The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Today, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia professor and former economic advisor to Bill Clinton, [published] a new report for the Roosevelt Institute entitled “Rewriting the Rules,” which is basically a roadmap for what many progressives would like to see happen policy wise over the next four years.
Eight “fixes” and PBI commentary below the fold.
Continue reading “Joseph Stiglitz: New New Lipstick on the Pig”
Some days, when I do SR by the time I am through I just feel that with the level of stupidity and greed that pervades our culture we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't. This is one of those stories.
Scientists Find Alarming Deterioration In DNA Of The Urban Poor
TPP: A Bloodless Coup Imposing Tyranny May be Near Upon Us [2015]
Richard Martin, an Internet financial radio pundit, sent the text below, written by Joe Firestone, to those on his email list. Note Martin's key take-away comment on this text:
“The governing functions of the TPP regime would not be exercised with the consent of the governed. The combination of the vague definition of “investment,” the ISDS criminogenic tribunals, and the elevation of the principle of “expectation of profits” above the principles of “public purpose,” “consent of the governed,” and “separation of powers,” is tantamount to the overthrow of democracy, preserving its form in national level elections, but emptying its elections of meaningful content in mandating change and conferring legitimacy on national authorities. And, further, the ISDS tribunals if in operation, would not exercise just powers, but only illegitimate power derived from the TPP agreement itself, negotiated in secret, passed without benefit of open debate based on the secret text of the TPP, and intended to remain secret for years after the TPP is signed. That makes TPP decision making, performed without the consent of the governed, tyranny, and makes those who want to pass the TPP guilty of conspiracy to create tyrannical rule of the few over the people of the United States and other TPP member nations.”
The 23-Count Indictment Of The TPP [2012]
There was a time when the American legal system was considered the benchmark for the world. Those days are long gone. The American gulag today and the courts and law enforcement agencies that service it constitute an octopus of the state that might described by Kafka on acid. In the United States if you are an ivy league graduate and work for the right financial institution you can weasel billions from fixed income grandmothers with no fear of being held accountable. If you are Black or Hispanic, and particularly if you are poor, however, any touch by one of the suckers of the octopus, and you are doomed. We manufacture criminals in the United States. Like cars they are created in the factories of the prison system. And they are needed, like terrorists, because they justify the expenditure of billions upon billions, producing profits made by a tiny faction of the population. There is a reason we have five per cent of the world's population, but twenty five per cent of the world's prisoners.
Lawsuits Show Gov. Contractors Intentionally Jailing The Poor For Profit
I find the lie that America tells itself and the world, that we care about our children, particularly heinous and pernicious. By any measure the U.S., as a society — of course you love your children — doesn't give a damn about the next generation. We should be ashamed of ourselves. That we do not care for and nurture our young is a serious national character flaw. One that will shape our future in ways great and small.
The Numbers Are Staggering: U.S. Is ‘World Leader' in Child Poverty
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.
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
