PROOF: Corporations ripping us off. Supremes’ failure again. Oil glut: YES. People: Trump is guilty?

Politics Done Right

• Study Shows Excess Corporate Profits in the US Have Become ‘Widespread’: A new research paper finds that corporate price markups and profits jumped to their highest levels in seven decades last year. A new paper published Tuesday shows that U.S. corporate price markups and profits surged to their highest levels since the 1950s last year, bolstering arguments for an excess profits tax as a way to rein in sky-high inflation. Authored by Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani of the Roosevelt Institute, the analysis finds that markups—the difference between the actual cost of a good or service and the selling price—”were both the highest level on record and the largest one-year increase” in 2021.
• Supreme Court Ruling Turns Separation of Church and State Into ‘Constitutional Violation,’ Warns Sotomayor: “We are witnessing one of the most extreme Supreme Courts in modern history rewrite the most basic social commitments of our society,” said the head of one of the nation’s largest teachers unions. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday warned that the court’s right-wing majority had further eroded the nation’s bedrock laws separating church and government when it ruled that Maine must include religious schools in a state-run tuition program. “Today, the court leads us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation,” wrote Sotomayor in the minority’s dissent of the 6-3 decision.
• Asia is buying discounted Russian oil, making up for Europe’s cutbacks.: A surge in demand from Asia for discounted Russian oil is making up for the sharply lower number of barrels being sold to Europe, dulling the effects of the West’s efforts to punish Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine and keeping revenue flowing to the Kremlin. Most of the additional oil has gone to two countries: China and India. China’s imports of Russian oil rose 28 percent in May from the previous month, hitting a record high and helping Russia overtake Saudi Arabia as China’s largest supplier. And most of the increase went to India, which has gone from taking in almost no Russian oil to bringing in more than 760,000 barrels a day, according to shipping data analyzed by Kpler, a market research firm.
• Expectations about prosecuting Trump may be shifting: Many Republicans and mainstream media commentators have intoned that the House Jan. 6 committee’s hearings wouldn’t draw ratings or change voters’ minds. That was wrong. In fact, the evidence presented thus far has been far more impactful than the punditocracy predicted. The first hearing, shown in prime time, generated close to 20 million viewers. The next, during midmorning, attracted 11 million. But even that misses the true impact.

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