Koch Brother Buys the Right to Interfere in Faculty Hiring at Florida State University

Kris Hundley, The St. Petersburg Times: "A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university. A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting 'political economy and free enterprise.'"

The Kochs already have our legislature and our governor. Might as well colonize the ivory tower. These guys must be stopped.

The Path to Prosperity?

Beware of right wing Republicans bearing platitudes.

When smug plutocrats like Paul Ryan unveil budget proposals with names like 'The Path to Prosperity," that sucking sound you hear is the hoovering of the spare change in your pocket. No, this is "The Path to Poverty, " unless of course you number yourself among the top 1% of the population in this country of ours, the ones who own just about everything, including a large proportion of our representatives and senators. Who would've thought after 8 years of Bush, under our first African-American president, a democrat propelled into office by a tsunami of political will, we would find our future held ransom to the greatest transfer of wealth in the nation's history? No, I can never forgive Barack Obama for squandering his political capitol, but perhaps it is just as Eric Alterman says in Kabuki Democracy:

"Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us. Sure, presidents can pretty easily pass tax cuts for the wealthy and powerful corporations. They can start whatever wars they wish and wiretap whomever they want without warrants. They can order the torture of terrorist suspects, lie about it and see that their intelligence services destroy the evidence. But what they cannot do, even with supermajorities in both houses of Congress behind them, is pass the kind of transformative progressive legislation that Barack Obama promised in his 2008 presidential campaign."

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, cut from the same mold as Florida's boy senator Marco Rubio, unveils the budgetary trail to the America that House Majority WHIP Eric "The Smirk" Cantor spoke about in a speech Cantor gave at the end of March at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, in which he said Social Security "cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be."

And what might that be, boys and girls? In a 2005 report to investors, three analysts at Citigroup declared that “the World is dividing into two blocs—the Plutonomy and the rest”:

In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.

In her recent Atlantic article, Chrystia Freeland writes "What is more relevant to our times, though, is that the rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition—and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didn’t succeed so spectacularly. Perhaps most noteworthy, they are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today’s super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves."

Sound good to you?

And its been one long blow job ever since ...

A tip of the Mirsky hat to Paul Krassner's Realist Archive.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

In the current issue of Vanity Fair, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz writes, in an article entitled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," how the top thin layer of the super rich control 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: "Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income - an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

A working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see
-- John Lennon

Huckabee: Americans should be forced, at gunpoint, to learn from Christian historical revisionist David Barton

From B. E. Wilson:

David Barton is the leading promoter of a brand of falsified American history altered to support the claim that America was founded as a Christian, rather than a secular, nation. As Chris Rodda, who has authored an entire book debunking Barton’s brand of pseudo-history, writes,

I was quite surprised… to come across a video clip from this conference on the People for the American Way (PFAW) Right Wing Watch blog with the headline “Huckabee: Americans Should Be Forced, At Gunpoint, To Learn From David Barton.” I had watched Huckabee’s speech. How on earth could I have missed a statement like that? Well, I didn’t. It had been edited out of the webcast that I had watched.

Kyle Mantyla over at PFAW’s Right Wing Watch had recorded Huckabee’s speech when it was streamed live on Thursday, and posted the ‘forced at gunpoint’ clip on Friday. By Saturday, when I watched the webcast on the United in Purpose website, that part of Huckabee’s speech had been edited out.

The webcast that I saw showed Barton leaving the stage as he ended his presentation, then the screen going black for a moment, and then what appeared to be the beginning of Huckabee’s speech. What was edited out was Barton returning to the stage to introduce Huckabee, and the first two minutes and forty-five seconds of Huckabee’s speech, during which Huckabee made his ‘gunpoint’ comment and praised David Lane, the man behind all of the American “Renewal” and “Restoration” projects that have popped up across the country during the past few elections.

Re-inventing America Addendum: Michael Ruppert talks about Peak Oil and the collapse of industrial society

Michael Craig Ruppert is an interesting man. He transformed from a LAPD narcotics officer to whistle-blower to social activist, and, in the process, has suffered health problems and poverty. Ruppert famously revealed the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking during the Reagan administration, and confronted CIA director John Mark Deutch in 1996 at a televised meeting in Los Angeles. His involvement with the so-called 9-11 truth movement cost him some respectability in the progressive community. From 1996-2006 Ruppert published the blog/newsletter From The Wilderness, which can still be accessed, though it is no longer active. His current activities are chronicled on the From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog.

Ruppert is the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, published in September 2004, and Confronting Collapse, published in 2009.

The documentary film, Collapse, released in 2009, chronciles Ruppert's history and his transformation into one of the founders (or at least the patron saint) of the Lifeboat movement, which seeks to develop a sane, sound, and sustainable network of communities prepared to endure what they say is the coming cataclysmic collapse of industrial society. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars.

Michael Ruppert has paid a substantial price for his steadfast activism, and whether one agrees with him on every point or not, we turn a deaf ear at our own peril. I view Michael and the late Chalmers Johnson as prophets of a dire future that we seem to be hurtling towards.

Mike Ruppert has an unblemished track record for saying things that are incendiary, outrageous, shocking—and true. Our new president needs desperately to hear the uncomfortable message of this book about energy and the economy, and so do the rest of us.

—Richard Heinberg, PhD, author of The Party's Over, Peak Everything, The Oil Depletion Protocol and senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute

The following eight videos are of a talk Ruppert gave in Vermont in 2010.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6



Part 7



Part 8

Shine

Daryl Hall & Todd Rundgren reunite for the 40th edition of Live from Daryl’s House, this time live from Todd’s house in Hawaii.

Re-inventing America, Part 1

I was originally going to title this post "Restoring America." But I realized that restoration is not really what fundamental change for USA is about. The America that I would like to see gestated then birthed is one that has probably never really existed before, except in (mostly) short-lived outposts in isolated corners of the nation. My inspirations are many, but chief among them would be David Korten, at least insofar as a sound economic future, followed soon after by Van Jones. But in fact the constellation of my inspiration is as diffuse as the seeds of real change (versus change inspired by fear, i.e., right wing, reactionary change, which is not really change at all). Before I list what I consider to simple, foolproof changes that I believe would fundamentally begin to alter the landscape of the socio-economic-political landscape of the USA, I'd like to briefly summarize what I think constitutes our present dilemma.

Where we are:

• Contrary to popular believe, we are not a true democracy. The U.S. is mostly a corporatocracy, wherein huge corporate interests, often multi-national in nature, exercise enormous control over the direction of public policy, media reportage, tax policy, and taxpayer expenditure.
• We are supposedly a "free market" economy. This is one of the greatest myths perpetuated by our politicians (who are, in the main, vassals of the aforementiond corporate interests). What we really have in the USA is a system of corporate socialism, succinctly summarized in the words of author Thomas Frank: "socialize the risks, privatize the profits."
• A sizable portion of the American population have passively surrendered any sense of investment in the future of our nation to elected officials who by-and-large have little interest in true populist causes. No matter how much their actual economic and political power erodes, many Americans persist in the mantra of American exceptionalism and the belief that their quality of life is still second to none anywhere else on the planet. It is this disconnect that that led the late Howard Zinn to call America "the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority."
• In concert with the preceding, is the growing contempt of the American people for intellectualism. Intelligence (and that word has a broad embrace of of many gifts, not necessarily connected to academic credentials) is increasingly viewed with suspicion, if not openly mocked, chiefly by faux populists such as Sarah Palin, but even in our media. My favorite example of this is the popular TV show "The Big Bang," in which brilliant scientists are portrayed as lovable but hapless nerds and geeks with little pragmatic competence. In the popular media, true cultural intellectuals have been replaced for the most part by pundits, whether of the left, or the far more omnipresent right.
  
• The fading status of reason and intellectual depth in our country is personified by two striking disconnects in comparison to the rest of the developed world: 1) our rejection of evolution as the driving force of life's diversity (only 1 in 4 unconditionally accept evolution as true according to a Gallup Poll), and 2) our stubborn refusal to accept anthropogenic climate change as a reality (about 40% at last count, and rising).
• Also conjoined with our fading intellectual capabilities is the continued downward spiral in our children's performance in science and math against a worldwide standard.
  
• Somewhere around 2005, the U.S. became a net food importer (despite the widely tauted efficiencies of food production increasingly managed at an industrial scale). I would hazard a bet that most citizens don't know this (or care), as they are quite pleased to purchase asparagus and apples year round at the local supermarket. However, a nation that is no longer producing the majority of its own food supply faces enormous risks of food insecurity in the future.
• Empire feeds the corporate state. With 700+ military bases around the world, despite the collapse of our proverbial bogey-state, the Soviet Union, the corporate state is thus poised to respond to any threat to its interests (mostly the continued flow of oil and other resources). At the late Chalmers Johnson wrote: "As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order." While the vast military apparatus safeguards global corporate interests, it also spawns an entire growth industry of military contractors, to provide goods and services to military personnel, as well as the manufacturing of military aircraft, ships, vehicles and, of course, weapons, many of these latter making their way into the black market side of arms dealing, and thus often end up being used against our own forces. The corrupting influence of this cycle is never so apparent as in the hiring of retired military brass by these corporate contractors, which has reached record numbers.
• A further indication of the corporate/militarist state's festering corruption is the fact that CIA agents are quietly allowed to moonlight performing corporate espionage. Yes, I kid you not. The twisted logic proffered by their spook administrators is that is the only way that they can keep their best agents in the Company (vs. jumping ship and going into the far more lucrative field of corporate work full time). This was detailed in the book "Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage" by Eamon Javers.
  
• Our entire society is based primarily on rampant over-consumption (the media euphemism is "consumerism"), which proceeds at a completely non-sustainable level. Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy. Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people. The average American's daily consumption of water is 159 gallons, while more than half the world's population lives on 25 gallons.

America Is NOT Broke ...the Madison speech by Michael Moore

America Is NOT Broke ...the Madison speech by Michael Moore

Delivered in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday, March 5th, 2011. Video available here.

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have the same wealth as half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here's what I learned: Money doesn't grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventors, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don't pay their fair share of taxes, the state can't function. The schools can't produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in tax revenue. Everyone ended up suffering because of what the rich did.

The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. Saying that the country is broke is repeating a Big Lie. It's one of the three biggest lies of the decade: 1) America is broke, 2) Iraq has WMD, and 3) The Packers can't win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.

The truth is, there's lots of money to go around. LOTS. It's just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn't work, they've got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day -- this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart -- because you -- yes, you, too! -- might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don't rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it's Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin' awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. "Here! Take our money! We don't care. We'll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!"

The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).

Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant known as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone who tells us America is broke and broken. It's just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!

So how do we make this happen? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.

Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois -- whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn't have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn't be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more -- something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job -- their $19,000 a year job. That's how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilot who flew me here to Madison today. He told me he's stopped hoping for a pay increase. All he's asking for now is enough down time so that he doesn't have to sleep in his car between shifts at O'Hare airport. That's how despicably low we have sunk! The wealthy couldn't be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They had to take away his sleep. They had to demean him and dehumanize him and rub his face in it. After all, he's just another slob, isn't he?

And that, my friends, is Corporate America's fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement -- a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don't understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. "Why are they all standing out there in the cold?" I mean, there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!

"There's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you ...?"

America ain't broke! The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!

Madison, do not retreat. We are with you. We will win together.

How the Rich Soaked the Rest of Us

Three graphs tell the story, plain and simple. It's their world now. For as long as it lasts.























Relative increases in net household incomes of Americans from 1979 to 2005.


Share of national income taken by top tranches of earners.

Take a poke at the right wing Kochs

Yes, that is supposed to rhyme.

It is unlikely that one can can root out all products produced by the billionaire right-wing puppet masters David and Charles Koch, but here is a list of items manufactured by their companies. For a little bit o' progressive bite back, boycott these goods:




Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins


Georgia-Pacific paper products and envelopes
All Georgia-Pacific lumber and building products, including:
Dense Armor Drywall and Decking
ToughArmor Gypsum board
Georgia pacific Plytanium Plywood
Flexrock
Densglass sheathing
G/P Industrial plasters (some products used by a lot of crafters)
FibreStrong Rim board
G/P Lam board
Blue Ribbon OSB Rated Sheathing
Blue Ribbon Sub-floor
DryGuard Enhanced OSB
Nautilus Wall Sheathing
Thermostat OSB Radiant Barrier Sheathing
Broadspan Engineered Wood Products
XJ 85 I-Joists
FireDefender Banded Cores
FireDefender FS
FireDefender Mineral Core
Hardboard and Thin MDF including Auto Hardboard,
Perforated Hardboard and Thin MDF
Wood Fiberboard
Commercial Roof Fiberboard
Hushboard Sound Deadening Board
Regular Fiberboard Sheathing
Structural Fiberboard Sheathing

(INVISTA Products):
COMFOREL® fiberfill
COOLMAX® fabric
CORDURA® fabric
DACRON® fiber
POLYSHIELD® resin
SOLARMAX® fabric
SOMERELLE® bedding products
STAINMASTER® carpet
SUPPLEX® fabric
TACTEL® fiber
TACTESSE® carpet fiber
TERATE® polyols
TERATHANE® polyether glycol
THERMOLITE® fabric
PHENREZ® resin
POLARGUARD® fiber and
LYCRA® fiber

A tip of the Mirsky hat to Lauren Kelly and AlterNet.

7 Top Corporate Tax Evaders

As you begin the dismal task of preparing your taxes before or on this year's April 18th filing deadline, think about the multibillion dollar corporations which Forbes reports had lower tax rates than you did for tax year 2009:

7) Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)

Hewlett-Packard earned pretax income of $9.4 billion, but managed to keep their tax rate the same as someone earning less than $33,950 a year. Their trickery? Book profits at lower-tax foreign subsidiaries.

6) Verizon (VZ)

Verizon has a lovely 10.5% tax rate. That’s better than a long term capital gain. Although Verizon earned $11.6 billion in pretax income, they have diverted much of their income through foreign wireless partner Vodafone (VOD).

5) Chevron (CVX)

Chevron paid $8 billion in taxes on $18.5 billion in pretax income. So why did they make the list? Chevron only sent Uncle Sam a check for $200 million. The rest was paid abroad in lower-tax countries. I think they should change their logo colors from red, white and blue to something more representative of the Caymans.

4) Ford Motors (F)

We all know Ford and other car makers have been skidding since the recession began. The struggling car maker still managed to earn $3 billion in pretax income. The beauty? Ford only plunked down $69 million in taxes — a 2.3% tax rate.

Not bad considering all the other subsidies, bailouts, and cash for clunkers we’ve already given as gifts to one of the oldest car manufacturers in the world.

3) ExxonMobil (XOM)

ExxonMobile did pay $17.6 billion in taxes on $37.3 billion in pretax income. However, unlike Chevron, none of Exxon’s taxes were paid in the US. That’s funny.. I think they sell a fair amount of profitable gasoline here.

2) Bank of America (BAC)

Bank of America earned pretax income of $4.4 billion in 2009, yet the financial services supermarket tallied up a $1.9 billion tax benefit.

How could such a travesty occur? Bank of America scoured the tax code for deductions like $860 million in tax-exempt income, $670 million in low-income housing credits, and a $600 million loss on shares of foreign subsidiaries.

Making matters worse for the US Treasury, Bank of America has a provision for credit losses of $49 billion which will carry over for a long, long time.

1) General Electric (GE)

Like those who received an Earned Income Credit (EIC), GE actually made money on their tax filing this year! Although the industrial behemoth generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, they recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. Don’t we all wish we could be in that bracket.

But big tax breaks are nothing new for the 12th largest company in the world. In 2008, GE’s effective tax rate was 5.3% versus the marginal US corporate rate of 35%. In 2007, it was 15%. You’d think GE would at least pay a little more for paper and administration costs considering their tax filing to the IRS is an astounding 24,000 pages when printed out.

Now, aren't you relieved to know that President Obama's newest "jobs czar" is the CEO of GE, an expert at exporting jobs and avoiding corporate taxes?

Unanswered Questions as Obama Anoints George HW Bush With Presidential Medal of Freedom

Russ Baker is the author of an absolutely mind-blowing book entitled Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. He is no tin hat conspiracy theorist, but a highly regarded journalist with impeccable credentials. I'm reading this book right now, and will have more to say about it when I'm finished. But I was as stunned as Baker by Obama's anointing of Poppy with the Medal of Freedom.

by Russ Baker, Who What Why | Op-Ed

On February 15, President Obama bestowed the Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest award, to a group of people which includes former president George H.W. Bush. Having spent five years researching the elder Bush and discovering a staggering array of secrets to the man’s life—none of them favorable, I was curious why Obama gave Bush the medal.

Officially, it goes to individuals “who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” In fact, it goes to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. In the case of Bush, it was an obligatory Washington ritual for a former President who is in the last chapter of his life.

Notwithstanding the inevitability of the process, President Obama needed to trot out some explanation or other as to why each recipient was deserving. In remarks at the ceremony, he said that H.W.’s “His life is a testament that public service is a noble calling….his humility and his decency reflects the very best of the American spirit.” And he referred to Mr. Bush’s “extraordinary life of service and of sacrifice.”

His life has certainly been extraordinary. Though whether “decency” is the right term, or whether his activities “reflect the very best of the American spirit,” or whether his has been a “life…of sacrifice” seem to be debatable.

There’s another side to the elder Bush. It goes to the heart of his purported “humility,” and whether it is truly humility—or his need to hide so many secrets. Especially as it relates, remarkably, to the assassination of another president, John F. Kennedy.

Here are some questions that must be asked of George H.W. Bush, while he is still around to be asked. The underlying points are all documented and footnoted [in Baker's book] —and some of these questions have appeared before in an earlier post on this site and others. Former president Bush, we all know that you served for a single year as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. What about the fact trail suggesting that, just like the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, you actually spent your entire adult life prior to becoming vice president working in covert operations—but unlike Putin, have not admitted that? What about documentation showing that, as far back as the early 1950s, your small but hyperactive company, Zapata Offshore, was commercial cover for super-secret ops?

• Some years ago you claimed not to remember where you were on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963? Have you since been able to recall?
• Can you tell us about your decades-long friendship with George de Mohrenschildt, the man who was in and out of Lee Harvey Oswald’s house on almost a daily basis in the year before the Kennedy assassination?
• Did you, as characterized in an FBI memo, work as a CIA officer in tandem with Cuban exiles at the time of the Kennedy assassination?
• Why have you never spoken publicly about the documented call you made to the FBI on Nov 22, 1963, in which you identified yourself fully and claimed to have information on a possible suspect in Kennedy’s death? What was the purpose of that call, in which you mentioned your whereabouts at the time of the call, 1:45pm, as Tyler, Texas, i.e. about 99 miles away but just a short flight on the private plane on which you were traveling? Why did you tell the FBI that you were en route next to Dallas and would stay at the Sheraton there when you had already been at the Sheraton the night before — and right after that call flew to Dallas but only to switch planes and fly back immediately to Houston? Why were you giving the FBI the impression you would be staying in Dallas the night after the assassination instead of letting them know you had stayed there the night before the assassination?
• Why was your own assistant at the home of the man you would finger as a suspect in the shooting, and why did he end up providing the man with an alibi? Was the ultimate purpose of that call not to cause the alleged suspect any permanent harm, but merely to use the call as an excuse to state in government files that you were in a place other than Dallas?
• Since you claimed not to remember where you were when Kennedy was killed, how is it that after these FBI memos surfaced, your wife Barbara suddenly found and published an old letter placing you and her in Tyler, Texas shortly after the shooting?
• On the day of the assassination, were you in touch with your friend and Republican running mate Jack Crichton, a military intelligence figure who was connected to figures forcing their way into the pilot car of Kennedy’s motorcade? The same Crichton who controlled the man who served as the interpreter between Oswald’s wife and police and reframed her words so as to implicate Oswald in Kennedy’s shooting? The same Crichton who was working out of a secret underground communications bunker below the streets of Dallas? The same Crichton whose secret military intelligence unit counted dozens of men who simultaneously held jobs as Dallas police officers? The same Crichton who did secret oil industry intelligence work in the Middle East while you did intelligence related oil industry work via your company, Zapata Offshore?
• Finally, do you know people who consider the events of November 22, 1963 to, in their minds, “reflect the very best of the American spirit?” You say almost nothing, ever, about the Kennedy assassination, even skipping over it in your own memoir, which details much more trivial events of the same year. Why is that? And why then, in your eulogy for former President Ford, a member of the increasingly-discredited Warren Commission, did you go out of your way to oddly praise him for promoting the increasingly-discredited “single bullet theory?” You said:

“After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good.”

Why did you, so bizarrely, smile when you uttered those words?

Now, with your Medal of Freedom, given you by a Democratic president who ran as an agent of change, you truly seem to be enjoying the last laugh.

Most uplifting photo I've seen in a while

Rocky Times Ahead: Are You Ready?

This article is from David Korten's yes! magazine. Korten is the Stanford educated economist who has now devoted his life to preaching "the great turning" away from our unsustainable corporatocracy. No, this isn't about building an underground bunker and stocking it with five years of canned beans, assault weapons, and ammo.

by Sarah Byrnes, Chuck Collins

Can forming a small group like this really make a difference, when the problems we face seem so overwhelming? History tells us they can.

"I don’t believe the economy is getting better,” says Billy R., a member of a mutual aid group in Oregon that he jokingly calls “my reality support group.” “All around me I’m surrounded by media and advertising urging me to keep borrowing, buying, and sleepwalking. I love meeting with others who are staring down the potential risks and challenges of the future.”

Maybe more of us could use a reality support group.

Even with the announcement that the official unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent, millions of people remain in dismal economic straits. The pace of home foreclosures has barely slowed and millions remain out of work. Even upbeat scenarios still assume protracted unemployment and economic stagnation for much of the decade ahead. The unspoken scenario is that things could get worse.

Sometime during the next couple of years, there will likely be a fundamental shift. It might be another economic meltdown along the lines of 2008, or a shock to the economy thanks to a rapid spike in energy costs. It could be a series of extreme weather events that result in flooding, drought, or unprecedented heat waves. Think Hurricane Katrina on a larger scale. These changes could lead to food and water shortages—and test our personal and community preparedness in ways that we have not experienced in our lifetimes.

Read more here.

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

By Matt Tabibi, Rolling Stone

"Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

'Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,' he said. 'That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.'

"I put down my notebook. 'Just that?'

"'That's right,' he said, signaling to the waitress for the check.' Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there.'

"Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people."

Read the whole article here.

The new class war starts in Wisconsin

What were they thinking, the fools who voted this tool into the governor's seat? Welcome to America, post-Citizens' United (thank you Clarence, John, Antonin and Anthony). How do Rethuglicans convince so many people to cut their own throats?

"TPM's Brian Beutler reports that half of Wisconsin's budget shortfall results from three of Walker's own business-coddling initiatives. According to the Capitol Times, as quoted in Beutler's piece, in January, Walker pushed through '$140 million in spending for special interest groups.' Walker claims a budget shortfall of $137 million. You do the math.

"Walker is carrying out the wishes of his corporate master, David Koch, who calls the tune these days for Wisconsin Republicans. Walker is just one among many Wisconsin Republicans supported by Koch Industries -- run by David Koch and his brother, Charles -- and Americans For Prosperity, the astroturf group founded and funded by David Koch. The Koch brothers are hell-bent on destroying the labor movement once and for all.During his election campaign, Walker received the maximum $15,000 contribution from Koch Industries, according to Think Progress, and support worth untold hundreds of thousands from the Koch-funded astroturf group, Americans For Prosperity." -- Adele M. Stan, Alternet

Goodbye, yellow brick road

From our friends at BuzzFlash:

Robert Kuttner just wrote a column in which he stated "America's corporations no longer need America's workers."

As BuzzFlash has recently criticized, President Obama's response has been to appoint the CEO of GE, an expert at exporting jobs and avoiding corporate taxes, to be his "jobs czar."

Even more detrimental to those in disproportionate need of work, Obama is going to cut federal assistance for grassroots organizations that aid the impoverished.

Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines

The Conservative Class War Continued

by Eric Alterman, The Nation

"Can it be mere coincidence that the right-wing media promoted this phony-baloney story at a moment when, as Charles Loveless, legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, points out, conservatives are 'readying a massive assault' on the pensions and benefits of these same employees? Led by Newt Gingrich, conservatives are floating the notion that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy to escape their pension obligations to firefighters, cops, teachers and, yes, sanitation workers. The assault on public employee unions is the next phase of a forty-year class war in America by the rich against the rest of us. It is of a piece with the steady dismantling of our progressive taxation system and the explosion of economic inequality." Read the Article

Is Ginni Thomas Getting Rich Off Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court Decisions?

by Ian Millhiser, Think Progress

"Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas has a new job — as the head of a Tea Party lobbying firm called ‘Liberty Consulting.’ Her new firm, which promises to give ‘voice to principled citizens and the tea party movement in the halls of Congress through governmental affairs efforts’ also offers very unusual service to its clients: Liberty Consulting offers advice on optimizing political investments for charitable giving in the non-profit world or political causes.Ginni Thomas’ new career advising clients on how to donate money to political causes is striking in light of the fact that this career path was much more difficult to break into just one year ago. In Citizens United v. FEC, Ginni’s husband Clarence cast the key fifth vote enabling corporations to spend unlimited money influencing U.S. elections. As a result of this vote, outside groups spent nearly $300 million influencing the 2010 elections — much of which would have been illegal before Justice Thomas greenlighted this spending." Read the Article