http://www.slate.com/articles/briefing/slate_fare/2013/09/you_have_reached_a_404_page_3.html
Wall Street Confesses to Bonus Culture’s Ills: William D. Cohan Imagine if you could hear directly, albeit anonymously, from the normally secretive bankers and traders who manufactured and sold the trillions of dollars in toxic debt securities that pushed the world’s financial system to the brink of disaster in 2008. Would they defend themselves and their actions, or show a degree of remorse for what they caused and have not been held accountable for? Well, you can find the answer to that question in “Conversations With Wall Street,” a compact -- and largely overlooked -- book by Peter Ressler and Monika Mitchell published last year by FastPencil Premiere, in Campbell, California. Ressler and Mitchell worked together at a Wall Street executive search firm that specialized in finding senior people for fixed-income trading departments.
Gingrich: Founding fathers would have ‘violent’ reaction to pot growers By Eric W. DolanWednesday, January 4, 2012 18:32 EDT Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that the founders of the United States would have dealt violently with marijuana growers, despite the fact that they grew the plant for commercial purposes themselves. He said at an town hall event in New Hampshire that decriminalizing drugs like marijuana would increase the rate of addictions and increase crime. “In general, I’d like us to be as drug free as possible and I think that it requires a much more serious approach.”
Against Law, For Order It’s taken decades and millions of lives, but elite opinion is starting to move against mass incarceration. The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books ran detailed exposés on the scale and violence of the penal state. Conservative leaders like Grover Norquist have said that mass incarceration violates the principles of “fiscal responsibility, accountability, and limited government,” while GOP darlings like Mitch Daniels have tried to take the lead in state reform. Soon the common wisdom will shift from “we need to get tough on crime” to “we jail too many people for too long for the wrong reasons.” The Trayvon Blues Founded and preserved by acts of aggression, characterized by a continuing tradition of self-righteous violence against suspected subversion and by a vigorous sense of personal freedom, usually involving the widespread possession of firearms, the United States has evidenced a unique tolerance for homicide. -David Brion DavisHomicide in American Fiction 1798-1860 The Trayvon Martin story is not going to go away. It was a narrative event waiting to happen, and the story only gets richer with meaning as time goes on. There are the obvious racial aspects, but the most important elements are about police power versus citizen power -- and who can get away with shooting whom.
Canada’s international reputation slipping under Stephen Harper Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper waves upon his arrival at the airport before the start of the G20 summit …Two years ago — during the G8/G20 summits in Toronto — political pundits and analysts were waxing poetic about Canada "punching above its weight" in the international community. In 2010, Stephen Harper received accolades for persuading his G8 peers to embrace his initiative on maternal health and his government was lauded for its handling of the economy during the worldwide economic slowdown. Two years later, the situation is distinctly different. At this week's G20 summit in Mexico, Canada's delegation — led by Harper and finance minister Jim Flaherty — is but a bit player with little or no influence. [ Related: Canada rebuts UN's criticism of Bill 78 ] Long-time Globe and Mail columnist Jeffery Simpson recently wrote about Canada's diminishing international reputation.
The Incentive Bubble Photograph: Joe Costa/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, 1939 The past three decades have seen American capitalism quietly transformed by a single, powerful idea—that financial markets are a suitable tool for measuring performance and structuring compensation. Stock instruments for managers and high-powered incentive contracts for investors have dramatically altered the nature and level of incentives and relative rewards in our society, on both sides of the capital market. In 1990 the equity-based share of total compensation for senior managers of U.S. corporations was 20%. By 2007 it had risen to 70%. Meanwhile, the investment management industry has been transformed by the rise of private equity firms and hedge funds, both of which prominently feature market-based compensation as the basis of their supposed virtue.
Santorum's Racist Welfare Rant: 'I Don't Want To Make Black People's Lives Better' With Taxpayer Money By Marie Diamond on January 3, 2012 at 1:10 pm "Santorum’s Racist Welfare Rant: ‘I Don’t Want To Make Black People’s Lives Better’ With Taxpayer Money" GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum has been trying to pull off an upset in the Iowa caucus, but he’s drawing criticism ahead of tonight’s contest for racially charged remarks he recently made about welfare recipients: At a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa on Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum singled out blacks as being recipients of assistance through federal benefit programs, telling a mostly-white audience he doesn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” [...]It is unclear why Santorum pinpointed blacks specifically as recipients of federal aid. The original questioner asked “how do we get off this crazy train?
America's Class War: Billionaires Against the Unions Barney Frank and Ed Rendell are right. In seeking to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the public-sector unions and their allies on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party made a big mistake. “My side picked a fight they shouldn’t have picked,” Frank told The Hill. “People need to be more strategic about the fights they pick.” In other places, such as Ohio, Democrats have successfully campaigned in state legislatures to roll back Republican anti-union initiatives. But rather than following such a strategy in Wisconsin, they tried to drive Walker out of office, alienating independent voters and bringing down upon themselves a deluge of conservative money.