Sacramento for Democracy - General Interest

America’s Economic Gang-Rape Triumvirate: BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT, ACADEMIA

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 20:08:45 +0000

Once again, the phrase that comes to mind is Milton Friedman's: socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the rest. An ordinary person defaults on his debt, he gets to live in his car. A banker defaults, and the taxpayer can be relied on to bail him out.

Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe:

Chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is reported to have taken home $125 million in bonuses over the course of a decade. What’s amazing about that Senate hearing is how Blankfein and other Goldman Sachs executives appeared to be unfazed when confronted with evidence of their malfeasance — pushing securities they knew to be iffy. Notoriously, the company’s e-mails use a different, unprintable word.

Wikipedia:

Top executives of the insolvent companies walked away from the crisis they had helped create with their personal fortunes intact. This happened because the boards of directors – which have responsibility for such decisions - are generally hand picked by the CEOs.

Examples include Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo, Merrill Lynch’s Stan O'Neal, O'Neal’s successor John Thain and AIG’s Joseph Cassano.

You Should Not Write on US Currency, But If You Do ….

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:43:23 +0000

Defacing US currency is illegal.

Nevertheless, an organization called HUG PAC (a/k/a "Hippies United Globally P.A.C.") wants to register their outrage over the inappropriate corporate US tax policies with a $1 Bill Protest. They are advocating that fed-up citizens write along the edge of their dollar bills the following:

"This is $1 more than GE, Exxon or Bank of America paid in taxes in 2010".

They also suggest you might add the word RECALL and then plug in the name of a betraying representative or two. Then let that dollar and its message circulate.

They go on:

It's time to start educating people. It's time to get people talking when they read this note. It's time to shine light on what's REALLY going on with our tax dollars and it's time to send a LOUD message throughout the nation (without using violence or encouraging hate) that WE, THE PEOPLE say enough is enough!

RSVP to America's $1 Bill Protest on Facebook and let your voice be heard. It's a guaranteed fast way to get the message out. When you do participate, be sure to spend the money at local stores or garage sales, as a tip at a restaurant...places where you know the money will travel through hands before it reaches a bank.

Is it just doom and gloom or should the U.S. expect a collapse?

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:06:34 +0000

Dmitry Orlov

Dmitry Orlov interviewed by Bonnie Faulkner

Dmitry Orlov is an engineer and a writer on the potential economic, ecological and political decline and collapse in the United States. Orlov believes collapse will be the result of huge military budgets, government deficits, an unresponsive political system and declining oil production.
Bonnie Faulkner is the host and producer of KPFA's Guns and Butter radio program.
Source: Dmitry Orlov Collapse Gap interview downloadable mp3 file Guns&Butter

Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges: The World As It Is with Laura Flanders

Chris Hedges' new book is The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress explores the problems of a crumbling empire, inside and out. Chris joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the murder of Bin Laden and the continuing concern over terrorism and the end of empathy in the U.S.
Source: Chris Hedges: The World As It Is

Music includes Charlie Parker - Hot House, Great Anthem, We'll Met Again, Let's stop the war, Willie Nelson - Bridge Over Troubled Water, Down By The Riverside, El Mariachi, Joan Baez -There but for fortune, Jeff Foxworthy - victoria's secret, Larry Verne - Mr. Custer, Monty Pythons - The Galaxy Song, War Warning from Madison 4th U.S. President

Play Program or Download(below the fold)

Of Course Obama and Kleptocrats Savage Sick, Elderly, Young, Poor & Working Class

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:58:06 +0000

Paul Street in “Whose Black President” on what the Obama administration has wrought:

... Barack Obama has belonged to Wall Street, corporate America, and the Pentagon from the beginning. Consider his first year in the White House – a study in the triumph of corporate-imperial conservatism. With its expansion of the monumental bailout of hyper-opulent financial overlords, its refusal to nationalize and cut down parasitic financial institutions, its passage of a health “reform” bill that only the big insurance and drug companies could love (consistent with Rahm Emmanuel’s advice to the president: “ignore the progressives”), its cutting of an auto bailout deal that raided union pension funds and rewarded capital flight, its undermining of global carbon emission reduction efforts at Copenhagen, its refusal to advance serious public works programs (green or otherwise), its green-lighting of escalated strip mining and hazardous deepwater oil drilling, its disregarding of promises to labor and other popular constituencies (remember the Employee Free Choice Act?) and other betrayals of its “progressive base” (the other side of the coin of promises kept to its corporate sponsors), and its appointment of a Deficit Reduction Commission “headed [in economist Michael Hudson’s words] by avowed enemies of Social Security” (Republican Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton chief of staff Erskin Bowles), Obama’s “change” and “hope” (corporatist Bill Clinton’s campaign keywords in 1992) presidency epitomized the power of what Edward S. Herman and David Peterson call “the unelected dictatorship of money.”

Science Friday: DIY Fruit Fireball | All Polar Bears are Irish | Dolphins Healing Powers; Electroreception of one Species

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:45:31 +0000

Fruit Fireballs

Orange peel, ideally from a large orange with a thick juicy skin
A candle

What to Do

Thomas E. Ricks talks about the Iraq War with Harry Kreisler

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:21:47 +0000

Thomas E. Ricks

After 21 years of conflict with Iraq is there something we can learn? It started with the Gulf War started on Aug. 2nd, 1990 which ended in 1991. Then on to the Iraq No Fly zone war which started in 1991 and ended in 2003. The current war in Iraq started in 2003.

Thomas E. Ricks has lead an interesting life. Reviewing the conduct of the Iraq War, he analyzes the weaknesses and strengths of America's political and military leaders, the long term consequences of the conflict for the military, and the future of Iraq, and the possibilities of a new American strategy for the Middle East under President Obama.
Source: Conversations With History: The Military and the Iraq War with Thomas E. Ricks

Music includes Earth Anthem, We'll Met Again, Coleman Hawkins - The Man I Love, The Lion King - Circle Of Life, gods a gonna cut you down, Kenny Rogers - Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town, janis joplin - mercedes benz, Gil Scott Heron - We Almost Lost Detroit, Joan Baez - Blowin In The Wind, House Of The Rising Sun, Sponji Raggae,theatre of whine, Hero of War, bobby mcferrin - dont worry be happy, mariachi vargas - el condor pasa, Fiesta En Jalisco

Play Program or Download(below the fold)

‘Obama Voids Bladder On All That He Is Supposed To Uphold’

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:36:17 +0000

I cribbed the above title from an oped by William Rivers Pitt entitled “So This is Despair.”

“I see a president on his knees, hands outstretched, offering the best ideas and policies liberal governance has ever devised up to the voracious carnivore of GOP opportunism. I see the end of the New Deal, and a far crueler America emerging from the aftermath. I see a Democratic president voiding his bladder on all that he is supposed to uphold.

Mr. Obama got on those knees again Monday night, on national television no less, and once again begged the GOP to devour Social Security and Medicare. He gobbled up the flawed, flayed premise of the far-right's deranged argument, again, and pleaded for the chance to give away the core of what he was elected to defend.

I thought I was done being ashamed of my president.

I was wrong.”

This is what Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report declares about Obama:

... Obama is showing such extraordinary talent for obliterating poor and working class programs across the board, he’s making Republicans look redundant and obsolete.

Capt. Obama, USS Titanic, Tosses Older Women Overboard First

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:59:52 +0000

[This is a re-post from 10-26-10]

Raising the retirement age to a whopping 70 is more than a twinkle in the eyes of Obama and his Gucci-loafered-Austerian-Commission-sadists from both sides of the aisle. They are about to stick it once again to all of us, but particularly to struggling low-income older women in physical jobs!

It just keeps on getting uglier and uglier. Sharon Johnson in this article in womensenews spells out how exceptionally cruel it is to the plight of women.

Nice reward working so hard all your life to have these sociopathic millionaire bastards steal your taxpaying money to reward fraudsters and then add insult to injury by moving your retirement goal post to 70 and making your hard-earned benefits (to some the ONLY benefits for a life of struggle) belated and unlivable.

According to Ellen Bruce, past president of OWL (Older Women’s League) 1 in 4 older women depends on Social Security for 90 percent of her income. Women have overwhelmingly far fewer assets than men when they retire.

Sharon Johnson writes:

Cenk Uygur Says No Thank You to Insider Cronyism and MSNBC’s 'Manufacture of Consent'

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 23:17:48 +0000

As far as I am concerned, it is a time for celebration.

Cenk Uygur escaped this week with his soul and his scalp from MSNBC. One way of celebrating may be to take a sledge hammer to your television. Just a thought.

I so wanted to dig into an angry blog about MSNBC, its false-left propagandizing of the Trojan Horse for oligarchs, Obama, its demonizing of only half of the Congressional rabid rat bastard criminal political class in Washington, and its attempt to neuter Cenk of his search for and assertion of truth to power.

But, alas, I had totally stopped watching MSNBC when Rachel Maddow so heartbreakingly jumped the shark a serious while ago by becoming head cheerleader, part time sycophant, for Obama.

I don’t watch much tv any more. Even the Newshour. The jump the shark moment there, one of many, was when Carol Browner, who served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011 and previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001 (which you would think would assure some reliability) just after the BP disaster (as if there has been a serious “after”) assured Judy Woodruff that Mother Nature had miraculously cleaned up oh maybe was it 80% of that toilet bowl of a Gulf of Mexico and it was only a matter of time before she (M. Nature, that is) finished the job.

What MSNBC Won't Admit: OBAMA ACTUALLY TO RIGHT OF BACHMANN

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:40:39 +0000

According to financial economist and historian Dr. Michael Hudson:

It’s a good cop-bad cop charade. The Republicans are playing the role of the bad cop. Their script says: “You cannot raise taxes on anybody. No progressive income tax, no closing of tax loopholes for special interests, not even prosecutions for tax fraud. And we can get a lot of money back into the economy if we give a tax holiday to the companies and individuals that have been keeping their money offshore. Let’s free the wealthy from taxes to help us recover.’

Mr. Obama can turn around and pretend to be the good cop. “Hey, boys, let me at least do something. I’m willing to cut back Social Security. I’m willing to take over what was George Bush’s program. I share your worries about the budget deficit. We have to balance it, and I’ve already appointed a Deficit Reduction Commission to prepare public opinion for my cutbacks in the most popular programs. But you have to let me get a little bit of revenue somewhere.”

In the end the Republicans will make some small token concessions, but they’ll get their basic program. Mr. Obama will have sold out his constituency.