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 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?

Book Can Now Be Ordered, Book Tour Being Planned

You can now pre-order my book at Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/daybreakbook

It's a thick book containing everything I know - and then some - for $10 (pre-order discount price).  And you can support a good cause by pre-ordering it now.

You can also call or visit your local bookstore right now and ask them to be sure to stock the book.

If you're in California, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, or Ohio please see below.  I'm only coming once to any given state, so please schedule more events for the times I will be in yours! Please don't ask me later why I didn't come to your town!

If you're in another state, please contact me re dates in 2010. -- David Swanson

Flyers to take to teabag rallies:

Large jpg. PDF. Word. Old Word.

By Dave Lindorff

For years, advocates of open government, mostly on the left, but
also on the right, have railed against the growing secrecy of the US
government. But the focus, particularly of left critics, has been on
the Intelligence budget, a $40+ billion “black box” that is completely
protected from public and even congressional scrutiny, and on large
swaths of the Pentagon budget, which are kept hidden allegedly for
“national security” reasons.

For the most part, the American public has adopted an ovine
attitude towards such secrecy, assuming that the “government knows
best.”

It has become almost commonplace, since the release last week of seven "legal" opinions written in 2001 and 2002 by the Justice Department, to remark that unbeknownst to us we came within an inch of dictatorship. And with President Obama announcing an end to torture and a new policy on signing statements, it is extremely common to speak as if we are moving quickly and deliberately in the opposite direction. But this picture is far too simplistic.

By David Swanson

In the ordinary course of things in Washington, D.C., and on television, there are two separate conversations. In one conversation, everything that the government spends money on (schools, transportation, police, etc.) must be trimmed back to save money. In the other conversation, the expenses of wars and the military must be unquestioned. After what he said this week on ABC, it will be interesting to see whether Congressman Barney Frank is permitted on television anymore. He combined the two conversations.

(NOTE: This article appears in the current issue of the magazine Treasury & Risk)

By Dave Lindorff

Key members of Congress were stunned to hear Federal Reserve Board
Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson say on Sept.
18 in a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill that the country was “days
away” from a complete financial meltdown—one that could lead to
Depression-like runs on banks, widespread violence and ultimately even
to a possible declaration of martial law. It was a vision of
Armageddon, but, of course, 10 days later, the House rejected a Wall
Street bailout package sent over by Paulson, only to pass one in a more
limited form—the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act—a week later that
gave Paulson less power and only half the money he wanted.

By Dave Lindorff

Congress should do now what it should have done back in the fall: kill the Wall Street bailout program.

After wasting $350 billion on a program that was misrepresented
from the outset, and investing hundreds of billions of dollars in
failing financial institutions that it could have bought outright for
less than it was investing in them (AIG was worth only a few billion
dollars in total at the time that the government bailed the company out
with an initial investment of $85 billion and Citicorp today is worth
less than the $45 billion the government has invested in that failing
firm), the Treasury Department, now acting at the direction not of the
Bush administration and outgoing Treasurer Hank Paulson, but the Obama
administration, is asking for the other half of the Troubled Assets
Relief Fund (TARP).