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Consumers rejoice. Floyd Norris has just penned a piece for the New York Times titled: “Rich and Poor Should Pay Same Price.”Mr. Norris said, it seems “absurd to have a system that requires people who do not use credit to subsidize those who do. You know there is something wrong when a middle-class person can…
Just when many conditions seemed ripe for a progressive political movement, the likelihood is fading fast. Concentrated corporate power over our political economy and its control over peoples lives knows few boundaries. As Republican investor advocate leader Robert Monks puts it: “The United States is a corporatist state. This means that individuals are largely excluded…
At a little noticed meeting with Senate Democrats, Warren Buffett, the famous investors’ guru, told the lawmakers that rich people are not paying enough taxes. A tax increase for the very wealthy? Many of the Senators backed away from that recommendation, even though it came from the world’s second richest man. That is just one…
The Wall Street gang is at it again! It’s been one year since Wall Street’s collapse and bailout took trillions from taxpayers and the sinking economy. The speculative instruments that pulled down the economy were those super-risky sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps, collaterized debt obligations—you know—Las Vegas East, using other peoples’ savings. As if to…
Ever wonder what’s happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don’t wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk. Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years…
After several weeks of protests at Senate hearings and health care events by single payer advocates (visit FactCheck.org reports that “a notorious analysis of the House health care bill contains 48 claims. Twenty-six of them are false, and the rest are mostly misleading. Only four are true. For example, false are claims that the bill…
Among Senator Ted Kennedy’s many accomplishments in the U.S. Senate was a little-heralded but critical boost he gave to the Freedom of Information legislation in 1974. At a time when the opposition to this key bill was in need of a countervailing champion, we visited Senator Kennedy, had a very substantive meeting and secured his…
The Obama White House—full of supposedly smart political advisors led by the President of the “Change You Can Believe In” campaign movement of 2008—is in disarray. Worse, multiple, confusing varieties of disarray provoking public confusion, internal Democratic Party strife, and the slow withdrawal of belief in Mr. Obama by his strongest supporters around the country.…
Never much of a fighter against abusive corporate power, Barack Obama is making it increasingly clear that right from his start as President, he wanted health insurance reform that received the approval of the giant drug and health insurance industries. Earlier this year he started inviting top bosses of these companies for intimate confabs in…
Companies that specialize in stock market forecasting and trading—such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase—pay very high salaries to their employee-vendors. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just released data showing that these and other large banks are giving each of their 5000 trader-forecasters bonuses of at least one million dollars. In…