Despite its great wealth, the United States today faces enormous difficulties. Amidst the economic pain and insecurity and the looming climate catastrophe, there are no easily discernible political answers that even begin to offer strategic handholds on a truly democratic future. We face systemic problems, not simply political or economic problems. The wages of most […]

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High-tech innovation isn’t the only thing Apple excels at. Tax avoidance is another specialty. That came to the fore during Senate hearings last week. Apple’s finance wizards succeeded in sheltering over $100 billion overseas, not subject to any tax authority. “Ocean money,” they call it. But Apple’s ocean money is just the beginning. There’s plenty […]

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(The Congressional Budget Office released its latest debt and deficit projections for the next ten years. There’s no way any honest analyst could read them as anything but the official end to any rational concern about red ink, says Doug Henwood. Image source: CBO) Given that the phantasmic plays such a large role in politics, it’s […]

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(BusinessWeek featured the above photo of billionaire Tom Steyer holding a jar of tar-sands oil. The article, titled “Tom Steyer: The Wrath of a Green Billionaire,” lauded his crusade to stop construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar-sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. As Darwin Bondgraham reports, part […]

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(Last summer, the Tax Justice Network released a study estimating around $21 trillion is being held in offshore tax havens, which is equal to the annual GDPs of the U.S. and Japan. Tax havens, says philosopher Daniel Innerarity, exemplify our new age of piracy: TJN) Piracy is no longer a historical curiosity or a simple […]

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