Trade
Backroom talks on dangerous TTIP agreement must end (opinion) EurActive ... TTIP will work to boost corporate power, make it harder for states to regulate markets in the interest of citizens, and attack workers' rights, as well as consumer protection criteria, and environmental standards...
TPP a bade deal (opinion) Daily Camera ... the TPP is shrouded in secrecy, with participants, negotiators, even Congress sworn to keep the details private. Of course, multinational corporations have access to the actual language, just not you and I...
State Battles
Sam Brownback’s Kansas Catastrophe Daily Beast ...a state Supreme Court decision ... found that Brownback and the legislature had cut funding for schools unfairly and too deeply in 2011, and would have to find budget savings elsewhere...
Republican Mayor Partners With Moral Monday Movement, Walks 273 Miles For Health Care Access Huffington Post ...A Republican mayor has partnered with the progressive-backed Moral Monday movement to protest the closure of his small-town's hospital. Belhaven, North Carolina Mayor Adam O'Neal set off on a 14-day, 273-mile walk to Washington, D.C. on Monday to draw attention to what he calls the "medical desert" ...
States That Raised Minimum Wage See Faster Job Growth, Report Says NPR ...In a report on Friday, the 13 states that raised their minimum wages on Jan. 1 have added jobs at a faster pace than those that did not...
War on Workers
Austerity Is Poisoning The Economy, In 2 Charts Huffington Post ...The broad spending cuts that were the fruits of the Republican Congress' budget obsession of the past few years have already cost the U.S. economy $351 billion in lost economic activity, according to a new study...
Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans Washington Post ... the NSA is building a data center in Utah five times the size of the U.S. Capitol building, with its own power plant that will reportedly burn $40 million a year in electricity...
Between Suspicious Deaths and Cy Vance Criminal Prosecutions, Technology Jobs On Wall Street Are Now Among the Most Dangerous in America Wall Street on Parade ...the Judge’s decision “represents a damning indictment of those assistant U.S. attorneys, assistant district attorneys and FBI agents who have now twice pursued an unlawful prosecution of an innocent man at the behest of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs...”
Walmart Investors - Worry Plenty About Tracy Morgan Lawsuit Forbes ...Walmart isn’t doing all that well. It is losing customers, even as the economy recovers. For a decade Walmart has struggled to grow revenues, and same store sales have declined – only to be propped up by store closings. Despite efforts to grow offshore, attempts at international expansion have largely been flops. Efforts to expand into smaller stores have had mixed success, and are marginal at generating new revenues in urban efforts...
Miscellaneous
The rise of data and the death of politics The Guardian ...Jim Farley, a senior Ford executive, acknowledged that "we know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you're doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you're doing. By the way, we don't supply that data to anyone..."
