Judge Halts Merger of Two of the Largest Food Corporations on the Planet

Sysco and US Foods have been trying to merge for over a year now, but just weeks ago, a judge filed a preliminary injunction to halt the proposed merger. This amounts to a fatal blow to two companies that have already done more than their part to ruin the food supply. The decision is also a victory for the Federal Trade Commission, which sued in February to block the deal on the grounds that it would lead to higher prices and worse service...

Read More

U.S. Government Would Have to Spend Less to Make Public College Tuition-Free Than it Spends On Financial Aid

Hard to believe, but apparently it would cost “only” about $62 billion to make public college tuition free, versus the $69 billion or so that the US Government spends on financial aid and other college programs. From the Atlantic: A mere $62.6 billion dollars! Photo: David Shankbone (CC) According to new Department of Education data, that’s how much tuition public colleges collected from undergraduates in 2012 across the entire United States....

Read More

Everything You Need to Know About the Greek Crisis and ECB Fascism in Two Paragraphs

Yanis Varoufakis just sat down for his first interview since resigning as Finance Minister of Greece. He talked frankly with Harry Lambert of the New Statesman. Here are the two most important paragraphs from the transcript. There is no democracy in Europe. None. Varoufakis said that Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister and the architect of the deals Greece signed in 2010 and 2012, was “consistent throughout”. “His view was ‘I’m not...

Read More

How the U.S. Government Squandered $1 Billion in Taxpayer Funds on “Ghost Schools” and Warlords in Afghanistan

BuzzFeed News obtained internal Ministry of Education data for 2011 that has never before been made public. For Afghanistan overall, the data showed 1,174 schools — almost 1 in every 12 — was a ghost school, an educational facility that the Afghan government publicly claimed was open but that was, in fact, not operating. In the provinces that are the most dangerous to monitor — and into which the U.S. poured the most aid money — that proportion...

Read More

LAPD Use Desperate Females Begging For Rides to Entrap Uber Drivers

An innocent woman in need frantically flags you down, begging you for a ride.  Despite not going through the Uber app, she tells you she's in a hurry, asks you to book the ride on your own phone and begs you to drive "across the street" to her friend.  When you comply, all the sudden you're surrounded by a gang of cops who accuse you of acting as a "bandit cab" driver -- someone who takes money under the table for rides, rather than...

Read More

What Assets Did Greece Just Hand Over To Europe: "Airports, Airplanes, Infrastructure And Most Certainly Banks"

The Simpsons had it right all along:   With the provocative and dramatic Greek "time out" language pulled from the final finmin and summit draft language, the two most humiliating aspects of the latest extend and pretend "deal" for the Greek people will be the return of the Troika's (surely we can call it the Troika again as part of the Greek capitulation) IMF mission to Athens, and the escrowing of some €50 billion in ...

Read More

US Aid To El Salvador Came With Strings Attached: Monsanto Seeds Required

A protestor demonstrates against Monsanto in the annual world March Against Monsanto. SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Farmers and activists for natural agriculture in El Salvador successfully resisted efforts by the U.S. government to tie foreign aid to the use of GMO seeds, in the latest attempt to link relief money with profits for Monsanto, the controversial multinational agribusiness giant. In 2013, the U.S. offered El Salvador $277 million...

Read More