A bit late, but I have an excuse: a day spent moving furniture from one place to another.

I think the people who are (some unintentionally) acting to enslave the working class of this country are the great leaders of the multinationals, and the big corporations based solely in the US (though there are few enough of those anymore). I believe that since they control Congress via campaign finance abuse, the politicians do not matter anymore.

The only solution to the problem we find ourselves in (though no doubt it will create or uncover other problems) is to remove the influence of business from our representative democracy. By this I mean complete campaign finance reform, zealous enforcement of conflict-of-interest laws (some of which no doubt don't exist yet, I am no legal scholar), and a big rethink on the whole idea of corporations.

I don't believe multinational corporations need to exist. I do believe their ability to abuse the laws of the countries they do business in means they are a threat. Since acceptable alternatives exist, they should stop existing (be broken up).

I believe no corporation should become too big to fail.

I toy with the idea of suggesting scrapping the right of corporations to litigate, and forcing the executives to do so personally. That sort of structural change to things would really require a lot of thought by careful, experienced law scholars, though.

But those are just my thoughts. No doubt there are a lot of ways to attack the rot caused by business-government corruption. The alternative absolutely is wage-slavery.

By all means, run again, Senator. And if you get re-elected, that would be the choice of the people of Illinois.

*(apart from denying their validity entirely).

The issue at hand is that torture is against our current law, and that the people who ordered it and carried it out violated that law. If a properly conducted regular court finds them guilty, they need to pay the price as set forth by the law. It's really simple.

So, I don't really approve of articles that delve into the minutiae and legal analysis of whether or not this subset of offenders might be prosecuted successfully in some showtrials designed to draw attention away from the real problem. Such "reporting" serves to reinforce the idea that it's okay to compromise in this way. Although the piece specifically rejects such compromises, it'd be even better to just continue to bang the drum and insist on the proper (and well established) criminal justice procedures being followed.

By analyzing/criticizing the fake arguments of the people trying to cover this over, you (to some extent) legitimize their point of view. Don't do that.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse.. for you and I. For those with power, money or influence, anything is excused. Ignorance is just one of many excuses that come out of their gobbling mouths as they pass the time waiting for the public to forget. Then they go right back to business as usual.

I'll believe that when I see it. Creativity, empathy and the other soft skills are abundant. Discipline and rigor are hard to come by. Simple economics tells you which will end up being more highly compensated.

If the premise of the article is "will right-brained workers occupy lots of low-rent jobs in the 21st century" ..then yes, I totally agree.

He's:

1. Completely betrayed us on civil liberties.

2. Wasted an unknown but vast amount of money on handouts to the financial geniuses that are the direct authors of our current economic woes.

3. Utterly abandoned his campaign promises on transparency.

4. Continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight.

5. ..And let's not even get started on healthcare.

--Exactly what is supposed to make this guy popular? Stop worshiping the man and look at his deeds! Other than make fancy speeches, what has this guy done as president that has worked out positively? Please do not hold up the stimulus as proof of his godlike prescience. It's really, really hard to predict what causes a recovery or slump until long after the fact, when all the data can be pored over by people who have years to burn.

No. I will not wait 4 years before complaining about Obama finishing what Bush43 began. He doesn't get carte blanche to do whatever he wants just because he won an election (against John McCain and Sarah Palin! Who would have lost, exactly?)

I LOL'd.

The reason you've been ridiculed is that you're spouting nonsense. There will be no federal bankruptcy because we can always (and have been) inflate the currency. Some balance between the following will be struck:

1. Higher taxes

2. Deliberate inflation (loss of current wealth for those with cash and who own debt)

3. Less services.

Please do not call yourself an economist. Economists don't make wild-assed predictions that flatly contradict human self-interest, especially when the humans they're depending on to act irrationally have as the easy choice doing a rational set of things.

run in circles, scream and shout.

The people I was referring to are the politicians, who will do anything to keep their jobs. An actual federal bankruptcy is one of the few things that I could imagine setting off an actual revolution in this country.

Inflation isn't going to show up later this year.. it's been happening all along. They call it quantitative easing, but that's a just a fancy term for creating money from nothing. I noticed the price of goods go up pretty dramatically during the oil/ethanol spike. They haven't come down much (cleverly, portion sizes and the like have changed to allow "price decreases").