Occupy Earth

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 — The movement began, quite brilliantly, as an occupation of one location: the seat of power — Wall Street. By striking at the root of the problem, it changed the global topic of conversation in just two months. Unlike the collapse of the global Ponzi scheme, no one could have predicted that. The question now is how to proceed. We propose the continuation and expansion of the occupation, by means of Inescapable Newspapers. Allow us to briefly explain. (Again. See previous discussions of this idea here, here, here, and here.) Information that Shimmers If you were to ask a fish what …

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Winter is Coming

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

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

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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Happy Day

Friday, April 23, 2010 — It doesn’t take all that much to make us happy. The papers were delivered on time. The mailing crew arrived, enjoyed a lively conversation about the events of the past fortnight while preparing the papers, then dispersed. Hundreds of papers are in the mail and on their way to forty-some-odd states. The kinks in the Digital Subscription system seem to be worked out. Some of our online subscribers may be downloading their PDFs even as we type. It’s time now to head downtown and make sure things have gone smoothly on that end. After that, there will be a few …

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