Profiting off the sick

 

The Great Prosperity vs The Great Regression. Or why we can't afford stuff.

 Posted on Reddit:

Saluting the flag or the soldier?

Trickle down

 

The dangers of the TPP

Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money:

I have written a lot about the Investor State Dispute Settlement courts that make up a central tenet of the Trans Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements. These extra-national courts effectively give corporations a new legal system to protect their interests that has no accountability to nations or peoples, no access for those peoples to defend themselves, and no system so that citizens can even know what is going on in them. Corporations can use them to protect their profits so that if a nation passes a law that could affect future profits, the companies can use the ISDS courts to sue for future profits lost. That could mean that minimum wage laws, anti-mining regulations, protections for forests, pollution regulations, etc., could be effectively overturned. And given the power dynamics involved in the world, it’s going to be western companies going after developing world nation laws more often than not. These courts have been around for a long time, but they are growing more powerful today. There are two recent pieces of journalism exploring the many problems with the ISDS courts.

Couldn't say it better myself

We have concentration camps right here in the USA

The Deportation System’s ‘Lock-up Quota’ Is Just As Bad as It Sounds

Lockup quotas are tearing apart immigrant communities and lining the pockets of private prison corporations.

Meh? Really?

To the Supreme Court apparently yes.

Imagine the hysteria if Hobby Lobby were run by religious Muslims....

Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court but there may be a silver lining....

This and that

Because reasons.

Ted Rall for president ... of France!

What fracking does.

Who owns your food.

Transparency in corporate campaign cash.  And Congress sells out again for cash.

The Civil War was about slavery.  No matter how many times you try to revise history.

Speak to the hand... Dr. Hand.

Taking away women's right to vote.  Because women can't be trusted.

Hillary Clinton answers a question about abortion.  Anti-rape garments for women because US men can't control themselves?

How many days the Congress plans to 'work' next year.

How to disappear completely.

What could possibly go wrong?

Although... once the US is in the grip of a revolution, the power and resource grab by the monied corporations would be very easy....

I for one will never forget

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut.


  Never.

Friday Follies

A good overview of the Steubenville rape trial.

Never forget what we did to Iraq.  Even though Donald Rumsfeld would like you to.

Transgender people speak out.

Steven Colbert about the voting rights act.

Yet another robot thing I will have to beat to death if it gets near me.

Dissolving our sea-shelled creatures.

Luke uses the force of his 9 year old self to fight off big corporations trying to take his city's water.

America's rape culture.

Deliberately destroying the post office

In 2005 the then Republican controlled Congress passed bill HR22 requiring the Post Office pay $5 billion dollars a year, over a ten year period, for healthcare cost 75 years in the future. No other part of government or any other corporation in the world has to do this. The post office is the only part of government that funds itself. It funds itself my selling stamps, express mail, money orders and many other services. It does not take American taxpayer money. This bill was passed to bankrupt the postal service so it could be privatized broken into pieces and sold to the highest bidder. 

These $5 billion dollar a year payments started in 2006. In 2006 then President George W. Bush appointed four members to the five member Postal Board of Governors who selects the Postmaster General to runs the postal service. Those four members appointed by President George W. Bush were (Thurgood Marshall Jr., Mickey Barnett, James Bilbray and Louis Giuliano). Only one member Dennis Toner was appointed to the board by President Obama (usa.gov).The Postal Board of Governors selected Patrick Donahoe (usps.gov) as Postmaster General. 

Today the 2012 Republican controlled Congress, the Postal Board of Governors and Postmaster General Donahoe are at it again. They want to take all California Postal Service driving jobs from San Francisco to San Diego and give them to outside private contractors by the end of 2012. Postmaster General Donahoe claims this is being done because California postal diesel vehicles don't meet air pollution requirements. The APWU (American Postal Workers Union) offered to modify these vehicles at no cost to the Postal Service. So far, Postmaster General Donahoe has not responded to the APWU offer. This proves money is not the issue. This is another attempt to take government jobs and give them to outside private contracting companies whose main goal is making money not serving the needs of the American people.

Dump Citizens United

Arrest more people!

Prison companies are making money!

Private Prison Management Company Seeks Guaranteed 90% Occupancy From States

Romney and Monsanto

This explains everything.

Guns for sale

Six Dumb Arguments We’re Hearing About the Aurora Shooting

And the two articles referenced: BATTLEGROUND AMERICA and To Keep and Bear Arms

But... isn't owning a gun supposed to stop gun deaths? /snark

An NRA victory

Another massacre brought to you by the NRA and the gun companies to celebrate our freedoms.

Listen to Bill Moyers on our obsession with guns

And then take a look at the NRA cult.

And realize that we are being told we must accept the deaths of innocents by crazies like this because the gun companies need to make money.

Freedom.  It tastes like death.

Update:  Bill O'Reilly calls Bill Moyers dumb.  I won't listen to the pompous ego-bloated smug bastard, but I'm sure Moyers could smack O'Reilly into next week with just a few choice words.