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Created
Wed, 03/08/2022 - 01:19
Jul 19, 2022 ROBERT SKIDELSKY Although words like “unprincipled,” “amoral,” and “serial liar” seem to describe the outgoing British prime minister accurately, they accurately describe more successful political leaders as well. To explain Johnson’s fall, we need to consider two factors specific to our times. LONDON – Nearly all political careers end in failure, but Boris … Continue reading Boris Johnson’s Fall – and Ours
Created
Tue, 02/08/2022 - 02:39
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are considered “passive” investors and are exempt from corporate tax. But in reality, they play a very active role in reshaping whole industries, like healthcare.

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are important financial actors that control over $3.5 trillion in gross assets and over 500,000 properties in the U.S. Yet they have been largely ignored because tax rules define them as ‘passive investors.’ They exist as tax “pass through” entities and pay no corporate taxes if they invest at least 75 percent of their assets in real estate, derive 75 percent of their gross income from real property, and pay out at least 90 percent of taxable income (excluding capital gains) as shareholder dividends each year.

Created
Sat, 30/07/2022 - 14:30
It is not socialism that explains capitalism, argues Max Weber, it is rather capitalism that explains socialism. And as long as capitalism exists, socialist aspirations will persist: “What characterises our current situation is firstly the fact that the private sector of the economy in conjunction with private bureaucratic organisation and hence with the separation of the worker […]
Created
Fri, 29/07/2022 - 09:26

As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as Continue Reading

The post American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama first appeared on Michael Hudson.
Created
Thu, 28/07/2022 - 22:06

In 1973, soon after the US Supreme Court established a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, Charles E. Rice concluded that “the essential remedy to the abortion problem is a constitutional amendment.” Rice is an important figure in the intellectual history of the antiabortion movement that is now, with the recent overturning of Roe, […]

The post The Irish Lesson appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

Created
Tue, 26/07/2022 - 23:19
When I was growing up in Chappaqua, a suburb north of New York City, in the 1970s, my parents would take my five sisters and me to visit our Uncle Leo and Aunt Ruth. A bachelor for a good part of his younger life, Leo married Ruth sometime after the war, and they ultimately settled in Co-Op City in the Bronx. I vividly remember the drive there, the big dip on the Bronx River Parkway that made my stomach leap into my mouth, and then the view of Co-Op City from afar, a towering Oz of white buildings that stood out from the surrounding marshes and waterways of the Bronx. I also remember the parquet floors of their apartment, though […]
Created
Mon, 25/07/2022 - 20:43
The steps the company should take to change the way it closes accounts. By George Monbiot, published on monbiot.com 25th July 2022 Following my family’s shocking experience in trying to cancel my deceased mother’s Vodafone account, and the discovery that many other people have suffered the same treatment, or worse, I’ve made a list of […]
Created
Mon, 25/07/2022 - 19:46



In 2007 the Australian Labor Party, under Kevin Rudd, inflicted a painful defeat on the COALition. From 60 MPs the ALP had before the federal election, their Lower House representation swelled to 83 (more than enough to pass legislation). And 22 of those new MPs were replacing defeated COALition MPs, whose House contingent was reduced to 65.

To make things worse for the COALition, even John Howard, until then PM, lost his safe seat of Bennelong and “moderate” Malcolm Turnbull, who soon was chosen federal Opposition Leader, was facing an extreme Right insurgency, led by Tony Abbott and Nick Minchin.

In the Senate, things were only slightly less favourable for Rudd, the new Labor PM: