Tag: Opinion

In June President Obama laid out a plan for the U.S. to tackle climate change including a climate test for the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. A new economic and environmental analysis from NRDC makes it clear that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline fails the President’s climate test. Industry analysts agree that Keystone XL is a critical piece of the puzzle for the tar sands industry to build new extraction projects. Tar sands oil production causes the release of huge amounts of carbon pollution from its energy-intensive extraction methods and refining processes.  The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would add 935 million to 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon pollution to our atmosphere-a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions-over the 50-year life span of the project. Expansion of the very energy-intensive and costly tar sands are not in our national interest and the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline should be rejected.

Mary Bottari and Rebekah Wilce: ALEC in 2013: Rightwing Legislative Group Fuels Race to the Bottom in Wages and Worker Rights

Just How Low Can Your Salary Go?

At least 117 bills introduced in 2013 fuel a “race to the bottom” in wages, benefits, and worker rights and resemble “model” bills from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), according to a new analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of ALECexposed.org.

As working Americans speak out for higher wages, better benefits, and respect in the workplace, a coordinated, nationwide campaign to silence them is mounting — and ALEC is at the heart of it. ALEC corporations, right-wing think tanks, and monied interests like the Koch brothers are pushing legislation throughout the country designed to drive down wages; limit health care, pensions, and other benefits; and cripple working families’ participation in the political and legislative process.

Emily Masters: As the NSA Follows You, We Follow the Money

Since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has witnessed the rapid growth of an intelligence-industrial complex that fuses government and corporate power. According to the Project on Government Oversight, $300 billion a year is now spent on a “shadow government of private contractors.” At the center of this arrangement is an interlocking web of current and former high-level government officials, major corporations, D.C. think tanks and other inside-the-Beltway operators who have benefitted from the rise of the surveillance state. Here are a few of the most notable: [..]

Bryce Covert: Is This the Big Moment for Better Work/Family Balance Policies?

Those of us who have been pushing for better work/family policies know the story of how we almost had universal childcare all too well. In 1971, Congress passed the bipartisan Comprehensive Child Development Act on a bipartisan vote. It would have meant the first step toward a universal childcare system, offering all parents a free, high-quality place to send their kids while they worked. As Nancy L. Cohen reports, Congress authorized five times what it currently spends on Head Start to finance the program.

Then, before President Nixon signed the bill, the evangelical right staged an intense backlash as part of the brand new culture wars, which wormed its way into Nixon’s ear through special assistant Pat Buchanan. Nixon ultimately vetoed the bill, saying it would “commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.” Thus the “family values” crowd was born and the bipartisan idea that the government should support working women by taking some of the parenting burden off their shoulders died.

Zoë Carpenter: Senate Poised to Raise Interest Rates on Future Student Loans

The Senate will vote this week on a proposal to change the way the government sets federal student loan rates, in the hopes of ending weeks of stalemate.

Don’t be fooled by any triumphant rhetoric. The plan the Senate is voting on-to peg interest rates on federal student loans to the financial market-promises low rates in the short term, and nearly guarantees that they will rise above current levels in a matter of years. [..]

The fix on the table now is permanent, and it allows both parties to dodge blame for the sudden rate hike that occurred July 1, when subsidized Stafford rates jumped from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. The plan does bring rates back below 4 percent for Stafford loans in the coming year, benefitting new undergraduates quite a bit.

But it won’t keep the rates below that threshold for long; instead, the Senate plan puts rates on track to exceed 6.8 percent in only four years.

Does anyone seriously doubt that, if Detroit were a “too big to fail” bank, it would have been bailed out long ago? Or that its pensioners, rather than facing the threat of cruel cuts as part of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s scheme to steer the city into brutal bankruptcy proceedings, would instead have pocketed hefty bonuses?

To ask the question is to answer it.

If the 2008 bailout of the biggest players in the financial sector-and policy-making over the ensuing years-tells us anything, it is that Congress and the Federal Reserve take care of Wall Street.

America’s great cities? Not so much.

Norman Solomon: Obama’s Escalating War on Freedom of the Press

The part of the First Amendment that prohibits “abridging the freedom … of the press” is now up against the wall, as the Obama administration continues to assault the kind of journalism that can expose government secrets.

Last Friday the administration got what it wanted-an ice-cold chilling effect-from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled on the case of New York Times reporter James Risen. The court “delivered a blow to investigative journalism in America by ruling that reporters have no First Amendment protection that would safeguard the confidentiality of their sources in the event of a criminal trial,” the Guardian reported. [..]

At the Freedom of the Press Foundation, co-founder Trevor Timm calls the court ruling “the most significant reporter’s privilege decision in decades” and asserts that the court “eviscerated that privilege.” He’s not exaggerating. Press freedom is at stake.

Paul Buccheit: The Insanity of Not Having a Financial Transaction Tax

The logic for the tax is indisputable:

1. Financial industry speculation devastated middle-class homeowner wealth.

2. U.S. investors pay zero tax on their speculative transactions.

3. The tax is easy to implement, and is very successful in other countries.

The emotional appeal reaches most of America:

Why should the rest of us pay up to 10% on the necessities of life while risky derivative purchases aren’t taxed at all?

Why should kids around the country lose their arts programs while trillions of dollars flow, untaxed, to Wall Street?

Ted Kaufman: Happy Birthday to Dodd-Frank, a Law That Isn’t Working

Today marks the third anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. Sadly, except for a recent promising development that might increase capital requirements for megabanks, the act has not delivered on its promise to fix the problems that caused the financial meltdown of 2008-09.

Failure was built into Dodd-Frank from the beginning. Instead of writing laws that addressed the abuses that led to the crisis, it nearly always kicked the can down to agencies, instructing them to write new regulations. By and large, those regulatory agencies have been overwhelmed by a combination of congressional underfunding and a massive lobbying effort by the megabanks that increasingly seem to control Washington. The Davis Polk law firm’s latest count says that only 155 of the 398 rule makings required by Dodd-Frank have been finalized

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Glass-Steagall prevented a classic conflict of interest that we know frequently arises in the real world. Commercial banks are subsidized through federal deposit insurance. Most economists support providing deposit insurance to commercial banks for relatively smaller depositors. I am not aware of any economists who support federal “deposit” insurance for the customers of investment banks or the creditors of non-financial businesses.

It violates core principles of conservatism and libertarianism to extend the federal subsidy provided to commercial banks via deposit insurance to allow that subsidy to extend to non-banking operations. Absent Glass-Steagall, banks could purchase anything from an aluminum company to a fast food franchise and (indirectly) fund its acquisitions and operations with federally-subsidized deposits. If you run an independent aluminum company or fast food franchise do you want to have to compete with a federally-subsidized rival?

Robert Kuttner: Breaking the Glass Ceiling at the Federal Reserve

Larry Summers is running hard to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. This is a terrible idea, on several grounds (which I’ll discuss in a moment.) Even so, I’d place the odds of President Obama giving Summers the job at 50-50 or better, unless progressive Democrats get mobilized, and fast. [..]

The prime alternative to Summers is Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen, who is very much like Bernanke, only better. She has gone even further in expressing concern for the economy’s persistent unemployment and in criticizing the bipartisan obsession with deficit reduction. I wrote about Yellen’s stellar performance for the Huffington Post back in February.

Yellen deserves to be Fed chair purely on the merits. It pains me to write that if she gets the job, one other major contrast with Summers will weigh in her favor. She is female.

Robert Reich: Detroit, and the Bankruptcy of America’s Social Contract

One way to view Detroit’s bankruptcy — the largest bankruptcy of any American city — is as a failure of political negotiations over how financial sacrifices should be divided among the city’s creditors, city workers, and municipal retirees — requiring a court to decide instead. It could also be seen as the inevitable culmination of decades of union agreements offering unaffordable pension and health benefits to city workers.

But there’s a more basic story here, and it’s being replicated across America: Americans are segregating by income more than ever before. Forty years ago, most cities (including Detroit) had a mixture of wealthy, middle-class, and poor residents. Now, each income group tends to lives separately, in its own city — with its own tax bases and philanthropies that support, at one extreme, excellent schools, resplendent parks, rapid-response security, efficient transportation, and other first-rate services; or, at the opposite extreme, terrible schools, dilapidated parks, high crime, and third-rate services.

William Greider: Stop Larry Summers Before He Messes Up Again

Washington insiders are spreading an alarming news alert. Barack Obama, I am told, is on the brink of making a terrible mistake by appointing Lawrence Summers as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. That sounds improbable, since Summers is a toxic retread from the old boys’ network and a nettlesome egotist who offended just about everyone during his previous tours in government. More to the point, Summers was a central player in the grave governing errors that led to the financial collapse and a ruined economy.

Surely not, I thought, when I heard the gossip. But my source heard it from the White House. Obama’s senior economic advisers-still dominated by Clintonistas and aging acolytes of Robert Rubin-are pushing the president to choose Summers as the successor to Ben Bernanke, whose term ends in January. And they are urging Obama to make the announcement right now, before the opposition can get organized.

The decision by the City of Detroit to declare bankruptcy came as a shock to many. Detroit, which was once the nation’s fifth-biggest city, is by far the largest government in the United States ever to declare bankruptcy. While Detroit has been seeing a falling population and worsening finances for five decades, bankruptcy is still a dramatic step.

One part of this story that is striking is the discussion in the media of how workers’ pensions will fare in bankruptcy. Most articles seem to take it for granted that pensions will face large cuts, with some implying that retired workers may be in the same situation as unsecured creditors, getting just a few cents for each dollar owed.

This is striking because Michigan’s state constitution seems to say as clearly as possible that pension payments are a contractual obligation of the state.

Ryan Budish: Tech firms should be allowed to publish more data on US surveillance

The ‘deal’ the government offered tech firms to publish limited data is a joke. We need real transparency

Following the leaks about NSA surveillance, people demanded information about the scope and scale of the US government’s data collection. In response, the administration offered internet companies a deal: they could publish the number of secret national security requests, but only if it was aggregated with data about non-secret, criminal requests.

Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo! immediately accepted and published aggregate data. But Google rejected the offer, stating that “lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users”.

Google is right. Americans are understandably concerned that their digital privacy may be eroded through the government’s ham-handed approach to foreign surveillance. But fixating on the accidental collection of domestic communications during foreign surveillance risks ignoring the ways that the US government legally and intentionally surveils the digital communications of its citizens. We must be careful that, in our rush to answer questions about Prism, we don’t endanger the gains we have made over the past few years in understanding our domestic surveillance apparatus.

Steve Martinot: Whose Ground Is It, Anyway?

Zimmerman as Role Model for US Government

The Travesty goes like this.

The grounds for Zimmerman’s acquittal were that he shot someone, and killed him. Pure and simple.

The grounds for Trayvon Martin’s having been killed is that he decided to defend himself against someone stalking him.

Does it make sense? No. Is it true? Yes.

There’s nothing to understand. That’s just the way it is. But if we do want to understand it, we have to look at the “role model.” Or rather, at The Role Model.

The Role Model is the US, the War Making Power.

Mark LeVine: Clear and present dangers of Janet Napolitano’s appointment as UC President

With no experience in higher education, the appoint of Napolitano raises concerns about the future of the UC system.

The now confirmed appointment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as President of the University of California should raise loud alarms for anyone concerned about the present state and future development of UC, for three reasons. [..]

As one of the world’s premier public university systems, UC’s highest priority must be the production of knowledge and the protection of the free exchange of ideas without which no university can fulfill its public mandate to educate future generations and help sustain a healthy and robust economy. Since the Regents and Secretary Napolitano were unwilling or unable to offer a vigorous defence of her experience, qualifications, and views before the Regents’ vote, and allow the university community a meaningful role in determining the wisdom and viability of her nomination, UC faculty should consider ourselves served notice that the UC to which so many of us have devoted our professional lives has finally been put out to pasture, and that a very different institution, administered by people with increasingly little experience, understanding or even concern for the core purposes and ethics of higher education, is emerging in its place. The question is, What are we going to do about it?

In his congressional testimony yesterday, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke called out the Congress. He warned them to stop the reckless and mindless spending cuts that are killing jobs and growth. Their stupidity, he suggested, poses the biggest threat to Americans going back to work.

Of course, he didn’t phrase it quite like that. His testimony was purposefully vanilla, designed not to cause indigestion on Wall Street. But that didn’t stop him from indicting the Congress. In his first sentence he stated:

“The economic recovery has continued at a moderate pace in recent quarters despite the strong headwinds created by federal fiscal policy.”

Translated: If you idiots abandon your destructive austerity fetish, we might be able to put people back to work.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: McDonald’s Accidentally Served Up a Minimum Wage ‘McManifesto’

Marie Antoinette, meet Ronald McDonald.

A lot of people are angry about McDonald’s new financial advice website for employees, an ill-conceived project which drips with “let them eat cake” insouciance. “Every dollar makes a difference,” McDonald’s lectures its struggling and often impoverished workers.

But it’s time to ditch the resentment and offer McDonald’s a word of thanks. It has just performed an invaluable service for campaigns like Raise the Minimum Wage and petitions like this one by serving up a timely and exhaustively researched brief on their behalf. This new website provides invaluable data for a living-wage “McManifesto.”

You want fries with that?

Eugene Robinson: Obama is the wrong person to lead discussion about race

We should talk honestly about unresolved racial issues, such as those exposed by the Trayvon Martin case, but President Obama is not the best person to lead the discussion. Through no fault of his own, he might be the worst. [..]

The designation “first black (fill in the blank)” always brings with it unfair burdens, and one of Obama’s – he bears many – is that almost anything he says about race will be seen by some as favoring the interests of black Americans over white Americans.

At this point in his presidency, Obama could ignore this absurd reality and say whatever he wants. He must be sorely tempted. But the unfortunate fact is that if his aim is to promote dialogue about race, speaking his mind is demonstrably counterproductive.

Dale Weihoff: Fruits of NAFTA

Drug cartels existed long before the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, but not drug cartels as we know them today. As we approach the 20th anniversary of NAFTA, we can no longer ignore its contribution to building a powerful and violent criminal enterprise that has brought Mexico close to being labeled a failed state and made the Mexican-U.S. border into a war zone.

Most often when we analyze trade agreements, the focus is on trade volumes, jobs and manufacturing statistics, poverty levels and immigration–all extremely important ways to understand the impact of neoliberal policies bequeathed to us from Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. But to fully appreciate how devastating free trade has been, we need to look more closely at the aftermath of free trade on the bonds that hold communities together. It starts out small, a single thread that eventually leads to unraveling the whole cloth.

A deal over the “filibuster” was tentatively reached in the Senate today, but forget all the insider talk about “nuclear options” and “recess appointments.” This isn’t a story about process. It’s a story about ideology – specifically, the radical-right extremism of today’s Republican Party.

It’s also a story about paralysis, the corrupting power of money in politics, and the real reasons why Washington is increasingly failing to serve the people.

The wasn’t a filibuster fight. It was a fight over fundamental principles of democracy and the role of government in society.

And it’s not over.

Jessica Berstein: Whatever Happened to MoveOn.Org? Progressives and NSA Spying

Ever since the Edward Snowden story about the NSA spying program erupted, there has been a disturbingly eerie silence from progressives. Yes, perfunctory articles have been written, the usual pundits have spoken, and the ACLU has filed a much needed lawsuit, but progressive action groups have scarcely eked out a handful of petitions. As we are facing what is arguably one of the greatest historic struggles of our time, there is barely a ripple in the progressive universe.

Many progressives believe they do not have much to worry about because they ‘haven’t done anything wrong,’ and ‘have nothing to hide.’ However, knowledge of the vast surveillance program should raise critical questions about what is actually being done with this information. Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyer’s Guild, explains that one of the first things the government does is target the individuals who are challenging either its policies or the corporate power structure. Evidence of such targets is mounting. Environmental activists and animal rights activists were labeled the top domestic terrorism threat in 2005. The brutal tactics used to suppress the Occupy movement should have given serious pause to activists on all fronts.

Robert Reich: Why We Should Stop Subsidizing Sky-High CEO Pay

Almost everyone knows CEO pay is out of control. It surged 16 percent at big companies last year, and the typical CEO raked in $15.1 million, according to the New York Times.

Meanwhile, the median wage continued to drop, adjusted for inflation.

What’s less well-known is that you and I and other taxpayers are subsidizing this sky-high executive compensation. That’s because corporations deduct it from their income taxes, causing the rest of us to pay more in taxes to make up the difference.

This tax subsidy to corporate executives from the rest of us ought to be one of the first tax expenditures to go, when and if congress turns to reforming the tax code.

Jim Hightower: Exceptionally Mediocre on a Global Scale

America became great through deliberate and determined public investments in the common good, not hocus-pocus exceptionalism.

America the Beautiful! America the Greatest! We’re No. 1, right?

Absolutely, naturally, and indisputably. At least that’s the theocratic pronouncement of far-right-wing nativists who preach the dogma of American “exceptionalism.” They use the concept as a not-to-be-questioned litmus test of our patriotism.

Never mind that on many crucial measures of national achievements, our Good Ol’ U.S. of A has slipped in recent years. A simple-minded assertion that we’re No. 1 doesn’t make it so.

The SEC already reached a ‘no fault’ settlement with Goldman Sachs, so how can it bring down Tourre for the same non-crime?

Monday sees the opening of the trial of a colorful former Goldman Sachs trader, Fabrice Tourre: a made-for-TV Wall Streeter, a Frenchman with a quick wit who dubbed himself “Fabulous Fab” even as he worked on mortgage deals which, it is alleged, he knew would fail.

The trial is sure to be entertaining. It is also certain to add nothing to the sum of human knowledge; nor will it create any kind of catharsis or sense of justice for the mortgage crisis.

First, some quick background: the deal for which Tourre is on trial is known as Abacus. It was a set of sure-to-fail subprime mortgage securities that Goldman Sachs created exclusively for rich investor John Paulson. Paulson wanted to bet against subprime, but he was having trouble: mortgage securities are mashed-together bundles of all kinds of mortgages, some of good quality, some of excellent quality, and some of subprime quality. Paulson wanted a purely subprime product so that he could bet against it. Goldman Sachs created such a product for him.

Eunice Hyon Min Rho: Photo ID Law on Trial in Pennsylvania: What’s at Stake for Our Democracy

Margaret Pennington, a 90-year-old Chester County resident and lifelong voter, votes by going to her polling place two blocks away. She also no longer drives and depends on her daughter to take her around. She lives about 25 miles away from the nearest PennDOT office, Pennsylvania’s equivalent of a DMV office. For Pennington to obtain a photo ID to vote, her daughter would have to close her small retail business and lose a day’s work.

Pennington is just one of the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians who will not be able to vote if the state’s photo ID law remains in place. Many are elderly, some have disabilities, some are low-income; all take seriously their responsibility to vote on Election Day.

Today the ACLU is back in court to ask that the photo ID law be blocked permanently, as it is an unnecessary and unjustifiable burden on the fundamental right to vote guaranteed under the Pennsylvania State Constitution. We will show that not only does the state photo ID law fall far short of the constitutional promise that elections be “free and equal,” but it also fails to pass the common sense test.

Joan Walsh: Hey, Newt, this is not a “lynch mob”!

Newt Gingrich insists Trayvon Martin protesters were “prepared to be a lynch mob.” Here’s a little history lesson

Every day this year brings another 150thanniversary of an epochal Civil War event, some more important than others. A big one that’s getting little attention is the days-long New York City Draft Riots, when hundreds of furious Irish immigrants took to the streets to protest Civil War conscription, which began July 13, 1863. Against the backdrop of mostly peaceful protests against the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, many people are remembering the history of white rage, and white race riots – Tulsa, Okla., Rosewood, Fla. – but I’ve seen no one mention the draft riots, though the Zimmerman verdict came down on the 150th anniversary of their start.

With the ludicrous Newt Gingrich (who claims to be a historian) insisting the peaceful Trayvon Martin protesters were “prepared to be a lynch mob,” it’s worth remembering that devastating eruption of white mob violence 150 years earlier, when at least 11 black men were actually lynched.

Jessica Valenti: Fear and Consequences: George Zimmerman and the Protection of White Womanhood

My first week of college, I had a heated debate about abortion with two new friends-both were white, and one, Nancy, was extremely pro-life. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for having such an “adult” conversation-we disagreed, but everyone was being respectful. Then my other pro-choice friend asked Nancy what she would do with a pregnancy if she was raped. I will never forget what Nancy said: “I think it would be cute to have a little black baby.” When we expressed outrage at her racism, Nancy shrugged. It never occurred to her a rapist would be anyone other than a black man. (DOJ statistics show that 80 to 90 percent of women who are raped are attacked by someone of their own race, unless they are Native women.) When this young woman imagined a criminal in her mind, he wasn’t a faceless bogeyman.

I hadn’t thought of this exchange in years, not until I was reading the responses to George Zimmerman’s acquittal-particularly those about the role of white womanhood. When I first heard that the jurors were women, I naïvely hoped they would see this teenage boy shot dead in the street and think of their children. But they weren’t just any women; most were white women. Women who, like me, have been taught to fear men of color. And who-as a feminist named Valerie pointed out on Twitter-probably would see Zimmerman as their son sooner than they would Trayvon Martin.

While Washington sleeps, America crumbles.  Why? How have we allowed that to happen?

The short version is this: The American people have been subjected to a bait-and-switch routine on a massive scale.  The national debate should have centered solely on how much to borrow, where to invest, and how to divide the investment among the plethora of worthy projects dotting the American landscape.

Instead we were treating to the bread-and-circuses spectacle of “Deficit Commissions,” debt hysteria, and a cult of economic austerity that demanded spending cuts across the globe despite the utter absence of real-world evidence for its harsh and untested prescriptions. When the evidence finally did come in, it showed that austerity’s effects were as devastating as the Keynesian economists had predicted.

Austerity prevailed anyway.

Dean Baker; The Return of Larry Summers?

According to accounts in the business press, there is a campaign among Washington insiders to get Larry Summers appointed as Ben Bernanke’s replacement as Federal Reserve Board chair. This could end up being the scariest horror movie of the summer.

It is bizarre that Summers would be seriously considered as the next Fed chair if for no other reason that there is an obvious replacement for Bernanke already sitting at the Fed. Janet Yellen, the vice-chair, has in the past served as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, a member of the Board of Governors in the 1990s and head of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also has an impressive academic background, having been a professor at both Berkeley and Harvard. [..]

But even if President Obama were to decide for some reason not to promote Yellen to Bernanke’s position, it is difficult to see why Summers would be the alternative. Memories tend to be short in Washington, but those of us removed from elite circles know that Summers’ policies played a central role in setting up the economy for the crash that got us where we are today.

Eugene Robinson: Denied the Right to Be Young

Justice failed Trayvon Martin the night he was killed. We should be appalled and outraged, but perhaps not surprised, that it failed him again Saturday night with a verdict setting his killer free.

Our society considers young black men to be dangerous, interchangeable, expendable, guilty until proven innocent. This is the conversation about race that we desperately need to have-but probably, as in the past, will try our best to avoid. [..]

The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys, are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it-and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I call this racism. What do you call it?

Trayvon Martin was fighting more than George Zimmerman that night. He was up against prejudices as old as American history, and he never had a chance.

Robert Kuttner: A Revolutionary Solution to Student Debt

On July 1, the Oregon legislature unanimously passed a plan to allow students to attend public colleges and universities tuition free and without incurring college loans.

The plan is revolutionary, and long overdue. It could change the politics of student debt nationally. The program permits an Oregon resident to attend an Oregon public university or community college, and pay back the state a percentage of income over a 24-year period, 3 percent of income for a four-year university, 1.5 percent for a community college. This system, called Pay It Forward, will be tried on a pilot basis, and then if the legislature reaffirms it, will be available to any Oregonian.

n the war against inequality, we’ve become so used to bad news that we’re almost taken aback when something positive happens. And with the Supreme Court having affirmed that wealthy people and corporations have a constitutional right to buy American elections, who would have expected it to bring good news? But a decision in the term that just ended gave ordinary Americans something that is more precious than money alone – the right to live.

At first glance, the case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, might seem like scientific arcana: the court ruled, unanimously, that human genes cannot be patented, though synthetic DNA, created in the laboratory, can be. But the real stakes were much higher, and the issues much more fundamental, than is commonly understood. The case was a battle between those who would privatize good health, making it a privilege to be enjoyed in proportion to wealth, and those who see it as a right for all – and a central component of a fair society and well-functioning economy. Even more deeply, it was about the way inequality is shaping our politics, legal institutions and the health of our population.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: It’s College Students vs. the Corporate Machine — and the Machine’s Winning

Once this nation saw higher education as a citadel of learning, growth and opportunity. Now student debt is being used as a cash cow to subsidize corporate tax breaks, while universities become incubators for corporate employees and cheap laboratories for private-sector patents.

The new student loan deal being cooked up in Washington is part of a larger picture. The forces of technology, globalization and wealth are calling the shots in government nowadays, and they’ve got higher education in their sights. Corporations want colleges and universities to serve them, not students.

In the dystopian future unfolding before our eyes, whole segments of the population are being offered up to the Corporate Machine. And unless we reject the corporate commodification of our common humanity, there’s no end in sight.

Monte Frank: The Holocaust taken in vain to promote gun rights

The cynicism of the pro-gun lobby – with its Nazi comparisons for those who advocate controls – knows no bounds of decency

Never again. Since the end of the second world war, Jews the world over have pledged that the Holocaust can never happen again.

The guns rights lobby has perverted this pledge for their own use – to advocate against stricter gun safety laws. The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre has argued that firearm registration in Germany in 1938 helped lead to the Holocaust. Charlton Heston rallied NRA members by connecting gun rights with the Holocaust by declaiming “first comes registration and then confiscation”. At the NRA convention this past May, conservative media personality Glenn Beck likened New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to a Nazi. And just in the last couple of weeks, former cop and pro-gun pundit Frank Borelli, speaking on NRA News, applauded sheriffs in Maryland who refused to enforce that state’s recently adopted gun safety laws by distinguishing them from Nazi guards who followed orders in the death camps.

César Chelala: It is Criminal to Execute the Mentally Disabled

The planned execution on July 15 of Georgia prisoner Warren Hill-who has been diagnosed as ‘mentally disabled’-is a gross violation of U.S. federal laws and specifically of the 8th amendment that reads, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.’ The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that criminal sentences that are inhumane, outrageous, or shocking to the social conscience are cruel and unusual.

This is based on a 2002 Supreme Court ruling-Atkins v. Virginia-that outlawed the death penalty for prisoners considered mentally disabled. That ruling had left a small gap according to which death penalty states were left to define the legal standard under which ‘mental retardation’ also known as ‘intellectual disability’ is defined.