Secrets of the 1%: FDR’s Attempt to Reform the 1%’s Wall Street
Looking at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal economic reforms to see if a new New Deal has any merit.
Month: December 2011
USDA Works to Speed Approval of Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered Crops
For years, biotech agriculture opponents have accused regulators of working too closely with big biotech firms when deregulating genetically engineered (GE) crops. Now, their worst fears could be coming true.
Naomi Klein: Capitalism vs. the Climate
Source: The Nation
There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row.
He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland’s Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually “an attack on middle-class American capitalism.” His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: “To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?”
Occupy Activists Try to Shut Down West Coast Ports
Around the country, Occupy activists moved to block ports, halting shipping and making their power felt among the 1%.
On Monday morning, about 500 activists with Occupy Oakland braved a predawn chill to blockade the Port of Oakland, the fifth busiest container port in the United States. The protesters broke up into 3 which which blocked the entrances to several shipyards in the sprawling complex, leaving dozens of trucks idling in line. Police eventually moved in to force open the gates; Oakland Police interim Chief Howard Jordan said that two occupiers were arrested.
The 1% Election: Their Bread, Our Circus
Source: Tom Dispatch
Sometimes words outlive their usefulness. Sometimes the gap between changing reality and the names we’ve given it grows so wide that they empty of all meaning or retain older meanings that only confuse us. “Election,” “presidential election campaign,” and “democracy” all seem like obvious candidates for name-change.
I thought about this recently as President Obama hustled around my hometown, snarling New York traffic in the name of Campaign 2012. He was, it turned out, “hosting” three back-to-back fundraising events: one at the tony Gotham Bar and Grill for 45 supporters at $35,800 a head (the menu: roasted beet salad, steak and onion rings, with apple strudel, chocolate pecan pie, and cinnamon ice cream — a meal meant to “shine a little light” on American farms); one for 30 Jewish supporters at the home of Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress, for at least $10,000 a pop; and one at the Sheraton Hotel, evidently for the plebes of the contribution world, that cost a mere $1,000 a head. (Maybe the menu there was rubber chicken.)
Vermont Event – Greg Palast: Why We Occupy: How Wall Street Picks the Bones of America
Greg Palast, the BBC investigative reporter who busted open the theft of the election in Florida, is back with a new book, Vultures' Picnic. He will be speaking in Burlington, Vermont on December 12, 2011.