As this report says, "Albert Edwards, a global strategist at the 159-year-old bank Société Générale, just released a blistering note on the phenomenon that has come to be called Greedflation." That is just another way of saying what I have been talking about for decades on SR. As the result of rigging the tax system and creating the worse wealth inequality in the developed world the American culture today has only one social priority, greed and profit. It is a stark contrast when compared with the cultures of countries such as the Nordic nations, New Zealand, and the Netherlands that have made fostering wellbeing for everyone their major social priority
When costs go up, so do profits? That’s not how capitalism is supposed to work, but that is the recent trend. For over a year now, consumers and businesses, both in the U.S. and worldwide, have struggled with stubborn inflation. But the soaring costs haven’t prevented corporations from raking in record profits. The companies in last year’s Fortune 500 alone generated an all-time high $1.8 trillion in profit on $16.1 trillion in revenue. Voices largely on the left side of the political spectrum have been sounding the alarm on this—think: Bernie Sanders in Congress or Jon Stewart’s recent grilling of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers—but now an economist at one of the world’s oldest and greatest investment banks is singing the same tune.
Albert Edwards, a global strategist at the 159-year-old bank Société Générale, just released a blistering note on the phenomenon that has come to be called Greedflation. Corporations, particularly in developed economies like the U.S. and U.K., have used rising raw material costs amid the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as an “excuse” to raise […]
The thing about MAGAt Republican politicians is they are largely crooks, grifters, and scammers, and they surround and staff themselves with people with the same lack of ethics. Consider as an example Matt Gaetz who has been in Congress since 2017 as a result of the voters of Florida’s 1st congressional district. The district includes portions of Walton County and all of Escambia, Okaloosa, and Santa Rosa counties. And Gaetz, who is notably corrupt and perfectly consistent with MAGAt standards has chosen a convicted war criminal for his staff. I wonder, are the people of Florida’s 1st congressional district who voted Gaetz into office proud of themselves?
MAGAt Republican Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Credit: Andres Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty
Derrick Miller, a former U.S. Army National Guard sergeant who spent eight years in prison for murdering an Afghan civilian in 2010, now serves as a legislative assistant covering military policy for Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.
While on a combat mission in Afghanistan’s Laghman province on September 26, 2010, Miller shot 27-year-old Atta Mohammed in the head during an interrogation. Miller has maintained that he was acting in self-defense, alleging that Mohammed, who had walked through a defensive perimeter established by Miller’s unit, could be a threat to his unit and that he had tried to grab Miller’s weapon during the interrogation. But another National Guard member testified he heard Miller threaten to kill Mohammed if he did not tell the truth; and then sat on top of him — Mohammed was lying prone — before shooting him in the head, killing him. According to the prosecutor, Miller then said, “I shot him. He was a liar.”
I think something very interesting happened yesterday in both Wisconsin and Chicago and it constitutes good news. In the 2022 election the Red wave did not happen, and yesterday in both elections progressives defeated christofascists. That suggests to me that the majority of Americans are fed up with Trump Theater and that the Republicans have made a major miscalculation. The constant harassment of election workers, the gerrymandering, voter suppression, and endless whining about how they are victims may be motivating their base, but that cohort is a shrinking minority. If you look at the social outcome data it is clear that younger voters and women are voting with a strong Democratic skew, and that is making me feel more optimistic about the upcoming 2024 election. If the Republicans are stupid enough to make Trump their candidate I think he will lose, and lose badly.
Judge Janet Protasiewicz speaks onstage during the live taping of “Pod Save America,” hosted by WisDems at the Barrymore Theater on March 18, 2023 in Madison, Wisconsin. Credit: Jeff Schear / Getty
Daniel Kelly, the right-wing former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who lost his bid to re-join the high court on Tuesday as liberal circuit court judge Janet Protasiewicz won by a decisive margin, refused to concede to his opponent in a speech that one critic said personified the Republican Party’s approach to electoral politics in recent years.
“It brings me no joy to say this,” Kelly told supporters. “I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent. But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede.”
Kelly acknowledged that he lost the election and said he “respected” the decision made by more than 55% of Wisconsin voters who chose Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County Circuit judge who was outspoken about her support for abortion rights and labor unions, to join […]
This is a very interesting, difficult, but positive (potentially at least) trend being created by the Biden administration. To help the mostly Red state communities that have been focused on coal for decades to transition to non-carbon energy production. I hope, for the fate of those communities, that they can make this effort successful. But these conservative religious communities have a hard time adapting to change.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm Credit: Francis Chung/POLITICO
The Biden administration is trying to herd renewable energy companies toward communities where coal-fired power plants and mines have shuttered.
The latest carrot to tease that interest? A bonus tax credit for clean energy projects.
But even as White House officials promoted the new support on Tuesday — contrasting it with the failed efforts of the Trump era to revitalize coal country — experts warned that rebuilding these economies will take a long time and beleaguered communities may need help in accessing federal benefits.
Why Biden is focusing on coal country: President Joe Biden is pitching his climate commitments as an opportunity to build up the places that have long relied on drilling, mining, or making power from coal, oil and gas.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said coal country would rise like a phoenix — the mythical bird that’s reborn from its own ashes — during a briefing Tuesday also attended by labor, environmental and energy groups.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen struck a more practical tone, saying coal communities often […]
I feel like I have been doing stories like this one for decades and that in the United States, tens of thousands of young Catholic children must have been sexually molested. It makes me quite sad to say I would not leave a child alone with a Catholic priest or staff worker, and I can only wonder how Catholic parents of young children must deal with this. It appears to be a trend with the Roman Catholic church going back hundreds of years.
A redacted report released Wednesday by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown alleges 156 Catholic “clergy members, seminarians, deacons, teachers and other employees of the Archdiocese of Baltimore,” have abused nearly 600 children since the 1940s, CNN reports.
The report comes after a four-year-long investigation into the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Former Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh launched the probe in 2019 and announced its completion in November, saying investigators had reviewed over 100,000 pages of documents dating back to the 1940s and interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses.
According to CNN, the report says, “From the 1940s through 2002, over a hundred priests and other Archdiocese personnel engaged in horrific and repeated abuse of the most vulnerable children in their communities while Archdiocese leadership looked the other way. Time and again, members of the Church’s hierarchy resolutely refused to acknowledge allegations of child sexual abuse for as long as possible.”
Furthermore, the report reads Additionally, the Office of the Attorney General created an email address and telephone […]
