I first got pointed to this video from what seems to me to be an organized attack against Greg Palast and Jimmy Dore. What fools the attackers are. This video will be long remembered and appreciated long after the attackers are exposed.
On this issue, I think Palast is spot on, and Jimmy Dore knows an important story when he hears it. The oligarchs must really be so worried about Palast, that they would pay for trolls to attack him. I think this just makes the case he presents here all the stronger.
When we remain silent and fail to act when we know that that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do – because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseum – when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of the institutions of our liberty, then we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.
Rep. Tom Marino has withdrawn his nomination as President Trump’s new drug czar after revelations he pushed through a measure that worsened the U.S. opioid epidemic. White-collar criminologist Bill Black says Marino and other lawmakers have been bought off by pharmaceutical companies he says have acted as “illicit, criminal, drug dealers”
This has implications from Obama and his Department of Justice, Donald Trump, and on through the two chambers of Congress. These people are as corrupt as the Mexican politicians who are bought off by their drug dealers.
The diversion and dealing of prescription opioids is a major part of the problem. In the U.S., three big pharma companies control the distribution of opioids. They have readily available data that allows them to identify quickly, cheaply, and reliably the primary sources of diversion and dealing because these drug stores and pain clinics purchase opioids in amounts that are nonsensical given the size of the local population and stores making the purchases. The first scandal, therefore, is that the big three distributors continue to sell to firms that they know are diverting and dealing opioids in ways that are illegal and murderous. We should not need laws or rules to prevent the distributors from profiting from sales to obvious diverters and dealers. The people who run big pharma are experts in what opioids do to humans. All of big pharma firms have senior officers who are doctors and chemists. They know the human misery and murder their sales to the diverters are certain to produce in staggering numbers. When elite doctors and chemists are willing to profit by selling to those they know to be dealers and diverters who will maim and murder their countrymen and women you know the rot lies deep in our elites.
How could we have ignored for so long the cause of the problem? The aftermath of the Savings and Loan crisis was the last time that these elite white collar criminals were held accountable for the damage they did. The aftermath of the collapse of the real-estate bubble may have been one of the seminal cases of rewarding the criminal predators for the damage they caused. The opioid crisis is just the latest example of the Republican’s (and Democrat’s) policy of being soft on crime.
Cape Coral, Florida, was built on total lies. One big storm could wipe it off the map. Oh, and it’s also the fastest-growing city in the United States.
A few years ago we actually made an offer on a house in Cape Coral. Fortunately Sharon confessed to me that there was no way she could contemplate living in Cape Coral. We withdrew the offer before the owners could even think about it. Just proves that with all my sales resistance, I am still a sucker for a good story. It’s not that we were pulled in by a sales story, though. We had visited the area many years ago, and finally decided we might want to live there. I obviously didn’t do enough fact based research, but luckily Sharon’s intuition kept us from making a huge mistake.
If you are going to insist on reading the New York Times, you really need to let Jimmy Dore read it to you. When we talk about fake news, this op ed piece in the NYT is what we mean. Unfortunately, Trump has co-opted the fake news term.
Now here is the bio of Douglas Schoen, the author of the piece. Would this have changed your opinion of his article had you known who he is? I’ve just given one excerpt from the bio below.
His political clients include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Indiana Governor Evan Bayh, and his corporate clients include AOL Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and AT&T. Internationally, he has worked for the heads of states of over 15 countries, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and three Israeli Prime Ministers.
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He is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and various other newspaper and online publications. He is also a Fox News Contributor, making appearances on various news programs several times a week.
Fellow at Peterson Institute, a regressive-minded think tank, concedes the many benefits of a nation that provides universal access to pre-school, healthcare, and college
Here is one of the featured videos in the article. Despite what it says in the headline, this is only about a 20 minute segment of the debate.
Ted Cruz admits that paying lower taxes means much higher out of pocket expenses. Bernie asked if you’d rather pay a net $12,000 extra to lower your taxes. The brilliant mathematician that Ted Cruz is, he thinks you would rather pay $20,000 to lower your taxes by $8,000.
He also uses Cuba as an example of the faults of socialism. He didn’t ask the right question about people fleeing Cuba to get to the USA. He should have asked if it is preferable to live in a powerful country that makes the rules, or would you like to live in a small island country that has been under economic attack for over 50 years by its big domineering neighbor?
Ted Cruz extolled the history of his father who came from Cuba with only a few hundred dollars and became wealthy in the USA.
Cruz’s father Rafael Bienvenido Cruz y Díaz is Cuban American, born in Cuba and growing up middle class there. He left Cuba in 1957 to attend the University of Texas at Austin and obtained political asylum in the U.S. after his four-year student visa expired, as the Cuban Revolution had changed the government. He earned Canadian citizenship in 1973. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2005. Eleanor and Rafael Cruz divorced in 1997
Do you think that we should compromise in every situation? How about the one above? Do you always take the middle of the road position? Do you have a 4 wheel drive vehicle?
In sabotaging the Iran nuclear deal, President Trump is listening to — and following the playbook of — the neocons behind the Iraq war, says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.
There are several dangers to the USA that are mentioned in this interview. One that I have been harping on lately is that if we continue to use economic sanctions as a weapon, the role of the dollar as a world reserve currency will eventually go away. The rest of the world will find ways to conduct commerce without relying on the US dollar. Our domestic policy choices depend on the status of our fiat currency. If there start to become things that we cannot buy with the US dollar, then our freedom to deficit spend without limit will go away.
Getting in bed with Saudi Arabian terrorists so we can get rid of regimes we don’t like should be frightening enough to everybody that I shouldn’t need to say anymore.
Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.
I find this story to be both credible and incredible. That the Clinton’s and Obama could be this corrupt is just human nature. That the Democrats should be so hell bent on blaming and investigating the Russians with the likelihood of exposing their own corrupt involvement is the incredible part.
