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Van Jones: Bank Settlement: $25B Down, $675B to Go

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Van Jones - Feb. 12 (News Analysis) - 'We must not forget the more than 14 million homeowners (one in five) whose homes are underwater, beneath a crushing total $700 billion in negative equity. We must not forget the more than 4 million families who have lost their homes.' Van Jones, Reader Supported News

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Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - When I read things like this I'm simultaneously amazed by two things. The first is the unbelievable tone-deafness of people who would complain out loud, during a time when millions of people around the country are literally losing their homes, that their bonuses - not their total compensation, mind you, but just their cash bonuses, paid in addition to their salaries and their stock packages - are barely enough to cover the mortgage payments for their new condos, the taxis they take when walking is too burdensome, and their girlfriends with expensive tastes. The second thing that amazes me is that Sherman is buying all this.

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Mind-Blowing Charts From the Senate's Income Inequality Hearing

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Josh Harkinson - Feb. 10 (News Report) - In another sign that Democrats have embraced income inequality as a cause célèbre, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on the subject today. The committee's ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, managed to look concerned during two hours of testimony about the kneecapping of the Middle Class—not that it should have been all that difficult. Here are some of the hearing's most striking charts ...

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Money and Morals

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - Conservatives have started telling us that the growing inequality is about a decline in morals. But it’s mainly about money.

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Catholic hospitals split on giving contraceptives

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

San Francisco Chronicle - By bottomline@sfchronicle.com (Andrew S. Ross, Chronicle Columnist) - Feb. 06 - Presented By: Chicago Booth Business Forecast Ads by ...

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57% of Republicans Should Just Be Democrats

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Andrew Belonsky - Feb. 04 (Poll) - 'The White House hopeful should really consult with his party's less fortunate members: according to a Pew Research poll, 57% of lower-income Republicans - families that make less than $30,000 annually - think the government does 'too little' for their ranks.' Andrew Belonsky, Death and Taxes

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Famine in Somalia is over, says UN

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Feb. 03 - Exceptional harvest and food deliveries have improved conditions, but millions of people are still at risk An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia, although conditions remain fragile and could worsen, the United Nations have said. The UN declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the country. The UN said initially 750,000 Somalis faced imminent starvation and lowered this to 250,000 by November. Six months after famine was declared, 4 million Somalis were in need of aid and the UN said the number now stood at 2.34m. "The gains are fragile and will be reversed without continued support," said Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia. "There are 1.7 million people in southern Somalia still in crisis. Millions of people still need food, clean water, shelter and other assistance to survive and the situation is expected ...

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Romney Isn’t Concerned

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 02 (Opinion) - If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.” Faced with criticis

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Unions Shocked By American Airlines Proposed Cuts

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

All Things Considered - By Wade Goodwyn - Feb. 02 (News Report) - American Airlines is looking to cut 13,00 jobs as part of a restructuring. The company — which is in bankruptcy — also wants to reduce salaries by 20 percent and end its pension plan.

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6 Shocking Ways Capitalism Is Failing Working America

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Les Leopold - Feb. 01 (News Analysis) - Capitalism is coming apart at the seams and the middle-class is paying the price.

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Raj Patel: In Attacks on Obama, Food Stamps, Newt Gingrich is “Racially Coding Poverty”

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 23 (News Analysis) - what is really needed is a conversation about poverty and why the need for food stamps is so high. "It’s true that disproportionately people of color are affected by food insecurity. But what Gingrich is doing, of course, is racially coding poverty by calling President Obama 'the food stamp president,'" Patel said. "He’s invoking these ideas of racialized poverty. Of course, if you look at the people who are on the food stamp program, you see that the majority of them are white and poor." Patel is author of the popular book, "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System."

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Bill Maher Compares Mitt Romney To Rappers: 'Straight Outta Salt Lake' (VIDEO)

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Bill Maher - Jan. 21 (Comedy News) - "No matter how clear Jay-Z makes it that the hot tub is only for the coolest and most beautiful people, somehow when the song ends we think, 'That is us,'" Maher said. "That's how Romney rolls -- straight outta Salt Lake. Get equity or die tryin'." Mitt

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One Percent, Many Variations

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Shaila Dewan, Robert Gebeloff - Jan. 15 (Special Report) - Adam Katz is happy to talk to reporters when he is promoting his business, a charter flight company based on Long Island called Talon Air. But when the subject was his position as one of America’s top earners, he balked. Seated at a desk fashioned from a jet fuel cell, wearing a button-down shirt with the company logo, he considered the public relations benefits and found them lacking: “It’s not very popular to be in the 1 percent these days, is it?”

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Nicholas D. Kristof Blog: Melinda Gates Shares Insights From Her Recent Trip to Bangladesh.

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By THE EDITORS - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - Melinda Gates, just back from a trip to Bangladesh, along with Nicholas Kristof, answer readers' questions about the developing world.

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300 Chinese Foxconn Workers 'Threaten Mass Suicide' At XBox Plant, Reports Claim

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

huffingtonpost.co.uk - By Michael Rundle - Jan. 11 (News Report) - Around 300 Chinese workers who manufacture XBox consoles took to a factory roof and threatened bosses with mass suicide over a dispute about pay, unconfirmed reports have claimed. The workers were employed at the Foxconn Technology Park in Wuhan in Hubei province. Foxconn is an independent, global manufacturing partner to companies including Apple, Microsoft and Sony.

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The economic illiteracy of economists | Mark Weisbrot

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Mark Weisbrot - Jan. 10 - The American Economic Association's annual meeting is red-letter day for 'the dismal science'. And dismal it proved The American Economic Association's annual meetings are a scary sight, with thousands of economists all gathered in the same place – a veritable weapon of mass destruction. Chicago was the lucky city for 2012 this past weekend, and I had just finished participating in an interesting panel on "the economics of regime change" , when I stumbled over to see what the big budget experts had to say about "the political economy of the US debt and deficits". The session was introduced by UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, who put up a graph of the United States' rising debt-to-GDP ratio, and warned of dire consequences if Congress didn't do something about it. Yawn. But the panelists got off to a good start, with Alan Blinder of Princeton, former vice-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describing the public discussion of the US national debt as generally ranging from "ludicrous to ...

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Occupy New Hampshire Member on His Exchange With Mitt Romney Over Support for Corporate Personhood

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 06 (News Report) - Occupy New Hampshire activist Mark Provost made national headlines Wednesday when he attended a town hall meeting hosted by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and asked about his past comment that "corporations are people." Provost's question to Romney came Occupy New Hampshire is preparing for a series of events leading up to the state’s Republican primary to highlight the disproportionate impact corporations and wealthy donors have on the political process. We play an excerpt of the town-hall exchange and get Provost's response to Romney reply. "I think his response, really, again is this denial that there's this class in the country, and that there are some people within the corporation — specifically, the workers — that are taking it on the chin so that the United States' executive management can make massive bonuses and serve their shareholders rather well too, because the profits largely go to capital gains and dividends." [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Medicare Madness: Baby Boomers At Center Of Possible Changes

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Richardo AlonsoZaldivar - Jan. 01 (News Analysis) - Baby boomers take note: Medicare as your parents have known it is headed for big changes no matter who wins the White House...

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It's the Inequality, Stupid

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Dave Gilson, Carolyn Perot - Jan. 01 (News Analysis) - How Rich Are the Superrich? A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.

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10 Ultra-Rich Congresspeople Who 'Represent' Some of the Most Financially Screwed Districts

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Sarah Jaffe - Dec. 28 (News Analysis) - According to a Washington Post story this week, “Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home equity.”

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Greeks Reeling From Health Care Cutbacks - NY Times: World

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 03:54:40 -0800

New York Times - By By SUZANNE DALEY - Dec. 27 (Special Report) - A 13 percent cut in health care spending as part of widespread austerity measures has left public hospitals lacking personnel and supplies, and many Greeks without care.

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The Whoppers of 2011

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Dec. 21 (Fact Check) - Despite what you may have heard in 2011: The new health care law won’t cost many jobs (and they’ll be poorly paying jobs at that). Republicans aren’t proposing to “end” Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version of the GOP plan). Most of the “millionaires” who would pay higher tax rates under a Democratic proposal aren’t job-creating small-business owners. President Obama’s mother didn’t really fight to get health insurance coverage as she was dying. And there was plenty more spin and deception in 2011. Obama claimed he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher. Michele Bachmann endorsed a claim that HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Joe Biden claimed rapes quadrupled in Flint, Mich., after police layoffs. And that’s just some of the nonsense we debunked.

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Crippling the Right to Organize: GOP Inaction May Leave National Labor Relations Board Inoperable

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Dec. 20 (News Report) - The National Labor Relations Board -- the government body that oversees labor complaints -- is on the verge of being shut down. Under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from last year, the NLRB must have a quorum of at least three of five members in order to operate. But one member's term expires at month's end, and meanwhile, Republicans have refused to confirm President Obama's two replacement nominees. Unless a solution is found, the NLRB would be frozen come January. Without the NLRB, workers would lose their legal recourse to defend their right to organize and to protect themselves against anti-union activity by employers. We speak with Standford Law School Professor William Gould, former chair of the NLRB. [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Gingrich has it wrong about the poor

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By LZ Granderson - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - This country isn't great in spite of the poor. It is great because of the poor.

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The Remarkable Political Stupidity of the 'Street' - you know, Wall Street

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Robert Reich: - Dec. 10 (News Analysis) - 'Wall Street has blanketed America in a miasma of cynicism. Most Americans assume the reason the Street got its taxpayer-funded bailout without strings in the first place was because of its political clout. That must be why the banks didn't have to renegotiate the mortgages of Americans - many of whom, because of the economic collapse brought on by the Street's excesses, are still under water. Some are drowning.' Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

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