Redefining the problem: the corporate predator state
Katrina van den Heuvel writes in The Washington Post:
True conservatives are — or should be — offended by corporate welfare as well. Conservative economists Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales argue that it is time to “save capitalism from the capitalists,” urging conservatives to support strong measures to break up monopolies, cartels and the predatory use of political power to distort competition.
Here is where left and right meet, not in a bipartisan big-money fix, but in an odd bedfellows campaign to clean out Washington.
Read her piece here.
New narrative for a new economy
John Cavanagh and Robin Broad write on the new economy movement:
If the Occupy movement popularized the call to end extreme inequality, Hurricane Sandy is popularizing the call to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure in a green and resilient manner. Weaving these themes together can make for a gripping narrative.
Read more here.
The cancer lobby
Big Chem is worried about your health – excuse me, worried about you worrying about your health – writes Nicholas Kristof in today’s Times:
Big Chem apparently worries that you might be confused if you learned that formaldehyde caused cancer of the nose and throat.
Read about the cancer lobby’s effort to suppress the National Institutes of Health’s updated Report on Carcinogens here.
“One dollar, one vote”
Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz writes on revealed preference in our political system:
President George W. Bush claimed that we did not have enough money for health insurance for poor American children, costing a few billion dollars a year. But all of a sudden we had $150 billion to bail out AIG, the insurance company. That shows that something is wrong with our political system. It is more akin to “one dollar, one vote” than to “one person, one vote.”
Read the whole interview here.
One nation under Wall Street
Robert Scheer, writing in Truthdig, applauds Sheila Bair’s new book:
If you want a compelling-if-unintended reason to loathe the two-party choice, check out the new book “Bull by the Horns” by former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. Her principled but ultimately futile effort to check the overwhelming power of the Wall Street lobby under both Republican and Democratic administrations indelibly documents the hoax that now passes for our representative democracy.
Read his take on the first presidential debate here.
When Corporatism Masquerades as Liberty
In “Capitalism Unmasked,” Econ4′s joint project with AlterNet, Edward Harrison writes on the peril to democracy posed by out-of-control credit markets:
“Corporatism masquerading as Liberty” … is a sort of crony capitalism steeped in the language of liberty that some are using to remove the protections we have built up to uphold and safeguard our individual rights. The goal of this corporatism is to give corporations the sorts of liberties that permit them to use their size, influence and money to tilt the playing field to their advantage. Absent any kind of regulatory oversight, these behemoths can run roughshod over individuals, trampling their rights and liberties in the process.
Read his piece here.
People’s Guide to the Federal Budget
New from the National Priorities Project:
The only thing stronger than money in politics is an informed electorate.
Find the report here.
Fracking democracy
In 2010, Pittsburgh’s City Council voted unanimously to ban hydraulic fracturing for natural gas extraction within city limits. Now the Pennsylvania legislature is moving to deny local governments the right to protect the local environment:
We don’t have a fracking problem. We have a democracy problem.
Read about it here.
