View previous stories
	What is a Human Rights Defender? by Human Rights First USA   Following the principle set forth in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders that “everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels,” human rights defenders are individuals and groups that non-violently promote and protect universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms.   They may include lawyers, judges, journalists, bloggers, students, religious leaders, trade unionists, and any others who work to promote human rights and combat violations.   Yet, because they are on the frontlines challenging government and private abuse, human rights defenders and their families are often harassed, detained, interrogated, imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for their work.   Working with activists around the world, Human Rights First advocates for policies and practices by the U.S. government and international community that would protect and promote human rights defenders and their work. Our work is guided by the principle set forth in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders that “Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels.”   We work to amplify the voices of human rights defenders in foreign policy debates and promote greater understanding about the crucial role they play in fighting for universal rights and fundamental freedoms.   We seek to promote policies and practices so human rights defenders can work openly and freely. These efforts include advocating to the U.S. Department of State to publicly adopt guidelines on its engagement with human rights defenders worldwide.   We bring the cases of individual human rights defenders at risk to the attention of the international community. We also coordinate with others in the NGO community to help in providing support and services to defenders facing threats to their lives and livelihoods.   While human rights defenders face persecution worldwide, as a msall not for profit agency we focus our efforts on a limited number of countries to try to maximize our effectiveness.   Our current focus countries include Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, and China. Within each country, we maintain a narrow focus on reforms of a few central policies and practices. We also work to leverage our expertise and contacts in those countries to promote the role of defenders in U.S. foreign policy and U.N. mechanisms such as the new Universal Periodic Review process.   * To access more information and resources visit our site.   http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/human-rights-defenders/what-is-the-human-rights-defenders-program/   http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/our-work/human-rights-defenders/online-tools-and-manuals-for-human-rights-defenders/ Visit the related web page
	Austerity''s Big Winners - Wall Street and The Wealthy by United for a Fair Economy, Huffington Post USA   September 2012   Gushing over the wild financial wealth of individuals, The Forbes 400: The Richest People In America In 2012 — released today online and heading to newstands nationwide—pays homage to the clichéd platitude that America is the land of opportunity for hard-working, gutsy entrepreneurs and great wealth is merely evidence of great accomplishment.   Unfortunately, according to a new report by Massachusetts-based United for a Fair Economy, the Forbes 400 does not tell the whole story of wealth in America. In fact, the authors of the report argue, the list of the country"s richest people tells the story of a nation where being born into wealth or inheriting great sums from a departed spouse are by far the most common paths to financial fortune.   Taking a close look at last year"s list of wealthiest people, the UFE discovered that roughly 40% of the individuals who appeared on the 2011 Forbes list received a "significant economic advantage in their lives by inheriting a sizeable asset from a spouse or family member." Strikingly, more than 20% received sufficient wealth to make the list from this inheritance alone.   Timed to coincide with this year"s list from Forbes, the UFE report, Born on Third Base: What the Forbes 400 Really Says About Economic Equality and Opportunity in America, seeks to show that the highly-touted list actually misleads about the sources of wealth and opportunity for many of those who appear on it.   "Each story calculatedly glamorizes the myth of the "self-made man" while minimizing the many other factors that enable wealth, such as tax policies, other government policies that favor the wealthy, and the importance of being born to the right family, gender and race."   Forbes claims that their list of the 400 richest people is "the definitive scorecard of wealth" in the United States, but UFE rebuffs that assertion, saying that the narrative of wealth and achievement pushed by Forbes ignores the other side of the coin— namely, that the opportunity to build wealth is not equally or broadly shared in contempory society.   According to the report:   • The net worth of the Forbes 400 grew fifteen-fold between the launch of the list in 1982 and 2011, while wealth stagnated for the average U.S. household.   • The racial wealth divide is starkly apparent from the overwhelming whiteness of the list. The 2011 Forbes 400 had only one African American member.   • Women accounted for just 10% of the 2011 list, and of the women on the list nearly 90% inherited their fortunes.   In addition, the report points out that (and the new 2012 list from Forbes shows continuation of this trend) the rich in 2011 got richer as the poor got poorer. The growing wealth inequality, the report says, is not due to any inherent brilliance or dynamism of the wealthy, but because of carefully crafted policy and legislative reforms enacted by government at the behest of the these same individuals.   Two examples cited by the report which directly impact the ability of the rich to retain and pass along their enormous assets:   • Tax rates on capital gains have been slashed, which especially benefits members of the Forbes list. The richest 0.1% receive half of all net increases in capital gains.   • Drastic cuts to the federal estate tax passed in the Bush tax cuts and the 2010 Obama tax deal allow the Forbes 400 to pass on more of their massive fortunes to their heirs, contributing to the growth of inequality and entrenching a class of super-wealthy heirs.   For its part, and despite the critical tone of the report, United for a Fair Economy says its efforts are not an attempt to "shame or belittle wealth or success."   "Instead," the authors maintain, "we aim to ask why certain representative individuals are on the list in order to reach a better understanding of wealth in the US. Such questions should lead to an important conversation about economic mobility, as well as the rules and loopholes that allow people to create wealth in the first place."   http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/19-7   Aug 2012   Austerity''s Big Winners - Wall Street and The Wealthy, by Zach Carter. (Huffington Post)   The poor and middle classes have shouldered by far the heaviest burdens of the global political obsession with austerity policies over the past three years. In the United States, budget cuts have forced states to reduce education, public transportation, affordable housing and other social services. In Europe, welfare cuts have driven some severely disabled individuals to fear for their lives.   But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of conservatives. Doing so also generates a tidy windfall for the corporate class, as government services are privatized and savings from austerity pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens.   U.S. financial interests that stand to gain from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cutbacks "have been the core of the big con," the "propaganda," that those programs are in crisis and must be slashed, said James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas.   Advocates of austerity measures have sold their proposals as a means to improve the economy.   "It is an error to think that fiscal austerity is a threat to growth and job creation," declared European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet in July 2010.   "We''re going to cut spending to get the debt down, help create jobs and prosperity, and reform government programs," vowed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, in a February 2011 commentary for Real Clear Politics. Ryan would later declare that his budget plan, with far more aggressive austerity measures than those ultimately enacted by Congress -- including $6.2 trillion in spending cuts -- would have spurred $1.5 trillion in economic growth and created 2.5 million jobs.   As for the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, it is often described by Beltway insiders as a "centrist" proposal that could "bring the country together" and improve the economy. In fact, Simpson-Bowles is yet another austerity program that would cut Medicare and Social Security while securing tax breaks for corporations and the well-off, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.   Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of the bipartisan commission that worked on the plan, is a director at Morgan Stanley, the sixth-largest American bank and a financial institution for which the United States made huge commitments to help it weather the economic downturn. Morgan Stanley took $10 billion in bailout funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program and received more than $100 billion a day in cheap loans from the Federal Reserve at the height of the past financial crisis. For weeks, Morgan Stanley borrowed more money from the Fed than the company''s stock market value.   That solicitude for the profits of big corporations shows up in Simpson-Bowles too. The plan offers multiple corporate tax reform proposals, but one, which calls for shifting to a so-called territorial tax system, would be especially advantageous to Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street banks. It would allow U.S. companies to permanently avoid paying U.S. taxes on overseas income, including money stashed in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands. According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, Morgan Stanley operates 273 sub-companies headquartered in such tax havens.   While Social Security advocates have attacked the plan, the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for corporate CEOs, has praised Simpson-Bowles. So has Peter Peterson, who served as Richard Nixon''s commerce secretary before founding Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm. Peterson has long advocated cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and he started a think tank devoted to federal debt reduction in 2008.   As many economists predicted, however, the austerity policies implemented after the financial crisis have proved to be a losing proposition for the global economy. The strong economic growth that austerity advocates predicted has not materialized, with the United States showing only anemic improvements, and European countries sliding back into devastating recessions.   At the same time, corporate profits in the financial industry remain above even the levels reached at the height of the housing bubble, according to Commerce Department data. And elites on both sides of the Atlantic have secured generous tax breaks, made possible in part by cuts to social services.   In the United States, President George W. Bush''s tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens were extended, while unemployment benefits and even food stamps have gone on the chopping block.   This tradeoff is even more apparent at the state level. In 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) opted not to make the $3 billion annual contribution to the state workers'' pension fund, instead securing $1 billion in tax cuts for the state''s better-off residents. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has similarly proposed budgets that provide tax breaks for corporations and the rich while demanding pay and benefit cuts for middle-class state workers.   "Austerity policies are literally a redistribution from the bottom of the income spectrum to the top," said Dorian Warren, a professor of political science at Columbia University and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, an economic policy think tank. "In Wisconsin, both wealthy people and businesses got tax breaks, while middle-class and working-class employees of the state essentially got crushed."   Warren emphasized that there are political dimensions to the austerity push. Efforts to curb collective bargaining rights -- and thus pay and benefits -- for state employees cut to the heart of the American labor movement. With only 7 percent of the private-sector workforce unionized, public-sector unions are a critical component of labor''s political influence and an important bloc in Democratic Party operations.   Governments in Europe, most notably the United Kingdom, have also pursued tax cuts for the rich while imposing austerity measures on the working classes. And the European financier class has benefited even more directly than their American counterparts from these budgets.   Every time the European Union has reached a crisis point on the debt carried by Greece or Spain, EU leaders, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have come to the rescue with bailout funds. That money goes to the banks that own Greek and Spanish debt, whose holdings would take a hit if either country were unable to repay. But the bailout comes with harsh austerity requirements intended to encourage budgetary discipline, so it''s ordinary citizens who end up taking the hit. The most vulnerable populations are harmed by the bailouts, while the well-paid financial professionals who made the deals to finance Greek and Spanish deficits in the first place continue profiting handsomely.   "Imposing pain on Greeks is ... a blood price for the ever-repeated bailouts whose actual beneficiaries are said to be Greeks, but are in fact French and German bankers," said Galbraith.   The consequences have been dire. In Greece, HIV/AIDS infections have soared 1,500 percent since the end of 2010, as public health programs and anti-drug campaigns have been decimated. Unemployment has risen above 20 percent in both Greece and Spain.   Yet none of this has slowed the bipartisan American political movement for greater austerity. The U.S. budget will reach the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of the year, when a number of tax breaks expire and harsh budget cuts under the 2011 debt ceiling deal kick in. Republicans in Congress are calling for additional slashing of federal spending, and they have been joined by Wall Street Democrats. Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), now a managing director at Morgan Stanley who supported the American bank bailout, advocated for austerity during a June appearance on NBC''s "Meet the Press."   "Obviously, we hope that things go well there in Greece," Ford said. "And when I say, ''well,'' I mean that the austerity camp wins out."   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/austerity-wall-street_n_1690838.html?utm_hp_ref=a-thousand-cuts
	View more stories