Facts

Who Knew There Was So Much Poverty? The Poor, That's Who

Last evening, Tavis Smiley hosted a program that was broadcast live on C-SPAN live and that focused for two-and-a-half hours on the issue of poverty in America.  It was terrific.  The energy and commitment of the experts assembled to investigate and help alleviate poverty made the conversation rich beyond anything I’ve seen in ages.  Each panelist came at the topic from a different perspective.  That added to the richness of the discussion about being poor in America.

Good stuff, Michael Moore, Cornell West, Barbara Ehrenreich, Suze Orman, Majora Carter, Roger A. Clay, Jr, and all who participated as panelists or who helped pull this together.  If you didn’t see this show, Remaking America, from Poverty to Prosperity, you can watch it in C-SPAN’s archives.  And you can find out more at Smiley’s website.

Even though I’ve been through the slide from middle-income to poor and now am fighting the unwinnable fight to climb back out, I still need the affirmation these sorts of discussions can give to remember that it still isn’t my fault.  The system crushed me, and the system will crush me again unless I stay intensely vigilant -- and maybe it will crush me again even if I do.  But I do not want to stay vigilant about the wrong things.

I want a life without the terror of poverty.  I hate fearing what I cannot control.  It’s worse than any horror movie could ever be.  I do not want a lot of stuff.  I do want some peace.

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Financial Meltdown 101

By the editors of Truthdig | Support Truthdig

Getting a grip on the economic catastrophe that rocked the country during the fall of 2008 is no easy feat, what with so many players, back-room deals, bills, upswings and meltdowns to consider. To that end, Truthdig, once again in collaboration withCapzles.com, has put together a comprehensive multimedia timeline that explains how we got into this mess and how we might avoid repeating history in the near future.

This is a work in progress, and we’ll be adding updates and pointers in coming weeks, so check it out and leave your feedback in the comment section below. We’ll also be including some audio commentary to highlight key turning points along the story line to make this complicated narrative easier to understand, even for those of us who fell asleep during Econ 101 (or avoided that whole scene altogether).

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The Essence of the Main Stream Media: Bottom Line Journalism

Former CBS Anchorman, Dan Rather, Speaks to an audience about how corporate broadcasters have compromised journalistic integrity by satisfying stockholders, instead of public interests. "The news stops with making bucks, America's biggest news organizations have over the past quarter of a century fallen prey to merger after merger, to the point that they are now part of major corporate entities, whose primary businesses have nothing to do with news. The goal of these entities is to increase profits."

Watch video here

 

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Prof. William Black describes fraud and liars loans in the economic crisis.

Black, who is a former government regulator and white-collar criminologist, shows that the crisis was not an unavoidable disaster, as Wall Street apologists suggest, but the result of large-scale fraud perpetrated by financial institutions like Lehman Brothers. The incidents of fraud were numerous, blatant, extreme and premeditated. In making his case against Lehman, Black exposes the omissions, failures and negligence of the primary regulators, particularly the Fed. Had the Fed not been derelict in its duties, the cyclical downturn would not have turned into a near-Depression.

"Lehman’s failure is a story in large part of fraud," Black said in his testimony before the House. "Lehman was the leading purveyor of liars’ loans in the world. For most of this decade, studies of liars’ loans show incidence of fraud of 90per cent. … If you want to know why we have a global crisis, in large part it is before you."

Prof. William Black describes fraud and liars loans in the economic crisis.

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