A new study backed by big business argues that lobbying is harming the American economy – and proposes regulation to address the problem Source: Even corporate America wants campaign finance reform to stop crony capitalism | Zephyr Teachout | Comment is free | The Guardian Continue reading Even corporate America wants campaign finance reform to stop crony capitalism

  Prosecutors in more than 200 criminal cases across the United States, including murder and rape trials, have used the TrueAllele DNA-testing software to secure convictions, but defense attorneys cannot look at … Continue reading Prosecutors are sending people to jail with software evidence that no one can double-check

Things really are getting out of hand. Privacy should mean privacy from all, including the police, especially when it comes to your medical and DNA records. Source: 23andme & Ancestry.com aggregated the … Continue reading 23andme & Ancestry.com turning over customer DNA to the police

Amelia Flores, a high school senior with plans to become an electrical engineer, eagerly filled out a form to register to vote for the first time at the Kansas State Fair last … Continue reading Voter ID Battle Shifts to Kansas – NYTimes.com

What the public wants out of a candidate and what the beltway press does appear to be two entirely different things. Source: Bernie Won All the Focus Groups & Online Polls, So … Continue reading Bernie Won All the Focus Groups & Online Polls, So Why Is the Media Saying Hillary Won the Debate?

Bill McKibben: The truth of Exxon’s complicity in global warming must to be told – how they knew about climate change decades ago but chose to help kill our planet Source: Exxon’s … Continue reading Exxon’s climate lie: ‘No corporation has ever done anything this big or bad’

The size of the audience was a demonstration of the concern that Finnish people have for the future of their nation given that the conservative government is signalling it wants to impose … Continue reading University of Helsinki lecture | Euro Crisis

One of the shibboleths of our age is that government is always and only inefficient and ineffective as compared to the private sector or “markets”.  This has been a view that has … Continue reading Why Shouldn’t the US Federal Government Invest $4-$6 Trillion Per Year on Climate Protection? (Part 2 of 2) 

The US Climate Platform outlines why and how the US federal government should invest somewhere in the area of $4 trillion to $6 trillion per year on stabilizing the global climate, in … Continue reading Should the US Federal Government Invest $4-$6 Trillion Per Year on Climate Protection? Part 1

Without the help of the authors, only a third of the results could be independently replicated by the researchers. Even with their help, only about half could. Just goes to show you … Continue reading Federal Reserve paper on the replicability of economic studies

The most pernicious effect of the status of economics in public life has been the hegemony of technocratic thinking. Political questions about how to run society have come to be framed as … Continue reading Don’t let the Nobel prize fool you. Economics is not a science

“We have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the telephone records program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation,” said … Continue reading Independent review board says NSA phone data program is illegal and should end