Stoller: "An Instrument Of Political And Economic Control"
Here in the U.S., we are living in an era where we're witnessing the greatest income inequality between the classes since statistics were first deployed to measure this metric. Yes, it is tremendously...
View ArticleWhy isn't the Carried Interest Loophole in the Compromise?
I'll make this short and sweet:We've been given many excuses as to why the carried interest loophole, aka the Hedge Fund Manager Tax Exemption, hasn't been removed from the law yet. Democrats including...
View ArticleDemocracy? Just where the hell are we going?
There has been a fair amount of chatter here as to the meaning of words and much misuse of them by the wingnuts, let us start with some basic accepted definitions.FascismA governmental system led by a...
View ArticleA Doomed Enterprise: Corporate Conservatism will eventually lead to a Pyrrhic...
My first diary, woo!• Attacking sex education, funding for birth control, and abortion has one goal: returning women and the poor to a permanent political and financial underclass. A girl growing up...
View ArticleThe Difference Between Science Fiction and Fantasy?
Why are SF and Fantasy so often grouped together? Obviously, because they share readership and so are well placed together in book stores. And... heck... some of us write both! Still, there are very...
View ArticleWhere the wealth comes from
Without government, the only wealth is food, water, clothing and shelter. Money comes from government, and without government it cannot exist.
View ArticleHere Comes Uncle Feudalism!
Breaking News:Corporate America announced recently that they are tired of pussyfooting around and have decided to fire the United States Government.They might as well have. And away we go...
View ArticleBloomberg: Make Detroit An Illegal Immigrant Zone
The neo-liberal plan for Detroit and other financially-strapped cities is becoming clear.
View ArticleHow do they hold their heads up?
I really have to wonder sometimes.Are they truly so filled with Hate that they would take it out on the American people time and time again? We've seen it with Gov Walker insane and unnecessary attack...
View ArticleThe Next 500 Years?
Does any of this sound familiar? At the heart of feudalism is a basic idea common to any society with a warrior caste. Such men need to be provided for. In a simple economy this means that the produce...
View ArticleTrue Patriotism in the Feudal States of America
We hear it all the time. Repeated like a prayer manta. Like a hypnotic trance."America is the Greatest Country in the World".It's taken as a matter of faith. A matter of fact."America is the Greatest...
View ArticlePaul Ryan Likes Obama's Program To Let Workers Work For Free
We finally have an area of agreement between Paul Ryan and president Obama. As much of the middle class continues its inexorable march towards serfdom (without really putting up too much resistance),...
View ArticleThese are the Days we only dared Dream Of...
Just one month ago, this was unthinkable.Well, it was thinkable - but absolutely no one thought it was possible. People thought that all Hope was lost. The President was a serial capitulator-in-chief...
View ArticleNo Taxation without Representation
The rallying cry of three significant movements in American History. The first time it was used it was the theme that created our country. The greatest experiment in representative democracy ever. A...
View ArticleSerfdom and the Idiocy of the American Right
A week ago my brother Dante wrote a featured article here about feudalism, the Jacquerie, and taxation on the wealthy in the context of California's proposed ballot initiative to restore some semblance...
View Articleuse of force
We are devolving into a post-law semi-feudal system of rank and relation. The reign of Bush II made trying to hide this tendency passe'. When BP flat out refused to obey a White House injunction...
View Article"Human are like rats and cockroaches": the coming feudalism
Is that too sensational a title for a Serious Diary?I took the bit before the colon from an article in The New Yorker of 14 May. It's a quotation from Michael Specter's The Climate Fixers: Is there a...
View ArticleSteampunk, Zombie Apocalypse, MacGyver
Oh my!I was reading Steve Masover's diary "Humans are like rats and cockroaches": the coming feudalism and want to take a slightly different approach to the topic.
View ArticleThe Privilege of Leisure
The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, is an economic treatise and detailed social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of...
View ArticleOn Asimov, Orwell, Markos, And Today's NYT Must-Read On The 916,643 Voters...
Back in October 2008, Markos Moulitsas was asked by Charlie Jane Anders over at Gawker.com’s Io9 blog “…to pick one piece of science fiction that you must read or watch before stepping into the voting...
View ArticleFeudalism, Peasant Revolts, and History Repeating
We truly live in interesting times. Gawd help us. In just the last few years we've witnessed the return of debtor prisons, extra-judicial assassinations by politicians, the return of the Star Chamber...
View ArticleYves Smith: "Our Coming Rentcropper Society"
PREFACEThe following post is Part I of a three-part series on the implications of our government’s “solution(s)” to our nation’s mortgage/foreclosure crisis. Parts II and III will be published between...
View ArticleAnti-Capitalist Meetup: The Importance of a Marxist Economic Analysis of the...
Today is the anniversary of the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote in the United States in 1920. While revolutionary socialist feminists see the suffrage movement as a "reform" within...
View ArticleGOP = Goa'uld Party: Stargate SG-1 As Analogy for American Politics
Stargate SG-1 never filled me with the humanist awe and wonder of the Star Trek series or the depth and cleverness of Firefly, but it is a good and interesting show that ran for 10 years with a...
View ArticleDressage Ann: Marriage Equality & Contraceptive Rights are not Economic Issue...
http://www.rawstory.com/...Only a woman who can afford a $70,000 Business deduction for her Losing Dressage Horse could, with a straight face, claim that the issues of Marriage Equality and access to...
View ArticleThey aren't executive and owners anymore
Using a commercial entity for political ends by threatening and sacrificing the people who work for you or use your product? Sounds more like a Feudal lord to me. A Feudal lord with little holdings...
View ArticleWhat the "libertarian" base just doesn't understand (UPDATED)
Who knew? Including "libertarian" in the title seems to have thrown sand in the eyes of every crypto-libertarian here! Judging by the flood of prim and unhelpful 'never met them' / 'who you callin'...
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Uprising
I'm a agitator. That means that when I see blatant injustice in society I don't only oppose it or criticize it, but I also want to see people rise up against it in mass.Over ten years ago I was...
View ArticleSo what if the Sequester is the "New Normal"?
We seemed to have simply slouched our way into this, sequester thingy, with a bunch of fuss - but not much muss.What if we never truly climb our way out of it?What if Sequester Level spending, becomes...
View ArticlePure Logic
There are over half a million bridges in the United States. If we sold them all and broke them down for scrap, we'd make at LEAST a million dollars, assuming that we got 2 dollars for each bridge. Of...
View ArticleAnti-Capitalist Meetup: What Is Capitalism? Part I
There have appeared in this space several thought-provoking attempts to define capitalism, including here and here. Although this might seem to some a mere academic exercise, nothing could be further...
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And Then They Came For Me: The New Face of Fascism
The temperature was perfect, I'd say about 68 degrees or so. I was parked, with the passenger window opened half way, looking at a beautiful waterway just a few feet away; there was this fountain...
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Hellraisers Journal: I have raised hell all over this country! You don't need...
You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes. -Mother Jones```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````Monday May 18,...
View ArticleLife was Short, but Unemployment was Low
I occasionally hear things in the news that are so stupid that it makes me want to scream. For example I’ve read a couple of articles lately praising the Lords of Downton Abbey for providing jobs....
View ArticleThe Future of the Middle Class: Slumlords, sharecroppers, and racist vigilantes
In case you missed it, the billionaires' final solution to the problem of the American middle class (as created by FDR) has been underway since the 2008 crash.For six centuries there has been a Jewish...
View ArticleFeudalism under Citizens United
With the abandonment of democracy under the Citizens United SCOTUS decision, I see our nation now spiraling into a feudal system. A pyramid of power is being established with the wealthiest at the...
View ArticleIs this the next wave of the Great American Land Grab?
We all know that the '08 Meltdown wound up transferring untold millions of dollars of real estate from the hands of homeowners to the hands of speculators and property management companies.Now comes...
View ArticleMichael Hudson on the American School of Political Economy
Originally posted on Real Economics.Too many liberals and progressives are stunningly ignorant of the war of ideas and ideologies hidden behind the staid mask of the academic discipline of economics. A...
View ArticleWhat Catholic Neo-Confederates Don't Want You To Know About Secession
Originally posted at Talk to Action.During the summer of 2013 I wrote several posts about Catholic Neo-Confederates. My purpose was to explain the activities of libertarians such as Tom Woods, Thomas...
View ArticleNYE 2015: Say Good Night To The Middle Class
Yes, it’s my last-day-of-the-year attempt to illustrate why I believe Hillary Clinton is not a proponent of the change that we absolutely need to see in Washington. Ignore at will.Teaching the middle...
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing - 4.18.16 - Black Plague = Renaissance
A long time ago I wrote a diary about the very subject I’m going to write about tonight. It had to do with how Europe evolved after the Roman Empire collapsed. Europe went back to the feudal system....
View ArticleOpen Letter to the Honorable Senator Elizabeth Warren
A Letter to the Honorable Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth WarrenDear Senator Warren,I admire your willingness to fight, you give good speeches and we need those speeches. Few Democrats talk openly...
View ArticleWhere We Are Headed: Corporate Feudalism
Crossposted from My Gedanken ExperimentsIn my last posting, The Lie of Supply Side, I wrote about the indefensible theory of supply side economics. Today I posit where this theory is heading. Whether...
View ArticleThe Antidote to Corporate Feudalism
In my last posting, Where We Are Headed: Corporate Feudalism, I discussed the similarities between medieval feudalism in Europe and corporate feudalism that we are entering today. I also promised to...
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Versailles Envy
The Court at Mar a Lago is taking applications for membership at $200,000 per prospective courtier (initial nonrefundable fee), plus $14,000 a year dues. Lord Dampnut’s court is filling its coffers for...
View Article"Of the people, by the people, for the people"
Lincoln’s Gettysburg address ends with the vow that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”We often see this restated to indicate that some special...
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Hidden History: England's 1381 Peasant Revolt
In 14th century England, the largest political rebellion in the country’s history broke out in London. It had far-reaching consequences which can still be felt today."Hidden History" is a diary series...
View ArticleAmerica failing? It's being built into the system
Excellent overview of the long path to a weakened democracy.John C. Calhoun, James McGill Buchanan, Charles Koch and others in the descent into oligarchy.www.rawstory.com/...Looks like I need to get a...
View ArticleOne positive outcome of this awful pandemic might just be more leverage for...
In 2021, perhaps for the first time in decades, COVID-19 has ushered in a shift in the supply and demand equation that has benefited workers. In April, a higher percentage of nongovernment employees...
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The End. Or Is It?
April 29, 1975 Dutch photojournalist Hugh Van Es took a photo of the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam (now Ho Chi Min City) that became an iconic symbol of the end of the Vietnam War.In...
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