Making Some Sense of $700b

How much is 700 billion? The mind registers the number with such imprecision as to make it meaningless. One blogger proposed this way of grasping the figure: As a stack of $100 bills, it would reach 54 miles high. But who can imagine that? On the other hand, someone at the Smithsonian once calculated that counting to one billion, at the rate of one digit per second, would take 30 years. By that scale, counting to 700 billion would take 21,000 years.

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.

The Communist Manifesto Turns 160

This year marks the 160th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto and capitalism--a k a "free enterprise"--seems willing to observe the occasion by dropping dead. On Monday night, some pundits were warning that the ATMs might run dry and hinting that the only safe investment left is canned beans. Apocalypse or extortion? No one seems to know, though the populist part of the populace has been leaning toward the latter.

Trickle Down Has Finally Trickled Up

So, for those of us old enough to remember thinking that Ronald Reagan's "trickle down" economics seemed like a polite way to tell the middle class we were about to be pissed on in a big way, the current economic crisis comes as no surprise. What once trickled down has finally trickled back up, and now it seems working Americans will pay for the folly with our life savings, our homes and our hopes of leaving this a better nation than we found it.

Phoney Wars and Real Ones

There's an awful lot of joking, jiving and just plain goof in this election. Sarah Palin alone has attracted an avalanche of spoof... Campaign ads on both sides are so over-the-top as to induce disbelief.

Saying ‘No Deal’ to This New Deal

The marriage of American capitalism and democracy has always been a Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee affair-stormy and erratic since its hasty wedding. But during the debate over a Wall Street bailout this week, we watched that matrimonial knot unwind into a tangled tale of terror.

As a financial crisis became a political panic, capitalism murdered democracy (ironically, while pursuing a vaguely socialist bailout). Only, unlike a typical horror story, the dead body wasn't hidden, it was dumped in the nation's public square.