Wyclef Jean squandered Haitian relief funds: report

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Partisanship is counterproductive

Partisanship is a waste of time, and is counterproductive.
Why? Let's take a look at our enemy. Our enemy is not convervative voters. Our enemy is not joe the redneck down the road with an and a gunrack mounted in the back of his gunrack.
Our enemy is not your Republican Grandfather.
Our enemy are corporate oligarchs who are trying to undermine everything good that America is supposed to stand for, things like liberty, and justice for all. You know, that stuff from the Pledge of Allegiance. They own almost all the media you watch. They control what news you see. They own almost all the food you eat, and they want to genetically modify it. They own almost all the money in our economy too. How did things get here? Well Corporate Oligarchs don't waste their time with petty bullshit and partisanship.

Since they control the media, they control our access to our political candidates as well. During the presidential primaries, you don't get to see people like Dennis Kucinich, or Mike Gravel for more than a few minutes. When you're on GE's turf they set the rules. GE owns huge chunks of the military industrial complex, and candidates who want to end our global war on scary things get excluded from their debates. GE decides which candidate you should vote for.
Last election, GE and Lockheed Martin, and Verizon and all the rest decided that your candidates were going to be Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and John Edwards. And funny enough, each of these candidates stated in their policy positions, which any chimpanzee with an internet connection can download and read from their campaign websites, that they were willing to bend over backwards to suck the collective cock of the corporate oligarchy-- sometimes called by folks like David Gergen, the “Business Community.”

Which is a terribly misleading name, because I know plenty of people who own businesses who aren't a part of that that community, and never will be. The community david gergen is talking about has expansive well-manicured lawns, tall iron-spiked fences surrounding it, a security guard at the gate, and gets around primarily by golf-cart.

The Corporate Oligarchs are playing their game in a post-partisan, post-national world. There is no Republicans or Democrats to them. There is no USA, China, European Union, African Union, etc. There is only the transnational corporation, free to rape and pillage the globe with impunity.

They're playing, 3-dimensional chess. When we get bogged down in partisan bullshit, cheering for the blue team or the red team, we're playing 2-d checkers on their 3-d chess board, and we wonder why we keep losing, and we can't possibly comprehend why we keep getting blindsided by triagonal unicorn moves.

It's not as simple as just never voting for another democrat or republican, because there are some good people out there in both parties, and we should work to keep the good ones we have, and get more good ones into position. Though this is certainly more the case in local politics than federal politics.

What we need to do is realize that:
1) The corporate oligarchs who run this whole damn show do not give a shit about you, and are purchasing our government to suit their own private interests
2) We can take our government back, but it will require a lot of hard work, and there's no guarantees.
3) If you are stuck in partisan bickering over bullshit distractions, step back and realize that there are four other chess boards that this game is being played on.

Chinese workers appeal to Apple over health worries | Reuters

Daily exposure to hexyl hydrid can cause long-term and possibly irreversible nerve damage, said Lam Ching-wan, a chemical pathologist at the University of Hong Kong. According to U.S. National Library of Medicine, there have been dozens of documented cases where workers suffered nerve and eye damage from exposure to n-hexane.

Workers said they wore protective gear, including masks and goggles, but worked in an enclosed, poorly ventilated space. In its report, Apple said that Wintek had switched to the chemical from alcohol without changing the ventilation system.

Jia, the technician, said that after working for a year on the production for Apple touch screens, he felt there was something wrong, but ignored the problems, blaming them on work stress or moodiness.

Soon he heard other workers were hospitalised and suspected it had something to do with the chemical hexyl hydride, which managers had said could be safely used.

Jia went to a hospital in Suzhou in August 2009, when doctors told him he had nerve damage. Doctors soon found many of his workmates had similar problems and were advised to be hospitalised.











Source: reuters.com

Military-Industrial Complex Wins Again

The amendment to cut the EFV & SLAMRAAM programs was rejected by a vote of 306-123, with 79 Democrats and 227 Republicans voting to keep production alive.

Why, when the dominant theme of the day is reducing the deficit by eliminating inefficiencies, would Congress insist on spending money for weapons systems that the military itself does not want?

The weapons are manufactured by two of the world’s largest and most powerful defense contractors — General Dynamics and Raytheon. Combined, in 2010 the two companies spent more than $18 million on lobbying and $3.7 million on direct contributions to Congress, according to data from OpenSecrets.org. That’s just one year. If you look back a couple decades, the companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on influencing decision makers in D.C.

Source: opencongress.org

"We the corporations" | Move to Amend

"We the corporations" | Move to Amend

With democracy busting out from the Mideast to the Midwest, the issue of corporate control is front and center in American minds. These events make it much easier for us to discuss corporate personhood issues with our friends and neighbors.

To help us in our efforts, the folks at the Story of Stuff Project have launched a new video: The Story of Citizens v. FEC: Why Democracy Only Works when People are in Charge

Watch it here.

Drawing from the essence of the work of Move to Amend and our allies, the video explains in easy-to-understand terms why corporations should not be entitled to the same rights people have.

Move to Amend’s short-term goal is to build local groups across the country that will work to amend the Constitution to limit corporate personhood rights by passing local resolutions; there are plentiful resources on our site to help you out.

The Story of Citizens v. FEC: Why Democracy Only Works when People are in Charge video is another great tool to help us achieve our goal.

This short cartoon gives a good history of why corporations have so much power and what it does to our democracy.

We do think the solution suggested at the end needs to go further -- unless an amendment campaign sets forth to abolish ALL corporate constitutional rights (they just talk about the 1st Amendment in this video) we won't have made a whole ton of progress.

But this video is a great way to start the discussion...

To start that discussion with your friends, you can post the link on your facebook page and twitter account, send it to your lists and ask others to send it to theirs, and even throw a watch party to help recruit your friends and neighbors.

If you'd like more info about why and how ALL constitutional rights for corporations should be addressed, see Why Abolish All Corporate Constitutional Rights and Not All Responses to Citizens United Are The Same.

Move to Amend thanks the folks at The Story of Stuff Project for this timely video, and we hope you’ll find it interesting and of great use.

Fascism - Wikipedia

Fascism (pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical, authoritarian nationalist political ideology.[1][2][3][4] Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.[5][6] Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined extreme right-wing political views along with collectivism.[7] Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right.[8][9][10][11][12] Confusion over whether fascism is of the left or right is due to the inability to fit the economic policies into a clear-cut category, because while fascism is considered on the right politically, fascist economic controls were left-wing, though ended up benefiting social groups considered to be supportive of right-wing parties.[13]

Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles among individuals.[1][2] The term corporatism is based on the Latin word "corpus" meaning "body".[2] Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body.[3]
One of the most prominent forms of corporatism is economic tripartism involving negotiations between business, labour, and state interest groups to set economic policy.[4]

Tripartism refers to economic corporatism based on tripartite contracts of business, labour, and state affiliations within the economy.[1] Each is to act as a social partner to create economic policy through cooperation, consultation, negotiation, and compromise.[2] Tripartism is a common form in neo-corporatism.[3]

Tripartism became a popular form of economic policy during the economic crisis of the 1930s.[4] Tripartism was supported from a number of different political perspectives at this time; one was Roman Catholic politics; fascism supported this for fascist unions but repressed communist and social democratic unions; and in democratic politics.[5] Tripartism is a prominent economic policy in Europe; it is a core part of the economic systems in Scandinavia and the Benelux that were put in place by social democratic governments.[6]

Obama Administration Says It Can Spy On Americans, But Can't Tell You What Law Allows It

McClatchy quotes Michael German, a former FBI agent, who now works for the ACLU pointing out the obvious:

"It's wrong that they're withholding a legal rationale that has to do with the authorities of the FBI to collect information that affects the rights of American citizens here and abroad.... The law should never be secret. We should all understand what rules we're operating under and particularly when it comes to an agency that has a long history of abuse in its collection activities."

Source: TechDirt

Toxic Tide: Discovering the Health Effects of the Deepwater Disaster

Months after BP’s well was capped, the health effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may just be starting to surface. Residents across the Gulf Coast report mysterious ailments, and some blood samples show traces of chemicals related to the oil. But as Living on Earth’s Jeff Young reports, firm answers are hard to come by and frustration is growing in coastal communities.


This is what you get when you let corporations run our country by purchasing our elected officials.  The american dream to own and run a successful business so that you can become independently wealthy is also our biggest downfall. 

Source Links:

Living on Earth

KUOW