The U.S. is the worst financial secrecy enabler of all

Because the greedhead plutocrats want it this way.

A global index published Tuesday ranks the United States as the world's leading perpetrator of financial secrecy, citing the country's refusal to share key information with the tax authorities of other nations and its status as a generous tax haven for foreign oligarchs, rich executives, and other elites.

The ranking comes despite U.S. President Joe Biden's campaign-trail pledge to "bring transparency to the global financial system, go after illicit tax havens, seize stolen assets, and make it more difficult for leaders who steal from their people to hide behind anonymous front companies." - Common Dreams

Young workers fuel the new labor movement

An upbeat take. Works for me.

This year, May Day was celebrated during a historic moment for the American labor movement. Nearly every day, news reports announce another example of workers exercising their rights as nonprofit professionals, Starbucks workers, and employees at corporations like Amazon, REI and Conde Nast announce their union drives. The approval rating for labor unions has reached its highest point in over 50 years, standing at 68 percent, and petitions for new union elections at the National Labor Relations Board increased 57 percent during the first half of fiscal year 2021.

Three years ago, we wrote an op-ed about how young workers in historically unorganized occupations — such as digital journalism, higher education and nonprofit organizations — were beginning to rebuild the labor movement. Today, Covid-19 has changed the way that we relate to work and created new sources of economic anxiety, while exacerbating old ones. Yet, young workers continue to fuel the new labor movement as they form new unions to win back a degree of control over their futures in a world fundamentally altered by a global pandemic. With momentum in union organizing and worker activism still growing, it is important to recognize the ways that workers in every industry are helping the labor movement live up to its values and reverse the years-long decline in union density. - In These Times

Death to private equity!

The article I'm quoting from is just one in an issue of Mother Jones largely devoted to explicating p. equity's foulness.

If you were to sit down with a focus group and a whiteboard, you would have a hard time coming up with a policy with less populist appeal than the nearly three-decades-old loophole that cuts private equity billionaires’ tax rate almost in half.

The carried-interest loophole, Barack Obama said, upset “the balance between work and wealth.” Donald Trump claimed the fund managers who availed themselves of this tax break were “getting away with murder.” Joe Biden, like both of his predecessors, ran for president on a pledge to end it.

“People get this really easily—we’re giving a whole lot of rich people more money for no reason other than them being rich,” says Mandla Deskins, advo­cacy manager at Take on Wall Street, an organization pressuring members of Congress to jettison this tax break.

On paper, it’s an idea that almost nobody says they want. Polls show the public is overwhelmingly against it. Mitt Romney lost his bid for the presidency in part because of it. Tax experts think it’s unfair. Carried interest has no real constituency outside certain corners of Nantucket. But for a decade and a half, private equity’s favorite tax break, which delivers hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the guys in blue button-downs and matching fleeces who bought your company and laid you off, has been the most unkillable bad idea in a town with no shortage of them, a testament to the unstoppable combination of money and inertia.

Well, money mostly. - Mother Jones

Big corporations are predictably mum on abortion rights

We may see some change on this, but probably not much.

In the days since a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, corporate America has offered a familiar response: silence.

It mirrors the days following Texas’ implementation of its six-week abortion ban last September — silence from the many companies in the state. But in the weeks after Texas’ ban went into effect, some companies started to speak publicly and implement policies to assist employees who wanted to get an abortion out of state. That response to the Texas law, then the most restrictive abortion ban in the country, created a precedent that corporations could draw on now that it seems imminent that Roe will be overturned. So far, they have not. - AlterNet

A big rise in global hunger

American corporate media coverage of the Ukraine war could be worse. At least most of them aren't pro-Putin. But you don't see much about this.

While international news headlines remain largely focused on the war in Ukraine, little attention is given to the horrific consequences of the war which are felt in many regions around the world. Even when these repercussions are discussed, disproportionate coverage is allocated to European countries, like Germany and Austria, due to their heavy reliance on Russian energy sources.

The horrific scenario, however, awaits countries in the Global South which, unlike Germany, will not be able to eventually substitute Russian raw material from elsewhere. Countries like Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Ghana and numerous others, are facing serious food shortages in the short, medium and long term...

While the thousands of sanctions imposed on Russia are yet to achieve any of their intended purpose, it is poor countries that are already feeling the burden of the war, sanctions and geopolitical tussle between great powers. As the west is busy dealing with its own economic woes, little heed is being paid to those suffering most. And as the world is forced to transition to a new global economic order, it will take years for small economies to successfully make that adjustment. - Middle East Monitor

The latest education-based way of manipulating frantic wingnuts

So many of the right-wingers I know are actually really good people in the most important ways, that is, as parents, community members, etc. They’re just foolish and very, very gullible, when it comes to their politics and worldviews, generally because they grew up in families and communities where that’s mostly how it was. So I think the situation is more complex and nuanced than it’s often presented to be, even by really good progressive writers. But this article does make very valid points.

Republicans are suddenly furious now about another educational bit of jargon: "Social-emotional learning," typically shortened to "SEL." Conservatives are complaining that kids are learning social and emotional skills like learning to say "please" and "thank you." Yes, you read that right. Being reminded to share and to clean up after yourself is being equated with communism. Telling little kids to play nicely together is the end of civilization itself...

In reality, of course, the kids are still expected to get the right answers. The debate is about the journey to the right answer. Are they simply told the answer and expected to parrot it back? Or are they being taught how to think through problems? The latter is a far more valuable skill, of course. But it's also threatening to authoritarians, who prefer an unthinking citizenry that simply follows the commands of their right-wing leaders. The battle is not over whether two plus two equals four. It's over whether students know why that equation works. If they do, then they are less likely to believe Trump or DeSantis when they push alternative facts.

The Republican loathing of the larger social and emotional parts of SEL isn't exactly mysterious, either. For the kids themselves, of course, lessons in working well with others, active listening, and exhibiting empathy all cultivate invaluable skills. Kids who learn those skills are far likelier to grow into successful, well-adjusted adults. But successful, well-adjusted adults are the GOP's kryptonite. They need voters to be maladjusted miscreants, the kind of people who think that someone like Trump or Tucker Carlson is worth following. So of course they object to any school lessons that put kids on the pathway to being decent adults. They need a voting population of assholes to keep holding power. - Salon

Nuclear bailouts are a big mistake

I think that on the whole the infrastructure package is a positive thing. I'd have done plenty of it differently, but I'm not in charge, nor will I be. Anyway, yeah, this:

The misguided but predictable decision by the Biden administration to waste $6 billion in taxpayer dollars propping up US reactors that were scheduled to close, further detours from and delays urgently needed action on the climate crisis...

Renewable energy is the fastest growing job sector in the US and would quickly provide a greater number of longer term, well-paying and obviously safer jobs for Americans. Equally, applying the $6 billion to the renewable energy growth sector instead of the financially failing nuclear power industry, would reduce more carbon faster for the same price.

As Stanford physicist, Amory Lovins, has repeatedly pointed out: “Most US nuclear reactors now cost more just to run – including big repairs that trend upward with age – than their output can earn. They also cost more just to run than providing the same services by building and operating new renewables, or by using electricity more efficiently.” - Beyond Nuclear

Update 4/30/22: The word now is that this may be too late to keep some old reactors going. I certainly hope so.