John Cox

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Rolling Stone

The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever - Politics News

Rolling Stone's 2013 investigation reveals that major global banks have systematically manipulated multiple financial benchmarks—particularly Libor (interest rates) and ISDAfix (swap prices)—that affect trillions of dollars in assets worldwide, from mortgages to municipal bonds to pension funds. The article traces how the voluntary, unverified reporting system that underpins these benchmarks creates inherent opportunities for collusion, with traders even exchanging manipulated data for champagne and sushi, while settlements have been minimal and no individual executives faced criminal prosecution. More troubling still, the same structural vulnerabilities exist across numerous other markets—gold, silver, commodities—suggesting systematic, institution-wide corruption that regulators are only beginning to uncover and that courts have proven reluctant to punish.

Permalink politicseconomics

The Big Picture

Cheney Admits that He Lied about 9/11 | The Big Picture

Dick Cheney admitted in a Showtime documentary that he unilaterally authorized shooting down the hijacked plane on 9/11, contradicting his previous testimony to the 9/11 Commission that President Bush had pre-authorized such orders—the Commission found no documentary evidence this authorization ever occurred. The article argues Cheney used the 9/11 attacks as justification for numerous policies and military actions that were actually planned beforehand, and falsely linked Iraq to the attacks to support the torture program and other expansions of executive power he championed.

Permalink historysecuritypoliticsnews

the Guardian

Untitled (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/28/after-the-sheikhs-christopher-m-davidson-review?CMP=twt_gu)

Christopher Davidson argues that the Gulf monarchies have survived through a combination of oil wealth, modern institutions grafted onto traditional authority, and strategic spending on services and Western support, but that internal pressures—youth unemployment, rising expectations amplified by social media, and external threats like Iran's nuclear program—are building toward potential collapse within two to five years. Andrew Hammond's analysis of Saudi Arabia specifically debunks claims of meaningful reform, showing that despite gestures like women driving, the regime remains fundamentally unchanged in its denial of political participation, instead channeling citizens toward consumption and religious observance while maintaining arbitrary dynastic power.

Permalink politicsnewseconomics

Eric Garland

Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people

Eric Garland, a college-educated, affluent, white, small-business-owning suburban Republican from a Mayflower family, explains why he and voters like him—the GOP's supposedly core constituency—are not voting for Republican candidates. He details specific policy failures and hypocrisies that have alienated him: the party's documented opposition to science and climate action despite observable environmental damage in his own state, its false claims about American healthcare superiority while workers die of preventable diseases, its disastrous management of the Iraq War, its decades-long failure to actually reduce deficits despite constant promises to do so, its moralistic opposition to gay marriage after heterosexual Baby Boomers destroyed the institution themselves, and its pervasive contempt for anyone outside its base, exemplified by Romney's dismissal of 47% of Americans as dependency-seeking parasites. Garland warns that the Republican Party cannot win national elections by insulting and mischaracterizing educated, hardworking Americans across racial and ideological lines, and offers the party three choices: drastically moderate its platform, disband and reorganize, or accept decades of electoral defeat.

Permalink culturepoliticsopinion2010s

TaxVox

TaxVox » Blog Archive » About the 47 Percent Who Don’t Pay Federal Income Tax: Mitt, Meet Andrea

Andrea, a home health aide earning $8.40 per hour, exemplifies why Romney's "47 percent" characterization misses the mark: she pays substantial payroll taxes and would owe federal income tax without the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit, which are specifically designed to encourage work among the poor rather than enable dependency. The author argues that these tax credits are fundamentally different from entitlements—they reward labor and help workers like Andrea climb out of poverty—while the real tax subsidies disproportionately benefit the wealthy through deductions like mortgage interest, which dwarf the benefits low-income workers receive.

Permalink politicspersonal financeeconomics

Vanity Fair

Michael Lewis: Obama’s Way | Vanity Fair

This wide-ranging profile follows President Obama through his daily routines, decision-making processes, and personal reflections, while interweaving the story of Captain Tyler Stark, a navigator whose F-15 crashed during the Libya intervention on Obama's orders. The piece explores how Obama approaches the presidency—his need for routine and exercise to maintain mental clarity, his basketball games where he plays as an equal rather than a figurehead, his method of staffing meetings to hear dissenting views, and his late-night habit of writing speeches by hand to clarify his own thinking. Paralleling Obama's meditation on intervention in Libya is Stark's survival story in the desert and rescue by Libyan rebels who initially mistook him for a French pilot, illustrating how a president's abstract decision reaches forward into the lives of ordinary people whose fates then circle back to constrain his political options.

Permalink leadershippoliticsmilitary

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Mother Jones

Follow the Dark Money | Mother Jones

# Summary This article traces the century-long battle over campaign finance regulation in American politics, showing a cyclical pattern where scandals prompt reform efforts that are subsequently dismantled through court decisions and legal loopholes. From Watergate's revelations about secret corporate donations funding the break-in, through the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s that were partially gutted by the Buckley decision, to the soft-money scandals of the Clinton era that led to McCain-Feingold in 2002, the article documents how conservative legal strategists like James Bopp Jr. systematically challenged campaign finance laws—culminating in the Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending and ushered in the super-PAC era. The author argues that money in politics behaves like water, finding new channels around each regulatory dam, and that we are now back to the pre-Watergate era of massive undisclosed donations despite public demand for stricter controls.

Permalink historypoliticsinvestigation

The New Yorker

Money Unlimited

Chief Justice Roberts strategically ordered Citizens United reargued with expansive new questions, transforming a narrow case about documentary advertising into a vehicle for overturning decades of campaign-finance law—a maneuver that boxed in the liberal Justices while securing five reliable conservative votes to reshape American electoral politics. By assigning the opinion to Kennedy rather than writing it himself, Roberts obtained the sweeping result he wanted while avoiding accusations of hypocrisy about his stated commitment to judicial restraint and precedent. The decision eliminated restrictions on corporate political spending that had stood for over a century, fundamentally rewriting the constitutional rules governing money in elections.

Permalink politics

The New Yorker

Money Unlimited

Chief Justice Roberts orchestrated a procedural maneuver to transform Citizens United from a narrow case about documentary films into a sweeping decision overturning decades of campaign-finance law. By proposing reargument with broader questions presented, Roberts put the liberal justices in an impossible position—they could no longer claim surprise, but the conservatives already had five votes secured for the more radical outcome. The resulting Kennedy opinion struck down McCain-Feingold restrictions and equated corporate political spending with protected speech, fundamentally reshaping American electoral politics to allow unlimited corporate and individual spending in campaigns.

Permalink politicsnews

The Nation

How the GOP Is Resegregating the South

After the 2010 census, Republican-controlled legislatures across the South—particularly in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas—have aggressively used redistricting to pack African American voters into heavily Democratic majority-minority districts while diluting their influence in swing districts, effectively resegregating the region along racial lines after decades of progress toward integration. Rather than simply maximizing Republican seats through standard partisan gerrymandering, this strategy deliberately isolates black voters to weaken the Democratic Party as a multiracial coalition, eliminate white Democrats, and reduce overall minority political power—essentially reversing civil rights era gains and using the Voting Rights Act itself as legal cover for racial discrimination. The consequences are stark: in states like North Carolina, Democrats could lose control of Congressional representation despite winning nearly half the statewide vote, while black elected officials face their lowest influence since the civil rights era.

Permalink north carolinapolitics

Rolling Stone

One Town’s War on Gay Teens

# Michele Bachmann's Holy War Between 2009 and 2011, nine students in Minnesota's Anoka-Hennepin school district died by suicide, with four either gay or perceived as such and reportedly bullied, creating what experts called a "suicide cluster." The district had adopted a "neutrality policy" on sexual orientation that effectively silenced discussion of homosexuality in schools, leaving LGBT students without support while teachers feared retaliation for defending them, and the policy was championed by religious conservatives including local anti-gay activist Barb Anderson and influenced by the climate of anti-gay messaging promoted by congressional representative Michele Bachmann. Despite mounting evidence linking the hostile environment to student deaths, district leaders and conservative activists denied responsibility, claiming the suicides resulted from mental illness rather than bullying, while refusing to rescind the policy until facing federal civil rights lawsuits and investigations.

Permalink educationpolitics

Paul Krugman Blog

Taxes and the Wealthy - NYTimes.com

This piece argues that while tax rate changes from 1979 to 2005 cannot fully explain rising income inequality, they have significantly amplified it rather than counteracted it, with the wealthy—particularly the very rich—receiving disproportionate tax relief relative to their income gains. The author uses CBO data to refute the claim that the rich are overtaxed, showing instead that tax policy has actively reinforced growing after-tax inequality over this period.

Permalink politicspersonal financeeconomicsyup

The New Yorker

The Mission to Get Osama Bin Laden : The New Yorker

This New Yorker account details the May 1, 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, tracing the operation from its planning stages through execution, focusing on the Navy SEAL Team Six assault on his Abbottabad compound despite significant obstacles. The narrative reveals how a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during insertion due to aerodynamic complications, forcing the SEALs to adapt on the ground, and reconstructs the precise moments when bin Laden was located and killed on the third floor, along with several family members and associates who posed threats. The piece also examines the broader intelligence, political, and military context—including President Obama's decision to authorize the raid over cautious advisers' objections and the operational precedent it set for future unilateral U.S. military actions inside Pakistani territory.

Permalink historypoliticsnewsmilitary

Vanity Fair

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Society | Vanity Fair

The essay argues that America's extreme wealth inequality—where the top 1 percent now captures nearly a quarter of all income and 40 percent of wealth—represents a fundamental threat to both economic efficiency and democratic legitimacy, not merely a matter of fairness. The author contends that this inequality stems partly from structural economic forces like globalization and technology, but significantly from deliberate policy choices favoring the wealthy: preferential tax treatment, lax antitrust enforcement, financial deregulation, and the corrupting influence of money in politics that ensures elected officials serve the interests of the rich. Drawing comparisons to the autocratic societies experiencing popular uprisings in the Middle East, Stiglitz warns that America risks similar instability unless the wealthy recognize that their own long-term security depends on investing in the common good—a principle he calls "self-interest properly understood."

Permalink politicsbusinesseconomics

openDemocracy

Putting the 'American business model' in its place | openDemocracy

John Kay argues that market economies outperform planned societies not because they harness human greed, but because they enable disciplined pluralism—the freedom to experiment and innovate combined with ruthless elimination of failures. He contends that the "American business model" misunderstands how markets actually work by overemphasizing greed and financial markets while underestimating the crucial role of social institutions, trust relationships, state regulation, and cooperation in sustaining modern economies. Rather than replacing markets or adopting universal economic theory, Kay advocates for understanding how different market economies function within their specific historical and cultural contexts.

Permalink philosophypoliticsbusinesseconomics