Public Policy

When they schedule the olympics in a city, the city usually schedules a massive international advertising campaign for its greatness as “the best place on earth,” which is actually the brilliant and oh-so-convincing motto selected by Vancouver, Canada, next host of the winter olympics. That we will learn a great deal about Vancouver from watching the olympics is placed in more doubt than usual by the fact that Canada arrested American journalist Amy Goodman at the border based purely read more

By David Swanson

“Glaubt es mir – das Geheimnis, um die größte Fruchtbarkeit und den größten Genuß vom Dasein einzuernten, heisst: gefährlich leben.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

On Thursday night I had the privilege of viewing a premier of a film together with its star. The theater was in the U.S. Capitol, and the film was “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” ( http://www.mostdangerousman.org read more

By David Swanson

Michael Moore’s movie motivated me to bring this out. Here’s a theme song for Capitalism that I wrote at the time of Paulson’s Plunder. Here it is sung by Timbrewolf:

And sung by leading Mad As Hell Doctor, Margaret Flowers:

And here is audio by Great Rain: The read more

By David Swanson

First let’s put the crusade to defund ACORN in context:

Among recipients of government money already convicted of serious misconduct, ACORN (had it been so convicted) wouldn’t make it onto the list of the top 100. In fact, ACORN could receive 100 times the funding it does and still not make it onto the list.

And you’ll notice something else about the top 10 criminal companies receiving government contracts: they’re all recipients of military contracts. read more

While 50 ACORN members were in the Illinois Republican Party headquarters, the phone rang, and an ACORN member answered it “ACORN, Can I help you?”

On the other end, they said, “What, ACORN? Wait a minute, this is the Republican Party in D.C. calling the Republican Party in Illinois.”

The ACORN member said, “ACORN has taken over the Republican Party in Illinois. Can I help you?”

The response: “Oh my God.”

The winter of 2003 was a cold one and my third read more

By David Swanson

Half the story has been told. On Tuesday the Washington Post reported that Bush is creating civil service positions for loyal appointees, in order to make it hard for Obama to get rid of them.

Bush has also, for some time now, been terminating large numbers of employees in the federal government, people known as whistleblowers, people suspected of disloyalty. Some of the higher profile cases are well known.

But there is more to the story. And it follows the strategy described read more