Early 2016 News and Noteworthy

UPCOMING EVENTS:

People’s Convention on July 23
March for a Clean Energy Revolution on July 24

Also, check out our calendar which is always linked in the right side bar

From the week of July 10 to July 16, 2016

1. Higher minimum wage, increased earned income tax credit or a basic income guarantee — what are the pros and cons?
   • A False Choice: Earned Income Tax Credit or Minimum Wage Increase
   • Wonky and somewhat dated, but good discussion of impacts of minimum wage increases
   • And let’s not forget those who aren’t working who wouldn’t benefit from either of those policies.
     • Andy Stern: “Raising The Floor”
     • How Many Americans Live on Less Than $2 Per Day?
2. How to build a movement?
   • Rebecca Solnit: Occupy Your Victories
   • Les Leopold: Economic Elites Will Only Give Up Power and Wealth When Forced to Do So
     • Reposting Leopold’s Left Forum speech “How do we build a mass movement to end runaway inequality?”may want to skip 10-minute introduction
   • As Sanders Endorses Clinton, How Far Left Has He Pushed the Democratic Party Platform? And does it matter?
   • Bernie’s gone, but the left goes marching on
   • By Endorsing Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders May Have Positioned Himself to Win The Presidency
   • How Globalization Divides Us
3. We can end police violence in America
   • Mathbabe: End Broken Windows Policing
4. Reposting: Elizabeth Warren on why we must stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
5. Philly airport workers vote to strike during the DNC
6. The South China Sea: Explaining the Dispute
7. How technology disrupted the truth
8. Citibank and Venezuela – Perils of Centralized Monetary Systems
9. This Man Traveled The World For 18 Months Spending Only Bitcoin

From the week of July 3 to July 9, 2016

1. Neoliberal globalization and its discontents in one graph
   • “Who Makes Cents” podcast on neoliberalism
2. Banks and developers collude to eliminate affordable housing, throw out existing tenants
3. States, like NY, without payday loans are doing just fine without them
   • How Payday Lenders are Using Trojan Horse Tactics to Weaken Consumer Protections
4. How Do We Build a Mass Movement to End Runaway Inequality You may want to skip the 10:00 minute introduction
5. Michael Sandel: “The energy of the Brexiteers and Trump is born of the failure of elites”
6. Is it Time for a New Deal Federal Jobs Program?
7. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Hit With RICO Lawsuit For Flint Water Disaster
8. Jim Hightower: Banks Don’t Commit Crimes, Bankers Do
   • A few bankers are going to jail for manipulating LIBOR will it help?
9. Mexican Teachers Fight on Despite Repression
10. Economic Democracy: An Ethically Desirable Socialism That Is Economically Viable
11. 505, 509, 514, 518 people have been shot and killed by police in 2016 so far
12. Elizabeth Warren on why we must stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
    • We can stop the TPP — you can help
    • 19 of 27 House Members from NY State Oppose it: We need to pressure Cong. Rangel, Meeks, Rice, and Crowley to join them, oppose TPP.
13. Hillary Clinton’s email problems might be even worse than we thought
    • Hillary Clinton’s Emails and the Crisis of Legitimacy
14. The Iraq war, Tony Blair and the Chilcot report
15. Get in the Streets Right Away: Justice for Alton Sterling & Philando Castile
    • The Black Lives Matter Network advocates for dignity, justice, and respect
16. Within a Decade, Retail Banks will be Dead
17. Sen. Warren on America’s Monopoly Problem — and how wonderful competitive markets are.

From the week of June 26 to July 2, 2016

Quote of the week “Try to understand the people that you fear because there is an election coming up” Leo Carey on Slate Money podcast

1. More on Brexit
   • Mark Blyth against the EU (4 min video)
   • Neil Faulkner on Brexit and the crisis of the European Left
   • Philippe Legrain NYT Column Makes the Argument Against Economic Expertise in the U.K.
   • the First Three Tragedies of Brexit
   • Brexit campaigners won by dividing, not uniting, the British working class.
2. Did you know that the Koch Brothers think there is too much inequality?
   • They do: just listen to their incredibly hypocritical “non-partisan” policy agenda.
   • Following up on their slick pr campaign.
   • We need to confront this bull.
   • Here is Jon Stewart’s satirical response to the pr but we need to combat the policy efforts, too.
   • Koch Brothers Flout Law
3. Oklahoma approves article V convention on balanced budget amendment
   • More public policy brought to us by the Koch Brothers
4. What Can Go Wrong When Private Equity Takes Over a Public Service
5. Unfinished Business: What good and bad has been done since the last crisis and what’s left to be done
   • Banks: A Broken Social Contract.
6. Corporate Fraud Demands Criminal Time  But, as long as prosecutors get to profit from fines, don’t expect them to prosecute corporations or the 1%.
7. Obama and Sanders battle over TPP and the Democratic platform Where is Hilary? She says she opposes the TPP?
8. Supreme Court Vacates Ex-Virginia Governor’s Graft Conviction
9. Poll: Most Americans Believe the Economy is Rigged Against Them
   • and why we should worry about it.

From the week of June 19 to June 26, 2016

1. Is Putin crazy? Putin speaking on a panel moderated by Fareed Zakaria
   • Note: I couldn’t find a great link here are some choices:
     • Audio Only: Panel intro begins at 6:30
     • You tube clips of portions:
       • Part 1: New Cold War?
       • Part 2: U.S. Presidential Candidates
       • Part 3: Putin on Syria
       • Part 4: Putin on Olympic Doping
2. Net neutrality passes court test
3. Why Big Oil and Gas get access to public lands for $1.50/acre
4. World’s Biggest Banks Are Driving Climate Change, Pumping Billions Into Extreme Fossil Fuels
5. You’ve probably never heard of them but these firms are important. Top 5 global law firms: Allen & Overy, DLA Piper, White & Case, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, and Norton Rose Fulbright  Not in the top 5 and I’m too cheap to pay to see the top 20, but I suspect ex-AG’s Eric Holder’s Covington and Burling is there, too. I wonder where Mossack Fonseca ranks?
   • Sorry to see the whistle blower in the Panama Papers case may have been caught.
6. Elliot Crown (and Marni) get some attention.
7. The Dark History of Police Interrogation, and Its Radical Future
8. The Violence of Forgetting
9. Brexit would be the worst of all worlds
   • Prof. Neil Davidson presents the left argument for why Britain should leave the EU
   • UK allowed its populist right to rise. America should heed warning
   • Brexit impact…Global Council’s assessment
10. PREYING ON PUERTO RICO: The Forgotten Citizens of Hedge Fund Island
11. Opening India to Foreign Investors
12. Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action Program at University of Texas
    • Supreme Court Tie Blocks Obama Immigration Plan
    • Debate: The President has Usurped the Constitutional Power of Congress
13. The Democrats Are Boldly Fighting For a Bad, Stupid Bill and Congressional “Sit-in” is a hypocritical election year stunt
14. Universal basic income: The Case for Free Money

From the week of June 12 to June 18, 2016

• June 17-19 Live Stream: The People’s Summit
• Until June 18th: Human Rights Watch Film Festival
• Money and Society MOOC – starts again Aug 21st 2016!

0. Occupy the Farm  Trailer for video Heather mentioned in Sunday’s talk
1. Silicon Valley’s Audacious Plan to Create a New Stock Exchange
2. Is it a crime to be poor?
3. Wall Street reacts to Orlando massacre in typical manner. “How can I make a buck?” US gunmaker shares soar after Pulse nightclub massacre and Tool to divest from anything gun related.
4. Puerto Rico Left Voiceless: The “Colonial Control Board” (15min)
5. Our Neoliberal Nightmare: Clinton, Trump & Why the Wealthy Win Every Time
6. Mathbabe: The US DOE’s sunk costs into for-profit colleges
7. The blockchain could give a big boost to local economies
8. Making Sense of the Emerging Economy with Yochai Benkler
9. Lobbyist claimed the Constitution guarantees billions in subsidies for banks.
10. EU referendum: Poll shows huge swing towards Brexit with a week to go and some have Problems with referendums in general, especially the Brexit one
11. Goldman Sachs Just Ate Denmark For Breakfast

From the week of June 5 to June 11, 2016

1. Disclosure of how predatory for-profit colleges operate. In this case Trump University but surely they are not unique.
   • John Oliver on Trump University
2. John Oliver experienced the high of forgiving medical debt and Who’s Afraid of Occupy?
3. NYPD gains from fines paid by European banks  Apparently the DA’s office gets to allocate the money banks pay in fines. Is that right?
4. Paper on Blockchain by USPS, includes explanations and financial alternatives
5. Tech firms say FBI wants browsing history without warrant
6. Silicon Valley, Money, Trump…? Podcast (start at 43min)
7. New study shows rich, poor have huge mortality gap in U.S. Lifespan gap shown to be large and growing rapidly
8. Work Requirements Don’t Cut Poverty
9. Republican plan to dismantle Dodd-Frank. It may not be all bad
10. Violence and Corruption in a Prison Union Someone who deserves some prison time
11. How an obscure nonprofit in Washington protects tax havens for the rich

From the week of May 29 to June 4, 2016

1. Economic growth failing to deliver prosperity for many Africans, study says
2. Wall Street Eyes Dodd-Frank Changes
   • Note: Wall Street spent about $4 billion lobbying since 2009 and has gotten a good return on their money.
3. Guaranteed Income / No Strings Attached Money
   • Swiss to vote on guaranteed income of about $30,000 annually to all adults. And it attracts NO attention.
   • What If We Just Gave Poor People a Basic Income for Life?
   • GiveDirectly Send money directly to the extreme poor.
   • The Economic Lessons of Star Trek’s Money-Free Society
4. Revolving Door In Office Of U.S. Trade Representative, Part 1
5. Big Gains For Striking Verizon Workers In New Agreement
6. Austerity policies do more harm than good, IMF study concludes
7. UNSUNG, a matching platform for excess food and those who need it.
8. Identity crisis: What defines a bank today?

From the week of May 22 to May 28, 2016:

Panel at Left Forum was great. We are back at Columbia this Sunday at 3 pm.

1. Why we must stop the TPP — A corporate takeover.
   • Part 1: Lori Wallach, Public Citizen
   • Part 2: Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance
   • Government’s own report shows it not worth passing TPP
   • Thousands protest against Monsanto ahead of Bayer merger
   • Activism update: #NoLameDuck Uprising this November: Stop the TPP!
2. Hedge Funds with Schools Attached
3. How Big Pharma Uses Charity Programs to Cover for Drug Price Hikes
4. Facebook’s One-Way Mirror
   • Nationalize Facebook
5. The Verizon Strike Is Not Just About Wages. It Is About Power and Domination Over Workers
6. There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks.
   • Mathbabe’s comments on the study
7. Chicago Police Try to Predict Who May Shoot or Be Shot
   • Mathbabe, again: The Chicago Police use data mining techniques to determine who is in gangs. Then they arrest people on their lists, and finally they tout the accuracy of their list. I’d like to see a scientific audit of this system.
8. Green Party wins in Austria.
   • But fascists get 49.7% of vote. In the words of their leader, the Party’s work is “not lost, but an investment in the future”
9. Want to talk about gender in management?
10. The transformation and future of our two parties.
11. Lee Camp: This Is The Most Censored Topic On The Mainstream Media
12. Brazil: At long last, is it finally time to call it a coup?
13. Venezuela is collapsing and the military just got involved
14. This is How Corrupt U.S. The Political System Is – (6min – video)
15. Labor coalition works to reform Wall Street (reported under the headline:.Occupy Movement has grown up and looks to inflict real pain on the banks)
    • The demands:
      • End hedge fund tax break
      • Wall Street Transactions Tax
      • End “Too Big to Fail”
      • Close CEO pay loophole
      • Stop predatory lending / Public (postal?) option for fair consumer banking services
16. Can we declare Clarence Thomas incompetent and remove him from the court?
17. Appeals court reverses jury $1.3 Billion award against Bank of America .Court’s message to banks: It’s OK to commit fraud as long as you don’t document it carefully.
18. U.S. kills Taliban leader Mullah Mansour. What legal basis do they have for doing so? CNN seems to say he was killed because he was opposed to negotiating with us. Do they think this will make the Taliban more likely to negotiate?
19. Instead of bombing Vietnam, now we will sell them bombs.

From the week of May 15 to May 21, 2016:

1. The Sorry Legacy of the For-Profit College Boom
   • Online School Enriches Affiliated Companies if Not Its Students
2. Foreclosure Fraud Is Supposed to Be a Thing of the Past, But It Happens Every Day
3. Pay-for-Privacy Schemes Put the Most Vulnerable Americans at Risk
4. Top Economists at White House Explain How Mass Incarceration Hurts the Economy
5. Official US Govt. Study of Trans-Pacific Partnership Study Projects Worsening Trade Balances for 16 of 25 U.S. Economic Sectors, Overall U.S. Trade Deficit Increase

From the week of May 8 to May 14, 2016:

1. China’s financial system: China: The coming debt bust
2. Facebook in the news (and manipulating the news and taking over the news busienss)
   • Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
   • Want to Know What Facebook Really Thinks of Journalists? Here’s What Happened When It Hired Some.
   • Zuckerberg crowns himself King (and presumably his heirs too)
     • Not for the first time
   • News groups should beware the trade-off of Facebook tie-ups
3. Corporatization of the ‘public square’. how does this affect us?
   • See Facebook above. Not clear if Facebook is politically biased but they are surely biased toward things that profit themselves.
   • Google as a “quasi-regulator”
   • See also last month’s Apple v FBI as a mega-corporation deciding privacy policy
   • And try passing out flyers in a Walmart parking lot
   • Google and Facebook are our frenemy
   • Are charter schools fully public?
4. #AirbnbWhileBlack: How Hidden Bias Shapes The Sharing Economy
5. Trump is not the only rising autocrat
   • Rodrigo ‘The Punisher’ Duterte claims victory in Philippines election
   • A Polish Putin: Autocratic Power Grab Accelerates in Warsaw
   • At least Mugabe seems, finally, to be on his way out
6. Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff suspended, and will face impeachment trial
   • With Rousseff Out, Brazil’s Interim President Installs Conservative All-White, All-Male Cabinet
7. 40% of Detroit Will be Deprived of Life Sustaining Water: the UN Investigates Human Rights Violations
8. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Black LIves Matter and Black Liberation
9. Dark Money:
   • Dark Money: London’s Dirty Secret: Regulators (and bankers) turn a blind eye
     • This is news? 2004 FT: London’s Dirty Secret
   • U.S. The New Switzerland
   • Most-Corrupt nations back Cameron’s awkward graft fight
10. The Democrats just noticed that The Fed is too white and male #FedSoWhite?
11. Real Estate Shenanigans
    • What is Predatory Equity?
    • A.G. Schneiderman Announces 20 Felony Charges And Civil Suit Against Major New York City Landlord Steven Croman
    • Tenants Celebrate Indictment of Controversial Landlord Steve Croman — I hear that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is just as bad
12. House Republicans win Obamacare lawsuit — subject to appeals

From the week of May Day to May 7, 2016:

0. Let’s hear it for the underdogs: Leicester City Football Club Money doesn’t always prevail
1. Our latest blog post Globalization for the 99%
2. Global Money: Past, Present and Future (but, sorry, no blockchain or other alternatives, just dollars, euros, yuan, etc. The most notable line is: “Money is private and global, the backstop is public and local.” in other words, the U.S. is on the hook to backstop the entire developed monetary system, what will Congress going to do when it gets the bill?
3. Consumer Agency Moves to Assert Bank Customers’ Right to Sue More good work by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB)
4. Homesick, lonely, sleepless – and these are the lucky child refugees
5. Robots at Work: FT series this week
6. At Puerto Rico defaults, eyes turn to Washington
7. Fantastic critique of the Democratic Party and TPP: Thomas Frank On How The Democratic Party Lost Touch With The People

From the week of April 24 to April 30, 2016:

1. Trump and Clinton share Delaware tax ‘loophole’ address with 285,000 firms
2. #DumpDebbie
3. May Day demonstrations
4. Varoufakis: Financial crisae, capitalism turning on itself & optimism
5. Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky in conversation on Tues, April 26th, 2016 at the NY Public Library
6. IMF Warns About Chinese Debt
7. Exit Polls Again Do Not Match Reported Results in April 26th Dem Primaries
8. What is a participatory workplace?
9. John Oliver and Lin-Manuel Miranda explain why we should help Puerto Rico
10. TTIP: Chevron lobbied for controversial legal right as ‘environmental deterrent’ TTIP is the Atlantic equivalent to the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). Both can be used to undermine environmental and other regulations and impede action on climate change. It is not too late to stop them.
11. A Racist Way to Sell Homes The CFPB can stop it (70 years too late but late is better than never)

From the week of April 17 to April 23, 2016:

1. The circular economy A new relationship with our goods and materials would save resources and energy and create local jobs
   • Today’s the day for senate energy bill
2. Email Privacy Act Clears House Judiciary Committee usually, unanimous votes are a bad sign. This sounds like an improvement but the devil is in the details.
3. Genuine and false “sharing” economies
   • A model that deserves the name “sharing” Platform Cooperativism as an Alternative to the For-profit Sharing Economy
   • Mathbabe on Tom Slee’s What’s Yours Is Mine
   • Old but funny: Bill Maher on Gig Economy, which is a more accurate name for the “Sharing Economy: (you can skip first minute).
4. Ukraine Government to Trial Ethereum Blockchain-Based Election Platform
5. TTIP – The next “trade deal” is being negotiated in NY next week
   • Th U.S. Trade Representative wants to hear from you, sort of
     • Hearing was announced “publicly” in the Federal Register
   • Trade Agreements Can Undermine Financial Regulation,Unless we stop them
6. 272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown University. What Does It Owe Their Descendants? NOte: our host Columbia also has links to slavery
7. Verizon Strike
   • STAND UP TO VERIZON
   • Technology is helping Verizon ride out one of its biggest strikes ever
     • is it just me or do you also get Verizon ads all over this article?
8. Could a Radical Alliance of Black and Green Save the World?
9. Hey, Prof. Hannah Appel gave us a shout out — good to see her prospering
10. Can the Blockchain Be a Solution to the Panama Papers Revelations?
11. Crisis in Brazil
12. Democracy Spring
    • 1,240 arrested for movement against money in politics, with little media coverage
    • Lawmakers call for democracy hearings
13. The Spirit of Occupy Lives on in France’s Emerging Direct Democracy Movement
14. Elections
    • You May Hate Donald Trump. But Do You Want Facebook to Rig the Election Against Him?
    • How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election
    • Investigation into New York’s voting irregularities launched after botched presidential primary
    • Film: Hacking Democracy, Film 1hr 20min
15. Keep Harriet Tubman – and all women – off the $20 bill Harriet Tubman did not fight for capitalism, free trade or competitive markets.

From the week of April 11 to April 16, 2016:

Democracy Spring, April 2-16 Democracy Awakening, April 16-18

This week’s topics:

0. Hundreds Arrested at US Capitol During ‘Democracy Spring’ Campaign Finance Protests
   • Arrests Made As Elderly Americans Protest At 2nd ‘Democracy Spring’ Sit-In
   • Cable News Devotes 30 Seconds To Mass Arrests Protesting Political Corruption
1. The Rich Live Longer Everywhere. For the Poor, Geography Matters.
2. Is the Sharing Economy Truly Green?
3. The dark side of digital finance: On financial machines, financial robots & financial AI
4. Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) the FIX is in (story is here but behind a pay wall).
   • The Obama administration has agreed that TPP is not perfect, but they are working to fix it. The U.S. Treasury Secretary, who received a bonus from Citigroup, says it is not friendly enough to Wall Street. But, the U.S. Trade Representative, who received a bonus from Citigroup, too, is working on a “side letter” that would remove that flaw. All of this in an effort to buy enough votes to pass it in 2016. Big Agriculture is getting a “fix”, too.
   • FLUSH THE TPP
   • Bipartisan House coalition from N.Y. opposes Pacific trade deal
     • Reps. Rangel, Rice, Crowley and Meeks have not taken a position
   • Our friends at Americans for Financial Reform are working to stop the bonuses.
   • As are a few of our representatives in Congress
5. Filing taxes could be much easier, if vested interests didn’t wok to make our lives difficult: Boycott Turbotax
6. John Oliver discusses Credit Reports
7. The Great Ponzi Scheme of the Global Economy
8. Government Surveillance and Race, part 1
9. Government Surveillance and Race, part 4: Brandi Collins of ColorOfChange at minute 39
10. Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State, and the Nuisance of Democracy
11. Regulators Warn 5 Top Banks They Are Still Too Big to Fail
    • As noted at last meeting, the Fed/FDIC already have the authority to break up the mega-banks. This is how. All that is needed it the political will.
12. National Coalition Criticizes Sec. Julian Castro For “Wall Street Giveaway”
13. 36,000 Verizon Workers Walk Off Job in One of Largest U.S. Strikes in Years
14. Pregnant, on Medicaid, and Being Watched

From the week of April 4 to April 10, 2016:

1. Panama Papers:
   • Huge document leak reveals elite’s tax havens First 10:00 of this podcast
   • Politicians, criminals and the rogue industry that hides their cash
   • Scandal Is What’s Been Legalized and The Panama Papers Show What Happens When the Wealthy Play By Different Rules
   • Panama Papers Western 1% Protected; Need A Leak Of The Leak
   • Forget Panama: it’s easier to hide your money in the US than almost anywhere
   • The West Is Enabling Graft in Ukraine (and elsewhere)
2. Money’s corrupting influence on democracy
   • Big Money Dominance: It Will Get Worse — Much Worse — Unless We Stop It
   • Rx for Outrageous Drug Prices: Heal Our Democracy
3. The scandal that didn’t make the news:There’s Another Huge New Corporate Corruption Scandal. Here’s Why Everyone Should Care.
4. What does California’s new minimum wage buy? A long commute and a room
5. When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 6 or is that part 6,130,285?
6. Free Trade. At what price? The Economist argues that the shock caused by China’s emergence also exposed faults lines in American economy.
7. Chairman of everything.In his exercise of power at home, Xi Jinping is often ruthless.
8. How Stuy Town Got A Tourniquet While Blackstone Gets Billions
9. One CEO is actually going to jail
10. The working class in France mobilizes against austerity
11. How to break up banks
    • That NYDN Bernie Interview Was Really Tough. Hillary Should Face OnWhy Bernie Sanders knows more about big banks than his critics are saying
    • There are lots of ways to break up the big banks
    • Why the Banks Should Be Broken Up
12. A subject apparently not worth discussion by Presidential candidates: Child poverty
    • Handouts Are Often Better Than a Hand Up
    • So Little to Ask For: A Home
13. Prieto unveils rival Atlantic City plan; Christie says no
14. Regulatory News:
    • One step forward: DoL finalizes fiduciary rule (NOTE: only applies to retirement accounts)
    • One step back: Pushback on payday lender rules
15. 4 New York Police Leaders Reassigned Amid Corruption Inquiry
16. Cyber: A new branch of the military?
    • Senate Leaders Set to Expand Role of U.S. Cyber Command in New Defense Bill
    • America’s Cyber War Against ISIS

 

From the week of March 27 to April 3, 2016:

The Left Forum is being held May 20-22. We are registering for the group rate of $25/person for the full conference. Email alt.banking.ows@gmail.com by April 5th if you are a regular meeting attendee and would like to register under the group rate. You can also volunteer to help the Left Forum and attend for free.

This week’s topics:

1. Ethereum, a Virtual Currency, Enables Transactions That Rival Bitcoin’s
2. Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and How it works
3. MetLife Wins Battle to Remove ‘Too Big to Fail’ Label
4. Victory for Unions as Supreme Court, Scalia Gone, Ties 4-4 “Victory” is really just that another big step backwards was narrowly avoided. Fight to kill unions continues.
5. Climate Change
   • Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.
   • We Need a Global Carbon Tax A global carbon tax can both mitigate climate change and radically redistribute wealth.
   • Climate Fraud Investigation Of Exxon Draws Attention Of 18 Attorneys General
6. The feds have resumed a controversial program that lets cops take stuff and keep it
7. Just What We Need: More Black Celebrity Charter School Crooks… I Mean ‘Entrepreneurs’
8. Why Merrick Garland is Terrible
9. How the voters view issues
10. Some progress toward $15 minimum wage
11. Trump and American Fascism
12. Will Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff be impeached?
13. How Hedge Funds Held Argentina for Ransom

From the week of March 21 to March 26, 2016:

1. Prison-Corporate Complex In addition to all of the cruelty, prisoners and their families are exploited financially and the corporations fight hard against reform.
2. Trump-Media Complex: The Mutual Dependence of Donald Trump and the News Medial
   • CBS CEO: Trump’s run is ‘damn good for CBS’
3. In Louisiana the poor lack legal defense (Not only in Louisiana, just saying)
4. The Hidden Price of Mindfulness, Inc.
5. U.S. Trade Rep. Froman says he can “fix” TPP with side deals to benefit “stakeholderrs” like Wall Street, pharma, biotech and agriculture.
   • I can’t get past the paywall either, But here is the transcript of his comments. The key paragraph is in the middle of page 8.
   • Via Naked Capitalism: Assuming Away Unemployment and Trade Deficits from the TPP
6. Skyscrapers — but no sewage system. Meet a city run by private industry
7. Racial Politics of Disney Animals
8. Trump and Trump supporters
   • Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here’s why
   • Keep in mind that just because two things happen togeter does not mean one causes the other but: Death predicts whether people vote for Donald Trump
   • How conservative elites disdain working-class Republicans
   • Conservative elites respond, or arguably plead guilty: Chaos in the Family, Chaos in the State: The White Working Class’s Dysfunction
   • There Was no Republican Establishment After All
   • How Trump Legitimizes Racist Ideas
9. Economist Intelligence Unit: Top 10 Global Risks
10. Is It A Coup? What Is Happening in Brazil is Much Worse Than Donald Trump
11. Flint Water Advisory Task Force Report
    • Christie Taps Emergency Manager for Atlantic City
12. Our racist past is not past
13. Slate Money on free trade, gentrification, and the Credit Suisse fiasco.
14. 5 things you need to know about the attacks in Brussels
15. Ankara car bomb: Turkish president vows to defeat terror after dozens killed

From the week of March 14 to March 20, 2016:

1. For those of us who missed his book talk, here is an interview of Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
2. Cutting CUNY Governor Cuomo wants to stop funding one-third of CUNY four-year colleges’ budget. Where will the money come from? (h/t Rob)
3. What Should the Next System Look Like?
   • Short video of one vision dubbed “economic democracy”
   • the papers at this link discuss this and other models
4. Swiss to hold referendum on guaranteed monthly income of 2,500 Swiss francs/month (which is worth nearly $2,500/month). Vote is on June 5t
   • Should adults get an allowance, too? Indykids (there is hope for the future after all)
   • Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. We can make it come true.
   • Freedom from want. One of FDR’s “four freedoms”
5. Right to the City: From Policing to Planning: Putting People in Charge
6. Can you put a price on nature? A Californian nonprofit thinks it can
7. Why the Supreme Court Needs Term Limits
   • Merrick Garland is older than any Supreme Court nominee since 1971. Here’s why it matters.
8. Koch Brothers and other billionaires influence in politics
   • Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
   • How the Koch Brothers Helped Dismantle the Democratic Party – @Thom_Hartmann
9. Election hurting TPP’s chances
   • But Obama resolves to push forward
   • Republicans push for a “lame-duck” vote so they can ignore the people’s voice.
10. Bad prosecutors ousted by voters.The presidential election is not the only one taking place.
11. Indian Point 11 plead “guitly and proud”
12. ‘The Profiteers,’ by Sally Denton Story of Bechtel’s decades of government contracting
13. As Women Take Over a Male-Dominated Field, the Pay Drops
14. Cathy wrote up last week’s talk by Tom Adams in case you missed it
15. Resist the evil of the selfie password
    .

From the week of March 7 to March 13, 2016:

Announcement: Conference on “What Should the Next System Look Like?“

• Opening Plenary: Thursday, March 10 6-9 pm
• Full Day Sessions: Fri. March 11 & Sat., March 12

News and noteworthy

1. Dangerous global warming will occur sooner than expected, study finds
   • The climate skeptics will probably say “see, we told you not to trust the scientists”
2. Too much finance? Even the IMF thinks the U.S. would be better off with a simpler financial sector, like Poland’s.
3. From Protest to Power: Behind the scenes of disruptive social movements and Meet the 50 Most Powerful Women in U.S. Philanthropy. In search of responsible philanthropy standards.
4. You probably aren’t much for sermons. Neither am I. But this one is worth listening to. A great case for a basic income guarantee “What we have now is a lack of basic common decency. Our poverty is created by those who both hoard wealth and who cling to power.” First 7 minutes is all I ask.
   • A Future Without Jobs? Two Views of the Changing Work Force
5. Obscure, unaccountable government entities spend more money than elected city governments Once again, John Oliver finds the obscure but important scandals.
   • Special districts seem to be completely off the radar screen — even of good government groups. Here is all I can find:
     • Special districts, special favors
     • The Formation of American Local Governments: Private Values in Public Institutions
6. Mutual Funds Resist S.E.C. Plan to Pump Up Buffer Against Cash Flight
7. Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug.
8. People’s Budget: Big Ideas that Work
9. Universities Are Becoming Billion-Dollar Hedge Funds With Schools Attached (h/t Hannah)
10. Barbara Ehrenreich: How America criminalised poverty
11. How Google could influence the election (h/t Marni)
12. CUNY in Crisis: Tuition is climbing, facilities are crumbling, faculty may strike and Cuomo keeps making things worse.(h’t to Rob for highlighting this issue)
    • Stand with community colleges resisting corporatism
13. In order to address inequality, we must talk about race

From the week of February 29 to March 6, 2016:

1. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City’ by Matthew Desmond
   • Author is speaking at Barnes & Noble at 82nd & Broadway on Tues.
2. Two Billionaires’ view of the future: Bill & Melinda Gates
   • Podcast interview: Technology will probably stop climate change and if it doesn’t we are toast
   • Gates letter
     • Note: Despite his claim Gates did not invent the formula
     • Or any of the other ideas in the letter. He just gets noticed because he is a billionaire.==
3. Juno to Take On Uber with Driver-owned Socially Responsible Ridesharing
4. Bloomberg Beta On Investing In The ‘Future Of Work’
5. Debbie Wasserman Schultz Just Joined Republicans to Declare War on Elizabeth Warren
6. New Economic Systems, volume 1: Papers from the “Next system Project”
7. Housing:
   • Out of Reach 2015: How Expensive Are Apartments
   • Cuomo-de Blasio Feud Threatens New York City’s Plans for Affordable Housing
8. Shameless self-promotion: Five Years Later, Here are 9 Important Movements That Grew Out Of Occupy. This features OccuEvolve, Occupy the SEC, us and others.
9. Big Banks Made 8% Of Their Profits Last Year From Overdraft Fees
10. We’re having the wrong conversation about Apple and the FBI
11. Holy shit I look amazing holding tampons (mathbabe)
12. NYPD Sued for using a sound cannon at Eric Garner protest
13. Melissa Harris-Perry exits MSNBC
14. Prisons:
    • Too bad Harris-Perry is leaving because she covered important, neglected topics like “Who Pays?” Impact of incarceration on families
    • Related report: True Cost of Incarceration on Families
    • Another look at costs, and profiteering, in criminal justice system

Week of February 22 to February 28, 2016:

Announcements:

Should we endorse these actions?

• Democracy Spring: Civil disobedience to reclaim our democracy!
• Democracy Awakening: More polite protests to demand a democracy in which voting rights are protected and the integrity of the vote is not undermined by big money
• A Grand Alliance to to Save Our Public Postal Service

Noteworthy:

0. Freedom in the Neoliberal Eden Our latest Huff Po blog.
   

   How did America’s government get this way? Once the world’s model, it has become so predatory that the very meanings of words like “freedom”, “responsibility”, and “governance” have been perverted to the point that we can hardly speak to one another anymore.

1. Prisons for Profit: Under Kasich, Ohio Becomes Laboratory for Privatizing Public Jails
2. Bernie Sanders Will Ban Private Prisons. Hillary Clinton Accepted $133,246 From Prison Lobbyists
3. No profit left behind In the high-stakes world of American education, Pearson makes money even when its results don’t measure up.
4. Michigan’s Water Wars: Nestlé Pumps Millions of Gallons for Free While Flint Pays for Poisoned Water
   • Michigan governor’s advisers warned about Flint water crisis months before disclosure
5. HSBC ‘taking too long to tackle financial crime’
   They are subject to a “deferred prosecution” agreement and I don’t understand why the U.S. doesn’t prosecute (or, more accurately, I do understand why but it doesn’t make it right)
6. The Koch Brothers’ New Brand
   • Koch Branding. “We wake up every morning and ask ourselves what’s possible.”
7. United States v Apple
   • Why Apple Says It Won’t Help Unlock That iPhone, In 5 Key Quotes
8. Congress: The Home Game If we are going to cry, we might as well laugh about it, too.
9. John Oliver on Voting
10. The best predictor of Trump support isn’t income, education, or age. It’s authoritarianism. But sometimes we shouldn’t laugh. “It isn’t funny. We need to stop laughing. it is something we should fear.”
11. Private Prisons Are Cashing In on Refugees’ Desperation
12. Is this the future of work? Scientists predict which jobs will still be open to humans in 2035
13. Continuing our real estate discussion:
    • CityViews: Four Wrong Ideas Driving de Blasio’s Housing Plan
    • Impacts of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program on Neighborhood Housing Turnover
    • Citizen–Government Contacting in New York City
14. French law forbids food waste by supermarkets
15. Impacts of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program on Neighborhood Housing Turnover

From the week of February 15 to February 21, 2016:

Announcements:

• Event Feb 23: Reports from the Field: Apps for Power
• LEARN: Money and Society MOOC – starts again Feb 21st 2016! understand the past, present and future role of money in society
• Laura Poitras: Astro Noise – art by the director of Citizen Four @Whitney

Topics:

1. At Puerto Rico’s Power Company, a Recipe for Toxic Air, and Debt.
2. Short animated videos on why drugs don’t cause addiction; social disconnection does.
3. Goldman Gives Up On Jailed Teens. Looks like Goldman’s investment in Riker’s Island teens did not pay off (bummer, but surprised they did not rig the data to make sure it did). It was Deputy Mayor Glen who put this together and now opposes making good jobs even a low priority in the Mayor’s housing plan. Here is the third-party report, which is way too flattering of the process if not the outcome.
4. This Is San Francisco’s Plan to Get the 1 Percent to Pay Up This gives us some hard numbers on how much more revenue a city can gain if they decide to tax luxury apartments. In this case it’s a transfer tax, not a recurring real estate tax.
5. Ex-Goldman, Fed official says Too Big To Fail still needs to be addressed. We knew that but good he would come out and say it.
6. Moderate Democrats helped Wall Street avoid regulation in the ’90s. They’re doing it again.
7. There are huge racial disparities in how US police use force. Again, no surprise but good to see it documented.
   • American police shoot and kill far more people than their peers in other countries
8. Making big bucks off water: Private, for-profit water companies charge 58% more than the government, report finds I am sure you are shocked to hear this.
9. FBI Demands Apple Grant Power To Hack All iPhone Users
   • Is this what the world has come to? We depend on mega-corporations to defend our civil liberties?
10. Markets In The Next System
11. Student debt protests planned after armed marshals arrest man for old loans
12. Gates Foundation Tied To Suit Against Common Core Ballot Measure

From the week of February 8 to February 14, 2016:

Topics:

1. The NYPD Is Kicking People Out of Their Homes, Even If They Haven’t Committed a Crime
2. Geithner Gets JPMorgan Credit Line to Invest With Warburg Pincus
3. Don’t reduce debate on Hillary Clinton and women voters to a cat-fight
4. Deutsche Bank openly playing the Too Big to Fail card
5. Department of Justice will sue Ferguson to force criminal justice reforms
6. Wall St. Whistle-Blowers, Often Scorned, Get New Support
7. Morgan Stanley to pay $3.2bn over mortgage-backed securities . Crmies were committed but there were no perpetrators — on at least, no prosecutions.
8. Getting to 100% renewable energy: Late and Fast
9. Did you know that Sweden has a $150/ton tax on CO2? In the past 10 years, Sweden’s GDP growth is higher than U.S., France, Germany and most other countries. Just saying…
10. This week’s unbelievable story of mistreatment of women of color: No Más Bebés film clip and NPR interview. Film focuses on LA women who stood up for themselves but apparently the practice was common across the U.S.
11. Slate Money discusses the future of the world’s economy with Mohamed El-erian
12. Philosophy/Literary podcasts:
    1. Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s. This came out over a month ago, but raises some fascinating issues. Is it possible that the texts of financial capitalism–that is, all those accounting sheets and metrics–are basically cultural representations, which fail to capture much, if anything, real about the economy? If so, do we at Altbanking spend too much time trying to understand these documents on their own terms?
    2. What Makes Taxes Moral. From Radio National Australia, a cool (if somewhat self-involved) conversation about: the moral grounding of taxation in Aristotle’s Politics, the willingness of a society to tolerate taxation as a measure of social cohesion, and the hard question of how immigration can challenge that.
13. Disparity in Life Spans of the Rich and the Poor Is Growing
14. Yellen Re-Examining Negative Rates; Top Lawmaker Doubts Legality
15. Professional Expertise or Politics Driving Economists’ View of Hillary & Bernie?

From the week of February 1 to February 7, 2016

Announcements:

• In case you missed it, here is the article Jarrettia recommended for our discussion: What a Band of 20th-Century Alabama Communists Can Teach Black Lives Matter and the Offspring of Occupy
• Left Forum 2016: May 20-22. Do we want to be there?

Topics:

1. Flint residents don’t need water bottles, they need democracy
2. Chris Christie just privatized New Jersey’s water. Good luck with that, New Jersey (please also considering a petition on this page)
3. Bangladesh’s Disaster Capitalism
4. Elizabeth Warren Blasts a Republican Plan to Protect White-Collar Criminals
5. Crowdfunding Campaign/ Black Lives Matter Activist Launches Mayoral Bid
6. The Future of Money and Monetization (podcast -22min)
7. The New Global Financial Cold War…includes TPP (podcast Wed 2/3/16 -1hr )
8. Bring on The Cashless Future
9. The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment
10. HSBC fined $470m for ‘abusive mortgage practices’ during 2008 crisis
11. The Three Letter Word Missing From the Zika Virus Warnings
12. Banks should serve the real economy

 

From the week of January 25 to January 31, 2016:

0. The 62 billionaires who have more wealth than 3.6 billion others (collectively).
   • Oxfam report
1. Democracy — its sorry state and something we can do to improve it
   • Dark Money:How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies Funded the Rise of the Far Right
   • Koch brothers convene donor retreat as dark money spending set to soar
   • Mobilizations for a true democracy
     • Democracy Spring — with civil disobedience
     • Democracy Awakening — more polite marches
2. Recovering history:
   • Original version of “America the Beautiful” —
     • ‘Til selfish gain no longer stain the banner of the free’
   • An Unbroken Line: New Afrikan Resistance from 1619 to the Present
3. Calls (once again) for prosecutions of bankers
   • ’Til selfish gain no longer stain the banner of the free!
   • AFR Statement: SEC Should Call Big Banks to Account for Unfair Dealings with Municipalities
4. In case you thought you were incapable of being shocked, listen to the case of David Ayers who, against all odds successfully contested his wrongful conviction (after spending 11 years in prison) and win a $13 million judgment — but is being cheated out of it by the Cleveland city government (listen from 4:00 to 21:00 of this podcast).
5. Martin O’Malley’s Wall Street plan.
6. Freedom Rider: Flint, Michigan and Democracy
7. Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP):
   • Japanese minister who negotiated TPP resigns in a bribery scandal
   • TPP will be signed next week, but there will be ratification fights in U.S. and elsewhere

From the week of January 18 to January 24, 2016

It’s a first: MEETING CANCELLED for January 24th

Skills: Breaking into the world of video journalism– bootcamp/ 2/27 @75$/ group rate?
Alt Financial projects: Open Bank Project, The Working World , Blockchain

1. Stand with Linda Sue Beck against right wing takeover in Oregon
2. China Not Facing ‘Cataclysmic’ Economic Slow Down, Says Stiglitz
3. Bernie Sanders
   • Top Economists Backing Bernie Sanders’ Plan To Break Up Banks
   • Paul Krugman:…stupid to attempt Bernie Sanders’ proposed “do-over”
   • Robert Reich: The Bernie skeptics are wrong — here are 6 reasons why
   • Sanders upends foreign-policy critique by Clinton experts: ‘I was right’ on Iraq
4. NYC Real estate
   • The little loophole helping developers build their supertall towers even higher
   • Leonard Lopate discusses New York real estate.
   • So does mathbabe
   • Speaker at Alternative Banking on Real Estate, Sunday 2-3 pm before regular meeting. See calendar.
5. Iran / U.S. thaw in relations
   • Iran vice-president hails new era after removal of sanctions
   • End of sanctions may help Iran face an accelerating environmental crisis
   • ‘Happy to be home’: Amir Hekmati lands in Michigan after release from Iran
6. 2015 Hottest Year on Record, Far Eclipsing 2014
7. Our Election/Auction process
   • 6 Years of Citizens United
   • The Devastating Cost of Monetized Elections
   • President Obama May Require Federal Contractors to List Campaign Gifts
     • Urge him to do so
   • Dark Money: How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies Funded the Rise of the Far Right
   • Now that you are informed and angry, do something:
   • Mobilizations for a real democracy
     • Democracy Spring — with civil disobedience
     • Democracy Awakening — more polite marches
8. Rerun of Flint?
   • Atlantic City Residents to Lose Their Water – and What’s Left of Their Right to Vote

From the week of January 11 to January 17, 2016

0. Let’s remember the real message of Martin Luther King Jr.
   • Martin Luther King, Jr. on Income Inequality and Redistribution of Wealth short clips followed by brief musings by James Baldwin
   • Martin Luther King, Jr. The Three Evils of White American Society Racism, Militarism & Capitalism
1. Labor News:
   • Good: National Labor Board takes McDonald’s to court
   • Bad: The Erosion of Collective Bargaining Has Widened the Gap Between Productivity and Pay
   • Ugly: Conservative U.S. justices prepared to deliver blow to unions
2. Reclaiming power in the sharing economy
3. U.S. Will Track Secret Buyers of Luxury Real Estate (hat tip to Gary)
   • Related story I had missed: The Hidden Money Buying Condos at the Time Warner Center
4. Is RBS right to forecast doom and gloom for the global economy?
5. Renault Shares Dive After Police Raid On Factories
   • What I find noteworthy about this is that the media coverage is more about the stock price than the event.
6. State Of The Union And NPR’s Live Reality Check
   • Swan Song for a War and Austerity President (Who is Also Black)
7. Chris Hedges: The Great Forgetting
8. Republican Candidates Grapple With a Touchy Topic: Poverty
9. Goldman Sachs agrees to $5 billion settlement over sub-prime loans from 2005-2007
   • If no crime was committed, why are they settling?
   • If crimes were committed, why are there no prosecutions?
   • Are these “perpetratorless crimes”?
10. Democracy in Black: A conversation about race in America
11. How ratings-driven presidential debates are weakening American democracy

From the week of January 4 to January 10, 2016

1. First They Jailed the Bankers, Now Every Icelander to Get Paid in Bank Sale
2. Meet the Family Making Billions From America’s Painkiller Overdose Epidemic
3. Warren Buffett’s Company Wants to Sell You a Mobile Home (Note to minority buyers: you pay extra)
4. TransCanada Fights Keystone Denial With $15 Billion Appeal — This is the sort of thing that will be much more common if the Trans-Pacific Partnership is approved. These proceedings are outside the U.S. (or any country’s) legal system and not subject to appeal.
   • Why you should care about TPP in 45.6 seconds (or, a 15 minute version if you prefer)
   • Tell the U.S. Trade Representative you oppose the TPP. Do it now. Jan. 13 deadline.
5. Polish party eliminating democracy
   • Poland’s new leader seems hungry for total control. The west can’t look away
   • Polish president signs bill putting state media under government control
6. Suspension of democracy in Michigan and its results
   • Not mentioned in the report, but Flint, Detroit and other cities where democracy was suspended are predominantly Black
7. Beheadings by Muslim extremists
   • Saudi-Iranian spat: Another skirmish in the oil war
   • Why Can’t the U.S. Condemn Saudi Arabia’s Executions?
   • Amnesty International warned of this, as we listed in Nov. 30 “News and Noteworthy”.
8. Climate change cover-up just got bigger
9. Are charter schools the next subprime?
10. Puerto Rico defaults on debt payment

From the week of December 28th, 2015 to January 3, 2016

1. We Don’t Just Need Nicer Cops. We need Fewer Cops. (article mentioned by Rob last week)
2. A Crisis Worse than ISIS? Bail-Ins Begin
3. January 1, 2016: The New Bank Bail-In System Goes Into Effect In Europe
4. Airbnb’s worst problems are confirmed by its own data
5. Airbnb’s tricky new numbers game: The tax-evading, neighborhood-gutting loophole they exploit — at everyone’s expense
6. Gentrification in Washington Heights forcing out longtime mom and pop shops
7. For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions
8. There’s a secret, separate US tax system that rich people use to save billions
9. Meet the Family Making Billions From America’s Painkiller Overdose Epidemic
10. A lonely road… the poor in the Deep South
11. Bernie: Audit The Department Of Defense
12. Puerto Rico Says It Will Miss $37 Million In Bond Payments This Week
13. Bitcoin and Its Blockchain Will Shape the Future of International Trade

From the week of December 21st to December 27th, 2015

We had so many important topics to discuss last Sunday we decided to hold the discussion on Student Debt and How to Pay for College next meeting, Dec. 27 so we could do it justice. See Gary’s site “The Brain Fund“

1. Shenzhen, Embodying China’s Growth, Falls Risk to It
2. The Creeping Villainy Of American Politics
3. As a New High Society Climbs in Manhattan, It’s a Race to the Top
4. Michigan Water Crisis Rooted in Crisis of Democracy
5. Sued Over Old Debt and Unable to Go to Court
6. How Seattle Uber Drivers Won the Right to Unionize

From the week of December 14th to December 20th, 2015

Proposal for Alternative Banking to endorse the letter opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership for the following reasons:

• Undermining environmental protection
• Offshoring U.S. jobs and driving down wages
• Jeopardizing the safety of the food we feed our families
• Rolling back access to life-saving medications
• Elevating investor rights over human rights and democracy

Other organizations are encouraged to sign on as well. Entire letter here. Sign-on here

Also, should we join Popular Resistance’s Buycott for Trade Justice

News and potential discussion topics

1. Tyson Foods’ Secret Recipe for Carving Up Workers’ Comp
2. Reinventing Banking: From Russia to Iceland to Ecuador
   • to the UK
3. Return of fascism
   • In the U.S., Trump and others
   • In Poland, and this
   • In France
4. Military influence
   • Rise of military welfare state
   • Pentagon To Lose Emissions Exemption Under Paris Climate Deal
   • The Militarism of U.S. Diplomacy
   • Military Justice Navy SEALs, a Beating Death and Claims of a Cover-Up
   • Military Justice:SEAL Team 6: A Secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines:
5. Bill Black “Jihadist” Against the Banks?
6. Richard Wolff: December Economic Update (skip first 6:30)F
7. Henry Giroux (skip first 7:00) “Where is the Outrage” (thanks Alejandrina) “citizens are urged to become consumers. Politicians are paid mouthpieces for money and power. Anti-public intellectuals are unapologetic enemies of compassion, the commons and democracy itself.”
   • An older but (somewhat) shorter and less dry interview of Henry GIroux by Bill Moyers..
8. Flint, Michigan declares state of emergency over lead in water
9. Yes, GOP Megadonor Did Secretly Buy Nevada’s Biggest Newspaper
10. Everyone’s favorite hedge fund / pharma exec arrested for fraud

From the week of December 7th to December 13th, 2015

1. The Potential of Debtors’ Unions. Aiming to build collective power in an age of financial absolutism, the Debt Collective is piloting a new kind of organization: the debtors’ union.
2. VW Says Emissions Cheating Was Not a One-Time Error.
3. What Drives Gun Sales: Terrorism, Obama and Calls for Restrictions
4. Why the New Education Law Is Good for Children Left Behind
5. America’s Middle Class Meltdown: fifth of US adults live in or near poverty
6. Who’s profiting from $1.2 trillion of student debt?
7. Why are so many black women dying of AIDS?

From the week of November 30th to December 6th, 2015

0. Unexpected History of American Capitalism, our latest blog post
1. Crucial Climate Talks Are Taking Place in Paris RIght Now
   • The Paris climate summit is a real test of humanity
   • Bill McKibben: Climate Protest Movement, Not Paris Talks, Key to Preventing “Uninhabitable World”
2. Puerto Rico poised to miss another debt deadline as financial crisis rages on
3. This week’s TPP commentary (I’ll stop posting this stuff when the TPP is dead)
   • 10 Shocking Realities of the TPP; Join The Revolt:The Secretly Negotiated TPP Will Impact Your Life In Many Ways; Together We Can Stop It
   • Lori Wallach: why and how to stop TPP
4. Why are middle-aged white people dying at faster rates than they used to?
   • Just to be clear, non-white people still have worse mortality rates than whites. But, middle-aged white mortality is getting worse in the US while rates for other groups are improving.
5. Capitalism at Work. Greek women forced into prostitution
   • Commentary from a reformed neo-con.
6. HSBC whistleblower given five years’ jail over biggest leak in banking history. Apparently, exposing white collar crime is punishable while the crimes are not.
7. The oligarchy:
   • A Wealthy Governor and His Friends Are Remaking Illinois
   • Challenging the Oligarchy
   • Mark Zuckerberg will “give away” $44 billion. But, actually it will save him, and cost the government, billions in taxes so much is really our money
   • And he gets to decide how to spend it… which isn’t a good thing
8. Saudi Arabia:
   • Execution looms for at least 50 on death row, including Shi’a activists
   • But, we shouldn’t feel too bad, they are finally letting women vote, and even run for local offices
9. Debt Collectors
   • How Debt Collectors Ruin Lives
   • The Color or Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods
10. No longer Too Big To Fail? JPMorgan, BofA, Citigroup Among Eight U.S. Banks Cut by S&P But, reading the fine print, bailout is deemed “uncertain” but still possible. If push comes to shove, we’d bet on a bailout.

From the week of November 23rd to November 29th, 2015

1. Crucial Climate Talks Are Taking Place in Paris Next Week
   • Global Climate Protests
   • Fossil Fuel Follies
2. Terrorism
   • Ending Blowback Terrorism
   • Paris Attacks: It’s Time For A More Radical Reaction
3. Tell the Postmaster General to Make Postal Banking a Reality Now
4. Heroin and the War on Drugs
5. Days of Revolt: The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History
6. Marble Columns (see our old post about what this means)
   • Koch brothers combating excess incarceration — of CEOs
     • Are they concerned they may be prosecuted?
   • Sign Occupy the SEC petition
7. Re-imagining Journalism: The Story of the One Percent
8. Safety Lapses and Deaths Amid a Building Boom in New York
9. Tighter Lid on Records Threatens to Weaken Government Watchdogs

From the week of November 16th to November 22th, 2015

Reading in prep for 2-3pm topic (optional):

• Experts Explain Why People Cared More About The Paris Attacks Than Beirut
• Film Shows Chilling Climate for Muslims in Post-Hebdo France (about the movie we’ll watch)
• America: Situation for Muslims like 9/11 again
• Europe: 5 facts about the Muslim population

1. Comment on refugees: “They Are Us”
   • This is how to stir up fear. :”Survey” from the racist right.
2. Stop Trans-Pacific Partnership: Fighting against global corporate domination
   • Text analyzed: It’s worse than we thought
   • TPP’s clauses that let Australia be sued [ISDS} are weapons of legal destruction Note: This was written by, and addressed to, Australians. But the same goes for all countries involved in agreement, including U.S. And TPP doubles the number of multinational corporations that can sue U.S.
   • Creative protest (watch to the end)
3. Fed likely to raise interest rates next month. Should it?
   • Why the Fed’s Policy on Interest Rates is Key to Fighting Poverty
     • But, if zero interest rates are so good at fighting poverty, why do we still have so much poverty after 6 years of zero interest rates?
     • Focus on Fed policy is distracting from what we really need: more public spending (what would Keynes do?)
4. Google is quietly becoming one of the nations most powerful politic forces.
5. How US and Saudi Arabia aided formation of the Islamic State. We have met the enemy and it is us.
6. Anonymous Takes Down 5,500 ISIS Accounts – 24 Hours After ISIS Called them “Idiots”
7. Climate Activists vow to continue protests ahead of Paris talks
8. Prof. Arun Sundararajan on the Sharing Economy, Blockchain Markets & Crowd-Based Capitalism (24:38min)
9. You think things are bad now, consider what happens if this bill passes
   • Well, a cynic would say that it wouldn’t make any difference because they aren’t prosecuting white collar criminals anyway, which is true enough.
   • But, as it is, at least we can hope and spur public outcry. If this passes, there would be no hope left..
   • Thanks to Occupy the SEC for circulating a petition about it. Please sign it.
10. We need to stand up for socialism

From the week of November 9th to November 15th, 2015

Conference on Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy. This sounds like an interesting 2 day conference for anyone interested in ‘Venture Communism’, social transformation, alternative workplaces and more. FREE REGISTRATION.

Optional in preparation for our speaker (he’ll give a summary as well):

• Understanding the blockchain
• Forget currency, bitcoin’s tech is the revolution (2min video)
• Bitcoin, a beginner’s FAQ
• Bitcoin’s blockchain explained in 2 minutes (video)

Regular Meeting:

1. The Rent You’re Paying for Your NYC Apartment Might Not Even Be Legal!
2. PROP’s brilliant protest: giving out fake summonses to white people in Park Slope.
3. Portugal’s Government Ousted in Challenge to Austerity
4. Germany loses key ally in Portugal as austerity regime crumbles
5. Cuomo to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 for All New York State Employees

From the week of November 2nd to November 8th, 2015

1. Privatization of our justice system — Domestic version
   • Part I of series: Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice
   • For the global version of this, see next item
2. Crony Capitalism Goes Global: The TPP & ISDS Explained
   • Dull as it sounds, TPP is a crucial issue. If we don’t act strongly and promptly, another major setback will occur. But, it’s not too late to stop it.
   • TPP text finally revealed.
   • Obama makes the case in favor of TPP
   • TPP explained, in person, in NYC on Nov. 10th.
3. Free Markets Ideology Is Making Society Sick
4. Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Climate Change Decades Ago, They Denied It.
   • Could they be prosecuted?
5. We discussed postal banking last Sunday
   • A Short History of Postal Banking
   • A short requiem for public post offices, and postal savings, in Japan
   • “How the Other Half Banks” highly recommended book that discusses why poor are poorly served by banks and why U.S. needs a postal savings bank (as most civilized countries do).
6. Success Metrics Questioned in School Program Funded by Goldman Sachs
7. Socially Responsible Investments Get Boost From Labor Department
8. Food for thought for those of us working on our own essay series: (hat tip to Yves Smith)
   • The Future of Work and Workers

From the week of October 26th to November 1st, 2015

0. Join us at an action to GIVE SUSIE BACK HER HOME
   • 4 pm Friday Oct.30. 270 Park Avenue @47th St.
   • Protest this and other illegitimate foreclosures
1. Free Markets Ideology Is Making Society Sick
2. Under TPP, Polluters Could Sue U.S. for Setting Carbon Emissions Limits
3. Issues the candidates “must” address. For “must” read won’t
   1. This list doesn’t include climate change?
   2. What is our list?
4. Hillary Clinton on Colbert: I would let the big banks fail
5. The Clinton Foundation, Shady Accounting and AIDS
6. 18 CEOs Called Out By Bernie Sanders For Taking Trillions…
7. Bankers for Bernie
8. Can Steve Buscemi Create Affordable Housing For NYC Artists?
9. Chipping Away at the System: How will we bring about systemic change?
10. What’s in the budget deal,
    • what’s not even discussed: infrastructure spending or any full-employment initiatives.
11. Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice

 

 

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