More than 5 years into the economic crisis created by Wall Street, recovery is a nothing but a meaningless word, mouthed by politicians. Yet just two years ago a bill was placed before the last Congress: the National Emergency Employment Defense Act (the NEED Act) Continue reading
Rolling Stone magazine has a picture of indicted Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the Aug 1, 2013, cover with a detailed feature piece “Jahar’s World” inside, written by Rolling Stone editor Janet Reitman. After reading many excellent articles on the financial machinations of the Wall Street banksters in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, I certainly expected more than the Rolling Stone and Ms Reitman delivered. Continue reading
Forbes Magazine lists Phil Mickelson as the world’s 7th highest paid athlete, with prize money earnings of $4.8 million and endorsements of $43 million for a very comfortable $47.8 million a year.[1] With his beaming smile, swashbuckling style of play, beautiful wife and children, $47.8 million a year; one could call them the All American Family. Continue reading
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” In Hamlet Shakespeare introduced us to the smell test. It would behoove us to apply the same test to the Boston Marathon Bombing. Continue reading
The International Court of Justice in 1996 unanimously interpreted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as, “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” Continue reading
An 83-year-old nun, Sister Megan Rice, and two other peace activists, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, received 20 year sentences for breaking into a Tennessee storage facility for depleted uranium weapons and splashing them with blood. Continue reading
The official storyline on the Boston Marathon bombing paints a picture of Tamerlan Tsarnaeva being “radicalized”. Continue reading
U.S. citizens accept freedom as a birthright, yet a capitalist economic system makes actual freedom an illusion as it fails us in four key areas. Continue reading
You have all been placed under pressure to provide your demands. I’ll admit when I heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement at its inception, I, too, was quite interested in what it was all about. I’ve seen laundry lists that contain jobs not cuts; tax the rich; people over profits; no more corruption; end the greed, etc. I’ve seen laundry lists that contain specific legislation to get behind; reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act (separating commercial and investment banks); do away with corporate personhood; end the Fed; end the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy; nationalize the big banks; and even my favorite, enact Rep. Kucinich’s NEED Act (National Emergency Economic Defense Act) that would take away the tremendous power to create money from the private banks, put it in the hands of a nationalized Federal Reserve, create fiat money with no debt to put people to work rebuilding our infrastructure and finance education and healthcare. Continue reading
Neoliberal globalization (free trade, free markets, no regulations, tax cuts for the wealthy and privatization of everything public), also more recently termed neoconservatism, is in essence a war on the poor and working class. Continue reading
U.S. capitalism and its twin apologists, the Republican and Democratic political parties, have much to celebrate with the anticipated fall of the Gaddafi government in Libya. Continue reading
Democrats and Republicans in Washington are emitting much sound and fury on the issue of federal debt and a balanced budget. What they won’t be telling us is that we could have it all: a balanced budget, no national debt, full employment, greatly reduced income taxes and expanded social programs. How this is even remotely possible will never be addressed by our two corporate political parties or the U.S. corporate stream media. Continue reading
Four days before President Obama made the unilateral decision for war with Libya, under the innocuous banner of a humanitarian NATO action to prevent civilian deaths, the African Union met in Ethiopia to discuss Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi’s proposal to unite the African continent with Arab states in a confederation called the United States of Africa. [1] Both our president and the lapdog U.S. press failed to inform the American people why this just might be of interest to them. Continue reading
U.S. elections for the Congress, Senate and presidency that require millions of dollars to be considered a serious candidate are undemocratic. To inform the public, U.S. elections require coverage in the mainstream corporate media. The corporate media refuses to cover candidates that do not support U.S. empire and capitalism. Thus, the public is uninformed of the great issues of the day and our system is undemocratic to the core. Continue reading
It’s impossible to make sense out of why we are at war in Libya through the lens of Republican/Democratic politics and outside the context of U.S. Empire. Continue reading
The current global economic cataclysm is not an anomaly. It is the 11th major financial disaster visited on the poor and working class by U.S. capitalism: Panic of 1785–1788, Panic of 1792, Panic of 1819–1822, Panic of 1837–1843, Panic of 1857–1861, Great Depression or Panic of 1873–1878, Panic of 1893–1897, Panic of 1907, Great Depression 1929–1941, Recession of the mid 1970s and now the Neoliberal Depression of 2008-? On average every 21 years U.S. capitalism provides the people with the gift of personal and financial disaster for many and severe hardship for many more. Continue reading
With 22 percent real unemployment, with millions foreclosed on and millions more to follow, with Republican union busting met tepidly by national Democrats and forcefully by workers and state Democratic representatives, with tax cuts in place for the wealthy and with our military occupations continuing largely out of the public’s consciousness in Iraq and Afghanistan; does it really matter how one solitary individual is treated when the entire array of state power is deployed against him? Continue reading
The U.S. working class has always been divided—along racial lines, against each succeeding wave of immigrants and now between the haves and the have-nots. Continue reading
Did anyone ever stop and think how protest movements could grow so vibrantly fast in Tunisia and Egypt? Not that there was nothing to protest, quite the contrary. But how did they organize and blossom under such repressive regimes? Continue reading
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Getting what we NEED!
Posted on March 28, 2014 by Nick Egnatz
What do we want? Continue reading →