Models of Community: Alternatives to Corporate America

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Charles Hugh Smith
OfTwoMinds

As I have often observed, the majority of America's household income flows to a handful of corporate cartels protected by the Central State. Most of the mortgage payments flow to the "too big to fail" banks. Most of the telecom payments flow to the few companies in the telecom cartel. Most of the energy money flow to the energy cartel. Most of the food budget go to the Big Ag cartel and the retail cartel. Most of the money spent on "entertainment" flows to the corporate media cartel, and so on.

Most of the global media is owned by 5 or 6 corporations. Most of the radio stations in the U.S. are owned by two corporations. This tremendous concentration of ownership of the nation's assets gives these cartels immense political power, and so the Central State acts as "partner" to Corporate America, protecting the cartels from competition by insuring that regulations are used to stamp out or limit competitors. Corporate losses are shifted to the backs of the taxpayers, all in the name of the "common good." Profits are private but losses are public--a peculiar definition of "common good."

Corporate profits are now the bellwether, and the raison d'etre, of the entire U.S. economy.The central State and the Federal Reserve have a single domestic goal: boost the U.S. stock market, which they have made the proxy for the economy's "health." If corporate profits and the stock market are rising, then all is well. Or so we are constantly told by Fed and Treasury hacks, toadies and lackeys.

America Is Bankrupt (But Not the Way You Think)

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Harvard Business Review

Healthcare, schools, police, tax breaks: which would you keep, slash, or cut? The axe has to swing, so where, if you were the lumberjack, would you aim it? It's the central, polarizing question in this age of austerity.

Or is it? Maybe relying on cuts to reboot prosperity is a bit like starting a diet to treat Alzheimer's: probably not going to work.

Consider an allegory: a household racking up debt not just because they have easy credit, but because they're a dysfunctional family to begin with. Meet the new Joneses: they're a little less Cleaver and little more Soprano.

Dad Jones is the CEO of Toxico, a major, blue-chip energy corporation. He's an imperious millionaire, but he's stingier than Scrooge McDuck. Though he rakes it in, he flat-out refuses to contribute much, if anything, towards basic household costs--and when the family sets up rules to make him, he quickly finds loopholes. In fact, last year, instead of contributing to the household purse, he managed to find a way get a net contribution from it.

US nuclear agency: Japan crisis no US health threat

Editor's Note: We're posting this story to have a record of this statement, much like the EPA press release that said the air was safe to breathe in NYC exactly one week after 9/11 -- which has been subsequently removed from the EPA website.

Radiation testing in Japan © AFP

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission sought to tamp down American fears of nuclear fallout, stressing Thursday there was no present radioactive risk to US territory from Japan's quake-stricken atomic reactor.

"All the available information continues to indicate Hawaii, Alaska, the US Territories and the US West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity," the NRC said.

The statement follows a day of near-panic buying of iodide pills in the United States, notably in California and Hawaii, the Pacific island state some 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers) east of Japan.