May 10, 2014

Donald Sterling, meet Dan Snyder (cartoon)

http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/the_sterlings_20140509

May 10, 2014

Did Pharmaceutical Firms Exploit Pancreas Problems to Increase Profits?

via truthdig:



Successful efforts by patient advocacy groups to require new approval standards for a particular class of drugs have resulted, perhaps inadvertently, in a sharp reduction of available products and a spike in the cost of brand name drugs to a tune of $350 million per year, Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News contributor Monica J. Smith reports.

The crucial question that arises in the mind of the socially concerned observer is whether prescription drug companies increased their profits by jacking up prices in a scarcity they may have helped create.

The advocates’ stated aim was to increase professional and publicly available knowledge of the drugs’ safety and efficacy through regulations under the Food and Drug Administration.

As a class, the drugs are known as pancreatic enzyme therapies. They are essential for people who suffer from problems associated with cystic fibrosis or chronic pancreatitis. Treatment typically requires three to four doses per day for the duration of a patient’s life. Those who go without the drugs commonly develop malnourishment and osteoporosis. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/do_your_pancreas_problems_equal_pharmaceutical_profits_20140508

May 9, 2014

Ain't no party like a Third Way party 'cause a Third Way party never stops......

Unfortunately.......


WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former White House aide to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, on Friday joined the Ready For Hillary group that is urging former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016.

Emanuel, who also served in the U.S. House of Representatives, will headline two fundraisers for the group in June. His support comes less than a week after Virginia Senator Tim Kaine also backed the effort.

"I've seen firsthand how Hillary has inspired women and men, and girls and boys, here in America and across the globe, and I know that as president, she would continue to move our country forward," Emanuel said in a statement from Ready For Hillary.

The group - a super PAC that voluntarily caps donations at $25,000 - is not officially affiliated with Clinton, who says she will decide whether to pursue the White House after November's congressional elections. But it boasts the backing of numerous Democratic officials and donors. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/09/rahm-emanuel-hillary-clinton-2016_n_5294976.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

May 9, 2014

David Sirota: How Wall Street Financial Fees Choke Our Cities

from In These Times:


How Wall Street Financial Fees Choke Our Cities
L.A. is on the hook for millions of dollars in the same scheme that has plagued cities across America.

BY DAVID SIROTA


When a city is forced to spend more on Wall Street fees than on basic public services, it is the sign of trouble. When that city is one of America's biggest population centers, it is the sign of a burgeoning crisis.

That's the key takeaway from a recent report looking at what has been happening in Los Angeles over the last few years. Published by the union-backed Fix LA Coalition, the report details how the city has slashed its spending in the wake of revenue losses from the Wall Street-engineered financial crisis. Yet, as the analysis shows, the city is nonetheless still being crushed by Wall Street —in this specific case, it is being forced to spend $300 million a year on financial fees. For some context, that's more than the city spends each year maintaining all of its roads.

So what specifically are these fees? According to the data, roughly $200 million worth of fees go to Wall Street money managers who oversee some of the city's pension investments. Yet, that's only a conservative estimate gleaned from analyzing documents that are publicly available. Because there’s no one central accounting of the fees, and because other fees may be secret, the report notes that, just like in most locales, “neither the boards nor the investment staff employed by the boards know (exactly) how much they pay in total fees.”

Moving forward, Los Angeles is now on the hook for $65.8 million worth of new fees in the next 14 years, thanks to a 2006 interest-rate swap deal.

“(Those) deals were sold on the assumption that they would save L.A. taxpayers money,” notes the report. “But after the banks crashed the economy, the federal government drove down interest rates as part of the bank bailout, and now the banks are reaping a windfall at taxpayers’ expense.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/16667/wall_street_financial_fees_choke_american_cities

May 9, 2014

Professor Richard Wolff: Economic Update: Shameful Economics (audio link)

Listen: http://rdwolff.com/content/economic-update-shameful-economics


by Richard Wolff.
PUBLISHED ON MAY 4, 2014


Updates on Alabama prison/slave labor, automobile irrationalities, and the California drought. Major discussions of: cutting public employee pensions, cutting state support for public higher education, and lotteries as disguised taxes on middle and poor Americans. Responses to listener questions on the Federal Reserve "creating" money and why corporations operate overseas and then want government (taxpayers') support for corporations' foreign operations.

May 9, 2014

Chris Hedges "The Absurdity of American Empire"

May 9, 2014

U.S. Laws Defy Basic Rules Of Justice: Report

Too many laws in the U.S defy basic human rights principles of justice by resorting to overly punitive sentences for nonviolent and low-level crimes, according to a report published Tuesday by Human Rights Watch.

“Almost 30 years of harsh sentencing laws have left the US with over 2.2 million men and women behind bars, most for nonviolent crimes,” the 36-page report concludes, pointing to the more than 53 percent of state prison inmates with sentences of at least a year who are serving time for non-violent offenses.

“Fair and prudent punishment is not only a core human rights principle, but a core principle of American justice that has been neglected for far too long,” Jamie Fellner, co-author of the report and senior adviser to the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch, said in a press release Tuesday. “There is growing national recognition that disproportionately harsh laws are not needed to protect public safety and to hold offenders accountable for their crimes. To the contrary, community well-being is best served by fair laws and just sentences.”

The new report also sheds light on the disproportionately aggressive enforcement of recreational drug laws against minority communities in the U.S., which maintains the world’s highest documented rate of incarceration. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/us-justice-system_n_5290838.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

May 8, 2014

Choosing Unemployment: Macroeconomic Policy and American Inequality

from Dissent magazine:


Choosing Unemployment: Macroeconomic Policy and American Inequality
By Colin Gordon - May 1, 2014


[font size="1"]Unemployed march in Washington, D.C., 1930 (Library of Congress via Washington Area Spark/Flickr)[/font]

This series is adapted from Growing Apart: A Political History of American Inequality, a resource developed for the Project on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies and inequality.org. It is presented in nine parts. The introduction laid out the basic dimensions of American inequality and examined some of the usual explanatory suspects. The political explanation for American inequality is developed through chapters looking in turn at labor relations, the minimum wage and labor standards, job-based benefits, social policy, taxes, financialization, executive pay, and macroeconomic policy. Previous installments in this series can be found here.

Macroeconomic policies, as the name suggests, take aim at the economy’s overall performance on everything from growth and job rates to price stability. Fiscal policies use taxes and public spending to shape economic growth, demand, and distribution. Monetary policies use interest rates and government securities to control the supply of money and the pace of economic growth. Macroeconomic policies, in other words, speak to both the broad parameters and priorities of public policy—where and how we raise and spend money—and the more immediate management of interest rates and the money supply.

Government revenue and spending policies, in the aggregate, have a substantial impact on economic growth and economic distribution. Federal spending reached about 20 percent of GDP during the Korean War and has been there ever since, dipping a little during good times, rising a little during recessions. Most of this spending—and its distribution—reflects changing policy priorities and demands. Defense spending, for instance, rose into the Vietnam era and then declined, with spikes in the early 1980s and after 9/11. Since then, spending on social programs, especially health care, has taken up most of the slack.

Fiscal policy also reflects the countercyclical logic of public finance: spending as a share of the economy tends to rise during economic downturns and fall during expansions, while tax revenue does the opposite. In this sense, policy commitments, especially on social programs, lean in against fluctuations in the business cycle, protecting the most vulnerable and sustaining demand during hard times. Additional spending commitments (a “stimulus” for example) can enhance these automatic stabilizers. On the other hand, cutbacks elsewhere in government budgets, at either the state or federal level, can blunt them.Choices on the tax side of the ledger, meanwhile, shape the distributional impact of all of this.

.....(snip).....

Macroeconomic Policy and American Inequality

This combination of “foot-on-the-brake” monetary policy and pervasive budgetary anxiety feeds inequality at both ends of the income spectrum. The preoccupation with inflation serves, first and foremost, the nation’s financial powers. For Wall Street, inflation has always been a particular and overriding concern. By calibrating its policies to this concern, the Fed has operated over recent decades as a guardian of the interests and assets of its member banks, not as a steward of economic growth.

This fixation on “sound money,” in turn, has had real and unfortunate consequences for working Americans. And these consequences, including high unemployment and its associated social and economic ills, haven’t been accidental. In practical terms, policymakers have dampened inflation by dampening wages, through both sustained joblessness and a wider range of policies (deregulation, trade liberalization, attacks on collective bargaining, cuts to social programs) designed to erode workers’ bargaining power. Indeed, the architects of this policy have consistently described America’s retreat from full employment as a way of “zapping labor” with concessionary bargaining, trade exposure, and monetary restraint. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/choosing-unemployment-macroeconomic-policy-and-american-inequality

May 8, 2014

Botched Oklahoma Execution Tells Us All

from The Progressive:


Botched Oklahoma Execution Tells Us All


It looks as if the practice of the death penalty is finally catching up with America. We must do better than this.

The botched April 29 execution of death row inmate Clayton Lockett, 38, in Oklahoma was gruesome, cruel and barbaric. The man died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the lethal drugs were administered. The morning of his execution he had refused to cooperate and had been subdued with a stun gun.

President Obama and the United Nations agree the execution was inhumane. The president called it “deeply troubling,” adding there are “significant problems” with the way death is administered, citing racial bias, uneven application and the fact that innocent people are sometimes put to death. A spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said the execution violated international law.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin said, “Justice was served,” adding that the execution was lawfully carried out. Defensively, she added: “The people of Oklahoma do not have blood on their hands.” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://progressive.org/news/2014/05/187680/botched-oklahoma-execution-tells-us-all

May 8, 2014

Pulitzer Prize-winner James Risen threatened with jail time re: confidential sources

from The Progressive:


by Matthew Rothschild


James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winner at the New York Times, may face jail time on a federal contempt of court charge if he doesn’t release the identity of one of his confidential sources.

The Bush Administration’s Justice Department tried to pry the information out of him, but ultimately relented.

Now President Obama, who vowed to restore our civil liberties when he ran for the White House in 2000, is letting his Justice Department pursue Risen even more aggressively than Bush did.

The information concerns a source for a chapter in Risen’s terrific 2006 book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.” That chapter dealt with a scheme to give the Iranians faulty blueprints for a nuclear weapon. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://progressive.org/news/2014/05/187681/obama-threatens-pulitzer-prize-winner