Richard tells me that the kind of government we have in the USA, UK and Australia isn’t really democracy – and he suggests a way forward to creating the world’s first true participatory democracies.
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World Mental Health Day (aka “Blue Day”) is being held on my birthday. Coincidence? I think not.
My mate Efisia has written a great blog post about WMHD which includes the latest stats in Australia about depression and suicide as well as her own struggle with mental health issues. Many of us on Twitter have changed our icons to be blue to promote Blue Day.
From Fiz’ blog post:
One in five people (one in four women, one in six men) suffer from depression at some point in their lives and 62% of them don’t seek help.
If you’re the one in five, do something about it. I started seeing a shrink about 5 or 6 years ago and it did me a world of good. In fact, I think EVERYONE should see a shrink, not just people suffering from depression. We’re all a little fucked up. Just admit it, do something about it, and move on. Mmmkay?
According to The Spagnola Report, “… the two corrupt fat cats that ran Fannie, Franklin Raines and James Johnson served as economic advisors to Obama. So if they ran Fannie into the ground and they advise Obama on economics, how well does that bode for America under an Obama administration?” The Raines connections seems slightly weak but the Johnson one is solid. .
The other interesting news to come out recently was that according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 28 lawmakers had between $598,100 and $1.7 million of their own money invested in the two companies last year. (link) You have to wonder how much of a factor that was in the FM & FM bailout.
So… yet again I make the case that Obama is as much one of the elite as McCain and, therefore, will represent the goals of the elite more than the goals of the other 99.9% of the American people.
On the US bailout, George Monbiot writes:
According to Senator Jim Bunning, the proposal to purchase $700bn of dodgy debt by the US government “is financial socialism, it is un-Americanâ€. The economics professor Nouriel Roubini calls George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke “a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of Americaâ€. Bill Perkins, the venture capitalist who took out an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the deal, calls it “trickle-down communismâ€.
They are wrong. The banking subsidies Congress rejected last night are as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded by Bush and Paulson might be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.
One of the best studies of corporate welfare in the United States is published by my old enemies at the Cato Institute. Its report, by Stephen Slivinski, estimates that in 2006 the federal government spent $92bn subsidising business. Much of it went to major corporations like Boeing, IBM and General Electric.
Conquest
“Secrets of Life” (mp3)