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With all due respect to Charles Dickens, it appears to be the worst of times for public and higher education in America, if not democracy itself; public schools are increasingly viewed as a business and are prized above all for customer satisfaction and efficiency, while largely judged through the narrow lens of empirical accountability measures. When not functioning as an adjunct of corporate value or a potentially lucrative for-profit investment, public schools are reduced to containment centers, holding institutions designed to largely punish young people marginalized by race and class.

On July 25th, for instance, while John Boehner raced around the Capitol desperately pressing Republican House members for votes on a debt-ceiling bill that Harry Reid was calling dead-on-arrival in the Senate, America's new ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, took his oath of office in distant Kabul.  According to the New York Times, he then gave a short speech "warning" that "Western powers needed to 'proceed carefully'" and emphasized that when it came to the war, there would "be no rush for the exits." If, in Washington, people were rushing for those exits, no chance of that in Kabul almost a decade into America's second Afghan War.  There, the air strikes, night raids, assassinations, roadside bombs, and soldier and civilian deaths, we are assured, will continue to 2014 and beyond.  In a war in which every gallon of gas used by a fuel-guzzling US military costs $400 to $800 to import, time is no object and -- despite the panic in Washington over debt payments -- neither evidently is cost.

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Congresswoman Barbara Lee, like Jeanette Rankin before her, bravely stood alone in Congress against a vote for war, the vote in 2001 for the so-called Authorization to Use Military Force, a Constitutionally dubious passing of the war decision buck to President Bush and his successors.  A majority of…

In an electoral system corrupted by money, media, and parties, the US people are offered a choice every four years between two hideously awful candidates for an office that increasingly resembles an imperial throne. And increasingly the primary motivation of voters is to oppose the candidate they believe is the greater evil.

Among the demands of the Wall Street protesters is student debt forgiveness - a debt "jubilee." Occupy Philly has a "Student Loan Jubilee Working Group," and other groups are studying the issue. Commentators say debt forgiveness is impossible. Who would foot the bill? But there is one deep pocket that could pull it off - the Federal Reserve. In its first quantitative easing program (QE1), the Fed removed $1.3 trillion in toxic assets from the books of Wall Street banks. For QE4, it could remove $1 trillion in toxic debt from the backs of millions of students.

Charging customers for a debit card is just one reason not to bank at BoA. Recent Occupy Santa Cruz Bank of America incident illustrates how sensitive B of A is to protest.  This "too big to fail" bank may collapse like a house made of junk bonds and become a taxpayer burden. Here are a few other reasons why you shouldn't bank with them.