Public Policy News and Research

Inequality and the Estate Tax

2011-11-20T00:08:00.001-05:00

TEDxHampshireCollege Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies' Program on Inequality and the Common Good gives an entertaining TED talk on the economic and moral rationale for increasing taxes on the wealthy...

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The Situation: An Introduction to Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, Deep Capture by Jon Hanson, David Yosifon [Deep Capture]

2011-11-12T08:35:00.000-05:00

SSRNquote: This article introduces an innovative approach to legal theory which the authors call "critical realism." The approach endeavors to integrate insights of social psychology, and affiliated social sciences, together with the methods of conventional economic analysis, as well as traditional methods of legal inquiry. Canvassing robust findings from across the behavioral sciences, the

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Wall St. Helped Greece to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis - Goldman Sachs and Greek Economic Collapse

2011-11-04T23:18:00.000-04:00

NYTimes.comAs in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere.

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How did Vioxx debacle happen?

2011-11-01T20:58:00.000-04:00

USATODAY.comq:The study, an analysis of a database of 1.4 million Kaiser Permanente members, found that those who took Vioxx were more likely to suffer a heart attack or sudden cardiac death than those who took Celebrex, Vioxx's main rival. Based on their findings, Graham and his collaborators linked Vioxx to more than 27,000 heart attacks or sudden cardiac deaths nationwide from the time it came

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U.S. Worst in Child Abuse : Discovery News

2011-10-29T12:11:00.000-04:00

Discovery News

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Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies - YouTube

2011-10-25T23:42:00.000-04:00

YouTube / TED

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US Hunger Rate Triple That in China

2011-10-23T23:50:00.000-04:00

Global ResearchAmerican workers are now three times more likely than Chinese workers to lack the means of feeding their families, according to a startling new report from the Gallup organization. The polling group found that 19 percent of Americans worried about being able to feed themselves or their families, compared to only 6 percent of Chinese.The Gallup finding showed a near reversal in the

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Prosecute the Wall Street Mafia! Bill Black, Dylan Ratigan & David DeGraw on the Destruction of the Rule of Law | AmpedStatus

2011-10-23T23:43:00.000-04:00

AmpedStatusIn this video, David DeGraw joins Bill Black on the Dylan Ratigan Show to discuss the “epidemic of fraud” and the people who need to be held personally responsible for the destruction of our economic system.

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Did Petraeus Try to Lie to America?

2011-10-15T11:54:00.000-04:00

Consortiumnewsq:On April 25, 2008, Joint Chiefs Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, told reporters that Gen. Petraeus in Baghdad would give a briefing “in the next couple of weeks” providing detailed evidence of “just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability.” Petraeus’s staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event in which captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then

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"Darrell Issa, Step Away From the Corporations" By Amy Goodman

2011-09-24T08:59:00.000-04:00

Democracy Nowq:The CDC says foodborne illnesses cause millions of people to get sick every year, sending 128,000 to the hospital and killing 3,000—that’s more than eight people a day.

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James K. Galbraith: The Final Death (and Next Life) of Maynard Keynes | MyFDL

2011-08-10T22:55:00.001-04:00

James K. Galbraith: The Final Death (and Next Life) of Maynard Keynes | MyFDL It’s of course a great privilege for me to be here in this role and especially on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the publication of the General Theory. Two years ago, as you may recall, our profession enjoyed a moment of ferment. Economists who had built their careers on inflation targeting, rational

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Wealthy Families, Corporate-Backed Foundations Behind Push for School Vouchers | Center for Media and Democracy

2011-06-01T23:05:00.000-04:00

Center for Media and Democracy: The sudden, rapid push for school voucher programs nationwide is not due to any public outcry or grassroots uprising for these programs. For decades these programs have been a hard-sell with the American public. Instead, a small group of wealthy individuals and corporate-backed, private foundations have been behind these efforts to divert public taxpayer dollars

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Fox News' Lies Keep Them Out of Canada, by Robert Kennedy Jr.

2011-03-20T11:18:00.000-04:00

From Reader supported news:: As America's middle class battles for its survival on the Wisconsin barricades - against various Koch Oil surrogates and the corporate toadies at Fox News - fans of enlightenment, democracy and justice can take comfort from a significant victory north of the Wisconsin border. Fox News will not be moving into Canada after all! The reason: Canadian regulators announced

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Fox News' Union-Busting Crusade

2011-03-20T11:10:00.000-04:00

From media matters:Fox News' coverage of the recent protests in Wisconsin was rife with falsehoods about unions and attacks on the pro-union protesters. This continues a long pattern of smears and fabrications that characterizes Fox News' campaign to scapegoat and vilify labor unions.

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Mike Whitney: The Student Loan Swindle

2011-03-13T04:05:00.000-04:00

From Counterpunch: "First, the student loan industry is huge – a large majority of students from every type of school are in debt. Debt is held by 62 percent of students enrolled at public colleges and universities, 72 percent at private non-profit schools and 96 percent at private, for-profit ('proprietary') schools. It was announced last summer that total student loan debt, at $830 billion, now

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IMF, the Real Dictator in Tunisia

2011-03-11T21:42:00.000-05:00

From The Media Freedom Foundation:The western media is quick to claim that Tunisian dictator, General Zine el Abidine Ben Ali is single handedly responsible for the civil and economic unrest that has plagued Tunisia since he was placed in power in November 1987. What is less widely known is that it is actually the IMF and Wall Street that is responsible for the extreme mistreatment of the

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How to Read Gates’s Shift on the Wars, by CIA White House Briefer, Ray McGovern

2011-03-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

Antiwar: In Establishment Washington, Defense Secretary Robert Gates enjoys a charmed life based on a charming persona. The Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) is always ready with fulsome praise for his "candor" and "leadership" – and even for his belated recognition that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were nuts."Certain kinds of public candor are so unexpected that they have the shock value of a

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The Story of Citizens United v. FEC (2011)

2011-03-01T20:45:00.000-05:00

Cenk Uygur, Matt Taibbi, Why isn't Wall Street in jail?

2011-02-20T11:28:00.000-05:00

Is Double-Dip Economic Collapse Being Prevented?

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Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? || The Mental Stumbling Block

2011-02-19T11:25:00.000-05:00

Rolling Stone Politics: The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple,

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Is Rolling Stone Finance Coverage Better than the PBS NewsHour?

2011-02-19T09:34:00.000-05:00

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics: "The pattern of inaction toward shady deals on Wall Street grew worse and worse after Turner left, with one slam-dunk case after another either languishing for years or disappearing altogether. Perhaps the most notorious example involved Gary Aguirre, an SEC investigator who was literally fired after he questioned the agency's failure to

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Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

2011-02-19T09:26:00.000-05:00

Rolling Stone Politics:The relationship between the SEC and the DOJ is necessarily close, even symbiotic. Since financial crime-fighting requires a high degree of financial expertise — and since the typical drug-and-terrorism-obsessed FBI agent can't balance his own checkbook, let alone tell a synthetic CDO from a credit default swap — the Justice Department ends up leaning heavily on the SEC's

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Facebook won't let me delete posts from my recent activity on my wall? - Yahoo! Answers

2011-02-11T23:27:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! Answers:

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Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools | Center for Media and Democracy [Is Bill Gates Failing?]

2011-02-09T20:36:00.000-05:00

From Center for Media and Democracy:The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has

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Enron, ultimate agent of the American empire: Part I: Money to get power, power to protect money -- Motto of the Medici family

2011-02-03T20:31:00.000-05:00

From Enron: "As a corporate agent and beneficiary of US and western military and intelligence operations, Enron is also no more an aberration than the United Fruit and Standard Fruit companies, whose dominance of Central America during the 1960s depended on cooperative operations with the CIA, the Pentagon and organized crime."

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