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Ref.: Civic Events
Ref.: Arts & Education Events
Ref.: Public Service Notices
05.19 How the Conservative Worldview Quashes Critical Thinking -- and What That Means For Our Kids' Future
05.19 As Schools Crumble: Quiet Call for Revolution in Philly
Ref. : Letters to the editor
05.22 A Fine Brine: New Desalination Technique Yields More Drinkable Water
05.22 Only renewables - not nuclear - could be too cheap to meter
05.21 Health Bargain Hunters Use Websites To Cut Doctor Bills
05.21 Rapid Climate Changes Turn North Woods into Moose Graveyard
05.20 Collateral Damage in the Marcellus Shale
05.18 Apple to Use Only Green Power for Main Data Center
05.18 New law makes Vermont the first state to ban fracking
05.18 Department of Energy Pretends that Low Levels of Radiation Are Safe
05.17 Only biofuels will cut plane emissions
05.17 Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find
05.15 Horrific Injuries Linked to BP Dispersant Corexit
05.15 'Last Call at the Oasis': Why Time Is Running Out to Save Our Drinking Water
05.14 German Government to Oppose Fracking
05.11 Petition calls on Brazilian president to veto 'catastrophic' forest code
05.11 Bans on School Junk Food Pay Off in California
05.11 When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed
05.10 Game Over for the Climate
05.10 Pollution: the great leveller
05.10 New study: Amish prove raw milk promotes health in children
05.10 Big Agriculture's Big Secrets: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat
Ref. High health-care costs: It’s all in the pricing - graphic
Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians
Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics
Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators
Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here)
Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries
05.22 It’s Official: Watching Fox Makes You Stupider
05.20 Corporate Media: Dan Rather on Real Time with Bill Maher [video]
Daily The Daily Howler
05.22 How America's death penalty murders innocents
05.17 Federal court enjoins NDAA
05.16 Is the filibuster unconstitutional?
05.15 MONEY UNLIMITED
05.11 How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent
05.22 Krugman: Romney ‘really does not understand the economy at all’ [video]
05.22 Is Texas Waging War on History?
05.22 Today's GOP: Worst Political Party Since the Civil War
05.21 The Rise of the New Economy Movement
05.21 Psychiatrist who championed 'gay cure' admits he was wrong
05.16 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage
05.16 Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars
05.16 The Economic Case for Same-Sex Marriage
05.16 If Information Is Power, What Is Lack Of Information? [video]
05.15 IMAGE: It doesn't have to be true, just credible...
05.15 WEDDING BELLS
05.15 Memo to Mitt: Time to Fess Up on Bullying
05.14 “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”
05.14 Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane
05.11 Why Atheists Have Become a Kick-Ass Movement You Want on Your Side
05.11 Fixable Error, New Insight, and Social Security
05.10 Ballot Access
05.10 Christian Conservatives vs. Sex: The Long War Over Reproductive Freedom
05.22 Today Germany Is the Big Loser, Not Greece
05.22 Europe is driving full-tilt, foot on the pedal, into a brick wall
05.21 Heist of the century: Wall Street's role in the financial crisis
05.21 MANIPULATIONS: FACEBOOK is a fiat stock, its valuation is no different than fiat money...
05.21 Obama pledges tough enforcement of Wall Street reforms
05.18 Barack Obama tells EU: boost growth now or face a global crisis
05.18 Bank runs intensifying in the Euro zone
05.18 The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Obama on JPMorgan
05.17 Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD Documentary)
05.17 Nurses vs. High-Speed Traders
05.17 Paul Krugman’s Economic Blinders
05.16 “What Scares Me Isn’t $2 Billion Loss JP Morgan Made, What Scares Me is the Record $19 Billion in Profits” [video]
05.16 Republican Party suckles at the breast of Big Business
05.16 Weisbrot and Krugman are Wrong: Greece cannot pull off an Argentina
05.15 Greek deadlock heightens fears of full European economic crisis
05.14 Why We Regulate
05.11 Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts
05.11 Breaking Up Four Big Banks
05.11 Wall Street’s immunity
05.11 How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform
05.10 Real Estate 4 Ransom -- locking up the Great American Dream
05.10 Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors
05.10 Europe’s Problems Multiply
Ref. Nurses vs. High-Speed Traders
Ref. Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD Documentary)
Ref. We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income
05.22 The Soviets showed the way to leave Afghanistan
05.21 US war veterans tossing medals back at Nato was a heroic act
05.21 Israeli settlers filmed firing guns at [unarmed] Palestinians
05.17 South Sudan slides towards destitution amid border conflict with Sudan
05.15 IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone
05.14 Noam Chomsky on:
• WikiLeaks, Obama’s Targeted Assassinations and Latin America’s Break From the U.S. [video]
•
Occupy Wall Street "Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist" in U.S. — Solidarity [video]
•
Palestinian Hunger Strike a Protest Against "Violations of Elementary Human Rights" [video]
05.14 INFOGRAPHIC: Gas Spending Around The World
05.14 Graphic: Products of Slavery
05.14 Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death
05.14 How Right-Wing Extremists and Islamists Are the Same
05.14 Guatemala's land grab and massacre
05.11 U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam
05.11 Thousands of British police join anti-austerity protest
05.10 China Investment Corp. Stops Buying Europe Government Debt on Crisis Concern
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COMMENTARY:
Everything is Broken: Money Power and the Minneapolis Bridge
Ain't no use jivin'
Ain't no use jokin'
Everything is broken.
-- Bob Dylan
Well, America's a different place than it was when those [older] records were made. It was more like Europe used to be, where every territory was different -- every country was different, every state was different. A different culture, different architecture, different food. You could go 100 miles in the States and it would be like going from Stalingrad to Paris or something. It’s just not that way anymore. It's all homogenized. People wear the same clothes, eat the same food, think the same things.
People think that the rapidly expanding gap between the richest rich and everybody else is just the way things are, when in fact, it is totally unprecedented in America. Again, you don't have to be very old to remember when things weren't this way. And I'm not talking about some kind of nostalgic utopia where corruption and cronyism was never known. Such things we have had and will have with us always. What is different today is the vastly magnified scale of the corruption and cronyism, and its active, ruthless, relentless augmentation by government -- and the ever-growing cumulative effect of year after year of this rot on our infrastructure, our politics and our lives. But the bright, garish diversions and carefully cultivated, corporate-skewed media misinformation that have swallowed our civic society have induced a kind of amnesia amongst the older populace, who are led at every turn to distrust and reject the historical evidence of their own lives.
And of course, there are now generations of Americans who have lived well into adulthood in the "shambling catastrophe" that the Money Power has made of the country. For them, it really is the way of the world, and it takes a conscious, determined, continuous effort on their part to see beyond the grotesque carnival they've been born into. Fortunately, there are many such young people; but of course, the default position of most people (of all ages) is, quite naturally, just to get on with their lives as best they can in the world in which they find themselves.
At any rate, for whatever reason, beyond expressing displeasure at the state of the nation in an occasional poll, the majority of Americans seem to have sunk into a strangely apathetic state. I have seen some remarks around the blogosphere expressing hope that the Minneapolis bridge collapse will at last spark some productive anger in Americans, cause them to rise up and demand that their communities and nation be rebuilt and properly maintained, that corruption and incompetence will no longer be tolerated, and so on. But of course there is very little hope of that. We're talking about a nation that countenanced the destruction and abandonment of one of its greatest cities, New Orleans, that still sits by as the Bush Regime and its cronies gorge themselves on "reconstruction" pork while thousands upon thousands of people remain refugees in their own land. (See here, here, here and here, all via Buzzflash.) Will such a people swallow the destruction of a whole city but strain at the loss of a bridge? I doubt it.
Maybe the fact that most of the people affected by the bridge collapse are white might give the catastrophe a little extra political oomph; we probably won't see jowly white Republican congressman from the Midwest breezily suggesting we just forget about rebuilding the bridge and leave the people to their fate. (Hey, it's a free country; if they can't cross the Mississippi there, they can always up sticks and move somewhere else where the bridges are still standing, right?) And no doubt we will see the Bush Regime and state governments move to slip fat, no-bid contracts to favored cronies to "upgrade" bridges around the country, in the same corner-cutting, pocket-filling manner described above. But a mass movement to stem the accelerating decay of the country by putting a brake on the rigged-game Money Power and its many sniveling helpers in government? That's one thing we won't be seeing any time soon.
(For more, see Jon Schwarz' excellent piece: Our Crumbling America.)
Chris Floyd is an American journalist and the Editor and co-founder of the Atlantic Free Press. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including the Nation, CounterPunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.This column originally appeared on Chris Floyd's site, and is republished here with the permission of the author.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on August 3, 2007.
