“Haitian people are all too familiar with the court expressing sympathy to their plight but closing doors to them,” concluded Muneer Ahmad, Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, at today’s federal District Court hearing concerning the U.N.’s immunity for introducing cholera to Haiti. “That need not be the case here,” said Ahmad.

For one day, at least, the Southern District federal court in New York did open their doors, as Judge Oetken heard oral arguments in the case George et al. V. United Nations et al. The question before the court today was whether or not the U.N. and its officers should have immunity from claims arising from the introduction of cholera into Haiti by U.N. troops in October 2010.  

“It is not seriously disputed that the U.N. is responsible for causing this devastating epidemic,” stated Beatrice Lindstrom, a staff attorney at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and counsel for the thousands of Haitian cholera victims represented in the suit.  The U.N. did not appear in court but rather it was U.S. government attorney Ellen Blain who spoke in defense of U.N. immunity, citing the U.S.’s obligation as host nation to the U.N.

Lindstrom argued that the U.N.’s immunity, as called for in Section 2 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations [doc] (CPIUN) did not need to be expressly waived by the U.N., because it had failed to provide an alternative dispute mechanism, as called for in Section 29 of the CPIUN.  Lindstrom stated that these two sections were “two-sides of the came coin” and that the convention must be interpreted “in whole.”  By failing to live up to its obligations under Section 29, the U.N. would not be able to then claim immunity under Section 2. U.S. attorneys argued that there was no link between the two sections and pointed to previous cases where U.S. courts have upheld immunity.

However, in those previous cases, the plaintiffs argued, the U.N. had provided an alternative dispute mechanism, and the question was over its adequacy. This was the first case before U.S. courts where the U.N. had failed entirely to live up to its obligations under Section 29, according to the plaintiffs as well as international law scholars, who filed amicus curiae with the court.

The second round of Brazil’s presidential elections, taking place Sunday, could be close according to polls showing President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party (PT) favored by 52 percent over challenger Aécio Neves of the Social Democratic Party (PSDB) with 48 percent. As we noted with Mexico’s 2012 presidential elections, media coverage can have a strong impact on election turnout and voter preferences, and there is compelling research [doc] that Mexico’s TV duopoly was decisive in determining the outcome of Mexico’s 2006 election. While Brazil’s media is mostly opposed to the PT, it hasn’t been able to swing recent presidential elections – but it appears it’s not for a lack of trying.

Manchetômetro (literal translation: “headline meter”), an independent project affiliated with the Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Políticos at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, has analyzed major media coverage of the main candidates and parties in Brazil. Focusing on TV coverage on Brazil’s largest audience TV news program “Jornal Nacional,” and front-page coverage in Brazil’s three largest newspapers (Folha de S. Paulo, O Globo and O Estado de São Paulo), Manchetômetro has documented a pattern of lopsided coverage that has disproportionately put Dilma Rousseff and the PT in a negative light, while opposition candidate Aécio Neves of the PSDB (and first round challenger Marina Silva) have received much more positive treatment and much less negative coverage, proportionately. Manchetômetro’s analysis also reveals that this bias against the PT is not new; coverage favored Fernando Henrique Cardoso (of the PSDB) over Rousseff’s predecessor, Lula da Silva during the 1998 election, and there was also more favorable treatment of the economic situation under Cardoso than the current economic downturn under Dilma, though the former was significantly worse than the latter.

TV Coverage: “Jornal Nacional”

Globo’s decades-old “Jornal Nacional” is considered to be a leading news program on Brazilian television; with around 18 million viewers (in 2013) it has a total audience of about twice the combined viewers of the four leading U.S. Sunday morning news talk shows (“This Week,” “Face the Nation,” “Meet the Press” and “Fox News Sunday”). The program’s influence may not be surprising considering Globo’s dominant position in Brazil’s media landscape. In a 2009 book, Giancarlo Summa (who did communications for Lula’s 2006 campaign) noted that Globo controlled 61.5 percent of UHF television stations, 31.8 percent of VHF TV, 40.7 percent of newspaper distribution, 30.1 percent of AM radio, 28 percent of FM radio and - through an association with Rupert Murdoch - 77 percent of the cable TV market.

Manchetômetro found a strong bias against Dilma Rousseff in “Jornal Nacional” coverage. During the campaign period (beginning July 6, and up to October 22), 21 percent of the coverage of Rousseff was negative, the most of any candidate. The percentage of positive coverage that Rousseff received was just 1 percent, much less than any other candidate. (Rousseff also had 78 percent “neutral” treatment.)

October 2014, Dean Baker

It is a popular sport in policy circles to complain that the government spends so much more on seniors that it spends on kids. The gap between spending on seniors and spending on kids comes from taking average Social Security and Medicare benefits, along with some other programs, and showing that is vastly exceeds what we spend on kids. (The calculation usually leaves out state and local expenditures, which accounts for the bulk of education spending.)

The problem with this calculation is that seniors have paid for Social Security and Medicare benefits through the payroll taxes taken out of their paycheck over their working lifetime. According to calculations from the Urban Institute, the typical retiree pays more into Social Security than she can expect to get back in benefits.

Dean Baker
October 20, 2014, TruthOut

by Eileen Appelbaum Gretchen Morgenson had a great column in Sunday’s New York Times that pulls back the veil of secrecy surrounding pension fund investments in private equity. PE firm Carlyle recently agreed to pay $115 million to settle charges that it

The Post is really angry that people are talking about the rich getting everything at the expense of everyone else. It demands in the headline of an article, "stop with the fiction of a binary economy." 

Actually, nothing in the article really gives us much reason to question the reality of the binary economy that many economists have written about. For example, it tells readers:

"The jobless rate in the center of the United States from North Dakota to Texas is less than 5 percent and has been well below the national rate for five years."

Yes, and this means what? Wages are rising in North Dakota, with a labor force of 470,000 (just over 0.3 percent of the national labor force), but not much in Texas. Furthermore, the country had a 4.0 percent unemployment rate as a year-round average in 2000. This meant that many states were around 3.0 percent.

Then we get this bizarre discussion:

"But the top two income quintiles saw annual gains of a percent to a percent and a half until 2008.

"That isn’t what it was in the 20th century, but we tend to forget that the 20th century also saw much higher inflation. And we forgot that just as income growth has slowed, the costs of many basic goods and services also dropped. In 1950, food represented 32 percent of a family’s budget, according to federal statistics; today, it accounts for less than 15 percent. Energy use has seen similar declines, along with clothing and basic necessities. Health care costs more, but that in part is because we are living longer. Education eats up more costs, but many more people are going to college."

Ha-Joon Chang
October 19, 2014, The Guardian

We all know how hard is to get rich these days, so it's understandable that Arthur Brooks wants to give the young men and women making fortunes in the "sharing economy" a hand. (He even dubs it the "helping industry," which apparently is to distinguish it from sectors like health care and education.) Anyhow, the gist of his piece is that companies like Airbnb are actually about helping people -- allowing people with unused rooms to make a bit of extra money, while people from out of town get to find a room at a lower cost than a traditional hotel. He is upset that governments around the country are trying to apply the same regulations to his friends in the helping industry as they do their competition in the hotel industry, taxi industry, or other sectors where the helpers compete.

First, we all understand that the Airbnb billionaires just want to help people (Brooks assures us that getting rich was beside the point), but sometimes the government does get in the way. Let's take a simple example that even conservative types might understand. The Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi is being sold in the United States for $84,000 for a 3-month course of treatment. This high price is due to a government granted patent monopoly. Indian producers can profitably sell generic Sovaldi for $1,000 a treatment.

Suppose I set up a helping industry company that bought up generic Sovaldi in large quantities in India and sold it to patients in the United States for $10,000 a treatment. Brooks would undoubtedly defend Baker's Cheap Drugs Inc., since we are just allowing people to get needed health care at an affordable price. And, we are creating jobs in India for people working in the drug industry. Why would big bad government interfere?

Okay, we all know the story about needing patents to provide an incentive for research (which happens not to be true). But the key point is that there are all sorts of situations in which the government doesn't just let "helpers" go about their business because third parties get hurt in important ways.

Eileen Appelbaum and Ruth MilkmanOctober 17, 2014, Philadelphia Inquirer