Portside

The financial infrastructure of the new economy is under-developed. Waiting for Wall Street to deliver the financial instruments we need for a sustainable economy is like waiting for Exxon to build the renewable energy system we need to avert climate catastrophe. It is not going to happen. The movement needs to be equally focused on moving capital out of fossil fuels and into the new economy as it is readying the economy to absorb this new flow of capital.

An exhibition, "The Left Front: Radical Art in the 'Red Decade,' 1929-1940," currently running at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, offers a visual history of radical pictorial art during the Depression era. The "Left Front" is meant to initiate a dialogue about the nature of radical art through the exploration of a crucial historical period in the United States when capitalism was potentially on the ropes.

The "so-called" American Revolution was not so much a "revolution for freedom against Great Britain, per se," as it was a shrewd and carefully calculated set of moves on the global chessboard of Real Politik, that amounted to a "Counter-Revolution" against freedom: That is to say, it was a revolution against ending freedom for its slaves and other slaves around the colonial empire.

Bringing democratic decision-making into the core organization of enterprises provides the best chance for a less unequal initial distribution of income than is now common in most societies. Transition to an economy where many enterprises were organized as WSDEs would likely proceed further in reducing income inequality.

But what if we’ve confused cause and effect? What if it’s not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat? Science may slowly be coming to an understanding of the complex feedback loops which control our metabolism.

The United States has tried to develop thorium as an energy source for some 50 years and is still struggling to deal with the legacy of those attempts. In addition to the billions of dollars spent, mostly fruitlessly, the government will have to spend billions more to deal with the wastes produced by those efforts. America’s energy-from-thorium quest now faces an ignominious conclusion: the Energy Department appears to have lost track of 96 kilograms of uranium 233.

In an exhaustive and devastating opinion, Judge Lynn Adleman writes that the facts don't justify restrictions that unduly burden minorities.

Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.

After receiving major bribes from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindall, Chiquita is abandoning Gulfport Miss. for New Orleans. This is another chapter in United Fruit/Chiquita's sorid anti-union history.

While the leading candidates for the Presidency of the European Commission tout the Greek bailout as a success story, the candidate of the European Left Party, Alexis Tsipras, says the imposed austerity is a tragedy for the Greek people, and it should not be repeated in any other country.