Reader Supported News | 26 May 16
A Puzzling - But Very Real - Funding Crisis
We don’t know who you are because we do not track our community members. But you are you are here and you are the first group in the history of Reader Supported News to refuse to help with funding.
It will not last.
For those who are serious about Reader Supported News please take the funding appeals more seriously. If we say we need ‘X$’ to finish then that’s what we need.
Marc Ash
Curator, Reader Supported News
Curator, Reader Supported News
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William Hartung | The Pentagon's War on Accountability
William Hartung, Tom Dispatch
Hartung writes: "Now you see it, now you don't. Think of it as the Department of Defense's version of the street con game, three-card monte, or maybe simply as the Pentagon shuffle. In any case, the Pentagon's budget is as close to a work of art as you're likely to find in the U.S. government - if, that is, by work of art you mean scam."
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William Hartung, Tom Dispatch
Hartung writes: "Now you see it, now you don't. Think of it as the Department of Defense's version of the street con game, three-card monte, or maybe simply as the Pentagon shuffle. In any case, the Pentagon's budget is as close to a work of art as you're likely to find in the U.S. government - if, that is, by work of art you mean scam."
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WikiLeaks Exposes Text From Secretly Negotiated TISA Trade Deal
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The website WikiLeaks released on Wednesday classified documents from the Trade in Services Agreement, or TISA, which is a huge trade agreement being negotiated in secret by the United States, the European Union and 22 other countries."
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teleSUR
Excerpt: "The website WikiLeaks released on Wednesday classified documents from the Trade in Services Agreement, or TISA, which is a huge trade agreement being negotiated in secret by the United States, the European Union and 22 other countries."
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The classified annex to the draft "core text" of the Trade in Services Agreement is part of what is being secretly negotiated by the U.S., EU and 22 countries
he website WikiLeaks released on Wednesday classified documents from the Trade in Services Agreement, or TISA, which is a huge trade agreement being negotiated in secret by the United States, the European Union and 22 other countries.
The documents include a previously unknown annex to the TISA core chapter on "State Owned Enterprises," which imposes unprecedented restrictions on SOEs and will force majority owned SOEs to operate like private sector businesses.
The leaked documents show how stipulations outlined in the TISA documents advanced the "deregulation" of big corporations entering overseas markets.
According to the leaked documents, the TISA rules would also restrict governments’ ability to determine the size or growth of certain economic activities and entities, preventing nations from limiting the size of foreign companies in the market.
"The TISA provisions in their current form will establish a wide range of new grounds for domestic regulations to be challenged by corporations – even those without a local presence in that country," WikiLeaks warned on Wednesday.
The whistleblowing website went on to note that the proposals and language contained in the text promotes what it described as “the corporatization of public services.”
There is growing evidence that the privatization of state-owned companies leads to an increase in costs for consumers. In the 34 OECD countries, for example, the average price for energy charged by private companies is 23.1 percent higher than the price charged by public companies.
Despite these alarming tendencies, the corporatization of public services is justified in the name of improving efficiencies, especially by introducing competition, WikiLeaks wrote in it’s analysis of the TISA annex.
If the proposed TISA measures are approved, several civil society organizations have warned of the potential impacts they may have on national sovereignty and public safety.
The secrecy around the deal and the negotiating process, which gives access to large corporations but largely excludes civil society, has been criticized as an assault on democracy.
The TISA documents are supposed to remain secret for five years after the deal is finalized.
The TISA is one of three international trade deals being negotiated in secret, along with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, trade deal. Collectively, these agreements encompass 75 to 95 percent of global GDP.
Insurance Firms Made $400 Million off Super-Storm Sandy as Home Owners See Little Improvements
Laura Sullivan, NPR News
Sullivan writes: "NPR and the PBS series Frontline have spent the past year investigating the business of disaster and have uncovered a complex system in which private companies profit and homeowners and clients suffer."
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Laura Sullivan, NPR News
Sullivan writes: "NPR and the PBS series Frontline have spent the past year investigating the business of disaster and have uncovered a complex system in which private companies profit and homeowners and clients suffer."
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Katrina Vanden Heuvel | Progressive Women Are Running for Office All Over the Country
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post
Vanden Heuvel writes: "With Donald Trump's misogyny under the microscope, Democrats could have a secret weapon on their side between now and November: not 'the woman's card,' as Trump has called it, but the actual progressive women who will appear on ballots nationwide."
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Katrina Vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post
Vanden Heuvel writes: "With Donald Trump's misogyny under the microscope, Democrats could have a secret weapon on their side between now and November: not 'the woman's card,' as Trump has called it, but the actual progressive women who will appear on ballots nationwide."
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CEO Pay Climbs Again, Even as Their Stock Prices Don't
Stan Choe, Associated Press
Choe writes: "CEOs at the biggest companies got a 4.5 percent pay raise last year. That's almost double the typical American worker's, and a lot more than investors earned from owning their stocks - a big fat zero."
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Stan Choe, Associated Press
Choe writes: "CEOs at the biggest companies got a 4.5 percent pay raise last year. That's almost double the typical American worker's, and a lot more than investors earned from owning their stocks - a big fat zero."
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Border Wars: Migration as Reparations
Joseph Nevins, NACLA
Nevins writes: "Instead of a 'surge' in deportations, the U.S. government should be paying off its imperial debt to Central America. The right to migration is a form of reparations."
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Joseph Nevins, NACLA
Nevins writes: "Instead of a 'surge' in deportations, the U.S. government should be paying off its imperial debt to Central America. The right to migration is a form of reparations."
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10 Ways Climate Science Has Advanced Since An Inconvenient Truth
Gayathri Vaidyanathan, Scientific American
Vaidyanathan writes: "Scientists have learned a lot in the last 10 years since Al Gore's documentary."
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Gayathri Vaidyanathan, Scientific American
Vaidyanathan writes: "Scientists have learned a lot in the last 10 years since Al Gore's documentary."
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