Corporations vs. Humans

Winter is Coming

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Thursday, October 27, 2011 — Winter is coming. This will make the Occupations — which can now be declared a success — more difficult to sustain. We believe the current physical Occupations can and should be transformed into an unprecedented free media space, uninfluenced by and impervious to corporate power, and covering the entire nation. Properly done this plan would not only extend the presence of the Occupation everywhere, but would give the people of each district a powerful tool to dislodge Members of Congress who do not serve them. There are about 100 million households in the U.S, and 435 Congressional Districts. Each district …

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A Free People Need a Free Press

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Friday, October 21, 2011 — The Editor conferred with his spiritual advisors last Sunday; which is to say, he sat down with a couple of fellow ’Nam vets and their life partners and drank beer and talked for several hours. These events are always their own reward, but something special came with this one. That should have been no surprise, since as it took place Wall Street was being Occupied. The Editor was told in no uncertain terms that now is the time to hammer home relentlessly the idea — previously expressed in this space — that the people in each and every Congressional District …

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435 Hohners — Our Simplistic Solution to the Nation’s Most Intractable Problem

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Friday, August 19, 2011 — In his New York Times column this morning, Paul Krugman points out that the dominant ingredient of the federal government’s response to our economic situation is “awesome wrongness.” Krugman did not explain why that is, but on the Diane Rehm show this morning, John King did. He argued that the voters bear substantial responsibility because they put enough Tea Partiers in Congress to dominate that body, after having put a Democrat in the White House. King made no mention of the role, if any, that the national news media might have played in the electorate’s decision-making process. We would posit …

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Because It Worked So Well in California

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Thursday, July 21, 2011 — So, here we are, pole-axed by what is probably but a hint of summers to come, our government paralyzed by an intransigent cult elected by the least informed, most easily manipulated sector of the electorate, and some of the nation’s best minds are advocating that we break through this impasse with a National Initiative for Democracy, a “meta-legislative proposal that would allow citizens, independently of Congress and the Executive, to propose and vote on laws.” What, because Proposition 13 worked so well for California? Granted, NI4D would “outlaw the use of funds from non-natural persons (for example corporate funds) in …

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