Working Life

Yesterday, I posted a quick story about the lawsuit filed by NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman against Barclays alleging. I’ve had a chance to read again and more carefully the complete complaint and there’s a bit more to say about the importance of this suit.

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This won’t put any of the bankers in jail–a place some of them still belong–because its only a civil suit. But, glad to see this from New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman: he’s suing Barclays for fraud.

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I’ve been looking long and hard, trying to find something, just one thing, to say positive about the crooks on Wall Street and in the banking industry. Maybe it’s the Summer Solstice–but, eureka! Those guys have helped moved the poverty conversation in the right direction.

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Every company and every industry runs around yelling, like a little child, “I’m special” and, so, don’t tax me. And Congress just falls all over itself to pass one dumb tax break after another. Here’s the dumb one regarding the Internet.

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There really has been a war going on–one of those wars that doesn’t get written about much. It’s the war between the states…oh, the other one–to give away the economic store to businesses without much thinking about the consequences.

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One thing you won’t hear any chest-beating about from rabid patriots: the need for paid family and medical leave. See, too many of them care only about stuff that makes the country seem big by either (a) blowing up other countries or (b) just spouting hot air about “specialness”. How about this for special: The United States is the only high income country that does not mandate paid family and medical leave.

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It is either ironic or karmic that just as Iraq is interrupting into yet another spasm of civil war, Hillary Clinton steps into the public arena to promote her book–and her presidential campaign (be my guest if you want to believe that she is really deeply weighing this or not). A lot of attention has been paid to her interview yesterday on NPR, mostly because of her (dissembling) explanation of her views on gay marriage. But, far less attention is being paid to an entirely dishonest attempt to wash away the blood she helped spill in Iraq–a tragedy generations will pay for in many ways.

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Yesterday, I wrote about an example of the all-too often bi-partisan dumbness when it comes to taxes. So, today, a little glimmer–and it’s tiny. Sometimes, bi-partisanship on taxes yields a little sanity.

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When it comes to taxes, neither party has an exclusive claim to dumbness. Bi-partisanship on taxes is pretty common–and over the years it’s one of the central reasons we have such a deep hole in the public till. And it just keep coming.

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One of the dumbest, and pernicious, obsessions has to be trying to tag teachers for the bad state of a lot of schools. Seriously? It’s just mindless, blind ideological hatred that comes straight from a hostile right-wing that wants to eviscerate the political power of teachers’ unions. In the list of the assault add the bad decision coming out of the mouth of a mediocre Los Angeles judge.

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