(Photo: marissaorton)PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The damage caused by the relentless corporate drive for profits has become more clear in recent years. In the most important areas of American life, devastating changes have occurred:

Health Care: Almost half of the working-age adults in America passed up doctor visits or other medical services because they couldn't afford to pay. The system hasn't supported kids, either. A UNICEF study places the U.S. 26th out of 29 OECD countries in the overall well-being of its children.

Education: Student loan balances increased by 75% between 2007 and 2012.

(Photo: 401(K) 2013 / flickr)PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" fantasizes a world in which anti-government citizens reject taxes and regulations, and "stop the motor" by withdrawing themselves from the system of production. In a perverse twist on the writer's theme the prediction is coming true. But instead of productive people rejecting taxes, rejected taxes are shutting down productive people.

Perhaps Ayn Rand never anticipated the impact of unregulated greed on a productive middle class. Perhaps she never understood the fairness of tax money for public research and infrastructure and security, all of which have contributed to the success of big business. She must have known about the inequality of the pre-Depression years. But she couldn't have foreseen the concurrent rise in technology and globalization that allowed inequality to surge again, more quickly, in a manner that threatens to put the greediest offenders out of our reach.

Ayn Rand's philosophy suggests that average working people are 'takers.' In reality, those in the best position to make money take all they can get, with no scruples about their working class victims, because taking, in the minds of the rich, serves as a model for success. The strategy involves tax avoidance, in numerous forms.

DEE EVANS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

What do these numbers and countries mean?

In 2002 Karachi, Pakistan; 2004, Uzbekistan; 2004, Saudi Arabia; 2006, Syria; 2007, Athens; 2008, Serbia; 2008, Yemen.

No, it's not a puzzle, but given the current nature of our political discourse, the story behind it will no doubt puzzle you.

Listed above are the years and countries where United States' Embassies were attacked under our previous commander-in-chief, George W. Bush. I found this to be quite revealing given the all out "hair on fire" witch hunt that is currently taking place amongst conservative pundits and Republicans in Congress over the embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya last year. Now, I will be the first to say that even one person killed in an attack on our embassies is too many, but the fact that seven (count 'em SEVEN!) embassies were attacked and many people killed under the previous Republican administration and we heard nary a word of dismay is more than puzzling, it's downright unbelievable!

Now where does the Republican hero of heroes stand on the attack meter?  There were three embassy attacks during Ronald Reagan's presidency, two in 1983 - Beirut (more than 60 killed including 17 Americans) and Kuwait - and one in 1987 in Italy.

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Unregulated capitalism is out of control. Like a cancer, it has become "something evil or malignant that spreads destructively," with tumors growing in several once-healthy parts of the American body.

Attacking the Hungry

The uncontrolled growth of investment wealth is diverting resources away from vital programs, effectively smothering them. The average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)recipient received about $1,500 for food for the entire year. At least ten Americans each made that much in under ten seconds from their investment gains in 2012, about the time it took each one to fluff his pillow and roll over in bed.

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Report reveals embarrassing DHS ineffectiveness in its drone border surveillance, and details drone mission creep, congressional drone boosterism and alarming lack of oversight, accountability and transparency in unmanned surveillance program. 

Immigration reform proponents in Congress advocate pumping billions of dollars of new DHS spending into a border security strategy that is already overly reliant on dysfunctional high-tech surveillance. Drones Over the Homeland (PDF | HTML) raises questions about the wisdom of linking immigration- reform bills to high-tech surveillance programs – as both the White House and Senate have proposed.

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Protecting the second amendment at all costs is nothing to make a lawmaker's chest swell with pride. As the president said after the Senate refused to pass an expanded background checks amendment for gun purchasers it was in fact "a pretty shameful day for Washington." Staring vacantly into the eyes of parents who lost a child at Sandy Hook or watching Gabby Giffords struggle to walk and speak is not a victory for freedom-loving patriots, it is a stain on our national character.

People tend to be outraged at what they see as acts of terrorism but withhold judgment when some crazed gunman shoots an abortion provider or states angrily that he's ready to defend his gun rights to his last breath - - or that his gun will have to be plucked from "his cold dead hands." Those who ask for the enactment of sensible gun laws are accused of just not understanding the "gun culture" that exists in parts of the country. But applying the word culture to the word gun is a dysfunction in the making and that's what we've been about in the lexicon of misnomers we have developed.

WALTER BRASCH FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Note from the Author: This is a special Earth Day edition of my weekly social issues column, Wanderings. The information is from my latest book, Fracking Pennsylvania, an overall look at the nature and consequences of high-pressure horizontal hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking. Even if you are not a Pennsylvanian or living in the recent boom in the Marcellus Shale, fracking is destroying the health of people, livestock, pets, and wild animals; it is impacting the environment and ecological diversity. It is going on across the country, and is about to expand into the urban and agricultural areas of central California. If you don't want your wine, lettuce, or hundreds of other fruits and vegetables to be methane-tinged or to hold traces of radioactive and toxic waste, you might wish to oppose the development of fracking in California.

Pennsylvania: You Are Fracked

The history of energy exploration, mining, and delivery is best understood in a range from benevolent exploitation to worker and public oppression. A company comes into an area, leases or buys land in rural and agricultural areas for mineral rights, increases employment, usually during a depressed economy, strips the land of its resources, creates health problems for its workers and those in the immediate area, and then leaves.

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Too many Americans are unaware of the extreme disparities that have been caused by the unregulated profit incentive of capitalism. Our winner-take-all system is flailing away at once-healthy parts of society, leaving them like withered limbs on a trembling body, even as the relative few who benefit promote the illusion of opportunity and prosperity for all. Concerned citizens armed with facts are not fooled. Instead, the more they learn the angrier they get. And as in revolutions of the past, discontent leads to change.

PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

When Dante descended into the Inferno, guided by Virgil, he passed through Circles of Gluttony and Greed, and of Heresy and Fraud and Treachery.

The modern-day version is the corporate tax filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Navigation through the hellish form is fraught with anguish and pain and bewilderment, causing the visitor to beg for release from its devilish grasp, to shudder when recalling the sign at the entrance: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

The Circle of Betrayal: Big Profits Overseas, Big Losses in the U.S.

Bank of America, Citigroup, and Pfizer can be found here. In the last two years each one of them made much of their revenue in the U.S., but they claimed billions of dollars in foreign profits and billions of dollars in U.S. losses.