Clippings for 28 September

A Better Bailout
Joseph E. Stiglitz writes in The Nation: "The champagne bottle corks were popping as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced his trillion-dollar bailout for the banks, buying up their toxic mortgages. To a skeptic, Paulson's proposal looks like another of those shell games that Wall Street has honed to a fine art. Wall Street has always made money by slicing, dicing and recombining risk. This 'cure' is another one of these rearrangements: somehow, by stripping out the bad assets from the banks and paying fair market value for them, the value of the banks will soar."

Is the Bailout Needed? Many Economists Say "No"
Kevin G. Hall reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "A funny thing happened in the drafting of the largest-ever US government intervention in the financial system. Lawmakers of all stripes mostly fell in line, but many of the nation's brightest economic minds are warning that the Wall Street bailout's a dangerous rush job. President Bush and his Treasury secretary, former Goldman Sachs chief executive Henry Paulson, have warned of imminent economic collapse and another Great Depression if their rescue plan isn't passed immediately. Is that true?"

AIDS Epidemic Reaches a "Chronic Stage"
Sarah Boseley reports in The Guardian UK: "After more than two decades and a truly epic struggle, the HIV/AIDS epidemic appears to be leveling off. The numbers of new infections are dropping. By now we have medicine we can give those infected to stop them from dying and we know how to prevent people becoming HIV positive. And yet every day, destitute women with children to feed sell their bodies for unsafe sex, babies are born with the virus and men die for lack of drugs. So much has been achieved in the fight against AIDS, and so much remains to do."

Ohio's Battle Over Early Voting
Amy Merrick writes in The Wall Street Journal: "In Ohio, where early voting will begin Tuesday, the fight in the courts is becoming as bruising as the one expected at the ballot box. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit in Cleveland late Wednesday, challenging a central Ohio county's decision to reject the secretary of state's instructions about same-day registration and voting."

The New Corporate Threat to Our Water Supplies
Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman write for TomDispatch.com: "In the last few years, the world's largest financial institutions and pension funds, from Goldman Sachs to Australia's Macquarie Bank, have figured out that old, trustworthy utilities and infrastructure could become reliable cash cows - supporting the financial system's speculative junk derivatives with the real concrete of highways, water utilities, airports, harbors and transit systems."

Bush "Conscientious Refusal" Puts Us All at Risk
Dr. Wendy Chavkin comments in RH Reality Check: "Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a set of regulations that claim to increase protection for healthcare workers' right to abstain from medical services to which they conscientiously object. These regulations represent another in a long line of cynical attempts by the Bush administration to distort science and medicine to fit its religious views and sabotage women's access to reproductive health care."

Ideology of Judges Determines Asylum Seekers' Fate
Matthew Blake reports in The Washington Independent: "In August 2006, then-Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales unveiled a 22-point plan to rescue the severely strained immigration court system. Gonzales vowed to better assist and police the more than 200 U.S. immigration judges, who are civil servants in the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Justice Dept. Each year, these judges issue more than 300,000 rulings on whether an undocumented immigrant seeking asylum in the United States can stay or must be deported."

An Unfolding Crisis in the Wake of Mississippi ICE Raid
Kari Lydersen writes for In These Times: "On August 25, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided the Howard Industries electronics factory in Laurel, Miss., taking into custody 592 immigrant workers-the largest single workplace raid in US history. But as in Postville, Iowa, New Bedford, Mass. and other sites of recent massive workplace raids, local immigrants and advocates say the real story is only now unfolding, as the waves of fear unleashed by the raids ripple throughout the community."


Recommended Audio
Check out last week's Counter Spin. They open by looking at the Republicans attempts to bar people from voting in November who have lost their homes in the mortgage crisis—targeting a largely poor, African-American pool of voters who would likely lean heavily towards the Democratic Party. Michigan's Republican party denied the allegations just as soon as the story started making its way into the mainstream media. CounterSpin speaks with Michigan Messenger reporter Eartha Jane Melzer about what she uncovered, and what she makes of the pushback against her reporting. Also on the show: The proposed federal bailout of Wall Street financial giants is still a top story.