America’s homeland is repressively militarized and unsafe. Habeas rights, judicial fairness and other constitutional protections are ignored. Lawlessness prevails. Everyone is vulnerable. Freedom is at risk. Police state repression is deepening. Knowing the dangers is a wake-up call for action. Latino immigrants, people of color, Muslims, and anyone called a threat to national security are most vulnerable.
By Ralph E. Stone April 24, 2010 My wife and I just returned from a visit to New Orleans. While there, we toured some of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005,…
The lie is that if the maximum freedom and, thus, maximum benefits are given to the super-rich elites, ultimately everyone will win because the super-rich will create companies and create jobs and buy things and that will benefit the rest of us. It’s been called various things over various times — Reaganomics, trickle down economics, free market capitalism. But mostly it’s just been called bullshit.
After 30 years of Reaganist tax cuts and assaults on the public sector, there is no dispute that public infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate due to lack of maintenance and investment. From interstate highway bridge collapses to crumbling prisons and deteriorating or non-existent public transit systems, the boomer generation took the gifts bestowed upon them by their industrious parents (who defeated Hitler in 4 ½ years), returned home to pay a 70 percent marginal income tax rate, and then squandered the gains in a bonfire of narcissism and selfishness.
The week before the convention it was cleared for security by the US Capitol Police, whose mission it is to “protect and support the Congress in meeting its Constitutional responsibilities.” This statue – rented and installed there by the Republican conventioneers – is two stories tall and sat right inside the front door and immediately to the right of a large bank of metal detectors. “Give me your revelers,” it says around its base.
The Belgiums favored the Tutsis, giving them the important positions. Predictably, this caused much resentment among the Hutus and the seeds of hate were sown.
In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, “capitalist democracies.” In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.
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