crony capitalism

Wireless ‘smart meters’ tell snoopers when you are not home

"Criminals no longer need to stake out a home or a business to monitor the inhabitants' comings and goings. Now they can simply pick up wireless signals broadcast by the building's utility meters. In the US, analogue meters that measure water, gas and electricity consumption are being replaced by automated meter reading (AMR) technology. Nearly a third of the country's meters - more than 40 million - have already been changed. The new time-saving devices broadcast readings by radio every 30 seconds for utility company employees to read as they walk or drive around with a receiver. But they are not the only ones who can tune in." Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: The lame rules for presidential debates: a perfect microcosm of US democracy

"All views that reside outside the narrow confines of the two parties are rigidly excluded. Anyone who might challenge or subvert the two-party duopoly is rendered invisible. Lobbyists who enrich themselves by peddling their influence run everything behind the scenes. Corporations pay for the process, which they exploit and is then run to bolster rather than threaten their interests. The media's role is to keep the discourse as restrictive and unthreatening as possible while peddling the delusion that it's all vibrant and free and independent and unrestrained. To understand the US political process, one can just look to how these sham debates are organized and how they function." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGlenn Greenwald: The lame rules for presidential debates: a perfect microcosm of US democracy

Carlos Slim, World’s Richest Man, Gets Richer Supplying ‘Obamaphones’ to Poor

"A Mexican telecom mogul who holds the title of world's richest man, and one of President Obama's top donors are both getting even richer from the U.S. government program that supplies so-called 'Obamaphones' to the poor. Carlos Slim, who has an estimated net worth of $70 billion, owns a controlling stake in TracFone, which makes $10 per phone for each device it provides to poor Americans. The program, which began in the mid-1980s, has exploded in the past four years after being expanded from supplying landlines to the poor to providing cellular phones." Continue reading →

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Government vs Capitalism OR Crony Capitalism? What Can We Do About Greed?

A lot of people are talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement and we did publish an article about the OccupyLincoln movement this weekend. One of the central themes one can detect within this movement regards “corporate greed”, and it started with a specific criticism of the corporate greed on Wall Street and its influences… more

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#1 Question for Lee Terry: What DID You Do With That 2010 CRS Report About Pipeline Authority?

UPDATED October 7, 2011: After reading this article, we highly recommend reading the next article in this series, “NE Unicameral on TransCanada Pipeline: Twisting Words & Giving Away Sovereignty“, as there are a number of updates and additional information included in it (we have included some of those updates here) . It’s obvious that the… more

Continue Reading#1 Question for Lee Terry: What DID You Do With That 2010 CRS Report About Pipeline Authority?

Warren Buffett: Crazy – Like a Fox

In my most recent article, I called for Omaha’s “Oracle”, Warren Buffett, to hush up. As I noted, he seems to be everywhere these days, speaking incessantly on public policy topics. I noted that I hoped in the coming days to explain what I meant by statements I’d made regarding the error of thinking that [...]

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