This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Why The Ted Rall LA Times Scandal Matters [legal analysis] - Tom Ewing at aNewDomain: "In the absence of any real evidence whatsoever and by the Times own description of what happened, here’s one possible conclusion: The LAPD simply asked the Times to fire Ted."
  
• Curator of the Future - George Monbiot: "The middle ground is a magic mountain that retreats as you approach. The more you chase it from the left, the further to the right it moves. […] Nothing was more politically inept than Labour’s attempt before the election to win back UKIP supporters by hardening its stance on immigration. Why vote for the echo when you can vote for the shout?"
• Nanny state submission - Cameron K Murray: "[…] it is not clear that “sin taxes” on alcohol are an effective way to change the binge drinking culture, and in fact might have the opposite effect. Those who choose to drink alcohol may change their patterns of consumption to only drink to get drunk. Why pay so much for alcohol unless you are going to get drunk?"
• Whistleblower Says Asylum Seekers Waterboarded And Zip Tied By "Thug-Like" Guards On Nauru - Max Chalmers, New Matilda: "I’ve seen members of the [Wilson] Emergency Response Team exit tents and later I’ve seen asylum seekers come out of these tents, come out of them covered in water, coughing."
• The great Labour purge is underway - Michael Chessum, openDemocracy: "One post currently doing the rounds on Facebook states: “If you know that someone who has recently signed up as a member, supporter or affiliate, who is not in fact a supporter of the Labour party, you should email their name to leadership2015@labour.org.uk with proof.” The post concludes: “Please do report anyone you suspect should be ineligible – and you too could be called a star by the Compliance Unit”."
• Neoliberal epidemics: the spread of austerity, obesity, stress and inequality - Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra of Durham University, in The Conversation: "Focusing on the social determinants of health – the conditions of life and work that make it relatively easy for some people to lead long and healthy lives, while it is all but impossible for others – we show that there are four interconnected neoliberal epidemics: austerity, obesity, stress, and inequality. They are neoliberal because they are associated with or worsened by neoliberal policies. They are epidemics because they are observable on such an international scale and have been transmitted so quickly across time and space that if they were biological contagions they would be seen as of epidemic proportions."
• But What’s It Really For? - Robert DiNapoli in Arena: "The very thought of tax revenues being lavished on education as a species of social investment long ago lost all credibility, and as a result universities have faced a perfect storm of budgetary axes falling faster and harder than those that split the skulls of the monks of Lindisfarne when the Vikings came knocking in the eighth century. The managers and education ministers who wrought this have possessed about as much feel for the real dynamics of teaching and learning as those Vikings did for the texts they ripped from the gospel books whose gem- and gold-encrusted covers they coveted. The pages that carried those texts’ real, living purpose they chucked into a convenient bog on their way back to their ships. Efficiency rules, for plunderer and executive alike."
• Greece is for sale – and everything must go, Nick Deardon, openDemocracy: "The beneficiaries are corporations from around the world, though eyebrows are particularly being raised at the number of European companies – from German airport operators and phone companies to French railways – who are getting their hands on Greece’s economy. Not to mention the European investment banks and legal firms who are making a fast buck along the way. The self-interest of European governments in forcing these policies on Greece leaves a particularly unpleasant flavour."
• Three-word slogans have left Abbott with an economic quandary - John Quiggin for the Drum: "Let's start with "debt and deficits". The Gillard government handed this issue to Abbott on a plate, with Treasurer Wayne Swan's obsessive pursuit of an essentially meaningless return to budget surplus. The rhetoric surrounding this goal made it impossible for Labor to defend its successful use of deficits to stimulate the economy at the time of the Global Financial Crisis. The result was that a government that had outperformed the entire developed world in terms of economic management was presented, and presented itself, as a set of wasteful spendthrifts."
• War and technological progress - John Quiggin again: "Opportunity cost reasoning leads us to ask what was foregone to release the [scientific and technological] resources [for war work]. In large part, the answer is ‘research of the kind that made these developments possible’. War gives great urgency to the “D” part of R&D, at the expense of R."
• Fairy Tales - Krugman at The Paper of Record: "As Mike Konczal, channeling Kalecki, pointed out some time ago, arguments rejecting Keynes and declaring that only business confidence can achieve full employment serve a very useful political purpose: they empower plutocrats and big business, while rendering populists impotent."
• Techno-optimism & low investment - Chris Dillow: "If you spend £10m installing robots in a factory today you might be able to undercut your non-robotized rivals. But if a new company later installs better robots for £5m, it will undercut you and destroy your profits. […] This is true not just of process innovation but product innovation too. For example, Nokia benefited hugely from the first wave of innovation in mobile phones, but suffered hugely from the later wave which gave us the smartphone. "
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• Did socialism keep capitalism equal? - Branko Milanovic: "The implication is of course rather unpleasant: left to itself, without any countervailing powers, capitalism will keep on generating high inequality and so the US may soon look like South Africa."
• "Don't Owe. Won't Pay." Everything You've Been Told About Debt Is Wrong - Charles Eisenstein at Truthout: "Positive money refers to money created directly without debt by the government, which can be given directly to debtors for debt repayment or used to purchase debts from creditors and then cancel them. Negative-interest currency (which I describe in depth in Sacred Economics) entails a liquidity fee on bank reserves, essentially taxing wealth at its source. It enables zero-interest lending, reduces wealth concentration, and allows a financial system to function in the absence of growth."
• The Upsurge in Uncertain Work - Robert Reich on the precariat: "On demand and on call – in the “share” economy, the “gig” economy, or, more prosaically, the “irregular” economy – the result is the same: no predictable earnings or hours. […] It’s estimated that in five years over 40 percent of the American labor force will have uncertain work; in a decade, most of us."