Truthout: 26 March 2012

Supreme Court Health Care Arguments to Begin Monday
Michael Doyle, David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers: "The Monday argument may do little to clarify public understanding of the 2,700-page health care law and its current status. More than four in 10 U.S. residents surveyed this month mistakenly think the Supreme Court has already struck down the law or are unsure whether the court has acted, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found. Among motivated advocates and political professionals, though, the oral arguments are a prime opportunity for spectacle."
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Breaking Glass Ceiling Against Compassionate Expertise, Obama Taps Jim Yong Kim to Lead World Bank
Robert Naiman, Truthout: "Dr. Kim has been a leading member of the community of people who have been pushing for greater access to health services in poor countries, including access to essential medicines, to be a higher priority for the World Bank and other international institutions. As you can imagine, that community of people is extremely happy about President Obama's announcement."
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Banking "Technocrats" Undermine Democracy (Video)
Paul Jay, The Real News: Gerry Epstein tells Paul Jay that in Europe and the US, bankers take control of the political process.
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Arizona's Curriculum Battles: A 500-Year Civilizational War
Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Truthout: "Horne believes that students should be treated as atomized individuals, not as members of distinct cultures, and he believes that the only valid culture they should be exposed to is that which is based on Western civilization. This is why Raza Studies or Chicana/Chicano Studies have long been opposed - even and sometimes especially - at colleges and universities."
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Veterans Peace Team Joins Occupy Wall Street
JA Myerson, Truthout: "Formed four months ago, the Peace Team aims to muster enough of a presence to present a first line between protesters and police officers at demonstrations like today's. 'We are hoping our message about nonviolence will prevail on the police (and any occupiers who are a little bit gaga),' says Jay Wenk of the 90th infantry division of Patton's Army."
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The Paul Ryan Rorschach Test
Dean Baker, Truthout: "But the advocates of the Ryan plan are obviously not thinking seriously about how to fashion a budget that would provide basic social insurance and sustain a 21st century economy. By allowing the public to see clearly who is serious about the budget and governmental responsibilities and who is not, Representative Ryan has performed a valuable public service."
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Congress Takes a Step or Two Forward, Two Steps Back
Michael Winship, Moyers & Co.: "As for the second step back, CREW published a report this week titled 'Family Affair' revealing that more than half the members of the House, as reported by The Boston Globe, 'paid nearly $5.6 million in salaries or fees directly to family members ... In addition, House members paid $3.1 million to family businesses, employers, or associated nonprofits. More staggering is the $150 million in legislative earmarks to organizations affiliated to the congressmen and their family members.'"
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Andrew Bacevich on Changing Our Military Mindset (Video)
Bill Moyers, Moyers & Co.: "This week, on an all-new Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers and Bacevich explore the futility of 'endless' wars, and provide a reality check on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. 'Are we so unimaginative, so wedded to the reliance on military means that we cannot conceive of any way to reconcile our differences with groups and nations in the Islamic world, and therefore bring this conflict to an end?' Bacevich tells Moyers."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Anti-Muslim Hate Crime in California, and More
In today's On the News segment: "Obamacare" goes before the Supreme Court, Wall Street doubles down on GOP donations, "Shoot First Law" in Florida under scrutiny, climate change is accelerating, and more.
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Why Do New York Times Columnists Keep Swooning for Paul Ryan?
James Kwak, The Baseline Scenario: "The reason Ryan won't specify the 'loopholes' he wants to close is that he can't: if he made a list of tax expenditures to eliminate but didn't touch the preferences for investment income, it would be patently obvious that he is waging class warfare on behalf of the 1%. Like David Brooks before him, [James] Stewart has fallen into the trap of believing that Paul Ryan is something other than a charlatan and a political hack."
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The 1 Percent's Doctrine for the 99 Percent
Mark Ames, Consortium News: "Slavery is often portrayed by revisionist historians as somehow antithetical to market capitalism; in reality, slavery was a winning portfolio investment, the very incarnation of just how evil 'free-market' capitalism can be. What makes this graph so disturbing for us in 2012 is what it suggests about today's '1 percent' - and how they view the rest of us."
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

Geraldo Rivera: Guns Don't Kill People; Hoodies Do
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: "To call mustachioed Geraldo Rivera a showboating self-aggrandizing buffoon is like calling a Tyrannosaurus rex a predator: it's just a fact. 'I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman,' proclaimed Rivera on 'Fox and Friends.'"
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Paul Krugman: Lobbyists, Guns and Money
Read the Article at The New York Times

Israeli Peace Marchers Protest Iran War Talk in Tel Aviv
Read the Article at Informed Comment

Japan in Uproar Over Censorship of Emperor's Anti-Nuclear Speech
Read the Article at The Atlantic

Nearly Three in Four Americans Think Police Should Arrest George Zimmerman
Read the Article at CNN

Glenn Greenwald: Obama Takes Bush's Secrecy Games One Step Further
Read the Article at Salon

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's Recall: Big Money Fuels Small-Government Fight
Read the Article at The Washington Post

War on Women: Anti-Contraception Literature Handed Out at Conservative Conference Headlined by Santorum, Paul Ryan
Read the Article at ThinkProgress

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