The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Foreign aid does not work. In the end, government doesn't know what it's doing.
Throwing good money at bad governments makes poor countries worse off.
I have been thinking about this story all day. If one out of two babies born in the U.S. will be autistic by 2025, if the present trend continues, what kind of world can that be? In 2013 the number of live births in the U.S. was 3,952,840. as described this would mean 1,976,420 autistic children. Within a generation the care of these millions would consume the nation. This is completely insane. Say the estimate is 50% off. It would still be 19,764,200 in 20 years. All of this damage in the service of profit.
Half of All Children Will Be Autistic by 2025, Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT
Phi Beta Iota: We include diseases spread by industrial mal-practice in the “infectious” disease category ranked as high-level threat to humanity number two. Our ignorant corrupt government is literally murdering our public.
This is how you buy the government of the United States. You say, “$721 million is a lot of money.” I respond it is a cost of business item. Fossil fuel companies operating in the U.S. and Canada made $271 billion dollars in profit in 2012, while continuing to receive billions in subsidies. As of April 14, 2014 , according to Mother Jones, “Taxpayers currently subsidize the oil industry by as much as $4.8 billion a year, with about half of that going to the big five oil companies—ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, and ConocoPhillips.” So let me see. They spent $721 million to buy the government; they got $4.8 billion in subsidies. And the conclusion is: You and I paid the fossil fuel companies through subsidies, money which they metaphorically in turn used to buy the government so that it operates responsive to their interests, rather than the interests of the citizens who paid the taxes. What a deal.
The Fossil Fuel Industry Spent More Than $721 Million During 2014’s Midterm Elections
Open Cooperativism for the P2P Age
Our recommendations for the new era of open cooperativism are:
1. That coops need to be statutorily (internally) oriented towards the common good
2. That coops need to have governance models including all stakeholders
Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Open Cooperativism for the P2P Age”
Citing Health Risks, Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York State (NYT)
Health Department Report on Fracking in New York State (Report)
New York State Just Banned Fracking (Mother Jones)
Phi Beta Iota: The media coverage of this historic decision has been mediocre. Everyone has missed two really big deals. First, the NY ban stems from a single legal couple going village to village over the years, persuading each village to pass an ordnance against fracking. Although industry took the case to the Appeals Court, they lost. Second, fracking is recommended as an energy solution in Global Trends 2030, the flagship of the US secret world's grasp of intelligence with integrity — in other words, they don't have a clue. So this specific decision on fracking in NY represents both the triumph of informed localized citizens, and the pathetic collapse of any semblance of “national” intelligence.
See Especially:
SchwartzReport: Grass-Roots Anti-Fracking
See Also:
Intelligence with Integrity @ Phi Beta Iota
Way ahead, this is.
Platform Cooperativism vs. the Sharing Economy
The Bad: Sascha Lobo and Martin Kenneyrecently introduced the term platform capitalism, which I’d define in reference to subcontracting and rental economies with big payouts going to small groups of people. Occupations that cannot be off-shored, the pet walkers or home cleaners, are now subsumed under platform capitalism.
The Good: Worker-owned cooperatives can offer an alternative model of social organization to address financial instability. They will need to be · collectively owned, · democratically controlled businesses, · with a mission to anchor jobs, · offer health insurance and pension funds and, – a degree of dignity.
This bitcoin alternative is a threat to Wall Street
Peer-to-peer loans imperil banks, and cryptocurrencies may finish the job
EXTRACT
Digital currencies circumvent the fees and roadblocks to access that come with traditional financial services. The possibilities, especially in the underdeveloped world, are enormous. As much as $9.6 trillion in assets locked out of the global economy could be freed up, according to the International Monetary Fund.
