Ordc Forum/Blog

". . . they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates. In the shadow banking system, they are sucking up our real estate and lending it back to our pension funds and mutual funds at compound interest. The result is a mathematically impossible pyramid scheme, which is inherently prone to systemic failure."

By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities.

by Ellen Brown
posted Oct 28, 2010

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Click for full tune by Peter Tosh

I just tried this link and after the ad for Prop. 19 YouTube skips to a satirical ad for the GOP that is pretty funny.

This article summarizes my views of the political difficulties posed by peak oil perfectly. No one can talk about it.

By Tom Whipple, Falls Church News-Press
Wednesday, October 27 2010 07:17:19 PM

As we approach another round of Congressional elections, it is a good time to review how the peaking of the world's oil supply fits into the American political scene. It has been obvious to anyone who cared to look at the issue that for the last six or seven years something has been seriously wrong with the global supply of oil.

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The Tea Party has become the subject of endless speculation as to what they are really about. I’d like to advance an idea which is not popularly mentioned. This is not entirely original; I first heard it in an offhand remark by Chris Matthews (MSNBC Hardball) who said “I never thought that when the revolution finally came, it would be from the right”.

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Monday 18 October 2010

by: Robert Creamer, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

With two weeks to go in the 2010 mid-term elections there are a number of good reasons to believe -- contrary to most conventional wisdom -- that Democrats will still control the House once the smoke clears from the electoral battlefield.

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What's It All About?
The War on Terror
from CounterPunch Oct. 15-17 Weekend Edition

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Does anyone remember the “cakewalk war” that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?

Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?

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Anti-drug policies in the U.S. have failed, and the marijuana trade is largely in the hands of organized crime. It's time for a saner policy of legalization and regulation.

By Evan Wood

October 16, 2010

People on both sides of the marijuana legalization debate have strong feelings about Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative that promises to regulate, control and tax cannabis. But science and empirical research have been given short shrift in the discussion. That's unfortunate, because the U.S. government has actually funded excellent research on the subject, and it suggests that several widely held assumptions about cannabis legalization actually may be inaccurate. When the total body of knowledge is considered, it's hard to conclude that we should stick with the current system.

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Why are mortgage holders suspending foreclosures? And what does it mean for homeowners?

by Doug Pibel
posted Oct 13, 2010
from YES! magazine

The attorneys general of all 50 states and Washington, D.C. are launching a joint investigation into foreclosures. Why? Because it’s looking like mortgage holders have been asking courts to hand over people’s homes even if the mortgage holders don’t have the evidence that the law requires. Even if they don’t have the promissory note that establishes the debt, and never have had it. Even if they don’t have any firsthand knowledge that the note ever existed.

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Amidst the cacophony of insulting chants from both Democrats and Republicans, the party that wants to be heard most at the so-called "green" debate was the California Green Party, whose candidate Laura Wells, had been invited then effectively barred from participating.

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from TruthDig Oct.13, 2010
By Robert Scheer

The Titanic that is the U.S. housing market has just sprung its biggest leak, and even some of the largest banks responsible for this mess, like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, are now imposing a temporary moratorium on foreclosures. They have done so very reluctantly and only after courts throughout the nation, and the attorneys general of 40 states, questioned the legality of a securitized system of homeownership that has impoverished tens of millions.

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by James Petras

Global Research, October 10, 2010

The abortive military-police coup in Ecuador, which took place on September 30, has raised numerous questions about the role of the US and its allies among the traditional oligarchy and the leftist social movements, Indian organizations and their political parties.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

It’s so great that Americans are finally angry about the state of their country.

But it’s beyond awful that all the wrong people are beside themselves for all the wrong reasons.

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California High School students were recently asked by a major polling organization:"What is easier to obtain, alcohol or marijuana?" 96% answered "marijuana." This completely undercuts Califano's argument that we should not pass prop. 19 because we have to keep kids from smoking pot. Apparently the current practice of strictly selling alcohol only to those over 21 works better than current policy of criminalizing pot.

by Paul Fretheim

The Itai Danovitch article on health issues with marijuana consumption in today's LA Times seems to presume that the present policies of prohibition limit access to marijuana. This is just not the case.

I read a recent survey of California high school students which asked "What is easier for you to obtain, alcohol or marijuana?" 96% of the students polled answered that "marijuana" was easier to get.

Apparently the system of keeping alcohol behind the counter and strictly enforcing its sale to those over 21 does a better job of keeping a substance away from children than prohibition laws.

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By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: September 30, 2010

The foreclosure machinery that has forced millions of Americans out of their homes is beginning to seize up as some lenders and their lawyers are accused of cutting corners in their pursuit of rapid home repossessions.

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JP Morgan suspends 56,000 foreclosures, GMAC and BOA

by Ellen Brown

“Maybe this is like shock therapy. Maybe this will actually get the lenders to the table and encourage them to work out deals that are to the benefit of everybody.” --Economist Karl E. Case, quoted in the New York Times

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This is disturbing information. Was 9/11 a manipulation like the Reichstag Fire which was used by the Nazis to take power in Germany in the 1930s?

To a state desperate for leadership, he brings the seen-it-all-before wisdom of a political veteran.

For its next governor, California is in dire need of a dynamic and optimistic grownup, one with the personality, perspective and presence to remind voters that theirs is a fabulously wealthy state and not the downward-spiraling mess that national media reports delight in comparing to Greece or Portugal. We need someone with a Reaganesque talent for revealing to ourselves our own exceptionalism and dismissing the self-doubt of the last decade. We need a Pat Brown or Earl Warren-style focus on our future, with investment in education and infrastructure. And we need a leader deft and clever enough to move Californians away from a three-decade pattern of undermining our own government, checking and counterchecking ourselves with selfish initiatives to lock up special program spending, lock out political decision-making and accountability and lock in a perpetual and destructive budget standoff, year after year.

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Besides the obvious "no on 23" vote, one off-the-wall recommendation is to vote to end marijuana prohibition (prop 19). Criminalizing marijuana (and other drugs) has been so costly, it's threatening to overwhelm the State budget.

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New research shows that, among developed countries, the healthiest and happiest aren't those with the highest incomes but those with the most equality. Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson discusses why.

by Brooke Jarvis