How Big Pharma Is Killing Americans and Bankrupting the Country | Alternet

How Big Pharma Is Killing Americans and Bankrupting the Country | Alternet
"Lifesaving medications and commonly prescribed drugs in America today are absurdly expensive here – and only in this country – because Big Pharma is ripping off Americans."

BP Posts $4.2 Billion In Q1 Profits As Its Chemical Dispersants Continue To Harm The Gulf

BP Posts $4.2 Billion In Q1 Profits As Its Chemical Dispersants Continue To Harm The Gulf: BP announced its 2013 first-quarter profits this morning, reporting earnings of $4.2 billion — down 10 percent from this time last year but higher than analysts’ forecasts. Here are some key facts about BP’s profits: The company is sitting on nearly $28 billion in cash reserves. In the first three months of 2013, BP spent [...]/p

When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic

When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic
"Who gets cheated?Women, minorities, immigrants, and workers at the bottom of the wage scale are hardest hit, but wage theft is thriving across the employment spectrum."

Pilots and Professors Barely Scraping By? 9 Surprising Jobs That Pay a Pittance | Alternet

Pilots and Professors Barely Scraping By? 9 Surprising Jobs That Pay a Pittance | Alternet
"The top 25 hedge fund managers continue to take in close to a billion dollars per year each, on average. As Les Leopold noted, it would take a middle-class family 47 years to bring in what they make in just one hour. What value do they add to our society? Well, when they're not wrecking the global economy, they're pricing people out of the housing market and ripping off small investors."

Police Shut Down Protest Of NC GOP, Arrest 8 Members Of The Clergy And A Woman In A Wheelchair

Police Shut Down Protest Of NC GOP, Arrest 8 Members Of The Clergy And A Woman In A Wheelchair: North Carolina capitol police arrested 17 people yesterday after protesters gathered in front of the doors to the state senate chamber in an act of civil disobedience against the Republican-led state legislature’s agenda. The arrestees included eight members of the clergy, and a woman in a wheelchair that a spokesperson for The Advancement Project identified [...]/p

As Europeans Push To Ease Austerity Amid Record Unemployment, The U.S. Digs In

As Europeans Push To Ease Austerity Amid Record Unemployment, The U.S. Digs In: Eurozone-area unemployment, still plagued by a continent-wide push for austerity, rose to yet another record high in March, and 12.1 percent of Europeans are now unemployed. Spain’s economy contracted for the seventh consecutive quarter in the first three months of 2013, and across the continent, growth is stagnant. Even Germany, home to Europe’s strongest economy [...]/p

Only Most Powerful Spared Pain Of GOP-Style Auserity

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Finally Austerity Is Being Broadly Exposed for Its Abject Failure | Alternet

Finally Austerity Is Being Broadly Exposed for Its Abject Failure | Alternet
"Austerity cannot go on forever, it is already failing economically, flagging politically."

xposed: The Billionaire-Backed Group Strong-Arming Parents into Destroying Their Kids' Public Schools | Alternet

xposed: The Billionaire-Backed Group Strong-Arming Parents into Destroying Their Kids' Public Schools | Alternet
"You won't believe the predatory behavior of this education "reform" outfit, Parent Revolution."

Art Pope Groups Push Extreme ALEC Tax Agenda in North Carolina

Art Pope Groups Push Extreme ALEC Tax Agenda in North Carolina
"An array of right-wing organizations in North Carolina are arguing loudly for Governor Pat McCrory to radically alter how corporations and people pay taxes in the state -- and the not-so-hidden hand behind the effort is North Carolina millionaire Art Pope, a close ally of the Koch brothers, who funds the groups and has been appointed as North Carolina's Budget Director. The John William Pope Civitas Institute, the John Locke Foundation, and the North Carolina chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP), have been loudly calling for cuts to shift the tax burden away from rich folks like Pope and onto the backs of the working poor and middle class."

Republican Lawmaker Plans Steep Cuts To Food Stamps

Republican Lawmaker Plans Steep Cuts To Food Stamps: The House is about to begin debating this year’s farm bill, as House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) has scheduled a mark up on May 15. Ahead of the negotiations, Lucas has already indicated that he is planning steep cuts in spending, mostly focused on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, [...]/p

Meet the Billionaire Bankrolling Austerity, As He Stands to Make Billions More From Privatization of Safety Net | Alternet

Meet the Billionaire Bankrolling Austerity, As He Stands to Make Billions More From Privatization of Safety Net | Alternet
"The motivation behind the world-wide economic con of austerity has been discovered. And, the source is none other than Pete Peterson – the debt-obsessed billionaire who stands to make billions off the privatization of our social safety net."

ALEC-Orchestrated Bill To Preempt Paid Sick Leave Passes Florida Senate

ALEC-Orchestrated Bill To Preempt Paid Sick Leave Passes Florida Senate: The push for paid sick days in various cities and states has won some crucial victories, the latest of which was in New York City. But “preemption bills,” laws orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that override any efforts to implement paid sick days, are also gaining speed, with the latest passed by [...]/p

Weeding Corporate Power Out of Agricultural Policies: Communities Mobilize for Food and Farm Justice | Common Dreams

Weeding Corporate Power Out of Agricultural Policies: Communities Mobilize for Food and Farm Justice | Common Dreams
"From the school cafeteria to rural tomato farms, and all the way to pickets at the White House, people are challenging the ways in which government programs benefit big agribusiness to the detriment of small- and mid-sized farmers. Urban gardeners, PTA parents, ranchers, food coops, and a host of others are organizing to make the policies that govern our food and agricultural systems more just, accountable, and transparent."

Sequestration 101: If a Budget Cut Doesn't Impact the Wealthy, Congress Won't Fix It | Common Dreams

Sequestration 101: If a Budget Cut Doesn't Impact the Wealthy, Congress Won't Fix It | Common Dreams
"And here is the last lesson sequestration has taught us: just how much more Congress cares about what’s bothering upper-middle-class citizens than what’s going on at the bottom of the income scale. There are tons of different programs expecting a big impact from sequestration. None of them saw multiple bills introduced in the Senate, one of which was passed with huge support on both sides of the aisle and signed within a matter of days. Had they continued, the furloughs would have been more than an inconvenience. They could have meant sharply reduced economic output. But the same could be said of many of the cuts to other programs. The lesson is not that the flight delays should have gone unaddressed. It’s that if a budget cut doesn’t impact a wealthy constituency, Congress can’t to be bothered to fix it."

Two Critics Of Government Spending Are Forcing The Army To Build Tanks It Doesn’t Want

Two Critics Of Government Spending Are Forcing The Army To Build Tanks It Doesn’t Want: Congress is forcing the Army to spend nearly half a billion dollars building tanks that Army officials insist they don’t want, with money they say could be better spent elsewhere, according to a new report from the AP. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) are the two members of congress at the [...]/p

You and Your Family Are Guinea Pigs for the Chemical Corporations | Common Dreams

You and Your Family Are Guinea Pigs for the Chemical Corporations | Common Dreams
"A hidden epidemic is poisoning America.  The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them.  We can’t escape it in our cars.  It’s in cities and suburbs.  It afflicts rich and poor, young and old.  And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name -- and no antidote."

How Austerity Is Literally Killing People

How Austerity Is Literally Killing People: Austerity in the United States and Europe isn’t just placing an unnecessary drag on economic growth that has harmed the global economic recovery from the Great Recession. The rapid deficit reduction efforts are also making people less healthy, causing higher rates of suicide, depression, and infectious disease, according to research from Oxford University economist David [...]/p

Made in Bangladesh: The Terror of Capitalism | Common Dreams

Made in Bangladesh: The Terror of Capitalism | Common Dreams
"Famous name brands were stitched here, as are clothes that hang on the satanic shelves of Wal-Mart. Rescue workers were able to save two thousand people as of this writing, with confirmation that over three hundred are dead"

GOP Senator Embraces Sequestration: It Has ‘Actually Worked’

GOP Senator Embraces Sequestration: It Has ‘Actually Worked’: As communities across the nation struggle with the consequences of sequestration cuts to pre-school programs, school aide, unemployment benefits, and jobs, some Republicans in Congress are trumpeting the automatic reductions as sound fiscal policy. Appearing on KHTE’s “The Alice Stewart Show” Friday, Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) argued that sequestration is “actually working” and compared the [...]/p

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever | Common Dreams

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever | Common Dreams
"Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget."

How We Ended Up with the Worst Congress Money Can Buy | Alternet

How We Ended Up with the Worst Congress Money Can Buy | Alternet
"If you want to see why the public approval rating of Congress is down in the sub-arctic range — an icy  15 percent by last count — all you have to do is take a quick look at how the House and Senate pay worship at the altar of corporations, banks and other special interests at the expense of public aspirations and need."

12 Programs Congress Refuses To Save From Automatic Spending Cuts

12 Programs Congress Refuses To Save From Automatic Spending Cuts: After thousands of flight delays across the country this week, the United States Senate voted Thursday night to give the Federal Aviation Administration the flexibility to keep the nation’s airports running smoothly. The delays were caused by the furlough of air traffic controllers, who were rotating off the job because of sequestration’s automatic budget cuts [...]/p

Mark Zuckerberg’s New Political Group Spending Big On Ads Supporting Keystone XL And Oil Drilling

Mark Zuckerberg’s New Political Group Spending Big On Ads Supporting Keystone XL And Oil Drilling: Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, which bills itself as a bipartisan entity dedicated to passing immigration reform, has spent considerable resources on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes — including driling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and constructing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The umbrella group, co-founded by Facebook’s Zuckerberg, NationBuilder’s [...]/p

6 New Ways Big Pharma Is Scheming to Make Billions at the Expense of Your Health | Alternet

6 New Ways Big Pharma Is Scheming to Make Billions at the Expense of Your Health | Alternet
"With many of Big Pharma's biggest hits going off patent, the industry is looking for new ways to deliver earnings to Wall Street."

PERRspectives: George W. Bush's Magic Calendar Returns

PERRspectives: George W. Bush's Magic Calendar Returns
"In the run-up to today's celebration at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, America's 43rd President declared that "history will ultimately judge" his tenure in the White House. And that is precisely the problem for the custodians of Bush's legacy. After all, the slaughter of 3,000 people on 9/11, the catastrophic and unnecessary war in Iraq, illicit domestic surveillance and illegal detainee torture, the worst eight-year economic performance since Herbert Hoover, a near-doubling of the national debt (thanks in large part to tax cuts that will continue to drain the U.S. Treasury for years to come), the implosion of Wall Street and the disastrously bungled response to Hurricane Katrina all occurred on George W. Bush's watch.

Unless, that is, you don't just rewrite history but redefine time itself. According to the Republicans' Magic Calendar, George W. Bush somehow "kept us safe" despite the carnage on September 11, 2001. Miraculously, it was President Bush who killed Osama Bin Laden, despite his opposition to the very kind of raid ordered by Barack Obama two years after Dubya left office."

Anti-Worker "Paycheck Protection" Bills Moving in Missouri

Anti-Worker "Paycheck Protection" Bills Moving in Missouri
"Missouri is the latest front in the attack on organized labor with so-called "paycheck protection" bills moving through the legislature, with backing from the usual array of corporate interests. But according to the Washington D.C. -based Economic Policy Institute, the bills primarily disadvantage workers while preserving privileges for corporations."

What Progressives Stand To Gain From Economic Radicalism

What Progressives Stand To Gain From Economic Radicalism: Progressives have always had a fraught relationship with the radical left. Progressivism, steeped in Enlightenment liberalism as it is, sees the free market and private property as on-balance pillars for the economy: though free enterprise needs to be heavily regulated to prevent brutal unfairnesses, it’s the next-best means of lifting people out of poverty, checking [...]/p

Austerity And Long-Term Unemployment

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How An Excel Spreadsheet Error Hurt The Economy

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Bush Library: Whitewashing War Crimes

Even One Percenters Understand Economics Better Than Republicans

Even One Percenters Understand Economics Better Than Republicans: Over at the Huffington Post, Jared Bernstein points us to a recent pilot study examining the ideological and public policy preferences of the super wealthy. The findings might surprise you: the one percent, selfish as they are, endorse some sound economic ideas that Congress is afraid to touch. The study, conducted by Benjamin Page and Jason [...]/p

What Does It Mean To Be An “American” Corporation? | Common Dreams

What Does It Mean To Be An “American” Corporation? | Common Dreams
"For all intents and purposes giant “American” multinational corporations have transformed into entities with completely different interests from their American workers, customers, communities, citizens and government. These corporations are no longer operating in the interest of America or any country, while claiming the benefits of being American corporations (when it suits them.)"

50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush's Presidency: A Reminder on the Day of His Presidential Library Dedication | Alternet

50 Reasons You Despised George W. Bush's Presidency: A Reminder on the Day of His Presidential Library Dedication | Alternet
"Amazingly, the Bush library seeks to ask visitors "What would you have done?" if you were in this president’s shoes. The ex-president’s defenders are betting that the public will reconsider their judgments after a hefty dose of historical amnesia. Bush has been absent from political debates in recent years, instead making millions in private speeches."

Hospitals Across America Lead A Profit-Driven Fight Against More Labor Protections For Nurses

Hospitals Across America Lead A Profit-Driven Fight Against More Labor Protections For Nurses: Nurses are fighting to improve hospital standards and patient care by pushing for mandated minimum staffing levels for nurses in hospitals. The logic — which has been reflected in reality — goes that, with more nurses per patient, the better and more personal level of care Americans will receive. But as nurses’ unions take their [...]/p

South Dakota Pays For Lawmakers’ ALEC Membership

South Dakota Pays For Lawmakers’ ALEC Membership: South Dakota will now subsidize a hundred lawmakers’ memberships to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative corporate front group, after a vote Tuesday by the Republican-controlled Legislature Executive Board. Lawmakers will also continue to receive perks like unlimited travel to out-of-state ALEC meetings. Aberdeen News reports that these two-year memberships will cost $100 apiece, [...]/p

Just Four Lawmakers Show Up To Congressional Hearing On Long-Term Unemployment

Just Four Lawmakers Show Up To Congressional Hearing On Long-Term Unemployment: With the nation’s unemployment rate at 7.6 percent, members of Congress are fond of saying that they are focused on nothing but jobs. And yet, when Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) scheduled a Joint Economic Committee hearing on one of the biggest jobs-related crises facing the United States, just four of the committee’s 20 members [...]/p

Low Wage Workers Strike in Chicago for 'Dignity and Respect' and a Living Wage | Common Dreams

Low Wage Workers Strike in Chicago for 'Dignity and Respect' and a Living Wage | Common Dreams
"“Workers across the country are tired. We’re tired of working hard, but not earning enough to support our families,” said Krystal Collins, a Macy’s worker. “After seeing the workers in New York say they weren’t going to take it anymore, we were inspired to go on strike right here in Chicago"."

New Mexico GOP Official Calls 19-Year-Old ‘A Radical Bitch’

New Mexico GOP Official Calls 19-Year-Old ‘A Radical Bitch’: Steve Kush, executive director of the Bernalillo County Republican Party in New Mexico, took to Twitter on Tuesday to verbally abuse a 19-year-old Working America volunteer who testified in favor of raising the minimum wage. Bernalillo County, the largest county in New Mexico, was considering a proposal to increase the county minimum wage from $7.50 [...]/p

How To Help The Middle Class Without Spending Government Money

How To Help The Middle Class Without Spending Government Money: The middle class has been shrinking since the recession as most of the country’s wealth has traveled upward. But any policy aimed at helping working families that also comes with a hefty price tag has little chance of passing through Congress and becoming law. That doesn’t mean there’s no hope for trying to bolster the [...]/p

Privatizing Europe

Privatizing Europe
"As Europe settles in for an even deeper recession, many countries of Europe, in Greece, now of course Cyprus, in Spain, in Portugal--and we'll see it soon, probably, in other countries, even France--a big sale is on. Some people have called it a fire sale. And what are they selling? Public assets, in order to pay off their debts."

Erskine Bowles Dismisses Facts on Deficits. Perhaps Because He Collects Millions for Deceiving the Public? | Alternet

Erskine Bowles Dismisses Facts on Deficits. Perhaps Because He Collects Millions for Deceiving the Public? | Alternet
"It is probably worth noting that playing the role of an Erskine Bowles and spreading confusion about basic economics carries large financial rewards. According to the New York Times, Erskine Bowles gets paid $40,000 for many of his speeches.

In addition, Bowles has collected millions of dollars sitting as a director on corporate boards. Perhaps most notable are the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he pocketed as a director of Morgan Stanley, one of the too-big-to-fail banks that would have gone bankrupt in 2008 had it not been saved by the Fed. He also was pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars as director of General Motors until it actually did go bankrupt in 2009."

The Stock Market’s Rally Drove Income Inequality In The First Two Years Of The Recovery

The Stock Market’s Rally Drove Income Inequality In The First Two Years Of The Recovery: The Great Recession fueled an explosion in income inequality and the economic recovery has carried on the trend. The numbers themselves are staggering, but the causes are also important. A new report from the Pew Research Center finds that not only did the wealth gap between the bottom and the top of the income ladder [...]/p

Republicans Too Busy Ranting on Fox News to Actually Write Any Bills | Alternet

Republicans Too Busy Ranting on Fox News to Actually Write Any Bills | Alternet
"Has the party become "post-policy"? The modern GOP simply have given up on and lost the capacity for developing policy ideas."

North Carolina Senate Passes Bill Requiring Welfare Applicants To Pay For Their Own Mandatory Drug Tests

North Carolina Senate Passes Bill Requiring Welfare Applicants To Pay For Their Own Mandatory Drug Tests: A bill that passed the North Carolina Senate Monday night would impose mandatory drug testing on all welfare applicants, in spite of federal court rulings blocking similar state provisions as likely unconstitutional. North Carolina’s proposal goes even farther than Florida’s court-invalidated provision, requiring all applicants to a program for the indigent to pay for the [...]/p

After Demanding Senate Pass A Budget, GOP Refuses To Enter Budget Negotiations

After Demanding Senate Pass A Budget, GOP Refuses To Enter Budget Negotiations: House Republicans spent most of their time over the last three years reminding Americans that Senate Democrats hadn’t passed a budget in two, then three, then four years. It was a regular Republican talking point, a particular favorite of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s. But now that the Senate has returned to regular order [...]/p

Amid “Obama Flight Delays” And Deal Making, Sequestration’s Impact On The Poor Goes Ignored

Amid “Obama Flight Delays” And Deal Making, Sequestration’s Impact On The Poor Goes Ignored: If your flight is delayed in the coming weeks, Republicans want to make sure you blame President Obama, despite having claimed that these cuts would be good for the economy. GOP lawmakers were also alarmed at the cancellation of White House tours. And now Politico is reporting that negotiations have begun to save some programs [...]/p

Ayn Rand and the Horror at a Texas Fertilizer Facility | Alternet

Ayn Rand and the Horror at a Texas Fertilizer Facility | Alternet
"the central role that absolute free market libertarianism, as personified by the fictional John Galt, played in the horrific explosion in West, Texas that took the lives of fourteen people, most of whom were volunteer firefighters fighting a fire at an unregulated fertilizer facility. We have now learned that the facility had a checkered history of ignoring regulations and had 1350 times more ammonium nitrate on hand than the amount that triggers a legal requirement to report the facility to Department of Homeland Security. Of course, the facility’s owner chose to ignore that regulation along with the many other regulations he chose to ignore."

Global Elites May Finally Realize Austerity Isn't The Answer | Common Dreams

Global Elites May Finally Realize Austerity Isn't The Answer | Common Dreams
"First, everyone found out Paul Ryan is super bad at math (shocker). As it turns out, the paper the House Budget Committee chairman has been using to make the case for austerity was discredited after it became known that essential data was excluded from the study, leading to "serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and growth"."

How Capitalism Is Dismembering America | Common Dreams

How Capitalism Is Dismembering America | Common Dreams
"Our winner-take-all system is flailing away at once-healthy parts of society, leaving them like withered limbs on a trembling body, even as the relative few who benefit promote the illusion of opportunity and prosperity for all. Concerned citizens armed with facts are not fooled. Instead, the more they learn the angrier they get. And as in revolutions of the past, discontent leads to change"

Will the Harvard Austerity Error End Economic Sadomasochism? - Truthdig

Will the Harvard Austerity Error End Economic Sadomasochism? - Truthdig
"Long before we knew economists Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart were wrong in concluding that too high a “debt-to-GDP ratio” will always shrink an economy, it was understood by many experts and observers that the two had made a fundamental error likening countries that have entirely different ways of creating money."

Unbelievable! Bowles and Simpson Release New Deficit-Reduction Plan Based on Discredited Austerity Research by Rogoff and Reinhart | Alternet

Unbelievable! Bowles and Simpson Release New Deficit-Reduction Plan Based on Discredited Austerity Research by Rogoff and Reinhart | Alternet
"What’s incredible is that over the last week, the study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff that famously warned of the dangers of government debt has been proven to be riddled with errors and questionable methodology. To recap: R&R’s paper purported to show that countries with public debt in excess of 90 percent of gross domestic product suffered negative economic growth. Austerity hawks everywhere used it to justify cuts that have cost people jobs and vital services. The original spreadsheet used by R&R was obtained by a U Mass grad student, who found that in addition to the mistakes already noted by several economists, there was a coding error in their Excel spreadsheet that significantly changed the results of their study."

No Charges for NYPD Officials in Occupy Pepper Spray, Punch Incidents

No Charges for NYPD Officials in Occupy Pepper Spray, Punch Incidents
"Two New York City police officials involved in separate incidents during the Occupy Wall Street protests won't face criminal charges, according to a report from NBC News New York."

Koch Brothers Plan To Buy Up Eight Major Newspapers

Koch Brothers Plan To Buy Up Eight Major Newspapers: The millionaire oil moguls Charles and David Koch are pushing ahead with their plans to purchase several news outlets across the United States, according to a detailed report in the New York Times on Sunday. At a recent seminar in Aspen, one attendee reported that the brothers — infamous for bankrolling conservative candidates and causes [...]/p

How Monsanto Went From Selling Aspirin to Controlling Our Food Supply | Alternet

How Monsanto Went From Selling Aspirin to Controlling Our Food Supply | Alternet
"Monsanto controls our food, poisons our land, and influences all three branches of government."

Pete Peterson's Fingerprints All Over That Bogus Economic Study

Pete Peterson's Fingerprints All Over That Bogus Economic Study
"The austerians are beginning to realize they've lost their footing in this debate. Time to step up and keep reinforcing the truth -- austerity harms the economy. It is no help at all to anyone other than possibly billionaires who want to have it all as the serfs grovel for their crumbs."

CISPA: Worse than the Patriot Act

America's New Math: 1 Wall Street Hour = 21 Years of Hard Work For the Rest of Us | Alternet

America's New Math: 1 Wall Street Hour = 21 Years of Hard Work For the Rest of Us | Alternet
"The new Rich List is out -- yet another example of financial pornography. While nearly 15 million Americans still can't find jobs due to the 2008 Wall Street-created crash, the top hedge manager, David Tepper, earned $1,057,692 an HOUR in 2012 -- that's as much as the average American family makes in 21 years!  

America's new math: 1 Wall Street hour = 21 years of hard work for the rest of us."

Nestlé CEO Doesn't Think Water is a Basic Right, Should be Privatized

Nestlé CEO Doesn't Think Water is a Basic Right, Should be Privatized
""Nestlé CEO wants to privatize water". Now at first I thought that the headline was merely a grabber to talk about the booming bottled water industry, but then I watched the video and realized, no this guy really thinks that it is a great virtue to be able to privatize water in the future."

Time to Demand a Vote to Increase the Minimum Wage

Time to Demand a Vote to Increase the Minimum Wage
"It is time – in fact, it is past time – to demand that Congress act to increase the minimum wage. This week, the effort to get Congress to act is accelerating."

Pete Peterson Linked Economists Caught in Austerity Error

Pete Peterson Linked Economists Caught in Austerity Error
"A team of economists at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst broke a huge story this week that was promptly picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and newspapers around the globe. The economists proved that the essential underpinning "of the intellectual edifice of austerity economics," as Paul Krugman put it, is based on sloppy methodology and spreadsheet coding errors."

Meet the 28-year-old Student Who Exposed Two Harvard Professors Whose Research Drove Global Austerity | Alternet

Meet the 28-year-old Student Who Exposed Two Harvard Professors Whose Research Drove Global Austerity | Alternet
"The world of economics has just changed, and somebody has some 'splaining to do! Please savor the following twisted tale of bad math, academic folly and pundit hubris."

Did a Spreadsheet Error Cost You Your Job? | Common Dreams

Did a Spreadsheet Error Cost You Your Job? | Common Dreams
"Did an Excel error cost you your job? This is what people around the world should be asking after researchers at the University of Massachusetts uncovered a serious calculationmistake. The mistake was in an enormously influential paper by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, two prominent economists, which purports to show that high levels of government debt lead to slow economic growth. This paper has been widely cited by political figures around the world who have been pushing the case for cutting back government spending and raising taxes. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan famously cited Reinhart and Rogoff when he laid out his budget earlier this year. So have many of the politicians now pushing for cuts in Social Security and Medicare."

Christie Revives Tax Cut That Would Give 40 Percent Of Its Benefit To The Top 1 Percent

Christie Revives Tax Cut That Would Give 40 Percent Of Its Benefit To The Top 1 Percent: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is reviving a once-failed income tax plan that will give a 10 percent tax cut to all of the state’s residents but will grant more of its benefits to the wealthiest New Jerseyans. Christie pitched a similar plan in 2012, but it failed at the hands of Democrats in [...]/p

Majority in the US: Redistribute Wealth, Enact 'Robin Hood Tax' | Common Dreams

Majority in the US: Redistribute Wealth, Enact 'Robin Hood Tax' | Common Dreams
"A majority of people in the U.S. want more equal wealth distribution and support a "Robin Hood tax" on the rich to achieve that, according to results from a Gallup poll released Wednesday, evidence that the economic policies that concentrate wealth and fuel inequality are out of line with what most people want."

Patrons Royally Pissed Over Regal's Plan To Screw Workers

Patrons Royally Pissed Over Regal's Plan To Screw Workers
"Sooner or later, these right-wing corporations are going to learn the hard way. People do not like it when companies thumb their nose at the law and threaten to slash employees hours for the sole purpose of screwing them out of health care. After an Applebee's franchisee and Darden's restaurants felt the heat, you'd think they'd get a clue."

House Passes Privacy-Killing Cybersecurity Bill, Despite White House Veto Threat | Alternet

House Passes Privacy-Killing Cybersecurity Bill, Despite White House Veto Threat | Alternet
"A bill that grants businesses immunity for sharing Internet users’ private information with the federal government passed through the House Thursday, despite an outcry from privacy advocates and a veto threat from the White House, the Hill reports."

Cutting the Budget, Bleeding Us Dry | Common Dreams

Cutting the Budget, Bleeding Us Dry | Common Dreams
"According to a new multi-year study by Pew's Economic Mobility Project, many families are priced out of “recovery” for reasons that long predated the recession and will persist indefinitely even as the economy "bounces back"."

Kansas Bans Communities From Making Contractors Pay Prevailing Wages On Public Projects

Kansas Bans Communities From Making Contractors Pay Prevailing Wages On Public Projects: On Tuesday, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R) signed a law aimed at prohibiting local governments from requiring contractors to pay prevailing wages on public works projects: “HB 2069 prohibits cities, counties, and local government units from using ordinances, resolutions, or law to require private employers to provide leave, benefits and higher compensation.” Prevailing wage and [...]/p

U.S. Rep Introduces 'Robin Hood Tax' to Fight Austerity-Agenda | Common Dreams

U.S. Rep Introduces 'Robin Hood Tax' to Fight Austerity-Agenda | Common Dreams
"Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) reintroduced The Inclusive Prosperity Act, HR 1579, on Wednesday, a financial transaction tax "that would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue annually at a time of great need, and allow the U.S.to join the rest of the world in a growing system of financial transaction taxes," the Robin Hood Tax Campaign announced."

11 States May End Long-Term Unemployment Insurance Due To Sequestration

11 States May End Long-Term Unemployment Insurance Due To Sequestration: The federal government’s long-term unemployment insurance program, which became law shortly before the Great Recession began driving the nation’s unemployment rate through the roof, is already facing cuts thanks to the automatic budget cuts that began taking effect on March 1. Sequestration will force 10.7 percent cuts to all benefit checks, costing recipients as much [...]/p

Roberts Court Shields Another Corporation From Collective Suit

Roberts Court Shields Another Corporation From Collective Suit: On Tuesday, another group of plaintiffs suing together lost their case against a corporation. This time, it was workers. Two weeks ago, it was consumers. In both decisions, the same five-justice majority supported their decisions to whittle away corporate accountability mechanisms with procedural rationales that were so results-oriented as to seem nonsensical to the four [...]/p

America’s Miserly Minimum Wage Needs an Upgrade » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

America’s Miserly Minimum Wage Needs an Upgrade » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
"America’s highest-paid CEO last year, John Hammergren of McKesson Corp., received compensation of over $131 million. That is the equivalent of about $63,000 per hour, or $10,000 more than the annual median household income in the United States. Meanwhile, some of this country’s lowest-paid workers—those on minimum wage—made just $15,080 annually at $7.25 per hour. Mr. Hammergren had surpassed that amount by 9:15 a.m. on his first workday of the year."

Checks Sent To Victims Of Foreclosure Fraud Are Bouncing

Checks Sent To Victims Of Foreclosure Fraud Are Bouncing: Could federal regulators and their cast of private contractors possibly do a worse job of getting relief to families who were wronged during the foreclosure crisis? First, private contractors botched their initial review of banks’ foreclosure files. Then, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency cut a bad deal with mortgage servicers that pays [...]/p

They Imposed Worldwide Austerity Over A F*#cking Coding Error?

They Imposed Worldwide Austerity Over A F*#cking Coding Error?
"When is scholarship not scholarship? When it's not carefully reviewed for every aspect, including the integrity of the underlying data used to draw conclusions."

Opposition Grows Fierce to Austerity Cuts in Portland

Opposition Grows Fierce to Austerity Cuts in Portland
"For the first time, the City Council and Mayor Charlie Hales began to lose control over their attempts to sell austerity."

Why Debunking The Austerity Paper Won’t Kill Austerity — And What Actually Could

Why Debunking The Austerity Paper Won’t Kill Austerity — And What Actually Could: Yesterday on TP Ideas Zack Beauchamp covered the release of new research showing that a key paper used to justify austerity in a time of economic crisis is so empirically flawed as to be rendered useless as a guide to policy.  That paper, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, purported to show that countries that [...]/p

How Much Unemployment Did Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake Cause?

How Much Unemployment Did Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake Cause?
"If facts mattered in economic policy debates, this should be the cause for a major reassessment of the deficit reduction policies being pursued in the United States and elsewhere. It should also cause reporters to be a bit slower to accept such sweeping claims at face value."

Corporate Tax Dodgers: 10 Companies and Their Tax Loopholes | Common Dreams

Corporate Tax Dodgers: 10 Companies and Their Tax Loopholes | Common Dreams
"In making their case, corporate executives decry the U.S.’s 35% corporate tax rate claiming it is the highest in the world and makes their businesses uncompetitive globally. The evidence suggests otherwise.
Corporate profits are at a 60-year high, while corporate taxes are near a 60-year low"

What The Austerity Paper’s Intellectual Collapse Tells Us About Modern Journalism

What The Austerity Paper’s Intellectual Collapse Tells Us About Modern Journalism: Tuesday afternoon, Mike Konczal transformed the debate over austerity and growth by reporting new study finding that a paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that served as one of the principal intellectual justification for austerity turns out to be have been fatally flawed. Its conclusions, for example, were based in part on an elementary [...]/p

11 Republicans Who Cited A Faulty Study To Push For Drastic Spending Cuts

11 Republicans Who Cited A Faulty Study To Push For Drastic Spending Cuts: Advocates for rapid deficit reduction have long used a study from economists Carmen Reinhart and Edward Rogoff, which argues that countries that carry debt burdens in excess of 90 percent of their total economy see slower economic growth, to prop up their argument. There were always problems with the study that kept other economists from [...]/p

Nobel Prize-Winner Joe Stiglitz Blasts America's 1 Percent-Coddling Tax System | Alternet

Nobel Prize-Winner Joe Stiglitz Blasts America's 1 Percent-Coddling Tax System | Alternet
"It’s a sign of how well relentless propagandizing works that Joe Stiglitz has to devote a lengthy op-ed in the New York Times to debunking the idea that our income tax system, whose salient characteristic is low tax burdens for the rich, is good for anyone other than the rich. Economists have increasingly taken note of the fact that the US experiment in lowering taxes produced the opposite of the outcomes that were claimed for it, namely, spurring growth and increasing incomes in all cohorts (the barmy “trickle down” theory)."

Sweatshops on Wheels | Common Dreams

Sweatshops on Wheels | Common Dreams
"he deterioration of the nation’s public transportation, like the deterioration of health care, education, social services, public utilities, bridges and roads, is part of the relentless seizing and harvesting of public resources and programs by corporations."

How Right-Wingers in Congress Came to Represent a Whole Different Country | Alternet

How Right-Wingers in Congress Came to Represent a Whole Different Country | Alternet
"With an assist from some long-term demographic trends, House Republicans have redistricted, propagandized and policed themselves into another country.

As a result, they have become unmoored from the political incentives that typically drive law-makers' decision-making process. Public opinion no longer sways them, and that is creating a potentially insurmountable problem for the party establishment's efforts to broaden the GOP's appeal beyond angry old white people."

How America's Corporate Overlords Cheat and Screw Us on Taxes | Alternet

How America's Corporate Overlords Cheat and Screw Us on Taxes | Alternet
"They make much of their revenue in the U.S., but claim billions of dollars in foreign profits and billions of dollars in U.S. losses, thereby evading their tax duty."

Middle Out Economics 101

Everything We Know About What's Happened Under Sequestration

Everything We Know About What's Happened Under Sequestration
"Children in Indiana have been cut from the federally funded Head Start preschool program. Last week, the White Houseannounced furloughs for480 staffers in the Office of Management and Budget. And cuts to Medicare have forced cancer clinics to turn away thousands of patients who are being treated with drugs the clinics can no longer afford.

We’ve taken a look at what’s actually happened in the six weeks since sequestration took effect."

Sen. Warren and End of the Minimum Wage Debate

Ten Ways the Wealthy Dodge Taxes

Ten Ways the Wealthy Dodge Taxes
"Have you read about the billionaire who pays a lower income tax rate than his secretary and gives advice for how much income tax other people ought to pay? You might want to ask: “How does he do it? ”

We don’t know the complete answer to that question. No doubt, only his army of tax advisers does. What we’d instead like to share are 10 ways the current tax code allows the rich to accumulate vast fortunes, subject to little or no tax. And, unlike the offshore account tax fraud that gets so much press and regulatory attention, many of the most egregious tax avoidance scams are perfectly legal."

The United States of Inequality

Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim

Study: Fighting Inflation Rather Than Unemployment Massively Increases Human Misery

Study: Fighting Inflation Rather Than Unemployment Massively Increases Human Misery: The Washington Post flagged a new study today from a Dartmouth professor and co-authors, which found that high unemployment causes much more misery for the average person than high inflation. That’s significant, in a really discouraging way, because American policy over the last few decades — and especially since the Great Recession — has focused [...]/p

Senator Elizabeth Warren's opening statement and Q&A at the April 11, 2013 Senate Banking Committee

Banks Got Nowhere to Run To, Baby | Common Dreams

Banks Got Nowhere to Run To, Baby | Common Dreams
"Among the issues on the agenda: a call for US Bank to pay its fair share in taxes; write-down mortgages to help stem the foreclosure and underwater mortgage crisis; and end payday loans with exorbitant interest rates. These issues are of concern, of course, not only to the activists from these three states, but also to people across the country."

Hedge Funder Lures Teachers' Unions While He Helps Break Them

Hedge Funder Lures Teachers' Unions While He Helps Break Them
"If this isn't Gordon Gecko writ large, I don't know what is."

House Bill Would Give Employers 'Flexibility' to Take Away Workers' Overtime Pay

House Bill Would Give Employers 'Flexibility' to Take Away Workers' Overtime Pay
""Welcome, America, to the new Republican party." Which of course is exactly the same as the old Republican party before their ridiculous rebranding effort. This is the third time they've introduced legislation like this, only to have it fail time and again. Maybe they're hoping the third time's the charm."

"Send 'Em To Jail That Day!” The Newest Frontier in the Drug War and the People Who Make Millions from It | Alternet

"Send 'Em To Jail That Day!” The Newest Frontier in the Drug War and the People Who Make Millions from It | Alternet
"The shady people and companies behind the push to expand drug testing."

Administrators Intimidate Newark Students Protesting Education Cuts | Alternet

Administrators Intimidate Newark Students Protesting Education Cuts | Alternet
"On Tuesday, April 9, an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 students from at least a dozen public high schools in Newark, New Jersey, walked out of class to protest years of budget cuts, school closings and teacher layoffs by Governor Chris Christie. They marched to Rutgers Law School, where they demonstrated for hours in front of a State Assembly budget hearing on education.

The walkout was organized by the Newark Students Union (NSU) in response to a $56 million budget cut proposed by state-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson. Rather than embrace student civic engagement, some schools reportedly responded with threats, intimidation and punishment to keep students from participating in constitutionally protected speech."

Elizabeth Warren Tears Into Federal Regulators For Shielding Big Banks

Elizabeth Warren Tears Into Federal Regulators For Shielding Big Banks: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) embarrassed government regulators during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Thursday morning as she demanded to know why they won’t reveal how frequently big banks illegally foreclosed on homeowners. In January, regulators abandoned a case-by-case review of foreclosure fraud conducted by some of the nation’s largest banks in favor of a [...]/p

Give The People What They Want! Taxes That Pay for Jobs, Education, Healthcare and Science | Alternet

Give The People What They Want! Taxes That Pay for Jobs, Education, Healthcare and Science | Alternet
"Despite near-constant news about how polarized our nation is, a careful look at opinion polls indicates that a strong majority of Americans actually have a coherent to-do list for Washington: we want more jobs, smaller deficits, more education funding, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, higher taxes on the wealthiest, plus -- the kicker -- Medicare and Social Security benefits preserved. You know, it’s the typical story of wanting to have our cake and gobble it down, too. Right?

Wrong. What’s virtually unacknowledged is that all these things could be done at once. Far from being an impossible set of demands, the collective opinion poll version of the wisdom of the American people is, in fact, a smart set of solutions -- or at least it would be, if we had a government capable of following our wishes."

How Democrats Debating Deficits Play Into The GOP’s Hands

How Democrats Debating Deficits Play Into The GOP’s Hands: Deficit mania has officially taken over Washington—again. Both Republicans and Democrats, while they have different preferred approaches, are heavily focused on cutting budget deficits and relieving the long-term debt situation of the country. Yet unemployment remains at an unhealthy 7.6 percent, with declining labor force participation, and the modest economic recovery that’s underway has shown [...]/p

Solidarity NOT Forever: How the Supreme Court Kicked Retirees Into the Gutter

Solidarity NOT Forever: How the Supreme Court Kicked Retirees Into the Gutter
"The Supreme Court's decision in Allied Chemical Workers v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass to give employers complete control of retiree benefits undercuts the purpose of the National Labor Relations Act and leaves vulnerable, retired employees powerless to protect themselves from costly changes in benefits."

Philadelphia Council Fails To Override Mayoral Veto Of Paid Sick Day Proposal

Philadelphia Council Fails To Override Mayoral Veto Of Paid Sick Day Proposal: For the second time in three years, legislation that would have required businesses in Philadelphia to provide workers with paid sick leave has failed at the hands of Mayor Michael Nutter (D). Nutter vetoed the city council’s paid sick leave proposal last week, and the council Thursday fell one vote short of being able to [...]/p