Wayne Madsen hits the spot
March 23-25, 2007--It really does not matter what political party governs the twin corrupt states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Currently, the two states' governors are Democrats. However, years and years of extortion, kickbacks and racketeering by both state governments have thrown a stinking pall over both State Capitol buildings that emanates more from skanky politicians than from the odor wafting from the antiquated restrooms. The latest example of base corruption are plans by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine to sell off their state turnpikes to private interests. "Private interests" in both states are usually represented by shysters wearing pinky nuggets and gold chains entangled in hirsute chests.
While the Republicans advocate selling all public property to their private interest friends, the involvement of Rendell and Corzine in such scams is scandalous. However, when it comes to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, corruption is a bipartisan tradition. The two states are home to some of the most corrupt cities in the country--garden spots like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Newark, Jersey City, Reading, Wilkes-Barre, Erie, Harrisburg, Chester, Johnstown, Allentown, York, Trenton, Atlantic City, Camden, Asbury Park, Bayonne and Elizabeth. Past governors of both states--Scranton, Shafer, Shapp, Hughes, Cahill, Thornburgh, Ridge, Kean, Florio, Whitman, DiFrancesco and McGreevey--had more crooks working for them than Al Capone.
For Rendell to turn over toll collection for the Pennsylvania Turnpike to private interests and Corzine to do the same with the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway is a travesty to the taxpayers who have more than paid for these roadways. If anything, the toll booths on these thoroughfares should be eliminated and these highways should officially be made part of the free Interstate highway system--they should become "freeways," not privately-owned toll roads.
Historians will one day write that before the people rose up and kicked out the greedy capitalists and globalists, almost every publicly-owned conveyance and institution was sold off to greedy corporations. The taxpayer-supported Smithsonian Institution has already signed an exclusivity agreement for all of its video and photographic footage with Showtime. The Walter Reed Army Hospital scandal shows us all how committed private corporations are to the public interest.
If the privatization of the PA and NJ Turnpikes goes forward, let me offer up a civil disobedience idea. The day those toll booths become private, hundreds of thousands of motorists, including truckers, should run them through the barricadeless EZ-PASS lanes. Enough is enough and Rendell and Corzine don't have enough cops to stop that kind of mass (and easy) protest. They can only react by closing the turnpikes, at a tremendous loss in profit for the new owners. That is what is called a successful protest.
~ ~ ~
Yesterday, Senator John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth held a news conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and announced that Mrs. Edwards' cancer had returned and metastasized by spreading to her bones. In 2005, this editor had the opportunity to meet Senator Edwards at a Progressive Democratic meeting in Washington, DC. I asked him how Elizabeth was doing and asked him to give her my best. He was genuinely appreciative of the concern--pointed proof that the Edwards family, which has had its share of tragedies, represents a quality rare in other political families, decency and a commitment to real family values.
As an aside, I mentioned to Edwards that I had penned an OP-ED piece in the Charlotte Observer during the 2004 campaign urging John Kerry to pick him as his Vice Presidential running mate. He recalled the editorial and thanked me for it. I told him not to thank me, emphasizing that I messed up the OP ED completely. After a quizzical look crossed Edwards' face, I said that I should have written it differently: Edwards should have chosen Kerry as his running mate. Edwards got both the joke and the underlying message.
The vile right-wing reaction to Elizabeth Edwards' cancer by individuals who do not know the first thing about family values was shocking even for their ilk. Rush Limbaugh, whose idea of family values is to fly off to Hispaniola with a pocket full of Viagra and Oxycontin to cavort with immature Dominicanos, said that the Edwards' announcement was a ploy to garner sympathy for his presidential campaign. Limbaugh's filthy, degenerate and oafish behavior is the reason he has been through as many wives as those other paragons of GOP family values--Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. And who can forget that a few weeks ago, GOP Nazi She-Wolf Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot" before the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), a group that counts more closet queens amongst its ranks than the J. Edgar Hoover Fan Club.
Thankfully, the right-wing is slowly hate talking themselves into obscurity.
The Edwardses can take solace in the fact that 99 percent of the American people wish them the very best during their latest ordeal. The other one percent--the phony Christians, neo-con lickspittles, Republican philanderers and pasty-faced country club conservatives, are as irrelevant as they are putrid
~ ~ ~
Walpole was the first prime minister to live at 10 Downing Street. He did not do so as prime minister, since such an office was considered to be inconsistent with the constitution. The title was only ever applied to him as an insult. It was one of many epithets he acquired in his long career. His official position was that of First Lord of the Treasury and that is still the title on the door of Number 10. Walpole bequeathed the house to his successors as their official residence.
--Ann Talbot
Capital understands very clearly what is at stake, and it must take great pains to ensure that we do not understand it.
But the ruling class fails to grasp the implications of "value-theory," that is, the very laws that give capitalism its character. The global monopolization that is taking place right now is an attempt to escape from those laws. The very fact of the current super-heated monopolization is an indication that the competitive process is exhausted. Recent revelations about the "creative accounting" scandals of major transnationals are evidence of attempts to escape those laws through massive bunko scams.
--Stan Goff (21 August 2002)
So I had nearly given up on my search when I stumbled upon someone who seems to be very close to providing a definitive answer, so much as a definitive answer is possible, to the question of what this war is ultimately all about. The man who provided that answer is a Canadian philosophy professor named John McMurtry (1 2 3).
--Dave McGowan (16 September 2002)
Contrary to European and US publicists on the right and left, very few of the top former Communist leaders are found among the current Russian billionaire oligarchy. Secondly, contrary to the spin-masters' claims of 'communist inefficiencies,' the Soviet-developed mines, factories and energy enterprises were profitable and competitive, before they were taken over by the new oligarchs. This is evident in the massive private wealth that was accumulated in less than a decade by these gangster-businessmen.
Virtually all the billionaires' initial sources of wealth had nothing to do with building, innovating or developing new efficient enterprises. Wealth was not transferred to high Communist Party Commissars (lateral transfers) but was seized by armed private mafias run by recent university graduates who quickly capitalized on corrupting, intimidating or assassinating senior officials in the state and benefiting from Boris Yeltsin's mindless contracting of 'free market' Western consultants.
--James Petras
The fact remains that the U.S. is now wedded to its "allies" among the Shia militia--an inevitable consequence of its own "rescue the poor Shi'ites from Saddam" public narrative as justification for the war. More importantly, at the beginning of the war the Americans had no available comprador class in Iraq willing to "front" for their interests in exchange for privileged position. In Vietnam, the French had a large Catholic minority that converted to the religion of Empire in the generations following the French incursion of the 1830s. The Americans in Iraq had only Ahmed Chalabi and other exile thieves and hustlers, but no social base. The Shia militias flexed their muscle, and the Americans found themselves trapped in their own "democratic" propaganda, from which there is no escape. That's the objective reality.
--Glen Ford
It seems to have escaped most economists in the West that in order for the so-called free-market system to function rationally, the essential component in production, labour, should have been free to relocate just like capital, but racism and nationalism prevented most people from understanding Adam Smith's truism that like water, all productive forces should be free to find their own levels.
--John Maxwell
Even if Iraq proves ungovernable and the oil unavailable to the US oil companies, Cheney's firm, Halliburton, has reaped uncounted, uncountable and unaccountable billions out of the so-called 'reconstruction' of Iraq. The planeloads of money shipped into Iraq are a fraction of the billions swallowed by Halliburton and Bechtel, among others, enriching their American bosses while robbing both the American taxpayer and the Iraqis it was supposed to help.
--John Maxwell
With his poor white characters established as racist Morlocks, Mankiewicz has no problem characterizing the black counter-mob as righteous reactionaries. In a scene that seems an inverted miniature of the Clan action in Gone with the Wind Luther's brother John goes out to join the mob battle with his mother's quiet approval.
--Glenn Erickson
Robert Baer and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: The operative bookends of the Official 9/11 Legend?
Memory Lane: Milestones in 9/11 Skepticism, 2000-2005
Israel as a Strategic Liability, 1945-1956
More Chaim Kupferberg (though he may be a bit disinformational): 1 2 3
While the Republicans advocate selling all public property to their private interest friends, the involvement of Rendell and Corzine in such scams is scandalous. However, when it comes to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, corruption is a bipartisan tradition. The two states are home to some of the most corrupt cities in the country--garden spots like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Newark, Jersey City, Reading, Wilkes-Barre, Erie, Harrisburg, Chester, Johnstown, Allentown, York, Trenton, Atlantic City, Camden, Asbury Park, Bayonne and Elizabeth. Past governors of both states--Scranton, Shafer, Shapp, Hughes, Cahill, Thornburgh, Ridge, Kean, Florio, Whitman, DiFrancesco and McGreevey--had more crooks working for them than Al Capone.
For Rendell to turn over toll collection for the Pennsylvania Turnpike to private interests and Corzine to do the same with the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway is a travesty to the taxpayers who have more than paid for these roadways. If anything, the toll booths on these thoroughfares should be eliminated and these highways should officially be made part of the free Interstate highway system--they should become "freeways," not privately-owned toll roads.
Historians will one day write that before the people rose up and kicked out the greedy capitalists and globalists, almost every publicly-owned conveyance and institution was sold off to greedy corporations. The taxpayer-supported Smithsonian Institution has already signed an exclusivity agreement for all of its video and photographic footage with Showtime. The Walter Reed Army Hospital scandal shows us all how committed private corporations are to the public interest.
If the privatization of the PA and NJ Turnpikes goes forward, let me offer up a civil disobedience idea. The day those toll booths become private, hundreds of thousands of motorists, including truckers, should run them through the barricadeless EZ-PASS lanes. Enough is enough and Rendell and Corzine don't have enough cops to stop that kind of mass (and easy) protest. They can only react by closing the turnpikes, at a tremendous loss in profit for the new owners. That is what is called a successful protest.
~ ~ ~
Yesterday, Senator John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth held a news conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and announced that Mrs. Edwards' cancer had returned and metastasized by spreading to her bones. In 2005, this editor had the opportunity to meet Senator Edwards at a Progressive Democratic meeting in Washington, DC. I asked him how Elizabeth was doing and asked him to give her my best. He was genuinely appreciative of the concern--pointed proof that the Edwards family, which has had its share of tragedies, represents a quality rare in other political families, decency and a commitment to real family values.
As an aside, I mentioned to Edwards that I had penned an OP-ED piece in the Charlotte Observer during the 2004 campaign urging John Kerry to pick him as his Vice Presidential running mate. He recalled the editorial and thanked me for it. I told him not to thank me, emphasizing that I messed up the OP ED completely. After a quizzical look crossed Edwards' face, I said that I should have written it differently: Edwards should have chosen Kerry as his running mate. Edwards got both the joke and the underlying message.
The vile right-wing reaction to Elizabeth Edwards' cancer by individuals who do not know the first thing about family values was shocking even for their ilk. Rush Limbaugh, whose idea of family values is to fly off to Hispaniola with a pocket full of Viagra and Oxycontin to cavort with immature Dominicanos, said that the Edwards' announcement was a ploy to garner sympathy for his presidential campaign. Limbaugh's filthy, degenerate and oafish behavior is the reason he has been through as many wives as those other paragons of GOP family values--Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich. And who can forget that a few weeks ago, GOP Nazi She-Wolf Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot" before the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), a group that counts more closet queens amongst its ranks than the J. Edgar Hoover Fan Club.
Thankfully, the right-wing is slowly hate talking themselves into obscurity.
The Edwardses can take solace in the fact that 99 percent of the American people wish them the very best during their latest ordeal. The other one percent--the phony Christians, neo-con lickspittles, Republican philanderers and pasty-faced country club conservatives, are as irrelevant as they are putrid
~ ~ ~
Walpole was the first prime minister to live at 10 Downing Street. He did not do so as prime minister, since such an office was considered to be inconsistent with the constitution. The title was only ever applied to him as an insult. It was one of many epithets he acquired in his long career. His official position was that of First Lord of the Treasury and that is still the title on the door of Number 10. Walpole bequeathed the house to his successors as their official residence.
--Ann Talbot
Capital understands very clearly what is at stake, and it must take great pains to ensure that we do not understand it.
But the ruling class fails to grasp the implications of "value-theory," that is, the very laws that give capitalism its character. The global monopolization that is taking place right now is an attempt to escape from those laws. The very fact of the current super-heated monopolization is an indication that the competitive process is exhausted. Recent revelations about the "creative accounting" scandals of major transnationals are evidence of attempts to escape those laws through massive bunko scams.
--Stan Goff (21 August 2002)
So I had nearly given up on my search when I stumbled upon someone who seems to be very close to providing a definitive answer, so much as a definitive answer is possible, to the question of what this war is ultimately all about. The man who provided that answer is a Canadian philosophy professor named John McMurtry (1 2 3).
--Dave McGowan (16 September 2002)
Contrary to European and US publicists on the right and left, very few of the top former Communist leaders are found among the current Russian billionaire oligarchy. Secondly, contrary to the spin-masters' claims of 'communist inefficiencies,' the Soviet-developed mines, factories and energy enterprises were profitable and competitive, before they were taken over by the new oligarchs. This is evident in the massive private wealth that was accumulated in less than a decade by these gangster-businessmen.
Virtually all the billionaires' initial sources of wealth had nothing to do with building, innovating or developing new efficient enterprises. Wealth was not transferred to high Communist Party Commissars (lateral transfers) but was seized by armed private mafias run by recent university graduates who quickly capitalized on corrupting, intimidating or assassinating senior officials in the state and benefiting from Boris Yeltsin's mindless contracting of 'free market' Western consultants.
--James Petras
The fact remains that the U.S. is now wedded to its "allies" among the Shia militia--an inevitable consequence of its own "rescue the poor Shi'ites from Saddam" public narrative as justification for the war. More importantly, at the beginning of the war the Americans had no available comprador class in Iraq willing to "front" for their interests in exchange for privileged position. In Vietnam, the French had a large Catholic minority that converted to the religion of Empire in the generations following the French incursion of the 1830s. The Americans in Iraq had only Ahmed Chalabi and other exile thieves and hustlers, but no social base. The Shia militias flexed their muscle, and the Americans found themselves trapped in their own "democratic" propaganda, from which there is no escape. That's the objective reality.
--Glen Ford
It seems to have escaped most economists in the West that in order for the so-called free-market system to function rationally, the essential component in production, labour, should have been free to relocate just like capital, but racism and nationalism prevented most people from understanding Adam Smith's truism that like water, all productive forces should be free to find their own levels.
--John Maxwell
Even if Iraq proves ungovernable and the oil unavailable to the US oil companies, Cheney's firm, Halliburton, has reaped uncounted, uncountable and unaccountable billions out of the so-called 'reconstruction' of Iraq. The planeloads of money shipped into Iraq are a fraction of the billions swallowed by Halliburton and Bechtel, among others, enriching their American bosses while robbing both the American taxpayer and the Iraqis it was supposed to help.
--John Maxwell
With his poor white characters established as racist Morlocks, Mankiewicz has no problem characterizing the black counter-mob as righteous reactionaries. In a scene that seems an inverted miniature of the Clan action in Gone with the Wind Luther's brother John goes out to join the mob battle with his mother's quiet approval.
--Glenn Erickson
Robert Baer and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: The operative bookends of the Official 9/11 Legend?
Memory Lane: Milestones in 9/11 Skepticism, 2000-2005
Israel as a Strategic Liability, 1945-1956
More Chaim Kupferberg (though he may be a bit disinformational): 1 2 3