By David Swanson

Michael Moore's movie motivated me to bring this out. Here's a theme song for Capitalism that I wrote at the time of Paulson's Plunder. Here it is sung by Timbrewolf:

By Dave Lindorff

OMG! Those protesters showing up at Democratic “town meetings” to
promote the president’s health care “reform” program are being bused in
from out of town?

Scandal! Que horrible! (Gasp)

But wait! That’s exactly what we on the left always did when we
held demonstrations—at least if we could. Who in the trade union
movement hasn’t called on fellow workers in other unions to join them
in rallies during struggles with an employer, or asked them to join
sparse picket-lines? Who hasn’t pulled out the stops trying to get
people from other cities to attend a local protest?

Michael Moore's new film is due in October. Here's a sneak preview - enjoy!

http://www.livestream.com/anewwayforward

The webcasting events are:
New York City, 6/8 at 7PM with Leo Hindery, Les Leopold, Alice Kessler-Harris at the Tank, (webcasted)

San Francisco, 6/10 at 6:30PM with Ernesto Dal Bo, Doug Rucskoff, Donald Goldmacher at Mechanic Library, (webcasted)

New York City, 6/10 at 7PM video screening with Danny Shechter, New Roosevelt Institute, Working Families at Le Poisson Rouge (webcasted)

Washington DC, 6/11 at 9:00AM with Simon Johnson, John Taylor, Nancy Cleeland, Mike Lux at the Capitol Hill, (one hour broadcast delay)

By Dave Lindorff

Just imagine for a moment that you are a retired contractor,
struggling to get by on your pathetically shriveled 401(k). when your
ne-er-do-well child suddenly comes to you saying he’s got this idea to
start buying derelict homes and rehabbing them for resale. He asks you
to stake him with a $100,000 loan (about half of what you’ve got left
in your retirement fund), promising to repay you when he sells his
first couple of houses. You know the kid’s flat busted and has been
laid off from his job as a dishwasher, so you want to help, but you’ve
also seen his carpentry skills: The doghouse he build in high school
fell apart on a windy day, and his own house has a leaking roof, needs
repainting, and all the plumbing leaks. You’ve also seen his business
skills: He plays the Lotto excessively, hasn’t saved a penny, and buys
most of his supplies at the local 7-Eleven.

By David Swanson

I've just interviewed Les Leopold, who blames the recent financial disasters on trends that began over 30 years ago, explains how a great deal of Wall Street's "investing" has had as much connection to the real economy as fantasy baseball has to baseball, diagnoses the failures of labor and the left to resist the financialization of the economy, views the current situation with genuine optimism as a rare moment in which we might be able to make necessary changes to regulate finance and to shift money from a tiny group of billionaires to the rest of society, and explains why that latter step is needed to stabilize any economy.

With teach-ins planned everywhere on June 10th and people trying to educate each other on exactly what just happened to trillions of our children's dollars, you could do a lot worse than to gather some friends together, read or listen to, and discuss, this interview, and then take appropriate actions.

Here's the audio in an mp3. It's a little under an hour.

David Swanson interviewing Les Leopold:

By David Swanson

If you're like me you find it at least a bit disturbing that we're giving trillions of dollars to save the economy to the very people who wrecked it, and more disturbing that we're doing so without any solid basis for expecting to get much of it back and without making fundamental changes to prevent a repetition. But if you're like me, you also aren't 100 percent certain how a credit default swap works with a cubed collateralized debt obligation, much less whether such a monstrosity needs to be eliminated or reformed. What to do?

By Dave Lindorff

What’s wrong with this picture: Four groups invest in a company.
One group puts in a 55% investment, a second puts in a 20-35%
investment, a third puts in an 8% investment and a fourth goes in for
2%. The group putting in the 20-35% stake gets three seats on the
company’s nine-member board of directors, which will be appointing the
new company’s management team. The group investing 8% gets four board
members, and the group investing 2% gets 1 seat. Finally, the group
that will hold the majority stake in the company, 55% of the shares,
gets…the one remaining seat on the board.

Why would anyone buy a majority stake in the company and accept
only a 1/9 representation on the board, and thus virtually no say in
the selection of management or in management decisions?

Hardball just emailed this:

Next up - what's the story with these anti-tax "tea party" protests? They're popping up across the country but what exactly do they stand for and does it make any sense? That's what we'll ask radio talk show host Michael Smerconish and the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore.

For more on the "tea party" protests, go to:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/tea-party-taxes-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html

Is Chris Matthews just a rightwing stooge? He doesn't even mention Saturday's anti-bailout protests by A New Way Forward. Send your protests to hardball@msnbc.com

Arianna Huffington's post about the death spiral of the newspaper industry is called the "It's the Consumer, Stupid."

Consumer habits have changed dramatically. People have gotten used to getting the news they want, when they want it, how they want it, and where they want it. And this change is here to stay.

That's been so obvious for so long that you'd assume everyone in the newspaper industry agreed. But they don't - and the most powerful people in newspapers, led by AP President Tom Curley, are trying to fight news consumers by finding ways to block AP news stories.