What Every Kansan Needs to Know about Kris Kobach

The Republican's nominee for the job of Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, is a well know nativist extremist who makes a living by drafting anti-immigrant laws and, after they are adopted, trains officers to enforce them. If the laws are challenged, he goes to court to defend them. Quite the racket since the laws are always rule unconstitutional and in the mean time he lines his pockets with tax-payer dollars from the legal fees he racks up.

Immigration lawyer Angie Williams and UMKC law student Raymond Rico join us for a frank discussion of Kobach and his anti-immigrant crusade.

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Clippings for 29 July 2010

Recommended Audio: Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' Speech

Rotten Eggs and Our Broken Democracy
Amy Goodman writes for Truthdig.com: "What do a half-billion eggs have to do with democracy? The massive recall of salmonella-infected eggs, the largest egg recall in U.S. history, opens a window on the power of large corporations over not only our health, but over our government. While scores of brands have been recalled, they all can be traced back to just two egg farms. Our food supply is increasingly in the hands of larger and larger companies, which wield enormous power in our political process. As with the food industry, so, too, is it with oil and with banks: Giant corporations, some with budgets larger than most nations, are controlling our health, our environment, our economy and increasingly, our elections."

Reagan Insider: 'GOP Destroyed U.S. Economy'

David Stockman

Paul B. Farrel writes for MarketWatch.com: "'How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.' Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, Four Deformations of the Apocalypse. Get it? Not 'destroying.' The GOP has already 'destroyed' the U.S. economy, setting up an 'American Apocalypse.' Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider -- someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology -- says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics 'holy war' is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish."

Banks' Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis
Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger report for ProPublica: "Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history. ... Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses: They created fake demand."

They Go or Obama Goes

Robert Scheer writes for Truthdig.com: "Barack Obama and the Democrats he led to a stunning victory two years ago are going down hard in the face of an economic crisis that he did nothing to create but which he has failed to solve. That is somewhat unfair because the basic blame belongs to his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who let the bulls of Wall Street run wild in the streets where ordinary folks lived. And there was universal Republican support in Congress for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that produced this debacle." Photo: White House / Pete Souza - President Barack Obama, in background, talks on the phone in the Oval Office earlier this month as National Economic Council Director Larry Summers listens in.

Speculation and the New Commodity Price Crisis: Separating the Wheat From the Chaff
Steve Suppan provides the following news analysis for TripleCrisis.com: "Wheat prices had been climbing prior to the August 5 announcement of a Russian wheat export ban. Kansas Board of Trade wheat futures contracts had gone from $4.92 a bushel on June 10 to spike at $7.95 a bushel on August 5, prompting a reporter to ask, 'How could a Russian drought in the age of instant information escape the world's notice until the country's wheat crop was devastated?' This excellent question does not yet have a clear answer."

Treasury Admits: Program for Struggling Homeowners Just a Ploy to Enrich Big Banks

Zach Carter reports for AlterNet: "The Treasury Department's plan to help struggling homeowners has been failing miserably for months. The program is poorly designed, has been poorly implemented and only a tiny percentage of borrowers eligible for help have actually received any meaningful assistance. The initiative lowers monthly payments for borrowers, but fails to reduce their overall debt burden, often increasing that burden, funneling money to banks that borrowers could have saved by simply renting a different home."

Let's Be Honest about Taxes
Ruth Marcus writes for Trughtdig.com: "I was pretty tough on House Minority Leader John Boehner the other day, and I don’t regret a word, but the Ohio Republican made one important suggestion that’s worth highlighting. It’s about the obscure-sounding but increasingly costly subject of tax expenditures."

Hawks Box in Obama on Afghan War
Ray McGovern comments for Consortium News: "Just back from Afghanistan, Marine Commandant, Gen. James Conway held a news conference to add his voice to the Pentagon campaign to disparage the July 2011 date President Barack Obama set for U.S. troops to begin leaving Afghanistan."

50,000 Soldiers, 1 Million Pieces of Equipment, and $3 Trillion: A photographic tally of what America is really leaving behind in Iraq.

Adam Weinstein writes for Mother Jones: "Seven and a half years after the invasion of Iraq, the last American "combat brigade" picked up stakes and left the country in mid-August. Come September 1, Operation Iraqi Freedom will just be another campaign for the history books. In its place: Operation New Dawn. Time to break out the "Mission Accomplished" banner! Not so fast. The United States is keeping nearly 50,000 troops in Iraq—the fewest since the war started in March 2003, but still enough to fill a stadium. What else are we leaving behind? It's more than just Humvees and huge bases. Here's a photographic tally of the human, financial, and political impacts being left in our wake in Iraq." Photo: US Marine Corps photo by Corporal Bobbie A. Harris / Creative Commons

10 Needed Steps for Obama to Start Dismantling America's Gigantic, Destructive Military Empire
Chalmers Johnson writes (via AlterNet): "However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union."

E-Verify vs. a National ID

Kevin Drumm writes for Mother Jones: "MoJo's Suzy Khimm, on sabbatical over at Ezra Klein's place, has a post today that sets out the current state of play on E-Verify, an electronic system designed to prevent employers from hiring illegal aliens. The good news is that the system has gotten better over time: the initial error rate for authorized workers is now only 0.8%, and that error rate drops very close to zero when results are contested. Error rates for foreign-born workers were a bit higher, but this has also improved considerably over the past couple of years. (The full report is here.) Photo: Mother Jones

Are Arizona's Political Leaders Deliberately Blocking Electronic Voting Machine Transparency?
Denis G. Campbell provides the following news analysis for Truthout: "Why did Arizona's two main gubernatorial candidates, Gov. Jan Brewer, former secretary of state/head of elections, who contracted for highly criticized and easily-hacked Diebold and Sequoia ballot scanning systems, and Attorney General (AG) Terry Goddard, with his three-year 'criminal investigation' into a 2006 Pima County (Tucson) local election allegedly hacked, according to a whistleblower, do everything in their power for years to stifle polling accountability while expensively fighting enforcement of Arizona's election laws?"

Why I Teach: Catching Kids Before They Sink

Laura Sofen writes for Teaching Tolerance: "I used to be a bad girl. I was self-destructive, angry and fearless. These traits, coupled with a decent amount of intelligence, took me to all the places bad girls go. For many years, I bounced from bad decisions to bad jobs to bad relationships. My life was a mess for a long time, and all I knew how to do was make it worse. I couldn’t talk to my mother, my father wasn’t around, and my friends were either victims of their own circumstances or they were busy creating better lives for themselves. I was alone for a long time, and it felt like I would drown forever."

MUST READ: Questions About the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’
Factcheck.org provides answers and facts about the proposed cultural center and mosque near New York’s former World Trade Center.

Near Ground Zero, a Shameful Intolerance

Paul Krugman writes for Truthout: "The biggest problem dogging American politics and media isn’t a deficiency of expertise or a lack of good intentions. It’s a lack of courage. But there is courage out there — and it should be honored. Kudos should go to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who amid fierce criticism publicly defended Muslims who were looking to build a community center in lower Manhattan. Also to Fareed Zakaria, the Newsweek columnist and CNN host, for making a case for tolerance by returning an award given to him five years ago by the Anti-Defamation League. He did so after the Jewish organization released a statement on July 30 maintaining that the planned Islamic center, which includes a mosque, should be relocated because it is too close to the site of the World Trade Center." Photo: David Shankbone

Alan Simpson, Senator Guttermouth, Spews Again
William Greider writes for The Nation: "Retired Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, who inherited a soft-cushion career in politics from his father, is a garrulous old crank who at 79 seems desperate for attention. Simpson likes to pop off provocatively. He cannot resist mocking lesser mortals like Social Security recipients with mean-spirited ridicule. Simpson is an always quotable darling of Washington reporters, who mistake his nastiness for straight talk, who are too lazy to check out his ugly distortions."

Covert Operations: The Billionaire Koch Brothers' War Against Obama
Jane Mayer writes for the New Yorker: "Members of the John Birch Society developed an interest in a school of Austrian economists who promoted free-market ideals. Charles and David Koch were particularly influenced by the work of Friedrich von Hayek, the author of “The Road to Serfdom” (1944), which argued that centralized government planning led, inexorably, to totalitarianism. Hayek’s belief in unfettered capitalism has proved inspirational to many conservatives, and to anti-Soviet dissidents; lately, Tea Party supporters have championed his work. In June, the talk-radio host Glenn Beck, who has supported the Tea Party rebellion, promoted “The Road to Serfdom” on his show; the paperback soon became a No. 1 best-seller on Amazon. (Beck appears to be a fan of the Kochs; in the midst of a recent on-air parody of Al Gore, Beck said, without explanation, “I want to thank Charles Koch for this information.” Beck declined to elaborate on the relationship.)"

In Ken We Trust: Why do Ken Cuccinelli's legal opinions always match his personal ambitions?
Dahlia Lithwick writes for Slate: "It must be Wednesday, because Virginia's hyperactive attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, is back in the news. Of course, he was also in the news on Tuesday, on Monday, and last Friday. Religious displays on public land, abortion, immigration, climate change. Is there a single issue from the culture wars over which Cuccinelli hasn't picked a fight? But that's one of the perils of treating one's elected office like a Fox News show: If Cuccinelli isn't launching five national ideological battles per week, his ratings might slip. And so ever onward he trudges, devoting his every working day to treating the commonwealth like it's the Lord's Disneyland.

Recommended Audio: Glenn Beck is Not Martin Luther King Jr.

Robert Greenwald Discuss Glenn Beck’s August 28th Rally on the Ed Schultz Show


What's Glenn Beck Afraid of?

Stephanie Mencimer writes for Mother Jones: "For a guy who loves chalkboards and slogans, Glenn Beck has issued a peculiar edict to potential attendees of his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial being held this Saturday. He has repeatedly told people coming to DC not to bring political signs. What? No signs? The hallmark of the last year's worth of tea party rallies that he helped fuel? But it's true. In an info packet on his website about the rally, Beck instructs, 'Please refrain from bringing signs (political or otherwise) as they may deter from the peaceful message we are bringing to Washington.'" Photo: Truthout

Could This Be A Crime? U.S. Climate Bill Is Dead While So Much Life On Our Earth Continues To Perish
Subhankar Banerjee, Climate StoryTellers: "Consider for a moment the top two carbon sinks of our planet. Oceans absorb more than 25 percent of the CO2 humans put in the air, and forests absorb almost the same amount. By doing so, our forests and oceans together make living possible on this earth for life as we know it now. All of that is changing rapidly and for the worse."

Factory Farms Make You Sick. Let's Count the Ways.

Russell Mokhiber reports for Corporate Crime Reporter: "Factory farms makes you sick. Let us count the ways. Just last week, more than half a billion eggs recalled. Why? Salmonella poisoning. More than 1,300 people sick. Just last week, a recall of more than 380,000 pounds of deli meat products distributed nationwide to Wal-Mart stores. Why? Possible contamination with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. The bacteria can cause listeriosis – a rare but potentially deadly disease. Move over Animal Farm."

Why Is Obama Siding with Polluters?
Kate Sheppard reports for Mother Jones: "The Obama administration has repeatedly vowed that tackling climate change is among its top priorities. But in a landmark legal case that could force the nation's dirtiest power plants to clean up their acts, the administration this week sided with some of the biggest polluters in the country. This latest development has left a number of environmental advocates wondering whose side the White House is really on when it comes to global warming."

Surprise Surprise! Latest GOPer to Come Out of the Closet Fought Hard Against Gay Rights

Blogger Booman writes on Booman Tribune (via AlterNet): "There is not a single black or openly gay Republican in Congress or in any of the 50 governor’s mansions around the country. Conservatives do not like black people and they actively legislate against gay people. The contempt from the left is for people who are willing to trade their dignity and rights for a paycheck. It’s a strange kind of bigotry that expects people to hold a belief system that isn’t hateful towards themselves."

Facebook Now Believes It Owns the English Language, Too
Tom Scocca writes for Slate: "Facebook, the data-mining and junk-software-marketing Internet behemoth, is suing a startup in Northbrook, Illinois, because the new company plans to use '-book' in its name, according to a Tribune report. The startup, Teachbook.com, is meant to help teachers 'share lesson plans and other resources,' and has 'fewer than 20 users signed up.'"

Verizon: Please, Only We Can Lie About Network Neutrality

Karl Bode writes for DLSReports.com: "We've explored how the Goorizon alliance is the regulatory equivalent of a bobble-head doll: cute and stuffed largely with air, but primarily designed to pre-empt tougher consumer protections. Worse perhaps, Google and Verizon's defense of their proposal has been one distortion after another, the companies insisting the weak-kneed framework is solely about empowering the consumer, and has nothing to do with keeping wireless consumer protections away from their tablet/smartphone Android partnership." Photo: DoomDaily.com

Net Neutrality argument Names the Wrong Villain
The Boston Globe writes in an editorial: "IN HIS Aug. 21 response to your editorial “After Google-Verizon fizzle, FCC should force Net neutrality,’’ Phil Kerpen, a vice president with Americans for Prosperity (Orwell would be proud) would have us believe that the threat of government censorship is reason enough to keep the Internet “unregulated’’ (“FCC should not upend decade of sound Net policy,’’ Letters). Issuing dire predictions of an Internet controlled by the government is a transparent attempt to harness the current mood of the nation. The argument, however, names the wrong villain."

In Minnesota, Hundreds Urge FCC to Protect Net Neutrality
Jenn Ettinger reports for SavetheInternet.com: "It was standing room only at South High in Minneapolis on Thursday night as more than 750 people turned out to show their support for Net Neutrality and free speech online. FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn listened to hours of impassioned public testimony about the future of the Internet."

Franken Goes Ballistic on Verizon, Google, Comcast, and NBCU

Matthew Lasar writes for Ars Technica: "'I believe that net neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our time,' declared Democratic Senator Al Franken at Thursday's public hearing on the Internet, held in his home state of Minnesota. 'Unless it's freedom of religion,' he added, 'which, until last week, I thought we had kind of worked out.' The audience at Minneapolis' South High School cracked up over Franken's reference to the Ground Zero Mosque slugfest. But this was a warm-up rally for their own cause—getting the Federal Communications Commission to pass rules that would partially reclassify ISPs as common carriers and apply various neutrality provision to their activities. Two Democratic members of the FCC also attended the event: Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn." Photo: Ars Technica

Chris Biggs on the Secretary of State Campaign

Following this week's Media Minutes, Secretary of State Chris Biggs joins us in the KSDB studio to discuss the Secretary's job, key issues in this year's election campaign - from voter fraud to immigration - and his criticism of candidates who want to use the office for their own political agendas. Visit Bigg's campaign webpage.

MP3 File

Clippings for 1 March 2009

A New, Ambitious Course of Action
Michael Ettlinger writes for the Center for American Progress: "The budget blueprint released by President Obama today is a positive shock to the system. First, it stands apart for its integrity. It lays it all out there: the size of the deficit, the cost of the war, the cost of tax reductions, the details of tax increases, the state of the economy. It’s all there for everyone to see without deceit. It’s sad that such honesty is novel, but it is, and it’s welcome."

James Galbraith: Obama Isn't Doing Enough to Solve the Financial Crisis
Nick Baumann writes for Mother Jones: "The financial crisis is even worse than people think (and people already think it's pretty bad), and we aren't doing enough to stop it, economist and Mother Jones contributor James K. Galbraith told the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday morning."

Obama's War with the Right (& Media)
Robert Parry writes for Consortium News: "Though Obama lays the bulk of what he calls 'a legacy of mismanagement and misplaced priorities' at the feet of the Bush administration, there is no mistaking his larger message - that the problems which were 'exacerbated' by Bush's tax cuts and other pro-rich policies have been building since Reagan's 1981 inaugural declaration that 'government is the problem.' Obama even made a glancing reference to that formulation in his preamble to the budget message. 'We need to put tired ideologies aside, and ask not whether our government is too big or too small, or whether it is the problem or the solution, but whether it is working for the American people,' Obama said."

The GOP's Anti-Obama Propaganda
Robert Parry writes for Consortium News: "The official history of what happened during Bill Clinton's difficult first two years - which ended in a sweeping Republican congressional victory in 1994 - focuses on the GOP's united resistance to his economic plan and Hillary Clinton's failed health care reform. But there was a darker side to the political damage inflicted on the early Clinton administration."

Doomed to Repeat History in Afghanistan?
Joe Galloway comments for McClatchy Newspapers: "If the new American team has some new ideas about how to succeed in Afghanistan, now would be the time to lay them out. Nothing that Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria or Leonid Brezhnev tried in their attempts to subdue the quarrelsome Afghan tribes worked, and nothing we've tried in the last eight years has, either. While we're waiting for a new strategy, perhaps we should break out some old Kipling: 'When wounded and left on Afghanistan's plain.' 'And the women come out to cut up your remains ....' Etc., etc."

Bill Redux?
Marie Cocco writes for Truthdig.com: " For someone who spent much of the Democratic primary season running against the Clinton era, Barack Obama sounds an awful lot like Bill Clinton. Obama is unfortunate in the deeper problems he has inherited, but much more fortunate in working with a more united—and more liberal—Democratic Congress than did Clinton, who took office with his party still uncertain of its direction after losing three consecutive presidential elections to Republicans. But their first State of the Union-style speeches to Congress were remarkably alike. "

The So-Called Sebelius Fight
Saturn Smith writes on the Open Salon blog: "The nomination of Kathleen Sebelius to Health and Human Services seems pretty official -- the New York Times reports she's accepted the nomination, and though it's sourced anonymously, it's supported by the head of the Democratic Governor's Association sending out congratulations (and by Claire McCaskill tweeting about it? OK, probably not a real confidence builder)."

Health Care Reform Is Needed Now More Than Ever
Mark Weisbrot writes for Truthout: "With the US economy's downward spiral still accelerating and the federal government looking at its largest budget deficits since World War II, some are saying that this is not the time to expand health care coverage to all Americans. But this is exactly the time for the Obama administration to move boldly on its campaign promise to implement a universal health care system. Obama wants spending that stimulates the economy in the short term, but he also wants to reduce the long-term deficit problem after the economy recovers. This is exactly what health care reform will do."

Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism
Tim Wise writes for Counter Punch: "It was all too predictable that Attorney General Eric Holder would be attacked for his recent remarks about race in America. To suggest that the nation is still haunted by the specter of racism is unacceptable it seems, especially since, with the election of President Obama, we have ostensibly entered the 'post-racial' era."

Iraq's Queer Underground Railroad
Peter Tatchell reports for the Guardian UK: "Dozens of LGBT Iraqis whose lives are at risk from death squads have been helped by a secret network of safe houses in Baghdad and other cities similar to the Underground Railroad that helped lead slaves to their freedom in the U.S. in the 19th century, according to human-rights activist Peter Tatchell. The clandestine network works to spirit the Iraqi gays to safety in other countries. 'This heroic work is not without its risks and sacrifices,' Tatchell writes. 'Many of the underground activists have been assassinated, in a series of grisly homophobic and transphobic murders.'"

After the GreenEconomy, Green Security
Chip Ward writes for TomDispatch.com: "Common to sudden catastrophes is the shock of finding the world upside down. The water is suddenly on top instead of under; the rumbling earth swallows houses and spits out lava; the mud wall slides down from above; the flames roar up; the wind spins; the tower topples. In an instant, everything is broken and nothing works. What you relied upon is gone."

Food Crisis - The Facts
New Internationalist magazine provides data that show the increase in global food prices may have temporarily stalled but food is expected to remain at record price levels for the foreseeable future. Industrial agriculture’s chickens have come home to roost. But the price is being paid not by agribusiness and food retailers but by small farmers whose income remains low, and by the millions being pushed into malnutrition.

The GOP's Misguided Energy
Jonathan Sten writes for MotherJones: "House Democrats wanted to talk energy efficiency. Their GOP colleagues had other things in mind. As Rep. Henry Waxman's energy and commerce committee begins to forge comprehensive climate change legislation, a preliminary hearing on Tuesday foreshadowed what is likely to be a torturous process due in part to Republican distractions."

Call for Mass Civil Disobedience against Coal
Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry write for YES!: " There are moments in a nation's-and a planet's-history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.:

George Will, Washington Post Traders to Humanity
Paul Rosenberg writes for Open Left: "George Will, "Dark Green Doomsayers", Feb 15: "according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade"

U.N. World Meteorological Organization, "WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 2007" (pdf), p4: "January 2007 was the warmest January since global surface records were instituted."

I'll say one thing for George Will: at least the guy believes in recycling--when it comes to global warming lies, that is. Because that's his entire shtick in his most recent columns on the subject, "Dark Green Doomsayers" (Feb 15) and "Climate Science in A Tornado" (Feb 27), both of which have been widely and thoroughly debunked, perhaps most succinctly here at the Wonk Room, which also takes note of the Post's Fred Hiatt's dishonest defense of Will's lies as 'inferences.' (Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, provides the lowdown on the Post Ombudsman Andy Alexander's shameful performance here.)

Bad Ballots in Florida Doubled in 2008
United Press International reports: "Election officials in Florida say they found twice as many ballots were rejected as invalid in 2008 as in 2004. After switching nearly all voting to paper ballots and optical scanners for the 2008 election, officials said the rejection rate of 0.75 percent was considerably lower than in 2000, when it was 2.9 percent, The New York Times reported Thursday."

Recommended Audio: Onion News Network - Are Video Games Adequately Preparing Children for the Apocalypse? (Humor)

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

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 ..."

Clippings for September 17

Click on titles to read complete articles.

Palin: The Opposite of Progress
Cynthia Boaz writes for Truthout: "Is it possible that voters have, once again, been duped by the Rovian rhetoric machine? Are we really as gullible as the GOP seems to think? Apparently so."

Gas Underlies the Bolivian Crisis (English translation)
Laurent Tourneux writes for the French paper Liberation: "Between the energy interests of some and others' opposition to the 'Yankee' enemy, Bolivia enjoys the 'unanimous' support of Latin American countries." For original French click here.

Is the U.S. Losing Its Edge in Tech
Arik Hesseldahl writes in Business Week that the United States still has the world's most competitive information technology industry, but its lead is slipping, according to a new study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit for the Business Software Alliance.

Will the Media Show Real Spine?
Edward Wasserman writes for the Miami Hearld that since the nominating conventions, we've entered a period of casual smears that have only the remotest bearing on the problems the electorate faces. And the news media, instead of acting as proxies for the public, have become enablers of a discourse that seems destined to grow evermore destructive.

Evaluating the Security of Electronic Voting Systems: Are Your Votes Really Counted?
The the Security Group of Univ. Calif. at Santa Barbara made a movie that shows how the virus-like attack would be carried out, and exemplifies the different scenarios that our malicious firmware would exploit.

The video shows how one can use a simple USB key to infect the laptop used to prepare the cards that initialize the various voting devices. As a result, the cards are loaded with a malicious software component.

Later, when the terminal is used by the voters to cast their votes, the firmware uses a number of different techniques to modify the contents of the ballots being cast.

The movie also shows that the physical security measures being used to limit access to essential parts of the voting systems are ineffective.

Part 1.



Part 2


The Corporate Control of Water Takes an Unexpected Twist
Jon Keesecker writes for Alternet: "During an otherwise unexceptional State of the City address in February 2008, Mayor Donald Plusquellic put before the residents of Akron, Ohio, a proposal to sell the city's sewer system. The still-nascent plan, news even to some in the mayor's administration, involved handing over the city's system to a private company in return to for a roughly $200 million fee."