Monbiot: “the bailout is as American as apple pie and obesity”

by | Oct 1, 2008 | capitalism, US politics

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-American”. 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 America”. Bill Perkins, the venture capitalist who took out an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the deal, calls it “trickle-down communism”.

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.

Read more.

G’Day World #349 – Antony Loewenstein, The Blogging Revolution

by | Oct 1, 2008 | Podcast

Antony Loewenstein is an a Sydney-based freelance journalist, author and blogger whose latest book, The Blogging Revolution, is “a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the globe who live and write under repressive regimes – many of them risking their lives in doing so.”


{Photo:Bryan Siebel}

Sources of global dissident blogs:

Global Voices Online

WordPress.com:tag:dissident

If you want an independent media, you can support TPN by throwing me some cash to cover the bills or, if you’re tight on the cash front, by blogging or Twittering about the show or joining the G’Day World Facebook group. There is a list of things you can do to support the show here.

The G’Day World theme music:

End of DaysConquest
“Secrets of Life” (mp3)
from “End of Days”
(Dark Star Records)

More On This Album

G’Day World #348 – Everett True, “The Man Who Invented Grunge”

by | Sep 28, 2008 | Podcast

Meeting Everett True isn’t what you’d expect.

When I went to his house a few weeks ago, I expected to be confronted by Spider Jerusalem in the flesh. Instead I was greeted by someone looking like a middle-aged accountant. Quite the anti-climax.

But the man is still the man. Who is Everett True, I hear you ask? Is he:

a. the man who introduced Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love?
b. the first music critic outside of Seattle to do a story on Nirvana?
c. the man who outraged the Australian music industry by denouncing some top Aussie bands as
“abominations against nature” and suggesting the local music press are all sycophants?
d. the man who wrote the definitive biography on The White Stripes?
e. the man who writes a regular column for VillageVoice.com and The Guardian?
f. the publisher of PLAN B magazine?

If you answered “all of the above”, then you’re a complete smart-ass as it wasn’t even one of the options. But yeah you’d be right.

Listen in as we discuss the future of the music business, why Nirvana was “the most overrated band of all time” and The White Stripes would be nothing without Meg.

This is what he looked like back then:

Please support the show by throwing me some cash to cover the bills or, if you’re tight on the cash front, by blogging or Twittering about the show or joining the G’Day World Facebook group. There is a list of things you can do to support the show here.

The G’Day World theme music:

End of DaysConquest
“Secrets of Life” (mp3)
from “End of Days”
(Dark Star Records)

More On This Album