Film review: The Campaign (2012)

I watched this film last evening and it was good fun. It stars Will Ferrell as the incumbent congressman of a North Carolina district who is expecting to run unopposed until a misstep by him suggests weakness and prompts two wealthy brothers (thinly disguised versions of the real life Koch brothers) to back someone who will be beholden to them and allow them to transfer their sweatshops in China back to the US so that they can save shipping costs and thus increase their profits. [Read more…]

One big bank finally being brought to account?

The way the big banks have been getting away with their crimes is truly a scandal, with the white House, the Justice Department, and other federal agencies responsible for monitoring them either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. This leaves Congress as the only possible entity that can do something and senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) has been almost single-handedly trying to bring some accountability. As we saw in the 2013 Frontline investigation The Untouchables and in the 2010 Academy Award winning documentary Inside Job, he used his powers as chair of the senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to drag out of the top executives in the big banks information about how they manipulated the housing market and investor’s money in ways that impoverished the country while enriching themselves. [Read more…]

The problem of restricted empathy

Ohio’s Republican senator Rob Portman has written an op-ed in today’s papers announcing that he is reversing his long-standing opposition to same-sex marriage (he also opposed gay people adopting children, was a co-sponsor of DOMA, and even supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage) and now supports it. The reason for his surprising move? The fact that his own son told him in February 2011 that he was gay. [Read more…]

The man behind the 47% video

While Mitt Romney always had a tough road to winning the last election, the infamous video of him at a $50,000 a plate dinner complaining about the 47% of moochers likely put the lid on his chances. Now the person who made the video has emerged from the shadows. To no one’s surprise, he was one of the staff working the event. His name is Scott Prouty and he worked as a bartender that evening and in an interview he explains what caused him to record the event, how he did it, and why he agonized over what to do with it once he realized what he had. [Read more…]

Comparing the US and Norwegian prison systems

The way we treat prisoners in the US has never made any sense to me. This country is easily the world’s leader in the total number of prisoners and in the per capita number. The US prison system is an exceedingly cruel and inhumane (and expensive) system, with some prisoners (especially those in so-called supermax facilities) spending almost their entire time in solitary confinement in their cells. [Read more…]

The menace of blasphemy laws

I have been railing about the menace of blasphemy laws and once again Pakistan’s infamous laws have revealed that, in addition to being an outrageous infringement of people’s rights of free speech and discriminatory against religious minorities, they also serve as a way for people to settle private grudges and advance their own agendas at the expense of others. The charges can carry the death penalty. [Read more…]

Income inequality and hunger in Venezuela and the US

Once in while, a news item comes along that inadvertently gives us a telling insight into our media mindset. NPR featured this obituary by the Associated Press’s business reporters Pamela Sampson and Pablo Gorondi on the legacy of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez that had this quite extraordinary passage that tells you all that you need to know about what the oligarchy and its media lackeys consider development and progress. Sampson says: [Read more…]

Political language today

George Orwell’s classic 1946 essay Politics and the English Language makes the case that politics degrades language because when politicians want to look truthful while telling lies they do so by making their language convoluted and using big words so that the listener is not aware of what the speaker is actually saying. Orwell says that users of such language should be viewed warily and recommends that people who want to communicate truthfully and accurately would do well to adopt a straightforward style using simple and common words and vivid and accurate metaphors. [Read more…]