Financial Start-Ups Aim to Court the Anti-Finance Crowd, William Alden, New York Times, December 22, 2014
Profit is usually a top priority on Wall Street, but some of the latest ventures into finance by start-ups seem to be inspired more by Karl Marx than John Pierpont Morgan.
A number of new financial start-ups are trying to reach younger and middle-class Americans by upending the customary fee structure of traditional brokerage firms and money managers. They are backed by deep-pocketed venture capital investors — and even celebrities like the rapper Snoop Dogg — who are wagering that these upstarts can challenge the Wall Street establishment.
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Robinhood, a new brokerage firm based in Palo Alto, Calif., whose founders were inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, introduced an app this month that lets customers trade stocks without paying commissions. (The firm plans to make money by offering margin loans and by collecting a portion of the interest earned on customer money invested in money market funds.)
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Some industry experts have voiced skepticism about the viability of the new business models, including those of Aspiration and Robinhood. But venture capitalists have been happy to bet that technology-focused start-ups can offer more appealing products for buying stocks or managing savings.
North Carolina’s Outrageous Abortion Requirement Is Struck Down, Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, December 22, 2014
A panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted today to strike down a highly controversial North Carolina law requiring doctors and ultrasound technicians to perform an ultrasound, display the image of the sonogram, and specifically describe the fetus to any pregnant woman seeking an abortion, even if the woman actively “averts her eyes” and “refuses to hear.” The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and others challenged the law, which was enjoined last year by a lower federal court.
Today, in a unanimous decision authored by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a three-judge panel affirmed a lower court’s determination that the law is a compelled speech provision that violates the First Amendment rights of providers. The language in Judge Wilkinson’s opinion is striking in its solicitude for the uniquely vulnerable half-dressed woman on an examining table, forced to listen to information she does not want to hear. It also addresses head-on conflicting rulings from the 5th and 8th Circuits that have upheld such provisions.
Debunking the Attempted Debunking of Our 10 Poverty Myths, Debunked, Erika Eichelberger, Mother Jones, March 28, 2014
Earlier this week, Mother Jones published a piece I wrote, in which I listed 10 commonly held notions about poor people and debunked them. The piece aimed to take down misconceptions about the poor—they’re leeches, they’re lazy, etc.—that end up shaping policy. Kevin Williamson at National Review Online, a conservative news site, took issue with the story.
Williamson responded to each item from my original piece, in an attempt to prove that the myths were true. Here are his responses to my original post, plus reasons why he’s wrong:…
My horrible right-wing past: Confessions of a one-time religious right icon, Frank Schaeffer, Salon, December 24, 2014
What began to bother me was that so many of our new “friends” on the religious right seemed to be rooting for one form of apocalypse or another. In the crudest form this was part of the evangelical fascination with the so-called end times. The worse things got, the sooner Jesus would come back. But there was another component. The worse everything got, the more it proved that America needed saving, by us! Plus, it was good for fundraising.
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The difference between now and then is that back then we were religious fanatics knocking on the doors of normal political leaders. Today the fanatics are the political leaders.
