Recently Charley Pierce posted a picture of a bottle of cough syrup that had been sent to him. It appeared to be a 19^th century ‘patent medicine’.

From looking at the ingredients, after a half teaspoon, a cough wouldn’t have a chance. After a tablespoon, disembowelment wouldn’t be a problem, but you might get the munchies.

They didn’t mess around if they found something that worked.

Nice catch by Susie Madrak of a post at Think Progress. The Arkansas spill is covered by the Oil Spill Fund but, because the pipeline was carrying tar sands / diluted bitumen, not oil, Exxon wasn’t required to pay the tax that funds the clean-ups.

The Keystone XL will be in the same category, they won’t have to pay into the Oil Spill Fund. Their spills will be paid for by other people because the tar sands corporations bought the right Congresscritter to put in an amendment to exempt them.

Over at the CBC Neil MacDonald has a look at Canada’s ‘Cyprus solution’ for bank defaults.

Same plan, to seize deposits to bail out banks that gamble and lose. Once again the investor-class is protected while the 99% get screwed.

The US and UK are talking along similar lines about doing to their depositors what the ‘troika’ did to depositors in Cyprus. They must really think that taxpayers are a totally separate group from bank depositors.

In the US state and Federal government programs have been pushing people towards banks and direct deposit for years. Many of the subsidy programs are now available only on debit cards that banks are profiting from issuing. They are shutting down printing of Social Security checks and tax refund checks, and soon if you don’t have a bank account of your own you will receive a debit card that will deduct fees for every month it is active and every time you use it.

It is well past the time when the states had their own banks, like North Dakota does, and the Federal government had its own bank. These threats against depositors don’t seem to take into account that unless there is a state bank, local governments have to keep their money in a commercial bank. They will be among the depositors who will be screwed, and all of their money is tax money.