Third World and when do you qualify?

Several things characterize countries of the Third World, whatever precisely “Third World” means. The first is corruption. America is rotten with it, but American corruption is distinct from corruption in, say, Guatemala or Thailand, being less visible and better organized. In most of the Third World, corruption exists from top to bottom. Everyone and everything […]

Your Tweets and Emails in the Library of Congress

Tweets, emails and other electronic communications can be considered “government documents” and must be preserved. The National Archives handles official government materials, while the Library of Congress’ mandate is to deal with anything that may have long-term historical interest. But how much digital information are we talking about? How about all of the tweets from […]

The Lessons of the Super Committee: Corruption rules dysfunctional Government

It would not be difficult for the so-called “Super Committee” to achieve the requirement of at least $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade. … But, in many ways, the super committee is “occupied” by corporate interests and cannot act for the people. The make-up of the committee and the tens of millions of […]

US becoming like old Europe style class based society?

To quote Time Magazine, long a tribune of America’s establishment media, we now have “government for the few at the expense of the many.” But let me call another witness from the pro-business and capitalist-friendly press. In the middle of the last decade – four years before the Great Collapse of 2008 – the editors […]

How the US government secretly reads your email

Somewhere, a US government official is reading through a list of those who sent or received an email from Jacob Appelbaum, a 28-year-old computer science researcher at the University of Washington who volunteered for WikiLeaks. Appelbaum is a spokesman for Tor, a free internet anonymising software that helps people defend themselves against internet surveillance. He’s […]

Ron Paul invokes and applies the Bible

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul says he would rather look to God – “the original king” and creator – than to the government as a model for moral values. Citing from the Old Testament book of Samuel, Paul said problems had arisen from an over-reliance on government leaders. “We have too often relied on […]

The US Government Spying on Americans

Two American senators with access to top-secret intelligence raised the alarm in May, suggesting that the invasion of law-abiding Americans’ privacy was being carried out clandestinely – and that people would be shocked if they knew the extent. “I want to deliver a warning this afternoon,” Senator Ron Wyden said on May 26 during a […]

Federal Reserve Audit Reveals Trillions in Secret Bailouts

The first-ever audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency’s opaque operations. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else,” U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, said in […]

Why unemployment and job figures vary depending on Government statistics

Mark Twain once said, “There are lies, damn lies and statistics.” Government statistics seems to fall somewhere between the last two. Why? Partly because of the statistics we focus on. When the unemployment rate comes out, we always focus on U3: the proportion of the civilian labor force that is unemployed but actively seeking a […]

Why has the US Government made a total mess of a solvable economic problem?

Does anyone really know what we have experienced on the global economic scene? Even Nobel Prize winner and economist Paul Krugman writes, “I’m still trying to make sense of this global intellectual failure.” Policy makers almost everywhere have failed dismally, and seem determined not to take on board the lessons of experience, either historical or […]