Awareness | Debate | Action

All Blog Posts (138)

It's a damn shame.

Compensation for the 10 highest paid corporate CEO's for 2008 has just been released by the high-class watchdog Corporate Library.

On average, each of the 10 received $222 million.

The least paid received $72 million.

The highest paid received $702 million.

There is something damn wrong with this country!

Added by Harold Hellickson on August 17, 2009 at 5:07pm — No Comments

What Do You Believe

I believe

……. In the separation of Corporations and State.

I believe

……. That Corporations hold dominion over Congress,

……. But Citizens should hold that power.

I believe that Corporations

……. For the first hundred years of this nation,

……. By Design and Charter, served the public good

……. And they should be required to do so again.

I believe that Major… Continue

Added by Harold Hellickson on August 14, 2009 at 12:32pm — No Comments

The vampires are still running the blood bank.

Can President Obama’s plans for economic and social reform succeed with two strikes against himt? With two strikes against him, will he hit a homer or strike out? Progressive elements of the Democratic Party are going to have to push both the President and the Congress very hard for Obama’s presidency to be successful. There is little evidence of either that push or his success so far.

The first strike against Obama is the corporate-governing-elites-controlled Congress, albeit with a… Continue

Added by Harold Hellickson on August 12, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

How long have we got?

“We live in an age of corporate dominion just as we once lived in an age of domination by royal families, kings, and warlords. Our culture is dominated by television and petroleum.” Our demands for entertainment and consumerism “depends on an unbroken supply of both“.

We live in a representative democracy where, in theory, our interests are represented in both Congress and the Administration. In reality our representative democracy is where state and district democracies individually… Continue

Added by Harold Hellickson on August 11, 2009 at 1:00pm — 1 Comment

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

Obama Placates with Palliatives

At the top of Obama’s domestic policy agenda are 1) the economy, 2) health care, and 3) education. Looking at each, what is mostly evident is palliative placation; palliative being the soothing of a disorder without effecting a cure and placation being, to allay our fear. In effect Obama speaks of concerns of substance without substantive plans or solutions.

On the economic front, Obama continues trickle-down-upside-down-socialism, of Reagan/Bush; Wall St. favored over Main St. It’s… Continue

Added by Harold Hellickson on August 8, 2009 at 9:32am — No 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

Economic Hodgepodge - The Plight of 70% of American Families

Following my July 26th article, "Income and Net Worth Inequality" a commenter indicated he was in pursuit of additional information. I promised him that I would review my files and send him what I could find. I did. He suggested it be submitted as article for a wider audience. This is it, with only a slight modification.

For the record, the data used for the earlier article indicates seventy percent of American families earn less than $75,200.

"The two greatest obstacles… Continue

Added by Harold Hellickson on July 31, 2009 at 7:39am — No Comments

The Company Store or Theft by Any Means

The Company Store or Theft by Any Means

That the rich have prospered from the labor of others is not news. Neither are the varied strategies by which the rich have continued to grow income and wealth inequality. What would be news is that the directional trend of income and wealth inequality were reversed. But will it? If so, how?

Pre-unionization, the Company Store assured owners of textile companies, coal mines, and others, plus those employing temporary farm labor that… Continue

Added by Harold Hellickson on July 23, 2009 at 1:00pm — No Comments

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