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Cromag's Blog (114)

Crisis and Hope

Theirs and ours

Noam Chomsky

Perhaps I may begin with a few words about the title. There is too much nuance and variety to make such sharp distinctions as theirs-and-ours, them-and-us. And neither I nor anyone can presume to speak for “us.” But I will pretend it is possible.

There is also a problem with the term “crisis.” Which one? There are numerous very severe crises, interwoven in ways that preclude any clear separation. But again I will pretend… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Obama Health Care Speech 09/09/2009 (transcribed)

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery Address

to a Joint Session of Congress on Health Care

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Washington, DC

Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, and the American people:

When I spoke here last winter, this nation was facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month. Credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 9, 2009 at 10:19pm — No Comments

$2.3 Billion Pfizer Settlement Is NOT Enough to Deter Organized Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Sept. 2, 2009

Statement of Sidney Wolfe, M.D., Director, Public Citizen’s Health Research Group

Today’s $2.3 billion settlement between Pfizer and the U.S. Justice Department for unlawful prescription drug promotion may sound large, but it’s not enough to ensure drug companies will curb their bad behavior. In fact, it just shows there is competition in the pharmaceutical industry. Pfizer has broken a record just set by Eli Lilly & Company in January for what was then… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 2, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments

Fascism Coming to a Court Near You: Corporate-Personhood & the Roberts’ Court

This health care battle within our communities has little to do with health-care and everything to do with corporate power. I hope people in the town hall meetings wake up and smell the fascism. Corporate interests are polluting some peoples views so they cannot see the real issues through their smog.

Fascism Coming to a Court Near You:

Corporate-Personhood and the Roberts’ Court

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of… Continue

Added by Cromag on August 10, 2009 at 2:31pm — 2 Comments

NO MORE FEEDS PLEASE! How abundant information is making us fat.

by Tad Toulis

Fat David by Scholz & Friends, Hamburg, Germany

Lately I've been unusually cranky: It may be the frustrations of a difficult marketplace where economic adversity forces one to tolerate the otherwise intolerable. It may be the extra hours of summer sunlight here in the Pacific Northwest, which brings about an initial euphoria that can descend into mania. But with a gnawing conviction, I've come to… Continue

Added by Cromag on August 7, 2009 at 11:30pm — 1 Comment

The Inner Workings of Systemic U.S.Corruption (Amicus Brief)

Laid out in this brief is a summary of how unchecked corporate political spending corrupts our system and distorts our economy. The brief is an effort to block CITIZENS UNITED (aka corporations), from successfully appealing to overturn laws that restrict them from contributing even more political money to influence their agendas. It's ironic that in a time of deep recession, --caused by corporate rent seeking and outright fraud-- that we have to… Continue

Added by Cromag on August 5, 2009 at 1:03am — 1 Comment

The Quiet Coup

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless… Continue

Added by Cromag on July 16, 2009 at 1:04am — 1 Comment

Insured, but Bankrupted by Health Crises

By REED ABELSON - July 1, 2009 - NY Times

Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

And so, even as Washington tries to cover the tens of millions of Americans without medical insurance, many health policy experts say simply giving everyone an insurance card… Continue

Added by Cromag on July 15, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments

America's Great Health Care in Despair

When powerful corporations with legal and eternal person-hood write the laws of a great nation, you get a shameful hypocrisy, incapable of fulfilling a Hippocratic oath. Which leads me to ask; why doesn't the corporation with person-hood have to take a Hippocratic oath? Our system of government is a hollow shell of its principled past.

Why can the rest of the world's powerful nations take care of all of their citizens health-care, but the USA can't?

If you are a US… Continue

Added by Cromag on July 11, 2009 at 5:00pm — 4 Comments

Big Bankers Mounting Sneak Attack on Consumers

Have you received your thank-you note? I'm still waiting for mine.

More than a year into the Wall Street bailout, I've yet to get any sort of "thank you" from even a single one of the big banks that you and I propped up with $12 trillion in direct giveaways, indirect giveaways, government guarantees and sweetheart loans. You'd think their mommas would've taught them better. But I've begun to think that waiting on a simple gesture of banker gratitude is like waiting on Donald Trump to… Continue

Added by Cromag on July 10, 2009 at 11:00pm — 1 Comment

Monsanto's History of Eco-Poisoning & Un-Accountability (PCB, DDT)

This is a modern tale about how everything is connected to everything else in the environment. It begins in 1929 when the Monsanto Corporation started selling PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). PCBs are oily liquids that are very stable (they don't change their characteristics) even when they get hot, and they don't conduct electricity but they do conduct heat. Therefore, they make good insulators in electrical transformers and capacitors. They have also been used as hydraulic fluid, and in… Continue

Added by Cromag on July 10, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Americans Who've Used Canada's Health-Care System Respond to Current Big-Lie Media Campaign

The scare ads and op-ed pieces featuring Canadians telling us American how terrible their government health-care systems have arrived - predictably.

There's another, factual view - by those of us Americans who've lived in Canada and used their system.

My wife and I did for years, and we've been incensed by the lies we've heard back here in the U.S. about Canada's supposedly broken system.

It's not broken - and what's more, Canadians like and fiercely defend… Continue

Added by Cromag on June 14, 2009 at 1:41pm — No Comments

Making Failure an Option: Throw Citi Under the Bus

As long as failure is an option, these "too big to fail" corporations will continue gambling with taxpayers money, without giving taxpayers any premium. Letting one of them fail or enforcing punishments that fit the crimes may help deter future problems of this sort. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, American Express, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street, Capital One, BB&T and U.S. Bancorp all said they will pay back TARP funds but, what about all the damage they did to the economy and the… Continue

Added by Cromag on June 11, 2009 at 2:38pm — 1 Comment

Is Obama Visit to France to Discuss a Formal Union of USA and the EU?

According to Streit Council for a Union of Democracies website, "Uniting democracies has been the key international political trend of the last hundred years Understanding this trend and enabling it to continue is the key to world political development"

June 7th, 2009

President Obama is currently visiting with French President Sarkozy. Could they be discussing the ideas in this PDF?… Continue

Added by Cromag on June 7, 2009 at 10:00pm — 1 Comment

Bribe Payers Index 2008

Good news worth repeating! Congrats to BPI winners Belgium & Canada whose companies are least likely to engage in bribery when doing business abroad. http://is.gd/JCFC

As the effects of the financial crisis are being felt around the world, Transparency International’s 2008 Bribe Payers Index (BPI) exposes the degree to which companies of the leading exporting nations are likely to engage in bribery when doing business abroad.

The… Continue

Added by Cromag on May 30, 2009 at 7:30pm — No Comments

Trust-Busting Shows New Signs of Life

US government through the Obama Administration is finally rejecting soft stance on oligopolistic anti-competitive practices.

From: Dirt Diggers Digest

chronicling corporate misbehavior (and how to research it)

http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/530

May 15, 2009 by Phil Mattera

"Everywhere you look, powerful forces are driving American industries to consolidate into… Continue

Added by Cromag on May 30, 2009 at 9:10am — No Comments

Wall Street's Best Investment II: 12 Deregulatory Steps to Financial Meltdown

The tail is wagging the dog of so called corporate governance. What's the point of voting. Giant oligopolies are gearing up to exploit the workers of global emerging markets by discarding current workforces to chase double digit growth and all at the US citizen's expense. GM is in receivership of the blessing of corporate bankruptcy to break away cleanly and be born-again under a different moniker to manipulate a whole new global culture. Reform is starting to sound like just another dirty… Continue

Added by Cromag on May 28, 2009 at 11:55pm — 1 Comment

Wall Street's Best Investment I: Paying for Policy in Washington

Wall Street's Best Investment I: Paying for Policy in Washington

By Robert Weissman

March 4, 2009

Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown.

Were the deregulators acting out of principle? Perhaps.

But it couldn't have hurt that the financial sector invested a staggering $5.1 billion in political influence purchasing in the United States over the last decade.

The money flows are… Continue

Added by Cromag on May 28, 2009 at 11:00pm — No Comments

Behind the Bean: The Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry

UPDATED: Philip H. Howard | Organic Processing Industry Structure updated Infographics

Revealing report on big-business's careless regulation and infiltration of the organic food industry. [Due to government subsidies, soy is one of the most prevalent ingredients in consumer foods]

Behind the Bean

The Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry

The…

Continue

Added by Cromag on May 22, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments