Plutocracy

Barbara Ehrenreich | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The white working class, which usually inspires liberal concern only for its paradoxical, Republican-leaning voting habits, has recently become newsworthy for something else: according to economist Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the winner of the latest Nobel Prize in economics, its members in the 45- to 54-year-old age group […]

Employment

The GOP Race as America’s Hunger Games

contributors

Nomi Prins | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Fact: too many Republican candidates are clogging the political scene. Perhaps what’s needed is an American Hunger Games to cut the field to size. Each candidate could enter the wilderness with one weapon and one undocumented worker and see who wins. Unlike in the fictional Hunger Games for […]

Featured

‘Very Soon’ US forces will Arrive in Syria; Russia bombs near Turkey

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Turkey’s government is very unhappy today about developments in Syria. President Obama’s special envoy, Brett McGurk, said Sunday that the some 50 men from special operations forces will arrive in Syria in the very near future. But Turkey has been upset that the US troops will […]

Climate Change

#ExxonKnew Escalates as NY Att’y Gen. Subpoenas Oil Giant Over Climate Crimes

contributors

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – – “‘Exxon Knew’ just joined the category of truly serious scandals,” said 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben “Just as New York’s Teddy Roosevelt took on the Standard Oil Trust a century ago, New York’s attorney general has shown great courage in holding to account arguably the richest […]

Climate Change

Fury as Probe Demanded into Exxon’s Historic Climate Crime

contributors

By Jon Queally, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – – A broad coalition of community groups along with prominent leaders from the nation’s top civil rights, environmental, and indigeneous people’s movements on Friday sent a joint letter to the U.S. Department of Justice demanding a federal investigation into allegations that oil giant ExxonMobil knew about […]

Climate Change

Top Five Things Congress Should investigate instead of Benghazi

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – – The fruitless carnival barking that was the GOP Benghazi inquisition did the nation the disservice of taking focus off the things really wrong with US policies, and places there really was wrongdoing. So here are some suggestions for real investigations: 1. We still don’t know why Bush-Cheney […]

Democratic Party

Did Hillary just Win the Presidency because Biden couldn’t Raise $2 bn. this Fall?

contributors

Patty Culhane | (Aljazeera English) | – – “United States Vice President Joe Biden has said will not run for president in 2016, ending months of indecision and removing one of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s biggest potential obstacles to the party’s nomination. Patty Culhane reports.” Aljazeera English: “Biden says he won’t contest 2016 US presidential […]

Economy

Trans-Pacific partnership raises the barriers for the access to affordable medicines

contributors

By Carlos M. Correa | (Inter Press Service) | – – GENEVA (IPS) – The pharmaceutical industry from the US and Europe scored a major victory with the adoption, in 1994, of a binding agreement on intellectual property (Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights – TRIPS) in the context of the nascent […]

Bernie Sanders

Thanks to Sanders, Democratic Party Just Debated Capitalism

contributors

By Sarah Lazare, staff writer | ( Commondreams.org) | – – Presidential hopefuls broke usual parameters of discourse when they debated capitalism versus socialism Tuesday night. Breaking the usual parameters of election season discourse, Democratic presidential hopefuls Tuesday night debated the merits of capitalism on the national stage—a development that many attribute to the candidacy […]