The Peasants Need Pitchforks CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CITIZEN TOOLS, CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS Comments Off Apr 062011 By Robert Scheer | From Truthdig | April 6, 2011 The unsinkable Larry Summers, a key player in the plutocratic mafia that runs America. A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still f*cking peasants as far as I can see.” The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the super wealthy controls 40-percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1-percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income — an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.” Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Inequality: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS Comments Off Apr 062011 Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret. By Joseph E. Stiglitz• May 2011 THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.” Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
EarthTalk: Dirty water kills 24,000 infants every day. That’s one child every 3.5 seconds. ANNOTATED NEWS, ASSHOLES, BASTARDS & CRIMINALS 1 Response » Apr 062011 EarthTalk® E – The Environmental Magazine Credit: water.org, courtesy Flickr Editor’s Note: While our leaders (pseudo leaders, in reality) continue to mouth florid rhetoric about our immense goodness and generosity, and our obligation to help throughout the world—the latest case of such boundless generosity being Libya—problems like those outlined in this piece continue unabated. Every year trillions are wasted on imperialist wars or stolen outright by the various plutocratic mafias who fester around the planet, and whose fortress remains the United States, but perfectly preventable scourges like lack of clean drinking water and sanitation go begging. As well, do note that just as class relations obtain within a nation, with the rich ignoring the plight of the poor for the most part, so it goes with the relations between nations, poor and rich. This vote on the right of human beings to clean water—whereby the US, as usual chose to abstain after doing everything in its power to defeat the measure—is telling in what it says about our scandalous degree of corrupt leadership. (Such obscene stances at the UN are not new.) Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
TOO MUCH: The American Inequality Monitor CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS Comments Off Apr 062011 Donatella Versace, fashion icon for the super rich everywhere. Decadence written all over her face, too. ONCE AGAIN we bring our readers the excellent TOO MUCH column, focusing on the excesses of the corporate class, and the growing abyss of inequality in America. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
You Thought the Koch Brothers Were Bad? ALERTS, ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS Comments Off Apr 062011 Turns Out They’re Even Worse Than You Thought By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet | Posted on 6, 2011 The concerted attacks by the world's plutocracy on working people's rights and economic security is a global project, and the Kochs are in the lead. Here, Swiss workers demonstrate. YOU KNEW THEY WERE BIG. You knew they were evil. From the union-busting actions of their minions in Wisconsin and Ohio to their war on health-care reform, to their assault on the environment and their attacks on the science of climatology, Charles and David Koch have earned their place as the focus of progressives’ scrutiny in the age of the Tea Party — the destructive and regressive movement they bankroll. But a new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows that, as bad as you thought the Kochs were, they’re actually worse. And their reach into virtually every aspect of political, economic and physical life on the planet is probably greater than you thought possible. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
ARCHIVES: Solidarity Divided—A Welcome Return to Class Politics BOOK NOTES, CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM, CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS Comments Off Apr 062011 By Susan Rosenthal, M.D. | Reposted 2011-04-06 With select original commentary WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A UNION? How should unions respond to the oppression of Blacks, women, immigrants and gays? How should unions relate to the rest of the working class, the employer, and the State? Should existing unions be reformed, or is more fundamental change required? In Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice ¹ Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin insist that we need new answers to these questions if we hope to reverse “the crisis facing organized labor – indeed the crisis facing the entire US working class.” This crisis is marked by declining unionization, inter-union conflict, falling living standards, rising unemployment, growing poverty and deepening oppression. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
The Obama Disaster, at Home and Abroad ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS, Liberaloids & Radical Centrists, THE COLOR LINE Comments Off Apr 062011 Nothing left, except the pose. A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford, Founding Editor, Black Agenda Report | Created 04/05/2011 “Shutdown – a real battle and test of wills over people’s programs – is better than Obama’s slick and slimy style of calibrated surrender.” When you predict disaster, it’s no fun being right. Since long before Barack Obama was elected president, we at Black Agenda Report have said that this center-right corporate politician is a War Democrat whose foreign policy objectives – if not his rhetoric – are no different than George Bush’s. With Obama’s expansion of Bush’s wars and his opening up of a new, North African front, in Libya, we have been proved catastrophically right – right, to the point of tears. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Freedom Rider: Thinking Post-Obama ANNOTATED NEWS, CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS, THE COLOR LINE Comments Off Apr 062011 By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley History will record that “the benefits to black America from the Obama administration have been non-existent” – and, at some point, African Americans will also have to face the fact. “Never again should one candidate for office, even the highest office of all, give voters amnesia about their history and experience.” Obama fever took all the oxygen out of the room, starving Black people’s brains. It is past time that African Americans became reacquainted with reality: Obama has been a disaster for the historical Black political agenda. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
Losing Our Way CLASS STRUGGLE, HEADLINERS, MEDIA SCUM Comments Off Apr 062011 By BOB HERBERT | New York Times | March 25, 2011 Herbert SO HERE WE ARE pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home. Continue reading » Did you like this? Share it:
