Saturday, November 09, 2013
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Monday, September 03, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The American Taliban
A riveting take down of the GOP, delivered by Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy on HBO's "The Newsroom."
Why Politics Suck
© copyright 2004 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Rage Against the Machine
Congressman Paul Ryan claims that his favorite band is "Rage Against the Machine." Say what? He must not be listening to the lyrics. Here's what RATM guitarist Tom Morello had to say about this admission from Mr. Ryan:
"Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.
"Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage."
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Rick Scott's version of transparency
In the article by Toluse Olorunnipa, we learn that " Gov. Rick Scott said he was championing transparency in May when he gave the public access to his emails by posting them online for anyone to see. But what he failed to say at his May 3 news conference launching Project Sunburst was that the emails he made public were not the emails of his official state account. The emails the public read online were from a different account used almost exclusively by conservative supporters."
If this man is not summarily drubbed in his re-election bid in 2014, it will be my state's swan song.
Monday, July 30, 2012
If ever a governor needed impeachment, its Rick Scott
According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2003, "HCA Inc. (formerly known as Columbia/HCA and HCA - The Healthcare Company) has agreed to pay the United States $631 million in civil penalties and damages arising from false claims the government alleged it submitted to Medicare and other federal health programs, the Justice Department announced today." The DOJ entitled its press release on the settlement, "The Largest Healthcare Fraud in US History."
The DOJ news release also records additional HCA civil and criminal fraud in billing the government illegally for services:
Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, founded what became HCA and resigned as the false claims to Medicare and other federal health programs started coming to light as a result of whistleblowers (who later received a portion of the HCA settlement).
Scott is now refusing to cooperate with the Affordable Care Act, particularly in relation to Medicaid. He regularly denounces government healthcare programs, even though his for-profit healthcare firm made nearly $2 billion in profit from these same federal government payers -- fraudulently.
The governor of the Sunshine State -- if criminal justice were fair and not subject to granting the wealthy impunity -- would very possibly be serving a prison term instead of being ensconced in the Florida's governor's mansion.
Therefore, it is tragically ironic that, according to The Political Carnival, "Florida sends TB patients to $35-a-night motel," and that Rick Scott's state government is "accused of [the] covering up of the worst TB outbreak in 20 years."
Read more here.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Zombie Politics
"It is difficult to imagine that anyone looking at a society in which an ultra-rich financial elite and mega-corporations have the power to control almost every aspect of politics -- from who gets elected to how laws are enacted -- could possibly mistake this social order and system of government for a democracy."
-- Henry Giroux, "Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism" (2010)
Read the Truthout excerpt here.