Multilateral Agreement on Investment

Here’s an interesting treaty that was secretly being negotiated under the Clinton Administration. The agreement would give international investors the ability to “roll back” any state legislation deemed counterproductive to investors and give investors the right to sue host countries in closed arbitration without any rights to affected communities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateral_Agreement_on_Investment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_track_%28trade%29

“It seems agreed on all hands now that the bank is a certain & gratuitous augmentation of the capitals subscribed in a proportion of not less than 40 or 50 percent. And if the deferred debt should be immediately provided for in favor of the purchasers of it in the deferred shape, & since the unanimous vote that no change shd. be made in the funding system, my imagination will not attempt to set bounds to the daring depravity of the times. The stockjobbers will become the praetorian band of the government—at once its tool & its tyrant; bribed by its largesses, & overawing it by clamours and combinations…” -James Madison

Political Links

The Case Against George W. Bush, by Ron Reagan

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0804-14.htm

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, by Michael F. Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran Chief, and Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station From 1996 to 1999

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Hubris

Supply Side Economics

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/23More.htm

The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, by Director of the Office and Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, who led the passage of Reagan’s Supply Side Economics and then later admitted, “I mean, Kemp-Roth [Reagan’s 1981 tax cut] was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate…. It’s kind of hard to sell ‘trickle down.’ So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really ‘trickle down.’ Supply-side is ‘trickle-down’ theory.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stockman

The Mendacity Index

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0309.mendacity-index.html