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Treasure Islands is highly critical of the offshore system and will inevitably be attacked by users and supporters of tax havens. I tackle some of the commonest myths about tax havens in Chapter 10, but this is a wide-ranging area and there wasn't nearly enough space to do justice to the array of is…

President Obama submitted three free trade agreements to Congress based on the flawed North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model that has been devastating to our economy, American workers and to labor and environmental standards. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been displaced and outsourced as a result of our pursuit of trade policies which are adverse to the economic interests of the American people. My home State of Ohio is one of the top-ten states posting the biggest job losses since the passage of NAFTA. Unfortunately, the proposed free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama do nothing to address the significant flaws in the free trade model that prioritize the rights of multinational companies over the rights of workers and the American economy. The Korea-US and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements are expected to increase our trade deficit by over $16 billion and result in the displacement or loss of over 200,000 jobs. This is on top of the over 2 million American jobs that have been displaced or eliminated over the past 10 years as a result of our increased trade deficit with China. The last thing American workers and our economy needs is more NAFTA-style free trade agreements.

Every day, 200,000 domestic workers in New York, mostly women of color, make it possible for others to work. But these nannies, elderly caregivers, and housekeepers are excluded from the most basic labor laws (including the National Labor Relations Act), and isolated with no power or leverage to negotiate. They endure long hours, low wages and sometimes emotional and physical abuse. New York State is considering historic legislation that would provide protections to domestic workers for the first time! The New York Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is the first of its kind nationally and will set a precedent for labor standards for domestic workers around the country Stand with domestic workers by calling Albany legislators to help pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights! Call Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver at (518)-455-3791 and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith at (518)-455-2701 and say: "My name is __________, and I live in ___________ New York. I'm calling to urge you to help pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Bill numbers A1470/S2311 this legislative session. Tomorrow, hundreds of domestic workers and their supporters will come to Albany for a day of action and education. Please work with them to move the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights to the floor for a vote." Then find your own representatives and let them know you want them to support the Bill of Rights: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/ http://www.senate.state.ny.us/senateh... In the wake of the economic crisis, the conditions facing domestic workers have worsened. Facing alarming rates of lay-offs, cut wages and extended hours, without notice, severance pay or any safety net, now more than ever - domestic workers need the Bill of Rights. For 5 years, domestic workers have come together across communities to organize for dignity and respect, and demand the passage of a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York State, which would include: * Notice of termination * Severance pay, sick

By Ralph Nader & Carl J. Mayer New York Times, April 9, 1988 Our constitutional rights were intended for real persons, not artificial creations. The Framers knew about corporations but chose not to mention these contrived entities in the Constitution. For them, the document shielded living beings from arbitrary government and endowed them with the right to speak, assemble, and petition. Today, however, corporations enjoy virtually the same umbrella of constitutional protections as individuals do. They have become in effect artificial persons with infinitely greater power than humans. This constitutional equivalence must end. Consider a few noxious developments during the last 10 years. A group of large Boston companies invoked the First Amendment in order to spend lavishly and thus successfully defeat a referendum that would have permitted the legislature to enact a progressive income tax that had no direct effect on the property and business of these companies. An Idaho electrical and plumbing corporation cited the Fourth Amendment and deterred a health and safety investigation. A textile supply company used Fifth Amendment protections and barred retrial in a criminal anti-trust case in Texas. The idea that the Constitution should apply to corporations as it applies to humans had its dubious origins in 1886. The Supreme Court said it did "not wish to hear argument" on whether corporations were "persons" protected by the 14th Amendment, a civil rights amendment designed to safeguard newly emancipated blacks from unfair government treatment. It simply decreed that corporations were persons. Now that is judicial activism. A string of later dissents, by Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, demonstrated that neither the history nor the language of the 14th Amendment was meant to protect corporations. But it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle and the corporate evolution into personhood was under way. It was not until the 1970's that corporations

LAHORE: Governor of Punjab has said according to reports eight to 10 armed men were involved in attack on Manawan Police Training School in Lahore .

With Wall Street speculators driving up oil and gas prices to near record highs, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today urged President Obama to ask for the immediate resignation of federal regulators who won't enforce a new law to stop excessive speculation in oil markets. Gasoline pump prices in Vermont averaged $3.90 a gallon today, a penny more than the national average. At the same time, big oil companies posted record profits. ExxonMobil's $10.7 billion first-quarter profit was 69 percent greater than one year ago.

DemocracyNow.org -The manhunt for Osama Bin Laden is over. Nearly 10 years after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, U.S forces are said to have assassinated the Saudi-born founder of Al Qaeda inside Pakistan. At the time of his death, Bin Laden was living in a heavily fortified mansion just a mile from the Pakistani Army's principal military academy. The U.S. operation was reportedly carried out by 25 Navy Seals under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command. It is unclear what role Pakistan played in the killing. For analysis, Democracy Now! interviews Jeremy Scahill, the national security correspondent for The Nation magazine. This clip is part of an hour-long roundtable discussion about Bin Laden's death and the ongoing war on terrorism. Click here to watch the entire interview: http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2011/5/2

10 shocking, illuminating moments that prove just how out of touch the powerful really are

Poor urban neighborhoods have already learned what is only dimly being understood by the rest of us-in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants.  - 2011/07/10

The Register of Deeds of South Essex County, Mass. is waging war on the banks over predatory lending and mortgage fraud (via Total Mortgage). John O'Brien's case hinges on the fact that the MERS system set up to expedite the bundling of mortgage backed securities skirted numerous local transaction fees. O'Brien figures his town lost as much as $22 million in revenue since 1998. To get some of it back he commissioned an audit of 2010 mortgage assignments. 16% of the assignments were valid, 75% were invalid, and 9% were deemed questionable. Of those that are invalid, 27% were fraudulent, 35% showed evidence of robo-signing, and 10% violated the Massachusetts Mortgage Fraud Statute. The proper owner of the mortgages could only be determined 60% of the time. In a release by his office O'Brien said: "This evidence has made it clear to me that the only way we can ever determine the total economic loss and the amount damage done to the taxpayers is by conducting a full forensic audit of all registry of deeds in Massachusetts. I suspect that at the end of the day we are going to find that the taxpayers have been bilked in this state alone of over 400 million dollars not including the accrued interest plus costs and penalties. The Audit makes the finding that this was not only a MERS problem, but a scheme also perpetuated by MERS shareholder banks such Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and others. I am stunned and appalled by the fact that America's biggest banks have played fast and loose with people's biggest asset - their homes.  This is disgusting, and this is criminal."

It's important, yes, and must be addressed. But by a wide margin, it's not the nation's most pressing economic problem. That would be the widespread and persistent joblessness that has plagued the labor market since the Great Recession began in 2008. Almost 14 million people - 9.1 percent of the labor force - were officially counted as unemployed last month. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There were almost 9 million part-time workers who wanted, but couldn't find, full-time jobs; 28 million in jobs they would have quit under normal conditions; and an additional 2.2 million who wanted work but couldn't find any and dropped out of the labor force. If the economy could generate jobs at the median wage for even half of these people, national income would grow by more than 10 times the total interest cost of the 2011 deficit (which was less than $40 billion). So anyone who says that reducing the deficit is more urgent than reducing unemployment is saying, in effect, that we should burn hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services in a national bonfire. We ought to be tackling both problems at once. But in today's fractious political climate, many promising dual-purpose remedies - like infrastructure investments that would generate large and rapid returns - are called unthinkable, in the false belief that they would impoverish our grandchildren. Yet there are other ways to attack unemployment that could garner bipartisan support. Perhaps the most promising is a payroll tax holiday.

The administration manipulates secrecy to disseminate beneficial information while supressing what's embarrassing

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

Jack Heyman, a recently retired business agent for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union local 10, drove through the Port of Oakland and called in the following statement to Truthout at 9:25 AM Pacific time:"The port of Oakland is effectively shut down. None of the ships are being worked. There is limited trucking activity by non-union workers but the port is effectively shut down. Trucks waiting to pick up containers are backed up over a mile," Heyman said. The truck backup was confirmed by the Oakland Tribune.According to Heyman, this partial shutdown was initiated by the rank-and-file workers at the port, in solidarity with the call for a general strike by the Occupy Oakland protesters. The union's official position on the strike call was to work in the morning and then join the demonstrations in the evening, but according to Heyman, the rank and file decided to vote with their feet and not fill key jobs at the port this morning.

President Donald Trump is a media personality in the united states, a developer of real estate and a businessman with net assets of between 3 and 10 billion dollars

US presidential 2016 campaign is in full swing. All candidates are not leaving any stone Upturned to attract voters. In most recent poll Hillary Clinton is maintaining 5 percentage point lead over Donald Trump post Donald Trump disastrous presenting debate and string of accusation leveled by ladies.

Senate democrats have been holding everything up including job creation and the economy!