Today's Stories

September 29, 2008

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

September 29, 2008

And What to Do Instead

"Just Say No!" to the Robin Hood-in-Reverse Bailout

By JEFF GIBBS

"I'm disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican Party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America's biggest corporations by asking taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice."

-- Mike Huckabee

Why are conservative Republican’s speaking the truth about this Wall Street fiasco but our Democratic leadership acts like sheep herding the flock to the wolves? I was outraged when during the recent debate Senator Obama pegged the war in Iraq at costing us $800 billion and complained how THAT had dangerously sapped our national strength, but then went on to mutter his way through support for a $1 TRILLION raid on our national treasure by Wall Street greed mongers. Obama, Pelosi and Reed are about to hand out to Wall Street and Bush and Company the same unfathomable amount of money we just squandered in Iraq? Holy crap, Batman! I thought. We’d better do something.

If this crisis is so profound why have the Dems not floated a single serious alternate proposal? Where are their thinking caps? Are they so in bed with the rich they can’t see the evil in this deal? Don’t they have the stomach to stand up to Wall Street’s threats? Or are they merely being arrogant? (“Can’t give the people options, they will get confused.”) And where are the Trumps, the Gates, and the Walton’s with their billions and billions? Where is all the cash the Wall Street execs and their minions have pilfered? Why isn’t that being offered up to solve this problem?

Here’s a news flash: if Wall Street is REALLY in such dire straits the rich have the money to bail themselves out. I have met the rich and they can give up a house or five or ten, a private jet or two, a yacht here or there, easier than you can afford this. McCain alone could put up the first $100 million and still have $50 million left over. Why aren’t the rich volunteering to “help” Wall Street avert the alleged calamity we are facing? Because they didn’t get rich by paying their fair share or helping others, they got rich by making OTHER people pay.

So just what is going on and what should we do about? Hell, even me sitting here in Traverse City, Michigan can come up with a few options beginning with JUST SAY NO! to this bail-out boondoggle legislation. Here are some suggestions :

1) Go after the evil doers

If their our economy is truly in peril because of self-serving, manipulative and possibly illegal decisions by greed folks who have abused our faith in them don’t reward them, go after them! Seek out the individuals AND corporations who have profited from these “toxic” instruments and seize their wealth if necessary. Call the police, the FBI, Homeland Security. If we can seize a janitor or a teacher’s home for the “public good” to build a shopping mall, we can take back ill-gotten gains from greedy bastards to save the economy.

2) Make the rich take responsibility

If we MUST have a bailout, why not have the richest Americans—the people who have gained the most from this system—do it? The wealthiest 400 Americans—FOUR HUNDRED PEOPLE! --are worth $1.5 trillion. They could put up the first $250 billion and see how it goes. They could put up the whole $1 trillion and still have a billion dollars each to play with. Or we could have the wealthiest 10% of Americans put up 5% or so of their collective $40 trillion in wealth to save Wall Street. The rich can spare 5%, hell they could spare 90% and still have far more than you and me.

3) Do what the Swedes do

Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks. Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government.

That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.
From:  The New York Times.

If the people’s money is used to bail our Wall Street’s greedy excesses, why is no one proposing that the people get a stake in these companies? Why are we not making them swallow their own toxic “products” before loaning them a dime? Why are we not making sure that executives, employees and shareholders don’t profit further from their monumental failure? According to Michael Moore the promised limits are not even present in the current legislation.

5) Open the First National People’s Bank

If our leaders are so worried about you and me being able to borrow money, use the trillion dollars of OUR money to fund our OWN bank, the First National People’s Bank. OUR bank could fund home and auto loans, farmers, and small businesses.

6) Jump start the “trickle up” economy

Use the trillion dollars to put people out of work back to work. That’s what got us out of the great depression. Take care of the people first. Take care of the working people and the money trickles up to the wealthy. That’s the genius of Henry Ford.

7) Use the trillion to fund universal health care

It’s not TAXES that make American businesses non-competitive and on the edge of collapse, it’s that American’s don’t have health care. Ask G.M. and Ford. Instead of welfare for the rich and bombing nations that don’t threaten us to oblivion, why don’t we try providing basic services to our own people?

8) Send Oprah

You know if only those stock brokers and traders and executives were better at visualizing abundance they wouldn’t be in this mess. Why don’t we all send them our old “The Secret” DVD’s since by now we’re all rich and don’t need them anymore? Maybe when Wall Street is finished with them they can send the DVD’s on to Somalia where obviously they have been having trouble with the abundance thing—maybe they are just not in touch enough with how much they deserve it.

9) Believe in capitalism

If the visualizing abundance thing doesn’t work out, let the companies that have been irresponsible fail. Capitalists love survival of the fittest and competition and it’s time to let them have their way.

10) Bail out Lori

My friend Lori is a self-employed single parent. When she got sick last year she had no health care, no disability, no mortgage insurance. Her family has held raffles and fundraisers in bars to help pay for medicines. Lori is now on a breathing machine and can no longer walk. Lori is losing her and her seven-year old son’s house. Last time I checked Lori pilfered money from noone, created no toxic instruments, placed no wagers that the system would go down. Now all she asks is for the medical care she needs to avoid dying, to keep her home, and to feed and cloth her son.

Senator Obama, please bail out Lori out before you bail out the weathy.

And finally, if you need it, here is another reason to “just say no” to the extortion of Wall Street. There is a very real possibility we’re going to need that trillion dollars. Our globally tightening supply of fossil fuels and hence the rising cost of gasoline, food and heating our homes, rising unemployment, and a whole host of other problems could become life and death this winter for many Americans. Maybe we’d like to be able to help them? And oh yeah, and there’s climate change, which, last time I checked was still on schedule to threaten civilization sometime this century. We might want to look into that.

This reverse Robin Hood deal cannot be allowed to stand. It’s time to take to the streets. “JUST SAY NO! to what Michael Moore is calling the “swindle of the century.” I don’t know about you but today I am calling, emailing and cajoling politicians AND THE MEDIA into stopping this legislation. I am going to email my friends and see what sort of protest we can put together in front of our favorite financial companies offices, or maybe at our congressman’s office, or maybe in front of Obama’s campaign center.

Jeff Gibbs is a writer, filmmaker and composer living in Traverse City, Michigan.  He was co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and is currently working on a film about the sorry state of the planet. He can be reached at: JeffGibbsTC@aol.com

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