Politics»

Is This Canada? 5 Banks Now ‘Too Bigger’ – Why Would Anyone Vote GOP?

Is This Canada? 5 Banks Now ‘Too Bigger’ – Why Would Anyone Vote GOP?

May 16, 2012 7:15 pm
Speaker John Boehner and President Obama in WH Cabinet Room We used to worry in the 1980s that the US would become like Canada with just 9 nationwide banks. Now 35-years later...

Business & Economy»

American Pain Foundation Shuts Down as Senators Launch Investigation of Prescription Narcotics

American Pain Foundation Shuts Down as Senators Launch Investigation of Prescription Narcotics

May 16, 2012 1:15 pm
by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, ProPublica A version of this story was published in The Washington Post. As the U.S. Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation...

Sustainability»

The Best, Most Disgusting Reporting on Food Safety

The Best, Most Disgusting Reporting on Food Safety

May 12, 2012 2:45 pm
(Getty file photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) by Blair Hickman, ProPublica The recent brouhaha over pink slime (and other lovely mass meat production processes) is only...

Media/Tech»

Pardon Attorney Torpedoes Plea for Presidential Mercy

Pardon Attorney Torpedoes Plea for Presidential Mercy

May 14, 2012 2:45 pm
Clarence Aaron was sentenced to three life terms in federal prison without parole for abetting a drug conspiracy. In 2001, he applied for a presidential commutation, an act...

Reflections On»

Opposition to Gay Marriage: The Republican Love Affair with the Past

Opposition to Gay Marriage: The Republican Love Affair with the Past

May 16, 2012 5:15 am
The future is always a dystopia and the past is always better than this mess we live in right now. That’s if literature has any ability to tell us about ourselves. Stories...

Recent Articles

Of Bedrooms and Boardrooms

The 2012 election should be about what’s going on in America’s boardrooms, but Republicans would rather it be about America’s bedrooms. Mitt Romney says he’s against same-sex marriage; President Obama just announced his support. North Carolina voters have approved a Republican-proposed amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage. Minnesota voters will be considering a [...]

News Summary from An Executive Review of Business Travel

Bye-bye Baby  bmibaby. Soon to be grounded. British Airways will over the next few months disembowel BMA, the once proud British airline vanishing from September, Peter Simpson MD of BA CityFlyer now managing affairs.  Some 500 staff will be affected.  BA owner IAG says that it is unlikely to find a buyer for bmibaby but [...]

Dick Lugar may lose to tea party favorite Richard Mourdock

Super PACs and other outside groups are on track to spend more on tea party favorite Richard Mourdock in his battle to unseat Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana’s Tuesday Republican primary than Mourdock’s own campaign, records show. Lugar, a moderate known for his expertise in foreign affairs and national security, is in danger of seeing [...]

Drone Attacks: The Latest Aspect of Growing US “Shadow Warfare”

Although President Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser says caution is exercised when making drone attacks, official U.S. announcements often state that suspects are killed. This very word betrays the fact that every drone attack is a crime because it is illegal in any civilized society to kill suspects. The killings are murder, pure and simple. (Only [...]

A Question of Timing: What America Can Learn from the Revolt in Europe

Who’s an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it’s not for the bond traders. Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: “When people think about the economy they don’t see it through the dry numbers of the [...]

Cameron? Non. Sarkozy? Non. Austerity? Non.

Forget liberté, égalité, fraternité… the cry in France and across the UK this past week was Non, Non, Non as the week long Europe-wide election hangover continues. It was a stunning rebuke of David Cameron and Europe’s draconian and ideological austerity measures (never mess with the crown jewel of health programmes the British NHS). Paybacks? [...]

The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism that Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution

Francois Hollande’s victory doesn’t and shouldn’t mean a movement toward socialism in Europe or elsewhere. Socialism isn’t the answer to the basic problem haunting all rich nations. The answer is to reform capitalism. The world’s productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich societies to fairly distribute its benefits. The result is widening inequality [...]

Why Hillary Would Clobber Sarah or Nikki in 2016

The moral of the story is that polls show Hillary Clinton would win in an epic landslide against any Republican in 2012, and I believe an even more epic landslide against Sarah Palin or Nikki Haley in 2016, because Clinton has qualifications and experience far out of their league, and because: Hillary Clinton fights for American workers [...]

Spain’s Capitalista Virus

The Capitalista Virus is rampant in Southern Europe; it is especially virulent in Spain. The virus occurs when capitalists, i.e. bankers, who receive fees and interests payments for/on issuance of country debt, mess up, a crisis hits, and average working people (taxpayers) end up carrying the brunt of the bailout, bailing out the capitalists (example: [...]