I love the Occupy Movement’s “1% vs. 99%” frame. It speaks clearly and directly to the major problem holding back social progress in a wide range of areas: the control of obscene wealth and political and economic power by a tiny minority at the expense of everyone else.
The truth is, though, that there’s little chance that the “99%” is going to be united anytime soon to stop that “1%” from the society-suicidal path they’ve got us on. However, it is possible that a big chunk of it, a majority or even 2/3rds or more, could come together in some way in the not too far off future. This can happen if we in the Occupy...
The tidal wave of home foreclosures is still rolling across the United States, devastating families and entire communities. By most reports, there are over a half-million homes sitting vacant, and more on the way.
A blog site that could only have been written by an Obama administration flack laments this “bleak” situation, but gives America the “good news” of the future.
“The Obama administration and independent federal regulators are formulating plans to sell government-controlled foreclosed properties to investors who would bring them onto the rental market. The aim is to reduce the number of vacant homes which...
On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed me on KPFK’s program, “Building a Powerful Movement in the United States” in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in. Listen to the interview. To clarify my points I have edited and expanded my answers from the interview transcript.
Alan Minsky: I am joined now by Michael Hudson. He is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and also is president of the Institute for the Study of Long...
It seems that Leon Panetta's plan to "save" money by making the F-35 more expensive (by delaying and stretching out production) didn't exactly impress Chuck Spinney, who has written about the problems in America's combat aviation for years and years. He's seen it all before, and he has written so instructively about it that if you don't know Spinney's findings you don't know much about the problem. Chuck has written a new piece at Time's Battleland blog summarizing the problems that are deep in the F-35's genes. It makes for quick but informative reading, and he provides links to more for those who want t probe...
Well, he had to get up there and say something. In this particular winter of our discontent, the wispiest nostrums and baldest lies will do. America is not interested in reality. America is a nine-hundred pound man imprisoned in a fetid trailer bedroom begging for one more case of Little Debbie Cocoa Cremes before the front-end-loader bashes through the wall to haul him to intensive care. America just wants to hear another story about its own wonderfulness before that happens. America's soul is so lost that it has disappeared into the same cosmic wilderness that MF Global's client accounts were last seen...
The recent strikes protesting the government’s abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier President Jonathan had promised the major trade union organizations that he would conduct a gradual four-stage lifting of the subsidy to ease the economic burden. Instead, without warning he announced an immediate full removal of subsidies effective January 1, 2012. It was “shock therapy” to put it mildly.
Nigeria today is one of the world’s most important producers of light, sweet...
In the more than two centuries since the beginning of radical transformation of economic life that accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism, one of the most interesting trends has been the changing nature of the forms through which people have engaged in economic activities. Before the industrial revolution, an artisanal mode of production predominated, with many small work-shops producing the goods required by the largely agrarian economy. At first glance, such the existence of many small firms would suggest a highly competitive economy; however this was not the case. Rather, the high cost of transporting...
Ethan Allen, the unpredictable frontier rebel who rallied resistance during the revolution era, has exerted a powerful influence over Vermont’s image as a refuge for rugged individualists and defiant outsiders. Both the true and mythical aspects of his story have helped ingrain an affinity with rebels and independent thinkers.
Nevertheless, the political values that have more consistently influenced the state are accountability, local control and autonomy. Frequently crossing party lines, they have persisted from the time in which Vermont was known as reliably Republican, a place where not even FDR...
Over and over again in the Middle East, we see the same pattern repeating itself: An oil-rich country takes control of its own oil fields and cuts out the Western oil companies. What follows as the night the day, the western countries overthrow the offending government and reinstall their favorite oil companies. This has happened in both Iran and Iraq.
Right now, the U.S. is threatening Iran with war on grounds that it is making a nuclear weapons. To begin with, Iran is a peaceful country. It hasn’t started a war in hundreds of years. It only fought when Iraq invaded it in 1980. In that war...
We hover like vultures, waiting for the wounded beast to die: The murderous, torturing, depraved beast that the US has become, or always was. To the beast, it’s just a facet of nature, the predator feeding on prey. It’s not an ethical issue, the strong kill the weak in nature all the time. It’s an evolutionary strategy, that feeds the empire for a while and keeps it strong, until the inevitable corruption and decline.
The suffering of millions of victims is irrelevant to its subjects, insulated by distance, propaganda, and narcissism. But, what feeds on the death of others will...
After months of wrestling with the County Building Department about permits and codes, excruciating financial gymnastics and down and dirty back-breaking spadework, we finally got our solar installation up. It’s a massive 3 kw (stc) photovoltaic pole mount.
We feel like we created the best of two worlds, too, since we live way back in the woods while, at the same time, are generating a lot of electricity. We inscribed a Sun Mantra, OM Suryaya Namaha, around the base of the installation, honoring the Sun as the principal of light, life and love. In Vedic Philosophy, the Sun...
The Wall Street Journal reported on January 19 that the Obama administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the "robo-signing" scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation is revealing that it did not just happen occasionally, but was an industry-wide practice,...
This is such a great debate on the floor of the Scottish Parliment. Can you imagine this kind of debate happening in United States???
As-it-happened: First Minister's Questions on Thursday, 26 January
Here is some additional material on Scotland's bid for independence:
Twelve unresolved questions on Scottish independence
"5) How much debt would Scotland take on?
There's...
It was typical Obama, taking credit for what should be condemned. He's a fraud, a crime boss, a war criminal multiple times over, a moral coward, and serial liar. His State of the Union address was beginning-to-end doublespeak, duplicity, coverup, and denial of failed policies complicit with Wall Street crooks, war profiteers, and other corporate favorites while popular needs go begging.
Not according to fawning New York Times writers, however. Suppressing truth and full disclosure, Helene Cooper headlined "Obama Speech Makes Pitch for Economic Fairness" saying Obama:
"pledged on...
In response to Obama's duplicitous and delusional state of the disUnion speech, and the ongoing criminal conspiracy that comprises our national government, as defined by the Nuremburg Principles, I offer the readers a copy of my recent letter to the IRS regarding my tax refusal for 2006 and 2007. Substitute Obama for Bush in the letter below and there is no difference. Sheeple, if you are nauseated by your choices this year and by your government you will have to starve the beast. As former Reagan Secretary of State Alexander Haig said, "Let them protest all they want, as long as they pay their...
I was doing some digging and I found a short essay I posted on facebook in early August of 2011. I thought Vermont Commons might find it relevant. I was responding to an article that suggested that the youth of America have been successfully pacified. I disagreed. I don't mean to brag, or suggest prophecy, but "occupy" started three weeks later.
Here's the article I was responding to:
A storm is coming. I’m in for 2012, as part of the Vermont Thirty, taking back our Legislature from corporate control.
You may find my positions here, the evolving platform that earned my status as a Liberty Candidate for 2012. The platform may be summed up in the words of Sitting Bull, Chief of the Lakotah Nation: Let us put our minds together, and see what kind of life we can make for our children.
In 2012, I’m going to be a grandpa. Folks, it takes...
For more information please contact The SAGE Alliance sagealliance.net
Defying the will of Vermonters, Entergy Nuclear has successfully won the first stage of its trial to allow it to break its word and to usurp the rights of the Vermont legislature. Judge J. Garvin Murtha effectively delivered a slap in the face to the people of Vermont by saying that [contrary to prior Supreme Court judgements] the legislature has no right to regulate the operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor. The Public Service Board is now the only state entity that has the power to decide VY's future. The judge...
How do we FREE VERMONT from this madness? Where is rule of law?
Insight: Top Justice officials connected to mortgage banks by Scot J. Paltrow
(Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who's Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a...