The release of the Panama Papers last weekend — a paper trail of eleven million leaked documents from the Mossack Fonseca global law firm — shows how major global banks move assets of billionaire capitalists and major political figures offshore to protect them from taxation. The revelation has stirred up a political hornets’ nest all…

The New York Times recently reported that on March 13th, Jeffery Pendleton was found dead in his jail cell. Pendleton was a homeless man who lived in New Hampshire and had been arrested on March 8th for outstanding fines and possession of small amounts of marijuana. His set bail of $100 was prohibitively costly for…

During his interview with the New York Daily News, Bernie Sanders was asked to specify the fraud committed by Wall Street banks. He replied: “What kind of fraudulent activity? Fraudulent activity that brought this country into the worst economic decline in its history by selling packages of fraudulent, fraudulent, worthless subprime mortgages. How’s that for…

In a speech March 28 at an award ceremony for the Toner Prize For Excellence in Investigative Reporting, the biggest enemy of investigative journalism since Nixon complained of the lack of… investigative journalism. That’s right. President Obama criticized the dominant journalistic culture for its stenographic approach of simply quoting the official statements of public figures…

The first nationally recognized Earth Day was celebrated in the United States on April 22, 1970. Now, 46 years old, the annual event is a world-wide phenomenon celebrated in more than 192 countries. It is a day numerous cultures come together to voice their support for environmental protection. I like a lot about Earth Day….

In an interview with Cenk Uygur March 23, Bernie Sanders noted, “The media is an arm of the ruling class of this country,” going on to point out its concentrated corporate ownership (for example, Disney’s ownership of ABC, Comcast’s of NBC, etc). This corporate media have a vested interest in not covering real news in…

Holman Prison in Alabama is home to death row and many there have little to lose should something go wrong. Given the degrading conditions of prisons and their lack of security for prisoners, it should come as no surprise that riots took place on March 11th and 14th. The first riot happened when a prison…

The continuing destruction of the steel industry in the UK has been a major news topic. And as usual, we see the typical narrative of either statist leftists who parrot nationalisation and subsidies as solutions, or the supposed market supporters, who take Ricardian economic arguments of specialisation and butcher them. What neither of these arguments…

After the terrorist violence in Brussels many people, including Barack Obama, said we should not change our way of life and live in fear because that is what terrorists want. Maybe, but is that all they want? It seems that something important is left out of the story. In the classical model of terrorism, instilling fear…

Whenever you read the words “our free market system,” it should raise a red flag. See, for example an article titled “Nobel Prize Economists Say Free Market Competition Rewards Deception and Manipulation,” by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller (Evonomics, Jan. 6). Now, if “free market” means anything, it means an economy where all market exchange…

In just 12 hours, North Carolina’s state legislature passed a “special” session bill superseding local anti-discrimination laws which protect the rights of LBTQA+ folk. The anti-discrimination laws superseded regard matters ranging from private matters like housing to public restrooms. No session of this nature had occurred in North Carolina in 35 years. This upheaval reinforces that if marginalized communities are…

In a new article at Harper’s (“Legalize It All,” April 2016), Dan Baum recalls a 1994 confession by former Nixon domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichmann, about Nixon’s motives in first launching the War on Drugs. Baum, interviewing Ehrlichman for a book on drug prohibition, asked a “series of earnest, wonky questions, that he impatiently waved…

At Reason, Steve Chapman (“Bernie Sanders’ Free Trade Mythology,” March 19) faults Bernie Sanders for saying: “Do you know that in 1960, Detroit, Michigan, was one of the wealthiest cities in America? Flint, Michigan, was a prosperous city. But then what happened is corporate America said, ‘Why do I want to pay somebody in Michigan…

(Content Warning: Brief mentions of rape) The Legal Aid Society is a private, not-for-profit legal service in New York whose motto is, “No New Yorker should be denied access to justice because of poverty.” In keeping with this philosophy, Legal Aid Society announced in late February that they’d brought a class action lawsuit against the New…

Ever since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the question of whom President Obama would choose to replace him has been — along with the possibility of Republican Congressional obstruction of a confirmation vote — a central issue in national politics. Liberal and Progressive activist groups have organized pressure campaigns to make the GOP-majority Congress…

Each year, March 16 marks an important date for those who cherish peace and harmony between human beings: Open Borders Day. The website openborders.info, founded by Vipul Naik, is in its fourth year of existence. It aims at starting conversations around immigration and freedom of movement across political borders. Its goal is a world where…

According to a recent interview with White House advisor Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama “has not had a second thought about drones.” Yet the president’s drone strikes have more often killed civilians than intended targets.  Drones have struck weddings, funerals, and rescuers. One drone strike even killed a 16-year old American citizen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. How can…

The key to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — the feature that explains nearly everything else about that toxic dump — is his aggrieved-nation shtick. Just about everything Trump says (when he’s not adoring himself or belittling others) is about how the once-great American nation has been humbled by the rest of the world. To hear…

The presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders share a uniting theme of protecting American workers from foreign competition. Trump favors a 45% tariff on Chinese goods, while Sanders vocally opposes NAFTA-style trade agreements and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) designation (which prevents the US from imposing tariffs, on Chinese goods which other countries would not…

At the March 9 Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton had this to say about competitor Bernie Sanders’s favorable comments on Castro’s Cuba and the Sandinista regime in the ’80s:  “if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear people, imprison people or even kill people for expressing their opinions…, that is not the kind of…