Truthout: August 5, 2011
Truthout: August 5, 2011
The Hidden History of ALEC and
Prison Labor
Mike Elk and Bob Sloan, The Nation:
"Although a wide variety of goods have long been produced by
state and federal prisoners for the US government - license
plates are the classic example, with more recent contracts
including everything from guided missile parts to the solar
panels powering government buildings - prison labor for the
private sector was legally barred for years, to avoid unfair
competition with private companies. But this has changed
thanks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),
its Prison Industries Act, and a little-known federal
program known as PIE (the Prison Industries Enhancement
Certification Program). While much has been written about
prison labor in the past several years, these forces, which
have driven its expansion, remain largely unknown."
Read the Article
Dean Baker |
Employment Rate Hits New Low as Economy Creates 117,000 Jobs
in July
Dean Baker, The Center for Economic and
Policy Research: "The Labor Department reported that the
economy created 117,000 jobs in July and revised prior
months' growth up slightly to bring the average over the
last three months to 72,000. This rate of job growth is
below the 90,000 a month needed to keep pace with the growth
of the labor force. Consistent with this fact, the
employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) fell slightly to 58.1
percent, tying its previous low for the downturn. While the
unemployment rate edged down to 9.1 percent, this was
entirely attributable to people leaving the labor force."
Read the Article
Journalist Kicked
Out of ALEC Conference, Threatened With Arrest
Eric
Carlson, The Center for Media and Democracy: "After filling
out my registration form to receive press credentials, I was
told by an alarmed ALEC intern to wait while she fetched her
boss. While I did not think she had ever heard my name, the
look on her face made me think that perhaps she had heard of
our new project ALEC Exposed.org. A very stern looking
gentleman - Ted Wagnon of Vox Global Communications -
arrived and told me my application would be denied on the
grounds that the Center for Media and Democracy was an
'advocacy organization.' I asked Wagnon for a written
explanation, and he handed me ALEC's Media Policy, which
bears no mention of 'advocacy organizations.'"
Read the Article
Robert Reich |
The Republicans' Double-Dip Recession, and What Must Be
Done
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "Republicans
repeatedly assured the nation that once the debt-limit deal
was done - capping spending, cutting the budget deficit, and
getting '90 percent' of what they wanted - the economy would
bounce back. Just the opposite seems to be happening. Call
it the Republican's double-dip recession. Wall Street
investors aren't ideologues. They don't obsess about budget
deficits ten years from now, or the size of the government.
One day doesn't make a trend, but a giant sell-off like this
is motivated by hard, cold realities."
Read the Article
On the News With
Thom Hartmann: Congress' Disapproval Rating at an All-Time
High of 82 Percent, and More
In today's On the News
segment: Dow Jones drops 512 points in one day, FAA bill for
temporary funding expected to pass today, millionaires
paying 25 percent less in taxes than they did in 1990s,
Romney gets million-dollar donation from mystery company,
Congress' disapproval rating at an all-time high of 82
percent, and more.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript
The Obama Doctrine and the Dangers of the $185 Billion
Increase in US Nuclear War Preparations
Dr. Joseph
Gerson, Truthout: "Let me begin with a few words about the
US political landscape, the fluid state of the global
(dis)order and the emerging Obama Doctrine. The sad truth is
that President Bush has been succeeded by another US war
president. The US remains at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama escalated the Pakistan and Yemen wars and the
aggressive military exercises in the Yellow and South China
Seas. Washington has deepened its alliances across the
Asia-Pacific with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines,
Vietnam, Australia and India and in Europe with NATO's new
'strategic concept.'"
Read the Article
Is Wisconsin
Ground Zero for the "American Spring" or a Third
Party?
Richard (RJ) Eskow, Campaign for America's
Future: "People watching the news over the past week might
have thought that Congress was the only place where battles
for our future were being won and lost. That's wrong. There
are other battles, better battles, battles far from the
glare of the Beltway spotlights. And more are on their way.
So forget Washington for a minute. (If you feel like I do
right now, that'll be a pleasure.) If you want to see where
the next wave of corporate-sponsored political attacks is
being launched, look to New Orleans. And if you want a shot
of optimism, a ray of light, a sign that battles can be won
against overwhelming odds, turn your eyes toward Wisconsin.
That's where the action is."
Read the Article
European and
Global Markets Drop Ahead of Wall Street
Opening
Matthew Saltmarsh and Bettina Wassener, The
New York Times News Service: "Stock markets continued to
slide Friday in Europe following sharp sell-offs in Asia and
on Wall Street, as pessimism about weak growth in the United
States combined with longstanding worries about debt levels
in the euro area. Futures on the Standard & Poor's 500 were
also down, indicating another weak opening in New York.
Slowing manufacturing and service activity and the prospect
of spending cuts to reduce debt loads and balance budgets
are raising questions about where future growth will come
from on both sides of the Atlantic."
Read the Article
The US Doesn't
Have a Debt Problem. It Has a Crisis of Values
Imara
Jones, Colorlines.com: "Default was the best option. The
shameful and dangerous debt ceiling deal passed into law
yesterday made that clear. It is rooted in the grand bargain
that the political class made in 2008: to save Wall Street
and allow those in the rest of America to drown Katrina
style. The plan will suck money out of a shattered economy
that can ill afford it and demand sacrifice from frayed and
threadbare communities that will likely not be able to
endure what's been asked. Yet, it will allow the wealthiest
Americans to get off Scott free and - here's the kicker -
profit from the misery that the plan exacerbates."
Read the Article
David Korten |
How Change Happens: A Threefold Strategy
David
Korten, YES! Magazine: "Social systems self-organize around
ideas and relationships. They are living, complex, dynamic,
and constantly evolving as they and their members learn from
shared experience. The organism, not the machine, provides
the appropriate metaphor. The relevant knowledge resides not
with outside experts but with the people who populate the
system. The challenge for those who strive to be agents of
transformational change is to help members of their group,
community, or society recognize, organize, and use that
knowledge in ever more effective ways."
Read the Article
Bringing on the
"Obama Recession" by Forgetting the Lessons of Keynes and
FDR
David Woolner, New Deal 2.0: "In the past two
years we have heard official after official claim that they
do not want to repeat 'the mistakes of the Great
Depression.' Yet the recent behavior of both the Obama
Administration and senior members of Congress belies this
claim. Rather than fight for economic policies that would
stimulate the economy and put people back to work, this
Administration - and even many senior democratic party
officials - have chosen to ignore the lessons of the past.
Instead of focusing on jobs and growth - the real crisis in
our economy - they have embraced the sky-is-falling rhetoric
of the Republican Party extremists."
Read the Article
Shell Gets
Tentative Approval to Drill in Arctic
John M. Broder
and Clifford Krauss, The New York Times News Service: "The
Department of the Interior on Thursday granted Royal Dutch
Shell conditional approval of its plan to begin drilling
exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean next summer, a strong
sign that the Obama administration is easing a regulatory
clampdown on offshore oil drilling that it imposed after
last year's deadly accident in the Gulf of Mexico. The move
confirms a willingness by President Obama to approve
expanded domestic oil and gas exploration in response to
high gasoline prices and continuing high levels of
unemployment. It comes as the issuing of drilling permits in
the gulf is quickening, including the granting on Thursday
of a permit for a Shell floating drill rig for a
4,000-foot-deep well."
Read the Article
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BUZZFLASH DAILY
HEADLINES
There is a false equivalency that comes into play when President Obama insists on presenting himself as a "reasonable" mediator between two political sides.
Since BuzzFlash was founded in May of 2000, we have lambasted many Democratic leaders for lacking strength and conviction. We have deplored that Democratic leaders, with a few exceptions like Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich, repeatedly accept the far-right Republican-generated "conventional wisdom" as the starting point for negotiating public policy.
When President Obama, in an appeal to the so-called "Independent" vote, positions himself as straddling the middle ground between two equal sides, it is an abandonment of leadership that could expose the moral bankruptcy and manufactured bullying of the Koch brothers' (and like-minded billionaires') created "Tea Party."
President Obama implicitly and explicitly asserts that those who would protect Medicare and Social Security, for instance, are leftist counterparts to Ayn Rand followers who want to destroy the federal government and create free-market anarchy to replace it.
As BuzzFlash has stated many a time, the mythical "center" of public opinion is not some immutable set of public policies. America's strength has been its vigorous and inventive ability to evolve. Otherwise, we would still have slavery and women wouldn't be able to vote.
When the White House legitimatizes the radical notions infused into a segment of confused and frustrated Americans by "Americans for Prosperity," "FreedomWorks" (two perniciously euphemistic names considering their missions) and the entire right-wing media and think-tank infrastructure, it is providing them with credibility. Outrage is called for from the bully pulpit of the presidency, not equating advocates of programs for the elderly and poor with hateful radicals who want to drown government in a bath tub, after strangling it (as followers of Grover Norquist) - but keep their Medicare and government subsidies.
The 20 to 25 percent of the population that is holding America hostage has made Obama look weak, not strong. In his first administration, Obama held all the cards, but still folded on virtually everything but health care reform (and that, while having many good substantive insurance improvements, was a financial windfall for private health insurance companies).
The White House's attacks on progressives while showing respect toward the acolytes of Ayn Rand will not help the nation evolve into a clearer understanding of the serious action needed to save our economy and preserve our democracy.
It calls for the audacity of hope, an impassioned advocacy of a vision infused with the facts, not a "reasonable" legitimatizing of psychotic politics that threatens the ruin of our nation.
Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at
Truthout
Instead of Taxing Wall Street, the Wealthy
and Corporations, We Are Forced to Borrow Money From
Them
Read the Article at BuzzFlash
Ezra
Klein: Stabilizing Into a Crisis
Read the Article at The Washington
Post
Paul Krugman: The Economy Isn't Recovering,
and Washington Has Been Worrying About the Wrong
Things
Read the Article at The New York
Times
Rupert Murdoch and Bradley Manning: Why Isn't
Murdoch in Jail and Manning Free?
Read the Article at
BuzzFlash
Wisconsin Democrats Attack Tea Partier
for Outsourcing the Printing of Her "Patriotic" Children's
Books to China
Read the Article at Talking Points
Memo
US Home Ownership Hits Lowest Level Since
1965
Read the Article at CNN
The Coming
Second Civil War in the United States: Will We Be Enslaved
by Corporate Governance?
Read the Article at BuzzFlash
Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines