Make the essentials public

Lets globalize banks, airlines, car companies, the energy producers (oil, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric), food producers and the media. Yes, globalize - the same idea as nationalize but on a global level. The for-profit-above-all model is inhumane, has been forever and if it doesn't bury itself we'll have to.

Even while the world they created, profited from and now destroyed is falling to pieces, the free market ideologues, including American Republicans, still argue in favor of unfettered capitalism.

We should allow all companies that product non-essentials to remain private. Everything else, globalize it!

Cheney in wheelchair for inauguration

The dinosaurs will be leaving Washington D.C. today and the most backwards and dangerous of them will be straining his neck from the seat of a wheelchair as he watches Obama place his hand on the bible. Mr. Dick Cheney injured his back moving boxes as he prepared for his trip out of Washington, D.C. Can this inauguration get any better? Out with the old and in with the new.

Privatization gone wild

The United States government has been privatized. It is now a corporation, formed to conduct business. The takeover is complete.

Since Ronald Reagan, every single administration, with the help of congress, has chipped away at the institutions of government, in essence redefining the role of government. For over thirty years, both conservative and middle of the road politicians have pushed the concept that "big" government is bad, bureaucratic, a waste of money. It is an ideology driven by the radical "free market rules all" camp à la Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan.

We have witnessed the most radical culmination of this ideology under the Bush II era. Government hollowed out to the point that it can't fight its own wars, it has to use a privatized fighting force instead. Government gutted to the point that it can't respond effectively to natural disasters. Government so weak that it can't regulate important industries like banks. Government which no longer can govern.

In the past a revolving door existed between the private and public sector. In recent years, that door has been blown to pieces. Now there is a gaping hole. It is virtually impossible to differentiate between corporate executives, politicians and lobbyists. Hank Paulson? Dick Cheney? Rahm Emanuel? Erik Holder? Donald Rumsfeld? Who are they working for?

We are all now suffering the consequences of this dangerous merger of private and public. Former corporate executives run the government and former politicians run the corporations.

See here just one example of what happens when there is no one around to keep watch.

Throw a shoe at Bush

George W. Bush, a bad President. We all know how unintelligent the man is, but in the end, and at risk of insulting our President, he has a great deal of blood on his hands......and for what? Now you can throw a shoe at Bush. Good luck though, he's sneaky.

I love people who say that even though you disagree with Bush that this shoe thrower committed a great offense and this his actions were disrespectful. Are you kidding me? After all W. has done, why should anyone respect him?

GE loves war in Iraq

Now it's clear why at least one American media organization swallowed Bush's justification for war and helped sell the concept to the American people. General Electric, the mammoth company which pretty much makes and sells everything, including NBC Universal, has just won the largest single order in the company's storied history. Any guesses where? It has to do with a country in the Middle East.

You got it.....IRAQ! GE won an order to provide $3 billion in electricity-generating equipment and services to our new friends. Yes! Now that is imagination at work.

Pay close attention: This is how a good company makes tons of money.

Using your own network, NBC, you support an illegal war based on lies. Then you cover the run up to the war like a NFL pre-game show and the war itself like the game. Meanwhile, your GE Aviation department sells military engines for the F-16, the Apache and a number of other war making machines which will help America fight the war, kill innocents and completely destroy the infrastructure of the country.

Stay with me, this is when it gets good. Now that you've duped the American public into a war, supplied the military with their war machinery and destroyed the country, now it's time to go in and fix it. And that's where the big bucks come in. In this case, $3 billion.

Some would argue that there's no correlation between NBC's news coverage and its parent company's other business areas. Yeah right.

I can't say it better than Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. "The corporate media is an extreme media beating the drums of war," she says. "They offer us a monolithic view through a corporate lense. We need a media that covers power, not covers up for power."

Blagojevich arrested, went after Bank of America

Before the Governor of Illinois was arrested for corruption, he ordered state agencies to stop doing business with Bank of America because the bank closed All Republic Windows & Doors' line of credit. The bank's decision forced the company to close their doors and led to the layoff of 250 people, most whom have locked themselves in the factory in protest.

Now that the story has received national attention, Bank of America said Tuesday it would extend some credit to the company. For the first time in a long time we are seeing some in government stand up to their main masters - the multinational corporations.

This corporate backlash has been coming for a long time, and it is because everyday people have been demanding it. And wouldn't you know, it works.

It works. It works. It works. It works. That can't be said enough.

Do you think the Bank of America would have reconsidered extending credit to All Republic Windows & Doors if the employees, with the support of their union, weren't so brave in taking over the factory? Of course not.

In my view, the only way to save the country is to ratchet up the criticism and critique of the private sector, to stay on their case and to continue to take these types of actions. If banks, or any other corporations, which by the way are only allowed to exist because we let them, attempt to harm us, we can successfully force them to change, or else.

It works. This is the dirty secret that the powers don't care to share.

Government stakes in automakers?

This is great. America is turning into the new Sweden.

I've lived in Sweden for three years. In that time the government has sold a number of state-owned companies, including Vin & Sprit, the maker of Absolute Vodka. The argument by the "free market rules all" camp was that government should have no stake in large companies because they were inefficient at running them and a waste of tax payer money.

This privatization frenzy has been taking place for a number of years in many countries. It is surely one of America's greatest legacies.

But privatization is so 2007. The opposite is happening in America today. First banks, now maybe automakers. I'm starting to like this new American socialism. Maybe it's time to move home.

Nah, not yet. I think I'll wait until Ronald McDonald becomes a federal employee.

Workers occupy factory in Chicago

The 8-hour workday, child labor laws, the right to collective bargaining and the middle class. Generations of American workers have fought and died for these rights. And for generations, America's ruling elite and the government have been fighting just as hard to protect profits and to keep workers unorganized and fearful of losing their jobs.

Now, after endless years of government shoving their "free market rules all" ideology up our you-know-whats, the discrepancies are becoming clearer and clearer. Bailouts for banks while
homeless tent cities sprout up. Could it be any clearer?

Well, some are fighting back. 250 angry laid-off workers in Chicago peacefully occupied their factory on Saturday after receiving three day's notice that it was closing.

Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743 said: "Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame. If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country."

I love this story. This is America's story. For as much as government and big business try, the American people will always be pushing back.

That push back (strikes, occupying buildings, the fight for a living minimum wage) is a necessity against this radical philosophy that both Democrats and Republicans have been selling us for years. The philosophy: It is a constant search by big business for cheaper labor and increasing profit margins which has had the affect of destroying America's manufacturing base and replacing it with TGI Friday's and WalMart. It has kept the minimum wage at near-poverty levels while executive salaries have exploded. It has placed all more responsibility, blame and risk on the worker while protecting the corporations, whether they make good decisions or bad.

We can no longer trust the mainstream American media to tell our story because they adhere to the same philosophy. CNN (the better of the networks?) was recently ordered by a judge to rehire 110 workers who were fired because they were union members.

The only thing we can do is live and write our own stories and tell them ourselves. That's what these workers in Chicago are doing today. They are my heroes of the week.

"I am through with giving this crowd money to play with."

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said that on Thursday when referring to whether or not congress would give Henry Paulson the second half of the $700 billion in bailout money. Isn't that a classic line?

He's admitting that, once again, congress screwed up. It's clear to no one what the first $350 billion did besides teaching banks that they can take on as much risk as they want and not worry about the consequences because government will bail them out if they get into trouble.

But that's OK. It's only $350 billion. We couldn't use that money for anything else, could we?

What's striking in all of this is how bad congress is. On probably the two most important issues of the past eight years, these people, Democrat and Republican, gave Bush the power to go into Iraq and the power to bailout the banking system.

Both plans didn't work. In fact they have hurt the average citizen and helped three of the biggest industries in the world: Defense, Oil and Financial.

Ah, congress doing what it always has in our country's great history. Should we expect anything else? Nope. The only thing we can do is fight to change it because they won't.

Obama embraces Green Path

Obama stuck with Bush's man at the Pentagon and has surrounded himself with many hawkish Democrats, so it's not surprising that progressives are wondering if he fooled them into thinking he was on their side. My sense is that Obama does lean slightly left of center, but does it matter? I think he'll be hard to define and that's what scares both sides. It does seem however that the capitalists are pretty comfortable with him.

I must say though, after eight years of attacks on environmental regulation and global warming denial, isn't it a breath of fresh air to read about Obama's plans to create green collar jobs and launch environmentally friendly projects?

Why is India being attacked?

If you watched or read the mainstream media's coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India then, like me, you may be confused. I had a ton of questions and no answers. Why these targets in Mumbai? Who could be behind the attacks? Who benefits from the attacks and what would the motivation be? After all, many of the spots targeted were luxurious Indian hotels, but also a Jewish center and a train station.

The first analysis we hear is based on religion. Islamic extremists were probably behind the attacks in Mumbai we're told. This may well be true. But is it ever only about religion? I instantly thought about the extreme poverty in India despite the country's booming economy and how that could lead to unrest.

I know virtually nothing about the situation there so I started to do some research and talked to a friend who lived in India for a number of years. I found out that in many ways the Muslim population has been left behind despite the economic boom India has been experiencing. This doesn't give motive for the attacks, but could help more extreme elements of the society with recruitment efforts. Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and Mumbai native, spoke with Newsweek.com and shed some light on what is happening in India.

Five Thanksgiving facts

Holed away in my office in Sweden, feeling far away from home - turkey, cranberry sauce and beer - I started to think about turkey.

The list:

1. Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in the middle of the Civil War. The year - 1863.
2. It's unlikely turkey was eaten at the first Thanksgiving in 1621, but supposedly there was lots of venison. It was given to the Pilgrims as a gift from the Wampanoang king.
3. They also didn't eat pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving.
4. 78% of business and government workers were given paid holidays in 2007 both on Thanksgiving and the day after.
5. Remember Squanto? Did you ever wonder how he spoke English? Well, he had learned English as a slave in Europe.

Sources: CNN and Wikipedia

Government bailouts are all the rage

Here we are again. I'm afraid it won't be the last time. The U.S. government has guaranteed $306 billion worth of Citgroup's troubled mortgages and toxic assets and injected another $20 billion into the fast falling bank. That's in addition to the $25 billion it threw in last month, all of which consequently, has disappeared.

Once again we are told that the bank is "too big to fail" and that it "had to be done" and that it will "restore market confidence". So far this philosophy hasn't worked.

I'm no banker but if you gave the money directly to homeowners and helped them pay their mortgages wouldn't the "toxic asset" then become healthy? Wouldn't the banks then in turn also become healthier? Tell me if I'm wrong. Like I said, I'm no banker.

Behind each troubled mortgage or toxic asset there are thousands of families with no homes or in danger of losing their homes. Yes, they shouldn't have taken loans they couldn't afford and the banks and mortgage lenders shouldn't have lent them the money. Both parties are to blame, but only one party - the banks- are being forgiven, and bailed out. It's backwards.

Both Democrats and Republicans, with the support of corporate America, are drowning us with the "banks can't fail" mantra. We are continuously warned of the dire consequences we would face if this was allowed to happen. Meanwhile people and families are being allowed to fail all over the country. The truth we are aware of but don’t want to talk about and very rarely see shoved so blatantly in our face is that the government prefers corporations over people. And remember corporations aren't actually living, sentient beings. They are a creation.

I think if polled, the American people would say that people are more important than corporations. Am I even allowed to write that? Our government has it all screwed up. Corporations should be allowed to fail, especially when they have made horrible decisions, but people should be saved.

Maybe the global behemoth banks have enjoyed their heyday. It's time to get back to the basics. People over profit.

Class issues never went away

Renowned historian Howard Zinn, writing about the growth of the labor movement and the rise of class consciousness in America before, during and after the Civil War, argues that the two main political parties leveraged the issues of war and reconstruction - national issues - to quell the class conflict expoding during that period.

He writes: “On these issues the political parties took positions, offered choices, obscured the fact that the political system itself and wealthy classes it represented were responsible for the problems they now offered to solve.”

We can apply this quote to the current crisis America is facing - the credit crisis or financial turmoil or deep recession or worst recession since the Great Depression (call it what you will).

The Democrats and the Republicans took positions and offered choices on how best to deal with the economic crisis facing America and then acted as if they, and the wealthy classes they represent, were not the ones who caused it.

Everyone knows both parties are in the pockets of big money and that lobbyists with the most bling bling are the ones with the most bills bills. Democrats are trying to claim the high ground, like they have nothing to do with the way America looks today. Sure George W. Bush ran the country into the ground for eight years, but we also had major problems under Clinton.

A country with such wealth and such incredible poverty, and both are completely out of control. Ford Motor Co. recorded a $12.7 billion net loss in 2006 and gave its new CEO at the time $28 million for four months on the job. This is a guy who, together with the other "big three" CEOs from the auto industry, flew into Washington D.C. this week on a private jet to ask congress for a $25 billion bailout. Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York said at the hearing, "It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high hat and tuxedo. It kind of makes you a little bit suspicious."

While we're on the issues of soup kitchens, new government figures showed that nearly 700,000 people went hungry last year in America.

As much as the political parties, the wealthy they represent and the mainstream media want to avoid it, this has everything to do with issues of class. We need to call the problem what it is if we really hope to solve it.

So what do you do when the two political parties offer solutions and choices on how best to fix the problem while obscuring the fact that they, and the wealthy they represent, are responsible for it? Let me know what you think.

How is Obama's AG pick linked to death squads?

Man, the Obama bubble has been bursting and bursting. Sad. The center and right are happy that he's bringing up the same old names while the left is broken hearted. Now news comes out that Obama's pick for Attorney General, Eric Holder, represented Chiquita Brands, which recently settled with the US government for paying right wing terrorists and death squads in Columbia, among other human rights violations. Sad, sad, sad.

Michael Moore nails auto industry

Larry King had Michael Moore on his show last night. He tore up the auto industry and brought it home like only he can do. He said president-elect Obama should give the "big three" the money they need so they can use it to save jobs. Then he said we should completely replace the management and take control of the companies like Roosevelt did in WWII.

Moore said the government should use the big three to build mass transit and cars which use little or no gasoline. The justification for the takeover, he says, poor management, the fact that they made horrible cars for years and that we are facing an economic crisis.

Watch it.

Bailout illegal

According to the Washington Post, it seems while all eyes were on the bailout late September, the Treasury Department sneaked through a significant change to two decades of corporate tax policy that corporate tax lawyers now say will give American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion. The banks had been lobbying for this change for years.

Also analyzing the equity deals the Treasury negotiated with the banks, Naomi Klein is calling this "a trillion-dollar crime scene". Her article is a must read. And her book, The Shock Doctrine, outlines this disaster capitalism model. I think this book is a breakthrough in the analysis of how the neo-liberal, "free trade rules all" ideology has developed and how we can break it.

This is insane, the administration is robbing the federal treasury on its way out of the capital and the Democrats are afraid to anger the market. The free marketeers are holding us hostage.

I think when the Republicans realized that they couldn't privatize social security they figured out another ingenious plan - privatize the Treasury, and who better to do that than former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson.

Clinton to accept Obama's offer

The Guardian is reporting that Hillary Clinton will accept President-elect Barack Obama's offer to be secretary of state. It's pretty obvious to me that some sort of deal was made before the election, but that doesn't matter anymore. If this is true, and Hillary Clinton becomes secretary of state, I think it says more about Obama than it does about her.

Again and again, he surrounds himself with talent, people with whom he may disagree, rather than those who will yes him to death. He also doesn't seem to hold grudges, as he showed this week when he met with McCain. His approach so far is a breath of fresh air and it may be the sign of a remarkable leader.

I think she'll do a pretty decent job, but I don't feel too strongly about it either way. What do you think?

Child Hunger in US rose 50 percent in 2007

Now I'm really insisting that the top execs at Goldman Sachs, and all the rest of the banks, give back their bonuses. The same year bonuses all over Wall Street ballooned to unprecedented levels, 36.2 million adults and children struggled with hunger in the United States. And you're telling me we shouldn't be spreading the wealth?

I'd take what some would call socialism....(I call it fairness)....any day of the week over the current "free market rules all" version of democracy.

Read the whole article

No bonuses for Goldman Sachs?

At the end of 2006 Goldman Sachs awarded employees with over $16 billion in bonuses - an average of over $600,000 buckaroos per employee. 2007 was even better. That year Goldman employees shared nearly $19 billion in bonuses. Many of the bonuses were performance-based.

This year however, according to the New York Times, the top seven executives at Goldman won't receive bonuses. Goldman's spokesman reportedly said "they believe it's the right thing to do." Oh, how generous, how compassionate. How will they be able to put any food on the table this Christmas?

CEO Lloyd C. Blankefein raked in a salary and bonus worth over $68 million in 2007. The two co-presidents each earned around $67 million. The right thing to do is to give your bonuses back for the past three years. Use it to save your company and your job, instead of allowing the Bush administration to threaten disaster if taxpayers don't step in and save you.

Goldman Sachs recently received a $10 billion gift as part of the federal government's $700 bailout package.

So, let's see. Some simple math, hmm... take only 2006 and 2007, Goldman employees received over $35 billion in bonuses. I wonder if it's possible to use that much money in less than two years. There must be some money still lying around in safes, off-shore accounts and duffle bags hidden in storage. Surely, if Goldman's top executives scraped their cash together they could come up with some spare change. $10 billion sounds reasonable.

Hey, wait, I can't believe it. I just figured it out. They should bail themselves out. If you're homeless, on welfare, poor, unemployed, well, "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." What if you're a millionaire?