Community Bridge interviews Senator Chris Steineger, possible Democratic candidate for Kansas Governor in 2010. We talk about a variety of issues including his plan to reduce country governments in the state through consolidation. Following this week's Media Minutes we will be joined in studio by David Carter, former Friends of Sunset Zoo board President and current board member, who discusses "Wine in the Wild" - a fund raiser for Sunset Zoo scheduled for June 6th.
MP3 File
31 May 2009
Clippings for 31 May 2009
Stimulus: The First 100 Days
Michael Garbell reports for ProPublica: "The White House just released its report on the stimulus plan’s first 100 days. President Obama will appear at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada this afternoon to mark the stimulus package's first 100 days. So how is the stimulus working? A few measures:"
Accounting Error Rolls Back Stimulus Spending Numbers
David Epstein reports for ProPublica: "Remember how we said [1] that, judging by Vice President Joe Biden’s first quarterly stimulus report [2] (PDF), the government was going to have to seriously pick up the spending pace to meet the Congressional Budget Office’s projection [3] that $91.5 billion would be spent in the first year? Well, thanks to an accounting error by the Labor Department, it looks like it might be time to redouble the redoubled efforts."
Who Shredded Our Safety Net?
Jame Ridgeway writes for Mother Jones: "LIKE MOST PEOPLE whose quality of life depends upon the fluctuations of an IRA, 401(k), 403(b), or other acronym-soup retirement account, I was born long before such things existed. It's easy to forget, now that more than half of us have been made shareholders, that until well past the middle of the 20th century, most people had nothing to do with the stock market: Wall Street was for the wealthy and the reckless. It was a world most Americans didn't understand and, after 1929, didn't trust. Some lucky people had pensions, but few had the privilege of even thinking about retirement. They were too busy trying to survive the present—which in my childhood meant the Great Depression and then World War II."
Government Taps Bailout Contractors With Conflicts of Interest
Elana Schor reports for The Washington Independent: "As the Wall Street bailout nears its first anniversary, the controversy over giving public money to private banks has become public knowledge. But an equally risky aspect of the financial rescue has flown largely under the radar: the government's reliance on private contractors - many with potentially significant conflicts of interest - to help revive the stalled economy."
Recommended Audio: Truthdig Podcast - Breadline USA
Sasha Abramsky discusses his new solution-oriented book about the millions of Americans who work 40 hours a week and still go hungry, “these forgotten communities and these forgotten families who are doing everything they’ve been told they need to do to survive and ... they’re still being pushed backward by economic forces that they really don’t control.”
Everyone Should See "Torturing Democracy"
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write for Truthout: "No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning. If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does."
RECOMMENDED AUDIO: to view "Torturing Democracy," visit: http://torturingdemocracy.org/
Petraeus Criticizes Gitmo And Torture: ‘I Don’t Think We Should Be Afraid To Live Our Values’
Ben Armbruster writes for Think Progress: "Last week, Gen. David Petraeus told Radio Free Europe that he supports President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and that he opposes the use of so-called “enhance interrogation techniques.” “I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention,” Petraeus said."
Torture and Truth
Jonathan Schell writes for The Nation: "It has fallen to President Obama to deal with the policies and practices of torture inaugurated by the Bush administration. He started boldly, ordering an end to the abuses, announcing the closing in one year of the detention camp at Guantanamo and releasing the Bush-era Justice Department memos authorizing torture. Subsequently, he seemed to grow cautious. He discouraged formation of an independent commission to investigate the torture and reversed a previous position in favor of releasing Pentagon photos of abuses and instead opposed release."
Recommended Audio: Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney for Torture Speech
The Silence of MoveOn
Tom Hayden writes for The Nation: "Last December 17, 48.3 percent of MoveOn members listed "end the war in Iraq" as a 2009 goal, after healthcare (64.9 percent), economic recovery and job creation (62.1 percent) and building a green economy/stopping climate change (49.6 percent--only 1.5 percent above Iraq.) This was at a moment when most Americans believed the Iraq War was ending. Afghanistan and Pakistan were not listed among top goals which members could vote on."
Cheney's Bunker Mentality
James Ridgeway writes for Mother Jones: "Say what you will about Dick Cheney, at least he's consistent. While he was in office, the Vice President made a practice of exploiting the fear and loss wrought by the 9/11 attacks to advance his own political agenda—and he's still doing it now. During his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, according to Dana Milbank's calculations in the Washington Post, "Cheney used the word 'attack' 19 times, 'danger' and 'threat' six times apiece, and 9/11 an impressive 27 times.""
Think Again: Dick Cheney's Post Presidency
Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory write for The Center for American Progress: "Former President George W. Bush recently mused with the press about scooping up his dog's droppings. Meanwhile, former Vice President Dick Cheney has taken on the role of attack dog. Some conservatives have suggested that President Barack Obama somehow goaded Cheney into this role when he attacked the VP during the campaign
Empathy, Sotomayor, and Democracy: The Conservative Stealth Strategy
George Lakoff writes for CommonDreams.org: "The Sotomayor nomination has given radical conservatives new life. They have launched an attack that is nominally aimed at Judge Sotomayor. But it is really a coordinated stealth attack - on President Obama's central vision, on progressive thought itself, and on Republicans who might stray from the conservative hard line."
Right-wing Hate Raises It's Ugly Head
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Brad Johnson write for Progress Report: "The radical right wing has launched a vicious campaign of racist and sexist attacks against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's selection to replace the retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor's 'compelling life story' involves a brilliant legal career after being raised in a South Bronx public housing project by parents who moved from Puerto Rico. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude, edited the Yale Law Journal, then served as a 'fearless and effective' New York City prosecutor and corporate lawyer before being appointed to the bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1992. 'Since joining the Second Circuit in 1998, Sotomayor has authored over 150 opinions,' only three of which have been overturned by the Supreme Court's conservative majority. During her time as an appeals judge, 'her influence has grown significantly.' Public reaction to the nomination of the first Latina and third woman to the nation's highest court is 'decidedly more positive than negative.' Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon remarked, 'If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff.' However, 'the same right-wing extremists who drove the country into the ground,' Salon's Glenn Greenwald writes, 'continue to attack Sonia Sotomayor with blatant and ugly stereotypes.' Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan called Sotomayor an 'affirmative action candidate,' and Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes claimed she 'has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.' As hate-radio extremist Glenn Beck described the nomination: 'Hey, Hispanic chick lady! You're empathetic ... you're in!'"
Documentary on Intensive Pig Farming Faces Legal Threat
Judith Soal writes for CommonDreams.org: "A documentary about intensive pig farming due to be screened at the Guardian Hay festival on Sunday is facing a legal threat from one of the companies it investigates. Pig Business criticises the practices of the world's largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, claiming it is responsible for environmental pollution and health problems among residents near its factories."
Report: Global Warming Causes 300,000 Deaths a Year
John Vidal reports in The Guardian UK: "Climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300 million people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming."
Finally, a UN Agency for Women
Lesley Abdela reports for The Guardian UK: "This autumn the UN General Assembly will vote yes or no to a new 'super-agency for women'; $1 billion is being discussed as the starter annual budget. Just like the House of Commons, the UN has finally been shamed into reforming itself. The UN sets global standards for human rights, but has no single agency with the resources and clout to work globally to improve the lives of women. As a result, the UN system has badly and unforgivably let down the world's 3 billion-plus women. In 2006 a UN high-level panel set up to recommend reforms in the wake of the 2005 world summit gave the UN null points for services to women. The panel found the way the UN system works for women 'incoherent, fragmented, and under-resourced'. Many of us have been saying for years the UN system is a son of the 1950s, patriarchal and hierarchical, so it is good to see it's official."
Where's the Equal Justice for Gays?
Joan Vennochi comments for The Boston Globe: "President Obama had much to say about the glass ceiling he is smashing on behalf of Hispanics and nothing to say about the glass ceiling the California Supreme Court is reimposing on gays.... On gay rights, as with other controversial issues, Obama stands where it's politically smart to stand. He finds the political sweet spot that placates the left and doesn't alienate the middle."
Recommended Audio: Dan Choi Protests at President Obama's Hotel in Los Angeles
Lt. Dan Choi speaks out against the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy at a protest at President Obama's hotel in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.
Lieutenant Dan Choi Takes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Directly To Obama
Linda Milazzo writes for the LA PRogressive: "Wednesday evening, in an act of daring befitting a West Point graduate and veteran of Iraq, recently discharged New York National Guard Lieutenant Daniel Choi defied the orders of dozens of crowd control police and stepped into the ‘no protest zone’ street to ceremoniously salute his Commander in Chief, Barack Obama, out of site at a star-studded fundraiser at the posh Beverly Hilton Hotel."
On Becoming a Civil Rights Movement
David Mixner writes for his blog: "For decades the leadership of the LGBT civil rights movement has come from inside of the Beltway. The leadership was often powerful and insightful and it still continues to serve our community well. There were clearly defined 'turfs' by each organization - one for politics, one for grassroots, one for gay elected officials and several on the legal front. If one became too aggressive and spilled over into the other's turf often there would be a little turf war which was quickly settled by the powers that be in DC. It worked for years and years."
Special Report: The Need for Speed
Nicholas Thompson writes for the Washington Monthly: "roadband Internet in the United States is a disaster. It’s appalling. It’s embarrassing. It’s preposterous. Compared to the rest of the world, our connections are slow, balky, and expensive. If you divide speed by cost, Australia’s Internet access is three times better than ours; France’s is nine times better; and Japan’s thumps us twenty-one times over. We’re catching fish with our hands, while they are out in trawlers. And the reason doesn’t have to do with anything intrinsically American. It’s not, for example, that the country is too rural. Broadband stinks even in Chicago. The problem is almost entirely a failure of policy and of imagination."
Michael Garbell reports for ProPublica: "The White House just released its report on the stimulus plan’s first 100 days. President Obama will appear at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada this afternoon to mark the stimulus package's first 100 days. So how is the stimulus working? A few measures:"
Accounting Error Rolls Back Stimulus Spending Numbers
David Epstein reports for ProPublica: "Remember how we said [1] that, judging by Vice President Joe Biden’s first quarterly stimulus report [2] (PDF), the government was going to have to seriously pick up the spending pace to meet the Congressional Budget Office’s projection [3] that $91.5 billion would be spent in the first year? Well, thanks to an accounting error by the Labor Department, it looks like it might be time to redouble the redoubled efforts."
Who Shredded Our Safety Net?
Jame Ridgeway writes for Mother Jones: "LIKE MOST PEOPLE whose quality of life depends upon the fluctuations of an IRA, 401(k), 403(b), or other acronym-soup retirement account, I was born long before such things existed. It's easy to forget, now that more than half of us have been made shareholders, that until well past the middle of the 20th century, most people had nothing to do with the stock market: Wall Street was for the wealthy and the reckless. It was a world most Americans didn't understand and, after 1929, didn't trust. Some lucky people had pensions, but few had the privilege of even thinking about retirement. They were too busy trying to survive the present—which in my childhood meant the Great Depression and then World War II."
Government Taps Bailout Contractors With Conflicts of Interest
Elana Schor reports for The Washington Independent: "As the Wall Street bailout nears its first anniversary, the controversy over giving public money to private banks has become public knowledge. But an equally risky aspect of the financial rescue has flown largely under the radar: the government's reliance on private contractors - many with potentially significant conflicts of interest - to help revive the stalled economy."
Recommended Audio: Truthdig Podcast - Breadline USA
Sasha Abramsky discusses his new solution-oriented book about the millions of Americans who work 40 hours a week and still go hungry, “these forgotten communities and these forgotten families who are doing everything they’ve been told they need to do to survive and ... they’re still being pushed backward by economic forces that they really don’t control.”
Everyone Should See "Torturing Democracy"
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write for Truthout: "No political party would dare make torture a cornerstone of its rejuvenation if people really understood what it is. And lest we forget, we're not just talking about waterboarding, itself a trivializing euphemism for drowning. If we want to know what torture is, and what it does to human beings, we have to look at it squarely, without flinching. That's just what a powerful and important film, seen by far too few Americans, does."
RECOMMENDED AUDIO: to view "Torturing Democracy," visit: http://torturingdemocracy.org/
Petraeus Criticizes Gitmo And Torture: ‘I Don’t Think We Should Be Afraid To Live Our Values’
Ben Armbruster writes for Think Progress: "Last week, Gen. David Petraeus told Radio Free Europe that he supports President Obama’s decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and that he opposes the use of so-called “enhance interrogation techniques.” “I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention,” Petraeus said."
Torture and Truth
Jonathan Schell writes for The Nation: "It has fallen to President Obama to deal with the policies and practices of torture inaugurated by the Bush administration. He started boldly, ordering an end to the abuses, announcing the closing in one year of the detention camp at Guantanamo and releasing the Bush-era Justice Department memos authorizing torture. Subsequently, he seemed to grow cautious. He discouraged formation of an independent commission to investigate the torture and reversed a previous position in favor of releasing Pentagon photos of abuses and instead opposed release."
Recommended Audio: Former Interrogator Rebukes Cheney for Torture Speech
The Silence of MoveOn
Tom Hayden writes for The Nation: "Last December 17, 48.3 percent of MoveOn members listed "end the war in Iraq" as a 2009 goal, after healthcare (64.9 percent), economic recovery and job creation (62.1 percent) and building a green economy/stopping climate change (49.6 percent--only 1.5 percent above Iraq.) This was at a moment when most Americans believed the Iraq War was ending. Afghanistan and Pakistan were not listed among top goals which members could vote on."
Cheney's Bunker Mentality
James Ridgeway writes for Mother Jones: "Say what you will about Dick Cheney, at least he's consistent. While he was in office, the Vice President made a practice of exploiting the fear and loss wrought by the 9/11 attacks to advance his own political agenda—and he's still doing it now. During his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, according to Dana Milbank's calculations in the Washington Post, "Cheney used the word 'attack' 19 times, 'danger' and 'threat' six times apiece, and 9/11 an impressive 27 times.""
Think Again: Dick Cheney's Post Presidency
Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory write for The Center for American Progress: "Former President George W. Bush recently mused with the press about scooping up his dog's droppings. Meanwhile, former Vice President Dick Cheney has taken on the role of attack dog. Some conservatives have suggested that President Barack Obama somehow goaded Cheney into this role when he attacked the VP during the campaign
Empathy, Sotomayor, and Democracy: The Conservative Stealth Strategy
George Lakoff writes for CommonDreams.org: "The Sotomayor nomination has given radical conservatives new life. They have launched an attack that is nominally aimed at Judge Sotomayor. But it is really a coordinated stealth attack - on President Obama's central vision, on progressive thought itself, and on Republicans who might stray from the conservative hard line."
Right-wing Hate Raises It's Ugly Head
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Brad Johnson write for Progress Report: "The radical right wing has launched a vicious campaign of racist and sexist attacks against Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's selection to replace the retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor's 'compelling life story' involves a brilliant legal career after being raised in a South Bronx public housing project by parents who moved from Puerto Rico. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude, edited the Yale Law Journal, then served as a 'fearless and effective' New York City prosecutor and corporate lawyer before being appointed to the bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1992. 'Since joining the Second Circuit in 1998, Sotomayor has authored over 150 opinions,' only three of which have been overturned by the Supreme Court's conservative majority. During her time as an appeals judge, 'her influence has grown significantly.' Public reaction to the nomination of the first Latina and third woman to the nation's highest court is 'decidedly more positive than negative.' Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon remarked, 'If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff.' However, 'the same right-wing extremists who drove the country into the ground,' Salon's Glenn Greenwald writes, 'continue to attack Sonia Sotomayor with blatant and ugly stereotypes.' Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan called Sotomayor an 'affirmative action candidate,' and Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes claimed she 'has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.' As hate-radio extremist Glenn Beck described the nomination: 'Hey, Hispanic chick lady! You're empathetic ... you're in!'"
Documentary on Intensive Pig Farming Faces Legal Threat
Judith Soal writes for CommonDreams.org: "A documentary about intensive pig farming due to be screened at the Guardian Hay festival on Sunday is facing a legal threat from one of the companies it investigates. Pig Business criticises the practices of the world's largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, claiming it is responsible for environmental pollution and health problems among residents near its factories."
Report: Global Warming Causes 300,000 Deaths a Year
John Vidal reports in The Guardian UK: "Climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300 million people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming."
Finally, a UN Agency for Women
Lesley Abdela reports for The Guardian UK: "This autumn the UN General Assembly will vote yes or no to a new 'super-agency for women'; $1 billion is being discussed as the starter annual budget. Just like the House of Commons, the UN has finally been shamed into reforming itself. The UN sets global standards for human rights, but has no single agency with the resources and clout to work globally to improve the lives of women. As a result, the UN system has badly and unforgivably let down the world's 3 billion-plus women. In 2006 a UN high-level panel set up to recommend reforms in the wake of the 2005 world summit gave the UN null points for services to women. The panel found the way the UN system works for women 'incoherent, fragmented, and under-resourced'. Many of us have been saying for years the UN system is a son of the 1950s, patriarchal and hierarchical, so it is good to see it's official."
Where's the Equal Justice for Gays?
Joan Vennochi comments for The Boston Globe: "President Obama had much to say about the glass ceiling he is smashing on behalf of Hispanics and nothing to say about the glass ceiling the California Supreme Court is reimposing on gays.... On gay rights, as with other controversial issues, Obama stands where it's politically smart to stand. He finds the political sweet spot that placates the left and doesn't alienate the middle."
Recommended Audio: Dan Choi Protests at President Obama's Hotel in Los Angeles
Lt. Dan Choi speaks out against the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy at a protest at President Obama's hotel in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.
Lieutenant Dan Choi Takes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Directly To Obama
Linda Milazzo writes for the LA PRogressive: "Wednesday evening, in an act of daring befitting a West Point graduate and veteran of Iraq, recently discharged New York National Guard Lieutenant Daniel Choi defied the orders of dozens of crowd control police and stepped into the ‘no protest zone’ street to ceremoniously salute his Commander in Chief, Barack Obama, out of site at a star-studded fundraiser at the posh Beverly Hilton Hotel."
On Becoming a Civil Rights Movement
David Mixner writes for his blog: "For decades the leadership of the LGBT civil rights movement has come from inside of the Beltway. The leadership was often powerful and insightful and it still continues to serve our community well. There were clearly defined 'turfs' by each organization - one for politics, one for grassroots, one for gay elected officials and several on the legal front. If one became too aggressive and spilled over into the other's turf often there would be a little turf war which was quickly settled by the powers that be in DC. It worked for years and years."
Special Report: The Need for Speed
Nicholas Thompson writes for the Washington Monthly: "roadband Internet in the United States is a disaster. It’s appalling. It’s embarrassing. It’s preposterous. Compared to the rest of the world, our connections are slow, balky, and expensive. If you divide speed by cost, Australia’s Internet access is three times better than ours; France’s is nine times better; and Japan’s thumps us twenty-one times over. We’re catching fish with our hands, while they are out in trawlers. And the reason doesn’t have to do with anything intrinsically American. It’s not, for example, that the country is too rural. Broadband stinks even in Chicago. The problem is almost entirely a failure of policy and of imagination."
27 May 2009
Clippings for 28 May 2009
Dissent is as American as Cherry Pie
Richard Haass writes for the Huffington Post: "The following is a commencement address I delivered today to the graduates of Oberlin College. Congratulations to everyone in the Oberlin class of 2009 -- but also to your friends and teachers and, above all, your parents. I don't know if it took a village to get you where you are today, but I expect it took a great many people giving a great deal."
Stuff the Bankers, Starve the Kids
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig: "All sorts of startling conclusions are being drawn about the failure of California’s ballot funding initiatives last week. Newt Gingrich hailed it as another Boston Tea Party, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisted that it condemns California, one of the world’s largest economies, to banana republic status. But if it was such a big deal, how come the voter turnout was so low?"
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold
Andy Kroll writes for TomDispatch.com: "On October 3rd, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the US government responded with the largest bailout in American history. That $700 billion bailout has since grown into a more than $12 trillion commitment by the US government and the Federal Reserve."
Taking Off the Rose-Colored Glasses
Raegen Miller writes for The Center for American Progress: "Not a dozen weeks have passed since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was lauded far and wide for its large investment in the short-term economic health and long-term reform of public schools. Balancing the act's two goals was always going to be complicated, even though the argument for a one-time federal injection of roughly $100 billion remains sound, a new report sheds light on how this balancing act may play out, and it doesn't look good for states that were already having fiscal troubles."
How the Poorest Americans Dropped Out of Politics
Lee Drutman reports in Miller-McCune Magazine: "In the 2008 election, lower-income Americans voted at significantly lower rates than higher-income Americans. This was not, in itself, news. Just as in 2004, more than 60 percent of voters came from families above the median household income of $50,000. That family income is a significant predictor of individual voting is a long-standing and oft-lamented fact of American political life."
Aerial Bombing Makes Terrorists
Abdul Malik Mujahid comments for Truthout: "During the last thirty years of wars in Afghanistan, Afghan civilians have had one safe place to escape to: Pakistan. They fled the Soviet invasion. They fled civil wars. They fled US bombing. Pakistan took care of millions of these Afghan refugees. Now that safe haven with its lush green valleys is burning with bombs."
Torture Nation (pdf)
The Reader provides a special 23-page section, Torture Nation, which examines the causes, reasons, results and reaction to the US’s counterproductive ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ carried out at Guantanamo Bay and other places during the past eight years. Essays by Andy Worthington, Ray McGovern, Bill van Auken, Jason Leopold, Mark Haas, Rory O’Connor and John Pilger. Other essays in this issue include Mark Ames’s account of a rebellion that went wrong; David Edwards on the fallacy of the left-wing media; Danny Schechter tells why he returned his American Express card; George Monbiot bemoans the state of Britain’s police forces; Jonathan Cook searches for secret prisons in Israel; while David Michael Green wonders what’s going on in the US, home of the barricaded, land of the ’fraid. Plus more essays from Joe Bageant, chris Hedges, Ramzy Baroud, Medea Benjamin, Dave Zirin and Norman Solomon. And, finally, we’ve got a wonderful photograph by Jess Hurd!
Recommended Audio: GRIT TV - The Sotomayor Selection, Credit Card Accountability?, and Auditing the Fed
How - and Why - Barack Obama Picked Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court
Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin write for Politico: "President Barack Obama called Judge Sonia Sotomayor at 9 p.m. on Memorial Day to say she was his pick for the Supreme Court. Obama showed he was willing to pick a fight with his choice - Republicans do not consider her a 'consensus' nominee and had signaled that they considered her the most liberal of the four finalists."
Obama Pick Sonia Sotomayor Reflects America
John Nichols writes for The Nation: "When Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his planned retirement, the pressure was on President Obama to add a second woman to a bench. At the same time, Obama was encouraged to pick a Hispanic justice. He did both, and a good deal more. Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the high court, was made at the White House this morning, with the president hailing her as 'an inspiring woman who I think will make a great justice.'"
Will Fox News Channel Parrot RNC Talking Points on Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor?
Alex writesf or News Hounds: "Is Hannity a Catholic? Well, depending on your point of view an argument can be made either for or against the latter. But as sure as the “right” think the sun shines out of Ronald Reagan’s – errr – corpse, FNC will parrot RNC talking points as well as the other anti-Sotomayor memes that conservatives have been incubating for the past few weeks. Better yet, they won’t have to do any homework on them because the Republican National Committee have inadvertently released their talking points memo, meant for the Republican faithful, to the national media (those goddamned libruls!). Memes, themes, vaccinations, and possible antidotes for infected conservatives provided after the jump."
Recommended Audio: Bill Moyers Journal for 22 May
BILL MOYERS writes: "Welcome to the JOURNAL. Health care reform. It's the talk of the town - if the town is Washington, D.C. But some possible reforms aren't being talked about at all. Not officially, that is. The White House and Congress have kept the lid on one of the most controversial but popular options, known as single-payer. It's a story the mainstream press has largely ignored and that's why we are covering it in this broadcast."
Rx and the Single Payer
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship comment for Truthout: "In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, 'I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.' Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two to one."
Obama Promises "Basic" Health Care Coverage
J.Taylor Rushing comments for The Hill: "President Obama vowed in an interview Saturday that his health care plan will provide "basic coverage" to all Americans - a linguistically different choice than 'universal' care - but reiterated his commitment to the idea of reform. Obama said reform is more possible in 2009 than it was under the Clinton administration in 1993 chiefly because businesses and the health industry itself now realize the country cannot afford the current system. 'The fact that we've got hospitals and doctors who also recognize that the system is unsustainable on its current path, fiscal conservatives who recognize that the single biggest component of driving down our deficits and long-term debt is getting control of Medicare and Medicaid costs, and that health care reform is critical to bend the curve,' Obama said. 'All those things I think are converged.'"
Blue Cross Millionaires Scared to Compete
Dean Baker comments for Truthout: "The boys running the show at Blue Cross in North Carolina are running scared. They're worried that President Obama is going to treat them like autoworkers and make them actually compete in the market. The Blue Cross boys think that they belong in the same league as the Wall Street bankers and should just be allowed to collect their multi-million-dollar salaries without being forced to worry about things like competition."
Intimidation Nation: How US Employers Fight Unions
Seth Sandronsky writes for Truthout: "Opinion polls say that the majority of US workers want to be in a labor union, according to Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor and director of Labor Education Research, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. So why are just 12.4 percent of American workers union members? In brief, they fear what their bosses will do to them."
"Clean" Energy and Poisoned Water
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig: "In the musical “Urinetown,” a severe drought leaves the dwindling supplies of clean water in the hands of a corporation called Urine Good Company. Urine Good Company makes a fortune selling the precious commodity and running public toilets. It pays off politicians to ward off regulation and inspection. It uses the mechanisms of state control to repress an increasingly desperate and impoverished population."
EPA Mining Decisions Favor Coal Industry
Mike Lillis reports for The Washington Independent: "Despite renewed vows to protect Appalachian waterways from the ravages of mountaintop coal mining, the Environmental Protection Agency has recently authorized a number of pending mountaintop permits that will bury dozens of streams in the nation's oldest mountain range. The move has left mining supporters cheering the federal endorsement of a popular extraction method, environmentalists wondering if the Obama administration truly intends to prioritize water-quality concerns above those of the powerful coal industry, and both sides unsure what to expect of mountaintop permitting in the future."
La Cage aux Democrats
Frank Rich comments for the New York Times: "THE most potent word in our new president’s lexicon — change — has been heard much less since his inspiring campaign gave way to the hard realities of governing. But on Tuesday night, the irresistible Obama brand made an unexpected and pointed cameo appearance on America’s most popular television show, 'American Idol.' In the talent competition’s climactic faceoff, the song picked for one of the two finalists, Adam Lambert, was Sam Cooke’s soul classic, 'A Change Is Gonna Come.'”
Internet Threatened by Censorship, Secret Surveillance, and Cybersecurity Laws
Stephen Lendman writes for The Media Channel: "At a time of corporate dominated media, a free and open Internet is democracy’s last chance to preserve our First Amendment rights without which all others are threatened. Activists call it Net Neutrality. Media scholar Robert McChesney says without it “the Internet would start to look like cable TV (with a) handful of massive companies (controlling) content” enough to have veto power over what’s allowed and what it costs. Progressive web sites and writers would be marginalized or suppressed, and content systematically filtered or banned."
Richard Haass writes for the Huffington Post: "The following is a commencement address I delivered today to the graduates of Oberlin College. Congratulations to everyone in the Oberlin class of 2009 -- but also to your friends and teachers and, above all, your parents. I don't know if it took a village to get you where you are today, but I expect it took a great many people giving a great deal."
Stuff the Bankers, Starve the Kids
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig: "All sorts of startling conclusions are being drawn about the failure of California’s ballot funding initiatives last week. Newt Gingrich hailed it as another Boston Tea Party, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisted that it condemns California, one of the world’s largest economies, to banana republic status. But if it was such a big deal, how come the voter turnout was so low?"
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold
Andy Kroll writes for TomDispatch.com: "On October 3rd, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the US government responded with the largest bailout in American history. That $700 billion bailout has since grown into a more than $12 trillion commitment by the US government and the Federal Reserve."
Taking Off the Rose-Colored Glasses
Raegen Miller writes for The Center for American Progress: "Not a dozen weeks have passed since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was lauded far and wide for its large investment in the short-term economic health and long-term reform of public schools. Balancing the act's two goals was always going to be complicated, even though the argument for a one-time federal injection of roughly $100 billion remains sound, a new report sheds light on how this balancing act may play out, and it doesn't look good for states that were already having fiscal troubles."
How the Poorest Americans Dropped Out of Politics
Lee Drutman reports in Miller-McCune Magazine: "In the 2008 election, lower-income Americans voted at significantly lower rates than higher-income Americans. This was not, in itself, news. Just as in 2004, more than 60 percent of voters came from families above the median household income of $50,000. That family income is a significant predictor of individual voting is a long-standing and oft-lamented fact of American political life."
Aerial Bombing Makes Terrorists
Abdul Malik Mujahid comments for Truthout: "During the last thirty years of wars in Afghanistan, Afghan civilians have had one safe place to escape to: Pakistan. They fled the Soviet invasion. They fled civil wars. They fled US bombing. Pakistan took care of millions of these Afghan refugees. Now that safe haven with its lush green valleys is burning with bombs."
Torture Nation (pdf)
The Reader provides a special 23-page section, Torture Nation, which examines the causes, reasons, results and reaction to the US’s counterproductive ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ carried out at Guantanamo Bay and other places during the past eight years. Essays by Andy Worthington, Ray McGovern, Bill van Auken, Jason Leopold, Mark Haas, Rory O’Connor and John Pilger. Other essays in this issue include Mark Ames’s account of a rebellion that went wrong; David Edwards on the fallacy of the left-wing media; Danny Schechter tells why he returned his American Express card; George Monbiot bemoans the state of Britain’s police forces; Jonathan Cook searches for secret prisons in Israel; while David Michael Green wonders what’s going on in the US, home of the barricaded, land of the ’fraid. Plus more essays from Joe Bageant, chris Hedges, Ramzy Baroud, Medea Benjamin, Dave Zirin and Norman Solomon. And, finally, we’ve got a wonderful photograph by Jess Hurd!
Recommended Audio: GRIT TV - The Sotomayor Selection, Credit Card Accountability?, and Auditing the Fed
How - and Why - Barack Obama Picked Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court
Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin write for Politico: "President Barack Obama called Judge Sonia Sotomayor at 9 p.m. on Memorial Day to say she was his pick for the Supreme Court. Obama showed he was willing to pick a fight with his choice - Republicans do not consider her a 'consensus' nominee and had signaled that they considered her the most liberal of the four finalists."
Obama Pick Sonia Sotomayor Reflects America
John Nichols writes for The Nation: "When Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his planned retirement, the pressure was on President Obama to add a second woman to a bench. At the same time, Obama was encouraged to pick a Hispanic justice. He did both, and a good deal more. Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the high court, was made at the White House this morning, with the president hailing her as 'an inspiring woman who I think will make a great justice.'"
Will Fox News Channel Parrot RNC Talking Points on Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor?
Alex writesf or News Hounds: "Is Hannity a Catholic? Well, depending on your point of view an argument can be made either for or against the latter. But as sure as the “right” think the sun shines out of Ronald Reagan’s – errr – corpse, FNC will parrot RNC talking points as well as the other anti-Sotomayor memes that conservatives have been incubating for the past few weeks. Better yet, they won’t have to do any homework on them because the Republican National Committee have inadvertently released their talking points memo, meant for the Republican faithful, to the national media (those goddamned libruls!). Memes, themes, vaccinations, and possible antidotes for infected conservatives provided after the jump."
Recommended Audio: Bill Moyers Journal for 22 May
BILL MOYERS writes: "Welcome to the JOURNAL. Health care reform. It's the talk of the town - if the town is Washington, D.C. But some possible reforms aren't being talked about at all. Not officially, that is. The White House and Congress have kept the lid on one of the most controversial but popular options, known as single-payer. It's a story the mainstream press has largely ignored and that's why we are covering it in this broadcast."
Rx and the Single Payer
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship comment for Truthout: "In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, 'I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.' Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two to one."
Obama Promises "Basic" Health Care Coverage
J.Taylor Rushing comments for The Hill: "President Obama vowed in an interview Saturday that his health care plan will provide "basic coverage" to all Americans - a linguistically different choice than 'universal' care - but reiterated his commitment to the idea of reform. Obama said reform is more possible in 2009 than it was under the Clinton administration in 1993 chiefly because businesses and the health industry itself now realize the country cannot afford the current system. 'The fact that we've got hospitals and doctors who also recognize that the system is unsustainable on its current path, fiscal conservatives who recognize that the single biggest component of driving down our deficits and long-term debt is getting control of Medicare and Medicaid costs, and that health care reform is critical to bend the curve,' Obama said. 'All those things I think are converged.'"
Blue Cross Millionaires Scared to Compete
Dean Baker comments for Truthout: "The boys running the show at Blue Cross in North Carolina are running scared. They're worried that President Obama is going to treat them like autoworkers and make them actually compete in the market. The Blue Cross boys think that they belong in the same league as the Wall Street bankers and should just be allowed to collect their multi-million-dollar salaries without being forced to worry about things like competition."
Intimidation Nation: How US Employers Fight Unions
Seth Sandronsky writes for Truthout: "Opinion polls say that the majority of US workers want to be in a labor union, according to Kate Bronfenbrenner, a professor and director of Labor Education Research, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. So why are just 12.4 percent of American workers union members? In brief, they fear what their bosses will do to them."
"Clean" Energy and Poisoned Water
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig: "In the musical “Urinetown,” a severe drought leaves the dwindling supplies of clean water in the hands of a corporation called Urine Good Company. Urine Good Company makes a fortune selling the precious commodity and running public toilets. It pays off politicians to ward off regulation and inspection. It uses the mechanisms of state control to repress an increasingly desperate and impoverished population."
EPA Mining Decisions Favor Coal Industry
Mike Lillis reports for The Washington Independent: "Despite renewed vows to protect Appalachian waterways from the ravages of mountaintop coal mining, the Environmental Protection Agency has recently authorized a number of pending mountaintop permits that will bury dozens of streams in the nation's oldest mountain range. The move has left mining supporters cheering the federal endorsement of a popular extraction method, environmentalists wondering if the Obama administration truly intends to prioritize water-quality concerns above those of the powerful coal industry, and both sides unsure what to expect of mountaintop permitting in the future."
La Cage aux Democrats
Frank Rich comments for the New York Times: "THE most potent word in our new president’s lexicon — change — has been heard much less since his inspiring campaign gave way to the hard realities of governing. But on Tuesday night, the irresistible Obama brand made an unexpected and pointed cameo appearance on America’s most popular television show, 'American Idol.' In the talent competition’s climactic faceoff, the song picked for one of the two finalists, Adam Lambert, was Sam Cooke’s soul classic, 'A Change Is Gonna Come.'”
Internet Threatened by Censorship, Secret Surveillance, and Cybersecurity Laws
Stephen Lendman writes for The Media Channel: "At a time of corporate dominated media, a free and open Internet is democracy’s last chance to preserve our First Amendment rights without which all others are threatened. Activists call it Net Neutrality. Media scholar Robert McChesney says without it “the Internet would start to look like cable TV (with a) handful of massive companies (controlling) content” enough to have veto power over what’s allowed and what it costs. Progressive web sites and writers would be marginalized or suppressed, and content systematically filtered or banned."
21 May 2009
Clippings for 21 May 2009
Wall St. and the Media Are Trying to Make Us Forget Who Started the Financial Crisis
Les Leopold writes for ALterNet: "It’s fast approaching the time Wall Street has been waiting for: the time when the media and the public forget what got us into this economic mess. As massive doses of taxpayer Viagra lift the stock market ticker, we hold out hope that our 401k and pension plans will re-erect themselves along with our jobs. We feel stimulated by the stimulus package… and the morning after we forget. The crisis, whatever it was, is over, isn’t it? Surely, it’s time to move on."
As Smash-and-Grab Capitalism Collapeses, the French Economy Shines
Willian Pfaff writes for Truthdig: "Many in Britain and the United States are in mourning for what’s taken as the suicide of the American (or Thatcherite, or Chicago-school) model of capitalism, accompanied by the non-interventionist state that hands the national economy over to business and financial leaders to run."
Recommended Audio: Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis: "The Worker Control Solution"
Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman for Democracy Now!: "'Shock Doctrine' author Naomi Klein and Al Jazeera host Avi Lewis discuss the workers who are taking over their factories and plants rather than lose their jobs, some to owners who owe money to bailed-out banks. They also address the latest news in the nation's global economic collapse amidst the White House and Democratic-led Congress's rejection of single-payer health care."
America's Poor Are Its Most Generous Givers
Frank Greve reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "When Jody Richards saw a homeless man begging outside a downtown McDonald's recently, he bought the man a cheeseburger. There's nothing unusual about that, except that Richards is homeless, too, and the 99-cent cheeseburger was an outsized chunk of the $9.50 he'd earned that day from panhandling."
The Disease of Permanent War
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig: "The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war. "
Why We Can't See the Trees or the Forest: The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia
Noam Chomsky writes for TomDispatch.com: "The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation, and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise, less so. For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantanamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law - a place, incidentally, that Washington is using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take seriously."
The Trials of Ehren Watada
Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith write for The Nation: "The Army's behavior toward Watada has been disgraceful from the start. The entire controversy could have been forestalled if the Army had not refused his initial request to resign. The Army charged Watada not only with 'missing movement' but with 'conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman' for speaking critically of government policy and President George W. Bush in ways that the military's own courts had repeatedly established to be constitutionally protected. In an effort to intimidate Watada's supporters, Army prosecutors subpoenaed journalists and organizers of public meetings."
After Claiming He Couldn’t ‘Imagine’ The CIA ‘Would Mislead Us,’ Boehner Acknowledges They May Have
Matt Corley writes for Think Progress: "Last week, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) asserted in a press conference that she believed the CIA had misled her in a briefing on interrogation, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) scoffed at the idea that the CIA could have been dishonest. “It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone in the intelligence areas would mislead us,” said Boehner in his own press conference."
Donald Rumsfeld: And He Shall Be Judged
Robert Draper reports for GQ: "Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics - his administration peers - are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they're saying? It isn't pretty."
GQ Report Blames Rumsfeld for Military Delay After Katrina
The Times-Picayune comments: "A report on the GQ magazine Web site is quoting an unnamed former Bush administration official as blaming former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for many failures, including a delay in military assistance in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The report says in speaking with the former Bush officials, it becomes evident that Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina."
GOP Senator Leading the Leading Attacks Against Health Care Reform Admits Gitmo Detainees Get Better Care than Americans
Satyum Khanna writes for Think Progress: "Last week, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) visited the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and declared that even if detainees are held without charge, they should remain at Guantanamo “until the war against terrorism ends.” “They are like having Charles Manson times whatever factor — these people are so dangerous,” Ensign said. "
Why is Washington, D.C. So Afraid to Even Talk about Single Payer?
David Sirota writes for The Huffington Post: "After high-profile arrests on Capitol Hill, there's a very simple question on health care that hasn't been answered: Why are top Democrats afraid to even discuss the concept of a single-payer health care system? This is the question I explore in my latest newspaper column."
Who's Afraid of Industrial Policy?
Max Fraser writes for The Nation: "When President Obama announced Chrysler's bankruptcy filing, on April 30, as "one more step on a clearly charted path to Chrysler's revival," even the most Pollyannaish of observers must have done a double take. Plagued by years of declining international competitiveness and now the worst economic downturn in three-quarters of a century, Chrysler, General Motors and even the temporarily healthy Ford have no clear path to recovery. And with much of the public discussion about how to "save" the industry focused on slashing workforces, eliminating surplus productive capacity and ditching obligations to current and retired employees, one could hardly expect autoworkers to share the president's optimism. "Our marching orders were to do both Chrysler and GM the way we would do a strictly commercial deal," an unnamed member of the Treasury Department's Auto Task Force told the New York Times, with the martial tone and menacing verb "do" sounding an awful lot like they were borrowed from Jack Welch's lean-and-mean corporate playbook of the 1980s. "
The State of the Employee Free Choice Act
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Pat Garofalo write for the Progress Report: "The Los Angeles Times yesterday -- in an article titled, 'Labor unions find themselves card-checkmated' -- made the case that 'business groups have outmaneuvered workers groups, jeopardizing key components of a congressional proposal that has been unions' top priority,' the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). 'We were outspent, outhustled and outorganized,' said one union adviser. However, lost among the doom and gloom was the simple fact that labor reform is still vitally necessary and has a good chance of getting through Congress. And while much of the debate around EFCA has been on the bill's majority sign-up provision -- which would have allowed workers to form a union by signing cards of consent -- there are other important measures aimed at ensuring fair contract negotiations and instituting penalties that actually deter labor law violations. Last week, Vice President Biden reaffirmed the White House's commitment to labor reform, telling union members, 'You've got to climb up a hill with so many roadblocks on the way to organize that it's just out of whack. ... If a union is what you want, then a union is what you should get.' President Obama has also reiterated his support for the principles in the bill, saying, 'What I think we have to do is to find ways in which the core idea of the Employee Free Choice Act is preserved.'"
Coal, Electric Industries Big Winners in Climate Bill Deal
Mike Lillis reports for The Washington Independent: "Even as House Democrats are celebrating their deal with conservative-leaning colleagues on climate change legislation, the real winners under the compromise have been the coal, electric and auto industries, who are largely the source of the nation’s carbon emissions to begin with. Details of the compromise are still emerging, but already the chief sponsors of the measure - Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) - have been forced to lower carbon-reduction targets, cut renewable fuel standards and dole out billions of dollars in benefits to the nation’s largest polluting industries."
Big Business Gearing Up to Defend Protectionism Against UN Climate Negotiators
Mark Weisbrot writes for the Huffington Post: "The battle over "intellectual property rights" is likely to be one of the most important of this century. It has enormous economic, social, and political implications in a wide range of areas, from medicine to the arts and culture - anything where the public interest in the widespread dissemination of knowledge runs up against those whose income derives from monopolizing it."
Chernobyl's Legacy as Psychological Problem
Adeleivd Velden writes for Dialy Censored: "Did you know people are protesting every day in front of the WHO offices in Geneva against access of the International Atomic Energy Agency to all WHO communications with a right to veto nuclear related content?” A friend who sent me a clipping on Chernobyl children, came up with the question. Unaware of the tightly-knit relationship between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and WHO, I did some research – and discovered his account was accurate. Since April 2007 activists for an independent WHO have been standing in front of the offices from 8 till 6, Monday to Friday."
Rallyin' for Planned Parenthood
Jason Croucher writes for Kansas Jackass: "Yesterday, as I said I would, I attended a rally at the Kansas Statehouse in support of Planned Parenthood and to encourage Governor Mark Parkinson to line-item veto the so-called Huelskamp Amendment from the budget passed in the waning days of this year's legislative session."
Politics Punctuate the Terrorism Debate
The Pew Research Center for Excellent Journalism: "With two of the nation’s more politically polarizing figures helping fuel the narrative, the U.S. campaign against terrorism was the No. 1 story last week. The news included the president’s change of heart in opposing the release of photos of prisoner abuse by U.S. troops as well as a highly charged Congressional hearing on interrogation techniques. But some coverage also focused on the second and third leading newsmakers of the week—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was embroiled in a controversy with the CIA over waterboarding briefings, and former Vice-President Dick Cheney, who continued his public campaign against Barack Obama’s policies."
Les Leopold writes for ALterNet: "It’s fast approaching the time Wall Street has been waiting for: the time when the media and the public forget what got us into this economic mess. As massive doses of taxpayer Viagra lift the stock market ticker, we hold out hope that our 401k and pension plans will re-erect themselves along with our jobs. We feel stimulated by the stimulus package… and the morning after we forget. The crisis, whatever it was, is over, isn’t it? Surely, it’s time to move on."
As Smash-and-Grab Capitalism Collapeses, the French Economy Shines
Willian Pfaff writes for Truthdig: "Many in Britain and the United States are in mourning for what’s taken as the suicide of the American (or Thatcherite, or Chicago-school) model of capitalism, accompanied by the non-interventionist state that hands the national economy over to business and financial leaders to run."
Recommended Audio: Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis: "The Worker Control Solution"
Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman for Democracy Now!: "'Shock Doctrine' author Naomi Klein and Al Jazeera host Avi Lewis discuss the workers who are taking over their factories and plants rather than lose their jobs, some to owners who owe money to bailed-out banks. They also address the latest news in the nation's global economic collapse amidst the White House and Democratic-led Congress's rejection of single-payer health care."
America's Poor Are Its Most Generous Givers
Frank Greve reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "When Jody Richards saw a homeless man begging outside a downtown McDonald's recently, he bought the man a cheeseburger. There's nothing unusual about that, except that Richards is homeless, too, and the 99-cent cheeseburger was an outsized chunk of the $9.50 he'd earned that day from panhandling."
The Disease of Permanent War
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig: "The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent. The collapse of liberalism, whether in imperial Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Weimar Germany, ushers in an age of moral nihilism. This moral nihilism comes is many colors and hues. It rants and thunders in a variety of slogans, languages and ideologies. It can manifest itself in fascist salutes, communist show trials or Christian crusades. It is, at its core, all the same. It is the crude, terrifying tirade of mediocrities who find their identities and power in the perpetuation of permanent war. "
Why We Can't See the Trees or the Forest: The Torture Memos and Historical Amnesia
Noam Chomsky writes for TomDispatch.com: "The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation, and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise, less so. For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantanamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law - a place, incidentally, that Washington is using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take seriously."
The Trials of Ehren Watada
Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith write for The Nation: "The Army's behavior toward Watada has been disgraceful from the start. The entire controversy could have been forestalled if the Army had not refused his initial request to resign. The Army charged Watada not only with 'missing movement' but with 'conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman' for speaking critically of government policy and President George W. Bush in ways that the military's own courts had repeatedly established to be constitutionally protected. In an effort to intimidate Watada's supporters, Army prosecutors subpoenaed journalists and organizers of public meetings."
After Claiming He Couldn’t ‘Imagine’ The CIA ‘Would Mislead Us,’ Boehner Acknowledges They May Have
Matt Corley writes for Think Progress: "Last week, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) asserted in a press conference that she believed the CIA had misled her in a briefing on interrogation, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) scoffed at the idea that the CIA could have been dishonest. “It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone in the intelligence areas would mislead us,” said Boehner in his own press conference."
Donald Rumsfeld: And He Shall Be Judged
Robert Draper reports for GQ: "Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics - his administration peers - are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they're saying? It isn't pretty."
GQ Report Blames Rumsfeld for Military Delay After Katrina
The Times-Picayune comments: "A report on the GQ magazine Web site is quoting an unnamed former Bush administration official as blaming former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for many failures, including a delay in military assistance in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The report says in speaking with the former Bush officials, it becomes evident that Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina."
GOP Senator Leading the Leading Attacks Against Health Care Reform Admits Gitmo Detainees Get Better Care than Americans
Satyum Khanna writes for Think Progress: "Last week, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) visited the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and declared that even if detainees are held without charge, they should remain at Guantanamo “until the war against terrorism ends.” “They are like having Charles Manson times whatever factor — these people are so dangerous,” Ensign said. "
Why is Washington, D.C. So Afraid to Even Talk about Single Payer?
David Sirota writes for The Huffington Post: "After high-profile arrests on Capitol Hill, there's a very simple question on health care that hasn't been answered: Why are top Democrats afraid to even discuss the concept of a single-payer health care system? This is the question I explore in my latest newspaper column."
Who's Afraid of Industrial Policy?
Max Fraser writes for The Nation: "When President Obama announced Chrysler's bankruptcy filing, on April 30, as "one more step on a clearly charted path to Chrysler's revival," even the most Pollyannaish of observers must have done a double take. Plagued by years of declining international competitiveness and now the worst economic downturn in three-quarters of a century, Chrysler, General Motors and even the temporarily healthy Ford have no clear path to recovery. And with much of the public discussion about how to "save" the industry focused on slashing workforces, eliminating surplus productive capacity and ditching obligations to current and retired employees, one could hardly expect autoworkers to share the president's optimism. "Our marching orders were to do both Chrysler and GM the way we would do a strictly commercial deal," an unnamed member of the Treasury Department's Auto Task Force told the New York Times, with the martial tone and menacing verb "do" sounding an awful lot like they were borrowed from Jack Welch's lean-and-mean corporate playbook of the 1980s. "
The State of the Employee Free Choice Act
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Pat Garofalo write for the Progress Report: "The Los Angeles Times yesterday -- in an article titled, 'Labor unions find themselves card-checkmated' -- made the case that 'business groups have outmaneuvered workers groups, jeopardizing key components of a congressional proposal that has been unions' top priority,' the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). 'We were outspent, outhustled and outorganized,' said one union adviser. However, lost among the doom and gloom was the simple fact that labor reform is still vitally necessary and has a good chance of getting through Congress. And while much of the debate around EFCA has been on the bill's majority sign-up provision -- which would have allowed workers to form a union by signing cards of consent -- there are other important measures aimed at ensuring fair contract negotiations and instituting penalties that actually deter labor law violations. Last week, Vice President Biden reaffirmed the White House's commitment to labor reform, telling union members, 'You've got to climb up a hill with so many roadblocks on the way to organize that it's just out of whack. ... If a union is what you want, then a union is what you should get.' President Obama has also reiterated his support for the principles in the bill, saying, 'What I think we have to do is to find ways in which the core idea of the Employee Free Choice Act is preserved.'"
Coal, Electric Industries Big Winners in Climate Bill Deal
Mike Lillis reports for The Washington Independent: "Even as House Democrats are celebrating their deal with conservative-leaning colleagues on climate change legislation, the real winners under the compromise have been the coal, electric and auto industries, who are largely the source of the nation’s carbon emissions to begin with. Details of the compromise are still emerging, but already the chief sponsors of the measure - Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) - have been forced to lower carbon-reduction targets, cut renewable fuel standards and dole out billions of dollars in benefits to the nation’s largest polluting industries."
Big Business Gearing Up to Defend Protectionism Against UN Climate Negotiators
Mark Weisbrot writes for the Huffington Post: "The battle over "intellectual property rights" is likely to be one of the most important of this century. It has enormous economic, social, and political implications in a wide range of areas, from medicine to the arts and culture - anything where the public interest in the widespread dissemination of knowledge runs up against those whose income derives from monopolizing it."
Chernobyl's Legacy as Psychological Problem
Adeleivd Velden writes for Dialy Censored: "Did you know people are protesting every day in front of the WHO offices in Geneva against access of the International Atomic Energy Agency to all WHO communications with a right to veto nuclear related content?” A friend who sent me a clipping on Chernobyl children, came up with the question. Unaware of the tightly-knit relationship between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and WHO, I did some research – and discovered his account was accurate. Since April 2007 activists for an independent WHO have been standing in front of the offices from 8 till 6, Monday to Friday."
Rallyin' for Planned Parenthood
Jason Croucher writes for Kansas Jackass: "Yesterday, as I said I would, I attended a rally at the Kansas Statehouse in support of Planned Parenthood and to encourage Governor Mark Parkinson to line-item veto the so-called Huelskamp Amendment from the budget passed in the waning days of this year's legislative session."
Politics Punctuate the Terrorism Debate
The Pew Research Center for Excellent Journalism: "With two of the nation’s more politically polarizing figures helping fuel the narrative, the U.S. campaign against terrorism was the No. 1 story last week. The news included the president’s change of heart in opposing the release of photos of prisoner abuse by U.S. troops as well as a highly charged Congressional hearing on interrogation techniques. But some coverage also focused on the second and third leading newsmakers of the week—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was embroiled in a controversy with the CIA over waterboarding briefings, and former Vice-President Dick Cheney, who continued his public campaign against Barack Obama’s policies."
17 May 2009
Clippings for 17 May 2009
Saving Troy Davis: Executions, Troy Davis and the Approaching Police State
Ron Jacobs writes for Dissident Voice: "One wonders how many times this scenario has played out in the United States. Like a classic crime movie, the details go something like this: A group of young men, usually African-American, get involved in an activity of questionable legality. A police officer (often off-duty) intervenes. Weapons are drawn by the officer and someone else. The officer ends up dead. One of the young men is accused of the crime even though the evidence (if there is any) offers no clear link between the accused and the crime. Prosecutors rely on witnesses with minimal credibility to get a conviction. The accused young man is then sentenced to death. While he sits on death row, questions about the prosecution and conviction begin to appear in the press. The prosecution conspires with the judicial system to keep their conviction intact, refusing any motions for retrial based on new evidence. The convicted man grows old in prison, facing multiple execution dates that are only stayed by appeals that never lead to a new trial."
Populism Is Not A Style
Jim Hightower writes for the huffington Post: "Gosh, everyone's a populist now: the corporate-funded teabag rallies, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck -- pretty much anyone or any group claiming to speak for the people and doing it in a mavericky, mad-as-hell fashion is labeled "populist" by the media."
Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama
Jeremy Scahill writes for AlterNet: "As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated … through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals."
Ex-CIA Official: Agency Brass Lied to Congress About Interrogations
Jason Leopold writes for Truthout: "Claims that Democrats were fully briefed on the Bush administration's torture program have been leveled as recently as last December by Vice President Dick Cheney and in books by former Bush officials such as John Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), who helped draft one of the four memos released last week. But the veracity of those assertions have been called into question by former CIA official Mary O. McCarthy, who said senior agency officials lied to members of Congress during an intelligence briefing in 2005 when they said the agency did not violate treaties that bar, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees during interrogations, according to a May 14, 2006, front-page story in The Washington Post."
Giving Some Love to the Inquisition
Robert Parry writes for Consortium News: "'One of the reasons these techniques have been used for about 500 years is that they work,' Graham said on May 13 in the latest Republican justification of Bush’s authorization of tactics such as forced nudity, sleep deprivation, painful stress positions and the near-drowning of waterboarding."
Afghan Women's Situation a Test Case for Obama Administration's Foreign Assistance Policy
Ritu Sharma writes for The Huffington Post: "President Obama has signaled a change of course on the military side of US policy in Afghanistan this week, replacing US military leadership in the country. The jury is out on whether these are the right changes to be making and whether this new military policy will succeed, but there is another aspect to Afghanistan policy that is also in need of a serious fix: foreign assistance. While our focus is on the war on terror, we have yet to figure out how economic development, which is the crying need of Afghanistan, fits into our engagement in that country."
Why Congress Won't Investigate Wall Street
Thomas Franks writes in the Wall Street Journal: "The famous Pecora Commission of 1933 and 1934 was one of the most successful congressional investigations of all time, an instance when oversight worked exactly as it should. The subject was the massively corrupt investment practices of the 1920s. In the course of its investigation, the Senate Banking Committee, which brought on as its counsel a former New York assistant district attorney named Ferdinand Pecora, heard testimony from the lords of finance that cemented public suspicion of Wall Street. Along the way, the investigations formed the rationale for the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and other financial regulations of the Roosevelt era."
Lobbyist Skirt Disclosures on Stimulus Lobbying
Olga Pierce and Brian Boyer write for ProPublica: "President Barack Obama’s March 20 memo [1] was quite clear on stimulus lobbying: every communication between a lobbyist and a government agency regarding the stimulus has to be documented, and those records have to be posted. "
Missing in Action on Healthcare?
Trudy Leiberman writes for The Nation: "It should come as no surprise that Barack Obama does not support a national health insurance system like most other countries have. He made that clear during the campaign. What is surprising is that he has been so vague about exactly what kind of healthcare reform he has in mind. It's becoming clearer that reform will include some or all of these options: requiring everyone to carry health insurance (an individual mandate à la Massachusetts); subsidizing a portion of the 85 percent of the uninsured who can't afford to buy a policy; taxing some of the health benefits workers now get from employers to pay for insurance for the uninsured; letting people keep the coverage they have even though it's likely to cover less as time goes on; shoving more people onto Medicaid; and trying to get insurers to insure sick people. There may or may not be a public insurance option--maybe like Medicare, or maybe not--that would compete with private insurers and theoretically reduce the cost of insurance. "
Dems: Don't Push Health Care Too Far Left
Chris Frates writes for The Politico: "Two powerful groups of moderate Democratic lawmakers have met with their House leaders to warn against pushing health care reform proposals too far to the left. The New Democrat Coalition and the Blue Dogs met separately Thursday with Democratic leaders to push for legislation they could embrace."
Recommended Audio: Baucus's Raucous Caucus
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!: "Advocates of single-payer universal health care - the system favored by most Americans - continue to protest their exclusion from discussions on health care reform. On Tuesday, five doctors, nurses and single-payer advocates were arrested at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, bringing the total number of arrests in less than a week to thirteen. We speak with two of those arrested: Single Payer Action founder Russell Mokhiber and Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program."
Let Them Buy Health Care at Wal-Mart
Ellen and Brian write for News hounds: "Another Fox News day, another unbalanced discussion about health insurance options in America. On Forbes on Fox last week (5/9/09), David Asman and Fox tried to argue that because people can buy $4.00 prescriptions at Wal-Mart (skipping over the fact that it's only for generic drugs), there's no need for government intervention in the rest of our health care."
Some Educational Action Items for Obama
Paul Cummins writes for Truthdig: "So, with the economy in the proverbial toilet and the D word (depression) hovering on the periphery, what is the Obama administration supposed to do about education? What can it do? Will additional and new funding be necessary to address his main concerns?"
From Free Press' Summit: Changing Media
News Media Shouldn't Pay for 'Old Media Sins'
Michael Copps says: "Two decades of mindless deregulation -- only briefly interrupted -- topped off by a veritable tsunami of consolidation across not just communications, but most business sectors, have succeeded in bringing our economy low and endangering the essential civic dialogue on which democracy depends. The sins visited upon old media must not be permitted to deny the promise of new media."
Journalism is a Public Service
Craig Aaron says: "A writer and an editor are lost and wandering through the desert. They’ve gone days without food or water. The sun is beating down. Their clothes are torn. They’ve got sand in their teeth. They’re a mess. As they come to the top of yet another sand dune, the writer spies an oasis on the horizon. The writer breaks into a sprint; the editor is close on his heels. Their arms are churning; they’re kicking up sand, tripping over each other. They reach the water’s edge. It’s no mirage."
For more by Craig Aaron check out: Fairness Doctrine: Secret Republican Agenda Exposed!
Journalism and Internet Policies Must Be Linked
Josh Silver, Free Press, says: "What we are proposing is a new direction. A fair, regulatory approach that protects consumers, promotes competition and allows the companies with the best ideas and products to make money -- a combination of public policy and market forces will achieve these outcomes. It's not an either-or proposition. Companies can make profits and the public interest can be served simultaneously."
Copps: “It’s the Democracy, Stupid”
Radio Business Report writes: "Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps says that democracy runs on information, and that two decades of consolidation are taking a toll on its availability. He sees an obvious decline in the quality of both print and broadcast journalism, and believes that strong intervention may be needed to turn the situation around. Among the steps he would take are a stronger public interest requirement and a reduction in license terms from eight to three years."
Copps Pushes Localism, Non-Discrimination Principle
John Eggerton writes for Broadcast and Cable: "Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps Thursday said it was time to do away with the eight-year, "postcard" station license renewal process and replace it with a three-year renewal with public interest obligations attached."
Ron Jacobs writes for Dissident Voice: "One wonders how many times this scenario has played out in the United States. Like a classic crime movie, the details go something like this: A group of young men, usually African-American, get involved in an activity of questionable legality. A police officer (often off-duty) intervenes. Weapons are drawn by the officer and someone else. The officer ends up dead. One of the young men is accused of the crime even though the evidence (if there is any) offers no clear link between the accused and the crime. Prosecutors rely on witnesses with minimal credibility to get a conviction. The accused young man is then sentenced to death. While he sits on death row, questions about the prosecution and conviction begin to appear in the press. The prosecution conspires with the judicial system to keep their conviction intact, refusing any motions for retrial based on new evidence. The convicted man grows old in prison, facing multiple execution dates that are only stayed by appeals that never lead to a new trial."
Populism Is Not A Style
Jim Hightower writes for the huffington Post: "Gosh, everyone's a populist now: the corporate-funded teabag rallies, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck -- pretty much anyone or any group claiming to speak for the people and doing it in a mavericky, mad-as-hell fashion is labeled "populist" by the media."
Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama
Jeremy Scahill writes for AlterNet: "As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated … through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals."
Ex-CIA Official: Agency Brass Lied to Congress About Interrogations
Jason Leopold writes for Truthout: "Claims that Democrats were fully briefed on the Bush administration's torture program have been leveled as recently as last December by Vice President Dick Cheney and in books by former Bush officials such as John Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), who helped draft one of the four memos released last week. But the veracity of those assertions have been called into question by former CIA official Mary O. McCarthy, who said senior agency officials lied to members of Congress during an intelligence briefing in 2005 when they said the agency did not violate treaties that bar, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees during interrogations, according to a May 14, 2006, front-page story in The Washington Post."
Giving Some Love to the Inquisition
Robert Parry writes for Consortium News: "'One of the reasons these techniques have been used for about 500 years is that they work,' Graham said on May 13 in the latest Republican justification of Bush’s authorization of tactics such as forced nudity, sleep deprivation, painful stress positions and the near-drowning of waterboarding."
Afghan Women's Situation a Test Case for Obama Administration's Foreign Assistance Policy
Ritu Sharma writes for The Huffington Post: "President Obama has signaled a change of course on the military side of US policy in Afghanistan this week, replacing US military leadership in the country. The jury is out on whether these are the right changes to be making and whether this new military policy will succeed, but there is another aspect to Afghanistan policy that is also in need of a serious fix: foreign assistance. While our focus is on the war on terror, we have yet to figure out how economic development, which is the crying need of Afghanistan, fits into our engagement in that country."
Why Congress Won't Investigate Wall Street
Thomas Franks writes in the Wall Street Journal: "The famous Pecora Commission of 1933 and 1934 was one of the most successful congressional investigations of all time, an instance when oversight worked exactly as it should. The subject was the massively corrupt investment practices of the 1920s. In the course of its investigation, the Senate Banking Committee, which brought on as its counsel a former New York assistant district attorney named Ferdinand Pecora, heard testimony from the lords of finance that cemented public suspicion of Wall Street. Along the way, the investigations formed the rationale for the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and other financial regulations of the Roosevelt era."
Lobbyist Skirt Disclosures on Stimulus Lobbying
Olga Pierce and Brian Boyer write for ProPublica: "President Barack Obama’s March 20 memo [1] was quite clear on stimulus lobbying: every communication between a lobbyist and a government agency regarding the stimulus has to be documented, and those records have to be posted. "
Missing in Action on Healthcare?
Trudy Leiberman writes for The Nation: "It should come as no surprise that Barack Obama does not support a national health insurance system like most other countries have. He made that clear during the campaign. What is surprising is that he has been so vague about exactly what kind of healthcare reform he has in mind. It's becoming clearer that reform will include some or all of these options: requiring everyone to carry health insurance (an individual mandate à la Massachusetts); subsidizing a portion of the 85 percent of the uninsured who can't afford to buy a policy; taxing some of the health benefits workers now get from employers to pay for insurance for the uninsured; letting people keep the coverage they have even though it's likely to cover less as time goes on; shoving more people onto Medicaid; and trying to get insurers to insure sick people. There may or may not be a public insurance option--maybe like Medicare, or maybe not--that would compete with private insurers and theoretically reduce the cost of insurance. "
Dems: Don't Push Health Care Too Far Left
Chris Frates writes for The Politico: "Two powerful groups of moderate Democratic lawmakers have met with their House leaders to warn against pushing health care reform proposals too far to the left. The New Democrat Coalition and the Blue Dogs met separately Thursday with Democratic leaders to push for legislation they could embrace."
Recommended Audio: Baucus's Raucous Caucus
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!: "Advocates of single-payer universal health care - the system favored by most Americans - continue to protest their exclusion from discussions on health care reform. On Tuesday, five doctors, nurses and single-payer advocates were arrested at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, bringing the total number of arrests in less than a week to thirteen. We speak with two of those arrested: Single Payer Action founder Russell Mokhiber and Dr. Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program."
Let Them Buy Health Care at Wal-Mart
Ellen and Brian write for News hounds: "Another Fox News day, another unbalanced discussion about health insurance options in America. On Forbes on Fox last week (5/9/09), David Asman and Fox tried to argue that because people can buy $4.00 prescriptions at Wal-Mart (skipping over the fact that it's only for generic drugs), there's no need for government intervention in the rest of our health care."
Some Educational Action Items for Obama
Paul Cummins writes for Truthdig: "So, with the economy in the proverbial toilet and the D word (depression) hovering on the periphery, what is the Obama administration supposed to do about education? What can it do? Will additional and new funding be necessary to address his main concerns?"
From Free Press' Summit: Changing Media
News Media Shouldn't Pay for 'Old Media Sins'
Michael Copps says: "Two decades of mindless deregulation -- only briefly interrupted -- topped off by a veritable tsunami of consolidation across not just communications, but most business sectors, have succeeded in bringing our economy low and endangering the essential civic dialogue on which democracy depends. The sins visited upon old media must not be permitted to deny the promise of new media."
Journalism is a Public Service
Craig Aaron says: "A writer and an editor are lost and wandering through the desert. They’ve gone days without food or water. The sun is beating down. Their clothes are torn. They’ve got sand in their teeth. They’re a mess. As they come to the top of yet another sand dune, the writer spies an oasis on the horizon. The writer breaks into a sprint; the editor is close on his heels. Their arms are churning; they’re kicking up sand, tripping over each other. They reach the water’s edge. It’s no mirage."
For more by Craig Aaron check out: Fairness Doctrine: Secret Republican Agenda Exposed!
Journalism and Internet Policies Must Be Linked
Josh Silver, Free Press, says: "What we are proposing is a new direction. A fair, regulatory approach that protects consumers, promotes competition and allows the companies with the best ideas and products to make money -- a combination of public policy and market forces will achieve these outcomes. It's not an either-or proposition. Companies can make profits and the public interest can be served simultaneously."
Copps: “It’s the Democracy, Stupid”
Radio Business Report writes: "Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps says that democracy runs on information, and that two decades of consolidation are taking a toll on its availability. He sees an obvious decline in the quality of both print and broadcast journalism, and believes that strong intervention may be needed to turn the situation around. Among the steps he would take are a stronger public interest requirement and a reduction in license terms from eight to three years."
Copps Pushes Localism, Non-Discrimination Principle
John Eggerton writes for Broadcast and Cable: "Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps Thursday said it was time to do away with the eight-year, "postcard" station license renewal process and replace it with a three-year renewal with public interest obligations attached."
May 14, 2009 - Sex, Pregnancy and Politics
Community Bridge ends our spring season with the broadcast of a panel discussion, Sex, Pregnancy and Politics which was held at K-State on April 16th. The panel was sponsored by Kansas State University's Students for Choice and Campus Progress, Center for American Progress, and featured Shelby Knox, a vocal national advocate for comprehensive sexuality education; Holly Weatherford, Kansas public affairs manager and lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri; and state Rep. Sydney Carlin, Manhattan. The panel was moderated by Kierra Johnson, executive director of Choice USA.
MP3 File
MP3 File
14 May 2009
Clippings for 14 May 2009
Action Alert: CBS Pro-Drone Propaganda
Fairness and Accuracy in Report has issued the following Action Alert: "On May 10, CBS's 60 Minutes presented a remarkably one-sided report on unmanned Air Force drones firing missiles into Afghanistan and Iraq. Though the drones have been criticized for killing civilians in both countries, CBS viewers heard from no critics of the weapons. "
Pelosi the Enabler
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig: "Nancy Pelosi is no Dick Cheney, nor a George W. Bush. She was neither the author of a systematic policy of torture nor has she been, like Cheney and most top Republicans in Congress, an enduring apologist for its practice. It is a nonsensical distraction to place her failure to speak out courageously as a critic of the Bush policies on the same level as those who engineered one of the most shameful debacles in US history. But what she, and anyone else who went along with this evil, as lackadaisically as she now claims, should be confronted with are the serious implications of their passive acquiescence."
Recommended Audio:Mark Danner and ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer Talk Torture
ProPublica senior reporter Dafna Linzer and Mark Danner, a New York Review of Books contributor and University of California at Berkeley journalism professor, discuss the details of the Red Cross torture report, what happened to some of the "ghost detainees" and whether there should be an investigation, prosecution or truth commission to sort out who is responsible for what.
First Milestone Approaches In Iraq Withdrawal Timetable
Chris Weigant writes for the Huffington Post: "America is approaching an important date for our military involvement in Iraq. By the end of next month, American combat forces are supposed to pull out of Iraqi cities. Little attention has been paid to this first withdrawal deadline in the American media, but as the date gets closer hopefully they’ll realize what is about to happen. Because the next phase of America’s military presence in Iraq could determine how fast President Obama can draw down the total number of American troops in the country."
The Politics of Escalation
Tom Hayden and Joseph Gerson write for The Nation: "Indications are that there will be no benchmarks or conditions set on the $96 billion supplemental appropriation before Congress beginning this week. The administration, which once promised no more rushed supplemental appropriation, is rolling funds for war and swine flu into one package, while not yet disclosing how much is earmarked specifically for Afghanistan."
Becoming What We Seek to Destroy
Chris Hedges writes for TruthDig: "The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war. We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat."
Recommended Audio: Pentagon Pundits - New York Times Reporter David Barstow Wins Pulitzer Prize for Exposing Military’s Pro-War Propaganda Media Campaign
Democracy Now: "In his first national broadcast interview, New York Times reporter David Barstow speaks about his 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the Pentagon propaganda campaign to recruit more than seventy-five retired military officers to appear on TV outlets as military analysts ahead of and during the Iraq war. This week, the Pentagon inspector general’s office admitted its exoneration of the program was flawed and withdrew it."
US Rejoins UN's Human Rights Forum
Howard LaFranchi reports in The Christian Science Monitor: "The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, hailed the return to the human rights forum as part of America's determination 'to again play a meaningful leadership role in multilateral organizations.' The US will not wait for a 2011 review of the council to try to reform it, she added, but 'will be working very hard from an early stage to try to support the strengthening and improvement of this body.'"
KS GOP Fearmongers Helping Terrorists Win
Jason Croucher at Kansas Jackass writes: "Months ago I said our federal elected officials- Senator Sam Brownback and Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins in particular- were nothing more than fearmongers for trying to convince the people of Kansas they should be afraid of the very thought of moving the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay to the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth."
The Future of Capitalism
Christian Chavagneux writing for L'Economie politique (reported on Truthout) and the Rocky Mountain Institute's Amory Lovins and Lionel Bony writing in Le Monde consider alternative - less unjust, less predatory - forms of capitalism.
How Free-Market Fundamentalism Brought the World to Its Knees
From The New Internationalist: "By the end of January 2009 huge losses accompanied a public ‘bail-out’ of bankrupt private banks that had reached, by some estimates, a staggering $15 trillion ($15,000 billion) worldwide – and was still growing.2"
Social Security: Downturn Does NOT Affect Long-Run Picture
Dean Baker reports for The Center for Economic and Policy Research: "It is not surprising that Social Security's annual financial picture deteriorates in a downturn. This is entirely predictable and in fact desirable. Social Security's tax revenues fall as workers lose their jobs. Almost two-thirds of the reduced surplus this year is due to an unusually large cost-of-living increase for 2009. The latest adjustment accounts for last year's rise, but not the fall in oil prices. Though continuing benefits are automatically adjusted for inflation, this year Social Security will be paying a 6.9 percent larger real benefit to retirees, disabled workers and their families."
Doctors ask: Why such poor coverage of single-payer?
Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein write for Nieman Watchdog: "On May 5, eight protesters, including three physicians, were arrested during a public roundtable led by Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a leader of the health reform effort in the Senate. "
Health Reform Debate Turning into Bailout of Insurance Industry
Jamie Court writes for the Huffington Post: "It's hard not to read the new US Senate Finance Committee paper laying out policy options for health care reform as anything but a bailout of the HMO and insurance industry. The paper has lots of policy options for the pivotal Committee, the architect of reform, to consider -- like whether there should be a public option to the private market and whether employers should be required to pay for health care. But there's one given for which there's no choice. Every American will have to show proof they have a health insurance policy on their tax returns by the year 2013. Convenient, isn't it, that's one year after the presidential election."
To Run the World, Power Up Feminism
Gloria Feldt writes in On the Issues Magazine: "Were you thinking we were done with elections and could take a few minutes to celebrate a pro-woman administration and a Democratically controlled Congress that appears ready to embrace pro-choice and pro-equality measures? Sorry, my Sisters. Elections are never over when they are over."
Recommended Audio: Parenting Advice from Palin: Wait!
King Anyi Howell produced this commentary for Youth Radio: "When newly appointed spokesperson for the Candie's Foundation, Bristol Palin, went on the morning television circuit urging teens to 'wait to have sex,' my first thought was, 'Till when? Tuesday?'. Palin, daughter of Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin, became the object of national focus during the governor's ill-fated campaign for the White House in 2008 for getting pregnant at age 17 by then boyfriend, Levi Johnston. Since Candie's launched the Candie's Foundation in 2001, their mission has been to 'educate America's youth about the devastating consequences of teenage pregnancy.'
A Woman at the Edge: Tough Times, Domestic Violence and Economic Abuse
Nick Turse writes for TomDispatch.com: "When 'domestic violence' is mentioned, people usually think of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, but experts say that another form of domestic violence has been on the increase since the global financial meltdown hit. They call it 'economic abuse.'"
Time to Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers report for The Progress REport: "During his campaign for the White House, President Obama pledged that he would push to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) -- the military's policy that bars gay men and women from serving openly. Since taking office, however, Obama and other officials serving in his administration have pushed the issue to the back burner. When asked about addressing DADT in March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, 'I feel like we've got a lot on our plates right now and let's push that one down the road a little bit.' Ret. Gen. Jim Jones, Obama's national security adviser, told the President recently 'not to add another controversy to his already-full plate.' On ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopolous asked Jones if the policy would be overturned. "I don't know," he replied. In fact, the White House website recently watered down language on repealing the policy, replacing the administration's commitment to 'repealing" DADT with a commitment to simply "changing Don't Ask Don't Tell in a sensible way.' (The more definitive 'repeal' language has since been reinserted.) At the same time, Obama has indicated that he remains committed to repealing the policy. Sandy Tsao, an Army officer who told her superiors last January that she is gay, wrote to Obama urging him to act on repealing DADT. Last week, Obama personally responded to Tsao, writing, 'I committed to changing our current policy. Although it will take some time to complete. ... I intend to fulfill my commitment!'"
David Simon, Arianna Huffington and the Future of Journalism
JOhn Nichols writes for The Nation: "We who still practice the journalistic craft in the shattered remains of American newsrooms have developed a particularly high regard for David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of the HBO series The Wire."
America’s Internet Recovery Plan
Tim Karr writes for Save the Internet: "Today, Free Press released Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a National Broadband Strategy, a comprehensive analysis of the failed policies at the root of America’s broadband decline."
FTC Chairman: Agency May Enforce Net Neutrality
Grant Gross reports for IDG News Service, published in PCWorld: "The Federal Trade Commission may start enforcing Net Neutrality rules and take action against bad network management practices when broadband providers don't live up to the promises they make to consumers, the agency's chairman said."
Recommended Audio: Investigative Journalism Gains Unlikely Champion
National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday: "Newspapers across the country continue to lay off journalists and columnists, and investigative reporting is rapidly becoming a thing of the past for many media outlets. Now an unexpected player — the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank — is looking to fill the void."
Fairness and Accuracy in Report has issued the following Action Alert: "On May 10, CBS's 60 Minutes presented a remarkably one-sided report on unmanned Air Force drones firing missiles into Afghanistan and Iraq. Though the drones have been criticized for killing civilians in both countries, CBS viewers heard from no critics of the weapons. "
Pelosi the Enabler
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig: "Nancy Pelosi is no Dick Cheney, nor a George W. Bush. She was neither the author of a systematic policy of torture nor has she been, like Cheney and most top Republicans in Congress, an enduring apologist for its practice. It is a nonsensical distraction to place her failure to speak out courageously as a critic of the Bush policies on the same level as those who engineered one of the most shameful debacles in US history. But what she, and anyone else who went along with this evil, as lackadaisically as she now claims, should be confronted with are the serious implications of their passive acquiescence."
Recommended Audio:Mark Danner and ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer Talk Torture
ProPublica senior reporter Dafna Linzer and Mark Danner, a New York Review of Books contributor and University of California at Berkeley journalism professor, discuss the details of the Red Cross torture report, what happened to some of the "ghost detainees" and whether there should be an investigation, prosecution or truth commission to sort out who is responsible for what.
First Milestone Approaches In Iraq Withdrawal Timetable
Chris Weigant writes for the Huffington Post: "America is approaching an important date for our military involvement in Iraq. By the end of next month, American combat forces are supposed to pull out of Iraqi cities. Little attention has been paid to this first withdrawal deadline in the American media, but as the date gets closer hopefully they’ll realize what is about to happen. Because the next phase of America’s military presence in Iraq could determine how fast President Obama can draw down the total number of American troops in the country."
The Politics of Escalation
Tom Hayden and Joseph Gerson write for The Nation: "Indications are that there will be no benchmarks or conditions set on the $96 billion supplemental appropriation before Congress beginning this week. The administration, which once promised no more rushed supplemental appropriation, is rolling funds for war and swine flu into one package, while not yet disclosing how much is earmarked specifically for Afghanistan."
Becoming What We Seek to Destroy
Chris Hedges writes for TruthDig: "The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war. We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter. And because we have employed the blunt and horrible instrument of war in a land we know little about and are incapable of reading, we embody the barbarism we claim to be seeking to defeat."
Recommended Audio: Pentagon Pundits - New York Times Reporter David Barstow Wins Pulitzer Prize for Exposing Military’s Pro-War Propaganda Media Campaign
Democracy Now: "In his first national broadcast interview, New York Times reporter David Barstow speaks about his 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the Pentagon propaganda campaign to recruit more than seventy-five retired military officers to appear on TV outlets as military analysts ahead of and during the Iraq war. This week, the Pentagon inspector general’s office admitted its exoneration of the program was flawed and withdrew it."
US Rejoins UN's Human Rights Forum
Howard LaFranchi reports in The Christian Science Monitor: "The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, hailed the return to the human rights forum as part of America's determination 'to again play a meaningful leadership role in multilateral organizations.' The US will not wait for a 2011 review of the council to try to reform it, she added, but 'will be working very hard from an early stage to try to support the strengthening and improvement of this body.'"
KS GOP Fearmongers Helping Terrorists Win
Jason Croucher at Kansas Jackass writes: "Months ago I said our federal elected officials- Senator Sam Brownback and Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins in particular- were nothing more than fearmongers for trying to convince the people of Kansas they should be afraid of the very thought of moving the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay to the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth."
The Future of Capitalism
Christian Chavagneux writing for L'Economie politique (reported on Truthout) and the Rocky Mountain Institute's Amory Lovins and Lionel Bony writing in Le Monde consider alternative - less unjust, less predatory - forms of capitalism.
How Free-Market Fundamentalism Brought the World to Its Knees
From The New Internationalist: "By the end of January 2009 huge losses accompanied a public ‘bail-out’ of bankrupt private banks that had reached, by some estimates, a staggering $15 trillion ($15,000 billion) worldwide – and was still growing.2"
Social Security: Downturn Does NOT Affect Long-Run Picture
Dean Baker reports for The Center for Economic and Policy Research: "It is not surprising that Social Security's annual financial picture deteriorates in a downturn. This is entirely predictable and in fact desirable. Social Security's tax revenues fall as workers lose their jobs. Almost two-thirds of the reduced surplus this year is due to an unusually large cost-of-living increase for 2009. The latest adjustment accounts for last year's rise, but not the fall in oil prices. Though continuing benefits are automatically adjusted for inflation, this year Social Security will be paying a 6.9 percent larger real benefit to retirees, disabled workers and their families."
Doctors ask: Why such poor coverage of single-payer?
Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein write for Nieman Watchdog: "On May 5, eight protesters, including three physicians, were arrested during a public roundtable led by Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a leader of the health reform effort in the Senate. "
Health Reform Debate Turning into Bailout of Insurance Industry
Jamie Court writes for the Huffington Post: "It's hard not to read the new US Senate Finance Committee paper laying out policy options for health care reform as anything but a bailout of the HMO and insurance industry. The paper has lots of policy options for the pivotal Committee, the architect of reform, to consider -- like whether there should be a public option to the private market and whether employers should be required to pay for health care. But there's one given for which there's no choice. Every American will have to show proof they have a health insurance policy on their tax returns by the year 2013. Convenient, isn't it, that's one year after the presidential election."
To Run the World, Power Up Feminism
Gloria Feldt writes in On the Issues Magazine: "Were you thinking we were done with elections and could take a few minutes to celebrate a pro-woman administration and a Democratically controlled Congress that appears ready to embrace pro-choice and pro-equality measures? Sorry, my Sisters. Elections are never over when they are over."
Recommended Audio: Parenting Advice from Palin: Wait!
King Anyi Howell produced this commentary for Youth Radio: "When newly appointed spokesperson for the Candie's Foundation, Bristol Palin, went on the morning television circuit urging teens to 'wait to have sex,' my first thought was, 'Till when? Tuesday?'. Palin, daughter of Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin, became the object of national focus during the governor's ill-fated campaign for the White House in 2008 for getting pregnant at age 17 by then boyfriend, Levi Johnston. Since Candie's launched the Candie's Foundation in 2001, their mission has been to 'educate America's youth about the devastating consequences of teenage pregnancy.'
A Woman at the Edge: Tough Times, Domestic Violence and Economic Abuse
Nick Turse writes for TomDispatch.com: "When 'domestic violence' is mentioned, people usually think of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, but experts say that another form of domestic violence has been on the increase since the global financial meltdown hit. They call it 'economic abuse.'"
Time to Repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers report for The Progress REport: "During his campaign for the White House, President Obama pledged that he would push to repeal "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) -- the military's policy that bars gay men and women from serving openly. Since taking office, however, Obama and other officials serving in his administration have pushed the issue to the back burner. When asked about addressing DADT in March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, 'I feel like we've got a lot on our plates right now and let's push that one down the road a little bit.' Ret. Gen. Jim Jones, Obama's national security adviser, told the President recently 'not to add another controversy to his already-full plate.' On ABC's This Week, host George Stephanopolous asked Jones if the policy would be overturned. "I don't know," he replied. In fact, the White House website recently watered down language on repealing the policy, replacing the administration's commitment to 'repealing" DADT with a commitment to simply "changing Don't Ask Don't Tell in a sensible way.' (The more definitive 'repeal' language has since been reinserted.) At the same time, Obama has indicated that he remains committed to repealing the policy. Sandy Tsao, an Army officer who told her superiors last January that she is gay, wrote to Obama urging him to act on repealing DADT. Last week, Obama personally responded to Tsao, writing, 'I committed to changing our current policy. Although it will take some time to complete. ... I intend to fulfill my commitment!'"
David Simon, Arianna Huffington and the Future of Journalism
JOhn Nichols writes for The Nation: "We who still practice the journalistic craft in the shattered remains of American newsrooms have developed a particularly high regard for David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of the HBO series The Wire."
America’s Internet Recovery Plan
Tim Karr writes for Save the Internet: "Today, Free Press released Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a National Broadband Strategy, a comprehensive analysis of the failed policies at the root of America’s broadband decline."
FTC Chairman: Agency May Enforce Net Neutrality
Grant Gross reports for IDG News Service, published in PCWorld: "The Federal Trade Commission may start enforcing Net Neutrality rules and take action against bad network management practices when broadband providers don't live up to the promises they make to consumers, the agency's chairman said."
Recommended Audio: Investigative Journalism Gains Unlikely Champion
National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday: "Newspapers across the country continue to lay off journalists and columnists, and investigative reporting is rapidly becoming a thing of the past for many media outlets. Now an unexpected player — the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank — is looking to fill the void."
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