World-News

Joseph Natoli, Truthout: 'We live now in a country which is perceived, according to a decreasing (increasing?) number, as having turned upside down. A plutocracy has emerged from previous aspirations toward egalitarian democracy; a 'trickle down' economics in which tax burdens are transferred from rich to poor persists even though it has only continued to redistribute the wealth to the wealthy; a tax rebate to the wealthy, which increases the national debt, is insisted upon by those who seeks massive cuts in government spending in order to decrease the national debt; a monumental collapse of the economy resulting from the reckless finagling of financial institutions results in an 'austerity' campaign against the working class and the middle class; the largest wealth gap among all industrialized nations is defined as a war between taxpayers and public employees; a privatized energy industry has silenced a major threat to its profits - global warming; programs which have greatly benefited the majority of Americans - Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid - face a continuous attack by the wealthy and a capitulating response by its defenders ...'

http://www.truth-out.org/when-world-is-turned-upside-down-and-protest-is-privatized68394



Europes Austerity: Like Something Out of the Brothers Grimm

Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus: 'In ways big and small, Europeans from Greece to Portugal, from Britain to Bavaria are registering their growing anger with the relentless assault inflicted by government-imposed austerity programs. Wages, working conditions and pensions that unions successfully fought for over the past half century are threatened by the collapse of banking systems caught up in a decade-long orgy of speculation that the average European neither took part in, nor profited from. Even the so-called 'well off' workers of Bavaria, Germany's industrial juggernaut, saw their wages, adjusted for inflation, fall 4.5 percent over the past 10 years.'

http://www.truth-out.org/europes-austerity-like-something-out-brothers-grimm68580



In Proposed Mortgage Fraud Settlement, a Gift to Big Banks

Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica: 'Lurking in a proposed mortgage fraud settlement with the state attorneys general is a clause that could be worth billions for the big banks. Yes, I mean the settlement that might extract the supposedly large sum of $20 billion from the banks to settle foreclosure fraud. The one denounced as a 'shakedown' by Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. Despite such rhetoric, the settlement might let the banks avoid tens of billions of write-downs, thanks to a clause with a biblical flavor: the last shall be first.'

http://www.truth-out.org/in-proposed-mortgage-fraud-settlement-a-gift-big-banks68578



Totalitarian Democracy

Richard Lichtman, Truthout: 'Those of us who have wondered how fascism would come, if and when it came, did not sufficiently credit the possibility that it would arrive through the process of law and 'freely chosen' representatives of the people. We were too much given to dramatic, filmic versions of the occasion, influenced perhaps by images of 'body snatchers' from another galaxy, or aliens as they were depicted in 'Independence Day.' There is often the exogamous tendency to imagine that catastrophe must come from beyond our shores, whether defined geographically, culturally or psychologically. It is always 'them,' not 'us,' that is the source of our disaster. Even when the foreign intrusion took a mortal form, we were more likely to view our antagonists in ways that denied their actual humanity.'

http://www.truth-out.org/totalitarian-democracy68543



Ohio Governor Gets 3,000 Boos

Howard Ryan, LaborNotes: 'Ohio Governor John Kasich delivered his 'State of the State' speech March 8 with all the pomp expected of a new governor setting his agenda. But 3,000 union members and allies - led by 2,000 firefighters along with teachers, state workers, electrical workers, steelworkers, and many others - had just finished rallying outside the Columbus statehouse damning Senate Bill 5, the governor's proposal to gut public employee unions.'

http://www.truth-out.org/ohio-governor-gets-3000-boos68569



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