The Peasants Need Pitchforks

By Robert Scheer
TruthDig

A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

What’s at stake in Wisc: Public Assets No-Bid Give-Away to Koch brothers

Mike Konczal Feb 21, 2011    Rortybomb

The Less Discussed Part of Walker’s Wisconsin Plan: No-Bid Energy Assets Firesales.

Have you heard about 16.896?

The fight in Wisconsin is over Governor Walker’s 144-page Budget Repair Bill. The parts everyone is focusing on have to do with the right to collectively bargain being stripped from public sector unions (except for the unions that supported Walker running for Governor). Focusing on this misses a large part of what the bill would do. Check out this language, from the same bill (my bold):

16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

The bill would allow for the selling of state-owned heating/cooling/power plants without bids and without concern for the legally-defined public interest.  

Egyptian Labor Uprising Against Rubinites

By Matt Stoller
Naked Capitalism

Via Wikileaks, we learned that the son of the former President of Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, had an interesting conversation in 2009 with Senator Joe Lieberman on the banking crisis. Gamal is a key figure in the forces buffeting Egypt, global forces of labor arbitrage, torture, and financial corruption. Gamal believed that the bailouts of the banks weren’t big enough – “you need to inject even more money into the system than you have”. Gamal, a former investment banker trained at Bank of America, helped craft Egypt’s industrial policy earlier in the decade.

Why the Big Lie About the Job Crisis?

By Les Leopold
Information Clearinghouse

August unemployment numbers are ugly, yet again. Nearly 30 million Americans are still jobless or forced into part-time jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics official unemployment rate is 9.6%. It’s borader and more telling jobless rate (U6) of 16.7% confirms that we’re stuck in our own version of the Great Depression. We’ll need more than 22 million new jobs to bring us back to full-employment. Happy Labor Day.

To get out of this quagmire we’ll have to face up to two fundamental facts:

Climate Bill Is a Misnomer: It’s a Nuclear Energy-Promoting, Oil Drilling-Championing, Coal Mining-Boosting Gift to Polluters

By Tyson Slocum
Public Citizen

After half a year of delay, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are set to release their nuclear energy/cap-and-trade bill today. Until we see legislative text, we can comment only on the broad outline made available yesterday and an additional summary being circulated among legislative staff.

It’s not accurate to call this a climate bill. This is nuclear energy-promoting, oil drilling-championing, coal mining-boosting legislation with a weak carbon-pricing mechanism thrown in. What’s worse, it guts the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) current authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

The Gulf oil spill: An American Chernobyl

By Political Committee of the Socialist Equality Party (US)
WSWS

With each passing day, the scale of the disaster unleashed by the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico increases. Somewhere between 5,000 (the official estimate) and 25,000 (the estimate of some scientists) barrels of oil is surging into the Gulf every day. Before it is over, millions, if not tens of millions of gallons of oil will be washed up on America’s wetlands and shorelines.

The Growing Movement for Publicly-Owned Banks

By Ellen Hodges Brown
Web of Debt

As the states’ credit crisis deepens, four states have initiated bills for state-owned banks, and candidates in seven states have now included that solution in their platforms.

“Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs.”

–Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero in the Detroit News, May 9, 2010

Struggling with 14% unemployment, Michigan has been particularly hard hit by the nation’s economic downturn. Virg Bernero, mayor of the state’s capitol and a leading Democratic candidate for governor, proposes that the state relieve its economic ills by opening a state-owned bank. 

Ex Monsanto Lawyer Clarence Thomas to Hear Major Monsanto Case

By D. Snodgrass
Celsias

In Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, No. 09-475, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case which could have an enormous effect on the future of the American food industry. This is Monsanto’s third appeal of the case, and if they win a favorable ruling from the high court, a deregulated Monsanto may find itself in position to corner the markets of numerous U.S. crops, and to litigate conventional farmers into oblivion.

Here’s where it gets a bit dicier. Two Supreme Court justices have what appear to be direct conflicts of interest.

Obama’s Regulatory Czar Deliberately Stalling Toxic Coal Waste Regulation

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: GregPC, Robert Thomson, calebkimbrough)

By Joshua Frank
TruthOut

It may be unsettling to some that the man most responsible for overseeing coal ash regulation within the Obama administration has a track record of siding with polluters instead of the people most affected by toxic waste.

His name is Cass Sunstein and he serves as the little known, yet powerful administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs – aka Obama’s “regulatory czar.” A long-time friend of the president, Sunstein’s law and academic career, which include stints at Harvard and University of Chicago, has focused largely on regulatory policy and behavioral economics. Sunstein, who has written extensively on such matters, has challenged workplace safety laws and even the constitutionality of the Clean Air Act.

False Profits

By Leslie Thatcher
TruthOut

Read the book for the argument, but the unequivocal conclusion is, “The regulators – first and foremost the Fed – had all the tools necessary to combat the bubble. They chose not to.”

False Profits: Recovering From the Bubble Economy
By Dean Baker
PoliPoint Press, 2010

He who feels punctured must once have been a bubble. ~Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 6th century BCE

Legitimacy of WTO Hangs by a Thread

By Michelle Pressend

I’m in Geneva, Switzerland and wrote this article on the eve of the 7th World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial meeting taking place from 27 November to 2 December 2009 at the WTO’s head quarters.

JC vs Capitalism: Foreclosures, Unemployment & Wall Street Bailouts

By Rady Ananda

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore looks at the Wall Street bailouts – which the vast majority of citizens rejected (and Congress passed anyway) – and concludes that capitalism is a sin.

“We now have the highest unemployment rate since 1983. There’s a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds. 14,000 people every day lose their health insurance,” he wrote in an email this morning. “Would Jesus be a capitalist? Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1% to have more financial wealth than the 95% under them combined?”

It’s Business as Usual Again for Wall Street’s Casino Capitalists

By DER SPIEGEL Staff

In this seven-part series, Spiegel closely examines the greed and corruption that led to the near collapse of the global finance system, and cautions that another wave of collapse threatens the world economy. Despite US efforts to hamper regulation of Wall Street, other nations are taking self-protective measures.

Neoliberalism Needs Death Squads in Colombia

By Hans Bennett

In her new book Blood & Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia, author Jasmin Hristov writes: “For roughly forty years, the Colombian state has been playing a double game: prohibiting the formation of paramilitary groups with one law and facilitating their existence with another; condemning their barbarities and at the same time assisting their operations; promising to bring perpetrators of crime to justice, while opening the door to perpetual immunity; convicting them of narco-trafficking, yet profiting from their drug deals; announcing to the world the government’s persecution of paramilitary organizations, even though in reality these ‘illegal armed groups’ have been carrying out the dirty work unseemly for a state that claims to be democratic and worthy of billions of dollars in US military aid.”