Clippings for 22 February 2009

Recommended Audio: Todd Tiahrt - Bought and Sold by DC Lobbyists



From our friends at Kansas Jackass:
Todd Tiahrt secured $7 M in Earmarks
Last week we told you Congressman Todd Tiahrt had received more than $27,000 in campaign donations from a lobbying firm called PMA Group. That lobbying firm is in a wee bit of trouble: PMA’s offices have been raided, and the firm closed its political action committee last week amid reports that the FBI is investigating possibly illegal campaign contributions...Today, CQPolitics breaks the news that 91 Members of Congress who received contributions from PMA Group turned around and authored earmarks for PMA Group's clients- Tiahrt himself penned earmarks to a tune of $7 million.

5 Great Progressive Moves by Obama that You Might Have Missed
Alexander Zaitchik writes for ALterNet: "It's been a full month since the inauguration of Barack Obama. With debates raging over the financial system and the larger economic crisis, Obama has quietly succeeded in pushing through some great progressive initiatives and picked an encouraging candidate for his drug czar."

Harlem's Man with a Plan: Obama's the first president in 50 years to prioritize fighting poverty. Met the man who shown him how.
Pauk Tough writes for Mother Jones: "And Harlem has long needed delivering. Poverty has always been a fact of life in the United States, but the concentrated urban poverty that Harlem—along with sections of every American city—has experienced in the past half-century is a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1950s and 1960s, middle-class blacks, less constrained by restrictions on where they could live, began to move out of neighborhoods like Harlem in great numbers. At the same time, the postwar decline of the country's manufacturing economy deprived the urban African American families who remained of the jobs that had sustained them. As a result, the number of poor people living in neighborhoods with at least a 40 percent poverty rate almost tripled during the 1970s in the five largest American cities. These areas became a brand-new kind of urban ghetto, almost all poor and all black."

Pre-empting a Progressive Split on Afghanistan
Spencer Ackerman writes for The Washington Independent: "As the Obama administration spends the next two months reviewing strategy options for Afghanistan, a progressive organization is attempting to cobble together a liberal consensus around basic principles for the future of the seven-year-old war - thereby fending off a progressive split over Afghanistan early in the Obama administration's term."

PBS Screws Up Report on Financial Crisis
Danny Schechter writes for AlterNet: "Last week, an action thriller move called The International opened nationwide. It is a big-screen shoot 'em up about a bank gone bad. A crime story, involving gun running, buying up debt and conniving with politicians. It seemed timely but was actually a dramatization of a real, if barely remembered, story -- the corruption of that notorious failed bank, BCCI, popularly known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals."

The Power of Imagery
Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III comments for Truthout: "This past Wednesday, February 18, The New York Post published a cartoon drawn by famed cartoonist Sean Delonas depicting two white police officers killing a chimpanzee. One of the police officers says to the other, 'They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.' In response to public outrage at the bigoted, insensitive and racially inflammatory cartoon, Col Allen, editor in chief of The New York Post, released the following statement: 'The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.'"

Health Care Reform Can't Wait
Bill Boyarsky writes for Truthdig.com: "Who needs Tom Daschle? The national health care crisis, intensified by the recession, is so bad that nothing can be permitted to stop reform of the system, not even the implosion of the former Senate Democratic leader. Daschle, remember, was paid big speaking fees by the health business before President Barack Obama chose him to lead the health reform fight."

Recommended Audio: Coping with Corporate Media
Truthdig's podcast for this week features a panel who tackles our obsession with imperfect athletes, the first days of the Obama administration and the decline of media. Special guest Megan Tady, campaign coordinator for Free Press, joins James Harris and Josh Scheer.

Report: No Child Left Behind Unattainable
Sarah Stultz reports for The Albert Lea Tribune: "Ninety-seven percent of principals surveyed across the state said Minnesota schools will not be in compliance with federal No Child Left Behind guidelines by 2014, according to a report released Thursday by non-profit think tank Minnesota 2020."

The Hidden Link Between Factory Farms and Human Illness
Laura Sayre writes for Mother Earth News: "You may be familiar with many of the problems associated with concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. These 'factory farm' operations are often criticized for the smell and water pollution caused by all that concentrated manure; the unnatural, grain-heavy diets the animals consume; and the stressful, unhealthy conditions in which the animals live. You may not be aware, however, of the threat such facilities hold for you and your family's health - even if you never buy any of the meat produced in this manner."

EPA May Reverse Bush, Limit Carbon Emissions From Coal-Fired Plants
Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin report for The Washington Post: "The Environmental Protection Agency will reopen the possibility of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, tossing aside a December Bush administration memorandum that declared that the agency would not limit the emissions."

Coal Ash: The Hidden Story
Kristen Lombardi reports for The Center for Public Integrity: "Pat Nees never liked the water at the Moose Lodge. Almost everyone in tiny Colstrip, Montana, drank and dined at Lodge No. 2190, but the well water was notorious - it smelled like a sewer. It felt oily, gritty from sediment. Lodge members braving a drink - Nees among them - frequently doubled over from indigestion."

Anti-Gay Forces Work to Regain National Influence
Chris Johnson writes for the Washington Blade that some top LGBT advocates believe the tone of anti-gay rhetoric getting sharper, in response to a boost in LGBT support on the national level, while others think conservatives are shifting their tactics to push for more anti-LGBT laws. "The more gains you make and the closer your opponents are to losing, the more ferocious they are in the way in which they lash out. That is just the nature of social change," said HRC President Joe Solmonese.

How Will the $7.2 Billion Allotted for Broadband Stimulus Be Spent?
CyrusFarivar writes for PC World: "In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, recently enacted by Congress, many details regarding the allocation of funds for high-tech projects remain blurry. Nevertheless, the nation's tech community appears to be encouraged by the $7.2 billion provision for broadband in the near $789 billion economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama earlier this week. Many observers believe that the allocation is a clear first step toward establishing a nationwide broadband strategy."

Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)
Paul Starr writes for the New Republic: "We take newspapers for granted. They have been so integral a part of daily life in America, so central to politics and culture and business, and so powerful and profitable in their own right, that it is easy to forget what a remarkable historical invention they are. Public goods are notoriously under-produced in the marketplace, and news is a public good--and yet, since the mid-nineteenth century, newspapers have produced news in abundance at a cheap price to readers and without need of direct subsidy. More than any other medium, newspapers have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm systems."