Bangladeshi Garment Fire: Downstream Effect of a WalMart Economy?
One of the things hot on the nets yesterday was Peter Suderman’s pushback against the anti-WalMart action that has been progressing over the last week, culminating in organized protests at numerous...
View ArticleHigh Profile Republican Firm, Cerberus, to Sell Freedom
It has come to this. Cerberus–the private equity firm full of well-connected Republicans like John Snow and Dan Quayle–has decided it can no longer continue to invest in Freedom Group, the maker of the...
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Future Forecast: Roundup of Scattered Probabilities
[The Crystal Ball by John William Waterhouse, c. 1902]While thinking about forecasting the future, I collected a few short-term predictions for the year ahead worth kicking around a bit. After gazing...
View ArticleTime to Fund Fat Al Gore Relief Like We Should Have Funded Iraq, Afghan Wars
Peter King, House Republican, called today for New Yorkers to stop funding House Republicans because they refused to pass a Sandy relief bill last night. “These Republicans have no problem finding New...
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The Constitutional Argument Against the Platinum Coin Stunt
They came for the 4th Amendment, but it was necessary for the war on drugs. They came for the 5th Amendment, but due process had to be sacrificed for the war on terror. They came for the 6th Amendment,...
View ArticleWeeping For the Scarecrow
As you may have heard by now, friend of this blog, and our friend at Firedoglake, John Chandley, aka “Scarecrow”, has died. Let the record reflect that I am freaking tired of being on the memorial...
View ArticleDHS: Happy to Spend $$ To Keep People Out, But Not Illicit Trade
A few weeks ago, a nonpartisan group revealed that the Federal government spends more on immigration enforcement than all other law enforcement combined. Altogether it spends $18 billion a year–most of...
View ArticleSherrod Brown and Chuck Grassley Watch Frontline, Too
Citing this line from Lanny Breuer in last week’s Frontline program, I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should speak to regulators, should speak to experts, because if I...
View ArticleLanny Breuer Now Blames 94 US Attorneys for Immunizing Banksters
Remarkably, on the same day two Senators (one of them named in the article) reminded Eric Holder that Lanny Breuer said this, I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should...
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What if China Not Just Hacked — But Sabotaged — the F-35?
Over the last week, two perennial stories have again dominated the news. China continues to be able to hack us — including top DC power players — at will. And the F-35 has suffered another setback,...
View ArticleShorter Rick Snyder: Black People Can Be Customers, Not Citizens
As Rick Snyder was announcing the takeover of Detroit’s government, paving the way for an Emergency Manager for the city, his staff tweeted out this: “Citizens of #Detroit are the customers of the...
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Detroit’s Emergency and Its Institute of the Arts
Last week, Rick Snyder announced he’d disenfranchise the 700,000 mostly African American residents of Detroit in a bid to solve the city’s seemingly intractable financial problems. The Emergency...
View ArticleThe Dictator Taking on Detroit’s So-Called Deadbeats Is One Himself
In the weeks before Rick Snyder disenfranchised the city of Detroit, the Detroit News suggested the problem was the city was a bunch of deadbeats. Nearly half of the owners of Detroit’s 305,000...
View ArticleMexican Cartels: The Counter-Globalized Network?
Monday AP published a fascinating article reporting that Mexican drug cartels are altering an earlier organizational approach — which outsourced the distribution of drugs to and within the US to...
View ArticleFast Food Workers: Reclaiming MLK’s Legacy by Striking
I had realized NYC’s fast food workers were striking today, in what may end up being the biggest fast food worker strike. And I always mark the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination,...
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The Internet Didn’t Kill the Middle Class; Laxity and Apathy Did
In tandem with the release of his book, Who Owns the Future?, Jaron Lanier’s interview with Salon generated a lot of hand-wringing across social media. It seems Lanier, one of our so-called...
View ArticleNeoliberalism: A Failsafe Bulwark against Terrorism
When I heard this line from Obama’s counterterrorism speech last week, We are actively working to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians — because it is right and because such a peace could...
View ArticleVirginia Doesn’t Want Detroit to Get Convention Dollars
About 14 months ago, I was at Netroots Nation in Providence, RI. RI has, like MI, been really battered by the Great Recession. Nevertheless, we had just seen Providence’s glorious WaterFire...
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The Black Budget
The Washington Post just published an excellent package on the FY2013 Black Budget for intelligence. I’m reading through the summary now. I’ll put working comments below. But one of my first...
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James Clapper’s Financial War on the World
I’m fundraising this week. Please support me if you can. Yesterday, TV Globo published details of NSA spying on Brazil’s oil company, Petrobras, SWIFT, and financial organizations. Besides revealing...
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