What broke WashingtonIt’s time to stop taking Washington seriously. How likely is it that Congress will deal with unsustainable deficits, climate change, decrepit infrastructure, unaffordable health care, muddled immigration policy, obsolete laws, unmanageable civil service, rigged electoral districts . . . ? The list of failures of our democratic government is getting long. Responsible reform seems hopeless.
Who Is The New Secret Buyer Of U.S. Debt?On the surface, the economic atmosphere of the U.S. has appeared rather calm and uneventful. Stocks are up, employment isn’t great but jobs aren’t collapsing into the void (at least not openly), and the U.S. dollar seems to be going strong. Peel away the thin veneer, however, and a different financial horror show is revealed.
Low-cost production will mean the end of jobsContinue reading page |1| 2 The internet and low production costs will free us from work and want, says social theorist Jeremy Rifkin – but what will we do then? Stephen Jay Gould called an early book of his “a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship”.
Obama and Holder’s ‘Assault on Freedom of the Press’Nearly 50,000 people have signed a petition in recent days urging President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to end legal moves against New York Times reporter James Risen.
Early Tap of 401(k) Replaces Homes as American Piggy BankPremature withdrawals from retirement accounts have become America’s new piggy bank, cracked open in record amounts during lean times by people like Cindy Cromie, who needed the money to rent a U-Haul and start a new life. Her employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, had outsourced Cromie’s medical transcription work.
Chris Hedges | Capitalism, Not Government Is the ProblemOur corporate masters have set in place laws that, when we rise up, will permit the state to herd us like sheep into military detention camps. Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act is but one piece of the legal tyranny now in place to ensure total corporate control.
Does New Boston Bombing Report Hint at Hidden Global Intrigue?By Russ Baker on Apr 14, 2014 The US government’s latest report on the Boston Marathon bombing is so full of revealing information buried in plain sight, it seems as if an insider is imploring someone-anyone-to dig deeper. It reads like the work of an unhappy participant in a cover-up.
SOMETHING HUGE JUST HAPPENED AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS IGNORING ITYou may be aware of Mark Levin's book “The Liberty Amendments” released last year which called for a “Convention of the States”. Article 5 of the Constitution gives the several states the ability to convene a convention in which the Constitution may be amended, changed, or even scrapped.
Hiding The Global Currency in False East/West Paradigm – A Cover Event Must Be CreatedDespite popular belief, very few things in our world are exactly what they seem. That which is painted as righteous is often evil. That which is painted as kind is often malicious. That which is painted as simple is often complex. That which is painted as complex often ends up being disturbingly two dimensional.
Robert Reich: Four Big Conservative Lies About InequalityEven though French economist Thomas Piketty has made an air-tight case that we’re heading toward levels of inequality not seen since the days of the 19th century robber barons, right-wing conservatives haven’t stopped lying about what’s happening and what to do about it. Herewith, the four biggest right-wing lies about inequality, followed by the truth.
US economy is the least entrepreneurial in decadesAFP Photo / Stan Honda Entrepreneurism in American has been on the decline for at least 30 years, a new report suggests, and for the first time in three decades the number of business “deaths” in the United States exceeds that of “births.”
Snowden: Why hasn’t the Director of National Intelligence been punished for lying to Congress?Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, and one of the reporters who first broke the news of Snowden’s documents, Laura Poitras, received a Ridenhour Truth-Teller prize Wednesday to a standing ovation at the National Press Club.
More secret 9/11 documents identified, but FBI has yet to turn them over to judgeContradicting an earlier assertion made under oath by a senior FBI official, an attorney for the Justice Department said Wednesday that the FBI has identified four more boxes of “classified” 9/11 documents held by its Tampa field office.
Technology law will soon be reshaped by people who don’t use emailThere’s been much discussion – and derision – of the US supreme court’s recent forays into cellphones and the internet, but as more and more of these cases bubble up to the high chamber, including surveillance reform, we won’t be laughing for long: the future of technology and privacy law will undoubtedly be written over the next few years by nine individuals who haven’t “really ‘gotten to’ email” and find Facebook and Twitter “a challenge” .
Sharyl Attkisson paints CBS News as a bunch of cowardsInteresting things happen when Sharyl Attkisson chats with radio host Chris Stigall on Philadelphia station WPHT. It was on Stigall’s show last May, for instance, that Attkisson got into some detail about the allegedly spooky circumstances surrounding hacking breaches into her home and work computers.
Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracyA review of the best commentary on and around the world… The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite. So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page. This is not news, you say.
US insists on going after reporters who publish leaked info ‘not violation of press freedom’Announcing its third annual Free the Press campaign to highlight censorship and oppression of journalists “around the world,” the US State Department made clear it doesn’t consider press freedom issues in the United States the same way it does abroad.
Why Economist Thomas Piketty Has Scared the Pants Off the American RightThomas Piketty is no radical. His 700-page book Capital in the 21st Century is certainly not some kind of screed filled with calls for class warfare. In fact, the wonky and mild-mannered French economist opens his tome with a description of his typical Gen X abhorrence of what he calls the “lazy rhetoric of anticapitalism.”