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The Social Security payroll tax hike of 1983 generated $2.7 trillion in surplus revenue. The surplus was supposed to be saved and invested in marketable U.S. Treasury bonds, which could later be resold to raise money with which to pay benefits to the baby boomers. If this had been done, Social Security would not have major financial problems today, and it would not be a major political issue.

But, none of the surplus revenue was invested in marketable Treasury bonds, or anything else. The money was all deposited directly into the general fund of the Treasury and …

Five security guards, members of the RCMP, two in bulletproof vests, all entrants pass through metal detectors, undergo a wand search, check all electronics including cell phones and have their bags meticulously scrutinized. Why all the security? The crown was presenting its criminal case against Arthur Topham, for the crime of “hate.’

The Law
Section 319 of Canada’s criminal code is an extraordinary law by most western standards. It reads, in relevant part: “(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of
      (a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for …

Former Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan recently opened yet another gym shoe store – this time in the heart of Chicago’s “Loop.” As with everything Jordan touches (especially in Chicago), this latest opening became something of an “event” – another opportunity for Jordan to further pad his already billionaire bank account. Hundreds of people camped on the street’s of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile days before the Grand Opening, hoping to be among the first to grab this latest iteration of Air Jordans.

fourthanddonesports.com imageDuring a …

In early November, while celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk proclaimed that “the Ukrainian army has been fighting and winning for 20 months.” This was a startling announcement for the head of a government which has lost pretty much everything that it is possible to lose due to lack of professionalism and stupidity.

Taking a look at the dry figures – the armed forces of Ukraine currently consist of 188,000 troops. Over the past year the number of generals has risen by 60% – from 121 in 2014 …

I have always been enthusiastic in my support for peace negotiations, which have been neglected all too often in internal and international conflicts. But it is clear that the international conference on Syria that held its first meeting in Vienna on October 30 is a sham conference that is not capable of delivering any peace negotiations, and that the Obama administration knew that perfectly well from the start.

The administration was touting the fact that Iran was invited to participate in the conference, unlike the previous United Nations-sponsored gathering on Syria in January and February 2014. That unfortunate conference had excluded …

Just when the prospects for single-payer or full Medicare for everyone, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, appear to be going nowhere, from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley comes a stirring that could go national and make single-payer a reality.

Throwing down the gauntlet on the grounds of efficiency and humanness, businessman Richard Master, CEO of MCS Industries Inc., the nation’s leading supplier of wall and poster frames, is bent on arousing the nation’s business leaders to back single-payer – the efficient full Medicare for all – solution.

The woefully wasteful and profiteering health care industries have blocked majority opinion, and a …

Incumbent politicians and parties, both Center-left and Right, have suffered serious defeats in recent elections. The principal beneficiary has been the extreme Right. Nowhere did the ‘consequential Left’ register a victory, although in a few instances it marginally increased its vote. The one major exception has been Turkey, where the incumbent Erdogan regime scored a ‘victory’ on November 1, 2015 by resorting to widespread violence during the general election campaign to intimidate and silence his opposition after having suffered a sharp (and surprise) defeat five months earlier in June 2015 when secular civil groups, leftists …

Diana Johnstone has written an extremely valuable book on Hillary Clinton, which not only examines in detail Mrs. Clinton’s political history and record, but places them in their evolving political context, which enlightens readers on the domestic and international political environment within which she works and into which she adapts and serves. Mrs. Clinton played an important role in the termination of Honduran democracy in 2009 and in the war on Libya in 2011, during her term as Secretary of State, and she had a lesser role but staked out definite positions in the 1999 war on Yugoslavia and …

A mass mobilization in Washington, DC from November 14 to 18 has been announced to begin the next stage of the campaign to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  The TPP was made public 10 days from the actions.

The protest, co-sponsored by 59 organizations, is being spearheaded by Popular Resistance and Flush The TPP and includes environmental, human rights, labor, climate change and good government groups. They have been organizing this mobilization for months knowing that the TPP would be made public around this time.

“At its root, the TPP is about modern colonialism. It is the way that Western …

One of the great Freudian slips of our time was supplied by a Fox News anchor on March 24, 1999, as Nato was preparing to wage war on Yugoslavia:

Let’s bring in our Pentagon spokesman – excuse me, our Pentagon correspondent.

For indeed the unwritten rule informing this type of journalism is: if you want to get close to the ‘defence’ establishment, you better be close to the ‘defence’ establishment: ideologically, sympathetically, ‘patriotically’.

A near-perfect example of this industry-wide perceptual bias has been supplied this year by BBC diplomatic editor, Mark Urban.

Last week, Urban discussed the Russian bombing campaign in Syria …

After 40 years, Republic of Guinea native Alpha Diallo still remembers the emotion he felt as a 20-year-old college student in Cuba when he made a decision that would change his life. The Cuban government had just decided to send troops to Angola to fight the invading South African army, which had crossed the border into Angola several weeks earlier on October 23, 1975. Diallo, who had come from western Africa to Havana on scholarship two years earlier to study agricultural engineering, attended a rally of 800,000 people in the Plaza of the Revolution as Fidel Castro announced the military …

The judge said “Son, what is your alibi?
If you were somewhere else, then you won’t have to die.”
I spoke not a word though it meant my life,
For I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife

— “Long Black Veil”, written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin, originally recorded by Lefty Frizzel in 1959, later by numerous artists including The Band in 1968

When Judge Christina Argyres told accused thief Isaiah Gay that he would become “somebody’s bitch,” and “raped every day,” if he went to prison, she defined one of the human rights violations which routinely occur …

With the collapse of the Communist countries in the 1990s and their conversion to capitalism, followed by the advent of neo-liberal regimes throughout most of Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America, the imperial regimes in the US and EU have established a new political spectrum, in which the standards of acceptability narrowed and the definition of adversaries expanded. Over the past quarter century, the US and EU turned their focus from systemic adversaries (anti-capitalist and anti-imperial states and movements) to attacking capitalist regimes, which (1) had adopted nationalist, re-distributive and Keynesian policies; (2) had opposed military interventions, coups and …

As time passes, a bona fide message emerges from within the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster scenario, and that message is that once a nuclear power plant loses it, the unraveling only gets worse and worse until it’s at its worst, and still, there’s no stopping it. Similar to opening Pandora’s box, there’s no stopping a ferocious atom-splitting insanity that knows no end.

Four years of experience with Fukushima provides considerable evidence that splitting atoms to boil water is outright unmitigated madness. After all, nuclear power plants are built to boil water; yes, to boil water.  It’s as simple as …

Despite claims it is seeking to calm tensions in Jerusalem, Israel is intensifying activities to encircle the al-Aqsa mosque and strengthen its control over the holy site, a group of Israeli archaeologists warned last week.

The group sounded the alarm as the United States oversaw moves at the mosque compound, known as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, intended to end weeks of Palestinian unrest focused on Jerusalem.

US Secretary of State John Kerry brokered an agreement last weekend between Israel and Jordan, the official guardian of the Haram, that will see cameras installed in the mosque …