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Paul Buchheit reports via AlterNet
While Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and John Kiriakou are vilified for revealing vital information about spying and bombing and torture, a man who conspired with Goldman Sachs to make billions of dollars on the planned failure of subprime mortgages was honored by New York University for his "Outstanding Contributions to Society".
This is one example of the distorted thinking leading to the demise of a once-vibrant American society. There are other signs of decay:
- A House Bill Would View Corporate Crimes as "Honest Mistakes"
- Almost 2/3 of American Families Couldn't Afford a Single Pill of a Life-Saving Drug
- Violent Crime Down; Prison Population Doubles
- One in Four Americans Suffer Mental Illness; Mental Health Facilities Cut by 90 Percent
- The Unpaid Taxes of 500 Companies Could Pay for a Job for Every Unemployed American ...for two years ...at the nation's median salary of $36,000 ...for all 8 million unemployed.
Citizens for Tax Justice reports that Fortune 500 companies are holding over $2 trillion in profits offshore to avoid taxes that would amount to over $600 billion. Our society desperately needs infrastructure repair, but 8 million potential jobs are being held hostage beyond our borders.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @06:34PM
Not so fast, Quickdraw Sam. The Nazis were quite happy with many aspects of socialist approaches to things, and in fact co-opted them quite handily. They weren't communists, and didn't do the collective farming thing, but they had lots of employment and upliftment programmes, budgeted for schooling and social benefit programmes. They spent quite aggressively on favoured industries, and used the government purse to do exactly that. If you hop across the alps, Mussolini was even more up front about co-opting the large unions, while drowning some of the more rowdy little ones. The main difference is that nationalistic aspect of their ideology, and the racism and expansionism that went with it.
It's no coincidence that the old aristocracy loathed Hitler with an incredible venom, and many of them actually turned against him when push came to shove. Hitler loved him some class warfare - by the simple expedient of creating a new hierarchy.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday December 08 2015, @09:47PM
Kind of like how the far-right corrupted the worthy grassroots goals of the Tea Party, and made conservatives think they were libertarians even as they were dragged further and further right...
To Trump and his irrational supporters, the aristocracy are the career politicians, including the already far-right Cruz, Bush, Cheney. With his latest outburst even they have turned on Trump, at least on specific issues, yet supporters still refuse to see the light, believing the less-far-right are RINOs... hell, some already thought GWB was a RINO years ago.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @10:46PM
already far-right Cruz, Bush,
This is some top notch comedy, matey.
'Far right' has truly lost all meaning.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday December 08 2015, @11:27PM
As someone already pointed out. Obama is pretty far right by most of the world's standard.
And every time Obama decided to consider some right-wing ideas, the GOP had to go further right to keep the Absolute Opposition Stance.
Most of the GOP would now make Le Pen (the extreme-rightist who just won the French local elections) feel either at home, if not a bit too commie.
And still, the media doesn't call them on what everyone else can see.
Almost anywhere else in the world, Clinton would get elected with better than 82/18 (Le Pen dad's loss in the presidential run-off)