When the New York City banker James Brown tallied his wealth in 1842, he had to look far below Wall Street to trace its origins. His investments in the American South exceeded $1.5 million, a quarter of which was directly bound up in the ownership of slave plantations.

Late last week, I opened my email to find a message with a sad, guilt-trip-laden subject line: “It’s Been Awhile.” I opened it up to a blaring announcement – “WE MISS YOU!” – accompanied by a photo of a woman smiling encouragingly. No, this wasn’t a tender note from a group of sweet long-lost cousins or old high school chums.

Due to a spate of bizarre rants from members of the 1 percent over the past two weeks, it would be easy to conclude that America’s super-rich have gone off the rails.
Christopher Williams believes that one little box changed the trajectory of his life.

In the past year there has been an explosion of films that dare to intelligently explore the U.S. drug war. Spurred by the rapid reform of cannabis policy, pot is increasingly becoming a centerpiece of American culture.

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder is putting the weight of the Obama administration behind restoring voting rights to former felons, calling laws that disenfranchise millions of Americans “unnecessary and unjust,” and saying they are rooted in “centuries-old conceptions of justice that were too often based on exclusion, animus, and fear.”

To be ensnared in America’s mass incarceration system means being in prison, on parole or probation. After three solid decades of rising arrest rates, there are now approximately 7,163,000 people in the penal system: nearly 10 percent of the population over the age of 18.
By Gary Leupp — Last month the Guardian reported that a team of scientists studying early homo sapiens in Europe had extracted DNA from the tooth of a male hunter-gatherer…
Please check out “Life Beyond Icons: Two Things We Should Remember About Mandela and Seeger” here: http://www.newclearvision.com/2014/02/14/life-beyond-icons/ Also, an earlier piece – “4 Corrections for a Teachable Moment” on the…
A federal court gave California two more years Monday to reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons, yielding to pressure from state officials who said they could meet an impending deadline only by shipping thousands of inmates to other states.

After a conservative-led revolt against the Farm Bill, a five-year congressional funding program for agricultural and hunger programs, a deal will reportedly reach the president’s desk on Friday.
Haiti President Michel Martelly held his first-ever meeting with United States President Barack Obama on Thursday at the White House in Washington, DC.