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Voices from the Status Quo

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Dear Parents: Everything You Need to Know About Your Son and Daughter’s University But Don’t. Do You Believe This For a Second? Getting hot in here...

Do You Believe This For a Second?

(image by YouTube) Linda Tirado on the realities of living in bootstrap America: daily annoyances for most people are catastrophic for poor people. Photo by tsuacctnt via Flickr Excerpted from Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado.

Linda Tirado on the realities of living in bootstrap America: daily annoyances for most people are catastrophic for poor people.

Out now from Putnam. I once lost a whole truck over a few hundred bucks. It had been towed, and when I called the company they told me they’d need a few hundred dollars for the fee. The Honest Courtesan. May 6, 2014 by Maggie McNeill Every nation has the government it deserves. - Joseph de Maistre It is often said that large companies are amoral, and commit myriad sins in the name of profit.

The Honest Courtesan

Even the Council on Foreign Relations Is Saying It: Time to Rain Money on Mai... You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.

Even the Council on Foreign Relations Is Saying It: Time to Rain Money on Mai...

—Winston Churchill When an article appears in Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the policy-setting Council on Foreign Relations, recommending that the Federal Reserve do a money drop directly on the 99%, you know the central bank must be down to its last bullet. The September/October issue of Foreign Affairs features an article by Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan titled “Print Less But Transfer More: Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly To The People.” It’s the sort of thing normally heard only from money reformers and Social Credit enthusiasts far from the mainstream.

Doomsaying math whizzes just don’t understand capitalism. Here we go again.

Doomsaying math whizzes just don’t understand capitalism

A group of mathematicians sponsored by NASA have purportedly proven that humanity is doomed. Ho hum. No queue-jumping, please. A Point of View: The perils of belief. 3 January 2014Last updated at 11:42 ET.

A Point of View: The perils of belief

US China War Preparation. Debt supercycle. The State of America’s Middle Class in Eight Charts. In 1992, both Tony and Claude had recently lost their manufacturing jobs.

The State of America’s Middle Class in Eight Charts

For the next 20 years, our cameras followed them and their families as they struggled to avoid poverty. When they could find work, it was often for longer hours, less pay and no benefits. Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks. Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants.

Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks

New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all three. Oxfordreview_winter99.pdf.

Climate

Commentary: Why peak oil threatens the International Monetary System. Introduction Having spent the last several years of my life engineering investment strategies to profit from the inevitability of Peak Oil, I’ve become obsessed with understanding the ramifications of radically different energy supply dynamics on the global economy.

Commentary: Why peak oil threatens the International Monetary System

Politics

Stiglitz says European austerity plans are a 'suicide pact' Mr Stiglitz pointed out that 700,000 public sector jobs had been cut in the United States in the past four years, removing demand from the system as unemployment spikes. The UK is set to lose a similar number by 2017. Instead, Mr Stiglitz argued the best economic medicine is infrastructure spending, especially on transport and energy projects. He pointed to China as one country that had successfully combatted financial crises with stimulus packages. Fallacy of the creative class: Why Richard Florida’s ‘urban renaissance’ won’t save U.S. cities. It was an urbanist’s nightmare.

Fallacy of the creative class: Why Richard Florida’s ‘urban renaissance’ won’t save U.S. cities

On Feb. 1, a teenager was shot dead in the middle of a popular art gallery walk and street fair in Oakland, Calif. — a town that highlights exactly what a city wins and loses when it attracts a huge influx of the vaunted “creative class.” Kiante Campbell, an 18-year-old Oakland resident, was killed in the shadow of new condominiums, gourmet food trucks, and buffed art galleries selling oil paintings that cost more than a few months’ rent in the ’hood. The festival, Art Murmur, shuts down much of Oakland’s downtown on the first Friday of each month, drawing 20,000 people, including tourists from both San Francisco and the surrounding suburbs.