…is that it topples major Western civilizations. This is from a book from 1991. (via)
“These [once-leading] regimes fell because they had used their nation’s resources poorly. Inefficient tax systems failed to capture a growing share of national wealth. … These persistent efforts by elites to resist or evade taxation, despite being massively undertaxed, [...]
Sort of creeped out by the images of “rich people” like those neck-down images of “fat people” in an obesity segment, but this is worth watching:
Our country is dying:
With the nation just days from a default, the chamber is at the mercy of a handful of people who believe they are on a mission from God.
“Where’s the chapel?” Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) asked as he emerged from an arm-twisting session with Majority Leader Eric Cantor Thursday night. The freshman lawmaker [...]
Andrew Sullivan: America’s Cold Civil War
This country seems as if it is beyond dysfunctional. It looks like a banana republic on the verge of economic collapse. Now that Nixon’s dream has come true and the GOP is fundamentally the party of the Confederacy, it was perhaps naive to think they could ever accept the legitimacy [...]
I was listening to an interview with Chris Hedges on KPFK and he takes the Democratic mainstream to task more than the Tea Party right. I have to agree with him – the Tea Party frames the debate all the way to the right and then the Democratic party meets them in the middle: [...]
This is important, because the charge of “socialism” is the most brain-damaged thing leveled by the right.
Mitt Romney says U.S. is “only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy.”
The U.S. ranked ninth out of 179 nations on the list, with a score that placed it near the top of the [...]
This is particularly insidious (via Disinfo):
Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved a hotly contested merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who voted for the deal said on Wednesday that she would soon join Comcast’s Washington lobbying office.
Meredith Attwell Baker, a former [...]
Ross Douthat (via Andrew Sullivan):
[I]t’s important to keep the costs of our post-9/11 wars in context. Even if you accept the highest estimates of the price tag (in which, for instance, Bin Laden gets some of the blame for the housing bubble, because it was enabled by post-9/11 interest rates), it’s [...]
Exhibit A:
Oil companies are making more money and less fuel
Gasoline prices are skyrocketing — and so are oil company profits.
Exxon Mobil Corp. earned nearly $11 billion in the first three months of the year, a rollicking 69% increase over its performance for the same period last year. That’s on sales of $114 billion.
It’s the same [...]
Financial System Riskier, Next Bailout Will Be Costlier, S&P Says
The financial system poses an even greater risk to taxpayers than before the crisis, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s. The next rescue could be about a trillion dollars costlier, the credit rating agency warned.
S&P put policymakers on notice, saying there’s “at least a [...]