Most Americans have no idea how perilous the times we live in have become. They know the economy is in bad shape. They know the yearly deficits are significant. Americans are war-weary even though they have been largely shielded from the consequences of a decade of constant war and broken promises. The more perceptive critics […]
Category Archives: Opinion
Crime Problem? Call Blackwater Writes Philly Columnist
A retired municipal court judge recently suggested the city consider using national guard troops to patrol the streets of Philadelphia. The judge is running for a US congressional seat in the city’s first district. The criticisms of his ill thought out plan were swift enough. Victor Fiorillo, writing in The Philly Post says: “Deploying any branch of […]
Washington Must Act Against Foxconn
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I never quite understood what he meant by that, but I think I’m beginning to. The conditions at the Foxconn factories in China have been written about quite extensively in the New York Times and I think it’s at least worth […]
MLK Speaks From Beyond the Grave
Rather than writing a diatribe about Martin Luther King Jr.’s importance today, I’ve decided to simply let him speak for himself, something rarely done in the mainstream press, despite their otherwise endless adulation. That’s the way it is with heroes. Societies rarely ever abandon them completely, but they ignore the inconvenient messages they deliver. There […]
NDAA Now Law, President Issues Signing Statment
Yesterday, the President signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, a law that allows the president and the military to detain American citizens indefinitely without trial and allows them to transfer custody to “foreign entities” if they are accused of “substantially” providing aid to al Queda or “associated groups.” The signature was accompanied by […]
Christopher Nolan’s Batman as Social Criticism (Part 1)
Good art, real art that is, always reflects some greater reality about the times we live in. False art or corporate art seeks rather to distract from reality in an effort to get us to buy and consume more and more, never questioning how fragile the whole system is. We think the next Batman movie […]
The Unsustainability of Nearly Everything
Many of us on the internet have written about how growth is dead and that the GDP growth we are now experiencing (minor as it is) is due to massive deficit spending at a rate of about $1.6 trillion per year. Once you sit down and do the math, the unsustainability of almost our entire […]
On Indefinite Detention Without Trial
When I was a student in middle and high school, we would occasionally talk about the loss of civil liberties in tyrannical countries. It was explained to us that these dictatorships or countries headed in that direction would deny their citizens free speech, a fair trial and other basic rights. This happened in all sorts […]
Exponential Debt Expansion Explained
Chris Martenson is one of the market analysts we follow pretty regularly. He does good interviews and podcast every once in a while. He’s not quite as sensational as some of our favored economist and tends to be very measured and careful with his endorsement of ideas. Overall, we think he’s fairly accurate. Here Martenson […]
Judge Stands Up For the People and Everyone Complains
Judge Jed Rakoff is probably one of the few honest judges we have left. He recently refused to accept an SEC settlement with Citigroup in which they sold mortgages and then bet against them, saying that the $95 million they were asked to pay was “pocket change” and required no admission of guilt. “If the […]