War On Women Part III: The Real Reason Conservatives Hate The Violence Against Women Act

By Bill Scher

March 16, 2012 - 9:57am ET 

First they came for the women who use contraception, and sought to deny them insurance coverage.

Then they came for the women seeking abortions, and sought to force them to have ultrasounds.

Now, they coming for the domestic violence survivors, and threatening to terminate the Violence Against Women Act.

Since its inception in 1994, the Violence Against Women Act transformed public perception of domestic violence, treating it as a crime and not a private family matter, improving police responses and prosecution, easing the reporting of crimes, funding shelters and prevention programs.

And it has worked. Domestic violence has plummeted 60% since the law has been in place.

Paul Krugman: Natural Born Drillers

To be a modern Republican in good standing, you have to believe — or pretend to believe — in two miracle cures for whatever ails the economy: more tax cuts for the rich and more drilling for oil. And with prices at the pump on the rise, so is the chant of “Drill, baby, drill.” More and more, Republicans are telling us that gasoline would be cheap and jobs plentiful if only we would stop protecting the environment and let energy companies do whatever they want.

Thus Mitt Romney claims that gasoline prices are high not because of saber-rattling over Iran, but because President Obama won’t allow unrestricted drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Meanwhile, Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal tells readers that America as a whole could have a jobs boom, just like North Dakota, if only the environmentalists would get out of the way. 

(Re) Occupy Greece

By William K. Black
Benzinga Columnist
March 05, 2012 1:07 AM

While the Occupy Wall Street movement set its sights on occupying a financial center, Germany has accomplished the vastly more impressive feat of occupying an entire nation: Greece. Germany has experience at occupying Greece, having done so during World War II.

The art of occupying another nation is to recruit a local puppet to do the dirty work required to repress the citizens. Germany used several puppets, most notoriously the murderous Ioannis Rallis, to (nominally) rule Greece and terrify the Greek people during World War II (after Germany's defeat, Rallis was executed for his treason).

Right-Wing Pundits Smear Soledad O’Brien As ‘Anti-Semitic’ And Racist

By Eli Clifton on Mar 15, 2012 at 11:40 am

A contentious CNN interview by Soledad O’Brien with Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak set off a firestorm of vitriolic name-calling against O’Brien from the far-right, with some critics going so far as to falsely accuse the CNN anchor of anti-Semitism.

In a March 8, interview, O’Brien challenged Pollak’s assertion that a video from 1990 showing President Obama, then a law student, hugging late Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell was a “smoking gun” for Obama’s true beliefs on “racial division and class warfare.” Pollak’s manufactured controversy hinged on characterizing Critical Race Theory (CRT) as “hold[ing] that the Civil Rights Movement was a sham and that White Supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.” Prodded by Pollak to define CRT, O’Brien accurately characterized it as a theory that “looks into the intersection of race and politics and the law.” (Watch it here.)

Decade of the Living Dead

Posted on Mar 15, 2012
By Nomi Prins

“Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy”
A book by Yalman Onaran

Yalman Onaran’s new book, “Zombie Banks: How Broken Banks and Debtor Nations Are Crippling the Global Economy,” makes it clear. The practice of subsidizing zombie banks (those that without support would be dead, but with support are the “walking dead”—sucking at our economic flesh through endless government life support), which began in the U.S. and was adopted in Europe, has dire ongoing economic implications for the global population. Onaran’s highly engaging prose is sometimes amusing, always scary in its content and imminently accessible to an economic layperson. He combines his considerable journalistic skills and powers of insight so concisely that the book can be read and digested in one or two sittings—depending on how much your stomach can take.

Dietary cadmium may be linked with breast cancer risk

PHILADELPHIA — Dietary cadmium, a toxic metal widely dispersed in the environment and found in many farm fertilizers, may lead to an increased risk of breast cancer, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Cadmium occurs at low concentrations naturally, but scientists are concerned because contamination of farmland mainly due to atmospheric deposition and use of fertilizers leads to higher uptake in plants.

The richest get richer

Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:59am EDT

By David Cay Johnston

(Reuters) - The aftermaths of the Great Recession and the Great Depression produced sharply different changes in U.S. incomes that tell us a lot about tax and economic policy.

The 1934 economic rebound was widely shared, with strong income gains for the vast majority, the bottom 90 percent.

In 2010, we saw the opposite as the vast majority lost ground.

Schools We Can Envy

March 8, 2012
Diane Ravitch

Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?
by Pasi Sahlberg, with a foreword by Andy Hargreaves
Teachers College Press, 167 pp., $34.95 (paper)


In recent years, elected officials and policymakers such as former president George W. Bush, former schools chancellor Joel Klein in New York City, former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have agreed that there should be “no excuses” for schools with low test scores. The “no excuses” reformers maintain that all children can attain academic proficiency without regard to poverty, disability, or other conditions, and that someone must be held accountable if they do not. That someone is invariably their teachers.

Nothing is said about holding accountable the district leadership or the elected officials who determine such crucial issues as funding, class size, and resource allocation. The reformers say that our economy is in jeopardy, not because of growing poverty or income inequality or the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, but because of bad teachers. These bad teachers must be found out and thrown out. Any laws, regulations, or contracts that protect these pedagogical malefactors must be eliminated so that they can be quickly removed without regard to experience, seniority, or due process.

Responsible Populism

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Simon Johnson

“Populism” is a loaded term in modern American politics. On the one hand, it conveys the idea that someone represents (or claims to represent) the broad mass of society against a privileged elite. This is a theme that plays well on the right as well as the left – although they sometimes have different ideas about who is in that troublesome “elite.”

At the same time, populism is often used in a pejorative way – as a putdown, implying “the people” want irresponsible things that would undermine the fabric of society or the smooth functioning of the economy.

Corn insecticide linked to great die-off of beneficial honeybees

New research has linked springtime die-offs of honeybees critical for pollinating food crops — part of the mysterious malady called colony collapse disorder — with technology for planting corn coated with insecticides. The study, published in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, appears on the eve of spring planting seasons in some parts of Europe where farmers use the technology and widespread deaths of honeybees have occurred in the past.

The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools

by Bill Bigelow

"Wear green on St. Patrick's Day or get pinched." That pretty much sums up the Irish American "curriculum" that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.



Sadly, today's high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity

One hundred fifty years of research proves that shorter work hours actually raise productivity and profits -- and overtime destroys them. So why do we still do this?

By Sara Robinson, AlterNet
Posted on March 13, 2012, Printed on March 17, 2012

If you’re lucky enough to have a job right now, you’re probably doing everything possible to hold onto it. If the boss asks you to work 50 hours, you work 55. If she asks for 60, you give up weeknights and Saturdays, and work 65. 

Odds are that you’ve been doing this for months, if not years, probably at the expense of your family life, your exercise routine, your diet, your stress levels, and your sanity. You’re burned out, tired, achy, and utterly forgotten by your spouse, kids and dog. But you push on anyway, because everybody knows that working crazy hours is what it takes to prove that you’re “passionate” and “productive” and “a team player” — the kind of person who might just have a chance to survive the next round of layoffs.

HUD Inspector General Hints at a Nuclear Bomb in the Mortgage Settlement

Wednesday, 03/14/2012 - 3:03 pm by Matt Stoller

Did Bank of America just get called out for failing to follow crucial procedures?

Most of what I have to say about the settlement is in this post over at Naked Capitalism. But there is a remarkable tidbit I left out, which the HUD OIG noted in a wry part of the audit on Bank of America.

Bank of America may have conveyed flawed or improper titles to HUD because it did not establish control environment which ensured that affiants performed a due diligence review of the facts submitted to courts and that employees properly notarized documents.

Cell phone use in pregnancy may cause behavioral disorders in offspring

New Haven, Conn. — Exposure to radiation from cell phones during pregnancy affects the brain development of offspring, potentially leading to hyperactivity, Yale School of Medicine researchers have determined.

The results, based on studies in mice, are published in the March 15 issue of Scientific Reports, a Nature publication.

“This is the first experimental evidence that fetal exposure to radiofrequency radiation from cellular telephones does in fact affect adult behavior,” said senior author Hugh S. Taylor, M.D., professor and chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.

What do the presidential candidates know about the retirement security crisis, and what do they plan to do about it?

ASK THIS | March 05, 2012

A scholar at the Claude Pepper Foundation writes that the presidential candidates should be required to clearly and fully articulate their policies. And journalists then have an obligation to assess the extent to which these proposed policies respond to the objective facts about the economic realities of old age.

By Larry Polivka
lpolivka2@fsu.edu
How is it possible that the Republican presidential primary in Florida came and went without anyone pressing the candidates to tell voters precisely what their positions are on economic and health security for older people?

Members of the media have not served the interests of the American voter well by letting the candidates avoid taking a clear stand on these issues. Indeed, reporters should immediately begin to determine how well-informed the candidates, including President Obama, are on the economic and health care needs of older people, and how they would ensure the future of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as viable pillars of the American retirement security system if elected president.

Rediscovering American Poverty

How We Cured “The Culture of Poverty,” Not Poverty Itself

by Barbara Ehrenreich

It’s been exactly 50 years since Americans, or at least the non-poor among them, “discovered” poverty, thanks to Michael Harrington’s engaging book The Other America. If this discovery now seems a little overstated, like Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was because the poor, according to Harrington, were so “hidden” and “invisible” that it took a crusading left-wing journalist to ferret them out. 


Harrington’s book jolted a nation that then prided itself on its classlessness and even fretted about the spirit-sapping effects of “too much affluence.” He estimated that one quarter of the population lived in poverty -- inner-city blacks, Appalachian whites, farm workers, and elderly Americans among them. We could no longer boast, as President Nixon had done in his “kitchen debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow just three years earlier, about the splendors of American capitalism.

J.P. Morgan Chase's Ugly Family Secrets Revealed

POSTED: March 13, 9:18 AM ET 

In a story that should be getting lots of attention, American Banker has released an excellent and disturbing exposé of J.P. Morgan Chase's credit card services division, relying on multiple current and former Chase employees. One of them, Linda Almonte, is a whistleblower whom I've known since last September; I'm working on a recount of her story for my next book.

One of the things we were promised by the lawmakers who passed the Dodd-Frank reform bill a few years back is that this would be a new era for whistleblowers who come forward to tell the world about problems in our financial infrastructure. This story now looms as a test case for that proposition. American Banker reporter Jeff Horwitz did an outstanding job in this story detailing the sweeping irregularities in-house at Chase, but his very thoroughness means the news may have ramifications for Linda, which is why I'm urging people to pay attention to this story in the upcoming weeks.

A writer's appeal to the UN: Treat the global financial crisis as a human rights crisis

COMMENTARY | March 13, 2012
 
Danny Schechter, a man of many journalistic talents, discusses being asked by an NGO in Geneva to testify about his findings – in this case, findings that issue a challenge to the U.N.

By Danny Schechter
danny@mediachannel.org

 

Journalists for the most part report what they know and hope that someone pays attention. With so many media outlets, brands, bloggers and sloggers out there, it is rare for challenging ideas to touch a larger nerve or get visibility beyond fragmented followings. 

 

The idea of winning global attention is a far off dream unless you break the biggest exclusive or win the first interview with, say, Jesus on his return to earth. (And that could be ignored if your name isn’t Oprah, etc.)

Water Pollution Rises From Farms, Costing Billions

By Tara Patel - Mar 13, 2012

Water pollution from agriculture is costing billions of dollars a year in developed countries and is expected to increase in China and India as farmers race to increase food production, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

“Pollution from farm pesticides and fertilizers is often diffuse, making it hard to pin down exactly where it’s coming from,” Kevin Parris, author of a report from the Paris-based organization, said in an interview in Marseille. “In some big agricultural countries in Europe, like parts of France, Spain and the U.K., the situation is deteriorating.”

The war on teachers: Why the public is watching it happen

By Valerie Strauss

This was written by Mark Naison, professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University in New York and chair of the department of African and African-American Studies. He is also co-director of the Urban Studies Program, African-American History 20th Century. A version of this first appeared on the blog With A Brooklyn Accent.

By Mark Naison

All over the nation, teachers are under attack. Politicians of both parties, in every state, have blamed teachers and their unions for the nation’s low standing on international tests and our nation’s inability to create the educated labor force our economy needs.

Mass firings of teachers in so-called failing schools have taken place in municipalities throughout the nation and some states have made a public ritual of humiliating teachers. In Los Angeles and New York, teacher ratings based on student standardized test scores — said by many to be inaccurate — have been published by the press. As a result, great teachers have been labeled as incompetent and some are leaving the profession. A new study showed that teachers’ job satisfaction has plummeted in recent years.

Barack Obama's Had a Pretty Damn Good Presidency

—By Kevin Drum | Sun Mar. 11, 2012 7:11 PM PDT

In the upcoming issue of the Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris has a cover story called "The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama," a headline almost guaranteed to set your teeth on edge. Normally I'd just blame the copy desk and move on, but since Glastris is both writer and editor, there's no way to let him off the hook for this. What were you thinking, Paul?

But let's move on anyway. Glastris' argument, obviously, is that Obama has been a pretty good progressive president. So why doesn't he get more credit from us lefties?

Game Over in Afghanistan

American troops no longer serve a purpose there. It is time to get out. Now.

By Fred Kaplan | Posted Monday, March 12, 2012, at 5:48 PM ET

The game is over in Afghanistan. An American presence can no longer serve any purpose. Or, rather, it can only extend and exacerbate the pathologies of this war. It is time to get out, and more quickly than President Obama had been planning. The consequences of leaving may be grim, but the consequences of staying are probably grimmer.

Sunday’s massacre in Kandahar province, in which a veteran U.S. Army staff sergeant sneaked out of his base at 3 a.m., strolled into a village, and methodically gunned down 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, is but the latest sign of a massive unraveling.

A reality check on the US economy

More volatile even than the markets, media reporting veers from double-dip recession to strong recovery. So, some sobriety …

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 March 2012 10.32 EDT

Economists and economic reporters are about as quick to change their assessments of the economy as teenagers are to shift allegiances to the latest pop star. While the economy rarely undergoes rapid shifts in direction, the public could be excused for not recognizing this fact – based on economic reporting.

Unfortunately, the analyses that look at underlying trends to determine the future course of the economy are the exception. More typically, reporting amplifies the latest report and ignores other evidence about the likely future direction of the economy.

A Tough-Oil World: Why High Gas Prices Are Here to Stay

Twenty-First Century Oil Will Break the Bank -- and the Planet

by Michael T. Klare

 

Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been -- except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing to this surge, including Iran’s threats to block oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, fears of a new Middle Eastern war, and turmoil in energy-rich Nigeria. Some of these pressures could ease in the months ahead, providing temporary relief at the gas pump.  But the principal cause of higher prices -- a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry -- cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.

In energy terms, we are now entering a world whose grim nature has yet to be fully grasped.  This pivotal shift has been brought about by the disappearance of relatively accessible and inexpensive petroleum -- “easy oil,” in the parlance of industry analysts; in other words, the kind of oil that powered a staggering expansion of global wealth over the past 65 years and the creation of endless car-oriented suburban communities. This oil is now nearly gone.

How Politics Damaged Obama's Recovery

Brian Beutler March 13, 2012, 5:39 AM

 

Last week we brought you this chart, demonstrating that the unemployment rate under President Obama is coming down fairly quickly — though not as quickly as it did under President Reagan in the months before he won a landslide re-election in 1984.

What Small Business Really Needs
Monday, 03/12/2012 - 8:54 am by Joe Shure

Entrepreneurs aren’t being discouraged by high taxes. They’re struggling with a lack of support and resources needed to put their ideas into action.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, an Ohio man named Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher confronted then-candidate Barack Obama about the Democrat’s plan to raise taxes on individuals in high-income brackets. Wurzelbacher, who became known as Joe the Plumber, asserted the plan would hurt small business owners like him.

At the time, it seemed as though Joe the Plumber gave a voice to the small business owner population, tired as they were of high taxes and strict regulations. But two things proved wrong with this picture: Joe the Plumber, it turns out, is not a plumber at all, he’s merely worked for one. Also, he is woefully ill equipped to speak on behalf of small business owners.

Paul Krugman: What Greece Means

So Greece has officially defaulted on its debt to private lenders. It was an “orderly” default, negotiated rather than simply announced, which I guess is a good thing. Still, the story is far from over. Even with this debt relief, Greece — like other European nations forced to impose austerity in a depressed economy — seems doomed to many more years of suffering.

And that’s a tale that needs telling. For the past two years, the Greek story has, as one recent paper on economic policy put it, been “interpreted as a parable of the risks of fiscal profligacy.” Not a day goes by without some politician or pundit intoning, with the air of a man conveying great wisdom, that we must slash government spending right away or find ourselves turning into Greece, Greece I tell you. 

Resurrecting Ayn Rand: How Corporate Money Pushes Economic Poison on Campus

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens, CounterPunch
Posted on February 28, 2012, Printed on March 13, 2012

Gary Weiss, the Wall Street writer who was ahead of his time with his comprehensive chronicle of Wall Street corruption in 2006 (Wall Street Versus America) charts a bold new course this week with the release of Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul.

 

Thanks to Weiss, the nation might just escape the next wave of Ayn Rand’s radical capitalism and student brainwashing by corporate money vultures fanning out across U.S. campuses.

Thanks to the trail paved in Weiss’ book, we did some further digging into the money cartel financing this “spontaneous” outpouring of campus and Tea Party interest in Rand, whose work is regularly considered by top academics to be mediocre and simpleminded.

Welfare Reform—From Bad to Worse

by Greg Kaufmann

 

A stunning report released by the University of Michigan’s National Poverty Center reveals that the number of US households living on less than $2 per person per day—a standard used by the World Bank to measure poverty in developing nations—rose by 130 percent between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million. The number of children living in these extreme conditions also doubled, from 1.4 million to 2.8 million.

The reason? In short: welfare reform, 1996—still touted by both parties as a smashing success.

How the Right’s Smear Machine Started

March 8, 2012

 

Exclusive: The Right’s attack machine, which these days questions President Obama’s birthplace and smears Georgetown student Sandra Fluke over contraceptives, arose in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate with young conservatives thinking they were the real victims, thus justifying whatever they did, reports Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

Americans sometimes wonder how the nation’s political process got so unspeakably nasty with vitriol pouring forth especially from right-wing voices like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage, to name just a few. Yet, whenever called on this ugliness, conservatives insist that they are the real victims, picked on by the Left.

This destructive and whiny dynamic has existed at least since the late 1960s when angry passions spilled over from the Vietnam War and grew worse after Richard Nixon exploited Democratic dissension on the war to win the White House in 1968 – and then continued the war for another four nasty years.

Paul Krugman: Ignorance Is Strength

One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education. And after World War II, public support, including the G.I. Bill and a huge expansion of public universities, helped large numbers of Americans to get college degrees.

But now one of our two major political parties has taken a hard right turn against education, or at least against education that working Americans can afford. Remarkably, this new hostility to education is shared by the social conservative and economic conservative wings of the Republican coalition, now embodied in the persons of Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. 

Why the American Empire Was Destined to Collapse

By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on March 7, 2012, Printed on March 10, 2012

Several years after the Wall Street-ignited crisis began, the nation’s top bank CEOs (who far out-accumulated their European and other international counterparts) continue to hobnob with the president at campaign dinners where each plate costs more than one out of four US households make in a year. Financial bigwigs lead their affluent lives, unaffected, unremorseful, and unindicted for wreaking havoc on the nation. Why? Because they won. They hustled better. They are living the American Dream.

This is not the American Dream that says if you work hard you can be more comfortable than your parents; but rather, if you connive well, game the rules, and rule the game, your take from others is unlimited. In this paradigm, human empathy, caring, compassion, and connection have been devalued from the get-go. This is the flaw in the entire premise of the American Dream: if we can have it all, it must by definition be at someone else’s expense.

Wall Street's Broken Windows

By William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives
Posted on March 6, 2012, Printed on March 10, 2012

James Q. Wilson, who died recently, was a political scientist who often studied the government response to blue collar crime. The public knows him best for his theory called "broken windows." The metaphor explains what happens to a vacant building when broken windows are not promptly repaired. Soon, most of the windows in the abandoned building are broken. The criminals feel little compunction against petty destruction because the building’s owners evince no concern for the integrity of their building. Wilson took social norms, community, and ethics seriously. He argued that as community broke down, fewer honest citizens were active in monitoring and policing behavior. The breakdown in community lled to widespread serious blue collar crime. Wilson urged us to take even minor blue collar crimes and breaches of civility seriously and to demand that they be contained through social pressure and policing.

New York City’s police strategy embraced “broken windows,” making it a priority to respond to even minor offenses that upset the community – like “squeegee men,” graffiti, and street prostitution. Reported blue collar crime fell. It also fell sharply in most other cities, which did not implement “broken windows” programs, but Wilson and the NYPD got the credit and popular fame. Wilson became one of the most famous blue collar criminologists in the world.

Ousted Iowa Supreme Court Justices to Receive JFK’s Profile in Courage Award

By Trish Mehaffey, Reporter

DES MOINES, Iowa - The three Iowa Supreme Court justices ousted from the bench in 2010 will receive the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Former Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and former Associate Justices David Baker and Michael Streit will receive the annual honor May 7, at John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Mass.

Meet the Whistleblowers Who Warned of the Impending Financial Crash But Were Ignored

By Eyal Press, TomDispatch.com
Posted on March 6, 2012, Printed on March 10, 2012

What’s worse: to be persecuted and indicted for trying to expose an act of wrongdoing -- or to be ignored for doing so?

Whistleblowers have been under intense scrutiny in Washington lately, at least when it comes to the national security state.  In recent years, the Obama administration has set a record by accusing no fewer than six government employees, who allegedly leaked classified information to reporters, of violating the Espionage Act, a draconian law dating back to 1917.  Yet when it comes to workers who have risked their careers to expose misconduct in the corporate and financial arena, a different pattern has long prevailed.  Here, the problem hasn’t been an excess of attention from government officials eager to chill dissent, but a dearth of attention that has often left whistleblowers feeling no less isolated and discouraged.

Report: 'Explosive' Growth Of 'Patriot Movement' And Militias Continues

by Mark Memmott

An enormous surge in the number of groups that "see the federal government as their primary enemy" and in some cases have militias as their "armed wings" continues, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports today.

According to the civil rights organization's researchers, the rapid growth in such "Patriot movement" groups, which began when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, has mushroomed since. They estimate there are now nearly 10 times more Patriot and militia organizations — 1,274 in all — in the U.S.

You Are Being Tracked Online: Here Are 5 Ways to Protect Your Privacy

By David Rosen, AlterNet
Posted on March 6, 2012, Printed on March 10, 2012

If you listen carefully when you turn on your smartphone or tablet computer or go online using your computer, you’ll hear a deep sucking sound. That's the sound of all your personal data being gobbled up by a growing array of digital service providers.

On Feb. 23, the White House issued a long-awaited report outlining a framework for personal cyber privacy, “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World: A Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Global Innovation in the Global Digital Economy.” Billing itself a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights," the report stresses the need for transparency, security, accuracy and a reasonable limits to what is collected.

The Day 'Due Process' Died: Obama, Holder and the End of Rights

by Peter Van Buren

 

Historians of the future, if they are not imprisoned for saying so, will trace the end of America's democratic experiment to the fearful days immediately after 9/11, what Bruce Springsteen called the days of the empty sky, when frightened, small men named Bush and Cheney made the first decisions to abandon the Constitution in the name of freedom and created a new version of the security state with the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, secret prisons and sanctioned torture by the U.S. government. They proceeded carefully, making sure that lawyers in their employ sanctioned each dark act, much as kings in old Europe used the church to justify their own actions.

The Religious Right's Plot To Take Control Of Our Public Schools

By Rachel Tabachnick, AlterNet
Posted on March 6, 2012, Printed on March 10, 2012

The Good News Club: The Stealth Assault on America’s Children by Katherine Stewart uncovers a right-wing conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy the nation’s public school system, using recent Supreme Court decisions as a lever. It’s a must-read for anyone who’s seen public school kids, perhaps their own, targeted for proselytizing by peers, teachers and adult volunteers. And for those who haven’t, it’s a wake-up call.  

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas once wrote, “Religion is certainly a source of positive values, and we need as many positive values in the school as we can get.” It sounds benign. But what if the particular brand of religion is coercive, and in conflict with the teachings and values of the family of the students being targeted? It doesn’t matter. Because under the law as it stands now, evangelical churches have the right to gather, teach and proselytize in your neighborhood school.

AP, WaPo Peddle Right-Wing Anti-Transportation Framing As 'News'

By Isaiah J. Poole

March 5, 2012 - 6:08pm ET 

As the Senate prepares to take up a well-intentioned, if sorely inadequate, transportation funding bill this week, the Associated Press distributed a "news" story Monday that offered little "news" but much in the way of ideological framing for the opponents of federal transportation spending.

And, as if the AP story itself wasn't enough of a screed worthy of RedState, The Washington Post's web site used a headline—really, more of a statement than a headline—that sealed the deal: "Highway bills pitched by lawmakers as job generators, but are they really? Economists say no."

Other People’s Suffering

By THOMAS B. EDSALL

 

The publication last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior” provided fresh fodder for the liberal critique of the Republican Party and the corporate ethic.

The paper, by Paul K. Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and four colleagues, reports that members of the upper class are more likely than others to behave unethically, to lie during negotiations, to drive illegally and to cheat when competing for a prize.

Why the Koch Brothers' Coup of the Cato Institute Is So Dangerous

By Alex Pareene, Salon
Posted on March 6, 2012, Printed on March 10, 2012

Charles and David Koch, of the famous anti-Obama billionaire Koch brothers, are attempting a sort of hostile takeover of the Cato Institute, one of the most prominent and independent arms of the DC-based American libertarian movement. Charles Koch co-founded Cato in the 1970s, but, as Dave Weigel explains, he left the think tank in 1991. David has been a minority partner since then, but the Kochs have largely left Cato to fund its libertarian research while they focused on polluting and evil cackling and other Koch-ish activities.

The Kochs have sued for the right to buy the shares in Cato held by the widow of co-founder William Niskanen. Their aim is basically to make Cato into another arm of their explicitly partisan messaging machine, along with Americans For Prosperity. To that end, they have already attempted to install some ridiculous Republican party hacks on Cato’s board of directors — hacks like John “Hind Rocket” Hinderacker, the attorney and “Powerline” blogger with no history of support for “liberty” to speak of.Current Cato people are upset. Some have preemptively resigned, even. (Well, announced an intention to resign upon the completion of the Koch takeover, anyway.)

Credit-Default Hypocrites

How Wall Street is gaming the Greek bailout.

By Eliot Spitzer  |  Posted Monday, March 5, 2012, at 2:39 PM ET

A funny thing happened on the way to the Greek bailout: Credit-default swaps involving Greek debt—the same kind of financial instruments that triggered the 2008 fiscal cataclysm—were set aside, once again protecting big financial institutions from their own irresponsibility.

As the negotiations over the write-down of Greek debt unfolded, one of the critical questions that seemed to be hovering over the markets was: Who bought credit-default swaps on Greek debt, and who would owe big sums to cover the CDS obligations if there were a default. Remember that back in the housing crisis of 2008, it was largely the inability of AIG to make payment on the credit-default swaps it had sold that triggered the cascade of incipient failures that required enormous government intervention. Remember the $182 billion investment taxpayers made in AIG—$12.9 billion of which went straight to Goldman Sachs?

Glenn Greenwald Tears Apart the Propaganda Driving the Insane Push for War With Iran

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on March 6, 2012, Printed on March 10, 2012

Iran is diplomatically isolated, has a weak and antiquated military relative to Israel and the United States, and its economy is being squeezed hard by international sanctions. The consensus among both American and Israeli intelligence agencies is that an attack on the country would be disastrous, and might lead to a regional nuclear arms race.

But that view seems to have a limited impact on the mainstream discourse surrounding Iran. Last week, Glenn Greenwald, writing on Salon, noted that for months, “Americans have been subjected to this continuous, coordinated, repetitive messaging from israeli officials, amplified through the US media.”

This is generally how the establishment American media conducts the debate over whether to attack Iran: here are Israeli officials explaining why an attack is urgent and why the US must conduct it. Now here are American officials explaining why an attack can wait a little while longer but that it will happen if necessary to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

Greenwald appeared on this week's AlterNet Radio Hour to discuss the push for war with Iran. The transcript of his interview has been lightly edited for print.

News on H.R. 3476

News supplied by a reader...thank you for the links!--Dictynna

Found this article helpful. Here's how it ends (sentence needs editing):
"This is not to say that free speech issues raised by HR 347′s passage should be ignored, but rather contextualized against a backdrop where protest and dissent are already consistently treated as illegal."


Bill text (short and easy to read) and legislative history:

This brief article raises several concerns and links to some other discussions of the bill:

This article has much more detail and many more links. (Skimmed the latter part; it ends with the spokesperson for the bill's sponsor bizarrely denying that the bill affects protest at all.)