Social Justice Magazine
Ugly Foreclosure Story Turns Uglier as Bank of America Attempts High-Pressure Tactics n Friday, Dirma Rodriguez— a widowed mother of a seriously disabled daughter— who alleges fraudulent foreclosure by Bank of America, was contacted by a lawyer representing the bank. David Redy, a partner at Redy & Smith, insisted that Rodriguez sign paperwork that day protecting the bank from legal … [Read more...]
he economy has stalled. Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but that’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). We need well over 250,000 new jobs per month in order to begin to whittle down the vast number of jobs … [Read more...]
hen the media revealed Mitt Romney’s plan to eliminate the federal agency in charge of affordable housing, it was the classic one-day news story. Instead of interviewing any of the seniors, disabled and low-income families impacted by such a move, the media went all out covering Ann Romney’s response at the same April 15 gathering to a political consultant’s claim that Ms.Romney “had … [Read more...]
he Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 13,338 Tuesday, its highest since December, 2007. The S&P 500 added 16 points. Wall Street will remember May 1 as a great day.But most of these gains are going to the richest 10 percent of Americans who own 90 percent of the shares traded on Wall Street. And the lion's share of the gains are going to the wealthiest 1 percent.Shares are up because … [Read more...]
olitically, today’s cry for small government has more to do with reducing government power than its size. Granted, without accountability, any agency, public or private, can balloon beyond its reason for existence. But try to imagine this: big oil, big banks, big cyber companies, big finance, big pharmaceutical, big retail, big transportation, big aviation, big utilities, big insurance, big … [Read more...]
he increasingly likely victory of Francois Hollande in the French presidential election would be the shot for economic justice and jobs that will be heard around the world. It would be the repudiation by one of the world's leading nations of the unjust economics of the 1 percent that is championed by Sarkozy in France, Merkel in Germany, Cameron in Britain and Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and … [Read more...]
urope is in recession. Britain’s Office for National Statistics confirmed Wednesday that in the first quarter of this year Britain’s economy shrank .2 percent, after having contracted .3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. (Officially, two quarters of shrinkage make a recession). On Monday, Spain officially fell into recession, for the second time in three years. Portugal, Italy, and … [Read more...]
ver the past week retail giant Walmart has squirmed in the unflattering news spotlight. There was a wave of stories about one of Walmart’s Thai shrimp distributors treating its workers as little more than captive laborers, and another barrage of pieces focused on corporations dropping their affiliations with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council even as Walmart holds onto its … [Read more...]
Credit Card Debt and Americans Financial Health verall, Americans are now carrying about $798.3 billion in revolving debt, a type of debt that is almost entirely made up of credit card balances, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve.It is those who have lost their jobs or suffered reductions in their working hours or rates of pay who are most likely to be forced to use … [Read more...]
The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe n September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress. But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time … [Read more...]
s Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote in 1904, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”But the wealthiest Americans, who haven’t raked in as much of America’s income and wealth since the 1920s, are today paying a lower tax rate than they have in over thirty years. Even though America faces a mammoth federal budget deficit. Even though public services at all levels … [Read more...]
e’re a species that has gotten around; we’ve wandered, pioneered and migrated to every corner of the world. The spear tip of technology is how we can get somewhere else: the wheel, the sailboat, the rocket. In short: we’re movers.We are now as mobile as we’ve ever been as a culture. Our phones are not tethered to any particular location. Our keepsakes, like photos and letters, are all … [Read more...]
just finished doing my taxes. And my mother’s taxes. And the tax returns for a small philanthropic organization whose Treasurer I am.If I had not waited so long, I would not have squeezed hours of filling out forms into just these last few days. But that concentrated my mind on our tax system: how much time it takes, how complex the paperwork can be, how much money is at stake.It’s … [Read more...]
n the Hollis Section of Queens, a working class and lower middle class African American community, two blocks of apartment buildings owned by a multimillionaire real estate operator named Rita Stark have sat vacant for more than 16 years on that community’s major commercial strip. Ugly and decayed, occasionally used by neighborhood drug dealers as a safe haven, they sit across the street from a … [Read more...]
ne of the most pernicious falsehoods you’ll hear during the next seven months of political campaigning is there’s a necessary tradeoff between fairness and economic growth. By this view, if we raise taxes on the wealthy the economy can’t grow as fast.Wrong. Taxes were far higher on top incomes in the three decades after World War II than they’ve been since. And the distribution of … [Read more...]
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