News and Noteworthy, 2016 part 2

From the weeks of December 18 to January 7

Happy New Year!

Five years and we’re still here! We took a very rare break (both on-line and in person). We will be meeting Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017

  1. Another, more beautiful America is rising. Trump will be resisted
  2. A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda
  3. Five Republicans who could buck Trump in 2017
    • We’d like to note that there are 52 Republican senators who could, and should, buck Trump and it’s pretty pathetic that only five are even considering it.
  4. Building a Mass Socialist Party
  5. Privacy in the modern world: Theory of Everything Podcast Surveillance miniseries Your host visits both the glass room ( a fake pop up store) and the Google pop up store (a real pop up store).
  6. A socialist criticism of basic income guarantee.
  7. Rethinking retirement: The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started
  8. Algorithms: AI’s creepy control must be open to inspection
  9. House Republicans send us a New Year message. Fuck you!
  10. So much shit is going on, it seems this nearly slipped through. I had trouble finding anything critical written about the 2017 NDAA
  11. Under Cover of Christmas, Congress passes NDAA, Obama Establishes Controversial Anti-Propaganda Agency
  12. Senate Republicans take first step to repeal Obamacare
  13. Republicans Are Planning to Rush Through Jeff Sessions’s Confirmation Hearing
  14. Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds
  15. Or, have our elections been hacked for decades?

From the week of December 11 to December 17

  1. Standing Up to a Strongman Let’s hope we can have the courage of these Filipinos.
  2. Significant pipeline spill contaminates local water just 200 miles from Standing Rock
  3. Trump picks Exxon CEO Tillerson for secretary of State: report Not yet clear if Tillerson will need to resign his current position. CEO of Exxon and Secretary of State—Trump wouldn’t see any conflict of interest there; neither would Noam Chomsky.
  4. Trump Team Requests List Of Government Employees Who Worked On Climate Change This has all the makings of “an illegal modern-day political witch hunt.” or enemies list.
  5. Betsy DeVos and God’s Plan for Schools
  6. Neoliberalism turned our world into a business. And there are two big winners
  7. America’s First Offshore Wind Farm Spins to Life
  8. Divestment From Fossil Fuels Passes $5 Trillion
  9. France Extends Emergency Law as Terrorist Threat Remains High This state of emergency has been in place for more than a year.
  10. Portland is the First City to Tax Corporations that Pay their CEOs 100 Times More than Workers
  11. Wells Fargo Faces Limits After Second Living Will Failure Fed could break them up—but don’t hold your breath.
  12. Robert Reich short video: Corporate tax desertion
  13. Robert Reich short video: Why we need a universal basic income
  14. Between The Lines interview – Institute for Local and Self-Reliance New Report: Amazon.com’s Increasing Dominance Endangers Competition and Democracy
  15. Institute for Local and Self-Reliance Report: How Amazon’s Tightening Grip on the Economy Is Stifling Competition, Eroding Jobs, and Threatening Communities
  16. South Korea’s president was just impeached. This is what it means and what comes next.
  17. Don’t need to look to Russia to find election hacking. Greg Palast: By Rejecting Recount, Is Michigan Covering Up 75,000 Ballots Never Counted?
  18. Obama Failed to Mitigate America’s Foreclosure Crisis
  19. Ta-Nehisi Coates: My President was Black: A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next
  20. Black Lives Matter Co-founder Opal Tometi on Navigating Trump’s America
  21. Barney Frank on Dodd-Frank.
  22. Largest Strike in World History?

From the week of December 4 to December 10

  1. Dakota Access Pipeline
  2. How Big Banks Are Putting Rain Forests in Peril
  3. News and commentary about the Misinformation Network
  4. Italian prime minister to resign after voters reject referendum
  5. Austrian election: Far-right nationalist Hofer admits defeat Winner is from the Green Party but that doesn’t seem worth mentioning.
  6. UK surveillance law marks a ‘worse than scary’ shift but seems to get very little notice.
  7. Building Code Violations and Bay Area’s Unaffordable Rent Were Factors in the Oakland Warehouse Fire
  8. Wells Fargo Killing Sham Account Suits by Using Arbitration
  9. Last Chance Obama: Relieve Corinthian and Trump “University” students and alums from debt.
  10. Reduce Subway Fares for Poor New Yorkers
  11. The Scourge of Racial Bias in New York State’s Prisons
  12. Amazon Go Debuts as a New Grocery Store Without Checkout Lines Another reason we need a Universal Basic Income Guarantee
  13. Health care refugees: Family flees Florida to save daughter’s life Need for universal healthcare is so obvious when you read heartwrenching stories like this!
  14. Facebook and other tech giants are setting up a database for terrorist content Does this make us feel safer or less safe? Should this be done for fake news?
  15. Stackable pods could help house the homeless Nice idea or degrading stopgap?
  16. Ohio’s ‘heartbeat’ abortion bill awaits Gov. Kasich’s signature
  17. Trump transportation pick Elaine Chao made $1.2 million from Wells Fargo
  18. Trump is appointing people who hate the agencies they will lead
  19. The FCC’s cable box plan is doomed, thanks to The Donald

From the week of November 27 to December 3

  1. Based on Sunday’s discussion and vote, we ranked the following issues for Alternative Banking to focus on:
    1. Income, Jobs, Basic Income Guarantee
    2. Education: including funding of college and resisting privatization
    3. Financialization: Debunking “free market ideology”, resisting privatization and marketization of everything.
    4. Mass Incarceration
    5. Political Process
    6. Housing / Homelessness (tied with E)
    7. Others receiving votes: Immigrant Rights, Environmental Issues, Racism/Black Lives Matter, War / Defense spending, and healthcare
  2. Hundreds of churches offer sanctuary to undocumented migrants after election
  3. Data on the white working class, just the facts.
  4. More on responses to the election:
  5. Trump’s plutocratic cabinet:
  6. The Retreat from Hyper-Globalization
  7. Renzi, reform and the paradox of Italy’s referendum
  8. The legal marijuana middle ground: it does not have to be run as a business
  9. TPP may be dead but another bad “trade” agreement lurks — TiSA. And Trump will probably like this one as it is all about deregulation and privatization.
  10. How does Facebook decide what to censor? Advocacy groups want to know

From the week of November 20 to November 26

  1. Dutch activists address abortion rights at risk.
  2. Jane McAlevey’s new book about organizing and unionization looks great. Here’s a great 10 minute interview with her on the Brian Lehrer show.
  3. Big data, dark posts, Facebook and Trump, controlling information.
  4. Universal Basic Income: A Solution to Inequality, Economic Instability, and Climate Change
  5. Stop Calling It Identity Politics — It’s Civil Rights is a response of sorts to
  6. The End of Identity Liberalism by Mark Lilla. Here’s also a discussion on
  7. The Brian Lehrer show with Mark Lilla and George Yancy.
  8. Identity Politics was also discussed on Room For Debate.
  9. Billionaire school-choice activist Betsy DeVos picked for Trump’s education secretary
  10. Dakota Access Pipeline: Protester nearly loses arm after explosion
  11. Trump’s grandfather ‘kicked out of Germany for avoiding military service’
  12. Is slavery the reason for Electoral College?
  13. Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results
  14. Rewrite the Constitution? Here’s how a convention could do it
  15. Summers: Trump’s economic plans could ‘cripple government for a generation’
  16. Protecting Donald Trump costs New York City more than $1 million a day
  17. Major changes for Medicaid coming under Trump and the GOP
  18. Sessions will undo decades of progress
  19. WBAI discusses rigged elections on Guns & Butter

From the week of November 13 to November 19

On Sunday, from 2-3 pm we will continue view How Do We Build a Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality and follow it with a discussion of how to build a movement and other productive ways to move forward. Please watch the video or come at 2 to see it.

  1. Trump-related commentary
  2. Lies in the Guise of News in the Trump Era
  3. TPP: Killed by Progressive alliance, not he who shall not be named
  4. We Are One GOP-Controlled Statehouse Away From a Convention to Rewrite the Constitution
  5. These Professors Make More Than a Thousand Bucks an Hour Peddling Mega-Mergers
  6. The Doubt Machine: Inside The Koch Brothers’ War on Climate Science
  7. Progress in ballot initiatives (many in red states)
  8. Overzealous Prosecutors Ousted Across the Country, Showing There Is Still Hope for Reform
  9. JPMorgan Chase to Pay $264 Million to Settle Foreign Bribery Case Just the cost of doing business — if you are a corrupt enterprise.
  10. As Hate Crimes Soar, U.S. Universities at Risk
  11. Classism or racism?

From the week of November 6 to November 12

On Sunday, from 2-3 pm we will continue our discussion of the Movement for Black Lives Platform focusing this week on the Community Control plank

There have been hundreds of anti-Trump protests across the country with thousands of protestors. What should they demand? What can we do to protect our country?

  1. Debate about who Trump voters are and how to respond
  2. Trump policies?

Last Sunday we discussed how we would reply to Treasury Sec. Jack Lew’s speech about how Liberal democracy is at risk unless inequality is tackled. We had planned to continue that discussion this week and write an open reply. We might postpone that discussion.

From the week of October 30 to November 5

On Sunday, from 2-3 pm we will continue our discussion of the Movement for Black Lives Platform focusing this week on the Political Power plank

  1. How Do We Build a Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality Video of Left Forum panel
  2. Follow-up to our “stone age brain” discussion.
  3. How Globalism is Rigged To Make the Rich Richer w/Dean Baker
  4. Two systems of justice: Oregon Militia Found Not Guilty While Pipeline Protesters Tear-Gassed & Arrested
  5. Notable state ballot initiatives: California Takes on Big Pharma, South Dakota Takes on the Political Establishment, New Mexico takes on debtors prisons
  6. Treasury Sec. notices and states the obvious: Liberal democracy is at risk unless inequality is tackled, says Jack Lew
  7. Thousands of NYC Landlords Who Ignored Rent Caps Got Tax Breaks They Didn’t Qualify For
  8. The Demolition of Workers’ Comp
  9. Rigged election?
  10. Advice for next president: Expand Social Security

From the week of October 23 to October 29

We plan to view the new documentary 13TH soon. Here is a good discussion of the film here on the documentary that looks at connections between slavery and mass incarceration.

  1. One of the Biggest Media Mergers ever
  2. How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul
  3. Women know why Donald Trump’s accusers stayed silent for so long
  4. Standing Rock: Police Arrest 120+ Water Protectors as Dakota Access Speeds Up Pipeline Construction
  5. For those of you who can still stomach analysis of the election:
  6. A More Money-Conscious Alphabet Emerges
  7. Fight in Michigan for clean water and against undemocratic “emergency” managers (long podcast)

From the week of October 16 to October 22

On Sunday, we will continue our discussion of the Movement for Black Lives Platform focusing this week on the Economic Justice plank. This Rags to Riches podcast might help inspire discussion.

We plan to view the new documentary 13TH soon. Here is a good discussion of the film.

  1. Voices from the Gig Economy Silicon Valley is turning back the clock on worker gains and New Yorkers are feeling the pinch
  2. Gender and the psychopathy of “leadership” in business and politics
  3. One in five American children is poor Giving Every Child a Monthly Check for an Even Start is a good idea but would not really create an “even start”
  4. How to Turn Anti-Poverty Work Into an Anti-Poverty Movement.
  5. Donald Trump’s poll-watching “voter fraud” squad sounds like it could easily lead to voter intimidation
  6. How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics
  7. Voting for a Third Party is Not the Same as Voting For Trump, and It’s Not “White Privilege”
  8. Black-white wage gaps expand with rising wage inequality
  9. Another Black platform National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination Convention
  10. Free The Land: Shirley Sherrod and Black Land Struggles in the South

From the week of October 9 to October 15

  1. Clintonism in perspective and what a neoliberal presidency means. Also research on Trump supporters showing that they are not in financial distress — their complaint is not as innocent as the media would have you believe (here’s a Vox video report on the findings).
  2. Who Deserves To Be Poor?
  3. The Eurasian Century Is now unstoppable
  4. Berlin’s battle with gentrification: podcast, article (may have paywall, sorry)
  5. The Wells Fargo Hustle What it was like to be a Wells Fargo employee
  6. Federal appeals court rules the structure of CFPB is unconstitutional
  7. Meanwhile, the U.S. expands war around the world and no one questions the constitutionality of that. Without Warning, US Bombs Yemen
  8. How to close the Trump loopholes

From the week of October 2 to October 8

We recommend that you read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Case for Reparations to prepare for the Oct. 9 discussion of the Movement for Black Lives platform plank on Reparations. In addition, note the U.N. call for reparations for slavery and more recent and ongoing “racial terrorism and racial inequality”.

  1. Excellent analysis of global anti-immigrant and anti-trade isolationist reaction to capitalism’s 2008 crisis (but leaves out the post-1982 de-unionization and debt creation that made the economic base less resistant to shock)
  2. Prime Minister Trudeau says Canada will implement a nationwide carbon tax by 2018
  3. Our latest Huff Po blog: Michelle Obama, We need your help to save your husband, us and the world
  4. What would you ask the candidates? You can help decide
  5. Liquid Assets: how the business of bottled water went mad
  6. Deutsche Bank as Next Lehman Brothers: Far-Fetched but Not Unthinkable
  7. Brazil Approves Handing Oil Reserves To Multinationals
  8. The Black History of the New Economy
  9. A Cleveland Success Story
  10. When Algorithms Decide What You Pay
  11. Google Said It Would Ban All Payday Loan Ads. It Didn’t.
  12. You Think Wells Fargo’s Bankers Are Bad? Take a Look at Its Brokers

From the week of September 25 to October 1

  1. As US politicians romanticize doomed manufacturing jobs, the new working class is suffering
  2. A Do-Over for Our Unequal Economy?
  3. What’s Missing From Black Counternarratives To Donald Trump
  4. I’m Black. Does America Have a Plan for My Life?
  5. Millions to the Polls: The Right to Vote for Formerly Incarcerated Persons
  6. Obama’s climate change legacy at stake as Clean Power Plan has its day in court
  7. How to hide it: inside the secret world of wealth managers
  8. Germany ‘prepares Deutsche Bank rescue’
  9. ‘The horrible night has ceased’: Colombia peace deal resounds in Farc’s heartland
  10. In ‘Hitler,’ an Ascent From ‘Dunderhead’ to Demagogue A ‘parable about how the confluence of circumstance, chance, a ruthless individual and the willful blindness of others can transform a country.’
  11. N.D. militarized police push back Water Protectors with armored vehicles, tear gas and rifles
  12. New Investigation Names Wall Street Banks Behind $3.8 Billion Dakota Access Pipeline Round up the usual suspects
  13. As Earth Reaches Frightening CO2 Milestone, Bill McKibben Calls for War on Climate Change

From the week of September 18 to September 24

  1. Why Bayer’s massive deal to buy Monsanto is so worrisome
  2. China’s debt load is flashing ‘a reliable early warning indicator’ of a banking crisis
  3. Employees, customers blew whistle over Wells Fargo fraudulent bank accounts years ago
  4. Wells Fargo CEO faces bipartisan wrath during fiery Senate panel hearing But, will anything actually be done?
  5. SEC Probe Called Possible ‘Moment Of Reckoning’ For Exxon’s Climate Crimes But, will anything actually be done?
  6. Charlotte NAACP & Protesters Demand Police Release Video of Keith Scott Shooting
  7. The Largest Prison Strike in U.S. History Enters Its Second Week
  8. Blazes in Southeast Asia May Have Led to Deaths of Over 100,000, Study Says
  9. Donald Trump took a longtime psychosis of the GOP base and amplified it.
  10. The Economic Impacts of Removing Unauthorized Immigrant Workers
  11. A civil rights perspective on money in politics
  12. Massive Yahoo data breach
  13. Gaming the Mayo markets
  14. Big data meets insurance, there’s an explosion
  15. Wells Fargo employees were fired for whistleblowing
  16. Low-value customers are NOT always right
  17. Amazon does not give customers the best deal
  18. Why the mainstream media is ignoring the nationwide prison strike
  19. Gun rights are for white people

Special Events This Weekend

Saturday, September 17 is the 5th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. There will be events in Zuccotti/Liberty Park all day starting at 10 am. There is a press conference at 11 am. Copies of our book Occupy Finance will be handed out at noon and we will have a special Alternative Bank meeting

More information here.

This Sunday, Sept. 18th, Jarrettia Adams will be discussing the impact of U.S./Cuba relations on the people of Cuba based on her recent research trip.

Upcoming Series on Movement for Black Lives platform

Sunday, Sept. 25, we will kick off a series of discussions of the Movement for Black Lives platform. Jarrettia Adams will lead a discussion of the first plank: End the War on Black People. She encourages everyone to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me to prepare.

We will discuss the other planks of the platform in subsequent weeks. Schedule TBA.

More information on our Speakers Page

From the week of September 11 to September 17

  1. President Trump Won’t Have To Tell CEO Trump ‘You’re Fired’ By law, he could keep running his businesses out of the oval office
  2. How the Trump Organization’s Foreign Business Ties Could Upend U.S. National Security
  3. Warren asks FBI why there were no criminal prosecutions from crisis probe referrals
  4. In Wells Fargo Scandal, the Buck Stopped Well Short
  5. Deutsche Bank to fight Department of Justice’s $14bn fine
  6. Why So Many Poor Americans Don’t Get Help Paying For Housing
  7. Leaked documents reveal secretive influence of corporate cash on politics
  8. What the Bayer-Monsanto merger means for food, farmers and the environment
  9. U.S. Census Report: Household Incomes Rise In 2015
  10. Standing Rock Sioux tribe claims small victory in pipeline battle

From the week of September 4 to September 10

To prepare for Cathy’s Weapons of Math Destruction talk, please read this excerpt from the Guardian.

  1. Enslave the robots and free the poor
  2. Move the federal government out of Washington
  3. “Predictive policing” is happening now — and police could learn a lesson from Minority Report.
  4. Wells Fargo Fined $185 Million for Opening Phony Customer Accounts, Charging Fees Without Consent; Executives Go Scot Free
  5. The underlying racism of America’s food system
  6. How Tech Giants Are (Secretly) Devising Real Ethics for Artificial Intelligence
  7. Airbnb tries to fight racism with rule changes
  8. Over a Million People on The Street Demanding New Elections in Brazil
  9. Leading Economists Oppose TPP Provision Giving Corporations Upper Hand in Investor-State Disputes
  10. Making Case for Clean Air, World Bank Says Pollution Cost Global Economy $5 Trillion
  11. An F-Minus for America’s Schools From a Fed-Up Judge
  12. Seventy years ago the thinkers and writers of the Frankfurt School warned of capitalism’s drift towards a cultural apocalypse. Has it already happened, but we’ve been too uncritical to notice? Why a forgotten 1930s critique of capitalism is back in fashion.

From the week of August 28 to September 3

Answer to Cathy’s question: What can we do to stop the TPP? Flush the TPP — #NoLameDuck

  1. The Big Problem With The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Super Court That We’re Not Talking About More depth on problems with corporate tribunals in Trans-Pacific Partnership
  2. Democracy And Capitalism May Be Headed For Divorce
  3. Apple ordered to pay €13bn after EU rules Ireland broke state aid laws
  4. Massive Insurance Giants Call For End To Fossil Fuel Subsidies
  5. Union Decline Lowers Wages Of Nonunion Workers
  6. Documents Show Government’s ‘Strategic’ Meetings With Oil Giants Shell and BP to Discuss Climate Plans
  7. The Color of Pollution: How Environmental Contamination Targets People of Color
  8. President Dilma Rousseff Impeached, New Government to Pursue Right-Wing Agenda
  9. Top Fed Officials Field Questions From Activists Unhappy Over Monetary Policy They met with them but will they really listen? Will this become a regular thing?
  10. African American Cooperatives & Civil Rights Apparently, Blacks have been leading the way on this (in part for lack of alternatives).
  11. Racism and the Price of a College Education

From the week of August 21 to August 27

  1. Rent-to-Own Homes: A Win-Win for Landlords, a Risk for Struggling Tenants
  2. Whose Lives Should Be Saved? Researchers Ask the Public
  3. Is Clinton a secret Occupier?
  4. U.S. Defense Contractors Tell Investors Russian Threat Is Great for Business
  5. FEC Commissioner Wants Help Getting Foreign Money Out of U.S. Elections
  6. What Detroit Needs Now: More Squatters
  7. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on why we need to stop the TPP. 5 minute video. Posted before but too important to miss. Fight on TPP is coming up. We need to be ready.
  8. Native American Pipeline Protest Halts Construction in N. Dakota
  9. In Landmark Decision, NLRB Allows Grad Students at Private Universities to Unionize
  10. Justice Department Says Poor Can’t Be Held When They Can’t Afford Bail
  11. 140,000 people petitioned President Obama to declare Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization. His response was pathetic “The U.S. government does not generate a list of domestic terror organizations, and therefore we are not able to address the formal request of your petition.” Read it in full. Why can’t Obama state the obvious that Black Lives Matter is NOT a terrorist org.? Is that asking too much?
  12. Activists ask Facebook to alter dealings with police after video stream of Korryn Gaines’ confrontation with police was cut off
  13. Washington threatens Brussels over plan to demand billions in unpaid taxes from Apple
  14. Why It’s Impossible to Indict a Cop
  15. Many donors to Clinton Foundation met with her at State

From the week of August 14 to August 20

  1. Obama puts Congress on notice: TPP is coming
  2. Ecuador’s Correa: ‘Neoliberalism Has Failed, Not Socialism’
  3. Stark New Evidence On How Money Shapes America’s Elections
  4. Reforms must address “the destabilization caused by concentrated wealth and power,” says new report
  5. Snapchat Finds Itself on the Wrong Side of a Racial Lens. Again.
  6. Why the NAACP is Calling for a Moratorium on Private Charter Schools
  7. How To Ensure Inclusive Four-Person Debates In Presidential Race
  8. I’m Sick of The So-Called “News”
  9. Corporations moving to partially privatize national parks
  10. Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons. The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.
  11. Does Blockchain Tech Solve Security Problems or Cause New Ones?
  12. Independent drivers no more…Uber buys self-driving truck startup Otto
  13. Nightmare on Main Street: America’s housing system was at the center of the last crisis. It has still not been properly reformed
  14. Comradely capitalism: How America accidentally nationalised its mortgage market
  15. Iran Payment Used As ‘Leverage’ In Prisoner Swap, State Department Says
  16. Here’s why a Deutsche Bank whistleblower turned down a $8.25 million reward

From the week of August 7 to August 13

  1. At last week’s meeting, we agreed that we should have substantive discussions on each of the planks of the Movement for Black Lives platform. Please review it especially the first two planks as they will be discussion topics soon.
  2. Think Tank Scholar or Corporate Consultant? It Depends on the Day
  3. A shamed AARP withdraws from right-wing lobbying organization ALEC
  4. Money, corporations and politics
  5. The Millions of Americans Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Barely Mention: The Poor
  6. Next System Project: Volume 3
  7. Justice Department report: Baltimore police routinely violated civil rights
  8. End Prisons-for-Profit – the Marshall Project

From the week of July 31 to August 6

  1. Black Lives Matter and other groups publish a broad policy platform also in Spanish: Una Vison para las Vidas Negras
  2. Blaming the victim: NYPD Cracks Down on Cyclists After Driver Deliberately Kills Cyclist
  3. Environmental records shattered as climate change ‘plays out before us’
  4. Dear Canada: it’s time to pay for your part in climate change
  5. Republicans just escalated the war over ExxonMobil and climate change
  6. Who should Bernie supporters vote for? Debate between Robert Reich and Chris Hedges on Democracy Now!
  7. We can’t fix policing without talking about race. Explained in simple charts
  8. Rethinking the Role of Government in Society
  9. Has Wall Street Been Tamed?
  10. Homeownership is at a 50-year low. So What?
  11. Trans-Pacific Partnership Updates:
  12. Hacking new money, and old:
  13. Missouri’s head public defender assigns case to Gov., cites overburdened staff
  14. Abolish Civil Asset Forfeiture

From the week of July 24 to July 30

  1. Occupy Hillary? NY Times thinks Clinton may be a secret occupier. If only…
  2. Democratic Convention and related items
  3. Pharma’s Orders Connection between Congressional votes and contributions (this story you can believe).
  4. ‘Reverse Robin Hood’ school vouchers divide Nevada ahead of court ruling
  5. Donald Trump, Peter Thiel and the death of democracy They think capitalism and democracy are incompatible. So, democracy has got to go.
  6. Overcharged: The High Cost of High Finance Finance is costing the U.S. about $1 Trillion per year, on average.
  7. Why JPMorgan’s wage hike is not worth celebrating
  8. Nina Turner speaks at the People’s Convention
  9. Just in case anyone is not yet convinced or wants to show it to friends, here is a new Sierra Club video on how the TPP will undermine environmental efforts. 91 seconds long.
  10. Prosecutors Say Baltimore Police Mishandled Freddie Gray Case
  11. Facebook may owe $5 billion in taxes

From the week of July 17 to July 23

Upcoming events:

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

  1. The global economic benefits of immigration and free borders (pdf)
  2. The Times reports a study claiming that police violence is not biased

    Brian D’Alessandro responds at MathBabe
    We can end police violence in America
    End Broken Windows Policing

  3. A dilemma for the blockchain and cryptocurrency
  4. Michigan’s Governor Snyder (of recent Flint memory) appoints oil lobbyist to run the Dept. of Environmental Quality
  5. #WallOffTrump demonstration at the RNC
  6. Fences: A Brexit Diary
  7. Crispr: Chinese scientists to pioneer gene-editing trial on humans
  8. Kaine Pick Won’t Help Clinton Win Over Anti-Wall Street Critics

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?
    1. How to build a movement?
    2. We can end police violence in America
    3. Reposting: Elizabeth Warren on why we must stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
  2. Philly airport workers vote to strike during the DNC
  3. The South China Sea: Explaining the Dispute
  4. How technology disrupted the truth
  5. Citibank and Venezuela – Perils of Centralized Monetary Systems
  6. 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
  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
  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
  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)
  13. Hillary Clinton’s email problems might be even worse than we thought
  14. The Iraq war, Tony Blair and the Chilcot report
  15. Get in the Streets Right Away: Justice for Alton Sterling & Philando Castile
  16. Within a Decade, Retail Banks will be Dead
  17. Sen. Warren on America’s Monopoly Problem — and how wonderful competitive markets are.

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