This vile, corporate atrocity was signed by delegates on February 4. It now has to be ratified by legislatures. It’s telling that that’s not expected to be a problem in more totalitarian-leaning places like Malaysia and Vietnam, but it is perhaps iffy in somewhat more democratic ones.
Japan’s parliament has started in on it. This article does not include speculation on whether it’s expected to pass, there. It does note a great deal of controversy.
Canada and Australia has been suggested as other countries that may not go for it. There’s plenty of opposition, and therefore grounds for hope, in Canada. My searches this morning turned up nothing recent about where Australia may be headed.
The biggest question mark is probably right here in the U.S., where among other things all four major remaining presidential candidates (Clinton, Cruz, Sanders, Trump) have expressed opposition. The plan appears to be to try to get it passed in a lame-duck session in December, with tactics that could well include all-but-open bribery for outgoing congresscritters. I wish that I was as optimistic about it being killed as the author of this kind of appears to be. I really hope he’s right.
Surprise!
Republicans in the Minnesota House are pushing again for tax cuts with a renewed focus this session on phasing out the state tax on Social Security income…
In Minnesota, Social Security benefits are already fully exempt from state and federal taxes for married couples with annual incomes of less than $32,000. The full exemption applies to individuals with income of less than $25,000. There’s a 50 percent exemption on slightly higher incomes. No more than 85 percent of anyone else’s benefits are subject to the state tax…
Senate Taxes Committee Chair Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook…said the full exemption favored by Republicans would primarily benefit people with the highest incomes.
“The vast majority of the money, if we exempt Social Security, goes to people making over $100,000 in income,” he said. “That would be investment incomes that relatively well-to-do people have, and they would be exempt from paying any income tax on their Social Security. Doesn’t seem like a good policy direction for us to go.”
(MPR)
Since about 1980, tax cuts for the rich have been incessantly proclaimed by conservatives as the means to unending prosperity for all. It obviously hasn’t worked out that way, but they keep bringing it.
The quote “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity” is often attributed to Albert Einstein. It probably isn’t really his. In any case, I’m hesitant to express disagreement with whatever smart person did come up with it. But the fact is that I don’t think it’s insanity, at all. It’s just plain stupid. And it’s long past time to get stupid people out of governance.
See if what jumped out to me jumps out to you too.
Mossack Fonseca is a leading global player in the incorporation of offshore companies across the globe. It was the subject of the largest-ever financial breach, and 11.5 million of its documents are the subject of a collaborative analysis by McClatchy and about 350 journalists under the umbrella of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. McClatchy was the only U.S. newspaper company involved.
You caught what I did if this bit was bolded in your mind as you read it, “McClatchy was the only U.S. newspaper company involved.”
This is unfortunately not one of those instances where the title is a question because the writer is going to answer it. I don’t know why other major US media outlets didn’t join in. In an interview with On The Media, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists director, Gerard Ryle, said the NY Times chose not to join. He speculated that US media still have a go-it-alone approach, which Ryle criticized on the grounds that the modern media economy makes it difficult for individual outlets to have adequate resources. He didn’t name other specific US media outlets and it’s likely unfair to pick on just the NY Times, but what about the other major dailies? What about the broadcast networks, and the cable news channels. Well, Fox News has the excuse that they don’t do news, but what about CNN and MSNBC? What, too many airplane crashes and terrorism scares to cover? What about the big news magazines? OK, be fair, maybe they invited only newspapers, but the big dailies for sure muffed it.
I’m not saying major US media didn’t cover the story after the ICIJ broke it, but it seems odd they all but McClatchy passed on the chance to break one of the biggest stories of the year. In fact, with so many powerful people from so many countries hiding from their respective tax collectors, the Mossack Fonseca could be providing new scandals for a long time. That’s just how much material investigative journalists are still trying to sort through. Everything that has come out so far — that’s with the story just getting started.
It’s a shame these financial scandals are so hard to follow. Sex scandals are so much easier to understand, no wonder they get so much more coverage, but they are’t nearly so important. Go on, explain just what the big financial corporations did to crash the economy in 2008. Now explain why Tara Mack and Tim Kelly suddenly decided to spend more time with family. Which was easier?*
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In spite of the high voter turnout there is a lack of enthusiasm for both of the leading GOP candidates that was on show in the primary in next-door Wisconsin. A lack of enthusiasm was responsible for the failure of Mitt Romney in 2012. A different way of saying essentially the same thing is that Trump – and Cruz – have high unfavorability ratings in polls.
Once again we are being treated to unsubstantiated accusations that Cruz ‘stole’ Trump’s election. Trump never had a likely win in Wisconsin. I will be the first to acknowledge that Cruz has used dirty tricks, but it’s not like Trump is any more honest in his campaigning than Cruz either. Both have a record of playing dirty.
To be fair, Hillary Clinton has a higher unfavorability level than is healthy for her success in either the primary or the general election too, but they are nowhere near as high as Trump’s. And typically a higher turnout benefits Dems in ways that don’t have appear to hold true for Republicans.
It is true, at this point, Trump has more delegates than Cruz and Kasich combined; Kasich isn’t going to get out of the race ahead of the Ohio convention. Because he has so many more delegates, he believes, he FEELS, the nomination is his — another example of faulty right wing entitlement he has persuaded his supporters to share with him.
The WaPo has an excellent map here of the voting distribution by candidates; Kasich did not win a single county.
However many of Trump’s supporters who are aggrieved, it won’t make a significant difference to those who disapprove of him. And the level of enthusiasm won’t give him a guaranteed win – Trump appears to demand a so-called coronation that he is not likely to get.
Even before the Wisconsin primary, Trump has been making some false statements that his supporters were turning out record numbers of voters; NEW voters. No surprise, that doesn’t appear to be the case if you look at the findings of Factcheck.org. Factcheck.org correctly analyzed the numbers, while Trump was misrepresenting those figures. …READ MORE
This first blockquote is from a succinct, yet definitive, summation of what’s been happening nationwide.
Education is in crisis because of the calculated effort to turn it into a business with a bottom line. Schools are closed and opened as though they were chain stores, not community institutions. Teachers are fired based on flawed measures. Disruption is considered a strategy rather than misguided and inhumane policy. Children and educators alike are simply data points, to be manipulated by economists, statisticians, entrepreneurs, and dabblers in policy.
Education has lost its way, lost its purpose, lost its definition. Where once it was about enlightening and empowering young minds with knowledge, exploring new worlds, learning about science and history, and unleashing the imagination of each child, it has become a scripted process of producing test scores that can supply data.
Education is in crisis. And we must organize to resist, to push back, to fight the mechanization of learning, and the standardization of children.
(Diane Ravitch/AlterNet)
Here’s what that’s led to in Minneapolis:
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Gun control will continue to be a divisive issue in the 2016 election cycle, and in subsequent cycles for the foreseeable future.
The gun-obsessed insist on a faulty reasoning, that if you restrict guns, only criminals will have guns. That is not true, in nations where guns are much more restricted than in the USA, there is lower rates of crimes with guns and lower rates of gun violence. Gun restrictions keeps firearms OUT OF THE HANDS OF CRIMINALS.
I have yet to see a solid, reasoned or valid peer review (one which is supported by other experts in an appropriate related field) which validates the claims of the gun obsessed. The Journal of the American Medical Association is no lightweight organization/publication.
From ScienceNews.orgMagazine issue:
Vol. 189, No. 7, April 2, 2016, p. 5
Guns, drugs, cars. Sounds like a formula for an action movie, but the list may explain why American men don’t live as long as men in other high-income countries.
In the United States, average life expectancy among men is 76.4 years — about two years shorter than men who live in Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and nine other countries. Deaths due to injuries are the reason for much of the gap, researchers report in the Feb. 9 JAMA.
An analysis of U.S. and World Health Organization data revealed that deaths from injuries due to firearms, drug poisonings and auto crashes account for 48 percent of the difference in men’s life expectancies. These causes of death are less of a problem for American women, the researchers found.
I put all that extra punctuation in the title because something like this – an article critical of a Minnesota Republican in Congress – is not a common sight, in this widely-read corporate media outlet, to say the least.
Republican U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen and his family members have taken more than $75,000 in free, mostly international travel since 2013, all paid for by outside groups.
Just a few weeks ago, Paulsen took his adult daughter, Cassandra, to Nairobi, Kenya, at a total cost of $27,357 for the week, the tab picked up by World Vision and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The trip was billed as a chance to provide “direct insight on how U.S. investments are working to improve global health.”
It was the single costliest trip a member of Congress has taken this year at the expense of an outside group, according to LegiStorm, a nonpartisan group that compiles information on members of Congress and their staffs.
The travel is legal and allowed by federal ethics rules, but it has drawn criticism from government watchdog groups as these organizations try to gain influence in Washington. Such organizations can pay for the travel of members, their staff and family so long as they don’t employ lobbyists and they report the costs, agendas and details of each trip to the Committee on Ethics.
(Star Tribune)
To be fair, the Strib doesn’t often go after Minnesota Democrats in Congress, either, though I suspect that some in senior management and elsewhere would dearly love to be more aggressive in that regard, especially concerning Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Keith Ellison. The guiding mantra seems to mostly be “offend no one.”
Despite a carefully contrived image that a whole lot of media outlets (in addition to, usually, the Strib) help to perpetuate, Paulsen is neither a “moderate,” nor a righteously devoted public servant indifferent to his own self-interest. Quite the contrary, on both counts. Jon Tollefson is a DFL candidate. You can help him out here.
And here’s a little something more about Rep. Paulsen: “Paulsen Pushing HSAs and FSAs While Voting Against Protecting Consumers From Price-gouging.”
Comment below fold.
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Unfortunate but not surprising in the least.
A fifth of the information in Minnesota state-produced pamphlets given to women seeking abortions has been deemed medically inaccurate by new academic research.
The study examined pamphlets produced by states that have “Woman’s Right to Know” laws. Under this law, Minnesota requires that before moving forward with an abortion, women must receive a Minnesota Department of Health pamphlet on risks associated with abortion and fetal development, as well as information on resources if she decides to carry to term.
(Minnesota Daily)
Minnesota has laws mandating this misinformation, as well as a waiting period and parental notification. Of course we shouldn’t count our pomegranates while they’re still on the tree, but if a best-case scenario eventuates in November and the DFL gets legislative supermajorities, that would be a good time to show some respect for women and get rid of those laws. Unfortunately, too many still buy that choice and other women’s issues are politically toxic. Or at least they still try to use that as cover for general gutlessness.
by Eric Ferguson on March 31, 2016 · 1 comment
Sure, there’s the obvious. Republicans hate Obama, oppose everything he does as SOP, and would oppose any nomination he might make for the US Supreme Court even under different circumstances. They would likely oppose any nomination made by a Democratic president, though given the disrespect they’ve shown this president, they probably feel the awful irony that the most blatant racist to sit on the court in recent decades will be replaced by someone chosen by the first black president.
But that’s not all.
Think back a few decades. Republicans held the presidency, and made all the supreme court nominations, for 20 of 24 years from Richard Nixon’s inauguration until Bill Clinton’s. The other four years were Jimmy Carter’s term, when he got zero picks. Zero. Presidents aren’t guaranteed any picks. Consequently, when Clinton started his first term, the court was 8-1 Republican. It may have been only 6-3 conservatives to moderates/liberals, but the point is this: the conservative lean of the supreme court is not recent. Going back to roughly the early 1980’s, for over 30 years, the court has been conservative. It didn’t start with George Bush Jr.; it couldn’t have, considering that the most infamous of the court’s 5-4 conservative decisions, Bush v. Gore, was a necessary precondition of Bush being placed in the presidency.
In other words, for all or most of the adult lives of those now living, and for the entire lives of anyone under age 35, the supreme court has been conservative, and been an eroding force for civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, and restraints on corporate power. Liberals haven’t always lost, but winning has always been against the odds, hoping a conservative or two could see the light on one particular case. Conservatives have been aware of this, putting far more attention on judicial appointments than liberals in general. There is no liberal equivalent of the Federalist Society frmo which John Roberts came.
So the death of Antonin Scalia means not merely that the favorite justice of the right has died, not merely that he’ll be replaced by a Democrat, and not merely that he’ll be replaced by THAT Democrat; it means the first liberal supreme court most of us have ever seen.
If the importance of that still doesn’t sink in, imagine no Bush v. Gore, and all that has flowed from that horrific decision; or at least, had Bush gone to the court as he did, he wouldn’t have been able to count on a partisan decision. Who knows, maybe a liberal court would have made a radical decision like telling Florida to actually count the ballots. Imagine no Citizens United or any decisions blowing apart our campaign finance laws. Imagine no Medicaid gap being written in the ACA. Imagine no Heller decision making law out of fringe doctrines of the gun obsessives. This is the court that is on the verge of flipping thanks to President Obama getting to select Scalia’s replacement.
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At this point, they’re talking investigations. Prosecutions will hopefully follow. Then, convictions, mega-fines, and maybe even terms of imprisonment. But all of that will likely take a while.
“ClimateTruth.org applauds the 17 state attorneys general who sent a clear message to ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies today: climate fraud will no longer be tolerated. For decades, ExxonMobil and its industry peers have spent billions intentionally misleading investors and general public about the dangers of climate change, resulting in an American public where only 64% accept climate science compared to over 97% of actual climate scientists. This fraud, perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry, has resulted in dangers like rising sea levels, superstorms, and droughts, all threatening the fabric of our global economy, security, and society,” said Emily Southard, Campaign Director of ClimateTruth.org.
(Climate Truth)
As one of the country’s best state AG’s, Lori Swanson’s record includes going after the likes of Globe University, Accretive Health, and the National Arbitration Forum. One could suggest that she doesn’t get enough press for that, but maybe that’s how she wants it.
Of course I too have seen her name repeatedly floated as a potential DFL gubernatorial candidate in 2018. I have no idea where she might personally be on that, right now.
