Analysis Topic: Politics & Social Trends
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Thursday, July 19, 2012
Why Your Health Care Is so Darn Expensive... / Politics / Healthcare Sector
Alex Daley and Doug Hornig,Senior Editors, Casey Extraordinary Technology
The cellphone in your pocket is NASA-smart. Yet it costs just a couple hundred dollars.
So why is it that rising technical capabilities are leading to drastically falling prices happening everywhere, except in your medical bill?
The answer may surprise you…
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Brace Yourself, the American Empire Is Over / Politics / US Politics
Chris Hedges offers an interesting 3 hour interpretation of events that one rarely hears in the mainstream media.
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
Europe's Climate Energy Fix Moves On / Politics / Climate Change
Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt, July 16, the European Commissioner for energy, Gunther Oettinger claimed it was now urgent and rational for the Union to add "another 20% target" to the three 20-20-20 energy targets for 2020, enshrined in the December 2008 climate-energy package.
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
U.S. Cities Going Bankrupt / Politics / US Debt
In past decades, many US municipalities declared bankruptcy. Since 1981, 42 cases were filed. Ten came in the past four years.
Given hard times getting harder, what's happening now is unprecedented since the Great Depression.
Cities occasionally declare bankruptcy. In America, they're coming more often. Others in dire financial straits may follow.
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
Are Big Banks Criminal Enterprises? / Politics / Banking Stocks
Here are some recent improprieties by the big banks:
Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this,this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis)
Laundering money for terrorists
Thursday, July 19, 2012
One Scam After Another, How the Feds Feed the Rich / Politics / Credit Crisis Bailouts
The Daily Reckoning…proved right again!
We’ve been sticking our necks out. We had a strong hunch that the rich had gotten a whole lot richer not because they were suddenly greedier or suddenly smarter, but because of the feds. The feds were handing out money. The rich were first in line.
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
Genetically Altered Foods – Are they safe? A proposed harmful change in controls / Politics / GM Foods
Larry Cyna writes: Change in Regulations
There is an uproar in the US currently. Buried in the House Farm Bill, approved by the House Agriculture Committee on Friday, is the agribusiness industry’s latest attempt to shed regulations restricting new genetically engineered (GE) crops. While the bill’s massive food stamps cuts elicited widespread outcry, the industry quietly inserted provisions to rush new crops onto the market after only a cursory review of their safety. The uproar comes as lawmakers are attempting to reduce spending in the wake of the massive US deficit. Groups opposed to genetically altered foods are protesting the elimination of controls over genetically altered foods.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Corruption and Mismanagement See Much of the US Without Power / Politics / US Politics
Amidst record-high temperatures and a very anti-climactic 4th of July, power outages have left millions without air-conditioning and even water in rural areas where households rely on electric pumps. At least 52 people have died from heat and three million people are still without power.
No it's not Yemen, where power outages in the capital Sana'a have sparked a new round of protests. It's the United States of America, where corruption converges with a moribund electricity distribution system to produce increasingly frequent blackouts across the Midwest and East Coast.
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Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Focus on the 20% Because You Can Replace Lost Money But Not Lost Time / Politics / Social Issues
If this were a law firm, you would be wise to hire another.
I define puttering as follows: "Unsystematic work that fills time without accomplishing much output." I define frittering as follows: "The refusal to take advantage of opportunities that have been placed in your hand."
I have known some very successful people over the years. Some have been rich. Others have been influential. All of them have had this in common. They have not puttered. They have also not frittered.
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Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Disclose Act (s. 3369) Destroying the First Amendment / Politics / US Politics
John Rolls submits, KrisAnne Hall writes: ALERT: The Disclose Act (s. 3369)has been resurrected and it will further destroy the remnants of our 1stAmendment and diminish the power of our grassroots groups!
It is always shocking to me that those we elect are absolutely clueless to the true government that they were elected to support and defend. Day in and day out we hear our representatives refer to our government as a “democracy.” Our founders did not establish a democracy, they established a republic. At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a women referred to as Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia, “Well, Doctor, what have we, a republic or a monarchy?” It is said that Dr. Franklin, without hesitation, said, “A Republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.” Here we are 225 years later and our own representatives do not know the correct answer to this question.
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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Belief in the Fed Heads South / Politics / Central Banks
In 1720, British legislators considered the South Sea Company's proposal to privatize the national debt. While they debated this swap of debt (in the form of annuities) for stock, a speculative mania for South Sea shares began. Edward Chancellor in Devil Take the Hindmost relates; "Exchange Alley in April 1720 resembled 'nothing so much as if all the Lunatics had escaped out of the Madhouse at once.'"
Most remarkable in this particular financial episode was the involvement of high level authorities.
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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
The Paradox of China's Naval Strategy / Politics / China
Over the past decade, the South China Sea has become one of the most volatile flashpoints in East Asia. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan each assert sovereignty over part or all of the sea, and these overlapping claims have led to diplomatic and even military standoffs in recent years.
Because the sea hosts numerous island chains, is rich in mineral and energy resources and has nearly a third of the world's maritime shipping pass through its waters, its strategic value to these countries is obvious. For China, however, control over the South China Sea is more than just a practical matter and goes to the center of Beijing's foreign policy dilemma: how to assert its historic maritime claims while maintaining the non-confrontational foreign policy established by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1980.
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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Exposing Obama, Revealing the Depth of US Government Corruption / Politics / US Politics
The solution for the United States is not to elect more "good" people to government because they are quickly co-opted and compromised by the corrupt political system.
It may sound cynical, but the solution is to make it politically advantageous for bad people to do the right thing.
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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Democracy, Tyranny and the 'good American' –the clock is approaching Midnight / Politics / US Politics
What is so difficult for the majority of Americans to recognize, and for a majority of critical writers to accept, is that they—the so-called "people"—have turned to stone. They—the so called "people"—have become "good Germans". They—the so-called "people"—have been induced into an authoritarianism that threatens to open the door to tyranny: tyranny in government, in religion, in corporatism, in finance, and in and through a mushrooming military-security state that already is the deadliest toxin permeating every air molecule democracy inhales. Fascism and Totalitarianism are the watchwords of the day. The solution is not a Gold Standard, but a Moral Standard.
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Monday, July 16, 2012
Ron Paul: Inflation is a Monetary Phenomenon / Politics / Inflation
Later this month Congress will have an unprecedented opportunity to force the Federal Reserve to provide meaningful transparency to lawmakers and taxpayers. HR 459, my bill known as "Audit the Fed," is scheduled for a vote before the full Congress in July. More than 270 of my colleagues cosponsored the bill, and it has the support of congressional leadership. But its passage in the House of Representatives is only the beginning of the battle, as many Senators and the President still don't see the critical need to have a national discussion about monetary policy.
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Sunday, July 15, 2012
Fractional Reserve Banking, Let Unsound Money Wither Away / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
[This is a revised version of written testimony submitted to the the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology of the Committee on Financial Services, US House of Representatives "Fractional Reserve Banking and Central Banking as Sources of Economic Instability: The Sound Money Alternative,"]
Chairman Paul and members of the subcommittee, I am deeply honored to appear before you to testify on the topic of fractional-reserve banking. Thank you for your invitation and attention.
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Sunday, July 15, 2012
A Better Way To Finance Public Projects / Politics / Credit Crisis 2012
In a local newspaper I recently read an article regarding how a school district was looking to “refinance” their outstanding bonds in an effort to reduce the interest burden on their debt. In the same issue I read how another school district expends nearly $2,000,000 yearly just to pay the interest burden on their debt.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Ethical Adaptation To Climate Change / Politics / Climate Change
What is sometimes called the "Nazi theory of global warming" is relatively well known. One of the
pioneering theorists of apocalyptic global warming is Guenther Schwab (1902-2006), an Austrian Nazi.
In 1958, following his action as a propagandist during the 1939-45 war, Schwab wrote a fictional novel built on Goethe's Faustian religious play entitled "Dance with the Devil." While a few scientists or Natural Philosophers as they were called at the time (literally "philosophers of nature") had contemplated the possibility of global warming or climate change arising from coal burning as far back as the late 18th century, Schwab used Goethe's dramatic approach to convert the theory into an apocalyptic crisis, due to industrial pollution.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
The Banking Industry / Regulators Time-Bomb! / Politics / Banksters
When President Eisenhower left office in 1961 his parting message to the nation was to “beware the Industrial/Military complex”. He warned that military contractors had become so chummy with Congress and the Pentagon that “the potential for a disastrous rise of misplaced power exists.”
We now face a much more dangerous power grab that could actually melt down the entire financial system of the country if it isn’t brought under control.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Low Carbon - High Political Price / Politics / Climate Change
Speaking on July 7, Poland's environment minister Marcin Korolec used a roundabout way to say how strongly his government feels about moves to save the European mandatory greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme, the ETS. He said: " The ETS is delivering on its target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost and there’s no need to “manipulate” the market after a slump in industrial output drove carbon prices to a record low".
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