The Nation Jun-09-14

You Say You Want a Revolution
 In the “Climate Revolution” issue [May 12], Christopher Hayes, Mark Hertsgaard, Naomi Klein and Dan Zegart illuminated the changes needed in economics, law and patterns of thinking to address climate change. I only wish they had given attention to a measure many climate activists consider pivotal: the revenue-neutral carbon tax. As proposed by Citizens’ Climate Lobby, this measure would tax carbon dioxide (or equivalent greenhouse gas) emissions at $15 a ton and increase by $10 a ton each year. The plan is revenue-neutral because all money collected would be returned to US citizens, which would protect lower- and middle-income households from the burden of higher energy prices. An analysis by the Carbon Tax Center projects that 66 percent of households would break even or…

Telecommunications conglomerates often prevail in debates about the future of media by pretending that the issues are too complicated for Americans to understand. But there is nothing complicated about the current battle over the future of the Internet. Nor is there anything complicated about the need for citizens to rise up and defend net neutrality—also known as the First Amendment of the Internet, because it provides the guarantee of free speech online for all.
 If the FCC allows the “paid prioritization” of some websites and communications over
others—as has been proposed under a plan the commissioners recently voted 3 to 2 to consider—the basic premise of a free and open Internet will be undermined. In a digital age, this threatens a lot more than online shopping. “Profits and corporate disfavor of…

“The word ‘FIFA’ is about as popular here as ‘FEMA’ in New Orleans after Katrina,” Dylan Stillwood, a young journalist living in Brazil, told me as protests, strikes and other direct actions engulfed the country a month before the June 12 start of the 2014 World Cup. For people just tuning in, the idea that Brazilians would be protesting the Cup makes about as much sense as New Yorkers rebelling against pizza. And yet here we are, on the eve of the Cup, and protesters across the country brandish signs with the slogan #NãoVaiTerCopa (There Will Be No Cup). This demonstrates with cutting clarity that Brazil’s mass uprising of 2013 was not a flash in the pan, and that Brazilians would not be intimidated by harsh new legislation criminalizing dissent.…

Before the big media verklempt-athon over the firing of New York Times editor Jill Abramson began, the paper of record saw itself involved in another controversy which, while not nearly as dramatic, was, in its own way, quite remarkable.
 The plot went as follows: Times columnist Joseph Nocera twice attacked Warren Buffett, calling him “cowardly and hypocritical” for not confronting the Coca-Cola board of directors about an executive compensation package that Buffett believed was excessive. The premise of Nocera’s second column, however, proved inaccurate, as it was based on a flawed timeline of events. The Times issued a correction, but when Nocera was asked by the Times’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, whether he planned to address the mistakes in his column, the pundit declined. It was only after Sullivan shamed…

A new report from Human Rights Watch documents a horrific problem: children working in US tobacco fields are falling ill from “green tobacco sickness,” poisoned by the nicotine they absorb through their skin. This past December in The Nation, Investigative Fund reporter Gabriel Thompson chronicled their plight in his article “Leaves of Poison.“ Thompson discovered child tobacco workers who are plagued by severe headaches, nausea and dizziness, and endangered by exposure to neurotoxic pesticides. In 2012, the Obama administration dropped its plan to ban child labor in dangerous agricultural sectors after an industry misinformation campaign claimed that the new regulations would burden family farms. The HRW report emphasizes the role played by tobacco companies in perpetuating the use of children in the fields (only Philip Morris released info on its…

In 1975, the same year President Ford nixed a bailout of New York City, a group of students and labor activists came together to exchange radical ideas about politics. Out of their living rooms in rough-and-tumble lower Manhattan, the New York Marxist School, later renamed the Brecht Forum, was spawned. After thirty-nine years of educational programming, the Brecht announced last month it will close its doors. The organization owes years of back rent on a space it occupied in the Westbeth complex in the West Village until moving to Brooklyn last fall.
 Executive director Matt Birkhold says that because of its longevity, “the Brecht Forum community was made up of multiple generations.” Much of the outreach in recent years has been spearheaded by Kazembe Balagun and Max Uhlenbeck, who increased…