Filibusted!
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 15 January 2013
Let‘s send a message to the Democrats in the Senate. Let‘s tell ‘em this: A lot of us out here in the real America (aka the electorate) have totally given up on the Republicans, but that doesn't mean you can count on getting our votes. You think we have nowhere else to go, but you're wrong.

 

At the end of 2012 we were hearing a lot of noises about filibuster reform, remember?  Noise from liberal pundits, noise in the liberal press, noise from our newly elected insurgent liberal senators.  What happened to all the noise?  The war cry is sounding more like a whimper lately.

 

Is the silence a signal?  Is the issue dead – again?  If so, expect another season of partisan gridlock, political dysfunction, and rising public discontent.

 

According to the Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Ballin (1892), changes to Senate rules can be made by a simple majority, but only on the first day of each session.  Like most everything that happens in Washington, D.C., what you see (or think you see) is not necessarily what you get.   To wit:  Harry Reid, the sad-sack Senate majority leader is using a parliamentary tactic that shelves rule changes indefinitely but suspends a sword of Damocles over the Republicans.  Under Reid's rule, each new day is still being considered as the “first day” of the new Congress so the rules can be changed at any time by a simple majority vote. Leave it to the highest rule-making body in America to f*@% with the rules!    

 

Here's writer, George Packer ("Senatus Decadens", The New Yorker, 1/4/13) on the very day when what might have been – namely, the long-overdue death and joyful burial of the filibuster – wasn't:  "Several proposals are circulating. The most intriguing is the one introduced by Senator Jeff ...

ALEC’s Decades of ‘Right-to-Work’ Effort Pay Off in Michigan
Taylor
Published: Thursday 13 December 2012
Think tank’s 32-year 'right-to-work' campaign succeeds in union stronghold.

 

Amid protests by labor unions, and objections from the state’s congressional delegation and even the president, Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed a “right-to-work” bill into law Tuesday, drawn word-for-word from a 32-year-old “model bill” pushed by a corporate-funded, conservative think tank.

The legislation deals a severe blow to organized labor in a state that has the fifth-highest union density in the country, and it marks the revival of an effort long promoted by the influential American Legislative Exchange Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has seen its share of controversyrecently.

Since 1973, ALEC has hosted corporate-sponsored meetings where state legislators and lobbyists meet behind closed doors to write and vote on model legislation. In a 1992 annual report, the free-market think tank boasted that it “provides the private sector an unparalleled opportunity” to influence state legislation.

 

One of its first priorities was passage of ...

The New Border: Illegal Immigration’s Shifting Frontier
Taylor
Published: Thursday 6 December 2012
The border is an expression of problems that exist far from the border.

 

Oscar and Jennifer Cruz knew that crossing the border would be the easy part.

 
 

The Salvadoran brother and sister made their way over the international line between Guatemala and Mexico with the help of a smuggler who guided them through the jungle. But soon afterward, Mexican immigration officers arrested the clean-cut teenagers on a bus in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the southernmost Mexican state, Chiapas.

Like many other Central American youths who migrate on their own, Oscar, 16, and Jennifer, 13, were pushed by the danger of ...

Doha Talks Show Need for Climate Action in Post Sandy U.S.
Taylor
Published: Thursday 6 December 2012
Will the United States ever change its policy of obstructing international action to stop climate change? If so, the political pressure to change the country’s role will have to come from the American people.

As the second week of international climate negotiations begins here in Doha, Qatar, rich and poor countries are staking out very different positions and digging in their heels. The big debates on the floor are about how rich and poor countries will strike a deal to reduce their emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases. And the provision of fair and effective financing for clean development, adaptation to climate change, and compensation for loss and damages is emerging as the make-or-break flashpoint

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The Barack Obama Story
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 4 December 2012
How a Community Organizer and Constitutional Law Professor Became a Robot President

President Barack Obama 

The White House 

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW 

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama,

Nothing you don’t know, but let me just say it: the world’s a weird place. In my younger years, I might have said “crazy,” but that was back when I thought being crazy was a cool thing and only regretted I wasn’t.

I mean, do you ever think about how you ended up where you are? And I'm not actually talking about the Oval Office, though that’s undoubtedly a weird enough story in its own right.

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350.org’s Bold New Plan to Save the Climate
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 4 December 2012
Since fossil fuel companies have “bought the silence of our politicians and filled our airwaves with misinformation,” McKibben contends activists need to pressure society by nontraditional means.

 

It’s a cold fall evening in Columbus, Ohio, but nearly a thousand people are ready to contemplate the consequences of man-made global warming. A tall, slender man strolls on stage and the crowd instantly rises, applauding for nearly two minutes, much to the discomfort of the humble speaker. Dressed casually in running shoes and slacks, with an unpretentious digital watch on his wrist, stands Bill McKibben, a man who has declared war on the most profitable industry “in the history of money.”

McKibben, known as “the nation’s leading environmentalist,” came to Columbus on Tuesday as part of a 21-city, 26-day tour called Do the Math. Organized by the global environmental group 350.org, the tour is an extension of McKibben’s phenomenally popular article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” which appeared in the July issue of Rolling Stone (the same one, McKibben jokes, with Justin Bieber on the cover). Earning over 124,000 Facebook likes and 13,400 related tweets, the article was described by one journalist as “among the most widely read single articles on climate change…ever.”

The tour has been riding this momentum, selling over 24,000 tickets and performing 17 sold-out shows with a ...

Obama Order Protects Intelligence Community Whistleblowers
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 15 October 2012
“The order is meant to address longstanding concerns that whistleblowers in the intelligence agencies lacked legal protections like those available to employees of the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.”

 

President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week creating new protections for national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, effectively sidestepping a congressional impasse provoked by the reservations of congressional Republicans.

The order — formally known as "Presidential Policy Directive 19" and signed by Obama out of public view on Oct. 10 and without a White House announcement — directs intelligence agencies to establish procedures for the protection of employees reporting waste, fraud and abuse.

The order is meant to address longstanding concerns that whistleblowers in the intelligence agencies lacked legal protections like those available to employees of the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.

The new order bans retaliation against whistleblowers in the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations. Until now, these agencies were not specifically prohibited from retaliating against whistleblowers. 

A House bill aimed at improving protections for most federal employees, known as the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act and passed by that chamber in September, lacked the safeguards ordered by Obama. Angela Canterbury, from the Washington, D.C. watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said House Republicans had narrowed the bill’s focus due to worries that its provisions might encourage Wikileaks-type disclosures of sensitive information.

She called this a "red herring," explaining that by protecting those with security clearances who want to blow the whistle on wrongdoing at intelligence agencies, a new law could have encouraged them to “use safe internal channels.” The Senate has yet to take up its own version of the bill.

In the meantime, ...

Climate Change Takes a Bite Out of Global Food Supply
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 30 September 2012
“Less well known to many is the fact that emissions from burning oil, coal and gas are both heating up the oceans and making them more acidic.”

Humanity’s ability to feed itself is in serious doubt as climate change takes hold on land in the form of droughts and extreme weather, as well as on the world’s oceans.

Less well known to many is the fact that emissions from burning oil, coal and gas are both heating up the oceans and making them more acidic. That is combining to reduce the amount of seafood that can be caught, according to a new report released here.

Seafood is a primary source of protein for more than a billion of the poorest people in the world, said Matthew Huelsenbeck, report author and marine scientist at Oceana, an environmental NGO.

“For many island nations like the Maldives, seafood is the cheapest and most readily available source of protein,” Huelsenbeck told IPS.

The Maldives, Togo and Comoros top the list of nations whose food security is threatened by climate change, according to the report, “Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World”, which ranks the vulnerabilities of nations. Surprisingly, Iran is fourth on that list. This is the first-ever look at how climate change may affect food security for countries that are dependent on fish and seafood.

The report was released this week at the Third International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World: Ocean Acidification, where nearly 600 scientists from around the world presented their research.

Rising ocean temperatures are pushing many fish away from the tropics towards the poles where waters are cooler, researchers have documented. And in a well-understood process, human emissions of CO2 have increased the acidity of oceans by 30 percent, threatening fish habitats such as coral reefs and thinning the shells of shellfish like oysters, clams and mussels.

The report examined every country’s ...

“Democratic Womanism”: Poet and Activist Alice Walker on Women Rising, Obama, and the 2012
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 29 September 2012
“You ask me why I smile when you tell me you intend in the coming national elections to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils,” reads Walker.

With less than 40 days to go before the 2012 presidential election, poet and activist Alice Walker reads her new poem, "Democratic Womanism," and discusses her thoughts on President Obama’s legacy, including his use of drone strikes. "You ask me why I smile when you tell me you intend in the coming national elections to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils," reads Walker. "There are more than two evils out there, is one reason I smile."

 

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! We are on the road in Washington, D.C. We then head to Charlottesville, and we’ll be back in Washington, D.C., then we’ll be traveling through Virginia, then on to Colorado for the presidential debate, and through the Western Slope. I’ll talk about it in a minute, the 100-city Election 2012 tour. I’m Amy Goodman.

Voting Rights Act: The State of Section 5
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 31 August 2012
“States also have the option to seek a favorable judgment from the federal court in Washington, D.C. — a costlier, longer and, therefore rarer, route to take.”

 

 

A single provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been playing a key role on the election front this year. Section 5 has blocked photo voter-ID laws, prohibited reduced early-voting periods in parts of Florida and just Tuesday barred new redistricting maps in Texas.

It's the reason South Carolina is in federal court this week to try to convince a three-judge panel its photo voter-ID law will not disenfranchise minorities. It's the reason that Texas went to trial on the same issue last month — and on Thursday, lost.

Not surprisingly, then, Section 5 is increasingly the target of attack by those who say it is outdated, discriminatory against Southern states and unconstitutional.

Under the provision, certain states and localities with a history of anti-minority election practices must obtain federal approval or "pre clearance" before making changes to voting laws. In present day, that requirement is burdensome, "needlessly aggressive" and based on outdated coverage criteria,

Romney Balancing Act On Undocumented Youth Getting Harder
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 28 August 2012
Romney has repeatedly said he would veto the DREAM Act, which once had prominent GOP supporters.

 

Undocumented youths 15 to 30 years old certainly can’t vote. But they are a large group — estimated at 800,000 to 1.7 million — that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney doesn’t think he can write off completely.

Why? Conventional wisdom has it that Romney, to win, needs to peel off Latino votes from President Obama in key swing states such as Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. Some Latino voters were once undocumented themselves, or know someone who was or is. They also tend to support the decade-old federal DREAM Act proposal — or something like it that would give youths a chance to earn full legal immigrant status, which isn’t possible within the current immigration system.Over the weekend, former GOP Florida Gov. Jeb Bush warned his party that it had to get with the nation’s changing demographics and heed the Latino vote — or get left behind. 

As Romney’s campaign prepares for the sprint to the finish, the GOP standard-bearer might consider the 2010 California gubernatorial campaign of Meg Whitman, a Romney supporter. In a blitz of Spanish-language TV and radio ads, Whitman simultaneously tried to woo Latino moms and dads by praising Latino schoolchildren as “the ...

Invisible Americans Get the Silent Treatment
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 28 August 2012
How about telling the poor you will make sure our government stands between them and the cliff?

It’s just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision – “out of sight, out of mind.”

And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plan or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans.  Tipping their hats to America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President Obama, who of all people should know better.

Remember: for three years in the 1980’s he was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had.” And when Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, author Paul Tough 

New Voting Rules Make Getting Latinos to The Polls Harder Than Ever
Taylor
Published: Thursday 23 August 2012
Latinos could be a potent voting force in the Southwest, but traditionally low voter turnout could get even lower with new ID laws.

 

Every month for the next two decades, 50,000 Latinos will turn 18 years old. With that many new eligible voters and dramatic population growth expected, Latinos could dominate voting in the Southwest, particularly Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

Every year, 600,000 more Latinos become eligible voters, making them a potentially potent voting force. However,  Latinos have a historically low turnout at the polls: Only around 30 percent of eligible Latinos vote, according to the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center. Advocacy groups see the national push toward more stringent voter identification laws as a way to suppress an already apathetic Latino vote.

Of the nation’s 21.3 million eligible Latino voters, only 6.6 million voted in the 2010 elections, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. White and black voters had higher turnout — 48.6 percent and 44 percent, respectively.

“We haven’t been able to engage the community to really participate in the democratic process,” said Carlos Duarte of the Phoenix-based non-partisan voter education organization, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund. “To be focusing our ...

No Tax Returns for You, Dark Money Groups Say
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 22 August 2012
“Eighteen of 106 social-welfare nonprofits that we identified as having spent money on elections in 2010 would not provide us with these documents, despite repeated requests and reminders that they were legally obligated to do so.”

It was mid-July and I had come to Hilltop Public Solutions because Jessie Bradley, a partner with the consulting firm, appeared to run two social-welfare nonprofits out of its Washington, D.C., office.

ProPublica was preparing a story about how such groups – also known as 501(c)(4)s for their section of the tax code – were pouring money into elections. The nonprofits run by Bradley, Economy Forward and the Citizens for Strength and Security Action Fund, or CSS Action Fund, had spent more than $3 million supporting Democrats in 2010, records showed.

I wanted the groups’ tax returns and the applications they had submitted to get IRS recognition of their tax-exempt status. The law requires 501(c)(4)s to make these forms available for inspection immediately if someone requests them in person or to provide them by mail within 30 days.

When I reached the office suite listed as Hilltop’s headquarters, however, it turned out to be a law firm.

The firm’s receptionist said Hilltop was located in an inaccessible area of the building and called Bradley to convey my request. 

Bradley said she was busy.

The receptionist asked if I could meet with someone else. “She hung up on me,” the secretary said, putting down the phone.

Bradley wasn’t the only one who refused to provide ProPublica with

Don’t Mess with Texas’ Tar Sands Blockade
Taylor
Published: Thursday 16 August 2012
That solidarity will take on greater meaning in a matter of days when construction on the pipeline is expected to begin and landowners will be bringing ice to the encampments to help alleviate the extreme Texas heat, as well as thanking everyone for defending the home they’ve built over decades.

One year after more than 1,200 people were arrested in front of the White House during two weeks of sit-ins against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, a coalition of Texas landowners and activists will attempt to physically halt its construction. Led by veteran climate justice organizers, participants ranging from environmentalists to Tea Partiers are preparing to lock arms for a sustained nonviolent civil disobedience campaign, beginning perhaps as early as this week.

The impetus for such action, which is being called the Tar Sands Blockade, goes back much further than last summer, however. In 2008 and 2009, small landowners along the pipeline’s route in rural Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska started noticing survey stakes with orange tape marked “KXL.” They soon found out that TransCanada — the company building the pipeline — had eminent domain power over their property and that if they didn’t sign a contract allowing TransCanada to build, they would be taken to court.

Many landowners, feeling pushed into an impossible situation, signed the contracts. Some began organizing, doing community outreach to explain what was happening and building conservative support on the ground. Organizations such as Nacogdoches Stop Tarsands Oil Pipelines evolved out of conversations between landowners — first focusing around eminent domain, but then, when they learned that tar sands oil would be pumped through the pipeline, discussion started to include environmental impacts, such as toxic diluted bitumen and climate change.

By August 2011, the climate movement in the United States started to focus in on the ...

Election-Fraud Not as Common as Recent Voter ID Laws Suggest
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 13 August 2012
With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

 

 

A News21 analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent.

In an exhaustive public records search, News21 reporters sent thousands of requests to elections officers in all 50 states, asking for every case of fraudulent activity including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, vote buying, false election counts, campaign fraud, casting an ineligible vote, voting twice, voter impersonation fraud and intimidation.

Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.

“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.

“There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.

The News21 analysis of its election fraud database shows:

  • In-person voter-impersonation fraud is rare. The database shows 207 cases of other types of fraud for every case of voter impersonation.

“The fraud that matters is the fraud that is organized. That's why voter impersonation is practically non-existent because it is difficult to do and it is difficult to pull people into conspiracies to do it,” said Lorraine Minnite, professor of public ...

Better Eating Through Mindfulness
Taylor
Published: Thursday 9 August 2012
How can increasing your awareness of tasting, craving, and satisfaction be a tool for healthier eating? Here's what psychologists have to say.

 

Deborah Hill used to think she was skinny. Her 5 foot 9 inch frame could take on a lot of weight without making her look out of shape. But last year she was shocked to discover that she weighed over 210 pounds, which classified her as medically obese.

“It was just crazy,” says Hill. “I’d never had a problem with weight.”

Hill is one of a growing number of Americans—over 35 percent, according to the Center for Disease Control—who are considered obese, having a body mass index of 30 or greater. Obesity increases health risks like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, to name a few, and the health care costs to treat obesity-related illness are skyrocketing, with CDC estimates in 2008 reaching $147 billion dollars.

But now there is a new prescription for combating obesity, one that goes beyond ubiquitous diet and exercise regimens: mindfulness, the moment-to READ FULL POST DISCUSS

Most Eligible for Obama Undocumented Program Already Working
Taylor
Published: Thursday 9 August 2012
“Critics have argued that Obama’s action is an overreach of his authority, and a bid to increase his appeal among Latino voters in an election year. ”

 

One of the nation’s top immigration think tanks estimates that 1.76 million undocumented people could attempt to benefit from an Obama administration decision to shield them from deportation, temporarily, and grant them two-year work permits. Moreover, the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. estimates in its new report that 58 percent of this population who are now between 15 and 30 years old are already in the U.S. labor force.

As of Aug. 15, the administration is opening up the process for certain undocumented youths brought here as children to apply for the two-year reprieve. It represents one of the biggest undertakings by U.S. immigration officials in years. It is not a program for permanent residency, but it does provide youths who meet the criteria temporary protection from deportation, as well as the ability to work legally and stop using fake Social Security cards or laboring off the books.

The Migration Policy Institute’s report includes state-by-state charts and other estimates that help paint a portrait of where and who the youths are. The report is based in part on data from the U.S. Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Does Cybercrime Really Cost $1 Trillion?
Taylor
Published: Thursday 2 August 2012
“Crediting Symantec, he said the theft of intellectual property costs American companies $250 billion a year.”

 

Gen. Keith Alexander is the director of the National Security Agency and oversees U.S. Cyber Command, which means he leads the government’s effort to protect America from cyberattacks. Due to the secretive nature of his job, he maintains a relatively low profile, so when he does speak, people listen closely. On July 9, Alexander addressed a crowded room at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and though he started with a few jokes — his mother said he had a face for radio, behind every general is a stunned father-in-law — he soon got down to business.

Alexander warned that cyberattacks are causing “the greatest transfer of wealth in history,” and he cited statistics from, among other sources, Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc., which both sell software to protect computers from hackers. Crediting Symantec, he said the theft of intellectual property costs American companies $250 billion a year. He also mentioned a McAfee estimate that the global cost of cybercrime is $1 trillion. "That’s our future disappearing in front of us," he said, urging Congress to enact legislation to improve America’s cyberdefenses.

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The Frack War Comes Home
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 31 July 2012
“They were ordinary Americans, whose neighborhoods, townships and states have been struggling to put an end to fracking, a destructive form of natural gas drilling.”

 

The war came home this weekend, as thousands of people whose land has been under siege by the U.S. government and corporate interests gathered in Washington, D.C. No, they weren’t victims of drone attacks or 10-plus years of fighting in Afghanistan. They were ordinary Americans, whose neighborhoods, townships and states have been struggling to put an end to fracking, a destructive form of natural gas drilling.

These veterans of the frack war were in Washington for a national convergence called Stop the Frack Attack. Over the course of two days, they held teach-ins and strategy sessions on ways to bring relief to their communities through collective action, before ending on Saturday with the first ever national march and rally against fracking. Many hailed the event as an important step to building a broad, grassroots movement to ban the drilling practice.

“I’m going to dream big,” said Jennie Scheibach with NonToxic Ohio, a group fighting the spread of fracking in northern Ohio and the disposal of fracking waste in the state’s rivers. “Standing together, rising up together, we can stop this.”

Jennie wasn’t alone. Thousands of people from across the country, from voluminous backgrounds, joined in common cause in D.C. over the weekend, raising the call for an end to fracking.

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Stephen Lewis: Trillions Spent on War and Bank Bailouts Leaves Little Money to Fight AIDS
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 28 July 2012
“It was the first time in 22 years that the United States hosted the conference due to the Obama administration’s reversal of a two-decade ban that prevented people infected with HIV from entering the country.”

The world's largest international AIDS conference concludes today in Washington, D.C. It was the first time in 22 years that the United States hosted the conference due to the Obama administration's reversal of a two-decade ban that prevented people infected with HIV from entering the country. We speak to Stephen Lewis, co-founder and co-director of AIDS-Free World. From 2001 to 2006, he served as the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. He is the former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations. Lewis warns more money needs to be spent on the fight against AIDS. "We are always struggling for the crumbs and the pennies from the table [for global public health] when we know the amounts of money available for other and more perverse purposes internationally, and that too has to end," Lewis says.

 

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, broadcasting from Baltimore, Maryland, not far from where the world’s largest international AIDS conference concludes today in Washington, D.C. It was the first time in 22 years that the United States hosted the conference, due to the Obama ...

Million-Dollar Donation in Indiana Race May Skirt Limits on Corporate Giving
Taylor
Published: Thursday 26 July 2012
Gubernatorial candidate Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., received a $1 million check from the Republican Governors Association — a contribution whose original sources remain shrouded in darkness

 

The RGA Right Direction PAC is a Washington, D.C.-based super PAC, registered with federal regulators to make independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates. So what is it doing giving $1 million directly to the Republican running for governor of Indiana?

The donation to Mike Pence, the largest to his campaign, appears to be a way around state laws limiting corporate contributions to candidates.

“In one way, it’s legal,” said Andrew Downs of the Center for Indiana Politics, at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. “But if you say this is a way to give in excess of corporate limits, that’s also absolutely true.”

Right Direction is funded entirely by the Republican Governors Association, a so-called “527” organization dedicated to electing as many Republicans to governorships as possible — a mission fueled by contributions from some of the largest corporations in the country. In Indiana, candidates can accept unlimited donations from individuals and political action committees but only $5,000 from corporations and unions. Corporations and unions can also give to PACs, but only in small sums.

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Medicare for All: A Single Solution to the Health Care Fracas
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 30 June 2012
There is a single solution to the challenges of providing coverage to the 50 million who are uninsured that would curb out-of-control health care costs and provide a humane standard of care to all who enter the medical system.

 

It will take some time to digest the Supreme Court's decision yesterday, but it appears to have averted some terrible jurisprudence that might have very seriously restricted the government's overall ability to regulate the economy and protect citizens.

In upholding most of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court lets stand legislation that offers some important benefits, but only to a portion of those who are uninsured, and will predictably fail to solve our nation's health care crisis.

However the health reform law ultimately plays out, we know two things for certain: Tens of millions of Americans will remain uncovered as will tens of millions of under-insured who will remain at risk of financial ruin if a major illness strikes; and it will leave the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries in charge of prices and life-and-death treatment decisions.

There is a single solution to the challenges of providing coverage to the 50 million who are uninsured that would curb out-of-control health care costs and provide a humane standard of care to all who enter the medical system. That solution is an improved Medicare-for-All, single-payer system.

The improved Medicare-for-All approach starts with the premise that health care is a critically needed right that must be afforded to all, irrespective of any individual's ability to pay for care. It solves the problems of 50 million uninsured Americans simply and directly by establishing that everyone is covered by the improved Medicare

Trading in Democracy: Why Rights are Still for Real People
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 29 June 2012
The impoverished Central American country could potentially be forced to pay the foreign company $77 million or more in damages.

 

 

One of us had just landed in Vancouver, Canada, for a huge “Shout Out Against Mining Injustice” when we got the news: A tribunal in Washington, D.C. that nobody elected recently issued a verdict that will potentially constrain the democratic rights of millions of people.

The International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a tribunal located at the World Bank, ruled that Canadian mining company Pacific Rim may continue to sue El Salvador for not letting the company mine gold there. The impoverished Central American country could potentially be forced to pay the foreign company $77 million or more in damages. The anti-democratic ruling has ominous implications for all of us.

We visited El Salvador last year to learn more about this landmark case. A wide vein of gold lies alongside the northern portions of a large river that flows down the country's middle, providing water for more than half the population. The gold remained relatively untouched until about a decade ago when foreign companies began to apply for mining permits.

Farmers and others told us that they were initially open to gold mining, thinking it would bring jobs to ease the area's deep poverty. But, as they learned more about the toxic chemicals used to separate gold from the surrounding ore and about the massive amounts of water used in the process, they began to organize a movement that opposed mining. Their simple cry: "We can live without gold, but we can't live without water."

By 2007, polls showed close to two

America Realizes It Likes Federal Spending After All
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 27 June 2012
“It’s been relatively easy to be anti-spending up to now because the reductions being proposed have mostly been theoretical and weren’t really likely to happen.”

There’s about to be a big change in the federal budget debate. In the end, the big winner will be the part of the budget that supposedly is so unpopular — federal spending — that a candidate for office this year cannot currently say he or she supports it without risking massive political condemnation and reprisals.

It’s been relatively easy to be anti-spending up to now because the reductions being proposed have mostly been theoretical and weren’t really likely to happen.

They also were mostly discussed in statistical terms that don’t typically strike fear into the hearts of most voters. After all, what does it really mean to reduce federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, to keep spending to its historical average or to implement an across-the-board cut?

And if all that has to be done — as some wishful thinkers have repeatedly said — is to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse and you’re sure what you care about doesn’t meet any of those definitions, then cutting federal spending isn’t really that worrisome.

The irony is that this is about to change because of something that spending cut proponents themselves demanded. The sequester — the spending-cut-only alternative they insisted on if the anything-but-super committee failed — that will occur on Jan. 2 is the opposite of most of the plans that have been part of the federal budget debate up to now: It’s in place and will happen unless Congress and the president take some action to prevent it.

And it’s forcing companies, industries and voters to face the reality that the spending cuts could actually occur and, despite what they’ve been saying publicly, that they really don’t want it to happen.

This is not a guess. The military community has been so actively opposing the spending cuts the ...

Occupy Will be Back
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 19 June 2012
“The Occupy movement is not finally about occupying. It is, as Zeese points out, about shifting power from the 1 percent to the 99 percent.”

 

In every conflict, insurgency, uprising and revolution I have covered as a foreign correspondent, the power elite used periods of dormancy, lulls and setbacks to write off the opposition. This is why obituaries for the Occupy movement are in vogue. And this is why the next groundswell of popular protest—and there will be one—will be labeled as “unexpected,” a “shock” and a “surprise.” The television pundits and talking heads, the columnists and academics who declare the movement dead are as out of touch with reality now as they were on Sept. 17 when New York City’s Zuccotti Park was occupied. Nothing this movement does will ever be seen by them as a success. Nothing it does will ever be good enough. Nothing, short of its dissolution and the funneling of its energy back into the political system, will be considered beneficial.

Those who have the largest megaphones in our corporate state serve the very systems of power we are seeking to topple. They encourage us, whether on Fox or MSNBC, to debate inanities, trivia, gossip or the personal narratives of candidates. They seek to channel legitimate outrage and direct it into the black hole of corporate politics. They spin these silly, useless stories from the “left” or the “right” while ignoring the egregious assault by corporate power on the citizenry, an assault enabled by the Democrats and the Republicans. Don’t waste time watching or listening. They exist to confuse and demoralize you.

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How Microsoft and Yahoo Are Selling Politicians Access to You
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 12 June 2012
“In one sense, campaigns are doing a more sophisticated version of what they've always done through the post office — sending political fliers to selected households. But the Internet allows for more subtle targeting.”

Microsoft and Yahoo are selling political campaigns the ability to target voters online with tailored ads using names, Zip codes and other registration information that users provide when they sign up for free email and other services.

The Web giants provide users no notification that their information is being used for political targeting.

 In one sense, campaigns are doing a more sophisticated version of what they've always done through the post office — sending political fliers to selected households. But the Internet allows for more subtle targeting. It relies not on email but on advertisements that surfers may not realize have been customized for them.

Campaigns use voters records to assemble lists of people they're trying to reach — for instance, “registered Republicans that have made a donation,” Yahoo's director of sales Andy Cotten told ProPublica. Microsoft and Yahoo help campaigns find these people online and then send them tailored ads.

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What Comes Next?: Building on Occupy and the 99% Spring
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 2 June 2012
This 99 percent reality—millions of young people saddled with student debt joining the jobless and homeless to confront an increasingly vulnerable and bleak future—suddenly had a face and a voice that resonated across the nation and around the world.

 

Where does the Occupy movement turn next? Can social movements build on its momentum? Will protest and new forms of mobilization create change to transform the economy to one that works for people and the planet?

When would-be Occupiers pitched the first tents in New York’s Zuccotti Park eight months ago, hand-written signs declaring “we are the 99%” grabbed the public imagination. This 99 percent reality—millions of young people saddled with student debt joining the jobless and homeless to confront an increasingly vulnerable and bleak future—suddenly had a face and a voice that resonated across the nation and around the world. 

So too were observers struck by the novelty and creativity of Occupiers able to make decisions by consensus, posing a stark contrast to a U.S. Congress where decisions seemed increasingly to be bought and sold by and for the one percent. Across the United States, thousands of encampments echoed the core message: a healthy society was a more equal society and Wall Street’s lock on our economy and our politics had to be broken. 

In dozens of cities, actions reinforced this message as the victims of this unjust system started to fight back with verve and effectiveness. In some cities, occupiers stood guard in front of foreclosed homes to block banks from evicting inhabitants. In others, occupiers urged people to “move their money” from Wall Street banks to locally-rooted credit unions and community development financial institutions. From ...

As New Jersey OKs NYPD Surveillance, Muslim Groups Continue Challenge to “Unconstitutional” Program
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 28 May 2012
The review’s finding means Muslims will have no recourse to state law to prevent the NYPD from monitoring and cataloging their daily life.

A three-month review by New Jersey's Attorney General has concluded the New York City Police Department did not violate state laws when they conducted extensive surveillance of Muslim communities with help from the CIA. The review's finding means Muslims will have no recourse to state law to prevent the NYPD from monitoring and cataloging their daily life. The decision has angered Muslim groups who were seeking an end to the intrastate police operations and surveillance throughout the Northeast. We get reaction from Gadeir Abbas, staff attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

 

Transcript

AARON MATÉ: A three-month review of New York City Police Department operations in New Jersey has concluded that they did not violate state laws when they conducted extensive surveillance of Muslim communities. The ruling by New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa means Muslims will have no recourse to state law to prevent the NYPD from monitoring and cataloging their daily life. The decision has angered Muslim groups who were seeking an end to the cross-border police operations.

The Associated Press first revealed how a once-covert 

As New Jersey OKs NYPD Surveillance, Muslim Groups Continue Challenge to “Unconstitutional” Program
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 27 May 2012
“New York City Police Department did not violate state laws when they conducted extensive surveillance of Muslim communities with help from the CIA.”

A three-month review by New Jersey’s attorney general has concluded the New York City Police Department did not violate state laws when they conducted extensive surveillance of Muslim communities with help from the CIA. The review’s finding means Muslims will have no recourse to state law to prevent the NYPD from monitoring and cataloging their daily life. The decision has angered Muslim groups who were seeking an end to the intrastate police operations and surveillance throughout the Northeast. We get reaction from Gadeir Abbas, staff attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

 

Transcript

AARON MATÉ: A three-month ...

What Kind of Defense Budget Would the American Public Make?
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 12 May 2012
Center for Public Integrity discuss the findings of their defense spending poll on May 10, 2012, at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation; Matthew Leatherman, analyst, Stimson's Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense project; and R. Jeffrey Smith, managing editor for national security, Center for Public Integrity discuss the findings of their defense spending poll on May 10, 2012, at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

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Wall Street and Their Purchased Representatives
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 12 May 2012
“In this 2012 election cycle alone, this industry has already donated $122 million to campaigns of members of Congress.”

How is it that two years after passage of the much acclaimed Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform (four years after economic crash), Too Big To Fail (TBTF) institutions are not only bigger, but also too big to regulate and too big to jail? Don’t be fooled into believing that because a law has been passed by Congress and signed by the president, it has actually been implemented.

Keep in mind that Congress controls the funding for the federal regulators who are charged with carrying out the reform — Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities Exchange Commission. What would possess members of Congress, who bragged about banning banks from gambling with taxpayer money, to force regulators to strategically surrender significant rules by threatening budget cuts?

Answer: their livelihoods. Yes, the very livelihood of a member of Congress is indeed in the hands of the TBTF financial institutions. What better motivation is there than your career and financial future of your family? The financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, with insurance companies, securities and investment firms, real estate interests, and commercial banks providing the bulk of that money. In this 2012 election cycle alone, this industry has already donated $122 million to campaigns of members of Congress.

In addition to campaign contributions, this industry spends billions of dollars to lobby Congress. The tally since the financial collapse, 2009 – Q1 of 2012, for this industry is $1.5 billion. Do you think that over a billion dollars can influence members of Congress to threaten regulatory agencies with budget cuts? Of course the ...

As Obama Expands Drone War, Activists & Victims’ Advocates Join D.C. Summit on Civilian Toll
Amir Gholi
Published: Friday 27 April 2012
“Obama argues U.S. drone strikes are focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists and have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.”

Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents families of civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes, was finally granted a visa to enter the U.S. this week after a long effort by the State Department to block his visit. He has just arrived in Washington, D.C., to attend the “Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control,” organized by human rights groups to call attention to the lethal rise in the number of drone strikes under the Obama administration. Obama argues U.S. drone strikes are focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists and have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties. “Either President Obama is lying to the nation or he is too naive, to believe on the reports which the CIA is presenting to [him],” responds Akbar. The summit comes as the United States pursues a radical expansion of how it carries out drone strikes inside Yemen. The so-called "signature" strike policy went into effect earlier this month allowing the U.S. to strike without knowing identity of the targets.

We’re also joined by Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of CODE PINK and an organizer of this weekend’s summit. “So many people who spoke against George [W.] Bush’s extraordinary rendition and Guantánamo and indefinite detention have been very quiet when it comes to the Obama administration, who is not putting people in those same kind of conditions, instead is just taking them out and killing them,” Benjamin says. “So we need to make people speak up and say that when Obama says this [program] is on a tight leash, this is not true. This is a lie.”

Former Bush EPA Chief Sounds Alarm on Chemical Security
Amir Gholi
Published: Monday 16 April 2012
“Greenpeace estimates that the law covers only a third of the U.S. facilities that could have catastrophic chemical releases.”

Wading into a decade-old controversy, former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman has urged current EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to close loopholes in a 2006 chemical security law “before a tragedy of historic proportions occurs.”

Whitman, who led the EPA under George W. Bush, suggests the agency use its authority to seal gaps in Department of Homeland Security rules adopted in 2007, according to her April 3 letter to Jackson, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

Those rules are “extremely limited,” Whitman wrote, barring DHS from requiring industry to take specific measures to prevent accidental or terrorism-related toxic releases. The rules, she wrote, exempt “thousands of chemical facilities, including all water treatment plants and hundreds of other potentially high-risk facilities, such as refineries located on navigable waters.”

The EPA has the power to regulate chemical security under 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, Whitman noted, writing that that the act’s “general duty” clause “obligates chemical facilities handling the most dangerous chemicals to prevent potentially catastrophic releases to surrounding communities.

“Facilities with the largest quantities … should assess their operations to identify safer cost-effective processes that will reduce or eliminate hazards in the event of a terrorist attack or accident,” Whitman wrote. “This has never been required and today hundreds of these facilities continue to put millions of Americans at risk.”

According to

Bank of New York Case Tests IRS Power to Halt Foreign Tax Abuses
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 16 April 2012
Tax authorities worldwide, notably in the U.S. and U.K., are under mounting pressure to show that large companies are shouldering their share of the tax burden as part of a broader political debate about fairness and corporate social responsibility.

In November 2001, Bank of New York, a mid-tier U.S. bank, transferred nearly $8 billion of its own assets to a trust in the small, business-friendly state of Delaware through several layers of newly created companies.

A mixture of home mortgages, shares and other securities, the transferred assets made up almost 10 percent of the bank’s total assets at the time. Yet, the transaction was not discussed with BNY’s regulators; nor was it noted in the bank’s financial statements or annual report. It had little practical effect on the lender’s day-to-day operations — the assets continued to be managed and serviced by the same employees in New York.

But it was a critical first step in setting up a complex structure known as STARS — structured trust advantaged repackaged securities — which U.S. tax authorities claim was used by several American banks as an abusive tax shelter that has cost the government more than $1 billion in tax revenue in the past decade.

This week, BNY will square off against the Internal Revenue Service in U.S. Tax Court in New York over STARS and the tax benefits tit triggered for the U.S. bank and U.K.-based Barclays, its counterpart in the deal. At issue is whether STARS was set up primarily to generate artificial foreign-tax credits, as the IRS contends; or was a legal way for BNY to obtain financing at rock-bottom rates.

The arguments heard this week will pose a crucial test of the U.S. government’s resolve to rein in sophisticated corporate tax planning that has sapped vast amounts of potential revenue. Tax authorities worldwide, notably in the U.S. and U.K., are under mounting pressure to show that large companies are shouldering their share of the tax burden as part of a broader political debate about fairness and corporate social responsibility.

“We are upping our game in the large business area, particularly as it relates to international tax ...

The Real Health Care Debate
Amir Gholi
Published: Tuesday 10 April 2012
“Obamacare will, according to figures compiled by Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), leave at least 23 million people without insurance.”

The debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act illustrates the impoverishment of our political life. Here is a law that had its origin in the right-wing Heritage Foundation, was first put into practice in 2006 in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Mitt Romney and was solidified into federal law after corporate lobbyists wrote legislation with more than 2,000 pages. It is a law that forces American citizens to buy a deeply defective product from private insurance companies. It is a law that is the equivalent of the bank bailout bill—some $447 billion in subsidies for insurance interests alone—for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It is a law that is unconstitutional. And it is a law by which President Barack Obama, and his corporate backers, extinguished the possibilities of both the public option and Medicare for all Americans. There is no substantial difference between Obamacare and Romneycare. There is no substantial difference between Obama and Romney. They are abject servants of the corporate state. And if you vote for one you vote for the other.

But you would never know this by listening to the Democratic Party and the advocacy groups that purport to support universal health care but seem more intent on re-electing Obama. It is the very sad legacy of the liberal class that it proves in election cycle after election cycle that it espouses moral and political positions it will not pay a price to defend. And since we have no fight in us, since we will not punish politicians like Obama who betray our core beliefs, the corporate juggernaut rolls forward with its inexorable pace to cement into place our global neofeudalism.

Protesting outside the Supreme Court recently as it heard arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act were both conservatives from

Casino Billionaire Rxpected to Move Millions to GOP Groups
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 28 March 2012
Adelson, whose fortune is pegged at almost $25 billion by Forbes, is a prime example of the new breed of super donor who in the wake of court rulings in early 2010, can give unlimited amounts to outside spending groups supporting a candidate.

Multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson and his family, who have kept the flagging presidential candidacy of Newt Gingrich alive, seem poised to send millions to Republican-allied groups and possibly a super PAC backing frontrunner Mitt Romney, according to fundraisers with ties to the casino owner.

Adelson along with wife Miriam and other family members has garnered notice by donating a whopping $16.5 million to a super PAC backing Gingrich for president.

A private dinner Adelson hosted on March 22 at his home in Las Vegas drew Republican bigwigs from Washington, D.C., plus some of the GOP’s best-known fundraisers and donors. The diners were in Las Vegas early for a weekend summit of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a nonprofit advocacy group that Adelson has backed heavily.

At the dinner, the Adelson family privately sent strong signals to some Romney allies that millions would flow from them to a ...

Does the U.S. Have a Legal Responsibility to Stop Climate Change?
Brian Walker
Published: Friday 24 February 2012
“Seven teenagers think so—and they’re taking the federal government to court.”

Seven teenagers set a new precedent for environmental action in May 2011 by suing the federal government for not taking measures against climate change. They claim that the government’s policies regarding climate change are squandering natural resources.

The young plaintiffs, led by 17-year-old Alec Loorz, filed a total of 10 suits against the federal government and individual states under the public trust doctrine, a legal principle derived from English Common Law which holds that the government is responsible for protecting resources—like water and wilderness—in trust for the public and future generations. 

The legal action is supported by a coalition of groups called the iMatter Youth Council, which is petitioning the government for a 6 percent reduction in global CO2 each year, an emissions ...

How to Put People Back in Charge
Brian Walker
Published: Monday 20 February 2012
Corporate power is behind the politics of climate denial, Wall Street bailouts, union busting, and media consolidation, and more. What prospect do We the People have for putting power back where it belongs?

Most Americans know we’ve got problems with corporate power. Eighty-six percent say Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington, D.C., and 80 percent oppose Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates to corporate campaign contributions.

But how do we change that when corporations have so much wealth with which to protect their privileges?

The YES! editorial team set out to answer that question by searching out the best strategies for rebuilding our tattered democracy and putting We the People in charge. This is an especially critical question at a time when corporate power is at the root of so many of the crises our world is facing. Among them:

  • Wall Street banks insist on deregulation and then continue to engage in practices that brought on a financial collapse that threw millions of Americans into poverty.
  • Agribusiness demands taxpayer subsidies for foods that make us sick; for farming practices that destroy rivers, soils, the climate, and the oceans; and for trade practices that cause hunger at home and abroad.
Was the First Session of the 112th Congress the Worst Ever?
Brian Walker
Published: Monday 26 December 2011
Experts say divided control of government, policy differences between the House and Senate, a polarized electorate and the 2012 presidential election all have exacerbated Congress’ natural tendency to disagree.

Now that the payroll-tax-break debacle has been resolved (for two months, anyway), it's time to ponder: Was the first session of the 112th Congress the worst ever?

The verdict from voters, political scientists and lawmakers themselves: It's a strong contender, if not the winner.

After all, 2011 began with a House Republican vote to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law and ended with a flip-flop over the 60-day tax-cut extender - with detours in between for the two parties to flirt with shutting down the government, jeopardize the nation's credit and assorted legislative mayhem.

That may go down as one of the most dysfunctional sessions, said Sarah Binder, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and author of "Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock."

After two years of Democratic control over both chambers of Congress and the White House, Republicans gained majority in the House this year. The modern-era benchmark for gridlock is pretty high - or low, depending on your view. The 102nd Congress under President George H.W. Bush, according to Binder's analysis, left 65 percent of its policy agenda unfinished. The 103rd under President Bill Clinton didn't fare much better.

Other congressional experts say the first half of the 112th Congress was remarkable as much for its belligerent tone as for its lack of productivity.

Burdett "Bird" Loomis, a political-science professor at the University of Kansas, said some previous congresses - including during the time of Clinton's impeachment and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's Contact with America agenda - were highly partisan but still managed to accomplish something, or at least tried.

In contrast, Loomis said, this year's tea-party-driven House "has been aggressively negative and destructive. And the so-called compromises have been reactions to ...

Pro-Romney Super PAC Using Media Firms Tied to Swift Boat, Willie Horton Ads
Brian Walker
Published: Wednesday 14 December 2011
Independent-spending group acts as attack dog

A recent ad attacking Republican presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich by a pro-Mitt Romney “super PAC” was produced and distributed by some of the same consultants who were behind two of the most controversial advertisements in American presidential campaign history.

The “Restore Our Future, Inc.” super PAC paid $44,666 to McCarthy Hennings Media, Inc., a Washington, D.C., media consulting firm whose president, Larry McCarthy, made the infamous “Willie Horton” ad in 1988. The ad helped sink the candidacy of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. McCarthy is also a co-founder of the super PAC.

In addition, a payment of $782,052 went to Mentzer Media Services, Inc.  for the media buy, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The Towson, Md.-based firm was paid more than $18 million for its work in the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” campaign and was the largest beneficiary of the group’s spending, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. ...

Jailed Journalists Reflect Greater Struggle for Internet Freedom
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 10 December 2011
“The imprisonment of journalists is perhaps the first indicator for the perils of freedom of expression and human rights, as reporters often face the brunt of repression for those looking to control dissent within and across borders.”

The number of journalists in prison worldwide has spiked to its highest level in 15 years. Of them, nearly half worked online, raising larger questions about Internet freedom for more than just reporters, but average citizens as well.
 

Eighty-six out of 179 journalists who were in prison worldwide as of Dec. 1, 2011 were reporters or bloggers whose work appeared online, according to a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists released this week. 
 

"The ratio of imprisoned online journalists to other journalists has been disturbingly constant in the last few years," Danny O'Brien, internet advocacy coordinator at CPJ, told IPS. "As for reasons behind it, I think that the desire for these people is to shut them up as quickly as possible, and throwing them in jail is the quickest way to do that." 
 

The imprisonment of journalists is perhaps the first indicator for the perils of freedom of expression and human rights, as reporters often face the brunt of repression for those looking to control dissent within and across borders. 
 

The report's revelation of the rising trend of imprisoned journalists appears as the 63rd anniversary of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights culminates in International Human Rights Day Dec. 10. 
 

Article 19 of the U.N. Declaration grants the freedom to produce and consume information, "through any media and regardless of frontiers," but this year, the Internet has taken center stage for the battle for opportunity, equality and access along political, social, and economic lines. 
 

Though it is touted as a democratizing force, there is a tremendous challenge that is also ...

Why We Occupy: The Declaration of Occupy D.C.
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 8 December 2011
Some complain that they don’t know why the occupiers are upset. In this declaration, adopted by consensus, Occupy D.C. clears up the mystery.

What does the Occupy movement want, anyway?

Critics like to say that the movement is made up of whiners without clear demands. This declaration from Occupy D.C. shows that the grievances are many, but the focus is clear: The 1% are laying claim to the wealth and power of our world, and the 99% will no longer stand for the destruction of our society and our Earth.

The following was approved by consensus by the General Assembly of Occupy D.C. on November 30, 2011.

* * *

We have been captives of corrupt economic and political systems for far too long. The concentration of wealth and the purchase of political power stifle the voices of the increasingly disenfranchised 99 percent. Corporate dominance subverts democracy, intentionally sows division, destroys the environment, obstructs the just and equitable pursuit of happiness, and violates the rights and dignity of all life.

Occupy D.C. is an open community of diverse individuals, facing different forms of oppression and impacted by economic exploitation to differing degrees, but united by a shared vision of equality for the common good. The harsh economic conditions that have plagued the poor, working class, and communities of color for generations have begun to affect the previously financially secure. This acute awareness of our common fate has united us in our struggle for a better future. We recognize that inequality and injustice systemically affect every aspect of our society: our communities, homes, and hearts. To build the world we envision, we commit ourselves to overcoming our personal biases so we can successfully challenge systems of oppression in solidarity.

We are peaceably assembled at McPherson Square, practicing direct democracy on the doorstep of ...

How Occupy Is Transforming Our National Conversation
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 23 November 2011
In just two months, the Occupy movement has begun to unseat an economic narrative that held sway for thirty years.

Shift your gaze for a moment from the lurid headlines of police shutting down Occupy sites in Oakland, New York and other cities to the scene on a sunny day in early November here in Washington, D.C. In front of the grandiose U.S. Treasury Department building, thousands of nurses dressed in red shirts gathered holding high large signs proclaiming: “Heal America: Tax Wall Street” and “Tax Timmy’s Friends” (as in U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner). They and their allies next marched to the Bank of America, then to the Occupy D.C. site, and onward to the corridors of Congress. Their rallying cry: 

An Interfaith Occupation
Moderator
Published: Sunday 13 November 2011
The Occupy movement is bringing deep moral questions that many religions confront to the forefront of national conversation. How faith groups are joining in.

The Rev. Faith Ballenger wears her collar at Zuccotti Park in New York City. Amidst the banging of drums, chants for change, and urban noise, she talks with protesters about their politics, their economics, and especially about their spirits.

Ballenger is the interim pastor at Transfiguration Lutheran Church in Harlem. She knew right away she’d be spending time at Occupy Wall Street, which is, she says, a tense place to be—there is a heavy police presence and the occupiers are often very tired.

“Clergy should be down there,” Ballenger says. “When people don’t go to church, you go to where the people are.”

Ballenger encourages religious communities to join the movement and spend time on Wall Street or in the financial districts in cities across the world. “Faith is an action word,” she says. “This is what faith in action looks like.”

 

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‘StudentsFirst’ Campaigns Against Bullying While Giving $70,000 to Anti-Gay MI GOP Legislator
Moderator
Published: Sunday 30 October 2011
“D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has recently forayed into pro-LGBT and anti-bullying activism.”

The self-described “education reform” group StudentsFirst, headed up by former Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, has recently forayed into pro-LGBT and anti-bullying activism. It filmed its own “It Gets Better” video and also opened up its blog for anti-bullying activism. The four most recent blog entries on its site are all about these issues:

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I Am Not Moving
Moderator
Published: Monday 17 October 2011
“Dr. Cornel West is willing to put it on the line for the 99%.”

Pledge: “I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day or the days immediately following, for as long as I can, with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine by occupying Freedom Plaza to demand that America's resources be invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning.”

Keystone XL Pipeline Not Worth The Risks
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 4 October 2011
“Suppose a pipeline spill poisoned this precious source of water for irrigation and drinking. The proposed Keystone XL would corrosive oil over shallow aquifers under sandy soil.”

In Washington, D.C., conference rooms, the proposed pipeline running from Alberta, Canada, to Texas refineries on the Gulf of Mexico may look rather attractive. The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would supply the United States with abundant crude from a friendly neighbor. It would create 20,000 jobs, says owner TransCanada. And it would be reasonably safe for the environment, according to a U.S.  READ FULL POST 7 COMMENTS

MLK National Monument Inspires
Moderator
Published: Saturday 27 August 2011
MLK National Monument Inspires Calls to Continue Civil Rights Leader’s Work to End Poverty and War

This week, the public got its first look at a newly unveiled memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., that honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is the first memorial on the National Mall not dedicated to a war, president or white man. The threat of Hurricane Irene has forced organizers to postpone the planned dedication of memorial on Sunday, which was to have been attended by 250,000 people, including President Barack Obama. The dedication ceremony was to have taken place on the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when Dr. King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Despite the storm, a related Rally for Jobs and Justice will proceed tomorrow, ending with a march to the King Memorial. We speak with longtime civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, president and founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and with Dr. Vincent Harding, a longtime friend and a former speechwriter for Dr. King. He co-wrote his famous "Beyond Vietnam" address. Harding reads from a Carl Wendell Hines poem written shortly after Dr. King’s assassination and notes that "Dead men make such convenient heroes... It is easier to build monuments than to build a better world."

Transcript:

 

JUAN GONZALEZ: This week the public got its first look at a newly unveiled memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., that honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s the first memorial on the National Mall not dedicated to a war, a president or a white man. The memorial features a 30-foot-tall sculpture in which the civil rights leader appears to emerge from a chunk of granite that is carved to resemble the sides of a mountain. It was sculpted by ...

On Turning Poverty into An American Crime
Moderator
Published: Thursday 11 August 2011
"If we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do."

It was at lunch with the editor of Harper’s Magazine that the subject came up: How does anyone actually live “on the wages available to the unskilled”?  And then Barbara Ehrenreich said something that altered her life and resulted, improbably enough, in a bestselling book with almost two million copies in print.  “Someone,” she commented, “ought to do the old-fashioned kind of journalism -- you know go out there and try it for themselves.”  She meant, she hastened to point out on that book’s first page, “someone much younger than myself, some hungry neophyte journalist with time on her hands.”

That was 1998 and, somewhat to her surprise, Ehrenreich soon found herself beginning the first of a whirl of unskilled “careers” as a waitress at a “family restaurant” attached to a big discount chain hotel in Key West, Florida, at $2.43 an hour plus tips.  And the rest, of course, is history.  The now famous book that resulted, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, is just out in its tenth anniversary edition with a new afterword by Ehrenreich -- perfectly timed for an American era in which the book’s subtitle might have to be changed to “On (Not) Getting a Job in America.”  TomDispatch takes special pride in offering Ehrenreich’s new afterword, adapted and shortened, for a book that, in its latest edition, deserves to sell another million copies. 

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Will Jason Richwine’s Retrograde Harvard Ph. D Dissertation, “IQ and Immigration,” Cause Crimson Faces at Harvard University?

By Michael Matthew Bloomer
Ten Thousand Men of Harvard want victory todayFor they know that o'er old EliFair Harvard holds...

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By Alan Starc
The relevant life policy can be regarded as one of the best things that has happened to the...

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By Lawrence Davidson
PART I - Richard Falk Tells the Truth Shortly after the 15 April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings...

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By Don C. Marler
[Note: This paper was presented to the World Future Society General Assembly in Washington D.C. in...

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By William Blum
Boston Marathon, this thing called terrorism, and the United States What is it that makes young...

How to Get Payday Loans No Credit Check

By Alan Starc
Alternative finance options like payday cash, same day cash advance, fast loans are becoming...

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By Michael Matthew Bloomer
Last night, from Abu Dhabi, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel revealed certain intelligence...

Julian Assange on George Bush’s Library and Bradley Manning’s Trial

By Medea Benjamin
I had an opportunity to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in...

American Bhopals! It Starts with Universities

By Ian I Mitroff
On the night of December 2-3, 1984, Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal India exploded. Approximately...

This Earth Week: Stop the Extraction Economy, Create a New World

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
This week is Earth Week, and while many are saying “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” we think key topics...

Freedom and High Anxiety in the USA

By Lawrence Davidson
Part I - High Anxiety Americans may assume that public insecurity is a condition you find under...