What happens when death becomes profitable? Like in buying specially-discounted bonds using a terminally ill person to get the discount. This happening. Now. What could possible go wrong (except if granny takes an unfortunate stumble down the stairs, that is…)
Senator Corker defends loan sharks. In a bizarre coincidence, they are major players in his state [...]
Posts under ‘Socialism’
Predatory capitalism goes wild
I can’t believe they used to think Obama was a socialist
Obama calls for compromise on health care
Right. Because he needs to compromise more and hasn’t done it enough yet.
Obama’s middle-class meltdown
The rapid decline in public support for Democrats and President Obama represents one of the most breathtaking political collapses in modern times.
Well, he’s made the banksters quite happy, hasn’t he? Anything they want, they get. [...]
Doug Henwood interview
From The Activist
Brooklyn-based Doug Henwood has been among the few articulate voices on what Perry Anderson likes to call “the vanquished left.” Doug has been publishing an irreplaceable newsletter, Left Business Observer, which examines politics and economics with a scientific rigor and without the moral exhortations or hyperbolic spasms of his contemporaries, since 1986. [...]
American Leftist surveys the SWP wreckage in Britain
Recently there was a split, purges, and resignations, with much resultant gnashing of teeth in the Socialist Workers Party in Britain. SWP is a Leninist formation that fancies itself a vanguard party, ready to lead the workers to the inevitable proletarian victory. However, this can only happen after the masses have realized the correctness [...]
Electronic Books
Anyone who knows me knows I love gadgets. I love technology, and I’m always looking out on the horizon for what’s new. But I’ve been slow to dive into electronic books. Ever since Amazon zapped paid copies of 1984 from Kindles, I’ve been suspect of this technology. To be more clear, it’s not the technology [...]
Fair-weather socialist
Suddenly you face
The possibility of me
Getting a place
Next to yours, of me
Coming to dinner
Without learning manners
Without losing the cap
Still using these vowels
Not caring how much
Jane Austen and Tolkien
And the oeuvre of Mike Leigh
And Romantic poetry
Mean to you
With my lack
Of gratitude
That you descended
To my state
That you befriended
Me, for your efforts to
Educate me
Improve me
Fix me
Elevate me
With my [...]
Food Rescue Map
With a record 1 in 8 Americans now receiving food stamps I couldn’t help but share this ingenious little find on Google Maps: A Food Rescue Map! I’ve seen walking tours and other touristy maps on Google but this is a real gem. This Food Rescue Map shows 18 spots in New York City where [...]
Left for Dead?
(Promoted from the comments. Dave Riley responds to my Left for Dead post.)
I don’t know where you’ve been at, Bob, but this straw man argument you are building comes across as a chronic winge.
The main complication of the ‘working class’ focus has been the post war economic boom which, combined with the ideological [...]
Left for Dead
Harry’s Place links to Stumbling and Mumbling’s thoughts on why the Left is in such a shambles in the UK now. (It’s no different here.) The comments on both sites make worthwhile reading.
[In the 80's] the Left gave up on the idea of the working class as a revolutionary force, and looked instead to what [...]
National Tea Party Convention: Let’s go?
My first thought upon hearing about the National Tea Party Convention was, “Let’s go!” No, not to shell out $349 to $549 dollars to hear Sarah Palin do her best Tina Fey impersonation, but to see if we might able to build some serious left-right coalition based on issues we can agree about. We don’t [...]
Venezuela
It’s not hard to find criticisms of Hugo Chavez in this country. Their socialist experiment, we are told, is doomed for failure. The recent news of Venezuela’s currency devaluation and two-tiered exchange rate have some shrieking failure. Mike Shedlock, on his blog Mish’s Global Economic Analysis, had this to say,
Turn out the lights. The collapse [...]
Far left train wreck continues in Britain
Mac Uaid details the ongoing SWP internal war that is mangling the far left in Britain at a time when it is already facing huge problems, concluding with:
The left in Britain – even more than elsewhere – seems completely at a loss in the face of the massive economic crisis that has hit Western and [...]
Jim Cramer was a Spartacist in college. Likens bonus outrage to Lenin in 1917: ‘It’s really about stringing up guys’
He says when he was living in his car, he thought the income disparity was unfair and studied communism seriously. But that the Russian revolution failed and the peasants basically just wanted to kill rich people. So let’s tax them now instead.
But that doesn’t get at root causes, does it? Or really solve anything. It’s [...]
Climate sceptics like alcoholics?
There is a moment in Malcolm Lowry’s novel Under The Volcano that reminds me of climate change sceptics.
Doomed alcoholic Geoffrey Firmin is on a journey towards death but he insists to his estranged wife Yvonne and brother that he can drink a beer or two because beer isn’t really alcohol.
For an alcoholic any excuse will [...]
