The United States used to build things.
You must help to preserve it.
"Play it again, Sam!"
Republican Plutocrats Create Bank Failures.
True Progressives
Unite at the Ballot box.
Impeach the Supreme Court Five.
“We have it in our power to make the world over again!” – Thomas Paine, American author-patriot-founder.
Lest we forget:
Older Letters to elected Officials and speculations on and about the subjects of war and recession, with links to today’s realities. Not much has changed, except for some of the faces of the players. Some issues are career opportunities for foot-dragging, do-nothing profiteers and cowardly politicians. It is plain that the People must lead.
ARAB-ISRAELI LOVE-FEST:
Ltr to Ron Wyden, Senator, OR. – January 8, 2009
The ancient Arab-Israeli confrontation is not worthy of support on either side. Only some radical change of policy will break this savage inhumane cycle. The Senate‘s recent unequivocal support of Israel is disgraceful. Why do we support violence from anybody toward anybody? Why not give peace a chance? It has never been done, and we seem instead incapable of overcoming our religious, ethnic, and other generational prejudices. We support people who coach their children to kill their enemies’ children. This is madness. It is insupportable. The morass of the middle east does not reveal a champion for the United States to support, and Israel cannot claim the Holocaust as refuge or excuse for a holocaust of its own making that it refuses to stop. Hamas‘ despicable actions are not an excuse for Israelis to murder, and the dead children they describe as collateral damage are not an acceptable cost for their security.
Murder and violence are what they are, not the stuff of virtue, right, or decent national policy – Israel’s, Palestine‘s, or the United States’. I urge you to re-think this issue outside of its historic insanity – and the personal blindness of culture and peer pressure. Help devise an alternative approach to international murder and mayhem. Help, too, to take the United States off its century-long war status.
Yours in sorrow and regret. j
EXIT STRATEGY:
I am a veteran and senior citizen.
Ltr to Representative Earl Blumenauer, OR – July 26, 2005 10:32 AM
Subject: Please support House Joint Resolution 55, toward ending the Iraq occupation.
The war in Iraq has been a personal project for George Bush using American lives and treasure. I believe he is ruining the world’s finest military. For what? He fights like the boneheaded English general Kitchener at Gallipoli, who observing the troops running uphill against Turkish guns said, “Stout fellows these Englishmen, they always run for the thickest part of the fence.”
Added to which, Bush’s war toys don’t work? They do if they’re just designed to fill the pockets of his war-profiteering cronies; that’s what they accomplish.
I was glad to see that Rep. Jones is leading a bipartisan effort to press President Bush to create an exit strategy and timetable for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. Being an occupying force with no end in sight only fuels insurgency there.
I ask you to join the thirty other members of Congress already cosponsoring the resolution, and to support it by voting for it. Thank you for your consideration.
IRAQ DEBATE:
Personal historical view – February 14, 2007; 3-1-08 rev.
Colin Powell said, “Don’t get into war unless it’s absolutely necessary, and when we do, go to win, no half measures,” but it doesn’t apply very much in real life.
As a Vietnam veteran, I know Johnson‘s phony Gulf of Tonkin Incident fished us into war (I was drafted). He bought into the radical right’s communist containment scare. The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars wrote:
“In part, the process of deception has also been unintentional. Much of the rhetoric and many of the actions that have accompanied our… involvement have been ad hoc responses to situations of stress: a cumulative series of reflex moves and lunges produced by deepening executive anxiety, defensiveness, alarm, desperation, and even a sensed state of siege. Similarly in rhetoric, our ‘national honor,’ ‘[enemies] with nuclear weapons,’ and the goal of ‘peace with honor’ – all have misled the public. At the root of executive deception is a vast amount of executive self-deception – or, .to put it bluntly, stupidity.”
America blithely ignores offers of friendship and makes enemies as fast as we can throw the first sucker punch. This is not military sense; it’s a bad case of ideology and invention over reason and fact. But, Americans don’t run out when the fight’s tough – see: Khe San. We stood nearly twenty years (dating from Eisenhower putting the first American boots on the ground in the Fifties when the French got tossed out) while our military-industrial complex ruined Vietnam. Our prolonged stay, and side invasions of Cambodia and Laos, generationally disrupted and destabilized Southeast Asia, distorted America’s rule of law, and led directly to the Bush leadership miasma.
We are now fighting a war for the health and life of the republic. Look at how the radical right Republicans and Tea Party and War Democrats have warped the nation they want us to fight for, die for, and honor. The self-destructive insanity of the radical right way of war makes it looks as if the bad guys have already won.
These are politically motivated wars, fought to extremes because of ill-informed egos and profit. Bush’s indefensible “give war a chance” was disgusting; so is Obama’s current pursuit of it. End the war now, no matter how wimpy it looks to arrested-adolescent bullyboys.
We’ve got a lot of positive work to do, and one dollar spent on peace really is worth ten wasted in war!
COST OF DOING WAR WITH YOU: – 3/21/08
Ltr to Rep Blumenauer; Recession and the War
The recession will force states to cut back their budgets. Most likely, the cuts are going to affect the services that working families need to survive.
The Iraq war costs Americans more than $338 million a day. We borrow $343 million every day to finance it. Gas prices are close to double what they were before the war. Oil hovers around $100 barrel [sic].
That money could help people who are hurting. For less than we spend on the war, we could pay for affordable housing, healthcare, or education scholarships for hundreds of thousands.
Our skyrocketing debt is a growing drag on the economy, slowing recovery and robbing generations of a secure future. Iraq sucks up the resources we need to make our economy work again. MoveOn writes, “The tradeoffs are stark: bombs or unemployment insurance, billions for Halliburton and Blackwater, or help for people on the verge of losing their homes because of the sub prime meltdown?”
Economic forecasts will be grim as long as we continue to dump billions into a reckless war that has no end in sight. The excessive and increasing degradation of our domestic economy is an attack on the nation. Thank you for continuing to oppose this excessive, costly and ultimately criminal war.
LAST WORDS:
A secret reformation helped to create the United States of America; it eradicated many of the weeds of prejudice; a spirit of freedom and moderation was diffused. The liberty of conscience was declared a common benefit, an inalienable right; the free government introduced the practice of toleration; and the narrow allowance of the laws was enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise, the mind understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy adult reason. – Paraphrase – Gibbon, p1937.
Maybe human civilization has progressed; it depends upon what you’re measuring. Human progress and perfectibility are two man-made ideals without much moral evidence to support them.
“One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.” – Travis at the Alamo quoting Thomas Osbert Mordaunt, Verses Written During the War, 1756-63.
“Sin sangre, y sin lagrimas, hay no es gloria.” – Santa Ana (“without blood, and without tears, there is no glory”).
“The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice is terrible to contemplate.” – Gibbon, p830.
Politician 1: “Why do politicians treat everyone else like idiots?” Politician 2: “Probably, because they voted for us in the first place.” — Poirot, “The Incredible Theft,” BBC, David Suchet.
San Francisco Dems Tell Pelosi to Support McGovern ‘Afghan Exit’ Bill, by Tom Gallager, www.commondreams.org. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/24-3
Can America Prevail on Afghanistan/Pakistan Front? No! It’s Obama’s war now, and a Vietnam-like quagmire is dead ahead. by Helen Thomas, www.Minneapolis/St.PaulStarTribune http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/23-13
Blackwater Seeks Gag Order, by Jeremy Scahill. www.thenation http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/23-2
Biden: Afghan War is ‘Worth the Effort’. www.bbcnews http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/23-0
The federal government spends at least $180 billion per year on corporate tax breaks and handouts – an average of $1500 per taxpayer (not including subsidies from counties and cities, hazardous waste cleanup costs, or limits on corporate liability). By contrast, as of September 2012, 47.7 million Americans were receiving on average $134.29 per month in food assistance, or $6.4 billion total.
Not many politicians talk about this. A rare exception is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who said to the Democratic Leadership Council in November 1995 that people are mad because “we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group left behind.” Then, he said, “Since we are committed to moving the disadvantaged from welfare to work, why not target corporate welfare as well?”
The White House quickly distanced itself from Reich’s speech, but activists of all kinds picked it up: Perot’s United We Stand-America made it a major target of angry-middle groups; the right-wing Heritage Foundation and libertarian Cato Institute joined Ralph Nader to present a list of corporate pork barrel reforms. Yet, neither Congress nor the White House makes much of corporate giveaways in budget-balancing plans.
What are the giveaways? The active variety includes agribusiness, military contractor subsidies, loan guarantees, and the bailout of the S&Ls, and computer databases. The rights to lumber and minerals on federal lands are routinely granted for $5 per acre, making the United States the only country in the world that virtually gives away its depletable natural resources! Drugs developed with taxpayer money are routinely given to drug companies for monopoly marketing with no restraint on price, or royalties returned to the people. The major television networks get free broadcast licenses with minimal public responsibility or obligation.
Passive corporate giveaways come in the form of tax breaks and loopholes. Private individuals pay taxes at higher rates than corporations. The investment tax credit designed to increase economic activity is historically taken as a windfall. Tax breaks granted to be put back into productive equipment, plants and jobs, are commonly used to buy out other companies, creating no new jobs or wealth. Subsidies actually debilitate innovation and efficiency.
In the debate over budget deficits, many ask, “How can we take food out of poor kids’ mouths and continue to subsidize the rich?” Scant legislation has been introduced to rid us of tax loopholes for the rich. There’s been no serious move to initiate cost-benefit analysis of corporate giveaways, in the same way they’ve meticulously reviewed health and safety regulation for years, and assaulted affirmative action and the minimum wage.
One problem is that connections are frequently not made between things that people don’t like and what causes them. Well-funded corporate lobbies and toadies are too adept at directing people’s anger against government in a massive, daily, Rush Limbaugh-/Lars Larsen-esque hate-your-government drumbeat. They work to keep the focus away from corporations, which are the dominant institution in our society.
Government has been only a minion, a simply willing agent, for transferring tax dollars to corporate coffers. We are the richest nation in the history of the world and our richest (corporate) citizens behave as if divine providence, rather than selfish market decisions doom the poorest (human) citizens. However, if the corporate greed issue is connected with people’s deprivation – and we brand-name the greediest corporate kings in the United States – we can turn the tide against the self-interested, compassionless and undemocratic aspects of the corporate institution. Corporations should pay their fair share to the citizens and communities, which enable their success. That can result in real tax reform, without creating unnecessary hardships for the poor and middle class.
WALL STREET LIES BLAME VICTIMS TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY FOR FINANCIAL MELTDOWN by Nomi Prins, Wiley Press.
To hear it from the big financial companies, the big crash started when poor people bought homes they couldn’t afford. But that was at most 1% of the problem. Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Nomi Prins’ new book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.
The Second Great Bank Depression has spawned so many lies, it’s hard to keep track of which is the biggest. Possibly the most irksome class of lies, usually spouted by Wall Street hacks and conservative pundits, is that we’re all victims to a bunch of poor people who bought McMansions, or at least homes they had no business living in. If that was really what this crisis was all about, we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late 2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce their loan principals. It would have cost about 3 percent of what the entire bailout wound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.
US DOLLAR SET TO BE ECLIPSED World Bank President Predicts by Heather Stewart
The United States must brace itself for the dollar to be usurped as the world’s reserve currency as American dominance wanes in the wake of the financial crisis, the World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, warned yesterday. United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency, says Zoellick. Speaking ahead of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings in Istanbul, he said it was time for a “responsible globalisation”, in which decision-making was shared between the old powers and developing countries such as China and India.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/28-7
CLEAN COAL IS FICTION says Jessy Tolkan: Washington saying coal industry can be “clean” is pure fiction.
Paul Jay speaks to Jessy Tolkan at the Tides Foundations’ Momentum conference in San Francisco. They speak about Tolkan’s coalition on climate change fighting Obama to establish a moratorium on all coal mining. Tolkan says that Washington’s push for “clean coal” is not enough because the coal industry’s and President Obama’s argument that the production of coal can be clean is “an absolute, 100% lie.” She also says that “the science is clear that if we don’t address coal head on, it’s almost “game over” for the planet.”
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/09/28
CASSANDRAS OF CLIMATE by Paul Krugman
Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.
And here’s the thing: I’m not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire warnings aren’t the delusional raving of cranks. They’re what come out of the most widely respected climate models, devised by the leading researchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/28-3
ENVIRONMENT-POPULATION JUMBOPAK
Donna Edwards’ No Corporate Monopoly of Elections Amendment by John Nichols February 4, 2010 by The Nation
Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards turned to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis for guidance in framing the Constitutional amendment she proposed Tuesday as the right and necessary response to the decision by Chief Justice John Roberts and a high court majority to abandon law and precedent with the purpose of permitting corporations to dominate the political discourse.
Brandeis knew that giving corporations monopoly power over our economic life or our politics would be deadly to democracy.
“The ruling reached by the Roberts’ Court overturned decades of legal precedent by allowing corporations unfettered spending in our political campaigns. Another law will not rectify this disastrous decision,” Edwards said Tuesday. “A Constitutional Amendment is necessary to undo what this Court has done. Justice Brandeis got it right: ‘We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.’ It is time we remove corporate influence from our policies and our politics. We cannot allow corporations to dominate our elections, to do so would be both undemocratic and unfair to ordinary citizens.”
Edwards explains the amendment in a powerful video
Edwards does not stand alone. In addition to an array of public interest groups including Public Citizen, Voter Action, The Center for Corporate Policy and the American Independent Business Alliance, the congresswoman’s proposed amendment is being backed by House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who is the dean of civil libertarians in Congress.
Here is the text of the legislation proposed by Edwards and Conyers:
JOINT RESOLUTION:
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:
‘‘ARTICLE—
‘‘SECTION 1. The sovereign right of the people to govern being essential to a free democracy, Congress and the States may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any corporation, limited liability company, or other corporate entity.
‘‘SECTION 2. Nothing contained in this Article shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.’
Edwards and Conyers may soon have a Senate sponsor for their amendment proposal.
Senator Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who chairs the Constitution subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee declared: “As legislators, we have a duty to carefully consider the constitutional questions raised by legislation. I urge you to do your duty but not be dissuaded from acting by fear of the Court. This terrible decision deserves as robust a response as possible. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.” READ MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/04
“He was the biggest asshole at Goldman Sachs!”
Patriot's Dream
ABSTRACT
15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams By David DeGraw, Amped Status, edited excerpt from the Amped Status report, “The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society.” LINKto full report at END of ABSTRACT.
Are we nearing a tipping point as rapacious elites push a heavily armed populace too far?
The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack.
1) The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The U.S. already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world. Since the crisis, the gap between the top 1 percent and the remaining 99 percent of the U.S. population has grown to a record high.
2) As the stock market went over the 10,000 mark and surged to a 13-month high, the three big banks that took taxpayer money and benefited the most from the bailout have just set a new global economic record by issuing $30 billion in annual bonuses this year, “up 60 percent from last year.” Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, and it is also benefiting by only paying 1 percent in taxes.
3) The profits of the economic elite are “now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth.”
As the looting is occurring at the top, the U.S. middle class is just beginning to collapse.
4) Workers between the ages of 55 to 60, who have worked for 20 to 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans went up by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion.
5) Home foreclosure filings “hit a record high in the third quarter (of 2009)… They were the worst three months of all time… some experts estimate that next year will be even worse.”
President Obama has enacted a $75 billion taxpayer funded program that has been a spectacular failure in stemming the foreclosure crisis and another massive waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.
6) 25 million people are unemployed or underemployed.
We have 25 million people who urgently need to increase their income, and they’re quickly running out of options. “The president’s chief economic adviser warned that the nation’s unemployment rate could stay ‘unacceptably high’ for years to come.”
The New York Times reports: “Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.
Economist Nouriel Roubini, just reported on unemployment stating: “Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening…. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. The jobs just are not coming back.”
7) As the few elite banks thrive, there have been 123 U.S. bank failures this year. The troubles put taxpayers at risk of losing as much as $5.1 billion invested in the banks since TARP was launched in October 2008.”
8) As bankruptcies surge across the board, 10 U.S. states are on the verge of bankruptcy, with several ready to declare a financial state of emergency. California, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services.”
9) This is occurring at a time when the “federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before.” In total, “U.S. public debt topped $12 trillion for the first time in history, meaning Congress would have to raise the debt ceiling to prevent a shutdown of government operations.”
Economist Dean Baker explains the risk “If the debt limit is not passed, then at some point the government will not be able to pay workers and contractors. It won’t be able to send out Social Security checks or make payments for Medicaid and unemployment insurance to state governments. And, it will not be able to make interest payments on government bonds, effectively defaulting on the national debt.”
10) Although the government’s official figure tries to low-ball the number, 47.4 million U.S. citizens live in poverty, and the U.S. poverty rate is the highest in the industrialized world.
Predictably, homelessness is rising at an increased rate as well. “The fastest growing segment of the homeless population is families with children.”
Children have been hit especially hard by the economic crisis:
11) One out of every two children in the United States of America will need to use a food stamp… to EAT!
Washington Post report: “The nation’s economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people — including almost one child in four — struggled last year to get enough to eat… ‘This is unthinkable. It’s like we are living in a Third World country,’ said Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America.”
These numbers don’t take into account the millions more unemployed throughout 2009.
This a national tragedy. But it gets much worse.
12) In 2008, according to the Census Bureau, the number of U.S. citizens without health care grew to a record 46.3 million.
13) Lack of health insurance has caused 45,000 preventable U.S. citizen deaths in the past year. The American Journal of Medicine recently released a study that stated, “Nearly two out of three bankruptcies stem from medical bills, and even people with health insurance face financial disaster if they experience a serious illness.”
Studies report that: 17,000 children have died due to lack of health care; 2,266 U.S. veterans have died in 2008 due to lack of insurance.
The Senate continues to strip meaningful amendments from a health care bill that wouldn’t even take effect until 2013; the health care bill is going to fall far short of meaningful reform and continue to rig the game in favor of large insurance company profits at the expense of the U.S. population. Change is not on the horizon.
The economic hit men have now hit the United States and millions of American citizens are now effectively sentenced to a slow death.
And the clock is ticking…
14) The gun and ammunition manufacturing industry in the United States has over 200 companies producing billions of dollars in annual revenues. This huge manufacturing base cannot fulfill demand quickly enough.
Americans are arming themselves to the teeth!
15) In the past year, 100 new armed militia groups have been formed, as militia members have doubled in numbers. One federal authority recently said, “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence.”
So let’s break down these numbers.
You have 50 million people in desperate need of money, have no health insurance and can’t afford to get health care of any kind. They are running out of options fast, and time delayed is time closer to death.
The richest 1 percent have never had it so good.
We are sitting on a powder keg.
Read the rest of the report here.
Denial isn't a river in Africa.
Thousands March in 3-Day Showdown with Banking Industry By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet.
Tired of bailouts and fat paychecks for those that created the economic catastrophe, marchers made clear demands to tame an out-of-control financial system.
Workers gave pink slips to the country’s top bankers Tuesday morning to culminate three days of protests, billed as the Showdown in Chicago, during the American Bankers’ Association’s annual meeting.
Before a jeering and cheering crowd of 5,000 union members and activists, Armando Robles, president of UE Local 1110 and a leader of the Republic Windows factory occupation last year, attached big, fluorescent pink slips to larger-than-life cutouts of retiring Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon.
The three CEOs were probably among the bank officials meeting in the Sheraton behind the stage that featured speeches by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Change to Win Chairwoman Anna Burger, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and workers and community leaders.
After “firing” the bank CEOs, Adam Kader of the workers group Arise Chicago presented a notice that the banks’ $17.8 trillion “loan” in taxpayer-bailout funds is due since, he said, banks have not complied with the conditions placed on the handout by the people. READ MORE:
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/143547/thousands_march_in_3-day_showdown_with_banking_industry
Tea Party Movement Returns, This Time with Much More Dangerous and Explicit Rhetoric By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet.
It’s not too hard to guess where talk of ‘Judgement Day’ can lead to in the context of a right-wing, gun-loving movement.
According to the “Tea Party” website, Tea Party Express II: Countdown To Judgment Day” is underway. Here’s how their website describes it:
All throughout the recent Tea Party Express national bus tour we kept receiving calls from people around the nation who lived far away from the route our buses took across America. We vowed at the time to keep the Tea Party Express effort alive — and that’s exactly what we are doing.Join us from October 25th to November 11th, 2009 as we tell Congress and the White House: “Enough!” Let’s stand up and stop the bailouts, cap and trade, out-of-control spending, government-run health care, and higher taxes! We’re back and determined to take our country back!
What will happen on their predicted “Judgment Day”?
If you buy the biblical spin of the Religious Right folks — that make up the bulk of the Tea Party movement — the implication is clear: Jesus will soon return, send all Democrats, gays, blacks, progressives, liberals, college-educated unbelievers, etc., to Hell, while saving what Sarah Palin calls “us” “Real Americans” — in other words unreconstructed frightened and resentful white lower middle class Americans.
(As a former right wing evangelical anti-abortion leader who built a good career from these folks — until I quit in disgust with myself, the anti-American nature of the movement and the takeover the Republican Party by extremists — I know of what I speak.)
If you put the secular/right’s “tree-of-Liberty-must-be-watered-by-the-blood-of-tyrants-Timothy McVeigh spin on the Judgment Day scenario; then there will soon be a hoped for bloody day of reckoning for the occupant of the White House.
The Case for Marijuana Legalization and Regulation By Paul Armentano, AlterNet.
An exclusive look at the historic testimony prepared for a special hearing on legalizing marijuana to the California Assembly.
The following is the testimony NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano will deliver on Oct. 28 to the California Assembly Public Safety Committee’s special hearing on “the legalization of marijuana: social, fiscal and legal implications for California.” Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, sponsor of AB 390, The Marijuana Control, Regulation and Education Act, is the chairman of the committee.
By any objective standard, marijuana prohibition is an abject failure.
Nationwide, U.S. law enforcement have arrested over 20 million American citizens for marijuana offenses since 1965, yet today marijuana is more prevalent than ever before, adolescents have easier access to marijuana than ever before, the drug is more potent than ever before, and there is more violence associated with the illegal marijuana trade than ever before.
Over 100 million Americans nationally have used marijuana despite prohibition, and 1 in 10 — according to current government survey data — use it regularly.
The criminal prohibition of marijuana has not dissuaded anyone from using marijuana or reduced its availability; however, the strict enforcement of this policy has adversely impacted the lives and careers of millions of people who simply elected to use a substance to relax that is objectively safer than alcohol.
NORML believes that the state of California ought to amend criminal prohibition and replace it with a system of legalization, taxation, regulation and education.
The case for legalization and regulation
Only through state government regulation will we be able to bring necessary controls to the commercial marijuana market. READ MORE:
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/143558/the_case_for_marijuana_legalization_and_regulation
30 Reasons Fox News Is Not Legit By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America.
Fox News routinely, and blatantly, breaks the code to which ethical journalists are supposed to aspire. READ MORE:
http://www.alternet.org/media/143541/30_reasons_fox_news_is_not_legit
Why Won’t Obama Send Condolence Letters to the Parents of Soldiers Who Have Committed Suicide? By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!.
The bereaved parents of Chancellor Keesling, a US soldier who took his own life in Iraq, wonder why the death of their son is treated differently than other mortalities. READ MORE:
Apocalypse Soon: Halloween Interview on Overpopulation with Kierán Suckling
Scared of ghosts, goblins, and jack-o-lanterns? None of those are on the Santa Fe Reporter‘s list of the top five environmental horrors. But human overpopulation is. “Apocalypse Soon: Today’s Environmental Horrors Could Lead to a Scary Sci-Fi Future” interviews Center for Biological Diversity director Kierán Suckling. Click below to read the whole article. Here are few excerpts:
“Virtually everything that is destroying wildlife habitat and the environment is driven by overpopulation,” Kierán Suckling, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, says.
“Whether it’s too many people diverting water out of the Rio Grande or too much wood use leading to the logging of old-growth forests, the bottom line is there are too many people using too many resources to be able to have a healthy environment.”
“It’s great to focus on reducing our carbon footprint, but…unless we start reducing the footprints to begin with, we and other species are not going to survive on this planet.”
“The majority of environmental groups avoid addressing overpopulation like the plague. I think that’s largely because they lack the courage of their convictions. They are fearful that in saying that [we are overpopulated] they will be viewed as being anti-human somehow–as if squalor and overpopulation are somehow pro-human.”
Read the Santa Fe Reporter interview and learn what the Center’s doing to confront the overpopulation crisis head-on.
The federal government spent $167 billion in 1994 on corporate tax breaks and handouts – an average of $1400 per taxpayer (not including subsidies from counties and cities, hazardous waste cleanup costs, or limits on corporate liability). By contrast, the total price tag for Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps and public housing came to $50 billion, or $400 per taxpayer.
Not many politicians talk about this. A rare exception is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich who said to the Democratic Leadership Council in November 1995 that people are mad because “we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a few winners and a larger group left behind.” Then, he said, “Since we are committed to moving the disadvantaged from welfare to work, why not target corporate welfare as well?”
The White House quickly distanced itself from Reich’s speech, but activists of all kinds picked it up: Perot’s United We Stand-America made it a major target of angry-middle groups; the right-wing Heritage Foundation and libertarian Cato Institute joined Ralph Nader to present a list of corporate pork barrel reforms. Yet, neither Congress nor the White House makes much of corporate giveaways in budget-balancing plans.
What are the giveaways? The active variety includes agribusiness, military contractor subsidies, loan guarantees, and the bailout of the S&Ls, and computer databases. The rights to lumber and minerals on federal lands are routinely granted for $5 per acre, making the United States the only country in the world that virtually gives away its depletable natural resources! Drugs developed with taxpayer money are routinely given to drug companies for monopoly marketing with no restraint on price, or royalties returned to the people. The major television networks get free broadcast licenses with minimal public responsibility or obligation.
Passive corporate giveaways come in the form of tax breaks and loopholes. Private individuals pay taxes at higher rates than corporations. The investment tax credit designed to increase economic activity is historically taken as a windfall. Tax breaks granted to be put back into productive equipment, plants and jobs, are commonly used to buy out other companies, creating no new jobs or wealth. Subsidies actually debilitate innovation and efficiency.
In the debate over budget deficits, many ask, “How can we take food out of poor kids’ mouths and continue to subsidize the rich?” Scant legislation has been introduced to rid us of tax loopholes for the rich. There’s been no serious move to initiate cost-benefit analysis of corporate giveaways, in the same way they’ve meticulously reviewed health and safety regulation for years, and assaulted affirmative action and the minimum wage.
One problem is that connections are frequently not made between things that people don’t like and what causes them. Well-funded corporate lobbies and toadies are too adept at directing people’s anger against government in a massive, daily, Rush Limbaugh-/Lars Larsen-esque hate-your-government drumbeat. They work to keep the focus away from corporations, which are the dominant institution in our society.
Government has been only a minion, a simply willing agent, for transferring tax dollars to corporate coffers. We are the richest nation in the history of the world and our richest (corporate) citizens behave as if divine providence, rather than selfish market decisions doom the poorest (human) citizens. However, if the corporate greed issue is connected with people’s deprivation – and we brand-name the greediest corporate kings in the United States – we can turn the tide against the self-interested, compassionless and undemocratic aspects of the corporate institution. Corporations should pay their fair share to the citizens and communities, which enable their success. That can result in real tax reform, without creating unnecessary hardships for the poor and middle class.
WALL STREET LIES BLAME VICTIMS TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY FOR FINANCIAL MELTDOWN by Nomi Prins, Wiley Press.
To hear it from the big financial companies, the big crash started when poor people bought homes they couldn’t afford. But that was at most 1% of the problem. Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Nomi Prins’ new book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.
The Second Great Bank Depression has spawned so many lies, it’s hard to keep track of which is the biggest. Possibly the most irksome class of lies, usually spouted by Wall Street hacks and conservative pundits, is that we’re all victims to a bunch of poor people who bought McMansions, or at least homes they had no business living in. If that was really what this crisis was all about, we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late 2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce their loan principals. It would have cost about 3 percent of what the entire bailout wound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.
US DOLLAR SET TO BE ECLIPSED World Bank President Predicts by Heather Stewart
The United States must brace itself for the dollar to be usurped as the world’s reserve currency as American dominance wanes in the wake of the financial crisis, the World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, warned yesterday. United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency, says Zoellick. Speaking ahead of the World Bank/IMF annual meetings in Istanbul, he said it was time for a “responsible globalisation”, in which decision-making was shared between the old powers and developing countries such as China and India.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/28-7
CLEAN COAL IS FICTION says Jessy Tolkan: Washington saying coal industry can be “clean” is pure fiction.
Paul Jay speaks to Jessy Tolkan at the Tides Foundations’ Momentum conference in San Francisco. They speak about Tolkan’s coalition on climate change fighting Obama to establish a moratorium on all coal mining. Tolkan says that Washington’s push for “clean coal” is not enough because the coal industry’s and President Obama’s argument that the production of coal can be clean is “an absolute, 100% lie.” She also says that “the science is clear that if we don’t address coal head on, it’s almost “game over” for the planet.”
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/09/28
CASSANDRAS OF CLIMATE by Paul Krugman
Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.
And here’s the thing: I’m not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire warnings aren’t the delusional raving of cranks. They’re what come out of the most widely respected climate models, devised by the leading researchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in just the last few years.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/28-3
ENVIRONMENT-POPULATION JUMBOPAK
John Legry's Blog 