The Old Hippie's Groovy Blog
Thoughts & Observations, on Sociological, Environmental, And Political Happenings (Best View = 1024x786)
posted by The Old Hippie @ 7:49 AM
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posted by The Old Hippie @ 10:49 PM
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| - “Suck on Our Yachts” Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein says he’s sorry, then proceeds to brag about screwing us all. Has an act of contrition ever in history been more worthless and insincere? - “Where Are They Now?” Ex-Bush Loyalists Cash In. As more Americans lose their jobs, homes, healthcare, and their “way of life,” and finally, to lose, (the most crushing of all,) hope. - “The Policy That Dare Not Speak Its Name” Medicare-for-All is something regular people, [2/3s,] understand. |  |
The Employee Free Choice Act is key to rebuilding the American middle class – news of Senators wavering in their support for the bill revalidates a key truth about Congress: the main stumbling block to strengthening and expanding the middle class is corporate power.
The same pattern emerges every year on TheMiddleClass.org. Throughout the year, DMI uses the site to share analysis about the impact of Congressional legislation on Americans’ ability to gain – and hold onto – a middle-class standard of living. Once a year, we take a step back and look at the big picture. It often looks depressingly familiar: fiscal conservatives notwithstanding, Congress does fairly well when it comes to measures that simply involve spending more, but falls short – often far short – when powerful corporate interests clash with the wellbeing of the nation’s current and aspiring middle class.
In 2008, for example, Congress stood up for the middle-class on issues like providing more funds to higher education and passing a consumer safety bill that’s even been endorsed by the industry its regulating. Virtually all Democrats voted for these bills, and most Republicans as well. Similarly in 2007, college aid did well and majorities from both parties in the House voted for common sense contracting reforms.
But Congressional support for middle-class Americans falls off precipitously as soon as major corporate interests are at stake.
In 2007, the Peru trade bill was the skunk at the garden party, provoking 64 percent of Senate Democrats and 48 percent of House Democrats (along with nearly every Republican) to vote for multinational corporations and large investors at the expense of their middle-class constituents. Last year, it was a willingness to put banks before struggling homeowners, telecommunications companies before consumers, and those @%$& banks again before taxpayers. These weren’t the only policy disappointments of the year for middle-class Americans, but they were the main cases where significant numbers of Democrats joined nearly all Republicans in selling out the middle class.
This year, I fear Thomas Frank is right when he predicts the same fate for EFCA. Sure, Congress will approve health coverage for low-income kids (an important boost for aspiring middle-class families in its own right) but when it comes to standing up for middle-class Americans against a full-scale corporate lobbying campaign, Congress may not have the guts. That's terrible news for the middle class.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 4:02 AM
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 | The American Empire Is Bankrupt ...what will come will be very... painful. |
“Now they tell us.
On Monday, two men with considerable responsibility for enabling the banking meltdown confronted the error of their ways. Not directly, of course, for accountability is hardly the mark of either Lawrence Summers, the top White House economic adviser, or Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Their careers have long been fueled by error. Summers was one of the leading prophets of radical financial deregulation in the Clinton administration. And Geithner, as head of the New York Fed, looked the other way during Wall Street’s collapse and then responded by opening wide the spigot of taxpayer dollars to resuscitate Citigroup and AIG.
What they wrote this week in a joint op-ed article in the Washington Post is a condemnation of the Wall Street shenanigans they once abetted and celebrated. ... ”
posted by The Old Hippie @ 4:31 AM
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posted by The Old Hippie @ 7:37 AM
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 {-The Way Many Picture Me-} |
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As I have observed before... The planet is more crowded than ever, the global corporations have more power than ever, and “the-very-few” have more money than ever, with its inherent manipulable power that this stolen wealth possesses. There is much less fresh water available to fewer people worldwide, and the supplies of it are diminishing with the melting of the glaciers planetwide. Food supplies are short in many areas, more so than ever, and global ag-chem corporations are making the situation far worse, just for the short-term profits to themselves.
We are in a bad situation on this planet right now, a very bad situation indeed, and it is getting worse each day from many complex, and mind-numbing, and varied directions... Fundamentalism, ideology, corporatism, “opportunistic profiteering” of every conceivable kind, not to mention commodification of supplies of food, and water, and healthcare... are destroying much more than “just peoples lives” on this planet, which has been accurately described as... “Spaceship Earth.”
When the revolt comes, whether from the left’s reality-based reaction to the insanity, and/or from the right’s manipulated paranoia, and/or from people simply “refusing” to starve and thirst for someone else’s profits - It will be ugly. Possibly more than just ugly. I seriously hope I am long gone from this mortal coil when it finally happens.
Redundant, I know... But reality is reality, even if it sucks.
The following is reprised, because not much has really changed as far as the ongoing denial of the insane “allowing” of the theft by the-very-few is concerned... I will continue to reprise this... as long as the 'citizens' of my nation continue to “allow the allowing.”
It, the insanity, of the “allowing,” is getting worse, in fact it is much worse already.
Go look at all of the MSM’s headlines, at their websites, then compare what you see there with the reality as rationally reported by reality based independent news sites.
If that simple comparison doesn’t open ones closed eyes of denial, nothing will.
To help you remain sane, and not too deeply depressed, you should end your “session of reality” by stopping in at some of the better editorial humorists’ websites - It couldn’t hurt.
That is my main personal method of doing research for this blog - Check in with the right and the right’s insane, then study as much of the reality-based news sites as possible, then check in with the humorists. I then sleep on it, do it again, and then post what I have learned, observed, or was stunned by, to first, share it, and second, to get it off my chest so that I can remain sane myself. All the while, trying my best to keep a reality-based perspective in these historically insane times.
posted by The Old Hippie @ 10:55 PM
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| Waging a War on Empathy -- We Can't Let Them Win |
posted by The Old Hippie @ 10:59 PM
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67, over-educated tree-hugging music-loving deadhead retired old-happy-hippie
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