Wednesday, March 10, 2010
War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, in which Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests have commercially [...]
Filed in Documents, Notable, Quotable
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, american empire, Anti-War, Authoritarianism, Civil War, Corporatism, Fascism, Gulf War, House, Imperialism, Interventionists, Iraq War, Korean War, Law, Liberty Bonds, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, Military, Nation-Building, Nationalism, Senate, Spanish-American War, USMC, Vietnam War, War, War Profiteers, WW1, WW2
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from [...]
Filed in Notable
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Class Warfare, Conservatives, Corporate Welfare, Corporatism, Democracy, Democrats, Despotism, Healthcare, Hedge Funds, Iraq War, Liberals, Media, Militarization, Military, Poverty, Reform, Republicans, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth
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Thursday, February 11, 2010
Senator Franken questions Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast; Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC, and Dr. Mark Cooper, the Director of Research Consumer Federation of America.
Franken’s toughness and savvy was on display last week at a hearing on the proposed $30 billion mega-merger between Comcast and NBC Universal.
In his feisty opening statement, Franken said: “I worked for NBC [...]
Neither the administration nor Congress is ready for a serious dialogue on ending marijuana prohibition, though. Congress is even stymied when it comes to medical marijuana — many elected officials still insist they can’t spend their political capital on it. With support for medical marijuana at 81 percent, one has to wonder — just how [...]
The House voted 233 to 187 to approve the rules, known in congressional shorthand as paygo. The rules were adopted last month by the Senate and now go to President Obama for his signature.
The return to paygo comes as record deficits push the government more deeply into debt than at any time since the 1950s. [...]
Terrorists. They’re trying to kill Americans at home and our troops abroad. And who’s footing the bill for the attacks against us? Oil money. Filtered through secret organizations in the Middle East and countries like Iran. When oil money hands up in the hands of our enemies, Americans pay the ultimate price. We’ve got to [...]
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged AIG, Bailouts, Banking, Bonuses, Christopher Dodd, Corporatism, Executive Compensation, Financial Sector, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, Lobbyists, Reform, Senate
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Thursday, February 4, 2010
In his article, How to Get Our Democracy Back, Professor Lawrence Lessig argues that if you want change, you have to change Congress.
He proposes a three-part solution to the crisis facing our democracy: Publicly-financed elections; a 7-year ban on former members serving as lobbyists, and, in the wake of the recent Citizen’s United v FEC Supreme Court case, [...]
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The coal ash industry manipulated reports and publications about the dangers of coal combustion waste, reports Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The group stated that the Environmental Protection Agency allowed the multibillon-dollar coal ash industry to have virtually unfettered access to the EPA during the Bush administration and now under President Obama.
As a result [...]
“Nothing has stopped the dragnet,” said Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director, whose case had grown to include all of the nation’s leading internet service providers.
The Bush administration and now the Obama administration have neither admitted nor denied the allegations. Instead, they have declared the issue a state secret — one that would undermine the [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged ATT, Big Brother, Courts, EFF, Intelligence, Law, Mark Klein, Privacy, Retroactive Immunity, Surveillance, Telecoms, TSP, Vaughn Walker, Wiretapping
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The key number, per the Wall Street Journal: “In all of 2009, GDP fell 2.4 percent, the biggest drop for an entire year since 10.9 percent in 1946.”
At the close of the worst year for the U.S. economy in more than six decades, Americans are cautious and scared. Without an improvement in the labor situation, [...]
I’ve been thinking a little more about the Supreme Court’s decision. This ruling gives foreign powers more rights than U.S. citizens. Imagine that! Aramco, a corporation owned by the Saudi Arabian government (whose citizens attacked the U.S. on 9/11/2001 from their base in Afghanistan), will have enormously more influence in choosing your senator than you [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Arlen Specter, Campaign Finance Reform, Citizens United v FEC, Corporatism, Courts, Dick Durbin, House, John Roberts, Law, SCOTUS, Senate
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They’re tuning out because we wasted 2009 “negotiating” with bad faith actors like Snowe and Mike Enzi. The tools were available to quickly pass a health care bill, yet Democrats were too incompetent to do so. And on issue after issue, they’ve proven completely ineffective.
THAT’s why the base is sitting things out. They don’t need [...]
Previous CIA failures regarding the unanticipated decline and fall of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq War demonstrate a $75 billion intelligence enterprise that can provide neither strategic nor tactical warning to policymakers and is reluctant to provide uncomfortable truth to power.
The serious problems that [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Accountability, Assassinations, Bureaucracy, CIA, Coup, Covert Ops, DHS, DIA, DNI, Intelligence, Intelligence Analysis, Leon Panetta, Militarization, NCS, NCTC, NIE, Oversight, Pentagon, Rendition, Secret Prisons, State Department, Torture, TSA
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
Top Republicans on Wednesday were hostile toward President Obama’s plan to create a bipartisan commission on cutting projected deficits, raising doubts about the prospects of a main piece of his budget strategy.
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Under that plan, Mr. Obama would establish by executive order an 18-member bipartisan panel to propose how to balance future tax revenue and entitlement [...]
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