Progressive Opinion

policyshop.net — Say you want to buy a house or a car and you need a loan to do it. You do what every personal finance site recommends and obtain a free copy of your credit report from annualcreditreport.com. Then, urged on by the ads from TransUnion, Equifax, or Experian – the “big three” credit reporting firms that compile the reports – you opt for not only the free report but also shell out for what the companies promise is your actual three-digit credit score. A number! Now, you may think, I know what the auto lenders and banks making mortgages really think of me. I have a sense of what rates I qualify for and what type of car or home I can afford. There’s just one problem: the score you paid for is likely not the same one potential lenders will use to assess you.  In fact, it could be way off.

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alternet.org — The redistribution of wealth toward the top is clearly getting worse. In fact, despite the financial crash, the Occupy movement, and the obvious failure of trickledown economics, the Census Bureau reports that the gulf between the rich and the rest of us is at an all-time high. Maybe that’s why the rich and their apologists are getting a bit defensive lately. Like a drug addict turning every cushion upside-down in search of lost change, the 1 percenters are scrounging up every timeworn myth, lame justification and absurd rationalization they can think of to convince us that the rich are super-smart, hard-working job creators instead of greedy parasites refusing to pay their share in taxes and play by the same rulebook as everyone else. This line gets harder to sell every minute.

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motherjones.com — Mitt Romney's taxes are once again in the news thanks to Friday's release of his full 2011 tax return. As with his 2010 filings, the documents highlight the GOP candidate's extensive overseas holdings, which some tax experts believe has allowed him to lessen his tax liability. But the problem with Romney's reliance on offshore tax havens goes beyond his own tax bill. The Internal Revenue Service and many members of Congress have sought for years to close some of the loopholes that are draining billions of dollars from the federal treasury and shifting the tax burden from wealthy corporations to average individuals. Yet through his work at Bain Capital and his personal investments, Romney has supported a shadowy financial system with far-reaching ramifications for the U.S. and foreign governments.

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huffingtonpost.com — Why does the press feign puzzlement about what Romney is hiding by not revealing his 2009 tax returns? His disclosure of his 2010 account omitted information about his Swiss bank account at the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS). Why is the press not asking for this form? UBS was fined $760 million for putting Americans into abusive tax shelters and forced to reveal more than 4000 Americans who banked with them under numbered accounts. The 4000+ Americans who were exposed by UBS were offered amnesty from criminal prosecution for tax evasion if they closed their Swiss Account, recalculated and paid all back taxes and paid a 25 percent penalty on the largest amount. Romney closed his UBS account in the time required. He did not close his other foreign accounts. Should not the press be peppering Romney with questions about amnesty?

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nextnewdeal.net — It was just announced that Tim Pawlenty will become the head of the bank lobbying group Financial Services Roundtable. The powerful financial lobbying group, which represents groups like JP Morgan and Bank of America among other big financial sector players, appears to be aligning itself more closely with the Republican Party and betting on the idea that Republicans will control at least part of Congress. But what do they want? Recently, Phil Mattingly had an article at Bloomberg Businessweek about how the GOP and Mitt Romney would approach Dodd-Frank. Mattingly's argument is that it is unlikely that the Republicans will outright repeal Dodd-Frank. "Instead, President Romney would likely try to give the financial industry something it wants more: a diluted financial reform law that would relax restrictions on some of its most profitable—and riskiest—investments but maintain enough government oversight to give the banks cover." So what would the Republicans try to dilute and remove?

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alternet.org — Most people now realize big banks aren’t their friends. Only in the fairy tale movie world of It’s a Wonderful Life does banker George Bailey lend a helping hand to friends and neighbors to build a prosperous Bedford Falls. But many people have no idea that the regulated banking system is only one part of a gigantic problem. Lurking behind regulated banks is the shadow banking system. And it’s from out of these shadows that the next big shock to the global financial system, threatening everyone’s nest egg, might come. What is shadow banking? Different writers mean different things when they use the term. But the fact that it’s hard to explain only makes it more difficult to constrain.

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alternet.org — Up until this point, as I chronicled the race-baiting and bigotry of the Romney campaign, I had seen it all as a cynical strategy deployed simply to appeal to the basest instincts of the Republican base -- and not necessarily reflective of Mitt's own biases. But the video tells a different tale. There, in the well-appointed home of leveraged buyout mogul Marc Leder, Romney seems to be, at last, his authentic self, speaking in a relaxed manner before people of his own social class, giving the subtext of Romney's wish-I-was-a-Mexican remark the feel of a more authentic racial resentment. Here are five examples of ways in which Romney has demonstrated disrespect for brown and black people.

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guardian.co.uk — The great protest movements of history lasted not for a moment but for decades. And they did not expand in the shape of a simple rising arc of popular defiance. Rather, they began in a particular place, sputtered and subsided, only to re-emerge elsewhere in perhaps a different form, influenced by local particularities of circumstance and culture. Movements that may appear to us in retrospect as a unified set of events are, in fact, irregular and scattered. Only afterwards do we see the underlying common institutional causes and movement passions that mark these events so we can name them, as the abolitionist movement, for example, or the labor movement or the civil rights movement. I think Occupy is likely to unfold in a similar way.

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guardian.co.uk — Rarely can a movement have been so hastily obituarized as Occupy Wall Street. The campaign that has done more than any other to thrust inequality on to the political agenda of one of the world's most unequal countries turned one on Sunday – yet already a would-be priesthood is reading its last rites. True, Occupy no longer squats unignorably in the American or British political debate as it did last autumn. But that doesn't justify one of the most interesting political phenomena in years being written off by many of the same folk who never saw it coming in the first place. Indeed, each time they do so, they display a lamentable misunderstanding of Occupy's strengths and weaknesses, an ignorance of how activism ebbs and flows and a complacency about the merits of its arguments.

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colorlines.com — One-year on from its beginning, progressives owe Occupy Wall Street a debt of gratitude. The movement’s clarion call “We are the 99 percent” has shifted the discourse on economic justice in the United States and around the world. Altered language is the first and essential step to political and policy change. When this fundamental change might happen, no one knows. But almost everyone, except perhaps those in the 1 percent, understand that it’s coming. This is in no small part to OWS’ ability, with a succinctly brilliant phrase, to highlight how and why things were so critically off course.

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