NewsTrust - Wealth - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Corporations Are Stealing Billions in Tax Breaks, While the Confused, Screwed Citizenry Turn On Each Other

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Reich - May. 20 (Opinion) - As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement that won’t allow global corporations to get away with this.

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Being a Democracy Hating, Corporate Power-Defending Newspaper Owner Runs Deep in the Koch Family

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Yasha Levine - May. 19 (Opinion) - There’s a rumor going around that the Koch brothers are interested in buying up the Tribune Company, which includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun… And there’s a lot of speculation about what would happen if they did. Some worry, and rightly so, that the Kochs—whose combined wealth makes them the biggest billionaires on the planet—would integrate the Tribune Co. with the rest of their free-market thinktank-industrial complex, and turn its newly acquired news media property into a gigantic business propaganda machine. Half the reporters at the Los Angeles Times even took a vote saying they’d quit if the Kochs bought the paper

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5 Ways That Raw, Unregulated Capitalism Is Acting Like a Cancer on American Society

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Paul Buchheit - May. 05 (Opinion) - The uncontrolled growth of investment wealth is diverting resources away from vital programs, effectively smothering them.

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We Decide How to Share Gains

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Stan Sorscher - May. 02 (Opinion) - Multinational employers steadily move work offshore, and lay off thousands of workers. We've cut funding for education; student debt is over a trillion dollars. We've terminated pensions, weakened unions, made work more contingent and more precarious. Wal-Mart cuts hours to avoid paying for health care. Some elected officials demonize teachers, and public employees, and turn public opinion against any regular worker daring to hope for a higher standard of living. Globally, workplace insecurity and inequality are at historic levels.

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Explaining the upper crust’s preference for austerity economics

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

seattletimes.com - By Paul Krugman - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics. Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics?

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California's Dark-Money Investigation Is Making Conservatives Sweat

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Andy Kroll - Apr. 15 (Opinion) - Investigators with California's election watchdog and attorney general's office are hot on the trail of the true source of millions in dark money spent to defeat two hard-fought ballot propositions last fall. The wide-ranging probe has conservatives worried that a network of nonprofit groups used to move secret money around the country could be in for some unwanted exposure. The investigation, led by the state's nonpartisan Fair Political Practices Commission, has already done more than most watchdogs to pry open the black box of the conservative dark-money groups that spent freely in 2012 without disclosing the sources of their money. Last fall, the FPPC revealed what it called "the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history" after it discovered that three nonprofits had funneled $11 million from Virginia to Arizona to California. As the probe progresses, some conservatives are nervous that more details—such as the identities of actual ...

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Bill Moyers: We Are Living in the United States of Inequality

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Bill Moyers - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - Inequality matters. You will hear people say it doesn’t, but they are usually so high up the ladder they can’t even see those at the bottom. The distance between the first and the least in America is vast and growing.

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How a Modern Inquisition, With the Help of Pope Francis, Stifled the Movement Protecting the Poor

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By George Monbiot - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” So said the Brazilian archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara. His adage exposes one of the great fissures in the Catholic Church, and the emptiness of the new Pope’s claim to be on the side of the poor.

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Since Alan Simpson has the President on the Defensive, House Dems Must Hold the Line

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

nationofchange.org - By Richard (RJ) Eskow - Feb. 21 (Opinion) - Alan Simpson, along with Erskine Bowles, represents a well-funded cadre of spokespeople who are only willing to present a narrow band of corporate- and billionaire-friendly economic policies. There’s just one approach in their world, one which Simpson and Bowles reiterated just this week: Medicare and Social Security benefit cuts for seniors and the disabled and the gutting of middle-class tax breaks, paired with further tax reductionsfor corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

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Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Joseph Stiglitz - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible.

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No on Lew

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Bernie Sanders - Jan. 11 (Opinion) - As a supporter of the president, I remain extremely concerned that virtually all of his key economic advisers have come from Wall Street. In my view, we need a treasury secretary who is prepared to stand up to corporate America and their powerful lobbyists and fight for policies that protect the working families in our country. I do not believe Mr. Lew is that person.

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State of Fear

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Chris Hedges - Jan. 08 (Opinion) - McLeish’s story is the story of hundreds of thousands of people—perhaps more—whose lives are being invaded by the state. It is the story of a security and surveillance apparatus—overseen by the executive branch under Barack Obama—that has empowered the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to silence the voices and obstruct the activity of citizens who question corporate power.

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The Ten Most Outrageous Economic Calamities of 2012

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Les Leopold - Dec. 29 (Review) - It was another year of Wall Street treachery. Those who took down our economy still have not been held accountable. Instead, Wall Street successfully lured the political establishment into a phony fiscal cliff/austerity debate

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There Is No Stopping Climate Change Unless We Can Mobilize Against Plutocracy

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By George Monbiot - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - Humankind’s greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that manmade climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine, whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it.

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5 Enemies of a Decent Middle Class Existence in the US

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Paul Buchheit - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - One of the pleasures of a weekend away from the city is visiting with people who express points of view that are different from my own. A lot of them hate government. Their comments are sprinkled with colorful references to taxes, waste, and socialism.

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WalMart’s Tears for a Tragedy

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Barbara Koeppel - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - On Saturday, a fire swept through a garment factory near Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing some 120 workers trapped behind locked doors. WalMart, one of the factory’s clothes buyers, quickly distanced itself from the tragedy, but WalMart’s profiting from sweatshops is a long-term pattern,

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The Party of Religious Fanaticism and Falsehood

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Veena Trehan - Nov. 04 (Opinion) - I’ll say it, since the Democrats aren’t. The Republicans have become a party of radical extremism and oppression. Election stealing? Check. Agenda to keep women second class citizens? Check. Religious lawmakers who reject science and reality? Check. Lying demagogue who will say anything to gain power? Check.

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Bill Moyers: The Plutocracy Will Go to Extremes to Keep the 1% in Control

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Bill Moyers, Matt Taibbi, Chrystia Freeland - Oct. 20 (Interview) - if you say, 'Actually, I want to study income inequality,' and even most dangerously, 'I want to study what's happening at the very top of the distribution," what Branko Milanović said to me is the think tanks immediately pull away because they say, "Our donors won't like it." And that actually challenges the whole economic setup of the United States and of western capitalism. It’s very, very threatening. And I think that that’s why you've had the billionaire class. You know, the minute Barack Obama, I would actually say rather gently suggested that the millionaires and the billionaires should pay a little bit more, you had immediate cries of class warfare from the plutocrats.

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Audit Notes: Google antitrust, the NYT on entrenched elites

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Ryan Chittum - Oct. 15 (Comment) - Reuters scoops that the Federal Trade Commission is leaning toward filing antitrust charges against Google for abusing its search monopoly to boost its own business.

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A Vulture Capitalist for a Vulture Culture

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Nation of Change - By Robert S. Becker - Oct. 14 (Opinion) - Delusional Romney belief systems – whether more trickle-down folly, indefensible tax cuts, or “God’s on our side” exceptionalism – serve as cover for an ever nastier, reactionary vulture culture. Under-regulated vulture capitalism preys on government regulation and legislation, environmental wellbeing (decimating forests, ocean life, coastal waters, and strip mining sites), low-wage workers here or overseas -- plus badgering phantom “socialists” who challenge spoiled-brat banksters, Koch Bros., or the Rove brigade. That overfed horde sustains the extremist GOP vulture culture, at war with women, fair taxation, democratic elections that count minorities, gay rights, basic science, and healthy food – in a word, rationality.

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10 Steps to Break Up the Wealth of the Super Rich

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Chuck Collins - Oct. 10 (Opinion) - We must change the rules of the economy so that they serve and lift up the 100 percent, not just the 1 percent. Starting in the mid-1970s, the rules were changed to reorient the economy toward the short-term interests of the 1 percent. We can shift and r

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Kristof: Why let the rich hoard the toys?

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

news-journal.com - By Nicholas Kristof - Oct. 06 (Opinion) - Imagine a kindergarten with 100 students, lavishly supplied with books, crayons and toys. Yet you gasp: One avaricious little boy is jealously guarding a mountain of toys for himself. A handful of other children are quietly playing with a few toys each, while 90 of the children are looking on forlornly — empty-handed. The one greedy boy has hoarded more toys than all those 90 children put together!

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Why Don't Americans Care About Democracy at Home?

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Henry A. Giroux - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - economic darwinism will...ensure the ...eventual elimination of those...willing to fight for public values, rights, spaces and institutions not wedded to the logic of privatization, commodification, deregulation.. we are seeing the breakdown of democracy...

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Not enough people pay income tax? What about Boeing?

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700

seattletimes.com - By Danny Westneat - Sep. 19 (Comment) - in any accounting of who pays zilch to the federal enterprise, our aerospace superstar is at the top of a long list. In 2011, Boeing had no net income-tax liability for the fourth year in a row, despite $5.1 billion in profits. I bring this up because Romney, in his foolish slighting of nearly half a nation he's trying to woo, blundered into one of my own hobbyhorses. Namely, that not enough people in this country pay income taxes. And by "people," I graciously include our newest citizens, the corporations.

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Stephen Colbert Takes On Mitt Romney's 47 Percent Comments (VIDEO)

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Stephen Colbert - Sep. 19 (Comedy News) - At this point, his whole campaign probably looks so outrageous that it's impossible to take seriously, but luckily, Stephen Colbert took some time on Tuesday night's "Colbert Report" to explain how this is all part of Mitt's brilliant plan.

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