Barack Obama continues to deceive– but will you still vote for him?

If you supported candidate Barack Obama for President back in 2008, you probably got an email like the one journalist Glenn Greenwald received. Provided one was willing to kick in a mere $5 to Obama's re-election campaign, one could potentially win one of four spots to sit down and have an intimate dinner with the president. Greenwald excerpted the email:

Most campaigns fill their dinner guest lists primarily with Washington lobbyists and special interests. We didn't get here doing that, and we're not going to start now. We're running a different kind of campaign. We don't take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs -- we never have, and we never will. We rely on everyday Americans giving whatever they can afford -- and I want to spend time with a few of you.
So, those words sound good, don't they? Promises about no lobbyists or special interest having a seat at the table are cheap. Three days before Greenwald published his post, the New York Times published an article titled "Obama seeks to win back Wall Street Cash". The article notes that Obama had more than two dozen Wall Street fat-cats over to the White House for a couple of hours to discuss whatever hot-button issues they wanted to discuss. Those who couldn't make the meeting received a personal follow-up call from the President. All part of the President's plan to get re-elected by pandering to Wall Street executives.

Continue ReadingBarack Obama continues to deceive– but will you still vote for him?

This is why it’s so difficult to get good people to run for political office

Help Wanted:

Now Hiring U.S. Senators and Representatives

We are in desperate need for honest and intelligent citizens of the United States to apply for the jobs of Senators and Representatives as specified in Article I of the United States Constitution. Job Duty: To do anything necessary to keep getting re-elected. Job Requirements: - You must be willing to raise $1,000,000 every two years ($10,000/week for a Representative) or $6,000,000 every six years (about $20,000/week for Senator). To raise one million dollars, you can either convince 10,000 citizens to give you $100 each or you can make secret promises to a few hundred large corporations. It’s your choice. - You must be willing to vote to pass 2,000-page hyper-technical and incoherent bills that were drafted by corporate lobbyists. - You must spend most of your time on the job secretly promising favors to large companies and asking them for money, while simultaneously denying to your constituents that you’ve made secret promises. - You must be willing to expose yourself, your family and your friends to the constant risk of being shot by incoherent disgruntled people. - You must be willing to find a way to avoid spending time with lower-class and middle-class Americans. - You must be willing to expose yourself to constant ridicule and false charges trumped up by the media to sell advertisements. Everything embarrassing you’ve ever done will appear in national publications, especially if it is irrelevant to the issues facing this country. - Once you start campaigning for the very first time, you must agree to stop talking candidly about anything. - You must support America’s war-machine or else you will be called a traitor and run out of office. - You must be willing to expose your family and your closest friends to massive invasions of their privacy. - You must pretend to explain and solve complex social issues using only 8-second sound bites. - You must be willing to expose yourself to scandalous and false Swift-Boating attacks. - Your door must always be open to lobbyists for banks, insurance companies and telecoms. - To win re-election, you must get down in the dirt and personally hurl false charges against your opponent, because the ends will justify the means. - You must constantly speak of our duty to our children while simultaneously crushing the next generation with federal debt, and providing the nation's children with terrible educations.

Continue ReadingThis is why it’s so difficult to get good people to run for political office

Welcome to the new Plutocracy!

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” -- Warren Buffett, currently the world's third richest person
Most Americans have the sense that something's wrong in our country, and most realize that it's intimately tied up with money and politics. Those who have not studied the issues deeply could be forgiven for thinking we have a foreclosure problem, or an unemployment problem, or a Democrat problem, or a Republican problem, or a problem with Congress as a whole, but the truth is more important than those symptomatic issues. The truth is that we are now living in a nakedly plutocratic state-- that is, a state which is run by, and for, the wealthy. Or perhaps a corporatocracy (a state run by, and for, corporations), but they are functionally the same thing.

Continue ReadingWelcome to the new Plutocracy!

Nader in Omaha

Tuesday afternoon, I was privileged to be able to attend a speech by Ralph Nader, followed by a question-and-answer session and a book-signing. He was promoting his new book, Only the Super-rich can save us! If you weren't aware that he has a new book out, you aren't alone. In fact, his presence in Omaha wasn't well-publicized. I managed to see this article in the local paper which alerted me to both the fact that he had a new book out, and that he was in Omaha. I was fortunate enough to be able to arrange for some time off work, and went to the 3:00 session at McFoster's Natural-Kind Cafe. Unfortunately, I completely forgot my role as a blogger and so I was woefully unprepared to take notes or photos. So rather than direct quotes, I'll discuss some of the main themes of his speech, as well as the question-and-answer session. Nader was scheduled to speak at 3:00 p.m., but didn't actually take the podium until about 3:15, largely due to the enthusiastic crowd gathered around him peppering him with questions and having their books signed. He spoke for about a half-hour, then took questions for roughly another hour. I estimated the crowd to number about 80, and it was standing-room only in the small upstairs room at McFoster's. His speech stuck pretty closely to the themes of the book, which asks us to re-imagine the last several years. The book begins with the disastrous fumbling of Hurricane Katrina, and a fictionalized Warren Buffet aghast at the apparent inability of a former first-world country to provide relief to its own citizens. Using his vast economic resources, he marshals the needed supplies and delivers them to a devastated New Orleans. The experience haunts him though, and he decides to convene a group of billionaires to solve some of the most pressing crises confronting American democracy. Using untold billions of their own, they are able to finally provide an effective foil against the big-money interests that would continue using the system to unjustly enrich themselves.

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How’s your water quality?

The debate over tap water vs. bottled water will probably go on for quite some time. Many people believe that by purchasing bottled water, they are consuming better quality water than that which comes from the tap. Others argue that the environmental impact of bottled water is massive, and that bottled water is no safer than tap water. A report earlier this year from the Government Accounting Office claims that because public water supplies are regulated by the Safe Water Drinking Act and those regulations are enforced by the EPA, they are therefore safer than bottled water, which is regulated by the FDA-- and we all know what a wonderful job the FDA has been doing. But a new investigative report by the New York Times calls this conclusion into question.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses. However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

Continue ReadingHow’s your water quality?