Standard and Poor's on Bush Tax Cuts

S&P would upgrade the US to "stable" if the Bush tax cuts for the rich were allowed to lapse:

Our revised upside scenario--which, other things being equal, we view as consistent with the outlook on the 'AA+' long-term rating being revised to stable--retains these same macroeconomic assumptions. In addition, it incorporates $950 billion of new revenues on the assumption that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards, as the Administration is advocating.

Sources:

United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To 'AA+' On Political Risks And Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative [pdf] Standard and Poor's, Primary Credit Analyst:
Nikola G Swann, CFA, FRM, Toronto, August 5, 2011.

What Does Egypt Mean for US Democracy?

People have been partaking in well deserved celebrating in Egypt. The relief and joy have brought tears to many... tears and smiles.

Yet I must confess a bit of foreboding, as in a great novel, which is what we are living. Some have begun putting it into words. I paraphrase, "Egypt could move forward and simply become a liberal democracy, like the United States, dominated by corporate institutions and beholden to moneyed masters with debt and other ropes tying the hands of the people. Paying for the financial sins of past dictators."

Part of this money can be clawed back from accounts in Switzerland and via the sale of ill gotten properties. But it's not just the accumulated wealth of Mubarak's family, but of many National Democratic Party operatives AND many former military officers.

Beyond that, what occurs to me is that it doesn't stop at Egypt, or stop at the other blatant authoritarian regimes in the middle east. And in the United States we have our own privileged class that has increasingly abused wealth and the power of corporations to corrupt our electoral and legislative system. The decision making process in the United States is rigged toward those with money and positions of power.

For the revolution in Egypt to be fully successful, we must root out the undemocratic corruption in the United States. Egypt has exposed the hypocrisy and undemocratic behavior by the United States over the years regardless of political party in power. This behavior reflects the wishes of a privileged establishment that must be challenged if we are to aspire to honest democracy.

Howard Zinn: 4th of July Reality-Check

I'd like to think the founder's motives were noble and pure, but I suspect the Revolutionary War was another fight among the elite (white men on this side of the Atlantic wresting control from the same on the other side of the Atlantic).

A 4th of July reading from Howard Zinn's "A people's History of the United States" tells a different story.

James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglas
4th of July Address

Sources:

DemocracyNow!, July 4th Special: Readings From Howard Zinn’s “Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” July 4, 2008.

United States: International Dictatorship

Are we so totally desensitized that the notion of "Secret US Prisons" elicits no ground swell of condemnation?

Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch asks, "where are these 39 people now, and what's happened to them since they 'disappeared'?"

"Disappeared." I thought that's what dictatorships did... make people disappear. Actually, knowing the recent history of Central America, I know that the US has a history of making people dissapear; Chile's Pinochet was supported by the US. And, actually, it's corporate power, which runs the US, that is behind the dictatorial behavior of the US government.

We're told we don't live under a dictatorship. That might be technically true domestically, but the United States of America is behaving like a dictator internationally.

Some have theorized that the US dictatorial behavior cannot be stopped from within the United States. They argue that it will have to be stopped from the outside. If so, it would be critical to have a massive internal movement linked with the external one to avoid a major war.

Sources:

Associated Press, "Report: 39 Secretly Imprisoned by U.S." RAPHAEL G. SATTER, June 7, 2007.