Leaked: The Internet must go!

Hey! Are you on the internet right now? Of course you are! Then you should definitely check out this amazing video about what the internet companies are planning. This move could hurt both consumers and content creators--but of course would be a huge windfall for internet providers.

How weathly are Americans?

The disparity in wealth between the richest one percent of Americans and the bottom 80 percent has grown exponentially over the last thirty years — but the video, posted by user politizane and relying on data from a popular Mother Jones post, focuses on the difference between the ideal disparity that Americans would like to see and the reality.

Tax the Rich

So long! It's been fun.

Dear listeners,

In July 2011 I started a new job teaching Italian at Kansas State University. In some ways this was a return to my roots, as I taught English as a Foreign Language for 17 years in Italy. Now I am teaching English speakers Italian. I've come full circle.

This coming full circle also means the end of an attempt on my part to start a new career in my 50s. Sadly, as much as I tried to bring community radio to Manhattan, I was not successful. So I have decided to dedicate my energy and time to my first love, being an educator.

The archive of my shows will remain active - there's a lot of great content in the shows. So I hope you continue to listen and enjoy them.

Once again thank you for your support and encouragement over the five years the show was on the air. I know many feel that my program needs to be on the air and I agree with you that a diversity of voices is sorely lacking in the local media. But alas, it is not I who will bring that diversity. It will have to be someone else.

Christopher E. Renner

30 July 2009

Clippings for 30 July 3009

Better Balance Between Climate and Military Spending Urged
Marina Litvinsky and Jim Lobe report for Inter Press Service: "Despite its conviction that climate change represents a serious threat to national and global security, the administration of President Barack Obama has proposed spending one dollar on addressing the challenge for every nine dollars it intends to spend on the US military, according to a new report by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)."

Casualties of War, Part I: The Hell of War Comes Home
Dave Philipps reports for The Colorado Springs Gazette: "Before the murders started, Anthony Marquez's mom dialed his sergeant at Fort Carson to warn that her son was poised to kill. It was February 2006, and the 21-year-old soldier had not been the same since being wounded and coming home from Iraq eight months before. He had violent outbursts and thrashing nightmares. He was devouring pain pills and drinking too much. He always packed a gun. 'It was a dangerous combination. I told them he was a walking time bomb,' said his mother, Teresa Hernandez."

Report Finds Advantages in Gov’t Takeover of Care for Injured Contractors
T Christian Miller reports for ProPublica: "The Congressional Research Service has found that the Defense Department was paying far higher premiums to insure civilians working in war zones than either the State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development. The insurance is required by the Defense Base Act [1] and provides medical care and disability benefits for those injured while working under U.S. contracts overseas. Pentagon contractors negotiate rates individually with insurance firms, while the other agencies use a bidding process to set a blanket rate."

Happiness Consultants Won't Stop a Depression

Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "Anthony Vasquez, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, worked at FedEx Kinkos for about two years. His store’s slogan was: 'Yes we can.' 'It meant that if a customer asked us to do a job for them, no matter what it was, we were to say "Yes we can!"' he said. Posters of the slogan were posted on telephones and in the backroom. Corporate auditors enforced the slogan by 'Yes we can' call audits. Employees would be punished as a group for failures, and individuals could be fired. Other slogans at the Santa Cruz, Calif., FedEx Kinkos included 'Winning by engaging the hearts and minds of every team member' and 'I promise to make every FedEx experience outstanding.'”

Military Commissions Debate Rages On in Senate
Daphne Eviatar reports in The Washington Independent: "Last week, President Obama's detention policy task force issued its preliminary recommendations on the prosecution of Guantanamo detainees. But as a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday afternoon revealed, there's little consensus in Congress over where and how to prosecute terror suspects, or the likely consequences of the various alternatives."

US Pressure Urged on Coup Regime in Honduras
Robert Naiman writes for Truthout: "It's been a month since Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a military coup. Negotiations on restoring democracy supported by the United States broke down when the coup regime refused to accept a compromise that would allow Zelaya to return."

US Citizens Wrongly Detained, Deported by ICE

Tyche Hendricks reports for the San Francisco Chronicle: "The son of a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hector Veloz is a US citizen, but in 2007 immigration officials mistook him for an illegal immigrant and locked him in an Arizona prison for 13 months. Veloz had to prove his citizenship from behind bars."

Obama Accused of Continuing Bush's Racial Profiling of Immigrants
Roberto Lovato writes for AlterNet: "Can a president who is, by any measure, far more forthright and lyrical than his predecessors about the pernicious effects of racism simultaneously promote and expand the racist policies of past administrations?"

Infamous Astroturf Lobbying Firm Behind New Anti-Health Reform Group

Lee Fang reports for Think Progress: "The new anti-health reform front group known as the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights, is being managed by the lobbying firm known as the DCI Group. After being contacted by ThinkProgress this afternoon about its sponsorship of CPPR’s press conference last week, DCI Group staffers acknowledged that they coordinate PR for the front group. Not be confused with Conservatives for Patients’ Rigths, another front group opposing health reform, CPPR has been organizing lobbying efforts against health reform and publishing op-eds across the country with misinformation about the public option."

Health Care - Sorting Myth from Reality
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, and Nate Carlile write in The Progress Report for Think Progress: "Congress may be moving one step closer to reforming health care, as the Senate Finance Committee nears agreement on a bipartisan compromise. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) vowed that the committee would wrap up its work by the end of next week. This deal, however, will most likely not contain a public option or a mandate for employers to provide employees with health insurance. While many progressives are upset with this outcome, it's important to remember that this is not the final legislation: After the bill passes the Senate Finance Committee, it will still need to be reconciled with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and House bills, both of which include a public option. While these lawmakers continue to hammer out the details, many Republicans, conservative activists, and industry lobbyists continue to spread misinformation and push for indefinite delays in the hope of killing any chance at change. Yesterday in a "tele-town hall" sponsored by AARP, President Obama addressed this obstruction, underscoring that no one is talking about 'socialized medicine,' despite what conservatives are charging. 'I think that we've been so accustomed to hearing those phrases that sometimes we can't sort out the myth from the reality,' Obama said."

Recommended Audio: Incredible Shrinking Health Reform
Real News Network reports that Republicans, conservative Democrats and the medical industry continue to chip away at President Barack Obama’s health care reform, leaving doubts that the final product will make much improvement at all. The Real News Network interviews New School economist Richard Wolff says the industry and its supporters in Congress are determined to permit “reform” only if the end result means more money or at least not a decline in profits for the industry. That means Americans would still be stuck with a remarkably inefficient health care system, Wolff says.

Nine More Go to Jail for Single Payer
David Swanson writes for After Downing Street: "Following a pattern of civil resistance in Washington D.C. and around the country, citizens in Des Moines Iowa on Monday risked arrest to press for the creation of single-payer healthcare, the establishment of healthcare as a human right, and an end to the deadly practices of Iowa's largest health insurance company, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield."

Birther Whack Jobs: Citizens of Idiot America
Dan Kennedy writes for Comment Is Free in the Guardian UK: "Just because there are people who believe some mighty peculiar things doesn't mean I'm obliged to pay them any attention. After all, there are folks who are convinced that the moon landing was a hoax, that Israel was behind the World Trade Center attacks and that the US government has been covering up the truth about the crash of a UFO in Roswell, New Mexico, for the past six decades. Not every ludicrous notion is worth the mental energy it would take to debunk it."

Recommended Audio: Huffington Post asks Republicans if Obama is American-born

Michael Tomasky watches the 'birthers' video from Huffington Post.


Recommened Audio: Jon Stewart Eviscerates The 'Birther' Movement
From the Huffington Post: "In a lengthy opening segment, Jon Stewart took on "birthers" last night, mocking their internal leadership and the media figures and politicians who support them. If you don't know by now (which is totally possible as a rational adult who does not engage with the lunatic fringe) "birthers" think that our president is not an American citizen, but instead a citizen of Kenya, who, through a massive government and familial conspiracy, tricked the American people into electing him.

Despite OVERWHELMING evidence that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen, "birthers" have created a media frenzy of late that has prompted conservative representatives to introduced the so called "birther bill" that would call for presidential candidates to provide their birth certificates before running. There has been some very responsible reporting on the subject, if you can ever call engaging crazy people responsible, by Rick Sanchez, Chris Matthews and others who called these people crazy and showed copies of the president's birth certificate amongst other documents proving he was born in Hawaii."


The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Born Identity
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America the Great ... Police State
Gore Vidal writes for Truthdig.com: "For those of us who had hoped that the Obama administration would present us with a rebirth of the old republic that was so rudely erased a few years ago by that team of judicial wreckers, Bush and Gonzales, which led, in turn, to a recent incident in Cambridge, Mass. that inspired a degree of alarm in many Americans. But what was most alarming was the plain fact that neither the president nor a “stupid” local policeman seemed to understand the rules of behavior in a new America, where we find ourselves marooned as well as guarded (is that the verb?) by armed police who have been instructed that they are indeed, once armed, the law and may not be criticized verbally or in any other way and are certainly not subject to any restrictions as to whom they arrest or otherwise torment."

The Dominance of Rich, White Men Is Eroding -- It's Time to Truly Fight for Diversity
Cortney Martin writes for AlterNet: "With crisis, comes opportunity. It’s a cliché that has soothed the displaced, the bankrupt, and the lovesick for generations. Our own moment of transition is certainly no exception. We’ve got an economy in shambles, multiple ill-conceived wars fumbling violently on, a dangerously warming climate, and broken healthcare and education systems. It’s enough to make even the powerful quake in their proverbial boots…which is precisely where the opportunity now lies."

Recommended Audio: How Monsanto and Fox News Prevented Americans from Learning About Bovine Growth Hormone


GMOs' Questionable Global Conquest
Truthout provides a translation of Antoine de Ravignan's article in Alternatives Internationales that surveys the main issues involved in the regulation and spread of genetically modified food crops, while in ZNet, Marie Trigona reports in Study Released in Argentina Puts Glyphosate Under Fire on an Argentine findings that criticizes the GMO soy model from a variety of perspectives.

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