A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis
Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:
Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.
Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.
In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.
Capitalism is at risk of destroying itself unless bankers realise they have an obligation to create a fairer society, the Bank of England governor has warned.
Leadership Failures in the National Security Complex
Current NSA forecast: continued Snowden flurries with no end in sight. No one blames the hardworking NSA employees for the latest series of gaffes: it’s the feckless leadership and the politics that got them there that are responsible for our current difficulties
The dispute is about money, but the outcome—whether Hachette gives up on pricing and pays a little more for marketing, or not—is about so much more. Amazon equated Hachette with its other suppliers in its statement: “At Amazon, we do business with more than 70,000 suppliers, including thousands of publishers. One of our important suppliers is Hachette….” Hachette doesn't feel the same way, according to its response to the Amazon statement: “By preventing its customers from connecting with these authors’ books, Amazon indicates that it considers books to be like any other consumer good.” But, it added, “They are not.”
When rigged numbers are the basis of our success, we have failed.
The essence of the U.S. economy is make it look good: never mind quality or long-term consequences, just make it look good today, this week, this month, this quarter: make the pink slime look like meat, make the company look profitable, make the low-quality product look good enough to close the sale, make the unemployment rate low enough to justify re-electing the toadies currently in power, make the body count of bad guys look good, and on and on–just makes the numbers look good now, the future will take care of itself.
This is, of course, an attractive lie: the future is a direct consequence of present decisions and actions. It is remarkable how quickly we latch onto the notion that an endless parade of lies, manipulations and deceptions will magically produce a warm and fuzzy future of organic growth fostered by sound investments.
GEN(R) Shinseki is catching flak, perhaps justified, perhaps not, for the deepening VA scandal. Invite your attention to attached as an indicator of what the man is capable of. Only issue I ever had with him was the black beret for everyone matter.
EXTRACT:
I think it ¡s important to point out that the Vision statement begins and ends talking about people. People are central to everything we do ¡n The Army. Institutions don't transform; people do'. Platforms and organizations don't defend the nation; people do. And finally, units don't train; they don't stay ready; they don't grow and develop leadership; they don't s'acrifice and they don't take risks on behalf of the Nation; people do. Without people in the equation, readiness and transformation are little more than academic exercises.
Editor's Note: Well, it looks like Obama the Peacemaker image took another hit today. China, which has no overseas military bases and no carrier battle groups sailing the seas to defend its customers, considers itself a target and not a threat. Imagine that!
The US “divide and conquer” ploy with the Asia Pivot is turning into Obama's Asia Boomerang. The land of freedom and democracy has turned into the major stimulus on the planet for forming defensive military alliances.
It seems they don't want to buy one of our “Sanctions-R-US” franchises. The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.
Maybe it's all a trick. Maybe “they” want to divert China and Russia's capital investment away from peaceful business endeavors and whiz it out the window, following the example of the $2 trillion we blew on the military industrial complex over the last decade with no credible threats on the planet.
Good gosh, what group in America would want to do that when our bridges are falling down and the highway trust fund is almost empty… the list goes on and on. Take a look at the companies that the Bush (43) thugs are all involved with, before and after. They seem to have done well.
Don't be surprised to hear brain dead Congressional candidates screaming about how we must rearm American to protect ourselves from the yellow horde building unsinkable inner tubes to float millions of Chinese secret DNA commandos across the Pacific to invade America.
The think tanks are sharpening their pens and swords to scare Americans into putting what money they have left into their various coffers by going on their Asian Jihad. Americans need to form a security alliance of their own here at home to defend ourselves against “you know who”… Jim W. Dean ]
