Tag: Politics

Apr 19 2015

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: Venezuela – A”Threat” to US Imperialism by Geminijen

In Memory of Eduardo Galeano, 1940-2015.

At the 2009 Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy of Galeano’s book Open Veins of Latin America which details the United State’s military aggression, economic exploitation and political coups or “regime changes” in Latin America.

In the 2012 Summit of the Americas, Obama’s reception by Latin American nations was noticeably cool – primarily because the United States refused to end its 50 year boycott of Cuba.

So at the 2015 Summit of the Americas, Obama walked in with a smile on his face and a proposal for a rapprochement with Cuba in one hand, and, in the other, his newly minted Executive Order 2015 which placed sanctions for human rights abuses on several  Venezuelan military leaders and  government officials. Under his emergency powers, Obama declared Venezuela a “threat to the United State’s national security.”

What was Obama thinking? Did he think people wouldn’t notice the bait and switch as he tried to appease Cuba and the Latin American nations while at the same time he applied the same old cold war tactics to isolate Venezuela as the more recent example of a Latin American country standing up to US imperialism? (To make matters worse, these particular military officers and judicial officials are those that many Bolivarians see as the most active in preventing a highly publicized attempt to destabilize the Venezuela government in February 2014 to set it up for another coup.)

The unanimous demand from the Latin American nations to repeal the sanctions against Venezuela show how disconnected Obama and the United States government are from changes in the balance of power in the Americas in the last decade. This includes  the failure of the United States to maintain its neoliberal hegemony and the rise of a left liberal block of nations (i.e., Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil among others).

Admittedly, much of the loss of US hegemony in Latin America is due to the United States over-extending itself in brutal and unsuccessful oil wars in the Middle East and Asia, but much of the impetus of this new left leaning block is due to the influence of the Bolivarian “21st century socialist revolution” of Venezuela. Beginning with the election of Hugo Chavez in the late 1990s and the drafting of a “socialist” constitution, Venezuela has been instrumental in establishing several inter-regional support groups such as ALBA, UNISUR and CELAC which exclude the United States.  The new left liberal block of nations has also benefited by Venezuela’s generous sharing of its oil wealth with its neighbors.

So even though most will scoff at the idea that Venezuela is a real military threat to the United States (given the size and nuclear capability and the fact that Venezuela recently reduced its military by an unheard of 34%), the spread of an ideology that challenges the United States’ right to exploit and impoverish its southern neighbors could be sufficient reason to consider Venezuela a “threat” to United States’ ideology of imperialism; thus causing the US to resort to its age old practice of “regime change.”

Seems Like We’ve Heard This Tune Before

For the past 150 years, the United States has treated Latin American as its own personal backyard to exploit.  Most of the exploitation has been accomplished through economic dominance and the support of right-wing dictatorships.  However, if we look at those countries that experienced actual “regime changes” involving military coups,  we can count, just since World War II,  a minimum of 11 countries (and I’m sure I’ve missed some) where the United States was either directly or indirectly involved with military regime changes in the Americas– either to protect specific multinational corporate interests or change regimes that promoted an ideology that was more generally in conflict with Capitalist interests (communism/socialism, nationalism, liberation theology): Guatemala 1954, Cuba1959, The Dominican Republic – 1961, Brazil – 1964, Chile – 1970-73, Argentina – 1976, Nicaragua – 1981-90, Panama 1989, Venezuela 2002, Haiti – 2004, and Honduras – 2009.

To learn some more about a recently published secret report that documents the United States plans for achieving regime change in Venezuela follow the discussion below …

Apr 19 2015

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: House Homeland Security Committee Chair Rep. Michael McCaul(R-TX); and  Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO).

The roundtable guests are: ABC News’ Cokie Roberts; ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd;  Republican strategist Ana Navarro; and ESPN senior writer LZ Granderson.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are:  Sen. Marco Rubio R-FL); former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD); and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).

His panel guests are: Dana Milbank, Washington Post; David Catanese, U.S. News & World Report; April Ryan, American Urban Radio Networks; CBS News Political Director John Dickerson and CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on Sunday’s “MTP” are: Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA); Gov. John Kasich (R-OH); and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

The roundtable guests are: David Axelrod, Director of University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics; Steve Schmidt, Republican Strategist; Helene Cooper, The New York Times and Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post.

State of the Union: Jim Sciutto is the week’s host. His guests are: Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN); Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD); former Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA); and Ali Rezaian, brother of American journalist Jason Rezaian who is imprisoned in Iran.

His panel guests are CNN’s Sara Murray and Peter Baker of the New York Times.

Apr 18 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: Congress cannot be taken seriously on cybersecurity

None of the members of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee have encrypted websites nor use secure emails. So how can we trust them with our privacy?

Members of Congress – most of whom can’t secure their own websites, and some of whom don’t even use email – are trying to force a dangerous “cybersecurity” bill down the public’s throat. Everyone’s privacy is in the hands of people who, by all indications, have no idea what they’re talking about.

Leaders are expected to bring its much-maligned series of “cybersecurity” bills to the floor sometime in the next couple weeks – bills that we know will do little to help cybersecurity but a lot to ]help intelligence agencies like the NSA vacuum up http://www.theguardian.com/com… even more of Americans’ personal information. The bills’ authors deny that privacy is even an issue, but why we’re trusting Congress at all on this legislation, given their lack of basic knowledge on the subject, is the question everyone should be asking.

New York Times Editorial Board: Rules to Make Retirement Investing Safer

In a giant step forward for investor protection, the Department of Labor proposed new rules this week to ensure that financial advisers act solely in their clients’ best interests when giving advice and selling products for retirement accounts. The new standard of fiduciary duty would bar stockbrokers, insurance agents and other financial professionals from increasing their pay by steering clients into high-cost products and strategies when comparable lower-cost ones are available.

For Labor Department officials, the challenge now is to see the proposal through the rest of the rule-making process. The United States Chamber of Commerce, which has opposed the fiduciary standard, has already said it plans to ask for an extension of the 75-day comment period. Other delay tactics are all but certain. [..]

Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and his team deserve praise for a well-crafted proposal. Now they need to carefully vet the public comments and promptly issue a final rule that preserves the proposal’s strong protections for retirement savers.

John Nichols: Enshrine the Right to Vote in the Constitution

Despite the protections delineated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the Constitution (which in 1964 formally banned poll taxes), headlines remind us that the right to vote is “still threatened.” The US Supreme Court has mangled the Voting Rights Act, and the Congress has failed to repair the damage done. The Brennan Center for Justice has determined that at least 83 restrictive bills were introduced in 29 states where legislatures had floor activity in 2014, including proposals to require a photo ID, make voter registration more difficult, reduce early voting opportunities, and make it harder for students to vote.

“The stark and simple truth is this-the right to vote is threatened today-in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” said President Obama.

The great American process of forming a more perfect union is far from complete. The events of 150 years ago were not the end of anything. They were a pivot point that took the United States in a better direction. But the was incomplete, and insufficient to establish justice. So the process continues.

That is why Congressmen Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, and Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, have proposed to amend the Constitution to declare clearly and unequivocally that

Scott Paul: The Follies of Fast Track

Even before the ink was dry on the deal between committee leaders on fast-track trade-negotiating authority, Cabinet secretaries were already completely ignoring its milquetoast terms.

And that should tell you a lot about the direction this debate is headed.

There’s a passing reference to currency in the fast-track bill draft unveiled on Thursday, but there’s no requirement that it be deterred in any enforceable or meaningful way, inside or outside trade agreements such as the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The TPP has already largely been negotiated, even though this current debate on trade-negotiating authority pretends to inform it. And it’s abundantly apparent from the comments of President Barack Obama, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and Trade Ambassador Michael Froman that currency manipulation won’t be addressed in any enforceable way as part of the TPP.

For American workers, that’s bad news.

Mike Lux: Elizabeth Warren’s Comprehensive Wall Street Reform Agenda

Elizabeth Warren has given her fair share of great speeches, and has written some outstanding legislation on reforming Wall Street, but her speech on April 15 to the Hyman P. Minsky Conference was the best Wall Street policy speech I have ever heard her, or anyone, ever give. It was comprehensive without being a laundry list of in-the-weeds wonkiness. It laid out a strong philosophical rationale for why we need to do these reforms, and it was politically compelling as well. Her politically compelling argument laid out a strong philosophical rationale for why we need these reforms. Perhaps most importantly, she did all this while masterfully refuting the hackneyed attacks about her being anti-business, anti-growth, and anti-market forces.

Warren’s series of proposed reforms would be a major and much needed boost to an economy still held down by the Wall Street abuses that brought on the collapse of the massive housing bubble, the 2008 financial collapse, and the hardest hitting economic slowdown since the Great Depression.

Andrew Rosenthal: Ted Cruz’s Strange Gun Argument

Americans who believe the Second Amendment gives them an individual right to own guns (as opposed to a more general right to bear arms, as our editorial board argues) often make cogent arguments for their position. I believe that allowing people to own guns is not incompatible with imposing reasonable restrictions on their ownership, but I have heard sensible people strongly argue the opposite side.

But there are ridiculous arguments against gun control, perhaps the silliest of which is that the framers of the Constitution wanted to preserve the possibility, or even encourage the idea, of armed rebellion against the government. It’s a particularly absurd argument when it comes from a member of Congress who is running for president.

Apr 17 2015

The Right’s Stealth Efforts to Privatize the Veterans Administration

Koch-backed veterans group advocates for VA privatization

During the 2014 midterm election cycle, the Koch-funded group Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) backed a bevy of extreme conservative candidates and helped send top Koch cronies (and veterans) Joni Ernst and Tom Cotton to the U.S. Senate. Scarcely a couple months into the 2016 cycle, CVA has released a report recommending that much of the U.S. Veterans Administration be privatized, an extreme policy position that would jeopardize the care received by millions of our nation’s veterans.

Last month, CVA’s Fixing Veterans Health Care Taskforce released its final report suggesting “policy reforms” for the VA, namely that the VA’s health care system be converted into an independent, nonprofit corporation and advocating for the creation of a private insurance option for veterans. Additionally, new enrollees into the proposed system would face tougher enrollment standards. According to USA Today, a whopping one-fifth of future veterans would not be eligible for care under CVA’s proposed system. It’s no wonder then that the American Legion has come out against the plan, as did Paralyzed Veterans of America, and that “most veterans service organizations skipped” the rollout of the CVA’s final report, according to Stars & Stripes Magazine.

Most veterans organizations don’t support CVA’s privatization plan, and it has the potential to negatively impact some 20 percent of future veterans. So what explains CVA’s release of what Stars & Stripes calls a “radical” plan for the VA? Consider that CVA received a whopping $5.5 million from the Koch brothers’ “secret bank” – Freedom Partners – in 2013. The Kochs have advocated for education reform by way of abolishing the federal Department of Education and campaign finance reform vis-à-vis doing away with the FEC. So it’s disappointing, but not surprising, that a Koch group’s vision of VA reform is to privatize most of the agency charged with caring for our nation’s veterans.

Koch favorite and presidential hopeful Senator Marco Rubio has already endorsed the extreme CVA plan. Will the rest of the Koch cronies follow suit and contradict the position of most veterans service organizations?

The idea of privatization through vouchers is also supported by two other GOP presidential contenders: former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). The right wing would like nothing more than to dismantle the entire social safety net for everyone.

In a two part segment, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted how the right wing was quietly working to privatize segments of the Veterans Administration through vouchers for health care outside the system.

In the second segment, she speaks with Robert McDonald, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, about the importance of the VA in the American health system, how the VA is improving after recent scandals, and political challenges from conservatives interested in privatization.

Founder of VoteVets.org Eric Solz pointed out in an article for Huffington Post that the voucher system would undermine funding to the VA and shuttle veterans into a system that is not equipped to handle their special needs.

The scandal that rocked the VA over excessive wait times to get care and excessive backlogs in processing claims was terrible. It was also a problem that was, literally, years in the making. Before Secretary Eric Shinseki, not a single VA secretary, Democrat or Republican, tried to get the VA to move to a modern, computerized system. And the VA never prepared for the influx of veterans when we launched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to overstretched facilities cooking their books to avoid punishment.

There is no doubt that veterans shouldn’t have to rely on the VA for everything. But what Republican candidates, backed by the Koch-brothers-funded Concerned Veterans for America, talk about is the beginning of the end of the pact we make with our veterans to give them the care they need. What they want is the privatization of veterans’ care: Fight for your country and get a voucher.

What this would do is severely underfund the department, leaving veterans out in the cold when it comes to many of their service-connected injuries. For example, VA centers are often equipped to deal with amputations and traumatic brain injuries in a way that a local doctor or hospital might not be. But if we voucherize the system, local VA centers and hospitals would be forced to shutter their doors. For veterans in need of specialized care — both physical and mental — they may not have an able caregiver to turn to in their area.

Furthermore, the VA, despite the bad press, continues to far outpace private care in national customer satisfaction surveys. Veterans like the care they get at the VA. A lot. Closing the VA is the first step toward ending other popular programs like Medicare. In fact, that’s what this whole fight is about.

Apr 17 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: Help for Victims of Crooked Schools

State attorneys general have long served on the front lines of the struggle to control and discipline predatory for-profit colleges that saddle students with crippling debt while granting them useless degrees, or no degrees at all. On April 9, nine of them who know firsthand how people can be deceived and bled dry sent a letter to the Department of Education, asking it to provide restitution – and help fix the problem – by forgiving the federal student loans of people harmed by crooked schools. The letter makes a strong case for prompt action.

The problem of for-profit schools received national exposure last year when Corinthian Colleges, one of the nation’s largest operators of for-profit colleges and trade schools, collapsed in the midst of a federal investigation. The company agreed to shut down or sell about 100 campuses. Earlier this week, the Department of Education fined Corinthian $30 million for misrepresenting job placement rates in one of the chains it owns, saying that the company had “violated students’ and taxpayers’ trust.”

Paul Krugman: That Old-Time Economics

America has yet to achieve a full recovery from the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Still, it seems fair to say that we’ve made up much, though by no means all, of the lost ground.

But you can’t say the same about the eurozone, where real G.D.P. per capita is still lower than it was in 2007, and 10 percent or more below where it was supposed to be by now. This is worse than Europe’s track record during the 1930s.

Why has Europe done so badly? In the past few weeks, I’ve seen a number of speeches and articles suggesting that the problem lies in the inadequacy of our economic models – that we need to rethink macroeconomic theory, which has failed to offer useful policy guidance in the crisis. But is this really the story? [..]

The point is that it’s wrong to claim, as many do, that policy failed because economic theory didn’t provide the guidance policy makers needed. In reality, theory provided excellent guidance, if only policy makers had been willing to listen. Unfortunately, they weren’t.

John Nichols: If Clinton is Serious About Economic Populism, She Should Come Out Against Fast Track

Hillary Clinton has backed NAFTA-style “free-trade” agreements and she has opposed NAFTA-style “free-trade” agreements. Like other prominent Democrats, she has been inconsistent in her support of what is best for workers, the environment and human rights.

But Clinton has a chance to get trade policy right when it matters.

And when it matters is now.

As she launches a 2016 presidential campaign in which she seems to be interested in grabbing the banner of economic populism-going so far as to complain in her announcement video about how “the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top”-Clinton can and should stake out a clear position in opposition to granting President Obama Trade Promotion Authority to negotiate a sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Jocelyn Sominson: Let citizens film the police! It’s the only way we learned what really happened to Walter Scott

Police-worn body cameras should be everywhere, but they’re no substitute for a civilian with a cellphone

We almost never saw the Walter Scott video. Feidin Santana, who recorded the April 4 shooting of Scott on his cellphone, nearly deleted the recording out of fear for his own safety. Santana had good reason to be scared – police officers across the United States have been known to retaliate against those who film them, using methods that range from blocking cameras and erasing recordings, to physical intimidation, violence and arrests for interference.  Such conduct by police officers is often in violation of established police procedures and constitutional rules regarding police conduct.  But it persists nonetheless.  In Washington, D.C, for example, an officer arrested someone for filming just one day after his police department issued a formal – and well-publicized – regulation regarding the filming of the police.

Although politicians across the country – from North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey to NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio – have reacted to the shooting of Walter Scott by calling for more police-worn body cameras, such calls for reform pass over the important issue of protecting civilian recording of the police.  Filming of the police by civilians serves a different purpose than police-worn cameras.  Cellphone footage, shot from the point of view of the civilian spectator, remains in control of the people rather than the police.  Videos can immediately become part of the public discussion, an antidote to the monopoly that police officers usually possess over official narratives surrounding police-citizen interactions.  Moreover, when filming is done by organized groups, often called [Copwatching http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa… recording of the police becomes a form of power-building that gives purpose and momentum to movements for change.

George Zornick: Now Congress Is Fast-Tracking the TPP Fast Track

After months of back-room negotiations, key congressional negotiators are finally ready to unveil legislation that would fast-track approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The bill would prohibit Congress from amending the trade deal, and would require a simple-majority vote for passage, but would in exchange set a variety of negotiating parameters.

If the architects of the legislation – Senators Ron Wyden and Orrin Hatch and Representative Paul Ryan – are at all worried that members of Congress will feel fast-track leaves them out of the process, they are doing a pretty terrible job of addressing those concerns.

A Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday morning featured top US trade officials-but occurred before the legislation was even unveiled, and was called with almost no notice. This drew some unusual and strong rebukes from Democrats on the Finance Committee over an unfair process.

Michael Eric Dyson: Racial Terror, Fast and Slow

IN the past two years, this country has held events commemorating 50 years since the triumphs and key struggles of the civil rights movement: the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act and, most recently, the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Ala.

Yet the glory of the past runs up against the gory details of the present.

The killing this month of Walter L. Scott by Officer Michael T. Slager highlights two interlocking truths: Social protest forces us to see realities we would rather avoid, and blacks live in mortal fear for our lives in a manner that most whites don’t see or understand.

Americans are bad at viewing race in real time; we prefer rose-tinted lenses and slow-motion replays in which we can control the narrative and minimize our complicity in the horrors of our history. The racial present is messy, and upends bland racial optimism about how far we’ve come.

Apr 16 2015

Debating Hillary

The silly season starts earlier and lasts longer with each cycle, to the point that it is now one big blur. Trying to make a choice which candidate to support for just the nomination is going to be tough this time. On the Republican side there is a bus load of right wing extremists while the Democrats appear to have the “inevitable” Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Republican platform is still stuck on what Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) called “stupid” from social and economic issues to foreign policy. The Democrats may differ with them on social issues, however, on economic and foreign policy their actions speak louder than their words.

So where does that leave the large Democratic left? Thank FSM there is time to ask questions and maybe get some satisfactory answers. But sadly, that may not be too easy considering the quality and tenor of the mainstream news media. Take for example the media obsession with Secretary Clinton’s announcement of her candidacy, her trip by van to Iowa and her stop at a local Chipotle. So far there hasn’t been any substantive discussion about the issues that are most important to the vast majority of America. Except that there has been; it’s just been hard to find.

Fortunately, we have journalists like Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman to provide a panel and a serious debate about Hillary Clinton and the issues.

Debate: Hillary Clinton Sounds Populist Tone, But Are Progressives Ready to Back Her in 2016?

Former secretary of state, senator and first lady Hillary Clinton has formally entered the 2016 race for the White House in a second bid to become the first woman U.S. president. We host a roundtable discussion with four guests: Joe Conason, editor-in-chief of The National Memo, co-editor of The Investigative Fund, and author of “The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton”; Michelle Goldberg, senior contributing writer at The Nation; longtime journalist Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig.com and author of many books; and Kshama Sawant, a Socialist city councilmember in Seattle and member of Socialist Alternative, a nationwide organization of social and economic justice activists.



Full transcript can be read here

I have to agree with Charles Pierce at Esquire Politics that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is hardly an example of a progressive but this is what will be heard for the next 19 months.

Apr 16 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: The shroud of secrecy around US drone strikes abroad must be lifted

It’s been over two years since President Obama promised new transparency and accountability rules when it comes to drone strikes, yet it’s become increasingly clear virtually no progress has been made. The criteria for who gets added to the unaccountable ‘kill list’ is still shrouded in secrecy – even when the US government is targeting its own citizens.

We know because a Texas-born man named Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh recently captured overseas was arraigned in federal court this week, but he’s actually lucky to be able to have his day in court. It turns out, as the Times reported, that in 2013 “his government debated whether he should be killed by a drone strike in Pakistan.”  [..]

Despite the Attorney General’s aversion to constitutional due process when it comes to killing Americans overseas, at least he was able to hold strong in this particular instance. Keeping the military from launching strikes, even with such guidelines, isn’t easy. Former Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson told 60 Minutes last week about that, when it comes to approving or rejecting the military’s request for drone strikes, “to say no is like stepping in front of a 90-car freight train.”

An important new report released by the Open Society Justice Initiative this week also shows that – despite the Obama administration’s internal requirements for drone strikes that supposedly require a “near certainty” that civilians won’t get killed – the government quite often just disregards its own rules, which has led to the death of dozens of civilians in Yemen in the past two years.

Dean Baker: Bonanza for the Super Rich: The Fund Managers’ Tax Break

The reason most of us have seen little gain from economic growth over the last three decades is that the rich have rigged the rules to ensure that money flows upward. Through their control of trade policy, Federal Reserve Board policy, and other key levers of government, they have structured the market to weaken the bargaining power of ordinary workers and benefit the CEOs and Wall Street crew. As a result, the typical worker has seen almost none of the gains from economic growth over the last four decades.

Most of this rigging comes in before-tax income. The big gains to the rich have not been primarily because they have become better at avoiding taxes than they were four decades ago, but there are some notable exceptions. At the top of this list is the fund managers’ tax break (a.k.a. the carried interest tax deduction). As tens of millions of people prepare to file their tax returns this week, it is a good opportunity to celebrate this tax deduction which gives billions of dollars every year to some of the richest people in the country for no reason whatsoever.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Return of the Vanishing Worker

On April 15, perhaps as you’re reading these words, working people in 200 American cities will rally for a $15 dollar base wage and the right to form a union. Solidarity demonstrations are planned in more than 30 cities on six continents, and have already taken place in Switzerland, the Philippines, South Korea, New Zealand, and Japan. The “fight for $15” matters — because the lives of working people matter, and because the success of this effort will help strengthen the American economy for everyone.

But the significance of April 15’s action runs even deeper than that. [..]

As our world continues to change, we will continue to face new challenges. We will need new movements, new alliances, and new ideas. But behind them will remain an idea as old as the labor movement itself: that all working people have the right to a decent life. That means a living wage, and time to live your life. It means knowing you’ll be financially secure decades from now, and knowing that your work hours have been scheduled for the next week so that you can arrange for child care.

Labor movements are a symbol of our values and an expression of our renewed hope. The Fight for $15 is a fine cause on its own merits. But its greatest importance may lie in the fact that it represents the return of the “vanishing worker” — which in the end means the return of our friends, our families, and our neighbors — to the American political stage.

Mary Bottari: Hotel Industry Spins Wage Hikes as ‘Extreme’ While CEOs Rake in Millions

Hotels are making a killing. Occupancy rates are exceeding pre-recession highs, and are expected to reach record levels in 2016.  Profits per room are up over 11 percent this April compared to April 2014 and the average daily rate for a room is almost 13 percent higher than it was a year ago. Executive salaries have skyrocketed.

But the little-known trade association representing this robust $163 billion dollar industry is a major force fighting behind the scenes on Capitol Hill and in statehouses and courtrooms across the country to keep workers wages low.

On Wednesday, April 15, the same day that hundreds of thousands of working people in over 200 cities are expected to participate in the largest-ever mobilization of underpaid workers, the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) which represents the 1.8 million-employee U.S. lodging industry will join forces with the National Restaurant Association to ask Congress to block a federal minimum wage increase, shrink the number of workers eligible for employer-provided health care insurance, and challenge the National Labor Relations Board ruling protecting the rights of franchise workers.

Frank Clemente: Repeal of Estate Tax Rewards Billionaires, Punishes Working Americans

Who deserves a break more these days: a struggling working family, or the heir to a billion-dollar fortune? According to the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, it’s the billion-dollar baby.

Recently, the House voted for a budget that would end tax credits for many working families that put $1,000 a year in their pockets, on average. The Republican budget also would cut $5 trillion in funding for benefits and services that make groceries, health care and college more affordable, pay for road improvements, and invest in scientific research.

Adding insult to injury, House conservatives plan to eliminate the estate tax, which is paid only by multi-millionaires and billionaires. An estate has to be worth at least $5.4 million before a dime in taxes gets paid. If the estate is passed on by a couple, it has to be worth nearly $11 million.

Repeal would hand elite households a $3 million tax break, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).

Simon Jenkins: Cuba has shown us that sanctions don’t work – so why keep using them?

Sanctions have become as sacred to western armouries as nuclear bombs were 50 years ago. No one dares question them for fear of being thought a dove or a wimp. They cost little to the aggressor but make them feel good. They repress trade rivals. They attract macho adjectives, such as tough, meaningful, targeted and smart. They are chiefly aimed at domestic consumption. Only the poor (and a handful of rich) in the victim states suffer.

Influencing policy in foreign countries short of war is a mug’s game. It is realistic only where it takes the form of diplomatic, trade and cultural exchange, and strengthens the professional and merchant class from which brave criticism of authoritarian government tends to emerge. Yet sanctions suppress such groups and drive them into exile, as now in Russia and Iran.

The idea that economic warfare would ever cause Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, or Libyans against Gaddafi, or Cubans against Castro, was always daft. The idea that it will turn Russia against Putin is beyond absurd. Yet such warfare remains British government policy. And in Labour’s manifesto, sanctions are no more questioned than nuclear weapons. Stupid still rules.

Apr 15 2015

Why You Shouldn’t Hate the IRS Even If It’s Tax Day

About now there are hundreds of thousands of people hunched over their computers, sitting with tax preparers, searching through files and boxes of receipts, standing on a line or hanging on hold waiting to ask a question which may not have answer or, at least, one they will like. It’s Tax Day in America.

Everyone hates the IRS but it’s not their fault, as John Oliver explained on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight.” Blame congress for the recent budget and staff cuts have made it increasingly difficult for the department to do its very important job.

Think of our government as a body. The IRS is the anus. It’s nobody’s favorite part, but you need that thing working properly or everything goes to shit real quick. [..]

The fact is, blaming the IRS because you hate paying your taxes is a bit like slapping your check-out clerk because the price of eggs has gone up

Humor and History on Tax Day

Joel Fox, Fox and Hounds

“April is the month when the green returns to the lawn, the trees, – and the Internal Revenue Service.” So observed Evan Esar, a collector of humorous sayings who understood that humor is the ultimate therapy. All of us need this therapy now that tax time is here.

Fortunately, a rich vein of humor and wry observations exist about taxes to help us through this time.

When tax day comes, most citizens pay what they owe … or what they think they owe. Discovering what you owe can be a challenge. Even one of the century’s greatest geniuses, Albert Einstein said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

Humorist Will Rogers put it this way: “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.”

So, grin and bear it, “You never miss your anus till it’s gone.”

Apr 15 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Amy B. Dean: Time for a moratorium on charter schools

Charters have failed to deliver, and their expansion should be put on hold

Charter schools are everywhere. Not long ago, these publicly funded but privately run institutions were a relative rarity. Those that existed served mostly as experimental academies whose successful lessons could be applied elsewhere in their host school districts. But in the last 15 years, swaths of the U.S. public education system have been turned over to charters. In fact, they are being used as a means to crush teachers’ unions and to pursue high-stakes testing.

Charter advocates justify this ascent by promising an antidote to the disappointing outcomes of traditional public schools in segregated and underfunded urban districts. But the research is in: Charter schools have failed to deliver on their promises.

It is time lawmakers freeze their growth and consider how to provide the best education possible for all students.

Bryce Covert: Education Alone Won’t Put an End to Equal Pay Days

Today is Equal Pay Day, the dismal holiday where women celebrate the fact that, on average, their earnings have caught up to what men made in one year last year, given that when they work full-time, year-round they make just 78 percent of what men make. [..]

But some think change is coming faster than that. They base this hope on the fact that today’s young women are getting college degrees at a faster pace than today’s young men. Given that a college degree represents a more than $400 earnings premium every week over that of a high school graduate, that extra money should, they reason, help women earn their way out of the gap.

But while education may boost earnings for each college-educated woman over her less educated sister, that doesn’t put her on better, or even equal, footing with a similarly educated brother. The gender wage gap still shows up at every education level (pdf).

Elizabeth Goitein, Faiza Patel: The Patriot Act’s Sunset is the Perfect Chance to Make the FISA Court More Like a Real Court

In the coming weeks, Congress must decide whether to renew the Patriot Act, which the National Security Agency (NSA) uses to collect Americans’ telephone records in bulk, regardless of whether they are suspected of any criminal or terrorist activity. These records can tell the government a lot about our private lives – whether we called a psychiatrist or a gun dealer, for example – and the debate likely will focus on how to protect Americans’ right to privacy against unwarranted intrusions. But there is another important issue at stake in the run up to the Patriot Act’s sunset: the role of the foreign intelligence surveillance court that supervises NSA programs.

Like the president and Congress, courts have limits on their authority. Under the Constitution, our courts don’t give advice – they decide concrete disputes. In practical terms, that generally means there must be at least two parties present in court, and they must disagree over the lawfulness of particular actions that one or more of them has taken.

Anna Lappé: The long, dirty trail of fake science

Revealing Big Oil’s role in climate change denialism

“Doubt is our product,” (pdf) wrote executives for tobacco giant Brown & Williamson in a now infamous 1969 memo on industry communications strategy. The memo was revealed during discovery in class-action lawsuits against tobacco companies that would eventually yield a trove of 85 million pages. Among those pages are details about the public relations playbook of an industry that – as far back as 1958 – knew that smoking caused cancer and used public relations to fight regulation for decades.

“Merchants of Doubt,” a brilliant new film from documentarian Robert Kenner (of “Food Inc.” fame), reveals this spin and tracks how other industries, from chemical manufacturers to pharmaceuticals, are ripping pages from Big Tobacco’s playbook to fight their own regulation and public scrutiny.

Based on the book of the same name by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, the film reveals, in particular, Big Oil’s role in climate change denialism. It makes the argument that the world’s biggest energy companies funded PR and lobbying firms that fomented doubt about climate science and thereby stalled action on climate policy. The film pulls back the curtain on the backstage battle to win the hearts and minds of the American public, with nothing short of a stable climate in the balance.

Michelle Chen: Can Labor Bring Wall Street Back to Main Street?

The 2007 banking collapse exposed the abysmal gap between the titans of finance and the 99 percent. But long ago, there was one place where Wall Street and Main Street intersected: at the teller window of your local retail bank. Some community activists want to pull Wall Street back toward an era when banking was done by real people, and retail banks invested in the neighborhood instead of pushing consumers into foreclosure. Can we bring back your friendly bank teller?

Seven years since Wall Street imploded, it seems the banking sector has rebounded far faster than the communities it has devastated, according to a report published by Center for Popular Democracy (pdf) (CPD), which builds on a global campaign to advocate for fair labor and corporate accountability in Big Banks.

The report finds that poor communities tend to be both underbanked and overexploited by banks. Though lenders no longer give away subprime mortgages like candy, bank chains still degrade vulnerable consumers. Roughly a quarter of households nationwide are considered unbanked or underbanked, lacking access to basic financial resources like a checking account. Big Banks instead market relatively high-risk financial products to the poor, while ignoring the essential economic vehicles that help build assets prudently and realistically. Despite their relatively paltry wealth, among the hardest hit by the financial collapse were low-income communities of color. “The median net worth for people of color fell 53 percent during the Great Recession [but] for whites fell only 16 percent,” CPD reports. But today the leading Big Banks have ironically “emerged stronger and more consolidated, rather than being fundamentally restructured.”

Jessica Valenti: Dealing with trolls will make young women sympathetic to Hillary Clinton

When I visit college campuses, young women always ask me how I deal with negativity online – and how they can. How can I write and participate on social media when it inevitably results in ad hominem attacks and vitriol? The students I speak to increasingly feel like they have to consider, before choosing a career path or posting an opinion in a public forum, whether they can cope with violently sexist responses and a never-ending barrage of misogynistic bullshit.

If anyone knows the answer to their questions, it’s Hillary Clinton. Her career has long epitomized how misogyny can haunts female politicians: the Hillary “nutcracker”, the pokes about her headbands, her hair, her pantsuits, her voice. She has too often been the target of insults based on men’s fear about powerful women – an unenviable position that few can understand. [..]

Clearly there is more to winning over young female voters than commiserating over sexist awfulness and advice on overcoming misogyny. But I’m betting there’s a deep-seated desire in a lot of young women to see sexist tormentors get theirs. Maybe they can’t stop the guy who tweets fat jokes at them, and maybe they’re too embarrassed to report the anonymous sexual threats in their Facebook messages. But what they can do is give a big “fuck you” to every get-back-in-the-kitchen YouTube bottom-dweller or cable news host jerk who mocks Clinton’s appearance by making their distaste known at the voting booth.

Then we’ll see who is making the sammiches. I’ll take an Italian sub.

Apr 14 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: Women Still Earn a Lot Less Than Men

Tuesday is Equal Pay Day, the day selected each year by the National Committee on Pay Equity, a coalition of women’s, civil rights and labor groups, to draw attention to how much longer women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. In 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, a woman working full time year-round typically made 59 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. By 2013, the latest year of available census data, it was 78 cents on the dollar. Another measure of the wage gap, computed by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, shows that, in 2014, the ratio of female-to-male weekly earnings was 82.5 percent.

While that seems like steady if painfully slow progress, closer inspection shows that progress in closing the gender pay gap has basically stalled over the past decade. The longer the gap persists, the less it can be explained away by factors other than discrimination. [..]

In 2010, 2012 and 2014, congressional Republicans blocked consideration of the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill supported by President Obama that would have extended pay-equity rules that apply to federal contractors to the entire American work force, in addition to making needed updates to the Equal Pay Act. Obstructionism has only made the problem worse, and an even more pressing one for the presidential candidates to address.

Dean Baker: Under Obama trade deal, disputes settled outside US judicial system

Trans-Pacific Partnership would create mechanisms for trade disputes beyond US law and democratic control

One of the most important Supreme Court cases this year is King v. Burwell. The suit questions the legality of the subsidies to low- and middle-income families in the health-insurance exchanges run by the federal government. If the Court rules for the plaintiff, millions of people in the 36 states that did not set up exchanges could lose their subsidies. With insurance now unaffordable for much of the population in these states, their exchanges will no longer be operational, leading to the collapse of the Affordable Care Act in much of the country. [..]

In short, King v. Burwell should be a joke case. But in a context where at least four members of the Supreme Court are prepared to rule in whatever way they feel advances the interests of the Republican Party, it is very possible that it will be the basis for undermining a law that provides health insurance to millions of people and access to insurance to tens of millions more.

This predicament should be a warning to members of Congress as they debate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and more immediately, the fast-track authority that will facilitate its passage. (A bill to establish such authority will reportedly be introduced in the Senate this week.) Under fast track, President Barack Obama would be able to get TPP an up-or-down vote in Congress without the possibility of amendments or filibuster.

TPP, as well as its sister agreement the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact, would establish an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, which will operate outside the U.S. judicial system. This system will consist of a panel of three judges, who will each be appointed to hear a single case. They are not bound by the laws of the United States, nor are their decisions subject to appeal within the U.S. judicial process. They are to determine solely whether a law or action in question violates the rules of the TPP. Furthermore, the reasoning behind their rulings will be kept secret for several years after the ruling.

Elton John and Michael Stipe: The silence on abuse of transgender inmates in US prisons is deafening

Ashley Diamond, a transgender inmate who was denied medically necessary hormones by the Georgia correctional system, was raped seven times, called a “he-she thing”, and thrown into solitary confinement for “pretending” to be a woman.

Last week, the United States Justice Department weighed in on her lawsuit and found that Georgia’s “freeze-frame” policy – which denied trans inmates the chance to begin or expand hormone treatment in prison – constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” and violated the United States Constitution.

This horrific treatment illustrates the broader policy changes we desperately need to ensure that no one in a correction setting – or any setting, for that matter – is denied their human or civil rights because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Today, transgender women in male prisons are 13 times more likely than the general prison population to be sexually assaulted while incarcerated. Nearly two-thirds of trans inmates report sexual assault. And more often than not, assaults go unreported in part because the perpetrators are prison guards, wardens and staff.

This is a disgrace.

Steven W. Thrasher: The inhumanity of ‘Fuck your breath’ should stop all of us cold

It’s hard for black Americans to catch our breath these days: from Michael Brown to Eric Garner to John Crawford to Tamir Rice to Walter Scott and now Eric Harris, we just keep getting the wind knocked out of us as we bear witness to death after unnecessary death of black men at the hands of the police.

Those who police us, however, can breathe quite easily. [..]

This weekend, Black Lives Matter activist Cherrell Brown asked audience members of a conference on policing that I attended to close our eyes and imagine a place where we felt safe. No one imagined a place with cops, cameras, guns, or attack dogs. And yet, as Brown noted, we’re asked to believe that, to feel safe, we need more cops in New York City, more racially diverse cops, more cops wearing cameras – more law enforcement, not more safety.

More cops, more guns and more cameras might make many white people feel more safe, but just the thought makes it hard for black people to breathe, because we know that they’ll all be trained on us. Fuck your false sense of security; I just want to be able to catch my breath.

Robert Reich: Will Hillary Rodham Clinton Deliver on Her Promise to Be a ‘Champion’ for ‘Everyday Americans’?

It’s a paradox.

Almost all the economic gains are still going to the top, leaving America’s vast middle class with stagnant wages and little or no job security. Two-thirds of Americans are working paycheck to paycheck.

Meanwhile, big money is taking over our democracy.

If there were ever a time for a bold Democratic voice on behalf of hardworking Americans, it is now.

Yet I don’t recall a time when the Democratic Party’s most prominent office holders sounded as meek. With the exception of Elizabeth Warren, they’re pussycats. If Paul Wellstone, Teddy Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, or Ann Richards were still with us, they’d be hollering.

The fire now is on the right, stoked by the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and a pocketful of hedge-fund billionaires.

Today’s Republican firebrands, beginning with Ted Cruz, blame the poor, blacks, Latinos, and immigrants for what’s been happening. They avoid any mention of wealth and power.

Which brings me to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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