Loved this recent bit from Colbert: "Corporations are people. You won't weigh in on whether some people are people? That seems kind of racist, George."

China doesn't play by the rules of international trade. Labor unions are illegal, workers are mistreated and underpaid and their companies run roughshod over any attempt at environmental protections. Naturally, their corrupt starvation-wages economy has allowed it to continue on as a low-cost provider, bankrupting the competition and closing factories all over the world. And now they're using that ill-gotten economic heft to buy up swathes of strategic resources as raw materials, bypassing what ought to be profitable processing operations on our end. Why do we let them do it?

Recommended reading: China has our forests. Now we're sending our oilfields, too

A Robin Hood tax on the banks? I can't say I'm entirely on board with how they'd like the revenues distributed, but the basic idea is sound. If anything, they ought to be asking for more of a slice from banks that continue to pay their financiers billions in bonuses while still benefiting from the government dole.

A very helpful video showing how the Greeks have helped beggar their own nation through massive and wasteful government spending, corruption and the kind of work ethic you usually see in failing states. On the bright side, some of the solutions to the crisis, such as actually enforcing tax collection and increasing the retirement age from 50, are not difficult to reason out.

Because these proud American progressives would much rather buy their oil from liberal democracies like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela. Oops.

The Occupy Wall Street protests continue. It is simply obstinate at this point to say that the protesters don't know what they want.

Wall Street hedge fund managers, bankers and other financial sector professionals, and CEOs pulling down more salary in a day than most people earn all year, own the vast majority of the wealth of the USA. They haven't got it all from hard work or entrepreneurial acumen, but largely from how well they've been able to game the system with the help of the US treasury. Meanwhile, unemployment is persistently high and it's harder than ever to achieve the American dream.

If you don't know that's unfair, then you don't understand the meaning of the word -- and most likely, you're in denial about just how thoroughly you've been screwed. Read more

When Occupy Wall Street began in New York City a few weeks ago, my first reaction was "What took them so long?"

The democracy of the USA is threatened by corporate greed. It's long past time for the 99 percent to protest. This began at the theoretical heart of American-style capitalism, but the protest needs to become a real nationwide movement. Hearteningly, "occupations" have already begun in other cities.

Even as the worst of the economic crisis of 2008 played itself out, the leaders of the big financial firms that had recklessly set up this scenario had one thing on their minds: how soon can we go back to giving our staff million dollar bonuses, so that we can justify giving ourselves bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars? Corporate greed and short-sightedness has only got worse since then. One rational (and long overdue) response to this insanity is to get loud.

Where have these protesters been for these last few years? We've seen protests against universal health care insurance by old curmudgeons secure in the knowledge that they're covered by Medicare. There have been protests against deficit spending that would help to pay for infrastructure projects, by people who desperately need jobs. We've seen protests by teachers' unions fighting against efforts to reform a failed education system that increasingly turns out graduates who couldn't work an assembly line, much less work as a member of the "creative class". But we haven't seen protests of any magnitude or continuity against the outrage of CEOs making well over a thousand times what their employees earn. Until now.

To an extent, this dearth of protest was understandable. CEOs are not public figures who have to earn voters' trust by doing the right thing. So long as they don't actually break the law, they are private individuals not subject to popular appeals. They do what they want.

That's the theory, anyway. But it's a wrong theory. Many Wall Street firms benefited from a system where they could effectively borrow cash at negligible interest from the American treasury and gamble it on the stock market. Big corporations benefit from subsidies to the tune of billions of dollars. Large scale private business interests are tied to big government (as they have almost always been), which in a democracy by the people and for the people, means that ordinary citizens have a right to speak out. Not to mention that when private individuals command resources equal to that of towns and cities, they arguably cease to become purely "private" individuals. To paraphrase Spider-Man, with great wealth comes great responsibility. Read more

The proletariat are mobilized to take on the symbols of capitalism under the brave leadership of their vanguard party.

Unfortunately, the capitalists drinking champagne don't seem all that worried.

Give it a few more weeks.

Be on your guard when
someone calls you poor.
It means they see you as small
for having less than they have.

They possess more of the seen
but can’t see the unseen.

“Poor” opens the door
to strangers with more.
They will not wipe their feet
when they trample in.
They don’t see anything
you would want to protect.

There is poverty among the rich
and wealth among the poor.

As the intruders begin to feel better
about themselves, you will
feel surprisingly worse.
When you resist, you will
be accused of ingratitude.

They prefer donating
to paying good wages.

The more you are given,
the less you will have.

The bondage of pity:
more powerful than chains.
What is given can cost your soul.

Lilija Valis' poetry will be featured in her forthcoming book, "Freedom on the Fault Line".

It's just not a good investment for China... unless the Europeans are willing to throw in Berlin and Paris as collateral.