Democracy gone Astray: Sunday, April 17, 2016

Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Verizon CEO Attack on Bernie Sanders Receives Gushing Praise — From Fellow Execs

As 40,000 Verizon workers went on strike Wednesday to protest cuts to health care and pensions, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders rallied with some of them in New York City, blasting the company’s practices.

“This is just another major American corporation trying to destroy the lives of working Americans,” Sanders told the workers, who decided to strike after failing to reach a contract. “Today you are standing up not just for justice for Verizon workers, you’re standing up for millions of Americans who don’t have a union.”

The Panama Papers’ revelations of widespread tax avoidance by the global elite have already forced a handful of high-profile resignations, an indignant response from the Kremlin, and embarrassment for the head of the British government. The pitchforks are out for the wealthy individuals and companies who take advantage of the technically lawful shadow network of shell companies and tax havens.

So far, the only proposals for reform have focused on modest oversight or penalties for people who go too far over the line.

For defense against the fungal pathogens that attack crops—think the blight that bedeviled Irish potato fields in the 19th century—farmers turn to fungicides. They're widely sprayed on fruit, vegetable, and nut crops, and in the past decade, they've become quite common in the corn and soybean fields (see here and here for more). But as the use of fungicides has ramped up in recent years, some scientists are starting to wonder: What are these chemicals doing to the ecosystems they touch, and to us?

Scott Walker’s food stamp passion didn’t win him the GOP nomination, but the fire still burns.

WASHINGTON — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and 10 other GOP governors trumpeted the benefits of drug testing food stamp recipients in a letter to Republicans on Capitol Hill this week.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five out of eight of the biggest U.S. banks do not have credible plans for winding down operations during a crisis without the help of public money, federal regulators said on Wednesday, saying the institutions could face stricter oversight if they do not fix their plans.

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrians voted in a parliamentary election in government-held areas of the country on Wednesday in what voters called a show of support for President Bashar al-Assad, who is holding the poll in defiance of opponents seeking to oust him.

The election is going ahead independently of a U.N.-led peace process aimed at finding a political solution to the five-year-long war. The government says it is being held on time in line with the constitution. The opposition says the vote is illegitimate, while Britain and France dismissed it as “flimsy facade” and a “sham”.

The offices of the firm at the centre of the Panama Papers revelations were raided by police officers on Tuesday as investigators prepared to meet in Paris to launch an unprecedented inquiry into global tax evasion.

Panama’s attorney general ordered the raid on the Panamanian offices of Mossack Fonseca in an attempt to “establish the use of the firm for illicit activities”.

Balfour Beatty and Interserve, two of the UK’s largest construction companies, have been accused of a raft of labour abuses by migrant workers employed on large-scale projects operated by companies that the firms co-own in Qatar.

Labourers on construction sites operated by BK Gulf, co-owned by Balfour Beatty, and Gulf Contracting Company (GCC), co-owned by Interserve, allege that they have been exploited and mistreated by labour supply companies hired by the firms to furnish construction sites in Doha with cheap manual workers.

David Cameron has been accused of employing ten times as many civil servants to crackdown on benefit fraud than chasing tax avoidance.

But the Prime Minister rejected the claim by the Scottish National Party’s Angus Robertson as “bogus” during his weekly parliamentary grilling that was dominated by the fall-out from the Panama Papers.

During Prime Minister’s Questions, Robertson, the SNP’s leader in Westminster, told the Commons that 3,250 Department for Work and Pensions staff have been specifically investigating benefit fraud - while only 300 HM Revenue and Customs staff have been investigating tax evasion.

Jeremy Corbyn has attacked the Government for spending more than £9m of taxpayers’ cash on its pro-EU referendum leaflet.

Ahead of a big speech on Europe, the Labour leader stressed that voters wanted a “more even approach” to the information distributed ahead of the June 23 poll.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dismissed Sen. Bernie Sanders questioning her qualifications to be President as "silly" -- and looking at her résumé alone, she'd be right -- but there is also the need to judge her performance in her various jobs.

What is troubling about Clinton's record is that she has left behind a trail strewn with failures and even catastrophes. Indeed, her highest profile undertakings almost universally ended in disaster -- and a person's record should matter when voters are deciding whether to entrust him or her with the most powerful office on earth.

Tune in to news coverage of the presidential election and you're bound to hear someone comparing the Republican Party's current attempt to pick a presidential nominee to the circus.

Others have suggested that if Donald Trump becomes the official Republican candidate, it will rip the heart out of the party. Some claim that the party is already so divided it might not recover.

The bombshell publication of the “Panama Papers,” leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in shell companies, has triggered both outrage and skepticism. In an April 3 article titled “Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak,” UK blogger Craig Murray writes that the whistleblower no doubt had good intentions; but he made the mistake of leaking his 11.5 million documents to the corporate-controlled Western media, which released only those few documents incriminating opponents of Western financial interests. Murray writes:

Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland.

Toronto police Supt. Mark Fenton is in court this morning for a sentencing hearing, months after he was found guilty of discreditable conduct and two counts of unlawful arrests for his actions during the G20 summit.

Fenton is the highest ranking officer to be charged for their actions at the June, 2010 summit. He was convicted last August under the Police Services Act.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government should scrap a controversial deal to sell armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia unless it can prove the vehicles won’t be used against civilians in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, says Conservative Foreign Affairs Critic Tony Clement.

Speaking to reporters on the way into a caucus meeting, Clement said the Conservatives initially endorsed the deal because analysis showed the vehicles were most likely to be used in the fight on terror in the region. However, Clement said the situation in the area has changed and he is now concerned the vehicles could be used against civilians.

The shortage of affordable housing doesn't just put some Canadian families in constant stress and fear of outright homelessness -- it can also contribute to breaking families up, or keeping them apart.

That's what happened to single mom Blaine Clayton.

In 2013, Clayton was struggling. Sharing a BC Housing subsidized two-bedroom apartment with her two boys under the age of eight, the young mother was, by her own admission, drinking so heavily that the Ministry of Children and Family Development took the boys into care.

Toronto could lose at least 2,184 infant and toddler child care spaces — and fees would skyrocket — under proposed provincial child care changes aimed at addressing 12-month maternity leaves and full-day kindergarten, according to a city report.

A minimum of 325 infant spaces and 1,859 toddler spots would disappear while costs would soar by almost $21 million under the plan to change child care age groupings, group sizes and staff-child ratios, says the report to be discussed by the city’s community development committee Wednesday.

Thousands of intellectually disabled adults in Canada are earning less than $2 an hour under sheltered workshop programs.

In part one of her investigation, rabble labour reporter Teuila Fuatai looks at what life is like for program participants.

Sheltered workshops: The ins and outs

For more than 20 years, Kevin Possamai and Warren Diogte were among the thousands of intellectually disabled Canadian adults being paid pennies on the hour for participating in sheltered workshop programs.

TORONTO — The International Monetary Fund is lowering its economic growth projections for Canada and the world.

Slowing growth in global oil exports, low crude prices and weak demand for non-oil commodities were identified as factors.

The IMF is now projecting Canada's economy to grow by 1.5 per cent this year and by 1.9 per cent next year.

Uber has joined the likes of Facebook and Google in releasing a transparency report, breaking down how it shares customers’ data with authorities.

The company seems uncomfortable with the amount of information it has been asked to share.

The inaugural report released Tuesday found the ride service had shared data on at least 13 million riders and drivers between July and December of last year — most of it at the request of U.S. transportation regulators such as the California Public Utilities Commission.

In these mean streets of globalized capitalism in crisis, it has become profitable to turn poverty and inequality into a tourist attraction.

The South African Emoya Luxury Hotel and Spa company has made a glamorized spectacle of it. The resort recently advertised an opportunity for tourists to stay "in our unique Shanty Town ... and experience traditional township living within a safe private game reserve environment." A cluster of simulated shanties outside of Bloemfontein that the company has constructed "is ideal for team building, braais, bachelors [parties], theme parties and an experience of a lifetime," read the ad. The luxury accommodations, made to appear from the outside as shacks, featured paraffin lamps, candles, a battery-operated radio, an outside toilet, a drum and fireplace for cooking, as well as under-floor heating, air conditioning and wireless internet access. A well-dressed, young white couple is pictured embracing in a field with the corrugated tin shanties in the background. The only thing missing in this fantasy world of sanitized space and glamorized poverty was the people themselves living in poverty.

At a time when European governments are worried about radicalized youth joining the self-described Islamic State, many young adults in the Arab world can’t envision any scenario in which they could possibly support the extremist group, according to the 8th annual Arab Youth Survey published Tuesday.

Half of the participants ranked the Islamic State as the top problem facing the Middle East. Almost 80 percent ruled out any support for the militant group, even if it renounced its violent tactics, and 76 percent said the group will fail to achieve its ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic state.

Populism has a long and colorful history in American politics, from Huey Long on the left and George Wallace on the right, to — more recently — Ross Perot in 1992 and Donald Trump today. But the roots of populism stretch much further back in time — more than two millennia, to the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic.

Recent bankruptcy filings have revealed that Chris Horner, who regularly derides climate science on Fox News Channel, has financial ties to the coal industry.

According to recent press reports, Peabody Energy — the nation’s largest investor-owned coal company — is now on the verge of bankruptcy. Among the many consequences: The company’s court-ordered disclosures are likely to yield hard evidence of Peabody’s direct links to climate science denial.

A federal court heard oral arguments in a mortgage lender’s challenge to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fine.

The judges present seemed open to ruling the entire agency unconstitutional.

An unfavorable ruling would be the biggest legal setback yet for the CFPB, but it is liable to be overturned on appeal.

Investors and the global environment are at risk because the nation’s primary securities regulator has done “almost nothing” in recent years to ensure that publicly traded companies properly warn their investors about the threat of climate change, according to a top environmental adviser to U.S. money managers.

The lack of action by the Securities and Exchange Commission under Chair Mary Jo White represents a reversal from the agency’s aggressive approach under its previous leader Mary Schapiro, who in 2010 instructed companies to publicly describe the risks they face from climate change, according to Mindy Lubber, president of nonprofit group Ceres.

If you follow the news or listen to the Republican presidential candidates, then you’ve probably heard that premiums for some Affordable Care Act plans went way up last year.

But now the Obama administration is saying that, for the vast majority of people buying coverage through healthcare.gov, premiums are only 4 percent higher than they were last year.

Can both things be true? Is it possible that some insurers hiked rates, but most people buying through the Obamacare exchanges aren’t paying much more?

Verizon Communications Inc’s wireline employees will go on strike starting Wednesday after reaching an impasse in talks over a new labor contract, union officials said on Monday.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers unions say they jointly represent nearly 40,000 employees of the wireline business, which includes FiOS Internet, telephone and TV services.

NEW YORK — Donald Trump on Tuesday slammed the chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), claiming the party's system for selecting its presidential nominee is a “scam” and a “disgrace.”

During an exclusive interview with The Hill at Trump Tower, Trump said, “It's a disgrace for the party. And Reince Priebus should be ashamed of himself. He should be ashamed of himself because he knows what's going on.”

Americans wondering what life might be like in the near future — after a President Donald Trump acts on his promise to “open up our libels laws,” so that politicians with easily bruised egos can sue reporters or commentators for hurting their feelings — should pay attention to what is happening this week in Germany.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, a law meant to close the wage gap between working men and women. But more than 50 years later, women on average earn just 79 cents for every dollar paid to men. And according to a new report by the National Partnership for Women and Families that was released before National Equal Pay Day on Tuesday, the persistent wage gap means women lose a combined $500 billion every year.

Prospective voters in Kansas were given different instructions for how and when to register to vote depending on whether they received the English- or Spanish-language voter guide issued by the Kansas secretary of state's office.

The English-language version correctly informed voters that they could register up to 21 days before an election. But the Spanish-language version told voters that they had only 15 days to register, according to the Kansas City Star. Passports were listed as a valid proof of citizenship in the English version; in the Spanish version, they were not.

This spring, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) bypassed the state legislature to unilaterally cut $41 million in education funding. Now, he’s getting hit with a lawsuit.

State Attorney General Andy Beshear (D) is suing Bevin over what he sees as a violation of state law and the governor’s authority. Bevin ordered a 4.5 percent cut to higher education funding in March, and Beshear told the governor he had one week to renege on his budget cuts or he would face a lawsuit. Bevin has refused to renounce his budget cuts, so the attorney general is following through on his promise to take the governor to court.

After several businesses have abandoned plans to expand in North Carolina and countless others have abandoned their travel to the state, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) issued an executive order Tuesday that addresses various aspects of HB 2, the anti-LGBT law that the state legislature forced through in a single day.

Claiming that there is “a great deal of misinformation, misinterpretation, confusion, a lot of passion and frankly, selective outrage and hypocrisy, especially against the great state of North Carolina,” McCrory said that his order would “affirm and improve the state’s commitment to privacy and equality.”

One of the most common arguments made about the gender pay gap is that it simply doesn’t exist. Take this Wall Street Journal op-ed lamenting the “The ‘Wage Gap’ Myth That Won’t Die,” or this one from CBS Money Watch that asserts “The Gender Pay Gap Is A Complete Myth.” Read the comments in just about any article on the subject. Pay gap deniers abound.

But dismissing the pay gap as a myth created by rabid feminists who can’t wrap their brains around the subtleties of economics is a crappy thing to do, and it’s also plain innacurate. So on Equal Pay Day — a day that marks how far into 2016 women have to work to catch up with what men earned last year — we explore why pay equity simply has not been achieved, and why that cannot be dismissed.

The “79 cents” claim isn’t wrong.

About 15 months ago, in January 2015, Paul Ryan announced he wouldn’t seek the presidency in 2016. On Tuesday, he said it again, using his strongest phrase to date: “I do not want, nor will I accept, the nomination for our party.”

It was nearly the “Shermanesque” pledge many expected. The infamous words — “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected” — first uttered by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman during the presidential election of 1884, have become the standard for anyone genuinely not interested in a particular office. And while Ryan didn’t perfectly repeat the pledge, his vow that he wouldn’t accept the nomination is likely strong enough to end the speculation.

For the first time in Canadian history, more than half of the federal government’s revenue in 2014 will come from personal income taxes -- a vivid sign that Canada’s tax burden is slowly shifting away from corporations and onto consumers.

It’s the apparent result of successive Liberal and Conservative governments that have cut corporate taxes far more aggressively than they have cut personal income taxes, while increasing “hidden taxes” that mostly impact low-income and middle-income workers.

It all started off so well. Justin Trudeau launched his career as Prime Minister with big promises to First Nations and the growing number of Canadians concerned about the environment. He installed indigenous MPs in key portfolios like Justice and Fisheries; vowed a new respect for Aboriginal people and their rights; re-introduced the climate to Environment Canada.

But five months later, it appears former New York Governor Mario Cuomo was right when he famously said, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” And the prose Justin Trudeau is authoring these days tells a very different story than it did on the campaign trail.

When Premier Kathleen Wynne strode to the front lawn of Queen's Park to engage with Black Lives Matter protesters last Monday, it underscored the comparative gutlessness of Mayor John Tory, who's repeatedly declined the group's requests for a public meeting. He's happy to get together in private, he says, but a public encounter could go off the rails.

That is quite possibly true. Because when Tory does attempt to wade into issues of race and injustice, he reveals himself to be jaw-droppingly ill-equipped.

Nearly a decade after the housing bubble burst, Goldman Sachs is clearing up pesky allegations that it knowingly defrauded people by selling them bad mortgage securities. The powerful banking firm agreed to a $5 billion settlement over the allegations, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Monday afternoon.

The deal resolves a number of different accusations against Goldman stemming from its mortgage securities business from 2007 to 2009. The firm will pay New York State $190 million in cash and take $480 million worth of consumer relief actions for New York residents. The remaining $1.3 billion in consumer relief will be spread around other agencies and consumers that brought similar allegations. Schneiderman heads a joint state and federal task force that works to consolidate such complex claims and resolve them more efficiently than multiple long-running court cases would allow.

Kim White started her job at a nursing home in Florida five years ago hoping it would open the doors to a fulfilling career. Instead, she’s been paid so little that her dreams have been indefinitely put on hold.

The certified nursing assistant job “was something that I wanted to use as a stepping stone to get into nursing school,” she said. “But it just always ended up being that it was never enough pay.”

A group of 20 senators and representatives has formed a de facto “anti-parks caucus” in Congress and is waging the most significant legislative and ideological challenge to America’s national parks in decades, says a new report released Monday by the Center for American Progress. The analysis finds that this anti-parks caucus is composed of less than five percent of Congress but is responsible for introducing dozens of bills to block the creation of new national parks, end America’s most effective parks program, and sell off public lands.

As President Obama prepares for a trip to Saudi Arabia later this month, a CBS 60 Minutes segment has rekindled calls to declassify the 28 pages omitted from the 2003 report about the 9/11 attacks.

The 28 pages are believed to expose a number of links between various officials in Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 hijackers — 15 of 19 of whom were Saudi citizens. A CIA watchdog report from last year says there is no evidence that the Saudi government “knowingly and willingly” supported al-Qaeda’s attack, but many congressmen believe the 28 pages could indicate heavy Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Darkness had enveloped the Newell Recycling yard by the time Erik Hilario climbed into a front-end loader on a cold evening in January 2011. Hilario, a 19-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, earned $8 an hour at the industrial park in East Point, Georgia, working amid jagged piles of scrap metal eventually bound for the smelter.

On this day, Hilario was driving a loader in a paved section of the nine-acre yard known as the defueler or car-processing area. Here, according to witness testimony, gasoline was drained from junked cars through a crude process employing a 30-foot crane and an 11-foot-tall structure topped with a spike known as The Puncher. A claw attached to the crane would pick up cars and smash them, gas tank first, onto the spike, spilling gasoline into a trough. The crane then would swing the cars onto a pile, dripping gas along the way.

BEIJING — More than 80 percent of the water from underground wells used by farms, factories and households across the heavily populated plains of China is unfit for drinking or bathing because of contamination from industry and farming, according to new statistics that were reported by Chinese media on Monday, raising new alarm about pollution in the world’s most populous country.

After years of focus on China’s hazy skies as a measure of environmental blight, the new data from 2,103 underground wells struck a nerve among Chinese citizens who have become increasingly sensitive about health threats from pollution. Most Chinese cities draw on deep reservoirs that were not part of this study, but many villages and small towns in the countryside depend on the shallower wells of the kind that were tested for the report.

Ongoing fallout from the recent Panama Papers leak got one longtime British lawmaker so heated Monday he was thrown out of Parliament for the fiery words he directed at Prime Minister David Cameron.

Referencing revelations that Cameron benefitted financially from his late father’s offshore investments, which were revealed in the leak, Labour Member of Parliament Dennis Skinner dubbed Cameron “Dodgy Dave.”

Tax avoidance by multinational corporations will be forced into the open under proposals to be unveiled by European regulators on Tuesday following the Panama Papers revelations.

The European commission will put forward legislation requiring large multinationals operating in Europe to disclose profits earned and taxes paid in each of the EU’s 28 member states, as well as fiscal havens.

What do you know about the worldwide chemical fertilizer industry? If you're like most people, not much.

There's plenty of press coverage and consumer awareness when it comes to genetically engineered food and crops, and the environmental hazards of pesticides and animal drugs. But the fertilizer industry? Not so much -- even though it's the largest segment of corporate agribusiness ($175 billion in annual sales), and a major destructive force in polluting the environment, disrupting the climate, and damaging public health.

EDMONTON — Alberta's NDP premier has come out swinging against the federal party's plans to consider dramatic policy changes that would have huge implications for her province.

Rachel Notley called the energy pieces of the Leap Manifesto thoughtless.

"The government of Alberta repudiates the sections of that document that address energy infrastructure,'' Notley said Monday. "These ideas will never form any part of policy. They are naive. They are ill-informed. They are tone deaf.''

UK Prime Minister David Cameron took the unprecedented step of releasing a summary of his tax returns from the past six years today (Apr. 10), in response to his late father being named in the so-called Panama Papers for setting up an offshore fund.

The document, prepared by the prime minister’s personal accountants, show no evidence of illegal activity. It was also revealed that Cameron received an additional £200,000 ($283,000) cash gift from his mother in 2011.