Founding Fathers Wanted Distribution of Wealth and Ownership, Not Concentration of Wealth

Here

'James Madison warned that inequality in property ownership would subvert liberty, either through opposition to wealth (a war of labor against capital) or "by an oligarchy founded on corruption" through which the wealthy dominate political decision-making (a war of capital against labor). John Adams favored distribution of public lands to the landless to create broad-based ownership of property, then the critical component of business capital in the largely agricultural U.S. Current levels and trends in inequality would almost certainly have terrified the founders, who believed that broad-based property ownership was essential to the sustenance of a republic.
...

If increasing inequality is indeed as dire a problem as the Founding Fathers imagined, what, if anything, can the U.S. do to reverse the pattern and to assure that in the next three decades, all of us share in the benefits of modern technology and economic progress? What is the best way to avoid Madison's dark scenarios?

...

We propose a new strategy: to expand capital ownership and capital income for normal workers through programs that encourage broad-based employee stock ownership of firms, widely available profit-sharing, and all-employee stock options and stock grants in firms that now restrict ownership, stock options and bonuses to only the highest-level executives. (More active pension fund investments, more active institutional investors economy-wide and reforms in corporate governance are also needed to address what we could call the ownership gap, but we'll save them for another day.)'

Yes.

NY Times: Typhoon in Philippines Casts Long Shadow Over U.N. Talks on Climate Treaty

Here

We're fucking this up pretty mighty.
The world governments better commit to action ASAP.
The ass draggers and oil investors are irrelevant.
Because we are talking about the viability of whole nations and ecosystems here.
We're talking about our species and keeping Earth's climate intact.
Science knows what needs to be done. We need to keep CO2 PPM under 400.
That needs to be done, FUCKING ASAP.

U.S. negotiators offer Iran relief on sanctions

U.S. negotiators offer Iran relief on sanctions 

This has promise. I hope Iran's new president Hassan Rouhani comes clean and they become transparent, clearly non-nuclear weaponizing and not a rogue regime. We all want a nuke-free world.

EPA in US Should be Lauded (detractors should be sent to China for a 'last gasp' aircation)

Thomas Friedman lays out a first-person account of China's air here. What is awful, and what good people are trying to do to make it livable there (read: not just increase hospital size and airmask supply).

Too Big to Breathe?

FDA Ruling Would All but Eliminate Trans Fats

This is good news, to help make for less obese and less heart-attacky Americans.
More sustainable. Reminds me of Thomas Friedman's kudos to the EPA (read: FDA doing good= EPA doing good) for keeping our skies blue and healthy, as opposed to China (here: Too Big to Breathe?)

FDA Ruling Would All but Eliminate Trans Fats 

Republican shutdown pain may boost Dems

Here
Washington (CNN) - Long before the ink had dried on the Senate deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, the writing was already on the wall for the Republican Party: The last three weeks have hurt them.

They have borne the brunt of the blame for shutting down the government, and polls show that a large majority of Americans disapprove of the way the Congressional GOP has handled the fight over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling.

Senate leaders announce deal to end shutdown and avoid default

Here

In an already historic display of incompetence, the Senate reaches a deal.
See if the Tea-Party-run GOP House can not commit politcal hari-kari and keep America open.

Obama: 'We Can't Make Extortion Routine As Part of Our Democracy' - NationalJournal.com

Obama: 'We Can't Make Extortion Routine As Part of Our Democracy' - NationalJournal.com 

That just about sums it up to a T. Americans get it. The GOP and Congress better get it real soon.
Pass a fucking budget bill and deal with legislation separately.

"A Corporate Trojan Horse": Obama Pushes Secretive TPP Trade Pact, Would Rewrite Swath of U.S. Laws | Democracy Now!

"A Corporate Trojan Horse": Obama Pushes Secretive TPP Trade Pact, Would Rewrite Swath of U.S. Laws | Democracy Now! 

This is horse shit. Corporate welfare gone amok, trumping the public interest. NOT ACCEPTABLE.

The only good news is a bunch of the other countries have basically said, "Basta! We are not going to roll back these things." So the reason there isn’t a deal is because a lot of the other countries are standing up to the worst of these U.S. corporate-inspired demands. You can see the whole lay of this at ExposeTheTPP, www.exposethetpp. There are fact sheets on each of the ways, each aspect of your life the TPP could affect. And if you want to get down into the weeds and have long papers explaining and/or information from other countries, you can go to tradewatch.org. That’s tradewatch.org. Between those two sets of information, you’ll see there’s almost no part of your life or the things you care about that this agreement couldn’t undermine. And again, trade is the least of it.