There is a lot at stake in the Panama Papers

The fallout from the Panama Papers continues as people start looking closely at what the documents reveal about the function and purpose of the shell companies that people can set up that can be used to hide assets and thus avoid taxes and launder money. These companies often offer no more information than an address, a phone number, and the name of a contact person who frequently cannot be contacted at the address or phone number.
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Deliberately making it harder to vote

The efforts to make voting harder in the US tends to disproportionately affect poorer people who have less discretionary time and money to enable them to overcome the hurdles being placed on showing eligibility to vote. Although Republicans claim that this is to prevent voter fraud (something that is a negligible or even non-extent problem), that the real purpose of these efforts is to make voting harder for certain groups is pretty much beyond dispute.
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The anti-LGBT Trojan horses

There has been a spate of anti-LGBT legislation in states around the nation. The stated purpose of these legislative efforts is often narrowly framed, such as to deal with what bathrooms people can use. In some cases they are more broadly framed as being to enable religious people to act according to their beliefs without fear of prosecution. North Carolina and Mississippi have been in the spotlight but the Human Rights Campaign lists 28 such bills around the country.
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Why are so few prominent Americans named in the Panama Papers?

Julia Glum tries to understand why there are not more prominent Americans named in the Panama Papers.

Why aren’t there more Americans implicated in the Panama Papers? Well, there might be: An editor with Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper that has been leading the investigation of the records, tweeted Monday to “just wait” until more were released. But some tax experts suggest the reason is that U.S. executives simply don’t have to leave the country to find places to make sly-but-legal business deals. The practices detailed in the documents are simply standard in many parts of the country, including Nevada and Delaware.
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Debbie Wasserman Schultz tries to undermine the CFPB and protect payday lenders

I wrote yesterday about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democratic congresswoman from Florida and chair of the Democratic National Committee, who epitomizes the fake populism that the Democratic party has long been good at espousing to mask their pro-corporate agenda. She has joined with the Republicans to attack and undermine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a new agency that was created as a result of the efforts of senator Elizabeth Warren to protect consumers.
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Challenging the Democratic party’s corporate allegiance

Florida congresswoman and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an oligarch-friendly party hack who is adept at spouting faux-progressive rhetoric, is for the first time facing a strong primary challenge in her congressional district from a real progressive Tim Canova. His challenge has prompted an unusual action from president Obama, who normally does not get involved in primary races, and he endorsed her. But that seemed to have given a boost to Canova’s fundraising.
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What Bernie Sanders said about Panama in 2011

The program Democracy Now! had an interview about the Panama Papers with Michael Hudson, senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which published the Panama Papers, and Frederik Obermaier, investigative reporter at Germany’s leading newspaper, the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung that first received the papers from the secret source.
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