MenuFoods knew their pet food was deadly - and shipped it anyway

Short-term greed and utter unconcern for anything but profits, as usual, trumps the public good. After receiving complaints that animals were dying, MenuFoods ran tests of the pet food. It killed 1 out of 6 animals yet they said nothing, allowing the deadly food to continue to be distributed.

Capitalism is a sick, exploitative system indeed. We need a better one.

1 Comment »

A bedrock part of the 12 step Alcoholics Anonymous program for getting sober and staying sober is making amends, admitting faults and transgressions.

Step 8: Make a list of all persons we had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9: Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Louis Bostich got sober in A.A., and his conscience began tormenting him to the point he knew he would drink again if he didn’t make amends. He went to a church, told the pastor to call the police, he had something to tell them. They came, and he confessed that twenty years ago, he murdered a woman in a drunken haze. He’s now doing fifteen years in prison.

A spokesman for Alcoholic Anonymous said he and other officials at the organization, which cites confessions of recovering alcoholics through its “Big Book,” could not recall a case in which someone had accepted responsibility for such a serious crime.

3 Comments »

Fannie Mae has stopped buying New Century mortgages too. Thus, the second-largest subprime mortgage company has self-destructed, leaving thousands in financial peril. One hopes that those who apparently just made shit up as their Ponzi scheme collapsed will spend the next several years in court or prison.

In a slight bit of poetic justice, all that stock that insiders bought cheap via stock options is now worth exactly zero.

It’s been obvious for some time to anyone watching the mortgage business that the subprime market was beyond risky and doomed to eventual failure. Yet government regulators looked the other way while mortgages that stood no chance of ever being repaid were funded as brokers and investment bankers took big profits.

Why was this not stopped long ago, before it blew up, before people, mostly poor, got hurt? Answer: Because that would have interfered with a financial elite making exorbitant profits, that’s why.

In a saner, more equitable financial system, the real estate market would have been watched more carefully. Managed growth rather than rampant speculation would have been the rule. Mortgages would have been allowed only to those who could actually repay them, not to anyone who could fog a mirror. Then we wouldn’t have had the boom-bust cycle that we’re seeing now, where a few got wealthier and millions got screwed.

1 Comment »

Pro-coal-mining billboard in Australia gets altered so the truth comes through.

Photo from Rising Tide Australia, who are mobilizing against more coal plants.

Tip: Life of Riley

No Comments »

“None of [the solutions presented by mainstream groups] address the power structures, None of them address corporations. None of them address a lack of democracy…. The environmental groups are not questioning this larger mentality that’s killing the planet.”

Some like the tepid liberals of the anti-war movement, who also favor going slowly (very slowly indeed) and not ever questioning or upsetting the status quo or economic structure that led to the problems in the first place. That might upset their donor base and thus threaten their power base.

No Comments »