A scandal involving highly paid public “servants’ is sweeping through the California public pensions system. The LA Times reports: Former City Administrator Robert Rizzo is now set to receive $50,000 per year. Before, he had been poised to get $650,000 a year from CalPERS and more than $1 million annually overall when a second pension […]

Following repeated claims by whistle-blowers, the government finally launched a lawsuit against a for-profit college company owned by Goldman Sachs that was allegedly defrauding the government and students for billions of dollars. The NYT reported on Monday: The Education Management Corporation, the nation’s second-largest for-profit college company, [is being charged by the government] that it was not eligible […]

Who says Americans can’t think outside the box anymore?A self described “former economic adviser” to the Mayor of Oakland (not the current Governor of California for whom some moonbeams are too moonbatty to hire) argues that the Wisconsin State Fair mini-riot was a plot by Scott Walker.  Noam Chomsky watch out — the competition is […]

Foreign travelers, journalists and even expats living in Cairo have been rounded up by mobs of Egyptian volunteers and delivered to police stations for interrogation. Egypt’s new military rulers seem to be stoking fears of foreign plots aimed at hijacking the Revolution. From the WSJ: The military-inspired xenophobia campaign has been amplified by resurgent Islamists, […]

Protestors were beaten back by water cannons, batons and bullets when they took to the Indian streets in recent days, angry over corruption scandals that continue to undermine India’s businesses and government. Voice of America reports that thousands of protestors marched in New Delhi yesterday while three protestors were killed in the western state of […]

The rapidly escalating Eurocalypse has reached a dangerous new stage.  The markets are starting to panic about France.  The panic is overstated; the concern is real.  France by many measures is less worthy of an AAA credit rating than the US and slow growth threatens to undo France’s planned deficit cuts.  The French equivalent of […]

Days after being accused by a private internet security firm of dozens of hacking attacks on international organizations, China responded with charges that the US and India were behind thousands of “Trojan” attacks on Chinese computers. The Hindu reports: An official report released on Tuesday claimed that about half of 493,000 cyber attacks on the […]

Leila Ahmed, who teaches at the Harvard Divinity School, is the author of a recently published book, A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America. She tells a very interesting story.Ahmed originally comes from a middle-class background in Egypt. In her early years no women in her circle were veiled, even […]

The news that Apple is challenging ExxonMobile for the capitalist crown — the most valuable company in the world as measured by stock market capitalization — shows that despite all the green gloom, capitalist progress is good news for Gaia.Stock values fluctuate, and Apple’s moment may be fleeting, but the fundamental direction of the global […]

Bad, though not surprising news from South Africa.  Textile firms are fleeing rising wages and strong unions in South Africa for the greener pastures of Lesotho, Swaziland, and Mozambique. Ekkehard Oelz, chief executive of clothing maker Peter Blond & Associates, told the WSJ: A business is a business, and investors want their returns…There is no growth potential […]