Noam Chomsky has a long history of close observation and deep insights in our national affairs. In the below interview he gave a spot-on analysis of Trump’s role in the current fire sale of our country to the robber billionaires, followed by an often overlooked insight into our nation’s corporate takeover that could make people smack their foreheads asking themselves how they never noticed this tell-tale connection. Much of our bought-and-paid-for government’s role in a global heist is laid bare here:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Special Interview: Noam Chomsky”)
Our collusion of government with private sector bullies has created a set of rules and laws that make it so that the majority of people cannot grow their own food or live on their own land since they have been deprived of any land ownership. If they wish to eat and take shelter from the elements, they then are forced to work (be slaves/serfs/peons) for the officially recognized owners of all the land, buildings, and the businesses that form the extensions of the land.
The officially recognized owners of EVERYTHING are those few whom the collusion has declared the owners. How is this moral, especially when you consider that the majority of the owner class inherit their “properties,” concentrating them in the hands of the owner class over the course of generations, and the few “owners” who gain their properties in life do so by walking over corpses, clawing up and kicking down, and pulling the ladders up behind them (causing Wall Street crashes and kicking people out of their homes, for example)? How is it moral that those types of all people, one group that never worked for anything, and another group who acted like bandits, get to “own” everything, be in charge of everything, live in opulence, and get to deny the rest of us our due?
Aren’t we capable of acting morally? I think we are. And that means, we are capable of exchanging an immoral system for a moral one.
The below forum coverage which inspired my words above is 54 minutes long. So, if you are interested in it, you may have to listen to it while you are commuting or postpone watching it until a night off or the weekend:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Building a Moral Economy: Elizabeth & Matt Bruenig at the Harvard Law Forum“)
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Something that Yanis Varoufakis proposed in a speech I previously shared on a Video Weekend got stuck in my mind, making me want to dedicate an entire article to it. An article I have announced and promised a view times. Today, I finally fulfill that promise to me and you.
Besides explaining the mechanisms of democracy’s decline, in his speech, Varoufakis also proposed an amazingly fair economic system, one that would end the division between an owner class (from which arise the robber billionaires who ruin this world for the rest of us) and a working class. In this model, we would all become owners. If you want to skip to this part of Varoufakis’ recorded speech, it stretches from 10:00–11:49 minutes:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Capitalism will eat democracy – unless we speak up | Yanis Varoufakis”)
Varoufakis lays out an ingenious alternative to – or variant of – capitalism, a kind of fairly shared capitalism or universal ownership society, a fairly shared assets society — a Star-Trek-like utopia instead of the Matrix-like dystopia where we are currently headed. It is an intriguing economic system where there is no more disparity between wage-based and asset-based income, a system where we all become asset holders and will no longer be ordered around by a few ownership lords who condemn us to live out our lives as their oppressed serfs and puppets. Continue reading “What if We Were Paid for Work in Assets rather than Ephemeral Wages?”→
Remember the report that,thanks to Equifax, we may all become victims of identity theft? The possibilities: credit card fraud, tax refund theft, ruined reputations and credit ratings replete with denied apartments, insurances, or jobs, and even worse: credit cards or bank accounts being set up in our names and the bill collectors coming for us over those false accounts, arrest warrants getting issued against us because of the crimes of others, arresting police shooting us in our beds… at least that’s what I can imagine coming at us. Here is an update interview:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Massachusetts First to Sue Equifax Over Massive Hack “)
It’s really sad to hear that the vulnerability is said to have been in an open-source software, since open-source is usually considered one of the best protections against hacking. But, of course, it won’t help when the quickly produced patches are not applied down the line, in this case by the staff of one of our three ruling credit bureaus. Continue reading “The Equifax Calamity – Possibly the Biggest Data Breach in History”→
No need, this weekend, to slump and sink into the corporate media’s dementing morass. Here are six enlightening videos about our man-made nightmare world and ways to fix it. And to finish on a high note, number seven is a recording of some simple, harmless fun for a change. I hope you won’t mind. It reminds me of younger, more innocent times in my life, or the kind of life we could live if we didn’t have to struggle for survival so much in a world where natural scarcity has been overcome and replaced with man-made poverty, exclusion, and despair.
I. A Living Minimum Wage
Quite possible. Simply a policy choice:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Australian McDonalds Workers Paid Like No Worker In America Ever Has”)
This video nicely echoes things I keep saying: Low-pay economic stress drives a lot of negative behavior. There are a lot of selfish reasons to want your fellow Americans to do well. You can do things for other people out of self interest.
Quote: “So many Americans have been bamboozled by the billionaires.”
II. Patronage instead of Democracy
The big business of raking in and skimming off political donations:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “DNC Having Trouble Fundraising—Nomiki Explains”)
III. Kick the Liars
An Example of Not Letting Lying Excuses Pass:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Campaign to Recall Californian Democrat that Blocked Single-Payer Underway”)
Let’s hope the recall works, and every other recall and ousting we must relentlessly attempt until we whittle the corrupt political establishment down.
IV. The GOP’s Christian Right
Ever wondered about the Christian Right which played such a big role in the GOP even as the GOP was hurting American workers, steamrollering over our Constitution, spreading war in the Middle East, abducting and torturing people, trying to dismantle Social Security and so on? Certain money barons in the GOP certainly partnered up with “Christian” leaders and took advantage of a unifying force which would let them betray the people to the corporations and billionaire class with impunity while their party base and voters were distracted over ancient Biblical bullying mandates and their modern resurrection, just like neoliberals in the “Democratic” Party were distracting us with minority protection issues (which, while valid, still distract us from the higher priorities — and which were going hand-in-hand with the GOP’s Christian Right trickery, by the way, like both parties were harmoniously working together for our robber billionaires — gee, were they?)? Well here is an interesting video talk about the other end of the equation:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Ex-Producer Reveals the truth about Pat Robertson”)
V. Grass Roots VS King Money
Ways for regular folks to deflate the iron rule of Money:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “D@W-LA: Nancy Berlin of Arroyo S.E.C.O.”)
VI. Manufacturing Terrorism: The Taliban
People rarely turn to extremism without reason or a little help:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Fact: Taliban Has Surrendered Multiple Times – US Rebuffed Them”)
VII. Some Harmless Fun to Finish With
Since I serve up so much depressing or exhausting news, how about a little, harmless snippet of fun to finish with for a change (and show us what a happy future world could look like):
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “The Funniest Table Tennis Match in HISTORY”)
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There is a meme-pic on mematic.net, picturing America’s 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, during whose term our corporate tax rate was the highest ever (90%!). It explains that tax rate quite logically as follows:
Corporate Tax Rate: 90%
Why? Because high corporate tax rates create incentive for big business to spend earnings and expand (i.e. new locations, new hires, new equipment, and product R&D) which are deducted from taxable earnings, thus driving reported wealth into a lower tax bracket. Better to spend a majority of earnings on expansion than to horde it and pay Uncle Sam 90% of it. It’s not Communism, it’s responsible economics.
Here is the most amazing speech exposing the root of and cure for all our man-made problems in politics and the economy. Inequality, crushing debt, money in politics, devastating decisions — all derive from this root cause and can be fixed as described. This is the education of a lifetime for you or any confused people you know. The video is a must-see for every responsible person. Therefore I will point to it repeatedly, so you don’t miss it:
Of all the politically relevant videos I have watched, this must be the best. If you don’t yet understand the root of all our problems, after this video you will, and you will have a powerful weapon in your arsenal to bring others into the light. This is the education of a lifetime. What better time than a bit of Sunday to invest one hour of your time to get the education of a lifetime?
In this video, Richard Wolff, whose information-packed eight minutes I shared with you yesterday, gives a clear and cogent critique of our awful current system and a clear cogent alternative. To summarize, currently, we leave the power of decision-making to a handful of self-serving people in the private sector who then throw us under the bus. The solution: make the economic system as democratic as we would like our political system to be. This will end the plutocracy and its constant gnawing on whatever democratic political institutions and justice-minded laws we erect.
What I have just described would be sufficient reason to mark this video as a must-see. But there is a lot more, too much to summarize briefly. You really are best off to watch the video (or listen to it) yourself:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Economist Richard Wolff speaks about capitalism, socialism & democracy, proposing a new way forward”)
An excellent article giving a quick insight into (one aspect of) the entirely parasitic modern form of financialized and casino capitalism that’s all about playing the markets and our vile banksters leeching off of working people and productive companies until life becomes so expensive we can’t afford it anymore.
In this article, you will also become a bit more familiar with Trump’s good friend, Goldman Sachs (from which so many of his appointees come).
Finally, an honestly speaking capitalist tells it like it is: CEOs and business owners only hire people when the demand for their goods or services rises to make hiring more staff necessary. And from whom comes the demand? From you and me, when (or if!) we can afford to buy. And for this we need a fair economy with fair pay, fair taxes, and good income security.Continue reading “The True Job Creators Are Not Who You May Think”→
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