His recent article for the Huffington Post, Time to Just Say No to Giant Corporate "Parasites" -- and Recognize Them for What They Are, is a brilliant commentary on the state of business and government relationships in the modern age. He gives several examples of huge bureaucratic entities that exist for no other purposes than to create billable hours and to suck down tax money while performing simple government functions that the government should in fact be doing, and doing with much greater efficacy.

Of course, one of the examples happens to be private health insurance, the worst parasite of all.

Read more.

Sounds like a movie script. Giant parasites stalk the American landscape disguised as benign upstanding participants in the "free market."

[...]

In fact, there are a number of major corporations in America who do very little productive work -- never making products or delivering services that benefit their consumers. Instead, the profits they earn and the big CEO salaries they pay are derived by sucking or skimming a portion of the dollars they have convinced the Government to send through their corporate accounts -- generally to perform a function that is or ought to be an inherently governmental function.

Ironically, many of these corporate parasites are the loudest defenders of "free markets" and the most vociferous opponents of "government takeovers," when in fact they exist by feeding off the taxpayers.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/time-to-just-say-no-to-gi_b_291102.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/time-to-just-say-no-to-gi_b_291102.html

Officials in America and Britain report on how a changing climate could batter their countries

IF YOU want to persuade voters to make difficult choices in order to tackle climate change, it helps to make clear precisely how their own homes might be affected by shifting weather patterns. Although climate change is widely expected to do most damage in poor countries, where large and vulnerable populations are most likely to be battered and displaced in the coming decades, rich ones will be affected too. This week two governments, in America and in Britain, set forth reports detailing what changes might be in store at home.

(Literally. Check. Figuratively? Check.)

WASHINGTON — The White House plan to rescue the nation’s financial system, announced on Tuesday by Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, is far bigger than anyone predicted and envisions a far greater government role in markets and banks than at any time since the 1930s.

Administration officials committed to flood the financial system with as much as $2.5 trillion — $350 billion of that coming from the bailout fund and the rest from private investors and the Federal Reserve, making use of its ability to print money.

For instance, check out this article on planes powered by algae. Or the U.S. as the greatest innovator.

This one on wireless electricity stands out the most:

But strap on your rubber boots; Tesla's dream has come true. After more than 100 years of dashed hopes, several companies are coming to market with technologies that can safely transmit power through the air -- a breakthrough that portends the literal and figurative untethering of our electronic age. Until this development, after all, the phrase "mobile electronics" has been a lie: How portable is your laptop if it has to feed every four hours, like an embryo, through a cord? How mobile is your phone if it shuts down after too long away from a plug? And how flexible is your business if your production area can't shift because you can't move the ceiling lights?

See Detroit CEO's doing that?

No. Why? They're not true leaders. They're not like this gentleman.

'We in Japan learned during the bubble economy that businesses that pursue money first fail. The business world has lost sight of this basic tenant of business ethics.'

And hopefully inspiring.

Obama Buying Half-Hour Block of Prime-time Broadcast - Advertising Age - Campaign Trail: "WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- In what is likely become biggest network-TV buy of the presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama is buying 30 minutes of time on major TV networks for a program to air from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 29."

Big Insurer’s Spending Habits Disclosed - NYTimes.com: "A week after the insurance giant, the American International Group, received an $85 billion federal bailout, its life insurance subsidiary, AIG General, held a weeklong retreat for its top sales agents at the exclusive St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif. Expenses for the week, lawmakers were told, totaled $442,000, including $200,000 for hotel rooms, $150,000 for food and $23,000 in spa charges.

In addition, the former A.I.G. executive who led the London-based division whose implosion is largely blamed for the insurance giant’s downfall, Joseph J. Cassano, continues to receive $1 million a month from the company, on top of the $280 million he received in the last eight years.

And even after A.I.G. reported $5 billion in losses in the final quarter of 2007, its chief executive at the time, Martin J. Sullivan, argued before a compensation committee that executives should receive performance bonuses. He received $5 million.

“This unbridled greed, this callous abuse of trust of hard-working Americans’ savings is just so disgusting it is hard to put into words, and the anger level in America is coming, as it often has, at Wall Street,' Representative Mark Souder, Republican of Indiana, said."

In my honest opinion, I believe this whole situation could have been avoided if the banks had allowed people to readjust their mortgages to allow them to keep their homes if they were able to maintain the payments they were making before their ARMs ballooned. I had a brief stint in the mortgage industry 10 years. I never understood how this shit was not gonna hit the fan.

The power brokers in suits simply didn't care. They got greedy. So, I'm not really in favor of the bailout.

But I am in favor of Barney Frank. This was another great Barney Frank moment.

But it got me thinking, what if this bail-out was indeed done by people offering micro-loans in the amount and manner of their choosing, with a high rate of interest return. You know, like Kiva for our country.