Ain't Free Market

Truth? Only compromised deals where everyone is equally at fault.... or some similar bullshit.

Daily Kos: Some Things Are True

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Indeed, why.

The coming economic catastrophe: Why do we still listen to free-market ideologues? - By Joseph E. Stiglitz - Slate Magazine

Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology—the belief in free and unfettered markets—brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its heyday, from the early 1980s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest of the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology's 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate.

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Joy.

Murdoch and the British phone-hacking scandal: Why the U.S. should prosecute News Corp. and strip its TV licenses if it's guilty. - By Eliot Spitzer - Slate Magazine

Much more importantly, the facts already pretty well established in Britain indicate violations of American law, in particular a law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Justice Department has been going out of its way to undertake FCPA prosecutions and investigations in recent years, and the News Corp. case presents a pretty simple test for Attorney General Eric Holder: If the department fails to open an immediate investigation into News Corp.'s violations of the FCPA, there will have been a major breach of enforcement at Justice. Having failed to pursue Wall Street with any apparent vigor, this is an opportunity for the Justice Department to show it can flex its muscles at the right moment. While one must always be cautious in seeking government investigation of the media for the obvious First Amendment concerns, this is not actually an investigation of the media, but an investigation of criminal acts undertaken by those masquerading as members of the media.

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A Growing Trend of Leaving America - US News and World Report

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Landmark transplant uses stemcell-coated artificial windpipe | The Raw Story

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Death of the Middle Class

I feel like-wise.

Daily Kos: The Words I Never Thought I'd Write Here (UPDATED):

"What I do know is that it has all added up. Not prosecuting torture. Not protecting privacy rights. Trading away any negotiating room on health care by refusing to acknowledge single-payer. Less-than-fierce advocacy for LGBT rights. Demonizing the left. Drill baby drill.

All of those things tarnished the dream. Those things, and many others.

But there were two things that finally did it in for me. Two small things, really, compared to the big picture and compared to some of the core issues listed above.

One, understandably, was education. Understandably, because I am a teacher. My horror at the Obama education policy has only been growing stronger since the beginning of this adminstration. Recent articles and comments have pushed me to the tipping point on that issue.

But the final straw, the one that broke the camel's back, was his response to the Simpson outrage, in combination with his own remarks in the weekly address. What I realized in reading about this issue and about Obama's history is that in the guise of 'saving Social Security,' protecting us against it being dismantled, he is going to allow a reduction in SS benefits, in service to the ideal of 'cutting the deficit.' Maybe I'm reading the signs wrong, but I doubt it."

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Nothing 'free' about the 'free market'.

I doubt theirs a Neo to save us, though.

Free market has turned us into 'Matrix' drones - Business News, Business - The Independent:

"A leading economist has likened the nation's acceptance of free-market capitalism to that of the brainwashed characters in the film The Matrix, unwitting pawns in a fake reality. In a controversial new book, the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang debunks received wisdom on everything from the importance of the internet to the idea that people in the United States enjoy the highest standard of living in the world; an iconoclastic attitude that has won him fans such as Bob Geldof and Noam Chomsky."

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We don't do 'accountable' and it will be our down-fall.

'Inside Job' A Must See Film for Every American:

"The Economy Won’t Recover Until We Prosecute

So there was a little fraud, no big deal, right? Wouldn’t looking backwards at fraudulent conduct be distracting for the people, the government, and the economy? Shouldn’t we look forward so we can recover? No. Specifically, the Wharton School of Business has written an essay stating that restoring trust is the key to recovery, and that trust cannot be restored until wrongdoers are held accountable. The Wharton paper states:

The public will need to 'hold the perpetrators of the economic disaster responsible and take what actions they can to prevent them from harming the economy again.' In addition, the public will have to see proof that government and business leaders can behave responsibly before they will trust them again. For more on the importance of trust in the economy, see this. The stakes are high. As Pam Martens, who worked on Wall Street for 21 years, writes:"

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What Tiabbi says... pretty much always.

Wall Street's Big Win | Rolling Stone Politics:

"But Dodd-Frank was neither an FDR-style, paradigm-shifting reform, nor a historic assault on free enterprise. What it was, ultimately, was a cop-out, a Band-Aid on a severed artery. If it marks the end of anything at all, it represents the end of the best opportunity we had to do something real about the criminal hijacking of America's financial-services industry. During the yearlong legislative battle that forged this bill, Congress took a long, hard look at the shape of the modern American economy – and then decided that it didn't have the stones to wipe out our country's one �dependably thriving profit center: theft."

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Arianna Huffington: Memo to America's Middle Class: Obama Is Just Not That Into You:

"Those in the 'disappointed' camp maintain that Obama presented himself one way to gain their support during the campaign and then, once he had it, ended up governing another way, turning his energies to winning over Republicans instead of changing the game in Washington. As Paul Krugman puts it, 'Why does the Obama administration keep looking for love in all the wrong places? Why does it go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?'"

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Capitalism, not 'job-ism'.

Wash Post business writer hits on the biggest problem in American economy:

"It is only in the world of Chamber of Commerce propaganda that businesses exist to create jobs. In the real world, businesses exist to create profits for shareholders, not jobs for workers. That's why they call it capitalism, not job-ism. There's no reason to beat up on business owners and executives simply because they're doing what the system encourages them to do."

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Death of the Middle Class:

And then he kicked the chair out from underneath his feet.:

"For all the faceless statistics we read every day - I wanted to add a face. A man who loved his sons. A man who got up and went to work everyday. A man society kicked to the curb. And, in turn, a man who felt his best option was to kick the chair out from underneath his feet."

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The Importance of Being Bagger

Uhhh, not really. Barely English.

I guess Alabama Republicans are getting a little jealous that they've been out-crazied of late.

No worries. Their bag of bigoted tricks is quite large.

The Rachel Maddow Show - 'This is Alabama. We speak English'

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Wow. To admit it... and it is 'has' not 'had'.

Again... Wow.

Michael Steele Acknowledges GOP Had “Southern Strategy” For Decades | The Plum Line:

"But I think folks are missing the real news in what Steele said. The RNC chairman also appeared to acknowledge that the GOP has had a race-based “southern strategy” for four decades, which is decidedly not a historical interpretation many Republicans agree with."

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Yeah, how's that free market working for ya?

In Coal Country, a Culture of Fear � The Washington Independent:

“They told my husband, ‘You’ve got a job to do and you’re gonna do it,’” said the wife of one Massey miner, referring to the funerals he’s missed this month for friends who died in the blast. “What else are we gonna do?”"

Where's the competition. How can a worker tell Massey to go frack himself and then take his/her talents to the competition?

Virginia, where coal is the only real industry, and Massey is king of the hill. Indeed, in certain areas there’s simply no queen.

“The bad thing here is that Massey owns [the Upper Big Branch] mine, and they’ve got a lot of subsidiaries — little tiny outfits just all down the river,” said Denny Tyler, an electrician who has contracted with Massey and now runs a website advocating for the end to mountaintop removal. “If you get fired from one, you’re not working anywhere on Coal River. … Its a fear thing

Evil. The lot of them.

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Special place in hell for insurance executives.

Exclusive: WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients | Reuters

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I guess the 'news media' is getting tired of playing with the tea bags.

The tea party's exaggerated importance - Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith - POLITICO.com

There were 15,000 people at a cannabis and hemp expo in SF last week, but Hannity didn't host that one though it was 3 times as large as any bagger cross burning.

Hell, a dog poop protest in SF draws more participants.

Rendell: Media blow Tea Parties out of proportion | Raw Story:

"'We had two recent Tea Party demonstrations in Washington. One a week before the health care vote, drew about 1,000 people. The tax day rally by the organizers' own estimate was 1,500 people,' explained the governor.

'If I organized a rally for stronger laws to protect puppies, I would get 100,000 people to Washington. So, I think the media has blown the Tea Party themselves out of proportion,' said Rendell."

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Salt be killing us.

FDA plans to limit amount of salt allowed in processed foods for health reasons:

"The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products."

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Touche. Keep pluckin', though.

Chicago's DJ Intel And Blogger Girlfriend Make Vegetarian Version Of KFC's 'Double-Down

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After the attack, dude surfed for another 45 minutes.

Surfer rides shark after it bites his surfboard

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