Benghazi! Why Trey Gowdy Is Still Hiding Blumenthal Transcript

Joe Conason

The strange saga of the House Select Committee on Benghazi continues as its chair, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) fends off renewed questions about the committee’s purpose, as well as demands to release the sworn deposition of Sidney Blumenthal, taken behind closed doors on June 16.

In a July 7 CNN interview, Hillary Clinton – the actual target of Gowdy’s investigation – brushed off accusations about her use of a private email server and mocked his partisan probe. “This is being blown up with no basis in law or in fact,” she said. “That’s fine. I get it. This is being, in effect, used by the Republicans in the Congress, OK. But I want people to understand what the truth is. And the truth is everything I did was permitted and I went above and beyond what anybody could have expected in making sure that if the State Department [servers] didn’t capture something, I made a real effort to get it to them.”

Senate Passes Bill Letting Schools Give Education Money To Financial Consulting Firms

By David Sirota, Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Andrew Perez

As budget-strapped Chicago follows a mass school closure with a new plan to layoff more than 1,400 teachers, one set of transactions sticks out: the city’s moves to refinance $1 billion in debt through complex financial instruments called swaps. The deals were spearheaded over the last few years by financial advisory firms brought in by the city to help find money saving efficiencies. Instead of saving money, though, the Windy City took a big hit: The school system has lost more than $100 million on the transactions and has paid millions in fees to its financial consultants.

Chicago is not alone. School districts across the country have been increasingly relying on high-priced consultants and Wall Street firms for financial and management advice. While proponents say many of the ensuing consultant-driven initiatives have resulted in cost savings, critics note that other initiatives have resulted in investment losses, layoffs and school closures. What is clear is that school districts’ reliance on outside advisers has created business opportunities for the financial industry. And now, thanks to an amendment to federal education legislation moving through Congress, that lucrative market for financial and consulting could become even more flush with cash -- specifically, with federal money meant for impoverished school districts.

The Greek Revolt Against Bad Economics Threatens European Elites

A look behind the scenes of the Greek referendum and what could happen next.

By Lynn Parramore

James K. Galbraith, author of The End of Normal and professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, has an inside view of the crisis leading to the recent referendum in Greece. Galbraith has worked for the past several years with recently departed Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis as both a colleague and co-author, and he has just returned from Greece, where he looked down over the rooftops of Syntagma Square as citizens made history in a strong vote against austerity. He discusses the dramatic turn of events and what is at stake going forward as the austerity doctrine — and the entire neoliberal project — come under threat.

Lynn Parramore: What's your view of the attitudes of the creditor powers — the European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Commission (EC) — toward Greece?

Jamie Galbraith: What happened on the 26 th of June was that Alexis (Tsipras) came to realize, at long last, that no matter how many concessions he made he wasn't going to get the first one from the creditors. That's something Wolfgang Schäuble had made clear to Yanis (Varoufakis) months before.

But it was hard to persuade the Greek government of this because its members naturally expected, as you would when you're in a negotiation, that if you make a concession the other side will make a concession. That isn't the way this one worked. The Greeks kept making concessions. They'd present a program and the other side would say —as you can read in the press — oh, no, that's not good enough. Do another one. Then they'd complain that the Greeks were not being serious.

What Else Was Buried In That Wisc. Bill That Almost Gutted Gov't Transparency

By Tierney Sneed

A provision in a Wisconsin budget package that would have gutted the state’s open records laws were scrapped after the Gov. Scott Walker (R) and the GOP legislative leadership came under intense scrutiny. However, a number of other consequential policy initiatives tucked into the larger budget bill remain intact. Some provisions appear to double down on Walker’s longstanding war on labor. Others roll back efforts to hold law enforcement accountable through transparency measures.

The governor’s office did not return TPM’s request for comment as to whether Walker, who will make his run for the White House official next week, intended to support or veto the measures. However, in the fallout over the open records law changes, legislators of both parties signaled his office was aware -- if not approving -- of all the provisions in the budget package, known as Motion 999, that passed the Joint Finance Committee on Thursday.

BBC Propaganda War v. Greece Reaches New Low After “No” Vote

By William K. Black

If you want to know why economic policy has gone insane in the UK you simply have to read the work of the BBC’s “Economics editor,” Robert Peston. I showed one example of his failed effort to terrify the Greeks into voting “Yes” in favor of continuing the self-destructive policies that have forced Greece into worse-than-Great Depression levels of unemployment in my most recent column. Peston argued that the Greeks had to submit to the troika’s demands that it make these policies even more economically illiterate and self-destructive because the troika would otherwise ensure that Greece’s economy was “utterly crippled.” As you know, the EU stands for “ever closer union.”

Examining the neonicotinoid threat to honey bees

American Chemical Society

The decline of honey bees has been a major concern globally for the past decade. One of the factors that could be contributing to the decline is the use of insecticides -- specifically neonicotinoids -- that persist in rivers and streams. Researchers now report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters that although sunlight plays an important role in degrading pollutants, its effects on neonicotinoids can diminish dramatically even in shallow water.

Neonicotinoids protect crops from pests, such as whiteflies, beetles and termites. They are a popular tool in a farmer's arsenal, but they end up washing into surface waters and soil. Some research has suggested the insecticides play a role in the disappearance of bees, a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder. But scientists didn't fully understand the fate of neonicotinoids in the environment, an important factor in determining how they might contribute to the disorder. Charles S. Wong and colleagues wanted to investigate sunlight's effects on these insecticides in water.

Paul Krugman: Ending Greece’s Bleeding

Europe dodged a bullet on Sunday. Confounding many predictions, Greek voters strongly supported their government’s rejection of creditor demands. And even the most ardent supporters of European union should be breathing a sigh of relief.

Of course, that’s not the way the creditors would have you see it. Their story, echoed by many in the business press, is that the failure of their attempt to bully Greece into acquiescence was a triumph of irrationality and irresponsibility over sound technocratic advice.

'Shocking...Outrageous': New Revelations Confirm UK Spied on Amnesty International

Tribunal which oversees British intelligence services admits that it mistakenly ruled that GCHQ had not targeted the human rights group for surveillance

by Nadia Prupis, staff writer

Underscoring "gross inadequacies" in the UK intelligence system, the group which oversees British spy services admitted on Wednesday that the government had targeted Amnesty International for surveillance and unlawfully misused its data—a startling turnaround of a ruling made just 10 days earlier, in which the tribunal declared that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had not spied on the world's largest human rights organization.

On June 22, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that two international NGOs, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and the Legal Resources Center in South Africa, had been subjected to illegal surveillance by the GCHQ.

Greece

Steve Randy Waldman

Greece is a remarkable country full of wonderful people, but along dimensions of development and governance, the place is plainly pretty fucked up. It has been fucked up that way for a long time, for decades at least. This has never been secret. Anyone who has visited Athens knows it has far more in common with Bucharest or Istanbul than with orderly Western European capitals. In the run up to Greece’s joining the Euro, everyone who wanted to know knew that Greece’s qualifications to join the Eurozone were, shall we say, ambitious. Mainstream establishment banks “helped” Greece and other Southern European countries with accounting fudges that, while perhaps obscure, were not secret even at the time. Despite protestations when these deals hit the news in 2010 that officials were “shocked, shocked”, they were explicitly blessed by the agency that compiles the statistics on which Eurozone entrance was based in 2002 and Greece’s gaming was extensively reported in 2003 (ht Heidi Moore, both cites). The Euro was and ought to be primarily a political enterprise. In order to sell the common currency to Northern European elites, its architects required Eurozone members to meet strict “convergence criteria” and especially the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact. But in practice, those criteria have always been interpreted flexibly. Most Eurozone members have broken their promises at one point or another, including both Germany and France. The Euro was a unification project, and erred (not unreasonably, I think) on the side of building a big tent.

Feds Awarded Colorado Charter Schools $46 Million because of "Hiring and Firing" Rules

Submitted by Jonas Persson on June 30, 2015 - 10:26am

Between 2010 and 2015, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) awarded Colorado $46 million under the Charter Schools Program. Part of the reason the state landed the competitive grant was that charters are free to hire unlicensed teachers and then fire them at will, documents reviewed by CMD show.

Designed to create and expand “high-quality” charter schools, the quarter-billion-dollar-a-year program has been repeatedly criticized by the watchdogs at the department's Office of the Inspector General for suspected waste and poor financial controls.

Toward a Rational US Strategy (Part 1)

Special Report: Current U.S. foreign policy is driven by neoconservative ideologues and tough-talking “liberal interventionists” who spread chaos and death around the world while failing to serve real American interests. It’s time for a fundamental rethinking, writes former U.S. diplomat William R. Polk.

By William R. Polk

Judaism, Christianity and Islam have proclaimed that humankind faces the ultimate fate of either eternal torment in Hell or everlasting bliss in Heaven, but they differ both in their descriptions of bliss and torment and on the reasons why individuals go to one or the other.

So it has been also with philosophers pondering our earthly lives. Statesmen, strategists and philosophers have pondered and argued about the actions that impel us toward war or peace. Also, like theologians, they have differed from the earliest times on the routes leading to each.

Toward a Rational US Strategy (Part 2)

Special Report: The ultimate madness of today’s U.S. foreign policy is Official Washington’s eager embrace of a new Cold War against Russia with the potential for nuclear annihilation. A rational strategy would seek alternatives to this return to big-power confrontation, writes ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk.

By William R. Polk

In Part One, I dealt at length with America’s relationship with “Lesser” or “Third World” powers because that is where we have been most active since the Second World War. I now turn to America’s postwar rivalry with the other “Great” power, the Soviet Union, and offer some thoughts on our growing relationship with China.

For more than half a century, we and the Soviet Union were locked in the Cold War. During that time we were often on the brink of Hot War. We organized ourselves to fight it if necessary but we also created political alliances, economies and politico-military structures with the announced aim of avoiding war.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

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

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

Argentina Shows Greece There May Be Life After Default

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Martin Guzman

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

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

The Torture of Absolute Power

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

by Robert C. Koehler

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

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

The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pew Research Center

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

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

Was Greece Lured Into “Strategic Deficits”?

Dave Johnson

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

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

Goldman Sachs Doesn’t Have Clean Hands in Greece Crisis

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 30, 2015

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

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

By Mark Joseph Stern

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

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

Slow-motion tragedy for American workers

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

By Jim Morris, Jamie Smith Hopkins, Maryam Jameel

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simon Shuster

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

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

The Greek Debt Crisis and Crashing Markets

by Michael Hudson

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

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

Paul Krugman: Greece Over the Brink

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

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

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

posted by DownWithTyranny

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

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

Even now, the collective madness grows.

By Don Quijones

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

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

The Church of Self-Help

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

By Helaine Olen

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

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

What's Killing the Babies of Vernal, Utah?

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

By Paul Solotaroff | June 22, 2015

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

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

Minnesota Loses the Race to the Bottom – And Wins

Isaiah J. Poole

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

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

Paul Krugman: Hooray for Obamacare

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

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

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

I, Cringely

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

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

Fight to Defend Trans Fats Funded With Dark Money

By Ben Norton

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

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

WageCrushers.org Tracks the Groups against Family-Supporting Jobs

Submitted by PRWatch Editors

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

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

James K. Galbraith: Europe's Malpractice of Greece

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Krugman: Slavery’s Long Shadow

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

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

Getting Our Story Straight: Honestly Framing the Climate Crisis

By Zhiwa Woodbury, Truthout | Op-Ed

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

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

Sneak Attack on Net Neutrality Picks Up Steam in Congress

by Amy Kroin

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

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

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

Military Sexual Assault Reform Blocked Again in Senate

by Emily Crockett, Federal Policy Reporter, RH Reality Check

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

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

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

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

By Marek Fuchs

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

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

Paul Krugman: Voodoo, Jeb! Style

On Monday Jeb Bush — or I guess that’s Jeb!, since he seems to have decided to replace his family name with a punctuation mark — finally made his campaign for the White House official, and gave us a first view of his policy goals. First, he says that if elected he would double America’s rate of economic growth to 4 percent. Second, he would make it possible for every American to lose as much weight as he or she wants, without any need for dieting or exercise.

O.K., he didn’t actually make that second promise. But he might as well have. It would have been just as realistic as promising 4 percent growth, and considerably less irresponsible.

The Sweatshop Feminists

Global elites have appropriated feminist language to justify brutal exploitation and neoliberal development.

by Hester Eisenstein

I have often been asked since the publication of my book what I mean by “feminism seduced.” Who is seducing feminism, and why? It’s a complicated question, with several meanings. I highlight two of them here: the use of cheap female labor by Export Processing Zones (EPZs); and the claim that women, rather than state-led development, are the key to eliminating poverty in the Third World.

tEmployers, governments, and international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have embraced one of the core tenets of contemporary feminism — the right of women to paid work — to justify the employment of women in EPZs in deplorable and often dangerous positions.

Joseph Stiglitz: Sovereign debt needs international supervision

Crisis in Europe is just the latest example of the high costs – for creditors and debtors alike – entailed by the absence of an international rule of law for resolving debt crises

Governments sometimes need to restructure their debts. Otherwise, a country’s economic and political stability may be threatened. But, in the absence of an international rule of law for resolving sovereign defaults, the world pays a higher price than it should for such restructurings. The result is a poorly functioning sovereign-debt market, marked by unnecessary strife and costly delays in addressing problems when they arise.

We are reminded of this time and again. In Argentina, the authorities’ battles with a small number of “investors” (so-called vulture funds) jeopardised an entire debt restructuring agreed to – voluntarily – by an overwhelming majority of the country’s creditors. In Greece, most of the “rescue” funds in the temporary “assistance” programmes are allocated for payments to existing creditors, while the country is forced into austerity policies that have contributed mightily to a 25% decline in GDP and have left its population worse off. In Ukraine, the potential political ramifications of sovereign-debt distress are enormous.

The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe

In the following excerpt from Out of Sight, the history of US corporate pollution and toxic dumping is recounted.

By Erik Loomis, The New Press | Book Excerpt

From the moment American corporations were born in the late eighteenth century, they saw the natural world as a dumping ground. Within a few years of an industry arriving on a waterway, fish runs went extinct and waterways became disgusting dumps of foul-smelling water that made people sick. The air was no better: smoke coated nearby buildings, killed vegetation, and wiped out bird populations. Although the courts favored this behavior in nineteenth-century decisions, some citizens resisted. As early as the 1870s, residents of Newark, New Jersey, attempted to prevent a paper mill from dumping waste into the Passaic River, just upstream. In the early twentieth century, citizens in Pittsburgh and St. Louis demanded that corporations clean up their smokestacks. They knew that all this smoke and smog made them sick. Chicago passed the nation's first serious smoke law in 1881, giving citizens some legal rights to classify smoke a nuisance and authorizing a municipal inspection agency against smoke violations. While groundbreaking, it was also almost totally unenforced in an era of corporate domination of politics and society. The federal government was not ready to act.

Treasury Reveals What JPMorgan Was Really Doing With London Whale Trades

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR), the body created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to make sure another 2008 epic crash never happened again, quietly released a report last week which not only suggests another 2008-style crash is possible but that regulators will likely be blindsided again.

The report, written by Jill Cetina, John McDonough, and Sriram Rajan, reveals that the big Wall Street banks are ginning up their capital measures by engaging in opaque and potentially dangerous “capital relief trades.”

Everything you need to know about Jeb Bush’s dangerous education agenda

The presumptive GOP frontrunner thinks privatization is a cure-all. In truth, that idea couldn't be more dangerous

Matthew Pulver

“There’s nothing else as large in all of society. Not the military—nothing—is bigger.”

That’s how Randy Best, Jeb Bush’s business partner, sees public education, as an untapped market where untold billions are to be made when kids and their families become educational customers. Touting his impressive assault on public education while Florida governor in yesterday’s announcement of his 2016 candidacy, Bush may become the loudest proponent yet of turning public education into a for-profit enterprise.

After Cutting Taxes On The Rich, Kansas Will Raise Taxes On The Poor To Pay For It

by Alan Pyke

Kansas lawmakers concluded the longest legislative session in state history Friday night by approving a slate of regressive tax hikes that will balance the state’s budget by targeting low-income workers and their families.

More than half of the $384 million in new revenue expected from the tax hike will come from cigarette taxes and sales taxes, two policies described as “regressive” because they fall more heavily on lower-income taxpayers than on the wealthy. Even though everyone who shops will pay the new 6.5 percent sales tax rate – up from 6.15 percent in previous years, and the 8th-highest of any state according to the Tax Foundation – the move is regressive because poorer shoppers already have to stretch each dollar farther than their more flush counterparts.

Robert Reich: Elites Are Waging a War on Public Education

'What we need to do is move toward a system of free public higher education,' he says.

By Danny Feingold

It’s no secret that former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich has some misgivings about the direction of the American economy. But the prolific writer, radio commentator and longtime University of California, Berkeley professor isn’t thrilled about how we are educating our kids, either.

As part of a new project with the activist group MoveOn.org, Reich recently released a video that described our education system as “squashing passion for learning, eroding the love of teaching and grinding up generations of young people.” The critique is accompanied by a set of proposals to reinvent American education – one of 10 planks in a broader agenda titled “10 Ideas to Save the Economy.”

Love and money: How low-income dads really provide

Study documents how noncustodial fathers support children through gifts, not cash

Johns Hopkins University

Low-income fathers who might be labeled "deadbeat dads" often spend as much on their children as parents in formal child-support arrangements, but they choose to give goods like food and clothing rather than cash, a Johns Hopkins-led study found.

In the first examination of the magnitude of in-kind child support, published this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, the team found many disadvantaged noncustodial fathers spend an average of $60 a month on in-kind provisions, while dads paying formal child support spend about $38 a month.

Neoliberalism poisons everything: How free market mania threatens education — and democracy

Reducing everything—including people—to markets makes democracy impossible, UC Berkeley's Wendy Brown tells Salon

Elias Isquith

Among lefties today, there may be no more toxic and discrediting a label than “neoliberal.” To be called a neoliberal is, generally, to be associated with the worst of capitalism’s excesses — Wall Street greed, union-busting, deregulation, standardized testing, wage theft, privatization, exploitation and so on. In some ways, it’s become a catch-all term of abuse for those who are seen as little more than lackeys for the 1 percent and multinational corporations.

For the purposes of political combat, that’s fair enough. In truth, though, neoliberalism isn’t just another word for “corrupt” or “hyper-capitalist”; it’s a specific political ideology, one that’s much younger than capitalism — and one that plenty of people who are basically pro-capitalism oppose. What’s more, if those of us who oppose neoliberalism misinterpret it as simply another word for capitalism, we make the job of fighting it even more difficult. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a capitalist, after all. But a neoliberal, he most certainly was not.

Paul Krugman: Democrats Being Democrats

On Friday, House Democrats shocked almost everyone by rejecting key provisions needed to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement the White House wants but much of the party doesn’t. On Saturday Hillary Clinton formally began her campaign for president, and surprised most observers with an unapologetically liberal and populist speech.

These are, of course, related events. The Democratic Party is becoming more assertive about its traditional values, a point driven home by Mrs. Clinton’s decision to speak on Roosevelt Island. You could say that Democrats are moving left. But the story is more complicated and interesting than this simple statement can convey.

Chris Hedges: America's Addiction to Violence—From War to Vigilante Mobs—Is A Conservative Legacy

This may help to explain why so little of it has been used against state authority.

The following is an excerpt from Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt by Chris Hedges, (Nation Books, 2015):

My father and most of my uncles fought in World War II. One uncle was severely maimed, physically and psychologically, in the South Pacific and drank himself to death. I was in Central America in the 1980s during the proxy wars waged by Washington. I accompanied a Marine Corps battalion as it battled Iraqi troops into Kuwait during the first Gulf War. My family history intersects with the persistent patterns of violence that are a constant in American life, both at home and abroad. Any rebellion must contend with this endemic American violence, especially vigilante violence, as well as the sickness of the gun culture that is its natural expression. As it has done throughout American history, the state, under siege, will turn to extrajudicial groups of armed thugs to repress populist movements. Radical change in America is paid for with blood.

There are some 310 million firearms in the United States, including 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles, and 86 million shotguns. There is no reliable data on the number of military-style assault weapons in private hands, but the working estimate is about 1.5 million. The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world—an average of 89 per 100 people, according to the 2007 Small Arms Survey. By comparison, Canada has 31 per 100 people. Canada usually sees under 200 gun-related homicides a year. Our addiction to violence and bloodletting—which will continue to grow—marks a nation in terminal decline.

The Sunday Times’ Snowden Story is Journalism at its Worst — and Filled with Falsehoods

By Glenn Greenwald

Western journalists claim that the big lesson they learned from their key role in selling the Iraq War to the public is that it’s hideous, corrupt and often dangerous journalism to give anonymity to government officials to let them propagandize the public, then uncritically accept those anonymously voiced claims as Truth. But they’ve learned no such lesson. That tactic continues to be the staple of how major U.S. and British media outlets “report,” especially in the national security area. And journalists who read such reports continue to treat self-serving decrees by unnamed, unseen officials — laundered through their media — as gospel, no matter how dubious are the claims or factually false is the reporting.

The Scariest Trade Deal Nobody's Talking About Just Suffered a Big Leak

By David Dayen

The Obama administration’s desire for “fast track” trade authority is not limited to passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In fact, that may be the least important of three deals currently under negotiation by the U.S. Trade Representative. The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would bind the two biggest economies in the world, the United States and the European Union. And the largest agreement is also the least heralded: the 51-nation Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks brought this agreement into the spotlight by releasing 17 key TiSA-related documents, including 11 full chapters under negotiation. Though the outline for this agreement has been in place for nearly a year, these documents were supposed to remain classified for five years after being signed, an example of the secrecy surrounding the agreement, which outstrips even the TPP.

Arne Duncan’s Patently False Promise to Forgive Student Debts at For-Profit Schools

The U.S. government has funneled hundreds of billions of dollars into corporate accounts by bankrolling for-profit schools that systematically fleece their mostly low income and minority students. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan promises to forgive the student loans of those who have been defrauded. Unfortunately, Duncan is lying through his teeth

by Glen Ford

Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Secretary of Education, claims his department is prepared to forgive the debts of thousands of students who attended the Corinthian Colleges, the for-profit rip-off conglomerate that filed for bankruptcy last month. Duncan chose his words carefully, claiming that the federal government is putting together a process that would forgive the loans of any student who can show that she had been defrauded by any college – Coriinthian or some other school.

Duncan is, of course, lying. His own department estimates it would cost as much as $3.5 billion to provide debt relief to the 350,000 students that have had the misfortune to attend Corinthian schools over the past five years. And Corinthian wasn’t the top dog in the for-profit education scam. Phoenix University, owned by the huge Apollo chain of con artists, had an enrollment of 600,000 five years ago, and still processes the checks of a quarter million victims a year. Forgiving the debts of all the students that have been victimized by the for-profit college industry would cost many tens of billions of dollars – far more than what’s left of the nation’s welfare program. We know that Arne Duncan was making no such commitment on behalf of an administration that loves austerity just as much as the Republicans do.

Plutocrats torched the economy: Our new Gilded Age & the hollowing out of America’s middle class

Tackling inequality isn't just a moral necessity -- it's an economic one, author-expert David Madland tells Salon

Elias Isquith

You may recall how in 2013 — and then again in 2015 — President Obama tried to give his economic vision a snazzy name, something to compete with “trickle-down economics” in terms of memorability and pith. What he came up with, and has stuck with since, is “middle-out economics,” or sometimes “middle-class economics,” which is supposed to communicate his and the Democratic Party’s commitment to seeing the middle class — and not the 1 percent — as the true fount of economic growth.

But although Obama and other Democrats are evidently happy enough with the branding, the actual policy approach that defines a middle-out economics has remained somewhat fuzzy. And that’s where “Hollowed Out: Why the Economy Doesn’t Work without a Strong Middle Class,” the new book from the Center for American Progress’s David Madland, steps in. While politicians’ focus on the middle class can sometimes feel like empty pandering, Madland’s book makes a strong and clear argument that an economy geared around the middle class is not only more in keeping with democratic and liberal norms, but it’s simply better economics, too.

Increased carbon dioxide levels in air restrict plants' ability to absorb nutrients

University of Gothenburg

The rapidly rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affect plants' absorption of nitrogen, which is the nutrient that restricts crop growth in most terrestrial ecosystems. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have now revealed that the concentration of nitrogen in plants' tissue is lower in air with high levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of whether or not the plants' growth is stimulated. The study has been published in the journal Global Change Biology.

Researcher Johan Uddling has been working with Swedish and international colleagues to compile data on how raised levels of carbon dioxide impact on plant growth and nitrogen absorption.

Senators Vote To Repeal Clean Water Rule That Protects Millions Of Miles Of Streams

by Natasha Geiling

Congressional Republicans are one step closer to blocking the Obama administration’s attempt to clarify the EPA’s regulatory powers under the Clean Water Act.

On Wednesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee voted 11-9 to pass a bill that would effectively repeal the administration’s recently announced regulations for water pollution. The vote was split cleanly among party lines, with only Republicans supporting it.

Kansas Governor Signs Bill That Could Defund State’s Entire Judiciary

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed into law this week a judicial budgeting bill that could plunge the state into a constitutional crisis. The bill, which provides funding for the Kansas courts over the next two years, contains a non-severability clause that strips the court of its entire budget if any Kansas court strikes down a 2014 law – currently the subject of a lawsuit — that removed the Kansas Supreme Court’s administrative authority over lower courts.

“Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, and a significant number of the members of the Kansas Legislature have, by the passage of this law, demonstrated their reckless disregard for the rule of law and their willful ignorance of Kansas' Constitution,” said Pedro Irigonegaray, a Kansas lawyer involved in the lawsuit. “Shame on them for creating an unjustifiable, unnecessary and costly constitutional crisis.”

Paul Krugman: Seriously Bad Ideas

Oxford, Britain — One thing we’ve learned in the years since the financial crisis is that seriously bad ideas — by which I mean bad ideas that appeal to the prejudices of Very Serious People — have remarkable staying power. No matter how much contrary evidence comes in, no matter how often and how badly predictions based on those ideas are proved wrong, the bad ideas just keep coming back. And they retain the power to warp policy.

What makes something qualify as a seriously bad idea? In general, to sound serious it must invoke big causes to explain big events — technical matters, like the troubles caused by sharing a currency without a common budget, don’t make the cut. It must also absolve corporate interests and the wealthy from responsibility for what went wrong, and call for hard choices and sacrifice on the part of the little people.

US Austerity Politics: One State's Attempt to Destroy Democracy and the Environment

By Laura Gottesdiener and Eduardo García, TomDispatch | Report

Something is rotten in the state of Michigan.

One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan’s austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder’s appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself -- all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

If you’re thinking, "Who cares?" since what happens in Michigan stays in Michigan, think again. The state’s aggressive balance-the-books style of governance has already spread beyond its borders. In January, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed bankruptcy lawyer and former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to be a “legal adviser” to Atlantic City. The Detroit Free Press described the move as “a state takeover similar to Gov. Rick Snyder's state intervention in the Motor City.”

Analysis Shows European Commission's 'Improved' Corporate Sovereignty Model Would Actually Make Things Much Worse

from the institutionalized-regulatory-chill dept

by Glyn Moody

Last year, the controversy around corporate sovereignty was such that the European Commission felt obliged to slam the brakes on this particular part of the TAFTA/TTIP negotiations in order to try to defuse the situation. The ostensible reason for that unexpected pause was to hold a public consultation on the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) mechanism. It turned out to be of a very limited kind. Rather than asking whether people wanted corporate tribunals passing judgment on their laws and regulations, the European Commission instead presented the ISDS chapter of another agreement, that with Canada, and posed some rather technical questions about the subtle changes it incorporated.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is nominally finished, and is currently undergoing what is known as "legal scrubbing", during which it is checked and polished for final ratification by Canada and the EU, although that's looking much more problematic now than it did a year ago. In the consultation, CETA's ISDS chapter was offered as a kind of template for TAFTA/TTIP. The Commission's argument was that it incorporated many improvements over traditional corporate sovereignty chapters -- which even the EU admitted were flawed -- and could be tweaked further to produce an even better solution for the US-EU negotiations.

Dean Baker: The Trade Deficit and the Weak Job Market

It is often said that the economy is too simple for economists to understand. This is clearly the story with the continuing weakness of the job market and the trade deficit. We are still down more than 3 million jobs from our trend level even with May's strong growth. It should be pretty obvious that losing more than $500 billion a year in demand (at 3.0 percent of GDP) to the trade deficit would be a serious drag on the economy and growth. But for some reason, economists insist on looking elsewhere for the problem.

The basic story should be familiar to anyone who has suffered through an intro economics course. There are four basic sources of demand in the economy: consumption, investment, government spending and net exports. "Net exports" refers to the excess of exports over imports. If we export more than we import so that net exports are positive, then they add to demand in the economy. This means that in addition to the demand we generate domestically, trade is increasing demand in the economy.

Austerity Isn’t Irrational

In Greece and elsewhere, austerity is nothing more than capitalists imposing their class interests.

by John Milios

After the outbreak of the 2008 global economic crisis, extreme austerity policies prevailed in many parts of the developed capitalist world, especially in the European Union (EU) and the eurozone. Austerity has been criticized as an irrational policy, which further deepens the economic crisis by creating a vicious cycle of falling effective demand, recession, and over-indebtedness. However, these criticisms can hardly explain why this “irrational” or “wrong” policy persists, despite its “failures.”

In reality, economic crises express themselves not only in a lack of effective demand, but above all in a reduction of profitability of the capitalist class. Austerity constitutes a strategy for raising capital’s profit rate.

CNN Is Now Selling Advertorial Programming: News You Can't Trust

Mark Karlin

You may not know that sometimes the "news" that you are reading in a newspaper, online, or watching on television is not really "objective" news at all: it's paid-corporate PR that is known as native advertising.

The reason that you might not realize that you are reading an article or whole section that is nothing more than an ad disguised as news is that often the disclaimers that "this content is paid for" (or some variation in wording) are in such small type, you can hardly see them. Add that to the fact that regular news consumers are now often reading information at a dizzying pace so that even if there were a large disclaimer, it might go unnoticed by readers surfing through news sources.

Killing tenure is academia’s point of no return

After busting unions, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has his sights on busting the professoriate

by Mark LeVine

Under Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin has become one of the great laboratories of conservative governance, with a record of union-busting, abortion-restricting, voter-ID-enacting policies that are at odds with the state’s tradition of progressivism. Unlike neighboring Minnesota, which has remained far more liberal — and whose economy is doing far better than Wisconsin’s — the Badger State has seen its Republican establishment increasingly entrenched by enacting policies of fear, resentment and suspicion of the sort that were so well described in Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

Given this record, it’s not surprising that the Republican-controlled legislature should go after universities, especially with the state’s ongoing budget woes necessitating steep cuts to education. And now the state’s Joint Finance Committee has voted 12-4 to eliminate tenure protections from the state statute, add limits to faculty participation in shared governance and make it easier to fire tenured faculty in good standing for ill-defined reasons of “program modification” or “redirection” rather than the previous requirement of financial emergency (which is already being abused to get rid of entire academic units and their professors across the country). Predictably, if frighteningly, the response of the University of Wisconsin system president and chancellors of the most important campuses has been weak-kneed and not at all comforting for the rank-and-file faculty who need the support of their senior administrators if the fight to protect tenure is to have a chance.

Paul Krugman: Fighting the Derp

When it comes to economics — and other subjects, but I’ll focus on what I know best — we live in an age of derp and cheap cynicism. And there are powerful forces behind both tendencies. But those forces can be fought, and the place to start fighting is within yourself.

What am I talking about here? “Derp” is a term borrowed from the cartoon “South Park” that has achieved wide currency among people I talk to, because it’s useful shorthand for an all-too-obvious feature of the modern intellectual landscape: people who keep saying the same thing no matter how much evidence accumulates that it’s completely wrong.

The Complete History of Monsanto, “The World’s Most Evil Corporation”

By E Hanzai
Global Research, May 20, 2015

Published by GR in June 2014

Of all the mega-corps running amok, Monsanto has consistently outperformed its rivals, earning the crown as “most evil corporation on Earth!” Not content to simply rest upon its throne of destruction, it remains focused on newer, more scientifically innovative ways to harm the planet and its people.

1901: The company is founded by John Francis Queeny, a member of the Knights of Malta, a thirty year pharmaceutical veteran married to Olga Mendez Monsanto, for which Monsanto Chemical Works is named. The company’s first product is chemical saccharin, sold to Coca-Cola as an artificial sweetener.

Even then, the government knew saccharin was poisonous and sued to stop its manufacture but lost in court, thus opening the Monsanto Pandora’s Box to begin poisoning the world through the soft drink.

Cold War II to McCarthyism II

Exclusive: With Cold War II in full swing, the New York Times is dusting off what might be called McCarthyism II, the suggestion that anyone who doesn’t get in line with U.S. propaganda must be working for Moscow, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the U.S. government’s plunge into Cold War II would bring back the one-sided propaganda themes that dominated Cold War I, but it’s still unsettling to see how quickly the major U.S. news media has returned to the old ways, especially the New York Times, which has emerged as Official Washington’s propaganda vehicle of choice.

What has been most striking in the behavior of the Times and most other U.S. mainstream media outlets is their utter lack of self-awareness, for instance, accusing Russia of engaging in propaganda and alliance-building that are a pale shadow of what the U.S. government routinely does. Yet, the Times and the rest of the MSM act as if these actions are unique to Moscow.

The cheapest way to end homelessness is ridiculously simple, according to the largest-ever US study

Drake Baer

The Economic Roundtable just came out with the largest study on homelessness in American history.

And it turns out the best way to combat homelessness is to provide homes.

The study's focus was on Santa Clara County, California, home to the extreme wealth of Silicon Valley and the highest percentage of homelessness in the entire US.

Twilight of the Professors

by Michael Schwalbe

Twenty-eight years ago Russell Jacoby argued in The Last Intellectuals that the post-WWII expansion of higher education in the U.S. absorbed a generation of radicals who opted to become professors rather than freelance intellectual troublemakers. The constraints and rewards of academic life, according to Jacoby, effectively depoliticized many professors of leftist inclinations. Instead of writing in the common tongue for the educated public, they were carrot and sticked into writing in jargon for tiny academic audiences. As a result, their political force was largely spent in the pursuit of academic careers.

Jacoby acknowledges that universities gave refuge to dissident thinkers who had few other ways to make a decent living. He also grants that careerism did not make it impossible to publish radical work or to teach students to think critically about capitalist society. The problem is that the demands of academic careers made it harder to reach the heights achieved by public intellectuals of the previous generation. We thus ended up with, to paraphrase Jacoby, a thousand leftist sociologists but no C. Wright Mills.

How 1970s deodorant is still doing harm

By Laurence Knight

Fluorine is an evil gas. And it is also used to manufacture a string of other artificial gases, some of which nearly left mankind exposed to burning ultraviolet light - and are even now warming the planet.

"Fluorine is the tyrannosaurus rex of the periodic table," says chemistry professor Andrea Sella. "It will react spontaneously with every other element except for helium, neon and argon."

If you ever happen to lay eyes on pure, elemental fluorine, it looks fairly innocuous - a pale yellow gas - but in truth it is so dangerous that Sella's department at University College London does not even keep it in stock.

Why the New NSA Restrictions Won’t Harm National Security

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies will have to appeal to a special court on a case-by-case basis for phone data, but it’s not likely to harm security.

By David Talbot

The National Security Agency lost its authority to grab the phone records of millions of Americans following this week’s change in legislation enacted after 9/11. But there is no evidence that the data produced actionable intelligence during the 13 years the government had access to it anyway.

And besides, the NSA is still expanding its arsenal of Internet surveillance tools on American soil. The New York Times reported Wednesday that the Obama administration is allowing the NSA to tap Internet cables in U.S. territory to look for data about computer intrusions that are coming from overseas, and that the agency does not need a warrant to do so.

Why good people do bad things

Anticipating temptation may improve ethical behavior, study finds

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Honest behavior is much like sticking to a diet. When facing an ethical dilemma, being aware of the temptation before it happens and thinking about the long-term consequences of misbehaving could help more people do the right thing, according to a new study.

The study, "Anticipating and Resisting the Temptation to Behave Unethically," by University of Chicago Booth School of Business Behavioral Science and Marketing Professor Ayelet Fishbach and Rutgers Business School Assistant Professor Oliver J. Sheldon, was recently published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. It is the first study to test how the two separate factors of identifying an ethical conflict and preemptively exercising self-control interact in shaping ethical decision-making.

'The Sky Remains Aloft': Dire Minimum Wage Predictions Proved Wrong

Local business success stories show "there's no reason for anyone to treat these kinds of threats as credible any longer"

by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

One year after Seattle's mayor signed the nation's first citywide $15 minimum wage into law, dire predictions of economic collapse have not come to pass.

In fact, according to Working Washington—the group that launched the fast food strikes that sparked the fight for $15 in Seattle and then helped lead the victorious campaign—many of the very same business owners and others who predicted such devastation "are now hiring and even expanding their business operations in the city."

WikiLeaks releases documents related to controversial US trade pact

Document dump regarding Trade in Services Agreement comes day after organization put $100,000 bounty on documents from series of US trade treaties

Sam Thielman in New York and Phillip Inman in London

WikiLeaks on Wednesday released 17 different documents related to the Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa), a controversial pact currently being hashed out between the US and 23 other countries – most of them in Europe and South America.

The document dump comes at a tense moment in the negotiations over a series of trade deals. President Barack Obama has clashed with his own party over the deals as critics have worried about the impact on jobs and civil liberties.

The 1 percent’s “centrist” propaganda war: Why Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren are so threatening to the establishment

Even as America gets younger and more progressive, those in power are insisting that Democrats have gone too far

Conor Lynch

After last Novembers elections, the GOP had a bit of a revelation. Once they had gained control of the congress, bipartisanship suddenly became the mature and necessary thing to do. The people spoke, after all, and had given the go ahead for Republican’s to push through their ideology, and it was now the responsibility of the Democrats to play along. “Serious adults are in charge here and we intend to make progress,” said Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, with an air of superiority. Yes, this is the same fellow who made the following remark a few years back: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” It is also the same party that has fought bitterly against nearly every policy that President Obama has advocated, like health care reform, the economic stimulus, immigration reform, etc.

Paul Krugman: Lone Star Stumble

Remember the Texas economic miracle? In 2012, it was one of the three main arguments from then-Gov. Rick Perry about why he should be president, along with his strong support from the religious right and something else I can’t remember (sorry, couldn’t help myself). More broadly, conservatives have long held Texas up as a supposed demonstration that low taxes on the rich and harsh treatment of the poor are the keys to prosperity.

So it’s interesting to note that Texas is looking a lot less miraculous lately than it used to. To be fair, we’re talking about a modest stumble, not a collapse. Still, events in Texas and other states — notably Kansas and California — are providing yet another object demonstration that the tax-cut obsession that dominates the modern Republican Party is all wrong.

Global Capitalist Crisis and the North American Free Trade Agreement: Reflections 21 Years On

By William I. Robinson, Truthout | News Analysis

Recent US Senate approval won by President Obama for "fast-track" negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal has thrust "free trade" and capitalist globalization again into the headlines. Often referred to as "NAFTA on steroids," the TPP is but the latest in more than two decades of "free trade" agreements that have helped open up the world to transnational corporate plunder.

If we want to understand such deals we would do well to reflect on the first of these, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which went into effect in January 1994. We cannot understand NAFTA without understanding the larger picture of which NAFTA and the TPP form part: the new system of global capitalism and the crisis of that system.

Jamie Dimon’s Legacy: GAO — Americans Face Stark Retirement Prospects

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 3, 2015

The General Accountability Office (GAO) released a sobering study yesterday that looks at how much 55-64 year olds have been able to set aside for retirement. The short answer is: excruciatingly too little. Why that is happening can best be summed up by a headline out this morning at Bloomberg News: Jamie Dimon Becomes Billionaire Ushering in Era of the Megabank.

The GAO study found the following: Approximately 55 percent of households age 55-64 in America have less than $25,000 in retirement savings, including 41 percent who have zero. Most of the households in this age group have some other resources or benefits from a Defined Benefit plan, but 27 percent of this age group have neither retirement savings nor a Defined Benefit plan. For the 59 percent of households age 55-64 with some retirement savings, the GAO study estimates that the median amount saved is about $104,000. While about 15 percent of these households have retirement savings amounts over $500,000, 11 percent have retirement savings below $10,000 and 24 percent have savings of less than $25,000.

Bee Crisis: More Than 40 Percent of Honey Bee Colonies Lost

By Charity Schmidt, PR Watch | Report

A dangerous new pattern in the bee crisis is alarming researchers and advocates. For the first time ever, beekeepers are losing more bee colonies during summer months than the cold winter months.

Beekeepers have reported losing more than 40 percent of their honey bee colonies over the last year, according to a recently released survey.

WikiLeaks Strikes Again: Leaked TISA Docs Expose Corporate Plan For Reshaping Global Economy

Leaked Docs reveal that little-known corporate treaty poised to privatize and deregulate public services across globe

by Sarah Lazare, staff writer

An enormous corporate-friendly treaty that many people haven't heard of was thrust into the public limelight Wednesday when famed publisher of government and corporate secrets, WikiLeaks, released 17 documents from closed-door negotiations between countries that together comprise two-thirds of the word's economy.

Analysts warn that preliminary review shows that the pact, known as the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), is aimed at further privatizing and deregulating vital services, from transportation to healthcare, with a potentially devastating impact for people of the countries involved in the deal, and the world more broadly.

Three suicides linked to blanket suspension of Social Security benefits for 900 in Kentucky

David Edwards

Kentucky attorney Ned Pillersdorf this week linked three suicides to the Social Security Administration’s decision to suspend benefits for 900 people without giving them a hearing.

Last week, the Social Security Administration confirmed that it had suspended benefits for 900 people after congressional investigators accused Kentucky attorney Eric C. Conn and David B. Daugherty, a former SSA judge, of fraud in 1,500 cases.

Memo to Readers: If You Want to Beat Big Finance, You Need to be Able to Take the Fight to Their Terrain

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Yves Smith

During the heyday of the financial blogosphere, even when the site’s following was much smaller than it is now, readers were keenly interested in getting to the bottom of hidden sources of risk, chicanery, and other “man behind the curtain” aspects of the operation of finance.

These issues are even more important now. We are 35 years into a finance-led counterrevolution where conservative interests are rolling back not just the New Deal, but are also pushing as far as they can in reducing the political and economic rights of laborers. And “laborers” is anyone who lives off earned income and does not have his pay directly or indirectly tied to the use of capital.

New Data Offer First Infuriating Glimpse At How The Richest 0.001 Percent Pay Income Taxes

by Alan Pyke

Tax day doesn’t sting much if you live at the gilded edge, according to new data on how the top one-hundredth of one percent and the top one-thousandth of a percent of all filers pay their income taxes. People who make tens of millions of dollars enjoyed falling income tax rates and ballooning wealth for a decade as middle-class taxpayers floundered.

The new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data helps illustrate the logic behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) call for radically reshaping the American income tax system to create pricey new brackets for extremely high earners. The numbers provide a deeper look inside the highest income echelon, breaking out data on income tax rates and total yearly earnings in previously unpublished detail. In the last year of the Bush tax cuts, there were well over a thousand people who reported more than $60 million in earnings but paid federal income tax rates far below 20 percent.

Zombie Patriot Act Will Keep U.S. Spying—Even if the Original Dies

Forget the White House’s doomsday talk about American intelligence going blind. Thanks to backdoor provisions and alternate collection schemes, U.S. spies will keep on snooping.

Shane Harris

Forget the White House’s doomsday talk about American intelligence going blind. Thanks to backdoor provisions and alternate collection schemes, U.S. spies will keep on snooping.

That argument is highly debatable—at least, in the short term. Not only does the U.S. government have all sorts of other ways to collect the same kind of intelligence outlined in the Patriot Act, but there’s also a little-noticed back door in the act that allows U.S. spy agencies to gather information in pretty much the same ways they did before.

The FBI is operating a small air force to spy on Americans

Jack Gillum, Eileen Sullivan and Eric Tucker, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes' surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge's approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.

Half of All American Families Are Staring at Financial Catastrophe

And they’re turning to payday loans and other lenders of last resort when crises occur.

Kriston Capps

The most frightening finding in the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2014 concerns a matter of $400. Four-hundred bucks. Twenty twenties. Four Benjamins.

Or just enough to crush half of all American households.

Paul Krugman: That 1914 Feeling

U.S. officials are generally cautious about intervening in European policy debates. The European Union is, after all, an economic superpower in its own right — far too big and rich for America to have much direct influence — led by sophisticated people who should be able to manage their own affairs. So it’s startling to learn that Jacob Lew, the Treasury secretary, recently warned Europeans that they had better settle the Greek situation soon, lest there be a destructive “accident.”

But I understand why Mr. Lew said what he did. A forced Greek exit from the euro would create huge economic and political risks, yet Europe seems to be sleepwalking toward that outcome. So Mr. Lew was doing his best to deliver a wakeup call.