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Monthly Archives: September 2013

Won’t give in to blackmail

As regular readers know, I'm a Monty Python fan, particularly The Life of Brian, which I consider to be one of the best movies ever made. Well, the Republican shenanigans of the past few days put me in mind of the following scene from that best of all movies. Unfortunately, this clip continues on past […]

Crime Definitely Pays

You couldn't make this up. Matt Taibbi gives a summary history of the most successful organized crime gang in the country, the Bank of America. Of course, the Mafia has a handicap in this competition. It helps if the government enables your criminality, something it has done for the banker class in spades.

Surprising finding…not

Some news from the Department of Why am I not surprised by this. It seems that politicians of both the the right and the “left” believe their constituents are far more out of touch with their own self interest than is actually the case: When we compare what legislators believe their constituents want to their […]

Our nobility

I think it can legitimately be argued that democracy is definitely dead when the nobles no longer even pretend to believe that this is a “classless” society. Put another way, we can kiss democracy good-bye when the nobles insist on being treated like nobles, or, alternatively, when they insist on their right to treat us […]

Let them live amongst the rabble

Digby rebuts the argument (made here) that members of Congress should be paid more, so that they can keep up with their “peers” and won't feel tempted to cash out for even more than their enhanced (above the present $172,000 per year) salaries by turning to a career in crime lobbying: But they're not supposed […]

Sunday Sermon

As my regular readers know, I have a hard earned degree in Catholic theology from Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, so it was only to be expected that many readers would have asked for my thoughts regarding the Pope's recent announcement that the church has, perhaps, been a bit obsessive about abortion and gays. […]

Organized Crime on the Government Dole

There is no criminal enterprise more organized than the modern banking industry. Wait, that may be unfair. It’s not really criminal if the government legalizes it once you start doing it. Still, if anyone else was doing it… This is somewhat old news, but worth passing on, as reported by Pam Martens at Wall Street […]

Going out with style

A belated comment about some recent good news, and that reminds me, this counts as my good news post of the week, as it truly is good news that Larry Summers won't be rewarded for helping destroy the economy by getting to run the Fed. This is good news on a number of levels It's […]

Sounds right to me

My fellow Democrats: read this.

Government sponsored inequality

As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of Dean Baker. Today he demolishes the claim that current levels of inequality are the result of market forces before which we are powerless to act. But no, as Dean shows with numerous examples, its not the invisible hand of the free market that is causing inequality, […]