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‘Keep your promises’: Bernie Sanders pushes Trump to maintain NAFTA hard line

Donald Trump is being encouraged to stay strong in NAFTA negotiations by people who aren’t normally his allies.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and other members of the anti-NAFTA left held a news conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill where they demanded that the president keep his promise to drastically overhaul the agreement.

They held their event as negotiators from the three countries met in Washington.

“We are here today to send a very loud and clear message to Donald Trump: for once in your life keep your promises,” said Sanders, a Vermont senator and former presidential contender.

Sanders expressed support for hardball U.S. negotiating positions like increased Buy American protections, and he wants to go even farther than Trump and not just water down the investor-state dispute mechanism in Chapter 11 but end it entirely.

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Sanders says poorly designed trade deals are one of the factors that have hurt U.S. manufacturing communities in recent decades and led to greater inequality between haves and have-nots.

“It devastates lives. And it devastates cities and towns,” Sanders said.

If the president is serious about fixing NAFTA, he must protect the interests of American workers—not the CEOs of multi-national corporations who have rigged our trade policies for the past 40 years.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 13, 2017

World’s richest 0.1% have boosted their wealth by as much as poorest half

The richest 0.1% of the world’s population have increased their combined wealth by as much as the poorest 50% – or 3.8 billion people – since 1980, according to a report detailing the widening gap between the very rich and poor.

The World Inequality Report, published on Thursday by French economist Thomas Piketty, warned that inequality had ballooned to “extreme levels” in some countries and said the problem would only get worse unless governments took coordinated action to increase taxes and prevent tax avoidance.

The report, which drew on the work of more than 100 researchers around the world, found that the richest 1% of the global population “captured” 27% of the world’s wealth growth between 1980 and 2016. And the richest of the rich increased their wealth by even more. The top 0.1% gained 13% of the world’s wealth, and the top 0.001% – about 76,000 people – collected 4% of all the new wealth created since 1980.

“The top 0.1% income group (about 7 million people) captured as much of the world’s growth since 1980 as the bottom half of the adult population,” the report said. “Conversely, income growth has been sluggish or even nil for the population between the global bottom 50% and top 1%.”

Almost 100 million people a year ‘forced to choose between food and healthcare’

Almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty each year because of debts accrued through healthcare expenses.

A report, published by the World Health Organization and the World Bank on Wednesday, found the poorest and most vulnerable people are routinely forced to choose between healthcare and other necessities for their household, including food and education, subsisting on $1.90 (£1.40) a day.

Researchers found that more than 122 million people around the world are forced to live on $3.10 a day, the benchmark for “moderate poverty”, due to healthcare expenditure. Since 2000, this number has increased by 1.5% a year.

A total of 800 million people spend more than 10% of their household budgets on “out-of-pocket” health expenses, defined as costs not covered by insurance. Almost 180 million people spend a quarter or more, a population increasing at a rate of almost 5% per year, with women among those worst affected.

“Only 17% of women in the poorest fifth of households have adequate access to maternal and child health services compared to 74% of women in the richest fifth of households,” said Timothy Evans, senior director of health, nutrition and population at the World Bank Group.

“This remains a problem for not only poor regions of the world, but for all countries at all income levels. At the World Bank, we think that this is both morally and economically bankrupt and unsustainable.

Poll: Almost Nobody Likes Plan To Kill Net Neutrality. GOP FCC Chair Ajit Pai: We’re Doing It Anyway

Despite new polling that shows more than 80 percent of Americans oppose Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to repeal net neutrality protections for the internet—which has provoked months of national protests—the FCC is disregarding that concern and will carry out its scheduled vote on the proposal Thursday.

The University of Maryland survey (pdf), published Monday, prepared respondents to weigh in by first providing them with policy briefs from both sides—Pai and major internet service providers (ISPs) such as Verizon, who claim the protections are a burdern, versus consumer groups and tech companies that argue net neutrality is the foundation on which the internet is built.

Although about 48 percent said Pai’s argument that “rules restricting ISPs are unnecessarily heavy‐handed and stifle innovation” was convincing, more than 75 percent were convinced the rollback would “basically giv[e] ISPs a license to steal from consumers.”

Ultimately, 83 percent of registered voters—75 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of Democrats, and 86 percent of Independents—said they oppose Pai’s plan to allow service providers to control download speeds, limit or block access to certain websites, and charge consumers extra fees for broader access.

“A decision to repeal net neutrality would be tacking against strong headwinds of public opinion blowing in the opposite direction,” said Steven Kull, who directs the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which conducted the poll.

The next senator from Alabama would make Bernie Sanders proud

The next senator from deep-red Alabama supports Obamacare. He favors abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and believes young immigrants brought to the country as children should be allowed to become U.S. citizens. And he opposes both President Donald Trump’s border wall and the Republican tax plan.

Doug Jones’ upset Tuesday night in Alabama’s special election will make him the first Democratic senator from the state since 1994 — and Jones’ positions show how just much the Democratic Party has changed in that time. While the last generation of Democratic senators from the Deep South were reliable conservatives on many issues, Jones figures to make progressives in the Democratic caucus quite happy once he’s sworn in.

Alabama conservatives and moderates were undoubtedly more willing than usual to overlook some of Jones’ policy positions because of the scandal engulfing Republican Roy Moore. But Jones, who faced intense criticism over his abortion stance during the campaign, resisted pressure to moderate his stance on that and other issues during the campaign.

“There are a lot of things that he has supported and espoused that … would not be typically a part of the culture of Alabama,” said Mark Kennedy, a former Alabama Democratic Party chairman. “But it offers us a lot of hope that there can be change and that people are willing to vote for a man who promotes moving Alabama forward not just economically but also progressively.”

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On immigration, Jones told the Montgomery Advertiser he supports “maintaining the integrity of our borders against all threats.” But he also supports a pathway to citizenship for so-called “Dreamers,” like other Senate Democrats. On health care, Jones said he wasn’t “there yet” on backing a single-payer health care system. But Jones openly backed Obamacare and opposed Republican proposals to slash Medicaid. And he focused on the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a point he repeated in his victory speech Tuesday night.

On some key social issues, Jones left little daylight between himself and future Democratic colleagues from deep-blue states. Jones supports same-sex marriage and LGBT rights, and he spoke proudly during the campaign of refusing to moderate his position in favor of abortion rights, a favorite target of attack from Moore’s campaign, which charged that Jones supported abortions at any point during a pregnancy.

Alabama earthquake shakes up political landscape

Both parties are drawing lessons from Alabama as the smoke begins to clear from Tuesday’s stunning special election result.

Doug Jones became the first Democrat to win a Senate race in the state since 1992, defeating Roy Moore despite vigorous support for the GOP candidate from President Trump, who carried the state by almost 30 points in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump sought to distance himself from Moore on Wednesday, though many political insiders saw the result, at least in part, as a rebuke of the president.

“I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election. I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!” Trump tweeted on Wednesday morning.

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But Democrats see their win as part of a broader pattern. They say that a victory in Alabama was only possible because of voter enthusiasm, especially among the African-Americans and young people who form the bedrock of their party.

They say similar patterns have been seen in other elections since Trump took office.

Bribes for TV soccer rights allegedly paid with ‘agreement and support’ of Murdoch’s Fox executives

Senior executives at Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox corporation are alleged to have agreed for millions of dollars in bribes to be paid to South American soccer officials to secure major broadcast deals, according to US prosecution documents.

‘If This Bill Passes, People Will Die’: Tax Scam Opponents Rally as GOP Aims for Final Vote Next Week

As GOP negotiators triumphantly announced on Wednesday that they have reached a tentative “deal” on their tax bill—placing it on track for a vote as early as next week—progressives held a “People’s Rally” outside of the Capitol building to highlight the legislation’s historic unpopularity and demand that a final vote be delayed until newly elected Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) is seated.

“No Jones, no vote!” demonstrators chanted, echoing a chorus of progressive lawmakers who have called on Republican leaders to “listen to the people of Alabama.”

“Our message to Mitch McConnell is simple: No vote on the tax bill until Doug Jones is rightfully seated,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a speech on the lawn of the Capitol.

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The demonstrations raged on as lawmakers attended the first public conference committee hearing on the GOP tax bill, which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) characterized as a “sham,” given that the legislation has “already been written behind closed doors.”

“There has not been one public hearing, no opportunity to hear from economists, governors, mayors, or ordinary Americans who will be impacted by this tax bill,” Sanders said.

Report Links Trump’s Anti-Press Rhetoric to Record Number of Jailed Journalists

Exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s anti-press rhetoric, a record number of journalists worldwide are currently behind bars for reporting or commenting on news events according to an annual survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The numbers reflect not only a “bleak climate” for journalists around the globe, but also a “dismal failure” by countries including the U.S. to address the ongoing crisis.

Turkey, China, and Egypt were the three worst offenders in CPJ’s report, jailing a combined 134 journalists out of the total 262 who are currently imprisoned worldwide. Trump, the report noted, has expressed admiration for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese President Xi Jinping, both of whom have been criticized for their authoritarian leanings, and has praised Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, saying they both “agree on so many things.”

“Far from isolating repressive countries for their authoritarian behavior, the United States, in particular, has cozied up to strongmen,” said the CPJ.

White House contradicts Tillerson and says not right time for North Korea talks

The White House has ruled out a dialogue with North Korea until it “fundamentally improves its behaviour”, once again contradicting the secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who said on Tuesday the US was ready to begin direct talks without preconditions.

A statement given to Reuters by the National Security Council spokesman, saying “clearly right now is not the time” for talks, following North Korea’s test launch of a intercontinental ballistic missile last month.

The statement seemed to close the door on a diplomatic window only hours after it had been opened by the administration’s top diplomat.

The mixed messages underlined the chaotic nature of Trump administration foreign policy, and raised new questions over how long Tillerson can stay in the administration that has persistently undercut him.

The new cold war: how our focus on Russia obscures social media’s real threat

Washington used to worship Silicon Valley. Few things made politicians’ hearts beat faster than the bipartisan love for big tech. Silicon Valley was building the future. Government’s role was to offer compliments and get out of the way.

Recently, however, the mood has shifted. Both sides of the political divide seem to be awakening to the possibility that letting the tech industry do whatever it wants hasn’t produced the best of all possible worlds. “I have found a flaw,” Alan Greenspan famously said in 2008 of his free-market worldview, as the global financial system imploded. A similar discovery may be dawning on our political class when it comes to its hands-off approach to Silicon Valley.

But the new taste for techno-skepticism is unlikely to lead to meaningful reform, for several reasons. One is money. The five biggest tech firms spend twice as much as Wall Street on lobbying Washington. It seems reasonable to assume that this insulates them from anything too painful in a political system as corrupt as ours.

But beyond that obstacle lies another: Russia. Without Russia, Washington wouldn’t be talking tough on tech. But Russia is also the worst possible way to understand what’s wrong with the internet, and how we might begin to fix it.

Making Russia the whipping boy for the problems of platforms like Facebook won’t produce a constructive political conversation about how to make the internet more democratic. Instead, it will probably make the internet worse – by accelerating the erosion of our digital civil liberties in the name of national security without doing anything to challenge Silicon Valley’s power over our lives.

Global warming made Hurricane Harvey deadly rains three times more likely, research reveals

Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented deluge, which caused catastrophic flooding in Houston in August, was made three times more likely by climate change, new research has found.

Such a downpour was a very rare event, scientists said, but global warming meant it was 15% more intense. The storm left 80 people dead and 800,000 in need of assistance.

The scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative usually publish their assessments of the role of climate change in extreme weather events around the world as soon as possible. However, in this case they waited for the work to be confirmed by peer review because of the current US government’s opposition to strong action on climate change.

The researchers said their new work shows global warming is making extreme weather events worse right now and in the US. The cost of the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey has been estimated at $190bn (£140bn), which would make it the most costly weather disaster in US history, more than Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy combined.

A series of new reports have found that extreme heatwaves, droughts, floods, storms and wildfires across the planet have been made more likely or more intense by rising global temperatures. The UK’s Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) analysed 59 studies of the influence of climate change on extreme weather published in the last two years and found warming has made matters worse in 70% of cases and better in just 7%.

A different dimension of loss’: inside the great insect die-off

Scientists have identified 2 million species of living things. No one knows how many more are out there, and tens of thousands may be vanishing before we have even had a chance to encounter them.

I really enjoy The Guardian’s ‘Long Read’ pieces. Almost always quite interesting & informative.