The most important action the government can take to ease the economic crisis is to bypass the middle-fiddle manipulators of Wall Street and deal with the thousands of solvent local and regional banks that still exercise sound lending and investment practices. Moreover, there are countless ways to put people to work without having to wait for new technology such as wind turbine grids and high speed rails. Decaying malls and housing are in need of immediate clean up and repair. Many malls in decl...

Rotten in Denmark is mild contrasted to what’s rotten in the United States. When politicians—such as Hoyer and Cantor— are still vying for funds from the likes of AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup how can we hope for a clean slate?  Even squeaky clean Obama was campaigning on $millions of corporate and union contributions. Other than the truly humanitarian, lobbyists should be chased out of Washington. Politics is so obscenely married to economic self-interests that ther...

It's not rocket science. The need for Public Works is a foregone conclusion; Furthermore, in order that others can be hired, we have to put an end to lionizing millions who work more than 40 hours a week, especially those who "manly" boast 60-80 hrs. The Labor Department should enforce the law. There should also be a surtax on every damnable item made overseas in order to discourage perpetual outsourcing. Call it a New, New Deal.     &nb...

Jobs Bill? Punish small businesses that chronically violate overtime pay. After eighty years isn’t it time not only to preserve the work week but to incrementally reduce it to 35 hrs in ten years? Solution to malpractice lawsuits is to get rid of grossly incompetent physicians with the same venom the public wants to eliminate teachers. A subcommittee should look into fee-gouging by malpractice insurers. Competent doctors should be partly subsidized for the outrageous insurance ...

Twisting Ideology Ideology was first meant to be science of ideas and policy designed to set in motion societal reform. By the Mid 19 th century it became emotionally charged by religious and political delusions bereft of systemic philosophic coherence and hardly worthy of political theory as in such likes of Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Kant and the Federalist Papers. Because he aligned his work with Hegel—thereby erroneously claiming political theory rather than economic ideology—...

Though it seems rational not to view things by ideology, the happenings of the times is geared to partisanship; Obama's call for bipartisanship fell on deaf ears big time. Take the majority leader's current situation: lefties see it as racism, righties see only the double standard when connected to Trent Lott. The true issue is that both senators—Lott and Reid—are awful wordsmiths. However, Trent Lott is a southern conservative, and perhaps even privately wishes for the good old days...

In browsing: "Pension Fund and Illinois shareholder Ken Brown alleges that Goldman's much-criticized compensation plan is not structured in the best interest of shareholders.... Citing New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's July report, Brown's lawsuit states that "Goldman earned $2.3 billion, paid out $4.8 billion in bonuses and received $10 billion in TARP funding." The lawsuit argues that the bank's 2008 bonuses were subsidized with taxpayer money. At issue in both lawsuits is whether or no...

  Obama is over zealous in offering tax incentives or credits for domestic green industries in order to broach the labor famine. What is wrong with this county that it cannot get its citizenry to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"? What industry would not be proud to  take part in building the future without expecting handouts. Haven’t we had enough of that since Nov. ‘08? Yet why are so many employers so willing to shit o...

"Failure to connect the dots"—deja vu. What this means is the failure to connect various agencies concerned. Yet even this rationalization doesn’t address the issue of human sloth and incompetence. Perhaps the solution lies in awarding these agencies bonuses when in the unlikely event they arrest the terrorists before boarding the plane. Wait! Just as with the Wall Street Dummies, don’t these government employees already get a living wage? When is enough, enough?

What with all the hoopla about blackberries, iphones, Google--symbols of the knowledge explosion--how is it the same old corrupt crap still goes on? It's because we are still a nation of idolatry. Those in high places who do wrong are usually forgiven, or rationalization sets in so that our idols are refurbished and, ugh, worshiped. I hope Obama has had enough of the Rubin Trap of Summers and particularly Geithner to dump them.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. After all these half-baked wars from Korea to now there simply is no solution to proactive rogues in this nutty world. In our own county we can't even wipe out druglords, perverts and the Mafia, let alone Islamic crazies. As some have suggested, give up trying before we totally drain our monetary and human treasures and concentrate on the nut cases here.

Where did Reich's optimism go? To begin with the unemployment figure will drop by next Nov. because the stimulus will kick in more. Of course, I would rather see a greater share of employment go to serious manufacturing jobs, but that will not happen anymore since we are so damnably attached to foreign made gadgets. Still--no matter how sad symbolically--an increase in hiring at Kmart, Wallmart, and Burger King will help the deceptive figure of unemployment, which for too long, whether low or h...

Board of directors have no more right to give away stock than they have handing out bonuses. The cavalier manner in which people in charge of other people's money is outrageous. Nevertheless, regional or community banks don't operate like George Bailey either — they aspire to be like their big brothers. Banks are banks—rotten to the core. The entire system of finance is based on sham by constantly raising the cost of living so that savers have to turn to banks and other investment op...

"Had the people at the top of corporate America, Wall Street banks and hedge funds not taken a disproportionate share -- most Americans would not have felt the necessity to borrow so much." Reich is only partly correct here. Excessive consumer debt has always been with us since the credit card became universal. What was new was remortgaging the home that had nothing to do with improvements and maintenance to enhance or retain price integrity of the residence. Credit and debt by definition is ...

Choice is the tag most often misused in the current health reform debacle. Aside from first year come-on gimmicks, all insurance companies are pinned to the same actuaries and eventuate delusion into collusion. The absolute minimal essentials are no more precondition clauses, no ands, ifs and buts to legitimate care, yes to county mandated free walk in clinics for all uninsured, taking the place of Medicaid , every infant hence born is given a government healthcare certificate, and price control...