The People's Rights Amendment

End Corporate Personhood

In homage to one of the "winter soldiers" that Thomas Paine memorialized, my old colleague Richard Grossman, who died too soon this November 22, 2011, I offer this plea for sanity. …

While I don't agree with their proposed market-based solutions, since the money/market system itself is the problem, I find it fascinating that these very mainstream thinkers - Herman E. Daly is Senior Economist at the World Bank. Kenneth N. Townsend is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at Hampden-Sydney College - understand that "sustainable growth" and even "sustainable development" (as it's currently used) are oxymoronic, if not simply moronic.

It is this…

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

– Mark 8:36

 "The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer"

by Wendell Berry 

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it. 

I have planted…

I just stumbled upon this essay, written in the aftermath of 9/11, but which has important things to say to some of the current discussions about a new economy and the role of technology. I've taken the liberty of highlighting some sections.

Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

by Wendell Berry, Autumn 2001 (reprinted in 73 countries and 7 languages) 

I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of…

Thomas Paine's Revolution

An Ode to #OWS

"There are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe – such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired…

Here's some excellent statements on the means and meaning of the OWS movement.

As an authentic anarchist, I don't even follow my on rules. One more for the old fart: Joe Bageant (may he rest in peace), America's Redneck Prophet, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, and the posthumous Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball, addresses in this essay (one of his last) a number of issues that, I believe, are insufficiently acknowledged in today's "progressive" culture -…

This is my farewell gift to you all. I believe I've given all I have to give and there are a number of you who will be glad to see me gone. May you get what you wish for! 

But here's a question that may be more important than any other asked here: Who the hell are you to think you speak for the 99%? From what I've witnessed, there's some good-hearted and open-minded souls and a number of those who think they've got it all figured out and are above and beyond (more "evolved") then the…

Peter Joseph is Peter Joseph Merola, born into a working/middle class family, attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and dropped out of the Mannes Conservatory of Music in NYC. He had hoped to be a professional marimba player, but instead went into video production and Wall Street day trading. He currently lives and works in New York City as a freelance film editor/composer/producer and is the creator of the Zeitgeist film trilogy and the founder of the Zeitgeist…

It can well be argued that human culture has been shifting slowly out of equilibrium since we stepped out of Nature's gift economy and began to mine the Earth for our need and then our greed. This began with the so-called Agricultural Revolution, by which humanity began to dramatically alter the environment to force it to grow more food than it would otherwise, creating the first regular surpluses (and, inevitably, the first cyclical shortages and consequent poverty and…