Tag: Opinion

Daniel DiSalvo doesn’t like public sector unions. That is the main takeaway from Government Against Itself (Oxford University Press) DiSalvo’s new book on public sector unions. In the course of reading the book, they are likely to conclude that he is not especially fond of unions or workers, in general. He also doesn’t like Social Security and Medicare. He even manages to get in a drive-by directed at Senator Elizabeth Warren.

But the main villain of the book is clearly public sector unions. DiSalvo paints a dark conspiracy where public sector unions push for ever higher pay and benefits, work rules that allow for endless loafing on the job, and disciplinary policies that prevent even the most incompetent from being fired. High costs and low productivity strain public budgets, but the political power of public sector unions prevents effective steps to counter their abuses. Since the unions are such large donors to political campaigns, politicians can’t stand up to them. It’s a moving story — the data just don’t quite fit the picture.

Robert Kuttner: Some More Radical Ideas for Hillary

I am going to periodically suggest ideas that Hillary Clinton might consider — both to establish that she is a real-deal progressive and to rally political support from voters whom the economy is leaving behind. Clinton might even outflank some leading progressives by going beyond what is considered politically safe in the current environment.

Another name for that is leadership. So if Hillary wants to show that she’s a fighter, let her pick some good fights. [..]

It’s time. Some Wall Street supporters might get off her bandwagon — and good riddance. She has plenty to spare.

Militarized policing was designed to destroy the dignity of those who contest power

The unrest in Baltimore after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray after he was critically injured in police custody has reopened longstanding debates over public-order policing. Where does protest end and rioting begin? What counts as violence? Is property damage ever legitimate? Listening to Fox News analyze the meaning of the word “thugs,” it feels as if we are doomed to repeat Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote “Riots are the language of the unheard” until we are blue in the face.

Baltimore, like Ferguson, Missouri, has seen the deployment of a hypertechnologized warrior-cop style of policing that has become unnervingly familiar, with recent exposés focusing further attention on the militarization of law enforcement. But these practices of so-called riot control are far from new.

Riot control is – and always has been – about criminalizing acts of disobedience by controlling people, public space and even the air we breathe. The disturbing forms of policing we see in Baltimore provide a small window into a sprawling, transnational business with roots in colonialist violence.

Andrew Elrod: Fast-tracking free trade is good for profits, not people

Congress should resist Obama’s push for Trans-Pacific Partnership

Upon signing the Trade Act of 1974, President Gerald Ford declared that the new trade agreements to come “will mean more and better jobs for American workers, with additional purchasing power for the American consumer.” The bill established the fast-track procedures that prohibit congressional amendments to trade and investment treaties; it was, he said, “one of the most important measures to come out of the 93rd Congress.”

Ford was right about that. Thanks to fast track, trade policy has become increasingly centralized in the office of the president over the past four decades. Though they expired for the first time in the aftermath of NAFTA, fast-track powers were again authorized under George W. Bush in 2002, allowing his administration to sign an astounding 11 trade agreements before Congress again revoked the powers in 2007. Today President Barack Obama would like to start the process again. He is now urging Congress to grant fast-track powers for the next six years, in part so his administration can finalize negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest investment treaty in history, encompassing 12 nations that account for 40 percent of global commerce. House leaders will begin canvassing votes today, with early indications suggesting that the president’s effort may fall short. And for good reason.

Donald Earl Collins: Freddie Gray: Don’t let the 1% determine police reform for the 99%

The history of policing in the US has been one of protecting private property, money and lives of the affluent and politically powerful, at least since the NYPD’s founding in 1845. Any new efforts at police reform – calls for which are growing stronger with each new death of an unarmed person of color at the hands of the police – will be unsuccessful if they exclude revisions to this most basic of reasons for the existence of modern law enforcement.

Freddie Gray is just the latest in a long list of men and women of color who have died during a police encounter in the last year, a list that already includes Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Miriam Carey, Tamir Rice, Antonio Zambrano-Montes and Michael Brown. Some have suggested that one possible solution is the introduction of police body cameras, which are far from being the panacea they are made out to be – the purchase and maintenance of which just happen to benefit corporations. That is why it is vital that any efforts to fix our broken police departments are not one-off trends promoted by and for the benefit of elites.

Robert L. Borosage: The Sanders Challenge

Tweeting that “America needs a political revolution,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders threw his hat into the race for the Democratic nomination for president this week. Sanders is in many ways the mirror image of Hillary Clinton, the prohibitive favorite in the race. She has universal name recognition, unlimited funds and a campaign operation overrun with political pros. He is not widely known, has little money, and has never run a national campaign. Sanders is not easy, not blow dried and not scripted. But in a populist moment, he is the real deal — a full throated, unabashed, independent, uncorrupted, straight-talking populist. And that is a big deal.

Sanders will focus his campaign on the great challenges facing the country: a politics corrupted by big money, and an economy where the rules have been rigged by the few to benefit the few. That reality won’t be changed by politics as usual, where the viability of a candidate is measured by how much money he or she can amass in the backroom “money primary,” and the message of a candidate is judged by its poll-tested ability to appeal to voters without alarming donors. It will take an independent political movement to change our course — and Sanders will run as its Tom Paine, summoning Americans to save their democracy.

Federal agencies say encryption will doom us, but they’re already using spy tools that circumvent it

For months, the FBI, the National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other spooky agencies have been lashing out at tech companies that have responded to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s surveillance revelations by starting to protect customers with stronger encryption. But it’s increasingly obvious that the government’s crypto panic is powered by fear, not facts. [..]

The reason the FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies want us to imagine these frightening scenarios is that their encryption problem is just that: imaginary. It’s built on the false premise that making encryption more accessible will allow criminals to shield themselves from the law. The only solution, the government says, is for companies to put backdoors into their devices and apps, which by definition means installing defects that make our data more vulnerable to criminals and spies.

One need look only at what law enforcement agencies are doing in secret to see that these predictions of digital anarchy are pure fantasy.

Michele Goodwin: Watch Out, Joe Camel Is Back: Big Tobacco and the TPP

The Obama administration is poised to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. If Congress passes the current trade promotion authority bill, the TPP will become subject to a simple up or down vote, without possibility for any amendment. The Obama administration refuses to tell the public what’s in the agreement and Congress seems pressed to accept provisions that many Americans might deplore. This is a problem. Consider the TPP’s secretive advocacy for big tobacco.

The U.S. government is supporting big tobacco companies by negotiating dozens of international trade and investment agreements, but largely without the public’s knowledge. Historically, the U.S. has supported big tobacco to expand their profitability abroad, despite known health risks. For example, dating back to the 1990s the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that US tobacco trade surpluses doubled after “the U.S. government provided assistance in removing [trade] barriers.” The GAO report also notes how the prevalence of smoking in “Taiwan and South Korea had increased since the removal of U.S. cigarette export barriers,” which resulted in “the opening of Asian cigarette markets, [and increased] cigarette advertising…”

Robert L. Borosage: Hillary: Time to Step Up on the Trade Deal

It’s time for Hillary Clinton to take a position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and the fast track authority designed to ramrod it through the Congress. Hillary has been non-committal to date, with many assuming she will eventually support the president whom she served as Secretary of State.

But now the pressure to take a stand is growing. President Obama decided to call out his opponents, turning the escalating battle over fast track and TPP into an intra-party back-alley knife fight. AFLCIO President Rich Trumka, head of the 11 million member labor federation, delivered a speech making it clear that labor consider the vote on fast track and TPP fundamental. A leader of the opposition in the Congress, populist stalwart Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont just announced he would challenge Hillary for the nomination. Fast track has already passed the Senate Finance Committee. The debate on the floor will begin in May. It is time for Hillary to choose.

Most people assume, of course, that Hillary will support the treaty rather than break with the president whom she served. But, if she adheres to the standards that she put forth for the agreement, she might well surprise observers by joining the opposition.

Katha Pollitt: Charlie Hebdo’ Deserves Its Award for Courage in Free Expression. Here’s Why.

When PEN decided to award the first PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, they surely thought they were honoring bravery in defense of free speech. This was a magazine that kept publishing after its offices were firebombed by Islamists in 2011, and kept publishing after nine staffers were horribly murdered by Islamists in January. Compare that to, say, Yale University Press, which dropped the illustrations for Jytte Clausen’s book about the Danish Mohammed cartoons after the book’s first printing, or Random House, which canceled publication of Sherry Jones’s The Jewel of Medina, a historical novel about Mohammed’s wife Aisha. Both publishing houses cited fears of violence by Muslim extremists. Those fears were not irrational. The head of the British publishing house that picked up Jones’s novel had his house firebombed-and the book was dropped. Violence works. [..]

The six writers are circulating a letter to PEN members, which many great and famous writers are signing: Joyce Carol Oates, Junot Diaz, Lorrie Moore. It seems to me these writers must be awfully sure that they will never fall afoul of either fanaticism or well-meaning liberalism. “There is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable,” it argues, “and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.” Well, sure, but excuse me: violates the acceptable? The acceptable what? And don’t we need writing and artwork that pushes the boundary of what the acceptable is? “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” as Blake put it.

Norman Mailer, former president of PEN, had all sorts of reprehensible, ignorant and pigheaded views. When it came to politics, he was like a drunken uncle banging the table at Thanksgiving. But he pushed the boundaries back for every writer. And much as I dislike the vast bulk of his writing and his repulsive ideas about women-talk about punching down-if PEN gave him an award, I would just live with it.

Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. As the middle class continues to decline and the gap between the very rich and everyone else grows wider, we should keep that in mind as Congress debates the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest trade agreement in American history.

Trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta) and the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China have been abysmal failures: they allowed corporations to shut down operations in the US and move work to low-wage countries where people are forced to work for pennies an hour; and they are one of the reasons that we have lost almost 60,000 factories in our country and millions of good-paying jobs since 2001.

The TPP is simply the continuation of a failed approach to trade – an approach which benefits large multinational corporations and Wall Street, but which is a disaster for working families. The TPP must be defeated, but our overall trade policy must also change for corporations to start investing in America and creating jobs here again, and not just in China and other low wage countries.

Dean Baker: The stock market isn’t in another bubble – yet

The stock market has recovered sharply from its lows during the 2008 financial crisis. All the major indices are at or near record highs. This has led many analysts to worry about a new bubble in the stock market. These concerns are misplaced.

Before going through the data, I should point out that I am not afraid to warn of bubbles. In the late 1990s, I clearly and repeatedly warned of a stock bubble. I argued that its collapse would likely lead to a recession, end the Bill Clinton-era budget surpluses and pose serious problems for pensions. In the last decade I sounded the dangers of the housing bubble as early as 2002. I recognize the dangers of bubbles and have been at the forefront of those calling attention to them. However, it is necessary to view the picture with clear eyes and not sound the alarm at every hint of froth. [..]

It is hard to make the case that current market valuations are driving the economy. Consumption is somewhat high relative to disposable income but not hugely out of line with past levels. And there is no investment boom in aggregate, even if some social media spending might be misguided.

This means that if the market were suddenly to plunge by 20 to 30 percent, we will see some unhappy shareholders, but it is unlikely to sink the economy. In short, this is not Round 3 of the bubble economy.

Jessica Valenti: College rapists should not be able to transfer schools to skip consequences

A bit of good news for college rapists: if you’ve been accused of sexual assault and don’t feel like sticking around to deal with the consequences on campus, you can simply transfer schools and no one will be the wiser. Thanks to a privacy law for students, young men accused of rape don’t even have to disclose the complaint to their new school.

Since we know that college rapists commit an average of six rapes during their time at school, these colleges – and this policy – are making it easier for sexual offenders to move on without consequence. And onto new victims. [..]

And while transfer applications also frequently ask students to reveal if they’ve been convicted of a crime, suspended or expelled, the fact that so few college rapists are punished beyond writing a research paper or letter of apology means it’s unlikely a rape accusation would ever be revealed.

Despite the threat of letting rapists simply college-hop to avoid detection and punishment, educational and even anti-rape activists are nervous about the idea of mandating disclosure of disciplinary infractions.

After Saturday’s full day of peaceful protests in Baltimore calling for justice for Freddie Gray – the 25-year-old who recently died of a spinal injury suffered while in police custody – some protesters opted Saturday evening and Sunday to pursue more hands-on expressions of frustration. On Monday, the day of Gray’s memorial service, public tensions led to rioting in West Baltimore that continued into the evening. [..]

When crowds turned to rioting on Monday, CNN legal analyst and New Yorker contributor Jeffrey Toobin took the opportunity on Anderson Cooper 360 to denounce the city. “Protest is an honorable thing; looting and criminality are not,” he said. “Baltimore disgraced itself today.” For Toobin, it’s as if nothing disgraceful or criminal happened before Monday, as if the city’s long history of racist police violence weren’t disgrace enough to be worth comment. On the receiving end of that violence have been teenagers, pregnant women, and octogenarian grandmothers.

Finally, the media found, the protesters were behaving according to the script – the one that casts black communities in America as powder kegs that can be contained only by the cops. Never mind that chucking hot dog buns and condiments at police and smashing up police vehicles and store windows is inherently less destructive, at least in terms of human life, than fatally severing a person’s spinal cord or shooting an unarmed man multiple times in the back. The latter two operations were performed under the sanction of U.S. law enforcement, whose behavior, no matter how outrageous, is still defended from public outrage by media and politicians alike.

Guinevere E. Moore: US border agents shouldn’t have the courts’ permission to shoot people in Mexico

If you shoot an unarmed teenage boy in the head, 3 days of administrative leave isn’t nearly enough punishment

A United States court has all but declared open season on Mexican nationals along the US-Mexico border. Border patrol agents may shoot foreign nationals in Mexico with impunity – provided that those at whom they aim are standing within feet of US territory.

According to a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit last week, agents who shoot and kill people in Mexico while standing on US soil will never be held to account, except before their administrative agencies. No court will ever review these actions and the families of the victims will be left with no avenue for justice. An agent’s actions will not be governed or restrained by the constitution nor subject to review by US courts.

This isn’t a hypothetic situtation: all of this has already happened.

Michelle Chen: Is the Tide Turning Against Water Privatization?

The rusty pipes running through the rough neighborhoods of Lagos reveal how Nigeria’s flood of petrol dollars trickles down: as much as 80 percent of the water is estimated to be “stolen” in a system plagued by mismanagement and failed privatization schemes. But now help is coming accidentally from the World Bank-the financial institution better known for financing mass displacement of slum residents. Its investment arm is inadvertently bringing a small spark of hope to Lagos-not because of what it’s funding, but what it isn’t. Apparently, it’s finally starting to back off the agenda of corporatizing the city’s water. [..]

These programs are fueled by a neoliberal development model based on the notion that private markets are the most rational way to distribute resources. But, while privatization is certainly an efficient way for rich companies to extract wealth from the poor, many experts say that, in fact, public, municipally managed water systems tend to work more effectively and distribute water services more equitably among those who most need them.

The collapse of the World Bank’s Lagos PPP talks may point toward a global trend toward remunicipalization of water services in recent years, as many localities that have experimented with privatization have found that public services are actually more cost-efficient in the long run.

Dani McClain: Black Women Aren’t Just Secondary Casualties of Aggressive Policing

Last week, The New York Times published a much-discussed analysis of Census data under a headline claiming that 1.5 million black men are “missing” from daily life in America. Because of punitive and racially targeted criminal justice policies and factors leading to premature death (including declining but high homicide rates), huge swaths of black men are tucked away in prison cells or early graves. The study found that for every 100 black women in the United States who are not in jail, there are 83 black men in the same category. Among white Americans there’s barely a gap, with just one missing man for every 100 women.

The Times‘ graphics and reporting are fascinating, but analysis veered off into shallow and well-trod territory, concluding that a primary outcome of these “disappeared” men is that black families are set up for dysfunction because too few men are around to be husbands and fathers. Through this lens, the systemic assault on black lives hurts black women because they’re left alone in to raise families on their own.

The Pentagon’s new 33-page cybersecurity strategy is an important evolution in how America proposes to address a top national security threat. It is intended to warn adversaries – especially China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – that the United States is prepared to retaliate, if necessary, against cyberattacks and is developing the weapons to do so. [..]

It is essential that the laws of armed conflict that govern conventional warfare, which call for proportional response and reducing harm to civilians, are followed in any offensive cyberoperations. With so many government agencies involved in cybersecurity – the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon – the potential for turf fights and duplication is high.

The new strategy is the latest evidence that President Obama, having given up on Congress, is putting together his own response to the challenge. Since this is a global issue, still needed are international understandings about what constitutes cyberaggression and how governments should respond.

Andrew Cockburn: The Kingpin Strategy

As the war on terror nears its 14th anniversary — a war we seem to be losing, given jihadist advances in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen — the U.S. sticks stolidly to its strategy of “high-value targeting,” our preferred euphemism for assassination.  Secretary of State John Kerry has proudly cited the elimination of “fifty percent” of the Islamic State’s “top commanders” as a recent indication of progress. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi himself, “Caliph” of the Islamic State, was reportedly seriously wounded in a March airstrike and thereby removed from day-to-day control of the organization. In January, as the White House belatedly admitted, a strike targeting al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan also managed to kill an American, Warren Weinstein, and his fellow hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto. [..]

Analyses of this policy often refer, correctly, to the blood-drenched precedent of the CIA’s Vietnam-era Phoenix Program — at least 20,000 “neutralized.” But there was a more recent and far more direct, if less noted, source of inspiration for the contemporary American program of murder in the Greater Middle East and Africa, the “kingpin strategy” of Washington’s drug wars of the 1990s. As a former senior White House counterterrorism official confirmed to me in a 2013 interview, “The idea had its origins in the drug war.  So that precedent was already in the system as a shaper of our thinking.  We had a high degree of confidence in the utility of targeted killing. There was a strong sense that this was a tool to be used.”

Had that official known a little more about just how this feature of the drug wars actually played out, he might have had less confidence in the utility of his chosen instrument.  In fact, the strangest part of the story is that a strategy that failed utterly back then, achieving the very opposite of its intended goal, would later be applied full scale to the war on terror — with exactly the same results.

Aaron Pasitti: Raising the Minimum Wage Boosts Growth and Does Not Cause Unemployment

The Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is far too low. A full-time worker — 40 hours per week for 52 weeks — earning the minimum wage is guaranteed to live at the poverty level. Raising the minimum wage is good economics, good policy, and good for workers. It would reduce income inequality and poverty while boosting growth, without increasing unemployment.

A higher minimum wage would also reduce the Federal budget deficit by lowering spending on public assistance programs and increasing tax revenue. Since firms are allowed to pay poverty-level wages to 3.6 million people — 5 percent of the workforce — these workers must rely on Federal income support programs. This means that taxpayers have been subsidizing businesses, whose profits have risen to record levels over the past 30 years. [..]

By failing to ensure the minimum wage keeps pace with the cost of living and worker productivity, policymakers have created a situation where full-time workers earning the minimum wage have to rely on public assistance to make ends meet. Programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Half of this spending goes to working people earning less than $10.10 per hour. Raising the minimum wage to this amount would lower welfare rolls by 1.7 million people and reduce government spending on welfare programs by $7.6 billion per year.

President Barack Obama’s administration announced that a US drone strike, which targeted an “al Qaeda-associated compound” in January, killed two hostages in Pakistan. One of the hostages was an American contractor named Dr. Warren Weinstein, the other an Italian named Giovani Lo Porto. Weinstein was a USAID contractor and Lo Porto was an aid worker.

It is a tragedy that once again raises questions about the mostly secret criteria for launching drone strikes. If the government did not know that two hostages were being held in this compound, how much did the government really know about alleged al Qaeda militants the government claims to have killed? [..]

Obama laughably contended, “One of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”

The caveat is that what the world sees as “imperfections,” inconsistencies or criminal acts the administration often defends as features of a carefully calibrated counter-terrorism program.

John Nichols: No Joke, Cheney Was the Worst President

(O)nce in a great while a great moment occurs.

President Obama had one Saturday night, when he ruminated momentarily on the crude excesses of a certain former vice president.

“A few weeks ago Dick Cheney said he thinks I’m the worst president of his lifetime, which is interesting, because I think Dick Cheney is the worst president of my lifetime,” mused Obama.

Cheney, whose own presidential ambitions were dashed in the mid-1990s by disinterest and distrust on the part of his fellow Republicans, had to engineer his selection as George W. Bush’s vice president in order to secure the power he craved. But, once he had wedded his ambitions to the hapless “legacy” president, the second-in-command did indeed pull so many strings that he was understood by savvy Washingtonians as a virtual commander in chief. [..]

What did come as something of a surprise-and a delightful one at that-was Obama’s decision to parry the former vice president’s thrust with a devastating one-liner that had the advantage of being true.

Ari Berman: Will the Courts Finally Block Texas’ Worst-in-the-Nation Voter-ID Law?

The 2014 election in Texas illuminated the burdens of voter-ID laws. Because of the law-the strictest in the country-many longtime voters were turned away from the polls and unable to vote.

The Texas voter ID law is once again before a court on Tuesday, when the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider whether to uphold a lower-court decision striking down the law as an “unconstitutional poll tax.” [..]

The three-judge panel hearing the voter ID appeal on Tuesday includes an Obama and Clinton appointee, increasing the chances that the law will be struck down. But any decision can be appealed to the full Fifth Circuit, which is dominated by conservative Bush and Reagan appointees. Whatever the Fifth Circuit decides, the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

When it stuck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, the Court’s majority claimed the remaining provisions of the VRA would sufficiently protect voters from discriminatory voter suppression efforts. Texas will provide the ultimate test of whether that’s true.

Moustafa Bayoumi: US Needs to Stop Fomenting Violence in Yemen

The United States response to the civil war in Yemen should be the opposite of what it’s doing.

Since late January, Yemen-the poorest Arab country-has been embroiled in a bloody civil war that is escalating in brutality. A Saudi-led air campaign against the rebel movement has repeatedly hit factories, schools, water systems and residential neighborhoods, degrading the civilian infrastructure and killing hundreds of civilians. At least 150,000 people have fled their homes due to the fighting. [..]

The only sensible action for the United States is to change its course entirely. Washington’s assistance to Saudi Arabia will escalate this conflict and further inflame a volatile region. The Obama administration must choose diplomatic over military solutions for Yemen. It should demand an immediate and unconditional cease-fire from all parties involved, which would let the dire humanitarian needs be addressed and allow the people of Yemen the opportunity to find a path to reconciliation.

The last thing anyone-Yemeni or otherwise-needs is another war persisting in the Middle East.

The Presbyterian Church USA calls for reform of US tax code to address inequality

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans is now officially classified as poor. This fact naturally raises a question: Where are the religious leaders whose scriptures tell them that caring for their 60 million impoverished neighbors is their central moral duty?

I posed this question at a tax conference in New York City this week to one of the leaders in the small Christian movement focused on the role taxes play in creating inequality. She shrugged.

“The church always leads from behind,” she said.

But this may be beginning to change. The awful realities of worsening poverty in America amid overwhelming abundance at the top are becoming harder to ignore, especially those tasked with following Jesus’ teachings.

Ralph Nader:Corporate ‘Free Traitors’ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

The pro-big business President Barack Obama and his corporate allies are starting their campaign to manipulate and pressure Congress to ram through the “pull-down-on-America” Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and foreign investment treaty between 12 nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam).

The first skirmish is a fast track bill to have Congress formally strip itself of its constitutional authority to regulate trade and surrender this historic responsibility to the White House and its corporate lobbies.

Lest you think the TPP is too commercially complex to bother about, think again. This mega-treaty is the latest corporate coup-d’état that sacrifices the American consumer, labor and environmental standards — inventively called “non-tariff trade barriers” — and much U.S. sovereignty to the supremacy of corporate commercial trade.

Jeff Biigers: Regret to Inform You: Coal Blasting Rages On

The Washington University Students Against Peabody Energy ruined my Earth Day. They sent me footage of a recent fact-finding trip to Saline County, Illinois, where some of my family members, friends and farmers are being blasted by nearby Peabody Energy strip-mining operations.

Regret to inform you: Coal blasting rages on in southern Illinois, along with cancer-linked mountaintop removal operations in central Appalachia, and mining across the West.

Let’s get the narrative right: Coal is not dying, it’s declining and shifting, and though mountaintop removal is on the ropes, the knockout still awaits federal action. US coal mining production in 2015 is still set for 926 million tons, down from 996 millions tons, and estimated to rebound to 941 millions tons in 2016, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Thanks to the Appalachian decline, the Illinois Basin mined 104.9 million tons in 2014, up 4.6%.

Peter Flanary: It’s Time For the GOP to Dump Bobby Jindal

Religious freedom is under attack in Bobby Jindal’s America, where “radical liberals” and “the media elite” are bullying corporations into supporting marriage equality.

“If it’s not freedom for all,” Louisiana’s governor argued Thursday in the New York Times, “It’s not freedom at all.” With his proposed faith-based bill, the Marriage and Conscience Act, Jindal claims that he wants to ensure liberty for everyone.

But the legislation is not on the side of gay and lesbian couples. Instead, it would legally protect companies from doing business with them, because same-sex ceremonies violate “a sincerely held religious belief.” Without this law in place, Jindal warns of inevitable “discrimination against Christian individuals and businesses.”

Jindal must have missed the memo from his fellow conservatives that this is the year for pandering to gay voters, not shaming them — at least not to their faces. It’s time for the Republican Party to officially distance itself from the governor, who in his column managed to diminish and alienate two powerful, and wealthy, voting blocs: corporate America and LGBT constituents.