How the US Press Lost its Way

By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on May 21, 2012, Printed on May 23, 2012

Editor’s Note: From May 10 to May 12, journalist Robert Parry participated in a conference entitled, “From the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks: A Transatlantic Conversation on the Public’s Right to Know,” sponsored by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies in Heidelberg, Germany.

The conference consisted of media figures, legal scholars and freedom-of-information advocates – and included Neil Sheehan, the New York Times correspondent who got the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg, and Barry Sussman, the Washington Post editor who oversaw the newspaper’s coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Parry spoke on the last day and offered the following observations:

Much of this conference has focused on the glory days of American journalism in the 1970s. And rightly so. My talk, however, will deal with the more depressing question of why things then went so terribly wrong.

First, let me say it’s been an honor to be at this conference, especially with Neil Sheehan and Barry Sussman, who played such important roles exposing serious crimes of state in the early to mid-1970s. That was a time when U.S. journalism perhaps was at its best, far from perfect, but doing what the Founders had in mind when they afforded special protections to the American press.

Dollars and sense: Why are some people morally against tax?

As the U.S. presidential election campaigns heat up, the economic debate is dominated by bailouts, austerity and, inevitably, taxation. Now a new study published in Symbolic Interaction asks why tax is such an important issue to voters and explores the moral ideas which underpin their views.

Americans are famously hostile to taxes even though they are not heavily taxed in comparison to Canadians and the British. In their study Dr Jeff Kidder and Dr Isaac Martin, from Northern Illinois University and the University of California-San Diego, explore how middle class feelings of exploitation lie behind this hostility.

We must take back control of our food, before it's too late

Big ideas are needed to protect the world's food resources, but that's unlikely as long as huge supermarket chains are in charge

Matthew Herbert
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 May 2012 11.35 EDT


We are living through a delicious disaster. Never has so much food been offered to us from so many parts of the world, and in such elaborate combinations. The average supermarket carries over 45,000 different product lines, and yet the provenance of most of these products are utterly opaque. The government has handed control of the food chain over to the supermarkets – and with it, any meaningful sense of the common good.

Take fish. There is a crisis in our oceans – according to the WWF as many as 90% of all large fish have been fished out – yet there are no gaping holes on supermarket shelves, or an absence of fish on our menus. Instead, you'd think nothing was wrong. Likewise, our fruit and veg is often harvested by illegal immigrants living in hideous conditions, but their stories are absent from the packaging. Instead, we have pictures of prairies on chicken packets, despite the packaged chickens having rarely, if ever, come in to contact with grass. And that tractor sticker with union flag wheels? It doesn't mean the food was made or harvested in the UK, but to UK standards. It's a massive con trick designed for the benefit of big business, yet sold to us as the natural consequence of choices we've made along the way.

Public Money Finds Back Door to Private Schools

By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: May 21, 2012

When the Georgia legislature passed a private school scholarship program in 2008, lawmakers promoted it as a way to give poor children the same education choices as the wealthy. 


The program would be supported by donations to nonprofit scholarship groups, and Georgians who contributed would receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits, up to $2,500 a couple. The intent was that money otherwise due to the Georgia treasury — about $50 million a year — would be used instead to help needy students escape struggling public schools.

Paul Krugman: Europe's Leaders Double Down on a Failed Strategy

Tuesday, 22 May 2012 09:18 

I guess we knew this was coming, but in the face of the French and Greek election results and the broader evidence that Europe's economic strategy is an utter failure, the usual suspects are, you guessed it, doubling down.

Simon Wren-Lewis, an economics professor at Oxford, has looked on in horror as the Dutch have agreed on completely unnecessary austerity measures, as a way of showing their commitment to Europe's totally misguided fiscal pact. "Towards the end of April the Dutch conservative coalition government collapsed when the far-right party refused to discuss further budget cuts," Mr. Wren-Lewis wrote on his blog on May 7. "The prime minister resigned. And yet a few days later other parties rallied round to give their support to a similar package of austerity measures, which now have majority support in parliament."

Is Texas Waging War on History?

By Katherine Stewart, Comment Is Free
Posted on May 21, 2012, Printed on May 23, 2012

Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education from 2007 to 2009, is a “young earth” creationist. He believes the earth is 6,000 years old, that human beings walked with dinosaurs, and that Noah’s Ark had a unique, multi-level construction that allowed it to house every species of animal, including the dinosaurs.

He has a right to his beliefs, but it’s his views on history that are problematic. McLeroy is part of a large and powerful movement determined to impose a thoroughly distorted, ultra-partisan, Christian nationalist version of US history on America’s public school students. And he has scored stunning successes.

If you want to see a scary movie about this movement, consider taking in Scott Thurman’s finely-crafted documentary Revisionaries, currently making the festival circuit, which records the antics of McLeroy and a hard right majority on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) as they revise the textbook standards that will be used in Texas (and many other states).

Occupy: This is how you know you have their attention

By Gaius Publius on 5/22/2012 09:15:00 AM

You still have it, Occupy. They're still looking at you.

A lot happened in Chicago over the weekend at events related to the demonstrations against NATO. Depending on where you go or who you ask, you get a different picture. It's a real kaleidoscope of images and viewing angles.

I want to look at some of the kaleidoscope, then add things up.

The Enduring Secrets of Watergate

May 22, 2012

 

Special Report: Forty years ago, burglars working for President Nixon planted bugs in the Democrats’ Watergate headquarters. Then, a month later, a follow-up break-in went awry, touching off America’s most notorious political scandal. But few understand what really happened, writes Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

Three times in May 1972, burglars working for President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee tried to enter the Watergate complex, an elegant new building situated along the Potomac River. Their target was the Democratic National Committee.

For the Watergate burglars, the third try was the charm. Armed with an array of burglary tools, two of the Cuban-Americans on the team – Virgilio Gonzalez and Frank Sturgis – entered the building through the B-2 garage level. They climbed the stairs and taped open the doors behind them. Reaching the sixth floor where the DNC offices were located, Gonzalez made quick work of the door lock and the burglars were finally inside.

The Mindboggling Sum We Actually Spend on National Security

By Chris Hellman and Mattea Kramer, TomDispatch.com
Posted on May 22, 2012, Printed on May 23, 2012

Recent months have seen a flurry of headlines about cuts (often called “threats”) to the U.S. defense budget. Last week, lawmakers in the House of Representatives even passed a bill that was meant to spare national security spending from future cuts by reducing school-lunch funding and other social programs.

Here, then, is a simple question that, for some curious reason, no one bothers to ask, no less answer: How much are we spending on national security these days? With major wars winding down, has Washington already cut such spending so close to the bone that further reductions would be perilous to our safety?

An Obama Spending Spree? Hardly

Sahil Kapur - May 23, 2012, 6:03 AM

 

A dominant theme of the national political discourse has been the crushing spending spree the U.S. has ostensibly embarked on during the Obama presidency. That argument, ignited by Republicans and picked up by many elite opinion makers, has infused the national dialogue and shaped the public debate in nearly every major budget battle of the last thee years.

But the numbers tell a different story.

Paul Krugman: We Could End This Depression Right Now

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on May 22, 2012, Printed on May 23, 2012

The central message of Paul Krugman's new book, End This Depression Now! is simple: It doesn't have to be like this. No external dynamic is keeping unemployment at more than 8 percent and consigning a generation of young workers to an economy in which risk is plentiful and opportunities scarce. It is only a failure of political will -- and an almost universal embrace of conservative voodoo economics – that is keeping us mired in this dark economic moment.

Of the 2009 stimulus, Krugman writes, “Those who had more or less the right ideas about what the economy needed, including President Obama, were timid, never willing either to acknowledge just how much action was required or to admit later on that what they did in the first round was inadequate.” Instead of treating the dismal jobs picture as a crisis requiring their full attention, Washington “pivoted” to talking about the deficit – a phantom menace -- at precisely the wrong time. “People with the wrong ideas,” Krugman writes, “were vehement and untroubled by self-doubt.”

Paul Krugman: What Have Rich People Done for You Lately?

Friday, 18 May 2012 15:05 

 So a former partner of Mitt Romney's at Bain Capital says, in a new book, what Mr. Romney probably believes: we should be really grateful to the rich for all the rich things they do.

Because, you see, they don't spend all their wealth building homes as big as the Taj Mahal; some of it they invest in innovation. "Most citizens are consumers, not investors," Edward Conard, the author of a forthcoming book titled "Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong," told the columnist Adam Davidson for a recent article in The New York Times Magazine. "They don't recognize the benefits to consumers that come from investment."

Scientist Peter Gleick cleared of forging Heartland documents in expose: investigation

By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian
Monday, May 21, 2012 11:56 EDT

A review has cleared the scientist Peter Gleick of forging any documents in his expose of the rightwing Heartland Institute’s strategy and finances, the Guardian has learned.

Gleick’s sting on Heartland brought unwelcome scrutiny to the organisation’s efforts to block action on climate change, and prompted a walk-out of corporate donors that has created uncertainty about its financial future.

The Rise of the New Economy Movement

By Gar Alperovitz, AlterNet
Posted on May 20, 2012, Printed on May 23, 2012

As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models. In 'New Economic Visions', a special five-part AlterNet series edited by Economics Editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back.

Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness. The “New Economy Movement” is a far-ranging coming together of organizations, projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion. The name of the game is practical work in the here and now—and a hands-on process that is also informed by big picture theory and in-depth knowledge.

Thousands of real world projects -- from solar-powered businesses to worker-owned cooperatives and state-owned banks -- are underway across the country. Many are self-consciously understood as attempts to develop working prototypes in state and local “laboratories of democracy” that may be applied at regional and national scale when the right political moment occurs.

The First Domino Falls in Greece

by Shamus Cooke

Greece’s situation is not an isolated event, but a bellwether for the industrial world and beyond. The fallout from the 2008 global crisis hasn't reached bottom yet, and the depths will be dug deeper as the Euro crisis spreads — political crisis will create economic crisis and vice versa, as periods of calm and stability are replaced by international turmoil and panic.

The media and politicians have portrayed the Greeks as indolent and stupid, refusing to swallow the economic medicine needed for a healthy recovery. But the austerity medicine of the bankers — slashing and privatizing the public sector, cutting wages and benefits, mass layoffs, etc. — is a cure that threatens to kill.

Paul Krugman: Dimon’s Déjà Vu Debacle

Sometimes it’s hard to explain why we need strong financial regulation — especially in an era saturated
with pro-business, pro-market propaganda. So we should always be grateful when someone makes the case for regulation more compelling and easier to understand. And this week, that means offering a special shout-out to two men: Jamie Dimon and Mitt Romney.

I’ll come back shortly to the troubles at JPMorgan Chase, the bank Mr. Dimon runs. First, however, let me
talk about Mr. Romney, whose remarks about those troubles were so off-point that they constitute a
teachable moment.

The Terrifying Ways Google Is Destroying Your Privacy

By David Rosen, AlterNet
Posted on May 20, 2012, Printed on May 23, 2012

In 1999, Scott McNealy, the former head of Sun MicroSystems, reportedly declared, "You have zero privacy anyway....Get over it." He unintentionally let the proverbial cat out of the bag of the digital age.

In 2009, McNealy’s assessment was confirmed by Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. In an interview with NBC's Mario Bartiromo, he proclaimed, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Schmidt’s words have become Google’s new mantra. Welcome to 21st-century corporate morality.

Now, a decade-plus later, McNealy’s prophetic words have take on a far more sinister significance than he probably intended. They are increasingly becoming the operating assumption of the digital corporate state. Whether going online, using a PC, smartphone, tablet or digital TV, users can no longer assume they have any privacy. In fact, users should assume they have absolutely no privacy.

Frank Rich on the National Circus: Bully Romney and the Gay Vote

The polls have not been too kind to Obama's gay-marriage announcement. Both New York Times/CBS and USA Today/Gallup show around 25 percent of voters saying they’re "less likely" to vote for him because of it. Is Obama going to regret that he did this now?No. I think it’s safe to say that that 25 percent wasn’t going to vote for him anyway. Some young voters may be energized by his stand. So, obviously, are some donors. Perhaps some black voters down on gay marriage will stay at home. Perhaps. But in political terms, I’d say Obama’s move is either a wash or a plus. In the long-term perspective of history, his endorsement of marriage equality is a big plus.

Alternatively, could Romney be hurt by his association with the anti-gay-marriage forces?Clearly he thinks so. When he spoke at Jerry Falwell’s old base, Liberty University, in Virginia last week, Mitt was minimalist in his obligatory endorsement of marriage between “one man and one woman.” Even so, the prominent Romney supporter Bill White, the former president of the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York, had such a strong visceral response to these mild words that he demanded that the campaign return his contribution ($2,500, the maximum). It had finally sunk in that the presumptive GOP nominee was supporting, as White put it, “a constitutional amendment which would attempt to make my own legal and blessed marriage null and void.”

Koch Operative Steered $55 Million To Front Groups Airing Ads Against Democrats; Ads Assailed Candidates Over Abortion, 9/11, Medicare

By Lee Fang posted May 19th 2012 at 2:00PM

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of of Koch Industries, are known as big spenders when it comes to lobbying and influencing public policy. Now, a new document filed with the IRS reveals how the Koch political machine funneled over $54.5 million in previously undisclosed funds to a litany of front groups designed to smear Democrats.

The disclosure suggests that a very wide variety of Republican groups active in the last major election, from pro-life organizations that ran ads on abortion to shadowy fronts that aired partisan commercials with the infamous Ground Zero Mosque conspiracy, have been highly dependent on Koch money. The document also reveals that the Koch’s political network spent much more on electing the current Congress than previously known.

"Catfood Clinton" rides again—at a Pete Peterson summit to kill Social Security

By Gaius Publius, 5/19/2012 09:15:00 AM

Wealth inequity is not a by-product — it's the goal.

If you read here regularly, you know that Pete Peterson, the crazed billionaire who lives, breathes, eats and ... well ... to take down Social Security — a man who has spent a half billion dollars on that soulless psychopathic project — just held a Washington DC "summit" aimed at killing what he loves to hate.

Your safety net.

The answer to our fuel woes might be monster sweet potatoes

By Jess Zimmerman

Corn ethanol is a good idea in theory — what’s more renewable than a fuel source you plant and harvest every year? But corn is such an inefficient energy source that if we wanted to meet our biofuel goals with corn ethanol alone, they’d have to shoulder out every other crop. You know what yields more ethanol per acre than corn, though? Sweet potatoes.

We Had Money In The Federal Budget For ... What?

By Isaiah J. Poole

May 18, 2012 - 3:36pm ET 

From the House Republicans whose leader, Speaker John Boehner, just three days ago claimed that "we can’t go on spending money we don’t have," and "our economy is stuck in large part because it’s stuck with debt," comes this:

The House on Friday approved a sweeping defense authorization bill for 2013 that calls for the construction of an East Coast missile defense system in the United States by the end of 2015.

The bill obligates $100 million next year to plan for the site, but the project would cost billions of dollars in later years that has yet to be funded.

That's right — the Star Wars missile shield is back, except that this time the threat is not from intercontinental nuclear missiles from Russia, but intercontinental nuclear missiles from Iran.

A Victory for All of Us

By Chris Hedges
In January, attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran asked me to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that challenged the harsh provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We filed the lawsuit, worked for hours on the affidavits, carried out the tedious depositions, prepared the case and went to trial because we did not want to be passive in the face of another egregious assault on basic civil liberties, because resistance is a moral imperative, and because, at the very least, we hoped we could draw attention to the injustice of the law. None of us thought we would win. But every once in a while the gods smile on the damned.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, in a 68-page opinion, ruled Wednesday that Section 1021 of the NDAA was unconstitutional. It was a stunning and monumental victory. With her ruling she returned us to a country where—as it was before Obama signed this act into law Dec. 31—the government cannot strip a U.S. citizen of due process or use the military to arrest him or her and then hold him or her in military prison indefinitely. She categorically rejected the government’s claims that the plaintiffs did not have the standing to bring the case to trial because none of us had been indefinitely detained, that lack of imminent enforcement against us meant there was no need for an injunction and that the NDAA simply codified what had previously been set down in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act. The ruling was a huge victory for the protection of free speech. Judge Forrest struck down language in the law that she said gave the government the ability to incarcerate people based on what they said or wrote. Maybe the ruling won’t last. Maybe it will be overturned. But we and other Americans are freer today than we were a week ago. And there is something in this.