Truthout: 16 February 2012

Democratic Women Boycott House Contraception Hearing After Republicans Prevent Women From Testifying
Igor Volsky, ThinkProgress: "Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration's new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees... Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused [and] dismissed the Democrats' woman witness as a 'college student' who does not 'have the appropriate credentials' to testify before his committee."
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Face Masks, Snipers and Aerial Surveillance: Chicago's Newest Anti-Protest Measures Revealed
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "Each time a new measure that the city of Chicago is preparing for the coming NATO and G8 summits is unveiled, the tension in the city ratchets up a notch. The latest news comes in the form of reports that Chicago has purchased face shields, and may be considering the implementation of airborne surveillance technology."
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Audit Uncovers Extensive Flaws in Foreclosures
Gretchen Morgenson, The New York Times News Service: "An audit by San Francisco county officials of about 400 recent foreclosures there determined that almost all involved either legal violations or suspicious documentation .. Anecdotal evidence indicating foreclosure abuse has been plentiful since the mortgage boom turned to bust in 2008. But the detailed and comprehensive nature of the San Francisco findings suggest how pervasive foreclosure irregularities may be across the nation."
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It's Time We Recognized the Blair Government's Criminality
John Pilger, Truthout: "In the Kabuki theater of British parliamentary politics, great crimes do not happen and criminals go free.... The farewell speech of one of the most artful, Tony Blair, had 'a sense of moral conviction running through it,' effused the television presenter Jon Snow, as if Blair's appeal to Kabuki devotees was mystical. That he was a war criminal was irrelevant."
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State-Sanctioned Rape: Forced Trans-Vaginal Ultrasounds in Virginia, Texas and Iowa
Andy Kopsa, RH Reality Check: "Virginia is poised to send two of the most abhorrent anti-choice bills to Governor Bob McDonnell to sign.... The first is a bill requiring the use of trans-vaginal ultrasound prior to a woman obtaining an abortion, the other is an egg-as-person bill.... Although the Governor has said he will consider the personhood bill he has been clear he would sign the forced ultrasound bill. But let's start calling this what it really is: state sanctioned rape."
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Secrecy Loophole Could Still Weaken Bureau of Land Management's Tougher Fracking Regulations
Lisa Song, InsideClimate News: "New regulations drafted by the federal Bureau of Land Management would increase pressure on energy companies to disclose information about the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing ... But there are gaps in the rules that could make them less effective. The BLM would allow companies to exempt certain chemicals or mixtures of compounds that are considered trade secrets."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Gov. Rick Scott's Plan to Imprison Floridians for Profit Derailed by His Own Party, and More
In today's On the News segment: The stage is set for Citizens United round two, oil prices are climbing again, Florida lawmakers reject the state's prison privatization plan, and more.
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Is NYPD Running Wild? Patterns of Brutality Raise Questions About Mayor's Control of Police
Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet: "A series of incidents last year, in some cases where police broke the law, has sullied the reputation of the NYPD. From the department's handling of Occupy protesters and journalists, to officers' participation in illegal gun sales and a ticket-fixing scandal, to rape charges and reports that allege the targeting of Muslims, the NYPD's pattern of abuse, law-breaking, and poor judgment is raising questions about whether some of New York's finest are operating as rogue units."
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Federal Pay: Another Battle in the War on the Middle Class
Charles M. Smith, Truthout: "In January, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report entitled 'Comparing the Compensation of Federal and Private-Sector Employees.' The report found that federal pay and benefits, are, on average, 16 percent higher than comparable private sector compensation. This report has now become the basis of a concerted attack on the compensation of federal employees, mainly by the Republican Party. The first question we may ask is shall we accept the 16 percent number proposed by the CBO? The quick answer is: no."
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The .0000063 Percent Election: How the Politics of the Super Rich Became American Politics
Ari Berman, TomDispatch: "Electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1%. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063%. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80% of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each. If 2008 was the year of the small donor ... then 2012 is 'the year of the big donor,' when a candidate is only as good as the amount of money in his super PAC."
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New Bill to Weaken Protections, Incentives for Whistleblowers Sneaks Through Committee
Dana Liebelson, Truthout: "Thanks to a lobbying effort from the US Chamber of Commerce, New York Rep. Michael Grimm's attempt to eviscerate hard-fought whistleblower reforms included in the Dodd-Frank Act is gaining steam. This news should be seriously troubling to anyone hoping to stop wrongdoing on Wall Street - the kind that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Grimm's bill ... guts the whistleblower provisions included in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation and puts whistleblowers at grave risk."
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Legislators Who Sign the Anti-Tax "Norquist Pledge" Are Enemies of the People and the Constitution
William B. Daniels, Truthout: "A recent lawsuit ... brings renewed attention to California's 30-year-old Proposition 13. The Norris/Young lawsuit, along with a November 2011 statement by Sen. John Kerry that Grover Norquist, as the 'thirteenth member' of the bipartisan supercommittee on fiscal reform, was responsible for its failure, raise two questions: 'Have Norquist pledge signers violated federal and state criminal laws?' and, 'What is the connection between Proposition 13 and Norquist pledge signers in the California Legislature?'"
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Capitalism, the Infernal Machine: An Interview With Fredric Jameson
Aaron Leonard, Rabble: "Fredric Jameson has written 'Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One,' a book that revisits Karl Marx's most important work, 'Capital'.... It is not coincidental that it addresses key elements of the situation we find ourselves in today: how the rich got so rich, how the poor got so poor and how all the various fixes and proposed solutions are based on the illusion that capitalism can somehow be made to meet the needs of the majority of people and still be capitalism."
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BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

When it comes to the harsh treatment of and low pay for working people, the Republican Party leadership resembles the former Soviet Union Politburo.

BuzzFlash at Truthout has discussed before how iconic GOP figures such as Ronald Reagan heaped praise on the Solidarity Union in the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet empire. Reagan even referred to Lech Walesa and the Gdansk shipyard workers as seeking "God-given rights."

We noted this at the time that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was taking away collective bargaining rights from public workers in Wisconsin, while publicly claiming he was acting in the "glorified" tradition of Reagan.

Just before the Super Bowl this year, Indiana became the 23rd right-to-work state, thus further weakening unions. Hoosier Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Bush administration honcho and possible GOP presidential nominee if the convention is brokered - like Walker - seems to have forgotten the "God-given" rights Reagan bestowed upon the Solidarity Union.

Of course, Reagan himself appeared to apply his admiration for unions only to those abroad, since one of his infamous acts was crushing the air traffic controllers union, PATCO.

Last night, I watched a somewhat under-appreciated docu-drama called "Strike." It is about the travails and courage of a diminutive shipyard worker named Agnieszka Kowalska (an alias in the film, allegedly representing a composite character of two women), who played a key role in keeping the Gdansk shipyard from caving in to government efforts to break union solidarity that had spread across Poland.

In the film, she was a multiyear winner of the Lenin "worker hero" award at Gdansk for her overtime work, but over the years, she witnesses the corruption and exploitation of workers by the Communist Party and the Party's shipyard "managers." This includes, of course, a trend of working more for less, as the Soviet/Polish bosses siphon off the money that should be going to the workers.

Reluctantly, she becomes a vital voice in rallying Polish unions in solidarity against those who prosper by suppressing people who do the actual work.

In many ways, a Daniels or Walker is interchangeable with a Soviet boss when it comes to treating people who labor for a living as interchangeable parts that are pressed to the limit and then discarded.

As BuzzFlash at Truthout noted in its earlier commentary on Reagan's defense of the Solidarity Union, he delivered a blistering critique of the Soviet satellite Polish government in a 1981 presidential address:

Yesterday the Polish Government, a military dictatorship, took another far-reaching step in their persecution of their own people. They declared Solidarity, the organization of the working men and women of Poland, their free union, illegal.

Yes, I know Poland is a faraway country in Eastern Europe. Still, this action is a matter of profound concern to all the American people and to the free world.

Ever since martial law was brutally imposed last December, Polish authorities have been assuring the world that they're interested in a genuine reconciliation with the Polish people. But the Polish regime's action yesterday reveals the hollowness of its promises. By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights - the right to belong to a free trade union.

Were the workers under Soviet rule to be granted union rights and improved working conditions, only to have workers in the US see their union rights incrementally taken away, their pay decreased and their working conditions grow increasingly more hazardous?

Apparently so.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

Citizens United Part II: Montana Supreme Court Collides With US Supreme Court
Read the Article at The Huffington Post

General Motors Records Highest Profits Ever: $7.6 Billion
Read the Article at The Associated Press

Mitt Romney's Own Private McCarthy
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

The GOP Death March
Read the Article at The Hill

Oil Prices Are Rising Despite Lowest Demand Since 1997
Read the Article at ThinkProgress

Climate-Denial Scientists Caught Taking Money From Corporations
Read the Article at the Sydney Morning Herald

Joseph Kennedy III Announces Congressional Campaign to Win Rep. Barney Frank's Seat
Read the Article at The Boston Globe

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