

“We know we need to do something about students who are not achieving in our schools.”

That anxious appeal – along with its many variations – has become the refrain now firmly embedded in speeches and opinion columns about American public education.

Yes! Do something. About those kids.

It’s time for a revolution: Bankrupt policies, historic losses call for new generation of leaders

It's always "Groundhog Day" for Democratic leaders who can't adjust, can't organize and can't win. Let's dump them

Bill Curry

As a wise man once said, never underestimate the capacity of an entire social order to commit suicide. The Democratic Party’s old order is doing it now. It may seem strange but make no mistake, the Democrats’ leaders are already unconscious. If they don’t wake up soon, they’ll go the way of the Whigs. If progressives don’t wake up now, they’ll go with them.

I’ve argued that progressive political movements died at the hands of their leaders; that their death is what caused the political collapse we errantly term “partisan gridlock”; that progressives need a timeout from electoral politics; and that both Democrats and progressives are best served by a return to a more arms-length relationship.

What Happens When Conservative Ideologues Get to Run Their Own States

Failures of GOP economics at the state level have electoral implications for Republicans nationwide.

By David Atkins

It would be hard to blame liberal-minded Americans for feeling a sense of despair as we begin a new year. The Republican Party is ascendant and reinvigorated after its smashing victories in 2014 at nearly every level of government. The NYPD is in near open revolt against one of America's most progressive mayors while police departments around the country seem immune to basic reforms.

But in spite of conservatism's seeming upswing, there are signs at a statewide level that its ideology is coming apart at the seams. Even conservatives are starting to take notice and worry.

NAFTA, TPP, and Clinton Global Initiative's "Free Trade" Activism

by Gaius Publius

I want to tie three small pieces into one package. The first piece, Bill Clinton and NAFTA. The second piece, Barack Obama and TPP. The third piece, Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Global Initiative and its neoliberal "free trade" activism.

Despite "Predictions" NAFTA Exported Millions of American Jobs

Let's start with NAFTA, which everyone now knows was a jobs and trade-deficit disaster, and a billionaire pot of gold. It's likely though that you may not know the details, including the details of how it was sold. So a quick look back.

Neocons: The ‘Anti-Realists’

Special Report: America’s neocons, who wield great power inside the U.S. government and media, endanger the planet by concocting strategies inside their heads that ignore real-world consequences. Thus, their “regime changes” have unleashed ancient hatreds and spread chaos across the globe, as Robert Parry explains.

By Robert Parry

Historically, one of the main threads of U.S. foreign policy was called “realism,” that is the measured application of American power on behalf of definable national interests, with U.S. principles preached to others but not imposed.

This approach traced back to the early days of the Republic when the first presidents warned of foreign “entangling alliances” – and President John Quincy Adams, who was with his father at the nation’s dawning, explained in 1821 that while America speaks on behalf of liberty, “she has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. …

It’s Not Just the Cops

Public defenders know that the trouble with our justice system extends far beyond abusive policing.

Jonathan Rapping, January 12, 2015

One has to admire the way we, as a country, have paid tribute to the lives of Rafael Ramos and Wenijan Liu, the two New York police officers shot to death while sitting in their police cruiser. We have rallied to support their families across ideological lines, demanding that they be remembered with dignity and honor.

But, juxtaposed against continued protests over police mistreatment of black men, they also help to highlight the fact that other lives are not valued at all.

Ten Secret Truths About Government Incompetence

What you can learn from the management mistakes of Obama and Bush.

By Donald F. Kettl

Wednesday, November 9, 2016
To: President-elect
From: Donald F. Kettl
Subject: Ten Secret Truths About Government Incompetence: What you can learn from the management mistakes of Obama and Bush.

Congratulations! You’ve won the nasty 2016 election for president of these United States. It was a long slog through more bad chicken dinners and dusty halls than anyone could be expected to tolerate. You won because you listened carefully to Republican strategist Frank Luntz’s take on the 2014 midterm election, that the “results were less about the size of government than about making government efficient, effective, and accountable.” And that’s just what you built your campaign on.

On January 20, 2017, you’ll be sworn in at noon, give a great speech, sneak out of the Beast for as much of a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue as the Secret Service will allow, cheer your hometown high school band, and dance the night away.

How trade deals like NAFTA neuter governments: Walkom

A new study looks at how NAFTA has prevented Canadian governments from doing what their voters wanted.

By: Thomas Walkom National Affairs, Published on Wed Jan 14 2015

Modern free trade pacts are about more than trade. That’s been known for a long time.

When Canadians were debating free trade with the U.S. in the late 1980s, those challenging the proposed pact warned that it would neuter governments’ ability to act in the public interest.

America's Class War Explained in 1 Chart

The system has been effectively restructured to serve the needs of the ruling elites.

By Mike Whitney

Is America in the throes of a class war?

Look at the chart and decide for yourself. It’s all there in black and white, and you don’t need to be an economist to figure it out.

But please, take some time to study the chart, because there’s more here than meets the eye. This isn’t just about productivity and compensation. It’s a history lesson, too. It pinpoints the precise moment in time when the country lost its way and began its agonizing descent into Police State USA.

Inside the lonely fight against the biggest environmental problem you've never heard of

In 2011, an ecologist released an alarming study showing that tiny clothing fibers could be the biggest source of plastic in our oceans. The bigger problem? No one wanted to hear it

Mary Catherine O'Connor

Ecologist Mark Browne knew he’d found something big when, after months of tediously examining sediment along shorelines around the world, he noticed something no one had predicted: fibers. Everywhere. They were tiny and synthetic and he was finding them in the greatest concentration near sewage outflows. In other words, they were coming from us.

In fact, 85% of the human-made material found on the shoreline were microfibers, and matched the types of material, such as nylon and acrylic, used in clothing.

Looking for the roots of terrorism

Anthropologist Scott Atran has done extensive field interviews with would-be and convicted terrorists.

Sara Reardon

In the wake of terrorist attacks last week on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Paris supermarket, the world has struggled to understand the combination of religion, European culture and influence from terrorist organizations that drove the gunmen. Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, studies such questions by interviewing would-be and convicted terrorists about their extreme commitment to their organizations and ideals. Atran recently returned from Paris, where he talked with members of the shooters’ communities. He spoke with Nature about what he discovered.

Paul Krugman: Francs, Fear and Folly

Ah, Switzerland, famed for cuckoo clocks and sound money. Other nations may experiment with radical economic policies, but with the Swiss you don’t get surprises.

Until you do. On Thursday the Swiss National Bank, the equivalent of the Federal Reserve, shocked the financial world with a double whammy, simultaneously abandoning its policy of pegging the Swiss franc to the euro and cutting the interest rate it pays on bank reserves to minus, that’s right, minus 0.75 percent. Market turmoil ensued.

That Was Easy: In Just 60 Years, Neoliberal Capitalism Has Nearly Broken Planet Earth

Pair of new studies show how various forms of human activity, driven by a flawed economic system and vast consumption, is laying waste to Earth's natural systems

by Jon Queally, staff writer

Humanity's rapacious growth and accelerated energy needs over the last generation—particularly fed by an economic system that demands increasing levels of consumption and inputs of natural resources—are fast driving planetary systems towards their breaking point, according to a new pair of related studies.

Prepared by researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the first study looks specifically at how "four of nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed as a result of human activity." Published in the journal Science* on Thursday, the 18 researchers involved with compiling evidence for the report—titled 'Planetary Boundaries 2.0'—found that when it comes to climate change, species extinction and biodiversity loss, deforestation and other land-system changes, and altered biogeochemical cycles (such as changes to how key organic compounds like phosphorus and nitrogen are operating in the environment), the degradation that has already take place is driving the Earth System, as a whole, into a new state of imbalance.