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category archive listing Category Archives: Corporate control

why?

Why do we allow speculators to raise the price of commodities like food and oil by betting on how expensive those same commodities are going to be in the future?
Doesn’t that seem a bit suicidal, like betting against yourself, doubling down each time?
India may be on the right track: India considers suspending trade in food [...]

not dumbstruck -

just holding our breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast thinks the great mass of Americans have been dumbstruck by the massive bailout of Bear Stearns:
The silence from the American people surrounding the collapse of Bear Stearns and the shoveling of taxpayer cash into the hole left after the implosion [...]

Time Magazine: We Don’t Report the News, We Write it

Time magazine invents facts to claim that Americans support Bush’s domestic spying abusesNo matter how corrupt and sloppy the establishment press becomes, they always find a way to go lower. Time Magazine has just published what it purports to be a news article by Massimo Calabresi claiming that “nobody cares” about the countless abuses of [...]

The Revolutionary Underclass Will Not Be Televised

Where else but the BBC would you read about shanty-towns in America?
Return of Hoovervilles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnnOOo6tRs8

What if there was a Depression and Nobody Told?
Tent Cities - 21st Century Hoovervilles - springing up outside Los Angeles to no media notice.
I live there, and the first I hear about is on [...]

but we will have a perfect model of an administration shill

From Alan Greenspan’s attemp at self-exculpation in the Financial Times this weekend, We will never have a perfect model of risk:
The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war. It will end eventually when home prices stabilise and [...]

Something to be grateful for

House Passes Spy Bill, Rejects Telcom Amnesty Despite Veto Threat
Democrats continued their defiance of President Bush on Friday over his secret wiretapping program, passing a spying bill that calls for a commission to investigate the program, and refusing to give amnesty to telecoms that collaborated with the warrantless surveillance.
House Democratic leaders secured passage of the [...]

according to bushco, we’re all just soylent green for the economy

Spokesmonkey Tony Fratto this morning:
Q Tony, could I follow up on something you said at the gaggle this morning about — in your response to the retail sales numbers? You said, we want consumers to spend. How can they –
MR. FRATTO: We call them consumers.
Q How can they, and why can’t — why should they, [...]

words matter

I wasn’t that surprised to see it in The Columbian, but I was disgusted that even the hosts on KPOJ have been referring to the Earth Liberation Front wackos who torched those McMansions up in Woodinville as terrorists.
E.L.F.’s actions are doomed to failure: burning a few model homes won’t stop sprawl or conspicuous consumption, any [...]

sympathy for the devil

For John Roberts, there’s nothing playful about being the devil’s advocate:
Chief Justice John Roberts was pained.
Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company — but that’s not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the [...]

Wobblies on The Great Starbuck’s PR Stunt of ‘08

Starbucks over-expanded and feel the crunch of an ailing economy. Their solution? A massive, newsmaking public relations stunt, ostensibly to re-train and strategize.The IWW Starbucks Workers Union smells a rat and tells it like it is:
Starbucks Baristas Question Substance of National Shutdown for “Training”
New York, NY- As Starbucks stores around the United States reopen after [...]

want some vioxx for that, nino?

Pacemaker dies, so you do, too? Bad luck, man. Knee replacements wear out before their time? Tough shit. Because according to 8 of our 9 illustrious SCOTUS justices (with their of the cadillac health care plan and the lifetime employment), even if a company knew its medical device was faulty, if [...]

Commerce Dept docs: Cheney and oil execs decided to take Iraq’s oil in spring 2001

The Commerce Department has been forced by Judicial Watch to turn over records of spring, 2001 meetings held between Dick Cheney and execs from global oil giants, records that suggest that the group decided months before September 11th that the US energy policy would center on taking control of Iraq’s oil:
In [...]