When I walked into the Bureau of Development Services, finding it packed as usual, I filled out my form to place in the first of five boxes, and settled in for a long wait. The plans I was submitting were for an extensive remodel, a rebuild, really, of a house that, had it not been [...]
They’re everywhere – these little men. No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.” But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, [...]
Well, it seems that Goldman Sachs, whose stock has lost 43% of its value since 2010 and has reported its first-ever quarterly loss, still has its priorities; mainly, stealing from everybody so a few guys can stuff their pockets with millions. Granted, they did pay a $500 million fine for defrauding investors, lost money in [...]
That didn’t take long. Perennial austerity advocate Robert J. Samuelson over at the WaPoo frets about the poor little feelings of America’s rich, in these troubled times: There are many theories about why inequality has increased, though no consensus: New technologies reward the highly skilled; globalization depresses factory wages; eroded union power does the same; [...]
I just got an email from a flunky named Sara who seems unaccountably excited about working for President Obama’s reelection. Better yet, she had an attractive little offer: I’m the national training director at Obama for America. My job is to develop the programs and resources our staff and volunteers use to teach others how [...]
I guess the bright spot in President Obama’s Afghanistan speech last night is that a great deal of Kabuki was devoted to making a meaningless, marginal drawdown of troops in an endless, decade-long fiasco into some sort of dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Establishment Republicans predictably howled about the errant perfidy of “playing politics [...]
I was pleasantly surprised with President Obama’s speech today, and although by now I find myself reluctant to believe much of it will happen, for once he firmly laid the blame for the deficits and debt where it belongs, with the Republican Party. Of course, the fact that he hasn’t been making this point in [...]
“That’s one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself,” he said. –Donald Trump, in an interview with Ashleigh Banfield, wherein he also announced that something about President’ Obama’s birth and past is a [...]
Out here in the Northwest, nuclear power has a long history of being dismissed as the kooky, plutocratic boondoggle it is, even while we have been spared the worst of the fears it understandably creates. Back in the 70′s, when our local utility, Portland General Electric, built the Trojan nuclear power plant, its remote location [...]
CHNN’s managing editor has been clamoring, seemingly for weeks on end, for something – anything!!! – on Silvio Berlusconi, the 21st century’s first world-class, hair-plugged, near octogenarian diva, major domo buffo – and now! - criminal defendant, with a prostitution charge stuffed inside a grab bag of official abuse allegations in his capacity as Italian [...]