All of that was bad enough, but now the scam is getting even more extreme, more transparent. Faced with the dilemma of how they could possibly justify their year-long claimed support for the public option only now to fail to enact it, more and more Democratic Senators were pressured into signing a letter supporting the enactment [...]
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, Congress, Conservatives, Corporate Welfare, Corporatism, Democracy, Democrats, Despotism, Healthcare, Hedge Funds, Iraq War, Liberals, Media, Militarization, Military, Poverty, Republicans, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth
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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In the same sentence, [...]
Obama must now prime the pump to get us out of a multi-pronged mess left over from the Bush crowd and seven years of Republican control. Republicans chose to look the other way and ignore the financial chicanery going on right in front of them, while the income gap between the very wealthy and average [...]
Filed in Essays, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Al Franken, Banking, Capitalism, Debt, Deficit, Economy, Financial Sector, Free Market, Jobs, Middle Class, Obstructionism, Regulation, Republicans, Safety Net, Trickle Down, Unemployment
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Sunday, February 28, 2010
Anthony Weiner [D-NY] sounds off about the Republicans’ lack of bipartisanship on health care reform.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Last week, CNN released a poll showing that 86 percent of Americans believe the U.S. government is “broken.” I admit my first reaction was to wonder subversively, “How would they know?” A contemporaneous Pew survey of the public’s “political news IQ” showed that on one of the most heavily reported issues of 2009-10, only 32 [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged ACLU, Barack Obama, Conservatives, Conspiracy Theories, Constitution, Economy, Healthcare, Ignorance, Jerry Falwell, Law, Movements, Oliver North, Republicans, Rights, Rightwing, Rush Limbaugh, Tea Party
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Monday, February 15, 2010
There has been widespread public anger against the hubris of the banks, who are regarded as being to blame for the financial crisis. Their bonus policies, which have persisted even after the system has been bailed out by the taxpayer, have been attacked by politicians and the media. But what I can’t understand is why [...]
Monday, February 15, 2010
Can someone shut these banking industry narcissists up?
[..]
The industry’s inability to see, much less admit, any culpability, and hence the need for root and branch reform, is pathological. The reaction of the bank chiefs, at least as depicted by Schwarzman, is utter denial. It’s as if someone who drove his car at 150 miles an [...]
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Among the cartels many sources of profit, illegal sales of cannabis account for the majority of their funds at roughly 60 percent, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
While debate over how best to fight the increasingly powerful criminal groups continues to wage within the U.S., many Mexican officials have arrived to the conclusion that [...]
Filed in Cannabis, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Cannabis, Ciudad Juarez, DEA, Drug Cartels, Drug Policy, El Paso, Law, Marijuana, Mexico, Preventable Deaths, Texas, War on Drugs
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Thursday, February 4, 2010
Let me be clear: Our world has changed, utterly. The old Michigan economy is gone.
Anyone who believed that Michigan would just naturally rebound without making deep and lasting change had a rendezvous with reality in 2009. The year that just ended was a dividing line — the finale of what Time magazine has called the [...]
Thursday, February 4, 2010
For worried Democrats, the sudden return of Social Security privatization as a fashionable nostrum among Republicans should lift their gloom. Or it would if only the Democratic leaders understood what to do when their opponents deliberately step into a messy dogpile again.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a pair of the most outspoken conservatives in [...]
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, Congress, Corporatism, Executive Compensation, Financial Sector, Goldman Sachs, Great Recession, Lobbyists, Senate
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Democracy requires at least three parts: Important decisions are made in the open. The public and its representatives have an opportunity to debate and influence them. And those who make the big decisions are accountable to voters.
But these principles are in retreat. The Troubled Assets Relief Program began with a virtual blank check from Congress. [...]
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Alan Grayson discusses executive compensation in the House Financial Services Committee with Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz, Lucian Bebchuk and Nell Minow. Why is Grayson among the very few public representatives really standing up for America? (I’d count Kucinich, Sanders, and a few others in that group.) Is every other representative completely spineless or beholden to corporations and their lobbyists? [...]
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Congressman Alan Grayson (FL-8) has introduced legislation to prevent a corporate takeover of government in America. His “Save Our Democracy” Reform Package (H.R. 4431-4435) aims to stave off the threat of “corpocracy” arising from today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision.
“The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections. If that happens, democracy in [...]
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