Thursday, February 28, 2013
Reagan in Central America:
Robert Parry: How Reagan Promoted Genocide
"A newly discovered document reveals that President Reagan and his national security team in 1981 approved Guatemala’s extermination of both leftist guerrillas and their 'civilian support mechanisms,' a green light that opened a path to genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages..."
Robert Parry: How Reagan Promoted Genocide
"A newly discovered document reveals that President Reagan and his national security team in 1981 approved Guatemala’s extermination of both leftist guerrillas and their 'civilian support mechanisms,' a green light that opened a path to genocide against hundreds of Mayan villages..."
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Societal Priorities:
Todd Miller: Norway's Common Sense Welfare State Versus U.S. Capitalism
"Norway was first place in the world in the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) for six consecutive years (2001-2006) and again in 2009 and 2010. The standard of living in Norway is among the highest in the world. Parental leave is 46 weeks and they have national health insurance. Libertarian websites such as Wikipedia refer to it as one of the biggest welfare states in the world. Thirty percent of all employment is through the government. Norway has the lowest unemployment rate and highest wages in the world (2.6%). Significant portions of the telecommunications and oil industry are owned by the government. Norway has a much lower crime rate and a much better prison system (see video above). People in the U.S. (see table below) work harder ( by 351 more hours per year), are paid less, have the fewest work protections of any developed country, a higher unemployment rate, more poverty, lower life-expectancies by two years and their children are treated worse at school. However, U.S. CEO and corporate wealth is much higher. U.S. current corporate cash holdings are 1.93 trillion. CEO pay is six times higher than the U.S than in Norway..."
The Nationmal Security State:
Wired Magazine: Supreme Court Thwarts Challenge to Warrantless Surveillance
"A divided Supreme Court halted a legal challenge Tuesday to a once-secret warrantless surveillance project that gobbles up Americans’ electronic communications, a program that Congress eventually legalized in 2008 and again in 2012. The 5-4 decision (.pdf) by Justice Samuel Alito was a clear victory for the President Barack Obama administration, which like its predecessor, argued that government wiretapping laws cannot be challenged in court. What’s more, the outcome marks the first time the Supreme Court decided any case touching on the eavesdropping program that was secretly employed in the wake of 9/11 by the President George W. Bush administration, and eventually codified into law twice by Congress. A high court majority concluded that, because the eavesdropping is done secretly, the American Civil Liberties Union, journalists and human-rights groups that sued to nullify the law have no legal standing to sue — because they have no evidence they are being targeted by the FISA Amendments Act. Some of the plaintiffs, which the court labeled 'respondents,' are also journalists and among other things claimed the 2008 legislation has chilled their speech and violated their Fourth Amendment privacy rights. The act, known as §1881, authorizes the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted 'to acquire foreign intelligence information.' The FISA Amendments Act generally requires the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to rubber-stamp terror-related electronic surveillance requests. The government does not have to identify the target or facility to be monitored. It can begin surveillance a week before making the request, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the secret FISA court rejects the surveillance application. 'Yet respondents have no actual knowledge of the Government’s §1881a targeting practices. Instead, respondents merely speculate and make assumptions about whether their communications with their foreign contacts will be acquired under §1881a,' Alito wrote. Joining Alito were Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said standing should have been granted. He said that the spying, 'Indeed it is as likely to take place as are most future events that commonsense inference and ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us will happen.' Signing the dissent were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The legislation authorizing the spying was signed into law the first time in July 2008 and the ACLU immediately brought suit..."
Political Corruption:
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Foul Play in the Senate
"...Just a couple of days before the inaugural festivities, The New York Times published some superb investigative reporting by the team of Eric Lipton and Kevin Sack, and their revelations were hard to forget, even at a time of celebration. The story told us of a pharmaceutical giant called Amgen and three senators so close to it they might be entries on its balance sheet: Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and that powerful committee’s ranking Republican, Orrin Hatch. A trio of perpetrators who treat the United States Treasury as if it were a cash-and-carry annex of corporate America. The Times story described how Amgen got a huge hidden gift from unnamed members of Congress and their staffers. They slipped an eleventh hour loophole into the New Year’s Eve deal that kept the government from going over the fiscal cliff. When the sun rose in the morning, there it was, a richly embroidered loophole for Amgen that will cost taxpayers a cool half a billion dollars..."
For Profit Education:
David Edwards: Republican-backed for-profit school caught deleting bad student grades
"A for-profit school that was hyped by Republican lawmakers as a solution to Tennessee’s education problems recently admitted deleting bad grades to 'more accurately recognize students’ current progress.' A December email obtained by WTVF showed that Tennessee Virtual Academy’s vice principal instructed middle school teachers to delete 'failing grades' from October and September. 'After … looking at so many failing grades, we need to make some changes before the holidays,' the email says, adding that each teacher needed to 'take out the October and September progress [reports]; delete it so that all that is showing is November progress.' 'If you have given an assignment and most of your students failed that assignment, then you need to take that grade out.' Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson said she was horrified because the school’s instructions amounted to cheating..."
Todd Miller: Norway's Common Sense Welfare State Versus U.S. Capitalism
"Norway was first place in the world in the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) for six consecutive years (2001-2006) and again in 2009 and 2010. The standard of living in Norway is among the highest in the world. Parental leave is 46 weeks and they have national health insurance. Libertarian websites such as Wikipedia refer to it as one of the biggest welfare states in the world. Thirty percent of all employment is through the government. Norway has the lowest unemployment rate and highest wages in the world (2.6%). Significant portions of the telecommunications and oil industry are owned by the government. Norway has a much lower crime rate and a much better prison system (see video above). People in the U.S. (see table below) work harder ( by 351 more hours per year), are paid less, have the fewest work protections of any developed country, a higher unemployment rate, more poverty, lower life-expectancies by two years and their children are treated worse at school. However, U.S. CEO and corporate wealth is much higher. U.S. current corporate cash holdings are 1.93 trillion. CEO pay is six times higher than the U.S than in Norway..."
The Nationmal Security State:
Wired Magazine: Supreme Court Thwarts Challenge to Warrantless Surveillance
"A divided Supreme Court halted a legal challenge Tuesday to a once-secret warrantless surveillance project that gobbles up Americans’ electronic communications, a program that Congress eventually legalized in 2008 and again in 2012. The 5-4 decision (.pdf) by Justice Samuel Alito was a clear victory for the President Barack Obama administration, which like its predecessor, argued that government wiretapping laws cannot be challenged in court. What’s more, the outcome marks the first time the Supreme Court decided any case touching on the eavesdropping program that was secretly employed in the wake of 9/11 by the President George W. Bush administration, and eventually codified into law twice by Congress. A high court majority concluded that, because the eavesdropping is done secretly, the American Civil Liberties Union, journalists and human-rights groups that sued to nullify the law have no legal standing to sue — because they have no evidence they are being targeted by the FISA Amendments Act. Some of the plaintiffs, which the court labeled 'respondents,' are also journalists and among other things claimed the 2008 legislation has chilled their speech and violated their Fourth Amendment privacy rights. The act, known as §1881, authorizes the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted 'to acquire foreign intelligence information.' The FISA Amendments Act generally requires the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to rubber-stamp terror-related electronic surveillance requests. The government does not have to identify the target or facility to be monitored. It can begin surveillance a week before making the request, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the secret FISA court rejects the surveillance application. 'Yet respondents have no actual knowledge of the Government’s §1881a targeting practices. Instead, respondents merely speculate and make assumptions about whether their communications with their foreign contacts will be acquired under §1881a,' Alito wrote. Joining Alito were Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said standing should have been granted. He said that the spying, 'Indeed it is as likely to take place as are most future events that commonsense inference and ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us will happen.' Signing the dissent were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The legislation authorizing the spying was signed into law the first time in July 2008 and the ACLU immediately brought suit..."
Political Corruption:
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Foul Play in the Senate
"...Just a couple of days before the inaugural festivities, The New York Times published some superb investigative reporting by the team of Eric Lipton and Kevin Sack, and their revelations were hard to forget, even at a time of celebration. The story told us of a pharmaceutical giant called Amgen and three senators so close to it they might be entries on its balance sheet: Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and that powerful committee’s ranking Republican, Orrin Hatch. A trio of perpetrators who treat the United States Treasury as if it were a cash-and-carry annex of corporate America. The Times story described how Amgen got a huge hidden gift from unnamed members of Congress and their staffers. They slipped an eleventh hour loophole into the New Year’s Eve deal that kept the government from going over the fiscal cliff. When the sun rose in the morning, there it was, a richly embroidered loophole for Amgen that will cost taxpayers a cool half a billion dollars..."
For Profit Education:
David Edwards: Republican-backed for-profit school caught deleting bad student grades
"A for-profit school that was hyped by Republican lawmakers as a solution to Tennessee’s education problems recently admitted deleting bad grades to 'more accurately recognize students’ current progress.' A December email obtained by WTVF showed that Tennessee Virtual Academy’s vice principal instructed middle school teachers to delete 'failing grades' from October and September. 'After … looking at so many failing grades, we need to make some changes before the holidays,' the email says, adding that each teacher needed to 'take out the October and September progress [reports]; delete it so that all that is showing is November progress.' 'If you have given an assignment and most of your students failed that assignment, then you need to take that grade out.' Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson said she was horrified because the school’s instructions amounted to cheating..."
Saturday, February 02, 2013
The Corporate Takeover of America:
The foundation that allowed 'Citizens United' to have such a disastrous impact was built decades ago. Protection of the public interest, via the 1970 creation of the EPA, was an affront to the American 'free enterprise system.' Apparently, pollution of air & water by those seeking a profit was seen as the natural order of things. The reactionary pro-business agenda was spread with the help of media companies, even holders of FCC charters (ABC, CBS) that required them to serve the public interest.
Bill Moyers: How Wall Street Occupied America
"...How did this happen? The rise of the money power in our time goes back forty years. We can pinpoint the date. On August 23, 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell—a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giant Philip Morris and a future justice of the Supreme Court—released a confidential memorandum for his friends at the US Chamber of Commerce. We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the top down. Recall the context of Powell’s memo. Big business was being forced to clean up its act. Even Republicans had signed on. In 1970 President Nixon put his signature on the National Environmental Policy Act and named a White House Council to promote environmental quality. A few months later millions of Americans turned out for Earth Day. Nixon then agreed to create the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress acted swiftly to pass tough amendments to the Clean Air Act, and the EPA announced the first air pollution standards. There were new regulations directed at lead paint and pesticides. Corporations were no longer getting away with murder. Powell was shocked by what he called an 'attack on the American free enterprise system.' Not just from a few 'extremists of the left' but also from 'perfectly respectable elements of society,' including the media, politicians and leading intellectuals. Fight back and fight back hard, he urged his compatriots. Build a movement. Set speakers loose across the country. Take on prominent institutions of public opinion—especially the universities, the media and the courts. Keep television programs 'monitored the same way textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance.' And above all, recognize that political power must be 'assiduously [sic] cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination' and 'without embarrassment.' Powell imagined the Chamber of Commerce as a council of war. Since business executives had 'little stomach for hard-nosed contest with their critics' and 'little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate,' they should create think tanks, legal foundations and front groups of every stripe. These groups could, he said, be aligned into a united front through 'careful long-range planning and implementation…consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and united organizations.' The public wouldn’t learn of the memo until after Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court that same year, 1971. By then his document had circulated widely in corporate suites. Within two years the board of the Chamber of Commerce had formed a task force of forty business executives—from US Steel, GE, GM, Phillips Petroleum, 3M, Amway, and ABC and CBS (two media companies, we should note). Their assignment was to coordinate the crusade, put Powell’s recommendations into effect and push the corporate agenda. Powell had set in motion a revolt of the rich. As historian Kim Phillips-Fein subsequently wrote, 'Many who read the memo cited it afterward as inspiration for their political choices.' They chose swiftly. The National Association of Manufacturers announced that it was moving its main offices to Washington. In 1971 only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in the capital; by 1982 nearly 2,500 did. Corporate PACs increased from fewer than 300 in 1976 to more than 1,200 by the mid-’80s. From Powell’s impetus came the Business Roundtable, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy (precursor to what we now know as Americans for Prosperity) and other organizations united in pushing back against political equality and shared prosperity. They triggered an economic transformation that would in time touch every aspect of our lives..."
The foundation that allowed 'Citizens United' to have such a disastrous impact was built decades ago. Protection of the public interest, via the 1970 creation of the EPA, was an affront to the American 'free enterprise system.' Apparently, pollution of air & water by those seeking a profit was seen as the natural order of things. The reactionary pro-business agenda was spread with the help of media companies, even holders of FCC charters (ABC, CBS) that required them to serve the public interest.
Bill Moyers: How Wall Street Occupied America
"...How did this happen? The rise of the money power in our time goes back forty years. We can pinpoint the date. On August 23, 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell—a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giant Philip Morris and a future justice of the Supreme Court—released a confidential memorandum for his friends at the US Chamber of Commerce. We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the top down. Recall the context of Powell’s memo. Big business was being forced to clean up its act. Even Republicans had signed on. In 1970 President Nixon put his signature on the National Environmental Policy Act and named a White House Council to promote environmental quality. A few months later millions of Americans turned out for Earth Day. Nixon then agreed to create the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress acted swiftly to pass tough amendments to the Clean Air Act, and the EPA announced the first air pollution standards. There were new regulations directed at lead paint and pesticides. Corporations were no longer getting away with murder. Powell was shocked by what he called an 'attack on the American free enterprise system.' Not just from a few 'extremists of the left' but also from 'perfectly respectable elements of society,' including the media, politicians and leading intellectuals. Fight back and fight back hard, he urged his compatriots. Build a movement. Set speakers loose across the country. Take on prominent institutions of public opinion—especially the universities, the media and the courts. Keep television programs 'monitored the same way textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance.' And above all, recognize that political power must be 'assiduously [sic] cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination' and 'without embarrassment.' Powell imagined the Chamber of Commerce as a council of war. Since business executives had 'little stomach for hard-nosed contest with their critics' and 'little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate,' they should create think tanks, legal foundations and front groups of every stripe. These groups could, he said, be aligned into a united front through 'careful long-range planning and implementation…consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and united organizations.' The public wouldn’t learn of the memo until after Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court that same year, 1971. By then his document had circulated widely in corporate suites. Within two years the board of the Chamber of Commerce had formed a task force of forty business executives—from US Steel, GE, GM, Phillips Petroleum, 3M, Amway, and ABC and CBS (two media companies, we should note). Their assignment was to coordinate the crusade, put Powell’s recommendations into effect and push the corporate agenda. Powell had set in motion a revolt of the rich. As historian Kim Phillips-Fein subsequently wrote, 'Many who read the memo cited it afterward as inspiration for their political choices.' They chose swiftly. The National Association of Manufacturers announced that it was moving its main offices to Washington. In 1971 only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in the capital; by 1982 nearly 2,500 did. Corporate PACs increased from fewer than 300 in 1976 to more than 1,200 by the mid-’80s. From Powell’s impetus came the Business Roundtable, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy (precursor to what we now know as Americans for Prosperity) and other organizations united in pushing back against political equality and shared prosperity. They triggered an economic transformation that would in time touch every aspect of our lives..."
