The absolute least Americans can hope for from a major government settlement with a large industry over well-documented crimes is that the industry wouldn’t, after signing the settlement, just continue to commit the same crimes day after day. After all, following the tobacco industry settlement, cigarette makers did manage to stop advertising to teenagers that their product had no medical side effects.But new evidence reveals the nation’s largest banks have apparently continued to fabricate documents, rip off customers and illegally kick people out of their homes, even after inking a series of settlements over the same abuses. And the worst part of it all is that the main settlement over foreclosure fraud was so weakly written that it actually allows such criminal conduct to occur, at least up to a certain threshold. Potentially hundreds of thousands of homes could be effectively stolen by the big banks without any sanctions.Continue Reading… … Read More
Meet the grad student who upended the GOP
The world of economics has just changed, and somebody has some ‘splaining to do! Please savor the following twisted tale of bad math, academic folly and pundit hubris. Since 2010, the names of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous in political and economic circles. These two Harvard economists wrote a paper, “Growth in the Time of Debt” that has been used by everyone from Paul Ryan to Olli Rehn of the European Commission to justify harmful austerity policies. The authors purported to show that once a country’s gross debt to GDP ratio crosses the threshold of 90 percent, economic growth slows dramatically. Debt, in other words, seemed very scary and bad.Their historical data appeared impressive, as did their credentials. Policymakers and journalists cited the paper to convince the public that instead of focusing on the jobs crisis that was hampering recovery, we should instead focus on deficits. The deficit hawks jumped up and down with excitement.But something didn’t smell right.Continue Reading… … Read More
‘Arab-Israeli conflict at heart of Arab world & Iran matters’ – Assad Aide (RT EXCLUSIVE)
http://www.youtube.com/v/td6wbtKdHRo?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Continue reading: ‘Arab-Israeli conflict at heart of Arab world & Iran matters’ – Assad Aide (RT EXCLUSIVE)
Glenn Beck’s favorite immigrants
Did you know that Glenn Beck has pledged $50,000 to the legal fund of an immigrant family facing deportation from the United States? As of April 9th, a petition to the White House to grant the family permanent asylum, organized by Christian conservative groups, topped 100,000 signatories, the threshold to trigger a response from the Administration.Confused? I can explain. The Romeike family aren’t just any immigrants. They are evangelical Christians from Germany. And, oh yeah, they’re white.Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are devout Christians who want to homeschool their five children. But under German law, attendance at an officially-recognized school — whether a public school or a private religious or secular school — is mandatory. Facing over $10,000 in mounting fines and police escorting their children to school daily, the Romeikes were contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association — which was looking to expand its work internationally — and suggested the Romeike’s resettle in Morristown, Tennessee, and apply for political asylum. Continue Reading… … Read More
Is there an actual tipping point for global warming?
Is there a chance that human intervention—rising temperatures, massive land-use changes, biodiversity loss and so on—could “tip” the entire world into a new climatic state? And if so, does that change what we should do about it?As far back as 2008 NASA’s James Hansen argued that we had crossed a “tipping point” in the Arctic with regard to summer sea ice. The diminishing ice cover had moved past a critical threshold, and from then on levels would drop precipitously toward zero, with little hope of recovery. Other experts now say that recent years have confirmed that particular cliff-fall, and the September 2012 record minimum—an astonishing 18 percent lower than 2007’s previous record—was likely no fluke.Continue Reading… … Read More
UK growth halved as budget ‘for an aspiration nation’ unveiled
Despite the slash in expected economic growth, ChancellorOsborne vowed to stick the course on austerity. “It is takinglonger than anyone hoped, but we must hold to the right track,”he said.The prospects for reducing national debt aren’t looking rosyeither, with Osborne forecasting it will rise to 85% of GDP and notstart decreasing until 2017-2018, two years later than previouslypredicted.But hopes for a better future are still high. Osborne said thatalthough it was taking longer than expected “we are, slowly butsurely, fixing our country’s economic problems”. “If you want towork hard and get on; we are on your side,” said thechancellor, adding it was a Budget “for an aspiration nation”.The package of measures presented by Osborne also includes a cut incorporation tax to 20% and the introduction of a new threshold forincome tax, which will stand at £10,000 by year 2014. The latterbecame available by squeezing public spending. Some measures toboost the housing market have also been revealed. Thegovernment will now offer an interest-free loan worth 20% of thevalue of a new-build house starting next year. With the hope ofstimulating small business in the country, Osborne’s budget offersa £2,000 allowance before paying employer National Insurancecontributions, in what is described as taking “tax off jobs”.But Osborne’s approach has clearly proved that one can’t dig itsway out of a hole by digging downwards, says Salman Shaheen, editorat International Tax Review magazine.”I think austerity has failed and now you really need to bespending money, injecting it into the economy, investing in housingprojects, infrastructure, roads, schools, these are urgent tasksnow. I think we need to create jobs in the economy, we need tocreate houses, and we need to stimulate investment,” Mr Shaheentold RT.”I suspect we’ll hear quite a lot about tax evasion in thisbudget. It’s been a news agenda lately and the chancellor can’tafford to ignore that. We are going to hear some talk of thegeneral anti-abuse rule. I feel like it may well be lip service,because this general anti-abuse rule is not going to catch theheadline grabbing schemes that we’ve all heard about with Google,Amazon and Starbucks. So I think the chancellor is going to have togo a lot further if he wants to address the problem of corporatetax avoidance.” … Read More
Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban Dropped from Senate Gun Bill
Harry Reid said on Tuesday he hopes have a bill to address gun violence on the Senate floor soon after the Easter break. He also confirmed that measure will not include an assault weapons ban. … Read More
