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Cromag
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Ethics Among Activists
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Started this discussion. Last reply by Ice Goldberg Oct 21, 2009.

Obama Deception?

Started May 31, 2009

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The Medicare-for-All Moment

There is only one solution to the twin problems of escalating health care costs and the epidemic of the uninsured: a Medicare-for-All, single payer system. Unfortunately, the healthcare debate on Capitol Hill has evolved without serious consideration of the Medicare-for-All single payer health proposal. There are many reasons for this, but one is that many … Continue reading "The Medicare-for-All Moment"

The Financial Crisis One Year Later: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

One year ago, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, bringing to a head the growing chaos on Wall Street. In the days and weeks that followed Lehman’s September 15, 2008, collapse, credit markets would freeze, the stock market plunged, the government took a controlling interest in AIG, Wachovia and Merrill Lynch merged themselves out of existence, the … Continue reading "The Financial Crisis One Year Later: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same"

Tightening the Corporate Grip: The Stakes at the Supreme Court

Can things get still worse in Washington? Yes, they can. And they will, if the Supreme Court decides for corporations and against real human beings and their democracy in a case the Court will be hearing today, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Until reaching the Supreme Court last year, this case has involved a … Continue reading "Tightening the Corporate Grip: The Stakes at the Supreme Court"

150 Years

One hundred and fifty years jail time for Bernard Madoff is a good thing. To listen to the victims of his swindle, or read their words, is to appreciate the very far-reaching ways in which Madoff’s quiet crime has wreaked havoc on the lives of thousands of families. Federal District Judge Denny Chin was absolutely … Continue reading "150 Years"

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Financial Sector Regulation

There are major gaps and shortcomings in the Obama administration’s financial regulatory proposals, formally released today, and the proposals alone leave the financial sector vulnerable to future crisis. Still, it’s nice to be able to say that the proposal does contain meaningful reforms. Whether those meaningful reform proposals become law is no sure thing, and … Continue reading "The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Financial Sector Regulation"
 

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What Motivates You to Activism?
I hate corruption, and unethical activity; like how people in corporations or government work to circumvent or even change laws with masses of money, and then use PR campaigns to misdirect their actions. I also dislike the disinformation and conjecture in journalism so you will find that I add respectable facts and sources to support my assertions, and I hope you do the same. Let's hold each other accountable. I want a democratic republic that does not cause suffering and is fair for all citizens. I am pro-business, education for all, and pro government-transparency. My lens is currently on the ruling class; elitism vs. pluralism. -see my random thoughts below.

Comment Wall (44 comments)

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At 10:56pm on August 14, 2014, Cromag said…

Tyranny of the majority or elite minority is still tyranny.

At 10:34am on February 17, 2014, Cromag said…

“Until they become conscious they will never rebel. ...” George Orwell, "1984"

“In April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV, films, and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China; it means people still dream about alternatives, so we have to prohibited this dreaming. Here we don’t think of prohibition because the ruling history has even oppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world — an asteroid destroying all of life, and so on — but we cannot imagine the end of capitalism.” Slavoj Žižek 

At 10:22pm on March 10, 2013, Cromag said…
“Hectored,treated, advised, instructed, and compelled at every turn, history's subjects may falter, lose heart, courage, or sense of direction. The larger society is then quick to blame, to translate survival systems of the weak into pathologies, and to indict as neurotic clear recognition of the human condition.

The safest defense against this is apathy, ignorance, or
surrender. Adopt any of these strategies -- don't care, don't know or don't do -- and you will, in all likelihood, be considered normal. The only problem is that you will miss out on much of your life.”
At 11:29am on May 16, 2012, Cromag said…

"What fosters revolution is not misery, but the gap between what people expect from their lives and what is offered." Chris Hedges http://tinyurl.com/7aedkf7

At 11:22pm on October 28, 2011, Cromag said…

"News is what people want to keep hidden. Everything else is publicity."

"While it is important to cover the news, it is more important to uncover the news." http://t.co/0jZIkxpv from video with Bill Moyers

Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man http://t.co/pszwtRaW we need leaders with conviction like this today @Public_Citizen #OWS #documentary

At 6:44pm on September 21, 2011, Cromag said…
Elizabeth Warren, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear.

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
At 1:10pm on August 20, 2011, Cromag said…

Carmen Hermosillo had been one of the earliest believers in the new communities of cyber space, her online name was humdog and she lived on the West Coast, but then she lost faith and she posted an attack that caused a sensation online  -

It is fashionable to suggest, she wrote, that cyberspace is some island of the blessed where people are free to indulge and express their individuality.  This is not true.  I have seen many people spill out their emotions, their guts online, and I did so myself until I began to see that I had commodified myself.

Commodification means that you turn something into a product that has a money value. In the nineteenth century commodities were made in factories by workers who were mostly exploited… but I created my interior thoughts as commodities for the corporations that owned the board that I was posting to, like Compuserve or AOL and that commodity was then sold on to other consumer entities as entertainment

Cyberspace is a black hole. It absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it as an emotional spectacle.  It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion and we are getting lost in the spectacle…”

http://ow.ly/626Yk

 

At 10:38pm on July 21, 2011, Cromag said…

Santa Fe Institute brought quantum into economics in the 1980s. There has always been a real blocking of new economic thought in US universities controlled by private money. Rockefeller created UChicago precisely because they couldn’t control Harvard or Yale, and you know what kind of bogus economic thought came from there. Now, they all seem to be controlled by private Trustee Money. Blocking complexity economics from Santa Fe Institute is not the first time these webs of institutions managed to do it. They blocked, discredited and buried Henry George who was the most famous American economist in the 1800s and a peer of Marx with a very different solution to capitalism’s ravages. Both Marx and George challenged the absolute power of these property owners over everybody. You can read about this blocking stuff in Eric Beinhocker “The origins of wealth” and Kim Philips-Fein “Invisible Hands”. There is some real hell to pay from these universities who live off private money tax exempt for the public service, and the NFP organizations that accredit them, also tax-exempt for public service not Top 1% service!

By planckbrandt on April 30th, 2011 at 4:20 pm

At 10:01pm on July 21, 2011, Cromag said…

The Real Housewives of Wall Street

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

By Matt Taibbi on Rolling Stone magazine.

 

My comment

Matt Taibbi is the Dana White of journalism, brazenly bludgeoning Banksters with yet another brash flurry of blue collar vernacular, but could he be misconnecting the dots?

What if his notoriety opened some doors, into the class of privilege and information, where Mrs. Taibbi was hypothetically offered the opportunity to greatly, increase their wealth; in turn helping stimulate the U.S. economy. All she had to do was put up $15 million of her own money, and a private entity (the Fed) would have a country (the U.S.) leverage it to $250 million. Instead of just buying up $15M of cheap distressed real estate, or a mix of foreign and domestic stocks (waiting for the market to turn), she could help make the market turn by purchasing US Treasury bonds with an almost guaranteed leveraged return funded by the U.S. Treasury. -more on the math a bit later. 

Does buying U.S. U.S. securities, from increased money supply, help devalue the dollar? Can it make U.S exports more competitive, and stimulate foreign (job creating) stateside investment ? Does this form of controlled dollar devaluation create controlled (non-hyper) domestic inflation? Does it export devastating, and destabilizing, inflation to poor  nations, thus creating opportunities to advance U.S. hegemony? I would say yes to all of these questions....

At 10:00pm on July 21, 2011, Cromag said…

...

Atypical investing of $15M, with a 10% speculative return, may or may not yield $1.5M the first year. The same $15M leveraged to $250M at 3% return, with NO 'downside' obligation to repay, is guaranteed to yield $8M each year, regardless of bond value, and  doubling your $15M every 1.9 years! Even with some increased inflation the leveraged return is staggering. Downside risk is the Fed raising the rate too quickly, too soon (before making back your initial investment with a reasonable return on top), and turning your approx 3% profit into a loss. Not too much of a concern if, as the article states, you don't have to repay the principal, but still a huge concern if you are responsible for making the interest payments to the Fed on rising interest rates. Too many details are left out to have a complete picture, but the premise is fascinating.

Maybe a hedge fund manager will set up a fund so we can all help inflate this new bubble into ginormous global devastation.

At 3:23pm on May 14, 2011, Cromag said…
"If we look only at behavior, it tells us that we have made money more important than we are, and given it more meaning than human life. Humans have done, and will do terrible things, in the name of money. They have killed for it, enslaved other people for it, and enslaved themselves to joyless lives in pursuit of it." The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist.
At 8:49am on May 14, 2011, Cromag said…
"Sovereignty is an [concept] originating in bygone times when society consisted of rulers and subjects, not citizens. It became the cornerstone of international relations with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648...Today, though not all nation-states are democratically accountable to their citizens, the principle of sovereignty stands in the way of outside intervention in the internal affairs of nation-states. But true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments. If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified."  George Soros, The Peoples' Sovereignty: How a new twist on an old idea can protect the world's most vulnerable populations, New York, Foreign Policy, January 1, 2004, accessed in http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2004/01/01/the_peoples_sovereignty.
At 8:42pm on March 9, 2011, Ben Donahower said…
Thanks for reaching out.  Hope to check out this community more thoroughly later this week.
At 4:40am on February 27, 2011, Ed Blacksheare said…
Thanks for the welcome Cromag. I am glad to be on board.
At 1:30am on February 26, 2011, Cromag said…
The masses are unable to collectively rise up against tyranny without leaders who organize them under a common self interest. The Wisconsin union protesters of 2011 are a good example of this, because many these same protesters --who are rallied by already established union leaders-- likely supported their opponents ideals, until those ideals were turned onto them in the form of union busting. Their self-interests were threatened in more ways than just abolishing collective bargaining rights. The unorganized masses would likely have a much harder time coming together, even while enduring much worse hardships. In order for individuals to wake up from the slow erosion of freedoms they need to overcome confirmation bias, and challenge the power of human ego to rationalize whatever self-image one has --or is manipulated into having.

The Egypt uprising of 2011 was different in the sense that the people were galvanized by crippling poverty stemming from government corruption and were being organized using a nonviolent action movement long before the events that set off the revolt. The suffering and corruption tipping point probably did come from the U.S. central bank's quantitative easing measures which exported inflation of food and other commodities, while the Wikileaks cables of 2010 validated the suspected corruption. 

Can we have this type of uprising in the United States? I doubt it because we still have a huge percentage of employed middle class who would not go along with it unless they sympathized with the suffering underclass. This middle class group would need to be pulled from their busy working lifestyles by organizers who could build common parallels of self-interest and create a peaceful protest movement that did not jeopardize or even seriously interrupt their busy middle class lifestyles.
At 3:21pm on December 4, 2010, Cromag said…
"The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade." Julian Assange Dec. 3rd 2010
At 1:23pm on October 25, 2010, Cromag said…
Focusing on the economics of self-interest and the effect it has on organizations. People seem to hide behind the corporate wall of semi-secrecy in a company, and somehow rationalize that the wrongs they commit, encourage, or ignore are somehow not their responsibility. People need to put in perspective how their actions would affect a loved one. The bottom line is the long arm of the law needs to make examples of a lot of people committing wrongs by breaking laws, and regulations, through stiff fines, public exposure, and prison terms. People, of all levels, need to start having to think twice about committing crimes behind the corporate walls of their workplace. We need to stop blaming the faceless corporations and big businesses for our troubles and start focusing on the self-interested individuals orchestrating the malfeasance.
At 9:48pm on August 26, 2010, Cromag said…
"Anti-democratic values are taking hold. We have become stakeholders instead of citizens, consumers instead of sovereign people, we are offered consultation rather than real participation. I don't accept this." Susan George
At 12:16am on April 21, 2010, Cromag said…
On Ethics and the Obligation to be Knowledgeable: Do I have to know something about an issue in order to advance an ethical argument? It is absolutely true that the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution promotes, and protects freedom of speech, but that may not mean that it is ethical for any person to try to influence others without some understanding of the issue. -David Lapakko Ph.D.
At 1:41am on March 6, 2010, Cromag said…
The principle threat to democracy in the United States today arises from irresponsible elites seeking relative advantage at the expense of shared social values.

Latest Activity

Cromag posted a blog post

Henry Giroux on Resisting the Neoliberal Revolution

Reactions to Anatomy of a Deep State from the Bill Moyers ShowFebruary 2014 - Credit: Dale RobbinsThe notion of the “Deep State” as outlined by Mike Lofgren may be useful in pointing to a new…See More
Feb 22, 2014
Cromag's video was featured

The Century of the Self

It's getting difficult to find a free version of this important documentary but I have found one that works for now and embedded it below. Watch it while you still can. The Century of the Self is a British television documentary film that focuses…
Feb 10, 2014
Cromag posted a blog post

The Rights of Nature: Has Deep Ecology Gone Too Far?

A specter is haunting the French humanist mind these days--a radical ecology movement that threatens to replace the idealization of humanity with an idealization of nature. Already we see "the passing of the humanist era," writes Luc Ferry, a philosopher at the Sorbonne and the University of Caen, in this prize-winning critique of that movement, a book all environmentalists ought to read. It is by turn witty and sneering, brilliant and disturbing, wildly alarmist and, in the end, surprisingly…See More
Jan 27, 2014
Cromag posted a blog post

If Nature Had Rights

... "So what would a radically different law-driven consciousness look like?” The question was posed over three decades ago by a University of Southern California law professor as his lecture drew to a close. “One in which Nature had rights,” he continued. “Yes, rivers, lakes, trees. . . . How could such a posture in law affect a community’s view of itself?” Professor Christopher Stone…See More
Jan 25, 2014
Cromag's video was featured

Chrystia Freeland: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich Plutocracy

The term plutocracy is generally used as a pejorative to describe or warn against an undesirable condition. Throughout history, political thinkers such as Winston Churchill, 19th-century French sociologist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville,…
Jan 24, 2014
Cromag posted a blog post

The Leveraged Buyout of America

Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How have they pulled this off, and where have they gotten the money?In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dated June 27, 2013, US…See More
Aug 27, 2013
Cromag posted a blog post

The Ecuadorian Library or, The Blast Shack After Three Years

Back in distant, halcyon 2010, I was asked to write something about Wikileaks and its Cablegate scandal. So, I wrote a rather melancholy essay about how things seemed to me to be going — dreadfully, painfully, like some leaden and ancient Greek tragedy.In that 2010 essay, I surmised that things were going to get worse before they got any better. Sure enough, things now are lots, lots worse. Much…See More
Aug 7, 2013
Cromag's blog post was featured

Introducing the Global Power Project (Updated)

Mon, 3/25/2013 - by Andrew Gavin Marshalloriginally posted on Occupy.comWe live in an interdependent world, where nations are increasingly eclipsed in size and wealth by the major banks and transnational corporations which have come to dominate the global economy.Royal Dutch Shell has more money than all but the top 22 countries on earth.…See More
Jul 17, 2013
Cromag posted a blog post

Local Lawmaking: A Call for a Community Rights Movement

Mon, 7/1/2013 - by Thomas LinzeyA little over 10 years ago, a small, rural township in central Pennsylvania banned corporate factory hog farms from their community. A couple of years later, several New Hampshire and Maine towns banned Nestle and other corporations from extracting water for bottling operations. In November…See More
Jul 9, 2013
Cromag posted a blog post

The Transnational Capitalist Class and the Discourse of Globalization

By Leslie SklairCambridge Review of International Affairs 20001. IntroductionRemarkably for a sub-discipline in the social sciences, theory and research on globalization appears to have reached a mature phase, in terms of volume of publications if not their quality, in a relatively short period of time. Most attempts to survey the field, despite their differences, agree that globalization represents a serious challenge to the state-centrist assumptions of most previous social science. The…See More
Jul 5, 2013
Cromag posted blog posts
Jul 4, 2013
Cromag posted blog posts
Jul 3, 2013
Cromag posted a blog post

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fixby Matt TaibbiAPRIL 25, 2013Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the…See More
May 3, 2013
Cromag posted a video

TVSet - Community Rights vs. GMOs

Full interview with Clinton Lindsey on Benton County's plight against toxic Rape Seed (Canola) infiltrating and contanimating seed crops in the Willamette Va...
May 1, 2013
Cromag posted a blog post

Beyond Hope

Beyond Hopeby Derrick JensenPhotograph by Stephen WilkesTHE MOST COMMON WORDS I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We’re fucked. Most of these environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have—or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be…See More
Mar 19, 2013
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Feb 17, 2013

Astroturf: Exposing the Fake Grassroots


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Nature and the Law

Posted on December 22, 2016 at 9:08pm 0 Comments

Nature and the Law

A new movement is working to protect our environment through the recognition of its fundamental rights. It’s an idea whose time has come.

By Mari Margil from December 20, 2016, 4:39 pm – 8 MIN READ…
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State Plastic and Paper Bag Legislation: Justice or Manipulation?

Posted on December 4, 2016 at 1:00pm 0 Comments

The plastic and paper bag law is ostensibly environmental legislation in hopes that a small fee will diminish the environmental impact of single-use merchant bags. It was possible to have the fee go into an environmental fund to help with diminishing the impact, but that was voted down by CA Prop 65. The resulting declining of Prop 65 is essentially saying that we cannot force the…

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Unsafe at any Dose? Diagnosing Chemical Safety Failures, from DDT to BPA

Posted on May 22, 2016 at 9:55am 0 Comments

via Independent Science News | by Jonathan Latham, PhD

Piecemeal, and at long last, chemical manufacturers have begun removing the endocrine-disrupting plastic…

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Organic food’s dirty secret: What the “seductive” label fails to tell you [Updated Info]

Posted on March 15, 2015 at 12:30pm 0 Comments

Just because food is labeled organic doesn't mean it's what you're expecting, journalist Peter Laufer tells Salon

by Lindsay Abrams 

Published Saturday, Jul 19, 2014 11:00 AM PST…

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If Nature Had Rights

Posted on October 23, 2014 at 2:51pm 0 Comments

... "So what would a radically different law-driven consciousness look like?” The question was posed over three decades ago by a University of Southern California law professor as his lecture drew to a close. “One in which Nature had rights,” he continued. “Yes, rivers, lakes, trees. . . . How could such a posture in law affect a community’s view of…

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