When the Salina Chamber of Commerce invited Sarah Palin to speak at the annual meeting on February 5th, a group of Salinans "instigators." who think answers to difficult questions require more than a “you betach,” organized the RNC to stage a counter event. Thus "Reality Not Celebrity" came to be. In addition to a great meal, wonderful conversation and ironical skits, the instigators were able to bring former Kansan George Pyle back to Salina to deliver the keynote for the evening.
George Pyle is the editorial writer at The Buffalo News in New York, but he grew up in Hutchinson and graduated magna cum laude from Wichita State University with a degree in journalism.
Pyle was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1998. He is the author of Raising Less Corn, More Hell: Why Our Economy, Ecology and Security Demand the Preservation of the Independent Farm, in 2005.
David Norlin comment as he introduced Pyle "buckle your seat belts. You are about to witness a high-wire act of the best celebrity-denying, hi-def-defying, not-a-bit-of-lying speechifying you've heard in a long time."
MP3 File
Showing posts with label 2008 Campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2008 Campaign. Show all posts
27 February 2010
08 December 2009
2008 Show Archive
Here's the best of our 2008 shows...
18 December 2008 - Sustainability Conference - What's next for NBAF?
On this week's show, we open with Ben Champion and Barbara Anderson who discuss the up-coming "Leading Kansas in Sustainability Conference" which will take place at K-State on January 23rd. For more information about the conference visit: http://sustainability.k-state.edu/conferences/leadingkansas/ During the second half, Dale Askey of No NBAF Kansas joins us to discuss what options exist now that it has been announced that the new lab will be coming to Kansas.
MP3 File
11 December 2008 - Shepherd's Crossing
During the first half of this week's show we welcome Jan Connizzo, Executive Director of Shepherd's Crossing, to discuss the services offered and how listener's can support their mission to fight poverty in Manhattan. During the second half, we hear two recent clips from CounterSpin. In the first clip we hear an analysis of why the media supports Obama's cabinet appointments. In the second we learn some important information about the Fairness Doctrine.
MP3 File
4 December 2008 - Manhattan Boys and Girls Club; UDHR at 60 and the work of Amnesty International
During the first half of this week's the show, Community Bridge welcomes Joyce Glasscock, Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Manhattan to talk about their new building and programs. In the second half we discuss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the work of Amnesty International with Frank St. George and Rob Dunn from the K-State Chapter.
MP3 File
20 November 2008 - Economic Bailout and World AIDS Day
Community Bridge opens the show featuring Amy Goodman interviewing Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine. Klein discusses the economic crisis and efforts by the administration and congress to give enormous sums of money to people Klein refers to as "bailout profiteers" and the multi-trillion dollar crime scene that is unfolding in the last days of the Bush administration as they once again raid the US Treasury to give money to their rich friends. During the second half of the show we welcome Dusty Garner from the Regional AIDS Project to talk about the activities what will be happening around World AIDS Day on December 1.
MP3 File
13 November 2008 - Fair Trade Marketplace and International Education Week
During the first half of this week's Community Bridge, we welcome Prof. Torry Dickinson and Linda Teener, Executive Director of UFM Community Learning Center to talk about fair trade and the up-coming Fair Trade Marketplace to be held next week, Nov. 18 and 19 from 10 am to 6 pm at the K-State Student Union. In the second half we explore International Education week with Prof. Barry Mitchie.
MP3 File
6 November 2008 - Election Wrap-up
As a result of the election, the political landscape has changed in the US, or has it? This week Community Bridge will take an objective look at this week's election results and discusses what the future may bring. Join our guests, Prof. Joseph Aistrup from K- State's Political Science Department, who will give an analysis for both national and state results, along with community activist Jan Garton and K-State Young Democrat Bryan Cox for a discussion of what it all means.
MP3 File
23 October 2008 - An Interview with Ray McGovern
This week Community Bridge welcomes Ray McGovern as our guest. McGovern served as a CIA officer for 27 years under seven presidents and nine CIA directors. For the past seven years McGovern has been a prominent and outspoken commentator on intelligence-related issues, and a very vocal critic of President George W. Bush's use of government intelligence to justify the Iraq War.
MP3 File
CCHW 2008 - Muslims in the Media
The A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications' Media Professional Day was held as part of the 2008 CCHW and featured Mahnaz Shabbir presenting "Muslims in the Media," - an analysis of of the stereotypes used by mainstream media to depict Muslims and the Islamic faith. This lecture provides basic information on Islam; challenges the stereotypes the media uses; and, challenges the listener use critical thinking when decoding the messages the media transmits.
Mahnaz Shabbir is president of Shabbir Advisors. Ms. Mahnaz was awarded the Kansas City Press Club Journalist of the Year for 2003 and received another Journalism award in 2005. In March 2004, she received the YWCA award for the Gold Honoree in the category of Racial Justice at their annual luncheon banquet. In November 2005, Shabbir received a special recognition award from the Crescent Peace Society for her contributions in community service. On September 11, 2006, Shabbir received the Human Rights award from Church Women United.
MP3 File
2 October 2008 - Domestic Violence Awareness Month
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Community Bridge opens its October line-up with Tychelle Jones from the Domestic Violence Task Force to discuss and educate on this issue during the first half of the show. In the second half we welcome Representative Sydney Carlin, who will discuss why she is running for office, her accomplishments during her past six years of service, and what are some of the issues facing the Kansas Legislature this session.
MP3 File
18 September 2008 - Community Cultural Harmony Week
Community Cultural Harmony celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Doug Benson, Candi Hironaka, and founder, Barbara Baker, discuss its impact on the K-State and Manhattan communities as they review this year's calendar of events.
MP3 File
11 September 2008 - A discussion with Stan Cox about the effects of 9-11
On the seventh anniversary of the events of 9-11 Community Bridge welcomes back to the show Stan Cox for a discussion of how this event has affected civil liberties and the rule of law in the post-9-11 era. We have posted several articles on our blog that related to the topics Cox discusses. We recommend these articles to our listeners as background to the topic of this show. During the second half of the show, we tune into CounterSpin for the September 8th show and a discussion of the police-state like actions taken against the press and protesters at the Republican National Convention.
MP3 File
4 September 2008 - An Interview with Charles McVey
Community Bridge welcomes Kansas singer/songwriter Charles McVey for a discussion of his music. McVey's music reflects a heavy '80s new wave influence, mixed with subtleties of the piano and soothing harmonies. McVey has added himself to the growing ranks of "out" musicians and makes no apologies for who he is. His approach is non-confrontational and open which allows his music to transcend gender and sexual identity.
MP3 File
21 August 2008 - Water Policy for Kansas
Community Bridge welcomes representatives from the Manhattan/Riley County League of Women Voters who discuss the recent study on water policy for Kansas conducted by the state organization. In an age of changing climate and more demand for water from agri-business and ethanol production, will Kansas have water to drink in the future? Karen Mayse and Hilary Esry discuss what the League has discovered and what they are proposing as state water policy for the future.
Please see the links to water, water policy and its history in Kansas in the postings under "Commentaries, Articles, Resources."
MP3 File
14 August 2008 - Opposition to NBAF
Since our 17 July show about the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), opposition about locating the facility in Manhattan has increased as more area citizens have become informed about the pathogens which will be studied at the location. Community Bridge welcomes Stephen Anderson, Debbie Nuss and Paul Irvine to discuss the opposition's take on the issue of locating the NBAF in Kansas. For more information, visit their blog at: http://nonbaf.wordpress.com In the final 15 minutes of the show we connect with Carol Barta, chair of the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice who briefly discusses the panel on energy which will take place Monday at 7:00 pm at the Public Library Auditorium.
MP3 File
7 August 2008 - Poverty in the Little Apple
This week Community Bridge welcomes Mandy Chapman Semple, Executive Director of the Manhattan Emergency Shelter as we take a look at reality of poverty in Manhattan. The 2000 census placed 24% of Manhattanites living in poverty. Most dismiss this figure as "caused by the student population," but as Mandy will discuss, poverty in Manhattan is very real and not limited to "a bunch of college kids throwing off the statistics."
MP3 File
31 July 2008 - The Child Care Crisis
This week, Community Bridge looks at the growing child care crisis in Manhattan and the surrounding community. Affordable, quality child care is becoming harder and harder to find, with many programs having waiting list of hundreds of children. Join City Commissioner Bruce Snead, Susie Kufahl, assistant administrator of the Riley County Health Department, and Jayme Morris-Hardeman, Executive Director of Sunflower CASA, in a discussion of the topic, the work the area Child Care Task Force has conducted and what the future holds for child care.
MP3 File
17 July 2008 - NBAF in Manhattan
The proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), which K-State and Manhattan are under among the final five possible locations under consideration for this new facility, is the topic of this edition of Community Bridge. Opening the show is Ron Trewyn, Vice President for Research and Jerry Jaax, Associate Vice President for Research Compliance at K-State. They give an overview of the facility and respond to questions concerning safety issues at the facility. Responding to their presentation will be Sylvia Beeman.
The proposed facility will occupy 48 acres. The estimated construction cost is $563 million with an annual payroll of $27 million. Additional infrastructure requirements include new power lines and a sewage treatment plant.
To read an op-ed by Paul Irvine, a contributing writer to the Manhattan Mercury, opposing the placement of the NBAF in Manhattan, click here.
MP3 File
10 July 2008 - A conversation with Kevin Willmott
This week Community Bridge engages Kevin Willmott, assistant professor in the Film Studies Department of Kansas University about his recently released film, Bunker Hill, in a discussion of what democracy means in the post 9-11 United States.
Willmott's Bunker Hill looks into the American psyche in the post 9-11 era. A former Wall Street executive comes to Bunker Hill, KS, to reconnect with his ex-wife and daughters. Soon after he arrives, all power is lost as well as communication with the outside world. At a lost to explain what happen, militant forces coalesce to protect the citizens from an unseen enemy. As unfounded fears run wild, torture, illegal searches and murder becomes become part of the new reality. Visit the film's website at: http://www.bunkerhillthemovie.com/
MP3 File
26 June 2008 - Flint Hills Pride/MSCDR Petition Ordinances
During the first half of the show members of Manhattan's LGBT community talk about the Pride events scheduled for the weekend. During the second half, Debbie Nuss and Kathy Dzewaltowski from Manhattan Citizens for Sustainable Downtown Redevelopment discuss the organization, discoveries made during their recent law suit against the city and their efforts at petition ordinances designed to bring citizen control back to the redevelopment project.
MP3 File
19 June 2008 - Voter ID Laws
This week Community Bridge takes up the topic of the Republican-led efforts to pass laws that require proof of identity in order to vote. Republicans leaders claim that the laws are needed because voter fraud is a reality. Numerous studies by Secretaries of State and independent researchers show that voter fraud is a myth. Recently the US Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law, which lead to 12 Roman Catholic nuns, all of whom were registered voters, being barred from voting in the Indiana presidential primary. If voter fraud is a myth, why are the Republicans pushing for this legislation and why should you be concerned about it? Tune in to find out. Guests included Diane Kuhn, President of the Kansas League of Women Voters, and Debbie Nuss, local community activist and League member. Together they will discuss what happens when voter ID laws are passed.
MP3 File
5 June 2008 - Community WiFi
Community wireless networks are being built using WiFi, or "Wireless Fidelity", a standard technology that provides wireless Internet connection using unlicensed spectrum. These networks are being built by a variety of organizations including volunteer cooperatives, non-profit organizations, local governments, business development associations and educational institutions — many in partnership with each other. The networks are helping to deliver Internet access to residential neighborhoods, downtown business districts, low income and transitional housing projects, city parks and Native American Tribal reservations. Our guests, Joshua Montgonery, founding member for the Lawrence Freenet Project, and Prof. David MacFarland, recently retired professor of journalism and mass communications here at K-State, discuss community WiFi.
MP3 File
29 May 2008 - Energy Policy
Community Bridge welcomes back Chris Cardinal of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy for this week's show. We will discuss GPACE's take on the 2008 legislative session, what the future holds for clean energy, a comprehensive energy plan for the state, net metering, and more.
Due to a technical problem we join this show already in progress.
As a special feature, this summer we will take a tour of syndicated progressive talk shows which are available on the Internet. This week we will listen to a segment from New Internationalist Radio's "Pathways to Peace," featuring Kathy Black - a convener of the US Labor Against the War, who explains how military intelligence, fundamentalist religion, education, and the American psyche have helped build and maintain US war-mongering.
MP3 File
15 May 2008 - The ACLU
On this week's Community Bridge we welcome Dan Winter, Executive Director, The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri.
In an age where fear has dominated national and international politics, the ACLU has stood against the Bush administration's efforts to curtail the rights and freedoms granted by the US Constitution to each person based on their humanity, fought efforts to allow domestic spying on US citizens and challenged the immorality of torture, secret tribunals, and extraditions. As such, they have been vilified by the Radical Right as unpatriotic, when in fact they are fighting to defend the very principles on which our nation was founded.
Mr Winter discusses the ACLU, its goals and projects. Topics include the Patriot Act, LGBT rights, reproductive rights and sex education, as well as other topics.
MP3 File
1 May 2008 - The Rising Cost of Food
This week we take a local look at the rising cost of food. We begin with a short piece from New Internationalist Radio featuring Rachel Smolker from the Global Justice Ecology Project and author of a report called The Real Cost of Agrofuels: Food, Forest and the Climate. She gives a global assessment of the impact of pouring the world’s grain supplies into our cars’ gas tanks. Then we will tune in locally with Prof. Rhonda Jhanke, sustainable agriculture expert at K-State and author of a new book: Farming in the Dark: A Discussion about the Future of Sustainable Agriculture. Dr. Jhanke discusses the impact of agrofuels on Kansas farmland and the role subsidies play in support corporate agriculture.
MP3 File
17 April 2008 - The work of the Wheels of Justice Campaign
During the first half of the show Mariya Vaughan and Shireen Roshanravan from K-State's Ordinary Women discuss the organization and the annual "Take Back the Night" march and rally. The second half features a recorded interview with Kathy Kelley and Nora Barrows-Friedman from the Wheels of Justice campaign discussing the war in Iraq and the situation in the Palestine-Israel conflict.
MP3 File
27 March 2008 - The War in Iraq at Year Five
This week's show opens with Chad Fitzloff from the K-State French Club discussing the up-coming French Film Festival. Then Prof. John Exdell (philosophy) and Prof. Robert Schaeffer (sociology) will explore the impact five years of War in Iraq, has had on our nation and what the price tag - $522 billion with another $70 billion allocated for 2008 on the war has meant to our economy. Every $1 billion spent by the government on education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than when that same amount is sent to Iraq. Is George Bush bankrupting our nation?
MP3 File
13 March 2008 - Audubon of Kansas
David Westfall of K-State ONE opens the show with a discussion about their rally on March 25th. Then, Ron Klataske, Executive Director of Audubon of Kansas joins host Christopher Renner to discuss Audubon's activities and work for the environment. Topics include the reintroduction program of black-footed ferrets; bird populations and birding; impact of ethanol on the prairies and habitat; and, Audubon's efforts at establishing biding and nature trails in Kansas.
MP3 File
28 February 2008 - Manhattan's Jewish Community
We open the show with a brief interview with Elise Young, Bread for the World’s Mid-Atlantic and Central campus organizer. Then we will learn about the history and activities of the Manhattan Jewish Congregation with guests Janis Clare Galitzer and Charlotte Edelman.
MP3 File
21 February 2008 - The Kansas Health Policy Authority
Community Bridge looks at the Kansas Health Policy Authority with Barbara Langner, KHPA Director of Policy, along with Jeff Levine, who serves on KHPA's Purchaser Advisory Council, and other members of the KHPA structure, who will discuss the new agency and its role in providing health care to all Kansans.
MP3 File
31 January 2008 - An discussion with Chris Hedges
Chris Hedge’s will discuss his 2007 book: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, published by Free Press.
Hedges is a Nation Institute Senior Fellow and has spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was part of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism and received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. His next book, Collateral Damage, co-authored with Laila Al-Arian and published by Nation Books, came out in June 2008.
MP3 File
18 December 2008 - Sustainability Conference - What's next for NBAF?
On this week's show, we open with Ben Champion and Barbara Anderson who discuss the up-coming "Leading Kansas in Sustainability Conference" which will take place at K-State on January 23rd. For more information about the conference visit: http://sustainability.k-state.edu/conferences/leadingkansas/ During the second half, Dale Askey of No NBAF Kansas joins us to discuss what options exist now that it has been announced that the new lab will be coming to Kansas.
MP3 File
11 December 2008 - Shepherd's Crossing
During the first half of this week's show we welcome Jan Connizzo, Executive Director of Shepherd's Crossing, to discuss the services offered and how listener's can support their mission to fight poverty in Manhattan. During the second half, we hear two recent clips from CounterSpin. In the first clip we hear an analysis of why the media supports Obama's cabinet appointments. In the second we learn some important information about the Fairness Doctrine.
MP3 File
4 December 2008 - Manhattan Boys and Girls Club; UDHR at 60 and the work of Amnesty International
During the first half of this week's the show, Community Bridge welcomes Joyce Glasscock, Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Manhattan to talk about their new building and programs. In the second half we discuss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the work of Amnesty International with Frank St. George and Rob Dunn from the K-State Chapter.
MP3 File
20 November 2008 - Economic Bailout and World AIDS Day
Community Bridge opens the show featuring Amy Goodman interviewing Naomi Klein, author of Shock Doctrine. Klein discusses the economic crisis and efforts by the administration and congress to give enormous sums of money to people Klein refers to as "bailout profiteers" and the multi-trillion dollar crime scene that is unfolding in the last days of the Bush administration as they once again raid the US Treasury to give money to their rich friends. During the second half of the show we welcome Dusty Garner from the Regional AIDS Project to talk about the activities what will be happening around World AIDS Day on December 1.
MP3 File
13 November 2008 - Fair Trade Marketplace and International Education Week
During the first half of this week's Community Bridge, we welcome Prof. Torry Dickinson and Linda Teener, Executive Director of UFM Community Learning Center to talk about fair trade and the up-coming Fair Trade Marketplace to be held next week, Nov. 18 and 19 from 10 am to 6 pm at the K-State Student Union. In the second half we explore International Education week with Prof. Barry Mitchie.
MP3 File
6 November 2008 - Election Wrap-up
As a result of the election, the political landscape has changed in the US, or has it? This week Community Bridge will take an objective look at this week's election results and discusses what the future may bring. Join our guests, Prof. Joseph Aistrup from K- State's Political Science Department, who will give an analysis for both national and state results, along with community activist Jan Garton and K-State Young Democrat Bryan Cox for a discussion of what it all means.
MP3 File
23 October 2008 - An Interview with Ray McGovern
This week Community Bridge welcomes Ray McGovern as our guest. McGovern served as a CIA officer for 27 years under seven presidents and nine CIA directors. For the past seven years McGovern has been a prominent and outspoken commentator on intelligence-related issues, and a very vocal critic of President George W. Bush's use of government intelligence to justify the Iraq War.
MP3 File
CCHW 2008 - Muslims in the Media
The A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications' Media Professional Day was held as part of the 2008 CCHW and featured Mahnaz Shabbir presenting "Muslims in the Media," - an analysis of of the stereotypes used by mainstream media to depict Muslims and the Islamic faith. This lecture provides basic information on Islam; challenges the stereotypes the media uses; and, challenges the listener use critical thinking when decoding the messages the media transmits.
Mahnaz Shabbir is president of Shabbir Advisors. Ms. Mahnaz was awarded the Kansas City Press Club Journalist of the Year for 2003 and received another Journalism award in 2005. In March 2004, she received the YWCA award for the Gold Honoree in the category of Racial Justice at their annual luncheon banquet. In November 2005, Shabbir received a special recognition award from the Crescent Peace Society for her contributions in community service. On September 11, 2006, Shabbir received the Human Rights award from Church Women United.
MP3 File
2 October 2008 - Domestic Violence Awareness Month
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Community Bridge opens its October line-up with Tychelle Jones from the Domestic Violence Task Force to discuss and educate on this issue during the first half of the show. In the second half we welcome Representative Sydney Carlin, who will discuss why she is running for office, her accomplishments during her past six years of service, and what are some of the issues facing the Kansas Legislature this session.
MP3 File
18 September 2008 - Community Cultural Harmony Week
Community Cultural Harmony celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Doug Benson, Candi Hironaka, and founder, Barbara Baker, discuss its impact on the K-State and Manhattan communities as they review this year's calendar of events.
MP3 File
11 September 2008 - A discussion with Stan Cox about the effects of 9-11
On the seventh anniversary of the events of 9-11 Community Bridge welcomes back to the show Stan Cox for a discussion of how this event has affected civil liberties and the rule of law in the post-9-11 era. We have posted several articles on our blog that related to the topics Cox discusses. We recommend these articles to our listeners as background to the topic of this show. During the second half of the show, we tune into CounterSpin for the September 8th show and a discussion of the police-state like actions taken against the press and protesters at the Republican National Convention.
MP3 File
4 September 2008 - An Interview with Charles McVey
Community Bridge welcomes Kansas singer/songwriter Charles McVey for a discussion of his music. McVey's music reflects a heavy '80s new wave influence, mixed with subtleties of the piano and soothing harmonies. McVey has added himself to the growing ranks of "out" musicians and makes no apologies for who he is. His approach is non-confrontational and open which allows his music to transcend gender and sexual identity.
MP3 File
21 August 2008 - Water Policy for Kansas
Community Bridge welcomes representatives from the Manhattan/Riley County League of Women Voters who discuss the recent study on water policy for Kansas conducted by the state organization. In an age of changing climate and more demand for water from agri-business and ethanol production, will Kansas have water to drink in the future? Karen Mayse and Hilary Esry discuss what the League has discovered and what they are proposing as state water policy for the future.
Please see the links to water, water policy and its history in Kansas in the postings under "Commentaries, Articles, Resources."
MP3 File
14 August 2008 - Opposition to NBAF
Since our 17 July show about the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), opposition about locating the facility in Manhattan has increased as more area citizens have become informed about the pathogens which will be studied at the location. Community Bridge welcomes Stephen Anderson, Debbie Nuss and Paul Irvine to discuss the opposition's take on the issue of locating the NBAF in Kansas. For more information, visit their blog at: http://nonbaf.wordpress.com In the final 15 minutes of the show we connect with Carol Barta, chair of the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice who briefly discusses the panel on energy which will take place Monday at 7:00 pm at the Public Library Auditorium.
MP3 File
7 August 2008 - Poverty in the Little Apple
This week Community Bridge welcomes Mandy Chapman Semple, Executive Director of the Manhattan Emergency Shelter as we take a look at reality of poverty in Manhattan. The 2000 census placed 24% of Manhattanites living in poverty. Most dismiss this figure as "caused by the student population," but as Mandy will discuss, poverty in Manhattan is very real and not limited to "a bunch of college kids throwing off the statistics."
MP3 File
31 July 2008 - The Child Care Crisis
This week, Community Bridge looks at the growing child care crisis in Manhattan and the surrounding community. Affordable, quality child care is becoming harder and harder to find, with many programs having waiting list of hundreds of children. Join City Commissioner Bruce Snead, Susie Kufahl, assistant administrator of the Riley County Health Department, and Jayme Morris-Hardeman, Executive Director of Sunflower CASA, in a discussion of the topic, the work the area Child Care Task Force has conducted and what the future holds for child care.
MP3 File
17 July 2008 - NBAF in Manhattan
The proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), which K-State and Manhattan are under among the final five possible locations under consideration for this new facility, is the topic of this edition of Community Bridge. Opening the show is Ron Trewyn, Vice President for Research and Jerry Jaax, Associate Vice President for Research Compliance at K-State. They give an overview of the facility and respond to questions concerning safety issues at the facility. Responding to their presentation will be Sylvia Beeman.
The proposed facility will occupy 48 acres. The estimated construction cost is $563 million with an annual payroll of $27 million. Additional infrastructure requirements include new power lines and a sewage treatment plant.
To read an op-ed by Paul Irvine, a contributing writer to the Manhattan Mercury, opposing the placement of the NBAF in Manhattan, click here.
MP3 File
10 July 2008 - A conversation with Kevin Willmott
This week Community Bridge engages Kevin Willmott, assistant professor in the Film Studies Department of Kansas University about his recently released film, Bunker Hill, in a discussion of what democracy means in the post 9-11 United States.
Willmott's Bunker Hill looks into the American psyche in the post 9-11 era. A former Wall Street executive comes to Bunker Hill, KS, to reconnect with his ex-wife and daughters. Soon after he arrives, all power is lost as well as communication with the outside world. At a lost to explain what happen, militant forces coalesce to protect the citizens from an unseen enemy. As unfounded fears run wild, torture, illegal searches and murder becomes become part of the new reality. Visit the film's website at: http://www.bunkerhillthemovie.com/
MP3 File
26 June 2008 - Flint Hills Pride/MSCDR Petition Ordinances
During the first half of the show members of Manhattan's LGBT community talk about the Pride events scheduled for the weekend. During the second half, Debbie Nuss and Kathy Dzewaltowski from Manhattan Citizens for Sustainable Downtown Redevelopment discuss the organization, discoveries made during their recent law suit against the city and their efforts at petition ordinances designed to bring citizen control back to the redevelopment project.
MP3 File
19 June 2008 - Voter ID Laws
This week Community Bridge takes up the topic of the Republican-led efforts to pass laws that require proof of identity in order to vote. Republicans leaders claim that the laws are needed because voter fraud is a reality. Numerous studies by Secretaries of State and independent researchers show that voter fraud is a myth. Recently the US Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law, which lead to 12 Roman Catholic nuns, all of whom were registered voters, being barred from voting in the Indiana presidential primary. If voter fraud is a myth, why are the Republicans pushing for this legislation and why should you be concerned about it? Tune in to find out. Guests included Diane Kuhn, President of the Kansas League of Women Voters, and Debbie Nuss, local community activist and League member. Together they will discuss what happens when voter ID laws are passed.
MP3 File
5 June 2008 - Community WiFi
Community wireless networks are being built using WiFi, or "Wireless Fidelity", a standard technology that provides wireless Internet connection using unlicensed spectrum. These networks are being built by a variety of organizations including volunteer cooperatives, non-profit organizations, local governments, business development associations and educational institutions — many in partnership with each other. The networks are helping to deliver Internet access to residential neighborhoods, downtown business districts, low income and transitional housing projects, city parks and Native American Tribal reservations. Our guests, Joshua Montgonery, founding member for the Lawrence Freenet Project, and Prof. David MacFarland, recently retired professor of journalism and mass communications here at K-State, discuss community WiFi.
MP3 File
29 May 2008 - Energy Policy
Community Bridge welcomes back Chris Cardinal of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy for this week's show. We will discuss GPACE's take on the 2008 legislative session, what the future holds for clean energy, a comprehensive energy plan for the state, net metering, and more.
Due to a technical problem we join this show already in progress.
As a special feature, this summer we will take a tour of syndicated progressive talk shows which are available on the Internet. This week we will listen to a segment from New Internationalist Radio's "Pathways to Peace," featuring Kathy Black - a convener of the US Labor Against the War, who explains how military intelligence, fundamentalist religion, education, and the American psyche have helped build and maintain US war-mongering.
MP3 File
15 May 2008 - The ACLU
On this week's Community Bridge we welcome Dan Winter, Executive Director, The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri.
In an age where fear has dominated national and international politics, the ACLU has stood against the Bush administration's efforts to curtail the rights and freedoms granted by the US Constitution to each person based on their humanity, fought efforts to allow domestic spying on US citizens and challenged the immorality of torture, secret tribunals, and extraditions. As such, they have been vilified by the Radical Right as unpatriotic, when in fact they are fighting to defend the very principles on which our nation was founded.
Mr Winter discusses the ACLU, its goals and projects. Topics include the Patriot Act, LGBT rights, reproductive rights and sex education, as well as other topics.
MP3 File
1 May 2008 - The Rising Cost of Food
This week we take a local look at the rising cost of food. We begin with a short piece from New Internationalist Radio featuring Rachel Smolker from the Global Justice Ecology Project and author of a report called The Real Cost of Agrofuels: Food, Forest and the Climate. She gives a global assessment of the impact of pouring the world’s grain supplies into our cars’ gas tanks. Then we will tune in locally with Prof. Rhonda Jhanke, sustainable agriculture expert at K-State and author of a new book: Farming in the Dark: A Discussion about the Future of Sustainable Agriculture. Dr. Jhanke discusses the impact of agrofuels on Kansas farmland and the role subsidies play in support corporate agriculture.
MP3 File
17 April 2008 - The work of the Wheels of Justice Campaign
During the first half of the show Mariya Vaughan and Shireen Roshanravan from K-State's Ordinary Women discuss the organization and the annual "Take Back the Night" march and rally. The second half features a recorded interview with Kathy Kelley and Nora Barrows-Friedman from the Wheels of Justice campaign discussing the war in Iraq and the situation in the Palestine-Israel conflict.
MP3 File
27 March 2008 - The War in Iraq at Year Five
This week's show opens with Chad Fitzloff from the K-State French Club discussing the up-coming French Film Festival. Then Prof. John Exdell (philosophy) and Prof. Robert Schaeffer (sociology) will explore the impact five years of War in Iraq, has had on our nation and what the price tag - $522 billion with another $70 billion allocated for 2008 on the war has meant to our economy. Every $1 billion spent by the government on education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than when that same amount is sent to Iraq. Is George Bush bankrupting our nation?
MP3 File
13 March 2008 - Audubon of Kansas
David Westfall of K-State ONE opens the show with a discussion about their rally on March 25th. Then, Ron Klataske, Executive Director of Audubon of Kansas joins host Christopher Renner to discuss Audubon's activities and work for the environment. Topics include the reintroduction program of black-footed ferrets; bird populations and birding; impact of ethanol on the prairies and habitat; and, Audubon's efforts at establishing biding and nature trails in Kansas.
MP3 File
28 February 2008 - Manhattan's Jewish Community
We open the show with a brief interview with Elise Young, Bread for the World’s Mid-Atlantic and Central campus organizer. Then we will learn about the history and activities of the Manhattan Jewish Congregation with guests Janis Clare Galitzer and Charlotte Edelman.
MP3 File
21 February 2008 - The Kansas Health Policy Authority
Community Bridge looks at the Kansas Health Policy Authority with Barbara Langner, KHPA Director of Policy, along with Jeff Levine, who serves on KHPA's Purchaser Advisory Council, and other members of the KHPA structure, who will discuss the new agency and its role in providing health care to all Kansans.
MP3 File
31 January 2008 - An discussion with Chris Hedges
Chris Hedge’s will discuss his 2007 book: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, published by Free Press.
Hedges is a Nation Institute Senior Fellow and has spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was part of The New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism and received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. His next book, Collateral Damage, co-authored with Laila Al-Arian and published by Nation Books, came out in June 2008.
MP3 File
07 November 2009
The 2008 Election One Year Later
One year after the historical 2008 elections Community Bridge looks at what is different at both the local and national level. Community Bridge's Thursday show opens with County Commissioner Karen McCulloh who discusses what is happening in country government. Then in the second half of the show we welcome Brian Cox, Tom Oldfather and Janie Simpson from the K-State Young Democrats to discuss the Obama administration, how young people are changing political discourse, and their out look for the 2010 elections.
MP3 File
MP3 File
22 November 2008
Clippings for 22 November 2008
Click on title to read complete articles.
This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Noecons to Watch for in Obama's White House
Jeremy Scahill writes on AlterNet: "U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good."
Recommended Audio: The Changing Media Policy in the Obama Administration
From Chicago Public Radio: President-elect Barack Obama will have a chance to dramatically remake the FCC. Free Press co-founder and communications professor Robert McChesney discusses what's ahead.
Shift Seen in Telecom Regulation
BRODY MULLINS and AMY SCHATZ write for the Wall street Journal: "The telecom industry is bracing for a new era. New congressional leaders as well as policy makers in the Obama administration are expected to press for fresh limits on media consolidation and require phone and cable firms to open their networks to Internet competitors."
Waxman Dethrones Gingell as Chairman
Patrick O'Conner writes for Politico: "California Rep. Henry A. Waxman on Thursday officially dethroned longtime Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, upending a seniority system that has governed Democratic politics in the House for decades."
Why Obama Can Keep Gates
Joe Conason writes for Truthdig.com: "As Barack Obama makes his way through the transition to power, he is learning the steps of an old dance. Having promised change, he now surrounds himself with experience. Having poured scorn not only on the Bush administration but at times on the Clinton administration as well, he now welcomes those who served his Democratic predecessor, including the former first lady who ran against him. And having roundly denounced current foreign and military policies, he may very well ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in place. "
Will Tom Daschle Be the Secretary of HHS the Reproductive Rights Community Wants?
Amie Newman writes for RH Reality Check: "According to The Los Angeles Times, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has accepted President-elect Obama's offer to become the new secretary of health and human services. Daschle is currently a fellow with the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank. It was originally reported that he would oversee Obama's health policy working group, but with this appointment, it's unclear what his role will be in that regard."
Obama Names 7 Gays to Transition Team
Lou Chibbaro writes for the Washington Blade: "Officials with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team this week named at least seven openly gay people to transition panels assigned to review federal departments and agencies. Three of the seven gays named to the transition panels — businessman Fred P. Hochberg, former San Francisco Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg, and labor attorney Elaine Kaplan — held high-level positions in the Clinton administration."
A Media Parable for "the Center"
Norman Solomon writes for Truthout: "It's been 16 years since a Democrat moved into the White House. Now, the fog of memory and the spin of media are teaming up to explain that Barack Obama must hew to 'the center' if he knows what's good for his presidency. 'Many political observers,' The San Francisco Chronicle reported days ago, say that Obama 'must tack toward the political mainstream to avoid miscalculations made by President Bill Clinton, who veered left and fired up the 1994 Republican backlash.' This storyline provides a kind of political morality play: The new president tried to govern from the left, and Democrats lost control of Congress just two years later. But, if facts matter, the narrative is a real head-scratcher."
Big Media: Screw the Auto Workers
Jonathan Tasini writes for the Huffington Post: "Memo to the traditional media: You want to see the auto industry go down? Fine. But, at least try to give the facts about what workers have undergone in the industry -- an assignment that most of the traditional media could not live up to in its coverage of hearings on the proposed bailout."
Employee Free Choice Act Would Restore Worker Protections
Aaron T. Knapp writes in The San Francisco Chronicle: "Legislation that makes it easier for workers to form unions died in the Senate last year but union advocates are hoping Barack Obama can perform some CPR. Obama has said that if the Employee Free Choice Act comes across his desk, then he will sign it into law. Still, union interests probably shouldn't count their chickens. The filibuster remains, as does a powerful anti-union lobby, to derail this legislation."
Time for a Bank Holiday
William Greider writes for The Nation: "Henry Paulson's $700 billion plan to save the world is dead or dying, but the bailout was not killed by his arrogance or his grossly misleading claims about what the public's money would buy. The plan collapsed because it didn't work. The Treasury secretary has launched a PR offensive to revive his falling influence. Too late. The Democrats should be equally embarrassed. In September their leaders in Congress rushed to embrace the Paulson solution, no hard questions asked. They now claim they were duped."
Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering US Water Supplies?
Abrahm Lustgarten reports for ProPublica: "In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyoming, and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people."
President for 60 Days More: Bush Tearing Apart Protection for America's Wilderness
Suzanne Goldenberg writes for The Guardian UK: "George Bush is working at a breakneck pace to dismantle at least 10 major environmental safeguards protecting America's wildlife, national parks and rivers before he leaves office in January."
How the Rich are Destroying the Planet
Herve Kempf's new book: "There is an emergency. In less than a decade we will have to change course -- assuming the collapse of the U.S. economy or the explosion of the Middle East does not impose a change through chaos. To confront the emergency, we must understand the objective: to achieve a sober society; to plot out the way there; to accomplish this transformation equitably, by first making those with the most carry the burden within and between societies; to take inspiration from collective values ascribed to here in France by our nation's motto: "Liberty, ecology, fraternity."
Stuff Happens: The Pentagon's Argument of Last Resort on Iraq
Tom Engelhardt writes for TomDispatch.com: "It's the ultimate argument, the final bastion against withdrawal, and over these last years, the Bush administration has made sure it would have plenty of heft. Ironically, its strength lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with the vicissitudes of Iraqi politics, the relative power of Shiites or Sunnis, the influence of Iran, or even the riptides of war. It really doesn't matter what Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or oppositional cleric Muqtada al-Sadr think about it. In fact, it's an argument that has nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with us, with the American way of war (and life), which makes it almost unassailable."
US Right Stymies Sensitive Medical Research
Andrew Jack reports for The Financial Times UK: "Important US research to reduce HIV infection may have been prevented in recent years because scientists have censored their funding requests in response to political controversy, according to a study published on Tuesday."
The Wrong Place to Be Chronically Ill
The New York Times writes in an opt-ed: "Chronically ill Americans suffer far worse care than their counterparts in seven other industrial nations, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation that has pioneered in international comparisons. It is the latest telling evidence that the dysfunctional American health care system badly needs reform."
FCC Stuck in the Netscape Era
Matthew Lasar writes for ars technica: "Something has got to be done about the FCC Web site, which still looks like it was thrown together 10 years ago. The only people who can really access it are telecom lawyers, public interest groups, and wonks who have dedicated years to exploring its mysteries."
More Groups Call for National Broadband Strategy
Grant Gross writes for IDG News Service: "Iraq War veteran Randy Hickman had a better Internet connection while deployed than he does at his home in rural Alabama. Hickman, a member of the Alabama National Guard, said many soldiers were able to communicate with their families through video conferencing while deployed in Iraq, but his family had only dial-up Internet service not capable of transmitting video."
The Morning After, Voting Problems Remain
David Herbert writes in the National Journal: "Anyone walking through Election Protection's headquarters on Nov. 4 could have been forgiven for thinking the invasion of a small country was under way rather than an election. Dozens of volunteers fielded calls from harassed or confused voters in a command center complete with a 20-foot-high wall of digital maps and statistics. Upstairs, teams of lawyers hunched around conference tables littered with soda cans and cups of cold coffee, working the phones and dispatching legal teams to troubled polling stations ..."
This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Noecons to Watch for in Obama's White House
Jeremy Scahill writes on AlterNet: "U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good."
Recommended Audio: The Changing Media Policy in the Obama Administration
From Chicago Public Radio: President-elect Barack Obama will have a chance to dramatically remake the FCC. Free Press co-founder and communications professor Robert McChesney discusses what's ahead.
Shift Seen in Telecom Regulation
BRODY MULLINS and AMY SCHATZ write for the Wall street Journal: "The telecom industry is bracing for a new era. New congressional leaders as well as policy makers in the Obama administration are expected to press for fresh limits on media consolidation and require phone and cable firms to open their networks to Internet competitors."
Waxman Dethrones Gingell as Chairman
Patrick O'Conner writes for Politico: "California Rep. Henry A. Waxman on Thursday officially dethroned longtime Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, upending a seniority system that has governed Democratic politics in the House for decades."
Why Obama Can Keep Gates
Joe Conason writes for Truthdig.com: "As Barack Obama makes his way through the transition to power, he is learning the steps of an old dance. Having promised change, he now surrounds himself with experience. Having poured scorn not only on the Bush administration but at times on the Clinton administration as well, he now welcomes those who served his Democratic predecessor, including the former first lady who ran against him. And having roundly denounced current foreign and military policies, he may very well ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain in place. "
Will Tom Daschle Be the Secretary of HHS the Reproductive Rights Community Wants?
Amie Newman writes for RH Reality Check: "According to The Los Angeles Times, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has accepted President-elect Obama's offer to become the new secretary of health and human services. Daschle is currently a fellow with the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank. It was originally reported that he would oversee Obama's health policy working group, but with this appointment, it's unclear what his role will be in that regard."
Obama Names 7 Gays to Transition Team
Lou Chibbaro writes for the Washington Blade: "Officials with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team this week named at least seven openly gay people to transition panels assigned to review federal departments and agencies. Three of the seven gays named to the transition panels — businessman Fred P. Hochberg, former San Francisco Supervisor Roberta Achtenberg, and labor attorney Elaine Kaplan — held high-level positions in the Clinton administration."
A Media Parable for "the Center"
Norman Solomon writes for Truthout: "It's been 16 years since a Democrat moved into the White House. Now, the fog of memory and the spin of media are teaming up to explain that Barack Obama must hew to 'the center' if he knows what's good for his presidency. 'Many political observers,' The San Francisco Chronicle reported days ago, say that Obama 'must tack toward the political mainstream to avoid miscalculations made by President Bill Clinton, who veered left and fired up the 1994 Republican backlash.' This storyline provides a kind of political morality play: The new president tried to govern from the left, and Democrats lost control of Congress just two years later. But, if facts matter, the narrative is a real head-scratcher."
Big Media: Screw the Auto Workers
Jonathan Tasini writes for the Huffington Post: "Memo to the traditional media: You want to see the auto industry go down? Fine. But, at least try to give the facts about what workers have undergone in the industry -- an assignment that most of the traditional media could not live up to in its coverage of hearings on the proposed bailout."
Employee Free Choice Act Would Restore Worker Protections
Aaron T. Knapp writes in The San Francisco Chronicle: "Legislation that makes it easier for workers to form unions died in the Senate last year but union advocates are hoping Barack Obama can perform some CPR. Obama has said that if the Employee Free Choice Act comes across his desk, then he will sign it into law. Still, union interests probably shouldn't count their chickens. The filibuster remains, as does a powerful anti-union lobby, to derail this legislation."
Time for a Bank Holiday
William Greider writes for The Nation: "Henry Paulson's $700 billion plan to save the world is dead or dying, but the bailout was not killed by his arrogance or his grossly misleading claims about what the public's money would buy. The plan collapsed because it didn't work. The Treasury secretary has launched a PR offensive to revive his falling influence. Too late. The Democrats should be equally embarrassed. In September their leaders in Congress rushed to embrace the Paulson solution, no hard questions asked. They now claim they were duped."
Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering US Water Supplies?
Abrahm Lustgarten reports for ProPublica: "In July, a hydrologist dropped a plastic sampling pipe 300 feet down a water well in rural Sublette County, Wyoming, and pulled up a load of brown oily water with a foul smell. Tests showed it contained benzene, a chemical believed to cause aplastic anemia and leukemia, in a concentration 1,500 times the level safe for people."
President for 60 Days More: Bush Tearing Apart Protection for America's Wilderness
Suzanne Goldenberg writes for The Guardian UK: "George Bush is working at a breakneck pace to dismantle at least 10 major environmental safeguards protecting America's wildlife, national parks and rivers before he leaves office in January."
How the Rich are Destroying the Planet
Herve Kempf's new book: "There is an emergency. In less than a decade we will have to change course -- assuming the collapse of the U.S. economy or the explosion of the Middle East does not impose a change through chaos. To confront the emergency, we must understand the objective: to achieve a sober society; to plot out the way there; to accomplish this transformation equitably, by first making those with the most carry the burden within and between societies; to take inspiration from collective values ascribed to here in France by our nation's motto: "Liberty, ecology, fraternity."
Stuff Happens: The Pentagon's Argument of Last Resort on Iraq
Tom Engelhardt writes for TomDispatch.com: "It's the ultimate argument, the final bastion against withdrawal, and over these last years, the Bush administration has made sure it would have plenty of heft. Ironically, its strength lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with the vicissitudes of Iraqi politics, the relative power of Shiites or Sunnis, the influence of Iran, or even the riptides of war. It really doesn't matter what Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or oppositional cleric Muqtada al-Sadr think about it. In fact, it's an argument that has nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with us, with the American way of war (and life), which makes it almost unassailable."
US Right Stymies Sensitive Medical Research
Andrew Jack reports for The Financial Times UK: "Important US research to reduce HIV infection may have been prevented in recent years because scientists have censored their funding requests in response to political controversy, according to a study published on Tuesday."
The Wrong Place to Be Chronically Ill
The New York Times writes in an opt-ed: "Chronically ill Americans suffer far worse care than their counterparts in seven other industrial nations, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation that has pioneered in international comparisons. It is the latest telling evidence that the dysfunctional American health care system badly needs reform."
FCC Stuck in the Netscape Era
Matthew Lasar writes for ars technica: "Something has got to be done about the FCC Web site, which still looks like it was thrown together 10 years ago. The only people who can really access it are telecom lawyers, public interest groups, and wonks who have dedicated years to exploring its mysteries."
More Groups Call for National Broadband Strategy
Grant Gross writes for IDG News Service: "Iraq War veteran Randy Hickman had a better Internet connection while deployed than he does at his home in rural Alabama. Hickman, a member of the Alabama National Guard, said many soldiers were able to communicate with their families through video conferencing while deployed in Iraq, but his family had only dial-up Internet service not capable of transmitting video."
The Morning After, Voting Problems Remain
David Herbert writes in the National Journal: "Anyone walking through Election Protection's headquarters on Nov. 4 could have been forgiven for thinking the invasion of a small country was under way rather than an election. Dozens of volunteers fielded calls from harassed or confused voters in a command center complete with a 20-foot-high wall of digital maps and statistics. Upstairs, teams of lawyers hunched around conference tables littered with soda cans and cups of cold coffee, working the phones and dispatching legal teams to troubled polling stations ..."
13 November 2008
Clippings for 13 November 2008
Click on title to read complete articles.
Goodbye and Good Riddance
Paul Waldman writes for The American Prospect: "After eight years of President Bush, we almost don't know how to function without him - almost. But before we move on, we should pause to remember just what we're leaving behind. Goodbye, we can say at last, to the most powerful man in the world being such a ridiculous buffoon, incapable of stringing together two coherent sentences. Goodbye to cringing with dread every time our president steps onto the world stage, sure he'll say or do something to embarrass us all. Goodbye to being represented by a man who embodies everything our enemies want the people of the world to believe about America - that we are ignorant, cruel, and only care about foreign countries when we decide to stomp on them."
A Closer Look at Obama's Energy Plan
Mark Clayton writes for The Christian Science Monitor: "If President-elect Barack Obama enacts the energy plan he laid out during his campaign, American taxpayers will each get a $500 rebate check - funded by a windfall profits taxes on big oil companies. But that's just for starters. Besides taxing oil giants more, Senator Obama's detailed 30-point energy agenda calls for big changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency for vehicles, and domestic and renewable power and efficiency."
Cold War Hawks Nesting With Obama
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig: "So, Vladimir Putin was right: It was Georgia that started the war with Russia, and once again it was President Bush who got caught in a lie. As The New York Times reported last week, 'Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the long-standing Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.'"
Obama's Toughest Challenge: America's Energy Crunch Comes Home
Michael T. Klare writes for TomDispatch: "Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none is likely to prove as daunting, or important to the future of this nation, as that of energy. After all, energy policy -- so totally mishandled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration -- figures in each of the other major challenges facing the new president, including the economy, the environment, foreign policy, and our Middle Eastern wars. Most of all, it will prove a monumental challenge because the United States faces an energy crisis of unprecedented magnitude that is getting worse by the day."
Guantanamo Closure Called Obama Priority
Peter Finn reports for The Washington Post: "The Obama administration will launch a review of the classified files of the approximately 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay immediately after taking office, as part of an intensive effort to close the U.S. prison in Cuba, according to people who advised the campaign on detainee issues. Announcing the closure of the controversial detention facility would be among the most potent signals the incoming administration could send of its sharp break with the Bush era, according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the president-elect."
The New Liberalism: How the Economic Crisis Can Help Obama Redefine the Democrats
George Packer reports in The New Yorker: "Barack Obama's decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932. It brings to a close another conservative era, one that rose amid the ashes of the New Deal coalition in the late sixties, consolidated its power with the election of Ronald Reagan, in 1980. Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression; the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan's incantations, failed to work, and the need for some 'new machinery' is painfully obvious. But what philosophy of government will characterize it?"
America the Illiterate
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. "
College Loan Slavery: Student Debt Is Getting Way Out of Hand
Nan Mooney writes for AlterNet: "Raya Golden thought she was handling college in a responsible way. She didn't apply until she felt ready to dedicate herself to her studies. She spread her schooling across five years so she could work part-time throughout. She checked that her school, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, had a high post-graduate employment rate. But there were two things she hadn't counted on. The first was the $75,000 in nonsubsidized federal student loans she'd have to take out for tuition and those living expenses her part-time jobs selling hotdogs and making lattes couldn't cover. The second was that she'd graduate into a workforce teetering on the edge of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression."
The Midnight Deregulation Express
Matthew Blake writes for The Washington Independent: "It's something of a tradition - administrations using their final weeks in power to ram through a slew of federal regulations. With the election grabbing the headlines, outgoing federal bureaucrats quietly propose and finalize rules that can affect the health and safety of millions."
In Final Days, Bush Pushes for Iraq's Oil
Maya Schenwar writes for Truthout: "As the Bush administration rumbles to an end, it is pushing with increasing urgency for a commitment to a long-term US presence in Iraq. Though the military aspect of this 'commitment' has garnered substantial publicity, the administration is equally invested in the economic aspect: securing US control over Iraqi oil before Bush leaves office, according to experts in the field."
Probe Sought of Bush Handling of Alaska Oil-Spill Case
Renee Schoof reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "An environmental watchdog group asked the Department of Justice's inspector general on Monday to investigate whether the department had prematurely halted a criminal prosecution of BP for a 2006 oil spill in Alaska. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed the complaint on behalf of Scott West, who as the special agent in charge for the Environmental Protection Agency participated in the federal and state investigation of the spill."
Prescription Drugs Kill Three Times as Many Americans as Illegal Drugs
David Gutierrez, Natural News: "A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death. An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem."
Is Our Internet Future in Danger?
Galen Gruman and Tome KAneshige write for InfoWorld: "The digital Disneyland of the future -- where we freely work and play online -- may be at risk. Why? Because, some argue, broadband carriers can't support it. The Internet's "free ride" culture has led to more people downloading gigabytes of data at practically no cost. "
Obama Media Policy: Broadband and Breaking up Telecom/Cable/Broadcast Monopolies
Matt Stoller blogs for Open Left: "I've been blogging about media policy for a few years, so I have pretty good sources on net neutrality, the FCC and media policy. Whenever I have a really tough question, I'm usually referred to Harold Feld, a brilliant lawyer at the Media Access Project who blogs about communications policy and politics at his incomparably great site, Wetmachine. His work and knowledge has been essentially to the media reform movement that has successfully placed openness and the protection of the internet in an important position in the Obama administration's priority list."
What do "White Spaces" Mean for Public Media?
Jessica Clark writes for the Center for Social Media: "The FCC decision on white spaces could mean more than just broadband access for millions of Americans. It could hold the key to more evenly distributed access to the public airwaves. And the public won't just be consuming media on open networks, they'll be producing it, too. "
Goodbye and Good Riddance
Paul Waldman writes for The American Prospect: "After eight years of President Bush, we almost don't know how to function without him - almost. But before we move on, we should pause to remember just what we're leaving behind. Goodbye, we can say at last, to the most powerful man in the world being such a ridiculous buffoon, incapable of stringing together two coherent sentences. Goodbye to cringing with dread every time our president steps onto the world stage, sure he'll say or do something to embarrass us all. Goodbye to being represented by a man who embodies everything our enemies want the people of the world to believe about America - that we are ignorant, cruel, and only care about foreign countries when we decide to stomp on them."
A Closer Look at Obama's Energy Plan
Mark Clayton writes for The Christian Science Monitor: "If President-elect Barack Obama enacts the energy plan he laid out during his campaign, American taxpayers will each get a $500 rebate check - funded by a windfall profits taxes on big oil companies. But that's just for starters. Besides taxing oil giants more, Senator Obama's detailed 30-point energy agenda calls for big changes to address carbon emissions, fuel efficiency for vehicles, and domestic and renewable power and efficiency."
Cold War Hawks Nesting With Obama
Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig: "So, Vladimir Putin was right: It was Georgia that started the war with Russia, and once again it was President Bush who got caught in a lie. As The New York Times reported last week, 'Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the long-standing Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.'"
Obama's Toughest Challenge: America's Energy Crunch Comes Home
Michael T. Klare writes for TomDispatch: "Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none is likely to prove as daunting, or important to the future of this nation, as that of energy. After all, energy policy -- so totally mishandled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration -- figures in each of the other major challenges facing the new president, including the economy, the environment, foreign policy, and our Middle Eastern wars. Most of all, it will prove a monumental challenge because the United States faces an energy crisis of unprecedented magnitude that is getting worse by the day."
Guantanamo Closure Called Obama Priority
Peter Finn reports for The Washington Post: "The Obama administration will launch a review of the classified files of the approximately 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay immediately after taking office, as part of an intensive effort to close the U.S. prison in Cuba, according to people who advised the campaign on detainee issues. Announcing the closure of the controversial detention facility would be among the most potent signals the incoming administration could send of its sharp break with the Bush era, according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the president-elect."
The New Liberalism: How the Economic Crisis Can Help Obama Redefine the Democrats
George Packer reports in The New Yorker: "Barack Obama's decisive defeat of John McCain is the most important victory of a Democratic candidate since 1932. It brings to a close another conservative era, one that rose amid the ashes of the New Deal coalition in the late sixties, consolidated its power with the election of Ronald Reagan, in 1980. Obama will enter the White House at a moment of economic crisis worse than anything the nation has seen since the Great Depression; the old assumptions of free-market fundamentalism have, like a charlatan's incantations, failed to work, and the need for some 'new machinery' is painfully obvious. But what philosophy of government will characterize it?"
America the Illiterate
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities. "
College Loan Slavery: Student Debt Is Getting Way Out of Hand
Nan Mooney writes for AlterNet: "Raya Golden thought she was handling college in a responsible way. She didn't apply until she felt ready to dedicate herself to her studies. She spread her schooling across five years so she could work part-time throughout. She checked that her school, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, had a high post-graduate employment rate. But there were two things she hadn't counted on. The first was the $75,000 in nonsubsidized federal student loans she'd have to take out for tuition and those living expenses her part-time jobs selling hotdogs and making lattes couldn't cover. The second was that she'd graduate into a workforce teetering on the edge of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression."
The Midnight Deregulation Express
Matthew Blake writes for The Washington Independent: "It's something of a tradition - administrations using their final weeks in power to ram through a slew of federal regulations. With the election grabbing the headlines, outgoing federal bureaucrats quietly propose and finalize rules that can affect the health and safety of millions."
In Final Days, Bush Pushes for Iraq's Oil
Maya Schenwar writes for Truthout: "As the Bush administration rumbles to an end, it is pushing with increasing urgency for a commitment to a long-term US presence in Iraq. Though the military aspect of this 'commitment' has garnered substantial publicity, the administration is equally invested in the economic aspect: securing US control over Iraqi oil before Bush leaves office, according to experts in the field."
Probe Sought of Bush Handling of Alaska Oil-Spill Case
Renee Schoof reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "An environmental watchdog group asked the Department of Justice's inspector general on Monday to investigate whether the department had prematurely halted a criminal prosecution of BP for a 2006 oil spill in Alaska. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed the complaint on behalf of Scott West, who as the special agent in charge for the Environmental Protection Agency participated in the federal and state investigation of the spill."
Prescription Drugs Kill Three Times as Many Americans as Illegal Drugs
David Gutierrez, Natural News: "A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death. An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem."
Is Our Internet Future in Danger?
Galen Gruman and Tome KAneshige write for InfoWorld: "The digital Disneyland of the future -- where we freely work and play online -- may be at risk. Why? Because, some argue, broadband carriers can't support it. The Internet's "free ride" culture has led to more people downloading gigabytes of data at practically no cost. "
Obama Media Policy: Broadband and Breaking up Telecom/Cable/Broadcast Monopolies
Matt Stoller blogs for Open Left: "I've been blogging about media policy for a few years, so I have pretty good sources on net neutrality, the FCC and media policy. Whenever I have a really tough question, I'm usually referred to Harold Feld, a brilliant lawyer at the Media Access Project who blogs about communications policy and politics at his incomparably great site, Wetmachine. His work and knowledge has been essentially to the media reform movement that has successfully placed openness and the protection of the internet in an important position in the Obama administration's priority list."
What do "White Spaces" Mean for Public Media?
Jessica Clark writes for the Center for Social Media: "The FCC decision on white spaces could mean more than just broadband access for millions of Americans. It could hold the key to more evenly distributed access to the public airwaves. And the public won't just be consuming media on open networks, they'll be producing it, too. "
10 November 2008
Clippings for November 9, 2008
Click on titles to read complete articles.
The Climate for Change
Al Gore writes for The New York Times: "The inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he - and we - must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis. The electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are born equal sets the stage for the renewal of United States leadership in a world that desperately needs to protect its primary endowment: the integrity and livability of the planet."
America is a Center-Left Country No Matter How Much the Corporate Media Says Otherwise
Joshua Holland writes for AlterNet: "The American people are center-left (or at least firmly in the center) on the primary matters over which government presides: taxation and debt, public services, the regulation of the economy and America's role in the world."
All Over But the Lying
Jamison Foser writes for Media Matters: "On Tuesday, Americans chose as their next president an African-American named Barack Obama who campaigned on a near-universal health-care plan, allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, and a move away from the belligerent foreign policy of the past eight years. Republicans, and some journalists, had spent months (falsely) saying Obama is the single most liberal member of the U.S. Senate -- and maybe even a socialist. The American people responded by electing him in a landslide."
Health Care Can't Wait
Edward M. Kennedy writes for The Washington Post: "President-elect Barack Obama has issued a clarion call for action on health care. His practical and thoughtful proposals draw from our Massachusetts experience and add important measures to improve quality and reduce costs. His plan includes crucial investments in modernizing the use of information technology in health care. He calls for a new emphasis on prevention and wellness, because the best way to treat a disease is to prevent it from striking. I'm sure opponents will dust off the same old slogans they have used to try to block every major advance in health care."
Will Obama Administration Signal Return to Rule of Law?
Brian Baxter writes for Law.com: "Foremost among the pressing issues he faces: rebuilding America's reputation in the international arena, says Philippe Sands, author of 'Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.' The book, excerpts of which appeared in a May 2008 Vanity Fair feature story, examines how U.S. lawyers abandoned the Geneva Conventions and other international protocols after the 9/11 attacks."
Palin Blamed for Death Threats Against Obama
Tim Shipman writes for The Telegraph UK: "Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign. The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of 'palling around with terrorists', citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him.' until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric."
Letter to President Obama on Human Rights
Julie Mertus writes for Foreign Policy In Focus: "Dear President Obama: The Bush administration had eight years to run our country's reputation on human rights into the ground. It succeeded not only in tarnishing America's image, but also in derailing the entire international human rights movement. As a professor of human rights who has studied the opportunities and challenges for the White House in transition periods, I know that the window of opportunity for distinguishing yourself from your predecessor is open now, but you must act quickly and decisively if you are to get human rights back on track."
Bush Administration Once Again Attempts To Block Release Of Prisoner Abuse Photos In ACLU Lawsuit
The ACLU states in a press release: "The Bush administration petitioned a full appeals court late Thursday to reconsider a decision ordering the Defense Department to release photographs showing detainee abuse by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In September, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the government to release the photos as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking information on the abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody overseas."
President-Elect Obama Must Appoint Officials Who Will Restore Scientific Integrity to Government
Francesca Grifo of the Unionof Cencerned Scientists states: "The new head of any science agency must be committed to fundamental change in the agency's conduct and communication of science. President-elect Obama should choose agency leaders who will make five commitments to reform."
We're still Aren't in a Post-Racial Society
Fred McKissack writes for the Progressive: "Moments after CNN declared Sen. Barack Obama the next president of the United States, I called my parents. I could tell my father was beaming. Through Obama, he could see the future for his grandsons and their peers — a collective sense of inclusion that has eluded the race for so long."
Looking Back and Moving Forward
Bill Boyarsky writes for Truthdig.com: "Barack Obama’s huge victory sent me down memory lane to the segregated America of a half-century ago, when a black person couldn’t crack the news columns of my Northern California hometown newspaper, much less get a job there. "
Top Ten Power Brokers of the Religious Right
In an AlterNet version of an article that originally appeared in Church and State Magazine, Bob Boston writes: "A recent Americans United study of the finances and influence of the Religious Right shows a movement that is very much alive and kicking. Indeed, our research shows that the nation's leading Religious Right organizations took in more than half a billion dollars over a recent 12-month period. Several of the organizations reported dramatic increases in their budgets; only a few showed a drop."
Neocons Plot to Co-Opt Obama
William Pfaff writes for Truthdig.com that the newly elected president is a foreign policy novice and will find himself under great pressure to follow Middle Eastern and China and Russia policies inherited from George Bush, even though these are what Barack Obama was elected to change or terminate.
Palin in Spotlight as Republicans Turn on Each Other
Oliver Burkeman writes for The Guardian UK: "As the implosion of the defeated Republican campaign continued yesterday, the landscape of American conservatism was dotted with signs that these were very strange times indeed. Rush Limbaugh, behemoth of rightwing radio, took to the airwaves to declare war on two enemies: Barack Obama and the Republican party. Bloggers at FreeRepublic.com, an internet hub for conservatives, announced a boycott of Fox News and John McCain's aides fell over one another to leak embarrassing details about the campaign to the press."
House Races Push Women's Numbers to New High
Alison Bowen, Women's eNews: "The number of women in the U.S. House of Representatives will reach a high of 74 when the victors of Tuesday's elections take office in January. While marking a gain of three legislators, the results failed to push women's stake into the 20 percent territory considered minimal for exerting significant voting-bloc pressure."
FCC White Spaces Decisions Kicks Off the Next Wireless Revolution
Priya Ganapati writes for Wired: "Like Wi-Fi, the availability of free, unregulated spectrum could create new technologies and new markets, bringing superfast wireless connectivity to the masses. Unlike Wi-Fi, it could also put pressure on wireless carriers."
FOX Stations Pull Down News Corp. Profits
Danny King writes for TV Week: "Fox Broadcasting parent News Corp. said today that its fiscal first-quarter earnings fell 30% as a drop in profit from its local television operations more than offset a boost in earnings from cable network programming. The company, factoring in the U.S. economic downturn’s effect on local advertising revenue, also cut its profit forecast for fiscal 2009."
The Climate for Change
Al Gore writes for The New York Times: "The inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he - and we - must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis. The electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are born equal sets the stage for the renewal of United States leadership in a world that desperately needs to protect its primary endowment: the integrity and livability of the planet."
America is a Center-Left Country No Matter How Much the Corporate Media Says Otherwise
Joshua Holland writes for AlterNet: "The American people are center-left (or at least firmly in the center) on the primary matters over which government presides: taxation and debt, public services, the regulation of the economy and America's role in the world."
All Over But the Lying
Jamison Foser writes for Media Matters: "On Tuesday, Americans chose as their next president an African-American named Barack Obama who campaigned on a near-universal health-care plan, allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire, and a move away from the belligerent foreign policy of the past eight years. Republicans, and some journalists, had spent months (falsely) saying Obama is the single most liberal member of the U.S. Senate -- and maybe even a socialist. The American people responded by electing him in a landslide."
Health Care Can't Wait
Edward M. Kennedy writes for The Washington Post: "President-elect Barack Obama has issued a clarion call for action on health care. His practical and thoughtful proposals draw from our Massachusetts experience and add important measures to improve quality and reduce costs. His plan includes crucial investments in modernizing the use of information technology in health care. He calls for a new emphasis on prevention and wellness, because the best way to treat a disease is to prevent it from striking. I'm sure opponents will dust off the same old slogans they have used to try to block every major advance in health care."
Will Obama Administration Signal Return to Rule of Law?
Brian Baxter writes for Law.com: "Foremost among the pressing issues he faces: rebuilding America's reputation in the international arena, says Philippe Sands, author of 'Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.' The book, excerpts of which appeared in a May 2008 Vanity Fair feature story, examines how U.S. lawyers abandoned the Geneva Conventions and other international protocols after the 9/11 attacks."
Palin Blamed for Death Threats Against Obama
Tim Shipman writes for The Telegraph UK: "Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign. The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of 'palling around with terrorists', citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers. The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him.' until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric."
Letter to President Obama on Human Rights
Julie Mertus writes for Foreign Policy In Focus: "Dear President Obama: The Bush administration had eight years to run our country's reputation on human rights into the ground. It succeeded not only in tarnishing America's image, but also in derailing the entire international human rights movement. As a professor of human rights who has studied the opportunities and challenges for the White House in transition periods, I know that the window of opportunity for distinguishing yourself from your predecessor is open now, but you must act quickly and decisively if you are to get human rights back on track."
Bush Administration Once Again Attempts To Block Release Of Prisoner Abuse Photos In ACLU Lawsuit
The ACLU states in a press release: "The Bush administration petitioned a full appeals court late Thursday to reconsider a decision ordering the Defense Department to release photographs showing detainee abuse by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In September, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the government to release the photos as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking information on the abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody overseas."
President-Elect Obama Must Appoint Officials Who Will Restore Scientific Integrity to Government
Francesca Grifo of the Unionof Cencerned Scientists states: "The new head of any science agency must be committed to fundamental change in the agency's conduct and communication of science. President-elect Obama should choose agency leaders who will make five commitments to reform."
We're still Aren't in a Post-Racial Society
Fred McKissack writes for the Progressive: "Moments after CNN declared Sen. Barack Obama the next president of the United States, I called my parents. I could tell my father was beaming. Through Obama, he could see the future for his grandsons and their peers — a collective sense of inclusion that has eluded the race for so long."
Looking Back and Moving Forward
Bill Boyarsky writes for Truthdig.com: "Barack Obama’s huge victory sent me down memory lane to the segregated America of a half-century ago, when a black person couldn’t crack the news columns of my Northern California hometown newspaper, much less get a job there. "
Top Ten Power Brokers of the Religious Right
In an AlterNet version of an article that originally appeared in Church and State Magazine, Bob Boston writes: "A recent Americans United study of the finances and influence of the Religious Right shows a movement that is very much alive and kicking. Indeed, our research shows that the nation's leading Religious Right organizations took in more than half a billion dollars over a recent 12-month period. Several of the organizations reported dramatic increases in their budgets; only a few showed a drop."
Neocons Plot to Co-Opt Obama
William Pfaff writes for Truthdig.com that the newly elected president is a foreign policy novice and will find himself under great pressure to follow Middle Eastern and China and Russia policies inherited from George Bush, even though these are what Barack Obama was elected to change or terminate.
Palin in Spotlight as Republicans Turn on Each Other
Oliver Burkeman writes for The Guardian UK: "As the implosion of the defeated Republican campaign continued yesterday, the landscape of American conservatism was dotted with signs that these were very strange times indeed. Rush Limbaugh, behemoth of rightwing radio, took to the airwaves to declare war on two enemies: Barack Obama and the Republican party. Bloggers at FreeRepublic.com, an internet hub for conservatives, announced a boycott of Fox News and John McCain's aides fell over one another to leak embarrassing details about the campaign to the press."
House Races Push Women's Numbers to New High
Alison Bowen, Women's eNews: "The number of women in the U.S. House of Representatives will reach a high of 74 when the victors of Tuesday's elections take office in January. While marking a gain of three legislators, the results failed to push women's stake into the 20 percent territory considered minimal for exerting significant voting-bloc pressure."
FCC White Spaces Decisions Kicks Off the Next Wireless Revolution
Priya Ganapati writes for Wired: "Like Wi-Fi, the availability of free, unregulated spectrum could create new technologies and new markets, bringing superfast wireless connectivity to the masses. Unlike Wi-Fi, it could also put pressure on wireless carriers."
FOX Stations Pull Down News Corp. Profits
Danny King writes for TV Week: "Fox Broadcasting parent News Corp. said today that its fiscal first-quarter earnings fell 30% as a drop in profit from its local television operations more than offset a boost in earnings from cable network programming. The company, factoring in the U.S. economic downturn’s effect on local advertising revenue, also cut its profit forecast for fiscal 2009."
06 November 2008
Clippings for 6 November 2008...
Click on titles to read complete articles.
OK Barack, Time to Hit the Ground Running
AlterNet asked dozens of writers, experts and activists on key issues to write about where the country needs to go, and the priorities for Barack Obama's early days in office. The following is the first in a series of articles we'll be running this week.
It's Morning Again in America
Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig.com writes: "It's time to gush! Later for the analysis of all the hard choices faced by our next president, Barack Obama, but for now, let's just thrill, unabashedly, to the sound of those words. Heck, both he and we deserve a honeymoon, at least for a few paragraphs of this column."
Barack Obama's Many Majorities
John Nichols writes for The Nation: "'If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,' wrote the poet Walt Whitman on the occasion of a distant election, "I'd name the still-small voice vibrating – America's choosing day." On this day after voting day, as Whitman's 'final ballot-shower from East to West' finishes, we are reminded once more that an American election, aggressively campaigned and well conducted, yields not the measure of men or parties, but of the country itself. Despite all the talk of spin, strategy, polls and personalities, an election ultimately tells us what America can conceive, what it is capable of, what indeed it demands."
After Four Decades, Finally: The Beginning of the End
Mark Weisbrot writes for commondreams.org: "But there is another sense in which this election will likely turn out to be historic. For nearly four decades this country has been moving to the right. Unfortunately we must include the Clinton years in this right-wing trajectory: with such major regressive structural changes as welfare reform, the World Trade Organization, and NAFTA, the Clinton administration continued the country's rightward drift on economic if not social issues. In other words, it continued using the government to make rules that would redistribute income, wealth, and power towards the upper classes. (These are generally described somewhat inaccurately as "free-market" or "free-trade" policies.)"
Audit Roundout: Obamanomics
Ryan Chittum reviews for the Columbia Journalism Review what Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post look ahead to the economic change likely under an Obama administration
GOP in Dire Straits
Jonathan Martin writes for Politico.com: "Thumped convincingly in consecutive election cycles, the Republican Party now finds itself in its worst straits since the rise of the conservative coalition — a minority party without the White House, fewer seats in the House and Senate, only 21 governors and full control of just 14 state legislatures."
Shape of Chamber Hangs in Balance
Amy Goldstein writes for the Washington Post: "The final shape of the new Senate lingered in doubt yesterday with a runoff likely in Georgia, recounts pending in Minnesota and possibly Oregon, and uncertainty over whether the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history had held on to his Alaska seat barely a week after being convicted on corruption charges. "
Beyond Election Day
Bob Herbert writes in a op-ed for The New York Times: "Conservative commentators had a lot of fun mocking Barack Obama's use of the phrase, 'the fierce urgency of now.' Noting that it had originated with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Obama made it a cornerstone of his early campaign speeches. Conservatives kicked the phrase around like a soccer ball. 'The fierce urgency of now,' they would say, giggling. What does it mean? Well, if your house is on fire and your family is still inside, that's an example of the fierce urgency of now."
The Biggest Losers
Glen Thrush writes for Politico.com: "On the face of it, Tuesday’s winners seem obvious: Barack Obama, congressional Democrats, Big Labor, liberals. Yet the ultimate verdict on the victors will come not from a single night of election returns but from the actions the winners take to remedy the nation’s economic ills and extricate it from two long and costly wars."
On a Mission From God: Examining Sarah Palin's Ties to the Christian Right
Chip Berlet and Esther Kaplan write for In These Times: "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the star of the Christian Right’s 2008 Values Voter Summit in mid-September, even though she was a last minute no-show. The Republican vice presidential candidate’s name was tossed around frequently to euphoric applause at the event in Washington, D.C., while the few mentions of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) drew only polite claps."
Obama Must Get Tech and Media Oversight Right
Diane Mermigas writes for MediaPost: "As if the recession was not enough of a deterrent, more stringent regulatory reviews and restrictions expected with a Democratic administration will slow mergers, acquisitions and partnerships, which could be critical to some tech and media companies hoping to weather a prolonged recession. How draconian the regulations will become is anyone's guess. President-elect Barack Obama has said he would pursue a vigorous antitrust policy, singling out the media as a consolidation-prone industry that would require close regulatory scrutiny. Google and Yahoo radically revised their proposed search advertising alliance on election eve in a bid for regulatory approval before deal-averse Democrats storm Washington D.C."
Media Change We Can Believe In
Rory O'Conner writes on his blog that fewer than one in four Americans now have "a lot of confidence" in traditional news media. The new president will have a full plate of media issues to deal with. But the American people will have to focus on fixing some of our media problems ourselves.
Public Wins with White Spaces
Freepress reports that in a landslide vote at the FCC, the public was the big winner. The FCC voted to approve the unlicensed use of white spaces -- empty airwaves between television channels -- to provide high-speed Internet access nationwide.
FCC Expands Use of Airwaves
Cecilia Kang writes for the Washington Post that the FCC approved a plan that would allow airwaves called white spaces to be used by gadgets such as cellphones and laptops connected to the Internet once that spectrum becomes available after the national transition from analog to digital television in February.
Seymour Hersh: The Man Who Knows Too Much
Rachel Cooke writes in The Guardian UK: "He exposed the My Lai massacre, revealed Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia and has hounded Bush and Cheney over the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib ... No wonder the Republicans describe Seymour Hersh as 'the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.' Rachel Cooke meets the most-feared investigative reporter in Washington."
Pot Wins in a Landslide: A Thundering Rejection of America's Longest War
Rob Kampia reports for AlterNet that voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana.
The Food Crisis and Gender
Katherine Coon, Foreign Policy in Focus: "Statistics on the most recent global food crisis are well-known. In the three years leading up to June 2008, food prices rose 83 percent. There is little prospect of returning to the cheap food regimes that characterized the world prior to 2005 anytime in the foreseeable future. So far, the food crisis has pushed an estimated 75 million people into chronic hunger since 2005. Women and children, particularly girls, have been hardest hit by the food crisis."
Gay Marriage Ban Looks to Have Passed in California, but Is It Legal?
Karen Ocamb writes for AlterNet that lawyers and marriage equality proponents are calling Proposition 8 illegal, and they may have good legal ground to stand on.
Grow Up, Please: State BOE race a sample of gender, race immaturity
The Hutchinson Daily News writes: "When America grows up, it no longer will be necessary to ask if this country is ready to elect a black president, if we're capable of electing a woman as president or if a candidate's sexual orientation should prevent him or her from serving on the state Board of Education."
Polis becomes 3rd openly gay member of Congress: Musgrave falls to challenger; Dole also ousted
Amy Cavanaugh writes for the Washington Blade: "Despite a strong showing from Democrats in races across the country, Election Day results for gay and gay-friendly candidates were mixed. The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which endorsed 111 openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates, reported that 70 percent of its candidates had won their races."
OK Barack, Time to Hit the Ground Running
AlterNet asked dozens of writers, experts and activists on key issues to write about where the country needs to go, and the priorities for Barack Obama's early days in office. The following is the first in a series of articles we'll be running this week.
It's Morning Again in America
Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig.com writes: "It's time to gush! Later for the analysis of all the hard choices faced by our next president, Barack Obama, but for now, let's just thrill, unabashedly, to the sound of those words. Heck, both he and we deserve a honeymoon, at least for a few paragraphs of this column."
Barack Obama's Many Majorities
John Nichols writes for The Nation: "'If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,' wrote the poet Walt Whitman on the occasion of a distant election, "I'd name the still-small voice vibrating – America's choosing day." On this day after voting day, as Whitman's 'final ballot-shower from East to West' finishes, we are reminded once more that an American election, aggressively campaigned and well conducted, yields not the measure of men or parties, but of the country itself. Despite all the talk of spin, strategy, polls and personalities, an election ultimately tells us what America can conceive, what it is capable of, what indeed it demands."
After Four Decades, Finally: The Beginning of the End
Mark Weisbrot writes for commondreams.org: "But there is another sense in which this election will likely turn out to be historic. For nearly four decades this country has been moving to the right. Unfortunately we must include the Clinton years in this right-wing trajectory: with such major regressive structural changes as welfare reform, the World Trade Organization, and NAFTA, the Clinton administration continued the country's rightward drift on economic if not social issues. In other words, it continued using the government to make rules that would redistribute income, wealth, and power towards the upper classes. (These are generally described somewhat inaccurately as "free-market" or "free-trade" policies.)"
Audit Roundout: Obamanomics
Ryan Chittum reviews for the Columbia Journalism Review what Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post look ahead to the economic change likely under an Obama administration
GOP in Dire Straits
Jonathan Martin writes for Politico.com: "Thumped convincingly in consecutive election cycles, the Republican Party now finds itself in its worst straits since the rise of the conservative coalition — a minority party without the White House, fewer seats in the House and Senate, only 21 governors and full control of just 14 state legislatures."
Shape of Chamber Hangs in Balance
Amy Goldstein writes for the Washington Post: "The final shape of the new Senate lingered in doubt yesterday with a runoff likely in Georgia, recounts pending in Minnesota and possibly Oregon, and uncertainty over whether the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history had held on to his Alaska seat barely a week after being convicted on corruption charges. "
Beyond Election Day
Bob Herbert writes in a op-ed for The New York Times: "Conservative commentators had a lot of fun mocking Barack Obama's use of the phrase, 'the fierce urgency of now.' Noting that it had originated with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Obama made it a cornerstone of his early campaign speeches. Conservatives kicked the phrase around like a soccer ball. 'The fierce urgency of now,' they would say, giggling. What does it mean? Well, if your house is on fire and your family is still inside, that's an example of the fierce urgency of now."
The Biggest Losers
Glen Thrush writes for Politico.com: "On the face of it, Tuesday’s winners seem obvious: Barack Obama, congressional Democrats, Big Labor, liberals. Yet the ultimate verdict on the victors will come not from a single night of election returns but from the actions the winners take to remedy the nation’s economic ills and extricate it from two long and costly wars."
On a Mission From God: Examining Sarah Palin's Ties to the Christian Right
Chip Berlet and Esther Kaplan write for In These Times: "Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the star of the Christian Right’s 2008 Values Voter Summit in mid-September, even though she was a last minute no-show. The Republican vice presidential candidate’s name was tossed around frequently to euphoric applause at the event in Washington, D.C., while the few mentions of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) drew only polite claps."
Obama Must Get Tech and Media Oversight Right
Diane Mermigas writes for MediaPost: "As if the recession was not enough of a deterrent, more stringent regulatory reviews and restrictions expected with a Democratic administration will slow mergers, acquisitions and partnerships, which could be critical to some tech and media companies hoping to weather a prolonged recession. How draconian the regulations will become is anyone's guess. President-elect Barack Obama has said he would pursue a vigorous antitrust policy, singling out the media as a consolidation-prone industry that would require close regulatory scrutiny. Google and Yahoo radically revised their proposed search advertising alliance on election eve in a bid for regulatory approval before deal-averse Democrats storm Washington D.C."
Media Change We Can Believe In
Rory O'Conner writes on his blog that fewer than one in four Americans now have "a lot of confidence" in traditional news media. The new president will have a full plate of media issues to deal with. But the American people will have to focus on fixing some of our media problems ourselves.
Public Wins with White Spaces
Freepress reports that in a landslide vote at the FCC, the public was the big winner. The FCC voted to approve the unlicensed use of white spaces -- empty airwaves between television channels -- to provide high-speed Internet access nationwide.
FCC Expands Use of Airwaves
Cecilia Kang writes for the Washington Post that the FCC approved a plan that would allow airwaves called white spaces to be used by gadgets such as cellphones and laptops connected to the Internet once that spectrum becomes available after the national transition from analog to digital television in February.
Seymour Hersh: The Man Who Knows Too Much
Rachel Cooke writes in The Guardian UK: "He exposed the My Lai massacre, revealed Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia and has hounded Bush and Cheney over the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib ... No wonder the Republicans describe Seymour Hersh as 'the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.' Rachel Cooke meets the most-feared investigative reporter in Washington."
Pot Wins in a Landslide: A Thundering Rejection of America's Longest War
Rob Kampia reports for AlterNet that voters dealt what may be a fatal blow to America's longest-running and least-discussed war -- the war on marijuana.
The Food Crisis and Gender
Katherine Coon, Foreign Policy in Focus: "Statistics on the most recent global food crisis are well-known. In the three years leading up to June 2008, food prices rose 83 percent. There is little prospect of returning to the cheap food regimes that characterized the world prior to 2005 anytime in the foreseeable future. So far, the food crisis has pushed an estimated 75 million people into chronic hunger since 2005. Women and children, particularly girls, have been hardest hit by the food crisis."
Gay Marriage Ban Looks to Have Passed in California, but Is It Legal?
Karen Ocamb writes for AlterNet that lawyers and marriage equality proponents are calling Proposition 8 illegal, and they may have good legal ground to stand on.
Grow Up, Please: State BOE race a sample of gender, race immaturity
The Hutchinson Daily News writes: "When America grows up, it no longer will be necessary to ask if this country is ready to elect a black president, if we're capable of electing a woman as president or if a candidate's sexual orientation should prevent him or her from serving on the state Board of Education."
Polis becomes 3rd openly gay member of Congress: Musgrave falls to challenger; Dole also ousted
Amy Cavanaugh writes for the Washington Blade: "Despite a strong showing from Democrats in races across the country, Election Day results for gay and gay-friendly candidates were mixed. The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which endorsed 111 openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender candidates, reported that 70 percent of its candidates had won their races."
03 November 2008
Clippings for 3 November 2008
Click on titles to read complete articles.
Paulson's Swindle Revealed
William Greider writes for The Nation: "The swindle of American taxpayers is proceeding more or less in broad daylight, as the unwitting voters are preoccupied with the national election. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson agreed to invest $125 billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for Goldman Sachs, his old firm. But, if you look more closely at Paulson's transaction, the taxpayers were taken for a ride - a very expensive ride. They paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor could purchase for $62.5 billion. That means half of the public's money was a straight-out gift to Wall Street, for which taxpayers got nothing in return."
McCain First, Second, and Always
Sahil Mahtani writes for The New Republic: "One day in early March 1986, John McCain, an Arizona congressman, sat down to write a letter. McCain had heard that a long-time friend and donor, Charles Keating, was upset for being listed as a member of McCain's campaign finance committee when a more prominent position would seem more appropriate. So McCain apologized. Needlessly it turned out, for 'Charlie,' as he signed his letter, would reply a few days later: 'John, don't be silly. You can call me anything ... I'm yours until death do us part.'"
Christopher Renner is (gasp!) Gay
The Salina Journal writes is a biting editorial: "A couple of supporters of Kathy Martin want to make sure you know that Christopher Renner is gay. Renner, Manhattan, a Democrat, is running against incumbent Martin, Republican, Clay Center, for her position as 6th District representative on the State Board of Education."
The Sounds of Voting
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write for Truthout: "Our Manhattan offices are in a building that also houses the New York City Board of Elections. So this is the season when we hear above our heads the sounds of heavy objects rolling across the floor into freight elevators. The moving men have arrived - and what they're transporting are voting machines being carted off to polling places."
Thanks to Sarah Palin, We Get to See the Cruelness of the GOP as It Really Is
Larry Beinhart writes for Alternet.com that Palin has helped reveal to the public pit-bull snarl that rouses GOP supporters to cry out, "Traitor!" against Obama, and "Kill him!"
Reversal of Fortune
Joseph E. Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair: "When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come."
The Ambition Condition: Women, Writing, and the Problem of Success
Anna Clark writes for Bitch Magazine: "Perhaps you know about Emily Gould's cover story, 'Exposed,' in The New York Times Magazine last May. Even if you didn't take in all 8,002 words on the former Gawker editor's gains and losses from blogging about her personal life, it would be hard to miss the criticism of the piece elsewhere. From The Huffington Post to the Philadelphia Weekly to an untold number of blogs and listservs, the backlash challenged the magazine for peddling narcissistic Dear-Diary diatribes as a worthy journalistic cover story."
Bush Administration Makes a Last Push to Deregulate
R. Jeffrey Smith reports for The Washington Post: "The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January."
Expanding War, Contracting Meaning: The Next President and the Global War on Terror
Andrew J. Bacevich writes for TomDispatch.com: "A week ago, I had a long conversation with a four-star US military officer who, until his recent retirement, had played a central role in directing the global war on terror. I asked him: What exactly is the strategy that guides the Bush administration's conduct of this war? His dismaying, if not exactly surprising, answer: There is none."
Homeland Security Pays Dividends for Alaska
G.W. Schulz of the Center for Investigative Reporting reports: "Despite its go-it-alone spirit, sparsely populated Alaska is one of the greatest per-capita beneficiaries of federal funding among the 50 states. A major portion of those U.S. taxpayer dollars in recent years has come from large infusions of homeland security grants and appropriations handed out to the state since the 9/11 attacks. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, where she was mayor from 1996 to 2002, has benefited immensely from the anti-terrorism bonanza. Wasilla, with a population of 7,028, has acquired a surveillance system for its water wells, a 150-foot-tall communications tower that altered the city’s landscape, a half-million-dollar mobile command vehicle with off-road capabilities and more."
Hell to Pay
Elliot Cohen writes for Truthdig.com: "Sen. John McCain’s ideological ties to the Bush-Cheney administration have mostly passed beneath the radar of the mainstream media, but if McCain loses the presidential race to Barack Obama, his neoconservative legacy could erupt into the open with a force that should not be underestimated."
Bella Abzug: In Hard Times, Look to the Legacy of the Brilliant Feisty Bella, Not the Poser Sarah Palin
Dan Hazen writes for AlterNet.com: "In this political moment when Sarah Palin is the new conservative female leader archetype, the image and record of Bella Abzug stands out in profound contrast. Abzug was a one of a kind -- a brilliant, charismatic, caring, impossible, incorrigible, relentless leader, who made an indelible mark in politics in her colorful career as a lawyer, Congresswoman, and leader of myriad causes."
Paulson's Swindle Revealed
William Greider writes for The Nation: "The swindle of American taxpayers is proceeding more or less in broad daylight, as the unwitting voters are preoccupied with the national election. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson agreed to invest $125 billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for Goldman Sachs, his old firm. But, if you look more closely at Paulson's transaction, the taxpayers were taken for a ride - a very expensive ride. They paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor could purchase for $62.5 billion. That means half of the public's money was a straight-out gift to Wall Street, for which taxpayers got nothing in return."
McCain First, Second, and Always
Sahil Mahtani writes for The New Republic: "One day in early March 1986, John McCain, an Arizona congressman, sat down to write a letter. McCain had heard that a long-time friend and donor, Charles Keating, was upset for being listed as a member of McCain's campaign finance committee when a more prominent position would seem more appropriate. So McCain apologized. Needlessly it turned out, for 'Charlie,' as he signed his letter, would reply a few days later: 'John, don't be silly. You can call me anything ... I'm yours until death do us part.'"
Christopher Renner is (gasp!) Gay
The Salina Journal writes is a biting editorial: "A couple of supporters of Kathy Martin want to make sure you know that Christopher Renner is gay. Renner, Manhattan, a Democrat, is running against incumbent Martin, Republican, Clay Center, for her position as 6th District representative on the State Board of Education."
The Sounds of Voting
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship write for Truthout: "Our Manhattan offices are in a building that also houses the New York City Board of Elections. So this is the season when we hear above our heads the sounds of heavy objects rolling across the floor into freight elevators. The moving men have arrived - and what they're transporting are voting machines being carted off to polling places."
Thanks to Sarah Palin, We Get to See the Cruelness of the GOP as It Really Is
Larry Beinhart writes for Alternet.com that Palin has helped reveal to the public pit-bull snarl that rouses GOP supporters to cry out, "Traitor!" against Obama, and "Kill him!"
Reversal of Fortune
Joseph E. Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair: "When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped (longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come."
The Ambition Condition: Women, Writing, and the Problem of Success
Anna Clark writes for Bitch Magazine: "Perhaps you know about Emily Gould's cover story, 'Exposed,' in The New York Times Magazine last May. Even if you didn't take in all 8,002 words on the former Gawker editor's gains and losses from blogging about her personal life, it would be hard to miss the criticism of the piece elsewhere. From The Huffington Post to the Philadelphia Weekly to an untold number of blogs and listservs, the backlash challenged the magazine for peddling narcissistic Dear-Diary diatribes as a worthy journalistic cover story."
Bush Administration Makes a Last Push to Deregulate
R. Jeffrey Smith reports for The Washington Post: "The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January."
Expanding War, Contracting Meaning: The Next President and the Global War on Terror
Andrew J. Bacevich writes for TomDispatch.com: "A week ago, I had a long conversation with a four-star US military officer who, until his recent retirement, had played a central role in directing the global war on terror. I asked him: What exactly is the strategy that guides the Bush administration's conduct of this war? His dismaying, if not exactly surprising, answer: There is none."
Homeland Security Pays Dividends for Alaska
G.W. Schulz of the Center for Investigative Reporting reports: "Despite its go-it-alone spirit, sparsely populated Alaska is one of the greatest per-capita beneficiaries of federal funding among the 50 states. A major portion of those U.S. taxpayer dollars in recent years has come from large infusions of homeland security grants and appropriations handed out to the state since the 9/11 attacks. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, where she was mayor from 1996 to 2002, has benefited immensely from the anti-terrorism bonanza. Wasilla, with a population of 7,028, has acquired a surveillance system for its water wells, a 150-foot-tall communications tower that altered the city’s landscape, a half-million-dollar mobile command vehicle with off-road capabilities and more."
Hell to Pay
Elliot Cohen writes for Truthdig.com: "Sen. John McCain’s ideological ties to the Bush-Cheney administration have mostly passed beneath the radar of the mainstream media, but if McCain loses the presidential race to Barack Obama, his neoconservative legacy could erupt into the open with a force that should not be underestimated."
Bella Abzug: In Hard Times, Look to the Legacy of the Brilliant Feisty Bella, Not the Poser Sarah Palin
Dan Hazen writes for AlterNet.com: "In this political moment when Sarah Palin is the new conservative female leader archetype, the image and record of Bella Abzug stands out in profound contrast. Abzug was a one of a kind -- a brilliant, charismatic, caring, impossible, incorrigible, relentless leader, who made an indelible mark in politics in her colorful career as a lawyer, Congresswoman, and leader of myriad causes."
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