Dissent Mag

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted August 8, 2008.

Big business has prepared a war chest of at least $150 million to stop one of the most progressive pieces of economic legislation in decades.

There is nothing more terrifying to corporate America than the prospect of dealing with its workforce on an even playing field, and, along with allies on the Right, it’s pulling out all the stops to keep that from happening. At stake is much more than the usual tax breaks, trade deals and relentless deregulation; corporations are gearing up for a fight to preserve a status quo in which the largest share of America’s national income goes to profits and the smallest share to wages since the Great Depression — in fact, since the government started tracking those figures.

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By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted August 7, 2008.

Instead of acting like journalists, the mainstream media have become McCain’s personal assistants, regurgitating his B.S. without question.

It might seem unlikely that the United States would elect John McCain to succeed George W. Bush when that would ensure continuation of many unpopular Bush policies: an ill-defined war with the Muslim world, right-wing consolidation of the U.S. Supreme Court, a drill-oriented energy strategy, tax cuts creating massive federal deficits, etc., etc.

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By Thomas Frank, Tomdispatch.com. Posted August 6, 2008.

Conservatives have turned a vast government built for our protection into a device for exploiting us.

Washington is the city where the scandals happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandals are a thing of the past, that the golden age of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cavalry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time presidents stopped wearing beards.

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By Stephen Lendman

07 August, 2008
Countercurrents.org

There’s good news and bad, mostly the latter but don’t discount the good. On May 22, (non-binding) HR 362 was introduced in the House - with charges and proposals so outlandish that if passed and implemented will be a blockade and act of war. It accused Iran of:

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McCain and Obama represent two fundamentally different economic philosophies. McCain’s is top-down economics; Obama’s is bottom-up.

Top-down economics holds that:

1. If you give generous tax breaks to the rich, they will have greater incentive to work hard and invest. Their harder work and added investments will generate more jobs and faster economic growth, to the benefit of average working people.

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By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

In last weekend’s edition of CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn updates the ongoing persecution of Sami Al-Arian by federal prosecutors. Al-Arian was a Florida university professor of computer science who was ensnared by the Bush Regime’s need to produce “terrorists” in order to keep Americans fearful and, thereby, amenable to the Bush Regime’s assault on US civil liberties.

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Interest-Rates / Financial Crash Aug 05, 2008 - 02:42 PM

By: Money and Markets

Martin Weiss writes: With America’s economy sinking rapidly into recession, with much of America’s financial system teetering on the brink, and with a presidential election just three months from today, our leaders in Washington are under siege.

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By John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted August 5, 2008.

To survive we need to recognize that these threats are not separate problems, and they must be addressed as one major crisis.

Editor’s Note: This essay originally appeared in TomDispatch, a website run by Tom Engelhardt and associated with The Nation magazine.

Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39% last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global economy appears on the verge of a TKO, a triple whammy from energy, agriculture, and climate-change trends. Right now you may be grumbling about the extra bucks you’re shelling out at the pump and the grocery store; but, unless policymakers begin to address all three of these trends as one major crisis, it could get a whole lot worse.

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