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 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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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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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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by Mike Whitney

Global Research, August 3, 2008

he Bush administration is going to be mailing out more “stimulus” checks in the very near future. There’s just no way around it. The Fed is in a pickle and can’t lower interest rates for fear that food and energy prices will shoot into the stratosphere. At the same time, the economy is shrinking faster than anyone thought possible with no sign of a rebound. That leaves stimulus checks as the only way to “prime the pump” and keep consumer spending chugging along. Otherwise business activity will slow to a crawl and the economy will tank. There’s no other choice.

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by Tom Philpott
(Gristmill)

World Bank finally releases ’secret’ report on biofuels and the food crisis.

Remember a few weeks ago, when The Guardian leaked word of a “secret” World Bank report that essentially blames U.S. and (to a lesser extent) E.U. biofuel policies for causing the global food crisis?

You know, the food crisis that continues to generate excoriating hunger in the global south?

Well, the World Bank quietly released a modified version of the report this week. Actually, The Guardian posted the original bootleg version, dated April 8, a week after its scoop; I missed it at the time.

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By Peter Chamberlin

04 August, 2008
Countercurrents.org

There is no shortage of speculation about “why” our leaders are still adamantly planning for the destruction of Iran, in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, even though everyone except the neocons and their allies believes that America would not survive our own actions. An irrational attack is planned and apparently the decision has been chiseled in stone. It may be for Israel. It may be for oil. Maybe it is for world domination?

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