The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Google: Three Elephants Preparing to Fight Among Themselves
I love the Google. I found two unrelated articles interesting for one simple reason: Google is getting ready for its own version of Wrestlemania. Read more.
Phi Beta Iota: Google, like Microsoft and Standard Oil, needs to die. It is only corruption that keep subsidies for fossil fuel and tolerance for the information-era equivalents of fossil fuel, alive.
Unveiling of Parallel Legal System for Foreign Corporations Will Fuel TPP Controversy, Further Complicate Obama’s Push for Fast Track
The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) Investment Chapter, leaked today, reveals how the pact would make it easier for U.S. firms to offshore American jobs to low-wage countries while newly empowering thousands of foreign firms to seek cash compensation from U.S. taxpayers by challenging U.S. government actions, laws and court rulings before unaccountable foreign tribunals. After five years of secretive TPP negotiations, the text – leaked by WikiLeaks –proves that growing concerns about the controversial “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system that the TPP would extend are well justified.
This is about as clear a statement of the noncarbon generation high tech mogul perspective as I have read. The article also gives an accurate, I believe, critique as to where he is in error. Most fundamentally I think Thiel has confused process and specific circumstances. I think democratic government can work very well. It certainly does so in many other countries. There is a reason why Danes are happy, and Americans are not. It is not working well here because of corruption, unlimited money in politics, and the Republican gridlock that has produced, and the compromised nature of our regulatory agencies. There is nothing wrong with the Founders' vision, and everything wrong with its execution. American politics is to the Founders' democratic republic as Fundamentalist Pre-millennial Dispensationlist Christianity is to Jesus' teachings.
Why PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel thinks American democracy is dead
Bankers can (and should) be jailed for fraud… Iceland shows the way.
Iceland Jails Four Top Bankers for Fraud in Landmark Case
Iceland has jailed four bankers for market manipulation in a landmark case which sets a precedent for the rest of the world. The verdict relates to corruption at the Kaupthing bank, which collapsed after the financial crisis in 2008 due to fraud at the highest levels.
Proving to the world that even bankers aren't above the law
Part of our social stability, I think, depends on the ignorance most people share about the true measure of economic inequality in the U.S. A definition of the one per cent: “they have median annual household income of $750,000, median assets of $7.5 million, and there are 1.2 million of them across the country.” That's a lot of money, but at that level you are still living in a universe that can be recognized by the 99 per cent. When you get above that by perhaps three times you to move into another realm. And when you are a hundred times that, as are the uber-rich, you may occupy tangential geography, but you live in another world. Why wouldn't you want to avoid all the unpleasant inconvenience of modern air travel for instance if you could move through the world more effortlessly than the 99 per cent move through neighborhoods. It changes the scale of your thought, but it also blurs perception of what life is really like for most people.
Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think
Why the House of Representatives Doesn't Represent the US Public
One of the really weird ironies of politics these days is the huge divergence between what the US people actually want and what the radical right-wingers in Washington actually do. You won't hear this on “Fox So-Called News,” but right now the US people are as progressive as they ever have been. Read full article.
Foreign Funding of Think Tanks Is Corrupting Our Democracy
The New York Times has published over the weekend [9 Sep 14] an excellent study of how foreign governments are buying influence at Washington’s think tanks. According to the story, foreign governments are not only getting prominent think tanks to embrace their views of what is in America’s interest, but to lobby for these views with politicians and high officials.
Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Corruption of US Think Tanks”
