Tag: Opinion

Rape apologists are neither edgy nor new. Why are they given such prominent platforms?

How we think about rape matters. It determines how we talk about rape, it determines how the media writes about rape and, ultimately, it determines what we as a society do about rape.

And right now, we are not doing enough. [..]

So you might think that someone given a platform at the New York Times, like  Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld was in Sunday’s paper, might have done more than simply note that women are attacked “in appalling numbers” and colleges mishandle rape cases.

Instead, what followed that barest of acknowledgements of the epidemic of rape – on the front cover of the Times’ Sunday Review section, ostensibly some lingering bastion of “thought leadership” – was misinformation, cherry-picked research and a series of inflammatory, baseless arguments.

Joanna Rothkopf: Wrong, NRA-Right-to-Carry Laws Actually Increase Gun Violence

New study definitely debunks gun nuts’ crazy theory that more guns make us safer.

A new study from researchers at Stanford University debunks the oft-cited fact that  more guns leads to less crime. In fact, the researchers found, the opposite is the case: right-to-carry laws are associated with higher rates of aggravated assault, rape, robbery and murder.

The results of the study are imperfect. Lead author of the study and Stanford law professor  John J. Donohue III said, “Trying to estimate the impact of right-to-carry laws has been a vexing task over the last two decades.” While they specifically found that right-to-carry laws had yielded 8 percent more instances of aggravated assault, that number isn’t set in stone because of a number of confounding factors (such as various drug epidemics). Regardless, Donohue says that 8 percent is a low guess-the reality could be much higher.

Still, the study’s findings are significant in that it pokes a hole in the gun lobby’s main argument.

Amy B. Dean: The labor movement helps Ferguson heal

By highlighting racial injustice, the AFL-CIO is leading an effort to address tensions in working-class America

Given organized labor’s mixed record on race, it may seem hard to imagine that unions can play a vital role in bridging racial divides in working-class America. But some labor activists are insisting that they cannot do anything less.

In 2008 the president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, openly criticized union members who were hesitant to vote for then-candidate Barack Obama because of his race. Trumka has since made addressing racial injustice a priority for the country’s largest labor federation. It is not surprising, then, that he has now waded into the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri, pledging the AFL-CIO’s support to help address the ongoing turmoil sparked by the Aug. 9 shooting of African-American teen Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson. [..]

Such outspoken stances reflect an increasingly important reality: Few institutions in American life bring together as much diversity under one roof as organized labor, and even fewer have the political heft to influence our public policy discussions. This gives labor leaders and grass-roots union activists a unique platform from which they can speak about how our country’s racial divisions might be overcome.

Jill Lawrence: The Democratic comeback plan

Shower money and energy on the states to advance policy and nurture tomorrow’s big names

There’s no getting over a heartache until you plunge yourself into something (or someone) fresh and consuming. That’s what Democrats should do in the wake of their miserable midterm elections. Specifically, party activists and donors should direct their cash and attentions to state legislatures and state ballot initiatives. It’s the smart move both psychologically and politically.

Obviously Democrats can’t ignore the 2016 House, Senate, gubernatorial and presidential elections. But party movers and shakers must also understand the potential payoff of a forceful presence well below those levels. There’s a diminishing bench of prospects for the higher offices that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and a policy agenda that is making more progress through direct, state-specific appeals to voters than in Congress. Think of the possibilities: Minimum wage hikes today, Medicaid expansion tomorrow? [..]

The urgency for Democrats can’t be overstated. They need to start now if they want to have solid candidates and policies on state ballots in 2016, when they may be able to capitalize on the high turnout and friendlier electorate of a presidential year. If any further incentive is needed, how about the prospect of a second round of Republican-dominated redistricting after the 2020 census? The last remapping locked in today’s House GOP majority. It’s up to Democrats to unlock it and in the process show the country that they are a capable, competitive party.

The American people have spoken. But what did we really say about inequality?

At first glance, it seems that extreme inequality mattered little to the majority of voters who put pro-business candidates into office. After all, the Republicans, along with far too many Democrats, are certain to cater to their Wall Street/CEO donors. Do Americans really want an ever rising gap between the super-rich and the rest of us? [..]

Americans are virtually blind to the growing gap between CEO pay and the pay of the average worker. As the chart below shows that gap has increased dramatically. In 1965, for every dollar earned by the average worker, CEOs earned 20 dollars. By 2012, that gap mushroomed to 354 to one.

Zoë Carpenter: Senate Democrats Are About to Do Something Truly Stupid

In a cockeyed attempt to save one of their own, Senate Democrats are poised to do something truly stupid. Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, after failing to win enough votes to avoid a runoff in her Senate race, is centering her prolonged bid for re-election on a bill to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline. Democrats have long blocked such legislation in the Senate, but all of a sudden they’ve decided to bring it up for a vote, likely before Thanksgiving.

The decision is both hypocritical and irrational. Landrieu’s victory or loss will not alter the balance of the Senate. More importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that passing a pro-KXL bill will improve Landrieu’s chances in the runoff, where she faces Representative Bill Cassidy, a Republican who is just as pro-Keystone as she is. (He sponsored the House version of Landrieu’s bill, and the lower chamber is scheduled to vote Friday.) Landrieu’s entire re-election campaign centered on her being big oil’s best friend; voters know that already, and it wasn’t enough.

Joe Conason: Immigration, Impeachment and Insanity on the Republican Right

Obstructing, denouncing and demonizing Barack Obama are so central to the existence of the Republican Party today that its leaders simply ignore the real purposes of the president’s proposed immigration orders. So someone should point out that his imminent decision will advance priorities to which the Republican right offers routine lip service: promoting family values, assisting law enforcement, ensuring efficient government and guarding national security.

Much of the argument for immigration reform-and, in particular, the president’s proposed executive orders-revolves around the imperative of compassion for immigrant families. That is a powerful claim-or should be, at least, for the self-styled Christians of the Republican right. If they aren’t moved by empathy for struggling, aspiring, hardworking people, however, then maybe they should consider the practicalities.

America is not going to deport millions upon millions of Latino immigrants and their families to satisfy tea party prejudices, even if that were possible. Attempting to do so would be a gigantic waste of taxpayers’ money, an unwelcome burden on thousands of major employers and an inhumane disgrace with international consequences, none of them good. It might or might not be “legal,” but it would surely be stupid.

Dave Zirin: New NBA Union Chief Michele Roberts Slams the League’s Old Labor Practices

The labor movement slogans that have guided generations include “an injury to one is an injury to all” and “solidarity forever.” But my favorite-because it speaks most directly to strategy-is, “The best way to avoid a strike is to prepare for one.” In other words, bosses will only back down and blink if they survey your side and think that they can lose.

That is why anyone who cares about the rights of labor on the highest possible public platform has to be inspired by the recent comments of new NBA Players Association Executive Director Michele Roberts. In an interview with Pablo Torre of ESPN the Magazine, Roberts took a step back from the decades of established labor practices that have governed sports and basically said, “This is bullshit.” [..]

Make no mistake what this is about. The league is about to be engorged by television revenue, $24 billion over six years, as live sports has become the tent pole of commercial television in our live streaming and DVR’d universe. Roberts is sending a shot across the bow that the owners will not be the primary beneficiaries of this broadcast bonanza and they will no longer, as she put it, “control the narrative.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest appraisal of America’s income breakdown. Whatever yardstick you use, the CBO shows, the rich are winning. Big.

How much income do America’s households take in? How much do they have left after taxes? Do federal taxes leave the nation less or more unequal?

Questions don’t get much more basic than these. Or more complicated either.

How, for instance, do we define income? Everyone agrees, of course, that anything anyone collects from a paycheck should count as income. As should any interest collected from a bank account or any profits from the sale of an asset.

But what about the money an employer shells out to cover an employee’s health insurance premiums? Or contributes into an employee’s 401(k)? Should these dollars be counted as income for the employee?

Calculating how much taxes people pay can pose similar puzzlers. How do we treat the taxes corporations pay on their income? Who in the end bears that burden? Shareholders? Consumers?

Paul Krugman: When Government Succeeds

The great American Ebola freakout of 2014 seems to be over. The disease is still ravaging Africa, and as with any epidemic, there’s always a risk of a renewed outbreak. But there haven’t been any new U.S. cases for a while, and popular anxiety is fading fast.

Before we move on, however, let’s try to learn something from the panic.

When the freakout was at its peak, Ebola wasn’t just a disease – it was a political metaphor. It was, specifically, held up by America’s right wing as a symbol of government failure. The usual suspects claimed that the Obama administration was falling down on the job, but more than that, they insisted that conventional policy was incapable of dealing with the situation. Leading Republicans suggested ignoring everything we know about disease control and resorting to extreme measures like travel bans, while mocking claims that health officials knew what they were doing.

Guess what: Those officials actually did know what they were doing. The real lesson of the Ebola story is that sometimes public policy is succeeding even while partisans are screaming about failure. And it’s not the only recent story along those lines.

Will Hutton: Banking is changing, slowly, but its culture is still corrupt

The latest financial scandal indicates how hard it is to stamp out double-dealing when bankers are allowed to live by their own rules

Another week, another financial scandal. Six global banks, including RBS and HSBC, were fined £2.6bn last week for rigging the foreign exchange markets. Since 2008, total fines levied in Europe and the US for banking crimes and misdemeanours now top £100bn, with banks making provision for a further £60bn. British banks alone have set aside an estimated £30bn for fines, provisions and litigation costs.

What has gone wrong with western finance?

The systemic ripping off of customers continued after the financial crisis to constitute what is now the biggest-ever global corporate scandal. Banks worldwide duped clients into buying products that were either not needed or provided no purpose. Worse, they organised financial markets whose purpose was to serve their own interests rather than those they purported to serve. It has proved a hard habit to break.

Robert Kuttner: Notes for Next Time: From Turnoff to Turnout

The voting turnout in this year’s congressional and gubernatorial elections was the lowest since 1942. Much of the story was in young people, poor people, black and Hispanic citizens who tend to support Democrats voting in far lower numbers than in 2008 or 2012. The Democrats just weren’t offering them very much.

But the other part of the Election Day story was older voters and the white working class, especially men, deserting the Democrats in droves — again, because Democrats didn’t seem to be offering much. Republicans, at least, were promising lower taxes.

Turnout on average dropped from 2012 by a staggering 42 percent. But as Sam Wang reported in a post-election piece for the American Prospect, the drop-off was evidently worse for Democrats.

The two parts of this story seem to create an impossible conundrum for Democrats: Do more for minorities and the poor, and you presumably risk driving social conservatives even further into the arms of Republicans. But ignore the needs of those who need more government activism — and the Democratic base fails to turn out.

It’s easy to strike a pose of cynicism when contemplating Hillary Clinton’s inevitable (and terribly imminent) presidential campaign. As a drearily soulless, principle-free, power-hungry veteran of DC’s game of thrones, she’s about as banal of an American politician as it gets. One of the few unique aspects to her, perhaps the only one, is how the genuinely inspiring gender milestone of her election will (following the Obama model) be exploited to obscure her primary role as guardian of the status quo.

That she’s the beneficiary of dynastic succession – who may very well be pitted against the next heir in line from the regal Bush dynasty (this one, not yet this one) – makes it all the more tempting to regard #HillaryTime with an evenly distributed mix of boredom and contempt. The tens of millions of dollars the Clintons have jointly “earned” off their political celebrity – much of it speaking to the very globalists, industry groups, hedge funds, and other Wall Street appendages who would have among the largest stake in her presidency – make the spectacle that much more depressing (the likely candidate is pictured above with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein at an event in September).

But one shouldn’t be so jaded. There is genuine and intense excitement over the prospect of (another) Clinton presidency. Many significant American factions regard her elevation to the Oval Office as an opportunity for rejuvenation, as a stirring symbol of hope and change, as the vehicle for vital policy advances…

David Sirota: Wall Street Takes Over More Statehouses

No runoff will be needed to declare one unambiguous winner in this month’s gubernatorial elections: the financial services industry. From Illinois to Massachusetts, voters effectively placed more than $100 billion worth of public pension investments under the control of executives-turned-politicians whose firms profit by managing state pension money.

The elections played out as states and cities across the country debate the merits of shifting public pension money-the retirement savings for police, firefighters, teachers and other public employees-from plain vanilla investments such as index funds into higher-risk alternatives like hedge funds and private equity funds.

Critics argue that this course has often failed to boost returns enough to compensate for taxpayer-financed fees paid to the financial services companies that manage the money. Wall Street firms and executives have poured campaign contributions into states that have embraced the strategy, eager for expanded opportunities. The election results affirmed that this money was well spent: More public pension money will now likely be entrusted to the financial services industry.

Robert L. Borosage: More Than the Minimum: Obama’s Next Executive Action

With a stroke of the pen, the president can have a dramatic effect on the lives of Lewis and millions of workers, leveraging not only the $1 trillion in spending on federal contracts, but setting an example that will accelerate similar action at the state and local level.

The choice here is a simple one. President Obama has held up Costco as an example of a good jobs employer that is remarkably successful. It pays its workers a decent wage with good benefits, doesn’t reward its CEO obscene bonuses, and respects workers’ rights. In stark contrast, Walmart pays its workers so little that taxpayers end up paying billions to subsidize their low wages and lousy benefits. Clearly, the federal government should be standing on the side of good employers rather than rewarding exploitative ones that layoff part of their costs on taxpayers.

Last week’s election showed that Americans are unhappy with a recovery that does not include them. A Hart poll for the AFLCIO showed that more than four out of five voters (87 percent) reported that they were sinking or treading water in this economy.

Democrats paid the price for that discontent. The big winners, even in red states like Arkansas and Nebraska, were initiatives to raise the minimum wage and guarantee sick leave.

Richard (RJ) Eskow : Bill Clinton’s Out of Touch Economically — and That’s a Big Deal

He’s eloquent, he’s popular … and he’s out of touch with the daily lives of most Americans. Bill Clinton’s economic worldview spells trouble, both for a party that’s still reeling from defeat and for a nation where millions of people struggle just to make ends meet.

Hillary Clinton, the heavily-favored contender for the Democratic nomination, has made Bill’s presidency and her role in it an essential part of her resume. But “Clintonism,” the Wall Street-friendly economic ideology of a bygone era, has passed its sell-by date. The former president’s latest remarks confirm that.

The 1990s are over. This is a different country now, both economically and politically. But the presumptive nominee’s partner and most important colleague still holds views which are sharply at odds with both economic reality and the nation’s mood. That’s a big deal. His opinions could have a profound impact on our political and economic future.

If Hillary Clinton disagrees with the former president’s views, she hasn’t said so.

Tell the Government Accounting Standards Board you want full disclosure on tax subsidies for corporations

Each year billions of your state and local tax dollars get diverted from public coffers for corporate subsidies. Just how much you are forced to pay for corporate welfare could soon move from the darkness of official secrecy into the light – but only if you act now.

A proposed rule requiring state and local governments to disclose the total amount of property tax and some other abatements in any year is being considered by the little-known private rule-making body known as the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB).

In 44 states, laws let county, city and other local officials grant tax reductions or exemptions to companies, often with little disclosure and no accountability. Exemptions from taxes benefit thousands of companies, from online retailer Amazon to shampoo maker Zotos International.

The proposal is tepid and narrow, but far better to let in a ray of light than to allow these deals the cover of total darkness in which they are typically carried out.

Dean Baker: Obama should devote final years to changing economic conversation

Intransigent Republican Congress and pro-austerity know-nothings need to have their views challenged

Presidents are rarely able to accomplish much in the last two years of a second term. Tuesday’s election results guaranteed that President Barack Obama will not be able to accomplish anything legislatively in the remainder of his term. The Republicans will demand that he surrender his firstborn just to get an undersecretary through the Senate approval process.

If Obama recognizes this reality, perhaps he can take the opportunity to spend his remaining years more constructively by permanently transforming the shape of the economic debate in the United States and overseas. [..]

By making it very clear that Obama can accomplish nothing by working with Congress, the elections last week put him in a situation where he has nothing to lose. This gives him the opportunity to step away from the Washington political nonsense and try to permanently change the nature of economic debates domestically and internationally.

If he succeeds, he will have done an enormous service to the country and the rest of the world. He can create a political environment in which his successors can talk honestly about the country’s economic problems and then work to fix them.

Scott Lemieux: In a divided America, partisan and race-based redistricting are indistinguishable

When the vast-majority of minority voters identify as Democrat, drawing Congressional lines based on party affiliation will have a racial component

One of the most profane parts of American democracy is the act of gerrymandering – which is to say, redrawing the boundaries of congressional districts less to reflect population shifts than to ensure the electoral results your party prefers. But like the word “fuck”, we’ve become so inured to gerrymandering that even in its ugliest incarnation – the “motherfucker” of all gerrymandering, if you will, racial gerrymandering – the scourge hardly registers as an epithet at all.

At the US supreme court on Wednesday, in a seemingly boring case about the particulars of this most insidious problem, chief justice John Roberts said he understood that states “have to hit this sweet spot between those two extremes without taking race predominantly into consideration”.

In other words, redrawing district boundaries to benefit Republicans over Democrats in party gerrymandering is totally legal (the “sweet spot”). Redrawing them to disenfranchise black voters instead of white voters are both a disgusting misuse of political power and illegal racial gerrymandering … even if the results – the diminution of minority voters’ electoral power – are the same. But then again, using semantics to avoid addressing racism is exactly the problem with a conservative Roberts court that has been gutting voter rights for going on two years now.

Jeb Lund: A flu shot won’t make Ebola go away, but it might kill our anti-doctor hysteria

Finally, something anti-vaxxers and smug liberal elitists can agree upon

Last month, I became a father for the first time, and with parenting has come a slew of unanticipated responsibilities. Did you know that you have to shop for a pediatrician? I had hoped someone looked at Google Maps and assigned the one closest to you. (They don’t.)

So with a new baby in hand and Ebola and annual flu shots in the news, I found myself asking a bunch of unfamiliar baby doctors a question I never thought I’d have to ask a medical professional: “How do you feel about vaccines?”

My first prospective doctor looked at me, bit her lip and squirmed, so I bailed her out and said, “Look, don’t get me wrong: herd immunity is extremely my shit.” She visibly relaxed then because conversations like that – and about Ebola – often turn rapidly and radically in the opposite direction. [..]

This is the state of our science conversation: hyped non-dangers, self-created unnecessary dangers, being wrong about the facts both coming and going. Polls still suggest that Ebola is a greater threat and that the authorities are deliberately doing less than they can to fight it; meanwhile, the measles have reached a 20-year high and parents are saying, Screw it, let’s roll the dice on Madison and Tyler getting some – at least it’ll be something to write about in that 17-page brick of a Christmas form letter we’ll send out printed in Comic Sans.

It all began taking shape back in March of 2013, when Sandra Steingraber – the noted biologist, author, educator and advisor of Americans Against Fracking – and 11 other courageous individuals were arrested for blockading the entrance to a natural gas compressor station on the banks of Seneca Lake, in the environmentally sensitive Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. These so-called “Seneca Lake 12” were simply doing what countless other Americans have done over generations when they knew their health and safety were threatened, when their elected leaders weren’t there to help, and when they had no other choice: they stood up for their neighbors, their families and themselves, and were hauled off to jail. Sandra spent 10 days behind bars after defiantly refusing to pay a fine.

The narrative of the Seneca Lake 12 is becoming all too familiar, as concerned residents across the nation are often finding no legal means of resistance against the incessant development of dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure spurred on by fracking. Thanks to the decimation of campaign finance laws by the U.S. Supreme Court, state and federal politicians have become increasingly bought off by the unlimited wealth of the oil and gas industry. As such, pleas from desperate local officials and community groups to reject hazardous infrastructure projects fall on deaf ears.

Amanda Marcotte: If anti-feminists believe false rape accusations are common, why don’t they warn men to protect themselves?

Having read, sadly, a shocking number of people who engage in rape apology, one of the weirdest things about it is how the same person can simultaneously argue 1) that rape isn’t real but is simply women getting revenge because they didn’t get a post-one-night-stand phone call and 2) that women only have themselves to blame if they’re victimized because they partied/willingly had sex/wore something slutty. This seems like a contradiction to me because if women aren’t actually under real threat of rape, why would they have to take precautions? If rape isn’t a thing that happens, then there’s no reason to be careful.

But the contradiction really goes deeper than that, I realized upon reading about Lincoln University president Robert R. Jennings’s lecture to young women about their supposedly awful behavior around men. Jennings was trotting out the usual rape-isn’t-real-but-it’s-on-women-to-stop-the-thing-we-don’t-call-rape contradictory argument, but his argument really drove home how nonsensical it all is.

Maya Schenwar: Prisons Are Destroying Communities and Making All of Us Less Safe

Isolation does not “rehabilitate” people. Disappearance does not deter harm. And prison does not keep us safe.

“Prison,” writes Angela Davis, “performs a feat of magic.” As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. But, as Davis notes, “prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.” And the caging and erasure of those human beings, mostly people of color and poor people, perpetuates a cycle in which large groups are cut off from “mainstream society” and denied the freedoms, opportunities, civic dignity, and basic needs that allow them a good life.

In many jails and prisons, incarcerated people are tossed into a dank, dungeon-like solitary confinement cell when they are determined to have “misbehaved.” It’s dubbed “the Hole.” Isolated and dark, it shuts out almost all communication with fellow prisoners and the outside. Guards control the terms of confinement and the channels-if any-by which words can travel in and out. The Hole presents a stark symbol of the institution of prison in its entirety, which functions on the tenets of disappearance, isolation, and disposability. The “solution” to our social problems-the mechanism that’s supposed to “keep things together”-amounts to destruction: the disposal of vast numbers of human beings, the breaking down of families, and the shattering of communities. Prison is tearing society apart.

Stephennie Mulder: The blood antiquities funding ISIL

The sale of illegal antiquities is now estimated to be ISIL’s second-largest revenue stream after oil.

Recently, in an exclusive event at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, Secretary of State John Kerry stood – with perhaps unintended irony – before the facade of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur to back an initiative to track losses of Syrian and Iraqi antiquities, including the destruction of monuments and looting of precious objects from archaeological sites.

Kerry blamed “barbaric” practices of groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who profit by sponsoring highly organised groups of looters who sell the objects, fresh from the ground, to middlemen.

But one might ask: Who buys them?

It’s politically advantageous to blame ISIL. But it is another barbarism, one that unfolds in the hushed and elegant showrooms of antiquities merchants and auction houses in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, that is the true engine of this commerce.

Antiquities trafficking is a booming business in Syria and Iraq, and not only ISIL is to blame. Syrian government forces have been filmed piling delicately carved funerary statues from Roman-era Palmyra into the back of a pick-up truck, and at the ancient site of Apamea, a capital of the successors to Alexander the Great, the sudden appearance of a vast, lunar landscape of over 4,000 illegal excavation holes indicate it was also looted while under the army’s control.

There’s a powerful solution for disclosing the secret-money sloshing around in our political system. It does not require an act of Congress or action from any of the effectively toothless campaign-finance watchdogs, like the Federal Election Commission. In fact, this solution could be passed in an instant, and the only requirement for action is political will.

President Barack Obama can issue an executive order today that requires government contractors to disclose their dark-money campaign contributions.

Why doesn’t he? And why don’t campaign-finance-reform organizations push for such a fix?

Paul Buccheit: The Billion Dollar a Month Club: A Runaway Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich

Our national wealth has grown by an astonishing $30 trillion since the recession, but most of it has gone to people who were already wealthy.

We are living through a massive redistribution of America’s net worth to the beneficiaries of a financial industry that has used cunning and money and power to impose their version of economic “freedom” while deregulating any policies that might have stopped the incessant transfer of wealth.

It’s getting worse, by the year and by the month. President Obama’s claim that “We’ve recovered faster and come farther than almost any other advanced country on Earth” applies largely to the people whose wealth accumulation has dramatically pulled up the averages. The evidence is staring us in the face, but the super-rich are only watching their portfolios.

William Hartung: The Escalation of the War in Iraq Is Grounded in Fantasy

Of the many fallacies underlying the current U.S. military intervention in Iraq, the greatest may be the idea that the United States has a reliable partner in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. In his Face the Nation interview, President Obama tied the latest escalation of the war to his trust in the new Iraqi government: “Phase one was getting an Iraqi government that was inclusive and credible — and we now have done that.”

The idea that the Abadi government is inclusive will come as news to people in Iraq. In one of his most consequential decisions since taking office, Abadi appointed Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, a member of the Badr Organization, as interior minister. The Badr organization is run by Hadi al-Amiri. According to a U.S. embassy cable released by Wikileaks, Amiri ordered the torture and killing of over 2,000 Sunnis between 2004 and 2006 during a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. One of the torture methods involved using a power drill to pierce the skull of the victims. [..]

Government-sanctioned violence against Sunnis is not a thing of the past. In the aftermath of a series of successful counter-attacks against Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Diyala province — attacks in which Amiri was given control of all Iraqi forces — Sunnis in the area suffered torture, executions, and the burning of entire villages at the hands of Shiite militias that had fought alongside Iraqi security forces.

Les Leopold: As Bad As You Think It Is, It’s Worse: Wage Theft Comes to America

In Denmark fast food workers make $20 an hour plus benefits, and the corporations who employ them are still profitable. Why there and not here?

The answer is simple and painful — wage theft. In America corporations are systematically stealing our wages. Virtually everyone in the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution now suffers from wage theft… perhaps, including you!

It starts at the bottom of the income ladder. Many undocumented immigrant day labors survive by standing on street corners and selling their labor to drive-by construction and landscaping contractors. Unfortunately, far too many contractors refuse to pay after the work is done, something experienced by nearly every day-laborer.

We have entered the fourth official month of the latest war without end in the Middle East, and the Obama administration has suddenly doubled America’s troop presence in Iraq – yet there is no approved declaration of war in sight. The so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels receiving millions in weapons are now being defeated, and those same weapons are ending up in the hands of al-Qaida – yet there is no public sign of dialing back in the fight again the Islamic State.

You would think the faces of the mainstream American press would start questioning the White House’s strategy of perpetual war, but you’d be wrong. The drumbeat seems louder than ever; the challengers of power are nearly silent.

Fresh off his party’s drubbing in the US midterm elections, Obama appeared Sunday on Face the Nation, as a meek Bob Schieffer of CBS News lobbed weak questions at the president on his Isis war policy. It was a quintessential example of how some in the mainstream American press have refused to ask critical questions about our new Forever War – even as the most important questions stare everyone in the face.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: US voter turnout is an international embarrassment. Here’s how to fix it

Americans should be embarrassed. The low voter turnout on Election Day last week in the United States was an international disgrace.

What has become of a democratic form of government that Abraham Lincoln said was “of the people, by the people, for the people“? Can we be satisfied with a “democracy” when more than 60% of people don’t vote and some 80% of young people and low-income Americans don’t either? Can we be content when poll after poll shows that most Americans can’t even name the political parties that control the US Senate and House – or who their member of Congress is?

Nationwide, preliminary indications show that the total turnout in the US midterms was only 36.6%. If these estimates hold true, 2014 will be the least representative election in modern American history. When billionaires and corporations tilt elections, conservatives suppress voting and crucial voters feel unengaged, what kind of example for the world is that?

Robert Kuttner: The Cure for the Democrats’ Woes — Goldman Sachs!

After the Democrats’ drubbing in the 2014 midterm elections, there have been fervent debates about whether the Party should embrace an economic populism to tap pocketbook frustrations — or move further to the center in the hopes of capturing more independents.

One thing the Democrats did throughout Obama’s nearly six years was move closer to Wall Street — from the economic team Obama appointed, to the administration’s premature embrace of deficit reduction promoted by financial moguls, to a bailout plan that shored up the biggest banks rather than breaking them up.

It was this coziness with big finance that allowed the far-right Tea Party movement to paint Wall Street and Washington with the same brush — and to capture much of the populist rage on display against Democrats in the 2010 midterms and once again on November 4.

So the last thing Democrats need going forward is an even closer affinity with Wall Street, right? Well, the Democrats may soon get even cozier.

Hannah Giorgis: Beyond ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’: what if there’s no indictment in Ferguson?

Black lives matter? It’s tough to keep saying something like that – to shout it in anything but protest – with this impending reality: At some point in the next few days, it’s likely that Darren Wilson will not be indicted, by the US justice department or the state of Missouri, for the extrajudicial killing of Michael Brown – an 18-year-old unarmed black man – in Ferguson, in broad daylight, three long months ago. [..]

But to understand a non-indictment in Ferguson as simply par for the course in the United States case is not to say that Brown’s life is unworthy of defending, nor that his death and its international aftermath are unworthy of redress. This reality check simply locates another officer in the context of the white supremacist law-enforcement apparatus that defends him in lieu of protecting its (black) citizens, that operates with impunity. And for the rest of us to view black life as worthy of defending, to unequivocally repeat that black lives matter in a world that insists otherwise, is a radical act – if a tiresome one.

The hard truth about no justice for Mike Brown is that we must reassess our standards for justice to create a kind of peace – for his family, for Ferguson, and for those of whose anger and grief emerge anew each time a black life is taken without consequence.