Alexander Ryking

There’s no alternative but to resurrect Glass-Steagall as a whole. Even then, the biggest banks are still too big to fail or to regulate. We also need to heed the recent advice of the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve, and break them up.

At the same time, there’s no point to the “carried interest” loophole that allows private-equity managers like Mitt Romney to treat their incomes as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent, when they’ve risked no money of their own.

If private equity were good for America it wouldn’t need this or the other tax preference it depends on, elevating debt over equity. But the private equity industry has huge political clout, which is why these tax preferences remain.

Get it? Bain Capital and JPMorgan are parts of the same problem. The President should be leading the charge against both.

Until now, bishops who believed that their leadership was aligning the institutional church too closely with the political right had voiced their doubts internally. While the more moderate and liberal bishops kept their qualms out of public view, conservative bishops have been outspoken in condemning the Obama administration…

But in recent months, a series of events — among them the Vatican’s rebuke of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, encouraged by right-wing U.S. bishops — have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a “Catholic spring” to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right…

For too long, the Catholic Church’s stance on public issues has been defined by the outspokenness of its most conservative bishops and the reticence of moderate and progressive prelates. Signs that this might finally be changing are encouraging for the church, and for American politics.

[Tokyo Electric Power Company] said the meltdowns it believes took place at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air during March 2011. The accident, which followed an earthquake and a tsunami, occurred on March 11…

It is difficult to judge the health effects of the larger-than-reported release, since even the latest number is an estimate, and it does not clarify how much exposure people received or continue to receive from contaminated soil and food. Experts have been divided on the health impacts since the disaster because the studies of assessing radiation risks are based mainly on a different type of exposure — the large doses delivered quickly by the atomic bombs in Japan in 1945.

Although people who lived closest to the plant were evacuated, many people remain in areas with significantly higher radiation levels than normal…

The newly released information is likely to add to concerns among many Japanese that they were never told the extent of the accident or the risks it posed.

Despite conservatives’ best efforts to paint Barack Obama as a “radical socialist,” Real Time host Bill Maher isn’t buying it…

“Newt Gingrich called Obama the most radical Leftist President in history. Senator Marco Rubio called him the most divisive figure in American history. Michelle Bachmann said Obama is the most radical President we have ever seen in the history of the country… John Bolton said Obama just doesn’t care about national security. Honestly, there are Mexican drug mules who don’t pull this much stuff out of their ass,” Maher said…

“If Obama were as radical as they claim, here’s what he would have already done: Pulled the troops out of Afghanistan, given us ‘Medicare for all,’ ended the drug war, cut the defense budget in half, and turned Dick Cheney over to the Hague.”

While a judge Thursday tossed out the rape charge, it remains far from certain if Gibson, 24, will face any consequences.

L.A. prosecutors have said they have no plans to charge her with making false accusations, saying it would be a tough case to prove.

Legal experts noted it could be difficult for the Long Beach school district and its insurer to get the settlement back [because she has few assets]…

The statute of limitations for making a false claim is four years, but experts say it could restart when a previously hidden crime is discovered. In this case, Gibson testified in 2003 during Banks’ preliminary hearing but recanted her accusation last year. “No, he did not rape me,” she told Banks and his private investigator in a recorded conversation.

“The prosecution can say that we only learned last year that the crime of perjury occurred and therefore we are still within the statute of limitations,” Loyola Law professor Stan Goldman said.

The fact that Gibson was a juvenile when she initially made her accusation poses a potential complication, as does the fact that she has since recanted her recantation, but Goldman said the large monetary settlement she received might make charging her a priority to prosecutors trying to ensure the integrity of the criminal justice system.