Archive
Mark Leier – Historical Snapshots North of the Border
Worse Than War | Full-length documentary | PBS
The evolution of propaganda and public relations in the United States
Talk – Sweatshops and the Global Economy
ProPublica – NY Assembly Approves Hydraulic Fracturing Moratorium
From ProPublica:
NY Assembly Approves Hydraulic Fracturing Moratorium
by Marie C. Baca
The New York state legislature gave its final approval to a bill that would, if signed by the governor, place a hold on new fracking until May 2011.
Full coverage: Gas Drilling’s Environmental Threat
CBPP: An Examination of the Rivlin-Domenici Deficit Reduction Plan
From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
By James R. Horney, Paul N. Van de Water and Robert Greenstein
“[The Rivlin-Domenici plan] marks a distinct improvement over Bowles-Simpson in five of the six key areas that the Center identified as especially problematic in Bowles-Simpson…. Unfortunately, in the remaining key area — health care — the Rivlin-Domenici provisions are actually more problematic than those in Bowles-Simpson. Both plans include proposals that could impair access to adequate health care for millions of lower-income and elderly people who rely on Medicare or Medicaid, or who will become eligible for premium subsidies under the health reform law.”
View the full report:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3333
http://www.cbpp.org/files/11-30-10bud.pdf 8pp.
Sen. Franken’s Floor Statement on the Importance of the New START treaty
Cholera’s Insidious March Across Haiti
Mosaic News – 11/29/10: World News From The Middle East
“We Have Not Seen Anything Yet,” Guardian Editor Says Most Startling WikiLeaks Cables To Be Released
Noam Chomsky: Illegal but Legitimate: a Dubious Doctrine for the Times
Noam Chomsky: Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours
Noam Chomsky: The Unipolar Moment and the Culture of Imperialism.
Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal ‘Profound Hatred for Democracy’ by U.S. Govt Officials
Gerald Celente on WikiLeaks – Cablegate
The Progress Report – Unemployed and Unnoticed
From The Progress Report:
Today, Congress sets a new record; in the last 40 years, it has never allowed extended unemployment benefits to expire when the unemployment rate was above 7.2 percent. But today, in an economy that faces a 9.6 percent unemployment rate, Congress will let the benefits expire and force 2.5 million Americans to lose their benefits in the midst of the holiday season. As the New York Times notes, such a “lack of regard for working Americans is shocking,” especially when juxtaposed with decades of bipartisan support for similar measures. But, in their pitch to obstruct any legislative progress, the Republicans of the 111th Congress have waged a two-year, all-out war against extending benefits, regardless of who it may hurt. The GOP’s chief defense of its position is the $12.5 billion cost of a three-month extension, or $60 billion for a full year. Such feigned concern for the deficit is made all the more deceptive when considering the same Republicans are simultaneously demanding that Congress extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. And, while these tax cuts for the rich provide very little economic stimulus, the unemployment benefits they obstruct have provided a vital economic boost to struggling families and businesses. By prioritizing the pocketbooks of the privileged over the needs of the American worker, Republicans are turning their back on their two alleged priorities: the American people and the economy.
Columbia Journalism Review
From the Columbia Journalism Review:
A WikiLeaks Primer: WikiLeaks shared its documents with a number of news organizations, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and others, before wide release (The New York Times was not on WikiLeaks’s gift list, but did obtain the documents). Here’s a basic rundown of the initial coverages.
The Editors Discuss: The two English-language newspapers given early access to the WikiLeaks diplomatic cable dump have published two very different Q&As with readers regarding the leaks and their decisions to publish reports based on them, each reflecting their outlet’s style. The New York Times’s Bill Keller, Jill Abramson, and Andrew W. Lehren respond to questions in a formal Q&A published here.The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, answers commenters’ questions more informally in the comments stream of this Guardian page. CJR’s Joel Meares compares and contrasts.
The Record Keeper: Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald owns the Guantánamo beat. David Glenn has a profile, in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Number Cruncher: One night in a bar, a thirty-four-year-old physics professor at Iowa State College named John Atanasoff was inspired. According to Jane Smiley’s new book, The Man Who Invented the Computer, he sketched out what would become the first digital calculator, and never really got credit for that effort. CJR’s Lauren Kirchner has the book review, in the latest Page Views, our online ideas and reviews section.
Never the More: What happens when a public official uses confusing and erroneous wording? Do you quote? Merrill Perlman has some thoughts, in the latest Language Corner.
Tom Philpott – Risk, bacteria, and the tragedy of food-safety reform
From Grist:
Risk, bacteria, and the tragedy of food-safety reform
Senate food-safety bill S. 510 represents a very small step in the right direction, so long as it doesn’t crush the alternative food systems that are emerging to challenge Big Food. But it doesn’t address the big underlying problem: the hazard that comes from concentrating huge amounts of production in relatively small spaces. Consider the example of two dairy operations — a big factory farm vs. a small-scale cheese maker.
Mosaic News – 11/24/10: World News From The Middle East
Mosaic News – 10/25/10: World News From The Middle East
Franklin Lamb, Stephen Lendman and Jeff Gates on WikiLeaks
techdirt – Chris Matthews Says That Pointing Out Chertoff’s Conflict Of Interest Over Rapiscan TSA Scanners Is Slander?
From techdirt:
by Mike Masnick from the ah,-the-media dept on Monday, November 29th, 2010 @ 3:05PM
Michael Chertoff’s conflict of interest over the Rapiscan full body “naked” scanners used by the TSA in airports is old news. It was reported on widely earlier this year, and again in the past few weeks. So it does seem kind of odd (as pointed out via Radley Balko) that MSNBC TV guy Chris Matthews appears to accuse someone of slander for pointing it out. Of course, if you watch the video, what Matthews does is even more insidious — which is taking what Ginger McCall actually says, and twisting it to pretend she said something different. She points out — accurately — the conflict of interest, and he claims she’s saying that the only reason we have these devices was because of corruption and “sweetheart deals” back when Chertoff was head of Homeland Security. But McCall was merely pointing out that there’s a “revolving door” at these agencies, and machines are pitched by former government folks, with little evidence that they’re effective. Matthews totally takes what McCall actually says and pretends (falsely) that she claimed he made a corrupt deal while still in power. This is what passes for journalism these days?
Also…
Why The TSA’s Searches Are Unconstitutional (Privacy)
by Mike Masnick from the hello-4th-amendment dept on Monday, November 29th, 2010 @ 12:01PM
Law professor Jeffrey Rosen has an excellent analysis of why the TSA’s new searches are unconstitutional. He notes that, even if the majority of people aren’t too bothered by the searches, that doesn’t change the fact that they appear to be illegal. This is even though the courts have generally been quite deferential to the government when it comes to claims of “national security” in doing things like preventing terrorism. He notes that, while the Supreme Court has not heard such a case, there are various appeals court rulings that set the standards for such searches:
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in 2007, that “a particular airport security screening search is constitutionally reasonable provided that it ‘is no more extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives.’ ”
In a 2006 opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, then-Judge Samuel Alito stressed that screening procedures must be both “minimally intrusive” and “effective” – in other words, they must be “well-tailored to protect personal privacy,” and they must deliver on their promise of discovering serious threats. Alito upheld the practices at an airport checkpoint where passengers were first screened with walk-through magnetometers and then, if they set off an alarm, with hand-held wands. He wrote that airport searches are reasonable if they escalate “in invasiveness only after a lower level of screening disclose[s] a reason to conduct a more probing search.”
Of course, as Rosen notes, the new searches do not pass that test by a long shot. He also points out that an analysis of the machines suggests that — despite claims to the contrary by the TSA — new research shows that last year’s underwear bomber would not have been caught with these machines, which suggests that such machines are not “effective” under the above basic definition. Perhaps the Supreme Court will finally weigh in on this topic… though, by the time it reaches that level, the TSA will probably have moved on to even more ridiculous security theater practices.
Down By the River – Phish and Neil Young
Laurence Lewis – War in Afghanistan Reaches New Heights of Absurdity
From AlterNet:
War in Afghanistan Reaches New Heights of Absurdity
Earlier this month, it was reported that one of the largest U.S. government contractors in Afghanistan was being fined nearly $70 million for having “knowingly and systematically overcharged the U.S. government.” But just two months after a whistleblower revealed the Louis Berger Group’s deliberate and systematic overcharging, the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded the company a new joint contract worth $1.4 billion. That seemingly large fine turned out to be but a minor business expense.
Read more
By Laurence Lewis | Daily Kos
Posted on Sunday, November 28, 2010 @ 04:20 PM
Fox News: Unsuitable For Viewers Under 75
Climate Progress – Royal Society special issue details ‘hellish vision’ of 7°F (4°C) world — which we may face in the 2060s!
From Climate Progress:
“In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.”
November 29, 2010
“Projections of global warming relative to pre-industrial for the A1FI emissions scenario” — the one we’re currently on. “Dark shading shows the mean ±1 s.d. [standard deviation] for the tunings to 19 AR4 GCMs [IPCC Fourth Assessment General Circulation Models] and the light shading shows the change in the uncertainty range when … climate–carbon-cycle feedbacks … are included.”
Note: The Royal Society is making its “entire digital archive free to access” (!) through Tuesday, so download the articles in their special issue on 4C warming ASAP.
James Parks – Report: Deficit Commission Proposals Would Cost 4 Million Jobs
From the AFL-CIO Now Blog:
Report: Deficit Commission Proposals Would Cost 4 Million Jobs
by James Parks, Nov 23, 2010
The deficit reduction plan released last week by the co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility shows that this so-called budget deficit commission shows the commission has run severely off course.
The recommendations issued by co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles would cost 4 million jobs over three years and reduce economic growth by 0.7 percent in 2012, 1.4 percent in 2013 and 1.9 percent in 2014, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
The Simpson-Bowles approach calls for job-killing budget austerity to begin in October 2011, even though most economic forecasters expect unemployment to remain as high as it is today or even increase by then.
Simpson and Bowles also call for deep cuts in Social Security benefits, even though Social Security is not responsible for our long-term budget problem and the public is overwhelmingly opposed to benefit cuts.
Simpson and Bowles also propose more cost-sharing in Medicare. They suggest lowering top income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans and for corporations and eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), while sparing Wall Street from any taxes on bonuses or financial speculation.
Bowles collects $335,000 a year as a director of Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley, and Simpson has called Social Security “a milk cow with 310 million tits.”
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Simpson and Bowles “just told working Americans to “Drop Dead.”
Related…
Deficit commission plan would kill 4 million jobs, analysis finds by Nathan Diebenow at The Raw Story
Economist’s View – “A Transparently Cynical Policy Gesture”
From the Economist’s View:
“A Transparently Cynical Policy Gesture”
I was trying to think of a succinct way to respond to Obama’s plans to freeze federal pay. This expresses my sentiment fairly well:
Freeze Frame: Yep, that’s exactly what we needed: a transparently cynical policy gesture, trivial in scale but misguided in direction, and in effect conceding that your bitter political opponents have the right idea.
Update: I also like pgl’s characterization of the policy:
This strikes me as short-term fiscal restraint but not a really serious attempt to getting the long-term fiscal house in order. In other words precisely the opposite of what we should be doing while in a very depressed economy.
Democracy Now! – U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of Secret Diplomatic Cables
From Democracy Now!:
U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of Secret Diplomatic Cables
Daily Headlines…
Kickingcrow's Weblog 