Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, June 14, 2021

• Pity the Poor Billionaire  by Russ Baker from his weblog WhoWhatWhy. (Note: This post borders on satire, and Baker frequently goes over the border.)

• Truthful Accounts – A View from Nicaragua by Stephen Sefton from Global Research. Referring to the impossibility for journalists to report on the truth in today's class-warfare-ridden world of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire, Sefton writes:
  

... this reality is very sinister because it means reporting honestly on, in this case, Nicaragua, but it could be Syria or any country under attack from the US and its allies, is subject to abrupt and brutal professional, economic and social repression. Not only does any professional journalist determined to report honestly on countries like Nicaragua risk losing work and income. The knock on effect is that they might end up ostracised by colleagues unwilling to be contaminated by association, thereby risking their own professional status, economic well being and social stability.

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, June 7, 2021

• Covid, Cybernetics, And The New Normal by "anonymous" from Wrench in the Gears.
  

This is a guest post written by a humanities teacher and freelance writer who holds a masters degree from the School of African and Oriental Studies, a public research university in London. It lays out over fifty concerns regarding pandemic policy implementation and plans for a cybernetic future, full spectrum dominance of life on the planet by defense, bio-tech, and finance interests. I’m glad to be able to share my platform so this detailed analysis can be more widely distributed.

• James Corbett Presents to the Corona Investigative Committee​ featuring James Corbett being interviewed by Reiner Fuellmich of the Corona Investigative Committee (based in Germany) about Corbett's investigation into the corona crisis and the future of humanity.​ My commentary follows:
   
  Early in the interview (02:45m) Fuellmich asks a very profound question: "What drives them? I mean they have enough money." The answer furnished by Corbett can be condensed in one sentence: The transnational capitalist ruling class of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire have bought into the assumption that humans are an exceptional species. Because they have long discovered that wealth brings power in its wake, they have pursued the accumulation of wealth. Now that they have so much wealth (besides the fact that power/control is addictive), the Empire's ruling class fantasize about a corollary of wealth/power: they must overcome death to prove the validity of their assumption.
   
  They recently embraced the high technology of digitization of everything (the "Great Reset") in order to realize their fantasies.
  
   
  But doubts are creeping into their mad-power-complex, and most notably from the Russia-China-Iran combination which threatens not only their Empire, but also the pursuit of their assumption. Too bad for us, the rest of humanity, this mad pursuit threatens the survivability of our species ... and most others. 

• Gaming Our Lives: Pay for Success Finance. Bonnie Faulkner, of Guns + Butter, interviews (nearly an hour) Alison McDowell who has been described by others as a mom, an independent researcher, and activist. (Note: A script furnishes the introduction to the thoughts of McDowell followed by the nearly hour-long audio interview.)

• Another Claim of ‘Mission Accomplished’ Collapses by Alastair Crooke from Strategic Culture Foundation.
  

• Mainstream Politics Offer Pretend Revolutions To A Discontented Public by Australian Caitlin Johnstone with her American husband reading the script, which is provided from her weblog.

• Interesting Timing – Obama Administration Lifted Block on “Gain of Function Research” Just Eleven Days Before President Trump Took Office, January 9, 2017 from The Last Refuge. 

• CNN / MSNBC Audiences Abandoning After Trump featuring Jimmy Dore summarizing, and exclaiming about, statistics of viewer ratings of TV shows in this 07:26m podcast via YouTube.

• Tech Giants Help Israel Muzzle Palestinians by Jonathan Cook, an independent journalist who resides in Nazareth, Israel, from Dissident Voice.

• Book Review – Joint Criminal Enterprise: Why everything you were told about Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs was wrong. By Andy Wilcoxson from "The Saker" weblog. My reaction: Who could have imagined? (sarcasm)
  

• Space Oddities by Bernhard, a German independent blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama. 

• Red Alert: Only One Earth from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) posted on Tricontinental.
  

Posts that I especially recommend for Monday, April 5, 2021

• Real COVID death rate 0.15% from Left Lockdown Sceptics: Socialist anti-lockdown news and analysis. My reaction: This figure was furnished by a research study conducted by Stanford epidemiologist John P.A. Ioannidis, and was peer-reviewed. But the ruling class has its approved "experts", and Ioannidis is not on the list. Therefore, it will be totally ignored by the ruling class's major media corporations. Instead, we will get uninterrupted fear campaigns with their insistence that we should wear masks, experience soul-crushing lockdowns, and take our "medicine" in the form of untested, experimental vaccinations. 

• Fighting lockdown in California: A US teacher speaks from Sceptics.  "Left Lockdown Sceptics interviews Andy Libson, an American anti-lockdown high school teacher and revolutionary socialist"

• Scenes From 2030 by TE Creus from Off-Guardian.

• Complicity/Collusion by Korvus Korax from Off-Guardian
  

• Global Casinos: Financial Markets are a Fraudsters Paradise by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room.
  

• Tax havens and Capital Flight by Rod Driver from Elephants in the Room. 

• We’re on Our Own: Texas in the Aftermath by Holly Lewis and Snehal Shingavi from Spectre.  

• A Damned Murder Inc: Kennedy’s Battle Against the Leviathan [Part 3 of 3] by Cynthia Chung from Strategic Culture Foundation. (Note: I missed posting Part 2, but the link is in this article.) My commentary follows:

You cannot understand the present unless you were furnished with accurate information about the past (history). Unfortunately for you, you have been given a history written by the secret services of the USA, mainly by the CIA. However, Cynthia Chung, who has done enormous research, has liberated true history from the fake that you have been fed by institutions that are all under the control of the capitalist ruling class.

• How Russia 'Weaponized' 111 Times by Bernhard, an independent German blogger, from his weblog Moon of Alabama.
  

• New Yorker Uses Cartoons to Boost “Uyghur Genocide” Myth by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. My reaction: The busy, trying-to-survive ordinary Americans usually swallow US imperialist propaganda, but Berletic makes a herculean effort trying to expose it for what it is--lies.
  

• 💥A Quintessential Eastern Marxist State: A Review of A.B. Abrams’ Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power by Stephen Gowans from his weblog What's Left. A best post.

• 💥Humans, Nature and the Illusion of Separateness by Kenn Orphan from CounterPunch. Orphan writes about the key cause of this huge calamity:

... capitalism cannot do anything but accumulate more and more capital. And capital is virtually everything that exists, from the raw minerals and petrol deep in the earth’s crust, to the fish in the sea and trees in the boreal range, to governments and politicians, to our own personal information and preferences. It has created a global arrangement of power that must use obfuscation and violence, or its threat, as a way of keeping the engine running. 

 

Orphan forgot to include racism in the weapons that the tiny class of capitalists has used against the survival of humans. Racism has been used to divide humans so that capitalists can continue plundering and destabilizing the Earth's miracle ecosystem that supports all life.

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

• Beyond Lucrative: Jeffrey Epstein’s Billionaire Tax Avoidance Assistance Business by Daniel Hemel and Bob Lord from Inequality.

• US Election 2020: From Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact by Andrew Korybko from Off-Guardian (based in Britain).
  

• How Gov’t Hides The Real Unemployment Rate featuring Lee Camp charges the government with lying about unemployment, but he doesn't explain how in this 4:05m YouTube video.

• The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot by Glenn Greenwald from his weblog on Substack. My reaction: What Greenwald misses is that the Deep State has taken over completely what honest journalism ever aspired to be throughout the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. Only getting rid of capitalists, and all other hegemonic social-economic classes, can there ever be an honest media.

• The Empire Attacks BDS For The Same Reason Nixon Started The Drug War by Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. My reaction: Nixon's anti-(illicit) drug policies were well understood by activists in the early 1970s, but the public completely bought the lies. Now mainstream politicians, who are employed by the capitalist ruling class, are trying to profit off of marijuana sales to the consternation of the older-age public--the same people who bought the lies of the ruling class in the 1970s and beyond.

• News Anchor Suggests Using Drone Strikes on Trump Supporters featuring Ben Swann of ISE trying via a 13 minute video presentation to correct the lies of contemporary "journalists" that have contributed to actual terrorism using the actual history of lies spread by ruling class media corporations. Such sociopathic "journalists" will still be hired by media corporations and will enjoy comfortable careers in the future, and a gullible public, while also pursuing comfortable careers, will continue to believe them. This self-reinforcing phenomenon will continue until sufficient numbers of the public will not accept such lies because they have been exposed to independent media.

• The Empty Promise of Western-Style "Equality" and "Democracy" by Brian Berletic patiently giving a corrective presentation via a 5:27m video to mythical concepts like "Illuminati". Capitalist ruling class media like to encourage such myths that detract their gullible listeners from them and their dastardly deeds.

• How Governments and the Media Help Corporations Get Away With Their Crimes by Rod Driver from his weblog Elephants in the Room.
  

• 💥Global Coup d’État: Mapping the Corporate Takeover of Global Governance. This 31:14m video (and transcript) appears to be a collaboration between two non-profit agencies--Global Political Economy (GPE) and Transnational Institute (TNI). This post is undoubtedly a best post. My commentary follows:

I have posted numerous articles from the latter organization, but I've only recently discovered GPE. This video features Lynn Fries of the Global Political Economy (GPE) conducting an interview with Nick Buxton of TNI. This essential post points out the subversion of the United Nations by corporations. Previously, I've posted articles that have explored the ways that secretive capitalist agencies like the CIA have subverted governments to promote Empire interests, but now they are corrupting the UN with their class-based motives of profit and power.

My impression of TNI was of a do-gooder (def) type of organization that believes that capitalism and a meaningful democracy were not incompatible. Reflecting on Buxton's remarks, I believe they are waking up to their contradictions. (See my remarks about this organization a year ago.)

(Note: Every time I consider retiring from maintaining this website, I encounter an excellent article that I want to spread far and wide. As long as this keeps up, I won't retire until forced to by ill-health. If there is someone out there in the blogosphere that can help out, I would greatly appreciate it.)

• China overtakes U.S. as the EU's largest trading partner by Katherine Berjikian from CGTN (China's main newspaper). 

• The Reshaping of Global Agriculture: The WEF Agenda Behind India’s Modi Government’s “Farm Reform” by F. William Engdahl from Global Research. 

• Update on Syria by Vanessa Beeley, an independent British journalist, from her weblog The Wall Will Fall. You may also be interested in an update provided by South Front.
  

• The Arab Spring Failed But the Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues by Patrick Cockburn from CounterPunch.

• US, OAS, Colombia Try to Steal Ecuador’s Election from Popular Socialist Candidate, While Spreading Fake News from Internationalist 360°. 

• Science Update: Arctic Permafrost, Mines Releasing Carbon, a 6:21m video featuring Prof. Guy McPherson (retired) giving an update from the latest scientific news (peer-reviewed journals) about the climate crisis. 

Posts that I especially recommend today: Wednesday, January 6, 2021

• Three Major Threats to Life on Earth That We Must Address in 2021 by Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad (produced by Globtrotter) posted on CounterPunch. My reaction: The support of highly educated people at CounterPunch as well as people at Globtrotter has ensured the predicament that all life on planet Earth is approaching such an end game. You write:
  

Global problems of this scale require global cooperation. ....The balance of forces available to drive such a class agenda on the international stage is no longer there; political dynamics in the countries of the West, in particular, but also in the larger states of the developing world (such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa) are necessary to change the character of the governments. A robust internationalism is necessary to pay adequate and immediate attention to the perils of extinction: extinction by nuclear war, by climate catastrophe, and by social collapse. The tasks ahead are daunting, and they cannot be deferred.

But populations of planet Earth are under the control of their ruling classes who are descendants of former ruling classes over many generations all of whom derived their power in an ultimate sense from violence, or the threat of violence, against peoples of the Earth.

You two recognize the self-serving class agendas of ruling classes, but you cling to an unrealistic "robust internationalism" as a solution. But the ruling classes and the threats of violence covered over by fake democratic ideologies still exist, so why cling to a false hope such as "robust internationalism"? The answer is to clean your conscience of all guilt after serving the ruling classes all your lives to obtain comfortable lives for you and your families. You two, and the highly educated social classes of which you are members, are as guilty as the ruling capitalist classes of our impending doom. Without people like you supporting the ruling classes and their power over the rest of us, we, and all species on Earth, could not have reached the dire "perils of extinction" with which our very existence is threatened today.

You and your social classes chose the comfortable route in order to serve the ruling capitalist classes. You are not like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Mordechai Vanunu, etc. all of whom made huge sacrifices down through the ages to confront and expose the powerful.

• Americans Only Care About America. Their Rulers Only Care About World Domination. By Australian Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog.

• IMF’s continued VAT push inconsistent with rhetoric on progressive taxes by Bretton Woods Project from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt). My reaction: The first graph seems to correlate with the rise of "neoliberalism" or the influence especially of the transnational capitalist classes of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.)
  

• Nord Stream 2: Potential Flashpoint as Pipeline Nears Completion by Brian Berletic from his weblog Land Destroyer Report. 

• You can’t sue Pfizer or Moderna if you have severe Covid vaccine side effects. The government likely won’t compensate you for damages either by MacKenzie Sigalos from CNBC.

• Stop Watching Propaganda by James Corbett from his weblog. (Note: Although Corbett recognizes the value of analyzing propaganda, he explains that he is moving on in the future to the subject of a "better way of living" (approximately at 16:15 of this 18:51m podcast)). My reaction: Unfortunately, I infer that he is moving on to pitch the agorist model that has roots in the Austrian school of economics which is an earlier version of capitalism, as a way to live. He doesn't yet give any indication of how he has been thoroughly propagandized (indoctrinated) into a capitalist way of perceiving reality. He has not yet acknowledged the total immersion of capitalist culture (or ways of thinking) that has formed his perceptions since WWII. But I never give up on hope.

• How an Austrian and British Malthusian Brainwashed a Generation of Americans by Matthew Ehret from Strategic Culture Foundation. My reaction follows: 

He disposes of the Austrian school of economics only to resurrect another false version of American economics as he screams in this article as "SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN". The Canadian academic is well-read on historical material, but he, too, shows symptoms of being thoroughly a product of mainstream American education. 

Although I've spent nearly an hour researching his biography, I can't find where he was educated. Numerous websites list the websites he as published--and they are many. One website furnishes what I think is his perspective of history: American capitalism was on the right course from the "Founding Fathers" to Franklin Roosevelt, but the British are the "evil-doers" that led the US astray.

I think he, too, is a product of American education; and that he, too, has been so well indoctrinated by one version of American capitalism of which he is totally unaware.

• We Are at War by Peter Koenig from Global Research. This is a best post. My reaction: Although he doesn't mention "class" as in "class wars" and "ruling classes", I think his analysis explains much of the current social-economic issues and it fits with a more Marxist analysis which has influenced my perceptions of social-economic realities through mostly independent studies. 
  

Michael Hudson: Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson from Naked Capitalism.

Hudson, who is employed as an economics professor at University of Missouri (Kansas City, MO), must not challenge capitalism overtly and directly. Nevertheless, I am amazed that he has gotten away with his more subdued criticisms of the system. For example, he must make less than blunt, mild statements like the following:

To implement a successful Green policy program, it thus is necessary to move beyond the environmental problem to take on a broad and wealthy array of vested interests. They will cite free-market ideology as justification for taking their money in the short run, without care for the weather disaster they are causing. That makes the task much more daunting, and also may limit the ideological appeal of a real Green program. 

Could he be writing that it is necessary for a successful Green policy program to replace capitalism with some system that doesn't reward a small minority of people to benefit from the exploitation of nature and people and, instead, is responsive to the needs of all people? 

Posts recommended for Tuesday, April 16, 2019

• Tucker Carlson Defends Assange. Huh? from The Jimmy Dore Show via YouTube.

• Secret Plutonium Shipment by Maggie Gundersen from Fairewinds Energy Education.

• US Tax Day 2019: Sixty giant corporations pay zero income tax by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site.

Articles/videos relating to the "yellow vest" uprising in France

• Yellow Vests Rise Against Neo-Liberal ‘King’ Macron125,000 French Take To Streets As Trump Trolls Macron; Protester's Hand Blown Off In Graphic Video posted by Tyler Durden from ZeroHedge. Includes several videos of on street clashes between protestors and police in Paris.

• France’s Yellow Vests: It’s just 1 protest…which has lasted 8 years by Ramin Mazaheri from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. 

• Why are the 'yellow vests' protesting in France? by Rokhaya Diallo from Al Jazeera.

• Yellow Vests Rise Against Neo-Liberal ‘King’ Macron by Diana Johnstone from Consortium News. 

• France’s Yellow Vest Rebellion: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité by Richard Galustian from Global Research. 

• Les Déplorables Demand The Fall Of The Regime by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

• French government threatens bloody crackdown on “yellow vest” protest by Alex Lantier and Francis Dubois from World Socialist Web Site.

Lucy is once again fooling Charlie Brown

I don't know if this archetypal cartoon was actually drawn by Charles Schulz, but I think the words were likely replaced. The cartoon and script suggests that the American public has been constantly fooled by our masters in the capitalist ruling class. (Thanks go to economist David Ruccio and one of his websites Occasional Links & Commentary.)
  
 

Other recommended articles for Monday, September 17, 2018

• Global warming’s paper trail by Benjamin Franta from Japan Times.

• Silicon Valley’s corrupt nexus: War, censorship and inequality by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site. 

• Amazon’s worth $1 trillion, so why is it robbing taxpayers? by Jim Hightower from Intrepid Report.

Recommended articles for 12/24/2017

• Pyongyang rejects biological weapons rumors, accuses US of fabricating pretext for attack  This is another example of the psychological term called "projection", a term that I touched on in the third article in the post "Recommended articles for 12/19/2017" entitled "Putin Is Preparing for World War III". I strongly suspect that this charge was made by Trump's regime because the US actually used biological weapons during the Korean War against North Koreans and nearby Chinese populations. Since then the ruling class has devoted massive efforts--and largely successful--to cover up this major war crime. For a recent, comprehensive review of the evidence, the best source is a recent book entitled This Must Be the Place by Dave Chaddock.

• US Congress passes tax windfall for corporations and the rich Excellent analysis of the latest move by the ruling capitalist class to enrich themselves in the face of government budget deficits.

• Western Media Consumed by Myanmar Monster of Own Creation by Tony Cartalucci

  

  Clinton and Aung San Suu Kyi pledge to work together for Burma

  from Land Destroyer Report. The author knows southeast Asia very well because he resides mostly in Thailand (the last I heard), and he has followed political events in that area very closely. It was several years ago under the Obama administration of the world's "indispensable nation" that a "pivot to Asia" was announced. This, of course, meant that the US ruling class was going to put more efforts into containing and curtailing China's influence in the area. Soon there appeared articles in corporate media that looked favorably on certain events there, particularly in relation to the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar (Burma). Well, it turns out that the attempt to use this character as a useful puppet in their anti-China program backfired. (On the left is another photo from this earlier period when the US ruling class was attempting to recruit her for this project.) 

Trump tax cut plan will devastate public education

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from the World Socialist Web Site. 

The tax cut legislation backed by the Trump White House is more than just a trillion-dollar windfall for the super-rich. The bills passed by the House and Senate in different forms will now be reconciled in a special conference, but both versions contain provisions that will devastate public education while promoting the growth of private and religious schools.

It's clear that it doesn't matter which capitalist party is in power because the class war continues, and in these times of desperation for the directors of the US-led Empire, at an accelerating pace. Meanwhile, back at the domestic ranch of the Empire (idiom), bloggers on alternative websites bitch and complain (examples: this, this, this, and this) while many ordinary Americans remain passive and glued to the latest corporate media headlines to learn about the latest Trump tweets, the latest celebrities who are accused of sexual abuse, and more Russiagate stories designed for Americans to hate and fear the Russians. 

While bitching and complaining are good, what is urgently necessary are thoughts about organizing an effective force to overthrow the rule of the rich and their system--and these are largely absent beyond going in the street and holding up a protest sign.

What is the solution to this mess? This writer plans to once again get out on the street corners of my town in a weekly peaceful protest. You see, it is NOT just about the new Caretaker for the Military Industrial Empire. Yes, this new guy is really bad news. Alas, if Mrs. Clinton was now in office (as with Mr. Obama) this ‘Military madness‘ would be just as bad. My sign will read:

Save our Cities..Our Troops.. Our Safety Net.

End this Military Industrial Empire!! 

We must get serious...because they (the ruling rich) are!

Recommended articles for 12/4/2017

• Tricked again: Ronald Reagan tried deep corporate-tax cuts before. They didn’t work from Quartz. 

• Yemen Without Saleh from Moon of Alabama.

"Free lunch" for the rich!

by political cartoonist Dan Wasserman.

Trump tax cuts: A bonanza for corporations and the wealthy

Click here to access article by Patrick Martin from World Socialist Web Site. 

The Trump administration is proposing the largest tax cut for the wealthy in American history. The plan outlined on Wednesday would transfer trillions of dollars from future tax collections into the pockets of the super-rich. Its purpose is twofold: to enrich the financial aristocracy and force the destruction of programs such as Social Security and Medicare by depriving the federal government of the revenue needed to fund them.

My post by David Lindorff last December entitled "Get Ready for an All-Out Assault on Social Security by Washington in 2017" seems almost prophetic.

Planned capitalist economy

by satirical cartoonist Max Gustafson from his website. 

The Rise of the American Bondholding Class

Click here to access article by Sandy Brian Hager from ROAR. 

Hager argues that "The concentration of the US public debt in the hands of the 1 percent has contributed to inequality and presents a fundamental threat to democracy." This is an interesting correlation, but I don't think it measures any kind of a decline in "democracy". I think that he has an extremely narrow concept of "democracy" (and he doesn't bother to define the term), and I find other problems with his mostly reassuring analysis. For example, he writes:

Foreign investors, especially China, fear that the Federal Government will “print money” to inflate away its growing debt burden. But the existence of a powerful group of domestic owners invested in the creditworthiness of the Federal Government should help to alleviate these fears. The wealthy households and large corporations that dominate domestic ownership of the public debt hold considerable sway within the political system and provide a powerful check against policies that might compromise the risk-free status of US Treasury securities.

A formidable “bond” of interests therefore unites foreign and domestic owners of the public debt.

I've read in numerous articles that China is now significantly reducing its holdings in US dollars because of this "fear". And I've read elsewhere which suggests that the Federal Reserve buys up whatever shortfall exists in the market whenever the US Treasury issues securities for sale. Because of the international reserve status of the petrodollar, inflation worries that would normally affect the US are absorbed by most of the world.

Of much more interest to me is the section where he describes some findings by the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck in his new book Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. 

In essence, what the transition from the tax state to a debt state means is that the Federal Government chooses to borrow from the bondholding class rather than taxing it. And in deciding to furnish wealthy households and large corporations with risk-free assets instead of levying taxes on their incomes, the debt state reinforces the existing pattern of inequality. This raises further questions about the long-term stability of current arrangements. The debt state is likely to persist into the foreseeable future, and the reason has to do in large part with the role played by foreign ownership of the public debt.

Thus I encourage you to read a review of his Streeck's new book posted in Truthout in December.

Trump plans tax cuts for the rich to create more jobs

by editorial cartoonist David Horsey.

How Taxes Were Shifted Off Real Estate

Click here to access this interview with economist Michael Hudson complete with transcript conducted by the Real News Network.

Hudson does us a good service by explaining how the shift of taxes off real estate benefits the bankers at the expense of workers. This argument is another attack on the banking sector for taking over more of the pie that American workers bake by reducing the interest income that bankers enjoy onto taxes that workers pay to maintain necessary public services, and some not so necessary such as huge expenditures to maintain the military forces necessary to maintain capitalist class control of their Empire. 

Of course, Hudson does not argue the latter because he is very much a part of the ideological system that the ruling class employs. As long as he restricts his criticisms to peripheral issues such as the growing financial sector's dominance of the economy that few people understand, and never attacks the capitalist system in which finance plays a major role, his job will be safe--and he knows it.

I think he needed to expanded on certain parts of his argument to create greater clarity. I had to go over this section several times to understand its meaning:

What they don’t realize is that when the real estate taxes are cut, that leaves more rental value of the land available for new buyers to pledge to pay the banks in interest. The basic principle is that rent is for paying interest. This is true in commercial real estate as well as residential real estate.

Bankers know that every time there’s a property tax cut, they can make a larger mortgage loan against that property. The result is that instead of paying taxes, new homeowners pay interest to the bank. The higher interest payment absorbs the tax cut.

The interviewer, Sharmini Peries, rarely asks clarifying questions of Hudson who she often interviews and obviously adores. I suspect that she has been selected for this role more for her ethnic garb and appearance than her skills at interrogating guests on the program.

Giving to Get

Click here to access a 55 minute interview with Linsey McGoey, author of No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation, on the "Against the Grain" program from KPFA, a listener sponsored radio station in Berkeley, California.

There has been a vast increase of charitable foundations in the last several decades. McGoey, a lecturer of sociology at the University of Essex in Britain, has studied this phenomenon with special focus on the Gates Foundation. 

Foundations provide benefit to the rich by reducing their taxes and simultaneously giving them the power to allocate their money in crucial areas of health, education, and welfare. This in essence is a way to give more power to the rich over the public services which were designed to ameliorate the worst features of capitalist rule and to educate the youth of the nation.

In an era of massive cuts to social services, the largesse of the wealthy seems a blessing.  But what do the rich get in return for their philanthropy? Linsey McGoey argues that they receive both financial benefits and great influence over policy. She traces the history of philanthropy in the United States and discusses the Gates Foundation’s role in shaping primary and secondary school education, pharmaceutical patents, and more — with very little media scrutiny.