Will Voters Know Who’s Funding Who by Election Time? (via Moyers & Company)
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in Wednesday’s McCutcheon decision, noted that he sees no need for government to place restraints on individuals’ campaign spending because such information can be found “almost…
Who could have predicted? Just about every DFH who tried to warn us:
In a series of preliminary opinions, an international tribunal of conscience has condemned massive violations of human rights in Mexico.
Now wrapping up a four-year process of evidence gathering, members of the Mexican chapter of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) have found grave threats to the environment, food sovereignty, indigenous autonomy, and democratic rights of self-expression and organization of the Mexican people.
A common denominator is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), according to PPT representatives and collaborators.
“Groups and movements participating in the tribunal have documented ways in which NAFTA has been pernicious to Mexico’s social, economic and cultural life,” says Dr. Zulma Mendez, member of the Group for the Articulation of Justice in Ciudad Juarez and a participant in the gender violence and femicide section of the PPT.
According to Mendez,“The unequal relations of power that are present in NAFTA and which help to make it attractive to U.S. interests have been addressed: Transnational corporations that divest communities of a viable future through practices that turn communities into mass production spaces, workers into a pair of arms, and life as disposable…”
Great interview with Matt Taibbi on the Daily Show:
On March 5, Chicago’s city council overwhelmingly voted to approve Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposal to divert $55 million of taxpayer resources into a new privately run hotel in the city’s south loop. Coming just before Emanuel pled poverty to justify his push for pension cuts and property tax increases, the hotel handout was part of the mayor’s expensive development plan that also features a basketball arena for DePaul University.
The vote followed a September decision by the mayor’s appointees on the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority to give Marriott the coveted contract to run the new hotel. The decision by the state-city entity could be a huge financial windfall for Marriott. After all, the company will be running one of America’s largest hotels next to America’s largest convention center – and doing so with massive taxpayer subsidies, but without having to pay to construct the hotel and without having to pay property taxes.
Amid self-congratulatory press releases, what Mayor Emanuel did not mention – and what has gone completely unreported until now – is what a joint investigation by PandoDaily and the Chicago Reader has now confirmed: in the year leading up to Chicago’s lucrative giveaway to Marriott, the hedge fund of one of Emanuel’s largest campaign contributors bought millions of shares of stock in the hotel company.
An anti-union group said today that Volkswagen is considering disregarding the February election results over United Auto Workers representation at the Chattanooga plant and accepting authorization cards the union claims to have collected last year.
Matt Patterson of the Center for Worker Freedom said that such a course of action “would hand over its Chattanooga assembly plant to the UAW in spite of that union’s failure to win a February secret ballot election.”
VW workers rejected the union in a 712 to 626 vote after a three-day election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.
Patterson, citing unidentified sources, said VW is considering recognizing the cards even though they’ve never been examined by a third party and a number of VW workers have complained to labor authorities that they had been tricked or coerced into signing such cards.
No thanks to the ambitious governor who ran as a moderate and governs like a wingnut.
Editorial: N.J. courts reverse Gov. Christie’s misguided rejection of greenhouse gas initiative (via NJ.com)
You can’t always get what you want. The Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court a state reaffirmed that conclusion with its ruling last month that Gov. Chris Christie unilateral decision to remove New Jersey from a regional pollution control…
‘What a tangled web we weave,” indeed Be sure to read this one.
I have the perfect solution. When you calculate our per-capita income, exclude the top 1%!
(NEWSER) – The FDA only approved Sovaldi in December, but the hepatitis C treatment is already setting records, with as much as $10 billion in sales expected in the first year alone. And why not? It has few side effects, cures 90% of patients, and, oh yeah, costs $1,000 a day. That price tag is causing turmoil throughout the health care system, CBS reports. Doctors can’t resist prescribing it, but several insurers might see a more than 10% drop in earnings because of it, one analyst tells the Wall Street Journal. There are an estimated 3.2 million hepatitis C sufferers in the US, and if all those eligible for Sovaldi took it, the price could be as much as $27 billion, one investment bank calculated, according to Forbes.
A lot of that burden would fall on taxpayers, because hepatitis C patients are often veterans, prisoners, uninsured, or on Medicaid. Several Democratic Congressmen recently sent a letter demanding that Sovaldi’s maker, Gilead, explain the price tag—especially given that it costs 99% less in hepatitis-ridden Egypt; Congress has no power to alter the price, however. Gilead says its prices ($84,000 for a full course of treatment in the US) key off a country’s per-capita income, and argues that it’s still a good deal long-term, because it cures patients in 12 weeks. UPI points out that some hepatitis C sufferers ultimately require a liver transplant, which costs upward of $175,000.
Banks are getting cheaper rates because everyone assumes the government will bail them out again.
H/t Sweta Patel.
On the Money: ‘McCutcheon’ Decided (via Moyers & Company)
Every week Moyers & Company producer Gail Ablow shares her must-read money and politics stories. The moment that Supreme Court watchers had anticipated finally arrived Wednesday, as the Supreme Court struck down “aggregate limits” on political contributions…
