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“If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models.”
-– B. Lester
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 | Business/Economy: Supreme Court Hears Arguments Challenging Patents on Genes |
 From: aclu.org
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case seeking to invalidate patents on two genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil LibertiesUnion and the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) on behalf of researchers, genetic counselors, patients, breast cancer and women's health groups, and medical professional associations representing 150,000 geneticists, pathologists and laboratory professionals. The patents allow a Utah company, Myriad Genetics, to control access to the genes, thereby enabling them to limit others from doing research or diagnostic testing of the genes, which can be crucial for individuals making important medical decisions.
"Myriad did not invent the human genes at issue in this case, and they should not be allowed to patent them. The patent system was designed to encourage innovation, not stifle scientific research and the free exchange of ideas, which is what these patents do," said attorney Chris Hansen of the ACLU, who argued the case.
A federal district court invalidated all of the challenged patents in 2010. In 2012, a federal appeals court ruled for the second time that the patents on the genes were valid. Its 2-1 decision followed a Supreme Court order directing the appeals court to reconsider its initial decision in light of a related patent case decided by the Supreme Court last spring. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, April 15 @ 19:42:52 EDT (98 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Chase Down Mega-Rich Tax Cheats & Recover the Offshore Trillion$ |
No Cuts! No Tax Increases On Ordinary People!
by: Dave Lindorff
Hold everything!
I mean it. Stop talking about cutting school budgets, Social Security benefits, Medicare, Veteran’s pensions. Stop cutting subsidies to transit systems, to foreign aid. Stop cutting unemployment benefits. Stop it all. There can not be any justification for budget cutting while wealthy criminals, corrupt politicians and business executives are hiding what reportedly totals between $29 trillion and $32 trillion in offshore tax havens.
A massive data dump by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), working in conjunction with dozens of news organizations around the globe, has exposed the secret files of over 120,000 dummy offshore companies that have been used for years to hide the wealth -- much of it ill-gotten, all of it tax-dodged -- of the world’s rich and mega-rich.
Before we go further, let’s think about those numbers, which are really mind-boggling.
The US annual federal budget for 2012 was $3.7 trillion. The total US economy, largest in the world by far, was $15.8 trillion in 2012. That federal budget deficit that we hear so much about, which is growing by $1 trillion a year, totals about $16 trillion.
Now by comparison, the Philadelphia school system -- fifth-largest in the country -- is in crisis, with 27 schools being closed down because of a budget shortfall of $304 million. That shortfall (the direct result of tax breaks given to wealthy corporations in the city), is approximately one ten-millionth of a percent of the amount of money criminal politicians and business leaders -- many and probably the vast majority of them, Americans -- are reportedly squirreling away abroad in hidden accounts each year! ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, April 08 @ 21:34:45 EDT (185 reads)
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| Business/Economy: A Wall Street Powerhouse Attorney Talks Sense |
Taxes can do more than simply raise revenue.
By Sam Pizzigati
With April 15 fast approaching, Americans are naturally thinking about taxes. But most of us won’t be thinking about them the same way our forebears once did. Over the past half-century, our nation has witnessed a profound transformation in attitudes toward income taxation.
How profound? Consider the perspective of Randolph E. Paul, the corporate tax attorney who helped shape federal tax policy during and after World War II.
Paul’s tax career had actually started decades earlier, back in 1918. By the 1930s, Paul had become one of Wall Street’s top tax experts. His clients ranged from General Motors to Standard Oil of California, and probably no one in America knew the tax code — loopholes and all — any better.
That knowledge made Randolph E. Paul invaluable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1940, Paul helped New Dealers write an excess profits bill. In 1941, right after Pearl Harbor, he joined the Treasury Department. From his government staff perch, he worked to make sure all Americans, the wealthy included, contributed financially to the war effort.
Paul succeeded. By 1944, the federal income tax had become a major presence in American life. Most Americans, for the first time ever, were paying income tax — and rich Americans were paying more than anyone. During the war, the top marginal tax rate on income over $200,000, about $2.6 million today, jumped to over 90 percent. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, April 03 @ 21:01:31 EDT (105 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Are We Resigned to Living Vastly Unequal Lives? |
Top academics are exploring why more Americans aren't protesting our nation's grand economic divide.
By Sam Pizzigati
Billionaire Warren Buffett is still paying taxes at a lower rate than his secretary. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz pocketed $117.5 million last year. The life expectancy gap between Americans of affluent and modest means has widened by five years over the last three decades.
Economic inequality in America hasn’t been this stark since the 1930s. But Americans took to the streets in protest by the millions back then. Why so little protesting today?
Americans aren’t loudly protesting, conservatives argue, because they really don’t care if some people become phenomenally rich.
Many Americans, progressives counter, simply don’t yet understand how staggeringly unequal the United States has become. With more awareness, they posit, would come more resistance to our unequal social order.
In 2011, a group of four top-flight academic researchers — including Emmanuel Saez, the world’s top expert on super-high incomes — decided to test this absence-of-information thesis. They prepared a detailed survey instrument and spent over 18 months quizzing a random sample of 5,000 Americans. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, March 25 @ 22:02:04 EDT (86 reads)
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| Business/Economy: How Deregulation Has Resurrected American Economic Insecurity |
 By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
We might not be in a Great Depression, but economic insecurity has nevertheless returned to America.
John N. Gray, a distinguished intellect and retired professor of intellectual history at the London School of Economics, disagrees with the view that “the end of history” has placed humanity on a course of ethical and economic progress. History, Gray believes, is not progressing to a higher stage. Instead, humanity is repeating the same follies and is destined to endure the same disasters. It is the Enclosures, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Poor Law Act of 1834 all over again.
The problem is humans themselves. They are not questioning beings. “Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have.” Instead of ethics and politics having advanced with the growth of knowledge, we are experiencing today state terror and murder on unprecedented scale as Washington kills people with drones and invasions in seven countries and threatens others. The US claims to be the democratic “light unto the world,” the “indispensable nation,” but it has resurrected in violation of its own law and international law the torture dungeons of the unaccountable governments of medieval Europe.
Few people see the disconnect between the propaganda about the goodness of America and the evil that its government practices. Torture was banned. Its practice was made the act of a war criminal government. But the Bush and Obama regimes have resurrected torture as a defense of the state against citizens who reveal its crimes and against those who resist its aggression. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, March 11 @ 19:56:57 EDT (175 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Retail Injustice |
Most big retail chains treat their employees as nothing but a drain on profits.
By Jim Hightower
The Powers That Be say the bulk of America’s middle-class manufacturing jobs are gone and aren’t coming back. High-tech jobs are being outsourced, as is an increasing share of the work historically handled by our accountants, lawyers, and some other professionals.
Retail jobs at brick-and-mortar shops, however, can’t be exported.
But wait, those aren’t jobs, they’re “jobettes.” They’re part-time, pay poverty wages, offer no benefits, feature lousy schedules, come with little training, and boast few advancement opportunities.
Most big retail chains treat their employees as nothing but a drain on profits rather than an asset worth investing in. Sales people are typically paid only $10 an hour, clerks get only $9.70, and cashiers just $9. Even worse, 94 percent of retailers define full-time work as only 30 hours a week. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, February 18 @ 20:22:30 EST (209 reads)
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| Business/Economy: The Fiscal Hoax |
Don't believe the cliff hype.
By Peter Hart
The biggest story in Washington is about something that doesn't really exist: the so-called ”fiscal cliff.” This manufactured panic is all about politicians and corporate interests getting things they want — things that don't have much to do with the ”crisis” anyway. But instead of challenging this spin, big media outlets are playing along.
So what's the not-really-a-cliff anyway? It's a number of things that are set to happen all at once starting in January. On the one hand, there are budget cuts, more or less equally divided between military and domestic spending. The threat of those cuts was supposed to force Congress to reach a deal last year. It didn't.
Add in the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and a temporary cut in the Social Security payroll tax and it starts to really add up. That's what's causing these breathless TV reports telling you that if Congress and the White House don't act in the next few weeks, the average family's tax bill will go up an astonishing $3,500.
Astonishing, sure. And if it all happened, the country would very likely be thrown into another recession. But will it happen? That's extremely unlikely. And is it really a cliff? Absolutely not. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, December 10 @ 20:00:04 EST (174 reads)
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| Business/Economy: The Trojan Horse in the Debt Debate |
Dozens of CEOs are running a misleading campaign that would just make matters worse.
By Sarah Anderson
It's budget showdown time in Washington. With various tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in at the end of the year, the pressure is on for Republicans and Democrats to make a deal.
A major player in this hot debate is a new corporate coalition called "Fix the Debt." [http://www.fixthedebt.org/] They've recruited more than 80 CEOs of America's most powerful corporations and raised $60 million for a big media and lobbying blitz.
Their ads call for what appears to be a moderate agenda of balancing spending cuts with some tax increases in order to bring down the deficit and ensure a bright future for the United States. But a closer look suggests the Fix the Debt campaign is a Trojan Horse.
Behind their moderate slogans is an extreme agenda focused on further reducing corporate taxes and shifting the burden onto the poor and elderly.
Take a look, for example, at a slideshow presentation the campaign has prepared as a "CEO tool" for wooing supporters. You can check it out right on their web site. It says flat out that the so-called "fiscal cliff" is an opportunity to push for "considerably less" spending on Medicare and Medicaid. It also calls for a shift to a "territorial tax system," which would permanently exempt U.S. corporations' foreign income from U.S. taxes. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, November 16 @ 20:00:22 EST (230 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Fracking Liars |
Supporters and leaders of the hydraulic fracturing industry aren't being honest about government support for this new natural gas boom.
By Jim Hightower
As they drill for quick corporate profits deep inside our Earth, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and other titans of the natural gas hydraulic fracturing industry are harming people's health, the environment, and local economies across the country. They're also fracking something essential to a properly functioning democratic society: the truth.
They're hailing themselves both as exemplars of free-market success and as the "virtuous ones" in our society — the producers and makers, as contrasted to the mass of Americans that the far-right corporatists are now openly calling "moochers" and "takers." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, October 22 @ 19:35:11 EDT (165 reads)
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| Business/Economy: The 'Self-Made' Hallucination of America's Rich |
Like Mitt Romney, most Americans who amass grand fortunes have a substantial head start.
By Sam Pizzigati
Let's cut Mitt Romney some slack. Not every off-the-cuff comment he made at that now infamous, secretly taped $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton reveals an utterly shocking personal failing. Take, for instance, Mitt's remark that he has "inherited nothing."
A variety of commentators have jumped on Romney for that. They've pointed out that Mitt, the son of a wealthy CEO, has enjoyed plenty of privilege — everything from an elite private school education to a rolodex full of rich family friends he could tap to start up his business career. On top of that, the struggling young Mitt had $1 million worth of stock his father threw his way to tide him over until the big paydays started arriving.
Not quite "nothing." But there's no reason to pick on Mitt either. Most deep pockets, not just Mitt, consider themselves "self-made." The best evidence of this predilection to claim "self-made" status? The annual September release of the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, September 25 @ 21:19:11 EDT (234 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Fix the Minimum Wage |
Americans who work hard should be able to make a living.
By Elizabeth Rose
In most states, working full-time in a minimum-wage job pays $7.25 per hour. That's just $15,000 a year for full-time work. It's not enough to live on. In fact, a breadwinner for a family of four earning the minimum wage would be a full $7,000 below the federal poverty line.
It's been three years since Congress last took action to nudge the minimum wage closer to covering the cost of living. Meanwhile, our politicians in Congress get an automatic raise every year, and CEO pay is skyrocketing.
Increasing the federal minimum wage even just to $9.80 an hour would lift the wages for more than 28 million Americans — boosting the economy by more than $25 billion and generating more than 100,000 jobs.
Raising the minimum wage would help the economy because people who work paycheck to paycheck spend what they earn. And it's the right thing to do, too — no one who works hard in a full-time job should be forced to live in poverty. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, August 20 @ 19:17:01 EDT (247 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Your Labor Rights or Your Life |
A hostile labor environment in a country like Colombia, connected through a trade agreement to the U.S., has repercussions for workers at home as well.
By Jessye Weinstein
When President Barack Obama announced in April that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement was finally going into effect, he assured the public that "[t]his agreement is a win for both our countries. It's a win for our workers...because of the protections it has."
However, this rhetoric ignores Colombia's rampant labor abuses. In fact, a recent survey of unionrights violations around the world ranked Colombia as the deadliest country in the world to exercise labor rights.
In recognition of Colombia's grave history of labor rights abuses, Obama and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a Labor Action Plan last year that outlined steps to improve labor conditions in Colombia before the trade agreement could go into effect. Despite these promises, backed by millions in assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor, the free trade agreement between the two countries went into effect this May without having meaningfully complied with that plan. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, August 01 @ 19:38:41 EDT (942 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Titanic Banks Hit LIBOR Iceberg: Will Lawsuits Sink the Ship? |
by Ellen Brown
At one time, calling the large multinational banks a “cartel” branded you as a conspiracy theorist. Today the banking giants are being called that and worse, not just in the major media but in court documents intended to prove the allegations as facts. Charges include racketeering (organized crime under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO), antitrust violations, wire fraud, bid-rigging, and price-fixing. Damning charges have already been proven, and major damages and penalties assessed. Conspiracy theory has become established fact.
In an article in the July 3rd Guardian titled “Private Banks Have Failed – We Need a Public Solution”, Seumas Milne writes of the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal admitted to by Barclays Bank:
It’s already clear that the rate rigging, which depends on collusion, goes far beyond Barclays, and indeed the City of London. This is one of multiple scams that have become endemic in a disastrously deregulated system with inbuilt incentives for cartels to manipulate the core price of finance. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, July 20 @ 19:52:07 EDT (613 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Economic Rapture Might Be around the Corner |
If the deficit disappears, our economic nightmare might finally come to an end.
By Salvatore Babones
It's January 25, 2001, the first week of the Bush presidency and more than half a year before the September 11 attacks. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testifies before the Senate Budget Committee, asserting:
"If current policies remain in place, the total unified surplus will reach $800 billion in fiscal year 2011. The emerging key fiscal policy need is to address the implications of maintaining surpluses."
As the poet William Wordsworth put it, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!"
The 2011 fiscal year ended with a $1.3-trillion deficit. How did America go from a state of "burgeoning federal surpluses" (in Greenspan's words in 2001) to "extraordinary financial crisis" (the way he put it in 2010) in just one decade? Two words suffice: tax cuts. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, July 16 @ 19:42:54 EDT (930 reads)
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| Business/Economy: Corporate Shadow Over Jersey's Trainted Groundwater Darkens |
Science “Advisors” Push Dramatic Relaxation of Groundwater Cleanup Standards
From: peer.org
Trenton — A newly released report recommends abandoning New Jersey’s current standards for protecting groundwater from chemical pollution. The report is from the state’s Science Advisory Board and was written by four scientists with corporate ties--including one from DuPont, which stands to directly benefit from loosening rules governing toxic waste sites and leaking underground tanks and pipelines, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
Approximately half of New Jersey residents depend on groundwater for their drinking water. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has identified more than 6,000 polluted groundwater sites, forcing closure of hundreds of wells across the state. Polluted groundwater can also migrate under buildings, causing “vapor intrusion” from volatile chemicals that poison building inhabitants. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 26 @ 18:45:52 EDT (179 reads)
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