No Company Should Be Too Big to Fail

According to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the biggest Wall Street banks now getting money from the government are just "too big to fail." Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke uses a different euphemism: he calls them "systemically critical." The point is that if any of them goes down, it could take the whole financial system with it. So we taxpayers have to keep them up.

Rewrite Bailout Rules on CEO Pay

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has executed two fairly slick about-faces since Congress passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout two weeks ago.

The first makes eminent sense. The second should outrage you.

Let's start with Paulson's positive turn. His original bailout plan would have had the Treasury rush to spend billions buying up toxic mortgage-backed securities. His new plan instead will spend the bailout's first $250 billion buying up part-ownership in America's biggest banks.

Corporate Curriculum: Teaching the 'Science of Death'

For more than a decade, writing for numerous newspapers, magazines and websites, I have attempted to cast a light on "industrial strength" science curriculum: "that curriculum of the corporation, by the corporation and for a corporation's profits...shall indeed hasten the rate of destruction of the earth's resources and indeed, people may perish from the earth." I have been an utter failure at convincing many in the environmental community of the importance of reaching out to these 55 million students as future voting citizens that must be ecologically literate and that

Closing the Courthouse Door

"Real change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. The genius of the American system has been to let that change flow upward, from neighborhoods to cities to states and then to the federal government." George W. Bush February 26, 2001.

Posted in Corporatism, Politics

Dennis Kucinich on the Democrats’ Bailout Betrayal

The passing of the $850-billion bailout pulled the plug on the New Deal. The Great Society is now gasping for air, mortally wounded, coughing up blood. It will not recover. It was murdered by the Democratic Party.

From Empire to Democracy

This current financial crisis is a major way-station on the way to the collapse of the American empire. The first important sign was 9/11, with the most heavily-armed nation in the world shown to be vulnerable to a handful of hijackers.