Tag: Opinion

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 situation has some important similarities with Argentina’s 2001 default — and some differences as well. In both countries, recessions turned into depressions as a consequence of austerity policies — making the debt even more unsustainable. In both cases, the policies were demanded as a condition for assistance. Both countries had rigid currency arrangements that gave them no possibility for running expansionary monetary policies during the recession. In both countries, the IMF got it wrong, providing alarmingly flawed forecasts of the consequences of the imposed policies. Unemployment and poverty soared, and GDP plummeted. Indeed, there is even a striking similarity in the magnitude of the fall in GDP and the increase in the unemployment rate.

Ralph Nader: Where Are the Presidential Candidates on the Minimum Wage?

As the 2016 campaign season gets underway, working families across the country will be very interested in where presidential candidates stand on raising the minimum wage. [..]

Democratic primary candidates Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have come out in favor of raising the minimum wage to $15.00 over the next several years, a living wage that would lift tens of millions of individuals out of poverty. Others have remained mum on the subject, including former Virginia Senator Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee.

Perhaps most glaringly silent is the front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She has spoken many times about making sure that individuals will make enough money to survive, including most recently at the Fight for $15 conference in June where she said, “It is wrong that so many people stand against you thinking that they can steal your wages with no consequences. That even stacks the deck higher for those at the top.” However, Clinton has declined to comment on whether or not she would support a $15 an hour minimum wage, or when she would like to see a wage hike implemented. In 2007, as a Senator, she supported raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and in May, 2014 she finally came out in favor of raising it to $10.10 an hour.

Mark Weisbrot: Are European Authorities Trying to Force Regime Change in Greece?

It’s ironic but not surprising that the European Central Bank decided Sunday to limit its credit to Greece by enough to force the Greek banking system to close.

This has pushed Greece closer to a more serious financial crisis than the country has had in the past five years of austerity-induced depression. Why did the ECB decide to take this harsh, unnecessary and dangerous measure now?

It seems clear that the move is in response to the Greek government’s decision to hold a referendum on whether to accept the last offer from the European authorities outlining conditions for continuing official lending to Greece. The financial problems and inconveniences of this week, caused by the bank holiday, are the European authorities’ way of saying, “Vote as we’ll tell you to, or we can make your lives even more miserable than we have been making them.”

New report sheds light on the covert tactics used to shape public opinion about what we eat

At the turn of the last century, the father of public relations, Edward Bernays, launched the Celiac Project, whose medical professionals recommended bananas to benefit celiac disease sufferers. Those pitched on the sweet fruit’s miraculous properties didn’t know the project was actually created for the United Fruit Co., the largest trader of bananas in the world.

The creation of front groups – independent-sounding but industry-backed organizations – as a public relations strategy dates at least as far back as Bernays’ day. But a new report by Kari Hamerschlag, a senior program manager at the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth; Stacy Malkan, a co-founder of the food industry watchdog U.S. Right to Know; and me shows that such tactics are continuing with ever more scope and scale today.

Zoë Carpenter: The Next Tactic in the Right’s Fight Against Gay Marriage? ‘Religious Liberty’

As a jubilant crowd at the Supreme Court celebrated Friday’s 5-4 ruling that same-sex couples have a right to marry, moans of impotent fury emanated from conservatives in and out of the Court. “The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie,” Justice Antonin Scalia fumed in his dissenting opinion. In his own dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Court should not worry about human dignity: “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved,” he wrote. Justice Samuel Alito, also dissenting, fretted that homophobes now “will risk being labeled as bigots.”

Among the field of Republican presidential candidates, the responses ranged from outrage to resignation; none embraced the ruling. Some were quick to throw red meat to the conservative base, ignoring yet another thing the GOP supposedly learned after getting crushed in 2012. But a few of the more serious candidates, who have read the polls and know that aggressive opposition to gay marriage spells trouble in a general election, tried to shift the focus to one of the next issues in the marriage debate, which Nan Hunter explores in detail here-the attempt to frame discrimination as the exercise of “religious liberty.”

Michelle Chen: Shouldn’t Home Care Workers Earn a Living Wage?

Healthcare workers in Massachusetts got good news twice this past week. First, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act and its insurance exchange rules-a system expected to add some 360,000 Massachusetts residents to the healthcare rolls. On Friday, about 35,000 workers who are providing disability and senior care through state programs got a major pay raise. Their new wage of $15 an hour puts Massachusetts personal-care assistants at the helm of the low-wage workers’ movement known as the Fight for 15.

George Gresham, president of the home care workers’ union, 1199 SEIU, said in the announcement of the deal, ‘”It is a moral imperative that all home care and healthcare workers receive $15 per hour, and Massachusetts is now a leader in this effort.”

The wage agreement was brokered over several months of talks between the union and Governor Charlie Baker’s administration, for a contract covering one of the country’s largest unionized home care workforces. The raise in the hourly base pay, set to increase from the current $13.38 to $15 by 2018, will cover a majority of the state’s home care workforce, who provide an array of household services, such as daily social support and medical assistance, to seniors and people with disabilities, and now heads for a union ratification vote.

Leslie Savan: In the Wake of Charleston, Fox News Is Perplexed on Just What the Confederate Flag and the N-Word Mean

It’s been quite a week for racist symbols. It took the murder of nine black churchgoers at the hands of a killer steeped in Confederate and apartheid logos and logic, but politicians have started removing rebel flags and other symbols of Dixie from places we’d thought they were nailed to (like Alabama’s capitol grounds, and South Carolina’s, where the Stars and Bars will need a two-thirds majority vote of both houses to come down).

There is even an “Et tu?” quality to the defenestration, since it has often been Republican politicians and corporations like Walmart who have suddenly realized that these symbols can be hurtful “to some.”

And the Charleston murders have galvanized a US president to publicly say the n-word to explain why not ever saying it in public does not magically end racism-anymore, he might have added, than electing a black president does.

The fall of the Confederate flag is the latest step in a progressive wave of reforms

Bigotry is suddenly on the run in America.

It is as if a giant dam thrown up to block human progress has begun to spill over the top, the outpouring growing until the dam collapses, a flood of decency, fairness and respect washing the stains of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.

Before June 17, many Americans were already feeling revulsion towards our country’s legacy of white supremacy after seeing numerous cellphone videos of police attacking innocent blacks. Then Dylann Roof massacred nine worshippers at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly and unexpectedly the vile nature of the Confederate battle flag, waved with pride by Roof in several photos released after the shooting, became obvious to so many people that within a week Southern politicians scurried away from that symbol of racist hatred.

This is just the beginning. We will see more positive change in the near future as those who solicit votes through fear and denunciation watch America move toward its founding ideals: that all people are created equal with inalienable rights and that America does best when our government follows the six noble purposes of our Constitution, especially promoting the general welfare.

Joseph Stiglitz: Europe’s Attack on Greek Democracy

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics. [..]

It is startling that the troika has refused to accept responsibility for any of this or admit how bad its forecasts and models have been. But what is even more surprising is that Europe’s leaders have not even learned. The troika is still demanding that Greece achieve a primary budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.5% of GDP by 2018.

Economists around the world have condemned that target as punitive, because aiming for it will inevitably result in a deeper downturn. Indeed, even if Greece’s debt is restructured beyond anything imaginable, the country will remain in depression if voters there commit to the troika’s target in the snap referendum to be held this weekend.

Alexis Goldstein and Luke Herrine:  Higher education reform should start with for-profit schools

Presidential candidates should recognize that the government’s education policy is rife with conflicts of interest

As the presidential campaign season heats up, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are talking about debt-free or tuition-free college. Using student debt as an issue to damage Republicans and to energize young voters is a smart strategy. But to make the case for why higher education should be free in the United States, 2016 candidates need look no further than the current crisis in the for-profit college industry. The government’s deep conflicts of interest as both the regulator meant to protect students and the banker profiting off student debt has led to an unmitigated disaster – one that, so far, has stuck students with the bill.

For decades, for-profit colleges have run an outrageously profitable scam: They have devoured more than a quarter of all federal student loan money and used it to lure first-generation college students into career training programs that lead to few, if any, real prospects. These schools often spend more money on marketing (pdf) than on instruction. As a result, employers laugh at for-profit college degrees. [..]

For-profit colleges perfectly illustrate why the privatization of public goods doesn’t work. It turns public servants into the guardians of private interests, and students are left behind as collateral damage. Politicians on both sides of the aisle proclaim education as the civil rights issue of our time. If that’s the case, it’s time to move past the model of individual indebtedness, which falls most heavily on poor and minority students, and show we value education for more than just talking points.

Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision was a great victory for LGBT rights. But it also was a great victory for something that rests right at the heart of the human experience, the paramount legal doctrine of M.Y.O.B.

Mind Your Own Business.

Reporters love to generate controversy. In a TV interview on Friday, a reporter asked me, “What do you have to say to all of the millions of opponents of gay marriage?”

I replied thusly: “Mind your own business.”

OK, I’ll admit that that response will not earn me the Nobel Peace Prize. But I’m making an important point here. What difference does it make to Person X if Person Y marries Person Z? Seriously.

Robert Reich: Why We Must Fight Economic Apartheid in America

Almost lost by the wave of responses to the Supreme Court’s decisions last week upholding the Affordable Care Act and allowing gays and lesbians to marry was the significance of the Court’s decision on housing discrimination.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 requires plaintiffs to show only that the effect of a policy is discriminatory, not that defendants intended to discriminate.

The decision is important to the fight against economic apartheid in America – racial segregation on a much larger geographic scale than ever before.

The decision is likely to affect everything from bank lending practices whose effect is to harm low-income non-white borrowers, to zoning laws that favor higher-income white homebuyers.

Robert Kuttner: A Good Week for America

What an extraordinary week in the political and spiritual life of this nation.

It was a week in which President Obama found the voice that so many of us hoped we discerned in 2008; a week in which two Justices of the Supreme Court resolved that the legitimacy of the institution and their own legacy as jurists was more important than the narrow partisan agenda that Justices Roberts and Kennedy have so often carried out; a week in which liberals could feel good about ourselves and the haters of the right were thrown seriously off balance.

Yet this is one of those inflection points in American politics that could go either way. It could energize the forces of racial justice and racial healing. It could reconstitute the Supreme Court as a body that takes the Constitution seriously. The week’s events could shame, embarrass and divide the political right.

It wasn’t that long ago – 4 November 2008 – that the US had an election that galvanized a generation of activists to change policies in this country that would have enshrined into law the continued marginalization of a large group of people. I’m not talking about who was elected president, or which political party took the most seats in Congress: rather, a ballot initiative in the state of California, called Proposition 8, passed by a four-point margin that night and successfully amended the state’s constitution by adding language that defined marriage as being between “one man and one woman”. [..]

But I worry that, with full marriage equality, much of the queer community will be left wondering how else to engage with a society that still wants to define who we are – and who in our community will be left to push for full equality for all transgender and queer people, now that this one fight has been won. I fear that our precious movements for social justice and all the remarkable advancements we have made are now vulnerable to being taken over by monied people and institutions, and that those of us for whom same-sex marriage rights brings no equality will be slowly erased from our movement and our history.

Joe Conason: The Real Meaning of the Confederate Flag

In the intensifying debate over the Confederate flag, important clues about the true meaning of this seditious symbol are staring us in the face. Dozens of those clues were posted by an angry, glaring Dylann Storm Roof on the “Last Rhodesian” website, where the confessed Charleston killer pays homage to certain flags-notably those of apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, as well as the old Confederacy-while he enthusiastically desecrates another.

Pictures of Roof burning, stomping and spitting on the Stars and Stripes are interspersed among the photos of him grasping and waving the Confederate battle flag, sometimes while holding a gun. “I hate the sight of the American flag,” he raged in a long screed on the site. “Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke.”

What this racial terrorist meant to express, in crude prose and pictures, is a lesson that the diehard defenders of the Confederate flag should no longer ignore: To uphold the banner of secession is to reject patriotism-and has never meant anything else.

Bill Boyarsky: Obamacare: Not Perfect, But ‘Here to Stay’

Republicans have been cornered by a president they had vowed to drive from office. Obamacare, an imperfect but badly needed revolution in health care, is, as President Barack Obama said, “here to stay.” Tens of millions of Americans will keep health insurance long denied them, and millions more will obtain such policies in the future.

Republicans sound angry and confused as they try to convince these many millions that they got a bad deal. It reminds me of earlier GOP generations warning Americans that Social Security and Medicare would land us all in the poor house. No doubt their latest effort will backfire, too.

Dr. Jill Stein has some great ideas about how to create “deep system change, moving from the greed and exploitation of corporate capitalism to a human-centered economy that puts people, planet and peace over profit.”

If the 2012 Green Party presidential nominee and contender for the party’s 2016 nod gets a hearing, those ideas will expand and improve the national debate. They could also strike a chord with the millions of Americans who are ready for a plan to “end unemployment and poverty; avert climate catastrophe; build a sustainable, just economy; and recognize the dignity and human rights of everyone in our society and our world.” [..]

The question is whether Stein, who this week formally launched her second presidential bid, will gain the hearing that is necessary to realize that potential. That is far from guaranteed, because the status quo polices presidential campaigns in order to maintain itself. That policing begins with ballot-access demands that make it hard for millions of American voters to have the multi-party choices that are available to voters in Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Canada, and every other credible democracy.

Even if Stein and the Greens secure every available ballot line-and they have a smart, ambitious plan for busting through the barriers-that still does not guarantee that she will be heard.

Faiza Patel: When will surveillance reform stop being just ‘cool’?

The USA Freedom Act marks the beginning, not the end, of the fight to protect our privacy

Last week, former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden declared that he was “cool” with the recently enacted USA Freedom Act, which reined in government bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. His characterization of that program as “little” is no doubt accurate. Information from the archive of documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed many other programs that pose equal or greater risks to Americans’ privacy.

But Hayden is too quick to assume that the phone records program will be the only reform. The passage of the USA Freedom Act is the first curtailment of intelligence authorities since the 9/11 attacks and should mark the beginning – not the end – of reform.

Peter van Buren: Five Things That Won’t Work in Iraq

When at First You Don’t Succeed, Fail, Fail Again

In one form or another, the U.S. has been at war with Iraq since 1990, including a sort-of invasion in 1991 and a full-scale one in 2003. During that quarter-century, Washington imposed several changes of government, spent trillions of dollars, and was involved in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. None of those efforts were a success by any conceivable definition of the term Washington has been capable of offering.

Nonetheless, it’s the American Way to believe with all our hearts that every problem is ours to solve and every problem must have a solution, which simply must be found. As a result, the indispensable nation faces a new round of calls for ideas on what “we” should do next in Iraq.

With that in mind, here are five possible “strategies” for that country on which only one thing is guaranteed: none of them will work.

George Zornick: What’s Next for the GOP After the Obamacare Ruling?

The case of King v. Burwell may have been the last legitimate chance to disable the Affordable Care Act. So the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in favor of the administration, with only the conservative rump of the Court dissenting in amusingly strident terms, should leave conservatives despondent. [..]

And as always, this split will continue to trouble the GOP. The hard-core members still have ample opportunity to use real leverage to disable or hurt the Affordable Care Act. At some point this year, Congress will have to pass government spending bills-and there is considerable conservative activism around using the process, which only requires 50 Senate votes, to defund significant parts of the law.

Some more moderate senators are already urging caution, and openly saying the GOP is better served by waiting until 2016 to take on Obamacare. But if the hard-core members, and the base they represent, not to mention ambitious renegades like Ted Cruz, force the GOP’s hand, that dog might start nibbling at the bumper again within a matter of months.

Americans have acquired a fondness for worlds of make-believe. Torture was done by “a few bad apples.” Or, we must await the “verdict of history” to judge how our invasion of Iraq turned out. Or, America is besieged by hordes of crazed Islamist terrorists scaling the walls and dedicated to surpassing the horror of 9/11. Or, The Sniper salvaged American dignity and self-respect from that tragic fiasco. Or, that it was a brilliant CIA and valiant Seals who avenged a righteous America by storming Abbottabad to assassinate an infirmed old man in his bed.

This last is one of the threads of make-believe woven into the fabricated narrative about the Congressional psycho-drama this past week over electronic spying on Americans. That engrossing campfire tale has our noble representatives struggling to find the path of Solomonic wisdom that walks a tightrope between security and liberty. We awaited in suspense to see if the perilous feat would reach its goal. We agonized at word of the NSA being forced by obedience to the Law to shut down its all-seeing networks — thereby, for a few hours, leaving America exposed to the diabolical schemes of the bearded devils. The White House warned that we are playing “Russian roulette” with the country’s very survival. No one pressed the question of all six chambers in fact being uncharged.

Steven W. Thrasher: Black children are not even safe from police violence at a pool party

Over the weekend, a video surfaced that showed police in McKinney, Texas violently controlling kids on a suburban street and pulling a gun on a young black girl. After I heard about it, it took a few hours before I could screw up the courage to watch it, because I knew it would make me cry. And it did.

The video made me cry because it showed me how black children are not allowed to play. How they’re not allowed to just be fucking kids. How their play becomes criminalized and how they’re socialized to become black adults who internalize that their very breathing selves are criminal.

The video (and the follow up interview with its videographer, Brandon Brooks) made me cry because they showed how a public space like a pool becomes the domain of a security guard with no accountability. Who calls the police. Who quickly assume guilt on every black child in sight.

It made me cry to see a gun pulled on these children. I only had a police officer begin to pull a gun on me once, but it scared the shit out of me and altered my interactions with police forever – and I was an adult. How scarred will these children be after such trauma?

Chris Weigant: SCOTUS Optimism

For political wonks, June is not the month to celebrate grads, dads, and brides, but instead the biggest SCOTUS month of the year. SCOTUS (for the un-wonky) stands for “Supreme Court Of The United States.” June marks the end of the Supreme Court’s yearly session, and it is when all the biggest decisions get handed down. [..]

Now, guessing which way the court will rule is always a risky proposition. Some even call it a fool’s game. Nevertheless, I’m going to go out on a limb today in a burst of (perhaps) foolish optimism, and predict that both decisions will actually be good news. We’ve already seen a flurry of “sky is going to fall” stories (especially over King) from liberals in the media, and my guess is that this trend is only going to increase, the closer we get to the end of the month. So I thought one article from a more optimistic perspective might be appreciated — even if my guesses turn out to be utterly wrong, in the end. That, of course, is always the risk you run when going out on a limb during SCOTUS season. Time will tell whether I’m right or wrong, but for now, here’s my take on these two cases, seen mostly through the lens of politics.