Bernie Sanders

Businesses usually begin as productive enterprises. But almost all have zombie tendencies. Once they reach a certain size, they recognize that the best investment they can make is in politics. They hire lobbyists. They pay crony politicians. In return, government enacts rules and regulations to stifle competition. But as with so many of its activities, government succeeds when it fails. As a new industry arises, the money still flows from the cronies, while the feds get a piece of action from the new enterprises, too. And households? They grouse and groan. But the masses usually love government. They think business people are greedy SOBs. But they often hold the fellows who run the government racket in the same exalted category as saints, TV stars, and sports heroes. Don’t believe it?

U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed ‘Trade’ deals are actually about whether the world is heading toward a dictatorial world government - a dictatorship by the hundred or so global super-rich who hold the controlling blocks of stock in the world’s largest international corporations - or else toward a democratic world government - which will be a global federation of free and independent states, much like the United States was at its founding, but global in extent. These are two opposite visions of world government; and Obama is clearly on the side of fascism, an international mega-corporate dictatorship... What’s at stake here is nothing less than whether the future of the United States, and perhaps even of the world, will be democracy, or else fascism.

Hillary Clinton actually supports Barack Obama’s trade-policy, and even supports the way in which he is trying to get it through Congress. However, the news-media didn’t report it that way. Hilary is repeating her earlier tactics, in 2008, when she tried to give the impression that she had opposed her husband Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, though in fact she had earlier bragged about how great it was for the country and claimed it as if it were her own.

The Department of Education says it will forgive federal student loans made to Corinthian Colleges students who can prove they were victims of fraud. The potential cost to taxpayers: nearly $4 billion. With the precedent thus set, the question now is whether continued pressure on for-profit colleges will result in further closures and more petitions from hundreds of thousands of students with hundreds of billions of loans they now know can be legally discharged.

If you think the corporate-fascist state is overbearing and oppressive now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.  But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it’s already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.

"Our goal is simple: Get Congress on record in support of debt-free college and spark a movement to make it a reality. This resolution can be the start of something big -- but we need your support to blow it wide open. Are you with us?"

It seems comical, yet ill-omened, how Barack Obama is herding the already decimated middle class along a path sure to reach economic oblivion, while maintaining support from much of the old guard of school-government-trade unionists which has kept the Democratic Party afloat during the last five decades in a conservative sea dominated by currents of old-time religion and misguided patriotism. ISIS’ literal style of decapitation is repugnant and shocking. US’ self-imposed economic decapitation may not appear at first as shocking, but the end result will be as gruesome to America’s working class: not the proletariat of old, but most everyone holding both blue and white collar jobs.

"Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wants to take from the rich in order to make public college tuition-free for everyone else. On Tuesday, the Vermont senator will hold a press conference in the nation's capital at which he will introduce a plan to use a so-called Robin Hood tax on stock transactions to fund tuition at four-year public colleges and universities," Bloomberg reports.

We present the likely winner of the next election...

Since the outcome of the primaries has already been largely pre-determined, and America will soon to be presented with the next dynastic iteration of the "Bush vs Clinton" false dilemma, here is how the key (non) question breaks down as of this moment: if the 2016 election were held today, for whom would you vote?

Peel back the layers of the TPP and you’ll find what some believe to be a “corporate Trojan horse.” Disguised as “free trade,” the TPP’s provisions and tactics undermine Constitutional safeguards and national sovereignty. But there’s also a silver lining. The TPP exposes who, in the marbled halls of political power, is working for whom. It forces politicians to put their cards on the table, and by their hands you will know them. Packaged as a gift to the American people that will renew industry and make us more competitive, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a Trojan horse. It’s a coup by multinational corporations who want global subservience to their agenda. Buyer beware. Citizens beware.

Should Gary Gensler truly be Clinton's chief financial officer, and should Hillary become America's next president, then ladies and gentlemen, in the fine tradition started by Hank Paulson who nearly brought the entire wastern world to ruin, the next US Treasury Secretary will be the following fine former Goldman Sachs employee and "champion for everyday Americans."

GE’s announcement that its getting out of the finance business should be a reminder of how crony capitalism is corrupting and debilitating the American economy. The ostensible reason the company is unceremoniously dumping its 25-year long build-up of the GE Capital mega-bank is that it doesn’t want to be regulated by Washington as a systematically important financial institution under Dodd-Frank. Oh, and that its core industrial businesses have better prospects. We will see soon enough about its oilfield equipment and wind turbine business, or indeed all of its capital goods oriented businesses in a radically deflationary world drowning in excess capacity. But at least you can say good riddance to GE Capital because it was based on a phony business model that was actually a menace to free market capitalism. Its deplorable raid on the public purse during the Lehman crisis had already demonstrated that in spades.

Like her or hate her, Elizabeth Warren this week unequivocally told Fortune's Sheila Bair "No," she would not run for President, reflecting that for a Democratic nominee to win, "they need to speak to America’s families about the economic crisis in this country. It starts with the recognition that Washington works for the rich and powerful and not for America’s families." We bring this up, since, as OpenSecrets reports, despite her reputation as an anti-Wall Street populist, Warren would have been the wealthiest of the potential 2016 presidential candidates currently serving in Congress.