In the Public Interest

If there is one person in the world most suited to govern the turbulent land of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani would be, by knowledge, temperament and sense of democratic justice, that person. Lo and behold, he was just elected president of Afghanistan! Ashraf Ghani is a former professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, as well…

The drums of war are beating once again with the vanguard of U.S. bombers already over Iraq (and soon Syria) to, in President Obama’s words, “degrade and destroy ISIS.” The Republican Party, led by war-at-any-cost Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain, wants a bigger military buildup which can only mean U.S. soldiers on the ground.…

It is remarkable what very profitable drug companies—as they merge into fewer giant multinationals—continue to get away with by way of crony capitalism. Despite frequent exposure of misdeeds, the army of drug company lobbyists in Washington continues to gain political influence and rake in corporate welfare at the expense of taxpayers. The drug industry goes…

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) – the corporate lobbyist in Washington, D.C. for the disintegrating atomic power industry – doesn’t have to worry about repercussions from the negative impacts of nuclear power. For nuclear power is a government/taxpayer-guaranteed boondoggle whose staggering costs, incurred and deferred, are absorbed by American taxpayers via a supine government regulatory…

Over twenty years ago, Pat Palmer, in her own words, “stumbled upon a $400 overcharge in a bill my father received for a routine medical procedure.” That might have become the costliest “overcharge” the gouging, overbilling health care industry ever inflicted on itself. Because it led Ms. Palmer, whom Steve Brill (author of the Time…

“Hillary works for Goldman Sachs and likes war, otherwise I like Hillary,” a former Bill Clinton aide told me sardonically. First, he was referring to her cushy relationships with top Wall Street barons and her $200,000 speeches with the criminal enterprise known as Goldman Sachs, which played a part in crashing the U.S. economy in…

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the minority leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, just had her political consultants send out a mass mailing to women asking for money and responses to an enclosed survey of their opinions. The mass mailing duly recites the truly horrible House Republican votes against a variety of women’s…

Dear President Obama: Abraham Lincoln once said that “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.” Presumably, he meant Presidential action on popular issues can and should overcome influential interests. At long last, the “public sentiment” seems to be aligning with some causes you are advancing. First, support is increasing for restoring…

Most candidates run for the presidency, Governor Jerry Brown of California, however, is standing for President in 2016. Already having run unsuccessfully for President in three primaries – 1976 and 1980 when Jimmy Carter won and in 1992 when Bill Clinton won – the always interesting Brown has no intention of slogging it through the…

Large corporate capitalism is a breed apart from smaller scale capitalism. The former can often avoid marketplace verdicts through corporate welfare, strip owner-shareholders of power over the top company bosses and offload the cost of their pollution, tax escapes and other “externalities” onto the backs of innocent people. Always evolving to evade the theoretically touted…