Inauguration 2017 Special Coverage w/ Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Ralph Nader & More
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Special coverage in the Trump Era
From Public Citizen's Corporate Presidency site: "44 Trump administration officials have close ties to the Koch brothers and their network of political groups, particularly Vice President Mike Pence, White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney."
Dark Money author Jane Mayer on The Dangers of President Pence, New Yorker, Oct. 23 issue on-line
Can Time Inc. Survive the Kochs? November 28, 2017 By Jane Mayer
..."This year, among the Kochs’ aims is to spend a projected four hundred million dollars in contributions from themselves and a small group of allied conservative donors they have assembled, to insure Republican victories in the 2018 midterm elections. Ordinarily, political reporters for Time magazine would chronicle this blatant attempt by the Kochs and their allies to buy political influence in the coming election cycle. Will they feel as free to do so now?"...
"Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" see: our site, and George Monbiot's essay on this key book by historian Nancy MacLean.
Full interview with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer March 29, 2017, Democracy Now! about her article, "The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer Exploited America’s Populist Insurgency."
Democracy Now! Special Broadcast from the Women's March on Washington
The Economics of Happiness -- shorter version
Local Futures offers a free 19-minute abridged version of its award-winning documentary film The Economics of Happiness. It "brings us voices of hope of in a time of crisis." www.localfutures.org.
What's New?
March 23, 2010
Why return to local economies?
“Income is simply compensation for work. If you wash my car for $10 and I mow your lawn for $10, we have a GDP of $20 and it looks like we both have income and economic activity. But no Wealth has been created, just Income.
“On the other hand, if I build your car, I’m creating something of value. And if you turn my lawn into a small farm that produces food, you’re creating something of value. We have created Wealth.
“A stick has no commercial value, but if you add labor to it by carving it into an axe handle, you have created Wealth. Similarly, metals in the ground have no commercial value, but when you add labor to them by extracting, refining, and forming them into products, you create Wealth. Even turning seeds and dirt and cows into hamburgers creates Wealth.
“This is the Wealth of Nations that titled Adam Smith’s famous 1776 book.
“On the other hand, when a trader at Goldman Sachs makes a profit trading stocks or currencies, no Wealth is created. In fact, when that trader takes millions in commissions, pay, and bonuses, he’s actually depleting the Wealth of the nation (particularly to the extent that he moves his money offshore to save or invest).
“In the late 1940s and early 1950s, manufacturing accounted for a high of 28 percent of our total gross domestic product (and much of the rest of the economy like agriculture that, in a classical sense is ‘manufacturing’ wasn’t even included in those numbers); when Reagan came into office it was at a strong 20 percent. Today it’s about ten percent of our GDP.
“This means we’re creating less Wealth here, because we’re not making much anymore. (And the biggest growth in American manufacturing has been in the military, where goods made are destroyed when they explode over foreign cities, causing even more of our Wealth to vanish.)...
Read full column here