The House is expected to vote Thursday on H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015, which Republican sponsors say “would put in place the most robust national-security vetting process in history” for refugees, one that would “do everything possible to prevent terrorists from reaching our shores.”

Conceived partly in response to the Paris attacks, the bill seeks to “pause” admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Though there are real fears of terrorism, this measure represents election-year pandering to the xenophobia that rears up when threats from abroad arise. People who know these issues — law enforcement and intelligence professionals, immigration officials and humanitarian groups — say that this wrongheaded proposal simply would not protect Americans from “foreign enemies.”

One of the bill’s chief sponsors, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, surely knows how federal protocols for admitting refugees work. Yet the bill disregards the complicated current process, which already requires that applicants’ histories, family origins, and law enforcement and past travel and immigration records be vetted by national security, intelligence, law enforcement and consular officials. This process can take 18 months to two years for each person.

Credit Jordan Awan

Like millions of people, I’ve been obsessively following the news from Paris, putting aside other things to focus on the horror. It’s the natural human reaction. But let’s be clear: it’s also the reaction the terrorists want. And that’s something not everyone seems to understand.

Take, for example, Jeb Bush’s declaration that “this is an organized attempt to destroy Western civilization.” No, it isn’t. It’s an organized attempt to sow panic, which isn’t at all the same thing. And remarks like that, which blur that distinction and make terrorists seem more powerful than they are, just help the jihadists’ cause.

Think, for a moment, about what France is and what it represents. It has its problems — what nation doesn’t? — but it’s a robust democracy with a deep well of popular legitimacy. Its defense budget is small compared with ours, but it nonetheless retains a powerful military, and has the resources to make that military much stronger if it chooses. (France’s economy is around 20 times the size of Syria’s.) France is not going to be conquered by ISIS, now or ever. Destroy Western civilization? Not a chance.

So what was Friday’s attack about? Killing random people in restaurants and at concerts is a strategy that reflects its perpetrators’ fundamental weakness. It isn’t going to establish a caliphate in Paris. What it can do, however, is inspire fear — which is why we call it terrorism, and shouldn’t dignify it with the name of war.

The point is not to minimize the horror. It is, instead, to emphasize that the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can inspire. And it’s crucial to realize that there are multiple ways the response can go wrong.

As Congress debates the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we speak to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz about the trade deal. "The irony is that the president came out and said, 'This is about who makes the trade rules—China or the United States?'" Stiglitz said. "But I think the big issue is, this is about who makes the rules of trade—the American people, our democratic process, or the corporations? And who they’re made for, which is, for the corporations or for all of us?"

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, what’s very interesting is you have Bernie Sanders really stressing inequality. This pushes Hillary Clinton to do this, because he has gained so much momentum and drawn tens of thousands of peoples to his rally. On the Republican side, you have, in some areas, Donald Trump sounding more liberal than Hillary Clinton—immediately came out against these trade deals.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah, so, in a sense, what you see both in the Republican and Democratic Party is a sense that something is wrong. You know, America was the first middle-class society. We’re about to become the first society that ceases to be a middle-class society. The basic requirements of being a member of the middle class—the ability to send your kids to school, a secure retirement—all those things are being put in jeopardy. And one of the things we talk about in Rewriting the Rules is how we can get those back. But what you’re seeing on both sides is a sense of anger. Now, I think that both of the Democratic candidates have put forward credible ways of dealing with it. And there’s going to be a long discussion. The problem is that on the Republican side there’s anger, but it’s basically inchoate. You know, it’s basically tax reforms that actually rewrite the rules in the wrong way, making things even more unequal than we have and the numbers not adding up.

Turbulent seas and falling temperatures are not stopping desperate people from seeking safety in Europe. Last month, more than 218,000 people made the perilous Mediterranean crossing — nearly as many as in all of 2014. So far this year, more than 3,400 people attempting to cross have died or are missing.

More than two and a half million people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis fleeing war, have gone to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where they are facing increasingly dire conditions. Many families have exhausted their savings, and children are forced to work menial jobs instead of attending school. United Nations agencies that provide food aid and winter supplies have had to cut thousands of people from support in these countries. They simply don’t have enough funding.

Thousands who have made it to Europe are also at risk of exposure, hunger and illness. Some European leaders, paralyzed by rising xenophobia that they themselves have stoked, are doing little to help. European Union members promised in September to accept 160,000 refugees who were already in Europe, but only 116 had been relocated by the start of November. Of the 2.3 billion euros ($2.46 billion) pledged by European governments to help refugees, less than €500 million has been received. For a union founded on values of solidarity and dignity, this is shameful.

The White House has finally released the text of the trade deal, and the reviews are scorching.

“Worse than anything we could've imagined.”

“An act of climate denial.”

“Giveaway to big agribusiness.”

“A death warrant for the open Internet.”

“Worst nightmare.”

“A disaster.”

A protest against the TPP in Leesburg, Va. (GlobalTradeWatch / Flickr)

As expert analysis of the long-shrouded, newly publicized TransPacific Partnership (TPP) final text continued to roll out on Thursday, consensus formed around one fundamental assessment of the 12-nation pact: It's worse than we thought.

“From leaks, we knew quite a bit about the agreement, but in chapter after chapter the final text is worse than we expected, with the demands of the 500 official U.S. trade advisers representing corporate interests satisfied to the detriment of the public interest,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Defying predictions, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, the A.K.P., won a conclusive victory in Sunday’s national elections in Turkey, freeing it from the need to form a coalition to stay in power. Mr. Erdogan proclaimed it a vote “in favor of stability,” and that is what it apparently was — though it was Mr. Erdogan who churned up much of the turmoil that frightened voters back into his camp.

Though the A.K.P. won about half the vote, it did not gain enough seats in Parliament to enable Mr. Erdogan to change the Constitution to create the strong executive presidency he has sought since he assumed the office last year. But the A.K.P. majority will mean a continuation of 12 years of one-party rule, and most probably a continuation of Mr. Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian domination of the Turkish government.

Mr. Erdogan engineered Sunday’s vote after the last elections, on June 7, not only failed to secure the seats he needed for his presidential scheme, but cost the A.K.P. its majority and allowed a pro-Kurdish coalition, the Peoples’ Democratic Party, to enter Parliament for the first time. Instead of helping to form a coalition government after that vote, Mr. Erdogan called for new elections.

Canada has a reputation for dullness. Back in the 1980s The New Republic famously declared “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” the world’s most boring headline. Yet when it comes to economic policy the reputation is undeserved: Canada has surprisingly often been the place where the future happens first.

And it’s happening again. On Monday, Canadian voters swept the ruling Conservatives out of power, delivering a stunning victory to the center-left Liberals. And while there are many interesting things about the Liberal platform, what strikes me most is its clear rejection of the deficit-obsessed austerity orthodoxy that has dominated political discourse across the Western world. The Liberals ran on a frankly, openly Keynesian vision, and won big.
Before I get into the implications, let’s talk about Canada’s long history of quiet economic unorthodoxy, especially on currency policy.

In the 1950s, everyone considered it essential to peg their currency to the U.S. dollar, at whatever cost — everyone except Canada, which let its own dollar fluctuate, and discovered that a floating exchange rate actually worked pretty well. Later, when European nations were scrambling to join the euro — amid predictions that any country refusing to adopt the common currency would pay a severe price — Canada showed that it’s feasible to keep your own money despite close economic ties to a giant neighbor.

Oh, and Canadians were less caught up than the rest of us in the ideology of bank deregulation. As a result, Canada was spared the worst of the 2008 financial crisis.

No doubt surprising many of the people watching the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders cited Denmark as a role model for how to help working people. Hillary Clinton demurred slightly, declaring that “we are not Denmark,” but agreed that Denmark is an inspiring example.

Such an exchange would have been inconceivable among Republicans, who don’t seem able to talk about European welfare states without adding the word “collapsing.” Basically, on Planet G.O.P. all of Europe is just a bigger version of Greece. But how great are the Danes, really?

The answer is that the Danes get a lot of things right, and in so doing refute just about everything U.S. conservatives say about economics. And we can also learn a lot from the things Denmark has gotten wrong.

Story highlights

    Joseph Stiglitz: Big businesses find ways to create tax loopholes and move their profits abroad to avoid paying up
    We need global governance and transparency from leading economic powers to tackle the problem of tax avoidance

Editor's note: "Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize laureate in economics, is an economist and professor at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author."

(CNN)Two things in life are inevitable: death and taxes. But not for big corporations.

Although they are "legal persons" and can fund politicians of their choice without limit, they don't have to be limited by time and, thanks to our outdated system of taxing global profits, they can easily shirk paying taxes.

While multinational companies can get away with paying little or no taxes, average workers have no choice in the matter because their income taxes are paid even before they receive their paycheck. And while big businesses can exploit tax loopholes and shift profits to offshore subsidiaries by employing sophisticated tax planners, small and medium-size businesses have little choice but to pay the full rate.

Joseph Stiglitz

This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, unveiled its package of reforms to the global tax system. This joint G20/OECD exercise is known as the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project, or BEPS. The BEPS Project is commendable: it is important to own up to the mammoth problem of tax avoidance and the outdated tax system its member countries have created. Just five years ago, a reform like BEPS would have been unthinkable. But after the financial shocks and revelations of widespread tax abuse by global companies, the G20 called on the OECD in 2013 to propose reforms to the global tax system.