Awareness | Debate | Action

Cromag's Blog (114)

Matt Yglesias is delusional

via Open Left

by:…

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Added by Cromag on September 6, 2010 at 1:41pm — No Comments

The Crisis of Middle-Class America

The crisis of middle-class America

By Edward Luce

Published: July 30 2010 17:04 Original FT Link here…

Mark and Connie Freeman in front of their home in Minneapolis

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Added by Cromag on August 1, 2010 at 5:00pm — No Comments

About Us - with Glossary

"Somehow we can talk about these subjects here in polite company."

Welcome all, and thanks for visiting ActMo! This is the NEW location for our popular About Us page since NING changed their TOS in 2010.

The Activist Motivator is a Citizen Journalist, Open Forum, Social Network for promoting Awareness, Debate and Organizing Action on important social issues. Issues like transparency, corporate…

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Added by Cromag on August 1, 2010 at 4:00pm — No Comments

Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill

By: Jane Hamsher Friday March 19, 2010

I’ll be on the new CNN show with Jon King that premieres at noon ET, available for live stream here

The Firedoglake health care team has been covering the debate in congress since it began last year. The health care bill will come up for a vote in the House on Sunday, and as Nancy Pelosi works…

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Added by Cromag on April 18, 2010 at 11:00pm — No Comments

Bill Moyers Journal: Johnson and Kwak Nail the Financial Meltdown (transcript)

Simon Johnson and James Kwak, authors of 13 BANKERS: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown

→ Link to full video interview http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/watch.html

"All regulated industries end up with the industry capturing the regulators." George… Continue

Added by Cromag on April 16, 2010 at 11:30pm — No Comments

Exposing Our Enemy: Meet the Economic Elite

by David DeGraw / February 19th, 2010

The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes… As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will…

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Added by Cromag on March 6, 2010 at 2:57pm — No Comments

Sins of the Fathers: How Corporations Use the Constitution and Environmental Law to Plunder Communities and Nature

Absorbing each and every line of this powerful document is a worthwhile step towards meaningful environmental activism. -Ice Goldberg

Thomas Alan Linzey, Esq. Executive Director

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Inc.

Thursday, March 4th, 2004 class at University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Our work over the past four years has taken us in new directions for environmental attorneys -- we now give most of our… Continue

Added by Cromag on March 5, 2010 at 12:00am — No Comments

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle

If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Feb 17, 2010 in Rolling Stone Magazine

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America's pre-eminent Marvel… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 21, 2010 at 10:10pm — No Comments

Republicans at Highest Levels Really Want to Do Away with Democracy for All

By Mark Ames,

February 12, 2010, via AlterNet http://ow.ly/19w6a

While Tea Party movement followers ran around Nashville last week dressed up in their Paul Revere period costumes, blathering about their heroic struggle against Obama's Islamosocialist tyranny, the right-wing elite that nurtures them, and their paid libertarian ideologues, have been openly advocating the abolition… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 20, 2010 at 11:00am — No Comments

Investigation: USMC General Smedley Butler and the US Corporate Coup [VIDEO UPDATE]

Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe…

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Added by Cromag on February 14, 2010 at 8:00pm — No Comments

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers

By William Deresiewicz

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 12, 2010 at 10:00pm — No Comments

Where's The Movement?

Where's The Movement? by George Lakoff

In forming his administration, President Obama abandoned the movement that had begun during his campaign for deal-making and a pragmatism that hasn't worked. That movement is still possible and needed now. Here is look at what is required, and how a version of it is forming in California.

We begin with this week's triple whammy.

Freedom vs. The Public Option

Which would you prefer,…

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Added by Cromag on February 9, 2010 at 8:00pm — No Comments

How to Get Our Democracy Back - by Lawrence Lessig

If You Want Change, You Have to Change Congress

We should remember what it felt like one year ago, as the ability to recall it emotionally will pass and it is an emotional memory as much as anything else. It was a moment rare in a democracy's history. The feeling was palpable--to supporters and opponents alike--that something important had happened. America had elected, the young candidate promised, a transformational president. And wrapped in a campaign that had… Continue

Added by Cromag on February 7, 2010 at 10:24pm — No Comments

Dale Maharidge Interview: Covering The Economic Pain Of Real Americans

Is today's media built for these times? Is it capable of covering the widespread economic downturn in a way that conveys the pain so many Americans are feeling to the country and the world? And can it be done in a way that doesn't feel like a view of devastation from 30,000 feet up in the air? For insight, we turned to a man who is built to cover this crisis, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author and Columbia School of Journalism professor… Continue

Added by Cromag on October 3, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments

The Powell Memo and the Teaching Machines of Right-Wing Extremists

"the need for a new kind of debate, one that is not limited to isolated issues such as health care, but is more broad-based and fundamental, a debate about how power, inequality and money constrict the educational, economic and political conditions that make democracy possible"

Thursday 01 October 2009

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Paul… Continue

Added by Cromag on October 2, 2009 at 8:00am — No Comments

Agriculture and Food in Crisis

An Outstanding Overview by Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar Originally published in the Monthly Review - An Independent Socialist Magazine

Purchase a hardcopy HERE

“Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?,” asks the title of an article by Lester…

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Added by Cromag on September 22, 2009 at 4:30pm — No Comments

Inequality and the American Dream

Jun 15th 2006 From The Economist print edition

The world's most impressive economic machine needs a little adjusting

MORE than any other country, America defines itself by a collective dream: the dream of economic opportunity and upward mobility. Its proudest boast is that it offers a chance of the good life to everybody who is willing to work hard and play by the rules. This ideal has made the United States the world's strongest magnet for immigrants; it has also… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 8:09pm — 2 Comments

Words in the Service of Corporate Masters

By Ralph Nader

Ever wonder what's happening to words once they fall into the hands of corporate and government propagandists? Too often reporters and editors don't wonder enough. They ditto the words even when the result is deception or doubletalk.

Here are some examples. Day in and day out we read about “detainees” imprisoned for months or years by the federal government in the U.S., Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan. Doesn't the media know that the correct word is… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 8:07pm — 2 Comments

►Transcribed Speech Iraqi Shoe Thrower Gave on Release from Jail w/ VIDEO

My flower to Bush the occupier: the story of my shoe

"Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war," said Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush, in this speech he gave on his release.

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world.

There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 5:30pm — No Comments

Corporate Crime (Nader/Gonzalez)

Corporate crime costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Tens of thousands of Americans are killed each year and hundreds of thousands of Americans injured and sickened each year by preventable corporate-bred violence.

From pollution, medical negligence, procurement fraud, product defects, and financial fraud, to antitrust, public corruption, foreign bribery and occupational homicide, corporate crime is widely ignored by politicians – yet acutely felt by all… Continue

Added by Cromag on September 21, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments