August 10, 2015

By the Numbers: Blankfein becomes a billionaire

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:





http://toomuchonline.org/

August 10, 2015

How Inequality Corrupts Success

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



How Inequality Corrupts Success
JULY 28, 2015

[font size="3"]In any society where great stashes of wealth amass at the top, philosopher Elizabeth Anderson reminds us, the wealthy will sooner or later see most of the rest of us as failures.[/font]

Defenders of our deeply unequal economic order have a standard rejoinder whenever someone suggests that maybe we ought to consider taxing the rich at a somewhat higher level.
“Taking from the successful people to provide for those that aren’t isn’t the solution,” as White House hopeful Jeb Bush pronounced this past spring. “The solution is, How do you build capacity so people can achieve earned success?”

The core assumption behind this Bush pronouncement: Wealth equals success. Those who hold great wealth have achieved great success.

A claim this sweeping raises, of course, all sorts of philosophical questions. Economists and sociologists can’t really help us much with the answers. So Too Much went to someone who could: Elizabeth Anderson, the chair of the philosophy department at the University of Michigan.

The Harvard-trained Anderson may be perfectly positioned for helping us understand how wealth and inequality intersect with notions of success. She’s currently writing a history of egalitarianism from the 17th century days of the Levellers right down to the present day. .............(more)

- See more at: http://toomuchonline.org/how-inequality-corrupts-success/#sthash.VciWciF2.dpuf

August 10, 2015

The Obama Administration Just Blew Off Human Trafficking Concerns to Pass the TPP

The Obama Administration Just Blew Off Human Trafficking Concerns to Pass the TPP

Sunday, 09 August 2015 00:00
By Jeff Conant, Foreign Policy in Focus | Report


This spring, investigators discovered mass graves of human trafficking victims in Malaysia. How did the US State Department respond? By upgrading its assessment of Malaysia’s human rights efforts. According to Reuters, trafficking experts in the department had given the country a poor rating, but political appointees overruled them.

There’s only one reason why the State Department would change Malaysia’s status: to ease the country’s inclusion in the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP — a massive 12-country trade and investment pact currently being negotiated by the Obama administration.

Congress recently granted President Obama fast-track powers to complete negotiations on the TPP without opening it up to scrutiny by Congress or the public. But Congress did one thing right: It included trade restrictions on dealing with countries that have the worst records in combating human trafficking. Malaysia happens to be one of them.

Rather, Malaysia was one of those countries, until late July.

Just last December, the US Department of Labor cited Malaysia’s palm oil industry — which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s total exports of the substance — as a sector marked by forced labor practices. Also last year, the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report placed Malaysia at the lowest rank for its flagging efforts to stop human trafficking. ................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32274-the-obama-administration-just-blew-off-human-trafficking-concerns-to-pass-the-tpp

August 10, 2015

Key Greenhouse Gas Study May Have "Systematically Understated" Methane Leaks, New Research Shows

Key Greenhouse Gas Study May Have "Systematically Understated" Methane Leaks, New Research Shows

Sunday, 09 August 2015 00:00
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmogBlog | Report


A widely cited study on the amount of methane leaking from oil and gas sites, including fracked wells, shows signs of a major flaw, a newly published peer-reviewed paper concludes.

"The University of Texas reported on a campaign to measure methane emissions from United States natural gas production sites as part of an improved national inventory," researcher Touché Howard wrote in a paper published today in the journal Energy Science & Engineering. "Unfortunately, their study appears to have systematically underestimated emissions."

The University of Texas study, the first in a 16-part research series backed by the oil and gas industry and the Environmental Defense Fund, had been hailed as "unprecedented" when it was published in October 2013. The drilling industry and its supporters cited it as clear-cut evidence that methane leaks were lower than previously believed and falling further due to new technology.

The study's key contribution to the science on methane leaks was that researchers were allowed to access to oil and gas wells, including 27 wells where fracking was underway, and test individual pieces of equipment. "This is actual data, and it’s the first time we’ve had the opportunity to get actual data from unconventional natural gas development," Mark Brownstein, an Environmental Defense Fund associate vice president, told FuelFix when the UT study was published. ..............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32272-key-greenhouse-gas-study-may-have-systematically-understated-methane-leaks-new-research-shows

August 10, 2015

Chris Hedges: Evoking the Wrath of Nature

from truthdig:


Evoking the Wrath of Nature

Posted on Aug 9, 2015
By Chris Hedges


MOUNT WASHINGTON, N.H.—The wind on the peak of Mount Washington—the East Coast’s highest point, where some of the most erratic and treacherous weather in the world occurs—reached 60 miles an hour the day I was there with my family. Backpackers huddled in the biting chill next to large boulders or congregated in the lobby of a snack bar and gift shop that extract money from the thousands of tourists who ride the cog railroad or drive up the auto road from the base of the mountain each summer.

This strange confluence, where those who hike to the peak and those who ride in cars and trains meet in uneasy silence, is emblematic of the clash of cultures that threatens to doom the planet and the human species. One group knows and respects the power of nature, is able to feel its majesty and is aware of our insignificance and smallness before the cosmos. The other, enamored of the machines that obliterate distance and effort, and that insulate us from the natural world in a technological bubble, is largely dead to the rhythms that sustain life.

The narration given during the rail trip up the mountain is about the technological glory of the rack-and-pinion rail line, in place since 1868. This narrative presents the weather and steep slopes as ominous elements that human engineers defeated. In truth, the lacerations caused by the rail tracks and the automobile road—along with the tawdry tourist attractions on the summit that include a small post office from which visitors can mail picture postcards—desecrate the mountain.

The backpackers at the summit were resting, many after climbing up Tuckerman’s Ravine, where parts of the rocky ledges are at 45 degrees, a trek that can take five hours. Some had been hiking for days or weeks. Half a dozen thru-hikers, instantly recognizable by their spartan backpacking gear, motley clothing, layers of dirt and bedraggled hair, had started in Georgia last spring at Springer Mountain. By the time they finish this fall atop Mount Katahdin in Maine, they will have walked 2,181 miles at a pace of about 15 miles a day and largely cut themselves off from the outside world for almost half a year. They and the other hikers watched the gaggle of tourists, many of whom rushed a few steps to the official summit of Mount Washington to get their pictures taken, buy sweatshirts at the gift shop or eat hot dogs, chips or plastic-wrapped sandwiches in the snack bar.

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

The blind, self-destructive exploitation that lies at the heart of capitalism, the placing of monetary profit above the maintenance of life, the refusal to understand and accept limits, have turned the victimizers into the victims. Ignoring the warnings of native communities, we have evoked the deadly wrath of nature. And I fear we may not be able to find our way back. .......(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/evoking_the_wrath_of_nature_20150809

August 9, 2015

The Rise of Big Generic: Why Knockoff Prescriptions Now Cost $1,200

The Rise of Big Generic: Why Knockoff Prescriptions Now Cost $1,200

Saturday, 08 August 2015 00:00
By Steve Hendricks, Truthout | News Analysis


Not that long ago, the generic drug industry was the ugly stepchild of the Big Pharma family - the uncomely domain of penny pills and piffling profits. The big names in pharma preferred to hawk Prozac, Viagra and other brand-name elixirs at five and 10 dollars a pop, leaving smaller firms that had all the prestige of Kmart to scramble over the nickels and dimes to be had off generics. It was, however, a good era for anyone who needed a cheap generic, as a majority of Americans did (and still do) each year. But times have changed, and decidedly not for the better.

The capstone event of the new era came on May 28, when the Federal Trade Commission reached a whacking settlement of $1.2 billion - one of the largest in the FTC's history - with Teva Pharmaceuticals over shady trade practices. The size of the settlement was only part of the news. The other part was that Teva responded with the corporate equivalent of a shrug, even declaring itself "pleased" with the deal, which might have been taken for bravado but for the concurrence of Teva’s investors, who kept the company's stock price steady as could be. It's not news that a billion dollars is chump change to Big Pharma. The news is that Teva isn't Big Pharma. Teva is a generics maker - Mid Pharma at best. But such has been the consolidation in the generics trade that even its players are now behemoths, and this is where the danger lies.

Teva has been a consolidator among consolidators, hoovering up half a dozen companies in the last 15 years at a cost of more than $30 billion. Headquartered in Israel, Teva does most of its business in the West. In the United States it employs 7,500 people and fills 1.5 million prescriptions a day, more than half a billion a year. In Europe it fills nearly twice that. All of which makes it the biggest seller of generics in both America and the world. Teva has plans to grow bigger still and has cast an acquisitive eye on, among other companies, its nearest rival in the generics field, Mylan (which has so far resisted Teva’s overtures). By one slightly hyperbolic assessment, if the Mylan purchase were to go through, "Every man, woman and child in the U.S. will eventually take a pill manufactured by the new entity." This is not good news for any man, woman or child - unless she or he holds stock in Teva.

Consolidation Results in Skyrocketing Prices

As Big Generic has consolidated, competition has of course dropped, and makers of generics have raised prices flamboyantly. In October 2013, a month's supply of doxycycline, a widely used antibiotic that has been available in generic form for three decades, cost hospitals $1.20. Just six months later, it cost $111.00, an increase of 9,150 percent. In July 2013, a month of tetracycline, another antibiotic long generically available, cost pharmacies $1.50, but a year later it was $257.70, an increase of 17,080 percent. These are extreme instances, but they are not aberrant. ................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32182-the-rise-of-big-generic-why-knockoff-prescriptions-now-cost-1-200

August 8, 2015

Todd Courser's political career goes down in rainbow-colored flames

from the Metro Times:



Where do we start? There's just so much juicy goodness to the epic comedown faced by state Rep. Todd Courser, we simply don't know where to begin.

First, the story is so bizarre, so twisted, that the excellent reporting that appeared in today's Detroit News almost seems to read like a lampoon of the famously anti-LGBT Tea Partier. Apparently, Courser hatched a wild scheme to circulate an email alleging that he was a bisexual cruiser who was spotted having gay sex behind a Lansing bar. Why spread such an outrageous story? Because his God-fearing followers would surely be pleased to learn that it was all a lie, and that all Courser was doing was diddling fellow Tea Party legislator Cindy Gamrat. (Makes sense, huh?)

Beyond this flabbergasting story, there's the obvious delight in seeing a screaming homophobe's political career go down in gorgeous, rainbow-colored flames. Courser, who nearly got himself elected chair of the Michigan Republican Party last February, has been a noisy God-botherer, and a font of anti-gay rhetoric to rival Michigan's own Dave Agema. Among other things, the Lapeer accountant and lawyer has claimed that Jesus wanted him to run to save the Republican party, said that he went to law school to preserve the “Christian heritage of America,” and said of gay matrimony, "This can and must be stopped!” Courser's "Gaygate" scandal is a welcome instance of a hypocritical gasbag being punctured, and that fartlike deflating noise you hear is his political life ebbing away. ...................(more)

http://www.metrotimes.com/Blogs/archives/2015/08/07/todd-coursers-political-career-goes-down-in-rainbow-colored-flames

August 8, 2015

Appeals Court Upholds Gun Ban on Madison Buses

Aug. 06--A state appeals court on Thursday agreed with a Dane County judge who ruled last year that a Madison city policy banning guns on city buses does not violate Wisconsin's concealed carry law.

Wisconsin Carry, a gun rights group, contended that state law preempted the policy. But the state 4th District Court of Appeals said that, as written, state law doesn't bar the rule, which prohibits guns on Metro Transit buses.

"Applying the language of (the state statute) as written, we agree with the circuit court and the city that the statute plainly preempts only 'ordinances' and 'resolutions,'" Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the three-judge panel. "And, we agree, it is clear that the bus rule is not an 'ordinance' or 'resolution' under case law providing generally accepted meanings for those terms."

Wisconsin Carry lawyer John Moore said the group has not decided whether it will appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. .............(more)

http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/14067024/appeals-court-upholds-gun-ban-on-madison-buses

August 8, 2015

The Great Unwind Has Begun, Bankruptcies Soar

The Great Unwind Has Begun, Bankruptcies Soar
by Wolf Richter • August 7, 2015


The junk-bond market lost money in July. Not a lot, 0.62%. But it did so after having already lost money in June. It was the third losing month so far this year, despite their “high” coupon payments that make these bonds look so juicy to yield-desperate fund managers.

Until recently, they were superb investments, riding up the credit boom. Junk-bond guru Marty Fridson, CIO of Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors, explained in a note for S&P Capital IQ LCD (behind paywall; some reports are at LCD’s free highyieldbond.com):

Strategists frequently take the easy way out in their year-ahead outlooks by predicting that the high-yield market will “earn the coupon.” At this stage, 2015 is shaping up as another year that makes false prophets of those who assumed, in the face of overwhelming experience to the contrary, that it would be free of both positive and negative shocks.

But it’s just the timid beginning.

The Fed hasn’t even raised interest rates yet, and the largest credit bubble in history continues to inflate. But it has begun to hiss hot air at the margins where the riskiest junk bonds, rated CCC or below, have plunged in value and where average yields have soared from a ludicrous low of 8% a year ago to over 13% now. That rout is far from over.

No matter how terrible and obvious the risks, fund managers, driven to near insanity by the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy, held their noses and closed their eyes and picked up the worst junk, thus continuing to fund over-leveraged, money-losing, cash-flow negative companies that should have been restructured or liquidated years ago. ...............(more)

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/08/07/the-great-unwind-has-begun-bankruptcies-soar/

August 7, 2015

Dunkin Donut CEO Who Makes $4,887 an Hour Outraged at $15 Minimum Wage

This week, the New York Wage Board recommended that the state's fast food workers should make $15 per hour, which has been the rallying cry for the labor movement across the country.

The New York move was seen as a victory for workers in this industry, who are among the lowest-paid in the country.

Within a day, corporate America was on the attack, to stop the spread of this burgeoning national movement.

Dunkin Donuts CEO Nigel Travis—who previously held senior positions at Papa John's and Burger King, other low-wage employers—appeared on CNN and decried the $15 minimum wage as “absolutely outrageous.” He went on to claim that the move will prevent his company from hiring more people and would “affect small business and franchises.” ................(more)

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18277/dunkin_donuts_ceo_who_earns_10_million_claims_to_be_outraged_by_15_minimum