When you compare them head-to-head, the Obama and Romney tax plans are nearly identical:

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, is offering a 20 percent tax cut for everyone. Given the mood of the conservatives in the United States today, that may not surprise you. But even President Barack Obama, who is routinely described as a socialist by his opponents, is peddling a plan under which 99 percent of Americans would pay less than they did under the last Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton.

Jonathan Amos | May 22

BBC - ...
Nasa's administrator Charles Bolden said: "Today marks the beginning of a new era in exploration... The significance of this day cannot be overstated; a private company has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Station that will attempt to dock there for the first time..."

a new era, indeed;-)

The Guardian's Helena Smith talks to Greek leftist leader Alex Tsipras:

Tsipras, who turns 38 in July, wants me to know that the war is not personal. The enemy is not Berlin, until now the biggest provider of the monumental rescue funds keeping the debt-stricken economy afloat. "It is not between nations and peoples," he says. "On the one side there are workers and a majority of people and on the other are global capitalists, bankers, profiteers on stock exchanges, the big funds. It's a war between peoples and capitalism … and as in each war what happens on the frontline defines the battle. It will be decisive for the war elsewhere."

Greece, he says, has become a model for the rest of Europe because it was the first country to fall victim to the enforcement of hard-hitting "growth through austerity" policies pursued in the name of resolving the crisis.

"It was chosen as the experiment for the enforcement of neo-liberal shock [policies] and Greek people were the guinea pigs," he insists.

"If the experiment continues, it will be considered successful and the policies will be applied in other countries. That's why it is so important to stop the experiment. It will not just be a victory for Greece but for all of Europe."

Even the old capitalist robber-barons understood that the way to get wealthy was to create wealth for all while making sure you kept the lion's share. Neoliberal austerity policies are just asset stripping under a false banner.

Via The Mahablog, here's the TED conference talk from Amazon.com venture capitalist Nick Hanauer that was initially judged too politically hot to release which now everyone is talking about.

And here's the transcript.

I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a "circle of life" like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way around.

Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous.

That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

So simply explained even your rightwing uncle would get it if he didn't have his fingers in his ears going "la-la-la".

Noam Chomsky writes that "The current US economy is built on 'growing worker insecurity' - people who are too busy and poor to make demands," and has a couple of new terms for us.

Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that's where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don't really care about them. We don't really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they're sometimes called the "precariat" - people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it's not the periphery anymore. It's becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.

Read the whole thing.

One might begin to see the seeds of its decline here:

iMore reports that Google may make four times the ad revenue off of their use in iOS than they do from their own Android platform. Apple wants to change that. Apple has already begun intermediating search queries though Siri, effectively cutting Google out of the valuable identity information associated with those searches. Next up is that other large data components on iOS, maps.

Howard Schneider & Anthony Faiola | May 14

WaPo - Political deadlock in Greece rattled world markets Monday, reviving fears that the fractious Mediterranean country could spurn an international bailout, abandon the common European currency and risk a fresh round of world economic turmoil.

European stock indexes fell, with Greece’s market now at a 20-year low, while the euro currency continued a recent decline against the dollar. U.S. stocks also fell.

Raphael Minder | Madrid | May 13

NYT - Tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets during the weekend to protest austerity budget cuts and commemorate the anniversary on Tuesday of a movement that inspired other groups on Wall Street and across the Western world.

Over all, protesters gathered in about 80 Spanish cities, but again, one of the biggest turnouts was in Puerta del Sol, the Madrid square that almost a year ago became the center of a nationwide, youth-led movement seeking to overhaul Spain’s political parties and other traditional institutions. About 40,000 people gathered in the square on Saturday evening, while a similar number of protesters rallied in a square in Barcelona.

Tom Braithwaite | New York | May 14

Financial Times - Last week Jamie Dimon was not arrested. JPMorgan Chase was not seized by federal regulators. Emergency laws were not passed by Congress. A grim-faced Barack Obama did not address the nation.

Queues of worried depositors did not form outside Chase branches. Black limousines of Wall Street chief executives did not descend on the Federal Reserve for crisis talks.
...
Yet the reaction to JPMorgan’s $2bn trading losses was nonetheless incendiary

From the Guardian's letters column:

The annual Sunday Times Rich List yields four very important conclusions for the governance of Britain (Report, Weekend, 28 April). It shows that the richest 1,000 persons, just 0.003% of the adult population, increased their wealth over the last three years by £155bn. That is enough for themselves alone to pay off the entire current UK budget deficit and still leave them with £30bn to spare.

Second, this mega-rich elite, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains. Some 77% of the budget deficit is being recouped by public expenditure cuts and benefit cuts, and only 23% is being repaid by tax increases. More than half of the tax increases is accounted for by the VAT rise which hits the poorest hardest. None of the tax increases is specifically aimed at the super-rich.

Third, despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, these 1,000 richest are now sitting on wealth greater even than at the height of the boom just before the crash. Their wealth now amounts to £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain's entire GDP. They include 77 billionaires and 23 others, each possessing more than £750m.

The increase in wealth of this richest 1,000 has been £315bn over the last 15 years. If they were charged capital gains tax on this at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, enough to pay off 70% of the entire deficit. It seems however that Osborne takes the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: "Only the little people pay taxes."
Michael Meacher MP
Labour, Oldham West and Royton

Things aren't very much different in the U.S. I wonder just how the collected wealth of the top 0.1%, say, compares to the national debt here.

Occupying Money.
Thursday, 01 March 2012
by John Merryman
Exterminating Angel Press

While it is natural to explain social issues in the general context to which they relate, the result is usually that the conversation goes in circles or divides into opposing sides. I think that to really peel away the processes at work, we should examine what is going on from the perspective of basic physical processes. As Newton said; “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” We need to understand what compels our actions and what the reactions will be, if we are understand where humanity is going.

continue reading after the jump

Francois Hollande scratched out a victory over Nikolas Sarkozy yesterday in the French elections.

I say "scratched out," because a three point victory over a wildly unpopular president is not exactly a drubbing, but it's also not exactly a close call.

Sarkozy showed himself to be a canny political card player. There was, for example, “l'ouverture” – Sarkozy's carefully-targeted effort to dismantle the Socialist Party by recruiting some of its brightest lights into Sarkozy's new right-wing government as ministers and senior officials. This cut the Socialist Party's leadership off at the knees, demoralized its membership, appropriated some of its best talent, reframed Sarkozy as a big-tent president who would govern for all the French – and left him perfectly free to pursue his policies exactly as he intended to do, validated by some of his most dangerous opponents. Demonstrating, as has occurred many times in politics in many countries before and since (in Britain, in the fate of the Liberal Democrats, for example), that weaving opponents into your team is an excellent way to defeat them.

To no one's surprise, health insurance companies will rape us for every last cent:

The agreement required the companies to finance an objective database of doctors’ fees that patients and insurers nationally could rely on. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, then the attorney general, said it would increase reimbursements by as much as 28 percent.

It has not turned out that way. Though the settlement required the companies to underwrite the new database with $95 million, it did not obligate them to use it. So by the time the database was finally up and running last year, the same companies, across the country, were rapidly shifting to another calculation method, based on Medicare rates, that usually reduces reimbursement substantially.

The Economist | April 21 | Washington DC

Work in progress -- The presumptive nominee is steering his economic policies to the right

When Paul Ryan released his proposed federal budget a year ago, Mitt Romney greeted it coolly. He congratulated the House Budget Committee chairman for “setting the right tone”, but pointedly declined to endorse any of its details.

The coolness was understandable. Mr Ryan’s budget was political dynamite. It proposed to slash income-tax rates, especially for the rich and businesses, and replace traditional Medicare with vouchers for the elderly to buy health insurance. Conservatives loved it, but voters, once they saw the details, recoiled, as did some Republicans. Newt Gingrich, vying with Mr Romney for the party’s presidential nomination, called it “right-wing social engineering”. When Mr Romney released his own 160-page economic platform last September, it promised much more limited tax cuts. On Medicare, all he promised was a plan that would “differ” from Mr Ryan’s while sharing its objectives.

We've all seen how...ugly...Mitt Romney is as a Presidential candidate, so it's no surprise this same EPIC FAIL! trope is to be found in a close examination of his career as a parasite capitalist:

In the midst of that 1994 campaign, one of Romney's companies, American Pad & Paper, bought a plant in Marion, Indiana. At the time, it was prosperous enough to be running three shifts.

Bain's first move was to fire all 258 workers, then invite them to reapply for their jobs at lower wages and a 50 percent cut in health care benefits.

Once again, Chris Martenson hits the nail on the head.

First, do nothing:

Obama turned his call for middle-income tax breaks into law within a month of taking office, incorporating a $400-a-person tax credit for workers into the 2009 stimulus law. In late 2010, with the economy still weak and Republicans gaining political clout, Obama agreed to an $858 billion tax cut that extended all of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for two years.

"The tax policy has been substantially in the conservative direction whereas the rhetoric has gone in the exact opposite direction," said Don Susswein, a tax aide to former Republican Senator Bob Dole who said he supported Obama in 2008.

Well, no surprise here. I bet Bush's White House hired most of these clowns:

President Barack Obama came to Colombia seeking to erase an image of the U.S. in Latin America as overassertive Yankees who exploit the region at will. He left with the stereotype reinforced.

The sixth Summit of the Americas that concluded yesterday in the Caribbean city of Cartagena was supposed to focus on trade in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, 11 U.S. Secret Service agents became the center of attention after they were sent home for allegations of misconduct involving a prostitute.

It often amuses me what rationales people come up with when a market moves in one direction or another.

To-wit: an analyst in England makes a positive comment about the banking industry, and glory be! the FTSE jumps up.

The comments specifically addressed this broker's belief...a broker, mind you, not a government official...that central banks around the world will address the lagging economy with stimulus packages.

Gee, thanks for pointing that out, Captain Obvious! A central tenet to Keynesian economics gets reitertated in the national press and markets suddenly facepalm and go "Now why didn't I think of that?"

In all the hoopla over the ACA arguments in the Supreme Court last week was lost a tactical blunder that liberals and Democrats could have...should have...been making all along: defining freedom:

Behind the challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) being heard at the Supreme Court this week is the idea that Barack Obama wants to take away your freedoms (as Mitt Romney himself asserted today). I’ve long since stopped counting the number of ridiculous things said about Obama, but this might be the ridiculousest of them all. At least the Kenyan rumors have some basis in reality, however threadbare it is, since his father was indeed Kenyan and he does have a funny name, for an American president. But this "freedom" business is simply paranoid and delusional. I defy anyone to name for me a specific and precise freedom that Obama has taken away from the American people. You can’t.[...]

There's a theme in my thinking with respect to this nation that, eventually, some large-scale changes are going to occur, and that they might occur suddenly and perhaps even violently.

American culture is based on three things: democracy, faith, and capitalism.

There's a basic disconnect in there. Those three things are, jointly and separately, untenably conflicted. Somethings have got to give, because it's within the human nature that one of those things aligns.

A basic drive of humanity is self-protection: food, clothing, shelter are all manifestations of our primal drive to survive. To believe that, somehow, that urge ends just because we satisfy those basic needs flies in the face of modern marketing, Maslow's theory notwithstanding.

Today will be an interesting day in the battle over President Obama's healthcare reform bill. Oral arguments are scheduled to be made in front of the Supreme Court of the United States today, with a final decision on the bill not due for about three months.

The administration's argument is grounded in the Commerce Clause-- that the Federal government has the right to regulate interstate commerce, with some expansions that have occured over time:

Patrick Wintour | Mar 16

Guardian Online - George Osborne will announce plans to pay lower salaries to public sector workers in poorer parts of the country in his budget next week.

The chancellor will argue that public sector pay should mimic the private sector and be more reflective of local economies. He intends to start the process in three Whitehall departments in the coming financial year, as part of a phased introduction.

Critics say the move will entrench economic divisions between north and south and depress regions of the country already struggling in the economic downturn.

It has not yet been decided if localised pay will apply only to new staff or to existing staff as well, but it was being stressed that no current employee would suffer a pay cut. Instead pay levels will gradually be adjusted to take account of costs, leading to larger pay rises in the south-east where some labour shortages exist.
 

The dismemberment/privatisation of the UK civil service continues...
Hey, does that mean members of Parliament should also suffer this pay differential? ;-)

I suspect that's Greg Smith's new nickname in some circles.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) saw $2.15 billion of its market value wiped out after an employee assailed Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein’s management and the firm’s treatment of clients, sparking debate across Wall Street.

The shares dropped 3.4 percent in New York trading yesterday, the third-biggest decline in the 81-company Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index, after London-based Greg Smith made the accusations in a New York Times op-ed piece.