UNC Wins! (Entire Ruling Class of USA USA USA Fails UP?) Election Fraud Mirrors Bankster Fraud (JPMorgan and Donald Trump Have Unusual Trading Patterns)

UNC WINS AGAIN!

Going to Elite Eight

Paul Ryan Running?

Dear Cruz Scandalmongers:  This May Not Bounce the Way You Want It To Bounce

45 Years and Counting:  Sustaining Power of “The Powell Memo”

The tentacles spread outward from all types of centers of power.

There are no good guys anymore?

We must look in new places it seems.

And, finally, the voters of the U.S. are angered . . . outraged?

Up to now it seemed like (if you gauge it by the dearth of lawsuits) that no one's really cared that they weren't recording the votes properly.

But don't mess with their polling places, knaves.

Voters Angered by Potential Election Fraud

We are all becoming aware of voter anger as the primary season progresses. Some have explained this anger as stemming from the loss of manufacturing jobs. Whatever the cause, the anger exists – and it is exploding in part in allegations of voter fraud, particularly directed at the Clintons.

When Bill Clinton showed up in Massachusetts, held an election day rally, and then brought his election day cheer into various polling places, over 119,000 people signed a petition  asking that he be prosecuted for violation of Massachusetts election laws. When he did similar things in Illinois, this inspired another petition. And there have been several petitions to investigate Hillary Clinton and the DNC for election fraud.

The latest petition — this one directly to the White House — arises from the Arizona primary. As of the morning of March 24, only three days since the Arizona fiasco, voter anger has driven the petition to over 92,000. At 100,000 the White House is supposed to respond. The petition is specific:  Numerous voters who switched from Independent to Democrat could not vote and were turned away or given provisional ballots, which in turn were never counted. The likelihood is that the White House will rule that this is a state law election issue and will do nothing.

But clearly the voters are getting very angry.

In 2012 there were only 300,000 voters in Arizona, but there were 800,000 this year.

Yet in Maricopa County, the largest Arizona county, there were 200 voting places in 2012 but only 70 this year, resulting in lines 3 hours long and lasting past midnight in some places.

One could argue that the long lines and long waits helped both the Clinton and Trump campaigns, which ultimately won. On the Democratic side, the lines would discourage working class voters, who have a limited amount of time to devote to waiting to vote. On the Republican side, Trump voters are fueled by anger and would wait regardless of the pain. But however you spin the situation, it is one that will increase voter anger and concern about the fairness of the process. Arizona lawmakers are scheduling a hearing, and there is a drive by voters to bring legal action.

Don't you always wonder whose boy is whose?

As if hydra can't raise themselves up from the mire.

The tentacles of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs burrow worldwide.

Why not nationwide?

JPMorgan and Donald Trump Have Unusual Trading Patterns

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

March 24, 2016

Presidential candidate Donald Trump and the mega Wall Street bank JPMorgan Chase share a common trait:  they can conduct themselves in a manner that insults the values of a civilized society and instead of losing ground, their star rises – or so it appears.

Trump’s public vulgarity and anti-Presidential demeanor are perpetually on display at his Twitter page and in the Republican debates.  In just the past month, Trump has called Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly “crazy”; boasted of the size of his “manhood” during a Republican debate; and promised to ramp up the use of torture – illegal under both domestic and international law.

The typically staid Senator Elizabeth Warren even lost her cool with Trump on March 21, Tweeting that “his insecurities are on parade:  petty bullying, attacks on women, cheap racism, flagrant narcissism.”

In a new CBS News/New York Times poll released on Monday, only 24 percent of Americans, of which 85 percent were registered voters, had a favorable opinion of Trump. And yet, somehow, primary elections or caucuses in state after state show Trump as the winner on the Republican ticket.

Now consider the same kind of anomaly at JPMorgan Chase.

On the morning of May 20 of last year, JPMorgan Chase was charged with a felony by the U.S. Justice Department for its involvement in rigging foreign currency markets. That was its third felony count in the span of less than a year and a half. One would have expected the price of the stock to tank. The stock price of JPMorgan had closed on May 19, prior to the news, at $67.01. It closed on May 20, after the news, at $66.48.

The public is being asked to swallow the idea that a criminal felony count at the nation’s largest bank, holding $1.3 trillion in the life savings of depositors across America, is worth a measly 53 cents.

We went back to January 7, 2014 when the bank was charged with two felony counts for its failures in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, the largest financial fraud in U.S. history.

In that case, the bank was given a deferred prosecution agreement and put on probation. On January 6, the day before the news broke, the stock closed at $59 even. 

At the close of trading on January 7, after the two felony counts, JPMorgan’s stock ended the day at $58.32 – a mere 68 cents lower than the day before or 34 cents for each felony count.

Now here’s where you really need to pay attention.

For the year 2015, in which the bank received its third criminal felony count and settled more multi-billion-dollar charges with regulators, which had cost shareholders $35 billion over the prior four years, the bank’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, who had been at the helm during this full litany of abuses (wait for it) received a pay boost of 35 percent or $27 million in total compensation.

While the business model of Wall Street is, indeed, fraud, as Senator Bernie Sanders continues to remind the nation, equally disastrous for America is that the political model of the country is rapidly becoming one of “failing up.”

Why should a trash-talking, reality TV star who won’t release his tax returns to allow the public to see if his claims of success are valid, and whose businesses filed bankruptcy four times, be the Republican frontrunner in one of the most critical economic moments in U.S. history?

We can’t account for the Trump phenomenon other than to say that there are growing questions about how some of these primaries and caucuses are being conducted.

Phoenix, Arizona Mayor Greg Stanton has issued a letter to the Justice Department calling for an investigation of this week’s presidential primary where there were 70 to 85 percent less voting locations than in either 2012 or 2008 and where Stanton said the county “distributed fewer polling locations to parts of the county with higher minority populations.”

As for the anomalies at JPMorgan Chase, we might offer that the bank has spent billions of dollars buying back its own stock during its serial charges of abusing the public trust.

Goodbye Dear Garry (Sign the Petition) Arizona Vote Stealing Makes U.S. Political Corruption Evident to World (A Drama Including Don Corleone, Scarface, Norma Desmond and Wicked Witch of the West) Only Way Out? Elect Bernie Sanders! (Who's To Blame for Donald Trump?) Does Pentagon Supersede State Dept. These Days? (Prince Under Investigation)

I'm so sad. This is heartbreaking.

I always felt I received my first lessons in sophisticated, low-key, madcap comedy from "The Larry Sanders Show."

Goodbye, Garry. Dear Garry.

You were far too young and fey to go so soon.

Are all the brilliant people leaving now?

What happened in Arizona wasn’t an accident: When states make voting impossible, it’s for a very clear reason

Sign this petition to bring fair elections to the U.S.

INVESTIGATE THE VOTER FRAUD AND VOTER SUPPRESSION IN ARIZONA 3/22/2016 DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

Voters Accuse Arizona of Election Fraud As Phoenix Mayor Requests Federal Investigation

Polling places were cut by 70%, leading #AZElectionFraud to trend on Twitter & a petition to get 100,000 signatures

The phrase #AZElectionFraud trended on Twitter on Thursday as thousands of users across social media accused Arizona of sabotaging the March 22 primary election.

Thousands of Arizonan voters were stuck in long lines for hours on Tuesday night after county officials decreased the number of polling locations in Maricopa County — the most populous area in the state, with more than half of the population — by more than two-thirds, from 200 four years ago to just 60.

Hillary Clinton won the contested Democratic primary in Arizona with roughly 58 percent of votes to Bernie Sanders’ 40 percent. Sen. Sanders won the other two primaries in Idaho and Utah the same night in enormous landslides, with approximately 80 percent of votes.

A petition calling on the Obama administration to “investigate the voter fraud and voter suppression” received more than 100,000 signatures by Thursday afternoon.

In response to the widespread outrage, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey called the conditions “unacceptable.”

. . . there was just one polling location for every 108,000 residents.

“Thousands of citizens waited in line for three, four, and even five hours to vote,” Stanton wrote. “Many more simply could not afford to wait that long, and went home.”

What Happened Tuesday in Arizona Should Be Considered a National Disgrace

By Bernie Sanders

Reader Supported News

24 March 16
got an email last night from a woman who waited five hours to vote in Arizona. Five hours.

We don't know how many thousands of people didn't get to cast their ballots yesterday in Arizona because they couldn't afford to wait that long. Scenes on cable news last night showed hundreds of people in line at 11:30pm in Phoenix – more than four hours after polls closed. Voting should not be this difficult.

One reason it is so hard to vote in Arizona is because the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. There were 70 percent fewer polling places this year than in 2012 in Phoenix's county. They wouldn't have been allowed to cut those polling places if the Voting Rights Act was still in tact.

These cuts meant that, in a county with more than 4 million residents, there were just 60 polling places. This is unacceptable, but it's also not an isolated incident.

We need to make it easier to vote, not more difficult. One way we can do that is by reaffirming our support for the Voting Rights Act, which, when I am president, I will fight to reinstate.

Add your name to say you support reinstating the Voting Rights Act so we can make voting easier for everybody, not more difficult.

We cannot continue to see democracy undermined in the United States of America. Enough is enough.

Make no mistake:  the billionaire class does not want Americans to vote. Billions of dollars are being funneled into our elections in a form of legalized bribery, even as American voters — especially minority voters — are being discouraged from voting. It is no wonder that government no longer works for ordinary Americans.

Above all, we need to remember the price that was paid for the right to vote. The Voting Rights Act was one of the great victories of the civil rights movement. Now, as then, change comes when the people demand it — in the voting booth, and on the streets in peaceful demonstrations. We must remind ourselves of what’s been achieved in the past, and resolve to do equally great things in the future. Democracy is not a spectator sport.

It is my sincere hope that the states that vote in the coming weeks and months do better than what we saw yesterday in Arizona. Too much is at stake for our future.

No one said a political revolution would be easy. The billionaire class doesn't want to see our movement win, and so we must do everything we can to show them that we have the power.

In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders

Web link:

https://go.berniesanders.com/page/content/splash

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has an honesty and trustworthiness problem. Exit polls continue to show voters see her as dishonest. Even voters who vote for her think she is less honest and trustworthy than Bernie Sanders, her opponent in the Democratic primary race.

I never cared much for Camille Paglia's take on sexual politics, but she seems to be right on the money as to the Republican Party crackup:

So the GOP is stuck with Trump, and through every fault of their own. Are we really hurtling toward a Trump-Hillary slugfest? If Bernie Sanders had gotten a hundredth of the press coverage lavished on Hillary over the past three years, he would have had an excellent chance of overtaking her.

But thanks to the outrageous press blackout (Clinton Incorporated’s vast vulture-wing conspiracy), Sanders remains too unknown to too much of the electorate, particularly in the South. The now widespread claims that Sanders voters will automatically vote for Hillary in the general election aren’t true in my case:  I will never cast my vote for a corrupt and incompetent candidate whose every policy is poll-tested in advance. If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I will write in Sanders or vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party, as I did in 2012 as a protest against Obama’s unethical use of drones and the racially divisive tone of his administration.

Voters have a tremendous opportunity this year to smash the tyrannical, money-mad machinery of both parties. A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote for the future, while a vote for Hillary Clinton is a reward to the Democratic National Committee for its shameless manipulation and racketeering. A primary vote for Donald Trump is a rebuke to the arrogantly insular GOP establishment, which if he wins the nomination will lose its power and influence overnight.

But a Trump-Hillary death match will be a national nightmare, a race to the bottom for both parties, as Democratic and Republican operatives compete to dig up the most lurid and salacious dirt on both flawed candidates. We’ll be sadistically trapped in an endless film noir, with Trump as Citizen Kane, Don Corleone and Scarface and Hillary as Norma Desmond, Mommie Dearest and the Wicked Witch of the West.

However, there is one way out to ensure a rational, future-oriented, issues-centered presidential campaign: Democrats, vote for Bernie Sanders!

Pentagon Muscles Out State Dept. on Foreign Aid

The State Department and the Pentagon are feuding over who should control decisions on supplying military aid to foreign nations.

Washington's newest arms race pits the State Department against the Pentagon, which are feuding over who should make the decisions on supplying military aid to foreign nations.

And to the consternation of the diplomats, the generals are on a winning streak.

The Pentagon is steering a growing pot of money, equipment and training to help countries fight terrorism, stem the drug trade and deter a rising China and resurgent Russia. Congress is poised to further expand the military's ability to ship arms overseas — causing the State Department and its supporters on Capitol Hill to warn that some of the aid may contradict broader U.S. interests, such as promoting human rights.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Still looking for someone to blame for Donald Trump? Look no further than the right-wing media bubble.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

A Republican Meltdown Won't Make the Democrats Better

Blackwater's Founder Erik Prince Is Under Federal Investigation

Bernie (On Kimmel!) Is Fated to Defeat Hillary - Fair and Square (Rahmbo and Deb Was Schtz Must Go NOW) Americans Should Not Underestimate the Importance of this Election (Forbes Yanks a Negative Article on JPMorgan While the Bank Pays for Content)

Yes, Bernie blew her away in Utah (imagine!) and Idaho, and we're hearing that the Dims who run Arizona did a number on their poor, trusting, foolish voters who were forced to wait up to five hours in line to vote in order to find out that their registrations had been changed to Independent, Libertarian and Republican(!). And, thus, they were excluded from being able to vote in the Democratic primary.

What a world.

But hardly unbelievable.

CBS Poll:  Trump and Clinton Have Historic Unfavorable Ratings Among Voters

Even Paul Ryan has figured this out.

And that's saying somethin'.


As a matter of party integrity, Rahm and Debbie have to go.

. . . if Secretary Clinton really wants us to believe she’s no creature of the corporate and Wall Street money machine — despite more than $44 million in contributions from the financial industry since 2000 and her $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, not to mention several million more paid by other business interests for an hour or two of her time — she should pick up the gauntlet herself and publicly call for the departure of these two, although they are among her nearest and dearest. And we don’t mean Bill and Chelsea.

No, she should come right out and ask for the resignations of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Democratic National Committee Chair — and Florida congresswoman — Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In one masterstroke, she could separate herself from two of the most prominent of all corporate Democratic elitists.

Each is a Clinton disciple and devotee, each has profited mightily from the association and each represents all that is wrong with a Democratic Party that in the pursuit of money from rich donors and powerful corporations has abandoned those it once so proudly represented — working men and women.

Rahm Emanuel first came to prominence as head of the finance committee for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, browbeating ever-increasing amounts of money out of fat cat donors, and following Clinton into the White House as a senior adviser attuned to the wishes and profits of organized wealth. Few pushed harder for NAFTA, a treaty that would cost a million or more working people their livelihood, or for the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” crime bill which Clinton later admitted was a mistake. After alienating most of Washington with his arrogance and bluster Emanuel left in 1998 and went into investment banking in Chicago, making more than $16 million in less than three years.

He came back to Washington as a three-term Illinois congressman, chaired the fundraising Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (calling on his Wall Street sources to get in on the gravy by electing so-called New Democrats over New Deal Democrats), and soon was back in the White House as Barack Obama’s chief of staff. There, he infamously told a strategy meeting of liberal groups and administration types that the liberals were “retarded” for planning to run attack ads against conservative Democrats resisting Obamacare. Classy. Writer Jane Hamsher described him as tough guy wannabe but really “a brown nose for power ready to rumble on behalf of the status quo.”

And now he’s mayor of Chicago, reelected last April for a second term, but, as historian Rick Pearlstein wrote in The New Yorker a couple of months ago, “Chicagoans — and Democrats nationally — are suffering buyer’s remorse.”

Remember that shocking dashcam video of a black 17-year-old named Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by a Chicago policeman while he was walking away? Of course you do; who can forget it? Remember, too, that for 400 days the police kept the existence of the video secret and did nothing about the shooting. Meanwhile, the City of Chicago paid five million dollars to McDonald’s family, who at that point had not filed a lawsuit. But despite the large sum of money coughed up by his own administration, Emanuel claims he never saw the video. If that’s true, he was guilty of dreadful mismanagement; if he did know, he’s guilty of far worse.

Only after his re-election was the cover-up of the murder revealed. In Pearlstein’s words, “Given that he surely would not have been reelected had any of this come out before the balloting, a recent poll showed that only 17 percent of Chicagoans believe him. And a majority of Chicagoans now think he should resign.”

The Laquan McDonald murder is just one of the scandals on Emanuel’s watch:  crime and abuse by police run rampant, the city’s public schools are a disaster, the transit system’s a mess. Yet while Emanuel has devoted little of his schedule to meeting with community leaders, Pearlstein reminds us that he did, however, “spend enormous blocks of time with the rich businessmen, including Republicans, who had showered him with cash…” Now many of them have deserted him, including one of his richest Republican — yes, Republican — contributors, multimillionaire Bruce Rauner, who became governor of Illinois.

Emanuel should go — and Hillary Clinton should say so. But while Senator Bernie Sanders, campaigning during the Illinois primary, said he would not seek and would not accept the mayor’s endorsement, with Secretary Clinton it’s business as usual. Emanuel has held fundraisers for her campaign since 2014 so chances are she’ll stay mum, take the money and run.

As for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she embodies the tactics that have eroded the ability of Democrats to once again be the party of the working class. As Democratic National Committee chair she has opened the floodgates for Big Money, brought lobbyists into the inner circle and oiled all the moving parts of the revolving door that twirls between government service and cushy jobs in the world of corporate influence.

She has played games with the party’s voter database, been accused of restricting the number of Democratic candidate debates and scheduling them at odd days and times to favor Hillary Clinton, and recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper that super delegates — strongly establishment and pro-Clinton — are necessary at the party’s convention so deserving incumbent officials and party leaders don’t have to run for delegate slots “against grassroots activists.” Let that sink in, but hold your nose against the aroma of entitlement.

But here’s just about the worst of it. Rep. Wasserman Schultz — the people’s representative, right? — has aligned herself with corporate interests out to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s effort to create national standards for the payday-lending industry, a business that in particular targets the poor. Payday loans, as Yuka Hayashi writes at "The Wall Street Journal," “are quick credits of a few hundred dollars, with effective annual interest rates ranging between 300% and 500%.

Loans are due in a lump sum on the borrower’s next payday, a structure that often sends people into cycles of debt by forcing them to take out new loans to repay the old ones.”

According to the nonpartisan Americans for Financial Reform, this tail-chasing cycle of “turned” loans to pay off previous loans makes up about 76 percent of the payday loan business. The Pew Charitable Trust found that in Wasserman Schultz’s home state, the average payday loan customer takes out nine such loans a year, which usually has them mired in debt for about half a year.

No wonder radio host and financial guru Dave Ramsey describes the payday loan business, which loans $38.5 billion a year, as “scum-sucking, bottom-feeding predatory people who have no moral restraint.” The very people, it must be acknowledged, who now have an ally in the chair of the Democratic National Committee, who has so engineered the rules of the current Democratic primary process so as to virtually assure her unlimited access to a Clinton White House where she can walk in freely to press the case for her, ahem, “scum-sucking, bottom-feeding predatory” donors and pals.

So imagine now the Democratic National Convention this July. Presiding over it will be, yes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, tribune for a party of incumbency, money and crony capitalism. Follow her as she makes the rounds of private parties where zillionaire donors, lobbyists and consultants transact the real business of politics.

Watch as she and Hizzoner Rahm Emanuel of Chicago greet and embrace. Then imagine those thousands of young people outside the convention hall who have arrived from long months of campaigning earnestly for reform of the party they see as an instrument of their future, as well as members of Black Lives Matter and other people of color for whom Rahm Emanuel is the incarnation of deceit and oppression.

This is why Emanuel and Wasserman Schultz must go.

To millions, they are enablers of the one percent, perpetuators of the Washington mentality that the rest of the country has grown to hate. What a message such servants of plutocracy send:  Democrats — a bridge to the past.

"Forbes" Yanks a Negative Article on JPMorgan While the Bank Pays for Content

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
March 21, 2016

Americans have painful recollections of how allowing ratings agencies to take Wall Street money and dole out bogus triple-A ratings on subprime mortgages tanked the U.S. housing market in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. They fully understand that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates to pay-to-play corporate financing of elections has grotesquely disfigured participatory democracy in America. Now they’re about to learn how America’s “free press” is able to be bought – literally.

This past Friday, March 18, Laurence Kotlikoff, a "Forbes" contributor, Professor of Economics at Boston University and bestselling co-author of Get What’s Yours:  The Secrets To Maxing Out Your Social Security, tweeted the headline of an article he had just posted at "Forbes:"  “JPMorgan Chase – The True Story of America’s Most Corrupt Bank.” The Tweet linked to a two-page article by Kotlikoff at "Forbes," which began with these two paragraphs:

“Between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, we’ve heard a lot about the corruption on Wall Street. But, if you want to understand exactly what happened and why, read JPMadoff:  The Unholy Alliance Between America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook.

“Written by trial lawyers, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, this heavily-researched, meticulously documented book lays out for the world to see the absolute corruption of JPMorgan Chase – America’s biggest bank. And the authors explain how Obama has furthered Wall Street crime by refusing to enforce America’s criminal laws against America’s biggest criminals – not Madoff, but JPMorgan Chase.”

By Friday evening, all that one got at the link to Kotlikoff’s article was a "Forbes"’ error message saying the page couldn’t be found. By this morning, even a partial Google cache of the article is giving the reader just a second or so to see the headline, then disappearing into thin air.

We emailed Mia Carbonell, Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Communications for "Forbes," asking if anyone connected to JPMorgan Chase had requested that the article to be removed. Carbonell responded:

“"Forbes" was not contacted by anyone at or on behalf of JPMorgan. An updated version of contributor Laurence Kotlikoff’s post will be available on Forbes.com this week.”

If you haven’t been closely following the criminal charges against JPMorgan Chase, you might think that the "Forbes"’ lawyers had every right to yank the story out of fear of a libel lawsuit. Unfortunately, for both America and the banks’ shareholders, JPMorgan Chase has the odious distinction of being both America’s largest bank and the only standing U.S. mega bank to have three felony counts against it by the U.S. Justice Department. Two felony counts in 2014 were in connection with its role in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Those felonies received a deferred prosecution agreement.

At the time of the Madoff-related charges, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos said:  “J.P. Morgan failed to carry out its legal obligations while Bernard Madoff built his massive house of cards. Today, J.P. Morgan finds itself criminally charged as a consequence. But it took until after the arrest of Madoff, one of the worst crooks this office has ever seen, for J.P. Morgan to alert authorities to what the world already knew.”

Less than a year and a half later, JPMorgan Chase had another felony charge against it for its role in rigging foreign currency markets, along with other banks. No executive at JPMorgan has gone to jail for any of its crimes.

But in addition to the felony counts, JPMorgan Chase has been on a non-stop spree of abusing its customers and paying fines tallying up to more than $35 billion in just the past four years. Inconveniently for JPMorgan Chase, the trial lawyers who wrote the seminal work on its history of crime, have appended a “Wheel of Misfortune” to their website, listing in excruciating detail the timeline and nature of the abuses and fines and settlements paid. It truly takes one’s breath away that throughout this crime spree, the Board of Directors of this bank has left the same Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, at the helm. One can only surmise from this that Senator Bernie Sanders’ view that the “business model of Wall Street is fraud” is an accurate statement. Why else would Dimon still be at the helm of this bank?

If "Forbes" doesn’t have to worry about a libel lawsuit, what else might be behind its rapid yanking of the article? As it turns out, "Forbes" sells, for hefty fees, the ability for corporations to write their own articles and post them as news articles on the "Forbes" web site. JPMorgan Chase is engaged in such a program with "Forbes." Instead of stating that the content is paid advertising, the content carries the nebulous appendage of “BrandVoice.”

Media blogger Phil Fersht had this to say about the "Forbes" BrandVoice model in 2013:

“To be honest, this whole debacle leaves me depressed and speechless. While less credible or renowned brands (or some lower tier analysts) might be pressured to take vendor handouts for rose-tinted articles, you expect more from a world famous brand like "Forbes." It’s almost as if the vendors want to cut corners these days and simply buy opinion – and even write it themselves, and some of these media platforms are (apparently) giving up the ghost on quality reporting and journalism. This is a slippery slope, and one you struggle to see bottoming out anytime soon.”

"Forbes" even Tweets about the paid content (see below) and has a special Facebook page set up for additional promotion. The "Forbes" web site carries a quote from an executive of another BrandVoice participant, Ian Dix, Vice President Business Marketing for CenturyLink, who states:  “Between the amplification of our content and the "Forbes" seal of approval, we are extremely excited to be a part of this industry-leading content syndication program.”

For integrated packages, the costs can run to over $1 million. Other content-posting packages can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As proof that once a magazine heads down this slippery slope there’s no turning back, last February "Forbes" was called out by Molly Soat of "Marketing News Weekly" for placing a Fidelity Investments ad on the front cover of its February 2015 print edition with only the notation, “FidelityVoice.” Soat wrote:

“Cover ads have been done before, of course, but this ad caught the marketplace’s attention because it was designed to look like a regular ‘cover line’ (a reference to editorial content inside the magazine) and because the content carried a nebulous label, rather than a clearly defined ‘sponsored content’ tag. According to the American Society of Magazine Editors’ editorial guidelines, rule No. 1 is that no ads should appear on the actual cover of a magazine, although foldouts and false covers have been used as advertising space for years, and some publishers have experimented with running small ads printed on magazines’ covers, themselves.”

Just the month before, in January 2015, Mike Shields of the "Wall Street Journal" had explored the deal that "Forbes" had with AT&T, selling it a cover directly inside the main cover of the print edition of the "Forbes Magazine." Shields wrote:

“In this case, AT&T is looking to drive readers to its own marketing site, AT&T Business Circle, which provides tips and advice for small business owners. Thus, as part of an elaborate sponsorship, the Jan. 5th issue of "Forbes" will not only feature the second cover just a page after the editorial cover, but also an ad for AT&T Business Circle just inside the front cover, as well as a full brand-commissioned article that will run within "Forbes"’ ‘30 Under 30’ feature … This year, AT&T’s BrandVoice cover ad package includes both online and print sponsored content, as well as a similar event sponsorship later in the year; the entire deal’s value is well north of seven figures, said a person familiar with the matter.”

All of this had a depraved but familiar ring to us at "Wall Street On Parade." As we wrote last year:

“In the late 1990s, Salomon Smith Barney’s telecom analyst, Jack Grubman, was viewed by his powerful firm as a ‘disruptor.’ He was throwing out the old rules on how a telecom analyst should interact with a company on which he was delivering research to the public and creating a new, innovative model. Instead of following the old rules and remaining pristinely independent and objective, Grubman was sitting in on board meetings at WorldCom, giving investment advice to its executives, while simultaneously issuing laudatory research to induce the investing public to buy the stock.

“When "Business Week" questioned Grubman on this new analyst model on May 14, 2000, here’s how the disruptor explained his redesign of his job:

‘What used to be a conflict is now a synergy … Someone like me who is banking-intensive would have been looked at disdainfully by the buy side 15 years ago. Now they know that I’m in the flow of what’s going on. That helps me help them think about the industry…Objective? The other word for it is uninformed.’

“Grubman was seen by himself and his firm as a disruptor not because his model made any sense, but because it was bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars in deals for Salomon Smith Barney. Grubman, in turn, got his piece of the action.

According to the SEC, between 1999 and 2002, Grubman’s compensation exceeded $67.5 million. Grubman was, in fact, a corruptor not a disruptor. Many of the companies he recommended went bust. The SEC barred him from the industry for life and fined him $15 million for issuing fraudulent research.”

One final question comes to mind. Does one depravity lead to the next in corporate America? Is the whoring of Wall Street the inevitable driver of whoring everything else it touches – from politics, to ratings agencies, to foreign cartel activity and, finally, a “free press”?

"Forbes" Tweets Its Advertiser-Supplied News Content

Why We Support Bernie Sanders Over Hillary Clinton for President

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
March 22, 2016

"Wall Street On Parade"’s strong preference for a President Bernie Sanders over a President Hillary Clinton is based on a well-formed belief that the United States will experience another financial crisis on Wall Street within the next few years. That crisis will, in hindsight, be viewed as the direct failure of President Obama to enact meaningful financial reform legislation after the 2008 crash, when he had the will of the people behind him, rather than pandering to his overlords on Wall Street who financed his campaign.

Nothing more clearly demonstrates who has been calling the shots in the Obama administration than the President’s nominees to oversee Wall Street at the U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Treasury Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, and his outrageous refusal for more than five years to even follow his own Dodd-Frank financial reform law and appoint a Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Federal Reserve.

In the early days of his first term, Obama nominated Eric Holder to serve as U.S. Attorney General at the Justice Department and Lanny Breuer to head its Criminal Division. Both Holder and Breuer came from the law firm, Covington & Burling, which had deep ties to Wall Street. Both Holder and Breuer returned to their high-paying jobs as partners at Covington & Burling after failing to prosecute as much as one Wall Street executive of the mega banks that caused the crash. In a January 22, 2013 Frontline expose at PBS, producer Martin Smith revealed the following:

Martin Smith: We spoke to a couple of sources from within the Criminal Division, and they reported that when it came to Wall Street, there were no investigations going on. There were no subpoenas, no document reviews, no wiretaps.

Lanny Breuer: Well, I don’t know who you spoke with because we have looked hard at the very types of matters that you’re talking about.

Martin Smith: These sources said that at the weekly indictment approval meetings that there was no case ever mentioned that was even close to indicting Wall Street for financial crimes.

Dodd-Frank created the Financial Stability Oversight Council to provide ongoing monitoring of the U.S. financial system and placed the U.S. Treasury Secretary as its Chair. For his nominee for Treasury Secretary, Obama picked Jack Lew, a man who had worked for the serially malfeasant Citigroup in the very division which had collapsed the bank, leading to the greatest taxpayer bailout of a banking institution in the history of finance. (Lew served as Chief Operating Officer of the division that the SEC charged with hiding $39 billion of subprime debt off its balance sheet in Structured Investment Vehicles.) Citigroup received a taxpayer bailout of over $45 billion in equity infusions; over $300 billion in asset guarantees; and more than $2 trillion in secret, cumulative, below-market-rate loans from the Federal Reserve.

Out of the taxpayer bailout funds that went to a clearly insolvent bank, Jack Lew, as a departing gift from Citigroup, received a bonus (yes, a bonus) of $940,000. Adding to the depravity, during the Senate confirmation hearing for Lew, it was revealed that Citigroup had embedded a criteria in Lew’s employment agreement for him getting that big bonus upon his exit from Citigroup. It would be conditioned upon “your acceptance of a full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.” In other words, Citigroup needed to add another regulator’s name to its gold-plated Rolodex in Washington.

Lew’s explanation in the Senate confirmation hearing for why he accepted the bonus from a bank being propped up by the taxpayer sounds a lot like Hillary’s explanation for why she took obscene amounts of money from Goldman Sachs for three speeches. Lew stated:  “I do believe it was comparable to compensation for people in positions like mine in the industry.” (Yes, insolvent firms like AIG were also handing out obscene bonuses, so in Lew’s warped view, that makes it okay.) When asked by CNN host Anderson Cooper during a Democratic Forum on February 3 why she took $675,000 from Goldman Sachs for three speeches, Hillary Clinton said:  “Well I don’t know, that’s what they offered.” (See video below.)

Senator Bernie Sanders was one of only a handful of Senators with the courage to speak out against the Lew nomination and vote against it. In Senate floor remarks, Sanders said this:

“We need a secretary of the Treasury who does not come from Wall Street, but is prepared to stand up to the enormous power of Wall Street. We need a Treasury secretary who will end the current Wall Street business model of operating the largest gambling casino the world has ever seen and demand that Wall Street start investing in the job creating productive economy. Do I believe that Jack Lew is that person? No, I do not … As someone who supports President Obama, I remain extremely concerned that virtually all of his key economic advisers have come from Wall Street.”

Cleaning up the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had allowed all of the corruption to grow unchecked leading up to the crash, should have been Obama’s first order of business. What did he do instead? He nominated a fatally conflicted lawyer, Mary Jo White, who came from one of Wall Street’s go-to law firms, Debevoise & Plimpton, to be SEC Chair. White’s husband, John W. White, works for Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, another law firm heavy into Wall Street work. Under Federal rules, the conflicts of the spouse become those of the SEC chair, gutting the SEC Chair’s ability to effectively serve.

Mary Jo White’s abysmal performance as SEC Chair prompted Senator Elizabeth Warren to send her a 13-page letter last June, highlighting her string of failures.

Obama has personally caused a significant amount of the Republican backlash by ignoring his own Dodd-Frank law for a solid five years in refusing to nominate a Vice Chair for Supervision to take the reins of overseeing Wall Street at the Federal Reserve. Even when Democrats controlled the Senate through 2014 and his nominee would have likely sailed through confirmation, Obama failed to act. Just this month, on March 15, Senator Richard Shelby, Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, explained why he is holding up Obama’s two nominations to the Federal Reserve Board, stating:

“As I’ve said before, I will not hold a hearing on the two nominations for the Board of Governors until the President fulfills his duty under the law and nominates a Vice Chairman for Supervision. Section 1108 of the Dodd-Frank Act amends the Federal Reserve Act to establish this position – one of two Vice Chairmen which is responsible for overseeing the Fed’s supervisory and regulatory activities.

“I’d remind you this is no small role, given the Fed’s unprecedented authority over our financial system granted in Dodd-Frank. Leaving the position vacant also deprives Congress of an important oversight tool as the Vice Chairman for Supervision is statutorily required to testify before this Committee twice a year. I believe this position should have been filled long ago. It’s now been almost six years since the enactment of Dodd-Frank. The President should obey the law and hold the Federal Reserve accountable for its actions.”

Hillary is effectively promising a third Obama term. We should take her at her word. The campaign war chest she has reaped from Wall Street and its law firms and hedge funds, together with her millions of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street mega banks, means you can expect more of the same caliber of appointments to the key Wall Street regulatory posts. And when the next Wall Street crisis arrives, you can count on those regulators putting a gun to the head of the American taxpayer to bail out Wall Street while further sacking a beleaguered Main Street.

Americans should not underestimate what’s at stake in this election.

Lying Paul Ryan Pushed on US by Whom? (He's Their Last Best Hope?) And How Much of a Fool Do the TPP'ers Think We Are? (Obama Assurances Worthless)

I have a huuuge crush on Steven Aftergood.

What a great name.

Now here's a national hero on whom you couldn't do much better to model your behavior.

(Click on his name link for more information.)

Secrecy News

DNI Representatives Form a Global Network

Posted on Mar.22, 2016 in Intelligence

by Steven Aftergood

“DNI Representatives serve as the principal advisors to their assigned organizations for IC matters, as a conduit between the DNI and their assigned organizations, and as the DNI’s personal representatives to a variety of U.S. and foreign partners and international organizations,” according to a declassified December 2009 Intelligence Community Directive that was made public last week. See DNI Representatives, ICD 402, 23 December 2009, amended 06 September 2012.

If I have to listen to one more Obama encomium about Lying Paul Ryan's* immense humanity, he who famously is just awaiting "his" turn to disappear the rest of the U.S. social safety net - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and VA benefits - I will be wretching forever.

Thank whoever that our woman at Sardonicky is on the job:

"New York Times" columnist Paul Krugman, apparently feeling confident enough in a Hillary coronation to cease and desist from his serial rabid Bernie-bashing, is regressing back to his own true area of expertise:  bashing the Republican Party in general, and Paul Ryan in particular. Like just about everybody in the liberal class, Krugman whines that the GOP, in all its "invincible ignorance," is disowning its own responsibility for the rise of Donald Trump:

Like just about everyone in the Republican establishment, Mr. Ryan is in denial about the roots of Trumpism, about the extent to which the party deliberately cultivated anger and racial backlash, only to lose control of the monster it created. But what I found especially striking were his comments on tax policy. I know, boring — but indulge me here. There’s a larger moral.

You might think that Republican thought leaders would be engaged in some soul-searching about their party’s obsession with cutting taxes on the wealthy. Why do candidates who inveigh against the evils of budget deficits and federal debt feel obliged to propose huge high-end tax cuts — much bigger than those of George W. Bush - that would eliminate trillions in revenue?

As is his wont, Krugman glosses right over Democratic complicity (Third Way free-market Clintonism) in the rise of Trump. My published response:

 Since the official embrace of ignorance has been a mainstay of right-wingery for more than 200 years, the GOP is simply following a grand old tradition. Their beef with Trump is that he wears his ignorance on his sleeve.

Lyin' Ryan and his cohort, meanwhile, couldn't survive without the complicity of the other big business party. Just last week*, President Obama praised him for being a good husband, father and a patriot. He doesn't often agree with him, of course, but he has no reason to doubt Ryan's sincere concern for "folks."

Obama (and the entire Establishment, it seems) are, however, chiding the young agitators who are disrupting Trump's fascist rallies. What really scares them is bottom-up democracy, citizens who aren't just consumers, and the inclusive message of Bernie Sanders.

 They would prefer to work with nice family men like Ryan to quietly "trim" or "reform" social programs, while pouring trillions of dollars into permanent war and the surveillance state. Every extra crumb for the needy is offset by a reward for the rich. The slow destruction of the safety net and the funneling of all the wealth to the top 1% must be conducted calmly and efficiently.

Their Exceptional America is for the exceptional top 1%. They, who are so devoted to family: their own. They are true patriots, whose love for the corporate state trumps everything: particularly the "folks" they claim to represent.

Hear the duopoly roar: politely, seriously, invincibly.

*Obama's complete "both sides do it"  remarks at a St. Patrick's Day luncheon can be found here. The salient excerpts, in which he fawned over Ryan and scolded political protesters for being rude to The Donald, implicitly including the Black Lives Matter activists, are here:

And so I know that I’m not the only one in this room who may be more than a little dismayed about what’s happening on the campaign trail lately.  We have heard vulgar and divisive rhetoric aimed at women and minorities -- at Americans who don’t look like “us,” or pray like “us,” or vote like we do.  We’ve seen misguided attempts to shut down that speech, however offensive it may be.  We live in a country where free speech is one of the most important rights that we hold.

(Except when militarized police forces get together and use batons and pepper spray to squelch free speech at Occupy camps and at anti-war and anti-corporate "free trade"  protests. It is "misguided" for protesters to shut down roads that lead to a demagogue whose whole raison d'etre is to incite riots.)

In response to those attempts, we’ve seen actual violence, and we’ve heard silence from too many of our leaders.  Speaker Ryan, I appreciated the words on this topic that you shared with us this morning.  But too often we’ve accepted this as somehow the new normal.

(No word about the physical courage of people who are willing to get beaten up for their protests against racism and xenophobia. Aren't their protests also free speech? Probably what Obama really fears is the whole corrupt duopoly collapsing in upon itself, and of course, protests at Hillary Clinton's rallies. Better be quiet little consumer-citizens and wait for the Adult President to tell Trump jokes to lighten things up a bit.)

And it’s worth asking ourselves what each of us may have done to contribute to this kind of vicious atmosphere in our politics.  I suspect that all of us can recall some intemperate words that we regret.  Certainly, I can.  And while some may be more to blame than others for the current climate, all of us are responsible for reversing it.  For it is a cycle that is not an accurate reflection of America.  And it has to stop.  And I say that not because it’s a matter of “political correctness,” it’s about the way that corrosive behavior can undermine our democracy, and our society, and even our economy.... 

(This is from the guy who until quite recently openly embraced Grand Bargain austerity and the Sequester, is still covering up portions of the CIA torture report, still shielding war criminals, shielding Wall Street criminals, waging wars both openly and secretly, killing thousands of civilians in drone strikes, and orchestrating coups in Honduras, Ukraine and other democratic countries. Violence is, and always has been, an accurate reflection of America. And yet Obama is singling out protesters at Trump's political rallies and glossing over the de facto social policy violence of Paul Ryan.) 

And this is also about the American brand.  Who are we?  How are we perceived around the world?  There’s a reason that America has always attracted the greatest talent from every corner of the globe.  There’s a reason that “Made in America” means something. It’s because we’re creative, and dynamic, and diverse, and inclusive, and open.  Why would we want to see that brand tarnished?  The world pays attention to what we say and what we do....

(America is pure propaganda, an advertising brand, a low-wage talent magnet, a maudlin appeal to patriotism in order to quell anger and dissent. Not much is actually made in America any more, thanks to NAFTA, the WTO inclusion of China into the Walton family oligarchy, and other "trade" deals. Obama seems more concerned about his reputation and legacy and public relations than about the reality that the whole world has been noticing for quite some time now.)

So when we leave this lunch, I think we have a choice.  We can condone this race to the bottom, or accept it as the way things are and sink further.   Or we can roundly reject this kind of behavior, whether we see it in the other party, or more importantly, when we see it in our own party, and set a better example for our children and the rest of the country to follow.  It starts with us.

(And if the duopoly has anything to say about it, the horrible example they set will be kept largely confined to opulent rooms behind closed doors. After all, this administration is credited with being the most secretive in memory. If only the angry citizens would just shut up, the kids won't look around and discover that one out of every 30 of them is homeless for the sole reason that the elite political class has never seen fit to implement a humane, affordable housing policy in this country.)

Speaker Ryan, you and I don’t agree on a lot of policy.  But I know you are a great father and a great husband, and I know you want what’s best for America.  And we may fiercely disagree on policy -- and the NFC North -- (laughter) -- but I don’t have a bad word to say about you as a man.  And I would never insult my fellow Irish like that....

 That’s what carried us through other times that were far more tough and far more dangerous than the one that we're in today -– times where we were told to fear the future; times where we were told to turn inward and to turn against each other.  And each time, we overcame those fears.  Each time, we faced the future with confidence in who we are and what we stand for, and the incredible things that we’re capable of together.

The corrupt duopoly is capable of so much more. Capitalism is awesomely incredible. The only thing the elites have to fear is Bernie Sanders-style Democratic Socialism.

"Lying Ryan" Krugman dissection from "The New York Times": (don't click on the link)

Remember Paul Ryan? The speaker of the House used to be a media darling, lionized as the epitome of the Serious, Honest Conservative — never mind those of us who actually looked at the numbers in his budgets and concluded that he was a con man. These days, of course, he is overshadowed by the looming Trumpocalypse.

But while Donald Trump could win the White House — or lose so badly that even our rotten-borough system of congressional districts, which heavily favors the G.O.P., delivers the House to the Democrats — the odds are that come January, Hillary Clinton will be president, and Mr. Ryan still speaker. So I was interested to read what Mr. Ryan said in a recent interview with John Harwood. What has he learned from recent events?

And the answer is, nothing.

Like just about everyone in the Republican establishment, Mr. Ryan is in denial about the roots of Trumpism, about the extent to which the party deliberately cultivated anger and racial backlash, only to lose control of the monster it created. But what I found especially striking were his comments on tax policy. I know, boring — but indulge me here. There’s a larger moral.

You might think that Republican thought leaders would be engaged in some soul-searching about their party’s obsession with cutting taxes on the wealthy. Why do candidates who inveigh against the evils of budget deficits and federal debt feel obliged to propose huge high-end tax cuts — much bigger than those of George W. Bush — that would eliminate trillions in revenue?

And economics aside, why such a commitment to a policy that has never had much support even from the party’s own base, and appears even more politically suspect in the face of a populist uprising?

But here’s what Mr. Ryan said about all those tax cuts for the top 1 percent: “I do not like the idea of buying into these distributional tables. What you’re talking about is what we call static distribution. It’s a ridiculous notion.”

Aha. The income mobility zombie strikes again.

Ever since income inequality began its sharp rise in the 1980s, one favorite conservative excuse has been that it doesn’t mean anything, because economic positions change all the time. People who are rich this year might not be rich next year, so the gap between the rich and the rest doesn’t matter, right?

Well, it’s true that people move up and down the economic ladder, and apologists for inequality love to cite statistics showing that many people who are in the top 1 percent in any given year are out of that category the next year.

But a closer look at the data shows that there is less to this observation than it seems. These days, it takes an income of around $400,000 a year to put you in the top 1 percent, and most of the fluctuation in incomes we see involves people going from, say, $350,000 to $450,000 or vice versa.

As one comprehensive survey put it, “The majority of economic mobility occurs over fairly small spans of the distribution.” Average incomes over multiple years are almost as unequally distributed as incomes in any given year, which means that tax cuts that mainly benefit the rich are indeed targeted at a small group of people, not the public at large.

And here’s the thing:  This isn’t a new observation. As it happens, I personally took on the very same argument Mr. Ryan is making — and showed that it was wrong — almost 25 years ago. Yet the man widely considered the G.O.P.’s intellectual leader is still making the same old claims.

O.K., maybe I’m just indulging a pet peeve by focusing on this particular subject. Yet the persistence of the income mobility zombie, like the tax-cuts-mean-growth zombie (which should have been killed, once and for all, by the debacles in Kansas and Louisiana), is part of a pattern.

Appalled Republicans may rail against Donald Trump’s arrogant ignorance. But how different, really, are the party’s mainstream leaders? Their blinkered view of the world has the veneer of respectability, may go along with an appearance of thoughtfulness, but in reality it’s just as impervious to evidence — maybe even more so, because it has the power of groupthink behind it.

This is why you shouldn’t grieve over Marco Rubio’s epic political failure. Had Mr. Rubio succeeded, he would simply have encouraged his party to believe that all it needs is a cosmetic makeover — a fresher, younger face to sell the same old defunct orthodoxy. Oh, and a last-minute turn to someone like John Kasich would, in its own way, have similar implications.

What we’re getting instead is at least the possibility of a cleansing shock — of a period in the political wilderness that will finally force the Republican establishment to rethink its premises. That’s a good thing — or it would be, if it didn’t also come with the risk of President Trump.

Not a Fish Tale: Humans Are Ingesting Plastic Thanks to Ocean Pollution

Dahr Jamail, Truthout: By 2050, the earth's oceans will have more plastic than fish by weight, according to a recent report by the World Economic Forum. Scientists warn that humanity's impact on the oceans may well have already pushed sea life over the brink.

 

Fools or Liars on the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

Dean Baker, Truthout: The TPP offers almost none of the classic benefits associated with free trade, since it does very little in terms of reducing trade barriers. The deal is about increasing corporate profits at the expense of the public in all of the countries that are party to the agreement.

Given the recent flood of op-eds and editorials on the wonders of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Obama administration must be about to present the deal to Congress for approval. Otherwise, it's hard to see why so many pieces would spontaneously appear on the TPP. Since there is real money at stake, we can expect the debate to get pretty low and nasty, with the pro-TPP forces liberally substituting ad hominems and claims to expertise for serious arguments.

But this is just the beginning of the fun when it comes to the TPP. The very pro-TPP Peter Peterson Institute for International Economics produced a study showing that the deal will add 0.5 percentage points to GDP when its effects are fully felt in 2030. While this projection is supposed to convince people of the huge benefits of the TPP, taken at face value it means we will be as rich on January 1, 2030 as we would otherwise be on March 15, 2030.

But even this limited projected gain is dubious. The model used to project this result explicitly assumes that the TPP cannot increase unemployment. If people are concerned that the TPP will lead to a further rise in the US trade deficit, which would cost jobs, the Peterson Institute model has nothing to tell them on the topic. It rules out this possibility by assumption.

The Peterson Institute has a long track record of pushing trade deals and dismissing concerns about trade deficits and unemployment. Back in 2000 it published a paper that dismissed as "extravagant" the concerns raised by Rob Scott, my former colleague at the Economic Policy Institute, that admitting China to the WTO will cost 817,000 jobs.

Scott ended up being far off the mark on this one. The actual job loss figure was probably close to three times his projection.

Of course the story with China was its decision to deliberately hold down the value of its currency, which allowed it to run massive trade surpluses with the United States and other countries. In spite of demands by members of Congress and numerous economists, including the Peterson Institute's former president Fred Bergsten, the TPP includes no provisions that will prevent currency management by the countries in the pact.

But the real story of the TPP is that it has little to do with trade. After all, we already have trade agreements with six of the other 11 participants in the deal. After NAFTA, there are not many trade barriers to remove with Canada and Mexico. 

The deal is about putting in place a pro-business regulatory structure. 

It was largely negotiated by business trade groups who crafted a deal to boost their profits.

The TPP will put into question every health, safety and environmental regulation that governments at any level seek to implement. 

The assurances from the Obama administration to the contrary on this front are absolutely worthless. 

The TPP sets up an extra-judicial system, not bound by precedent and not subject to appeal, which can impose large fines for any measure it chooses. 

Former President Obama will not be pulling money out of his personal bank account to compensate anyone if his assurances prove to be wrong.

But the most pernicious part of the deal is its extension of protectionism in the form of stronger and longer patent and copyright protection. This will raise the price of the protected products, most importantly prescription drugs.

While the public in the United States has been focusing on making drugs cheaper, our TPP negotiators were working to make them more expensive. 

High drug prices are a serious problem in the United States; they can prove deadly in poorer countries where large segments of the population can't afford to pay Pfizer tens of thousands of dollars for the drugs on which it holds patent monopolies. 

Incredibly, it doesn't seem the Peterson Institute folks included the impact of these protections in its modeling of the TPP.

The long and short is that the TPP offers almost none of the classic benefits associated with free trade, since it does very little in terms of reducing trade barriers. 
The deal is about increasing corporate profits at the expense of the public in all of the countries that are parties.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Drugs in the Drinking Water? Don't Ask and Officials Won't Tell

Martha Rosenberg, Organic Consumers Association: Thanks to the chemical, agricultural and pharmaceutical industries, and antiquated water systems, Americans are imbibing a witch's brew of drugs and chemicals often without realizing it. Drugs and chemicals in US drinking water are a huge, under-reported problem, which officials are barely addressing.

Drones, Drugs and Death

Esther Kersley, openDemocracy:  Unsurprisingly, remote warfare methods are having negative consequences in theaters across Latin America where the war on drugs is playing out. Remote warfare does not offer a new approach to the problem of illicit drug trafficking. Rather, it represents an unchanged strategy dressed up with new tactics.

Obama Visits Cuba, but Will US Ever End Embargo, Give Back Guantánamo?

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!:  President Obama has arrived in Cuba for a historic three-day visit, becoming the first sitting US president to visit the island in 88 years. Obama is scheduled to meet Cuban President Raúl Castro today at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana. Many issues remain unsolved.

Watch the Video and Read the Transcript

The Oilman Who Loved Dictators: How Texaco Supported Fascism

Adam Hochschild, TomDispatch:  Texaco Oil helped Francisco Franco win the Spanish Civil War, putting him in a position to aid the Nazis in the far larger war that followed. Three-quarters of a century later, climate change deniers are testimony to the enduring power of Big Oil.

How a For-Profit College Targeted the Homeless and Kids With Low Self-Esteem

Annie Waldman, ProPublica:  Corinthian Colleges was the country's second-largest chain of for-profit colleges before it collapsed into bankruptcy last year amid evidence of phony marketing and predatory loans. Newly released documents filed by California's attorney general as part of an ongoing lawsuit show firsthand Corinthian's predatory practices.

On the News With Thom Hartmann: Several Industries' Sole Purpose Is Exploiting the Poor, and More

In today's On the News segment: There are several billion-dollar industries whose sole purpose appears to be exploiting low-income families for profit; the Department of Labor sent the final rules for a new overtime pay protection to the Office of Management and Budget; the American Legislative Exchange Council is pushing hard to privatize our public schools; and more.

. . . If you don't lose your car, your bank account or your personal belongings to a pawn shop or pay day loan, you will probably still wind up with more debt, less money and a lower credit score. And, good luck finding your next job or apartment in that scenario. This is what people mean when they say that the system is rigged, and it's why we need Congress to fight for laws that put people ahead of corporate profits. Let's break this immoral cycle and un-rig the system by casting a vote in November.

Biofuel or Biofraud? The Vast Taxpayer Cost of Failed Cellulosic and Algal Biofuels

Almuth Ernsting, Independent Science News: Whether the goal is ethanol from cellulose or biodiesel from algae, results have so far ranged between very unpromising and truly dire. Billions of dollars in taxpayer money have been expended on ventures yielding no discernible public benefit or technical progress. Where the money went, and continues to go, is of ongoing interest.

The Political Economy of Argentina's Settlement With the Vulture Funds 

 

Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research: After 15 years of court battles, injunctions, smear campaigns, lobbying and other interventions, the vulture funds have finally won a tentative agreement with the new Argentine government. The chief vulture, US billionaire and major Republican campaign donor Paul Singer, will get an estimated 370 percent return.