Shades of the 2008 Hank Paulson, three-page ransom note to the Treasury for a $700 billion bailout for banks or the world economy would collapse. This time the LaRouche Political Action Committee reports that “Capitol Hill sources confirmed that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are demanding that Congress prepare emergency legislation for yet another hyperinflationary bailout of the hopelessly bankrupt trans-Atlantic financial system.” Continue reading →
Who else but Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders would have the courage to blow the whistle on the $4 trillion Fed scam involving near zero-interest Federal Reserve loans and other financial assistance that went to banks and businesses of at least 18 current and former Federal Reserve regional bank directors in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, all documented in the Government Accountability Office records? Continue reading →
The Egyptian version of the “Arab Spring” ended, not blooming in a democracy fought for by the young revolutionaries of Tahrir Square, but frozen in the cold hard hands of fundamentalism and the military. It was not the sight for sore eyes expected after last weekend’s runoff election for president. Continue reading →
The Operation Fast and Furious scandal, as reported by the Washington Post, contains two scandals in one, with the latter being far more egregious. First, the Republicans, most notoriously in the form of Representative Darrel Issa from California, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is holding Attorney General Eric Holder’s feet to the fire, blowing whistles and triggering sirens, for more documents in the Fast and Furious scandal. Continue reading →
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s misguided administration is offering a plan to permit the deadly drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” in portions of several struggling New York counties along the Pennsylvania border, providing these communities express “support for the technology.” That support for technology generally comes from the generous buy-offs by natural gas companies for the land of near-bankrupt farmers or townships. It’s misery’s profit. Continue reading →
As a boy I went to Public School 18 on Leonard Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which was just across the street from St. Mary’s Church and elementary school. It was convenient, my mother said as my father worked on dinner, to just cross the street on Wednesdays for religious instructions in preparation for my First Holy Communion and several years later, Confirmation, that is, being inducted into the Army of God. Continue reading →
If you ever had any doubt that the millionaires and billionaires pull the strings in this country’s puppet elections, get over it. As the New York Times reported, Walker Survives Wisconsin Recall Vote, “Gov. Scott Walker, whose decision to cut collective bargaining rights for most public workers set off a firestorm in a state usually known for its political civility, easily held on to his job on Tuesday, becoming the first governor in the country to survive a recall election and dealing a painful blow to Democrats and labor unions. Continue reading →
Chris Hedges is not only a brilliant journalist, but a former correspondent for the New York Times and part of a team of reporters awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. The author of a number of books, including Death of the Liberal Class and The World as it is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress, and now, he is most notably the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the most odious Section 1021 that allows the U.S. government to indefinitely hold U.S. citizens, strip them of due process, and detain them in military facilities, including our offshore Gitmo. Continue reading →
Dear Mr. CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Jamie Dimon: There you are sitting with egg on your face and $2 billion plus going deep into the red on bad bets. You, the guy who fought for less and not more regulation is now in the middle of a major mess. You, the guy who hates the Volker rule named after ex-Fed Chief, Paul Volker, and says it went too far and that “if you want to be trading, you have to have a lawyer and a psychiatrist sitting next to you determining what ‘was your intent’ every time you did something.” That was some expensive exaggeration, wouldn’t you say? Continue reading →
According to an April 15 article in the European Union Times, a new report circulating in the Kremlin, “prepared by the Foreign Ministry on the planned re-opening of talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Islands during the next fortnight” states that Russian diplomats were ‘stunned’ after being told by their Japanese counterparts that upwards of 40 million of their peoples were in ‘extreme danger’ of life threatening radiation poisoning and could very well likely be faced with forced evacuations away from their countries eastern most located cities . . . including the world’s largest one, Tokyo.” Continue reading →
Mitt Romney started running Bain Capital in 1984, earning a reputation as a bright star of private investment. A prospectus by Deutsche Bank would write that by the time he left in 1999, that Bain had averaged a glowing 88 percent annual return on investment. Romney would use that success to burnish his political career. But the dark side of that success was not forgotten by the legion of broken companies, fired employees, duped corporate buyers, unions and investors of his wares. He served one man only: himself. Continue reading →
First, there were ACTA, then PIPA, then SOPA, now there’s CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act, the worst of all. Continue reading →
As the Supreme Court laced up its gloves to get in the ring with Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), demonstrators in D.C. are petitioning the Court outside for it to be or not to be. It always seemed strange to me that ACA was intended for 30 million people without health insurance though you had to pay for it either through your employer or an IRS tax on income. Why couldn’t Obama and Congress have opened up Medicare as a single-payer insurance plan for working people and Medicaid for the poor? Continue reading →
Shopping for Father’s Day
Posted on June 15, 2012 by Jerry Mazza
Here I was in the shoe department of the largest department store in the U.S. There to meet my wife at noon. She knows I love to wear Merrills and said that if we met there, she’d treat me to new pair with her discount card for Father’s Day. Of course, I got there early to scope out the scene. A hearty Australian man and his hearty wife were buying everything in sight. Ditto a German couple. The young blond wife look liked a trick from Midnight Express in dusky pantyhose, short shorts and black boots, and her husband looked like a Luftwaffe lieutenant, buying as if the EU was making a major comeback. Nein! Continue reading →