MIC

Six impossible things before breakfast

Submitted by arendt on Wed, 03/14/2018 - 12:10pm

How does a sane person deal with the insanity that is America today? The party line on just about every topic one might mention is the wrong side of stupid. The media zeitgeist is to ignore our falling apart ecology, economy, infrastructure, educational system, political system, and foreign policy. Our duty is to worship the crooks on Wall St. and the warmongers in the Pentagon, both of whom are robbing the citizenry blind while providing negative value to the 99% with their "services".

Paul Street's article in today's CounterPunch: a confirmation of what many of us suspect.

Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sat, 04/15/2017 - 7:04pm

Paul Street published an article in CounterPunch this morning entitled "Bernie Sanders, the Company Man". You can find the article here. The article strongly confirms the suspicions many of us here at c99p have about him.

Here's a taste to get you to link to the whole article and read it:

My Back Pages - US Government and Corporations Cooperate To Create Your Dystopian Future

Submitted by joe shikspack on Sat, 03/26/2016 - 12:09pm

I'm slowly bringing some of my old articles over to post here on C99. This is one that I originally published Jun 21, 2013. Now that we are in the midst of FBI vs. Apple wherein the FBI is attempting to compel Apple to become an arm of the surveillance state, some of this seems pretty current in a way.

The US government works closely with thousands of corporations to bring you everything from national security to the drivers of climate change.  The connections between these entities are diverse and often quite opaque making it difficult for citizens to tell who is really in charge.  Is it the corporations with their ultimate responsibility to make a profit for their owners and shareholders, or is it the government with its ultimate responsibility to the electorate that is in charge?  Do the principles of government or business apply to joint decision making processes when government invests in businesses and sits on their boards, or when government agencies have representatives of business sit on task forces and decision making structures?

The economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith wrote, “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

What happens when the interests of business and government so align, that they are fundamentally, "in the same business?"

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