Getting money out of politics is a very crucial matter; it has been for a long time. It’s gotten much more extreme now. For a long time, elections have just been public relations extravaganzas where people are mobilized every four years to get excited to go push a button and then go home and forget about it.
—Occupy - Noam Chomsky (via noam-chomsky)
Living a minimal life doesn’t have to mean not owning things. It can mean, and I choose it to mean, owning only the things that matter.
—Randy Murray — Minimal Is Not (Necessarily) Frugal — First Today, Then Tomorrow (via minimalmac)
(via minimalmac)
The nation’s first privately owned state prison has quickly turned into a total hellhole
Your daily reminder that when people say that private enterprise will do things more efficiently, the thing it will turn a higher profit at the expense of whatever service it was meant to provide.
Your other daily reminder that when someone’s quarterly earnings report depends on the number of criminals who are incarcerated, that gives them the resources and the incentive to lobby to have as many people declared criminals as possible.
(Source: think-progress, via awesomethatisstuff)
Always remember.
Under capitalism, it is perfectly possible to have starving people and unsold food in the same region.
Perfectly possible to have empty factories, decaying infrastructure and millions out of work.
To have too many houses and homeless people in the same street.
That is fucked.
(via ikenbot)
Apparently, there’s this new trend going around Japanese schools where they’re faking Dragon Ball fights.
(via awesomethatisstuff)
An Open Letter to my Friends on the Left
My friends,
In the last week or two, I have heard frequently from you that the current financial mess has been caused by the failures of free markets and deregulation. I have heard from you that the lust after profits, any profits, that is central to free markets is at the core of our problems. And I have heard from you that only significant government intervention into financial markets can cure these problems, perhaps once and for all. I ask of you for the next few minutes to, in the words of Oliver Cromwell, consider that you may be mistaken. Consider that both the diagnosis and the cure might be equally mistaken.
Consider instead that the problems of this mess were caused by the very kinds of government regulation that you now propose. Consider instead that effects of the profit motive that you decry depend upon the incentives that institutions, regulations, and policies create, which in this case led profit-seekers to do great damage. Consider instead that the regulations that may have been the cause were supported by, as they have often been throughout US history, the very firms being regulated, mostly because they worked to said firms’ benefit, even as they screwed the rest of us. Consider all of this as you ask for more of the same in the name of fixing the problem. And finally, consider why you would ever imagine that those with wealth and power wouldn’t rig a new regulatory process in their favor.
—Steve Horwitz
The full article raises many good points, but also contains a lot of fluff and cherry picking. I don’t fancy losing my entire evening to replying to these points, so I’m not going to.
What I will say is that even if the above is accepted as gospel, I can not remotely comprehend how someone can genuinely advocate a free market. For the sake of me being lazy I’m going to boil my argument down to merely mentioning four following areas:
Healthcare
Environment
Wealth equality
The national grid
I mean I’ll definitely grant any libertarian that we don’t remotely live within a free market currently, but thank fuck we don’t because, as screwed as our current society is, life would be a darned sight more terrifying if we did.
(via elbowstoopointy)
REPORT: Koch Brothers Looking To Purchase Several Major American Newspapers
Right-wing funders and business industrialists David and Charles Koch may purchase the Tribune Company newspapers, which include the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and the Los Angeles Times. The brothers are “interested in the clout they could gain through the Times’ editorial pages,” the Hollywood Reporter notes. Responding to the report, a spokesperson for Koch told the website that the brothers are “constantly exploring profitable opportunities in many industries and sectors”
….
The Koch brothers own Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in America, and fund a network of right-wing think tanks and organizations. In 2012, the brothers had pledged $60 million to defeat President Obama and even sent mailers to employees urging them to support Mitt Romney and other conservative candidates.
You should be scared. And this is why:
- The Koch brothers funds and supports an organization which thinks the Violence Against Women Act is “unconstitutional”.
- The same organization, called The Heritage Foundation, is known for being anti-gay and climate change denying, among other bigoted and delusional stands.
- Last year, Koch Industries Warned 45,000 Employees Of ‘Consequences’ If They Don’t Vote For Republicans.
- Koch Industries is one of top five corporate air polluters in the U.S.
- The Koch brothers have been accused of backing public school segregation, in 2009.
- The Koch brothers have no respect for Native American rights or lands.
- The Koch brothers also sympathize and help fund Tea Party rallies.
- ALEC, which is Koch funded, is responsible for drafting strict voter ID laws that have been known to exclude students, People of Color, the elderly, and low income citizens from the voting process.
- The Koch brothers are basically at war with Social Security.
In case that’s not enough:
- Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions
- Koch, Exxon Mobil Among Corporations Helping Write State Laws
- Pipeline Climate Disaster: The Keystone XL Pipeline and Labor
- Koch Industries have spent $48.5 million since 1997 to fund the climate denial machine.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I encourage a reblog of this post and additions of the atrocities committed by the Koch empire.
(via ikenbot)
This is the first of a few short videos explaining how banks and money creation works in the UK. If you’ve not looked into this before, you should really give this a watch.
Here are the other videos.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
