Tag: Opinion

Could Fighting Global Warming Be Cheap and Free?

This just in: Saving the planet would be cheap; it might even be free. But will anyone believe the good news?

I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary Fund. Both claim that strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth. This may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. These are serious, careful analyses.

But you know that such assessments will be met with claims that it’s impossible to break the link between economic growth and ever-rising emissions of greenhouse gases, a position I think of as “climate despair.” The most dangerous proponents of climate despair are on the anti-environmentalist right. But they receive aid and comfort from other groups, including some on the left, who have their own reasons for getting it wrong.

David Sirota: Too big to punish: Why America’s banks are still above the law

The Obama administration is now reducing sanctions on Credit Suisse. So much for the lessons of the Great Recession

A few months ago, in a press conference about the felony conviction of Credit Suisse, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “This case shows that no financial institution, no matter its size or global reach, is above the law.”

Yet, earlier this month, the Obama administration announced its proposal to waive some of the possible sanctions against Credit Suisse. The little-noticed waiver, which was outlined in the Federal Register, comes amid criticism that the Obama administration has gone too easy on major financial institutions that break the law. [..]

Under existing Department of Labor rules, the conviction could prevent Credit Suisse from being designated a Qualified Professional Asset Manager. That designation exempts firms from other federal laws, giving them the special status required to do business with many pension funds. The Obama administration’s is proposing to waive those anti-criminal sanctions against Credit Suisse, thereby allowing Credit Suisse to get the QPAM designation needed to continue its pension business.

David Dayen: The real Olive Garden scandal: Why greedy hedge funders suddenly care so much about breadsticks

Remember that “hilarious” report last week ripping the chain eatery to pieces? The back story will infuriate you

Last week, you may have noticed a kooky story about a hedge fund named Starboard Value chastising Olive Garden for handing out too many unlimited breadsticks at a time, and failing to salt its pasta water. The snarky 294-page presentation highlighted everything wrong with Olive Garden, along with recommendations to fix it. And there was much laughter. [..]

The story had all the proper elements for our Twitter-fueled “you won’t believe what happened next” media age. Readers could mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs, and the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review.

Except Starboard Value does not spend its time crusading for better mid-market Italian meals for no reason. It owns a bunch of shares in Olive Garden’s parent company, Darden Restaurants, and wants to take control of the company’s board. The scheme it’s concocted to increase its share price has little to do with breadsticks and pasta water. It really wants to steal Olive Garden’s real estate, and make a billion dollars in the process.

Barron H. Lerner: When Medicine Is Futile

MY father would have been thrilled to read “Dying in America,” a new report by the Institute of Medicine that argues that we subject dying patients to too many treatments, denying them a peaceful death. But he would have asked what took us so long. A physician from the late 1950s to the late 1990s, my dad grew increasingly angry at how patients died in this country, too often in hospitals and connected to machines and tubes he knew would not help them.

He placed some of the blame for the situation at the feet of bioethics and patients’ rights, two movements that I, as a young physician, had fiercely advocated. Doctors, he believed, had abrogated their duties in preventing – and, if necessary, thwarting – patients from pursuing inappropriate end-of-life interventions. We should heed my father’s advice. Physicians need to reclaim some of the turf they have ceded to patients and families.

While 70 percent of Americans approve of corporal punishment, black Americans have a distinct history with the subject. Beating children has been a depressingly familiar habit in black families since our arrival in the New World. As the black psychiatrists William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs wrote in “Black Rage,” their 1968 examination of psychological black life: “Beating in child-rearing actually has its psychological roots in slavery and even yet black parents will feel that, just as they have suffered beatings as children, so it is right that their children be so treated.”

The lash of the plantation overseer fell heavily on children to whip them into fear of white authority. Terror in the field often gave way to parents beating black children in the shack, or at times in the presence of the slave owner in forced cooperation to break a rebellious child’s spirit. Black parents beat their children to keep them from misbehaving in the eyes of whites who had the power to send black youth to their deaths for the slightest offense. Today, many black parents fear that a loose tongue or flash of temper could get their child killed by a trigger-happy cop. They would rather beat their offspring than bury them. [..]

Equally tragic is that those who are beaten become beaters too. And many black folks are reluctant to seek therapy for their troubles because they may be seen as spiritually or mentally weak. The pathology of beatings festers in the psychic wounds of black people that often go untreated in silence.

Rebecca Solnit: The Wheel Turns, the Boat Rocks, the Sea Rises

There have undoubtedly been stable periods in human history, but you and your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never lived through one, and neither will any children or grandchildren you may have or come to have. Everything has been changing continuously, profoundly — from the role of women to the nature of agriculture. For the past couple of hundred years, change has been accelerating in both magnificent and nightmarish ways.

Yet when we argue for change, notably changing our ways in response to climate change, we’re arguing against people who claim we’re disrupting a stable system.  They insist that we’re rocking the boat unnecessarily.

I say: rock that boat. It’s a lifeboat; maybe the people in it will wake up and start rowing. Those who think they’re hanging onto a stable order are actually clinging to the wreckage of the old order, a ship already sinking, that we need to leave behind.

Oliver Burkeman: Corporations are not people, so don’t let them guilt you into tipping the maid

Gratitude is a very good thing. It makes us happy. But this is what happens when Marriott and the corporate do-gooder police co-opt your feelings

If I still somehow retained any capacity to be surprised by the tone-deafness of corporate America, I imagine I’d be pretty taken aback by the news that Marriott International has joined forces with a nonprofit called A Woman’s Nation to launch The Envelope Please, a campaign to encourage hotel guests to leave “tips and notes of thanks for hotel room attendants” in envelopes that Marriott will graciously provide. (You can contribute to Marriott’s marketing budget – sorry, I meant “donate to A Woman’s Nation”! – here.)

As New York magazine’s Annie Lowery and others have pointed out, tipping is a terrible way to try to improve the lot of hotel housekeepers, whose work is stressful, debilitating, unseen and badly paid. On the one hand, tipping is basically useless as a way of encouraging good work; on the other hand, it’s incredibly useful as an excuse for employers to avoid raising wages. In the words of the National Review – and how often does one quote the National Review approvingly when not under the influence of massive quantities of hallucinogenic drugs? – how about just paying them more?”

Emma Brockes: There is nothing more American than unlimited breadsticks

Forget those classist hedge-funders and their 300-page report on pasta water. What could be more authentically itself than Olive Garden?

I have been thinking about Olive Garden more than usual the past few days – specifically its breadsticks, which were singled out for abuse in a 300-page report written by one of the restaurant chain’s investors, a hedge-fund up in arms at the perceived waste of food (and trying to gain greater control of the parent company’s board).

It’s the breadsticks, along with the bottomless salad bowl, that have of course made the franchise famous, both for its generosity and as a symbol of the gluttony and excess laying waste to America. Olive Garden is the sort of restaurant that one loves as a child and should supposedly outgrow – but that kind of snobbery overlooks a fundamental fact about human nature: no one ever, ever outgrows a good salad bar (or hot breadsticks, for that matter). It would be like outgrowing the need for a hug.

So while debate this week has ostensibly surrounded the restaurant’s commercial efficiency, all anyone has really been wondering is this: is Olive Garden – and by extension a big slice of American restaurant culture in general – gross or not gross?

As military leaders make the case for deepening military engagement in Syria and Iraq to Congress on Tuesday, more than two dozen groups are calling on lawmakers to seek answers to a number of questions about the mission that the Obama administration has so far failed to address.

“If the past decade of war in the Middle East has taught us anything, it’s that we must demand answers to hard questions before launching into war,” Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, said in a statement. “That’s why, today, groups representing millions of Americans are calling on Congress to debate and be held accountable for America’s next steps in Syria and Iraq-so we don’t make the same mistakes we’ve made in the past.”

Congress has signaled it’s disinclined to have that debate by pushing any real consideration of military action until after the midterm elections. Though a number of lawmakers have called on the president to ask Congress for authorization, many are not looking for a chance to deliberate so much as to show off their hawk bona fides. Tuesday’s campaign, which includes phone calls to lawmakers, social media asks (using the hashtag #AmericaMustKnow) and petition signatures, is intended to point out the serious gaps and inconsistencies in the president’s strategy that Congress (and until recently, the media) have largely failed to take on.

Shirley Willaims: How Scotland could lead the way towards a federal UK

England and Wales need to harness the civic spirit seen in the Scottish independence referendum and devolve powers to the regions

The Scottish independence referendum, whichever side one is on, has demonstrated the civic spirit of this country. Engaging in a mobile debate on the main street of Dunfermline or Inverness, hearing a heartfelt plea for the union from a 15-year-old schoolboy speaker at the town hall of Kirkwall, in Orkney, forceful comments on trains and trams, are testimony to the rebirth of democratic politics. Turnout at this passionate election may well exceed 80%, a figure not reached in general elections for over five decades.

The referendum decision will come at the culmination of a long period of disillusionment with politicians. The SNP, like the other mainstream parties, has attracted its own share of public frustration about centralisation and the excessive rule of Edinburgh over other regions of Scotland. Nationally, the disillusionment began with the poll tax, the decline of manufacturing in Scotland, Wales, the Midlands and the north of England during the Thatcher years, the failure of our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis in 2008 which loaded on taxpayers the huge costs of bailing out the banks. The referendum debate is not fuelled only by controversy between unionists and nationalists. It reflects also the underlying anger and resentment among members of the public in England and Wales.

Jessica Valenti: The Texas abortion clinic battle is about more than politics. It’s about women’s lives

Reproductive rights are more than a shouting match. They’re about the ability of women to access life-changing health care

Imagine you are a young woman who has just found out she is pregnant. You already have children and you’re only employed part-time. Maybe you’re in a violent relationship. Maybe you’ve been assaulted. Whatever your motivation, you know you cannot continue the pregnancy. But when you try to make an appointment at the nearest clinic – which is a hundred miles away – you’re told that there is a long waiting list. It’ll be a month-long wait for the abortion you should, medically-speaking, have right away, making it a more complicated and expensive procedure. You can’t afford that, so you start to think about going to another country with fewer regulations, where you heard about cheap drugs that will end the pregnancy.

That is not a story that should happen in America – where abortion is legal – but it’s an increasingly common reality for many women. And, after today’s hearing from the 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in which the judges appeared to support Texas’ restrictive abortion laws, it’s potentially a daily reality for many more women in Texas.

But in the midst of court decisions, a national debate over choice and lawmakers’ efforts to limit abortion rights, we cannot afford to forget that there are real people affected by these laws.

Letting the investment banks collapse would not have caused a second Great Depression

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The investment bank’s bankruptcy accelerated the financial meltdown that began with the near collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns in March 2008 (saved by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan) and picked up steam with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going under the week before Lehman’s demise. The day after Lehman failed, the giant insurer AIG was set to collapse, only to be rescued by the Fed.

With the other Wall Street behemoths also on shaky ground, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ran to Capitol Hill, accompanied by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner. Their message was clear: The apocalypse was nigh. They demanded Congress make an open-ended commitment to bail out the banks. In a message repeated endlessly by the punditocracy ever since, the failure to cough up the money would have led to a second Great Depression.

The claim was nonsense then, and it’s even greater nonsense now.

Stephen Marche: Why Canada wants Scotland to vote ‘yes’

Tea and biscuits, James Bond, the queen – Britishness is a cover for ruthless conquest. And the end of Britishness can’t arrive soon enough

The Union Jack currently occupies space on three of Canada’s provincial flags – by Friday all may be historical artifacts. The Scottish referendum is currently too close to call, but even if Scotland votes to stay, Britishness – as an idea and a way of being – has died in the process of debating it. Should the United Kingdom survive, it will survive out of economic fear. The lie that Britain deserves to survive as anything other than a bad arrangement handed down from history has been called out. And it brings me hope: if Scotland has the guts to reject the fundamental hypocrisy, vulgar classism and demand for self-contempt that Britishness demands, maybe Canada can work up the courage to do the same.

Scots built Canada under the banner of Britain. Sir John A MacDonald, the father of Confederation, rejected Chinese citizenship exactly because, as he said, the Chinese immigrant “has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations, and therefore ought not to have a vote.” Canada is its own country, of course, but British instincts and feelings and aspirations have been steeped into Canada, to the point where in some regards we are more British than the British. My nation’s motto is “peace, order and good government” – and each of those three principles is applied with the utmost sincerity. We really believe in those values.

Angel Gurria and Nicholas Stern: We can avoid climate change, and boost the world’s economy – if we act now

Reversing the damage is within our grasp, but it will hinge on a strong international climate agreement and policies that make polluters pay

The global economy is undergoing a remarkable transformation which is altering our ability to deal with climate change. The growth of emerging economies, rapid urbanisation and new technological advances are making possible a new path of low-carbon growth in ways that were not apparent even five years ago.

We know that if left unchecked, greenhouse gas emissions will cause devastating climate change. What is now becoming clear is that reducing emissions is not only compatible with economic growth and development; if done well, it can actually generate better growth than the old high-carbon model. [..]

The prize before us is huge. We can build a strong, inclusive and resilient global economy which can also avoid dangerous climate change. But the time for decision is now.

Eugene Robinson: Why Does Hillary Clinton Want to Run For President?

Judging by her weekend appearance in Iowa, it looks as if Hillary Clinton is indeed running for president. Now she has to answer one simple question: Why?

“It is true, I am thinking about it,” she said Sunday at the final Harkin Steak Fry, an annual cholesterol-boosting fundraiser that retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin has hosted for the past 37 years. Given the context, this was pretty close to an announcement of the Clinton 2016 campaign. [..]

Now Clinton begins another campaign-perhaps-in which she is seen as the inevitable winner. She has said she will make a firm decision “probably after the first of the year.” But if she has reached the point of dropping broad hints, she needs to begin telling the nation how and why she proposes to lead.

President Obama has committed the United States to another open-ended Middle East war in which the potential for doing harm rivals the possibility of doing good.

That’s the bottom line from Obama’s sober address to the nation. The president made his decision cautiously, reluctantly, even painfully. But make no mistake: The pledge to “destroy” the Islamic State is a long-term commitment, and success will depend on a host of partners that may be unreliable. [..]

To ask the even more obvious: Once you get involved in the Syrian civil war, how on earth do you get out?

David Sirota: Shareholders’ Quest for More Transparency

If you own a share of a company, how much information about the company are you entitled to? That is the question embedded in the debate over a proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would force publicly traded companies to disclose their political spending to their shareholders.

As of this month, a 2011 petition to the SEC proposing the rule has received more than 1 million comments-most of them in favor of the mandate. Supporters of the rule, some of whom demonstrated outside the SEC last week, say that’s the highest number of public comments ever submitted in response to a petition for a SEC rule. That level of public engagement, the proponents say, means the agency must stop delaying and implement the proposal. They also say that as hundreds of millions of dollars flood into politics through anonymous “dark money” sources, the rule is more needed than ever.

Joe Conason: Republicans’ Reaction to Obama Speech Reveals Much-About Them

Minutes after President Barack Obama concluded his strong and sensible address explaining how he intends to destroy the terrorist organization the Islamic State, Republicans popped up on television like political snipers. He should have kept a “residual force” in Iraq, complained Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and he is to blame for the Islamic State’s advances. He sounds just like George W. Bush, gloated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and he is reluctantly enacting the advice of Dick Cheney.

None of those remarks was accurate, but the falsehoods revealed once more the irrepressible Republican impulse to slur a Democratic president-even when the nation faces a serious security threat. In this instance, as the president attempts to unite us and bring together a broad coalition of allies, their behavior is worse than inappropriate. Indeed, were the roles reversed, the Republicans would surely describe such conduct as unpatriotic.

President Obama plans to violate international law by launching airstrikes inside Syria without that government’s consent, even though Syria might well give it. Is Obama playing into neocon hands by providing a new argument for “regime change” in Damascus?

Official Washington’s ever-influential neoconservatives and their “liberal interventionist” allies see President Barack Obama’s decision to extend U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State terrorists into Syria as a new chance to achieve the long-treasured neocon goal of “regime change” in Damascus.

On the surface, Obama’s extraordinary plan to ignore Syrian sovereignty and attack across the border has been viewed as a unilateral U.S. action to strike at the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), but it could easily evolve into a renewed effort to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s government, ironically one of ISIS’s principal goals.

Kevin Gosztola: Obama’s Deceptive, Ideological, Perilous Case for Escalating War

he neoconservative foreign policy doctrine advanced by officials in President George W. Bush’s administration was defined by the ideological belief that America has a “unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles.” In other words, America is the one indispensable nation in the world. That ideological belief inspired the Bush administration to manufacture a case for war in Iraq that was based on lies. And now, more than eleven years later, that same ideological belief is driving President Barack Obama’s administration.

In Obama’s speech announcing his strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), he invoked the September 11th attacks and the economic recession. [..]

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have perpetuated a cycle of violence that leads to more terrorism, that fuels more intense conflict in countries and leaves citizens wondering if this is the goal of the US: to maintain conditions for fighting extremist groups like ISIS so America can continue to justify its presence in places around the world.

What the Obama administration is doing continues this dangerous game, and it could have terrible consequences for the people of Iraq and Syria, who do not need to suffer from more atrocities. They need actions that will de-escalate the Middle East, not further transform the region into a training zone for extremists.

Ralph Nader: The Havoc of the Unrestrained Drug Industry

It is remarkable what very profitable drug companies-as they merge into fewer giant multinationals-continue to get away with by way of crony capitalism. Despite frequent exposure of misdeeds, the army of drug company lobbyists in Washington continues to gain political influence and rake in corporate welfare at the expense of taxpayers. The drug industry goes beyond crony capitalism when it then charges Americans the highest drug prices in the world.

Here is a short list of the honey pot produced by the lobbying muscle of the $300 billion a year pharmaceutical industry. It receives billions of dollars in tax credits for doing research and development that it should be doing anyway. Some companies reaped billions of dollars in revenues when they were granted exclusive rights to market a drug, such as Taxol, developed by the government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH). These corporations turn around and gouge patients without any price controls or royalties to NIH.

Two little-known rules on corporate reporting of executive pay are currently being reviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. While they have received almost no press coverage, these rules could have far-reaching consequences for our nation’s economy and the future of the middle class.

The Dodd Frank law requires corporations to disclose the difference between the pay received by their CEO and the median income of all other employees, and the SEC is currently finalizing the regulations, which will determine how this reporting is to be done. It has also announced that it will release rules by the end of the year requiring corporations to report on the relationship between senior executive compensation and corporate performance.

While these rules may sound obscure and largely symbolic, here are five reasons they should be receiving wider attention — followed by five ways this kind of information can be used to improve economic policy:

John Nichols: The Senate Tried to Overturn ‘Citizens United’ Today. Guess What Stopped Them?

A majority of the United States Senate has voted to advance a constitutional amendment to restore the ability of Congress and the states to establish campaign fundraising and spending rules with an eye toward preventing billionaires and corporations from buying elections.

“Today was a historic day for campaign finance reform, with more than half of the Senate voting on a constitutional amendment to make it clear that the American people have the right to regulate campaign finance,” declared Senator Tom Udall, the New Mexico Democrat who in June proposed his amendment to address some of the worst results of the Supreme Court’s interventions in with the recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (pdf) and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission decisions, as well as the 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that [it’s going to take more than a majority http://www.archives.gov/federa… to renew democracy.

Mychal Denzel Smith: What More Will It Take to Arrest Darren Wilson?

“Hands up, don’t shoot!” has been the cry of the thousands who took to the streets seeking justice for Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old who was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9. According to multiple witnesses, Brown had his hands in the air-a gesture generally understood to signal surrender-when Wilson shot him to death. The police have a different story: they say Brown was the aggressor, having reached for Wilson’s gun while the officer was still in his vehicle, and later charging toward Wilson. This version of the story, frankly, sounds ridiculous. And now there’s more reason that ever to doubt the police’s explanation. CNN has reported on two witnesses that had not previously given statements to journalists: [..]

At this point, I need someone to answer this question for me like I’m stupid: What else is needed to arrest Darren Wilson? I’m not asking what a prosecutor would need to for a murder conviction, or even what a grand jury would need to bring formal charges. What else is needed for police to say, “Darren Wilson, you shot and killed someone, you are under arrest”? What more?

Steven W. Thrasher: America is a democracy. So why do we make it hard for certain people to vote?

Voter ID. Re-registration requirements. Demanding a fixed address. Exercising your franchise shouldn’t be so tough

Since I first registered to vote on my 18th birthday, I haven’t missed voting in a single election that I can remember. My feat has been nothing short of a pain in the ass, given that I have moved 14 times in the 19 years since.

This week, I almost failed to vote for the first time: I had moved – again – in the gap between the board of elections deadline to change my address and the New York state primary election. I did try to update my voter registration online, but didn’t receive a confirmation. I was confused if I was eligible to vote where I now live, or at the last address where I had been registered.  [..]

Most people like me don’t have hours to spend voting by provisional ballot, as I did on Tuesday. And by “people like me”, I mean those of us who are somewhat fringe and move often. According to Demos, “Almost 36.5 million US residents moved between 2011 and 2012,” and “low-income individuals were twice as likely to move as those above the poverty line.”

Voter transience has a huge demographic effect on the electorate.

Are We the People the boss of the corporations, or are the corporations the boss of We the People?

Are We the People the boss of the corporations, or are the corporations the boss of We the People? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) needs to be reminded which way that question is supposed to be answered.

The SEC is the agency pset up by We the People http://www.sec.gov/about/whatw… to “protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” The SEC states that “all investors, whether large institutions or private individuals, should have access to certain basic facts about an investment prior to buying it, and so long as they hold it. … Only through the steady flow of timely, comprehensive, and accurate information can people make sound investment decisions.” [..]

But so far the SEC is not asking corporations to provide investors and the public with this information. Don’t shareholders — and We the People — deserve to know what these companies are really doing and how much they are really making?

Micheal Keegan: The First Amendment, According to Mitch McConnell

A good rule of thumb in politics is that the scarier someone sounds, the more you should doubt what they’re saying. Another good rule in politics is not to trust what Mitch McConnell says about money in politics.

Because, yes, that’s what we’re talking about here. Not a secret new Orwellian regime. Not a new anti-pastor task force. What we’re talking about is simply limiting the amount of money that corporations and wealthy individuals can spend to influence our elections.

This week, the Senate is debating a constitutional amendment that would overturn recent Supreme Court decisions that have paved the way for an explosion of big money in politics. In those decisions, including Citizens United and this year’s McCutcheon, the Supreme Court radically redefined the First Amendment to allow corporations and the wealthy to drown out the speech of everyday Americans with nearly unlimited political spending. The Democracy for All amendment would restore to Congress and the states the power to impose reasonable restrictions on money in politics, just as they had before the Supreme Court started to dismantle campaign finance laws.

So, what are Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz so scared of?

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Dems Can Win on Social Security — By Fighting to Increase It

A new poll confirms that voters don’t just want their Social Security benefits protected, they want them expanded – in overwhelming numbers, across geographical distances, and crossing all party lines. It’s not just “liberals” who feel that way. Three out of four Republican voters support it.

What’s more, voters say they’re far more likely to vote for candidates who vote to increase Social Security benefits. This is a winning issue for Democrats who are willing to take a firm stand as defenders – and expanders – of Social Security. [..]

Republicans have become shapeshifters on the issue of Social Security. Looking at poll numbers like these, it’s easy to understand why. Fortunately, Democrats can easily reveal them for what they are, by backing a fair sensible policy for increasing Social Security benefits – one which can help avert a retirement crisis in this country.

These “overwhelming” poll numbers make it clear that Democrats have everything to gain if they do.

James Rucker: Net Neutrality, Civil Rights, and Big Telecom Dollars

You might not know it, but the reason you’re able to read this article, the reason you found out about happened in Ferguson when you did and how you did, the reason you’re able to participate in activism on the Internet, is because of the way the Internet has worked since its inception — as an open platform free from corporate censorship and free from discrimination by gatekeepers at the network level.

This open nature of the Internet is again under attack, and it was years ago, with the corporate players behind the push using key voices in our community to further their interests, while at the same time undermining ours.

I actually thought this would be an old story given the sunlight that was shown four years ago during the 2010 Open Internet proceedings at the FCC. On display were the connections between civil rights organizations (like the NAACP, LULAC, National Urban League) who received significant funding from the big telecom players like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, and their policy positions favoring those companies.

But I guess four years is long time: long enough for some folks to forget, and long enough for the people and organizations implicated to brazenly go on offense.

Why are we still supporting him?

When Barack Obama and I last sat down in 2006, I refused to shake his hand. Today, I still won’t. His announcement last weekend that he would delay executive action on immigration is his fifth broken promise to Latinos on this all-important issue for our community. He has been blind to the pain of the 1,100 deportations our communities face every day and the anguish our families feel as they are swung back and forth as political pawns.

The question for us Latinos – especially the nearly 24 million of us eligible to vote – is, what to do about this? How can we ensure that the fastest-growing demographic in the country isn’t taken for granted by Democrats who purport to be our allies but often dash our hopes in the face of the least bit of political pressure? There are no obvious or even satisfactory answers, but one thing is clear: We’ve been slapped in the face one too many times by this president. And it probably won’t be the last: Obama has a long record of betraying Latinos – and it predates his days in the White House. I’ve seen it up close.

Jessica Valenti: Domestic violence survivors stay for a million reasons. Janay Rice’s is her own

Asking a battered woman why she didn’t leave is just another way to pass judgment on her and excuse her abuser

Why did she stay? How could she possibly marry him?

They are questions that victims of abuse are – wrongly – expected to answer every day. They are the questions that Janay Rice (née Palmer) is being asked to answer, again, now that video has surfaced of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice delivering a blow to her head in a casino elevator in February that knocked her into a handrail and caused her to lose consciousness. [..]

I want Ray Rice to be punished for what he did, but what I want more is for Janay Rice to be heard – even if you don’t agree with what she’s saying or that she’s choosing to stay. No one knows her life better than she does, and if this outpouring of stories should teach us anything it’s that the best thing we can do for survivors is listen to them. They will tell us what they need.

Amanda Marcotte: A Simple Rule About Sex Some Men Seem to Miss

Some men are confused about what constitutes consent.

For many years now, feminists have been promoting the idea of ” enthusiastic consent” or ” affirmative consent”, the idea that consenting to sexual activity should be about more than a lack of a “no” and that there should be the presence of a “yes”, which can be expressed verbally or non-verbally. This idea, that you should only do sexual things with people who want to do them with you, should be common sense, but a lot of angry sexists online, mostly men who seem afraid that they’ll never get laid if they have to make sure their partners want it, are up in arms about it. But as two major news stories from pop culture show, the belief that women’s bodies are up for grabs unless they are explicitly fighting back is used to justify horrible sexual violations. These stories show how important it is to spread the word that sexual interaction requires not just the absence of a “no”, but the presence of permission, and without permission to use a woman’s body for sexual purposes, you are violating her basic human rights.

The singer CeeLo Green recently pled no contest to a felony charge of giving ecstasy to a woman in 2012. He was accused of sexual assault by the woman, who said he slipped her the drug and that she woke up naked hours later next to him with no memory of what happened.

The smart thing to do after legal trouble like that would be to shut up about it, but Green decided to go on Twitter instead and share his feelings about what constitutes rape and to imply that women’s bodies are up for the taking by anyone who wants them, regardless of the woman’s feelings on the matter. “Women who have really been raped REMEMBER!!!,” he tweeted, even though there’s substantial evidence that most rapists target women they believe are too drunk or high to remember the assault clearly-which obviously helps them escape legal repercussions.

Joan Walsh: GOP’s crude birth control fake: Here’s who they may fool (hint: it’s not women)

Plans to sell “the pill” over the counter reveal they don’t know how it works, and they think women are stupid

You can’t say Republicans haven’t learned from their 2012 disasters: They’ve drilled their candidates not to talk about rape, legitimate or otherwise. Now a few are realizing it hurts to be seen as the party that’s against contraception, too.

But they don’t support the Affordable Care Act, which mandated contraception without a copay. And they can’t come out against the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, either, which vastly expanded the religious exemption letting employers duck the ACA mandate, since that’s beloved by social conservatives as well as free-marketeers. So in the closing weeks of the 2014 midterms, we’ve seen several Republican Senate candidates running tough races in purple states endorse a novel proposal: allowing pharmacies to sell birth control pills over the counter.